Confessions of a Legal Beagle

So long, farewell, Auf Wiedersein, adieu..

2009-08-30T18:02:00.000-07:00

Well, after some deliberation and soul-searching, I have made a decision that, to be honest, has been coming for some time. Everything has its time and its place, and unfortunately, this blog has had its time and its place, and so, after almost 3 years, 119 posts, 88,464 words, and a whole lot of fun along the way, I've decided to end my blogging days.

Its not a decision I have taken lightly, however to tell you the truth, its become more of a chore than a hobby, and thats always a bad sign.

I've had fun doing it, and I hope you have gained some form of entertainment reading it too. We've gone through some of the strangest and brilliant moments of my life, from my pretty horrific operation, bad job interviews, poor Villa results, and a failed relationship, to passing exams, getting a great job, watching the Villa in Hamburg, and going on the greatest holiday I have ever been on, I think its fair to say I've took you to heaven and hell, and its been a fun journey.

Obviously, this news is going to make big headlines. The internet will suffer as a result, as people just won't know what to do with themselves, without hearing my pearls of wisdom every time they log on the site, but I have full faith in humanity, that they will find a way around this devastating news and move on with their lives, just as I am doing.

I will leave the site open for a few weeks, if not to have a last bit of banter with the banal Andy Pearce (oh, how I will miss those hypocritical jibes at my character), or even the lovely people in my office, who get so bored at work, that they feel the need to beat their heads against the keyboard until words appear on my shoutbox, but for all the fans that just want to write down some of my classic yatterings, so they may take a piece of me with them on their life journey!

Anyway, thats about it from me. Like I said, it has been a great experience for me, but life moves on, and unfortunately for me, that doesn't involve this blog. However I thank all my thousands of visitors and fans for their continued support. Who knows, maybe The Beagle will turn up on some other medium......Radio?.......TV maybe?

For one last time, TTFN!

The Stag Party

2009-08-08T17:28:00.000-07:00

During my absence from this comforting corner of cyberspace, there has been a wedding in our little group. Yes, the brave young souls of Jenny and Marcus have tied the knot, but that is to be dealt with in a later post, as, first up, we have the ritual stag party, and all the fun of the fair!

It was my first stag party, and so I didn't really know what to expect, which I always think is the best way to deal with any new situation you find yourself in. So, a few weeks ago, me, Gareth (you remember him, beardy bloke, used to write stuff on a site just like this one, only a little bit more about him), Adam, Carl and John all piled into Gareths car and toddled up to Liverpool for the weekend of fun, frivolity and....well anything else we could get away with!

First on the agenda was clay pigeon shooting in chester. Now, having never been the sort of chap to shoot any kind of clay ornaments, I've only got my Dad's experiences to go on, when he used to go on these kind of expeditions, pre-health and safety (yes, before those yellow jacketted people stole our youth and happiness!), and he used to come home black and blue, as the shotguns they used were alot heavier than our modern equivalent. So it was fair to say I was expecting at least a dislocated shoulder and a fair amount of bruising!

As it was, I got neither (which wasn't meant to sound disappointing!), but instead found a tendency to smash Granny's plates as they came hurtling through the air, which is always something to be proud of, unless you happen to be reading this, recruiting for the front line, in which case I didn't hit a single thing, then lost sight in one eye! We were split into two teams, which almost always means I end up on the losing team, which was no different here, however we all found comfort in the thought that, as Marcus was on the winning team, they obviously cheated their way to the title, which is probably not true, but we'll stick to our story eh!

From there, we all jumped back into our cars, and headed into Liverpool, Marcus now complete with varying bits of stag party paraphernalia, fake boobs, top hat, blow-up doll, ball and chain and t-shirt expertly made by Gareth and John, and the rest of us just glad it hadn't peed down on us while we were doing the more manual of our excursions of the weekend.

Now, having been a 'southern softie' and proud of it for these last 27 years, and having never been to Liverpool, and allowing the wonderfully 'truthful' media rule my thoughts on the area, I had imagined Liverpool to be some wasteland, run by some Mad Max-style vigilantes driving Vauxhall Nova's, stealing hubcaps whilst wearing shellsuits and saying 'Ay Ay Ay' alot, but to my happy amazement, the city itself is a fantastic city to visit. I never expected there to be such a mix of old and modern buildings, and certainly didn't expect there to be such a massive entertainment district, with more bars than you could shake a drunk stag at.

Our hotel, if you could call it that, was, unfortunately a big minus point. I'm not sure exactly how to describe it, other than the fact that it constantly reminded me of one of those dirty american motels, where hundreds of people either kill themselves or each other, each year! For some reason, the walls were painted using paint that had clearly missed the paint chart by a good few feet, and instead just shouted colours at you as you walked down the corridors. Not to mention the toilets that were straight out of a japanese bullet train, plastic from floor to ceiling, and no room to swing an imaginary cat, yet alone anything else. Having said that, it was a cheap place to lay your head, so long as you intended to have a good wash when you got home!

So, onto the evening entertainment, and after going to an amazing indian restaraunt, and making Marcus eat a chilli, which blew his head off, we headed into the city centre, and visited various bars, only stopping to have our photos taken with various hen parties touring the city. We ended up going into the Cavern Club, which I've always wanted to do, although the real Cavern Club is closed now, due to those lovely people in health and safety (I mean, who REALLY needs a fire exit nowadays!). We wanted to see a band playing in the club, but not seeing one in the main room, yours truly spotted an annexe and a bouncer, which usually means there is a VIP section and/or a private party. So, after sweet-talking the bouncer, I managed to get us into the private party next door, so we could watch the show, which was a part-stage production/part-60's music festival show, which was really good.

From there, we ventured onto the main event of the evening. Now, it wasn't quite up to the Peppermint Hippo standards that some of us may be used to (mentioning no names!), but it was good fun, especially watching as Marcus went through his ritual humiliation, live on stage....which is all I shall say on the internet!!

After that, we finished the night off in another bar, then headed back in the rain to our hotel/motel/murder-tel, which wasn't too far away, although it seemed like miles in the pouring rain!

In the morning, we dragged ourselves up and out to get some breakfast from the Docks, which was really nice, then Marcus wanted to go for a wander, which was when our stag party went a little.....differently.

Marcus loves his big organs..........especially the biggest one in Liverpool Cathedral, so we all trundled up there and had a wander round the place, which is absoutely spectacular, and well worth a visit. The organ itself is a magnificent piece of manufacturing, but I won't bore you with the details, as it is stupid 'o' clock in the morning while I'm writing this and I am pretty tired, but thanks to Gareth we got a chance to have a look 'backstage' at all the workings of the machinery, which was really interesting.

Not to be outdone, we then went and had a look at the modern Metropolitan Cathedral, which is fascinating, mainly as it is a modern Cathedral, but also as, when we went in there, they were holding a choral practice, so it was very ethereal and stunning really.

From there, and safe in the knowledge that we were probably the first stag party to end up in 2 cathedrals on the same day, we headed back to the cars, and went on our merry way, back to normality, and ready for the wedding of the year!

TTFN!

Never fear, the Beagle is still here!

2009-08-01T17:44:00.000-07:00

Ok, so maybe I haven't been updating this as often as I would have liked......ok I haven't updated it AT ALL for well over a month, and for that I apologise.

I could explain away the reasons for not updating it, citing lack of material, lack of time etc, but that would be a little bit of a fib. Truth is, I've had a very busy time of late, packed full of material, and odd little thoughts that would have left you as confused and enthralled as you usually do when you click onto my little site, and I have had bits of time scattered here and there to update this section of cyberspace, but truth be told, I've not made the effort, which is a shame really.

Over the next few weeks, however, I shall bring you bang up to date with my fun little existence on this odd little planet, and bring a bit of freshness to this page. I might even do a spot of decorating while I'm at it too, just to brighten up the place.

I think I was starting to get stuck in a bit of a routine, making this old blog a bit of a chore, which it shouldn't be, and this may be the alcohol talking, but I think we all need a bit of a revamp every now and then, and thats exactly what I've got in mind.

I may get political, I may comment on a vacuous celebrity or two, I may even discuss science, nature and the crazy world we live in. I may even go mad and talk about myself a bit, although that may be going a bit too far. Point is, this site is in need of a revamp, and we don't need another John's blog, or.....dare I say it.....Gareth's blog?

Think of it as my biggest mission yet!

Field Report: 'Project Anti-Wrinkle'

2009-06-23T14:47:00.000-07:00

I have returned with news from the South Coast, sir. Having spent one week exploring the whole of East Sussex, and a little bit of West Sussex (Brighton was too much of a temptation), I have news of a war that has broken out to claim the seaside resort of Eastbourne back from the stereotypical wrinklies.

As you are aware, I departed my secret location the day after receiving my orders, travelling the 173 miles to Eastbourne, getting there mid-afternoon for my meeting with the contact, who handed over the keys to the apartment overlooking the sea (great views, might I just add, own private beach, you do spoil me!).

The apartment itself is 2 miles outside the centre of Eastbourne, and was purposely built, very much like Dickens Heath, a self-sufficient town within a town, with its own marina, shops, restaraunts etc. The main thing I learned over and over again this week was that Eastbourne is the sunniest part of the UK, FACT. It gets more sun per year than any other place in the country, which is due to its location, the fact that it is protected by cliffs, so it rarely gets bad weather. This is probably why alot of elderly or retired people go to live there, as its such a seemingly pleasant place to live, which it is.

However as I said, there is a war breaking out over the town, between the young and old generations of this great nation. We stayed in Sovereign Harbour, which is very much geared towards the younger, family market, and people who commute into London every day to work. It is also attracting quite an affluent population, with the marina purposely built for large yachts and powerboats, some of which were simply stunning. The fact that we spotted dozens of expensive cars from Monaco and Marbella proves that point.

The elderly residents tend to stay in the centre of Eastbourne, and this is where the battle takes place. These residents are fairly stuck in their ways and like Eastbourne as it used to be back in the 70's and 80's heyday, and unfortunately to this end, thats where alot of Eastbourne has stayed. To be fair they have tried to modernise the town, with a few new shopping arcades dotted around to bring a bit of life back to the place, but unfortunately this has not livened it up as much as Brighton has done so magnificently. There is a ray of hope, however, in the form of some surprising comrades. Chavs have descended on Eastbourne, for the 'cheap'n'cheerful' resort it is, and as much as we all want to use them for an alternative to fossil fuels, they do serve a bigger, better purpose, with their giros at the ready.

This band of low-grade citizen bring the need for the town to provide some slightly better, and 'easy' shops, such as the Primark, TJ Hughes and Wilkinsons of the world, which they have done quite easily, meaning there is now an incentive for people to come into the town centre, and see what else the town has to offer. There are just enough decent shops to keep them here for a couple of hours as well, and of course as money breeds money, the fact that people have been lured into the town to spend at the above stores, means other stores get their custom too, which of course brings in more people as word of mouth spreads like swine flu!

So, the battle lines have been drawn, and its pretty even at the moment, the chavs have brought a younger, fresher feel to the place, but it is a tired town, most notably at Eastbourne's pier, which is currently up for sale for the sum of £5m.

In other parts of East Sussex, seaside resorts are getting the right idea, although some places (St Leonards on Sea and Hastings) could do with a major investment to get the young crowds back. One of the best seaside resorts, apart from Brighton which just blew me away as it should probably be renamed London-on-Sea as alot of it is like walking down oxford street or covent garden, is the beautiful resort of Bexhill, with its famous De La Warr Pavilion, which was built in 1935 and is an amazing piece of post-modernist architecture. Bexhill is alot smaller than Eastbourne, but has a really good mix of old and new shops, and is the self-confessed home of motor racing.

Going inland, there is an eclectic mix of wonderful English country village life, one of which, Alfriston is very picture-postcard and well worth the visit. Also in this category, and possible favourite village must go to Rye, which, as those of you of an 80's persuasion may be aware, was the setting for the legendary Mapp & Lucia TV series, which starred three legends of British TV, Nigel Hawthorne, Prunella Scales and Geraldine McEwan. If you've never watched it, nor heard of it, think of it as a more tongue-in-cheek version of Jeeves & Wooster. Anyway, the books were written by E F Benson, who was the Mayor of the village while he was writing them, and its still as picture-postcard perfect as it was back in his time as mayor, although I have to admit wandering the streets in awe of the fact that the houses in the TV series are exactly the same now as they were then!

As experiences go, the highlight of the mission had to be the visit to Battle, where of course the battle of Hastings was fought. We went around the battlefield with an audio tour, which was just amazing, even though alot of the land was 'stacked' in the years after the battle in order for the Abbey to be built on the hill next to the castle. Most of it, though, is untouched from 1066, and as you walk round the fields, you get an amazing sense of what took place, and a definitive reason to laugh at the BNP and its 'morals' even more!

Beachy Head was also on the tour of the region, and was a big disappointment. I went on the day of the funeral for that couple that jumped to their deaths recently, and looking at where they jumped off, health and safety would have a field day, as all that comes between you and a few hundred feet drop to the rocks below, is a small brown sign, with a hand written note saying 'cliff edge'. I kid you not!

The village itself, like most villages I saw, kept both young and old happy with its mix of shops, pubs and restaraunts, and it for this reason, and the fact that Sovereign Harbour is expanding at the rate of knots (my one maritime joke of the day!), which leads me to conclude that in the coming years, Eastbourne will be dragged kicking and screaming into the 21st century, so long as the throngs of Londoners that swell the crowds on sunny days and holidays, continue to travel in their masses.

So, theres my report on sunny Eastbourne, oh and before I forget, thanks for the air support...

TTFN!

Mission Possible?

2009-06-12T16:05:00.001-07:00

Ah, Agent Beagle, so good of you to join us once again. It appears we have another mission for you. Word has got round of your recent success in saving the 80's spirit at a birthday party a number of weeks ago, and it seems you are in demand. We have a new mission for you....

Codenamed 'Project Anti-Wrinkle', you shall leave base on Saturday morning, drive 173 miles due south of your location, skimming Heathrow and Gatwick Airport along the way, entering your location around three and a half hours later, where you will disembark and meet your contact, who will give you the keys to an apartment overlooking the beach.

Your contact will then provide you with a set of detailed scematics of the area in which you will work, but for the purposes of preparation for your visit, and due to the secure line we are transmitting on, we shall provide you with outline details of your mission. Your mission, should you choose to accept it, is to reclaim Eastbourne from the Granny-parade reputation it has with the great British public. You shall have one week to find out as much information as possible about the seaside resort, then visit as much of East Sussex as possible in order to improve the UK's attitude to the location, and to report back on the town's redevelopment progress, as it looks to finally reclaim the modern tourist market.

We have full faith in you, Agent Beagle, and you have our full backing to provide any assistance you require, including air support and ground troops, however we do advise you avoid Beachy Head on a windy day.

Good Luck Beagle, we are all counting on you, your country needs you now more than ever.

Looks like I'm off to Eastbourne then! Speak to you in a week!

Summer, Baby, Yeah!

2009-06-03T15:42:00.000-07:00

Greetings one and all, I have returned after an absence which can all be explained in an instant, you see I've got an exam coming up on Monday and so I have been cramming like a crab trying to get into a very tiny lift, whilst carrying heavy shopping bags, therefore I've had very little time to do anything else!

But I have managed to find 5 minutes to give you a brief update of my time on this funny little planet of ours.

Summer has finally arrived, Whoop, although it is going to be a bit cold over the next week or so, so I hope you enjoyed summer while it was here! Ah summer, the joys it brings, making ugly women look cute, cute women look hot, hot women look gorgeous, and making blokes look a bit sweaty!

I left you last time on the verge of grasping the 80's spirit back from doom after Kelly McGillis broke many a mans heart. Well on that weekend a party was had, and some photos are on facebook for you all to see. I must say I did like my hat, never been a big 'hat' person, but felt in the spirit of the 80's as everyone who went to the party got fully into the spirit of things and really did look the part. We even popped back to my cousins house the following day and had a nice spot of lunch and a ride down the thames in their boat, which was brilliant!

Nothing major is going on with me at the moment, or at least nothing I can think of, work is going really well, and thankfully the football season is over, with villa slumping to a deserved 6th place.

Thankfully Gareth Barry has left us in the same way as other players have in the past, citing their need to be with a 'bigger team' playing Champions League football, then joining a much smaller team for double the money who aren't even near to europe! Bless him though, I'm sure he'll love counting his pennies for years to come.

Anyway thats enough from me, got cramming to do. Blog again soon, ttfn!

For those of an 80's era, look away now..

2009-05-06T15:11:00.000-07:00

I have some dreadful news to break to those who have not heard the biggest story to break in the last couple of weeks, something that puts swine flu, the budget and Madonna's baby-stealing in the shade.

As you will all be aware, Top Gun was one of the biggest films ever to grace our screens in the 80's, mainly because its one of the rare few times where you can say that Tom Cruise could actually act, but also because of one woman, Kelly McGillis. She, with her swishy hair, lingering looks and all-in-one denim outfit, stole many a weak bloke's heart (and probably quite a few strong blokes too), however those men will have been quivering with fear at where their life went wrong when she announced to the media the other day, that she bats for the other team, and probably always has!

Noooooooooooooooooooooo!!! Kelly, what have you done to us!?

Now, every man has to do some serious soul-searching to get over this. Maybe we should start a facebook group, or have regional meetings to talk through this epic news. Could it be that Tom Cruise tried it on with her, and she was so against joining his little band of alien-loving hippies that she turned altogether!? We shall never know, all we can do is stay strong for each other, and always remember that we probably preferred Jessica Rabbit more!

There is a hope, however. As those special few who know me so well will testify (possibly to a court of law one day), I have a love for the 80's that knows no boundaries, and I shall not let this grave news deter me from my chosen path, to celebrate the 80's forever and a day, starting with this saturday. It is my cousins birthday, and she is having an 80's theme party with a whole bunch of people, including yours truly. My outfit is ready, and thanks to those lovely people at asos.com, I have found probably the most legendary 80's t-shirt I have ever seen. So I shall leave for a weekend of fun and frivolity, and reclaim the 80's as best I can, hoping beyond hope that others will follow my lead by making the rest of this year as 80's as we can.

As Barack Obama once said to me, when I asked him if I could help him reclaim the 80's spirit, 'Yes we can'!

In other news, the powers-that-be at london midland have decided to install electronic barriers at several stations including snow hill, where I get the train. All is going well for those of a technological nature, or even a logical nature judging by some, however last Thursday was the first day when they came into operation, as I was quite proud that, not only did the barrier work for me, but I didn't need any help from the helpful staff at the barrier.

However, that didn't stop a rather rotund woman behind me, who was late for her train, and didn't think that it would matter that the barriers (which are solid steel with a solid plastic coating) were really for her, quickly flashed her ticket at the poor chap who was busy watching me go through the barrier and who only had a nano-second in which to say 'wait a minute, you have to use the barrier. Just put your ticket in the slot and the barrier will open', which came out as 'Wai....' as he was cut off by the sound of the foulest language I've ever heard shouted by someone who is really old enough to know better. I turned around quickly, as did everyone else, including two startled policemen, to see this woman wedged inbetween the barriers, as she had stupidly thought she could squeeze through after I'd got through. The barriers had closed on her rather large stomach and as she was straddling either side of the half-closed barrier, couldn't move either way!

I really hope she didn't make her train, just for the comic punchline!

TTFN!

Remind me, what does pride come before?

2009-04-17T06:43:00.000-07:00

I think we all know the answer to this one!

Well as most of you will know by now, the great spectacle came and went (no comments please!), and as of last Thursday I ended it with Leanne, basically because we just want to stay friends, which is all very good in principle.

The story of saturday night is legendary, but in short I had agreed to go out with her and a few of her mates on the saturday ages back, and I naively thought that everything would be fine, no awkward situation, just go out, have a good night and come home slightly sozzled.....

....only one of those things actually occurred!

Long story short, I ended up in a different club with a mate who was also in brum and had a pretty good night!

Other news from my little world is that I've finally started my new job, yay! So far its going really well, I am enjoying it and everyone seems to think I'm doing well, so watch this space!

A short recap this week, mainly because the last couple of weeks have been spent working overtime quite alot, redecorating the dining room, and chopping the second biggest conifer down in our garden, which was going fairly well until I chopped it in half and almost took me, mom, the rose bush and the wooden arch with it!

Normal service will be resumed next week but rest assured you have missed pretty much nothing over the last couple of weeks apart from the obvious 'dumpage'!

Ta-Ta

Where were you?........

2009-03-28T04:29:00.000-07:00

AD138 - Hadrians Wall built...

570 - Islamic prophet Mohammed born in Mecca...

1066 - Battle of Hastings...

1300 - Huge stone statues built on Easter Island...

1429 - Joan of Arc leads French troops to successfuly defeat to English..

1787 - US Constitution drawn up...

1805 - Battle of Trafalgar.....

1904 - Captain Scott becomes the first person to explore Antarctica extensively by land...

1969 - First man on the moon..

....and now, take a photo of yourself to remember where you were when you heard this.......

2009 - The Beagle gets a girlfriend!!

I know, I was as shocked as you are, possibly even more so!

It is true, you all owe me a fiver, as not only is she a woman, but she is real!!

Her name is Leanne and I met her at work, which brings its own wonderful irritating problems, as these kind of things invariably lead to pathetic rumours and whispers between the jealous and the downright intolerable. Keep an eye out on the Yellbox, I'm sure they will be all too pleased to mash the keypad with their fists until words appear!

I don't give a monkeys right armpit though. Its a happy situation to be in, and to be honest, not one I'd really given much thought to, as its never really been a priority of mine to obtain one of these feminine-type people.

So there you have it, that has been the brilliant highlight of the week for me, and I thank Mr Evans for his rather disturbingly nice blog. Hopefully one day, you will reach these lofty perches where I have been sitting for some time, typing away to myself!

Tarrarrabit!

Train Incident No. 2458

2009-03-21T17:48:00.000-07:00

No, nothing as bad as the chap who gave me the plague, although I've not seen him since, so lord knows what happened to him, but something much worse happened to me on a train the other night....

......someone almost died sitting next to me!

(before you ask, no it wasn't to do with my sparkling conversation, thank you very much!)

I was working late one day last week, when I got on the train as normal at Snow Hill, and at Moor Street station, an asian man sat down next to me. I didn't pay much notice to the fella, as there was nothing to pay much attention to really (i.e the grim reaper wasn't stood behind him, tapping his watch). Anyway, just after we got away from Moor Street, he started leaning forward and squinting his eyes like he was in severe pain. This was alarming, but not half as alarming as when he then leant forward and rested his head against the back of the seat in front, seemingly in agony. Now this is probably very selfish of me, but the entire journey home, all I could think about was how the hell I was going to roll this chap out of the way so I could get off at my stop, if he does kick the bucket before we get there!

Fortunately, he moved to another seat when one was free, so he could die alone and in peace, which is a nice end to that story I think!

I have another two moans about the morons who board trains at 5pm. Firstly, who decides to go to the city centre on a train in the UK, and decide that not only have they finished their shopping dead on 5pm, but they would quite like to cycle back, so bring their bloody great mountain bike on board the train. A train, which has only 2 carriages and a billion people trying to cram on it, then decide to push past the sardines with said mountain bike, causing untold misery in the groin region for several people, including my good self!

The same applies for chavvy mothers with bloody pushchairs, whose sole aim, when the doors open at Moor Street station, is to take a run-up, yes a run-up, from the platform, so she can wedge her VW-Beetle-sized pushchair inbetween all those workers, whose jobs finish the day, quite inconveniently, at 5pm. Next time, I will bring pepper-spray!

Apologies for the 2 week gap, I'd blame the economic gloom for it, as thats getting a rather bad press lately, but in actual fact I've been ridiculously busy at work, what with new starters to train, and overtime to work, but with my new job fast approaching, I just tick off the days and keep on going!

So, the highlights for me over the last couple of weeks, undoubtedly being the visit to the Beer Keller a couple of Saturdays ago for Gemma and Gareths birthday bash. Well, I say 'bash', in actual fact Gareth had a 'do', and Gemma had an almighty bash on her noggin, which left her celebrating her birthday in A&E............the rest of us had a great time though!

The other main highlight for me was almost getting to the end of my coursework, which will soon mean I'm at the mercy of my memory and computer skills, as I type out all the notes I've taken over the last few weeks, and commit them to my gigantic brain, for later use in my exam in June. I'd like to say I can't wait, but I really really can!

The big highlight for me has come in the last week, but I shall leave that little nugget for my Facebook status, and next weeks blog. Oh yes, dear readers, a cliffhanger to leave you on!

Unclean.....Unclean!

2009-03-06T07:08:00.000-08:00

I think I may have caught rabies from a peasant-boy on a train........

....its true! Theres a youngish chap that gets the same train as me on the way home, looks a bit of a fat boy, with a stooping walk that makes him look like he tortures small rodents in his shed at weekends. So far, I've managed to avoid him on my carriage, and so haven't taken much notice of him, but on Thursday he decided he was going to sit next to me, which didn't bother me too much, as the train is always crammed like a sardine tin, so you kinda expect people to sit next to you. However, what I did object to was when he started to scratch his head violently, as if one of his tortured rodents got his own back and gave him fleas, and rub his face with the same vigour, with little old me left with nowhere to run, as the only alternative was to jump through the train window, which in hindsight was a pretty good plan, as the next thing that happened was a musty smell started to waft from his general direction. I say musty, as its the closest thing I could think of before I started to try and hold my breath, but that was over before it began, as he got off at shirley, and if you've ever tried to hold your breath from Snow Hill to Shirley, you'll know that you pass out at about Tyseley!

So, since then, I've been convinced that I have fleas, and would quite like to lose a layer of skin just to make sure that whatever industrial disease he was passing on, didn't have much of an effect on me. Unfortunately, I have woken up with a sore throat and a headache, which hasn't abated all day, which is more than a little annoying, especially as its a fairly important next few days with me, as tomorrow I'm off the the legendary Beer Keller to assist Gemma and Gareth in their boozy birthday celebrations, and next week we have some new starters joining the department, which I'll be 'buddying' and training up, which will be good fun, especially if I'm a raging snotball by about wednesday!

Still could be worse, I could have talked about the Villa! I hereby state that I will not rejoice in the Villa's success this season until mathmetically we cannot balls it up!

Talking of mobile phones, I'm thinking of treating myself to a new G1 phone when I'm settled into my new job, which, by the way, I now officially start on the 14th April. Suggestions and comments on a postcard to the usual address.

TTFN

For Queen and Country

2009-02-26T08:40:00.001-08:00

Greetings all, its yet another enthralling blog from yours truly.

I can finally reveal (to those of you that don't know), where 've been for the last week and a half, I have been taking part in Jury Duty! Now, its a common thought process that jury duty is boring and tedious, blah blah blah, but I for one loved every second of it! Its probably the law part of my brain that it appealed to the most, but there is a certain satisfaction knowing that you have played your part in justice being given out.

I won't tell you the case I'm on, mainly because it goes on forever as I was on a case for 4 days, but also because the law hasn't been kind to people who have blabbed over t'interweb about a court case they are on, some people being held in contempt of court and thrown in jail, which I don't really fancy, so I'll keep it short and sweet and just say that the case I had was an armed robbery case, but because of the distinct lack of evidence, and the fact that the people it happened to had a completely different description of the guy who did it, meant that he was found not guilty on all counts, which we were all happy about, as was he, I assume!

Anyway, the case finished on tuesday and I had wednesday off from work, which was useful, as I was needed by my aunt, whose garage door fell on her head as she was putting the car away!

This led me to learn something new, garage doors are not made of a nice chunk of aluminium, as I'd always imagined, but a big fat chunk of solid steel, which you can't hold onto for very long when your spine starts to hurt in every place!

We shall gloss over the last week or so with regard to the villa, and indeed the CSKA match tonight, which will be an equal disaster, however normal service will be resumed on sunday when the not-so-mighty stoke come knocking at villa park. Bring it on!

Toodles!

Wave it, baby!

2009-02-19T00:19:00.001-08:00

Well this weeks blog, and indeed next weeks shall be a short one, as I can't actually talk about whats gone on this week, or next week! Secretive, I know, but I don't fancy a few weeks in jail just to entertain the nation, so I shall just talk about what else has been going on with me!

I shall give a general overview in a couple of weeks, just so your mind doesn't wander and you think I've finally got the money together for that sex change operation!

Well, the days I wasn't doing what I'm not talking about have been fairly uneventful. Now, we have a massive conifer at the bottom of our garden that has been slowly dying for the last 2 years, so think of the pleasure it brough to our little faces when we opened the curtains a week back when we'd had a heavy blizzard the night before, to see a conifer split in two by the sheer weight of the snow?

...Unfortunately, not only was it the wrong tree, but it took another conifer with it when it fell, both equally sort-of healthy!

So, over the next year of the glorious green bin from the corrupt council that is making us pay for the free service this year, we shall cram the damn thing full of branches and get our £30 worth and then some!

This week also saw the beginning of Villa's biggest week of the season. We happily went out of the FA Cup to a much better Everton team, then put in a great performance to draw 1.1 with CSKA Moscow, although the highlight for most people was getting a free flag (thus the title to the blog, not some weird past time!). This saturday, however, brings the big one. The mighty Chelski comes to villa park, with their new chap in charge, so I think its only fair that we show him just how rubbish his new team is. Bring it on!!!

