It's been a busy Christmas - the first one we've spent in Coventry, previous years we've driven up north to visit our parents.

My parents and my brother came down on Christmas Eve and stayed for 2 nights. We probably cooked too much food for Christmas dinner because there was plenty of turkey, veg and stuffing left over.

Emma's mum and her husband joined us on boxing day, so the house was a bit crowded for lunchtime, but my family went home after lunch.

We've got the house to ourselves now, so we can start finding homes for all the Christmas presents we've received - mostly chocolates and biscuits, so we don't need to buy any of those for a few months. Emma's Dad and his wife are stopping for lunch tomorrow but we'll be serving salad and sandwiches, so that will be a bit easier for us.

We went to take our recycling to the tip this morning but the traffic was queueing all the way to the main road. We took the glass and cardboard to the recycling point at the nearby Asda but that was getting full too. At least it showed that people were willing to recycle over Christmas rather than just throw things away.

Emma recently bought an incubator so we could try to hatch some quail. They were expected to hatch on Christmas Day but last night we could see a beak starting to peck its way out of one of the eggs.

Sadly this morning there was no movement from the egg - it looks like that quail was too premature and too weak to hatch. There was another egg which looked like it was starting to hatch though.

When we came downstairs about an hour later, there were two chicks wandering around the bottom of the incubator.

Around lunchtime, a 3rd chick hatched. It looks like our first attempt at hatching quail has been reasonably successful so far.

Thanks to the BBC iPlayer, I finally managed to watch the episode of Top Gear where they 'celebrate' 40 years of British Leyland cars. Unfortunately the episode I originally downloaded failed to work - the licence had 'expired' despite having 5 days left - so I had to watch the version with the sign language person 'flapping' in the corner of the screen.

In the episode, the presenters had to go out and buy an old BL car each, and then perform various tasks. They drove to the sites of some of the old factories, but most of them had since been demolished. The only one still in use is now owned by BMW. Others had been demolished and (like Longbridge) were derelict land or had been turned into hotels or offices.

At the site of the old factory in Coventry they commented on how it had turned into a hotel. They complained that there was nothing to commemorate the site of the factory, apart from a few road names (Herald Avenue, Dolomite Avenue). They must have missed the metal plinth which gave some of the history of the site.

The Canley factory has gone the same way as most of the motor manufacturing in Coventry. A lot of the sites have been converted into flats, offices or shops. The Canley site has an industrial estate, a hotel and a Sainsburys. The Peugeot site at Stoke is now flats and offices. The only cars made within Coventry are the Black Cabs, made by London Taxi International, at the factory on Holyhead Road. This factory (tucked behind the BMW/Mini dealership) is opposite yet another shopping centre built on the site of an old car factory - the Alvis Retail Park.

Anyway, back to Top Gear. They took their old cars to a test track and had to drive along a bumpy cobbled road, with a colander of eggs taped over their heads. They scored depending on how how much egg was still in the colander, and lost 'points' for any trim which fell off. The biggest bit of 'trim' lost was the back door from Clarkson's Rover SD1.

Another of the tests was to drive up a 1 in 3 stretch of road, apply the handbrake, and see if the car would stay there. Now 1 in 3 is very steep - lesser gradients make it feel like the car is tipping over backwards. The Rover had great difficulty even getting up the slope. The wheels lost traction and the wheelspin hid the car in huge clouds of smoke.

Back when I lived in Aberystwyth, there was a 1 in 4 road between Waen Fawr and Llanbadarn. At the bottom of the hill there was a T junction and I had to approach it very slowly because it always felt like the car wasn't going to stop. Heading the other way, up the hill, unless I managed to get a good run up I had to take the hill in 1st gear. At the time I only had a Rover Metro with a 1.1 litre engine so it struggled when presented with challenges like that.

We got rid of the Metro a few years ago, but we noticed the address in the back of the handbook was given as 'Canley Road' - the site now occupied by the hotel/industrial estate/Sainsburys. I did a search for the postcode on Google maps but it doesn't exist any more.

Getting back to Top Gear, the tests became more surreal. They filled the cars with water and drove around the track to see which would go the furthest. The surprising winner was an Austin Princess driven by Captain Slow.

Top Gear is at its best when they have the silly games and challenges. Most of the car reviews get very tedious. They tend to be either overexpensive cars being driven fast around the track while being compared with other overexpensive cars, or small/affordable/economical cars being accused of being dull and boring. I can't be the only viewer who gets tired of hearing about the latest supercar with zero relevance to everyday life. It's like a car version of the pathetic Celebrity type of magazine.

Despite these problems, the banter between the presenters is good. The 3-way reviews, where they all go out with similar cars and compare them, tend to be more interesting than the one-off reviews with individual cars. Hopefully they'll continue to do more of the motoring challenges - the one where they had to drive old cars across Africa was one of the better episodes of the series.

Coventry's new Ikea store opens tomorrow. The local news has been full of scare stories about how the traffic to the store will throttle the ring road and bring the city to a standstill. As a countermeasure, the council has set up signed diversions especially for Ikea traffic.

The shop was actually open this morning, although only to 'Ikea Family Card' holders. We had received a letter telling us about this sneak preview and a voucher for free delivery if we spent over £150, so we went along to see what the shop was like and to pick up some furniture for the front room (which we are in the middle of decorating).

There were a lot of security guards and crowd control barriers outside the shop, but a surprising lack of people. The shop was fairly quiet inside too. Apparently it's the tallest Ikea in europe, according to the announcement we heard on the instore 'radio' while we were in the restaurant. One advantage of this height is the view - you can see a lot of Coventry from there.

We managed to buy enough furniture to qualify for the free delivery. Everything arrived this afternoon, just as we were about to resume stripping the wallpaper in the front room. Our hallway is now full of rolls of carpet and flat-packs of furniture.

There were predictions of around 15,000 visitors to the store today, but I don't think they will have had anything like that many. They are expecting 20,000 tomorrow for the Grand Opening. There are 'Gift Cards' for the first 500 in the queue, and plenty of special offers and price reductions, so I expect there will be quite a few people lining up outside when the shop opens.

I don't know whether the population of Coventry doubled over the weekend but the traffic was much busier than usual on the way home tonight.

Near one one the many roundabouts on the way home, there is a bus lane. It is separated from the main carriageways by a traffic island. There are traffic lights here, the ones for the bus lane are always red unless there is a bus approaching.
Tonight, a lot of cars seemed to want to use the bus lane. They didn't seem to realise that the light was never going to turn green for them. The traffic in our lane was moving so slowly, we got a good look at the long queue of cars stuck in the bus lane, waiting in vain for the lights to change.

On Saturday 1st December, while we were out, we had a card pushed through the door telling us that the Royal Mail tried to deliver a package. We went to collect it this morning. It took them quite a long time to find the package because the card was dated 31st November. The shelves in the depot are apparently arranged by date and it was tricky to find something which was allegedly delivered on a non-existent date.

Just a quick note about the show. I've been quite busy recently which explains the lack of posts this week.

This years Christmas show was quite well attended, and there wasn't much left over buffet food at the end. The only unclaimed item was a plate of salad.

During the show, we went out to a nearby aviary and bought another quail hen. She should improve the male:female ratio, so our current hens don't get too much 'attention' from Dan and Waylon.

Beware of multi-buy bargains at Tesco.

We still haven't decided on a name for our new hamster. Our original Winter Whites were called Theobold, Archibald and Reginald, so we may go for another '-old' or 'ald' name, but there aren't many girls names like that. There are Emerald and Marigold but we're not sure whether we like those.

She's not easy to photograph. She doesn't sit still for long, so it takes several goes to get a clear photo of her. Even though she's easy to handle and she'll readily climb onto your hand, most photos show her either blurred or scampering away.

Emma's been taking the hamster to University, and putting the cage in her office so she can keep an eye on her during the day. Most of the people in the department have stopped by to have a look.
In the photo above, she's trying some scrambled eggs, made using one of our quail eggs. We bought some 'puppy milk' because it's designed for growing animals (it has a fairly high fat content, and extra minerals etc). We used that for the scrambled egg. We gave some to our other hamsters too, and they enjoyed it.

We didn't do as well in the Hamster Racing this year. Last year, Theo won. This year, Red Rum didn't emulate his namesake. Sadly he lost in the first round.

We bought a new hamster while we were there. There weren't many hamsters for sale but we saw a tub with 3 baby winter whites in it. They were only about 3 weeks old and were tiny. We ended up buying one of them.

We drove up north this afternoon to visit my parents. We kept to our traditional pizza night, but this time we were cooking for 5. My mum doesn't like anchovies so we only put them on one half of each pizza.

We did 2 pizzas with a tomato base, using a bought bolognese sauce instead of making our own. The other 2 had a pesto sauce base. Each pizza was slightly different, with scallops, crab meat and crispy chicken toppings. It was good to have a variety of pizzas. Normally when we cook for ourselves, we do 2 identical pizzas. I think we'll start doing 2 different ones so we can have half each.

Our quail have started earning their keep now. The 3 hens are giving us an egg each nearly every day. If we want to use the eggs for cooking, we need to save up for a while. It takes 5 quail eggs to replace 1 chicken's egg in a recipe.

We were in Tesco and were going down one of the aisles which specialised in foreign food. They had some Polish chocolate on a 'buy one get one free' offer so we bought a couple of bars.

The first bar we tried was described as Milk Chocolate bar with creamy filling. It was quite tasty and had a sort of Baileys Irish Cream sort of flavour. I had a quick look at the ingredients and noticed that it contained alcohol. I thought it was a bit unusual that it wasn't described as a chocolate liqueur, but alcohol and 'Baileys flavoured' didn't seem too strange.

They were only small bars (45g each) and we were sharing so we opened the 2nd one. This was toffee flavour. We were surprised to see that it also contained alcohol. I think I'll buy all my chocolate from Poland from now on...

The last of our Winter White brothers from June 2005 died this morning. Old Man Reggie out-lived his brothers Archie and Theo, despite having looked old and poorly for most of his life.

Somehow, deep down, we knew that he'd out-live them. He was often ill and needed numerous trips to the vets, whereas his brothers had been fitter and healthier.

The photo above is the last photo we took of Reggie. It was taken on the 4th November and shows him trying to burrow into our duvet. Whenever we took him out for a run about, that's what he'd spend most of his time doing. He'd either try to hide himself in the folds of the duvet, or try to tunnel through people's elbows.

We found out earlier today that a friend of ours was in a band. They were playing live at the Beer Engine pub. As that is only on Far Gosford Street, not far from here, we decided to go along and see what they were like.

Their opening song was a solo piece featuring their vocalist/guitarist, and reminded me of a Badly Drawn Boy song, which isn't a bad thing. The band is a 5-piece: vocalist/lead guitar, keyboards, saxophone, bass guitar, drums.

They were pretty good. Worth going to see if they're playing nearby. They'll be performing at a local Battle of the Bands and I wish them the best of luck.

They have a page on myspace but there doesn't seem to be much there at the moment.

We were watching the BBC Breakfast News this morning and there was a story about Tesco opening a supermarket in the USA. We had the subtitles on because it wasn't easy to hear the reporter over the crunch of cereal.

The story was about Tesco trying to break into the American market by offering a range of affordable and healthy foods. We saw a customer carrying a punnet of fruit. The subtitles referred to the Man with the neck tureens. I suppose they'd be handy for carrying soup around...

We bought a cheap box of fireworks on saturday morning and decided to throw a fireworks party. It was last minute and friends from Uni had exams and write-ups to do so we didn't expect a very big turn out. In the end there were only 5 of us, which wasn't too bad because our garden is only small.

Some of the fireworks recommended a minimum distance of 25m. Our garden is only 8m long so we were a bit close. Things started to get a bit worrying when we almost had glowing embers raining down on us from one of the larger fireworks.

We were watching An Inconvenient Truth on DVD. Today's Dilbert cartoon seemed remarkable appropriate:

www.dilbert.com

I went upstairs to check on the quail when I noticed an egg in the bottom of the cage. This was a bit of a surprise, although our older quail are getting close to the age when they start laying.

They'll need to lay a few more before we can cook any, unless we want a very small omelette…

It normally takes us around 30-45 minutes to drive to the University in the mornings. We normally encounter bottlenecks of traffic near the railway station, along Kenilworth road near the A45, and on Charter Avenue. This week it has only taken around 10 minutes to do the same drive, with no hold-ups anywhere.

We were wondering where all the traffic had gone, then it occurred to us that it was school half term. Some of the decrease in traffic would be due to people taking time off work to take their children on holiday, but I'm sure most of it is due to the absence of parents driving their kids to school.

I find it amazing that all the extra 'school run mums' add enough traffic to make the roads grind to a halt and increase journey time by a factor of 3 or 4.

1. Some mornings, I have to scrape ice off the car before I can drive off.
2. We've turned the central heating on. Most of the time we try to avoid using the heating but we've decided that it should be on for at least an hour in the mornings and evenings.
3. We've had to turn up the temperature on the shower, otherwise the water comes through cold.

