last week

Well, last week was an interesting one for me, not that it started well. The first thing I did on Monday morning was fall up the steps at the station. I’m still trying to train a new pair of shoes to fit on my feet at the moment and frankly it isn’t going well.

As well as chafing mighty sores the size of Wembley football pitch into the back of my ankles, I can’t seem to get them to walk in the same direction as my feet. The shoes had seemed such a good idea at the time, five minutes in Brantano and I’d located a pair roughly the right colour and an absolute bargain. It only took a moment to try them on and decide they were good enough. I should know better!

To be fair, half of the problem is that I’m not used to wearing shoes. For the last ten years I’ve always worn boots – never shoes. On a whim, then, I decided that I should wear shoes to work now that I’m approaching 39, perhaps it’s time to start being a bit more grown up.

That brings me back to the station at 8 last Monday morning trying to steer these razor lined, glass bottomed canoes that weigh three tonnes each, up a set of steps in front of a hoard of impatient commuters. I fell straight over knocking my left knee three metres to the left and grazed my hand bad enough that if I’d been a horse at the Grand National, the next thing I’d have seen would have been a man in a brown coat and flat cap holding a pistol.

“It’s OK, I’m fine!” I shouted into thin air as a crowd of people pushed past, huffing and tutting at the fat buffoon who had held them up for 10 seconds with his ridiculous lack of coordination. Not one offer of sympathy or help came my way, whereas a mountain of hatred and impatience was thrown at me for being in their way.

Still, I survived and through a great deal of comfort and support given by my private healthcare clinics (Subway and Wetherspoons pubs), my counselling is nearly complete.

Later in the week I found myself in Cambridge as previously discussed and discovered the actual answer to the problem that even Einstein couldn’t answer, which is nice!

Finally, I was asked to spend a lot of effort at work ripping out the whole of the Northern section of our Network. In a bizarre twist of fate, I was befriended on Facebook this week by Debi, who was my boss when we put all the equipment into these sites, but who I haven’t heard from for years. It was a complete coincidence, but when I heard from her on the very day that I was removing all the data at these places I couldn’t help but shake my head at how odd life can be.

Now I sit and wonder what will come this week? What next in my fast paced world of trivia? If I can get those new shoes working OK, I reckon things will be just fine.

redesigning your blog

So far I’m very happy with the response I have had and the way that I feel about the redesign of this site. Its odd how simply making it look different makes you feel different.

It took long enough to do though, a whole evening trying to teach yourself HTML and art when you have no real skills in either. Clearly I’ve used an easily available template which takes no skill at all but then I had to tweak it a bit. The template wasn’t quite the right size and just did not look right at first.

So I had to try and locate the parts of the script that covered the widths of the different areas and where the margins were and adjust them all. Then I had to keep on adjusting them until I repaired the damage that I had just caused. Several hours later I was back to square one and scratching my head.

Eventually I’d managed to get it looking how I liked and proudly I decided that it was time for bed.

As I was about to switch off for the night I noticed my favourite widget was no longer working. This widget was my first and shall remain my favourite for some time, I think. If you are wondering what I am referring to it’s the simple, little prompt in the top left hand corner that invites you to have a look at an old post. So simple, it’s brilliant. I nabbed it from Experiment Garden when I first set up the blog and love it. I’m proud of a good 70% of the posts that I’ve written here. Consequently the idea that these posts, that are otherwise forgotten about get a mention, really appeals to me.

It might only be me that does it but often I do find myself thinking “Oh yeah I liked that one!” when I see the prompt and then click and re read it. Sometimes I can see how I could have done it better, sometimes I cringe yet sometimes I pat myself on the back.

To get to the point (at last) I had a good look at it the next day and went back to Experiment Garden to find out why it had broken. Any one reading this with any knowledge at all will already be jumping up and down with their arm in the air shouting “Miss”, at this point, but for the rest of us…

It turns out I needed to add a line into the actual HTML of the template separate from the widget. The new Template wouldn’t have that in so it needed re adding.

So now I can relax as my favourite gadget is back up and running, though I’ve got a niggling feeling that I’ve missed something.

I know I’ve added some other lines like that into the header before – can’t remember what they were but I feel they were important, possibly for Google searches or Adverts? Any ideas anyone? I’m starting to panic that I’ve missed something important.

Charles has a drink

Charles stood and waited, unsure about the etiquette. What should he do next? What rules were there to follow that could get him out of this one?

The social enigma that he’d found himself in was as oppressive and out of place as finding a Scotsman in an Australian heat wave teaching Cricket. Charles stood and stared, uncertain of what to do next.

Charles had finished his day at work in some discomfort. The day had not gone well and the weekend before it even worse. His mood had not been good. After working later than usual on projects that did not particularly appeal to him, the prospect of a swift beer had seemed all too tempting.

Rick had seemed so sincere. He had come over to Charles’ desk with the genuine warmth of someone he had worked with for more than five years. “Do you fancy a drink?” had been the line and as they had both been forced to work so late together, the camaraderie had seemed so genuine so Charles jumped at the chance.

“I just need to finish typing this email and I’ll be there.” Rick nodded and put his coat on. “Nice one I’ll see you there!”

Charles spent 30 seconds writing the email and then shut down his computer as the lift doors closed on his friend behind him. Alone at his desk Charles thought to himself how right this all was, how much he needed a pat on the back from a friend right now. He was suffering enough from the blues of being a husband and parent. Surely a few minutes with a friend was exactly what he needed?

Excited as he was, Charles took the time to text home as he walked into the pub; after all he loved his wife very much, no matter how disgruntled he felt after a tough marital weekend.

It was here that things got strange. Charles walked into the pub just as his friends were walking away from the bar. Rick had got the round in and was now putting his bag down on a seat. All of the group smiled and warmly welcomed their friend as he approached them, but Rick sat himself down, firm in his belief that he had done his duty as far as the beers were concerned.

Charles stood and said hello again, just in case Rick hadn’t seen him. Surely the man who had asked him down and then bought the beers would see that his friend had only been two minutes behind him? Surely he would buy a beer?

