Loose end?

I have some time on my hands but there's nothing I find worse than being stuck at a lloose end..... I mean I have lots of holiday time to take and I want to take it... I just don't want to be sat at home..... Ok there are some lovely parks near me but there are only so many walks you can go for.

Anyway, I am planning on a trip to visit a friend in The Netherlands, but I'm a bit sacred, it's silly but I seam to have gotten less adventurous.....

Years ago, before the internet, I wanted to go and see a friend who was getting married in France, she invited me to the wedding, out of curtosey as a friend, but as I knew no french and I didn't have a job she didn't think I would make it. It was all in a beautiful french village called Rogne where she grew up and I remember the trouble I went to booking all the transport and looking for guide books in the library..., it all seemed like a big adventure and I really want to do something like that again. So This trip to The Netherlands I think I need to do soon, I want to feel independent again and not so petrified.

Weekend is here

Yep, weekend is here and time to get off the treadmill....... except I said I'd work tomorrow :(

Why do I do this to myself

Definetly when I get paid all this overtime I am having a bit of me time

Where's my weekend?

I really need to sort out something called Work,Life Balance. It's Sunday and I spent the whole of Saturday from 9:00am till 2:00am in work, I did manage to nip out for a bite, but what the heel am I thinking, I have 6 weeks holiday to take and only 4 months to do it in......
Don't get me wrong, don't pity me, it all helps towards Christmas and means that I will have some money to spend when I do take time off. Nothing worse than being on holiday with zero cash in your pocket, after all you do work and earn money, you don't do it to just pay bills, you do it to improve your quality of life.

Right off to hit the poker tables now.

Weekend!

It is just about the weekend and I intend to be putting my feet up, there is one slight problem with that idea and it has to do with me being at work all weekend. I am sure my boss might not like it with my feet on the desk, there is a solution to this problem, Stop giving me so many over hours and so few days off!
So lets see what it brings, I am just sick of being a hamster in a cage!

This deserves an award.

Someone once said "It is better to keep your mouth shut and appear stupid than to open it and remove all doubt" and the number of times I go to meetings in work and I am constantly reminded of this pearl of wisdom from even the most educated and sometimes most wordly of people makes me laugh. So true is it everyday I even see examples of it in real life. Lets take one very recent example..... umm... where to start.... I know... how about Mister Kanye West?.....





I just don't understand it... I mean what went wrong... he seemed so happy going in, looked like he was having a good time, he even had the delightful company too... here he is with his delightful company..

























and here he is again still holding onto his delightful company















Although by my reckoning his delightful company has deminished somewhat from the first photograph, infact I'd say atleast half the bottle is now gone.

We need a special award for exactly this kind of thing, were people make fools of themselves publicly, a bit like the Darwin Awards but for non fatal stupidity, a sort of Non-Postumous Darwin award.

Slippery Slope

Yup... proof positive if proof were needed, I went shopping on sunday and 3 of the shops I visited all had sections specifically for Christmas stuff..... there's no escaping it... Luckily I always keep a few £££ spare to get loads of stuff in the January Sales.... so hopefully this year will be less hectic......

Fingers crossed

How Long!!!!!

Today is the 13th of September and as usual I wake up to watch the news and have a cup of coffee while I decide how to spend my Sunday. Not to watch the cartoons... no , never....suddenly I notice a disturbing pattern, there seems to be more toy commercials than usual.... not that I usually watch the cartoons... but yep more and more of them I'd even say there were more commercials than programs.... then it dawns on me...... 15 weeks till Christmas..... Thank god I don't have kids...... don't pretend you haven't been warned, this is your 3 minute warning.....

You get how many channels!!!!!???

Growing up I always wondered why the television had channels 1 to 10.... 1 to 10 when there were only 3 Television channels, BBC1, BBC2 and ITV. Of course my dad ruled the TV, he decided what we watched and most of the time it was either something on ITV or the news the later much to my brothers frustration..... It seemed to be that we were either watching the news or a soap opera or a John Wayne film or some western, he did like Clint Eastwood too so wasn't too bad. I watche "The Enforcer" last night and it was full of classic Clint quotes "CALLAHAN: Well what'd you want me to do? Yell "trick or treat" at them?".

Anyway, along came the inspirationally named "Channel Four" (Can't imagine how much they paid the marketting team to come up with that name), which to start off with, was rubbish, however my brother uncharachteristically seemed to like some of the ... err.... Art programmes.... hmmm.... then came Channel 5 , another class example of clever PR and shortly digital TV and a huge array of more free to view channels. OK there were paid for cable channels and satelite channels in the intervening years, but not free.....

With all these channels now we still have the BBC which is publicly funded and not funded by advertising, they show a lot of repeats too sometimes, but sometimes they do produce the kid of great programmes that you know on a commercial channel would just not happen like "Blue Planet" which is an example of what I love about the BBC.... but I'm glad that we still have television that is not playing to the largest crowd and is independent of any other influences, if someone owns a company they will decide what goes on. So it must really gawl people like the Murdochs' that there is some form of popular media broadcasting that they just can't buy. For years they've railed against it, when BBC launched the iPlayer allowing people to watch TV online in the UK, they said that it was anti competative, how can it be anti competative, OK all channels have to compete for viewers, but the independent TV channels don't have to compete with the BBC for advertising.

