Happy New Year

So the Year of the Ban has come and gone and is any one much bothered?

A couple I know have given up having the occasional visit to the pub by themselves. Either they had to sit alone whilst the other half had a cigarette or they both went for one together - that is they went to stand on a pavement together on a freezing winter night. Not exactly a hot date. They just stay at home now and smoke to their hearts content.

Another wavering smoker is very happy with the ban - she's so glad she doesn't come home from the pub smelling of smoke. She has the occasional cigarette but not down the pub - she has to find other excuses. And she does (find other excuses).

For my part it is my second new year without a cigarette and I don't miss it at all.

A lot of people will have given up as a New Year Resolution. Good luck. I did it once using the Alan Carr method - it was the nuttiest January I have ever had wrestling the mini nicotine monsters he encourages you to visualize whilst undergoing cold-turkey. Never again.

Literally.

Hopefully.

A poke from behind

Today I got this in my gmail inbox:

" Dear future self,
I'm reminding you about your stated goal on 43 things,
to "Quit Smoking". How's it going?

Sincerely,

Your past self "


It was from a social networking site called 43Things.

I can't remember setting it up but I doubt a Superbrain computer did it off it's own bat.

So what do I say to my past self?

Yeayyyy!!!! I have actually gorn and done it - I have not smoked since whenever it was - April 2006.

I still have the odd one in my dreams and I occasionally make jokey remarks about needing one if something particularly stressful has taken place - but yes Past Erik, the Erik of Christmas Present is currently a non-smoking Erik. Can you believe it?


smoking quit smoking



Thanks to tarnie at flickr for "xmas past"

The Chicken Party

Krunchy Fried Chicken
Originally uploaded by hugovk

I was busily not helping around the house last weekend when I heard R deal with some visitors to the front door.

I later found out they had been canvassers for the forthcoming local elections - R mentioned her annoyance with one particular council policy but being the conscientious democrat that she is, she took a leaflet outlining the main planks they were standing on for her to study later .

It contained one of those questions that it is often unwise for a politician to ask. It went something like this - "did you know the Council is engaged in a major redevelopment program for Plumstead?" I thought the obvious answer would be no. But reading the detail it mentioned the refurbishment of shopfronts and it slowly dawned on me that I had in fact noticed it. I had been a bit bemused to see that the Chick-Chicken shop had renewed its hoarding a few weeks ago. A few days later I noticed another shop that sells an odd mixture of things including fried chicken had also had its sign renewed. I believe I even chucked a little comment up on my Facebook status line along the lines of "Erik is wondering if the refurbishment of all the fried chicken shops in Plumstead is a sign of development or retrenchment."

That's what the development programme seems to amount to anyway - at least as far as appearances are concerned. (It's just occurred to me that I saw a particularly dodgy estates agents had decided to have a a paint job-struck me as odd at the time). For a bold development program the council seemed to be making some odd choices as to what needed improving. The Chick-chicken shop had a perfectly adequate sign anyway. After all who needs a good shopfront when your marketing team have come up with such an excellent brand name?

Picture: Krunchy Fried Chicken
Originally uploaded by hugovk

fried+chicken plumstead local+elections london

Crimes and Misdemeanours

I've been feeling tired all week. I was woken in the night by Mr Scuttles who has taken over from John and Wayne apparently (did I tell you that Wayne was found looking uncomfortably dead in a trap in the bathroom?) Mr Scuttles was making a fair bit of noise - it sounded like he was trying on my hiking boots at one point.I made a mental note to kill him then went back to sleep. In fact my sleep has been relatively undisturbed but I still feel in need of more.

Is it the stresses and strains of the jury service I have just completed? I'm pretty sure I am not supposed to mouth off about the details but we found him guilty and the whole thing was pretty lame. There was a brutal murder closely connected to it but it was itself a mini-saga about the possession of controlled medecines. It was a bit unsavoury but I certainly didn't lose any sleep over it - it made me laugh a bit and it made me feel sad a bit but it was hardly the The Texas Chainsaw Massacre.

