Feel the groove and do it anyway.....

Ho, ho ,oh!

2009-12-24T13:42:00.001Z

Merry Christmas to anyone still lurking.
I have taken a lo-o-o-o-ong break from posting.

Posting will now be sporadic at best.

Wake up!

2009-06-24T19:18:00.000+01:00

"You take the blue pill, the story ends, you wake up in your bed and believe whatever you want to believe. You take the red pill, you stay in Wonderland, and I show you how deep the rabbit hole goes."

I musta taken the red one. Damn. Rabbits everywhere.

Netbook

2009-06-23T12:45:00.005+01:00

I read about these little computers and then found out that one in particular could run OS X.
Oooh, I thought, that would be really cool and I could just shove it in my camera bag with a portable drive saving me lugging about my considerably larger laptop.

I bought a Dell Mini 9, a few days before they stopped manufacturing them - obviously not an early adopter, eh?
Still, a very nice little machine running XP at present but 2GB RAM and a 32GB SSD to be installed and then it's OS X here we come.

It is very handy to read the news at breakfast...it's main use so far. Free wifi about the urban areas will be a boon when I am out and about!

The dell outlet have plenty of refurbs on offer (you think I stumped up for a new one? Pah! They even had a 100 quid off offer on which, of course, I took full advantage of.)

Blogging on the move also. Kewl.

Kodachrome RIP

2009-06-23T11:55:00.003+01:00

How photography has changed, most professional colour work is now digital. With the end of production of Kodachrome we see the end of something special. It was the de-facto standard for professional colour photography for decades, even if it had a greenish tinge or a magneta tinge depending on it's age.

My interaction with it was short, in the early nineties. I much preferred the saturated colours of Fujichrome products. I blame youth. Now I would use Kodachrome.

I'm sure I can aquire a plugin for photoshop.....not the same at all really.
A projected slide is something to behold, especially one with the fine detail of Kodachrome. I suppose I could get my digital files written to film and project those if I wanted. I think I'll add that to my "to do sometime" list.

Litha

2009-06-21T09:56:00.000+01:00

Happy Solstice people.

Peace and happiness to all.

Poison

2009-06-14T09:30:00.005+01:00

Just say no to fluoridation.

I haven't used fluoride toothpaste in over 10 years and have only had one filling needed in that time. I used fluoride toothpaste up until then and have numerous fillings. Not a scientific argument but if I want to use a product with fluoride I can go and purchase it.

I do not want it in my drinking water.

There was a fluoride trial here in NI many years ago and it was let lapse and the area concerned never informed. They were never told as the powers that be thought the people might go public with their indignation.

We in NI are fluoride free at present even though dosing stations were built at many large reservoirs. The one thing added to our drinking water at present, that I do not agree with, is ortho-phosphoric acid. This is only added to ,ahem, protect those householders who have lead pipes. It is supposed to form a coating of lead phosphate on the pipes and thus prevent leaching of lead into the drinking water of the said individuals who have lead pipes leading into their homes. This happens because NIW are responsible for the water as it leaves the tap, even though they aren't responsible for the pipe work inside your property. So our drinking water has an acid added to it to protect the few at the expense of the many. Madness.

Sunday rant over.

I'm back.

Offline

2009-05-13T21:09:00.002+01:00

I've been away but skirting around the edges here and there.

Bereavement in the family.

Fake normality has kicked in.

Expect something pithy sometime soon.

Go Greece

2009-05-13T20:43:00.002+01:00

Greece has proper privacy laws for their citizens.

We should too.

Life begins at 40

2009-04-10T10:30:00.002+01:00

I've turned 40. It didn't hurt.

I realise I didn't post for over a month.....no excuses, just didn't feel the urge.

I have taken up my favourite instrument, the saxophone.

I dearly hope I can release my inner Charlie Parker though it may take me a few years (one lives in hope).

Hopefully the weather will stay pleasant for some gardening this weekend.

I'm off to get saxy.

Memery

2009-02-26T10:21:00.002Z

Via Nick......

I have: A wonderful relationship with my wife, a sense of wonder about the world and a feeling that there is light at the end of the tunnel.

I wish: I could fly (no, really), that I had no need for money, that certain things in my life weren’t so damned difficult and that certain members of my extended family could have perfect health.

I fear: the worst but hope for the best.

I wonder: how bad things will get before people have had enough.

I regret: A few things in my life but nothing that hinders my progress as an evolving human being

I love: My wife and my family, photography, music, cooking, red wine, good beer, malt whisk(e)y, reading and thinking.

I always: Wonder if I could have done it better, look for the good points in people, get disappointed in males of the macho bullshit persuasion as they haven’t evolved past adolescence yet, enjoy good food and good company.

I usually: sit back and watch those around me puff their chests out and laugh inwardly whilst they do it, cook in our house, laugh out loud at things which I find amusing and scratch my head at people who are selfish.

I am not: a fan of sport, a political animal/career ladder climber or a fan of laddishness.

I dance: far too infrequently nowadays though I used to do so on a weekly basis.
I sing: the odd time, not too often.

I never: eat meat, say never, play rugby, juggle, hurt other people to get ahead.

I rarely: get really angry, shout at people, say snide things or fart in public.

I cry: on occasion, last time being the end of Gran Torino (who would have thunk it?)

I need: to get fit, to continue with my plan for growing vegetables in the back garden, the love of my wife, to keep in touch with old friends more often.

I should: Be more positive, more conscientious, care more about those around me and pay more attention to peoples micro expressions so I know when they are lying to me! ( I’m getting better at it)

Fight The Power II

2009-02-26T09:42:00.002Z

Fight The Power II

So, Sir David Omand has come up with the idea that none of us should have any privacy.
I think we should start with him and publicly display transcripts of all his conversations, anything ever typed on his computer, all his travel plans and arrangements and let’s throw caution to the wind, details of his children too.

Do you think he would think it a good idea?

I think not.

This little fascist will lead the government into deciding that this is “best” for us all.
He must be stopped.

This is the road to fascism, just ask the people of former East Germany. They were shocked and amazed at the scope of the intrusion into their lives.
They found out after the wall came down.

The Stasi had samples of their clothing kept in jars so as to aid sniffer dogs, should they need to. Not if they were after someone suspected of true criminality but samples of EVERYONE.

This is what Herr Omand wants. Total lack of privacy for the entire population.

FIGHT THE POWER !

We must not let this happen.

Yes M'lud

2009-02-11T19:30:00.003Z

I spent the day in court yesterday....no it wasn't me in the stand.
Very interesting day, watching the machinations of a defense QC working his magic.

I watched a colleague have himself a new arsehole torn by a QC over a period of 3 hours. Ow, that was vicious. Glad it wasn't me up there.

Boy was it rough, seemingly, if you have the money you can hire some really vicious toe-rags to operate on your behalf and I don't mean the beat your teeth in kind. Whooooo.

He looked like he enjoyed it too. My colleague didn't, needless to say.
I hope he went home and relaxed after it.

I reckon it would take me ten hours of T'ai Chi to recover from that, or a bottle of red wine, whichever was easiest.

Electrickery

2009-02-05T11:53:00.002Z

We just got the quarterly electricity bill in the post.

Bloody hell!!!!!

It has nearly doubled and we have stopped using the tumble dryer by more than half.

Th unit price is now 16.88 pence.

Living in NI we have no choice as to whom we buy our electricity from.

A monopoly situation. We are being fleeced.

What's goin' on.....?

2009-02-01T19:47:00.003Z

I have been reading on the net about various events that have been occurring around the world. Events that make me worried as the very fabric of our society seems to be at risk. Hear me out, I have ranted a few times before on this blog but check these things out for yourself.
The collapse of Iceland and the anti government rioting that ensued, the use of pepper spray - I laugh when I read the word spray, it is more like a jet of liquid- against photographers...just what is going on? This is an island of 320,000 people or so with the population of a large town. They don't have any "armed forces", that is armed forces for external aggression, just the police to keep "law and order". Funny that, no defense of the nation, just the govt being able to defend itself against the people. What is happening in Iceland is a wake up call for all other countries.
Latvia, Bulgaria and let's not forget Greece have had riots recently. These are ALL anti government riots. This is not normal behaviour, especially in Iceland, or the Baltic states where they lived under the iron boot of communism for so long. Greece has always had a reputation for it's people standing up to the government, lets not forget they lived under a military dictatorship not that long ago which suppressed freedom of thought and freedom of the press, though thankfully for only 7 odd years.
Enough about the past, let's think about right now. The age of abundance is over, those in power are trying their hardest to hang on to the way things were. This is not going to work. Finite resources cannot fuel infinite growth. World trade is slowing down, fast. Container ships are lying at anchor with skeleton crews as there is no work for them. Governments are using barter as a method of trade as currency values are heading downwards.

The last time things were this bad was after the stockmarket crash of 1929. When things got bad then, we saw the rise of National Socialism in Germany after their economy collapsed. In the past week or so we have a prominent government minister in NI saying that all jobs available should be given to locals as opposed to those who do not originate from this country. He needs to keep the local electorate on his side , I suppose. Power wokers are striking all over the country over the same issue, jobs for locals and not "johnny foreigner". I remember the last major power strike here, though I was but a nipper. Could this happen again? I say yes, most definitely. When economic depression hits, people want to blame it all on someone. That someone is the other, the foreigner.

If we don't learn from history we are doomed to repeat it, ad infinitum...

The paradigm of spend, spend, spend, spend is more than over. It was only revealed last week that the entire UK banking system was close to total collapse last October.
Imagine if the banks stop operating. Everything else stops too, in time. Scary.
The goverment giving money to the banks and expecting us to pay for it is a sick joke. Our great grandchildren will be paying this debt off and the banks will still be using our money to make profits.

I fear for the future but I am preparing for it, so should you. Just remember, our supermarkets operate on a three day ordering system for delivery.....shops completely empty in a weekend if things get bad. Really scary.

On a brighter note..........................................that's for another post.

Chilli

2009-01-29T17:40:00.001Z

Last night, lunch today and this evening I shall be eating my own pinto bean chilli.
That is chile sin carne, entiendo?

I may need a pilot light tomorrow.....

Eating one's words.

2009-01-29T17:35:00.001Z

I bought a games machine....a 2nd hand playstation 2 to be exact, it cost me 43 quid.

That doesn't make me a bad person does it?

Could cause injury

2009-01-29T13:22:00.002Z

I have been confined to barracks since Sunday as I have injured my back. My work does entail lifting things on occasion and some of these things may be in awkward places and weigh quite a bit. I lifted something that should take two people last week. It took a few days but on Sunday morning whilst spooning some sugar into a cup of tea something went twang in my lower back and I have been a shuffling wincer ever since. I knew too much sugar wasn't so good for me but bloody hell!

I attended a manual handling refresher course last week and the irony isn't lost on me at all.

My back is on the mend, thankfully. Apart from two last Sunday night to be able to sleep, I haven't taken any painkillers . They only mask the pain and give a false sense of security. The last thing I wanted was to think I had freedom of movement again and then be crippled when the meds wore off.

I plan to be back in work next week and I won't be lifting anything for a while.

Currently listening to the Clash's first album on Spotify. Ah, lost youth....

Spotilicious !

2009-01-18T20:19:00.003Z

Well, back in the land of the living and segued neatly into the role of Florence Nightingale as Mrs M has a bad dose of the lurgy.

On a brighter note, Mrs M's friend from London gave her an invitation to a new web based music service called Spotify. Oh, wow.

Streaming audio of everything from the major music labels. Free.
(Catch is you have to listen to an advert every album).
The odd advert not withstanding.......bloody hell this is the coolest thing since Napster. I had a playlist of super groovy music playing on Friday night as I made dinner. It is like having access to EVERYTHING ever recorded !!!!
I got lost in searching for bands...sooooo muuuuuch - the indie labels are in talks about licensing their artists I think I'll need to be sitting down when this happens.

Spotify is the future ( 160kbps Ogg Vorbis - for all you techies out there).

Fit and workin' again.

