mkingdon – Page 19 – Mkingdon's Blog

Mumble and Sons – Step away from the Banjo!

24/02/201314/01/2014 by mkingdon, posted in mkingdon

I watched the Brits this week. Emily was the main driver for this, as One Direction were due to perform. Her taste in music is weird/eclectic, as she likes some bands that you won’t have (and don’t want to have) heard of, but every now and again she gets drawn to a commercial boy band like me to a buffet.

I’ve watched the Brits for years. Earlier in my life, I was in a band, and so had more than a passing interest in the business they call music, as I of course assumed it was only a matter of time before I was snorting Vim off of Wendy James’ backside whilst thrusting my recently won Brit up a Gallagher’s nose.

Alas, my lack of fringe, talent and luck prevented that from happening, but still I am interested in what is hip and happening. I do appreciate that using the phrase hip and happening makes that (and me) an oxymoron.

Now this isn’t a predictable rant centred around me wondering what happened to music, and how they don’t write decent tunes anymore. Let’s be honest, I grew up in a time when Sigue Sigue Sputnick and Joe Dolce had hits.

However, there is a massive amount of Emperor’s New Clothes going on today. What I saw on Wednesday was an endless parade of ordinary looking blokes with too much facial hair trotting out what appears to be the same miserable, throaty guff based around some sort of folk or country theme. In my book if your band contains a banjo, that’s probably one banjo too many.

I know that I’m not supposed to know who these people are. I’m in my forties for God’s sake. It isn’t about that. It is about what appears to be the ability to write anything approaching a decent melody. Instead there is a reliance on stompy grunge ridden pub music, or dour, moany laments sang by people who can’t even spell diction.

On the odd occasion now that I stumble back to Radio 1, driven away from Radio 2 by Dido’s latest aural enema, I don’t stay very long. Listening to the resident gimp telling me that their “Big Thing” or “Mahoosive Toon” of the week is so banging just gets depressing when the “song” in question is pretty much always some black guy talking over a sample of a song I didn’t like twenty years ago.

That’s another thing. Rap Music – Making the talentless rich since 1980. How I enjoy seeing these fellas on MTV cribs with their platinum encrusted houses and their baths made of human bone. I only have to mention the name Professor Green to prove the point entirely.

Sigh. I’m ranting. Is this just the inevitable turn of events of me getting old? Probably, but I can and do like new music. I am a sucker for a pop tune or a hook. Something that has been written with the express desire of making me remember it, and more importantly want to.

So the likes of this Ben Howard character, and the God awful Mumford and Sons can take their tweed, bad diction and their angst and do one. The fact that their record company, via Radio 1, keep telling everyone how good they are, does not mean that they are actually any good.

I know we're crap, but they keep buying our records!! — I know we’re crap, but they keep buying our records!!

I’d rather listen to One Direction to be honest. Take away the whole boy band hysteria, and whoever has written for them has done some really good classic, catchy pop writing, and it works. Sure, the latest effort is a crass, car crash like version of a classic song, but they wouldn’t want to waste anything written originally on a charity. There’s real royalties to be had with stuff that isn’t a cover!!

So with all of that, and Coldplay winning best live act, the Brits for me wasn’t great. Timberlake was OK. He can sing, and has that “I’m American” class about him. Watch and learn Robbie. I was too stunned by his Singing In the Rain abomination on Saturday night to really make any sort of comment. Just imagine me slack-jawed and confused starting at the telly. It was more Freddie Starr than Mercury. Mind you, I am probably the only person in the world not to be a big fan of him either.

Robbie Williams — Freddie Starr…no, maybe Norman Wisdom!

I’ll probably watch the Brits again next year, when some new unwashed twonk is singing almost in tune as their record label count the money. The least they can do to make it worth watching is have someone get drunk and dangle their rude bits in Adele’s drink. That’s what you call Rolling in the Deep!

Till the next time……

Prom Diddly Om!

17/02/201317/02/2013 by mkingdon, posted in mkingdon

Well this is odd. I am looking out at the world at blog time on a Sunday and there is day light. There is day light and no snow. It may have been a little early for the flip-flops and mankini, but as I always say, I don’t think you’re ready for this jelly world.

Could it be that we are moving out of the bleak dark depressing claws of winter? I suspect winter still has something to say on the matter, but I have my fingers crossed.

Moving into the warmer months brings mixed blessings. On the plus side it means warmth, heating bills I can actually afford, driving to and from work in day light and not having to give Oli a full body bath after every walk.

The biggest downside is that I will have to shed my “winter coat” in order that I can once again fit into a T-shirt or two. The forgiving nature of those winter layers hides a multitude of sins, and there have been many sins to hide, and as usual I leave the depths of winter at the higher end of the register of my acceptable weight.

I am hoping that spring will deliver me some mojo, as for me to exercise, I need the basics, like a modicum of energy and the desire to leave the house. These two commodities have been severely lacking of a winter’s evening, but hopefully if I get home in the light, like some sort of overweight plant, I may absorb extra energy from the extended sunlight. My O Level Biology tells me that is Photosynthesis, which I think is probably also a Genesis album!

Subliminally I may have started my fitness regime yesterday. We visited the local cinema to watch This is 40. Now, I know you know me better than to imagine I didn’t indulge in any snackage, however, I did only indulge in one snack. I impress myself!

The film itself was very enjoyable.

I was expecting a fairly light gross out comedy, and there are definitely elements of that in the film, but it had much more substance and length than I had anticipated. Don’t get me wrong, it wasn’t Schindler’s List, but it had a decent story to accompany some real belly laugh moments.

If you do go and watch it stick around for the credits for some very funny out take moments from one particular scene.

It was a late showing, so we were back home late, almost midnight, which is a very late night for the 40 somethings in our house. Sleep soon followed.

After a resultant lie in, today has only consisted of a little tidying, and a spot of driving with Emily. My ability to remain calm despite my hatred of being a passenger is developing nicely. Still, I’ll be glad when she has passed, so that I can then just sit at home and fret about her being out driving by herself!!

Saturday saw Louise and Rebecca out shopping for Rebecca’s prom dress. Yes, we all know that prom isn’t until July, but apparently this meant we were cutting it fine! It only took a couple of hours to find “the one”, and I am looking forward to seeing it in a few weeks when we pick it up. Louise assures me it is lovely, and I will in no way reference the price paid for it….oh bugger!! Anyway, I’m sure it will be worth it. I mean Emily wore hers for at least four hours before storing it forever in her wardrobe. Can someone we know please get married so that she has an opportunity to wear it again!

Why Rebecca couldn’t wear this one I don’t know!!!

So for those also in the hunt for prom stuff, good luck, and I hope you win the lottery too!!

Till the next time…..

Is it August yet?

10/02/2013 by mkingdon, posted in mkingdon, Walt Disney World

This blog would be a painful place if it were merely to host an ever-increasing level of moaniness between now and August, about how we aren’t going away. It is indeed going to be that, but I feel it only right and proper to tell you.

With that disclosure done, we go on. Oh arse, that just reminds me of Reflections of Earth.

That is the problem when you have spent every holiday since 1999 in WDW. To illustrate that point, whilst lay in bed this morning I also calculated that over the past eleven years or so, we have spent about 26 weeks in Florida. That’s more than half a year! We are practically residents. No wonder we are pining for home.

What could be similarly boring in a blog, is blogging about what you blogged about before. So we’ll do some of that too.

Last week’s blog (the doughnut burger experience) broke a few records in terms of readers. I was also really pleased to have the Teak Neighbourhood Grill spot it, and retweet it out to their followers and post it on their Facebook page.

How strange must they think we are that some seven or eight months after eating a burger in a bar in Orlando, we get together to recreate it, and then some idiot writes it all down!!

I got all sorts of reactions from all sorts of folks. People I never knew read my blog got in touch to express delight, revulsion and incredulity in fairly equal measure. As they say different strokes for different folks and all that.

So onto this week. As many of you will already be aware, Louise passed her first set of nursing exams this week. She was, as ever, convinced she wouldn’t, but in the end scored an impressively high mark. Her current placement is proving to be testing (to put it politely) but hopefully the positive news about her exam will gird her loins enough to get through it, and then enjoy the rest of the course. After this placement it is one year down, and two to go.

Whether we go to WDW or not any time soon, I am also planning our longer term trips (I am truly talented in this way, and I can have multiple trips percolating all at the same time), once she has qualified.

Not only will she earn more than she does now, but also both the girls will be out of full-time education, and we shall no longer be tied to the extortionate and sadistic mid summer flight prices. My heart is already leaping at the prospect of securing flights in the quieter periods of the year.

It will be like travelling back in time to when we first started going, and I sometimes do flight searches now for those off-peak times just to see some results come up that don’t start with a 7 or higher! It is both torture and joy combined.

Enough WDW whining I think.

