pipe dream

hello there


alas, no, sorry. if you have hit this post hoping to see, not unreasonably on the basis of the title look you see, some stuff about that epic excellent game Pipe Dream, you are mostly in for a disappointment. although i did connect some pipes today - successfully so - it was not on a game, and i didn't particularly score any points for the classy network i built.

what you do you need to build a classy pipe network? the obvious, and not incorrect answer, is pipes, but it would seem that if you, as the advert goes or at least used to, "b and q it", rather more essential is a rudimentary hacksaw.

b and q, or if you like your capitals B & Q, only sell lengths of what you and i would call plastic pipes in lengths of 2 metres or 3 metres. fat lot of good that is if you only need just under 1 metre, or if you like 95cm, for the pipe that we shall still call plastic to fit where it needs to.

i asked if one of the many, many fine staff at b and q could kindly assist me in cutting the pipe in half. it was at this stage that i was informed that, as it was in fact a pvc pipe, not they could not cut it on behalf of clients. hence me buying the hacksaw.

there is probably some sort of "health and safety" reason as to why they cannot do this. equally, it could be that they were just being all fanny and nancy boy, and were too scared to cut what they considered to be called pvc tube on their fancy equipment.

yeah, that's all the new pipes and junction fittings all in place, thanks. i did it no problem, on the second go at doing it. i thought i would show you the above now, lest you be in some sort of rush and be keen to see the conclusion of my efforts before departing this blog for some other, presumably more interesting corner of the internet.
 

it only took me two trips to b & q to get all of the bits i required to get the job done correct, or if you like proper. yes, i know, two trips to a hardware mender and problems solved is surely some sort of record for me.

and it's not like the second trip was entirely my fault, but i will take the fall for it. it did, however, allow me to learn a most valuable lesson about the way b & q do things, and one that i may well discuss with their international brand ambassador, g-man, who i happen to have a good and constructive working relationship with.

what did i learn at b & q? that if a length of pipe has 32mm printed on a sticker on it, and is in a pile or rack of pipes marked with a label saying "32mm", then there is every chance that, after a few moments of being flummoxed and baffled as to why it will not fit into a 32mm connector, if you peel the sticker off you will discover "36mm" printed in orange on the pipe. nice one, cheers for that. i am assuming one of the more senior "stand around here and look at the taps" staff members noticed that they were low on 32mm, instructed a junior "stand around here and look at the smart drills" staff member to get some more and he or she simply decided that shoving some 32mm stickers on the pipes that were there would suffice.

and yes, by international brand ambassador, i do mean that he has a rather sweeping level of diplomatic immunity. if he saw you, and was displeased with what he saw, he could, in the eternal words of Simon Phoenix out of Demolition Man, "set your ass on fire" and there's not a thing that the constabulary could do about it, except maybe fetch you some water. so watch out.

a quick break from my adventures with pipes and a saw? surely. how about a video of me, in my reni hat, walking along in the rain, smoking of course, to fetch the boys some pizza for tea? doable.

taking video and pictures is all that my phone is able to do right now, as is, i suspect, the case for most in the village. we have two different mobile networks on the go, and both are down. we have an immense storm on the go - far, far stronger that what you can see on the video above - and it seems to have totally knacked mobile, or if you like cellular, means of correspondence.

anyway, pipes. what pipes was i replacing or adding, and to what end? it was the pipes that allow the water from the bath, or indeed shower, to run freely down the drain, rather than all over our expansive courtyard. the boys were playing football, you see, and the pipe that was there presumably won a hotly contested tackle, yet faired very badly after the fact. think Gazza's ankle after that particular tackle that took him our for a year in the FA Cup final of 1991 and you have the general idea.

another gander at the pipes, which as of my second trip to b& q were in fact 32mm as i checked, double checked and thrice checked, in place and working? why not.

all in all, something like 10 - 15 minutes of actual work to cut the pipe and connect it; some 80 minutes in round trips along the majesty of cargo fleet lane to visit b & q a couple of times. not necessarily an all that bad way to spend a saturday afternoon, but not exactly the most relaxing. but still, i got to listen to some Led Zeppelin in the car as i went about my travels, so there you go.

plus, i have a semi-shiny new hacksaw into the bargain. £4.80 it cost me, which was the cheapest i could find. although on the second trip i noted that, hidden away on a different rack, they had some mini, junior hacksaws that would have done the job for south of £2. nice of them to hide them; let me get hold of their international brand ambassador.

a close up of the product description of the hacksaw to finish off this blog post? sure, why not, happy reading, dear reader, for there's a lot of detail for a rudimentary cutting appliance.

yeah, that might not be all that easy to read in Commodore 64 mode, but it's a lot clearer than it could be as i left the dithering mode firmly off. 

overall, i would say i am satisfied with my efforts. the water flows freely into the drain, so the job that needed to be done is, as it were, done.  also, as a bonus, i have two lengths of 36mm pipe going spare, one measuring 93cm and the other measuring, i presume, 107cm. perhaps i will make a smart didgeridoo out of one of them, or some other sort of classy traditional Australian instrumentation.

it is my most earnest hope that wherever you are whenever you read this, you don't have the massive storm that we are presently experiencing on the go. if you do, well, you don't need me to suggest you keep dry, but i do hope that you are. 



