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.

Change of plans

Stayed over in Edinburgh last night and was all set for an early start to get to London this morning for a day trip to the City. The alarm went off on time and I checked out of the hotel and headed for the car park.

05.10 I was standing in disbelief looking at the NCP car park where I had left my car, it was locked up. In small print next to it there was a sign that said
"this car park is shit from 22.00 to 06.00, for access outside these hours please press the intercom."

I did want access so I pushed the intercom button.

The following conversation took place with some (I am guessing here) spotty young lad with a strong Glaswegian accent.
"Aye?"
"Hi, the car park is locked."
"Locked?"
"Yes!"
"Are you sure?"
"Yes. The doors and shutters are all padlocked."
"Its locked then!"
"Yes, I know."
"Is there a sign saying when it is open?"
"Yes it says 06.00 but I cannot wait I have a flight to catch."
Long pause...
"Do you want me to get someone to open it?"
"Yes please!"
"It will take a while. I will have to ring one of the guys and get him to drive out to the car park and open it for you!"
"By which time the car park will probably be open and my plane will have gone. Thanks but no thanks!"

I wasn't that desperate to go to London anyway.

Shaving problems

Sometimes you wake up and just know that the day is full of surprises. Today was such a day in the life Mr Blog.

I came to and realised I had slept badly, trapping a nerve or something in my right forearm. Undeterred I went down stairs and applied the "freeze spray" to the affected area, took two Ibuprofen and congratulated myself on my medical skills.

By now I was fully awake and decided to crack on and get shaved, with my now, world famous Hydro Glide 5 razor, (The one that is so big it does not fit under my nose). Somehow I must have touched the still-wet freeze spray with my left hand because when I rubbed my left eye with it, my eye went very cold and started watering profusely.

The Hydro Glide 5 is tough enough to use without blinding myself in my one good eye, the other eye lets in light but not not much else of use when shaving! For those of you who dont have a bad eye I have shown a detailed picture of what it is like.

Adults Only

I seem to be breaking all the rules on my blog this week,- corny humour, plagiarising emails and now... adult content! If you have children under 16 do not let them click on the link below. If you are 16 or over click on the link below it is to an amzon page advertising a mens hair removal product called "Veet". Once on the page click on the customer review link and read the most honest (and funniest) review ever posted.

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Veet-Men-Hair-Removal-Creme/dp/B000KKNQBK/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1335512646&sr=8-1

Thanks to Sister-in-law-Blog

For anyone who was not on the extensive email list earlier this week started by sister-in-law-blog. It made me chuckle

BY JOHN CLEESE

European Alerts

The English are feeling the pinch in relation to recent events in Libya, Egypt and Syria and have therefore raised their security level from "Miffed" to "Peeved." Soon, though, security levels may be raised yet again to "Irritated" or even "A Bit Cross."
The English have not been "A Bit Cross" since the blitz in 1940 when tea supplies nearly ran out. Terrorists have been re-categorized from "Tiresome" to "A Bloody Nuisance." The last time the British issued a "Bloody Nuisance" warning level was in 1588, when threatened by the Spanish Armada.

The Scots have raised their threat level from "Pissed Off" to "Let's get the Bastards." They don't have any other levels. This is the reason they have been used on the front line of the British army for the last 300 years.

The French government announced yesterday that it has raised its terror alert level from "Run" to "Hide." The only two higher levels in France are "Collaborate" and "Surrender." The rise was precipitated by a recent fire that destroyed France's white flag factory, effectively paralyzing the country's military capability.

Italy has increased the alert level from "Shout Loudly and Excitedly"
to "Elaborate Military Posturing." Two more levels remain:
"Ineffective Combat Operations" and "Change Sides."

The Germans have increased their alert state from "Disdainful Arrogance" to "Dress in Uniforms and Sing Marching Songs." They also have two higher levels: "Invade a Neighbour" and "Lose."

Belgians, on the other hand, are all on holiday as usual; the only threat they are worried about is NATO pulling out of Brussels .

The Spanish are all excited to see their new submarines ready to deploy. These beautifully designed subs have glass bottoms so the new Spanish navy can get a really good look at the old Spanish navy.

Australia, meanwhile, has raised its security level from "No worries"
to "She'll be alright, Mate." Two more escalation levels remain:
"Crikey! I think we'll need to cancel the Barbie this weekend!" and "The Barbie is cancelled." So far no situation has ever warranted use of the final escalation level.

