What an end to the year...

Last night Mrs Blog was addressing me in conversation. She stumbled over the choice of calling me "Richard" or "Sweetheart". The result was...

"Retard"

Happy New Year!

Christmas is coming

On Friday (the 14th of December) I asked Mrs Blog if I should open the window on the advent calendar. We had agreed previously that I should open the even numbers.

"No need. I opened it," she replied.

"But it's the 14th - an even number and that should mean I open it."

"Well, you missed out yesterday."

"What?"

Sometimes life in the Bloghouse is a real struggle.

Swimming like a pro...

Recently, on the advice of my doctor, I went back to swimming. Having swum before I was aware of the unpleasantness of chlorinated water getting up my nose, in my eyes and in my ears. So I equipped myself with a Speedo nose clip, Speedo goggles and a cheap pair of ear plugs.

This afternoon I went in to the pool and swam 20 m ...like a pro! Having reached the other end of the pool, I took time to adjust my equipment and managed to shove the ear plug so far in to my right ear that it got wedged. I panicked and tried desperately, and without success, to un-wedge it.

It was so bad that I had to eat humble pie and ask the 12 year old pool attendant with the curly hair to help.

Humiliation doesn't describe it!

News!

As regulars know, I occasionally find something in The Times that needs sharing.

Yesterday they carried the story of a dog that sniffed out explosives in the army. (The dog saw active service in Afghanistan but is now retired). Our four-legged hero had been on the battlefield going ahead of the infantry, which makes his name as hazardous as the explosives he was looking for...

He was called..."Fire"

Is this Wembley?

Mr and Mrs Blog have just had one of those conversations...sitting in two different rooms...

"What time are you seeing the doctor on Wednesday?" she asked.

"Twenty past nine!" I bellowed back.

"It's alright I already have one."

"????"

(She thought I said "Do want some wine")

Don't get old!!!

Some senior moments are worse than others, far worse.

Last weekend I was getting out of a car in the dark and reached for my hat. So far so good. I put it on and then I reached for my gloves. Nothing, they were nowhere. I felt around with my hand, knowing that I had put them on the seat next to me. Nothing. Time to switch the light on! Nothing.

Then I took my hat off...and found my gloves had spent the last five minutes on my head!

 Why is life so difficult?

Online anomalies

I had an idle moment.

Ok...a very idle moment.

I found a video on You Tube entitled "How to fall asleep in two minutes".

It lasts 7 mins 24 seconds!

Back problems

As Mr Blog ages bits that used to work perfectly well suddenly stop doing so. Lately it has been the turn of my back.

The Osteopath suggested treating the problem with ice. So I did.

Having used up all the ice cubes in the tray this morning, I refilled it with water and popped it back in the freezer.

Two hours later the ice cube tray was empty.

Mrs Blog had found it and concluded that the only reason that there was water in the ice cube tray was because the freezer was broken. She diligently removed the ice cube tray, throwing away the contents and left absolutely everything else in the freezer (which she thought wasn't working).

Mission Impossible

Recently Mr and Mrs Blog were on holiday in Barcelona. Being fairly adventurous we tried out the local Metro system which uses a very similar gate-entry system to our very own London Underground.

Mrs Blog struggled a little with gate. First trying the ticket one way, then another, turned it over ...
and realised it was the keycard for room 318, Ibis Hotel.

A journey of discovery

Had a trip to Glasgow on the back roads through the countryside this week. I was trying to get there in good time for a meeting and learned the following,

• Thursday is slow lorries day
• When you overtake the slow lorries you haven't seen the last of them
• Some farmers don't keep their cattle in the fields but let them roam along the road
• I am useless at rounding up stray cattle
• Drivers of slow lorries are even worse at rounding up stray cattle
• The farmer who owns the stray cattle has a lie in on "Slow-Lorry-Thursday"
• After waking the farmer up I was behind the slow lorries again

Family visits

Recently I went to stay with the Yorkshire-blogs. It was one of those "expected visits", by which I mean they were expecting me. I knew this because we had emailed several times to that effect and I was reassured by the replies.

However, on arriving at "Chaos Towers", (home to Eschatology-sister-blog (ESB)), I discovered, unexpectedly, that I was not expected. ESB had decided to go off with Swiss-sister-blog for a day's shopping.

Bewildered-Tom-blog and nephew-Tom-blog were in the dark. Worse still, they decided after just thirty minutes in my company, that they would much rather drive 70 miles to go and watch Incredibles 2 at a distant cinema.

