50+ and proud of it.

The beach near where we were staying was absolutely lovely, unspoilt with no one on it. This was possibly because of the remoteness of the area and probably because there are 4, 600 km of beach between there and Rio, so why choose this bit? Swimming was a bit risky due to the scattering of rocks, which, at high tide were hidden *just* below the surface - " sometimes dries " to use a nautical phrase. This did not deter my wife from launching herself into the breakers. Spot the shop? 1 Unfortunately, she caught her toe on a sharp piece of rock and it got infected the next day, which required a trip to the local hospital "just in case". We drove about 30 minutes to the hospital, which to be honest looked a tad tired on the outside. Inside however, was spotless and there were only two other people in the waiting area. The receptionist was helpful, but stuck religiously to the rules. She said (in Portuguese) " Foreign nationals must present their passport before tre...

In Brasil , in every village, on every road leading into that village, and, everywhere else for no apparent reason, there are speed humps. Now, in England there is probably a government document that lists the precise dimensions, materials and "rules governing placement thereof" of speed humps. In Brasil it's most likely "got a village?, have a speed hump! No, have ten!" Now these work - and the villagers love 'em. And the reason why they work is that they are so severe that hitting them at any speed more than "0" results in the vehicle leaving the ground and smashing the undertray . So, speed through the village is a sensible and safe 10 mph. This is a small training speed hump: Others I found ranged from a line of bricks cemented into the ground, one that looked like a small telegraph pole bonded to the surface and to a rather ingenious "reverse hump" which consisted of where a speed hump had been and there now was just the trench - t...

Here is a shower in a charming modern bungalow in Brasil. A self-contained, 7kw electric unit fixed to lovely slate tiles: Here is the electricity supply switch. I was told by the electrician, who came to fix the original DOA unit fitted at build time, "regue primeiro, então eletricidade!": Err, OK. We all had cold showers, and it's nothing to do with the Brazilians.

(This is long, stick with it). Part I. As I mentioned a while back, we've just spent the last 10 most fantastic days in Brasil with my sister, husband and friends (more on this later I suspect). While were in Ponta Negra my wife bought a carved armadillo as a present, which required some very carefully packing. We flew TAM Airlines and they were faultless in the way we were treated both in the air and on the ground. This leads me to what happened at Heathrow on the very last lap. We checked our bags in yesterday at Natal, at the start of the first of two legs home. "Make sure you tell 'em at Natal to check them through to Heathrow, and then you check the tags have GIG and LHR on them, so that they get forwarded to Heathrow at Rio! (de Janeiro)" "We'll still have to get them from domestic inbound to take them to international outbound though, won't we?" my wife asked a bit later. "I reckon so" I replied hopefully. After a two hour domest...

We awoke this morning to quite a bit of snow, which, to be fair was forecast... ...and they said 50mm to 100mm, which they got pretty well right... This reminded be of the female American news anchor to the weather man (who predicted a large amount of snow which never happened): "So Bob, where's that 8" you promised me last night?" Now, the fail bit seems to be that this is an urban legend. If you're really bored, pleased post me the YouTube link. :-)

I will ignore the obvious joke here... I am off to NE Brazil next week to see my family. I was asked to bring some woodworm treatment out to kill the little blighters that are scoffing the cane furniture. Now it may be that South American woodworm is more voracious than their European counterparts, but the message was "...the stuff we have just isn't cutting it, please bring some Rentokill..." Me being me, I checked the DirectGov website . Which says: Poisons and toxic substances, including rat poison no Ah, but, Permethrin isn't a poison to us only to woodworm. I thought I'd check with the airline (a Brazilian airline). *ring* *ring*, press 1, 3, 4, re-dial, press 2 "Hello, I have some woodworm treatment, can I put it into the hold of the aircraft?" "You merst speek to ze Customs an Exercise peeple, 'ere iz zee nummer." *ring* *ring* Press a few other digits. "Hello, can I take woodworm treatment out of the UK in the hol...

I just received an email from some unknown person from "Group", headed "Training Plans". As mentioned earlier, we've just been undergoing "restructuring" and this appears to be part of the Master Plan. There were about 40 people in the "To" list. My work colleague was first on the list and I was the second - and it's not in alphabetical order. After a few seconds thought, I sent the following note to him that simply said: "Scary that we're first on the list..." A few moments later I got the reply: "I was thinking that! Does that mean we are the thickest?"