We are getting used to Louise working shifts, including weekends. Yesterday it was just the girls and I, so I suppose that more or less made me “in charge”. We managed OK, and were even able to work the washer and attempt some rudimentary cleaning!

Today has been one of those lazy days, with us not getting out of bed till late morning. A delicious sausage and egg sandwich to start the day was then followed by, well, not a right lot really. I took Emily out for more driving, and she is really improving.

From the initial terror I felt sat in the passenger seat, I am now relatively relaxed when she is driving. Her overall control of the car is fine, and she can in fact actually drive now. The real work to do is around how to park, reverse and generally manoeuvre the thing at slow speed in small spaces.

Whether it is the heart wrenching fear and angst of their first day at nursery, their terrifying start at secondary school or them handling half a ton of metal at high-speed, they are just one long set of woe, worry and mietheration. The trick is recognising that this is all part of that often quoted Circle of Life, and trying to enjoy the ride, rather than shouting out STOP as she brings the car to halt seven inches short of that lamp-post as she parks the car up back at home. It is also important to recognise and appreciate that they are worth it too.

I’ll try harder next time, but I’m not that hopeful.

I shall leave you with a new picture of Oli, taken by Emily. For no other reason than I love it….

Till the next time….

If Mohammed can’t go to the mountain, make calorific food.

03/02/201307/02/2013 by mkingdon, posted in mkingdon, Walt Disney World

Staring down the barrel of our first non WDW year since sometime around 2001, the pain is becoming unbearable. So much so that on Friday afternoon in a quiet moment at work, I glanced back through the photos on my phone, and eventually came to the ones taken last August in Florida.

I felt the urge to tweet a photo of the now infamous Donut Burger from the Teak Neighbourhood Grill, stating how much I missed it. A retweet from Emily and a brief Twitter conversation with the sister-in-law led us to a Saturday night based around re-creating the dish here in the UK.

So between us we procured the required ingredients, and I kicked off the cooking.

In terms of ingredients, I suppose I should list what you might need, but to be honest it is fairly obvious. Anyway, we had ten diners and used –

Two dozen glazed Krispy Kreme doughnuts.
Twelve good quality beef burgers
Some maple cured bacon
Cheese
Chilli Fries (made by sister-in-law)
A selection of mustards, ketchup, BBQ sauce and mayo to suit all tastes

The burgers said to fry them, so I did.

With the bacon under the grill, as soon as stuff was ready I started to plate up. Before I did I quickly melted the cheese on top of each burger. Plating up is a bit messy, as the sugar glaze stuff gets everywhere!!

I had been afraid that the finished article would bear no resemblance to the real deal over in Florida, but I was pretty chuffed to be honest. To be fair, it isn’t the most technical of dishes!

Amongst the diners present, only Emily and I had actually eaten the real thing back in August, so I had no idea what sort of reaction there would be. Our other guests had been to Teak during their recent Florida trip just after Christmas, but had different dishes. My brother had tried (and failed) to polish off the Heart A-Teak.

I needn’t have worried. Everyone seemed to lap it up!!

That expression is I think a mix of disbelief and joy!!

Meat - good, burger - good, bacon - good! It's good!! — Meat – good, doughnut – good, bacon – good! It’s good!!

Rebecca and her boyfriend Tom were equally impressed. Tom is a fitness freak so I wasn’t sure how he’d react, but he wolfed it down. That burger, along with the chocolate cake and custard to follow rid him of his ugly six-pack in one go!

Don't interrupt my burger — Don’t interrupt my burger

Emily’s aversion to photos knows no end, similarly her love for this dish.

Nephew Jack had necked the lot by the time I had got to him. I took that as a good sign.

Niece Sarah was also won over!!

By this time plates were becoming clean and I had spent enough time snapping and I needed to eat my own!!

That didn’t take long, and with a choice of New York Cheesecake or Hot Fudge Chocolate Cake for “afters” everyone was soon suitably immobile, tired and I think happy.

Full of food and topped up with wine and beer we discussed how we should open an American inspired restaurant, with dishes like these, the obligatory eating challenge, and an old-fashioned traditional ice cream and American soda bar.

We had loads of great ideas, and between us probably enough knowledge and business sense. Alas, we lack the couple of hundred grand to get it going so instead we had another beer and finished off the wine.

So, in an attempt to fight off the lack of America blues I have managed to replicate that “none of my clothes fit” fear for my next day at work by consuming a ridonculous amount of calories. We also have no money, so we can almost pretend that we’ve just got back from Florida. Can’t we?

A couple of tweets and Facebook posts of said burgers drew a wide range of comments. All I will say is that those expressing revulsion, concern or sheer horror…..like all things in life, don’t knock it until you’ve tried it.

If any of you are heading to Florida soon, give the Teak a try, and tell them I sent you. Whether you have or indeed like the Donut burger, you’ll have a good time anyway.

Not that I’m missing the place at all…..

Till the next time…..

Murdoch vs Branson. Call me!!

27/01/2013 by mkingdon, posted in mkingdon

I have had a Sky induced strop this week.

Being a sensible, mature adult, even mid strop I knew that it was an over reaction, and not really that important, but it did not reduce the venom by which I did what everyone does now when they are angry….updated my Facebook status about it.

Friday saw some snow. In fact it saw a lot of snow in these parts. Thankfully, due to some work appointmentage in the bustling metropolis of Manchester earlier in the day, I was at home when it started rather than trying to battle my way home through it from the office.

Said appointmentage by the way was in a section of Manchester called the Northern Quarter. This is the mecca for all things artsy and cool in Manchester, and indeed if you try to get in without a pair of converse and a pair of thick rimmed glasses there is a toll to pay.

I met with a design agency (get her!), and the office was pretty much the stereotypical version of what you might imagine it to be. It was an old mill style building, with one of those old style pull the door shut industrial type lifts. As I emerged into the office itself, I was immediately surrounded by retro cool jumpers and sarcastic T-shirts.

If you weren’t an Apple Mac computer or stripped wooden floorboard you were no use to them.

Anyway, the meeting was productive, the people were actually lovely, talented and very useful so all was well. I took my uncool M&S bedecked torso back into the real world, where I didn’t need to try so hard to be cool.

So there I was back at home mid afternoon, cracking on with some work, watching the first flakes of snow hit the ground. It soon turned into a fair deluge, and traffic thinned as the roads got worse and worse.

Anywho, such a sad sham is my life that one of the highlights of my week is the repeat of the series on TCM of Band of Brothers. I mentioned it last week, but that shall not stop me repeating my high regard for this programme. It starts at 9pm.

At 8.43pm I was told without any softening of the blow that no satellite signal was being received. I took this as a personal attack, and uttered a phrase I often quote when bad luck befalls me. “You couldn’t write this!”.

Our Sky dish is in a very lofty position, nowhere near any window, so I resorted to throwing snowballs at it in an attempt to dislodge the seven flakes of snow that were stopping me from watching my favourite programme. Of course, nothing worked, and with no signal I couldn’t even record them for later.

Naturally, Band of Brothers appears to be the only series currently on TV that isn’t repeated at least four times throughout the week. I even searched You Tube for the two episodes I was currently missing, but no joy.

My bottom lip knew no bounds as it protruded proudly to display my dissatisfaction with the world.

I constructed and dispatched a very strongly worded email to Mr Murdoch (or one of his underlings) outlining my outrage, and telling him that I wanted to cancel my contract forthwith, immediately and without delay. No bugger has replied.

So I have spent the weekend on the Virgin web site, pricing things up. It is pretty much like for like, but each have their pros and cons. Virgin have faster broadband, cheaper phone (for us) and very similar TV. Alas, one channel has stopped me from pressing the button on this change.

Virgin do not have Sky Atlantic. We do not watch it a lot, but I know that sometime soon the new series of Game of Thrones is going to appear and if I can’t watch that there will be a similar meltdown. Nothing comes between me and my dwarf sex and unlimited sword related bloodshed.

So that right there is a dilemma. I am leaning towards Virgin on principle really. It all depends now on who contacts me first, Murdoch or Branson. Let battle commence!

Oh and to add insult to injury, Tesco phoned us on Saturday to cancel our delivery due to the snow. Seriously, taking away food and Sky in the space of 24 hours is a risky business. This has Falling Down written all over it.

Falling Down — Where is my delivery Mr Tesco?

To save the day my brother and sister in law invited us for tea on Saturday night to prevent us having to eat toothpaste sandwiches. We had a delicious meal, and watched Dredd….in 3D on their clever new telly.

So Mr Murdoch I’ll have one of those fandangled 3D TVs as compensation for missing my programme, plus of course the box set of Band of Brothers!

Till the next time…..

Monkeys, gurning and a selection of anoraks

20/01/2013 by mkingdon, posted in mkingdon

To avoid another bit of bloggage about the banality of January, let’s wander back through the years. My Mum popped round earlier with some old photos. Louise had been asking if she had any really old black and white ones that we could frame and hang, she didn’t just appear out of the blue with random photos.

