Last weekend we attended the Cornbury Music Festival, which is a middle-aged, middle-class, frightfully respectable music festival.
How respectable? Paul Simon headlined and David Cameron attended. THAT is how respectable.
It wasn't so respectable that it avoided the shite weather. It rained a lot and having decided to camp, that wasn't so good. We being three adults, four children, two tents and three cuddly rabbits.
Children being children, they didn't mind the weather and we spent a bunch of time in the family tent where, and I am not proud of this, I heckled the Mister Men.
If I go again next year I am taking a proper big family tent. On wheels.
A month later we have finally received feedback from our 3 day fostering induction course. And we passed. It would have been difficult to fail, to be honest, since it was very basic, but we now have a certificate of attendance to frame and mount on the loo wall.
The next step is home interviews where that pick apart your motivations for fostering and try to uncover your secret history as a member of staff in a Jersey children's home.
...was very nice. Stinking hot, mind, at 29C or mucho mucho fareinheit.
The guide books all say that Venice has bad food. But, hey, how bad can it be? This is Italty after all. Well, it can be very bad. I did a bunch of research to make sure we only went to traveller recommended restaurants, and the food still blowed. So it you are planning to visit Venice, take enough food with you to last the duration.
Apart from that it was a great experience. Imagine the most Londonny parts of London all merged together - a Beefeater, red buses, the royal family and some knife crime. Put them altogether and you have an intense tourist experience.
Venice is like that, not just in one street, but in every square inch. It is a theme park that wasn't created by a marketing weasel. I am not sure whether that is good or bad.
Anyway,it is well worth a visit, but don't do more than 2 days. And take your own food.
This weekend we will be in Venice. There was a cheap flight promotion last September (September!) and I figured that Venice during the winter months would be grim, so I booked as far out as I could. It was £70 return each, all in.
I visited Venice as a child, on a day trip from a beach resort we were holidaying in. It rained and I was of an age where Venice would have been boring whatever the weather. I do remember being told that the city was sinking by 3cm a year and was figuring that it wouldn't be a bad thing if it sank faster.
This time around I am slightly more cultured and, travelling independently, I can avoid the worst of the tourist trail and try to find the real Venice. If such a thing still exists.
Last weekend was Marlow Regatta weekend, which is generally a time to steer well clear of Marlow. However, on the Sunday morning they have dragon boat racing, so we headed over to the river, armed with champagne and pastries to take a look.
Verity enjoyed it greatly, cheering on all the red boats, which were apparently all called Puff.
Pascal came too and has one of those fancy cameras that take a good picture even when the subject matter is traditionally nonphotogenic...
Ah, 41. A bit of a nondescript age really. It underscores 40 a little, but doesn't preface the significant ages ahead. One of those nothing year.
I am still in the French Alps, in Peisey-Vallandry for those who know the region. And... I can ski!
It transpires that snowboarding last year will a bit of a silly idea since it is near impossible, while skiing is a piece of piss. That I could ski after one two-hour lesson is testament to the sheer ease of it. Five days in I can now do fancy stuff like zig-zag down a hill, ski backwards and stop on a sixpence.
The only problem is that my knees aren't up to it. After an hour they hurt. At the end of a 2.5 hour lesson I am crippled. I recover overnight, but I think I might have to rethink my new ski-bum career.
Other than that all is well.
Oh, Verity hates skiing. We booked her a one hour private lesson and she lasted ten minutes. Looked cute in all the gear though. Photos to follow.
Snowboarding didn't kill me. It tried. I got pneumonia while trying to be a rad boarder. Sally says it was 'a bit of a cough'. Katie, in a telephone diagnosis, said pneumonia. My doctor said lung infection. I think Sally is way off beam there but she isn't for changing her opinion.
Anyway, having, er, mastered boarding I will try skiing this year. Skiing is supposedly easier and is better suited to old folks.
