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!