The Dark Destroyer

I hope that nobody is looking for a Christmas card this year - the dogs ate my address book

Google Chrome

I have been very happily using the new Google Chrome as my default browser for about a week now.  I like the look and feel of it and especially like fact that for me, it is a trillion times faster than Firefox.  The only problem I have had so far is that I haven't been able to reply to my hotmail via Chrome.  I have been able to see my inbox but I can't reply or forward from it. As you can imagine I reported this to Google but they say that until MSN alter their settings there is nothing that Google can do about this.  This has been a pain but there has been a workaround, until today when I can't even open hotmail through Chrome.  What is going on in MSN are they afraid of the competition from Google ?

Now it may seem daft to run mail through two different accounts, but hey what can I tell you, I'm fickle.

In the News

I know that I must be sounding like a stuck record but since I decided to boycott all the daily newspapers the only news I see is on the BBC and I'm now considering giving Auntie the old heave ho - why is that?  I hear you ask - well for one the BBC seems hell bent on destroying the economy of this country.

Does that sound a little harsh when politicians seem to have buggered up the economy since time began? well maybe but let's consider the facts.  This country, along with many other around the world, is suffering a downturn in it's economy due in no small part to the American system of giving mortgages to people who can't afford them.  That might sound a little simplistic but at the end of the day the world would not be in the state it's in now if American bankers had been more responsible with their lending. That of course is not the only reason we are in this state but I'm sure that the hundreds of hours that the BBC have spent 'explaining' the credit crunch have either informed you or bored you to death and you don't need me waffling on about it here. 

But my biggest reason for looking for an alternative source of news is BBC TV's paucity of world news. Did you know for example that the Israelis are still trying to starve the  Palestinians in Gaza  into submission or that 5 Brits have been killed in Afghanistan so far this month or that a company in China that employs 200,000 people has had it's shares suspended because of suspected stock market fraud or that after only a year since it joined the EU Bulgaria has been warned that it's eurofunding will be suspended if they don't get their act together over corruption and fraud.  Do you even know the name of Australia's Prime Minister or the fact that he is proposing the creation of an Asia-Pacific block similar to the European Union?

 No well you're are not alone. I think it's about time we rebelled and told the BBC what we really want in our news bulletins - news - not gossip from reality shows or pathetically staged vox pops or even god forbid that lizards are the new Labradors (I kid you not, Breakfast news had a big article this morning on how people are buying reptiles instead dogs because of the credit crisis - ahhhhhhh!)

(by the way the Aussie PM is Kevin Rudd)

Children in Need

I thought that it would be cute if I dressed the dogs up for Children in Need day in Pudsey neckerchiefs

They didn't!!

Bella took to her bed and sulked

Three Generations

While I was looking through boxes of old photos I came across this picture of Mum, Lesley and I.  I'm not sure who thought that it would be a good idea to take a picture of us in front of a drain pipe or why we all seem to be having a bad hair day but I still think that it's a lovely picture and I'm only sorry that we didn't get round to taking more of the three generations pictures when we had the chance. (sorry about the quality of the scan, that's probably more my fault than the scanner's)

Feeling poorly

I have been feeling very sorry for myself the past week. I have been full of cold, streaming eyes, runny nose and a rotten cough. The writing has gone to pot, the house has looked like a bomb had hit it and all I wanted to do was sip honey and lemon and look pathetic but unfortunately the dogs had other plans and apart from a lie in on Sunday morning it  has been business as usual. 

Even the dentist was unsympathetic - have you ever tried having a crown fitted when you can't breath through your nose? - I thought that I was going to drown in my own spit!

London City Airport

What is it about airports that turns quite normal people into frantic stress bunnies?

Take the pick up area at Manchester Airport's Terminal 3, it doesn't matter what time of the day or night it is, there will always be people driving like maniacs, cutting between lanes, pulling up on the hard shoulder of the feeder roads and stopping in the middle of the road to drop of passengers.

The other week, when I had gone through to pick up Dave, I actually saw a woman driving through the pick up area with the boot of her people carrier wide open and her husband (I guess) running after the car trying to grab his case out of the back - madness.

