50+ and proud of it.

This was going to be entitled "Woman Drivers". Now, it's not that I consider women to be bad drivers - in my opinion, the bad ones are just as bad as men, and vice versa. No, it's just that having spent a nice Christmas at my mother's (and not managing to throttle her) we returned home to find that my daughter had managed to roll her lovely 106 up a bank near the local junior school. "Well, it was icy" she explained, " and there was mud on the road!". "Umm, correct me if I'm wrong, but if you knew that, why didn't you slow down or something?" "Humph, that's not fair!". Fair, but accurate, I feel. Why the title? Well, we have a third offspring who has yet to start driving. Numbers One and Two children have now managed to roll a car each. Watch this space in 2 years. It may then be called "The Three Stooges" or the like... A thought just occurred to me. The same driving instructor taught them to drive. ...

Y'know, call me cynical if you will but I've just been reading an article in the Daily Mail about the sad case of Madeleine McCann. If I had lost my daughter, I too, would be doing everything in my power to find her again. Maybe I wouldn't have gone down the pub, and eaten in instead, but that's as maybe. The article (in brief) is that the Barcelona detective agency say "they'll find her by Christmas". "We know where she is". "We know who's got her". etc etc. I have a real problem with this. "Hello Mr Bad guys, we know where you are. Would you like to stay there while we fetch the Police?" Hmm, no. I really can't help thinking that this is an elaborate form of the 429 scam. They have a six month contract to find her:- 'Repeating his earlier promise to find Madeleine before March, he said: "We have a six-month contract. We have always said we want to fulfill it by finding her."' "We only need a le...

After 25 years of not going to watch the RAC Rally (as it was then), I got an invite from WW & Hubby to go down and see them - and as a bonus WW got some tickets for the final leg of the WRC, SS13 in the Millennium Stadium in Cardiff. "Look," she said "it'll be sitting down in the warm and under cover, not standing around for hours in a cold & damp forest!". Well, at least one of those was correct... WW managed to wangle some parking under the stadium itself. We had to go into "Gate 4, car park W", which happened to be the start of SS13 itself. Having driven through something marked "Timing, Stage Start", we parked next to a car marked "FIA Steward" and proceeded to wander off looking for a way up. A nice man stopped us. "Err, who are you? Where are you going? Are you staff?". WW looked at him blankly "You mean we shouldn't be here? I thought the place looked empty!". "Look," he said "...

It's like this - "Control Panel / Add/Remove programs" shows small icons down the left and bugger all anywhere else. In other words, you've got no hope in Hell to add/remove/update anything. Would you like to know how to fix it? Yup? You re-install Internet Explorer. Go figure. Also, I've just watched England lose in style to Croatia 2-3. Hey ho. I'm one of the people on the "Lost 25m Child Benefit Records" and, to put the icing on the damn cake, my exactly-one-year-and-three-day-old-your-guarantee-has-just-run-out O 2 sensors on the Mustang are returning EEC IV codes 41 & 91. Go Google 'em, sorry, I can't be bothered to explain... More wine? Yes please.

I finally got the last bit of trim back into the interior of the Mustang over the weekend. I have to confess to waiting until "David" the air-conditioning chap had returned to re-fit and re-fill the system just in case the evaporator had done something unpleasant (like split). I'm not (that) stupid - I know that if you're my age and take out screws and don't put them back within 3 seconds, you're going to forget where they went. So leaving them out for 3 weeks would leave me no chance. Ergo, I religiously put each screw back into the hole it came from as I removed them. However, having replaced everything and now had a completely vacuumed out and cleaned interior I was left with four small screws in the magnetic bowl. I know where one goes, so that's OK. The others? No idea. Nothing is loose and nothing rattles at all. This is my point - at my age The Screw Fairy is someone who leaves 2mm Japanned self-tappers around when you’re not looking, and not someon...

I read with interest this week some internet articles entitled "How to change a Fox Mustang heater" and "How not to change a Fox Mustang heater". All of them were variously sub-titled "I'd rather have root canal surgery" and "How to spend a week in the cold" and so on. There's a chap somewhere in the USA who reckons you can change the matrix without removing the a/c evaporator - and this is the same chap who freely admits he's done the job six times. One wonders if he's got the message yet? Well, to you sir, "No, you sodding well can't" . If you've got hands the size of a garden gnome and an 8mm socket made out of tin foil and a pipe-cleaner, then perhaps, maybe. Look, just cough up the money and get the aircon evacuated! This is a marvelous opportunity to vacuum out all the otherwise inaccessible places and wash all the plastic bits that come off. I also found the door chime - now, I didn't expect that . I ...