Thankfully it's not been too cold yet, but I'm sure it'll get colder when we get to winter proper.

We went to the Shurdington Hamster Show, near Cheltenham. We took the Quail with us, because there were a few people who had expressed an interest in meeting them.

They turned out to be one of the main attractions there - most people popped over to take a look at them. We have now chosen names for them all. Our original 3 are Waylon and Rose, and the third (aka Scaredy Quail) is now Dan Quail.

Our new quail are Daisy (which was the name of one of our original quail til we found out she was a he) and Maggie (short for Margaret Flapcher - I know, terrible name).

We took Hank & Peggy and Vande & Graaff along to enter into the show. Vande was a last minute decision. He had had an infected scent gland, which looked like some kind of red cauliflower growth on his belly. We got some anti-biotic from the vets but it didn't seem to be making any difference. A few days ago it magically disappeared. We're not sure if it fell off or he gnawed it off but it now looks fairly normal.

We collected two new quail on Sunday. This now gives us 3 females and 2 males. We haven't thought up names for the new birds yet but our unexpected male has now been named 'Dan Quail'.

To introduce the birds, we set up a makeshift 'pen' in the living room. We put a bin bag down on the carpet and surrounded it with cardboard boxes for walls. The quail don't fly very well at the moment so that was enough to slow down any escape. Everyone seemed to get along ok so we put them all in the cage.

Read Part 1.

Part 2

On the Desktop Computer

Setting up the FTP server was straightforward. After installing the programme, select the User Manager and click 'New' to add a new user.

You'll need to:

• Set the password. If the computer is behind a firewall and can't be reached from outside, it'll be safe to set it to blank.
• Add a 'root' directory. This will be the directory where the files to be synchronised are. The name used on the FTP server doesn't have to relate to the actual name on the computer.
• Don't forget to give the remote user access to the directory by clicking on it and selecting read/write/create permissions.

On the Laptop

Setting up the SyncBack software was slightly more complicated, due to the extra options available. From the Profiles menu, select 'New' and choose 'Synchronisation'.

Give the profile a sensible name, then click 'OK'. The profile settings box should appear. Click on Expert to open up more options.

The 'Source' directory is the directory on the computer which is to be synchronised with the server. The 'Destination' is the directory name we chose on the FTP server. Most of the other settings can be left as they are, apart from the FTP tab.

After typing in all the details, it would be sensible to do a few tests first. Clicking on Test FTP Settings will check whether the serve is reachable. After making all the changes and clicking OK, SyncBack will do a 'test' run to see what files will be transferred.

Once everything is set up, it's only a few mouse clicks to synchronise the data between the two computers. This could be speeded up by telling SyncBack to always run the profile every time you double click on the icon. To do this, right-click on the desktop shortcut and select 'Preferences'. Add the name of the profile after the application name (in this case, work). When the icon is double-clicked, SyncBack will run the profile and then exit.

The only potential problem I can foresee is that a file deleted from one computer but not both will re-appear after synchronising.

Part of the Coventry ring road was closed yesterday - there was a long queue of traffic approaching junction 5. Thankfully we managed to avoid it by staying on the slip road and got to our exit ok. The rest of our drive to work was uneventful. There was hardly any traffic on the Kenilworth road - all the cars must have been stuck on the ring road.

According to the news, the incident was caused by a deer on the road. Unfortunately the animal had been hit by a car and had to be put down.

What I find puzzling is where the deer came from. There aren't any large expanses of green near junction 5 of the ring road. Coventry might be a small city but a deer still has a long way to walk to get there from either the parks or the surrounding countryside.

Part 1

I have been given a laptop computer for work but when I work at home I sometimes use my home desktop computer. I decided I needed some way of synchronising files between the two machines, so that I could easily keep both up to date.

Both machines have Bluetooth, which I could use to transfer the odd file manually, but I decided I needed something I could automate. All of the bluetooth syncing software I could find was designed for transferring between a computer and a phone, not between 2 computers.

I found other solutions which expected the files to be on a networked drive, but would keep local copies available for editing. I can't change the network settings on my work computer so it would be tricky for me to set up something like that.

The only solution I could think of was to use FTP to copy the files between the machines. One computer would run an FTP server while the other would run some sort of backup software which would synchronise the files.

I found 2 programmes which looked suitable:

1. Cerberus FTP Server. I'd used this a few years ago and it was fairly easy to set up.
2. SyncBack. This comes in free and paid-for versions. The free version seemed to do everything I needed.

Both the programmes were fairly straightforward to install. Then came the tricky bits - setting up the computers to talk to each other.

Both computers can access the Internet through our router, and both would normally get assigned automatic IP addresses. I needed a fixed name or address to use, so that the laptop could find the server, so I set the desktop machine to request a fixed IP address from the router. I did this by opening the 'Wireless Network Connection Status' in windows by double-clicking on the wireless network icon which Windows places in the 'tray' in the taskbar. Clicking on 'Properties' then 'Internet Protocol (TCP/IP)' then 'Properties' again got me to a screen where I could specify an IP address.

IP addresses on my network start at 192.168.1.1 for the router and .1.2 onwards for any computers. I chose .1.9 because it's unlikely that we would have 8 computers connected, so that address should always be free.

Read Part 2.

I had thought about going to Urban Pie (outside the Bullring) back when I worked in Birmingham, but never actually got around to it. As we happened to be in Birmingham this afternoon, we decided to eat there.

Fortunately they had a half-price offer after 5pm so we had a pie and a beer each without breaking the bank. My Aberdeen Angus pie was pretty good and Emma liked her Chicken and Asparagus pie. Both pies were well filled, with tasty pastry. Much better than your usual supermarket pie.

We went to Birmingham by train. The website for the Think Tank science museum suggested taking the 'Station Link' bus service, so that's what we did. It wasn't terribly easy finding the bus. There was nothing in New Street Station itself (which was no surprise really, New Street is one of the worst railway stations in the country. The planned multi-million pound replacement can't come soon enough) but there was a sign outside pointing to the bus stop.

The bus took a fairly roundabout route towards Millennium Point, taking us within sight of the building a couple of times before it finally got to the actual bus stop. We were still quite a way from the building itself, so it wasn't that handy a stop.

Things didn't get much easier when we got into the building. The huge atrium didn't make it immediately clear where the way in was. We wandered further in and only noticed the big sign when we turned round.

The museum itself was a fairly typical science museum. There was a mixture of exhibits aimed at kids (literally - many were too low for adults to use) and more serious industrial history. There was a Planetarium on the top floor. The show we attended was about the possibility of alien life and was fairly interesting.

The museum covers similar ground to the Manchester Museum of Science and Industry but with the disadvantage of charging an admission fee. Both cover the past and present of industry, with Think Tank having a floor devoted to the future. Of course both also have sections emphasising local contributions to science and industry.

The £8.50 entrance fee was a little steep. For only a few pounds more, you could take the train up to Manchester and visit a better museum with free entry.

The easiest way to tell male and female quail apart is to examine their chest feathers. Females have a speckled chest but males are plain and paler.

When we bought our quail, one was definitely male, one was definitely female and the other looked like it was developing the speckles so was considered a possible female. Unfortunately the speckles have faded and it looks like we have ended up with 2 males and 1 female.

We've not decided on a name for the pale quail yet. He's a bit more timid than the other two we currently have Waylon, Rose and Scaredy-Quail. It's better to have a high female:male radio so we are going to collect some more females soon.

Coventry seems to have more than it's fair share of crap drivers. There was heavy rain this morning. An awful lot of cars were driving around without headlights. When I looked in my wing mirrors, all I could see was a wall of grey. A car without headlights would be effectively invisible.

Another thing I saw this morning was in a slow moving queue of traffic approaching a pedestrian crossing. The traffic was also queued up beyond the crossing. The lights turned red and Mr Genius accelerated to get over the crossing and join the queue at the other side. He risked the lives of anyone trying to cross and saved himself a grand total of zero seconds on his journey.

A few weeks ago I saw a car parked on a zebra crossing. It was also parked on the wrong side of the road, facing the wrong way. The moron driver had parked there so she could go to the nearby cash machine.

Emma had been wanting to buy some Quail for a while. We eventually found some for sale near Halesowen. They are just over 3 weeks old, and if we keep them indoors during the cold weather, the 2 females should start laying eggs after 8 weeks.

We have 3 of them - the male is called Waylon and the females are Daisy and Rose.
Quail are notoriously stupid birds. I remember reading a story in the newspaper about someone who bought some and kept them in the garden. They were too stupid to take shelter during a hailstorm, and afterwards they were all found flattened in the mud. When ours eventually go into the garden, we will have a large rabbit hutch for them, so they will hopefully be safe from both the elements and any foxes or cats.

Who's There?
The Police with a battering ram...

We were on our way to work this morning but didn't get far because there were some police vans blocking the road. There were a few policemen standing around wearing body armour, with one carrying a battering ram. We stopped and watched for a few minutes while they smashed in someone's front door. They then encountered a re-enforced inner door which needed some other gadget, which resembled a briefcase but made a whirring noise when they used it. Unfortunately I couldn't see what was happening by then because the porchway was obscuring my view.

The police disappeared into the house. We didn't have time to stay and watch any more so didn't see whether anyone got dragged out kicking and screaming. We spoke to someone at the end of the road who told us it was a drug dealer's house.

When I first moved to Coventry, I decided that when I started work, I would try to get a job where I could commute by public transport. I saw how bad the traffic was at peak times, and didn't want to be stuck in a car in the middle of it. When I was working in Birmingham, I used the train because driving would have been a nightmare. On the two occasions when I did drive in, it was no quicker than the train, and was certainly more stressful. At least on the train I can sit back and close my eyes for half an hour.

Unfortunately, where we're living now, we're not on a direct bus route to Uni, so what should be a 15 minute drive can be an hour on the bus. At peak times, it becomes a 20-30 minute drive, thanks to a few bottlenecks near the ring road or at certain roundabouts.

I might as well get used to it - I've got another 4 years of it to look forward to.

More pinhole photographs from Coventry. These photos were all taken around summer/autumn last year but didn't get uploaded at the time. Colour photographs of the same scenes are shown for comparison.
 

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These pinhole photos were taken in the abandoned lead mines around Cwm Rheidol, in 2004.  

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• Findon.info, home of the Pinhole Photography web ring.
• Pinhole Gallery
• Worldwide Pinhole Photography Day celebrated on April 29th.
• Even Kodak have a page describing pinhole cameras.

When I check my email this morning, I was surprised to find 64 emails sitting there wanting attention. I was more surprised to find that most of these were 'delivery failure' notices, all from emails which I hadn't sent. Even more surprising was that these were all send during a brief time window between 21:51 and 21:59.

I hope nobody out there is receiving junk email from this domain, but I can assure everyone that I'm not sending any out myself. This is most likely due to spammers inserting my domain as the 'from' address. Some information about the problem can be found here.

At the weekend, Emma placed an order with a company called Cybercandy. They specialise in selling foreign sweets and snacks. One of the things ordered was a 'Mystery Box' which contains a selection of out of date food. We were impressed with the selection we received.

The main part of the order.

The contents of the mystery box.

Perl, Ruby and Alysia in the Hamster Car, presumably getting ready for a road trip somewhere.

Something very strange happened in the Whitefriars Pub last night. The three of us (Me, Emma, Stuart) were sitting in the old part of the pub when Stuart felt something wet on his back. He turned round to show us and there were several wet patches where water had trickled down onto him. There was also a drop on the chair. None of us saw anything happen. I felt the ceiling but it was completely dry. The pub was nearly empty - there was nobody near at the time so it seems unlikely that anyone squirted water at us.

Parts of the building date from the 14th century, and the building has had many different uses over the years. Before it was converted into a pub, it had been a butchers shop. The place may be haunted but I'm not sure. I think we'll need to revisit the pub and investigate, over a few more pints of beer. There is always an extensive and ever-changing range of real ales to sample.

Zosima, aka Little Silly died today. We're not sure how old she was because she came from the RSPCA rescue centre back in January. We assumed she was younger than 'Big Silly' Alysia because as Alysia got older, she got thinner and more ginger, whereas Zosima kept her colour.

This leaves 'Big Silly' on her own in the huge 'ZooZone 2' cage, which is more suited for larger pets such as Syrian Hamsters or Guinea Pigs. We're going to try to re-introduce her to Perl and Ruby and see if they'll all get along this time.

Our current Hamster roll call:

1. Reggie (our oldest hamster - 27 months old)
2. Alysia (Big Silly)
3. Zosima (Little Silly)
4. Perl
5. Ruby (previously 'Little Un')
6. Redrum
7. Vande
8. Graaff
9. Hank
10. Peggy

They are currently in 6 cages - The two Sillies, Hank and Peggy, Perl and Ruby, Vande and Graaff, with Reggie and Redrum both living alone.