Charles hovered, and time slowly passed. Charles coughed dryly, and time passed. Charles looked around and everyone except Rick smiled. Rick looked away and pretended to be fascinated by the wallpaper. Charles attempted to make a joke about buying his own drink and everyone laughed, but nothing changed. The moment lasted forever. Charles had been invited into the group but felt like he was an alien.

Not knowing what to do next, he asked everyone if they would like a drink, even though they all clearly had brand new ones. No one wanted one and so he really didn’t know what to do now. Was he welcome here? Had it all been a mistake?

Charles turned to the barmaid and dejectedly ordered a solo pint. He would buy a drink and then sit with his colleagues, hoping like hell that somewhere along the line he would start to fit in.

As he waited to pay for his drink, the mobile started to sing and Charles sighed as he saw who was phoning. Charles stood in disbelief as his ear was bent by an angry wife who was more confused as to why he was there than he was. After all she had suffered just as bad a weekend but hadn’t been able to go out and have fun. Why should he? Charles wasn’t sure he was having fun yet.

It didn’t take long for things to resolve themselves and Charles relaxed as he instantly felt warmly included into the group on sitting down. At the end of the day Rick was a pleasant man but socially inept and prone to making uncomfortable faux pas in mixed environments. Charles could excuse this, having spent a lifetime doing similar himself.
Soon a proper round was ordered by someone else in the group and all was forgotten. Charles sat back and laughed at how alone he had felt such a short time ago. He mused how massive an impact such small things as this can have on one, how lonely you can feel surrounded by people.

In no time at all the beer was drunk and Charles was on the train, warmed and comforted by friendliness that he’d actually been a part of once the initial moment had passed. It was only when the train pulled into the station that Charles realised that his problems had not quite finished yet, and he prepared his ears for the ache they were about to receive.

waiting for a taxi

I’m so cold I can barely type, so annoyed I can barely think without swearing and so far from home I can barely understand the accents around me.

Today I’m in Cambridge having meetings with some colleagues. As an Oxfordshire resident I’m naturally against the whole concept of Cambridge and usually deny its existence. But today I’ve had to bite the bullet and get on the long train ride to this non existent land that time forgot.

As with Oxford, Cambridge has tried so hard to hang on to its heritage that the modernised parts stick out like sore thumbs and generally compete with the city instead of complementing it. Having said that, it’s ok, and there are some very nice parts if you can put up with intelligent, posh students acting like complete idiots in order to be cool. Actually I could be talking about either city there so delete as necessary depending on your loyalty.

Any way, at the end of the day I ordered a taxi to get me to the station and began closing down my laptop. “Ten minutes,” came the cheery response from the controller. So I had a last cup of tea and visit to the toilet whilst saying my goodbyes to everyone. Actually, having re read that last sentence I should point out that I wasn’t going to the toilet whilst saying the goodbyes, I had the good grace to wait until afterwards.

What I did then was very, very foolish. My naivety completely caught me by surprise. As the building is a big one and the taxi drivers don’t bother coming in I headed out to wait. Am I really so inexperienced in life to believe the 10 minute taxi time? Really – have I never travelled anywhere?

Bang on 10 minutes after ordering the car I stood outside smiling. Any minute now the cab would come round the corner to get me. As we all know, or should know in my case, taxis are always 10 minutes away. The time is never meant to relate to an actual measured length of your lifespan. It is merely supposed to be an indication to let you know that they have received your order. There is no fixed measure for how long a taxi driver’s 10 minutes actually is. I believe this is the theory that Albert Einstein was actually working on when he stumbled accidentally on the whole E=MC squared thing. Albert never did find the answer and finally died whilst stood in his lounge looking out of the window for the cab that had been “just coming into your road now” for the last hour.

As the minutes ticked by I started to realise how cold it was and so I began to do the walk of ‘waiting passenger’. I walked around in an ever increasing spiral for a few minutes, turned and then walked back into the start. Then I walked on each paving slab without ever standing on the cracks or standing on the same one twice. There are 56 paving slabs in the little patio area outside the office, you will no doubt be interested to hear!

I was really cold by this point as was clear by the way my buttocks were beginning to go numb as the cold worked its way through my inadequate layers. To raise morale I began singing the waiting for a taxi song, a simple refrain that starts off simply by repeating “Where is the taxi?” but then turns a little Tarantino so I won’t go into detail about the later verses here and the chorus would make Eddie Murphy wince so I’ll leave it there.

For a full 40 minutes I pranced about finding different ways to walk over the slabs and adding new and physically impossible verses to the song. Finally the cab turned up with a smiling driver instantly opening with, “It’s like a maze here ‘innit mate? Been drivin’ roun’ for chuffin’ ages!”

“Yes it is like a maze, a particularly rubbish one with a really big building sat on its own surrounded my road signs pointing to it!” I coolly responded.

And so here I am on the train at last; the lateness of the taxi making me miss two trains. Now I have to head all the way into London before I can turn round and head back out to Oxford. It’s a long trip but happily I don’t have to do it too often so I suppose I shouldn’t moan.

T=DW divided by Q squared – I think I just solved it.

T = Ten minutes

D= Drivers ability to know where he is in relation to the little one bar heater in the cab office.

W = Time it takes to finish ‘reading’ Playboy.

Q = Quality of the fare. The journey you are taking will affect how much money can be made for the shortest possible driving time. Also factored in is if you are being picked up from a good tipping area or if you are likely to have some extra chargeable luggage in the boot. 2 seconds after hearing where you are going from and to, the cabbie will be able to come up with a figure between one and 10 that relates to your Q score.

How hard was that Einstein?

random things that kids say

Last night I found myself laughing out loud at the random things that my children do. This is not at all uncommon as they are both absolutely mad; I’ve no idea where they get it from.

Parenting is such an odd job that you can never let your guard down and become complacent. One minute you are so stressed that you hate the way your life has become, the next you are crying with joy. The only thing you can do is hang on to the good bits and try to remember them during the bad.

I got in a little late yesterday and the boys were well asleep before I got in. They so often are sadly. Later on as I was going to bed I heard little footsteps heading to the toilet. Not liking to miss a chance to say hi I headed out to the landing and waved a big hello.

