Road To Nowhere

Are we shocked by this?

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2009/jan/22/gaza-charity-appeal

Thank you, Popbitch.

Just had to share...

CLICK HERE

Very sad to hear the great Patrick McGoohan has died.

CLICK HERE

Somewhere I have a video of him in Danger Man, a great Sixties spy series where he was brusque, manly and terribly sexy. Those characteristics were much in evidence in his most famous role, Number Six in The Prisoner.

If you haven't seen it, do. It's brilliant. Hopefully it will be repeated now and hopefully the idiots at ITV will realise a remake is a pointless waste of money.

I have such fond memories associated with watching The Prisoner and Portmeirion in North Wales, where it was filmed. I've stayed at The Portmeirion Hotel a few times. It's a magical, beautiful place.

Goodbye, Number Six. Never forgotten.

I've been asked if I want to do a triathalon next May time with some of my sportier colleagues.

Of course there would be training - and lots of it.

I can do all the components - swim, cycle and run.

But I've never swum full throttle in open water. At least I can do front crawl. But then I haven't cycled with an ounce of competitive spirit in my life. My running... well, that's more jogging.

Then of course I'm flattered to be asked. And it scares me. And I do love a challenge. Which are all shouting "YES" very loudly in my head.

Anyone done one?

Yup, spinning again this morning. (This is gym-stylie spinning. Nothing to do with running around in a circle or weaving)

Really enjoyed it.

But then we have some top tunes.

Anyone remember this?

CLICK HERE

I've been singing it all morning, much to the amusement/now mounting irritation of my cell mate.

Watched Demons last night after few afternoony pints with Row.

Not very good, is it?

What a shame.

You try them on.

You walk up and down in the shop.

Comfy.

You get home.

You walk to the shop in new shoes.

You get home.

You have no skin left on the back of one heel. Toes are complaining.

Why does this happen?

I'm still living with post-Christmas Belgian chocs fest/feast/binge consequences.

And I may be a little more curvy than I would like.

So when a 'waister' caught my eye in the local department store I thought Friday dinner time would be an ideal time to try it on.

On the label a fifties-style nymphette smiled at me with a coquettish twinkle in her eye. 'Hum,' thought my naive little optimism, 'our waist could look that nipped in.'

And with that I shipped off to the changing rooms.

What optimism had forgotten was, unlike pictured fifties nymphette, I have hips. I am, actually, 1950s shaped. And so getting in to this contraption took some time and effort and was about as uplifting and glamorous an experience as being slapped about with a wet fish.

Then there was getting out. There was a moment when I didn't think I was going to make it. I tried not to panic/laugh/cry/ and I was eventually free, if a little out of breath.

But if all that were not depressing enough the changing rooms were floodlit by the most unflattering spotlights on earth which showed up every fat cell sitting on the back of my thighs.

It could have been worse. I've pondered the ignomony of what could have happened - having to be cut free? *shudders*

Someone pass me a chocolate, please.

'Ooh, I've got a bit of a sore throat,' I said.

'That's how that vomiting virus started with me,' said Trusty Assistant.

'Kind of just catching when you swallow?' I said.

'Yes, just like... sorry,' said Trusty Assistant, looking sheepish.

Bugger.

Our computer at home is refusing to connect to the internet. It almost gets there and then says something about an error in getting it together with Firefox.

Perhaps it has fallen out of love with Firefox - or something.

So, no blogging from me this weekend while I wait for one of Nibs' techie mates to come to the rescue. Apparently the mice on the mouse organ don't do IT.

It is quite old now so I'm not holding my breath for a cheapo solution.

But if anyone has any bright ideas...?

A clown was sacked from his job at the circus...

He's suing his employers for funfair dismissal.

This site was recommended to me by a colleague.

I'm a big Eurostar fan, as we know.

But armed with this man's expertise I feel I could avoid airports for a very long time.

And as it's only good manners to share....

http://www.seat61.com/

'What the HELL is she doing?' cried Glutinous Maximus (Left). 'Owwwww!'

