1 June 2010 (Tuesday)
- An Anniversary Today is an anniversary - I’ve been blogging
here on Blogger for a year now – and three years before that over at Yahoo.
Where has the time gone? Looking at my archived stuff I’ve
got over one thousand three hundred blog entries and (together with the
piccies that go with it) it takes up nearly 30Mb of disk space. I might
get it published eventually. With an average of forty different people
tuning in to the thing daily, from all over the UK, to say nothing of the US,
Canada, Belgium, Russia and Australia (to name but only a few of the
places that pop up in the tracking software), I’m amazed at the success
of the thing. I wonder if I oughtn’t organise a meet-up of my loyal
readership – that might be quite a party… Meanwhile I woke up this morning aching more
than usual – I’m wondering if spending an hour playing leap frog with my
niece yesterday was a good idea. And then I got just a bit wound up with the
morning’s post. I got a letter from the company who’ve just loaned me a
squillion pounds to buy my new car. They told me that appreciate my custom,
and went on to say that should I wish to borrow another squillion pounds,
then maybe I would be interested to learn that they lend money, and maybe I
might like to consider borrowing it from them. Dur!!! Do they think I’ve
never heard of them? They’ve demonstrated that they are happy to lend me
money – where do they think I’m going to go for more loans – the fishmongers?
If they wasted less money on unnecessary expenses (such as producing and
posting this letter) then I would have to pay less in interest
repayments. I was home early from work today – having had
to go into work during the night. It suited me to come home early – I thought
I might get the roof bars put back on the car in readiness for the camping
season. But it was raining. Pouring hard. So I played on the internet until
the rain stopped. After an hour’s wrestling I got the roof bars in place. Now
they are on, I’m not sure there isn’t a front and back bar, and a left and
right side to each. But they are on, and (hopefully) will stay in
place until September. I then collared Martin to help me get the top box into
place. I’m sure that the box has shrunk over the winter – it seems a lot
smaller than I remember it being. And it’s a shame the bars and box’s colour
doesn’t’ match the car, but I’m not shelling out for new ones. I’m mean like
that. Now all I need to do is remove the rear seats from the car and go to
the farm to retrieve all the camping gear... I’ll do that another time. |
2 June 2010
(Wednesday) - I stumbled upon something that made me smile this
morning – when attempting to translate a direction sign into Welsh, the
signwriters thought the automated email response was actually the translation
they’d asked for. And so rather than giving the required instructions, the
sign they produced read (once translated) "I am not in the
office at the moment. Send any work to be translated". And from that
article it didn’t take me long to find a whole load of mis-translated signs
in Wales – left and
right being mixed up is an easy enough mistake to make (just
ask my beloved!). But surely confusing cyclists with cystitis is
somewhat more difficult to do? And then some signs have just been rendered into gibberish. But, as usual, on further research I’m in the minority with my opinion. It’s not just the Welsh – the Cornish have apparently revived a languagethat’s been dead for a century. As have the Manx and various forms of Celts. |
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June 2010 (Thursday) - A Birthday |
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June 2010 (Friday) - Fermi & Gemini |
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June 2010 (Saturday) - A Good Day, Really. |
And
the politicians would have us believe there’s a recession. |
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June 2010 (Monday) - New Shears |
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June 2010 (Tuesday) - Loading Up |
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June 2010 (Wednesday) - Nearly Packed |
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June 2010 (Thursday ) - see you all soon..... I expect I shall publish a blow-by-blow account of my exploits when I get back. See you all on Monday…. |
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June 2010 (Thursday ) - It Begins |
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June 2010 (Friday) - Soaking Wet And
then with the clans gathered we scoffed a wonderful tea of fajitas and set
about the beer. And the port. We managed to break one of our “camping
virgins”. If not exactly with her knickers round her ears, she was
certainly singing songs about sailors, and as is so often the way we had a
wonderful time, eventually staggering off to our tents and caravans in the
wee small hours. |
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June 2010 (Saturday) - Teston Kite Festival Having washed up and played a few games of Blokus we dispatched shopping parties. The women went off
for proper food shopping, whilst the blokes went hunting beer; we’d got
through rather more than I was expecting during the previous evening’s
festivities. Sainsbury’s was fun – we managed to scare quite a few of the
normal people, and really wound up the staff by putting several gallons of
ale through the self-service checkouts. Those machines don’t like you buying
beer, and they set off an “authorisation required” alarm for every
single bottle of beer you put through them. We also managed to get bread and
cheese and more port, and rewarded ourselves with cream cakes which we
scoffed before driving back to camp. After all, our fellow campers wouldn’t
believe we deserved the cream cakes. Back to camp, and more kite flying. On
Thursday and Friday I’d flown without a problem. Today I demonstrated why I
rarely fly kites at kite festivals. With other people’s kites around, |
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June 2010 (Sunday) - Teston Kite Festival (Still) Teston Bridge Country Park is quite spooky after dark when all your friends have gone home… |
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June 2010 (Monday) - Home Again |
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June 2010 (Tuesday) - Gone Fishing Talking
of “My Boy TM ”, I expect he will be jealous
of my progress today. He is currently on the fourth day of a fishing holiday
in France. In two and a half hours I had over thirty fish. From reports
received, in four days, he’s had two fish. Mind you, they are both carp: the
smallest weighing in at 41lb, the larger over 50lb. When I was a lad the
British record carp was only 44lb… |
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June 2010 (Wednesday) - Not Much |
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June 2010 (Thursday) - Correspondence Being in a “letters” frame of mind I wrote a letter of complaint to the council: I
wonder what response that will provoke? None, I suspect. But time will tell –
it usually does. |
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June 2010 (Saturday) - Shopping |
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June 2010 (Sunday) - Tidying Up, Washing Lines... And
then, as you can see, I played around with the blogger software. I quite like
the new look. I hope the majority of my loyal readers do too – I’m not sure
how to turn it back again… |
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June 2010 (Monday) - A New Friend |
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June 2010 (Tuesday) - The Cows Roundabout |
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June 2010 (Wednesday) - A Bit Fishy It’s
been suggested we put a net over the pond as a precaution. My concern is that
if it’s a light net, then the fish jump with such force that they would
tangle themselves in the netting. And if it’s a thicker mesh they would hurt
themselves when they crash into it. I so hope this is a one-off problem… |
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June 2010 (Thursday) - Stuff
|
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June 2010 (Friday) - In Outer Space |
And
then home to watch the last episode in the current season of Doctor Who.
Bearing in mind how good last week’s episode was, tonight’s was a
disappointment…. |
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June 2010 (Sunday) - Meeting a Hero |
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July 2010 (Monday) - Football (Sorry!) I
hear we have been knocked out of the world cup. And
I am left wondering how on Earth did England as a nation manage to
get the two to be synonymous? |
29 June 2010 (Tuesday) - At Work |
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June 2010 (Wednesday) - Dull, so Dull.... The
last Wednesday of the month – arky-ologee club. I’ve mentioned before that we
have a Riddler who comes to the club. This
month “Mossop” invited us to a church in the back of beyond. We spend
a rather dull half an hour looking round this church. And then we went
outside where she had dug a hole on a thicket (for no adequately explained
reason) and where she claimed she had discovered a medieval pond. I
remained unconvinced, but we had a nice walk round the woods afterwards…. |