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

not reading The Winter Of Frankie Machine right now, then

hi there

this post here, look you see, is pretty much one for you to ignore. i'm doing this one as some sort of reminder for myself, on the off chance that i ever go back and read my blog for, well, a reminder. fat chance, i know, as i don't even bother to do the most rudimentary of proof read stuff before i whack that publish button.

if you are still reading, regular readers will be aware that i was quite excited to have a gander at the novel The Winter Of Frankie Machine by someone called Don Winslow. my interest was piqued, so to speak, when it was revealed that him who did French Connection is going to direct it, after the film failed to be made by him who did The Departed and him who did Heat. weirdly, those last two both had De Niro down to star, presumably as the title character.

my interest saw me place an order for the novel, despite me no longer being able to sit, read and enjoy books on the bus. 14 days later, however, and the book has not landed, and the person i ordered it from was so fast in getting a refund to me that i suspect it was never even sent in the first place. hey ho.

i have heard that this is something of a trick some do on amazon marketplace and ebay. they list an item in a relatively cheap form, "sell it", but don't ship it on the off chance that they can command more coins of money in the mean time. one can only assume, if this is true, that the genius of the plan lies in either the person who ordered it originally not bothering to ask where it is, or simply shoving a refund the way of the person who does ask where exactly their item is.

i am assuming there has been a surge in interest in the book in the light of the film version. whereas when i placed my order for the novel you could get quite a few copies for south of £3, now you can only find them for distinctly north of that. as point of fact, someone was now trying to sell a copy of the paperback for £189, and no, there is no decimal point missing.

hey ho. as was the case with Child 44, i shall wait for the inevitable "film tie-in cover" version of the book to be published, and purchase it as either part of a "buy one get one half price" deal at WH Smith, or just a flat half price at the cigarette counter at Morrisons.

annoyed? for sure. it actually sounds like a really, really good novel. it can wait, if nothing else i found yet another "if you liked The Da Vinci Code" book at the Pound Shop earlier today.

right, let's see if i ever remember to visit this post and get reminded to look for the book at a later stage.





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

my burgeoning relationship with the Japanese

hello there


in recent times i have made mention of what i consider to be my good working relationship with Japan or, if you like, the Japanese, look you see. this was something which, in many respects, was confirmed this week by the arrival of correspondence from Japan.

well, when i say from Japan, i of course mean Surrey. to those not in the know, Surrey is not usually considered a provide of Imperial Japan. as Japan Tobacco are seemingly based there, as far as i am concerned the rule of law of Japan applies to the place.

the correspondence, or if you like letter, arrived on some really elegant, high quality paper - basically half a tree in thickness, to give you a clue on what i mean by high quality. it features, as you can see here, a restrained, minimalist company logo, which is fitting with their understated presence in both Surrey and the world as a whole.

what was the letter about? well, we shall get to that later, but in the meantime, here, have a gander at this.Google, as some of you may know, have an "album of the week" on their Play store, where one can purchase a classic album for either 99p or, from time to time should the artist or if you like artiste dictate it, £1.99. look, see you who it is this week.

yep, that's classic Barbs right there for, at the time of going to print, all of 99p.  wow. i mean, wow. that's Guilty for less than a pound. if she did do any sh!t albums, right, and i am not saying that she ever did, i would not expect them to ever be available for south of £5.

the only thing stopping me from clicking above in yellow and buying yet another copy of this album is that i don't have that much balance left on my Google account. it's raining, so i am not walking down to the shop to buy a new one. and i will be f***** if i am giving my banking details to Google, looking at what happens when i do an image search for myself.

despite having the CD of it, with a fancy DVD too no less (yes, i know i am supposed to do a blog post on it but i haven't got to it), i may well commission a voucher tomorrow, load it up and buy this again.

in the mean time, Google had the good grace and courtesy to extend to me an invitation to write a review of the album. i was very happy to oblige.

if the above is all rather too much tl;dr for you, whatever that means, then let me assure you that it is a very positive review of the record, and i can only hope it encourages some of the kids to turn off the gangsta rap for a bit and turn on the sounds of the Barbs.

but anyway, back to Japan. i would imagine that Barbs has played a concert or two in Japan, assuming that enough Yen was presented to her (in distinguished briefcases), but that's not what my letter, or if you like correspondence pertained to. what was it, then?

as some of you are tired of being aware, i have been struggling - seriously - to find Winston Red on the shelves anywhere. i wrote to Japan Tobacco, then, to ask them were exactly i could buy them. they wrote back with a list of places in my area that, as far as they are concerned, sell these fine cigarettes. 

i was highly impressed with how fast they wrote back to me. i am, however, sadly slightly less impressed with the list. on their documentation of retailers that sell them, according to them, are the two stores that did sell them, but now do not, which is what prompted me to write to them in the first instance. oh bugger.

it's likely that i will write back and tell them they are mistaken, requesting that they give me a more accurate list before i go off driving around. it is more likely, however, that i must face the reality of being resigned to having to change brand once more. oh, how i wish Marlboro was affordable here.

anyway, let me not keep you from buying that Barbs album for 99p with my melancholy tales of woe about cigarettes.



