street life

hello there

no, not something to do with that fine, celebrated song off of Ferry and Roxy Music, looks you see, but just a simple way to tie in the last of the pics from our time away at, or if you like in, the magnificence of Scarborough. i didn't know what else to call this one, and as the "life" thing seems to link them, well, there you go.

the boys were very excited about the idea of staying in a bed & breakfast, despite having no idea what a bed & breakfast actually was. we did our best to explain to them that it did pretty much what it said on the box; with it being the case in where we stayed excellently so. it has 9+ out of 10 reviews all over, and i have added to that.

what they liked the most, however, was this idea of something called a "bar" being present.

they were entirely oblivious, as one would hope at their age, to the beers, wines and spirits available to the gentry and the ladies. they were, however, very excited by the presence of coca cola for sale. they really, really liked the idea of a bar being somewhere that one could sit and be served coca cola on a perpetual basis.

whilst my (considerably) better half and i seldom drink these days, we agreed - since we were on holiday - to sit and have a pint each so that they boys could indulge their wish of sitting by the bar and having a coke. i suspect, as years go by, this scene will be repeated, although the coke shall be "sweetened up", as it were.

on, naturally, then, to the train ride from Peasholm Park to where Sea Life is. and, indeed back. a really smart train ride it is, and one that we all enjoyed. enjoyed, if not entirely complied with the "sit down, keep hands inside" ruling and instructions on the side. still, no limbs lost.

we had been to Sea Life the day before, so literally took the train, had an ice cream and took the train back. it was most pleasant and fun, in particular as it allowed us to have an elevated look at some of the more significant of the 20 or so mini crazy adventure golf courses that Scarborough offers to guests.

speaking of elevated views, open top double decker buses.whereas london believes it to be a city which has a monopoly on them, this is not the case, as Scarborough has many of them going between the north bay and the south bay.

as was the case as was with the bar, when the boys clocked what an open top double decker bus was, it was declared to be the best thing ever, and something that we should ride on frequently.

more pictures of open top bus adventures coming up for you, but i thought i'd slide that one in now just to mix things up a bit.

back to Peasholm Park, or rather the park over the road from it, where the very impressive looking open air theatre is. or maybe that's part of Peasholm Park too. on offer there were some of those massive air filled ball things that people who weigh less than me may step into and roll or drift across the water.

at the risk of being a touch repetitive, when the boys clocked what they were, they declared them to be the best thing ever and wished to give them a go.

what is the proper name for these things? not sure. James said it was something or other that began with a "z", but i cannot remember what exactly, sorry. they are just big inflatable balls that you get into and ride across the water in.

are they good, fun value for what they are? well, i raised an eyebrow, dear reader, when i was informed that it was £4.40 for 5 minutes, each. a fair price, i suppose, for the equipment and that which goes into it, and to be honest 5 minutes is just about all the fun you can extract out of the concept in one go.

five minutes was pretty much too much for William, who got bored very quickly with it. James, however, loved it, and wanted to have another go the next day. which he did, as you can see above. William worked out that being held by Daddy and pushing the ball that James was in was fun, so that's a win-win, and i saved £4.40 so there you go.

back to the buses, then, and another open top ride for you. they were so marvellous, apparently, that we had to stand and wait for another bus if there was no space for us on the top of one at the stop. in fairness, they came along fairly frequently - unlike the ones here, of course. Arriva could well learn from the idea of running buses at times convenient for their clients to get on.

there are two open top bus companies running in Scarborough. it would appear they are in healthy and friendly competition with each other, for i saw no evidence of drive by shootings or attempts by one to ram the other off the road.

we tried both, although i cannot recall the names of them. from a cost perspective the mostly brown ones for the win, as their all day family ticket (2 adults, 2 children) costs £7, whereas the same ticket is £10 on the blue and yellow ones. the blue and yellow ones, however, run slightly more frequently, and also run far later into the night.

a last picture on the bus, then, and one selected purely for the look on William's face. he learned the hard, and perhaps most effective way, that there is a price to pay for open top bus shenanigans on windy days, looking at the look on his face.

where is it that we took the bus to? the south bay of Scarborough. the south bay is what one might call the "business end" of this particular seaside resort, for that is where all the fishing and boat trips happen, along with the amusements, arcades, sticks of rock shops and what have you.

we didn't go on the beach at the south bay, but for what it's worth that seems to be the more tourist orientated one, as in if young lads and lasses wish to hang about in speedos, string like bikinis and that sort of nonsense, meet and be flirtatious, that's probably the place to do it. we just troubled ourselves with the amusements, the places to eat and, thanks to James spotting it, the Tardis off of that Doctor Who thing.

ok, so it's not the actual Tardis so much as it is a disused and distressed, somewhat abandoned old police box. but to the boys, and my (considerably) better half, it was the Tardis, and they were happy to have their picture taken in front of it. if it were the real one, well, one would hope that that time travel fellow off of Doctor Who, whose name escapes me for the moment, would clean the bird muck off of it.

and that's the slightly more expensive, yet runs for longer into the night and more frequently, bus right there in the background.

i have been pretty good, i would like to think, at limiting your exposure to me on these holiday posts. for the most part i have just presented you with images of the 75% of my family that you all actually like. indulge me, then, with my presence in a family selfie of us on the only boat with a motor on it on Peasholm Park.

i did want to get one the pedalo boats to go around in, as i think i maybe mentioned in an earlier post. they, however, looked like hard work, and there was a massive queue for them. the boat styled like a swan was a reasonable cost, and as we passed people peddling they commented how they wished that they had gone the way we had instead. also, lovely bloke running it.

and that's about that, then. except for one more picture of the boys propping up the bar.

yeah, this is the boys hitting the bar before breakfast. we kind of hope that this will not be a habit for them as life goes on, but who knows?

right, that pretty much covers the holiday then, or the parts that i wish to share. hope it's been of interest to someone somewhere, and that the info was useful!

more of this sort of thing as and when we go on our travels!