Whilst driving the Mustang to town on Saturday I noticed a strangely familiar odour, not noticed since the passing of the Morris Minor. "What's that smell?" asked my wife. "Um, that's anti-freeze". Yup, most of the coolant was pouring from a small hole in the bulkhead. It looks like Mr Ford thought about this - and duly designed a drain hole for coolant leaking from the heater core to exit into the engine bay rather than onto the carpets. Now, personally, I would have preferred them to have a) Designed a stronger heater core and b) Made it easier to get to. Let me explain how Ford build Fox Mustangs. They sweep out a big room and place a V8 engine in the middle and place a heater matrix beside it. Then they build the rest of the car around them both...

My son is moving into the (new) flat with his mate on Saturday. It appears to be definite now, as they were waiting for confirmation and it turned up in spite of the Postal Strike. Basically his mate's Mum (June, not her real name for reasons which will become clear) is moving to "a large town far away". June said to her son that he could come with her or stay where he is now. The son says that all his mates were here, so he started to look for a flat. My son had secretly been thinking about moving out for a while and this was an opportunity to split the rent. Now, my daughter has already packed and has moved her things to the landing outside his old room. Also, we ordered a new wardrobe and cupboard for her via home delivery from Argos - which of course we don't want now... Have you ever tried to cancel a Home Delivery? Once you pressed a zillion buttons a get through to a "real person" it's quite easy really! June is moving away to start a ne...

We were more than a little surprised on Saturday to receive a phone call from my eldest son. Not surprised in that he gave us a ring (he's always doing that), but in its content. We were spending the inheritance at the local pub and were halfway through a sandwich when the call came in: "Hello Mum, do you think it would be alright if I left home?" My wife kept calm and asked normal things that mothers do - "Err, have you thought about it a lot?", "Have you worked out how much it's going to cost a month?" and the like. "Well", he asked "Is it alright?" "Alright? Alright?!", I exclaimed, "I'll help you pack."

Today marks a step forwards into the murky world of the retired. Yes, I've joined a Whist Drive at my church. I haven't played whist for years, so I thought I'd brush up on the rules and printed them from Wikipedia. Rules include: ". ..against the rules to in any way comment on the cards... " and " One may not signal his partner. ". Now that brings up an interesting point. Imagine the scene - a hushed Church Hall full of pairs intently studying their opposites for the slightest give-away, the steady ticking of the wall clock, the click of the cards being played on the wooden tables and the gentle sharp intake of breath as one pair wins a difficult finesse. And, because you can't signal your partner - "JIM, IT'S YOUR BLOODY GO YOU DEAF BUGGER" Does this mean I've got to the top of the hill and now I'm over it?

Last week, we were taking a late break in Mallorca (Majorca) and on the Monday (17th September), my wife received a phone call to inform us that one of our circle of good friends had just been killed in a motorcycle accident. He leaves a wife and three children. We all will miss him.

We were watching the national news last night and were disgusted to hear that the so-called compassionate Animal Liberation Front (ALF) had targeted the makers of Savlon (that well-known antiseptic and healing fluid) by allegedly tampering with 250+ bottles of the same. (Aren't we all animals? So, why target us too?). After the item, a representative of the company said that there was no evidence to suggest that the bottles had actually been affected and we should continue to use the product. "Anyway", says my sister-in-law, "if you're really worried that it's been contaminated, you could try it on the guinea pig first..."

Last week, I thought I'd go up-market and buy a wireless router to replace the wired network I had installed previously. No problems, just plug it in and Bob's Your Auntie. My daughter came upstairs and asked "Have you just done something, my laptop has just spotted a wireless network?". "This is easy", I thought, "now I'll just turn on my wife's laptop and away we all go". That was last Wednesday. I tried everything I could think of to get the damn thing to work, but each time, the "gui" thing kept saying "no network, RF OFF" and the like even though Winwods could see the card etc etc. I downloaded the latest drivers - even taking the back off the laptop to get the chip serial number off the w/lan card. In a fit of pique, I by-passed the problem and bought a USB dongle and, hey presto, it all worked. However I was still annoyed that a new laptop should be bust. I mailed the Laptop Support People yesterday (Sunday) to se...

