Another one gone

Christmas came and went pretty quickly, didn't it? So, what happened?

Saturday was spent doing lots of housework, shopping etc. At about 4.30pm I had just settled down for a well-deserved G&T when my mobile rang. It was work. The main server had failed. Basically, this meant everything had stopped. Pretty serious for, say, a Monday or something. But no, this just happened to be the busiest day of the whole campaign and as it was a Saturday, no-one was about.
I put down my gin and shot off in to work. I'll spare you all the details, but I got away for the final time at about 11.45pm. The phonecalls carried on going for another hour or so.
Onto Christmas Eve. Picked up the turkey and the pork. A final bit of shopping and we were sorted. An evening at our friends, Kev & Sal, was good fun and a nice relaxing evening before the big day.
CHristmas to be spent alone. Bliss. First we popped some presents round to H's mum and called off for a drink on the way back. A great atmosphere in the pub and free drinks to boot. I did the final bit of dinner prep and we dived into our presents. Oooo, I've just remembered that I've got some photos to show. Don't go away!

Here we are, a couple of our lounge all decorated up...




And this is the present haul. I'm not going to list what they are, if you want to know, you'll have to ask.



Boxing Day was spent at H's sister. A nice relaxing time there too.
Back to work on Wednesday and yesterday and I've had today off.
This evening we've got Tim & Bobbie coming up to stay, but they're heading back tomorrow evening. Then it'll be New Year's Eve! We're going round to another friend's for a Murder Mystery evening. I'm both apprehensive and thinking it may be fun, both at the same time.
If I get chance I'll post again before the end of Sunday. If not, see you in 2007.

Home Alone

It's Thursday already, blimey!

Tuesday and Wednesday disappeared fairly quickly, just like this...
Tuesday morning, up at 04:30. Walk Jack, have some breakfast etc. Drive down to meet MC at his place about 34 miles away. No great problem? Well in temperatures of -5° and patchy fog, it wasn't so much fun. Good job I had my Sat Nav to guide me through it, eh?
So, from Newmarket we head down to Folkestone and the weather doesn't improve so much.
I've never been on the Chunnel before. Easy, innit?
So much easier than flying or a ferry. I was most impressed. Quick too. I'll certainly consider it for the future.

Right, once the other side, we head North following the E40. Again, a pretty straight forward journey on much quieter roads than in the UK. We called off for a bite to eat just into Belgium. What did we have? Full English breakfast! Very nice too.
Onwards and upwards in the Netherlands. Our printed instructions did us very well until the last 10Km or so and then we got completely lost and had to ask for help a couple times.
Arriving at our destination we had a meeting for about an hour and a half and then headed South again.
Getting a bit late in the day now so we had decided to head into Brugge to stay overnight. Again, this is somewhere that I have never been before. I'm steadily ticking off the European countries. Not many to go now.
We stopped at the first (half decent) hotel we found within the city and booked in.
Half an hours wash and brush up, and we met up in the bar. Here I made my first mistake. I asked for some nuts. Now, this barman was a little weird. He gave me a look and said "No nuts. Do you know that nuts are the least healthy snacks." We then got a (very) lengthy description into how blokes grab some nuts out of a bowl and then go for a pee, not washing their hands afterwards and then grabbing more nuts (no, not those ones!). At the end of the evening, the remaining nuts get chucked back in the main bowl/bag ready for re-use. What you end up with is a huge mound of contaminated nuts. Now, I would debate a lot of what he was saying, but I really couldn't be bothered. It wasn't that I especially wanted nuts, I just wanted something to snack on. This I got, in the form of small chunks of cheese. These were served in a small bowl. He got the chunks from a much larger bowl using his bare hands. Yes, you're way ahead of me here aren't you?
Okay. Time to head out into the town (city?). Very pretty place. I do like going round European cities when it's lovely and cold and crisp. This was no exception. Behold, photos...





DInner beckons. Really nice and very reasonably priced at about €60 for the two of us including drinks etc.
Back to the hotel and we made sure not to mention the barman's nuts, as it were.

The morning came soon enough and we headed South back towards Calais. MC knew of a few places to head for shopping. First stop a wine warehouse. I never intended to really buy much, but here I am, 18 bottles of wine and one crate of lager. How did that happen?
Popped to a supermarket too. Gin, cheese, paté, dijon mayonnaise, cakes - not in any particular order. French food is the best though, eh?
Then, to cut a long story short, back home by about 3pm. Two hours at home catching up on a few things (business & pleasure) before going out on duty for 4 hours.

