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.