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

duran duran appreciation day

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books of bedtime

hello there

and indeed, as you can work out from the title, look you see, welcome to the new reality of my reading and subsequent reviews. or comments, if you like, since i am not at all sure i do in fact present proper reviews of books, or if you like novels, here. as regular readers will be aware, Arriva, the providers of theoretical public transport in my area, have done all that they can do to stop people actually using their service. as certain somewhat draconian laws exist which prevent a gent from reading as he drives, my reading now takes place on a night alone. hey ho.

what two novels have i most recently read before i drifted off to sleep? well, that would be these two, for a quick glance. hopefully the glance lets you know whether or not you want to read more.

oh, goodie goodie good good. blogger and apple are at war on the subject of image rotation once more, i see, and so you have a sideways view of the novels. sorry for that.

a quick, spoiler free overview of the novels? sure.  

Piece Of My Heart is some 4 or 5 books after the last one i read, and quite a lot happened. it's a cheeky novel in that it borrows off of a famous, or if you like infamous, incident in rock history for its plot point of departure. it's rather good.

Sweetheart or perhaps Sweet Heart appears to be a sequel to what would have been a very, very nasty book indeed to read. it's not at all bad, but rather graphic and violent for some tastes, i suspect. much of the plot and sequences scream "make a film of me", so you may want to hold off on reading it to see if they do in fact do that.

as usual, any links here to the worldwide grocer of poor tax standards but generally fondly thought of by the members of the shopping society are not a specific endorsement from me, or any indication of an affiliation or sponsorship. they exist here purely for ease of reference and you are most welcome, as was the case with me, to shop around and get them for a good deal less.

right, that's the spoiler free review done, so a warning needs to be in place for the rest of this post. ignore or act upon it on your own discretion.

**** POSSIBLE SPOILERS AWAIT THE READER AHEAD ****

if i were asked, i would say that's one of my best bit of scrolling warnings yet, really.

and so a return to the world of the copper that likes to conduct as much of his work in a pub as possible. yeah, it's another DCI Banks novel off of Peter Robinson, with Piece Of My Heart costing me £1 off of the library.

as mentioned above, there's apparently 3 or 4 Banks novels i have missed. in those novels, it seems, his wife has left him (it was a bit rocky in the last one i read), he found he had a wealthy brother who subsequently died and left him a load of shiny things, his old boss retired, he had at least one affair with a colleague and someone absolutely twatted him one with an iron bar.

but let's worry about this one. plot? a journalist visiting where it is that Banks lives got killed during a power cut. it turns out the journalist was due to interview a former member of a band; a band which had the misfortune to have a founding member die via drowning in a swimming pool. was that drowning a murder, in fact, and was the journalist killed for finding that out? or is it all related to a murder that was dubiously solved back in the 60s; a murder that took place whilst that band was doing a gig?

it's an interesting novel, clearly borrowing from the curious case of Brian Jones. a lot of the fun of the novel is, of course, speculating whether or not anything other than death by swimming pool is a reference to urban legends about the $tone$ or any other such 60s pop rock beat combo groups. but best i not say more, for fear of giving spoilers away that make reading the book, on the whole, pointless.

yes, the usual is in place, as in as much police work as possible happens in a pub. this is true of both the present day sections, and the 1969 flashbacks, so to speak, to the original murder investigations. and, once again, at least one crime, as is standard in the world of Peter Robinson books, is resolved by the English way of doing things, which is to say that (and you read the spoiler warning) someone hands themselves in and confesses even though there was little or no chance of the constabulary clocking it was them.

it would seem that the 50p i threw at Sweetheart by Chelsea Cain was something of a comparative bargain, going on the £10 - £15 pricing it presently enjoys over on amazon at time of me going to print. but is it any good at whatever price you pay?

plot? well, it's a sequel to what sounds very much like it was a lot of disturbing, role reversal gender-wise off of Thomas Harris torture porn. had i read the first one, i suspect i might not have troubled myself with any more. lots have, though, as i believe there are now 6 novels in this series.

that's not much of the plot, is it? right. some copper, who was captured and tortured by a prolific, lady serial killer called Gretchen, is called in when a dead body is found in a forest. near, as it turns out, two other bodies which seemed to have been dumped quite a while ago. also, a popular senator who was about to be exposed for having what in this day and age we are encouraged to call Jimmy Savile tendencies, is killed in an apparent car accident with a famous, well established and celebrated alcoholic of a journalist. yeah. stereotypes abound here. also, the copper - Archie, i think - who was captured and tortured has an unhealthy obsession with, if not love for, his captor, and keeps trying to see her. his fellow coppers but a block on it, but, wouldn't you know, as part of the plot, nature finds a way......

it was an enjoyable novel, if nothing particularly spectacular. a couple of the sequences, in particular a school shut down, all screamed "please film me", as it would provide high action and drama on a relatively low production cost. at it probably would make a pretty decent film, this.

the biggest surprise, i believe, was just how well developed and rounded the theoretical protagonist, Archie the copper, was. it's some really good characterisation and development on the go with him. the rest, in particular this Gretchen killer type, are somewhat skimpy and one dimensional in their presentation. perhaps that gets fixed in some of the other novels.

would i be interested in reading more of these Archie & Gretchen novels? probably, and i would pick them up if i saw them at prices not too far north of what i paid for this one. i'm not, however, going to go out of my way to find them, and i am most decidedly not going to pay amazon's prices.

a sideways look at the backs of the books? i don't see why not, although it is somewhat blurry.

so, two agreeable, indeed acceptable novels read, at a rate somewhat slower than the 60 or 70 minutes each day on a bus would have allowed me to plough through them. i would not hesitate in saying both are worth a read, mindful of the sequence of novels referenced above.

next to read? not sure. i have ordered some interesting sounding novel, the name of which escapes me, that apparently them who did Taxi Driver and Casino attempted to film a few years ago, but is now being made by him that did The French Connection and The Exorcist. i might grab something from the pile before that lands though; you just never know with my wild, crazy ass life.

i trust the info here has been of interest or use to someone!



