22 Years Ago Today...

my wife and I started seeing each other.

6 Years Ago Today...

we got married.

It is a shame I have to work today, but after all of my short days recently I did not have the cheek to ask!

I bought my wife yet another elephant ornament and a pair of silver elephant ear rings with tiny jingly bells hanging from them. She bought me a copy of the "Tenacious D and the Pick of Destiny" DVD, which we will watch tonight while eating fried chicken and drinking cherry coke, our nostalgia meal. We have not planned to go out for a meal as these never happen, something always goes dreadfully wrong, eg the place unexpectedly closes for the day :-(

So, enjoy our anniversary everyone!

The School Fete

On Sunday we went to the summer fete at the school that my 2 youngest go to. The weather was good for it, warm but a bit overcast so there was less risk of sunburn or heat stroke.

All the usual things there - knocking down coconuts, throwing things at crockery, throwing wet sponges at people, tombolas (we always do a lot of these in memory of our eldest daughter who absolutely loved them), etc. Oddly, everything we won (and we did do quite well) was girly (body lotion, foam bath, a coloured gel pen set, etc), leading to comments of "ooh, thank you Sophie". It is at times like that that I can actually feel her looking over my shoulder

We wondered around with the kids for a while, then our younger daughter was recruited to help out on the crockery smashing stall, so my wife and I sat on the grass, gave the boys money to go off and have fun, and grabbed a drink from the beer tent. What a great way to pass the afternoon.

The funniest thing of the day was when the boys threw wet sponges at each other. My eldest is rubbish at throwing - he tried hoopla, hitting coconuts, and smashing crockery with no success. His throwing was dangerously bad! Then it came to hitting his younger brother in the face with wet sponges - 3 hits out of 3 shots! He put it down to motivation. The coconuts had not given him any grief, but little brother...

Just for the record, little brother was also a very good shot, so they both got rather wet!

Just Chillin'

Well today is just one of those days you can't help feeling great. Life is back to normal, I have got a silly smile on my face (see previous post...), I have got a nice simple task to do today, nothing too taxing, I have got Amy Winehouse playing away on my computer and it is Friday!

Can it get better than this?

Yes it can! I actually get a lunch break today too, so I will be in the little Mexican place I go to most of the time and munching a chicken quesadilla with loads of jalopinoes and cheezy nachos. It has been a long time, over 3 weeks since I was able to do that and I can't wait!

Have a great weekend, guys and galls!

Return to Normality

My wife returns today, after being away for nearly 3 weeks (I think - I lost track of time.)

Her mother's funeral went as well as these things can, and her dad seems to be coping well now.

I think I did pretty well while she was away - the kids were fed, had clean clothes, did their homework, didn't fight too much, etc, etc. I kept some "me time" to keep me sane, playing a bit of guitar and managing to almost finish painting 2 more armies (Dacian Wars, around 100 AD, Rome attempting to conquer what became Romania) and have kept things under control at work!

The thing that I am most proud of, though, is managing to count my daughter's calories successfully all this time. I have been terrified that I would mess up and that she might fail to lose, or even gain weight under my regime. No problem, though, she continued to lose a pound a week with no trouble. I'M BAD!

Tonight I will be cooking Chinese, with my home made, zero-calorie, sweet and sour sauce, which is one of my wife's favourites. Hey, I know what you're thinking, and you're right - we have lost time to catch up on!

Rock Chef in the Kitchen

Logzie wanted me to post some recipes.

Unfortunately, I do not tend to work to set recipies, I just hit the kitchen and see what comes out!

If I am cooking Chinese, for example (not the ready done type that my Cashew Chicken was) I tend to cook some noodles and rice, some meat (usually chicken, sometimes pork) with something that I picked up at the oriental supermarket that is near where I work (a great shop with a truly naff name - Thais R Us!) raid the spice rack, etc, until I have something that tastes good. Finally I stir fry a load of vegitables with soy sauce, garlic (lots of garlic) and assorted stuff from the spice rack. The result is always different but always great - in my opinion anyway.

Probably the only time I follow a set recipe is when making pizza bases, but even this has changed over time, starting with white flour, then half white and half wholemeal, to entirely wholemeal - part of our healthier eating kick. My pizza topping recipe is gradually evolving, currently involving lots of garlic, fresh basil and oregano. Black pepper is calling me but I do not want to put the kids off by making it too hot.

So there you have it - Rock Chef has no recipies, he just jams it!

Checking in

Thanks for the messages. It is strange, isn't it, how knowing that someone that you have never met and who lives hundreds or thousands of miles away is thinking of you really does make life easier.

My wife is going to stay with her father until the funeral is over - she does not want to leave him on his own right now. This means that I continue to play mom and dad until the middle of next week. It is exhausting, sometimes frustrating (the thankless tasks of housework...) but generally great fun.

Take yesterday.

Got up at 6.30, took the dog for a walk, got the kids ready and sent them off to my mom's for the morning, went to work, worked until 1pm, went home, grabbed the dog, walked him to my mom's to collect the kids, walked them home, did some washing, took the kids food shopping (2 trolleys worth), put shopping away, took the older kids to their youth club, played Mario Soccer on the Wii with my youngest (nearly beat him in the last game, a big improvement on 12-0!), collected the kids from youth club, had dinner (sweet and sour chicken, cashew chicken(sorry Logzie it was delicious) rice etc) got the kids to bed, had a bath, went to bed, reading a bit of Band of Brothers before falling asleep mid paragraph. Phew.

Anyway, work calls. More next week, have a good weekend.

Sad News

My mother in law died very peacefully, at home, on Monday evening surrounded by close family.

I am very sad to see her go. She was a great woman, and I grew to love her dearly once I had stopped being scared of her! Never one to be told, she lived for 10 years with a form of cancer that normally kills within the first year or so.

I will miss her.

Me and The Baby!

My daughter snapped me for a school project and I borrowed it. This bass guitar was made for me when I was 18. It has a few scars to show that it has been there and bought the t-shirt, but it is still a beauty. It is called The Baby.

8 Things about me...

Terri tagged me to do this, so here goes!

1. I totally hated school and avoided it at every opportunity. This reached its peak when I was 14-15 when I went to schools so rarely that my mom was taken to court and ordered to make sure I went. Bad boy, I know.

2. When I was a child, my dad suffered from mental problems, with the result that he was constantly in and out of hospital and finally left us for good when I was 10. This instability affected me a lot and was the main cause of my not wanting to have children when I was older. I was such a miserable teenager that I was convinced that I would be a terrible father. Other forces were at work, though, and I don't think I do too badly as a parent. My dad now lives around the corner and we get on well - I understand his problems and know it was not deliberate.

3. I am not a risk taker. Growing up with Dyspraxia (although I did not know I had it at the time, I just thought I was weaker, clumsier and slower than everyone else in the world) made me naturally cautious. The last really dumb thing I did was to go sledging with a friend of mine. He had a wonderful wooden sledge and there had been a fantastic snowfall in the night so we headed to the steepest slope for miles around, sat one behind the other on the sledge and let gravity do the rest. After the fastest, most terrifying ride I have ever had, we found ourselves on collision course with a shelter, tried to steer away, almost made it and BANG hit the shelter with such force that the sledge smashed into pieces and we both thought we had broken our left legs (which took most of the impact). Our legs were fine, if a little tender, but the sledge was beyond salvage.

4. In my 20s I worked permanent night shifts in a factory that produced pellets of coloured plastic which were then sent off to other factories to be made into things. Although the money was good I detested the place and a lot of my colleagues. I would go home in the mornings covered in coloured dye, blue, green, red... Sleep was also very hard to come by as our eldest daughter was young at the time and I wanted to spend time with her and my wife. My sleep deprivation became so bad that at one time I was surviving on energy drinks and ginseng pills. Even then I would find myself falling asleep on my feet.

5. I used to own an Irish Setter that was totally mad. I walked him along the beach and at low tide he would chase the birds that walked around on the sand looking for food. He would often get so carried away with this that he would 'not hear' me when I shouted for him to come back. This would mean that I would have to chase HIM, often for a fair distance. The worst case was the day I chased him 5 miles along the coast to the next town before he realised I was there. He was a truly dumb dog, but great fun.

6. I suffer from terrible travel sickness in cars, buses and coaches, and as a teenager earned the nick-name "John the Puker".

7. After I stopped working at that dreaded plastics factory, I did a short course in office skills. It was great in that it introduced me to computers and led directly to the job I now have. One of the optional parts of the course was short-hand, which I decided to do for some strange reason and I actually got quite fast. The rest of the group were all women and I think they found it funny that I was there. I never got to use it in anger, though. And no, I did not do it so I could be in a class of women!

8. When I was a child, my mum worked in the local corner shop. As a result I ate huge amounts of sweets and was a rather fat child. I stayed like that until I was about 11 when I started growing upwards. I must have doubled in height without gaining any weight, as by the time I was 17 I was tall and painfully thin, gradually settling to a better weight during my 20s and early 30s. This put me in the rather unusual position of being far better looking (or at least far happier with my appearance) at 40 than I was at 20.

I am now supposed to tag someone - Chris? AmazingBrenda? Anyone else?

The Sleepover

My daughter's sleepover went really well, and the party bags were a real hit - one girl said that there was more in her bag than she got for her own birthday! They did not go to sleep until after 4am, and my daughter is already planning next year!

