Thursday

Vanessa & Jason's Reception

Here are Kevin (best-man) and Jason, at the beginning of the reception; both looking very sober.



Vanessa and her (maid-of-honour) sister Arabella, looked stunning.





The general throng was some 270 persons, bent on having a good time and saluting their hosts.






The blushing bride did some posing for us erstwhile photographers.

And she looked ravishing.







Some people were pretty hot..: it was about 40 deg C, and 85% humidity.


And some people looked pretty cool; like Arabella and Rene :








The dancing started, led by the newly-weds, and later joined by parents and guests.







Here are Vicky & Tony (Jason's parents) with the happy couple.








And some people were in love.
We all wish them every happiness for the future.

Monday

Vanessa & Jason Get Married


16:30 hrs on the 25th August 2007, the ceremony started in the Basilica of St Peter & Paul in Nadur.

Vanessa was particularly beautiful.




Jason had his "Robbie Williams" smile.




And all the other girls and boys, from Arabella downwards, looked very happy & helped with the celebrations.

Julie, Paul & the Gang at the Grand

It was great to see Julie and Paul's family - the gang of seven, at my place and the Bocci Club in Qala.
Paul wanted to treat me and Jean to a long lunch, the next day, so we opted for the Grand Hotel at Mgarr.

Unsurprisingly, the first six turned up to meet us in a taxi; their damned minibus having broken down again, so we had to wait for Paul.





Here we are waiting for Dad.

He eventually turned up, whilst waiting for the hire mini-bus to be fixed.









A really great bunch of kids....we all dug in to Guiseppe's burgers and enjoyed a wide selection of ice creams and bubblies.






A fun time was had by all....and I told the lads a few tall stories.













At about five o'clock, Jean took two car-loads off to the beach, whilst Paul went to pick up the bus.


And I went for a nap!

Saturday

Swapping out the mobs

Here is "Dear God-Daughter", Sade, looking scintillatingly scrumptious before preparing for a Monday morning departure.

All the girls turned up to say a fond farewell on Sunday night.

It's been a hectic four days, with a lot of bubbly having been drunk.

Exhausting but enjoyable.

So the first four went by Mercedes to Malta at 10:30am, with Lucy, Laura and Jodie leaving at 3am on Tuesday.

But by 12 am, here at my place, Jean's niece Juie, turned up with her lovely family. Or "Rent-a-Mob" as I call them; with husband Paul, and the five kids from seven to seventeen.


















Here they are, from left to right, John, Paul, Phoebe, Alec, Julie, Lillie and Camille.

We polished off quite a bit of bubbly and coke at my place whilst handing out lots of small presents plus a signed Chelsea shirt!

These kids think that my place is an Aladdin's cave!


Then we went to the Bocci club for the fantastic views, three more bottles, and lots of burgers and pizzas.
A very pleasant five hours was had by all.

I'm getting used to walking in to a place and taking a table for nine.

Wednesday

A day at Mgarr Ix Xinni with Malta's Millionaires

Roger Xuereb (a drinking buddy of mine) kindly invited me and the eight ladies on to his Fairline for the day. With hang-overs in tact we headed down to the yacht basin to find the Gin Palace called "Cherylee"...

Here are the girls is gay anticipation..

We left the Blue Lagoon alone as it was too busy, and we shot along the southern coast of Gozo at 25 knots, to the millionaires boat-park at Mgarr Ix Xinni.

We did a bit of swimming and the girls soaked up the sun as usual.








Manuel (left) was acting as Roger's (right) mate, and we ate salads, local cheeses and meats with some ice-tea and light beers.









From 12:30 until 16:30, whilst moored, I did quite a bit of swimming, but I had on the "Factor 100" on my face.





We zoomed away from Mgarr Ix Xinni, and had a quick look at the crowded "Blue Lagoon". We had been missing nothing.



















It was like an enormous commuter queue in London.



About two hundred people waiting for a boat back to shore; kiosks bristled, tour-boats jostled, everyone was milking the tourist business during the height of summer....

Gleneagles and Sammy's

The girls wanted to see Gleneagles...Lucy & Sadie being "Old Hands".

Tony and Vanessa joined us, and magically, all the old Lotharios who'd been hitting on the girls, disappeared into the sunset.

Tony welcomed Sade & Lucy, and I sent half a dozen of my bottles of Jacquard Mosaic Rose downstairs, with a few bottles of red.


And then we went to Sammy's for a fish feed...

We all chose either Sea Bream or King Prawns. What a feast!

Then they all left for "The Rook" Disco, but Jean & myself were back home for just after midnight!

Friday

The girls arrived OK, with just Lucy (Mrs Campbell) and Sade staying with me and Jean.
The other five are staying at Ian & Sue's place


Here they are from left to right :


Sade, Jodie, Karen, Vicky, Jean, Laura, Lucy & Jane.
This is there first pink champagne (of this campaign) on my balcony.

After finishing five bottles we clambered in Charlie's Mercedes bus and went to Majis.

Causing quite a row...we had a great meal.

Jodie managed to steal a baby at some point......from some people that are staying at the Grand, saying to me, "I really want a little girl", a little sister for Dylan.


Vicky looked thoughtful, and a good deal of talking was done.

And before we turned in to pumpkins, Charlie whisked us home at midnight.

Thursday

Days of wine and Rose

This is a good joke, sent to me by Revel ( http://revelbarker.blogspot.com/ ) and the meaning will fully kick in from this afternoon :
We'll see how many bottles of pink champagne we get through in the next few days.

