AndyBlog

An AndyDoodle Mind

OK, Rebecca, I'm up for this.

Here is my doodle - analyse away!

Amywatch - Update

Up she shoots. This plant continues to amaze me.

It is possible to go away for half a day and return and see noticeable growth. The stem shoots up, the bulb shrinks. All that long stored up energy is suddenly and dramatically released.

It's a privilege to see, first hand and close-up, the wonder of nature. I have stuck with this wonderful plant, and she has repaid me royally.

Good on yer, Amy!

She'll be bloomin' fantastic soon!

Soreen, as never before.

Jo introduced me to the joys of Soreen (the excellent sticky fruity malt loaf), but in whole new way that had never before occurred to me.

Try it, she said, toasted.

It did try it, and I did like it. Lo, I did love it.

It's hard on the outside - which one can of course cover with butter - and molten sticky and warm on the inside. Oh my.

Oh my oh my.

If you like Soreen, please give it a go. You might just love it.

Also you might not. TL loves Soreen, but did not take to the toasted incarnation one little bit. I can only apologise for her - although, to her credit, she did try it straight away.

Snowy Today

Snow today...

It's been a great day for weather in demonstration mode today. Click the movie above to see the snow phase.

Before that there was hail, rain wind and sunshine. Spring weather is special.

Well, what a weeks that was...

It is tempting, having just had a busy week, to literally spew out all the details in a long, boring and barely palatable list.

So that's what I'll do, but I'll be brief, so as to give you a feel for the happenings without boring you too much. I started on this flurry of going and wenting a week last Thursday. I feel like I have stopped today. Here's what happened:

Thursday:  Final packing up - leave Griffin House after last minute computer build.
Friday: Unpack in Hudds, set up computers.
Saturday: Actual lie-in, fantastic. Lazy Day.
Sunday: Back to Griffin House, paint the shack out with Fiona and TL.
Monday: Take TL to interview for job, house hunt, deal with the let-down of not getting the job.
Tuesday: Drive back down to Hudds with more gear, and unpack in Hudds.
Wednesday: Drive down to TL's D1 C2 in Birmingham. Fit cable router, have nice evening. Sleep on excellent pull-down bed.
Thursday: Return home, quite tired by now. Early to bed.
Friday: On my own, back up to the NE to do consultancy work for various clients. Nice meal out with Jac in Seaham, where I am pictured looking like a saint.
Saturday: Improving a computer in Washington and breaking a chair, then on to spend the afternoon with Terry before the gig. Gig in the evening till very late.
Sunday: Out early to Church to play for the service. Back to Jason's for excellent lunch and fine company. Back to Griffin House to drop off stuff and see Fiona, then back to Terry's to drop of band gear then a long drive home, knackered as marathon runner after 4 races in two days.
Monday: Today is Monday. Today I can flop.

It was good to see the people in the band again - I like them all and meeting with them is a sizeable part of the attraction. We haven't played in earnest for a good while, so it was good to get up to speed with the sets again. Good, also, for our new trumpeter, Paul. (He replaces our old trumpeter Paul - I didn't know, but apparently legally, all trumpeters have to be called Paul these days)

So we played our music to a tepid reception, at best. It wasn't out finest hours, by any means, but it was a fitting part of this busy weeks.

I go now, to make soup. Bacon and tomato. Should be delovtastilicious.

Thumb update

Here you see a thumbnail of my...erm...thumbnail.

Clicking on the image will reveal to you the full glory of my current left thumb. I've never had a thing quite like this before, so it is interesting watching it grow and develop. Nice to have something that is in a nice easy place to monitor as well.

I assume that I have some sort of bursting event to look forward to, coupled with a bandaging or elastoplasting phase. Come what may, I think there will be plenty to bore you with, fear not.

My thumb hurts

Yes. My thumb hurts.

It hurts, my thumb.

It's a hurty thumby.

The picture is not of my thumb.

It's someone else's thumb.

Their thumb was hurtytoo.

Not thirtytoo, hurtytoo.

This is not a poem.

Brekky in Huddy

Welcome to Huddersfield - it's quite small really.

Greetings from the land of heavy woollen, dye mills and excellent Persian food. Yes, I made it here, and all in one piece. Phew. Having arrived, I looked forward to the long-awaited chill-out time when I could just relax and let a few days drift by without so much as a shoe-lace to tie.

I really could not have been more wrong.