From a vast collection of photo albums (remember those) we looked through just three. They were a mixture of really old photos of my Mum’s parents, and brothers and sisters through to some that were even in colour!

Before I shock and amaze you with my incredible levels of cuteness when I was younger, take a look at these of my Mum and Dad, or Tony Curtis and Doris Day…not sure which.

I think at the time of this next one my Dad was in National Service. It is amazing and scary to think that just a generation ago every male had to serve two years in the army! My soft under belly quivers at the prospect. I am under no illusion that my Dad spent those two years in peace time on a switchboard rather than on a front line somewhere, but still, two years in uniform is a prospect I cannot compute.

On a similar note, I have been watching Band of Brothers (again) of a Friday evening on TCM. It is probably one of the best, most compelling and watchable pieces of drama ever made, and this week was the one where they spent weeks dug into frozen holes with no supplies, ammo or warm clothes at the Battle of the Bulge. I simply cannot comprehend that experience either. But I digress….

Moving on a good few years, this next one caught my eye for a couple of reasons. Firstly, I look horrified, and second this was from a time when you could have your photo taken with a monkey outside of British Home Stores. Or was that just Bolton?

There is also some top anorak action going on here along with some top gurning from my brother, more of which later.

So onto the cuteness I promised you. I’m not sure if this next one is before or after the last, but my levels of cuteness only lead me to ask what went wrong?

Brace yourselves….

I’m pretty sure that is food around my mouth, so not much changes really.

As technology raced ahead, within only a few short years we emerged into a glorious world of technicolour, Polaroid cameras, large brown swivel chairs that only Dad could sit in, but for some reason still with dodgy anoraks.

My brother is one of those people who cannot have a photo taken without such an expression. I think there are probably only half a dozen of them in existence where he looks “normal”. Some of them are his wedding photos, but not all!!

It has been strange looking back through history. Looking at myself seems like looking at someone else. I sort of remember those times, but somehow see them as seperate to my life today. I wonder how the girls will see themselves in years to come.

It will be different I suppose, as their life will be captured in many and varied ways. Facebook and twitter have already captured their every thought in recent years, and with phones acting as cameras and video cameras, they will have a lot to reminisce about. There are moving images of my younger years of course, but they are on silent jerky “cine” films which are buried somewhere in my Mum and Dad’s house.

I suppose I can only hope they have more happy memories than otherwise, and of course that I manage to stick around long enough to look back with them. If Emily keeps taking corners on two wheels like she did again this afternoon, that could be in jeopardy.

Till the next time…..

Enjoyment, crying and being (Les) miserable.

13/01/201313/01/2013 by mkingdon, posted in mkingdon

I am contemplating a change in schedule. The fact that I write my bloggage of a Sunday evening may be giving them the slight tinge of melancholy. I know this will come as a surprise to you, as no doubt I hide my sarcasm, cynicism and moaning well.

I have given it some thought but I can’t think of another time of the week when I have the time, energy or inclination. We’ll see.

So how was the first proper week back after xmas? It is a strange time. Everyone is trying to lose weight yet the cupboards still groan with half a dozen selection boxes, some posh cheese crackers and a Luxury Christmas Pud. In my case I also had a bumper size Toblerone to deal with. I did the sensible thing and took it to the pictures with me on Saturday night. For any normal person that would mean that they need not buy any over priced Pick n Mix from said cinema, but you will know by now that was not how it went down.

I jump ahead a little. That was Saturday evening and an event of note took place that afternoon that I should share with you.

Having procured (at last) some almost affordable insurance that would allow Emily to drive the 1.0 litre beast that lurks in our garage, purchased some magnetic L Plates and girded my loins, we went out for the first time.

It felt a little surreal to be honest. I sat next to her with a fifty-fifty mix of pride and absolute terror as she pulled away from the kerb, to her credit, not stalling. For the next hour she drove around the local area on the roads on which over the years I have taken to her to –

Playgroup
Nursery
Infant School
Parties
Ballet Lessons
Junior School
Guides
Guitar Lessons
A&E
Secondary School
Drama Workshop
Drum Lessons
Gigs
College

Plus a million other journeys I have forgotten. All of sudden there she is operating an actual car, and being pretty good at it too. I remained calm at all times, with only a last-minute mild panic as she turned the final corner at about forty miles an hour in third gear. How we laughed!

We spent about twenty minutes practising her reversing, and its safe to say that is where we will be concentrating our efforts. Her theory is booked for early February, so it is time to give her as much practice as possible. Beyond the incentive of being able to drive, and of course actually being insured on a car to do so, losing the crushing expense of weekly lessons will be one I shall celebrate almost as much as when she finally passes her test.

So onto the evening activities. We had all been looking forward to watching Les Miserables since we first saw a trailer months ago. So Louise, Emily, Louise’s Mum and I were booked for the 7pm show. Rebecca had a prior arrangement at a friend’s party so she missed out.

We arrived early anticipating large crowds. We had pre booked our tickets but wanted to bag some seats that meant we were not on the front row looking up Russel Crowe’s nostril for the entire film.

As you know, a 7pm film will only actually start about forty minutes later, so I patted myself on the back for having the foresight to get some Pick n Mix as well as my enormous slab of Swiss chocolate. By the time it actually started a large dent had been made and I felt suitably sick.

The film itself was, in our view, fantastic. We already loved the music and the stage version so were probably highly likely to like a film version, but it was superbly done. Even Russell Crowe’s less than perfect singing voice could not detract from the enjoyment. I sat next to Emily, and heard a fair amount of excessive sniffing at various points in the film, but as the final rousing chorus was in full swing she pretty much lost it. This wasn’t just a dewy-eyed glimpse of emotion, but rather uncontrollable and full on sobbing that lasted all the way out of the cinema and most of the drive home.

This probably isn’t a reaction that would be commonly seen, but you have to bear in mind that Emily cries each and every time the WDW advert comes on. You know, the one about the teenager going there and spending time with her parents.

She cries at Glee (every episode) Up….and Toy Story 3, every single time she watches them. Personally, I think this is a lovely trait for a 17-year-old in this cynical day and age.

So if you are going to watch this film, you may get a little emotional, and you may not. I suppose it depends on your emotional state and make up, and I don’t mean whether your mascara is waterproof or not. Emily is going to watch it again on Wednesday with her friends. This time she tells me she won’t wear eye make up and will take more tissues. The small amount we took with us, knowing she may tear up were nowhere near sufficient!

It’s a long time since I watched a film that I needed tissues for, but that’s a different story.

Mind you if she takes another corner like she did on Saturday afternoon when I’m in the car with her I might cry a little, and need some clean underwear too.

Till the next time…..

Oreo Cheesecake induced pain.

06/01/201307/06/2020 by mkingdon, posted in mkingdon

So the week just gone was rife with the pain and misery of the return to work. It has been many years since I had to endure going back so early after New Year so the pain felt was acute.

My early return was required mainly as I had a new chap starting work and felt it slightly unfair to allow him to spend three days sat wondering where the toilets were. Those three days felt longer than most full weeks, but I suppose that was always going to be the case.

The one positive from such a situation is that this initial pain is done and dusted and I can now sit and watch those endure it tomorrow as the late starters join me to sit still on the motorway tomorrow morning.

To make the week simply fly by, we have been enthralled and entertained by photos sent back home from those Williams’ currently enjoying WDW.

George and Piglet — Nephew George with Piglet

With the size of the party travelling, they are getting around on some sort of double-decker bus.

You can only imagine how images like this have been helping the diet

As is tradition on any Williams journey to Florida, a birthday is to be celebrated. This time it was my Dad who did it in his usual understated style. Apparently, he wore the hat all day.

Dad Birthday — Where did you get that hat?

They head home tomorrow (Monday), and if I were that way inclined to take solace from the pain of others, my own recently endured return to work woes will be a gnat on the arse of an elephant compared to that about to be endured by the returning tribe from Orlando. Apart from my Mum & Dad of course who will just go back to being retired and not going to work in a different country.

So if you have been one of those lazing at home for those wonderful extra few days since New Year, this is probably one of the worst Sunday nights of the year. I look upon you with a mix of pity, sympathy and gloaty supremacy. Don’t worry, as bad as you think it is going to be will be nothing compared to how it actually will turn out. I speak from recent experience.

Oh and after only a few hours at work, Louise and I had one of those text conversations that more often than not end up on a flights web site with a smoking credit card. Fear not, we remained strong, and no bookings were made. We were caught up in the madness for a few short moments but the sobering cost of flights and the lack of a method of payment that might be accepted swiftly brought us down to earth again……with an enormous and bone-shattering bump. It hurt.

So be warned, the pain of the return to work (especially if family members are sending you hourly updates of WDW activities) can make you do crazy things. Let’s be careful out there!

Till the next time….

