My name....

My name's Jason, and I'm a Pokemon addict!!

Don't ask me how it came to be that I have waited until my fortieth year to investigate the photosensitive epileptic phenomena that put young children on the floor, all those years ago back in ninety seven.

We all grew up with top trumps, and essentially Pokemon's the same game, but with some adventurey role playing type game stapled on the front of it.

I can't even explain why I am finding such a simple game to be so addictive.

I only know that before long, I'll have played it to death and can get on with my life again!!!

Curse you, you crazy Japanese anime creators.



Irony: Seeing as we had our first hard overnight frost last night, and I spent most of the day in bed keeping warm, playing Pokemon, and subsequently didn't get out with my camera.... here's one I took earlier. I have a strange fascination with these old gateposts. This is somewhere between Slawit and Marsden.... somewhere between river and canal.

Happy Diwali.

Regardless of the mythological explanation one prefers, what the festival of lights really stands for today is a reaffirmation of hope, a renewed commitment to friendship and goodwill, and a religiously sanctioned celebration of the simple - and some not so simple - joys of life. - Times of India editorial.

..... The festival of light is upon us. Lights, fireworks and sweets!! Every kids dream come true!! Forget your Halloween and your trick-or-treat nonsense.



Effing technology!! I tried to upload this very photograph a squillion and odd times, but for some bloody reason it kept rotating the image (anti-clockwise) by ninety degrees or 270 degrees (clockwise) whichever you prefer!!

Anyhow, this is an image I shot at the Huddersfield Festival of Lights last year during a performance by the Plasticiens Volants group. Catch a short video of it here (it's not my video).

Like I need an excuse.

Having spent last evening in Wakefield, at the lovely hostelry known simply as Fernandes - an Ossett brewery tap, Dawn spent the night being sick in my bathroom (accompanied by one of many power cuts that we seem to be experiencing lately). I think we're both fairly sure that the meat from the smorgasbord that we ordered, had, sadly, disagreed with her.

The upshot of Dawn's nocturnal stomach churning adventures meant that, today while my central heating refused to cooperate, she slept while I played Pokemon Diamond on my Nintendo DS. I think we eventually surfaced at about two in the afternoon and Dawn started to feel a little better, and the central heating kicked in, and we managed to settle on the sofa and relax for a while watching a bit of TV.

Poor lass..... hope she feels better soon!!



Just one of a series of "landscapes" that I have in my collection - A Bolton Abbey waterscape. I love the sunshine, the motion, the weed on the rocks..... You get the idea... I'm fond of it, you make your own mind up!

If you go down to the woods today....

... watch out for a group of people running round like maniacs looking for mushrooms, fungi, toadstools, whatever else you might like to call them. I have, of course, been on a fungal foray into Stocksmoor and into Lower Stone Wood.

I've never been on a guided walk or foray before, so wasn't quite sure what to expect. Turning up, I was surprised to find that about twenty five other people had the same idea!! For me, it was a little overcrowded and a little short on the fungual findings, but enjoyable nevertheless.

We found a few interesting things, but I didn't come away with the confidence to go and grab a basket of fresh food for my supper!!

Some of the finds were: Birch Polypore; Common Earthball; Sulphur Tuft; Honey Fungus; Turkeytail; Lots of types of Mycena; Candlesnuff Fungus - There were quite a few more species, but for the most part, they were very small and in such a big group it was difficult to see them properly or understand what was going on.



It's a Birch Polypore of course!!

Glory.

Having a lie in. Playing some games. Watching some films. Drinking some beer. Going for a walk. Taking some photos. Writing a blog. Going to bed when I want. Eating food when I am hungry. Unlimited coffee.

I know that at some point I'll be back at work, perhaps even in full time permanent employment. I know there will come a time when I will be getting up in the morning or sitting behind a desk wishing I had the time to do the things listed above. For now, I'll settle for just living the dream..... every single day!!

For now, I'd better get back to my Pogo badges!!



Oh to be in Pighill Woods now that Autumn is here!! A rather "artsy" bark profile with bokkeh boughs beyond. Lovely textures in't it? Deep dark black cracks in the tree bark look like they could be bottomless pits.

Full speed ahead!

Seems the season of beer festivals is upon us. I have to be careful not to drink too much too often!! Having gotten myself a little bit blootered last weekend has made me slightly wary!!

Well I've been quite busy with one thing and another.... mainly Pokemon Diamond!! I DID manage to get my job application handed in on time though, so you never know..... Everything now remains crossed up to the point where interviews begin in the week commencing third November, and to hope that I get an invite!!

Shows how busy doing nothing I have been when I haven't even had a chance to look at my Pogo badges this week and they've been available for me for four hours or more!! Unheard of!!



Finding Nemo? A very lucky picture - indeed the one that DIDN'T get away!! A day at "The Deep" in Hull yielded some pretty crappy photos, and this is the best of a bad bunch. Shame the fish aren't bigger in the frame, but lovely colours and stuff.

A little bit deeper.

Yes, put off by the complicated "work history" that I seem to have accumulated, my enthusiasm to apply for a job has waned to the point that I managed to stay in bed until three o'clock this afternoon playing Pokemon Diamond on my Nintendo DS.

So far I've reached Pikachu procrastination level nineteen.

Bearing in mind that the application deadline is Wednesday and it's already Monday evening and I've only filled in my name and address..... if I had to ask a magic eight ball I am sure it would say something like "Outlook not so good".

I wish I had stayed in permanent employment and never turned to contracting now because the idea of references and work history would have been so much simpler.

Having played some Pogo and updated my blog, I guess I ought to go and at least try to fill in a few more postage stamp sized boxes with my patented "spider-crawling-across-the-page" style calligraphy.



Bolton Abbey 20th September 2008 - What can only be described as a lovely day out - we went walking near Menwith Hill around Fewston and Timble Ings Woods (walking route supplied by the excellent Yorkshire Water website) - A day filled with sightings of red kites, enormous dragonflies, and sunshine - Called at Bolton abbey on the way home.

Groggy.

A groggy Sunday, in a state of alcohol recovery.

Neither "self scanning" my own supermarket shopping at Tescos nor watching Bear Grylls (Born Survivor) drinking his own piss out of a rattlesnake skin have actually made me feel much better.

Brain swelling and puffy, tired eyes.

Effervescent vitamin tablets - extra B vitamins!!

Toad-in-the-hole with broccoli, mashed carrots and swede, new potatoes, savoy cabbage and lashings of gravy has more or less saved my life today.



Beaumaris, Anglesey - Portrait of a gull. Ironically, Beaumaris is a very picturesque place - so of course one of the best pictures I took there didn't actually feature any single view of the town itself - could have been anywhere!! Still, it's a nice picture (in my humble opinion).

The first fence.

Bloody hell. Although I am TRYING to make myself be more productive and even to apply for a job..... I am liable to fall at the first fence for the following reason(s)....

a) My employment history is quite complicated. I've been contracting for quite a while and this means a lot of jobs and not many job references.

b) My qualifications aren't what you would recognise as modern.

c) I find it hard to represent myself in a stiff, fill-in-the-box type application form, especially when it happens to be printed onto A4 sheets and the boxes you have to use aren't lined, nor are they bigger than a postage stamp..... so when it comes to filling in a small box with information relating to my personal characteristics (giving some information about myself, including my main characteristics and why I think I might be good in this role) - the box actually measures all of 16.5cm by 4.5cm!!!

d) My handwriting is pretty sucky!!