Tomorrow we drive the France, with a bit of help from a boat, and on Saturday we mess about in the snow and then on Sunday I learn to ski. Simple, surely.
My boss said I could only have next week as holiday if I was online, which I will be, so there will be updates and medical bulletins.
I have been trying to sell my car this week, via an advert in Autotrader. Yes, my beloved Mini is moving on to a new life, having already been replaced by a nice sensible Audi estate.
The Audi has room for Verity and her travelling circus of detritus and is also comfy and quiet. Given that I am now driving 800 miles a week, comfort is essential.
So, the Mini for sale.
I have had a dozen phone calls, all of them from companies offering to sell my car for no fee. I allowed to first one to send me details of their service, which costs £90. So, erm, no fee then.
All of the calls were from similar numbers and with similar call centre background noise, but each one had a slightly different name.
The next call I politely declined.
The new few I gave very short shrift to.
Then I started getting annoyed:
"We have buyers already interested in your car"
"So tell them to read Autotrader and fuck off"
Click
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"We can sell your car for you"
"I'm kinda busy right now. Give me your personal phone number and I will call you this evening"
"We can't give out personal numbers"
"You don't seem to have any problems calling mine, now piss off"
Click
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"We offer a service matching buyers and sellers"
"What was your name again"
"David"
(camped up) "Hi David, you sound hot, could we meet later?"
Click
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"There is no fee for our service"
"Tell me what you are wearing Karen, starting with your underwear"
After much thought we have decided to become foster parents, and to do so with a teenage. At this point you are probably thinking 'are they completely mad?'
Well, yes, probably. Despite being kinda busy with other stuff, like working and parenting Verity, we figure we would be quite good at sorting out a teenager.
It takes a long time to get approved for fostering, around nine months, and during that time we will find out a lot more about what it takes, and of course might get rejected. But if we do clear all the hurdles, and they don't manage to put us off along the way, we could have a new tearaway by the end of the year.
The extended break from work provided the opportunity for a bit of turf and another step on the path to the 59 racecourses of Britain.
And contestant number 8 is... Lingfield in Surrey.
A good day's racing, despite only getting one payout from six races, and that was only a place. We both came close with exactas and I reckon we have cracked the art of the parade ring. So by this time next year we will be rich.
Next on the tour of Britain is Market Rasen in Lincolnshire and I am on track to complete the challenge in 2024.
It is coming down today so I thought I had better get a picture of it, especially given that it is so much more tasteful than last year's effort.
I guess I will bring myself a year of bad luck by taking it down early, but Christmas is dead and buried and we need to move on. Except that I am still eating turkey and chocolate.
The 'buyer' decided that current market conditions meant that a big price cut was needed. I did not concur, mainly because a price cut now would mean another, deeper, one, on the eve of contract exchange.
Irregular readers will know that in August 2005 I put my house on the market and spent well over a year trying to sell it with minimal interest from the house-buying hoi poloi. Finally in September 2006 I agreed a deal with a woman by the name of Felicity Time-Waster who went through then entire process only to pull out the day before the sale became contractually binding. The bitch.
Anyway, I then rented out a couple of rooms for a while, moved back in myself for a couple of months, spent £6,000 fixing up the garden, and the put it back on the market early last month.
And I appear to have a buyer. Given what happened a year ago I am not being overly optimistic, but it would be nice to be rid of the house, and in the intervening year the value has gone up significantly, so it does all go through Felicity Time-Waster will have done me a favour.
Let the journal be marked with the age, at 2 years 6 months and 8 days, at which Verity first said "I hate you Mummy". The first of many, for sure, with occasional "I hate my life"'s thrown in for good measure.
I, and no doubt Verity, have already forgotten the perceived crime, although it might well have been a refusal to put Pingu on the TV.
Should I be happy that she has progressed sufficiently to express such a sentiment? Or depressed that she felt the need to?
Actually I am depressed, but for a different reason - she made a grammatical error. She said, "I hated you Mummy". If she is going to be a pain in the ass, she could at least be eloquent about it.
