CBeebies to be investigated by Ofsted

In my current series of lazy posts here is the shocking news that "The Government’s education watchdog announced today that it is to investigate the BBC’s flagship children’s channel over claims that it has been childminding the nation’s under eights despite not being registered as a childcare provider."

Car Toon

My WiFi Nextdoor

Now that we are well into our second year of running our own business from home, our friends (if we had any) would lean over the bar of the local pub (if we had one) and ask the following question : "How on Earth do you cope working together all day as husband and wife?".

Well, the short answer is that we don't.

Thanks to the magic of Wireless Internet I am able to work in my back bedroom office and back bedroom photographic studio whilst Mrs Rine "hot desks" it with the laptop in the kitchen. We haven't reached the stage of corresponding by emails yet but we do use the internal phone for important business exchanges such as where a particular item of stock has disappeared to. (Every room in the house contains a certain amount of stock - or "old shite" as Oz refers to it).

When we do have to meet up it's a bit like we are working in a "proper" organization where the office politics come to the fore. For example, when I have my imaginary "Head of Warehouse" Brown coat on and am knee deep in corrugated cardboard, I base my character on a dangerous amalgum of Stan from Dinner Ladies, Arkwright from Open All Hours and Victor Meldrew from One Foot in the Grave. When Mrs Rine appears with a query that something cost twice as much to post because of the excess packing weight I turn to my imaginary colleagues (or Oz) and say things like "Those girls in that office just have no conception of the need to add protective packaging to our valuable items. They were moaning last week because I got through 17 rolls of brown plastic tape! I ask You!".

Mrs Rine bases her working persona on the entire female cast of Dinner Ladies with the exception of Twinkle, who is played by Lily.

Honestly, the days just FLY by!

Flippin' Fast

I know this is a net-loafing "best practise" site so I am pleased to alert you to Google's latest time-thief called Fast Flip, part of their on-going campaign to rid the World of paper.

It's a great way of zipping through the BBC News and much more akin to flicking through a newspaper. At the moment the BBC is the only UK publication in "fast flip" - just click here then double click any page to go to full screen flipping mode.

Now get on with some work, eh?

Mouldy Old Dough (Slight Return) - Bontempi Hits Vol 2

I found this 1984 clip yesterday when digitizing some old family movies, so just to prove that I've grown past any kind of embarrassment and as my personal tribute to Kaz & Dave who are retiring this week, here it is. If Simon Cowell is watching, I happen to know that he's equally proficient on the guitar.



Relax girls, he's married.

Homage to Brown

Ever since I was a little lad I've been fascinated by magic.

It could have all started watching my father doing the three card trick on London Bridge but more likely was watching black and white magician David Nixon on early BBC.

He looks a bit frightening in this old picture. I also began reading some wonderful old books about magicians in the Edwardian heydey such as Harry Houdini who was killed in 1926 when he invited someone to punch him in the stomach and didn't have time to prepare his muscles, a mistake I never make myself.

I've just noticed that if you morph David Nixon and Harry Houdini you get well known urbane barrister wit Clive Jenkins who became head of the White Collar Union in the 1970's.

I loved magic spectacles though, and always wanted a pair with plain glass in. I was one of Paul Daniels's 17 fans (if you exclude Paul and Debbie) and went to see him at Thetford Sports Centre in the late 1970's. I also went to see Siegrfried and Roy in Las Vegas and was stunned by the fantastic stunts involving fierce Tigers and Motorbikes - however did their wives let them take such risks?!

So let me say I am a great fan of Derren Brown who has brought a new level to magic by dressing it up with all sorts of psychological mumbo jumbo plus a tiny bit of real hypnosis. His shows and stunts are always incredibly original and entertaining which stands out amongst the formulaic strictly-big brother-on-ice-factor television that fills our numerous channels these days.

We watched him on recording last night and he did a brilliant thing of taking a lady round Hamley's and letting her pick a toy from the thousands on offer. She chose a Giraffe, and he guessed correctly, but when she walked out of the store she was confronted by a giant giraffe with a name tag that she had chosen 5 minutes previously. Excellent!

Mind you, the finale of the show was a mass hypnosis film to make audience and viewers stick to their seats. I wasn't so impressed with this - making Channel Four viewers stick to their sofas doesn't sound such a big deal to me.

