It was the headline that caught my eye. The obviously place to look for such a missing “brain remote control” is eBay. You can buy almost anything there these days.
Today, we head out to the shops to buy a new hoover. Yes, our old hoover has given up the power to live and refuses to suck. I get through a least one vacuum cleaner a year – it is an expensive business keeping Chez Lock clean. And so a new strategy is to be adopted…we are limited to a £50 hoover budget. Meanwhile, the broken hoover joins the big pile of discarded crap in the shed that needs to be taken to the local refuse centre. That’s one Sunday morning of 2005 accounted for already.
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Hurrah!
The first day of a new year. The rest of 2005 is ripe for the plucking. 🙂
We awoke to find that our fridge had packed up – and by looking at the butter, we reckon it probably failed yesterday. Oh well, the day was spent looking for a replacement that can be delivered with speed.
On a separate note, I got paid from CDBABY for all my music. It seems that my tunes are quite popular on i-Tunes Europe and I am doing quite well in that territory. It filled me with a warm glow. Plus it is good to know that in the past 12 months, I’ve been paid over $300 for my music. (In terms of actual profit, I think I am only breaking even, which is better than making a loss, of course).
It’s the last day of 2004 – hurrah! To say that I cannot wait to see the back of this particular year would be an understatement. It’s has been a strange year. A middling year. A year of minor triumphs and staggering defeats. It has been a year of seeing the unseen, it has been a time of seeing how other people perceive you. Sometimes reality has a nasty way of biting you on the arse.
Took Alex the Wonderdog to his new vet today. A new strategy is to be adopted to tackle his genetic skin allergy. They might call it “Westie Skin” but I call it an expensive vet’s bill.
Talking of dogs, a year or so ago, whilst out walking Alex the Wonderdog, we encountered a man walking two large Alsations. This man lives a few streets away from us and has no control over his dogs. So we are on the other side of the street and the two dogs head over in our direction.
“Tosser, Cunt!” the guy screams. He repeats this until the dogs take notice and return to him.
“I wonder which of us is the tosser and which is the cunt?” I ask The Missus.
“You are the tosser and I am the cunt,” she replied and we both had a good laugh about it.
Today, as we returned from the vet, we saw the two dogs being walked again by the green next to our house. A young couple were walking them (we presume that these are relatives of the owner). As we take Alex inside, we can hear the girl shouting “Come here, Tosser.” And so we finally discover that “Tosser” and “Cunt” are the names of the two dogs. Jeez, it really is a measure of the mentality of the man, isn’t it?
Meanwhile, experts believe that no animals were killed through the recent Tsunami disaster in Asia. They believe that this is proof that animals have an inherent “sixth sense”. More here.
Oh well, at least I finally found out what happened to Nathan Lane in The Producers. Sounds painful. Tomorrow, the film “Mousehunt” starring Lane and Lee Evans is on the TV. I like that film a lot.
Not much doing. Bumming around and playing internet poker (and winning a little bit). Went back to the guitar and did some more noodling and got my groove back a bit. Looking forward to doing some more recording soon.
Went to the sales yesterday and tried to pick up a bargain. The item I was looking for was out of stock and so we returned empty-handed. Today, we left the house a little earlier, headed for a different branch of the same store and picked up the bargain – they had 13 of these items in stock. So I am a happy boy playing with my new toy. Hurrah!
Been reading about the terrible disaster in SE Asia. One witness described how he was sitting on the beach watching the sea and he saw the tide just go out really rapidly. The next thing he saw was the huge tidal wave coming. He told how he and his girlfriend ran for cover but got hit but the deluge. Terrifying. What a terrible end to the year.
Merry Xmas casual browser!
Today, I received the following gifts from The Missus.
CDs
The Rutles – S/T
Neil Innes – Taking Off/Innes Book of Records
Robert Wyatt – Greatest Misses
Rothko – Not Gone, Not Forgotten
Anthony Phillips – Soundscapes
DVD
Van der Graaf Generator – Godbluff Live
Monkey Dust – Series One
Books
Nick Mason – Inside Out
From my mother, I received a bread maker, which has to be one of THE best gifts I have ever received from her. I am currently having fun trying to make bread. Normally, I do it the old fashioned way, but the machine is quite hypnotic when it starts to mix and knead the dough automatically.
I hope you all got what you wanted for Christmas.
Yesterday, we both went to the theatre. We headed to Theatre Royal, Drury Lane to catch the Producers. It was a shame that Nathan Lane was “indisposed” but the show was still very good. Cory English, the understudy for Mr Lane, acquitted himself perfectly and was very good in the role of Max Bialystock. We both enjoyed the show very much and I wept with laughter throughout.
Then we headed to the Theatre Royal, Stratford for our annual Xmas Eve panto performance. This year it was “Sleeping Beauty”. My God, this was the WORST pantomime the Theatre Royal had put on in about 10 years. The script was poor, the jokes non-existant and the music numbers weak. Last year’s “Little Red Riding Hood” was a masterpiece in comparison. Oh well, you win some, you lose some.
“Merry Xmas, Mr Lock,” says the Inland Revenue, “Here’s your present from us…a nice tax demand to be paid by 31 January 2005”.
Bah, humbug!
Yesterday, I had the misfortune to witness the worst Christmas dinner ever served. As a treat, we took the Missus’s grandmother out for Christmas lunch at our local. I had the sense to refrain from the seasonal menu as I had already turkey last week. The food was luke-warm, the vegetable raw and the parsnips incinerated.
“Maybe they will redeem themselves with the dessert,” suggested I.
The Christmas pudding was then served COLD, rock-hard and with a miserly dollop of piss-weak, luke-warm custard. I took one mouthful and pushed my bowl away. The rest of the party followed suite. The serving staff must have heard our loud remonstrations as they promptly disappeared from view. We wanted to air our greivances as we left, but – surprise, surprise – all the staff were AWOL. So if you want a REALLY FUCKING AWFUL Christmas dinner, pay a visit to the Plume of Feathers pub in Loughton. They are charging something like £50 for that uncooked slop on 25 December, so be sure to book ahead.
Now it looks as if I will need to find a new local! 🙁