ice cream and eccles cakes

hi there

well, a few moments have presented themselves, so why not use them up with a few more pictures?i would imagine you can work out most of the content from the title, so if you are not particularly interested - and no one would judge you too harshly if that was the case - do not look!

it was, as we stretched our legs on a most brisk of a most December evening, quite a delight to see the famous, celebrated ice cream shop of where we are at open for business. oddly, there were not an excessive amount of patrons wanting ice cream or any such frozen goods, but a number of people were wisely partaking in consuming warm beverages.

we just settled for a quick photograph outside.

well, three of them did. i had to take the picture, you see. i don't think blueberrys have a timer on them, and there was nowhere to stand it anyhow. they don't come with a tripod. maybe Samsung or Apple ones do.

probably not, mind, but you can see an iTripod being on the market before long.

anyway, as you can see them three were dressed up rather warm, as if it were freezing cold or something. obviously i was in just shorts and a t-shirt, so splendid is the weather right now. honest.

moving on, and after indulging my wish to have some Ribena, look at what i found in the shops.

yes, Eccles Cakes. Eccles Cakes are class and i have missed them a very great deal indeed. i could have, to be honest, eaten that whole pack in one go, but i thought it would be polite to allow my (considerably) better half to have one of them. one, you will note. that's her lot.

in fact i have just gone and had another one now to make sure that i had it. lovely.

you may have guessed from the above text thus far that i do not have all that much to say at this moment.sorry about that, so here is another selfie from the evening. i think, might have been in the morning.

i will do my best to come up with some interesting content as soon as i can!


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

kettle

hi there

well, a somewhat quick update to put here a picture which i promised for the Child of the Condiment Phoenix in the post yesterday but forgot to add, sorry!

phase one of my assorted quests has been completed. behold, a purple kettle that is called such as it is a kettle which is purple in colour.

magnificent, is it not? the tea proudly on display next to it is also spectacular, and very much appreciated.

also, despite the rather adverse weather, i attempted to indulge in a cigarette this morning. you may or may not be pleased to see this picture that my (considerably) better half took of me as i did my best to indulge this filthy hobby.

as my phone has ceased working i am in urgent need of a trip into the town, which i will undertake shortly. i may well, if you are wondering, put some pants on first.


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

traveller's tune

hi there

well, i am a touch tired out and somewhat disorientated, but let me have a go at one of those "proper", presumably longer posts that i apparently once did and attracted all you kind people to come along and read my musings. as i am writing this one of them netbook thingies, that which features a keyboard just about as substantial and practical as a child's toy, please do bear with me!

i really rather like being punctual, even if it means arriving way early for things. my (considerably) better half goes punctual for professional, "as and when" for social things and uber-punctual on those rare instances paranoia creeps into her world, or when she has done things like given all our furniture away so we might as well get somewhere waaay early so we can at the least sit down.

such instances lead to one arriving with their family at premises before the staff of such premises are ready to entertain your business, which in itself leads to you hanging about in corridors, sitting on conventional cases.

when the staff arrived and assisted us, well after some scrawny gent of Indian origin apparently in a rush decided to ignore that we had formed the very queue he presumed to create, we were then on our way. that is, on our way to waiting for a few hours.

and what better way to spend some of those hours than by eating brie cheese loving melted over some bacon and a rather fine chicken fillet. this is what myself and my (considerably) better half most certainly did whilst the boys watched some planes do their thing.

well, their take off and land thing, at the least. and watched them fly a bit too, but they are rather quick so you can only watch them do that for a few moments. unless you ran really fast and tried to keep them in view i suppose, but for some reason airports are constructed in such a way that you can't go wandering outside for a jog and a gander at the skies.

with airport companies being so unnecessarily restrictive, for the petrol that goes in planes comes off of the same dinosaurs as that what goes in cars and you can walk around petrol stations, we then had to stroll around inside the airport after the class brie thing was done and, indeed, paid for.

other than purchasing a magazine for my Dad that i have absolutely no idea how i am going to get to him, we saw this rather fine statue on display in front of one store.

an absolutely magnificent likeness of the magnificent man they call Madiba. way better than the very bad statue at that Nelson Mandela Square place (see previous posts). our congratulations and admiration to the artist who created this; a fantastic work.

