Is this a good blue message of death?

Eek! Any suggestions? Re-loaded fine, but can't be good...

Greyhound racing

I took April to the dogs for the first time yesterday, it was kind of a team night out but I promised April that i'd take her at some point so invited her along too.

We went to Romford, if the walk to the ground was an omen as to how the place would be I was pleasantly surprised. I had only ever been to Wimbledon before and found that quite grotty. Romford was excellent.

We booked a 2 course meal at a trackside table for £14 and had a great time. The place was tidy, had loads of staff and most surprisingly clean.

We only stayed until 9:30 (had to get back to Tonbridge) but I think I won, 3-4 times out of 7 races. Still down on the night betting wise but not a bad loss ratio considering i'm a complete amature.

One highlight was my friend James, he won once during the night but only about £1.20. During one of the races his dog was tripped by another and went arse over tit straight into the advertising hoardings. I shouldn't laugh, but it was funny. Slapstick is the finest form of comedy.

Another highlight of the night for me was during the walk to the venue, I looked down and spotted a tenner! Get in! It paid for my drinks that night! Slightly less impressive, 10% as impressive. I found £1 underneath the money slot of a pool table today at lunch. Woo hoo! They do say good things happen in threes... What will I find next???

Finger progress

I had my finger operated on 2 months ago, I Injured it playing rugby back in February 2007 but it never healed. Usually after a couple of weeks the swelling would go down and it would be fine, but it never did.

After a couple of months of nagging from April and me wincing from getting change out of my pocket I went to get it x-rayed. It wasn’t broken (I also got my pinkie x-rayed too, not broken), but needed to get looked at. My doctor recommended I had some physio, so being a member of BUPA I booked in to a local one in Putney.

After a month of physio, and exercising the joint, she recommended I saw a specialist, I had to go and see my GP first to get that signed off by BUPA but eventually I got an appointment to see a Dr Davy in Wimbledon. He told me that it could take up to 9 months for an injury like that to heal so I had to wait again. All the while continuing with my exercises, although not massively vigilantly.

It was no better in the new year so I saw my specialist again. He x-rayed the finger once more and said that the damaged soft tissue had turned into bone. Not an uncommon problem but would require surgery to fix. It was still during the rugby season and I was also off to Australia for a few weeks so I decided to sort everything out afterwards. Here’s what it looked like after the operation (above).

I went to a new physio (Putney’s too far away now) in the city and she was rubbish. She actually yawned on more than one occasion during my appointments and was always checking the clock. I decided to stop (even though it wasn’t my money I was spending), as it was such a waste.

I was supposed to book an appointment with my specialist a month ago so that he can check out my recovery but with the move and everything I’ve not sorted it out yet (must to tomorrow). He’s over in Wimbledon so it’s a pain to get to but I need to get it looked at as although the movement of my knuckle has improved, the pain is still there. Here’s what it looks like now. You can hardly see the join…

United Nations Women's Empowerment Bracelet = Yawn

http://www.un.org/Pubs/chronicle/2008/webarticles/080325_unifem.html

Have they not got better things to do? It's just a big advert for Avon.

'She emphasized that “by empowering women, we can help change the world and this commitment is imprinted on everything we do”. ' -What a load of bollocks!

I've never been one to follow the latest trend but I thought those bloody bracelet things were out of fashion now since they flooded the market. They were only ever swimming pool locker key wrist bands. How is that supposed to "empower women"?

Idiots!

Brewmaster Clark

It has been a long term dream of mine to produce my own beer / cider and now that I have having plenty of space in the new house I thought i'd give it a go.

I was initially going to use the garden shed as my brewery but that's still full of evil looking spiders so for the time being I am using a utility room cupboard.


I ordered the kit through http://www.brewityourself.co.uk/ this site was recommended by my friend James from work. He's used them many times before and certainly likes his beer so I take his word highly (only on the matters of beer and the drinking of beer, sorry James).


















The delivery took 4 days (including the weekend) and luckily as we were at work at the time one of our nice neighbours signed for the box.

I've had a busy week after work so I left the brewing to the weekend. In all it probably took about an hour although this nearly ended in tears as we got to the end of the mixing process and found we were two key ingredients missing. Yeast and 'special nutrients'.

April tried calling the company but no one was at home then we looked at the syrup container and gave it a shake. The two sachets were hiding in the secret compartment at the bottom. Phew! Brewmaster Clark's cider and beer empire nearly toppled at the first hurdle.

You will be able to sample the cider yourselves at our inaugural summer barbeque.

A week in Tonbridge

We moved into our new house on the 23rd with very little fuss. Ben, Kris and Ian came down to help out and a big thank you goes out to them. It is amazing how much rubbish you can accumulate when living in a small London flat. I dread to think about ever having to move from this place.

A couple of days cleaning and hoovering made the place livable but there were still a handful of things to get sorted out. We couldn't get the boiler to work so we had no hot water for a week. We have a few locks including one for the side door that we have no keys for so we need to get a locksmith in. The water is now hot and the locksmith failed to turn up.

I have also been waiting all week to get Sky fitted, in truth i've been waiting since August 2007 since I moved out of the Putney flat. My landlady wouldn't let us get a dish fitted in my last flat in Clapham and Virgin was yet to get installed on the street.

This was my main priority so we booked it a few weeks in advance to get it installed soon after the move. The engineer game round on Saturday and sucked his gums. He spotted the tree in our back garden straight away and said we wouldn't be able to get a dish unless we hired someone to install an extending pole to give clear line of site to the satellite.

Here's the tree, the bane of my weekend. Even if I wanted to (and I don't), I couldn't get the tree cut down. We half own it with our neighbors.

It would be a week before I could get a guy round and then another few to get the sky guy round once more. This would probably involve two separate days off work which i'm not willing to take so we're going to get Virgin.

Sky: Sky 1, better interface, cheaper
Virgin: On demand, HD, free Setanta sports

Overall they are much the same. Another two weeks to get installed though so we now only have 3 channels as for some reason we can't get any freeview reception.