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

beach life

hi there

yes indeed, look you see, another round of images from our time away a little while ago. as opposed to, i suppose, images from some time away that has yet to dawn. i mean i could do some sort of artist's impression of what that would be like, but as i took the proper, fancy digital camera away with us, it would be a shame to waste proper pictures, would it not.

it was to our great fortune that the weather forecasts were on the whole incorrect. the warlocks and charlatans of the weather bureaus had all prophesied rain. this water from the skies was, as it turned out, notable only through its absence, and i trust those that predicted it have subsequently been arrested, if not burned at the stake.

the good weather allowed us to do something that has been, for the most part of the lives of the 75% of my family that you actually all like, quite a rarity - wander a beach.

living mostly, if not extensively, in the inland empire of Johannesburg (i know my friend Jonathan wishes for me to refer to it as the Transvaal but that would upset some so i shall not) means that a coastal area is not someone one sees on a daily, weekly or monthly basis. well, not unless for some reason you went from there to a coastal region - Durban, perhaps, or maybe even Cape Town for the more cosmopolitan - on a daily weekly or monthly basis, i suppose. and some probably do. so let's move on.

i don't, for a rare change, recall all the facts and stats on the matter, but from what i do remember it is the case that in England you are never more than just slightly north of 70 miles away from the coast. there are plenty of rivers and that too, in particular of course the world celebrated Tees and all them other rivers that are not quite so good.

rivers, however, do not have sand. various areas of the coast do have sand, and such areas are colloquially but not absurdly referred to as "beaches". the 3/4 of my family that you all like rather enjoyed their experience on such a place. William even tried to make an indelible mark of evidence that he had been there.

are the beaches of Scarborough any good? well, we only went on the north bay one, and that was most smart. the south bay one looked really good too, although from what we observed from a slight distance suggested that it attracted the rather more common of tourist type to it. the more refined connoisseur, it seems, is compelled to rather take a residence up on the north bay.

what of the swimming? well, we didn't really. there was some minor dabbling of toes into the sea, but that was it. a few did go out, and as point of fact we saw one or two embark on an ambitious attempt to surf on the relatively agreeable waves. the last time i went to Scarborough was the 1980s, and then it would have been unthinkable that surfing would ever have been allowed.

no images of surfing for you, unless there's a dude in the distance that i am unaware of, but here comes the gang after some successful toe dabbling.

if you have noted, and been pleasantly surprised by, the fact that i am not present in any of these pictures, then i can assure you your pleasantness shall continue for the duration of it, for i do not feature in a single image here. well, maybe my shadow shall creep into one or two, but that's about it.

what would a visit to the beach be without some beach related fun and games? it would be a visit to the beach without beach related fun and games, i suppose. we did not take that course, however, as we purchased some most splendid items to have fun with, as James is showing off here.

well, attempted fun. the rain may well have stayed away, but the wind, alas, was an ever present. unless we wished to send off the frisbee to the very finest of the seven seas, we were perpetually throwing it against the wind, which affected the velocity and aerodynamics somewhat. the ball, at the least, was immense fun to throw and catch, with the vast space allowing for some long distance fancy stuff. it was in particular class when a dog caught the ball and ran off with it, but the lady custodian of the dog was kind enough to retrieve it and return it to us.

seaside commerce is notorious for exploiting tourist filth, and we were no exception. that frisbee cost me £1.99, whereas the ball cost me £1. this was after the lady in the shop attempted to charge me £1.99 for it and i pointed out to her the 99p price marked on it. i was in no mood to quarrel the cause of this extra 1p levelled against my account. 

another image of the family walking around the beach? surely.

the above was taken near a rather distinguished sequence of what i believe one calls "rock pools", as in they are pools on the coast made possible by a circular like enclave capturing the water of the sea and giving stark refusal to the tides when they request it back.

quite a few crabs take to life in these pools, and quite a few people take to collecting the crabs from these pools and storing them in buckets. why? not sure. perhaps it is to take them away and eat them, or maintain them as pets, or possibly just to release at a later stage. one rather enthusiastic gent, a complete stranger to us, explained with some excitement to my (considerably) better half that he had found a pool with absolutely masses of crabs in it, and he ran off to the shops of the coast to buy more buckets to store them in. good luck to that gent, i say; be free.

yikes i have put a lot of pictures here and i have just about burned through any text of consequence that i could add to them. apologies if it all goes a bit more sparse from here on out then.

if there's one thing we learned from our trip to the beach it was that the boys really, really love the beach. this is most useful information, and shall steer us on the direction of future breaks away. for all the wonderful and varied attractions on offer, it seems that they would be quite content to run around on the sands and by the sea for a few hours each day.

also, they rather liked digging down into the sands of the beach, to see what they may find.

as it turned out, what they found was more sand, but this did not dampen their enthusiasm for the task.