Before I went out tonight I selected this picture from a whole heap of other images. How apt that indeed, you would not want to encounter me on dark night inbetween me pressing "publish" and me getting home and typing the commentary to this photo - it somehow seems appropriate now, a bit like a premonition!! Puffin Island promontory at Black Point, Anglesey (two quid toll road).

Kickstart.

I have started the transformation from a lazy arse into a mildly interested lazy arse.

I attended (along with The Turtle) a countryside volunteering meeting last evening. All I gotta do now is make sure I attend a some of the guided walks and "task" days over the next few weeks and to find out whether I fancy it or not. I've left my contact details and I think there's room for an Arctic Fox and a Turtle amongst their ranks.

Shock, horror, I even phoned up a company to send me out a job application too!! As anyone who knows me knows.... I am quite particular about which jobs to apply for - in truth I've applied for three jobs in the last two years!! This job is a nice one, and it's very local, and it seems pretty interesting, so fingers crossed on that.



For no other reason that I actually think this photo is as good as any "calendar" shot I've ever taken, this colourful shot of Conwy Bowling Club in North Wales has managed to find a place on my blog. I love the deep colours and the hint of an approaching autumn that are hanging in the frame.

Trying.

I am trying, or so it's been said!!

In fact I am trying to be a better citizen. I'm trying to be more active, more sociable, more productive. I've even started using a diary!!

This week alone I've registered to attend a couple of guided walks, and tried (unsuccesfully) to enroll on a day of coppicing.... alas, it's oversubscribed, and I made it onto the standby list. I am planning on attending an open meeting of countryside voolunteers tomorrow night to see if there is a way I can be of ome use. I am also contemplating some dry stone walling courses.

Let's hope my flush of enthusiasm stretches to me applying for two jobs that I've noticed this week.



I like the spontaneous aspect of this photograph - I guess I was reading a bit about the macro function of the camera and trying it out at the same time....... and that's what you get. It's an oldie, but a goodie in my book - 5th December 2007. slightly out of focus but a valiant test shot - I also like the overexposed fade to complete whiteout at the top.

Full moon.

Hurray..... I am unable to contain my excitement at the coming of the Harvest Moon of 2008 - At least that's what we call it here in England!!

It is, of course, too cloudy, too rainy, too blustery, too wet, too miserable to be able to SEE the moon, but trust me, it's up there somewhere. I saw it last night and it was already VERY bright.

Hello to my mum, who landed in Australia today - I got a text at about midday to say she'd arrived and all was well.

Been out walking in Beaumont Park today - never been there before but it's a nice enough place with scope for adventure. Two strange things that attracted my attention whilst there: A young lad walking across the park removing a pair of latex gloves and discarding them in a flower bed (Possible solvent abuser?) - Two young Asian lads watching each other's backs while one of them sauntered up to the main steps and jumped into a car (no doubt trading in some sort of substance or other) - I am such a sceptic!!

Walking in dogshit was the downside of my day.

Eating Dixons ice cream - the world's finest!!



Autumnal bounty - grid ref SE 11475 05025 - walking around Riding Wood and Ramsden reservoirs. A nice circular walk through the village of Holme. There's a bit of something for everyone on this ramble - woodlands, open moorland, streams, reservoirs, a great little village with a pub and a hobbit house underground with a round hobbit door.

Best foot forward.

I've been walking... A LOT. Aged forty, with middle age spread (which is presumably beer inflicted) making its presence well and truly known, I am trying to be a little bit more active inbetween the pint glass raising sessions. I've lost count of the number of walks that I have done recently, but if you'll bear with me while I post a few pictures from some of them, then we can recall some of my footsteps together.



Grid reference SE 00565 10990 - A brief moment of elation and enjoyment, sadly punctuated a few minutes later by me missing the right hand fork in the track, ending up on the Oldham Way (instead of the Pennine Way), taking a "shortcut" across some open moorland, and inevitably, and ever so predictably, falling thigh deep into a bog!! The final six miles of this 14 mile walk were completed with my stinking, muddy trousers stuck to my legs and a severe amount of chafing!!

Partly to blame.

Well, another month has passed since my last post - I'm really getting rather bad at this "blogging" lark. I once heard that the road to something was paved with good intentions or something or other. Perhaps, in order to catch up with what has been going on, and indeed to provide someone who might stumble upon my blog with something to look at, I'll try, over the next few days, to post some "catch up" pictures.



Friday October 3rd - Irish Centre, Huddersfield - Oktoberfest. The campaign for real ale's annual beer festival. Attended this year by myself and my uncle's brother John, who used to actually be a teacher at the school I went to. Needless to say, I got a bit pissed!!

It never....

... rains, but it bloody well pours!!!

The story of the last couple of days has been that of trudging through thick mud in the pouring rain. Wet walking boots, wet shirts, wet rucksack, trying not to get my camera wet, and trying to stay on my feet as the soles of my boots are filled with thick, black, gungy, Yorkshire mud. It's grim up north!!

Just managed a circuit of Scammonden Dam today, probably four miles or so, and in all fairness I'd say the weather really did get the better of me. The walk actually took twice as long as it should because of the horrible conditions underfoot.

I like this wall. A concrete wall at the end of Deanhead Reservoir... and undeniably man-made structure in a largely natural environment. I love the way that the mosses and lichens are slowly, but very steadily, breaking the concrete back down.

An ill wind.

In a few weeks I will be forty. We are booked to go off to Wales for a few days to celebrate by walking up Mount Snowdon. I like to try some sort of active pursuit to celebrate my birthdays, and last year was a Lake District walk from Keswick to the top of Catbells. With this in mind, I thought I had better get back into my walking shoes and get some miles under my belt so I don't end up breaking myself over the course of the weekend that we are away. I found a book of local walks that was written by one of my old school teachers and decided to get out there and crack a few Colne Valley circular walks.... I managed a three mile ramble around Blackmoorfoot Reservoir and into the village of Helme and then I walked a four mile route around Deer Hill Reservoir. Today is the first time I've had to use my new waterproofs in anger!!

I had a great walk and the book that took me there was very good too.


Deer Hill End Road..... a self portrait that made me laugh. Wearing my VERY unfashionable walking hat under my hood, complete with waterproof pants..... you can see the rain clouds that passed overhead as they disappear into the distance behind me.

Turtle.

A few beers with my cousin and the infamous Turtle of Huddersfield town, yielded a bag of home grown veg, the likes of which I have not experienced since I was a kidd-a-lee-dack. The turtle furnished me with courgettes (the size of marrows), spuds, onions, and a jalapeno - in return I gave some bottles of the Turtle's favourite brew, Batemans XXXB.

If you're in the vicinity of the Rat and Ratchet, they have some delicious Golcar Dark Mild on the go at the moment!! Fill your boots!! Also in fine fettle is the Phoenix White Monk - the perfect lunchtime tipple.


A quick shot from the beach at Formby. A young seagull in flight - I am really fond of the blankness of the sky behind..... it's not great photography but I like it.

Nearly there....

