is this now a site for The Dark Knight??

hey everyone

at the risk of turning this site into a tribute to the making of The Dark Knight, here are some more images of The Joker (well, sort of) in action, apparently being filmed in IMAX.

here's an image of The Joker's gang in action - apparently, that's The Joker blurred in the background :



I am assured that this next image is indeed The Joker - it looks plausible from what we have seen of him thus far. if it is The Joker, he looks rather upset, no?




finally, a shot of filming in the IMAX format. this appears to have been edited or deliberatley blurred, but you can still work out that it is The Joker, i guess!




enjoy, and be excellent to each other!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

splendid!! testing testing!

well, what do you know - it seems that i can update my site from verk again!!

be excellent to each other!!!!!!!!!!!

Winter and More Chair Action

hey everyone


dear me, even with a high speed connection it is tricky to update Blogger these days!! all these fancy changes seem to have taken Blogger down to the slowest speed possible, hope it gets fixed soon!!

Winter is here, so James and Grandad (and Marmite, or Woof Woof as he is called by James) are busy keeping warm!





Just because James is at Grandma and Grandad on a couple of days each week does not mean an end to Big Cook Little Cook action. here he is sat in another chair, and, you will note, with pens at the ready in case he urgently needs to learn how to write and, erm, write something.




The chair in these pics was bought by James's Great-Great Grandfather, or his Grandfather's Grandad, if you will. It has certainly stood the test of time, and he seems rather happy with it!





otherwise, it was Michele's birthday on Saturday, so we had a nice day out and about - as well as her presents, i even bought her lunch AND something to drink, as well as some smart new boots!

if it is also winter wherever you are at, keep warm!!


be excellent to each other!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

James and the Chair Adventures

hey everyone


when James watches classics of television such as (erm) Big Cook Little Cook and Teletubbies, he has had this habit of wedging himself between our coffee table and his pushchair.

clever Mummy has clocked that what he is looking for is a seat of his own, as the couches are a bit too far away from the TV, and when he sits on the carpet he cannot see over the coffee table. and thus i went and got him a choice of two chairs for his televisual feasts :





he would seem to be rather impressed with both of them. the blue one was a clear early favourite, until he decided to see if it would work out OK as a rocking chair. well, it did rock in one direction, and fortunatley the carpet and the cushions behind him ensured no damage. i believe this pic may well be from mid-fall :



the lilac one was thus considered the safest by James, and thus this is the one he has stuck with for now!




meanwhile, joy of joys, two Big Cook Little Cook DVD's arrived today. and one of Balamory. roll on the weekend so we can sit and watch them!!


be excellent to each other!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Bedtime James

hey everyone


just a few pictures of James, looking rather dapper in his pyjamas, messing about instead of heading off to bed :







night-night, pleasant dreams!!!!!!

An Official Glimpse of The Joker

hey everyone

the first official picture of Heath Ledger as The Joker in The Dark Knight has finally turned up. you may recall the retrospectively obvious fake one that was posted here a few weeks ago.

there are two ways of seeing the picture. firstly, you can click on the link in the title, register and assist in removing the blocked image of The Joker pixel by pixel. the second option, and i would reccomend you do this in particular if you are a bit rushed, is simply have a look at it here :




reaction to the picture? a considered hmn, i guess. on the one side, i guess they are not going for the theatrics of the earlier incarnations of The Joker, and thus Christopher Nolan will be carrying on with the darker, more "grown up tone". on the other side, however, is that the idea of The Joker looking like a somewhat misguided tribute to Robert Smith out of The Cure is not exactly going to thrill too many people.

the fact that the link takes you to an alternate tribute to Harvey Dent (do a google interweb network search for "i believe in Harvey Dent") suggests that here we go again with two villains in the film. not wise - the 80's/90's Batman films fell apart by overloading the plots with as many bad guys (and, spectacularly badly, girls) as the writers could think of.

anyway, there is still over a year to go before any of us see the finished product that would appear to be called The Dark Knight. if any more pics turn up i will put them here, hopefully they will start to get more interesting real soon!!

be excellent to each other!!!!!!!