At London City Airport yesterday there was a queue to get through the security area and I watched as a grown woman was panicking to get her coat off, her laptop out of her bag and untie her shoes at the same time as her husband. Quite why this had to be co-ordinated I don't know but she was determined that the blue tray with his stuff in should follow her tray through the xray machine. She was getting more and more agitated as other people were putting their trays down and looked ready to stab me in the eye when I put my carry-on bag between their trays to go through the machine (OK I did it deliberately to watch her reaction)

She was muttering away in German, probably putting a curse on me and all my offspring, while her husband, for no obvious reason other than acting like a two year old, gave his tray and extra shove through the machine before stomping off through the metal detector. Then their plans for blue tray efficiency were well and truly scuppered when the alarms went off and he was taken to one side by the security staff. I thought his wife was going to explode, how dare they, her look said, this wasn't part of the plan, she had scheduled 1.5 mins to get through security and now they were going to be 5 mins behind. The fact that they still had well over an hour until their flight was to be called was irrelevant - madness - at airports all common sense seems to fly out with the planes!

Researching for the novel

Dave is really busy in work at the moment and has been working silly hours so rather than sit about in the flat moping I made the most of the time in London by doing some research for the novel and that's why at 6.30pm on Friday night I was in the 1802 bar sipping a glass of dry white wine because I kid you not the museum in Docklands doesn't serve coffee after 5pm!

I had great fun sitting there writing up my notes and 'people watching' (it's not that I'm nosy or anything) There were a couple of office parties in the bar and the one thing that struck me was why do all the young woman working in Docklands think that they have to dress in black? - black shoes, black tights, black skirts, black coats - Do they do it because they think that it makes them look slimmer? more professional? older? - well maybe they do, but unfortunately all it really does is make them look as if they have just come back from a funeral.

I overheard one conversation that made me smile (honestly I'm not nosy)

Good looking young bloke ''what do you want to drink''
Pretty ( if a little chunky) young woman ''gin and tonic?'' ( and yes she really did make a request sound like a question)
Bloke again '' any particular brand of gin?'' ( do me a favour, I know you're trying to impress her but really)
Pretty girl '' no but can I have slimline tonic please' (giggle giggle)

Sorry darling but the 20 odd calories you are saving on the slimline tonic will make bugger all difference on those hips - and yes as a woman of a certain size I can make fat jokes - she's young and pretty and has a handsome bloke after her body what does it matter what I think!!!

Lord Mayor's Show and Fireworks

I didn't get to see any firework displays this year- it's not much fun on your own and to be honest I didn't know how Bella and Murphy would cope with Bonfire Night, the cats are bad enough, they hate the load bangs and usually hide away in the one room in the house without a window - the bathroom. So being the responsible pet owner that I am I stayed in - boring but honorable.

Last weekend was the City of London's Lord Mayor's Show and as Dave was already 'darn sarf' I thought I would join him for a few days so that we could spend Saturday in London watching the show in the morning and the grand firework display over the Thames at 5 o'clock.

I have loved the Lord Mayor's Show ever since I was a 19 year old refugee from the North and would stand in Fleet Street or the Strand and watch the procession. One year we had a special treat when the bank had a family day in their Fleet Street branch so that we could watch the show in comfort. Dave invited my Mum and Dad down and they had a wonderful time. The staff had prepared a buffet lunch and had positioned seats by the windows on the first floor to give us a grandstand view.

After Dave left Fleet Street were were reduced to standing with the hoi polloi but this year we thought that we deserved a treat and booked seats in the grandstand by St Paul's Cathedral. The parade was as good as ever, the floats were colourful, the bands musical and the servicemen and woman a credit to the TA and reserve forces. But my god did it rain - it was torrential but we're British and a little thing like a monsoon isn't going to stop our parade or as a young American guy sitting behind me said 'only the Brits would sit in the rain to watch a parade and cheer every time a soldier marches past' - couldn't have put it better myself!

