Fuckaramma!

Mofo!

I purchased the Lewis Collins 1982 classic 'Who Dares Wins' from Amazon in the week. I came home today to excitedly put it in the DVD, the laptop and and the Playstation but it won't play.

I suspect I have no redress whatsoever: curse the seller with his high rating for pre-owned goods.

Bastard!

Top smart.

I have had a few nice things happening recently and I am grateful for that.





Here they are:

• The county council covering a flat I rented in 1999 wrote to a pal of mine to tell him that we had a council tax rebate from that year for £380! I live in BS5 now, of course but I am still on the records and will get a third of the rebate!


• I collected new specs on Wednesday and they are scratch free and un-wonky, unlike my rather battered old pair. I can see clearly now the specs have come!

• I have started running again and my legs feel good for it


• I have had a top smart drive in VX52, a pleasure that has been absent for three weeks (lots of nights away)


• I am hosting my brother and his GF for dinner in a week and we will dine as a happy four


• A good bloggy pal posted a crane on her (charming) Blog for me to look at!


• I've bagged a go on a Saturn V rocket (okay, I made that one up)

I like it when I can count my blessings and when good things happen.

One for Taiwan please, Drive...

My brother who lives in the far east (and who is not the one cycling right along the UK) has been emailing me today telling me about Taiwan.

He's there awhile working and promoting a book he has published. Anyhow, he thinks Taiwan is the place for him and he's up for living there. I asked him about Taiwan's merits and he told me about many of them but sent this as the clincher.

Check it out for quality bus action...with ears! I'm visiting...

In under the radar...

I am flying at ground level today, trying to get in under the radar and not be accused of shallow blogging!

Anyhow, here's a picture of Kirsty Wark and Sharleen Spiterri who graced the cover of The Observer Magazine yesterday.

I'd say they'd both be on the Blog BS5 list of foxy women to invite for lunch...

Cycle path warriors...

Overnight I hosted my brother and a pal of his, and it was great fun!

Between them and a third pal who is hopping over from America to join in, they are cycling from Land's End to John O'Groats in September.

My brtoher put in 120kms yesterday and ended up at mine for 5pm with Carl arriving from Wales shortly after. We had beers, chat and a beef curry that I had made from scratch (it seemed to go down well) and the two lads dried out from the rain.

The two of them set off again today, heading back to Buckinghamshire in the intermittent showers of a July Monday morning.

I am 'WFH' today after being away from home last Sunday to Friday night. I am writing up a presentation on logistics and deliveries for store managers.

Here's a picture of Greg prepping for the off a couple of hours ago (he's the dude in green, not the fella on a balcony) .

No other drama to report...

Oh, actually today is the day the SAS stormed the Iranian Embassy back in 1980, and although I was only 8, I was there (obviosuly) in an advisory capacity.

Back in BS5

I am very happily back in BS5 after a 760 mile week which took in a two day working-stint at The Royal Welsh Show , a tour of my stores in North Wales, a jolly on Angelsey and a very long drive indeed in a completely arse Toyota with a crap automatic gear box! (The car was almost as slow as Google Chrome seems to be as I type) .

I am glad to see the weekend and take off my suit.

This evening I am making dinner for two and looking forward to it very much, and then tomorrow my brother is cycling 82 miles to my house, only to go back again the day after! He is preparing for his UK wide cycling tour with his good friend CA who is also cycling over from Wales. I think they're a bit mental.

My major weekend plans involve a lot of acquired laundry, a bit of tidying, some beers and a good old loaf in front of Miami Vice which I purchased in the week for about two quid.

I wonder if Crockett and Tubbs will be as cool as me in the movie?

Top ticket action!

Here's a whole load of train journey evidence from these last weeks.

I'd have about a third more tickets except for the fact that at the end of a lot of return journeys, the machine eats your ticket up and doesn't give it back!

Best behaved hounds in the world...for a biscuit.