2009-01-12T11:10:00.000Z

Sickness all gone and feeling like I belong to the human race again.
Then the heating oil ran out on Saturday…I know, I should have checked the tank.
I had talked about it two nights previously but never did anything about it.
The oil won’t arrive until Wednesday so it’ll be a bit cool around the house until then.

Saturday night and all day and night on Sunday were spent sitting by the fire, which was really great and I thought that having no heating oil was actually not such a bad thing. Though Mrs M would probably vehemently disagree. Lots of coal, slack and logs used and a serious heat was generated. Being on call I couldn’t enhance the heating with a glass of whiskey or three. This shall be remedied this evening. Whoo-hoo!

Sick as a pike

2009-01-03T17:51:00.001Z

Bleugh. Feeling dreadful, only down and not out thankfully.

Normal service will resume sooner rather than later, hopefully.

Fight the powers that be !

2009-01-01T11:11:00.002Z

I read this, and got very angry.

I particularly like the quote from Sir Ken Macdonald, no less, former head of the DPP.

Capitalism/Communism....where is the difference ?
Rhetorical question - no answers please.

This way lies madness, lets say NO and back it up.

Happy New Year

2008-12-31T17:11:00.002Z

I hope 2009 doesn't work out the way I think it may be heading.
Batten down the hatches folks!.

I still haven't found that bloody present yet.

I have a night off cooking this evening but normal service will resume tomorrow with a big pot of soup and some home made bread.

A glass of Talisker is to hand.

A Happy New Year to one and all.

Chistmas dinner and the lost present

2008-12-22T11:24:00.000Z

Christmas dinner.

I thought I would post something on this subject as I get asked constantly what I am going to have for christmas dinner.
The conversation usually goes something like this –

Them - “So, what do you have for your Christmas dinner then?”
Me - “Well, this year..”
Them – “..Nut roast, snigger?”
Me – “Actually no, I don’t like nut roast. This year it will be a butterbean and leek pie with all the usual trimmings”.
Them - “Oh, that sounds all right. Still, how can you have a Christmas dinner without turkey and ham? I mean, really?”
Me - sitting in silence wondering how to break it to them that they have a distinct singular lack of imagination without appearing rude. I never have figured out how to do this. Any tips please let me know.

A guy I work with doesn’t celebrate any aspect of Christmas at all. He keeps this very quiet, to avoid the sort of grief I get for not eating meat I suppose.

I have wrapped all my presents apart from two, one will be wrapped later this evening.
The remaining present will have to be located first. It was the first one I bought and I hid it in a safe place, so safe that I cannot remember where. Bugger.
The house will be turned upside down tonight when I get home.

Ho, ho feckin' ho.

2008-12-18T19:54:00.002Z

Hah, bumhug or words to that effect.

I look forward to time off from work and generally lazing about and drinking.
This is after I visit family and friends of course. The few dark days at Christmas that the door is closed and Mrs M and I make food and drink and look out the window at the cold and wet. It would be even better if we could look out at snow, especially the sort Pamela is getting right now-see glassy bird- in the links.

I remember a few, or more, years back when it snowed on Christmas night and there is photographic evidence of me dancing about in the snow with a santa hat on.

If it happens again this year I shall post a photo.

I've just had about 5 pieces of a monster sized toblerone and I feel a bit sick.

Just getting some practice in.

Moneymoneymoneymon-ney...MON-NEY.

2008-11-25T12:30:00.006Z

It’s been a while.
I suppose I haven’t been feeling much disposed to ranting or venting recently.
I’ve been watching world events unfold and a feeling of despair has settled lightly upon my shoulders. The whole pyramid scheme that financial institutions conjured up is folding in on itself as it, like all infinite growth, is unreal and unsustainable.
People went along for the ride as we were told from all directions that having something you wanted right now was a good thing, why wait? Easy credit, read: DEBT, enabled people to have what they wanted, when they wanted it. The so called feel good factor of the past 11 years when people were encouraged to live an aspirational lifestyle have come to an end.
I always laughed when I read that term.
I pondered upon what it really meant and what was meant in it’s usage.
Living a life that entailed spending beyond what you actually had using credit cards and or borrowing money against the rising price of your house, how long did people really think this could have gone on for?
I had some credit card debt, sure, but not so much that I didn’t get it paid off nor did I borrow against the perceived value of my house, thankfully. My mortgage is well below average and when Mrs M and I bought our house we made sure that our repayments were the same as the rent we had been paying previously. We thought this was being financially sensible, especially when the mortgage lenders were offering us loans of at least £30,000 more than we felt comfortable paying off. I am really glad we didn’t get into more debt than we could cope with, mortgage wise.

Times were tough for a while, money wise, in the past 10 years, I would not have liked to have been in the position of having a bigger mortgage to pay off. I saw the aspirational lifestyle glitter and felt like I was standing against the wall at a party watching. This was a conscious decision and I missed out on a friend’s stag night as I told the best man that I couldn’t afford it. I was accused of many things but I wasn’t prepared to get into debt to the tune of a couple of hundred pounds just to get drunk in another city.

I worked in a techy company at the height of the internet bubble. What a strange atmosphere indeed, people acted as if the share price would rise forever. The exuberance was infectious, thankfully I had Mrs M to keep me grounded. It was plain weird, everybody was so happy, positive and confident. All because of a rising share price.

It all changed when the bubble burst. Oh, what a change. It became the most depressing place I have ever had to work in. Around this time an insidious ponzi scheme emerged called locally as "The Money Tree" my workmates grew glassy eyed at tales of aquiring tens of thousands of pounds in a matter of weeks. I voiced my opinions about it and suddenly no-one wanted to mention it near me. They didn't say much when they lost their money either. I'm sad that they all got stung this way but I fully understand why they did it. I jumped ship, thankfully, and got out of the techy world altogether. I earn more now than I did then but I never did get into debt to keep up with the neighbours. My aspirations are to keep my integrity, be a good husband and hopefully father when that happens. Sure, I like my toys, well, cameras but I don’t buy the latest model when they bring it out….I would like the D3 or D700 though. I have no games machines and don’t drive a flash car. I don’t spend lots of money on clothes and when I do buy clothes I try and buy things that don’t go out of style, though some may argue this point when they see my wardrobe.
I am somewhat of an anachronism amongst my workmates.
I haven’t got the latest HD TV with 1080P Blu ray player and surround sound system and not forgetting the PS3, the must have item. I am just not willing to spend so much money on these things as I haven’t got the cash and will not get into debt to obtain them.
I have the feeling that having debt will be a bad thing in the coming few years.
The ways things are heading I would like to be prepared rather than be caught out.
It may be back to the lentils and rice of my younger days in no time at all.

Schlomo

2008-10-23T15:15:00.007+01:00

A funny thing happened on the way to the gig....no, really.
I saw three spides stop dead as they were walking up lower north street and suddenly one of them was getting into a car from the passenger side. Oh, dear. I looked over my shoulder a few times as the other two kept watch at each end of the vehicle. Mrs M phoned the police who perked up when she said that, yes, she did have the VRN and the make of the vehicle and they are currently just driving away. They had got in and hotwired the car in under 2 minutes. Hopefully the police will have caught the thievin' wee bastards and gave them a hiding, ahem, I do of course mean use the full force of the law upon them.

Schlomo and the human beatbox orhcestra.Wowee, after seeing this guy a year or so ago on Later with Jools Holland I was blown away. He was making noises that I didn’t think were possible to make. Maybe he had swallowed a bird of paradise ? He was playing a bassline and the drums just using his mouth! Impressive. Sounded great too.

Then he started laying down different sounds on a loop sampler and building the layers into recognisable songs. Just with the human voicebox and mouth.

Last night was his latest gig in Belfast, this time with the human beatbox orchestra.
He came out, all shy and proceeded to wow us all with the sounds and beats he was able to make. That was for the first half of the show. The second half saw 7 more people come out on stage and then the fun really started. No instruments used and those 8 people made fantastic music. They played their versions of some recognisable songs, one from the Prodigy (not a fan but it sounded great) and I want you back by the Jacksons, though when they played a Stevie Wonder song the place went daft. Truly amazing.

Highlight of the night was when Schlomo asked what we in Belfast said as an exclamation, such as “yeehaa”, “Hey” etc. One guy shouted “Whataboutye”.
They only went and improvised a song around it! Though polite English accents singing what about you was odd. The funniest and best part being when the bass guy imitated the guy in the audience, who originally had shouted whataboutye, a few times to the point where I thought they had sampled it and played it back.

They got a well deserved standing ovation. You all missed out on this people.

AMAZING.

Go check Schlomo out on you-tube, go on….feed your head.

Goodbye Ray

2008-10-10T11:33:00.002+01:00

My manager of 4.75 years retires today.
We are going out tonight to give him a send off, it'll be odd him not being here.
He may have been cantankerous at times and interfering, even annoying but he was always approachable and a damn fine human being. He has a wealth of knowledge that will be very much missed. Rather large shoes to fill and I fear that there is no chance of anyone doing so.

I'm sad to see him go but as he says himself he would have been away earlier if he could.

I was warned that he had a habit of engaging you in conversation as you had your coat on and were heading out the door. Yup, still was catching me out up to last month with that one. He bluffed it if he didn't know something, once I figured out when he was doing this I could really learn from him. It took me near a year to do so. He was encouraging, he praised me in public for good work I had done. Needless to say this didn't happen very often but when it did, the people that mattered where listening.

Ach, I'm just a big softy reminiscing here, plenty of time for that later tonight.

Werk Schmerk

2008-10-08T20:58:00.002+01:00

Normal service has been resumed after my 12 day sojourn to Crete.

Back at work...blah..

Photos will be dealt with at the weekend as I am busy this week.
I will post tales of my holiday with accompanying photos.

Needless to say it was 27c in the shade for the most part bar one day it was 22, overcast with some rain and one day it was 33c no rain just heat!
I have tasted Bougatsa and I need more.
Can I go back now please?

Market/Mapket

2008-09-07T10:47:00.003+01:00

I love food markets, wherever I go.
I love looking at all the fresh food and watching people interact with the vendors.

Here are a couple of my favourite food markets.

The Agora in Hania, Crete and the English market in Cork, Ireland.

Carbooty

2008-09-06T15:27:00.004+01:00

Mrs M wanted to do the Fairhill carboot so we got up at 5 am and got prepared.
We picked up the sister in law and her boyfriend at 6.15 and went to sell a load of old tat.
I was only providing logistical support, thankfully, as I am laden with a throat infection which is downright nasty. Hot whiskey may have to play a part in the recuperation process later.

Getting up a mere two hours earlier than normal has sent me sideways. I look at the clock and think it is hours later than it really is.
What is this, home brew jetlag?

Mrs M and the crew packed up at 11.30 as the place was dead.
Certainly the least busy I have ever seen it. Only three cars selling tat, I mean family heirlooms, whilst the rest were traders.

I just had a short nap and feel a little better for it, Mrs M is taking a bit longer but then she was out in the cold selling , or trying to.

Cork, boy!

2008-09-05T11:28:00.004+01:00

A few weekends ago Mrs M and I embarked on a train journey from Ballymena to Cork, a seven hour journey no less.
We had method in our madness as we were travelling down to worship at the food mecca that is Café Paradiso.

We have been before and have been spoilt forever as nothing has been up to that standard since, well, one memorable meal in Ginger is on a par. The memorable main course in Ginger being a tempura of sticky rice with a pineapple ( there may have been ginger in it…) salsa.

Absolutely wonderful, but y’know Cafe Paradiso goes to eleven.

The train journey down to Dublin was uneventful. Getting from Connolly station to Heuston was interesting as we passed the pre queue meetup for the local methadone clinic. Blimey that was a hefty dose of reality. We had a minor disaster when our flask of coffee (with no joy ie-decaff) got gently bumped by the taxi driver as he opened a door wider. Off we toddled to get the train to Cork with a trail of coffee pissing out of a bag. I spotted it and yelped “Crap, the flask”. Mrs M’s white Converse were stained a light brown colour and not symmetrically either. The flask was dumped in a bin. The train journey ahead was to be coffee free and Mrs M was mightily annoyed her footwear was filthy. Damn.
Mrs M was very annoyed about her ruined footwear and planned to go and get herself a new pair as soon as we hit the shops in Cork. No suggestion of washing machines and bleach/stain removers were having any effect whatsoever.