no. i know you hoped the answer to your question would be yes, but it is not. the boys did not even think to enquire as to if they might be able to dig a suitable size of hole for me to get into so that they may bury me in the sand. perhaps they suspected that i would refuse such an invitation anyway. perhaps next time.

another look at my intrepid family taking steps into the sea? surely.

what is, you may well ask, the state of seaweed and other such vegetation associated with saline loaded water of the coast of Scarborough? i don't really have anything to compare it to as such, but what we saw and experience was not, to me, a trouble some amount. the lack or abundance of it wasn't really part of our thinking, although William had great interest in what bits he found.

now that i think of it, looking at the above, my (considerably) better half suggested that the stark shiny white nature of her legs may well cause some blindness in those who see them. should this have affected you, and you've recovered and for some reason have returned here, well, i would say sorry but i don't see how it's my fault or problem.

as we have tried, for close to a decade now, to be good and decent parents, we have not - as you'd expect - allowed our offspring to bear witness to the sanity testing experience that is, or was, Baywatch. so it was something of a surprise when James wished to have pictures taken of him doing what can only be described as a classic, if not iconic, Hasselhoff pose.

perhaps he has discovered the magic of  the one they call The Hoff on that you tube thing, i don't know. what was the name of his character in the show again? Mitch or something, wasn't it? i never particularly cared for the show to be honest. although the Americans produced some fine TV shows in the 90s - well, X Files, that version of Star Wars where the new captain was bald and of course the brilliant Seinfeld - a lot of it had really crap music. Baywatch had the worst, in truth.

anyway, i pretty much think i've told you all there is to tell from an hour or so on the beach. oh yes, there shall indeed be further images of our time away, but for now i will leave you with another image of the substantial part of my family you all like at something of a distance, once again staring at the sea.

as 'tis friday, may i sign off by saying i hope you all have a fantastic weekend, and if you read this within moments of it being published, thank you for taking some time from a fantastic weekend to come and have a gander at this.

if you had tickets for the 4th day of the 4th Test, i would wager you now have ample time to peruse some of the other stuff i have put up here........................



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

urinals of the world

hi there

i am prepared to admit, look you see, that the title of this blog post is somewhat misleading, or indeed even a tad incorrect. the plural is entirely superfluous, for a start, and thus as a consequence the claim of them, or if you like it, being "of the world" is on the whole incorrect. downright false, actually. sorry, but at least you have got the disappointment out of the way early on.

my good friend Spiros has elected to go on a tour of various areas of Europe noted for being home to what many may well consider to be a disproportionate number of peasants. i can't tell you why he has done this because, honestly, i am not really or particularly interested beyond him bringing back some lovely, cheap cigarettes. and even then, dear reader, i suspect that instead of Marlboro he shall be going out of his way to find me brands such as Κρίμα and Φιλικό Κυρίου. i can't wait. 

regardless, Spiros has elected to send me images from time to time and i have decided to share them here, mostly for the benefit of all you Spiros enthusiasts. the first one is, i am sure you can guess, of a gentleman's restroom facility.

Spiros is quite enamoured, if not enthralled, by gentlemen's toilets. he reckons they are not so much "as good a place as any" to meet men, but rather an exceptionally good place to do this. he likes to share his enthusiasm for them by sending me pictures of particular noteworthy ones. famously, as it happens, he once sent me some 300MB images of the restroom facilities at Dubai airport, and regaled me with tales of the many Arabic and Turkish gentlemen who seem content to spend hours standing around the entrance of them.

the above urinal is unmistakably Greek, which would make sense as Greece was on the list of areas Spiros reckoned he was going to go and see to survey peasants and a few scrapyards. beyond the classical architecture of their distinct and distinguished urinals, Greece has in recent times become rather famous for one or two minor economic indiscretions. in official terms, their economy "πήγε πατήσαμε" and has pretty much remained that way. so it feels somewhat sadistic of me to share an image of a banknote that Greece would probably rather appreciate being sent to them in real terms.

this banknote, with a face value of £10 sterling, was recently issued to me by one of them ATM thingies, or if you like money vending machines. yes, it is quite pretty, but the reason i am sharing it is, you may have worked out, for the fact that it seems to be encoded.

i have, weirdly, had several messages passed on to me in unorthodox ways in the past. am i prepared to discuss or share those ways with you? not really. one or two of them are ones which conjure somewhat fond memories; ones from a time when i might be persuaded to have considered myself, as an existence, worthwhile. for the most part, though, messages are usually conveyed to me via the usual means - letters in the post, more recently emails and texts, people randomly yelling "wanker" at me in public places, telephone calls and the occasional drop by and visit from time to time.

someone going to the time and trouble to send me a message via a banknote dispensed by one of them cash machines is, however, a new one. which is kind of weird as i spent some 14 years working in a bank, now that i think. i mean, how could they have known that i would have used that machine at such a time to get the note with the message on it? that's James Bond stuff, man. except without the being picky about vintages of wine, troubling myself with concerns about if a drink was shaken or stirred and, perhaps regrettably, without the random and apparently very easy to get sex with ladies who shall invariably attempt to kill me not too long after the fact.

we shall return to the encoded banknote later, but for now, more of the Spiros tour of peasants and indeed back to the land where the economy "πήγε πατήσαμε". and further indeed, back to the hope that he remembers to bring me back some class fags.

the focal point of this image is the magnificent, bowl like ashtray you can see. it's a very very attractive one and Spiros has pledged, even if it means that the Greek economy goes even more "πήγε πατήσαμε", he will bring it home for me. he does not care if people have to get hurt in the process of him getting it. 

