It’s the little things, the incidentals…

by mkingdon, posted in mkingdon

THE SHED HAS LANDED.

It shall be mentioned no more.

Shed
It looked bigger in the shop!

We’ve had a bit of a change around here this week.  I’m presuming you have noticed by now a new look to my blog.  It was time for a change and a bit of colour to combat the unavoidable approach of winter.  Do let me know if you like the new look or if you fear change like the ravaging demonic beast that it is.

On a genetal note I do enjoy getting comments, (he said in a needy type way), so always feel free to post your thoughts.

In a week that has seen Tsunamis (why the silent T???), more economic torture, and no doubt millions of other personal tragedies, I find myself wrestling with one of those really small annoying problems that really get under your skin.

Before I say what it is, I will admit it is completely trivial and of no matter whatsoever, but still it lives inside of me like some sort of technical tumor.

For months, my phone has worked perfectly with my car’s bluetooth system.  I have jumped in and out of the red beast, with it pairing and unpairing as easily as Katie Price and Peter Andre.  It has been one of life’s little miracles that I can speak to my car and it knows who to ring, and when someone phones me, it pauses the CD, or turns the radio down, and allows me to speak hands free.

For some reason, about two weeks ago, the phone started just randomly disconnecting itself from the car’s bluetooth system, sometimes mid call, so I would then have to shout very loudly…

“Hang on, the fecking bluetooth has gone” whilst I swerve from lane to lane trying to wrestle the phone from the cradle to speak illegally for a few seconds to say goodbye.

It will reconnect if I press enough buttons either on the car or on the phone, only to deny me again moments later.  Then in a mocking style, other times it will connect and stay so, come hell, high water or a three car pile up on the M602.

In best man fashion, I have been looking for a fix.  Men like to fix things.  It is what we do in life.  If a problem has no solution then it isn’t a valid problem.

I have thus far failed.  Google has been of some help, and I’ve tried a few fixes that others have tried, but as yet no joy.  In the back of my mind, I know that I should either –

a) Give the phone to the IT chaps in the office, demand either a fix or a new phone, and flounce off all diva like.

b) Ring the phone manufacturer and ask them to sort it out.

Well you may guess that the first option is not my style, and the second one fills me with mental images of overseas call centres, and three-hour waits listening to Linda Ronstadt.

So I shall continue my quest for a fix, and until I do…don’t phone me when I’m driving.

By the way, ten pop picker points for anyone who can tell me the song and artist from which I nicked the title for this post.

Rebecca's battered phone.
Let's talk about texts baby.

Elsewhere this week on the subject of phones, I have to share with you a bit of a deal.  Rebecca has had her phone for two years now, and it bears the scars of a squillion texts.  Her contract is almost up, and we’ve been counting down the months until she can upgrade.  She’s been with O2 all her mobile life, and we saw no reason to change, and were preparing for a visit to the shop next month to pick out her new handset.

That was however until I got an email from Quidco.  A cash back site I have used quite a bit recently.  This email told me about a deal for new Orange Pay Monthly contracts, offering £140 cash back.

Nokia E5
That keyboard is going to take some hammer

To cut a long story short, I signed her up for a Dolphin.  Which is odd from a phone provider but with it she gets unlimited texts (vital), enough minutes (she doesn’t actually talk to anyone on her phone) and 500mb of internet each month for £20.  A shiny new Nokia E5, and Daddy gets a nice payment of £140.  I thank you.

On top of that of course, we now have an Orange contract within the house, which means we can finally take advantage of the Orange Wednesday scheme, which is quite apt as the company I work for “do that”.

This week has seen me realise that I also need to actually do some getting ready for my Paris trip, and luckily with Louise at home, she has been able to sort out some Euros for me (even though Adam has promised to pay for everything 🙂  ), and with the temperatures dropping faster than my council’s budget, some essential stuff to keep me warm.

So a wooly hat and gloves have been procured on my behalf.  I am sure I shall look dashing and exotic.

Paris Weather
Sunday sees a light drrrrrizzle.

A quick check of the upcoming weather for Paris shows that it may not be too bad, with some light rain forecast for Sunday, and with temperatures staying some way above freezing.  Forgive me if I still pack the woolies and seventeen different layers.  I don’t do cold very well at all.

Tomorrow sees a full day of travel, which of course will all go smoothly and to plan, and I get to Paris around 6pm.  I then have a few hours to kill until Adam arrives, so I’ll wander around shops, eat, and perhaps eat as well.

If the phone works over there (and my IT chap tells me he has made it so) then see you on Twitter for blow-by-blow updates from what I hope is an enjoyable weekend.

Au revoir….

Till the next time…..

A Shed, never ending illness and a decent erection.

by mkingdon, posted in Garage Conversion, mkingdon

People often say that no news is good news.  In the world of trying to get your garage conversion done before Christmas, this does not apply.

No real updates on that front, and there probably won’t be until the good men of Gas arrive to move our meter about a metre.  The one thing that did happen this week was that the funds for said conversion arrived in our bank account.  I am a fairly sensible soul, but there were a few mad minutes where I imagined what sort of kickass holiday I could book with that amount of cash sat in the current account.

Shed
Shed's Up

Sanity, plus a healthy fear of Louise prevailed,and it got transferred to the savings account (nice to use it for something I suppose) and we wait.

But wait, Monday brings a major development in this whole Grand Design.  Our shed arrives.  Being frankly shite at anything that even includes the letters D I and Y, we have employed a crack team of shed fitters to ensure the erection is satisfactory.  I would hate to have an unsatisfactory erection anywhere never mind in our back garden where the neighbours can see it.

Once we have the erection in a satisfactory state, then the real work starts, and I will be working up a sweat I’m sure.  Yep, we have to empty the garage of vital crap, and put said vital crap into the shed, and jetison non vital crap to the skip via the cavernous delights of the Mondeo’s boot.

However, that shall not be next weekend, as I shall be away, jet setting in gay Paris.  An unfortunate choice of words perhaps, when I admit that I shall be so with a bloke I met off of the internet.  I refer you back to the earlier post in which I outline how I won a trip to Disneyland Paris courtesy of the DisneyBrit Podcast.

My journey starts next Friday morning and I shall be tweeting all the way there and back, so if you care, then please follow me! The prayers for fine weather have begun, alongside the hopes that the delightful French decide that next weekend is the one this year that they will not be striking over something important.  I’m hoping to travel light, but this is balanced against the worry that it will be bloody cold, and I therefore need to take three hundred layers.  This will of course be the reason for any unsightly bulk around my frame on any photos.  As you know, I have a fine physique.

Thursday evening saw Louise and I drag my disease ridden frame to the girl’s school.  Louise started at 5pm, for a meeting about Rebecca’s exchange trip to Nuremburg in November.  A quick summary is, it will be cold, it will be expensive.  Time well spent.

I joined Louise at 7pm for the next meeting, this time for Emily.  As she has just started Year 11 aka GCSE year, we had to attend a briefing on how to help our Year 11 children through this difficult year.  No bugger did similar for me.  When I was doing my O Levels (giving my age away), it was a solo effort, and all of my revision had to be slotted in around the 1986 World Cup.

Now it seems we have roughly as much to do as Emily, and we were told how to spot and deal with stress.  We were also shown how to use mind maps as a revision technique, along with a long session on how to plan and structure revision, course work, controlled assesments, and some sort of social life.  Jesus, if I wasn’t worried about it before, I am now.  Emily seems unfazed by the whole thing, and only appears from behind her fringe to ask for food and/or money.  As long as she knows I am here for her!!

I arrived home, tired, scared to death for the year ahead, starving and close to death’s door at 9pm!!  Smashing.

Now I know I may have let on more than once that I have not been in the rudest of health this week, but I have fought on valiantly, and made it to work all week.  I did give in and leave early on Friday, as the illness was peaking, and once I’d come out the other end of my meetings which ran from 9.30 until 2.30 non stop, I was neither use nor ornament to anybody.  The fact that some arse had been incompetent enough to have a bump on the M61 and made my journey home last over an hour only added to the magic of my Friday afternoon.

Where the wild things are
Wild Thing, you make my heart sink

Friday night was spent watching a couple of DVDs, interrupted nicely with some sniffing and coughing.  We watched Where the Wild Things Are and It’s Complicated.  The latter was much better than the former.  Where the Wild Things Are was just weird to be honest.  I can watch a kid’s film with little problem usually (no comments thanks), but this was just a bit boring to be honest.

No real plot to speak of, and this meant that the film just doesn’t seem to go anywhere.

It’s Complicated was better, if predictable.  It was one of those non challenging films that you can just let wash over you.  With a cast of Meryl Streep, Alec Baldwin and Steve Martin, you know you are in safe hands, and the plot is just about original enough to keep you interested.

Fair play to Alec Baldwin.  Being on the chunkier side, he had no issue in showing of his Party 7 (not six pack), and I for one applaud him.  If I had any weight issues I too would make a stand and have my kit off at every opportunity too.

My plan for the weekend is to do nothing….at all.  I have less than no energy, so this seems to be the correct plan.  Having felt rough for two weeks now I am getting seriously bored.  I haven’t been able to get to the gym due to this, and if this carries on I shall be approaching Baldwin territory, and I don’t mean Mike.

So next week (and the week after) are four day work weeks for me, having booked Friday and Monday off for Paris, and that is just dandy.  I’m not sure when and if I will be able to blog you again, with being abroad and stuff next weekend, but I would imagine Monday will be a good time to regail you with tales of missed trains, over eating and Space Mountain.  Frankly, I hope it is more Space Mountain than Brokeback Mountain…no offence Adam!

My aim during next week is to finish off the trip report for our 2010 Florida jaunt (don’t hold me to that), so that I shall be free to quickly document the Paris trip, in a compare ands contrast fashion.

As I type this, Louise is unusually out doing the BIG shop.  A task I normally undertake every Saturday.  This is because when Louise does it somehow the shopping bill is tripled.  We go to the same supermarket, and seem to eat the same food, so it is quite some acheivement.  I await her return with trepidation, a headache, sore throat and an impressive collection of snot riddled kitchen roll.

Have I mentioned that I feel unwell?

Till the next time…..

Elton Welsby, Lat Am and the battle between some Americans

by mkingdon, posted in Garage Conversion, mkingdon

This week’s ridiculous search term to find my blog is……  “hotel room littered with liquor bottles”.

I must have missed that particular entry, which is not too surprising if the room was littered with liquor bottles.

Moving quickly on to matters concerning the garage, this week’s update is thus.  We have permission from the holder of our freehold to go ahead with the conversion, despite there being a term in our lease saying our garage can only be a garage.  It is quite amazing how little such legal documents actually matter when compared to the large cheque they can have in its place.  Of course, for them to take the trouble to look at our letter, consult the lease and write back we have had to cough up the Brazilian (or is that UK now?) national debt.  It seems their favour can easily be bought.

If they had not given consent, we would have been faced with a choice of not doing the work or buying the freehold outright.  In the end the costs were pretty similar, but permission ever so slightly cheaper.  It was tempting to buy the leasehold though, just to be free from their money grabbing mitts.  However my natural tightness prevented my moral outrage from out doing my propensity to save money.

The pain of actually getting an answer was massive.  It took around a dozen phone calls over two weeks, and a week of delay whilst they wrote to us, yes as in a letter, not an email, as they think it is 1976, to tell me they needed more information.  Now I know what the process entails it enrages me to know that we could have sorted it all out with two emails and a phone call in about three hours.

Hindsight is a wonderful thing.

So the builder has the go ahead, and the critical event now is the moving of our gas meter from the garage to an outside wall.  Another small fortune has been squandered on that task as I moaned about last week, so I won’t again.

At work this week, I have been working with other departments, “bedding in” my new role and team alongside a change to the other department’s structure.  Not easy in a world of differing opinions and corporate egos, but I think we got there.  Once we’d done all of that, we then had to communicate it out to the rest of the company.

