Since there's been relatively little to no riding recently i thought i'd slap together a B-roll of all afew photo's from last year that didn't quite make the grade when they probably should have done. Just use the numbers to scroll through the images.

Well yesterday myself, pete and phil went down to the meeting about the bowl, although it was actually more of a all welcome voting session. Because of waffling nonesense about insurance claims it doesn't look all too hopeful for the bowl. Though they are planning to build a new park to replace it, this will most proabably be years before anything is done. Contrary to justin lee collins' persistent positive outlook, this is not good times. Karma was on my side though, last night Ferris bueller's day off was on tv and as always it made everything pretty much good again.

I guess the best situation if the council can't get the money to completely repair the bowl is to temporarily re-skim it so its rideable for at best another year or two, and in the meantime source funding for a new park, and im thinking a clover bowl.

Our old friend botley bowl suffered a pretty serious INJURY late last year. As it turns out the council have finally decided to do something about it and from what i know there's two ideas. Either its going to be filled in for good, or repaired. Personally i would rather see the latter happening. Like dating Helen Mirren its one of the few older parks there are left in the south, and in my opinion more fun than most of the newer concrete parks nearby.

Now to shoot sharp and straight to the point Mike's been right on the case and found out that there's a meeting tomorrow at 9.30am at the seacourt hall in botley about it all, so if you want to give this old hermit the support it needs then by all means come along, myself and pete are heading down with our ties and breifcases to employ a strategic presentation on the saving this national treasure. This is really late notice but we weren't sure on the details exactly untill now. Anyway my babbling is a pittence in contrast to the words of the oxford mail, so go read THIS or even more on the ball, THIS for more.

That was all pretty intense so to restore our dysfunctional order here's two things i value as interesting.
1. I just ate hands down the biggest chip i have ever seen.
2. I will make pete buy THIS TIE at some point in the near future.

The playtime has hit spring cleaning early this year. i've been fiddling around with changing the site for ages now and ive finally come to this. Unlike iTunes in which this would be called version 2.1.9.3.1 and changed every two weeks im going straight up for the whole numbers. i give to you V3.

So what does this mean to the common man? This layout should maximize fun all around, and i really mean widespread fun. The approach we took last year ended up with updates coming around on average 1.666 recurring a month, which if you're a lady or a boyfriend once a month is more than enough, but for the average bigplaytime fan it just doesn't cut the mustard.

We'll aim to pump variety down your throats so much that you have to start reading variety magazine and eating variety packs of cereal to keep up with us. You'll send money to the VARIETY to make it stop but it just wont.

Anyway, im working on something for sometime within the next week so in the meantime listen to south africa's very own N-DUBZ.

So here we are, december again. this time last year i was just embarking on redesigning the site into its previous incarnation. i cant say thats going to happen again just yet, maybe just a little tinkering..

Im really hoping that there wont be a huge drought of posts after this, it always seems like we do more riding in the winter anyway which is bizzare and slightly arousing.

this has probably been blogged and re-blogged just about everywhere by now alas i saw it only earlier and it made me HAPPY. right, im off to do something wild like cut my nails.

According to the man of the hour, the self confessed pilgrim to the holy text that is Point Break; rimmer, this is the first thing he's actually done off a set. super nice. There were also alot of super nice looking girls in town, making a wharf whistle in petes general direction for this turndown all the more rewarding.

I dont know if its just me but i think petes lifestyle is brilliantly captured by keanu reeves in THIS moving scene. Also, and probably more so in THIS part. Anyhoo im fresh out, check back tomorow for another one, and hopefully i'll write something worthwhile... hah

We finally managed to make a long overdue outing to the streets yesterday and actually found some pretty cool stuff to shoot. Powered on cups of tea matt made rubber and brick join in a wonderfully satisfying way. Later we listened to a continental brass band play YMCA, this was almost equally satisfying.

I have two more shots for your very own hungry eyes, but i'll milk some more updates out of them, so come tomorow there may be another little present posted up on here.

i came across THIS the other day and i know, i know its skating but that shouldn't be a barrier as its so carefully filmed. go enjoy.

Absolute poor show from myself for not doing this in almost a month now, luckily though the blog has been keeping you posted on njugunas, heavy drinking, smoking blunts and videos. Hurrah.

One of the many reasons i haven't had time to do this is i recently went to the prague in the czech republic, which was to say the least pretty damn strange. petes been making slanderous accusations that my photos always seem warm looking. in an attempt to overcome this to the right is a nice holiday snap from what i have been told by a local was an old gypsy town. nice. maybe there will be more alas i am pushed for time currently.

I am now going to throw you over in the direction of photographer YANN GROSS who is damn fantastic. if anything just check out his series from UGANDA. I still cant put my finger on what these photos do for me but something hits home hard about them.

Sparing any other words, wednesday was the day i fell in love with a waitress at a thai buffet in camden. it was also the day we met some lovely chaps from the WEDNESDAY CLUB.

For once i have more pictures than words so i'll just dive in. although firstly apologies as it was really hard to shoot having little idea as to what lines people were going to hit, alongside alot of mis-timing and bad angles. here's what came out on top..