yes i did, as it happens, ask him about the suntan lotion. i asked him if he had gone all nancy boy, using lotions and oils to bronze himself in the vicinity of the agean sea sun. his answer was "that is not lotion, bru". fearing that it might be related to any one of several gents he met at the bathroom from earlier, i troubled myself with asking him no further questions. 

yes, i do actually appreciate that i should be posting further images from our time away in Scarborough rather than troubling you all with this, but i am doing this now, so there you go. here, dear reader who has got this far, here's a closer look at the apparently coded message on the bank note. 

what does it mean? i mean, what is it that someone is trying to tell me? as far as i can work out, someone seems to have wished for me to spend £146 on Carling, which is an awful lot to spend on glorified, fizzy water, and to that extent handed over either £150 or £180 to get it, with the matter of if that is a 5 or an 8 being rather unclear. 

i'm going to assume that the translation is not quite so literal as the above, but without a cypher or some sort of clue i'm afraid that's the only possible interpretation i can reach. perhaps, i suppose, the message was intended for someone else, and i rather inadvertently intercepted it.

if this message wasn't intended for me - and for all i know it's all to do with some sports sponsorship deal being brokered - then i can only hope the intended recipient has somehow found the message here and has responded or acted accordingly. in the mean time, i shall probably just spend the note with the code on it on some item or other. 

right, i am off to write a fairly strongly worded letter to Royal Mail, and then i suspect i shall be retiring for the evening. so a post of actual interest might not be coming your way here tonight, sorry.



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

sea life

hello there

well, here we go. this will be the first, look you see, of several posts of our brief break away last week. we hadn't been away anywhere on holiday as such since we've returned to England, and prior to that our last holiday was, erm, coming to England in 2012. yeah, i know, some people never ever get to take a break, but still, we were glad to get off and get out for a bit.

where is it that we went off to, exactly? Scarborough. i was charged with finding a place to get away to for a couple of days, with my mandate being that it be far enough away to justify staying, but not so close that paying for room and board would be silly. as Scarborough represented a 90 minute or so drive, that was where the pin landed on this particular map.

visiting Scarborough allowed us to visit, as the website address thing for them suggests, Sea Life. which, for the most part, was a very wise and enjoyable thing to do. the least of the reasons for this is most certainly not that we were able to get some (two) smart family photos; something of a rarity for us without resorting to the evils and heresy of a "group selfie".

i know what some of you will wish to say in regards of the above, as a few have already said it. that would be to suggest that for some reason we are all ignoring the shark. we're not, for if you observe to where we all point towards, we are simply finding that Nemo fella, like in that film; the name of which escapes me for the moment.

further, i know that practically all of you have the same concern in respect of the above image. that would be that i shall feature in many of them. fear not, dear viewer, for that's not the case - for the most part i promise you it's just the 75% of my family that you all actually like which shall be here.

what is Sea Life? pretty much what it says on the box, to be honest. they are a visitors attraction, yes, but one with a purpose - the facility, and funds raised from it, go for the most part towards saving and helping various sea based life, in particular seals and penguins. so all money thrown at them goes to a good cause.

taking images inside Sea Life was somewhat tricky, for flash photography was explicitly prohibited. a lot of the fish and what have you live many yards, if not miles, down below the surface of the sea, and thus are not used to the bright lights what us people type of life are. images in the dark sans flash are not easy, but i had a go for you.

yeah, William was under the impression that i was making a video rather than taking still images, and so frantically, or if you like enthusiastically, waved every time the camera was pointed at him. hence the motion blur.

Sea Life seeks to help, preserve and protect all life of the sea, except tuna of course. absolutely no one cares about tuna. this was underlined to tuna, or if you like the chicken of the sea, when a whole load of fuss was made and the tuna slayers of the world were applauded and given awards for ceasing to kill the occasional dolphin as they slaughtered the tuna and then danced naked under a shower of tuna blood on the deck of their fancy tuna knacker boats.

no, tuna are all alone in this world, my friend, and they are reminded of this daily, if not hourly. if that American dentist or whatever had gone to Zimbabwe and shot a tuna instead of some lion, schools would be expected to display a picture of him as an example of being all that you could be. the only hope tuna have in this world, as far as i can see, is if they somehow start learning to do fancy dolphin tricks, such as jump through hoops or balance inflatable balls on their head. it's either that, or hope some scientific research declares them to be "the single most homosexual fish, if not being, ever to exist", and then Stephen Fry and his chums will kick off some jolly "save the tuna or you are racist" crusade on that twerker thing he does.

but anyway, back to fish that have been checked to not be killable tuna, and a look at James, thankfully not waving in front of some more lovely, lovely fish.

speaking of tuna, my one and only grumble about Sea Life as a venue is the food. they do not, as you'd probably guess, do sea food as such. no, not even tuna. what they do "cook" and serve, however, is awful. none of us were able to finish the food we paid a premium for. and when i say premium, chips are considered an "extra" with a burger, or chicken nuggets, and you pay £1.80 for about 12 chips shoved on your plate. yeah, the money goes to a good cause, etc, but does that mean you have to pay a high price for really low quality food?

what we learned from what they consider to be a restaurant is that the next time we go, we will go either before or after lunch, but most certainly not during. if you must eat there, stick with the cold food, such as sandwiches and crisps.

with that unpleasantness out of the way, back to the good, and indeed the very good. attached to Sea Life is a mini, or if you like crazy golf facility with a Pirate theme to it. it is a boss, mega ace 12 hole course and, as you can hopefully see if not ascertain, a lot of fun.