A bit of history. When my wife was little (about 6 years old) her Nan (grandmother) took her to Margate and they went on the beach where the donkeys were giving rides 1 . They queued up it the sun waiting for their turn. After about 20 minutes of waiting the man started to lift her up into the saddle 2 . She turned round to him and said quite firmly: "Me, no donk!" Last weekend we all went camping. "It'll be fun", I was told, "We'll be in a cold small tent, everyone else will be in their warm large caravans". So, after ruining my back on a blow-up bed, eating barbecues in the dark, walking across wet fields at 2:00am to go to the loo, and rowing with the in-laws, it's definitely "Me, no camp!" 1 No longer I believe - something to do with the Human Rights Act For Donkeys. 2 No longer I believe - something to do with Common Assault Laws...

Can you believe that the people I work for want to count all the lines of code used in their systems? And, to make matters worse, they got some damn consultants to write a few pages on how to do it - "don't count blank lines or comments", "for each library routine count it once per system", "include form generation code", and so on... I wanted to just make up a number - "Err, it's about 3/4 million", I said. "No, do it bloody properly", I was told. OK, after about 9 hours of dragging the individual project's source code from back-up (SourceSafe) and using an automatic line counting program 'wot I wrote', I came up with 725,433. No - really. I had to fill in 6 spreadsheets relating to the 6 major functional areas. I was given numbers "A179", "A435" and so on. I sent them back, filled in, and called "A179_FBLOC.XLS" etc. I've forwarded them to my team leader who has, in turn,...

I get a phone call from my sister (in Turkey) who herself had a call along the lines of "your mother's in hospital, here's the number". I rang the number. "Hello, have you got a old woman there at all? Admitted today? (repeat three times, to different extensions) "Hold on sir, I'll check" ... "I've just spoken to the ambulance crew who says she's still at home" "So, she's not been admitted?" "No" Ring a lot of other people, including the Doctor's Receptionist. "Your mother fell off the bed and bumped her bottom, so she pressed the red alarm button 'cos she couldn't move. The carers who turned up thought she'd broken her hip and called the ambulance - she's fine, but refused admission, so the Doctor's given her some pain killers and she's fine now" In an attempt to explain an hours worth of calling and to cut down on international telephone calls, I text'd my sister: ...

I could have entitled this " The Most Stupid Traveller " too. It was my turn to visit my mother yesterday to check she was OK. Yesterday was, of course, the end of the school year and, the worst day (to date) this year for rain. I drove to the West Midlands without any trouble - apart from zero-visibility-from rain on the M6 at some points. Prior to returning, I checked the travel news: "M40 blocked southbound, M1 blocked southbound at J10, M5 blocked everywhere, M4 blocked east bound..." etc etc etc. After about 30 minutes of sheer desperation staring at Ceefax, one of them changed: "M1 J10 easing" - that'll do Donkey, and I set off. The journey was fine apart from a) J10 M6 onslip closed for roadworks (ha ha, didn't spot that one did you Mr Garmin?). b) The first 80 miles of zero-visibility in spray. c) Possibly exceeding an average of 50mph through the Luton Roadworks (I'll have to wait and see) and, d) Fine up until J5 of the M2 which they...

My wife and I went to a place called Castello di Donnafugata which is a 16th(ish) century building near Ragusa. Very nice it is too - we reported back at base that the others should take a visit. "Oh look, it's in the TomTom's POI's, I'll program it up now for when we go tomorrow." said P. 'Tomorrow' arrived and P's wife (W) had a change of plan. "Let go with the others (us) to Cava D'Ispica instead, we'll drive." "Oh look, they're in the TomTom's POI's...." (time passes as we drive down strangely familiar roads) " Arriving at destination, on right. Bugger. Make a U turn, when possible"

Whilst sitting down in a very expensive restaurant in Ragusa Ibla, we spotted a man on the adjacent table who looked suspiciously like the chap in "The Italian Job" (original version, not a lot of people know that). You know, the one who says "...and England is that way" (pointing with his RayBan's). I turned to my colleague and said, "If you see a car coming down the road with its back window open, duck". "It'll be too late", he replied, "I'll probably get caught by the ricochet". In a completely different conversation, my other friends were talking about palindromes. "...indeed", one of them said, "A ricochet is just another palindrome". (hey ho, worked for me).