Since my eye operation in August I have been carrying some tubes around in my head. The went from above my eye, down through the upper and lower tear ducts (and visible in the corner of my eye linking the two lids), and into my nose.
On Friday the tubes were finally removed. The technique was to snip the tube in the corner of my eye and then have me blow them with a powerful nose blow. Which worked and is exactly as gross as it sounds.
I did have my eye numbed first with an eye drop that really stung. This is akin to kicking someone in the shin to take their mind off a headache.
Anyway, it is all done now and the next step is to return to the hospital in four months time and decide whether I want to go through the whole thing again with my other eye.
So from Shanghai to Singapore, but only for an overnight stop - we arrived at 10am and had to be out of there by 6am.
We were tired and needed sleep, so we spent 3 of our 8 hours in Singapore eating and drinking and the other 5 hours allowing hangovers to develop while we slept. Our hotel was the exquisite Fullerton which must have cost a packet, but a supplier was paying so I never got to find out.
From there we flew to Surabaya in Indonesia for my third trip into the southern hemisphere (Mauritius 2004, South Africa 2006). We spent two days there visiting factories, developing new products and haggling over prices, and got blind drunk both nights and ended up in Desperado's Nightclub, which is very well named.
After that, and hungover again, we flew to Singpore and chilled for 28 hours, including the obligatory photo shoot outside Raffles, then flew home via Bangkok. I am awash with airmiles and have developed a drink problem, a craving for marmite and a monstrous work backlog.
After Hong Kong we returned to China, taking a fast ferry into the Pearl River Delta to visit a factory, which was of impressive quality. The factory, not the ferry.
The ferry was pretty impressive though, zipping between massive container ships. I have never seen so many ships in my life, from leviathans to dows, most of them carrying containers, even the dows.
I do wonder how the container shipping business manages to consistently get stuff from A to B without losing it.
Anyway, after a factory tour we did lunch in a local restaurant with the factory owner then did some product development work back at the factory and headed off to the airport to fly to Shanghai.
We arrived in darkness and headed straight to dinner downtown and then had a 90 minute drive to the hotel somewhere in Haining. The hotel was interesting - luxurious for a start but with quirky touches. Such as the basket of goodies by the bed - socks, shorts, condoms, 'arousing cream' and... a pack of playing cards. Maybe strip poker is a big thing in Haining.
The Haining factory visit was very good and then back to Shanghai and its other airport to fly to Singapore. After a relatively restful time in HK, the travel schedule is becoming bruising.
I visited Hong Kong in 1981 and there have been a few changes. The skyline has gone crazy and there are new roads, bridges, tunnels and an airport, but overall it feels very familiar.
The main deterioration is with the pollution - the view from Kowloon to the Peak is permanently hazy.
We arrived there on Friday evening, went to trade shows on Saturday and Sunday, and met a bunch of potential suppliers on Monday and celebrated our last night on Monday with dinner at Aqua, 22 floors up and with the best (hazy) view in Kowloon.
Over the weekend we managed to squeeze in a little shopping - handbags, watches and electronics. With more time we would have visited the Peak, Stanley market and nipped over to Macau for some gambling fun. Next time maybe.
A couple of pictures will follow when Flickr comes back online.
I left home at 8.20am on Tuesday and 27 hours later finally came to a halt in Guangzhou. That sounds like a long journey, but it never really felt like it apart from a couple of hours waiting in a railway station while jetlagged into 2008.
The flights were lovely on account of being with Thai Air and also on account of being in biz class, or Royal Silk as Thai prefer to call it. We were upstairs in the bubble of a 747 on the flight to Bangkok then ninety minutes on the ground and on to Hong Kong. A taxi to the railway station then a train into China.
Guangzhou was busy, hot and smoggy. The trade show was very good, although I have sore feet from traipsing around. Think of a product that has a tiny niche and China will have 200 companies making it. Impressive. And scary.