The next month or so

Rereading my last blog, I can see that things are starting to get to me again.

Life is getting a bit tough at the moment for a few reasons: my MIL will not be with us for much longer, we are coming up to the second anniversary of my daughter's death and other matters related to that (concerns regarding her medical treatment) are still nowhere near resolution. As a result, I may not blog very regularly for a while and if I do it might not be very entertaining reading.

So please don't think I have been squashed by a 4x4 if I don't post for a few days, OK? I am probably just taking time off to play mom, or just knuckling down to get through it all.

Love you all, please don't give up on me.

John

John the Superhero

I was going to blog about what I would do if I could have a secret identity, but it has gone off on a slight tangent - I now have Superpowers, OK?

The first power is invisibility. This enables me to move around totally unnoticed, which can be great anyway, but specifically it would allow me to sneak into places that I would not normally get to, so I could find out things about people, influence events, etc.

My second, and final, ability is the real fun part. Remember the movie Liar Liar? Well I would have a mind control ability that forced people to tell the truth. Imagine the fun. I could sit, invisible, in Parliament or Congress and no-one could lie, not even the smallest white lie. I could hang around Police stations and courts so when a scrubbed up drug dealer tries to deny doing anything, out comes a full confession instead. I could hang around schools and when a bully started mouthing off about what he got up to with a girl last night he would tell what really happened - he did the washing up and watched soaps. You get the idea.

I guess my choice is because of something that is going on in my life at the moment - I just want the truth. Wouldn't the world be better if we had more of it?

Birthday Preparations

My daughter will be 11 tomorrow. We have bought her a few presents but her main present is a load of cash to take out on a major shopping expedition. She is such a girly-girl it is amazing, and just loves shopping for clothes, make-up (she only wears a little bit but loves the way it makes her feel) accessories.

On Friday evening she is having some friends round for dinner and a sleep-over, with snacks, movies, face-packs, nail painting, etc. Should be a blast (for her and the other girls at least!).

My wife went out and bought the party bags yesterday. My daughter made it clear that there was not to be anything baby-ish about what was bought - she is a big girl now, OK? So my wife took the Hollywood approach - the party bag is a small handbag, and inside instead of cake, sweets and a plastic kazoo there is lipstick, nail varnish, a mirror, hair bands, a bracelet, etc, etc. My daughter was stunned when she saw what was going to be given out and she is now waiting to see what her friends think when they get them.

Right now she feels a cool as Hannah Montana.

Which reminds me of a comment my daughter made the other day. Hannah Montana (if you do not know) is a girl on a TV show who is normal most of the time, but is secretly a mega pop star. Hannah is played by the daughter of Billy Ray Cyrus, who also plays her father in the show. One evening, we were watching one of those "Top 20 [insert word or phrase here] Songs" lists on VH1. On came Billy Ray Cyrus singing "Achy Breaky Heart", complete with terrible hair style and even worse dancing. My daughter's mouth hung open in horror. Then came the immortal words:

"Oh, that poor girl! How terrible to have a father who is THAT embarassing! I feel so sorry for her."

Favourite things from childhood

I enjoyed reading these lists by Terri and Logziella, so here is mine.

1. The way that summer never seemed to end.
2. A drink called Cresta - catchphrase "It's frothy, man".
3. Running through piles of dead leaves in the autumn.
4. Playing with toy soldiers. Oh, I still do that!
5. Trying to climb a huge tree near where I lived. I must have been the only kid for miles around that never managed it. Then it fell down in a storm.
6. Riding the large tricycle that I had. I was so sad when I grew too big for it. I was forced to learn to ride a 2 wheeler!
7. When my aunt visited and made her wonderful fruit cake.
8. The little bag of biscuits and sweets that my grandfather used to give us each day. He had suffered terrible hunger and hardship as a child and was obsessed with making sure we were all well-fed.
9. Building camps out of grass on a field near where I lived.
10. Trying to skip stones on the sea. I must have been 20 before I mastered that one!
11. Making pictures with those sets of rub-down transfers.
12. A small bear that I had when I was very young. I carried him everywhere until I was 3, and gave him to my grandmother when I was taken to say goodbye to her when she was dying of cancer. I remember telling her that the bear would look after her. It was the last time I saw either of them and no-one knows what happened to the bear. I like to think he was buried with my grandmother.

That is enough for now!

My Wargame Photos


Cynoscephalae, Rome vs Macedonia, 197BC


The Romans


The Macedonians

As you can see, the terrain is not the prettiest in the world, but it worked very well for the game, which is what my prize was for. Next year I will make sure it is mega pretty too...

The Grand Day Out, or DANGER DANGER, NURD ALERT!!!

Well they day finally arrived - the day of wargames that I have been planning for since before Christmas. All along it had been clear that I might not be able to get there due to my mother-in-law's illness, and in the week running up to it, my own sickness. It was only on Thursday night that it was finally clear that we would go. Oh yes, my eldest son had been volunteered to come along to help and play the game with me.

Wargaming is a hobby that involves using toy soldiers on model scenary to recreate historical battles. How the game progresses is controlled by a set of rules which determines how far the soldiers can move during each turn, how far they can shoot arrows, etc. The rules also allow you to calculate who wins and loses any fighting that takes place. Unlike Chess, the wargamer has lots of different sets of rules to choose from, ranging from the very complex to the very simple, each having their good and bad points. At this event, there were around 60 people and 12 games, each representing the same battle but using different rules. It is great fun to compare how the different sets of rules reproduce (or fail to reproduce) the same battle.

In previous years I have stayed over night near the hall where we meet, but I had not been able to book this year, so we got up at 4am to catch our train at 5.50. Our eagerness meant we were at the station at 5.05 and were horrified to see the large sign - DUE TO TRACK MAINTENANCE WE WILL BE OPERATING BUSES BETWEEN HERE AND FAVERSHAM. My heart sank. The bus would surely mess up my planned connections. However, the bus then arrived at 5.15, meaning that (thanks to our excessive haste) everything then fell back into place. Cool, I thought. Arthur, my son, had other ideas. This was just a lucky escape. Something else would be waiting for us further on.

And he was right! Getting to London, we headed down to the Underground trains to announcements along the following lines:

DUE TO TRACK MAINTENANCE THE FOLLOWING LINES ARE CLOSED

There followed a list of lines that seemed to include just about all of them. Except the one WE WANTED! (Chorus of angelic singing.) We zipped across the capital with time to spare, got on the next train and arrived safe and sound.

I had just finished setting up the scenary and soldiers when a small sea of smiling faces appeared in front of me. It was James and 3 of his absolutely wonderful children. The morning was spent listening to the introductory lecture and then playing our games, me and Arthur on one side and James and another friend of mine on the other, with James's children rolling lots of dice for us. It was great to see James again, he is such a nice guy and his children were an absolute credit to him.

James had to leave at lunchtime (working on Saturday night) so after lunch (a lovely Thai curry) we recruited another player and carried on. Arthur and I lost by the narrowest of margins, but it was a great game and we had infact reproduced history very closely, which was good.

As the event wound down to its conclusion, there was a prize giving and I was stunned and delighted to be awarded the prize for best scenary. I had intended to post a couple of photos here, but forgot to put them onto my USB drive. Maybe tomorrow!

A Joke!

Heard this on Boston Legal last night - love that show! I think it is a great joke, having deeper meaning than most jokes. Let me know what you think.


During a terrible storm, a town is being flooded. The last person awaiting rescue is holding onto the church spire, praying for rescue, when a man in a rowing boat comes along.

"Get in!"

"No, I am waiting for God to save me!"

The water rises higher, reaching the man's waist. A man in a motor boat comes along.

"Get in!"

"No, I am waiting for God to save me!"

The water rises even higher, to the man's neck.

A helicopter comes along.

"Get in!"

"No, I am waiting for God to save me!"

The water rises higher and the man drowns.

When he gets to heavan, the man goes to find God.

"Why are you here?" asks God.

"I was waiting for you to save me", replies the man.

"That's funny", says God, "I sent a rowing boat, a motor boat and a helicopter..."

Potato Peelers

Many people seem to have an object that they have a bad relationship with. My daughter loses ear rings at an incredible rate. Some always seem to need a new watch while most of us only have fleeting relationships with pens before they either vanish or stop working long before they run out of ink. Mmy kids seem to have the same problem with memory cards for the PlayStation :-(

My personal problem is with potato peelers. I quite enjoy peeling potatoes but I like to do it sitting on the sofa, watching TV, with the peel going into a plastic bag that is on my lap. Like this I can happily work away doing potatoes, carrots, sweet potatoes, etc without feeling that I am missing out.

So what is wrong with this? Well, nothing really, until the NEXT TIME I want to do some peeling. I can't find the peeler, where is it? I search the drawers and racks in search of the peeler, but it is nowhere to be found. Then the light goes on. I must have thrown it away with the peel. So next time we go shopping I buy a new one, which, sure as eggs is eggs, I promptly throw away a week or so later.

Why is this? It is not deliberate, and I have done it so many times that you would think I would have learnt by now! But no. Sometimes I feel like Marilyn Monroe in "Some Like it Hot", where she keeps falling in love with saxophone players, even though she knows they will dump her and break her heart (again). I keep buying new peelers and then throw them out with the peel.

