Noooooooo!

This years Worcester beer festival has been cancelled due to the floods :-( Gutted...

I think that I'll probably organise the surfing weekend for the 17th & 18th August, weather permitting of course.

Random Blog Stuff

I just thought I'd take some time to post a few bits and bobs that I have been meaning to post, but not had the time to getting round to doing...

Anyway, heres a pic of the driveway when the slate was delivered in front off the garage. once the delivery guys came back twice and finally got it in the right place, I managed to shift 5 tons of it 'by hand'. It was totally knackering! So last Friday I got them around again to lift the last two bags up and I basically slit the bags and raked the into the position I wanted
















One man, his wheel barrow and spade, and 5 tons of slate later.















As you can see by this picture, this is what 7 tons of crushed slate looks like. I need to rake it a bit more flat, and even things out a little, but it looks really good and gives a nice little 'off road parking area'. I just have to build a couple of steps up into my 'allotment' area, and it will look nice















Also, I want to put some wrought iron gates up at the front, and I'll be building a patio area under the bathroom window (not visible on this pic). I dont think the work will ever end!

Anyway, its looking pretty good now.
















Here we have a piture of my toe. I was reading Lis's blog the other day and she had posted a pic of her foot after she broke it. I was all mankey with stitches in, and I thought I'd share with you all my minging toe. As you can see I have no big toe nail. I like to tell people that when I was captured behind enemy lines, in my job as secret agent, and tortured for information, they removed my nail to try and make me squeal.

However, ill fitting walking boots, a long walk and blood blisters are slightly more closer to the truth...(well a secret agent would say that now, wouldn't he?!)

Its my birthday tomorrow - happy birthday to me, happy birthday to me! 37 years old. Oh my god - how old is that? Presents in the form of tenner's can be posted to Lincoln :-)

Eleven Years

Eleven years of compulsary education, and according to a report today, some parents have trouble reading a bedtime story to their kids. How do you go eleven years at school and come out not being able to read? Especially if its at bedtime story for kids level...

Yes, I know what you're thinking, its probably down to dyslexia, or some other form of learning difficulty, and I accept that some of it is down to that, but not all of it. Apparently 5 million adults lack functional literacy. Thats apalling....

So whats the problem? Well, I imagine that when most of these adult were at school, because they found it too hard, they just 'couldn't be bothered', but some of the blame must be borne by the educational institutions too.

As a footnote, Im not expecting many people to comment on this, because the target audience probably wont have a clue what I've written :-)

Heres the link to the story

How Difficult Can it Be?!

So, anyway, I gets home from work last night, only to find that the bags have been moved. However, instead of moving them to the right like I said, they moved them to the left, right slap bang in the middle of where I need to dig out and level :-D

So, I rang them up again this morning. After a polite conversation, they are coming back this afternoon, where I will be on hand explaining left and right to them!

Quiz Question

Right, quiz question for you....

"You are a delivery driver tasked with the delivery of 5, 1 ton bags of crushed slate to a good customer who is building a garage. When you get there you see a drive way leading to the garage, a space to park another car to the left and an area of land that wont be used for parking on. Where would you drop the bags of slate?

a) On the off road parking bit to the left?
b) Right in front of the garage, blocking off any access the owner might have had?
c) To the right, where access to home and garage is assured?

Answers on a post card to your local builders merchant, please"

Well, anyway, I called up said supplier this morning and told them I wasn't happy about their delivery drivers sense of humour. They are coming over to remove the bags from in front of my garage today or tomorrow....why does it always happen to me?!

I'll post some more pics soon.....

Water Water Everywhere

I can't wait for winter so I can wear some of my t shirts and shorts. I don't think I'm going to be able to this summer!

The floods in Hull and Yorkshire have been pretty bad. Luckily, myself and family have managed to avoid them, but I do know a couple of close friends who have been flooded out

As always, I have a solution to this problem :-) The answer is quite obvious, although a little controversial. Its seems to me that we aren't burning enough fossil fuels! So, sell your Toyota Smug's in favour of the Trabant. Leave all your electrical items on stand by, and lobby your local MP's to build more coal fired power stations. Look at China - they build about 2 a week, and they're basking in a heatwave!

Cold wet summers are what you can expect if you listen to the MP's about being more green!

MP's are such lying bastards too. I remember last year when one of them was going on about if we don't do something about our carbon foot print, we can expect hotter summers and wetter winters. Thats bollox - I've done nothing about reducing my CO2 output, and its done nothing but piss it down.

Bah, I'm off to flout the hose pipe ban :-)

Me and Mrs T

I'm so glad we decided to go to the airshow yesterday, rather than today, as its been cancelled due to a flooded car park. Personally, I suspect that the raised terror threat level to critical has played a part in the decision too.

Anyway, despite the weather, we had a really good time. It rained on and off, but nothing really too bad.

Mrs Thatcher was there for the 25th Falklands anniversary service, and we bumped into her as we were looking around some of the displays in the hangar. Carols youngest asked if she was the Queen :-D No, I replied, she just thought she was!














































She looked quite frail, but then again, she is in her 80's. She didn't look bored, and seemed to be quite enjoying herself.











