...which was nice.

Sonorous, clanging empty vessel on the Oxfordshire train.

Yes, yes, it's Georgian.
6 bedrooms yes.
Heavenly.
Only 100 yards to the river and we have frontage rights.
Yes, well of course, Tom loves to fish.
Yes, and when we started on the conservatory we found a sunken kitchen garden.
Delightful.
A snip at 1.4.

The woman next to me whispered "gosh, it's awfully loud today isn't it"
It was. A little too loud to be an accident.
Believe me it's not jealousy, it's the lack of tact and, for want of a better word, class.

The next stop will be parvenu parkway.

10 mph brains doing 85.

Went to Alton Towers on the weekend, which is fun because you get to see jakers in their natural environment. The others being TKMax, Local Magistrate's Courts and of course the Pub Brawl and Wedding Punch Up. Rural Staffordshire was a sea of beer guts, white trainers and Croydon facelifts.

All in, a great day and I did have a right good laugh n that.

BUT…

Just where do you get off charging £4 for parking, given you are already stiffing everyone for 35 bar to get in and there is NO PUBLIC TRANSPORT. And you have to buy a bloody token to pay the parking man, because bizarrely, actual money is unsuitable.

That’s not the real issue though, no that would be the imbecilic motorists racking up the length of the trip home, through irritating thoughtless driving techniques.


"typical motorway scenes"

There was a recent government announcement, that on all motorways the inside lane would be lifted and moved to the right of the current outside lane thus providing extra driving space. Reports suggested it would not be missed, as no bugger ever used it.

Critics argued that motorists could simply all move left a bit into the vacant left hand lane, thus solving the problem. This was dismissed as a ridiculous concept that no-one would ever adopt. Plus as proved in the1998 study by Ricketts and Bletherwit, all German and Swedish cars cease to function if driven on the inside lane. They did add a footnote that it was possible the drivers were simply complete pricks. On that score the study was inconclusive, more data required.

Seriously, what is with you people? Why can no-one drive properly? I have taken to gratuitously undertaking. I like the inside lane, you can travel at the same speed or faster than the rest of the traffic, but with a 1.5 mile braking distance.

Get Left, or Get Rid of your car.

When would you like that served?

I was out dining with my lady-friends at the weekend and we decided to try a new noodle bar close to S.

We ordered our food, each having a starter and a main, whereupon the waiter posed a corker:

“Would you like your starter before your main course?”

Which he immediately followed up with:

“Well, it doesn’t matter, it probably won’t all arrive at the same time or in the right order anyway.”

We were stunned!

I wasn’t sure whether to be impressed with his honesty, or disappointed in the virtually promised failure of what I deem to be a fairly key component of running a restaurant – that is bringing the right dishes to the table at the right time, and have the diners respective dishes be served at roughly the same time.

As it turned out, they did manage to bring all the starters before the mains, and the main courses were only 5 minutes apart. And it has to be said, the food was very good, even if S & A had to eat theirs with a sauna spoon.

Still, the rest of the evening was a resounding blast.

(Oh yeah – we did also create a blog over the course of the evening, but I can’t remember the name, the login name or the password – and I don’t believe we managed to write anything on it either – just as could be expected between us).

Two for One!

I went to buy a pair of shoes for my daughter the other day, and was horrified to discover that a single pair of shoes for her amounted to the same price as 2 pairs for me.

To be fair to the shop, the shoes for me were an absolute bargain, BUT if you can knock the prices down on adult footwear, then surely you can reduce the price of kiddies shoes, given that they are the ones that need them more often (what with that habit children have of growing).

I know that this is all just business savvy, and they sting the parents where they know it hurts the most, but seriously!

What shocked me more is that a pair of shoes for a 6 year old in this well-publicised discount outlet should cost more than a pair from Clarks. To me, Clarks are the don in kiddies shoes, and consequently they deserve to charge £30 a pair. Cheapo retailers do not!

(But I love my new shoes!)

One Branch

It's been a while since I lasted posted anything here, but I struggle to find things to blog about. Not that there aren't everyday occurences that make me want to gouge the eyes out of the offender, or events that have me wishing that I'd stayed at home that day, but by the time I get to a position where I can write about them, I've either forgotten, or the rage has passed.

Maybe I should branch out of me tree.

How long does it take to freeze?

Its the coldest week of the year so far. What better time could there possibly be to switch off the heating in my block of flats to carry out the maintenance?

There's nothing like a well thought out plan. And this is nothing like a .........

Are we being secretly filmed for a Far East game show?

Where are those scissors??

I went to get my haircut the other day. Not an experience that I’d normally find anything interesting to write about, but on this occasion, ‘twas not to be.

It was the same salon that I’ve been going to since I moved into the area nearly a year ago, but every time I’ve been, I’ve had a different stylist (indeed can’t say I’ve ever seen one member of staff twice). This last guy was an experience.

I know it’s something in the training (or the genes) of hairdressers to be quite open about themselves, and in some cases, bore their clients shitless with endless chitter chatter. (I wish they wouldn’t, but hey ho!)

Within 2 minutes of me sitting in the chair, the cutter of the day had managed to let slip that he has a highly addictive personality, and is just recovering from a severe and lengthy dependence to steroids, coke and crack. (I notice he managed to slip in the question of what it is I do for a living first though, just in case.)

Clearly not satisfied with my somewhat ambivalent response to that news, he then went on to tell me about his recent diagnosis of bipolar disorder, and the medication he’s been prescribed to keep that under control, which was starting to make him feel queasy as he’d failed to take his morning dose with any food that day.

So, right at the juncture when he’d cut one half of my hair (ie. one side was now 3 inches shorter than the other) he announces his need to take a break and get a sugar rush before he keels over.

Upon his return, he’s seems delighted to let me know of his relief at being able to see again!!!!!!! I make a mental note to have a VERY good look at the back mirror look before paying, unlike the usual cursory ‘that looks fine’, when truthfully I haven’t seen a thing.

The rest of the sitting is relatively uneventful, assisted I think, by my determination to converse no more (head buried in magazine sorts that out fairly quickly).

It wasn’t’ til I was relaying the experience to my other half later, that he pointed out this was probably a bet by a fellow colleague to freak his customers out. If that’s the case, then fair do’s and I’m sure he had a laugh doing it. Although, he can rest assured he’s convinced me to find another hairdresser next time.

If it was all true, then he needs to re-evaluate the difference between idle / mindless chit chat, and deeply personal baggage, taking into account the added nervousness of the client as he relays this whilst standing so very close armed with sharp implements!

BTW, in case you’re wondering, the cut did look fine in the end, which further supports his nib’s theory that it was in fact all a wind up. Ha Ha.