Tonight there are nine of us at Maji's in Victoria.
(Yep that's me and eight women!)

Tomorrow we may all be out swimming from Roger Xuereb's motor yacht / gin palace; followed by a quick clean-up, then down to Gleneagles and with all twelve of us (ten ladies and me + Tony Grech) at Sammy's restaurant in the evening....followed by possible disco etc if energy allows.......

That's about as far as the plans go for now...........

Wednesday

More Picasso

Talking of which, these are the two limited edition lithographs that are in my guest's bedroom.

This is Picasso's love of women ...in August 1951, the Odalisque : Genevieve Laporte.


A man who could really draw, and love, well in to his 70's.



And here is an element of cubism in the sad/happy face of Francoise drawn in August 1946.

Another limited edition of which, is on loan to the Gleneagles bar in Mgarr, between the starfish and the langouste above the door to the harbour.

Ah....Picasso...when you got it right: .... it was right.

Ladies are coming to Gozo

Jean arrived in Gozo today.
I love her dearly........

......and my God-daughter Sadie arrives with another six young ladies tomorrow.
It reminds me of Picasso's great(est) work
Les Demoiselles d'Avignon We visit them often, in NYC's MOMA.

In early 1907, Picasso began painting, Les Demoiselles d'Avignon, which would become arguably the most important of the century.
The painting began as a narrative brothel scene, with five prostitutes and two men — a medical student and a sailor. But the painting metamorphosed as he worked on it; Picasso painted over the clients, leaving the five women to gaze out at the viewer, their faces terrifyingly bo
ld and solicitous.
There is a strong undercurrent of sexual anxiety.
The features of the three women to the left were inspired by the wooden carvings on which he had worked him in the summer of 1906, influenced by the memory of the prehistoric Spanish sculpture he had seen in the Louvre.
The two women to the right were based on the masks that Picasso saw in the African and Oceanic collections in the Musée d'Ethnographie du Trocadéro in Paris.

His interpretation of African art, in these mask-like faces, was based on this idea of African savagery; his brush-strokes are hacking, impetuous, and violent.
Les Demoiselles d'Avignon was so shockingly new that Gertrude Stein called it "a veritable cataclysm." She meant this, of course, as a compliment.
Not only did this painting later become a turning point duly remarked upon in every history of modern art, but Picasso felt at the time that his whole understanding of painting was revised in the course of this canvas' creation.
He called it his "first exorcism picture."

I think it's a work of true genius.
But I think Picasso didn't LIKE women, as much as I do!
It's about multiplicity & serendipity !

Sunday

August 12th -13th Preseids

As there will be a new moon soon, the Perseid Meteor shower will be particularly bright this year......the next 'good' year will be 2015.
The Earth has been passing through the remnants of the Swift-Tuttle comet since August 1st.

From Gozo, and after 9pm on the 12th or 13th August, just look to the North :
Perseus is in between the big "W" of Cassiopeia and "the seven-sister cluster" of the Pleiades (see attached star chart for 13th August). And the meteor shower will emanate from just above Perseus.

More information from :
http://space.newscientist.com/article/dn12396-perseid-meteors-set-to-dazzle.HTML

Perseid meteors set to dazzle


One of the year's most impressive meteor showers is firing up as the Earth swings through a trail of debris left by a comet.

The Perseids will peak on the night of 12 August, streaking through the dark skies of a New Moon. At its peak, the shower is expected to produce one or two meteors per minute, according to Bill Cooke of NASA's Meteoroid Environment Office in Huntsville, Alabama, US. Watch a video of a Perseid meteor on spaceweather.com.

The Perseids, which appear to be shooting out of the constellation Perseus, are primarily a northern hemisphere show, although a few meteors may be seen just south of the equator.
The meteors are cast-offs from Comet Swift-Tuttle, which orbits the Sun every 135 years and last swept through the inner solar system in 1992. Comets are made up of ice and dust, and as they approach the Sun, the ice begins to evaporate, releasing dust that streams in a tail behind the comet.
Earth's orbit takes it through the tail of the comet every summer in the northern hemisphere, bombarding the planet with meteors. Most are no bigger than a grain of sand, but they burn spectacularly as they shoot through our atmosphere at 60 kilometres per second.Dazzling earthgrazers

The Earth is now on its way through comet Swift-Tuttle's tail, so Perseid meteors are already visible in the night sky. The shower will be at its best, however, on 12 August.
The spectacle begins as Perseus rises in the northeastern sky around 2100 (9 PM) in every time zone. That is the best time to look for dazzling "earthgrazers": meteors that emerge from the horizon and glide overhead. Observers will be lucky to spot a few of these in an hour, Cooke says, but "they are among the most beautiful of meteors".
The Perseids will reach their peak in the pre-dawn hours of 13 August, with the added allure of Mars floating just below Perseus. By then, Cooke says, "dozens of Perseids may be flitting across the sky every hour".Comet connection
The Perseids are the subjects of some of mankind's earliest records of meteors, made by Chinese astronomers a millennium ago.
In the Middle Ages, the Perseids were known in England as the "tears of St. Lawrence" after the third-century archdeacon of Rome. Meteors streaked through the sky on 10 August 258, the day of his execution by order of the emperor Valerian, and reappeared every year around St. Lawrence's feast day.
In the 1860s, Italian astronomer Giovanni Virginio Schiaparelli, famous for naming lines on Mars "canali", figured out that the path of the Perseids followed that of comet Swift-Tuttle, making him the first to connect meteors with comets.