Abyssinian Roller

Up and down
Originally uploaded by palko72 (in Nepal again...)

Rollers are one of my favourite families of birds, they are called rollers because of the way that they display to there mates by rolling during a steep dive. There beautiful feathers have also been highly prized by many African tribes for use in head dresses etc.

Anyway I jut though that this was a great shot of a pair of rollers.

Halloween Costume Packer

Most of you may not know that I work for the fancy dress company Jokers' Masquerade, where I help with search engine optimisation as well as internet marketing. Halloween is our busiest time and as such for the past few days, and probably for the rest of the week until Halloween, it is all hands on deck and I will be working in the warehouse where I am a "shipper" That means I process all the orders and get them ready for delivery.

If over the next few days you want to check out just hard we work the cool thing is that we have a few web cams dotted around the warehouse, the call centre as well as a cool "forklift cam" fitted onto one of our er.. forklifts! During the day up until probably Thursday the 30th of July, you can probably find me on the top right web cam on this web cam page.

Oh and for those of you who don't believe how busy a fancy dress company can get over Halloween, check out this video we put together of an average day in the warehouse:

How to Fill a 40 Foot Container Lorry in 60 Seconds



Check out fancy dress ideas blog or Jokers' Masquerade if you need / want a costume this Halloween

Feel the Burn

Winter and the rain have really set in this weekend and as such, Sharon and myself decided to wipe the dust off our squash racquets and enter the house of pain!

I haven't played in what must be three years now and even though I have played quite a lot of golf over the summer and often ride into work on my mountain bike, squash has an incredible knack of being able to find every muscle in your body that you haven't been using! The good news is that I beat Sharon 4 games to 1, but will have burning muscles in the morning to remember this great victory!

Speaking of burning, check out this mega cover version of BURN by Yngwie Malmsteen (on guitar) originally from one of my all time favourite bands... Deep Purple:

Two Zebra's at Duma Manzi Game Reserve

Two Zebra's at Duma Manzi Game Reserve
Originally uploaded by chirundu

One of my favourite photos taken on our recent stay at Duma Manzi Game reserve in Natal, South Africa

One Crazy Summer...

Contrary to public opinion, I haven't developed some morbid fetish for Smurfs. The company I work for sells fancy dress costumes and to promote a Smurf costume that we produce, we decided to send it on a world and UK tour.

For the most part, a guy I work with was "the smurf" and I tagged along as the photographer. So far we have visited Brussels in Belgium, Paris and Rome. The Tour has also visited Las Vegas, Dublin, The Gambia and a bunch of other places I cant remember.

Later we continued with a UK tour, visiting places like Lands End in Cornwall, North Wales and right up to Scotland. Along the way I seem to remember something about Robin Hood and the oldest pub in England, the set of Emmerdale or something and one hell of a serious pub crawl in Edinburgh that included drinking establishments with cool names like Dirty Dicks and The Black Rose Tavern Rock Bar, although I only remember these because of photographic evidence!

We (Ian in the costume and my photos) have so far also appeared in a bunch of local news papers, The Basingstoke Gazette, The Newbury Weekly News as well as the Sunday Sport! and had a radio interview on BBC radio Berkshire

Thanks to everyone that I have bumped into along the way, especially The Warman family in The Gambia and Brendon and Taryn up in Scotland.

... oh well, Summer is now over and we now all have winter to look forward to!