These fine chaps have arrived at my house today and they seem jolly keen on assisitng me with any matters related to Moo biscuits (located on the desk, mid-transfer!)

Paid Spod Action!

As part of my development and learning at work, this Friday I am visiting a distribution warehouse. How exciting is that? Lorries, logistics, picking, conveyer belts, noise and drama! And I get paid!

My firm has a healthy 22 store Operation spread right across the UK in pretty remote places. Our distribution is handled by a major player and I am off to see them! At our Store conference later in the year I need to deliver a piece on deliveries and this visit is in support of that task.

I think I will take my diggie camera and get some top spod action digitised for this blog!

Creations!

This Sunday I made picallili!

I had made some a while ago and whilst it was very nice (and very eaten by someone else: you know who you are!) it was not quite right. Last time I had my proportions wrong for the goo and it was a little bit thin.

So this time, I consulted several recipes and undertook the creation in partnership-supervision. It was really quite easy and hugely enjoyable. You just soak some chopped, raw veg' in brine for 24 hours, then you do the 'sauce' bit. A couple of spoonfuls of paprika, ground all spice, ginger, mustard powder and cornflour, smoothed to a lump free past with wine vinegar. You then waz a load of wine vinegar in a saucepan with some sugar and dissolve it, adding it (heated) back to your paste. Boil it all through so it thickens, add the drained veg', cook for a little more and that's it!

It's always really bright yellow in the supermarket - colouring additivies, I think.

You do have to wait at least a month for it to fuly take on the flavours, though.

WFH today - ideal!

Town Square

When I stay away near HQ in Bedfordshire , I choose to stay at a family run B&B some miles from the office. It is a very pleasant establishment and the lady who runs it is from the same small town in Co. Galway, West Ireland as a pal of mine (and knows her mother, indeed) .

Anyway, when I stayed just a few days ago, I aced a very smart room which I will certainly ask for again. It's right on the town square so you can hear Mr Bongy pretty much every hour, and the local chavs going round the twon square as fast as poss' in their Mum's Nissan Micra, but that's not really an issue as the space and the sofa more than comepnsate.

Here's a little look at it from last week, with 'Today' on Radio 4 starting the morning in a daring stylee. You can see Blog BS5 on the laptop!

Spod.

Well now, I had a right old week of it and it felt the longest in ages. I started out on Monday passing through London on the way to HQ in Bedfordshire. I had a course there for three days and then high tailed it to Cumbria on Thursday night to see a store that has just been refurbished. The store is a barn conversion from 1841 and it sits just on the Cumbria/Lancs border.

The train up north was quite entertaining and had only two stops, Preston and Glasgow. Unfortunately we stopped at Staffordshire as some hooligan types had stolen signalling cabling (according to Ken, our Train Manager) . Anyhow, I made my conenction and spent the evening and next day in Cumbria before finally returning to BS5 (somewhat tired) on Friday night.

I was at the old Fast Train Vid' station on Monday and it hammered it down with rain - although I got a bit wet, I did have the delight of trains rocketing through full of lightning as the rain bounced off the wires. Total Spod Action.....

Here's one from earlier.

D'ang: trust this is blogger adrenaline that suits?

Sock n Roll star.

It's prett rock n' roll here tonight at Blog BS5.

I am away with work but now realise, having put all my socks in the wash at 4am on the day I came away, I left those same socks on the clothes horse drying as I caught a midday train to London.

I am thus laundering on the hoof in my (vast!) room at my usual B&B. I have a view of a small village square and it is sunny and light. Same said socks are now drying for tomorrow on a decent stone window sill in a gentle breeze. I have aced a great room this stay and I can get on to the network here, so that's a bit smart.

Man, I am useless unsupervised but at least I can adapt.

You will all become one....

Now I don't want to come across as batting for the other side, or even helping them out when they are busy, but yesterday I was in the pub watching the tennis and chatting to a pal about Bjorn Borg, good looking chap that he seems to be. It was only the second bit of Wimbledon I had watched, and both matches lacked foxy Russian chicks!