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

the lost opportunities of 90s wrestling games

hello there

i got a few moments to myself this evening, look you see. not long enough to do something productive, such as watch a film or read a significant portion of a book, but some time all the same. in determining what to, then, i for some reason opted to see if some sort of emulator for a 90s video game machine wouldn't allow me to - briefly - become an overlooked legend of 80s American wrestling, or if you like wrasslin'.

to this end, then, and to extend what i consider to be a good working relationship with the Japanese, i fired up some sort of Nintendo emulator and set about having a look at all the smart wrestling games that they had available. well, all the smart ones and, as we shall start off with, the non-WWF ones, such as WCW Nitro, whatever the hell that is.

 i really rather fancied playing a game of wrestling as one of the three most significant wrestlers in the history of WWF, with those three being his eminence The Honky Tonk Man, his angriness Bad News Brown or his eternal coolness Rowdy Roddy Piper. i was, alas, as the kids of the 90s were, royally f****d over in this regard, as none of the WWF variants featured any of those three.

and it was called WWF, folks. back then a quest to save pandas and an entertainment engagement in which steroid laced sweaty Americans grappled each other could carry the same name and no one got confused. this generation, it seems, are unable to tell the who apart, which is why the steroid sweaty version has changed its "F" to an "E".

the above is indeed a screenshot of the WCW Nitro character select screen. it is animated, too, if not animated that a child of today, with their X-Stations and Play 360 machines, would understand, but animated all the same. as you can see in this sensational video.

that is indeed, assuming the video is the right way around, Rick Flair in the top right corner. or bottom left, if it is upside down. no, i have no idea who the rest are.

i switched on the WCW one in the hope that, with it being early 90s, either Honky Tonk, Bad News or Rowdy had engaged in the sort of career slide that saw them relegated from WWF and into the murky world of WCW. i am not sure, but i seem to think that WCW was the cheaper version of WWF, for kids who had fathers that were not quite good enough at mining coal in order to be able to afford easy access to WWF.

no was the answer, as i think you have worked out. none of the three, it seems, sank so low that they were licensed for use in a WCW game on any form of Japanese games console.

not that the WWF games were a complete write off, mind. here, as you can sort of see in this Commodore 64 mode, Hulk "thunderlips" Hogan was allowed to be in it. he isn't any more, so far as i am aware, due to some sort of Mel Gibson like "misunderstanding" of the correct way to address people with a common ethnicity, but that's none of my concern.

whereas i was denied the chance to play as Rowdy Roddy, Bad News or Honky Tonk, one of the WWF games did, at the least, allow me - if i were to so choose to select to do so - play as Jake The Snake. that's at least something.

i think on these fancy new versions of WWF games you can download and play as Honky Tonk or Rowdy Roddy. i shall consult the kids, as they seem to know more about it than me. but if i consult them, then they shall expect me to play a game against them, and they shall be ruthless in the beating they administer to whatever character i select.

if what i consider to be my very good working relationship with the Japanese ever flourishes to the extent that someone off of Japan ever responds to my correspondence, i will try to breach the subject of why the 90s wrestling games they produced succeeded only in failing to promote class wrestlers.





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

legends united

hi there

i was channel surfing earlier this evening. i was, look you see, searching for something to watch. i was hopeful of either finding a show in which Americans buy lockers full of junk and claim that they are of value, or a show in which Americans take junk to a central point in the hope that they may exchange it for coins of money. i was not disappointed, as i was able to see both.

on my travels, or if you like surfs, through the channels, i stumbled upon an episode of Minder, quite possibly recently scheduled so as to pay tribute to the ostensible star, George Cole, who passed away recently. i say ostensibly, for although his presence was pivotal to the show, the show itself was named after the chap that did the class theme song for it.

anyway, in that episode, i was fortunate enough to capture this image.

no, this is not some photoshopped, doctored image - what you are seeing is very real. that is indeed Dennis "bring me some" Waterman and Jimmy "hard as" Nail(s) on screen together. wow, man, that's like totally awesome. what makes it even better is that it looks like "bring me some" has only recently had his face smashed in, quite possibly by "hard as".

what's most interesting about this is that both actors have a proclivity to do the theme song for shows in which they appear. maybe "hard as" had not thought of it, and it was only after working with "bring me some" on this episode that he got the idea.

even more interesting is that if Minder had been about some Geordie barrow boy second hand car dealer instead of a Cockney one, "hard as" would probably have been cast as Terry, or whatever the Minder out of Minder was called.

what's the capital city of Cameroon? Yaoundé. don't thank me, thank Spiros. he discovered this little bit of information earlier today and was most keen to share it.

meanwhile, scenes from outside the Bongo this monday morning, and oh dear. it looks like the sauce once again got the better of a few people. here's quite a bit of broken glass; glass that presumably got this way from some sort of stress that a patron or patrons felt or were feeling.

any abandoned footwear this week, you ask? as it happens, yes. for some reason one sole, solitary, lonely sock was strewn across the road, and someone had taken the time, trouble and imagination to shove at least one shoelace into the ashtray outside the front door. the traditional second shoestring may well have been there, but rammed in so deep that it was no longer visible to ladies or members of the gentry walking by and keeping a keen eye out for such sights.

what is it about the Bongo that causes people to lose or otherwise discard their footwear? i have no idea, but i am not at all convinced that it's the Bongo at fault. if, indeed, fault is to be attributed.

how is driving, since i drive past the Bongo at least an even number of times each day as part of travels to, from and around verk? so far so good. i may well make a new mix tape, except on a CD, tonight, but other than that no issues.

William has taken something of a shine in my efforts at that most traditional of English driving activities, namely parallel parking. i am not particularly good at it, see you look, and so i normally call on the services of my (considerably) better half to do it for me, for she likes that sort of thing.

William comes along and "helps", if helping can be described as opening up the sunroof and standing out through it, as you can most surely see here. no, not whilst the car is actually moving, for such a thing would be quite silly and in all likelihood against some sort of law.

anyway, that's pretty much monday. nope, no further robots in the post, and no book that is to be turned into a film by him what did The French Connection either. perhaps tomorrow.



