Blog Christmas 2012

The Blogs had a nice quiet family Christmas that was nothing out of the ordinary.

Daughter Blog got up from the dinner table after lunch and laid her paper napkin on the table. It was not only on the table but on the flame of the candle that was on the table in front of her. Mrs Blog called "Fire Fire!", Mr Blog put it out and we survived with the loss of a napkin and a bauble, that was one of several decorating the table, too close to the candle for its own good and which now has a hole in the side of it.

Mr Blog and Son-Blog were the proud recipients of an inspired gift from Boyfriend-of-Daughter-Blog, a pair of Nerf guns with spare ammo. Mrs Blog and Daughter Blog were not as inspired and proved easy targets all day long.

In anticipation of the shortages that arise during a Christmas holiday I had the foresight to make and freeze enough dough for two loaves of bread. Early yesterday I took one lot out of the freezer ready to be cooked that evening. Having proved, knocked-back and second proved the dough I popped it in the oven and showed a huge lack of foresight by not setting the timer. Two and a half hours later the Blogs realised the bread should be ready.

Merry Christmas!

A Tale of the Season

Two days ago I went out to get a "Small Shop" which translates as, I went out and went shopping and spent less than £100. Mrs Blog is a fan of the "Big Shop" which obviously costs more than £100 but also takes most of the afternoon or morning.

Part of my shopping was to buy some Saxa table salt which comes in a cylindrical shaped tub. Mrs Blog favours sea salt but for baking it is impractical. I emptied the boot when I got home and carried my one bag of shopping indoors. Unknown to me, I had left the Saxa table salt in the boot of the car.

Yesterday the Blog-family went to see the "Hobbit" and stopped at Tesco for a little more shopping. Opening the boot to put the new shopping in, I discovered the Saxa table salt. It had burst out of its cylindrical tub and was spread in little mountains all over the boot.

Today I went to the garage and put a coin in the vacuum machine and proceeded to de-salt my boot. It was at this point that I became very self-conscious since I looked something akin to an incompetent drug-dealer hoovering class A drugs out of my car. Merry Christmas!

NB for USA readers:

Boot means Trunk

Saxa are manufacturers of table salt

Tesco is a supermarket

Garage is a filling station

Mr Blog finds his place in life

This morning I was sitting in our lounge, contentedly reading the paper, when Mrs Blog announced that she was going to vacuum the downstairs rooms.

With a fair bit of clattering she yanked our state of the art "Dyson" from the cupboard under the stairs, plugged it in and tried to switch it on. I say "tried" because she only partially succeeded  When she took her foot off the "on" button it stopped. She tried to tap it in much the same way as she clicks the mouse on her laptop when it is running slow. Mrs Blog, you see, is sometimes impatient for a solution.She believes that "stupid" machines will only respond to repeated instructions to do the same thing.

Alas for me her first solution did not work so she employed me for a part of the morning to follow her around standing next to the "Dyson" with my foot on the "on" button button while she vacuumed the relevant part of the house.

Christmas Cards

We are always keen to count our Christmas cards in the Blog-House. It tells us whether or not we are as popular this year as we were last year. Sadly it seems that we are on a bit of a declining trend. This could be due to the economic environment stripping our friends of their hard earned pennies or it could be that I have managed to offend more people with my blog than ever before.

We have been consoled though by one particular card which arrived today. It is a black and white photograph of what I can only describe as Josef Stalin on a camel!!

A Star is Born

Some of the Blog relatives rarely get a mention in these pages. One particular relative-blog who is seemingly put out by this lack of attention is "Immy-Blog" (one of the Yorkshire Niece-Blogs) who asked why she had never appeared in a post when I was with the Yorkshire-Blogs last month.

Said Immy-Blog was curious about my short hair , (number two on the trimmers as an homage to Britney Spears). She queried whether I washed it with shampoo - seemingly she thought there was not enough of it to bother with. Regular readers will know that my hair has been the source of great hilarity in the past (see Extreme Haircuts).

I eventually explained that I used a special shampoo for short hair.

"You have shampoo for frizzy hair, heat-damaged hair, split ends, dry hair and so I use a shampoo for short hair. It is just like normal shampoo but the bottle it comes in is a quarter of the size!"

EasyJet offer in-flight entertainment

Last month EasyJet announced a revolution in air travel. They had, according to the announcement, listened to their customers and decided to offer "allocated seating". Genius! They came to the market with the idea that you did not need "allocated seating" and that a free-for-all-fight was the best way to board a plane.

Some suspicious types might wonder if the change in policy was down to a trial they had run which proved that, on average, it was quicker to board a plane if you had allocated seats. So they could keep to their schedules.

On my first "allocated seat" flight last week I logged on and was faced with the option of paying £3 for choosing my seat. A bargain I thought given that FlyMayBe would charge £6. I even held back from criticising them for the under hand way of milking £3 each way out of my pocket to have an allocated seat - it was worth it I thought. I had assumed that people who did not pay £3 would be subject to the usual free fro all fight for seats. This, I figured, meant I must be getting some sort of priority boarding. In my head I heard the announcement "Flight EZY424 to Bristol is ready for boarding - speedy boarders first then allocated seat boarders".

