The Great Blog Story - Chapter 13

Your humble writer here, has stepped into the breach and has written chapt 13 of the Great Blog Story and its now up and live and you can read it by clicking on the link on the side bar.

Enjoy!

Holiday in St. Ives Cornwall

This last week I have been on Holiday. Together with the Ukrainian Wife we went for a few days to sunny St. Ives in Cornwall. We walked around a lot in the rain and went into a lot of galleries where struggling artists were trying to sell paintings similar to the picture above. I took that for free on my digital camera. If I had wanted the same picture but in acrylic on board or canvas, it could have cost me about £300!

They look something like this:

  

After walking around a bit more and having a coffee, we went to the Tate Gallery in St Ives. It wasn't very good. Although there were some nice pictures by Turner
Turner moonlight 



who had toured around the West Country making sketches, as one does. We looked at the graffiti outside of the Tate and that was much more interesting that some of the artwork inside the Tate.






The main display other than the Turner was by some women who painted things like this:


Blue Square



I'm sorry but I just don't get it.


We walked around some of the craft markets as well, but some of the things on offer there were, well, just a bit too dubious!




On another day we went to the Seal Sanctuary in Gweek. And looked at the seals, it rained that day too!




But all in all St Ives is a Beautiful Place



I recommend it.

Trading Standards and DELL Computers

I've just this minute reported DELL computers to trading standards. It really annoys me that these companies can get away publising misleading ads about their products.

It all started when I saw an ad in last wednesdays Daily Mirror. The ad draws you attention to what they call 'Dell's Lowest Priced Notebook' and it is priced at £299. Which to me looks like a bargain because I have been looking for a laptop for my wife, who just want to use word and excel, so we don't really need a top spec one.

This laptop, the Dell Inspiron 1300 is quoted as having

• Intel Celeron M processor 370
• Windows XP Home edition
• 256mb ram
• 40gb hard drive
• 24x CD/DVD drive
• 56K modem
• 1 year euro collect and return service

Sounded good to me, so I went to their website, think I might purchase one.

On the website www.dell.co.uk/offer you actually find that the Inspiron 1300 is quoted at £348 pounds, you click through the links to buy and suddenly the price is up to £424 and I havenh't done anything yet, just clicked through the links!

By changing some of the selections I now have it down to £407 .48p, thats a bit off the quoted £299

So I telephone their sales desk, and speak to a very nice man, probably in Bombay because I couldn't recognise his irish accent!

He goes all through the listing again and comes up with a price of £405

Now where is that £299 Laptop they are advertising?

Illness abounds

Since last week, my last post actually, I have been ill. The virusy sort that makes you feel like a peice of felt thats been swept under a carpet in a place where lots of people in spiky high heels are walking all over you! PLus its making me cough a lot and I have an on going headache.

So i have spent much of the time in Bed, except for the weekend when it was my daughter matilda's seventh birthday, and I as it was also my weekend to have here I couldn't be ill for her could I, so I put on a brave face and soldiered on. We did all sorts of things and went to see Chicken Little. I thought that this might give me the opportunity for 90 minutes of sleep in a darkened cinema, but I actually watched the film and it was OK (ish) and sort of relative to a situation I am embroiled in with my littlest sister - all that moralising about closure and talking it through and listening to each other touched a raw nerve!

But most spookily, yesterday I did actually attempt to come back to work, even though I still wasn't feeling my best and guess what happened...

Yes I had a POT NOODLE!

What you say 'A POT NOODLE? - yeeuuuurrrrgh!

I Know I know, the last time I had a pot noodle was about 20 years ago, but yesterday after a team breifing I walked out of my office into the local shop and bought myself a POT NOODLE for lunch.

I don't know why I did it, perhaps it was some sort of Benylin enduced hympnotic state I had entered into (especially after snoozing through nearly 2 hours of a team briefing).

