For Alison

A bedtime story from Ellie and her mate Tilly.

Saturday Night

Oscar is in bed, Ellie has her mate 'Tilly' round for a sleepover, and I have an iPhone and a glass of Chianti. We are all very happy tonight.

Monsoon

My little girl Ellie has just done the Monsoon spring/summer catalogue. She had a great laugh, spending the day dressing up with a bunch of other girls in a huge room full of clothes, shoes, and jewellery. There was even a hair and makeup person waving curling tongs around. They were in heaven, probably. The Monsoon people won't let us have any of the proper pictures yet so here's one i managed to snap very quickly - Ellie on the left.

The Joanna

Now you all know how much I like a freebie... Well guess what ? Here's my latest acquisition - a Piano! It all seems to work and is in tune sort of, except the lid is split and needs gluing and one of the notes doesn't work, which is ok because it's not one of my favourite notes anyway. The kids are gonna love it. Think I might brush paint it purple, and get some earplugs (obviously).

iDrink

Can't wait to get my iPhone... remember it's not just a phone, ipod, internet/mail device, video player, camera etc. Its a bleedin bartender as well. Hurrah !

Mental

Life has gone a bit mental here - the missus is away in Capetown again and I'm buried under a pile of work, laundry, accounts, etc etc. The battery is dead on my cab, and a bloke up the road wants to give me a piano. And I'm gonna get an iphone on Friday, And Leopard is buggy. And I'm not sleeping properly. Thank god for youtube.

Another Great Sunday

Another perfect weekend - my mate Angela was 27 today and cooked a feast for us all, then we let of some rockets in the mews and then piled in the taxi and went to see the bonfire in my favorite secret park. And now Charlies Angels is on the telly. Brilliant !

Leopard

I've been using Leopard for 2 days now, and so far everything is working perfectly, and I reckon it's bloody good. Time machine is absolutely fantastic. Coverflow and Quickview are brilliant as well. But be very very careful before you install it. Make sure you update everything, repair permissions, then backup EVERYTHING,and take your time.

Spooky

Blinkin hell, is that time of year again? I'm sure my internal clock has gone very wrong because it seems like it was just a few months ago. Maybe I need hormone replacement therapy or something. And please don't tell me that it's possible to do anything useful with pumpkin innards, because it just isn't. I mean, if pumpkins were any good we would eat them all year round, wouldn't we... but we don't cos they are horrible spooky things. Pumpkin seeds maybe, but even then you're pushing it a bit.
These guys have got the right idea though...

Bliss

Yesterday, we did a Sunday Roast (on a Saturday). We bought 2 legs of lamb and some goose fat from the posh butchers in Lordship Lane and after 2 and half hours of commotion in the kitchen, we served up a superb feast for 6 adults and 6 kids. The grown ups drank loads of wine and blackcurrant martinis whilst the kids destroyed the house and played in the mews with sparklers.

Today I am going to watch Star Wars episode 4, (whilst recording James and the Giant Peach), then Top Gear and The Ninth Gate (whilst recording Long Way Down and Abigails Party.)

And I'm going to buy one of those giant tins of quality street.

Leopard

Cor Blimey, finally I might get my hands on the new system, it's been bloody ages since they first started wittering on about it. Over 300 new features apparently, some useful, many not. And I'm sure it will be very exciting for about an hour, then I'll start shouting at my computer again just like usual. Oh well, Hoh Hum and all that.

Blogger Play

As if most of you don't already spend far too much time staring at your computers, here's yet another way of wasting your valuable time. If you're even remotely nosey, ( which you are anyway because you are nosing into my life right now ) you will love the latest idea from the chaps at Blogger.
Blogger Play will show you a never-ending stream of images that were just uploaded to public Blogger blogs. You can click the image to be taken directly to the blog post it was uploaded to, or click “show info” to see an overlay with the post title, a snippet of the body, and some profile information about the blogger who uploaded it.
Perfect if you have an attention span of less than 3 seconds.

More Graffiti

This is more like it... pinched from Craigy's blog...

House Envy

We've all just spent the day shooting the Charles Dickens documentary in Griff Rhys Jones's house in Fitzroy Square. Five storeys of fantastic huge house stuffed with wonderful things, must be worth a bleedin fortune. Well jealous. Ellie had a great time, but poor old Oscar objected to wearing a smock and found all the hanging around a bit tedious to say the least. And it was a long day, eleven hours on set surrounded by people wearing some very strange clothes. In the end he just couldn't handle it any longer and we had to evacuate the place. Glad to be back home, even if it isn't five storeys high.

