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pretty pooey for the rest of the week.
I just hope it gets better next week. Em and I are off for a few days next week as an early anniversary present to ourselves. It’s our 10th one! A milestone in modern times. We’re going to Lincolnshire for 2 days. Around Stamford, Oakham and Rutland Water. All our old haunts. We love these places. Not much else to report at the mo. Ciao
The sun was shining when I got out of bed this morning. We had some wind and rain overnight but nothing too bad. It did appear to hit the Welsh coast and S/W England fairly strongly though. Just doing the old run-of-the-mill stuff for the rest of the day. You know, I was convinced Chuck Norris was dead. I thought he’d been dead for years! I kept wondering why people still talked about him with such relevance. Sorry Chuck! Ciao
It’s just gone midnight and all is calm here. Not sure when this “big storm” is meant to hit, but if it’s big enough it might stir me from my sleep. Another day dusted and supplies coming in an online food shop tomorrow, just in case “Armageddon” strikes.
We’re all being told to brace ourselves for the biggest storm of the year. Hardest hit will be Wales and South West England. Will it be that bad? Stay tuned. I’ll keep you posted. Ciao
Shambolic is the only word that could describe this years Children In Need. And why the hell should I be made to feel guilty for not donating when Terry Wogan can command 1500 pounds an hour for his hosting “skills”. The man is crap! He behaved as if drunk. If wasn’t taking his cues properly. He was making weird “off the cuff” remarks. He was amateurish at best.
Most of the acts were throw away. The cast of Eastenders doing Beatles songs. The Spice Grans MIMING their new single “Headlines” which sounds more like they are singing “hairlines” to me. Not 5 minutes into the show, the new Joseph lost sound on his mic when performing “Any Dream Will Do”. The sound problems continued all night. It WAS awful! I’ll never get those 7 hours back! For those of you wondering what the hell I’m talking about. Children In Need is sort of like an old style telethon in which a load of “entertaining” bits of TV are put together to get people to watch and donate money. It’s put on by the BBC each November. For more info in to: www.bbc.co.uk/pudsey
I don’t know just how long through my life I have craved to be able to arise in the morning with the birds. I’ve been a night owl for many years. Mum tells me it started from the moment I was born really. I’ve had brief dalliances into the world of the lark. Mostly when it involved being awake for SSSOOO long that I was already awake the next morning! A few times it’s happened due to jet-lag. And a few times it’s been down to pure luck and I’ve “fluked” a few weeks of larkish behaviour.
At this point in time I’m further away from being a lark than I ever have been. I was in Australia for several months at the beginning of this year. It started out well. Jet-lag allowed me to be a lark for about oh…two weeks! Then the old owl crept back in, and eventually took over. This was helped greatly by some inexplicable, freakish event that overtook my nerves and made it almost impossible for me to sleep for the rest of my stay in Oz. I was like it for weeks. Most nights I wouldn’t get to sleep until around 5-6am. If you can still regard that as night? No, it isn’t, is it?! And that’s my point. I’ve always loved the idea of waking around 6am, watching the sun come up, hearing the birds wake up. But instead that’s when I’m fast asleep from only nodding off just a couple of hours before. At the moment I’m getting to sleep around 4am. Then I’m DRAGGING myself back out again around 10.30-11.00am. If I was getting my recommended 8 hours sleep, I wouldn’t get up til midday (and on the odd occasion I do, because I’m just SSOO dog-tired)! I’m a creature of habit really. And this behaviour is habitual. It’s fueled by two things. Firstly, I can never drag myself away from TV at night. I’m always finding something to watch around 10.30-11.00pm which gets me hooked for an hour or so. Also by this time (well, use to be, not so much now), Em is asleep, so then I spend some time on the Internet. Which means I go to “bed” at any time between midnight and 1.30am. Then I don’t turn in straight away, I’ll play my Nintendo DS, or play games on my mobile phone, or listen to music. So, probably by around 3am, I’m ready to turn in. I don’t know. Sometimes I get REALLY guilty for being like this (night owl) and other times I think “why do I care”? It’s not like I’m some super-fit person or something. It’s not like if I got up early, I’d be outside with the birds or anything. I just think I’d feel better being a lark. Photo supplied by: Spirit635 under creative commons (some rights reserved)
“But I liked it!”, replies the attention-seeking, recalcitrant no-mark. Another “victim” of Celebrity Scissorhands. If you have no experience of this programme, it’s about training a group of “celebrities” (I put them in commas because unless you live in the UK and have no life “HELLO” – waves hands in the air – you will probably not have heard of ANY of these so-called celebrities) to become hairdressers/beauty therapists with around 13 years experience in just 3 weeks.
