Hanging Doors

I discovered on Saturday that hanging doors is... er... really fun.

Actually it wasn't as difficult as I'd imagined. Our first attempt, a new bathroom door in the Stead's house was 100% sucessful with no major disasters at all. Apparently, it's a one man job. Bah.

Sun, sun, sun, sun, sun, sun... RAIN! THUNDER!! LIGHTENING!!!

After nearly 3 weeks of glorious sunshine, the weather has finally broken. The BBC weather forecast prepared me for this, but like a true Brit, I didn't take it seriously. A little bit of rain, I thought. It ain't gonna be much, I thought. After all, we've had none at all for weeks. In fact we've had temeratures of 24-30 here in Bristol, which is positively scorching for us!

I was wrong. I woke this morning to a torrential downpour, accompanied by lashings of thunder and lightening.

Lucky I had my brolly, really.

Poor sods at Glastonbury. All that nice weather, and it breaks on the first day of the festival. Bummer.

Batman

I'm a big Batman fan. Always have been. So imagine my delight when they bring out a new Batman movie and it turns out to be great! Unlike the last couple which were a load of old nads!

Batman Begins was dark and brooding and exciting. Christain Bale was well cast in the role. He had a nice different approch to the character - scary and even a bit vicious - that the previous movies did'nt have. In fact there was lots of great casting - Gary Oldman, Michael Caine, Morgan Freeman.

So anyway. Batman Begins Rocks. It's fantastic. Go and see it right now.

(I seem to be liking a lot of movies at the moment. Life is good!)

Beware the Pants-Eating Bunny

In all the excitement and drama of the previous post, I forgot to chronicle the latest escapade of the man-eating bunny that lives in my dining room.
She's devoured many things in her time, curtains, cables, hardback books, the odd small child, but this evening she decided that she was going to steal and consume my underpants.

I should clarify that I was not wearing them at the time. They were on the clothes horse, drying in the dining room.

Bloodletting 2: Bigger, Badder and Bloodier

Oh yeah. It was Bloodletting day today. I actually haven't donated blood since last September 'cos I keep forgetting. I am a bad man!

Anyway - it was a very traumatic experience this time round. After donating the alloted quantity of Dazza Juice (apparently they take 470 ml - just a touch less than a can of coke), they patched me up and sent me off for my cup of tea.

Whereupon, I started bleeding profusely.

Sadly, engrossed as I was in my tea, it took a minute or two for me to notice the spreading stain on my t-shirt, so by the time I got the attention of one of the attending nurses, it all looked somewhat catastrophic!

Still. Lots of tissue later, it all looked hunky dory, and I was about to return to my much deserved cuppa when it all started up again. This time they weren't taking any chances. I now have the most enormous lump of gauze strapped to my arm with industrial strength surgical tape! I ain't looking forward to tearing that off, I can tall ya.

I am apparently, a re-bleeder.



Sadly, it seems I cannot draw hands. Lucky, really that I don't have to draw stuff for a living.

Glastonbury

We went to Glastonbury yesterday. Somewhere I’ve never been. Actually, when I make a sweeping statement like that, my mum usually interjects with ‘Yes you have, we took you when you were 3 months old’. So I shall be more careful with my phrasing: I do not recall ever visiting Glastonbury.

Right, having got semantics out of the way we can get down to business.



Glastonbury itself was actually somewhat bigger than I was expecting. It even has a ‘superstore’, although we never came across it during our visit. The main thing that struck me, however was the plethora of shops that were flogging ‘mystical’ tat. Yes, in any given shoppe (note the spelling) one can purchase mystical spell books, mystical candles, mystical bits of rock, mystical lumps of wood and mystical chunks of plaster-of-paris in the shape of mystical items such as mystical chalices and all the while, you are treated to the overpowering stench of mystical incense sticks. We received many dirty looks form mystical shoppe owners who overheard us slighting their wares.

The Torr itself was quite nice. Not especially high as hills go, but given that its plonked right in the middle of the Somerset Flats, its quite prominent and affords some pretty spectacular views.

I think I may have taken the picture just as the sun popped behind a cloud as it looks a bit murky, but rest assured, it was a gloriously sunny day.

Painting The Town Red

My younger brother, Chris came down from Nottingham to visit me this weekend. I like my little brother. He’s cool and insults me in many new and exciting ways, bringing with him the traditions of the East Midlands. I do, however have to remind him fairly regularly that he is the product of a South Coast upbringing and should therefore not be referring to bread rolls as ‘cobs’ or calling people ‘duck’ (pronounced ‘dook’) and so-on.

