Monday 25 October 2010

Musca Domestica (bloody flies)

Yes I made the mistake of using Raid fly killer (tm) on a few flies which where re-enacting the battle of Britain in our bedroom... they were merrily battering themselves against our sky lights and each other so after being hit on the side of the head by a rather large bluebottle I thought the time had come to remove their genes from the fly genome using a good old fashioned aerosol poison....


Little did I know that the entire Luftwaffe and several squadrons of the RAF World War II re-enactment group were hiding in every crevice our bedroom affords, probably because our bedroom is at the very top of the house and any flying insect eventually ends up in our bedroom pointlessly battering itself against the glass of one of our skylights.....



Needless to say once the RAID got to them they came out coughing and buzzing in their hundreds..... it was carnage I was literally sweeping them up off the floor..... how we didn't notice them before is beyond me... maybe the cold in our rafters had immobilized them....

(I still rate DDT for it's knock down power after using some circa MOD 1969 issue in 1982 in our guardroom once and I've never seen flies drop like that in my entire life before .... or since.... no wonder they banned it if it killed flies that quickly .....)

Anyway getting back to the story .... "Ha Hahhhh" I thought "that got you ... all of you ....buzz no more you hideous little creatures...."

But no..... they had one last act of defiance before becoming a lifeless ex buzzy thing.... several squadrons managed to ditch their twitching bodies into our hot water header tank ... which when it was installed by the plumber did not have the tank cover put on the top.... in fact it was devoid of any kind of cover near it or placed remotely near it....


It gets worse.... much worse .......So several days later when I was running a nice relaxing bath for myself when I noticed black things wildly swirling about in my bath water..... on closer inspection I realised that those black things were in fact fly body parts...... legs, heads, wings, thorax's.....

I didn't have a bath that night.....unsurprisingly ..... I opted for a shower instead which isn't attached to the header tank (thankfully)


So today I've just spent the last 30 minutes draining the header tank out ,fishing out the remaining dead flies scrubbing the inside of the tank out and pouring enough bleach in it to turn the black hole at the centre of our galaxy white......

The tank now has a cover on it so any further mass genocides will remain outside of my bath water...... 

Shudder....

Bloody cowboy builders...... sheesh

Sunday 24 October 2010

The girl hits the big THREE !!

Well it seems like only five minutes ago she was learning to walk and talk and now we seem to have a girl who is all grown up.... Time marches on as they say .... 

She had an absolute blast at her birthday party, my parents attended along with Niki and Justin with their kids .... Andrea slaved over the food for hours and overall it was a very enjoyable day... We bought her an enormous dolls house complete with wooden furniture which she has been playing with quite a bit since yesterday... she has such an imagination.. and has us falling about laughing most of the time and she knows we're laughing at what she says not her... she's a bright spark Freya....

Andrea is getting a bit jittery about the Snowdonia Marathon.... 


As for me I'm getting a bit jittery about leaving two teenagers alone in the house for three days..... God knows what we will come back to but I will actually go off my nut if anything is broken/damaged/trashed.....I will of course be equally displeased if the house is a mess.....
 

Tuesday 19 October 2010

I don't know about you..... but


It's a tad worrying this latest cost cutting scythe that has sliced through the MOD here in the UK.... I'm fully aware that savings have to be made but to decommission the Ark Royal after only 25 years of service ???? 

Which means it leaves only HMS Illustrious and HMS Invincible  as aircraft carriers... but there isn't much point in having Aircraft carriers when the Government are also ditching the Harriers we have as well ....


Of course it didn't start with the new government it started way back when Labour got in power, as you can see above  (click the table above to enlarge) it's been quietly selling off war ships to other nations and pocketing the cash... I doubt Ark Royal will be sent to a breakers yard...

More like it will be re-badged and be sailing under another countries flag.... Britain seems to be turning into the Car booters of Europe when it comes to military hardware.... likewise 100 ex British Army battle tanks and several hundred (possibly thousand) artillery pieces will probably be sunning themselves in Saudi Arabia before the end of next year....with a nice KERCHING from the Government..... 

it makes you think when HMS Victory ( a Royal Navy wooden war ship launched in 1765) saw service..... she lasted for 40 years before she was decommissioned.... a wooden ship outlasting a modern aircraft carrier ???? surely not ......

Anybody want to invade us ? we've left the latch off the back door.... come on in......

Saturday 16 October 2010

Teenage Angst & Whatever

We've had some ructions in this house of late that have wobbled the time & space continuum and quite possibly cracked the timeline of existence .....

Or to put it another way both Xbox boy and his sister have broken up with their respective boyfriend/girlfriend...I suspected it might have been something to do with increased solar activity or possibly a change of water or some lunar influence that triggered the double whammy on the same day... but nothing really fits ........

I suppose when you're 16 - 18 it can feel like the world has come crashing around your ears and they lack the clarity of experience not to mention the realisation that it's not really the end of the world... I won't go into specifics because that's not really fair on them and neither would I want to go into any detail here on my blog.... it's their life and sometimes taking a few hard knocks is good for you ......That said all we can hope for is that lessons have been learnt and that they won't go down that road again.... Alas I fear that won't be the case.... most teenagers seem to like the feeling of banging their head off the wall.... personally if something hurts .... stop doing it.....

Time will tell...... providing it hasn't been cracked by teenage angst

Destiny is a funny thing, when you get there...... you can't really blame somebody else, if you've let them drive......

Tuesday 12 October 2010

The wonders of ebay

I noticed our bonnet badge had taken a few high speed impacts with either stone chips or some very hard headed insects, needless to say the veneer over the top of the badge had cracked, then let in water and then had obviously frozen the water and cracked open even more and has basically split off large chunks of the badge... so much so it's almost a white circle on the bonnet...

So no problem I thought I'll find out how much a BMW badge is at the local BMW emporium...."NO that can't be right !!! £25 !!! after nearly spitting my coffee over the screen and keyboard I fell back to the old faithful ebay...

I found a much more wallet friendly one at £2.50 !!
 
Spot the difference ?
OK it's made in Taiwan but it looks the part and apparently you'd be hard pressed even with close examination to tell the difference between a genuine one and a copy.... and lets face it, it's not performing a vital function to do with car safety or driving experience it's purely there for a finishing touch...What I do care about is not filling up BMW's coffers with our cash for a tiny "genuine" approved badge which "might" last as long as the copy....

All I need to do now is get it booked in for an oil service and have the intermittent ABS sorted out and it's good to go. I have to admit I've never really been a fan of BMW's they tend to be driven by idiots...but I guess I'm a BMW idiot now because I love it... it sticks to the road like no other car I've had, the only complaint I do have is that it's a bit heavy on fuel if you drive it a bit urgently or go over 65mph but then I've been used to driving "Duran Duran" around which barely had an engine to speak of and only needed the barest of petrol fumes to run

Friday 1 October 2010

Beauty and the Beast


I'll probably get sued for this but I'd like to introduce my estranged daughter Emma....(The Beauty) Hey who knows we might even get to see each other in court..... well worth it !!! (The Beast)


She's studying for her BA in Photography and I have to say judging by the pictures I've seen thus far, she is a very talented young lady. I've been following her for some time on the internet and was delighted when she started a blog to showcase her idea's and photography talents. I wish her all the very best in her chosen career.

I know what she thinks of me, and I can't change that .... neither would I want to... it's something that she herself will have to get her head around when the time is right for her.... I'll still be here (hopefully) who knows I might even get to introduce her to her half sister Freya at some point... what will be will be.....

ps/ all photographs in this blog post are copyright Emma Brabrook (that might fend off being sued) and if you like them you can see more >here<