(However, I would take a bore draw now!)

Snow!

2009-02-11T04:12:00.001-08:00

Well it has been the theme running through this past week and a half, so I think its a fairly fitting title!

Welcome to another peek into the mad old world of yours truly! I would have posted earlier, but work has been stupidly crazy over the last couple of weeks, so I've not had much of a chance to blog, but this should make up for it!

As I've mentioned, last week has been dominated by the weather, and because a couple of inches fell on London, it meant that the entire country has grounded to a halt, whereby for everyone who lives north of Watford Gap wonders what the fuss is about as we've been having snowy weather off and on for the last 3-4 months and no one seemed to mind! Still, to be fair, it has been very heavy around the country, however that doesn't give any excuse for the local councils all around the country to be clearly so dangerously corrupt by not preparing for any kind of cold weather. No gritters have been anywhere near Birmingham, nor the surrounding areas during any of the bad weather, leaving many people slipping and sliding everywhere, not to mention the countless amounts of deaths caused by the icy weather, which clearly indicates that local authorities are guilty of manslaughter! To run out of grit/salt that early is quite frightening, especially as they are trying to justify yet another council tax hike!

Of course, they will always put up some vacuous oxbridge graduate who will say to the media that they were so dangerously unprepared for the weather because they had no warning about the icy conditions coming in. Well they may be the only ones, as any person who can read and understand the english language would have been aware a full 2 weeks before the weather changed that this would happen.......

.....I may have answered my own question there!

I'm not getting political over this, but surely people have got to lose their jobs over this debacle, I mean how can Paris and Barcelona, who have less of an economy than us, get worse weather than us and still run trains, buses and businesses, but when we get a week of snow, the country drops to its knees!

Speaking of trains, in the couple of weeks running up to the snow, not one London Midland train ran on time, so come the heavy snow showers, it was a marvel to behold that not only were the trains running, but they were running on time, and sometimes earlier! Miracles will never cease!

Our road was a complete and total nightmare. We live in a cul-de-sac on a fairly steep hill, and as our local council only employ corrupt politicians (when will we learn!), we have never had a grit bin, despite asking for one for the last 28 years, nor have we had the road resurfaced for about 15 years, so you can imagine the joy on our faces when the road quite literally iced up and cars slid to the bottom of the road in a blaze of wheelspin. We even had one poor chap who came down the road in his van looking to turn round, got stuck, got his mate to come with a 3 litre estate care....who also got stuck, so they had to dig their way out and get towed by a land rover, which took them about 3 hours!

A momentous thing happened to me on saturday, I went into work and didn't get involved in any protests, yay! There was a small fear welling up inside me as I approached Victoria Square that at any second I'd be arrested or kidnapped, but I made it home safely, so safely in fact that I'm doing it again this saturday, double yay!

Finally, another word about the mighty villa. We now sit proudly in 3rd place thanks to 3 out of the top 5 teams being fairly useless when it comes to winning games, and if we keep going the way we are, we could accidently get into a title race, which would be madness, sheer madness!

Up the villa!

Train Etiquette

2009-01-29T04:27:00.000-08:00

I have noticed over the last few months that there is a distinct lack of basic courtesy on the trains.

I don't know why people seem to think that bringing a mountain bike, for example, onto a crowded train at 5pm is a good idea, but god love them they still have a good go at it, and even seem to have a look about them that makes you think that you are the only one that doesn't like having your crotch attacked by a giant metal object at every bump in the tracks!

I also have some rather brilliant fashion news:

THE MITTEN IS BACK!

Yes, you heard it here first, Ladies and Gentlemen. I have seen a girl wearing a very nice pair of mittens on friday, and whilst they weren't quite sewn into her coat-cuffs a-la school days, its a clear indication that we all have a heads-up of this years winter fashion. So, hot on the heels of big hair and leggings, dust-off your mittens, the 80's are back!

Finally, a word about the mighty Villa, who are getting more and more legendary by the week. We have managed to play fairly poorly the last couple of months but still pick up wins in every game. I'm not sure my heart can keep up with this, but we are now 4th, a lovely 5 points away from Arsenal, and with some good-looking games coming up, have to keep it going if we are going to get into the Champions League this year. Up the Villa!

' Free, Free, Pallastan...'

2009-01-19T08:21:00.000-08:00

Good day to you all, I bring you good cheer on this, a brand new shiny monday!

Firstly, apologies for not blogging in the last week or so, it has been a bit mental, work-wise, so i've not had a single chance to get on here and moan about it....thats how mental its been!

We shall gloss over most of last week, as its pretty much been covered in the 2nd paragraph, although Thursday was probably a highlight for me, as we had a good old laugh in the pub, just like the old days (god I feel old saying that!)

I came into work on saturday to get rid of some files (literally, they are currently being ripped apart all over broad street!), and had a good mornings work, which is always nice. Anyway, I left at about 1 and walked down towards Victoria Square as per normal. Now, every friday for the last few weeks, there has been a fairly vocal protest taking place about the whole sorry saga in Israel (not sure what Birmingham City Council can do about it, but they seem happy enough to protest nonetheless!). There are usually a good few hundred of flag-wavers and banner-holders, and it all goes off fairly peacefully.

So, as I walked down towards Victoria Square, headphones on, I noticed a few protesters holding peace signs from where I was walking by the Library and thought 'oh well, they're back again. Nice weather for it' (which is was, by the way!), turned the corner and realised that there were slightly more than a few hundred...more like a few thousand! As I moved past a few people standing around, I didn't quite realise what they were standing round, and ended up walking (I kid you not) right through the middle of....

.....an impromptu prayer mat with about 20 people wearing white and doing that 'om' thing where they take their shoes off and put their heads on the floor (I probably should have listened more in RE, I know its a muslim thing....or at least think it is!). I almost stood on one blokes head as I walked through their gathering!

So, recovering from that, I staggered past another few hundred people signing petitions and headed past the Council House towards Colmore Row. As I did so, I was looking at all the Palestine flags and the Peace banners (amazingly nothing anti-UK or USA. See, they can do it!), and after about 10 seconds of walking, realised that alot of the flags we being walked in the general direction that I was walking, and that the noise and the chants were getting slightly louder.......

....and then it dawned on me.....

......I'm in a protest march, aren't I!

Not just that, I was too busy trying to get past people waving flags that i had almost got to the front, where a double line of police and riot police were escorting the protesters round the streets! The worst thing was that i couldn't get out! I was wedged in, between all these people shouting about Hamas and Isreal and couldn't get out. But then I noticed we were walking towards Starbucks on colmore row, which has a lovely little side passage to it, so I made a dart for it and just about made it, to the amusement of 3 policemen who were watching events unfold!

According to the news, there were 3,000 people in that march, and I didn't even watch the local news for fear of seeing me wedged inbetween flag-bearers!

I'm not sure what the moral of the story is. I suppose I should be grateful it didn't turn nasty and I got arrested. That would be an interesting call to my mom!

....to Paaaaartaaaaay!

2009-01-09T08:36:00.000-08:00

Indeed you do, indeed you do.

Well its a shorter blog from me today, mainly coz I only have a few minutes to do this, and because I only have one thing to tell you as well.

This week I have had yet another interview at work for a higher position, and as this was my 5th interview during my time here, I was fairly sure I wouldn't get a promotion ever again. However, as fate would have it, I am now the proud owner of a shiny new job, which is a miracle in itself, as you well know!

Its about damn time I have to say, and I can't wait to start, and I intend to celebrate in the best possible way....well Threshers is just next to Wythall train station!

I also think I may have broken my finger. Well actually I think its badly sprained, but it hurts quite alot (sometimes at the same time as my tooth, which is more than slightly annoying), and it hurts even more when I bend it. Its the only injury to survive the Hamburg 'experience', my leg having formed a lovely big scab on it, then subsequently falling off over Christmas, so thats healing nicely. So now I have my 'impact finger', ironically its my middle finger, which is kind of funny when you think of the performance that villa gave out there, but I'm sure that the amount of alcohol I'll drink over the weekend will numb the pain.

Toodles!

'You've gotta fight....for your right.....'

2009-01-07T08:36:00.000-08:00

I think my teeth may be falling out.

Well when I say teeth I mean only one of them, but its making the rest of my teeth hurt as well, which is rather annoying. I actually think it has something to do with me leaving work, like my tooth doesn't want to leave, so it has a paddy! I'm sure it has more to do with the fact that I've eaten far too many bad things over christmas and new year, and continue to do so (we still have mince pies and christmas cake to eat, oh well!), and the weather hasn't helped with a nice icy blast as I leave the nice cosy office building into the arctic winter outside!

Speaking of which, as you will all know, Britain has been at the heart of an icy spell of weather these past few days, and as such, the roads and pavements have been lovely and icy, which has been about as fun as hitting your head against a spiky pole, especially when you consider that most people's work shoes don't have any grip on them whatsoever, but never fear because the council always puts out the grit to melt the snow away....or have they?

Well surprisingly they haven't. Despite the fact that everyone in the country knew that we would be experiencing high levels of snow and ice this week, it appears that the council did not know, or indeed care about laying some grit out so the members of the public that might want to get to work don't fall on their faces every time they put a foot wrong, leading to scenes not unlike leading an army unit through a minefield at times!

This annoyed me more than ever. I just can't stand unfairness or things just being done badly wrong, especially when its so glaringly obvious to everyone else, so I sent the council an email. Now, the Christmas before last, we had a problem with the bin collections at home, in that the whole neighbourhood had not had their bins emptied in the last collection before Christmas, leaving alot of sad looking Daleks sitting on the side of the road. So, deciding that the fat cats needed a kick up the ass, I sent the council a strongly worded email, reminding them of their statutory duty to the taxpayers, and quoting their own policies at them. I copied in about 20 local MP's and councillors who were effected, and the impact was so great that the Chief Councillor at Bromsgrove had to interrupt his Christmas break to email me back, as there was alot of flak coming from alot of angry MP's who saw the opportunity to stick their oar into the debate. Long story short, the bins were collected the next day, with a written apology from the council. So this time around its the turn of Birmingham City Council. A similarly strong-worded email has been sent, with the added pressure of having copied in 2 local newspapers, and so we shall see if anything gets done.

The email was sent yesterday, and this morning there were about 3 lumps of grit in Victoria Square, so if nothing else, I earned those lumps!

Positive news now, and the Pacman game on the right hand side of the page is a little bit brilliant. I have decided to put a game there every month for your delectation, and as you can see, I am fairly into it now, so let battle commence!

Hasta La Vista 2008!

2008-12-31T07:21:00.000-08:00

Greetings once again, this is a slightly delayed New Years blog, as I have been laid up for the last few days. Yes, those 'brave' souls I moaned about a week or so back have finally got their way and infected me with their diseased........diseasey stuff and on Sunday and Monday I had what could only be described as the flu, which pretty much knocked me for 6.

I personally think this was all Gareths idea to take out his competition, as he has mysteriously gone off the airwaves these last couple of weeks, so seeing he has bowed down to the superior blogger, this is my 50th blog of the year (compared to 49 for Mr Evans, ha!).

Christmas was very good to me, I had presents that I had chosen way back in October/November and that I had completely forgotten about, which made the surprise even more welcoming! I ate half my own bodyweight as normal for this time of year and am starting to proceed nicely through all the other munchy things that everyone always buys for this time of year, so I may roll into the new year!

Football-wise, well what a few days it has been! The Arsenal game was an amazing spectacle. We dominated for 40 minutes, hit the crossbar twice, and post twice, had a clearance off the line and made their goalkeeper make some great saves, so what do they do, they go up the other end and score with their first shot on goal! Then after half time, they scored their second to bury us, which made our heads drop, however not for long as a penalty and a goal in the 93rd minute meant that we stayed in 4th spot ahead of Arsenal, and with a lucky goal giving us the 3 points against Hull last night in the last few minutes of the game, it means that we are in a great position going into the January transfer window, which opens tomorrow ...............

.......tomorrow being January of course!

So its the end of a long old year, a year that started with the best holiday I've ever had in the Caribbean, that ended with a cold shoulder in Hamburg (geddit, 'cold shoulder', hahaha.....ok well i liked it!), and had a nice bit of blood and gore in the middle. Sprinkled with the odd bout of depression and joy in equal measure about an immeasurable amount of things, and hopefully at all times at least keeping you entertained in this little corner of cyberspace.

Happy New Year to all, lets hope its a good one (to quote John Lennon)

100 not out!

2008-12-24T06:40:00.000-08:00

Woohoo, not only is this my festive blog, but as my 100th blog, I feel we are all due a christmas glass of bubbly, so here it is:

Enjoy!

Well since my last blog, I have endured two of the longest days at work, where a ridiculous amount of work needed to be done before I had today off. Thankfully I don't have to think about work until Monday, which seems a glorious lifetime away!

This week also saw something arrive in the post that almost gave me a heart attack. I received a letter from court telling me I had been selected for jury service! The letter arrived in a brown envelope with the courts name on it, so immediately I thought 'god, how did they find the body!'.

As you can imagine, there were quite a few sore heads on Monday morning in the office, and the nuclear fall out from the christmas party will still be going on well into the new year, and lets just say its great to have been as sober as I was, as alot of people needed a gentle reminder as to what they did on Friday night! Marvellous!

And so it is, Christmas is finally here, I have just got my last present, and thankfully Amazon sent through most of my presents this morning (I almost kissed the postman!), so all I need to do now is wrap my pressies, get to the pub and drink my way into Christmas Day!

So, whether you are staying at home this Christmas, or visiting the in-laws or other members of your family, remember just that. That it is all about family this Christmas, and whether you like it or not, its only one day a year, so just let yourself go and grab that cracker with vigour, because the worst that can happen is you get the mini sewing kit!

If you are feeling a tad bored during the festive season, look to your right for my present to you, loyal readers, its only blummin' Pacman! For those of you far to young to know what it is, its the best game ever, and thats all you need to know!

Merry Christmas Everyone
(P.S Come on Villa, 3 points against Arsenal. Always remember, as the song suggests, 'Santa is a Villa fan'!)

God Rest Ye Merry Gentlemen..

2008-12-22T08:32:00.000-08:00

Good Tidings one and all, it was our Christmas party on Friday night, and as usual the party went with its usual alcoholic bang!

The names have been removed to protect the innocent......however as there were none, the names have been re-entered, then removed to protect the guilty. They know who they are, and right about now, the grim realisation of what they did should be eating into their very soul!

.....that poor squirrel.....

Anyway, the theme of this years festivities was Victorian, and so as we all arrived at the Custard Factory, we were greeted by hot chestnuts and mulled wine to settle us in before the main drinking, sorry eating and drinking, began! We all had our set tables to sit at, so were all plonked with people in a 'getting to know you' type of event, which was good fun, as I knew pretty much everyone at my table!

The Victorian-themed evening was never the best idea in my concerted opinion. After all, refined dancing and carols sung by a woman wearing traditional dress, doesn't exactly fit in with the booze-and-bust occasion. However after the Victorian dancers had done their routine and sold out by doing the 'lets embarrass members of the audience by making them do some dance steps to what closely resembled Blackpool meets Pride & Prejudice', they left the dance floor to the cheesy music and dancing that the - now drunk - workers had come for all along!

From then on, it was a case of sitting back and watching everyone get obliterated in alcohol, and then remember exactly who did what to whom and when! Of course, I cut some disco moves on the dance floor, and of course was out of this world, and at midnight the disco and bar finished and we were all herded out to stagger into taxis, and wonder if certain members of staff were going to make it home without getting arrested for attacking the local drugged up teenager/their own co-workers, call a taxi driver a 'moustached man' in a fit of anger, or just plain wander off and not remember how they got home.

All in all it was an eventful night to say the least, and a rather enjoyable one for the many people who stayed on the right side of plastered. The memories at work this morning were as fresh as they were on Friday night and the consequences were more than amusing for those of us in the know!

The weekend passed off without too much incident. Villa maintained their form of playing badly but winning, sending us into third spot in the league with a rather tasty match against Arsenal on Boxing Day coming up next. Tom Chambers disgracefully won Strictly Come Dancing, which made our blood boil, then on Sunday we went to get our Christmas food, and spent the rest of the day getting ready for the big day.

I shall blog again on Christmas Eve, where it will be a double celebration, as it will be my 100th blog, woohoo!

Pics from Hamburg

2008-12-21T15:29:00.001-08:00

Yay! Glory be to the mobile phone that gives up its photos!

These are all from a square in the city, where about 500 villa fans congregated for light refreshments (lots of fizzy pop and a few sherbet dib-dabs of course!). It was the only British bar we could find, and as such, made it our own with the help of several flags, as you can see below, through the rain!

Our view of the stadium....in the stadium! Pretty darned special, I think you'll agree!

ABH at the HSH, Bier, Carolling and world domination!

2008-12-18T07:35:00.000-08:00

Guten Tag, my little Christmas Elves, I have returned from the beautiful city of Hamburg with more than a few memories, and some which will last more than others!

Lets get the bad part out of the way, shall we? We came, we put out a team that everyone knew would fail miserably, and we did so, in a blaze of cold adulation from us loyal fans who spent good hard-earned money travelling great distances to support the stupid sods!

Right, thats the bad stuff done with, now on with the fantastic day itself! As we were flying from Heathrow at 9.05am, we had to be up nice and early at stoopid 'o' clock in the morning to be awake enough for me to drive us all down there and be in time for a nice cooked breakfast at wetherspoons and then fly out.

The journey itself, as you would imagine at that time of a morning, was pretty quiet, apart from the delivery lorries carrying their wares, and the odd car or two, and we had managed to get down to the Oxford services in pretty quick time, which gave us a chance to kick back and have a coffee and a stretch of the legs, before getting back in the car and tackling the fun that is the M25 and M4 in quick succession before getting to Heathrow. Well by the time we'd got to the M25, it was around 5.15am, and the traffic was just mad, like they'd just let all the cars in suddenly! That was nothing, however, compared to the absolute carnage that is the road network around Heathrow.

Now, there has been alot of talk about moving the airport from Heathrow to some place south of the Thames. Well let me tell you, if you can successfully move something the size of half of Wales, down the road without giving town planners at least 15 heart attacks, then good luck. This place is just huge!!!

The road network around the airport is a maze of islands, traffic lights and slip roads, which in hindsight is an absolute godsend as the airport is ridiculously big. We needed to get to the Long Stay car park for terminals 1-4, which would be easy if it were signposted at all before you got to the main islands that make up the labrynth of roads. I ended up taking what I thought was a decent route to the car park, as I had just seen the sign for it, however as we proceeded through the tunnel, it was looking less likely!

Remember those old action movies, where to lose the bad guys, the good guys drive their car up a narrow alley, and at the end the road narrows so much that the good guys (in small car) get through, but the bad guys (usually cops) get their car all smashed up? Well imagine that, but in tunnel form with a weird kind of cycle path running through the centre of it! That was one of the entrances to one of the hundreds of car parks we went pas, but eventually we managed to find our way to the correct one and get the shuttle bus to the terminal.

After a cracking breakfast at wetherspoons, we boarded and in typical german fashion, landed in Hamburg 10 minutes early!I had been told that there was a subway running from the airport to the city centre in 25 minutes, so after we trundled off the plane, we made our way down to the station and experienced an awesome demonstration of how a rail network should be run!

Ordinarily, in England, you pay around £5-6 for a day saver pass, however on the subway in Hamburg, you pay the equivalent to £1.85 maximum for a whole days pass on each line you need to take! Not that there was anyone checking tickets, as lets be honest, even in a credit crunch, to use the train all day for such little money means that everyone will pay for the service, therefore no fare dodgers!

The trains themselves were superb, all electrical, the driver just having to get out and see if everyone is on board, then getting in, pressing a button and away we go, never to reach a destination late! German engineering eh! We used the train about 4 times during our day in the city, costing us about £6 altogether, even reaching our hotel direct from the station in about 20 mins!

When we got to the city centre, we had a bit of a wander round, as it was about midday so we had time to kill before we went to our hotel to check in and on to the ground for the game. There is a main shopping centre just in the centre, a bit like the bullring, plenty of brand names etc, and then as you walk around, the shops tend to get more........unusual!

After about 10 minutes, we got fed up of counting sex shops as most of us had lost count! Seriously, there were sex shops next to restaraunts, nurseries, fruit and veg shops, hairdressers, and this wasn't even the red light district!

We managed to find ourselves a decent looking bar, which turned out to be the size of a postage stamp, and crammed full of villa fans, so we stopped there for about an hour and had a couple of drinks there, which was a very nice introduction to proper german beer. You know the sort of beer that puts hairs on your chest!

The rest of the day was spent wandering round the city centre, then getting the train to the Reeperbahn, the red light and entertainment district of the city, which was great! Again, an odd choice of destination to put the red light district, as it is right next to the main club/bar part of the city, and those pesky germans have a very odd sense of what is 'sexy', god bless 'em!

After some grub in a burger king (still have that acidic fizz in my stomach!), we headed for our hotel and after a 10 minute turnround, headed for the ground, which was a good 20 minute walk, but well worth it when you got there. I'll post some photos in a seperate blog, and when my phone decides to let me have them! The ground itself is an amazing spectacle of how to build a stadium. It was built for the last world cup, and holds about 60,000, and the atmosphere inside the stadium was electric.

There were 2,500 villa fans in the stadium, but I'm pretty sure there were far more in Hamburg before and after the game, which led me to a fiendish plan to take over the world. Think about it...if you were a fresh-faced dictator, keen on taking over the world for your own amusement, all you need to do is invest heavily in a football team, and make sure they qualify for European competition every year. Then, every away game, take thousands of fans over there, invade a city and within a few years you'll have taken over most of europe, gaining vital cities along the way........

.....ok I was bored on the flight back, but you can see my point!

As I said, the stadium was amazing, and as we took our seats, it took us a good few minutes to realise just how impressive it actually was.Before the game, and as the home fans trickled into the stadium, various dance songs were played to get the crowd jumping around, which was good as most of us would have frozen solid if we'd have hung around for too long! One song they did play was We Will Rock You, however I didn't actually hear that much of it, as just when the song started playing, some lads behind me were messing around, one fell into me and I went flying, head-first into the row below! The first thing I knew about it was when I saw concrete hurtling towards me, so instinctively I put my left hand out to cushion the blow, but unfortunately didn't have enough time to extend my arm sufficiently, so my arm buckled under my weight, jarring my shoulder and grazing my hand, as I landed, shoulder-first, onto the concrete with a sufficient Aarrghh!

The lads that caused the superman impression were very apologetic, as after all, they were only messing around and it was an accident, but after i'd got myself back upright and laughed it off with most of the crowd arround me, realised that I had got myself a lovely 4 inch gash in my leg, not unlike Craig Gardners injury in the game! At least I know that a little piece of me will always be in Hamburg! Alot of the game was spent singing christmas songs and anything else that lifted the gloom, which was odd but worked somehow!

After the debacle of the game, we headed back to our hotel, had a drink in the bar and went to bed, as we had to get up at 4.30 the next day to get our flight home, most of which was spent half asleep, however a nice surprise when we got back to Heathrow was the fact that Pat Nevin, the Channel 5 fella, was on our flight as well, so we had a chat to him about how useless we all know Marlon Harewood and Zat Knight to be. Apparently he is good mates with Martin O'Neill, so we can only hope he has a big influence on his January sales!

The journey back home was a nice quick one as soon as we'd left London, although the distinct lack of sleep will make tomorrow at work all the more fun, not to mention the Christmas party tomorrow night!

Stop throwing those bloody germs at me!

2008-12-15T08:23:00.000-08:00

Festive good will to you, my loyal and devoted audience, 'tis another blog from yours truly, and one step nearer to the Hamburg visit!

We shall begin with the highlight of the weekend, the return to fourth spot for the mighty villa team, running out 4.2 winners over a pretty decent Bolton team. Hopefully this run can continue for the next two weeks, as we have a stuttering Arsenal team to visit Villa Park on Boxing Day, which should be an absolute corker!

I return to the office today to find a scene reminiscent of the classic film Zulu. I appear to be playing the Michael Caine role, which given his striking good looks and way with the ladies, is an obvious choice! This time though, I am not faced with Zulus chucking sharp, pointy spears, but a horrible flu thing thats been sweeping the office for the last few weeks. It has now reached my part of the office, and I have no less than 7 people surrounding me, all coughing, spluttering and generally being 'brave' by coming into work when they are feeling a bit off colour. I swear if I get even a hint of a sniffle there will be hell to pay and I may just hit someone with my computer (I'll youtube it, of course!)

Until then, I shall keep overdosing on vitamin C, and not breathing as much as I normally do, and pray that between now and the end of tomorrow, I haven't caught any horrific germs from my darling co-workers!

Everything is all set for Hamburg. My car is ready to roll down the M42, M40, M25 and M1 at 4am Wednesday morning, and tomorrow I shall check-in online (ooh the technology!) and we shall be raring to go!

Toodlepipski!

'I've got red lights all around...'

2008-12-11T08:32:00.000-08:00

Festive greetings one and....well the other one that reads this!

You will all/both be glad to learn that it is now officially Christmas, as not only have I seen the Coca-Cola advert, but I have now heard my all time favourite Christmas song on the radio. 'Driving Home for Christmas' by the legendary Chris Rea is not everyones mainstream favourite like the Pogues that have been forced down our eardrums, not that I don't love that too, but I've always had a real liking for the song. Have a listen when you get a chance, its a great little ditty, and warms the cockles of your hearts, just as every Christmas song should do.

I've been learning bits and bobs of german this week too (well when you are this bored at work, there really isn't anything else you can do!), and surprisingly it isn't too difficult to pick up, once you get over the fact that not every word has to sound shouty and more than slightly Klingon! Amazingly, in my little pocket penguin phrase book, there is even a phrase to ask a taxi driver to take us to our exact hotel! So, hopefully by Wednesday morning, I shall be sufficiently fluent in some German, so that I don't get the wrong end of the conversation and end up telling some butch Hamburg fan that his mother was a half-breed with some kind of snowblower!

Pub tonight, whoop whoop!

Commeth the hour, commeth the lord!

2008-12-09T08:32:00.000-08:00

The Russians are a noble bunch of fellas. They still harp on like they are the big superpower they used to be, still spend oil money like its going out of fashion, and when they get a bit of spare time, they bomb Georgia, however they have a very apt way of describing Sunday afternoon, as Voskresenie, or 'Resurrection Day'.

On Sunday a certain football match was played between the two oldest members of the football league, Everton and the mighty Villa. For those of you who didn't watch the game and aren't still in a state of shock, I shall recap the events of sunday. Villa scored the fastest goal of the season after just 34 seconds, an absolute sparkler from about 30 yards, then Everton hit back after about 35 minutes to take the game into half time as a draw. Villa played well but not brilliantly, didn't hold onto the ball very well, and this continued after the break, as Everton kept coming at us, but not really hurting us when they had their chances.

Then the silly season started in earnest. A backpass from an Everton defender broke to, the now ethereal, Ashley Young, who popped it into the net for an unlikely 2.1 lead and that was how the game stayed until the last minute of injury time, when Everton equalised and had a bit of a party to celebrate, as you do when you've just saved the game....

....or had they?

30 seconds after the restart, that man again Ashley Young scored an absolute blinder of a goal with virtually the last kick of the game to take all 3 points, and send every villa fan into hyperspace! I will admit to effing and jeffing when they equalised, as we had been inviting them onto us all game, but no sooner had I got half way through my tirade, it was all taken back by the legend that is Ashley!

Apart from that, I went to the Glee Club on friday, which was fairly good, although I have now officially realised that I am rubbish in social situations. Not only can I not hear a blummin thing anyone says when any music is blaring out, and not think of a single thing to say to anyone during a night, no matter what I have in common with them, but I hate the fact that I have to shout to make myself heard. Just can't be arsed with it any more, I'm old but I don't care!!

Thursday, Friday, Happy Days!

2008-12-05T07:58:00.001-08:00

Greetings one and all, yes this is a Friday blog. It may be through boredom, but a blog it is so read it at your leisure!

I was going to gush about two wonderful things that occured this week, namely Villa beating MSK Zilina and so qualifying for the latter stages of the UEFA Cup as group winners, and me getting my ticket for the Hamburg game, however as you will no doubt be aware,Villa for some inexplicable reason, put out a weakened team for our most important game of the season so far, and were roundly beaten 2.1, however because the other result in the group went our way, we have now qualified for the last 32 of the competition, but now have to beat Hamburg in order for us to get a slightly easier game in the next round.

The only shining light from the game was a 17 year old striker called Nathan Delfouneso, who made his debut. He scored a cracking goal and was arguable the best player on the pitch all game, however as his name is open to debate on how to say it, its far easier to just call him The Fonz, which is probably why i've been singing the Happy Days theme song all day. Marvellous!

The good news from the night is that I finally have my Hamburg ticket, thank the good lord! So all we need to do is get there, not get killed and get back and we'll be laughing!