-- John Cleese - British writer, actor and tall person

A final thought -“Greece is collapsing, the Iranians are getting aggressive, and Rome is in disarray. Welcome back to 430 BC”.

Corny as they come

I have tried to avoid using corny humour in this blog since I started. However, all rules were made to be broken. I was staying in the Aztec West Hotel near Bristol this week, it is a popular venue for conferences, trainins sessions, seminars and so on. On the way to my room I went past a seminar room which had a sign on the door which read,
"Asthma Training"
I thought  "That will be pants then!"

Anagrams

I have one of those brains that loves anagrams. I thought I was pretty good at coming up with them too, until this week. My employers have a subsidiary company which manages billions of pounds of investments called "Architas". If I had been any good at anagrams I would have beaten the Cheif Investment Officer to "A shit car", but alas it did not even occur to me.

Milestone!

Some time last night the clicker on this blog, which tells you how many people have read it, went through 10,000. I had no idea that drivel was so much in demand! Better keep on blogging!

A week's blog in one

Having been in the Isle of Man on business this week I have just returned to Chez-blog in the Borders and sat down to write this drivel. Sometimes, as regular followers will have spotted, things go quiet and I have nothing to blog about. This week though, that all changed.

First I was on the SAAB 340 twin prop aeroplane at Edinbugh airport getting ready to take off, as we turned on to the runway the front wheel locked and the plane (more a car with wings) slewed to the right finishing at near right angles on the runway itself. It seems there was a problem with the hydraulics. The pilot fixed it  (or thought he had) and decided to taxi back to the stand to get things checked. On the way the same thing happened again and we slewed to the right. Eventually after reaching the stand they brought the mechanics out who gave the hydraulics the once over. British Airways, BMI, even FlyBe would give passengers the option to get off at this point. Not so with Loganair who are, to air travel what the Trabant is to Formula 1 racing. I spent the whole 45 min flight on the cursed plane praying that the wheel would not lock out on landing. It didn't.

I stayed in the Claremont Hotel, my first choice of hotel in Douglas, IOM and received the usual upgrade to my room. Fantastic! Until that was about 1.00 a.m. when a water leak me with the fire alarm system. Standing on the seafront of Douglas at that hour of the morning is not fun. Tired, I got back to my room and lay down again just as every seagull from twenty miles around discovered the bag of chips somewhere out side the hotel - specifically outside my room. It took until 5.00 a.m. for the seagull fight to end , I assume either one seagull won or between them they ate all the chips. An hour later the housekeeping staff started banging the doors. End of a lousy night with three hours' sleep.

All through Thursday I was consoled in my exhaustion, by the idea that I had some good material for my blog. Then, on the drive home tonight, I tuned into Radio Scotland (a sort of Radio Two for ginger-haired people) and heard about the escaped Wallabies. There is a family zoo thingy near where we live and it had acquired two wallabies, both of which escaped by swimming across a lake. Both were recovered and are now safe and well. Even more material for the blog then....

At the end of the news they re-capped on a story about "Smurf the hamster" (feel free to google these exact words to prove the authenticity of this).

Smurf ate a toy Spiderman or rather he ate bits of a toy Spiderman. Specifically he ate the small magnet in the toy Spiderman. No-one knew until the next morning when one of the children found Smurf stuck to the metal bars of his cage 5 inches above the ground. The Franciscan in me cannot help feel sorry for poor little Smurf but the blogger in me cannot stop giggling about it.

I was only trying to help...

Having passed A Level Physics I consider myself to be at least qualified to operate a refrigerator. Daughter-blog is home from Aberdeen this week so both my swimming goggles and my Ipad are well hidden. In honour of daughter-blog's return, Mrs Blog went on a food-shopping-extravaganza, which left us with a rather full fridge. In fact there was not a spare bit of space or daylight. Remembering my Physics I recalled how all this warm food would increase the temperature of the inside of the fridge, so I turned up the dial to a maximum of "5", fully intending to turn it down again later. Otherwise we ran the risk of some of the food spoiling. Alas, old age and short term memory problems intervened and I totally forgot to adjust the dial back to "3".
This evening Mrs Blog is blaming me, probably rightly, for a frozen lump of broccoli that she reckons will rot as it thaws out. Given that I am not mad keen on any vegetable I consider it a moral victory.

