Memory Lane

On the plane last night and the films were just rubbish. The good news though is that I got the chance to listen to some really good, old fashioned high quality music.

The Beatles
Elvis
Queen
Simon and Garfunkle
ABBA
And so on

Life defining music every last song. I'm afraid modern pop slop does nothing for me

DW


Sent from my BlackBerry® wireless device

Eternal Youth

I've found it: the secret of eternal youth.

Get the 09:42 bus into town and all of the other passengers will be pass wielding pensioners with silver hair and a Dunkirk spirit attitude to life.

Difficult not to be the youth on that bus!!

Yet another top tip from duncanwil.co.uk

DW
Sent from my BlackBerry® wireless device

Fairy Tale

One day, a long, long time ago ... there lived a woman who did not whine, nag or bitch.

But that was a long time ago ... and it was just that one day.

The End

Thanks to the clever wit who put that one together.

DW
Sent from my BlackBerry® wireless device

Zimbabwe

After many, many years the cat is finally out of the bag and that repressive and murderous tyrant Robert Mugabe is openly doing what he said he would: murdering his own people, stifling anything resembling democracy and so on. I wonder what he will say when he meets his maker?
 
Now, however, we can hear pious and piteous bleating from the international community: why so long in coming? Why are these people only taking notice now? The people of Zimbabwe have nothing to look forward to now that Mugabe is getting away with murder.
 
There is talk of further sanctions being levied against the top 100 or 200 people in Zimbabwe. Whooppeee! Does that mean that their ill gotten gains that have been stashed away in foreign bank accounts will be confiscated and shared between the people of Zimbabwe. As if. Ever heard of numbered Swiss bank accounts? Ever heard of secret identities? Does anyone think that these people haven't hidden everything?
 
How about stopping them travelling? I have never done it and never will, but I think it would take me about a day to source and place an order for an illegal passport from just about any country I liked. I don't doubt some of these top people are way ahead of the curve on this one.
 
By the way, in case you don't know. In the glory days when Mugabe was able to travel freely, for example to collect his honorary degrees from the UK and his knighthood (wonder where that was conferred), he normally took a plane load of cronies with him and they raided the shops for weeks on end. How much money did they plunder to finance those trips? And did his wife really need Rolex watches costing many thousands of Pounds each? Funnily enough, everyone knew what Mugabe was doing then but who even suggested he was doing something wrong? No one: not even our own bleater in chief, the one and only Gordon Brown.
 
DW
Sent from my BlackBerry® wireless device

Chopper

As I walked through Manchester airport last week I came upon a man wearing an Orange County Cycles tee shirt ... That's American Chopper talk.

I went up to the man and asked if the tee shirt was genuine. He said, rather snottily I thought, no it wasn't. I said I was hoping it was and that he'd been to Orange County and met Paul Sr, Paul Jr and Mikey!!! Dismissively, he said no again.

No offence but this man had a Southern English accent!! 'nuff said.

DW
Sent from my BlackBerry® wireless device

Pissoire

Last Friday afternoon I was on a tram in Manchester having just left Piccadilly Gardens on the way to Old Trafford to watch the Lancs v Yorks Twenty20 cricket match. Then son Andrew pointed out the pissoire in the street ... Completely open to the street.

Honestly, I couldn't believe it. Where is the dignity and privacy in that? Where are we living, France?

Turns out there's a pissoire in Halifax too.

DW
Sent from my BlackBerry® wireless device

BMI ... AGAIN

I vowed never to fly with BMI again and you can search this blog's archive to see why.

However, as part of the trip to Riyadh that I am just finishing now, I was put on the Manchester - Heathrow - Manchester sectors, connecting to Gulf Air flights to run me down to Riyadh.

Needless to say, my luggage has not made it back with me. Moroever, I couldn't be booked all the way through from Riyadh to Manchester so I had to check in with BMI at Heathrow. The check in girl even kindly explained why I also needed to reconfirm my luggage with her. Otherwise, she said, it wouldn't be put on the same flight as me.

How prophetic that turned out to be!!!

DW
Sent from my BlackBerry® wireless device

Language again

A rather well spoken English woman was interviewed on BBC World's financial news from Singapore this morning and she used one of those stupid phrases that inadequates use. She suggested that a company had "kitchen sinked" a financial report.

Secondly, do you know the plural for Corgi? A Corgi is the Queen's favourite dog, of course!

DW
Sent from my BlackBerry® wireless device

The Sun

I am in Riyadh at the moment and one of my delegates asked me what the difference is between their sun and our sun.

I said the difference is that we can see theirs!!

Jolly japes!

DW
Sent from my BlackBerry® wireless device

Deleting Microsoft Office 2007

Before Deleting any software using Windows' Add/Remove Software utility do make sure you read what it is you are removing. After all, you wouldn't want to uninstall Office 2007 in its entirety would you? More particularly, you wouldn't want to unistall that software when Windows' Restore utility has been disabled for some reason would you?

 

That's probably a double top tip

 

DW

The Lawn

Hooray!

 

It has taken me a long time but when I got back from a recent three week trip I found my lawns to be knee high in grass. The grass just flourished during those fewweeks. It took me another couple of weeks to get my mind ready for mowing but I did nothing. Then this week my old neighbour shamed me by mowing my front lawn. Now, it's not a big lawn but he is quite a bit older than me and he just got on with it.

