Fast Cars

If you are even remotely petrol headed, you should grab your cheque book and book yourself in for one of the driving days at Goodwood Race track. I spent a glorious afternoon belting around the course in an AC Cobra, Porsche 911 RallySport, Formula 2000, Alfa GT, Mini Cooper S... Fantastic fun and thoroughly recommended.

Wood Fairy

And here's one of Ellie pretending to be a wood fairy.

2 Finger Ninja Crazy Pinch

Ok, after a few months on Facebook, I am ready to return to Blogging.. To start with, heres a picture of Oscar practising his favourite 'Double Handed Two Finger Ninja Crazy Pinch Technique', which is capable of rendering his sister completely hysterical almost instantly.

Holidays !

Hurray ! A long deserved break from the kids begins tomorrow here, with a couple of hours of this thrown in... Yippee !

Even More Lost Than Before

Last night, after what seems like an incredibly long wait, I watched the first three episodes of Lost Series 5. And it was brilliant. Everyone else was in bed, and my massive telly once again earnt it's ludicrous expense.

This Morning at Seven

It's definitely a "bunk off school" day...

Tooth Alert

As you can see, the Tooth Fairy has been very busy in our house recently.

Geek Alert

I have been having an enormous amount of fun over the last few days playing around with various combinations of the following kit:

Pioneer PDP LX 5090 plasma telly
The picture quality is so good to look at that that you sometimes forget what you are actually watching..
Yamaha DSP AX763 av amplifier
Fantastic for the money...
Paradigm PS 1000 Subwoofer
Gets the bass down so low that my house starts to flap...
Western Digital WDTV media player
Unbelievably brilliant little box that lets you play music, video and photos on your telly via HDMI and the above mentioned amp. Rip your dvd collection using handbrake, and dump it to a usb hard drive, then have instant access to 1080p Dolby Digital movies. Find stuff on BTjunkie or Superfundo and download with Azureus... Awesome

Sickies

It's that time of year and there's a few bugs going round... Both kids off school and being generally annoying. Oscar seems only capable of eating popcorn and watching telly. Ellie is an entirely different kind of patient, preferring to snuggle down and think about shopping. Have got a strange feeling that I'm being stitched up here. But I'm not taking any shit from them tomorrow, it's off to school or else...

Marry Xmas

Oh My Gawd

Ooh Dear, Xmas is coming early for one bewildered dad. After about a year of research, I've just gone and ordered a bloody great big telly. £400 off normal price, and my research tells me that it's not going to get any cheaper despite credit crunches and January sales. Probably. Anyway, it is apparently the dogs bollocks and you can't really get a better screen anywhere. Can't wait to see Dot Cotton on a fifty inch plasma. Not looking forward to explaining the credit card balance to the missus though...

Get yer own here...

A Classic Masterpiece

God I love the InterWeb. And tabloid bad taste... Check THIS out ! Genius...

Bondage

Is it too early to start blogging about xmas ? Probably. But what the hell, here is my first festive entry....

Blurb

If you've ever fancied publishing your own book, here's your chance. Just go here and download the free software (mac and peecee), then get cracking. When you have finished, you can order copies which are printed, bound and delivered... bloody brilliant. If you are really clever, you could produced a set of spectacularly self-centered and exquisitely dull books to hand out to your mates for Xmas.

Bargains !

As you can see, there are some fantastic bargains to be had on this web site. These pies are going for just over a quid each providing you collect them from Torquay Police Station within the next 14 days...

Halloween

This credit crunch thing is getting a bit ridiculous. We went out last night knocking on doors and spooking people, and only managed to get about 2 dozen sweets ... (quality street on special offer at sainsburys). Oh well, at least we had fun dressing up.

Fun

Here's one of Oscar enjoying one of his favourite games whilst on holiday... "Stamping on Pidgeons"

Writings

There are times when writing a letter is the only way to get your message across. This is an absolute classic that we found lying around the other day... a short and slightly confused note from Luella to her brother.

Tea

At the tender age of just five and three quarters, Luella has just enjoyed her very first cup of tea. It was a standard PG Tips, white, with one sugar. I thought it was worth a quick photo given that she will probably consume a minimum of 50,000 cups in her lifetime or an average of 2.3KG per year.(apparently)

Breathless

Whilst on holiday, Ellie learnt to swim (un-assisted) a full length of the pool, which is bloody marvellous. She then started experimenting with under-water swimming, and breath holding. Today, in the bath, she smashed her previous record by holding her breath for 29.3 seconds , which is a lot longer than I can do. The real bonus behind all of this though, is that for those entire 29.3 seconds, she was unable to speak, which really is bloody brilliant.