Unfortunately we were soaked to the skin and rather than catch our death walking about all afternoon we decided to go back to the flat to change into warm dry clothes and go out for dinner rather than hang about for the firework display.

No fireworks for me this year then - oh well there's always next year.

Coffeetastic

Overheard the other day in Costa Coffee

'The Gingerbread Latte - does it come in skinny? Yes? OK, I'll have a regular skinny decaf gingerbread latte'

I'm sorry but that's not a beverage, it's a short story!

Non Elected Officials

When it was announced that Peter Mandleson was to join the Government as a Minister, I was amazed and couldn't understand why Gordon felt that he had to bring him back from the EU. Is our Prime Minister telling us that out of all the Labour Members of Parliament there isn't one who is as capable of being the Secretary of State for the Department for Business, Enterprise and Regulatory Reform.

Well I'm sorry but what does that say about us, the electorate? Are we voting for people who are not up to the job of running the country, or is it that the Prime Minister thinks that his own MPs are not good enough?

I then started to wonder how many other non elected officials we have working in government departments as Ministers. I had quick trawl through some (but probably not all) of the Government Department's websites and found 9 Ministers who haven't been elected, is this right, is it even honest? How can a Government be responsible to it's electorate when there are so many non-elected Ministers in that Government.

I suppose that a student of politics would tell me that I am being naive and this situation is far from unique but I can't help wondering why Gordon Brown felt that he needed to look for 3 Ministers for the Department for Business, Enterprise and Regulatory Reform from outside of the House of Commons. I'm sure that he would argue that he just wants to have the best people in place to steer the country through it's current economic problems but what does that say about the Department's previous Ministers? Should we infer that the 'B' team led us into situation we know find ourselves?

And don't get me started on the Government's so called Special Advisers. I have always felt uneasy about New Labour's reliance on these 'temporary' civil servants who are political appointees paid by Central Government. Admittedly the Brown administration has far less Special Advisers than Blair had but even so, in the financial year 2006-07, we the British Taxpayers, shelled out £5.9 million on them - yes £5.9 million. Remember that these are people who are appointed by the government of the day to work alongside civil servants in government departments who are not answerable to the electorate (because we didn't have any say in their appointment) but are there to add a 'political' dimension to the advise that civil servants give their Minister.

And what happens to all these Special Advisers, because let's face it, if you get a job like that it will only last as long as 'your' Minister is in post, well in the case of Alistair Campbell you go off and write a book about working in Number 10 or if you fancy entering politics proper like the Miliband brothers you are in the right place to look for a safe seat to get elected from, or then again you could be given a peerage like Shriti Vadeera and then go straight into Government as a Minister without all the bother of standing in an election.

I wonder if any of this is taught in the Government's citizenship lessons in schools - at first I couldn't find out because the dcsf website didn't seem to have a link to a site where I could look this up and when I phoned their helpline a very nice woman read from a prepared script telling me what citizenship in schools covered for the 14-19 age group but said she was very sorry but there wasn't anywhere where I could look at this for myself. However not one to be stopped at the first hurdle, I had a quick trawl through the Teachers' resource packs for Citzenship on the Teachernet website and I found that the curriculum covers parliament and other forms of government so let's just hope that our young people are far more politcally savve than us oldies.

Panorama - Britian in the Red

I suppose watching, or listening, to any programme presented by Jeremy Vine is a bit like admitting to buying The Daily Mail - you don't have to be Angry of Tonbridge Wells to agree with him, but it helps. You know that he will have his own agenda, he will think that he is speaking for the 'ordinary man in the street' but dear god let me shout loud and clear, he doesn't speak for me!!!

Last Thursday's Panorama programme was supposed to answer all the questions we, the ordinary people, had about the credit crunch, banking crisis et all. What is was however was 55 minutes of Jeremy trying to whip us all up into believing that the whole of the banking industry in this country was on the point of collapse, that our savings were better off out of the banks and under the mattress and if our homes weren't already suffering from negative equity we were about to loose our jobs and have them repossessed because we couldn't afford the higher mortgages anyway.

