To be honest I think I’m pretty good at budgeting as long as I don’t have my wife beside me when I’m making a decision on how to budget.
Bless her she seems to be one of this group of people that sees the word “Shop” and then she’s off.
And if the shop mode is in full swing then all thoughts of budgeting are out the window.
It’s the same with home improvements, I’m the practical one who will size a job up, get it planned and priced and she will come in at the last moment and add her requests and all of a sudden a perfectly decent price will now double because she’s probably added some unnecessary upgrades that weren’t really needed.
It’s different but you become used to it. I’m absolutely sure that in a previous life she was a lady of the manor, however I am not unfortunately on the earnings of a lord.
So I am quite good at budgeting, however nine times out of ten I don’t bother as it’s a pretty impossible task.
Are you patriotic? What does being patriotic mean to you?
It’s nice to see patriotism being shown all across any nation in the world. It’s good to show a love and a belief in all that your country and its people stand for. It allows everyone else looking in to know that its people can’t be walked all over and pushed around, they all stand together.
However in the Uk a good majority of its own people hate to see anyone showing any pride. You quite simply get labelled as being, far right, fascist, racist you name it. It’s just not fitting the current climate of opinion or agenda to show any patriotism.
What’s the point. Am I patriotic? Yes. But just like discussing religion or politics, I just keep it to myself. My business.
Label me if you must, but I’m not the idiotic one, take a look in the mirror and make a change.
I’d be a liar if I said no. And so would a large percentage of everyone else.
The Uk is full of laws. Bye laws, little sub laws that we all fall foul of from time to time. Whether it be parking on a kerb in a hurry, accidentally dropping litter, allowing your dog to foul in a public area we are all guilty.
Come to Leicester and the quality of driving will shock you. There are probably third world countries (I don’t like that term) who have better road behaviours than what you witness up here. No one pays any attention to traffic lights, and by the way, Leicester have more traffic lights per mile than any other town and city in the Uk! Thanks for that you town planners.
Red lights here just mean go faster, you really do take your own life in your hands attempting to cross a road up here. Add to that everyone’s journey is more important than yours, and then that’s what adds to all the speeding and racing on open public roads. It really is utter madness.
Petty theft is high up here, shop owners lose an absolute fortune, however this seems to be a trend across the whole Uk as certain members of the general public decide, “ Damn, why should I pay? Nothing is going to happen to me anyway.” So under the coat it goes and then it’s away. The Police forces here are struggling to address this epidemic that is spreading across our entire country.
Personally it’s something I’ve never knowingly done, but if I did get away with not paying with something for some obscure reason, i very much doubt I’d go back to correct the situation. They’d have been a time when I would have, but I probably would not now. How times and attitudes have changed.
And this is it. It seems that petty crime, the breeding ground for more advanced crime has not been nipped in the bud and the consensus is, if they can get away with it then why can’t I?
Bang – there’s the problem. It needs addressing urgently.
So yes I have broken the law unintentionally on many occasions and I guess that’s the way it will be for the foreseeable future.
Attitudes and perceptions of right and wrong have changed, and in the good old fashioned way of following each other like sheep, that’s the way it will continue going. We lack guidance from the authorities, we have no shepherd to guide us anymore.
We have no law makers or politicians that have the necessary backbone anymore. And without good leaders you will never have committed followers.
Right, I’m off to probably break some unknown law or bye law. And I haven’t even risen from my bed yet. It’s a crime to be awake at this time.
We are safely ensconced in our prison on the Bath Road at Heathrow Airport. Luckily it’s only a one night sentence prior to moving off to Icelandic shores on the morrow.
Our view from our prison window for the night
To be totally honest we have a nice hotel room, it’s clean and comfortable and has all we require. The view to the front is right on the runway, however we are looking into the centre of the hotel.
View from the front
I’m only joking using the HMP and prison title, it’s been a good journey down from the East Midlands to West London with only minor delays on the way. We did it in good time.
If you are familiar with British Motorways I have a question. I Have lived between Hertfordshire and Leicestershire all my life. I use the M1 motorway more than I’d like to, I have all my life. So why is it I have never seen the M1 motorway without major works and speed restrictions my entire adult life? I have never seen it open at its full speed potential. What’s that all about? And don’t get me started on so called “Smart Motorways”.
Anyway we are in our room all comfortable contemplating dinner. For the moment it’s a coffee for me and an English breakfast tea for the wife.
