Oscar's Birthday

I have been horribly busy recently, and just haven't had the time to post anything at all to my blog. At least I managed to stop everything for a day to celebrate Oscars Third Birthday, which was a very nice day indeed.

Warning !

Do not, under any circumstances, put one of those EcoDisc DVD's (the sort you get free with the Sunday newspapers) into your Apple laptop... They only work in tray loading drives, NOT in slot loaders like the ones in G4 iBooks macBooks etc. If you look carefully at the label on the dvd it does actually tell you this, but in very small writing. I've just spent an hour dismantling an iBook to get one of the buggers out of the drive... However,if you want to pull your laptop to bits just for fun, then look here first...

Help Needed

In our house we have a whole load of south facing windows which is very nice indeed. Except when it comes to cleaning the bloody things. Upstairs there are 4 like the one in the picture above which have 30 panes of glass each, and then 2 double doors each of which have 24 panes of glass. Thats 168 separate panes of glass, each of which has 4 corners , and then of course you have both inside and outside of the window. The total is 1344 corners that you have to somehow clean with a sponge and then polish with some bloody stuff that isn't supposed to smear but which does and leaves streaky bits. And even if I managed to do it well enough for them to look clean when the morning sun shines through them, I still have one more problem... There are another 768 corners downstairs.

Doh !

It wasn't my fault, I was set up... honest.

February

Thank god January is over with. Illness, hangovers, massive debt and the taxman all contribute towards making it my least favourite month in the year. In future, I am going to consider February as the first month of the year, because it is impossible to make any kind of "fresh start" in January for the above mentioned reasons. So, my new years resolutions, as of this month are :

Only get drunk once a week.
Earn more money.
Spend less money.
Save money for tax bill.
Shave more often.

The Downfall of HD-DVD

Well thats it then. Game over as they say.

Payback time

This evening, whilst watching a Steven Seagal movie on Channel Five, I bit down on a toffee and one of my molars exploded. Weird eh ?

Aah, January !

Just when I thought I had got away with it, the dreaded Christmas Flu that has been ruining everyones holidays has finally found it's way into my hopelessly vulnerable body. The last few days have seen me sloping around the house being generally pathetic and cantankerous. Hopefully, it will not turn into this, which would be too much for my addled physique to bear. I am supposed to be getting all the accounts ready, and have a whole pile of other work to do, but simply cannot face doing anything that requires any sort of intellectual ability. The telly beckons. I am a useless git today.

Xmas, New Year etc

Well thank god that lot's over with. My innards are moaning and my brain has just about shut down. One of the last things I can remember drinking is this mulled beer, made by a friend of ours using a combination of Newcastle Brown Ale and Sherry. I am absolutely not going to drink alcohol again until February. Probably.

Got Me A Turkey

This morning, at about 7 am, I fell out of bed, reeking of last nights alcohol, climbed in the car, and headed over to the posh butchers shop in East Dulwich. It was still dark by the time I got there, and there was already about ten people waiting in line outside. By the time the doors opened at eight, there were about 40 people in the queue, all desperate to get their hands on a last minute turkey. As it turns out, there were no turkeys left at all, so I grabbed a smoked gammon and headed up to Sainsburies where I managed to get a £55 free range jobby at half price... "Brilliant" I thought to myself, that gives me an extra £25 to spend on booze...

Fame

So we've just watched Oscar and Ellie on the telly, and we think they did very well indeed. We are proud parents today.

House Update

It's been a busy time here over the last week or so. Ellies birthday party left us all feeling a bit knackered, and now both kids are off school with the usual round of Xmas bugs. But this morning, a chap arrived with the metal railings I ordered a couple of weeks ago, and after a mere 30 minutes of gentle tinkering, they stand proud around the stairwell, ready to take on the relentless attacks of two bored children. I shouldn't really say this, but, I reckon that by this time next near, I might actually have this place finished...

Ballet

It's all getting a bit hectic round here at the moment. It's Ellies birthday on saturday and she's having a "princess party" and we've just had to endure the schools xmas fair and xmas assembly. Then we had to go and watch Ellie do a ballet performance, which was actually very good, although I don't suppose I should have been laughing all the way through it. We've got a particularly good Xmas tree in this year which a friend of mine organised (delivered from scotland) it is just about the perfect xmas tree shape and nearly 8 feet high. I reckon it will look damn good when all the presents are piled up beneath it.. Looking forward to having a very relaxed xmas.