2012 blog stats….and a thank you

02/01/2013 by mkingdon, posted in mkingdon

The WordPress.com stats helper monkeys prepared a 2012 annual report for this blog. Thank you for reading!!

Here’s an excerpt:

4,329 films were submitted to the 2012 Cannes Film Festival. This blog had 54,000 views in 2012. If each view were a film, this blog would power 12 Film Festivals

Click here to see the complete report.

Not a slow motion montage of 2012.

31/12/201231/12/2012 by mkingdon, posted in mkingdon

Well, we survived Christmas, and despite consuming silly amounts of food (mainly desserts and chocolates) I have not had to buy new clothes. This is good.

I would declare this Christmas a decent one, and I have absolutely loved being at home for an extended run of days. It has proved to me, as if proof were needed, that I would be absolutely superb as a lottery winner. I am a firm believer that if anyone wins enough to ensure they need never work again, and they continue working then they should be stripped of the money, and it be given to someone else, ideally me.

I don’t get this “I’d be bored if I didn’t work” thing. I have filled every day very easily, and that is without having the luxury of endless funds with which to entertain myself and the family. With a few million in the bank I don’t know how I’d find time to even think about my previous life where I was a slave to an alarm clock and overdraft.

Most weeks I go through the thought process, in some detail, of exactly what I would do with a sizeable lottery win. I won’t go into the level of planning I undertake as you would think me sad(der), but whenever those balls wish to drop I am more than ready. Are you listening Dale?

Anyway, back to xmas just gone, and as you are no doubt aware we were hosting. The burden was lightened by everyone who came bringing with them a vital element of the meal, so really it was just about finding somewhere for every one to sit.

The day started too early, with Rebecca as ever channeling her five-year old self. After trying to go for a quiet wee around 7.30am, I got back to bed to find a text from Rebecca asking if she could get up yet. Knowing that Emily’s body would probably require about four more hours sleep we tried to stall her as long as possible but within minutes she was up in Emily’s room making a nuisance of herself. Luckily Emily spared her life and we piled downstairs to open presents.

Emily — Eye contact is not advisable this early

From various sources Oli had as many presents as the girls. He liked this one a lot.

The rest of the day was a blur of gifts, family, eggnog and food…so much food.

Rebecca channeling Bet Lynch with that top

Since Christmas Day we have waved off most of the family as they left for Florida where they are right now. This.Is.Absolutely.Fine. Moving on.

So thoughts now turn to the New Year, and no doubt you are already overdosed on slow motion montages of 2012, and those ever so hilarious not at all scripted panel shows where they tell us all what happened in case we’d forgotten.

As I can’t do slow motion montages, I’ll keep my review brief. 2012 was, like pretty much every year, a mixed bag of ups and downs. It is tempting to slag off every year and say you are glad to see the back of it, but if you keep doing that all you end up is dead.

The year about to end was busy, traumatic in some ways but also included some good stuff too. Of course us somehow managing another Florida trip was a major highlight for me, but just to prove the point about ups and downs, of course Mum’s illness preventing them coming along wasn’t great.

Louise started her nursing course in 2012, which is the realisation of a long-held ambition, and despite some real downs I have ended the year in a really good place job wise. Incredibly after ten years in one place I have changed jobs three times this year. The first by choice, mainly on a point of principle after how they treated a load of people who worked for me. The second was more or less forced as the company was heading for a brick wall, and the third was flatteringly via some head hunting, but awkwardly only a few weeks after starting a new job. I am often the first to bemoan our luck and look for the worst in a situation, but the way in which that happened, and the job and company I have now settled with was pretty much a gift from the gods.

The girls are healthy, happy (as much as teenagers can be amidst their raging hormones and mood swings) and not on drugs, dependent on alcohol or familiar to the police. I’ll settle for that.

We also moved house in 2012. The fact that this happened right in the middle of job move number two made the early summer probably one of the most stressful times of my life. Having to secure a new job and deal with the inevitable nonsense of a move was not good. Sure, people go through a lot worse, but I don’t want to repeat that thanks.

The wider world outside the Williams sanctum has crumbled to shit a little more in the past twelve months. Financial disaster, corruption, scandal and lies have dominated the headlines. Basically if you were on TV between 1970 and 1985 you should expect to be arrested in 2013.

So looking ahead to 2013, I expect another year of similar ups and downs. Aside from the inevitable lottery win that is bound to come our way (isn’t it?) there won’t be a Florida holiday. I know, I know, you won’t believe me but unless a whole heap of cash falls into our lap there is no chance. The house is screaming at us to spend money on it, and a holiday is rightly someway behind all that in the pecking order.

In the few short months since we got here we have converted the loft, repaired the chimney, cosmetically enhanced the kitchen as best we can without a full refit, titivated Rebecca’s room and painted various bits of the bathroom. Of course I also bled the radiators!!

The list of what we still want and need to do is longer than the list of desserts I ate on Christmas Day.

Between now and the end of the summer Emily will be doing her A levels and Rebecca her GCSEs. The house could turn into a war zone in the battle to get them to do sufficient work and revision. I am of course looking forward to that!

Our journey into the new year will be just Louise and I, as both the girls are out at parties, and of course the rest of the family are in bloody WDW! We intend to raise hell with a visit to the pictures and a meal in local pub. I am the Ozzie Osbourne of the North West. Making it to midnight is not guaranteed!

So I wish you all well for the New Year, thank you for your support and time in tolerating the trip report(s), and your continued interest in and reading of these weekly verbal vomits is astounding and appreciated in equal measure.

So there you go, probably the only retrospective of 2012 you will come across without mentioning the Olympics…oh bollocks!

Till the next time….Till the next year…..

Craig.

Two loo seats and other festive treats

23/12/2012 by mkingdon, posted in mkingdon, Walt Disney World

Fear not, there shall be no political ranting this week. I finished work last Tuesday, and so I am almost at the stage where I am starting to relax a bit. It does usually take me those few days to shed the grinding routine from my system, and this was evidenced by me not getting out of bed this morning until 10.40!! That is testimony not just to my relaxed state but also to the very impressive performance of my prostate. That’s what I call bladder control! Take that middle age!

I have spent my days being busy but in a good way…..mainly. I’ve done a couple of decent walks with Oli, and done some of those long overdue niggling jobs around the house. I am not one to spare you from detail, so these have involved changing both toilet seats in the house and replacing about twenty-six bulbs that were out. I had not planned to replace both toilet seats, however having selected a new one for the main loo all by myself, as soon as it was fitted it became quite clear that it was not correct. Well, so Louise told me anyway. What is wrong with a bright white toilet seat on a cream toilet I do not know. Anyway, to save any tears (mine) I allowed Louise to go and choose another one, and I retired the bright white one to the en suite, where it still looks a bit odd, but no-one sees that other than mine and Louise’s under parts.

I have also shampooed our carpets. Really, how do you live with the level of excitement in these blog posts? Loo seats and carpet cleaning in one week must have you on the edge of sleep.

Christmas wise, I wisely secured a delivery slot with Asda some weeks ago, and this duly turned up on Saturday. The delivery driver had the haunted look of someone who had about a dozen similar mammoth deliveries to get through that day. Having spent an enormous amount I was somewhat aghast and let down to realise when he’d left that we had no actual food.

We have lots of booze, plenty of stuff for Christmas day but very little actual day-to-day stuff. So this morning I had to walk up to the local Co-op and do a mini shop just so we can eat before the big day. It sort of took the shine off my smugness at being so organised for once.

We are hosting this year, however, the burden is somewhat reduced as everyone involved is pitching in to cook various elements of the food required. So the more people we invite the less we have to do. If we get a few more round I only have to open the peanuts and buy a cheese board and we’re away!

One distinct advantage of living next door to my Mum & Dad is that we can devise a way to seat all twelve of us. We are going to dismantle their dining room table and bring it into our house. With a few emergency chairs and sitting close together we should be OK.

I’m sure you like us are plagued with the fear of having forgotten something key, and therefore disappointing someone who fancies a glace cherry. Oh bugger, we don’t have any glace cherries.

Thinking about it, should any of our guests require such a thing, I can live with it, as most of them jet off to Florida two days later. That’s right, my brother, his three kids (plus a couple of their partners) and my Mum & Dad are spending ten days there, and I don’t mind a bit. Giving dining recommendations through gritted teeth is perfectly normal isn’t it?

Should you all wish to club together and fund us to join them, call my boss and Louise’s University placement and secure the required time off, kennel the dog and cats and pack, then that would be a real nice xmas treat and no mistake!

Instead, I shall spend the remainder of my xmas hols in the elasticated pants, staying in very close proximity to the TV and Xbox, and determined to clear the cupboards in readiness for the inevitable new year diet. I am not in any way ready though for the already recorded onslaught of “New Year, New You” nonsense. You just know there will be the normal parade of leotard clad minor celebs trying to fool you into thinking their DVD will get you thin, when in reality they have an eating disorder and a history of surgical procedures to thank.