It's nearly the end of this current series of Big Brother.... it's been a long one, and I'm not overly sad that we are nearing the final week. I think I've done quite well to avoid discussing it here in my blog..... my original blog was very heavily influenced at this time of year by the reality show's goings on and off.

Well, today's not been much of a day.... crumby weather and catching up with paperwork and generally doing a few of those put-off jobs that have reached the end of their shelf lives.


Continuing with another Yorkshire Sculpture Park image (despite belligerent protestations from those who should know better!!) - this is a Sophie Ryder sculpture - her stuff is "interesting" and this is probably one of the saner examples on display.

Turned out.....

... nice again.

A trip to Formby, a place I knew little about, yielded an empty, sandy, windswept day by the sea. Usual stuff.... eating sand with sandwiches, picking over the myriad of tide-strewn detritus, getting wet, windswept, and generally just plain old sandy.

I heartily recommend the beach at Formby (near Liverpool) for anyone looking for a quiet place for romantic walks..... dog walking...... shell scavenging..... and even (squirrel pox permitting) the spotting of red squirrels.


Just a sample of the seabirds that you can buy in Formby. This one comes with its on sand dunes and includes delivery anywhere within a ten miles radius.

Grim up north.

Spent a day in Hebden Bridge being chased by a goose and scrutinising the local camera club's work. Hebden's a pleasant enough place, but it's overrun by touristy types (of which I am one) and overenthusiastic geese!!


That there is me, looking out over downtown Cairo. A crazy place to cross the road or to smoke a big bubbling pipe.... how bazaar?

Sunday schmunday.

When I used to have a job (a couple of years ago!!) I used to hate Sunday because I knew it meant that I'd have to go to work on the very next day, and the Sunday evening always seemed a bit sombre and depressing. Now I just hate Sunday because my lovely girlfriend has to go home and carry on with her life while I get back on with mine..... bah!!


A lovely Henry Moore sculpture courtesy of the fantastic Yorkshire Sculpture Park which I took my Canadian family members to see last week. Rain fell heavily but our spirits were not dampened.

Done and dusted.

Well, I've been to my cousin's wedding, and moreover, I've completed the reading that I was required to make. In the end it was based on a reading found on the internet and tinkered with to suit my own inimitable stylee. Apart from one Freudian slip where I muddled the words "devotion" and "divorce" it went well..... you can of course, without prompt, guess the disastrous context!! Laughter ensued and the officiant could only respond with the immortal words "I'm not sure I can follow that".


Continuing my "stunning church" series, I managed to snap this lovely pick of the twisty spire of Chesterfield Parish Church..... bloody hell maybe this second coming thing has had some sort of effect on me without me even realising it????

Knock knock....

Who's there?

A man clutching jump leads and a pregnant sobbing wife.

A man clutching jump leads and a pregnant sobbing wife, who?

It's not a joke, it's the modern day biblical tale of what happened at my house last night, or rather this morning at one thirty AM.

They wanted a lift to their car out on the dark moors to see if I could manage to help them get it started...... are you mad? Suffice to say, as much as I'd like to have helped them out in their predicament, I'm not about to go riding out into the moors with strangers offering money at any time of day!!

Bad times.


Deanhead church, in the area of Scammonden Dam near where I go riding my mountain bike. A truly lovely little part olf the world.

Moving along....

.... at the pace of.... well, of course a picture speaks a thousand words, or so they say!!

I'm trying to write a "reading" for my cousin's wedding.... unsuccessfully, I hasten to add!! This is made doubly difficult by having submitted a first draft for approval and now completely changing my mind!!

A simple close-up of a snail in my garden that appeared in the middle of the lawn while I hacked a few trees to bits earlier this "summer".

Failing and falling.

Flat on my face, I've already failed to make a daily post for three days straight. I think that's a fair reflection of my current level of commitment!! I blame beer, a stag night, and the impending sense of dealing with stuff.


It's just a nice example of a sculpted stone lion.... guardian of the College of Shipley College in Saltaire. Just an excuse to continue my rash of photo blog updates.

Old Salt.

Just because I probably won't get proper time on Saturday for real (it's just after midnight, so technically it really is Saturday), I thought I'd better at least try to keep up the posting.


Dawn, enjoying a drink of Weston's organic cider at Fanny's Ale House in Saltaire near Bradford, last weekend. For those that don't know Saltaire, it's a world heritage site which is made up of a mill and housing created by Titus Salt. It's worth a journey there to see some cool David Hockney works, and more importantly it's bloody free!!

More?? MORE??

You know it's the real Arctic Fox just as much as you ever did!!


Some might say "eyesore" others might say "treasure" - Blackley Brickworks (sadly disused), above Elland, viewed from Jagger Green. I can only imagine it will be turned into more unaffordable "luxury" shoebox apartments. They'd certainly get a good view from there. I took this photo when I went out for a walk one day on the 1st of July. I like the blank expressionless glassless windows.

Neglect!

I'm still here..... I'm still alive......


In retrospect, I figured I ought to at least add a little commentary to accompany my photograph.... outside Buckingham Palace (London) when I took Dawn down there for the weekend to see Justice play an open air gig at Somerset House in July - it was wet - read a review here.

Bam!!

Kicking it up a notch with the spice weazle.

What a crap day. Foggy, rainy, cold, miserable..... woke up to the distant sound of a recycling wagon making its way along my street. It's a long street and the house numbers go well over a thousand.

The fact that I could hear the wagon could mean any of the following:
a) I slept very late.
b) The wagon was early.
c) I had already missed it.
d) I had to get up and check which way it was going and whether I could get my bin out in time.
e) I would not be able to find anything to pull on to go out in the rain.

In golfing pants and flip flops I trundle out with my bin, relieved that I haven't missed another monthly collection.

I like recycling. I like the fact that my rubbish bin, which is collected weekly, rarely has enough in it to warrant collecting it more than monthly. I'm in the process of ordering a compost bin to further reduce my landfill footprint.

I DO have issues with the way our recycling is done......

a) We have co-mingled collection, which means that paper, cardboard, tin cans and plastic bottles are all mixed together in a big green bin.
b) We currently have no glass collection service.

The problems with co-mingled recyclables is that they are actually fairly worthless. Most local councils that opt for co-mingled are just embarking on a number crunching exercise to obtain the relevant targets with no regard for what happens to our rubbish, other than the fact that it's less in our conventional grey bins.

Take for example plastic bottles..... from co-mingled waste, it's not cost effective enough to get someone to sort it all out so we ship it out to china, and thirty miles away from the place that is shipping it out there, there's a place that's importing plastic bottles from Germany.

The councils that do collect glass and mix it all up are effectively destroying the value..... co-mingled glass is broken up and used for creating roads (i.e. another form of landfill) - Those glass bins at the supermarket are much better when you separate your own colours of glass.... one bin for green... one brown.... one white.... the value of glass collected in this manner is much higher and can be put to good use.

There is actually no substitute for finding a good recycler..... there's no real lazy solution.

What to do when you can't be arsed to blog?

4) Widget!!

Invest some time in a crappy widget that will inevitably slow down your page loading times..... I've got loads of 'em over there on the right hand side if you don't believe me.... one plays music.... one is my (sporadically updated) bowling cam..... one for the moon phase.... one for the weather.... an Iraqi civilian death counter..... and even a defunct polling booth.... and here's another for good measure!!