'Climbing Ben Nevis would be my guess.. hang on... wait...,' said Glutinous Maximus (Right). 'Brain says she's in a spinning class.'

'Stupid bitch,' mumbled GM(L).

'Brain says it's completely off its head on endorphins so shut up and shift your arse,' said GM(R)

Here he is. My great sleep aid.

I don't have him in the bed with me very often as he is very old and a bit fragile now. You can see where his fur has worn away and no bear should go completely bald.

He's called Tinker and we've been together a very long time. He was a second birthday present from my Aunty Moira.

"All the toys you had and you had to hang on to 'that'. you took him everywhere," said my mother, somewhat disapprovingly, as she spotted him in my bed when I was visiting - about 10 years ago. He is a regular in family snaps. Sitting on the steps of caravans with me in the early 1970s, attending weddings...

I've stopped taking him everywhere with me now though - he's been through too many x-ray machines at airports and the suspicious looks I was getting from their security staff were making me paranoid.

Usually he sits on a pile of books by my alarm clock, but when I can't sleep I sneak him into bed with me, sniff behind his ear and drift off to sleep - and sneeze first if he is a bit dusty.

No, I don't do 'lends'.

Bit late I know, but here's the lovely Maastricht Christmas Fair with its beautiful big wheel.

I was there less than a month ago but it feels like a lot longer than that.

I'm not a great photographer and I have absolutely no idea what I'm doing at night, but I think you get the idea.

I slept last night, for all of two hours.

Someone has ripped the door from the waiting room hovel on platform two of Oxford Road station - again - rendering it fit only for sheltering penguins.

My train was delayed by 29 minutes so I only had the 30 minute wait in said ice cubicle.

But if I thought it was cold as I skidded along the pavements of Manchester this morning, I was rudely reminded Bolton's thermostat is always set just that little bit lower - to Arctic.

The first thing I saw as I scurried into Sainsbury's at 7.40am to buy nurofen plus... hot cross buns.

Casualties, so far:
* One voicemail message from my trusty assistant who is off sick with vomiting virus.

* One email from webmaster who has to take the day off to take wife for a scan re. impending baby.

And 400 emails from the slim fast people who have apparently heard about my Belgian chocolate binge and seem to think I need to be suffocated with the message that their product will shift my Christmas spare tyre. (Actually, I find eating when you are hungry and moving about more works just fine, if you want to lose weight. Funny that.)

Oh, and I have a meeting with my boss at 10am.

Great. Just great.

... by the looming spectre of work, tugging on my sleeve. (That and the habit of beginning blogs '...' which is beginning to grate on my own nerves, no wonder my visitors are plummeting. "Must get new parlour tricks, must get new parlour tricks.")

An early night with Jeeves, I think. (The books).

... well not completely, the ceiling has crumbled a bit in one corner where we had a roof leak last year.

A damp patch in the corner of this room was first indicator of trouble and of course it shedded it down - this being Manchester - before the roofer could get to it.

The leak was plugged though the stain remained.

Today I plucked up courage to clamber up a step ladder to inspect the damage.

It immediately crumbled. It's dry but disintegrating to the touch.

This room used to be a bathroom so it has awful swirly artex which I was going to have skimmed anyway, eventually.

But with a crumbling mess in the corner do I actually need a partial/whole new ceiling? Can a plasterer do this? Do I need a builder? And *shudders* will it be hideously expensive?

All home renovating advice very welcome. *mews*

Curb your enthusiasm, missy.

If you are going to go on long walks remember that anything over ten miles is going to test your muscles a bit.

Think about the next day, you silly mare.

All that gallivanting about in the fresh air yesterday and where has it got you?

Spending Sunday clutching the sides of your thighs is not proving to be fun.

*hobbles back to bed*

but I've noticed my page views and visitors are slowly falling off, compared to this time last year.

I'm confused. I have more blog chums than I did last year, I even have a mystery subscriber (yes, just the one!).

Does blog.co.uk add up differently?

