Computer problems

A big thank you to everyone who sent in suggestions for the inverted laptop (OK, some might have been slightly more helpful than others ;-) )- T followed smescrater's suggestions and it worked! We are both very grateful.

Witches' Ball

A lot has been going on over the last few days so I'm catching up...On Thursday night, we hosted the shops' first gig: a Witches' Ball in Glastonbury. This was a success - we had a buffet supper supplied by the local Indian restaurant, live music (Damh the Bard) and a Samhain ritual, which was done along American pagan lines by our friend Heidi (more theatrical than the Brits, who tend to mumble).

Halfway through the ritual, which was carefully choreographed to music, I became aware of a slight hiatus. T stepped in and talked everyone through the next bit and I thought no more of it until we finished and a furious H informed me that she'd gone to see why the sound engineer hadn't cued in the next phase of music, and found he'd passed out face down on the sound board. She brought him round but remains underwhelmed.

Apart from that, it went without a hitch and the 60 or so folk who turned up all said they had a great time. T has read the riot act to the sound engineer, however.

Racing and carnival

We have also been racing, on Friday, and are about to head off again. Yesterday was Glastonbury's carnival and we had to work - thousands of people in town and I'm not happy about leaving staff unsupported when there are possibly a large number of drunk blokes about. In fact, we had no trouble at all, although we had to drive round one crash barrier to get out of town and remove another one (T: "Get out of the car. Get that thing out of my way. And don't argue!" For once, I didn't. Had to wrestle it apart and then wrestle it back together again, but we escaped, so that was that). Carnival here means massive floats on low loaders, drawn by equally huge tractors which not infrequently break down, so traffic management is essential but annoying if you live in the place.

Racing was good - a lovely clear day (it's raining this morning). The track was visited by members of various hunts and the Olympic eventing team, so it was a fairly full day. Getting out of the track was also a nightmare due to security for the eventing lot, so I'm hoping today will be relatively traffic free...