Pimp My Taxi

In between hours of staring blankly at pages of code and other gibberish on my computer screen, I have been occupied by my latest passion - the black london taxicab I bought a few weeks ago. It is seriously good fun to drive around in, and we both argue over who's turn it is every time we need to go somewhere. I have had it checked out by a taxi mechanic, and he reckons it's good for another hundred thousand miles at least. When the sun shines, I nip outside with my T-cut, BackToBlack, vinyl roof polish, WD40 etc, and tinker with it. As if this isn't daft enough, I have just ordered a wooden steering wheel, chrome hubcaps, and an assortment of other chromey bits to fancy it up a bit. Alison wants to do up the interior in a kind of Indian retro chic stylee, with mad carpet, cushions and dangly things. I want a decent stereo with a subwoofer wotsit and a set of chrome bumpers. We are all being silly buggers this week.

Christmas Comes Early

We got a call a few days ago confirming that Ellie and Oscar are to play the parts of Kate and Walter Dickens, the children of Charles Dickens, in a BBC documentary about "A Christmas Carol". They are both very excited about being on the telly, apparently they get to decorate a christmas tree and open lots of presents. Shooting starts next week, which is a slight problem because Oscar fell off the back of the sofa on Friday and now has a black eye. (which we haven't told them about..) If they complain, I'll just tell them that he has been 'getting in character', because probably most kids around that time looked slightly battered. There better be a good make-up artist around....

Lost Again

Thanks to good old iTunes, I've just been able to download the entire season 3 of Lost, which was annoyingly hijacked from my TV screen last year by those bastards at Sky. It looks damn good on my 24" iMac screen, and at £32 is pretty good value, especially if you are needing excuses not work.

Fnaaar !

This is good fun - link courtesy of my mate Tobes...

Torture

I've been very busy this week trying to finish an interactive DVD for one of my clients. The artwork, graphics, video and 3d stuff was all pretty much finished ages ago. The stage I am at now involves painstakingly examining and altering about 450 tiny text files, each with bizarre titles like MANPIMP07 and CONTUCD03. It is beginning to really do my head in. Fortunately the end is in sight and and I may be able to finish just in time to stop my brain from turning to complete mush. In a month or so, I'm going to have to edit each of these files again by translating them into the Azerbi language native to Azerbijan. I expect to be ready to commit suicide shortly afterwards.

Graffiti

The thing about graffiti here in the UK is that it is mostly of such pathetically poor quality. If the kids are talented enough to spray something cool on a wall in a sort of New York way, then I probably don't mind, but shit like this really pisses me off. For Christ's sake kids, do a bit of googling and research your artwork (and spelling) before you get started. And get some decent paints too.

Not Fair

The missus is swanning around in Capri this week, apparently working very hard but nonetheless I'm stuck here in Peckham. God I'm jealous.

If you're on a mac (which over half of you are according to my blog stats) then you can catch a glimpse of life in Capri with this QTVR three dimensional photograph thingy. And if you're using windoze then, download the quicktime plugin so that you don't feel left out.

And Whilst We're At It

And whilst we're at it, here's another classic from the archives... This one is of my missus pretending to be a bunny rabbit.

Cowboys

This week, whenever I have a few moments spare, I have been trying to sort through the 5000 or so photos on my computer. There seem to be loads of duplicates, and plenty that should just be chucked in the trash. Anyway, I came across this photo of my mate Derek, who is a recently retired chemistry schoolteacher, and felt I should share it.

Mews Party

Every year, all of us here in the Mews have a big party. This years event was great fun, there were no injuries, and we didn't have any trouble with the police. I mixed a rather lethal bucket of pimms (1 bottle pimms, 1 bottle vodka, 1 bottle lemonade) which was a great success, and everyone got very pissed. I am rather hungover today.

New iPods

Oh God, thats all I need, more beautiful gizmos to spend my non existent money on. And there will be a replacement out in 12 weeks probably. The iPod Touch is a masterpiece of design (again), click here to see a video explaning all it's wonderful features... Whatever happened to Radio Rentals ? Perhaps it's time to simply rent these things and just upgrade whenever something new comes along...

Pillocks

Come on then, if yer hard enough !

Mac Nuts

Ok, macs are cool, I love my mac etc etc. But, these people are nuts.

Although, this is even sadder...

Cabbie !

Ooh er, I've just gone and done something a bit mad... again. I seem to have bought myself a new car ! Ha Ha how crazy is this? Can't wait to customise the interior. This is gonna be such a laugh...especially trying to stop drunks climbing in late at night...Why did I buy a black cab ?

Because...

They are large virtually indestructable vehicles
They are easily one of the safest cars on the road
They are built on a solid chassis
They can carry huge amounts of shopping
They can carry up to seven persons
They are ideal school runs vehicles
They sit up high and give a fantastic command of the road
They give a sense of invinceability
They easily accept the largest pushchairs
Other drivers keep clear of taxis
They are simple to drive & easy to service
The division window can close off noisy kids
They can do over 30 miles to a diesel gallon
They frequently do half a million miles if regularly serviced
They are cheap to insure
Parts are not expensive
They can be hosed out after the kids throw up in the back
And you can sneak up the bus lanes...

Jason Bourne

I went to see Mr. Bourne smashing up cars and killing baddies with a phone book last night, and it was bloody brilliant.

Part Time Model

Very good.