Discussions went back and forth about the best way to get down there, who was going, whether we were staying overnight, who was going to look after Evie, etc, etc. At one point, it was turning into a mini family holiday, with my mum and dad coming with us to look after Evie while we attended the concert, us all stopping in a hotel overnight, then coming back the following day. In the end, Evie stayed at home and my folks looked after her, while Paula, Chris and I went to the concert by car, mainly because that was the easiest and (more importantly) the cheapest option. The 8+ hours of driving weren’t ideal, and we didn’t get back home until around 2:30am, but I coped better than I thought I would. The tiredness that I was expecting didn’t hit me until the following afternoon.

The concert itself was excellent. Anthony Daniels (yes, that Anthony Daniels*) was the narrator, and introduced the various musical sequences. While the orchestra was playing these, clips from the six Star Wars films were shown on a large video screen behind the orchestra. Some of the clips were silent, while others had dialogue and sound effects. Certain sequences worked better than others, but there’s nothing quite like seeing an orchestra and choir in full flow, especially when performing music that you know and love. Oh, and there were frikkin’ laser beams too!

We saw a couple of famous faces there (famous in Star Wars circles, at any rate): Warwick Davies (Wicket the Ewok) and Jeremy Bulloch (the guy in the Boba Fett costume). The only bummer from my point of view was that George Lucas apparently turned-up on the second night, hence we missed him. :O(

* Mr C-3PO, for the uninitiated.

Over the past couple of days we’ve been putting in the new flooring upstairs, as we took the old stuff out at the beginning of the year in order to make the plumbing and electrics ‘easier’. We’d nearly finished putting down the new boards (those 8′ by 2′ chipboard thingies) in one of the back bedrooms when Chris decided to take ‘one small step for a man,’ missed his footing and trod on the kitchen ceiling. Of course, it’s only plasterboard sheeting and didn’t offer up much resistance, so I had the rather bizarre experience of watching my brother disappear between two joists at around 1:30 this afternoon.

As I said, he was lucky. It’s about an eight-foot drop, but the plasterboard slowed his descent somewhat, and there was nothing beneath where he fell in the kitchen. Amazingly enough, he didn’t go through any plumbing pipework or electrical cabling either. It’s a shame he didn’t fall a couple of feet to his right, as he would have landed on our sofa that’s currently sitting in the kitchen (don’t ask).

In other house news, the central heating was finally completed the other day, almost two years after we took the old radiators out and switched-off the back boiler skulking behind the fireplace in the lounge. Not before time I have to say: it wasn’t much fun for me and Paula to endure two very cold winters with nothing but some strategically-placed portable oil-filled radiators to keep the house warm (which they didn’t). I don’t think we’d have coped with a third.

Needless to say, the hall wasn’t air conditioned, so it was kind of uncomfortable. It was also quite a long and boring ceremony (imagine clapping complete strangers for an hour-and-a-half). However, I was very proud to see my bro get up to collect his… well, he wasn’t actually given anything, he just received a handshake from the VIP on the stage. I was a bit surprised he wasn’t handed a scroll or something, but then maybe I’ve been misled by TV and the movies!

(from right to left)
Me, Paula, Dad, Chris, Mum, Nick, Sarah-Jane (Nick’s girlfriend)