Wednesday, Thursday and Friday....Boring

Work incredibly busy so little else than it and sleep. Finally succumed to tummy bug and took an hours holiday to leave early on Thursday morning. Done little since apart from tweeting. I can't even be arsed to make up nonsense.

Thursday 25 November 2010

Today I had a Rugby tournament from period 3 to 1 hour after school I played as a hooker for the school team not surprising relay seen as I am always the Hooker. We only lost one game and that was not the final which we won so we won the tournament and I was Captain and we all got free pens for playing!!!

Wednesday 24 November 2010

Today I went to Scouts after school and we played games and did some map work I also talked to Jacob about wino's school rugby team and apparently they are terrible and are mixed year 7 8 which is good news if we play them.

Poorly Hannah, Nat back To School, Tummy Ache Continues,

Hannah was still unwell this morning and will stay home off school for another day. Nat seemed to have recovered and went to school although not on his bike Deb drove him there. How he fared I don’t know as when I got up this PM he was at his friend Brandon’s house. He wasn’t back when I left but I assume he must be better or he wouldn’t have gone out.


Deb took another “sick child” day and stayed home with Hannah; that meant that I was able to go to bed and not stay up with her. She still looked pretty rough when I woke and it looks as though it’ll be another no school day tomorrow..

I again stole Nat’s N95 and tried to listen to The Phones Show Chat Podcast but kept falling asleep. After a number of restarts I eventually heard it all the way through although not all at one time. It’s a little worrying to hear Steve Litchfield announce that he’s abandoned the N8 in favour of his old N86 as that’s the phone I nearly bought. He has a point about touch screens however and it’s easy to see the allure of an old fashioned real keyboard. The bottom line is, I suppose, that there’s no such thing as “the perfect phone” it’s more a case of horses for courses. Anyway, it’s all academic at the present time for all I know I’m now the proud possessor of a Nokia Personal Media Player if Carphone Warehouse doesn’t come through with the repair!

Before I retired for the day, I’m a vampire I is, I finished updating the blog which now only requires the inclusion of a few more photos and videos to bring it bang up to date.

Work was hectic tonight and I helped out issuing the emergency calls. I, it appears, drew the short straw and ended up with the busiest area. I didn’t stop for breath from 20:30 until just after 00:30; on the upside the time just flew by. Eventually things quietened down and I was able to go back to my normal duties.

It’s a slow night punctuated only by my frequent trips to the little boys room; I suspect that I’m suffering, mildly, from the same malady as the kids…shit to coin a phrase, well a word actually you can’t really refer to a single word as a phrase, can you? Is it possible to claim "Squatters Rights" over someone elses toilet?

Tuesday 23 November 2010

Teacher comments in red.


 Today I went round Brandon's and we played some Warhammer What is Warhammer? I had my Space Wolves Space Wolves what are they? and which hunters Who? he had Tau What are Tau? and I won because I am the greatest Very full of your self Nathaniel so Yay me!!Yay is not a word As well as this I did not have mushy peas to eat but Pizza very nice Pizza Don't use the word nice Nathaniel is a boring word it was outstanding Pizza. very good Nathaniel.

Sick Kids, Advent Calendar, Ploughman

As I mentioned in the previous post, both of the kids were off sick today with the tummy bug that’s doing the rounds. When we phoned their schools to advise them of the situation we were informed that there were scores of pupils off with the same thing. After I’d updated the photo and videos previously mentioned I photographed and uploaded a few photos of the Advent Calendar that Deb had made for Hannah (see below).


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Deb had decided to stay at home to look after the kids and so took the opportunity to telephone John Adams (01162365375) re ploughing allotment.

If explained that if he ploughed it now and we left it exposed so that the frost could break up the ground it probably wouldn’t also need rotavating later. So that’s the plan, then after the frost we’ll cover over the parts we don’t intend to immediately cultivate so that the plot doesn’t get over grown again. It’ll cost £20 for him to plough the plot and that’s not a bad price at all. If we don’t hear back from him soon we’ll chase him up to make sure it gets done before Xmas.