No. Everyone gets a seat allocated. If you don't pay £3 to choose your seat you get given one for free!!!

In my advancing years I am becoming calmer and more able to deal with this kind of corporate spite. I learned my lesson and ignored the box saying £3 to choose your seat when I went to Bristol yesterday. I found I got an even better seat than the one I had paid for last week. Happy days!

Better still EasyJet had realised that passengers were missing the spectacle of the free-for-all-fights that entertained us in the days of free-for-all-seating - they laid on a fight when we landed between a big Scot with a huge backpack and a small German in a pork-pie hat. It kicked off when the Scot slung his backpack over his shoulder just as the wee German was trying to get into the aisle behind him hitting him square in the face. The German retaliated with a hefty push forward nearly knocking over ten people standing in the aisle waiting for the doors to open. The big Scot retaliated with a shove of his own and another ten people in the opposite direction went wobbling down the aisle.

I simply sat and watched the entertainment before thanking the captain as I left the plane.

Serious Post Dec 2012

On several occasions Dog-Blog has featured on Drivel and Wisdom. 

Sadly Dog-Blog Muffin is no longer with us. Below are the drawings of Dog-Blog that have featured on this site as a tribute to the best dog in the world.

So farewell Muffin - not just a dog but one of the "Blogs".

Beer Fridges

For some years we (me) have fondly referred to the area immediately outside our back door as the "Beer Fridge". It is not a fridge but simply the place by the door where I keep my beer; however, given that we live in Scotland my beer is never too warm.

Not only does the "beer fridge" keep my beer at an acceptable temperature, it saves me carrying heavy cases of beer the extra ten feet to our real fridge and it leaves space in the real fridge for all the yummy vegetables and salads that Mrs Blog is so fond of buying.

This weekend Mrs Blog, in anticipation of Christmas, asked me to move a real fridge from our garage to the area formerly known as the "Beer Fridge" so that we could use it to store all the extra food we are planning to buy before Christmas.

Mrs Blog is excellent at keeping things tidy so it was no surprise that she "hid" my beer in the real fridge where the "beer Fridge" used to be. Alas though, the real fridge is somewhat colder than the old "beer Fridge" and especially when you have it on setting 6 out of 6.

At the end of a busy day I reached in to the "new real beer fridge" and pulled out a can of Fosters....

The blooming beer was frozen into a Fosters Slush Puppy and took half an hour to defrost. The old "beer Fridge" only ever did that following a Met office severe weather warning.

Errant Nurofen

Having a tendency to occasionally imbibe of the odd glass of red wine, I keep a steady stash of painkillers by my bed just in case I wake up in the middle of the night and have need of them.

Two nights ago I set my side of the bed up as usual, filled my bottle of water, took the alarm clock out of the drawer that Mrs Blog hides it in and laid the blister pack of my last two remaining Nurofen next to the water bottle on the floor.

As a temperate soul I had no need of the Nurofen that night. I did however, drink the water and in keeping with middle aged men paid the "odd visit"!

Somehow I managed to tread on the blister pack without realising it.

The first I knew was next morning when the sainted Mrs Blog brought me my tea and trod on something at the entrance to the bedroom. She found a bright orange capsule stuck to her foot and wondered how it was that a Nurofen capsule could find itself there. Now she knows!

Remote based working

When your employers ask you to work from home you might be tempted to think that you can get up late, work short hours, take a morning to do the crossword and have a nap in the afternoon.

I have been working from home for more than ten years and it equates to lots of travelling., longer hours and lots of unforeseen stressful situations. I have learned to cope with being on a conference call at the same time as the postman turns up, dog-blog starts barking and then the courier arrives with Mrs Blog's latest purchase from Amazon/Ebay. Today, however, was a first.

I was working transcribing fifteen flip chart pages crammed full of useful ideas from my team planning day last week. The info was so good that we are confident we can single-handedly bring the UK of recession in 2013. There I was with the flip chart pages scattered around the room typing up the content on my laptop when Mrs Blog popped her around the hitherto closed door.

"Muffin (dog-blog) is out of sorts an I think she wants to come in here,"said Mrs Blog

Dog-blog had just been out of sorts in a very wet garden.

My teams output now looked like this

Dog Blog jumped on the sofa as she was instructed to do by Mrs Blog. I kept my mouth shut I have been in tough situations before.

Mrs Blog left the room and closed the door, Mr Blog sighed in a resigned sort of way, Dog-Blog sat on the flip charts!

Movember

This morning myself and Mrs Blog "Skyped" Son-Blog through the wonders of a PC and an IPhone 4. It was the first time I have seen Son-Blog for a little while and it seems he has joined the "Movember" craze...

It was quite difficult to know which way up he was!

Carrot Mystery

For the last two days Mr Blog has been in Yorkshire with the relatives. One of the said relatives was the internationally famous two year old Blog -Nephew "Ben-Blog" (see earlier posts with "Swiss Cooker Problems" in the titles).

I knew Ben-Blog would be there for a number of reasons, not least of which was that he had caused Swiss-Sister-Blog to yell out on a phone call on Tuesday. Sister Blog was already in Yorkshire and I had called her at about Ben-Blog's tea time. During the conversation she had clear sight of Ben-Blog eating his tea evidenced by the said yell...