as conventional biology, if you accept its rule, dictates, the consumption of fine foods with brie cheese melted all over it, accompanied by a not unreasonable beverage in the form of a mild (in every sense) coffee, requires one to expel the waste excesses from their person.

whereas normally i am unaccustomed to discussing such things, and certainly never has anyone ever proved that i unleash attacks in such facilities (in particular at verk), the poster i saw in it necessitates me discussing the public restroom on offer.

here, then, is the poster, roughly in size that which one would normally see outside a cinema, advertising the latest motion picture to feature George Clooney or some other such rubbish.

i have been asked to review several products and services in the past, but not once that i can recall has anyone ever gone to so much effort to solicit from me what exactly i thought of a urinal that i had just used.

i forgot to send the review in, but if they are reading - the urinal was in the top ten of ones that i can remember using around the world, the taps on the wash basin were adequate to satisfactory, the hand dryer thingie was of a reasonable height and produced sufficient heat and the chap with a mop expecting coins from the gentry using the facility very nearly created the sense that one was in the Savoy or the Ritz, except it didn't.

of the restroom i would say it is tragic that one has to be cleared by customs and be in transit for a place beyond the borders of South Africa to experience the sheer magnificence of it. i am, however, unsure that this is the case, and i would wager any chap that wanted to go wee-wees there and have the pleasure of a gent with a mop ask you for money could go with little fuss.

why? because my experiences at security getting in were of the "classic" variety. as in, as usual i set off the metal detector, despite stripping my person of all known metal. i thus duly presented myself to the (theoretical) security officers, expecting a full pat-down and one of them handheld metal detectors to be passed over my person.

the security staff, alas, were too busy chatting and socializing with each other. they had not even noticed i had set the alarm off, and did not acknowledge me when i stood in front of them. so i just walked off and through.

although one is apparently now welcome to use electronic devices inflight and on a plane i refrained from doing so. it just strikes me as being an incredibly twat thing to do, and i would like to think i am not one of them obtrusive types of twat. other than being rude and inconsiderate to other passengers, why is it i would want to speak to or message anyone? to say what? "i am on a plane"? i would like to think anyone that needs or wishes to know that would be aware, thanks.

still, a brief stop in Dubai, brief as in a duration which allowed a couple of cigarettes, some ice cream and a can of Coke, did allow for one or two pictures. here is one of them, in which for some reason James thought that a water feature in Dubai would be the ideal place to perfect his Statue Of Liberty impression.

i did not take any further images of our travels, or for that matter of many of our adventures in our new, old locale thus far. it is a time to settle and adjust, as it were, and indeed a time to spend with our family. and so far our relatives have been astonishing, amazing, supportive and kind. we are very thankful to all who have helped us in tremendous ways thus far.

no doubt over the next days, weeks and years the usual kinds of pictures and stories will flash up here. for now, though, just another two for you. both are from this morning. here's one from about 7:30am, which features the moon in the sky and is a lot brighter than it actually was as i left the flash on the blueberry thing.

and yes, of course, there is a selfie for you to finish. this one was taken just after 8:30am, a time when i thought the sun might have made itself visible. it had, alas, not.

when the sun did appear, somewhere after 9:30am or so, it sparked off a most lovely day that was not as freezing as we expected it to be, but was quite nippy all the same. i am led to believe that tomorrow shall see the cold and the rain enter our lives, with snow likely in the next few weeks.

and with that weather forecast i feel myself wishing to climb in to bed, for i have heavy eyes, some sort of ear infection that has left me for the most part deaf in one ear and indeed i can win the battle against this keyboard no more tonight.

more tales, pictures and selfies in the not too distant future.

thanks, as ever, for reading.



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

arrival

hello there

just a quick update for those that like to know where i am and what i am, after two days of travels we are shattered but have made it.

more sooner or later!