an abiding memory of Scarborough would be just how much the place loves mini adventure crazy golf sort of things. there are courses for it in practically every direction you look. some claim that they are the best in Scarborough, others stop nowhere short of proclaiming to be the best in the world. one even proudly boasted of being the home of the "mini adventure crazy golf world championship"; a contest i had no idea existed until i saw it on a rudimentary billboard.

a very exciting hole on this Pirate golf was the 7th, or it might have been the 8th hole. whichever, one had to navigate to an island to get to it, doing so by an intricate raft and pulley system. the boys really rather enjoyed this, and would have been happy crossing it via pulling the ropes all day.

who won the golf? difficult to say, as we kind of stopped scoring towards the last two or so holes. James and my (considerably) better half both got a hole in one on at least one of the holes, but i kept my score fairly low down across the course. William was enthusiastic and so we gave him a very generous handicap in terms of scoring, so he with that in mind probably won. to make life easier, let's just say that the 75% of my family you all like were tied for 1st, with me a distant 4th.

friends and family around the world are probably thrilled with an influx of pictures of the boys here, for they have not been present much of late. not a deliberate exclusion, i promise you, it's just that life has meant we've not been up to all that many adventures to picture and present here.

for those of you wondering just how big the boys have got, well, quite handily there was a special "check your height against a penguin" display, which the boys agreed to stand by.

indeed, as you hardly need me to point out, William took this all very seriously, hence the "i am in a line up" pose and look he has about him. do i think line ups of a more constabulary nature will feature for him in later years? we would hope not, and do try to parent him in accordance with this hope.

whilst that is a nice rendering of some penguins on the height measurement chart, i am sure one or two of you would like to see actual penguins. if you prefer your penguins to be somewhat in the distance and looking a bit small so you have to squint a bit to actually see them, then you are really going to love this image.

i've read through some of the reviews of Sea Life on things like Trip Advisor and similar. frankly, many of them left me baffled. paying for parking seemed to be an issue for many. we paid, i think, £5 or thereabouts for 5 hours parking. that's not particularly unreasonable, since you are also parked right by the coast for them coins of money. another complaint is that the Sea Life centre is "small". what? if you rushed through and didn't stop to watch the everything but tuna do their thing i suppose it would be, but we spent a very comfortable four hours strolling around and enjoying. except for the lunch thing. i would suggest that anyone who wants bigger, and to see things like a killer whale dragging a water skiing playboy model through a hoop of fire, should consider p!ssing off to Florida to see it.

a picture of the boys with a massive statue (i hope) of one of them turtle things? certainly.

exactly how these turtles get so good at kung fu and ninja stuff is beyond me, i must confess. i mean, they had a massive one swimming about, and he or she could certainly swim faster than me; not that i am some sort of benchmark or grading system for martial arts. but i don't see how a turtle can handle one of them massive sticks, or even get a good grip on them throwing twatting death stars of pain. next time we go i will ask the staff - who are all really rather enthusiastic, by the way, if they can arrange a killer turtle death match demonstration for us to enjoy. i have every confidence that the staff could rustle up some tuna for the turtles to introduce ninja pain to.

after Sea Life it was time for a stroll along the sea front, or if you like the end of the earth, prior to us checking in at our lavish, swanky accommodation for the night. the tide was in, and so some care was required as we strolled.

care was required as the waves lashed the side of the earth on which we walked, soaking several brave souls who stood by the railings. a precious moment, one we shall remember forever, was when James for some reason said "come on then, hit me with your best shot, give me what you've got" in the general direction of the sea, which was followed by an absolutely massive wave crashing over and nearly soaking him.

that second official image from the lens of Sea Life? go on then, but be warned, for i feature once more.

there are many more pictures and stories from a couple of days in Scarborough, more than i have time for this evening though. i will do my best to post further, sooner rather than later.

if you read my drivel in between the pictures, thank you and sorry. for the wiser, hope you liked the images!




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

bagpipes make it all better

hello there

i know you are all excited about that title, look you see, so let me lay it down straight for you - yes, you will see and hear bagpipes being played in this blog post. if you take that as either incitement to carry on reading or your reason to make your excuse and leave, well, that's up to you.

my lunch, and indeed the lunch of many others, was beautified today by the presence of a bagpipe player. he, for i am sure it was such, was stood in one of the pivotal spots demarcated for being where buskers and other such performers may stand and perform their art in exchange for coins of money from those that approve.

video clip a little bit lower down, but for now, to act as some sort of teaser if you like, here's a still that i have trimmed down off the classy video i covertly made.

going around and randomly filming people doing stuff is not what they call the English way of doing things as such, but i could not resist the chance to capture this for you. i trust that it is all appreciated by those of you who elect to select "play" on the clip below when it crops up.

weirdly, during the course of verk today i stumbled upon a national college for bagpipes. they offer four courses a day, five days of the week. where are all of these people who are learning the bagpipes?

to leave that sort of thing briefly aside for one moment or perhaps two; bagpipes, to the best of my knowledge, shall not be cropping up on this, this rather fine gem of a CD i found today over at Poundland.

i spotted that, right, and said that looks a bit like it is the celebrated Forever Changes album by Love, except it isn't. indeed it wasn't. it turned out to be something i had not heard of before, the Forever Changes Concert CD set, recorded in 2003.

if you've not heard of the band, the album or this apparently celebrated concert recording, don't beat yourself up or get all Australian about it; few have. the band disintegrated not long after the album was released in 1967, with this reunion thingie in 2003 (or thereabouts) being the first time that most, if not all, of the songs from it were ever performed.

as is the case with them two that i love dearly, Harry Nilsson and Warren Zevon, Love were a band that had a profound influence on other artists - other artists that went on to have massive success, with the success being of a level that those who inspired never got close to. the so-called "classic" line up of The Stone Roses were unified by their love of this record, for a start, and their intention with the album The Stone Roses was to capture the same groove and vibe that Forever Changes gave them.

