Home, Rescuing Nat’s Treasures, The Traveller Returns, Too Many Chips, Work and The Lottery

Deb and Han picked me up this morning, thank God I was too knackered to cycle, and we drove home via a quick stop at ASDA to get a few essentials (yes I do mean beer). Once home we filled the car with the crap Deb had chucked out of Nat’s room while she was decorating it. It filled the boot of the car quite easily and that was after I’d rescued a number of things I was sure he would want to keep. I’ve noticed that with women, if it’s not theirs they have no problem whatsoever in throwing things away without checking with the owner as to whether or not they wanted that item disposed of. On both the occasions when we’d moved house I‘ve invariably ended up discovering that certain “treasures of mine” never left the old place. I hope Nat’s grateful and realises what I service I’ve done him. If Deb had got her way he’d have come back to a room stripped of it’s history and bereft of it’s treasures. Anyway, my mission of mercy complete, after this I settled down to watch a little TV before going to bed. Deb planned to take Hannah to the cinema, again, and then to a local pub for lunch. I eventually went to bed at about 11:30 and by the time I woke Nat was back. He’d had a fantastic time and couldn’t wait to tell us everything he’s done.


Apparently when the coach had arrived at the central pick up point in Burnley there’d been a two hour stop over before going on to Castle Head so, once again, he’d watched most of the video of Avatar, still his all time favourite movie, before being whisked off in the coach bound for Castle Head; another hour and half saw him finally arrive around mid afternoon. I’ve yet to hear a chronological list of what happened after but at the moment the highlights appear to be Gyhll Scrambling (the spelling varies) which entails “scrambling” along a river bed while the river is still flowing over it; the video below should make this clearer :



In addition to this exhilarating pastime, there was, the fun of someone possibly Pooing their pants, although they may just have rolled in some animal droppings, meeting kids for a load of different backgrounds…including a few Scouser (people from Liverpool) Scallies and some Manchurians who subsequently fought with each other at the farewell disco (you can always rely on the underclass to embarrass the rest of us) plus kayaking and many other outdoor activities. Nat said that he wrote a list of the activities he undertook in the note book Deb gave him; so hopefully there’ll be a much fuller account of his week in Cumbria in his own blog entries.

Deb treated to chips, pies, sausages in batter and donner meat from the chip shop, there was far too much; none of us ate everything, before she drove me to work. The weather had improved vastly during the day and it was reasonably quite tonight. We had an amusing team buzz session early on in the evening and I undertook to check out the Camalot lotter website to see if there was an easier way of organising the team’s weekly Eurolotter entries. At present JDM collects the money monthly then he has, every week, make a trip to the supermarket to actual buy the tickets; is proving to be an increasing inconvenience for him. Perhaps we could organise things differently, perhaps direct debits and purchasing tickets on-line. I’m about to find out!

It'sThe End of the (School) Year as we Know It...Already! No Spondoolies, Lucy Lawless, Spartacus, Edgy Photo, New PAYG Three Android Smartphone, Doit4Real, Cumbria, The Lake District, Castle Head, Ghyll Scrambling.

After what seems like only a few weeks there Nat has reached the end of his first year at Brockington College and Hannah now has only two years left at Millfield. OMG they will be adults before you know it, Nat acts as if he is already and Han has been for years, but that's just like all girls isn't it? Spent the night with a sore throat (contracted from Deborah) that has been getting worse rather than better all day. I had to run for the kitchen tap in the middle of the night because I woke feeling as if I were choking. I can confirm, without hesitation, that waking that way is very very unpleasant and most distressing! What I hadn't realised was that today is the 16/07 and that I paid yesterday. I "asked" Deborah whether she's paid my "allowance" into my account and if not could she do so before she left for work. This simple question and request somehow turned into a "knockdown and drag out" fight between us before she left...without her having, of course, transferred the spondoolies! Bang went my idea of "perhaps" popping into the local pub for a lunch time pint prior to my being stuck with the kids for the rest of the summer.
I've got six unseen episodes of Spartacus: Blood and Sand on the Virgin+ box which I must get round to watching because I've just found out on the Inter-Web that Lucy Lawless, yes Xena Warrior Princess, gets her Norks out in a number of them and, apparently, they are very nice Norks indeed. On top of her lovely Norks, or to be more anatomically accurate below her lovely norks, she also wears her very own Merkin! Well that's one night of severe wrist ache pencilled in; probably best to pencil that in now... while I still can! I think that's more than enough lawless lusting for today, wouldn't you say?

Is this what you call "Living on the Edge"?

It seems that Android smart phones are becoming more and more affordable. My favourite carrier (my only carrier since 2006 when I got my first smart phone - Nokia N73) Three have just announced a sub £100 Android phone called the ZTE Racer. An Android (with resistive touch screen) smart phone, running firmware 2.1 and with both Wifi and GPS for under £100 on Pay As You GO is astonishing...and very very tempting!

It looks pretty decent too:

Nat's Doit4Real course got sorted out yesterday. It seems that Deb's conversation of the previous evening had not been entered into the record hence the phone call. Nat missed his "extreme activities" courses but has ended up with one that he should enjoy greatly. It's in the lake district at Castle Head Field Centre,Grange over Sands, Cumbria and it's pretty nifty. The course doesn't included paint balling and the like but it does include activities such as hill walking; camping; ghyll scrambling; rock climbing; caving; canoeing and rafting. This should be more than enough to keep and adventurous twelve year old boy happy. we didn't actually know what ghyll scrambling was so we Googled it and it turns out to be, walking, running, sliding, diving and generally navigating your way down Cumbrian rivers. It looks like a darn fine way of passing the time and building moral fibre as this terrific video from the BBC's "Country File" demonstrates.

The centre itself (Castle Head) is very attractive; it lies between the fells of the Lake District and the shores of Morecambe Bay, in a secluded corner of north west England. The Centre includes an impressive Georgian house which is enhanced by a Victorian verandah and is surrounded by 20 hectares of grounds.