I have been fascinated by a meeting that has been taking place over the road from me today. The hotel opposite rents out meeting rooms and usually its the boring kind. You know, the ones where everyone writes things down and looks very seriously at the boss who is probably the most boring man on the planet. However today was different. Today in the meeting room, the conference table has been moved out, and the people in there have been doing various 'activites' with a woman, who at one point was shouting at them, whilst waving her hands around, then later she stood them in a circle and waved a bendy stick at them whilst holding a large tennis ball. I'm sure today has been a really good 'team bonding' exercise, whatever it is that they have learned!

This evenign marks the start of the Christmas festivities for yours truly. I am going for some christmas drinks at the glee club, which is either going to be a great night, filled with laughter and frivolities, or will be a complete disaster, in which case we will just drink more and have a great night filled with laughter and frivolities!

Finally, a look over to the right hand side of the page into the yellbox will show you what happens when someone puts a foot firmly in their mouth!

Have a good weekend!

Just Another Winters Tale

2008-12-02T08:49:00.000-08:00

Ah David Essex, the legendary cockerney sparra'. My best memory of good ole DE ironically was nothing to do with him. We were on holiday in Benalmadena and the hotel had a star turn every night. Unfortunately this was a fairly old person hotel, and as such, the poor old sods had to be in bed by 10, otherwise they'd turn into crazed zombies, or something. Anyway, one night we had a David Essex impersonator on, and I must say he was pretty good, belting out a few classics (Gonna Make you a Star, Hold me Close), as well as other oldie songs, which were a good singalong. Anyway time got on, and at about half 9, some of the packed crowd started to leave, which is understandable if you are a bit tired, or have an early start, but normal people would wait until the chap doing his darned best on stage had finished his song! They were walking past him in their droves by 10, and fair play to him, he just stood there, said goodnight to everyone, then turned to the audience and remarked on how it was 'Horlicks time'! Marvellous!

Things I've learned this week:

Cold hands are a nightmare when the cute girl on the train sits next to you and you want to apear to be all sofisticated and intelligent, but your fingers simply can't turn over the double page spread in the Metro all about AIDS!
It doesn't matter how old you are, an advent calendar is a must for Christmas, if not to give you a sugary buzz first thing in the morning, but to fill you with Christmas cheer every day!
It now takes half an hour to get yourself dressed before you leave work, what with the Nordic conditions outside, which is great as it gives you something to do when you are bored out of your brain!; and finally
The German language isn't fairly ok to remember, but you can't say it without veering into Klingon territory, which could just get you killed in Hamburg in 2 weeks time!

We shall leave the supreme 'bottlers' that are the not so mighty Villa team alone this week, and hope and pray that lessons have been learned from the weekends debacle, so when we do get the chance to go 3rd in the league, the pressure doesn't crush us again!

I shall leave you now with warm and soothing Christmassy wishes!

Welking in a Wonter Sunderland

2008-11-27T08:27:00.000-08:00

Greetings one and all to another enthralling blog, and in a change to recent times, its actually a fairly uplifting and positive blog! (I know, I'm worried too, but just go with it!)

Friday night was spent at the German Market with mom and a few old workmates. It was a really good night, and considering it was hammering down half an hour before we got there, the weather held off nicely and a good night was had by all. We left at about half 8 and got back in to watch the IT Crowd, which I think you'll find is brilliant!

The weekend was made for me on a cold, wintery Saturday night, when the mighty Villa held Man Utd to a goalless draw, which meant we crept into the top 4 on points, and not goal difference like previous attempts. Hopefully we won't go a bugger it all up when we play Fulham this coming saturday!

Monday was arguably the best day of the week, as it was the most random! I decided to have a wander round the German Market, as I hadn't been for a few days.

On the way there, noticed a little van parked outside the ICC. It had various anti-government lingo and pro-conservative guff on some TV's on the side of the bus, however thats not what made me laugh. Apparently, in an attempt to rebrand the old tories, good ole 'Dave' has rebranded the Conservative logo so it is now a big green tree......which is nice. Its meant to indicate a change of direction for the party, as we are entering a bold new world, threatened by global warming, and so a big oak tree is meant to represent a greener alternative to....well anything else! So it was a bit of a surprise to find that the van they used to advertise their fist-waving at the government, had its engine on, spewing diesel fumes everywhere, for a good hour!

That made me chuckle, although not as much as the singing moose in the German Market. He is a fixture at the market, singing carols for the patrons and generally getting everyone into the spirit of christmas (he isn't an actual moose, by the way. Even though that would be great fun, I'm sure the RSPCA would be onto them in a flash!). Anyway, one of his songs on monday was that great christmas song, White Christmas', sung in a very low, deep, fake american accent, which if you forgot it was a cheesy version, would get you into the spirit whether you liked it or not. Unfortunately, I'm sure dear old Bing Crosby wouldn't have sung the following verse:

'Where treetops glisten; and children listen;
to hear........

SLYBELLS in the snoooooow'!

What the doosch is a Sly Bell? Oh those sly little bells, getting up to mischief around this time of year, going around ringing themselves (ok that sounded less sordid in my head!)

Tuesday was a bust so we'll kick on with Wednesday, and I went to see the consultant in the afternoon for my follow-up appointment to see if everything was working ok, which after an hour of waiting to see him (damn you, block appointments!), he told me in about 2 minutes that I was fine and had recovered well, although he does need to give me a poking mid next year, which is always something to look forward to!

Yesterday was really good. Amazingly, we must be the only few people to not have seen Mamma Mia, and considering we saw it at the theatre in London, and are big fans of the legendary ABBA, we really should have gone to see it. Anyway we bought the DVD yesterday and watched it, and I have to say it was a great show, very much like Hairspray (also a quality film), but with a far better cast and storyline.

I shall leave you with whatever ABBA song is in your head right now, ta ta!

'Its the end of the world as we know it..'

2008-11-19T08:36:00.000-08:00

...and you know what.....I DON'T feel fine!

Welcome to another blog. A blog that, when first thought about over the weekend was going to be a light and happy one, however these last 3 days have been the absolute worst that I can remember for a very long time. We shall start, as usual, with the disaster that is my job...

Remember a few months ago when I went for a job in my firm and was told, in no uncertain terms, that I wasn't suitable for the position because I didn't have the right personality? Well towards the end of last week, another advert came up for a similar position in the department, so I emailed my boss and asked her if there was any point in going for the job, as she clearly doesn't want me anywhere near her (there may have been different words used, but its not too far off what I put!). Anyway, a few days after I sent the email, she finally came back to me and referred me onto the Business Manager (I didn't know we had one, so I was happy to learn something that day!). Fine, I thought, I'll just mail him and ask him the same question, which I did, and a meeting was set up, which of course he didn't turn up for on Monday. So, being bored as per usual I decided to speak to my boss again, who gave me the exact same response, but with added 'I do understand your position', and just a hint of 'haven't you left yet?', which popped a few more nails in the career coffin!

So, monday I left work thoroughly dejected, and having not heard from the 10 job applications I've applied for in the last week, nor heard from any of the 4 recruitment firms have joined, decided that life was shit, and no one is going to help you but yourself. So I am now sitting at my desk, waiting for the 4th time for the Business Manager to remember who he was supposed to meet up with, while he goes into meeting after meeting, doing his very best to ignore me, which isn't too difficult. I mean, after all, I am only in Data Support, and thats waaaaaaaayy below their lofty heights!

I have therefore made a decision. I will from now on, not care a jot about my job, I shall come into work every day, get on with my 'easier than walking into an oak-tree' work (without brain), whilst at every opportunity apply for as many jobs in law firms as I can, whilst at the same time really crack on with my coursework, and pray that I pass my exams next year.

Oh yes, and I will put down 2 more names onto the role of dishonour - those people who have crossed me and questioned my career, or purpose in life. Oh yes they mock me now, but in years to come I will be just as good, if not better than all of them. I was tempted to put all their names on the blog, in a BNP-style list, however they know who they are and my vengance shall be sweet, mwaahaahaahaahaa!

Anyway back to the rest of the depressing blog, and it looked like I wasn't going to be able to go to Hamburg after all! The villa website published details of the ticket information for the game on monday, so reading down it, it looked as though, unless you had been to any away games in the last 2 years, or had been to every european away game this year, that us poor old normal season ticket holders couldn't go. So, gutted because I had just seen well over £120 fly down the drain as the flights and hotel were non-refundable, I phoned the ticket office up this morning, ready to plead with them to let little old me go to hamburg. However, the very nice lady on the phone explained that I hadn't read the website properly, and missed out a crucial or in the information, therefore the tickets for season card holders or people with an away game booking history in the last 2 years can get their tickets on December 2nd, phew! Panic over!

The last bad thing I shall bore you with is the fact that my MP3 player has died on its ass, which after just 18 months is a really crappy mp3 player if you ask me. Thankfully I have my phone and adapter to use until I ever get enough money to buy another one, which at the moment will be on the 1st July 2014, unless something else evil happens to me in that time, which I think you will all agree, is completely possible with my luck!

There are so many other things that have gone wrong for me this week, however I shall not bore you with the details. Suffice to say I would like this week to end, so God can prove his bloody point about why everything bad is happening to me this week!

I've noticed a new show coming to our screens on sunday. Surprisingly its a remake (wow, we never get any of those!) of the 1970's show, Survivors. Now I shan't explain what its about, mainly because I haven't seen any reviews or storylines from it, however I will now confidently predict what will happen using my knowledge of the 1990's take on it, shown on ITV, called The Last Train. I would be amazed if Survivors didn't have the following show highlights:

Gangs forming in 'ghetto's', mainly wearing bandana's and shouting alot;
The ridiculous sex aspect of the show, and the immortal words 'lets repopulate the world', or words to that effect;
Most of the people in the show going mad at one time, and/or starting a fight with people in the 'good guys' group;
Witless vandalism of statues, monuments, and priceless artifacts, for no purpose other than to show that the BBC used to have a budget for the show;
The obligatory stupid girl, that wanders off and gets herself killed/raped by something horrible (usually the blonde one); and finally
If the show is like The Last Train and wants to disappoint the whole audience, 'Life on Mars' style, for no reason at all, nail two people to a cross, then burn them for being normal!

Happy viewing!

I can't get that Tic Tac advert out of my head!

2008-11-12T08:51:00.000-08:00

..you know, the one where that chap is late for a bus and the Tic Tacs pick him up and carry him onto the bus?... its driving me a tad potty, just like its driving you potty about.....now!

Your welcome!

Anyway on with the blog, and this week saw the triumphant return to my flagging career at work. My return was greeted by most, especially as before I left, the credit crunch was just being talked about as a distant possiblity, rather than the horrific meltdown of the last few weeks. So I was greeted by mountains of work, as those lovely little fraudsters just love a good old financial crisis to get the blood boiling! Somewhat unsurprisingly, my wonderful boss was one of the only few to have no idea that I've been off for the last 7 weeks, although I don't suppose she would care less about anything that happened to anyone below her. Oh well, to celebrate this occasion, I signed up to 4 recruitment firms in one day, so we'll see what comes of that, although i won't hold my breath, as all the adverts out there ask for experience of handling your own cases, which I just don't have.

This week also saw the whole country battered and bruised by high winds and tornado's, which came to Wythall at approximately 11pm on Sunday night. We knew this because the wind was howling so loudly that we thought that we'd end up as the worlds first convertible house, however we avoided any real damage to the house or road, although a car wasn't so lucky about 20 yards from our road, as a tree fell on their car. Luckily, they escaped without any serious injuries. At one point, the weather was so bad that we thought it had opened up the gates of hell, especially when it threw up the dying embers of various extinct bonfires around the neighbourhood!

Brilliantly, I have returned to work just when all the Christmas lights have been turned on, and thank the lord above that the council have invested in actual Christian lights, rather than the ghastly commercial lights, that don't annoy any council member because they may offend anyone from another religion! The whole city looks gorgeous at night, and the entrance of the legendary Frankfurt Christmas Market signifies that Christmas is officially here, hurrah!

Finally, the highlight of the week, if not the year, was when those lovely people from Sky and Virgin Media put down their toys (ironically after a change in management at Virgin Media....funny that..) and decided to kiss and make up, so we poor saps who have got Virgin Media cable finally have the irreplaceable Sky News back. Oh how we've missed you, Sky News, with your presenters who actually know whats going on in the world and who make the news sound interesting, and give us factual information the second you get it, rather than BBC News 24, who are quite frankly, a shambles at everything they do on that channel. If they're not messing up the autocue, or fiddling with bits of paper, they are on the wrong camera or give you the wrong story with the right pictures. And boy oh boy, who decided to hire such odd-looking people at the BBC?

So welcome back Sky News, Sky Sports News and Sky One, and a very warm welcome to come new channels we didn't have before, Sky Two and Sky Three, for all your repeats that you missed in the last 18 months, Sky Arts and Sky Arts 2, for when we feel a bit arty and just wanna kick back and relax, and Sky Real Lives and Real Lives 2, which....may....be about...people? But anyway, welcome one and all!

Right, I'm off to Lader my Hosen, ready for the Christmas Market!

OOoooh! Eeeeeeh! Aaaaahhhh! Whhoooooo!

2008-11-05T10:09:00.000-08:00

No, my pain hasn't returned worse than before, I am currently sitting here in the middle of a mini-war zone. I've never actually seen the point of fireworks....or balloons, but fireworks in particular. I mean, the premise of spending hundreds (if not thousands) of pounds on small grenades that have pretty lights when they go off, has always seemed a ridiculous notion, but people still spend millions of pounds each year to literally watch all their hard earned money go up into the air, do a vertical loop and split into a thousand atoms. So, what do these odd people do when this happens? Instead of going 'oh my god, I've just spent a months wage in 90 seconds!', they go all googly and love it! I like the premise that you get all your mates around for a bit of a 'do', because its always nice to have a party, but I get the feeling that most people are grateful to be going to someone elses house, just to see them waste their own money! Lord knows, thats the only reason I'd go to one!

Anyway rant over, and back to the good news of the week, I'M GOING BACK TO WORK! YAY!....... ironic enough for you?

Yep, I'm back at work tomorrow, although how many people will realise I've been off work for 7 weeks, is anyones guess. I'm quite looking forward to going back to work actually, and not just because I want to use my lunch hours to search for a new job! Anyone who has worked in the city centre will know how brilliant The Metro is. Amazingly its the only newspaper that actually reports the news. I know there are other papers to choose from, but anyone who spends money on one when they can get a decent one for free, is an idiot! The Metro is only bettered by one publication, the legendary Shortlist magazine, out every Thursday. I don't know how I've coped without reading the superbly random column by Danny Wallace, who is, quite simply, a legend!

Health-wise, the fact I'm going back to work tells you I am pretty much back to normal, although I do have a lovely scar in an interesting place that isn't showing much interest in going away. But for all intents and purposes I am fit and well, so bring on the dreaded workplace!

This past couple of weeks have been more than a tad on the quiet side, therefore a distinct lack of blogging, however I bear news of the all new interactive part of the last blog, where I asked for suggestions for anything random to talk about, as my brain was slowly turning to mush and I would run out of things to make up soon. Well the results are in, and from all those people who kindly offered suggestions, I shall give you all page-time, because I am just that nice.

So, coming soon to this page, the following random topics of conversation, and the kind people who asked for it:

.......get the hint?

2 weeks and no one has even thought of anything, not even abusive messages on the shoutbox (oh how I miss the adam and matt days, I wonder if they ever found someone who found them genuinely funny?)

You disappoint me, people. I shall have to think of random stuff to speak about, as clearly no one reads this blog, however I for one do not give a rats ass, I shall merely use my blog for my own amusement, as per usual!

TA-TA!

Why do you have to pay for 'free' advice?

2008-10-23T01:07:00.000-07:00

Well not a fat lot has happened in the last week or so, thus distinct lack of blogging, but that may change in the next week or so, as I have decided to introduce a series of 'random' blogs, where I'll just randomly talk about anything, and you can have a good old laugh...possibly. Feel free to suggest random things to blog about in my shoutbox thingy, oooh its all gone interactive!

Anyway, on with the blog, and we'll start with the possible joint-highlight of the past 10 days, we have a new TV! Our old TV broke down and died about 5 days after I came out of hospital, which was a real shame as we really liked our TV, but it gave us a chance to join the digital age, so we bought ourselves a nice new shiny 32 inch Samsung affair, which is just gorgeous and gives us freeview, so as a virgin media subscriber, we have bypassed their anal argument with sky and finally have sky news and sky sports new back on our screen, whoop whoop! The financial disaster has never looked so good! Still don't have Sky One, but we'll survive.

We've actually been watching the crusise holiday videos on it this week, which just look depressingly beautiful, and make us want to go again, but having just seen Dominica flattened by Hurricane Omar, and St Lucia, Martinique, Grenada and Barbados effected by a big wave or 50, we might leave it until they have at least rebuilt most of it until we go back! Anyway, if anyone knows a good DVD burner from DV video's, then please let me know! Speaking of DVD burning software, I had a looksie on t'internet to see which software was best for what I wanted to do, so I looked on the Which website, which is always harping on about being the first port of call for the consumer that wants, and for some jackass reason, you actually have to pay for a subscription to the damned site to read a bloody review of the goods they have reviewed! How ridiculous is that?! How does that help the average consumer, when we all are having to scrape together as many pennies as we can before the country goes bankrupt!

This week also saw me going to the doctors to get signed off for another 2 weeks, which he did, but my Doctor also mentioned that his father gained a doctorate in urology, and in the good (?) old days, they used to take a chunk out of your bladder to make into a new pipe for you, which begged the question from me of 'well, don't you sort of...need.. it in your bladder', to which the reply came 'well yes, but it does grow back, however it hurt so much that you were drugged up for a good few weeks', which is always nice to know!

Anyway, the upshot of it is that I have another 2 weeks off, as my wound still has to heal over, but my cheek is almost back to normal, so thats a positive.

Today sees the mighty Villa entertain the mighty Ajax (not the cleaning fluid, for those non-football fans), which should be a fantastic game, I've even prepared to go and see it by wearing jeans for 3 whole days without searing agony. I know, thats commitment!

I have also rediscovered the excellent Dangerfield, which was a cracking medical/detective series in the 90's. I knew it was filmed in the midlands, but never actually knew it was filmed round by me! The majority of the footage is in Warwick, but most of the road shots and outside broadcasts are in Earlswood, Stratford-Upon-Avon, Redditch (that would be the episode where Dangerfield couldn't find his way out of Redditch and kept ending up in Bromagrove!), Hockley Heath and Wythall, yes little old Wythall was brought to the big small screen in the 90's! Tune to Alibi every day to see for yourself!

Tarrar-a-bit!

Wir gehen alle eine europäische Tour weiter!

2008-10-13T01:54:00.000-07:00

Indeed we are....indeed we are...

Well its time for another post from yours truly, slightly later than usual, mainly due to the fact that, being at home all day every day, there ain't too much to shout about!

Well this last week has been spent getting used to having a lovely catheter in, which is as fun as it sounds, and apart from feeling uncomfortable and the odd shooting pain, it wasn't too bad, although by the beginning of last week I had pretty much had enough of it, so it was a pretty good job that I was having it removed on friday. This concerned me slightly, as, having had a couple of catheters removed after about a day after my mini-ops, I know for a fact that it pretty blummin hurts when they take it out. So I wasn't really looking forward to it, especially after my, now infamous, 'blood line' incident.

So on friday morning, we trundled along to Russells Hall again, and as I was going to be in there for about an hour or so, my aunt and mom decided that they hadn't been to Merry Hell for a while, so just had to pop along there for a few bargains (which they found, of course!)

After about an hour of waiting in the waiting room (Where else?), trying not to get into 'Cash in the Attic' and 'Bargain Hunt', I was eventually sent into the small operating theatre, where within about 30 seconds I was set free from my tubular hell. Apart from the small ping-pong ball at the end which gave me a fright as I thought I was missing 'something', it didn't hurt at all, and within another half hour I was out of there, with good wishes from my consultant, who came in to check his handywork, and kept telling me what a pleasure I was to work on (I may be on a 'this is your life' DVD for his retirement)

Since then, weirdly, its like the catheter had been acting as a weird kind of scaffolding, holding everything together on an old building until it comes down and it has to settle into its new life with new bits attached, as it were. I now have the limp perfected to make it look like I really mean to walk gingerly everywhere!

This last week also saw the unveiling of the mighty Villa's opponents in the UEFA Cup. Gladly, we have avoided most of the big teams, and should get through the group stages of the competition. Ajax at home should be an interesting start, especially as they have had a bad start to their season, then its a tricky tie away to Slavia Prague before we destroy MSK Zilina (Slovakian team) at home, then go to Hamburg for the final game, by which point we should (and I say 'should' with some emphasis!) be safely through the group.

Now, we decided at the end of last season, that we would at least try and go to an away european game, so when Hamburg came out of the hat, we jumped at the chance, and spent the next few days on t'internet, hunting down hotels and flights, which was all going very well. We had found a nice hotel not too far from the ground, and a flight from Heathrow (Brum is closed overnight in December for maintenance, which is annoying) that got us into Hamburg for 1.15pm, then back for 8.30 the next day, which didn't give us much time in the beautiful city, but we could see some of it at least.

This was until Thursday, when the airline put the price up on their flight £3.95 every 5 minutes (seriously!), so we could either spend another £70 on the same flight, hunt for another flight at a similar time, or forget it....

...well this beagle ain't gonna give up that easily, no way! Not only did I find a flight that got us in much earlier, so giving us a whole afternoon in the city, but for only about £30 more. So, booked it up, and told the rest of the guys, who did similar, even though by the end of the 30 second phone call, the price for the same flight had gone up by £15!

All done and dusted......well no actually......

...y'see, the ground we had seen on Google Earth, which we recognised from t'internet.....may not have been Hamburgs ground........

......in fact....

...it wasn't!

In actual fact it was their tennis arena that they have the Masters Series events at. We genuinely thought that there was a tennis club next door as there were so many tennis courts next to the ground! In fact the actual stadium was about 40 miles away from where we thought it was, and away from the city centre, which was good as the only hotels we found for a decent price, were right smack bang in the middle of the red light district, or insisted that me and Dan shared a bed (not bloody likely!)

So, having panic-phoned everyone to make sure they hadn't booked the hotel, I found a fantastic hotel less than a mile from the actual ground, which has some lovely Bavarian-style villages surrounding it. I'll get some piccies off t'internet for the next blog.

Right, thats about it from me, I'll probably blog again this week, just to keep you sufficiently annoyed. Hopefully I'll be out to the pub this thursday to accept my accolades from my confederates, but that all depends on whether I can sit on a car by then!

Jack Bauer is a pussy

2008-10-01T00:44:00.000-07:00

Good tidings one and all, your saviour has returned from the other side of hell, with only mental and physical scars to prove he ever went away!

I shan't bore/sicken you with a blow-by-blow account of the days in hospital, as for very.....very long periods of time stuck in a bed, unable to move, and so the only entertainment I had was to watch people walk past, or stare at a wall/floor/curtain, however in a weird way I quite enjoyed it!

But anyway, I digress, we shall start where I finished last time, last Thursday, where I had to pop over to the hospital to have a pre-assessment. This involved me having blood taken, getting weighed and measured (to determine how much anaesthetic I needed), then having to fill out endless amounts of paperwork about past medical history etc.

Friday, and after getting into hospital and settling into some very fetching anti-embolism socks, which are like flight socks, but go right up to the tops of your legs and don't allow any air, or indeed anything to get to your legs, which is annoying and itchy until you lose all feeling in your legs! As I wasn't allowed any food for 24 hours before the operation, I was pretty much starving by the time the operation time came along at 1pm on the saturday, so I was quite grateful to be called in by the theatre team, even though I was actually called in twice as they got me confused with a 70 year old in the next ward!

This is where it all gets a little bit strange, because as I entered the theatre area, half-blind as they asked me to take off my glasses before I walked down with one of the team, and hopped onto the operating table outside theatre. After a bit of a chin-wag with the anaesthetist and various members of the team about the merits of healthcare reform and whether smokers and clinically obese people should pay for hospital treatment (seriously), we could hear the rest of the team in the theatre, washing everything down, ready for me to come in next, listening to the stereo. So, as the anaesthetist kocked me out with enough drugs to incapacitate a small elephant, the last thing I heard is the whole theatre team singing at the top of their voice, 'Livin' on a Prayer' by the legendary Bon Jovi!

I kid you not!

I woke up after around 5 hours in the land of nod, with my mom and aunt sitting next to me, which was nice. Unfortunately, as the anaesthetic was still taking effect, I was about as alert as a dead hedgehog, so all I managed were a few groans before I went back to sleep for a few minutes, possibly due to the added effect of the oxygen mask. After a sarnie at about 10pm, I had a fairly good nights sleep, after doing the dreaded 'whats under the sheet' trick, which wasn't as bad as I thought it would be, as there was so much padding down there, I actually thought they had started to mummify me! I couldn't feel my cheek, but knew there was alot of stitching along the inside of my mouth.

Sunday was spent in a dreamy state, which is never a bad thing, the highlight of which was listening to Villa beat the Baggies in the afternoon. I also spent alot of time working out what was actually 'in' me, and apart from the catheter, there was a pipe that went from my crotch into a bottle on the other side of my bed, collecting some blood, which is very good until you realise that at some point, that pipe has to come out, which will hurt.....alot......but more of that later. My consultant who performed the surgery came to see me on sunday, and said that he'd never had such good surgery on someone, and that I was a pleasure to work on, as I have wonderful tissue, which is probably the best compliment I've ever had! He also said that he'd be amazed if he ever saw me again, as he is almost certain he has fixed the problem, which is really good news.

Monday, and I was feeling alot better, although that had something to do with the fact that I was taking so much paracetamol that I thought I would start rattling if I ever got out of bed! My days were now spent staring into thin air, or watching people walk from one end of the ward to the other, which took 12 seconds (yes, you do start to time these things after a while!). You may be wondering why on earth I didn't have a TV/Radio to pass the time. The truth is that not only did I have my own radio, and book, and mobile phone, which you can now use in these sparkling new shiny hospitals, but after a while, you get tired of entertaining yourself, and so you start either napping during the day, or just watching nothing inparticular, which after a few days, starts to drive you completely mad, especially if you can't move around at all!

**THIS IS WHERE IT GETS A BIT BLOODY, SO SCROLL IF YOU ARE SQUEAMISH!**

Monday also saw the removal of the 'Blood Line' as the nurses called it. Now, this is a tube that is inserted along the stitch line to remove any excess blood that was collected because of the surgery. Now, having pulled at it a little bit, it was fairly clear that it was attached to something horrible and non-moveable, possibly an internal organ, or my spine. Either way, I knew it was going to hurt!

Fortunately, the two nurses that did the dreaded deed, were really nice, although I may have scared the bejesus out of the student nurse that pulled the line out! First, as the pipe was stitched to my padding, she cut that away, which should have left it really easy for her to gently pull it out, and everyone would be happy. Unfortunately, as she began to slowly pull it out, we all realised that because it ran along the stitch line, they obviously put the stitches in after the line went in, which meant that the pipe had become caught in 3 stitches. Yes, 3 stitches!

This meant that it was going to have to be yanked out, which would hurt more than I ever imagine, especially after the second time of trying to pull it out, which loosened my sense of reality, but not alot else!

This is where I decided to act, this bad boy was coming out, whether it wanted to or not, so seeing the student nurse not especially happy with the fact that she was going to hurt me alot (she kept apologising, bless her!), I decided to help her out, so I said to her that we'd both do it on the count of three. I had somehow managed to detach my brain from all sensation of pain, as I knew it was going to hurt, so the surprise element had gone, so on '3', we both pulled as hard as we could.............

.........ping......

.....................ping.....

......................................SNAP

We pulled so hard that the nurse staggered backwards and I had to catch her, whilst at the same time, repressing the need to scream like a little girl! Weirdly, the pipe that was in me was a good 6 inches, which is blummin big, and as it came out, blood filled up the gap that remained, much in the same way as if you have a bucket of water with a cloth in it, then take out the cloth and watch the water drop back into the bucket, which was one of the oddest sensations ever!

I didn't need to be stitched up after that, as there was only a small cut to put the pipe in, and amazingly it healed up in a few days.

**YOU CAN READ AGAIN NOW, ICKY BIT OVER!**

Tuesday was my birthday, woohoo! I have had my birthday in some very strange places, from the House of Commons to most family occasions, but being stuck in a hospital bed all day, really wanting to go home, having just had fairly big surgery, probably took the top prize! Thankfully it was to be my last day, as I was coming home on Wednesday afternoon, but it didn't stop the day from dragging. I finished my book, listened to most songs on my mp3 player, and text most people in my phone book, so was pretty much ready to come home.

Wednesday morning was spent getting 3 bagfuls of various medcial bits and bobs for the foreseeable future, and having a tap fitted to my catheter, which I will need to have fitted to me until next friday, when I shall be released from its grips and set free to pee! Mom came and picked me up in the afternoon, and getting out felt like I'd been released from prison, fresh air never felt so good! And of course theres nothing quite like your own house to hide away in for the next 4 weeks off work (plus more because of the stitches, woohoo!). So now I'm back, just about to finish my course of antibiotics, safe in the knowledge that if a 24-style terror plot is exposed and I am caught and tortured for information by baddies, I can grin and bear it!