Jamie was sat on the toilet with his tired eyes barely open. His sleepy head rested heavily on his hands but his elbows kept falling off his knees every now and again, and so his head bobbed about like a beach donkey. Eventually he realised I was there and looked up.

I waved again and Jamie smiled and simply asked…

“Can horses run faster than humans?”

Stunned, I nodded and said that I think they can. Jamie smiled contentedly and then, having finished his business, got off the toilet, washed his hands and went back to bed without another word or glance in my direction. I’d clearly resolved that mystery for him. Now he could get back to sleep.

I stood and laughed at how crazy and priceless these moments are.

lurking on Facebook

Last night my wife came into the room and announced that she had ‘un-friended’ her mum. Enough was apparently enough and Jo had decided to take action against her mum’s lurking habits on Facebook.

It had come to a head earlier in the week when Jo’s mum let slip that she knew what she had been up to after reading it all on FB. Jo was not impressed as it appeared to her that her mother had not logged in for months. Instead it appears that she likes to log in and just read what other people are up to but without ever giving anything back. Jo said she didn’t have time for lurkers,

This all prompted a discussion, because we decided that the type of person who sits back happily snooping into their so called friends lives on Facebook without ever contributing anything in return needed a name.

In the end we decided that they should be called Flurkers and so from now on that is what we shall call them. To be honest as this was an impromptu, spur of the moment chat we didn’t have time to search on Wikipedia or anywhere else to see if a name already existed, and so it’s possible that Flurkers is actually the Oxford English dictionary entry for this anyway. Perhaps we are way off and the real entry is very different – feel free to let me know.

Having shaken off her first Flurker, Jo is on the rampage now and is intending combing finely through the last three months status updates to see if anyone else is trying to live their life through hers. I suspect their will be many more casualties in this war.

Can you do this in real life I wonder? If someone is hanging round not really contributing to conversations can we ‘un-friend’ them? I might try it at the pub. If a group of us are chatting and one person is just sitting at the end laughing at everything but not saying anything back I think I shall take action. I shall take a Flurker pack out with me consisting of ear protectors that you can quickly put on the Flurker, and then he can continue to see you but can’t hear what’s going on.

I think I have a few Flurkers on my FB too; perhaps it’s time to get nasty.

the 12 months of fitness

Oh dear, so far the January detox and fitness purge is not going well. I just can’t seem to get into it yet. I think I will have to wait and start in February instead.

The gym is still waiting, helping itself to free money from me, so I don’t need to panic about that just yet. Somehow I am going to have to go back there though and surround myself with people who can see their toes without lying down and raising their legs. I guess if I got off my bum and went there now though, I’d be more likely to see people like me wobbling about trying to make the running machine start when they had completely forgotten how to use it. In January, I wouldn't be the only heaving mound of sweat falling off the back of the running machine.

Meanwhile I still haven’t quite got out of the Christmas spirit when it comes to lunch time. Though I really do need to work that one out and fast as I’m down to my last pair of work trousers that still have a working button to close them with. Fortunately we never threw out the maternity trousers that Jo had worn to work with Jamie that everyone had mentioned looked like men’s trousers at the time.

So as you can see I am struggling to shake off December and get stuck into the new year health kick. I will keep at it though and eventually I will get started again – though as with every year what happens is that I get going by late January. This continues through February until my Birthday in early March. Generally I wind up taking a fortnight break to celebrate and heartily eat my fill. It’s ironic that it’s the eating heartily that will no doubt wind up giving me a heart attack.

After the Birthday break comes Easter and so quite often I look up and we are suddenly in April before I’m thinking of being healthy again. As with Christmas I can’t be expected just to jump straight back into the shorts and so I have to work myself back up to starting. Hence in June I will probably make it back to the gym.

I can usually sustain two months of this activity before realising that it is the summer holidays. Day trips out, main holidays and quality time with the family means that the Gym drops out of view again and Domino's returns to haunt me.

September is used to once again get myself back in the mood and hopefully I can be back in the gym by October. November follows but then suddenly it’s December again and nobody should be expected to exercise in December. It’s immoral surely?

By my maths that means I can look forward to 5 months in the gym this year, let’s hope it’s enough!

Crazy people's Lawsuits

For anyone who read Teachers In the Snow and mocked my theories about some idiot suing a school because their child slipped on snow, please have a look at the info below.

I just received this in the electrical mail from Mike who has forwarded it on from someone he met in the pub – so there is no doubt about the validity, it must be true.

I cannot credit the source of this as I don’t know where it came from, however clearly it’s not mine.

Though these are all Americans, it would be foolish to expect that it could not happen here.

Please enjoy.

Stella Awards
It's time again for the annual 'Stella Awards'! For those unfamiliar with these awards, they are named after 81-year-old Stella Liebeck who spilled hot coffee on herself and successfully sued the McDonald's in New Mexico , where she purchased coffee.
You remember, she took the lid off the coffee and put it between her knees while she was driving. Who would ever think one could get burned doing that, right? That' s right; these are awards for the most outlandish lawsuits and verdicts in the U.S. You know, the kinds of cases that make you scratch your head. So keep your head scratcher handy. Here are the Stella's for the past year:

*SEVENTH PLACE*
Kathleen Robertson of Austin, Texas was awarded $80,000 by a jury of her peers after breaking her ankle tripping over a toddler who was running inside a furniture store. The store owners were understandably surprised by the verdict, considering the running toddler was her own son. Start scratching!

* SIXTH PLACE *
Carl Truman, 19, of Los Angeles , California won $74,000 plus medical expenses when his neighbor ran over his hand with a Honda Accord. Truman apparently didn't notice there was someone at the wheel of the car when he was trying to steal his neighbor's hubcaps. Scratch some more...

* FIFTH PLACE *
Terrence Dickson, of Bristol , Pennsylvania , who was leaving a house he had just burglarized by way of the garage. Unfortunately for Dickson, the automatic garage door opener malfunctioned and he could not get the garage door to open. Worse, he couldn't re-enter the house because the door connecting the garage to the house locked when Dickson pulled it shut. Forced to sit for eight, count 'em, EIGHT days and survive on a case of Pepsi and a large bag of dry dog food, he sued the homeowner's insurance company claiming undue mental Anguish. Amazingly, the jury said the insurance company must pay Dickson $500,000 for his anguish. We should all have this kind of anguish. Keep scratching.. There are more...... Double hand scratching after this one.....

