An awarding experience

I had the honour of being guest speaker at Wakefield College's annual awards event earlier this evening, the same college I went to some 24 years ago. As I said at the event, I was hardly a model student and I think at the time I'd plumped for the Microelectronics course simply because it had low-level programming, which was as close (and as exciting for a 16yr old hobbyist programmer) as I was going to get to doing Assembler and suchlike.

Anyway, it was quite an interesting event tonight, where we were holed up in a very hot room prior to going and sitting on the panel, I am sure the amount of sweat that I'd lost will certainly help the weight loss. I also met the Mayor of Wakefield and his wife (Mr s Lady Mayor) which was nice, along with the governors of the College and various other local dignitaries.

My quick speech, which was primarily aimed at telling the award-winning kids that life's what you make of it and it's all about dedication and drive and treating others as you'd like them to treat you, went OK but not as flowing as other stuff I've done.

There'd been a bit of a cock-up/misunderstanding on my return from France and subsequent docking in Hangover central and I ended up just winging it prior to helping out dish out 97 awards or something. The kids seemed chuffed which is the main thing.

The audience of 180 or so were also told of my need to get the kitchen done, which was an amusing highlight and know I know that this blog can be my own worst enemy - someone had been doing their homework.

At the end of the day, we're trying to help local colleges and especially universities bring on new talent and it's all about support and encouragement. Funnily enough, I ran into one of our producer's mothers who also worked at the College, which was nice.

Other than that another quiet, sober night in apart from a 20 minute drama when Sid (our once-little, but now quite podgy) female cat got in the Christmas tree and almost brought it down. Cue panic from Katrina and the kids, I managed to lure here down with a packet of cat-food...

Oh and weight wise... 9 pounds lost already, which is good.

Earlier in the day we had fun with a replacement Sofa - basically we'd bought one earlier in the year and when it came (after a 10 week wait) part of it was flawed/faulty. Cue some compensation and another put on order. After waiting in almost all day, the replacement turns up only to see it's faulty too and the company already have a 3rd replacement on order. Suffice to say we weren't totally satisfied.