Had brilliant weekend. I was actually working and earning some much needed dosh, but it was great fun. I really don’t mind working when it’s fun.

I do some ad-hoc work for an event management company and this weekend, as a slight departure from the norm of managing corporate hospitality staff at major sporting events, I was helping out at a picturesque restaurant on the hampshire/berkshire border.

The New Mill at Eversley, though no longer a water mill, has been around since 1577. The River Blackwater flows past leisurely and the water wheel inside still turns with all the mill’s workings on show.

Primarily a restaurant serving fine food and well chosen wines, the venue is available for exclusive hire for all manner of occasions.

On Saturday I was helping out at one of the 76 weddings booked this year.

I was impressed with the organisation and it almost appeared to be ‘laid back’ though I have to stress that this is purely down to the immense efficiently of the considerably few staff. They work very well as an intricate team, and as an ‘agency manager’ contracted in for a couple of days to cover for a vacant restaurant management post that is due to be filled shortly, I was made to feel very much a part of that team.

The food service of a three course ‘Wedding Breakfast’ (No, not bacon and eggs - it’s called a breakfast since it’s the ‘first’ meal after the marriage.) went like a dream. I was amazed at how quickly we were we able to serve 95 guests on ten tables and the food looked stunning. (And tasted good too, since I was able to eat the salmon fishcake starter for my dinner during the speeches.)

Whilst coffee was served in the lounge, we changed the restaurant into a disco and the guests danced and drank themselves silly to midnight.

Oh, and a word of caution for anyone attending a wedding this summer. Don’t take your own champagne!

A small group of guests decided to sneak in a few bottles of Veuve Clicquot. We knew something was going on when a guest asked for some flute glasses. One of the staff gave them some without realising, and we spent the next couple of hours playing hunt the bottle.

We found one, then, not long after I found another and took it to the bar. We thought that was probably it, but then I found yet another one and this one was half full! Off it went to the bar.

The guest naturally complained, and when the Stephen, the General Manager, explained that he would be charging the bride’s father corkage, we thought may be he would have got the hint.

Er, no…

Half an hour later I spotted another bottle hidden by a curtain. Three of the women that had been drinking the champagne all night saw me clearing glasses and rather obviously started dancing in front of the bottle thinking rather naively that I was stupid enough not to have noticed it.

It wasn’t long before I discreetly nicked that one too.

Funny then, that come the end of the evening, all the guests are departing and a small party are mysteriously left to wait a while on their own as we set up for Sunday Lunch - Their taxi was over an hour late!

–

Sunday, and after a few hours sleep at home and a mammoth journey negotiating the queues of Farnborough Airshow traffic on the M3, I arrived back at the New Mill for luncheon.

We had a number of bookings including two large parties and a couple of smaller birthday celebrations.

The beautiful Garden Room, with floor to ceiling windows overlooking the terrace and the river flowing serenely to the side, was booked - which sadly didn’t please one of the other guests who was under the impression she’d been eating in there.

On entering the restaurant, this rather rotund women with huge dark sunglasses demanded to see the table she had been ‘moved to’. Though still with a view of the river, it simply wasn’t good enough for her.

- “I wish to be seated in the Garden Room,” she said with the air of someone who never gets what they want in life because they’re far to rude to deserve it. “It’s far too dark here.”

- “I’m very sorry, Madam”, I replied in my very best ‘I’d really like to help you but your being an arse’ voice, “but the guests in the Garden Room are having a private function and have paid a room hire charge.”

Not at all happy, she moaned yet again about her table being ‘far too dark’.

- “Well you fat bitch,” I said to myself whilst smiling the biggest fuck off grin I could get away with, “If you took your fancy fucking sunglasses off, you might just be able to see your table!”

Sunday Lunch was lovely; again, incredibly efficient, with that laid back feeling. And at £22.50 for a superb three course lunch I though it was great value for money too.

Okay, so you’re much more likely to find me having a £4.59 veggie-burger and chips with a free drink in Wetherspoons, but for a special occasion, I’d certainly go to, and indeed recommend the New Mill at Eversley.