The next part of the journey was pleasant as we were nearing our final destination. Watching the countryside roll past and letting someone else take care of the driving and reading my book.
I did love it when the train announcements in Irish made me look up every time it said “Heuston go Corcaigh” (pr: Heuston go Corkey)

Go Corcaigh indeed.

On arrival in Cork our hotel was a mere 10 minute walk from the station.
We stayed in the Hotel Isaacs and very nice it was too. There was a really great pub across the street called Dan Lowrey's - great pint of Murphys. The street in which the hotel is situated is varied in its shopfrontery. Takeaways, musical instrument shops, a theatre, furniture shops, an adult store with private video booths.... I was intrigued by the last one but Mrs M most definitely wasn’t, she was rather indignant when I said I would go in on my own.
I have a feeling I haven’t missed out on too much though.

We had reservations for Café Paradiso on Friday and Saturday night.
I cannot adequately describe the excitement this generated in both of us.

We got there for dinner on the Friday and gazed at the menu as if in a trance.
It is very rare that a non meat eater gets so much choice and such a high standard of cooking.

What to eat?

I went for the rice paper rolls stuffed with greens and herbs with lime and coconut dip with spicy tomato rasam. Mrs M had tartlet of caramelised beetroot & Bluebell Falls fresh goats cheese with watercress pesto and olive-crushed potato.

The rice paper parcels were light and a wonderful blend of flavours.
Mrs M’s tart was rich and satisfying and the watercress pesto really set the flavours off.

Just feckin’ delicious and two more courses to go.

I had baked semolina & sheep’s cheese gnocchi with panfried artichokes, braised lentils, lemon cream and caramelised beetroot.
The gnocchi were very light indeed and every flavour on the plate (as ever) complemented one another. Beautiful. Really, really tasty and light. They could have carted me off right there and then, I've fulfilled a life dream, I have been in love and been loved in return and I had just finished a beautiful plate of food that left me feeling dreamy, satisfied yet not full. I digress.
Mrs M had braised chard timbale of roast aubergine, puy lentils & halloumi cheese, with crisped potato, green peppercorn-citrus cream and cumin baby carrots.
I tasted some, it was sooo good.
Dessert for me, was roasted peaches with lavender ice cream and pistachio biscotti.
I can still taste it. Man, what a great dessert.

Mrs M had limone Paradiso which she thought was out of this world.

Spoilt, yet again. Nowhere do I eat food matching this. Nowhere!
When I make piles of cash I may move to Cork and eat there at least twice a week.

We ate in Boqueria, a tapas bar on the Sunday night and it was just alright. Saturday lunch in café bar deli was a really great plate of pasta. Very good in fact. Lunch on Sunday was in café Mexicana and was very nice and not hot enough to buckle the buccal, thankfully.

Food tourist, is that all I am? Well, it could be worse couldn’t it?

I have all the Café Paradiso cookbooks now so I shall be making some of the recipes, I’ve already made two and they were spectacular, if I say so myself.

Glitter and Doom in the Rat Cellar

2008-08-03T11:48:00.001+01:00

Friday night, Phoenix Park, big circus tent, Tom Waits.

I never realised a show could be so good.....words fail me........

Muttering can be dangerous

2008-08-01T08:57:00.002+01:00

Mrs M and myself went out on the town with my sister and her husband for a night of great food and some drinks in Belfast last Saturday.

We started off in Ginger, rather early I thought, but it was the only time available at such short notice. I didn't care, we were going to eat in my favourite restaurant in Belfast.

All went very well indeed, the food was good, the wine was good, the service was good.
Until, that is, the muttering waitress. We had finished off our desserts and my brother inlaw ordered another 2 glasses of red wine for us.
I knew what he was at, one for the road, no hanging about etc.
Magic, I thought.

The waitress looked at her watch and told us that she didn't want to appear rude but the table would have to be cleared and set for the next diners (the perils of early dining). Fine we said, no problem, two glasses of wine whilst the bill is being paid and we are gone, we thought.

Mrs M and my sis suddenly looked very annoyed as the waitress walked away.

"What's up?" I asked.

Turns out, said waitress had turned on her heel and walked away muttering "I already told you on the phone you would have to leave by 8.30" in a rather agitated tone.

Oh dear, how unprofessional indeed.

The tip was short after this. Otherwise it would have been more than generous as we had a great time. Up until then the service had been excellent.

I deal with numptys quite a lot but I keep my face straight and rant about it later.

It's just not very professional letting people you are annoyed at hear your muttering.

Of course we will be back, I love the place, but next time I'll book later in the evening.

Mrs Robinson

2008-07-22T20:09:00.002+01:00

Mrs Iris Robinson MP, has stated that "it is the government's responsibility to uphold god's law".

Oh dear.

What further proof do we need that this person doesn't have the critical faculties needed to be in our government?
Iris really does put the mental into fundamental (Christianity, that is).

Or was she referring to one of the gods worshipped by other faiths within Northern Ireland? Nah.

The electorate put her in place to uphold the law of the land, not some esoteric dogma from a desert in the far east.

I view this as the three strikes she needs to be kicked out of Stormont.

I was angered by her previous views but this one , I think, shows very clearly just what sort of mentalist (fundamentalist that is) we are dealing with.

Iris out.

Blowing hot and cold

2008-07-17T16:15:00.005+01:00

So, I held back on deciding whether this so called gobal warming phenomenon was caused by mankind.
I don't tend to jump on the bandwagon of the shrill.
Ok,ok, sometimes I do but I always reserve the right to change my mind.
I mean, that is scientific isn't it, sticking with a theory until it is proved otherwise?
I smelt something fishy when the talk turned to carbon credits...the idea that those greedmongers would trade carbon credits just made me think it was all a scam. Carbon footprint, my arse, as it were.
For those who like reading see the link below-
http://scienceandpublicpolicy.org/images/stories/press_releases/Press-Release_No-Climate-Crisis.pdf

Cut and paste folks. The title is clickable but leads somewhere else.

Other planets are warming up, sunspot activity is not as ususal.
Something odd going on then ,eh?

UK govt wants to give us all a personal carbon account. What an almighty pain in the ass that will be, never mind the levels of bureaucracy it will create. More contol over the people is all it is.

I will add that unbridled expansion is the road to nowhere. Those who are of the opinion that "he who dies with the most toys wins" should be lined up and their
wishes fulfilled early and their toys taken away.
That sort of attitude does nothing to advance us as a species at all.

As for capitalism, I have yet to see it working as per theory, much like socialism.
Cat, meet pigeons.

Ribbit

2008-07-12T21:00:00.003+01:00

It seems there is an adult common frog living in my back garden.
I won't be charging him any rent since he does a good job of eating the little buggers that I don't want in my garden.
Nice to have him here actually.
I'll maybe put in a small pond next spring.
The large slugs, equal in size to him, are something I have to deal with.
Hateful little bastards, eating my shallotts.

Still, not as bad as foxy eating all Nelly's chickens.

Beer and a curry

2008-06-27T20:51:00.002+01:00

Cancelled plans for this evening because of weather report.
No, not Joe Zawinul's outfit.
So, some fine ale has been quaffed and a curry is on the hob.

I just thought I'd mention.

80's nightmare on the radio courtesy of 2fm.....tolerance tested at times but still makes me laugh.

Time for another one...oh gawd it's Van Halen.................I prefer Paul Anka doing "Jump". The best "Jump" is by Derek and Clive of course. Heh.

Stolen meme

2008-06-21T20:15:00.002+01:00

1. Where is your cell phone? Kitchen

2. Your significant other? Surfing (electronically)

3. Your hair? Brown

4. Your mother? Folks house

5. Your father? Ditto

6. Your favourite time of day? Twilight

7. Your dream last night? Anxiety

8. Your favourite drink? Liquid

9. Your dream goal? Family

10. The room you’re in? Kitchen

11. Your ex? Disturbed

12. Your fear? Senility

13. Where do you want to be in 6 years? Father

14. What you are not? Table

15. Your Favourite meal? Evening

16. One of your wish list items? Escape

17. The last thing you did? Cook

18. Where you grew up? Carnmoney

19. What are you wearing? Apron

20. Your TV is? Off

21. Your pets? None

22. Your computer? Table

23. Your life? Busy

24. Your mood? Gentle

25. Missing someone? Benny

26. Your car? Silver

27. Something you’re not wearing? Suit

28. Favourite store? O'Hara's

29. Your summer? Green

30. Your favourite colour? Blue

31. When is the last time you laughed? Today

32. When is the last time you cried? Ages

33. Your health? Good

34. Your children? None

35. Your future? Bright

36. Your beliefs? Truth

37. Young or old? Old

38. Your image? Nondescript

39. Your appearance? Mediterranean?

40. Would you live your life over again knowing what you know? Yes

Food, shelter, heat and the doom that beckons

2008-06-17T14:22:00.003+01:00

Anyone else keeping an eye on how much you don't get for your pound anymore?

With the rise of fuel prices everything else is going up. Wheat harvests aren't so good, so wheat products have gone up. With all the flooding in Iowa and the other big corn producing states the maize crop this year is not going to be very large. Australian wheat prodcution is way down because of their ongoing drought. Soft drinks and snacks that use high fructose corn syrup will go up in price but I see that soft drinks manufacturers are investigating other sweeteners such as stevia. Cutting costs to maximise profits or getting away from bad publicity surrounding HFCS, or both?

I saw a bar of chocolate in Lidl go up nearly 50% in price in a few weeks (the one with chopped hazelnuts in - a dirty secret no longer). I have seen pitta bread go up in price in the big supermarkets, these are things that I have noticed, I suppose I should start to pay attention to other items as well.

Time to start buying a few well dated cans of food, bags of pasta and bags of rice when you go food shopping to build up a little food stash to last a week or two. A camping gas stove and a bottle or two of gas if your cooker is electric might also be a good idea. Pack away a box of cheap candles and a packet of lighters. Get a water butt or two or stack away a few flats of bottled water.

Haha, I sound like a crackpot. If only I had the luxury of being so.
They are talking of inflation at 4% today.

Fookin rubbish.

2008-05-27T12:04:00.002+01:00

I went out with two good friends last Saturday night. We had decided to go out and grab some food before the evening really started. Then it turned out that only two of us were to dine, I say dine….read on.

Not being organised, we hadn’t reserved a table anywhere so we thought we would try the Foo-Kin Noodle Bar. I had eaten in Ba-Soba years ago and also recently had takeout from Food-Affair in Ballymena. I like noodle dishes.

We entered the Foo-Kin place and were advised to pay first, a tenner too. Then we realised what was going on. £10 for all you can eat. Oh, dear. Those words never bode well. I had some noodles, some of which were baked hard and some “mixed vegetable”.
No boiled rice on offer, trading standards should get a call as this was listed on the menu.

My companion had double helpings as he had more choice and a strong determination to get his money’s worth.

If I had more choice I would have too.

Never shall I be across the threshold of that place again.
Noodle bar, my arse, bloody mediocre “chinese” food more like.
Great name but really does not live up to the advertising.
Fookin rubbish.

Just say no kids.

Get your motor runnin'

2008-05-27T12:00:00.001+01:00

Instead of going out to purchase a brand new shiny petrol powered lawnmower, at the cost of many pounds indeed, I fixed my electric mower.
Turns out all had happened was that the drive belt had snapped, ten minutes taking the thing to pieces told me that. Two minutes online found a replacement for £5.99 inc. del.

Sorted.

Short grass may well be other folks idea of living correctly, I only do it to blend in.
Utterly pointless. There is a sociology phd in there somewhere.

Green green grass of home

2008-05-15T21:17:00.002+01:00

Bollocks.

I think I may have just burnt out the motor in my electric lawnmower.
7 years service.
Maybe time for a petrol model next.
I can hear my wallet squeaking already.