Little Un was renamed 'Ruby' by Anita and Dave when they were looking after them while we were in Leeds. Perl and Ruby are both programming languages. Never let a computer geek name a hamster. Perl was originally called 'Pearl' but the spelling changed when Emma was using the Perl language in one of her Uni projects.  

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There are a lot of squirrels in the middle of Coventry, in the 'Cathedral Quarter', in the green areas around Holy Trinity Church near the old cathedral. We were in town for the Heritage Open Day, and Emma brought some peanuts along to feed to the squirrels.  

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The annual Coventry Heritage Open Day is upon us again. A lot of historic attractions are open to the public this weekend, including some which are usually limited access or by appointment only.

We've been meaning to visit the Guildhall for a while, so this was the ideal opportunity. We also visited the Watchmaking Museum and the Police Museum - both of which are usually closed to the public.

St Mary's Guildhall

Black Swan Terrace, a recently renovated row of medieval houses on Upper Spon Street. The middle house was the Weavers Cottage, which was open for viewing. Until recently, the buildings were hidden from view, covered in scaffolding.

Today is my last day in work. Next month I return to University to continue my postgraduate education. There are a few things about work which I'll miss, such as the occasional social night out and the sense of cameraderie which exists within the department.

There are other things which I won't miss so much, such as Mr Annoying Speakerphone, who inhabits one of the nearby offices. He insists on using the speaker for most of his phone conversations, oblivious to how annoying it is to other people.
The other day, he was on the phone and the two girls in my department were chatting and laughing. He had to close his door to continue his conversation. That must count as some kind of revenge.

Before we went over to Leeds for the festival, we dropped most of our hamsters off in Manchester, for some friends to look after. When we went back to collect them on monday, there seemed to be 2 more which I'm sure weren't ours.

I'm sure Emma had been doing some behind the scenes scheming and as a result, we now have 2 Campbells Hamsters, called Vande and Graaff. They are almost identical, but Vande is slightly podgier and Graaff has a very tiny nick in his ear.

They are very fast and active, and it's been very difficult to get photos of them both facing the camera.

We got back from the Leeds Festival last night. I'll post some photos and comments when I get time - probably back-dated to when things actually happened.

Update:
Comments and photos now uploaded.

We've walked past this place lots of time but had been put off by the loud music coming through the front doors. It was much quieter this time so we ventured inside.

The restaurant isn't licenced but they have an extensive range of soft drinks, including freshly made fruit smoothies. We shared a mozarella and balsamic onion garlic bread starter, which was very good with lots of cheese stuffed inside. We then took advantage of their mid-week £4.99 pasta and pizza offer, and had a couple of 12" pizzas (wood fried according to the sign outside) and a penne pasta dish.

At full price, most main courses are around £7 each, which is good value. When the £5 offer is running, they become amazing value for money. An optional 10% service charge is added to the bill, but as the food was great and the service was friendly, we had no objection to paying it. This was in stark contrast to MYO where they added a compulsory service charge and illegally tried to force us to pay it. As a result we decided to never return to MYO but we're certainly going back to Aqua in the future.

They have a website which lists their menu and prices: www.aqua-food-mood.co.uk

Highlights

• Smashing Pumpkins playing an acoustic version of 1979
• Nine Inch Nails ending their set with a version of Hurt which borrowed from both their own and the Johnny Cash version.
• Simon Amstell and Ed Byrne at the Alternative Tent
• Hypnodog
• The weather - brilliantly sunny most days with no rain!
• The milkshake stalls in the main arena - the chocolate hobnob milkshake was great
• After we'd packed our tent away on the monday, finding a couple of abandoned unopened cases of beer nearby
• Being allowed campfires - they were banned last time I went, in 2005. It was good to sit around the fire at night, chatting with our neighbours and enjoying a beer or two
• Gogol Bordello on the main stage. Described as Gypsy Punk, they were good festival material
• The start of the Red Hot Chili Peppers act when it looked like they were going to be good

Disappointments

• The end of the Chilis when the singer walked off and the rest of the band jammed an instrumental for ages before leaving. There was no big finale, the concert just fizzled out, leaving people feeling disappointed with a sense of anticlimax.
• The cost of drink in the main arena - no way were we going to pay £3.20 for a tasteless pint of Carling. Thankfully the 'Wine Bar' had 500ml bottles for £6.50, which wasn't cheap but was more acceptable.
• The Enemy coming on stage to the tune of Too Much Too Young, pretending they are the new Specials, but the lead singer came across as some sort of moron knob-head who insists on using f**k as every other word.

There were also the now obligatory trouble-makers on the sunday night. Thankfully there was little violence and no actual rioting, but a lot of peoples tents got burned. We acquired a few refugees as neighbours, who managed to salvage a couple of their tents and carried them halfway across the site to safety.

Here is a selection of photographs from this years Leeds Festival.  

Click on the thumbnail to view the image

The Birmingham German Winefest started today, in Victoria Square. There are stalls selling German food and drink, with wines from most parts of the country. Unlike the rubbish sold in most supermarkets, most of this isn't sweet Liebfraumilch but proper stuff, with a wide range of whites (dry to sweet), reds, rose and sparkling wine.

I've never tried a german sparkling wine before so I bought a bottle of medium-dry sparkling reisling. It was sweeter than I am used to (mainly the excellent but very dry Lindaur) but it was impressive stuff. It's a mystery why supermarkets can't sell stuff like this. It was better than most Cava wines.

I almost forgot about this years Perseid Meteors. It was about 11pm when I remembered. I had to get up early for work in the morning so I couldn't really stay out too late but we went into the back garden for a few minutes, long enough for us to see a couple of bright meteors streak through the sky.

We've been working on this jigsaw for about a week now, doing an hour or so each evening. We finally finished it today.

It's a National Geographic jigsaw, showing the ancient city of Petra. The reason it took so long was because most of its 1000 pieces are almost identical looking bits of stone.

The photos are from the Festival of History, at Kelmarsh Hall. The event takes place over 2 days (today and tomorrow) and celebrates nearly 2000 years of British history, from the Romans to the Second World War. Military events are a large part of the event, but as they make the more spectacular reconstructions, that's no surprise.

The 1st World War air display was almost worth the cost of entry on its own. Other events included Jousting, artillary demonstrations and battle re-enactments.  

Click on the thumbnail to view the image

It's been almost a year since I wrote about starting on a psoriasis-friendly diet. It hasn't completely eradicated it but is seems to have helped a bit.

I did a bit more reading on-line and found various lists of suspect foods, which often included:

• Tomatoes
• Peppers
• Aubergines
• Potatoes
• Caffeine
• Alcohol

There were also some foods which were recommended, such as dried fruits or oily fish.

An awful lot of this information seems to have originally come from an American psychic called Edgar Cayce who, according to an article in Fortean Times magazine, would often go into a trance and diagnose illnesses or suggest cures. His suggestions have been repeated over the years and regularly features in advice on reducing the symptoms of psoriasis. Normally I'd be sceptical but there is a lot of anecdotal evidence that it has some effect.

I initially stopped eating tomatoes and drinking red wine. I also started taking probiotic and omega-3/fish-oil supplements daily. As the psoriasis was mainly on my scalp I'd been keeping my hair short, but recently started having it cut even shorter (only no. 8 on the hair clippers but that's still shorter than I like it).

With all that going on it's hard to tell what has had the greatest effect but it has definitely got slightly better. It hasn't gone away but it isn't as thick on my scalp and areas of 'normal' skin have started to appear by my hairline. Cutting out the various prohibited foods helped but didn't stop it so I've returned to eating them but only in moderation. I've since started drinking squash drinks with red berries in, and having small amounts of tomatoes about every other week, and probably a bottle of red wine once per month. Other foods such as aubergines and potatoes are easier to avoid (I always have rice or pasta instead of chips).

I've been drinking green tea for a number of years, but increased my consumption because of anecdotal evidence of it being useful. This has since been confirmed by researchers. Sadly, I've not noticed any improvement through drinking it.

The psoriasis comes and goes in cycles - I'm not sure whether the waxing and waning is anything to do with diet. The weather may have some effect - ultra-violet light is known to help. I keep my hair short to let more light get to my scalp. As long as I don't let it get too thick, it doesn't cause many problems.

Psyche was already a year old when we got him, in august last year. He was a larger than average Roborovski - at the time, he was the size of a smallish Winter White hamster. As he got older, he seemed to shrink - it's fairly common for them to get quite skinny as they age. It wasn't a lack of food - we would often see him eating. The last time I saw him was last night and he was nibbling at a dog biscuit.

He was very active and quick, although we did notice he was getting a bit unsteady and would slide rather than walk down the ramps in the cage. We knew he was old and didn't have long left, but it was still a surprise when we found him dead this morning. He'd been looking old and frail for a couple of months but he didn't seem ill.

We hope that Redrum is ok on his own, now he no longer has his 'Uncle Stinky'. Poor old Psyche, aka Stinky-Pinks, aka Mr Pinky, aka Mr Pinklestein. We're slowly running out of 'little old man' hamsters. We've still got Reggie, who is ancient at 26 months and has been looking like a little old man for most of his life.

Psyche (on the left) and Redrum (on the right)

Due to a Security Alert, this train will not be stopping at Birmingham International

No explanation was given. Our train had stopped just short of the station before the announcement was made. When we got to New Street, I noticed that the next train to International had been cancelled. There was also an announcement saying that the next train to London Euston (which normally stops at International) would not be stopping there.

I don't know what happened there - I hope it was nothing serious, just something like accidentally unattended luggage.

Update: 09:15
The National Rail Enquiries web site has the following announcement: Train services on all routes via Birmingham International are being disrupted due to a security alert. Birmingham International is currently evacuated and train services are currently unable to call at this station

Update: 10:20
Found this:

BIRMINGHAM International train station has been evacuated this morning following reports of a suspect package.

British Transport Police ordered the station's operator Virgin Trains to close the building at 8.48am.
No trains are stopping at the station, although they are still able to pass through.

A spokesperson for British Transport Police said: "We can confirm that Birmingham International railway station is currently evacuated.

"Officers are at the scene following reports of a suspicious item and a person is helping us with our enquiries.

"Trains are continuing to operate through the station."

There was also news about this on the BBC website.

I want to eat at the Zesty Fork restaurant. I've seen the advert for it a dozen or more times. It's there every time a newspaper or magazine reviews or discusses the film.

The sign is only on screen for a fraction of a second - one of many "blink and you'll miss it" jokes in the film.

The writers probably worked hard coming up with some scenes or clever in-jokes. Unfortunately for them, the bit most people will remember is Homer holding the pig up to the ceiling, singing Spider-pig Spider-pig, does whatever a Spider-pig does....

This is a 'new' Persian restaurant Far Gosford Street. It's been open for a while now but this was our first visit.

It was fairly quiet when we went in. The proprietor greeted us and described the menu, recommending a few dishes. For our first course, Emma and I decided to stick to what we knew, and had Falafel and Halloumi. Neither was particularly Persian but both were good. The falafel was crunchy and doughnut shaped, and was coated with sesame seeds, which gave it some extra taste and texture. Stuart had lamb and mushrooms.

The main courses were mostly between £7-10, including rice. Slow cooked or stewed meats featured prominently. I decided to choose the proprietors recommendation, which was lamb cooked in a sauce with spices and a dried lime. We were brought a lime to examine, sniff and taste. It was unusual, with a more delicate flavour than I expected. Emma chose chicken legs which had been cooked in some kind of flavoured liquid or stock. A bowl of this cooking liquor was provided as sauce to go with the meal. Stuart chose one of the more expensive meals at £11, but it did consist of 2 different types of steak.

Emma and I were too full for dessert, but Stuart had Baklava. He seemed to enjoy it, eating it all without giving us a taste, although we'd had it before elsewhere.

The food was tasty, the service was friendly. I think this is another restaurant to re-visit, to further explore their menu.

If you know where to look, Coventry has some great restaurants.

I've finally got to the end of the final Harry Potter book. It took me 4 days because I only had an hour or 2 each day, on the train or in the evenings, to read it.

A few thoughts:

• The early books were a bit childish. Thankfully the later ones were more grown up.
• What has J K Rowling got against the North of England? She names a couple of evil characters after Northern towns (Warrington, the Slytherin chaser in the earlier books, and Runcorn, a fairly nasty man from the Ministry in the last book). Also, do all Hogwarts students live in London? There is only ever mention of the train leaving from Kings Cross.

