Snow!

This is my heroin

I’ve just discovered this

It’s called Fantastic Contraption and describes itself as a “fun online physics game”

From this point onwards this is what I do. Don’t bother trying to call me.

I declare the festive period…open!

I’ve been holding back on officially declaring the start of Christmas. People have different views on when Christmas begins, some say it’s when they hear the music in the shop, some when it gets freezing cold, some miserable buggers will whinge about anyone who mentions Christmas more than a week before the event.

I, however, have a different criterion. The festive period begins once I see the Hellman’s mayonaise advert that goes to the tune of 12 days of Christmas. I saw that advert on Saturday. So let the festivities commence!!

Kilroy-Silk in the jungle

I am slightly obsessed by Robert Kilroy-Silk. Daytime TV presenter turned racist turned prime time quiz show presenter turned politician turned I’m a celebrity get me out of here contestant. All that and he still found time to create the Daleks. It says here that his specialist skill is “chopping wood”.

 My favourite things Kilroy related are him writing the European Parliament to complain about Marks & Spencer mirrors distorting women’s figures  (Thanks for the heads up on that one Robin), Paul Merton telling him to shut up on Have I Got News For You and him presenting “Shafted”, when he does the “Shaft” hand gesture

I am quite excited at the prospect of him being in the jungle – it may even tempt me to watch the show (which by the way contains the least famous person I think that has ever been on the programme the fiancee of Peterborough United footballer Tom Williams)

Also, I took this photo in Amsterdam last year, it appears he’s branching out into being a racist travel agent too.

Sorry this post was a bit disjointed, I could go on all night about RKS but I’ll end things here. I’d love to hear any Kilroy related incidents/stories/dreams that you have though.

bye xx

Doing my bit for small business.

With all this talk of a recession looming, and the political parties climbing over one another to say how they would be best for small businesses, I thought I’d briefly mention how I helped someone in my own little way with their enterprise.

During my time in Peru, I met a young entrepreneur, who came to me with a business proposition.

“Shine your shoes mister?” He said with a Peruvian twang.

“No thanks lad, as you can see I’m wearing a dirty pair of adidas trainers, you won’t be able to polish these bad boys up” I replied, without breaking a stride. These trainers were the only thing that had been on my feet for 6 months (Bar a pair of flippers I went diving in), they had been covered in mud, soaked through, climbed a volcano and much more, and were really dirty and stank.

“Go on. Only one sole (20p). Please?”

I admired his tenacity, as he followed me down the street for half a mile, so finally I relented.

So he shined my shoes, and I gave him a couple of soles. (Despite him trying to hike the price up to 16 soles midway through the polish)

So, in all their glory, here is the end result, my shiny trainers!

Blogging old material. Allowed??

Not sure if this is good blogiquette, but since I’ve only just put my holiday photos on my PC I’m going to do it anyway and blog some older stuff.

My first one is a pic I took in Australia I think – it amused me greatly

 

What were they selling?

Question.

I have an important question, something I hope you can clear up for me. Which is the coolest bit in Tron?

The discs?

or the light cycles?

 

Votes please!

Rock Werchter

Last week I was in Belgium for the Rock Werchter music festival. Here is a summary of what I found

Best Band – The National

Great set from a band I knew virtually nothing about, even though they’ve apparently been going for a few years now. They sounded like a souped up version of Tindersticks (If you don’t know who Tindersticks are they sound bit like Vic Reeves’ club singer impression). Fantastic.

Runners up : Grinderman, Radiohead

Best Song – Bittersweet Symphony by the Verve

Caught me by surprise this one, didn’t think I liked this song, but there you go. Almost made me feel proud to from old Blighty, Gawd bless ‘er. The new Sigur Ros song with all the clapping was good too, no idea what it was called, probably something like Smjörið er smátt hrært út í þangað (Running through the glade, where the faeries sometimes come)

Best Costume – Jonsi Birgisson (Sigur Ros)

Looking like the bastard son of Adam Ant and Edward Scissorhands, there was only one person ever in the running for this contest. Unfortunately can’t find a pic to put here, but there are pics on the Rock Werchter website if you care enough to take a look… (Go to Report->Day 3 -> Sigur Ros). He also probably won nicest/most unassuming frontman award, we liked Jonsi.

Best facial hair – Grinderman

A hotly contested category this one, with a disappointing showing from Kings of Leon, who were expected to have it sewn up, but were well off the pace. Strong showings from Justice (Great muttonchops), and Sigur Ros (The keyboardist had a marvellous Dali-esque moustache, and could easily make a career being a mid 19th century dastardly villain if Sigur Ros ever goes down the pan). But Nick Cave’s horseshoe moustache, coupled with Warren Ellis’ Grizzly Adams style clinched it for Grinderman.

Worst moment – Counting Crows

I had a bit of misfortune in that I caught the first 4 songs of the Counting Crows set. At the time I didn’t think I could like this band any less. I now like this band even less. Midway through the third or fourth song, some dirge, the lead singer started to force himself to cry, it just looked ridiculous, at no point did you believe that he was crying due to the song meaning that much to him, it was just a piece of theatre. A rubbish piece of theatre. In this time of economic strife, please don’t spend your money on buying Counting Crows albums, they have enough money. And if you’re considering seeing them, please don’t, instead, pay me the price of the ticket and I’ll slap you round the face a few times, which is a little more fun (at least it is for me anyway).

Best Dancing – Over and Over by Hot Chip

We had a great jump around to this tune. Simple as that.

Worst excuse – Pete Doherty

Babyshambles didn’t turn up to play, and it turned out that the reason apparently was that Pete Doherty had to take care of his pregnant cat. If by his pregnant cat he means smack, and by take care of he means inject, then I am probably inclined to believe him…

This concludes my little awards show, but if anyone has any other categories they wish me to arbitrarily allocate a winner to, I’d be more than happy to oblige.

Just so you know…

I’m safe and well. Currently in Prague after whistlestop visits to Budapest (Highlight – drinking cans of beer in the train station late at night), Belgrade (Highlight – trying and failing to get into Eurovision, ah well, Moscow 2009 here we come!), Zagreb (highlight – a 13 hour sleep in a real BED after two nights of no sleep) and Vienna (Highlight – amazing buildings and parks, beautiful city).

Unfortunately my travel partner Robin has had to head off to a funeral of a friend of his (Jim), but hopefully we’ll be reunited soon. Robin’s written a nice piece about his friend on his blog (The link is Skinto on the right hand side of my blog).

Byeee

xx

For four days only…

I’m back in the UK!

Looking forward to eating a curry. Yum.