I am very fortunate to have a small collection of very good friends. (On occasions, they do not consider themselves fortunate in reverse - like the day I pulled out in front of a Range Rover with "N" in the passenger seat of the Mustang. Well, I thought he was indicating...). Anyway, N has hired a villa in Sicily for two weeks and has invited a few select friends to join him. My wife and I are going out in the second week and I naturally asked the question "Where is it?" He promptly mailed me the email tennis he had with the villa owner. Which started with " meet me in the cafe in the middle of Ragusa " and ended with " we have never sent anybody directly to the property before, unfortunatlely there is not a postal address, the post does not go there! This is why we always make the meetings in Ragusa and the owner takes you to the property himself. "(sic). The interim conversation involved questions about GoogleEarth coordinates and Lat/Long fi...

I'm not normally one for writing gastronomic reviews - particularly ones about pubs - however, I thought this was worth a mention. There's a village near us called Stockbury and right in the middle is a pub called The Harrow . It's used to be cr *p, but has recently been taken over by a French bloke and his wife - both of whom are chefs. Don't get me wrong, they don't (as yet) do French cooking (I'm working in him about that one), but they do really good value, quality meals. The first time we went my friend had a steak & kidney pie. He was poking his fork around the dish. "What's wrong?" "I'm trying to find the gravy, there's no room for it with all the steak and kidney they're put in" I removed the pastry lid from my chicken and leak pie - same thing, loads of chicken and leak. Excellent. And the beer is good too - Shepherd Neame , but hey ho, you can't have everything. We asked the chap about his background. "...

A tiny problem manifested itself late last week with the 106. The air temperature dropped somewhat and my daughter had trouble starting the 106 and then keeping it ticking over. A brief investigation revealed that the new idle control motor fitted recently wasn't actually doing any idle control motoring at all. I rang my "favourite" Peugeot Dealer on the grounds that they had left it in that state in the first place. "Before I bring it in, how can I test it?" "Oooh, we can't tell you that, or we'd have to kill you. We would put it on the *special machine* and do an actuator test" "Oh, so you would start the car and see if the motor was stepping in and out ?" >click It wasn't. I found a new one on an identical 106 in the local breakers, so I bought the whole injection unit for £35 and swapped out the stepper motor. This seems to have had the desired effect. Watch this space. Something I found out:- The part numbers for Bosch Ste...

I'm ashamed to admit that I gave in and took the 106 to the main dealer... "What's wrong with it?" "It's using too much fuel and the CO is way too high at 13%, and it's coking up the plugs". I then proceeded to give the woman behind the counter the long history of what I had, and had not, fiddled with. I stopped when her eyes glazed over and I started to visualise her as the old woman in Airplane . I went home on the train. 2 hours later: "Hello, it's all fixed. It was your O 2 sensor" "Erm, is that the same O 2 sensor as the one I changed for a brand new one? Oh well, so long as it's fixed. What the CO reading now?" "Oh, he's a technician, not an MOT man he wouldn't check the CO." "Do you think that might be a good idea on the grounds that that was the original problem? It'll take 2 minutes to shove the pipe thingy up the exhaust to check won't it?" 3 hours after the first 2 hours: ...

...really, really annoyed. I fixed my daughter's Pug a treat except that the stupid ECU won't learn that the throttle position sensor (TPS) has been moved - and repaired. It now is over-injecting (13% CO, 24mpg, coked up plugs, ergo, engine stops after a while and you have to remove the plugs and clean them to get it going again. It's a "Peugeot main dealer thing" to reset the ECU. There's nowhere on the net that tells me what the two pins are that I have to connect a 9v battery to reset the ram. ...still waiting for the Pug dealer to "get back to me" and no doubt going "ho ho ho, that's a bank loan for that mate." I have however found a nice 1999 model on eBay...

For some weeks now my daughter's Peugeot 106 has been randomly misfiring and/or cutting out and generally misbehaving. Therefore it makes sense to randomly replace things rather than to sit down and logically work out what's wrong. Armed with an eBay user name and a bank account I have bought "some bits" and replaced them - funnily enough - to no avail. Today I replaced the last item before throwing in the towel and taking it to a Peugeot dealer. I replaced the ECU temperature sender with a new one from the local parts shop. Plugged it in, plugged it out - no difference. Let's have a think. Tick over fine, open throttle and it works, move throttle a bit more and it stops, open throttle some more and it works. Close throttle and it stops... I eventually decided that this reminded me of the "old days" when the volume control on a radio needed cleaning when the sound, rather than increasing slowly as you turned up the volume, crackled and leaped from ...

