After we had our Christmas Dinner, we gave the hamsters some too. They seemed to enjoy it. At lunchtime Reggie had some beef and a little turkey. After dinner proper they all had a small piece of turkey, sprout and roast potato.

Theo eating some sprout.

Archie eating some vegetables for a change.

Reggie eating some roast potato.

Gel and Alysia relaxing after their Christmas dinner. (Gel's the flat one underneath)

We had the secret santa present givaway this morning. Last week we had to draw a name out of a hat and buy a present for that person. I got a Bedlam Cube. I made the mistake of taking it out at lunchtime. I can't get it back in the box now!

We chose from the Christmas menu. This starts with a small bowl of root-vegetable crisps then a choice of starters. I had Caesar Salad and Emma had Garlic Bread Quattro Formaggi. For our main courses Emma had the Padana pizza (goats cheese, spinach, red onion) and I had the Natale (a kind of Christmas Dinner pizza with turkey, prosciutto and stuffing). A couple of weeks ago I had the idea to make a similar pizza myself. It was good to see such a pizza in a restaurant. Theirs came on an impressively thin and crispy base - ours probably wouldn't because we haven't perfected the art of thin bases yet.

We both started to feel a little full but we couldn't leave without a pudding, especially because it was included in the price. The Torta di Milano was suitably moist, cakey and creamy. The Chocolate Glory wasn't on the christmas menu but they allow substitutions. It was a wonderful assembly of ice cream, cake and chocolate sauce.

It was foggy while I was walking home from work tonight. There was a dark and empty park to my left and a brightly lit shopping centre to my right, beyond the railway line. I looked across the park and thought I could see someone walking across the grass. I looked again but couldn't see anyone. I carried on walking and thought I saw several dark ghostly figures moving through the fog. It was a few seconds before I realised they were my own shadows, caused by the lights from the shopping centre.

All the teaspoons have disappeared from the kitchen in work. There are usually plenty first thing in the morning but they all go by lunchtime. No-one knows what happens to them or where they go. There are people trying to make cups of coffee using forks.

The current Christmas stamps have created a bit of controversy because they don't have any religious content at all. A slightly greater concern to children throughout the land is depicted on the 1st class stamp (pictured left). Santa knows if you've been naughty or nice, and if you've been naughty he'll poo down your chimney.

Take care watching this film if you are a physicist, astronomer, metallurgist, geologist, biologist, cartographer or have a brain larger than a squirrel's. Remove brain before watching movie. Or get drunk first.

The film doesn't quite get into the so bad it's good territory. It's very silly. It's complete nonsense. But at least it manages to be entertaining so it's not a total dud. I won't list all the bad physics in the film. I'll leave that to the experts.

I don't know whether all Warwick Graduate Association christmas parties are this empty. The Student Union was pretty quiet when we arrived.

There were two bands on tonight. The first were the Skabilly Rebels which featured "Roddy Radiation" from The Specials. They were good, performing a mixture of Ska and Rock with a little Blues thrown in. Sadly they seemed to be ignored or unappreciated by most of the audience. The so-called 'headline act' were an unimaginative Crappy Covers Band called Carte Blanche. Their highlight was when the lead singer gave her lungs a rest and allowed the guitarist to sing a fairly good version of Suspicious Minds.

I think the real high point of the evening came near the start when we had a go on the 'Rudolph' bucking bronco. I managed about 44 seconds which seemed average frmo what we saw, but my hands were hurting afterwards from gripping too hard trying not to fall off.

This winter hasn't been as cold as last year. There have been no cold frosty mornings on my way to work yet. This morning was the first frost of the winter, we had to scrape ice off the car before we could go to the shops.

This week's episode manages to keep up the 'wierd quotient' of this X-Files/Men in Black hybrid. The story was about a bloke who had an 'alien eye' in his possession. He got run over by a car but his 'ghost' followed Gwen's investigation into his death.

Part of the episode was set at 'Aberystwyth University'. I thought: OK, they've got the name slightly wrong but we should see some shots of the town and maybe the Old College building. Instead what we got was an interior scene which was actually filmed in the National Museum in Cardiff. I don't know whether they failed to get permission to film at the University, or whether it was too expensive, or whether they were just too plain lazy to drive to another town to film. It was a bit disappointing but didn't detract from the episode.

Update: Since I wrote this, Aber has split from the University of Wales and is no longer University of Wales, Aberystwyth and is just Aberystwyth University, as shown in the programme.

We went to the cinema again to take advantage of the 'Orange Wednesday' 2 for 1 tickets offer. I thought the film looked ok but not brilliant. I was in for a surprise. The trailers really didn't do it justice and downplayed a lot of the comedy.

The film was much funnier than I was expecting. Watch out for the slugs - they play a large part in the film despite being irrelevent to the story and provide many of the film's funniest moments. The film also has lots of 'blink and you'll miss them' jokes and references in the background and will probably benefit from a 2nd viewing.

I was suprised at the film's lacklustre performance in the cinemas. There were only 2 other people watching it tonight. It might have suffered internationally because so much of the humour was very British but that shouldn't have been a problem for a 'home' audience. The racist stereotyped French characters might only be a problem in France, although Jean Reno played the lead Frog so at least we know he's got a sense of humour. And we're used to seeing offensive British stereotypes in many American films and that doesn't usually affect box office takings over here.

In summary, a brilliant film, a 'must-see' comedy.

I was walking home from work, it was dark but there were streetlights nearby. A bloke was walking towards me, wearing camouflage gear. He obviously hadn't seen me and almost bumped into me. I think he might have been related to the Ravenous Bugblatter Beast of Traal.

This house is getting far too cold. The bathroom regularly gets down to 10-11C and the front room keeps dropping below 15C. We don't want to use the storage heaters because last year that caused our electricity bill to shoot up by several hundred pounds.

It will be good to finally be able to move out of this place. The kitchen wall still hasn't been sorted properly. Someone was supposed to come and paint the outside wall last month. We got home one day to find the house smelled of solvent or paint and there was a paintbrush in the wheelie bin. The kitchen wall looked completely untouched so we don't know what they actually did. The wall still gets damp but thankfully we don't get water running down the inside any more. The plug socket hasn't been replaced so we're still using the extension cable for the fridge and washing machine.

It was our work's Christmas Do today. I bumped into one of my office colleagues while I was en-route to the station to meet Emma. We went for a pint at the German Market before meeting everyone else at the restaurant.

The restaurant seemed to struggle with this many people. They had difficulty finding enough seats. Service was a little slow and irregular, it took a while to get served and we ended up with several spare starters and desserts. I think that's why they encouraged all the dancing, to distract people from the quality of the service. The food was good though.

I arrived at work in a bad mood this morning, thanks to an overcrowded and late-running train. I think it's time for a bit of a moan about Coventry Station.

The new signs are working and no longer have the notices covering them. Unfortunately the old screens between platforms 2 and 3 have been removed but not replaced. This means that if you are crossing the bridge you can't see what trains are running late or what platform they are arriving at. They used to have screens on the stairs by platforms 2,3 & 4 displaying the next arrival at that platform. On the platforms themselves there were screens showing all the departures. These have all been removed so the only places where you can see this information are the main concourse and the ticket barrier.

The ticket barrier itself is a huge bottleneck at peak times. On most days the only way through is to insert your ticket into the slot and wait for the barrier to open. This is much slower than the set-up at Birmingham New Street where there are ticket inspectors who look at the tickets as you pass. It may be more thorough but it is much slower and leads to huge queues forming.

Outside of the station, the entrance to the long stay car park has been made incredibly pedestrian unfriendly. A new fence has been erected, forcing pedestrians to either walk the long way around or to squeeze through the gap between fence and hedge, over a muddy patch of ground. There is no pavement alongside the car park entrance so the third option is to walk in the roadway and try to dodge the traffic entering and leaving. The layout seems to have been designed with complete disregard for pedestrial welfare.

Ok, moan over. Hopefully my next blog entry will be a bit more positive.

They are having new signs installed at Coventry Station to replace the existing screens and clocks. The old clocks didn't always show the same time as each other and the screens didn't always work.

I arrived at the station this morning and the old monitor screen between the concourse and platform 1 had been removed and there was a new flat screen monitor in it's place. It had a sticker on it claiming 'These signs are under test. Please disregard the information on them'. The signs on the platforms are of the type which show the time and the next train to arrive at that platform. These replace the old 'digital' ones where the segments flick over to make the numbers, only some of the segments had stuck so bits of number kept going missing. They also had the please disregard notices stuck to them. I had to hope that my train wasn't going to be too late and I didn't need to be on a different platform.

I had a rather strange dream last night. We were watching Robin Hood on TV and there were some old (1940s or earlier) cars visible in the background, driving along a road through the woods. Then, still in the dream, we were watching the next episode. I was telling Emma about my dream of the other episode with the old cars. The episode we were watching also featured the same old cars, similar to the ones you get in the gangster-era films. There was also a bit in the episode where Marian was shot by an old duelling-style pistol. She was sleeping in the top room of a tower and there was a narrower stone tower alongside. When she stood up, someone in the other tower shot her.

Another record breaking car is on display at the Transport Museum. The JCB Dieselmax broke the land speed record for a diesel engine back in August when it topped 350mph. It was already on display here in Coventry when easier.com erroneously claimed the first UK viewing will be at the Autosport International show in january.

We took our 4 roborovski hamsters along: Gel and Alysia to show to Alysia's old owners, and Psyche and Bumble to enter into the 'Pets' category at the show. The two boys did well in the competition, Psyche coming 1st and Bumble coming 2nd in their round. There were a lot of pets entered so two sets of awards were given. We can't complain, it doubled our chances of winning something.

I would like to say thank you to the Midland Hamster Club for today. It was their Christmas Show and they put on a buffet and provided tea, coffee and a range of soft drinks.

I was listening to the radio this afternoon and Steve Wright (on Radio 2) and he played the song 'Sunzanne' by Leonard Cohen. I thought the song sounded very familiar but it took a bit of googling with the lyrics to find out why.

The lines (from Suzanne):

And you want to travel with her
And you want to travel blind
And you know that she will trust you

have the same tune and are very similar to:

You want to go out Friday
And you want to go forever.
You know that it sounds childish

from 'Hope' by REM. According to Wikipedia (so it must be true), the band didn't realise how similar the two songs were until after they had recorded theirs. As a result (and presumably to avoid and ugly legal action) they gave Cohen a co-writing credit.

This sort of film shouldn't be allowed. It's just too easy to make a film which makes Americans look like a bunch of intolerant bigots or racists. It's just not sporting at all.

This is the film to watch if you want to see a Jew lay an egg, an ice-cream van with a bear inside, Sacha Baron Cohen risk his life by parodying the American National Anthem at a rodeo. Don't watch if you're easily offended. Do watch if you want to see a hilarious 'documentary' about modern American society.

We only bought our tickets a week ago - we decided to go because we found out that some of Emma's friends from home (Judy and Helen) were going, and we were going to meet them there. We had tickets for the 10:30 Anthony Worral Thompson theatre show so we turned up in plenty of time to wander through the hall and start sampling the food and drink on offer.

We took our seats in the theatre, only to find Helen and Judy sitting behind us, just a few seats away. The cookery demonstration wasn't as destructive as last year, with no kitchen equipment falling apart. Gordon Ramsay did get mentioned a few times. AWT referred to how he doesn't dislike Ramsay and considers him a good chef, but since it isn't reciprocated he referred to him as a bit of a prat.

There were other celebrity chefs doing public demonstrations in the halls. We saw Paul Rankin and James Martin at various times but didn't hang around to watch. There were too many free samples to go after.

It wasn't all free food though. We did buy some things - a few bottles of cider, some 'nairns' oat cakes, some 'seabrooks' crisps, an assortment of Hersheys chocolate/Reeses peanut butter sweets, and some cooking oil. It was a lot to carry around with us by the time we were ready to leave.

The house-hunting stage is over. We've found a house, made an offer, had it accepted, and sorted out the mortgage. Everything is now in the hands of the solicitors.

We received our copy of the survey last week and were apalled by the numerous mistakes and general poor quality of the report. Here is a sample:

The main roof is pitched, timber framed and clad with tiled roof covering. There is no evidence of significant distortion or timber noted

Does that mean no evidence of timer? Or distortion to the timber?

Rainwater fittings are formed in a mixture of PVC.

End of sentence. Mixture of PVC and... what?

It is assumed that there in adequate structural

End of sentence. Should that be is adequate or is inadequate or what? Even then, adequate structural... what?

The waste pipes to the rear are of PVC section and were also defective. These appear to be in good serviceable condition.

The previous sentence made no mention of anything else being defective, so the also doesn't make sense. And how can something be defective and in good condition at the same time?

There were also numerous grammatical errors, using it's instead of its and changes in tense such as using required instead of requires. The whole report read like it was amateurishly botched together by someone using cut and paste to take sentences from another report.

e.surv Ltd of Kettering, you should be ashamed of yourselves sending us such a shoddy piece of work.

I had my hair cut on the way to work this morning, with the intention of having a shower when I got to the office. There was a sign on the shower door saying it was out of order so I walked down 2 flights of stairs to the next shower. No 'out of order' sign so I got in and turned the taps. No water. Turned the taps fully one way then the other. Got a brief squirt of water for a second then nothing. I couldn't be bothered walking down 2 more floors to try another one. Looks like I'll be stuck wearing a hairy shirt for the rest of the day.

We got back to Coventry this afternoon, after our trip up north for Sandy's 60th birthday. It was a good party, with a buffet, cheesecake, and dancing. We took Emma's stereo to provide the music and Sandy provided the CDs with a fairly eclectic selection of music, ranging from Neil Diamond to the Scissor Sisters.

The cake was impressive, based on their back garden:

Close-up of the cake.

Candles being blown out.