Perhaps it's the troubles faced by Civil Servants this week? I am a bit annoyed that all read/write access to DVD drives and support for flash drives has been removed at work. Getting rid of the ability to copy to them makes sense of sorts - in fact you needed special permissions to write to CD/DVD before the debacle as far as I could work out. But not being able to read from them seems beside the point. We are all going around self-satisfied that it would never happen in our own particular corner of the world and have definitely not felt the need to pull duvets over our heads either metaphorically or actually.

Was it the dismal awfulness of the England versus Croatia game? Did that take it out of me? When I heard Israel beat Russia, coming back from my Irish friend Mariadphod's Birthday drink, I leapt up in the train , spun round and shouted the result down the carriage and one hundred Nigerians,Poles,Lithuanians,Indians, and Finns looked back at me blanky. Two sweet old ladies from Ghana asked me what I was excited about but I am not sure they understood. The Italian and Australian to my right at least knew there was a game a called football but were much more interested in Rugby. After this realisation that no one in England really cared about what happened to England's football team the defeat was a lot easier to take.

Perhaps its all due to not enough cigarettes all round.

Mr Scuttles certainly would not want to be poking around my smoke-ridden bedroom risking passively contracted mouse cancers.

If I had been desperate for a cigarette during our deliberations the jury would have moved along a bit quicker.

I would be getting regular breaks from my computer for fag breaks.

I could have enjoyed a quiet smoke instead of annoying all my fellow passengers.

I bet more members of the Croatia squad smoked than their English opponents.

And I am missing out on the enlivening effects of the plant itself - I now have to rely on the narrow gauge of caffeine that irritates more than it soothes.

A ghastly image of Fag Free Britain arises before my eyes - knackered and stressed and generally useless at everything.

Thanks to BlackScarletLove for the photo



football croatia england hmrc discs cd smoking smoking-ban cigarettes mouse mousetrap

Starlight Foundation

These are the links to donation forms the Starlight Foundation in the UK and the Australian Foundation respectively. You can click back to their homepages to see the kind of work they do brightening the lives of children with serious conditions.

The UK Starlight

https://secure.paradisii.net/Starlight/payment_details.asp

The Australian Starlight Homepage - click through to make a donation

http://www.starlight.org.au/Default.aspx?TabId=1374

Down Under

Melbourne 2006 : Flowers
Originally uploaded by simv

I have just found out about the sudden death of my uncle David.

He emigrated with Margaret and the children to Australia many years ago but I remember staying at their house, that David built himself, in Woodstock.

I last saw him at my cousins wedding and he seemed happier than ever.

I am glad that he got to meet my partner before he died - they got on like a house on fire.

My thoughts are with Margaret, Christine, Kevin and Colin and all the family.

He was buried this afternoon in Melbourne.

Gifts have been requested to go to the Starlight Foundation, a hospice for terminally ill children.

When I can find an obvious link that's suitable for UK citizens I will post it up.

The Gr8 Heelr

58/365 Shut up you stupid girl
Originally uploaded by Toxic Cherry Girl

I came across the following on my internet travels today.

I have no idea what search terms led me to it. Its a Bebo blog.

"Today was ok quiet wiv out becky though, she went to london 2 get a photo shoot done. had grease rehearsel after school that was funny joey didnt half look soooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo fit!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! becky would hav loved 2 be there as she would hav gone all mental coz danny didnt half look cool he look exactly like the lad off grease the part he is playing. danny said 2 me in english is BBT in and i said no she had gone 2 london he shouted yes and smiled.i hav had nothing 2day 2 eat coz i had noone 2 go in2 the canteen wiv me. i am so pissed off wiv chloe i hope i batter her she so has pissed me off i h8 her 4 it i wish i had never told her that little bitch any way fingers r hurting now so im gonna give it a rest
posted by name edited

1 Comment:

(name edited)said... 981 days ago

hey babe lovin ur journal i still fink that dan is sooooooooooooooooooooooo fit even if he did say yes
(and for those who dont know bbt is becky big tits)yes thats me becky big tits"


So far so good.

