A day on the golf course is a welcome relief from all of the nonsense that has been going on lately. After two rounds in the fresh air, and a glass (or perhaps two) of wine with the roast dinner that follows I am sleeping the sleep of the just. Sleep has been a regularly disturbed luxury of late, so I am less than chuffed when my phone starts going at around half seven.

“Blazin”

“Uh?”

“You awake?”

Why do people ask that? How stupid can people be with only one head. “I am now Adge, you twat. What is so important that you need to call me at this hour?”

“You’ve broken the internet”

“Come again?”

Adge proceeds to tell me that he cannot access this blog and I must have broken the internet because “Facebook and the BBC works and everything”. This is Adge we are talking about, one of the few surviving brain donors, but he has worried me enough to force me from my much-anticipated lie-in. I make tea for two and venture into the centre of my media operations spare room.

I have no problem firing up Blazing in my browser, so the next few seconds of my life I waste berating the bastard who had prematurely brought to an end my wonderful kip. Comments on another favourite blog of mine though reveal that in fact he is partially correct. Anybody using Internet Explorer cannot access a whole host of blogs, it would appear.

I Google ‘Internet Explorer’ and the whole sorry tale is just starting to unfold it seems. Fourteen hours or so later it looks as though the issue has been resolved. The Sitemeter code used by a lot of bloggers to get visitor stats and info apparently had been changed and sadly exposed a bug in Internet Explorer (A known bug, but one that had escaped Sitemeter it would appear).

They now appear to have resolved the problem, but if you were trying to get through on that particular browser today, and failed, please accept my apologies. I would recommend you consider using Firefox or Opera instead, both excellent browsers with a whole host of features.

As for Adge, well it really hurt to thank him and buy him a beer today. I did, however, make sure he was thoroughly aware that should he contemplate ringing me at that hour of a Saturday again then he will no longer wish to use his Nokia as I will have given him a plastic enema with it.

Tags: disturbed, golf, internet, sleep, twat, wine

What is it with us? The best weekend for a couple of years means I join the throngs bursting through the doors of the local supermarket at ten on Sunday morning. (Twenty-four hour opening was wasted on us).

The scene by the bread rolls resembles Dirty Nellies on a Saturday night as grown humans nudge, shove, and yes, barge each other out of the way. I grab the last pack of finger rolls and it is only ten past ten. Wholemeal baps will do for the burgers. Sorry white bread lovers, they’re all gone.

It isn’t much better down the meat and poultry aisles. I escape with two packs of quarter pounders only because they are on the top shelf and some of the poor souls cannot reach. A catering pack of Cumberland sausages is a real coup, and I top that with some fresh minted lamb kebabs.

Now I’m not messing with that charcoal nonsense. A large ‘instant’ barbecue pack fits my trolley-burner perfectly, and will be quick to get going and easy to dispose of. Some paper plates and throw away cutlery are essential for similar ease of disposal. Grill trays will be better for the kebabs, won’t they? Kitchen rolls, sauces, wine, matches, Guinness and whisky (I’m a thirsty chef!) complete the £75 pound bill.

The neighbours are entering into the spirit too. Well two of them. The first couple have suffered my outdoor culinary skills before. ‘We’ll bring lamb chops, you burn them better than anybody’. They arrive not only with chops, but also drumsticks and chicken kebabs. And more wine.

‘We will bring the salads and a sweet. I’d love to do that’. Our newest neighbours arrive with the promised goodies, plus some amazing looking seafood kebabs. And more wine.

Sadly their son, probably the heartiest appetite in attendance, is not well and is soon back in bed. ‘Poisoned at a barbecue yesterday we think’. Oops.

Luckily another couple turn up midway through proceedings. Effectively eight people are eating. There is enough meat, fish, and poultry to feed half of Wiltshire. I start cooking (ok, burning!) around three, and don’t stop for about four hours.

Astonishingly there is not that much waste, considering. I think my grazing is coming to an end when I force down a delicious lamb kebab and sausage finger roll with my last Guinness. As I prepare to wash it down with a glass of something red and powerful the cry goes up ‘PUDDING’. I come face to face with the most delightful pavlova I have ever seen.

Now a couple of us are fighting the inner demons, both feeling much like Mr Creosote in Monty Python’s ‘The Meaning of Life’. A pavlova the size of a medium umbrella vanishes in no time flat, and it is truly delicious. I am honestly certain that if a ‘wafer-thin mint’ were offered I would explode, Creosote-like.

