I happened across shipscook in the hallway earlier this evening, carrying two glasses of wine in his hands. As he was obviously unable to defend himself I took it upon myself to tweak away at his "raspberry ripples" while his hands were full.

So let that be a warning to you all.

Especialymerly the ladies out there.

Ahem.

So, Mrs F and I took Sarah to Thorpe Park today.

We arrived in brilliant sunshine and a ford focus both of which stayed with us all day. The car obviously stayed in the car park and the sun stayed in the sky.

The first ride Sarah wanted to go on was "The Detonator" but for technical reasons we didn't manage to do that one first off so we went and got wet.

Somewhere in that cloud of water you will see Sarah, me and 14 other people. Let me tell you, that water was FUCKING COLD! as it rained down on me all I could do was just gasp and breath in over and over till I thought I was going to burst! Totally soaked and it was brilliant. Due to the bright sun there was even a little rainbow around us in the boat.

So then Sarah decided we should go back to "The Detonator" and line up again. This is the thing she wanted, her first choice of ride. Is she mental or what.

Yes, twelve bucket seats arranged around a tower that looks a couple of hundred feet high. It goes up slowly, pauses, then drops like a rock.

I sat there next to Sarah holding her hand and up we went. Now no matter how high you think that looks let me tell you, when you get to the top it looks a hell of a lot higher. And as I sat there at the top, I thought to myself;

"I think I may have made a bit of a mistake here"

When I got to the word "mistake" in that mental thread, we dropped.

A split second into the drop, my rear end left the seat and I was free falling. the only thing connecting me to the ride was my left hand on the padded collar thing that was pulled down and clicked into the seat for safety reasons and my right hand holding Sarahs.

a third of the way down I became aware of a sort of growling "rrrrrrrRRRRRRRRRRR!" noise. I was even more amazed to realise it was me! I was making an involuntary noise!

The ground came flying up at us and then the hydrolics kicked in and my arse slammed into the seat with a force that made me groan out loud, and then it was over.

Sarah is so brave sometimes, braver than me. I was scared crappless! She was cool.

Mind you, neither of us stopped shaking for half an hour afterwards!

In no particular order:

Rundontwalk

Miramazing

Rowtheboat

Soy.

Sorry if I have left anyone out.

What?

Oh right – you see technically I have shared a bed with them all. With the exception of Soy, all of the above have stayed at Rancho Collapso. All of them slept in the spare room, which I would have been sleeping in the day before. So after a change of bed linen they slept in it (not all at the same time, that would be kinky) then after each one left the bed linen was changed again and I resumed my sleepy activities of a night in the very same bed.

So we did infact share it. OK, not at the same time but if I had said that you wouldn’t have bothered to read the bloody post.

And as for soy, she slept in the bed in the blue room at Landers and Brads in Ireland and on a completely different occasion, so did I.

OK I am pushing that one a bit, but why not.

And I am so tired I think this post is a good idea.

Which just goes to show.

Right now – Friday lunchtime pint!

Where ever you are.

Have a good one fella.

excuse the heavy use of wossnames but that just about sums it up.

Just read Juzzzys post and thought I would share this picture with you.

As some of you will know, my dad was in the Royal Navy during WW2. He volunteered - but he could not swim. Now I think I know where I get my habit of putting myself in potentially bad situations. Anyway, they put him on a boat. Not a big one, but the Germans did try to sink it a lot anyway.

Especially on D-day.

I was nothing personal, it was just that they objected to the allies trying to get on the beaches before them. Well you know what Germans are like about sun bathing.

So anyway, below is an LCL of the type my dad spent the war on stubbornly not getting sunk. This is also the type of boat that he and his shipmates almost stripped bare on the voyage back to the US navy dockyard when the war was over. It was only borrowed you see. (see the post "my father the thief")

And no, it's not the one in the front with wheels on - it is the one behind it.

He did once tell me a little bit about D-day. About some of the stuff that happened when they were landing the troops. I am glad it was only a little bit. Horrible.