My tenuous excuse for posting this is that it was the last post I could find for this particular blogger - it was 981 days ago.

It makes me wonder if things have been patched up wiv chloe. I also wonder whether joey still looks soooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo fit or whether he has lost his charm.

981 days is a long time. It is longer than the period I have not been smoking. A lot longer - I estimate about 411 days longer.

Fingers r hurting now.

(Thanks to Toxic Cherry Girl for the pic)

Get it off my chest

flu
Originally uploaded by taylorbrinton

I was going to write pithily about the vast array of chicken joints in Plumstead but I think I must have got bird 'flu and just sending in this is about the best I can do. Once again I'm pretty grateful for having given up smoking at times like these. Its very odd as the cold seems to have gone into my chest and I am having these unusual things called coughs - chesty coughs in fact. It brings back memories. Most of my coughing was pretty low-key as a smoker. Small irritating little affairs they were. R was amazed that I didn't seem to cough at all. She suspected that I didn't inhale properly as she remembers always have a big coughing session every morning when she was a smoker. Others might not have noticed my coughs but I certainly did - and now this little virus has reminded me of something I now largely live without. Luckily.

geeking and squeaking

R decided to have a peek under the computer room "day" bed and thought that there was a mouse dead in the trap. She was right.

I was too busy to remove it immediately. A neighbour's computer had a suspiciously slow connection to the internet and I had undertaken to have a look at it. I have done a help-outs at work but this was the real thing. I didn't quite get to the bottom of it but whilst I was not quite getting to the bottom of it I noticed a mouse making its way round the skirting board of the room and then disappearing.

As I was trying to determine whether it was the same error I had had with explorer.exe trying to access inaccessible folders or whether it was in fact a trojan I was also juggling with the thought that the non-humane trap was also empty. The mouse had somehow released itself and ambled off to sniff out crumbs at its leisure.

The trap wasn't empty and I delivered a complicated lesson about a workaround for the slow connection issue. Progress was made in all departments - apart from that particular mouse's "survive as long as possible" department. I wonder if it was Wayne or John.

R has laid another trap. We are on a roll. We will not rest till all their necks are snapped. Ha Ha !!!

Well smack my little bald head

I was messing around a bit with the template today - mainly so I could stick that Movie thing in my sidebar - its supposed to 1) update movies I have thought about whilst browsing 2) connect interestingly and pertinently to other sites. If you click the little blue squares you're given a few options to explore further. I tried the War of the Worlds option and was taken to YouTube and this clip. I love being productive at my PC.

You'll notice this traditonal hyperlink link has the same blue square located just to the right of it...and so it goes on...for ever...

Be warned...this video contains scary scenes evocative of the Seventies

tecnorati tags benny hill blueorganiser adaptiveblue smartlink funny youtube video semantic web

Interesting Dream Last Night

smoking kills
Originally uploaded by engintepe

Interesting Dream Last Night

I was smoking last night. In fact I had been smoking for a period of months - about 4-5 a day for a period of months whilst making out on this blog with the Quit-o-meter that I was completely clean.

I was enjoying my smoke, feeling a bit disappointed that I had relapsed but at the same time confident I would be able to go back to being a non-smoker. I was unsure how I was going to adjust the Quit-o-meter if I was to confess via the blog that I had had relapses. I was totally confused by all this when I was waking up. It took a bit of time for the relief to kick with the realisation it was just a dream.

Its just short of a year and a half since I gave up.

(PS No thanks to either Flickr or Blogger or both for having such a flimsy blogging set-up. I hate re-writing posts).

It's quite simple..

