The construction race

I have previously posted about the race between the workmen building a new retail park round the corner from our house and the men replacing our kitchen.

Time for an update.

Well the new retail park is going up in direct proportion to the profits at the local chippy. We usually get home and decide that we can't have chips again, shall we go to McDonalds again?

But recently the work going into the kitchen has showed some sign that it may well be finished some time. Heather went out to th'Army last night on the agreement that I would try and put the shelves together in the completed kitchen cabinets. Easy, one might think. But thoughfully, Heathers dad came round for advice on how to make his mobile phone louder, so that took an hour or two. And it would be impolite not to make him a drink.

Eventually I got round to the job, I found a missing cupboard door in the garage. Then I decided to address the corner cupboard shelving. A mistake. After scraping most of the skin off my arm and banging my nose on the shelve when pulling it out. I decided the job was for a professional so I left it for the workmen to round to it. I don't do hardware, only software.

As for the race well the work on the retail park seems to have stalled recently. Perhaps they thought they had the "game in the bag" and decided to go for a sleep ala "tortoise and the hare". My boys at home are on the final leg.

It's my mums birthday today ..

... so I thought I could give you a list of the things I didn't buy but considered:

• Playstation 3 (too expensive)
• Inkjet printer refill (again too expensive, did you know that InkJet ink is the second most valuable liquid on the planet. In first place is snake venom. They didn't have any snake venom in Asda either, but it would have been too expensive anyway).
• Big Night Out CD featuring Mika/Girls Aloud/Take That/Scissor Sisters/Just Jack (I don't think she likes Scissor Sisters)
• King Size Duvet Set (I don't know the size of their bed)
• NAVMAN F20 Satellite Navigation kit (Dad drives her everywhere)
• New kettle (possibility)
• BBQ set (they haven't got a garden now)
• Plastic Dog (Dad doesn't like dogs)
• Tennis racket (possibility)
• Pair of jeans (Never seen mum in jeans, they might suit. She would need a proper make, not George)

Isn't Asda a marvellous shop, full of possibilities.

Eddie Bongo

On the way home from our church (SA), I pass a pub/sports bar. Now this is in quite a "rough" part of Liverpool, but the proprietors are obviously trying to raise the standards by putting two notices in the windows. The first notice is, "No under 25's and sports wear on Friday and Saturday night". This is an attempt to dissuade the track suit wearing teenages from trying to gain access to the bar.

The second notice is much more effective in my view. It advertises a regular guest artist for Friday and Saturdays. "Eddie Bongo, original member of Kid Creole and the Coconuts". Being aged 45 now I really can't remember Eddie but I am pretty sure that his music will not be the taste of the regular "Liverpool Scally".

Major building projects

There are two major building projects that have started in Ormskirk this week. There is new commercial and industrial units being built half a mile from our house. I believe there will be some sort of diy store and some new offices There is also a new kitchen being built in our house. I am not, of course, a betting man, but my money will go on B&Q finishing first.
So far we are eating cereal, climbing over an obstacle course to get to the upstairs bathroom and cleaning the dishes in the shower in our bedroom.

Compatability

Hey! I have found another thing that indicates that I am compatable with Heather (my wife), (apart from being married for 21 years.).

She likes the top of hot cross buns and I like the bottom (of hot cross buns, obviously).

The High Ropes

The department I work in incorporates outdoor education. The outdoor ed lecturers are generally of a certain kind. They are all men, they all wear fleeces with no brand name, they all rarely shave, they all swear a lot and they all are called Barry.

The outdoor ed people run the high ropes course. The high ropes are a set of telegraph poles with ropes strung between where teams of people are encouraged to climb up, walk across and jump off while attached to a rope with an outdoor ed lecturer at the other end in case people fall off (which they do frequently). The job of holding the ropes at ground level requires a reasonable strong and heavy lecturer the whole time a person is on the ropes. (I lifted a Barry a couple of feet of the ground when I jumped from the top pole)

A few of us where in the canteen the other day (we seem to spend a lot of time there), talking about various session that we had done. Barry told us that he had recently taken a psychology group on the ropes the previous day. He said a student had climbed to the top of a pole and was having a problem jumping off, the psychology lecturer asked the student how he felt. Barry said he was still holding the rope 45 minutes later while the student explained how she felt. I don't know why I thought this was so funny. I think is was that I knew that Barry holding the rope during this conversation was just saying to himself "Just $£$%%E jump!", but didn't to say anything.