Anyhow, my pal Cas and I both agreed that Bjorn Borg is a very cool character indeed, and with his effortlessley cool grey hair we concluded that he probably had no trouble at all pulling. Picture seems to confirm it...

Take off.

I meant to post this vid' the other week. I have watched it lots of times since and it always makes me laugh!

This little moment was caught by my brother because he knows I'm always up for planes and trains. It's the commentary 14 seconds in that makes me smile...it's kinda' hushed because he knows he's in public but it still hits the spot!

Off to London (Paddington) on the train today and maybe the journey won't have the surreal edge of more recent train trips...

DLL files.

This morning having been woken by pissheads at 5 a.m (for the second day of the weekend), I just went with it, sacrificed a lie in and got up.

I listened to quite an entertaining Radio 4 show about Gloucester old spot pigs and read a very spoddy article indeed about SVChost running dll files instead of executables. I had wanted to know why it had such a heavy CPU usage on my machine so I got my Spod hat on and read all about it. There's ten minutes of my life I can't get back; I am none the wiser really. Still, you can't beat a good spod about.

Models (spaceships, trains and blondes)

Yesterday I had a useful and very hot day visiting a store I support near Exeter. It was a productive day and I felt tall and confident and indeed competent in my work. I had a suit back from the dry cleaners that I had not worn for about a year and it always makes me feel tall and well dressed! It's a blinder from Austin Reed.

The train journey home was surreal to say the least. I came home on a fast Edinburgh train and it was air conned and pretty empty! I bagged a table seat and sat to do a little work and make a few calls. As I looked up, a woman at the table opposite beamed in my direction; I looked over my shoulder assuming she had seen a friend but she definitely appeared to beam at me so I smiled back and said an awkward, Victorian 'good afternoon' (I managed not to say 'madam'). I then retired behind my newspaper and read about Buzz Aldrin and spaceships (smart!) but each time I peered past it, she threw smiles my way! She was pretty stunning, very well spoken and aged in her twenties I think, and I think she was slightly teasing me, but in a risque sort of a fashion, not unkindly. Anyhow, I nodded goodbye as I disembarked and smiles aplenty occured. Odd but quite fun.

Now then, here's much more of an expectation for Blog BS5! In the afternoon back at home the heat finally broke and for about twenty minutes it hammered it down with rain and unleashed angry thunder all over BS5. Now I am sure my brother in the far east has much more spectacular rain storms but this one put the street awash with rain in about three minutes flat. It was smart to sit in the doorway and be a dry observer...

Exeter St Raining

Off to the Seaside again today (nearly) . Exeter is my destination and I think I will run into a wall of rain that stretches all down the west coast of Ireland this morning, and is on its way up through the south west. Welcome, cool rain in Bristol by this afternoon, I hear.

As I am off to Exeter I am on a main line train to Plymouth so it will be fast and cool unlike the slow hot train to Weymouth earlier in the week.

On an unrelated topic I cooked roast lamb yesterday but intentionally let it cool off to have cold with salady stuff last night; my brother who lives 6,000 miles away and misses roast lamb was aghast at not eating in hot! Fab' sarnies for lunch today, though!

This picture is clearly not Exeter but is a summer storm in Sarajevo - found it on Google.

Snoozing in a Bentley.

I have just woken up from a really great sleep, the best in ages, in fact. No early train to catch today and not waking up in someone else's uniform hotel or small B&B. My commute to work is as long as the thirteen steps down to my dining room. Sometimes WFH is very welcome.

Overnight I had a top-smart dream. My brother had won a Bentley for a day in a random draw from using his credit card. He had driven over to me so we could spend the day in it together, larking about or 'taking it for a burn' as we used to say aged about 16. We were just for the off when some loud squawky early seagull woke me up! :(

It was a Bentley like this one.

Off to work now, writing up recent store visits and prepping future ones.