We are still polishing off wine at eight when we all agree it has been an excellent day, and we must do it again when next we get such a glorious day. Hopefully it will not be another two years. I wonder if they were thinking the same as me later on. If the weather had not been so good, would we have got together, and agreed to spend a couple of hundred quid (it must have been) on food and wine for such a small number of people.

For a birthday, or anniversary, yes. But just because the sun was out?

Only mad dogs and Englishmen…

Tags: barbecue, Guinness, The Meaning of Life, whisky, wine

A couple of years have probably passed since I found myself in one of those pound shops. I’m not sure what I went in for but it was possibly the last time we had some sunshine and I could have been panic buying disposable barbecues. Anyway, I do remember seeing reading glasses in there, and being a practical sort I invested in a couple of pairs at the minimum magnification.

I may have been a tad premature (and yes, sad!) but in the last two or three months I have needed to use them as my arms are no longer of sufficient length for me to put books and magazines at a distance where I can comfortably speed read them. Father time is well and truly making his mark about my person.

The strange thing is when it finally happens it becomes a topic of conversation at sad old gits dinner parties. “Have you seen the supermarket where young mums pat their denim posteriors are selling two pairs of reading glasses in a pack for two pounds?”. Inflation may be rife, but reading glasses it would appear remain unaffected.

The company for whom I sweat blood in return for a meagre living are sufficiently concerned about my failing faculties to send me for an eye test. They kid themselves they are looking after the welfare of their employees and not guarding against against future legal action if I go blind whilst using their second rate I.T. equipment. They will even contribute fifty quid if the optician deems optical enhancement necessary.

Of course the highly qualified professional does indeed decide I require very special glasses that will have different points of focus depending on whether I am looking down at printed media or looking up at the computer monitor. The opticians assistant has, I’m sure, undone another button as she explains to me they can probably sort out something for under two hundred pounds. I am past the age of distraction. “I’ll let you know”.

I head for the supermarket where young mums pat their sprayed denim bums because I am sure I remember seeing an optician on site. I am not wrong. I explain I have fifty quid from my employer and I need some assistance in the reading department. ‘Well our varifocal lenses start at £110….”. I miss the rest of it, knowing we have yet to make it to the frames and the ‘extras’ like anti-glare, anti-scratch, anti-sun and all that stuff that glasses apparently cannot function without.

“Forgive me, I understand that the making of a varifocal lens will be a much more complex process than just taking two magnifying glasses and putting them in a wire and plastic frame, but I really am struggling to understand how it is one hundred and ten times more complex than your reading glasses”.

“Yes, I can see your point, but I can assure you that…”, and off into salesperson mode goes the nice young mum who has yet to pat her not denim-clad derriere.

My last chance is another supermarket, one where every little helps. A leaflet offers varifocal lens starting at £45. Frames are on offer at £20. “Please come in and talk to me. It’s very quiet and I’m bored”. I cannot resist another young mum. As I follow her I think she really should be working at the other place and clad in denim whilst… oops, sorry about that. Daydreaming again.

We get off on the wrong foot and she is clearly dischuffed when I explain I want a £65 pair of varifocals. A little bit of charm is turned on and ten minutes later I discover she is just about to set off on a well earned holiday. A sunny little chat later she is disarmed enough for me to query the difference between the bins I have purchased and the more expensive options they have available.

“In all honesty you will get a slightly narrower field of vision at that price but not anywhere near half as bad as the ones you would pay twice the price for. You may have to move your head a little bit more to focus depending on what you are doing, but these will be just fine.”

Now the proof of the pudding is in the eating, and this particular sweet will not be served for two or three weeks, but when the £65 glasses arrive I will let you know what they are like. I may even add some band aid to them which is a lasting memory I have of kids cheap glasses when I was at school. True retro at a value price. I might just be starting a trend.

Tags: optician, reading glasses, varifocal, young mums

I suppose I am not alone in chuckling at the story that Marks & Spencer are once again in the news for charging extra for larger sized bras. I wonder if it was an astute M&S PR man, or the complaining customer, one Beckie Williams, who allowed the tale to reach the national press?

Either way the story will do them little harm. It is a sign of the times that the protest has reached the mixed bag that is ‘Facebook’, in the shape of the 900 people joining a Busts 4 Justice protest group on the website.