"Hang on, Ben has just put the hot water bottle on his dinner!" said Swiss-Sister-Blog.

I thought no more of it.

During my trip to Yorkshire I discovered the following facts which are critically related to the above "yell".

1. Swiss-Sister-Blog was very impressed with Ben-Blog's appetite on Tuesday because he had eaten almost all of his dinner including a portion of carrots. More remarkable since Ben-Blog has a love-hate relationship with carrots.
2. Other-Sister-Blog-Christine discovered carrots in the sink on Wednesday and assumed that Swiss-Sister-Blog had mistaken the sink for a waste disposal unit.
3. Swiss-Sister-Blog had retrieved a hot water bottle and thought the Mum-Blog had had a senior moment and filled the hot water bottle with some weird substance

Solution to the "carrot-mystery"

Ben-Blog had decided the only way he would get a pudding (which he loves) would be if his plate was clear and Swiss-Sister-Blog thought he was still hungry. Not wanting to eat the carrots but still wanting the pudding he hid the entire portion inside the hot water bottle. Which was subsequently filled with hot water and used that night.. He managed to do this undetected, unscrewing the top and screwing it back on again afterwards. You gotta love him!

Clock Chaos 3

Clocks and the Blog household have been having a bit of a rough time this year. It has got no better. Today I was packing my overnight bag for a business trip to London tomorrow. I always make a point of setting my alarm at the same time as I pack - kind of a routine I have. This routine was interrupted today.

I packed my bag as usual, three chargers, wash-bag, shirt, tie etc. Then went to the bedroom looking for an alarm clock (there are four of them in the Blog household). The blog bedroom was bereft of alarm clocks! Not one in sight: not on Mr Blog's side of the room, not on Mrs Blog's side of the room. Not unduly worried I headed for the bathroom where Mrs Blog keeps a spare alarm clock. Nothing. The same was true of the two unoccupied bedrooms. The Blogs were out of alarm clocks.

In desperation I asked Mrs Blog,

"Do you know what has happened to all the alarm clocks?"

"Yes, I put them in a drawer. They were too noisy."

I have still not found a response.

Mr Blog goes romantic and blows it

Mrs Blog and I have just returned after a three day short break in beautiful Glencoe. (Incidentally spell checker thinks Glencoe is Glycogen). I booked the trip nearly two months ago on the web and at the time though how lovely it would be to take up the hotel offer of delivering a bunch of flowers to Mrs Blog at breakfast with a card containing a personal message. This is exactly the kind of service you would expect from the TripAdvisor recommended "Glycogen Hotel".

So on Sunday night we checked in, had a fine meal, free bottle of wine and slept like babes. Breakfast came and Mr Blog completely forgot about the romantic gesture he had pre-booked for Mrs Blog. Not only completely forgot but absolutely completely forgot. The waitress came up to the table with a card and bunch of flowers and said
"for you!", to Mrs Blog
"Who on earth are these from?"
"Not me," I said, "it must be daughter-blog"
"To my lovely wife" read Mrs Blog.
"They must be for someone else" I said.
Mrs Blog, looked crestfallen.
"They are for room 101...Leeson" said the waitress.
At this point a fuzzy, hazy memory surfaced and I sheepishly admitted that I had in fact ordered them. Romance is not dead it has just slipped our minds!

Quiz night

Quiz night has featured before on this blog. It usually takes place on a Thursday and Mr Blog and his mates humiliate themselves in public at the local pub by demonstrating our collective ignorance.

Last night I phoned the home of quiz-regular Dr Computer. His daughter answered and said he was in the bath. I asked if she knew whether or not he was going to the quiz and she said "yes". Not wanting to disturb Dr Computer in the bath nor to have such a mental image in my mind, I declined her offer to speak to him. Undeterred she passed me to Mrs Dr Computer who immediately headed up the stairs with the cordless phone plugged to her ear.

Unable to dissuade her from disturbing Dr Computer and still not wanting to have such a mental image I asked her
"Do you have a plant spray?"
"Yes I do," was the reply.
"Could you get it and fill it up with very cold water for me?"
"...and squirt your husband?"

"I can do better than that" said Mrs  Dr Computer, "We have a detachable shower head on the bath!"

Ten seconds later I heard a shower head spray Dr Computer with freezing cold water. He yelled and started laughing, Mrs Dr Computer was shrieking with laughter for a full three minutes before she passed him the phone.

"Are you going to the Quiz tonight?"
"Yes but a different one. By the way my wife just sprayed me with freezing cold water!"
"Really? Which quiz are you going to?"

It turns out that he was going to a quiz organised by the Freemasons. I thought better of it, not being a member of the Masons, they probably would not tell me the answers to the questions!

University Life

Son-Blog left for St Andrews University this year and has so far stayed alive, sane, injury free and un-expelled.

Several times now, he has rung during the day to complain about the "ridiculous" level of work he has to do for his two main subjects  - Italian and French. In fact all manner of academic evil seems to have befallen him. This evil takes the form of essays, assignments, presentations, revision, tests, translations and copious amounts of reading. I have been left with the impression that Son-Blog has been working into the wee small hours every night trying to keep up with the workload and consequently feeling pretty sorry for the poor lad.

