This has been a really busy weekend for us. On Friday we drove down to Kent for Nicola and Olly’s beautiful wedding reception in Lympne Castle, then dashed back to London on Saturday just in time to host our own last minute Halloween party.

Thanks to everyone who turned up! Since my photos are crap this year I’m begging for donations from people who brought their cameras. In the mean time, here’s all my pictures that aren’t disastrously blurry:

Ant the clown:

Ant poses in Southgate Circus:

Ant & the Devil:

Jamie, as a murdered gangster:

In other news: after five or six years of being a long haired hippy, I’ve got my hair cut.

It’s an odd day when you get a spam you enjoy reading. Excerpted version follows:

From: “Ling Valentine” To: xxxxx@xxxxxx.com
Subject: I am Ling Chinese Human Female UK Car Expert.

Hello, I am Chinese Contract Hire female human expert, Ling Valentine. I am unique in the UK!
I bring you best UK car takeaway service menu!

I have 200 customer letters on website to prove I am not flying-by-night company. I sell £1.25m cars/month.

I am offering some new VW cars at such low prices I decide to email marketing these. Hope you don’t mind.

This is my Chinese Nuclear Rocket Truck 6×6
7.0 V8, I park it next to A1(M) at Darlington

Who is Jeremy Clarkson? I exterminate! I test drive cars myself to give you idea of quality and speed. What else you need to know? Click on a car.

NEW FEATURE “There is no free lunch” - YES THERE IS! I bring you free lunch. Nowhere else give you this offer! - Ling

Reprehensible as all spam is, I can’t help loving the Invader Zim writing style. Since it’s obvious Ling is an extraterrestrial desperately masquerading as a human businesswoman it seems fair to let her flagrant breach of email etiquette go. I can only hope the threat to exterminate Jeremy Clarkson is legitimate.

Following the success of Kaz and Andy’s halloween party last year we’re throwing a joint one with them this Saturday at our house. It’s fairly short notice and we’ve been very sloppy about inviting people, but all you beautiful freaks are welcome to give me a shout if you fancy a scary night out.

As you can see from the pictures, costumes are mandatory. You’ll have to try hard to beat Ant’s winning costume from last year:

Occasionally, a real gem turns up on Overheard in New York.

HS boy #1: Okay, who’s Pavlov?
HS boy #2: I don’t know, it doesn’t ring a bell.

I just had my first Aikido lesson in eight years at the Airenjuku Aikido Dojo in SOAS gym.

It seems I’ve forgotten almost everything that I learnt while i was practising in York, though tiny bits of Shihonage seemed to be coming back towards the end of the lesson.

Also, I’m exhausted. Hopefully that will get better with practice.

I’m just echoing NTK here, but the promise.tv project looks like something interesting to watch.

Even an antique tivo like mine is a wonderful thing for taking control of the tv schedules, but unfortunately you still have to know what you want to watch in advance of the broadcast.

Promise.tv have a more impersonal take on the Personal Video Recorder - just record everything on digital tv, then you can pick through the last week of tv to find the bits you like.

Here is Ant’s picture of our Klagenfurt gang.

Standing Left to right: Silvia, Monica, Justin, Sarah, Pete. Crouching: Ant and Nick.

Jon Stewart’s excellent Daily Show is finally going to be a little easier to get in the UK. It’s being advertised as one of the core titles of the new more4 digital channel launching on 10th October.