Still, soon be Easter!!

Merry Christmas.

Till the next time…..

A non funny rant…so nothing new this week then….

16/12/201217/12/2012 by mkingdon, posted in mkingdon

I like America. I like it a lot. The fact that in terms of surface area I have only ever visited a very small percentage of it does not detract from the affection in which I hold most of it.

If at any point in my life I get both the time and the funds, I have every intention of visiting lots of different bits of it. This is a recognition that the bits I’ve been to are the sugar-coated, freshly painted tourist ready facades, but still, as a country it is on my list of things I like a lot.

Of course, like anything with positives it has some negatives too. Jimmy Saville did quite a lot for charity, but seems to have blotted his copybook somewhat by the small matter of also being the most renowned and prolific sexual predator in UK history. On balance then the negatives win in that case.

Despite my affection for the US, I feel I should probably bring up the fact that America is pretty much almost certainly politically corrupt. This is most likely a negative!

For example, if your brother runs a state where the election results might be a bit close, it seems it can be arranged that you actually win that state, even when you didn’t really. The fact that the real winner should have been Al Gore, who would have implemented massive mounts of green policies, and thus upset nearly all of the massive conglomerates who need to keep killing the planet to make their profits is just another coincidence surely?

Even when you get elected president it seems you are not safe. Should you be a really popular young handsome president who happens to make a few decisions that go against the grain, then the good old authorities are not averse to having you bumped off on National television just to smooth the running of the world.

So this country of glamour, glitz and of course fabulous holidays has a few flaws then. However, all of those are pretty insignificant when compared to the fact that there is actually a law that pretty much insists that you own a gun. In fact, the lower your IQ, or the higher your depressive EMO tendencies then the more you are encouraged to own multiple firearms.

This is of course every “Americuns” right, to defend their home. So having six fully automatic rifles to keep the marauding hordes out of your one bed apartment is A-OK. Daft, quaint things like burglar alarms, decent locks and maybe even a dog are just old-fashioned ideas that those funny folk across the Atlantic persist with.

So all this pithy build up is a prelude to a very unfunny scenario that of course happened earlier this week. I have to say that I don’t know all the details of the killings that happened in an elementary school, as I could not bring myself to watch the news. I know that around twenty children were gunned down along with about ten other teachers and other adults.

For a country that is so advanced, in so many ways, that gives the world so many great things, and of course that has given me and my family some of the best experiences and memories we’ll ever have, how can it be that in 2012 this global giant still allows any knob head to stock up on guns ready for the day that something doesn’t go their own way.

If this were a one-off, like of course our own tragic Dunblane, then we would mourn it as that, and put all our efforts into those affected. But these things are regular events, and how many do they need to get the hint that something needs to change?

So come on Barack, I suspect you are a decent sensible chap, even though I have never met you. Sod the rednecks who will piss and moan and sort out your gun laws. There are several children somewhere in America right now who will owe you a massive debt of gratitude if you do, but then again if you do, they will never know you saved them.

Till the next time…..

Bleak Blackpool and Dale Winton’s Tan

09/12/201209/12/2012 by mkingdon, posted in mkingdon

Emily met Dale Winton this week. OK, so met may be a little strong, but she was in the same room for many hours. I think it was Tuesday when she asked if she could go to the BBC at Salford to watch a recording of In It To Win It. Her teacher had somehow got some tickets and offered them out to the class, so off she went.

It was at best OK, but the whole experience seems to have been blighted by the audience having to endure sub-zero temperatures so that Dale’s tan wouldn’t be sweated off during the recording. As a student of Film and Media, experiences like this can only be good, and the endurance of low temperatures can only be good for the spirit in later life, especially as by the time she has her own place, heating it will require one of the lottery wins Dale so often introduces.

It was also good practice for our day out on Saturday. We (the girls and I that is) went to Blackpool on Saturday. A strange choice I hear you think…..but one sort of forced upon us. Emily needed to get some more photographs for her latest photography course work. The coursework is in two halves. The first half taken in WDW last August, and the second contrasting piece now being taken in a bleak mid winter UK, at various theme and amusement venues.

So we set off at around lunchtime, and about an hour later were parked up on the prom just outside the Pleasure Beach in the shadow of the Big One, which by coincidence is the title of an adult film….so I am told!

All the pictures here are mine by the way, not Emily’s!

By Christ it was cold. Of course as we left the house I went through the pointless ritual of telling Rebecca that what she had on was nowhere near sufficient for the expected conditions. As usual I lost, and as usual I was proven absolutely correct as her teeth began to chatter within seconds of leaving the car.

So we wandered up the prom with Emily snapping away, and popped into a couple of amusement arcades, amazed that they were open, and not at all amazed that they were deserted.

Whilst Emily took her photos Rebecca began her onslaught of miethering to have a go on those bloody claw games where you give money away to operate a mechanical arm for a few seconds. I was eventually worn down and kissed goodbye to a couple of quid, only to be amazed a minute later when Rebecca turned up with this.

I bet the owner of the arcade was gutted as she’d just wiped out his weekend’s profits.

Out into the cold again, and more photos down by the pier.

As we crossed back to the non sea-side of the prom it became apparent that times were tough, with nearly every other hotel being up for sale or boarded up. Those still trading looked one bad weekend away from joining them if I am honest.

Still, we were having a nice time to be honest. Spending time together like this is rare these days, and despite the slow onset of frost bite I was very glad we did it. Even the girls were smiling.

Yes Rebecca does indeed have Toms on with no socks!

We walked for quite some time up the prom, but as we went it was becoming obvious that we had all the photos Emily was going to get, and we were more likely to die from the cold before she got any worthy of that sacrifice, so we turned back.

We made it back to the McDonalds and went in hoping for a hot chocolate to warm our frozen bones. Alas, in keeping with the look and feel of the resort, the machine was broken, so we settled for coffee and cokes instead. As we drank and watched the world go by, the weather worsened, and the drizzle became steady rain…cold steady rain.

I left the girls finishing their drinks whilst I walked the rest of the way for the car, and drove back to pick them up. The fringes must be protected at all times. After the usual nonsense of trying to find the road out of Blackpool, we eventually found the motorway and headed for home.

I know that mid December is no time to judge a resort like Blackpool, but it was grim, cheap, tatty and of course baltic. I did jest with the girls that we could have holidayed there for the past ten years instead of Florida, but they knew I was bluffing. There is just no way we could afford to holiday in Blackpool for two weeks!

Saturday evening was spent walking the dog, dropping off and picking up Rebecca from a friends and being very pleasantly surprised at how much we all enjoyed The McFly Show on ITV1. I don’t know if it was the fact that it was a weekend show that didn’t involve any form of voting, or whether it was just genuinely funny and entertaining (apart from the odd Al Murray moment), but we really enjoyed it.

Sunday has been spent Christmas shopping. Nearly all of it online of course as I am not mental, but we did nip out to an actual shop to get Louise’s gift. She had asked for a bike, so it made no sense to either try to wrap that bugger or hide it away for two weeks so we went out to get her one.

Owning a clown car these days I had to employ the services of my brother and his amazing bike rack to get it home. Well, it serves him right for going to Florida the day after Boxing Day!

So a mini trip report has formed this week’s bloggage, which saves you from any sort of rant about crap TV, even worse traffic or just the fact that I didn’t win the lottery again. We should do this day out thing more often!

Till the next time….

A wally wallet forgetter

02/12/201202/12/2012 by mkingdon, posted in mkingdon

If I start by telling you that this week and indeed blog will be a snot free zone, then just by doing that I have made it untrue. Anyway, after a full two weeks of my life threatening cold I appear to be recovered.

With that trouble behind me I have been enjoying the finer things in life, like sleep and the ability to breathe and as such was looking forward to the weekend. I should by rights have been in London for a Christmas do with work, but decided against it as to be honest I wanted my own bed over the weekend, and the do involved making decisions about what to wear in swanky London eateries and discotheques, and I honestly couldn’t be arsed with the shopping or selection process that might involve. At my age once it goes dark I just want to get home, draw the curtains and get “seckled”.

It would seem that the Gods of Christmas dos decided to take full and vengeful revenge for this indiscretion, as I have had a weekend that makes you think you should have either stayed in bed or gone and drank forty-eight tequila shots in Stringfellows with some work colleagues.

So Saturday started normally enough. The Big Shop was on its way from Asda, and for the past few weeks they have always turned up towards the end of the two-hour slot. With this in mind, I went for a shower leaving Rebecca to look out for the van just in case it arrived. So as soon as I had unleashed my toned and teasingly taught frame from the shackles of clothing and had one toe in the shower, Rebecca shouted that they were here. A mild inconvenience, and I quickly dressed and came downstairs to deal with the delivery.