AUSTRALIAN HEIGHT
FIDS TABLE
FIDS NO-HANDS
CHRIS-G MOTO
RIMMER T-DIZZLE
FIDS WIDER TABLE

And im out. go watch THIS strangely appealing video by brandon blommaert.

Yesterday myself and pete set sail for london, more precisely cantelowes bowl, however I'll do the update about that tomorow. guaranteed. When you look at the word guaranteed too long it looks like either a spelling mistake or a type of spanish saltwater fish.

To cut a long improbable story short, i made pete walltap this tree on our way back, i feel as he did it was well worth it.

Well we had planned to go somewhere a little further afield but like most plans this one was foiled by the weather. illustrated pretty well by the picture, it pee'd down afew minutes after the moneyshot was immortalised in a 48x32 inch melee of pixels.

I think if we ever produce some sort of bottled drink, which i hope we do, the billboard picture will definately have to be THIS. if we could somehow get the sax solo from jungleland to play on repeat behind this the message would be utterly unequivocal.

Its news time, if i was clever enough i would have written an amazing pun like 'its big news time' or well something else. I didn't have any riding pictures, so i hope this insight into my awkward mind will prevail. we haven't ridden in what seems like an age due to injuries, weather and hangovers, however i would like to loosely promise there shall be something riding-wise between now and next weekend.

Matt's been hard at work and has started a blog which will document our other goings on and musings, similair in many respects to the B-side of a record. There'll be a main link up on the sidebar forever but for ease of your mouse movement CLICK THIS.

For thoes of you that dont know, honorary playtimer and champion wordsmith Yak has been getting his meat-hooks dirty single handedly creating poetry magazines (though they're good enough to be classified light books). He's just released issue two and given his site a touch up. so go check out POPSHOT.

If you didn't get a chance to buy a small or medium bigplaytime tee we now have recieved 5 more so get them while you can. Since they've just about all gone now i feel many thanks need to be addressed to Tom from Leopard Press, without him i probably wouldn't have bothered to get them done.

Finally, i almost didn't want to say this until i was sure, this is very, very underground right now but things may be looking up for our dear old friend botley bowl, lets just say insurance might be in the favour of the punters...

I had toyed around with the idea of making a separate little page for this but im all out of creative juice, and after this im going to read some Dr Suess. incidentally i dislike unintentional rhymes.

On with the show! Ripely, a bunch of us decended apon watlington to ride its exhausting sandpaper bowl, im going to keep this short and sweet. here's the mugshots in nombres;
UN
DEUX
TROIS
QUATRE
CINQ
SIX

Josh got nuts on the miniramp and hucked this huge fakie, bearing in mind this quarter had the frictional properties of polished ice, it made it just that little bit extra special. The weathers being an absolute darling right now so hopefully we'll get some more riding in soon, not to mention some interesting developments on the web based side of the spectrum. check back soon.

This is just a quick one, in which i doubt anything too clever shall be said. avid followers have been breathing down my neck for some time now for a new dose of playtime; so if this isn't what you are craving tomorow, or at lastest wednesday ive got a medium to large size update from some weekend funzies..

Now to adress the issues at hand. our homeground/motherland/birthing pool botley bowl has suffered a little DAMAGE. We seem to currently be in limbo over the future of our beloved, the council are dialling up the estimates for the repair but also considering filling it in for good. Whatever the outcome i feel there needs to be some sort of jam, be it rebirth or funeral.. ive never felt so unstable in my life.

Apologies as this has been pending for about 7 days, more commonly known as a week i have been busier than an austrian basement..

Anyhoo, myself and cuban pete headed off in search of new territory, namely Combe bowl. Hidden amongst a double entendre of pubs the old boy was found at the very back of a cricket green. i had no idea it was so close, from oxford its really only a 10 minute drive if you know where you're going of course. Its one of thoes places i can imagine a lot of people would completely overlook but despite its lack of socially acceptable trasitions and lips it was, as i believe pete put it, 'le bombe'. theres a good chance he didn't actually say that, i just like to think so.

Enough of me, go LEARN SOMETHING NEW.

This may well be completely unrelated but its something i feel worth babbling about. Im not a huge fan of the hiccups, they are to say the least pretty annoying, which leads me to a lesser known man named Charles Osborne of Iowa who hiccuped continuously for 68 years. Every time i get the hiccups i work up a healthy state of paranoia that they wont cease so readily. Luckily Mr Osborne lead out a fairly normal life despite this inhibiting problem, and sort of like the way seeing Jeff Goldblum reminds me of dinosaurs, hiccups will always evoke memory of this old boy.

Enough nonesense. we've recieved fan art from none other than Mr Towndrow and this lovely SEAGULL. hats off to you sir. dont forget to send in your own, double points for crayola madness.
To reel this all in to the world of bmx, pete tweaks in a hop over a brave steed infront of arguably the jolliest house in abingdon.

In one way or another we're back in business, however long this may be for it feels pretty kooky for sure. We've been in search of new spots in what are generally familiar places, ive found many spots rarely tire so long as you're progressing. Without getting into a wafting one sided debate all too often seen on the pages of alot of bmx magazines, pete shows me how 2 years ago this wallride would seem far from viable. whats the key? progression.

