A lark in the park

As I had a day off today, the wife decided we should go to Dewsbury for a few things then go for a walk in Crows Nest park.

We wandered around the park admiring the splendid spring floral displays in the flower beds, when we came across the kids adventure playground. The kinder were dispatched onto the swings with the wife in attendance, whilst I availed myself of a park bench. It was a bit muddy because some kids had been climbing all over it before I got there. I found a clean bit and plonked myself down and started to admire the view.

After about 5 mins, a woman with two children and two miniature poodles arrived at the gate to the playground. She shooed her kids into the play area and came over to sit down on the bench. When she saw the mud on the seat, she started going on about hooligans and how it should'nt be allowed etc. She made such a fuss, I was thinking of giving her my clean bit, when she produced an hanky from her pocket and cleaned a backside size bit of the bench and then promptly sat down.

Now after all that fuss, I don't think she should have picked up her two toy poodles to sit on her lap. Of course they left their muddy pawmarks all over the front of her nice beige coat.

I've told you before, they're out there!

Chocoholic

I'm getting sick of chocolate.

What with chocolate Easter eggs at the weekend, the store selling the excess off at half price, the last couple of days, a colleague bringing choco in for us to nibble on in the lab whilst we're working and the canteen laying on a bit of free chocolate at breaktimes.

I'm sick of it!

You see, I have this problem, I'm an incurable chocoholic. I'm usually the first in the queue when they're handing out free Mars bars. I have to take a different route to the library just so I don't go past Thorntons chocolate shop. I take a nice packed lunch to work every day including fruit but just lately I've snuck a chocolate bar in.

Well it's got to stop! I can't go on like this. I'm really going to stop eating chocolate....

...tomorrow.

It's finished

I finally finished the decking today...I started to put the deck boards on yesterday whilst it was drizzling with rain and found out that I'd miscalculated the amount of boards I needed. It being Easter Sunday, the DIY store was shut, so I had to make a trip down this morning.
At least it was'nt raining. 

An Hour Less

Well, it's that time of year when an old British custom occurs, the annual, putting the clocks forward one hour.

At 1am Sunday morning, the whole of Britain changes from GMT(Greenwich Mean Time) to BST(British Summer Time). This does'nt mean that summer has arrived, far from it judging by the weather, (it's cold and wet at the moment, mind you, it's cold and wet in the summer sometimes). No, from what I can gather, it's something to do with farmers and their herds. Don't quote me on that, I could be wrong. Come to think about it, I have'nt really got a clue why we do it, we just do thats all. If anyone knows, let me know.

One thing I do know, we all end up getting an hour less in bed in the morning.

Happy Easter to everyone.

Back to the Decking

After an unexpected but welcome day off, I decided to carry on with the decking. I got as far as this before I ran out of time and had to go and do my Provvi round. With all that sawing and screwing and bending and cementing, I know I'm going to be as stiff as a board tomorrow.


Back to it on Sunday

Customer Service

Whilst trying to post on the blog last night, my remote control keyboard gave up the ghost.

I would'nt mind too much, but it was only 3 months old. It came with the new computer I got just before Christmas. I sent an e-mail to the computer firm just before midnight last night using the on screen keyboard asking them what they are going to do about it, knowing full well that it would take them eons to reply, if at all. I then tried to connect my old keyboard, but the new computer does'nt have a port for the lead.

Hecky-thump I thought, that means I've got to buy a USB adapter, which I did in my lunchtime today. It cost me £13 an all.

I'd just got back into the store and was about to switch my phone off when they rang me. The nice lady apologised for the problem I had with my keyboard and they will send a replacement out to me.

My gaster was flabbered. I was preparing myself for a long and protracted battle with this firm but it did'nt happen. Their customer service is second to none.

10 out of 10, Elonex.

New Project

Here we go again!

No sooner had the dust settled on the the trellis erecting project, the wife decided she wanted some decking laying down in the pebbled area at the back of the garage. This area is partially enclosed by more trellis with honeysuckle and climbing roses growing up it. It measures approx 12ft by 9ft and is pebbled, with a few clumps of thyme growing. We put a double garden chair in there during the warmer months, but it wobbles a bit on the pebbles, hence the decking. It's only going to be 6ftx 4ft.

I made a start yesterday by cementing the first supporting post in but I'll have to wait till the weekend till I can get back to it. I'll post a photo when it's done.

The kids break up from school on Thursday for 2 weeks Easter holidays. My lad said this morning, "Hoorah, only three more days to go."

The wife, rolling her eyes and groaning, said, "Yehhh." in a, I've got to put up with two kids for two weeks kind of voice.

I'll be at work.

Outside the front door.

Border 1.

And this is border No 2. 

The Pussy Willow. 

Spring Is In The Air

The Wildlife Pond
Originally uploaded by freddyfox.

After all the snow we had a couple of weeks ago the weather has picked up a bit.

The daffs must know that spring is on the way.

All we want now is for the frogs to return and lay some spawn in the wildlife pond.

Handsome Guy

I've managed to put a new photo of myself in the profile section of the blog. Just look at the luxurious brown hair I've got and the clear blue eyes.

Yep, definately a handsome guy!

What's that you say.. you'll help me polish what, and what does slaphead mean?

Ok, Ok. I'm an overweight middle-aged, four eyed slaphead.

At least I'm honest about it. I used to weigh 9 stone at one time. ( I was 12 yrs old.) Ever since I've piled the weight on. I've worn specs since I was 9 and my hair started falling out when I was 24.

