Off to sunnier climes

Bye guys, off to sunny Cyprus at 6am tomorrow.See you in a fortnight!

In defence of Cadburys

As you may be aware, Cadburys, the manufacturer of positively my favourite chocolate in the whole world, are being taken for a considerable sum of money because of the Salmonella scare in one of their products. Now, I dont know all the details, I will read up AFTER I have written this, (as is my way) but I write to defend the one comment I have heard.
Some poor feckless employee has had the affrontary to say that " a little bit of Salmonella was not considered to pose a risk to the general public."
This has caused an outcry.
Why? I say.
Again , WHY?
Any microbiologist worth their sort knows that in order to have an outbreak of food poisoning, a certain bacteriological burden is required in the contaminated material. This does not amount to 1 or 10 or 100 or even a 1000 organisms but many many more.Even for old, infirm and infants.
Salmonella is indeed an indication of faecal pollution and certainly should not be there but Im hoping that Cadburys would have gone on to identify the source of the contamination and deal with it.
In this day of vastly improved isolation and detection techniques, I suspect, only suspect you understand, that Cadburys would be able to detect far fewer organisms than were necessary to cause a serious panic.
So, give the guys a break, preferably with a bar of the divine cadburys dairy milk.
I may have to eat my words when Ive read up on the case ....if only it were cadburys.

St Tropez or Chavvy orange

Heather and I are going to get a spray tan on Friday afternoon...schools out yippee!

Im off to Cyprus for two weeks next Monday and I couldnt be bothered to cream myself all over with holiday skin ...too much flesh, Id need about a dozen bottles.

THIS IS ME...HONEST! (fingers crossed)

My friend Sheila , aka Mrs Bling, gets her tan from a salon when she goes to functions requiring her to bare her shoulders (?!) so I thought I would give it a whirl so that my pasty white flesh doesnt look quite so pasty in a swimsuit. When I booked it over the phone, it raised not a titter when I told the woman I didnt want to end up looking like an orange. Just stony silence.

I had to tell her that I was teasing her , to which she replied "Oh, I see."

Not a very good start.She'll probably have a bottle of dark mahogany tan ready and waiting when we get there.

Strange co -incidence or....?

I would really like someone to work out and let me know the probability of this. You know when you keep seeing the same person, at totally different times of the day or night? Or do you know?! Theres this guy who the boys and I have nick named " The walking man"He always seems to be walking along local roads whenever we are out either driving or walking ourselves.

HANG ON...I THINK I RECOGNISE THIS GUY!



Now, the times and days vary because I definitely am not a creature of habit.He obviously lives locally and possibly works locally but what are the chances of this sighting of him being so frequent? I go from one weeks end to the next without catching sight of a neighbour or friend yet this man, keeps cropping up.He even walked by the other day whilst I was talking to Terry the twitcher and we both said "sorry" for being in each others way. So now weve made contact.Chris saw him drinking at the SU bar in Brunel when he was there, somewhere Chris rarely goes. Hes either a guardian angel or a stalker...or maybe just an ordinary guy who likes to walk.Chris thinks his job is testing trainers.He could even be right.

Down my road

Not- so- evil Bob is at it again. This time he has submitted full plans and wants planning permission to actually BUILD a bungalow. Well, nothing has changed except that my road is one in an area of recently designated " special local character".I guess that makes us one step down from a triple s i. Anyway, it means that not so evil Bobs proposed development doesnt really fit in with the big scheme. Not only that...theres no damn room for it! No one would mind if he was building it for himself or his mum or daughter but we all know that he will sell it immediately to make a profit.

A SLIGHT EXAGGERATION..BUT YOU GET THE PICTURE



Now, whilst I have no objection to making a profit...Im as capitalist as the next person...I really dont want my quality of life threatened by this carport/crossover/stopping light/construction site which will be right next door.



Terry the curtain twitcher got some signatures anyway and now it will have to go to panel.
Even Derek the brick signed although he did his usual Jobs comforter bit with "he'll get it anyway".Yes, well if we all took that attitude ,Hitler probably would have won the War!

Of moscows mules , Tennyson Down and the Great wall of China

YARMOUTH IOW

A VERY OLD VIEW OF ORCHARD STORES

aka Arkwrights to us.

Its been a while since I blogged, apologies to my hundreds of readers, millions of publishers and positively billions of film producers falling over themselves and drooling with anticipation at the film that could be made of this blog........uh? where am I ?? .......sorry ...in my dreams...