I was trying to explain to someone at work the other day about something or other and went to an early entry in my blog 1 to prove a point. I noticed that a lot of the images in various blog entries had disappeared 2 , so I selflessly re-read all my blog entries to edit in the missing pictures again. It was then I noticed that my writing style had changed over the years, and more worryingly, I couldn't remember half the reasons why I had made the entry in the first place. This led me onto another "ah ha" moment - if I couldn't work out why then anyone else had absolutely no chance whatsoever! Fr'instance: National, Trust Wife With Camera (4,6) , I spent a while working out what I meant by this (like all of yesterday), I now realise (today) it was simply an annoyance to people who do crosswords and there's no answer... and Thanks Dad. I missed two important bits: Dad's been dead since May 2002 and someone said "go left"... Anyway, I decided not...

I had a voice mail this morning from "yesterday". "You Mum's had fall but she's OK. Please ring 0161.... By the way we left a voice mail on your home phone." *ring* *ring* "Hello, Social Services here, your Mom's just fine, just a small bruise on her back and we think she has a UDI." "Hello, this is me here, I'm glad Mom's Ok, you never left a message, and, how the hell did she get a UDI?" "Oh, old folks get them all the time! Don't worry too muc h." I paused for bit. 'Old folks get them a lot'? Jeez. I got into work this morning. My work colleague was going though her phone messages and was visibly shaken. "You OK?" "Not to start with. I then realised that one message was for you. My mom died when I was 14, so I wondered how she ' had hurt her back, but was OK now '" Ah, so my home phone number is actually my colleague's work number (not even my work number). Never mind. I...

This was going to be entitled "My Worst Christmas Holiday" but it wasn't quite that bad. I'm back at work tomorrow and I feel that I need another week... Friday 23 rd : Son's 106 fails MOT on washer bottle not working. Spend 20 minutes removing it from wheel arch: 15 minutes of which spent getting out (intact) one of those stupid black push-in clips that hold the wheel arch liner in. 3 minutes chiseling off the other four in frustration, and 1 minute getting out the pump. Spend 1 minute picking up the broken bits of the other clips off the floor. Do a 45 minute round trip getting exactly the correct pump from a local motor factor. No one in town has anything like the clips. I resolve to go to the Peugeot dealer in the county town 12 miles away. I just hit the one-way system and find Maidstone is completely grid-locked. I spend 45 minutes getting half a mile to the nearest car park. Spend £8 on the clips and spend 45 minutes getting out of town to the wrong side...

I read this article today about using pictures (of faces etc) instead of conventional "textual" passwords and was interested in the following sentence: " The initial calculations show that it is likely to provide a level of security that is at least as strong as a password, and frankly, stronger than most passwords chosen by users," he added Yeah, right. If people are going to use passwords today of " password " and " 123456 " etc then they're still going to choose " ear, ear, eye, nose, you " Boom boom. I thank you.

I don't know if this is funny or not, I guess you had to have been there - but here goes anyway. A bit of background: We've just gone through a fairly extensive "restructuring" process (yes, you can read "redundancies" if you like) and one of the things everyone had to do was to "register an interest" for a particular job that's on offer (aka apply for your own job). Even the senior management had to do this. Prior to all this happening were several "restructuring" announcements (read "redundancies") a while back. I won't go into why it was a complete f***-up but suffice to say there was no HR presence, because "everything was going to be alright". Crucially, the important bit was the announcement that the Devon office was going to close and "everyone one had a job" so long as they moved to Wales. In their defence, HR were at that meeting. Anyhoo, last Friday one of the ladies in the office was on th...

As hinted in this blog entry I am currently engaged in a, err, disc ussion, with a certain Debt Collection Agency acting on behalf of Euro Car Parks. I say "discussion", but as of to date it's been a complete ignore of their threatening letters. My son received one the other week - " You owe us £100, but we'll reduce it to £70 if you pay up now else we may take you to court ". It is of course total bollocks. If you feel like an interesting hour or two, Google for "Euro Car Parks Scam". Anyhoo, that's not the point of this post. Oh no. I thought it was time that I stopped it and replied with a letter sort of pointing out what the law actually states (or, I believe actually states having read all these forums ;-) ) ... The contract is between the land owner and driver of th e vehicle, not the registered keeper. If you can provide me with irrefutable proof of who the driver was, then I may be able to help you. For this piece of advice I have c...

