Patience!!

I am not a patient person...

The above statement suitably encapsulates the feeling of severe despair that is currently hanging over my head like a big grey cloud, brought on by the disintegration of my Nintendo DS.

New parts ordered.

New parts arrived.

Tri-wing screwdriver...... of course missed off my original order.

In a concerted effort to get my project underway - immediately - I set off to find a suitable screwdriver....

DIY store in Marsh - never heard of them.

B&Q in town - "Have you tried Screwfix Direct?"

Screwfix direct - Confirm for me that they are indeed called tri-wing screwdrivers but don't have one.

End of the line......

Back to the internet shopping.....

Choice 1 : $1 but comes from Hong Kong with free postage 10 -12 working days?.....

Choice 2: Same place I got the case from - £6 + £2.50 postage - 1 -2 days.....

Normally I'd have gone for the fastest. Call it credit crunch, or a lesson in patience and thrift, but I went for the cheap Hong Kong one!!

I miss my Nintendo.



Smashed.... bloody design faults!!! Cue weeping fox.

What a difference...

... a week (and a bit) makes!

A week punctuated sparingly with medium jinx.

Highlights (and lowlights) have included:

My Nintendo DS falling in half - played to death, RIP little buddy.

New walking boots finally purchased, arrived, and totally loved.

Cooking a good curry (low fat, meat free, slimming world friendly) for the lovely Dawn.

Getting my car MOT'ed (not by my usual choice of the Honda dealer - the credit crunch is upon us - sorry, "global economic downturn").

Walking through Merrydale (above Slawit) with a pair of stupid dogs, and finding the last of last week's snow hiding under a wall at Cop Hill (see picture).

Beer - The King's Head in town is rapidly becoming one of my chosen few, purely for their beer - certainly not for the ambiance!!

Gardening.

Mario Kart Wii - finally smashing the time trial records and unlocking the last few elements of the game - right down to the point where there is just one record that remains..... untouchable thus far!!

Celebrity Big Brother final - Abject disappointment - Despite myself, I wanted Terry Christian, Verne Troyer or Coolio to win...... defeat was snatched from the jaws of victory, and for some strange, unsavoury reason, Ulrika "bloody" Jonsson won it!! Who saw that one coming??

The memory fades beyond that lot.....



A veritable small continent of snow nestled in the bilberry bushes above Marsden. Freezing cold winds whistle across Cop Hill. Hats pulled down hard, in direct contrast to the still, breathless, sticky climb up Merrydale packhorse road that led us here.

Cool, wet grass.

Apparently, or so I am led to believe.... Monday the 19th of January is the most depressing day of the year.

As for me, well it's been a pretty good day.

Apparently, or so I am led to believe.... the fire walker's mantra is "cool, wet grass.... cool, wet grass...." - We've got no shortage of cool, wet grass today. It's been snowing, and it's come damn cold again.... scuppering my walking plans along the way. If I could figure out how to get my "bowling cam" back up and running then I wouldn't have to write weather blogs all the time!!



Love me, love my canal. Anyone who knows me or knows the canal between Marsden and Slawit, will know this particular stretch very well indeed. It's a place I pass often whilst walking and it's also the most photogenic part of the route.... the light was lovely on this day when the canal was frozen over.

Peril.

The perils of pressing shift-delete.

For those of you that don't already know, you can avoid your files making their final shuffle into the Recycle Bin by holding down the shift key while you press the delete key. This deletes the files instantly, thus bypassing the security net of the bin.

For those that don't know, I've spent 310 hours playing Pokemon Diamond (since October 18th to this morning). It's been a real labour of love and my creatures were just starting to really like me... I mean REALLY like me!!

For those that don't know - I am a complete idiot and accidentally shift-deleted both the Pokemon game and my progress save file.

D'OH!

Struggle.....

I ALWAYS say I should never drink and blog.....

I ALWAYS find material that I consider to be bloggable whilst drinking.......

Quandary.....

Is it the fact that I am drinking that makes life more bloggable, or is it that drinking makes me more perceptive to bloggable material..... or is it, as I suspect, that drinking simply makes me consider the mundane to be hilarious blog matter?

Cases in question.....

Drinking in the Jug and Bottle AKA "Drug and Brothel" with the rastas trying to sell me weed - I thought he said "do you want a wee?" to which I replied.... "No I'm off for a shit!!" - only joking!!

A young girl on the back seat of the bus, perturbed that I dare to sit there, moves her sprawled legs from the seat and proceeds to pretend that the bus is her office and her friends are her business clients on her mobile phone - "and if Jody asks, tell her I arranged it last Saturday and I didn't tell you 'til today!!" thereby incriminating her accomplices in the lie. I did particularly enjoy the ten minutes she spent pressing buttons and pretending to be texting or doing something with her phone when nobody was bothered about her.

