50+ and proud of it.

50 years ago, give or take a year. my Dad bought a small axe for chopping wood for kindling - we had coal fire in those days. (No one knows what Jack Frost is on a bedroom windows these days). Me being me, decided that chopping wood and everything else was quite fun. My father sensibly decided to hide the axe from a manic 5 year old. He hid it. He hid it from me, and, ultimately, hid it from himself. I remember when I was a teenager my Mom mentioning something about "when Dad finds that axe". The lost axe slowly merged into family legend. Did Dad hide it on the Allotment (a mile or two away)? Did my Uncle borrow it a not return it? Did we actually have an axe in the first place? The shed at the top of the garden - itself over 40 years old (shed, not garden) - finally collapsed into a heap of rotten timber last winter and a couple of weeks ago Mom paid a couple of men to dismantle what was left and remove it. Can you guess what they found? Wrong. They found nothing. But what t...

Dear Diary, Monday, The war is over and I've been sent back to London for another course. Another hotel, another set of problems - which of the two real ales to try? Whether to have the Full English Breakfast or the Continental One? Shall I have the shower on hot or really hot? Life's hard in The Tavistock. Tuesday, I've just spent the last two hours discussing "Religion And Its Place In Science" with the course tutor. I only asked him how to get rid of "dbo." 1 at the start of a function call and ended up discussing that the first word of the Bible in Hebrew 2 supposedly could mean "In A Beginning" (and not in the beginning); and where the Jedi fit into all this. Gosh that London Pride looks inviting. 1 Something to do with schemas - maybe Wednesday will enlighten me some more. 2 כראשיח

Now I know you shouldn't blow your own trumpet, but, I feel quite pleased about this one. We took the Astra for it's 120k mile service and told the bloke that none of the remote key fobs were working reliably. You could do the standard re-program 1 and then next time you used either they wouldn't work. They charged me £3.50 for a new battery and, spookily enough they worked. The next day they failed. I took the car back and asked 'em what they were going to do about it. The service manager suddenly "had an idea" 2 , took the fob apart, had a good look, gently jiggled the battery cage and spotted a small crack in the "battery-pillar-to-circuit-board" connection. "Hang on for 5 minutes, I can solder this" - sure enough, it now works just lovely. That gave me an idea for the second fob. Sure enough, I took it apart and it too exhibited the same cracked battery pillar posts 3 . The challenge was to find a small enough tip for my low-wattage so...

Went to Lydden Hill today to see the first round of the European Rallycross Championship. Met Murray Walker - nice bloke, looks like my Dad.

Dear Diary, Thursday Get up after picture on wall swings around accompanied by the company song. Shower in *exactly* three minutes. Check cell for bugs. Grab packed suitcase; rush through lobby throwing room card into box on exit whilst guard's back is turned. Skip breakfast. Sidle into road attempting to fit in with locals. Someone stops me. " Goood Luck " "Thank you" DOH!!!

Dear Diary, Sunday Went to London for a course. Booked into the Royal National Hotel - seems like a nice place, staff are friendly but mildly incompetent. They took my money in advance for four nights and then decided the "office was closed" and promptly reversed the transaction. I had to pay over at the Concierge desk. Got three receipts. Room is small but seems nice & clean. Monday Get up at 7:00. Woken by sounds of traffic and large motorbikes (even at seven stories up). Go into shower - ceiling still has stains of cigarette smoke on ceiling. One bar of soap and two towels. Go to breakfast early; guard at restaurant lets me in when I show my pass. Fried eggs can sole my shoes; bacon resembles leather. Go for a walk in the evening - feel distinctly scared. Decide to surf the net in my room instead - room has no Wi-Fi. Go to bed early. Tuesday Get up slightly later. Woken by herds of tourists rushing down the stairs. Go to breakfast; Filipino soldier lets me in after fr...

My son's girlfriend has just "won" a prize. It's a free makeover worth £500 at "FreshImage" studios in London. Do a WHOIS looking for www.freshimage.co.uk. She fell for it up to the point where they asked her for her bank details over the phone for "security purposes" (or something like that). She suspected something was wrong and I googled for the site. I came up with this thread . Basically, you actually have won something and that's what makes it legal. You win a makeover/photoshoot or some other bollocks just to get you up there. It probably ain't worth the moolah tho'. When you get there you're sucked into the "you're sooo pretty, you could be a model" crap. "Just pay us £30 for a professional-photoshoot-makeover. "Ohh look, how lovely these pictures are, we need to send these off to a modelling agency, it'll only cost you £75 per picture"... You get the idea. Don't fall for it.