Any suggestions for a cure? Anyone else do something like this?

Erg...

Hi, everyone. Thanks for the concern, I am back again.

Last Friday my eldest came home from school with a sniffle, not feeling too good. He spent a couple of days lounging around not doing much and was fine. By Sunday evening I was starting to feel feeble.

Monday (a holiday) saw me so weak I could hardly move with a thumping headache. I put on my Troy DVD, which was fun but I don't think much went in. A couple of times my wife asked about what was going on and I did not really know!

Tuesday night I had a raging temperature and must have sweated a couple of pints.

Wednesday I felt a little better, by the afternoon I was actually painting a few toy soldiers and cooked the evening meal.

Today I have dragged myself to work, still not perfect, leaving my wife and daughter ill at home. Not a fun week!

A peek inside my head…

Thought I would pick this up from Terri!

1. What is the stupidest mistake you have ever made with money? Don’t know, I don’t normally get to do stupid things with money!

2. Do you think taxes are unfair or do you think it’s your civic duty? They are my duty, but I do wish they were spent more sensibly!

3. Do you take risks and possibly turn your life upside down for new opportunity? Nope. Steady and plodding, that is me.

4. Are you the alpha in your household? (Include pets) Absolutely not. My wife has final say in all matters.

5. Do you compromise with your significant other or does someone always get their way? If one of us feels strongly about something then they get their way. I don’t think we have ever had strong disagreements about anything, so compromise does not rally come into it.

6. What curse word do you use most often? Twat, usually directed at someone in a car.

7. Do you easily change your mind or are you dead set on most issues? I like to see the facts and make my own decisions. Once I have decided I am then quite hard to shift.

8. What famous person would you like to trade places with for one week? Bono. I would donate ALL of his money to ending world poverty.

9. If you could go back in time and tell one person off, who would it be and what would you say? I would go back and change the way the doctors treated my daughter’s illness.

10. Were you a good student or did you do just enough to get by? Varied, depending on how much I liked the subject and teacher, but I think I was reasonably good.

11. If you could give one piece of advice to someone just starting out on their own, what would you tell them? Find love and happiness.

12. Are people basically good and honest or are most people opportunistic and predatory? Sadly I think the majority of people are opportunistic and predatory, just out for themselves.

13. Is there somebody you wish you could go back and apologize to? No. Those that deserve an apology have already had it!

Hm, that dug deeper than I expected it to. Anyone else?

Bad Ideas

A couple of days ago, I wrote that using a vacuum to suck up spaghetti vomit was the worst idea I had ever heard. (Sorry Terri).

On reflection, this is clearly a lie. There have been far worse ideas than that. Here are some that I thought of while walking my dog last night.

Pickett's Charge

This was the climax of the Battle of Gettysburg. By the 3rd day of fighting it was clear to all that the Confederates had lost and that any further fighting would just lead to pointless death. So did Lee pack up and go home? Nah, he got together those units that were still capable of fighting and sent them forward against the strongest part of the enemy line, which consisted of rows of cannons and men who seem to have had between 3 and 6 rifles each! The attackers died heroic but pointless deaths.

Pop Tarts

These little parcels of jam are a really bad idea. Eaten cold they are totally tasteless, eaten hot they are like eating a mouthful of napalm, guaranteed to strip off several layers of skin. Ouch!

Fusion Cooking

My personal theory is that this was dreamed up by a chef who had run out of things to make a real meal.

"Hm, I have got the ingredients for a load of stir-fries but no chinese seasoning of any sort. Yay, let's chuck in a load of Basil and Oregano. It will taste disgusting but no-one will throw up until after they have paid the bill! Kerching!"

Building Houses on flood plains

Despite increasing instances of heavy rain causing rivers to burst their banks and flood the surrounding areas, we are continuing to build new houses on river flood plains. Streets with names such as The Water Meadows or River View sound very quaint, but clearly the buyers do not seem to stop and wonder why they are called these names!

The London Olympics in 2012

When we won the race to hold the 2012 Olympics it was announced with great pride. Our bid put the cost at £2.5billion which would be paid for out of lottery funds and private investment. The cost has now risen to £10billion without a brick having been laid and the extra cost is going to be paid by the tax payer. Whoopee. The sad thing is that most of us are convinced that the whole thing will be a total shambles. The British are totally incapable of building anything on time. The rebuilding of Wembly soccer stadium ran over by a matter of YEARS and that makes the Olympic project look like a small DIY job. I can see events being farmed out to Wales, Scotland and, dare I say it, France! Still, at least London will get the fancy firework display!

So you see, vaccuming up spaghetti vomit was a comparatively GOOD idea!

100 Random Things

Having done a “day in the life of” for Logzielle, here are my 100 things for Ali!

1. How old will you be in five years? 48

2. Who did you spend at least two hours with today? My wife.

3. How tall are you? 6’2”

4. What do you look forward to most in the next six weeks? Playing wargames all day at the Society of Ancients Battle Day. My daughter’s birthday. Summer!

5. What's the last movie you saw? Terminator III.

6. Who was the last person you called? My friend Steve.

7. Who was the last person to call you? My wife.

8. What was the last text message you received? My friend Steve moaning about the NHS.

9. Who was the last person to leave you a voicemail? Don’t know, I never get them.

10. Do you prefer to call or text? Call.

11. What were you doing at 12am last night? Laying in bed reading about Alexander the Great. I guess that is rather sad.

12. Are your parents married/divorced? Divorced.

13. When did you last see your mom? This morning.

14. What color are your eyes? Blue-grey but if I wear green they look green.

15. What time did you wake up today? 6.30am.

16. What are you wearing right now? Short sleeved shirt, trousers, slippers – and undies of course!

17. What is your favourite Christmas song? Away in a Manger. My mom used to sing this to me when I was a child – even in the middle of the summer!

18. Where is your favourite place to be? Anywhere with the wife and kids.

19. Where is your least favorite place to be? The local hospital.

20. Where would you go if you could go anywhere? I would do the coast to coast tour of Canada.

21. Where do you think you'll be in 10 years? Not far from where I am now!

22. Do you tan or burn? Tan very slightly.

23. What did you fear was going to get you at night as a child? Things in the shadows. No I was NOT scared of Hank Marvin!

24. What was the last thing that really made you laugh? A really dumb sketch on Radio 4.

25. How many TVs do you have in your house? 5.

26. How big is your bed? Double.

27. Do you have a laptop or desktop computer? Both.

28. Do you sleep with or without clothes on? Without unless it is really cold.

29. What color are your sheets? Burgundy.

30. How many pillows do you sleep with? Four.

31. What is your favorite season? Autumn.

32. What do you like about fall? Blackberry picking, crunching through fallen leaves.

33. What do you like about winter? Getting through it without getting too cold and wet on my bike!

34. What do you like about the summer? Picnics, long family walks, sitting in the garden playing guitar.

35. What do you like about spring? Warm sun, blossom on the trees, longer days.

36. How many states/provinces/counties have you lived in? 1.

37. What cities/towns have you lived in? Herne Bay, Whitstable.

38. Do you prefer shoes, socks, or bare feet? Slippers.

39. Are you a social person? Sort of. I like company but can easily get along on my own.

40. What was the last thing you ate? A jelly baby.

41. What is your favorite restaurant? Burrito Amigo

42. What is your favorite ice cream? The white Italian stuff. Then I chuck all sorts of stuff on top.

43. What is your favorite dessert? Trifle.

44. What is your favorite kind of soup? Hot and Sour.

45. What kind of jelly do you like on your PB & J sandwich?
Bramble.

46. Do you like Chinese food? Oh yes!

47. Do you like coffee? NO!

48. How many glasses of water, a day, do you drink on average? Plain water? None. I do drink about 3-4 pints of fruit squash each day, though.

49. What do you drink in the morning? Squash.

51. Do you sleep on a certain side of the bed? I sleep away from the door, because my wife wants to be close to the door.

52. Do you know how to play poker? Vaguely.

53. Do you like to cuddle? Oh yes.

54. Have you ever been to Canada? No.

55. Do you have an addictive personality? Yes.

56. Do you eat out or at home more often? Home.

58. Do you know anyone with the same birthday as you? Not the say day, but 1 day either side.

59. Do you want kids? Did not want them until I found I was going to be a father. Now they are the centre of my life.

60. Do you speak any other languages? No, like a true Englishman.

61. Have you ever gotten stitches? Yes.

62. Have you ever ridden in an ambulance? Yes.

63. Do you prefer an ocean or a pool? Pool for swimming in, ocean to look at and listen to.

64. Do you prefer a window seat or an aisle seats? Window.

65. Do you know how to drive stick? How to what?

66. What is your favorite thing to spend money on? My kids.

67. Do you wear any jewelry 24/7? No. I used to wear a ring that my wife gave me but it got caught on something at work (when I worked in a factory) and my hand nearly got dragged into a chopping machine so I stopped wearing it.

68. What is your favorite TV show? Heroes.

69. Can you roll your tongue? Yes.

70. Who is the funniest person you know? Steve.

71. Do you sleep with stuffed animals? No in the bed – I have a couple of stuffed toys that are mine in the bedroom.

72. What is the main ring tone on your phone? Incoming. My phone is old.

73. Do you still have clothes from when you were little? No.

74. What red object is closest to you right now? My desk tidy.

75. Do you turn off the water while you brush your teeth? Yes.

76. Do you sleep with your closet doors open or closed? Who cares?

77. Would you rather be attacked by a big bear or a swarm of bees? A bear. Bears are cuddly and cute. OK, they are not but I think I would die much faster.