Well thats enough from me, I am currently regretting having a chocolate hob-nob, as the bits have gone into my stitches in my cheek, ow ow ow ow ow!

TTFN

Time to cross fingers, toes and everything else!

2008-09-17T05:18:00.000-07:00

Well folks, its my last blog for at least 10 days, as I will be going into hospital on friday for a lovely bit of reconstructive surgery!

Not much to report, as I only blogged on Monday, other than the fact that a certain Mr Evans has discovered the exact amount he spent in Legs 11, and lets just say I was right!

Monday saw the mighty Villa rip apart a pretty rubbish Spurs team, although the scoreline didn;t really reflect that, and with a UEFA Cup match coming up on Thursday, then a ding-dong derby on Sunday, its a great start to what will be 7 matches in 21 days. Not sure how well us thrashing the baggies will go down in Dudley, lets just hope the surgeon isn't a West Brom fan!

For some inexplicable reason, it actually dawned on me last night as to just what I was getting myself into. I mean, I was fine and dandy with the fact that i would be left with a scar somewhere and I was alright with them taking a skin graft from my face, but it hadn't actually sunk in that they would be removing bits of me and replacing them with other bits! Thats, like, a proper operation and everything!

It came as a bit of a shock to me last night, but after that remarkable revelation, I am ready for it now. I've got an appointment with the anaesthetist tomorrow afternoon (conveniently finishing just before the villa match kicks off at 3.20!), just to talk through what he will be doing on saturday (how long does it take to say 'knock you out'!?), then I'm being admitted on Friday afternoon, probably to be drawn on like they do with those freaks who have plastic surgery, and then Saturday is the big day, a 5 hour operation, followed by alot of pain, discomfort, drug-taking, and a few weeks off work.

Marvellous!

Wish me luck!!

Its the Final Countdown!

2008-09-15T05:09:00.000-07:00

Greetings one and all, and welcome to yet another enthralling blog, a blog which comes with less than a week to go before my op!

We shall, however, start a safe distance away from my operation date. Last week was, as usual, an odd one, from having very strange, smelly people sit next to me on a train (how can one woman smell of so much parafin?), and being soaked almost constantly all week (how does rain fall perfectly sideways?), to the joys of England finally putting a great performance together for the first time in 2 years!

Work has been its usual dreary self. I now cannot remember the last time I actually used my brain in my job, however with the country seemingly on its financial knees, that situation isn't going to change any time soon. I could be in a worse job, although seeing your career rot before your very eyes every day is not the best feeling in the world, especially when you see new recruits to the fim who look (and probably are) about 10 years younger than you, taking the job that you could do perfectly well, just because they wave their little bit of paper with the word 'degree' in front of HR's eyes!

.....that was an unexpected rant, I feel rather good after that!

But I have far greater things to worry about, and apart from the large amount of discomfort and a fair amount of bloodiness I will experience, it will be worth it for the ten years guarantee I will have (I wonder if I get a certificate, like you get with white goods, or Comet purchases?). I've been through all the probables and maybes regarding the operation before, during and after, and having done all that I feel I am ready for anything.

On saturday we went for a jaunt into cuddly Dudley to find the hospital so we all know where we're going, and after going to the wrong one in stourbridge, we finally found it, fairly close to merry hill, which is great for Mom and my aunt. I probably won't see them most of the week, what with 9pm closing time in merry hill!

Sunday was my birthday....ok actually it wasn't, that comes next Tuesday, but as I'll be all drugged up and lying around (which is what every birthday should be like), I might not get chance to celebrate it properly, so we went into Stratford to have a meal at Ripple, which is a Cantonese/Chinese restaraunt right on the waterfront, which serves some absolutely superb food for a ridiculously good price, and so after being stuffed like a Christmas turkey, we lumbered our way home, my car having done well over 100 miles over the weekend (ok so we may have got lost a 'few' times in Dudley!), but it was well worth it!

One more blog to go, eeeeeeeeeep!

Happy Birthday to me....

2008-09-04T05:15:00.000-07:00

My word, doesn't time fly when your having fun! Yes its another wonderful blog from yours truly, and as ever, my life doesn't run exactly to plan!

Now, as you may be aware, my operation had been put back until the end of september. All was well and good with that, until monday when I got a phone call from the hospital.

They told me that the date they had booked in was unavailable because they couldn't get an anaesthetist in to knock me out, and as I probably didn't want the operation without the drugs (!), they have moved the date, not forward like you would imagine, but alot sooner!

My operation date is now definately the 19th september. I go in on the friday, have the operation on the saturday, then spend a week in hospital before hobbling out and having a few weeks off work, which I think is worth all the aggro!

The problem with this is that its my birthday on the wednesday I am in hospital (23rd), but I suppose all you want to do on your birthday is be pampered, and it saves me spending money on bringing in cakes to work, so those two boxes are well and truly ticked! Annoyed that I'm otherwise inconvenienced on my birthday, though, but I'm just grateful the date has finally come around, although its been so long since I was told about the operation originally, that I almost forgot that I was going to have my face sliced open to have the skin graft!!

The op is now going to be at Russells Hall Hospital in cuddly Dudley, which is a very nice Trust hospital, and its lovely and clean, which saves infections where you really don't want it!

This week also saw the mighty Villa take on the not-so-mighty Liverpool. We played far better than them for the majority of the game, although Martin O'Neills substitutions left us all baffled, but it was a decent enough game that we really should have won, and it shows just how far the club has come that we were disappointed to have only drawn 0.0 with them.

Only 2 blogs till the op!!

.....Wait!

2008-08-28T08:11:00.000-07:00

Ah ha, see what I did there?

Now, hopefully you haven't noticed that I haven't blogged for a while, but I have been stupidly busy at work, and not a fat lot has been happening, so this will be a short update (woohoo!). In case you haven't noticed I've not updated my blog, I shall endeavour to trick your mind into thinking that this blog was written on Thursday, like......so.

There, hoodwink complete, on with the blog!

The remainder of the week was as dull as it normally is at work, but the weekend brought a social event, yes dear readers, the Beagle actually went out for the night! It was Jess' birthday, so we all went up to hurst street for a good ole bop. Somehow I had managed to get the amount of people actually going to the night out from 11 to 3, without actually trying, which is some effort, you have to say, but these things come to try us and we got the old dunkirk spirit, last seen at the beer keller, out for the night, and a thoroughly good night it was too. We went to reflex, which, for those of you who know me, is pretty much what you imagine my head would look like if it were a disco!

Ben left at about 12-ish and as reported in Gareths blog, we all ended up in legs 11 at about half 2! (well Jess did ask us to go, it would be rude not to!). Now the rest of the nights intrigue is best left up to pure guesswork. If you have spoken to Gareth about how much he spent, and in what time frame, and you are happy to go along with it, then fine. If, however, you want the actual amount he spent, and the real time he was in there, then ask me, as he kept on blurting out how much he had spent inbetween the 'oh my god' and the 'bloody hell mate'! But who am I to say exactly what he told me, Jess and Paul several times in the early hours of that morning.....

This week has been a busy old one at work, so much so that I've hardly had time to look for a new job! (yes, THAT busy!), however I did manage to go and see Villa play their second leg of the qualifying round in the uefa cup against that silly named team. It was a very dull affair, that ended up 1.1, there were some bright performances by a few of the fringe players for villa, and the icelandic electricians, plumbers and teachers will be delighted with the way they played, and the fact that got a chance to come to a premier league ground. The crowd even gave them a standing ovation at the end of the game, which is great, but the really great story is the fact that we have a team we can both say and spell in the next round, Litex Lovech, a Bulgarian team, who we should get past to go through to the group stages, where the competition really gets going.

Until I blog again in a week (2 days), ttfn!

Good Things come to those who.......

2008-08-20T08:40:00.000-07:00

Greetings one and all, and welcome to another enthralling blogette from yours truly.

This week has been one of those strange up and down weeks that came to a resounding finish on sunday, but we shall start at the very beginning (a very good place to start, for all those sound of music fans!)

The week started at a leisurely pace, as I had to try and gear myself up to come into work after a nice week off, but the work wasn't coming in too quickly either, which eased me into the week quite nicely.

On Tuesday night, I did something rather silly. I was bending down (never a great start to a sentence, but stay with it) reading something and as I went to get up, I felt a sharp, shooting pain just above my knee. I think I must have damaged the muscle as I could hardly walk for the rest of the night and ended up limping around for the rest of the week, which gave me a pretty cool walk I have to say!

I didn't manage to get up the pub on my normal thursday jaunt because of this, and because the villa were playing that silly-named team from iceland so I stayed home to watch that and do some coursework, which was about as eventful as my evening got.

Friday, it all went a bit mad! It was about 9am and I was working away when I felt a bit cold in my leg. Looking down, I was looking straight at my thigh and realised in true carry-on style, that my trousers had given up the fight and split right down the seam, almost to my knee! I then remembered something that I had either seen at school, or on TV, and getting my stapler, very carefully lined up the seam and stapled my trousers back together at my desk, as I'm tucked away with my back to the window and partitions everywhere! This happened on the hour every hour, because as soon as I sat down again, one of them would ping off and stab me in the leg!

(Thankfully Google were not doing the offices of Broad Street at that time with their 3D machine, so I think I may have escaped!)

So, on saturday we went into solihull and I had an early birthday present as my aunt very kindly bought me a nice new suit (with attached seams and everything!) from BHS, which was good of her, and the evening was spent watching Oceans 13, which is more in keeping with the brilliant first film, and thankfully nothing like the bilge of the second film!

Now, every football season, I purchase a brand spanking new cheesy CD, its usually 80's, 70's disco, or something equally sing-alongable (is that a word? Well it is now), and unfortunately I had not had time to go and get one this week as the weather had been rubbish, so today I had to go and get the CD, which is a good 15 minute walk right down new street. So, with freshly stapled trousers, I set off and wandered round Zavvi and HMV, eventually settling on the 2 cd box sets that I wanted, and made it all the way back to the office without hearing a 'ping' in the trouser region!

We have a few VIP season tickets at the Villa at work that we usually take clients along to, and occasionally, when the powers-that-be can't make it, they do a draw out of the hat for the tickets to be given to those less fortunate. There was one such draw at work on friday and, as per usual, I put my name down for the draw......and only bloody won it!

So, on Sunday, both myself and Mr Bennett, as well as another person from work and her better half, went down to Villa Park for the first game of the season against Man City. We got there nice and early so we could get in our 3-course carvery lunch and soak up the atmosphere in the ground. The carvery itself was really nice, the kind of carvery you'd get in a normal pub on a sunday, and we were so stuffed by the mains that we could hardly make it to dessert. And in true VIP style, we made our way up to our comfy, armchair-like seats, about 5 minutes before the game started!

The game itself was a typical first day of the season affair, both teams had their good moments and bad, but in the second half, we pretty much blew them away with a sparkling hat-trick in 7 minutes by the legendary Gabby Agbonlahor, which has set us up nicely in 2nd place in the league, so lets hope we can hang on for another 37 games eh!

On the way out we went for a drink in the VIP area (I just love saying 'VIP'!) and watched the second half of the Man U match, then as we were leaving, we decided to have a wander over to the players car park to see if we could meet any of the players.....

.....which we did!

Now, I would normally put the pictures of the players I met up on the blog, but as my mobile has fell out with my computer, and does not want to play, I'll have to put that on another seperate blog, if I can ever upload them, but we met most of Villas first team, Doug Ellis, plus a few Man City players, and their manager Mark Hughes, and even the referee came for a chat!

It was a fab end to a great day, just can't wait to go in for the draw again!!

'Things.......can only get Bettaaaaaa!'

2008-08-12T05:19:00.000-07:00

Greetings one and all, after last weeks rant and rave (which was very cathartic, so thanks for that!), this weeks offerings have a flavour of positive thought flowing through them like some form of flowing thing in a stream, so we shall begin at my friends wedding reception, which is always a nice way to spend an evening.

It was, as it turns out, mostly due to the fact that the weather had held during the day, and so the doors of Moseley Golf Club (I know, I didn't know they had one either, but they do and its amazing!) were open to the patrons of the evening, which went really well, and of course the bride looked gorgeous as ever.

Monday started off with me phoning the Hospital to find out where my letter was for my op at the end of August, as I needed it to hand into work with a big grin on my face as I tell them I'll be off for a few months. Unfortunately they brought out the old double-edged sword and told me that my operation had been put back till September 26th because someone had to be bumped up the queue as they were suffering from cancer and so had to get operated on first, which to be honest is a pretty decent reason, you have to say!

All this means that not only will I be able to hurl abuse at Steven Gerrard and the fat spanish waiter when Liverpool come to Villa Park, but I'll be able to see the return leg of the UEFA cup match against FN Hafnarfjordur (yes I know its just a bunch of letters thrown together in a drunken manner, but its also an Icelandic team!). I'll miss the Sunderland game, but I doubt that will be any big loss!

This week also saw the arrival of 2 new players at the villa, which is great to see, and when we get Cuellar in from Rangers, our defence will be as water tight as a big rubber dinghy, marvellous!

I've been off work this past week, and the time off couldn't have come at a better time, although I am still in some state of utter shock at the events of my last blog, and still have a small hope that something will happen in this place to make me slightly less suicidal about my whole career, but we live and learn and I guess I will live on at another firm as soon as possible, but until then I'll just stay in my minimum wage job, doing basic admin for a firm who doesn't give a poop about me (tee hee, 'poop'!)

Been out and about this week with mom and my aunt, going to various places to pass the time of day as the weather dictates, and on Thursday I went to have my hair cut. Now, usually get my hair cut by a girl who looks the spitting image of Reese Witherspoon (oh yes!), and who is excellent and we have a good old bitch about anything and everything. Unfortunately she was off this week so I had one of the other girls cut my hair, who last time, because she was fresh out of hair-dressing college (if there is such a place), was a tad on the rough side and left me feeling like a piece of swiss cheese, but that was over a year ago, she must have improved by now, right?....

.....I noticed the dripping of blood coming from my ear about 10 seconds before she did, I had noticed that she had clipped me with the razor but it didn't hurt that much so I ignored it. Luckily she had a handy red towel (which may or may not have been white at the beginning of the week) to mop up the drips and drops. I didn't know your ear held so much blood!

The weekend saw us going down to Berkshire to my cousins for a barbie and a general catch-up with the rellies, which was great, and the weather held, which was even better, which was a nice end to a rather entertaining week!

This week I have been watching the BBC return to The Cruise. You remember it well, back in the 90's, it was at a time when reality TV was actually exciting and you had the legendary Jane McDonald strutting her stuff in front of dreadful Americans. Now they have gone back to see what they're up to now, and its even better than the original show because they've been bitching about each other, and we get all the goss!

Haven't we been down this road before?

2008-08-03T13:23:00.000-07:00

Greetings one and all.

Once again, apologies for the delayed blogging, but as you are about to discover, this old beagle has been put through the mill a bit recently, so its taken a bit of a back seat.

We shall start by jumping forward slightly to the weekend after I blogged last. It was a glorious day on saturday for more than one reason. Firstly, it was a gorgeously sunny day, not as muggy and horrible as we've been having recently, but nice and hot, just the way we like it. Secondly, Villa beat Odense to get through to the last qualifying round of the uefa cup, which was great, especially as we watched it in the lovely sunshine. Finally, we won the lottery again, although there does come a time when you just get sick of £10 every 3 years!

.....that, unfortunately, was a small highlight of a very dark 10 days or so.....

It started on the Thursday before the Villa game, I had been waiting for a good position to come up in my firm since I joined over a year ago, because after all, who wants to get to the age of 26 and still be working in a dull admin job? Anyway, a position arose in one of the two big departments in the office, and the partner heading up the department asked me if I would apply for the position, as she thought I would be a good candidate for the role. 'Great' I thought, 'not only has a fantastic position come up in the right team, that seems perfect for me to kick-start my career in law, but the partner in charge seems to think I have something to offer!' (You can see where this is going can't you!)

So, the interview came round in early July, I went in for the 'verbal reasoning' test, which has nothing verbal, nor any reason, to it, and then had my interview, which went really well. The people who interviewed me nodded and agreed in all the right places, I was confident, relaxed and at ease with the pretty intense questions they were throwing at me, and so I came out of there feeling that I had done the best I could, so whatever the outcome, I'd given it my all.......

......so I waited.....

.....for 17 WHOLE DAYS!

....until finally the partner in charge called me into her office to tell me if I'd got the job or not.

Now, lets do a little experiment with all you lovely people who read this little blog of mine. How would you react if you had trained for over 6 years to become half qualified in a profession that you loved and that you had worked so hard to try and carve out a career in, only to be told that you wouldn't be getting the job that you have prayed for in a big firm because 'your personality isn't right for the department'?

Ok, answers written down? Well theres more. Not only do I not have the right personality to 'fit in' with the department, but my personality 'would be more suited to the mainstream (standard) side of litigation', meaning I don't have what it takes to be a hard-nosed lawyer when the going gets tough. In other words, I will be a weak lawyer!

And in true Rocky style, the third punch threw me off my feet and onto the canvas, because to aid my progression into mediocrity in the profession that I love, I 'should wait for a similar position to come up in our other litigation team', which would be a really good idea....if a position ever came up in the history of that team.....

....which is hasn't.....

......since that team started a decade ago.......

....which the partner in question knows full well!

As if that wasn't enough, as I sat there, taking the punches like Dolph Lundgren in Rocky 4, there was one final insult that was afforded to me, because not only was I not good enough in pretty much every possible way, but even if I had been a half decent proposition, I was up against people 'who had degrees'. Now, I have been passed over for more jobs than I care to remember, most of which are because some little tax-dodger has waltzed in, waved a bit of paper under the interviewers nose that says 'degree' and walked off with my job. On more than one occasion, I have got down to the last two candidates and been beaten by someone with an Art Degree, yes kids an Art Degree! I have nothing against people who have degrees, in fact I admire them for getting a degree, lord knows its hard enough to get one of those even if you put in the hard yards, but to overlook someone with experience and a professional qualification in favour of someone with a piece of paper, no interest in law, and a student loan to repay, really does take the piss!

Suffice to say this did not sit right with me, and within about half an hour, most people in the office had heard and were equally annoyed on my behalf, which is nice I suppose, although doesn't help me in the long run, as I now have to look for yet another job, which to be honest, I don't have the strength for at the moment. This has just knocked my confidence for six, and I really don't know where to go at the moment. I certainly can't stay at my current firm, as that little episode shut every door for me at the firm and stopped me from ever applying for a promotion there again, which really does hurt, as I was enjoying myself there. The firm was going in the right direction, until now there was alot of room for progression in the firm, and the people were great, but now its put me off applying elsewhere as I'll have one of the same problems anywhere else!

It has also damaged my confidence in my career, which is one of the worst feelings you can have, as this is yet another firm that has dealt me a blow, so you have to wonder is it really worth it, which is a question I have asked myself every day since, and unfortunately for my self-confidence, the answer is always 'yes'. So I will get my operation out of the way on the 22nd, then in the new year start looking for work again, and hope that in that time my confidence has somehow miraculously returned and that I can sell myself sufficiently to another firm and start all over again!

The Friday was spent in a whole other, numb, place in my mind, having forgotten my mobile when I left the house, which felt like my right leg was missing! After work, we went out for a few drinks. Now, having not eaten all afternoon and had a few pints, the following story shall be saved under the 'Things not to think about when you're tipsy!'.

I had been planning on getting the 27 past 6 train home, but I knew I was alright because if I missed that train, I could always get another 20 minutes later. Having arrived at the station I quickly realised that I had just missed the first train and had misread the timetable on their website, as the next train would be more than an hour away, which would mean that not only would I not get home until after 8pm, having eaten nothing and drank alot, therefore arriving dead, but I could not simply just hop on a train going to Solihull and call mom as I had no mobile and no brain activity telling me how to use a payphone.

So I came up with a fiendishly good, and foolproof, plan!

After 10 minutes of sitting there trying to make the chiltern train stop spinning round my head, I realised that there was a train to Shirley going in a few minutes time, and that it wasn't much of a walk to Wythall from that station, maybe 20 minutes or so, so I could just get on that train, and be home before the Stratford train gets in, easy!

Now, cast your mind back to the friday before last, and how hot it was. Now, having been on the AA website, I realised that I half walked, half ran home from the station in hot conditions for 2.3 MILES!!, but the important thing is that while I almost had a heart attack, was stung in the leg by a stinging nettle, and lost half a stone in weight as I was doing it in a suit, shirt, tie, and shoes that you can't run in, I beat the Stratford train....

....by 10 minutes!

I felt justified till I got in, collapsed on the floor, then realised how many phone boxes I had passed on the way home, not to mention the phone boxes at Solihull station (crikey, imagine if I had run home from there!)

This past week has been pretty much a blur for me at work, I can't say whether we've been busy or not because I simply don't give one any more. I'm sure I'll quite like the job again soon, but lets face it, its very doubtful! To add insult to injury, not only can i not go to the bloodbath that will be the Liverpool game at the end of this month, but Villa have swapped the uefa cup legs round, so whereas I could have gone to the original home leg on the 14th, I now can't go to the 'new' home leg on the 28th, as I will still be 'sore' to say the least *sigh* But I have a week off this week, and that can't start soon enough!

Day Fifteen: Barbados and Home

2008-07-23T15:37:00.000-07:00

Well its the last day of our Caribbean tour, which means I shall have to think of random events in my life to blog about from now on...unless you want to do a quick whip-round to send me on a tour of another few countries?.........

...thought not, oh well, on with the blog!

Today was our final day in the Caribbean, and we finished where we started, in the surprisingly dull and grey harbour. Out of all the islands, I was more surprised that Barbados had the worst port to come into. Its a working port and as such is packed with massive containers and old fishing vessels, which takes away alot of the charm of the island, considering this is the place where the famous Sandals resorts are located and where every celeb worth their salt goes to for a relaxing break.

This time we were not on a 'Best of' tour, having done that one on the half way point of our cruise, but instead the ship offered a 'Farewell Barbados' tour, which took in a few of the tourist attractions and then dropped us back at the airport for a swift check-in before leaving for home.

We were picked up by the funniest tour guide we'd ever had. He was your sterotypical West Indian, complete with a big bushy beard and his famous rooster call to get the passengers back on his bus.....

.....yes thats right, a rooster call, which was probably why he was know as 'the rooster', legend!

We first drove by a sugar cane factory and were then taken across the island, which is surprisingly flat, to Gun Hill Station, which is one of the most important and largest military outposts

Now this is the chap who showed us round the station, and he had the best accent I've ever heard. He was born and raised in Scotland but has lived in Barbados for 20+ years, so just imagine that accent!

From there, we headed up to St Johns Church, which was built in 1836, and is owned by a very nice British couple, however this was overshadowed by the fact that we were next door to the one and only Eddie Grant's house! Now for those of you who don't know who Eddie Grant is, click here, and for those of us over the age of 23, you would think that after the massive success of Electric Avenue, Hope Joanna, and the success of Baby Come Back, which he wrote originally (fascinating fact for you) in the 1960's, he would have been able to afford a slightly bigger house than this metal bungalow that he lives and works in (he has just built a recording studio here, and has the biggest satellite I've ever seen, so he can see who is playing his songs any time of the day!)

He does have massive gates on the front to keep away the hoardes of fans, so we will forgive him his one showbiz moment!

From there we headed onto another sugar plantation for some lunch, where I tries Breadfruit, which sounds like it should be one of the other but is actually really nice. Basically the history of it is that when we introduced slave labour into the Caribbean and were still a lovely big empire, the captains of the ships that brought them over found that there wasn't any cheap food to give to the workers to keep them going all day, apart from this big, ugly fruit that grew on alot of the trees on the islands. It tastes alot like freshly made bread but is very soft and a little bit like a mango in texture and taste as well, so the British decided to give them nothing but that while they were working. Unfortunately, the Breadfruit is very high in protiens and carbohydrates, which is good in that it makes the slaves work faster, but also meant that when the slaves turned against the British, they had quite alot of strength!

Since we gave the islands back, the Breadfruit has still been enjoyed as a delicassy, and we were given some in our huge plate of food that they gave us at the lunch, which was really nice.

That filled us up nicely for our journey back to the airport, while our driver sang sweet melodies to us (he really did have a nice voice!). One of the great things about the holiday is that we didn't have to worry about check-ins or lugging luggage around, so we were in nice and quickly into the airport to catch our depressing flight home!

Is it a Bird? Is it a Plane?......

This weeks blog was going to be a pretty short one, as apart from the villa's battling (and unfit) 2.2 draw in the first leg of their european adventure, nothing has really happened, until last night that is....

I'd just got home from workin the really muggy and horrible heat (the worst kind of hot, I mean seriously, intense 90 degree heat in the Caribbean is fine, but I wilt in British summer!), and so I rushed upstairs and was half way through getting changed out of my work gear, when Mom shouted 'look out of the front window!'. Now, we, over the last couple of months, have had many things fly over our house, we've had Sea King Helicopters, Jumbo Jets, Chinooks (which shook the foundations of our teeth!), and as previously seen on this page, an Air Ambulance, so when Mom shouted 'look out of the window', I rushed over, half naked and looked upwards.........

.....for about 15 seconds....

.....until the car went past..........

......that took my photo...........

....for Google Earth!

I had heard about Google Earth doing the ground shots because its annoying getting that one dimensional image when ur zooming in looking for naked women (apparently), so they are doing an upgrade in service, which will be really good, unless you were standing, naked from the waist up, in full view of the car when it drove past!

Suffice to say I wasn't best pleased, and can only hope that they have decent editing software when they come to upload the images, lets hope!

Day Fourteen: St Vincent

2008-07-16T08:10:00.001-07:00

Well if we wanted a day to forget about Martinique, then this was the place to come! As our last island, we really wanted to get back to what we remember from our first week, the amazing colour of the islands, the weird and wonderful buildings, all the things that had made the holiday so blummin brilliant so far.

So, after boarding the coach in the morning, we climbed up 600ft above the bay to Fort Charlotte, where we stayed for around half an hour. Most of the islands were, at one stage, part of filming or location sets for the Pirates of the Caribbean films, but this Boatyard was where they made the real-life versions of the Black Pearl!

The fort was quite stunning, we could see as far as Richard Bransons 1st and 2nd islands, although they are only 200 miles off the coast!

Frrom there we headed down to the Botanical Gardens, which were simply stunning. The gardens were created back in the 1700's so most of the trees are really mature, which gives them a spooky, gnarled look, and there were some lovely green areas, which again you wouldn't have thought before you came to the Caribbean!

Typical, you try and take a photo, and some dashing young man pops his head in the way of your shot! (the video is ace, by the way, even getting a shot of a tree planted by Captain Bligh in 1793!)

From there, we headed down the valleys, through the breadfruit tree and banana plantations and eventually found ourselves at an exclusive beach bar for our daily tot of rum! There we found the rich and the fabulous, sitting by the pools, watching the world go by, as this was a private villa complex, with each villa costing ridiculous figures, although I think it would probably be worth it!

...together with your own private view (if you ignore the tourists!)

After that we headed back to the boat for our last sleep on deck with a good book and a cocktail, watched the final performance from both comedians and Robbie and George lookalikeys and headed back to our cabins to pack, as tomorrow, it was Barbados and home!

Ooh, almost forgot, our last sunset *sniff* *sniff*

'Working 9 to 5, Woo'

I've had that song in my head all week, so now you can share the love (they're making a musical of that, you know. Don't ask how I know, I just do!)

This week has been a hard working one at work, as per normal, but respite came in the form of a barbie at Gemma's house on saturday night with Becky, Jason and a handful of their friends. I gave Gareth, Carl and Adam a lift down there, and a good time was had by all. I dropped the lads back at Gareths house for about 1-ish, then headed home to watch really really bad TV that can only be put that far back in the schedules. I decided that I had to go to be as my brain had turned to mush when I started watching 'kids do the funniest things' on living tv and started to quite enjoy it!

A highlight of the week was watching the villa lads parading their new kit just outside my office. Despite the rain, a good sized crowd turned up and the kits look really good, well worth an investment when they come out at the end of july, especially with the charity emblazoned on the front.

Thats about it from me, another barbie this weekend, together with a euro trip for the villa in the intertoto cup, which should be good fun, so until then, so long!

Day Thirteen: Martinique

2008-07-08T03:52:00.000-07:00

Firstly, apologies for the delay in posting, I blame work, Wimbledon and a dodgy buffet, but more of that later!

Our last but one stop was on the lovely island of Martinique. Now this island has been predominantly owned by the French for centuries, barring the odd scuffle with the spanish and dutch, and to be slightly hypocritical, the French have ruined the place!

Again, we were on the 'Best of' tour of the island, with a lunch at a plantation house, so it was pretty much an all-dayer, so after another big breakfast (god, how I miss those!), we wandered down to the dock and got on our minibus for our day's adventures.