It was frantic at work again tonight and things didn’t quieten down until about 01:00 in the morning which is when I started bring these last few entries up to date. All that’s left to do now is embed the relevant photos and videos and it’s done. I’ll do those on my off days this week

Monday 21 November 2010

Today I did not go to school partly because I was ill and partly because I was exhausted from camp. So instead of going to school I watched TV and went on the pc what a nice day to recover from the camp to have a bit of R and R :)

Chief Scout gold award camp

I got to camp on Saturday morning at 8 and when everyone had got up 2 people cooked breakfast on an open fire while the rest of us made are bibvowacks after an hour in which I had to open my survival tin to get the knife out we had breakfast a full English YUM YUM after this we continued to build are bibvowacks and ours was really good. After lunch which we cooked on an open fire same as with breakfast we built camp gadget's or more specificity washing up stands again our group's was da best. We then did some more work on are bibvowacks and had a session on knives, axes and saws after this we had dinner and went to bed in our bibvowacks. After getting up on Sunday we took our bibvowacks down cooked breakfast and did a season on first aid we learnt how to treat Frost bite, Heat exhaustion, Heat stroke and how to give CPR after this we made ballisters and fired them it was fun we then had dinner packed up camp got our badges and went home. 

Redditch, Andrew Marr Show, Young Earth Creationist, N95, Podcast, Dan Carlin, Rang George, Allotment Plough Man, Back From Camp, New Shife, Lurggy,

It was my first night back at work tonight so I needed to catch up on some sleep during the afternoon. Nat would be away until early evening and Deb and Hannah were planning to visit Deb’s parents in Redditch and collect him on their way home

I watched the Andrew Marr show and had a good laugh at the Young Earth Creationist who appeared on the following programme explaining why, he believed, Darwin was wrong and why the earth was less than Ten Thousand Years Old. What a complete arsehole of the first order. These people are so needy that’ll they’ll swallow any old bollocks and repeat the same old lies to convince themselves of the existence of their God. It’s interesting how they’re so quick to dismiss the equally irrational beliefs of other religious folk…Total F**king F**kwits! Equally amused and depressed that people can honestly believe such tosh I made my way to bed via Nat’s room where I temporarily stole back my old N95 so that I could listen to a few podcasts while getting off to sleep. Dan Carlin’s most recent Common Sense program if I recall correctly. I received an automated call from the Carphone Warehouse telling me that my phone had been dispatched and that they’d let me know when it came back which was nice if somewhat unexpected.

Before I’d gone to bed I’d rung George, who was the previous allotment site manager, to ask him to ask his successor if she could ring us today, she’d forgotten last week, with the number of the gentleman who would plough our allotment for us. As luck would have it George had his number and was able to give it to me over the phone. We planned to call him later in the week to arrange to get our plot ploughed.

I eventually got up at about half four after Deb had called me to make sure I didn’t forget that I had to get up earlier now we were starting work at 20:00 instead of 21:00. She called again at 17:00 to say that she and Han were at the camp and waiting to pick up Nat. When they hadn’t arrived home 45 minutes later I called her back only to find that they were still waiting for the scouts to finish clearing their camp site. Eventually they got home and Nat stank. They had slept in their bivouacs and he was rank but grateful for his new sleeping bag that is suitable for temperatures as low as minus 18C! He’d finally opened the survival tin that his granddad had bought him about five years ago and proceeded to display the contents. It seems that he had a great time at camp but then he always does.

I left for work at around 19:00 and arrived with plenty of time to spare. So far I like this new shift the time passed quickly and I was able when it was finally quite to catch up on these blog posts. Cycled home in the morning, back by 7:30, to find both kids were struck down with the “Lurggy”. Deb stayed home to look after them because Hannah was very poorly and she didn’t want to leave her being sick and with me asleep in bed. I posted some photos and videos onto a couple of the blogs I’d written that night then went to bed at about 11:00.