Last night I spoke to his sister...

It turns out that Son-Blog has been up into the wee small hours, however there has not been a book in sight. Son-Blog it seems, is becoming something of a legend in St Andrews. Aside from walking the streets dressed as Cruella D'Ville, he has been out partying carrying a beer sabre (several cans of beer stuck end to end with packing tape) and even found time to relocate a traffic cone to an inaccessible point on the architecture of this venerable town! (by all accounts the cone is still there).

Clock Chaos 2

I thought the Blogs were bad at setting clocks yesterday. Today I discover that Bill Gates is even worse. Mrs Blog has a laptop which is set up to "internet time" which means it should automatically update the date and time function on the machine. I should point out that this is quite an important function because all sorts of programmes stop working when the date and time are not correct.

So this morning Mrs Blog tells me that the laptop isn't working. Sure enough it is having the computer equivalent of a "hissy fit", which I trace to the inaccurate time and date setting which at 8.32 a.m. read,

"16.48 20th February 1641!"

Clock Chaos

Turning the clocks back is always a bit of a challenge in Chez-Blog. Usually it is no more of a challenge than to  make sure that
a) all the clocks are turned back, and
b) that none of the clocks are turned back twice

This year .....

I turned back my clock by my bedside before I went to bed. Mrs Blog relies on her mobile phone so she turned that back before she went to bed.(Her mobile phone automatically adjusts for daylight hour changes). Neither of us turned back the clock in the bedroom with the big red LED display that we both rely on in the dark.

At 5/6/7 a.m this morning I made Mrs Blog a cup of tea that she did not drink because it was 5.00 a.m.

at 6/7/8 a.m. this morning Mrs Blog made herself a cup of tea, I declined her kind offer because I was getting out of bed at 8.30 a.m.

At 9.00 I discovered it was 8.00 so went back to bed, where I am tempted to stay until March 2013.

Transport Problems

Having visited Bristol many times, I have always thought it a strange place.

I flew there this week on EasyJet. "Aha" you might be thinking, no wonder he called this post "Transport Problems"! But no, EasyJet worked as well as it does. In fact they quite surprised me by announcing that, having conducted a test, they were now going to move to the revolutionary new idea of allocating seats to passengers. (Not of course, because it suits us as passengers...they found out that they can get us on and off the plane faster this way)

Later that day I took a taxi to my hotel from the office. I was greeted by a cheery looking chap who introduced himself and his car,

"Hi, sorry about the dent in the door, I ran in to a lorry yesterday."

He then sat me on the inside of this huge dent so that I could contemplate the loss of effectiveness of the side impact protection system.

The following day and still in Bristol I invited a colleague out for a coffee and a chat. My preferred coffee shop is the "Refectoire" just behind the bus station. So we walked through the bus station, me looking as smart as I can in my dark suit and crisp white shirt finished off with a red pin dot tie, where I was stopped by an old lady. 

"Do you work here?" she asked.

Year of the dragon

Whilst under the influence of alcohol I once started trying to speak like some one from the Orient. Where they mispronounce their R and L sounds. It was mildly amusing or at least made mildly amusing by the alcohol.

Then more recently I was sitting on a FlyBe flight and I began to wonder what an Oriental person would sound like doing the safety briefing...It is best to have two drinks before trying to read this out loud.

"Good mawning and wehcome on bald diss FryBe fright to Blister (Bristol). Prease take your seats and prace any rarge items of hand ruggage under the seat in flont of you. Smawrer items can be praced in the ovahhead rockers.

Prease now pay attention to this impawtent safety bleefing.

Yoah seat bert fastens and unfastens as shown

There is a safety instluction reafret in the seat pocket in flont of you that shows you the clash position if you heah the words “Blace Blace!”

There are four emuhgency exits on bald, two at the flont of the prane one reft and one light and two at the leah one reft and one light. Row reveh righting wirr guide you to these exits.

In the event of sudden deplessulisation, masks rike these wirr farr from the panerrs above your head. Prace the mask over yuah nose and mouff and bleathe normarry. The mask is sekkuahed using the erastic stlaps. Prease fit your own mask befoah hepping anybuddy erse.

In the event of a randing on watah, prease take the rife vest out of the prastic covah. Prace it ovah yuah head and secuah it using the stlaps in a dubber  knot at the flont on the reft. Do not infrate the rife vest untir you are outside the prane! To infrate the rife vest paw down on the led toggah. Theah is a tube for ferver infration or defration. A right that wirr irruminate in watah and a whissuh fah attlacting attention.

Once we are in the clews we wirr commence the comprimentary dlinks sahviss

Prease sit back, lerax and enjoy this shuht fright wiv us."

Beeps

Nothing is quite so irritating in Mr Blog's life as a machine that beeps when it is trying to let you know that it has finished doing whatever it was doing. Unfortunately Mrs Blog rather likes Bosch as a manufacturer of washing machines.This has meant that for the last 14 years Mr Blog has been jumping up and running to kitchen every time the washing machine finishes to turn it off and stop it beeping. (Why Bosch think a machine needs to beep is beyond me!!)

