Snippet

"He extended the tube and, as he pressed the button, described a semi-circle with the instrument. Immediately the tall guardsmen toppled over like so many tenpins, and Rob stepped across their bodies and penetrated to thereception room, where a brilliant assemblage awaited, in hushed and anxious groups, for opportunity to obtain audience with the king. I hope his Majesty isn't busy, said Rob to a solemn-visaged official who confronted him"

Chocolate

It being Easter, and given that he had been running around in the heat, my 2½ y.o. was given a chocolate ice cream. Half way through he said, "Put it in the bin, please". "Don't you want any more?". "You can have too much chocolate!", he announced, and then he dropped the rest of his ice cream in the bin.

Bunnies and eggs

White and fluffy
Bouncing through the grass
Rabbits

Yellow and green
Popping through the spring cold soil
Daffodils

Pink and juicy
Filling the kitchen with aroma
Roast lamb

Brown and oval
Making your mouth water
Chocolate eggs

A Room with a View

I have a view of the glorious sunshine this morning, as well as the A3. What a glorious day. Though my 2 year old, despite loving cars, would probably argue that the other side of our building with a direct view of the Firestation, would be a more desireable location for an office.

Being a boy he loves fireengines, and trucks, and any other motorised vehicle, but being a kid of this century his current hype is babies. Would it be in-correct to buy him a doll for his birthday? I can think of several people who would think so. Out of principal, I don't think it would, but then why wouldn't I?

Surely the world has changed from the times when girls had to develop into ladies, and men into Gentlemen? Ladies being brought up to look after the house and the children, and the man to earn the living for his family?

Seasons

It was only a few weeks ago we would be building snowmen and have snowballfights, but then the snow melted and this weekend it was summer. 21°C saturday! Not that I got much oppertunity to work on my suntan, but we did have our first BBQ this year. There is something special about charcoaled sausages, which you just cannot re-create in a normal kitchen.

Sunday the summer was all over again. But considering we had just had our Easter holiday plans wrecked by the French seamen strike, we didn't spend too much energy being concerned about the weather. Do they have to block the port the one day in years we decide to cross the channel by ferry? Obviously! But there is nothing as bad as it can't be turned into something positive, somehow. We have managed to save our trip by moving the whole thing to a different date, which means we will now be driving back from our Easter holiday a day later than most of the European Community, so there should be, fingers crossed, less traffic on the road.

So apart from the fact that it will be the holiday we went to a country where the winter snow is just melting, so half-way between seasons, it will be a holiday we remember before we even go, thanks to the french obsession with national strikes.

Top o' the mornin'

Patrick, having been sold into Irish slavery from Wales, returned to Ireland after his escape to convert the Celtic Irish into Christianity. In his conversion of the Irish, the shamrock was used by welsh missionary Patrick, to explain the Trinity, the three leafs representing the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit.

I didn’t know this… But then again, I’m neither Welsh nor Irish, or particularly catholic. Though churches are at the top of the agenda at the moment due to my 2 year olds fascination with castles and hence towers, which a lot of churches have.

Roadworks

The last two miles of my 17 miles journey home last night took me 20minutes last night. There's nothing better than roadworks when all you want to do is go home and put your feet up, or in my case, feed my 2 y.o. and get him ready for bed, befoer I could put my feet up.

One of the advantages of my new job is the commute is only half the distance of my previous job, but the disadvantage so far has been roadworks, and on the rare occassions where there has been no issues due to roadworks, there seem to be an issue with peoples driving abilities.

Either you get stuck behind a super carefull driver, who thinks the fact that it may snow sometime means you should drive 10mph in a 40mph zone even though the roads are clear and comepletely dry, or you are the last car in a 5 mile backlog, due to a driver not realising the roads are slippery when there has been rain followed by frost, so they have casued an daccident, which everyone, off course, has to slow down to see. You never know, someone might have gotten seriously hurt.

I just want to get home in the evening. If I want to watch traffic I would get an appartment overlooking the M3!

I have a direct view of the motorway from my office window. It was very quiet when a truck crossed over the middle, hit a Jeep and subsequently blocked the whole road. It was closed down for most of the day!

My thoughts go out to everyone who is hurt in serious traffic accidents.

You started it. You did. You invaded Poland!

John Cleese had his own way of being diplomatic as Mr.Fawlty in Fawlty Towers. Snippet from conversation between Mr.Fawlty and his German guests: "Stop it! Can't you see my wife is upset?", "You started it", "No we didn't", "Yes you did. You invaded Poland". Or at least something along those lines. So do we punish the Germans forever for past mistakes? Do we punish all nationals of a country where serious wrong doing was comitted in the past?

