ABC Wednesday – “O”

Oh (no pun intended) how tempted was I to use The Story of O by Anne Desclos under the nom de plume of Pauline Réage?

However to raise the tone of the post a little bit here are two alternatives

How well I remember my kids when they were very small getting in a right mess with these, only we called them Spaghetti Hoops in the UK not Spaghetti Os.



These are what eldest son of DeeJay sees on the tress at home in San Diego. I wish I was there with him.


If you want to join in ABC Wednesday, visit Mrs Nesbitt's Blog

The answer lies in the soil!

Who was it that used to say that? I can hear the yokel voice and think it was on a radio program (perhaps 'Round the Horn'?).

Well anyway this weekend of glorious weather, well Saturday was best, had me and Mrs DeeJay tidying up our garden and tilling our allotment. Saturday saw Mrs DeeJay in the garden pruning and weeding whilst I planted another 3 rows of potatoes and dug over most of the remainder of the allotment plot. When the dampness had been burnt off the grass by the heat from the strange yellow thing in the sky, I returned home to cut the lawns which after the spring fertiliser treatments are looking better than they have ever looked before.

Did I tell you about "Green Thumb"? Its a national franchise for lawn treatments that was recommended to me by a friend. I can't believe how they can do it for the price! They called to give me a free assessment of my lawns (written) and I subsequently contracted them to aerate them with hollow tining (£34 one off) and then quarterly treatments of feriliser/weed killer (£16 per treatment). That can hardly cover the cost of the fertiliser, the petrol and the labour!! The beauty of it is that whatever they are using doesn't have to be so acutely timed as to be applied when it hasn't rained but then watered in if it doesn't - if you see what I mean.
Yesterday we dragged our aching backs and legs back to the allotment to complete the digging. As it has been so wet and the under soil is still very sticky the result was still not good enough to take seed drills, but as luck would have it one of my fellow allotment tenants was there with a rotavator which she lent me and after 3 passes of the plot, it is now a nice crumbly tilth. I love that word!

I should have slept like a log last night, but my back ached so much it kept waking me, so I have come back to work this morning for a rest LOL

Another gem from my American trip

So listening to some of the ads on the early morning TV as I was getting ready to depart on Friday, I had to do a double take to ensure that I actually heard what I thought I heard on an ad about teeth whitening strips. Although not verbatim the voice over went something like this
"xxxxx is preferred by more people than the leading selling brand"

Hello, excuse me, wouldn't that make it the leading selling brand? DOH!

Can you believe this?

So in the newspaper (USA Today) delivered to my hotel door this morning is an article about the Supreme Court upholding the right of States to use lethal injection for executing prisoners sentenced to death.
The issue was that prisoners in Kentucky had appealed to the court that the process was unjust in the eyes of the constitution as it was "cruel and unjust" because it caused unnecessary pain.
A Chief Justice quoted that to be successful, the prisoners would have had to show that the process "presented a substantial risk of harm to the prisoner".

EXCUSE me is death not a substantial risk of harm?!!!!!!!!

ABC Wednesday - M

A couple of "sweet" M photos




I particularly like this one

This feels like a second home!!

Here I am again back on the east coast of the USA sitting in my lovely Marriott hotel room catching up on the 66 emails that have flooded my Inbox since I logged off on Friday evening. I know what there game is, wait until I am in the air and then send as many Re:, Re:, Re: emails as they can. Well I have fixed their little game I now read the latest first that has the whole sorry trail in it and then I get to delete all the others ha ha!

I bought my first electric guitar on Saturday so I was not too happy about having to plant out my potatoes and onions on the allotment on Sunday, but it made me get onwith it all the quicker so I could get back home and play. Mrs DeeJay soon had me feeling a little guity though, as I haven't bought a set of headphones yet, so along with most of the street she had the pleasure of listening to my practice!

Here it is

Hump Day (Wednesday) funny

A middle aged man bought a brand new convertible Porsche. He took off down the road, pushed it up to 160 and was enjoying the wind blowing through his (thinning) hair.
'This is great,' he thought and accelerated to an even higher speed.
But when he eventually looked in his rear-view mirror there was a police Car behind him, blue lights flashing.
'I can get away from him - no problem' thought the man and he floored it some more, and flew down the road at over 210 to escape being stopped.
Then he thought, “What the hell am I doing? I'm too old for this kind of thing' and pulled over to the side of the road, and waited for the police car to catch up with him.
The Policeman pulled in behind the Porsche and walked up on the driver's side. 'Sir, my Shift ends in five minutes and today is Friday the 13th
'If you can give me a good reason that I've never heard before as to why you were speeding, I'll let you go.'
The man looked back at the Policeman and said, 'Last week my wife ran off with a Policeman and I Thought you were bringing her back.'

The Policeman said, 'Have a nice day.'

ABC Wednesday - L

L is for this fantastic track by Eric, or I should say Derek (and the Dominoes)
I have always liked this track but after my visits to Tokyo late last year whenever I hear it now I cannot get the image out of my head of one of my Japanese colleagues singing it in a Karaoke studio. I say singing but in all honesty nobody who heard it would ever call it singing, but his passion was without doubt. I can also hear his enthusiastic cry when the track began "ooooh Crapton!!!"


And here is another one especially for all of my lady readers

Emotional Weekend

Well I have a had a wonderful but very emotionally fired weekend, not helped by the tiredness resulting from late nights and 500+ miles of driving, much of it on horrible rain/sleet/ snowy motorways.

This past weekend saw my Mother’s 87th birthday, my eldest son’s 36th birthday and my youngest son’s partner’s birthday. My eldest son who lives in San Diego and who has not been home for 4 years was here on holiday with his wife, so we all met up for the weekend and had a celebratory dinner on Saturday night.
So you can understand my mixed emotions of joy at seeing eldest son again in the company of youngest son and my Mother but the sadness at leaving them all yesterday evening knowing that eldest son and his wife are flying home today.

I have resolved to visit them in San Diego towards the end of the year

ABC Wednesday - K is for ……..

K9

Although a new Doctor Who series starts on Saturday I am not expecting to see the return of K9 - Shame!

Late Weekend Post

Bah humbug, too busy etc. ………..

It has been the start to another one of those weeks where the proverbial has hit the fan from the off so I have not had time to do my Monday morning post.
In all honesty, I probably don’t have that much to post about anyway seeing as how the weather has been absolutely s**t here all weekend.
I still need to get the remainder of my allotment dug, compost dug into it and my seed potatoes are just raring to get planted.
My lawns have been hollow tine aerated and some spring treatment spread which means that the weeds are dying, the grass is now about 6 inches long and I need to get that mown but it is so wet that the mower would simply churn it all up and undo all the good work.

I suppose the upside is that I have started to prepare the bathroom for decoration although that is the part of decorating that I hate. I have also had plenty of time, much to Mrs DeeJay’s disgust, to get in some guitar practice. Last week my tutor took me away from learning chords and strumming patterns and introduced me to some gentle lead guitar stuff with some blues licks. He even let me loose on one of his electric guitars while he played bass and I have really got a taste for it now and have been itching to go shopping for an electric guitar and amplifier – omg, Mrs DeeJay will either leave me or throw me out!

Monday was a complete change of weather (isn’t that always the way?), so I rode my new motorbike to work and managed to put on nearly 150 miles by taking the “scenic route”. It won’t be long before the 750 mile service can be done and I can stop having to run it in. It is so difficult to keep the revs below 7000. I guess watching the Moto GP on Sunday was also an unconscious motivator to ride on Monday. What a performance those guys put on and James Toseland did really well to get another 6th place. I can’t wait to see what he does next time out with the new engine.