Anyway, time for an update. As my loyal follower(s) and friend(s) know, the Isle of Wight, that lovely little piece of England where time stood still for 30 years before it caught up again, is visited on a yearly basis by yours truly and the gang ..aka the 2x4's (dont ask).

FIELD HOUSE IOW

This year is no exception and Mucky, Legs, BJ and Stubb wended (?) their way to the ferry at Lymington last Saturday lunchtime. Alisson and Jim, our long suffering hosts, were pre warned of our imminent arrival. In fact they agreed to us staying for another 4 days in spite of the fact that they knew exactly what to expect.Well, not EXACTLY because our gang thrives on doing at least one more ridiculous thing every year. Nevertheless, we had not been shunned by these generous folk , although we would not have been surprised to find a note on the door saying they had moved to unknown climes.



A wonderful ferry crossing, brilliant blue skies , no rain or Tsunamis and a great walk to Freshwater to our wonderfully luxurious and welcoming home for 4 days which also must have the most comfortable beds in the world.Im sure the mattress is filled with the down , hand plucked from the backs of extinct dodos or some such creature. This is essential as BJ and I share a bed (we've been together long enough so its allowed) and we are two magnificent specimens of womanhood with a combined tonnage of around 100 .Having a bed that doesnt even move when one gets out is superb.

FRESHWATER BAY

Check out the link to Field House, Pound Green, IOW, in my "chains"
Wondrous food with Jim as a most solicitous host and Alisson being very indulgent with us and we were set for the four days. We had a quiz, raced butterflies and laughed loads, I DO mean loads.

Tennyson down was as beautiful as ever and we managed to squeeze in a cream tea. We got caught in a 10minute downpour on Afton Down, the abiding memory of which will be Mucky attempting to get Legs into her see through plastic poncho that was really nothing more than a very large polythene bag whilst the wind flapped it everywhere and BJ watched in the shelter of the tea shop thinking "oh there they are, poor loves" Yes, thats ALL she did! Not rush out to rescue us or anything . I know it would have been futile but...thats not the point!

We met up with another resident of Alisson and Jims, a very jolly lady called Jean.Well, she was jolly by the time we left.I think the poor woman had been seeking some peace but she made the mistake of booking the same time us us which then made peace unattainable.

She did say she enjoyed it and that laughter was the best medicine,.I still cant help feeling she may have been a tad overwhelmed!
Food at the Vine , the local pub , was the order of most evenings. One evening was spent at the Fatima tandoori where the waiter steadfastly refused to acknowledge that he remembered us.Im sorry, but I just cant believe that we havent made such an impression over the five years that he didnt at least want a one way ticket back to Pakistan! Anyway, the food was great.

The greatest evening was indeed spent in the Vine at the Monday night quiz.Our illustrious hosts and , by this time, totally overwhelmed Jean, came with us and it made the evening all the more special. We ate there again , with great food except that Jean had to eat a beef madras, thinly disguised as a chicken balti.I dont think her stomach will ever be the same!

We thought thatAlisson was fraternising with the enemy at one point but it turns out that she knew some people down there. Jim kept his own council.We did OK except for one or two dodgy answers that we really wanted to dispute like the Great wall of China being 160 km long ...well give or take a few thousand Jim said! This and the 10 correct answers given by some cheating residents (they were using their mobile to access the internet.) to an impossible snowball when clearly they were in the shallow end of the gene pool (not my comment but from one of our group who shall remain nameless) made Jim cross and he turned from quiet scotsman into BRAVEHEART!

We will get them next year, never fear Jim!
Im running out of steam and superlatives but thanks guy(s) and gals, it was quite an adventure yet again. It gets better every year. Watch out for the pics.Ill post them when I can. Hasta la vista IOW.

BALLYBUNTAL...dohh! Why didnt I know that?!

Sunday afternoon...and I should be doing something else!

This is so addictive! Ive just spent an hour answering emails and going onto my facebook account and commenting on others. I really should be doing something else like ironing or cleaning. Yawwwnn! Anyway, a little update.
A really sadistic device, an electronic fly killer was purchased the other day.I wasnt impressed and I said so.However, Ive just spent another 10minutes using the damn thing.
Now the house is filled with the aroma of frying invertebrates, along with roast lamb.
I need forgiveness again I think.