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...