State of flux

2008-05-15T11:20:00.003+01:00

You know when life seems to be ticking along nicely and then the proverbial spanner gets jammed in the gearing mechanism?

First I heard a friend had to go get a lump removed.
Big scare and an op for removal. Sorted, one would think.

Oh no.

The cancer has spread to her lymph nodes. Big time scary now.
What do you say to someone in their 30s that is faced with a cancer that has a low survival rate for someone her age?

I really feel for her and her family.

Then, another friend who has been through the cancer nightmare and survived has been hospitalised as her pregnancy is in danger.

There I was last week feeling ill with a chest infection.

I'll have to go off and write a pithy post now to balance this out.

This little piggy went to market

2008-04-25T00:09:00.006+01:00

I had the best chips I have eaten since the last time I was in Superbites in Crossmaglen today. Does that sentence make sense? I am not sure.

Really. The best chips. Crispy on the outside and fluffy on the inside. I ordered a large portion too, since it may well be some time before I am back that way again.
I even threatened to take Mrs M all that way to sample the chips as I extolled their virtues when I arrived home. Whether she holds me to this is another matter.

I needed those chips today as this morning I saw the ugly side of food production.
I saw some animal husbandry that was, as a colleague pointed out to me since I am ignorant of the facts, cleaner than average.
It was intensive pig farming.
An animal that is reputedly more intelligent than "man's best friend" the dog.
I saw stillborn piglets lying in a heap, I saw a dead sow with many more dead piglets and I saw into the eyes of pigs that were alive and what I saw made me shiver.
Maybe I was anthropomorphising, hard to tell. I can still see their eyes now.

I have been at other intensive animal rearing facilites and each time it just reinforces my feeling that it, as a practice, is inherently wrong.

Old style small holdings, the way things used to be before the industrialisation of agriculture, need to be brought back.

Fancy takeaway food

2008-04-17T21:30:00.002+01:00

I tried the new takeaway in Ballymena last night.
It is called Food Affair and bills itself as a gourmet takeaway.

I ordered thai green curry, the vegetarian option. Very nice indeed though the ferocious indigestion it gave me means I will not be ordering it next time.
Damn, it tasted really good too. The portion with steamed rice was enough to do two meals so I had the rest for my lunch today.

There are 5 or 6 options I can go for never mind the side orders.
Mrs M had tiger prawns done with veg and noodles and said it was delicious.
I hear it has a 25 minute wait at the weekends and no phone orders taken.
With this quality of food it'll do really well.
Now all I need is somewhere that does good Indian food and I will be in heaven.

Happy Birthday to me !

2008-04-08T12:21:00.000+01:00

One year older and none the wiser.

Fotawgrafee

2008-03-28T21:06:00.001Z

I delivered some photos to a client tonight and they told me it was exactly what they wanted.

Can't get better praise than that in my book.

Monkeysee, monkeydo

2008-03-28T21:01:00.002Z

Workwise, I was asked to go have a look at a problem on behalf of some people who get paid more than me.

Isn't it bloody sickening that I sorted it out?

I am pleased that I have but it was a no brainer. Some people have gone down in my estimation ever so slightly because of this.

Vernal equinox and a full moon

2008-03-21T12:08:00.002Z

Blimey, since I am off caffeine and alcohol I can only attribute this weird feeling to the fact that yesterday was the vernal equinox (or is it today?) and today is a full moon.

I feel as if I have had more than 5 cups of really strong coffee, or some other dubious substance with a stimulating effect on my central nervous system.

Gotta enjoy it while I can. Thankfully I am not grinding my teeth.

Werk

2008-03-11T14:07:00.003Z

I have a meeting this afternoon with a senior manager about my job description.
There are some ponits of concern, some of which are valid, I was chancing it and some of which I will fight for.

I am feeling thran and will be of the opinion that if it isn't included in my job description I will no longer be carrying out the task/s.

Bollocks and other associated swear words borne out of frustration.

The flashing blade

2008-03-06T16:11:00.003Z

This post is prompted by Nelly slicing herself with what she termed an overly sharpened kitchen knife.

I keep my kitchen knives very sharp indeed as I have had two incidents of digital injury due to knives being blunt and slipping, generally off an onion. The idea of avoiding onions was a non starter. I now keep my knives scary sharp. No more injury. Did I mention about having imbibed alcoholic beverages before wielding the blade?

I no longer have more than one drink before chopping or cutting and since the blades are scary sharp no more slipping.

Ending up in the emergency room with either your thumb or forefinger (two separate occasions) sliced and pulsing blood steadily on a Saturday evening is not my idea a of a fun night out. Really not so when the hunger is upon you and you have had to leave dinner preparation to deal with a fingertip hanging off or a deep slice that is also through a thumbnail. Ouch.

I bought some japanese knives from Nippon Kitchen which came scary sharp out of the box.
I was impressed.
Of course, I had to go and buy a suitable sharpening system to keep these blades at the correct level of scariness.
Shaving hair off my arm is my measure of sharpness, or slicing a piece off a sheet of paper with no tearing.
I stick with the paper as my arms started to look mangy.

Keep the knives sharp and don't get pissed before you start flailing away with the blade.

A simple maxim to live by.

Come on get behind this, people!

2008-02-20T15:41:00.003Z

Independance for Kosovo, come on get behind this, lets bring these people some democracy.
And maybe they'll give us the rights to all their mineral deposits and oil and gas.

Cynical, moi?

Huge deposits of oil and gas just found over the border in Albania....

Where's the freedom?

2008-02-04T14:02:00.000Z

Alan Johnson MP is to ask MPs to consider the introduction of fluoride into the drinking water in parts of England.

We don’t have fluoridated water here in NI. Yet.

The infrastructure is in place but no action plan has been implemented as yet.

I will be installing a reverse osmosis filter on my drinking water supply if and when this ever happens here.

I haven’t used fluoride toothpaste in nearly ten years and I have only had to have a couple of old fillings replaced in that time.

Naturally occurring fluoride is unavoidable in some areas. The fluoride they propose to use in the water supply is an industrial byproduct that is currently labelled as a toxic waste. As soon it gets the go ahead to be introduced to the water supply, hey presto no costly waste charges, in fact they can charge for it!

Don’t take my word for it, go check it out for yourselves.

Oh yeah, and another thing… there is now mandatory fingerprinting for all domestic flights emanating from Heathrow. Any future travel I may undertake will not be to Heathrow.

I have nothing to hide other than my right to privacy.

Giving up any civil liberties in exchange for the illusion of security is utter madness.

BUY, sell, buy, sell...gimme the goddamn money!

2008-01-30T11:46:00.000Z

After living with a hideous bathroom for too long we bit the bullet and got the builders in.
Now we have a bathroom which is the opposite of ugly. Altogether very pleasant.

Not being of the aspirational mindset....we will not be going down the middle class route of giving visitors the guided tour of the new facilities. Nothing bores me more than going to someones house and being shown their new decorating, extension, toilet/microwave/radiator combo.
All very well and good but I don't take part in this keeping up with the neighbours thang.
Life is too short for that shit.

Living with a chemical toilet for four days and having to go to the inlaws for a shower was a pain in the arse.
Still, at least we didn’t have to walk ten miles to collect drinking water.
Always healthy to self-flagellate with some perspective I think.

On a lighter note….is anyone else annoyed that the govt have given 30 odd billion of the money-we the people- paid in tax to a private company, namely Northern Rock bank?

That is outright bloody theft in my opinion.

They want –so called- free markets but when they screw it up they want the govt to come and help them. Seems they only like socialism when they are up shit creek.

I am greatly perturbed by this as 30 Billion could be spent for the benefit of all in so many different ways as opposed to assuaging the panic and dividends of Northern Rock share holders.

This would make one think that one’s money in the hands of a bank is not safe.

This coupled with the financial markets tumbling and the endless wailing of a coming recession in the USA has me thinking that my pension is not safe.

Not a very comforting thought at all really.

www.urbansurvival.com/week.htm is a site I watch as Mr Ure has a rather pragmatic handle on what seems to be unfolding in the world. There are some hard to bend you head around nearly sci-fi aspects going on in relation to his information but read for yourselves. Always healthy to be a sceptic with an open mind, eh?

Getting out of debt and growing my own vegetables are my first two steps on the road to more freedom than I currently have. Yeah, I know using that wording means I am hedging my bets.

It isn’t all doom and gloom though.

The only way is up, baby.

The good life

2008-01-11T14:42:00.000Z

Has anyone else noticed that food prices are going up?

I realise that the price of oil rising will directly affect food prices.
The price of wheat has gone up. This means bread goes up and also meat as many cattle are grain fed. Ok, not so much here but in most other beef producing countries.

The rush to grow crops for biofuel also locks land up that may have been used for food production.

I don’t like it one bit.

I am going to grow my own vegetables this year, it will entail using over half the garden but the end result means that we shall be mostly self sufficient for vegetables by next winter.

I checked out the price of a site with planning permission….holy smoke!
Waaaaaaaay beyond my purchasing power. PPS14 has a lot to answer for.

A couple of acres is all I ask but it is not to be for the next year or so.
A permaculture approach will produce lots of interesting heirloom veg.

I’m going to have to buy another freezer and learn how to pickle things.
I’ve been practising on my liver but I have yet to put it in a jar.

Hole in one (or one in a hole)

2008-01-11T14:30:00.000Z

I am in work. Much hilarity has just ensued.

A colleague was just overheard in a phone conversation stating “if you get an orifice big enough you’ll be able to fit it in”.

I am still drying my eyes.

Nothing wrong with a good laugh on a Friday afternoon.

Hah! Bumhug.

2007-12-31T19:36:00.000Z

So much for long winded rambling, perhaps witty, posting in the week leading up to Christmas.
Busy. Very Busy.

Still it's always nice to receive presents on someone else's birthday. Cheers, Jesus.

I am currently in the kitchen ( would it be any other way?) making an end of the year meal.
Same meal as for Mrs M's birthday.

Mrs M has had flu since boxing night so I have been attending to her and ferrying supplies of painkillers from the shops for her.

This hasn't stopped me from testing my liver to it's limits though. We did seem to receive an inordinate amount of wine this year, never mind what I bought. Damn fine it is too.

A bottle of Laphroaig too...yum!

Currently waiting for roasted butternut squash to cool so I can make gnocchi. Mmmmm getting hungry.

Mrs M bought "How to be free" by Tom Hodgkinson...it has changed her thinking processes!
Living with me and listening to my droning on seems not to have been enough.
Looks like 2008 will see a bit of positive change for both of us. Yaaaay !

A plethora of good wishes for the coming year to anyone who happens upon this murky cul de sac.

I have yet more cooking to do.

Very very busy..., no...really !

2007-12-15T23:37:00.000Z

The past couple of weeks have been really busy in work. More so than any other time this year. I've only been in the office a third of the time. Lots of outside work generating more paperwork...Aarrgghh.
I like it, reminds me of how life used to be. Still, can't discuss who employs me or what I do to keep the wolves from the door (are there really wolves round here? ) and no, I'm not a peeler.

I've only just had dinner and it is 23.39 according to the laptop. Me?, I dunno what time it is.

I was helping a friend today. He and his family are upping sticks and moving to Orkney.
I have been driving a van and lifting stuff since just after midday. No lunch and dinner at 23.15.
I'm not whinging at all. I had a great day. I was a friend today, in full effect. I feel good.

Tired though. Still, I made a friend for life back in 1996 and I helped him and his family today.

Funny how life is, eh?

I don't make friends easy at all, never have. Textbook classic introvert. ( Never mind another post, that is a lifetime of analysis right there!)

Mr Orkney is someone I should have and should spend more time in the company of.
Sometimes things don't work out that way though.

I am bloody knackered.
Only Sicilian red is keeping me going right now. Damn good it is too.

What else to report....I bought a new mouse for the mac.
A Razer Pro1.6. Manny, ya have to get one, makes thon mighty mouse look wick, like.

I'll post something long winded and interesting during the coming week.

Promise.

Lentil and spinach pasta with garlic and chile

2007-12-01T18:18:00.000Z

This is for Hails.