Or perhaps my body was craving some of the stuff thats in this, I hesitate to call it food. Maybe the antioxidants and stuff they use will have some beneficial effect on my raddled body, ease the coughing maybe (I've been coughing like an elephant with a hair stuck up its trunk) or something, maybe the eminent doctors and scientiosts that read this blog will come up with an answer - my name on the patent please.

Anyway today, even though I am coughing my way towards my coffin I have to drive up to Bristol, I should be in bed, I think, but I have something to do that has been booked for a while and it would just be such a hassle to have to re book it.

Who says us men make a meal out of being sick, I think I am being a brave soldier an all.....

Lots of pink fluffies and sympathy in the comments box please!

INTERNATIONAL WOMEN'S DAY MARCH 8TH

womens day

Today March the 8th is International Women’s Day. Apparently it is a day when women on all continents, often divided by national boundaries and by ethnic, linguistic, cultural, economic and political differences, come together to celebrate their Day, they can look back to a tradition that represents at least nine decades of struggle for equality, justice, peace and development.

And yet we hear very little of it in this country. For my Ukrainian wife, this is a big day, a day of celebration, in her country it is a holiday – why not here?

These are some of the issues raised by International Women’s Day

Some of the issues the U.N. and International Women's Day have focused on include the following:
• About 25,000 brides are burned to death each year in India because of insufficient dowries. The groom's family will set the bride on fire, presenting it as an accident or suicide. The groom is then free to remarry.
• In a number of countries, women who have been raped are sometimes killed by their own families to preserve the family's honor. Honor killings have been reported in Jordan, Pakistan, Lebanon, Syria, Iraq and other Persian Gulf countries.
• According to the World Health Organization, 85 million to 115 million girls and women have undergone some form of female genital mutilation. Today, this practice is carried out in 28 African countries, despite the fact that it is outlawed in a number of these nations.
• Rape as a weapon of war has been used in Chiapas, Mexico, Rwanda, Kuwait, Haiti, Colombia, Yugoslavia, and elsewhere.



So to all you women who read this have a happy Women’s Day solidarity, peace – and when you’ve got a minute I’d like a nice cup of tea please!

And by the way, us men have an International Men’s MONTH – who says size doesn’t matter!





happy day!

Hooray todays my birthday!

Today it is my Birthday
I’m feeling kinda tired
Yet only 20 years ago
I’d have been feeling kinda wired

Today it is my Birthday
Another year gone
I’m wondering about all those
Great things I shudda done

I shudda travelled round the world
And seen the Taj Mahal
Kissed all the lovely women
Not let my life just pall

I shudda climbed some mountains
And swim in the Japan Sea
Sing monkey songs with monkeys
Eat marmosets for tea

I shudda walked the China wall
And swum with dolphins free
I shudda leapt that canyon grand
On a fat boy Harley D

I shudda worshipped idols
On the road to Shangri La
Listened to the silent monks
Just one hand clapping – Nah!

I shudda spent some money
On diamond rings and pearls
I shudda spent some evenings
With durty durty girls

I shudda found some inner peace
I shudda found a route
I shudda got my arse in gear
For my tree of life to fruit

I shudda had the kumquats
The centre sweet and soft
Lived a magazine type lifestyle
In an airy New York Loft

Or I shudda been a poet
Eating canapés and brie
Like William Butler Bloody Yeats
On the isle of Innisfree

But today it is my birthday
And all that stuff is tosh
If I really take a look around
My life is just awash

My loving wife and family
My darling little girl
Make all these sad sad sad regrets
Unpick, deflate, unfurl

Who wants a New York Lifestyle?
And Marmosets for tea?
Who cares about the idols?
And the fat boy Harley D?

I’d rather have my family
Than all the china tea
Because after all that moaning
I’m pretty pleased with me

So hurrah today’s my birthday
Next one I’m fifty three
But maybe one day you’ll find me
On that Isle of Innisfree.