Queens Scouts Camp 2, Carphone Warehouse, £80!, Steak, Magners Pear Cider, Harry Potter, Stomach Pains, Things To Come,

We were up early because we’d agreed the night before to try and get Nat to camp by 08:00; it was still foggy but nothing like as bad as the previous evening and eventual just before 08:00 we found the entrance, it wasn’t easy thank you Hannah, and left Nat with one of the troop leaders. They would be building bivouacs in which they would sleep that night. Nat had demolished a huge bowl of cereal before we left home and subsequently, we later discovered, sat down to eat a full English breakfast with the rest of the troop…greedy little sod!


The previous evening Deb had gone on line to discover the nearest approved Nokia repair outlet. I filmed the journey and the video quality was outstanding as were traveling at around 50mph. Unfortunately this will probably be wiped while they're trying to fix the phone! This turned out to be the Carphone Warehouse shop on Welford Road so, after dropping Nat off, we headed there to see if they could repair the phone. They weren’t open until 09:00 and as we arrived early I decided to see if the FM transmitter would allow me to play one of the podcasts I’d put on the phone via the car radio. This it did indeed do, perfectly. Eventually the shop opened and I explained what had happened. The guy there wasn’t sure they could repair it, hopefully they say this to everyone, but agreed to send it off to their engineers to see what they could do. If they can repair it, fingers crossed, it’ll cost me £80 so everything I saved by buying on eBay has been lost. In addition they’ll have to destroy the memory card in order to remove it so that’s another £20 down the drain. It’s now just a question of waiting to hear back from them.

Afterwards we did the weekly shop at Sainsbury’s’ where Deb picked up a couple of small, but succulent steaks for she and I for dinner, Hannah doesn’t like beef so she would be having macaroni cheese…one of her favourites. While we were there we also picked up some beers including three bottles of Magners’ pear cider which was on special offer. This was very nice but nothing like as nice as the St Austell’s pear cider she’s bought the previous week. When you open that it smells like pear drops and is gorgeous.

Hannah had a ballet lesion that afternoon and had to stay for an additional hour to make up for the lesion she’s missed on Wednesday so she was exhausted when she eventually got back home.

We had our dinner; the steaks were delicious, while watching the end of the first Harry Potter film on ITV and decided, once it had finished, that we’d then watch number four, Goblet of Fire. I fell asleep and missed the end; Hannah and Deb watched the next one as I slept on. When I woke up they’d gone to bed so I made up a bed on the sofa and went back to sleep. I woke again around 04:00 with a searing stomach ache which I’m still experiencing as I write this. It seems Deb had been suffering from this too and on Monday both of the kids also came down with it, Hannah was particularly severely affected and spent the day in bed when she wasn’t in the loo throwing up!

Saturday 20 November 2010

When I got to camp in the morning.........................................WELL NAT WHAT?????

Cancelled Hospital, N8 Arrives, N8 Broken, Depression, Suicidal, Great Video, Camp, Sat Nav, Fog, Defeated, Homeward Bound, TWAT.

Phoned the Hospital and rearranged my appointment for the 17th of February next year. At 8:40, shortly after Deb had left to drop Hannah at school and go to work, there was a knock at the door and my new phone was delivered. Let joy be unconfined I’ve finally got a Nokia N8! I spent the first hour checking it out and playing with it before I decided I was ready to insert the sim card. I removed this from my N82 along with the removable memory card. I didn’t need to put a card in the new phone as it has 16 Gigs of internal storage but I wanted to transfer the contents of the card into its onboard memory. This would alleviate the necessity of re-downloading the podcasts and videos I had stored on it. THIS WAS WHERE IT ALL WENT WRONG!!! You know when crashes are blamed on human error, because the pilot is so familiar with what he does that he thinks he’s done something but he hasn’t, well I experienced something similar. I picked up the memory card and inserted it into the SIM slot pushing it home to ensure it fit. One Hundredths of a second later I realised what I’d done, but even now I don’t know why I did such a stupid thing, but it was too late. The card was in the slot and there was absolutely nothing I could do that would remove it. I tried easing it out with a pin but only succeeded in damaging the SIM slot. My beautiful new phone had now effectively been turned into a Nokia iPod, f**k f**k F**K! I have never felt so stupid in my entire life and the adrenaline was pumping through my system as the repercussions of what I’d done came home to me! When Deb called to ask if the phone had arrived and I had to explain what I’d gone and done I wanted the ground to open up and swallow me especially as she couldn’t keep the amusement out of her voice. Whether or not it can be repaired; forever after she and the kids will now refer to the N8 as the “brick” that Daddy made. What made things even worse was that everything that still worked, of course, worked perfectly. The camera and video were super as you'll see from this First Film -



The phone acquired a GPS lock in seconds and, after I’d remembered the password to allow it access, so did the Wi-Fi. It worked just fine allowing me access to the internet.