After a couple of nights and days we were back on the train to Kowloon, where I am now.
Next week I am going to the Far East on a buying trip.
The current travel schedule is:
Tuesday - fly from London to Hong Kong via Bangkok
Wednesday - arrive in Hong Kong, train to Guangzhou
Friday - train to Hong Kong
Tuesday - ferry to Pearl River Delta. fly from Shenzhen to Shanghai
Wednesday - fly from Shanghai to Singapore
Thursday - fly from Singapore to Surabaya
Saturday - fly from Surabaya to Singapore
Monday - fly from Singapore to London via Bangkok
Tuesday - arrive in London
The final Sunday in Singpore is the only day off in the whole schedule, so it is mostly work and little play, but I will be disappointed if I don't get to eat a few things that taste like chicken.
Our holiday in northern Spain was lovely. We stayed in Tudes, a village of 30 people in the middle of the Picos de Europa, 20 minutes from the nearest shop and 90 minutes from the nearest hospital. It was very relaxing with a log fire every evening and plenty of local cheese and wine.
There were a couple of cute cats there and we gave one of them a sardine for dinner. The next day a dead bird was on our doorstep, perfectly intact and looking like it was sleeping. With its eyes open. On its side.
A generous return of favour and a sign that not all cats are selfish. Verity thought it was a penguin, for which we can blame Happy Feet.
The ferry crossing was interesting since most of the passengers were on a mini-cruise, sailing to Bilbao and back without getting off and spending three days and nights eating, drinking and smoking themselves to death.
On the final morning we squeezed in a quick visit to the Guggenheim in Bilbao, or at least the outside of the Guggenheim, and it is genuinely impressive. Verity rather liked the spider.
Flanerie is in the Picos de Europa in northern Spain.
Internet connectivity is shite, but the food and wine are good. Yesterday's revelation was a bottle of very drinkable wine for 99 cents. Euro cents, rather than the cheap trashy dollar cents, but a bargain.
More on the location, and the ferry crossing, on my return.
[found on Ananova]
Paddington Bear is courting controversy by swapping his famous marmalade sandwiches for Marmite.
Fans are bound to accuse the bear of selling out when TV viewers see him appear in an advert for Marmite.
Paddington enjoys a Marmite sandwich, then shares it with a distinctly unimpressed pigeon, reflecting the spread's 'love it or hate it' slogan.
The bear has been eating marmalade sandwiches since he was found on a station platform by Mr and Mrs Brown at the start of Michael Bond's first Paddington book 49 years ago.
Cheryl Calverley, Marmite brand manager, said: "We are really excited to be working with Paddington Bear.
"Both the Marmite brand and Paddington bear are British institutions and bring back warm nostalgic childhood memories."
Karen Jankel, managing director of Paddington and Co, said: "I think fans might be perturbed if they thought he was giving up marmalade, but they should know he's not. He just wanted to try something different."
On the recent holiday weekend we went horse racing at Beverly in Yorkshire. Well, the horses went racing, with leprechauns as passengers, and we merely watched and wagered.
Beverly is number seven in my very long-term mission to visit all 59 racecourses in Britain, the others so far being Towcester, Windsor, Goodwood, Sandown, Cheltenham and Newbury.
(I have also been to Ascot racecourse for a seminar on company law. That doesn't count.)
The day was lovely, the turf action was very good and the wagering was a fiasco. Seven races, eight bets, no wins. Thankfully I am still spending winnings from the Newbury coup, so it doesn't stick in the craw too much.
Next on the list is probably York, since it is a city that warrants a long weekend visit.
As my regular reader will know, two years ago I put my house up for sale and it stayed that way for fifteen months before I finally gave up in an explosion of expletives.
Now, after having the garden completely remodelled, I am trying again.
The good news is that the theoretical value of my house has gone up by around 10% since I gave up nine months ago, so maybe all the hassle last year, and the frustration over a collapsed sale, will turn out for the good.