Running Dedication

I was out for a run with Mate-blog this morning, just about five miles thought the Scottish hills. It was a great start to the day, I feel full of energy and high on endorphins. Better yet I got a blog out of it!

Mate -blog is running the London Marathon in two weekends and has been training madly for the last three months. He is a dedicated runner and I  have kept him anonymous to avoid embarrassing my very good mate Paul. Mate-blog is running with a foot injury and has consulted the same physio as I use (See earlier posting about getting fixed 7/2/2011) who has suggested that strapping is a bad idea - it simply moves the problem from one place to another. "Blue Tape" is apparently the remedy of choice, however, to be effective it needs clean skin to adhere to. Mate-blog is that dedicated he is off to shave one of his legs...

Blog first

This is the first time i have blogged while away on business and also the first time I have blogged using my Ipad2 made famous in a post recently.

I couldn't wait until got home to post this one because by then the middle aged anger in me might have subsided. I am away on business this week which meant leaving home in Scotland at an ungodly hour this morning. First to Bristol for a series of six meetings before getting on a train (second class ticket thanks to the expenses crackdown) to London Paddington. A full hour and forty five minutes of screaming two year olds. Finally I get to where I am staying for the next two nights. Another first, an apartment. having never stayed in one before I checked the website to make sure it was ok. There were pictures of huge penthouses and whilst not a hotel I thought "no problem, I can make shall sacrifices for the company and find somewhere to eat dinner and breakfast."

Having just checked in, after walking up three flights of stairs with my luggage, I am sitting in what I am told is an upgraded room from the one I booked. Suffice it so say that I am off to tour the streets of the east end to purchase a dead cat to prove a point.

Never again!

Best of intetntions...

The weekend was pretty busy with loads of little chores and a few big ones like tidying up the garden. Nonetheless, I found time to take Mrs Blog's car to the local garage for a vacuum and a wash (Not any old wash but a hot, waxy, foamy, fragrant wash and blow dry!). Unfortunately the dryer did not work but I resisted the temptation to "to go off on one" and accepted it as one of life's little trials.

All was good in our house until five minutes ago when Mrs Blog suggested a walk by the river with the dog. She took the car keys, bundled the dog in the car (relegating me to the back seat). Then said,
"Where are the ""L"" plates?"
After discounting the possibility of theft, even though they were magnetic and easily pilfered, we live in area of nearly no crime. I then realised that magnetic "L" plates are probably not car-wash-proof.

You could not make this up

Reading the Sunday Times yesterday, my eye was caught by a news story written by James Gillespie. It appears there was a shooting tournament recently in Kuwait which was won by Maria Dmitrienko last Thursday. There has been a diplomatic incident as a result of the national anthem played at the medal ceremony.

Maria D is from Kazhakstan and someone, it seems, decided to play Sacha Baron Cohen's version of the anthem made famous in his film "Borat". After the first few notes the words "...all other countries are run by little girls" were clearly heard. The tune Borat used was the American National anthem. The lyrics continued, "Kazakhstan's prostitutes are the cleanest in the region" and "No1 exporter of potassium." My particular favourite line was about the Tinshein swimming pool with "filtration system a marvel to behold. It remove 80% of human solid waste."

Maria D carried it off with a baffled look on her face. ~Two Kazhak officials including the foreign minister have demanded that the medal ceremony be re-run. (No sense of humour -they did of course ban Borat the movie in 2006 - a ban which is still in place)

Should they complain? Well earlier this month, the journalist tells us, there was a ski-ing competition in Northern Kazakhstan, where rather than playing the national anthem the officials played "Livin' la Vida Loca" by Ricky Martin instead!

Daughter-Blog turns to hacking

Daughter-blog returned from Aberdeen University recently to spend some time with us. She was as welcome as ever. I ignored the two sets of swimming goggles she stole from me so that she could chop onions without tears (see earlier posting), and made her feel right at home.So I showedher my new Ipad 2 (supplied by my company) and taught her how to play Temple Run , which she loved even though her best run was 3.5 metres.

I turned my back for five minutes and she decided to have another go on Temple Run to see if she could get to 4 metres. The problem was that my Ipad had locked itself and needed a six digit numerical pass code. Undeterred Daughter-Blog decided she could use her university education to hack the pass code, although quite how a degree in linguistics equips you to be a hacker is beyond me. She decided to use the tried and trusted hacker's favourite of entering random six digit numbers until the Ipad got suspicious and locked itself.

