The Time Bubble

Having a party this weekend and want to celebrate the Jubilee? Not sure what music to play. Well Bicester Blogger has done all the hard work for you - today I am proud to unveil my "JUBILEE PLAYLIST". This has been the result of many hours of work and research by myself to come up with the ultimate list. Here are the criteria I used. Here are the goals I set myself, and how I went about achieving them. 1) To showcase music from across the Queen's reign. 2) To include as many different types of music as possible. 3) To include only British artists. 4) To provide appeal to all ages and tastes. 5) To have a running time around 5 hours. 6) To be useable as a party playlist, or for personal listening. So how did I get on? Let's see. 1) My original plan was to include hits from every year since 1952, which was conveniently also the year that the charts started. However, I soon ran into a problem with this. The problem being that in the 1950s the charts ...

On a day like today, there really is no point in cooking. Claire is not here on a Monday evening, and it's pointless me slaving over a hot stove for the children in this weather when they are hot and irritable and would rather have a sandwich. I didn't really feel like a hot meal either - however as tea time approached I felt one of my cheese cravings coming on. Fortunately this was a good thing as I am well stocked up on cheese at present. Not only do I still have some of the famous French "Stink Cheese" that Jo and Alex brought back from France but I took advantage of a very attractive priced jubilee special edition cheese pack in Tesco the other day. Same thing I bought, minus the Union Jack packaging (see footnote #1 below). What's this, I hear you gasp? You are praising a Tesco offer, Bicester Blogger - are you ill? No - I did say you had to sort the wheat from the chaff and this little baby at £3 a throw was too good to miss. I was also fortunate...

I've got one last holiday blog to do, then we are up to date. Should you find yourself down in Devon on holiday, another place you can visit is Combe Martin Wildlife and Dinosaur park. We had a half price voucher for this place which we had picked up somewhere on our travels so the whole family got in for under £20, which compared well to the £30+ we spent at the Big Sheep. However I was soon pissed off when I was handed a half price voucher for the Big Sheep with my receipt, apparently these things are everywhere, as are 2 for 1 offers for most theme parks these days. I am probably therefore the only person ever to pay full price to get into the Big Sheep. Which annoys me, because as you know I pride myself in seeking out value. More on value to come later on - so what about Combe Martin? Well it's not for the faint hearted - the hills, not only getting in and out in the car but also on the footpaths are horrendous - feels like about 1:2 in places. All the animals ar...

So - another poor performance at Eurovision - and out will come no doubt the usual predictable comments about how the rest of Europe hates us, Balkan block voting, how it's a bad draw going first and all the rest of it. You know what - these excuses are spurious at best, the fact is, we just don't have a clue when it comes to putting an entry in. What the younger, more forward thinking countries in Europe do is put forward a song that's going to appeal to the masses, particularly the young, who are the ones picking up the phone dialling in greater numbers. No matter how much of a hero our great "Hump" may be to us, regardless of where he sang in the order, do you really think he would have been of any interest to some young clued up 20 year old in Russia or somewhere? You may laugh at some of the acts tonight, but really, I can imagine most of these viewers over in the Eastern Bloc thinking "Who's this old ****?" No disrespect to you Engelbe...

As you know I'm a fairly laid back person and most of my blog is normally of an upbeat nature, but like everyone, occasionally I have to let the dark side out, and today I have a rant of truly Meldrew-esque proportions to lay upon you. Without further ado let's have a picture of the great man himself to set the scene. I don't believe it!!!! What's this all about then? Well as you know, for six years now I have lived in Chapel Street, 3 years in this house and 3 in the one next door (which has no off road parking). During the period I was next door it was a constant battle to get a parking space opposite the house, the only free ones left in the area, and not included in the residents parking scheme unlike everywhere else nearby, e.g. Priory Road. The one time I stepped out of line and parked on the single yellow line for about 5 minutes because I had just got back, Ollie was crying and had a soiled nappy and I had to make getting him in and changing him a pr...

Whilst down in Devon we did a fair bit of travelling about. On the Sunday evening we found a lovely old 16th century coaching inn called the Foxhunters Inn where we had a lovely meal. But the undoubted highlight of the week was a trip to "The Big Sheep", a theme park (if you can call it that) near Bideford. As the name suggests this place was all about sheep. There was various stuff going on there - different animal shows, tractor rides and train rides for children, gift shops, all the usual sorts of things one finds at these kind of places. Now that particular day was the one day away when the weather started badly - in fact on arrival at the park it was tipping down and there seemed to be hardly anyone there - about 30 paying customers and that was it. It was before 11am, and I discovered shortly after arrival that the one thing I had particularly come to see, the Sheep Racing did not take place until 3:50pm. How on earth were we going to fill all that time in th...