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

it happened to me - pension fund raid

hello there

you know, sometimes i feel like starting these posts off with something like well, hello daaaahlings or hey you or howzit, look you see. but i don't. it's always an hello or a hi. sorry for the lack of variety.

yes, indeed, quite a serious subject i have as the title here, and not one to mess about with. many assumed that pension fund raids were a thing of the past; that they died at the same time that Robert Maxwell died, which was 5 November 1991. i know this because i saw Bowie's Tin Machine on that night, and the news was on the radio in the taxi on the way home.

granted, dear reader, i did not exactly have the biggest pension pot fund going, but still it was mine, and it was raided.

i invested £2 in this pension plan in good faith, expecting to wake up this morning to see that it had matured to, at best, some £4,000,000 in value, or at least £20,000. even £25 would have been a handsome return on capital outlay. but, alas, no.

i cannot believe that i am the only one to have experienced this terrible raid. many, i suspect, were lured into the same pension scheme investment as i was, what with them fancy adverts on the tele and that, and all those "pension fund ticket" sales machines located next to cigarette counters across the land.

an interesting statistic that sticks in my head about these pension fund schemes, or if you like lotteries, is that the odds of hitting the jackpot are 16,000,000-1. that doesn't sound all that bad, maybe an outside chance rather than a long shot. however, it's worth noting that if you were to walk into a turf accountant of your choosing and tell the bookmaker that you wished to place a bet on The King, Elvis Presley taking command of a flying saucer, then Him crashing it in Scotland and twatting the mythical Loch Ness Monster with it in doing so, you would be quoted a return on investment of 8,000,000-1. so if you bet on that happening twice you basically get lottery pension fund odds, i suppose.

a post from me without some whining about the apparently lack of Winston Red available for sale? oh, i don't think so. today i decided to pay a visit to that elitist, upper class shop that is Sainsbury's, in the hope that it was the case that Winston Red had simply been removed from the hands of the proletariat and was now only available to purchase where the bourgeois and ruling class send their servants.

no. Sainsbury's did not have Winston Red, hence me buying more Chesterfield. more Chesterfield, look you here, at a price higher than what all the other stores have them at, but Morrisons were out of stock yesterday so i had little choice. well, yes i did have choice if you consider "simply don't smoke, then" a choice, but i did not think of that at the time.

Sainsbury's, as you would expect with a store associated with the opulence of luxury, has a special folder on display by their locked away cigarette counter, where one may see what tobacco they have in stock, and what prices they currently command for them.

moving away from that - briefly - and an unexpected and very welcome blast from the past. as previous wallowing in nostalgia has told regular readers, there do not seem to be all that many pictures of me around in that decade that was called, briefly, the 90s. so it was wonderful to see one which featured me from some stage of the first half of that decade, possibly towards the middle bit.

many, many thanks indeed to the lady in the picture who stumbled upon it and forwarded it on to me. Olivia didn't mention if i was allowed to say it was from her or not, so i will not mention her name here, just to be safe.

they were indeed, as it were, spectacular glasses frames i had, were they not? yeah, i know, in many respects one could say that them are Elton John specials, them are.

my tele viewing, moving even further away from pension fund raids, is as you are aware, and somewhat in awe of, mostly limited to repeats of Bullseye. every now and then, when i cannot be bothered to change the channel, i get to watch Wheel Of Fortune too. here's a picture, from my (considerably) better half, of the puzzle that had to be solved last night to win the big, or if you like major, prize.

can you work out which Australian singer, actor and generally multi-talented person that is enthusiastic about putting lemon in shampoo that it is? the lady on the show could not, so she did not get to claim the big prize, whatever it was. probably cash, a car or some sort of holiday. they didn't do class prizes like speedboats and caravans on this show, they were the preserve of Bullseye. which is as it should be.

another look at the Chesterfield that Sainsbury's agreed to sell me at something of a premium? sure, why not, at least the plastic bag was free, although the man in a suit at the cigarette counter basically made me beg for it. well, i had to ask and he said "of course sir", but that's a bit like begging/

is it just me, or does there in the top left corner it seem like the bag and the wonders of Commodore 64 mode have combined to produce a likeness of Nick Rhodes out of Duran Duran? i have a lot of time for Rhodes; he is after all part of the 40% of the classic line up of Duran Duran not to be called Taylor.

anyway, let me go and lament the loss of my pension fund some more, and consider ways in which i may get it back to the level which it was at.




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

living the high life

hi there

i went to the shops today, look you see, to find out if there had been any change in the state of play with Winston Red being available. the answer, alas, was no. this was not entirely unexpected, but made somewhat more frustrating by virtue of the fact that the alternate i had opted for, Chesterfield, now also seems to be getting rather scare. if i were a Silk Cut or Bensons man, believe me, i would be spoilt for choice. also bankrupt, going on the fee those lesser brands command.

just as well, then, that - amongst other things - my good friend Spiros has sent me along an insanely large amount of Marlboro to work through. here, here's a mere 10% or so of what he sent.

nice one man, always appreciated, and with the current drought here of cigarettes that i consider to be acceptable (affordable), all the more pertinent that he should send them on.

they are indeed two very different types of Marlboro, how observant of you to note. some of them came off of Greece, where Spiros went to see if he couldn't have a go at mending their economy (alas, no), and the others are from South Africa, from where he recently needed to fly in his own personal electrician from.

do i still need to put disclaimers in? very well. cigarettes are, like, really bad for you and stuff, and cause you to die. so don't smoke them. comments about the fags in this blog are entirely my own opinion and view, and not an endorsement, and if you follow my lead in smoking or anything for that matter, you need to set your sights somewhat hire on a decent role model.