Could eat no lean

Jack Spratt had convenient relationship with his wife in regards to eating meat. Apparently he couldn't eat any fat and his wife was unable to eat "lean". I think this relationship is convenient as the rhyme says they are "unable" to eat fat or lean.

In our house the relationship is slightly more stressed as Heather criticises my sweeping up skills, (when I can be bothered to give it a go) but she is unable to actually put the piles of dust, breakfast cereal and small assorted pieces of plastic in the bin. This leaves me to come into the dining room and see the offending collection of mess in a neat pile on the floor, find the dustpan and put it in the bin (I don't swear often, but I am tempted to stray at this time). Or not see the pile and kick it across the floor again.

We have discussed this situation with each other and decided that we should carry on being married, even though the relationship does not seem to be as easy as Jack's and his missus. But there again, perhaps Jack does all the cleaning in his house, he is obviously the fitter of the two.

I think I may have started something here???!!!

Roots 07

Roots is nearly upon us and the traditional March/April panic is well under way. If anyone fancies working for Roots as a steward (its a great job, you get to meet loads of people you wouldn't ordinarily talk to) let me know.

(Sorry for the advert)

An Inconvenient Truth

At last I have the DVD. If anybody wants to watch it. Let me know, and I will lend it to you.

This weekend was "sick weekend"

And it wasn't even me who was sick.

Friday night I went straight to the gym and beat Murray at squash. Hurrah! Got home and stayed in with Matthew because he was still unwell from last week. Heather went to Southport to see her dad and mum.

Saturday morning stayed in Kitchen man comes to size up the job to replace our new. We started to take the tiles off the kitchen walls. What a horrible job, and it leaves a horrible mess. But we have at last a date for the new kitchen to be built. 2 weeks time. Hurrah!

Saturday afternoon Heather goes to see her mum and dad, I stay in with crying, sick Matthew. Get Heather back quickly because he wants his mum. Stay in Saturday night consider taking Matthew to drop in centre but it is closed.

Sunday morning I stay in and look after Matthew while Heather goes to Th'Army for Sunday meeting and worship workshop. She gets back at late in the afternoon and I am getting a bit "stir crazy" (I watched a black and white war movie on Film4!?), so I go and do her job and visit her mum and dad in Southport. It was a pleasant drive and it meant Jim could go for a walk on Lord Street.

Got home and made "comfort food" for supper, scrambled eggs, sausages, bacon and bread and butter pudding.

We are back ...

... Hurray. Virginmedia have finally got their act together. With a collective sigh of relieve the Elliott family rejoin the Internet community. Has how it been since we have been away? Have you missed us? Is there anybody there? Hello?!

I went shopping with Will and well ..

I've got a new iPod Video (It is a very cool thing). We went to the Apple shop in London and looked at all the shiny things. We thought of buying everything in the shop, fortunately Debbie was there and common sense prevailed.

Will tried to drop me in it before I could tell Heather, by sending her a picture of me and the iPod before I could ring her; but my telephone call just beat his picture text to her phone.

As I don't have broadband at home at the moment (hmmmmm!!!), I downloaded some games and a video, to test it out whilst I was at my brother-in-laws house.

Which reminds me, when we got to Hamishs house; Heather and I both dived for the computers to look at our emails and read blogs which we have not been able to do for a few weeks. Possibly ignoring relatives living there that we both hadn't seen for a few months.

Do we have a problem?

It's freezing today..

and I have to go outside and work.

Its seems my contribution to stopping global warming is kicking.

• I have one person committed to seeing An Inconvenient Truth
• Will has given me some low energy light bulbs that I need to install (It's the thought that counts)
• I occasionally remember to turn off the telly when going to bed
• We don't light up Ormskirk with our upstairs lights when we go out
• We go to bed early now (this is probably because the internet is down in our house though)

Oh no! The internet is down.