It is amazing some of the things our grand parents or parents had to do, ordinary people having to do terrifying things. Some of them gave their lives.

Luckily for me my dad didn't.

She seems to have got impossibly tall in the two weeks away. Of course she has not - a little perhaps - but she just looked a lot taller. And her skin seems to be more like mine than her mums, she does not have much of a tan but you can see she will go brown easily like me and not go red like Jo.

She has also picked up another bucket of cocktail umbrellas and novelty stirrers like she always does, and proceeded to make me a "cocktail" of apple juice with a peach half impaled on the glass rim into which she sticks the various flags and umbrellas and sparkely things the way she saw them do it in the rock bar her and Jo spent most evenings in.

She gave me a massive hug.

She told me tails of water parks and the friends she made and the things she saw. Showed me the picture of her on a donkey that carried her along cobbled streets in the old part of town.

I am so glad she is back.

What is the best answer you have ever given anyone in reply to a stupid question?

My two personal favourites are:

I was talking to someone on Holiday who came from Birmingham.

“Oh my mum came from Birmingham” said I

“Really! Which part”

“All of her”

Well it’s an old one but a good one.

My next favourite was when talking to a distant relation at one of those big family barbies that you get dragged to once you marry into a family that likes that sort of thing.

“Where do you work?” they asked me.

“Central London”

“I wouldn’t like to commute into there every day, where do you travel to?”

“Liverpool Street Station”

“And what do you do?”

“I get off, that is where the train stops”

Yeah, I’m a smartass I know. And I’m bored.

Sooooooo

Tell me your snappy comebacks to dumb questions.

Edit - I have just realised that the above where not really stupid questions, they were inane and dull conversations that I wanted to end. So maybe I should re title the post. Ah sod it.

Meh.

Tonight I get to see Sarah after her two-week holiday in Rhodes!

God I missed her.

I am going to have a takeaway back at the house with her and Jo before Sarah goes over to her Grannies to be looked after while Jo is at work tomorrow.

Then on Friday night she will come and stay at S&F’s with me and we are taking her to Thorpe Park on Saturday. I will have to go on all the scary rides with her.

Oh dear.

What a pity.

Hehehehehe.

In other news I am still busy as a thing with lots of things to do here, so now that the city is doing the dance of a thousand sandwiches I will trawl about the net and have a catch up.

Over the past few weeks I have purchased a number of small items for "the flat"

This imagined place where I will live and be happy. I have not bought anything major because as I spend most of my time at S&F's there is nowhere to put it. And there are enough things of mine cluttering up their house as it is.

But I have just got a few small things that will make it feel more like home, and give me something to moan about having to dust.

The reason for this seemingly pointless activity is to move this place from being a dream into being a reality. Apparently this sort of behaviour works, so I am told.

So when we were coming back from Santorini I got a set of ceramic coasters featuring ancient greek lads and lasses being somewhat "energetic" shall we say. They will have to be hidden when sarah comes round.

The weekend that Mira was with us, I got a small brass compass in a very nice wooden box that will sit on a little shelf in the main room. I can see it in my head.

The next day when we were at Avebury I got a celtic patterned cotton throw to go over the big single bed sized bean bag that will go in the front room as a spare bed.

And on our way home from Barcelona I got a small ceramic bull figure, hand painted to look like it is covered in lots of shards of multicoloured tiles. That is going to go next to the compass.

It all makes it seem more real in my head.

Maybe it will be real in the realest sense of the word soon.

Well ya gotta have hope eh?

Well so far my day has sucked more than an Essex girl at a nude wedding.

Why am I so late with the checking in thing?

Because I have been inundated with work! Egad!

And the rest of the week looks pretty much like it will be the same.

Bugger.

So here I am, forsaking all sandwiches and keeping only unto blog, as they almost say in that hateful ceremony.

I need to catch up as I have not had a decko round these parts since my brief one this morning as I gulped my black as sin coffee.

So let’s see what you have all been up to then………..

Barcelona Harbour/marina.

Click for full pic.