Being a global company it means a few “web meetings” with our international colleagues in Australia and the US. Whenever I hold meetings with my US colleagues, I have to remind myself that not everyone with a US accent is a Cast Member at Disney.  Alas our US offices are in New York and Arlington, and not Lake Buena Vista, but once I’ve got my feet under the table a little more I shall be suggesting a relocation, and a new US manager!!  Next week we do India and Lat Am.

Come on….seriously….you are going to let me get away with “Lat Am”?  It is used of course as a shortened version of Latin America .  Lat Am is the term used throughout our company when talking about our office in Buenos Aires.  The saving of the in and erica from the end of those words is just not worth it when balanced against the sacrifice of sounding like a character off of some corny American office drama.

Whenever I use it in the office (which so far has been twice), I either smirk or blush, at the sheer crassness of the whole thing.  I belive the folks in Argentina refer to us at Head Office as Great Man, sacrificing the er and chester for effect.

I hate corporate nonsense and buzzwords like this, and this week, I encountered another.  A colleague on one of these presentations was outlining a process, and was asked by a US colleague if we were open to ideas.  “Yes” he says,” in fact we’d welcome it, and we have a meeting planned next week, and in that we will reach out to all parties”.

Reach out????  Really???  This guy is from Wigan by the way.

Maybe I just don’t take myself seriously enough to buy into this nonsense.  I still feel like at some point soon I’m going to find a job that I really should be doing, rather than getting away with things in my working life, until someone finds me out.

 

Elton Welsby
Elton Rifles

 

I have, as you may have picked up on via Twitter, also being fighting a life threatening bout of mild man flu all week.  So this illness and a busy week of prep and meetings only served as a distraction from my constant monitoring of the sale of Liverpool FC to NESV.

I’m not sure if I have yet declared my colours football wise here, but I am and always have been a Liverpool fan.  I cannot really tell you why, I just have been so for as long as I can remember.

I guess being a child of the 70’s, if there was ever football on telly, then it was Liverpool.  Elton Welsby has a lot to answer for.

This week then has been fairly stressful, with more twists and turns than a twisty turny thing.  Thankfully at work I have full access to the internet and Tweetdeck (which I highly recommend by the way) which allowed me to keep up to date (when not buried under mountains of work of course).  I only hope the success off the pitch this week starts to be replicated on the green stuff pretty soon.

I like Americans as you probably know, but the exception to the rule are the two idiots that have been Liverpool’s owners for the past three years.  Hopefully, the new Americans will be much more like all the other Americans I have met, with the additional benefit of buying half a dozen world class players and a new stadium.

 

Social Network film
I'm a PC and Facebook was my idea!

 

The arrival of this weekend then was very welcome, but it seems I welcomed it naively thinking I would be able to get some ass on couch time.  Not as yet.

We went to a gig on Friday night, at a local pub.  I haven’t been in this pub for so long that the last time I wasn’t drinking legally.  Since then, perhaps not surprisingly, the owners have changed, and they have done a great job of turning it into a proper music venue, with a decent stage, great sound system and lighting.

We were there to watch my brother’s band, Mustard, rise phoenix like from the ashes of a two year hiatus, to gig again.  We had a good night, and if anyone is looking for an excellent pop/rock covers band, let me know, and (for a sizeable commission) I shall put you in touch!

Saturday saw me in constant perpetual motion between chores and Mondeo.  I did get a slight lie in until around 10am, but then the next time I was still was in the cinema watching Social Network last night.

So after a visit to the gym, taking Emily for her new glasses, doing the BIG shop at Asda and picking up some of the girl’s friends for an enormous sleepover, it was a good job that the film was good or else I would have been asleep before the trailers ended.  I was wary of going to see this film, as usually any tale of some young and talented upstart making huge amounts of money with an idea I wish I’d had would just make me grumpy, and you know that isn’t like me.

The film of course did make me grumpy, as I want to be a billionaire too!!  However, it was interesting and enjoyable to watch, and I think reminded me that history doesn’t all happen two hundred years ago, it happens all the time, and we just don’t notice.

On our return home there were frankly too many teenagers to count strewn across the house, and I did have a slight sense of humour failure when we had to “politely tell them to go to bed” at some silly early hour as their noise was getting ridiculous.  I am just counting the minutes now until I get my house back.

Today is also packed with tasks, and of course a very important football game at lunchtime.  I do however commit here and now that somehow by the end of today I will have completed Day 12 of the trippie.

Promises, promises…..

Till the next time…….

Level 42 – Channel 4 and other final scores.

by mkingdon, posted in Garage Conversion

Kevin McCloud is ignoring my calls it seems.

Not one person from Channel 4 has been on the phone following my last post about our intended Grand Design.  During the week I even tweeted my delight that he had joined Twitter (@Kevin_McCloud), and I thought this event was obviously driven by my last blog post where he was name checked.  Alas no.

So it seems our development will go un-televised.

Nearly all of the required ducks are now in a lovely row, enabling us to give the builder a go ahead, and brace ourselves for whatever disasters may befall us on our journey to four bedroom-ness.  I have ordered the alteration to our Gas Service (robbing bastards), and await a date when they may or may not turn up.  Unfortunately it seems that very soon we are going to have to begin the arduous and depressing task of emptying the garage of all our junk.

This means throwing away lots of stuff, but we need to find a new home for other stuff, and that means purchasing a shed for the back garden.  My journey to middle-aged conformity is complete.  I have two children, I drive a Mondeo, and will very shortly own a shed.  Tragic!

Anyway, I embrace my beige tinted middle of the roadity.  If time and memory permit I shall photograph the project at relevant stages so you can travel with us.  I’ll pop round to your house too, and throw some dust into your living room to increase the realism for you.

Better news this week is Louise’s continued return to something like health.  Crucially she feels up to doing some ironing now, and who am I to stop her?  The next major milestone will be her ability to drive, alas that is a few weeks away just yet.  She is becoming a little stir crazy at this point.

 

Level 42
Level 42 and a head

 

Onto events of the past week, I’ll start with last Sunday, when (as my belated birthday present) my brother took me to see Level 42 at the Manchester Apollo.  This was, I realised, a replica of my first ever gig, aged thirteen, at the same venue, with the same brother, seeing the same band.  This tour is their 30th anniversary, and having seen them countless times between 1983 and last Sunday, I’m fairly sure they do get better with age.  They are one of the tightest live bands I have ever seen.

From time to time they have a new member here and there, and this time saw a new drummer.  Well, I say drummer, but that intimates that he is human.  After watching him play for an hour and a half, I’m not sure.  I suspect he is actually some sort of multiple limbed alien being.

Have a look….

The audience was the usual mix of middle-aged chaps who were there back in 1980, who hate it when the ladies jump up to dance to the string of hits from the back end of their career, and dancing ladies who know about four songs who annoy all the grumpy blokes who just want to sit down and revel in the abject muso-ness of it all.

As you know, I was involved in playing music in bands and stuff, but frankly, every time I go to see the Lev, I struggle to equate what I used to do with what they do with such apparent ease.  As my Dad always says when he watches professional golf  “They play a different game to me!”, despite the fact that he has been a single handicapper for decades.

Well, in this case my handicap is an under abundance of talent.  Still, going to see a band that I have worshipped since puberty is lovely.  There is a real feeling of comfort, and you know that you are in safe hands as they rattle through the set.  Every now and again they throw in one of the old obscure tunes, if we are lucky an instrumental, and those “in the know” sit back and smugly watch the “glory hunters” who came along sometime around “Something About You”  look at each other quizzically.  Small pleasures!

The rest of the week has been relatively uneventful, other than the usual schedule of work, and the writing of trip reports.  I got two done this week, and hopefully one or two more to follow over the weekend.  We’re not far from the end now, which for those who bother to come here, I guess, will be sad to hear.  For others who do not enjoy the non stop deluge of knob gags interspersed with the odd photo, then The Dibb will soon be safe to return to.

Any plans for the early booking of next year’s trip have been shelved, as amazingly, the ample budget (we thought) that we had allocated to the garage conversion has been soaked up, almost to the penny.  It is as if every party involved knew upfront what our budget was, and have priced their elements in a conspiracy to get their hands on every penny.

 

Cobweb Cottage
Le Maison mon Frere.

 

So with things likely to go wrong/cost more, we need to just watch what we do until we are done and then take stock.  Knowing our luck with previous similar projects we shall be in a tent in the back garden next year.  As I’ve said already, I think all of us are ready for a change (although if someone is looking to fund us a trip just so I can do another trippie then don’t get me wrong, please contact me!!), and it may be time to do something very different.

The West Coast really appeals, and if funds allow this will be my first choice.  If funds don’t we may plump for a decent beach destination, and if we are really skint we’ll do a week at my brother’s house in France.  That may sound ungrateful, but I should explain that his house is WWWAAAYYYY out in the sticks, and is meant as a pure get away from it all and relax place, which with two teenage girls, has its drawbacks.  Mainly the complete lack of the internets!!

The only concern I have with a beach holiday (WARNING: SNOB ALERT) is the fear of getting to a hotel which is all kid’s clubs, Agadoo and knobbly knee contests.  I would literally rather eat my own earwax, and being honest often do.

As all self-respecting middle-aged, Mondeo owning, shed buying Dads say…..”We’ll have to wait and see”.

I shall see you soon for more riveting garage updates!

Till the next time….

Joey Tempest in bed…in my garage?????

by mkingdon, posted in Garage Conversion

OK, before we do anything else I just have to cover one thing here.

As part of the admin features of this here blog, there is a tool that tells you what phrases people have typed into search engines to come to it.  Usually of course, there are lots of variations of mkingdon, but just now, a phrase appeared that made my blood run cold.

Someone typed “Joey Tempest in bed”.  Forget the fact that my one random mention of the Nordic rocker meant that they ended up here, but for the love of God, what type of sick individual wants to see the results from that search term.  The internet is a weird place.

Anyway, moving on.

Louise’s recovery continues, and she is getting more mobile each day, but she discovered this week that there are problems with her wound, and she may have a hematoma in there somewhere, oh and her wound is infected!!  We are of course delighted with this, and she is having to go to the clinic every other day for check ups and new dressings.  She has a cold too!!!!  Nothing is ever simple it seems.  Speaking of which…..

The more attentive amongst you will have picked up on the fact, that amongst all the pre holiday hullaballoo, we put our house up for sale.  Our main reasons for wanting to move where twofold –

  1. We want/need more bedroom space
  2. With my new job, I can no longer drop the girls off at Grandma’s for breakfast, from where they can walk to school.

We live about ten minutes drive from school, but it is no longer “on the way” for either myself and never has been for Louise, so the girls are now faced with walking or catching the bus.

They have always insisted they were fine to do that, but our trust in them to get themselves up, dressed and on their way in time was about zero.  If we are not rounding them up, shouting at them, and bundling them into a car, then they would still be sat applying make up at around 10.30am.

Anyway, since returning to school, they have done OK on the whole walking thing, and haven’t yet been late.  Of course, they have had Louise around, post op, who can still administer the relevant motivation when required, but still the signs are good.

Add to that, the fact that we’ve had less interest in our house than the East 17 reunion, and our thoughts have been forming in another direction.

Kevin McCloud
Every McCloud has a silver lining.

As it looks like we don’t need to move the girls within five feet of school, we are hatching a plan to create another bedroom.  Don’t for one second paint pictures in your mind of our house sat in rolling hills of endless space, and us casually bolting on a new wing.  The only place we have not yet made into a room is the garage.

So, over the coming weeks, and no doubt months I shall be sharing the Grand Design style experiences and heartaches involved in a fairly major building project.  Like most things until you start to look into it, you have no idea how complex and involved they are, and this certainly applies here.

The idea is less than a week old and here is what I have found out already.

1.  Our lease prohibits the garage from being used as anything else but a garage, so we need to get permission.  To even ask this question involves a fee of £80, and then if they agree in principle there will be “other fees” to process the permission.

