A quick note about kittens

Domino

Jenga

Do you remember these bad boys?

Domino and Jenga entered my life last summer as tiny bundles of cute fir and whirlwind silliness. I was quick to post up some pictures and couldn’t wait to fill my blog with tales of their madcap madcappery.

And they are cute.

Very.

But the problem is that I am the world’s worst wildlife photographer. I’m never ever ready. You have to live with a camera in your hands to get decent photos of kittens and I never remember where I put it quickly enough. By the time I’ve recognised the blogging potential of a cute cat moment, it’s gone.

Domino and Jenga now - all grown up

I’m too busy laughing at them to photograph them. Maybe I’m too busy living in the real world to consider myself a proper blogger.

Now I could ignore that and write about them anyway. Spend hours writing about them tearing about the house or the way that Domino has started bringing in presents for us. Well I say presents…

Look at the tits out there....

Last week he brought us a worm. A bloody worm! How useless is that? I told him to take it outside and use it to catch me a proper gift but he just sat there pointing at it hopefully. In the end I relented and gave him a stroke while Jamie took the worm outside.

At no point did it occur to me to fetch a camera.

And all that would be fine but a cat story with no pictures? Is that the point where you reach for the PVC and climb into the cupboard in bored desperation? Nobody wants to hear about a cat – they want to see it.

Okay but pull my nighty back down when you've finished

People who come into work and bang on about their pets do my nut in. I’ve no interest in hearing stories of how your animal uses its litter tray, thank you. And if hearing someone talk about their cat is bad enough, imagine reading about it when they haven’t gone to the effort of showing you a picture? Cat stories need a photograph – and that’s that. At work you can show me one photograph a week, maximum, before I will attempt to hook my own eyes out with a finger. Keep the description of what the animal was doing at the time down to twenty seconds and we can stay friends.

I love my cats – and they appear to love each other (I think I have gay cats) but I’m thinking one post a year is enough – what do you think? By the way, should you watch this video - try and imagine Serge Gainsburg and Jane Birkin moaning Je T'aime in the background because I couldn't figure out how to add it.

 

How to dress to impress at your new job

I wrote this a month ago on the way to work but completely forgot to post it. I’m posting it now because I can…

I do not believe it!

One week into a brand new job and I’m sat here on a train in split trousers!

I only started here last Tuesday and have been parading myself about in a whole wardrobe of carefully purchased new clothes. 13 years of service at my last place had dwindled down my attention to detail on the dressing front, let’s just say I wasn’t putting much effort in, so when I was preparing to start anew I headed into town to stock up.

New trousers, new shirts, new ties. I even bought some new razors so I could remember to shave in the mornings.

I’m a new man.

But after only 5 days I’m going to be revealing the real me in the office today and I’m gutted.

I stood, just now, to let a guy sit in the window seat and when I sat back down all I could hear was tearing. 

My pocket had snagged onto the centre armrest. I’ve torn a gaping crevasse into the side of my trousers. I can’t cover it. I can’t get off the train and go home.

I’m such an arse.

So there goes my new image – the confident, energetic, fresh and dare I say sexy, potential leader of men has dissolved already back into the shambolic, scruffy, bumbling buffoon that he was before.

I guess I’ll spend the whole day walking around with my hand pressed against my hip. Looking camp has to be better than looking tramp, right?

Update: I did indeed spend the whole day trying to cover it up with my hand. I failed to fool anyone. Now they think I’m a camp tramp.

The Lord of the Gays

So, over at ‘In The Powder Room’ it is “Gay Week”. Specifically it is a themed week responding to President Obama’s recent comments about gay marriage. We do have quite a range of writers over there so if it is a subject you are interested in then please go to the home page and read the various posts in the theme as these guys properly have some good points to make.

As for me?

I’m not entirely sure I understood the brief.

Oh dear…

Apple have an awful lot to answer for...

It’s 8pm. I know it’s 8pm because I’ve been staring at the time for the last fifty seconds, ever since 7:59, when I started.

Watching a clock tick is worth the effort, it’s stopping me from starting something that I’ve been putting off for a while.

But I can put it off no more.

It’s time to transfer i-tunes.

