The 106 is dead long live the 205 !!!

Well I drove the freshly taxed and insured "Duran Duran" era car to work today, other than a slight wobble when you brake it seems to perform ok, no steam, or clanking sounds, it cost £40 to fill it up and I will be scrutinising it's consumption of arabian goldtop over the next week, I have a feeling the CD player that was in it when we bought it costs more than the car, but who cares it drives, it's supposed to be economical..... it's purely an A to B car and if it costs less than the Terrano a week to fill up I'm all for it :)





"Puff" is sitting sadly in the driveway... :( .....soon to be stripped and scrapped





Anyway that's enough about the 106 it served it's purpose for a while......on the way to work I was quietly singing along to "Crazy Penis" this morning (don't ask......look them up, although I think they call themselves "Crazy P" these days I think it was something to do with getting air play.....lol)

My man flu has all but gone, I still feel dreadful but not bad enough to take a day off, Andrea is back working again today despite being told to pack in work..... I think I will have to nail her to the bedpost before I go to work to stop her from her compulsion :)

The Halo 3 recluse finally emerged at 6am the other morning to rush off to Carmarthen to buy his £70 cheesy halo 3 limited edition helmet, he had completed the game by the next morning I believe, although he says he is about a quarter way through the online element of the game, so at this rate he should have finished it by Tuesday of next week, good on him though saving his pocket money to buy it, at least he has something to show for it other than tooth decay or a thickening waist....

I will go fishing this weekend if I have to drag my dead body to the waters edge.....

Man flu strikes me down

It started yesterday with the back of my nose sore when I woke up, I went to work and proceeded to sneeze constantly all day, but got home not feeling too bad, anyway I woke up this morning feeling dreadful, so I took the day off, the back of my throat and the back of my nose is soooooooo sore..... :(

I'll live.....Andrea is home as well...she isn't well at all either and is now sleeping soundly next to me on the sofa while I update this blog neither of us had a good nights sleep, hopefully we will feel better soon I don't like taking time off work at all but sometimes you have to take it easy to get well...

The weather is much colder of late, you can feel the change in the air much crisper and fresher..... :)

anyway nothing to report other than the above so will sign off

Where did the weekend go ?

I seemed to spend most of it dragging one of my customers from the dark ages of 1990's computing into the bright light that is Windows 2003 Server with SQL, thankfully all went well, but still I didn't manage to do any fishing :(

I fully intend to rectify that this weekend, Andrea is off work not feeling very well, I've told her to slow down and other than nailing her to the bedpost every morning there isn't a lot I can do, she does have a very strong work ethic, something completely alien to me, I've never had a wife who WANTS to work before..... I've had one that did bugger all and complained when there wasn't any money left, I think her words were "I won't skivvy for anyone"......indeed she didn't.....not even for her family.....anyway I digress I have more interesting things to ramble on about....

life goes on, shift work sucks big style but bills have to be paid etc etc and at least I "usually" get my weekends to myself so not all bad..... Car saga sorted out we just have to get rid of the old 106 now, I'm not having our driveway looking like a scrap merchant like the old house did....


anyway nothing much to report except I've seen a few films recently "300" and "hot fuzz" "300" was brilliant, "hot fuzz" was well ........crap, seriously they show the best bits in the excerpts they show on the tv, certainly not worth paying good money to go see in a cinema

time to go relax, I'm desperately trying to avoid watching "Eastenders" which the two ladies of the house can't seem to get enough of, I think I have waffled on enough now

Conkers and Spiders

Apparently house spiders HATE conkers, I've yet to try this little tip, but if you put a conker in each room you don't want spiders to live in they won't come near the room, we've been over run with them the past two or three weeks, but where do you find a conker when you need one eh ???? apparently it's something to do with horse chestnut and the odours it gives off

we shall have to give it a try, because I am sick of removing them and chucking them over the decking, and another thing have you noticed whenever you throw a house spider out of your house, it ALWAYS runs towards it again rather than away from it ???? :)