My blog is worth $6,774.48.
How much is your blog worth?

Drunken idiot.

Well I may or may not have mentioned that I wanted to take a trip to Wakefield (of all places) to find the Fernandes brewery tap. Last Saturday night we finally decided to make the pilgrimage.

Well, it all started out quite nicely as we caught the train from Slawit into Huddersfield, and had a twenty minute wait on the platform before the connection to Wakefield. Following the twenty minute wait (and a pint in the King's Head pub), it transpired that the train conductor had been assaulted at the station before Huddersfield, and the train was subsequently cancelled.

Well, there are two pubs at Huddersfield station, so to while away the hour until the next train, we visited the Head of Steam for a couple more jars.

Now, it's probably best to avoid drinking BEFORE you go in search of a brewery!! That's all I am going to say on the matter. I was pissed, and the brewery tap was VERY good indeed. Let's leave it there.......

If you were the train spotter on Wakefield Kirkgate train station that tried to explain to me why the train comes into this platform or the other one.... then I apologise for my state of inebriation and lack of concern at your fascinating railway knowledge.

What to do when you can't be arsed to blog?

3) Regurgitate quirky news items from BBC or Ananova.

a) Only in Germany - A bunch of snails walking across a road caused a six-car pile up!! Police closed the road while they scraped up the slimy remains of both living and crushed migrating snails on the B14 near Stuttgart. "Cars were crushing the snails and the slime was making the road so slippery that people started skidding all over the place, said one driver. Motorists had to stop and try to pick their way through the snails. It was like something from a horror film."

b) Paul Gascoigne has been sectioned under the mental health act for a second time.... what only twice?? Apparently the teary-eyed soccer has-been was reported as "acting strangely in Hemel Hempstead" - well, that explains it then, break out the straightjackets!!

With all the good will in the world.

I try to be a better blogger. I try to set time aside each day to read, write and comment on as many blogs as I can get through. In reality, I am just too frikking lazy or preoccupied to get on with it. I actually outprocrastinate myself by avoiding the tasks that used to keep me from doing other things by doing even more outlandish things like walking or drinking or gardening or heaven forbid.... shopping!!

And so it seems quite apt that I should continue my list of things to do when you can't be arsed to write a blog.....

2) A selection of "youtube" videos (Youtube videos in blogs is just about the laziest thing ever!!).

a) Simpsons are always a cheap shot. Here's every "couch" scene.....


b) In true Harry Hill style, here's some "you've been framed" type action.

Can't post, won't post

Sure, I've actually been quite busy for a couple of days.

Against MY better judgement, my mum decided that she wanted a "real" roof on the conservatory. This, of course, changes the idea of a conservatory into one of an unfinished, highly glazed, extension. Neither a stone constructed part of the house, nor a wood and glass sunny lookout post.

Anyhoo.....

For the last couple of days, it has of course, been pissing down with rain, and the moor-grime has been rolling in and out with alarming regularity. What better way to spend this time, than running up and down a ladder carrying roofing slates?

So that's where I've been.

Of course, seeing as the majority of the work is now done (I was just the helper in this respect - I can not be credited with actually achieving anything other than putting things where they should be, when they should be there) the weather has taken an altogether more red hot and sunny outlook!! Sod's law at work again..... where's that Tupperware® box gotten to?

Other than that, I've been trying to keep warm.... the central heating has made a comeback this week, due to the inclement weather conditions of course.... I've been playing Age of Empires.... the Wii Fit hasn't seen the light of day.....

I have booked a weekend away..... for me and my lovely lady friend..... we're off down that London, for an (as yet) undisclosed purpose that (contrary to all women's first guesses) does not involve proposal of marriage!! We're going in July, so that makes the next few months quite interesting with July being my little trip..... August is a trip out to my cousin's wedding (we were also double booked to go to a wedding in Marbella but you can't be in two places at the same time).... and September.... well, I'm led to believe that my much-better-half has organised some form of weekend away to celebrate my birthday. I only hope that pony trekking is not on the menu!!

Here is something you might post, if you couldn't be bothered to post....

1) A top ten list.

Ten things I hate.

* Comic Sans font.
* Misappropriated apostrophes (I try my best and I know I am not always right).
* Jumbled font sizes, colours, and types.
* Social Networking sites (myspace, friends reunited, facebook etc etc).
* Racism.
* Pop-ups.
* Spyware and Adware and spam.
* eGears and eDirectory (more to follow, still working on resolving an issue).
* Slugs (although conversely, I quite like snails!?!).
* Nordic walking poles!

Wet and windy.

Each and every "bank holiday" weekend in England is typified by weather that generally makes it a hazard to tow a caravan into the Lake District. This, however, does not deter the great British campers and caravanners, and many thousands of people, in true "blitz" spirit, do exactly THAT.

A veritable oasis of summery weather has indeed been punctuated by a colder snap, with some pretty high winds. The flushing of spring has been brought crashing back down to earth in the shape of fresh green foliage, strewn around the highways and byways of our great nation.

And as far as the windy weather goes..... well.....

A couple of days attendance at the Barge and Barrel spring bank beer festival has also had rather windy consequences for a certain blog author too. Coupled with a couple of pints of the Riverhead's finest brews this weekend.... well, as you can imagine.... I've been declared a national emergency and am strictly a no-go zone!!

Baby birds. There's tons of them at the moment. Starlings that nested in my roof are driving myself and my neighbours a bit mad with their constant skriking for worms. Bluetits are buzzing around in the garden and giving my nuts a severe pecking. Dunnocks that seemed to have jumped the gun slightly, and indeed jumped out of the nest too early, are all thriving and starting to grow "real" feathers instead of those fluffy crap ones that don't fly too good. Today I saw the first baby robin in the tree too..... with its stubby little wings and fluffy feathers ruffled in the wind. If they can manage to stay still in this wind then it looks like a good year for the birds.

Slugs. They've started eating my red hot poker. I stuck some slug pellets down, but am praying that the birds (mentioned above) can recognise the difference between juicy worms, tasty table treats, and deadly poison!! Bloody slugs!! The birds should be eating them, but then (and I know we've had this discussion before about slug recipes) would you really want to?

What shall become of me?

Well, it's Friday afternoon.... There's a beer festival that's just started at the Barge and Barrel, and I am sitting at my computer desk drinking pineapple and grapefruit green tea!!

Shame on me.

I haven't even managed to blog this week, and once again, I would put this largely down to the very fact that whilst the sun is shining, you're like to find the fox indulging in some sort of outdoor pursuit.... walking, gardening, dogging..... you know, the usual stuff.

Anyhoo.....

Big big big shout going out to the Pighill Wood volunteers, who, within the last couple of years, have totally turned around the decimated woodland area near Scapegoat Hill. I have been walking across there a couple of times this week, and I'm pleased to say that all their efforts are both appreciated and obvious. Not sure how relevant or up-to-date any of this information is, but if you want to know what I'm on about then it's here anyway. I guess thanks are due to the lottery too.... I must eat my words!!

My pineapple and grapefruit green tea smells very much better than it tastes.