To resuscitate the Ipad required me to plug it into ITunes which I did. My Ipad kicked back into life almost immediately unfortunately the memory (all my work documents) and all the applications were gone.

Shaving Technology

Having used a Gillette Mach 3 (with three blades for an even closer shave) for the last ten years I noticed that the already exorbitant cost of new blades was more than buying the same number of blades AND a new razor!

I switched there and then to a new Wilkinson Sword Hydro 5 with hyper glide lubri-strip and flip-top technology (and five, yes five, blades for an even closer closer shave). Then it occurred to me -
"Where will razors be when Son-Blog gets to my age?"

The new Gillette 532  Macho-Mach Turbo with petrol engine, lubri strips, self-cleaning, four wheel drive, 999 BHP?

As it is I cannot get the bloody Hydro 5 under my nose and so I am going to end up with a moustache I don't want which kind of defeats the whole purpose of buying the damn razor in the first place!

Glad I got that off my chest.

Blog the baker

A while ago I tried to surprise Mrs Blog with a birthday cake for her fortieth birthday. The "surprise" was that I was going to bake it while she was away visiting relatives one weekend, whilst I looked after son and daughter-blog.

Having never baked a cake before and faced with an Aga rather than a normal cooker it was no easy task. In fact it was so difficult a task that I spent all weekend baking. It involved three trips to the shops to buy extra ingredients, sixteen separate Victoria sponges (none of them edible) and no small amount of trooper-style language. The first batch was raw in the middle and burned to charcoal on the outside, then next just as bad. I rang a friend who has an Aga and asked for help (the equivalent of me stopping to ask for directions when driving). Friend-blog advised that I should use the "cooling shelf" to prevent the oven getting too hot. After several more failed attempts I rang back to find out that the cooling shelf should go above the cake not below it.

Finally I cracked it late on Sunday afternoon, with a swing-bin full of eggs, raw sponge, blackened sponge, butter wrappers, empty sugar and flour bags, I turned out two usable (if not perfect) sponges. I placed them on the, hitherto unused, rack to cool. I returned and applied butter icing and put candles on the top.

No-one had told me to turn the sponges over when they cool so that you have a flat surface when sponge meets sponge in the classic Victoria Sponge recipe. So...when I went back in to the kitchen I witnessed the effect of this oversight in the form of the top sponge having fallen on the floor having slid down through the icing like a skier on a hill.

One more trip to the shops and I bought a bloody cake.

This year though, I have progressed as a baker and can turn out decent scones, bread,croissants, focaccia... So, emboldened I tried again to make Mrs Blog a birthday cake.

Here it is...

First time as well - no mistakes, no burned bits, light and fluffy and cooked through. I ensured that I put the flat sides up and finished with coffee butter icing, champagne bottle-shaped candles, chocolate sprinkles and piped icing saying "Happy Birthday!" All done in an hour and a bit. Success!!!
To say I was chuffed was an understatement. how could Mrs Blog fail to be impressed??

Then she got home from her job in the local cafe which is owned by one Ruth Hinks. Known to me now as the "Evil Ruth Hinks". Ruth , you see is a patisserie chef, worse an award-winning patisserie chef, worse still the winner of the award for "Confectioner of the year 2011" in the UK. She gave Mrs Blog a birthday cake as well, here it is...

Some times you cannot win.

Einstein is right

A few weeks ago the researchers at the CERN laboratory announced results of an experiment (part of the search for the Higgs Bosun - a type of knot I think) which could have blown apart Einstein's theory that the speed of light was a maximum speed in the cosmos.

They had carried out a series of experiments in the LHC (Large Hadron Collider), which cost over £6 billion to build, and discovered that a neutrino (very small atomic type thing) went 60 nanoseconds faster than it should have done. The news dominated the front pages of the world press for a few days.

Today it is reported that the scientists have discovered that these earth-shattering results were in fact an error caused by wiring anomalies!

But better still was the quote from the head of research at CERN, an Italian, called Sergio Bertolucci who was quoted recently on the earlier discovery,

"I have difficultly to believe it, because nothing in Italy arrives ahead of time."