Possibly a few spoilers below...
A few thoughts about the final book:

• How did Neville get the Sword of Gryffindor? He was wearing the Sorting Hat at the time, and the sword had come out of the hat for Harry in the 2nd book. But when that happened for Harry, the sword was still in Hogwarts. When it happened for Neville, the sword had been taken by Griphook and its whereabouts were presumably unknown. Are we simply to assume that the hat could magically bring the sword into the school grounds?
• I was disappointed that Harry finally defeated Voldemort with the Expelliarmus spell. I at least expected him to counter with an Avada Kedavra of his own. At least he used the Cruciatus curse on one of the Carrows so he wasn't all goody-goody in the book.
• A few comparisons with other things:
  Lord of the Rings: A group of friends travelling around the countryside, trying to destroy a magical object. Also the presence of giant spiders.
• Jesus: A baby who would grow up to be our saviour. Although unlike Herod, at least Voldemort knew who to target, instead of killing all children.
• Nazis: Luna Lovegood's father wore the symbol of the Deathly Hallows - an ancient symbol which had been commandeered by evil (in the guise of Grindlewald)

I will probably re-read the book to make sure I haven't missed anything important.

I've opened an Explorer window to a directory with several thousand files in it. I need to find a particular group of files so I click on 'Search' and tell it to search for files with a particular set of numbers in the filename.

Now Windows already has all the file names because it has displayed them in the directory window. You would expect any decent program do be able to do this search in a millionth of a second and filter the directory listing to show the files. After all, it already knows the file names and I told it only to look in the one directory.

After a minute or so, the useless pile of crap is still searching. I ended up stopping it and looking for the files myself, which was much quicker. I would like to know what Windows XP was actually doing during that minute - it could have indexed the whole drive in that time.

This was a networked drive with a very deep directory structure so I couldn't have easily navigated to it in the command prompt. And I was using a company computer so I couldn't install anything like the useful 'Open Command Prompt Here' powertool from Microsoft themselves. How hard would it have been for them to put some kind of 'filter filenames' option in Explorer? Something like the 'select files' command in WinZip, which allows wildcards to let you specify which files you want.

What we really need is something that combines the bits of windows which work with the bits of linux which are better... and probably end up with something like Mac OSX.

According to a local news story, adults in Coventry know more about healthy eating than adults in other cities.

Seventy-five per cent of parents in the city understand about the recommended five-a-day fruit and veg portions, compared to just 60 per cent in Manchester and Liverpool, and 67 per cent in London.

Only nine per cent of Coventry parents could not name anything that counts as one healthy portion.

I'm sure the ignorant 9% must shop in our local ASDA, where the cake and biscuit aisles are twice the length of the fruit and veg aisles. But seriously, how could a so-called 'grown up' not be able to name a piece of fruit? Have they not heard of an apple? a banana? an orange? It's a miracle we aren't in the middle of a scurvy or rickets crisis.

Recently I've been finding it ridiculously easy to eat 5 portions of fruit during the day. A glass of juice, a banana, a few pieced of dried fruit, and that's it. Whenever Julian Graves have their half price offers, I stock up with assorted packets of dried fruit. 2 dried figs, 3 dried apricots, 5 prunes: not the start of the 12 fruits of Christmas but each counts towards the 5 portions per day.

I think we should be issued with Bullshit Bingo cards in work.

Within the first 5 minutes in work, I was confronted with an email informing me:

The key objectives were to raise the bar in the design of our marketing collateral

You'd be well on the way to a full house by lunchtime...

Archie the hamster died overnight. He had been looking old for a while. For the last couple of days, each time we left the house we feared the worse when we got home. He had been getting more unsteady when he walked, and sometimes had difficulty opening his eyes. Thankfully he didn't seem to be in pain, he was just getting weaker.

It was my company Summer Do in Birmingham tonight. Emma was supposed to be meeting me at the office but she was running late. It had been raining all day and the railway lines were flooded. No trains were leaving Coventry station but the ticket offices were still happily selling tickets to people. They weren't going to put on a rail replacement bus because they claimed the flooding wasn't their fault.

Emma eventually turned up 2½ hours later, having taken the bus instead. She said she wouldn't have bothered but I'd already paid in advance. We stayed for a few drinks and the buffet, to make sure we got our moneys worth.

We didn't know whether the trains would be running properly by the time we were ready to go home, so we thought it would be safer to leave early. We were in luck and there was a train ready to leave when we got to New St.

We got back to Coventry before midnight. Emma had pre-ordered the Harry Potter book from Waterstones and we had to wait for the shop to open. She decided not to read the book there an then, but to wait until morning.

Will 2007 be the year when Britain failed to have a summer? June started well, with the local weather station recording 12 successive dry days. Things rapidly went downhill with the rest of the month recording 18 successive days of rain.

Many parts of the country have been suffering flooding but things seem to be improving a little. As I write, it's actually quite warm outside. I've managed to go 2 days without being rained on, but I don't think it will last. Rain is forecast again for tomorrow.

Update:
10pm - got rained on while leaving the Wing Wah restaurant.

For the last couple of weeks we've been looking after 2 syrian hamsters, called Toffee and Mocha. Their original owner was a student who was returning to Singapore. She had found a new owner but needed someone to look after them in the meantime.

I was trying to take a photo of Mocha (which is difficult because she's a very dark brown colour and she sometimes disappears into the shadows) but she wouldn't keep still. Emma tried feeding her which helped a bit, she (Mocha) would sit still and eat. This worked fine until Emma gave her a monkey nut. She pouched it whole, instead of opening it and eating it. The nut in its case, in her cheek pouches, would rattle every time she walked. We had to resist the temptation to pick her up and gently shake her to hear the rattling.

Toffee

Mocha, with the soon to be pouched monkey nut.

It had been raining overnight so we were expecting things to be a bit soggier on the sunday. Yesterday had been really sunny and the local radio had reports of huge queues of traffic leading to the park. Today was much quieter, no queues, easy parking. The downside was a muddy field.

Most of the acts who perform in the main arena do shows on both saturday and sunday. While we were there, there was a comedy gymnastics troupe, a daredevil/stunts/escapology family, and the obligatory falconry display.

As well as performing acts, there were tents with local history/crafts/environmental societies hawking their wares. Everyone seemed pleased to engage you in conversation or hand out leaflets to promote their cause.

The final act we saw before leaving was what can only be described as a 'stand up painter'. When we arrived he was half way through a painting of Robbie Williams, while Let me entertain you blasted out of the speakers. His next painting was to the tune of two Elvis songs but initially I thought 'Sorry Rolf, I can't tell what it is yet' before I suddenly realised he was painting it upside down. That made it much more impressive.

We went tonight to watch some of the live music. There was a huge crowd around the tent where local band The Enemy were performing so we wandered off to the Cider tent for a pint before going back and squeezing our way through the crowd.

The band seem to be the latest in a line of above average bands to be hyped above their level of competence. They're not bad but don't seem to be much better than a lot of other bands around. Towards the end of their set, they started playing one song and I thought it was a cover of Going Underground by The Jam. As the song continued I thought it was still a cover but they had changed the words. Then I realised it was the song their album (We'll live and die in These Towns) gets its title from.

There was a big gap before the next band came on so we had a walk around the festival site. In the coin arcade, a load of 10p coins fell out of one of the 'waterfall' machines as we walked past, no-one was touching it so they must have been precariously balanced. I did the honest thing and use the change machines to turn them into 2ps and fed them back into various other games.

The headline act were the Super Furry Animals. We'd seen them before at the Leeds Festival and they were good on both occasions.

The Godiva Festival Parade started in the city centre and slowly made its way towards the War Memorial Park. These photos were taken in Trinity Street, near the Wetherspoons.

We've found out who has been eating the garden - as we suspected it was the slugs. Last night I put some slug pellets around the plants. Tonight I went out to water the garden and there were a lot of dead-looking slugs in the vicinity. Hopefully the rest of the herbs and vegetables will survive.

I am currently reading Where Did It All Go Right?, by Andrew Collins. The broadcaster and journalist tries to counter the fashion for 'miserable childhood' autobiographies with this book, where he describes growing up in a fairly normal family in Northampton in the 70s.

The book is effectively a time capsule of that decade, with chapters alternating between describing aspects of his home life (sometimes in great detail), and extracts from his diaries. He's a few years older than me so some of the TV and music was different to my childhood, but some aspects were painfully familiar.

The chapter called Supermousse covered food in the 70s and was an absolute gem. He came to the conclusion that, although kids eat rubbish today, things weren't actually that much better back then. He presented extracts from his diary describing meals, and most of it was out of packets or tins. Pasta and rice were non-existent, beans and chips were ubiquitous. A lot of this was similar to my own recollections. Vegetables did mostly consist of carrots and peas (with sprouts at Christmas of course). In our family, Cauliflower Cheese made an appearance after I discovered it at my Aunt and Uncles wedding and ate several platefuls.

Potatoes were the main bulk, usually chips or mashed, or sometimes mashed then fried - we sometimes had 'Bubble and Squeak' if there was leftover cabbage. One thing people did do better in the 70s was re-use leftover or spare food, probably because it was more expensive in real terms than today.

He mentions the lack of curries, or anything rice based really, but no mention of rice pudding. In the book, pasta was largely confined to tins of spaghetti, but at least we had Macaroni Cheese, usually out of a tin but I remember my mum making it on occasion, and thinking it took an awfully long time. The home made cheese sauce was better than the tinned variety though.

The 70s was a decade full of terrible food, but through no fault of the people living through it. Most people had never encountered foreign food, most people had never been abroad and even those who had were largely wary of the strange foods on offer. People weren't used to experimenting with food. Ingredients which are common now were a rarity back then - I don't remember seeing peppers, aubergines or courgettes as a child (recently in Asda, we saw Courgettes on the shelf under 'Exotic Veg' - I hope that was a mistake and they don't still consider such a common vegetable as exotic. But this was Asda so you never know.)

Finally a weekend without rain. Today we lifted up some flagstones to expose the soil underneath, so we could plant out the courgettes which were still in tubs. We were surprised to find that there were only 4-5 inches of soil underneath before we hit concrete. We will have to limit ourselves to growing things that don't need much root depth.

Something has been eating our herbs. The Tarragon has completely gone, and there isn't much Parsley left. The Marigolds have also been eaten. Our other herbs (Sage, Oregano and Thyme) were ok, as were the other flowers. We think it may have been slugs but the rain will have washed away any trails. We've added Slug Pellets to our shopping list.

Update 08/07/07:
Not quite a weekend without rain. Sunday started off sunny but it started raining by late afternoon.

Earlier this week, Apple Computers advertised a hard drive at about one tenth it's intended price. As you would expect, a lot of people placed orders. Apple realised their mistake and decided to change the orders without telling anyone.

The original order said:

Iomega 1TB Value Series Hard Drive with USB 2.0 Interface
TM258ZM/A £16.98 1 £16.98

but a few days later they strangely changed to:

DYMO LABELWRITER LARGE ADDRESS LABEL-ZML
TM258ZM/A £1.00 1 £1.00

The product code was the same but the price and description had changed. There was nothing on the page to explain what was happening. A phone call to the Apple Store revealed that they admitted their mistake and were cancelling the orders. It was a whole day before an email was received explaining the situation, in fairly patronising terms:

Dear Apple Store Customer,

We regret to inform you that your recent order for the Iomega 1TB Value Series Hard Drive. Which you placed on the online Apple Store has not been accepted.

Due to a temporary inaccurate pricing issue on the store, the price of the product was listed incorrectly as £19.95. Whereas the correct online Apple Store price is £199.95 i.e. the listed price was approximately 10% of the correct price.

We would like to draw your attention to clauses 2.4 and 2.5 of the Apple Online Store Terms and Conditions under which if Apple cannot accept your Order, we will contact you.

Furthermore, we would like to draw your attention to clause 2.6 of the Apple Online Store Terms and Conditions under which Apple reserves the right to cancel your order in case of a price error on the Apple Online Store.

We understand the inconvenience that this pricing inaccuracy may have caused you, and we sincerely apologize.

Kind Regards,

The Apple Store

The wording of the T&Cs was obviously chosen to allow them to weasel out of any such mistakes - they must have learnt from the mistakes of others, such as when Argos advertised a £300 television for £3. Apple aren't breaking any laws but they probably won't win any new friends this way. I'm not suggesting they should honour all the orders and sell the hard drives at such a giveaway price, but some other goodwill gesture would have been better than just an apology which was worded to make the customer sound like they were being told off.

The weather has been terrible for at least a month. June was one of the wettest since records began. I don't think we've gone more than a few days without rain. My umbrella has certainly had more use in the last month than it did all winter. Hopefully we should be getting a summer soon.

We were surprised at the length of the queue when we got to the cinema. I expect a lot of people were taking advantage of the Orange Wednesday offer where you get 2 tickets for the price of 1 using an Orange mobile phone, but the queue was still ridiculous. It was certainly the longest I've ever seen at the Skydome, curving and snaking around the foyer until it was almost in the car park. It took us about 40 minutes to get to the front and buy our tickets.

It wasn't too busy in the film itself - I don't know what films everyone else was watching but thankfully they weren't all in with us.

The film itself has had some fairly indifferent reviews but I don't think it really deserved them. The humour might not be so original any more but the film was still funny. It took a while to really get started though but it got quite funny towards the end, and if a film ends well then you tend to think of it as a better film. I think that's what earned Casablanca its classic status anyway. The 3rd Shrek film certainly isn't a classic but it's funny and worth watching.