Having found a peaceful place deep inside me I thought I would be able to cope for the rest of my days with this annoying machine.

Mrs Blog decided that our dishwasher was not as effective as it should be. I don't understand the technicalities but it was something to do with the dishes being dirty after they were washed. You are probably ahead of me at this point, Mrs Blog decided on a nice "Bosch" dishwasher as a replacement. Of course it too beeps when it has finished doing its thing.

Now I run to the kitchen when I hear the beeps and find I am faced with the 50/50/90 rule. With a choice between the dishwasher and the washing machine beeping, I have a 50/50 chance of picking the right machine first time. The 50/50/90 rule says that where you face such a choice you will make the wrong decision 90% of the time. I do.

Learning Gaelic

Inspired by the beauty of the Gaelic language on our trip to Barra I decided to take a one day course for beginners.

The venue was the Tourist Office in Aberfeldy about two hours from Chez-blog. Arriving in good time for the 10.00 a.m. start, I got there at 9.00. Apparently nothing opens in Aberfeldy before 10.00 on a Saturday so no cup of tea or coffee in sight. Settling for a bottle of water and an apple from the just opened Coop I waited till the course opened.

There were four people in the broom cupboard of the Aberfeldy tourist office when I got there. One man and three women. The man looked about mid-seventies the women slightly younger with one exception which was a white haired lady who looked just like the women you see in 100 year old photos of "Black Cottages" or Crofts.

"Matin Va",
"Matin Va",
"Matin Va",
"Matin Va",

Not wishing to look a right pillock I decided to pretend I knew what was going on...
"Matin Va"

It seemed to be the right response.

Our teacher turned up along with three other students. We were asked to introduce ourselves...
"is mishe Richard", I said when it was my turn.

I discovered that the mid-seventies bloke next to me was Roger and that he was an advanced Gaelic speaker  who had no business being on my beginners course. (You may have guessed by now that Roger and I were not destined to become best friends).

All through the day Roger and I were paired up for exercises. These were made all nigh impossible by Roger demonstrating his extensive Gaelic vocabulary and asking me questions with words we had not covered. Feeling a right pratt I sat there looking dumb all day.

All I learned was that Aberfeldy is pronounced Opperfalldie and that I really did not like Roger

At the end of the course I was so close to asking the tutor

"What is the Gaelic phrase for "Shut up or sod off Roger!"."

Catching Mice

Living where we do in the countryside of the Scottish Borders, we are occasionally troubled with wee rodents.

Based on extensive previous experience I am equipped with a "live capture" mouse-trap (which inspired me to take Mrs Blog to the play of the same name in London for our twentieth anniversary three years ago).

The live capture mouse-trap variety is compulsory in the blog-household, where Mrs Blog would do me bodily injury and possibly murder if I harmed one of God's little vermin.

So having spotted a vole making furtive trips to and from the back of the Blog-house I readied the trap with a a handful of chocolate drops. For anyone who thinks cheese is the correct bait - think again, chocolate is the choice of the pro!

Next morning I noticed that the trap had been sprung and lifted it up to establish whether the claim "live capture" was appropriate.I could not feel anything running around in the trap. My heart sank. Mrs Blog was going to kill me for accidentally killing a mouse or worse still a fluffy little vole. With a heavy heart and the weight of trepidation on me I opened the trap .....

.... and found a slug!

Trip to Barra

This month Mrs Blog and I spent a couple of days on Barra (the Hebridean island and not Barra-in-Furness).

It is about twelve miles long and four miles wide with an airport where the runway is a beach. It has an "A" road which is a single track with passing places not unlike many other Hebridean islands. Knowing that transport from the airport to the hotel might be problematic I rang the hotel beforehand to ask about my options.

"Can you tell me how best to get to the hotel from the airport please?"

(Singsongy voice ) "Aye, you could take Hector McNeil's coach service".

"Thanks. Is there a taxi service?"

"Aye, Hector McNeil runs a taxi service."

Before I could stop myself and knowing what the answer was going to be I asked again

"Is there a car rental service on the island?"

"Oh yes, Hector McNeil's car rental service."

Which left me wondering if Hector McNeil had one vehicle with three signs - taxi, car rental and coach to stick on the roof!

Nuns and Machines

Went to Church yesterday and I thought I was pretty well awake by the time I got there.

The sermon was replaced by an appeal from an Indian nun, this can be good or bad depending on whether the appeal lasts longer than the sermon would have done. I closed my eyes to look as if I was in a deep spiritual reverie and tuned in.

"We need your help with the machines", implored the nun.

I sat up, intent, wondering where this was leading. In the next five minutes I heard that we need to help the machines in India, Africa, Asia and South America. There are special machines for children. Apparently. There is even a machine which teaches poor women in India how to use a sewing machine!

Then it hit me she was actually saying "Missions" not machines, I closed my eyes and went back to looking deeply spiritual.

Sleepless Sleepers

As I had to be in London yesterday quite early I was faced with the choice of travelling down the day before and staying an hotel or taking the Caledonian Sleeper. Based on cost and time with the family I opted for the Sleeper.

Safely boarded at 11.00 p.m.on Monday night I got into my pyjamas and hit the hay. I would love to say what a great sleep I had, but I cannot, because I did not.