It prompted my latest masterpiece

Happy Anniversary

Unbelievably this blog is over one year old. Here are the stats,

• 8,600 hits
• Total earnings (which is why I started writing this nonsense) 4.51 pence/£0.0451
• Top three blogs by popularity "Extreme Haircuts", "George and Me" and "Hello Iran".
• 37 Comments of which my favourite so far is in reply to "oops" (16/1/2012) where sister-in-law Blog confessed to getting angry with her local bank and said on the phone to them "I bark an Bankleys!!"
• Top five countries UK, France, US, Germany and Russia

As I have not yet made my fortune and inflation has eroded the value of 4.51p I have earned I will have to keep on writing this drivel!!

Back again!

Dr Computer is concerned that I have not been blogging lately and he is right to voice his concerns. The truth is I have had nothing to blog about. I am indebted to the London Times for the inspiration for today's posting.

They carried a headline on the front page today which read...

"Women pushed into extra breast surgery"

In my head this translated as...

Dog-Blog on death's door

Mrs Blog and I went for a swim today and got back at about 5.10 p.m. The only significance of this is that it was ten minutes after Dog-Blog is usually fed and Dog-Blog is a creature of habit with an uncannily accurate stomach-clock.

Mrs Blog duly filled her metal bowl with the required amount of food; dog-Blog ate only two thirds of it. As Dog Blog has not been well of late both Mrs Blog and I were very concerned that this might indicate her imminent departure from this mortal coil. Especially as she would normally eat all her tea in a mere three seconds and still be looking for more.

We gave her an extra dose of  her painkiller to see if that would help - all wrapped up in a handful of smoked salmon. She struggled bravely and swallowed it. But still she lay by her bowl looking none too well.

"This is the beginning of the end" I thought but kept it to myself.

......."Muffin where did you get all that food from?" said Son-Blog.

"What!?" I said.

"I fed her half an hour ago." replied Son-Blog.

Now we know what is wrong with Dog-Blog...

....the starvation diet starts tomorrow!!

Oops!

Five minutes ago I got back from Sainsburys having assisted Mrs Blog with the weekly food shop. She asked me to take the shopping (very heavy shopping) bags in to the house and intended to say

"You are my Knight in shining armour."

Instead of which the ghost of either Dr Spooner or Dr Freud intervened and she actually said,

"You are my shite in nining armour."!!!

Mistaken Identity

Sister-in-law-blog was just on Skype. She had been chatting to Mrs Blog (Her sister) when I arrived home from the swimming pool. Always open for a chat I stood behind Mrs Blog and waved and said "Hello".

"Hello Aunty!" says sister-in-law-blog.

"Followed up with,

"Sorry Robbie!"

Robbie is Son-blog and, much as we are alike in height, build and hair colour, he has a distinguishing feature which I do not.

Mrs Blog has a clear out

Every year, just after Christmas, Mrs Blog has a clear out. The aim is to get rid of all the junk - particularly old clothes, to make way for the new ones we all got for Christmas. This year she was like a Dervish. She whirled around the cottage and before I could say "hang on a minute!", she had finished.

I now have a sock drawer with no socks, a pants drawer with no pants and a running-kit-drawer with no running kit left in it! If there are no more posts on this site it will be for one of two reasons,
1 I have been arrested for disturbing the peace by running naked in the hills.
2 Mrs Blog has cleared out the computer to make way for some jumpers.

More Swiss Cooker Problems

Nephew  Ben-Blog found fame in November last year with his cooker antics ( I have pasted the post below as a reminder).

I learned from an email from Sister-Blog that he has done it again! This time he snuck into the kitchen unnoticed and turned the hob on again. The cable from the electric mixer was lying over the hob. Ben-blog snuck back into the lounge to watch CBeebies as innocent as a lamb. First thing Sister-blog knew was when there was aloud bang and the smell of burning. Cherubic Ben-blog carried on watching TV  and clearly my sister has not learned her lesson from the previous incident! (see below)


Having been struggling all weekend to find a subject for a blog I was gifted the following by a skype to call to younger-sister-blog who lives in Switzerland.

She has three children, the youngest of which is Ben, who is not yet two years old. She runs a catering business from home and as a consequence makes extensive use of her cooker. Young Ben decided to sit on the open oven door, mistaking it for a chair and ...broke it!



With the oven door duly repaired she set about baking the cakes. Ben-blog realised he could reach the temperature dial and turned the setting up from 175 to 275C and from oven setting to gill setting. Fortunately sister-blog intervened in time.

Not to be out-done. budding Masterchef contestant Ben-blog, spotted the dials for the hob and turned it on. First thing sister blog knew was the smell of her cookery book, which was resting on the hob, giving off faint burning smells.