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The scale of this place is amazing. As is the fact that they have been building it for about 100 years. Ask them to put up a hotel on an unspoilt beach however.......

Damn hot, soup like air and boiling clouds through which the bright Spanish sun would burst at regular intervals. 29 – 31 degrees of heat and a hotel room with no air con. People in the next room shagging very loudly. A very small lift creaks you up to the fourth floor and almost gives up under the weight of two people and hand luggage.

The square outside is vibrant and full of Palm trees from which green parakeets squawk at each other, we sit at a Cervesary beneath the arches and drink cold beer and realise we have been up since 3am. A siesta in our boil in the bag hotel room does not seem very inviting but may have to occur at some stage, but it is only 11 am.

Side streets off Las Ramblas are narrow and inviting during the day, some less so in the evenings but down there wait the small and interesting Tapas bars Cervesaries. Never eat or drink in the places in the middle pedestrian strip of Las Ramblas, not unless you have a lot of money you want to get rid of. And never eat in a place that does not display prices on its menu board.

A city of insane architecture, you can turn a corner and be stunned by an apartment block that looks like it is melting or made of bones. The women of Barcelona are just as jaw dropping, dark haired and dark eyed and all sorts of curvy. I almost fell down the steps of the metro looking at the most beautiful woman I have ever seen. English girls are easy to spot, badly dressed in ill advised shorts and strappy tops by day – badly dressed like girls on their lookout for a hen night to join in the evening. And always pale and blond.

The harbour is a good place to head for in the evening, a little cooler and bright with reflected light, fish leap in the water as they shoal together to avoid bigger fish. Big yachts and cruisers bob and incite fantasies on lottery wins or fame and fortune. Then you see people sleeping on the grass in some of the squares. Compare and discuss.

Food can come slowly but is good when it arrives. Some serving staff could give French waiters lessons in Surly, some bar owners are not exactly welcoming, but you just move on to the next one. There is always a next one.

So - Barcelona. I liked it.

(If you want detail, look out for Shipscook posting stuff. He actually wrights stuff down you know.)

Our hotel, on the left. Fully deserving of it's solitary star but at least it was cheap and right in the centre of things.

The square outside at night,

And if you came out of the hotel and turned left you could saunter down here, just not after dark.

I iz an gargoils!

Seen on that there unfinished big church in Barcelona.

which one would, if they chose to admit it, regale you with tales of them getting so drunk in Barcelona on Saturday night that they spent all Sunday claiming to be about to die, being unable to walk more than 200 yards without having to sit on a bench to recover, Claim frequently that they would never eat or drink again, Sit slumped in chairs outside cafes with there head resting on the cool metal tables for relief, and had to use the rest room in a posh looking eatery when the need for a "technicolour yawn" became too great?

A - Me

B - Mrs F

C - Shipscook.

Clue - the yawn took place in a ladies toilet.

ahem.

Yes we are back.

So I leave work early and get my hair cut.

I am officially now "Beyond tired" - yep, straight out the other side into bouncing around everywhere.

On the train home I get a call from the estate agents, basically something has come up and can the woman come and see the house at 6.30 instead of 7.00?

Yeah no problem.

I arrive at the house. Our for sale board is missing. Has it blown over? I check both sides of the fence - Nope, it is fully gone. Some drunken idiots must have taken it for a laugh.

I phone estate agent.

"Our for sale board has gone"

"Ah, yes, the board man seems to have got ahead of himself"

"A letter is going out today to all households on our books, as of this weekend we are ceasing trading"

"We are not getting enough through sales so we can't continue"

Estate agents can't just say "We're fucked" can they.

So this letter will tell me what is going to happen, and I will have to find another estate agent to sell the house.

Bugger!

I need a weekend away.

Oh right!

But nervous energy will get me through.

Because after about three hours sleep last night what I really need to do is go to Rancho Collapso and see Shipscook and Queene Mab, eat the nom worthy meal ships will prepare and then go to bed.

Because we are all getting up at about 04.00 in the morning to go to Barcelona. An early night after a stress free evening is what I need.

