Oh What a Perfect Day

Today was the Perfect Friday. Everything came together in a freakish way that will only happen once in a blue moon. Today was a payday Friday, but not only that, it was a Pay Day Friday at the beginning of a long weekend. And on top of all that my boss was not in work! A most excellent Friday I'm sure you'll agree.

Coupling

Ok - Jen is watching Coupling, the UK version on BBC America. She enjoys it despite my claims that it is a terrible British version of Friends. Last night she was watching it and I was reading my book. In the show they were having a dinner party and some music was playing in the background. I stopped reading because I had the overwhelming sense that I recognised the voice, and I don't just mean that I knew the song, I actually recognised the voice singing.

Jen leapt up and said, "My God it's the Pulfords!" And indeed it was Steve and Stephanie Pulford - better known to the world as The Arlenes. Strange where you friends spring up. Like Stu on the Sky News or Ian in a publication about gardening (or something to do with the Eden Project) or Jon talking about West Ham with Mark Bright, or Darren on Crimewatch (as a armed robber not a victim).

No Rain (yeah right!)

This entry is to test the new video uploading service of this blog, and to highlight the wonderful weather we had during our visit to the UK.

Congratulations - Marsh Boy

A heartfelt congratulations to Ian for his new job. Good luck and we expect free entry to all the attractions of English Heritage.

(He is the one in the green - lurking outside the toilets as we used to in the clubs).

Crawling

Ellie crawled for the 1st time today. She is now a mobile baby - watch out world!

Check it out

I have spoken in this blog before about my musical friends (and also Ian) well here are a couple of links to their relevant sites. !st of is Stu, he played at our party and went down a storm. There is video tape of his show so I will try and work out how to place it on here (or somewhere else on the web) and show you all. However, he does have a myspace um, space, so check it out, at the moment it is just a blog, but he assures me that he will get some music content up there soon.
http://www.myspace.com/sonofjackmusic

The 2nd link is to a Tinners site. The Tinners were South-East Cornwall's premier duo specialising in anything that wouldn't get them bottled off the stage. Sometimes it worked as in their wonderful rendition of No Woman No Cry in the Two Bridges in Saltash, and other times it failed as in their attempt at Living Next Door to Alice in the Union in Saltash. There are many stories to tell about this Dysfunctional Duo, and I am sure that more will appear on this page. it is on Facebook (I don't get it!!) so please check it out. (You will need a Facebook account to follow this link)
http://apps.facebook.com/bands_and_music/bands/show?bid=58

From Under Covers

My addiction to cover versions seems to show no sign of ending any time soon. For those that have been unfortunate enough to receive a CD from me recently will know that I have for a long time been interested, nay, obsessed with cover versions.

Whilst living with Jon and Helen they exposed to me to a wide range of cover versions and sionce then I have not looked back. Recent purchases have involved Richard Cheese, who is a lounge singer who specialises in "loungified" versions of modern pop and rock songs. Last night I found a group called Hayseed Dixie who do versions of heavy metal songs in a Bluegrass style.

Some of the best covers in my collection are from Paul Anka whose album Rock Swings was a runaway success when it was released in late 2005. So if you have any unusual covers please do let me know, I am always keen to hear them, and you never know - there could be a cover cd winging it's way to you very soon.

We don't need no education

Today was Emma's 1st day at Kindergarten. I didn't think it would effect me in any way but it was a moving experience seeing her trot off into school this morning. She is officially a big girl now. I just worry about how mean other kids can be. I remember Stu telling me about the horrible time he had at school including the time he was Sellotaped to a chair by another kid and the teacher proceeded to tell Stuart to stop it. Ah teachers!

Having not gone to school in the US I struggle to understand the system, and the way things are done here. But I also wonder if Emma was at school in the UK whether I would also fail to equate what she is going through with my experiences of flying board rubbers, kids being hung up on coat pegs, swapping Paninni cards and Michael Bennett wetting himself in assembly.

There's no business like Snow business

Yesterday I ready a story about Tony Snow. Mr Snow is the chief spokesman for President Bush. He is going to have to resign for financial reasons (Snow not the Prez). You see Snow earns a pitiful $168,000 a year, but obviously he cannot cope on that as he has expenditures. Now I am not doubting that he does have expenses and kids at college etc, but it is a slap in the face to all those other people who do not earn anywhere near that smount and yet still have kids to support, houses to pay for, food to buy etc etc.

For example Jen and my salaries combined is still a good $60,000+ short of Mr Snow's. But we would be considred well off by most standards in America. think that sometimes politicians and their spokespeople forget that the rest of the world has to struggle by with their actions earning far less that they themselves get, so when they come out with statements like that of Mr Snow's this weekend it really makes peole snort with derision/hate them even more/realise how out of touch they are.

Book of love

I love reading books to Emma, it gives you a great excuse to read some of your old childhood favourites. For example I recently reread The Fantastic Mr Fox to Emma as I remember it being, well fantastic, frankly.

Ellie's books on the other hand are not nearly so much fun. The problem being on of plot or rather lack of plot. She has book called Teddy Bear. Inside this admittedly colourful book there is no story lie, no character development, and no Teddy Bear (he is on the front cover but makes no appearance once you open the book). There are in total 8 words in the book. These range from Elephant (next to a colourful picture of an elephant) to Rabbit (yes you've guessed it). There are in fact more words on the back of the book, describing the copy right laws and when it was 1st published, and what type of material it is pinted on, that there are words in the book.