Lured by the cheaper price and bigger bandwidth offered by Virginmedia, we have migrated our broadband. But before BT could do the business, NTL have cut us off. All sorts of things are happening:

• Al has been outside the house and had his hair cut. (probably thought he could get wireless access at the hairdressers.)
• Heather is coming to bed before 1:00am.
• Dr Bill will be able to beat me up in Torncity soon.
• Matthew can't play on the CBBC site.
• I can't watch a film on telly with imdb.com looking for the mistakes. (doesn't everyone do that?)
• We won't be able to use it a bible fellowship tonight when we ask Biblegateway to read the passage from Daniel to us.

I have pleaded with Virginmedia several times now, but they don't seem to understand how important it is. Apparently somebody at BT will decide to get round to it as soon as their tea break finishes.

Disappointing the B & Q boys

Our new kitchen arrived this week I took Thursday off work because Heather was away in York for a couple of days. Alistair and I had a happy hour matching the parts delivered to the delivery note.

We had some of the delivery a couple of weeks ago on a Saturday morning and Heather answered the door in her pyjamas. Heather asked me to check and sign the note on this occasion because the delivery bloke was obviously having difficulty keeping his mind (or eyes) on his work.

I did expect a posse of delivery men on Thursday, but only two arrived to move the new kitchen into the newly cleared out garage (four trips to the tip!!).

(couldn't think of an image for this post?!)

The Great Global Warming Swindle

I watched a programme on Channel 4 called the Great Global Warming Swindle. I felt a bit uncomfortable watching it, I must admit. You can see links from this blog to Al Gores "An Inconvenient Truth". I have been trying to think why the programme made me feel uncomfortable and I am not entirely sure.

What was the purpose of the programme? Was it to encourage us to keep on using the resources that are available to us? Is it OK now to keep my telly on overnight? Does it want us to not be careful about the world we live in? It's a fact that we in the "west" can afford to use less. So even if the science argued by AIT is in doubt, what is wrong with encouraging less consumption (big cars, turning off tellys, using different light bulbs)

My mate Ray ....

... has been done for speeding. I don't know why this is funny.

Perhaps its because:

• He is the Corps Sergeant Major and they shouldn't do bad things (it's going in the corps newsletter)
• Nobody at the corps (church) or his family are going to let him forget it (especially Simmo, he's a bobby)
• He is showing off that his Skoda goes that fast

Excuses

I must admit I hear loads of excuses during the day from learners, why they haven't been there, why they haven't done that. But last week someone told me they weren't in college because they had been to the hospital and they had been told that they where missing two Vertebrae in their back.

Now I have checked this with my doctor mate this morning. And we reckon:

• We should be able to carry him around in a bucket.
• Or a scientific specimen jar for closer examination
• He should be in the circus
• Or perhaps he telling me fibs.

Moan and Laugh

I know what North West Gas contractors got for Christmas. Portable Traffic lights. It seems they have been given them and they are determined to use them. There is small road works on the out of Ormskirk and they are using their new toys. It must put 10 minutes on my journey to work in the morning. (Grumpy old man)

Digital television is marvelous. Don't let anybody tell you that they are struggling to fill the schedules. There was a triumph on the Discovery Channel last night. The channel is scrambled on our telly but I would definetly watch "Sex Change Operations Uncut".

Normally, I hide behind the sofa when any real blood and guts is on telly. Heather has to tell me when its safe to look. Doing a Sex Change Operation without cutting, sounds like a great idea. In our house it was suggested that the scalpel must be replaced by size 10 boots.

If I was the director I would be tempted to add comic sound effects as well.

Valentines day

Yesterday I bought Heather a Valentines day card. I knew she was not home late so I chose one from the shop yesterday. When I gave Heather the card she noticed hit had a picture of a elephant on the front.

"So you think I look like a cute elephant?"

I said "I don't think your cute", it came out before I could think about it.

"Any way how do you know its from me?". You know you have lost when you resort to this line.

I thought I had done really well going into town to buy a card and spending seconds choosing it.