A note to Myutopia

I will never forget you standing there as I walked past you, you looked creepy so that is why I walked faster!!!
LOL joking
It was a lovely surprise and we done so much and had the best time, can not wait to be back in the UK next month (next month is only 4 days away!)

I never tell lies.... EVER!!.....

Honest...... I would never lie to you about something like this, I am the most truthful person I know, Honest! What, you don't believe me. OK I'll give you an example of my recent trip to London. A friend of mine was going to London with a friend and her daughter and this was going to be her first ever trip to London so she had lots of things planned for her to do to make the whole trip special, She even had a ride around Hyde Park organised for her as she is crazy about horses and riding on the Saturday. They were going to have such a great time and I told her I would come down and spend a day with them on Monday.

But I fibbed, just a small fib, not even a lie, instead I came down Friday, stayed in a hotel near to where they would be going for riding, got up the next day and setup my ambush. I got there 20 minutes in advance of their arrival to see where everything is and get familiar with the area and once I was in position I texted her to ask if she was nervouse about the ride.... to my horror.... she was running a little late... What top do, well I went to the stables and just mentioned she would be a little late but that she would get here and was on her way. Anyway, I got chatting with the girl at the stables and almost lost track of time. I hastily made an exit from the stables into the street and suddenly 100 yards away, there they all were. ULP.... I made a quick about face pulled out my map of London and gave it the lost tourist routine... and when they were out of site headed to my ambush point in the park and waited.

While the daughter was riding round I had intended to spring a suprise on them as they walked alongside, but chickened out and partly I knew this was a special suprise for the daughter so I decided I wasn't going to muscle in.

An hour later the ride concluded so I made my way back to the stables and 15 minutes later they all emerged all with beaming smiles on their faces. I couldn't help it, as they approached me I couldn't help but beam back..... I continued to beam right up until the point they walked straight past me.

I after they got about 3 feet past me I managed to just catch her eye with a small "Hey it's me" wave and finally the penny dropped... and my fib was exposed. Not really a lie is it? I mean... I said I would come down Monday OK... I did say I would only come down on Monday.... but, I can change my mind for reasons of "comic suprise" can't I? I'm sure it's permitted by law.

So there we were, all 4 of us chatting away and laughing, then my friend notes... "I was chatting to the girl in the stables, telling her that we were worried about being late and that a friend had help organise it but they weren't coming down till Monday... and then she started laughing... and I couldn't understand what was so funny"

Anyway... everyone had a great time and we packed in quite a bit.. there were 2 pairs of quite sore feet for sure but despite that we saw loads of things and the weather was perfect the whole time and we did loads of stuff for free which is much easier now as the majority of museums and galleries are free. So I'm going to do some posts and links to stuff that if you ever visit London will help take the sting out of it.

Trip to London

Yesterday I was supposed to travel to London... but sadly I did not make the treck from Manchester to London :-( .......................

Instead I decided to be very sneaky and travelled down there on Friday, to give a few friends a surpise.... in fact they were su suprised..... they walked straight past me........

There I was standing in the street... all smiles.... giggling at my duplicity..... and they walk towards me all smiles......... and carry on walking :-(........

OOiiiiiii

Credit Crunchtime

With everything that's been going on in the financial markets lately, I've decided not to take my money for granted, especially as I'm at risk of losing my job at the moment because of it all.
So I'm going to try and avoid where I can giving my money to big business's that have huge profit margins and squeeze small suppliers till they pop. I'm going to shop around a lot more for everything, they need my money and no matter what I can always go out there an earn more, so intend to make them work for it.

I'm going to shop at farmers markets for food, ok will be slightly more expensive but not by much and atleast the money stays local, but things like gifts I'm also going to get from someone that made it themselves rather than from a factory that churns out thousands a second and uses child labour, just to satisfy the demands of the big high street retailers.

I had a look on ebay but I think ebay takes too big a cut but I did come accross this site "Imagination Madness", I love the designs and I think the people that I give this too as a gift will appreciate the hardwork and skill involved in making them... This one I like the most..

BINGO!!!!

Started off quite well but now going down hill...... it's true what my grandfather tole me... gambling is a tax on the stupid.

Ah well

In for a penny in for pound... cya at the next GA meeting.

It is a little quiet here

With all the planning of the upcoming trip it has been a little quiet here recently, I promise things will get back to normal as soon as the trips is over.
So agendas have been made, tickets and hotels booked now it is just a matter of getting up at 5am for that plane!

It is all up hill from here

The days are getting marked off the calendar by the kid for when the London trip is, the teddybear passports are made, suitcases are sitting out ready to be packed and now... Now we are already looking at the plans for next years trip, Australia.
A dream of many but it is my home country and the fact my child has not seen it is not ok with me, so this year London, next year Australia!
**smiles** hi there myutopia just thought I had to let everyone know we are visiting you lol**