Friday, May 28, 2010

Why do children do this?

I came home from work one evening and noticed tucked neatly under one of our dinning room chairs, my wife's shoes. My eldest daughter had decided that these would make the perfect hiding place to store some treasures that she had found. These included:

  • A magic wand
  • a box of fairy magic things
  • a decorative flower ornament
  • 2 lipsalves
  • some eye shadow
  • our kitchen timer.

Why she thought that the shoes were the perfect home for her hoard I don't know, but I'm sure in her mind is all made perfect sense. Very cute... that it until she hides the car keys or the TV controls!

Tuesday, May 25, 2010

I got hit by a car.

It was swelteringly hot, the trains had all been delayed and I was stranded at Waterloo station with hundreds of other commuters waiting for a train home. After slowly baking in Waterloo (which I realised is basically a giant greenhouse) a train became available and the hordes descended on the unusually shortened train. As we sweated our way home I was reading a commentary on Ezekiel as I am preparing a sermon on Ezekiel's final vision in chapters 40-48. And so with my mind full of such things as the River of Life I finally disembarked and came out into the fresh air.

There was a car parked on the side of the road and a fellow commuter had just gratefully climbed into it. Anticipating that the car was about ready to head off, I crossed the road behind the car. Unfortunately, the driver decided that for some unfathomable reason he needed to reverse. And so despite swathes of people crossing the road all around his car he choose that moment to reverse and decided he didn't really need to check his mirrors and so he drove into me. Thankfully the noise of my body and wedding ring impacting his boot made sufficient noise to alert him to his error and he applied the brakes.

There was a pause – I was stunned, he was surprised. He eventually managed to enquire "Are you alright mate?", to which I mumbled "Yeah". It felt wrong. I had just had a close encounter with his car and I felt like I should have said more, but I had nothing. He had just nearly run me over, I could have died, but my wit failed me and so after barely spluttering 'yeah' I walked home feeling slightly embarrassed.

Thursday, May 13, 2010

How to fix a leaky kitchen sink trap.

Our kitchen sink is in desperate need of replacement, but as I don't want to replace it just yet, when it became apparent that the trap at the bottom of the sink had rusted through, another solution was needed. I borrowed some Kitchen and Bathroom Silicon from my Father-in-law, and found an empty orange juice bottle. I then cut a suitable portion of plastic from the bottle to form a patch and provide some rigidity. I dried the leaky trap and then smothered the area and patch with silicone. I wiggled the patch into place and there it has stayed. No leaks, no expense – my kind of repair.

Wednesday, May 12, 2010

Alien plant-life discovered

I was picnicking in Bushy Park awhile back when I came across what could only be described as some very strange Stalagmites. The woody protrusions were like nothing I have seen before.

Perhaps they are the roots of a tree or the remains of a heavily pruned bush... or perhaps our world is being slowly and covertly overtaken by a strange alien root monster that is pushing it's legs throughout our world...

Check your gardens, be on your guard. These things could eat the triffids for dinner and have you for afters. Ahh.

* UPDATE* – Apparently these are the roots of an unusual Conifer plant – the Bald Cypress or Swamp Cypress (Taxodium distichum) – which has roots projecting above ground and are for the plant to breath.

Thursday, May 6, 2010

Shopping online with Tesco

So there I was, in my lunch break at work, doing my monthly Big Shop at Tesco's website. And I came across this 'deal' below...






Quick everyone, rush to buy two soups for the price of three! Bargain.

Wednesday, May 5, 2010

Mr Grasshead

Ladies and Gentlemen, let me introduce... Mr Grasshead. [Crowd applauds]

He was given to me by my company [Wow, gasp the crowd].

No, I'm afraid I wasn't singled out for this extraordinary privilege – everyone got one. [Ohhh] I'm not entirely sure why they gave all the staff these grass heads – I think it had something to do with Earth Day... [Er?] Indeed.

Mr Grasshead was born about 3 weeks ago and I gave him his first haircut yesterday. And as he was looking particularly dashing this afternoon, I thought now would be a good time to introduce you to him. Say, 'Hi', he doesn't bite.

I'm sure he'll continue to grow into a fine lad – I'll keep you updated. [Hurrah, cry the crowd].

Chessington World of Adventures

To celebrate our youngest daughter's birthday we decided to take them to Chessington World of adventures. There were two cunning things about this.
  1. As we are local, we got free tickets
  2. We went in term time
The first is an obvious boon; the second the icing on the cake.

I took a day off, Claire wasn't working and the kids weren't at school. I'm not a fan of parks with rides etc, but I have to admit it was a brilliant day out. There was hardly anybody there. We had no queues for any of the rides; walking past the 'Only 30 minutes to wait from here' signs and jumping straight on. Usually you have to wait so long for a ride and then it's all over in minutes, but we could stay on the rides if we wanted, take as many goes and generally have a great time. And as our youngest daughter was just over the critical 0.9m high she was able to go on most of the rides, and they were tame enough so that even I enjoyed them. Brilliant fun, definitely the way to visit the only thing Chessington is famous for.