I was watching the new series (S2, Ep 1) of Mongrels the other night when at "15:36" or thereabouts I saw the briefest of flashes of what appeared to be a subliminal page. I spent the next ten minutes or so playing the "Play/Pause/Step" game with the DVD recorder. I eventually got this: A little more delicate finger work revealed:- Brilliant! I pressed "play" again and thought I spotted another flash a moment later. It took a little more extra effort to get this. I then read the last line: I'll forgive them. It was worth it. Offers anybody? Anyone?

I was Googling for stuff about Private Parking Companies (PPC) the other day, for reasons which may, or may not, become clear later. Through an intricate series of "following-web-links" I came across this gem . It's very long. But it comes with a health warning. Don't drink coffee when reading. Enjoy.

My wife has recently been into "day hospital" for a minor operation. It was the usual "name, date of birth, next of kin please" sort of stuff and eventually we made it onto the ward where we went through *exactly* the same set of questions. "They're only making sure they've got the right person," my said trying to justify, "they must make sure that everything is right!" "Right, everything off, put on that gown" smiled the cheery nurse, "now go and pee into that bowl..." "Oh, ok(?)" replied the wife, "I'm sure they know what they're doing." She toddled off and returned with a bowl full of, well, you know. "Ah" "Ah, what?" said the wife "I didn't notice that on your notes, it says you had 'the lot' out a while ago, the pee-test was to ensure that you're not pregnant." "Err, yes, I am completely potential-child free and have been for some time ...

You would think that plugging in a plug is one of the more easy things to do in the 21st century wouldn't you? Well. Last night my "Homeplug v2.0" turned up so that I could connect my TV to the Internet so that I could watch stuff on iPlayer - like the last episode of the series of Doctor Who . The small piece of paper labelled "How to add another Homeplug to an existing network" gave five steps: Plug in the plug. Press and hold the security button 10 seconds Wait until the green light stops flashing. Press the same button on number 1 for 3 seconds. Press the same button on number 2 for 3 seconds. " Wait one minute and you are now networked! " What really happened:- I can do that by reaching behind the TV and plugging it into the power strip. The lights come on and then off again. I can do this too by stretching over the TV, catching my ribs on the top of the TV and winding myself. The lights stop flashing and then they all go off. Number 1? Ah, this o...

I was going to simply put " very " and leave it at that. However... The story so far: Sunday: Go to Mom's for her 96th birthday. (Birthday on the Saturday, but we wanted to take the Great-Grandson with us and his Mom & Dad were only free then). Get there for 15:40 (well, we had got the grandson and they were late getting to us, then we had to feed him half way up the M1. As someone said once "I feel like I've had a good day if I can get the baby and me dressed by lunchtime). Pull up on Mom's driveway to get accosted by a deputation from the neighbours - "She's driving us nuts ringing up every half hour sort out the TV!". Apparently they sort it out and she then fiddles with it because "the picture is dreadful" and then calls them over again. It turns out that "they" turned off the analogue signal a few weeks ago and Mom was trying to watch white noise. The FreeSat box we had fitted a while back simply wasn't being use...

I've always been a fan of Vauxhalls since my MkII Cavalier some, err, a lot, years ago. And, indeed we have an Astra as the sensible car. Since the demise of the daughter's Peugeot a year ago when we got her a Corsa everything was fine; until last week. "Hello Vauxhall Dealer. Please can you do a service and MOT on the Corsa?" "Yes, of course and we'll do a reasonable price too!" *ring* *ring* "Hello, the Corsa has failed on so many things that we ran out of red failure sheets, we've put the car in a cardboard box for you to collect. BTW, the airbag light is on but it's not a failure.". (I knew that, it's been on since we bought the car). Actually, it wasn't that bad TBH. Although it *was* a long list, it was mainly front suspension stuff & broken coil springs 1 that are easy to do - but really irritating thing was it failed on " Drivers' seat not secure ". Part 1: Find a seat Co...

We spent an interesting time near Naples the other week. Interesting, not because the weather was nice and it was all relaxing, or the fact that we spent the week in a down-market version of Center-Parcs, no, it's because the Italians are completely and utterly mad on the road. "What" I hear you say "we already knew that". Wrong - these guys make a profession of it. I've driven along the Adriatic Coast, I've driven in Rome and I've driven in Sicily. But the drivers around Naples are totally bonkers. First of all, the roads are only wide enough for two Fiat 500's and secondly most of them are hacked into a cliff face with a vertical face one side and a sheer drop the other, secured only by a small brick wall. This is a picture of such a road taken shamelessly from this site : Now what makes it interesting is the following scenario: You're driving along at 20 mph trying to slot the i30 between the cliff face + pedestrians and the white line wh...