I was built by a team of scientists, trying to create an insane robot...but it looks like they failed!

It’s all go in this part of the world, firstly Hythe high street is under threat, yes, threat! Due to the plans to build a Sainsbury’s on the site of the old seeboard offices. Hythe has two supermarkets, Waitrose and Aldi, does Aldi count as a supermarket? Both do everything that Sainsbury’s offer although Aldi doesn’t have butchers. There is a perfectly good local butcher on the high street. There’s also a blooming good fruit and veg shop. If the new shop opens, it will seriously damage the traders on the high street. It will result in more shops going out of business; it will leave a few of the more expensive shops, which will also fail as fewer people visit the high street. Whilst I rarely shop in Hythe but I do have a vested interest in one retailer, the shop where I oversee the gaming group. If that goes under I will be very sad, primarily because a good friend’s livelihood will have been lost. Secondly because I really look forward to and enjoy running the group. It would also mean that the guys would be without a structured gaming venue. I have been told that the planning permission has been suspended pending a court inquiry. One of my friends spoke to the MP for the constituency of Folkestone & Hythe asking him for his views on the matter. Mr Howards response was that he does “not get involved in local affairs!” is it me or does that sound a little odd? The local government representative is not prepared to involve himself in an issue which is going to affect around 2 -300 voters. Oh dear Mr Howard, come the next election you may find yourself looking for a new constituency. Of course him being matey with members of the Sainsbury family has no influence in his decision at all.

On a lighter note I covered the shop today, leaving the gamers to get on with it. I still had to threaten them with being eaten occasionally. Of course this has no effect on them, aside from the exact opposite. They usually roar with laughter and feign fear. The little monkeys! January has not been a good month by way of trade for the shop. People are still feeling the crunch after Christmas which means that they’re not going into town or if they do, they leave the little darlings at home. However, the first few weeks after Xmas usually means that the little darlings have oodles of cash that’s burning holes in their pockets. Of course the best place for them to part with the dosh is the shop. This is pretty much what happened today. Lots of little cherubs wanting to know more about 40k, which army is best, what paints do they need and so on. I am, of course, duty bound to give them the best advice I can and separate them from their little portraits of the Queen. The result of the day was a good end of day figure. That should please the proprietor when I take her bag down to her. Another upside of covering the shop is that, although I don’t get paid for the Saturdays I cover when herself is away. I do get stuff; this has made it very easy for me to amass such a good and varied collection.

Whilst I was at the shop I got a call from a friend saying that he was having trouble connecting to the internet. So off I went to see my bud Roger, on inspecting his computer set up I discovered that the Ethernet cable had broken at the connection and beyond my ability to repair it. Fortunately he has a wireless network card in the pc. After a bit of fiddling with WEP codes and authorisation keys I finally managed the PC to Rogers wireless router and left him a happy bunny. Then off to meet up with Trudes at her folks for tea cake. Woo hoo! Then home to feed the masterful moggie. His royal feline cuteness was as pleased to see me as ever. People who don’t like cats just won’t get how comforting being a cat owner is. You never truly own a cat; they just lodge with you until the food and the fussing run out. So far everyone who’s met my mogs has liked him, not difficult to understand considering what a great little chap he is. He does like a lap!

Tomorrow I have to make time for Obi Kat, so I’ll use the time to watch Most Haunted – The Live Series; it should be worth a giggle. Although it’s not as enjoyable as it was when Derek was in it, it’s still a very amusing pile of tosh. Well that’s tomorrow sorted, just Monday and Tuesday to get through before I have a day of to visit the 2010 toy fair which I am rather looking forward to. There’s a slim chance that I may skip out a bit early to have a quick wander through the Waterhouse and Dinosaur galleries at the Natural History Museum and a quick browse around the museum shops, the feathered Tyrannosaurs look rather cool.

In closing I leave you with this little gem:

If electricity comes from electrons, does morality come from morons?

If you’re living on the edge, you’re taking up too much room!

I sit here with the telly blabbering away incessantly, my main squeeze is compiling a shopping list for oriental type grub and I really fancy chocolate ice cream. Sadly it’s yet another item of food that has been relegated to the forbidden list. I’m seeing an old friend in a couple of weeks who has had diabetes for as long as I’ve known him, so I may pick his brains about how he copes. I remember him once saying that he even has to be careful with something as innocent as a grape.