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

go

hi there

and, indeed, bye there. au revoir, if you like. i shall soon, in a matter of hours in fact, be experiencing a lack of internets and networks or whatever it is called, that thing that lets you put a computer in touch with the rest of the world. "big massive wire" if you like.

i would imagine that the majority of readers here are friends and family, so they know only too well as to what is happening. for those who don't, well, ask, really.

i have recently courted some controversy with posts about boots and, most recently, the apparent aggressive tone of fruit juice producers. no such controversies shall stem from this blog for quite a few days, unless i think of something really provocative in the small hours of this next day.

for those who were affected by the accidentally controversial post i listed on boots ("anything that starts 'boo' is good", one commented), you may be even more affected to see that i was not kidding. off they go to face trial by the treacherous sea.

in there also, somewhere, is my stag. i left some discs in, including my magnificent theme song by my good friend Jonathan. if pirates seize the ship, bother to unpack, hook up my stag and hear the theme, i fear they may steal it for their own use. some, like for instance Roger Daltrey who seems puzzled that neither the Krays nor Ronnie Biggs got knighthoods whilst they were alive and probably expects them to get the nod in the imminent New Year's honours list, will probably think this is quite class. let them steal a Daltrey song, then.

with my stag packed up, off on an adventure with boots of yet to be determined worthiness, i am at somewhat of a loose end as to what to do for entertainment. or rather i was. i invented a rather class sport, or if you like form of entertainment.

i call it watching laundry dry.

it is a good deal more exciting than you may assume. i have learned of many interesting things as i have engaged in this new activity. well, just one really - surprisingly, towels dry a good deal faster than t-shirts do. i eagerly anticipated this being the other way around, so it is just as well that i did not wager any cash on this. well, no cash of consequence.

how do you do watching laundry dry? conventionally, i suppose. it is usually best to wash some clothes (or towels, but as my mate Fraser has explained with his tales of prison, towels can be clothes in certain, often unfortunate for the wearer, circumstances) and then hang them on a suitable drying apparatus, like a clothes line. then you watch.

i claim no ownership over this sport or spectacle. if you want to give it a go please feel free to do so, and equally feel free not to feel obliged to credit me or pay over money in royalties.

how have the boys taken to what their father has been up to? mostly rather well, and indeed to a great extent highly supportive. it's just that when my (considerably) better half and i explained to them that just about everything was being packed up and sent to sea, they said that they understood but did not, as it turns out, expect just about everything to be packed up and sent to sea.

they pretty much understand this now, and to a large degree the issues surrounding their expectations have, mostly, been resolved. probably.

with everything that we recalled needing to be sent off to face the challenges of the open oceans, and indeed closed oceans if there are any (i do not know and my atlas is in one of them boxes and i cannot be bothered to google), it was time to send them off by an initial trial by road.

with the roads here being what they are (feel free to seek out my "twats of the road" post), the trial by road could in fact be more tricky, if not more treacherous, than the trial by sea.

of the items that we had somehow forgot to mention to the removal chaps that they needed to take away, few if any provided much in the way of entertainment or solidarity. watching a stagnant side table, for instance, is not something which can compete with the glamour or prestige of watching laundry dry.

i turned to the newspapers then, and read several interesting advertisements in the classified section. one in particular, the one in the picture below that pertains to a lady of apparent Portuguese origins, provided some mild entertainment as i discussed it with my Staines based friend Spiros.

Spiros, as regular readers will be aware, has embarked on a rather interesting journey of self-discovery; one that sees him trying to imbue himself in the world of the tramps of Lambeth, Tooting and various other London suburban areas, swigging meths, Spesh and, on certain days of the week, McEwan's.

when i asked if there were any adverts like this available to him in London, he suggested that there were ladies not too different from the Portuguese one listed above at certain Travel Lodge hotels for a fee of around £60. i am not at all expert in such matters, but that strikes me as a rather excessive fee.

also, probably wrong. whereas i am not as well versed in the ways of this cockney rhyming slang business, i am fairly confident that they have no specific rhyme for £60 and thus they would not use this as a price for anything. i suppose they could use a convoluted combination of variations in number of "scores" and "monkeys", but in this kind of exchange i would imagine speed is of the essence and the use of a special cockney calculator may kill the mood and the moment.

sadly, or indeed happily, my life is just bereft of the glamour and excitement Spiros has in his world of Spesh, Travel Lodges as sleeping by a canal. it does, however, feature my (considerably) better half constructing furniture out of random items in a very A Team way.