Eventually Deb and the Kids came home and discovered, in detail, exactly what as massive screw up I’d made. Despite this, the Kids were completely captivated by what the N8 could still do and were fighting with each other to get their hands on it.

Nat had to leave for camp so I put the approximate location into the phone which would allow me to test out the free Nokia Maps software. Again this worked superbly and we obtained full off line voice guided navigation. Unfortunately it was very foggy when we left home and as we travelled toward Kirby Mallory this got worse and worse. We easily found the general location, after a hic-cup when I entered the road name and we discovered that the software had plotted our route to a street within Leicester with the same name. We eventually got to the right road but by this time visibility was appalling so despite repeatedly driving up and down the road and stopping to ask directions a number of times we were unable to locate the entrance to the camp site. Eventually we decided it was no longer safe to keep looking and returned home. When we got back I phoned one of the scout leaders and explained what had happened and agreed we’d drop Nat off there in the morning. Even in the daytime the entrance proved difficult to find and it was pure luck that Hannah spotted it as we, once more, drove passed it.

I can’t say I slept well that night; I tossed and turned dreaming of the complete disaster I’d created because of a moment’s inattention! I sincerely hope it’s a long time before I experience another day like this one…Twat!

Friday 19 November 2010

Today my Dad was a total idiot and put the memory card in the sim card slot on his new N8 what a FOOL! we also could not drop me off at the scout camp because we could not find the entrance in the fog so we came home.

Bought an N8 on eBay, Hospital Tomorrow

Finally bid on and bought an N8, £295 plus £7 postage. Sellers a female, on Three who received it as an unwanted upgrade, with 100% feedback so it looks like I’ve bagged me a bargain (if only I knew what the future held in store for me!). Paid the money and later received an email to say that the phone had been dispatched and was scheduled to arrive before 1pm tomorrow. At last, I’m going to own the best camera phone that’s ever been made…to date. There was only one problem; I was due to attend the hospital in the morning to see my consultant surgeon. This was to be the final check that everything was OK with my new hip. I would need to rearrange this because as sure as eggs the phone would be delivered whilst I was out if I didn’t. I wish now that I kept this appointment!

Shopping For Camp, Queen's Award, No Ballet, Sleepyhead,

Finished work at 08:00 for the last time, its 07:00 from now on. Cycled home and spent the day on the PC doing little or nothing. Nat went shopping this evening, with the Queens Award group (he attends a special scouts group, separate from his normal pack, once a month in order to do this) for provisions for camp this coming week end. This meant that he missed the normal meeting. Hannah was supposed to go to ballet but for some reason I don’t think she went. Certainly on the coming Saturday she had to stay an extra hour to make up for the missed session. The reason I’m unclear over the details is that by this time I was sat on the sofa drifting in and out of sleep and my comprehension of my surroundings was nil.

Nothing To Report

Sleep, Deb still marking N8’s, work nothing of significance other than tonight’s our last night. Off until Sunday…Hurray!

Payday, I Have a Dream, eBay, N8, New Team Members, D's a Daddy, Silly Season,

At last, Some Money, yes its payday, there’s actually going to be something positive in our bank account for at least the next three days! Wow, after that it’ll be back to a eking out the overdraft for another 28 days. Is it any wonder that, despite knowing the odds, I still buy the occasional lottery ticket? Just like Doctor King “I have a Dream” its just that mine entails oodles of money, foreign travel and hot and cold running whores, surely that’s not too much to ask for, is it?