So, not even two years old and he is cooking the books! His Mum, sister blog is of course a Chartered Management Accountant!!

Coffee

A very good mate came round yesterday. I made him a coffee using Mrs Blog's very best ground coffee (remember she is a barista!). After one sip my friend asked what sort of coffee it was.
"Finest Kenyan", I replied.
"Where is it from?"
......"Kenya."

Mrs Blog needs new glasses

Alas Mrs Blog might be in need of new glasses. She was trying to read the TV schedule on the screen yesterday and noticed two films - "The Git" and "Chocolate Dundee" rather than True Grit and Crocodile Dundee.

Goodbye 2011

Unusually in our house we stayed up to see in the New Year last night. Well, it was more to make sure the old year left really. At the time I decided to do this it seemed like a good idea. That was before Mrs Blog decided to get in on the act.

"Right" she said, "We are going to do this properly."

She then looked up "First-footing" on the internet. This is an ancient custom celebrated in Scotland and Northern England designed to bring good luck to the household. It should involve a dark haired man knocking on your door just after midnight bringing coal, food, whisky and some money. In most parts of Scotland it is now more an excuse to gate-crash your neighbour's party.

No such luck in my life though! Without going into details our First Footing ended up with

"Oh no it is after midnight and you should be outside already!" from Mrs Blog.

She then pushed me out the back door in my dressing gown and her "crocs" plastic slippers (size 4 and I am size 7). I then ran round the house in the dark to the front door. Halfway round I discover the neighbours opposite are doing the same thing and I nearly dropped the plate Mrs Blog had shoved into my hand holding coal, shortbread, a pound coin and tumbler of scotch.

I then had to employ all the fieldcraft techniques I learned in the army cadets  thirty years ago to get past the neighbours without being seen and back into my own house!

Mrs Blog demonstrated her sympathy for predicament by doubling over laughing at me. Happy Bloody New Year!

Merry Christmas!

Christmas has started

The tree is trimmed, the decorations are up and the food and booze has all been bought. The Blogs are ready for Christmas 2011.  Daughter Blog returned home from Aberdeen today so the family is back together - what could possibly spoil things?

In my "double-dip recession worried frame of mind" I spotted the introduction of Sainsnbury's finest "own label"wine earlier in the year. It is actually a pretty good value bottle of plonk, whether you go for the Shiraz or the Cabernet Sauvignon etc. So earlier this week when I saw they had brought out wine-boxes of the stuff I was in heaven! Two and a quarter litres of drinkable wine at a bargain price. For added value when you have drunk the wine you can take the silver bag out of the box, this is the bit that actually holds the wine, and blow it up to make a make-shift pillow. (This handy tip cones from living in Scotland and listening to local wisdom.)

I have been patting myself on the back for my vigilance in spotting this ace bargain all week.

Just ten minutes ago I opened the box of wine; (no small feat of engineering). It tasted like it should have been sprinkled on chips!!

As you can see Mrs Blog and Daughter Blog had the same reaction as me. Our one remaining hope is that Son-Blog will find a liking for it, failing which I will be drinking it all myself - can't waste booze! So if you are touring through the Borders of Scotland this week and see a middle-aged grump asleep on a silver pillow - it is me!

Advent Calendars

Mrs Blog works at a local coffee shop which also sells some of the finest chocolates in the world.  She splashed out with her hard won wages on an advent calendar purveyed by her employer. It is a series of boxes shaped like a Christmas tree. Each little box contains one of the world's finest chocolates.

With three of us in the house we take it in turns to open the calendar. I waited expectantly as Son Blog took the first one - a Latte Truffle. Then Mrs Blog discovered a soft Caramel. I could hardly wait for my turn. So on the appointed day I opened the box and bit into what I can only describe as a Cauliflower Truffle. Disgusting! I wonder if it some attempt to imitate Bertie Bott's Every Flavour Bean???

Xmas Trees

Today was the annual trip out to buy a Christmas tree.

To get us in the spirit Daughter-blog sang,
"O Christmas tree, O Christmas tree, your ornaments are history"

Then we spent a good twenty minutes in the rain (freshly arrived from Southampton) choosing the one good tree from a pretty sorry bunch. As is our tradition, we went for an eight foot tree to fit in our 6'6" high lounge. Also in keeping with tradition we gave absolutely no thought as to how we were going to get the damn thing in the car.