observe.

that's a perfectly serviceable table she has constructed there from a box and some washing baskets. quite a vision she had to do that; i would have failed in any similar effort. it worked too, insofar as tables work instead of just sitting there looking impressive.

this one certainly served its purpose, as eating Nando's and McDonald's whilst sat at it proved to be a most excellent experience. perhaps, i would suggest, the best meal i have ever eaten off a cardboard and washing basket table dressed in a bin bag.

the astute will have observed a distinct lack of regular, obvious furniture in the above, with particular emphasis on sitting paraphernalia. that would be because my (considerably) better half has given all of that away, perhaps has some sort of misguided retaliation over what i did with my boots.

and just how do i entertain myself on an evening? i have been experimenting with a day/night variant of watching laundry dry.

so far, alas, the night end of day/night watching laundry dry has not been a spectacular success. whilst a level of humidity, indeed a reasonable amount of briskness to the air, makes drying laundry partially possible on an evening, it just does not have the spectator value. it could be that i am using the wrong, or indeed none whatsoever, floodlights.

thanks to the vagaries of UK broadcast times and this nonsense that is time zones i appear likely to be needing to be awake for the next 2 or so hours. i may get spectacularly bored and thus do another post just now.

however, if i do not, i think this will be the last post for at least 5 or so days, depending on connectivity and that, as well as how it goes when i face a distinctly equatorial trial by air. i will do the best i can to be online and updating soonest.

in the mean time, as ever, thank you for reading



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

the hostile ways of fruit juice companies

hi there

i recently had reason to drink a fruit juice thingie, the reason being that i was thirsty.my enjoyment of the juice, the type or structure of which escapes me for the moment, was spoiled by the unnecessarily harsh and aggressive tone taken by the juice manufactuer.

here, have a look.

is there, i have to ask, any need for this approach? a nice, soft, comforting font and soothing relaxation of the name of the proprietor of the juice followed by a lot of hostile, angry capital letters telling you what you can and cannot do.

i have paid money for this juice, so i will do what i like with it. it would have been nice if they had said "suggestions" for use, but no, they just insist on certain things.

i will decide where i store it, thank you. it might be cool, but also wet. it might be dry, but also warm. that is up to me, not you. you took my money for this product, there ends your rights over it.

also, i will refrigerate it as and when i see fit to. and i will take as long as i wish to consume it, i am not making a special calendar for this.

does every company that deals with fruit have to try and behave like Apple?

also that "for best before date see" somewhere else on the packet. would it really kill them to set the printing to put the best before date next to that pre-printed advice? and why would they want to sell me something that is out of date?

i see no reason for them to be so hostile. my (considerably) better half suggests that it might be a law or something that means they have to print that stuff. quite possibly the case that, but do they have to be so mean in complying with a law?

damn them, i shall drink the juice anyway, if only to spite them.



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

a saturday, or of pigs and skol

hey there

you know if these netbook notebook thingies were the only computer in the world they would be amazing. they are not, however, and so they are crap. this will, however, have to do for now.

just a few random pictures from the day today for you, with a hefty percentage of course being selfies. well, indeed, and why not.

first up, one which will hopefully please the former members of the E1 posse a fair bit.

yes, it is the pig by the beach sculpture or curiosity that my chums in E1 got me during one of several travels around the globe. how splendid that it is that this has survived for what, some 25 years. blimey.

rather pleasant that it shall soon be going full circle too.

i would imagine that this pig statue thingie is a good deal less controversial than my musings in respect of boots from the other day. i do, however, appreciate that some of you would quite like to see it without me blocking up the picture, so here you go.

indeed those are my most beloved pliers next to it; the ones i used to use to put the window up and down in my car until me Mum and my (considerably) better half made me get it fixed. actually, after a mere two days of using it, my (considerably) better half, used to a pampered life of electronic windows, appears to have become flummoxed by the ways of a windy window and has done a right number on it. these pliers may be called to duty once more, then.

for those who for whatever reason did not like the pig but wish to see more of me, here is one of them selfie things i promised, complete with a hat i found in a cupboard.

oh yes i agree that is a most excellent South Park hat so i am at a bit of a loss as to why it ended up being shoved in a cupboard. i do not recall any sort of falling out between myself and South Park, so i presume it was done so on the basis of me not needing a hat at that stage.

for those of you who wish to see neither me nor pigs, here is a picture of some Skol lager that my mate Spiros sent me.