78. Do you flirt a lot? No.

79. What do you dip a chicken nugget in? Hoisin.

80. What is your favorite food? Mexican.

81. Can you change the oil on a car? No but I don’t have a car!

82. Have you ever gotten a speeding ticket? No, they don’t tend to give tickets to cyclists.

83. Have you ever run out of gas? Yes but a good Mexican soon fixes that!

84. What is your usual bedtime? 11pm.

85. What was the last book you read? The Campaigns of Alexander the Great.

86. Do you read the newspaper? No, I hate them all.

87. Do you have any magazine subscriptions? Yes, ones about wargaming.

89. Do you watch soap operas? No.

90. Do you dance in the car? No car and you can’t dance on a bike.

91. What radio station did you last listen to? InvictaFM.

92. Who is in the picture frame closest to you? My kids.

93. What was the last note you scribbled on a piece of paper? A phone message for someone who was out of the office.

94. What is your favorite candle scent? Not really my thing.

95. What is your favorite board game? Backgammon.

96. Have you ever screamed at someone (not words - just a scream) in a public place, just for the sake of it? No.

97. When was the last time you attended church? A wedding when I was about 18.

98.Who was your favorite teacher in high school? Mr Nicholson, my maths teacher who lived 2 doors away.

99. What is the longest you have ever camped out in a tent? 1 night.

100. Who was the last person to do something extra special for you? My wife.

Did the Earth move for you?

You might have heard about the earthquake that hit Kent this weekend.

It was not far from where I live, and people living much farther away have reported feeling it.

So, what is my story?

Well, I was trying to have a bit of a lay in, last week had been rather tiring and stressful so a few extra ZZzzzzs would have helped. I was not asleep, just hovering on the edge, aware of talking and movement around the house. Then the dog started barking.

Knowing that something was wrong, I leaped out of bed and rushed down stairs.

"What's that Custard? There is an earthquake and you think we should take cover under the stairs?"

Sorry, this is not a Lassie movie! I stayed in bed and the kids told Custard to shut up. There were no tremors, nothing rattled. We (not counting Custard, of course) did not know about the quake until it was announced on the news later that morning.

The only worrying thing was that an 'expert' stated fairly confidently that it was now over and we should not expect further quakes. QUICK, BETTER STOCK UP ON FOOD, WATER, CANDLES, BATTERIES, GUNS...

Well, we all know about 'experts'!

A Day in the Life of...

Logziella commented that she enjoys reading blogs about every day life, so here is one of from me.

Woke up in the morning to the sound of our local radio station. Thankfully they have replaced the idiot that was driving me insane a while ago, so this is not too bad. As I try to achieve full consciousness an Anastacia song comes on. I love her voice and this gets me moving a bit faster.

For breakfast I have a bowl of a new cereal that the kids have been raving about. I can't see anything special about it, but as it is a good healthy one I encourage them to eat it. I will go for something else in the future.

When I leave home I walk with my eldest son until he joins up with some friends for the rest of the trip to school, then I head for work. My mobile rings. It is my wife telling me that I have left my shirt behind, so I go back home for it before resuming my journey to work.

I am only half way there when the traffic grinds to a halt. It turns out that they have dug up the road in Canterbury, causing a 3-4 mile tailback. Still, this does not slow me down as much as it does the cars, so I am only a couple of minutes late for work.

At lunchtime I phone my wife to discover that we are in trouble with the bank because part of my regular income has not been paid in. It has taken her 2 hours to hopefully get it sorted out. Good job it is pay day soon!

After work I stay in Canterbury for the evening as it is wargames day. Dinner is at the local Mexican place that I go to a lot, the lure of cheese nachos and jalapenos is just too much for me!

Then off to meet the guys for an evening of toy soldiers. We are trying out a new game that is designed to recreate ancient Greek warfare. My game started off OK but things rapidly went wrong for me - even my general got killed, turning defeat into a catastrophe. An interesting game that we will come back to again!

Then it is time to head home. The road still has works in place, so most of the traffic seems to have taken a different route, which is great for me. Not needing to keep checking for cars I get home very quickly, grab a sandwich, make a fuss of the dog, freshen up and flop into bed.

So there you have it, a day in the life of me!

Food!

On Sunday, we visited a small town near to where we live. It is not far away but we have never felt the urge to go there, so it was a new experience for us. Luckily my SIL lives near there, so we had been able to get some directions.

We arrived safely on the train and soon found the High Street and small Mall. My daughter immediately realised that this place had all she needed for the shopping spree that she is planning on for her birthday next month. Also a couple of computer game shops to keep the boys interested so it all looked good.

Then hunger set in. We had been told that there was a KFC there, but had been unable to find it. A quick call to the SIL gave us directions - right at the train station, under the bridge and onto the industrial park. Off we went.

On arrival in the industrial park, our immediate thought was that we were in the wrong place. Still, let's keep going, might be different around the corner. 10 minutes later, and we were starting to feel like we were in a Zombie movie, the industrial units were becoming increasingly desolate and surely cannot house proper businesses, only creatures that want to eat our brains!

Then we saw it - the distant sign for Carpet Warehouse. KFC is surely close to that! On we went, our hopes rising, closer and closer, we could almost smell the chicken.

Then our hopes were dashed. Between us and what we realised was a Trading Park (surely what the SIL meant!) was a 12 foot high fence.

The kids were stricken. Did this mean we had to go all the way back? Yes, I thought so.

But then feminine logic steped in. My wife said that there was no way that the hundreds of men working here will take the long way around when they want food. They would make a gap in the fence by whatever means necessary. As a now very hungry man, I agreed with this. In fact I was ready to chew my way through the damn fence myself!

A couple of minutes scouting and we found it - a huge, well trodden path through the fence, between the workers and their food supply. Yay for feminine logic!

KFC found, we all stuffed our faces until we could nolonger move. A reward that was all the more appreciated because of the fun we had finding it. I had trouble convincing the kids that getting lost was NOT MY FAULT (see earlier blog on this). We were going where we had been told to go. This almost worked, until on the return journey we found that we had gone under the wrong bridge. My reputation was in ruins again.

The strangest gig I ever did

In my late teens, I was in a number of bands - often 2 or 3 at the same time! Bass players were in sort supply...

One of the bands played a lot of gigs in a variety of places, but the strangest was an L shaped pub in Dover.

I will try to describe the set up.

The bar was along the right side of the upright.

The people filled the rest of the upright area.

The stage was on the upper part of the horizontal area.

Attached to the wall along the lower part of the horizontal area was a massive mirror.

Got that?

The result was that the audience did not watch us, they watched our REFLECTIONS in the mirror. This was a very strange experience, especially at the end of a song where there would be a load of applause and cheering from people we could not directly see, just dim reflections in the mirror.

This was also the gig where 2 band members suddenly had to dash off to the toilet, leaving me and the singer on the stage. The result was a jazzy jam song - "Andy and Jim have gone to the toilet"...

Happy days...

Puff, pant...

Not much time to blog at the moment, as I am playing mom again while my wife is visiting her ill mother. Back to normal soon, I hope.

What's that smell? Is it Arabel?

This comes from one of our favourite books for children. It follows a well tried pattern.

"What's that smell? Is it Arabel?" (Arabel is a toddler).

Turn the page.

"No, it's mummy making cakes!"

After several of these the book finishes with "Yes, it IS Arabel! Eeew!"

Well, we have been reliving this story in our house. In the old days, any nasty smell was blamed on me. Then we got Custard the dog, who is capable of making incredibly disgusting smells, so he started getting the blame.

Now we have a new, even more nasty smell that appears in the house. It stings the throat and makes eyes run. It is foul and toxic. It must have taken us a week to work out what it was. It was Number 1 Son.

In recent weeks he has started cooking snacks for himself when he returns from school. Cool, all boys should be able to hold their own in a kitchen, so we have been leaving him to it. Then we found out what he has been eating every day after school. Beans with garlic seasoning. Yes, he has been putting garlic with the world famous fart pill, and now seems to have reached critical mass where he is expelling something that could easily be classed as a Weapon Of Mass Destruction. Even the dog is avoiding him!

He protests that we should be happy that he is eating health food, good for the digestive system and blood. He knows this from Biology classes. Well maybe he should drop one in his next Biology class and see what is teacher has to say about it!

I think we might have to hide the garlic seasoning....

So, mothers with small children, it is not over, it just changes!

Let's go this way!

Like all men, I have an infallible sense of direction. As with all men, I am fully capable of travelling 500 miles to a location that I have never been to before without taking a wrong turning and all without the aid of a map or Sat-Nav.

Sadly, nobody else in my family believes this!

Why?

Well it all started a few weeks after my wife and I started seeing each other. We had decided that, as it was such a wonderful summers day, we would go for a nice walk in the woods with our dogs. Off we went, heading through the woods along bridle paths, passing others out for walks or riding horses. It was a lovely day. Then we got to a point where we decided that it was time to head for home - we were all getting hungry and the water bottles were now empty.

Then I said it:

"Let's go this way! It will be quicker!"