This morning's journey to work took about three times as long as it normally does. The journey was ok until the approach to Birmingham International where the train sat motionless for a few minutes before pulling into the station.

After a short wait an announcement was made telling us we had to leave the train and board a different one on another platform. Everyone dutifully trudged over to that platform and started to cram themselves onto the train but it soon filled up and left, with half the people still on the platform. The 'paddle waver' (who seems to be there to indicate to the driver whether anything's trapped in the door) had made a swift departure and had gone into hiding so there was no-one to ask what was happening.

I went up to the concourse to wait, but that proved to be almost as cold and draughty as the platform. There was an announcement that all trains to New Street had been cancelled. A few minutes later we were told to go to another platform and board the train there. We were warned that due to a trackside failure the train would proceed slowly to New Street. Then about a minute later we were told that the train was out of service and to return to the concourse for further news. The train driver did admit that the delays were caused by an overhead power line failure though.

Eventually we managed to get onto a train which was bound for Liverpool. This stopped at most of the local stations on the way to New Street but at least it was moving. The whole sorry comedy of errors meant that I got to work about an hour late.

The German Market is back in Birmingham for the run-up to Christmas, in it's usual place at the Victoria Square/New Street area. Last year I bought some really tasty candied macadamia nuts from one of the stalls so I decided to get some more.

I popped down during my lunch break. The first 'nut stall' I got to, there was nobody manning it but there was a 'Help Wanted' sign. They must have gone to lunch. The second stall was up and running. The bags of macadamias were 50p cheaper at this one but I decided to get the larger bag of assorted nuts instead.

I got home tonight and went upstairs to get changed. I was surprised to see a cat's head poking out from under the duvet. It was that cat from down the road. It was raining when Emma got home and the cat was waiting outside our house. She followed Emma in when the door was opened, raced upstairs and hid in the bedroom.

It's fun dealing with Coventry City Council. I received a Council Tax bill from them last month for my old address (which was shared with 2 other people). The council, displaying their usual flair for efficiency, didn't get around to sending us the bill for the property until 5 months after we had moved out. It took them a further year to track me down and demand payment.

Unfortunately as I seem to be the only one still living in Coventry they are demanding that I either provide the names and addresses of the other two, or pay the full amount and then try to claim the money back from the others. They offered no other help and basically said that I was responsible for sorting it out.

Thankfully I still had Nathan's mobile number so I phoned him and he got in touch with Rachel. Rachel paid her share on-line although (carelessly or otherwise) managed to round it down by nearly £2. Nathan claims the cheque for his share is 'in the post'. The council have offered a slight extension while I wait for the post office to complete their tardy business and perform the herculean task of moving a letter the 5 miles from Bedworth to Coventry. Hopefully that'll be the end of the matter.

Saturday night has become our traditional 'home made pizza' night. Emma makes the base and I make the tomato sauce and then we sort out the toppings.

Pizza Base

• 8oz bread flour (white or wholemeal flour)
• 1 tsp bakers yeast
• pinch of salt
• 2 tps dried herbs
• pinch of salt
• 4 tsp vegetable oil
• ¼ pint warm water

Mix the yeast with a little water and wait until it starts to 'bubble'. Sift the flour into a mixing bowl and add the salt and herbs. Add the yeast, water and oil and mix to form a dough. Knead for around 10 minutes before returning it to the bowl. Leave for about an hour until it has started to rise.

Divide the mixture in two, roll out and cover with the chosen toppings. One alternative is to make a 'stuffed crust' by putting a ring of spreading cheese around the pizza, about 1 inch in from the edge. Fold the edge inwards to cover the cheese.

Tomato Sauce

• 1 tin of tomatoes
• 1 medium onion
• 2 cloves of garlic
• 2 tsp mixed herbs
• pinch of chilli flakes
• pinch of salt

Put everything in a food processor or liquidizer and puree. Pour into a pan and simmer gently for about 1 hour until the mixture has cocentrated down to a thick paste. You may need to stir occasionally to make sure it cooks down evenly and doesn't stick or burn. Leave to cool slightly before spreading on the the base.

Toppings

The range of suitable toppings is almost infinite but we tend to stick to either chicken/turkey based, seafood based or vegetable based. We sometimes do combinations such as a paella style topping, with saffron and paprika in the tomato sauce and a mixure of chicken and seafood on top.

Most of our pizza toppings include capers and anchovies along with the obligatory cheese. For the cheese we either use proper mozarella, sometimes grated cheddar or even feta. The seafood pizzas often include tinned tuna, baby clams, crabmeat and sometimes king prawns. Vegetable toppings include sliced onion and peppers or sometimes to cheat, a scattering of a frozen 'roast veg' mixture which includes peppers, courgettes and aubergines.

When everything is on the base, bake in a pre-heated oven (gas mark 6) for about 15 minutes.

We were walking from Broadgate to the High Street when we heard the bell sounding at 11am. Most people stopped what they were doing and stood silently observing the Armistice. People stood and watched the Godiva clock leap into action, with Lady Godiva riding past on her horse and Peeping Tom leering at her from above.

In the distance we could hear the Cathedral bells and then a bugle call. Shortly afterwards everyone started moving again, almost simultaneously. It was a very odd and sobering experience.

Not quite the War of the Roses but a not-too-serious comparison between Yorkshire and Lancashire . In the interest of fairness I am taking the pre-1970's county boundaries, so I'll include Liverpool and Manchester as 'Old' Lancashire . As little research as possible has been conducted, only simple fact-checking to make sure I haven't mis-remembered anything important.

It's a dead heat so far so I'll get Google to decide the winner.

It was close but it looks like Yorkshire wins on penalties.

Someone is trying a little too hard to sound clever. Everyone in work received an email warning about removing the newspapers from the canteen:

These newspapers are provided by Management to utilise within the canteen area and so this property should kept within the vicinity.

We are going out to a restaurant tonight (Wing Wah), otherwise I would probably go home and utilize our television within the lounge area.

We live near the Butts Park Arena, not far from the middle of Coventry. Every year they hold a big firework display. We get a good view from the front of the house so we watched the display for a few minutes. There is a row of houses blocking part of the view but we saw enough to appreciate that it was a spectacular display.

We drove up to Lymm in Cheshire to a hamster show. We took Theo, Gel, Alysia and Psyche with us, to enter into the 'pets' category. Psyche's original owners were there as stewards, and were happy to see him again.

Theo did well in the judging. He was the only one of our hamsters to do anything, coming 2nd out of about 8 animals. None of our others came anywhere.

We entered Theo and Alysia into the hamster races. Each heat consisted of 2 hamsters racing through sets of tubes with the winner being the first to emerge at the other end. Theo was in the first race and ran to the halfway point before turning around and running back to the start again. The hamster he was 'racing' against never left the first length of tube so Theo was through to the next round.

Alysia won her first race - it seems a bit unfair pitting a speedy roborovski hamster against a slower syrian but Alysia kept running backwards and forwards whereas the syrian plodded on towards the finish. It was almost like the hare and the tortoise but speed won in the end.

Unfortunately this meant that Theo and Alysia were against each other in the second round. Alysia repeated her trick of running half way then coming back again while Theo waddled to the end almost without stopping. He continued in this fashion through the remainder of the races, eventually winning the final and being awarded a '1st Place' rosette.

We are off to a hamster show on sunday so we decided to have our Firework Party a couple of days early, on friday instead. Last year we left the firework buying til last minute and I think we had to go to about 4 supermarkets before we found one which still had some in stock.

We had invited some of Emma's friends from Uni and when we opened the door to let one in, a cat ran in. It was the one from down the road which is often lurking outside in the mornings and tries to slow me down on the way to work. There were other people in the area letting off fireworks and she obviously didn't want to be outside with all the noise.

She ran upstairs and hid under the bed but soon came downstairs and would wander back and forth between the front room and the kitchen. Later arrivals thought she was our cat. She looked hungry so we gave her some of the cat biscuits we get for the hamsters.

We had bought two boxes of fireworks so we let off one box first before retreating back into the house for a drink of hot spiced cider. This was inspired by the hot cider sold at various festivals, and is made along similar lines to a mulled wine, with coriander, nutmeg, cinnamon and ginger simmered to give extra flavour. Later on after more guests arrived we let off the second box.

First time around, the catherine wheels didn't stay attached to the fence and one fell onto the path, setting fire to some dried leaves. Second time, we hammered them into the fence with a bit more force. They didn't spin round very well and we ended up with melted lump of plastic on the end of the nail.

At the end of the night, the cat wouldn't leave and she ended up sleeping at the end of our bed. We were woken up in the early hours of the morning by her walking about on the bed trying to attract our attention. I got up and followed her downstairs - she was telling us that she wanted to go outside. At least we know she is well housetrained. We haven't found any 'presents' left behind any of the furniture. At least not yet.

This is the perfect time of the year to be cooking with pumpkins - most of the unsold ones left over from Halloween should be available cheap in the shops.

• Pumpkin Mash
  Very simple to make - 2 medium potatoes, peeled and diced. A quarter of a small pumpkin, peel, remove the seeds and dice the flesh. Boil the potato and pumpkin in salted water until soft, then mash together.
• Roasted Pumpkin Seeds
  Scoop the seeds out of the pumpkin, wash and dry them. Toss them in oil with salt, paprika and a little chilli. Spread onto a tray and bake in the oven (gas mark 6 for around half an hour). Leave to cool then eat.
• Roasted Pumpkin
  Diced pumpkin can be added to roast vegetables to add variety of texture and flavour.
• Soup
  Add pumpkin to a vegetable soup.

Torchwood is the Doctor Who spin-off starring Captain Jack, who we first met in the Dr Who episode set in WW2 where Billie Piper was dangling from a Barrage Balloon.

The idea behind the series is similar to the Men in Black films, tracking down aliens and alien artifacts, but without much of the silliness of the films. Although it's not a comedy it also doesn't take itself too seriously.

It seems a strange decision to have the programme set in Cardiff but then again it makes a nice change from having everything set in London (it was explained in the first episode that they had been several 'Torchwood' groups around the country). More 'grown up' than Dr Who (read: has sex in it) which accounts for it being on later.

The clocks went back an hour across most of Britain last night as we leave British Summer Time and return to Greenwich Mean Time. I say most of Britain because the clocks at Coventry railway station were still on BST this morning. Thankfully the timetables and the arrival & departure boards were showing the right times but it was a bit confusing at first.

Update 03/11/06:
This has since been reported on the IC Coventry news site. A quote from their article:

As a result they are all running one hour earlier than they should be except for the clock on platform four, which has been 18 minutes slow for the past month. Now with the switch back to GMT, it is only 42 minutes fast.

Last weekend we were in the pet shop buying hamster bedding, and on the way out were approached by someone from the local Wildlife Trust trying to attract new members. We talked for a few minutes and decided to join.
We went along to the nature reserve today to collect our copy of the handbook and to have a walk. It was a nice sunny day and we managed to see some wildlife so the place lived up to it's name. There are a lot of ponds with a wide variety of water birds but there are also woodland and grassland areas so there were squirrels and rabbits on view as well.

We were walking down one path and heard a loud 'thrum thrum' sound. We couldn't work out what it was til we saw a swan flying from behind the embankment alongside us, passing overhead towards a pond. It was only the second time I've heard a swan in flight and I'd forgotten how loud they are.

The bear of very little brain seems to have gained an intellect in China, although he does seem to need biscuits in order to achieve it. I found these in one of the Chinese supermarkets in Birmingham. The biscuits are number shaped and taste quite sweet, only marred by the bitter taste left by the Disney logo on the front of the pack.

Winnie the Pooh 'Intellect Biscuits'.

Update (28/10/06): We have eaten most of the pack and although the numbers go from 0 to 9, there don't seem to be any 1's.

We have had Bumble for a week now. The original plan was to introduce him to Psyche and see if the two would live together but they kept pushing each other around. He got on much better with Gel and Alysia and so far hasn't shown any sign of wanting to mate with them so we are going to see if we made the right decision there.

We started by having the three of them out together while we could keep an eye on them. On thursday night we had them together in the large cage but kept the cage in our room so we could listen out for any fighting. There was a lot of squeaking and we kept getting up and shining a torch into the cage to see what was going on. Emma mentioned this to Bumble's orignal owner and she said that he was just a squeaker. He would squeak if other hamsters were too close to him whether they were pushing him about or not.

Click on the thumbnail to view the image

You've got to hand it to M&S, they know how to do food, especially their 'Oakham' range of chicken. We had the chicken breast with roast veg the other night and marvelled at how juicy and tasty the meat was. This shouldn't come as a surprise to us because we've said it before on the few occasions we buy it. It really is much better than the normal supermarket chicken. Tesco Organic chicken comes very close.

Wenever we've cooked a roast chicken we tend to save the scraps of meat and use it for sandwiches. Recently we've started making a sandwich spread by pulverizing the meat in a food processor and then adding mayonnaise. Normal roast chicken breaks down to small 'fibres' but the M&S chicken is so juicy it comes out almost like ready made sandwich spread, and very little mayo is needed to make it hold together.

It makes very tasty sandwiches. The only other ingredient required is a small sprinkling of salt.

We've had a couple of foggy days this week, with today being the worst. From the top floor in work you couldn't see much of the city.

Looking towards Broad Street in Birmingham

For Ben's 30th birthday, he decided we should all go out in Nottingham. The plan was to meet up on saturday at an ex-student-rental house owned by a friends parents and then head into town.

Emma brought her laptop pc for watching videos or listening to music but it turned out that the neighbours had an unsecured wireless network so we had internet as well. This was handy on a couple of occasions, the first of which was when Jack arrived. The taxi dropped her off in the wrong place so we got onto a couple of mapping websites and managed to direct her to the house.

The second time we needed the internet was to find the Midori to make the squashed frog cocktails. After phoning around most of the off-licences in the city we found one with some in stock. I drove off to collect it, assisted by one of Ben's friends with a GPS navigation thingy.