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He wear no shoeshine he got toe-jam football

I seem to have, over the past couple of weeks, been growing something in my shoes. Yes I seem to have toe nail fungus. This seems to be linked with the fact that for some unknown reason I developed an infection in my right big toe – how does that happen? I didn’t bang it, I am perfectly healthy, I don’t stick things into my big toe nor do I stick it where it’s not wanted, I basically stick it into my sock everyday with the rest of my foot and forget about it.

But now something hideous is growing on it or in it. Seems that what this is is called onychomycosis and one webapage tells me ‘Onychomycosis refers to the invasion of the nail plate by a fungus’. Arrgh I have a fungus. I’ve been invaded.

Now the closest I have been to a fungus recently is the quorn fillet I had for my dinner the other day oh and the quorn sausages I had recently. I really don’t want to think that what I have under my toenail is of the same genus as what I have on my dinner plate I mean UUURRRRGH!

Look even the quorn logo now looks a little like a big toe nail doesn’t it. I feel a little nauseous.

toejam


The doctor told me to get some canestan (Thrush) cream to put on my toenail but I have been treating it with tea tree oil which is antiseptic and anti fungal. But another webpage gives a lot of alternative cures. But first Ask Alice lists the main symptoms of toe nail fungus

thickening of the nail
brownish or yellowish discoloration of the nail
"toe jam" accumulating under the nail and along its edges (sometimes that toe jam can smell pretty rank)
brittle crumbling or breakage of the nail

I can go with thickening of the nail, the brownish discolorations – but Toe Jam? UUURRRRGH number 2. Why does everything have to refer back to food? What the F? is Toe Jam? Wait while I search Google…….

Well according to the Urban Dictionary one of the few places I could find a definition it is either:

An insulting reference to someone affiliated with the University of Southern California (also known as the "University of Second Choice" or the "University of Spoiled Children." The mascot of the University is one Thomas the Trojan, also known as Tommy Trojan. Thomas is often prophylactically sheathed in plastic in order to protect him from his admirers at that fine cross-town academic institution, the University of California at Los Angeles.

(a cultural reference which of course being a Brit I don’t get – Americans please clarify)

Or

the tiny treats that accumulate between the toes of attractive female feet
"I enjoy eating the tasty toe jam I find between DragonLily's toes at the end of the day."

(retch)

or

That grey-brown shit that accumulates between your toes. Primarily composed of dead skin cells, sock fluff and sweat.

(But I never get that….)


So having searched the whole of the internet I cannot find any thing that vaguely satisfies any definition of what toe jam is and how to recognise it apart from Alice telling us that it smells pretty rank and some people like to suck it off their girlfriends toes. Call me kinky but I prefer my fungus disguised as a healthy vegetarian sausage next to a pile of mashed potatoes!

So what are the remedies?

Vinegar, Vicks Vapour Rub and Tree Tea Oil seems plausible; Potassium Iodide (KI), diluted bleach and piss seem slightly less plausible. To me that is, some people might find it perfectly plausible to use Potassium Iodide which is more commonly known as a tablet that you take, immediately after being exposed to nuclear radiation.

Further has whoever recommended using piss thought this out? I put it to you that while it is relatively simple for us guys to point and shoot, with some degree of accuracy, the girls would have one whale of a job hoping around trying to hit to offending toe!

And here is a recommendation from the wacky side of the farm:

Here is a remedy you can add to your list. I read this on the internet probably 5 years ago. I can't find it now. The web site said to take a magnifying glass and concentrate the sun on the bad nail for 30 seconds a day. He said he didn't know if it was the heat or the ultraviolet light that killed the fungus. I don't remember how many days you were supposed to do this. I thought it was interesting.
I am currently using the Vicks on two bad fingernails. My husband's aunt swears up and down it worked for her on fingernail so we shall see.
--Michele

So I have to live with the realisation that there is something resembling a Lemon and Black Pepper quorn escallop living under my toenail.

toe jam quorn



Salad for tea tonight!

No Prize for guessing which song does the line I have used in the title of the blog comes from.

Well maybe a little pot of Toe Jam perchance?