So off we went along a new path, me confidently striding ahead while my girlfriend and the dogs followed, confident that I knew where I was going.

To this day I do not know where I went wrong, but as we came out of the woods we were looking at the wrong town. DON'T LAUGH!!! We were about 8 miles from where we should have been. On the bright side, there was a pub nearby, but we quickly found that this had just closed for the afternoon, which made things even worse. The rest of the trip, retracing our steps, was in stony silence. I had distinctly failed to impress.

And I have never quite redeemed myself in that respect. Whenever we are out and I can clearly see that there is a good short cut to be had, my wife and the kids cringe in terror and go the other way! One day I will show them, one day...

Summer is here!

Today is the first day of the summer school term - the kids went off in their summer uniforms, the sun is shining, the sky is blue, there is not a cloud in the sky! The result of this wonderful day is that I have declared Unilateral Summer. This means that I am in shorts and shirts from now on regardless of what happens to the weather. I took to doing this after a couple of really nasty summers where spring seemed to skip straight to autumn without summer getting a look in, and as I had been waiting for the nice weather to arrive before I get out the shorts I missed it! So, have a great summer everyone, even if you are still waiting for your snow to go away for good!


Love and Marriage

OK, a switch of subject. Broken relationships are everywhere. The news seems to regularly give increasing divorce rates. Films and TV shows make them a stock item, making it seem that failure of a relationship is inevitable.

My favourite line for this comes from the film Clue:

"Life after death is about as probable as sex after marriage".

So there are times when my wife and I look at each other and wonder where we are going wrong! Why aren't we arguing, throwing things at each other, having affairs, splitting up?

From the Harry Enfield show:

"You're holding me back! I should be on my 4th husband by now, and I haven't even got a brown baby!"

But, do you know something? I don't know if I just got lucky, but reading the blogs that I do has made me realise that we are NOT alone. There are others out there that also have wonderful, loving relationships! So here's to us all!

Give the one you love a big hug tonight, and prove that there is life after death :-)

Radio DJs

Is being a complete imbecile a job requirement for DJs? Let me explain.

Each morning my radio switches on to wake me up. I have it tuned into the local station as they play some reasonable music, and they have news slots where they talk about which schools are closed for whatever reason and tell you where there have been car crashes so you know the best route to work etc. But the DJs can be real plonkers.

Take this morning.

First off, he announces a great new track by someone or other, tells how it is going to fill the floor at the club he is appearing at tonight (plug plug) and what a great bass line it has got.

Hm, great bass line? I am thinking Geddy Lee, Stanley Clark, Mark King...

On comes a total abomination that is a looped sample of the chorus of a classic 60s track with a thumping synth bass. Great track? I think not.

Then he decides to comment on the latest news stories but gets it all completely wrong, twisting things so he can make a cheap joke. Funny? At 6.30am? I think not!

Finally he gets round to the weather, telling us what a cracking day it is already and how it is going to be shorts and t-shirt weather today. Now this programme is being broadcast from 3 miles up the road. We went past the studio while walking the dog the other evening. Outside MY house it is freezing fog! Has this idiot actually looked outside since he arrived at the studio, presumably while it was still dark?

"It's Friday the 13th - is it really a bad day?" he asks.

Well waking up listening to him certainly started things off on the wrong foot!

Adventures in Parenthood, Part 1

This happened when my eldest daughter was a toddler in nappies - something that is very important to this story!

We were in our living room and my daughter was enjoying her new freedom now that she could finally walk - it had taken her a long time to learn due to her dyspraxia, but we did not know that at the time.

Anyway, it was one of those quiet, lazy days. I think I was reading.

"Penny!", said my daughter. We looked up and there she was, holding a 5p coin in her hand. Suddenly, without any warning, she popped it into her mouth and swallowed.

And started to choke.

Quick as a flash, my wife had her suspended my her ankles and slapped her between the shoulder blades.

A cough.

A clinking sound as the coin hit my daughter's teeth.

A swallow.

Coin gone.

Oh god, that was a big coin, what if it gets stuck?

So off to the hospital for an x-ray. I really wish we could have kept that x-ray. We could see all of her tiny, delicate little bones and there, slap in the middle, the white circle that was the coin, safely in her stomach.

So back home, everything should be OK, just make sure that the coin comes out at some point. Yes, you guessed it. We had 2 weeks of closely examining every single dirty nappy, searching for that coin. After 2 weeks I was wanting to give up, I could not face another one, we must have missed it, but then it happened.

"Poopah."

Her face went red, then darker red, then her eyes watered, then a sigh of relief. It was finally out.

And we still have that (thoroughly cleaned) 5p coin, safely stored away in her memory box.

In the beginning...

Well, thanks to Mr Zig for tagging me! I will say now that I am quite sure that everyone who I read has already been tagged, so this particular line of tags stops here. Sorry!

Anyway, it all started for me last autumn when James emailed me to say that he had started blogging and asked me if I wanted to read it. While reading his blog I created one for myself, entitled "Don't talk to me about life". I had intended that this would be a place where I would dump all sorts of anger, hatred and loathing that I was feeling at the time. I only made , 2 very short posts before I decided that this would be a bad idea. I continued to read James's blog and started to follow links from comments that were left by others and started reading their blogs too. I had expected blogging to feel much like an email discussion group, but it is actually a totally different experience, and I love it and the new people that I have met through it.

After some bullying from James, I decided that I would get back to doing my own blog. My original one was far too negative - I wanted to blog about the things love in life, while still acknowledging that SHIT HAPPENS. The result is Cycling Thoughts, what I hope is a diverse and entertaining series of ramblings about me, my life, what I do and think. Thank you for reading it, making comments and making my world a better place.

A gentle stroll...

Had a really good Easter break - 6 days off in all!

What went on? Let me see.

Lots of painting of Toy Soldiers! I got my armies finished for a show that is coming up (see an earlier post on this!) and they do look rather good. This leaves me a month to make the scenary which is plenty of time!

I totally avoided doing any DIY, so I have not inflicted a horrible injury on myself, have not had to spend time in a hospital, catch a nasty infection and die!

I have succeeded in eating vast amounts of chocolate, to the extent that I am currently drinking Coca Cola Zero so my sugar levels get a chance to go down!

I did huge amounts of laundry, which was really good as the weather has been fantastic, making drying the stuff very easy. Yes I did hang it out "right" and did not deliberately do it "wrong"!

With the wonderful weather, the kids' bikes have come out of the shed and have seen lots of use. The 2 youngest have taken to riding along with us when we take the dog out for his walks. This is great exercise for THEM as it means they are getting 3-4 miles of cycling in each day, but it has a nasty side effect that Custard, the dog, gets worried if he loses sight of them and drags me along until he can see them again! Due to his deformed rear leg joints we are not allowed to let him run loose, so he is limited to his extending leash. Being dragged along has brought about the return of my Old War Wound. OK, not a war wound, it is sciatica, an occasional reminder of when I worked in a factory, lifting and carrying things that were rather too heavy to be lifted and carried...

With the warm evenings I have taken to spending an hour sitting in the garden with a guitar, my FX box and earphones, rocking away to myself. Such a great way to settle down for the evening.

Finally, yesterday was Extreme Makeover: Home Edition Day on TV. This is my wife's all time favourite programme, so it was on all day and my wife had a day of rest and watched it all. It is very rare that she will do something like this, so it was good to see. Meanwhile, The Rock Chef was in the kitchen cooking up roast pork with potatoes, salad and home made bread rolls - healthy brown and granary ones, of course!

So all in all a rather good break, now I am back and ready for anything!

Easter...

Today is my last day at work until after the Easter weekend - that will make it my longest break since Christmas and I think I am ready.

I love Easter.

It is a great excuse to scoff down obscene amounts of chocolate and sweets.

It is a great family weekend, when we can all get together for a nice meal, to drink, chat and play.

It is a traditional weekend for DIY, where we rush around getting jobs done so that we are ready for the summer. The hospitals are bracing themselves, waiting for the people who fall off ladders, smash fingers with hammers, drill through part of themselves, slip a disk by lifting something that is too heavy, etc. Such fun. I do my best to avoid all of this, of course.

It is a time for theological debate! Wouldn't it have been better if Jesus had not been crucified? What would have happened if he had lived longer? Perhaps the Romans could have been converted 300 years earlier than they were! Perhaps he could have convinced the Jews that he really was the Massiah. How would THAT have affected history? Why is the timing of a Christian festival determined by the moon? Sounds a bit pagan! Just what has chocolate got to do with it all anyway?

It is generally the weekend that sees winter's last attempt to throw something nasty at us. Unbelievably, in the UK we are more likely to have a White Easter than a White Christmas! Bing missed a trick there, I think!

From Easter onwards we are headed for summer, barbeques, hot days with a beer in the garden, cool evenings with a beer while watching the inner city riots on TV and painting toy soldiers, thunder storms which often knock out the electricity supply for half a day, spoiling viewing of riots and threatening to ruin the food in the freezers, syphoning the bath water down to the garden because it is illegal to use hosepipes.

Yes, I love Easter.