Spiros is, as regular readers will know, a very interesting chap indeed. presently he is attempting to immerse himself in the vagrant lifestyle which he tells me is prolific in Staines and Tooting. why he wishes to do this i don't know, but i might have led him to believe that drinking lots of Skol and sleeping by a canal would do the trick.

i am not sure if he bought the Skol. i suspect he may have gone for some Spesh or McEwan's instead. he will no doubt let me know when he wakes up and recalls where he is, or more specifically why he is where he is.

that should do for the day today, hope you have appreciated the great effort i have gone to in typing this up on one of them net note book things!



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

evil boots

hey there

i have randomly come to the conclusion, after a great deal of thought, that boots are quite possibly and in all likelihood rather evil. i am not sure that they are, or if i accept the concepts of good and evil, but that is my possible conclusion.

in following through with this, i have thus decided to cast aside all boots. even if it is just, in the grand scheme of things, for a little while. i will no doubt see them again soon, but for the next few months i have taken a vow to never wear them again.

here they are, cast aside.

yes, even some regular shoes that appeared bootesque and yes, even the cowboy style boots.

to ensure the exile, exodus or if you like things that start with an e the exorcism or exit of the boots i have a team of four chaps here to tape them up in secure packaging and send them off to sea for a while.

yes, i say, to the sea with them, no matter how treacherous the sea may be. these boots must face down the trials of the oceans if they are to prove their worth. i anticipate that on the seas they will face trial by pirates, trial by wave, trial by shark and indeed trial by fishing quota enforcement.

if the boots conquer these challenges then they shall be deemed worthy and not evil. i will then wear them.

to be safe it seems that the chaps are boxing up every single item that the boot may have exerted an evil influence over. it is good that they are doing this, and as far as i am concerned these items must also face the trials of the treacherous sea. i would not wish to eat toast or drink coffee from mechanisms that the boots have spread their evil ways towards. it is in all likelihood the case that England lost the Ashes as i watched it on a TV that the boots may have cast evil thoughts towards.

the above shows me in the garden, watching the laundry dry. this to a degree certainly is a sort of act of penance, yes. but it is also out of sheer boredom, since i cannot do much of anything in the house as the chaps clear the pollution of the possibly evil boots.

which is how i have come to end up testing the patience of the battery of a somewhat elderly netbook or notebook sort of thing, plugged into the internet and writing whatever comes to mind about boots and the seas.

and with that i am inclined to give up on typing on the netbook for a while. it is somewhat tricky with fingers of my size.

i shall try to do updates over the next few days, barring some swines hacking my account once more, and keep you informed as best as i can.



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

hack attack

hi there

well well well. it seems that my account, or two of my accounts, were ones that were hacked some two weeks ago. that would be according to the news, and indeed the messages i woke up to.

my good friend Spiros is particularly good at sending confusing messages, but the one today was a particular masterpiece. early in the morning he sent word that he would help me, asked me what sort of camera it was that i was so excited about and warned me of the last time i had a partner in Africa.

after i asked him something along the lines of "wtf" for those that know what those letters stand for, he advised me that he had got a mail from me requesting money. $300 to be precise. for a camera.

i went to go and have a look at my email and discovered this.

oh, as they say, dear. it seemed my password had been changed on my behalf as i slept. presumably, you would think, by some bunch of Completely Unkind Nerdy Twat Sh!theads, as it were. that's not nice of them.

no matter how safe and secure you keep passwords and no matter what web thingie people do to secure information it seems these hackers, or if you like twats, keep managing to break into systems and obtain usernames and password lists.

at the least the leading sites all offer ways to mostly undo any damage caused, or at the least let you get back into your emails and profiles and what have you.

here is what i was greeted with when i went into recover my account.

hmn, so some twat decided to change my details to say i was in Togo, could not write a phone number properly and had a singularly stupid email address.