If there was a biography about you, what would the title be?
Mañana man
Procrastination, thats me to a tee, or should i really say it used to be. I don’t know, ill tell you what, ask me tomorrow.
That’s me that is 👆
I used to always work in the future, always putting off until tomorrow something that could be done today. Even my bosses knew that i could be relied on to do a job, they just didn’t know when though.
They tried getting me to do daily to do lists, this worked for a while until i turned them into daily tomorrow lists. They gave up in the end and just subtracted 24 hrs off my weekly schedule to make it look like i was being productive on a daily basis. It made them feel as if they’d achieved something. Losers.
It’s probably why i loved visiting our friends in Cyprus so much. The procrastination levels there are through the roof and i thought i fitted in well. My mate would tell me he had a Plumber coming Wednesday, however the key thing he omitted to find out was just on what Wednesday they would be arriving! The levels of procrastination were skill level 2000, these guys were ultra professional.
Over time i have gotten better, but do you know what? It’s never really caused any issues and on many occasions my putting off doing things has fitted in extremely well when there have been changes made to plans along the way…I hadn’t wasted any time, unlike others.
And as for my wife and her numerous 6 monthly reminders..
Ill do it tomorrow
I always tell her it will be done tomorrow. And we all know that never comes.
I know this sounds like a stupid title for a post, it is really, it’s one of those impatient child like statements that we, so called adults make from time to time.
We’re off to Iceland again this weekend and it’s always been one of my dreams to be able to witness an erupting volcano. However not a massive one, a small inconspicuous non invasive one would do just fine.
Picture courtesy of Perlan
At the moment the weather in Iceland is actually warmer and better than it is here in the East Midlands, and that always confuses me due to their proximity to the arctic circle. I lay money on it, what usually happens is we head on home and then the land blisters and there is a new eruption for a few months. But when we plan to return the land seals up like a small surface cut and then scabs over.
It’s quite frustrating
Icelands volcano cams
I constantly check in with the local news streams, as well as looking at the large amount of Volcano cams that are online and providing live coverage of the most susceptible areas.
That said we are really looking forward to our break in the land of ice and fire, however at the moment there doesn’t seem to be much of either.
I’ve just read this post on the “Old man pondering” blog page and it really struck a chord with me. Kind of reminded me of that horrible day last August when our dear little four legged companion finally left us. It’s true to say it feels as bad now as it did back then. Grief and loss is a horrible experience.
When my parents were at my current age it would have been 1986. They were probably doing their best to just get by, and they both had multiple jobs. I remember a few details from this period as there were some significant goings on around this time.
My mother would have been a shop worker in a local store as well as a cleaner at the company i worked for. I would have been in the photographic industry about four years at this time, i would have had a darkroom in the spare bedroom and would have probably been on my third computer at this point. I’d have ditched the Sinclair ZX81 and the Commodore Vic 20 and I’d probably be trying to master the Amstrad CPC464. I loved the start of the computer era, as did a lot of my friends at the time.
I had my first SLR camera around this time and that would have probably been a Praktika. I was saving as much as i could, to try and purchase my all time favourite camera at the time, and in fact it is still my favourite of all time to this very day. A jet black Canon A1.
I know that i was heavily into photography at This time, as i took one of the most iconic photos i have ever taken in my family history, of my father. I have it to this day. He was leaning on a coal bunker in the garden, it was a beautiful sunny day and i took it, and processed the film and enlarged the photos in my little darkroom in the spare bedroom, on a Gnome enlarger. It was a black and white photo and it represented a turning point in all of our lives.
He had just had a heart attack, and he suffered a deep immersive depression that he never really came out of. Please don’t misunderstand me he lived for another 21 years with no other medical issues, however he had changed and became highly abusive to my mum, my little sister and me. He was heavily into alcohol at this stage, and we were paying the price. I had to grow up quick as i became the protector of my Mother and sister, it was hard and i was not prepared. We were the only ones at home at the time as my two elder brothers and elder sister had all left at that point, and boy how we suffered big time. Our lives were changed the very day his heart attack occurred.
He was a very good electrician, he had been an aircraft electrician but was now working for a local building company, he was also a part time baker.
In the next few years my mother would lose all her brothers and sisters as time took its toll. Father would lose his mother and sister and the family began to dwindle in size.