Manchester has changed an awful lot since I lived there, back in the early 90s. It's changed a lot in the couple of years since I last visited. So many new buildings and developments have sprung up around the city centre.

The actual City Centre is much larger than when I lived there. The redevelopment around the Northern Quarter has made it part of the centre, making the area around the Cathedral more accessible and a complete change from how it was 15 years ago when most of the buildings were either offices, grotty shops or derelict.

Today was spent pretending to be a tourist in a city which used to be home but now seemed foreign to me. So much has changed that I decided to explore it as a tourist would. I started off at the GMEX (now renamed Manchester Central but all the signs still point to GMEX). The Manchester International Festival started yesterday, and the Festival Pavilion is there, but there seems to be nothing much happening during the day. At lunchtime they had a string quartet playing, but I didn't stay because the drinks were a bit overpriced for my liking - over £3 for a beer is just not the Manchester I want to know.

The aforementioned Northern Quarter was home to a Big Wheel. It's also home to Sinclair's Oyster Bar which is a great pub with cheap Manchester prices - roughly half those charged in the pavilion. Next door to it is The Wellington, which was famously moved a hundred yards or so after the IRA bomb.

I walked down Deansgate and noticed that the whole street now seems to be shops, bars and restaurants. 15 years ago, there was nothing worth seeing once you started to venture much further south than St Anne's Square.
I visited the John Rylands Library for the first time. Despite having been a student in the city and having visited the 'new' John Rylands Library on campus many times, I had never actually been in the 'original' library. The building was designed to resemble a church, and is well worth a visit.

I continued on to the Roman Fort of Mamucium. There isn't much of the original fort on show but some towers and bits of wall have been reconstructed.

While in the Castlefields area I visited the Museum of Science and Industry. The last time I was here was in 1990 and the place is completely unrecognisable. It's now split into 5 buildings, each showing a different aspect of science, with a Manchester emphasis wherever possible.

The Underground Manchester exhibit covers a lot of the history of the City which emphasis on sanitation or otherwise. The photo above shows a stretch of sewer.

My final bit of tourism was to visit the Art Gallery on Mosely Street. I must have walked past it hundreds of times but never gone in. It was an interesting diversion and they had a painting (The Sirens and Ulysses) which you could watch being restored.

My cup of coffee farted and everyone turned round and stared. I have one of those 'cafetiere' cups which takes filter coffee, and the rubber seal around the filter plunger is getting a bit old and sometimes makes a farty noise. I felt the need to explain to everyone that it was the cup and not me.

I was reading the Metro newspaper on my way to work this morning when I noticed a voucher for a 99p Mocha 'Today at your station'. The voucher expiry date was 10th June 2007, so it looks like the offer is open to Time Lords only, which is discrimination and should be illegal.

There was a list of stations where the voucher was valid. ALL IN LONDON! Since when have any of those been 'my station', especially because I was reading the Midlands edition of the paper on the Coventry to Birmingham train. So get your Tardis over to London and get your cheap cup of coffee.

My arms are still aching today. I'm not sure whether it was from playing the Nintendo Wii at the weekend, or whether it was from carrying the bag of gravel from the shop to the car.

I was on the platform at New Street station, standing next to my train waiting for the doors to open. Some people walked past with bin bags tied around their legs as makeshift waterproof leggings. All I can assume is that they were on their way home from the mudbath which was this years Glastonbury Festival.

Cheaper than using proper Panini bread and a Panini toaster. This needs the part-baked baguettes from any supermarket, and a George Foreman grill.

If it's a long baguette (or a small George), the bread may need cutting in half to fit. Slice the bread horizontally lengthways and then add typical Panini filling, such as ham, tuna, chicken, anything suitable as long as it's topped with cheese to hold everything together.

The important thing is not to bake the baguette first - it will cook in the grill. Press the lid down so it flattens the bread slightly - this will make it look more like a proper panini.

It shouldn't rain this much in June. I was going to do some gardening today - our back garden is all flagged and I was going to lift up 2 rows of flagstones and dig it over, ready to plant the flowers, herbs and vegetables which are currently in pots. As I said, it was raining so I was stuck inside. I decided to paint he hallway instead.

We stripped the wallpaper from the walls a couple of months ago but never got around to repainting. Last week I washed the walls down with sugar soap, and intended to get the walls painted before my parents visited last weekend, but we didn't have time.

I only managed to get one coat of paint up, but it looks so much better than the bare plaster. Our aim now is to get the rest of the downstairs decorated before Christmas, because eating Christmas Dinner from plates balanced on your knees isn't ideal.

Earlier this year, a sculpture was erected in the middle of a roundabout in Stratford-upon-Avon. It depicts an armillary, which apparently is some kind of ancient astronomical tool.

For some reason, this has sent the residents of Stratford into an apoplexy, with people shouting abuse at it and holding a protest at the site.

For Christ's sake, it's only a sculpture. It's not obscene or pornographic or anything which should warrant such vitriol. The worst it could do is liven up a dull roundabout. Get a sense of perspective. If that's the worst thing happening in Stratford at the moment, then you are a very lucky town indeed. Otherwise, you are all a sad bunch of bastards and you should get a life.

I remembered reading a news story recently about how local councils plan to introduce 'Bin Police' to enforce strict recycling policies and to stop people from throwing away recyclable material. I was wondering how such a policy could be enforceable when around here, people regularly throw rubbish into our bin. It happened again this morning when someone had moved our bin a few yards down the road and filled it with cardboard.

Funnily enough, when I tried to check a reference for the 'bin police' story, the only mention I could find was the new newspaper where I originally read it, the good old Daily Mail. Now I'm not too sure about the veracity of the story. You can sum up a typical issue of the Mail as follows:

OUTRAGE FOREIGNERS OUTRAGE LABOUR GOVERNMENT OUTRAGE IMMIGRANTS OUTRAGE RESTRICTIVE LAWS OUTRAGE ERRODING CIVIL LIBERTIES OUTRAGE DESTROYING OUR WAY OF LIFE OUTRAGE

displaying a journalistic flair for working itself up in a lather with very little regard for any actual facts. So I think I'll take the story with a pinch of salt.

On the train to work this morning, it seemed to be braking quite hard between Birmingham International and Marston Green. The train came to a shuddering halt just at the end of the platform at Matston Green. It sat there for about a minute then an announcement came on the tannoy: we apologise for the delay while we try to open the doors.

Still nothing happened then the train started to reverse back into the station. It looks like the driver wasn't paying attention and either forgot we were stopping there or forgot to brake in time.

Summer's here and there's crap on the telly. Our video recorder died last night while I was trying to find a tape to record The Butterfly Effect. In the end we stayed up to watch it - odd film. I gave it 7/10 on IMDB.

Last night's episode of Dr Who was a good one, but a little bit scary. I'm going to be a bit wary of statues from now on.

Desperate Housewives and Ugly Betty have both finished so there's nothing to watch on a wednesday night and not much on a friday. Thursday is looking like the best night for tv - the second series of My Name is Earl and House are both on.

I'm so glad we've got a decent collection of TV Series on DVD to watch. Otherwise we'd have go to the pub or read a book or something like that.

Good old Mail on Sunday, carrying the baton of outrage... After yesterdays story about people not knowing the origins of foodstuffs, we now get a story about the new 'Whole Foods Market' supermarket which has opened in London. I really wasn't expecting two completely different stories highlighting food ignorance and apathy in Britain.

To test out the new shop, they sent two people along:
Food writer Tom Parker Bowles, and the woman who shot to fame by shoving burgers through the school railings during the Jamie Oliver school dinners campaign. She claims to be championing freedom of choice when she really seems to mean freedom to feed unhealthy crap to their kids, freedom to fail to educate them about healthy food, freedom to encourage bad eating habits which will eventually kill them

There were some good quotes from her in the article. She seemed puzzled as to why more than one cheese existed, having only ever bought cheddar herself:

As for all those goat's cheeses, you must be kidding. Who would want to eat something that smelt of goat?

Hmmm. When even chavs-choice supermarket Asda manages to sell goat's cheese, how can someone who shops at Morrison's be so sceptical of it. I don't think Goat's cheese smells of goat - that's like saying ordinary cheese smells of cow. I don't know if she's been mis-quoted by the paper but when I read that I thought: 'what a moron'.

Further down the article she expressed incredulity that anyone would buy bread with fruit or vegetables in. Has she never heard of a fruit loaf? or bread with onions in? (I was going to mention olive bread but that's obviously foreign muck and she wouldn't be interested in that)

I won't say much about Tom Parker Bowles experience in the shop, suffice to say he seemed to drool over most of the specialist foods and liked the place.

There is a story in today's Daily Mail which reports how most adults have no idea where food comes from. According to the article, adults were asked if they knew whether the ingredients used to produce certain foods could be produced in Britain.

22% of adults didn't realise that sausages and bacon could be made from 'ingredients' produced in Britain.
One third didn't know that the same was true for omelettes. The article didn't elaborate whether they knew that omelettes were made from eggs or not. According to a similar study of children, which was also mentioned in the article, bacon comes from sheep and cows lay eggs.

OK, this was in the Daily Mail which is famous for it's We're going to Hell in a hand cart school of journalism but it's frightening to think that there are so many stupid adults in the country. Actually, a quick stroll around the streets near here would let you know that there are a lot of stupid people around, but even stupid people should know where bacon comes from.

I don't really have time for a full review but it was a good film despite its 3 hour running time. I had to nip out at the start because we forgot to validate our parking on the way in and we didn't know if there would be anyone at the desk on our way out.

The film was a good balance of comedy, surreal and serious (well as serious as a supernatural pirate caper can be). The visual style was more impressive than the previous ones with some impressively shot sequences, such as when the Black Pearl was in the middle of the salt flats. The sequence which followed was like a bizarre version of Fitzcarraldo.

I don't usually review trailers but the film was preceded by the trailer for the Transformers film. It was like a psychotic version of the Citroen advert where the car turns into an ice skater. I know the advert borrowed from the original Transformers idea but seeing a sequence from the film where a car/robot skates along, it was just too similar to the advert. We were also treated to the proud boast that it was a Michael Bay film. That's not a phrase to make me rush eagerly to the cinema.

I was about 10 minutes early getting to work this morning, ironically because the trains were running late. I managed to get onto the train which normally runs about 15 minutes before mine, which turned up at the station just as I was crossing the bridge to the platform.

After a week of terrible weather and almost constant rain, we decided that if it was decent at the weekend we would go out somewhere. We chose two more National Trust houses.

First, Upton House. The house itself was a bit disappointing, being more like an art gallery than a residence. You didn't really get a feel for what it would have been like to live there. The grounds were better, the gardens were quite extensive and well landscaped with terraces and lakes.

The second house was Farnbrough Hall. The house was smaller but is still lived in so it's only open for a few days each week. The grounds were quite hilly so there was plenty of good exercise to be found walking to the end to view the Obilisk, along with various other buildings and follies along the way. We also saw a deer in the woodland walk - it bounded off as soon as it spotted us.  

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I like a good mystery, such as the perennial favourite 'What train am I on?' and the related 'What platform is my train on?'

Tonight they had moved my train to platform 1, which you can't get from the side entrance of New Street Station, so I had to walk along the platform, up the stairs to the central concourse, then down the steps to the platform itself. The screen there still announced the imminent departure of a different train, and the platform was full of people waiting for that train til the tannoy announced that it had been moved to yet another platform.

I've been on my own all weekend - Emma has been away since Thursday at some University related thing, but she's due back later this afternoon. All I've done really is lounge around watching videos or listening to music, with the occasional bit of gardening (well, re-potting some plants so the roots have more soil). I walked into town yesterday morning but it's been raining almost constantly since yesterday afternoon. I was in the garden when I felt a few spots of rain so I managed to bring the laundry in before it got wet again.

It looks like it's going to be another wet bank holiday weekend, unless some miracle happens and the weather improves tomorrow.

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icCoventry has a news story about the latest Lonely Planet guide to the UK which criticises Coventry and it's overabundance of concrete.

The ring road comes in for some criticism and granted, it's not pretty to look at and not fun to drive on (confusing junctions where you have to pull off to stay on the ring road, mostly grade-separated junctions but with one roundabout thrown in for extra confusion). Its big advantage over other ring roads in other towns is the separation - traffic using it is kept away from traffic in the city centre.

The complaint about the concrete city centre is probably fair. The area around the fountain in the precinct is a typical ugly town centre shopping area. The tower where Smithford Way meets Corporation Street is very pedestrian unfriendly, blocking the middle of the "road".

The book deservedly praises the Cathedral and the Transport Museum. The area around the Museum (including the Whittle Arches and Lady Herbert's Garden) is how a modern city centre should look. There are still a lot of medieval buildings in the centre but they are mostly hidden away which means the first impression is of 'modern' buildings.