Now, the first thing you notice about the island is how un-caribbean it is. I think the french have ripped out pretty much everything that you think a Caribbean island should have, so out go lovely little shanty towns and villages, and in come large, grey, monotonous office buildings and apartment blocks. Out go farming and other manual labour jobs, and in come large foreign companies to convert most of the islands green land into farming land for one produce only, bananas. Now, we saw alot of banana plantations on the islands, but Martinique was the only island that covered most of the island in plantations!

I know this seems hypocritical of me, a Brit, to have a go at the French for taking over a Caribbean island and making it their own, but at least when we did it as part of the British empire (which, by the way, you'd think we still had judging by most of the islands, where we were greeted like we were royalty!), we educated the people there, gave them work. The french, on the other hand, have taken a perfectly nice island and bulldozed its culture, rather than embraced it like the brits did.

The only photographs we wanted to take were of the rugged coastline, which I have to say was stunning:

....one of the banana plantations, which has a line running through it to keep the birds away, but makes it look like predator is about to shoot you:

...and another arty picture from my aunt (Arty Aunt!):

..which is a bit good, you have to say!

We also visitied a Rum distillery, which served rum that knocked your head off. It had a big kick of aniseed taste in it, so I declined the offer to get drunk on that occasion!

Our last destination was Saint Pierre, which was devastated by a volcanic eruption of Mont Pelee back in 1902. There is an amazing museum there dedicated to the eruption, featuring all the artefacts that were salvaged. Now, having been to Pompeii before, its a chilling sight to see the shapes of people who have been killed by the ash in the dust, but because this was so recent, there are books, childs toys, wine bottles full of wine, and the old clock bell that was cracked when the church was destroyed. Its one of the most eerie places I've ever been, but it was just fascinating to see up close the devastation that was caused not too long ago.

That pretty much finished us off. We all trudged wearily and depressingly back to the glorious comfort of the ship, and hoped that tomorrow would be a better day, as it was our official last day before heading back to Barbados to get the plane home.

Bug 1 Beagle 0

This past week or so has been a hectic one at work, and I've not had alot of time to myself when I've got home, as Wimbledon has been just so damn exciting, except for the womens matches. My god how much did we not want to see the Williams sisters in the final, although at least it was the good tennis player's turn to win it this time in a drab affair!

Great to see such a good showing from the Brits this time round, and especially Laura Robson, who won the girls tournament at the age of just 14. Lets hope and pray the LTA throw some serious money at her, because she looks close to the finished article already!

Anyway the highlight of the past couple of weeks has been on Saturday, when me and mom went to our friends' wedding reception at Tidbury Green Golf club. She had gone to Antigua for her wedding and the wedding video was amazing, just to see all the shots of the island that we didn't have time for!

There was a lovely buffet as well, which was gorgeous........right up until the moment when I thought I might die!

Ok that may be a slight exaggeration but I must have picked up a bug from some food on the buffet and spent a rather uncomfortable hour and a half afterwards! This, however, did not stop me from bopping the night away, once the grey colour had left my face! All in all it was a great night, and it was good to see people we hadn't seen in ages as well, so all is good!

I shall leave you with the words to the most famous of famous french-speaking hounds. I have been singing this for the last week, although I do tend to mix it in with the Family Ness theme song, so next time I may give you the words to that!

Click here for the song, and don't forget to really go for it in the chorus, and a one, two, a-one two three and....

One for all and all for one

Muskehounds are always ready

One for all and all for one

Helping everybody

One for all and all for one

It's a pretty story

Sharing everything with fun

That's the way to be.

One for all and all for one

Muskehounds are always steady

One for all and all for one

Helping everybody

One for all and all for one

Can sound pretty corny

If you got a problem chum

Think how it could be!

La-la-la la-la-la

They cross their hearts and pray

La-la-la la-la-la

They cross their swords night and day

La-la-la la-la-la

They drink their beer and swear they're faithful to their King.
La-la-la la-la-la

No matter what you say

La-la-la la-la-la

They're never far away

La-la-la la-la-la

They're always ready to fight - or to sing.

One for all and all for one

Muskehounds are always ready.

One for all and all for one

Helping everybody

One for all and all for one

It's a pretty story

Sharing everything with fun

That's the way to be.

One for all and all for one

Muskehounds are always steady

One for all and all for one

Helping everybody

One for all and all for one

Can sound pretty corny

If you got a problem chum

Think how it could be!

La-la-la la-la-la

They like to make jokes and tricks

La-la-la la-la-la

They fight with swords or with sticks

La-la-la la-la-la

They have a beer and swear they're faithful to their King.

La-la-la la-la-la

They will defend you, save you

La-la-la la-la-la

They'll always come to rescue

La-la-la la-la-la

And on their horses they fight - or they sing!

One for all and all for one

Muskehounds are always ready

One for all and all for one

Helping everybody

One for all and all for one

It's a pretty story

Sharing everything with fun

That's the way to be

One for all and all for one

Muskehounds are always steady

One for all and all for one

Helping everybody

One for all and all for one

Can sound pretty corny

If you got a problem chum

Think how it could be!

Marvellous, well done all, especially those who knew it off by heart, like......me!

TTFN

Day Twelve: St Lucia

2008-06-25T08:10:00.000-07:00

I couldn't remember where we were meant to be today (the days, by now, merging into one big sunny blur that I never wanted to end), but luckily the good people of this island had the foresight to give cruise passengers a little hint:

....and it was

Again, we were doing the 'Best of..' tour, so we assembled as per normal on the dock, fought our way past tradespeople selling their wares, and clambered onto the bus for our excursion round the island.

First up on the journey was another Caribelle Batik place, where we got another few items of clothing that can only be worn in the summer, fact! Then, after another hour or so, we headed up to Morne Fortune, or 'Hill of Good Luck', which looks down onto Marigot Bay, where we were heading to next.

By the time we arrived, we were grateful for our rum punch, as we hadn't had one for hours and hours, while we watched a steel band play for us all, which was great. After we'd had our drink, we walked down for a bit of an explore, as we had heard the soothing sounds of the legendary Mr Marley, and were greeted by this photo opportunity at the fantastic bar at the end!

..which you have to admit, should be entered for a photography prize, so well done to my aunt!

From there, we started to head back, and our last stop was one of the best times ever! St Lucia, like most of the Caribbean islands, have alot of rum distilleries, and one of the largest, and best, was right here at the St Lucia Rum Distillery (not a catchy name, or website, but hey, its the caribbean, mon, just tak' it eeeeasy!). Anyway, after a short, and relatively informative video presentation (that carefully negotiated its way around the 'British are bad' historical parts), we were shown around the distillery, which was very interesting as it showed us just why rum is the greatest alcohol in the world. Rum is made using Molasses, which is 50% sugar, and as such, when they start the distillation process, in order to get the flavour of the drink, they remove certain ingredients from the pulp, one of which is the one ingredient that causes hangovers, therefore Rum is the perfect drink as you can get plastered with it and not feel a thing the morning after!

This was proven time and time again by my good self, not least when we went into the next room for a tasting of their produce, to be greeted with 36 bottles of rum, with a 'help yourself' order from the proprietor! Well my record was 9 glasses of the good stuff, each one a different bottle, be it liqueur, straight rum, cream rum, you name it, most of us drank it! That left us happy enough to go back to the boat, have something to eat and collapse on the deck with a good book while we watched the sun go down.

Now, the entertainment on board ship is, as I have explained before, pretty first class, and tonight was no different, in fact as slightly better! Fresh from that BBC1 show 'The One and Only', it was Tony Lewis as Robbie Williams. He was superb, he carried him off perfectly and even had the same brand of humour as him, even down to the Take That jokes and innappropriate fondling of female audience members!

After that, I had a wander down to see the other comedian, Bill Woodland, who might have suffered a bit from the previous comedian being so damn funny, because he was good, but nowhere near as good as the big, burly aussie guy who was on the night before.

All that paled into insignificance after hours, because I was about to be........a RECORD BREAKER!

There were a few 'house' singers that played at various times during the evening, between the bigger performances on the main stages, or while they were going on, just so everyone had a pretty good choice of where to go in the evening, and one of them was a chap called Dan James, who thought alot of himself but was generally pretty good, apart from over-cheesing some songs. Anyway at about 11.15 he started his little set of songs in the Village Square, which spanned 3 decks. I wandered past there on my way back to my room at about half past and there were quite a few people just sitting around, drinking coffee, while all the staff closed up the bars and coffee shops and he was just singing away, taking requests. Now, the usual thing that happens is that the artist judges when to get off, because, as you would expect, people get a bit tired and go to bed after hearing a few songs, but tonight was different.

Its got to about midnight, his usual time for heading off stage, and there were still quite a few people there, sitting around with their drinks, talking and generally singing along to the songs, so Dan started to do his 'ok, last couple of songs now, guys', meaning 'ok you can go to bed now guys!', but no one was having any of it, and the place was filling up a bit more, so he played on, giving us a few party numbers just to tire us out, like you do with kiddies if you want a peaceful night in! But we were having none of is, we carried on dancing and singing along, so at 12.45, the place was buzzing, the bars had reopened and were doing a roaring trade and even the staff, on their way back to their cabins were there, enjoying the show.

He did his whole repertoire, songs from luther vandross and dusty springfield to the killers and coldplay, and even broke the law (apparrently), by singing a couple of elvis songs, which were great!

So by this time he'd already said thanks for staying round, but now he was starting to say 'this is one of the longest sets I've ever done', which made the, now tipsy, crowd want to stay for longer, so we did......

....1am came and went......

....1.30 came and went..... which meant that it was officially the longest set anyone has ever done on an Ocean Village liner........

.......and as both boats go worldwide, ITS A NEW WORLD RECORD, BABY!!

This was greeted by cheers by the assembled masses, which now included 4 members of the bridge, including the captain at one point, then boo's as we were told by Dan that he was knackered and had to be up early so did his last song (it just had to be New York, New York!).

All in all a blummin good night, although I was shattered by the next morning!

Ooooh, isn't he the fella from?

There are many advantages to working in the city centre, theres the endless supply of places to get drunk at lunchtime, endless sandwich places to choose from, not to mention people-watching in the mailbox, but one of the best things, and something that has been highlighted on these pages on more than one occasion, is the fact that you see so many A-ZZ list celebrities wherever you go. Now, most of the time, I don't really know who they are, because they were dead body number 3 on Midsomer Murders 4 years ago, or were once part of a dreadful boy band before the drugs kicked in, and so I couldn't tell you the name as google hasn't developed technology that scans your memorised images and performs a search from that (they are SOOOO behind the times!), but as this one really annoyed me, I shall pass the annoyance onto you, my loyal readers!

Coming out of work on Monday I saw a chap who was either in the X-Failure, Soapstar Superstar, the Joseph thing or even possibly Fame Academy! I've looked at all the finalists from all the series of the above and can't for the life of me work out where he is from. I am fairly sure he isn't one of the X-fatulence people, because its a dreadful show that I refuse to watch on the grounds that its ITV and therefore its tat, and on the basis that if he had been implanted into my brain from a newspaper article at the time, he would be in the final however-many on the live bit, so thats out of the window, as I've trawled through the forgettables on their website.

So, that leaves me with the Joseph thing, Soapstar Superstar and Fame Academy, now same thing applies with these two, in that I know who the live studio people are (and I'm fairly sure I've seen him sing on TV), which means that he was one of the people who didn't make it onto the live studio bit, which then makes it dawn on you that there were about 5,000 applicants for the Joseph thing and about the same amount on all the Fame Academy things, most of whom had a TV camera shoved in their face at one time, and probably all of whom I saw..............I am therefore stumped!

So, if you know of a half-cast guy with a strong jawline, permanent stubble and a really good voice who may or may not have been on the Joseph thing, Soapstar Superstar or Fame Academy, then please let me know in my shoutbox!

Trentham Gardens

2008-06-17T08:43:00.000-07:00

For moms birthday, we had a day out at the gorgeous Trentham Estate over in Staffordshire. This was a double treat for me, as not only had we had all wanted to go there for years, but it gave me a chance to drive on the M6 toll, which is a small ambition of mine, sad as it may be!

Anyway, after just over an hours drive, we arrived at the estate which is absolutely huge, 750 acres to be exact. A brief history of the estate is that the Italianate gardens were built by the same fellow who built the Houses of Parliament, Sir Charles Barry and the park was originally created by Capability Brown, who, if you don't know already, was basically kick-ass at creating masterpieces of gardening architecture. Go on, google him and find out!

The massive original house originally on the estate fell into disrepair and were demolished to make way for a grand public park, which has recently been restored to the tune of £100m, and by god it looks stunning. We spent about 6 hours in there, and didn't even have time to visit the monkey forest next door, which looks amazing!

Anyway, photo time:

Ain't it purdy, notice and 'ooh' at the box-hedging!

The estate itself used to have a monumentally huge house on it, which like I said was knocked down to make way for what you see above, and all that remains are the two sections that are about to be restored. Firstly, the orangery:

...which has a working belltower, amazing considering its hundreds of years old, and another section that they are about to convert into a new 5 star hotel, which should look gorgeous

...which is on the left.

Anyway I hope I have at least educated you slightly (and lord knows, some of you need it!) in architecture, landscape gardening and the M6 toll (which was great, by the way!). I've rather enjoyed this little diversion from my, now-usual, travel guide. But back to it for my next blog, during which I shall be record-breaking!

Toodles!

Day Eleven: Grenada

2008-06-13T05:31:00.000-07:00

Right, a shortie post as I'm busy at work so just enough time to cram this nugget inbetween your eyelids (I just thought that up as I was writing it, you'd never tell!)

Grenada it is then, and what a difference a day makes ('24 little hours....'). From the arid, barren landscape of Isla Margarita yesterday to the greenest place I've ever been to. Grenada is mostly rainforests and extinct volcanos, and again, as we were on the 'Best Of' tour, we were going to see as much of the island as we could in a few hours.

The island itself is known as the Spice Island for fairly obvious reasons, the fact that everywhere smells of some form of spice (or all types of spice, which messes with your head!), tells you where it got its name from.

So, meandering through the islands capital, St Georges, we headed up to another small village to visit a nutmeg station, where around three quarters of the islands nutmeg ends up being sorted through and packed up for shipping to varying countries around the world, including good old blighty. After making some spicy purchases, we headed for the hills, and to a change in weather, as we found out why the rainforest was called the rainforest! The higher we went up, the more we drove into the clouds and so it got a tad wet, but being a hot country, none of us got a slight bit wet when we got out at the Grand Etang Lake, which is formed out of the islands largest extinct volcano, is 1900ft above sea level, so us europeans couldn't really breathe all that well, and is absolutely massive and stunning for a nice photo

The small, red, plant you can see in the bottom right hand corner is an historically significant one, as this was the plant that was discovered by the fella who discovered paint, and its basically a small paint pot, although I'm sure he got sick of painting in red all the time!

From there we headed back down through the vast amounts of banana, nutmeg and cocoa plantations, and on the way back, saw another gloriously odd sight of the Caribbean:

Forgive the smudginess of the photograph, but it was taken through a coach window and it really was that misty out there! Don't you just love the guy with the NASA hat on! To be fair, the people washing their clothes were really nice and kept waving at us, which makes you feel so much better when you're taking a photo of them!

After we got back to the boat, we had a wander round the port, which looks lovely doesn't it:

You'll notice that there is a line of people walking along the quayside, they were made up of plucky Brits and gigantic Americans, who were fascinated at where the quay went, as it seemed to end up at some shops of something, but alas, after 30 minutes of walking in the heat, everyone ended up at.........a Boat Repair shop, yay!!

To be fair it was a very nice boat repair shop, just not what we were expecting!

We were moored away from the main dock, as the american boat had taken up the only mooring, so we got back on board the tender boat and made our way back to the ship for a spot of lunch and an afternoon nap.

The evenings entertainment went up a notch this week, as it was easter week and all the kiddies were off school. Thankfully we hardly saw any of them, as they were disposed of in the kiddies area of the ship, but first up we were treated to the one and only George Michael......

...ok not George Michael, just a short chap who was pretending to be him, but he was very good and he put on a really good show! The main highlight for me that night was the first of two comedians for that week, a giant among...well giants! He is called Colin Cole, and is about 7ft tall and built like a fairly typical rugby player, but has the funniest act I've seen in a long time. There wasn't a single group of people he didn't insult or lampoon on that night. I did try and find a picture or a bio of him, but all his photos are from about 10 years ago and don't show any of his act, which is a bit useless, but anyway if you do get a chance to see him on the conedy circuit, its well worth a visit!

What a big chopper!

Again, a quickie normal bit of the blog, and a photo of the most exciting thing to happen this week, as on thursday we had a visit from the air ambulance. We didn't see any accident nearby and there was nothing on the news, so I can only suppose they wanted to pay us a visit, as they're always flying over here!

We also went to Trentham Gardens for my moms birthday on monday, but as the blog has already mashed together as there are too many photos on this blog, I'll do that in a seperate one, so see above!

Day Ten: Isla Margarita

2008-06-05T08:23:00.001-07:00

Today we were touching the top of South American, as we were a few miles away from Venezuela.

Now, having never been to the US, or South America, I was open to embracing whatever it threw at me, and boy did it throw alot!

Again, this was a morning excursion for 5 hours, which meant we could take in the vast majority of what the island had to show us. We were picked up in the port by one of the campest men most of us have ever seen, and he was brilliant!!

The island itself is very arid and dry, and full of desert-type landscapes and mountainous valleys, and very influenced by the US and all their oil reserves, so every few miles there is a nice big refinery, working away so that the caribbean has nice cheap petrol. By the way the most expensive petrol of all the islands we visited was the equivalent of 39p a gallon, although to be fair most of the islands top earners only earn £5,000 per year, so its probably fair, added to the fact that they don't have to travel that far to get the oil delivered!

First stop for us was the Tropical Gardens, which were simply magnificent, just to see cacti growing naturally was worth being sprayed by foul-smelling anti-mosquito spray (there was an epidemic apparently!), now at this juncture I must inform you that mom has a phobia of snakes, me of spiders, and my aunt of tortoises, so of course my aunt decides to book a trip that for 2 hours would leave us open to seeing these damn things up close and personal, bless!

The animal section itself was amazing, wildlife weren't kept there like a zoo, but just visited to be fed and hung around for a while, for example, parrots and monkeys!

So, once we'd had our fill of handling various animals (not us, of course, we just stood right at the back, away from everyone else, nervously looking round!), we hopped back on the bus and headed for our next stop, which was La Restinga National Park.

This is the islands main attraction, and contains thousands of acres of mangrove thicket. Now, for those of you not familiar with mangroves and how eerily-beautiful they look, take a peek at this:

The small boat journey took about 30 minutes, during which time we were shown where all the pearls were grown on these tree roots, which were then sold to the tourists back on dry land, but not before the boat zoomed back at over 60 miles per hour on choppy water, now that was hair-raising!

After that, we went on a long old journey to a Maritime Museum, which was interesting only because of the vast amount of stuffed marine life hanging on various walls of the place! After that, we were dropped off at the port to catch the boat again but not before our camp tour guide dropped a bit of a bombshell (no, one of the animals hadn't escaped!). Back in the 80's, our tour guide was nominated several times to give private guided tours to all the royal family at varying stages!

2 Words I never thought would be put into a sentence!

Well this week has been another busy affair with me, as we've still had loads of work in, so much so that I've been in work for the last 3 saturdays, which I don't mind, mainly because I get paid to do it, and also because it gets rid of alot of the work before I go in for my op in August. See, ain't I nice, thats commitment for ya!

There have been quite a few freebies floating round the city centre this week, firstly the Muller rice 'guys' have been handing out free muller rice pots to all passers-by, all apart from me that is, although that was firstly because I was in the wrong line to get them as I was coming out of Snow Hill station on thursday, and would have been distinctly un-British of me to scramble across lines of people to get a freebie, and secondly, on saturday afternoon, as I was coming back from work in centenary square, I wasn't even offered one, so screw you Muller Rice-people!!

Rant over, now onto my final thought for the day, and to another thing offered outside Snow Hill station (sounds dodgy coz it is). There were a bunch of people handing out leaflets for a new concept in dating, and obviously the desperate look on my face as I came out of the station screamed of singledom, they gave me a sympathetic look (the emphasis on 'pathetic') and handed me a leaflet. Its a good idea actually for those people who don't have time to prowl the bars and clubs, you register on this website and u can arrange lunch-dates with your chosen person, therefore not interrupting your hectic schedule too much. The only problem is that when they were thinking up the concept and wanted a catchy slogan, the words 'Love-buffet' should never have crossed their mind, yet alone be printed on thousands of leaflets advertising it!

Bless!

Day Nine: Cruise Control

2008-05-28T08:48:00.000-07:00

Like it? Thought I might put a Speed 2 reference in there, since the ending scene of the film was shot on one of the islands we were passing !

Today was the second day of our second week on the ship, so we were well used to all the ships little nuances, and by this time we even knew what kind of ocean was good or bad (Carib Sea = Good, Atlantic Ocean = Very Bad!), as we'd had a couple of really rough nights coming into and out of Barbados. We were also one of the old hands at this ocean lark, as the newbies who came on got used to it, we gladly strolled round like we owned the place, having fully blown conversations with people we'd met on our first week, as if to say 'Hey there, newbie-white-skins, this is our ship, and you'll be just as chilled out and relaxed as we are in a week!' I don't know why we did that, but everyone else from the first week did, and they seemed to enjoy it, so we did it too. It must be a British thing!

Anyway we had a lie in and a leisurely brekkie as we had nowhere to go, then after our stroll round the decks we headed to the main auditorium, as in our first week, to see what delights were awaiting us on the various islands we were about to visit. We hadn't got anything booked up for Isla Margarita, so we had a look at the new trips they had put on and booked one up, now theres an adventure for another day!

Today also saw my aunts birthday, and to start the day off, we had bought her a nice sponge cake, a few balloons (which, I developed a new game for, how long can you balance a balloon on your nose?.......ok I admit I had drank quite alot by then!), a big bottle of champagne and a couple of bubble-blowing things, which was sent direct to her room.

The day was spent lounging around, reading our books and watching the world float by, which ain't a bad way to spent any hot day, now is it!?

Our evening meal was at James Martins' restaraunt, and what an experience that was! We dolled ourselves up, as it was an really nice place, and wandered in. Now, before we move on, I must explain that I had said nothing about a birthday when I booked the table, however when we got in, the whole table was decked out as if it were for a birthday party, complete with party hats, and the chap on the desk knew exactly whose birthday it was.

It turns out that the chap who was the host for the restaraunt also doubled up as the chap who organises all the celebratory cakes, events and the like, so he had obviously noticed the same name on 2 lists and worked it out from there. We even had a happy birthday song in an army-style ('I don't know what I've been told......'). It was an amazing evening, and the food was just to die for, and so we headed back to our rooms to polish off the champagne.

'I Wanna Hold Your Haaaaaaaand'!

This week has been a busy old week for the beagle, not only did I go out for 2 nights in the past week (I know, 2 nights, woweee!), but its also been really busy at work.

Firstly, Friday saw us go to Hall Green Dogs (all beagle/greyhound-related puns to the usual address), and after getting pretty lucky for the first couple of races, I noticed the form guide and the bookies predictions, and before you know it, out of the 11 of 13 races I bet on, 9 races won me some spondulas! I actually came home with more money than I went out with. God I love those nights!

Saturday was a funny old night. Me, Gaz, Mark, Ben and Jay went out for Gemma's leaving 'do' up to the Beer Keller, or to give its correct name 'Mr Bills Beer Keller'. Well lord knows who Mr Bill was, or even what he did, but when we got in there, the room reminded me or a Torchwood episode where they go to the Brecon Beacons and find a village where the inhabitants eat the tourists and store the bodies in an abandoned barn.....this barn to be exact! The smell of damp was only beaten by the smell of impending death, but I don't know whether it was to infuse our Dunkirk spirit, or whether our British attitude of 'lets have a great time, or die trying', but we had a brilliant night. The music was really good, and yours truly bopped his ass off all night.

Finally, in other news this week has been that I've finally got my hospital appointment for my big op, so clear your diaries, I am going under the knife on the 22nd August, which is a friday, unusually for an op. However that is the day and I'm grateful I've got it, as theres nothing worse than waiting to hear about something for ages.

Day Eight: Barbados (again!)

2008-05-22T04:55:00.001-07:00

The last island of our first week was back to Barbados. Having only seen a few backstreets and the odd weird-looking dog/dog/chicken/tree, we were looking forward to it, especially as its one of the islands you first think of when someone says 'Caribbean'.

Again, we'd booked ourselves on another 'Best Of' tour, so before all the people leaving the boat could get off, us second-weekers piled off the ship and onto our tourbus for a half day's tour of the island.

Now, as stunning scenery goes (and so far, you've had a fair old selection of pretty fine photos), when you think of sitting on a beach, just doing nothing, with a cocktail of your choice, is this pretty much what you are thinking of?

Ladies and Gentlefolk, I give you, Bathsheba Bay:

...and just to add a bit of Carib-colour to the occasion, some of the local women were making wooden ornaments to sell to the tourists, whilst their washing dried out.

So, after about half an hour of oohs and aahs we popped back onto the coach and made our way to the top of the tallest mountain on the island, where green monkeys were supposed to live. f course we didn't see any as we drank another rum punch, but while we were looking at the view, I noticed a couple of signs that shouted 'blog' at me.

First up, spot the deliberate mistake:

I've always wanted to go to Los Angles, where nothing is quite how you expect it to be!

Next up, the best sign I've ever seen!

You'll have to look closely at the writing, but its well worth it!

Incase you can't read it (the writing is quite small), the sign reads:

Highland Adventure Weather Station

If the stone is wet.....its raining

If the stone is hot.....its sunny

If the stone is cool....its overcast

If the rock is gone....

...its a Hurricane, RUN!

HAVE A NICE DAY!

By the time we'd got back to the ship and had a wander round a fairly rubbish americanised mall-type thing that passed for some shops, new people were boarding, although we had to wait to bring on more fresh water, so we eventually left port at midnight, which was eerie!

Tomorrow, its a free day, and also my aunts birthday, but we never expected the day we had!!

'Always the last to know'

Right, onto the normal blog bit and its been a strange one at work this week. I appear to be the founatin of all social knowledge without actually knowing anything at all! On Tuesday, I had the following conversation:

'So, I bet you're looking forward to tomorrow night?!'

'.....erm...what about tomorrow night?'

'Oh haven't you had the email?'

'Er.....no'

'Oh right, sorry......'

Cue the longest lift journey ever!

And on Thursday, this conversation:

'So, I hear you're going to the cricket on Sunday'

'erm....no, I've not heard anything about any cricket on Sunday'

'Oh right, I thought I heard someone say you were going'

'No, no ones mentioned anything to me!'

'Oh right........'

So, two situations whereby someone could have told me what the hell was going on, but declined the invite point blank. Seems like I should have been told, as it was implied that I'd be going to wherever, but obviously I appear to be the office social leppr. I don't really mind about the first one, as it was probably only going for an end of year drink and I hadn't got any cash on me, so thats ok, but the cricket is a different story. I mean, was it an invite to the test match in manchester, or a local game, or would I have to play (I could do with smacking another 4 against an insurance toff!), I just don't know!!!

......and relax.......

Anyway I'm not too bothered about it really, just annoyed at the time I suppose, but looking forward to this weekend, I'm out Friday night at Hall Green Dogs with a few mates from my old work, then out for a booze up at the beer keller on saturday night, so I could have done without a cricket game/social interaction on sunday, so there!

Day Seven: Dominica

2008-05-15T05:06:00.000-07:00

Next up is the beautiful island of Dominica. Unfortunately we didn't see much of the island, as we were booked on our favourite trip of the whole holiday....whale and dolphin watching!

The ship had to be docked about half a mile out at sea, as the port was already holding their maximum amount of liners (the Americans getting there first, but more about them later), so we had to be taken in by tender boat, which is one of the 16 lifeboats on board ship.

...which was ever so much fun when you try to get off it and a big wave crashes the tender boat into the ship, throwing you into the arms of one of the maintenance crew!

The port itself was very nice, pretty much left as it always has been, with winding alleyways and really old-fashioned markets, so we made plans to investigate it when we got back, as we were herded onto our boat to take us out on our little jaunt.

To be honest with you, I don't know what I was expecting. I actually thought it would be a case of us just sitting there for 4 hours, waiting for something to happen, taking a few snaps of the view and getting hammered on rum (yes there was free rum, like you needed to ask!), which wasn't the worst way of spending a morning, I have to admit! We had been warned, not only on the cruise ship, but when we got on board the boat, that as we were dealing with wild animals, that they don't just turn up and perform for us just because we were there, and so not to expect anything, so our expectation levels were sufficiently low before we set off.....

....what we didn't expect, though, were scenes from a Flipper reunion!

As we set off on the boat, the captain (he even had a hat AND a t-shirt with 'captain' on) told us that we were heading for the Dolphin area of the ocean, and showed us a big National Geographic poster of all the dolphins that we were likely to see, and to keep an eye out for the spotty ones, as they are the only dolphins who tend to jump out of the water.

So then we were on watch, the captain on look-out, together with his 2 guys on either side of the boat, along with our group, who had taken up our positions and looking out for gulls circling around a particular area of the ocean, as they could smell the fish on the surface that the dolphins smelt of.