The Dark Knight

some film news!!

as Warner Bros have set up a website called The Dark Knight and have this logo on it



i guess it is safe to say that the follow up to the most excellent Batman Begins will not be called Batman Intimidation. ho hum, a bit of a pity, but there you go. the logo does look ace, mind!

by the way, if there was any lingering doubt, the previously shown Heath Ledger pic as The Joker was indeed a fake. told you so!

family portrait

hey everyone

sorry, this should be called an attempt at a family portrait whilst James is full of energy and refuses to sit still.



no bad thing, really - who would want a posed picture when you can have a look at James in fun mode?




be excellent to each other!!!

Go Go Gee Gee!!

James loves Grandad. James loves horses. Grandad loves James and he loves horses. what better way to spend a sunday afternoon than watching a touch of horseracing??

i do recall fondly watching some Sky news with a horse race on, and James all of a sudden shouting "go go gee gee go go gee gee" at the television not so long ago!

i am sure James will soon be old enough and big enough to go to the real gee gee's with Grandad. if he has as much luck (sorry, skill) as Grandad does on the horses in regards of picking out winners, well, so much the better!!!

tortoise! tortoise! TORTOISE!

hey everyone

no pics for a while, and all of a sudden a whole load turn up!!! they are all pics of James, of course!!

James is very proud of his extensive vocabulary, and we are very impressed that he has mastered a seemingly complicated word like "tortoise" with relative ease. it helps, presumably, that Grandma and Grandad have tortoises walking around in their garden! James loves them to bits -




whilst James has mastered the word, he has not neccessarily mastered the concept of "tortoise", and what "tortoise" does. when he gets to the grandparents, he excitedly looks for them with some lettuce in hand. when he finds one, he puts the lettuce on the tortoise, and starts doing a very excited dance whilst shouting "tortoise tortoise tortoise eat eat eat tortoise" :





the tortoise, alas, have thus far been most un-co-operative, and refuse to devour one half of a hefty lettuce within seconds of James presenting it to them. oh well, never mind son, keep trying!!


be excellent to each other!!!!!!!!!!!

more James pictures!!

hello again

more pictures of James from today! here he is sitting in his car seat, looking rather chuffed with himself!!!!



and here he is having some orange juice cordial type stuff, something that became quite a favourite of his at the party today!



as with the sweets, i suppose we should try and control or limit the amount of juices and things like that James has. however, as the picture below clearly illustrates, most of it tends to end up on his chin and shirt rather than in his tummy!




be excellent to each other!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Clever James

here's James showing you how to use your good looks and natural charm to casually steal some popcorn of your mesmerised cousin :



be excellent to each other, and try to respect your cousin's popcorn stash!!

James and the Cousins

Hi Everyone

Today was James's Uncle Dylan's 9th birthday (don't ask, a very short long story), so we were all together for a big party and to hand over to Dylan just as many Spider-Man 3 toys as those clever Chinese types can make. Or wherever they come from. Anyway, James got to spend some time with his dear cousins, the twins Jade and Skyla :







As you can see, they are eating all sorts of things that probably are not very good for them, but what is life without the occassional treat, especially at a party?

They all had a great time running around - sorry, i attempted to take pictures of them running around, but they really do move too fast, even for these fancy new cameras!!

Everyone seemed to have a good time, even those who rushed off to watch some sort of important game with a funny shaped ball!! Dylan seems very impressed with his array of "Spidey" things, and James has run himself into sleeping long and hard tonight. i also got my (ahem) dear Mother-In-Law a set of Mills & Boon books and DVD for Mother's Day, and she got me a rather snazzy walking stick as a belated birthday present. a successful day all around, then!


be excellent to each other!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

The Jack Coleman Bridge

Ladies and Gentlemen


Once in a lifetime, perhaps more often if you travel, you get to witness an architectural curiosity that leaves you speechless, astounded, in awe even. Unless of course you never travel anywhere other than Edenvale and are just left bemused.

Here is the sign for The Jack Coleman Bridge :




And this is The Jack Coleman Bridge itself :




Just who is Jack Coleman? I mean, I am very interested about a chap who is famous enough or well established within their community to have a bridge named after them, but that the bridge in itself is impressive to the extent that you can barely get two cars next to each other on it, and the length of it is barely more than a car!

I would imagine that Mr Coleman is a property developer, or owned the land around which the bridge is located. What river or stream does it cross? I have no idea at all, and Michele is busy playing with some bubbles with James, so I am not going to bother asking.

