Frozen!

Here's a self explanitory vid' about my store visits on Friday.

Home for the weekend now.

This lake is in Powys, a county in mid Wales.

No.....there is....another.

I meant to blog this a week or so back.

I recently told BS9 how most chaps of my age had a thing for Princess
Leia.

There was something pretty stirring about her outfits in all three
movies and the way she wore her hair up in the original movie. Many a
youthful fantasy there.....

Anyhow, suitably inspired, the ever thoughtful woman that she is, BS9
got creative with a lime and a little circle of goats' cheese!

Get in!

Store visits

I am at my hotel ahead of a day's store work.

The hotel is an old railway hotel and is trading on faded glory a
little. That said the rooms are cavernous , the heating is Victorian
Empire best and could warm an aircraft carrier, and the hot water is
abundant and constant. I like staying here rather a lot, even though I
often miss breakfast as it starts at 9am.

Caught the Chelsea Milan game last night which was relaxing and
electric after four hours on the train.

None of the hotel rooms has any TV as Digital switch over kicked in
this month and caught Llandudno junction on the hop!

Here again tonight before a train to picturesque Mid Wales tomorrow.

Crewe rotation.

I am at Crewe tonight, en route to Llandudno Junction and my mid &
north Wales stores.

Today's trains have been delayed but they have been fast and
comfortable, and none has missed a connection since starting out at
Bristol at three pm.

Now I know you're interested, so let me tell you; with Crewe you have
to balance the lack of fast through-trains with sheer volume of spod-
train acton. It's kinda medium paced but the traffic is there.

Here's a typical example!

Yours, haemorrhaging readers by the post .....BS5!

Magic carpet..

Blimey!!

Eight years as a regular in The Rhubarb and now in 2010 it's a new
carpet.

This will be a big event for further discussion at the weekend.

Stock take.

Is it wrong? I think not.

Each time I purchase a chicken of late, I use it right through, from
roasting to carving to stock.

'Shift your carcass, child!', as my mother used to shout at us when
we were small!

It takes zero effort to boil up the carcass with an onion, a carrott
and some herbs, and then you've got the basis for 'a great plate of
food' as they say on Masterchef. Four lots of tasty stock for all
sorts of dishes to share with my other chicken!

A man obsessed?

:)

Transporters enabled.

Last week I went to stay with my folks . BS9 and I met them at their
local eatery which always excites BS9 with its fish dishes and great
puddings.

We arrived and parked up, with snow all over the place unlike Bristol.

As I parked VX52 I spotted these characters from the future
( obviously) beaming in from a Federation Starship!

Knowing my temporal directives I did not hang about in case I
endangered the timeline. Instead I went inside for a pint and some
dinner.

Maybe Herefordshire is the location for First Contact and not Bozeman,
Montana?

BS5 on TV.

This evening I watched Dispatches, a documentary on Channel 4 about mathematical ability in primary schools and how they set children up for adult life.

Not normally on my radar for TV; no spaceships, no car chases and of course, I have no children.

However, this documentary used Barton Hill school as its base. The school is right here in BS5 and it is 2 minutes from my house. It is opposite my church and is also on my route to catching the train for work, and on my route to The Rhubarb.

Cool to see some parents that I know and many streets and buildings that are familiar. This is a view from the tower block just nearby.

TV Dross

Today it's the 25th anniversary of sloppy speaking, dropped H sounds, estuary English and frankly, general TV dross (in my opinion) .

Eastenders is 25 years old, so it's all that Riccckkkkkky and Paaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaat nonsense all over the TV.

Enjoy it if it's your bag, but it's certainly not for me!

Actually when Eastenders was about three years into its run, a schoolmate and I spotted some woman who was on it every week and asked her for her autograph near our school, which she was only to happy to pass on. We were 14 and she was quite a honey, as I recall.

A rare departure!

Today I worked happily and hard from home.

This evening I just fancied Man U AC Milan on the big screen with a
pint, and that is what I am up to .

Cutting edge Blogging.

Way back when at Christmas, BS9 thoughtfully bought me an egg poacher
from John Lewis ( top quality purchase then) . Today I Christened it,
and very nice the result was too.

Two egg posts on the trot. That should generate a readership spike.

Stretch!

This Sunday my fabulous BS9 showed me how to make lemon cake with a
lemon I picked last month right from the tree in Spain!

The cake was delicious but check out the egg that went into it. It was
huge, so just think about the poor chicken now John Wayning it around
the garden.

I have seen the light!

Time for a happier post here at BS5 after a rare rant last time.

This is brown dog, one of two hounds who own my brother.

He was having a lark on the sofa and suddenly got excited about
something invisible!

Fucking irritated!

My temporary lodger has insitigated a bloody clanger and a half. In
his quest to tweak my heating he closed off the highest radiator in
the house and I went along with it. Disaster!