*FOURTH PLACE*
Jerry Williams, of Little Rock, Arkansas, garnered 4th Place in the Stella's when he was awarded $14,500 plus medical expenses after being bitten on the butt by his next door neighbor's beagle - even though the beagle was on a chain in its owner's fenced yard. Williams did not get as much as he asked for because the jury believed the beagle might have been provoked at the time of the butt bite because Williams had climbed over the fence into the yard and repeatedly shot the dog with a pellet gun. Pick a new spot to scratch, you're getting a bald spot..

*THIRD PLACE *
Amber Carson of Lancaster, Pennsylvania because a jury ordered a Philadelphia restaurant to pay her $113,500 after she slipped on a spilled soft drink and broke her tailbone. The reason the soft drink was on the floor: Ms. Carson had thrown it at her boyfriend 30 seconds earlier during an argument. Only two more so ease up on the scratching....

*SECOND PLACE*
Kara Walton, of Claymont , Delaware sued the owner of a night club in a nearby city because she fell from the bathroom window to the floor, knocking out her two front teeth. Even though Ms. Walton was trying to sneak through the ladies room window to avoid paying the $3.50 cover charge, the jury said the night club had to pay her $12,000.....oh, yeah, plus dental expenses. Ok. Here we go!!

* FIRST PLACE * This year's runaway First Place Stella Award winner was:
Mrs... Merv Grazinski, of Oklahoma City, Oklahoma, who purchased new 32-foot Winnebago motor home. On her first trip home, from an OU football game, having driven on to the freeway, she set the cruise control at 70 mph and calmly left the driver's seat to go to the back of the Winnebago to make herself a sandwich. Not surprisingly, the motor home left the freeway, crashed and overturned. Also not surprisingly, Mrs. Grazinski sued Winnebago for not putting in the owner's manual that she couldn't actually leave the driver's seat while the cruise control was set. The Oklahoma jury awarded her, are you sitting down? $1,750,000 PLUS a new motor home. Winnebago actually changed their manuals as a result of this suit, just in case Mrs. Grazinski has any relatives who might also buy a motor home..........................

The behaviour chart

I’m very pleased to say that my boy has hit his first target – well done Daniel.

It came to ahead just before returning to work on our country walk. Daniel had yet another major tantrum and has been getting worse recently, and so it yet again turned violent.

Daniel is a fiery character with a real spark about him and believe me I would not take that away from him, but lately this has come out in some really nasty strops. Jo and I sat down and worked out that we could overlook it no more and had to start getting serious.

Over the years we have tried many things with him and most either fail straight away or he quickly works out a loophole and works around it. At last then, I have given in and he now has a chart.

I hate behaviour charts. I just don’t like the whole concept of rewarding naughty kids for the slightest of decent behaviour whilst good kids get to trundle along behaving the same but without the reward. However needs must and it was time to give it a go.

And so last night it was a mixture of pride, relief and guilt that I was filled with whilst realising that he had reached his first reward target of 9 consecutive days without losing his temper out of control. I’d never ask him to be a robot and not lose his temper at all but he does have to reel it back in before he gets to the point of hitting out at us or his Brother. We had also discussed and worked out the difference between normal sibling fights and the out of control hitting, so we aren’t going to try and ask the impossible.

He has done it though and 9 days may not sound much to you but let’s just say that this was his 2nd attempt with the first attempt only lasting 5 consecutive days. It’s a good start and now he needs to raise his game and last another 5 days on top so his next target is 14 days (the days sound an odd number because of how we have broken them out into mornings and evenings – it’s complicated but kind of makes sense too).

Fingers crossed that we can really achieve something here. Will Daniel ever be a little angel that quietly sits and let’s everyone else choose sweets out of a jar first? No of course not and I really don’t want him to be like that either, but if he can learn to control that temper 90% of the time then I’ll be a happy Dad.

re working the adverts

Hello,

Just to let you know I'm re designing the site and moving the bulk of adverts to a seperate page.
This results in me posting the adverts here so please forgive this. I'm not savvy enough to work out a different way of moving the adverts and so they will appear on site for a couple of days before dropping off the bottom.

Hopefully the result will be a nicer place to come and read, especially if I manage to re design the template at the weekend as well. Meanwhile anyone wanting to shop will still be able to do so ( would be nice ).

I ran an experiment with the extra adverts but don't really like it and so this is why I'm moving them. I'm not deleting them because I'd still quite like people to use them!

Thanks Glen.

Links and Shopping page for Glen's Life

Glen's Links and Codes page February 2010.

Please scroll down for all the latest Offers and discount codes.
NEW to Glen's Life -- British Airways Airport Parking and Boots!






















































Promotion codes and offers - February 2010

Celebrate this Valentines Day with John Lewis Flowers.

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B&Q

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I'll keep on updating this page as I get the offers in!Happy shopping - Glen
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More Medals than Ebay

I almost fell off my chair laughing the other night whilst watching the news. Rarely have I seen anything quite so funny.

I suppose I should say that the item itself was not so funny as it clearly shows a man with some issues of loneliness or of simply fitting in that could easily be attributed to the things that had happened to him during the 2nd World War.

I tip my hat to everyone who lived through that weather you went to war or not, such was the level that everyone in the country was affected and suffered in some form or other (such as rationing or being evacuated or bombed etc.). So take it as read that I appreciate most highly what they all went through for me.

However – some things are just funny.

The report told of Roger Day, a pensioner who’d been caught out lying about his war record in order to impress a lady. I was only half listening to the report but picked up that he had been on the Remembrance parade marching with other veterans but some of them had complained. Clearly someone had decided that his medal was wrong or something. Either way he had been investigated and found guilty of wearing medals that in fact he had not won.

