click together my arse

At the weekend I decided to lay some laminate floor in the new conservatory. I know, how posh am I having a greenhouse nailed onto the back of the house.

Anyway in a bid to keep on budget my financial advisor Mrs L and I, plumped for B&Q's finest, ecologically friendliest, (cheapest) click together laminate flooring. I've got some experience of laminate, I watched my mate Tys do the whole ground floor of my house when we first moved in. I didn't just watch I also made the tea and told him where it didn't look right.

So I prepared the room swept the floor laid down the cyber ninja three in one moisture membrane/thermal insulation/acoustic attenuation sheeting. A bit like thick bin bag but 20 pound a roll and yes you need a second roll just so you can cut a final tiny piece out and leave the rest in the garage. Then according to the instructions the easy bit, laying the easy click together flooring. What a bunch of lying bastards. The first row is a doddle they click together end to end then you cut the last plank to fit. The next row however is like trying to stick an umbrella up your arse whilst it's open. You get one end of the 4 meter long strip to click in, go the other end lift it up to click it in and bingo the first end pops out...fuckbeans! After a few minutes of this I got really angry and started using some choice language. It appears that these warped and wobbly boards are engineered with all the high precision tolerance of a Hong Kong made rubber dog turd.

I struggled on anyway, at times it took all four members of the house to support the long row of planks and try to get them to click. Eventually I got it sussed and made a breakthrough. Enter the big fuck off hammer. Using the old fashioned tongue and groove technique I found that a liberal application of a good battering I could finally persuade the buggers to stick together so much for clicking.

So now 2 days later I've got a nice even floor a pair of knackered red old knees and the odd squashed finger. Ah well that's DIY for you.

At least I've got my wifes unwavering admiration for a few day's until she starts calling me the elephant man again, but that's another story.

midweek report

It's been a busy week this week at the biscuit factory where I work. We are putting some hours in, but at least we are making lots of lovely biscuits.

What really grinds my gears is the biscuit training course coming up next month. The powers that be have decided that we need to practice making biscuits, even though that's what we do all the time. So it seems we've got to move to another temporary factory miles away. We must go there for a few weeks and make some biscuits. However because it's a training course we're not going to make real biscuits we are just going to arse around making biscuits out of play doh, glitter and dog turds (just like the biscuits from Aldi) and then at the end we are going to chuck them all in the bin. I could understand if we pretended to make different biscuits maybe ginger nuts, but no we'll just make custard creams as usual, but only pretending obviously.

Meanwhile those people left back at the real factory have got to work even harder to make up for us losers on the course. So the real biscuit factory is not running as well as it should for a few weeks. I hope there isn't a sudden surge in the demand for custard creams or we will be knackered.

seperated at birth

Here are 2 pictures 1 is Karl Pilkington and the other an impostor called Gary.

Can you spot the difference?

Ricky Gervais - Extras

I've been overloading on Ricky Gervais these last few weeks. Between his hilarious podcasts (with the secret weapon that is the genius Karl Pilkington), the American version of 'the office' which really starts to grow on you, when you get used to the new faces and of course the latest series of extras.

Extras is just brilliantly funny, I love the way the writing manages to make some really cutting jokes but it wraps them up so well that they don't jar you. It's the subtle way that the characters and often celebrities make the comments it's hard to find them offensive even though they are having a pop at homosexuals or the BBC. Usually you'd be hung for that sort of stuff.

Orlando Bloom was good with a great comedy portrayal of himself as a vein hollywood star obsessed with his looks and a bitter hatred for Johnny Depp.

The whole cast is excellent and I love 'Barry' from Eastenders.

I wish they would give Karl a part in the show that would be sweet.

Back To Work

This week at work I had to sit through a 1 hour presentation on 'sexual harassment in the workplace'. It was really just a bit of common sense wrapped up in a load of male bashing crap.

Apparently all men are just leering, swearing, violent, macho idiots who only look at women as sex objects. Not a bad assessment I suppose. I've been called worse. It's pretty condescending to be told you shouldn't touch girls bottoms at work or make comments about their breasts. No matter how special they are. I mean is there anybody out there who thinks it is acceptable to go up your boss and wobble her breasts? If you can do this then you probably work in the porn industry.

I look at it the other way, if a little gay fella turned up at work and told me I had a cute botty I would put him straight. I'd say thanks for noticing but I'm not into all that gay stuff. It's just a load of arsing around isn't it?. I think I'd then go home and tell my wife that she's got a bit of competition, and she better stay top of her game.

I don't think I'd put in a formal complaint and activate my army of lawyers for compensation. But it seems that's what happens these days.

Don't get me wrong harassment can be devastating, but the type of nasty scheming people who do this are hardly going to watch a quick presentation and think 'I didn't know I couldn't do that' These people know exactly what they are doing and deserve to be punished. In the mean time all us normal people have to sit through crap powerpoint presentations and are then too scared to fart if there's a woman in the room.

hooray for the weekend

At last it's Saturday time to kick back and whittle some.