Ive got another lovely of pete that i'll throw into the limelight, but thats a story for tommorow..

Yesterday our most eligible man PETE got back from his 5 or so week stint in Australia, im assured he'll do an update about it involving some good fish based stories. I love it when you haven't seen someone in a while and they use new words to refer to things; in this case pete has replaced the jolly male colleague reference of 'buddy' with the charmingly informal 'champ'. take note.

We kicked off with a lovely session at our home turf the bowl, and for the first time in ages my knee felt pretty normal again, naturally this doubled the fun. If we get some good weather in the next few weeks updates should start picking up again, i almost promise.

Well its been a while, its increasingly feeling like the playtime has almost been disbanded in one way or another. hopefully when the collective are all together again something will click and we'll be back to our old tricks.

Last weekend we had a little play in grove, i tried to ride but my leg doesn't work properly and its really getting to me now. This sucks royal eggs.
Despite seeing more human faeces in under an hour than i usually do in a whole week (i earn my keep as a cleaner and part of that involves toilets) it was a good day. Rounded off with the real meat of this update; some bridge DIVING. Jales can pull off what i would like to believe is the perfect bomb, however here he shows us the perfect FARMER TAN. Its a thing of lust.

If you do not intimately know josh there's only three things you need to know about him; he has very orange poo, he once ate a moth, and when thrown in water he makes a good SPLASH.

Its fair to say we're going through some tough times here at the playtime, petes on the other side of the world, jamies back wheel is in a state of disrepair and i still cant ride on my leg. but negativity is not what we're about so lets forget that for now.

We went out to get a photo of an access hop matt had been eyeing up, the take when he landed it came out appauling (my fault not his) so i dont really fancy showing that. i much prefered what you are seeing.

I think matts working on a big video thats sounding pretty funny, think 'a day in the life' meets countdown. I am never failed to be impressed by what THESE GUYS DO.

I realised last update i said id post this the following day, i lied. i think it was about two weeks ago now or something we went down to the trails to do some more testing and my last run i came in abit steep and nose bonked the top of the lander and ate shit pretty hard. despite finding it hilarious that i slid on my face it seemed like a pretty mediocre bail. the next day i still couldn't lift my leg at all, it wasn't pain stopping it, i just couldn't do it so i guessed it was a good idea to get it checked out.

Regrettably i thought monday night at hospital shouldn't be too busy. after waiting 4 hours (no word of a joke) i was seen at 1am, had an x-ray and managed to confuse the hell out of about 5 different doctors, no-one could really figure out what id done. They finally came to the conclusion that id ruptured the tendon that connects the knee to the shin and id need surgery within a week. After a well earned cup of tea they had to clean up my knee if they were going to operate so they gave me happy gas wich was close to one of the best experiences of my life. It was like being blindingly drunk without any of the downsides. i couldn't stop laughing the whole time, which was pretty good i suppose as they were scrubbing all the dirt out with some sort of glorified scrubbing brush.

Anyhoo i was put in a cast and left at 5am only to be seen 6 hours later by a consultant that told me my knee is still attached and i shouldn't need surgery. they didn't exactly tell me what id actually done but its some sort of damage in the tendon nonetheless. i think that brings a nice anti-climax to this so i shall leave you with the heartbreaking news that Peter 'Rimme Rimmes McRimmer' is leaving for australia in afew days for about a month i think, so i'll try to do some sort of pete orientated update before he goes. Stay out the hospitals yeeeah.

Im finding writing a painstakingly difficult pursuit today so please forgive me. this seems like it was ages ago now me and matt went in search of some evening street, we never really got exactly what we went in to do but i guess 1 photo isn't too bad going if youre happy with it. We bumped into leo and some OXFORDBMX locals who were accompanied by the smiley chaz and friends along with kenny garth of THEYAINTREADY fame. kenny was a damn nice guy, he's on this strange island for a while so send him some hospitality or hook him up with a ladyfriend that can dance.

Our street venture got cut short by this loud and overwhelming meet and greet so we only got matt hopping over a beautiful ladies racing bike, whitewalls and all. I was also re-united with the salt i have with flashes and their inability to fire, this pretty simple photo took a silly number of takes and in this final take only one flash actually went off. i think im going to have to buy a generator and some spotlight lamps instead and have the spot permanently lit.

I have a story but i'll save it for tomorow. if you haven't been check QUIS, anyone else want to ride that snake bowl?

The previous site layout grew thin on me really quickly so here we are on what i would like to have called if there were a board meeting about this: version 2. I thought this would tie in nicely with our new outlook and improve general presentation. The site now uses a little javascript so if you have it disabled change that and let the delicious scripts run.

Hopefully this will last longer than the old layout but who knows, i feel the need to change things pretty quickly. If for some reason you want to have a butchers back into any of the updates from the old site, hit THIS PAGE up. the divided columns layout has gone completely wild nuts on removal of the width restriction on some browsers so have fun navigating through it..

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