as you can see, sort of, Marlboro was not the only thing what Spiros got me off of Greece. behind this very carefully placed packet of cigarettes is a rather smart postcard of a young Greek lad, who for some reason is bereft of clothes, enjoying a grape or two as a fancy yacht sails by.

surely such a postcard, featuring a gent naked and proud, is not the sort of thing that Royal Mail smile upon, or deliver willingly? probably not, no, but it was in the box with the fags, so they don't know that they delivered it.

do i really rather like postcards from Greece featuring naked men stood on beaches? well, to my knowledge this would be the first one which i have ever received, and this it's the absolute best one that i have. it is so magnificent, as point of fact, that i have scanned it and sent it to a few people. i may well yet send it to a few more people, actually, as i have stamps here. and envelopes.

is there much in the way of a difference between the SA Marlboro and the Greek Marlboro? not really. i mean, not between the rather different languages both use on the packaging. and the general outlay of the pack, but Marlboro's style and design must be one of the most easy things in the world that you can see and recognize straight away.

in terms of taste and experience, identical. some brands - Camel in particular - have different blends for different regions of the world. not so Marlboro, who produce a product of such distinguished quality that the taste, flavour and experience of it remains as a constant wherever you get it from. unless you buy them illicit bootleg pirate ones, which have the classy asbestos filters on them.

for what reason was it, you might ask, that Spiros felt the need to fly a personal electrician in from South Africa? ladies and gentlemen, as well as you may think you know Spiros through his many adventures shared on these blog pages, you simply don't know the half of it. i am pretty hazy on the exact details myself, but from what i can gather Spiros required a circuit board knacked in a very particular way so that he may be able to do business with a circuit board dealer in Blackpool, and no cockney electrician could knack it in a satisfactory manner.

in between all of that, Spiros managed to find, harking back to earlier on in this post, what could well be the last packet of Winston Red in England, sat proudly for sale in London.

he reckons he will be sending it on to me in the fullness of time. nice one man, i know you are bust with electricians, so no rush. 

returning briefly to the gifts of Greece from Spiros, then, and he also sent me this calendar; the cover of which was not quite as censored as i hoped it would be by using the magic of the more pixellating Commodore 64 camera mode that i have. but you are all grown ups, i am assuming.

the efforts of Sprios to fix the Greek economy were hampered somewhat when he, in his words, got "distracted" by this calendar. flicking through it and it is very easy to see why that would be the case, to be honest. roll on the new year, i say, where i think i will make efforts to take this calendar in to verk and have it on proud display on my desk.

yeah, i appreciate that this post has, more or less, been all about how happy i am to have some Marlboro once ago. it might seem silly, or not a lot to you, but it's a very great big deal to me, thanks.

right, let me see who else i have in my address book that i may send a print out of a scan of that class postcard that Spiros sent to me.

i'll see if i can make the next blog post a little less Marlboro in content, but no promises.




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

robot

hi there


there can be few things that personify the bourgeois indulgence of what are termed "first world problems", look you see, than the matter of purchasing, or if you like investing, in insurance in England. the market for insurance is structured and stacked in such a way that your choice amounts to whether or not you want a plastic bulldog with a bouncing head, a stuffed meerkat (toy rather than a real one, i think), to give money to someone who hires the hideous Sharon Osborne to be in adverts or if, as was apparently the case with me, you want a plastic robot.

yes, i now own one of them Brian toys off of the advert off the TV. for those of you reading outside of the UK, which looking at the stats would seem to be "most",  here you go, a link to an advert for insurance for you to see what this is all about.

oh yeah, i could have gone for them that do the insurance but have hired Harvey Keitel for the ads, but no, the boys assured me that i wanted a Brian toy.

apologies if that video comes across as being in some way sideways, i don't think i held the blueberry phone the right way around to do the video with and i am not sure if blogger will bother to rotate it.

so yeah, insurance. it's the law here that you have to have car insurance, otherwise they take your car off it, impound it and probably crush it. so i needed to attain insurance, then, thanks to the previously discussed (at length) decisions made by Arriva, the celebrated bus company that doesn't actually want to have any buses running.

it was in investigating insurance options that i discovered the basic choice came down to which toy you would like, or the hiring of which celebrity or actor you felt like giving your endorsement too. in England it seems there are as many insurance "companies" as there are or were Arabian nights; although all one thousand plus of them would appear to be subsidiaries of a mere handful of actual underwriters.

oh yes, i am peppering, or if you like littering, this blog post with some videos of my smart new Brian toy in action for you, so that you may both see and hear the joy that has come into my life.

in an effort to make it easier to pretend that this is interesting, or that these videos have in some way or another have value, i've made a special mix up for you, so some of the videos were made on the blueberry and others on the iTwat. if you appreciate the differences, well, that's just awesome, man.

which insurance company, or "price comparison of insurance companies", would i have gone with if i was given a free hand? absolutely any of them which gave me the lowest price in relation to services offered, except of course that lot which hire Sharon Osbourne. she's not really the problem, it's that bald headed twat with the CGI long legs and high heels which annoys me in the advert. but still, no dice.

as bewildering and unlikely as this seems, i am going to assume that there's quite a market for these Brian toys. this would be a market that has apparently inspired a bootleg market for toys in his likeness. that, dear reader, can surely be the only motivation for the inclusion of a certificate of authenticity in the box.

are we really living within the realms of reason in a world where there is a need to give a certificate of authenticity to a plastic toy that was shot in the post by some random website you bought insurance through? what next, certificates of authenticity for corporate pens, drinks coasters and bottle openers as and when they get handed out?