Despite my restless night of sleep at 5.45 the steward knocked on my door to tell me we were 25 minutes away from Watford Junction and handed me my breakfast tray. I was not quite sure why he decided to wake me and tell me this but I figured he was doing the same to everyone.

I drank the coffee, chewed on the rubber croissant and avoided the yoghurt. The steward returned and told me we had arrived at Watford Junction. I thanked him, though I don't really know why.

Knowing that Euston was about another 20 mins away I got on with shaving, still in my pyjamas. two minutes later there was another knock on the door. This time a young lady in the train steward uniform appeared and said,

"You have to get off here!"

Before I could protest she disappeared. Still in my pyjamas and with white foam all over my face I thought that getting off at Watford Junction was not really an option after all.

A minute later the original steward came back.

"You have got to get off you're holding the train up"

"Where is the train going on to?"

"London Euston!"

"Good. That's where I want to go anyway!"

If I weren't the sort to stand up for myself I wonder where I would have been at 6.30 yesterday morning...

Where not to live

The blogs love living in Peebles. We are keenly sympathetic towards those who live in the following towns identified in a survey by findmypast.co.uk as embarrassing places to live,

3rd place Brokenwind, Aberdeen

2nd place Scratchy Bottom, Devon

1st place Shitterton, Devon

Tree surgery

Last weekend son-blog had friend-blog round. Friend-blog stays here most of the time actually, so much so that his parents think he left home last year and only occasionally pops back for visits. Usually we don't see them until after 3.00 p.m. owing to the nocturnal nature of teenagers.

Last weekend was different, Friend and son-blog made a big mistake they were up at 11.00 a.m. Not just up but washed and dressed! It was too good an opportunity to miss.

"Would you guys do me a favour?"

"Sure" (At least that is what it sounded like)

"Could you cut down the bent holly tree in the corner of the drive -way?"

"Yeah OK"

To them, this seemed like one step away from the teenage dream of being let loose with a chain saw. Fortunately, I only allowed them access to an old-fashioned-manually-operated wood saw. Just as well, if the eagle-eyed Mrs Blog had not been watching out of the bedroom window....

Good old British Airways

I heard the lovely story of a BA flight. My source was upgraded to business class and sat the other side of teh aisle was a grumpy old fella who had clearly paid for his business class seat.

After take-off grumpy old fella had the cabin crew running in circles - get  me a drink, is that what you call a Bloody Mary? Try again, and so on.

After a while he calmed down. The stewardess then bourgh along the dinner menu....
"Dinner manu for you sir?" she asked.
"What are the options?" he replied gracelessly.
"Yes or No sir"

Executive Rewards

As regulars will know I travel around Britain quite a lot. It means I get to stay in many different hotels and fly with many different airlines.

Hotels and airlines are pretty keen to secure the loyalty of busy executives so they have entire teams dedicated to improving customer loyalty. At British Airways they came up with the idea of BA Miles (now Avios Miles), I have enough to get to Hong Kong and back. British Midland have their own BMI miles, I have plenty to take the family to Barbados and back. Hilton have HiltonHonors where you can get a free night or two, I have used this to take Mrs Blog to the Waldorf free of charge. Hilton also upgrade you where possible to a bigger room, great!

A couple of months ago I joined the Holiday Inn reward programme. Clearly their budgets are not as big. Last week I received my first benefit from the programme when I checked into their Bristol Filton Road Hotel, a paper bag.

I rushed up to my room to open it.

"What could it be?" I thought.

Surely something they have researched that the foot weary, tired executive will want after a long busy day....
It was a bottle of water and a Crunchie.

In case anyone from Holiday Inn is reading, could you swap the Crunchie for a bag of mint Aero Bubbles?

Blog the artist

In an idle moment I decided to create a work of art. I call it "a picture of Mr Blog on a Scottish summer day"!

Those who have followed my art work in the Tate Modern will realise it bears a remarkable similarity to my famous piece "a picture of Mr Blog on an English summer day".

Planking is back

Son-blog and I went out to the pub quiz on Thursday. I, sensibly, left after the quiz and came home. Son-blog, less sensibly, went on drinking with his friend Scobie. Rather than come home he decided to copy Scobie. One of them "Planked" on a bollard and the other on a local monument to our our local hero the Salmon (Fish, not first minister!)

Isle of Man

The Isle of Man has a pizza parlour, no real surprise there.However it is called "Stone Willy's". Can you imagine asking,
"Can I have a 12 inch Stone Willy please!"???

Plays what he wrote

Was at the local pub quiz last night, always an entertaining evening.

Sat next to myself and mate-blog Paul was a team of students, including three followers of "Drivel and Wisdom". The group included grubby-blog who was sporting a brand new pair of ears. The students were a little nervous that their poor scoring was going to be a source of embarrassment on this posting.

Lucky for them there was a team of maltezers (brown on the outside but blonde on the inside) on the other side of us.

In answer to the question "Which Shakespeare play inspired the film "Ten reasons why I hate you?"", they decided to cheat by listening in to Mr Blog and mate-blog's answer. Sadly for them they misheard and wrote
"The taming of the shoe"!!