2.  We need to move both our gas and electric meter things.  Putting the astronomical costs aside for a second, trying to find out who to talk to in order to arrange this is a challenge they should put in place when recruiting new folk for Men in Black.  When you do, they then add considerable insult to injury by telling you their prices.  To move the electric board and meter, ooh, around a foot and a half to the left, they want £1400 and for the gas meter to go onto an outside wall is another £800.  I asked both parties how many men they were sending, and how many days they were staying for.  They didn’t understand the question until I pointed out that for those prices I was expecting the A Team to arrive by helicopter, and stay for at least a week!  No, it seems both jobs will take less than half a day.

It will also be at least eight weeks until they can get around to it too!!

3.  The bank seems willing to lend me endless supplies of cash, but despite banking there since 1987, I still have to spend forty-five minutes on the phone telling them all the information that they have on their computer, like, how much I get paid, how much we spend each month, and by how much one exceeds the other!!

So the pain has started.  However the end game still looks worth it, as we should end up with a decent sized fourth bedroom with an en suite.  Face it no-one wants to see me dashing through the house to the upstairs bathroom in my undercrackers do they!  Well, maybe the guy who searched for Joey Tempest in bed does?

All in all though, this to me still seems like the preferable option to moving.  Despite the cost of such a development, it gets us into a four bedroom house, in an area we love, without the pain of putting everything we own into boxes, and then taking it all out again.  When you weigh up the legal fees, stamp duty, removal costs etc, the conversion of the garage feels like a bargain!

Tomorrow we have our builder coming round to do some final checks, before he presents us with the official quote.  Depending on what that says, this could be the shortest development project in history.  However, if he is anywhere near our budget, we’ll crack on I’m sure.

Work has been hectic again this week, and the “highlight” was a training course on Wednesday in central Manchester at the offices of our PR agency.  A few of us were to be media trained!  I know, I know.

This basically involved learning how to do interviews with the press and how journalists try to trick you into getting info you didn’t want to tell them.  Then to my horror, a session on how to do pieces to camera, as we intend to populate our YouTube channel with lots of promo videos, explaining how great we are.  The horror of seeing yourself played back in 1080p cannot be fully understood until it happens.  Suffice to say, I don’t see a future in television for myself at this stage.  Plus, why didn’t anyone tell me I was losing my hair?????

They also say that the camera adds ten pounds.  I don’t know about that, I think it is more likely to be the 8,000 calories a day whilst on holiday!!

In other news, Rebecca came home with a letter this week about a school trip.  As you know, these days these are usually things like giraffe racing in New Zealand rather than a day in Cleckheaton.  This trip is an exchange thing to Germany, where she will go and stay with a “pen pal” and their family in November, and we shall return the favour next April.  It’s a good job we plan to have an extra bedroom by then!!

This may not seem odd to you, until you understand that not one pupil in Rebecca’s year actually learns German at school.  They all either do Spanish (like Rebecca) or French.  The benefits, of course, are around life experience, meeting new people etc, and learning to be independent, but you would think they could manage something like that in a country who speak the language they are learning??  I did study German for three years, and as a result, can now ask for a piece of Black Forest Gateaux with great confidence.  This is ALL I can do, but still, a glowing reference for a comprehensive education.

Ich mochte ein stuch schwarzwalderkirschtorte bitte.  Have that!

Till the next time….

Everyone’s a winner..ah no, that’s just me then.

by mkingdon, posted in mkingdon, Walt Disney World

I thought I had to do a special midweek post to mark a landmark event.

Anyone who knows me will realise that my life is a constant stream of injustice, bad luck and persecution.  What do you mean I am a drama queen?  What do you mean I have a lovely family, habitable house, enough money to service my debts, and enough food in the fridge.  Don’t spoil my sense of self-pity please.

Well, it seems the tide has turned as I have actually won something.

I got a phone call late last night informing me that my entry into the DisneyBrit podcast competition was the winning entry.  The competition celebrates their 50th podcast.   I had to say in less than fifty words why I should go, and it seems my promise of a brown envelope stuffed with cash did the trick.  I jest.  I actually sent in an entry outlining the benefits of taking me along as my Halloween candy eating exploits will easily recoup any DisneyBrit expenditure.  I can on board enough candy to maximise the return on the prize budget….or something like that.

I think Adam recorded the phone call for the podcast too, so you shall be able to hear my stunned gobsmackiness if you decide to listen to the next podcast, and you should.  Luckily, I did not swear.

The prize alas is only for one person, unless you fork out for any other travellers, and with Louise officially recovering for the next twelve weeks, she will not be able to come along.

Planes Tranes and Automobiles
What about those bears!!

This leaves me in the rather odd situation of “bunking”  (I said bunking!) with Adam, having never met him.  This brings up images of the classic scene from Planes Trains and Automobiles, where Steve Martin and John Candy wake up in the same bed.  “Those aren’t cushions!!!”.

I am assured we have suitably platonic sleeping arrangements in place.

So after breaking the news to Louise that I would be flying solo and some very quick research about Eurostar, I am all booked train wise.  From Manchester to DLP for just over £100, including First Class on the way back from Euston to Manchester!!

Adam has given me a rough breakdown of the weekend, but I won’t go into it here, as I feel it my duty to encourage you to listen to the podcast after Halloween to find out what happened.  I may of course do a mini trippie, because of course I don’t have enough on in that regard already!!

We are staying at the Magic Circus hotel, which looks splendid, but then most hotels that you stay in for free are!!  The only other thing I shall tell you about is the advertised prize –

  • 2 nights accommodation
  • 2 day park hopper ticket
  • a ticket to Disney’s Terrorific Night at Walt Disney Studios on 30th October
  • food over the weekend
  • a few surprises

I’m not sure the “food over the weekend” element of this prize has been thought through to be honest.  I hope the budget planning was suitable!!

So there we go.  I am as you may have noticed a tad excited to be going to DLP for the first time, and with an expert such as Adam to show me around.

More news as it breaks.

Till the next time…..

Mr & Misses.

by mkingdon, posted in mkingdon

Last Saturday evening, we went to my brother’s house for a small get together.  It was a celebration of his and his wife’s twentieth wedding anniversary.  As my brother often says, ten years of blissful matrimony, but he’s been married for twenty.

During the evening, we played a game of Mr & Mrs.  Now you might imagine that this is a recipe for disaster, with several drunk couples arguing over whether their partner is “sweet or savoury”.  You’d be right!  We came second.  You can only imagine how hard I had to fight not to show my outrage and disappointment at this, to preserve the fragile facade of a nice night out.

We lost (yes, lost, not came second) by half a point.  This was naturally all Louise’s fault.  Well, Louise plus half a bottle of Bacardi.

Paul Whitehouse
Int Milk Brilliant!

We both missed out on questions about each other such as “Who would your partner want to play them in a movie of their lives” as they are quite subjective, and hard to guess at.  By the way, for me I said Paul Whitehouse.  Louise said Angelina Jolie…to play her…not me, whereas I said Megan Fox.  Wait, here is a chance to post a picture of Megan Fox.

Megan Fox
Megan is a fox

Those slip ups are fine, as the questions have a million different possible answers.  But when I get asked what was Louise’s first job, and I get the right answer and she doesn’t, then my allergy to losing kicks in.  The night trundled on from there, filled with Tapas, which was lovely, and alcohol, which did for Louise, and saw us revisit the Tapas at around 2am.  I was delighted.

This week at work has flown by.  Whilst it is always nice to get to the weekend a little quicker, the trouble is that those weekends shoot by at high speed too.

The reason for the whizzing week has been work.  As I alluded to last time round, my role at work is changing, and I have spent most of last week in summit style negotiations with other manager types, sorting out who works where, and does what.  Add to that the doing of actual work as well, then the week passed in a blur.  This of course has meant a few late finishes, scuppering any plans to get to the gym and write any further trip report days.  I finally got around to one yesterday.

The Other Guys poster
The Oscars won't be troubled

So by the time Friday evening arrived I was knackered, and ready for some relaxing, eating and fun.

We ticked all the boxes with a trip to the local Cineworld to see The Other Guys, preceded by a visit to the local Frankie and Bennys.  My one regret of the evening was eating too much there to allow me to unleash my full power on the Pick n Mix.  I had a decent bash, but found myself having Pick n Mix left at the end of the film, which is a crime really, but fear not, I finished it off for breakfast the next day.

Will Ferrell, much like Jim Carrey, appeals to me, as they usually turn up in silly, funny films that allow you to let them to wash over you, without having to worry too much about complex plots.

The panel that hand out Oscar’s will not be troubled by this one, but it is great fun.  Ferrell, again much like Carrey, tends to play the same character in many films, but I for one am not bored of it yet.  His pinnacle will always be Ron Burgundy, (closely followed by the scene in Elf where he belches and says “Did you hear that?), but this was a good one too.

There are also some cracking cameos from the likes of The Rock, Michael Keaton and best of all Samuel L Jackson.  His appearance is brief but just fantastic.

Whilst we enjoyed the film we left the girls and one of their friends (Mikey…and he is a friend who is a boy rather than a boyfriend) at home to watch Camp Rock 2.  Having seen trailers for it both in the US, and again back home, I would rather watch a 24 hour marathon of Heartbeat, so our escape was well-timed.

The girls enjoyed it and I suspect Mikey endured it, but it also seems that they were inspired to create their own cinematic masterpiece.  Frankly, I think that this beats Camp Rock too.

Cookie Monster & Jam
Click on Cookie Monster!

Looking to next week, the major event will be Louise’s admission to hospital tomorrow for an operation.  We have been here many times before of course, but it is never something any of us look forward to.  It is a fairly big one this time, and she will be in for the week we think, and then off work for a good few weeks after that.

I know you are all immediately feeling sorry for me, having to manage the household single-handedly, but please spare a thought for Louise too!!

The girls are staying at Nana’s all week, as I will be a blur between work and hospital, plus it means they can stay in bed longer of a morning as Nana lives about two minutes stroll from their school.

Hopefully (as we always say) this will be the one that gives Louise a decent run at a healthy existence.

An unfortunate side effect of this of course is an anticipated complete lack of trip reportage, for which I now apologise, but some things are more important even than that.

On a positive note, and one for Louise to think about in the next few days of pain and drugs, is that we absolutely have to return to the US for our next holiday.  Why, you might ask?  Well, yesterday, Louise found $33 left over from our holiday.  We cannot be so frivolous as to let that sit festering in a drawer, as that would be an incomprehensible waste.

The fact that the credit card bills have arrived from our latest trip this week, delivering with them a complete shock to the systems as to how we could possibly spend so much in such a short space of time, had slightly dented our ambitions to book our next trip quickly.  But now with a full $33 at our disposal, the die is cast.

Hopefully, with my next post will come news of Louise back at home, along with the girls, and some sort of debt restructuring package in place to allow us to consider another trip overseas.

Till the next time…..

Jetlag, bad backs and talk of the Hulk’s entrance.

by mkingdon, posted in mkingdon

It’s been an odd week, and a long week.  It does seem like forever since our holiday, and I feel like I’ve done about twelve days at work this week.

The jet lag only seemed to linger over me until Monday I think, and I’m very glad that the girls had an extra day to recover as their body clocks were all over the place over the weekend.  Louise returned to the UK with a very bad back, and without stealing my own thunder for the latter parts of the trip report, she really struggled through the last few days of the trip.

So after seeing both the emergency and proper doctor on her return she’s been on horse tranquilisers in an attempt to kill the pain and stay mobile.

The girls have returned to school, and we’ve been told that Rebecca’s hair is “inappropriate”.  Yes I can see that a few strands of red hair is going to endanger the education of the entire school.  Good to see the teachers are concentrating on what is important.  We thanked them for their interest anyway.

Pink Dr Martens
Is there a doctor in the house?

Rebecca returned from the US in the unusual position of not having found anything substantial to spend her dollars (donated by grandparents) on.  So I spent them instead.  I did promise her that I would refund them in pounds on our return, so, with minimal delay, she claimed the funds this week, and purchased a pair of bright pink Dr Martens.  Out of spite I might just send her to school in them!