My old PC is slowly dying and running out of steam – don’t be sad, it’s had a good innings but the world no longer loves Windows 2000 and my computer’s memory is fading fast, is it one Gig or two? Who can remember?

Before I can send my faithful old PC out to pasture and place him lovingly into the loft with all the other crap that I refuse to throw away/sell/charity/admit to still having, I have a job to do.

Music has been a somewhat complicated affair since some bright-spark decided that the CD’s, which they had made me buy because the cassettes that I had replaced all my LP’s with, had gone out of fashion and that anyone with trousers worth ripping off had an ipod instead. 

What was wrong with taping the top 40 off the radio anyway? So what if the start and end of every song had some chump talking over it but who cared? You were bang up to date with the latest tunes, could copy it to play on other devices, could carry it about to listen to on the train and could easily mix it about to knock up your own special playlist mix-tapes that you could give to a special lady who would usually dump you the next day.

 Music was easy.

One day, several years ago, I joined the digital revolution and spent a lifetime figuring out how to put my “Who”, “Spear of Destiny”, “The The” and “S-Club 7” collections onto it via my computer. Oh don’t laugh, everyone has something embarrassingly shameful and indulgent on their ipod, with me it’s The The.

Somewhere along the line, I’ve just discovered, I decided to use my work email as the log-in for my i-tunes account.

The work email that is about four years out of date now.

That’s the one.

With the password that is nearly, but not quite, the one I usually use.

That’s the one.

 I knew that this job was going to be lengthy.

Authorizing a new computer is step one and according to the help texts takes about four seconds. It does if you can log in without it happening automatically in the background for you. When you actually have to know your account name and password it suddenly becomes interesting.

Do I want to email myself a new password? What, to an email address that wouldn’t even work now if I still worked at my old company – which I don’t? Hmmm – better keep guessing then.

Eventually, I stumble onto the right credentials and my buzzing new laptop has the power to access my songs.

Except it doesn’t because I still haven’t actually transferred the music, just the rights to play it, it seems.

So another hour skips idly by as I seek out the actual media files and copy them over to an external drive only to copy them again to the new computer. I have at least got a little savvy now by leaving them grouped in a single folder and backed up on the external so things should be easier next time.

Next time?

Like I’m ever doing this again!

Midnight.

I do believe I’m done.

My new computer has playlists (that was a shocker – you export and import the library but then have to do the playlists separately). The playlists point to tracks that it can actually find.

It works.

Bed.

Feeling somewhat cocky and confident, the next day, I buy some new tracks and plug in the ipod.

Three hours later….

It seems my ipod had to delete everything and rebuild itself to the new PC.

It seems it didn’t like it very much.

Everything has gone and the ipod is not responding.

What was so bad about vinyl again?

It's only taken three years but I finally have a fan

Did I tell you that I’ve been writing for three years now?

My third Blogiversary passed by in April, relatively unnoticed by the world and I. This year has been a little rocky for me and posts have taken a little dive as a result.

I won’t bore you with the detail but I’ll use some keywords to describe the distractions that have been going on about me in both my immediate and extended family over the past six months.

Physical attacks

Breast Cancer

Strokes

Redundancy

Stress

I didn’t want to write about any of those things but as they were filling my mind and taking up most of my thinking time, writing anything here became harder and harder.

Anyway…

To the point.

Something happened this weekend that has really cheered me up, really made me smile.

I got a fan-mail.

An actual letter (well, email really but it’s the same thing) from Susan. Susan is an actual bone fide reader!

Not only does she take the time to read here, which is pretty blummin amazing, but she then felt the need to write in and tell me what she thought…

Not because she has a blog to promote, which she doesn’t,  not because she was after a plug or a giveaway…

But because she wanted to.

How amazingly brilliant is that?

So, Susan – thank you – thank you for being an ace reader.

You made my year – even if you did tell me off for not posting often enough… working on it -)

Summer is going to be very British this year

London 2012 Olympic Stadium

Summer is coming.

It is, it really is.

I know this seems unlikely with the current weather conditions being what they are (I’m a little over sensitive to the climate at the moment as our boiler is broken and so the heating has been off for a few days. A cold wife is not a happy wife).