Heading outside the path of the old town walls, you get the two medieval streets which lead away from the city. Spon Street has been 'prettified' and should be on any tourist's itinerary. At the opposite end, Far Gosford Street is much more run down. Both are home to a wide selection of pubs and restaurants.

I'm not sure whether I'm trying to defend Coventry here. The city has been my home for nearly 3 years now, and it certainly isn't perfect. There are many plans to redevelop a lot of the uglier parts of the centre so Coventry may eventually become a city to be proud of.

I think someone has stolen the paper recycling box from our front yard. When I got home tonight I was going to bring it into the house to fill, ready for collection tomorrow. It was only then that I noticed it was missing so I don't know when it was taken. I expect it was just some cheeky bastard wanting a free storage tub rather than someone actually wanting to recycle. Hardly anyone in our street bothers putting the boxes out. Most of them are in front yards, collecting either rainwater or rubbish.

It wasn't the ideal day to be stuck in a hot car with the windows wound up. It was very warm and having the blower on full didn't cool the car down much - air conditioning would have been so welcome. Thankfully we only had to do this whilst in the 'dangerous animal' enclosures, we could have the windows open everywhere else.

There are no monkeys at this park so we thought we'd be safe from animals wanting to wreck the car. We didn't expect a zebra to try to eat the wing mirror. Thankfully it didn't do any damage.

When looking at animals starts to wear a bit thin, there's the fun fair with assorted rides, roller coasters and the crappiest slowest dodgems I've ever been on.

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At the weekend, we were in Northampton visiting some baby Roborovski Hamsters. We met their owners first (Alison and Doug, some of our hamster-owning friends) before driving over to their house to poke the babies. We took 2 of them home with us and they are living happily with Psyche. At the moment we're not sure of their gender - if they turn out to be female we may have to move them out before he gets any ideas.
 

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I was listening to the radio, moving through the stations trying to find something I wanted to listen to. I had to turn it off after hearing the Billy Joel song River of Dreams twice on different staions. I hadn't heard the song for ages - I don't dislike it but I think once per half hour is enough for me.

I mentioned this to 'Jack' on MSN messenger and she had the song stuck in her head for ages afterwards.

Europe seems to have suffered a collective sense of humour failure tonight. The contest was won by Serbia with a fairly dreary ballad, whereas the Ukraine deserved better but only came second.

Apart from the Ukraine (who benefited from the Eastern Bloc policy of voting for friends and neighbours), no other novelty act scored well. France should have scored better than they did - the singer jogging around the stage with a toy cat around his neck had to be worth something. Scooch did surprisingly badly - we would have been better with Pif Paf Pof.

The swedish song sounded very familiar but I can't work out what it reminded me of.

According to NewsBiscuit, Tony Blair decided that Parliament should move to Aberystwyth.

Quoth the article:

Tony Blair's final act as Prime Minister was billed as a huge boost for the regions today, when he announced that the government of the United Kingdom, would henceforth be re-located in the Welsh coastal town of Aberystwyth.

Theo the hamster died today. He was nearly 2 years old which is a good age for a Winter White. He is survived by his brothers Reggie and Archie.

The 'free milk' people were outside Coventry railway station again this morning, giving away samples of a new semi-skimmed milk with less than 1% fat. I got a small bottle yesterday which I drank on the train because I was thirsty. The bottle they gave me this morning is sitting in the fridge in work. If nobody steals it*, I'll have it with cereal (we're not allowed to use the milk provided, that's for tea and coffee only. People have complained about the milk running out when the cereal-eaters start plundering the fridge).

• There has been a spate of thefts from the fridge in work - mainly just a few scrapes of butter but on occasion an entire tub has vanished, along with a jar of marmite!

Our garden is starting to fill with plants, although at the moment most of them are weeds. We did a little bit of light gardening this afternoon, spraying the weeds with weedkiller and re-planting our courgettes. We sowed them from seeds a couple of weeks ago and all but one germinated. They were getting a bit tall for the propagator so they are now in a larger trough. The propagator is now being used to germinate some Spinach Beet seeds.

The Coventry Sikh Union holds their annual Vaisakhi Mela in the War Memorial Park. We went along today to see what was going on and to sample some of the food (Langar) on offer. The food may have been free but they were requesting a small charitable donation which seemed fair. We had a couple of plates and it was all good stuff.

We wandered around the stalls and fairground (most rides were £2.50 per person which seemed a bit much). We also discovered that the park has an aviary which we weren't aware of. It was fairly small and was mostly populated by various types of finches and a few cockatiels.

The weather had been warm all week. I could smell a barbecue on my way home on wednesday evening, which only made me want one. When we were in the supermarket on thursday we decided to buy a barbecue for the weekend.

This seemed to have a remarkable effect on the weather, making friday quite cold and windy. This morning started off the same but thankfully started to get warmer by mid-day.

The home-made marinade we used for the chicken breast was a success. I mixed together brown sauce, tomato puree, anchovy sauce, chilli and soy. The chicken breasts themselves were really plump and juicy which helped.

I spent a few minutes at lunchtime trying to fool the Oracle of Bacon - an on-line version of the famous game where actors are linked to Kevin Bacon in as few moves as possible.

I was trying to find names with a large 'Bacon number' by choosing people such as obscure Russian actors from the 1920s but the highest I managed was 5 links.

I was still feeling a bit full after last nights visit to the Oriental Palace so I don't think I managed to eat as much as I might otherwise have done. This was an office trip which also included the Senior Manager and Secretary/PA so I thought it wise to show a little restraint and not over-fill my plate. This plan may have back-fired because I needed more visits to the serving area, so it may have looked like I was eating more than I was.

Jimmy Spices is yet another of the Asian/Italian buffet places which seem to be quite popular these days. The starters included spring rolls, pizza slices, assorted types of salad and pasta. Main courses were the usual selection of curries but also a 'Live Stir Fry' where you select the raw ingredients and have them cooked for you. There was no sign of the Thai food which is advertised but there were a lot of empty spaces where the serving bowls were so I imagine a fuller selection is offered in the evenings.

Puddings were more limited than at other buffet places. There was Fruit, Strawberry mousse, ice cream and something resembling a stodgy cheesecake but on a thin sponge base. The one novel feature was the provision of ice cream cones but sadly no sauces or sprinkles.

There were three of us this time around so we managed to try more dishes than last time. Never afraid to repeat ourselves, we started off with the excellent Dim Sum selection and Butterfly King Prawns this time with Curry Triangles, which were like small vegetable samosas and came with a curry sauce to dip them in.

We continued the familiarity theme with a repeat of the Jill Yuen chicken, which is battered pieces of chicken served with onions and chilli. The Crispy duck was also excellent.

The main course featured Noodles and beansprouts, and Sizzling Chicken with ginger. We felt like we still had some room left so had a second helping which included Pork and mushrooms and Egg fried rice. We would have managed ok if they hadn't brought us a double portion of rice.

It was a stroke of luck that we chose to go to Stratford during the Shakespeare birthday celebrations. We were only in town for a few hours and what we saw was slightly disappointing. There was country dancing and morris dancing in the road outside the Birthplace. There was also a parade through the town in the afternoon which consisted of a few bands and people wearing suits with a small number of people in period costume.

Our main reason for going was to visit the Shakespeare Houses, 5 properties in and around the town with various connections to the man. We started off at the Birthplace and finished at Mary Arden's House (which was possibly the most interesting, being the largest of the attractions with two houses and various farm buildings to visit).

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A: When you are Adsa.

A couple of days ago we bought 2 packs of turkey from the fridge in our local Asda. Both packs were in the same fridge and had identical stickers on saying 'BUY ANY 2 FOR £4' even though they were slightly different prices. When we got home we noticed that the 'multibuy' discount hadn't been applied so we took them back to complain.

The person on the customer services counter and a supervisor both tried to convince us that the offer only applied if we bought 2 identical packs. One pack happened to be 'normal' turkey whilst the other was their healthy range. We tried to explain that the word 'any' meant we should have been allowed to do what we did.

The dictionary at answers.com includes the definition: one or some or every or all without specification. For some reason the people at Asda seemed to be using their own definition and tried to convince us that 'any' meant 'only from the identical range of produce'.

Shortly before lunch, the lights went out, all the computers switched off and the entire office went silent for a few seconds. The electricity had gone off.

There was a rush to the kitchen as people wanted to make hot drinks before the water heater emptied or cooled down but after a minute the power came back on and all the computers re-booted.

We could log on to the computers but not the network server so at the moment we have no access to files or emails. Thankfully we still have Internet access so I'm posting this during what may turn out to be an extended lunch break...

To commemmorate Anzac Day, one of our Australian colleagues in work always brings in a tub of home made Anzac Biscuits.

The biscuits are based on the long-lasting ones sent to the soldiers in the First World War.

Our roborovski hamsters smell of curry. We bought some fenugreek flavoured biscuits from Pets at Home and they seem to enjoy them. The only side effect seems to be the smell!

There must have been one very embarrassed person listening to the Birmingham Philharmonic. During a short silence in the middle of a piece of music (possibly Gershwin's American in Paris) the familiar beeps of the Nokia 'SMS' ringtone could be clearly heard.

I couldn't find any decent music on the radio so I carried on moving through the stations and ended up on Radio 4 listening to Gardeners Question Time. Normally I wouldn't listen to it but as we've decided to do something with our back garden, I took an interest.

One of the subjects covered was growing parsley. Apparently the reason why curley parsley is sold more than 'flat leaf' is to avoid confusion with the poisonous 'fools parsley' which looks identical to the flat stuff...
This was relevent to us because at the weekend we bought a couple of troughs and some pots of herbs to start off our 'garden'. Apart from a small patch of gravel near the back fence, our entire garden consists of flagstones. We've decided to concentrate on edible plants rather than flowers or other merely 'decoratives' so we started with herbs and intend to plant some vegetables soon. Of course with no actual 'garden' we will have to keep things in tubs which will limit us to smaller plants but that still gives us plenty of options.

The BBC's supernatural series has returned for a one-off special. The show stars Bill Patterson as a paranormal researcher in a Scottish university (possibly based on or inspired by the The Koestler Parapsychology Unit at Edinburgh).

Tonights episode was part one of a story based around the spooky happenings in a scottish manor house which has been bought by a couple who want to convert it into a hotel. The resident 'ghosts' have a different idea and try to convince them to leave, by intimidating the wife and frightning off the builders.

The house seems to have been the scottish base of an occult organisation called the Golden Dawn (who really existed and counted Aleister Crowley as a member at one time).

This lookes likely to be one of the better episodes, resembling a dramatised issue of Fortean Times magazine. I must remember to watch the conclusion on thursday.

The tastiest foods always seem to be the worst for you. Now there's another reason why bacon and other cured meats are bad - nitrites used in the preserving process can lead to an increase in lung disease.

I really like the occasional bacon sandwich but my bacon, ham and salami consumption has dropped in the last few years. I think i'll stick to chicken from now on...

Location: London Road, near junction 4 of the ring road.

We've driven past this place lots of times and noticed the banner on the outside of the building advertising their 'eat as much as you can' evening menu. Unlike most other 'all you can eat' places this isn't a buffet. Instead you get to choose from the menu and eat as many different dishes from each course as you can. The only other place I've been to where they do this was restaurant called Raffles in Chester. Although you have to wait a bit for each course, it does mean that all the food is freshly cooked unlike at buffet restaurants where it may have been sitting in the hot trays for an hour or more.

We started with the Appetisers and chose the Dim Sum selection and some battered King Prawns. Servings were generous and the food was very tasty (although slightly salty as is often the case with oriental food in restaurants). We ordered a bottle of the House Dry White wine which started off tasting very dry but the combination of salty and spicy food left it tasting slightly sweeter as the meal went on. It went well with the food.

For the next course we had Chicken Satay Skewers and a type of crispy battered chicken. Moving on to the main course we had Sizzling chicken in wine and garlic sauce, King Prawn Thai Green Curry and Noodles & Beansprouts. After that we were nicely full so felt no need to try more dishes. I think we'll be back again to sample more of the menu. The food was excellent and was good value at £12.95 (costs £1 more thursday to saturday).

Food isn't safe when Podge is around. It didn't take him long to find the peanut butter sandwich I made for my breakfast.

The Camra-run beer festival is back. I had forgotten it was this weekend but I'd already booked today off work so we managed to go to the lunchtime session.

There were a few locally themed beers brewed specially for the festival:
Duckfat Bradshaw is named after a local youth hanged for a murder committed in the nearby Malt Shovel pub in 1821.
Fallen Arches commemorates the occasion in 1857 when the railway arches collapsed.

The festival is being held at the Butts Park Arena rugby stadium again. Last year we lived within walking distance of the venue but unfortunately our new house means a bus ride across the city first. It wasn't enough to put us off.

