We took a drive down to Mum’s today. It’s been our first opportunity to see her since she came out of hospital, and rather fitting as it was Mother’s Day too! We knew that Mum wouldn’t feel like cooking, so Ann and Lee prepared a complete meal here – a full Sunday Roast – and …
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Lunch with Sally B
Restaurant Browns – Cambridge (Photo credit: Steve Palmer (UK)) I drove over to Cambridge today and met up with Sally B. I haven’t seen her since the Wedding and it was GREAT to catch-up. We met at Brown’s (as we nearly always do!) – the service and menu was great (as it always is!) – …
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Meeting at Menzies
I drove over to Menzies Hotel and Golf Club today, near Bar Hill, to meet up with an ‘old mucker’ from my Sainsbury days – Andy Bull. We’d tried meeting a month-or-so back, but the appalling traffic scenario for me on the journey there, meant that we had to abort. We had years to catch-up …
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DVD: Source Code
It’s Saturday night and there wasn’t much to watch on the TV, so it was a perfect opportunity to dig into our Blu-ray collection of unwatched DVDs. We selected ‘Source Code’, a sort of ‘Groundhog Day’ meets ‘The Matrix’ storyline. I hadn’t heard of any of the stars in it: Jake Gyllenhaal and Michelle …
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The Cats are 7 Today
Biscuit and Bon-Bon are seven years old today, so here is an update of them both. A few years back, it was a rarity, if either of them jumped onto our lap – now it’s a semi-regular occurrence (although Bon-Bon hardly stays there for longer than a few minutes, Biscuit is more than content to …
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Posh Spice – The Exotic Dining Experience
Jo, Janet, David, Val, Ann and I headed for The Exotic Dining restaurant in Kettering tonight. Cunningly hidden upstairs above the shops in Newland Street, no wonder we’d never stumbled on it before. Jo and Janet had been before, but for the rest of us, it was our first visit. A bit of prior research …
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Ordinary Ordinals
My day-job requires me sometimes to be a bit of a ‘wordsmith’. My word-processor of choice is the mighty Microsoft Word, but one of my pet irritations is the way Microsoft Word adds the date to your document when you use the ‘insert date & time’ feature. 01 March 2012 is one example. I just …
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Mum’s sorted!
After an extended stay at King College Hospital – plus a few ‘false-starts’, (where we thought a solution was on the cards, only to find that ‘others’ were able to jump the queue), Mum seems to have been sorted. Looks like they’ve done some work on Mum’s arteries and she should be discharged in the …
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First Service – Vauxhall Insignia
‘Ziggy’ went in today for its first service – I’ve covered just over 11000 miles. I’m continually impressed by the standard of customer service at my local Vauxhall Dealer – Forest Gate, Kettering. For a volume manufacturer, they demonstrated all the right moves – happy smiley people, small talk, efficiency and a good explanation of …
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Family Lunch – The George, Buckden
What a change in the weather! After worrying about the lawn drying-out over the past month or so, today began and ended with: rain, rain and more rain!For lunch, we headed over to The George at Buckden. We’d been there a few times before, so we were confident the food was going to be good. …
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DVD: The Bank Job
After our recent run of duff DVDs (Drive and Black Swan), we decided to watch this latest acquisition – The Bank Job – not really knowing much about it. Set in London in the 70s and starring Jason Statham plus a host of other well known Brit actors including Keeley Hawes and David Suchet, it’s …
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Lent Boy (2012)
For those who asked – here is my list of banned substances for the period of Lent in 2012. It’s a longer list than in 2011! …and 2010 … and 2009 (but that’s the idea, as I try and grow the list each year by 3-4 items). There is always quite a bit of debate …
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Tech Alert No. 1138: Sky on your Smartphone
This is cool… and free… and launched today. If you’ve got a Sky package and an Android phone (well, most newer ones) you can now watch Sky programmes on your mobile. Just go to the Android Market and search using ‘sky’ as your criteria.