I found myself on my own dog-sitting for most of the evening debating with a Tibetan Terrier which of us was to blame!

Memory test

Mrs Blog and I enjoy the odd box set. We recently settled down to watch a couple of episodes of a police drama.

"Was it on Netflix or BBC IPlayer?"

"Don't remember."

"What was it called?"

"Don't remember."

We tried looking on both under the "continue watching" section. The program...

"Unforgotten."

Hard truths

In a meeting at work in Glasgow last week I was having a discussion about personal development with a financial adviser.

"They say you should stretch yourself by doing something that scares you every day," she said.

"I scare myself just by waking up!" I replied.

"...and looking in the mirror?" she added.

I waved a flag of surrender.

Measured responses

Mrs Blog has been suffering with her knees. More accurately it is just one of her knees that is causing a problem. Last Thursday she was showing me both knees and asking if I thought the left one was swollen compared to the right one.

"I'm not sure, have you tried measuring them?" I replied, rather helpfully.

"It's a bit difficult with the ruler," she said.

The value of punctuation

Earlier this week I was at Kinross Services (living the dream).

I spotted a sign on a faulty machine which read

"Out of order management"

...and thought "I could name a few of them!"

Siriously

Since I acquired an Iphone and found it can connect to my car dashboard my eyes have been opened. I can simply speak my commands to the posh English woman in the ether who then executes them...usually.

Yesterday I was showing Mrs Blog how it all worked. The phone was plugged in to the usb connection and we were ready.

"Siri, destination Crail,"I said.

"I cannot provide directions to Trail, Canada."

I tried again, adding Scotland after Crail.

"Searching for directions to Thailand."

"Siri, are you in a bad mood?"

"I am here to help you."


Back to map and compass or ...elocution lessons?

Drug mistakes

Yesterday I was in the kitchen where Mrs Blog keeps her laptop. It is a messy laptop. I noticed that her browser had a couple of open tabs and couldn't help spotting the title on one of them read,

"Rolling Your Joints"

It is hard enough to get Mrs Blog to take an aspirin so I was a little surprised at the idea of her developing a cannabis habit. However, it seems it was the title of a yoga video!

Good News

Yes, at last!!

Our windows no longer need a window cleaner on a daily basis...look!

Spotless!

"Love-lorn Larry" the Long-tailed Tit has either,

1. found a girlfriend! or,
2. got a pair of glasses

(If none of this make sense please check out earlier posts)

A hard week...

After a hard week at work, which included trips to Edinburgh. Inverness and Newcastle, I was looking forward to getting home to relax.

Little did I know!

Mrs Blog, for reasons of her own, decided to test me out by putting four of these....

In one of these...

If it is a while before the next post I hope you will understand!

Strange Veg

After a hard day driving to Carlisle and presenting on the world macro-economic situation i was a little distracted by the time I got home.

Mrs Blog was telling me about tea and I heard,

"...with twenty stone Broccoli."

Apparently I should have heard "Tender Stem Broccoli".

Mr Blog's Stiff Upper Lip

I have a stiff upper lip. To be honest I have always wanted one. Our predecessors had them and they helped them see of the Nazis in the second world war.

Sadly mine wont. It is not that sort of stiff upper lip.

Mine is the result of a mix up with Mrs Blog. She offered to pick up some shopping for me and on my list was gel. Instead of shaving gel I have now got a large tube of turbo-max-strength hair gel...and a stiff upper lip.

Long Tailed Tit

You might remember this fella. He was bashing his brains out on our windows two weeks ago. (See post "Bird Troubles". After two weeks of him not finding a mate he is still pelting our windows constantly, all day, every day! So please...

1. Does anyone have a spare female long tailed tit?
2. A solution to stop this guy needing a head injury assessment? and,
3. The name of a good window cleaner?

PS you can follow this inane drivel automatically be putting your email address in the box below

Coffee Art

I enjoy a good cup of coffee and in particular a flat white or a cortado, both of which come with coffee art. The quality of the art naturally varies according to the experience of the barista. I have seen some truly remarkable tulips and even a pumpkin over the years. Recently, however ever I was treated to a piece of art that left me speechless. It was produced by very experienced Costa-Mike-Blog and at first I thought it was the worst attempt at a tulip I had ever seen. Then he explained...

"It's a jellyfish"

Genius!