Ingredients:

Puy lentils. I cook loads of them and freeze them in bags. You could use green lentils or brown lentils but not the skinned brown ones they would cook down to mush too fast, I think. Tinned would be grand.

Spinach. I used fresh but frozen is just as good. Defrost frozen ingredients first, eh?

Onion.

Garlic.

Chile flakes/ dried chiles.

Pasta. I used conchigle as it fills with the lentils etc.

Right.

Chop up an onion finely.

Chop up a garlic clove.

Use 2 small dried chiles and chop them up. Use seeds as well.
Alternatively use a pinch or two of chile flakes.

Fry off the onion and garlic in some olive oil.

When the onion and garlic are cooked soft, add the chile and then the lentils.

Of course you have had your pasta cooking whilst doing all this.

Chop up your spinach and add to the onion pan as your pasta is very nearly ready.

Drain the pasta and add to the "sauce" when the spinach has wilted.

Add a lump of butter. (Knob is just so rude, don't you think?)

Stir so the pasta is coated in the "sauce".

Plate and EAT.

Very. Very. Tasty.

Takes no time at all to make, really as long as it takes the pasta to cook.

Not my original recipe but I have no idea where I got it from.

HOTHOTHOT

2007-12-01T18:12:00.000Z

Well, £175 lighter of wallet and an hour of helping my Dad and we have a new oil burner.

I saw how easy it was to install so next time I can do it myself. I'll also be able to do minor maintenance and cleaning now.

I missed the office christmas party but I have heat now. Lots of lovely heat !

I could run around the house naked it is so warm.

Now, that is mind pollution. Hahahahaha....

I've learned something new. I like it.

I did have a wee swally last night and made a huge pot of mashed potato and had veggie bangers with it. Marvellous.

Tonight it will be my infamous leek and gruyere tart with baby boiled potatoes and spinach.

UPDATE!

Feckin' mofo.....

Ok, the oil burner was replaced but now one of the two water pumps has died. Why there is two I dunno. One should do the job.

One pump has died and now we have no heating. AAAAAAAARRRGGGHHHHHHHHH!!!!!!

Big fire going, which is nice, sourcing of two water pumps will commence next week.

No point just replacing one.

FAAAAAAAAACCKKK !

Only raki can save me now.

http://www.sfakia-crete.com/sfakia-crete/raki.html

Cut and paste....I can't be arsed makin' it html.

1$%X^>"}+!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

2007-11-30T11:13:00.000Z

Damn oil burner is well and truly dead.

Guy came out and spent over and hour coaxing it back to life only to tell me it could last a week or a year ie; it is well and truly knackered and it is a wonder it has lasted so long.

It lasted another 3 hours.

It's as dead as democracy.

Today I have had to cancel my attendance at my office christmas party to try and find a new oil burner that will fit my old boiler (careful! no jokes at the back).

I have sourced one locally and will be off down the road in a jiffy to buy it.

Handing out a couple of hundred close to christmas is not my idea of fun.

Ho fucking ho.

Can't live without heating. Well, I can but I really don't want to.

What an almighty pain in the ass.

I might just have to get roaring drunk later tonight.

I did say might.

If it was any colder it'd be freezing.

2007-11-28T21:00:00.000Z

Have you seen the price of oil?

I don't mean crude at $100 per barrel.
(well maybe I do as that is where the bloody stuff starts )
No, the more refined stuff, 28 sec Kerosene to be exact.

I paid £0.46 per litre last week.

I nearly fainted at the price.

I got over it quickly enough though there were some odd noises emanating from the radiators.
The noises continued until yesterday when the heating didn't come on.

I bled a radiator, crap I just remembered I had to get another radiator key as I broke the one I had bleeding that last radiator.
I digress.

That didn't fix it.

I went out and opened the purge valve on the boiler.

Nothing.

Oh shit.

The image of hundreds of litres of oil soaking my garden sprang to mind.
I went and got a torch and checked the oil. No loss.

HUGE sigh of relief, that is until I remembered why I was looking at the oil level in the first place. Crap.

I unscrewed the inline filter in the oil pipe. This is not the cleverest thing to do when you haven't closed the valve at the oil tank. I was prepared for some oil loss but not the few litres that spewed out. My hands still smell faintly of kerosene today. That and the fumes gave me, as they say round these parts, "a wile sore head".

No heating last night. Ambient temperature rather mild for the time of year so no hardship.

I managed to close the oil valve and unscrew the oil filter, the fine mesh seems unclogged enough to me but on testing the oil still wasn't getting through.

I have phoned and booked a boiler service for tomorrow evening.
This is something I have never had done. We have been here over 5 years now.
About bloody time then.

More money to shell out. Gah.

Still, I am sitting here in front of a roaring fire after a large bowl of my current favourite quick dinner. Lentil and spinach pasta with chilli and garlic. I could eat this until I had peritonitis but I won't put it to the test. I love it. Very tasty and filling.

That said, I didn't pig out as Mrs M phoned to ask if I had eaten yet as she fancied getting a pizza. Who am I to say no to pizza?

Bring it on. Drool.

Normal heating will resume tomorrow, the management apologises for the delay.

I'm only here for the beer

2007-11-25T13:30:00.000Z

I spent Friday afternoon with some colleagues . We went to the beer festival.
Being a lover of nice beer it was odd that this was my first ever visit.
There was so much choice I had no idea where to start.

A scan through the list of beers had me alight on one I had sampled on a trip to Edinburgh in Milne's pub to be precise. The beer in question is called Thrappledouser.
It was lovely in Edinburgh. Not so in Belfast, a bit wishy washy ( technical term ) in my opinion.

I tried a few beers...my favourites out of that selection were Sarah Hughes Dark Ruby Mild - very nice indeed, could have sank a few pints of this. Old Growler- a stout that had me chewing it was so tasty. Dragon's Fire was just alright. Flash Harry was like dishwater, even though I cannot remember ever tasting dishwater. I thought the taste notes sounded promising, don't believe the hype, blech.

It was funny with five of us there and not everyone having the same taste. Some were lager drinkers and I do think they were quite unhappy but not about to admit it in front of the "lads".

I think that the beer festival will bear a repeat visit next year. I was well impressed.
MMMmmmm....beer.....

I have just discovered that I can order a "wine box" type contraption of 20 litres of Old Growler direct from the brewery, result!

Check the link.

Hahahahahahahahaha......I love christmas, me.

What a fuckup.

2007-11-20T17:56:00.000Z

The government have lost a set of discs with the names, addresses and NIS and "where relevant" bank details of 25 million people !

What the fuck? !!!!!!!

So, these numptys, entrusted with keeping these highly confidential records put them in the post. Not even registered post and then they get lost...........and then they say that there is no evidence that this information has fallen into the hands of criminals.
I would add "yet" to the end of that statement.

So they want us to submit all our details to a giant database and issue us with ID cards ( at our expense ) to protect us from terrorists. Hmm, looks like we can't fucking trust them to look after the confidential information they already hold never mind the amount they want encoded on a national ID card.

This latest fuck up has to convince the populace that the ID card scheme and associated database is a non starter, we cannot trust this government to safely look after the information they have been entrusted with.
ID theft is very real indeed and this list is worth a lot especially as it has bank account details included.

What if this information falls into the hands of a paeodophile?
A list of the name and address of all the children in the UK under 16???

This is beyond the pale.

How will they spin their way out of this one?

Someone who'll watch over me

2007-11-16T14:50:00.000Z

SPOILER ALERT ! Possibly........

I went to this play in the lyric on Wednesday night.
Very good indeed. That is me culturally replete for a while now.
My favourite line in the play, the derogatory line about Strabane aside, has to be-

" I'm Sam Peckinpah....this is a gun.....you're dead."

Made me laugh out loud.
Some parts made me fill up. Powerful stuff.
I think I'll add Frank McGuinness to my list of favourite playwrights.
He joins David Mamet and Conor McPherson on the list.

Never More.

2007-11-13T11:23:00.000Z

We were staying in Portrush at the weekend.

Seaside town out of season, cold, windy, some rain.

Marvellous.

Going out to eat and drink and a long walk on the beach on Saturday, to enjoy the bracing sea air and marvel at the kite boarders. I had to envy the bodyboarders too as they had tired of the freezing water and were tobogganing down the big sand dune. Looked like lots of fun.

The beach looked like it had smoke flowing over it at ankle level because of the dry sand being whipped along. We walked from East strand ,or Curran if you want to call it that, down to Whiterocks and back.

On the way back I noticed a Raven floating in the wind with something white in it's beak. It dropped down onto an outcropping of the dune and sat looking round it. I would say nervously but I don't want to be anthropmorphic here. Another raven was floating in the wind up the beach a bit and it "reversed" and dropped down to sit beside the first one. The first one set down the white thing ,we were perpendicular to them by now, and the two of them looked about and watched us walk past. We were about 20m away, quite close to a raven, they normally fly away or you don't get that close in the first place. As we walked on the 2nd raven flew off again. The first one then started to dig a hole in the upright wall of the dune. It then proceeded to pick up the white object, put it in the hole it had dug and seal the hole over.

The 2nd raven kept in the air whilst this was going on.

I have never seen ravens behaving like this before, I know they are really intelligent but I can't work out what it was the raven was burying or why. I discounted going over and digging out the hole to be nosy. Rather rude to do so I thought.

Wonderful to observe.

A trip to the 2nd hand bookshop then lunch and a pint or two of guinness rounded off the afternoon.

A meal in D'arceys later on was very nice indeed. A nice spot, pay it a visit if you are in Portrush. Of course, after the meal it was nowhere else but Funland and a frantic half hour of video game mayhem and a game of air hockey.

Darth Vader kicked my ass.

Never get into a lightsabre fight on a full stomach.

Friday philosophy

2007-11-09T15:33:00.000Z

I have decided, a few weeks ago in fact, to change my negative thinking and embrace positivity.
Instead of constantly reacting to outside factors I plan my day before I get out of bed and focus on certain things I want in life.

Though the possibility exists of complete self delusion, I do believe it's working.
This please me greatly and family have noticed my new postive outlook on life.
Sitting at home with pneumonia after a month of feeling bloody awful made me think that maybe my attitude was shaping my reality.

Over the years I have read volumes of books on this subject and recently some friends passed on the names of some more. I read them, dismissed one as having the grain of "truth" but being a conglomeration of quantum physics ideas and new agey bullshit. The other laid off the physics and concentrated more on how only the individual can manifest their own reality.

Nothing new here at all really. Coinciding with getting pneumonia I felt I needed a positive direction to this big adventure.

Well, I've been in a great mood for a while now, most unusual, and I enjoy it.

I was the kid in hospital reading a book called "Cosmic Consciousness" at the age of 14.

Destiny? ;-)

Kitchen whizz

2007-11-09T11:15:00.000Z

Mrs M’s birthday was the other day and I promised a three course meal.

Starter- Stewed long peppers and yogurt sauce

Main- Butternut squash gnocchi with garlic spinach cream.

Dessert- Italian applecake with cinnamon chocolate cream.

AAAARRRGGHH!

I got in from work early, having planned my menu and aquired the ingredients.

I hit the ground running when I got in to the house and had an Italian apple cake mix on the go for dessert. I got the recipe from the Silver Spoon. Huge tome, only translated into English in the last couple of years. It has some interesting recipes for brains.

Ok, applecake made and into the oven.

I had prepared some of the main course the night before, to wit, I had roasted a butternut squash and 5 cloves of garlic.

I made the sauce for the main course which involved 100mls white wine, 100mls light stock and the roasted garlic. This was blended and sieved into a pan and reduced by half.
I let it cool down and added 300mls of cream and reduced it. As I was doing this I was making the yogurt sauce for the peppers which had been made ready for the oven.

The applecake turned out perfect and when I took it out I put the peppers into the oven.

Multi tasking…just about.

Starter turned out well and tasted great. Though I have made it better previously.

After the starter it was time to make the gnocchi.