no doubt the email address above has now been discontinued or deleted, but if you are of a mind to do so go for it, spam away at them.

here is that detail again if you are interested.

it was not, alas, just my email that got hit - they decided to take over my facebook profile too. and had somehow wiped out the email address that i had left to exist more or less just for facebook, so all that spam from them could just go into one easily ignored folder.

now for this one the twats used more or less the same email address as above, just the 3 at the end seems to have been changed to a 1.

oh no it hasn't, it's an 11 not a 1, and it is supposedly outlook rather than gmail.

what did they do with my facebook? well, sent 3 or 4 begging messages for money, as per my mail, but also decided to add some friends for me. how nice of them.

want a look at them? i thought you might, so i took a screenshot before i blocked them and of course reported the profiles as fake.

sadly Florance's profile page had already gone by the time i got around to looking, but the other two were alive and well - in facebook terms - when i checked. here is the interestingly named Success Classic.

Drake and One Direction? how very cosmopolitain of him. either that or it is just that the f*****g dickhead that set up this profile clicked on things at random.

as for Jennifer Maxis of the Cape, well, she looks like a woman with issues.

hopefully both of these ghastly profiles have been closed down by now. although for all i know they too were also hacked and for some reason the twats doing this thought we should all be friends.

what message did they send out on my behalf? well, it was this crap.

yes, that's genius that is. all that effort to take over an account to ask for 300 dollars for a camera? it is with good fortune that i am blessed with friends who are not even the slightest bit retarded. is Togo even a Republic?

i believe i have contacted everyone fortunate enough to get this from me, advising them of what happened and how they should just delete it. one or two chums, however, have taken it upon themselves to jerk these twats around by arranging for the above to get hit with a lot of things.

no doubt many have had their accounts used in this way. i cannot imagine anyone would have been so stupid as to fall for this rubbish, but you never know.


with the obvious exception of Completely Unkind Nerdy Twat Sh!theads,



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

more cowboy action

hi there

well, what a magnificent way to bookend, and indeed flag the halfway mark of, this year. avid readers of this blog will be aware that i am always on the lookout for quality literature for my beloved mother-in-law. i have, to this extent, a proclivity for books that feature cowboys.

does she like books with cowboys in? i have no idea. well, i have no idea if she did, but i sincerely hope that she does now.

after the triumph of Cowboy Under Siege in January and Welcome Home, Cowboy in June, it was a delight that in December i could present her with a third, circumstantially aptly named book with cowboys in it.

that one is called Cowboy's Triplet Trouble and just looks awesome. well, it has a cowboy on the cover at least.

is it related to the other books? no idea. do i care if it is or it is not? not really, to be honest. i do however hope that my beloved mother-in-law enjoys it, at the least.

i do not know if she can be tempted to give us a review after reading it, but if she can that would probably better, and make a good deal more sense, than if she forwarded a review before reading it.

hopefully i find further cowboy action books to forward on to her in the not too distant future.



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

ashes to ashes

hi there

well, what can one say, really, beyond f*****g well done England.after an unconvincing, but all the more impressive for it, 3-0 Ashes win earlier this year, the urn has been surrendered back to the Australians for the first time in, what, 5 or so years?

surrendered, i say. let me not undermine or understate the superb Australian performance, but of the 14 days it took Australia to win back the Ashes, out of a possible 15, only on day one of the First Test and half of day one on the Third Test did England look anything like they should.

surveys and that held in that fine country often come to the result that the Australians consider the Ashes to be the single most important sporting achievement for their nation; many considering it just the most important thing ever, irrespective of sports related or beyond.

it was always highly unlikely that Australia would take this series lightly. there was no chance they were going to risk losing four times in a row to England without one hell of a fight. and fighting they came.

England can mostly hang their heads in shame. the First and Third Tests were winnable. we had Australia down and out, but as soon as the first 5 or 6 wickets fell cheaply, our bowlers seemingly took the foot off the pedal, assuming the rest was a breeze. the less said about our "here, catch this" approach to batting the better.