I have bought myself some herbs today (of the legal variety) - some flat leafed parsley, some thyme, some fennel, and some fancy schmancy basil. I also bought myself some Giant Russian sunflower seeds, and a Kniphofia - that's a red-hot poker to anyone else.... a childhood favourite, from which my cousin and I were quite deft at removing the heads with a single swipe of a stick... how my grandma (the legendary Fanny Bush) must have cursed us. She did make up for it by surreptitiously nipping us while our parents' backs were turned.

I've even managed to almost catch up with all the blogs I have to read..... some of you may have received a comment from me, but they've been few and far between because none of your blogs were even worth responding to I've just been so busy. Sorry.

If you expected this post to be done in rhyming couplets, or as a witty sonnet, then I'm sorry to disappoint.

Wasted.

I'm glad that at least a couple of folks enjoyed my poetic answer to the doggerel artist's cheeky query about my grossly supersized frame. My only defence is that I piled on some weight when I stopped smoking (just eating sweets all day eventually has an effect).... Once I stopped smoking I also developed a liking for a nice pint. I don't drink large quantities of beer (except for the odd festival or two), but I do enjoy a tipple, and of course that also has a detrimental effect on ones waistline.

Truth be know.... my poetry was in fact written whilst I was a bit drunk on Friday night. I know I shouldn't drink and blog, but no harm done.... THIS time!!

And so.... wasted......

We went out last night to meet some of my old work colleagues.... Adam, Don, Emma, Gary, and Stu (and a couple of Emma's friends too) painted a bit of Huddersfield a dazzling shade of crimson. I think it's fair to say that everyone was a bit worse for wear (except Stu, who was driving) and none more so than Dawn, whom I had to nurse back to health during today after what can only be described as a "rough night".

So, today's been a wasted day. Perhaps that's where the term "wasted" originates?

Ironically, everyone last evening that I haven't seen for quite a long time now commented on the fact that they thought I'd lost weight.... how odd?? I haven't actually lost any weight (I don't think) - I'm somewhere around 14 and a quarter stones!! What I have noticed though, is how much better I carry myself since I started training on Wii Fit. It's all about posture!

On that note, an image of an applauding taxi driver flashes back into my mind as he observed my attempt at the "king of the dance" yoga pose on the street corner last evening.

Note to self.... drink + yoga = silly idea!!

Question?

This is a tale of a too plump Fox,
He's plump from his head to the end of his sox,
The cause of the girth is a lack of motion,
And two years on he's a big as an ocean.

Lard, all lard,
cried the mouse in his house,
And all from beer, (he's a bit of a souse).
They'll be wheeling him out, if he gets any bigger,
Just what did happen to that slim Fox figure?

Answer:

Sit tight and I'll tell you the fantastic tale,
how the fox got quite big from just supping on ale.
He stopped eating food only peanut butter and bread,
deep fried with bananas, just like the the King said....

In order to get himself clean every day,
A rag on a stick was the only good way.
One day in a skin fold, when lifted, they saw....
A mouse, in a house, and some clogs on the floor.

When asked how it happened, he just couldn't say,
He simply rolled over and waved them away.
The mouse house spilled out and it went with a bang.
He'd been living in a windmill in an under-arm-jam.

False start.

Bloody heck.

I got myself all geared up to go with Fred to the Barge and Barrel beer festival.... only to discover that it's not until next week.

That'll learn me!!

Other than that, I've done nothing... all day.... and all night too.....

Why did the FoX cross the road?

To get to the chip shop!!

Sod's law and Tupperware®

As soon as I mentioned the hot weather, you could have honestly predicted a steady drop in temperature. to the point where I even had to don a smart knitted item on my extremely toned upper body (thanks to Wii Fit - I am still overweight, but persistent if nothing else).

The other thing that the law of sod spoke to me about recently is my choice of Tupperware® container. It might seem trivial, but that's my middle name.... Tupperware® - just joking!! How come, whenever there's something that needs to be sealed with that yummy polycarbonate freshness and kept until it needs to be thrown away, then I reach for my plastic friends.... I choose an appropriate sized container, turn around to the work surface where said item destined for the fridge is waiting, and lo and behold.... the Tupperware® tardis effect has kicked in......

The size of container I have selected is always too big. I have tried selecting ones that I know to be too small, but whatever it is that needs to go into this controversially (potentially, but hotly denied) harmful plastic coffin, will still amply fit into the container.

Is it just me that has this refrigerated storage box related dilemma?

PS: Yorkshire Pud - Sorry to burst your little bubble of... well, let's not even imagine.... Love Soup is a BBC Sitcom, starring the fantastic Tamsin Greig and written by the talented David Renwick (of One Foot in the Grave fame)... it's very funny but I don't think many people know about it.

Mad dogs....

...and this very English man, invariably go out in the midday sun.

Well circumstances have truly conspired to keep me away from my blog.

First came the absence of beer, which coincided with the purchase and subsequent investment of several days of Mario Karting on my Wii.

Next came the great beer flood of May... the month of mild and the mild festivals.

Next came the weather.... it's been bloody great weather for more than one week, and in England, this generally constitutes "summer". I have indeed been making hay while the sun shines.... I've been out on my bike a bit.... I've been walking quite a lot.... and shock, horror, I've even been seen in the garden, weeding, planting, mowing, raking, sweeping, eating, drinking and generally mooching.

Not long after the glorious weather arrived, the Wii Fit arrived.... if you haven't seen it then where have you been? It's a fancy-schmancy pair of tilt sensitive weighing scales that connect to the Wii and help you "get fit" through a series of exercise types... aerobic, yoga, muscle, and balance..... It's accounted for some very sweaty afternoons and a goodly amount of my missing blog time.

It's not much to show for my missing time..... Small amounts of the remainder have been made up of (perm any combo of the following):

snoozing; eating; cooking; age of empires; nintendo ds; snooker; radio 7; cancellation of sky account; cancellation of an ongoing epic order (email transcript to follow when concluded) with eDirectory (what is it with companies that start with e? - ie. eGears... eDirectory); dexter; heroes; freesat; love soup; gavin and stacey; pushing daisies; deal or no deal; pogo;

Normal service will be resumed as soon as it starts raining!!

Jibber jabber.

Too much Mario Kart and no beer makes an Arctic Fox go crazy.
Too much Mario Kart and no beer makes an Arctic Fox go crazy.
Too much Mario Kart and no beer makes an Arctic Fox go crazy.
Too much Mario Kart and no beer makes an Arctic Fox go crazy.
Too much Mario Kart and no beer makes an Arctic Fox go crazy.

I knew I bought my camera for a reason.... I haven't used my new camera half as much as I ought to have.... hopefully now that the weather is slightly more cheerful this is something I will rectify.

Here are a couple of (in my humble amateur photographical opinion) my better springtime shots...


Especially for my friend spice-the-cat... this lovely picture of a blackbird with its beak chockfull of worms heading off to feed its young 'uns - This is bokkeh to the level 11!!!!


Despite my abject disappointment at losing a clutch of robin eggs during a winter storm earlier in the year when my shrub blew down, the dunnocks have made up for it and nested in the ivy that hangs over from next door's garden. I took this picture of a very young dunnock chick... probably only a few days after it fledged... still too naive to actually fly away from a twinkle toed fox and a camera!! (note totally sure it's a dunnock... might be a sparrow... they're quite similar)

Making an example.

Sometimes I wonder how I can be so busy, when in reality I'm not actually, really, doing anything at all.