It's always a bit sad to read about the death of someone if you were a fan of their work. I read a lot of Vonnegut's books while I was in my 20s, starting with The Sirens of Titan. His most famous book, Slaughterhouse 5, was inspired by his experience of the fire-bombing of Dresden and is usually mentioned alongside Catch 22 as one of the greatest anti-war novels.

Our reason for going was the Hamster show. We arrived early because we counted as 'exhibitors' so had to arrive before the show opened to the public. We had plenty of time to wander around and see what else was going on though. Unfortunately we also had to wait until the end before we could leave so it was quite a long day.

It was worth it though because Hank and Peggy won in the 'novice' section, although it was a bit of a cheat because they were the only two in it. Hank did come third in the 'dwarf sapphire' section though. We also brought Psyche along to enter into the 'pets' category. He came second - we're sure he lost marks because he was reluctant to come out of his 'nest' for the judge.

Chainsaw carving - this was very impressive. It was a while before we managed to work out what he was making - it was an eagle in flight.

They had ferrets and ferret racing.

And pig racing.

And a sheepdog rounding up ducks.

We had Ann and Nigel pop round to visit us today. We cooked a roast chicken dinner followed by a really unhealthy chocolate biscuit cake so we decided to go for a walk into the town centre.

It was really warm and we had a good walk around some of the historic parts of the city centre and the old cathedral, with a quick stop for a pint in Wetherspoons.

The photo on the right shows the old cathedral reflected in the entrance of the new cathedral.

The photo below shows Emma and Ann next to the waterfall in Priory Place. There was someone asleep on a bench (at least I hope they were asleep) - I didn't realise they were on the photo when I took it.

Tonight's episode of Dr Who had the Doctor and his new assistant travelling back in time to Elizabethan London and meeting Shakespeare. Part of the episode was actually filmed in Coventry and made the local news at the time.

The episode featured Shakespeare, Witches, Alien Monsters, the usual mix of nonsense which we've come to expect from the programme.

I saw 8 magpies on my way to work this morning, all within the space of about a minute. The standard magpie rhymes only go up to 7.

They weren't all together but were in small groups along the same stretch of railway line. This was slightly spooky because I was listening to last nights Mark Radcliffe show which I recorded from Radio 2 (last ever show tomorrow night although he's returning soon with a new show co-hosted with Stuart Maconie). On the show, Mark was discussing Magpies with Rick Wakeman and they were debating whether you have to see them all at once or whether you're allowed to add up magpie numbers.

We were watching an episode of House on DVD when it occurred to me that it would be an ideal programme for a drinking game. There are many phrases and themes which recur repeatedly during a series so it would be fairly straightforward to compile a list of them.

A few which came to mind from the one episode we watched tonight were:

• House takes a Vicodin
• House asks for a Differential Diagnosis
• Someone suggests Cancer
• Someone suggests Lupus
• They stick a needle in someones eye
• A patient gets worse when they start a treatment
• A patient lies about taking drugs
• They suspect ALS (aka Lou Gehrig's Disease)

These are only a few initial ideas - the list could and should be expanded.

Last weekend we bought a book of Pizza recipes from the National Trust 2nd hand book shops. We're going to work our way through some of the different dough and topping types but we've been impressed so far. We'd already made several dessert pizzas and calzone using our normal pizza base but the book had a recipe for a sweet base so we decided to try that.

Sweet Pizza Base

The book was published in the USA so uses cups rather than weights. Conversions can be found here.

• 1 teaspoon of bakers yeast

• 2 cups of plain white or bread flour

• 2 tablespoons of sugar

• ¼ teaspoon of salt

• 2 tablespoons vegetable oil

• 1 egg

• ½ cup warm milk

Follow the standard pizza method to make the dough. The pizza can be topped as normal or folded over to make a calzone.

Suggested Toppings

• Mincemeat - this makes a very good 'mince pie calzone'

• Summer fruits or berries - stewed with sugar to taste and a little cornflour to thicken

• Marshmallows and chocolate chunks

Measuring cups and their volume, along with the equivalent weights - these are only applicable for general purpose white flour or granulated sugar.

Other conversions

These may be found in various American recipes.

• 1 cup is 8 fluid ounces of liquid or solid
• 1 stick of butter is the same as 1 cup (i.e. 4oz or 110g)

The MOT, annual service, road tax and insurance are all up for renewal on my car at the end of the month. I took it in for it's MOT yesterday and thankfully it passed, although the 'check engine' light keeps coming on. According to the manual that means the engine management has detected unusual emissions so I'll need to look into that. The annual service was the only non-compulsory thing so I thought I could wait a couple of months before doing that, but that might need doing sooner rather than later now.

I went to the post office at lunchtime to pay the road tax. Thank you very much Gordon Brown for putting the price up in the budget, meaning I had to fork out £15 more than I was expecting.

I need to shop around for insurance now - I've seen quotes saving me up to £100, which would be very welcome. I just need to decide which one to accept.

We decided to use our new National Trust memberships to visit a couple of nearby properties - Packwood House and Baddesley Clinton, both only a few miles from each other. We had a bit of a walk around each of the houses and parts of the grounds but it was a bit too cold to be spending much time outside.

Packwood House has interesting grounds, having an over-abundance of sundials and a Yew garden set out like the Sermon on the Mount. Baddesley Clinton House is slightly more unusual, set in a moat where we fed our sandwich crusts to the ducks.

At last there is something worth watching on a thursday night (at last there is something worth watching on Channel 5!). The 3rd series of House has started.

We've ordered the first 2 series on DVD and we're waiting for those to turn up, then we'll have plenty of grumpy doctor episodes to watch.

For the past week or so, Theo (aka Podge) has been very hyperactive and constantly demanding attention. If we walk past his cage he's often climbing or nibbling the bars and if we open the door he'll often flop out onto our hands.

This started shortly after we got Hank and Peggy. It's unlikely to be jealousy, it's more likely to be that he can smell girl hamster and it's making him all excited.

The problem with slow days in work is that they encourage me to eat too much. I tend to keep some spare crisps or biscuits in my desk and if work gets a bit boring I sometimes succumb to 'boredom munchies' and start snacking, or head to the kitchen for a 'boredom cuppa'. Unfortunately we are still suffering from a lack of teaspoons in the kitchen. We keep getting more but they keep disappearing.

Tonight the lucky viewers of BBC1 got a chance to vote for the act to represent us in the Eurovision Song Contest. After the first round of votes it was narrowed down to 2 acts:

• Cyndi, with a dull unoriginal 'power ballad by numbers' combining the worst bits of that Titanic song, Wind Beneath my Wings and various others and

• Scooch, an act reminiscent of the 'Piff Paff Poff' episode of the highly underrated short lived comedy The High Life. It's been far too long since British TV has had a camp Air Steward song and dance routine.

The final phone votes were counted and it was down to Terry Wogan to tell us the winner. He initially announced that Cyndi had won but there was a confused silence then he corrected himself. I had mixed feelings - I thought poor cow, she briefly thought she was going to Eurovision followed by that's more like it, Cyndi's song was a bit crap.

We'll have to wait til May to find out whether our novelty song and dance act is good enough to win.

Our local Morrisons supermarket, in common with most supermarkets, has a shelf where they put a lot of the 'reduced' foods - dented tins, damaged packaging, things close to being out of date, that sort of thing. Occasionally they also manage to go one step further and have carrier bags full of assorted reduced items, where the entire bag costs 50p. I've not seen this in any other branch of Morrisons so I don't know if it's common practice or not. My parents haven't seen them in their local shop.

They had 2 such bags on the shelf today so we decided to buy both. They mostly contained a standard assortment of foods - crisps, pasta sauce, tins of tomatoes, mushy peas, tuna, soft drink cans etc. There were also a few surprise items - we weren't expecting the tin of cat food or dog food. Slightly more welcome were the packets of meat-filled tortellini which should normally sell for £1.50 each. Most welcome of all was the Lindt chocolate bunny which was intact with just some scratches on the foil.

You couldn't rely on the bags for a balanced diet (other items included tins of semolina pudding and a pack of chocolate puddings) but they provide some nice bargains.

Most of the 50 Shocking Facts About Your Food on Channel 5 weren't that shocking or surprising. Most of them must be common knowledge by now (eating too many burgers is bad for you, the French practice animal cruelty as a means of food production, tomatoes contain something good called lycopene).

For me I think the only real eye-opener was quite how rubbish modern fruit and veg are compared to 40 or 50 years ago. According to the programme, vitamin levels have dropped so much that, taking oranges and tomatoes as examples, you need to eat 8-10 times as much as earlier generations did. The blame was put on intensive farming and exessive storage and transportation.

There's a news story doing the rounds about how purple grape juice is much better for you than other juices. The report also repeated the recent discovery that cloudy apple juice is better than clear. Unfortunately the vast majority of apple juice available in the supermarkets is the clear filtered stuff and the cloudy unfiltered juice is much more expensive. It's all rather stupid that you've got to pay more for a product which has had less done to it.

I'm sure a few years ago it was possible to buy cloudy apple juice in cartons, from the shelf rather than the fridge. If supermarkets are really wanting to encourage healthy eating they should make it available again at a sensible price. They'll probably whine about how clear juice outsells cloudy but since they offer a greater choice of clear and sell it for less then of course it'll sell better.

My eyes have been feeling quite tired recently so I was thinking about getting some caffeinated eye drops to wake them up.

The place is described by the National Trust as a Superb Tudor house and landscaped deer park. I had a couple of days off work so we decided to go along and take a look. It's a bit early in the season and not all of the buildings were open but we spent an interesting couple of hours there.

Despite being a fairly sunny day, it was quite cold especially in the shade. It should be better in the summer - not only would it be warmer but there would be leaves on the trees so it would look better too.

We decided to join the National Trust while we were there. Emma had already decided to join because she gets the cheaper 'young persons' price. I decided to join because they had a voucher for discount membership. This means we'll get free entry to any of their other sites in the UK. Hopefully this will help us to

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I seem to find it impossible to go to Wing Wah without over-eating and leaving feeling full and uncomfortable. I suppose it's because they have such a great range of foods and I don't want to leave without trying most of them. I also have to have some chocolate fountain and ice cream. When I got home I needed a lie down.

We went there tonight for Stuart's birthday. It's been a couple of years since I've been in a nightclub and none of us had been to this particular club. It was fairly empty when we got there but soon filled up. The music was ok - different nights seem to have different themes so at least it's not all just crappy dance music. The place was really smoky though and our clothes really stank when we got home. It'll be so much better when the 'no smoking' laws come into force in the summer.

On our way home we popped into the Nazaw Balti House on Far Gosford Street. We were wanting a naan bread and some dahl. They were getting ready to close and were waiting for some 'eating in' customers to finish. We came away with our order plus a free keema naan, which was a welcome and tasty extra.

1. Photos of Hank and Peggy

I wasn't able to get photos of our latest hamsters at the weekend because I didn't have batteries for the camera. Peggy is slim, quick and very nosey. Hank is slower, rounder and less inquisitive. Emma is changing her mind about names, and occasionally refers to them as Red and Kitty from That 70s Show.

2. Roborovski Update

Alysia and Zosima have been living together for about a month now. It took a couple of days to get them settled together but they seem happy with each other's company. We don't usually refer to them by name any more - they have become Big Silly and Little Silly.

3. The Others

Everyone else is doing fine, although apart from Reggie we seem to have stopped using their original names. Archie is known as Tubble, Psyche is called Pissy or Stinky (because of his habit of using his bedroom as a toilet), and Theo has become Podge.  

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Our wheelie bin seems to have become a local dumping ground for other people's rubbish. Last week there someone shoved several bin bags in it. This morning when I dropped our bags in it before dragging it to the kerb, I noticed some toys and old videos had been added.

Update 2:30pm
Someone has put our bin back in the front yard. It's unlikely that the binmen did it - I've not seen that happen for years. As the house was empty for several months before we moved in, it's likely that a near neighbour got used to using our bin when theirs got full.

When we lived in Earlsdon, I used to be able to get my hair cut on my way to work. There was a hairdresser on my way to the station who opened early and seemed to do a brisk trade in commuter haircuts. Since moving house the nearest one is on a bit of a detour and costs almost twice as much. As a result I was several weeks overdue for a cut and my hair was getting a bit too long.

Our solution was to buy a set of clippers and for me to let Emma loose on my hair. We got a set which had the 'number 8' attachment which leaves the hair about an inch long. That's a bit shorter than I usually have it but it doesn't look too bad. The clippers will have paid for themselves after only 2 haircuts.

We acquired two new hamsters today, from a breeder at a the Great Barr hamster show. Emma had pre-arranged this a few months ago and we'd already decided on names. We were wanting names from a TV family and chose Hank and Peggy from 'King of the Hill'.

The ones we collected weren't the original Hank and Peggy though. After a week together, the original Peggy ate the origninal Hank so we were given two different animals.

Tonight is the start of the University of Warwick beer festival, run by the Real Ale Society. As well as beers, there is also a decent selection of fruit wines and ciders, but disappointingly only one perry. Having been to several of these festivals recently, it's starting to get difficult to find beers which we haven't had before, but with around 100 beers on offer we should be able to find something.