Work has been pretty busy too, and I returned to find that we’re undertaking a fairly major restructure, and it turns out they want me to do something different to what I have been for the past few….well, weeks.  Same sort of stuff, just more people to look after, and a bit more stuff on my plate.  I approach these things with the usual sense of gratitude, relief they think I’m worth employing and outright fear that I am going to make a right ricket of it.  We’ll see.

So, in my very brief blog earlier in the week I mentioned some sort of rant.  Thinking about it, rant may be a little strong.  Whilst doing multiple theme parks in Florida, I did come across a common behaviour by those inhabiting theme park establishments, and I thought that if I wrote my displeasure of it here, where a handful of people will read it, this is bound to fix the entire situation for the next time we return.

So, being fairly organised in my approach to these holidays, I’m also not bad at planning our route around a park “on the go” so to speak.  I don’t need a map of the parks anymore, and I have a good idea of what to do, not only next, but like some sort of theme park chess master, what the next couple of things will be.

I think, a good analogy here would be when I was learning to drive.  I used to go out of a weekend with my Dad, and only came close to death once really.  One thing my Dad told me has always stuck with me when it comes to driving, and it was this.

“Don’t just look at the end of your bonnet, lift your head up, and look down the road so you can see what’s coming and plan for it”.

I’ve always remembered this, and I do consider myself half decent at seeing things coming on the road, and being aware of upcoming muppetry from others before it happens.

So how is this relevant?  Well, as we approach an attraction, I already have everything I need.  So if we are using a Fastpass, I have them all out, in an attractive fan shape, ready for inspection.  I also take a good look at the entrance, and make sure I know which entrance is for Fastpass and which is for the unwashed.  I had (in the past when relevant) a decent idea if the girls were tall enough, and if the ride was suitable for them.

This means that we are through the entrance and into the queue or attraction with minimal fuss.

Entrance to the hulk
Beware the Hulk's entrance

What started to really bug me was the high number of folk who walked up to something, with all their party, usually double figures, and then proceeded to stand right in front of the entrance looking at the ride as if it was an alien ship just landed, or fishing out fastpasses, or trying to talk their way into the Fastpass line without any, or asking the CM inane questions like what time the three o’clock parade is, or arguing who was going to go on with Uncle Harold.

All this time, I am trying to navigate my way through this mini minefield, with my Fastpasses in fan, a large backpack attached to me and all the while tutting for England.

This ride entrance paralysis drove me insane.  For goodness sake, lift your head up, think about what will happen five seconds in advance, and don’t arrive at the entrance and then think it odd that the CM wants to see the Fastpasses stuffed at the bottom of your bag under four ponchos and three bottles of coke.

Then, when in the queue, don’t double back seven times to talk to a family member who hasn’t entered, to try to get them to come on, then expect to walk right back to where you were.  I only have so many tuts available to me in my lifetime, and I fear I may wear them out pretty soon.

Had I read this a few weeks ago I would have thought the writer an anal, control freak, who needs to just chill and go with the flow.  But remember this rant the next time you are in a park.  As you come up to a ride, watch out for the loitering nuisances blocking the entrance.  Kick them in the shin and tell them I sent you.

As rants go, that is quite tame I know, and it came nowhere near having a negative impact on the holiday.  Besides if I don’t get to tut and feel superior to someone a couple of times a day I get all grumpy.

So, I’ll crack on with the trip report as time allows, but it may be a while.  Work is about to ramp up to a whole new level of inconvenience, and one night this week I was astounded to find myself actually doing work at home, in the evening, after hours, not in the office, in my own time.  Did I make that clear?

Hopefully Louise’s back will improve too, as that seriously looked like anything but fun.

Till the next time….

They think it’s all over….

by mkingdon, posted in mkingdon, Walt Disney World

It is now.

We’re back, jetlagged, already sick of work, and sneakily taking a look at options for our next holiday, but don’t tell anyone.

The Trip Report has started with Day One now up on The Dibb. There is a link to it on the Trip Reports Page.

This isn’t a proper post, as with work, trip reporting and being fed up, I don’t have time, but I just wanted to say hello to everyone now we are back in the UK.

I’ll probably do a blog post this weekend if I can, as I have some inner rage to expel on some theme park behaviours I encountered that made my (usually calm) blood boil.

See you then, and of course, till the next time…..

My Dog’s Anal Glands are Expensive. (No really!)

by mkingdon, posted in mkingdon, Walt Disney World

I need a holiday.  Really, I am exhausted.

This isn’t helped in any way by our house going up for sale, so as well as having to prepare for the important stuff, such as our trip, but I’m also having to cosmetically enhance the house to fool some idiot into thinking we’ve done loads of work on it rather than hand over all our renovation budget to the board of Disney.

A house has gone on the market down the road which Louise tells me we like and, therefore we are to see if we can off load our current one to secure it.

As you might expect last week at work did not fly by, but somehow the weekend arrived, with a slight sense of foreboding as I had an inkling of the amount of stuff we had to get done.

The weekend started with the revelation that the cheap as chips suitcase we’ve been using for a decade will not survive another trip.  Really, is nothing built to last these days??  Indignant at having to spend money after only ten short years of dragging our current case across the Atlantic, the first task of the weekend was to secure new luggage.  We also had a very brief discussion about buying a new rucksack.  Louise pointed out one that would be suitable, and I reacted like she had suggested I lopped off my left arm.  Ryan is getting on and he needs some work but if that were the criteria for being replaced I would have been gone long ago.

Suitcase
A case of bad taste?

We left the girls at home getting ready to go out with their friends, (which worryingly takes forever these days…there will be trouble on holiday if I am denied early startiness) and Louise and I scoured at least two shops to find something suitable.  There wasn’t a great deal of choice if I’m honest, but the main criteria being, it is cheap, and it is well proportioned (hey, that sounds like me), we soon settled on the flowery affair you can see in the picture.

Size wise it fits the bill as either of the girls could get in it, which in hindsight could have saved me the cost of one flight!!

For the second time in recent history I then ventured to the Trafford Centre on a Saturday, as Louise “had no clothes at all” for the holiday.  I needed a couple of things too, and as I needed Louise along to let me know if I liked stuff, it was two birds with one stone.

Weird Bug
About to be blown off....

As we got in the car to leave I spotted something on the roof the likes of which I have never seen before in this country.  As the photo shows, it is half dung beetle, half fly, and after snapping a quick photo I was glad to get into the car, floor the accelerator and see it be blown off in my rearview mirror, and that isn’t something you see every day, unless you go looking for it on the internet.

First things first, we had lunch.  Then we started the tour of every women’s clothing shop in there.  The day was full of ups and downs, with lows as “nothing looks right”, and then moments of elation as a triumphant Louise emerges from a changing room, garments aloft, wielding here switch card like a samurai sword.

I got some new trainers.  The whiteness of these new trainers you cannot begin to perceive.  They come with several sets of dark glasses to be handed out to passers-by.  They announce the fact that I have just purchased them like the brightest beacon on the darkest night.  Did I mention that they are white?

I also got some brown sandals.  Now, as I told the girls this on our return home, their faces reflected the horror that phrase could mean.  However, trust me they look very suave and sophisticated.  I like them because Louise said so, and she also said they are good as they hide most of my horrid feet from view.

Our return from shopping saw me go to the gym and the supermarket as is becoming my Saturday routine, and Louise, not yet fed up with retail establishments ventured out again to the Middlebrook retail park, next to the Reebok stadium, even though a match was in full flow.  She has no fear, having braved the Trafford Centre, she now struck out solo to face the traffic chaos that is the end of a match at the Reebok.

She returned with that holiday essential, a new phone!  Yes, that’s right, with mere hours to go until departure, she felt the need to replace our perfectly good phone.  I didn’t really pursue that for personal safety reasons, and she did seem to have bought enough clothes for the entire Magic Kingdom crowd, so I’m guessing she’s sorted now.

Jim Carrey
Bum Steer

Now, a word of warning.  If you, like us, enjoy settling down as a family to watch a film, then don’t whatever you do, do so with one called “I Love You Phillip Morris”.

We are big Jim Carrey fans, so we were looking forward to watching this one, and the 15 certificate told us it was fairly sure to be OK for the girls, with perhaps a little swearing, which is nothing they won’t have heard anytime that I’m doing DIY.

I won’t go into details here, but the “bottom” line is that the girls quickly made their excuses and averted their eyes in a few “love scenes” as I quickly scrabbled around trying to find the fast forward button.

Don’t get me wrong, the film is very good, just not a family one!

Then, the day of rest dawned.  Louise had been up for a while, making lists!  I knew immediately I was in trouble.  So today I have –

  • Hung a picture (minimum swearing)
  • Mowed the lawn
  • Cleaned the kitchen
  • Dropped the girls off somewhere
  • Popped in to see my Mum
  • Resealed the bath
  • Hung a mirror (maximum swearing)
  • Made tea (putting that pizza in the oven was a tough one).

Louise was last seen in our bedroom somewhere under a pile of clothes.  I think I got the better deal to be honest.  Rebecca has just done the “try on” of stuff in her drawers and selected the garments that will make the Atlantic crossing, and Emily is now upstairs doing the same.  I suspect they will both return with more than they left with!

So we move into the last few days, and for once I am having to work right up until the day we go, as having just started at the new place, I have very few holidays to take.  So Louise is off Wednesday and Thursday to get stuff ready, and I shall appear on Thursday evening just in time to sit on the case, zip it up, and then unzip it again on Friday morning to force all the last-minute hair apparatus in.  I suppose I could leave my GHDs behind??

Emily’s idea of getting ready for holiday is to try on three T-shirts and then ask which take away we are having on Thursday evening.  For the record she wants a curry.

As I type I can hear a conversation upstairs centring around knickers, and thankfully the verdict is she has enough.  This is good news as this morning Louise took Henry to the vets.  The amount of money exchanged there was on a par with the holiday budget, so if we haven’t got something now we’re doing without.  Henry is fine by the way, apart from an infected ear, and issues around his anal glands.

Apparently, after a quick root around up there, and the appearance of some cottage cheese like substance from his glands, Louise almost lost her breakfast, and don’t forget Louise has worked in Operating theatres, and sees old lady boobs all day every day.

He seems much happier in himself now, and when Louise came home and described the procedures done by the vet, I sort of understood the amount of cash charged.

Anyway, he’s ready for his holidays in Yorkshire now, but the instructions for the giving of medication is longer than this here post, so the best of luck to Steve and Di, his carers whilst we are pet free.

So come on Friday, hurry yourself along.  I only hope the trip is a magical one, and gives a good return for the sheer amount of hours that have gone into it’s making.  For the record here are some of the milestones I am looking forward to –

  • The airport
  • Arriving at the villa
  • The first “big shop” at the supermarket (cake, beer, crisps with perhaps some fruit)
  • The walk up Main Street on our first morning
  • Food, all of it.
  • Hard Rock Hotel
  • Harry Potter stuff
  • Daytona
  • The Beach Club
  • and I even don’t really mind turning forty!

I will say goodbye for now, as I doubt I will blog whilst overseas.  I may manage the odd tweet/facebook as the girls will have their laptops with them, and I shall see you all back here in early September for more tales of household chores, shopping and my dog’s backside.  How could you resist?

Till the next time…..

Hurry up and wait.

by mkingdon, posted in mkingdon, Walt Disney World

I’m knackered.

The weekend has been less than restful, and it is only now that I have planted my backside on the couch, found an episode of Two and a Half Men I have only seen about twelve times, and commenced the me time.

Yesterday saw me tackle a task that has been festering at the back of my mind for months.  I threw the back seats down in the car, ready for the trek to the tip,  took a deep breath, and ventured into the garage.  Someone once said that it is crazy that we leave thousands of pounds worth of car on the drive, and stuff the garage full of worthless crap.  We had indeed, and it took many, many hours to get to a stage where you can now walk through the garage without striding over stuff.

To put the level of work into context, in one box we found the photo from the twelve week scan of Rebecca!  Rebecca is 13 years old.

So with two trips to the local tip, we said goodbye to stuff we had kept for years, under the illusion that we would need it someday.  Sod’s law says that we will next week.