What have I been doing since Sunday?

Well, I resolved to NOT go out for a drink this week... It's only Tuesday and I am wondering whether I might have made a bad choice. May is a month of celebration of the humble pint of mild, and there's a couple of *mild and cider festivals cracking off this coming weekend, so I thought I might enjoy them more if I err on the side of sobriety this week.

* Three Pigeons mild festival Saturday and Sunday (10 milds) - Rat and Ratchet mild and cider festival Saturday and Sunday (15 milds and some cider).

So that's what I HAVEN'T been doing.

I've been glued to the snooker (an annual occurrence) at the Sheffield Crucible - Yes, we all know it's really boring, but like Big Brother, the more you watch it, the more you get sucked in and enjoy it.

Spent half a day today looking for:
a) Mario Kart Wii - with steering wheel - (found in the first shop I went to)
b) Wii Fit - (Gave up looking after the twelfth shop)
c) A **Rubik's Cube - (Gave up looking after the ninth shop)

** Apparently the Rubik's Cube is once again a "must have" toy for kids.... Some shops have not had any stock of them since December!! I am so out of touch with the youth of today!! Obviously I still have my original "cube" but I'm sure a birthday gift didn't ought to be so tatty!!

Obviously, after purchasing Mario Kart for my Wii.... I've invested a little bit of time and effort into doing some of that, and playing against Riv.

Spent a few hours yesterday evening servicing (well, helping Riv to service) a bike for the Turtle, which is now, once again, greasy and almost road worthy!!

Satnav... I've been trying to work out why the Nokia LD-3W is such a poor bluetooth GPS receiver. After quite a bit of digging, it turns out that it's because the unit operates in "static navigation" whereby your position data is averaged, and therefore it's more accurate when travelling at speed than it is for walking around some fields (or indeed being (mis)guided up and down the same street outside the Manchester Arms in Hull several times to the point of embarrassment). So.... after much digging and sniffing around the interweb, I've found a utility that lets me hack into the bluetooth GPS receiver and turn off the static navigation... I tried it out today and it does genuinely seem a bit better..... it needs a more exhaustive test, but that would involve me getting off the sofa!! Anyone interested in the Nokia LD-3W should look here, it's most useful.

I baked some bread... then ate it.

Caught up on my Sky+ recorded programmes (Heroes (season 2), Love Soup, Pushing Daisies (season 1), Dexter (season 1).

Hoovered around the house - a task LONG overdue. Bleached my dishcloths (I never know why I don't just throw them away!!). Unclogged the bathroom sink.

Hung a window mounted bird feeding station on my lounge window.

Listened to Terry Pratchett's - The Amazing Maurice and His Educated Rodents - part of Mr. Pratchett's 60th birthday (28th April) celebrations on Radio 7.

Played endless hours of "brain training" type activities on my Nintendo DS, and an equal amount of time playing "brain numbing" type games too. Also played a fair amount of Pogo.

Drunk a lot of coffee!!

And so..... it would appear that there have not actually been enough hours in the couple of days since my last post to fit all of this nothingness into.... where did I get the extra day from?

Advantage fox.

The lovely weather that presented itself yesterday did not fall on the house of a lazy fox!!

Following on from last weekend's trip to Hull, we took another journey (this time avoiding public transport) to the Humber Estuary and visited the delightful Cleethorpes.


The lovely Dawn, with her hair characteristically annoying her by blowing into her face, and no doubt saying to me "you better not be taking my picture" or words (that I dare not repeat in mixed company) to that effect!!

Much like many "classic" British seaside "resorts", Cleethorpes has seen its share of hard times. I'm happy to say that Cleethorpes has survived the season of unfashionability that has dogged our coasts. Perhaps it's global warming or a dose of environmental awareness that is now prompting people to return. Cleethorpes has now begun its restoration and is looking decidedly chirpy. The promenade is really pleasant* and some of the shopping areas are really looking nice, quaint and respectable.... the seaside "tat" shops are being slowly whittled down.


The pier and the groyne. Lovely sky with the "sea" somewhere in the distance.

* Seasides are like magnets for teenagers with badly modified, cheap cars - typically Citroen Saxo and if you can mask out the occasional open ended exhaust pipe and tinny, rattling, euro dance or god forbid r&b (the modern version, not the good version), then it's a help.

* Seasides tend to attract the elderly. while I have nothing against the elderly, it is slightly off putting that you can't buy food that needs to be chewed or beer which doesn't come from an electric pump!! The more the resorts can cater for the discerning punter, then surely, the more discerning punters will be likely to visit and even more importantly REvisit.

* Yes, I know, Cleethorpes isn't actually "seaside" it's tidal estuary, but it's much the same thing apart from the large tidal range and expansive mud flats!!

* Grimsby were playing at home, but if you avoid the football chanting pubs just above the train station, then you wouldn't really know much about it. For those that don't know, Grimsby and Cleethorpes are pretty much the same town, although I am sure someone will pick me up on this broad generalisation.

Having spent an hour or so "promenading" with my lovely lady friend, we decided that we should head out of town and find a more natural environment in which to take a constitutional stroll along the myriad of wildlife havens along the edge of the estuary.


A view along the "prom" at Cleethorpes from Ross Castle, a Victorian folly (recently renovated).

We (eventually) parked up at the "Lakeside" area... not far out of town. It's like an old 1920s boating lake, and you can tell it's also had its fair share of troubled times, but its being invested in and its looking very nice. A boating lake, a light railway running through the area with mini steam engines, some ancient sand dunes, and access to lovely salt marshes and stunning low tide walks along the beach.


Haile Fort, constructed in the mouth of the Humber Estuary during the first world war, and hailed as "an outstanding triumph of modern engineering".

It was a great day out... For me, the walking on the beach, picking up interesting shells, and feeling the sun on your back, and the sand whipping around your ankles in the breezier moments, and soft terrain under your feet, was the highlight of the day.

Go to your nearest coastal resort and support it. I maintain that there are so many places in this country that I have never experienced, that I ought never to need to go abroad again. That's obviously not to say that I won't go abroad, but damn it, most people don't know what's on their own doorstep!!

Crap.

What to have for my tea? (that's dinner to you posh types!!)

I'm mulling it over in my mind, and contemplating the fifty or so yards walk to the chip shop for a Friday special - fish, chips and the obligatory mushy peas.... I live across the road from (in my humble opinion) the finest chip shop in England. For those that haven't yet, and are able to sample the delights of Outlane chip shop, then you really ought to.

On the other hand, I've got a bag of rather large, roastable potatoes, with delicious looking red skin.

Unhealthy fish and chips or healthy baked potatoes?

Eventually (as I've been a bit slack on my bike work this week) I take the healthy option, with the thought of smothering crispy skinned roast potatoes in baked beans and lashings of grated cheese....

Pricking the potatoes...

Rubbing the potatoes in olive oil, to discover that I hadn't any hot water in which to wash my hands thereafter.... dammit.

Seasoning the potatoes lovingly with sea salt and freshly ground black pepper...

Bunging them in the oven for an hour and a half....

Beep... beep.... beep... the oven timer is screaming at me to come and get it.

I rush down to the kitchen, check the potatoes, and they're done to perfection. I turn off the oven and put the taters back in to keep warm. I turn to the cupboard... where's the beans??