We received a couple of emails today just dripping with corporate-bollocks-speak. The first one informing us of repair work going on outside the building and telling us to Please diarise this event.

No I don't think I will. I'm not going to do a thing until you use proper English and not stupid made up words in an attempt to sound clever.

The second email informed us of repair work going on inside the building out of office hours. Apparently it will be BAU during the working day. There was no explanation of what "BAU" meant. I think it stands for "Bullshit As Usual".

I was surprised to read about the local council getting a 3-star rating in the latest council 'league tables'. Whenever I've personally had to deal with them, they tend to come across as a fairly inefficient bureaucracy. There are some things which they probably do well (whoever runs the redevelopment in the city centre seems to be doing an ok job) but there are other aspects which they are less good at.

They miscalculated our council tax last year which led to us overpaying by an admittedly small amount. We're still waiting for the refund they promised. The roads/highways department is also piss-poor. Some of the residential streets are in shocking condition with huge pot-holes and broken or rough surfaces.

The new house is slowly taking shape. This morning we moved the washing machine over from the old house. It was much heavier than we remembered, even after following the instructions to drain the water from it. This afternoon we finally moved our TV. We've been without a telly since saturday but at least we've been too busy to miss it.

Last night was our first night spent in the new house. I suppose that means we've officially moved in now. There's still a lot of work which needs doing though. Two of the three bedrooms are finished but that still leaves the bathroom and hallway to be done and the 3rd bedroom is waiting for a final coat of paint and the carpet.

Downstairs is still needing plastering after the damp proof treatment but thankfully someone's coming to do that this week. I've hired a van to move some of the larger furniture which won't fit into the car. We've already moved the sofas - we need to move desks, shelves and the washing machine later.

This was an unusual film to open on Valentines Day, but I suppose it offered a bit more choice for people who didn't want to sit through some dreary rom-com. Simon Pegg is joined by his usual lardy side-kick Nick Frost, and a who's who of British acting (including Timothy Dalton, Bill Nighy, Steve Coogan, Bill Bailey, Jim Broadbent, Edward Woodward, Anne Reid, Billie Whitelaw).

At two hours, it was longer than the average comedy but managed to keep going without running out of steam. Very funny pretty much from start to finish. I lost count of the number of film references and spoof sequences, but a lot of them were quite subtle and were worked into the film quite well.

It might have been a mistake to watch this film in our cold non-centrally heated house, especially the 2nd half where the entire northern hemisphere is frozen over.

We had to bring our small fan heater downstairs so we got a gentle waft of warm air blowing over us during the film. Warmth shouldn't be a luxury in modern england but that's how it feels in our current house.

Back to the film - it's quite surprising that it actually got made when you realise that Fox was one of the production companies behind it. Global warming denier Dubya friendly Fox (although he's now changed his tune slightly since).

I took last week off work so I could work on the house. We're still decorating upstairs but at least the front bedroom is finished now. The middle bedroom has paint on 3 of the walls. The 4th wall will be ready to paint soon, when the plaster is dry. We had to re-plaster part of the wall behind the radiator because the plaster was all dry and crumbly.

Downstairs is a complete mess. We got someone to come in to treat the damp in the front and middle rooms. As a result they are a complete mess at the moment. The carpets have been ripped up and the plaster taken off the bottom metre or so of the wall. We're waiting for them to come back and re-plaster soon.

Despite the house having central heating (a huge improvement on our rented house), we can't actually use it at the moment because half of the radiators have been removed. The ones downstairs for the damp proof course, the ones upstairs for decorating or plastering reasons.

I seem to have spent most of the week up a ladder, stripping wallpaper, painting or filling holes or cracks in the plaster. My shoulders and neck are aching a bit as a result.

Gel the Hamster died this morning. She'd been looking very old and during the last few days she'd been very weak and unable to walk properly, crawling everywhere. She was about 18 months old.

The other night we bought a steam stripper to help us get all the wood chip wallpaper off the walls. The stuff is on every wall and ceiling, except the kitchen and bathroom. Tonight, we started stripping the wallpaper from the back bedroom. There was paint on top of wallpaper on top of paint so we needed to score the paper first to let the steam get in.

Some areas were very stubborn and needed lots of steaming to get them off. Other bits would peel off very easily. Unfortunately this included a lot of the ceiling paper, so I expect we'll have to re-paper that too.

I was a little worried that the wallpaper was what was holding the wall together, it seemed to be stronger than the plaster. There were some areas where the paper would come off, bringing a lot of powdery plaster with it. These walls will definitely need some remedial work before we can paint over them.

I was walking home last night when I saw a poster advertising the NatWest bank. What struck me as odd was that it was in Polish. Unfortunately it was one of those 'rolling poster' types and it changed while I was walking past and I've not seen it since.

Our local Tesco also seems to be getting taken over by the Polish. They've got a shelf full of polish food and we had a leaflet pushed through the door advertising this (written in polish of course). We've tried some of their pomegranate drink and it was ok but didn't actually contain much pomegranate juice. I was tempted to try some of the chicken pate but it was a bit fatty. Ah well, back to the M&S Potted Chicken then.

Everything's sorted and after a couple of months, we've finally bought the house. The contracts were exchanged last week and we collected the keys on friday. We've got a few weeks before we need to move out of our current place so that gives us chance to get the new house in order before we move in properly.

We started by decorating the front bedroom. Nearly all of the house has wood-chip wallpaper on the walls and ceilings so we spent most of yesterday scraping that off the walls. We washed the plaster down with sugar soap and left them to dry overnight.

Todays job was to paint the walls. We started by painting a while emulsion on the plaster this morning. This afternoon that had dried enough to put the 'proper' paint on. We've decided on light blue at the top and dark blue at the bottom. We managed to get 2 coats of light blue on today.

We've also ordered some carpets for two of the bedrooms. We'll need to measure the other rooms in the house and as soon as we've settled on the colour schemes we can start shopping for carpets for those too.

The last few days have been getting colder in the mornings. We had some snow overnight - not much but enough to still be hanging around when I got up.

It's been getting colder in the house too. The lack of central heating is starting to become a problem. The only heater we're using is a small electric one in the front room (the Hamster room), and we've been having to slowly turn it up a bit each night to stop the room temperature from dropping too much.

Just over a week ago someone left a shoe box full of hamsters in Primark, which were taken to the RSPCA centre. Emma was wanting to take a few of them but we really don't have room and it'll be more cages to deal with when we move house soon.

The local free paper had a story about the Coventry branch of the RSPCA being short of cash and Emma wanted to help out by taking a small hamster off their hands. They had one called Biggles, who was described as tiny Chinese Hamster. He turned out to be a female roborovski, so although Biggles would be a good name for a boy hamster, we think we'll need to find a new name for her.

It has been very windy today. Whenever it's windy, a strange sound can be heard from the back of our house. It's a low moaning note, sounding like a lower version of when you blow over a bottle top. We hope it is just air blowing past a pipe and not some sort of wind monster outside.

On my way to work this morning, the pavements were blocked by wheelie bins lying on their sides, victims of the wind overnight. The trains were running but were reduced to 50mph for safety. At least they were running. Things weren't so good tonight.

I had heard that the Virgin Trains to London had been cancelled but I got to New Street at my usual time in the hope that I wouldn't have to wait long for a train. I couldn't check the 'Live Departures' website because it was down. The screens at New Street were all displaying a notice apologising for the disruption caused by the weather.

The station was surprisingly quiet. There weren't many trains at the platforms and surprisingly few people standing around. I overheard someone saying that the main entrance to the station had been closed. With no train times being displayed, everyone was milling around on the bridge waiting for an announcement over the tannoy.

Thankfully a train to Coventry was announced. I managed to get a seat. The train was surprisingly empty given that it was one of the few actually leaving. The exercise in crowd control at the main entrance seemed to be a bit over zealous meaning a lot of people couldn't get to the platforms.

The much anticipated bar and restaurant complex in the Old Fire Station finally opened last month. One of the restaurants there is MYO which provides all-you-can-eat Indian, Chinese and Thai food.

They offer a fairly lacklustre salad bar but the Indian food really shines. There is a wide range of starters and curries. All the ones I tasted were very good with a nice balance of spice and heat. The Chinese food on offer includes a stir fry section where you choose from a range of meats and vegetables and have them cooked while you wait.

The dessert selection included the now ubiquitous chocolate fountain. There were mini bits of swiss roll and a really tasty treacle sponge available for dunking.

The only problem we encountered was when we asked for the bill. They initially tried to bill us for 8 people despite the fact that only 7 turned up. They were fairly quick at bringing us a corrected bill though. We were then horrified to find that they had added a 10% Service Charge. For a Self-Service restaurant! Drinks were brought to the table but we served ourselves food. One of our party paid by credit card and they forced him to pay the full amount including the compulsory enforced tip. We paid the rest of the bill in full and left them some change for the tip but it fell slightly short of the 10% they demanded. It soured the whole dining experience and I'm unlikely to ever go back there again.

I couldn't find my wallet this morning - I realised I must have left it in my desk in work. I didn't want it there all weekend so I thought it would be best for me to nip back in to retrieve it. It was a 3 hour 'nip'. There were no trains running from Coventry station (thanks to engineering works) so I had to get onto a rail replacement bus. This decided to stop at every station between Coventry and Birmingham International and took ages. The only consolation was seeing a goat standing on a picnic table, somewhere halfway between Canley and Tile Hill.

Bumble the Roborovski Hamster died yesterday. We found him in the evening, curled up in his bedroom. It looked like he died peacefully in his sleep. We buried him this morning in the corner of the garden alongside Uri, Ira and Zac.

We went back into town this afternoon to collect the Wii. We ordered it before Christmas and was told we should get it by mid january.

The Wii Sports game which comes with it is good exercise and very tiring. After a few games of bowling, baseball, tennis and boxing, my arms were aching. We also downloaded the trial version of the Opera web browser and had a brief look at that. It was an odd experience looking at the Internet on a tv but it worked well.

There are other 'channels' on the Wii such as News or Weather. The News channel wasn't working but the Weather one was and it was impressive, allowing you to zoom in and out and pan around a map to see what the forecast was in different parts of the world.

I've seen 'home smoking' being demonstrated on tv a couple of times, using either a wok or a roasting pan. We've got an old wok in need of replacing so I thought I'd give it a go using some salmon.

You'll need a wok with a lid and a rack which fits in the wok to stand the salmon on. Start by lining the bottom of the wok with foil, using enough to stick about an inch or so above the lip of the wok because it needs folding over the lid to reduce the amount of smoke which escapes.

Mix together a couple of tablespoons each of rice, sugar, tea leaves. Pour into the foil. Place a rack above this mixture - I didn't have a suitable rack so I used a thick foil 'pie dish' (the sort which is supposed to be disposable) which I cut holes in.

Place the wok over a medium heat. When the mixture starts smoking, put the lid on and fold the foil over the lid. Turn the heat down to low. After about 15 minutes, check the salmon and give it a few more minutes if needed.

It may be a good idea to open the kitchen window and close the door before doing any of this - the smell of smoke managed to fill the house. The salmon came out looking more like 'smoke damaged' than smoked but it tasted good. The technique would work with other fish but it was a lot of hard work.

These frames were from a video taken last year, showing Bumble trying to climb onto the outside of his wheel. He did it regularly and each time he fell off. He's not the brightest of hamsters.

Here's a photo of him asleep outside his 'nest' under the wooden bridge:

At long last and after months of waiting, we finally have a new water heater in the kitchen in work. The new one is one of the wall mounted boilers and it seems to work a bit better than the old table-top one. Hopefully this will reduce the amount of time wasted as people stand around waiting for hot water.

The mobile blood van was outside the office today so I popped down this morning to give them a pint or so. I didn't realise it had been over 2 years since I last gave any. I must have been out of practice which would explain why it took such a long time.

I first started giving blood when I was working in North Wales. When I went to Aberystwyth I decided to continue doing it. It was made easier by the blood donor service turning up on campus every few months. The first time at Aber was a bit confusing because they couldn't get my details from my blood donors card. It turned out to be an English issued card which was not compatible with the Welsh system. Although I'd only ever given blood in Wales, the vans in North Wales were run by the Liverpool service.

We decided to go to Sainsburys for tonight's shopping trip because their tins of beans are cheaper than Tesco. This definitely turned out to be a case of 'Penny wise, pound foolish' because we ended up spending around £20, much of it on unnecessary stuff. We did save some money on things we needed (multibuy saving on tins of pulses, half price breakfast cereal, reduced price bread) but we managed to spend much more on frivolous things (Thorntons chocolate slab, santa shaped chocolate lollies and other heavily discounted Christmas stuff).

We also noticed Easter Eggs and Christmas chocolates on the same shelf. They might have only been 'creme eggs' but it's still a bit too early!