Australia, meanwhile, take the foot off the pedal when across two innings they have about 1000 runs on the board and when they have taken all 20 wickets from their opponents. that is how you win Test matches, whoever you are facing.

as crazy as it sounds from a Yorkshire born England supporter, there is much pleasure to be taken from seeing Australia win this series. a weakened Australian cricket side means that world cricket is weak. the ease with which Australia lost the last home series, in 2010/11, followed by the way they could not gain a single Test win in England in 2013 all screamed that the cricket of this country was in decline. not only has a stop been put to that particular rot, it's fair to say they are back and ready to challenge the likes of South Africa and India in order to be declared the best in the world once more.

more pleasure can be drawn from watching a side take on the best Australia has to offer and losing by little than can be from watching a side knock over a weak Aussie team. of course i want England to win games, but they need to understand they have to work to win. i think they might get that now.

looking at the pattern above, there's every chance that we might lose the Fourth Test by less than one hundred runs. can we at least draw if not win the Fifth Test, since actually winning one seems beyond them? it remains to be seen how they respond to this.

congratulations Australia, best of luck retaining that most prized of possessions.



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

selfies by candlelight

hi there


ok, there are some really pedantic people prowling the internet, so let me clarify something. when i say "selfies by candlelight" do not mean candlelight.

candlelight is just a generic term for any source of light, be it a torch, the sun or some sort of massive explosion. i know that dictionaries around the world say different, but please bear with Mookie for he is very busy and will fix it as soon as he can.

and yes, strictly speaking, the above picture is not a selfie, for it is my (considerably) better half, apparently rather pleased to be about to hack me up with some sort of implement. so when i say "selfies by candlelight" i mean that the idea of the title "selfies by candlelight" is quite class and i wanted to use it.

i have a most pressing need to make myself look, if not better, then passportishlike. i am not going to show you what passportishlike looks like here, of course, as that may well upset the authorities. however, i can assure you it looks next to nothing like this first picture below.

blimey. i at the best of time avoid mirrors, but even in the odd glance by accident i had no idea that my hair had gone quite so wild. time to get it hacked off then, with the greatest of thanks to my (considerably) better half for doing it, although she will probably get quite cross at me saying that she is hacking it off.

my apologies to some of you for what could be seen as an excessive display of skin from myself in some of these selfies, like the above. a number of my chums, however, will probably be quite excited to see so much flesh. here i am thinking of Spiros, Martin and Payney, but mostly Spiros. he likes what he calls uninhibited men, which might be this pose here.

the great danger of having a haircut done here is, of course, the electricity could just go off at any given moment. without any warning and without any way of discovering why, never mind when it will be back on. so you could end up with a mere fraction of a haircut and be left looking like a right tit. or even more of a tit than usual, if you like.

could or will i ever get used to a life where one does not refill flasks every second night, for fear of power blackouts? i am not sure, but i do look forward to finding out. i hope all the people of this country one day live without that fear.

this next picture i, for some reason, find mildly amusing. no idea why.

and here i am with mostly just a moustache. a number of people think i should ditch the beard and keep the moustache, but i am not so sure. it looks and sounds like a lot of effort, really.

it would make things complicated for Simon Le Bloody Bon in his efforts to copy my look, i suppose, which would be a bonus. but why must i put myself out just to stop Bon Bon from copying my look? he would just turn up at some fashion awards with a moustache anyway, probably with Nick and John, saying "hey everyone, i have just invented the moustache look. it is mine and i did not copy it from some small time, overweight, out of date blogger, honest" and the people people would believe him so long as he remained Simon and kept doing Simon things.

except maybe for the boat sinking stuff.

nearly done, if you have read this far you may well be pleased to learn.

sorry about all the text, really. as Barack, "Dave" and whoever it is in charge of Norway or Denmark or whatever (same thing) will tell you, the selfie should speak for itself. or journalists should write about what it means.

so yeah, last one then!

is this look passportishlike? not sure to be honest, may have to have a gander and then tackle things with one of them razors. well, when i say things, i mean facial hair.

i can't shave it all off, though. when Payney sees me with my head and beard all shaved off, he expects me to wear some sort of black cloth and quote TS Eliot whilst he prances around with an enormous blade on the end of a stick, intent on making some sort of sacrifice of me. which, in fairness, a lot of people probably like the sound of.

i hope to bring you more selfies by candlelight in the not too distant future.



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