The rest of the morning dwindled away, and after lunch Louise and I had the joyous honour of a visit to B&Q (on xmas tree buying weekend) to get some wallpaper for our long undecorated kitchen. Time was already getting on by the time we set off, and the traffic was a thing from the bowels of hell. The increasingly frustrating and depressing state of the traffic whenever I am trying to get anywhere is the subject for a whole other bile ridden moan filled ranty blog at some future date!

So it took an age to drive the few short miles to our local B&Q. We got out of the car, and I did my normal pat down routine to make sure I have everything….phone….car keys…wallet….bollocks. Now, I didn’t have to pat anything to know I had those. That last expletive was more of a cry of anguish realising that I had left my wallet at home.

How I laughed. I told Louise to go and choose stuff (I have no input into these decisions anyway) and I would “pop” home to get it. So I wrestled through the crappy traffic again, dashed in to get my wallet and set off again. I needed my wallet for petrol too, so as soon as we’d done the DIY thing we’d stop on the way home for that. A few hundred yards later, as I moved out to overtake a bus that had stopped, a press of the accelerator met with no response. It soon dawned on me that for the first time ever, I had run out of petrol!

I coasted to a stop, luckily in a legal parking place, tried to phone Louise to tell her what had happened, but of course as per usual her “mobile” phone was pretty much the opposite on the dining room table.

So I set off walking back home (thankfully I had only driven a couple of minutes) to get Louise’s car. I have to say that my stress levels were a bubbling at this point. I wanted to get the wall papering done, and I could feel time rushing away as I tried to walk home as quickly as possible without slipping on the inconveniently icy pavements.

With a vehicle secured, I tried again to get to the promised land of B&Q, and the traffic had gone up by about another 25%, so by the time I got to Louise I was a coronary waiting to happen. We checked out, and set off for home.

Once home, through more tortuous bobbins traffic, I looked for the petrol canister that Louise bought recently when she ran out of petrol! Of course, I couldn’t find it, so we set off again in Louise’s car to the petrol station. I paid a ridiculous £6.99 for a suitable and legal petrol container, as apparently they don’t let you dispense it into an Asda bag.

I then filled said container, and we drove back to my car, through even more even worse traffic where I got it going again and drove home. By this stage I had fallen out with the world….all of it, and I sat in a monstrous sulk for the rest of the day whilst Louise and the girls did the Christmas decorations. My aversion to festivity at this point measured about 400 on the Richter scale.

My anger was aimed at me, and me alone, (apart from the driver of the X reg Hyundai who did 24 miles an hour in front of us all the way back from B&Q) for being such a complete arse and forgetting my wallet, which kicked off this stupid and maddening series of events.

Still, no-one died, and as the night wore on I calmed down and got back to some sort of normality even though I had to sit through most of the X Factor. You can imagine how Christopher Maloney helped my mood?

So Sunday dawned full of fresh starts and new hope. Alas, today has consisted of decorating the kitchen, and I have documented many times what sort of frame of mind DIY puts me in. It is complete, and apart from one” is it overlapping at the top” comment from Louise as I was about ten seconds into the second piece, any unpleasantness was kept to a minimum.

Oh, and the dishwasher broke.

Ho, Ho, Ho.

Till the next time…..

Snot and success in unequal measure

25/11/2012 by mkingdon, posted in mkingdon, Oli

I know that I may have mentioned my illness in semi-jocular stati this week, but bloody hell I have been rough. The standard cold symptoms randomly brought their great mates heart burn and muscular aches, and just as I was hopeful of waving the bugger off over this weekend it has thrown one hell of a farewell party. Over the past two days I have experienced pain unlike any other. I’d call it a headache, but it isn’t really. It is more eye ache!

A searing pressure like pain right in the middle of my eyeballs. It hurt…like proper big boy pain, and I don’t like it. As you know I handle pain and illness well so you really wouldn’t have known had you been here.

Today has been a slight improvement with no such repeat of that, and apart from feeling like I have been battered with a big stick, there are signs of recovery. I have done nothing today which has really helped. Well, I took Oli out, and had the intention of cutting my toenails, but I haven’t managed that yet!

Being below par has been really frustrating. I had a heavy week at work, with stuff going on that couldn’t be interrupted by illness so I took my germs to Marlow for two days. What joy I felt in my deluxe suite in which I stay, wrapped in a blanket hugging the lukewarm radiator watching crap football. Who says executive travel isn’t glamorous? By the time I got to Friday I was no good to anyone and crawled home mid afternoon and went straight to bed for a bit.

Still, a productive week, with a key supplier decided upon for a very important project and a key person, with actual technical skills rather than my invented ones, recruited to help me do it. Snot and success in unequal measure….there was much more snot!

So let’s put all that illness behind us (I hope). Some regular sleep and less snot will help so fingers crossed.

Affairs of the teenage heart have been in play this week too, with some “stuff” going with Rebecca and her friend who is a boy. I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it now, there is nothing harder than watching one of them going through pain and not jumping right in the middle and knocking heads together or off altogether.

I am biting my metaphorical tongue, and hoping it all gets sorted out without too much upset, and the need for me to remove limbs.

Talking about removing limbs, Oli also came pretty close to losing a couple whilst I was away. It seems that he left a large and damp message all over our bed, and those of you who sees Louise’s facebook updates will have appreciated her slight displeasure at this.

Thursday saw me travelling about in London, and whilst doing so coordinating my parents and a cleaning company to all work together before we got home to make sure we had something clean to sleep on.

My Dad sorted the duvet to the launderette, and Chem Dry turned up to sort the mattress. Apparently they do a lot of work for hotels, so are used to similar work but I suspect for different fluids!

There are lots of theories about why Oli would do this, as he is superb at doing his stuff only where he should, always has been, so we are a bit baffled. I wonder if it is connected to me being away, and him marking his territory in some way, but to be safe he isn’t going upstairs again anytime soon.

Just to remind us not to kill him here he is looking cute and lovable.

By the time we did get home on Thursday we were mostly sorted, and even had time to nip to my brother’s for a drink and pie celebration of his birthday. I had soft drinks and lots of pie, as you need to feed a cold of course.

The other bit of news to share with you this week will hopefully be in the happy to hear category. After the bitter disappointment in the summer for my Mum & Dad who had to cancel their trip to Florida with us with days to go, they are now booked to go just after Christmas. Alas, we are not playing host, rather my brother and his family. The party will be a huge one, nine in total, with his two elder children each taking their partner, so I think they have hired a coach to get them around. Good luck with that!!

So I am offering some tips, mainly on where to find a donut burger, which my brother is slightly more interested in that my sister-in-law who I’m guessing won’t be partaking.

So here’s to a week of better health as we hurtle towards December. Someone might want to tell the telly that it isn’t December yet, cos if I see another version of the same advert from a bloody supermarket in November I might go and wee on their bed.

Why have they all gone for the same advert this year? A stressed mum being the xmas hero. I have no beef (or turkey) with the idea, but once you’ve seen it 48 times before December starts a dirty protest is the only solution. Maybe Oli was ahead of me there?

Till the next time….

Sick and tired

18/11/2012 by mkingdon, posted in mkingdon

This shall be briefer than a Helen Flanagan bush tucker trial. I am sick and tired. Not a reference to another impending rant but a genuine reference to my physical being. What I thought was just dog tiredness for the past week or so has turned into the lurgy. Whether the tiredness was a first sign of the illness or the tiredness allowed it to possess my body I don’t know and it matters not. I am male and ill….pity me!

The girls have had it for a week and just as they started to recover both Louise and I have inherited whatever they had. It gripped me on Friday and I spent a day at work in my dressing gown. This was for a pajama based day in aid of Children In Need but it felt quite apt. If only I had worn something underneath it, I may have attracted fewer strange looks, and less of a breeze that may have made matters worse.

So allow me to battle the throat, the sniffles the hot and cold sweats and weirdly horrific heartburn, and I shall return to you next week, plague free and back on form.

For now, I shall retreat to my bed, chair or whatever position of self-pity suits me best, and try my best not to infect you via this bloggage. Alas, I have a busy and travel full week ahead. Deep joy.

Enough.

Till the next time……

The Disney Do is Done.

11/11/2012 by mkingdon, posted in dibb, mkingdon

So it’s only taken the two months, but yesterday saw the 2012 trip report finally put to bed. During those two months, it has at times felt like a millstone around my neck. With the new job and new house it has had to take its place behind those two things. However, literally as I put the last full stop on the last sentence, it made me a little sad.

As ever finishing these reports absolutely puts the holiday to bed, and that is sad of course. Naturally a holiday forever sits in our memories adding interest to our nostalgia assets for years to come, and it does seem that a holiday just had can take a few months or years to be fully appreciated.

As well as those thoughts, I of course always regret having dashed several days off in a hurry, and wish I could go back and do them again without time being against me.