Ebay had apparently provided him with a medal or two to wear, these he used to impress a new love by proving how brave he had been in the war. I imagined how petty the whistleblower must have been to spot it and report him. I mused that in fact the grass had been a love rival who had spent months researching his foe before being able to jump up and confidently accuse the cad.

Then they showed film footage of the parade.

I nearly collapsed a lung in laughter.

This poor man had somewhat lost the plot and had slightly overstepped the believability benchmark. His chest sported more metal than Robocop. He was covered in medals. Admiral Nelson would have looked like an underachiever next to him.

Roger stood out more clearly than ‘Mr. T’ at a Coldplay gig. There must have been a mighty crush of veterans queuing up to complain about him as anyone with that amount of hardware on his ribbon would be well known to every war historian on the planet.

If only he had known when to stop. He could have stood there with 3 medals hanging and impressed anyone worth impressing. Four medals would have had his back slapped heartily by the other men and ladies phone numbers written on bingo cards thrust into his pockets. Walking around with half the world’s bronze swinging about your chest was only ever going to get you in trouble.

I do hope he finds love and that the lady in question (his wife in fact) forgives him, mainly because of the great uplifting moment of joy it gave me on an otherwise miserable day.

Check out the story at BBC News

The extinction of the dinosaurs in snow

Well here it is, the future winner of the Palme D'or.

The film that has made George Lucas cry and Steven Spielberg hide in the cupboard.

This film (described earlier in Walking With Snow Dinosaurs) accurately depicts the death of the dinosaurs due to climate change all those millions of years ago.

It demands you take note and think about how fragile our own existence is and how we must all recycle our Dominos boxes if we are to make it through the next 100 million years or so.

This is film making at it’s dramatic best so I hope you have a comfy seat and are ready to accept some harsh truths about the planet we are guests upon people!

Please enjoy – “Death of the Brachiosaurs, in snow”

Created from the rotting corpse of my own previously made Snow Penguin.


P.S. some viewers have complained that they can only see a blob of snow melting in a very boring manner and that most of the film is set in complete darkness with nothing to see. I pointed out to them that their browser settings and media player set up is probably at fault and that their inability to see the Brachiosaur is entirely down to their own lack of vision. They replied that they would rather watch paint drying to which I suggested that they would like my soon to be released epic – “The rise of the Mammals in Dulux paint”.

new chest of drawers

I thought I would just write a quick note about doing D.I.Y. under pressure, this also very much illustrates the difference between my wife and I.




For a while now Jo has been pointing at the boy’s chest of drawers and saying how much we need new ones for them. I could see that she was right as the drawers were practically unusable. We don’t have an IKEA anywhere near us so that was out and I didn’t want to spend too much.



Any way Jo patiently kept on reminding me that we needed new drawers without ever so much as suggesting that she would sort it out herself. This weekend I cracked and got in the car and fetched some. Here is where the first difference comes in because I just went to the first and closest shop and then bought the first and cheapest set of drawers that I found. Jo would have spent ages in different shops checking out the drawers. Jo would have investigated the best drawers to get and bought a set that perfectly matched their room.



However Jo would have had to get up and actually do it and that’s where it went wrong.



So upon my return, the first thing Jo did was go on the internet to look at the finished product and read reviews, meaning that before she even saw them up she informed me that they were too small.



Then, just as I was opening the first pack she came running in with a smile on her face. Apparently she had just read a review that said the following “Even whilst 6 months pregnant, I was still easily able to put these drawers together in two hours”. Jo overtly checked the time on her watch and then walked away.



The pressure was on.



She knows full well how my head works and knowing that Jo was timing me against a 6 months pregnant woman made me anxious to get started.



The boy’s were helping though ( ha pregnant lady didn’t have that issue ) and so every time I put the screwdriver down one of them picked it up whilst the other loudly complained that it had been his turn to use the screwdriver. Eventually Jo conceded the unfairness of the distraction and dragged them away to watch the TV.



By this time I’d done the unhappy head shake three times and cursed the instructions twice. Slowly the cabinet came together, somewhat wonkily until I realised that one of the sides was actually the top. But eventually it was done.



Jo came in and stopped the clock, the pregnant lady had beaten me by 6 minutes which I immediately realised would be down to her not timing it accurately enough.





The drawers are a bit small and cheap looking, but I’m fairly confident that Jo will stop mentioning this soon; well fairly soon, certainly before next Christmas.

Walking With Snow Dinosaurs

I think I probably won’t be making it as a film maker after all.




Yes, it’s yet another attempt by me to step into large sums of money; this time film making. How can it be so hard? I figured that since I got a new camera at Christmas I was fully kitted up now to make a top of the range Hollywood style film and pocket wedges of cash.



Yet again my plans have been thwarted, yet again I will have to put my back pack on and head off to proper work.



The idea was simple, and I reasoned I could come up with some waffle to match the genius. I thought that it would sit nicely into the artistic bracket of film making, could easily wind up being displayed at the Tate, although from what I saw in the miserable half hour I once spent there so could the mess that next doors cat leaves on my garden. I could sell this to some idiot posh feller for millions after getting the Turner prize or something.



Failing that I thought that maybe David Attenborough could use it in one of his documentaries or better still the BBC could pick it up for their Walking With Dinosaurs series. My film would after all be depicting the extinction of the dinosaurs in snow.



“Death of the Brachiosaurs in snow” is the working title of the piece and essentially it depicts the effects of climate change on the dinosaurs all those millions of years ago in extraordinary – never seen before – detail.



It started on Saturday when I looked out into our back garden and noticed that my snow penguin had deformed due to being partially thawed out. The snow penguin had become – the snow Brachiosaur. We giggled and talked about putting a sign out the front inviting people to come in and “walk with dinosaurs” for £2 an adult, £2.50 for kids. We wondered if we would make any money from it and if Jo could knock up some sandwiches and coffee to sell in a hurriedly put together café stall that I had already started to erect on the patio.



Jo put a stop to that idea when she pointed out that one small lump of snow, which looks vaguely like a dinosaur, might not hold the public's attention long enough for them to need to stop in the café, or buy one of the boy's old and well thumbed dinosaur books from the gift shop which I was building next to the exit. It was about this time that I remembered that the new camera I have has a time lapse film feature.