My plan is to have it sold within six weeks. Although I said that last time too.
I watched the movie About Schmidt last weekend and it got me wondering.
Oh, it was about Jack Nicholson retiring and having a late-life crisis. Or it was about a dude called Schmidt, played by Jack Nicholson, retiring, etc.
The thing is, I have been working for 20 years for a whole range of companies, big and small. I have worked with many hundreds of people, and I have never once seen a person retire.
Do the nearly-retired go to special companies to retire from? Is it like the elephants' graveyard, crawling on their knees with their final shallow breaths?
Or perhaps I have seen a bunch of people retire without ever realising it. They pretend they are going to another job, or just popping out for a sandwich, and disappear into the land where people read the entire newspaper every day.
It also made me wonder about my own retirement - it needs to be soon, obviously, and involve foxy handmaidens, whatever they might be, lots of money, and a butt-load of drugs for when either my mind or body hits the skids.
I had a DCR yesterday, which drills a new channel from the tear duct into the nose to make up for the faulty one that already exists.
It was not as unpleasant as it should have been, although the stitches and swelling mean I can't wear my glasses for more than a couple of minutes and without my glasses I am as a bat. Without the sonar.
The stitches come out next week. And if it all works okay (a 70% chance of success) I will get the other eye done.
Here are the photos - pre-op, post-op and de-bandaged:
Poor Milly, she had her 20,000 mile wash at midday and four hours later was rear-ended in Milton Keynes. Amusingly, for me at least, it was one of my staff that did it, driving a huge planet-busting Jeep. Her car was, of course, unscathed.
This weekend we attended the Cornbury Music Festival. It is a music festival, but for toffs, and is a great idea. The hoi poloi, the great unwashed, the men and women on the clapham omnibus, CHT's. None of them were there, just respectable types eating organic beanburgers.
I tried to big it up with Verity in advance:
"We are going to a music festival"
"Music testicle"
"No, a music festival"
"Testicle"
"F-f-f-festival"
"F-f-f-testicle"
"Ah, whatever"
It was a good day out, with a bit of the Proclaimers, a bit of the Waterboys and a bit of David Gray.
Last weekend we headed into London to see Les Miserables. Or at least I headed into London to see it while Sally came along on a 'mystery date' only knowing the hotel we were staying in.
I received maximum brownie points for the choice of show and dinner was pretty impressive too (Incognico on Shaftesbury Avenue).
I have only ever seen one West End show before and that was Saturday Night Fever. Kitschly entertaining. Les Mis was in another league completely and was simply breathtaking. Not sure how I am going to top that, although I have tickets for the new production of Joseph in August.
Apparently I need to see the Lion King too, although I quite like the cartoon and would hate to be disappointed.
After 10 grumpy years Gordon Brown will finally get the job he always coveted and become Prime Minister of Blighty. I wonder how easy it is to switch from being the finance guy to being the top guy. Will he still be all over the finance function at the expense of other important roles, such as rolling on his back while George Bush tickles his nipples with a feather? Or will be overcompensate and let finance go to hell in a handbasket, spending all his time on international junkets?
I wonder this especially because after a little less than two years I am moving from being Finance Director where I work to Managing Director. Or, in American English, I am changing from CFO to CEO. And unlike Gordon Brown it was never part of my master plan.
It will be an interesting challenge and if it all goes wrong I will blame my predecessor, or the parent company, and if things go well I will go to great lengths to point out my inate genius.
After much prevarication my house now uses 100% renewable electricity, with Ecotricity as my new supplier.
Add to this the carbon offset for motoring, which I started in 2006 and my offset for air travel, which I started in January and I am slowly reducing my carbon footprint. For these two, of course, an offset is a very poor substitute for not generating the carbon in the first place, but right now I can't reduce my road miles and am not willing to reduce my air miles. Offset is a reasonable second best.
My next mission is to get my place of work on renewable electricity.
