I've finally got floors downstairs! The floor people finished putting them in yesterday and they look really good. Hurrah! Soon I will have my sofa too, and I'll be able to actually set the house up properly. There's still painting to be done (very carefully to avoid getting it on the new floors!), but it should be relatively straightforward.

Here are things you must do this weekend:

1. Get Bjork's new(ish) album Medulla. It's really good. The last track ('Triumph of the Heart', I think), currently on 6 Music's playlist, is really good as you may know, and the rest of the album is top notch


2. If you can't get 6 Music thanks to your sad lack of a DAB digital radio, get one of those


3. Play Doom3. It's really good. Don't worry about the cost - you'll finish it after a week and get 20 quid back selling it, so that's a week's worth of entertainment for a fiver. It sort of loses it's appeal after a few hours anyway (HalfLife was so much better), but you just have to try playing it in a darkened room with 5.1 sound. Top stuff

Things to do before you're 30

I hate lists like that, especially as I have now actually reached 30 so it is too late to do anything on any of them. Ho hum.

My weekend was rather fantastic, despite hitting middle age. On Friday we went to see Blithe Spirit, which was very good. After that we went for a few drinks in town. Then a few drinks turned into a few more.

I didn't feel too drunk when I got home, but on Saturday morning I felt really awful. However, I was pretty much recovered by then time Ben and Emma arrived around 3. Claire arrived shortly afterwards and we headed into town for a drink and a snack at the Pig and Fiddle, where we met the others. We then headed home to drop off bags and things before going back into town for the meal at 8 where the others arrived shortly afterwards. The Wife of Bath was excellent once again, and we were stuffed and jolly by 11. We wandered to T's for a bit of dancing but the queue was insane, so I headed back with some of the others. We then stayed-up until the early hours chatting about this and that, and laughing at old photos. This is what 30 year olds do, you see.

Sunday was blazing hot. We were up at a reasonable hour (oh, 10 or so) and headed into town for breakfast at The Jazz Cafe. After that we went to the International Kite Festival in Bristol. It was lovely weather for it... too lovely, you might say. There was very little wind, so the effort to fly the largest kite in the world wasn't as successful as they had hoped. It was still a nice day out though, and they managed to fly enough kites to be impressive.

In the evening I went to the cottage and we had dinner and birthday cake. A splendid end to a splendid weekend! It was lovely to see everyone and I got some lovely presents, cards, and people were lovely. I will stop now though, before I start gushing like a girl.

Travellers

Some time over the Bank Holiday weekend some travellers parked-up in the car park here at work and have been living there in several caravans. This has caused some amusement to everyone here, but is no doubt a slightly less than professional image for the company. I wasn't really surprised when I looked out of the window this afternoon to see that there is a large flatbed lorry with a crane in the car park now, and it is lifting the caravans and taking them away. I'm not sure how the gypsies feel about this, but I can guess that they're not impressed.

Now I would be tempted to feel sorry for them, as I would for any generally persecuted group of people. However, this is the same lot who were camping on park about half a mile down the road for a week, and when they moved on they left the most horrible mess you can imagine. I don't just mean rubbish (although they could have put that into bags, at least), but pretty much everything you can imagine a group of people producing in a week. It was grim.

I know there are perfectly respectable groups of gypsies and travellers out there that care for their environment and are decent people, but all of them suffer thanks to the actions of people like those in our car park. Can't they see that they just make things worse for themselves? I don't pretend to know what the solution is, but it probably involves responsibility on their part before they can expect people to tolerate them.

Yesterday was Corina's birthday, so to celebrate we went to ZeroDegrees in Bristol. It's quite a new place - part swanky bar, part restaurant (with good pizza) and part microbrewery. Beer and food were both good, and that only helped the evening along. Of course, we would have had a good evening even if we were somewhere rubbish as everyone was on top form and had an excellent time.

So, next up - my birthday. I can't believe I'm going to be 30 on Saturday. It's going to be a scary moment, although probably less scary than the day I turn 40! To tell the truth though, it's not bothering me as much as I thought it might. 30 might have sounded old when I was 20, but now it seems pretty reasonable. I just have to face some facts now - chances are that I won't be married by 30 (unless the next few days are bizarre), so it goes to show that some of life's expectations aren't completely reliable. I am trying to avoid all of those 'things you must do before you hit 30' lists, as I feel there may be too much to do in 1.5 days.

I still have a year (and a day) to go on a Club 18-30 holiday of course, so I'm not really old yet!