It’s all for charity. The BBC’s annual fund-raising event which is broadcast each November, called Children In Need. Last year on the night, the celebrities that remained in training styled the hair of the people taking part in Children In Need that night. This year they will be taking part in a hairdressing “show-down” where they will be performing styles in front of a panel of hairdressing and celebrity judges. The best is crowned “Celebrity Scissorhands Hairdresser of the Year 2007”. Nine “celebrities” are taking part with the assistant to head hairdresser (and trainer) Lee Stafford, being last year’s favourite, Steve Strange (of 80’s pop icons Visage). All the celebs are to train in all aspects of hairdressing and beauty therapy. So they’ll be doing anything from cutting and styling hair, to waxing, to massage, body wraps, facials, manicures and pedicures…everything. Members of the general public apply online to go into the salon to be “clients” of the celebrities. You can state your preference between having your hair cut, to having a beauty treatment, or an entire makeover. Obviously the hair cuts are the best entertainment. The celebs start cutting on day one, with absolutely NO pre-training, just a very basic “this is how you hold the scissors and this is how you make a cut” approach, and off they go! Baring this in mind, can anyone explain to me WHY someone would apply to this programme IF they are SO precious about their hair? It must be to get on TV, as there would be no other reason if you are that uptight about it. On day one, Ben Nicholas (Stingray off Neighbours) cut a ladies hair and she was getting really pee-d off. She said he’d made her “look like a boy” and so STEVE STRANGE (if you happened to watch last year, you’ll know why I put this in capitals) was sent to rectify what “butchering” Ben had caused. Trust me, the last person you want to touch your hair if it has already been butchered is Steve Strange! Suffice to say, Steve tried to “salvage” the job and for a change didn’t do too badly. But anyway, it’s FOR BLOODY CHARITY! So, you’re a big-headed love-me-do, but, you know you just happen to have a charitable side (that shines through most while you have your mug to TV it just so happens). You’re happy to apply to CS for a hair cut, because you know it’s for charity and you’ll raise some money for Children In Need. Until you’re at the salon, when Steve Strange approaches you and you rather hypocritically start to panic. You then start to forget about the little 2 year-old girl sleeping on the streets of Malawi you’re meant to be there to help because Steve has just left a big V-shaped gap in your hair. GET OVER IT! How pathetic do you look, obsessing about your hair when some child you are meant to be there for is being abused by their father while you’re there crying into your own hands because your hair looks funny. GET A GRIP!! I love the show, but why oh why do the people that end up on there get SSOO worked up about their hair? One lady, obviously wonderfully charitable, raised £5,000 to have her hair cut on the show, but was visibly unhappy with her cut. I mean, take it on the chin! You raised 5K’s! Shouldn’t you be happy? I’d be wrapped to be “Stranged” (as Steve’s cuts have come to be known). It would be a unique cut for one! Just friggin’ live with it! It’s only hair after all.[youtube=http://youtu.be/VMo6v_uFZKU]
I’ve just been listening to the local radio station. They played the new Spice Girls single. . .well, whatever. It’s totally forgettable. Unlike Kylie’s one. . .which is fab! Straight after they played the Spice Grans song they played All Saints’ Black Coffee. That song is still KILLER after all these years. They were *so* ribbed when they released Rock Steady, but it is 50 times better than the Spice Grans song. Seriously!
[youtube=http://youtu.be/kLZTlsgOdXY]
I watched this last night on TV. Thank GOD, someone put this up on You Tube. This is just brilliant. It’s from Family Fortunes (otherwise known as Family Feud elsewhere in the world).
Can you name another type of bean that ISN’T a baked bean?