Andrews Parents here for a visit

Andrews parents came for a quick visit mid September before they headed to France for some wine, art and World Cup Rugby watching. Unfortunately we didn’t get any pictures of our visit together but we went for tapas one night at our local Spanish restaurant, went for a roast one Sunday and watched Canada play a rugby game – we lost.

Lindsay came back for a day a couple weeks later on her way back to Canada so we went for afternoon tea at Fortum and Mason’s which is an up market department store for foods but most famous for their hampers and preserves and teas.

http://www.fortnumandmason.com/

Recent Books I have read…

This list is so little and nothing good so it makes me disappointed..and i hope by posting this it will shame me into making more of an effort to read a bit more. Unfortunately I have just not been in the mood. Sometime in April I finished a couple books.. the second and third books to the Jonathan Strange and Mr Norrell trilogy. Not bad.. not hugely great, but really easy as they are for kids and they got better as the story went along.

The feature that Andrew is currently working on is based on a children’s book called the Tale of Despereaux – terrible book … sorry guys and to all the people working on the project. There is a way the author writes that is just so annoying, reader do you know what annoying is? Well look it up you lazy kid!

The End of Me and MPC

So with the end of August also came the end of my time at MPC. I had a great time and everyone gave me a great send off which was lovely. In my time there I got to work on 5 features though one was Narnia and it was only just getting going but still pretty good for only 6 months. The crew was great and I will miss the certain aspects and people, and of course some I’m glad to leave behind.. heehee .. who knows maybe I’ll be back one day. I would like to say watch for my name in the credits but I don’t think I actually get credits as most of the artists don’t get credits either… so the best I can do is just updated my IMDB oh well.. here’s to my starmeter going through the roof!

Andrew and his weddings

This entry is written by Andrew - August 24th marked my parent's 39th wedding anniversary and I celebrated with a 7 hour fight to Toronto. Now you might think that this would be a strange way to pay homage to their ongoing marital commitment, but you would be wrong. For you see, I was flying to Toronto to witness the beginning of another such union. This time between my good friends, Lino and Rosanna.
I've know Lino for about 10 years now. We met at film school when we were both learning our trade. Lino's American - from New York, in fact - and during his time in Vancouver he became besotted with Canada and it's people and ended up marrying one of us. Now he's half Canadian.
The wedding was a pretty gallant affair with good food and good people. Was good to see my buddy Leif and his wife Erin again - this time with their new kid, Magnus. Although extremely disappointed in the absence of Ben Bosgang. Come on Ben, New York to Toronto? You could've walked it! Shame!
My personal highlight of the night was sitting out on the patio after dinner, smoking a cigar with Lino and listening to a group of guys with heavy New York-Italian accents lamenting the modernification of pizza toppings and how it's near impossible to find a decent pie in Queens these days. "Back when I was a kid, all you had was regular, Sicilian and calzone. You walked in and all you had to say was 2 and 2 and the knew what you were talking about. Nowadays? Fuggedaboudit." Awesome.
The next day I went over to Rosanna's folks place for a barbecue. The food was amazing. Better than the wedding, I think. More cigars and imported Parmesan. Good times.

The next day I flew to Vancouver for another wedding. This time it was Jon 'Rocky' McCleery and Penny Weaver getting hitched.
Penny's folks live on my favourite island in the world: Hornby. I used to travel to Hornby almost every summer from when I was 14 into my early 20s, so it has a special place for me. In fact, my fist trip there was with Jon, himself, and Jen Finlay who was also at the wedding. On top of this there were a lot old school friends along for the ride, making it as much a reunion as it was a wedding.
The big day was tempered with some rain clouds but a couple of tents and umbrellas staved off the threat of a moist ceremony and everyone was happy.

Best man, Ian MacKenzie, and both sets of parents dropped some great speeches after dinner and afterwards, in true Hornby fashion, we retired to a bonfire down on the beach.
The next day, Labour day, the unofficial end of summer saw most guests, and most vacationers, leave the island to head back to their urban lives. A few of us stayed on the extra night to skip the crowded ferries and highways and give ourselves time to take a hike to the Helliwell bluffs and Mushroom beach - two locations frequented in the heady days of summers past. The decision rewarded us with two unexpected experiences, much in keeping with Hornby's giving nature. Firstly, down at the pub that overlooks the ferry dock we found ourselves part of a Hornby Island Local Tradition called the Wave Off, where the locals all gather to drink and wave off the last ferry-load of tourists, signalling the end to tourist season and transferring control of the island back to it's perennial inhabitants. Second was reserved for the those of us who stayed up late and braved the wind and mist to walk down to the beach in the middle of the night. Scott noticed the glowing waves from our cabin's lofty purchase up on the cliff so he and I with the company of Andrew Ellis and Moselle headed down to check out the phosphorescent waves in the dark. For those who don't know, the phosphorescence is caused by bioluminescent plankton - Dinoflagellates, to be specific - in the ocean that emit a green glow when they're disturbed by the water's movement. When it's dark - like on a cloudy night or new moon - the effect is pretty cool and is a perfect example of the magic Hornby has to offer.
Then I came back to England.

Cambridge Visit

Few weekends later Andrew and I went to Cambridge to see a friend of ours Mr Mark Lack. One day we went punting, it was so busy on the river that it was a bit much but fun none the less and a total different experience than from when we went punting in Oxford.

Cambridge of course is a beautiful little town and we went for some lovely walks as you can see by the pics

On Sunday we took a walk to a nice pub on the other side of a field for a yummy roast.

You can see the pub behind me and Mark here and here is another picture of the growing bump sorry I didn’t realize my shirt was not covering my whole belly.. heehee

A Site I would like to share with the class

Well to break up the blog a little I just wanted to thank Beau for sharing a wicked on line e-card site with me.. I think it’s hilarious and fills any e-card need you may have. I can’t recommend this site enough .. enjoy!

www.someecards.com

Latitude

Latitude was a music festival that Andrew and I went to this year in Suffolk for a long weekend. The headlining bands were Arcade Fire, Damien Rice, The Good the Bad and the Queen and there were other people like CSS, Wilco, Jarvis Cocker and smaller highlights were New Young Pony Club, Gotan Project and Rapture.

Now the summer in England was right poo this year and so we had to go prepared.. when the sun came out it was hot but in between burst of sun we would get little showers but we would take that time for mid day naps in the tent. The Festival was 3 days and there were 3 main music stages and then there were literature, comedy and cabaret tents and things like that for the 12,000 in attendance.

First picture here is of the main stage. Second pic is of food area and the distance the lit tent and cabaret and the second main stage is behind us. And the third pic is of the 3^rd stage in the woods. And then for the fourth pic I know a lot of you have already seen this pick from our flickr account but I am with my new bump in tent city. All in all we had a good time and in the end we made a good decision to go to this one and not the Big Chill this year… one I don’t think I would have been able to handle going to the loo every 5 mins as I would have been further along for the Big Chill and second it was right after all that rain and the site would have been right muddy.

Good times! Highlights were CSS, New Young Pony Club and Arcade Fire.