I was reading somewhere about someone who had "been there, done that" when it came to WWII movies. Should we stop making movies like Shindlers List and give the Germans a second chance? Or should we keep reminding ourselves that Europeans are not innocent, so what right do we have to judge others?

Whichever, I think we should give the Germans, the French, the Muslims, and everyone else a chance, and blame the people who where to blame and not the innocent individuals.

No Tomorrow

I would wake up in the morning
I would come home from work
I would grab my red shoes
I would meet a stranger
We would eat
We would drink
We would party
We would part
I would wake up in the morning…

Before I had a family I lived life as if there was no tomorrow. That is after living life as if work was the only thing keeping me alive. Working 16 hour days, and often 5 days a week, never seemed like a big deal, at the time, but afterwards… I do not miss it… I turned on a coin and started living as if there was no tomorrow.

So in between being a workaholic and becoming all domesticated, I used to live as if there was no tomorrow. I would pick up a new date several times a week. Some I would see again, some I just wouldn’t bother with for more than the evening and whatever the night could offer. I would spend every penny I had before I even got around to doing the food shopping. Living on baked beans or cheese on toast, and alcohol and Redbull, I managed to get completely run down in 6 months. That’s when I decided to spend a couple of nights in.

The only problem with getting into the habit of not sleeping more than 3-4 hours a night, apart from the obvious sleep-deprivation, is you cannot just go back to sleeping 7 hours a night, so I would sit up browsing the internet and its chat rooms, doing my best not to pick up a date for the weekend. You can learn a lot of interesting useless stuff in some of these public chat rooms. Not that I remember any of it.

Things you didn't want to ask

My favourite,

Advert: Girbaud's poster advert
Artist: Michelangelo
Bird: Tit
Car: Ferrari
City: Rome
Colour: Red
Dress: Long skirt or dress
Dessert: Cheesecake
Experience: Life
Fish: Oranda
Food: Pizza
Footwear: High heals
Game: Monopoly
Hotelchain: Small Luxury Hotels of the World
Instrument: Piano
Juice: Tomato
Knight: Shrek
Longdrink: Campary & Orange
Mammal: Rabbit
Nemo character: Dory
Other: Life
Pen: pencil
Quote: "Travelling is living", H.C.Andersen
Road: Motorway
Sweet: Liquorice
Tree: Oak
Underwear: LaSenza
Vegetable: Broccolli
Wine: Merlot
Xray: ??
Yogurt: Toffee
Zebra: ??

Ctrl+Alt+Del

Ctrl
Control your world
Control your world
Control your world
But don’t control me
Alt
Alternative living
Alternative living
Alternative living
But no alternative for me
Del
Delete
Delete
DeleteBut don’t delete me

My Hat

My hat hangs where I live
I live in exile
by choice
I forgot
why I hang my hat
in exile
I took my hat back home
regretted every minute
since

My hat hangs where I live
I live abroad
by choice
I remember why
I hang my hat
in exile
I took my hat back abroad
am living every minute
since

Gone

I woke up this morning and thought I was still dreaming, when I heard the radio newscaster announcing the traffic news for Monday morning. They are playing, “I can’t wait for the weekend to begin” on the radio, so it must be Monday. Grey clouds, 0°C, ice on my windscreen, and we decided to go and feed the ducks on our way to nursery/work. It was refreshing, if nothing else, and despite the grey sky the lake was beautiful and the swans came from all over when we started feeding the ducks, scaring the ducks away though. A flock of 20 hungry swans can be rather intimidating when you are only 2½, but we managed to share our left over bread crumbs among them, before they started attacking each other, and splashing water all over us.
I don’t think I have ever seen so many swans in one place at a time. They where like starlings when they arrive in your back garden to raid the bird feeders, only prettier.

Being Monday, I was expecting some kind of traffic mayhem, but it failed to materialise, so I arrived in the office in plenty of time for a coffee before I even had to boot up my PC. Not that there was much actual work for me to do this morning, and this afternoon has been even slower. I did my rounds this morning, begging for work, but no one had anything they could pass over for me to do, except my boss who asked me to run a report for him, which took all of 5 minutes, including downloading, manipulating and emailing it. Anyway, I am not here to run reports and be a general dogsbody! I have been given a new date for receiving my assignments; Thursday. I’m counting the hours, or I would be, if I knew what time on Thursday I would get my assignments. Just in time for me to go on Easter holiday next Wednesday.

It's FRIDAY!