Having unpacked and distributed my stuff around TL's house (so as not to draw too much attention to it), I set about integrating my computer system with hers. It was a delicate procedure, and one that was better not viewed by anyone who was not an IT professional. Finally, the labyrinth of cables seemed to resolve itself a little, and I could breathe again.

Not for long, though, because we thrust ourselves, almost immediately, back into the glory wagon and travelled up to the North East. Arriving back at Griffin House was a strange experience for me. Very very familiar, very very empty and very very much not my home anymore. I'll leave you to unpick that assortment of emotions.

Fiona, Liz and myself painted my old computer room out so that it looked a bit more presentable to the new owners, before spending an enjoyable night playing cards and watching TV.

On Monday, TL went to North Shields to interview for a job, which sadly she did not get in the end. We were/are a little disappointed, but it must mean that there is a better way for this all to work out. There were sufficient reasons, TL says, for the job to have been less than ideal anyway - so the search continues.

We spent Monday afternoon at the estate agent's in Ashington and viewing another house. Our hoped-for purchase in NBTS has also fallen through because our offer was deemed too low. That said, the people might be back to us, because I doubt if anyone will offer much more. There are other possibilities arising on the housing front which I will tell you all about, another time.

After grabbing a splendid pizza at Gianni's in Morpeth, we headed back to Jason and Antonia's for a coffee and a chat. That was nice. By then, it was too late to drive all the way home, so we prevailed upon Fiona's kindness once more and went back to Griffin House.

On Tuesday, we finally made it home, after a long and lazy morning, partly spent eating the delicious bacon and black pudding from the North Shields bacon shop, bough the day before. Don't worry, we left some for Fiona. We're not cruel/stupid.

Today's brekky/brunch/lunch was fuelled by the remainder of these amazing foodstuffs. We bought black pudding, white pudding, home cured smoked back bacon and double-yolked eggs.

They are QUITE big eggs. The middle one is a normal large egg.

A nice little movie of the egg being inserted.

Fresh into the pan.

The finished brekky.

Together with some of Bill Morrison's beans and a few mushrooms from the bacon shop - Oh yes. A truly epic breakfast. The home cured bacon from North Shields bacon shop is absolutely out of this world. Highly recommended.

We're off now to Birmingham to visit TL's D1 C2 and male partner. (D1 C2 MP?) Should be fun. I spent over half an hour the other night explaining to them how to set up a router for their cable modem - only to discover that it was an ADSL router and not for cable at all.

I go equipped with a cable router today. I will be victorious. Oh yes.

Orange, like clockwork

IMPORTANT MESSAGE

The new SIM card arrived this morning. So, Panikova.

My phone is now back on as normal with the minimum of fuss. I am impressed by the good people at Orange for getting me out of my own stupid fix so quickly.

I guess I really am a creature of the 21st Century - the thought of being without my mobile phone actually scared me. I carry my whole life around in it. My contacts, my appointments (the few I bother to keep), my SMS texts, Words Documents, Excel Spreadsheets, Many games, my calculator, Currency converter, A tool for posting blogs, a program so i can chat on the internet, a web browser, my email, a voice recorder - the list goes on.

In short, my phone is far too important to me, but I have it back, so I am, once again, happy.

I am so totally totally totally stupid!

IMPORTANT MESSAGE

I had a problem with my phone, whereby it was not charging properly. More seriously than that, it was just losing all of its charge very suddenly.

So, I rang the good people at Orange, and they promised to sort it all out by sending out a new phone. This they duly did, and it arrived precisely on time.

All I had to do was back-up my old phone, take everything off and hand it over to the courier. So I took out the battery and cover, removed the SD Card and the stylus, and handed over the phone.

As the man was driving away, I realised that I had left the SIM card in the phone. I left the SIM card in the phone. The phone is in some van with my SIM card in it. I have no SIM card for my phone. My phone doesn't work. You can't ring me, or text me - or anything phone related.

I am so stupid. So very stupid. I've done some daft things in my time, but this is in a league of its own. The one time in my life when I am relying on my phone more than ever - and I don't have a SIM card. All because of my own stupidity.

So I rang Orange again, rather sheepishly, and told them the tale. The courier had only just left, but they were unable to do anything about it. So, I pay my 15 quid and they post out a new one which should be with me “within the next few days”.

I am so sorry folks, but you won't be able to phone or text me for a little while. I'll post here just as soon as the new card arrives. I believe the voice mail will still work, so you can leave messages.

I can, of course, still pick up emails.

I'll post an update here when I am, once more, phone-able. If you need to call me on a land line, please email for the number.

I am sorry that I am so completely stupid.