This is some equipment hidden under a camo net - I almost walked into it - thats how good the camouflage is ;-)












Here's the AWACS. You could get on board it and have a look around, but the queues were big and by the time we got there it was closing







I was amazed at how much kids love fun fairs. All the kids we went with wanted to do was go on the waltzers and win gold fish from the hook a duck stall, and all around us was all this hardware and aircraft :-) Priorities eh?!

1st Anniversary

One year ago today, I moved into my house. Its hard to think that this time last year, I was sweating gallons in the heat moving all my stuff in with the help of Phillip and my dad

How time flies...

Just Not Cricket

Tomorrow I was supposed to be going down to Worcester to watch the 20Twenty cricket at New Road. I usually go every year with my old work mates, and my dad has always wanted to go and watch a cricket match. So I thought it would be a great idea to get a ticket for him for fathers day.

What could be better? Mid-summer, cricket in Worcester with the Cathedral in the background, strawberries, champagne, beer :-)

The pictures below give some clues as to why we wont be bothering...


























Managed to get tickets for the Waddington airshow this weekend. it should be really good. There will be fly pasts from a Hurricane, Tornado & a Spitfire. And thats just the weather forecast! Im sure the planes will be good to :-)

I'll take some pictures - I imagine that they wont be putting any classified black projects on display, so i assume I can post the images...

This Is The Week That Is

What an extraordinay week it is this week. If you listen to the media and sycophantic arse licking ex-politico's you would think that Tony Blair was some kind of saviour of man kind.

Just like the rubbish floating away in the gutters of Yorkshire, so too the flotsum and jetsum will be moving out of Downing street tomorrow.

Good riddance I say...

Just goes to show, even if you're an absolute repugnant ar$e hole, like Blair, with the right amount of spin, you to can be popular once every sheffield flood

Global Warming?

I don't know about anyone else, but I am utterly sick to death of hearing about global warming and the impending doom this planet is facing.

Im never one to trust any snivelling little bastard politician who tells me to do as he says, not as he does. Especially when he tells me that its going to cost more to drive my car or take a plane trip.

So I decided to have a look at global temperatures over the last few hundred years. As you can see from the graph below, it makes for interesting reading...











It would indeed seem to indicate that temperatures are rising (well at least in central England anyway)

On closer inspection, it seems that the 5 year mean temperature has shot up, but look at the fluctuations of the annual mean.

So, what caused the Little Ice Age? Imagine if that happened now...politicians would be screaming for us to burn more fossil fuels! And judging by this graph, the world has had heat waves before some cad built an internal combustion engine, or had even thought about a coal fired power station.

Why was it so cold after the industrial revolution, when you would imagine there would be much more pollution than there is today, which you would have expected to be in the atmosphere trapping all the heat inside (just like they reckon happens now)

I'll tell you what I think. The graph points out that the global warming scare started in the late 80's. Since this time, a hell of a lot of the rain forests had been cut down, which in turn reduced the worlds biggest CO2 sink. This in turn has lead to the atmosphere having to deal with more green house gasses, which has lead to a bit of a warming up.

However, the politicians see this has a fab opportunity to tax us even more for flights, cars etc. I wonder if Blair's final farewell tour around the world was 'carbon neutral'

Do as he says, people, not as he does....

Voices from the Past

When I was about 13 or maybe 14, at school we were learning about Hitlers rise to power and the subsequent world war that followed.

For my project I wrote about Hull in the blitz and how it affected the people who lived through it. As my Grandma lived on Hessle road at the time of the war, I reckoned she would give a pretty good eye witness account of the time, so I set about recording an interview with her about it.

Well, the tape has turned up again in some boxes at my mam and dads, so Im quite looking forward to listening to it after all this time! I just need to sort my tape player out...hadn't anybody heard of MP3 in 1983? Tsch...!

(By the way, any of the family who is interested in hearing it, let me know)

Dorset Naga-saki

Anyone who knows me, knows that I love chilli's. No, not the American restaurant chain, but the heat filled edible varieties. Unless of course, the sauce is smeared in my swimming shorts leaving my 'old chap' hot, and not in a sexy way (more about this story in another blog post one day!)

Anyway, enough of the painful memories...this year I am growing some scotch bonnet chilli's, and thanks to a colleague of mine (thanks for the title idea, Kev!) this year I am also growing some Dorset Naga (www.dorsetnaga.com) These evil things come in at around 1 million scoville units, which makes them the hottest chilli's in the world.

I am going to make some sort of dish with them once they mature, any idea's for what I should make?

Digger Pics

As promised here are some pictures of the digger weekend.
















This one was taken at the end of the first day

















Carol actually managed to tip the digger up! Her face was quite a picture when she knew it was going over!
















The whole of the dug out section is going to be graveled, and a shubbery planted by the grass. Just need to be able to afford it all now!

Composting

My composting bin turned up yesterday, and Ive placed it on my veggie patch. It was interesting to read about what you can and can't put in there - nail clippings, hair etc

I was going to shred my Babylon Zoo CD and compost it, but then I read you're not supposed to compost human excrement :-D

Oh well, there's always my coal fire....