Oh yes, I had an idea. Daniel and I set about filming with a Playmobil character acting as Professor Nincompoop walking up to the Brachiosaur and then being eaten (I’d extensively researched what dinosaurs eat as you can see). We went out and filmed it but my complete misunderstanding of how time lapse filming works meant that 20 minutes of messing about outside with sheets of paper for dialogue and finely worked out choreography provided us with four seconds of an un-watchable speeding blur.



Then Jo piped up that making a study of the snow dino melting would be interesting and she could use it at school maybe. Genius, I immediately set to work knowing full well that her school would not be able to afford the rights to my epic work without sacking 3 teachers, a dinner lady and putting the whole of their library on Ebay.



In no time at all I had the camera sat on a tripod and running. Comfortable with my work, I left it to film.



What I’d maybe not considered was how long it takes a snow dinosaur to melt and how irresistible to children the camera is.



An hour or so later I looked over and noticed the camera pointing directly up into the air – how long had it been like that? never mind I fixed it back down into roughly the same place that it had been before and left after putting some chairs in the way to block access.



Then the unexpected happened, whilst we were out it got dark. Actually the getting dark bit wasn’t unexpected but the snow blob (as it had now become) still being there and the fact that the lights inside the house reflect off the window meaning that the camera can’t see the blob, was a surprise.



I spent the next ten minutes working this out, closing the curtains behind the camera allowed it to see out. Over riding the security cameras so that they are always on allowed a small amount of light to get into the garden. Hopefully this will be enough – you can nearly see the snow blob in the view finder.



I reasoned that the time spent not being able to see anything will be a mere blink of an eye in the film so I should get away with it. Later I noticed the camera had swung itself 180 degrees and was now filming inside the house.



On Sunday night when the snowball had shrunk but was still there I’m afraid I rather had started to get a bit bored of it, but none the less I rigged up the lights and left it to it. This morning there is still a small clump of snow left and so it is still filming.



I really hope it finishes today because the thrill of the moment has well and truly gone. I don’t think I have the patience to be a wildlife cameraman at all.



I’ll keep you posted as to how it goes and if the film is ever finished I will attempt to post it here as well as I’m sure you are now desperate to learn about how climate change completely wiped out the dinosaurs in colour!

Mildred

Mildred looked about her once more and wondered why on Earth she had got herself into this.

It had been a good day and Mildred had been at her cantankerous best making as much fuss as possible over the way dinner had been made. There hadn’t been enough carrots but too many peas, the meat was not cooked enough but too tough for her teeth. The grand kids had been too noisy and where was the pickle? “I know it’s a roast dinner but I like pickle!” Mildred chuckled to herself about that one even now.

It was the same every year, and on this her 75th Birthday it had been no different. Her son in law had come to pick her up and as he had been late she made him wait while she finished watching a recording of Countdown. Then he drove far too fast on a much different route to the one she liked and sat there white as a sheet as she reminded him of this at every turn.

Soon they were at her daughters and everyone was there, done up in their smartest clothes. Her daughter Mary and Peter her son was stood there smiling as were their children, all 4 of them, Mildred could never remember their names and so she simply called the boys Billy and the girl Mary nice and loud so that they knew who she was talking to. As usual they all pampered around her letting her sit in that specific old seat that didn’t fit in with any of the other décor in the house and wasted so much room, but Mildred loved it so much and so it was kept in prime position in the lounge ready for her visits. Mildred found it quite uncomfortable really but didn’t like to say now after all these years!

Mildred spent the day contradicting her children and indeed herself with reckless abandon. All in all she had really enjoyed herself especially the bit when young Billy had presented her with a pair of slippers for her Birthday and she had spent nearly 10 minutes talking about her other pair of slippers which are really comfy and can someone fetch them from her bag please as these new ones are the wrong type. Then she had spent 10 minutes arguing with the eldest kid – the girl, about her new boyfriend’s name. The girl had clearly got it wrong, what kind of name is Gary? What is it short for? 10 minutes later the grand kids stopped trying to convince her that it was a real name and settled for calling him Gareth from now on.

Then it happened, then the conversation changed and she had let her mouth move without waiting for her brain to have a think about it first. She had said how she wanted to do something fun, something crazy. Why not after all, she had been through so much hadn’t she? Why can’t she take a little risk now and then? Mildred had lived through a long innings and been through a lot of hardships; why not go out on a high?

What troubled her most was how feeble an attempt her family had made to talk her out of it, in fact maybe what troubled her most was how quickly they had arranged it? Maybe she could enjoy being awkward for a few more years yet?
Perhaps there was no need to do this after all? No what was she saying? They would pay for this, if they thought she was hard work before now then they have another thing coming.

Mildred stood up and scooped up her breasts from the chair as she did so instantly regretting her insistence on being naked as she did so. Mildred took one last indignant look around and gave one last old lady fart, smiled, stepped forward and bungee jumped her way into the local papers!

Pods

Today I have truly witnessed a marvel. I have seen, with my own eyes the power of the internet community, and I’m frankly in awe.

You read all the time about groups getting together on the Internet and then making changes. Petitions get handed in to Number 10 with hundreds of thousands of names on demanding this or being appalled at that.

I often wonder how big a difference it can make on the really important issues in life. Are the top level decisions concerning the governing of our country really altered if a quarter of a million MYSPACE users click “yes” to voice their opinion?

I can exclusively reveal that yes they do.

The people at the very top listen and act very fast indeed if the cause is high profile enough – I’ve seen it for myself!

I’ve seen Facebook move mountains to put something right, in just five days!

To use a metaphor relevant to our current weather, a snowball was thrown on Wednesday and before it stopped rolling it was an avalanche.

It was a simple enough comment which in another time would have gone unnoticed, 10 years ago someone would have said it to their friend who were in the same room as them and before the last one had left the house it would already have been forgotten.

Today, things are different. This was different because the comment was made to friends in Facebook’s lounge and the drinks being served weren’t tea; they were virtual Red Bull and Vodkas.

