Work, rest and playing away:

having driven around 50% of the company into the ground over a six month period, the management thought it'd be a splendid idea to cart their hollow-eyed remnants, plus those of the lucky escapees, to a nearby beach and provide them with a barbeque by way of compensation. Compare and contrast: six months of working late nights and weekends to meet a schedule written off as impossible before it had even begun, versus a burger in the sun. It pisses me off royally, and I wasn't even one of the 50%.

Most annoyingly, it was a really good day. Along with a few of the other hardier types, your intrepid correspondent went for an entertaining surfing lesson while for the less eXtreme there was some sedate horse riding. Boules, frisbee, football and rounders were played; the porta-bar was cleaned out of beer and the barbeque was a tasty affair indeed. As the sun started to dip and the breeze took on just a hint of a chill, the bus arrived exactly on cue and conveyed us back to the city, replete with food, booze and sneaking suspicions that in work terms, we'd been had.

The rat race is an odd place, really.

On Saturday, Moritz and I (where are ye, self-professed mountain bikers? Well dost thou shrink from my entreaties when the trails beckon!) burned up the trails in Glentress with a vengeance: no longer for us the tepid charms of the red route but instead the rocky (and surprisingly straightforward) black run. We rode about a quarter of the V-trail - V is the new X, I can only assume - to add a bit of variation to the normal route and it was well worth the detour. The scenery transported me back to childhood holidays in the north of Scotland and the rocky descents brought me back with a jolt, although truth be told their visual bark was worse than their physical bite.

In the evening Ash and I wandered along to La Partenope in Dalry for Giancarlo's birthday meal. It was an excellent evening: one of those rare occasions where everything falls into place and yet there's nothing out of the ordinary to wax lyrical about. The chat was good; the food plentiful and mostly enjoyable; the coffees tiny and the surroundings suitably cosmopolitan. We trooped over to the Pear Tree for a few postprandial pints in the fading warmth of the evening and called it a very pleasant night.

Sunday was taken up with some Trøll-related mechanical fumblings and a quiet barbeque in the concrete oasis behind Jez's flat. What an great week...!