Is blogging less popular now?

Am I just not that interesting anymore? *sticks out bottom lip*

Has anyone else noticed their 'audience' dwindling?

'Underground overground, wombling free,
The wombles of Wimbledon Common have gone more PC...'

Ok so it doesn't quite scan, indulge me. I am feeling bruised.

I am recovering from Rude Awakening.

Don't you just hate it when someone goes messing with your childhood?

Yesterday evening, after a hard day's non-shopping, I was crashed out on the sofa, perusing the TV Choice thingy, when I spotted the Wombles.

"Yay, nostalgia time tele," I said to no one in particular and settled down to what I imagined would be the first of four episodes of comfort-blanket joy.

Not quite the treat I had anticipated.

If it weren't right-on enough - wombles do tidy up all day - more PC messages had been added. I was anticipating 1970s TV heaven, but apparently in the 1990s more episodes were made.

These were they.

For a start all the voices were wrong, but there were also more wombles.

There's was now some action-girl womble called Alderney and a Rasta womble called Stepney.

Were wombles white? I thought they were furry imaginary animals but Stepney was black and had dreadlocks. Alderney lived up a tree (why?) and was flying something called a Womcompter.

OK so Madam Cholet did spend a lot of time baking and we all knew she was Uncle Bulgaria's mistress.

Yes, they slept in twin beds and yes, he always kept one slipper on the floor, but you could tell. There was true love in those little button eyes.

Why do we have to have more, more, more? More PC messages, more wombles, more things to fly, do, see... enough!

It's not right. I'm not happy.

What's next, Paddington's coke-smuggling cousin, Jose, arriving in London, fleeing his terrorist past and Shining Path connections?

I think we should be told.

It wasn't exactly heaving out there in the great shopping land of Manchester today.

And yet, in spite of little in the way of jostling crowds - and much in the way of shops - could I find a pair of comfy shoes for trolleying to work in?

Of course not.

It's the sod's law of shopping isn't it.

The one pair I liked that were in my size turned out to be too big and the pair I liked that weren't in the sale (desperation at this point) they didn't have in my size at all.

Sooooooooo infuriating.

I tried on a skirt that looked gorgeous on the hanger and made me look quite hideous when I put it on. It even had the temerity to cost more than the dress I was wearing which I had bought at full price.

At this point I had to break for a reviving cup of tea and a read of the MEN. Our evening newspaper revealed very little except it's supposed to be -8 here tomorrow. Whatever happened to global warming?

Buoyed by by English breakfast brew I tottered on to the great, hallowed frock temple of Vivienne Westwood which did nothing but convince me that my taste is getting stratospherically expensive - even at sales prices.

Oh, mew, mew, mew, mew, mew!

Conscience has won out over desire.

I am banging that cash in an ISA before frock-love gets the better of me.

And so I ended up coming home with nothing to show for my day out but a face scrub and some room spray.

And so on to a pampering evening... yawn. Goodness, non-shopping is exhausting.

Never mind a new me, I want the world to change.

Let's just say I'm ambitious.

I want that stuff going on outside my front door to shift. But just in small ways.

I'd like big ways really but I'm an ambitious realist.

So war and famine aside, these are the little things I want to GO AWAY.

1. Wheelie suitcases. Not only have they cunningly bashed me about the shins on several occasions this year but they have woken me up as they trundle past hotel bedroom windows in the early morning. If you can't carry it you shouldn't be allowed to take it with you.

2. The man at my train station checking tickets in a manner which involves his pointing at departing passengers. Apparently he can't read a ticket date without pointing at it - and you - first. Pointing. Very, very rude.

3. Bus drivers who pull away just as you reach the doors and ignore you when you knock. Last year I nearly caught my heels on the sound barrier sprinting down Oxford Road. The embarrassment of passengers' pitying gaze is poor reward for my near-Olympian feats.

There. Three small wishes.

No more mean bus drivers. No more pointy man. No more wheelie suitcases.

What would you kill off for 2009?