Last weekend we were in Florence enjoying a very relaxing 4 day break, and what a delightful city it is. Rather than do every single museum in a foot-sapping marathon, we went for the laid back approach of sitting around watching the world go by, with only the Uffizi, Accademia and Boboli Gardens planned.
I tried to book both the Uffizi and Accademia in advance but only the latter was available, so we passed on the Uffizi rather than stand in line for a few hours. Still, the statue of David in the Accademia is genuinely impressive. I work on the assumption that the really famous works of art, the ones famous simply for being famous, can only be a disappointment when finally viewed in person, but David fully lived up to its reputation.
A significant proportion of the US population was in Florence for the same weekend but, although it is only a small city, it managed to absorb them with driving me to strap explosives to my body.
The weather was good until the last day, by when it didn't matter, and we brought home a bunch of tasty treats from the central market.
Just what is it about small kids and adult shoes? They always make a beeline for them and start teetering about in an alarming manner.
Is it something genetic, or just the early budding of a foot fetish that in most people fades away before they are old enough to be a real nuisance?
In my house there is real competition for my shoes between the kid and the labrador. A battle between snot and drool in which only I, and my shoes, can be the losers.
Last weekend I was interviewed on BBC News 24. My 30 seconds of fame was on the subject of Zopa.
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During the week Verity celebrated her second birthday. Without being fully aware of what it all meant, she clearly knew something was up and managed to force herself to wake up at 5.30am. Bastard. Anyway, we now have even more plastic tat in the house.
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At the end of the month I am going to Florence for a 4-day weekend. Also, I might at some point write up my weekend in New York.
I spent the weekend moving house and then going to an open day at an agricultural college, which was way more fun than it sounds. The open day, not the moving. The moving was okay though.
Anyway, if I hadn't been doing that, I would surely have been creating my own Transformers (Robots in Disguise!) outfit.
But if I did, it wouldn't be a patch on these guys who have clearly reached the very pinnacle of Transformerdom.
My birthday dinner was a treat from my other half - I had only specified that it must be somewhere I had never been and a walkable distance from home. Thankfully this remit excluded the local chip shop, of which I am already a patron.
Her choice was The Vanilla Pod in Marlow and a seven course dinner. They threw in a couple of bonus courses to make it nine and at the end of all that I was fatter than Elvis.
Cream of celeriac
Butternut Squash Risotto
Seared Scallops with Purée of White Beans and Bourbon Vanilla Foam
Pink Grapefruit Mouselline
Roasted Sea Bass on Purée of Jerusalem Artichoke infused with Truffle
or
Rump of Lamb on buttered Savoy Cabbage and Woodland Mushrooms
(we had both and shared)
Trois Laits Cheese with Pear Chutney
Apple and Cranberry Compote with Greek Yoghurt
Tahitian Vanilla Panna Cotta with Doughnuts
Petits fours
All the food was delicious and I now have a tough act to follow in August.
On Tuesday I visited Accrington in the North of England, a part of the country famed for cloth caps, whippets, Woodbines and wife-beating.
My route takes me past the nearby town of Darwen, a festering shit-hole that is a blight on the county, the country and, indeed, the planet.
However, there an exception in Darwen, a thrupp'ny bit in the pudding, a gem that sparkles in the ordure - Carlos Viveiros.
Carlos is a curious name in Lancashire, a county where 60% of men are called Gary. He is from somewhere is South America, or maybe Central America, and he runs a factory that makes chairs.
In one of my previous lives, I worked for a sister company that sold office furniture. We bought chairs from Carlos and sold them to our customers.
Unfortunately we were losing money like Bush loses poll ratings and, when deciding which bills to pay, Carlos was bottom of the list.
So he would ring me up to politely request payment.
[Carlos' lines should be read in a kinda South American accent, if you can manage it]
"Ah Carlos, what can I do for you?"
"Give me my money!"