We took the tram into town and then walked to TGI Fridays to sample the cocktails. Then to the Pit and Pendulum for some overloud shite music and more cocktails.

The main part of the evening was supposed to be the meal at the Red Hot Buffet Shack but the only booking we could get was half past 9. When we got there the place was very busy and we were waiting ages before our table was ready. I think it was worth the wait though. All the food I tried was good. The range was impressive, covering Indian, Chinese, Thai and Italian. You could even order your own pizza with a selection of toppings.

After leaving the restaurant we took the tram back to the house for more silliness and drinking games and stealing neighbours internet connection.

A few of us wanted to go out for sunday brunch but we had to wait for a hamster first. Emma agreed to take a roborovski hamster off someone who decided she wasn't comfortable handling them. She got lost on her way to the house (cue more use of mapping websites). The hamster arrived safely though (photos to follow) and we eventually left to look for somewhere to eat

It turned out that there was no-where within walking distance was serving food. All the pubs were open for drinking only and directions to places which might be doing food involved confusing paths through side roads. We gave up and went back to the house.

We gave everyone a lift into town then drove home, via the KFC at Leicester Forest services on the M1.

A photographer has followed the course of the River Sherbourne through the culvert under the city. A description of the journey and photographs are on his website.

This was the first time we had eaten here since the place recently reopened after being refurbished. The previous time was actually a take-away so we had an idea of the food on offer. The restaurant is much smaller than Wing Wah and has a smaller choice of food but the quality is every bit as good. Prices are slightly lower with evening dining costing around £12-13.

The selection of starters was good. Chicken and sweetcorn soup went down well and came with optional croutons. Crispy seaweed was sweeter than at Wing Wah but still acceptable. There were the obligatory crispy duck pancakes and some tasty steamed dim-sum type dumplings.

The teppanyaki was disappointing. Instead of selecting a plate of meat, vegetables and/or noodles and taking them to be cooked, you choose a piece of chicken, steak or salmon and have that cooked, and then add accompaniments from the main courses on offer. The Dessert selection was reasonable. We were impressed by the small pots of jelly, trifle or cheesecake. We missed out on the chocolate fountain; it was running on empty when we were there and only got re-filled as we were leaving.

We were going to go to Turmeric Gold tonight because it was our 3rd Anniversary dinner and we thought we should go somewhere special. While we were on our way out Emma decided she was in the mood for a chinese buffet. We hadn't booked so it was easy for us to change our minds at the last minute.

About a month ago I changed my phone to the Nokia 6280. It's got a bigger screen than my old phone. Last night I was on the train home and the bloke sitting next to me was watching a tv programme on a video ipod. The screen was a similar size to my phone's so I wondered if I could use it to watch things on.

The software CD which came with the phone had the latest version of the Nokia PC Suite. The media viewer part of the suite allows you to view mpg or avi files and save them in a format suitable for the phone. I tried it and it seems to work ok. The playback on the phone didn't let me fast forward or rewind within a video file but the video quality on screen was good. If I restrict myself to 20-25 minute shows or split larger programmes into shorter segments then I should be able to watch videos on my way to and from work.

I noticed the Flower Dalek on its side on friday morning but I didn't take a photo at the time. It was still there this morning but the council had put a barrier around it.

A few years ago the latest excuse for late running trains was the wrong kind of leaves on the line. Apparently a leaf weighing a few grams could stop a hundred ton train because it would cover the sensors making the trains appear invisible to the control room.

This year they've excelled themselves by chosing a smaller item to blame. Pollen is now stopping trains on the Cambrian line between Birmingham and Aberystwyth by clogging up the radiators of the diesel engines.

Read more about this on Google News.

... or 'Why are Estate Agents so bloody awkward'

We have started looking for somewhere else to live. We really don't want to be renting forever because it's never your house so you're more or less stuck with the way things are. We can't install central heating or move the bathroom to upstairs or do any of the other things we want to do (such as sort out the kitchen wall properly).

We spent a while talking to mortgage advisors this morning so we need to wait to find out how much we can borrow. We know that almost certainly we'll need to move away from Earlsdon because it's a fairly expensive area. Small two-bedroomed terraced houses like ours are around £20,000 more expensive here than in other parts of the city.

On a number of occasions we have seen houses advertised on Estate Agents websites or in their windows and asked about them. In the majority of occasions they have already been sold. Why the hell can't they mark them as such or remove the adverts. It would take a matter of seconds to stick a 'sold' sticker on the advert or to take them off the website but they just can't be bothered. I wouldn't be surprised if they did it deliberately to get people interested. It really is so feckin' annoying and wasted so much of our time.

After making at least 5 or 6 enquiries we've only managed to view one property. It was much bigger than our current place but was at right at our upper limit. It'll be sold before we're in a position to make an offer though so we're effectively back at square one again.

That Mitchell and Webb Look continues on BBC2. On the surface it's just another sketch show but it features the occasional touch of genius especially in the shape of Numberwang. Worth watching for that alone but there are usually a few other good laughs in each show.

The 50p Fair is back in town, perfect the those who like to be scared and bruised in roughly equal proportions but are on a strict budget. The venue as usual is Hearsall Common.

We were going to go when it opened on thursday night but we were busy filling ourselves with Chinese food at Wing Wah, so we went tonight. We went on the Waltzers while we waited for Emma's friends to arrive. At one point we were spinning so quickly, all I could see was horizontal strips of light. It was good to get back onto steady non-spinning ground afterwards.

My trouble with travelling fairs is that I always seem to acquire mystery bruises. The Rhythm Rider was back (last seen at the Final Fling). This was the ride where there is a horizontal row of seats and it gets lifted up into the air in a circular motion, so you get lifted out of the seats and thrown left and right. I was more padded this time because I was wearing a jumper and felt ok when we got off.

The ride which caused the most pain was called the Sizzler and had a set of cars which spun around but stayed horizontal. I thought this one looked ok but as the central pillar spun the spinning cars moved in and out so Emma kept sliding away and then towards me. As it spun faster and faster, Emma kept sliding into me with more and more force. My leg was pinned against the lap bar and I was in pain for most of the ride.

My thigh was still feeling bruised this morning but there was no visible mark. For some reason my arm, which doesn't feel as bad as my leg, has a massive bruise on it. I won't be going back to the fair, at least not until later in the week when the bruising has gone.

Today be Talk like a Pirate day. To avoid looking like the scurvy-filled landlubber you obviously are, ye must watch this video.

Sunday morning. Bored. Emma, not wanting to waste the weekend asked 'where are we going to go today?'. So we went to the zoo. It was a slow drive along the A444 and through Nuneaton although we did pass the curious dandelion fountain in the town. As we got closer to Twycross we passed near the curiously named villages of Sheepy Parva and Sheepy Magna, and a Sheepy Road which lead to them.

Twycross is quite a big zoo. I think we managed to see nearly everything but there are bound to be a few animals we accidently overlooked. We managed to catch the feeding of the elephants and penguins - these were popular events and attracted a big audience.

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Spon Street in Coventry contains a lot of the medieval building in the city, some of which were moved there in the 1970s. During daylight hours the street is usually full of parked cars. These photos were taken early on a sunday morning to try to avoid too many vehicles.

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There was a lot of rain on wednesday night and when we came downstairs thursday morning we noticed that water had started coming in through the kitchen wall again. The damp patch was working itself down towards the plug socket where the fridge and washing machine are plugged in.

On thursday evening we were in the kitchen preparing food when we heard a couple of loud 'crack' sounds. Neither of us could tell where it came from but we started to smell burning. I realised that the crack sound could have been an electric spark. We came to the conclusion that the water had reached the socket.

All of the sockets in the house are on one fuse, labelled 'Ring Main' with the exception of the one in the downstairs store cupboard, which was labelled 'Immersion Heater'. There had never been a heater there while we've lived in the house but the socket was still there. It only ever got used when I had to mow the lawn because it was next to the back door and handy to plug in lawn mowers or strimmers.

We plugged the fridge and freezer into an extension cable and plugged that into the immersion heater socket. We decided it was safer to have all the sockets turned off overnight in case more water got in.

I had phoned the letting agents on thursday morning to let them know about the wall, so when the maintenance contractor came out on friday morning to examine it we told him about the water getting into the socket and that we wanted it moving or otherwise making safe. Later in the morning an electrician came round to remove the socket. The results can be seen above.

Sunday is supposed to be the day of rest. My arse! I have the day at home on my own because Emma is in work but thanks to the lack of buses I still have to get up early to give her a lift to work.

At least I get chance to go out and do some photography before the town gets busy. I have several weeks of pinhole photographs which I need to add to the website. Hopefully I'll manage to do that later today, after doing all the washing up, ironing my work shirts, mowing the lawn and trimming the bushes in the front yard.

Coventry Cathedral, build in the 1960s, stands next to the ruins of the 14th Century St Michael's Cathedral. The old cathedral was heavily damaged by German bombing in 1940 and now only the shell remains.

The photographs below compare B&W pinhole photos with colour photos taken from the same position.  

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This weekend celebrates Heritage Open Days where many of Coventry's historic sites are open for free, including many sites which aren't usually open to the public. We heard about this in one of the local papers and it mentioned the Lunt Roman Fort, which had been on our 'to-do' list, so that's where we went first.

The fort is near the airport, near the village of Baginton, and is quite small. The outlines of buildings are still visible but have been covered in concrete so no roman brickwork is visible anymore. A replica granary building has been erected and houses displays and models showing what the fort would have looked like.

This afternoon we headed into town to the tour of the old Priory Undercroft. This is part of the ruins of the original priory building from the 12th Century and isn't normally open to the public. The guided tour was very interesting.

Underneath the ruins of the old cathedral, one of the crypt chapels was open. This was used for services during the war, after the cathedral had been bombed. It was very small so they can't have fitted many people inside. We also went into the new cathedral to take a look around. It was very impressive and larger than we were expecting.

On the way home we popped into another old building - the Old Windmill pub on Spon Street. They were holding a Cider Festival so we had a couple of drinks as we were passing.

Pinhole photograph of the Eleanor Cross near Northampton.

The same view, taken with a normal camera.

We decided to try and get Gel and Alysia to live together again. Gel looked very unhappy on her own and we thought it might work better now. There was no fighting this time around. Last time there was a lot of fighting but thankfully not much biting. If the fighting wasn't potentially serious, it might be comical, looking like a furry version of cartoon fighting.

We kept a close watch on them, having the cage in our room overnight so we could listen out for any fighting. Things have been ok for 2 nights now, and the two of them look happy together.

We used to refer to Gel as a little Hamster Nugget because she was chubbier than Ira and Zac. Alysia is even more 'nuggety' than Gel.

Zac died this morning. We think he may have had a stroke in the night. When we found him in the morning he was very slow and unsteady and had lost his co-ordination. He would hobble around unsteadily, and when he picked up food he couldn't get it to his mouth.

We don't know how old he was because when we obtained him last year he was already fully grown. He may have been of indeterminate gender and had a bit of a hunch back but he was lovely and friendly. When we first got him he was very timid and would run away from us if we looked into the cage. After a few months he became much more calm and would readily walk onto our hands if we reached into the cage.

We had an email sent round the office in work, describing the disk structure and file archiving procedure. It included instructions for archiving files and also told us who was responsible for 'restoring files from anchovies'. I hope that was a typing error and they haven't invented some fish based storage system.

We collected a new hamster yesterday, from a couple in Manchester who were being forced to get rid of their hamsters. Their landlord described them as 'vermin' and insisted they moved them out or risk eviction.

We selected a male Roborovski called Psyche, and he's a bit of a monster. 3 or 4 times the size of a standard robo, closer in size to the Winter Whites. He's really cute and friendly though.

Located a couple of miles from the city centre, this is a small zoo next to Cannon Hill Park. They had a good range of animals, including the obligatory Lemurs, a cute selection of rodents (including the Striped Mice pictured below), and their latest star exhibits - some Red Pandas (which kept themselves hidden while we were there).

We were leaving Sainsburys yesterday when someone stopped me and started talking about Psoriasis. It wasn't a completely random event because I have suffered from it on my scalp for a couple of years and it's visible at the top of my forehead. He had suffered from it for several years and wanted to pass on some advice. He told me to avoid anything with red berries in it, and that included red wine. He also suggested the original Head & Shoulders 'all-in-one' shampoo and conditioner rather than the coal tar shampoos which are usually recommended for the condition.

We chatted for a few minutes, then thanked him and left the shop. It shouldn't be too difficult to follow his advice. It certainly won't cost much when the only thing we need to buy is a standard off the shelf shampoo. Some of his other suggestions, such as avoid processed food and additives, we do anyway.

We were back in the supermarket tonight. We realised that the definition of red berries was a bit ambiguous. It might mean:

• Red Grapes (and by extension, raisins)
• Strawberries and raspberries
• darker berries such as blackcurrants
• possibly even tomatoes

We had to buy some more squash because the ever-so-tasty Vimto and the blackcurrant drink in the house might be unsuitable. We had to buy apricot jam because the strawberry jam in the fridge might count. I had to put the malt loaf back on the shelf because of the raisins. I won't be able to drink the purple grape juice in the fridge.

I'll give it a few months and see if it improves.

When I was publicity officer for one of the university societies in Aberystwyth, everything had to be bilingual and we had to get all emails and publicity materials translated into welsh. I was warned not to use any machine translators on the Internet. This is a good reason why you shouldn't:

Cyclists have been baffled by a new road sign which warns: "Your bladder disease has returned."
The sign - in Welsh - was meant to tell them to dismount at roadworks. But council chiefs made an error using an online translator and confused the words 'cyclists' and 'cystitis'. Amended signs are now being put up as soon as possible in Penarth, near Cardiff.
Welsh speaking cyclist Matt Lloyd, 27, said: "I thought someone was having a laugh. I've never even had a bladder disease."