Irritating Thrush

In a serependitious manner, a sight from the kitchen window today drew a tidy conclusion to the trilogy of my award winning recent posts, viz:

1. Going on Holiday to a bird reserve and not seeing any birds.

2. Taking a picture of Oz in the garden looking at a Dandelion seed head.

3. Yes, it's a bird looking at a dandelion seed head!

I'm going to lie down and have a rest now - this enhanced level of creativity is taking it out of me. The old brain is racing away working on part four of the trilogy already.

If you want to know the Time never ask a Tibetan....

Key for Longevity?

Contrary to beliefs held in certain quarters, there ARE one or two celebrities I don't despise with loathing and scorn. Yes, of course there is the coterie of Evans-Moyles-Clarkson-Edmonds but there really aren't too many more.... thousand.

Sadly two of my great heros have shuffled off in the last few weeks whilst the aforementioned bastards are lazing in their holiday homes.

Keith Waterhouse, a wonderful, readable and exciting writer who produced my all-time favourite novel "Billy Liar" left us a couple of weeks ago. He had been a bit of a grump in later years but had persisted with heavy champagne lunches and appealing cantankerosity till the end.




The other day Keith Floyd sadly joined him. Bon Viveur extraordinaire, his panache and extrovert style made his TV Cooking programmes infinitely more fun and enjoyable than millionaire businessman Rick Stein's efforts. And his programmes used the Stranglers music.

What is it about Keiths then?

They all appear to be attracted to a high-octane life to be lived in the fast lane.

That includes my brother Keith who is not included in the pictures here.

That's why my post title is "Keef or Longevity".

Heeby Jeeby Heaven

Long standing readers of this blog and that of my predecessor, Mr Murph, may remember that we acquired, or were acquired by, the lovely Lily in February of last year so she only has another 5 months to go of her probationary term of two years.

Here she is birdwatching from a portable hide in a Mablethorpe car park last week:

Apparently Petit Griffon Basset Vendeens, or PGBV's, or Heeby Jeebies were used for hunting but as one of the most scatter-brained, doolally creatures ever invented one wonders how they got on. With her boundless energy, tendency to run after scents with no sense, short memory and strange eating habits it is no wonder that the breed presents a challenge to owners and certainly would not be recommended as a part time pet.

Lily is the most classic "full-on or fast asleep" creature in the World, and in the Bi-Polar stakes she makes Stephen Fry look lightweight and veritably equatorial. Her dial is either set on zero or 11 with no gaps in between. She will be comatose in a basket for hours and then suddenly fly out and run up and down the stairs chasing Oz and grabbing teddy bears and anything that catches her eye as she emits the deepest, throatiest bark you could imagine. And although she comes from the Continent, when she travels in a car she isn't.

The other day little Pand sent us a picture of a pack of heeby-jeebies she had seen at a game fair, all off leads and appearing to act as a group under the direction of a Country Alliance person in wellies.

.

I suspect this has been Photoshopped because there is no way they would all be milling together in a big field. And I bet the UKIP bloke in the flat hat doesn't let them all sit in the front seat of his Range Rover in a big red bucket.

Going through the Motions

Our Coastal Lincolnshire Wildlife holiday week involved us passing the above facility which had been thoughtfully provided for us responsible dog owners.

But who had worked out the statistics?

The quantities of canine effluent sounds absolutely enormous!

I can't begin to imagine what 8 Tonnes of Dog Shit and 40,000 litres of dog piss look like. Here's my best guess....

Weekend Poem

We saw this on the window of a shop in Market Rasen today.

This is the transcription:

If I knew the box where the smiles were kept,
No matter how large the key
Or strong the bolt, I would try so hard,
'Twould open, I know, for me;
Then over the land and sea broadcast
I'd scatter the smiles to play,
That the children's faces might hold them fast
For many and many a day.

If I knew a box that was large enough
To hold all the frowns I meet,
I would gather them, every one,
From nursery, school, and street;
Then, folding and holding, I'd pack them in,
And turn the monster key,
And hire a giant to drop the box
To the depths of the deep, deep sea.

Apparently it is the full manifesto of both Mandleson and Andy Coulson for the next election.

A Huge Disappointment...

Why is it that so many things in life are such a big disappointment?

It's almost always the case that the higher the level of joyful anticipation, the bigger the let down. Christmas is a regular feature in this department but there are lots of other examples. An Ian Brown concert, for instance. Or a Gordon Brown Premiership.

And what about bird watching? You look at some of the books on bird spotting and become quite enthusiastic about giving it a try, eager to sample the colourful delights of Darwinian diversity in the airborn branches of creation.