Armed only with a Tesco's carrier bag + two wishbones I toddled off this morning to the very same MOT garage that spotted the movement in the ball joints in the first place. My logic being that if they'd caused me all the trouble over the weekend in the first place then why shouldn't they share in it as well? "Morning', you very kindly volunteered to press in the ball joints for me. I'm off to work now, thanks." "We're a bit busy right now, but the press is over there, I trust you to use it. Have a nice day". Hmm, not part of the plan, but to be fair, as this particular press requires two people to operate it and hold the job in it, the MOT man did help me. The first one went in without much trouble - apart from two small things:- 1) We put the joint in upside down and 2) I swung the press arm around and caught him smack in the forehead causing a lump as normally seen in cartoons. We removed it and put it in the correct way. This one took abo...

The wife trotted off to Manchester this weekend to see some college friends whom she hadn't met for about 8 years, and, by a remarkable coincidence, the bits I'd ordered from 50resto turned up. So, armed with a hugely inflated confidence and a nice warm morning, I decide to replace the lower ball joints... It all started with the nice MOT man spotting that there was some up-and-down play in the front lower ball joints (last September). "I can't fail it 'cos the guidelines say I can't, but I'd like to..." What can be hard about taking off the wheel and undoing 3 nuts? Nothing, except that the disk brake back plate very neatly gets in the way of the lower arm - so you have to remove the disk and brake caliper. Now the trouble with a 1½ tonne 1990 Ford Mustang is that they're over-engineered - and those three nuts are actually torqued up to 100 ft/lb. Which is fine, but you have to balance said 1½ tonnes two feet in the air on axle stands to be able ...

I found out loads more stuff about Rome this time - including that best kept secret - the metro . Buy a ticket for next to nothing and ride for the duration of your stay! However, it shuts at 10:00pm - but the taxis take over then where I also found out that lane discipline is for wimps and the reason why every single vehicle over 2 days old have no straight panels...

One of the nice things about Rome is that you can always disappear down a small alleyway and generally find a decent bar - and avoid paying the tourist rip-off prices found around The Trevi Fountain and so on. This was the case on our last night. We walked due west from Piazza Navona and were discussing the aforementioned fact. "I bet there's even one up there", my friend remarked, pointing up a very dark street. Indeed, silhouetted against the only street lamp, there was a man moving a table. We walked up and sat down at the only table for four left. A nice German couple (from Dresden) sat down next to us a few minutes later in the only two seats left in the restaurant. It seemed only a few minutes after that there were people queuing to get a seat. "We did some extensive research on the Internet and found that this restaurant is the best this side of town", the German chap explained, "we took ages to find Da Francesco in Piazza Del Fico, it's not on...

We visited Rome for the third time last week with some friends (who have never been before) and, like most people, went into the crypt of St Peter's Basilica to view the tombs of the (late) Popes. A one-way system operates and we were surprised to find three people coming out the in - two people supporting a clearly disabled elderly gentleman who was having extreme difficulty walking. They were moving very slowly and as they reached the small doorway we held back to allow them to exit. A woman behind us (nationality withheld to prevent a war) harrumphed, overtook us and nearly knocked the trio over as they exited the corridor. "What the f'h was that all about?" My friend looked at middle of the departing trio. "I think they're trying to smuggle one of them out."

Having spent the last 24 hours with a daughter in a state of frenzy, which included her running around with hands pressed against her ears going "no more, no more, I don't want to hear anymore driving advice!", I was heartily relieved to get a text at 11:01 this morning that simply said: "i passed" She got 6 "minors" (whatever they are. In my day, as long as you got from the test centre via points A and B and back again without killing anyone, you passed). I got her a secondhand SatNav as she has no sense of direction - and I have "fully trained her" in it's use:- "Turn left" "Nooo! Not here!"