But no.

I have to leave here via the barbers (Buzzzzzzzzzzz - alla da hair iss gonna!) get home and rush round tidying things, opening windows to let some fresh air in, getting all the apples of the lawn in the back garden - because no one wants to know they are going to spend the best part of late summer picking up to 100 apples off the lawn each week - and make sure the place is in reasonable repair as someone is comming to veiw it at 07.00 tonight.

And I have to be somewhere near awake to try and charm/intimidate/beg them into buying it.

Then, after they eff off I have to travel in towards London, change trians and travel out again to get to Rancho Collapso then eat, try to relax enough to sleep and then get up at "bugger off!" O'Clock for the weekend trip.

And apparently Spain yesterday declared three days of national mourning for the plane crash victims. Hmmmm, this could make the trip interesting.

Probably by the time I get to lay my groggy head on a pillow I will have gone beyond tired and not be able to sleep.

There is always the old stand by of crashing out on the plane with your head on the tray table I suppose.

I has an headache. Again.

Meh.

If you don’t have this in a relationship, then you don’t have a relationship.

I have read a couple of posts people have blogged telling of the results of their assuming false ID’s on websites and chatting up their partners. The results generally were not good.

And I know that some people are doing this sort of thing even now on various sites, being someone they are not, seeing if their partner will take the bait.

Really, if you feel you have to do this sort of thing – it is over between you.

Move on and find someone you do trust.

Even though you don't hang around here much anymore, I still hope you have a great day and everything is going well or at least better for you and yours.

XXXXX

1 If you could be any sort of book, Why?

2 How many Cities have all the people you will call friends in your life thought about living in?

3 You are in a dark ally at midnight with no way out, and in front of you is a ravening Vampire. All you can find to use as potential weapons are the rind from a Parmesan cheese, a soggy coppy of "Rubber Donkey Monthly" and the stone from an Olive. Do you

A- Shit your self.
B- Wake up screaming.
C- Wake up screaming and shit yourself.

4 If all the Virgins in the world were laid end to end, would it make a good video?

5 How old were you on your tenth birthday?

6 There is no such thing as saliva, when you eat your teeth are actually crying - discuss.

7 You are at a dinner party and have finished the wonderful meal prepared lovingly by your hosts and are sitting back feeling replete and ready for an after dinner drink. Just then a huge silver back Gorilla burst roaring into the room and throws the hostess face down over the table and begins to take her vigorously from behind. Bearing in mind that you have just lit up a rather fine Cuban cigar, do you take a Port, Brandy or Sherry?

It is a luverleee thing, after a night of good food and a bottle of red wine and a ricard to start, to find an amount of Spiced rum that you didn't actually finish off a couple of nights ago.

This should help relax me into a nice sleep.

Or help me think that being naked in the garden talking to the fish pond at five in the morning is a good idea.

Again.

No, stop it. Not rude innuendo type stuff.

I had a very nice meal in the best, and only, French restaurant in my little suburban town.

And as it was their tenth anniversary (I am amazed that this place has lasted ten years in our chav tastic little town) We got a free bottle of wine with the meal.

It was a very good evening.

Candles, good atmosphere, real French waiters managing to make you feel that you had done something wrong in spite of how friendly they were (and they were friendly) It must just be something to do with French waiters.

They are probably pissed off that they are working in East London and not somewhere in Paris.

And so does my boss.

I am the proud possessor of a first class headache. Real bastard of a thing. Hurty much. And I feel run down and rather turd like.

Which is not good, as I am supposed to be going out tonight.

Bumholes.

And my boss has given me a wonderful big file of stuff to attack in that way I do.

Total Meh out.

I have not done a post today! And it’s nearly lunchtime!

A blog habit, I HAS IT!

Addictive personality you see. I can never do things “A bit” it tends to be all or nothing.

Anyway, I know you really can’t live without my inane bollocks – just admit it!

Yeah, I know……….I am getting my coat.

In other news, someone is coming to view the house tomorrow night. First one in months. Eeeeep!