Doing things "right"

Sorry to say I was not able to do much about my School of Rock plan this weekend, as my wife was not feeling too good. As a result I spent a lot of my time cooking (which is usual for weekends anyway), washing, walking the dog, looking after the kids, etc. I did manage to fit in an hour of painting my toy soldiers on Saturday and about half an hour on guitar on Sunday, but not much else. Oh well, at least we have the long Easter weekend coming up, and I have extended it by taking Wednesday and Thursday of too! Yippee!

Anyway, on to the topic of today's blog. It was while I was pegging out clothes on the washing line that I realised that my wife was watching me.

"Just checking that you are doing it right".

This is a trait that runs in her family. The women have a fixation with how certain things are done, such as how washing is hung out. If it is done wrong they will march out into the garden and, regardless of how ill they are supposed to be, repeg every single piece until it is "right".

Some times friends will ask if it bothers me. Nope, I just learn the "right" way and do it that way. OK, so she still checks on me, but what the heck. It means I can tease her by deliberately doing it "wrong". He he.

School of Rock?

My brother bought his daughter a new guitar for her birthday - a lovely Peavey with a Floyd-Rose trem system. I popped over and sorted it out for her, having a good play to make sure it was OK :-)

Then we got talking about her guitar lessons and the fact that she is getting disillusioned with them. 2 years on and she has half learned a few songs and is still not sure how to tune her guitar! Hm. Maybe Uncle John can do some lessons. Well I have started to give some of my kids lessons, so why not?

Then I started thinking. We could start up a band. With a bit of tutoring, my kids and my neice could have 2 on guitar, a bass and keyboards, with the keyboard providing the drum track. Hm, wonder if I could pull it off? Even if they only manage one easy song together it would be a great experience for them, and they could play it at family barbeques this summer!

LET'S ROCK!!!

My Slippers

Things are pretty laid back where I work - the Geography Department of a University. When I change from my cycling clothes into my work clothes I often pop on a pair of mocasin slippers, which have become something of a trademark over the years. They are getting pretty old and tatty now, but they are SO comfortable I just can't stand the idea of getting rid of them.

One year I took my them on a week long field trip. Some students got together and kidnapped my slippers and held them to ransom. On the last night I had to complete a set of tasks to secure their release. Getting a bra was the hardest... (Note: I did not do anything unethical!)

These same slippers were also responsible for me mentally scarring my eldest daughter. When she was at the college near where I work, we used to meet up for lunch every Thursday. One day I was running late and did not change out of my slippers. It was not until I got home that night that I found how mortified she had been. I was never, ever to meet her wearing those skanky slippers again. (Note, though, that she had not turned down lunch!) She never forgave me for that. Even when she was in hospital she ordered me not to wear them when visiting her!

I love my slippers.

Being a Teenager

My older son will be 13 tomorrow, beginning his voyage into the dreaded teens.

He is very excited about what is really the first of that run of birthdays - 16, 18, 21, 30, 40, 65, (Grandpa Simpson voice on) erm, now let me see I was born in..., erm, Abraham Lincoln!! I truly hope that his teens are a wonderful time for him, and will do everything in my power to make them so.

My overriding memories of being a teenager are awful, I hated it all: School, other teenagers, life in general. I was a very miserable teenager who did not want anything to do with the rest of the world. Thinking about it, I only had one person who I thought of as a friend right through my teens. I only see him rarely now, he is a bit of a nomad, but each time we meet up it is like were never apart, seeming to pick up the conversation where we left off, maybe 5 years previously. I rapidly drove away the rest, picking up a few new ones, mainly centred around bands I was in and people I played Dungeons and Dragons with. By the end of my teens I was bordering on reclusive, I guess. Then it all changed as I entered my 20s, when the girl who became my wife dragged me back into the real world.

I would not relive my teens for a billion pounds.

Extreme Cycling

Yesterday had been a wonderfully sunny day, but while I was out taking my dog, Custard, for his evening walk I noticed the fog closing in. I like a bit of fog and Custard seemed to like it too, finding lots of extra exciting sniffs along the ditches and hedgerows where we walk.

By this morning I had completely forgotten about the fog - until I opened the door to find that I could not see the houses across the street. A real 'Pea Souper' as we call it here.

The cycle ride to work was hellish - large vehicles emerging from the fog and disappearing just as quickly. I hoped and prayed that my reflective clothing and lights made me visible enough, but still hugged the edge of the road, dodging the pot holes, ready to take a dive into the ditch or hedge if things got nasty. Strangely, I soon realised that I was actually finding the trip rather exciting, whizzing into the unknown, having to suddenly swerve to avoid a fallen tree branch or the rear end of a car that had missed a corner in the fog.

Extreme Cycling.

Well, extreme for me, anyway.

Supermarket Checkouts...

Things were going so well. In my lunch break I had rushed out to Argos to buy my neice a guitar stand for her birthday, and this had gone perfectly. As I left I decided to pop into Asda to get her a card and also to grab something for lunch.

Zoom! In was in like Flynn, grabbed a card, some hot Southern Chicken fillets, a couple of bread rolls and off to the checkouts.

I cruised along looking for the shortest queue and found one with a couple who only had about 3 items left to be scanned. Aha!

Wham! I unpacked my 3 items onto the conveyer belt and waited. And waited. The couple were still packing items and it was what seemed like an eternity before one of them actually paid for their shopping.

OK, a slight blip on my progress, but hey I was next. Meanwhile, someone else who had been playing the same game as me (ie looking for a short queue) moved in behind me. My fate was sealed.

Bleep, bleep, bleep. My shopping went through. Then the girl paused and smiled sheepishly.

"That is not right, is it?"

I looked at the green numbers glowing, mockingly, on the till.

£321.97

"No", I agreed.

So then we had to wait for a supervisor to come over and cancel the sale so we could start again.

Bleep, bleep, bleep.

£1.98

"Now that isn't right either", I said. The card alone was £1.97! Curse my honesty!

Back comes the supervisor, eventually, who seemed to be having a very long private chat on her mobile phone. Sale cancelled. Items entered into the system manually, ie very slowly. The woman behind me rolls her eyes, while I shrug helplessly.

Finally I am asked for the correct amount and I am able to leave, already late for work!

Am I the only person to suffer from this? Is it tempting fate to look for the shortest queue? I see others joining stupidly long lines and getting out way ahead of me! Do they know something that I do not? Is that why some checkouts have very short queue - because those who know better are avoiding them like a half cooked chicken at a barbeque?

Photo, at last!

I just found this photo of myself on the web. It is from a few years ago, but I have not changed much.

The Accidental Diet

2 weeks ago everyone else in the house decided that they needed to lose a few pounds. My wife has always been a bit heavier than she should be, but that does not bother me (she calls me a "chubby chaser"), the boys have become aware that they have a bit of podge on their bellies that could go and my daughter has decided she wants to drop a bit of weight so she will look really good when she moves up to secondary school in the autumn.

The only one who did not want to lose weight was me - I have hovered around the 200 pound mark for the last 10 years, and at 6'2" this is about right, especially as most of it is muscle on my legs and butt from cycling (the best butt in town according to my wife).

So this morning it is weigh-in day. In the last 2 weeks, the boys lost a pound each, my daughter lost 3 pounds and my wife, who has been working out like a demon, lost 10 pounds!

I was still in bed while all this was going on and suddenly got the urge to weigh myself too. I guess I was feeling left out!

So, into the bathroom, onto the scales and wait for the numbers to settle down - I felt like a contestant on The Biggest Loser!

So guess how much I lost, without trying, just by eating the healthy meals that the others were eating.

Go on, have a guess!

10 pounds!

That makes me the lightest I have been since my mid-thirties!

My wife was furious! "Typical! I have been exercising myself to death to shift it, and you do it without thinking about it! You have probably been eating cream cakes at work too!"

Which was absolutely true, I had 2 yesterday...

The Bends

I heard a wonderful line on the radio the other day, and I keep thinking about it so I thought I would share it.

We all know what "The Bends" is: it is what happens to divers when they come to the surface too quickly, resulting in bubbles of nitrogen in the blood. Not nice and often fatal if not treated quickly, I understand.

Anyway, back to the radio. The person talking had been involved in show business for many years and started by saying that, way back, people used to "pay their dues", ie spend time building up their career and experience so that when the finally achieved real fame they knew how to deal with it. These days, of course, we have over-night superstars who shoot to instant fame without doing all of the hard work. This rapid rise, we were told, can cause a type of "Bends", bubbles of nitrogen in the soul.

I really like that. A quick look at the gossip magazines shows you that it is true...

Parenting

We are often told that we are too protective of our children. We walk them to and from school, do not let them roam the streets, worry if they go to the local shop alone. Sometimes we start to feel this may be true. However, the last 2 times one of our kids was out on the streets alone he was attacked, once by 4 complete strangers, once by 2 kids he vaguely recognised from school. The Police and authorities eventually dealt with those responsible, but that does not alter the fact that it happened!

So what can you do? Let them go out and then follow along behind to keep watch? Some say that they need to go out as part of a group of friends, so they can become 'street-wise', but when does a group of friends become a gang?

We heard on the news this morning that someone that my eldest daughter went to school with has been arrested for being in a gang of teenagers who murdered a man. Had things been different for us, had our attitudes perhaps been less paranoid, could our daughter have been part of this gang? Is this what being 'street-wise' leads to?

Being snuck up on...