Obviously this is a topic of discussion in the Grot. Adge is particularly vexed. “I take their point, Blazing. Let’s face it, I don’t pay any different for my 46 inch waist shreddies in Primark than a bloke who is only 34 inches.” I point out that different prices are charged for childrens clothing than adult sizes. “Isn’t that the same principle?”

Adge concedes he hadn’t considered that,  but seems intent on labouring the point. On reflection he would probably have phrased his question to Blossom a little more politely were he to be given a second opportunity. She was not enamoured with being expected to explain in a packed pub if a “tit-sling for them there whoppers was more expensive than her daughter’s”.

Adge too was perhaps not best pleased to feel the full force of Blossom’s left palm which arrived with an impressive thunderclap on his cheek at roughly the same time he expected to be partaking of a drop of Bulmers. The resultant search for his bottom set of teeth, as they disappeared under a table and set of barstools, was hindered by the shards of glass and the frothing contents of his chosen drinking vessel.

Eventually the biters and the bit are re-united. Adge apologises and asks for a half of cider. “That’ll be two fifty please” says Blossom.

“I only want a half, not a pint.”

“This isn’t Marks an bleedin’ Spencer, Adge. As far as you’re concerned I only charge one price regardless of glass size.”

Cue much sniggering and inspection of glasses. Poor Adge has nowhere to go, and pays up. Well played Blossom.

Tags: Bulmers, Facebook, Grot, M&S

They say the Lord moves in mysterious ways, and mine certainly does. I’ve been toying with the idea of adding TV to this new computer recently. We have a multitude of channels via cable on the main tv, but the bedroom set only gets about half of the available freeview channels. ITV is not one of them. After taking advice I decided I should seek out one specific bit of kit that features a dual aerial, given that we are not in an area of great reception.

A couple of these have turned up on ebay this week. I have set a ceiling of sixty quid on my purchase. This is three quarters of the price advertised on the Apple website. The first auction reached that level pretty quickly and I was forced to wait until yesterday for the second one.

This had crawled up in price slowly but with less than a minute to go had only just broken the fifty quid barrier. I counted down in my head, double checked my timing as the final minute ticked over. Then I pounced. With four seconds of the auction remaining I hit the button on my fifty-seven pound bid.

‘Congratulations, you are the highest bidder‘. Euphoria.

I refresh the page, ready to follow the links to pay for my purchase. ‘Sorry, You were outbid‘. What? No human could have reacted that quickly. This was some bastard using one of those automated bidding programmes. Basically I didn’t stand a chance. I hope the postman jumps on the bloody thing with his size tens to make sure it goes through the pillock’s letterbox.

I return to my favourite blog with a heavy heart, and walk into the middle of a conversation about an apparently legitimate streamed television service. Half-heartedly I go to the site, download the software, and register. I’m not expecting much as I fire up the tennis on BBC1.

I get a surprise. Obviously it is not cable television quality pictures, but I’ve had worse reception on external aerials. Full screen is not a great option, but I do find a screen size that produces a perfectly decent result, and later find I can ‘lock’ the screen to that size. The delay between the stream and the cable broadcast is only two or three seconds.

Less than an hour after missing out on a tv stick that may not have worked I have 21 channels available to me on the Mac, including ITV1, and it doesn’t cost a penny. Indie, I owe you a Guinness! The service is currently restricted to eight European countries but is expected to expand, and those of you familiar with the use of an open proxy may be able to circumnavigate those restrictions.

So I have sixty quid left in my ‘boys toys’ budget. What could I spend it on? Hang on, what’ this? The new G3 iphone is out on Friday? I wonder…..

Tags: Apple, Ebay, iphone, TV, Zattoo

I’m flicking through virtual tv channels, and being reminded of my advancing years by the sheer amount of sport that is on during the summer. It’s everywhere.

Oh yes, I can still amble in a leisurely fashion around the countryside thumping a little white ball that doesn’t move towards a hole in the ground, but I mean real sport. Lung-bursting stuff that requires you to break out of a hobble now and again. The comradeship of team-mates.

Inevitably the mind wanders to tours. The start of the summer was when one would disappear on a football tour, and in my case the best ones were to the Channel Islands. Guernsey was a particular favourite, described by one local on my first trip as consisting of twenty-five thousand alcoholics clinging to a rock.