I read this in the Metro newspaper on the train this morning but the story was also covered on the BBC News website, where they have a picture of the sign as well.

A couple of weeks ago I bought a packet of 'Almond Snickers' from the 99p shop in Coventry. I ate one today for my afternoon break and had a quick look at the pack. It claimed May contain peanuts and Tree Nuts. I'd not seen that particular warning before - the snickers were made in Australia so it might be a pecular antipodean warning. But as they were almond flavour surely it should read May contain peanuts but should definitely contain at least some Tree Nuts.

The Almond Snickers were really tasty but I've still not forgiven Mars/Masterfoods for changing the name from 'Marathon' here in the UK.

I did a quick search on Marathon Snickers to try to find out when the name changed. Instead I discovered that Marathon is a type of energy bar sold in the USA under the Snickers brand! The cheek of it. They change the name then steal it from us.

Not made out of hamsters. Not even made for hamsters. These are actually 'Trill Toppers', made out of assorted seeds with a flavoured centre. There was nothing in the ingredients which would make them unsuitable for hamsters so we thought they would make a nice treat for them.

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There seem to be two types of blackberry growing around here. The first to ripen has fewer clusters of larger berries. The other is the more familiar type with more plentiful fruit, with tighter clusters of berries.

The blackberries within the city also seem to be ripening earlier than the ones out in the countryside. The latter type are already ripe in the nearby park but are still mostly green further afield.

On the left, the more common later ripening fruit with smaller berries. On the right, the less common version with larger berries.

If it wasn't for Orange Wednesday I don't think we'd ever go to the cinema. At £6 each to watch a film, I think we'd wait for the DVD to come out either to buy or rent. Watching a film for half price is always good and waiting until it's been out for a while, so the cinama is half empty and you get a choice of seats is fine as well.

I didn't expect the film to be so long, at 2½ hours. It didn't feel so long and never got boring. Johnny Depp's performance as Captain Jack seemed more camp than I remember from the first film. I'm sure there was a lot more mincing this time around. A good film, well worth watching.

We seem to have been befriended by a local cat. This actually started about a month after we moved into the house but today she decided she really wanted to get into the house and not leave.

She was waiting outside the house when I was leaving for work and as soon as I opened the door, she ran in. I followed her upstairs and carried her out. I went back into the house to get my bag and keys but as soon as I opened the door again she was back in.

For some reason the cat seems to really like us. If she sees us from the other end of the street she'll rush up to us. She often sits on the bins outside our house, trying to attract our attention. Ocasionally when I'm walking to work she will lie down on the pavement in front of me and roll around, as if she's trying to stop me going any further.

We have finally decided on a name for our new hamster: Alysia Summer Roborovsky. Alysia from the greek name meaning posessive. Summer was the original owners name for her, which we used until we could decide on a new name. Roborovski is the breed of hamster. !!-- more -->

We are trying to introduce her to Zac and Gel by taking them out to play together and also by having them in a 'split cage'. This has Zac and Gel in one side and Alysia in the other, with a wire mesh between them. This allows them to get used to each other's smell, which should hopefully reduce the chance of fighting when they are put together.

We were in the area visiting a couple of hamster-owning friends of ours and they suggested we go out to a chinese restaurant. They are big fans of Wing Wah whenever they are in Coventry so they wanted to take us to their local equivalent.

The food was very good - an all you can eat buffet with a wide selection available. Plenty of choice of meat, fish, vegetables, rice and noodles. I managed to try one of almost everything and it was all good. They also had a tepanyaki area where you could choose the food and have it cooked for you. Unlike Wing Wah, the chef doesn't put on a performance but just cooks the food plain and simple. It was well cooked though next time I'll forgo the chilli sauce - it was a bit too hot and overpowered the rest of the flavours.

At first he tried to pouch the peanut but it got stuck and he couldn't get it out again. Emma had to help him by gently massaging his cheek pouches until it started to come out. He then decided to eat it properly.

Ira died yesterday. He was around 20 months old, possibly a couple of months older but we don't know how old he was when we bought him. He's buried in the back garden next to his brother Uri, who died last year.

We took him to the vets last wednesday because Emma found him with his leg trapped in the cage and thought it might be broken. He appeared to be in pain and had difficulty walking. The vet gave him a tiny shot of painkiller and he perked up and was soon walking about, so it must only have been injured.
We removed the wheels from the cage and blocked off the upstairs of the 'hamster castle' to minimise any chances of him hurting himself. We waited until he seemed ok for a couple of days before putting the wheels back in. He must have built up huge reserves of energy because he was running around much more than normal.

We thought he had made a full recovery but the ordeal may have put too much stress on him.

Although Uri and Ira were both girls, it is quite difficult to sex roborovski hamsters, especially if you only have a picture or diagram for comparison. Although we have known for quite a while that they were actually female we had got into the habit of calling them 'he'.

. . . about the hot weather. After a heatwave which lasted about a month with almost completely clear skies and temperatures regularly into the 30°s, the weather broke over the weekend and we've been having grey cloudy days with either drizzle or downpours.

And if that wasn't enough, the rain has started to come in through the kitchen wall again.

Tim Burton has to be one of the more original filmmakers working today. I can't think of anyone else who has produced such a varied output of both live action and animated films. The Corpse Bride is a very good film, although I was surprised to see John Prescott have a role as the prospective Father-in-Law.

John Prescott	Finis Everglot

We have acquired yet another hamster - a roborovski which we collected from Stoke earlier today. This now means we have seven dwarf hamsters. Her previous owners didn't have the room because she wouldn't live happily with their other hamsters. We haven't decided on a name yet.

She is about 3 months old, not fully tame yet but very fast. She hasn't yet learned that when she runs in the wheel she needs to stop slowly otherwise she'll spin round 360° or more.

I can't remember whether I've said this before but one of the best things about being in Coventry over the summer is the number of festivals and events which take place. This weekend it was the Caribbean Festival. We went along for an hour or so, ate some food and watched a steel band. We didn't try the jerked chicken but we did share a spicy chicken dumpling (which was like a long doughnut filled with lumps of chicken) and a salt-fish fritter.

This morning we drove over to the Malt Kiln Farm for the pick your own fruit. It was a bit soggy underfoot because of the rain (after weeks of unrelenting hot weather we finally had rain yesterday). The paths between the bushes were overgrown with weeds so I imagine the fruit is probably organic and pestcide or herbicide free.

The raspberries were very ripe - they came off the plant with no effort at all. We also got some Tayberries (which are a cross between a raspberry and a blackberry). They look like a longer darker raspberry and taste similar to a blackberry.

We took our hamsters to the Quinborne Hamster Show, in Birmingham (except for poor old Reggie who has a spot of exzema on one leg).

Archie did well again, coming first in the Dwarf Hamsters category (for Novice members). Theo came 2nd. The three roborovski were entered into the Pets category. Gel came 3nd, with Zac and Ira getting 'Reserve' and 'Very Highly Commended' respectively.

We bought a strip of raffle tickets while we were there and won a bottle of lambrusco and a toy dinosaur.  

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We watched a couple more of the £1 ex-rental films:

Bubba Ho-Tep This is what independent films should all be like. Elvis is alive and well and in a nursing home in Texas. Enter an Egyptian mummy intent on eating peoples souls. Elvis (with his buddy JFK) have to save the day. Odd, clever and quirky, this is one of the best films I've seen in ages. Grand Theft Parsons I've been a fan of Gram Parson's music for a number of years so I obviously wanted to watch this film. It presents a version of the events following his death with the stealing of his coffin and eventual burning in the desert. Disappointingly not many of his songs feature in the film. Interesting, humorous, worth watching.

I found this website a while ago when I was trying to find out who recorded the original version of Tainted Love (it was Gloria Jones by the way).

The Covers Project

The website allows you to search for singers or bands and it lists songs of theirs which have been covered by other artists, and also songs which they have covered themselves.

Most of the photos here show events in the Jaguar Arena on the saturday and sunday. The falconry pictures are stills taken from video.  

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Coventry's annual free festival was held this weekend. Although it started last night, the main procession was today. The first lot of photos here are from when the procession arrived at the War Memorial Park. Unfortunately my camera batteries kept dying so I only managed to get photos from the start and the end - I missed the ones in the middle.

The second set of photos are from the evening and the Earth Works show. This was more or less the story of Gaia and how humans are mis-treating the planet. It used the floats and costumes from the procession with the added bonus of fireworks at the end.  

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Emma graduated from Warwick Uni with a BSc in Biochemistry. Congratulations.  

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The main reason for going to Blackpool was to go to the Pleasure Beach. The wristbands which allow access to all the rides normally cost £29, which is quite pricey, but we got ours by cashing in some of our 'Tesco Clubcard points', so it was effectively free. If you ignore the several hundred pounds we had to spend at Tesco first, but most of that would be essential food shopping. The full wristbands also allow entry into one of the shows, so it being a hot day we thought the ice show (Hot Ice) would be good. It should be cool in there!

The Pleasure beach didn't open til 11am so we had a spare hour between leaving the B&B and going in. One of the places on the way was a rock shop where they actually made the rock in the back. They were demonstrating how they make the 'Blackpool' letters using long pieces of black and white sugar mixture.

We went on most of the rides while we were there. Thankfully it was a very warm day so when we got soaked on 'Valhalla' (an indoor log flume type ride) we dried out fairly quickly. Although it was reasonably busy, the queues were fairly short for most of the rides.

At the end of the Trauma Towers 'tour' there is the ride itself where everyone sits on a circular bench around the dining table which featured in the story. There was one cocky kid who kept sarcastically saying 'oh, I'm so scared' when the bench started spinning. He soon shut up when it started clunking and shaking.

Red Squirrel, photographed at the Formby Nature Reserve. We didn't manage to get close to the squirrels because it was vey busy and there were a lot of coach parties of noisy kids which probably scared them away. This was the only clear photo I managed during the hour or so that we were there.

While we were up north visiting out parents, we decided to go up to Formby to see the red squirrels, then carry on to Blackpool. When we got to Blackpool, we checked into our B&B then had a walk up and down the sea front, popping into some of the arcades and a few of the pubs en-route.

There has been a lot of talk recently about Blackpool becoming the 'Vegas of the North' with themed casinos. Looking at this place, it is already half way there.

We stopped at a few places for drinks while we were walking along the sea front. We had some cocktails at a place called The Counting House. I can't remember what this one was called but it looks quite spectacular.

Last night we bought a pile of ex-rental videos from Blockbuster for £1 each. We've watched 2 of them so far:

Death to Smoochie A strange film. Not the hilarious zany comedy the box claimed (thank God) but a very strange and quirky film with a good performance from Robin Williams. Some funny moments - worth watching for the scene in the tractor warehouse alone. Starship Troopers 2 Ok, we only bought it because it was cheap and neither of us had seen it before. It was a low budget heap of rubbish and possibly one of the worst ever sequels to a good film (another strong contender is 'Blues Brothers 2000'). The ending was very weak. The film looked like it was made for TV rather than for the cinema.

A silly little game: try to balance the mouse pointer and stop it from falling over:

www.weebles-stuff.com

I walked into the hamster room tonight to find a confused looking Ira running about in zig-zags in the middle of the room. This is the second time this week (actually I think only the 2nd time ever) he has managed to get out of the cage. There was a small gap where the pink ball/wheel attached to the cage and he had managed to squeeze through!

We drove to McDonalds for a milk shake. We specifically asked for a large Vanilla. When we got home it turned out to be something else altogether. Probably supposed to be chocolate but it was pale coloured, vaguely chocolatey but really not very nice at all.

We had to drive all the way back to get it replaced. The Canley branch does seem to be one of the worst McD's in Britain. It's not the first time we've had problems there.

On this weeks F Word, Gordon Ramsay had Cliff Richard as celebrity guest in the restaurant. Halfway through the show they did a blind tasting of various wines. The final two were 'Celebrity' wines - one sold by Bob Dylan and one from Cliff's own portuguese vinyard. He didn't like either of the wines, saying they tasted a bit harsh and he'd only consider buying them if they were £2.50 in the supermarket. Since Cliff's wine sells for £8 a bottle and Bob's for even more, it doesn't sound like they are good value for money.

The show also featured a promising tuna recipe:
Tuna loin, dipped in soy sauce and then spread with wasabi, coated in sesame seeds then pan fried. The ones they did on the programme looked a bit too raw in the middle so I'd probably use tuna steak (cheaper than loin) and roast it in the oven so it cooked a bit more thoroughly without burning the seeds.

We arrived nice and early so we could get our moneys worth and go on as many rides as possible. In fact so early the rides hadn't started yet so we had a look around the zoo, which was quite impressive in scope. We had a look at the penguins, lemurs, wildcats, meerkats and reptiles.

What surprised me about Drayton Manor was how quiet it was - it's much more compact than Alton Towers but still manages to cram a large number of rides on the site. Even so, the queues were much shorter than I'm used to at such places.

We started off on the Buffalo Coaster which is advertised as one of the children's rides but it's fairly good for a non-looping coaster. We did see a very frightened baby rabbit run away from the tracks as we thundered overhead!

We managed to go on all the major rides at least once. Towards the end of the afternoon the queues on the 'basic' rides (such as the Buffalo Coaster or the Cable Cars) were getting quite long but the queue on G-Force was non-existant so we went on that a second time.

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There were Pot Noodle Miners in Birmingham city centre this lunchtime. They were giving away samples and vouchers. I waited around for a free sample (chicken and mushroom flavour) and I must admit that it was tastier than I remember pot noodle being.

Somehow, I managed to oversleep this morning, the first time in I don't know how many years. I think I set the alarm last night.I don't know whether I pressed 'cancel' instead of 'snooze' this morning. All I can be sure of is that when I looked at the clock this morning, it was half an hour after I should have got up. I still managed to get to work by 9am thanks to an Edinburgh bound train, which seemed to have more than it's fair share of ladies wearing hats - as if they were going to the races.