it is, make no mistake, very nice indeed to be living in a world where one of the few things to trouble you on a night is which free toy you might want with a financial product or service. no, this won't be one of them "some people don't know how lucky they are" things; for i loathe them and do all i can to avoid them. everyone should just deal with the hand life has dealt them, not put up with crass "but you should see how bad it is for so and so" comparisons.

another video? surely.

i must admit, this bizarre, bastardised hybrid of Wall-E, that robot off of Short Circuit (a film which i think starred Guttenberg, you might find) and Marvin off of The Hitchhikers Guide To The Galaxy is kind of growing on me a bit. the ads are smart, i suppose, and it is kind of cute the way that the robot talks.

would i recommend that you too use this outfit for your insurance concerns so that you may get one of these classy robots? if the toy is pretty much the only point of difference you have had between quotes then go for it, unless you really want a stuffed (hopefully manufactured) meerkat, or want to either give more money to Sharon Osbourne or keep Harvey Keitel in work away from actual cinematic movies. i mean, if it's a case of "well, this insurance meets all my needs, but this one, for £200 more, doesn't but does come with a sort of semi-smart plastic toy", well, you don't need me to indicate the wiser approach, do you?

another picture? certainly, and why don't we have a go at a full frontal of Brian, since were' here.

if you have read this far in the hope of some practical car advice being present, you are in some luck. the weirdest thing i discovered was that insurance companies here do not want to "upsell" or extend further services to existing clients. for this reason i strangely find myself making use of an insurance company which, on face value, is entirely different from the one the wheels of my (considerably) better half are covered by, yet they seem to both be owned by the same firm at the end of it.

our first port of call was our existing insurers, or if you like brokers. they quoted us an insurance price, for a year, which was basically around £100 south of the actual value of the car. they said that your existing policy had no bearing at all, and that it would be treated as an entirely new insurance policy, despite you being evaluated against the existing one. hence us using the computer and that to find insurance that was, annually, way, way, way south of what we paid for the wheels entire.

so, insurance companies of England - consider making more money by simply being competitive and equalling the price of services for your existing clients. if some other firm can do it for £x for a new client, surely you can too for someone you already have on the books.

another video, then.

the arrival of Brian in the post was marred by some disappointment, i must say. when i heard a knock on the door and found an employee of Royal Mail at the threshold to our home, i had hoped it was because that book i ordered, the one i cannot recall the name of but him who did French Connection is going to film it, would not fit through the letterbox. no, that has not arrived as such as yet, and it was the case that it was Brian who could not fit through the letterbox. well, just how big do you think our letterbox is?

another Brian in action video to finish off with? why not.

yeah, i've put the toy, and the all important certificate of authenticity, back in the box. perhaps i should have a gander at the paperwork which came with Brian; for all i know it might be that i am supposed to drive around with him/it in the car, so that it may serve as proof of my insurance should the constabulary have reason to stop me and ask.

i appreciate it would be a strange fluke if it has, but all the same i do hope that all of this has been of some use or relevance to one or two of you.




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

new old toys

hello there

well, look you see, we would seem to be all but four months away from this Star Wars Episode 7 : Mission To Moscow film being released. quite a few people are getting all excited about it, assuming that it's going to be one of the all time greatest films of all time. one can only trust that they are not disappointed when it comes out.

some images of the contractually obliged, if not inevitable, toys of the film have worked their way onto the internet. it's not for me to repost images of the characters and action figures of the new ones, as such, but i could not but help notice that there are several toys featuring the "classic" Star Wars characters. no Officer Mahoney or Sgt Hightower, but some familiar characters from the universe all the same.

oh, good. Disney, or whoever, has clocked that a pretty good, if not efficient, way of extracting coins of money from me and the many other sad cases like me out there is to make yet more Boba Fett stuff available to purchase. nice one, although i am not sure i am comfortable with yet another sanitised, made nice Boba Fett, as once more this is a toy, or if you like action figure, that sees the infamous wookie scalp missing.

your guess is as good as mine in regards of the "armour up" accessory which comes with either of these characters. neither are things that i can recall from the films, but it has been a while since i saw them.

as for Luke, that is the classic Revenge Of The Jedi costume he has on in that action figure. and my my, are they not hammering the classic Luke look hard in the toys, for you will also be able to purchase an action figure, or if you like toy, of Luke in his Empire Strikes Back beige outfit.

yes, i have seen this "first look" leaked image of Luke Skywalker as he appears in Star Wars Episode VII : Mission To Moscow. no, i am not posting it here, for Disney are going around issuing takedown orders to everyone that posts it. can i describe it? certainly. it's a bearded, somewhat mid-70s The King, Elvis Presley sized Luke, wearing a robe and threads that look more or less like what Obi Wan did in the Episode IV - VI films of Police Academy. nothing special and nothing unexpected.

giving credit for leaked / "stolen" images seems a bit strange, but why not -  Star Wars 7 news is where i found these images, and it is where you will find all that you would want to about the film.

a closer look at Luke in his classic Empire Strikes Back outfit? i don't see why not. the quality is not great, but i am sure enthusiastic Luke fans will not mind.

it's interesting that we are going to get, at the least, two "classic" Luke toys, but on the basis of the images which have come out, not a single solitary Han Solo one. perhaps it was the case that Harrison Ford did not quite need the coins as much as Mark Hamill did, and thus did not sign off any sort of renewed image rights to let them make some toys. had, all them years ago, they cast Steve Guttenberg as Han Solo, not only would we have had much more different films, but also they probably would have been able to make as many toys of his character as they liked.

as Darth Vader, like Boba Fett, does not strictly speaking feature an actor's face, they are of course free to make as many toys in his image as they like, and so we do indeed, it seems, get another Darth Vader toy to throw into the collection. 

i am not at all sure i get this one, in particular how it relates to the new Mission To Moscow film. Luke is obviously going to be a central part of the film, and us sad case acolytes can but hope that Boba Fett makes an appearance. Darth Vader, though? he got killed, then got burned up to ashes, then became one of them ghost things. it strikes me as somewhat unlikely that he will feature in the new film, then.

anyhow, i trust that these have been of some passing interest to one or two of you fellow Police Academy fans who are looking forward to having a bit of a gander at the new movie.



