Wedding Anniversary

Yesterday was our second wedding anniversary. I cannot believe the time has gone by so quickly! It ended up being quite a busy day for me, hence writing about it today!

When I finished my night shift, on the way home I stopped off at Sainsbury's and bought some flowers and chocolates for my wife. The look of pleasure on her face as I handed them to her as I stepped into the house gave me a real sense of pride and happiness! Then I went to bed, alone, and slept until 3pm.

Immediately, I got up, my wife and I drove over to Olney to pick up a mahogany office desk, for our daughter to use for her studying. We brought it home about 5pm, and set it up in the spare bedroom for her.

Next, my wife and I set out to go to a Carvery restaurant for a celebration meal. My wife liked the location of the restaurant, and the quality of the food, and she wants to go back there again, only with all 3 of us next time!

Back home, it was gift giving time. My wife gave me a silver tie clip. I gave my wife a bottle of "Guerlain Idylle" perfume, and we received from our daughter 2 wedding anniversary champagne flutes!

We then sat down with a glass of Baileys each, and watched a movie together. I chose the movie "Along Came Polly", but my wife was not very impressed with the movie. I still haven't quite found the type of romantic film she likes to see, but hopefully, I will get it right through a process of elimination. After all, if I stay alive long enough, I should have the next 40 years or so to work it out!

Recently viewed

I managed to watch all three films over a period of 3 days. Having read the book many years ago, I am pleased that these films are a very accurate rendition of the original book.

It is a shame that another series of books have been completely ruined when brought to life as a TV series. I am a great fan of the author Terry Goodkind, and his Sword of Truth series.

When I heard that Sam Raimi had persuaded Terry to allow him to create a TV series of the books, I had high hopes that he would follow the books closely, the way that Peter Jackson did with the Lord Of The Rings, or the Harry Potter films.


Unfortunately, Disney and the ABC Studios offered a deal that was too good to miss, and Sam lost overall control of the way the series would be made.

Because the American writers get bonuses for original work, and not for transcribing the original storyline, they have to change the story to get their pay. Consequently, all the sub plots, and the events that drove Terry Goodkind's first book "Wizards First Rule" at the edge of your seat wanting to know what happens next, was completely destroyed by the screenwriters.


Now all that is left is the names of the characters, and very little else. I hope that one day, someone else will faithfully reproduce Terry's story as it should have been made, and Disney's fiasco will disappear, the way the first attempt at Lord Of The Rings did back in 1978.

The waiting game starts today

After a very restful evening yesterday, cuddled up to my wife on the sofa, I found it a real struggle to go to sleep. Partly this was because I worked a night shift on Saturday, and once home, slept until 4pm. I eventually crawled into bed just after midnight.

Now I don't think it was a very warm night, but I found myself bathed in sweat by 3am! And no, I didn't have a duvet over me! You might think it was because of the wine I drank yesterday, I certainly considered it a possible cause, except I break out in a sweat with the slightest exertion, and the wine was drunk over 4 hours before I went to bed.

I did have some strange dreams though. I dreamt that I had to take my wife to work, and the place where she worked was surrounded by a thick hedge of low gnarled trees and bushes. There was only one way in and we had to duck our heads, and twist our way through the trees to get to the entrance of the Hotel.

Now I wonder whether some of my dreams have any connection to today. At some point today, I have the Electrician coming to fix one of my circuit breakers. When I had the adventure of the burst hot water tank earlier, we had to get an Electrician to come and check the wiring where the water had poured through. There was nothing wrong with any of the wiring that got soaked. He did find that the main RCD breaker didn't always trip when the test button was used. He said it was probably through us not testing it once every 3 months as we are supposed to do. So he decided to replace it with a new one. Now I know this RCD works, because every time we plug the iron in to do some ironing, the bloody thing trips! Suddenly there is no power to the whole house!

I bet that when the Electrician turns up today, that the RCD breaker will NOT trip when I plug the iron in, just to spite us!

Sometime today I hope that someone will come to pay me for my old Landrover Discovery. He was the highest bidder for it on E-Bay on Friday, and he said he would come and pay for it today. It's hard to believe that I have had that car for 10 years, and did 200,000 miles travelling! What is even more worrying, is I never went abroad with it!

My wife is hoping that I will take a piece of the old carpet from our en-suite shower room and put it into the airing cupboard to replace the water damaged one. This is something that needs to be done, but somehow I have got to try and find the enthusiasm to get started. Thinking about what I will need to do is definitely not raising my motivation! Perhaps if I sit here and try to ignore it, my wife will forget to remind me. Then again, I think that will be a very unlikely option!

My patience is almost in shreds!

It all started a few weeks ago. I had a neighbour knock on my door.

"Your hedge round the side of your house needs to be cut back. When are you going to do it?" He said.

"Er, hopefully later this week, if the weather is fine. Thanks for letting me know." I replied.