Daughter-blog rewrites the Bible

At the same dinner mentioned in the last post Daughter-blog disgraced herself and started a new religion in the same sentence. She was describing what would happen at the Easter Vigil mass that evening and said,

"There'll be a reading from the book of Gemini."

Wherein we discover that Judas was a Scorpio?



(Acknowledgement: Beth=blog)

Feeling very old

Last night I was at dinner in Edinburgh with the blog family and friends. Somehow we found ourselves talking about a pew we used to own and kept as an outdoor bench. I mentioned that in the early days of the Church, (meaning over a thousand years ago), there were no seats in Christian churches except for a handful for the infirm or the elderly.

That prompted a friend of daughter-blog, called "Lara-I-am-not-a-spy-blog" to ask,

"Do you remember those days?"

Happy Easter!

Communication problems

Last week I was in Aberdeen for a meeting with a prospective client. The client, who was from Fraserburgh, wanted to invest money for his grandchildren... or so I thought.

"Ah want to put the barbies in a trust!" he told me.

I looked blankly back.

"The micks! I want to put the micks and the barbies in a trust for the wains!" he told me again.

I carried on looking blank. Nothing in my extensive career in financial planning had prepared me for the investment of "micks and barbies" into anything.

Was this some racist slur against people from Ireland I wondered? Why could he not just give the dolls to his grandchildren without a trust? Why indeed did he have a collection of dolls in the first place? Why did he think I was an expert in dolls?

After several confusing minutes it was explained to me, by a translator, that micks and barbies were in fact money in Fraserburgh.

Bird troubles

For the last fortnight the blog-house has been under attack. Our attacker is a diminutive long-tailed tit. He has taken to headbutting the kitchen window for hours at a time all through the day. Our best efforts to dissuade him have met with no success.

Mystified by this behaviour I went on the interwebtube in search of answers. I have discovered that,

1. Long-tailed tits breed about this time in Scotland
2. The males like to chase off rivals with aggressive displays during the breeding season
3. Long tailed-tits are short-sighted

Conclusion: Our bird-brained buddy is seeing his reflection in the window and is spending all day trying to scare it off.

In case you have the same problem here is what they look like.

Another can't stop myself post

If you hated the last post then don't read this one.

Last night Mrs Blog was chatting with her friend Dibdob-blog. I overheard a snippet about someone who was brought up in a remote house halfway up a mountain. Said person came home from school one day to find that their father had removed the front door.

It was too good an opportunity to miss,

"Was he unhinged?" I asked.

Sometimes I can't stop myself...

I was talking to a financial adviser yesterday about the merits or otherwise of property investment. The adviser mentioned that he was pleased with a property he had bought which was a music studio.

Before I could stop myself I asked, "Was that a sound investment?"

A trip to Orkney

Here is what I learned on a business trip to Orkney...

• The views are rubbish in the dark
• There are no taxis at the airport
• There isn't much of an airport at the airport 
• You cannot get a taxi before 6.00 am
• The ferry leaves for Scrabster at 6.30 am
• To catch the ferry, leaving from Kirkwall, you need a taxi before 6.00 am
• Taxis are terrified of the barmaid in the Bothy bar
• When you get to Scrabster there are lots of policemen
• No-one is supposed to know why there are lots of policemen in Scrabster
• Everyone in Scrabster knows why there are lots of policemen there
• Wick is a small airport
• A two hour delay in wick airport feels like a two week delay

Bloody BA!

On a jaunt to London, BA decided to cancel my return flight due to adverse weather. 

They cancelled it more than 24 hours BEFORE the weather! I rang to remonstrate with them. 

They told me that the flight an hour before my cancelled flight was not cancelled! Nor was the one an hour after!

Either they have better forecasters than anyone else on the planet, with pinpoint accuracy of a one hour snow window or...they are hiding something. 

I have complained and will update when I get a reply, assuming it isn't held up by an icy blast or sent to Toronto by mistake.

Swimming

For fear of incurring the murderous wrath of Mrs blog, I nearly didn't write this one! (See previous post)

Mrs B went for a swim last week and on arriving at the pool, was unable to find her swimsuit. She went home to look for it. No joy. 

It turns out ... she was wearing it!!

Near death experience

Last Saturday Mrs blog pulled in to the local garage under the pretext of allowing me to buy a Costa coffee at the express machine. In order to get to the shop door I had to walk in front of the car. She took her chance and drove straight at me.

If I go silent again for an extended period with no blogs, tell the Rozzers!!!