Weekend wanderings

We visited Wakehurst Place this weekend. Wakehurst is an offshoot of Kew Gardens - we're members at Kew, and get free entry. It is a lovely estate with some great walking opportunities (up and downhill, unlike many other gardens). The manor house itself is quite attractive. Another major feature is that Wakehurst is the home of the Millennium Seed Bank, where they are aiming to preserve 10% of the world's flora in seeds by 2010. We both agreed that we need to visit again as the seasons pass - it looks like it will be really beautiful in spring and summer, and the walks through the trees should be great in autumn.

Some photos, more to come (and more on Flickr - check the large sizes too):



Picked up the debut album by Thirteen Senses for a stupidly tiny price in Tesco - very mellow listening. Also picked up a bargain copy of Midway Arcade Treasures for PS2, so I spent a bit of time yesterday afternoon revisiting arcade classics like Gauntlet, Defender, Spyhunter, Joust and my personal favourite, Smash TV. Some of them seemed much more difficult to play than they used to be - it could have been the controller over the keyboard. I certainly wouldn't have spent as long playing if I didn't have unlimited opportunities to continue (i.e. "new coin") in most of the games.

As Darren mentioned over on eightbar, one of the internal IBM podcasts at the moment is Battle of the Bands. I listened to the most recent episode this weekend. I think I'm going to have to start buying some of the albums by the artists involved - in particular, I really enjoyed a track by Lisa Swain. The quality of all of the bands is just so high, it has been very difficult to choose my favourite tracks so far.

And now, the week begins in earnest.

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