Monday, 23 December 2013

Dad, shoping and Lost data!!!



23 December 2013

Today has always been a hard day for our family. It was on this day 1981 that we held the funeral for my dad. It was that event that actually caused Jan and me to end up going to stay with mother over the Christmas period. Sadly she no longer realises what the date means, her dementia is so now. Do I miss my dad, yes I do but I don't let his loss spoil everything for everyone else. Anyway ...

Today we went off to do a bit of shopping. I wasn't last minute shopping but a few odds and ends we thought might be useful, but we also bought some stuff we don't really need but are nice anyway ;-))) Main reason for going out was to get some wild bird seed, we are running short of it. After that I decided that I needed a book from PC World, that done we headed for Morrison's and the road was full of cars wanting to turn right into the place. We turned and headed elsewhere. We finally got the dews bit we wanted from Farm Foods and the Co-Op. After that, we dropped into the Anker to see Charlie and Sam. Two pints of Ba Humbug later and we headed home with Jan driving. So now we don't need to go out again until Jan goes off to church on Wednesday ... unless we go to see Charlie and Sam again tomorrow night ;-))) Well, come on, that Ba Humbug is very nice ;-)))

How many time have you read about backing up your data? Only a few days ago I was on about me backing up to my hard disc and so on; yet over the last few days I haven't done so. Now It seems I have lost everything on my USB stick. I shall be pretty pissed if I have. At least Bill Howe has a clean copy of my NANO at least ready for proof reading for me. Perhaps he'll be kind and send me a copy back ;-)))

Well folks, I'm going to have a few days off now and will come back again on the 27th. I shall be far too busy to write the blog over the next few days.  So, I wish you all a Merry Christmas and a Happy New year.

I'll see what photo I have to hand ... 

Yes, I thought I had one, a B&W shot of my dad with Pally, his spaniel cross dog.

And the Sage has been good to us again today - and a cracker it is too ...

Last night my kids and I were sitting in the living room and I said to them, "I never want to live in a vegetative state, dependent on some machine and fluids from a bottle. If that ever happens just pull the plug."
They got up, unplugged my computer and poured away my wine!!

The little B******* 

Sunday, 22 December 2013

Holiday, myth and death



22 December 2013

This morning I sat and watched a documentary that was on telly yesterday. I don't think I could sit and watch it again! The mental pain and anguish that the people of Lockerbie are still feeling, as well as the families of those who died in the States was so clear it hurt to watch. But as one of the Lockerbie residents said  in effect at the end, 'We will not allow the terrorists to win.' And that is how we all must be. We must not let those people kill our souls and spirits. Life is far too precious for that to happen.

After writing yesterday's blog I got the text of my NANO effort sorted out and email to Bill Howe to do his normal first class job of proof reading it for me. He's on holiday right now on the Isle of White and his return email said he wasn't sure if he was on holiday on punishment. It took some time for the penny to drop; Parkhurst Prison on the Isle of White ... dddeeeeerrrrrr ... ... ...   

Anyway ... yesterday I mentioned the similarities in the Potter and Star Wars films. Bill has said that perhaps a book called Hero With a 1000 Faces by Joseph R. Campbell. He then points out that Wikipedia has a good outline of the monomyth element of both films and Campbell's  book -  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monomyth - if you're interested.

A short one again today folks .. so here's photo for you ... 

The tower of Kingsbury parish church, North Warks.

The Sage spoke again this morning as I was writing this blog ...