But thats enough of the bad as its all in the past and though i never forget what happened, i have to move on with my own life for purposes of maintaining sanity.
I loved the 80”s as the world was opening up and starting to develop technologically, however i do believe the older generations did struggle. It’s strange really as it is a mirror image for us older generations today, with some of the things that are going on around us currently. Perhaps all generations have their own Groundhog Day periods.
Here are some points of interest that also occurred back in 1986
Plans were announced between the UK and France to build the channel tunnel
The space shuttle Challenger exploded just after its launch
Halley’s Comet makes a show
The Soviet Mir space station is launched
Microsoft goes on the stock market
The Chernobyl nuclear plant explodes
Argentina wins the World Cup
The M25 motorway – The UK’s biggest car park opens officially
A lot happened that year and these are just a small selection of them. However the dynamics of my family changed that year and what occurred from that point on will never be forgotten . WordPress really couldn’t have chosen a worse time line to talk about for me than this one I’m afraid, but then, it’s good to get it out there.
However, time moves on, wounds heal and we all learn. This is why it is important that we don’t erase our past, otherwise how will we ever learn to be better people and treat others with the mutual respect and belonging they all so rightly deserve.
I have been on a run of night shifts this week, and when I awoke this afternoon, I checked my phone and I had a missed call. I listened to the message and tears flooded my eyes. A fantastic colleague and friend had passed away as I slept and its hit me hard.
20th April 2014. We won.
Chris had been a slave to the big “C” for a couple of years now, he had his ups and downs and for a while he seemed to be winning. But that bastard Cancer did not allow him any respite and today I have lost a wonderful friend and colleague.
Chris was a signaller on the route between Leicester and Peterborough and I used to regularly meet him at signal boxes between Melton Mowbray and Oakham. He, like me was a fan of Leicester City football club, and we loved nothing better than to talk about the club and try to sort the issues out in our own way, just as every football fan across the country does.
Chris spotted on Tv at the Leicester v WBA match 20th April 2024
The pictures above were broadcast on BBC tv when we were playing West Bromwich Albion in the championship in April 2024. We won that game so we both had something positive to chat about.
Something to talk about
51 years of age is no age at all.
Chris was a wonderful human being and a lovely soul. He always had a smile to greet you and there was always the offer of a cup of tea the moment you walked through the door. Some people are put on this earth to make others lives better, and Chris was one of those people. Now he has left us and the world will be a sadder place for it.
My life has been blessed for knowing him, he was an outstanding work colleague, and i am glad our paths crossed. He will always be remembered with fondness.
If you had the power to change one law, what would it be and why?
I’m going to inject a little humour into this prompt and I’ll tell you why. People see prompts such as this and then go into full dive mode to dig out a law that they disagree with, some rightly so others just because they have fallen foul maybe, and the rest just because it doesn’t fit with how they think it should be.
And then the arguments begin.
Here in the Uk and probably in a lot of other countries around the world, we have a whole load of laws still in place going back to times long past. It’s just like that drawer full of junk you have at home, no one ever has the time to open it up and get rid of all the clutter.
British law is sometimes just like that.
I’m not going to suggest any changes to the law, I’m just going to highlight a small selection of the weird and wonderful ones still in force today.
Here are a few that made me smile. They are still on the statute books, however i suspect they are rarely acted upon these days.
It’s illegal to linger after a funeral – A chap buried his wife in 2015 and waited an extra 20 minutes after the funeral as he was in no rush to leave. He ended up with a £160 fine! Apparently the law is there to stop gravediggers being prevented from doing their work
It’s an offence to handle a Salmon and look suspicious – WTF! See what i mean about strange laws. Under section 32 of the Salmon act 1986 this covers the suspicious handling of fish, and was aimed at preventing people selling fish through illegal means.
It’s illegal to be drunk in a pub – well I’m a convicted felon if this is the case. I must admit i have managed to get away with being arrested for many years now so i suspect this is one of those laws that are pretty much defunct now. The law that covers this is the Metropolitan act of 1839.
It’s an offence to be drunk in charge of a cow – the licensing act of 1872 forbids anyone to be in charge of a cow in an intoxicated state on any highway. (I have not been found guilty of this yet, Cows are hard to find in the city)
And the list could go on and on, there are literally hundreds of these old outdated laws still on the statute books today.
But i doubt anyone really falls foul of them nowadays.
Hope this shaped your wonderful faces into a smile…
Foxes Den 
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