My Friend Wrote A Book

My good friend and erstwhile colleague Dave Dorrough (or David Doordough as Amazon helpfully suggests you might mean) has written a novel.  It's called Revolution and it's available on Amazon if you can get past their suggestion filter or from his own site here: https://revolutionnovel.com/  

You should buy it.  And also read it but if you had to pick one, just go with the buying.

Hardest Tongue Twister?

Some time last summer my daughter and I discovered, much to her amusement, after I broke a popper off my trouser pocket that I can't really say "Pocket Popper" much more than once without getting in a mess.  She also found it tricky, but Hayley seemingly has little problem, not sure why that would be.

Anyway, today we refined it further by adding in some of the words we say when we get it wrong and came up with: "Popular Pocket Popper Puppet" which to be honest I often struggle to say even once, usually starting with "Pockular..."

Give it a go!

The Lion King

I found out today, courtesy of my wonderful daughter, that the story of the lion king is this: a cub's daddy dies, then he becomes king.

Sounds awesome.

Facebook Is Trying To Get Rid Of Me!

I'm not sure how I've managed to upset Facebook, but I was a little shocked to see this as a recommended group:

Or has Facebook achieved sentience and started a subtle programme to get rid of the fleshies?  Well I'm not that easy to get rid of Facebook!

Decisions, decisions...

I thought it was unlikely that the legendary Owl Lamp could ever be bested.  I was wrong!  Three times over, in fact.  But which one to buy?  The parrot just edges it for me and only £85 too!  And is it me or does the rabbit look like it's passing a tapeworm..?

Braaaiiins... Beeeeeerr... Braaaiiiin Beeeerr....

It's what all thirsty zombies have been looking for.  A beer with added brains!  What's not to love? Well the added brains, obviously.  And actually, the beer too.  If I'm honest, I'm not really all that keen on cranberries either.

Blast From the Past

My good lady wife was perusing the 21 Years of Spectrum display while taking Phoebe to her swimming lesson when she spotted a picture of Spectrum Fencing Club from 1994 which she thought had me in it.  So I asked them for a copy of it, and she was right!

What do you mean you can't see me?  I'm here:

Backscatter...

I've recently started suffering from spam in a new and even more irritating way.  It seems that spammers often fake the "from" addresses in their emails to try and fool spam filters.  It also seems that someone has started using mine.  Often these messages are recognised and rejected later on or are to an invalid address both of which can result in a Non Delivery Receipt, or a bounce message.  Of course the bounce message doesn't go to the spammers, it goes to me.

Yesterday I got nearly 100 an hour for about five hours.

I tried setting filter rules to stop them, but unfortunately there isn't a standard for what a bounce message looks like which means you need rather a lot of them.  When I started getting them in German and Italian I got really grumpy.

What I don't know is how they got my address in the first place.  There is a guy in the US who keeps registering for things using my address instead of his (presumably) similar one.  I even got sent a load of legal documents that should have gone to him and I regularly get his BestBuy discount vouchers.  However it happened, it's too late now and it seems there isn't anything I can do about it.  Grrrr.

The Legend Spreads

It seems even our American cousins are awed by Bradford City's magnificent achievement all those years ago.  They were so impressed, they named their entire company after it.  This is quite understandable of course, if a trifle puzzling.  Why do these New Yorkers care about The Lads so much?  We'll never know.  But I for one am pleased that they do.

Satanic Kitty

Look at her, so cute and innocent.  A harmless novelty soap dispenser you might think.

But you'd be wrong.  Kitty wears her Satanic allegiance for all to see.  She must be stopped!

If You're Lonely...

...and want 20 or so humourless men to pop round for a visit, perhaps you should check out this page on Amazon.  Go on, add all three to your basket.  You know you want to.

Resilient Russian

Quite an impressive achievement from the Russian Fella.  Imagine their surprise the first couple of times he came back to life.  I suppose they must have got used to it eventually.  Either that or they hated him so much, they had a medic on standby to revive him just so they could shoot him dead again...

I'll Take A Crate!