For Sale

I have a brand new boxed Laserjet 1022NW laser printer for sale. They are around £200 quid new. It is black and white/ grayscale... NOT colour.. Anyone interested in offering more than a hundred quid, please leave a comment and I'll get in touch...

more info here

UPDATE: sold within 30 minutes...

The Treadmill

NB: all times are approximate

09.00 alison gets back from capetown - exhausted
09.30 i leave to fix some-ones mac
10.30 ali goes to sainsburies
11.30 mercedes breaks down
11.45 ring the aa - wont fix because its outside house
12.00 ali unpacking suitcases and then packing again for next trip
13.00 i go to fix someone else's mac in taxi
15.30 mate arrives to try fixing mercedes - no luck
15.40 another mate arrives to say hello
16.00 book mechanics in to tow mercedes to garage
16.05 i go out to fix a mac in taxi
17.00 oscar pulls 3 sheets of mdf onto his head - survives
17.10 I return to chaos - shouting
17.20 ali cooks kids dinner - preps for tomorrow
18.00 I walk to shop to get milk
18.20 kids bathtime - messy
19.30 kids to bed
20.00 kids decide they don't want to go to bed
21.00 we eat - sort of
21.20 kids in bed again
21.40 ali in bed - knackered
22.00 dis working on computer
23.30 dis goes to bed
00.20 oscar wakes up crying
01.30 oscar has temperature , needs medicine
03.30 oscar in our bed
05.00 ellie in our bed
06.15 alarm clock goes off
06.20 alarm clock goes off again
06.40 load up taxi with suitcases for ali trip
07.00 ali drives taxi to kent leaving me with no car
07.15 feed kids - drink half cup of coffee before cold, 2 fags
07.30 washing machine on - make beds
08.30 walk oscar to school
08.40 continue walking to ellie school
09.05 ellie deposited at school - late but ok
09.20 back home - realise wallet is missing
09.30 mechanics call - can't make it - thanks
09.45 try starting car again - battery runs flat
10.00-13.00 tidy entire house thoroughly whilst looking for wallet
11.00 first of 4 mac support calls start coming in
11.20 go through wheelie bins looking for wallet - nice
11.30 go to shop to see if I left wallet there..no
12.00 call oscars nursery - can he stay all day please - yes !?, thank f***
12.20 water plants - why bother, they're all dead anyway...
13.00 dis working on computer - new deadline, thanks mate needed that..
14.00 ring bank to cancel all bank cards, they offer a loan of course.
14.15 borrow a car to visit a client, virgin broadband bust - surprised = no
15.15 ellie finishes school goes to ballet
15.30 return borrowed car - keys through letterbox
16.00 second wash on, tumble drier on for first lot
16.10 need sugar - 2 x amarula shots with havana club top up
16.30 pick up oscar - can't pay - no wallet - sort it tomorrow? - ok
17.00 ellie back from ballet - hyperactive - pushy
17.20 ali calls - staying away till tomorrow - ok no problem
17.30 oscar throws up everywhere - temperature - calpol - mop
17.40 kids bathtime ahead of schedule to wash sick off oscar
18.00 put clean bed sheets on bed - hurrah about time too
18.30 kids dinner - not eaten - don't blame them - kievs in tomato sauce
18.40 kids fighting - crying - hurt - then ok again
18.50 dis opens bottle of red wine ( kindly donated by client)
19.00 chicken run dvd on - kids silent - eating crisps - still hungry
19.20 dishwasher emptied, reloaded, on again
19.30 tumble drier on for second lot
19.40 dis working on computer - constant interruptions
20.10 kids to bed - arguments - go to bed or else...
20.30 oscar sick again - change bedding - ellie wakes up
21.00 kids asleep
21.30 dis eats spaghetti with sauce from jar - yuk
22.00 get everything ready for morning - bookbag, packed lunch
22.15 large vodka coke - out of ice - bummer
23.00 dis wastes 20 minutes writing this blog - am I mad or what ?
23.30 bed
00.00 i am dreaming of a far away place which is soft and fluffy and floaty. there are no clocks or wallets and my legs don't work. a warm fuzz overwhelms me. all is peaceful, until, far away in the distance, a child calls my name...

The Dress Code

Today, on the telly, Trinny and Susannah did a show about how us men should dress. It basically involved 3 steps.. 1- know your shape, 2 - look for ideas, and 3- try it on. So I started with the first one, which is know your shape. There are 6 shapes..
Top Heavy
Beer Belly
Thin
Short Legs
Man Boobs
Thick Neck

That's great except that I'm already buggered because I am top heavy, with a beer belly, I am thin, and have short legs. What am I supposed to do now ? Silly bloody women! Download your own guide here..

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.