Watching a young lady flicking through a book of guitar tabulations.... she was reading the classic Oasis hit - Don't look back in anger ..... she then flicked through to Simon and Garfunkel's Bridge over troubled waters - as she closed the book, I noticed, with immense kudos, that she was reading "Ukelele Chart Hits".........

Judge for yassen!!



Although this duck appeared outside the Riverhead in Marsden, my mum swears blind she saw it in Slawit..... I think it was a cuckoo!!!

C C C C Cold......

Apparently, and these are not my words, but apparently last night was the coldest night in Yorkshire.... ever, or at least since the recording of data was established, a trifling forty some years ago. Ironically, I couldn't tell you what that temperature was!!

Crisp day, crunchy, a bit frosty, a bit snowy, very icy.

Went for a walk down the canal from Slawit to Marsden.... Mum's just started walking as a new year resolution, so given the tricky conditions underfoot and inadequate walking equipment we did quite well to make it to the Riverhead public house for a stunning pint of American Pale Ale with its staggeringly good alcohol level - a fitting reward for the journey.

Spent the rest of the afternoon taking care of those twelfth night logistics.... ripping up christmas cards and burning down the christmas decorations..... saves on the loft space!!!



Self portrait at Scapegoat Hill!!

Rather randomly....

... and even more trivially......

Whilst catching up on some Pogo badges in "Trivial Pursuit Daily", I have come across some interesting but entirely useless information....

Hitler's favourite film was King Kong.

Winston Churchill smoked two cigars a day.

The kookaburra is the largest of all the kingfishers.

150 years ago, Reuters began as a line of carrier pigeons, carrying banking information between Aachen and Brussels (a two hour flight).

Orville Wright flew for 43 years without a pilot's licence.

Go figure...... It snowed last night and it's bloody cold now - The peak temperature for the rest of the whole week is four degrees (C)!!!

Magnetic.

It's been said that I have a magnetic personality.... not just any old magnetic personality, but a very special one that only attracts bloody weirdos!! Case in question, in the time it took Dawn to pay a little visit to the ladies' room, I'd attracted conversation with three Belgian beer fans, one of whom proceeded to tell me about the specific dose of antibiotics it had taken to clear up a leg infection he contracted whist swimming in Samoa!?!?! Try as I might, I simply could not get out of the door fast enough....

Anyhoo.....

Managed to get out walking today, and that's something that pleases me very much. We walked a section of the Pennine Way up to Black Moss Reservoir and back down into Marsden. It was so cold out there on top of the moors that we actually managed to walk out onto the surface of the frozen Black Moss itself - Don't try this at home, we're both highly trained idiots, and the dog looked funny skidding about out there!!!

A few weeks ago, sitting stupidly, as I so often do, on the floor, with my feet and legs screwed up underneath me...... The upshot of this is that my feet end up going completely dead.... When I stood up and walked, my foot sort of folded up beneath me so that instead of pointing forwards, it pointed backwards, with the sole facing up....... ouch!

I am sure I've broken something, and today's walk has highlighted this very fact. Like a typical bloke, rather that going to a doctor or hospital casualty department, I'll try and walk it off!!

Warming up.

Well the thaw has arrived and the sun's been out. Everything back to normal.... or is it?? I've still got roses that are blooming in my garden and the frost certainly hasn't stopped their unseasonal display!!

They say simple thing please simple minds, and if that's the case then I must be very stupid.... case in question:

Whilst playing Tiger Woods 2008 on my Wii today, I suddenly found myself laughing out loud as the commentator announced "Aphrodite Papadapolus looking for a birdie". It's most certainly not the kind of sentence that you hear uttered every day. Suffice to say I eventually won the tournament and had the last laugh as I was declared player of the month!!

I need a life/beer (delete as applicable).

Cold....

It's so cold (by dear old Blighty standards at least). Yesterday, for the first time ever, I witnessed freezing fog. A veil of icing sugar drifted down across the misty slopes of Huddersfield for the entire day. On the local weather last night I heard that the peak temperature during the day had been a chilling minus four degrees (centigrade) which is fairly rare in this place!!

Dry cold is nicer than wet cold, and cold weather is not so bad when your central heating is working and you've just gotten shut of a nasty strain of flu. All this being said, I enjoy the scenery when it's all coated with a deep, hard frost.

As for the rest of it, we went and got a bit pickled at the faithful Barge and Barrel - I was drinking a couple of really excellent beers - Phoenix's Black Bee and Durham's White Amarillo - very nice indeed - Dawn managed to stay off the cider bus for a night and got a bit merry on Leffe (a giant killer of a brew!!). We came home for just after 11 o' clock and I cooked a few snacks and we saw the new year in with a cuppa and a game on the Wii.

White rabbits..... pinch and a punch..... happy new year...... apparently Alaska and Hawaii are the last to experience the turning of the page? correct me if I'm wrong.