I mentioned in the final thoughts of the final day that this trip report may be the last one, and I’m sure that was greeted with scorn and derision, as of course for a decade now we’ve not been going next year. This year’s threat seems to be the closest I can remember to becoming a reality though. Even with unlimited funds I highly doubt Louise could be tempted to do another WDW based trip.

I agree to a certain extent. Naturally should someone shove four plane tickets in my hand and point me in a Trans-Atlantic direction I would gladly go and do WDW all over again. However, we are being drawn to other spots in the US. Should we be blessed with a lottery win I would whisk the family away on a Stephen Fry style tour of all the states, taking in the diverse nature of the various parts of the US.

Back in reality I suspect as and when funds become available we’ll do the West Coast thing next. So expect that trip report any time in the next decade.

Away from holidays and their associated reports I have been unable to avoid DIY this weekend. Parts of the kitchen need decorating. The previous residents had an unhealthy obsession with sauna style wood panelling, and I am attempting to turn it white. Two coats in, plus the assistance of my Dad and there is still no real sign of an end game.

The decorating is an evil necessity as we are to host the family for Christmas this year. So that totals twelve folks. Louise made this kind and generous offer at the wrong end of a bottle of red, and despite the fact we can seat six for dinner at a push with some emergency chairs, twelve it is. Add in a four stone sheep dog and our house should be an adventure come the big day!

Once I have finished painting the sponge like walls there is also some wallpapering to do, and the dreaded glossing.

On a different note you may remember me bemoaning a journey home from Marlow on a Friday afternoon? You may also recall me swearing an oath never to leave myself in that situation again?

So on Friday I had to drive home from Marlow. It was pretty much unavoidable. I left a little earlier but it did little to ease the pain. The M6 was gruesome and the M40 joined in too, not wanting to be left out. I crawled out of the car some five or so hours later, defeated by some bitumen or should that be bitch-umen.

I will make no similar vow that such a thing won’t happen again, but I’ll try really hard not to make the mistake again, and if I do, definitely not to moan about it again here.

I don’t think I’ve done a family update for a bit so you can have one.

Last week saw me attend Rebecca’s Parent’s Evening. Despite the fact that appointments are booked every time, they are then systematically ignored by everyone, and it is just a case of grab a teacher your child recognises as soon as the seats at their desk become free.

She is doing OK. She could pass the whole lot at GCSE, but the recurring theme is she needs to apply a little more effort. I tried my best at motivational speaking as we walked home again afterwards. I suspect it will have little effect as Rebecca was just too cold to listen to me. This was because she didn’t listen to me earlier when I told her she’d need her big coat on as it was really cold even though it is only a five-minute walk. The trials of fatherhood.

She also has the distraction of her Tom. If Tom tells her she needs a coat it would be accepted without question! You can but advise and guide, as they don’t listen much anyway.

Emily is progressing well with her driving, being told by her instructor to concentrate on her theory now as she needs to get that sorted and passed as by that time she should be ready for her test. It really does feel odd watching her drive off in a car for her lessons. This week was the wonders of the roundabout. After being extremely nervy to begin with she seems to have found her confidence now, and is enjoying her lessons.

In her spare time she has taken to sheep dog fancy dress!

Louise finished her first placement in a hospital on Friday much to her relief. It has been hard work, fitting in shifts and coursework as well of course as the grueling work of a nurse on a hospital ward. Some of the tales she tells of tubes, puss, vile body parts and in some cases viler patients confirm my conviction that I absolutely could not do that job. She is back to the less intense University elements of her course now until January.

Onto the wider family, and my Dad is still wrestling with the insurance company over his non-holiday with us. I am not one to suggest that these insurance companies use delaying tactics, but they have written back (by snail mail) half a dozen times to request extra and different snippets of information that they could have requested on the original claim form. Some of their clients might just give it up as the effort is too big, but they are fighting a losing battle with my Dad.

His persistence is only equaled by his retired free time, so they may as well just write the cheque and have done with it. We are also keeping him nice and busy with our DIY requirements. He’s in the middle of a project to un-damp our cellar which should keep him going for the next few weeks!

Mum is doing better. She’s had a couple of relapses into pain, but generally she’s doing OK. She saw a consultant last week who seems to have settled on a diagnosis of Irritable Bowel Syndrome, which was pretty much what we all thought before the dozens of tests and weeks of pain. Anyway, she’s on the relevant medication now, and we’ll see how that goes.

So that’s it I think. I had considered another vitriolic rant about the ways of the world, but thought better of it. The ending of the last/latest trip report is worthy of a mention both in appreciation of the time and effort spent on it and as a nod of respect to what could be the last of its kind. What do you mean you don’t believe me????

Till the next time…..

Perspective, Patience and Parents

04/11/201204/11/2012 by mkingdon, posted in mkingdon

I have a fairly well-developed persecution complex. It appears to be a disease of the middle-aged man. Real or not, at times everyone feels that they are getting not just the shitty end of the stick, but the other end is being poked somewhere unpleasant too.

Such was my thinking on late Friday afternoon. There I was minding my own business, when I got the phone call that every man dreads.

It wasn’t that one of my daughters was pregnant (although in ten years this is more likely to be good news than bad, but at 17 and 15, I think not), it wasn’t that Louise had dumped all my belongings on the front lawn either. This is mainly because we don’t have a front lawn. This was uppermost in my selection criteria of any new house…..

“Yes Phil and/or Kirstie, we are looking for a seventeen bedroom period property with eighteen acres of land, with our own water-mill and miniature village on the back patio where we shall sit and watch herds of Wildebeest sweep majestically through the Home Counties with our children Saffron and Hercules. Our budget is tight at only 25.4 million pounds”…said me never.

No, our new house is modest but it has no grass and this is something I wake up thankful for every day.

Anyway, I digress, this dreaded call wasn’t any of that. It was that….

SKY WAS NOT WORKING!

Quite what I could do about it from twenty miles away I don’t know, but the girls had done the correct thing and gone next door for Grandad. I put the phone down thinking he may well sort it by the time I got home.

Nope. In fact I got another call from Dad, which turned into one of those conversations that you could never have imagined having.

Dad: “There is water coming out of your Sky box!”

Me: “Sorry, I could have sworn you said there was water coming out of the Sky box”.

It turns out that is indeed what he did say. Fast forward to my arrival home, and the TV and its plethora of boxes and gadgets are all over the front room soon to be joined by my will to live.

To cut a very long and painful story short, we discovered that the aerial cable coming in from outside was pumping water into our Sky box, which was now forlornly lying on the carpet looking damp and unlikely to ever work again.

This water was coming in via a circuitous route involving the cellar, which was as a result nice and damp too. So back to my point?

I had a right sulk on. In the full glaring horror of a post holiday cash shortage, with Christmas looming, once again, just as I could see us getting back to some sort of financial normality, shit happens. It was quite an epic sulk, and I could quite easily have torched the bloody house at that point and put in an insurance claim. Staring down the barrel of a new sky box, new cabling and who knows what else to sort out the cellar, I had a right hissy fit.

I was so upset that I almost didn’t eat my tea. THAT is how upset I was.

So with the Sky box down we watched a DVD on Friday night, The Black Knight, which was again awesome, and then went to bed, taking my bottom lip with me.

Saturday dawned and taught me (again) a lesson in perspective, patience and parents. After drying out the Sky box, I tried to connect it all up again (minus the water-bearing aerial cable of course) and it all worked. The scenes of jubilation were epic. It was like the Ewok party in the Return of The Jedi with even Emily raising an eyebrow in appreciation, her Dad being suddenly useful.

So we don’t need a new Sky box after all. Kerching.

My Dad then returned from golf and popped in with a plan to sort the cellar, and with news of a chap he golfs with arriving on Monday to sort out our aerial issues.

Having stared down the desolate barrel of a weekend without Sky, huge bills and a leaky house, come Saturday afternoon, Sky was restored, and the rest didn’t look so daunting.

So the moral of the tale is…

I am absolutely correct in my persecution complex. Life is just a series of obstacles and hurdles, most of which trip me up and see me sprawl across the running track of life. The thing is, it is probably the same for everyone else too.

Much as I put my girl’s worlds back together again on a regular basis, when they fall out with friends, lose a boyfriend or have coursework traumas, so in the circle of life does my Dad (and/or Mum) for me. The fact that he spent his entire working life in the building trade, and there is not a trade that is not represented now by a member of his golf club, means that these house related things are small beer for him.

The fact that I lose all perspective and patience from time to time is just how I am made. Louise knows this, recognises the signs and handles me in the way in which I need handling. That is to be left alone until the sulk passes, with some consoling words thrown in which pretty much fall on deaf ears despite her best efforts.

I’m an introverted drama queen, which is a pretty bad combination. Whether my Dad is picking me up after falling off a swing (not for some years now I admit), or from the precipice of a house related trauma, he’s probably used to it by now.

I shall try better to remember, appreciate and deploy the three Ps of which I write in future!

