Category: Personal

Chester Zoo’s Zookeeper Experience at The Reserve

Seemingly because it’s now a thing, a few weeks back I stayed a night at The Reserve: luxury accommodation within the walls of Chester Zoo.

It was located in the Heart of Africa, so you were surrounded by animals that you tend to see in Africa, with the huts overlooking the enclosure with the giraffes and animals we call “Antelopes”1. You also got an evening meal, breakfast, access to the Heart of Africa exhibit before the zoo opens and after it closes, but the main thing was the accommodation. Waking up to a full vista of the antelopes playing and the giraffes was an experience like no other. It’s like being in the opening of The Lion King.

Of course, as well as a great night sleep in a fantastic location, we also got two day access to the Zoo, so just being able to explore that as a leisurely pace was also excellent. Chester Zoo is massive so being able to explore it over 2 days was great. Meant we could lunch without feeling rushed.

I loved the lemurs (I do love lemurs), the vibrant flamingos as the big animals like the rhinos and the elephants. 10/10 would go to Chester Zoo again.

  1. They weren’t, but I forget what they were. ↩︎

WordCamp Europe’s Totally Unorganised fringe event: Krakow Pinball Museum

Krakow has a pinball museum. I’ve been a few times. It’s a great place to go for an evening.

I’m in Krakow for WordCamp Europe in a few weeks, and I’ve suggested this and Krakow’s parkrun as things I want to do whilst listening to talks about how AI is going to ruin us all. Surprisingly this seems more popular.

So consider this an open invite for a trip to the Krakow Pinball Museum, possibly followed by beers and Zapiekanka in Kazmierz. I’m happy to coordinate and be somewhat of a host1. Pay for your own entrance.

  • Where: Krakow Pinball Museum, Stradomska 15, Kraków.
  • When: Wednesday June 3, 6pm – 9pm (ish)
  • Cost: 70 zloty (about €16.5).
  • RSVP: Drop a comment here.

I’ll try and co-ordinate attendance, obviously if folks don’t show and I get bored I’ll probably bugger off a bit before, but it’d be nice to get some quality screen came as we flip balls.

I’m not listing this as an official side event, because the venue is not accessible (there’s a large staircase to the basement), and some of the language I use when the ball goes between the flippers may be deemed to break a code of conduct. But mainly as it isn’t accessible.

  1. Well, by “host” you mean “grunt conversations whilst playing Addams Family Pinball” ↩︎

50 before I’m 50 – Learn to smoke meat

As part of my birthday present earlier this year, Fern got me a half day cooking course for Outdoor Dirty Cooking and smoking workshop from Howl Bushcraft, which took place a couple of Sundays ago. As part of the workshop, we learned to smoke fish, venison, and cook over an open fire using leaves to add flavour, and make cuts in meat, build vegetable and leaf wraps, and how to skewer effectively to ensure even cooking.

It was a delicious way to eat food. I think my favourite things were the smoked fish, the seabass and learning to make bannock bread, but it was all delicious. What was great was the ingredients were all largely supermarket bought – the flavour was added from the open plan cooking. Couple that with a beautiful surrounding of the Yorkshire countryside (the camp was located in the grounds of Harewood Estate), I had a fabulous time and would recommend it.

So another of my 50 before I’m 50 has been ticked off the list! I think from the above, definitely can do the leaf wraps on the barbecue (although I don’t trust myself to pick hedge garlic and burdock leaves you can replace with wilted cabbage) and I may try and build a rudimentary smoker, as the smoked haddock was incredible.

A Whinge

Sorry for the radio silence, for I’ve experienced a lot of first world problems.

I’ve had some ups and downs the last few weeks, it’s fair to say. I think I shared the majority of them on the Now page, but the main one was that my laptop had experienced a battery failure, meaning I had to transfer over to my Windows machine (which was slooooooow – seriously I think the only thing that made it slow was Dropbox, but it crippled my machine). Having to spend Friday evening at the Trafford Centre was probably the second most stressful experience in the last few weeks….

The Apple Store in Manchester Trafford Centre

…only broken by an experience of picking up the laptop from The Trafford Centre on the Saturday afternoon of Bank Holiday weekend. Spending a sizeable amount of time driving around to find a car parking space was not how I envisioned to spend the start of the weekend, but I suppose I should count my lucky stars that Apple said it was ready to pick up whilst on the way to Manchester Airport, though it meant we had to swing past The Trafford Centre on the way home – meaning guest’s first experience of the UK was Saturday afternoon in the busiest shopping centre in the North. But it got done.

There’ve been other pesky things – having to ring HMRC as they’ve estimated my income next year to be really high1, a cancellation, potential clients ghosting2 – but having to work without my main laptop was probably the most stressful, meaning I had a slow week, and I needed to catch up – quite how that is manifesting itself in a blog post like this I’m not sure, but it is.

Couple that with the rise of the far right and the fact I lost my Wordle streak this morning means I’ve been in a better place.

There have been highlights mind. I discovered I quite liked Minecraft, I’ve booked tickets to the Manic Street Preachers, I also went to Liverpool and my next post features me ticking off a 50 before I’m 50!

Normal service should resume, soon.

  1. It’s not ↩︎
  2. Seriously, if anybody has a better way than The Magic Email, then I’m happy to hear it ↩︎

The Primate Experience at the Welsh Mountain Zoo

I’ve talked far too much about AI and how the world is going to shit on my blog over the last week and a bit. Let’s have a blog cleanse.

I mentioned this on my Now page, but over the Easter weekend I treated my mum for a big birthday to the Primate Experience at the Welsh Mountain Zoo, and I wanted to share the gallery here:-

I would recommend the experience! It saw us feed four of the primates (the lemurs, red-faced spider monkey, cotton top tamarins & goeldi’s monkey), and the keeper (Shaun) was excellent and knowledgeable and incredibly generous with his time. You do feed the animals live bugs – one found it’s way into my shoe – but it’s wonderful to get up close to these animals.

I did enjoy the lemurs!