Commercial Break

And now a word from our sponsors;

Advertising was much better in the '50's & '60's when bare faced lies were perfectly acceptable and nobody questioned anything.

For anyone not familiar with "Oxo", it's a dried beef stock cube used to flavour gravy for your Sunday roast.
Not too sure why you would put it in milk and give it to your little wretches.
Might be worth a try for the hell of it, tell them it's chocolate milk and wait for the reaction!!!

MMMMMMmmmmmmm beefy refreshment.

Scare wear

Now I have dug out some of my travel photos and worked out how to get them here, I will post some more over the next few weeks.

Inspired by Lynn, Mme and Dive, here's my contribution to the swimwear collection.
This is me just before entering the "Fat Bastard of the Day" contest in Cuba.
As you can see, when I got to the beach, everyone else fucked off!!!

When in Cuba one must read Hemingway.

Just so you know what the food was like, welcome to the Restaurant Colon.

More Phlegm

As I've let Lynn down so very badly by being a bit tardy with my posts, this is just for her.
Don't eat them all at once and if you do make it to Norwich, I still have some of these left.

So, I've been with the Phlegms again. (yeah)!!!
This is part of the new border controls at the Channel Tunnel.
If you give it some food you can go through.
This gull was one of the extras in "The Birds". It's sad how they are now reduced to scratching out a living by menacing tourists with their "Hooded" look.

This is where I play when I'm over in Belgium, complete with a pretend series 1 Elise.
This is just a load of old panels we used for testing, which were then screwed together on a few blocks of wood and painted in "Gay hairdresser purple".

Here we are in jolly Mechelen again.
This is for Dive. See how the Belgian town planners seamlessly blend the new architecture with the old?

I like bridges, so here is a bridge.

Obviously I work very hard when I'm there but there are benefits.
Belgian beer and chilli nuts at the end of a long day.

I have been going to Belgium for over 10 years now with work and when we go out in the evenings the restaurant food is very good where ever we go. This, however, was probably the best place I've been for the setting as well as the food.
It's Het Pomphuis (The Pump House) alongside the river at the docks in Antwerp.
The building has an eclectic style with art nouveau features and beautiful tall Romanesque windows set in red brick edged with block stonework.
The inside, as you can see, is the old pumping gear used to drain the nearby dry dock to maintain the ships which used to trade from Antwerp.

I had a superb seat just to the left of the three chairs to the top right of the picture.
It was right on the edge and ideal for vertigo sufferers.
The food was excellent so if anyone is ever in Antwerp, go there.

On my travels.

I will be away from Blogland next week so play nicely together and don't run indoors.

It's Curry Club tonight, Twickenham for the EDF Cup Final between Leicester Tigers and The Ospreys on Saturday, ( I'll wave Lynn), and off to the land of the Phlegms again on Monday.

I will try to get some photos etc and try to put the fun back into Belgium.
(I be glum).

Lynns Mystery

Lynn posted a picture of some strange growths in a tree and wondered what they were.

This is a shot I took a few weeks ago as I travelled to Pouancé in France.

Seems they are taking over the world.
Maybe they are alien nests!
Maybe thats where Twiglets come from.
(that would explain the crappy taste).

Happy Easter

Just a few pictures taken this morning as I came home.

The date today is March 23rd

Easter Sunday

Oh well, the garden won't get done today.

Happy Easter to you all from festive Norfolk.

Wheeeee !!!

I have been in a blog vacuum for a while but as Dive said he was going to show some scary views, I thought I would mention the view from the plane I was in this week.
I have been over to France with work Monday to Wednesday for the last couple of weeks and this Monday we trundled to Stansted with joy in our hearts safe in the knowledge that our flight would be cancelled due to the storms etc.
So as we flew across the channel in our "not so cancelled" 737, the pilot informed us that the crosswinds at Dinard airport were "on the limits for this aircraft but we will attempt to land anyway".

Thanks matie.


As we came out of the clouds it started to get a bit bumpy, but I have been on lots of bumpy flights and this wasn't so bad.
Then it got more bumpy and, as we approached the runway, we went up diddly up up, and down diddly down down, and then sideways for a bit, then the right hand wing flipped up about 10 degrees and we went sideways and down again. By this time we were about 50 feet off the runway and having fun when the pilot must have thought "fuck this for a game of soldiers" and put on full throttle and we went up diddly up up at a rate of knots.
When we got to about 20,000 feet the tannoy calmly announced " you may have noticed that we had to abort that landing as I deemed it a little dangerous" No shit Sherlock!!

We then flew on to Brest where the gale force winds were blowing directly down the runway rather than across it.
The pilot got us in first time, although it was bloody rough. The end of the much shorter runway at Brest was very close when we finally slowed enough to turn back to the terminal. (that's not a good word for an airport building).
As we filed off the plane, the pilot stood at the cockpit door with a smile on his face. I said "That was interesting" and his reply was a silent intake of breath and raised eyebrows as if to say "thank fuck I got that down in one piece".

He earned every penny of his wage on Monday, thanks Captain.