I simply wrote, “I wish Pods were more available in the UK” How could I possibly even imagine the extreme reaction this would cause. Pods are a very nice chocolate biscuit creation mainly available in Australia. We discovered them a few years back in Sydney. A small crunchy UFO saucer shaped base filled with Mars bar type chocolate. So it tastes like a mars bar with crunch. They also have Snickers and Twix versions and all are the best treats out there.

Knowing how much I miss them, my wife had gone to a lot of effort to import some for me for Christmas and this had re ignited the fire. Hence I’d found myself musing on FB at how it was time for them to be more mainstream here.

Just five days later I come to our Birmingham office for the first time in about a year. En route to the office I pass a very new looking shop and stop in awe. Cyber Candy? I know full well that Cyber Candy store is only in Covent Garden and that they sell Pods!

I dive in to the shop in a mixture of excitement and fear and there they are, right there on the shelf in front of me! I grabbed a bag of Snickers pods which have a snickers flavoured cream in the middle – yum. I paid for the Pods and ran for it. What on Earth has the power to turn an irrelevant comment like that into stocking a whole shop in five days? How did they know I’d be in Birmingham when I didn’t even know myself when I wrote it? I racked my brain to think about who knew I’d be in Birmingham – just how closely are MI5 watching me?

It’s not even as if I was aware of the work that was happening; only one person had really commented, so how had it happened?

I for one am a changed man – not only can Facebook create miracles like this in such short time but also it knows my movements before I do. I now live in fear, do I dare quit Facebook? What will happen to me if I do? Will it happen anyway now that I’ve considered it?

I’ve just realised that I don’t know anyone who has started on FB and then left it! However I do know a few that went on it but I’ve neither seen them or a status update for ages! Is that why they have disappeared?

Oh dear I’ve worked myself into a right state again, I think I’d better open the bag and have a couple of Pods to calm me down.

Teachers in the snow

Teachers crack me up.

Teachers put as much effort into not going to School as the kids do! The snow came down and the teachers went into a frenzy of excitement.

Facebook was in meltdown with teacher’s status updates and comments. My wife put her status down as “just seen the news – apparently snow is forecast this week”, within 30 seconds she had 24 comments which started off asking if she knew what time it would snow and how much, and moved on into where exactly it would fall and which roads were being gritted. The last 10 comments covered working out how few staff the School could legally open with and which sub-clause of their contracts covered working in arctic conditions.

In every profession and every office in the land there is a pub based legal expert ready to supply his or her colleagues with the vital line in their contract that gets them out of turning up and working for any slight variance from the norm. So it was soon reasoned that because running their cars would cause global warming and according to Pierce Brosnan this would then cause the world to freeze ( I never really understood the maths on that one?) it would be entirely against page 3 paragraph 6 sub-paragraph 2D for them to come in.

Page 3 paragraph 6 sub-paragraph 2

D: if it looks a bit cold outside then you would have to waste fuel warming the car up and heating it thus making your travel costs rise by an unacceptable level, stay at home and call your union.

This revelation calmed every one down for a while. Jo couldn’t peel herself away from the computer as each and every possible angle had to be covered and re covered for certainty. The cold deeply frowned expression on her face as she sat there had me worried, had I remembered to clear my history last time I’d used the computer? At the same time people from other professions in the county did the following.

They looked out of the window.

One look told them that there was a load of snow outside and they shouldn’t try and drive on it. They went to bed and in the morning they phoned their boss who wasn’t there; sorted.

The reality is that long gone are the days when both staff and children at a local school all live locally. Whereas you’d expect the majority of the kids to be within walking distance there are still a large number who aren’t. Likewise in a lot of schools the teachers also need to drive in. In the olden days there would be a much higher ration of walking distance children and teachers, enabling a school to open even when it’s snowy. Sadly another fact is that in today’s society the rules have changed. When we were kids a school might have opened with only a handful of teachers available but that was because as a society we understood that this was the case, and when little Johnny came open with a broken arm he got told off for being stupid on the playground. Now he’d get patted on the back as the parents are calling straight on the phone to the accident lawyers.

No way you say? Well you are right. Almost all of us would not do that, almost all of us would understand that it was icy and that chances are Johnny had been told to be careful, but it only takes one. It only takes one person to hold the school to blame for their precious Son’s arm. Admit it though, without taking money into the equation, how many of us would be angry at the school if it turned out the accident had been directly caused because there simply weren’t enough staff on hand to take reasonable care of our child?

And so we get to the point where there simply are not enough teachers available who can safely drive in to work and then look after a load of over excited kids and so the school has no choice but to shut. It means the teachers, the kids and the parents who drive don’t get put in any unnecessary danger by bringing them in and it’s not an easy decision to take I bet.

I joked earlier about the staff being un willing to do the slightest extra work that deviated from their contracts but let me say this. I was impressed by the way that in fact they have gone above and beyond the call of duty in reopening the schools.

A lot of people won’t notice it but I did.

At my children’s school they were fantastic, the first day they got it open the work that had gone in was obvious. Paths were clear, clear signs up directing people where to go. A clear plan of action was in place and loads of staff were out side directing people and helping people. All of this is above what is legally expected, it’s all down to their goodwill. The effort of shovelling paths and standing out in the cold for such long periods will earn them no extra pay.

It was the same for my wife, who drove on the icy roads to get to work, and then stood for an hour clearing paths. Then she and her colleagues spent the day pulling together to keep the kids learning and safe. They spent long periods outside in order to boost the safety on the playing field meaning that through the day most of the teaches wound up getting 10 minutes break for lunch at best with no other breaks through the day. I’m sure that it would have been easy to quote a contract and get out of all of that. No contracts were quoted by the majority of teachers across the country however, and thousands of them all did the same amount of work to ensure that the best option was given to the children. In some schools, even the parents turned up and helped to open the schools! How fed up of your kids would you have to be before you were prepared to clear their car park for them just to get rid of them for a few hours?

I was astonished at how much effort went into ensuring that the schools were shut when the snow came down, but absolutely amazed and impressed at how much more effort went into re opening them.

life is back to it's usual self

I think this just about sums up the way that life goes.