I know that I prattle on a bit but it’s still a bit of a shock, I’m never ill, ok I get the odd cold or my back plays up now and then. But my last sick day was about 8 months ago. I surprise myself really, my managers are always going on about the fact that they eat healthy and exercising and blah blah blah! But they’re often off because they’re sick or their children are ill. Before I continue I must stress that I think the world of my managers, I couldn’t ask for better employers, they also have the most adorable kids. My rant here is the fact that they are so often ill. From the way I see it, living a healthy lifestyle should make you healthy. Here’s me, overweight, over 40, living on a diet of tea, sugar and lard and I’m never, well hardly, ill. Ok so I have high blood pressure and diabetes, but that’s my fault. It’s down to the way I’ve lived my life. Yes, if I scoffed less in the way of fast food and more in the way of green grub I wouldn’t be in the condition I’m in. But hey what’s done is done, is it too late to change? Probably not. The big question is do I want to change? Well that remains to be seen.

On a brighter note, I’m emotionally healthy. I have a wonderful girl in my life, and she cares deeply about me, and I feel the same way about her. I have some remarkable friends who do not judge me, when you consider that some of them have seen me at my lowest and most ridiculous. So I thank my friends for all the support they’ve given me over the years. You know who you are! I also wish one in particular a safe and happy journey on the road to his new life. I will miss him when he goes, I know that we don’t speak much, but he knows that I’m always about should he need me, all he has to do is pick up the phone.

It’s funny that eleven months ago things weren’t very positive, and I was heading down a very steep road to a very dark place. The realisation came when I went to bed at night hoping I didn’t wake up and I was almost angry with the fact that I had woken up. I felt as though I served very little purpose. But that all changed with the arrival of, oddly enough, Obi Kat at first. Then things between Tea and me grew and well the rest is history. It just goes to show that you never know what’s around the next corner. So I’m glad that I didn’t give in to some of the thoughts I had a few months ago.

A bit deep this one, probably not a good idea to publish as it may give a few people ammunition, but this is, as I often point out, my blog space. So if you don’t like it, naff off!

So all in all I’m a much happier bunny than I was and my life has taken a turn down a new road that appears to lead to a brighter future. So here’s to the future, raise your glass and wassail!

Until next time dear reader(s).

May you find a large slice of the happiness cake, with marzipan and icing? Yummo!

 

I’ve just seen on the telly box that channel 4 are going to run a documentary about the recent cold weather the blurb on it is “Early 2010 has been one of the coldest winters in Britain for decades. This documentary examines what has happened and why, the consequences, and what weather we can expect in the future.”

Um let’s think about this for a minute, it’s January, we live on an island just over a thousand miles from the Arctic Circle. The wind for the first two weeks of the month was coming from the north east, and a region of high pressure was sitting over the north Atlantic. As a result of this it got cold! Can we expect this kind of weather in the future, well DUH! This reminds me of a time when I was waiting for a bus, two elderly ladies were having the standard old persons moan about everything from the price of tea and small yappy dog food. I overheard them talking about that year’s summer, 2007. It had been particularly rubbish, it rained, a lot! Anyway one of the old dears pointed out this fact, the other agreed that the weather had been terrible but then ended the statement with the words, and I kid you not! “Someone really should do something about it!” ok first off, who? secondly, what?

Predicting, sorry, forecasting the weather is sketchy at best. In reality any forecast can only be accurate for 24 to 36 hours, beyond that there’s little point. Weather patterns are the finest example of the chaos theory you’re ever going to see. The best forecasts I’ve ever heard were from Jeremy Paxman and a KMFM dj. Paxman had been told that Newsnight was to include a weather forecast at the end of the show, much to Paxmans chagrin, but he soldiered on and his forecast went something like this. “it’s April, what do you expect!” the dj advised his listeners to look out of the nearest window, he then said that it would be like that, in this case slightly overcast, for the next hour at least. I read on a friend’s blog a week ago that the ecomentalists are no longer worried about global warming, as the recent weather is a clear indication that we’re heading into a short ice age. Well here’s a bit of news for you regarding ice ages. As long as there’s ice on the planet, we’re in an ice age!

Ice age implies the presence of extensive ice sheets in the northern and southern hemispheres; by this definition we are still in the ice age that began at the start of the Pleistocene (because the Greenland and Antarctic ice sheets still exist).

Right, I'll put my soap box away for now

ta ta.