R&R

Bewildered Dad is abroad, running up a huge bar bill...

A Few Numbers

These are some of the numbers that have been bothering me recently. Also, this message was posted at 08.08.08am on 08.08.08

Adventures

We've just got back from a couple of days camping at a rather lovely campsite in Sussex. The great thing about this place is that the farmer is happy for you to light proper fires, and even provides firewood. In fact he is a jolly nice chap, happy to sit for a few minutes by the fire with a beer and tell a few stories, offer local advice etc. The kids ran amok, with very little parental supervision and got covered in filth, cow shit, soot and sausage fat. They swam in a lake, climbed trees, chased pea-hens, toasted marshmallows, poked sticks in fires, got stung and prickled and ran through wheat fields. About 9 of them got to sit in the front and drive my taxi around the campsite... - all in all they had a brilliant time. Before leaving, we visited Pooh Corner, which is a bit of wilderness popularised by a chap called A. A. Milne.

Oh one other thing, there's a cider shop next door.

Wallpaper

Remember that advert for IKEA a few years ago? The one with a bunch of housewives singing "Chuck out your Chintz" whilst throwing floral duvet covers out of their two bedroom semi's? Well we are doing the exact opposite, and buying the stuff in as fast as we can. Hooray for Chintz. Long live Chintz. Viva la Chintziness. Well, for the time being anyway.

School Photos

The other day I put an old school photo up on this blog, and strangely, just a few days later, I heard that they were doing school photos at Ellies school. I was expecting a class photo as per usual, but for some reason they don't do those anymore. The school photographer just does individual portraits, no class photos whatsoever. Well of course I complained, I mean, who wants a portrait of their own kids... most of us have plenty anyway. No, what you want is a proper class photo, so that in years to come you can look at all your classmates and take the piss out of their haircuts. Anyway, the longshot of all this is that I was 'volunteered' into taking a photo of the class myself. Actually, quite a terrifying business. Especially if you are not a photographer, just a bloke with a camera. What came out was a bit out of focus, with strange lighting and a funny colour cast, but otherwise ok.

Its arrived...

And they knocked £400 off in the sale... Hurrah!

Dodgy Haircuts

I found this photo on my old schools website yesterday...and was quite horrified by the state of everyone's hair. Mine was definitely the worst of the lot, a shocking example of the 'pudding bowl' cut. Front row is all I'm going to say.

PicLens

Do yourself a favour and get your self over to PicLens here and download their plugin for your browser. Then go to google image search or deviantart or whatever and click the little arrow that now appears over the images in your search results. Bleedin Brilliant it is. Now supports YouTube !

Rewards

So today, after a lot of swearing, smashed knuckles, and a certain amount of banging about, I managed to sort the drains out. Now when I empty the kitchen sink, a get a little whirlpool in the middle, just like you are supposed to.

As a reward for myself, I hung up these rather nifty mirrors, which was quite an achievement considering they are a whopping 7 feet by 5 feet each, and weigh a bloody ton.

As a further reward for hanging up the mirrors, I am going to download the last 2 episodes of Lost season 4, and watch them back to back with a lager or two.

Dankness

The last 24 hours have not been good. it all started to go wrong when the drain blocked somewhere between the washing machine and the sewer. This happened whilst both the dishwasher and the washing machine were emptying themselves, resulting in an enormous flood of foul smelling water behind all the kitchen units. I poked one of those spring steel snake things down the pipe to try and unblock it, and lost the snake when it snapped in half somewhere in the pipework. So I cut the pipe in half and discovered that the snake had gone the other way and still couldn't be retrieved. Went to B&Q to buy replacement pipe and fittings, and discovered that I had bought the wrong size when I got home. 40mm instead of 43mm. The house is a shocking mess, dirty plates, wet laundry, emptied kitchen units, an unpleasant smell, and a faint sound of dripping water. Not good. Went to bed and slept for about 2 hours. Got up at 4.30 in the morning because I was getting bored of lying in bed wide awake. The house stinks. Couldn't find a clean coffee cup, and couldn't wash one up. Today I have to sort this all out, and I am not looking forward to crawling around under wet kitchen units.

At least the kids are back to school today, and I actually heard the dawn chorus this morning which was kind of nice.