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

shampoo, shower gel and you

hello there

more diving headlong into the world of personal hygiene, look you see. mostly as i do not consider myself at all qualified to speak of, and let me type this rather carefully, public hygiene.

usually it is deodorant or shampoo that i would "go off on one" about, i appreciate, but let's instead go to, or start with, the interesting world of shower gel. 

shower gel is a relatively recent innovation in the world of personal cleanliness and care, and has been something of a blessing to those of us simple types who were never really able to grasp the complexities of soap in a shower; lest we turn to the inherent evils of "soap on a rope".

up until now, and i do appreciate that it is in its infancy, shower gel has been pretty much rudimentary in content and purpose. that's all a thing of the past, now, with these new types i have picked up apparently being something of what i believe the kids call a "game changer".

yes. in a rather successful effort to attract my coins of money, shower gel manufacturers have clocked that all they have to do is shove lemon in their products. or lime, which is probably pretty much the same thing as lemon, when think about it.

it did my heart good to see these items on sale. as regular readers will be all too aware, i have been struggling to come to terms with the fact that shampoo makers no longer consider lemon to be a necessary or quite class thing to shove in their products. when i left England, i left an England that was blessed with the knowledge of Jason Donovan, who informed the world that he washed his hair with shampoo what had lemon in it. i have returned to an England where this teaching, or if you like learning, has sadly been abandoned. i am doing my best to rectify that.

on the note of that, and shampoo, here you go, progress is being made in a return to the traditional values of how Jason Donovan washes his hair.

i had been making do with the only lemon shampoo i could find, which was that ultimate blends off of someone called Garnier. it was not ideal, for the insisted on blending it with green tea or something, but it did the job. Clairol, or whoever it says on that bottle, have struck back by adding purely lemon to their shampoo. well, it might have lime in it too, or be only lime, but as we agreed earlier, same thing.

the above shampoo presented in the glory of Commodore 64 mode with scan lines switched on? certainly, dear reader, i can do that for you with pleasure. 

just because bought this herbal essences shampoo purely and exclusively because it was about a third of the price of the ultimate blends one should not be taken as the only reason i bought it. it's important, i think, to keep Garnier, or whoever makes ultimate blends, on their toes a little bit. let them know, as it were, that they are not the only game in town.

does Jason Donovan still wash his hair with shampoo what has had lemon shoved in it? does it make washing your hair any better? i do not, alas, known the answer to either question. i do know, however, that Jason Donovan, or if you like Jase, is awesome, and if he says that lemon in shampoo is the way to go, that's the way i will go. and indeed have gone, for just slightly south of 30 years.

actually i've just had a look at the bottle of herbal essences and it does not explicitly state that it has lemon in it, rather it has the words "citrus scent" on it. but hey, lemon smells, right, and lemon is widely recognized - by scientists and such like - as being the only true, genuine and useful supplier of citrus, whatever this citrus stuff actually is. probably stuff that makes the lemons work so well on Jason Donovan's hair, i suppose.

a quick break from the world of lemon infused personal hygiene products, then, to have a look at a very merry blast from the past. here, take a gander at this question off of the latest edition of Match Of The Day Quiz Special.

that is indeed, on the side without the silver hair, the legend that is Branco. as in the Branco who was quite happily retired, right up until the point that Boro phoned him and offered him a good deal of money to come and play again.

when it transpired that Branco was, in the eternal words of my mate Fraser, "no longer the fastest", Boro attempted to make him into some sort of coach for the team. legend has it that his one and only team talk, before a match against Wimbledon as i recall, went along the lines of "run run run, pass pass pass, win 1-0 then lager, lager nightclub". we as it happens lost the game, maybe 1-0 but a 3-0 scoreline comes to mind, and Branco's contract was paid up in full the very next working day.

for an even further diversion from lemon based cleaning products, one of them "selfie" things of my (considerably better half and i in Commodore 64 mode, but with the other Commodore 64 mode camera mode being used? why not, here you go.

quite smart, that is, i must confess i rather more lean to liking the "scan lines" images, but these pixellated, or however you say it, ones do the job.

yeah, i know, there's been more images of me on this blog of late than any of you would normally care to see. sorry about that, but this is my blog, you know, it's not unreasonable for me to actually feature on it from time to time.

back to scanlines, then, and back to this fancy new shower gel that i have discovered and bought.

the "original source" one seems to be very proud of the fact that it is a "vegan" product. isn't vegan something to do with not eating cows or whatever? unless i am very much mistaken the idea of shower gel is not to eat it, not even by accident.

the other one, the one i am most confident about for it has lemon written on it, is from brand Morrisons. if it is any good, i shall continue to use them as my provider of provisions of choice, despite the fact that they have ceased to sell Winston Red.

on that note, i have indeed reached out to the Japan Tobacco company in the form of a letter. i posted it today, and i remain hopeful that they reply and tell me just where it is that i may still give them coins of money for their products.

going back, however briefly, to the shower gel with lemon in it, and no i cannot tell you how it performs, for i have not used it as such as yet. i am still busy with some fancy imperial leather branded shower gel. when that is done, i will try one of these. it is my hope that the lemon in it will do the job.

many thanks, as ever, for reading, and i look forward to bringing you further updates, about such things as shower gel and beyond, soon.