Thursday was my first day back at work after a long break. As you would expect this was met with mixed emotion as on the one hand I was ready for a break from the rigmarole of Parenthood and catching up with mates but on the other hand I had grown quite accustomed to not being at work and was in no hurry to return.

I guess some of the anxiety of returning to work affected my sleep as I had quite a vivid dream between snooze alarm chimes.

The dream went like this; I was sat at my desk slowly going through my emails. As always after a lengthy holiday there would be hundreds of emails to work my way through. Suddenly there was an email from the Lottery! They had good news about my ticket.

I quickly logged onto their website and read my messages – I’d won – I’d only gone and won the Jackpot!

In the dream I was fraught with uncertainty, I wanted to jump on the desk and shout it out, I wanted to run up and down naked shouting out insults to anyone higher up the ladder than me (pretty much everyone then!).

But I forced myself to stay still, keep calm, and keep quiet. No way was I going to tell anyone about it until after the money was in the bank, there was still so much to do so I started planning how I was going to get the time off work to go and fetch the cheque without anyone finding out.

I worried about getting that big cardboard cheque home on the tubes and trains without someone seeing it and mugging me, would it be safe in the luggage rack or would I have to hold it all the way home?

Eventually I decided that I could probably afford to get a cab to Paddington instead of the Underground and would manage to carry it from there on the train.

When the snooze sounded yet again I realised that I was still broke and would have to ride the tubes today after all.

And then it happened! Talk about déjà vu! I’d been going through my emails for half an hour and suddenly there it was. The Lottery had some great news for me!

I nearly screamed, my hands shook and my heartbeat went up alarmingly. It took about an hour for the website to open, it took three days for me to locate the message – I’d only won!

I’d only won £10 of course as we had all guessed from the very start of the story, but that’s life I’m afraid. Sometimes the obvious thing does happen; sometimes there isn’t a twist at the end.
Ho hum, I guess I’ll get back to work now.

Back to work

That’s Christmas over then! I hope you all had a good one – should you celebrate it and that you have a great 2010.

Sadly though it’s all over for another year, the decorations are down (well mainly they are anyway, I’m sure there are some outside lights that will be staying up for a while yet on the streets near me). Most of the chocolate is eaten and I’m back at work straining my trousers to their limit.

I’ve enjoyed a proper break and thoroughly enjoyed it. I’ve only briefly been near computers in order to continue my hobby of learning what the latest animals my Facebook friends have found on their Farmville farms, and so I have well and truly rested my eyes and not even considered writing anything. It’s been quite nice.

None the less I missed sitting here putting my thoughts down and so here I am. I’ve started back at the keyboard a day later that I’d intended and with considerably less time however, but never mind.

The plan had been quite simple, I’d even felt confident enough to explain it in full detail to Mr. Bond a week ago because I knew that nothing could go wrong. Sadly, like all evil overlords who have mistakenly described their plan to 007, and then left the building laughing as the bizarre solar powered shark dipping crane lowers the spy down to his certain death, my plan failed.

I confidently sat with friends on New Years day and revealed how my last week of holiday was going to progress and laughed at my own genius as I looked smugly at my wife, aware that she was unable to stop me. It was simple, Jo would be back at work on the Monday and I would be left with the boys as they enjoyed their last day off school. So Monday would be spent with a trip to the park or something where the three of us would laugh and dance about as we go for a nice walk and I impart all my knowledge of wildlife onto them. We would all come back rosy cheeked and happy in time to tidy up a bit and make a nice meal for their Mother on her return.

Tuesday would be spent doing housework. The boys would now be back at school so I would be able to get loads done. The decorations would come down and everywhere would be dusted and vacuumed and tidied. The Mount Everest sized ironing pile would be sorted and a meal fit for a queen prepared in time for everyone coming home.

All of this – I informed the group – entitled me to claim that Wednesday was Glen’s day. On Glen’s day I would do nothing at all. I would laze about watching TV, I would relax. I decided that I would re start the Blog on Glen’s day, the peace and quiet of a whole day to myself would easily afford itself to getting some decent writing done. On Glen’s day I would probably not even get dressed. Glen’s day would be the very last day of my holiday and I was going to thoroughly relax down and have some quality me time before getting back to work.

No one argued, I was clearly right with this; Jo nodded and said fair enough, I knew that all would be well. Only Mel shook her head and foretold bad karma would come from my overconfidence, so I shook my finger back at her over confidently and shushed her.

And so the week progressed….

Monday – Jo went to work and in the afternoon the boys and I went to the park. We laughed as they played and then went for a walk. 5 minutes into the walk as I was about to point out a lesser spotted whooping cough bird that I had seen, Daniel noticed that Jamie had a much better stick than he did.

15 minutes later, after a massive tantrum that had seen me being hit by a scooter, a stick and a foot as well as Jamie being swooped on once Daniel had finally worked out that hitting me wasn’t getting my attention ( ignoring tactic – does it actually work?), and we were back in the car.

I drove off feeling somewhat dejected as my boy screamed so loud that he made himself sick. It was a fun drive home. The evening meal was late and the atmosphere sullen.

Tuesday – pretty much to plan really, got the decorations down and vacuumed, but couldn’t find where Jo keeps the dusters or the Mr. Sheen and so failed on that task. The assent up the ironing pile was slow and hazardous and so was only attempted at night after the boys were in bed. Due to relations still being a little frazzled from the previous day, the meal was late and the atmosphere only marginally improved.

And then it snowed.

Wednesday – the world is white. Jo could not get to her school to work; the boy’s school was closed! I’d spent the whole of Monday working and for what? The house was full of noisy, over excited people. I had absolutely no chance of doing any writing. I couldn’t watch any TV and I certainly couldn’t rest. In fact I worked harder than I’d worked all year. I built 2 snowmen, a snow penguin and a snow fort – I was shattered! It’s not as if the kids helped very much, they just kept jumping on the snow ball or putting the arms in the wrong place – I had to send them in the house in the end just so I could finish them in peace.

So here I am back on the train and back in the office. Never mind I’ve had a lovely break and the look on the boys face on Christmas morning when they saw the presents and especially when they saw the mess that Santa had left the fireplace in was priceless. Can’t wait to do it all again next year!