Wife's Diary:
Tonight, I thought my husband was acting weird. We had made plans to meet at a nice restaurant for dinner. I was shopping with my friends all day long, so I thought he was upset at the fact that I was a bit late, but he made no comment on it.
Conversation wasn't flowing, so I suggested that we go somewhere quiet so we could talk. He agreed, but he didn't say much.I asked him what was wrong; He said, 'Nothing..' I asked him if it was my fault that he was upset. He said he wasn't upset, that it had nothing to do with me, and not to worry about it.
On the way home, I told him that I loved him. He smiled slightly, and kept driving. I can't explain his behaviour. I don't know why he didn't say, 'I love you, too.'
When we got home, I felt as if I had lost him completely, as if he wanted nothing to do with me anymore. He just sat there quietly, and watched TV. He continued to seem distant and absent. Finally, with silence all around us, I decided to go to bed. About 15 minutes later, he came to bed. But I still felt that he was distracted, and his thoughts were somewhere else. He fell asleep; I cried. I don't know what to do. I'm almost sure that his thoughts are with someone else. My life is a disaster....... .
Husband's Diary:
A two-foot putt..........who the hell misses a two-foot putt?

Saturday, 21 December 2013

Sky Blues update, compare and contrast, and a birth and death



21 December 2013

I have an update on the Coventry City story from yesterday where I said that the clubs owners were looking to build and new stadium, possibly in Brandon, a small village right on the edge of Coventry. BBC Midlands Today reported yesterday on the artists impression of how the new stadium. They are looking at two sites for it but Brandon isn't one of them. It all seems to be such a waste of money considering that there is an almost new stadium sitting empty on the old gas works site. The City has a loyal band of followers, just like so many other clubs in the FA, but that number getting smaller all the time and it won't be long before there are none left at all. Who will then use the current stadium, let alone newly built stadium?

Last week I mentioned on here that we had watched the Star Wars films. I'm now nearly finished reading the Parry Hotter Half Blood Prince book. It occurred to me just how much the two series tend to follow each other plot-wise and character-wise. They both have orphaned kids being coached by a kindly old man. The both have a dark side of life ruled by a sad and twisted man and being helped by others who betray the orphan in some way. At the end they both come down to the orphan and dark villain fighting it out between them. Star Wars has the Sith and the Dark Side of the force; Potter has dark magic and a leading exponent of it. Both side have supporting armies of the main two characters. Strange that eh ... ... ...

 Another strange thing is numerology. The idea as I remember it, is that by using the names of subjects, their date and time (if known) of their birth and giving them a number which is supposed to indicate their character and future. This is worked out assigning each letter of the alphabet a digit; using that you then assigned each letter a digit. You then add all the numbers together and reduce it to a single digit. You then reduce the date and time of birth in the same way and add that to the name number and reduce it yet again. Well ...

In the mid-1970s I used to do that as bit of fun in the pubs in Cambridge. But I didn't do it correctly. All I had done was to write out the alphabet and under each letter I added a number. And this is where it differ quite a bit it seems from how it should be done. So then ... A=1, B=2, C=3, D=4; OK so far? Next comes E of course, so I start at 1 again, and so on all the way through.

This whole thing showed up two surprise for me. The first was just how many young people, mostly students I should add, were interested in having it done. Secondly, my 'bit of fun' actually seemed to work very well and I got more correct that not. I got posted to Cyprus then and that brought it all to end, but I did enjoy all the free pints I got because my little part trick ;-)))

It's Telegraph day today being Saturday. Today's anniversary only goes back to the birth in 1804 of a future of a future Prime Muppet, Benjamin Disraeli. But today in 1945 is also the day that General George Patten died in a traffic accident in Berlin I think it was. There's been a few conspiracy theories over his death. One suggested that he was killed because he had uncovered a massive fiddle going on in the army command structure at the time.

And so for photo today ... 

A main battle tank, as they are known as (don't know which one though), that I found in a grounds of a closed RAF museum would you believe, Cumbria.

And another on from the Sage ...

