Last Saturday night I was Penny again, the first time since January. It's true to say that I hadn't been looking forward to this event in Brighton very much, partly because the rest of my life including work have been so busy that I haven't had time to think about it. Also, what with the summer coming up and being a family man and all that entails, I had decided not to shave my legs. That kind of took the edge off the whole feminine experience.

Once again I met up with A.HH before the event, and she let me change at the shop where she works in Hove. A.HH's wife Claire joined us there a little later. I was wearing a black skirt from a charity shop over opaque tights (concealing hair quite well). Knee-length black boots. A gauzy white and aqua top from Next was the only new item of clothing.

We met up with the other girls at the Tin Drum in Kemptown, Brighton. There was a huge arrangement of tables to seat 22 of us and I have to say that it wasn't ideal because it sort of curved back on itself which meant you had to have a neck like an owl to glance round at everyone. The venue was also a bit loud which meant it was only comfortable chatting to the people either side me. Negatives out of the way, I have to say that the service was good and the food was excellent!

I met some interesting new people. One thing that you can say about chatting with trannies is that there's not too much small talk. The awkward barriers have already, necessarily been broken down.

We drew a great deal of attention on our way out of the restaurant and on the way to Revenge, a three-level nightclub that's primarily a gay venue. Three of us girls in particular spent a lot of time dancing which was great! My wife D isn't keen on dancing at all, but I do like to lose myself in the music once in a while.

A.HH and I left at about 1:30am which is quite early really, but our feet were beginning to hurt, and I'd promised my son I would help him with his Airfix model 1st thing on Sunday morning. Good thing I remembered, because it was 2:30 by the time I'd showered and got the makeup off and dropped into bed and 4 hours and 2o minutes later he was up and pestering me to get out of bed! Ah well, you make your choices...

No regrets! Excellent fun.

Cassie and Penny

On behalf of all the good and just people of England, I hereby reclaim the flag of St. George. We will keep our flag as the symbol of our nation. We will wrest it away from the racists and make it a flag of tolerance; a flag that everyone in this country can look to with pride, whether they are of Anglo-Saxon descent, Greek, Russian, Indian, Pakistani, Brazillian, Nigerian, Italian or any other origin.

St. George himself was not 'English' anyway, so it's only appropriate and fitting that he should represent the disperate nations that came together to forge the people we are today!

Hey have you heard of www.pandora.com ??? You create a custom radio station based on the music you like. Tell it an artist or artists that you like, a song or songs that are your favourites and it just builds a streaming radio station for you based on stuff that sounds similar. It's really cool!

Give it a whirl. Oh, you might have to promise that you like in the US using a ZIP code, but that's OK, 'cos we all live in George Dubbya's world now don't we?

It's a common lament for the lasses and it's not until you pretend to be a woman that you understand what they're on about. I'm going out as Penny this Saturday and since my feminine wardrobe fits in one suitcase, I really can claim that I've got nothing to wear! ;-) Mind you, even if I had a hundred outfits, I'm sure it still wouldn't be enough.

Are there any women out there who genuinely feel that they have enough clothes, shoes, accessories? I don't think we'll see many comments posted with the answer "I have"!

How the feck did people manage before Google and eBay were invented??? I just don't understand! Life must have been miserable; having to reach for an encyclopeadia or telephone directory every time you weren't sure about something or having to pay top whack for new gear, or trawl around depressing car-boot sales in the middle of torrential thunderstorms.

Just incredible! Here's an example of why. We have ongoing trouble with our central heating combi boiler in our house. The problem was intermittent but has been getting gradually worse. Various people have tried to fix it to no avail, and finally, to avoid astronomical bills from the so-called experts, I have rolled up my sleeves and taken up the mantle.

After some fault finding and a bit of a guess, I used Google to locate the supplier of an air pressure switch. At 18.UKP it seemed a worthwhile punt. Sadly, that didn't fix the problem. Using the boilers fault finding guide, I then wanted to try replacing another part. The same supplier quote 88.UKP, hmmm. Since I'm not sure that's the fault, it's probably not worth the risk. "Hey," I said to D, half joking, "Maybe someone is selling the part on eBay!" Sure enough, when I checked, they were, and it was going for a song!

