watch tHe skies

Well I did write a highly humorous post at work the other day and I emailed it to myself. It was about fog, alien invasion and, er something or other. Unfortunately it never arrived in my home email account and so its humour is lost to the world.

So, it’s Christmas Day and fair play to you for visiting my site when there is a roast on the table of some kind.

Me? I’m off on some british motorway somewhere, visiting someone. So I leave you with a photo of Ben the Christmas Elf, and would like to wish you a peaceful, heartwarming and very Merry Christmas .

(click on more to see our little man)

(more…)

So I don’t remember there ever being fog like the fog we have in the UK at the moment. Fog usually lasts a day, maybe two, but not a whole week, which is making me suspicious.

Extreme phenomena (cue muppet theme) like this only happens in the movies, but as we say in our house, truth is stranger than fiction which logically leads me to believe with conviction that we can expect an alien invasion or extreme natural disaster in the next few days. Typical really because it had to wait until I’d spent some considerable time shopping for presents and also renewed my gym membership, paying for the year in advance, yet in the current inclement weather it is actually hazardous for my health to drive there.

Should there indeed be an alien invasion, at least little Leicester will be one of the last places they get to. After all it poses little or no threat to the alien hordes, having only the National Space Centre that is of interest outside of the shire. Who knows, perhaps we will survive? They will probably have to finish off Nottingham before they come for us, and as the most armed city in Britain (rumours have it that there are more automatic weapons and short range artillery in circulation in the city of Nottingham than in the entire British Armed forces), it will probably put up a fairly good fight. So the aliens will certainly be weakened before they arrive at our gates to a defensive wall of curry houses and shopping centres.

Navigating the city of Leicester in their bizarre three legged contraptions will indeed be difficult given the uneven road surfaces and extremely bad traffic congestion. Their best bet would be to arrive at around 4am sunday morning when all of the taxis and ambulances are congregated around the clocktower.

Of course once Leicester has fallen to the bug-eyed freaks, our little village of Countesthorpe will follow shortly. Even its brief fame as the place at which grubby indie band Kasabian formed whilst at school won’t be enough to defend us from disintegration rays and the huge earth burrowing machines that churn the ground over in preparation for new inhabitants.

And that will be that. Probably before Christmas Day, so I had better go and get myself prepared. Whatever that means. So this will be my last post. If through some technical hitch on the aliens’ part the invasion is postponed, I would like to wish you a very merry Christmas and I’ll speak to you in a few days…

So I spent saturday doing my christmas shopping. I don’t venture in to the shops much nowadays, preferring to do my shopping online. However my recent illness set me back by a fortnight on my shopping programme so saturday was do or die.

It was hard work but I achieved my goal in the one day. My debit card is still glowing a little… But my sanity didn’t fare so well.

It was the buying behaviour all around me that disturbed me greatly. It seems that half of the stuff people were buying was, for want of a more eloquent word, crap. Novelty stuff that won’t be of interest to anyone past boxing day. And this stuff ain’t cheap - I would imagine millions of pounds are being spent every day in december on stuff that no-one is interested in past boxing day, and it is a sad indicator of the state of our society when our hospitals and police force are under-resourced and yet we are openly encouraged to spend money (that many don’t even own) on crap that we don’t need.

Suddenly I am sounding a lot like Tyler Durden. So I’ll stop and go and have a lie down. Perhaps my “Mr T in your pocket” can help me relax. All together now, “you are not your television set”…

So I spent the weekend in bed after waking early saturday morning with a pounding headache and overwhelming nausea. After ruling out morning sickness, I concluded that Labyrinthitis had returned. The hospital confirmed it yesterday so once again I am laid out hoping that it goes away quick smartish.

The labyrinth is part of the inner ear that deals with balance. When it gets inflamed because of an infection, it throws balance out, leaving you feeling seasick, or suffering from vertigo. I had it once before a few years ago, so bad that I couldn’t watch TV for weeks because the motion made me vomit.

So here I am again, fortunately it doesn’t seem to be quite so bad this time, as I’m still able to use the laptop…

No, it wasn’t a fad, I’m still looking for the best way for our family to become carbon neutral, and a neat way to do so is to sign up to targetneutral, a BP led programme to contribute to environmental compensation programmes to offset the carbon generated by our motor vehicles. With my business mileage and Jenny’s shopping mileage, our offset would cost around £20 per year, which seems a small cost to compensate for the damage to the environment.

I’ve also proposed to my company that we sign up to such a programme to compensate for the emissions caused by our many corporate vehicles travelling all over the country.

However this programme doesn’t cover home energy usage or flights, so I’m still looking around and would be interested if you can find something that wraps up all energy usage in to a single compensation programme.

With the popularity of the Pirates Of The Caribbean movies, talking like a pirate has gone up a few notches in popularity, and it is of course, talk like a pirate day today me hearties.

So shivver me timbers, break out the hornpipe and raise the mainsail, an’ head over to www.yarr.org to find out more.

www.talklikeapirate.com has some excellent pirate chat-up lines, including the legendary “Avast, me proud beauty! Wanna know why me Roger is so Jolly??” Even Captain Jack Sparrow would struggle to beat such a charming phrase!

I was sorry to hear today of the death of Steve Irwin aka “The Crocodile Hunter”. Killed by a Stingray off the coast of North Queensland whilst filming a documentary, Steve will be remembered by many as the nutter who “played” with crocodiles and snakes whilst informing us viewers of the many interesting facts about the creatures.

No doubt if there is an afterlife, he’s there chasing a T-Rex through the jungle…

Lehmann off, Pires gone, great goal from Sol, rearguard action for 60 minutes. Admirable performance the boys did themselves proud.

But it wasn’t meant to be.

Well done lads we are proud of you.

Still, at least we knocked Spurs out of the Champions’ League

Aaah how beautiful is our Karndean floor? Looks like tiles yet plates bounce (allegedly) and it’s nice and warm. Plus, if you ask for samples from Karndean, you can get free coasters that match you floor…how sweet is that? And they say that you don’t get anything free in this world…well when you pay that much for a floor I don’t think that they care about a few measly samples.

Here are a couple more shots if you are interested (click to open)

Well the lousy artex patch that the Kitchen fitters did has gone, as we shelled out the best part of £200 to get the ceiling skimmed and coved. Looks lovely, and will look even more lovely when I get around to painting it and the end wall.