I finished the day about half seven, and subsequently got caught in the Farnborough Airshow traffic going home on the M3! Oh well.

–

And finally…

As a good-will gesture, the bride’s father wasn’t charged corkage, though he did tell us his wayward guests had allegedly stolen the champagne from a corporate event the previous day!

Oh, and Miss Dark Sunglasses, 2008?

Well she kept them on throughout the entire meal and left the restaurant afterwards still wearing them. Allegedly, her ex-husband was also among the diners on the table; and he’d bought along his also allegedly younger, slimmer and far better looking new wife!

Perhaps that’s why she never took her sunglasses off!

So thanks to Steve, Rouve, Bruce, Popeye, Chef and the other staff for making me feel part of an effective, efficient and excellent team. It was great weekend. Thank you!

So, me thinks I might have invented a new verb! Well, Alex, you read it here first!

For those who wish to be illuminated, the term playwright is not a variant spelling of playwrite, but something quite distinct: the word wright is an archaic English term for a craftsman or builder (as in a wheelwright, cartwright, or shipwright). Hence the prefix and the suffix combine to indicate someone who, like me, crafts plays.

So, since the term playwrighting means crafting a play (as being distinct from writing a play, since the act of crafting a play requires learned skills and is much more than the specific act of writing) I have taken the noun ‘wright’ to also be a verb: ‘to wright’ meaning to craft.

And so, to quote my facebook profile (seven friends and counting, and at the rate of adding one friend every two hours!) being a playwright, I guess I wright plays.

Yep, looks like I’ve succumbed to Facebook. (Thanks Tom!) I should be in bed, very busy few days ahead, but here I am trying to find some friends to add to my very short list.

Amazing to find some old school/college friends. Wonder what they’re all doing now…

Anyway, any one out there feel like adding me to their list of friends then feel free. Search for “facebook-at-pafoster.com” as an email and you’ll find me. I think there’s a widget thing-a-me-bob-do-dah-whotsit that will post my blog entries there too!

Oh and there’s bound to be a Mac dashboard widget thingy too.

Oh dear…

And Rich is already complaining of being a Mac widow - I daren’t mention Facebook!

Sunday, and after a Saturday of not much at all, I went to Sunbury for the Riverside Youth Theatre’s AGM.

I was elected onto the committee as the publicity officer and after an hour’s meeting it was time for the post AGM entertainment: A live Who’s Line Is It Anyway? style show.

I’ve spent the last six Sundays running an Improvisation Workshop where the young RYT members have been learning a variety of improv’ techniques.

It was brilliant. We were in the studio at the Riverside Arts Centre and had set up some staging and even had a some proper lighting too. (Thanks Aaron!)

I hosted and about a dozen or so members performed a variety of games from the show: Foreign Film Dubbing, Dating Show, Press Conference and some hilarious Alphabet Scenes.

The members were all brilliant and audience was great too; All willingly chipping in various locations and character styles for the actors to improvise with on cue.

It lasted forty five minutes - too short as we could easily have gone on, but we had too stop for some lunch.

A good time was had by all, with some really pleasant comments from various parents afterwards too.

We were supposed to have had a picnic afterwards, but with our great British weather as it is we ended clearing the studio and having our lunch inside, during which it was announced that Lewis Hamilton had one the Grand Prix.

Another good day for me in Sunbury. I do love spending my Sunday afternoons over there. There such a great bunch of people; adults and young people alike.

Next week it will be our last Sunday before we break up for the summer. I’ll be having my first committee meeting and the members will be rehearsing for a show they are putting on for the Shepperton and Sunbury Arts Association - a week of various arts related workshops and shows put on every summer in the centre. RYT will be performing an evening of drama and songs on Friday the 18th.

And when they return in September? Well it’ll be straight into auditions and rehearsing for the next show, a production of three one act plays to be performed in December.

Oh, and yours truly will be directing one of them: Lunch in Venice by Nick Dear. More on that later.