Water had nowhere to go and under pressure pissed through the ceiling
below causing this crack, which will be expensive to sort (as Tony
helpfully observed).

He's gone out now which is for the best as I'm tempted to splay his
dog out in order to staple the crack . Tony seems to be in a blame free
frame of mind which is the most galling.

More expense now with a plasterboard and skimming repair.

Irritated and then some. Investigating a repair and then a house free
of such charitable support that has been the case these last ten weeks.

Gooner!

I am sat at Paddington on the 4pm which is due to head for Bristol
shortly.

On the way into London I passed this!

I am lucky to have a seat on a 4pm service as this normally comes in
on the edge of cattle train time. Hope it's fast and incident-free to
home.

Kinda' filling up now.

B&BS5.

This is the view from bed in my pleasantly appointed B&B here in
Potton, a small village near my HQ.

I have been here for two nights after an away day meeting not far away
in rural Essex. Breakfast follows soon and then the civilised free bus
into work. I have a few hours' work with colleagues and then it's a
train into London at 2 and back out west to BS5 for a date at the
movies with BS9!

I like this B&B and I am grateful to stay in it; I always sleep well
and feel rested.

Space BS5!

Today I went into London on the train; this is the last part before
Paddington.

Before I went for the train I had an early start and got a load of
work done ( in faaaaaantastic company x).

I also took a look at live Nasa TV and the Space Shuttle launch at
9.15. That was a right source of spod based fact action!

Within three minutes of launch the Space Shuttle was going 5000mph
and was already 52 miles beyond the launch site. At that rate of
knots, over the 13 seconds of this mundane train vid, the Space
Shuttle covered 17.92 miles!

Top spoddery!

Also met a very nice woman on the tube who asked me if I'd let her
know the changes needed for Kings Cross, which was my journey. This I
did happily and chattily, and that never happens in the saaaaaarf east!

Dog stew!

You can't go wrong with a slow dog stew on a Saturday afternoon.

Stew all cooked now and I am blogging from my mate Steve's house where
we are drinking beers and watching Ireland trounce Italy in the Six
Nations. My brother is at Twickenham later for England Wales.

Hoofage!

The train back to BS5 is hammering along today; always handy on a
Friday.

Here's a little bit of the Gloucestershire country side going past at
speed from just a moment ago.

Come on the weekend and a lie in!

Mappa Mundi .

This is an exciting snap of the turn by turn ability of maps on
iPhone! I had a meeting in Birmingham today and once I had left new
street, I chucked in the postcode and followed the arrow.

The map rotates around you so that one always apears to be progressing
forwards from a central point in the screen.

Ideal!

Morning train....

07.30 and I'm at Temple Meads again for a train out. This was so on
Tuesday and will be so again on Friday.

The train shown here goes all the way to Edinburgh and I will pick it
up in 24 hours for a ride to a meeting in Birmingham. After the
meeting I may have a nose about at Selfridges and a look at massive TV
sets!

My brother has been with me a few days this week and has now flown
out; should be wheels down in Hong Kong any time now, in fact.

Speed!

I have a decent speed tester on my iPhone and here's a rather exciting
picture of it doing its stuff.

Very rare to get 9 MBps at my house and I only really get that at the
Apple Store in the city.

Spod!

Trains and Scooters but no coffee.

A £141 ticket today for a 6.40 Bristol start.

No seats on the Reading to Banbury train and no one turned up to staff the
buffet car.

Pretty ropey overnight sleep owing to some complete cunt riding his moped up and down the
street from 11-1.

Cosmic.

More Transport Stat' Action!

I have just booked train travel for the week ahead and this week the totals come in at 777 miles and a ticket cost of £420.70 pence.

This means a per mile cost of 0.54 pence, which is better (I think) than the other week when it was around 0.96p! I am bringing you this data following a huge spike in readership response to this running Stat'.

54 is a great number if you know your 70s disco venues.

Not quite such an all over the place week but I will take in Banbury, Newport, Birmingham and London.

Tall women and time travel.

I have a bit of a dilemma - two in fact, so I will share them here.

On Sunday my top-smart other half showed me a picture of her from a handful of years ago and before we knew each other.

Then, as now, she looked traffic-stoppingly pretty. After she had gone home, I went to bed and had a dream that I went back in time and met her those years ago. She did not know me but I knew her and we went out and spent the evening together. Is this technical badness? I mean it was still my GF but a different person :) . I asked her and she said 'dreams are free, my love', so I reckon that's okay. Phew!

Here is the other dilemma: my local pub has a party next Saturday night where boys dress as girls and vice versa - just for a giggle you understand. I am unsure about joining in. I have pretty long legs (36 inches) but there's NO way I am shaving them! I think I'd look a bit odd in a skirt. Heels would put me over the six foot seven mark too.