The Time Bubble

It's impossible not to get nostalgic about things as one gets older. Time moves on, the world changes, people are replaced by other people and things are replaced by other things. Nostalgia is not always a good thing. Wistfully looking back on supposedly happy childhood things can have a way of coming back and biting you in the arse. All I can say is I am so glad that my sister's and mine letter to Jim'll Fix It were never answered. 3 things this week gave me food for thought. Firstly, that great institution, Ceefax, disappeared from our TV screens after 34 years. I am sure I don't need to explain what Ceefax is to anyone, but I can tell you a little about my relationship with it. It started in 1974 but I didn't become aware of it for a while after this, until the daytime TV schedules, mostly BBC2 started showing "pages from Ceefax". Now it's hard to explain how exciting this seemed to a young lad back in the late 1970s, but innovations such as dig...

Last week I had to phone my website people to tell them they had upgraded me to the Premium package without my consent - in fact all I had done was looked at the list of options and decided it wasn't worth it. They sorted it all out - no problem, back to the standard package. And then today I receive this email! Are they taking the piss or what? Dear Jason, Please accept our apologies for the error made on your recent order. We are sorry for any inconvenience it might have caused you. To compensate for our mistake, we have issued a credit to your account for the amount of £0.00. What can you do with your credit? You can use your credit on your next order. You can order the same product, or take your credit off any other product. The amount of your order doesn't have to be exactly the same as your credit. We will just deduct the credit from the total amount of your new order. How can you use your credit? To redeem your credit, take these three easy steps: Choos...

And the door. And the bed. And the floor... Have had to have a serious talking to with Ollie about writing on said items! There have been a number of incidents in the past but this latest one required a very stern talking to. To summarise, he stayed at a hotel this weekend and noticed whilst walking around in it, that all of rooms (unsuprisingly) had numbers on them. So on Monday morning he got up extra early, went round with a thick black crayon and wrote numbers on the doors of every room in the house. And for good measure on a number of other items of furniture too. By the time I discovered this in my bleary eyed Monday morning state (after two late nights working) he had already left for school with Claire. Which was probably fortunate for him as I was somewhat annoyed to say the least. Many of the doors in our house are wooden, and this crayon was thick stuff - there was no way to remove it without damaging the look of the wood so we are probably going to have to treat the...

Every now and then I like to do a little blog about one of the many hobbies/ interests that have been part of my life over the years. Today I thought I would talk about Viz. Now most of you reading will know what Viz is - many will have read it at some point, or at least be aware of it to some degree - famous characters such as the Fat Slags and Sid The Sexist have passed into national folklore. Here's a piccie or two to jog your memory: Come on San, I think G's is still open! And there's one of these in every pub! The great thing about Viz is that it has basically never really changed. It's been a constant backdrop to my life - appropriately for something classed as "toilet humour" a lot of my reading of said tome has taken place in that exact location. A 1 or 2 page strip is just right for a morning movement I find. Yes, life has changed a great deal for me over the years, but Viz has always been there. I remember the day I first discover...

Probabilities...possibilities? Why do so many people do the lottery? Because someone "has" to win it. It's just not very likely it will be you. However anything that has a possibility of happening will in theory happen eventually. I am sure we have all heard the example oft quoted that give let an infinite number of monkeys type away randomly on a keyboard infinitely and one of them will eventually come up with the complete works of Shakespeare. I can't even begin to calculate the possibility of how long this would take but it seems highly unlikely to me - astronomical odds in fact. Alas, poor Yarik..."no you stupid monkey  you've spelt it wrong - start again" Going back to the lottery, by comparison it's a much more achievable aim - the actual odds of scooping the jackpot are around 13 million to one. Let's say you have a quid in each of Wednesday's and Saturday's draws. By my calculations if you live another 125,000 years ap...

I find myself in a most unusual situation this weekend. For reasons that I needn't elaborate on, my wife and children are in York for the weekend and will not return until Sunday night. This leaves me in the rather unique position of being home alone - with nothing I "have" to do until I head off to DJ at a wedding tomorrow afternoon. This is something that hasn't really happened before since the kids came along, and is unlikely to happen again any time in the forseeable future. Now some would see this as an opportunity to have some "me time" but myself I just don't know what to do with myself to be honest. Why? Well - when you have the responsibility of parenting and running a house, your days are one long list of things to do - and they also have a defined structure working around the school runs and mealtimes. You become almost programmed into the routine. When that routine is suddenly ripped away, well, in my case I am a bit lost as to what to ...

Hi everyone, Well - it seems that having been saying it for months I have finally broken free of the chains of facebook! It's really not all that hard if you really try. No longer do I have to read an endless torrent of moaning about the weather, traffic, cryptic attention seeking statusues (or should that be stati?), a load of links to crappy bands that I don't like or have never heard of, supposedly "amusing" pictures and all the rest! I'm free! OK - I am not totally off facebook, I need it for work, and the PM facility is very handy - fortunately if someone PM's me I get an email so I can come on and respond - a lot of my work comes through facebook, also we have our little racing game on Saturdays which I can't abandon bearing in mind how far I am winning it by. Though come to think of it I am so far ahead even if I didn't post any tips for the rest of the year I probably have an unassailable lead! This blog should be pulled automatically acr...

No - that's not an exclamation from Robin in the 1960s Batman TV series, though I am sure he said it at some point! No in fact today was my second son's baptism. Because of the unusual way in which we work - i.e. I am usually working over the weekends and off in the week, we arranged this to happen as part of the Wednesday morning communion service at the church. Unlike Ollie's baptism, we decided it would be just a quiet affair this time. We asked our very good friends Lynda and Duncan to be godparents and they were delighted to accept. So just before 10 I collected Ollie from school and we all met at the church and enjoyed a very nice service from Teresa, who is the vicar at St Edburg's. Ollie was very well behaved throughout - he is definitely getting better on these big occasions. I do enjoy Teresa's services as she talks a lot about everyday events, and even for those who attend special occasions who are not Christians, there is still plenty to be taken o...

Hi all, First of all - this is the last post I shall be sharing to facebook. This was mainly done to try and attract new readers and get more hits - but to be honest - number of hits on the blog is not the be all and end all of blogging unless you are aiming to get millions and make some money. I'd prefer any comments relevant to the subject matter to be actually put on the blog rather than facebook - as at least I know then that the person reading them has actually read it! As opposed to casual acquaintances I've haven't seen for years making obtuse comments based purely on the title. The comments have more permanence then anyway as opposed to the here today gone tomorrow nature of facebook. Speaking of which I am still trying very hard to wean myself off facebook - there are some things that I have to be on there for i.e. work and the racing game we do on Saturdays but the rest is a constant distraction for all the reasons I've blogged about many times before. ...

I'm settling into quite a little routine in the mornings now term's well established. Basically, my mission in the mornings is to get Ollie to school by 8:45am and Jamie to the Courtyard by 9:10am. Bearing in mind there is no more than 10 minutes walk between those two places that doesn't sound too much of a challenge, does it? No - it isn't - but I like a challenge and I also like maximising my time. 25 minutes isn't long enough to go back home - as soon as our coats are off, we'd be putting them back on again - but it doesn't leave much leeway for doing anything else. But time management is key to the success of my days, so I have decided to try and fit all of my shopping into that window. With an optional extra of Wilkinsons after dropping Jamie off as it's on the way back. I normally need to visit any two or more of the following: Tesco, M&S, Iceland and the Butchers. Now I am an efficient well oiled machine when it comes to shopping as you w...