50+ and proud of it.

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...