 

Galvanised, I then found the missing cable: my lawn mower has been standing idle since last August as I left the power cable in my old house in Abingdon. That is, I went online and bought a new power cable and it arrived yesterday.

 

So I spent just an hour or so hacking down my back lawn and whilst it is not at the same standard as my prim and proper Abingdon lawn (the best on my estate by far!), I have begun to look after it now. I will be buying lawn food, moss and weed killer for it now and will mow it more frequently than once in 7 months!!

 

When it is perfect, I will take photos and show you. NO before and after either: forget the past!!!

 

DW

The Secret of Dieting

I know there are lowly people who are fat and then become thin who go on to write a successful "diet" book. Nigel Lawson, one time miserable failure of a Chancellor of the Exchequor, was very blubbery, like his daughter, that ridiculously pseudo poetic cook Nigella.

 

Lawson lost his blubber and now looks more like a Rhinocerous than a person, illustrating just how fat he really was.

 

So, Lawson wrote a book that I believe became a best seller. It is doubtless just a collection of recipes and doubtless the recipes are interspersed with crappy motivational thoughts ...

 

Let me tell you the secret of losing weight, having lost over a stone (more than 14 pounds, more than 7 kg) myeslf recently.

 

Eat less. There you are, that's the secret; but there's more

 

Cut down on the fat: much more important than cutting out the carbohydrates.

 

Eat fewer sweets, chocolates and puddings.

 

There you are: simple

 

If you are a moderate to heavy drinker of alcoholic and/or high calorific soft drinks, drink less,

 

It's that simple and if you cannot do any of this then you are going to be or stay fat.

 

Exercise is important for general health and the more you do the better. In my own experience, especially as I get older, exercise is not such a weight controller. However, good quality exercise gets the heart pumping and the lungs shifting the oxygen around. So take more exercise, especially if you are a slouch and an idle Jack or idle Jenny.

 

Finally, sleep well: you don;t need to sleep more than 7 or 8 hours a night once you are an adult. You don't.

 

Get out of bed, take some exercise and eat and drink less.

 

If you want to pay me some money for that advise, just let me know and I will tell you where to send it!!

DW

DHL ... No thanks Parcelforce is better

I needed to send a package from Abingdon to Halifax and chose DHL. On the web I found the phone number of their nearest office, Leeds. This is what happened; and in each case I started by telling them what I wanted them to do for me..

1 Oh no you need next day delivery for that. Let me give you their number.

Dialled that number.

2 Ah no you've come through to Leeds, I'll give you the number you need.

Dialled that number.

3 Let me put you on hold a second ... I need to give you another number ...

I stopped her and said this is the third number they've given me and I don't need any more. Goodbye.

I then called Parcelforce and for just £14.99 and five minutes of my time they sealed the deal!

DW


Sent from my BlackBerry® wireless device

Slugs love fish fingers

I went out into the back garden this evening and found a tiny child' bike and then saw a bowl on the floor nearby with three fish fingers in it. Slithering their way into the bowl were three slimy balck slugs.

So now you know slugs like fish fingers don't you?

DW


Sent from my BlackBerry® wireless device

A lake?

It's funny but at least she can speak two languages!

I was chatting to a friend on MSN and showed her my front garden via my web cam. At one point she asked me, 'Is that a lake?' and I replied, 'No, it's a bird bath'!

DW
Sent from my BlackBerry® wireless device

Plug on the stairs: a top tip

Don't just throw an electical cable with a plug on the down the stairs in case it lands prongs uppermost on a step and you are stupid enough to step on one of the prongs thus gashing the sole of your foot causing prolonged bleeding.

DW
Sent from my BlackBerry® wireless device

More Politicians in the Stupid Tree

Have you seen the latest crackpot idea from our politicians? They want to give us all a carbon allowance that we can either use or trade with. So that's another hare brained scheme that is probably impossible to manage and that they will no doubt waste billions on trying to cobble together. These clowns have only fallen one level down the stupid tree but it looks as if they have firmly smashed their heads on the thickest branch as they fell. DW

Grandchild II Arrives

Ey up, let me introduce you to one of the planet's newest people: Rosalin Williamson.

Rosalin was born on Sunday 18th May 2008 in Germany. How about that and she was, as Shakespeare put it in MacBeth, from her mother's womb untimely ripp'd.

DW, the happy and proud grandad!

Is it London?

I am working in London this week and following a successful meeting I decided to buy a SIM card for my new phone. I did that and as I was finishing the transaction I cheerily asked if my new number was a lucky number. I got a reply that surprised me.

Charmaine said I could make it my lucky number if I wanted. Lighten up Charmaine!

Then I called in a Post Office to buy an envelope to send Dima a little something. I paid for the envelope and asked if I could take it to that counter to send it. The man behind the counter told me that he was closing in a minute.

I said, no, it will be tomorrow. However, I didn't ask him when he closed, I asked him about the services he provides.

DW
Sent from my BlackBerry® wireless device

Hold the phone!

How about this?

I have just spoiled myself and bought a new mobile phone at Dubai Duty Free. When I told the assistant about my BlackBerry she asked if she could hold it!

The first one she's ever seen she says.

Wasn't a pick up line either I'm sorry to say!

DW
Sent from my BlackBerry® wireless device