On the other hand, I've got a lovely wife, 2 nice kids and live in the better part of town.

I can't complain really.

I sat at work today, sifting through all the baby photos, pondering how to get my blog to show correctly on IE6 when I had one of those inspired moments.

I know, I thought, copy all the links into notepad and change my template to Minima.

And that's just what I did. It took ages getting all the links back in, but I think they are all there.

As it's getting late and I want to go to bed, I promise I'll do a normal post tomorrow. No messing with my template.

Well, not much anyway.

All this messing about with my template has caused a few problems.

You see I've been viewing my blog in Firefox all the time and it looks fine. I just happened to use IE6 for something else and had a quick peek at the blog and goodness me, what a mess!

So if your viewing this in IE6, sorree, I'll try to make it IE friendly. On the other hand you could always get Firefox, a better browser in my opinion.

Iv'e moved on from the water background and had another tweak.

I think it's more or less there.

Uuumm maybe.

I apologize in advance

At the moment I'm messing about with my template, so I do apologize to anyonefor the upset this may be causing.

It all came about because I finally managed to get connected to my free webspace provided by my ISP. I've been trying to access it for ages and finally had a breakthrough last week. It cost me a call to the helpline, to find out the problem was at their end.

So I'm taking a poll on the water background thats here at the moment.....

1. Does it make you throw up?
2. Does it hypnotize you?
3. Does it annoy you?
4. Do you like it?
5. Other.

Answers on a postcard please, (or comments box). No spelling misteaks.

My little girl with her red nose. 

A picture of my lad dressed up as Peter Pan. All the kids from his school had to dress up as a book character in aid of Red Nose Day, a UK charity from Comic Relief. u 

I'll let you off

I'll let you off the photo posts today. To be honest, I've been so busy I have'nt even picked up my new toy, but tomorrow's another day.

I've been out in the garden sinking more posts in concrete, this time to accomodate 3 climbing roses that are about to start budding and climbing. When I've finished it I'll post a picture. The wife finished planting all her clematis plants(about 14 of them) up against the trellis at the back. They have names like Spider and Freckles and Dorothy. True! Look it up.

This is the place we got them all from, a couple of weeks ago.

You've probably noticed I've been messing with backgrounds and colours. Let me know if you like/dislike it. I've got a new logo to go in the title, but I'm stumped on how to do it. Any suggestions greatly appreciated.

Don't be cheeky!

The School Run

This is a picture I took whilst waiting for the kids to come out of school. They've got a good view of the Holme valley. Note the Pennine hills in the distance, still with a bit of lingering snow. 

A Bit Of Gardening

I've got a few days off from the daily grind so I was out in the garden with my new camera.

I think we shared the workload very well.

The wife did the gardening whilst I took the photos.

I made this all by myself. Not a kit either. They cost £250-£300 in the shops. My price £80. 

The Scarecrow 

The infamous trellis 

Photos

My blog is set to improve pictorially in the near future. I've gone and bought a digital camera. Just got to work out how to use it now.

Watch this space.

Lazy Sunday Afternoon

As it was a nice sunny day, we decided to go for a walk around Oakwell Hall Country Park near Birstall. All traces of the snow and ice that has blighted these parts for the last couple of weeks has vanished except fot a small mound were the snowman had been.

Oakwell's a place we often visit during the year. It's nice to see how everything looks in different seasons. The daffodils are up but havn't decided to open their heads yet but there are plenty of snowdrops and crocus in flower. One or two trees have blossom on them, but most are still in bud just waiting for it to get a bit warmer. There's no frogspawn in the wildlife pond yet, but it won't be long before there is. Mother mallard and her husband were showing off their three little ducklings in the duck pond. The formal garden behind the hall, is looking splendid at the moment. The gardeners have worked wonders on the garden, trying to recreate what they would have looked like in the 17th century. They've succeeded. Prince Andrew came to open them this week and was impressed.

As it was Mothering Sunday, I treated the wife to a cream tea from the tearooms. It was warm enough to sit outside and have it. I even bought the kids an ice-cream.

Getting soft are'nt I?

Trying out w.bloggar

I picked up a disc with a computer magazine that had this software on for blogging without going thru blogger dashboard. Thought I'd test it.
Early indications are good. You download the software from the w.bloggar site
The programme can be accessed from your desktop, were you can post or edit your template. You can then publish straight awayand it's faster than going through blogger. There seems to be a lot more functionality than the WYSIWYG editoryou get with blogger. Click the link and give it a try. It's freeware with no spyware.

That kind of feeling

Have you ever clicked on Blogger Dashboard, new post, without the foggiest idea what your'e going to write about. Well that's just happened to me.

I usually have a fair idea about what to post about, and as I start writing, it seems to develop as I go along, but tonight... nothing.

So I'll tell you the funniest joke Ive heard in a while.

A man and his wife are fast asleep in bed one night when there was a tap on the bedroom window. The guy get's up and opens the window to find a man standing on his lawn in the pouring rain. It's pitch black.

"What do you want?" the guy says.

"Can you give me a push?" the man replies.

"Bugger off, can't you see it's pitch black and pouring with rain."

With that the guy gets back into bed.

His wife says, "Your'e being a bit rotten there, don't you remember breaking down in your car a couple of months ago and that guy giving you a push to the garage."

The guy gets out of bed and goes downstairs, grumbling all the way. He opens the front door and shouts out, "Hello, are you still there, do you still need a push, were are you?"

"Over here on the swing." came the reply.

Goodnight.