a review of that to follow, but for now you want bagpipes, and here you go. a video of some dude playing the bagpipes during lunchtime today.

yeah, sorry that it is so short if you wanted more, but also you are very welcome if that's quite enough bagpipe action for you.

as for who it is that's learning the bagpipes so much that firstly some sort of national college was formed and secondly they have to offer so many lessons, i bet it is them hipster b@stards, or possibly some or all of them f*****g "millennial" twats. it just seems the sort of poncy, wanky, avant garde stuff they would get up to, to be honest.

indeed i do have quite a crop of pictures and stories here from our time away on a brief break, and i probably should be using my time to post them here. the presence of bagpipes in my day, however, was something that could not be overlooked or allowed to go with no reference.




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

just seeing if google has got any more clever yet

hi there


nothing of consequence, look you see, just one of those experiments to pass the time of day.

earlier this year - April, for those of you who value precision - i tried to see if google could find a photo of me off of a search on an image on me. the results of this were interesting, to say the least, as you can see if you click on these words in yellow.

this is the image that i took to do the new search on, then. i figured four months, give or take a day, was most sufficient for this all mighty and all knowing google to get their act together.

yeah, i know - usually i would have glasses on. i opted, dear reader, to do the test via taking a "selfie" with that boss iPhone that Spiros gave me. an image of me taking a selfie kept reflecting in my glasses, or if you like spectacles, when i did, though, so off they came. that might go some way towards explaining the frustrated if not flabbergasted look i have, should you decide to interpret my look here as being either flabbergasted or frustrated.

who would i look like this time? if you have clicked on the link in yellow above, or just now then when i did it once more, you will see that the first go at this got very exciting when it turned out that i was either Michael Stipe off of REM, or possibly Mel Gibson. in regards of the latter, one would hope for a less shouty, sweary, pious, bigoted and offensive version, but if you will take someone from American and tell them "actually you are Australian" you're not going to end up with some sort of civil, polite and reserved sort of chap.

anyway, the image results. did google find me? no, but they are getting closer, it would seem.

indeed, google has at the least clocked that i am a white dude with a most splendid beard and a distinguished sprinkle of grey to the shade of my hair. it has not found me, as such, which is odd as they have at least a decade worth of pictures of me. but they are getting the general idea of what i look like. i would have to say that i am a trifle miffed that it didn't pick up on my smart anchor shirt, although you will note that most of the people it found that it reckons that look like me are wearing shades of blue.

what happens when you click on "visually similar images" you enquire? this.

whereas the first batch of results that came up this time around was, unless i am mistaken, pretty much celebrity free, as you can see here google reckons that i might be Hugh Laurie. also, as i scrolled down, there was a suggestion that i might be him what directed them Indiana Jones films, Mr Pink off of Reservoir Dogs or also possibly Nelson Mandela or Jacob Zuma. cheers.

what would my reaction be if google actually found an image off of me from an image of me? i am not sure. on the one side yeah, it's scary, as it would say there's the potential to take stalking to a whole new, crazy insane level. on the other, well, i suppose there would be some good that could come off of you finding out who people are from an image. the police would probably find it handy, maybe.

ah, you say. i have not done a fair, like for like test. well, yes i did. i took the original image and did a search on that again. here's the result of that.

virtually the same as last time, then, although it feels like there's more Mel Gibson, less Michael Stipe this time. also, no Sean Connery, but i think the suggestion that i might be Jack Nicholson is a new, and very welcome, one.

google claims that they crawl and index the web on a three month basis. they've had, then, four months to index the original picture i did this test with. i guess they've not got to my corner of their servers. let us not forget that blogger, so far as i know, is a google thing, and so i have handed them the picture of me to find.

a "visually similar" click on this image? sure.

smart that google thinks i might be that Ian McShane fella off of Lovejoy and that American western thing where he had a potty mouth. slightly less smart that google thinks i could be Rolf Harris or Saddam Hussein.

yeah, i will do another test of all of this in a few months. it will be interesting to see if it's third time lucky, if it would indeed be "lucky" for me to find an image of me on the google. i would have thought that anyone looking for me would have been able to work out how to do it without an image search, but you never know.

this is a thumbsuck, unscientific and unmeasured test, i know, but the evidence suggests my view remains quite correct - the google has incredible power and vast swathes of knowledge and information, but absolutely no clue as yet how to utilise it all. some say that google is a scary, sinister thing, grabbing all this info and data about us. well, it only stores what you give it, and what you do give it, as far as i can see, doesn't seem to get used beyond their advertising mandate.

should you opt to have a search for yourself on the google via an image, well, fingers crossed you get the result that you want!



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

wake up and smell the ricoffy

hi there

there are, look you see, better and more creative titles that i could have used for this post. instead, in my infinite generosity, i thought i'd throw nestle, or whoever makes it, a bit of a free bone to use as advertising. unless they've used that slogan somewhere before.

anyway, no, i did not wake up and smell the ricoffy as such, but my (considerably) better half did. she slept somewhat longer than i this morning, giving me ample if not plenty of time to get some mighty splendid ricoffy on the go.

yes, indeed we are going to be going all out Commodore 64 mode with the images here, to the extent that i have used both Commodore 64 mode cameras what i have installed on this iPhone thingie.

ricoffy is, indeed, not at all native or natural to life in England. this fine, fine tin that you can see was purchased in May of this year, purchased no less from a quality importer of the finer things of life. well, the finer things of life and ricoffy. 

