Tornado??!!

One of my long held life ambitions has been to experience a tornado, the weather/windy kind not the aircraft, though I wouldn't turn an opportunity to do that down either!

Well, WOW, maybe I just experienced a life ambition in a small way, right here, on my way home from work in little old England!!!

So what happened? I had just parked up outside the house on my return from white van hell, when the heavens opened, I mean this was instant and absolutely torrential rain where previously there had been nothing.


I was still in my parked car so I turned on my wipers to see. Moments later all hell seemed to break loose, there had been a slight breeze but suddenly there was mayhem on a small scale. Leaves recently shed from the trees advanced up the road at me in a rapid spiralling motion, recycling bins were lifted into the air, a good 15 foot high, and rained down around me (one hit the car....don't ask, I haven't dared look yet), their lids became detached and the contents became airborne and twirling at high speed everywhere..... and then there was the sound.....immediate, thunderous but not thunder, like nothing I've ever heard before.

The whole incident lasted maybe a minute, I wanted to get out of the car and video it but I couldn't open the door against the wind so I just sat, not quite sure what I was watching, thinking WOW...WOW...WOW......amazing....absolutely amazing!!!

....and then as fast as it had arrived it was gone, leaving only heavy rain and a mess of bins, papers, leaves and loose road signs in it's wake.

A tornado? I don't know, I'm not meteorologist and I didn't see it approach but it seemed suspiciously like a little tiny one to me.....anyone hear any reports of any in the U.K. today?

Whatever it was it was pretty cool, pretty amazing stuff and has reinforced my wish to go on a storm chasing holiday someday!

Wow....just wow!

Next please

That's the next weekend to which I am referring, I've kinda had enough of this week already, I know, it's only Wednesday but somehow it's not turning into one of my better of this years 52!

I'm not really sure why but I have the 'right hump', I'm tired, miserable and cold, I've had a bloody headache for days and I am completely without any single iota of motivation!

I'm sick to death of the white van and all it entails, I've had enough of making sodding sandwiches and given the option (which of course I'm not) I would happily sit in a warm corner somewhere and sulk for a while.

I have tried all the usual tricks for cheering myself up...to no avail, even a small amount of retail therapy (which I can ill afford, don't start me on the finances issue!) has been unsuccessful along with the usual chocolate therapy, more failure.

Yup, I need it to be the weekend, I need to play for a day or two.......


....and if anyone dares mention PMT....just don't! ;o)

Motivation!

For more and better go HERE! ;o)

Silly me!

Home office minister Liam Byrne, who has campaigned for road safety extensively, was today convicted of using a hand held mobile phone whilst driving.

In mitigation of his behaviour he said in a letter to the court that he was taking "an important call on a deportation matter"!

I seem to have missed the piece in the legislation that allows for that.

Oh, silly me!


Happy weekend guys :o)

How to tell...

....if you're mums favourite!

Suddenly it all became clear....

....and life has new meaning!

D: "Where is everybody, Hol?"
H: "They're dead, Dave."
D: "Who is?"
H: "Everybody, Dave."
D: "What, Captain Hollister?"
H: "Everybody's dead, Dave."
D: "What, Todhunter?"
H: "Everybody's dead, Dave."
D: "What, Selby?"
H: "They're all dead. Everybody's dead, Dave."
D: "Petersen isn't, is he?"
H: "Everybody is dead, Dave."
D: "Not Chen?"
H: "Gordon Bennett! Yes! Chen, everybody. Everybody's dead, Dave"
D: "Rimmer?"
H: "He's dead, Dave. Everybody's dead. Everybody is dead, Dave!"
D: "Wait. Are you trying to tell me everybody's dead?"
H: "I wish I'd never let him out in the first place."

Ok, ok so I'm about 20 years late but better late than never!

Talking of Tilly...