There is an event that I try to get to each year. It is a meeting where a group of wargamers (ie grown men who still play with toy soldiers) get together to recreate a particular battle using as many different sets of rules as possible. Unlike most games/sports where there is a set of standard rules, us wargamers are much more fragmented and play with a wide range of different styles of rules. The event is great fun as we can wander around and look at other games, chat to people about the games and battles and compare our results.

So I knew it was coming, I was even involved in some of the organisation this year, but I have been caught on the hop! The event is now about 8 weeks away and I now have to face the fact that I have been putting off painting the mass of soldiers that I need to fight the battle and must get on with it. I also have to build the scenary for the battle, which will be great fun to do once I get started.

The question is: why is it always like this? Why didn't I start the work before Christmas when I knew what had to be done and had loads of time to do it? Maybe I will do better next year...

Friday on my mind

Where has the week gone? It is Friday again, our traditional pizza day. (Sorry Ali!)

Pizza day started off a long time ago, when I discovered the pizza counter at Asda. I would pop in on the way home, grab 3 pizzas, wedge them into my rucksack and head home. Mmm, a nice, easy, tasty meal to end the week.

Then, one day, I had the bright idea of making my own bases. It was very easy, and the result was delicious. That evening, the kids got together and banned me from buying pizza ever again. From now on, pizza would be home made. And it has been ever since.

Of course, the beauty of it is that each of us can personalise our own pizza - my youngest started off having only cheese with a thin base, but has now added salami, sausage and bacon, while I can add jalopinoes and a sprinkling of tabasco sauce and the girls pile up the vegitables. Everyone is happy.

Except, perhaps, the neighbours, as I have to have music on while I do the cooking: Foo Fighters, Gary Moore or AC/DC are current favourites, and of course, there are the days when The Rock Chef joins in...

"Monday I have Friday on my mind..."

Phew!

What a day! It started off really quiet, enabling me to merrily tidy my desk area. Then the flood started, a constant stream of requests for help, printing, tasks to be done. I just about managed to slip out and grab some lunch (a bacon, cheese and jalopino baguette - mmmm) only to come back to notes on my desk and emails with more to do!

Still, in the end it has been a productive day, I learned a new trick on the PC and everyone else has gone home happy.

Now I must go and find me wonderful, newly restored bike and head for home. It seems that my 10 year old daughter has been asking for sex education lessons...

We have the technology...

It was not long ago that she was bright, fresh and new. She was beautiful and a pleasure to be with. There would be envious glances as we went along together, the occasional teenage boy would be unable to prevent sighing and staring open mouthed.

Now the ravages of daily life have taken their toll, and I was faced with the choice of getting rid of her and looking for a replacement or paying to have some serious work done on her. I spent a few days looking around, checking out the options, the size, and feel of the alternatives, even testing out a couple of particularly attractive models. In the end I decided that none were quite as good as what I had already.

So my bicycle is now in the workshop having new gears, chain, cables, etc, fitted.

Neighbours I Have Known Part 2

I have just started to read Flags of Our Fathers by James Bradley, what promises to be a great book about the men who planted the flag on Okinawa in 1945. It has stirred a distant memory...

In my teens I developed the knack of walking my dog and reading a book at the same time. This caused many to think of me as a nutter (not far from the truth I guess) and was the starting point of many a conversation. One man that I chatted to a lot was an old family friend. He once saw me reading a book about the Battle of Monte Casino in Italy, 1944. We got talking and he told me that he had been in Italy during the war, driving trucks. The only Germans he had seen were either dead or prisoners, and the only time he got shot at was when he had been ordered to take some boats up to the front line for a river crossing. Some random German shells landed close by and he had unloaded with record speed and headed back to the rear.

Over the next few years we chatted, or merely waved and said our hellos, commenting on the weather as the British do. Sometimes I would catch him sitting in his garden in the sun. On these occasions he would share biscuits with me and my dog and he would always make sure I had a few spare biscuits to take on my way.

It was only after he had died that I heard the truth of his time in World War 2. His wife had made a comment that he was very lucky to live to the age that he did, considering how he had been when he came home after the war. His Italy story had been just that, a story. It allowed him to hide the truth, to avoid reliving what he had really been doing. He had been in Burma in 1942 when the Japanese invaded. Like many of his comrades, he had not been able to escape from the Japanese advance and had spent the next 3 years as a prisoner of war. He had seen most of his friends die slow deaths from hunger and exhaustion. The biscuits and his pretend war in Italy suddenly made painful sense.

I really miss this guy.

TV Advertising

I was watching TV last night and finally snapped.

The cause was a series of ads that kept repeating the same information. This is the sort of thing I am talking about...

"I've been looking for cheaper car insurance."

"I got cheaper car insurance at flybynight.com and saved 40%!"

"Wow, I think I will try flybynight.com and see if I can save 40% too!"

See what I mean? Do they think we are that stupid?

The one that really made me snap, though, was one for a music store:


Starts with a blast of music that rapidly fades to an annoyingly low level.

"At Rip-Off-Records we have got the latest ground-breaking album from the One Hit Wonders: Gone by Christmas. Featuring the latest smash hit single, I Stole This Song From David Bowie And Hope Nobody Notices."

At this point the music blasts back, just as the singer sings the title of the song. AAAARRRRGGGGGHHHHH!!!!!!!! I heard you the first time! And how can an album be "ground-breaking" when it sounds just like something I listened to when I was a teenager?

Oh, and I saw the album in a supermarket last week for £3 less than the "rock-bottom" price given in the ad.

Does marketing really consist of lying to a public that you think of as morons? Probably!

Playing Mum

This week has been a bit of a trial for us. On Sunday my mother-in-law, who lives in Devon and has severe cancer, was taken into hospital with stomach problems. My wife set off to be with her, leaving me to hold the fort. There were a range of problems at the hospital which I will not go into, and these were not sorted out until Thursday, when my wife felt it safe to return.

Note: - try not to get ill while in the UK!

Meanwhile, on Monday my youngest was sent home from school feeling ill. I took him to the Doctors on Tuesday and was told he had a virus - no school until next week. Bang goes work, then! That afternoon, when the others came home from school, I found that they had the virus too! Argh! On the up side, they did not actually feel that ill, so we watched TV (finally watched our DVD of "Over The Hedge" - what a great film!), played computer games, made cards for nanny, etc.

I must say that I was quite pleased with my performance as stay at home mum - cooking, cleaning, washing, etc all went well, so my wife did not return to a terrible mess. Having said that, I don' t think I would volunteer to swap duties permanantly...

Life is going to be rather unpredictable for a while now, so if I go quiet for a few days fear not - I shall return!

You don't get rid of me that easily!

Mysterious Chocolate

A colleague of mine has just received her latest purchase from eBay - a rather nice dress. What she was not expecting were the 2 bars of chocolate that were also inside the parcel!

Her instant reaction was "What a nice lady!."

But is she right?

My mind wanders.

OK, so maybe she is just a nice person who wanted to give her customer a little something extra for her money...

Or perhaps she is a chocoholic and is now trashing her house looking for the 2 bars that she was saving for later? Could be! Maybe my colleague will soon be receiving emails: "Give me back my chocolate..."

Or she could be rather confused - one customer gets some chocolate that was laying around, another gets a kitten...

Or, I wonder, is she vindictive? "So, you think you are a size 8 do you? We'll see about that! Have some free chocolate! Hahahahahahaaaaaaaaaa..."

Could be! OK, so she is probably just a nice person. But watch out, you never know...

My Valentine's Day card

I got home last night to find that my wife had made me a Valentine's Day card. It was great! Standing about 12 inches high, it had the message "To my Jelly Baby Valentine" written on the front in huge, coloured letters and attached to the front was a large clear plastic box which was filled with Jelly Babies and bars of chocolate! Wow! How perfect can something be?

Then followed the discussion about what to eat - no of course we hadn't planned ahead! In the end we settled on good old Southern Fried Chicken, ribs and fries, probably our main food during the early courting days, so I popped into town and grabbed far more than was decent. We all then ate far more than was decent and spent the evening like a family of Buddahs in front of the TV. Sometimes it just has to be done...

How we met

2 posts in 1 day again. Must stop this, but after reading Logziella's blog I wanted to tell my story. I will start by pointing out that I did everything in the wrong order - hope you do not think less of me because of this!

The first time I met my future wife, she was dating one of my friends. I instantly fell for her. Over the next few months I made half-hearted attempts to chat her up. We got on well, but she was already with someone, wasn't she?

Next thing I knew, they were getting married. I even went to the wedding! Next time we met was at a Christmas party, 6 months later. Rumour was that things were not going well in their marriage. I did another one of my half-assed chatting up attempts again, but as far as I was concerned she was still married, so I was just playing really.

Over the next few months we bumped into each other a few times and chatted about stuff, getting on well until finally, the following summer, I found out that she had left her husband and was interested in dating me. From the first date we both seemed to know that this was the real deal. As her husband refused to discuss divorce at first, we decided to just move in together. They eventually got divorced, but by then marriage had become something of a non-issue. Children arrived, life was wonderful, and we eventually decided to get married on our 16th anniversary, complete with a ready made entourage of 2 bridesmaids and 2 page boys! The wedding was intended as a simple affair (we announced the date and told people they could come if they wanted to, no presents needed as we already had it all) that had a life of its own. Friends and relatives swamped us - my mum, the pony owner, even took off her wellies for the occasion - it was a grand day.