Right, now I’ve done my blogging and indeed a whole host of other things on my MacBook today (including my Nuffield homework), I’m off to bed; some of us have to be up early in the morning - like five o’clock! I’m off to Warwick Racecourse for a couple of days; more corporate hospitality supervising. (Think I may just take my MacBook.)

Just thought I’d do a quick blog post about last Friday; My day at Silverstone and practice day for the British Grand Prix.

Well it was brilliant.

I arrived at the clubhouse of British Racing Drivers’ Club (BRDC) half way through the first sitting of lunch. Diners included BRDC President, Damon Hill OBE and Vice President, Sir Jackie Stewart OBE. After a couple of hours there supervising the waiters I went on over to the BRDC marquee next door.

But not before I’d had a quick five minute visit to the first floor club lounge and then the roof terrace with a fantastic view of the whole circuit. One thing I hadn’t appreciated was the noise. The word ‘deafening’ doesn’t quite do it justice.

In the marquee I helped supervise the setting up of the BRDC Grand Prix Ball. 450 guests were due at about 7.30pm after a champagne reception on the lawn, including the board and their guests and other patrons.

After various management and staff briefings, we were ready for the off. A three course meal, with speeches from Damon Hill (not happy with Bernies decision to pack the British Grand Prix of to Donnington in 2010) and a visit from David Coultard (oh, and another driver whose name I can’t remember, but I do know he was foreign and had just turned 21.)

It all went rather well. Though to be honest I didn’t think much of Bjorn Again; the band hired for the after dinner entertainment. They were okay, I suppose. It’s just that I’d heard them doing all their sound checks and stuff while we were setting up in the afternoon. They were, of course, english, but when the evening came, they actually pretended to be the band members of ABBA, took their names and even put on fake Swedish accents. Oh and I’m not sure why they performed a couple of Status Quo numbers half way through, though there was a Rick Parfitt Jr on the guest list.

The patrons started leaving (along with half the staff) at about midnight, leaving us managers and the other half of the staff to set up for breakfast. Amazing to watch the whole stage set up and lighting rig in the marquee all come to pieces and disappear out the side exit as we were laying up tables.

At three am, the rest of the staff went too, leaving three managers and myself (oh, and a security guard who spent most of the time asleep) to finish off. We finished at 6:30 am as the next shift of managers and waiting staff who were doing breakfast arrived. The marquee had been transformed and it looked great.

Luckily for me, I wasn’t needed for Saturday, so after my marathon 18 hour shift, I drove the hour and half home, told Rich all about it, and climbed into bed for a well earned sleep.

Well here I am, bloging for real!

I’m sat in the Goldsworth Park Surgery as Rich visits his GP. There is a little three year old boy sat next to me reading his Richard Scarry book and I’m typing away in my WordPressDash Widget.

I should be working since I was in the middle of my Nuffield homework, but as soon as I sat down here and woke up my Mac it asked if I wanted to join a local wireless network called SpeedtouchC68C80.

Assuming it would ask for a password, I clicked ‘join’ just for the fun of it. And now I’m online wirelessly in my Doctors Surgery. No password needed!

So there you go. My MacBook’s first outing and my first blog post from the Doctor’s!

Oh well, back to the homework!

Well, Ive just installed a new widget on my dashboard. No, not in my car - on my MacBook!

This little widget called WordPressDash allows me to post to my blog direct from my dashboard.

Bloody brilliant!

Just a quicky!

I’m off to Silverstone for theBritish Grand Prix.

Well, practice and qualifying anyway. Cant see the race as I need to be back for the Riverside Youth Theatre AGM!

Bye for now…

Yippeeee!! I have a MacBook! Ordered it online and UPS delivered it at lunch time.

Now with my 10Mb broadband (well about 9.5 actually but what’s half a meg between friends!) I can do things like watch Erasure videos on YouTube!