It's a pity I don't still live in Aberystwyth. Someone was apparently giving away [Free money in the town centre. A driver threw bundles of £20 notes from a car, shouting "Who wants free money?", before driving away.

The travelling fair comes to Hearsall Common most bank holiday weekends and this weekend was no exception. Unlike the amazing 50p fair from about a year ago, the rides were a bit more expensive at around £2 each. We only went on a couple of rides: the dodgems and the rapids. Neither of us had seen a rapids ride on a travelling fair before. Thankfully we didn't get as wet as we did at Thorpe Park but I did get splashed on the back of my trousers so I was wet on the walk home.

I didn't realise you needed to be over 16 to buy either prawns or the Mail on Sunday. Sainsbury's seems to think so.

Update: 11/06/06
It's definitely the Mail on Sunday. We bought it again today and it had the same confirmation. We bought alcohol and it had the 'over 18' confirmation above that as well.

I've noticed a huge increase in spam recently both to my email and comment spam. Thankfully the spam protection on the comments field has managed to stop most of it from appearing on this site. Looking at the server logs it appears that over 200 spam comments have been prevented in the last few weeks.

Thankfully I don't get anywhere near that much spam email, but what does make it through is often quite surreal. Recent messages have had the following subject lines:

• runaway cottage cheese
• madreporic tubercle
• Your family, winking cartilage

Apricot Wine
It was drunk at room temperature rather than chilled but it was good. Quite light flavoured but you could make out the apricot taste. If I tried it again I might try more apricot or leave the dried apricots to soak for longer.

Jam Wine
Quite light in flavour. Served chilled it worked well as a mixer. Tried it with white rum (ok), gin (worked well), Tropical Sourz (worked well) and Grenadine (just seemed to make it taste sweeter).

Berry Wine
This is the strongest flavoured of our wines so far, and with (in my opinion) the right balance of sweetness and depth of flavour. Also works well in a turbo purple

This test did the rounds at Uni but it looks like it's been updated since, so I thought I'd try it again to see if my score had changed. Not much. It was around 27%. This time I got 26.0% so it has actually dropped slightly. That might be because I'm not running Linux on my old laptop any more.

Find the test at: www.innergeek.us/geek-test.html.

Presidents of the USA from 1789 to present.

British Prime Ministers, 1721-2006

... but not when they're growing out of the kitchen wall.

We noticed it when we got back to the house on sunday. All the rain over the weekend had led to water seeping through a crack in the kitchen wall. There was a piece of mushroom/fungus growing out of one area. Yesterday I phoned the letting agents to report it. This morning someone came round to take a look. Hopefully it won't take too long before someone comes back to fix it.

I was driving along Earlsdon Avenue when some idiot cycled out of a side turning, completely oblivious to myself and the van coming towards him from the opposite direction. He was weaving and swaying and looked drunk. He swerved out in front of my car again so I tooted the horn. He leaned over (swaying some more) and shouted angrily and tried flicking 'v' signs. When I drove back a few minutes later I half expected to find him squished under a lorry or bus but he seemed to have escaped unscathed.

Possible the most deserved Eurovision win since Bucks Fizz and Making your Mind Up. I never thought I'd live to see the day when a Scandanavian heavy metal band would win Eurovision. Especially not one with lyrics such as 'arockalypse' and 'day of rockening'. Unmissable TV. Well done Finland!

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Yesterday morning, whenever I received a text message it would silently sneak into the inbox without my phone (nokia 6630) playing the 'text message arriving' alert. This afternoon it wouldn't even receive any. I checked the phone settings but they looked ok. I hadn't changed any recently so I couldn't see what the problem was. I could still send messages and send and receive phone calls.

This morning I put the sim card in my old phone and 8 new text messages arrived. A lot of them were 'test' messages I sent myself yesterday but some were actual messages which I should have had.

Tonight I put the sim back the phone with the intention of backing up my data and resetting the phone. The battery had been out of the phone all day and when I switched it back on it asked me for the time, date and my timezone. I sent myself another 'test' text message and to my surprise it arrived ok. Having the battery out of the phone seemed to be all the 'resetting' it needed.

In the kitchen in work we have a water heater. It's fairly new, only about a month old. It's also not very good, spending most of it's time holding water at around 80°C, not enough for a proper cup of tea.

There's a button to press to force it to reheat the water but it often has the opposite effect. If I press it when the temperatures reading in the 80's, it often drops to 70-odd degrees before slowly climbing.

I managed to watch the infamous Ricky Gervais episode of the Simpsons today (titled Homer Simpson, this is your Wife). It started off quite funny and the plot revealed itself to be about one of those wife-swap tv programmes. The problems began when Mr Gervais made his first appearance. He decided to use that unfunny annoying I Wish For God's Sake He'd Shut Up persona which crushes the life out of any humour which might have been present.

Seen in Asda, their version of Love Hearts but for the modern generation:
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And the sweets themselves:

I'm sure there must be some irony there somewhere. After commenting on the report that Americans are sicker than British, my bad back decided to come back. It was really bad yesterday and was very painful when I stood up, but the pain went away after I'd been standing for a while.

After an uncomfortable night of not sleeping well and it hurting every time I turned over, I phoned in this morning to let them know that I wouldn't be in. I don't know what's wrong with me recently. I used to be able to go years without having to see my doctor or take time off.

There seems to have been some outbreak of politeness in Coventry. I lost count of how many people said 'sorry' if they walked in front of me or accidently brushed my with their bag. Nobody actually bumped into me. It was all very civilised!

Essentially a pub crawl around the Black Country, by bus. The trip was organised by someone from work and most of the people there were either employees or friends of employees. The bus was half an hour late because they had to double back to avoid a low bridge. This meant we only had 10 minutes at the first pub (The Forge in Halesowen) but we were allowed to take our drinks onto the bus as long as we poured them into a plastic 'glass' first.

It was very difficult drinking on the bus, mainly due to the bumpiness of the ride. Despite that, the on board bar seemed to do good business. The next pub was the Dry Dock, in Dudley. Notable for having a bar made out of an old canal boat. The third pub was the Blue Brick, then last of all The Pie Factory in Tipton.

It was a good night out and a good way of seeing other parts of the midlands.

Update: A number of people have contacted me asking for details about booking the beer bus. Their website is www.blackcountrytours.co.uk.

According to a survey, Americans are much less healthy than the British. Even the British at the poor end of the scale are healthier than wealthier-than-average Americans. Woo-hoo. Pass me another jumbo bucket of chicken bits, fries and a gallon of (non-diet) coke.

On my way home from the station, there is an old derelict shop on Albany Road and a footpath which goes up some steps. Today I noticed the front of the shop had 'incident tape' across it. Climbing the steps, I could smell smoke. I looked through a gap in the fence and noticed that there had been a fire. The building seemed to be used as a scally hang-out and I occasionally saw shifty looking kids in the alleyway and noticed them disappear through the fence when they thought nobody was looking.

As if yesterdays bad back wasn't enough, today I've got a cold. I'm sure my body is slowly trying to kill me.

At lunchtime I had a walk round the shops. I went to Jessops in the Bullring to get some of the medium format black and white film I use in my pinhole lubitel. I was wanting some of their own brand film because it is cheaper and works well enough. I was told it was out of stock and had actually been discontinued. I checked their website and where they used to sell 3 different versions of the film, they only had one listed and that was out of stock. It looks like if I want to keep doing more pinhole photography I am going to have to bite the bullet and buy some more expensive branded film, which always seems a bit overkill when the camera is a bit cheap and rubbish!

Lost returned to channel 4 tonight, with the first 2 episodes of the second series. We finally found out what was down the hatch, and what happened to the people on the raft.

I don't know what caused it but I first noticed it when I stood up to get off the train this morning. My back gave out a little twinge of pain. It got worse during the morning, but would only hurt when I first stand up. Once I've been standing up for a while, the pain goes away. When it was time for my morning cuppa, it meant I hobbled to the kitchen but could walk back normally.

Last bank holiday, we went for a drive over to Melbicks, mainly for a look around (because that's what you are supposed to do on a bank holiday) but also to buy some veg (for the kitchen, not for the garden - they sell food there as well). There were a lot of samples of free food available.

We decided to go back today (it being may bank holiday) to see what was available. Rather disappointingly, there weren't many free samples on offer. We did buy a bag of frozen summer fruits, to make a smoothie. When we got home I left the fruit out to defrost before making the smoothie, adding pears, apples and grapes. It ended up very thick and dark, and the summer fruit flavour was very strong. It tasted great but I think next time we will need to use less of them.

• 600g of dried apricots.
• 500g pears.
• 1kg sugar.
• 1 small tin of white grape concentrate.

Wash the fruit in a dilute sodium metabisulphite solution, then chop and put into a large pan. Add the sugar, cover with water and bring to the boil. Turn off the heat and leave to cool.
Pour into a sterilized fermentation bin. Add 1tsp of pectin enzyme, 1tsp of yeast nutrient and the yeast. Leave for a few days, occasionally mashing the fruit to get more juice out. Strain into a demijohn, add the grape concentrate and top up to 1 gallon with water. Fit the airlock.

When the fermentation has stopped (or the wine has reached the desirable sweetness), add some wine stabiliser. The wine will need to be clarified either by adding finings or syphoning into a 2nd demijohn and leaving to settle. Or both if the wine is quite cloudy.

We saw this when we were in Ellesmere Port visiting my parents. We didn't have a camera handy so had to wait until my Dad could take a photo and send it to me:

After leaving work I walked to New Street Station as usual. I glanced at the board to check that my usual train was at it's usual platform. The train left the station only a couple of minutes late. I looked out of the window at the industrial units we were passing and thought they looked slightly unfamiliar. Also the BT Tower seemed to be in a different direction. We then passed through an area of housing, looking down onto the rooftops. I don't remember seeing that before. We passed a park with a pond. Wait a minute. There's definitely no park like that along the route home.

The train slowly trundled through a station. I looked out of the window to read the name. Perry Barr. Holy Crap! We're heading in the wrong direction. None of the other passengers look worried. Am I on the wrong train? If the next stop is outside the West Midlands, my railcard won't be valid to get me home. The LED display in the carriage still claims the train is heading towards London Euston via Birmingham International and Coventry but we are going in the wrong direction.

The voice of the train manager wafts through the train. We are being diverted because a lorry hit a bridge near Adderley Park station. The train has to pass over the bridge so the line is closed while they do safety checks. Ok, I'm on the right train. We pass under the A38. I look at the road signs and notice we are going from west to east so at least we are now in the right direction. We pass Aston Villa football stadium and Star City. The next station we pass is Stetchford. Phew. We're back on the right line now.

We arrive in Coventry almost half an hour late. I step onto the platform. Puzzled. I don't recognize this place. What platform are we on? The sign says 1. The other sign says Coventry. Ok, right place. I look down the platform one way then the other. Ah, the exit is over there. The train came in 'backwards' so I was at the unfamiliar opposite end of the station. I wander the length of the platform, under the road bridge and towards home.

Yesterday my Doctor told me I should rest for 'anywhere between a few hours and a few days'. I decided I would wait until I woke up naturally this morning and see if I felt well enough to go to work.

I always feel guilty about staying off work if I'm able to be up and about but yesterday I was too tired and work would have made me feel worse. This morning I was feeling a bit better so after a late breakfast consisting of yesterdays uneaten bacon sandwiches dunked in soup, I wandered off to the station to catch the train to work.

It doesn't hurt as much when I eat now but I think it's wise to stick to soft foods at the moment so lunch was more bread and soup, along with some cherry tomatoes and a hard boiled egg. As long as I remember to take my penicillin an hour before eating, I should be ok.

The old Mazda 323 went to the scrap yard today. It was only ever a temporary car between the Rover Metro and the new car.

It was my Dad's old car and he only kept it because it would have cost money to have it scrapped. The scrap yards here seem to be better and we got £25 for it. Anyway, back to the car. It would take around 5-10 minutes to warm up before it was safe to drive, due to the engine management being faulty. For most of the warm up time, I had to sit with my foot gently on the accelerator. When it started to blow black smoke out a couple of months ago, Emma insisted that we started looking for a new car. Occasionally while driving, the engine power would drop and then return, giving the car a bit of a jolt. It was also a high insurance group and we couldn't afford to get Emma insured to drive it.

On the positive side, when I was emptying the car last night, I found a bottle of wine under the drivers seat! That probably explains the creaking and clanking noise I heard when I last drove it. It sounded like the seat was about to collapse.

The old Mazda 323 went to the scrap yard today. It was only ever a temporary car between the Rover Metro and the new car.

It was my Dad's old car and he only kept it because it would have cost money to have it scrapped. The scrap yards here seem to be better and we got £25 for it. Anyway, back to the car. It would take around 5-10 minutes to warm up before it was safe to drive, due to the engine management being faulty. For most of the warm up time, I had to sit with my foot gently on the accelerator. When it started to blow black smoke out a couple of months ago, Emma insisted that we started looking for a new car. Occasionally while driving, the engine power would drop and then return, giving the car a bit of a jolt. It was also a high insurance group and we couldn't afford to get Emma insured to drive it.

On the positive side, when I was emptying the car last night, I found a bottle of wine under the drivers seat! That probably explains the creaking and clanking noise I heard when I last drove it. It sounded like the seat was about to collapse.

I woke up this morning with a sore throat. I took a look in the mirror and there was a huge white spot on one of my tonsils. Emma insisted that I go to the Doctors so I phoned up for an appointment. The Doctor told me it was tonsillitis and gave me a prescription for penicillin. I was told to stay home and rest.