We were hunting round the reclamation yards of South East London yesterday and popped into the Elephant & Castle Shopping Centre. The Elly Centre is not what you'd call state of the art and the range of shops is limited to say the least. But I have enjoyed those few trips I have made. There's a definite ambience about the place on a weekend morning. When R and I lived nearby we saw one of those editorial pieces promoting nearby shops and there was an article about the centre and it was what originally inspired us to go along. When we got there I found it chimed with some positive reports from a friend about interesting goings-on on the top floor.

So we were desperate for a nice coffee yesterday and there was nothing decent until we got to Waterloo-unless we stopped at the Elephant of course. We ended going to both the "it's quite simple: brilliant Coffee" outlet and the Colombian La Bodeguita cafe bar. Our first coffees had been so good, really good, but we had finished them before getting back in the car so needed another. It meant we could do a direct comparison between the two stalls.

Although it had the advantage of meeting a desperate need the first round of coffees, from "Brilliant Coffee" were a clear winner in my opinion. Mine was a medium caramel cappuchino -the froth must have been made from full cream Jersey milk and had a solidity to it that made taste like an impossibly delicate meringue. The chocolate topping was spot on.

La Bodeguita beats the Brilliant Coffee hands down on charm - the service point is like walking into Santa's grotto. You are immediately transported away from the grot that is Elephant. This is the place to come and chill out for a while - there's even a library if your Spanish is up to it. It's also about 50 pence cheaper for a similar round. The coffee is good - they do are decaff though R found the authentic bitter cocoa a bit of a surprise. The take-aways were served extremely hot so we were far away from shop before we finished them. The extra shot I had ordered seemed to be missing from my cappo (and from the price) and the two sugars were hiding down the bottom somewhere. The flavour was there, if a bit subtle, but the froth was half-hearted. A decent enough coffee though and probably not their speciality. I'll try the hot chocolate next time. But still a lovely place and definitely worth a visit if for some unknown reason you find yourself in the Elly. But if you're just after simply brilliant coffee to take away just read the sign.

london coffee Elephant and Castle

Smokers and non-smokers agree: Bans are okay in public places

Ok. I'm feeling lazy. And I told you I'm obsessed. So what?

clipped from www.synovate.com Smokers and non-smokers agree: Bans are okay in public places Smokers also willing to pay price for tobacco-friendly flights As smoking bans continue to make headlines in Germany, Australia and the UK, findings from international market research firm Synovate's latest survey show that 80% of respondents in 15 countries across the globe are in favour of such bans, primarily because of the positive influence these are perceived to have upon public health. Smoking bans win global support More than 70% of people believe that smoking in public is fine as long as there is adequate ventilation or designated smoking spaces, according to the Synovate study. Read more

Clipmarks-My Latest Obsession

You can only fully use this with IE6 + or Firefox or Flock browsers. I had it for yonks on FF but had given up on it- now all of a sudden it makes sense. Its now on my IE7 too (though the toolbar doesn't integrate so well). It is there to help me waste even more time. Also the printing snippets thing in this article sounds like its actually useful - it hadn't occurred to me until I came across this article- using Clipmarks of course.

clipped from www.pcpro.co.uk COMPANY: Clipmarks RATING: The extension reviewed here is one of the ones that we simply couldn't live without. That's where Clipmarks comes in. Whether you want to save to a file, to a shared clipping website with a Digg-alike rating system, or to print. All you do is click on a toolbar button and move your mouse around the screen as various page elements get boxed in - one click and they're all clipped. Best yet, you can compile multiple clips from multiple pages and save them when you're ready. We find it works best when you want to print information from multiple pages or sites, but only that which is pertinent. If you save clips to clipmarks.com, there's a pitiful character count limit; on the positive side, you can quickly build a searchable database of your own preferred web content.

Wass den fecken?

And now Bloggers inviting me to anfahren nach meinen Bloggeposten or something -aaaaAAArrRGGHH. And I've got to enter some poncey little word verification again and it will reject it again...and it did reject me again I was only joking. Sob sob snarl snarl. And agin - right the next one is nycdaeva there is no way I will get that wrong anymore than I got the others wrong. And it did reject me. The torture must STOP.

