Friday 27 March 2009

Red Dwarf is Back!

A few years of heavy cocaine abuse, rejected sexual assault charges, and poor sit-coms later and Red Dwarf is back!!


One of my favourite shows from my teens.

Only problem is they have 'returned to earth' (i.e. are short of budget) and are allegedly going to be using Coronation Street sets.

Also they are a bit old (old people calling each other 'smegheads' is just not as funny)

Also it is probably going to be a bit crap.

Also its on a channel that I don't receive.

But apart from that ... yay!



but here is a classic:


Sunday 22 March 2009

Becoming a White Van Man

My list of 40 things to do before I am 40 is increasing at a very slow rate (standing at a weedy 16 at the moment) not because I can't think of things I would like to do, but more because I don't like to over commit.


I am making a little progress on #4 as discussed here and I have grand plans in the next couple of weeks to get my first one ticked off - #5 going to an NHL game. This may seem like a bit of a lame thing to put on the list to colonials. But seeing an NHL game when you live in Europe is quite a challenge! 

I have always had a bit of an affection for Ice Hockey, stemming from my roller-hockey playing youth. But watching my local team (a good as the Sheffield Steelers are) is a little like watching an NHL game slowed down to 2/3rds speed. Not quite the same.

In a week I am flying out to Ontario for work and will try to sneak in a sly visit to the Ottawa Senators if I can. Unfortunately this will be by myself as my work colleague appears more interested in meeting up with the local Morris dancing troupe.

But the one I really want to tackle this year is #6 - converting a mini-bus into a campervan. I have been wanting to do this ever since hearing stories from my friends in Sydney who spent the best part of two years living in a bus in New Zealand.

While not wanting to do anything that extreme, I would love to have a bus for the weekend. To just drive to where I want and grab a quick kip in the back.

Plus I need a new project!

You may have read about the recent troubles of British van maker LDV. I am hoping I may be able to pick an old one of those up pretty cheap. I've got my eye on a nice LDV convoy 400 for around £1200, but my finances wont stretch quite that far yet.


Thursday 19 March 2009

The Call Girl and the House of Ivy

I knew the title would get your attention!

A couple of years ago when I lived in Ivy house in Burley - just before Lucy moved in, my housemate, a civil engineer and myself had to find a replacement for another guy who had moved out to live with his girlfriend.

We went through the painful process of advertising on easyroommate.com in order to find a suitable replacement. We got a large number of responses, largely due to how good the house looked (once we tidied it up and took photos) and how ridiculously cheap the rent was (the landlord not having upped the rent in the previous seven years).

A few people looked around. Some we didn't like the look of (such as the guy who came round in the "I hate girls" t-shirt), and some didn't like the look of us. One of the primary considerations for selecting a new housemate had to be that said person was agreeable to our respective partners and their respective jealousies (one being worse than the other!).

This is why when we had a subdued, kind of geeky looking teacher come and look round, slightly ill as she was just recovering from tonsilitis at the time - we thought ... perfect, there is no way there can be any jealousies about this one!

So she moved into our spare room. And this is where things began to get a little strange.

Our new housemate seemed pretty chatty and nice at first, though our girlfriends developed a dislike to her instantly as she almost refused to talk to other females.

It was in the summer holidays at the time and our new housemate wasn't going to work. She seemed to go out quite a bit partying at the time and she would leave the house (with some anonymous bloke picking her up in an old bashed up red saloon) at around 11pm running out the door with nobody seeing her - not to return until around 5 in the morning. When we asked if whe had a good night and where she went, she would reply 'oh I just went for a few drinks in the Marriot' or 'I went to meet a friend at the Jury's Inn'.

This struck us as a little strange as in Leeds it is not common to go for a night out in a hotel bar, particularly the Jurys Inn which is a fair walk out of the city centre . What struck us as a little more strange was that when we finally spotted her leaving the house we noticed that our normally short haired housemate would go out wearing the longest hair extensions you have ever seen. These things were literally about a metre long! And fishnet stockings.

Ok, so she had a dubious dress sense, but we were fairly open minded people.

Then there were the photos. At first they were just enlarged glamour shots that she had decided to put up all around her bedroom. Glamour shots of herself in her underwear or some such atire.

Ok, so she like to look at photos of herself. We could live with it. Ok, so she also had post-it notes printed up with photos of herself in varoius states of undress in her handbag for handing out ... she wants to be a model - no problem with that.

My civil engineer housemate did, however feel a little uncomfortable when she asked his opinion on topless photos of herself and which ones should go into her portfolio. Not because he was embarassed, but more because his girlfriend would have ripped his head off if she had found out.

When the penny finally dropped was after a month or so, when our new housemate began to use the civil engineers computer to go on the internet. Ever a resourceful guy, the engineer would look at his history and find out where she had been. Aside from a few websites I would rather not mention, she had been looking in the main at one of her own design.

It was a profile page - it wasn't her name on the profile, but we clearly recognised one of the photos, with a blurred out face from those which adorned her bedroom wall. the page was filled with satisfied comments from previous 'customers'.

The most surprising thing was the cost. £850 per night!

She wasnt even very attractive (I wouldn't have paid more than a couple of quid - but I am a Yorkshireman).

Anyway I think the civil engineer's girlfriend eventually drove her out with a campaign of hostility. She only lasted a couple of months in the house and then made some excuse about going to London to join the civil service.

Sunday 8 March 2009

Overpriced Cinema

Every time I go to the Cinema at the moment it seems that there is somebody at the screening hell bent on trying to ruin my enjoyment. 


I went to the Hyde Park picture-house some time ago and remember a girl in the row in front putting her wooly hat over a particularly annoying lamp (which are located down the side of the cinema walls. Without the girl noticing, the hat proceeded to catch fire (being as lamps have a tendancy to get hot and that) and send a significant amount of smoke into the cinema. It actually went very on fire and was just a bit of rag really by the time I told her and she took it off.

While that was just funny, the last two times we went to the cinema in Meadowhall we have had a gang of lads smoking and running around in the row in front of us and an overzealous group of girls sitting next to us laughing ridiculously loudly all the way through the showing which managed to annoy everyone in the entire screen. And its not as if the cinema is a cheap night out anymore with tickets costing 6.50 (and then there's the extortionate drinks and food).

Which is why when we got to our 6.50 seats at a late showing of Slumdog Millionaire last night  we were doubly dismayed to find first that the only seats left were the ones at the front (you know - the ones that give you neck-ache and a headache)  and then that we had been seated next to a young couple - with a 3 or 4 month old baby! That bad enough on a plane, but who brings a baby into a movie about violence and life in the slums of India at 10 o'clock at night??

Luckily it appeared that one the movie got going the shear volume of the cinema speakers managed to drown gurglings and protestations of the young child. I was surprised (according to Lucy) the girl in the seat next to me managed to breast feed the baby without me even noticing (not that that should be a problem).

Thursday 5 March 2009

#4 - Pennine Way Update

We did our first training walk for the Pennine Way a week or so ago. Me and The Nurse, I had a 5 or 6 kilo pack, he had a 10 kilo one. We did about 16 miles and after the walk my legs seized up pretty hard. I was fine by the next day, but apparently The Nurse was walking a little like John Wayne.

The training walk has learned us a few lessons on the art of walking:

  • Undertake training walks in order to avoid being crippled by the second day
  • Wear the same t-shirt and underwear the whole time to avoid carrying too much weight
  • Dont walk at the ridiculous pace the Nurse tried to set off at
  • Dont go to the pub until the end of the walk
  • Try not to walk up hills (this may prove a little difficult)

Being sticklers for punishment, I think we may set out on another one on Saturday.