The 'ordinary' people they had filmed earlier were worried that they might have to pay more for their mortgages, that their homes mightn't increase in value by 300% in the next six months and we were supposed to feel sorry for one poor woman was having to work an extra half day a week to help pay the bills because she was worried that her husband's job in teaching could be in trouble because the government has underwritten the banks and they might start laying off teachers. If these vox pops weren't bad enough he then interviewed experts in banking, finance etc but no matter how much they tried to be calm and sensible about the current crisis Jeremy was having non of it and set about them like a little terrier. Wasn't it all the fault of the government? shouldn't we all hate the bankers? Surely we are all heading for financial Armageddon? The message was, if you aren't worried you damn well should be.....

Yet again the BBC have frightened far more 'ordinary' people than they have reassured. I'm all for keeping people informed about the current financial situation, but until the media in this country starts reporting the facts and not their usual hysterical scaremongering the 'ordinary man in the street' will continue to have no faith in either this country's financial institutions or it's Government's handling of what is a global problem and without some kind of faith we will surely be stuck in a recession for far longer than we need to be. Then I suppose the BBC will justify all the rubbish they are spouting by saying 'I told you so' - God help us and save us from irresponsible journalists!!!

City Workers

If you wander around Canary Wharf during the day you would be forgiven for thinking that all the young city workers were a bunch of totally focused, unsmiling serious types, busy rushing from meeting to meeting with their mobile phones super-glued to their ears while sending very important messages on their Blackberries. But I'm delighted to tell you that after 5pm on a Thursday night they change, they metamorphose into human being. As the bars fill up and the alcohol consumption rises they start to loosen up and the noise level rises.

The young and not so young singles start flirting and the old buggers (in 21st Century City Talk that means 35 year olds) try to look cool by removing their ties and opening the top button of their Turnbull and Asher shirts. This is radical stuff! In fact this is the city culture I remember from the 70's - rush out of work - get to the pub - and unwind (or pissed)

But wait a minute something isn't quite right, yes they all have a drink in their hands, yes they are all VERY loud and yes some of them are flirting but take a step back and really look and you will see that they have been nursing that same drink for the past hour, the loud chatter is all work related and the old buggers are surreptitiously glancing at their watches wondering if they can still make the 6.30 from Charing Cross.

Bugger, it's 6 o'clock on a warm October evening in one of the world's great financial districts and I'm surrounded by a bunch of boring Bankers ..........(what is the collective noun for Bankers? - suggestions on a postcard please)

A change is a good as a rest

My usual routine of an evening is to feed the cats (Jess will have been pestering me for about an hour and Sassy has taken to walking across the keyboard for daring to ignore her sister!) then it's feed the dogs making sure that Murphy doesn't hoover up Bella's food if she wanders off looking for a drink. After their dinner it's time to walk the dogs; prepare my dinner; phone Dave; cook; eat; wash-up; decamp to the living room; try to stop the dogs from playing bitey/facey game; look for something to watch on the TV; give-up; make a cuppa; settle the dogs and go to bed with a good book.

Last Thursday however I was sitting outside the Slug and Lettuce at Canary Wharf sipping a large and rather expensive glass of chilled white wine waiting for Dave to finish work. I knew that he would be tired after work and would probably just want to get back to the flat but what he didn't know was he was taking me out for dinner, but as they say, 'a change is a good as a rest'

Read the first paragraph and weep!!

How many A levels do you need to write garbage like this!!

Lesley's Birthday

Hands Up - there's no excuse, except possibly old age and a desire to make people eat far too much but I forgot to take any photos of Lesley's birthday party. I had the camera ready but it wasn't until I was clearing up the next day that I realised that I'd left it upstairs in the office.

It's a shame because everyone had such a good time and there would have been some lovely pictures. Luckily the weather was kind to us and it was warm enough for the party to spill out into the garden. The little ones, who aren't little any more, I must think up a new collective noun for them, were so good and they had great fun teasing James, or Tree as they have nicknamed him. His firing up of the chiminea was a great success but I'm not sure how pleased their Mums will be if they ever repeat half of the shaggy dog stories he came out with. In fact they had a full evenings entertainment what with Wii competitions, Laurence's Magic Tricks and Lilly's stories so their parents (the older kids) had a chance to catch up with cousins they haven't seen for a long time.