10 minutes went by........... then 20..............and on the half hour.........

'FISHY FISHY FISHY', shouted the captain as one surfaced just in front of the boat, then another two were spotted (by me, ithankyou) just to our right, so over we went to have a look, which involved us basically racing them at about 50mph. What happened next was one of the most memorable moments of my life, it has to be said. There must have been between 15-20 dolphins all around us, eager to try and beat the boat, who was getting faster and faster, usually swimming past us in pairs or more, ducking under the boat or keeping level with us before jumping out of the water and diving back down again.

Piccies:

I have a video that caught pretty much everything, which includes the perfect shot of 4 dolphins coming out of the water at the same time, that we must have watched 20 times, and a shot of one dolphin leaping out of the water and almost standing up on the water, which was amazing to see. Alas we couldn't stay there all morning, even though we wanted to, as we needed to go and find some whales.

By this time we must have been about 10 miles out at sea, going from the calm, serene Carib sea, to the more choppy Atlantic ocean, however for all our look-outs, plus the whale-caller (there is probably a more technical name for that, but as it was a pole, a wire and a stolen soup bowl, we'll stick with whale-caller!), there were no whales to be seen by us, or the yachts and fishing trawlers our captain spoke to. So for the last hour or so, we just floated around the bay and headed back to port, drinking spiced rum that knocked your head off!

Once we got back to the port, we decided to explore the shops and streets and mingle with the yocals before heading back to the ship for some lunch and an afternoon nap (god, how I miss those afternoon naps!). By the time we got back into port, another cruise liner had docked, unloading a few thousand americans onto the local population, and because of this influx of tourists, the local authority had closed the main road off to all traffic, so you could have a nice, leisurely wander round, without taking your life in your hands.

Now, I've never had anything bad to say about americans from experience. I mean, of all the americans I had met up till then, they had been perfectly nice people, polite in some cases, so I was well prepared to blow away the theory of them being loud, arrogant little blighters when on holiday, however Dominica changed all that! They were brash, shouty, sterotypically fat tourists who barged their way past you to get into shops, then shouted over the top of everyone to speak to the person standing next to them. If I had been in their company for any longer, heads would have been knocked together!

So, after being knocked around by some fat yanks, we headed back to the tender boat, and the safety of the cocktail bar before settling into the evenings entertainment, which was slightly on the thin side as half the boats passengers were packing their bags for their flights home the next day. Luckily for us, we were there for two weeks, so we had a relaxing time out on deck, preparing ourselves for our next island, its back to Barbados for us!

The Seven Dwarfs didn't have do do THIS much work!

Judging by the title, you can probably tell that I've been pretty damn busy this week, firstly in the garden, taking advantage of the hot weather to hack the hell out of every weed and nasty looking thing in the back garden, only to wake up the next day to find 10 more sprouting up everywhere. But the garden is looking slightly better for it, so we must be doing something right.

Work this week has been mad, with a huge influx of work that yours truly has had to wade through, but after hours of solid work, and not a lunch hour to be seen all week (hey, its the commitment they'll remember me for!), everything got done and dusted in pretty good time, which is knackering but pleasing.

I've made in-roads into the next part of my course this week, which is good as its been playing on my mind for the last few weeks, so hopefully by the time the exams come round in October, I'll be ready for anything they throw at me....well thats the idea anyway!

This week also saw the mighty villa qualify for europe, which is fantastic considering where we were just a few years ago. So fingers crossed we can add to the squad and really go for it next season to stay in the top 6 on a regular basis.

This weekend I'm off to a birthday bash at Edgbaston cricket club, which should be good fun, especially if they have a cheesy disco, as I could do with a good ole bop!

Day Six: Antigua

2008-05-06T03:52:00.000-07:00

Today was slightly different to all the other islands that we visisted in that we had our trip in the afternoon, which meant we could have a lazy morning, and a wander round the port, which was a nice change. Unfortunately, the port area wasn't so much Caribbean, more Harlem in the 1970's! We were hassled by everyone we came across, be it for a taxi, a trip to a 'secret' beach (whether you would ever come back from that, it wasn't clear), or someone selling you everything you could never wish for, including a chap selling Bibles and giving you a free preach as you tried, and failed, to walk past him.

There was another american liner in, so the port was probably more busy than normal, in for the extra trade that 2 cruise liners brought, but that was the first (of two) ports where you were getting indimidated by the yocals.

We made a hasty retreat back to the boat after getting lost round the small streets, trying to find signposts to the main shopping area, which I doubt existed as all the signs pointed in the wrong direction, and getting the odd 'you're not from around here' looks from the local people.

Our trip in the afternoon was again a general look around the island that took in as much as we could handle in 3 hours, so the first few stops, as we were driven through up the mountains, was Dows Hill, which is right at the top of the island and from which you can see pretty much everything the island has to offer. Now, apart from the cricket, Antigua is famous for being the home of Eric Clapton. Eric used to live right in the heart of the main bay, however the damned locals only went and built within a mile of his house, so he had to move all the way to the top of a cliff face just down the road, as you do.

Eric also owns a rehab centre that is free for any Antiguan. This may seem like he's doing this out of the generosity of his own good heart and being charitable in the process, however as our tour guide explained, as Whitney Houston comes here once a year for 6 weeks, she pays for the rehab centre to keep going, so he's probably making a tidy profit out of the old warbler!

Next up, Shirley Heights, which sounds as if they really really like Shirley, whoever she was, but in fact it was a principle fortification used by the British Fleet who were stationed at English Harbour. From here you can look down onto arguably the best part of Antigua, Nelsons Dockyard.

(and if you look very very closely, the grey building centre-right, backing onto the hill is Mr C's old place)

This is the worlds last Georgian dockyard still used today and is named after Admiral Nelson, who ruled the roost in the Leeward Islands from 1784-87 and was used to maintain the Royal Navy ships that used to capture valuable sugar island and thus expand good old Blighty's Commonwealth. Nowadays its used to maintain and repair various yachts and boats, and is also useful in hurricane season as the dock is landlocked, and so protects the multi-millionnaires from losing their hobbies!

The dockyard itself is an amazing sight, as you can see, and has kept pretty much everything that was built orginally, including a nice large bar that was used by the sailors to drink in ye olde times, which was a great place to stop off for a free rum!

Miracle on the 25th Lane

Right, now onto the normal blog bit, and on Sunday me, Kate, Ben, Marcus, Jenny, Gareth and Dan went bowling in rubery, where 2 miracles occured. Firstly, after over 5 years of not going bowling, both me and Dan suddenly found that we could bowl, and bowl pretty damn well at times, in fact Dan won the first game and only lost out on the second game due to the second miracle. He found he could fly......actually fly! He even had a run up and a skip before throwing the ball and himself down the lane, at one stage actually becoming horizontal before crashing to the ground!

Anyway a good night was had by all, and we ended up getting back for around 11-ish. This weekend also saw the demise of the mighty Villa to the paltry Wigan, who to be fair were the only team that turned up on the day, so Villa need a win at West Ham to be guaranteed an Intertoto spot (back door to europe), and hope Everton muck up against Newcastle at home, to sneak into 5th spot and get an automatic UEFA Cup spot, so bring on the weekend!

Day Five: St Kitts

2008-04-30T05:32:00.000-07:00

This island is our favourite island that we visited, for two main reasons. Firstly, the port that we docked in was very tourist-friendly. No-one could get in or out unless you had your cruise card on you, therefore you couldn't get murdered there (see Antigua for more details!) and enjoy your major shopping experience, and secondly, pretty much the whole of the rest of the island was untouched by the modern day, so plenty of fortresses and wonderful little shanty towns, together with a pretty big rainforest!

We were woken up again by the ship coming into dock, which is great as it gives you about an hour or more before you go for breakfast, which is good, especially if you've had a heavy night the night before! So after eating another big breakfast, we ambled our way down to the harbour, where we were picked up by another little minibus and taken to our first destination, high up in the hills.

After the usual 2 or 3 stop-offs to take some snaps, we eventually arrived at Romney Manor. This is an amazing place, high up in the rainforest, with some spectacular views and pretty great gardens to boot. The main reason for the stop off was to see some Batik clothing being made. Now, Batik, for anyone that hasn't clicked on the link, is an ancient trade of colouring cloth using a procedure involving wax dyeing. The clothes were amazing and, because of the glorious price of the dollar, cheap to buy as well, so we all came away with some item of clothing, which will probably make an appearance at various cheesy barbecues over the summer!

Here's a piccie of some of the cloth drying out:

That blue one, second in, is similar to the shirt I bought!

After that, we slowly made our way up towards the highest point of the island, and to our next destination, Brimstone Hill Fortress, which is a UNESCO world heritahe site. It got its name because the fort itself was made from the lava rock from the nearby volcano Nevis, so its pretty damn strong!

I think that may be Nevis in the background, but either way, its a good photo so there!

There were supposed to be green monkeys up there, but apart from the sickening sight of one on a leash that one local decided to charge every tourist for looking for (a stern, british look put him to rights!), there were none to be found.

After that, we made our way slowly down the steep lanes back to the harbour, and before getting back on board for some lunch, had a wander round the tourist-friendly part, which was lovely, and amazingly intact, considering just over a year ago it had been decimated by a rather large hurricane!

The entertainment on board ship up till this point had been excellent. There were resident singers, who were suitably cheesy and quite good at times, and in the first week we had two comedians, who filled the category 'I know his face but not his name', or vice versa). They both came from the Jongleurs club sceme, and they were really good. So, first up, Sean Meo...

...who, when not entertaining us with fairly risque material, was getting hammered in the casino, or sleeping by the pool. Oh the pain of being paid to be funny!

Next up, Junior Simpson, who is slightly better known (this is where the text-wrapping goes AWOL)...

..and, whilst very funny, was not as funny as the chap we had coming up next week. But more of that at a later date.

The highlight of the entertainment on the first week was the 'Planets' show, which was performed by the Freedom 2 Move performers who had done various acrobatics around the ship all week, and done an excellent job of performing an ABBA tribute act the previous night. This was performed outside on top deck, and was incredibly spectacular, as it was created by the chap who thought up the War of the Worlds west end stage production.

After watching that, we headed back to watch the final performance of the above comedians, ably assisted by Manuel Martinez, before heading to bed (after an alcoholic nightcap, of course!), as tomorrow, we're heading for Antigua, the wedding capital of the world!

Three, Two, One....Goooooooooooo!

Right, now for the normal blog bit, and this time with actual content!

Been a busy week at work (thus, no blog for a week-ish), but its been quite interesting in brum this week, as they have started to excavate the bit inbetween Baskerville House and the REP for the new library. Before they do this, they have bought in the archaeologists to uncover the original house that John Baskerville lived in. They are there for about 4 weeks, and have only opened up a few trenches, so its not really worth a photo yet, but stay tuned for more digging action!

Finally the weekend came and after attending a leaving drinks 'do' in solihull on friday, and hearing Blues' demise on saturday (*snigger*), sunday saw me, Jason, Gareth and Dan go out to Bassetts Pole to get battered by paintballs all day long. It was great fun, and apparently our team won, which was nice.

Highlight: Me, Jason and two other lads decimating half a field of opponents, using tactical army techniques, strategic manouevres, and a whole lot of bullets!

Lowlight: Gareth hitting me on the forehead with a paintball, giving me double vision for about a minute, then when I came to and started firing at his group, him hitting me in the glove and square on the visor!

Anyway, all good fun, and despite the bruises, of which I am still finding some to this day, I'd do it again!

This weekend I shall be mostly attending the 'Mellberg Day' at villa park to give Olly the best send off that the holte end can muster (got to be worth a quid on him scoring, hasn't it!?)

Day Four: St Maarten

2008-04-23T11:24:00.000-07:00

Day Four again saw us getting up at stupid o'clock to take gorgeous photos of sleepy ports and sunrise in the lovely island of St Maarten, see?

Now, great story time, the island has been one of the most fought over in the last few centuries, mainly by the Dutch and French, in fact....only...by the Dutch and French! So one day they decided to call a ceasefire to all the fighting (whereby at that stage the island was almost changing hands monthly!), and to jointly own the island, however they could not decide who owned what. It was decided, finally, that one Dutch man and one French man would set off from the same place and walk around the circumference of the island in opposite directions, and wherever they met, the island would be split down the middle, so each side would own their own side, of which both sides agreed. So, both men set off with food and rum to keep them going in their journey.

About a quarter of the way round, the Dutchman got a tad thirsty and decided to have some rum. Unfortunately, no one asked the dutch lad if he had ever drank rum, and so because he wasn't used to drinking something that you could probably carve, and the fact that he was a very young lad, the drink went to his head and so he decided to have a sit down and get his head together. When he woke up, it was around 4 hours later and the Frenchman was already half way round the island, which is why the French own three quarters of the island and the dutch only own a quarter!

We didn't get a chance to go and see the madcap airport I spoke about a few months ago, we were over the other side of the island, but we did go to Marigot Bay, which is owned by the French, and is a really lovely port with the odd scattering of boutiques and touristy places.

From there, we were taken on a drive round the rest of the island, stopping off to take various shots of the bay, and wandered back to Philipsburg, where we did a spot of window shopping, before realising just how bloody big our ship is. One of the other liners had come into dock whilst we were away, the Regatta. Its an amazing sight, and well worth a photo methinks!

Interestingly, the port itself was very tourist-orientated, despite the fact that they'd had to rebuild the entire port since it was destroyed in 2006 by a hurricane.

We got back to the ship just after lunchtime, so had a bite to eat then went to chill over a cocktail (or two) in the bar.

After dinner, we went along to The Marquee, where we saw a performance by Manuel Martinez, who was incredibly funny and a weird but wonderful magician to boot! After that, we went and watched the acrobats flying through the air, before heading for a drink on deck and retiring to our cabins, ready for tomorrows island, St Kitts, which is our favourite island by a long shot!

The Normal Blog Bit

This week started fantastically, especially after the weekends destruction of the soon-to-be-relageted Blues, *cue evil laugh*. It was a fantastic game and personally I think we were kind on them, only sticking 5 goals past them, although I was slightly peeved that we conceded a goal against them, but I'll get over it!

Monday was an 'interesting' one. I was knackered after Sundays derby game, so just wanted to sleep at my desk, which I did for most of the day, until my mom text me to tell me that my aunt had got her hand caught in a blender, and had just got to hospital!!

Luckily she had only caught one finger, and the blade had missed the bone, so she was very very lucky. It was just one of those silly, automatic things that you do, and probably won't ever do again, we hope!

The rest of last week wasn't much to write home about, or indeed write to you about. Work came in, work got done, Pub on thursday was attended, enjoyed, and departed forthwith, and thats about it. Blog again soon!

Day Three: Tortola

2008-04-15T08:51:00.000-07:00

Apologies for the slight delay in blogging, I was meant to do it over the weekend, but got distracted by something else, which I'll get onto shortly, but in the meantime, lets blog with photos (oooooh!)

Getting up on board the ship is easier than you think. Theres absolutely no need to set an alarm clock, because every day you get to a new island at about 7am, so by 6am all the ropes and pulleys are moving around, getting ready to dock at whichever port you are arriving at, so we all woke up at about 6ish to various banging and machinery noises, which was pleasant as we got a chance to get out on deck and see the approaching port.

We had breakfast and met up in the Marquee with all the other people on tours and were led out onto dry land! (that sounded better at the time, I admit!). So, off we went in our various groups to the tour bus. Now, when I say tour bus, you immediately think of a coach or such like with windows, air con etc, but this is more of an adventure to say the least. It was an open-sided bus with little in the way of safety measures, in fact the tour guide did remind the people on each side of the bus to hang on to the metal posts as he went round corners, as they would fall out! (Thankfully my aunt had already bagsied that seat!)

Anyway after about half an hour of bouncing along the rugged coastal roads, we stopped off and took a few snaps of some pelicans and of the stunning view (view 1 of 150 million):

Now, fascinating fact, fact-fans. That little island, just past the yacht is called Dead Mans Island, and the legend goes that when the island was a trading port, in times of yore, pirates used to try and get onto land to plunder the locals for whatever they could find. Only problem was, that this area of the ocean is very shallow, and so pirate ships were destroyed trying to negotiate the rocks, killing hundreds, so the inhabitants of the island took their bodies and buried them in an uninhabited island, and built a Mausoleum for them. Decades later, a plague devastated the vast majority of the population of the island, and so they buried those poor souls next to the pirates, in a seperate Mausoleum, so you can imagine the ghost stories flying round there! This is also where the idea for the Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Mans Chest was thought of, see!

Next stop was a Harbour called Pussers Landing, in Sopers Hole Wharf, which is a stunning little port where most of the rich-boys toys, otherwise known as yachts, are moored, as demonstrated here:

Next up was the long drive over the mountains to Cane Garden Beach. The journey there was as much fun as you can have in an open-sided bus, as there were so many tight hairpin turns above sheer cliffs, that we were glad to get there in one piece! Along the way, however, we stopped off to get some local flavour at the 'Bomba Shack'. Now, unfortunately Bomba wasn't in, but the general idea of the Bomba Shack was to advertise and sign people up for every party boat and beach barbecue on the island, as demonstrated, quite brilliantly here:

In case you are wondering, that is ladies underwear nailed to the top of the Bomba Shack, god love Bomba!

Our last stop was Cane Garden Bay, and it was well worth waiting for. You had to walk through a massive bar area to get to the beach, whilst Bob Marley played at full volume, which was played pretty much everywhere we went to, don't know whether that was just for the tourists, but it was great to hear! Anyway, I think the beach was worth waiting for:

After about an hour on the beach, we came back down through the mountains and back to the ship, which by this point had been joined by another, american ship, which amused us as we could do the 'our ships bigger than yours' game, which never tired over the whole 2 weeks!

Next Stop, St Maarten, and one of the greatest historical alternatives to war ever!

The Normal Blog Bit

Now, the reason for the delay in blogging over the weekend was that I decided to upload all my videos of the cruise onto DVD. Simple, right? Wrong! Basically Windows Movie Maker didn't want to talk to the CD/DVD converter, then the DVD converter didn't recognise the DVD in the joint CV/DVD drive (The Benq drive that you installed, Gaz), so after 2 days of trying I'm just gonna shove it onto video and buy a seperate DVD drive to do it at a later date.

At the same time I was trying to upload all our photos to the Boots website so we could have all our photos to put in albums and show them to whoever wanted to see them. Easier said than done, the Boots website kept crashing, the software kept telling me off for 'interrupting' the upload, and it took the best part of 9 hours to upload 350 photos! Absolute nightmare, then I had to do the same for my aunts photos on the sunday, marvellous!

I finally ordered them and they came on Tuesday, completely out of the order we'd set out! So thats our weekend sorted then! Although I'll have to steal myself away to go and see Villa thump another hapless relegation-threatened team, who just happens to be the feckless Blues, on Sunday. Bring them on!!!!!

Finally, a word from Celebrity Corner. Now I know this segment has been somewhate bare over the last few months, but I doubt me telling you how I've seen 'that fella who was on casualty a few years ago. Y'know, the one who fell off a ladder and broke his leg', would do you much good, but this time I can put a name to the faces of the two legends in their own right who I saw last week.

First up, the silver-haired Blue Peter legend that is, John Craven, who I saw in a tunnel by the Mailbox!

Ah, I remember the days when news was real news. Not the rubbish you get now with death and destruction everywhere, but cats saving dogs from badger holes on John Craven's Newsround!

Last, but by no means least, the even more legendary Martin Laursen getting into his Aston Martin along Colmore Row!

Up the Villa!

Day Two: All at Sea

2008-04-08T07:51:00.000-07:00

The day after the day we arrived....which by all accounts would be our second day on the boat was spent travelling from Barbados which is in the Southern Caribbean, to Tortola, part of the British Virgin Islands in the Northern Caribbean. I can't describe the intense, giggling pleasure of waking up and seeing no land anywhere!

As we had a nice free day, we decided to get our bearings and have a wander round the boat, first with an official tour of the boat finishing off with an hour long talk about the various islands we would be visiting in the coming week, and again later on, after a spot of lunch.

Now, we knew the boat was big, we kinda got that impression when we couldn't find our own rooms on the first day, but walking round the boat gave you the impression that you were in a floating city, which, basically we were!

The on-board facilities include a Gym and Health spa (of course, I was in there every morning before breakfast!), a casino (where I got a vague idea of how to play roulette after watching a woman win £700 and another woman lose more), 6 bars, a theatre-type arena where most of the big shows went on, a village square which had 4 duty free shops, a coffee shop, an internet cafe (is £8 for 30 minutes or £12 for an hour expensive?), an art gallery and auction, 4 restaraunts, including James Martin's restaraunt (he's a TV chef incase u don't know), plus a couple of swimming pools and other, less glamourous facilities, such as doctors, laundry service, hairdressers etc.

Basically, a blummin big ship, but luckily they did give you a map upon boarding the ship, which proved very useful when we got lost, which we did.......quite often......every few hours! There were varying forms of entertainment on board the ship on the hour, every hour. Usually the daytime was handed over to the classes, for example salsa class or art appreciation, or learning to be a trapeze artist, which I decided to pass on as it was just after lunch!

The remainder of the day was spent unpacking, as we had arrived so late in the evening the night before, and after dinner, headed for a drink whilst we watched one of the many acrobats do their stuff, before heading for bed, because the next day, we were in Tortola!

Normal blog bit

(I really should come up with a catchy title for this bit)

Anyway, since I last blogged, the work has increased slightly for me in my new/old job thingy, which is good as I've now got a proper feel for the work and am enjoying it more and more, which is never a bad thing!

Saturday saw the mighty Villa rise to the occasion, which by all accounts had been lacking recently, and flatten the hapless Bolton 4.0. For some reason, my season card wasn't being recognised at the turnstile, which was a bit of an arse, but the chap in the villa office who I spoke to assured me that it wasn't their fault......oh goodie! Don't fancy going all the way over to the ticket office before the blues game to make sure my ticket is alright. Don't know why, its probably because I'll have to cross 4 lines of riot police and a hail of rocks from the inbreds from our near neighbours, and I don't really wanna do that again!

Thursday saw me back to the good ole pub (back to earth with a bump!), and if anyone else had turned up, that would have made it a pretty good night! To be fair Ben turned up, in fact he was there before I was, and we had a good night, mainly trying to work out just how Jason had destroyed yet another car in his possession!

We've finally sorted out the video and photos from our holiday, which makes us more depressed every time we look at it, and so next blog, you shall be joining us in our mutual depression, so until then, sweet bloggers, goodbye!

Day One: Barbados

2008-04-03T04:26:00.000-07:00

Apologies for the Big Brother-style headings, but I thought I'd do these in a diary-like form and this is the first thing that came into my head!

Right, a nice easy one to start you off. We got to the airport at 8am ready for the flight at 11, got checked in and had a spot of brekkie in wetherspoons (which is starting to go off a bit, I really must write to the management), whilst we whiled away the minutes until the plane was ready to leave. Unfortunately because of the bad weather and gale force winds, the plane was delayed by 2 hours, which was rather annoying, and then once we had taken off sideways (seriously, we actually took off sideways because of the crosswinds, you'd pay good money for that kind of thrillseeking at any theme park!), we were told that the flight was slightly longer than the advertised 8 hours and we would be in Bridgetown in approximately 9 and a half hours!

Thankfully we had some half decent movies and TV shows to watch on the in-flight entertainment, as well as music and games, of which i won about 14 games of solitaire, and got to £64,000 in millionaire when the boredom got too much. Unfortunately there was only about 7 hours worth of entertainment to watch, which left us with brain-numb for the remaining hours, but arrive we did, and immediately we knew we were in a little slice of paradise, as we were greeted off the plane by lines of palm trees and a big sign with bob marley on it (they love him out there, they do), and of course because it was late afternoon there, the poor, grey-coloured peasants trudging off the plane in long sleeves and trousers weren't subjected to intense heat, which was good.

Our bags were already en-route to the ship, and as there was no check in (all inclusive y'see), we got on some buses to take us down to the port. Now, as odd routes go, this one really took the biscuit. From smooth road surfaces and highways, our driver decided to take us through a couple of villages. All very well and good, but these roads did not like buses, and so we were buffeted along as we went past some lovely little shanty towns, even though we all just wanted to get on the boat and crawl into bed by this point!

The journey took about an hour, but it was well worth it when we got there. After checking in and having our credit card details taken, we were taken round to the ship, which was docked with about 3 others. After getting on board and finally finding our rooms, a tannoy announcement put pay to any relaxation. They were going to have an emergency drill and everyone coming onto the ship was required to take part. Oh joy of joys, we thought. Just what you don't need. So when the alarm sounded, off we went with our life jackets and sat in the Marquee, which was the main auditorium on the ship, and sat through a couple of speaches from the captain about safety, which no one took a blind bit of notice from as we were all trying to keep awake.

After that we were left to our own devices, and so while we waited for the Manchester passengers to get in (their flight had been delayed by 5 hours), and have their own emergency drill, we went and had some dinner, got settled in and went out on deck when we were due to leave port. It was only when you went out on top deck that you realised just how big the ship actually is, and wonder how the heck it was staying afloat!

After having a wander around the ship, trying not to get lost and getting our bearings, we went to bed, as tomorrow was exploring day!

Normal bit of the blog!

Well this week had been a struggle. Not only have I had to cope with the time difference and all the fun that jet lag brings, but i've had to motivate myself to come into work, which was fun! Actually this week hasn't been too bad, we've not had too much work in, which is good when you start a new job, as you don't want to be bombarded with work when you are trying to settle yourself in. Added to that, I've got a nice, shiny new desk, with a window and everything!

We'll ignore the plight of the not-so-mighty Villa at the moment, and just say that this weekends match against bolton is a must-win, otherwise mid-table mediocrity will be an inevitability!

Until next time, ttfn!

Pelicans, Chickens, Record-Breaking at 1am, and the perfect alcohol!

2008-03-28T08:22:00.000-07:00

Good Day to you all, your blogging saviour has returned, slightly browner than before (yes I've finally tanned!), and completely overawed by the Caribbean!

I'll give you a small, general taste of the last 2 weeks, as my blogs will take a slightly different format over the next couple of weeks, as I'll do a blog from each of the islands visited, plus an update from the last blog (it will make sense once I've started!)

The last 2 weeks have been an amazing experience. We saw (and videoed) dolphins in Dominica, broke an Ocean Village record, met some minor celebrities and drank at least one cocktail per day. We've had tours where we have been sung to by our tour guide, tours where the sound of our tour guide making a cockrel and parrot noises signals our departure, and tours that have seen celebrities homes in the sunshine (slightly disappointed with Eddy Grant's place, but more of that at a later blog!), not to mention tours that have seen celebrity rehab centres, the Sandals Resort and Richard Bransons private island, and the one he's buying at the moment, and tours that have sent us deep into rainforests full of weird and wonderful creatures!

Temperatures went from a 'cool' 70 degrees when it rained, which it did three times, but as it was so warm, no one gets wet (brilliant!), to a gorgeous 90 degrees. We've had high seas in the atlantic, where we were fairly sure the lifeboats were coming out, and been soaked by the waves on a boat, whilst we searched for whales off the coast of Dominica (again, videoed, but slightly less entertaining than watching dolphins!).

We've seen some great entertainment on board the ship, including productions from the guy who does the War of the Worlds show around the world, cheesy singers and production shows to rival the west end, and comedians from the club scene in the UK.

Added to that, the duty free shops on board and on the islands helped us to give a few knockout blows to our credit cards, we ate far too much every night and put on a few extra pounds, and took about a million photographs, and it bodes well for the next few blogs on this site, so stay tuned!!!!!

'Its the final countdown!!!!'

2008-03-07T15:06:00.000-08:00

Thats right, its my final blog before I set sail for sunnier climbs, and I can't blummin wait!

But first, a blog for your delectation.

We'll start where we finished, and the weekend was a fairly good one, although we didn't get up to anything really as mom had caught a nasty flu-type cold (dunno who she could have caught that off!), but we made use of our time and made more and more lists about lists about what preparations to make before our holiday, which was more productive than you may think.

Monday saw us back to normal after the Labour Spring conference, although Birmingham City Council had helpfully left all the plants and palm trees (I don't know why palm trees in a city centre are meant to make us feel all summery, but somehow they do!), so that was nice.

This week saw me working my ass off to get all my loose ends tied up (oooh, sounds like my upcoming operation!), which was helped with not much work in, and despite one of those frustrating days where you want to do loads, but things keep cropping up that you have to deal with NOW, everything was done and dusted by lunchtime on friday, which was great. I've also packed up all my stuff to be sent downstairs for my new same-job-but-downstairs-so-technically-its-a-new-job.....erm.......job! Its gonna be weird going back to work in 3 weeks time and going to a different job to do the same work but on a different floor. It will be like starting a new job, but not....

......I have a very confusing life!