The recipe stated a fixed amount of flour. My butternut squash absorbed that and yelled for more. Quite a bit more in fact. The dough turned out well and I had a pan of boiling salted water ready for it. I made the gnocchi and put them in the pan in two batches. The amount of dough made would feed 6 people, so I froze half of it for future use.

I heated up the sauce and the gnocchi were ready in a couple of minutes.

Once the next batch was done it was time to eat.

My sister gave me the recipe from a book we had bought her. A Café Paradiso book. The best food I have ever eaten.

Oh wow, it tasted fantastic. I will be using the sauce recipe for other things also. It was very filling. Really, really tasty. In fact I took the leftovers for lunch in work yesterday. Not so good microwaved, cream sauces always die. Still very tasty though.

I shall be making this again, and again and again!!

A little break was taken before dessert, in fact Mrs M was so full she took the merest wafer of cake. She wasn’t fussed on the dessert wine so I drank it.

Boy did I have a sorehead the next day. Not only did I drink the dessert wine but I had half a bottle of Chablis with Mrs M and I polished off 3/4s of a bottle of rioja on my own.

From 4.30 pm until near midnight so no suffering a la Manuel. Thankfully.

Mrs M was delighted with the three course meal, I was happy I was able to do it all and get drunk at the same time without injuring myself or ruining anything. I wouldn’t chance it too often though.
I was exhausted after all this and spent last night sitting on my ass waiting for a plumber who didn’t show up. That will be for another posting sometime in the future.

Mouldy old dough

2007-11-03T13:04:00.000Z

I took yesterday off and didn't do too much other than a few household chores and make a loaf.

I had to use what flour I had so the loaf ended up being 700 grams white flour, 200 grams rye flour and 100 grams wheat flour.
I would normally go for more wheat than rye but I only had 100 grams of wheat flour left.

2/3rds of Led Zeppelin III later and I had some good (organic) dough to be put into the tin to prove.

I punched it down after about an hour and a half and let it prove for another 45 minutes or thereabouts.
Pre heated the oven to 220 C and put the dough in and turned the oven down to 200. 35 minutes later I took it out and tapped the bottom to see if it was ready. Always a risky business this as handling the tin and the loaf with oven gloves means the risk of dropping the lot or getting my arm singed.

No inadvertent self harm and my loaf went on to the rack (bread torture, moi?).

Mrs M and I just had some for lunch.

The verdict?

Fucking marvellous and really tasty.

I love making bread. It has taken me 4 years to get it right everytime.

My Dad started it and got it right everytime from the get go
He used a dough hook on a mixer, I knead by hand.
.

Jammy beggar.
I have the moral highground though he makes bread that is truly fantastic

Funky Mofotastic

2007-11-03T01:30:00.000Z

Jools is back with a BANG !!!!

Richard Hawley - marvellous.

Soil and Pimp Sessions - funkymofotastic !!

Needless to say I am buying their back catalogue as I type.

BRILLIANT.

Siouxie Sioux- alright, Mrs M say it sounds like Goldfrapp.
Hard fi are shite and no mistake. Bleugh.

Symptoms

2007-10-20T12:56:00.000+01:00

NameThatDisease.com - Test your disease knowledge

I missed a calling !

I took the test off the link on Ed's site.

WTF !

2007-10-17T12:16:00.000+01:00

Re: my post about having the lurgy.

I finally went to the Doctor this morning after much guilt inducement from Mrs M and other family members.

Turns out I have "mild" pneumonia.

!

Sledgehammer strength antibiotics for me then.
Started them already.

Daydreamin'

2007-10-11T16:14:00.000+01:00

Here I am, sitting in an office with only half the usual amount of people working in it today. It is too warm, has been all year. A “constant” temperature that hovers between 23 and 29 degrees Celsius. Yes, I know, this is illegal but the normal rules don’t seem to apply for this health and safety stuff in here.

I digress, the heat must be getting to me, I am searching for a suitable metaphor, in the meantime I’ll go get some coffee (decaff-only the real stuff when I am out on my travels).

That’s better and since some colleagues are away I can train a fan towards me without bothering anyone else.

Ah, metaphors. Much as I do enjoy the dayjob I have been feeling that a certain challenge, creative fulfillment and self determination is missing in my life. Hence my searching for a suitable metaphor such as feeling lost at sea or something like that. Well, you get the picture so far, eh?

I really do feel the need to be master of my own destiny, going freelance as a photographer would give me that sense of freedom (whether real or no). I am aware that in doing so I would be a total slave to the mortgage and would have to relinquish such luxuries such as holidays and sick leave. No such thing when you work for yourself. Still, I am most definitely heading in that direction. The dayjob does provide satisfaction in some areas and absolute frustration in others.
Careful planning with regards to finances and lifestyle will have to be addressed.
Very careful planning.

Maybe it’s age, maybe it’s a sense of not having achieved my potential, maybe it’s an inner sense that there are things to be achieved, places to be experienced and a life to live?

This has been a joint production by Deep & Meaningful and Philosophy Thursday.

New fangled doo-dah.

2007-10-03T21:55:00.000+01:00

Attention, or should that be achtung?

I am now broadcasting to you via the medium of wireless. ( Is this thing on?)
After some wrestling with a new wireless router/modem I have successfully set up "The Home Network" chez Mudflapgypsy.
Wireless encryption enabled etc etc, paranoid about security I am.
In fact I will be upgrading security even more as soon as I get Mrs M's new laptop up and running and firewall enabled.

This is my first posting from my macbookpro, so there.
I am sitting in the kitchen listening to radio 2 with a pot of lentil and carrot soup on the hob. I have been feeling very disposed towards soup and stew over the past week with a break for pizza in between.

I think I will love this wireless malarkey more and more.

In setting up I noticed that I was privy to another wireless connection....one with no encryption to boot ( there is a pun there....I know there is).
I may be a good neighbour and inform whomever it is that they should sort it out. Though, if it is the guy next door I won't as he is an ignorant twat....he moved in and I said hello and he just stared at me and made no reply.
I thought either he didn't understand english (nope), was deaf (nope) or was an ignorant twat ( yep ).

If it's him, everybody come round and use his connection!!

The Lurgy

2007-10-01T15:53:00.000+01:00

On a brighter note, a photo of a roadsign spotted whilst in the wilds of Coalisland last week.

I have the lurgy. I was off three days last week to try and kick this infection and thought I was ok and was back in work Thursday and Friday.

Friday night I was due to attend a friends stag night.

I had a relapse and had to cancel all plans for the weekend.

My temperature skyrockets, I feel dreadful and have a rather sore head.

I am, of course, being polite about this, much swearing has been done when the paracetamol brings me to near human levels again

Mrs M has a shiny new laptop and I have to install wireless in the house now.

Hopefully this will happen by the weekend.

I'll be able to blog from the bathroom, now there's a thought.

No parking

2007-09-20T10:48:00.001+01:00

I include this for comedy value as in it was taken in Hania in Crete. It also fits in with a series I'm working on of vehicles parked with visible no parking signs.

There is a deepwater submarine port to the East called Soudha.

The locals seem to be a bit miffed.

I also saw some graffitti which said "better dead than marine". I thought it may be along the same lines but then again it could be a fashion label for all I know.

Two ponces in a landrover

2007-09-20T10:26:00.000+01:00

I have to write about this as it is rare I get incensed by a tv programme.
This one got me.

I thought that the premise of this show was ok. Living off the land and only eating wild caught food.

I am sold already. The skills of living off the land should be taught in schools, in my opinion.

Ok the two protagonists are terribly posh, I can get past that.
They have a landrover stuffed to the gills with supplies from a supermarket…..
…aren’t they supposed to be living off the land? I can’t get past this one.

Oh, the “arse in the sunlight whilst pouring water over himself shots” guy always carries a shotgun when he’s out in the country. Everyone has one lying about don’t they?

Huh?

I was looking forward to these people eating trout stuffed with sorrel or seafood medley. You know, the sort of things you can get in the wild. Not stuff taken from a farmers garden supplemented with vegetables, herbs and spices from the local bloody Tesco!!
Describing a wild wood pigeon as “free range” ……….. Wild equals free range then?
Give me strength.

I’m sure the producers are doing the “we do good TV” dance.
Poncy arsed crap, I say.

Lifestyle TV for cityfolk who have never been in a field.
Bloody Bankers.
I knew I wouldn’t be viewing another episode half way through the first one.

Rant over.

Cafe Ellinikos sketo, Parakalo.

2007-09-14T15:01:00.000+01:00

I was away on holiday.

An honest to goodness hot country sunshine and beach type holiday.

A real get away from it all and relax type holiday.

It’s crap to be back.

Mrs M and myself went to Crete.
We have been twice before, the first time to the lager swilling infested North east coast. Loved Crete, hated the yobs. Well, it was a package holiday that first time, once bitten etc etc The second time we went it was on honeymoon and some serious research was done first. We picked a great place to get away from it all. So great, in fact, that we are just back from another two weeks in the same place. It IS that good.

Frangokastello is not frequented very much by English speaking tourists, nor does it have bars, discos or nightclubs. The beaches are empty and the tavernas serve really good food and the house wine is really very good. It is also very cheap, a meal for two including wine coming to about 18-27 euro. I love it. I now regard it as a home from home. I have fallen for Crete, especially the Sfakia region where this is.

I want to go back…..

Oh, while I remember, Nelly will laugh at this…who was standing beside me at the baggage reclaim at 1am in Iraklion airport, only Willie Drennan and his wife!

I hope they had a good holiday.

Back to my story then.

It is mostly ( I would hazard a guess at about 85—90% ) Germans who go on holiday to Franagokastello and the surrounding area. For the UK and Ireland the flights arrive in Iraklion which is 2.5 hours drive away. Since the flight arrives at 1am local time an overnight stay in Iraklion is essential, no way would I drive those scary mountain roads at night when feeling tired. Too scary.

It is very quiet, the weather is fantastic, the locals are friendly, the food is good the wine is good and the local firewater RAKI is brilliant, can you tell I like it? I brought home 4 bottles of the stuff and it’s all mine I tell you!! They bring you a shot of Raki and a little pastry or a plate of watermelon chunks after dinner. Now that, is civilised, I tell you.

What can I tell you about the holiday then…we didn’t do very much as we did a lot of exploring the last time, this time was for relaxation, quite a bit of swimming and snorkelling and sunbathing, you should see my tan!

A trip to the city of Hania was a little break midway through the holiday. People watching, wandering about, eating dinner in Tamam inside, we had only ever eaten lunch outside before ( 3rd visit) and coffee and pastries or ice cream, in this instance, in the old town where the locals go in Zharaplastio 13 afterwards.
I could go native, you know.
What sort of work I would undertake to support myself and Mrs M still eludes me, as does any real grasp of Greek. Rather difficult language, never mind the different alphabet filled with letters that look like ours but are pronounced differently.

September is really the time to go as getting somewhere to stay is really easy even if you haven’t pre booked. The weather is less fiery and the Cretan winds die off. Glad we didn’t go earlier in the summer, temperatures were crazy. It was 30C at 9pm ish when we were there some nights, what must it have been like in July?

The beaches were empty and the most difficult decision to make was where to eat dinner. Magic.
Though after having found what we considered the best place to eat dinner the last time we visited, not much decision making was done. I did say it was very relaxing didn’t I?.

I bought Mrs M a camera before we went ( guess who is really skint now…..) and she took some really good photos.
I am well impressed.

Wanna go back. Must start saving.

I'll save the story about the red tape on the airline for later...

Put that bloody thing away, will ye?!

2007-08-25T17:09:00.000+01:00

This was written on Saturday.....only posting it now.

I was at a family wedding on Friday and was asked to take some photos of the "evening do", so I did. Being a guest meant I got to get drunk as well.

My mental faculties are not functioning so very well today.

I am taking a short break from editing and tweaking the few hundred images I took.

Digital may make life easier but it also makes it more...more...damn. Told you I wasn't 100% today. More pics means more work, that's what I meant to say.

I got home last night and demanded hot food, toast wasn't going to do it for me.

Too late for any of the takeaways.

I proceeded to make a stir fry with noodles. At 1am. Told you I was drunk.