The quickest car purchase in history

My trip home was "interesting" to say the least, there is a stretch of road between Crosshands and Carmarthen where the A48 is quite straight I must have looked like a one man and very low level red arrow display team, I looked back in my rear view mirror and could see this pall of white sugar smoke drifting across the dual carriageway along it's entire length, confirming that the Pug's life has come to an end, thankfully it got me home but probably burned as much oil and water as diesel in doing it, it only coughed once on the whole way back, Andrea is taking it to work today but it will probably be it's last day on the road...... :(

we looked on Ad trader last night on t'internet and found a nice Peugot 205 XL which is cheap to run and cheap to insure, it's not exactly new, it would have been during the height of the "Duran Duran" era though, and is definitely not an 80's icon car, but it didn't break the bank paying for it, will be cheaper than chips to run, so for an A to B car it's perfect :) and it was cheaper than repairing the 106, we both decided it was false economy to throw more money at the comedy clown car.....from deciding to look at, arrive and then buy said vehicle took just over an hour apparently a record

Andrea drove the comedy clown car to work this morning and it has been dubbed "puff the magic dragon" the kids were horrified apparently I don't blame them it must have been embarrassing to lose their "street cred" turning up for school in a car that creates it's own travelling atmosphere loosely based on London smog, hopefully it will hold together until we can get the new (old) car on the road, but with 11 months MOT left on it and we have both driven it, I don't think we will get much trouble with it........touch wood :)

second hand Peugot 106 for sale !!!

(Three careful owners....yeah right)

The Peugot 106 is not long for this world it by the looks, I had just come off the M4 onto the slip road just outside Swansea this morning and the car was pointing downwards on the slip waiting in the traffic when this white sweet smelling mist enveloped the car, it didn't take me long to realise it was the car I was driving emitting the cloud of white sugar smoke.

I suspect either the head gasket has gone or going or the cylinder head is cracked, it's been a bit iffy since Andrea broke down in Tesco's with it when the radiator blew this summer, and rather than leave it where it blew it's radiator she drove it to Tesco's where it finally died, "it was making a funny knocking sound" apparently.....I despair ....(rolls eyes....she is the Hannibal Lecter of second hand cars), I think the rot set in then, I fitted a new radiator to it hoping no damage was done to the engine, but it hasn't been 100% since it was fitted, it's been losing water and getting air locks mysteriously for months not very much though with nothing showing on the floor, and now I know where it has been leaking, strangely the engine oil is still engine oil colour and not turning chocolatey and the water is water without any oil, I spoke to my local garage who looks after the Jeep and he says the Peugot 106 is renowned for cracking it's cylinder head because it's cooling system is so crap, I wholly agree with that and bleeding the cooling system is not my favourite pastime and anyway repairing it would cost about £400 or thereabouts, and considering that's roughly what the car cost in the first place it's not really worth spending more money on it, so we have a Peugot 106 with a brand new radiator and 12 months road tax....any offers ????...... thought not :(

it's going to go eventually, so I may as well drive it into the ground and give it a good send off, shame really because it's only done 74,000 miles which is half the mileage of my jeep which is still going strong :) it may just end up on ebay for breaking/spares....... one thing I know is we are NOT having 2nd hand cars cluttering up the drive

The neck is back

I woke up this morning feeling particularly unwilling to start the day at 6:30am it took me a full 10 minutes to realise my neck and shoulder although still hurting had lessened dramatically, so much so I didn't need pain
killers at all :) so all is well in my world, well the neck bit of it anyway ......

The only other thing is the road tax for the roller skate has been paid and will be winging it's way to our house within the next few days, so that's a load off my mind, the Jeep doesn't need taxing for quite a while yet, so I
can forget about that one.....for now, it's a bit of a difference £115 for a year compared to £190 (it's probably gone up to save a penguin or some other fluffy creature) but that's the price you pay for having a 2.7 litre turbo diesel gas guzzling monster

The weather has taken a dramatic turn for the colder, and to be honest I'm glad we are going into winter after a frankly disappointing summer, although we had a few days out in the sun, but nowhere near enough of them for me, I seem to be counting the days between the weekends these days, its all go

Can't wait for our new arrival, Andrea is fit to burst, I do feel sorry for her but not a lot I can do about it, seems I've already done my bit, no going back now.....not that I want to :)

What a lovely crisp morning (beats rain anyway !!)