.....well ok I wasn't but I had been a few days back, I came accross this picture today and it just has to be one of my favourites of her 'kittenhood', so for Karen who misses seeing Tilly pictures here she is, aged about 10 weeks and getting to grips with domesticity! :o)

End of a small era

Well not really, that's kind of overplaying my hand but I made a decision yesterday that I have been toying with for a while.....I killed off 'gemmak designs'. It is not longer, it is defunct, it has gone to the big blog landfill in the ether somewhere.

It was quite an important part of my life for a time, I really enjoyed doing it and the income didn't go amiss but I haven't used it since I closed it 18 months ago and I don't see a possibility for my getting back to it anytime soon, so it seemed like time to stop the sentimentality and hit 'delete'.

....and that's what I did.

Gone, the end.

Double take

Friday evening on my usual mind numbing sit in the parking lane journey via the M25 to Cambridge I stopped, as ever I do, to relieve the boredom and acquire a coffee at a the usual faceless service station. Twice a week I stop there, nothing ever changes, I could find my way to the coffee machine and the bathroom blindfold and Friday held no promise of anything different.

So I headed to the 'ladies', usual comatose state of mind prevalent and on walking out, taking a quick glance in the mirror instead of looking where I was going, I walked smack bang into someone. I hastily apologised for my clumsiness and walked away but as I did so I realised I had seen that face before. I turned round to look again at the victim of my clumsiness, to see her looking back at me...it was one of those moments when one does a double take.....we both realised at the same moment that we knew the other and fell immediately into animated conversation.

The woman in question had been a teenager the last time I saw her, about a 1000 years ago, ok maybe closer to ten but it seemed forever! She had been at university at the time and we worked together when she was on holidays, we had been quite good buddies but when she left and I moved to Scotland we lost touch completely.

So, we stood for maybe an hour catching up to the sound of hand dryers and flushing toilets, too riveted in our gossiping to think of moving elsewhere and eventually parted with an exchange of email addresses and a promise to meet up again soon.

I love it when that kinda stuff happens! :o)

Sometimes I'm confounded....

......by our laws!

As ever it seems money is the great God and it's not the first time that jail sentences have been handed down that prove to me British justice still has a nasty habit of considering money above life and common decency.

I know there are many aspects to any case, nothing is straightforward and the actual charges bought and the limits of sentencing available to a judge must dictate to a degree the outcome of a case, but it never ceases to offend me on a knee jerk level when on the same day one case, that of an executive stealing company monies has a five year sentence handed down but a thug, who urinated on a dying disabled woman and filmed it on a mobile phone with the intention of uploading it to You Tube, gets only three years incarceration!!!

Tilly is two!

Today is Tilly's second birthday.

I never imagined two years ago that I would have to part with her, I still miss her and still think of her every day and I still feel kinda guilty that somehow I let her down...... but for today I'm going to try and concentrate on knowing she is happy and very well cared for in her new home and remebering all her stupidities and funny little cat-ways that gave me such pleasure for the time she and I were a gang of two.


"Happy birthday little Tilly puss".

Anger management

Sometimes when you are angry with someone, it helps to sit down and think about the problem!


~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

(Ok, ok, I know I'm being a particularly bad blogger this week but I just seem to be having one of those muddle-headed spells where anything I want to say kinda gets stuck and I can't get it into words.....and the fact that blogger stole yesterday's post wasn't helpful!)

Bloody hell fire....

......I just spent an hour typing a post and blogger stole it!

I haven't had that happen for years and I'm somewhat less than chuffed....though maybe it was a blessing in disguise for you guys, I've written more upbeat posts in my time so by the Blogger Gods you have been spared!

I would never....

.....have thought that the day would come when I would feel so disappointed at the result of a rugby match....and nor would I have anticipated that having turned off the T.V. at the final score to avoid the inevitable dissection, I would become embroiled in an hour long discussion on just the same dissection with he who understands the finer details of such things!

I'm not qualified to make a judgement but it seemed to me a pretty good effort by the guys in the red and white and common consensus appears to be that they can be proud of themselves despite the final outcome.

The B.B.C. World Cup blog says it way better than I can.

Hey...maybe Lewis Hamilton can lift our spirits this afternoon.