Mrs M asked me nicely to avoid lopping off a digit. I succeeded, thankfully.
Not before I ranted and raved about being perfectly capable etc etc. Whilst I was staggering about the kitchen, of course.

I feel like I have been replaced with a pale, wan replica of myself.

I think I might have a beer later, hair of the dog etc etc.

I did get some great photos though. I'll be getting them made into a little book to give to the happy couple. An extra present, if you will, which they will show to their friends, who being of marrying age will maybe entertain the thought of paying for my services.

Here's hoping.

Back to the edit..............

Any drinks or snacks?

2007-08-15T19:19:00.000+01:00

Monday week ago Myself and Mrs M travelled to London.

The adventure started in the alcoholic who frittered his talent away on booze and birds airport ( George Best Belfast City Airport ).

At the metal detector/security section I must have set off a silent alarm as no beep emanated from the magnetic doorframe apparatus.

I was watching the security guard and he was watching the top of the doorframe.

I can only assume a visual signal , probably a small illuminated sign with " search this creep" as the text.

I stood for the obligatory frisking, he even asked to inspect my belt buckle.

Thankfully I wasn't wearing the one with the .410 derringer! (One can dream.....)

Then I heard " Is this your bag, sir?"

My bag then got searched. I had a book, a waterproof coat and whoops, a tube of lethally dangerous toothpaste.

Crumbs, I am awfully dangerous aren't I?

I had no clear plastic bags. I enquired as to whether I could just carry it in my hand, seeing as I only had one item.

"No, you have to carry it in a clear plastic bag. You can nip round there and buy one for 20p".

Being an tad ornery when confronted with this sort of situation and being perfectly happy to sever a few limbs never mind cut off my nose to spite my face etc...I said " just throw it in the bin".

Radical, huh?

Next thing I know, the guard takes a small circular disc of paper, swabs the inside of my rucksack (small, 25 litre) and inserts it into a desk sized piece of machinery.

Not so much GCMS as , I assume, a nitrate detection machine using similar techniques.

Naturally the bells and whistles didn't go off nor where there any silent alarms. Otherwise I would have been well and truly nicked.

Might have been different if he had swabbed the outside as there could be traces of cowpat there. High nitrate levels.

I walked away wondering why this crazy situation exists in the first place...... if someone did want to use liquid combustible materials to compromise the hull of aircraft the 100 mil rule would mean that there just need to be more of the crazy bastards to carry the crap onto the plane. Y'know, if they are that devoted to their cause etc etc a silly regulation isn't going to put them off is it?

Rules and laws being for the lawful not the criminal.

An auspicious start to the journey.

The purpose of the journey was ostensibly to go to the o2 arena to see Prince. Mrs M is a massive fan.

Since she was paying I couldn't say no.

We stayed in an Ibis hotel near Billingsgate Fish Market. Classy.

One public transport stop away from the venue.

I had booked us into London's most famous and upmarket vegetarian restaurant "The Gate" in Hammersmith on the Monday night.

Oh boy, is that a crap idea when you have a 7.30 booking and have to get across London during rush hour, on a hot day, on the tube after arriving at your hotel at 5 ish.

The restaurant was lovely, the food was lovely, the wine was lovely. The bill had 12.5% service stuck on as standard. I tip well, I can afford to as I don't eat in restaurants all the time.

I hate service charges. Especially when I am in a party of two. I would rather leave cold hard cash and I assume that the waiting staff would rather have this also.

I did leave a fiver with the bill, as I didn't have the right notes and coins to leave 20% after they had taken the first 12.5% with the card payment.

Oh, well.

The next day we pottered round Laaahndahn. We called into the HOST Gallery in Honduras street and had a sneak preview of the show that was opening that night.

Lunch was at the Wholefood cafe in Neal's Yard. Nice.

Back to the hotel to get ready for heading out again to meet an old school friend of Mrs M's.

I had never met him before but we all got on really well, a few pints were had and some insider music industry gossip was batted about before we had to run off to see the pint sized purple person.

Visit HolyMoly for the lowdown...

The Prince gig was great. I have never been in an indoor venue that big before-20,000 people.

It was "in the round" so was even more bonkers looking as we were sat way up in the penultimate row near the ceiling.

I participated in my first Mexican wave ( did they really originate in Mexico?), Mrs M bought us chips and got back to her seat just as Prince took to the stage.

Personally, I ate my chips whilst sitting down as all around me people stood up and danced, apart from the couple to my left, who didn't at all.

The whole place (nearly) danced for all the uptempo songs.

I never thought that one day I would be part of a group of 20,000 people singing the chorus of "Purple Rain" with no musical accompaniment.

They played "Lets Go Crazy" and ,I swear, the crowd did.

No 1999 though.

Getting home on the tube was.......hectic, mental,scary, claustrophobic...you get the picture, eh?

Not pleasant but thankfully only one stop away from our hotel, phew.

Getting to the tube the crowd was as bad on the escalators and platforms.

We got out at Canary Wharf which is deadsville after working hours, well, normal working hours, it still had a few coming out of buildings trying to get taxis at 11ish.

Bankers.

A short walk back to the hotel then to bed and ready to go home the next day.

Not so much going to London for a short break as going to speed up life a bit.

Living and working in the sticks'll do that to ya.

Rough and tumble

2007-08-02T10:59:00.000+01:00

Whitegoods.

Can't live without them, eh?

The tumble dryer stopped heating. No major problem as the weather is conducive to outdoor drying at present, though with the rain it takes a wee bit longer.

I had a look at the heating unit and tested all the components with a multimeter (not even a pretty face...). One of the thermostats was fried. Yippee, I thought, a small component costing pennies to replace.

Sorted.

Or so I thought. The component can only be bought in bulk. Serious bulk.

Crap. The only option now is to replace the entire heater assembly.

Quotes range from £30 to £60.
For exactly the same thing.

Guess which one I just bought.
Skinflint that I am, or is that financially prudent?( gotta be careful I don't sound Like Gordon),
I went for the cheaper option.

Here's hoping it gets here by the weekend, what with an alleged postal strike in progress.

Fight the power !

2007-08-01T11:53:00.000+01:00

Welcome to the future. Right now.

Not just the police but the troops that are left have just been given the power to stop anyone and question them on their movements. If you don't answer they can hold you indefinitely until you do.
Does dissatisfaction with your answer about your movements still give them the power to hold you?

And furthermore, I always thought that my movements were between me and my proctologist?

Annoying customers

2007-07-19T12:02:00.000+01:00

Overheard in restaurant -
rather drunk diner at dessert ordering stage asking the waitress how on earth she lived under communism, sure it must have been terrible ( imagine some slurring going on here too ).
Waitress looking slightly embarrassed as patrons wife looked on waiting to hear the answer.
I didn't hear the answer as I could only hear the loud gentleman who was doing the asking.
It made me cringe. How must the waitress have felt?
I suppose it is much the same as being asked about growing up under terrorism and army on the streets here.
Bloody annoying then.

No fun and having to clear out the spare room.

2007-07-13T18:28:00.000+01:00

Archery is off tonight and it is pissing with rain.

Too wet even to have fun with a home made target in the back garden.

I suppose I will just have to get off my ass and finish clearing up the boxes in the spare room like I promised Mrs M I would.

Gah.

Still, I did find a lot of cassettes of music I'd written in the early 90s the other day.
I listened to a few last night as I made dinner.
All that creativity is channeled in different directions now.

There is a lot of crap to be thrown out too. We threw out a couple of bags of cassettes that we have on CD. No point keeping them.

I think I'll go get a beer and get to work.

Taxation

2007-07-13T09:28:00.000+01:00

"Tax his land, Tax his bed, Tax the table At which he's fed.

Tax his tractor, Tax his mule, Teach him taxes Are the rule.

Tax his cow, Tax his goat, Tax his pants, Tax his coat.

Tax his ties, Tax his shirt, Tax his work, Tax his dirt.

Tax his tobacco, Tax his drink, Tax him if he Tries to think.

Tax his cigars, Tax his beers, If he cries, then Tax his tears.

Tax his car, Tax his gas, Find other ways To tax his ass

Tax all he has Then let him know That you won't be done Till he has no dough.

When he screams and hollers, Then tax him some more, Tax him till He's good and sore.

Then tax his coffin, Tax his grave, Tax the sod in Which he's laid.

Put these words upon his tomb, "Taxes drove me to my doom..."

When he's gone, Do not relax, Its time to apply The inheritance tax.

Shamelessly appropriated from George's place.

Spinal Tap

2007-07-09T10:35:00.000+01:00

Live Earth.

I only wanted to see Spinal Tap and maybe check out the Police ( lacklustre) as I don't agree fully with the sentiment behind it nor do I like many of the performers. I thought it odd that someone like Radiohead wasn't aligning themselves with it, nor Coldplay. Two bands I do not listen to.
Madonna was the London main act and she has shares in some of the most polluting companies on the planet. Hypocrisy? No. Shameless self promotion, the only thing I think she is excellent at and has consistently proven so. Who cares what the cause is, everybody look at me!!!

My real rant is that Spinal Tap were to perform 3 songs and the goddamn BBC cut to Jonathan bloody Ross as they started their third and last song. This was the only thing I was waiting on, having a telly on in the living room and working in the kitchen. Not watching the drivel is what I am trying to say here.
The only thing I really wanted to see and they they cut the broadcast.
Wankers.

So can I get a discount on my tv tax then?
I am not happy with the service.

Date

2007-07-03T12:30:00.000+01:00

Mrs M was working hard over the weekend including afternoon on Sunday so I told her I'd take her out for something to eat and few drinks.
She worked until 8pm on Saturday night and we were booked in for 9pm. Mrs M got home a little earlier than expected so as to give more time to get ready. Being ready early meant we actually arrived at our destination on time.

We arrived at the Blackstone, or should I say "Upstairs at the Blackstone" dead on 9pm.
I had even got dressed up for the occasion, prompting Mrs M to rethink her planned outfit.
Thankfully she was able to put one together in a flash and looked lovely.

I am not going to give a critique of this eating establishment. Suffice to say the food is the best in Ballymena ( within the town, that is ) and it was only the second time I have eaten there. We'll be back soon. Well, when the menu changes as there is only one non meat option (I don't eat meat).

Great food cooked really well and very good service indeed. I must have had a good time as I tipped more than is usual.

We contemplated having a drink downstairs but the band was too loud for conversation. We opted to go and sit at the bar in the Grouse where I had a couple of pints of Guinness. The thought of dancing sprang to mind but as we heard the noises emanating from the "disco" upstairs we both reappraised the situation and said "Naaah". A little dancing may have been fun. Pity there is absolutely nowhere playing music to dance to for people of our age in Ballymena ( late 30's). Who am I kidding, we are not of the demographic that goes out on the lash every weekend trying to pull. I haven't been dancing in so long I can't remember (my living room doesn't count).

One novel experience was there not being any tobacco smoke, the downside of this being the pong of the wanker that farted beside us prompting me to exclaim loudly " Stinkin' bastard, who did that?". I did have drink taken but thankfully the guilty party melted away rather quickly.

The gassing notwithstanding a rather pleasant evening was had.

Some dancing was observed in our living room later on after a few more drinks.

Going for gold

2007-06-30T08:51:00.000+01:00

I have taken up archery as a relaxing pastime.
Something to focus my mind, to get "into the zone" as it were.
It works.

I really, really enjoy it.

Last night, for the first 45 mins, I was shooting exceptionally well (compared to my previous form ,that is). Then my bow arm shoulder got tired and my aim went.
Still, for 45 mins I was there, nothing but me and the target. The way it should be.
Now I have to go and figure out a way to strengthen my shoulder and arm sufficiently.

I had been visualizing all last week. It seems to have worked.
More mental discipline needed methinks.

Now playing- Bad Brains "Sailin' on".

Rock n roll

2007-06-28T10:48:00.000+01:00

I filled 6 x 1 GB cards at the Glyder gig on Saturday night. A mighty edit was done, as mentioned in my last posting. This was whittled down to 100 shots and then pared down further to about 9 for me to post on t'internet and a disc of about 20 to the guys who run the rock nights upstairs in the diamond bar in Ahoghill.