Mentioning Michele, here she is looking very excited indeed. When this picture was taken, she was a mere two corners away from crossing The Jack Coleman Bridge for the third time today. It should have only been twice, but we went back around to get more class pictures of it for you all :






If you have any idea at all who or what Jack Coleman is or was, or are Jack Coleman, please feel free to leave a message or comment here enlightening the masses!


Be excellent to each other!!!!!!!!!!

James and the Stars

hey everyone

at last, some new pictures of James!!! i keep getting requests for them, so i figured i had better take some. and what better opportunity than of him being rather proud of his award from school today!!

as James helped a new baby boy settle in on his first day at school today, and as a reward for his vast and impressive vocabulary (trust me, he speaks a lot!), he was awarded three gold stars on his head! as you can see, he was rather proud of this!





Mummy is also very proud of young James too! here she is trying to hold him still for a picture to be taken - no easy task, especially as Big Cook Little Cook, currently the thing above all things that is the centre of James's universe, was on the TV!!





and here is one last pic of him with his stars, kindly posing for the camera but looking very tired indeed - well, it was not long after this that he wanted his night night bottle and to be carried up to bed!!





otherwise, not exactly a great deal to report on here. a busy weekend for us, in particular as Mother's Day looms on Sunday. hmn, i wonder what exactly James has got his Mummy for this special day..........?

be excellent to each other!!!!!!!!!!!

Stalked by Trigger

hey everyone

well, rather bewilderingly, i can give you pictures of Michele and myself at this Cokefest concert thing!

i was back in at verk today, and in my inbox was an email from Trigger, one of the lads in the office. simply entitled "I KNOW WHAT YOU DID LAST FRIDAY", it included a series of pics from the concert :



i was somewhat taken aback to see them, and thus asked if he had got them off a interweb net site thingie somewhere.



the answer was no, he had taken these pictures himself with his cellphone camera thing. i must say, it is a rather high quality cellphone camera thingie, then, as the originals of these pics are most impressive - they have been reduced in size and quality a bit here to make it easier to upload them.





now, if we put aside my surprise/delight at getting these pics, and the compliments to the cellphone camera thingie, i did ask Trigger exactly, if he saw us, why the hell he did not say hello to us, and come and have a drink or something! according to Trigger, we "looked like we were on a mission". this is somewhat at odds with the reality, as of the 12 hours, we spent a good 7 or 8 at the beer tents and the food places just, as it were, "chilling". it transpired, of course, that he did not say hello mostly due to him being in the company of some ladies. as he gets to see me all day at work, who could blame him for admiring some talent of the female persuasion when the chance occured?

Trigger appears to have enjoyed the day too, and gave us a rather smart badge from the day. alas, he did not take any pictures of the ladies who disrobed during the Evanescence performance, but it is not like i would post them here anyway.

on the note of Evanescence, it would appear they have split? i saw some story of the guitarist and drummer leaving, but not at all sure if this was before or after they played here. it says something of my knowledge of the band that i would be unable to tell either way.

be excellent to each other!!!!!!!!!!!!

Boro live to bore another day.

born and (mostly raised) in Middlesbrough means that i am a Boro fan. it doesn't mean that i have to like how things are going at the club, though.



it is not every team which goes from UEFA Cup Finalists one year to scraping to survival in the Premier League the next. that is what we have ended up doing, despite having a team of established professionals mixed with some awesome young stars.

the reason for the year being such a struggle? Gareth Southgate. a nice man, a very good player, but just not the kind of person you need in charge of a football club. why we ended up with him in charge instead of looking towards Tony Mowbray is still beyond me.

the season in review - a sparse amount of halfway decent results, one or two inspired performances for great victories and a whole bunch of dreadful performances which led to well deserved defeats and, on occassions, batterings.

Southgate claims to know "how to fix" Boro during the off-season. i would like to think that this means he is going to admit he is not up to the job and suggest that they get a new manager who can do the job properly.

5fm My CokeFest 2007

OK, this review is a bit late since it was on April 27, but let me give you a rundown on what i recall of it!

Firstly, it is quite smart that 5fm and Coke bring over some decent acts to South Africa - it takes a fair bit of cash to get these tours together, so nice one and thanks, hope the advertising you got out of it means you will be doing another!