I took this photograph at 06:30 this morning, the original picture is much better, I had to set the camera for low light it was just starting to get light, you could see the mist flowing from the top of the valley to the bottom like a river, I couldn't take a video of it because my camera doesn't do low light with video, but it's a shame because it was fantastic to watch.....

but then I had to get ready for work so slurped my coffee with my painkillers then got dressed and off I went, the drive to work was bloody agony, you simply don't realise how much you use your neck while driving, but it let me know every single time I had to look around to pull out I must have sounded funny with the "oooooohh's and ahhhhh's" and of course the odd choice expletive thrown in with every turn of my neck, apparently the M4 was closed today both directions between Jct 24 - 29, so the traffic was heavy, more so than usual, probably because of all the people trying to find an alternative route into work, but I got to where I was going on time, hopefully there won't be any problems with the traffic on the way home.

addendum..... the closing of the M4.... two people died early this morning, along with three bloody idiots.... apparently the police were chasing 4 lads in a car and they tried to shake the police by driving down the motorway in the wrong direction.....a few minutes later they hit a couple driving in the other direction head on.... the couple were killed instantly and three of the four idiots in the car, in my opinion all four lads should have got killed....idiots doesn't quite cut it

a pain in the neck

Well I woke up on Saturday morning with a frozen neck and shoulder, fabulous, I have no idea how I did it I presume I must have slept awkwardly through the night, needless to say it's bloody painful and it has put pay to my fishing this weekend and the grass cutting.

I've only had this once before in my life when I was about 15 and I woke up unable to move my head and it was agony then and it's agony now, I can hardly function in the morning until my pain killers kick in.... and I'm taking Paramol and Ibuprofen but even that doesn't knock it on the head (excuse the pun) my sense of humour has also failed this weekend :(

So I'm really hacked off that I'm sitting around not able to do very much....... I think I will have to take my pain killers at least an hour or so before I am able to get out to work and I'm not looking forward to working at all come Monday, ahhh well....hopefully I'll be better soon

The weekend had landed.......

Right up until I was tasked with restarting a massive Novell server in Port Talbot, which has more storage than a small planet made of silicon..... it takes ages to shut it down gracefully, but takes even longer to fire it back up, so my 6pm finish will be delayed somewhat, which has put a bit of a downer on my weekend dash home, ah well best laid plans of mice and men eh ?

nothing much to report on the home front, my step daughter still has her foot in plaster, although she seems to be in no pain, so that's a plus I suppose, she is off to a party tonight with some friends and I think they are staying over as well, the eldest delinquent is staying at a friends house, no doubt to play with a different xbox360 his life seems to revolve around the thing, I dread to think of the arguments we would have had if I hadn't made his xbox wireless (rather cheaply done I might add as well at £27 instead of £80 for the Microshaft wifi dongle) and not to mention the trail of wires all over the place.... my step daughter is content with the laptop in her bedroom and it works well considering it's having to transmit through 3 walls one of them being an outside wall as well ..... it certainly reduced arguments when it arrived with constant "I want to go on the computer" and "you've been on it ages now.....MUMMMMMMMMM" ad infinitum ..... and there was absolutely no chance they were going to be allowed within keyboard distance of my PC, considering the carnage they inflict on the other two, fortunately I have a disk image of the laptop and it can be re-imaged very quickly now, anyway that's enough of the IT department talk

the only task that really needs doing this weekend now are the lawns, we have three of them, a medium size one at the front, a small one at the back, and a massive one below the decking, so it looks like I will have an attack of "white finger" by Saturday evening if previous grass cutting episodes are anything to go by, and I must remember that the petrol strimmer has an ON switch before I try and start it fruitlessly ... :¬)


the only other thing I intend doing is definitely going trout fishing this weekend, I wanted to go last weekend but various things interrupted that particular plan.....

well I've updated my blog, only another hour before I restart the server and wait.......and wait......and wait some more........then HOME !!!