So we've all survived one more week, and in a matter of hours I'm off to celebrate the weekend :)

Red Nose Day

March 11th is the official red nose day, so we should all go around with red noses? I'm developing a cold, does that count? All that fresh air yesterday, first in the morning dropping my car off at the garage, and then again in the afternoon when picking it up. I only just made it before they locked the doors. 2 minutes later and I would have had to catch a train back, after having walked to the train station, plus I would have had to change trains, and probably get a taxi to pick my son up at his childminder. But I made it, just in time, and everything was fine, so we can safely tour northern Europe for Easter, well, part of it anyway.

But today it's Red Nose Day. Everyone is up to something silly and usually red. Fancy a baked beans bath anyone? All in the cause of charity off course.
Driving in to work this morning most of the schoolkids I passed had either sprayed their hair red, or where wearing a wig. I quite fancy colouring my hair red, but maybe Ferrari red is a little to brigth for the job? Anyway, getting a Ferrari would be much more fun, and at least as unlikely.

So what are you doing for charity? Supported the Tsunami victims? Or how about the homeless kids in London, or whatever your nearest big city is?
I did something charitable this morning, inspired by all the Red Nose supporters with red hear roaming our streets. I stopped to let a few of the red headed kids cross the road, and that even though they should really have walked 100m further along to the assigned crossing .

Lunch

It's been a slow morning. So slow in fact, that if the afternoon gets any slower I am in danger of falling asleep, and will have to go for a walk to the petrol station kiosk next door and get... something. Probably a Redbull, even though, that is not really taking my fancy at the moment. Something else then... a Kitkat? And then I could kill at least 10 minutes with the kitkash actions online. Though I would need to eat several ton's of Kitkat chocolates before I would be able to get anything usefull, so maybe not.

The dinner plan for tonight says 'bangers and mash'. But maybe I could spend the afternoon trying to be creative with the ingredients in the fridge; sausages, potatoes, ½ suede, mustard, milk, butter, yogurt, cloudberry jam, apple juice... maybe I should bake a yogurt cake with cloudberry jam? Not that my 2 y.o. son would let me use his precious yogurts for something as grotesque as a cake. So 'bangers and mash' it is. Potato and suede mash with a mustard gravy perhaps?

What's for lunch?

Something

I dropped the car of for it's service today, which was a particular non-eventfull event. Though I had opted not to get a courtesycar for the day, so I had to walk the 1 mile to the office, which was fine, as it is not freezing cold and snowing anymore. However, the fact that I only had 8 minutes to do it in was maybe a little unrealistic, considering I had to cross busy roads as well.

Being only 10 minutes late, my boss had already been and left me a note on my desk to come to his office. He must have left it before 9, or he is very relaxed about timekeeping, as he didn't mention anything. He just had a project he needed me to tidy up. So maybe today will be the day when I will be doing more than ½days worth of work? I live in hope.

D-Day

Today being the big day where I was supposed to start some real work. You would expect that after a month at the same desk. Well, I would, but then I would expect some work after two days. Bot it was not to happen. The morning was full of promises, but as the afternoon materialised the possibilities where shrinking.

So I sit here pondering again. Where does the word 'ponder' come from I wonder? Wonder with a P? Anyway, having lived in England for more than a dozen years I am by now getting used to the english. Though I am no closer to understanding them. How come, when asked, "How are you?" the answer is rarely negative, it is just not the done thing, no matter how bad you feel. But on the other hand, when the topic of the weather comes up, which it often does, 9 out of 10 it is negative. Is the weather the scapegoat for everything? and how does that work? Don't cry over spilt milk... take it out on the weather!?

1st post

So what would you like to know? What sent you here? What sent me here?

I have absolutely no idea what I am doing here, but I had to do something before the boredom sent me up the wall. Ok, so intelligent people don't get bored, you say? Well, maybe that is why I am here, to avoid being bored. What is boredom anyway? Isn't it very much individually defined? Boredom for me is when I only have one or less tasks at the time to keep my mind occupied. Like now, where I am stuck at my desk waiting for 5pm. Litterally counting the hours till the next day, where I come into the office again, and start conting over. It's a little like groundhog day, only like being chained to my desk.
But luckily it's not like that really. I'm just not used to having so little work to day, so looking forward to getting my first assignements anytime this week, preferably yesterday.
I'm going to have to start not changing jobs so often. The first few weekes in a new job always seems to drag on forever, untill I get everything up to a decent speed where time flies when you are having fun.

But this is not what you where here for I bet. Now you are really wondering why you are here!

Let me tell you something fun which happened not so many years ago;
I was walking down a street on a cold December day, and all of a sudden hot steam blew up my skirt, in best Marilyn Monroe style. As if!
I was wearing trousers, but what is all that hot steam coming up in the american pavements about?