"Hey, come on Carlos, you know if I had the money, you would be the first person I would pay, even ahead of my own salary"
"Just give me the money. You took my chairs, now you have to pay for them"
"But Carlos, we are owned by the same guy. I would have to get him to lend me money to give to you. He would be transferring money from one pocket to the other. So really, you need to call him for the money."
"I will come to see you and cut you with a knife! You want that? Huh? Cut you with a knife. Now give me the money."
"Carlos, given the choice I would vote not to be cut with a knife, but I really don't have any money."
"A knife. I know where you work, I can visit you tomorrow. The money or the knife?"
"Erm, okay. Let me see what I can do"
Now that is a credit control process that really works.
I have always assumed that travelling with children is just like travelling, but with children. It isn't.
Even with a perfectly behaved child, which Verity (mostly) was, it is a very stressful experience. There is no point packing a book in your hand luggage, it will only add extra weight which given all the child paraphernalia required, is not entirely welcome.
Not that it wasn't enjoyable, just different.
There is barely a single moment when you can think of anything except the child, its welfare, and whether it is about to run towards a security point shouting "death to infidels."
The child, of course, doesn't notice this. The child doesn't even realise that there might be something terrifying about hurtling down a runway, strapped into a metal tube full of explosive fuel in the vague hope that it might start flying.
And so, I would like to apologise to my parents for all the years of foreign holidays when I was too young to be grateful for the stress they went through; and for the years when I was old enough to be grateful but wasn't.
Tomorrow I head off to the French Alps for a week of snowboarding. This is my first ever such holiday and I expect to get seriously injured.
Obviously I didn't think this when I agreed to go, but since then everyone has told me that I am doomed. Apparently there is an age where is becomes more likely than not that a serious injury with be suffered. For snowboarding it is around the mid thirties and for skiing the mid forties.
I was in a job interview when I was told this, by my rather jolly potential new boss.
Anyway, if I do die, it has been fun. If not, I will update next from the hospital.
Sometimes you have to wonder whether progress is a good thing.
Take Verity, for instance (please, take her. ha ha. er, sorry). Time was that a runny nose didn't bother her. She would just ignore the green trail of snot that made tracks to the top of her lip. It bothered me of course, and nose wiping, which met with protest, ensued.
These days it does bother her and she wipes the snot across her face with the back of her hand. It gets as far as her cheek where it acts as glue, sticking her fine hair to her face.
It's progress, but I am not sure it is in a forward direction. But then to get from A to Z you have to pass through a bunch of crap letters. Snot-smeering is just a passing phase before sniffing and nose-blowing. It is a passing phases that lasted about 20 years in my case.
The other development is that when her nose runs she points to it and says 'naughty nose'. Lovely stuff.
My cousin has had a baby, or at least his wife has. He just did the stress bit, plus a bit of live action blogging.
Anyway, I don't know what the child of a cousin is. A second cousin? A cousin once removed? A grand cousin? I have decided on subcousin since it does make some kind of sense.
She is called Jana and looks like new babies do. Just once in a while it would be cool if a new baby looked like something else. A puppy or a giant lego brick.
But enough of this fol-de-rol. Welcome to the world Jana.
I am going to New York in April for a long weekend. This is part of my 40th birthday celebrations. Forty? Already? Fuck.
Although I have been to the US maybe forty times, I have never been to any of those itty bitty states in the top right-hand corner, so it will be a whole new experience.
So, dear readers, what should I do/see/avoid in New York? Are there any great places that the guide books omit to mention? Do any of you want to lend me an apartment overlooking Central Park?
It might not seem much to readers in the north-east US but this meagre snowfall was a real treat. In this part of England it happens once a year at best, and leads to traffic chaos and school closures.
I gave up on my 50 mile commute without even starting and focused instead on enjoying the snow while it lasted (it has mostly melted already).
The child viewed it with cautious enthusiasm so I tried to get her into the spirit with a few snowballs.
Not having any gloves on I decided to flick the snow up with my foot. The first attempt was pretty good, spattering her coat like buckshot, but the second came up as a single big clump of snow that hit her square in the face.