Finally, at long last, having saved up my pennies for well over a year, if not more, I’ve caught up with the real world! So Steve, if your reading this out in Amsterdam, thanks mate! Should have bought one years ago! (Fancy an iChat then?)

I knew my Mac would be good, but had no idea how good! It’s just brilliant! I’ve only been playing for a couple of hours, and it’s great. I’m sat on the roof terrace in the sunshine wirelessly blogging and I’m doing just fine. I’ve even worked out how to get my searches in Safari using Google.co.uk and not the default .com (For anyone interested, download and install Inquistor, select Safari>Preferences>Search and then set your preferred search engine from the rather extensive list - Google UK is right at the bottom.)

Sorry to sound so excited, but I really am! My 10 year old Dell Laptop (no battery) was only being used to print with, and my RISC OS desktop is not up to much anymore though I’m sure I’ll still use it - if only occasionally.

Well, I can’t sit here blogging, I’m half way through my Nuffield homework (we’ve been doing the senses) and it’s due tomorrow!

Having just spent the last hour and a half shredding my 00/01 and 01/02 annual business and personal accounts and checking every reciept for my credit card number (printed, I might add, in full on the vast majority of them), I’ve discovered a surprisingly interesting fact…

In January 2001 I was paying about 80 pence per litre for unleaded petrol.

Checking back over my reciepts for the last tax year 07/08, I see I was paying back in the beginning of January this year about 100 pence per litre . Yes, less than six months ago.

And now, with oil prices reaching record highs and our fuel going up almost weekly, I’m paying here in Woking, Surrey, very nearly 120 pence per litre.

So, (and this is in no way a scientific study, just my personal observations) it took about seven years (Jan 01 - Jan 08) for unleaded petrol at the forecourt to rise in cost by 20 pence and then less than six months to rise by another 20 pence!

Okay, a bit of calculation on my part here: Using the figures quoted, a bit of prediction, and extrapolating from them using percentages, the price of unleaded petrol at my pump has been rising by 25% in 8.4% of the time span.

Here’s the maths:

• 80p (01 Jan 01) to 100p (01 Jan 08) is a 25% increase in 7 years. (2556 days)
• 100p (01 Jan 08) to 125p (01 Aug 08 - by extrapolating the increases so far this year) is a 25% increase in just 7 months. (214 days)
• ie: the same percentage increase (25%) occurs in 8.4% of the time. (214/2556)*100 = 8.4%

Therefore my petrol increased by the same percentage (25%) in 8.4% of the previous time span.

So here’s the scary bit…

If this is, in any way, some sort of perverse exponential trend and the maths can hold true for a third time, ie: unleaded petrol rises by another 25% in another 8.4% of the previous time span, then assuming 125p on August 1st (it has been rising at an average rate of 0.117 pence per day since 1st Jan 08), following the model I’ve explained above, unleaded petrol will have risen in price again by 25% in 8.4% of 7 months (ie: 214 days), which will be just 18 days after August 1st.

So, using what I will now christen the “Paul’s Law” of Petrol Prices ie a 25% increase in 8.4% of the previous measured time span, here’s my wacky prediction…

I predict that on Tuesday 19th August, 2008 the price of unleaded petrol at the BP service station in Goldsworth Park (Woking) will be at or above 155.9 pence per litre.

A bit of a laugh, I know, (and boy, I’ll be famous if my prediction does come true!) but there is mention of prices reaching £1.50 per litre by September, so I’m not that far off really if those predictions are anything to go by!

And if I’m anywhere near right, and “Paul’s Law” does hold true for 3 times in succession, you’d better hope and pray it fails on the fourth!

It will of course have to fail, else it would mean a 25% rise to 195p in 8.4% of the time span of 18 days; ie: about one and half days later!

Silly, yes, but maybe now you can see the stupidity of exponentials; you simply can not keep increasing your rate of increase.

Sooner or later, and in terms of house prices, oil prices, food prices, petrol prices, in fact production of anything, hell, the whole bloody world economy for that matter, something somewhere has to give, and give in a big way, ie: crash!

- Houston, we have a problem.