Well, imagine the words that come from my mouth as I unearth tins of borlotti beans, of chickpeas, pinto beans, black eyed beans, cannellini beans.... but not a single tin of those bloody baked beans!!

Knackers, or words to that effect.

I grab a bowl..... chuck in a tin of tuna, a tin of vacuum packed sweetcorn, some mayonnaise, and mix it all up and throw it at the potatoes!!

To add insult to my culinary injury.... I only had "light" mayonnaise too!!

That'll teach me to take a healthy option!!

How come a vacuum packed can of sweetcorn still weighs the same when it's been opened?

What a miserable meal!!

I couldn't...

... give a monkey's that it's Saint George's day!!

Not my words, but those of our intrepid local weatherman Paul Hudson on the lunchtime news.

For me, personally, I've never celebrated Saint George's day with any fraction of the enthusiasm that I can muster for, let's say, Saint Patrick's day!! Who wouldn't want to be falling down in town with a huge Guinness foam hat to cushion the blow?

So what do we do to show our Britishness?

Even the flag of St George has been hijacked and tainted with extreme right wing prejudicial values.

A national flower? A national drink? A national food?? Street parties?? None of the above!!

Apparently we're supposed to wear a red rose button hole.... first I knew of it!!

So, will you be celebrating the life of our Turkish, Roman soldier, who despite his staunch christian beliefs fought for a pagan Roman emperor?

What was so wrong with Edward the Confessor in the first place?

I'd be interested to hear from anyone who thinks that being British in these modern times of credit crunch, food shortage, war, petrol prices, and Euro2008, is any reason to be waving a flag from your rooftop on this auspicious day?


Just because you should never be afraid to wave the flag!! I'm British, I'm not a racist, and I'm not overly proud of being British.... but it IS my flag and I've a bloody right to wave it without being embarrassed!!

In deep!

This is a belated account of a day trip to Hull.

Having worked for a few Saturdays on the trot, Dawn finally got a free weekend, and rather than sit at home or spend our time traipsing round some lifeless shopping centre, we caught the train to Hull.

Neither of us had ever been to Hull before, and it couldn't possibly still be true (as was voted in 2005) that Hull is the worst place to live in the United Kingdom... could it?

I decided we would go to The Deep (a classy looking building that houses an aquarium) and I also looked up a string of pubs and bars of note. I took a bunch of relevant postcodes and a satnav device so that we might find things a little bit easier (more on this later!!).

Well we arrived in Hull after a painless train journey, and the station at Hull itself is a lovely place. People talk about Huddersfield being a lovely station (I agree with John Betjeman that Huddersfield station possesses the most splendid frontage, but the interior is a dump) that's all old and characterful, but Hull is bigger, brighter, more airy, and indeed older!! The other obvious benefit of Hull station, is that it's in the same place as the bus station.... shame on you Huddersfield!!

The Deep was well signposted and we had no trouble finding it and spending a good hour or two fighting off the ranks of ankle biters that were hogging the interactive elements of the display. I was especially annoyed at the shoals of amateur photographers that had not worked out how to turn off the flash on their cameras.... fish don't have eyelids and your camera flash could blind, or indeed shock them to death, besides which your pictures will look crap when your flash reflects off the glass!!





The Deep done, we set off in search of lunch. I had the postcodes of several suitable hostelries, but the pubs in the old town looked far too "beardy" for Dawn. She's very good at putting up with my pub selections as a rule, but she doesn't like "old men" pubs where there aren't any women, which is what I mean by "beardy"... Anyhoo, after wandering around for a while with grumbling tummies we decided to seek refuge from the biting cold wind and to turn on the satnav to find a place I had earmarked as somewhere to eat.

I struggled to get the satnav to accept the postcodes without a supporting address. I couldn't get the internet working on any of the three mobile devices we had with us. I texted Riv for some full addresses and off we set into the street to find the Hop and Vine at 24 Albion Street.

Walking with satnav is funny because it takes a while to orient itself, so we walked up and down the street, passing the pub where we'd stopped, no less than four times before I decided we should just keep walking and adjust to the satnav when we got into the right vicinity.

After a few bad instructions and a couple of back tracking manoeuvres, we made it to the Camra award winning, tiny hostelry, known as the Hop and Vine. It's a small, cosy, real ale, cellar bar that serves home made food, very cheaply in my humble opinion. The bar is about six feet long, and the whole place seats about twenty people. Three real ales and a couple of real ciders to choose from..... good selection and well kept for such a small place... exactly the sort of place I dream about running. Home made vegetarian chili with homemade bread and hummus. Great stuff.

And that was about it.....

We saw a fair bit of Hull..... I know a lot of it's quite depressed and industrial, but you can clearly see where the regeneration is happening, and it certainly seems like it's being done both sympathetically and effectively.

It puts Huddersfield to shame....

Fogday.

I vote that we rename this day of the week to reflect the weather we seem to have inherited!!

And so it came to pass that on Fogday, the fox rested.

Here are a bunch of searches, which are just an excuse for me not to write about my trip to Hull yesterday.... which I will now write about in another blog entry..... I also need to update my random shopping blog, so if I get time then that's where you'll find me.

shagging gif animation (Google)
Ok, before I begin.... I don't know why the hell you ended up here looking for shagging animated gifs!! I live to give (be warned NOT SUITABLE FOR WORK!) - Are you looking for this kind? Or this kind? Don't blame me!!

arctic fox eyes location (Google)
Come on... you're having a laugh surely. Do you really need to sit at a computer and type this into Google to look it up for you?? They are on the fox's head of course... located.... in the Arctic!!

Rat and ratchet, Huddersfield (Google)
Hurrah for the Rat and Ratchet!! I haven't been there for a good few weeks now, but it's still one of the best pubs in town. Good beer, moderately priced, not too beardy!! Part of the Ossett chain of pubs.... you can see their website here!!

blu-tack creation bored (Google)
Bored? Looking for Blu-Tac action?? Head on over to the grossly underutilised Flickr group for blu-tac animals in their natural habitats!! Come and contribute!!

spike milligan plain tales from the raj download (Google)
Yes, it was a good set of radio programmes. No, I don't know where to download it from!! If anyone does, then I'd be keen to know about it too. I keep checking the torrent sites, but it hasn't appeared yet. Hail to the Spike!

whats on tonight in golcar (Google)
Very little I would imagine. Why not head to the Rose and Crown and avail yourself of some of that lovely Golcar brewed Mild or their lovely Pennine Gold!! You know you want to!!

im a ant that rides on golf balls song (Google)
I lose count of the number of people who come searching for the ant on a golfball song. To put this issue to bed, for once and for all time.... it's a song by Bob Brown. I don't know who the heck he is.... I don't know the song..... go and buy it from here!!

egears.co.uk review (Google)
Review?? Review?? I'll give you a review.... they're bleeping bleep di bleep.... bleepitty bleep.... bleep bleep.... don't give them the bleeping bleep off your bleep!! Find another supplier!!

what helps Arctic Foxes stand the cold (Google)
Fur!

Royal Doulton Arctic Fox (Google)
You gotta be truly kidding me. If you really have money to burn by buying pot arctic foxes, then you might as well give it all to me and I will make one for you.... shall we say fifty quid to get the ball rolling??