But that gets followed up with the downside. As this (presumably to be yearly) event is sponsored/promoted by sucha big Corporate, you are never going to get bands taking part in it that you would really want to see. i appreciate that others in South Africa (this Durban-based blogger in particular) have no quarrel with overtly commercial, some would say "sell out" acts, but it would be ace to see someone like the Manics, Pearl Jam or Morrissey play here. they are not going to do that with a massive Coca Cola sign on the stage. ho hum. i suppose you might get monoliths like Bowie or The Who or The Stones agreeing, but then again they share the stage with no one.

The biggest bad thing about this concert was, of course, the failure of Axl Rose and what he claims is the band Guns N Roses to turn up. i kind of predicted that he/they would pull out, and this they did, owing to some injury to a bass player that no one has ever heard of - Tommy Stintson or something. whereas many would have loved to see them, i do recall that when i saw the proper version of the band in 1992, well, they were not exactly brilliant then. i cannot imagine that this 3rd rate, sham line up using the name would be much better.

onto the day out, and the bands that were good enough to show up!

we had a most excellent day and night of it. James was with his grandparents for the day and night, so it was the first time in some 18 months that Michele and I had been out and about on our own. i must confess, as a result of this, we spent more time just "hanging about" with each other, less so concentrating on the bands. here is a rundown of what we saw and heard, or at least what i can rememeber of them :

The First 5 Or So Bands - i am sure you are rather smart, hence getting the gig. what i heard of you in no way offended me as i hung around the beer tent, the toilet, the pizza dude and the t-shirt stand.


Springbok Nude Girls - one of the few true SA bands that are world class. an excellent band, led by an ace frontman. i am not sure what, if any, international success they have had, but they could handle themselves on the world stage with ease. nice one.


Hoobastank - never heard of them. this band turned out to be good fun! i couldn't name a single song of theirs, and i am not sure i am going to rush out and buy a cd or two by them, but if they ever played live near you, i would say yeah, go and see them, they are rather smart. the singer has a smart sense of humour, and they interract with the audience rather well. possible winners of the day.


Staind - i knew very little of this band before the gig, except that song they do it's been a while. it would seem that their usual sound is normally a great deal heavier than that song suggests. in no way are they a bad band, but, dear me, they need to work on their set-list. it seemed that each and every song required a 60-90 second break to switch guitars, instruments, whatever. a rock concert is about energy and momentum, chaps. the result of the perpetual breaks between songs was that it was difficult to get into them much. oh well, they sell more albums than i do, so who am i to complain? a major highlight of Staind's set, and the day, was the lead singer out of Staind making offensive comments about Axl Rose.


3 Doors Down - i think that is what they are called. neither myself nor Michele were interested in them at all. we just left to have a few more drinks and a bite to eat whilst they were on. sorry if you are a fan of them, but to us it didn't sound like we missed much.


Evanescence - in the absence of Axl, the headline act of the day out. unless you see someone called Wickhead who came on after them as the headliners. they were certainly the most polished act of the day - read into that what you will from my earlier comments, i guess.





Michele was more excited about seeing this band than any of the others, and thus we did the decent thing and stayed for the whole set, or most of it. not really favourites of mine, but they did a decent set (ie mostly one song after another without dramatic instrument changes) and they are pretty good. rather like the band Live, though, whilst i enjoyed the live music, the CD's really don't do anything for me. bewilderingly, two ladies in the audience decided that during a female singer's performance was the best time to flash their topless selves at the stage and for all others to see, unless they had been doing it earlier and i just had not paid attention. it sounded like they played all of their big numbers - i might possibly have even recognized My Immortal and Bring Me To Life somewhere in the set, and all and sundry seemed rather impressed with them.


overall, my memories of the day will be an ace day out - spending time with Michele, buying a large amount of beer for guys who couldn't get into the ale tents, and in general just having fun. i would be very interested in going again next year if it is as well run as this one. reports were that the 2006 one, headlined by Metallica, was a disaster - you couldn't get anything to eat or drink at it. this one was not like that at all.

i doubt these reviews, if i can even call them that, have helped anyone, but we had fun!

be excellent to each other!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

slight return

hey everyone

well, after my last post, i am pleased to report that James is now fit and well. quite a scare with his high temperature and fever, but he seems to be back to normal.

i have not been so well - in rushing around looking after James last week, i managed to give myself a nasty smack to the head. the headache after it did not clear up, and so i have been for C.T. scans and what not.

no results back as of yet from the scan, but i am sure someone would have called if there was a problem??

anyway, i seem to be feeling much better today, and so it's time for some updates!