The lump on my tonsils felt like there was food stuck in the back of my throat but of course it was stuck there and felt uncomfortable every time I moved my tongue or jaw. Swallowing food was painful - most of today's diet comprised of fruit smoothies or soup.

The pears are definitely ripe now. I brought one to work to eat today and it got a bit squashed in my bag. There was a big dent in one

I was supposed to be meeting Emma and some of her Uni friends tonight - they were going out celebrating the end of their final exams. The plan was for me to take the bus in and join them at Varsity for food and a few drinks before going to the Students Union. Unfortunately Varsity wasn't serving food for some unspecified reason so I was asked if I could go via KFC and pick up a couple of meals and a bucket. Although KFC is on the bus route, I would be stuck waiting for the next bus while holding a rapidly cooling box of chicken bits so I had to drive. Which meant I would be on soft drinks for most of the night

We sat outside Varsity eating our food and drinking jugs of cocktails from the bar. As we were getting towards the end of the meal the manager came out and told us that we shouldn't eat our own food on the premises and we'd have to stand on the pavement if we wanted to continue. As most of us had finished eating, this wasn't a problem. She took away the rubbish we'd generated. (So much fat had come out of the chicken in the bucket that it had dissolved away the cardboard at the bottom. Yum!)

After we had all finished eating we went back inside to buy more drinks. The manager seriously considered not allowing us to be served! Fairly stupid really because the pub was fairly quiet and they probably needed all the custom they could get.

On leaving Varsity we went into the Students Union for the Top Banana night. It was empty when we got there but by the time we left it was really crowded. Probably something to do with most drinks being £1 each. Of course I was driving so was relegated to tap water.

I don't watch much TV these days - a few comedies and films, and sometimes the shopping channels on freeview to see what kind of horrible tat they're selling. There are a few programmes I regularly watch:

Everybody hates Chris
Much funnier than Everybody Loves Raymond. Narrated by Chris Rock, this is like some kind of anti-Cosby Show about a hard working but poor black family growing up in New York.

Doctor Who
The second series of the new and improved return of Dr Who. The BBC have given it the budget it deserves so at last it has decent special effects. It's a pity that so many of the stories are Earth-based but what we've had so far has been good.

Invasion
A very strange programme. After a hurricane, strange things started to happen in a small Florida town. People who went missing during the storm were found later, physically unharmed but somehow 'changed'.

My Name is Earl
One of the most original comedies currently on tv. About a petty criminal who lived a crappy life til he found out about Karma. He figured that this was why bad things kept happening to him so he made a list of all the things he'd done and tries to make amends.

House
Hugh Lawrie as an american doctor. Now into it's second series. The stories follow a few familiar patterns, usually: patient is admitted, doctors think they know what's wrong, start treating patient, patient gets worse, doctors realise some odd combination of ailments was giving misleading symptoms.

The second series of Lost is starting soon so that's another one I'll be watching. Most of these programmes are American - British tv seems to be going through a bad phase at the moment. One of the few watchable British comedies at the moment is My Family but that has a writing team based on the american way of writing sit-coms. And even that isn't as funny as it used to be.

We went to Tesco last night and noticed that they had half price lobsters, down to 'only' £5. There were none on display but I asked if they had any left and thankfully they did.

We ate it for lunch with bagels and cream cheese. There wasn't a lot of meat, only enough for a bagel each. It was only a small lobster and more like a Tesco Value lobster really, but it was worth getting just the once.

We went out to a restaurant from work. Some of the bosses were there as well. For main course I ordered beef and chicken pie and roast potatoes but what came was hotpot. A plate of roast veg was brought out and put in the middle of the table but there were only 4 bits of veg on it.

After the main course I somehow ended up at home. My house was very dark inside and I had to crawl between some scaffolding to get into the front door, as if the place was derelict.

I was back in the restaurant for dessert, which was a huge plate of fruit salad. There was a hollow or well in the centre of the plate which was filled with fruit juice. Assorted fruits were arranged around with a different one in each sector of the plate, including gooseberries which were about 1 inch round but cut in half and had a furry texture which I likened to eating a hamster! They also tasted quite like kiwi fruit and not sour at all. Despite the texture they looked more like gooseberries with hair, and not like kiwi fruit with fur.

The dessert also came with a large clear plastic and cardboard mug (the same shape and size as a fast food soft drink) full of a thick dark coloured juice drink with whipped cream floating on top. I was drinking from the top of the cup before I noticed one of my colleagues drinking from a straw which was sticking out of the side of the cup.

Unfortunately then my alarm went off and I had to get ready to leave for work.

My brain has been half asleep this week. Forgot to check email in work this morning and nearly missed out on some free biscuits which someone brought back from holiday. They'd been left in the kitchen and an email was sent out to let people know.

I was like this last night as well when I kept mis-reading prices in the supermarket.

We bought two bags of pears from the supermarket over a week ago (bought one, got one free). They were very hard and under-ripe. We also bought some bananas at the same time so I thought I'd try a bit of an experiment.

I had heard about bananas helping to ripen fruit, due to them giving off small amounts of ethylene gas. I tore a small hole in one of the bags of pears and poked a couple of bananas in, leaving them there for just over a week. I ate one of the pears today and it had ripened 'just right' - soft enough to eat but not too soft or juicy. When I got home I tried a pear from the 'control' group. It was of a very similar ripeness. The bananas seemed to have had a negligible effect

I find it strange that despite Coventry being the birthplace of the British Motor Industry, it is not a very car friendly city. There are a lot of strangely designed junctions with strange restrictions on them. Near where we live, there are:

• The junction with Melbourne Road and Spon end - no right turn from either direction.
• Hearsall Lane, no left turn onto Allesley Old Road
• Queensland Avenue, no left turn onto Hearsall Lane
• Broomfield Road, no right turn onto Albany Road
• Broad Lane, no right turn onto the A45, which brings us to...
• The strange 'island' full of fast food eateries next to Sainsburys which you need to go all the way around to get onto the A45 if you want to go towards Birmingham
• Junction 4 of the Ring Road where you turn onto the slip road to stay on the Ring Road
• Added 3/11/06: A roundabout on the A444 where you can never leave if you try to obey the 'no left turn' signs on all the exits

One of the worst junctions though has to be Toll Bar End, near the airport where the A45 and A46 meet. This is one of the busiest roundabouts in the midlands, and is quite horrible to drive around. There are far too many lanes and it is nearly always busy so if you're not in the right lane early enough it can be difficult to navigate around.

The image below is from Google Maps and shows the junction as it is at the moment. Thankfully, there are plans to replace it with a 'grade separated' junction where the main carriageway goes straight through so the roundabout would only be needed to switch roads.

Based on a recipe in the Mail on Sunday 'You' magazine.
To make the base:

• 170g/6oz butter
• 75g/2½oz sugar
• 100g/3½oz ground almonds
• 150g/5oz plain flour

Use a food processor to mix everything together until it all sticks together into one lump. Put into a well buttered baking tray (approx 6x6 inches) and press flat. Put into the fridge to chill for around 1 hour. Prick the base all over with a fork and bake for ¾ hour on gas mark 3 (around 150°C). Leave to cool while you prepare the topping.

To make the topping:

• 200g bar of plain chocolate
• 200ml double cream
• 100g macadamia nuts

Break the chocolate into chunks and slowly melt over a pan of boiling water. Beat in the cream until well mixed. Pour the topping over the base and generously scatter the macadamia nuts, pressing them gently into the chocolate (you don't want them to fall off when you eat it). Cover and put in the fridge for a couple of hours before cutting into very small fingers (at least 12-15 servings). Warning: this is loaded with calories. Depending on the cream and chocolate, up to 300 calories per serving!

I think our back garden somehow attracts the wind. A couple of weeks ago the plastic table was found upside down in the bushes at the far end of the lawn. I hung some laundry out this afternoon and it must have got windy after I went back indoors because about half an hour later I looked out of the window and the clothes horse had blown over. I moved it to near the back door where it shouldn't be too windy and went back inside. Shortly afterwards I looked outside again and the clothes horse had blown over for a 2nd time and my shirts had blown off the clothes line and were lying in the bushes. Thankfully they didn't need washing again.

• 1lb minced turkey
• 1 medium onion
• 2 cloves garlic
• 4 slices bread
• 1 egg (beaten)
• seasoning (salt, pepper, herbs etc.)

Use a food processor to make breadcrumbs from the 4 slices. Add to the mince. Finely chop the onion and garlic (preferably using food processor again). Mix everything together, adding the desired seasoning. Jamaican Jerk seasoning works very well.

Shape the mixture into small patties and fry gently for about 5 minutes each side.

We had our first barbeque of the season this afternoon. The weather stayed ok, not as warm and sunny as this morning but still warm enough. We provided chicken breasts, sausages and home made turkey burgers. Ben turned up and brought pork steaks. Emmas's friend Andrew turned up and helped eat them.

The last time I wrote about Zac, he was living in a seperate cage to Ira and Gel. About a month ago we decided it was worth trying again to get them to live together. Like last time we started off by getting them out to play together. Then we'd leave them in the same cage during the day while we could keep our eyes on them. We would put Zac back into his own cage at night (actually alternating cages so one night Ira and Gel would be in one cage with Zac in the other, then next night they would be in the other cage).

This time we left it longer before having them in the same cage at night. This seemed to make a difference and everything seemed better with much less fighting and pushing.
Emma wanted to get a larger cage so that they would have more room to run around. She saw the Hamster Castle for sale on ebay decided it would be ideal to keep the three of them in. It is huge (2 foot square), much bigger than the habitrail cages, and required the furniture in the upstairs front room (aka the Hamster Bedroom) to be rearranged.

There was a fare-dodger on the train this morning. When the ticket inspector appeared at the far end of the carriage, he stood up and disappeared towards the other carriage.

Thee ticket inspector obviously knew what was going on because after he had finished his rounds, he came back into our carriage and sat down opposite me, where he could keep a watch on the toilet door (where presumably the fare dodger was hiding). Another Central Trains employee arrived on the scene to offer reenforcements, but I didn't see how the scene played out because the train arrived at New Street and I had to leave.

After moving my website to a new hosting company last week, I've been a bit busy making sure the site works properly, that the blog software is set up properly and that all the links work. This has meant that I haven't had time to add many entries, so I am spending my lunchtime today writing a few brief notes for last week, and back-dating them so they appear on the right days. So any short entries below don't reflect any new found brevity, just a lack of time.

Update:
Lunchtime might not be the best time of day to do this, at least in work. It seems that everyone starts surfing the 'net and everything slows down, pages fail to load and lots of DNS errors appear.

Venue: Go Ape at the Sherwood Pines forest park near Mansfield.

It involved rope ladders, swinging from trees into nets, walking across wobbly bridges, sometimes proper rope bridges, sometimes logs suspended from wires. I managed to put my fear of heights behind me and completed the course.

We were late getting started because on the first obstacle after the training area there was a little kid too scared to swing across onto one of the nets. Various members of staff tried to talk him into it but without success. He was even too scared to climb down the rope ladder to the ground and didn't realise that he needed to make a decision otherwise he'd be up there for the rest of his life. We wasted about 45 minutes while all this went on.

Each stage of the course followed a similar pattern:
Rope ladder to a platform halfway up a tree
Several crossings to other trees
Zip wire down to the ground.

One of the crossings from tree to tree was an aerial zip slide from one platform to another. Normally the zip slides take you to the ground so you go at quite a steep angle and there are wood chippings on the ground to help slow you down and cushion any landing. In this case though, the end of the line was on a wooden platform so the approach was slower and not so steep. The idea was to get your feet onto the sloping approach to the platform and climb to safety. Unfortunately Emma's legs were too short and she started to slide backwards and ended up suspended from the cable, 30-odd feet above the ground. Now my fear of heights was at it's worst when I was standing on the narrow platforms up in the trees, but I think it would have really kicked in if that had happened to me. It took quite a long time for a member of staff to hear the cries for help and to come to her rescue.

Despite this minor setback, everyone seemed to enjoy the day out, including Jill, who's recent birthday was the reason for going.

Most mornings while I'm walking across the car park, the London bound train is pulling into the station. This is usually accompainied by a frantic increase in activity as commuters hurriedly park cars and race to the platform.

This mornings participants included the occupants of a black Range Rover with blacked out windows. This tough looking vehicle parked and a man and a woman climbed out. They both sped towards the platform, the man mincing his way across the car park, his running action completely at odds with the tough image suggested by his car.

We were supposed to collect our new car on saturday but as I've already mentioned, we were away. I left work early this afternoon so we could go and collect it today.

It's not a new car (just over 4 years old) but it's low milage and in good condition. When we took it for a test drive, the speedometer wasn't working but thankfully that had been fixed and we were able to drive it away safely and legally.

We chose to buy a Kia Rio because they don't hold their value, so second hand ones are much cheaper than most other similar sized cars. As long as we get a couple of years motoring out of it, we'll be happy.

We were away this weekend, up north visiting our parents. We started off at my parents house, then drove to Emma's mums place (via Bolton to collect a castle shaped hamster cage, more about that another day). On the saturday night we all went out (me, Emma, her mum, her mum's husband) to an Italian restaurant. On sunday we drove over to see Emma's dad and his wife. We were taken out for a pub lunch. On the way home we stopped at Ikea to get some of their really tasty Punschrolle from the food shop.

I was listening to last nights Mark Radcliffe Show on my way to work this morning and he was talking to Jason Lyttle, from the band Grandaddy. One of the things they talked about was the band splitting up. The Sophtware Slump was one of my favourite albums and it was a shame to hear that the band were no more. Hopefully Jason's next project, either solo or with another band, will produce some more great albums.

The train was ready to leave Birmingham New Street when the announcement came on to say that the departure was cancelled and we all had to go over to platform 1 to board the Bournemouth train. Something to do with a failure with the overhead lines causing other trains to be cancelled or diverted. Anyone travelling to London would have to change at Birmingham International and hope for the best. Thankfully the Bournemouth train stops at Coventry so I was ok.

