Uffington White Horse Hill, on a saturday evening’s sunset, is a marvellous place to be, relax and chill out. I know this because I’ve done it.

Jon and Sarah Katz came to visit over the weekend, having toured London and Paris on an Americans-doing-Europe thing; I fielded them Chez Muffett on saturday morning, and decided that in the face of all the metropolitan whizzbangs they’de had for the past week, it might be nice to get out in the countryside for a while.

So in short order we did:

• Stonehenge
• A Pub
• Silbury Hill
• Avebury
• The Ridgeway
• The White Horse
• Uffington Castle
• An Ice-Cream

…which proved a pleasant way to spend an afternoon (apart from being fleeced by the National Trust / English Heritage) – the most peaceful bit being sat atop Uffington Castle with Skylarks and Meadow Pipit rising all around us.

Then home, food, perry, wine and beer, talking politics, and snooze.

Sunday I was up early – after a couple of fits and starts – got iChat Audio working with Chris in Australia, with a sound quality that was frankly astonishing for 17 Kbits/s flowing each direction. We’re going to work on video at some point, once I work out how to wire my USB webcam to iChat (I believe some third-party shareware can do it).

Motorcycle maintenance, drop off the Katzes at LHR, and home to snooze, read, and mow my lawn before it overflows the garden fence.

I think I need to give my mower a long-needed service after a slight contrtemps with some shrubbery ripped-out the fuel petcock, dribbling unleaded everwhere until I turned the mower on its side.

The upcoming week will be filled with the excitement of dynamic change and reorganisation. Oh joy, oh rapture.