The afternoon, as last week, was spent at the gym, and then Asda.  I truly am living the dream.

This morning saw me wrestle with the downstairs loo.  By that I mean that Louise had started to decorate it this week, and it was therefore my job to finish it.  The room, as you might imagine, is small, so why is it then that it took me bloody hours, and it still isn’t finished.  I ran out of wall paper just before I ran out of patience.  There are so many nooks and crannies in there that not one piece of paper went on in one piece.  The complexity of wallpapering is directly related to the level of bad language.

Pleased to have a reason to stop, I did.

So, that explains my opening sentence!

Countdown
Keep going....

This week saw me produce a pre trip report, which was perhaps a little premature, but hey, such is the story of my life.  I’m not a big pre trip writer, and have only done one a couple of times, as I’m never really sure what to put in there.  Anyway, with my countdown racing to a conclusion, I felt obliged.

As a result of posting this, there may be a few new readers here at http://www.mkingdon.com so welcome to you if that is the case.

I don’t know if anyone else feels like this, but when we get as close as this to a trip, I try to tell myself to enjoy having a countdown, and in some way, fear the holiday racing past all too quickly, and then I’m sat back here staring a bleak winter in the face, wondering when the next trip will be possible.

So for now, it seems I can think of nothing else than the upcoming trip.  I am looking forward to so many things it would be difficult to list them all.  These things are not necessarily the big events either, it is also the silly things.  For me, the sheer joy of the morning of the outward journey is pure magic.  For once, no-one minds getting up at silly o’clock, and the drive to the airport is a jolly affair.  Even the hours spent at the airport are special, and somehow I don’t mind paying over the odds for an average breakfast, and if the girls are looking to get anything bought for them, this is a good time to get me!

I don’t think Louise enjoys this as much though, as her fear of flying is pretty bad.  I wouldn’t say that I enjoy the flight, but mainly due to an over eagerness to get to the front of the car hire queue.  Louise however, is genuinely afraid of the entire thing.  I suppose it shows how much she enjoys the holiday that she puts herself through it every year.

Seat plan
Two by Two

This year, I’ve booked seats right at the back of the plane, based on the assumption that if we hit any mountains then we’ll be OK, as you never hear of any planes reversing into these things.  The layout of the plane is typically 3-3-3, but right at the back it narrows to 2-3-2.  This means we don’t have to worry about one of us (me of course) having to sit with another family, and we can just concentrate on annoying each other.

In years gone by one of the grown ups (yes, that includes me) would have sat with one of the girls, as we would have had Polly Pockets to dress, and food to cut up, but these days the girls can sit together, share iPods, films and their opinions on any boy unfortunate enough to wander by.

The films on board look pretty good, with the latest Shrek, Iron Man 2, Valentine’s Day and a few others I can’t remember available so these should pass a few hours.  For me, the worst part of the flight is just after the food, drinks and duty free have been around, and things settle down.  It is at that point that I realise that we still have about six hours left, and the girls start asking me how long to go!

The big kid in me just wants to get there, beat everyone though immigration, be the first to get the car, and be free of the airport and en route to the villa.  I will remind myself now, to savour every moment, even those that I find boring and frustrating, as they are all better than being back at work!!

I don’t usually deal with queues and people particularly well.  You may wonder then why I continue to go to the one place on earth guaranteed to inflict both on me.  I can’t answer that really, but I do know that this peaks on the outward journey, with a multitude of tuts heard at every stage, from the check in desk to the restaurant we have breakfast in.  I promise to restrict my Meldrew-esque moments to a minimum Louise!!

Oh yes, I just remembered.  A historic event happened yesterday.  You may remember in a previous post my disdain at Louise’s suggestion that I may need some new shorts.  I made the point that I only wear them for two weeks every year, so in effect, regardless of the fact that they are older than the kids, they are almost brand new.

Anyway, I bought some new ones!  They should see me right till my 50th now!

I’m waffling now, so I should stop.  My excitement is over-riding my ability to edit myself.  If you think this post has been a winding piece of nonsense, lurching from one thought to another, all holiday related, just wait until next weekend, when it will be my last blog post pre holiday.

I’m not sure yet if I will be tweeting from Florida, I need to ask the IT chaps at work if my phone tariff will inflict thousand of pounds worth of data charges by taking it to the US.  In a way I hope it does, as it will mean two weeks away from email.  On the other hand, I could do with my phone to act as sat nav, mobile internet look up, and tweeter whilst away.

I really will stop now.  Till the next time…..

All presents and correct.

by mkingdon, posted in mkingdon

The week began with Emily’s actual birthday.  Being a Monday, and Louise and I having to go to work we had to wake her at some silly time to bestow pressies upon her.  This, on a school day is dicey, but to do it in school holidays is something that only the bravest souls should attempt.  We did offer her the option of having her presents on Sunday evening, but bless her, she felt this wouldn’t be quite right.

iPod Pig
Pigging Loud

It was probably the lure of presents which meant that she was awake, and amazingly smiling quite quickly and with minimum physical harm to either parent.  We were not stupid or ambitious enough to actually assume she would get out of bed, so we did the deed in her bedroom and she was delighted with the gifts on offer.

From Nana, Grandad and Auntie and Uncle, a pig that you can stick your iPod into.  Folk have been arrested for less, but it seems this is OK to do.  It isn’t very big, but seems to have the audio output equivalent an Iron Maiden gig.  In fact that would be preferrable to some of the shouty nonsense that has been pouring out of it this week.

Most of the girl’s music is at worst tolerable, and some quite enjoyable, but at the other extreme, is the shouty nonsense with a bloke using some sort of ridiculous deep gutteral noise to spout lyrics that no-one can actually make out.  Yes, yes I know I now sound like every Dad in history, but I refute that claim.  Where music is concerned I am fairly discerning, having almost been a pop star and everything, and I’m sorry but this stuff really is just noise.

Emily’s other main present from good old Mum & Dad was a camera.  She’d asked for this a while ago, and in line with all good Dad traditions, I had told her she had no chance as they were too expensive, so she was nicely surprised upon ripping the wrappings off.

GE Camera
Sharp Shooter

She fancies getting into photography, which ties in with her overall interest in all things media, film and stuff.  Having looked at proper SLRs, chuckled at the price and moved on we got her what I believe is called a Bridge camera.  As the name suggests a sort of half way house between the usual point and shoot and those proper cameras where you need to know what you are doing.

As someone who is firmly in the point and shoot, leave it on automatic setting camp, I really hope she does get into photography enough to know her ISO from her elbow, then she can teach me.  What it also means, is that this year we should have two lots of photos from our holiday.  I suspect Emily’s collection will be quite select, as the “effort” of actually carrying it around will all be a bit too much…unless of course good old Dad shoves it into the never-ending rucksack.

The girls have been off this week as the holidays are now in full swing, which has meant getting to work has been a whole load easier.  No teenagers to get out bed, no lunches to make, and the traffic on the roads has been a delight.  Work itself is making a little more sense every day, and I feel like I made the odd positive contribution every now and again too.

So the week really passed without too much to note.  Saturday saw the girls and I strike out to the forbidden land that is the Trafford Centre on a Saturday.  My declaration that we had to be out of the house by 9.30am crashed and burned on the rocks of showers, hair dryers and hair straighteners.  I must learn to get ready quicker!  Anyway, we got there pre lunch, and the main job was to get Rebecca some shorts.  Gone are the days of buying a multi pack of multi coloured shorts, possibly with flowers on from Adams.  Back then, the girls would more or less wear whatever you put on them.  My how things have changed, and we spent hours, scouring every clothes shop in the Trafford Centre for shorts….denim shorts.

Can I just say what an absolute nonsense female clothes shopping is.  Items are not grouped together in one part of the store, so you might find a pair of shorts near the door, and several others tucked away in some dark corner.  Then even when you do find them, the game of trying to identify what bloody size each garment is starts.  These labels are not displayed obviously on the outside of the clothes, or on some large clear label, or even better hung around the top of the hanger.  No this crucial information is hidden inside the shorts, on a label the size of a pin head, in a foreign language.  So this means I have to root around in women’s shorts getting all hot and sweaty (so many jokes, so little time), as the girls will not exert that level of effort, as it may impinge on their job of looking cool.

Then, I had to summon the crash team to revive me when I saw that the price for a piece of denim, stitched into the shape of shorts started, yes, started at £20.  I won’t continue the rant here, but we dropped a bunch of cash just to ensure Rebecca didn’t have to spend the fortnight in her swimsuit.  Of course the expense was added to with lunch, the obligatory Starbucks, and a couple of T Shirts for Emily, as the sulk factor for having being dragged to the Trafford Centre, and not being bought anything reached serious levels after a few hours.  Rebecca also secured herself a new pair of black converse as her old ones were literally falling apart.  She does wear them as her school shoes, so Dad logic says, yes you can have a pair for the holidays, and then they will do nicely for the new term when you get back!  Result.

Toy Story 3
Toys with your affections

The rest of Saturday was spent by me at the gym, taking a few ounces off in readiness for the calorie onslaught that will ensue in the US, then we went to see Toy Story 3 in 3D.  It was up to the usual high standards, and Emily cried all over again.   I say again, as of course she and Rebecca watched it last weekend for her birthday do.

Perhaps the theme of growing up and moving on struck a chord with Emily, as at 15, she has a drawer full of toys she just won’t part with.  As soon as her back is turned, I am due an eBay bonanza.

Man Vs Food
How I wish I had this guy's job!

Over the weekend I have also watched the episodes of Man vs Food that I had sky plussed on Friday.  It is on one of those high numbered channels on Sky that you rarely stumble to, but believe me it is well worth it.

The premise is that Adam Richman travels the US visiting eateries, and taking on various eating challenges.  Some are truly ridiculous, and one episode stood out for that very reason.  I can eat, but this meant taking down a 2lb sandwich, and 6lb milkshake in one hour.  I won’t spoil it by telling you whether he did or not!!

If you haven’t seen the show have a look for it on Friday nights, aroundabout Channel 249 or 250 I think…or of course You Tube is your friend.

One last thing to point out, is that I have started to use Four Square.  I can’t really tell you what it is, but it is a new social networking thing, so I thought I’d give it a go.  I only mention it as it posts updates as to my location from time to time, so when you see them on Twitter or Facebook, it might explain why I am posting trivia about being at Asda!!  Not that me posting trivia is anything new to anybody.

Till the next time…..

One wedding, seven teenagers and almost my funeral.

by mkingdon, posted in mkingdon, Walt Disney World

Before I start, can I just point out, more for my benefit than anyone else, that it is 25 days until we go to Florida!

This is not a gloat, well not solely a gloat, but more of a wake up to me that this thing is close now.  The whole new job thing has really taken my eye off the clock watching, agonising minute by minute countdown analysis that is normally going on around now.

With my first week at the new place under the belt, my eye is now drifting back, slowly to the very pleasant task of awaiting our latest trip.

Oh, I bought our park tickets!  I know I have dragged that out for weeks now, but with the realisation that we don’t have long to go, and a minor rally on the Dollar rate, I took the plunge.  I used Orlando Attractions in the end, and got an 8 day Magic Your Way Base Ticket, with 2 days for free.  We will not do ten days in Disney, but it gives us a couple spare in case we want to pop in for an evening etc on a non planned Disney day.  Add to that the 14 day 2 park Universal ticket and we are sorted, and all with change out of a grand!  I was happy.  Well as happy as I can be parting with that amount of cash!

So, this new job then, how did it go?  I know you will not have slept with worry all week, so let me enlighten you.  It was OK.

Now what else happened this week….

Oh, more detail perhaps?  Well, it was OK, with most people being very welcoming, and I certainly know more now than I did last Sunday, but there lies the rub for me.  For the past many years I have been the guru, the gnu, the expert, the one with an answer for any question.  So to transport me from that to being the bloke who is still opening every cupboard in the kitchen area trying to find a cup, well its a culture shock.

Salford Quays
Quayed up

By Friday however, I was feeling like progress had been made as I did make a couple of contributions that were remotely useful.  Hope is high that I may do the same again next week.