The train was a bit over crowded with many people standing in the aisle and by the doors. On arrival at International, the London bound people got off and a few other people got on. There was one unfortunate chap who was standing on the platform, arms were full of various bags and holdalls. He was also carrying a cup of coffee which he set down in the doorway of the train as he got his bags ready. Just as he was about to climb aboard the train, the doors closed. He was still there on the platform clutching his luggage as his coffee sped off into the distance.

We first heard about this from an advert on the side of a bus shelter. Even though I like coffee I wasn't sure whether I would like this or not. It wasn't as bad as I was expecting - mainly because it doesn't have a very strong coffee flavour. To me it seems to taste more chocolatey. Worth trying but I don't think I'll be buying it regularly.

I suppose I should set the time on the rest of the clocks in the house, moving them an hour forwards. Thankfully the computers sort themselves out and our phones have a 'daylight savings time' setting which needed selecting. All the other clocks need doing by hand:
2 in the bedroom, kitchen clock, 1 in the living room, 1 in the dining room, video recorder, my watch (twice - for the analogue and digital display).

Last year the festival was held at Highfield Road but with the stadium being demolished (because Coventry City have moved to the new Ricoh Arena), this year it was held at the Butts Park Arena Rugby Club. This was handy because it's just round the corner from where we live.

We went to the first session yesterday lunchtime (£1 entry fee and a full range of beers on offer) and the final session tonight (£2 entry in evenings). It should really have been cheaper for the final session because a lot of the beers had sold out.

We managed to try a good selection of beers and wines, and also came away with one of the 'festival branded' half pint glasses (which we had to pay a deposit for so they expected some to be taken as souvenirs).

Yesterday I developed the photos from my pinhole Lubitel camera. This was a photo of the space centre from sunday:

This morning I remembered to take the lift up to the 10th floor, rather than going to the old place on the 5th. Thankfully everything of mine had moved up there ahead of time and all I had to do was unpack my stuff and re-arrange everything on the desk (including my computer ornaments - a beany baby squirrel called Harry, a kinder surprise toy medieval style knight/soldier eating a chicken, and a bloodshot eye which lights up when hit, which came from the Wetherspoons Halloween beer festival. The eye started off white but the combination of sunlight and flourescent tubes has yellowed it a bit).

Sadly I no longer have a window seat so the view isn't as good as before. Also, there's a cabinet to my right which is about 1/2 inch higher than the desk surface so is positioned perfectly to do serious elbow damage. I'll have to watch out for that.

It didn't take long to drive to the Space Centre - I think it took as long to get out of Coventry as it did to drive the rest of the way to Leicester.

Entry includes a film show in the planetarium style 'Space Theatre'. The film was called Big and was about the scale of the universe. Other highlights include Astronaut training which included a simulator ride to Jupiter's moons.

While we were there, we had a quick look at the Abbey Pumping Station which was next door. This was billed as Leicester's Science and Technology Museum but was on a much smaller 'local' scale. As the site used to be a sewage pumping station, a lot of the exhibits were to do with toilets and sanitation.

Over the weekend our office is moving from it's current location on the 5th floor, up to the 10th floor right at the top of the building. We had to pack everything in crates and label things - including chairs, phones, computers, bins and any drawer units which we moving.

While checking though one of the drawer units to see what could be thrown out, I picked up a folder and found a wide selection of condiment sachets lurking underneath (as well as salt, pepper, ketchup, salad cream etc. there was tea, coffee, hot chocolate). It was a bit whiffy because a vinegar had leaked sometime in the past. Nobody had any idea how long they had been there or who had put them there. The only thing I could find with a date was a sachet of hot chocolate which expired in March 2004.

Found while searching for info about computer memory. I clicked on the 'translate this' link next to a japanese language page which google found for me.

There is no excuse, but the file which corresponds to the URL which is
appointed existence was not present in this server.
You can think the cause below.

    * Type mistake of URL
    * Link of the page has not stretched normally
    * It is deleted by code violation and the like

We've been watching Invasion on Channel 4 and it's recently started to get interesting. After last weeks episode, Emma was impatient to see the next episode so we switched on our Freeview box and watched it on E4.

We'd been wanting to buy a Freeview box for a while, but the various digital TV websites all claim that the service isn't available in Coventry. In the last few months though, a lot of the supermarkets have started selling freeview boxes so we asked in Sainsburys and were told that they should work in most of the city. We bought it last month and most of the time we get a watchable signal. Even at the best of times, the signal strength is weak (due to the transmitter being too far away) and we can't receive all of the channels on offer, but it's better than nothing.

Yesterday, our wireless router died. We didn't get chance to take a look at it because we ended up going out to Wing Wah for an all-you-can-eat buffet, which was kind a spur of the moment decision.

Tonight on my way home from work I popped into the Birmingham branch of Maplins to buy a multimeter. I tested the power supply and it turned out to be dead. We went to the Coventry branch of Maplins to buy a suitable replacement. We ended up spending £20 instead of £45 it would have cost to buy a new router.

We suspect that the old power supply overheated (and the router itself would get very hot) so we now use a timer plug as well, so the router is turned off for a couple of hours each night.

It was very busy on the train this morning. A lot of people got off at Birmingham International (presumably for Crutfs at the NEC), including a woman with a huge fluffy white dog.

Tonight was the party to drink the rest of the Biology Society homebrew - this was made in december and the first party (where about half of the beer got drunk) was last month.

As well as homebrew, we also tried 'turbo purple' - this was inspired by the drink served at the real ale festival, where they used strong lager, cider and blackcurrent wine. We used homebrew lager, a bottle of strongbow, and our blackberry and elderberry wine. It tasted fine.

Last night was the final night of the university's Real Ale Society's beer festival. Over the last 3 nights there have been lots of beers, ales, lagers, ciders, perrys and wines available to taste. Unfortunately I've had to get up early for work every morning, meaning that I've not been able to try as many beers as I'd like but we did manage to sample a good selection. There was only one (a dry perry) which we didn't like but it wasn't bad enough to leave it undrunk.

I was sitting at my desk in work when I noticed a puff of smoke out of the window and a second later heard a bang. It turned out that a firework or rocket had been fired from the roof into the car park, narrowly missing my boss's car!

The University Student Cinema was having a Wallace and Gromit Night, where they showed all 3 short films, the Cracking Contraptions mini-episodes and the film Curse of the Were-Rabbit.
Update 06/06/2006
I was glad to see that 'Were-Rabbit' won the Oscar for best animated film.

When we first set up our wireless network, everything seemed to be ok. It was when everything seemed to slow down that we started to look into wireless security.

1. MAC Address filtering

This was the first thing we tried - by giving the router a list of the MAC addresses of our computers, it was supposed to allow them to connect but refuse connection for all other machines. Unfortunately, due to a bug in the router itself, it kept disconnecting us, forcing us to reset the router each time (this only affected the router when it was set to use 802.11g. It worked ok with 'b' only).

To find the MAC address of your computer on Windows XP, open a command window and type: ipconfig /all The MAC address is listed as 'Physical Address'.

2. Broadcast SSID

With this enabled, the router is telling the entire world (well, the bits that are within range) that there is a wireless access point available, and come over and steal our bandwidth. With this disabled, a computer needs to know the name of the network before it can connect to it.

The first thing to do is to change the name of the network. The default name in the router might be the model number or router type, which would be easy to guess and not at all secure. After that, disable the 'Broadcast SSID' (or ESSID) option. The chances are that your computer will now have been disconnected (unless you're being sensible and making these changes while physically connected using a good old fashioned network cable).

The next step is to let Windows know the name of the wireless network so it can connect. If the wireless card's own software is managing the connection, there should be an option somewhere to specify the network's name. Otherwise, you'll need to open the Wireless Network Connection icon, click on Properties and then select the Wireless Networks tab. From there you can add a new network and provide the SSID.

3. Encryption

This is the most secure method - it will stop people connecting to your network and will also prevent anyone from evesdropping on your data.
Again, this is a two stage process: Setting encryption on the router and then on each computer which needs to connect. The exact method will vary from one router to another but one of the standard methods is WEP or Wired Equivalent Privacy. On the router, select WEP 128 bit. You'll then need to provide the 128 bit key - either by typing in a series of hexadecimal numbers or by providing a word of phrase and having the key generated for you. Whichever method you use, you'll need to make a note of the key before clicking 'OK'.

In Windows XP, the encryption settings are in the same dialog box where the SSID was specified above. Network Authentication needs to be 'Open' and Data Encryption needs to be 'WEP'. Then type the encryption key in the boxes and click OK. With any luck, you'll have a nice secure wireless network.

For the last week or so, my wireless broadband has been really slow. At first I suspected the broadband itself but the downstairs computer was fine, then I suspected the wireless router but the other upstairs computer was fine as well. It looked like it was just my PC which was having problems. The connection was very slow and would occasionally stall causing any downloads or web pages to time out.

I tried a few things to attempt to fix it:
Reset the router and set it to use a different broadcast channel and transmission rate.
Reinstalled the wireless card drivers on my computer.
Removed the wireless card from my PC and installed it in a different PCI slot.

None of these made any difference. It wasn't til I removed my bluetooth dongle that the network speed got back to it's normal rate. It's very strange if the bluetooth has only just started to interfere because it's been connected to my PC for several months with no apparent problems until recently.

We've seen them live before (at the Leeds Festival 2 years ago) and they're good live so we went to see them again, this time at the University of Warwick Students' Union.

The first support act were called Fandangle and were quite good - they were in the same ska style as the main act. (We bought one of their CD singles for £1 and listened to later on - they were actually better live than on the record!).
The second act were called Zebrahead and they were more of a standard rock band. Their music was a bit too similar to a lot of other bands, although they did have some good songs.

Reel Big Fish themselves were good. I recognised a few songs from the last time I saw them. While we were at the merchendise table at the start of the night, alongside the usual t-shirts they also had ties. I decided to buy one to wear for work.

We bought a box of these sometime in December but forgot about them until recently when I found a bag full of assorted sweets, cakes and biscuits when I was tidying up the back room.

We tried one last night and were surprised by how hot and spicy they actually were - we didn't realise they actually had chilli extract in them.

The sweets went out of date yesterday but as they are individually wrapped they should still be ok. I took some to work to share amongst my colleagues. The responses ranged from 'not bad' to 'Jesus Christ!' with the sweet being hastily spat into a nearby bin!

I had only just got to work, I had only just made a cup of tea, I had only just put my cheese sandwich in the toaster when the fire alarm went off. I popped the sandwich out of the toaster and trudged down the stairs to join everyone in a 20-odd minute stand outside in the cold.

We were finally allowed back in when it was discovered that there was no fire - it was caused by someone burning toast in one of the kitchens on the first floor.

Last year, Emma and I decided not to spend too much on Valentines Day gifts. We would get a card, a single gift, and have ourselves a decent meal. The food part was a home made salmon and prawn pie.
I bought Emma some chocolates. She bought me some 'day of the week' socks. Not just normal monday to friday socks, but these had saturday and sunday as well. They were from Marks and Spencers. You do expect a bit more from them.

Makes two individual pies.

For the filling:
Finely dice two small onions and a clove of garlic and gently fry in a little olive oil. When the onions are soft, add a knob of butter. When that has melted add two tablespoons of plain flour and mix well to form a paste. Add some light chicken stock and stir to form a thick sauce. For extra flavour add a dash of thai fish sauce and a tablespoon each of chopped parsley and chopped capers.
Into two pie dishes add a layer of the sauce and then add layers of prawns, flaked salmon, adding a sprinking of peas as well.

For the pastry:
We used some ready rolled puff pastry to cover the pie dishes, and brushed the top with milk.

To cook - around 20 minutes in the oven at gas mark 6.

We were in the local branch of Pets at Home looking for a new cage for one of our hamsters, when I saw a shape dart across the floor - something grey and kitten sized. I walked to the end of the corridor and saw a member of staff stalking an escaped chinchilla. It was too fast for him and kept scurrying away. It had quite a funny running/bouncing action. When we left the shop it was hiding under some shelves.

I finished reading the book on the train home tonight. If treated simply as a novel describing the end of the world, the traditional fight of good vs. evil and the only group of Christians in the world who realise what's going in, then it is a reasonable fantasy. Ignoring any religious issues at the moment, there are a few odd ideas in the book such as the passage which described addresses being collected so emails could be sent out to attract visitors to the organisations website. Obviously they meant it in good spirit, but spamming for Jesus would not make them very popular. There was another section towards the end of the book where thousands of voices were singing in different languages but the sounds combined to form the Hallelujah Chorus from The Messiah. If that was tried in a film it would be such a terrible cliche.

Most of the problems stem from the authors notes at the end of each chapter. Oh the whole, these are interesting and draw attention to parallels between the story and the Bible, but again there are a few issues.
In the notes at the end of chapter 4, the 'Big Pot' is used as another name for the Big Dipper constellation, in order to draw another parallel with the Bible. I've never heard this seriously used as a name for the constellation and this sounded so tenuous when I read it.
At the end of chapter 23, the author says:

There is something about the return of Jesus that sounds unbelievable to the modern, cynical mind. And yet it is no more unbelievable than any of the other myths and legends (including evolution) that mankind has come up with to explain our existence.

Now personally, I think the idea that the flora and fauna of our planet has been slowly changing over millions of years to be a more rational explanation than the belief that God created everything in only a few days. For a start it is based on many years of studying the real world, rather than simply believing something which was written in a book a few thousand years ago and for which there is no proof whatsoever.
This absolute belief in every word of the bible is possibly the book's greatest weakness. It crop up again in the notes after chapter 23 where he claims:

Everything else about the Bible indicates that it is an historically accurate book

For most of the Bible, there is no historical corroborating evidence. Especially the story of the creation, where there is absolutely no evidence whatsoever.