It wasn't just family though we also had friends and neighbours there as well, in fact an old fashioned Carter party, just what Lesley had wanted and I think that everyone enjoyed themselves and hopefully made some new friends along the way.

Teachers Training Day

They really don't do themselves any favours do they?

Teachers to Train in Spain

Spending the weekend in London

It was a lovely weekend and we decided to make the most of the fine weather and take the Clipper Boat up the Thames from Canary Wharf. We had originally planned to travel up to town on the Dock Lands Light Railway (DLR) but engineering works meant that great chunks of the system were closed last weekend and we didn't fancy fighting our way onto one of the replacement buses and sitting (or probably standing) for hours in a traffic jam.

We set off quite early planning to go up to Green Park but when we arrived at Tower Bridge we thought, what the hell it's been years since we've been here, let's hop off and grab a coffee by the river and sit in the sunshine people watching - god how I love people watching. I can spend hours just sitting and watching the tourists and making up little stories about them, I kid you not, they all have a story. For example; see that pretty young girl over at the postcards, well she came away with her boyfriend but they had a terrible row because he got very drunk last night. The poor girl is heartbroken, she was expecting a romantic lunch with the man of her dreams but instead she's on her own and her boyfriend has spent all morning in bed with the world's worst hangover - and see that 25 year old teetering along the cobbles in her Jimmy Choos, the one with the blond hair extensions and the expensive St Tropez tan, is she really with that middle aged bald bloke for his sparkling wit and personality?

But rather than drive Dave nuts with my rabbiting, we finished our coffee and set off over Tower Bridge to look at the Mayor's River Festival on the south bank. Not that we knew it was the River Festival, all we could see was a load of marquees set up outside the Council Offices and it looked like there was something going on!

It was good fun in a hippy dippy kind of way - lots of people out to save the planet and sell you trinkets from Peru and food stalls selling Argentinian Beef and Jamaican curry but the best fun was the army of Greenpeace activists who with incredible politeness were trying their best to get new recruits. Even our protestations of penury didn't deter one young bloke who offered us such a fabulous deal on the subscription we would have been mad to turn him down - mad and proud of it, that's us - the next time I'm asked what's the one thing that you are particularity proud of I shall say I didn't give in to Greenpeace - even though they had pulled out all the stops to put their cutest people on the streets.

Train, planes and automobiles

Dave's regular commute to Canary Wharf comes at the end of a long week of back to back meetings and random trips up to the Midlands, so I have promised him that at least once each month I will join him down south to save him the travelling.

It will come as no surprise to those of you who have travelled with me down to London on the West Coast Penaluna that I hate that tilting train with a passion. It is against all the laws of nature to expect a human being to sit meekly while travelling at 100mph in a carriage that is listing at a 45 degree angle. OK so I might be exaggerating about the angle but you get my drift. I have lost count of the number of times I have stood on the concourse at Euston Station, green at the gills and fighting to keep my hastily eaten breakfast in my stomach rather than decorating the pavement with it like a poor man's Jason Pollock. So what is a girl to do? why fly that's what - VLM fly Manchester to London City in 50 minutes and it's cheaper than I can get a standard rail fare on Virgin Trains (though off peak it's far cheaper to let the train take the strain). You travel in style and comfort, they give you sweeties when you take off, sandwich and drinks while you are cruising and beautiful Belgian chocolates just before you are due to land AND if like me you have a whole raft of VLM executives on your return flight you have the added bonus of a smooth flight, text book take-off and landing and arrive in Manchester 15 minutes early!!

(word of warning - if you want to know more about Penalunas make sure that you Google the phrase Penaluna Trains and not just the word Penaluna otherwise you will be directed to a very mucky website!!!)

Hot off the press

Our athletes are now SECOND in the medals table at the Bejiing Paralympics with 14 Gold 11 Silver and 7 Bronze medals so far.