here i am, for want of a better term, enjoying a cup of ricoffy, and indeed i am bravely drinking easy to spill coffee whilst wearing a white shirt.

ricoffy is not aimed at what you would call the elite or discerning members of South African society. it's not really aimed at the lower classes, either. there are cheaper and there are more expensive coffees available over there, so i guess this one fills that important "f*** it this will do" bracket; for it is the coffee you have a jar of kicking about for "emergencies".

the above sounds somewhat unfair of me, as it's not all that bad. i got a rather pleasant surprise, for a start, when i made it and was taken back in time somewhat via the smell, for it is some 19 or so months since the scent of it had wafted so elegantly near my nostrils.

my (considerably) better half was also most pleased by the smell of ricoffy being the aroma of our kitchen. it brought back some fond memories for her too, for this stuff was and probably is the coffee of choice of her mum, my dearly beloved mother-in-law. and so we drank the coffee. then, when that was finished, we made another cup of it - well, i made two, we didn't make our own - and then we drank them.

that was indeed an image of the super pop rock combo Kiss you could see in the background. today was a most happy day in commencement, really, as the postman brought my ultra-cheap Gold compilation of the band as part of his round of deliveries.

how are the vibes on this two disc set of Kiss? no idea, as i have not given it a play yet. it does, however, feature Love Gun plus 39 other tracks which i am sure are all smashing. well, 35 of them will be - i am uncertain as to what i will find in the four tracks that represent the ill-advised four solo albums the band released at the height of their fame, but we shall see.

what did i drink and taste the ricoffy out of? why, my rather smart Darth Vader mug that the boys got me for father's day earlier in the year. which reminds me, i need to send a second batch of father's day cards to New Zealand, what with them celebrating it in september.

that is a class Star Wars mug, it is, and it's all the more accentuated and what have you by being pictured in Commodore 64 mode.

will i be investing in ricoffy on a frequent basis? no. we have well over half of this tin left, and i would be somewhat surprised if we polished it off in a hurry. i may well purchase another tin at some point, speculatively i might say in a year or so. in the mean time, i believe we can make do with the several hundred brands which are freely available for purchase on the shelves here.

another look at that smart Kiss CD set? sure, why not.

this CD set will end up in the car at some point, during the week, i expect. i am sure i am going to look and sound smart, driving around with this on. it will be class to hear Love Gun and all them other great, great pop songs that they do for the kids.

anyway, another image of me enjoying that class ricoffy taste for you, since the hour is getting late.

anyway, that will do. i am sat here rubbing my eyes and yawning some, which would usually suggest it's time to retire for the evening.

hope that your weekend is, was or will be rather smart!



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

the blue shampoo

hello there

blimey, August? really, look you see? that speed of time thing, even though time does not scientifically exist, really is true as you get older. but anyway, you're not here for bemoaning the passing of time; you're here for more adventures from me in shampoo.

as regular readers will be aware, i wrestle with finding the correct shampoo for me. that would be, of course, shampoo what has lemon shoved in it, as Jason Donovan pioneered the use of in the late 1980s. i have, for the most part, had to broaden my thinking a bit, and now have to content with different sources of citrus being shoved in shampoo rather than the purity offered by lemon.

i recently, as i shall no doubt get around to sharing here at some point in the not too distant future, had reason to make use of some blue shampoo. not just any blue shampoo, of course, but the finest in blue shampoo that is available in the world, or more importantly in Yorkshire.

birley blue shampoo, a brief, generalised google search has revealed, is an exquisitely rare item in the world these days. whereas pompous twats speak of vintages of wine as if they were speaking of something other than what's basically grape juice with alcohol, sugar and sweat off the feet of Italian peasants in it, the more discerning people know that vintages of shampoo are a far more crucial and interesting thing to be aware of.

whereas wine is always shoved in bottles of a standard nature to meet commercial requirements, shampoo dictates the form of the storage. here, as you can see, it was best ascertained that blue shampoo should be housed exclusively in a cylindrical pyramid style bottle, as this allowed prominent emphasis to be placed on the flair and tactile qualities of it. also, this gives even the most casual of shampoo connoisseur the assured sense that this will in fact do what it needs to, which is wash your hair to a most satisfactory standard.

are, you might well be asking at this stage, celebrated beat pop combo Showaddywaddy still a going concern in this day and age? my friend Jonathan posed this question in passing recently, and so i was delighted to find evidence that yes, indeed they are.

no, alas, i did not get to see this band perform all their hits, whatever they were, as my travels took me to the venue where they played after the date you see above. i can sort of remember watching and hearing them play when they were quite the staple of 70s tv light entertainment, but i could not name a specific song they did. i assume they were all pretty good, or if you like smart, owing to the frequency with which they seemed to be on shows. i am pretty sure they did the odd Radio 1 road show, back when Radio 1 was decent and played music and did things like have those road show things during summer.

back to the shampoo of blue, and as you can see it can be enhanced in use by the birley crystal clear shower gel, so long as one is considering and thinking of a particularly clear, or if you like transparent, crystal at the time they are making the comparison.

was i as satisfied with the shower gel as i was the shampoo? yes. shower gel, to me, is a means to an end. i don't really care if it has citrus in it to the extent that i am concerned about it being an integral part of my shampoo. papaya and mango, however, would seem to be integral parts of the shower gel i am using on a more frequent basis at the moment, however.

so, is blue shampoo any good? yes. it cleansed my hair and, so far as i can tell, did not accelerate the levels of grey my hair is increasingly showing. it did not, however, impede or retard the spread of grey, but then it never claimed to.

i trust that this helps you should it be the case that you are confronted with blue shampoo and are uncertain what to expect from it.



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