The week itself consisted of training on Monday, London to see a customer on Tuesday, another customer meeting, but this in the office on Wednesday, and then Thursday and Friday a series of internal meetings and getting stuff sorted to respond to customers.

The view to the left is a snap I took on my walk from the car park to the office on Monday morning.  The offices are at Salford Quays, so it is all penthouse apartments, pink pound and expensive coffees, but the views are certainly better than the last place which was a business park in Bury (no offence Bury).

Having avoided being uncovered as the charlatan I am in one whole week, we’ll see if we can do the same again next week and take it from there.

Emily returned from Berlin on Friday evening after another 24 hour journey from hell.  She had a great time, but was glad to be home.  When she posts her photos (obviously on Facebook) I will post a link here if anyone wants to have a look.

She was zombie like and hadn’t eaten properly in about two days, so we did the decent thing and ordered a load of Dominos pizza.  Her early night drifted to 11pm of course, and she is still struggling now to be honest.

This is mainly because she had her birthday “do” yesterday.  This involved seven teenagers descending upon us at lunchtime Saturday.  We quickly deposited them at the cinema to watch Toy Story 3, whilst we did the BIG SHOP, and prepared things for the evening.

Wedding Party
Well groomed groom
Emily & Friends
Fringes are fire hazards

This involved buying three tonnes of junk food, preparing it, supplying a few horror DVDs and then buggering off out for the night.  We tried a local restaurant for the first time having driven past it a million times threatening to eat there.  Desperate to escape Teen City, we arrived early, and had the place to ourselves initially, but very soon the place was buzzing as an Asian wedding was taking place.  We were enthralled to be honest.  The colours, dress and all round showbiz nature of the event was great to watch.

With all the hullaballoo, we couldn’t leave the restaurant as we would have had to walk right through the video and photos, so we just sat and watched.  This meant that we missed the film we wanted to watch at the cinema, Inception.  So we had to kill 45 minutes until the next showing with a glass of wine and J2O.  I will let you guess who had which!

The film was great…I think.  It is so complicated it was hard to tell.  I was almost afraid to breathe in case doing so distracted me from the story line and I lost the thread.

So we didn’t get home until midnight, to find our lounge looking like Beirut, and smelling worse.  So we shut the door and went to bed like the responsible adults we are.

Next thing, we are awake at 8.30am, by shouting and giggling from downstairs, and I am soon on bacon butty duties.  An enormous amount of getting ready happens and finally they all stumble out of the door around 10.30.  I see this as a chance of escape, and run away, I mean drive to the gym.  Having being operated on a little while ago (what do you mean you forgot?), I have not been to the gym since.  I have used our treadmill at home a few times, but that is quite gentle really, so I was fearing the worst to be honest.  I was right.

Five minutes in to my normal routine I was seeing my life flash before my eyes, and as most of it seemed to involve seven teenagers and an Asia wedding, peppered with highlights from Inception, it didn’t make much sense.  I somehow made it to half an hour on the cross trainer, and then shuffled for a further ten on the treadmill.  The sit ups I ended up with were less than elegant, and I dragged my wheezing frame into the changing room before I presented the gym with the highlights from last night’s curry!

As for the rest of the day, well the kids are out, probably taking crack somewhere, Louise is happily ironing away upstairs, so I think I’ll take my lead from Henry, and join him in a bit of this….

 

Henry asleep
I'm letting him lie.

Till the next time…..

Adieu, Adieu, to you and you and you.

by mkingdon, posted in mkingdon
Food
Food, Glorious Food

It has been a few days littered with goodbyes.  As I may have mentioned, I finally, after 12 weeks of hellish notice period, left my job on Friday.  As tradition dictates I was expected to take in some snacks for the team, as part of the ritual of escape.

It may not surprise you to learn that I may have over bought.  I do…no, did, have a largeish team of around thirty, but I still defeated them, and ended up bringing home quite a bit.

I was, by some bizarre circumstance, quite busy on my final day, which was annoying.  Perhaps they may miss me after all, but frankly, you cannot imagine the enormity of the toss I do not give.  As the time came to actually leave, the goodbyes were made with arms full of gifts and excess food.

The saddest goodbyes were with the chaps at my favourite supplier Merus Software.  We have worked together for ten years now, never had a cross word, and I can honestly say that it was fun working with them.  As they are based in the South West, our virtual office that we share is a chat room, and the goodbyes exchanged there were harder to do than the ones face to face in Bury!

The old place....
Nerds for Herding

Anyway, on to the important stuff, what pressies did I get?  Well, I got a posh pen.  I am not an aficionado of pens, but it looks nice, and someone let slip that it cost £40.  These pen makers must live off the gift trade as surely nobody in their right mind would spend £40 of their own money on a bloody pen???  I also got some M&S vouchers.  A safe, and appreciated thought, as, within 48 hours they are spent.  Louise works on the premise that vouchers expire within minutes, and we have spent the day today in Bolton getting me some new clothes.

There, I admitted that I do clothes shopping at M&S.  I am officially 106.

I think I realised today how long it has been since I actually went clothes shopping for myself.  Put it this way, I didn’t know that half the shops we walked by existed.  The last time I was in town they were model aircraft shops, and toy shops selling Rubik Cubes.  Having only managed to get two items of clothing for the best part of £50 was also a bit of an alien concept!

My team also got me another present which was a little odd, but a nice thought.  A photo of the team!!  Now, my unofficial job title for the past ten years has been nerd herder, so you can imagine the subjects in said photo would not trouble the cover of GQ magazine, but as I said a nice thought all the same.  It now lives on my fridge.  It puts the kids off eating too much!

Emily at desk
Working...honest!

Emily’s work experience ended on Friday too.  The two weeks were probably two of the longest in her short life.  Anyway, on Friday she was allowed to “work on her PC”, which meant playing with Photoshop, and perhaps more likely browsing the internet.

Speaking of Emily, the second set of goodbyes were this morning as we waved her off on her school trip to Berlin.  Linked to this, yesterday I had to go to a travel agents to pick up some Euros for her, and I realised that people actually still book their holidays in these places.  Whilst queuing I overheard couples taking to “agents” (typically early twenty something false tanned travel experts) describing their ideal/preferred trip, and then sitting back as these girls then tap at computers and make phone calls to secure their holiday.

It brought back memories of doing this with my Mum & Dad, over twenty years ago.  Really, someone needs to tell them that internet has been invented.  How can you hand over thousands of pounds based on one brochure photograph and the reccomendation of Kirstie from Bolton (apologies to all Kirsties).

So back to this morning.  Having packed yesterday we wrestled her out of bed early, and drove her to school.  We then stood for half an hour as about fifty sleepy teenagers were packed onto their coach.  There was a slight delay as one chap didn’t turn up.  It turns out he thought the trip was tomorrow.  Oh dear.

At 9.30 the coach left, followed by all the parents waving at their particular bundle of hormones, all feeling a little bit sick and upset at the thought of their child being out of their control and protection for the next week…or was that just me?  I hate the thought of Emily doing the long journey without me driving the coach and sailing the ferry.  Who said I was a control freak??

As goodbyes go this week, this was the harder of the two!

Tomorrow of course I start my new job, so all those new kid at school feelings will resurface, but hopefully I can avoid having my head flushed down the toilet for most of the day.  To ready myself for the trauma of this new experience I have told Louise that the correct preparation is to sit on my arse for about six hours in front of the golf.  She looks sceptical, but she’s busy with her ironing hobby so she’ll be OK.

I still haven’t ordered my tickets by the way.  My finger has hovered over the button a couple of times, as it has with the purchase of dollars too, but with the dollar rate having a welcome surge recently I am holding my nerve as long as possible to gain those extra few pence that will make all the difference to our holiday.

We’re nearly ready though.  I have, with the aforementioned M&S vouchers bought a shirt that is one of those that you will only ever wear on holiday, as it is  –

  1. White
  2. A bit see through
  3. Built for maxiumum coolness (and I mean temperature, as that boat has long since sailed)
  4. Likely to get you beaten up if you even think about wearing it in Bolton

All I am missing now are my obviously brand new bright white trainers, bum bag and one size too small speedos!!  Now there is a mental image to leave you with…

Till the next time….

As Joey Tempest once said….

by mkingdon, posted in mkingdon, Walt Disney World

For those too young to understand the reference in the title, your life is poorer for not having embraced the poodle permed, leather trousered, white teethed Lothario that was the lead singer of Europe, Joey Tempest.  The title of course refers to their finest hour, well three and a half minutes anyway.

The countdown reference is double barreled.  You may have heard me mention that I am due to start a new job?  I mentioned it once or twice.  I can’t believe that I’ve been saying this since April of course, but next week will be my final week of purgatory, otherwise known as my notice period.  This countdown has sort of distracted me from my more important countdown to my ever so special 40th birthday WDW trip.  This countdown too is entering the final furlong, with around 40 days to go now.

Last week and the one to come have been a little unusual in that Emily has been with me on work experience.  I do find it odd how things work out.  When I started work at my current employer, Emily was four, not yet in proper school, and now some ten years later she is in GCSE phase, and how ironic that she is on work experience for my final two weeks.

The experience she has mostly gained in her first week is the mind numbing banality that is the working office.  I think it was mid afternoon on her second day when she uttered the fateful phrase “How many hours to go?”.  Well, if I calculate that you will start work at say 18, and retire anytime between 55 and 75, I’d say she has a lot of hours to go.  Hopefully, it will help her to appreciate school a little more, and follow my one and only piece of advice about school, work and life in general.

That is to find something to do that you enjoy, because if you don’t, work becomes one long interruption to what you’d rather be doing.

Emily’s other contribution to this week has been to be the daughter with a broken heart.  They tend to alternate on this one, having met some boy, agreed to go out, and then about seventeen minutes later, break up.  This is a little disrespectful I suppose, as this week Emily is very, very upset over some little Oik, and I’m sure at fourteen the world seems to have ended.  If only there was some way to inject what you know into them they may not be quite so upset, but I suppose everyone has to go through it.  It is not an easy thing to watch though.  I should ready myself for lots more to come I guess.

On to more pleasant matters, and I have (I think) decided upon the ticket options.  It will, as predicted, be the Magic Your Way Base option for seven days, along with a two park Universal ticket which last for fourteen days, but we’ll only use two.  I had more Disney days in the plan, but to keep the ticket spend down to a level that George Osbourne would approve of, I did a quick switcheroo with the plan.

I have tagged an extra day onto our Daytona Beach visit, and rather than do their and back in a day, we are going to do a stay over.  This suits Louise a lot, as you may know that she is the first to tire of the Disney parks every year, and she is quite keen on a spot of sunbathing.  After a quick trawl of the The Dibb, I had enough info to make some firm plans.

Accommodation wise, the criteria was clean and cost-effective (ie cheap), as we’ll be spending very few hours in it.  A name that popped up a fair bit on The Dibb was the Sun Viking Lodge.  A quick bit of a google found me a price of less than £50 for a three bedded room (this is key as the girls are not keen on sharing a bed).  Having used Quidco, this cash back brought the price to nearer £40!!

The location looks superb, being beachfront, with a decent waterslide and pool, and if the rains come, and indoor pool too.  It is also less than five minutes from the baseball park where we have tickets to watch a game on our second evening.

Daytona Lagoon
We oughta Water Park

Again, from Dibb research I discovered that Daytona has a waterpark, and this being the activity I had culled from the plan, this seemed like a good option.  Even better that upon looking at their web site, the admission for our date was $12 each!!

I am not expecting a Disney experience from our break at the beach.  The hotel will not be Vero Beach, and the water park may not live up to Typhoon Lagoon, but it will be good to experience new things, and of course save a few hundred quid into the bargain.

Once I have the new job started, I imagine that I can concentrate more on the holiday, but for now it seems perhaps further away than it is.

So onwards we go into my final week at work for the old regime, and if you can imagine scenes similar to the closing ceremony of the World Cup, or even the last Olympics, these will be the scenes in an office in Bury on Friday.  I expect several members of my team to be wailing, tearful wrecks as I try to leave the office with several of them attached to my legs begging me not to leave.