Only £7,200 a bottle, it's a bargain!  What I don't really understand though, is a standard 75cl bottle of Cristal 2002 is £290, and six litres is equivalent to 8 bottles, so I could buy exactly the same amount of overpriced champagne for £2,320 if I went for the more convenient to refrigerate normal sized bottles.  Or to put it another way, I could buy 24 bottles of exactly the same overpriced champagne for the same money as the giant bottle.  Could it be the bottle is worth £5,000?  Because it doesn't look that great.

Every Hotel Needs...

...giant plastic snails in the lobby!  Courtesy of the Golden Tulip Noailles in Paris.  You might think it's a little weird, I certainly did, but as a marketing strategy it was spot on (for me.)  As soon as I saw the pictures on their website I knew that was where I wanted to stay.

It also helps if you have an army of plastic gummi bears watching you through the window!

Armistice Day

"Mummy, I didn't know any soldiers who died in the war.  So how am I supposed to remember them?"

The girl has a point.

Trickle Treat

"Daddy, what's Trickle Treat?"
"Trickle Treat?  No, Poppet, it's Trick, Or, Treat."
"Oh.  How do you trick or treat?"
"Well, you knock on someones door and say 'Trick or treat!' and if they don't give you a treat, you play a trick on them."
"OK.  Shall we play trick or treat now?  I'll knock on the door and you say you won't give me a treat."
"Sure."
"Knock!  Knock!"
"Hello?"
"Trick or treat!"
"Errr, trick please."
"Ask me my name."
"OK, what's your name?"
"Rubella Witchy!"
"Hello Rubella.  Rubella?  Why is your name Rubella?"
"I've tricked you, my name isn't really Rubella."

Sorry Heston

I'm a big fan of Heston Blumenthal.  I'm also a big fan of gin.  So the combination of the two should be great, right?  Errr, sadly not really.  In fact, if I'm honest, it's just horrible.  I keep thinking I must have made some kind of mistake.  Surely, Heston Blumenthal knows more about how things should taste than I ever could?  In this instance though I'm forced to admit that maybe he doesn't get everything right.  

Writing this I've just remembered that I also didn't like his Pine Fresh Toilet Cleaner flavoured mince pies.  Ahh well, never mind, I'll go and console myself with some snail porridge.

An Unlikely Princess

I took Phoebe to a kids party at the weekend.  The parents had laid on an entertainer and while she was trying to get the children involved she gathered them round her and asked them who their favourite princesses were.  Yes, they were all girls.  She got the usual answers I was expecting - Cinderella, Rapunzel until she came to the birthday girl herself.  When she was asked, she just pointed and said "Phoebe!"

I'm glad to say Princess Phoebe didn't let it go to her head.

The Dangers of Syllable Juggling

One of the long running jokes in our household is the something I have just decided to call "Syllable Juggling".  This essentially involves changing the syllables in a sentence round so they form some kind of amusing nonsense.  Unfortunately this happens in such a spontaneous and throwaway fashion that concrete examples are hard to remember, but typically something like "Let's load the dishwasher" becomes "Let's dish the loadwasher" or something similar.  Yes, the long winter nights just fly by.

However, Syllable Juggling while tired can have unintended consequences as my Darling Wife discovered when she had a go with "The Princess and the Pea" and came up with "The Peaness and the Prince*" - fortunately Phoebe is so used to this kind of thing that she didn't notice the unintended meaning, while I was able to quickly leave the room to avoid drawing attention to it by laughing.

* just say it out loud if that's not making sense.

UncleMungo - Nature Photographer IV

Finally some success or at least I got something much better than my first effort anyway.  I have to admit, this  was a massive fluke and unfortunately I missed what could have been the best shot while dragging my camera out of my bag and turning it on.  But never mind, I managed to snap this pretty cool shot of a Grass Snake apparently trying to make off with a duckling*.  For those of you with a nervous disposition, don't worry Mummy Duck was equal to the challenge of chasing the marauding snake away.  Click the picture for a better view...

* I have no idea if the snake was really after a duckling, it did seem to be chasing them though - swimming directly at the family of ducks several times before mummy finally saw it off.