Among the many thrilling and exhilarating activities that we engaged in over the weekend was a trip to the clubs and bars of Bristol Centre on Saturday night. Now this, I would point out, is something I would not normally do. In fact as a rule I would avoid it as best I could. There are several reasons for this, among which are the regular stabbings, conversation drowning base-lines and nasty, nasty bulgy bits on girls who should either be wearing clothes that fit, or simply wearing more of them! I’m a bit of a grumpy old man when it comes down to ‘going out on the town’.

Anyway, we persuaded the Stead to drive us into town and made our way into the closest bar – an oddly laid out affair on three levels. After making our way to the top floor we located a table served by a sofa and two very cool leather swivel chairs. Much spinning ensued on the part of Little Bro and myself, until Stead pointed out that spinning in one’s chair was not very cool and was unlikely to attract girls.

After a few minutes of somewhat unhealthy interest in the traffic to and from the gents, we decided that our current position was not affording us a particularly effective view of passing… er… trade, so we decided to move on. Two or three identical bars later, we decided to move away from the Waterfront and head up Corn Street. This was not our best move. The bars there were amazingly busy, many of them having lengthy queues outside. Now, I’ve been in these bars many times, usually at lunchtime or immediately after work and, as venues, they have always struck me as pretty mediocre. Given the amount of business they were doing however, my opinion was clearly wrong. The first bar we went into was so busy that we gave up after half an hour waiting at bar for service (or at least as close to the bar as we could get).

What did work out well for me though was that the next bar we went into was a Wetherspoons which meant that the round I bought (as it was my turn) in there cost less than four quid. Bonus.

I thought I’d finish with a few fashion tips for the ladies from the guru of coterie:

I have nothing against the… er… fuller figure. I would suggest, however that anyone who considers reducing the size of their backside by squeezing into trousers or skirts several sizes to small for them should think again. All it does is push that excess flesh straight up, creating a decidedly unattractive spare tyre effect. Skinny girls can also create exactly the same effect using the same technique and it’s similarly unpleasant.

Speaking of skinny girls… wandering round looking like you have an eating disorder is not attractive and is probably bad for you. Eat more pies.

And finally… belts. Belts are for one thing: Holding your trousers up. They don’t need dangly bits, frills, huge coloured disks, ribbons or shiny metal rings on them. They also shouldn’t be hanging around your arse. In fact, given the natural shape of most girls’ waists, you shouldn’t need the things anyway.

This is Victor Meldrew reporting for the BBC…

In which our hero travels to Andover and learns a valuable lesson about stinging nettles.

My legs hurt. They sting, in fact.

I have spent the best part of this week in Andover on the latest instalment of my management development course. This time around, they had us looking at organisational cultures and building towers out of coloured plastic bits. Terribly exciting stuff.

On day 2, it was decided that a 5-a-side footie match would take place between the end of the working bit and dinner. I did not take part on account of being shite at football and because I didn't bring any suitable kit.

The two 'cohorts' played against each other. It was an exciting, dramatic match and many minor injuries were incurred on each side.

At one point, the ball was kicked at an enormously high velocity out of the pitch, over the 15-foot fence, across the car park (bouncing off the roof of a parked 4-wheel-drive vehicle) and into a large patch of stinging nettles. Being a hero, and also the only person present in long trousers, I volunteered to retrieve it. This, it seems was a big mistake. My trousers provided no protection at all to the awesome power of the stinging nettles. I was in agony for the rest of the evening.

So. My management development course taught me two very important lessons:

One: Organisations structures are not nearly as interesting as you might think; and

Two: Stinging nettles hurt. Lots. Even through trousers.

The Old Doorbell Prank

So, a bunch of kids from my estate decided to try the old 'ring-the-doorbell-and-run-away' trick on me today.

Only thing is, I was sitting in the lounge, looking at them out of the window and watched them walk up the path, heard them ring the doorbell, giggling and then watched them run away across the front of the house. So quite rightly I didn't shift from my comfy spot. They seemed to enjoy it anyway.

Now my point is this. They had a choice of 2 directions to run. Up or down the path. Down would have allowed them an easy escape without me being able to see they had gone, menaing that it's likely that I would have come to the door, thus validating all their hard work and planning. Sadly they chose the latter.

Kids, eh.

Sin City

Sin City has finally been released in the UK. And what a glorious experience it was. Fantastic. I couldn't fault it in any way!

The single best bit... Marv. Perfect. Amazing. So cool.

Go and see it today. Right now! Do it.