Well the kids are back :)

By all accounts fun was had by all, the eldest lad had his eyebrow pierced, and I have to admit it suits him :) they went kayaking, land boarding, and loads of other things, the youngest came back with a snazzy pair of trainers not bad for a tenner, but he didn't get to design any of his dads new house which he was really excited about before he left, but I guess what with everything else they did, there simply wasn't any time, my step daughter has her leg in a plaster cast, and I've just found out she has to wear it for 6 weeks !!! apparently it's a sprained Achilles heel, she seems in good spirits though hobbling about on her crutches a spare pair of which are being used by the youngest as well, so we have a real cripple and a pseudo cripple in our midst, things have returned to normal. I suppose the only good thing with this injury is that neither of us will be dragged outside for any arduous matches or re-matches of "blob-ball"........awwwww shame ;¬)

The only other ongoing saga is my step daughters phone, I don't know if she has her phone back yet or not or if it's working, it was sent down to her dad to get it repaired ??? (this will be the second time it's needed repairing) but he didn't pick it up, so it was sent back, so that was a waste of £5.60 registered post !!! I can't see what needs repairing on it to be honest, it looked like it was working perfectly to me, just that it only accepted incoming calls and then they stopped, and she kept getting phone calls from people she didn't know asking for her dad but not discussing what it was about with her, I might be wrong but they usually do that when the bill hasn't been paid, but it's nothing to do with us, it was his present to her at Christmas we are both keeping out of it and not getting involved, but not particularly happy about wasting money on sending things that don't get picked up, what I do know is it's upsetting her....


Other than that the only other news is that Andrea is getting bigger by the minute, she is getting to the stage now where she has had enough, or in her words "I want to put the baby down it's too heavy" I do sympathise with her, although I have no idea what its like, but it can't be much fun at this stage, but she is keeping active, even though I have told her to slow down, not that she listens to me.

anyway another week starts.......... lets see what it brings :)

The ride of my life !!!!

I'm staying with some very good friends in North Wales, I basically needed a break from the onslaught of work, seeing as two of the team had left and the remaining two of us had to take on their workload until they are replaced, it's very hard work, there is no let up from the minute you walk in until you leave, and even then the phones are still ringing with users desperately trying to get their IT support.

Anyway the drive up was pretty painless, I took my wife's rollerskate the Peugot 106, it's a bit scary after driving the Terrano for so long, but it was ok.. I filled it up before I left with a whole 25 quid and it's only barely dented the full tank getting up here, if I had brought up my jeep I would be down 36 quid by now... I couldn't use my GPS because the Pug doesn't have a cigar lighter so pointless, and besides my wife needed to know what speed she was going at considering the Jeep's speedo is broken, on top of which the exhaust is broken and it needs shock absorbers all round, so it's going to be an expensive job (the speedo cable is 54 quid alone !!!)

Once my hosts get out of bed I will say my goodbyes to them and head on back to South Wales, I've had such a laugh here, but Chris always cheers me up...... he is basically mental and how his wife puts up with him I will never know :)

The kids are now back from the Devonian outback, she got a bit upset with some of the things her ex said to her, but it doesn't last long these days she just laughs at how ridiculous some of the things he says these days... he really should be over it by now, or at least take issue with the people he is complaining about, he is getting a much easier ride of it than I have, at least he sees his kids, and doesn't have the CSA chasing after him for the upkeep of his kids. (well I say chasing in my case I've had two letters off them since the divorce.... hardly chasing)

I don't know why they are bothering to be honest because I have an exemption certificate issued by them, I guess it must be my ex wife nagging them...she was good at that, but if you haven't got it then they can't take it.... If I had it I would gladly support my children, but I can't, I suppose their argument would be "well you are supporting another man's three children and a fourth is on the way.... can't you support two more ?"

Well yes if I stopped supporting my wife's kids and let them go hungry, and pay for two children I don't see, yes I suppose I could, but then they would have to chase after her ex husband for support......... Good luck....they'll bloody need it !!! but I think his kids would have died of starvation before they got anything out of him .....

anyway the tribe has woken up here, I have Finlay the youngest lad (he's 3) hanging off my leg saying he loves me, I suppose I had better go make a coffee get my stuff together and say my goodbyes, it's been a blast being up here, my batteries have been recharged, I'm ready for the onslaught of normality .....again