Yet again another example of so-called "Sat Nav Error" surfaced over the weekend. A lady drove her "£90,000" Mercedes into the river because her Sat-Nav told her to. She ignored the sign that said "Not suitable for motors" and the one that presumably said "Stop, river ahead", and the obvious clue that the road had changed from gravely-colour to ripply-water-colour and kept going, "No the Sat Nav fitted to a Merc can't possibly be wrong, the river is obviously in the wrong place". "In, 300 feet, turn, left, and drown"

Now I'm not normally one for getting scared about such things, but an odd thing happened today at work. We've recently moved offices from our satellite office in "town" to our main office "out of town" (which, incidentally is much better for me as I live on "that" side of town). We're all still in a complete state of disarray 1 and so we stopped on after finish time to tidy up a bit more. One of the Support guys came down from upstairs and asked who had been in the Comms Room. "Dunno, Why?" "Several of the telephone patch leads have been removed again and tucked under the racking." "Again?" "Yes, it's happened about three times already to my knowledge." Long conversation about scary stuff ensued and we decided that someone obviously was taking the key and getting up to mischief. I mentioned this to the night receptionist on my way out. "Ah. Let me tell you a story about the guy in the blue jacke...

So there we have it. 3 months of an hour here and an hour there. Someone mentioned planning permission, and "was there a slope on it to let the rain run off?" Um, the answer to both is "No". However the really important questio n is "Are the glasses underneath?" - we'll never know.

Well, after a fairly traumatic week (we said fairwell to Ellen) I managed to get on with the decking. My neighbour popped round to help. Help which was gratefully received as I was in the middle of trying to balance a 4.8m deck board on a workmate whilst trying to cut the 45 degree angle with one hand and hold the other end which was by now flapping in the breeze... We got on a pace and eventually ran out of wood. (Yeah, I know, I had enough short bits that all added up to the required length, but none long enough). We retired for a beer. His wife strolled up to see how we were getting on. "Hello dear, where are your glasses?" I was suddenly reminded of the "Carpet Fitter And Budgie" joke.

Sadly, our friend and neighbour Ellen lost her fight with cancer this morning at 3:00am. Our thoughts are with her two children and husband.

Remember the "Hedgehog in the Greenhouse" saga? No? Well, one of them took up refuge in a plastic bag full of old tea towels, jam packed it full of dead magnolia leaves and hibernated for the winter. I religiously left the greenhouse door open four hedgehog inches all winter so it could get out and forage, and made sure that no one put anything in the greenhouse on top of it and so on. Last weekend my wife went to clean out the greenhouse. "I think the hedgehog has died, there's a terrible smell in there" Ok, I gently pick up the bag so as not to disturb it (just in case...) and begin to remove the leaves very carefully. "It's buggered off" "When" "Well, let's just read the guestbook to see when it signed out shall we?" "Oh. Well. What's the smell then?" "Dead leaves."

Now I've said this already, but here's a resume: Decking is where conservatory wants to be, so dismantle decking and pile in a heap alongside the garage; build conservatory and stop for the Winter. The plan is to have the decking outside the kitchen and finished by the time the weather gets nice - which could be March if we believe the "global warming" protagonists. I start by levelling the ground (slight exaggeration) by removing the grass + top soil - which incidentally, I estimate to be about 4 tonnes - and removing the old sloping concrete path. Well, we've had lot of rain recently haven't we? By the time I get the ground even half level I begin to understand the purpose of Wellington Boots and why ground and/or trench warfare is totally pointless. I trot off to the local timber yard to order some BOW's 1 for the frame and spot a pile of "proper" decking top. "How much" "90p per metre. It's all reject because there's...

The problem with teenagers is that they eat - a lot. And, they eat at weird times too, like 2am, and they bring their pals back too! Cheese-on-toast 1 is a favourite (or, Mary Hopkins as my friend calls them 2 ) So, to keep up with the demand, my wife bought, along with shares in the local cheese shop 3 , a new toaster. Now this baby is a "four slotter" and can make toast faster than the Co-Op can supply the loaves. It also has lots of dials and levers, and, a couple of lights. This reminded me of the Red Dwarf toaster and I found myself yesterday morning staring straight at it, pointing an accusing finger and saying- "One word out of you and you're under the patio..." 1 This also includes chilli powder and other stuff. In fact, anything that can be found in the fridge. 2 This is an awful joke, which for the purposes of suspense, I'm not going to explain... 3 Cue Python

So, now I've laid 307 floor tiles that makes me an expert doesn't it? Well, even though I say so myself, I'm quite proud of this... :-) Things I've learnt:- A glass explodes when dropped. You can't get glass out of the gaps no matter how much suck the Dyson has. and, cats can't walk straight on hard tiles. Yup, now that was worth the effort.