Anyway, enough about that, back to the holiday, and all the fun of the fair thats happened this week. I might as well give you a list of some of the things that have gone wrong this week, thankfully they've happened this week so we can get them sorted out and out of the way before the holiday, so in no particular order:

1. My aunts radiator leaked rust all over her new carpet, which we discovered was some form of hydrogen (thank god she doesn't smoke), which had to be drained completely;

2. All of our suitcases were built over 3 years ago, before they found out that making suitcases out of hard plastic might not be a great idea as suitcases may have to be loaded on top of one another on a plane. Lets just say when we opened them up, plastic crumbs fell out of the main part of it, so we've had to buy new cases;

3. The President of Venezuela (where Isla Margarita is located), is threatening to break out a war in the next couple of weeks, so we might not be coming back for a while! (Oh no, what are we to do, we must get back to grey, cold, England!)

So, apart from all those things and many more that I can't think of at the moment, we're damn ready for this holiday!

So, for one last time before I trundle off into the warm sunshine of the Caribbean, here's your last little taste of whats to come:

Are You Jealous Yet?

#11 St Vincent

This is where alot of the scenes in Pirates of the Caribbean were filmed, so expect plenty of market stallholders selling 'genuine' pirate tours and 'real' pirate ships...bless 'em!

First up, the standard beautiful picture of the ocean lapping against the shore. I wonder if I'll get bored of it?.......Nah!

Next on Animal Corner, the endangered St Vincent Parrot. How cool is this fella!

That is one colourful bird, and speaking of which, a musical finale for your entertainment. I give you St Vincent. Think of them as a throwback to the days of flower power and ban the bomb, and you are pretty much in their headspace. They have some pleasant ditties, although they do tend to sound the same!

So thats it from me, I shall blog on my return where I will report on my adventures in the Caribbean, and if you see on sky news that Venezuela has become a war zone, spare a thought for the old beagle!

Tarrar-a-bit!!

One blog to go!

2008-02-29T05:32:00.000-08:00

Salutations, my good people, welcome to another action-packed edition of your favourite blog, and this week I have actually been quite a busy bunny, so lets crack on with the show!

We'll skip over the weekend, mainly as I was feeling crappy so didn't actually go anywhere, but was cheered up with a comfortable win by the villa on sunday.

Monday came and brought with it an interesting start to the week. I had gone for an interview at work on friday, which I assumed would lead to yet another disappointment for me, which it did, as I hadn't got it. However, because the powers-that-be were worried that I might not like rejection all that much and leave the firm, they offered me his old job when he moves on! The job itself is a sideways move, so no more moula unfortunately, but its in a fantastic department thats always expanding, and is far enough away from teenyboppers that I hardly see any all day, woohoo! The afternoon was spent at home, as I was feeling so blummin awful that I just had to go home and die in peace, but when my head cleared of all the fungus, I realised that this is a great job for me to go into!

Tuesday was supposed to be a quieter day, a day that I could just sit back, relax and let the day take me to 5pm, which was very much the case, unfortunately, come 5pm, there was a little 'incident' at snow hill station which almost killed me! The train before the Stratford train was for Dorridge, so us stratford commuters watched as the Dorridge passengers piled onto a train that was probably older than most of the people on the platform, and trundle off into the darkness of the tunnel inbetween snow hill and moor street. Our train was alot less fun, we had 2 carriages for a rush hour commuter line, which is bad in anyones book, so we all squeezed on, making sure all the air was pushed out of the train at the same time, and waited for the train to pull out.

So we waited............and waited........and waited for about 10 minutes, after which time came an announcement that the Dorridge train had become stuck in the tunnel and had to be shifted before any train went through. This took the longest hour and a half of our lives, by which point, more than 8 trains had been cancelled, and over 500 passengers, including me, were freezing to death on the platform. Once the tunnel had been reopened, I managed to jump on a solihull train and got home for half 7, by which point I'd lost all care for the modern world!

Overnight I was having a weird, flu-powered dream about an old lady's haunted house in the isle of wight and craig david.......(don't ask, just don't ask!), and was trying to get some half decent sleep when our house was hit by the earthquake. Unfortunately for me, I was at the mid-turn stage of rolling over in bed, so when the bed moved, my weight shifted too much and I ended up falling out of bed!

Wednesday was my most fun day. I'd had the day off as I was going to the hospital again, but this time I was going for my last poking before my operation, woohoo! We got there in good time, and after parking up, wandered inside to the waiting room, and sat there for around 45 minutes waiting to be let in for my voluntary torture. I was due in next, but as there was an emergency coming in, I had to wait for some poor bloke on a stretcher to go in. After about 10 more minutes I was led into the next door room, where all I could hear coming out of the room next door was a weird, drilling, sound......poor b*stard!

After another few minutes, the consultant came in with his new assistant (young, brunette, attractive, not good, but thank god for anaesthetic!) and was talking to the nurse about this row he'd just had with this poxy manager, who was moaning about the fact that people were waiting more than the obligatory 10 minutes that he allowed on their stupid waiting list structure.

Anyway suffice to say he was less than happy with all this, which was bad news for poor old me, as he was poking me next! He was very quick and got the job done which was good, and everyone wished me bon voyage and good luck which was nice, and best of all, he told me that my big operation will be in June or July, which means I'll have the whole of the summer off, woohoo!!!

Thursday and Friday were dominated by the Labour party conference, which was taking place at the ICC. The roads have been closed off and there are rather more snipers on rooves and armed police than public at the moment, which is slightly off-putting, however I can guarantee the crime rate will stutter to a halt in the city centre this weekend, so go out, enjoy yourselves!

Are You Jealous Yet?

#9 St Lucia

This should be fabulous with a capital F! Not only do you have The Pitons, which are the most famous mountain range in the whole Caribbean as the backdrop (picture below), but this is the most celebrity-stuffed island there is, so I'm guaranteed not to see anyone I recognise!

And now on Animal Corner, I give you the most colourful bird I've ever seen, and no I'm not talking about those chavvy specimens in every town and city in England, Ladies and Gentlemen, I give you the St Lucian Parrot:

I shall call him Denzil.

Are You Jealous Yet?

#10 Martinique

Now, apparrently this island is more french than any other island that they colonised, when the dutch, british and spanish weren't looking, so its gonna be a weird island to walk around to say the least! It, like all the other islands, has its own unique and varied naval history, and was the birthplace of Napoleon's wife, Josephine, so stick that in your pub quiz cap!

See, just France with sunshine!

Note to self, don't go out on deck if theres a thunderstorm!

T-minus 17 days....

2008-02-23T02:12:00.000-08:00

Welcome to a flu-ridden blog. Yes I have contracted the fatal beagle-flu (beagle-flu being worse than mere man-flu!), so this blog will be a slightly shorter affair, as I can't remember my own name, yet alone what I did in the last week!

However I shall plough on for your amusement, coz I'm just nice like that!

Well the weekend saw us going to our cousins wedding in Sutton Coldfield, which was really good as its always nice to see the family, and it also gave me a chance to put to the test a theory of mine. You know the old addage that you can't mix grape and hop (wine and beer for those of you who are unaware and always seem to get drunk before anyone else on a nightout!). Well my theory was proven correct, that you can mix grape, hop and apple (wine, beer and cider!). Brilliant!

The wedding also gave me the chance to try out my new videocamera, which I was fairly pleased with, although I did forget to turn it off at one point and drained half the battery, leaving me 29 minutes of power before the camera died. But I did get some good footage, and its better to get all the little problems out of the way now, rather than when we're on holiday.

This week also saw the trains up and running again, although signalling problems at moor street station meant that snow hill looked like the USSR in the cold war, with trains banking up on every platform, and everyone being sent to different platforms within seconds of the train coming in. Oh what fun we had!

As my head now seems like fungus the bogeyman has slapped me several times, I shall finish off with another 2 destinations for your delectation, which by the way, because of my impending flu-related death, meant that I had a really odd, weird dream about the cruise last night, which involved us trying to wade through grotesquely fat Americans (Not their normal fat, but cartoony fat!) trying to get to the buffet, in order for us to get to our rooms, which was more than odd. Anyway, on with the good stuff!

Are You Jealous Yet?

#7 Isla Margarita

Just 25 miles from the Venezuelan coast, the island was discovered in 1498 (by good old chris columbus, as most of the islands were) and translates as the 'Island of Pearls', due to its numerous oyster beds, so I guess I'll be buying a few pearls (god bless US Dollars!).

Right, enough of the history, on with the purdy photo!

And for those of you looking for a Caribbean getaway this year, or even if you want to buy a holiday villa that you can just fly to any time you like, why don't you try this 'unique' property on the island.

Now, I admit, this place could do with a lick of paint, plus a few bits and bobs of decoration, but I'm sure the chap in the picture will let you have it for a very reasonable price!

Are You Jealous Yet?

#8 Grenada

This is known as the 'Spice Island', as, apparently all you can smell around the island is Vanilla, Cinnamon and Nutmeg growing, which may be where it got its name from! On with the photo's:

And now on Animal Corner, the Grenada Dove

Or as I like to call it, a Suntanned Pigeon!

TTFN!

Strike a pose, there's nothing to it....

2008-02-15T16:06:00.000-08:00

Good Morning, Afternoon or Evening to you all, and welcome to another foray into the oddbox that is my life!

We'll start with last weekend and Villa are finally back on track in league form, with a comfortable 4.1 victory over the not-so-mighty Newcastle. If we could turn up for 2 halves of a match, we'd be a frightening prospect for any team, but half a match is better than none at all, so we're happy villians at the moment!

This week has seen the conclusion (hopefully) of the replacement bus service, which means I can actually have a 5 minute lie-in of a morning before catching the train next week (I know, famous last words!). The bus service, I have to say, has been great in the main, apart from the coach driver on Thursday night not realising that when you drive a manual gearbox coach, you should probably not wait 20 seconds inbetween gears before you reach the next gear up or down! Like I said though, on the whole, very impressed by the bus service, and they have many votes from the public if they ever wish to expand into bus travel!

Now, from my ventures into the vast expanse of youtube, I've been very impressed by the videos of the Caribbean, and being a holiday of a lifetime, you kinda want to take as much of the scenery and experience back with you, so after strenuous investigation on t'interweb (being up till 2am 2 nights running), I'd found the ideal one, then found a slightly more expensive version, but available now at Jessops, so I trundled along on Wednesday to get it.

Now, what is it about shop assistants? When you are wandering around, just having a mooch, they can't keep away from you, but when you actually want something, its like a ghost town in there, as was the case in Jessops in Birmingham. After finding a gap where there should be a camera, I waited about 5 minutes until someone came over to see if I needed any help in my gormless staring at nothingness (he didn't say it, but he had that look, you know the one), and after checking on his computer, found that there was one in the shop, and that one was a 'Managers Special' that had been knocked off because an elderly couple couldn't work the buttons on it. It had been sent back to the manufacturers, but mechanically it was perfect, but they couldn't sell it as new, as it....well......wasn't, so I got it for a knockdown price, plus a half price carry case, which was a great deal. I've since ordered various bits'n'bobs for it, so I am looking forward to trying it out this weekend when I go to my cousins wedding in sutton.

Right then, that was the highlight of the week up until today, when we got something interesting through the post.........

.....WE'VE GOT OUR FLIGHT TICKETS FOR BARBADOS, BABY!!!!!!

T'is true, they're all shiny and purdy and everything!!

But enough about that, onto the next 2 islands on the adventure:

Are You Jealous Yet?

#5 Dominica

Ok this next one has a question attached to it, who gets them first, Swamp-Thing or a giant Croc?

My money's on Swamp-Thing, he's a sneaky bugger, that one.

Are You Jealous Yet?

#6 Barbados

Oh yes, one full day in Barbados, right in the middle of our trip!

Now that's a sunset!

Now, a bit of wildlife for you, remember Mike the monkey (who can forget!), well meet Dave the Barbados Blackbelly sheep!

...and his mate Claude (he has that french look in his eye, and look at those eyebrows!)

Finally a small treat for you, especially if you are going to Antigua. I only found this yesterday, and it certainly gives you a 'different' side to the island. Anyone for a Pleasure Cruise?

Public Transport? Its the future, I've been on it!

2008-02-07T05:48:00.000-08:00

Less than 5 weeks to go, woohoooooooo!!

Welcome to yet another enthralling blog from yours truly, this time with a double treat in store for you at the end, but more of that shortly. Firstly, on with the blog.

The remainder of last week was just as fun as the first few days, only with a few differences, one of which being that on Thursday, Gareth got a quiz off t'internet about cartoons, which we all had a go at, and felt very, very old for afterwards (thanks Gaz!). For some reason, I woke up on friday with a searing pain in my shoulder. Not sure if I had lay on it awkwardly in the night or what, but it did hurt all day, so I decided to work my lunch and leave an hour early, just in time to catch the snow! Now, I'm not sure if anyone else has had this experience before, but on Friday I experienced, wait for it......

.....Pink Snow!

T'is true , the snow was so heavy at about half 4 that the street lights in brum had turned the snow a sort of pinky, orange colour, which was slightly trippy and fairly amazing! Unfortunately the snow didn't stick, so I couldn't make my legendary snow-rabbit in the garden! :o(

The weekend was, yet again, spent sorting various bits'n'bobs out for the holiday, and having discovered that I actually have far too many clothes to take with me, I am pretty much ready for the cruise. I could do with a straw hat though, dunno why, I've just always fancied a straw hat, slightly rough round the edges (bit like me!) to take on my hols, but I could always get a genuine one whilst i'm there I suppose!

The weekend saw us popping over to Sutton Coldfield to find where we need to for a wedding we are off to next week, which was about as exciting as the weekend got, as Villa decided to have yet another shambles of a showing away to fulham, who deservedly ran out 2.1 winners.

Now, I don't know if you have ever had this before, but recently I've been getting something I like to call, Myspace guilt. Now, I don't necessarily think its my fault, I blame it squarely at the door of facebook, and all its pretty colours and features, however its because of this that I've not been on my myspace account for ages, which has left me a tad guilty, although I'm sure I'm not alone in thinking that facebook has taken over from myspace as a better social networking site in the last year or so, so it is my mission this weekend to go on my myspace page and see whats what, so there!

This week has also seen the cancellation of the trains on the stratford line, due to maintenance work, lasting from Thursday through to the end of next week, so the good people at London Midland have supplied buses and coaches to take us commuters to work. This would have been a problem if Centro were still in charge as they would have probably resorted to one bus every 2 hours going to one stop if the driver could remember which one, however as we are under a new regime, who have lots of wonga (not sure if I like that word to describe money, hmmm, maybe moula would be less sordid?), they have put in place a system of buses and coaches that go almost to the exact time, if not earlier, than the trains they replace, and by putting loads of staff at train stations and sticking signs everywhere, they have actually become organised, which is quite worrying in a train company really. They'll be running the trains on time soon, the crazy cats!

Anyway, this new journey to and from work has allowed me to see a much different side to the city, and one that I'm even more proud of than I was before, which is going some I have to say. For example, did you know that on the stratford road in Hall Green, just before the junction at South Birmingham College are a couple of great examples of Art Deco architecture, and some of the houses in the area have that style too, which is great.....

..well I was impressed and thats all that matters!

Right then, time for a double...

Are You Jealous Yet

#3 St Kitts

Now, amazingly there isn't anything odd or weird that I could find out about St Kitts, apart from a picture of a dead whale, and no one wants to see that unless you are japanese, but you are more than welcome to google your ass of and find out! But until then, here are some piccies:

Ok I fibbed, here's a picture of a resident green fervet monkey, who I will name Derek!

Ok he looks angry with the name Derek, as he seems to be shouting 'Mike!'.....so we'll stick with Mike then! St Kitts is the hideaway for many a celeb, which will be great for the old blog, as celebs have been a bit on the quiet side for the last couple of months in the city centre, unless you count people who you may have seen get bumped off in an episode of Casualty or Midsomer Murders, in which case I've seen hundreds!

Next!

Are You Jealous Yet?

#4 Antigua

This island has one island for every day of the year, so heres a picture of the first one I found on Google!

Who's SHE? Blimey, I hope she's on the ship!

Now this is a stunning photo of the island, no not this one, this one!

And, not to be outdone by Mike the Monkey, here is the Google answer to Antigua:

Yup, its a caravan, but not just a caravan, a lightweight caravan. I know, crazy eh! Well it was a straight choice between that, an Iron, a Shower unit, a Horse, a Table, a Rug or a settee, so just be grateful!

Ta Ta!

They don't tell you that in the brochure!

2008-01-30T15:13:00.000-08:00

Greetings to you all, and welcome to another wonderful blog from your ever-friendly travelling companion!

...Ok that sounds dodgy but I'll leave it in for comic effect!

Right then, a short one from me, mainly because nothing much has happened, and because I want to show you something fairly amazing about another island I am hopping to on my upcoming adventure.

The rest of last week was a busy one, which was good as it meant my week was over quicker, especially as I had friday off to get rid of some holiday owed to me. I spent most of the day getting into the next part of my course, which doesn't sound exciting to you, but I quite enjoyed it, so there! The highlight of the day was having my hair cut in the afternoon, and before that, having the alarm man round to check the house alarm, which was fairly uneventful!

The weekend saw the mighty Villa play Blackburn, which was meant to be a classic as both teams were vying for a place in Europe next season, but we both played so badly I don't think any of them wanted to be in Europe, so a dissappointing 1.1 draw it finished.

This week has been very busy. I'm trying to do more than I probably need to, as I know at some point in the future, I'll have to do it anyway and so leave my normal work....if that makes any sense at all......which it doesn't!

Right, on with the next in the new feature of the blog:

Are you Jealous Yet?
#2 - St Maarten

So far, so gorgeous, right? Well thats what I thought before I saw this next picture. Now, after 9/11 there were loads of people putting out really obvious fake photos about the seconds up to and after the incident, for example the bloke taking a picture of his friend with the first plane just about to hit the twin towers underneath where they were taking the picture. So when I saw the next shot I thought this was obviously a fake, as were the others that were in the collection:

See what I mean, obviously fake isn't it?

...well actually........ no !

I have really got to go and see that when we go!!

I shall leave you with those videos to watch, and just remind you that its now 6 weeks to go, woohoo!!!!

Blimey, I'm worth more than Villa paid for Ashley Young!

2008-01-22T11:47:00.000-08:00

Good Morning, Afternoon or Evening to you all, and welcome to the first of a series of slightly different blogs, but more of that later. For the time being, though, on with the post!

Last week was mainly spent dragging myself through what work we did have in, and thankfully we have had a bit more in over the last week or so, which is good as it makes the days go just that bit quicker, and thats is never a bad thing when you are counting the theoretical days until another half decent position comes up in the firm.

Annoyingly the new train operator, London Midland (guess where their trains run?) have announced that they are closing the lines south of Birmingham in a few weeks time, so the commuter-types will have to get 'special' buses (which can't be as bad as it sounds, surely!), so thats all the fun of the fair to come next month.

The highlight of the week came on the weekend, as not only did I have a day off on friday, but we sent off all our insurance details and next of kin bits and bobs to Ocean Village, which is the last thing we need to do before we get the flight tickets in a few weeks, which is another big step towards the big hol. Reading through all the bumph (technical word, look it up) they send to you from the insurance company, if the boat blows up, or I get abducted by some rabid natives and chopped up into little bits, my death benefit is £10m, which is great when you don't think about it, because when you are looking round for insurance deals, and you have to choose between a £2m and £10 plan, why should you give a rats ass? After all, its not like you are gonna spend any of the money after you've kicked the bucket. So, if by some hideous miracle, we are all wiped out on the holiday, our cousin will be £30m to the richer, which is nice for her!!

Onto happier things and a change in the usual tedious blog entry. Every week, from now until I leave for sunnier pastures, I shall be guiding you through all the islands that I will be hopping onto, in a little feature I like to call 'Are you Jealous yet?'

So, first things first, sit back and relax at the beautiful island of Tortola:

..look, it even says 'Paradise' on the blummin photo!

Now, I admit that throughout my little foray into the Caribbean from these pages, the views may seem a little similar, after all, see one drop dead gorgeous sight, seen them all eh? Well actually no, because I was gonna show you lots and lots of lovely photos of the beauty of the island, until I googled 'Tortola' and found this little gem, entitled 'Photo of Tortola Shoe Sale':

Wow, I hope they've got duty free!

..and for those of you with an eye for history, and the odd swashbuckle through time, take a peek at the history of the island here, where you will discover why the Virgin Islands were called the Virgin Islands, and where an infamous pirate first hid his treasure.

So until next time, I bid you landlubbers a grand farewell.

'Woah, in the sunny Carribean sea...'

2008-01-15T05:21:00.000-08:00

Well its 8 weeks to go till our cruise, and we're slowly but surely ticking off all the things we need to do before we go. One of the big ticks was booking the 'action ashore' adventures when we get to the various islands. We have played it fairly safe with the majority of the trips, as we want to see as much of the islands as we can in the time we are there, so we have booked trips where we will essentially go across each island and back again (with rum in tow!).

The possible major highlight for us will come in Dominica, where they filmed alot of the Pirates of the Carribean films, where we will be jumping on a boat and going dolphin and whale watching.

Now, this isn't an exact science, as lets face it, they can't just demand that they jump out of the water and come and say hello, like they do at those dreadful theme park places, so we are expecting to spend most of the 4 hours we are out there, just sitting around and waiting for something to happen, however its the experience we are after, and its the experience we will get.

This past week has been another fairly dull affair (yes I've been at work, how could you tell!), the only excitement coming these past few days when I received my new credit card (tick), as this is the only method of payment they will accept on board ship for anything you buy, apart from food (which is all free, woohoo!). I also received my new Civil Litigation course manual (tick), which I'm really looking forward to getting stuck into, as I would like to specialise in it when I qualify.

Finally a special mention to the now legendary Aston Villa team, who currently lie joint 4th in the league (yes we do, check the points out, see!). It is a scary time for villa fans at the moment, everything seems to be going just a little bit well for us, and the Londoners and media-types (who are one and the same) seem to like us all for it at the moment, so we shall enjoy it while it lasts, and while it lasts, we shall certainly enjoy it!

Tarrar-a-bit!

Happy 2000-and-gr8!

2008-01-07T08:45:00.000-08:00

Ok, rubbish title, but I get points for trying at least!

Hope you had a great New Year, and hope that the mother of all hangovers has finally worn off, as you are all finally back to work, and all the pleasures that it entails!

The last post was a rushed job, mainly as I knew this one would be a short-arse too, so here it is!
The remainder of the festive season was spent working, which is as dull as it gets really, so we shall skip past the monotony of being just below the bottom rung of the career ladder, and look forward to a new, fresh, fairly exciting new year.

As the new year dawned on us all, the realisation that our big holiday was just a couple of months away dawmed on us like a big rock over Wile E Coyote (eep!). We have been able to have a look at some of the excursions we can book ourselves on. Now, a common theme running through all the caribbean islands is the fact that every trip, and I do mean every trip, has free rum served before, during, and/or after the excursion, which makes you realise just why the people in the caribbean are just so laid back all the time!

We've decided on some of the trips we intend to go on, mainly those that take in most of what the respective islands has to offer. Most of these trips are about 3-4 hours long, which is good, as you don't want to be on a trip all day every day, you need some time to yourself to have a wander round the island at your own pace. We have also made it our mission to go out on a boat and see the dolphins and whales. We'll probably not see any, but the experience of going out to find them will be th experience in itself, and of course there is rum on board ship, so we might not even care!

Its also the time of year to make (and break) new years resolutions, and mine is a fairly simple affair this year. I simply need to have some belief in my own abilities and take as many chances that are presented to me, which sounds fairly simple, but I've not done that in recent years, and have suffered as a consequence.

Finally a special mention to my number 1 fan. Some know him as Giraffe, others know him simply as Mutual Paw, which makes it even more obvious to me who the fella is. Happy New Year to you, the inbred who reassures every single person reading this blog, that they are at least one step higher in the food chain than someone else!

And a Very Happy New Year to the rest of you, ta-ta!

'Titanic? Friends? Pingu?....THE CABLE GUY?!!!'

2007-12-31T07:44:00.000-08:00

Greetings my hungover-yet-happy elves, t'is my final blog of the year, and a short one at that, as we're all rather busy as its New Years Eve.

Right so on with it and we'll start with Christmas Eve. We all trundled down to the Windermere for some pre-xmas drinkies and a bit of a laugh, which we had in fairly equal measure. I drove Gareth there and when we got there, the guys had already started playing a pictionary/name that film-hybrid (we're hardcore, we are!), which was good fun, especially when one of us got 'slightly' inebriated and started to have fairly wild guesses (as you can tell by my blog title!). Anyway we all left just before midnight and I dropped some of the guys back at their respective places, including the drunken one, which was as fun as it sounds!

Anyway who cares coz it was then Christmas Day, and Santa had been very good to me. Included in the various items that I had chosen in the preceeding months were a Simpsons and Shrek 3 DVD which are both brilliant, and loads of other things that I won't go into as it will take too much time! Christmas was a snotty affair in our family, as all 3 of us had varying stages of dreadful colds, so we didn't eat much, play much, or watch a great deal!! But a good time was had by all and its always nice to spend time with your family over xmas.

Boxing Day was spent trying to get the plastic wrapping off most of the pressies, which were almost as fun as the presents themselves, but the highlight for me was listening to the game of the season between villa and chelsea (4.4 incase you didn't hear the screams coming from our house!)

Thursday and Friday was spent back at work, and what a jolly lot we were too! The least said about that the better, and the weekend brought another victory for villa (against poor old steve bruce, ah bless, hehehe!) and a bit of time spent sorting our travel insurance out, getting a new tumble dryer and sorting out house insurance (told u we were hardcore!)

And on that abrupt note I shall leave you with good tidings for the new year, see you in 2008!

Ok, so I am definately NOT Jude Law!!

2007-12-24T06:56:00.000-08:00

Hi all,

Good tidings to you all, my happy blogging elves, t'is your festive blog from your favourite bloggee!

Well the rest of the week was spent being generally ill (had Wednesday off as I was a walking headache!), and watching the clock at work, praying the week would end so Christmas would come quicker (ooooh I'm such a big kid!!)

As previously mentioned, we watched a couple of festive flicks over the weekend, and the good one (The Holiday) had Jude Law in it. Now, Jude and I haven't seen eye to eye on a number of things, but thats all ancient history since he publicly apologised for doing the Alfie remake (for those who didn't know Alfie was a remake, or thought that it was a good film a few years ago, you may leave this page now with best wishes for the festive season!). Anyway he has fully redeemed himself with The Holiday. Its a bit of a rom-com but with a alot of the mushyness that tends to ruin very decent rom-com's, taken out. Good cast too, with Kate Winslet, Jack Black and Cameron Diaz to boot, not to mention the living legend that is Eli Wallach, who has appeared in pretty much every film ever made!

Anyway, back to the story, and in the film, Judy (as I like to call him) has a couple of Christmassy scenes where he wears a big, posh, scarf. I normally wear a scarf to work, as its freezing on the station platforms (wouldn't wanna get a cold, would I!), but I'm not usually a social scarf-wearing beagle, so for the usualy Thursday jaunt to the pub, I thought I would wear my nice thick grey one, and looked quite dapper in it, I must say. Anyway, a good time was had by all as we sat in the nice restaraunt bit (away from the rabble), and we left at our normal time. Getting home, I went to take off my scarf....if I could find it........Oh Baubles!!

Dashing back to the pub, I was just in time to sneak in, grab my scarf (which had lodged itself under a chair leg), and wander out before they locked up for the night. I'm sure Jude never has this much trouble, he probably has 'people' to remind him to put his scarf on, but never mind, I'll get there one day!

Friday dragged like a Christmas b*tch, but no matter, because at 5pm it was officially Christmas, which was brilliant!!!!

The weekend was spent getting everything ready for Christmas day, doing the odd last minute check on food and getting pressies wrapped for the big day, inbetween watching villa thump Man City 1.1! We watched 'Happy Feet' last night, which was an absolute barnstormer of a film, not the normal, cuddly, funny film that you expect from an animation, but a thought-provoking film that had alot of laughs along the way, which was fantastic!

So thats about it from me, all thats left for me to say is have a very Merry Christmas, I hope Santa brings you everything you wanted. Have a great day and I'll speak to you soon.

Freeview, 'Bravery' and Festive spirit

2007-12-18T09:17:00.000-08:00

Greetings one and all (well I do have an 'audience' now!), yep its another blog from yours truly, and yet another blog nearer to getting back to some normality on this page. So here goes...

Friday was the office Christmas 'do' at the ICC, and as the theme (for the people not on minimum wage, and who could therefore afford it), was 'Hollywood Stars', I was expecting something slightly more adventurous than half the office turning up in 1920's ganster gear, but no matter, as there was plenty more to be cheerful about, namely free food and drink! The food itself was good, well as good as mass-catering can be, and apart from an odd starter and a pretty decent desert, the main xmas meal was really good, proper thick slices of turkey, although the dreaded sprout reared its ugly head again, but as it was christmas, and I felt confident it wasn't actually going to kill me, I tried one (ok the smallest one!), and immediately remembered why I didn't like them in the first place!! Oh well, no harm in trying is there!

The main entertainment was a fake casino, complete with fake money, a blackjack table and a roulette table (apparently). Now, having never, ever, played any casino-type games in my life, I thought I would have a look to see what the heck the rules were......