Higgs Boson

Having now been found the elusive Higgs Boson (God particle) decided to go on a bit of a tour. He headed off to Rome where he was keen to see the Sistine Chapel. The Vatican guards refused to let him though...
The Higgs Boson pleaded,
"You have to let me in, you can't have Mass without me!"

Mistaken identity 2

Leaving Church this morning with Son-Blog, the Priest asked Son-Blog if he was Spanish. He explained that with dark hair, dark complexion it was an easy mistake to make.

"Don't worry, Son-Blog" said I. "I was mistaken for being Spanish when I was in the south of France."

"Is that cos you were slow?" says Son-Blog.

15  Love

The Hobbit

On the same trip to the Isle of Man mentioned in the last posting, I had a team meeting. One of the team, Tony-Blog, worked with me at two of my previous companies where he was often called "Frodo". This was due to him being somewhat height challenged and portly, giving more than a passing resemblance to the famous Hobbit.

Somehow it slipped out during the team meeting during an unguarded moment that this was his nick-name. He took it well acknowledging the truth.

Then he slipped up badly. he went on to tell me that his fingers are now much bigger than when he was married. As a result, he cannot wear his wedding ring on his finger anymore.

"I wear it on a chain around my neck." he confided.

"Hang on!" I said quite loudly (well, loudly enough for all the team to hear).

I continued, "You are  nick-named "Frodo" and you wear a gold ring on a chain around your neck???"

Forgotten but not gone

Following a restructure of my sales team we decided to have a "kick-off" event in the Isle of Man this week. It was worth celebrating because it was a positive restructure in which we are expanding the team instead of contracting it (which is what most Financial Services companies are doing!)

So, there we all are for the event which involves a barbecue and drinks in a lovely ittle town called Laxey. Laxey is about 20 miles from Douglas, which is where we are staying. Kindly the company put on a tram ride for everyone to get from Douglas to Laxey.

Everyone that is but me and a colleague called Kevin. By being three minutes late we were simply overlooked!

Some celebration!!!

You gotta love Cabbies

Yesterday I took a fifteen minute cab ride to the office in London from my hotel. The driver was one of those "salt of the earth" cabbies who won't stop talking.

He told me that he had a week of Americans in his cab and that they were always good for a laugh. Apparently on Monday he picked up a couple by the Tower of London who asked him why there were no lifts in the Tower. He explained that it was built before lifts were invented.

On Tuesday he did a pick-up from Heathrow and drove some more Americans to Windsor. They wanted to know why Windsor Castle was built on the flight path to Heathrow.

Finally, on Thursday, he was asked by an Amercian couple if he could drive them round London and show them where all the bombs had landed during the Blitz. I have to admire his spirit, he took them all round London showing them building sites and inventing numbers of casualties.

My apologies to all our regular Amercian readers - this is not aimed at you. Whoever these people were they clearly voted for the other side!

Windy weddings

As mentioned in earlier blogs we visited the Sussex-blogs last weekend for a wedding.

It was a pretty windy weekend, something of only passing interest to me, until I was tasked with looking after the two gazebos in the garden that were going to shelter all the guests at the reception.

The wind ripped the tapes off the side panels, moved one of the gazebos (weighted down though it was) a couple of feet into a flower bed and threatened to whip the two gazebos up into the stratoshpere. So I invented the "Gazebobrella"!

Y-fronts and Weddings

Whilst at Sussex-blogs for the wedding this weekend Yvonne-blog asked if I would put up the bunting she had bought, to decorate the garden and the gazebos, for her wedding reception. Mr Blog is always happy to help, where possible, with such DIY projects and especially as this one did not require a spirit-level, hammer drill or any degree of competence with DIY.

She duly produced two clear packets of white bunting that left Mr Blog slightly confused.

Whatever Yvonne-blog said, the bunting looked suspiciously like a pair of pants. Having never been asked by a lady to hang her pants in the garden before, I was a little apprehensive.

But Mr Blog is not one to shy away from danger or a challenge so I duly set about hanging the strings of pants as directed.

Sussex is a strange place. Everyone who attended the wedding reception thought the pants were lovely and added to the ambiance of the garden. Maybe it is because I live in Scotland, where men wear kilts (allegedly with nothing underneath) and pants are quite rare, that I am unable to appreciate the aesthetic quality of hanging your "smalls" on the fence for a wedding?

By the way - apologies for the recent loss of quality on the drawings due to son-blog completely buggering up the settings on "paint" - hopefully normal service is now resumed.

JT makes a cup of tea

After a weekend rich in blogging material, I find myself spoilt for choice as to what to write about first. (Watch out for Y-fronts and weddings!)

I decided to settle on the blog - "JT makes a cup of tea", because it is chronologically correct. JT is also known as nephew-blog, or more accurately, one of a number of nephew-blogs. He is singular as a nephew-blog, in one respect, the length of time it takes him to make a cup of tea.

Whilst staying with Sussex-Blogs this weekend, JT (don't ask me why he is called that - his initials do not tally up with JT), offered to make the blog-family a cup of tea. In the time it took to get from filling the kettle to tasting the final product, I had two birthdays, a Christmas, added four hundred grey hairs and watched the passing of seven seasons! JT is not quick at making the tea!

