Memoirs of a Roadie

Hold Back The Rain

Posted on 24th July 2007

I thought the rain in May was bad, but it seems the rain in July has been even worse. I'm working from home at the moment is most of the staff based around Tewkesbury, Gloucester and Cheltenham. Several friends are without power and fresh drinking water and looking at the helicopter aerial view on the news the other night the flood waters have taken out most of the Gloucestershire area.

Thankfully workers managed to save a local substation and the weather has changed, so hopefully once the waters have started to subside the power problems will be restored quickly. However, that isn't likely to be until the end of the week. The water problems might take several weeks, as treatment centres have been affected and the amount of flood water has been extremely high in places (yes that's the goals at a local football pitch). You can see 5 galleries of pictures on the BBC Gloucestershire site.

I'm not sure what kind of devastation has hit Gloucester Business Park, but MessageLabs have asked none essential staff to work from home. This has mostly only affected the development and administration staff, as with our business being a global operation, our data centres are distributed all around the world. I'm lucky as we live on part of the incline from the Lickey Hills, and Birmingham hasn't been hit anywhere near as bad, but I know of at least one person whose home is out of action. I just hope everyone else is okay.

Can't Be Sure

Posted on 28th May 2007

"England my country the home of the free,
Such miserable weather!"

I was hoping to take Ethne to her first music festival yesterday, The Abbey Park Festival in Leicester, but torrential rain put a stop to that. In fact this month could quite easily have been mistaken for March, as we seem to have had much more rain this month than during any other during the year so far.

I used to attend The Abbey Park Festival regularly when I lived in Hinckley, and it was always a great day out. You'd get to see some great bands, usually I would bump into friends and best of all it was free. In later years they charged a nominal fee of a few pound just to help with the costs, but I noted this year it was again free, but visitors were invited to make a donation. Considering that over the two days the festival is on you can get to see about 20 or more different acts, it's a bargain. Many are unknown local acts, but considering that Leicester has had its fair share of unknown acts playing on the bill, who have gone on to make a name for themselves, it's a good opportunity to see some of the stars of the future.

Hopefully the weather holds out a little better next year, and we can have a family day out. Mind you now I'm just going to have to look to see what other family orientated music festivals are happening around the midlands and see whether are worth attending. Our friends Bleeding Hearts are playing a few, so we'll have see if we can make one of those :)