Two aliens landed in the Arizona desert near a gas station that was closed for the night. They approached one of the gas pumps and the younger alien addressed it saying, "Greetings, Earthling. We come in peace. Take us to your leader."
The gas pump, of course, didn't respond.
The younger alien became angry at the lack of response.
The older alien said, "I'd calm down if I were you."
The younger alien ignored the warning and repeated his greeting. Again, there was no response.
p**sed at the pump's haughty attitude, he drew his ray gun and said gruffly, "Greetings, Earthling. We come in peace. Take us to your leader or I will fire!"
The older alien again warned his comrade saying, "You probably don't want to do that! I really think that will make him mad."
"Rubbish," replied the young alien. He aimed his weapon and opened fire.
There was a huge explosion. A massive fireball roared towards him and blew the younger alien off his feet and threw him in a burnt, smoking mess about 200 yards away into a cactus patch.
Half an hour passed. When he finally regained consciousness, he refocused his three eyes, straightened his bent antenna and looked dazedly at the older, wiser alien who was standing over him shaking his big, green head..
"What a ferocious creature!" exclaimed the young, fried alien. "He damn near killed me! How did you know he was so dangerous?"
The older alien leaned over, placed a friendly feeler on his crispy friend and replied, "If there's one thing I've learned during my intergalactic travels, you never mess with a guy who can loop his willy over his shoulder twice and then stick it in his ear."

Friday, 20 December 2013

BT, trains and mucky stuff for Tom



20 December 2013

When we moved into our flat the first thing we did, actually it was before we moved in here, we sacked BT and got Virgin installed. That was around 18 months ago, yet here I am just sitting down to start writing this morning's blog when the house phone rings. I heard, 'This is the SNS service from BT ... ' At that point I cut it off and put the phone down. We fell out with BT in 1998 when we moved into our bungalow. There was a BT line in there but it wasn't working and after several weeks of fighting them they got it fixed - on the same day that NTL were there to install our new service. From what I hear from folks about and off the telly, BT are still just as bad.

It makes me wonder just what the hell they are playing at you know. When they were the only supplier of land line phone services they could get away with poor service up to a point but not now. There is far too much competition out there for them to be so poor. As I said, we use Virgin and we are happy with them. We've had few if any problems and the odd time we have had one it's been sorted very quickly. And guess what? BT have called yet again with exactly the same message! Later I shall be finding their customer service number and they will get a blasting!

Our son Tom is in the mucky stuff again. A week or so ago he was able to get two days work with cash in hand payment. Thinking he was doing the right thing he reported it to DWP. Now he's had his normal bennies stopped for four weeks! And then they wonder why people don't bother reporting such things. And it happens the week before Christmas too. What Tom needs to do is to get in touch with CAB and see what they can do to help him.     

The Ricoh Arena shopping centre stands on the old Coventry Gas Works. The major outlet there is a Tesco Extra store; but there's also a Boots, M&S, Next and a number of others too. The name comes from the footy area where Coventry City once played before they went bust. For several years there's been discussions about upgrading the Dorktown to Coventry railway line with the addition of two new stations at Bermuda and the Ricoh, as well as the lengthening of the platforms at Bed'th station. According to today's News the upgrade is now likely to be delayed, perhaps to 2017; but I have feeling that it might get scrapped altogether now seeing as the footy club has left the Ricoh and is looking to relocate to Brandon on the other side of the city. There again, it might well go ahead because the shopping centre is very popular with the car park being full or almost full at any time of the year.
I like the salad bar at Tesco and the milk which we but a lot of too, make it worth whole driving to on occasions. Even if the new station is built there, I can't see us using it because of our need to use our scooters to get about. I know that you can use trains while using them but it's such a fart about it's just not worth bothering with. If it was I would use the train a lot more. I've always liked travelling by train. And talking of trains ...

There a non-privatised train company running in East Yorkshire that is doing really well and is paying around £650 million a year to the exchequer. So Daft Dave has decided that such a prize should got to his mates in private companies. It just doesn't make sense does it?

Today's photo then ...

A rare sight of a Virgin service stopped at Dorktown Trent Valley Station. Virgin no longer runs a direct service from Dorktown to London now and hasn't done for years.

And the Sage has been good to us and sent us a lot of funnies ...

It's not a well known fact but it only takes 3.5 inches to satisfy a woman, and it really doesn't matter if its Visa or Maestro!