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

what's going on with Winston Red?

hello there

i appreciate two things about the title of this post. i am aware, look you see, that unless you happen to work for some outfit called Japan Tobacco, you are unlikely to know the answer to this question. also, i appreciate the fact that many of you would respond with something along the lines of DFK DFC, which is to say you could not care less and assume the same should be true of me. it is not.

with my beloved Marlboro costing north of £9.40 per packet i have had to accept that they are beyond my funding. as my efforts in quitting / cutting down considerably have been a spectacular success thus far, i have had to move to a more modest brand that i actually liked. i found that in the form of Winston Red.

pictured above, dear reader, in the glory of Commodore 64 mode, is what could well be the final packet of Winston Red to be sold in the area of Yorkshire; widely regarded and acknowledged to be the finest and really only proper provincial area of England.

Tesco used to sell them. then, they stopped. i moved my weekly grocery shop to Morrisons as a consequence, as they still sold them. as of this most recent of passed weekend, they have now stopped. i am open to offers, then - Asda, Sainsbury's, please let me know if you sell Winston Red.

weirdly, both Tesco and Morrisons sell the lighter Winston Blue. yes i have tried them and no i did not like them. at all. i don't think anyone else but me has ever actually bought an experimental pack of them from either retailer.

moving away for a moment, then, from Winston, but staying with the weirdly side of things. as some of you are aware, i verk in close proximity to Club Bongo International, which means that on a monday morning i can usually see one or two quite curious things that have been abandoned outside of this fine establishment by members of the gentry, and indeed the ladies. this monday was no different.

that, hidden in the hedge, bush or shrubbery sort of thing, is indeed a darkish, or if you like off, blue adidas branded trainer. as far as me and the chaps of verk could see, they were a size 9, and further were in pretty good condition. so good, in fact, that someone has taken them (for both were visible, as you will soon see), so don't look for them as they are not there any more.

more on the shoes momentarily, but for some reason my (considerably) better half considered a, oddly enough, half packet of polo mints were something which needed to be placed in the laundry. if you want to see how a half packet of polo mints fairs against my smart, snazzy samsung washing machine, here you go, fill your boots, have a gander.

the washing machine, so far as i have been able to ascertain, survived the ordeal with a simple shrug. i suspect, however, that these polo mints are now of no practical use to anyone. if you want them, well, sadly they are now binned, so please do not ask.

just why was it that my (considerably) better half felt obliged to test the washing machine with any sort of packet of polos, let alone a half one? if you are asking that, well, you have absolutely no idea how married life works, do you? my place is not to question or protest such decisions; instead i am expected merely to get on with thing and deal with the consequences of her decisions.

moving back to the abandoned shoes, then, and here is the other one. i think i am right in saying that this one is the right one, as it is the one that someone would conventionally wear on their right foot.

that is indeed a tea bag near the shoe. no, no one has been and claimed it as their own yet, unlike the shoes.

why would someone have abandoned a pair of reasonably good condition shoes after a night out at Club Bongo international? it's an interesting question. perhaps they were abandoned not so much as a choice or lifestyle decision, but more that they were lost during a hotly contested bout of fisticuffs. the sauce, you see, can sometimes get the better of gents quaffing it, and minor incidents - how one is perceived to look at another, for instance, or even a debate over the cause of the spillage of a pint - can escalate rather quickly into heated confrontation.

i would like to think, though, that these were abandoned by a chap who was made merry by the sauce, and he declared something along the lines of "f*** these shoes i do not f*****g need them" with a smile on his face as he cheerfully discarded them. we shall never know, i suppose, but we can but hope that the new owner, or if you like incumbent custodian, is happy with them.
 

back to where this all began, then, and Winston Red. i am somewhat scared of opening and smoking these Winston Red, for i may not get another packet of them any time soon. that is indeed a pack of Carlton underneath them; my failings at quitting smoking now live a world of them and Chesterfield.

some, if not many, of you who do not smoke may well say that surely all cigarettes are alike. no, alas, this is not the case. just as wines, beers, apples and potatoes all differ in taste, so do cigarettes. Marlboro are the absolute king in this regard, but Winston Red have been a fairly close, decent enough substitute, in particular as the price of a packet is most usually south of £7 a pop.

in a recent post i am pretty sure that i intimated that i, so far as i know, have what one would consider to be a pretty good, constructive working relationship with the Japanese. this shall be tested to the full somewhat shortly, as i need to contact some company called Japan Tobacco, who are based in Surrey. they are responsible for Winston here in England, so it is presumably they whom i must address to enquire as to why i am finding it such a struggle to hand them over money in exchange for their product. due to the draconian laws in place regarding marketing and advertising cigarettes, they will presumably find it quite tough to answer me directly in regards of where i may buy them.

for the easily led and influenced of you, please note the warnings on the packet of Winston - cigarettes on the whole are very bad for you, most think, and you should not buy or smoke them. well, actually, you can buy them but don't smoke them. send them along to me and i shall gladly take care of that for you.

should i get any joy in information on Winston Red, i will be sure to share it here!




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

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!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!