....after about half an hour staring at each table, I gave up trying to work out anything and gave my fake cash to someone who lost it within seconds. I did have a play on the remote controlled shoe-football game, which sounds more entertaining than you think. I scored 2 goals on my shoe-debut, which I was very proud of, and spent the rest of the evening bopping my ass off on the dance floor to as many cheesy-class tunes as they could put on. A good night was had by all, despite a few misdemeanours by a select few, which I couldn't possibly mention in a blog....so its probably best to email me and i'll tell you all!!

Thee weekend was a pretty good one, despite my horrible cold, which we'll come onto shortly, as we went to Woods Farm to get our Christmas tree, which is always a tradition in our family, as it signifies the official start of chrimbo. So by Saturday and Sunday night, after all the trimmings and lights had been put up, we felt suitably Christmassy, especially when we heard one of the best christmas song ever, 'Driving Home for Christmas', by the legendary Chris Rea, on Radio 1 as it had got to Number 35 in the chart, god love you, downloads! That song, much like the Coke advert, signifies the start of christmas, so we're ready for it now, bring it on!

Monday was a swine, as my cold had developed into a fully blown tornado of sniffles and headaches, which weren't good, especially as the previous week were filled with people 'braving it' and coming into work, coughing and spluttering, so I knew I was gonna get it at some point, which is why I couldn't go into work today (Tuesday), as my head felt like a brick, and I couldn't actually stand up without the room spinning. But apart from that I was fine, apart from the runny nose, hot and cold flushes and being unable to breath when I lie down! God bless those who came in last week and gave the germs to everyone, although that might have had something more to do with the immortal words 'Billable Hours', than anything else!

Monday also saw my aunt get a freeview box for her telly in her kitchen. Now, having not looked into freeview or anything likewise, I hadn't got too much of a clue about what it was, or what it did, however as my aunt is retired now, she had done loads of research into it, and noticed a freeview box for £14.99 in sainsburys, which is a damn good bargain, so she bought it yesterday, and we went round to help her install it, which took about 5 minutes, seriously, its that stupidly simple! And the great thing about it, as you will know if you've been reading this blog since the beginning, is that freeview gives us back Sky News and Sky Sports News, which was like a breath of fresh air! You really don't know how good Sky News is unless you are forced to watch BBC News 24, which is just bilge! Even better news is that my aunt has just bought us one for Christmas, which is fantastic, so even more to look forward to next Tuesday!!!!!

Happy last-minute shopping!!!!

Crappy Birthday to me, Crappy Birthday to me!

2007-12-13T11:15:00.000-08:00

Well folks, I've heard of having a 'memorable' first blogging birthday, but this past couple of weeks have really taken the biscuit!

For those of you who haven't been reading this page for the last 2 weeks, and to save my fingers and your eyes, I shall skip through what normal stuff has been going on in the last couple of weeks, then come back to the silly stuff at the end!

First up was the meal at a Teppanyaki restaraunt in the Mailbox. Its a great night out for a group of mates, as its not the most 'personal' of surroundings, as you are being constantly talked to by the chefs, whilst they attempt to cook everything in sight (and I mean everything; unless you like your eyebrows, don't lean forward!). The meal itself cost us £30, but for 8 courses, in the Mailbox, which left you stuffed by the end of the night, its definately worth it, and the food was great too.

Right, next up was the saturday, and a great second half performance for Villa against Arsenal, which was great....unfortunately as we had given them the first half, it was never gonna be easy, but it was a good game, despite the 2.1 defeat.

Now, Monday and Tuesday were pretty damn good. Work was good, well as good as it could be, but with something to look forward to as I had a job interview at work the following Monday, which was good, and a great opportunity to leave the minimum wage to do something which paid slightly higher, and was a far more interesting job, so that was all to come, and I had a great review from my boss, so all was good. I had even found a fan on the blog, who I was chatting to, and generally getting on well with.

Wednesday onwards? Well that was when the walls caved in.

As previously mentioned, confidence and me don't exactly go hand-in-hand, and so, on leaving the office and having the odd moment of P & Q with my own mind, I somehow came to the conclusion that my new fan was someone that I knew, probably from the office, having a laugh at my expense. Now, no normal human being would ever think this, imagine, if you will, the creators of Google or Myspace thinking that every single person on their site was a nutjob (well in the case of Myspace, they could be right, but we'll come to that later!). Being that I wasn't in the most confident mood on Wednesday (one of those weeks where nothing goes right at all), one thing led to another and I took a shot in the dark at it being someone in the office, and even went so far as to name that person in a posting. Suffice to say, the shot in the dark hit a big fat tank of petrol! I got it so far wide of the mark that it set off a sequence of events, not unlike the start of Saving Private Ryan! That post was subsequently deleted within about 10 minutes, but the replacement post, apologising for getting it so very very very wrong, started the next wave of 'happiness'.

I'll not bother to say exactly what I wrote in the post, but it referred to the upcoming interview, and was very similar to a post I wrote when I first applied, back in April, for the job I'm in at the moment, in that it gave various rough 'characteristics' of the people who were going for the job, in my usual ironic style.

Not to mention any names but I was called into my least favourite meeting room (been told I didn't get the last job I went for in there), and was told by senior management that my blog 'constituted incitement within the office', as I had mentioned people in the office in a less-than-complimentary way, and that I shouldn't be on the site in work time anyway, producing sheet after sheet of log sheet confirming this, together with letting me know, in a matter-of-fact way that everyone in the office had been told of the 'offending material'. It was an informal meeting, but mud sticks in a big law firm, so its fair to say I'll be on the minimum wage till I'm about 40, which will be nice.

That shook me up a hell of alot, and put a pretty massive dent in my legal career before its even begun (cue cheers from chavs, if the asbo's allow them to), and pretty much destroyed my self confidence, and with the interview coming up on Monday, that was never gonna be the best preparation for it.

The weekend came and went (another Villa defeat, I shan't bother telling you about it, but we just didn't turn up!), and so to Monday, and interview day. For an internal vacancy, the three external candidates who turned up for the interview were a shock to the system! After having 3 tests done, 2 on the department itself which were good, the interviews were held in the afternoon, and, typically, mine was last. By that time, both the interviewers and me were tired from a long day. They didn't want to ask many questions, I was trying desperately not to repeat the previous answer, but apart from that, it was a fairly good interview, however short it was.

The evening came with even more wonderous news, I'd failed my exam I took back in October, which I was kind of expecting, and amazingly it was rather cathartic, as I threw all of my conveyancing papers into the recycling bin, as that finally signalled the end of my conveyancing career, as I was always far more interested in litigation now anyway. Annoyingly, work has a silly rule that prohibits people in non-fee earning positions from having their course paid for, so a strongly-worded email was sent to a few people in the firm's 'academy', who deal with all that. It was done in the heat of the moment, but the sentiment stays firm, after all, I am half qualified, its not like its a hobby of mine!

The results of the interview were revealed on Wednesday, and unsurprisingly I didn't get the job, but as I'm having the worst couple of weeks of the year by a long shot, ironically the person who did get it, I convinced her to go for it to get some internal interview experience, as both of us knew that, as she'd only been here 4 months, she probably wouldn't get it, as that was the excuse given to me the last time I went for a job.

This week also saw a fair amount of abuse directed at the beagle on this page, the most disturbing of which came in an email I had on my myspace account from 'Chris'. The following is the email in full directed at me, by this 'special' young man:

'you sad sad t w a t ive been reading http://legaleagleblog.blogspot.com/2007_05_01_archive.html , and you are one sad chap, one of the people you are talking about in that is a friend of mine and lets just say you wont have a smile on your face when you find out whats gonna happen, you are jelous really bad '

Now, apart from the major grammatical errors littering the email, this is taking it a tad too far, even for the likes of this guy.

I readily admit that I talk about people that I work with, and people who I am mates with, but for those of you who do truly know me, will know that I haven't got a vindictive bone in my body, and certainly wouldn't start slagging people off openly on the internet for everyone to read. The simple fact of the matter is that if you write a blog, you characterise people to make the piece you are writing more entertaining for the person reading it. You are not lying about someone, or inventing something, just pointing out an amusing part of their nature, not to berate or bully them, but to either emphasise a point or to add humour to a situation. If everyone started to write exactly what happened in their week, without emphasising small, insignificant details, then for a start off, it wouldn't be true to the person writing it, as there would be very little point writing it in the first place, and everyone reading it would be bored witless about some guy or girl yattering on about how they went into a shop to buy some milk, paid for it at the checkout and got the correct change from the guy behind the counter; not writing about how the guy behind the counter looked like Alan Partridge, or that the person in front of you in the queue took so long, that your milk was turning into cheese while you waited!

Fact is, I will happily apologise for any offence I've caused anyone in this blog, but as there was no malice behind it, nor backstabbing on my part, I've drawn a line under the whole situation, and I suggest my detractors do the same, otherwise I'll have to delete even more of your little pointless vile comments off my yellbox.

Right then, Christmas party tomorrow, that should be fun!

'I've had my fun, but baby I'm done, just wanna go home'

2007-11-29T05:50:00.001-08:00

Well its been one of those strange, rollercoaster weeks in the Beagle household. that can only lead to a very odd blog.....so here goes!

Saturday saw me and mom go to the Michael Buble' gig at the NEC. Now, for those in the know, you will be aware that Michael is currently seeing Emily Blunt. So we get to the NEC and as we were a bit early to get our seats , we had a wander round the arena for a nose at all the people, and out of the VIP area came Emily Blunt. So we immediately jump into celebrity-stalker mode as she and a chap head towards the backstage area, and set off in (fairly) hot pursuit, only to see them start kissing right at the end of the corridor. This led us to believe that maybe she isn't Emily Blunt, nor would she be carrying on an affair in front of 12,000 people! We trudged back to our seats and got ready for the show, and what a show it was!

The warm-up act was a troupe from New York called Naturally 7. These guys are amazing! The only way to describe them are 7 Seargent Jones' from the Police Academy movies. They have to be seen to be believed They play no instruments, and use only their voices as the music, and its simply amazing! They were on for about 45 mins, and then it was the main show, which was fantastic.

He did mickey takes of Amy Whinehouse and Elvis, not to mention very funny stand up routines in between songs, plus the first person I have ever seen to do the last verse from his last song, with no big band playing, and no microphone, and he still sounded superb! Added to that the fact that Villa easily beat another couple of old team mates 3.0 and it was a cracking day!

Sunday was a nice relaxing one, which leads to Monday, which wasn't! I had been feeling really ill over the weekend so decided to plead with my consultants secretary to let me have an earlier appointment, which after much wrangling, was booked for Wednesday! So, after booking the day off and finding the hospital in Dudley (well stourbridge really, but not!), I wandered in, ably assisted by mom, as I wasn't entirely sure I'd be able to sit, yet alone drive when I came out!

So picture the scene, you walk calmly into the hospital (after all, you've had the old camera-trick done twice before, so theres nothing different about this one), walk up to reception and give your details, only to be told by the receptionist to 'go down the corridor and the gyneaocology department is on your left', so off we went...........hang on, what did she say!?

It turned out that it was the flexible cystoscopy day, well according to the sign anyway, so in we went and sat down with all the other nervous people in the waiting room. The next hour can only be described as an 'oh my god' moment!

I was called in (wrongly, they had my first and last name mixed up and couldn't spell either!), and got on the bed as per normal in the situation.....

**WARNING - FOR THOSE OF A NERVOUS, OR MALE, DISPOSITION, LOOK AWAY NOW!!**

As before, the anaesthetic was given, and the camera went in. The consultant seemed very unhappy about it, and so asked one of the nurses for something. That something was a wire, no thicker than a hyperdermic needle, which he put down there and had a jab around. Unfortunately, he could not jab around much as there was too much resistance from the collapsed tubing for him to do anything, so he asked for a '10'. One of the nurses then went to the same cupboard and brought out something that looked like a knitting needle, covered in thick plastic. This was not a good sign.......and wasn't.

Well I've had pain before, but this time it didn't actually hurt, it was just unbearably uncomfortable, as the consultant started jabbing away down there in order to open up the collapsed part of the tube. That he did, but then asked for a '12', and then for a '14' (which ironically turned out to be a '16', which is why I almost passed out at one stage, because it was so unbearable!), inbetween putting the camera down there for another look to see how bad the damage was.

Once he had finished poking and prodding around, he told me that he had opened up the tubing sufficiently well for me to be able to not be in excrutiating pain for a while, but would need to have me in for a big operation in Feb/March time where they would take a skin graft from my cheek (on my face, before you ask!), to create the new tubing, which would take a 3 hour operation, and leave me in hospital for 4 days, with a good few weeks off work to recover (small piece of good news!), the only problem is that I've got my cruise in March, so he's going to have me back in to do the same poking procedure 2 weeks before I go on holiday, just so I don't have any problems while i'm away, which will be nice.........probably!

**YOU CAN LOOK BACK NOW, NASTY STUFF HAS GONE AWAY. IN FACT I DIDN'T PUT ALOT OF THE GORY DETAILS IN AS I MAY HAVE BEEN BANNED!!**

So thats your lot from this week, I'm going out for a meal with work on Friday, which should be good, then a lie down in a cold-dark room all weekend to try and get my head round this week!!

Frohe Weihnachten jeder!

2007-11-23T08:36:00.000-08:00

Greetings one, all, and the rest, to another exciting blog from your legend and lord himself.........

.....me!

Well the remainder of last week was a slightly annoying one, as I found out that all the good things that my boss was saying to me in reviews ('sorry for putting you in such a lowly position in the firm', 'you have a bright future here, so grab every opportunity to prove yourself', 'you are the sexiest person alive'...... ok maybe not that one!), has been said to every other person, including the teenyboppers, in the department, which annoyed the crap outa me. I have my 6 month review next wednesday, so it will be fun trying to guess when the little soundbites will come along, and in which order. Its actually really annoying, especially as I'm 26 and have taken a massive gamble in dropping wages big-style to come to a very office junior-type role just to get myself a career, but we shall see what happens in the near future, as you will find out shortly.

The best thing about last week was the arrival of the Frankfurt Christmas Market, which has just set up residency in the city centre. Its probably the most christmassy thing you will ever go to, as they have fresh food, proper sweets in big jars that are probably banned under some EU code of conduct, proper frankfurters, and german beers, to name but a few. Its really great, and well worth the visit to Birmingham for a look, as I will guarantee you that you will come away from there with loads of Christmas spirit, which is never a bad thing!

The weekend saw us going into solihull to try and get rid of my remaining £10 voucher that I had from College when I left. I've spent most of it on clothes for the cruise and was hoping to put it towards some 'deck shoes' (you'd know 'em if you saw 'em), but instead my mom bought them for one of my xmas presents, so we are pretty much ready for the cruise next year now, clothes-wise anyway.

This week has been a bit of a fight with the NHS over my next operation. I've been waiting, as you'll know, since the end of september for my next operation to be sorted out by Russell Hall Hospital. Now (deep breath), my consultant at redditch hospital sent the referral letter to my new consultant in dudley, whose secretary said that she hadn't got it, so I called redditch and asked my consultants secretary to fax over the referral letter to my new consultant, which she did. I phoned to confirm they had recived it the day after and my new consultants secretary said that the consultant had got the letter with him and would be allocating it to an urgent case as soon as possible, which of course never came! Now annoyingly my new consultants secretary has been off sick for most of this week, so when I phoned her on Thursday she said that she had thought originally that the consultant had it with him, but he didn't and she hadn't even seen it round the office so redditch must not have sent it in the first place.........

.........The red mist descended.....

...so in a major strop I called redditch back to have a go at them for not doing their job properly, and spoke to the secretary, who confirmed that they had not only posted it at the time, but faxed it when I called last time, and had the fax confirmation on my file (ooh I have a file, ok not the point but I liked that!). She then went into a right old tizzy on my behalf because, as she rightly pointed out, I had been waiting since september for an appointment, and nothing had come of it, so she was going to phone my new consultants secretary to have a go and get this sorted out!

(Still with the story? Good, there will be questions at the end!)

I called to confirm this had been done late on friday afternoon, to be told by the new consultants secretary that they had it all along (*&$%?) and that an appointment had been made to go to dudley and have my favourite hosepipe-related operation performed yet again on the 19th December. Seriously, it doesn't take 20 rocket scientists going 'Hmmm, I wonder', to work out that the problem is going to be in the exact same area as the 2 before it!

There are 2 highlights of the week, one is a new job thats come up at work, its in our Claims Validation Team, which is basically the team that finds out if your insurance claim is a fraud and then proceeds to countersue and lock you up for a fair old time. The job itself is a really meaty one, as it involves making loads of searches against the person suing, just to make sure that they are relatively upstanding members of the community, or even better, are Nazi-loving, puppy-kicking ignorant chavs who deserve to be locked up for a good few years to relieve the court system of any more ASBO's. The cut-off point is the 19th December also, which is quaintly ironic, and so far only 2 people including me have gone for it, and the other person is a mate of mine who probably won't get it but would like the chance anyway.

Finally the other highlight of the week came today (Friday). My mom and some old work colleagues from college came to the christmas market, and we had a wander round, just forcing ourselves to gorge on frankfurters, sweeties, and Gluwhein, which is damned good!

Merry Almost-Christmas Everyone!

'Have a nice daaaaaaaay'

2007-11-14T05:38:00.000-08:00

Blimey, has it really been that long since I last posted? I know you must have been devastated not hearing from me for the last week or so, so I'll try and make up for it now, condensing 14 days into one post, which should be fun!

Amazingly I didn't get eaten by halloween ghouls or ghosties, although we did have 2 baby witches come round, which is rare as we don't tend to get many halloween-type people round our neighbourhood, due to the house prices being so high that its literally a choice between having kids or a nice house! The weekend brought the usual moronic fireworks and whizz-bangs in the street, which were suitably annoying. I think I may be the only person in the world who actually finds buying fireworks fairly nonsensical, although I do admit to watching them! Saturday morning, I awoke to find a big firework had lodged itself, together with some of its smaller companions, into our front lawn. Not the worst thing in the world, you have to agree, but not when you consider the big one bounced off my car bonnet before plunging itself into our lawn! Suffice to say i was not amused!

Sunday was a pleasant one, we spent about an hour in the freezing cold trying to cut back as much as we could cram into the green bin before winter hit, which was useful, although it took me an hour to get green powdery tree-stuff off my hands!

Work was relatively good last week, as we had a small amount of work in, so we had a chance to crack on with some wonderful archiving, woohoooooooo! party......on! Highlights of the week included realising that a secretary in our office looks the spitting image of....

The Nanny off Count Duckula! She even has the same stooping walk that she used to have, and a strangely similar voice too. All we need is for someone to knock on the door and for her to say 'I'll get it, duckypoos', and we'll have a live action remake on our hands!

Other than that, it was a fairly bog-standard week for me, Thursday night was the usual foray to the chav-horse, which was pretty good actually. A good laugh was had by all who attended, which brings us wonderfully to the greatest weekend of the year!!

Saturday was spent shopping, or at least getting ideas of what we all want for xmas off each other, which was good, but Sunday....oh Sunday....was a goodie!

If you live under a rock, or have just crash landed onto this green and pleasant earth, allow me to fill you in. Sunday saw a local derby in Birmingham, Blues v Villa, and I don't think it could have gone any better if you tried! As a lifelong villa fan, and as a fan of my own life, I stayed at home to watch the match on TV, as there is usually the odd dust-off between the fans, and because i didn't want to remortgage our house to buy a ticket! The game started perfectly, with villa soaking up alot of pressure, then liam ridgewell (who we sold to blues in the summer for actual money!), doing what he does best and scoring an own goal in the first 15 mins of the game. What followed next was the longest game I can remember in a long time! At times I actually forgot to breathe, as we went close to scoring at one end, then blues went close at the other.

Blues bought on another striker at half time and he managed to score in the second half, leading to even more heart attacks in the beagle household! We then went close, then they went even closer, with a header which was superbly cleared off the line, before.......in the last 3 minutes of the game.........we got the winner! Now, I will let you into a little secret now, I screamed like a girl!

So, up and down the midlands, hundreds of villa fans could walk proudly into their office and take full advantage of the bragging rights afforded to them, mwaahaaahhaaaaaa!

That was not the end of my Sunday, far from it, as I was going to see the Stereophonics at the NEC on the night. I've never been to a proper rock gig at the NEC before, and was fairly dubious that the 'Standing' on my tickets were going to mean I was in a mosh pit for most of the night, but to be honest it was a fantastic night. They were supported by The Enemy, who came out and did an hour long gig first, and they were really good, then the Sterophonics came out and did 2 hours, which was superb. Hard to believe they have been around for over 10 years and I still can't believe the songs they have done. Brilliant band, brilliant day......B R I L L I A N T !

GBH at the ICC and strain on the train

2007-10-31T06:09:00.000-07:00

Greetings one and all, and welcome to another fun-packed edition of your favourite blog ever!

We'll start the day after I last posted, which was spent realising just how free I now am, now that I don't have my course revision to worry about (for the time being anyway!), which is a very liberating feeling, let me tell you. So the weekend was spent attempting to unsubscribe from the billion emails I get a week asking me to enlarge certain parts of my anatomy, which was ultimately fruitless, so i just ended up deleting the lot instead!

Monday was pretty good, spent most of the day trying to stay awake, not helped by the fact that we weren't very busy at work, and in the evening, myself, Donna and Gareth went to The Peacock pub in Kings Norton to see Kate, who we hadn't seen for ages. Most of the evening was spent watching Gareth try and peel hot candle wax off his fingers, which is always entertaining!

Tuesday was fun. The ICC was taken over by Newman College for their annual Graduation Ceremony, or as I like to put it, their annual Hat Throwing in the air Championships! Anyway its a really nice time for everyone who was there, as it was a big family event, with loads of photo opportunities by the canal before they rip out the flowers before winter hits the city, so it was a very proud moment for all concerned. The only problem with this is that, because everyone and their mother were there, and because we are a nation of hangers-round, the walkways through the ICC were crammed full of people, which wasn't very good, especially when you consider just how many commuters walk through there of an evening.

So at 5pm, I was walking through the ICC to get to the station as normal, and there were so many people in there it was like a gigantic ant farm, so you had to pick your way through the crowds as best you could. Anyway, after about a minute or so of bustling past people, I spotted a gap that a rather rotund lady was walking through, so I went for it, together with about 10 other lost commuters in the ICC-triangle. All was going well, we had gone past well over half the people there, and the exit was literally in touching distance, when suddenly she saw someone she knew and stopped.......dead. This meant we had nowhere to go in any direction, and as the momentum had carried me this far, I may have...inadvertently.......pushed past her....kind of.....ish!

I think I may have spun her round it happened so quick, but it was her stupid fault for stopping so suddenly, and in my defence, I would still be there now if i hadn't done that, so it was her fault really. As I 'brushed' past her, she muttered something about 'oh, someones in a rush', to which I quickly glanced over my shoulder and gave her a look that would stop time! A satisfying end to the day!

Wednesday was fun on the trains again, as this time they decided not to open any doors in the whole train, so people could not get out. Only problem was that they only realised this when people weren't able to get off at tyseley or small heath, which to most people would be a blessing, but not if you worked there!

The rest of the week was fairly crappy as I had been developing a throat infection all week and woke up on friday unable to talk or even breath properly, so i called in sick and speny most of the day wondering if i had vitamin c poisoning, as i had taken so much!

The weekend was spent trying to get myself better, which was made worse when it decided to become a fully blown flu on saturday, so sunday was spent in a drug-fuelled happiness, which brings us majestically to monday.

Monday brought a winter wonderland to the city centre, as the clocks had gone back and so i was walking home in the dark, which is really nice as it brings the whole city to life (i know, i'm easily pleased, but i don't care as its getting nearer to xmas every day!). Tuesday was the most fun i've had on a train since the last blog, as it was my turn to sit next to the weirdo! Now, those of you who travel on the peasant-wagon, or 'bus', may think that they have a bad time of it if they sit next to a freak on a bus, but its worse on a train, as you can't exactly stop the train and hop of straight away, you are on it till the next station, or you get a big fat fine! Anyway back to the story, so there I was, on the train from Snow Hill to Wythall, watching people get on from Moor Street, desperately vying for a seat, as per normal with centro, when this neurotic, stick-like waif of a woman clambers on with a rucksack, and immediately started eyeing up the seat next to me......oh sh*t!

Plonking herself next to me, she immediately assumed a praying position, with her rucksack in front of her when the train started to move, and after about 30 seconds, plunged her head and hands, still in a praying position), and started rocking too a fro. I just stared at anything out of the window and kept staring as i could see her in the reflection....rocking! After about 5 minutes of rocking, she took her head out of her rucksack, and still in praying position, started to mime to something, which, after a while, i realised that she was listening to the same song on radio 1 that i was listening to, only i wasn't...erm....rocking!

So onto today, all hallows eve, another pointless theme day in the calendar, I mean who thinks that dead spirits need to eat (google it if you don't know what I'm talking about!), so if i haven't been eaten by bloodsucking freaky girls, I shall blog again next week!

E-Day

2007-10-19T00:16:00.000-07:00

Well folks, today is the big day. Hopefully I'll have done enough to pass but its all down to how good or bad the exam paper is at the end of the day (or...some time in the afternoon!). I think I've done enough revision and so now its all down to a nice slice of luck and a good old fashioned memory, so wish me luck and off I go......

....Back now and stupidly I think I may have done really well. I guessed right at most of what they were going to ask, which was good as I'd revised well on the subjects, and there were only a few questions, worth small amounts of points where I struggled slightly, but I put down what I could and did my best, which is all you can ask really. Right then, all I've gotta do is wait till December for the results.....marvellous!

Slip-slip-sliding away

2007-10-15T14:06:00.001-07:00

Salutations, dear reader(s), its been a couple of weeks since I last blogged, so I'll do my best to race through the time since our eyes last met over a crowded dancefloor....

...ok on with the post!

The week I had off after my op was spent, in the whole, revising for my upcoming exam, which is pretty much all that happened that week. Exciting eh?!

So we shall skip merrily onto last week, and back to work again. Monday was a typical dreary affair, filled with sleeping colleagues and tidy-ups from the mess caused by 3 of us being off the week before (we knew they'd miss us!)

Tuesday brought an 'interesting' train journey into work. The train trundled along, crammed to the rafters with angry, squashed passengers, and just before it got into moor street station, the train slowed down and came to a stop. After about 5 minutes the driver apologised for the delay and announced that a passenger on the train in front had been taken ill on the platform and so the train couldn't move off until the passenger had been picked up by the paramedic, as the poor thing would have had 400 people trampling all over her! Anyway another 10 minutes went by and eventually the train set off again. Getting into the station, the doors opened, and a woman that was standing by the doors slipped on the plastic 'runner' under the doors and almost went under the wheels of the train. Luckily, she was rather a rotund lady so she was sort of wedged in between the platform and the train and had to have 3 people wrench her out of her predicament, and the paramedic, who by the time we got into the station was loading his bags back onto his motorbike, had a 'buy one, get one free', as she was all brusied and scratched from her fall. Anyway the rest of Tuesday was a disappointment compared with the fun in the morning, so we'll skip to wednesday.

Wednesday saw us have a fire alarm go off in the building. Well, actually we think that the builders that are rebuilding the Ipanema bar at the back may have cut through a wire or something, but anyway we all had a good excuse not to work for 30 minutes while we waited outside for a big fireball or at least some smoke, alas nothing. At least this time, the radio 'giants' BRMB decided to grace us with their prescence, probably deciding that this time, they could fit it into their busy schedule of playing the same songs in the same order every day. We were grouped next to them, which gave us chance to see if anyone could recognise anyone at all from the station. I recognised one DJ who does the PA-ing at villa park, the fella who decides to put 'super' at the beginning of every matchday, e.g welcome to villa park for this super-wednesday game in the carling cup. Er...no! Anyway 3 firemen turned up, walked round the building and that was it.

Thursday was spent hoping friday would come, the problem being that this week, as the postmen and women threw all their toys out of the pram, we had literally no work to do, so it was a very dull week. Seriously, does anyone have any small amount of sympathy with them any more? Didn't think so! The evening was spent, where else, but in the chavhorse (new name for the packhorse, i might stick with it), where a good time was had by many.

Friday was a joyous day, as it was...well...friday! It dragged like a b*tch but it was worth it in the end, as we had officially broken up for 2 whole days.

Which brings us onto Saturday and a great day for sport. England walked over Estonia in about 10 minutes, and in the evening we watched the England v France rugby semi, which was a cracker, as you well know, before hitting the chav-den which is rosies in solihull (Please can we have a half-decent club in solihull, pretty pretty pleeeeaaase!)

Sunday was revision day so we'll gloos over that and come onto this week, which has seen (drum roll please).........

...CHRISTMAS!!!!

Woohooo!

The Christmas lights have gone up all round the city centre, and Brindleyplace looks great. The powers-that-be have decorated all the trees round the squares with simple white lights, and there is a kind of blanket of twinkly star-like lights next to our building, which is gonna look fab when we leave work in the dark.

The work has started to come back in too, which is keeping us fairly active (although I am doing this blog at work, which shows that the work has dried up again!), and I've got Thursday and Friday off work as I have an exam on Friday afternoon, so I shall bid you farewell!