Blue sky thinking?

Well, here's the latest update on my Sky engineer.

A two man team was booked, along with high ladders, to come and look at the satellite dish that is attached to my chimney, which sits atop my three storey house.

Waiting on Thursday for the men with the ladders to arrive, imagine how my heart sank as a single, lonely, solitary engineer pulled up outside my house, in a smaller van than the previous engineer had driven, and with much less in the ladder department. I was not expecting miracles.

Ok, so let's at least give them a chance.

First things first.... the engineer asked to have a look at the actual Sky box in my lounge... the receiver... the decoder, if you will.

Cables were detached and meters attached to test the signal. Well, imagine my delight when the engineer realised that his meter wasn't working, so he couldn't actually measure the signals any further than I could demonstrate by changing channels on my televisual equipment!!!

Ok, I'm still not going to put this guy down.... let him get on with it.

He brought a new Sky+ box from the (tiny) van and plugged it in. It worked.... so the box was faulty.

Paperwork done.... signed, sealed, delivered....

So... why the frik didn't the first engineer look at the box you might ask? You wouldn't be alone in asking that either!!

Ok, so now I don't have Sky movie channels or Sky sports working..... the engineer did some stuff on the box and said that these channels can actually take four or five hours to come through onto the new box.... I've come across this before in pairing my viewing card to another box.

I sit and wait.... (actually I was doing other stuff, but still, you get the picture).....

After five hours, still with no movies or sports channels, I go for a bike ride for an hour and a half. I get home and of course the channels still aren't working. I decide to ring sky support.... I give them the details and after I've replaced the handset and made my way upstairs.... all channels are working!!

They really are a bunch of clowns... but I'm working again now.

Truth be known... I think I am actually going to cancel my Sky soon.... I might just get freeview instead.

Belated.

I meant to get around to writing a little bit of an item yesterday.... circumstances conspired against me and culminated in the imbibing of a selection of the Drop Inn's finest.

I was woken this morning by my phone ringing at the ungodly hour of a quarter to eight. Who uses a phone at that time? It was, of course, the Sky engineer, who was calling to inform me that he would be arriving between ten AM and one PM today. Personally I think he was calling everyone on his schedule to say "If I have to be out of bed at this time of day, then you bloody well gonna get to know about it".

I grunt my acknowledgement of his declaration of alertness, and promptly fall asleep until I am once again awoken by my ringing phone. Nine thirty, and I decide to get up.

So, while I am waiting for the inevitable series of lemony unfortunate snicketty events to unfold, as two grunting, van driving gibbons crawl up the walls and across my roof..... I've got a bit of time to spare. I can complete the item that I had assigned myself yesterday.

Happy belated birthday to the late, great Spike Milligan. He would have been ninety years old yesterday. I've enjoyed a whole rash of shows on the spoken-word radio channel that nobody listens to, BBC Radio 7. which for my money, is the best thing the beeb have channelled their energy into, for quite some time. Some lovely items from the Goon Show, right through to the magnificent More Plain Tales From The Raj.

In tribute to this gentle, comic giant, that still manages to make me laugh, I thought I'd fly in the face of convention (and indeed the law) to bring you some samples from my childhood favourite Badjelly the Witch.


Bless the Spike!

Updates later.......... OK.... Here's the complete Badjelly the Witch book!!

Hell to pay.

Customer service. I bang on about it. I never stop being aware of it. I give credit where it's due, and I certainly don't hold back when I've been let down... and let down, I have been!!

Sky customer services.... waited in all day for the engineer to come to fix my unsightly satellite dish. I took great pains to explain that my house is three stories high, and beyond that the dish is attached to the chimney.... so imagine my chagrin when Conrad arrives and his opening gambit is:

"You've no chance mate!"

Mere fractions of an hour later and Sky customer services are on the phone to me telling me confidently that, not only will Conrad not fix my problem, but I am not a Sky customer, that they never installed the system, that I've never bought any equipment from them, and that I don't subscribe to their services.

"I do." I protest.

"You don't" comes the voice down the wire.....

Pantomime ensues for several minutes before I suggest she looks harder at the computer screen.... much harder!!

A twenty minute phone call establishes that I do indeed have Sky TV... that I am a paid up subscriber, that they fitted the equipment, that they supplied everything, and ..... Guess what??

We finally establish that I have a high roof, and that Conrad will not fix my problem.

Someone else is going to call on Thursday this week, and I fully expect round two of exactly the same thing.

I could go on and regale you with further tales of dissatisfaction, but then what will I moan about tomorrow?

Huzzah!!

Thanks to spice-the-cat, I am now a music bearing blog again. You may or may not be happy about that, but after a heck of a lot of jiggery-pokery I have managed to bastardise the "skydrive" file service into my flash mp3 player over there on the right hand side... see?? You learn something new every day!!

I didn't yet get chance to apologise properly to everyone for my absence as both a reader AND a writer!! In light of the sheer volume of backlogged blog posts that I need to read to catch up with everyone, I may have to set some serious time aside!!

Rol: Thanks for those kind words.... Yes, Dead Man's Shoes is a great film. It's a long time since I saw a movie that actually "changed" me in some way.... I certainly didn't feel like I was the same person that I was before I had seen the film, after I had seen the film, if you know what I mean?!?

I must update the "movies I have watched" section of my blog with as many of them as I can now remember.

Normal service is S L O W L Y being resumed!!

Slacker....

... and slacker.

I've written a few blog entries over the past couple of weeks but I never got round to finishing them, and they certainly weren't in any fit state to publish.

I've been totally busy doing absolutely nothing.

The job interview turned to mush, and I was fobbed off with the best management one-liner ever.... "it's not so much what you didn't have as what the other candidate did have" - How to turn a negative into a positive 101 - What a load of bullshit, as surely both eventualities amount to the same thing.

Erm... what else.....

The internet service provider transition went really well (contrary to popular belief) and I only lost a couple of hours of connection time. Previously I was paying twenty five pounds a month for a 512/128Kbps (down/up) connection.... Now I'm paying seven and a half pounds a month for a 2825/1060Kbps connection - That HAS to be a result in anyone's book. It's just as stable as it was before, and the only thing I lost......

Gripe: My old service provider gave me a small amount of webspace that had unlimited data restrictions applied. I used to host my mp3 files there so I could play you a bit of music while you looked at my blog. I tried to switch this file over to some webspace that I pay for, but the sheer volume of data that ends up being transferred to play the file is costing me too much. Silence descends upon my blog in more ways than one!!

What else have I been doing then that's kept me so busy?

Nowt really.... I've been out on my bike a few times.... I've played some Nintendo (probably a bit too much for my own good).... I've drunk a bit of beer (finally got round to drinking some Mancy Mild from the Pictish Brewery in Rochdale and it was delicious).... I've drunk a bit of cider..... I've eaten loads of fruit and veg and done loads of cooking..... Baked a load of bread.... watched loads of TV.... loads of DVDs..... loads of movies.......

Good things I've watched recently include:

Dead Man's Shoes.
Gavin and Stacey Series 1.
Dexter Series 1.
Keith Lemon's World Tour.

Good games I've played recently include:

Animal Crossing Wild World (DS)
Wii Play (Wii)
Picross (DS)
Pogo

Jobs applied for in the last week:

none!!