But for God’s sake who has ever heard of water being pumped into your Sky box by your aerial? (Not a euphemism!)

Till the next time….

Barney and Barmy Traffic

28/10/2012 by mkingdon, posted in mkingdon

Jazz Flute, wheels of cheese, sex panther and the gun show. It can only mean one thing. Yep, Anchorman is on, and it is one of those films that make me laugh no matter how many times I see it.

Every character is excellent, but I do have a soft spot for Brian Fantana, played by Paul Rudd.

Time to musk up

So forgive me if I’m a little distracted as I rattle this off.

Last week I forgot to plug something that I should have. After a break of too long I finally penned something for the WDW Dads site, so please, if you haven’t already, pop over and have a read.

OK, so other than pointing you at day twelve of the trip report, I think we can begin.

The week just gone has been fairly ordinary, as it was filled with far too much work…roughly about five days worth. I made the schoolboy error of arranging to be down south in Head Office on Thursday and Friday for some meetings. As everyone knows, Friday afternoons is when the volume of traffic on the UK’s motorways doubles as everyone tends to be at the opposite end of the country that they need to be.

Thursday was a fancy dress day in the office. How I enjoy these sorts of things!! The theme was purple. I could explain why, but really it wouldn’t make that much sense, so I won’t. It may not surprise you to learn that my wardrobe does not contain a wide variety of purple garments, so this caused me an issue. I dallied with the idea of going the whole hog and renting a proper costume, but

a) I’m tight

b) I would have felt like a giant tool

c) I left it too late so sort one out

So instead, with an impressive amount of forethought, I sent Louise a text at 5pm on Wednesday evening, asking if she’d call somewhere on her way home to get me some “purple clothes”. The results were a purple polo shirt and a pair of purple jeans. Yes, I now own purple jeans…skinny ones at that.

So I left the house at 5am the next day looking like an overweight bruise. The day passed without too much to note, and I had guessed the level of effort correctly. It is always a concern with these things, especially when new in a company, that you gauge this correctly. You don’t want to turn up in a Barney costume only to find that everyone else has worn a purple hat. Ironically, someone did turn up as Barney, but most were just in simple purple attire so that was OK.

After a busy couple of days, the end of the week approached and for the first time I had to do the drive north on a Friday. The levels of fear and trepidation felt were totally justified, as the usual three and a half hour journey turned into five.

If it is possible to hate a section of tarmac then the M6 is it. Listening to the radio, they seemed to gloss over the severity of the chaos that was taking place. As I came off the M6 toll, the brake lights lit up in front of me, and pretty much stayed on until I left the M6 at Junction 22 several hours later.

It was pants. The constant stop start brake nonsense was only surpassed in the aggravation stakes by those who felt the need to fill the couple of car’s lengths I was leaving between myself and the braker in front. By Crewe my mood was black. Never shall I meet anyone in Marlow again on a Friday! Seriously, what happens to motorway traffic on a Friday?

Oh yes, and at the risk of generalising….if you drive a Mercedes Sprinter you are probably going too fast!

Once home, the weekend has been uneventful, due to post holiday insolvency and the fact that Emily and Louise have been buried in coursework. Of course, Emily has been off all last week for half term but felt it better to wait until the weekend to get it all done! Ironically once she had finished it about half an hour ago, she found out from a friend that it wasn’t due in until Wednesday. Justice!

We’ve spotted Rebecca a couple of times for meals and bedtime as her hectic social calendar keeps her busy. She’s started a YouTube channel with her friend, and on Saturday she went to Manchester for something called a YouTube gathering. I don’t really understand what it was, but I think it was an event where all these internet phenom….phanom….fenome….people who have lots of people watching their videos went to meet their fans.

Anyway, I should do a push for Rebecca’s You Tube channel, and ask you to subscribe as her numbers are a little low right now. Click this! I hope that is the right link. Go on subscribe, and make me a hero in her eyes!!

Next time I bump into her she may express her thanks if she gets a minute.

Who knows what next week will bring, but I can assure you it won’t see me on the M6 on Friday!

Till the next time……

It was 29 years ago today….

21/10/201221/10/2012 by mkingdon, posted in mkingdon

Well, not quite today, but close enough. What is the anniversary to which I refer? The last time I had to blow dry my hair? The last time I wore a pair of pants with a waistline starting with a 2? The last time I had a positive bank balance?

No, none of the above. It was in the autumn of 1983 that I attended my first ever gig. I was fourteen at the time, and had to really convince my Mum to let me go with my brother, as it was at the Manchester Apollo, in Ardwick. Trust me, she was right to be worried.

Now, a fourteen year old in 1983 had a smorgasbord of musical delights to choose from as my first gig choice. A look at the charts of the time reads like a who’s who of big hair and pompous pop.

Paul Young
Mike Oldfield
Heaven 17
Elton John
The Police
David Bowie
Iron Maiden
and Bucks Fizz

I was not one of normal tastes to be honest, and even now I tend to not like the mainstream. Adele, Coldplay, U2, and the likes do not and have never floated my raft. I may have mentioned that a couple of times?

Back in 1983, influenced by my brother for sure, I liked a band not at this stage really troubling the charts. They were cool, niche and under the radar, which is also known as skint and not famous. Being vaguely musical, which means that I’d started playing bass about six months earlier, and my brother at the time being a drummer, we appreciated the muso-ness of bands, and none came more muso than…..Level 42.

At this time they still wrote jazz funk instrumentals, and had some distance to travel to get anywhere near the chart topping days of about four years later when they found a few hits and multi-million selling album or two.

So off I went to my first ever real gig, and was blown away.

1983 looks a long time ago!

Fast forward twenty-nine years, and on Friday, the same two of us sat in the same theatre, with a few more pounds and a lot less hair, to watch them all over again. I’ve lost count of the amount of times we have seen them live in the intervening years, but it is a lot. The line up has changed a bit, but in recent years with a settled line up, and a re-established following, they are back playing fairly large venues again, and despite their advancing years they still have it.

I know they will not be everyone’s cup of tea, and most folks will only be aware of a couple of singles, but that’s Ok. I don’t need you to like them too!

In recent years the usually annual gig has become a chance for me to have a night out with my brother, which we don’t do often enough. Now you will know that any night out involving me will involve food, and on Friday we met after work in Manchester and wandered up to the ever so trendy Northern Quarter. A place full of grown men in cardigans and converse, meeting in pubs after a hard week creating mood boards at their inevitable agency.

We went to Trof.

The music was too loud, it was jam-packed, and there was nowhere to sit, but we got a drink and persevered anyway, based on my brother’s previous dining experience here.

We took a table as one appeared, and despite a small hiccup where my brother tried to order from some girl who just happened to be wandering past our table, we were soon eating.

We had a Middle Eastern Sharing Platter to start. It was your usual olives, feta, halloumi and falafel etc, and it was delicious. By the time our mains came we were already filling up, but I somehow managed to neck all of my Pulled Pork Burger and Fries. My God, I was stuffed, and we both had to leave fairly quickly to get some fresh air and try to walk off the impending cardiac arrest.

Thankfully we had a decent walk to the car, a short drive and then another walk to the theatre so we felt less like dying once we got there.

You may not believe me, but it was busy. The queue for a drink was in need of a fast pass so we didn’t bother. I couldn’t fit another ounce of liquid in my stomach anyway!

We took our seats, applauded politely for the support guy and waited for the main event. So the lights dimmed and of course a dozen numpties came charging from the bar, as they had to have every last second in there didn’t they. So this meant that they had to get to their seats in the dark, making the whole row stand up, and therefore blocking the view of half the theatre just as the show started.

These same folks then went for wees, more drinks, and inevitably more wees pretty much all the way through the show. I almost wore my tut out.

I took a bit of video, all dodgy quality but here is the opening, until the row in front had to stand up for the aforementioned twonks came in from the bar.

The gig was great as ever. We marveled at the musicianship, felt nostalgia for the video clips shown on the big screen behind them, and clapped a lot.

They played a mix of some really old stuff, which had some of the less cool and hard-core fans than us a little bemused, along with all the hits….and there are quite a few. Something About You, Hot Water, Lessons in Love, Running in The Family, are the most obvious ones, but they have shifted a load of records over the years.

They left us with ringing ears and a promise of a return in 2014 with a new album. We wandered back to the car wondering what that would bring, and picking out examples of the fancy Dan musician-ship we’d just witnessed that separates them from mere mortals and Dire Straits. Oh yes, I could never tolerate them either, despite that bloody Brothers in Arms CD being in every house in the 80s.

I hope you enjoyed the slightly different approach this week. It still more or less took the form of a trip report, but I did forget to take photos of our food! Mind you it was so bloody dark that us two old gits had to use the lights on our phones to read the menu!! Once illuminated we then had to move it in and out of eye range until we got a fix on the microscopic text.

That wouldn’t have happened twenty-nine years ago!

Till the next time……

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