If people are adding pics from our wedding to Flickr, please could you tag them “pjwajf” ?

That way they can all be brought together in galleries like this one:

[flickr-gallery mode=”search” tags=”pjwajf”]

(I’m testing a new plugin – I hope as more photos crop up, the gallery will get bigger, but I don’t know if that’s the case.)

So, back home. The cards are open, the gifts unwrapped and the contents logged. All bills have been paid ((including the beer bill from Nottingham Brewery who hadn’t warned me I had to pay in cash when I collected the polypins, and who just said – oh, take the beer and drop the payment in the next time you are passing)). All guests have left now and the quiet time alone begins.

And married life began with thinking a) why is the sun shining today and not yesterday? and b) Ooh, the sun’s shining – quick, get the laundry on.

My trusty Zoom H2 was there, sitting in the ceremony room discretely on the mantelpiece of the massive fireplace in front of which we got married yesterday at 1pm, making a recording of proceedings.

I don’t think I will be sharing with the world a full copy of the day, although I can probably make a CD for anyone who particularly wants it.

But I did just want to share the following second or so.

This is the noise my darling husband made as he was slipping my wedding ring onto my finger.

[display_podcast]

Harrumph!

I’ll put a bit of explanation in the comments.

Yet again, the car has weird faults. The dashboard stopped working, which meant not knowing how fast I was going at any given time. The ignition got ropey, wouldn’t always start, and sometimes stalled again as soon as started up. And the key has been a pain for months – you never know whether it will lock or not, and once it has locked, you never know whether it will unlock or whether you will be climbing over the passenger seat after using the emergency key.

The car does have a “lifetime warranty” which is maintained by having an expensive annual dealer service. Last year that in itself cost almost as much as the value of the car, and the latest chunk of things going wrong – apparently it needs a new key and sensors aplenty to make it work again – will easily take me over what WEBUYANYCAR, for example, would pay for it.

So, they’re not doing the work, I’m living with the unreliability, and starting to turn my thoughts to my next car. Boo hiss.

Buying the car last time was a pain. I know nothing about cars, and my criteria are a bit weird.

I feel guilty for having a car at all. City living shouldn’t need one. The buses here are excellent. But having one does make it a great deal easier to do my campaign work, including shifting leaflets about, getting to delivery places and to the secret print cave, which barely has a bus service at all. If I didn’t have a car, a lot of people around me would have to make adjustments.

Last time, at the last minute, I rejected a much smaller car on seeing the boot and thinking, “I couldn’t fit our camping kit in there.” I think this time, I will be more rigourous with myself: we only camp rarely. Most of the work of the car will be small, planet destroying city hops.

What I need:

a nice car
a tiny eco car
with a nippy acceleration
strong, instant brakes
fabulous cockpit experience
– mp3 / cd player
– radio tuning stick on driving wheel
– comfortable seats
Majorly more reliable than the bloody Renault Mégane!

The old and the new parquet at Nottingham station

Originally uploaded by nilexuk.

They’re renewing the parquet in the Distribution Hall at Nottingham railway station – a process that is taking weeks. It must be quite painstaking work. It does feel a bit of a shame – presumably the old wood saw a bit of history? I don’t know if they’re just replacing it or cleaning and repairing the old wood.
– Taken at 8:40 PM on September 22, 2010 – uploaded by ShoZu

I was looking up sunrise/sunset data for Nottingham, and this website gives a fascinating data table for what weather to expect in this part of the world.

Nottingham, United Kingdom – Solar energy and surface meteorology

These data were obtained from the NASA Langley Research Center Atmospheric Science Data Center; New et al. 2002

It’s interesting how little variation there is throughout the year. Clearly sunshine and temperature change with the seasons with the best insolation – the sunshine that falls on the ground – in May, June and July. So a better early part of the year is good for the for solar panel than sunshine during the school holidays.

But for the other data there’s really very little change. The average rainfall per month varies from 47-60. Wet days are more or less the same every month, with only a five day difference. And the wind speed average barely changes at all.

I see from the Nottinghamshire History Blog that iron-age remains have been found during roadworks for the widening of the A46.

There are helpful links to the Highways Agency’s Flickr account and press-release, with this gruesome picture amongst them.

I am tempted to make a joke about dying in a traffic jam trying to leave Widmerpool, but I probably shouldn’t.

I did give essentially the same speech this year as last year.

Last year, I was deeply chuffed at retweets and mentions my blog post got, and it half appeared that some people thought I was headlining at Pride and giving a huge political speech to a crowd of thousands. I didn’t try particularly hard to disabuse them of the notion either.

In fact, almost certainly more people will engage with the material than heard me speak on the day.

This was the crowd before I began speaking. There were 5 or so when I started and about 30 by the time I finished. The ones at the end probably missed entirely the humour at the start, so perhaps I should rejig the speech if I am invited to give it again next year.

What happens at Nottingham Pride, which is great, is that in addition to the two stages of live music and all the stalls, they also have a “Speakers Corner” – as a way of preserving some of the politics of Pride, and remembering it’s not just a party. As well as me speaking, they had Cllr Jane Urquhart and a rep from Unison.

Two omissions from my speech – I think if I were giving it again, I would touch on the David Laws débâcle and the very current stuff about Clare Balding.

Sun’s almost come out – and this is pretty huge actually. There’s thousands here.

Originally uploaded by nilexuk.

– Taken at 3:12 PM on July 31, 2010 – uploaded by ShoZu

see more Lolcats and funny pictures

This post appeared on http://www.libdemvoice.org earlier today. We seem to be suffering a little technical difficulties, so I am reposting it here to help it get out to a wider audience, given the constraints of time. Please do not reply here – please send your message to the email address given. Do, please, pass this info on to the people who are contacting you, particularly party members who will want to have their say.

On Saturday afternoon the party’s Federal Executive is meeting to discuss how the party should handle the Parliamentary situation. There’s no pre-set, universally supported answer to this so the FE’s discussion is going to be meaningful and important – which means that if you want to influence what the party does, now is the time to let the FE know.

Because many members of the Federal Executive are scattered around the country – sleeping, travelling back from election counts, making their way to London and so on – the FE members may be hard to get hold of and many will not necessarily be checking their emails frequently.

Therefore, in order to ensure that people have a chance to send in a view that will be read before the meeting, we’ve agreed with the Party President Ros Scott a special email address – balancedparliament@libdemvoice.org which can be used to email in your views. A member of staff will collate all the messages and make sure that they are drawn to the attention of Ross and also reported to the members of the FE in time for their discussion.

A few tips when emailing this address:
– Given the pressures of time, short and concise messages are likely to be more effective than 12 pages essays
– As with letter writing or lobbying more generally, saying in full who you are and where you’re from is likely to add to the impact of the message
– Please send your message as soon as possible