50+ and proud of it.

I read with great sadness yesterday that MFI had gone T/U. Our kitchen is MFI (no, not that cheap, it was a 2-3 star one, which meant the drawers came with handles). The guarantee has run out anyway, unlike my neighbour whose MFI kitchen tap required replacement. "I keep ringing them up, but I don't get a reply", he complained to me. "So, no change there then..." We'll never actually know the time between when they left the office and them simply letting it ring. Woolworths too, have gone under it seems. I already have a search set-up on eBay for the Dog & The Sheep.

Following on from the removal of the old heating system we (OK, I) decided that we should fill the hole where the gas fire was with a nice log-burner. Now, these aren't cheap. The fire is reasonable but the flue is about £100 per metre . I called in the experts. A very nice man called Simon 1 turned up yesterday. He had a nice pair of black trousers, a nice black roll-neck top and a nice black suitcase. Very similar in fact to the Milk Tray advert man. He decided that fitting a log burner here was very expensive and very difficult . And the flue is sooo expensive at £150 per metre, "and that's plus VAT you know". "Um, is that a different flue then?, never mind, carry on" "Oh, I'll just have to call in the fitter to see if it's possible." ...and he flounced off, pissed off that he never got to show me his marvellous glossy bro-shures . Previously I had called in a man from Gillingham. He is a chimney sweep and sold & fitted fires t

No, not "'er indoors", but the Galaxy Gloworm installed when the house was new 26 years ago. Although it's working just fine, none of the others on the estate are, so we decided a preemptive strike and to sneak up on it unawares whilst we had the chance. We had British Gas in. "No problem sir, we'll just stuff it in the airing cupboard where the tank is and you can have five pipes running up the hall which you can box in later." "What about the flue?", I enquired, "we have a loft extension and you can't run it through there." "Yes we can, you'll have to move your bed and wardrobe and you can box in the flue afterwards. By the way, it's £5,300". We had an independent plumber in. "Nope, can't do a good enough job. Bye." We called in another. "Err, how about if we move it to the small loft space you have left where the (now) redundant tanks are? I'll have to pull up the floorboards to run the

I notice that the British Government are proposing to monitor (amongst other things) all emails sent and received by our goodselves. I, for one, will simply get a free Thawte signing certificate and encrypt everyone I send. However, does this mean they can catch the bastards who send me 2,000 spam emails every month? Probably not.

"Pitwall to Timo, Pitwall to Timo, come in please" "Timo, what d'you want?" "Pitwall, err, Ron says it's 2 million" "Timo, say again, you want to Ronseal what?" "Pitwall, RON, SAYS, PLEASE" "Timo, one peas? You talk about lunch?" "Pitwall, Lewis is behind you, let him past!" "Timo, how much?" "Pitwall, a lot, just shut up and slow up a bit" "Timo, Oh, you want me to let Lewis overtake me and let him win the world championship?" "Shut the f*** up on air!" "I think my tyres have just given up" "Good boy..."