As for me, I am currently reading John Peel's (auto)biography. I say it that way becuase he wrote the 1st half but died before the end. It is a cracking read, and has some truly laugh out loud stories within, I would highly recommend it to anyone. But it made me start to think about the increasing number of biographies I have read in recent years. Here are some of my favourites:

1) Full Time - by Tony Cascarino
2) Scoring an expert's guide by Frank MacAvennie
3) The Dirt - Motley Crue
4) Billy by Pamela Stephenson
5) Tragically I was an only twin - William Cook (about Peter Cook)

Yes all light hearted and not too high brow but thoroughly enjoyable reads.

An Apology

A huge "sorry" to Jo and Monge - better luck next time eh?

Papering over the cracks

I made a shocking discovery today. The story starts with me on my bike. I cycle in to work. I would love to claim that this is an effort to get me fit, or a personal effort to help the environment, but in reality it is because we have one car and Jen needs it to get to work and my work is only 15 minutes away on bike. Anyway, I shower and change at work. My desk is located on the ground floor (1st floor to any Americans reading), but the shower room is located, along with the gym, on the 3rd floor. So I trundle up there every day and get ready for work.

Now I don't want to get too scatological here, but I have never visited the bathroom on the 3rd floor before, doing my business closer to my desk on the ground floor, but today for many reasons I don't think I want to divulge here, I had to use the facilities located on the 3rd floor. I was shocked, not because the toilet looked any different, oh no, but by the fact that the third floor, where all the senior management team are located, have better toilet paper than us low life's on the ground floor. Yes there is an elitist toilet practice going on at my work. How have they managed to maintain this approach? Well I realised that no one is going to complain about it, mainly because who goes to another floor to use a bathroom? And secondly how do you approach that subject matter with the facilities department?

If you have any idea please let me know so that I can rectrumfy (I thank you) the problem.

i-tunes - i-love it

Ok so I am a late convert to Apple's i-pod. I had an MP 3 player from Dell up until 2 months ago, but after the difficu;ites we have had with Dell and Windows Vista, and discovering that their own system no longer supported their own MP3 player Jen and I have both switched to the i-pod.

I love it, it is so good with such a wide library to choose from, but the one downside is that I have my credit card registered and so when I buy something from the i-store it never feels like a real expense as I don't actually have to enter any details or pass my card to anyone.

Wind Instruments

Fathers are the best belchers. I don't mean that they themselves emit a lot of earth shattering burps (well some do) but rather that they seem to have an uncanny knack of making their children burp. I base this opinion on our trip to the UK and all the guys that had kids were routinely passed their spawn (Jen loves it when I call Ellie that) to make them pass wind. The reasons are unclear. According to Amanda it is becuase men are more ruthless in the attacking of their children to make them pass the gas. Myself I like to think it is the one small contribution that we can teach our little chrubs - that of a good belch.

Decade

It is strange how life can sometimes seem like a series of coincidences. I remember once dating a girl who it turned out knew not one, not 2 but 3 different friends of mine, and these were different friends from different parts of my life, who didn't know me.

I thought of this tonight as I was reminded how 3 of my friends from Uni have or are going to have babies this year, and if Ellie had been born on her due date, rather than 3 weeks early she too would have been an 07 Lancastrian Alumini baby. Stu and Nat started it by having Benjamin, quickly followed by Martin & Amanda with Benjamin (easy to remember although if I forget one of their names the chance is I will forget the others too) and Caroline and Douglas are pregnant and due well ok I can't remember when, but it is this year.

Whilst on our trip to London I was also reminded of coincidences when in the Natural History museum we bumped into someone I used to work with at PwC - I mean what are the odds of that happening - answers welcome and their may be a prize.

A little Horse

It was good to go back to the Uk with kids in tow. For one thing it gave me an excuse to get involved with lots of activities that I was unable to for the last 20 or so years, and secondly with the family in tow I was able to revisit old haunts and remember my childhood.

We went to castles, Dartmoor, a miniture pony centre as well as Cothele House and Morwehllham Quay. It was a funny feeling to be a tourist and a local at the same time at these places. It is great having kids you have the perfect reason and playmates to do silly things - as this picture shows.

Reservations

Our trip to the UK was fantastic, we all had a great time, but one thing we did struggle with, even before we left San Francisco was on-line reservations. Just what is the bloody point? We had booked a hotel in San Francisco because it worked out cheaper that way than paying for parking at the airport. We reserved a room with 2 beds in it (one for us, and one for Emma) and a cot (for Ellie obviously). We checked in and they had our room but they did not have a cot ready for us. Ok we thought we will go out for dinner and by the time we get back they will have put one in our room.

No such luck. Finally after 2 phone calls we got one. The next day we checked into our flight which we had reserved tickets on 3 months previously. However, when we got on our flight it turned out that despite us requesting and reserving a kids meal for Emma, they did not have one for her. A tired child on a 10 hour flight - it really wasn't too pretty.

We landed at Heathrow and went to pick up our reserved hire car, only to find out that the class we had reserved was not available as they had been "pretty busy" that morning. We were given an upgrade which was great except that the boot space wasn't as big so it was a real struggle to get our luggage in. Also despite us reserving 2 kids seats for the car they only had one, and had to rush out and buy us an alternative.

When we returned to London after a week spent in Cornwall we found that our family room that we had reserved in Hammersmith was without the cot that we had reserved. Unbelievably they had given it away to some other family who hadn't reserved it without checking to see if anyone had reserved it. They only had one so they had to contact another hotel to get them to trasnport one over.

So why reserve things? We hardly got any of the things that we reserved, makes you wonder doesn't it? Anyway the ohoto shows that the car was so small we had to put Ellie in the back. (By the way she is laughing I promise, not crying).

Lazy

Ok so many factors have kept me from updating my blog; having a family, a new job, but mainly just laziness. Since I last wrote I have been promoted at work, visited the UK and discovered that I have very hairy ears. All will be revealed over the coming days and weeks as I get back up to speed. Hopefully people will still read this.

More later - I promise.