Reconnected and a last few pictures of 2010

Hello good people, I'm back. I had the pictures here uploaded and was just about to add a few words to them when I was struck down by the dreaded lergy. Before I was recovered, I was whisked away to work where I found my lab internet not working. I'm now much better, only a cough remaining, and a nice man from the computer helpdesk phoned this morning about another matter but I wasn't letting him away until he'd sorted my wee connection problem too.

The next 3 pictures of a pretty good summary of my musical year. Until August I hadn't been catching many sessions for a while maily because I was never there. This one below is one of the few, in one of the Castle Douglas pubs (I can't remember which it was now).

Any shortage of tunes was well and truely sorted in September with the Portpatrick Folk festival - previously blogged here . Being the person who takes most of my pictures, it's not very often you see me parked behind the guitar - still doesn't look like I'm doing much playing.

You're more likely to see a picture of my empty seat and unoccupied guitar as below at on of Frank's Sunday afternoon sessions - nice gentle sessions, usually completely without a background rabble (this one actually happened on a Monday as the Sunday was boxing day)

Back to tea briefly - I found a little tablet of tea for sale in a shop in Glastonbury. Willing to try many things, I bought it and popped some into my teapot with a little boiling water. It was awful!! ....truly awful! I couldn't read the label as it was in Chinese but it quite clearly has 2003 on it which is a lot of years ago whether this is a production date of a sell by date, so I suppose I had better give it the benefit of the doubt and say that it might have tasted better 7 years ago (I doubt it though)

This chap painted the whole High Street in 10 minutes.

On one visit to the British Museum, they had put out a table with little objects you could pick up and handle. This netsuke (or kimono toggle) is about the most delightful little object I've laid my hand on all year - it's been carved into the shape of a rolled up rat.

These two glorious little gold cups are also from the British Museum. One has suffered more than the other from a few millenia of being ploughed over. They were found in Kent and Cornwall and date back to 1800 to 1600BC - that's about as far back before the Romans invaded this apparently barbarian little Isle as we are from when the Romans left.