I always have loved fast women

But around the corner, the Sun is rubbing its hands together and blowing on them to get ready for a hard season’s shining – trust me.

In London, summer’s imminent arrival can mean only one thing.

The Olympics.

For all of the tax expense, for all of the travel disruption, for all of the anticipated lack of gold medals – I for one am excited. Never before in my lifetime have I had a chance to go to the Olympics and chances are I never will again. This is it – this is my chance.

And guess what – I’ve already been.

On Saturday – last week.

Where most of our golds will be found, I suspect

As part of the preparations for the facilities, LOCOG have been running test events. These help to train the volunteers as well as check the processes and procedures about the park in time to make any last-minute amendments before the main event. And we got us some tickets.

So we went and explored the Olympic Park in a very chilly Stratford.

It is pretty impressive; I can truly report that Britain has done a bloody good job. Be proud of it you Brits – we can hold our heads up high. The Stadium is awesome, the Velodrome looks fantastic. The whole set-up seems very well thought through.

They just need to work on the coffee. They’ve got time and this is the point of test events after all – tasteless over-priced coffee that you have to queue up for three days to buy is not the future. Get it right guys, this is a make or break situation. The park was only a quarter full and coffee was a major headache. I get a bit David Banner when deprived of caffeine.

Jo tries very hard to get over the lack of a good coffee

We watched Team GB take on the Australians at Hockey for an exciting three-all draw, then went into the main Stadium to watch University athletics, followed by an awful so-called celebrity official opening thing. Watching the athletics was great. It really gave you a feel of what it will be like to see the real thing. I especially enjoyed watching the women athlete’s bottoms bouncing about – but then I would.

The Orbit - absolutely awesome piece of art

The show was dire. Really. But that didn’t take anything away from the moment. Sitting in that arena with the floodlights shining like beacons of hope, the boys loved it, Jo loved it, I loved it. The Olympics are coming, and we are ready.

Team GB have a crack at the hockey

Come Summer you will find team Staples watching the male artistic gymnastics (not quite sure how that happened and not too happy about the glint in Jo’s eyes every time someone talks about gymnast’s bodies – I hate it when women treat us men as objects to be leered at). Then in September, we are back in the stadium to watch Paralympic Athletics, which I truly am excited about.

London 2012 – Being British doesn’t have to be embarrassing.

The death of a myth

The jury is out, the Judge is stroking his gavel, and the prosecution are high-fiving openly and shamelessly.

It’s an open and shut case.

Guilty.

My son.

The boy who killed the Tooth Fairy.

The last time my eldest son, Daniel lost a tooth he tried to set a trap so as to catch the fairy at work and presumably ransom her into coughing up an extra pound. He tied some string round the tooth and then to his finger. One twitch would wake him – I talked about what happened here.

This time he meant business

For Christmas, Daniel was given an electronic set that lets him build simple circuits that make lights flash or buzzers sound.

Unbeknown to us, Daniel got creative.

Jo and I went up the stairs ready to do a little midnight pillow lifting and just in the nick of time I saw it. Just a hint of a string. Following it along I found his trap. One tug on the string around the tooth would pull a ball of Aluminium kitchen foil out from between two wires, setting off a billion decibel siren that would wake the whole of Oxfordshire. Actually the buzzer is pretty quiet but I can see what he was thinking.

We couldn’t stop ourselves.

Jo found the closest ornament she could find that resembled a fairy and stuck on some tinsel.

We might be evil but some things are too tempting to resist.

I stuck a pound coin into the fairy’s hand and tangled her in the string, swiped the tooth and then hung the fairy. The buzzer wouldn’t go off because the string was tangled on his drawer. I think things through.

Then we tip-toed out and went to bed.

To the untrained eye it did look a little like a dead fairy.

At 06:45 there was exactly (I timed it) a twenty second pause between the loud cry of “Wha???” and laughter. For twenty whole seconds my boy thought he had killed a tooth fairy that he didn’t even believe in. He’s not daft and knows full well to play along with the game or otherwise he wouldn’t get the cash. If he had really still believed I wouldn’t have done it – promise.

But that pause was pure doubt.

Love it.

The Tooth Fairy - dawn of time to April 2012. RIP