Shooting at 1600 asa and 2000 asa made the pics rather grainy. I calmed this down slightly using some software. (I quite like the grain though).

Of course if more wattage of lighting had been available I wouldn't have had to up the asa so much. The band would have been cooked though....

Gaffa taping flash guns on the lighting rig next time maybe.
I really enjoyed taking these photos. I started out taking photos of bands in 1990. I stopped in 1995 for a reason I can't remember.
With digital I can shoot as many pics as my cards will carry. At no extra cost. If I had been shooting film at the Glyder gig it would have cost me £100 approx for film and processing.
Digital rules for high volume shooting.

The pics are on my flickr site if anyone wants a look. I posted the pre grain removal shots.

Have lens, will travel.

2007-06-26T10:51:00.000+01:00

Saturday saw me up and out taking photos at a Cancer Research relay for life event at Eaton park in Ballymena. I got some good photos of the relay teams with the mayor and chef/TV personality Paul Rankin.

A break for lunch and download and backup the photos and then to my godson's 4th birthday party where I took more photos.

Home for a bite to eat and a sit down watching Glastonbury whilst donwloading the photos and backing them up to an external drive.

Then that evening I went to take photos of a band called Glyder who were playing at the Diamond bar in Ahoghill.

Up until 3.30 am downloading, backing up and editing the gig photos.

I'll be posting some pictures tonight when I get home. I spent all day Sunday and Monday evening editing and tweaking photos. ( I took quite a lot).

Still tired and it's Tuesday.

Traffic n some stuff

2007-06-20T19:17:00.000+01:00

I had the misfortune to have to drive home from Belfast today.
I am so glad I don't have to do that everyday.
20mph in the fast lane on the M2? Fook that.

Maybe that is why I ranted a bit over at Ed's place.
Sorry Ed, Had a bad commute.
That and learning a new computer filing regime all day. Gaah.

I also had about 4 cups of coffee today....now that I am only doing my legal drugs at the weekend ( alcohol and caffeine) I am a bit wired.

I have a very good idea for a photojournalistic story and exhibition. ( Formulated last weekend.)
The title and idea of which are not to be revealed until work commences which should be in the next week or so.

I'm aiming for public exposure by winter, the work that is, not me.

Ambitious, me? You betcha.

I am adding to my portfolio this weekend, I'll be posting on Sunday on Flickr.

Infected

2007-06-19T13:48:00.000+01:00

I have been infected.
I feel crap.
I am fighting it off as it isn't really getting a hold on me.
Still crap though.

Its hot, George...

2007-06-09T15:54:00.000+01:00

Enjoying the weather?

I am.

I've just been weeding (and no, I don't have a speech impediment). Crap joke over then.
It is hot though. I sometimes wonder how we will cope with warm weather. We don't have buildings kitted out for it as we are set up for cold and wet weather. Not every building has aircon.
Funny how we now have a govt company called Northern Ireland Water and not a squeak about reservoir capacity. Just endless talk of water charges. A moot point if there isn't going to be enough water to pump to customers .
Our water retention facilities are woefully inadequate. One not so wet winter and the water levels in our reservoirs drop by a scary amount.
Now, global warming.
A hot potato subject if ever there was one.
Hypothetically speaking, just say the sun is getting warmer. Just say other planets in our solar system are also heating up much the same way we are. Just say that the amount of crap we pump into the atmosphere isn't the cause of this heating up but is exacerbating it-worst case scenario.

What to do?

Fecking carbon credits are not the way to go.
Still, I am not going to making billions from carbon credit trading, maybe I am jealous.
Yet another con foisted upon us.
So, the sun is heating up ( I am still being hypothetical here), it isn't a manmade phenomenon and because some misguided people have bleated very loudly saying it is I am going to have to pay extra tax?
Wank3rs, I say.
I wish I'd thought of it. Nice scam.

Now, before anyone starts slapping me on the back and handing me a cigar from their Rangerover humidor.... Stick it in your ear and stop driving that bloody thing round town. Why do you feel the need to drive such a huge vehicle? They are not safer as their centre of gravity is higher, ergo they are more prone to cowp going round bends.
It is too big, it makes you think you are invincible and hence makes your driving skills even less evident. Much kudos to those people in overly large vehicles who actually DRIVE OFFROAD. You can tell them apart as they are covered in muck and most definitely do not have low profile tyres.

All this ranting, it must be the global warming.

Getting older

2007-06-06T15:42:00.000+01:00

Attending the cremation of my friend's mother (a guy who is like the brother I never had, by the way) was an odd experience. It was the first time I have had to attend the funeral for a friends parent. It was marked, I thought, by the small amount of attendees on the non family side. Myself, Mrs M and Mr DJ (another old friend) were in attendance along with the guy who my friend works with on a two man team and a young apprentice (that's a three man team then I suppose.). So, work colleagues aside, that made three of us.

I was thinking maybe a lot of people couldn't get time off work or were on holiday.
Maybe I was being too nice.
Maybe, and I realise I am theorising here, all those other people who didn't show up aren't really friends at all and this is the sort of situation when one finds out who one's true friends actually are?

Hmm, maybe.

Quality not quantity, eh?

Normality lite

2007-06-05T13:35:00.000+01:00

Update- My Father in law has had an angiogram and a "stent" fitted. This is a small tube to keep an artery open so hopefully he doesn't have another coronary.

He is in fine form and is looking forward to getting home. Lookin' good so far.

I am back to work today. Straight back into a pile of admin work to boot, the other fun stuff will have to wait.

I had a dose of normality last Friday when I attended a colleagues retirement party. Much fun was had by all. I was under orders from the inlaws and Mrs M to go and enjoy myself.
It was my first serious night out on the beer since last year. (Scary when its put like that, isn't it?).

Very drunk I was. Had my camera with me and took many photos. Won't be posting any as they identify the miscreants involved very very well.

Truth be told I am wary of posting photos of people without them agreeing to it in writing.
A hangup that may or may not be a good thing. Jury still out on that one.

A good test of the 12-24 mm lens. Hmm, I like it a lot, it deals very well shooting with directly into the sun. Very sharp and the distortion at the wide end is to be expected really. Great for up close and personal people photos. Especially in crowded pubs in the 'Mena !

I also made a sale last week using the i-photo slideshow and remote control facility on the macbook. It looked very slick indeed.

Bloggorhoea.

Is there loperamide for blogging?

Upside down

2007-05-30T22:18:00.000+01:00

Monday, I found out my best friend's Mum died.
Early hours of Wednesday morning my Father-in law had a heart attack.

He's stable now, thankfully.

It's been a long day.

I'll maybe post at the weekend or something.

A surreal week.

Fountains of Wayne

2007-05-22T13:51:00.001+01:00

Last Thursday Me and Mrs M traipsed off to Dublin for a day out, meet a friend, have a nice meal and go see Fountains of Wayne play the Ambassador in Dublin.

What a great day. We got to the hotel, parked our stuff and went out to get some lunch. We ate in La Med which is a wee place in temple bar ( I know ,it is tourist hell round there) as we have been there before. A nice way to start our micro holiday. After watching the tourists take numerous pictures of the temple bar from our lunch table we ventured out into the sunshine to have a look around.

I ,of course, had been very sensible and had gone prepared for rain.

My feet were cooking in big boots and the raincoat had been left in the hotel already but no spare footwear.

We wandered the streets for a bit and I took a few pictures. Film, I'll get it developed and scanned tomorrow.

We visited the gallery of photogrpahy and I ended up buying two books on street photography.
The exhibition that was on was good too. Not great emotive subject matter but the presentation was good.

We then took off up the road and into the porterhouse where I had a pint of Wrasslers XXXX stout.

The heavens opened and blinding shafts of light emanated from above.....

That is the nicest stout I have ever tasted, beats the rest by far. It had an after taste of liquorice, but only after the first taste. It was more bitter than other stouts I have tasted but with a marvellous depth of flavour.

I only had the one pint unfortunately.

We had to go back to the hotel and get freshened up.

Then it was off to meet a friend in the IFI ( was the IFC but they changed the name ) for a drink.
Two pints later we toddled off to dinner in the Mermaid Cafe on Dame St.

A very tasty meal was had. This was our third time and we get the same table, in the window (makes it look busy) as we always eat at 6-6.30. The reason for this is we are only ever in Dublin to go see a band.

The main event then-

We got to the gig early and were able to get up the front (not something I have done in a long time) for the support (The Minutes) - pretty good. Then FOW came on and it was bloody brilliant. We were singing along and I yelled loudly after every song, so much so that Chris Collingwood dedicated "This next song to the loud guy over there" and pointed at me.

Three pints of stout and half a bottle of wine'll make me loud but I've never had that sort of response before!

They didn't play my two favourite songs but ya can't please all the people all the time etc etc.

It was a great gig though.

Stinky malinky

2007-05-16T13:32:00.000+01:00

Mrs M and I visited St George's Market in Belfast last Saturday. Some aromatic Irish cheese was purchased. So aromatic, in fact , that it had to be kept inside two different types of containment.
Goodness knows how it would smell if it was off.

Last night we sampled it along with some chutney and bread and an olive or two. A glass or three of wine also.
Cratloe, Gubbeen, Daru and a cheddar I cannot remember the name of. Of course, I couldn't remember which was which. That was before the wine as well. I liked them all, though one of them, I'm thinking maybe the cratloe or the gubbeen perhaps had a very strong flavour indeed. One of them was softer than the other and had the stronger smell. I enjoyed them, there is still plenty left, but not of the cheddar, Mrs M liked it very much.

I thought that if we didn't sit down and make a meal of it we wouldn't really eat much of it.
I have myself a little lunch planned for the weekend whilst Mrs M is off gallivanting.

It made me realise that the plastic wrapped cheese we buy from supermarkets is pretty much that, plastic. Still, it has it's place. I can't imagine eating a cheese roll with the hard cheddar we bought. I might try one of them in some cooking a la Cafe Paradiso in Cork. I did say try, my cooking is nowhere near that level of expertise. It never will be as I don't like the idea of being a kitchen worker. I wouldn't like the hours.

I had some real coffee for the first time in over three months on Saturday too. I bought some Captain Cooks coffee from SD Bell's stall in the market. Verrrry dark roast, some might say burnt.

I had one cup at 8pm on Saturday night and it was really nice.

I went to bed at 3am.

Blinkin' blimey flip !

I swear I was clenching my teeth.

....and you can buy this stuff over the counter?

Yow.

I'm saving it for weekend use only, roll on the weekend.

MAC DADDY

2007-05-13T02:26:00.000+01:00

I went and bought a Macbookpro 2.16Ghz.
Ouch, my wallet is still weeping.

Fancy looking machine. ... The Mac desktops in the shop looked really sci-fi, I thought.
I need the portability of the laptop though. It'll take me a while to get used to the new operating system as opposed to windoze. I look forward to not having to tinker under the bonnet with OS X.

Aperture seems like a good program to work with RAW, but as I said I am still learning all things Mac and the associated programs. Mrs M is jealous of the new shiny aluminium machine. I'll get it set up to go online and then she can sit with it on her knee and surf.

I also went and bought a 500GB external drive to backup my photos. Wonder how long it'll take to fill?

Teknology

2007-05-07T01:38:00.000+01:00

I need a laptop for the sole purpose of photographic manipulation.

I have weighed up my options and thought long and hard about Windows versus Macintosh.

I am not happy with all the reports I am hearing about Vista. I mean, they release a new OS and still it isn't right. I have enough fun wrasslin' with XP. ( Sarcasm, moi?) I hear that Vista makes a horlicks of RAW images metadata. Man, I can do without that kinda crap. Keepin' my head together with using all this software for my photography is enough without being the IT guy to keep it all runnin' smoooooooth.

I am gonna go and spend the money on a Macbook.

I also have an old PC that I thought I could put linux on......then I realised it doesn't have enough RAM. Fit for nuttin'. Any older versions of linux that'll run on 128MB RAM ????????

Cox's pippin anyone?