Flickring out

That is the last time I use that blog option on Flickr. It may not be Flickr's fault but if you change one character from the original post you lose the title and link beneath the picture. I am sure an html wizard can fix it but my various "messings-with" have never worked. It is something to do with the total amount of characters in the post. Anyway I have had to let the typos go in the post below. There's always going to be one or two and I'm not always that concerned about accuracy but I can lose the will to live adding a single apostrophe sometimes.It involves re-acquiring two URLS and creating two links to credit the photo and I think sod copyright and sod Lynne Truss and sod blogging and sod life and sod mice.

Hampstead Heath expands to Woolwich

HPN_0037.JPG
Originally uploaded by Arthur Pewty

I know what all the Gormley talk has been about Woolwich now. Actually they are by Peter Burke - though finding that out was a harder google than I imagined. Flickrs direct blogging tool is such a pain as I have to give the full link to the page that gave the answer and I won't be able to edit it without messing up the photographers credit. The link is the Cass Sculpture Foundation site. Such a pain Flickr/Blogger/Whoever!

edit - yes I did edit this anyway as it was totally incomprehensible and though I can see the links under the photo as I write I bet they will be gone if I click PublishPost. So here they are, painstakingly recreated. The picture is enigmaticallyentitled HPN_0037.JPG and the artist is Arthur Pewty.

The trap shuts

Last night we were disturbed by some loud frantic rattling. R was convinced it was coming from inside our bedroom. I surmised quickly (not bad for 3am at any rate) that the noise was from the next door room and that the mouse had got caught in the humane trap . They work on a pivot system - they smell the peanut butter at the far end of the tube - he then enters the tube, the weight tilts the tube forward and the door shuts behind him.

The noise was almost disturbing. He went quiet suddenly. I thought he might have died from a heart attack. We heard some more noise -less desperate- later on and managed to go back to sleep.

I got up and checked it this morning. The trap had indeed closed shut. Victory at last. My earlier dismissive comments about the trap's usefulness were instantly retracted and I did a "huntsman returning in glory" dance up and down the stairs. I had to go to work and didn't have time to release him straight away. I got home and thought I better not delay any further - he might suffocate or something. I got my gloves on placed the trap in a bag and armed with a camera set off to the nearest open ground. I think I understand the warning on the label a bit better now.




video mousetrap funny

Forward to the Past

I'm just slightly worried that when I went to hospital on Monday they didn't discuss my latest blood test but instead pronounced me dead. England has just won again with Owen and Heskey as frontmen. This can't be true can it?

I have also come back home after the match and seen the builders are still here working away.

Forget it. I'm dead. I'm definitely dead. Ate a bad prawn or something.

Life was good whilst it lasted but not as amusing as it is now. If you are still alive and receiving this post via a seance or something then "hello and fear not - the afterlife is serene and witty. Especially the Emile Heskey bits. Love to mum and dad. Bad to Wayne and John- but don't kill 'em or they'll end up here."

dot.com crash bang wallop

If you click on this image you will see how my plans to displace YouTube and Facebook are coming along. According to Google-Analytics even I don't visit this site any more. Sigh.

Meanwhile John and Wayne have got themselves ear-muffs and this time it's personal. I need to get tooled up for round two though - I was far too lily-livered in the first round. The humane trap actually says on its packaging something like "due to the difficulty of capturing live mice this product might not work". Can you imagine that with a CD player - "due to the difficulty of digitalising music this product might just transmit a dull whirring noise".

And as for the Sonic Devices - pah! At least the veggie-traps tell you they don't work. I am going down to a bog standard fancy goods shop and buying a shed-load of conventional traps which I am going to manically lay around every corner of the house à la Tom & Jerry, then I am going to sit me down in a comfy chair with a beer and wait till I hear that sound...then it's bye bye guys - eat trap!

Thanks to www.rodentcontrolsupplies.com for the pic






mice mousetrap murder google analytics