She took it quite well considering - she just kept saying 'face' in a tone the said she couldn't believe I just did that to her. Get used to it kid, ha ha ha ha.
I am in Miami right now. Not for the Superbowl though. I only discovered that it was Superbowl weekend when I was headed to the airport, and only discovered the Miami was hosting when I got here.
I guess Miami gets to host the Superbowl pretty often because of the near-guarantee of great weather.
Slightly unfortunate then that it is raining like it did when Noah was doing the animals two at a time. At least the bears and colts will appreciate the comparison.
Why are so many US sports teams name after animals?
I visited my doctor last week, a pleasant chap called Dr. Foord, about a minor matter that I won’t bore you with.
It was a lovely spring morning, in globally-warmed late-January, so I decided to walk the two-thirds of a mile.
On my return walk, as I my flitted between random thoughts, I sensed a car slowing beside me and, still walking, turned my head. It was a police car and the passenger lowered his window, “excuse me sir.”
I stopped walking.
“Could you give me directions to the police station?”
“You have to be fucking kidding?” I said.
He looked over to his partner, who had a road map open on his lap, the sort of road map that tells you the approximate location of a town, as long as it is a big town, and turned back to me, “we aren’t from this area.”
“No shit. But you do have a police radio. And presumably cellphones. And perhaps, having embarked on this journey, you might have thought to call ahead and ask. Or did you just think you could drive into town and the police station it would be lit up like a Vegas casino? And if you, highly trained defenders of the law, can’t find it, what chance do we, the terrified populace, have, constantly in fear of hoodlums, brigands, hucksters, shysters, rapists and murderers. I put it to you office that you could not find your ass with both hands.”
I said all of this in my head, of course, and with my eyes, and silent though the communication was, it was perfectly understood.
“I have a good mind to get out of the car,” replied the cop, “club you to the ground with a baton, kick the crap out of you, then urinate on your prostate form.”
He said this with his eyes, of course, but it was perfectly understood.
Our respective positions thus established, I gave detailed directions to the police station and continued on my merry way.
At the Science Museum in London they are holding an exhibition of toys. Uniquely the toys belong to members of the public who have been invited to lend their favourite toys to the museum for a few months. They have formed a display, all safely stored in glass cases, and range from battered old teddy bears to Lego.
On hearing about this gig I couldn't resist taking Pickles the rabbit along to be a part of the show and he has been there for a couple of months already.
I was a bit worried that he might be lonely over Christmas, but clearly I needn't have worried - he has found himself a nice lady rabbit for company.
The rabbit will be returning home in time for easter, hopefully armed with chocolate eggs.
There was a competition on a newspaper website recently that asked people to try their hand at crime fiction. I fancy myself as a bit of a writer so I gave it a go.
The task was to provide the story that explained a crime scene, which was provided in sketch form, in only 50 words. It was a lot more difficult than it sounds, as there were 6 or 7 different clues in the picture and I have already used more than 50 words in this paragraph.
Anyway, I clearly did something right as I won the competition and the prize is a 3 night trip to Florence, including flights and a half-decent hotel.
Yay me!
I need to take the holiday before the end of April so will probably squeeze in between Miami in February and New York in April. Meanwhile, if any of my readers have been to Florence, do you have any recommendations?
Subject to a few technical formalities, I today sold the company I work for. The whole process, which has been going on for several months, was grossly unpleasant and akin to being raped while eating horse shit.
[I have never experienced either, but there are some things you just don't need to experience to know that they are plain nasty. And anyway, there is probably a Danish porn flick that covers it in glorious detail. With pigs.]
My new masters have asked me to stay for a few months but I just can't face 100 miles a day for longer than a few more weeks. Hence, I am looking for work.
So all of those in the Thames Valley that thought you were shot of me - I am heading back. [Cue an evil laugh that descends into a coughing fit.]
