50+ and proud of it.

Occasionally there are times that my wife calls "bottle it" moments. This evening was one such moment. The local school was holding a Fete & Music Night for St George's Day. It had been going all day and my neighbour had already complained that "if you can hear the music indoors, then it's too loud". I tended to agree, as the bands who were booked to play in a small village, probably deserved to be booked, well, for small villages. I simply turned the TV up a bit and watched "The Voice". A while later, my wife called me from upstairs. "Listen", she said, "it's a Pink Floyd tribute band". We sat in the loft extension with the window open looking out over the estuary with the stars just starting to show against the deep blue & dark red of the sunset. The band played "Comfortably Numb", by Pink Floyd as their last number. Jeez can that boy play the lead guitar. Wow.

This was going to be entitled "The Missing Link", but after today, I feel that "morale" is more appropriate. Chapter 1: I went to our Devon office on Monday for an "analyst meeting", it was in fact a shameless excuse for a free lunch and to say "bye" to the people who were leaving when the office shuts at the end of the month. There were four of us in the company Skoda, plus luggage and laptops so I was quite irritated to be asked, "By the way, can you take back that Development AS400 that's sat in the hallway and those disks?". Humph. I went out and rearranged the boot and made space for the "office environment server", or "large-slab-of-useless-metal" as I fondly call AS400's. It rained. I got soaked. I went back indoors. "Oh, don't forget the tape drive and all the cables.". Humph. I went out and threw all the luggage into the back seats and wedged the drive next to the AS400. I then filled ...

Midway through our Beach Buggy Safari, there was a planned stop for lunch. I was told that "it was in the middle of a river". This didn't overly concern me as surely there must be a bridge or something to get to the restaurant? I was wrong. Quite wrong in fact. The restaurant was indeed, in the middle of a river. The tables were located in the water and we now realised why we were told that bringing swimming trunks was mandatory. When we got there my wife took one look and announced "There's no way I'm walking through that water with my gammy toe". (Never mind the fact that this water was probably better quality than Evian even though there were children swimming in it). "I'll eat on the bank". This naturally upset the locals. And one returned with a chair. "Seet down...", his friend, quick as a flash, whipped out a carrier bag from behind his back and tied it around her foot. "Don't move", and the two of them carr...

A quick plug for my son's band " CzechMate ". They're playing the 100 Club in Oxford Street, London on 17th August 2012. Worth a trip there. Good value for £8. ...and the Nambucca too, July 15th.

Brasil is pretty much the only holiday from which, on the flight back, I have tried to work out how I was going to go back there. When we first arrived it seemed like pretty much the same as any "Mediterranean" country. Where was the "I'm in South America" feeling? Where were the Amazonian Native Indians? Where were all the exotic birds and animals? And in particular, where were all the Brazilian Wandering Spiders ? I then realised that Brasil is as large as the United States and at least maybe I shouldn't worry about the spiders. On the second day there we were taking breakfast on the veranda when this turned up: Possibly a Swallow-Tailed Hummingbird Every morning he (or she) would have his breakfast from the hibiscus flowers and move on. I started to feel less, um, well, cheated and started to warm to the place! A few days later we went on a "Beach Buggy Safari". Which consisted of all of us piling into a VW engined buggy and being driven 30k dow...

I'm not saying it rained most nights in Brasil, but every morning it seemed we had to sweep the garden off the patio and back into the borders. It was a regular thing - Wake up from the sound of the torrential rain, go back to sleep, wake up at 06:00 because it was already fully light 1 , get up and then sweep the sand back from whence it came. One day the rain seemed to surpass itself. We were driving to Natal (the nearest large town) and came across this: Apparently it happens a lot - the cars just drive gently through with no problem. However, take a look at the white Mitsubishi with the lights on. He is actually hanging back. He waited until the flood was clear of traffic on his side and then gunned it for his worth creating a massive breaking wave about six feet high. I think the taxi behind us had his window open... This is another reason why there are no smarts in Brasil. 1 Obviously, near the equator you get a more-or-less even 12 hours day/night. The days consisted of waki...

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?