More importantly I will find it hard to leave the office, burdened as I shall be by the vast quantity and size of the leaving presents I shall have bestowed upon me.

Let me remove my tongue from my cheek, and just hope that I can slip away in a peaceful manner with minimal fuss, and then get on with the new job…but only for a few weeks, as I have a holiday booked.  I did mention that didn’t I?

You may also have noticed that I have worked out how to embed video into these here posts…be warned!!

Till the next time….

That’s the ticket?

by mkingdon, posted in Walt Disney World

The time is drawing close when I need to make my annual trip through the absolute maze that is, buying theme park tickets for our Florida trip.  The sheer enormity of the options available are enough to scare anyone, even someone who has been through this as often as I.

The simple stuff is usually Universal, as we only need two days there around our on site stay, and even I can navigate that purchase fairly well.  Sea World and Busch have alas not made the final cut this year.  Budget plays a part, but really we just don’t have enough days to get to them and do them justice.  So the real task is to select the ideal ticket option for WDW.

So that will be a major thrust of my weekend to come, and if you need the internet this weekend I’d get on it early as I may wear it out by late Sunday.

Disney Tickets
Ticket to Rides

My choice may be swayed by the ever improving dollar rate.  Many a day in the preceding months I have toyed with the idea of getting some dollars before the dollar rate dropped any further.  Seeing rates at less than 1.4 at one stage was truly depressing.  Thankfully, the bank rate seems to be consistently above 1.5, and whilst this is still pretty paltry compared to the freakishly high 1.9 or so we have had on one previous trip, psychologically, getting above the 1.5 makes me feel like I have had a minor victory!

With a better dollar rate I may buy our tickets from a US site in dollars.  We shall see.  I am tempted by those non hopper things, for the exact amount of days we need, as they are good value, however, they come with several drawbacks.

1.  You can’t hop between parks

2.  They don’t include water parks and Disney Quest

3.  We can’t just pop into a park on a whim for an hour or two, as this will use up a full day

Choices, choices.

How goes your post op recovery Craig?  I hear you all say in unison.  OK, thanks.  I have had better weeks in terms of sleep, mobility and lack of pain, but I seem to be emerging from those woods now, and edging back to something like normal, well as close as I ever got anyway.  I got bored of the whole resting and not doing stuff within about two days, and just became really frustrated by not being able to do anything.  Now that I can actually do stuff again, the appeal seems to have worn off a little.

The week gone by has seen Emily go to Chester Zoo on her end of year reward trip.  The reward was that I was allowed to give the school £17 for the privilege.  Speaking of Emily she finishes school this week, as she has a busy few weeks ahead until the official end of term.

Next Monday she starts two weeks work experience.  She managed to get a placement at the same place as one of her friends.  How did she manage that?  Well, because she is coming to where I work.  My team is naturally delighted to have the bosses daughter around for a fortnight!!

Once she finishes that, she immediately goes to Berlin on a school trip.  This is to support her History GCSE, in which they are covering the Nazis.  The itinerary looks great, and I wouldn’t mind going.  Seems only fair after sorting her work experience out for her?  Then on her return, it is her fifteenth birthday, and of course a few weeks after that we go to Florida.

Germans
Some locals Emily may meet

We attended a planning session at the school a few weeks ago to go through the long list of rules, and even worse, stuff they will need to be bought to take with them to Germany.  As the group are obviously below eighteen, visiting the proper concentration camps is not an option but they are going to Sachsehausen Concentration Camp which apparently was the place where they trained SS officers to carry out the Final Solution.  They are also doing the Stasi Museum, the Wannsee Villa and Checkpoint Charlie amongst lots of other stuff in a very busy week.  There will be some light after all that shade as they also visit a waterpark, ten pin bowling and the Olympic Stadium.

Most of my school trips involved a kagool, curled up sandwiches and three hours on a coach to some caves in Yorkshire.  Although, I did do one overseas trip to Hamburg to stay with my German pen friend.  Everyone in my German class had a pen friend allocated, and they also came over to stay with us. My chap was called Carsten Polland.  I wonder where he is now?  Germany I am guessing, but you know what I mean.   This exchange programme will explain why after three years of study, my grasp of the German language starts and ends with being able to ask for a piece of Black Forest gateaux.

Sounds like a fun summer for Emily.  She had better make the most of it though, as next year is her official GCSE year and she will be locked in her bedroom for all of it revising.  In case Emily reads this, if you look up the definition of revising, there is no mention whatsoever of Facebook, MSN or iPod.  Just so we are clear!

Time to draw this here post to an end now, as I have the house to myself.  The girls are out with friends celebrating someone’s birthday.  This involves a trip to Manchester (for a change), a visit to see Eclipse, and then a sleepover.  The best bit of all of that is that it happens at someone else’s house.  Louise is also out, at the hairdressers, which is a double-edged sword.  It creates an Xbox opportunity, but also creates a huge dent in the bank balance.  Life is never simple!

Here’s to a shorter week next week.

Till the next time…..

Trussed up like a chicken

by mkingdon, posted in mkingdon

I’m off work today.  This is because yesterday I underwent a touch of surgery.  Nothing major, well, major enough to need a general anaesthetic, and a few frayed nerves, but I’m up and about today, if a little gingerly, with more dressings than Paul Newman.

The day started early, and not without nerves.  Upon arrival, insult was added to potential injury when I was instructed to put on my gown, which is understandable, but what are the medical benefits of paper underwear?  I think they are just used as a source of comedy whilst you are asleep.  They certainly are not built for comfort I can tell you.

It has to be one of the oddest sensations and experiences in life to be put under.  Some stranger wanders up, sticks a needle in your hand and talks to you like some sort of begowned Paul McKenna.  However, this was not to be the only odd conversation of the day.  As the theatre nurse came to collect me, we walked down to theatre, and she struck up a conversation no doubt intended to put me at ease.  Of course this started with the weather, but then turned into a very bizarre (one sided) conversation about her recently acquired paddling pool for her kids.  This went on for a good ten minutes, lasting all the way until I got onto the slab.

I now know the relative benefits of your solid framed affair compared to the traditional blow up model.  This is amazing really as my mind was obviously elsewhere, as we were sat in a little room just outside theatre, and I could see and hear stuff going on next door that was quite distracting.

Anyway, back to my drifting off.  I’m sure they have a standard script for these occasions, as he gave me all the usual warnings about feeling a small prick in my hand (which I thought was a little forward as we had only just met) and then that I might feel some cold in my hand.  Then as I started to feel a strange tingling all over, he was telling me all about some lovely warm beach I was on, and that the oxygen mask on my face was really a scuba mask, and I was drifting along looking at fish and stuff……

That is where I left that conversation, as the next thing I knew my name was being called out by some nurse who was all blurry.  Mighty relieved to be awake again, a quick squirt of pain killers and a bumpy trip back to my room brought things to an end.  Within an hour or two I was fairly normal again, enjoying my lunch and having my dressings done, however, not at the same time.  How I am looking forward to having them all removed, as they made a great job of attaching some sticky tape to every hair on my body!!

I was allowed home around 4.30pm, and enjoyed every pot hole on the endless drive home (Louise was driving not me!!).  I then ate the largest McDonald’s known to man as I was starving.

So I have a few weeks of being trussed up whilst stuff heals, but I am told I should be fine to go to work on Monday.  Hmm, we’ll see!!

Luckily I managed to get this done before my new job starts, and of course before our holiday.

Having time on my hands at the moment, I stumbled across something that really made me think on the internet.  No, nothing like that!!!  One of Rebecca’s friends had posted some old photos, and it seems that we officially had the cutest child in the universe.  Well we had two, but I only have photographic proof of one at my disposal for this post.

It is strange that this feels like just yesterday, but on the other hand seems like a lifetime ago.

Rebecca at Infant School
Cuteness v1
Rebecca at Infant School
Cuteness v2

So if any of you have children around this age, not too long from now you will wake up and find out that they have turned into something like the photo at the foot of this post.

Rebecca Now
Ok, she's still cute!

Right, I’m off to make the most of not being able to do anything, although I think I can manage to manipulate the Xbox controller!!

Till the next time…..

Raawwwwkkk and Roolllll…..Man!

by mkingdon, posted in mkingdon

A pretty uneventful week in the Williams household to be honest so I expect this to be a brief.

England Fans
They're Coming Home, they're coming home....

First, I should comment on the football.  After the glorious anti climax of the first game, the entire nation was built up to expect some sort of cricket score against the Algerians.  Well, I can safely say that the game was probably the worst performance by an England side in my memory.  I have no idea what was going on, but there were footballers there who looked like average Sunday league players, after a particularly heavy Saturday night.

Louise has taken to watching the England games with me.  This is not conducive to matrimonial harmony, as when my team is not doing well I become mono syllabic and grumpy.  Louise famously came into the front room during the 2005 Champions League penalty shoot out, with me on my knees, two feet from the TV, praying. She wanted to ask me to do something like feed the cat or something equally important before I came up to bed.

My less than pleasant response meant I enjoyed tongue and cold shoulder for the next few days.  The enormity of those occasions are understandably lost on those that do not “get” football.

On Friday, I was quite upset and angry about the whole thing.  The sheer audacity of the England players to perform so badly was shocking.  The enjoyment of these major tournaments is based upon having the odd win, or at this stage, I’d settle for a goal or two to celebrate.

I suspect though, as usual, having disappointed so well, they will pull it out of the bag in the last game and get through.  Although, after Friday’s game, I am struggling to see how that would be possible for the same players to be less crap!

Enough football (until we win a game anyway).

Saturday night saw us attending a 40th birthday party for a friend of mine.  I have known him from school, and we started our first band together at the age of sixteen, and continued to be local pop stars well into our twenties, until jobs, families and hair lines started to become bigger (or smaller for the latter) parts of our lives.

We’ve only seen each other a few times over the past ten years, and always finish these occasions with promises of more regular outings, so it was lovely to meet up again, along with other members of various bands from our history.  An evening was spent remembering all the toilets we played, some of the weirder band members we accumulated through the years, and if I’m honest more than a small urge to dust off the black leather trousers and rock some ear-splitting riffs.  For those not in the know that means play some music together.

I doubt it will happen to be honest, as we all have lives full of work, families and a lack of motivation to cart a load of gear to a cold rehearsal room on a Sunday morning, but you never know.

Pop Band
We looked just like this....honest!

I took along some vouchers for Simon’s present, but I also stumbled across an old band photo in a drawer, so I framed it and took that along.  We all had our best moody pop star stares on, and more crucially full heads of hair.  None of that stopped us looking ridiculous of course, but we were enjoying ourselves.

Luckily for you I don’t have an electronic copy of this (or any other photo) as all this was well before digital cameras, but just use your imagination to conjure up the image of five young blokes all in black, with mood lighting and sexy scowls.

It was very easy to get back into the old routine with everyone.  Playing in a band does bring you together differently than other friendships, and had there been a collection of instruments strewn around the room, plugged in, tuned and sound-checked (just like there always is on Glee, Fame etc) we may well have performed a few of the old classics.  Sadly there were not so we had to sit and listen to some ex Red Rose Radio DJ pump out everything from Chain Reaction to the inevitable sixties medley.  Rest assured I did not endanger the dance floor, other than to wander over and say good-bye to Simon and his wife at the end of the night.

This time we really should get together before Simon’s 50th!!

Apologies for the brevity today.  I shall promise to blog again before the week is out, you have been warned.

Till the next time…..

Bingo, Balls and Bloody Tesco.

by mkingdon, posted in mkingdon

Have I mentioned that I’m working my notice?  Maybe once or twice.

Now of course this has not affected the level of professionalism, dedication and commitment I exude at all times….much.  Well it has a bit, and this was demonstrated on Thursday when I attended a meeting in Sheffield.  Firstly, I was quite impressed with myself that I could motivate myself to go, and not delegate it to someone who gives a sh…I mean one of my guys who would benefit from the learning and development opportunity.