Early August and thoughts would turn to the annual cricket pilgrimage to North Devon. Because you were away for a whole week, rather than just a long weekend, the cricket tour had to be carefully negotiated. One can just about survive a couple of days of constant drinking inconvenienced by actually having to go and play a couple of football matches on Saturday afternoon and Sunday morning. A week of that would kill anyone.

So the mornings on cricket tour were spent, weather permitting, playing tennis and golf. Weather didn’t always permit, and then invariably I would end up in Bod’s car touring the locality. I say Bod’s car. On a couple of occasions at least that meant a beaten up and filthy blue transit with an armchair thrown in the back.

Bod was a builder, you see, and a cricket fanatic. He employed a couple of the younger lads in the side during the summer so they could spend most of their working day bowling at him in the back garden (or often, in inclement weather, the front room!) of the house they were working in.

He was also a diabolical driver. You know the sort, always rushing from one jam to the next. Everytime I think of him I am reminded of one miserable morning when we decided to negotiate the narrow lanes of the West Country in pursuit of some beauty spot that now escapes me. Vic and Bully won the toss to sit in the front of the Transit, and I reluctantly took my place in the armchair in the back, and yes, it was on castors!

An hour into the magical mystery tour and I was dizzy, having been catapulted into the internal panels of this infernal vehicle as Bod threw it around harepin bends with real gusto. I turned the bloody armchair upside down and planted it at the back of the vehicle and took up a position kneeling behind the front bench seat.

That was a big mistake. As we squealed around the next bend I, like the other three occupants, was mortified to see a small family car heading directly towards us, also at lunatic speed, and with a split second before impact I implored our Lord and maker to look kindly upon us at that moment, or words to that effect.

What happened then remains a mystery, and all four of the occupants of the blue peril are as one in their recollection. We all, to a man, braced for impact. Somehow, and to this day we could not explain how, the two vehicles slid alongside each other, wheels locked, and as the cockpit of the car passed the drivers window I can still see Bod muttering ‘Good morning Madam, nice day’ at an equally startled saloon driver.

Then we were past. ‘Something wrong lads?’ Bod was one of the funniest men I ever knew, but his humour was not immediately appreciated at this precise moment. Without a word of a lie if Bully had stuck his left arm out of the passenger window he would have been hitting the hedgerow on the left of the van. Similarly if Bod had signalled right from his window he would have suffered a similar fate, so how on earth we made no contact that morning is beyond comprehension.

What is beyond doubt is that five people escaped an early appointment with a higher authority that morning, and at least four of them were left to chuckle heartily at the memory. I hope the poor lass travelling in the opposite direction wasn’t too traumatised by the event, or her morning greeting from a lunatic builder.

Tags: builder, cricket, Devon, football, Guernsey, sport, tours

Adge is on his soapbox. That’s not an unusual occurrence in the Grot, and more often than not we’ll just let him jabber on until he runs out of blather. This time he seems to be onto something interesting though.

‘Orchestra my arse.’

‘Sorry, Adge?’

‘Orchestra in Bristol’ he continues. ‘They reckon the answer to all the little herberts thieving, carjacking, and shooting up is to have a bloody orchestra in Bristol. They reckon in Venezuela it has saved loads of kids from a life of crime. Now I know parts of Bristol might as well be a third world country, but any bugger can see that kids in Venezuela are lured into a life of crime out of necessity. Little shitbags in Brizzle do it to fund their nastier little habits.’

I’m unaware of the story (I looked it up later here) but anybody with children, or in my case grandchildren, would take a natural interest in such things. Don’t we all fear the way our youngsters appear to be targets for the most despicable scum in society these days.

I know that gangs and drug-dealers are not new. There were always a minority of kids who were gullible, or naive, or just plain mischievous who got involved down the years. What is worrying these days is that that minority appears to be growing, fuelled by direct action by lowlife actually in and around our schools.

So I cannot say I disagree with Adge. Like most angry old farts I think a lack of discipline, both at school and in the home, is largely to blame. Parents without values are bringing up kids without values, and those kids can influence those around them by their wit or their bullying. We are too lenient with them as a society. Asbo’s don’t do the same job as a spell in a borstal where large numbers of kids have discovered they were not all that clever, or as ‘hard as nails’.