This is the sight that befell us when we trudged down to the Nature Reserve on the first day of our holiday and I think it aptly demonstrates the vast chasm between expectation and practise.

What we did on our Holidays

Phew! Back on t'internet but only briefly. I am having to balance on one leg with the laptop perched on the window ledge and my dongle hanging out the window and it's only a matter of time before the police squat team arrive.

As advised by the lovely Guardian writers we have cancelled our three weeks in Provence and Florence, sent the dog's au-pairs back to Lithuania and are bravely "staycationing" out the recession in the United Kingdom.

We are in the enormous County of Lincolnshire, nestling on the coastal dunes between those pearls of Eastern delight Mabel Thorpe and Donna Nook. It is a Nature Reserve, or "Sports Facility" as Oz prefers, and although tiny this holiday cottage ticks a lot of our boxes:

Dog Walks from the Door - Tick
Enclosed Garden with 6ft fence and no miniscule Lily sized gaps - Tick
Away from Main Roads - Tick
Spar Shop within 1.5 miles - Tick
20 minutes from agreeable Market Towns with pub lunches - tick
Small parasitic creature on Lily's back - Oz ...I mean Tick.

Boxes that aren't ticked are:

Wi-fi accessUp and Coming but still cheap gastro pub within 5 minutes walk
Provision of Washing Machine and Dishwasher
No Neighbouring holiday makers with dogs inviting regular barking contests
Sea nearer than 3 miles across boggy and munition laden marsh

The double edged sword of having to wash up by hand is that I have sliced my index finger on a carving knife and so have sub-contracted this onerous task to Mrs Rine. As my middle finger is also still badly strained from my recent near death railway experience I am rendered incapable of celebrating Chris Evan's well deserved takeover of the Breakfast Show from Togmeister Wogan. Evans or Moyles - you really do spoil us Mr Thompson!

Feignites or Barleys?

When I was at primary school being chased around the playground and wanted to call a "truce", the thing to do was to cross both fingers and shout "feignites!" or even "fainites!".

When I tried this recently when Mrs Rine was chasing me around the garden, she had no idea what I was talking about. Apparently the equivalent word in Northern climes was "Barleys!".

It's amazing that even in this Web 2.0 world of instant communication where everybody in the World knows what Stephen Fry had for breakfast, every High Street is the same mix of Phone Shops and Charity Shops and everyone under ferty finks they talk like evryfink on the telly annat (with rising inflection) that regional variations still exist.

I'm a proud member number 2157 of the Facebook group I call woodlice cheesybugs (and i'm probably from gravesend) despite my aversion to both wood lice and uncapitalised spelling as it is a small but significant brick in the wall against globalisation and bland homogeneity.

Do any of you have any of your own regional or local words that have withstood the onslaught of media smoothing?

Blood on the Tracks - an apology

I'd like to offer a profuse and public apology to the driver of the 8:47 passenger train from Norwich to Cambridge this morning.

There are two unmanned foot crossings within a couple of miles of here and today we walked the dogs across the one where you can't see the signals. It was fine on the way over - there are only about 3 trains an hour and it's a straight piece of track.

On the way back, however, I ventured so far out of my comfort zone I almost required to show a passport.

I led the group, or rather followed the enthusiastic Lily on her lead, as I opened the wooden gate and ventured onto the line, glancing as I did to the right to see .... a train approaching at full tilt!!! I immediately pulled on the lead to get Lily back behind the gate but in doing so slid ass over tit on the wet wooden crossing boards and dropped the lead.

Let's sum up where we were at this stage:

1. Train fast approaching and driver frantically blasting hooter.

2. Me lying flat out across the track directly in his path.

3. Lily running around madly unchecked and dragging the heavy extending lead.

4. Mrs Rine behind at the gate dragging a reluctant Ozwald who was on a go slow.

I can't spin this out much longer as I'm starting to get flashbacks and the laundry bill is big enough as it is.

"Mrs Rine to the Rescue!" sounds like an Enid Blyton yarn, but she bravely pushed past me (?!) to grab Lily's lead whilst I creaked up from the wet wooden floor and limped across to the far gate just as the poor traumatised driver flashed past. The only injury was a strained finger.

I'm really sorry about this Mr Driver. There was a fatal accident last year at the next crossing up so this was certainly no joke. Please don't try this at home kids.

If you can come up with a better title for this post, however, I'd be grateful.