I spent most of the day in bed dreaming; of oodles of money, foreign travel and the aforementioned ladies of easy virtue. All too soon it was time to awaken and face the dreary reality that currently passes for my life. In an attempt, doomed to backfire (see coming Saturday blog) to hold onto as much of my overtime as she can Deb’s perusing eBay for bargain deals on a Nokia N8. There are loads up for offer as many people have received them as contract upgrades and are attempting to generate a little spending money by flogging them off.

Work’s getting really busy as we enter the cold season and tonight I discovered that one of our two new team members has just become a Daddy and will therefore be off, on paternity leave, for an indefinite period. Now he seems to be a nice, if somewhat credulous, guy but one has to question the decision, given his circumstances, to employ him on our team after all this is our busiest time of year. Additionally, someone else who supposedly transferring to our team, who has been on sick leave ever since the transfer was supposed to take effect, is now coming back to work but not as part of our team…weird. To cap it all, the last person I spoke to this morning wanted to complain that we hadn’t resolved his problem despite the fact that he had cancelled the appointment made for the previous day to do this. Once again, dearest reader, we’re in the silly season!

Loughborough Fair Photos and Videos, Allotment, Rent, Ploughman, New Site Manager, Broken Monitor, EA Overtime,

Today I uploaded the Loughborough Fair photographs and Videos with a few to including them in this blog. As you’ll see they are now linked into the previous post. Deb picked up Nat from Jacobs and as mentioned stayed to speak to Chris who burst into tears.
We also popped up to the allotment to let them know we were still alive, still interested, pay our annual rent and see about buying enough covering material to cover our plot. We were advised that there was a gentleman who would, for a few quid, plough our plot and subsequently rotavate it. The lady who’s taken over from George as site manager was going to telephone us later with his number but must have forgotten to.
When I got to work I discovered that the monitor at the new desk I’d moved to was broken so, instead of going back to my old work station I moved further away even though that entailed having to use a CRT old style monitor. I considered this but a small price to pay. Interesting to note, three of our team were already there doing o/t on EA...how did that happen back to the good old days of the four guys monopoly perhaps, I don’t think so!
We had a team meeting and it was decided that in order to provide the necessary early evening staff for EA, it’s that or leave it to Geoff (!) from now on we’d change our hours to 8pm - 7am...to start next Sunday 21/11.

Consider Humanism

Consider Humanism - Robert Ingersoll from American Humanist Association on Vimeo.

Bruce Redundant, Jacob's Sleep-Over, Nat Away, Payslip, Over-Time Wrong, Supreme Twattery, N8, Chick-Flick,

Terrible news today; the company that Bruce, Jacob and Josh’s Dad, works for has gone bust and he’s been made redundant. This is devastating news for them. Bruce earned 40K per annum while Chris, his wife, earns only £10K part time. They are facing an 80% drop in income and when Deb picked up Nat from there the following morning and spoke to Chris she just burst into tears and said they had no idea what they were going to do. It’s all right to talk about necessary cuts and spending restraint but its different when it hurts someone you know and like.
To make matters worse Jacob was due to have a load of kids over to stay the night today to celebrate his 13th birthday. This still went ahead and Nat stayed the night there. I’ve told Nat that if Jacob’s parents have to start selling things, like his and Josh’s games consoles and such, he is to make sure that they know they are welcome at our house at anytime play on his with him. They’ve shared more than enough of their stuff with him quid pro quo. Despite the news the sleep over was a great success and we didn’t see Nat again after he went to their house at 2pm. Deb, as I mentioned, picked him up the next morning.
I received my payslip in the post this morning and imagine my surprise when I discovered I hadn’t been paid for all of my overtime. Later, at work, I discovered this was because the third time sheet that I thought I’d handed in before we went on holiday hadn’t been given in, I must have just picked up the two and not the third, so I gave it to John to process for December. This example of Supreme Twattery, far above and beyond the call of duty as it was, should have provided me with a warning to be more careful and if it had then my N8 would now be in my pocket not off in the hospital for poorly mobiles but more of this later. Anyway, Nat was away and as I left for work Han and Deb settled down to watch a chick flick…yuck! I was going to try and get this blog up to date but got side tracked by other things which is why I’m doing it now instead.