You see, there we have an example of the first thrust of this here blog post.  Corporate bull$hit.  Please do pardon my French but it is called for I feel.  The business world it seems is littered with people who have been brainwashed into using it, or even more scarily, actually use this stuff and believe it.

Looking back at my notes from this meeting, it seems I didn’t make a great deal of them, as I got bored relatively early on, which in any other circumstances would have been risky, as the attendees where chock full of cheese.  We had to do that cringeworthy round the table introduce yourself thing, which inevitably turns into a battle of the job title.

There were a couple of MDs (one of them mine), many Heads of (yep, regrettably I had to cough to one of those), and many other job titles that I still don’t know what they mean.  Most like I, just said our name, job title and company, but there is always the odd one or two who launch into a ten minute monologue on their responsibilities, experience and how they were a prefect at school.  You see now why I was bored so early on?

So rather than watch the powerpoint slides I started to capture all the bull$hit bingo terms that I heard.  There were many of the common ones that I hear all the time….

Model, best fit, and my personal favourite, synergy!  One of the guys was obviously a serial meeting attendee, and revelled in the concept, insisting on capturing the “Expectations” of the meeting before we started.  My contribution of “Finishing early enough so the M62 isn’t the bag of spanners it is at rush hour” didn’t make it to the flip chart though.

I see one entry on my notes underlined and ringed a few times.  It is a new entry in my dictionary of dreariness.  Are you ready?

Glide Path.  Yep, you read that right.  What the bloody hell does glide path mean?  I know what he wants it to mean, but why not just say it??  It was right up there with another classic, Helicopter View.

Reginald Perrin
Is that you CJ?

In terms of popularity, there was no competition, it was the term “piece”.  In nearly every sentence you heard it.  How?  Like this.  How do we tackle the “insert any topic here” piece?  Have we thought about the “insert any topic here” piece?  To me this is like someone dragging their nails down a blackboard.

It was like living in an episode of The Office or Reginald Perrin (for the older readers).  I do feel like I don’t belong in this universe of Austin Reed open necked shirt wearing, ego waving, sanctimony, but alas I must as I have a mortgage, kids and an addiction to expensive holidays.

So we move onto the end of the week, and the World Cup started.  We are “beaming” matches throughout the office for all staff to enjoy.  Beaming may be over egging the technology, but it sounds impressive when explaining this to people.  In truth, we have scattered a few tellys, and a couple of projectors around the place, securing the best stuff for the area close to my desk of course.  There is no point in managing the IT department if you don’t get any perks is there?

So on Friday we watched the opening game, (whilst obviously working a full speed as well).  A good game, and it whetted the appetite nicely for our opening game last night.  After the usual over the top build up by the media, the millions spent on advertising cheap beer and crisps by the supermarkets, the country wakes up this morning to a massive hangover, and a sense of deflation.  Only a 6-0 win would have matched the expectations of the nation, and 1-1 draw leaves everyone feeling a little let down.

You can never enjoy watching England to be honest.  However I thought there were a lot of positives, and I’m sure we will get better as we go.  Frankly the next two games should be formalities and should give us some confidence for the next phase.

Now, what would one of these be without a bit of a rant?  Luckily it just so happens I have one.  Saturday afternoon saw us at Tesco, against my better judgement.  I had done the “big shop” late on Friday night at our local 24 hour Asda, and it was a dream.  It was basically me and a load of people with the munchies or who had run out of beer, and it was great to hold up about twenty people with just two items whilst I checked out a full shop!

Anyway, back to Tesco.  We needed ” a few bits” which is female talk for stuff we could do without, but absolutely won’t.  We had a hand basket, and all the checkouts were crammed full of England tops buying cheap beer and crisps, so we went to one of those self-serve things.

Tesco Self Serve
Amen!

My God, what an abomination.  It took us about twenty minutes to check out a dozen items.  The assistant patrolling the area may have well have just done the whole lot for us as she was over every other item, entering her password.  It took her a while to believe that I was over 25 for the alcohol purchase, but other than that we couldn’t find Lemons on the alphabetic list of fruits (so that went in the bag for free), and nearly every other item became an “unexpected item in the bagging area” or just wouldn’t scan.

Technology at its best!  I left with high blood pressure, a desire to never darken Tesco’s door again, and a free lemon!  So, I’d call that a result.

Till the next time…..

June so soon?

by mkingdon, posted in mkingdon

I just need to point out that our fridge has broken.  I appreciate the nine o’clock news will not be troubled by this news but it has really naffed me off.

It isn’t even the main function of the fridge which has broken.  It simply will not dispense water from the fancy water dispenser thing in the door.  After a bit of Googling on the subject the water tank may be frozen.  I’ve turned up the temperature a bit and we’ll see what happens.

The reason this irks me is that there seems these days to be a constant stream of stuff breaking.  A symptom I suppose of having so many gadgets and gizmos (I have them aplenty as my favourite Mermaid might say).  Last week it was Rebecca’s netbook, before that Louise’s car, and next week it will be something else….so just to set the lovely jolly tone for this post, I am not in the finest of moods.

I do of course appreciate that there are many things worse than these minor incidents, but I reserve the right to be in a strop.  OK?

Breathe!

As I mentioned in my last post, I am in milestone mode, and the arrival of June is another on the road to our holidays.

I know the start of June isn’t officially the start of summer, but in my mind it is, as traditional summer stuff happens in June, like Wimbledon, the World Cup, and this year the paying of the balance on our villa.  See, so that last one proves that we are close now….right??  S’funny how usually the thought of dumping hundreds of pounds fills me with dread, (especially on netbooks, cars and fridges) but the cheque sent off today was written with a smile on my face, but looking back, a pen would have made things a whole lot easier.

Of course my notice period rumbles on endlessly, and this in no way meant that last week I spent most of it on the internet watching news events unfold, like the World Cup Squad “announcement” (I’ll come back to this in a minute), Rafa Benitez leaving Liverpool, and Rio Ferdinand getting injured.

For all of these, I think they all showed that the way in which news is relayed is changing (or perhaps has already changed) forever.  Yes, for years the web has been a source of news from official sources, and most people would go to the BBC site for “official news”, but the advent of Twitter is the real change agent here.

News breaks on Twitter first now, and you can find out things much more quickly there than via any official news channel.  To be honest, this will now be the way in which the official sources are getting first wind of news breaking.  With an application like Tweetdeck, as soon as you are vaguely aware of an event, you can create a search column based on any term (I created a “Ferdinand” one and within seconds I had unofficial news of his injury, and that he would miss the World Cup, hours before it was official) and watch people, often on the spot, report on an event.

This meant that the “announcement” of the squad for the World Cup was actually a stream of tweets spread over the day, meaning that by the time the FA posted any sort of official announcement everyone knew the outcome.  Even the unfortunate footballers left out, like Darren Bent, tweeted how gutted he was about three hours before it was official.  It does amaze me how this isn’t thought of by bodies like the FA.  This new fandangled internet thing has changed how stuff works, and they can’t send some bloke out in a blazer with a piece of paper to read stuff out anymore.

I do find this stuff interesting, which is odd, as really I have become familiar with it (or had to) due to the nature of my job, and it is very unlike me to like anything connected with my job.  It will still be relevant to my new one too, probably more so, as that is much more closely connected to how people use the internet on mobile devices, and twitter, specifically to report stuff as it happens, is one of the major ways in which people do and will use their mobile.  It may not be Twitter specifically, but how many of us update Facebook on the move?  This is just news for our friends and connections rather then being about some overpaid fop tweaking a knee.

I know those following me on Twitter will be endlessly enthralled with news on lawn mowing, my tea and where I am dropping the girls off today.

Anyway, I digress…I’m not sure from what, but it felt like I did.

As we creep ever closer to departure, the sacrifice scale increases.  What do I mean?  Well, there are times when at weekend we would like nothing more than to go out for a meal or three, buy this or that, but with dollars to acquire, and the worst exchange rate in the history of the world ever (OK, perhaps I exaggerate) we have to hunker down, and have a few boring weekends.  Even I, with my blind obsession for WDW feel this pain, and it can get quite frustrating.  Ultimately though it is worth it, well it is when we are there.  When we are tied to the couch enduring some bloke cut wood on Britain’s Got Talent I could quite easily give away a large sum of cash just for someone to make it stop.

Annie Hard Knock Life
Just put the dish IN the dishwasher.....

The girls have no issue in not doing a lot.  In fact, if it were an Olympic event I would enter them both.  We have recently decided that the handouts of seemingly unending cash is to stop, and they shall earn some spends each week.  I’m not saying they are on their hands and knees singing Hard Knock Life, but little things like keeping their rooms recognisable as a room, a bit of hoovering and perhaps even managing to get the odd dish into the dishwasher rather than just leaving it either wherever it fell, or at best on the kitchen worktop, will make the house a happier place.

In this way they can fund their trips to Manchester, where they congregate with other Emo types, and stalk boys.  We’ve already had our first “upset” over them both liking the same boy, but it didn’t last long, and to their credit they agreed that being sisters was more important, and they moved on.  Emily has decided that she doesn’t want a boyfriend at the moment, and has recently turned down one boy, which quite upset Louise and I as we think he is great!  He is now going out with one of Emily’s friends instead…how fickle these boys are!!

Rebecca
Mirror, mirror on the wall.....

Rebecca on the other hand definitely does want a boyfriend, and seems to have a different one each week, but most of them are mainly over Facebook.

She changes her status one way or another, for one boy or another, most times not even having actually been “out” with them.  Bless her, she is finding her feet, and is ever so slightly conscious of her looks at the moment so we have to walk on egg shells most of the time.

At the risk of sounding like a biased Dad, if only she knew how beautiful she was…..same goes for Emily who has so little confidence in how she looks it is scary.

On another totally unrelated topic (why change the habit of a blog-time), it is looking like we will have three Dibb meets whilst in the US.  Now, again, this is a sign of how life has been changed by the internet.  Even when the internet was established in our lives the prospect of meeting people from off of the internet would have been a bit odd.

Through a mutual love of WDW we have met some lovely people, and we are pleased to call them friends now (not sure what they call us though).  Our three meets this year consist of two regulars, Jakki (TinkTatoo) and her family, and Margaret (gala) and two of her kids.

Jakki is leaving Florida on our first day, so we have a very limited window of opportunity.  We’ve arranged to meet at the Main Street Bakery in Magic Kingdom.  We shall try not to gloat too much at their impending departure, but to be honest, they will have been in the US for about six months anyway, so my sympathy will be limited!!

Margaret happens to be staying at the Hard Rock Hotel on the same night, so we’ve arranged to meet at the pool bar for cocktails.  There is nothing in the theory I can see you formulating that these meets are taking place around cakes and cocktails.  They are simply the most convenient locations available!!

I’ve also got a yet to be fully arranged arrangement to meet up with Andy (Woody) as he is staying at the Beach Club at the same time as us.  Again, I suspect this will be alcohol based.  Having met Andy several times already (virtually) whilst playing Call of Duty on the Xbox, I’ll just have to look out for the bloke in the army uniform, fully armed, shooting at people.

Having also struck up a now fairly long lasting friendship with Mike Jones, and latterly his wife Amanda, based on a web site, I come back to my theme of stuff changing how we live our lives.  It could very well be the case that my girls meet their future partners courtesy of the internet, and for their generation, any stigma we may or may not have about that will have long gone.  They spend half their waking lives on the thing so the odds of a relationship starting there is pretty good.  Don’t worry we’ve had the “conversation” about nasty folks etc……

This brings me to a parting thought, on this topic of change, that I don’t think I’ve shared with you yet, but I may have so apologies if so, but it is very relevant here.  The headmaster at the girls’ school said that around 40% of the pupils now at school will do a job that hasn’t yet been invented.

I’m pretty sure I have mentioned that already, but hey ho, you are not paying to read this drivel!!

In life only change is constant.  Someone clever said that, and it wasn’t me.  My favourite piece of wisdom, that I really did invent is, In the great block of flats of life, one man’s ceiling is another man’s floor.  Think about it.

Till the next time…..