The way things are going, however, I wouldn’t completely poo-poo this idea. If it does give a new outlet for the energies of a few hundred potential troublemakers, then that is a few hundred less for parents, grandparents, teachers, policemen, and the courts to worry about.

I do understand Adge’s concern about the likely success of the scheme in Bristol, but we owe it to the kids to try something, don’t we? If we are to encourage them down the straight and narrow we need to provide attractive options along the way. This might, and I stress might, be one.

Tags: discipline, gangs, orchestra, parents, soapbox

I’m in that stage between good and bad, up and down. You know what I mean, don’t you?

I’m puzzled. Why do people blitz everybody else’s websites with spam when it is blatantly obvious that a filter is at work that gets rid of it all.

My first job every morning is to pop into the filter to hit that one button that deletes everything that has been incarcerated behind the scenes in the last twenty-four hours. People and bots (programmed by people) have wasted their time writing and sending stuff that will never see the light of day.

You, my loyal reader, are missing nothing. If I wanted to find porn I know much better sites than these halfwits are peddling. I reckon as well that if you really need viagra you will already have a supply. I stick some on my golf club shafts but they remain annoyingly flexible!

Oh well, time to hit the sack. Tomorrow morning I’ll get up, make a lovely cup of tea, and hit that one button again before getting on with my tour of the sites I look at every morning. I wonder how many hours of concerted effort that one button press will render wasted?

Tags: bots, filter, spam, tea, viagra

What a week. I am given a rare opportunity to park my ample arse on a chair for an evening and enjoy the fruits of a full week’s labours. Allow me to bore you to tears for ten minutes as I explain why I have not endured a pain in the khyber.

The replacement of the element in the oven is a job I have always managed to cock up. One of the leads always slips behind the rear inner panel of the oven and I end up having to strip the back off the cooker to complete what should be a five minute job. This week the replacement turns up on time, in itself a novelty, and I somehow accomplish the five minute task successfully.

I’m on a roll. I decide as I will spend a lot of time here in the coming weeks, and a good chunk of it needs to be spent keeping an eye on the management while she recuperates, I should finally install the wireless router that has sat in the cupboard for a year waiting for me to pluck up courage. I know this is a difficult job for the untrained. Everybody has told me so.

I read the blurb, follow the instructions, and in no time flat my antique Apple Wallstreet powerbook is hooked up to the net in the kitchen. Surely it will all turn to rodent droppings when I try to get a PC laptop working in the front room? No, an ounce of common sense goes a long way it would seem. I am smug git numero uno for a night as I trawl ebay for the new ibook that will be the perfect accompaniment to my new wireless network.

Only the ibook at the right price doesn’t appear. What does appear is a beautiful flat panel imac at a silly price. I don’t need it. My mini is fully operational and the hard drive only half-full. I have been fighting a desperate battle with my inner self not to buy a new desktop for a while now. The beast bites deep into my resolve. I half-heartedly bid in the dying seconds, fully expecting to be gazumped in the last minute flurry of activity that usually sees my bargain evaporate in a puff of smoke. ‘Congratulations, you are the winner’. Well, bugger me sideways.

Now comes the next problem. The same ‘everybody’ who insisted that I wouldn’t get the wireless set-up sorted now assures me that transferring all of my files, particularly my music files, will be beyond me. Twenty minutes of carefully worded searches on the Apple discussions, and a couple of hours with a firewire cable and my ipod sees a successful transfer completed.

Now I’m not used to things falling into place like this for a day, never mind a whole week. I know that just around the corner somewhere is that natural disaster, or incompetent arsehole, that will bring my run to an end. Just for tonight though, allow me to sit back, arrogant, all-conquering, unbearable, and soak up the full extent of smugness that only a couple of glasses of vino will allow.

What was the point of going wireless again? Perhaps the management will forgive me for spending an evening in the executive suite spare room, just for tonight?

Oh, and ‘everybody’. What do you know, eh?

Tags: accomplish, Apple, Ebay, smugness, wireless

Sunday morning. The most relaxing day of the week, right?

Not when your oven decides to blow up before the roast dinner has been cooked. If you are under eighteen it’s time to get back to Facebook now and read no further.

Bastard.

Bollocks.

Hellfire and damnation (ok, you can read that one…)

Curry’s have the element, hooray.

For 24 hour delivery only, boo.

I have to fork out thirty quid not to have my roast beef today. Fate, you are a son of a bitch. Trust me though, you will not get the better of me.