This was a trip organised by the University of Warwick Biology Society and the Cheese and Chocolate Society - I went because they needed a minibus driver and nobody in the Biology Society was old enough or had held a driving licence for long enough. I took the University minibus test last month so I was able to drive for the trip. The best thing about that was that as driver, I got into Cadbury World for free.

The first thing we noticed on leaving the minibus was the sweet smell of chocolate filling the air. Our first free bars of chocolate were given to us at the very start of the tour, just before we went through the jungle based exhibition about how the Spanish first encountered cocoa.
Other parts of the tour (in no particular order) included the history of Cadburys and the Bournville site, a viewing of the factory where we could see bars of chocolate being wrapped. It was after this section (and the viewing of a 3D film about the robots who do the packing) that we got out next free chocolate. We also got to see the set used for the 'Sponsored by Cadburys' opnening sequence used for Coronation Street.

Part way through the tour there was a tasting room. On our way in we were handed small pots of melted chocolate to taste. We also saw chocolate being set into shell shaped moulds and lumps of fudge being dipped into liquid chocolate - these were then made available for tasting. We came out of this room into the next area but couldn't see any other members of our party, so we ducked back under the barrier and went back into the tasting room - this was only to try to find the other. We had no intention of eating more chocolate. Honest.

Possibly the strangest part of the tour was the car ride through the Cocoa Bean Village. This was bizarre, with the beans in various settings from quaint village life through to skiing. A lot of the scenery was animated with flowers swaying from side to side.

The tour ended up in the Factory Shop, where anyone who hadn't become fed up with chocolate could buy more.

I was walking back to the office after wandering around the shops at lunchtime. On New Street, at the bottom of the ramp which leads up to the Palisades shopping centre, there was a bloke handing out books. Ever curious, I decided to see what it was about. The book was called Survivors, written by a pseudonymous Zion Ben Jonah. It seemed to be some kind of post-apocalyptic tale designed as a warning about moral corruption in modern society. I tried to hand the book back saying that I wasn't interested, but he refused to take it back and said that he only wanted 'a few pennies' in return. I rummaged around in my pocket and pulled out a few coins to give to him - I had less than £1 on me after buying food so he only got a few coins, which strangely were all 20p pieces.

I started reading the book on the train home. It's a novel where the end of the world seems to follow the events described in the bible, which starts with the nuclear destruction of America. The book also takes issue with the moral corruption of modern America and how organised religion has diverged so far from the original teachings of Christ - both fair points as well.

There are one or two issues I have with the book (apart from it's obvious preachy nature) but I'll wait until I've finished reading it before saying more. You can read a review of the book here.

The Virgin Trains usually have a couple or carriages designated Quiet Zones, where they ask the passengers to refrain from any music or mobile phones which may disturb others. Most people tend to respect this and you only get the occasional phone ringing. Today was the exception, with a baby crying almost all the way from Birmingham to Coventry. People really shouldn't take babies into the quiet carriages unless they can actually keep quiet. They aren't called 'Quiet commuter and crying baby' zones, and for a very good reason.

Our phones were reporting hardly any free memory despite the amount of used memory being a fraction of the 10Mb on the main phone itself. Deleting text messages didn't help - deleting a couple of messages actually made the free memory go down, leaving Emma's phone having no free memory at all. Copying the messages over to the memory card failed - possibly due to the lack of memory.

We used the Nokia Communicator software to back up the phone data, then reset the phone completely. This freed up all the memory but restoring the backup just got things back to where they were before. There was actually a tiny amount of free memory which allowed us to move the messages over to the memory card, deleting them from the phone memory. This did the trick, giving around 8Mb of free memory, despite the File Manager only claiming the messages took up less than 2Mb.

The free memory decreasing when we deleted texts is still a mystery but at least we now know why the phone was full. Each text message must take up more memory than is reported. The phone treats it's internal memory as a disk drive and if each message is stored as a seperate file then this will explain it. Files always take up a minimum size, often around 2-4Kb, so a message which is only a few characters long will still take up a few K.

We decided to go shopping in Birmingham by bus instead of train. We both have travel passes which allow us to travel anywhere in the West Midlands by bus so it wouldn't cost us anything to go. Unfortunately the bus takes around 3 times longer than the train. Not worth it just to save a few quid (so we took the train back home again).

We had a walk round the market, getting some fruit and veg and some less healthy chocolate-coated strawberries. We went to Selfridges to get some of their so-called mini onion bhajis, which are fairly huge but terrific value at only 50p each and taste great. Lunch was at McDonalds - only because we had a b.o.g.o.f voucher for a value meal, otherwise I try to avoid the place.

I found this site a few days ago - it's a weather station run by a school in Coventry. As well as showing the current conditions it also has some statistics and historical weather info:
Bablake Weather Station

Looking at the statistics page I was surprised to see that there were 23 days last year when it snowed - I didn't think it had snowed that often, but it might count some hail (or snail) in with that.

Over in Spon End, they have what's possibly the most pointless cycle lane anywhere. That's all there is to it - a small bit at the corner of the road. There's a cycle lane on the other side of the road, heading towards the underpass to Spon Street. Perhaps they had some green paint left over and didn't want to take it back to the depot.

Last night, we were in bed and heard a thud come from the front room. I went to investigate and found Theo sitting on the floor looking a bit confused. The lid from his bedroom hadn't been attached properly and he managed to get out. The noise must have been him landing on the floor after climbing out. Thankfully he was ok.

I was on my way home from work on the Birmingham to London train, which stops at Birmingham International and Coventry. I'd got to the train quite early and managed to get a seat at table. When the train stopped at International, a grey haired who looked vaguely familiar sat down opposite me. After a few seconds I realised it was one of my old lecturers from Aberystwyth.

We went to a Cheese and Wine night at Warwick University, jointly hosted by the Cheese and Chocolate and the Wine and Whisky societies.
There were 6 wines paired with 6 cheeses for us to sample, and 2 experts from shops in Leamington to talk about them. It was in interesting evening, the wines and cheeses varied in quality and flavour and some of the pairings were less successful than others but most of what was available was good. There was a particularly good blue cheese there, whose name escapes me but it was very soft and creamy. There was also a Warre's 10 Year Old Tawny Port which was possibly the star of the show as far as the wines were concerned.

This is a recipe my Dad emailed me a few years ago which I found again recently while I was sorting out some old emails. It takes a bit of work to make but it's worth it:

The recipe makes 300 g of the marmalade
1 kg peeled red onions
100ml olive oil
1 tsp sea salt
1/2tsp black pepper
2 bay leaves
2 sprigs rosemary
150g caster or soft brown sugar - we used the latter
100ml dry white wine
75ml red wine vinegar

Cut onions in half and slice finely and cook in the oil for approx 5 mins or until soft.
Add salt,pepper,bay and rosemary ,cover and cook over gentle heat for approx 20 mins until wilted and soft stirring occasionally Add sugar,wine and vinegar and bring to the boil,stirring.Reduce the heat and cook uncovered for 20/30 minsuntil soft and sticky and most of liquid absorbed.need to stir fairly constantly at the end to avoid sticking.Pick out the bay and the rosemary and discard.Spoon into 2 150ml jars and leave to cool,then seal tightly.Jars should be sterilised.your mum put them in microwave 3/4 full of water and allow to boil for a while. Empty and leave to dry. Your mum dries them in a low oven on gentle heat.
Ideally the marmalade should be left for a week before use for best results but not essential. Once open can store in fridge for 3 weeks.

My Dad's email continued to say that it works really well with cheese on toast.

I had a cold before christmas which lasted about a fortnight. I wasn't too bad while we were away over the holidays but the cold germs must have been waiting in the house for me, for when we got back to Coventry. Not long after we got back my cold started to get worse.
Slowly slowly slowly I started to get better, then yesterday Emma was suffering from a sore throat which seems to be part of a cold which is travelling around Uni - one of her friends from her course has the same thing.
This morning I woke up with the same symptoms I had back in december when my cold first started - painful sinus pressure and a nose which is either blocked or constantly running.

I had a strange dream last night. I was wandering around a town centre but it was more like Aberystwyth than Coventry, although it had a large indoor shopping center, unlike Aber. When I was outside I heard a tannoy announcement from the railway station, but it was broadcast to the entire town. It apologised for the late arrival of the tuesday train. I glanced at my watch and noticed that it was wednesday lunchtime. I then suddenly realised that I should be in work - I'd gone into town because I thought it was a saturday!

I finished reading the book on the train home tonight. It's an interesting, entertaining and moving (auto)biography, started by John Peel and finished by his wife after he died. Full of anecdotes and interesting titbits about Radio One's longest serving DJ and presenter of Home Truths, which was one of my favourite Radio 4 programmes for a while.

The 2nd of Emma's birthday parties. This time held in the Wing Wah Chinese Restaurant in Coventry. They do an all-you-can-eat buffet for around £12-14 evenings and weekends, only £6 mid-day but there is less choice. As well as all the usual stir fried food (which is very tasty) they also have a Teppanyaki bar where you select the food you want cooking and it's cooked in front of you. It's fascinating to watch this in action, with the spatulas almost dancing across the grill as the food is mixed and cooked. The highlight of this is when the brandy gets added, and the grill briefly becomes a wall of flame.

The dessert selection used to be fairly typical until they got a chocolate fountain. I think you're supposed to use the sticks and fruit provided (usually lychees and melons) but we tend to pick other things off the dessert table and dip those as well - grapes, lumps of cake, that kind of thing. It's also good to collect some of the chocolate in a spoon and pour it over the ice cream where it sets into a hard shell.

The Wing Wah also have a special birthday dessert - usually a melon or pineapple filled with ice cream and with a giant sparkler sticking out. This is brought to the table with great ceremony to a recording of a chinese lady singing 'happy barthday'. We tried to make sure that Emma didn't fill up on all the other foods because two of her friends had ordered one of these. In the end, we still had to help her out eating it.

(photo of Emma and the ice cream taken by AndyMac. Andy - hope you don't mind me stealing your photos and using them on my site!)

Thankfully, the bread and chicken last night managed to stay down. But for some strange reason I just don't feel hungry today despite having had hardly anything to eat. At least my stomach isn't constantly churning and uncomfortable. I think I'll be ok to go back to work tomorrow.

I wish the bathroom wasn't at the back of the house, downstairs. It's much too far to get to quickly in an emergency, such as what happened this morning.

I was lying in bed thinking my stomach felt a bit upset and I thought I might go to the toilet - thankfully I got there before the vomit decided to leave me. I don't know what I might have eaten to cause it - obviously I felt perfectly fine last night.

It took a while for my stomach to settle - after the second vomit I had a glass of water and a fruit-flavoured indigestion tablet (to try to reduce the stomach acid a bit). All that did was make my next hurl taste lemony. Thankfully by mid afternoon, 4 vomits, several glasses of water and a slice of bread, I seem to be able to keep things down now. My guts are still very gurgly but hopefully I'll be better if I manage to eat something tonight.

Update:
I've managed to eat some poached chicken for tea but my stomach is still feeling upset.

Tonight was Emma's first birthday party. Her birthday isn't til next week but she decided she needed one party for friends and neighbours back home and another for Uni friends. This was the party back home, so we drove up north with a car overloaded with sleeping bags, pillows, stereo gear, a helium tank for balloons and several sets of coloured or flashing lights. Oh, and Minnie, one of Emma's Uni friends and a housemate from last year. We met up with Ben (aka Zoomy) later on - he was taking the bus there, and as he doesn't live anywhere near Coventry we couldn't have given him a lift anyway.

When we got to the venue I set up the stereo and the lights then helped everyone inflate the balloons. Of course, where helium is involved you also get people talking with squeaky voices...
Emma had spent the last few days sorting out the music, taking a selection from her CDs and downloading some cheesy music to fill the gaps. Towards the end of the evening, most people were dancing and generally enjoying themselves.

Although quite a few people turned up, there were slightly less than expected and there was a lot of buffet food left over. We ended up with lots of cheese, pork pies, sandwich meat and chicken portions. I'm sure the chicken will make a nice soup. One of Emma's friends bought her a hand held liquidizer as a present, which will be a nice replacement to the one I accidentally melted last year by liquidizing soup which was too hot! We'll have to be careful with this one because it is a good quality model.

The title should really read I shouldn't have any cake. After the foodfest which is Christmas, Emma and I decided that we should probably start to eat a bit more healthily (at least once the cakes and chocolates have been finished off). At the moment we are in some kind of compromise situation where we have healthy meals but are still eating the cakes etc. which were left over from Christmas.
This would all be ok if it wasn't for the free cakes which turn up occasionally in work. So far this week this has happened 3 times (2 birthdays and 1 leaving). 3 free cakes in a 4 day week isn't bad going, but hopefully this won't continue for long.

Last week I was eating a Strawberries & Cream Kit Kat during my lunch break. I had already eaten one finger before I noticed that the other finger had Temporary written on it.

I thought it was a little strange but when I mentioned it to Emma she didn't believe me - her KitKat only had the normal Have a Break... message on it. I checked a couple of other bars and they only had normal messages like break starts here. Today I found another of the temporary bars - the actual message is temporary shutdown.

This is one of those games where people choose a list of celebrities, and score points depending on which ones die. Each competitor enters a team of 15 celebrities and then waits for the Grim Reaper to start knocking on doors. Last years game has finished and the scores will be finalised as soon as all the obituaries are in for 2005.

Entries are still being accepted for this years competition, which began on January 1st. To enter, visit the Website.

We were walking along the Allseley Old Road at around 1:40am-ish, on our way home after a few new year drinks at a friends house when we heard the sound of helicopters overhead. We looked up but couldn't see anything, then we made out the outline of a dark helicopter with no lights whatsoever, flying in a roughly northerly direction.
Hmmm... most mysterious.

Happy New Year!