Fifteen minutes of pushing, shoving, swearing under breath and it finally made it (albeit with one end sticking out of the window.

Totally stressed we get the tree home without being arrested for driving with a dangerous load.

Then the dog-blog decides to have a mad spell and ran straight through the fairy lights we were half-way through putting on the tree.

The day was only saved by a trip to the coffee shop with daughter blog. There we met a neighbour who has a three year old daughter called Freya.
"What does she want for Christmas?" we asked.
"A Blue Cat!!!"
My troubles suddenly did not seem so bad!

The Spite Goblin works for FlyBe

So, a week ago I write a blog about the complete injustice of the FlyBe "rewards for all programme" and have the misfortune to fly with them again this week. In doing so I discover that the Spite Goblin (referred to in the very first post) actually is employed by them. The SG takes revenge against me, usually for things I have done wrong. This time I am innocent and can only conclude the SG is in the paid employ of Jim French the CEO of FlyBe.

Here is the tale. I arrived at Edinburgh airport yesterday morning for the 7.05 a.m. flight to Southampton. My plan was to have a day trip to Basingstoke, returning on the 18.35 flight that evening.

The 7.05 took off late and arrived twenty minutes behind schedule owing to the fact that the ground staff who work for FlyBe cannot count. The delay was entirely down to them waiting for a passenger which did not exist as a result of a sums-mistake. Nonetheless I get to the meeting in time, do all I have to do in Basingstoke and head off at about 16.00 to get back to Southampton.

The information board in the executive lounge said "Edinburgh Flight 773 - Relax and Wait" - this was at about 17.00. It also said exactly the same for the previous two flights. As I showed my boarding pass to the girl in the lounge she reminded me "We don't make announcements, please watch the board". No need to make announcements when the 14.35, 16.40 have not even taken off yet!

I wait and watch the information board steadily ratchet up lie after lie, saying "Next announcement in half an hour" again and again. Now to be fair there was the small issue of a hurricane passing through Scotland that afternoon.

Eventually they announce the earlier two flights are combined and taking off at 20.00, then they call my flight and said hurry to gate 8 - it is about to board. So hurricane over!

The earlier two flights duly board and take off - with fewer passengers than the plane can hold - I know I heard the girl at the despatch gate refer to it (this one could count!)

Then at 20.15 they cancel my flight due to adverse weather at Edinburgh!! having already cancelled the later flight this meant no way of getting home.

I legged it to the ticket desk where a surly mare ask me what I want. I explain that I am now stranded and cannot get home. She books me on the 12.40 the following day and expected me to wander off.

"I have nowhere to stay tonight and no luggage, what am I supposed to do?"

"Here is a list of hotels you can ring"

"Can I claim the costs back?"

"You can try! Next!"

I then hustled out side to where I knew there was a "Premier Inn" a five minute walk away, through it must be said, some pretty adverse rain with no umbrella.

Merry Christmas signs greet me as I go in bedraggled and thoroughly miffed. And in true Christmas tradition there was no room at the Inn!!!

A sleepless night in the sister hotel in Southampton centre next to the rail freight yard, which works noisily all night long, made a truly bad day turn into a truly awful night. Finally get home a full twenty fours later and felt compelled to update my blog.

If anyone reading this works for FlyBe please let them know I am happy to offer training on maths, customer service, communication skills, time-management and how to make announcements at airports, all at an exorbitant price of course!

Swiss Cooker Problems

Having been struggling all weekend to find a subject for a blog I was gifted the following by a skype to call to younger-sister-blog who lives in Switzerland.

She has three children, the youngest of which is Ben, who is not yet two years old. She runs a catering business from home and as a consequence makes extensive use of her cooker. Young Ben decided to sit on the ope oven door, mistaking it for a chair and ...broke it!

This left sister-blog with no means of finishing her cakes until the repair man turned up four days later.

With the oven door duly repaired she set about baking the cakes. Ben-blog realised he could reach the temperature dial and turned the setting up from 175 to 275C and from oven setting to gill setting. Fortunately sister-blog intervened in time.

Not to be out-done. budding Masterchef contestant Ben-blog, spotted the dials for the hob and turned it on. First thing sister blog knew was the smell of her cookery book, which was resting on the hob, giving off faint burning smells.

So, not even two years old and he is cooking the books! His Mum, sister blog is of course a Chartered Management Accountant!!