So onto this evening. A very unusual time for me indeed. I'm here all alone and will be for the whole night. I think this has possibly happened just the once before in (almost exactly) nine years. Normally it's me that's away, but tonight it's H's Christmas do at work. For those of you who know it, it's at the Haycock at Peterborough. A nice spot indeed.
She's staying over and sharing a room with a work colleague (female, I hasten to add). So what to do? Well, I've already made a batch of rum truffles and tidied the kitchen & lounge. What else can I do? Oh now there's a thought, I could update my blog!

Just started to re-read this to check for typos etc, but no. Do I really need to? If there are any, you wont mind, will you?

A Dream Come True

Well here's a story from yesterday. I've already posted it elsewhere so I'm going to shamelessly cut & paste...

H used to work with a chap called Granville. His son bought this car about 5 years ago. I was insanely jealous at the time as these were my dream cars for a long time.
We still keep in touch with Granville and went there today for lunch. Guess what? Bill (the son) keeps the car at Granville's. I drooled over it for about half an hour.

Anyway, after lunch, the three of us were sat down having coffee and who should turn up?
We talk a little about the car and he says that he came across to take it out for a spin (he doesn't use it much). Did I fancy going with him.

Here are the details...

It's a TVR Cerbera.
This one's a 4.2 litre that's been tweeked to give about 480bhp.
0-60 = 3.9 secs
Top end = 180+ mph

He starts it up and all of the local house's windows begin to shake from the noise.
I crawl into the passenger seat - there's no easy way to get in and out.
As we get out of the village he opens it up. OH MY GOD! The acceleration is unreal.
We blast around for a while and then we're back on a main road and have just overtaken a couple of cars. There's a stream of traffic heading the other way and one of them flashes us, so Bill lifts off.
Sure enough, about half a mile ahead, we spot it. A police car in a layby about half a mile away. As we approach, plod gets out and waves us in. Oooops!
Bill gets me to drop the front numberplate into the front of the screen (it only fell off recently, honest!). The conversation that I hear...

"Do you mind telling me what speed you were doing?"
"Erm, I'm not really sure"
"Well, if you are unable to tell me, I'll do you for driving without due care and attention"
"Erm, about 70 I think"
"Nowhere close son, nowhere close"
Bill gets invited to take a seat in the car.

I'm starting to feel a bit guilty 'cos if it wasn't for me, he wouldn't have been going that quick....... probably.

After what seems an age, Bill returns. I just look at him. He says that plod timed him between two lamposts and as he knows the distance between them is able to work out the speed. Bearing in mind he was braking heavily due to the flash from the other car. His average speed was 125mph!

Bill turns to me and says that he must be the luckiest man alive! That sort of speed calculation is insubmissable. Plod doesn't have any speeding device in the car. He was told that he must attend a speeding seminar. That's it!

We go home a different way.
On the way he pulls over and asks me if I'm fully comp insurance.
Three seconds later I'm in the drivers seat. The view is surprisingly good, I can't see any of the bonnet though.
I set off at a steady pace, but can't resist flooring it a few times.
At one point, I'm in third and think that I may be straying above the speed limit. I lift off and a couple of seconds later look down at the speedo. It's 90!!!

I did stall it at a T-junction though . Bill says it took him about a year to get totally used to driving it.

What an incredible experience. It's not often you get a chance like that.

Title goes here!

Morning all.

Look at this, I'm really making an effort to post!
What news?
I don't think I mentioned Jack's leg did I?
While we were at H's dad's place, he went out for a bit of a run on the Sunday morning. It was still dark and Robbie heard him yelp, so went to see him and he was all collapsed in a heap. He carried him back to the house. By the time we got up, he was not putting it down. I had a good look at it but could see nothing. The strange thing was that he didn't seem to mind you touching it anywhere.
Anyway, no change after a couple of days so I had him to the vet. Me touching it was fine, but Jack's not a big vet fan! It was a bit of a puzzle for the vet, but after quite a bit of prodding and such like he concluded that he'd pulled his sciatic nerve. The equivalent to us knocking our funny bone, but much more long lasting. Ouch!
Should improve over a week or so. The vet did offer pain killers, but Jack's as hard as nails so we declined. That said, it should have been me with the pain killers after a bill for £25! He was right though, it is improving and he was almost back to normal this morning.

It's still very mild, isn't it? Quite a nice morning and was very bright whilst I was out, but it's just not right for December!