Of course, every time I had a day off, the weather put a stop to any possibility of making a start, until last Wednesday, 9th September.

The weather was beautiful, I had a couple of days rest from work, so I started to cut the hedge. That's when I ran into trouble. First I found that the hedge trimmer I had had for 20 years, just wasn't up to the task of cutting the woody stems of the hedge. So after searching the Internet, I finally decided to purchase a new on from Homebase, as I would also get an extra 5% discount off my household bills next month.

So far, so good. Then the garden shredder, I had, started to play up. It kept jamming. Every time I switched it off to clear the jam, it then wouldn't start again for another 10 minutes. I was steadily getting more, and more frustrated and annoyed with the machine. I couldn't continue to cut the hedge, without shredding the cuttings, as I only had a limited amount of space left in my wheelie bin!

On Friday, I finally lost patience, and decided to replace the shredder. Again, I searched the Internet, and I found that Homebase had a Sovereign shredder on special offer for only £120. Again I thought the £40 discount from the shop, plus the 5% discount on my home bills was a pretty good bargain. So off I trundled to the local Homebase store and brought home my new shredder. When I first started to use it, it seemed to work alright. Then my wife came out to help me, and that is when things started to go wrong.

This shredder had a capture bin for the waste. My wife didn't notice it was getting full, and continued to add more branches into the hopper. Eventually she could put no more in. Now this machine is supposed to automatically stop when the bin gets full. It didn't. After 10 minutes of clearing out the debris, I started up the machine again. This time, the machine would not shred the material at all! That was when I discovered that the cutting adjuster was broken!

I took the machine back to Homebase on the same day that I had bought it. They immediately exchanged it for a new one. I went home that evening, vowing I would return the next day with the shredder in it's box unopened, and try and get a refund, as I was not impressed with it's ability to do the job. My wife, persuaded me to give this new machine a try, as she thought that she might have been the cause of the previous machine failing. So, the next day, I assembled the shredder, and gave it a try.

Immediately, I discovered that this machine would not shred anything. No matter how much I tried to adjust the cutters, it simply just kept feeding the branches straight through into the capture bin! This time, when I took it back to Homebase, I got a full refund.

Now my old shredder, had been a Bosch model, and it had worked fine for about 10 years without any problems. I decided that I would go for another Bosch model this time. I spent an evening searching the Internet, to find which one would best suit my needs. I finally settled on one of the top of the range shredders, that will be happy to mulch leaves, as well as thick, woody, branches. My only problem was that I could not find any shop that had this particular model in stock. They all seemed to have sold out! So I have had to order it from an online retailer. Hopefully, it will arrive within the next few days, and I can then continue to cut the bloody hedge again!

Currently Reading

Synopsis: They watch you through mirrors.....

'Your mother was twenty-seven when it came to her. Now you're twenty-seven, and it's come to you.'

The skin of Alex's arms tingled with goose bumps. By her twenty-seventh birthday insanity had come to his mother...

Turning 27 may be terrifying for some, but for Alex, a struggling artist living in the mid-western United States, it is cataclysmic. Inheriting a huge expanse of land should have made him a rich and happy man; but something about his birthday, his name, and the beautiful woman whose life he had just saved, has suddenly made him - and everyone he loves - into a target. A target for extreme and uncompromising violence...

Where do you turn when your own reflection spells doom?

This book was a birthday present from my wife, and I am already halfway through the book already! If you have read Terry Goodkind's Sword Of Truth series, you will find this book has some connections to the series. I will have finished this book by the end of this week, and then I will have to wait for another year before I can read the next instalment! Damn!!

Today's a special day for me.

Once again, I have reached another milestone, or is it millstone, in my life. Today is the day when I will be inundated with offers from companies who cater for the more senior end of the age cycle. I HATE being constantly reminded that I am now over 50 years old!

My daughter, once again has completely surprised me with this birthday video clip. I did not realise that the Beatles had even done this. I think it must have been from one of the BBC recordings, or from one of their special records given out to only their fans each year.

I should have a fairly quite day today, just taking my wife to and from work, my daughter to and from school, trimming the garden hedge... Now that is going to take the best part of the day to do! It is a glorious sunny day, so it will actually be quite nice to do. I may even get a bit of sunburn for my efforts!

This evening, I am being taken out to a Chinese Restaurant for a birthday meal. Yum, yum!

Oh and one last thing, yesterday, I have finally completed my en suite shower project, and here's the picture to prove it!

My next project is to wallpaper the hallway, stairwell, and upper landing. I might do this on my next holiday in October, unless we all go away for a real holiday instead!

Golden Oldie Song of the Week

Some light humour!

My daughter found a website that does strange things to pictures! When she showed them to us we fell about laughing. Here are a few of the ones we found amusing, or interesting.



This one is of my daughter.









This is my wife. I didn't realise that she was a time traveller!












This is me during the swinging sixties!






I haven't quite worked out where this advert is in the world, but it looks strangely familiar