This summer we will have been together for 22 years, and married for 6. Together we have survived everything that the world has thrown at us, and have become even stronger.

Water, water everywhere...

I guess it was tempting fate. Some time ago I blogged about cycling and stated that it was never raining when I set out on a trip. This is now totally untrue! It seems that everytime I want to get out the bike it is pouring with rain.

The field where we tend to walk Custard, our dog, has become a marsh with water that threatens to come over the top of your boots, and the ditches are almost full to the top, with 4-5 feet of water in them! Custard loves it like this and happily hurls himself into the water and mud before running back to share his wetness with us and show us how great life is.

This morning I cycled to work as usual, with the rain hammering down. Going along the narrow country lanes, water was gushing off the fields and along the lanes, looking for a way out, eventually forming mini waterfalls as it flowed into a small stream or found its way into a lower laying field. At times I wondered if I might have been better off with a canoe!

Of course, being the south east of Britain, there is a strange irony here. Despite the huge rainfall, there is almost certainly going to be a water shortage this summer. None of this water is captured in reservoirs. Nor is it deliberately trapped to allow it to soak into the ground to replenish our depleted underground reserves. Instead, most of it is channelled through ditches, streams and drains straight into the sea. Come August it will be illegal to wash your car or water your garden with a hose pipe!

Doh!

Silence

I think it was Dave Gilmore, guitarist in Pink Floyd, who said that the secret of great guitar playing was not the notes that you played, but the notes that you DID NOT play.

Sometimes, silence can convey far more than any amount of talking, shouting, jumping up and down, etc...

The silence of 2 old friends, just enjoying each others company...

The silence of 2 lovers, relaxing in each others arms...

The silence after someone has just made themselves look really stupid...

The silence after hearing the latest news - more troops being sent overseas, plans to bring them back home again, the latest bombings in Iraq, the latest earthquake, flood or mudslide...

The silence before a storm, as the world takes a big breath...

The silence when we are offered a few moments for silent prayer - surely the time our Gods hear our loudest cries for help...

Listen to the silence.

Cycling Thoughts

Feeling good...

Well it is pouring with rain outside, so I am going to get soaked on the way home, but I don't care! Today is one of those days where nothing can dampen the spirits!

It started on Friday when 2 parcels arrived at work - a new scanner and the latest version of our GIS mapping software - the nerdy side of me just wants to party!

Then we had a really good weekend, where everything seemed to go right, including time to catch up on some rest - I have been running on empty for the last couple of weeks and really enjoyed having some plain 'vegging out' time. Also had a bit of time on the guitar, trying to crack some Gary Moore stuff. Getting there... But he is such a great guitarist that I keep hearing new things that he is doing!

The new laptop is getting ridiculous amounts of use and The Sims has had a major revival. I have taken to setting it up in the kitchen while cooking, if I can get hold of it, and running my new family while cooking. The Rock Chef has had to step down for a while.

Finally, back to work this week and things have eased up a lot - no dashing around for ME this week! Hah! Hah!

Mind you, that rain looks very wet...

Friday!!!

Well it is Friday - how can a week seem so short and so long at the same time? Time is relative, it is said. Relative to what? A psychopathic junkie?

Anyway, I am hoping for a nice, peaceful weekend, where maybe we can catch a family movie and generally just chill, because I really need it. Yesterday was manic. We had snow in the morning, which meant that I called in and said I was taking the day off. I won't cycle in ice and the buses are dreadfully unreliable - last time it snowed heavily (2 inches) they stopped running entirely, leaving adults and school kids alike stranded miles from home. Johnny don't play that! So I set about a day of helping out my wife and my mum - collecting food for the pony, going up to the field and feeding him, getting shopping, collecting the dog from the vets (had his hips x-rayed looking for deformed joints - more on this later), collecting kids from school, going to parents evening and finally staggering in and collapsing. What a day. Not even enough snow left to make a snowman by the time I could think about it. Oh well.

Back to the dog, Custard the golden labrador. The vet was looking to see if there were problems with the development of his hip joints. To cut a story short, basically he does not have any joints, just a slight dip that his leg tries to connect with. He is OK at the moment but we now know that, sooner or later, he will need an operation to do something about it. Poor Custard. Poor bank balance. Oh well, we have come to expect things like this. To tell the truth, this diagnosis was a bit of a relief as the x-ray was also to look at a small lump that is on the side of his leg. Our initial fear was that this was some sort of cancer, but it seems to be scar tissue from bug bites that he got last summer, so it is not all bad news.

Right, I am off now - the Rock Chef is making pizza tonight, as is usual on a Friday. Hope the cheese grater is in a good mood!

Neighbours I have known: Part1

Hey, 2nd post in a single day, how about that!

As I cycled to work this morning, admiring the effects of the frost on fields, trees and hedgerows, dodging patches of ice and avoiding the wheels of speeding 4x4s, I remembered an old neighbour of mine. He was a source of constant entertainment (for all the wrong reasons).

He lived near us, having moved in with a single mother and her 5 children. He was a compulsive petty thief, tending to break into houses within about a quarter of a mile from where he lived. The Police got to know him very well but never seem to have been able to get the courts to impose sensible punishment (There I go again!). Seeing this, the kids started to try their hands too, and this is where things started to get more entertaining.

Arguments would break out, involving screaming matches that could be heard streets away. Eventually he would storm off to his mothers house - next door! Then, once he had calmed down, he would try to patch things up, usually by kneeling down on the door step calling through the door, saying thinks like "I really f&%$£& love you". What a charmer :-)

On hot summer evenings he would try to stir up mini-riots when a Police car came round on patrol. Always the first to shout abuse and thump on the car roof, he was also the first to disappear when reinforcements arrived. My wife and her friends used to sit on a fence and watch events, gladly giving the Police names and addresses of any 'rioters' that got away.

One evening I was heading out of my house to walk the dog and saw him walking in the same direction. He had failed to win her back, and declared that he was heading for the nearby train track to end it all. As we got close to the track it started to rain. I was OK, having a sensible coat on, but he was only wearing the t-shirt that he had been wearing when he was thrown out of the house.

"Oh, that's all I need", he said in disgust, turned around and went back to his mum's house!

What a guy...

The National Sense of Humour

According to a study carried out by a British University, the British sense of humour can be summed up by the following joke:

Patient: Doctor, I have got a strawberry stuck up my bottom!
Doctor: Don't worry, I have got some cream for it.

OK, it is not a very good joke, but sadly, it IS the sort of joke that will get a good reaction from the majority of Brits! Hm.

Now, it is a commonly held belief in Britain that the Germans have no sense of humour. This probably dates back to the world wars, when all sorts of things were said in the name of propaganda. The joke that sums up the German sense of humour is this one:

Astronomers have decided that the Moon is gradually moving away from the Earth and have calculated that 50 million years ago it was orbiting at a height of around 30 feet. This could explain the extinction of the dinosaurs - well the tall ones anyway...

No for me, this is much better! What do you think?

Is there such a thing as a National Sense of Humour? These were the only 2 countries that I have heard comments about. Is there a type of humour that characterizes the USA, Canada, etc?

A Series of Unexpected Events

What an exhausting weekend! All of the usual stuff to deal with - going out for a bit of shopping, cooking, sleepovers, walking the dog, etc, plus an unexpected bit of shopping. This is the story.

At Christmas my two nieces who live over the road got laptops. This upset my eldest, who wanted one even though he has a got really good desktop PC.

Time passed, as it tends to.

My dad (a heavy smoker) gave up smoking, resulting in a growing pile of surplus cash.

Last week, he brought round a 'briefcase' that he had acquired, which turned out to be a case for a laptop. Comments like "all we need now is the laptop" followed.

Next thing I know my dad has popped round and given my wife some money to buy a laptop. A half followed conversation had lead him to think that they were much cheaper than they really are (the price he heard actually referred to HAIR EXTENSIONS!), so I had to put him straight, offering to give him the money back as I could not expect him to pay the real price. Oh, no, he says digging into his wallet, have some more! Just how much had he been spending on cigarettes, I wonder?

So I then had to go to PC World and get the thing. Found a rather good bargain, fought off the sales people trying to sell me extended warrantees, anti-virus software, MS Office, wireless mice, printers, carry cases, blank DVDs, Windows Vista... NOT I JUST WANT THE COMPUTER! THAT IS ALL! AND I WILL NOT BE TOUCHING VISTA FOR AT LEAST ANOTHER YEAR OR SO, UNTIL THEY HAVE SORTED IT OUT SO THAT IT ACTUALLY WORKS, OK? I ALREADY HAVE A COMPUTER THAT DOES ALL THAT STUFF AND IT IS CALLED AN iMAC!

So, back home, I installed a bunch of software, the kids had a go on some games and then, shock, horror, my wife is really impressed with the new toy and says that she wants to learn how to use it! This is pretty much a first, apart from playing The SIMS on my desktop PC. She wants to write s story for a competition that she has seen. OK, so I sit her down and show her the basics. Soon she is typing away like a professional while I do the ironing. A couple of hours later she asks me to read the short story that she has written and it is great. I never knew she could write like that. Just need to remember to send it off to the competition now. Failing that I will start stocking up on paper for the manuscripts that we might end up sending round. Watch out J K Rowling...

Isn't it amazing how one thing can seem to lead to another?