I made a New Year's Resolution that I wasn't going to spend *any* more money on my eldest son - and particularly on his car. So answer me this: Why did I spend £60 on fuel picking up another AX GT from the West Country last weekend? Why did I spend £40 on brake parts, and, more annoyingly, Why did I spend the last 4 nights in sub-zero temperatures on the driveway fitting the damn bits! I must be mad... ...but at least I'm not ill - or at least according to the "Man From BUPA". I went for a follow up CAT scan as they spotted some "interesting" nodes in my stomach 6 months ago. The latest scans showed they had disappeared. So all this pain and anxiety must be due to me lying on cold concrete under cars? Is there a lesson to be learned here...?

I read with interest today an article on bbc.co.uk/kent about a gas leak in Sittingbourne. The local ASDA was evacuated along with several shops and private homes - some roads were also closed. "This caused major disruption" said one resident, "I couldn't make it to Argos for me jewelry" "Ow am I gonna get me fags now?" complained another. I for one, snuck out to my office's smoking hut to see who was there. "Anyone got a light?"

10 Things I have learnt about tiling:- Cats know you've tiled, but don't care. Adhesive called "RapidSet" does exactly what it says on the tin. Tiles aren't the same size - none of them - at all. Rooms aren't square. You can't cut a 20mm square from a tile, no matter how hard you try. Grouting is fun - cleaning up afterwards isn't. It takes 10kg of adhesive to tile a floor 3m x 4m - it takes 2g of adhesive to block the sink U-bend. Stainless steel sink units aren't. 15 tiles in a cardboard box falling through 90° smashes a cat bowl to smithereens. Cats can fly .

I read recently about a woman who turned left up a railway line because her Sat Nav told her to. Err, "Hello", is she completely and utterly stupid? This woman should not be driving should she? It really gets me mad that people make fundamental driving errors and then try and blame someone else. "The car made me do it", "My dog barked and I was so startled that I turned up the down ramp and drove 25 miles the wrong way up the M40", "My interior light came on by itself and so I shot my husband".... No. What happened to common sense? These devices have a thing called a "map" and a "distance to junction" don't they? My Garmin does sensible things like "turn left in half a mile" and then at (or near) the junction it's " turn left" . Not "hang a left as soon as I've finished speaking" but "turn left and have a little look to check the map to see where". This woman should be anot...

Funny how a job - "Oh, let's get the kitchen done" - turns out to be "Let's tile the kitchen, hall and conservatory too". Ok, it can't be that hard can it? {Extremely long story cut about choosing tiles} 1 Goes to local tiling place:- "Can I have some of these tiles please?" "Yup, you're going to need some * special * glue 'cos you're covering old Marley Tiles" "Fair enough, any advice mate?" "Yup, here's a free DVD on How To Tile The Professional Way" Eeek, to me a DVD means about 2 hours worth of stuff to watch. Already my neighbour who is a retired plasterer/tiler is starting to look like a better option. We watch the DVD together (no not that sort of "together", more in an "all lads together" sort of way - but less the beer). "Yes, that's right" he says, and promptly goes back home. How to tile: Mark out, mix quick drying adhesive, lay tiles, panic, mix more ad...

My Mom is 91, grew up in "The War" and now firmly believes that she's 23 and can do anything. She insists that she still goes up to town and down to the butcher's every week, whereas we all know that she hasn't been out since last July. My sister and I kept gently asking if "she needs any help" with the cooking, cleaning and, more importantly, remembering to take her tablets every day. An important digression: UK Social Services will not get involved unless the involvee specifically requests them to help by signing an involvement document. The conversation generally goes along the lines of: "Mom, shall we ask if you need some help?" "What! I don't need any help, I still go to town, what day is it? who are you?" This is nearly the classic Catch 22 situation (look it up on Google...). How do you get someone to say they need help, when they genuinely don't believe that they do? The answer presented itself over the New Year. To ...

Consider this. It's Christmas Eve and the family are round - like good Catholics we they are, they all go to Midnight Mass. So that no one can break in and steal the presents, I volunteer to stay at home guarding the Christmas Tree - armed only with a decent bottle of Chatneau-Neuf. 2am arrives and we trot off to the Land Of Nod. The good wife and I sleep downstairs with the trusty mobile phone alarm set for 10am so that the sprouts can go on ready for 3pm lunch. At precisely 07:15 the phone erupts with some weird polyphonic garbage that laughingly passes for a text message alert. "What the f*** was that?" "It's my best friend Lorraine 1 wishing us a Happy Christmas! How nice!" I think she's the second person to be nominated for the pwsbk award... 1 Name not changed - at all.