Last night we went out to the local Thai restaurant. We haven't been for ages and were looking forward to it. I was a little worried, as it's approaching Christmas and I thought it may be full. It was empty! Anyway, G&T in hand we chose. Starters were tempura for H and Beef Delight for me (Bits of beef grilled on a skewer and served with satay). Very nice. The wine was good to. Main course duly arrived. H went for chicken with mushrooms & ginger. Myself, stir fried duck with cashews. Both very tasty and the quantity was huge. One thing though. All the way through both of us were thinking. Why are we paying for this? It's not that special. I could have made it at home. Kinda took the edge of it.
There was loads left and we cartoned it up and I had it for brunch this morning!

Right, I'll leave it there. Another tipped hat to Last FM with a bit of code to show my last 10 tracks...

Today's The Day

I seem to do nothing but apologise on here for not posting. I think I'm going to stop apologising. I'm a busy person. Those people who post on their blog everyday. Where do they find the time?

Anyway, today's a good a day as any to post again I suppose. Thanks for the cards - those that have sent them. I don't know who has as I haven't opened any yet. That'll come later.

Still don't really know what we're doing yet. I think we'll probably go out for a nice Thai meal tomorrow night, but don't know about tonight yet. Maybe get a bottle of fizzy stuff on the way home and have a quiet night in.

However mild is it at the moment. Driving into work the other day and it was 12°. That's pretty warm. I don't mind it so much though. What would be pretty good if this continues for a bit and then it goes really cold. I'm a bit of a fan of extreme weather conditions. I would much prefer us to have it really cold than for it to be miserable with wind and rain.

Ah! I know what I've got to rant about. My Wii. Or rather lack of it. This is supposed to be a great gaming experience. When I found out a bit about them, I decided to kick the X-Box into touch and get one. I've had one pre-ordered since September. The release day was last Friday and I haven't got one yet. Bloody annoying. The place where I'm getting it from is fairly confident that I'll get one before Christmas, but it would have been nice to have it a bit sooner.

Bah humbug.

Navigating around

Been flying around the country this last couple of weeks. I've been busy carrying out some Health & Safety audits at the other sites. It's something that I quite enjoy, but it is a bit tiring.

Anyway, we were due to go and see H's dad at the weekend and I tried to tie this in with a visit to one of our sites across there. Also, as you've probably read on here, our good friends Tim & Bobbie have had their second - a fantastic little boy called Zach. Both of us wanted to go and see him, so we thought we could possibly tie that in too.
This meant driving across from ours to near Kidderminster, me dropping H off and then driving North for about an hour to work. Spend Friday night with H's dad, heading off to Worcester Christmas Market on the Saturday. After breakfast on Sunday, drive down to NW London, then back home again Sunday afternoon.
Last Wednesday I printed out a few route plans. After a while of staring at them, I thought - sod this, why don't we get a Sat Nav???
It's something that I've been toying with for a few months and this was an ideal excuse. I scoured a few websites for the best option and settled on the Tomtom One Regional. Bought online but picked up from PC World the very same day. £195 including a decent carrycase.
An evening of checking how it all worked and I gave it a trial on Thursday - work & back.
Friday morning and I typed in the destination postcode. Confident in it's ability, I left the road atlas in the back of the car. It didn't disappoint.
I cannot sing the praises of these things enough. I'm very, very pleased with it. It's very accurate, it's routes are good, it's clear and easy to use.
A real test for it came after I dropped H off. The trip from H's dad's place to the factory across there is one that I don't know at all. It took me through some twisty, turny backroads and at one point I came across a "road closed" sign. I just turned off down a different lane and within seconds, it had recalculated where to take me. Most impressive.
The journey down to London was just as good. Built into the thing is blue tooth communication with your mobile phone. It uses this to find out traffic problems. Sure enough, it sussed this and took us around the snarl-up.
I think one of the major benefits of using it is down to a totally stress free journey. Even on routes that you know, it takes all the hassle out of it. You don't have to keep an eye on road signs for your turning or anything. It gives you a distance countdown to your next exit/junction.
I'm so impressed, we're even thinking about getting H one as well. She would be able to use it when she goes places with work, but also it will make life so much easier whenever her route home has problems (which can be quite frequent)

That's got to be the longest post from me for a while. I do have other stuff I can say, but I'll save it for a day or two. If you're anything like me, in blogs and the like, if you see a large chunk of text, you tend to switch off!