Been up early and into town, the parking situation in Lincoln sucks balls. If your not in town before 10am you end up driving around for ages looking for a space. Even when you've found a space you still need a second mortgage to pay the fee's. If you want to park for a long time it's cheaper to just abandon your car and buy a new one to go home.

I know all you tree huggers will say that high parking fee's are environmental and encourage public transport, but that's plums. All the money goes straight into the council coffers and none of it translates to a more effective public transport system. Also have you tried carrying 75Kg of laminate floor home on the bus. It nearly broke my 5 year old son's back.

Why Daniel Craig in the picture? I've just seen the newest trailer for Casino Royale it looks excellent. I know the nerds didn't fancy him as Bond but he comes across really well in the trailer. He's got that ruthless killer agent thing down pat. Much better than your grandad running around in a leopard print safari suit ala Roger Moore. No disrespect but after Live and Let Die the best thing on screen in the Moore films was usually the car or the girls.

You can see the trailer here

That's assuming it's not 2012 when your reading this and if it is, am I still around?

Playstation 3 Delayed.

Grrrrr I'm mildly annoyed by todays news. Why?

Well once again European gamers get the shaft from the big electronics companies. The PS3 won't be under any british xmas trees this year.

We won't see it until April 2007 and that's if it doesn't slip again it's already slipped twice. It plays right into the hands of Microsoft here as the 360 will get a xmas boost with no other hi-def rival.

Nintendo may well be laughing as well with the launch of the Wii in Europe for xmas. Although to be fair, Nintendo have often treated UK gamers as second class citizens as well.

With Gears of War coming at the end of the year and Halo3 looming next year it looks like King of the Geeks - Bill Gates will be winning this console war.

I'd probably opt for the Xbox 360 just for Halo, thats if Mrs L was willing to loosen the purse strings. The little kid in me (oo-er) is also dying to get my hands on that Wii with it's natty Buck Rogers controller wand.

Xmas it's so exciting.

Crikey mate

I cant believe it Steve Irwin has croaked it.

I think secretly we all used to watch and nod knowingly thinking one day a croc is gonna eat him. Instead it was a sting ray that got him in what they are calling a freak accident.

I feel sorry for his wife and kids like, but I suppose he died doing what he liked.

It could have been worse he could have died on the toilet or choked on a peanut or something.

He's probably up there now showing Evil Knievil how to wrestle alligators.

Wait a minute Evil's not dead.

Load of rubbish

I went to the tip today to get rid of a load of rubbish from my garage. Mainly cardboard and an old table and chairs. (just in case you fancy some bin diving.)

I always find a trip to the tip slightly depressing and I think it's for a variety of reasons. One of them being that I'm usually throwing something away that cost me a lot of money. You tend to visit the tip with big stuff like furniture, and you can't help but remember how much it cost you ten years ago.

My other tinge of sadness is the fact that I see people throwing things out that I would like to have. However I'm not making a pikey of myself by climbing in and fishing stuff out of the giant skips. Well not in broad daylight anyway.

The other thing is the sense of waste, when I see the mountains and mountains of crap we all throw away, I feel slightly guilty. I don't know why I feel guilty but I blame the government and media for this. The current green message is being forced down our throats and your made to feel like an environmental thug if you throw rubbish away. Apparently your now classed as an evil bio-terrorist if you don't have energy saving lightbulbs, whittle your own clogs or drink your own recycled piss.

Balls to that. In the good old days we just turned all our rubbish into bombs and dropped them on our enemies. Maybe I could drop my old dining suite on the taliban. It might not do much but it's cheap and at least they have somewhere to eat their roast goat dinner on a Sunday.

All this global warming is pretty bad for the planet but why should I drive around on an electric scooter when America carries on porking it's way through half of the world's resources. I'd just be pissing in the wind.

Or should that be windmill?

Royal Visit

I've been to Windsor to see the Queen

Unfortunately she wasn't there, I'm a bit dissapointed really. I would have hoped that Aunty Betty would have been there to greet one of her war veterans. Ah well maybe she was busy making frozen yorkshire puddings.

I must say though she did have an amazing gaff. My personal favourite was the waterloo chamber a whole big room dedicated to the kicking of the frenchies arses at some battle, I forget which one :) . It was mucho impressive with pictures of the generals and various other cling-ons making guest star appearances. There was a picture of the pope in there for god's sake, I don't remember him firing many cannons or swinging on ropes during the battle.

There also a similar project starting soon. I beleive that they are opening a toilet in the west wing dedicated to the liberation of Iraq, could just be a rumour

The place has certainly been spruced up well since that little fire (insurance job) a few years ago, well done ma'am.

We also went to legoland, that was great fun, but it was chocker. Someone in Denmark is making a shit load of cash from that little doozy. The rides where excellent but they pull your pants down over the prices of all the food drink and toys. Still the kid's had a ball so it was worth it.

It was a long drive home though after a full day, hooray for coffee and tom-tom.