Cinema: The Artist
We picked up Lee and dropped into the local Odeon tonight to see ‘The Artist’. This is the film that was made to look like an old black-and-white silent movie and tells the story of an artiste struggling to make the transition to the ‘talkies’. It’s not always a good sign when you hear that …
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South of the Pacific in Birmingham
Nick and Celina joined us for the weekend. it was Celina’s birthday and as a surprise, we’re all went off to Birmingham to see the stage production of South Pacific. (Wiki entry about South Pacific is HERE)Nick and Celina arrived about noon and we hurried down a quick snack before jumping in the car and …
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TV’s Hustle – Last ever episode
I just watched last night’s last-ever episode. Predictable? Maybe! Although not quite such a quizzical ending as the recent Sherlock finale, I thought it did the script-writers proud and brought the series full-circle. Shame it’s now finished, as IMO it was always a very watchable programme …and family friendly too. #hustle
A Taste of…
India! We met up with Paul and Sue at the Taste of India in Rothwell tonight. This restaurant was probably the first one we discovered when we moved to Kettering all those years ago. Since then, admittedly, we sort of forgot about it, preferring Mazza’s simply because it’s closer to home (well, at least it …
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Happy Valentine’s Day
Hope you had a good one! ..and when I say Ann is my rock, what I mean is…
DVD: Black Swan
First of all, ‘hats-off’ to Natalie Portman, who carried off the lead role in Black Swan very convincingly. It can’t have been the easiest of parts to study for, and she looked very credible in all the dance scenes. Now to the story: Those expecting to see that nice girl from Star Wars as a …
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Lunch with Denis and Bev
There’s cool weather, cold weather, freezing weather and TODAY! When Ann, Lee and I left for Lincoln, Ann’s car was saying it was –8C outside – it certainly felt like it and I don’t think I’ve ever felt so cold. As we drove a few miles through Weekley, the gauge plummeted to –11C. That’s right …
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Tech Alert: No. 1123: “I Hate you Butler!”
You wait for ages for one to come along… ..and then possibly the most useful Android app for a long while makes its appearance! If you live in London, or work there, or travel to the Capital once in a while. and have to get a bus from A to B, (that’s me!) this app …
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Snow!
Overnight, we had some significant snowfall here. As always, the roads are already chaos, some trains are cancelled and so are around 30% of flights out of Heathrow. So, it was good to see we took the situation seriously – and made a snowman!!!
Snow Patrol
After 2-3 inches of snow that fell during Saturday evening, we were debating the disadvantages of owning a WHITE cat! 🙂 First snow of 2012
Tech Alert No. 977: “Phone me some music”
OK, so here’s the challenge. You’ve got a lovely up-to-date smartphone and you’ve managed to put a load of MP3s on it. Up ‘til now you’ve been very happy listening to your tunes through some ear-buds or headphones. For many, that’s all that’s required for a great musical experience. Trouble is, some of us (of …
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No Pressure Then!
When the Wet-Room was completed a few months back, we soon realised that the whizzy-tap-with-no-knobs-on-you-just-hold-your-hands-near-the-tap-and out-comes-the-water was going to be a pain in the a** to live with! The problem? Unbeknown to any of us, it was only suitable for high pressure systems, and being upstairs where the water pressure is very low, the water …
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Great App for Android Phones
If you need to find the cheapest price for something, this is a great app. …and it’s. FREE! Check Out “Idealo”
“I have a Dream (Weaver)”
Well, that’s sorted Julie’s web-site out nicely. The site is already up and running but I’ve I’ve now put all the source files onto her PC so that she can use Dreamweaver to update it all more easily Job done!
Meal with Ian and Mags: The Encore
I drove over to Stratford-upon-Avon to meet up with Ian. He’d asked for my help with a thorough review of all his technology. We aimed to determine what he needed to integrate his music, data files, photographs in the most efficient way in preparation for his retirement – we also talked about the best sort …
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Oliver’s Birthday/Get together with Gill and Chris
It’s Oliver’s birthday today and we drove down to Duxford Air Museum to meet-up with the Jedi-Knight himself with Roger & Jane. Wow! the Museum has changed – we haven’t been there for 20 years or more and there was so much more to see and do – simply brilliant! We started off in Hangar …
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Moving Tenerife!
A bit of a ‘tech’ afternoon here today. I spent a hour-or-so ‘moving’ a friend’s website files from their temporary home (a sub-folder on my website) to their very own shiny new web-space, courtesy of those nice people at 1 and 1. So, if you want to test-drive it, (oh, and book a holiday in …
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