Hooray for Google and eBay!!!

Just come back from a drink with Otherphil. He seems to think that the Bahrain job will not happen, partly because his wife needs to be employed as well. He is also dealing with health problems which a scan may help to dispel on Thursday. Fingers crossed!

It's good chatting with Otherphil about work. After a day when clients have been threatening to pull the plug on 1M.USD projects, disaster stories involving 100M.USD projects rather put things into perspective!

On a different matter entirely, I just want to say that Michael Zimmerman is a top-notch, modern-day hero! Michael is a priest in the USA who is battling religious idiocy. He claims that religion can co-exist with evolution and is under huge pressure from the god-squad as a result. As I have said before...evolution does not disprove the existence of God, it just proves the madness of the text in the bible. Not the same thing at all. See...

http://www.uwosh.edu/colleges/cols/clergy_project.htm

and...

http://www.uwosh.edu/colleges/cols/religion_science_collaboration.htm

I wish him the very best of luck and send him my strength for the battle against the forces of bigotry and non-thinkers.

It seems we do (after all) live in a time of heros!

So you see? I didn't just dream it! Photo taken by my good friend RT who paid for the whole trip. Don't worry, I got some of him too.

*SIGH*... D had drinks with the girls last night and came home with the news that Otherphil and his family are contemplating a move to Bahrain.

It would be great for Otherphil because he really hates the company he works for now and desperately needs a new challenge. So he should go if he gets the chance, but I will be sad to lose my drinking/windsurfing pal.

There is no one else in the town whose company I enjoy as much, but I guess that's just the way things go sometimes. I will just have to rely more heavily on BIL (brother-in-law), Bloke and other such friends who all live further away. Drat-and-double-drat!

Those of you who read my blog will know that I rarely, if ever use it to complain. There are enough people ranting already. However, I am very cross about the fact that the XBox 360 does not provide support for XBox games as standard. :-[

Looking at information on the Web before the launch, it was never clear. Now it seems that support is only 'native' for a couple of games including Halo. Well that's small comfort to me because I am one of the few people who thought Halo was *pants*! There are other games I would rather be able to play. Apparently what I have to do is download support for individual games piecemeal IF it's available.

This news is really irritating! How cheerfully do you think XBox owners will be when having to dip into their pockets to help Microsoft deliberately obsolesce our library of games.

In their attempt to provide backwards compatability in their operating systems, Microsoft crippled the reliability of almost every version of Windows and I cursed them for it. Perhaps this is their way of showing that they are tougher now in a less mature market. It's either very brave or very foolish. What guarantee do I have that an XBox 360 game won't be obsolete in 3 years time when the next variant comes out? None.

The next generation of Playstation is beginning to look very tempting now.

Back in the UK now and quite glad of it too. I am sore, beaten up and weary. It's good to be back with the family who met me at Heathrow which was fantastic!

RT and Dtm went their separate ways. I still have a very big 'thank you' email to write! Hopefully some of the photos we took will be worthwhile. One may even get posted here...watch this space.

On the final day, I had three attempts at the 'forward roll', a jump, followed by a rotation of man, board and sail over and around the mast to continue in the same direction. No success I'm afraid. The effect was much like a high speed catapult from 6 feet up and I've got some bruising on my back to prove that water can seem very hard at high speed. Still, I had a go and my confidence is high. With waves on the South Coast for bigger ramps and a better technique, I'm sure I can do it.

For a while, because I loosely believe in the concept of "pass it forward", I was troubled that this lavish holiday gifted to me was too big. Then I realised that the philosophy of "pass it forward" can't demand that each favour passed on is the same size as (or bigger than) the original, otherwise it wouldn't work. The magnitude of favours would grow over time to a point where no one could afford to do even one favour for others, let alone two! Let me know if you think I'm wrong.

Ugh! Back to work tomorrow.