I have illustrated below how it might look if he ever makes himself a cup of tea first thing in the morning.

Thanks JT!

Some days finish really well

Today was my last day at work for this week as I am on holiday tomorrow. As regulars will know this has been a tiring week - starting with the Caledonian Waker on Monday night. This was added to by being on the Caledonian Waker on Tuesday night as well. (I had to fly home from Bristol to see son-blog at his prize giving evening. Back tonight after an extended trip to Basingrad/stoke and straight out to watch same son-blog triumph in the school production of Blood-Brothers.
 What a fab week - Son-Blog in the Lead at the play, son-blog winning the Maigret Cup for Languages, son-blog winning the Balfour Medal for the outstanding pupil of the year and son-blog making a superb speech at the prize-giving as his last head boy duty. On top of that daughter-blog is back form uni.

How can a week like that get any better you might ask.

It did....

My lawn-aerating shoes have turned up in the post!!!

Detective Blog

Last night I was on the Caledonian Sleeper from Edinburgh to Euston which leaves Edinburgh at 11.40 p.m. I had the luxury of a single berth despite my company's travel policy doing what it could to force me to share with some unknown Scotsman.

I settled down in bed just in time to hear the guy next door come in to his berth. I was still awake and then heard a number of sounds that prompted the part of my brain that would have wanted to be a detective to become fully alert. I deduced (Sherlock Holmes -style) the following,

• The chop was drunk or had a stomach bug as he heaved into the sink
• He had three legs because he took off three shoes
• He did not brush his teeth because the tap was never turned on
• One of his legs was made of tin and he put it in the metal waste-paper basket at 1.00 a.m.

Not a wink of sleep trying to work all that out! And tonight I am back on the Caledonian sleeper again (don't ask!).

Blog the Baker

For my birthday in April Mrs Blog gave me the wonderfully thoughtful present of a bread-making class. The date of the class was Sunday 3rd June and the two of us trogged up to Edinburgh to "Jo-Jo's Bakery and Cafe". Mrs Blog went off shopping and smiling.

I introduced myself to Jo-Jo the mad lady baker from Denmark and Welynn Garden City. She in turn introduced me to her brand new assistant Alessandra from Immola in Italy. We started with a dark bread using rye flour, spelt and four seed mix from Tesco (this is the UK shop and not a Danish Baking word).
 Jo-Jo managed to run out of baking parchment at this point which was to prove problematic later with two more loaves still to be baked.

Whilst the first loaf was proving we started on the second loaf with Alessandra. In went 500g of flour, four "turns" of the olive oil bottle and an unspecified amount of water. A "turn" is a "swoosh" where the bottle is tipped up and when the oil is flowing you make four turns round the bowl. There was no instruction so I went for clock-wise just to be safe.

Having assembled these ingredients we went for the hand mix method and started to get messy.

Now, I should "fess-up" that I have made bread before and learned, mainly from trial and error, that if you want bread and not a biscuit it is best to put yeast in.

Alessandra was warned by a fellow class-mate that there was no yeast in the mix before suggesting that now would be a good time to add it, when the dough was already formed. No easy task I can tell you.

We went on to our final loaf and used the same mix as before but with yeast in at the same time as the flour. This, we then ruined by putting sun-dried tomatoes and olives in it. Yuk!

After a coffee we then assembled our loaves and put them in to bake. Jo-Jo managed to slip and burn her hand on the oven. The lack of baking parchment meant that we went for plan B and coated the baking trays with flour, (most of which ended up on me and the rest left a yucky flour coating on the bottom of every loaf we made).

We shaped our Italian dough without the yeast into long sausage shapes that we then turned into snail shapes by rolling them up. My attempts all looked like the shape of joke dog-poo.

After four hours of trying not to laugh, I left Jo-Jo's with a bag of bread which I have no intention of eating. But all in all an excellent birthday present!

Heatwave

If you follow weather patterns in Scotland you will know that his week has been a record week for sunshine. Yes it really is sunny in Scotland. The temperature was so high over the weekend they had to issue the "Ginger Alert" (Ginger rhymes with the Scottish word minger).

Once it gets over 25 degrees C they start to melt apparently so you won't see any one with red hair up here at the moment - they are all hiding in cool places or have melted.

Mistaken Identity

Today Mrs Blog and I went for a walk by the river Tweed with Dog-Blog. It was sunny, warm and dry (clearly summer is over in Scotland cos it isn't peeing down with rain anymore!)

Dog-Blog ran and gambolled by the river, as much as she can in her advanced years. I have re posted the picture of Dog-Blog because it is relevant and important to this blog. Also I have re posted a picture of Mr Blog (Me) for the same reason.

Mrs Blog has been known to call me  "Robbie" (Son-Blog's name) and I have taken it in good heart accepting her human frailties and choosing not to make a fuss.

Today though she surpassed all reasonable behavioural norms. She mistook me for Dog-Blog!!!

Not that she chirped "Muffin" at me - oh no that would be too easy to explain....
... she actually threw a dog biscuit at me and said
"Good girl"!!

Miffed does not describe my feelings. Watch out for future posts about Ex-Mrs-Blog.