Tuesday, August 29, 2006

Signs and Notices

"We really need to get a chartered accountant"

I have a thing about public signs and notices. We often have a laugh in the car on the way home. As we go round a corner near home, there is a sign on the wall which is lit with a light that changes from blue to green slowly. The sign is for a chartered accountancy company, which prompts the question, what do they want to achieve by doing this sort of marketing? Are they looking for passing trade or is it subliminal advertising.

In our local chippy, underneath the menu there was a sign which said "Sorry, No Dogs!". This is ambigous in several ways. Did they serve sweet and sour dog, and they are sorry they have to let customers down. Or do they not serve dogs as customers so dogs need to go to the slightly more seedy chippy across the road.

I have also noticed that Asda now say they are a member of the Wall Mart family of companies. Did mister and misses Wall Mart have a baby Asda?

Friday, August 25, 2006

It must be a boy thing


Last Saturday morning Will and I drove down to Deeside to meet with more mates for Daves pre marriage morning out (formally stag do, in the morning without the staying out late and drinking lot's of alcohol, then leaving Dave naked in a field in Scotland. We have not been invited to that one).

The morning involved karting, great time was had by all. I spent the first practise laps trying to expell my "Drive to Survive course" (run by Cheshire Police) out of my head. I did manage to pursuade myself that a cement wagon wasn't likely to crash into me around the next blind bend. This is not an excuse for not winning. In fact I played my bit to let Dave (the groom) win but sadly Will, Wes, Steve, Paul, Chris etc didn't (Well done Stuart for coming last).


When I got home I tried to explain what fun we had to Heather but I noticed the same "interested" face she has when I come home from playing or watching football and so I decided....


it must be a boy thing.



I'll try and post a picture when I get home

Thursday, August 24, 2006

Being a Dad

I have often wandered what it was like to be a Dad. I suppose traditionally it is proud dad with new son or daughter (see Will at eatspoosandsleeps.blogspot.com),but there are other times as well. I have two boys, tens years apart and its eldest sons GCSE day.

2 Bs in Music (hurrah!) and Graphics
4 Cs in Science, IT and English Lit
2 Ds in Maths and English (have to do those again)

Well done, mate.

Do we have to do this again in 10 years time!!!???

Your turn in 16 years Will.

Monday, August 21, 2006

Start of the new season ...

Friends beware....

Don't talk to me on Saturday afternoon if we have lost. Check the score first.

Wednesday, August 16, 2006

Do you feel strongly about random things?

I was on a car journey the other day/week/month, talking with some friends, when we came across some strong views held by Dan on some fairly random topics. For instance, he thinks that fruit or nuts have no place in any sort of chocolate. So, Marathon bars are bad but Mars bars are good, Topics are bad but Twirls are good and so on.

Even more specific, there are wrong a right ways to eat chocolate. It is not allowed to nibble the chocolate off Mars bars then the bottom, leaving the sticky gooey bit to finish last. You need to enjoy the bar as it is meant biting through the whole bar and enjoying all the elements in the mouth at the same time.

[I tried to load a Mars Bar image here but failed.]

Thinking about that I do have some firm views on some things, for instance white uPVC windows are OK on the right house (mine for instance), but there is no place for brown uPVC windows with a wood effect, its just wrong (I'm sorry if you have spent a lot of money on yours, but its just wrong).

I don't like stickers in my car "My other cars a Fiesta", etc, unless it came with the car (dealers name etc).

I get annoyed with other drivers when we are in a 40mph area and they slow down to 30 when they pass a camera, they are not paying attention.

I like mint and I like lamb. But, I don't like mint on lamb.

I dislike front doors without a letter box in September. (other SAers will get that one)

I am not particular about where physical things are stored around my house, but I am particular about where stuff is stored on the computers at home, they have to be in the right place (so I can find them). I can spend a while sorting out the file structure on the computer whilst sitting amongst chaos in the real world/living room. I don't know what this says about me?

Monday, August 14, 2006

Have we scored, Dad


I took the oppurtunity on Saturday to take my 6 year old son to his first football match. I was really excited (I don't know if he was). The game was Everton versus Athletic Bilbao (The Howard Kendall testimonial). The idea was to cement his support for ever and to thwart the plans of the evil uncle Murray who is trying to turn him to the dark/red side.

I don't think he is going to be too bothered when it comes to football (is it something I did, it must his mothers fault).

After the first few minutes excitement of being inside a football stadium it wore off. Every few minutes, I had the annoying question "have we scored, yet". "No" was the first reply eventually getting to "NO!!!!!!".

He slept most of the second half. And we still didn't score.

(This posting is left with no depreciating humour relating to supporting Everton, because I know that if anyone reads this they are sure to do better than I can possibly manage)

Sunday, August 13, 2006

Confidence building


I have recently changed job and I now work for a large local college. As part of the course we encourage the teenagers to go on the high ropes. This week I decided that I could not ask the learners do something which I had not done.

So, I volunteered to have a go. It sounded a good idea to start with. And it does not seem very high from the floor. But when you have climbed to the top and asked to walk along the top, I remembered how much I disliked heights. But with a fellow tutor and 8 students watching there was not much else to do but to complete the tasks. Surprisingly enough, the most difficult part was to trust the other person at the end of the rope when I jumped off the top.

The last task was to jump of the pole in the middle of the picture and hit the orange ball. Jumping off was easy, the difficult bit was climbing up the pole and standing on the top. Of course when I jumped off, the tutor holding the rope left the ground also. Must lose some weight.

Fortunately I saw the caution about serious injurt note after I did the jumps


Friday, August 11, 2006

Moving on..

Youth Alpha has finished for a while, but seeing as I have this blog space a feel a responsibility to use it.

I don't think I shall do anything too profound. But I have been reading Wills, Heathers, Matt Leeders and links from their sites and feel bad for posting on theirs when I don't contribute myself. Don't know if anybody will read this.

But here goes.

(Sorry Lynsey for highjacking this)