Happy anniversary

I was surprised to realise that yesterday's post was my 1001th.  Of course, I'd like to apologise for burdening you all with the nonsense that pops up here on an all too regular basis.  Half an hour a post, makes that roughly 500 hours...that's twice as long as it took to rehearse for the Olympic Opening Ceremony.

And come to mention that, it was exactly a year ago that I received my Olympic offer:

Congratulations! London 2012 Ceremonies are pleased to inform you that you have been successful in your audition to become a Ceremonies Volunteer Performer in the London 2012 Olympic Games Opening or Closing Ceremonies. We hope that you are able to accept this once in a lifetime opportunity to be part of a global event that expresses and celebrates the passion and creativity of the United Kingdom in front of the entire world. You have been selected to perform in the Opening Ceremony as part of the 44-GROUP-A cast group.

Below is a brief overview of the cast group that you have been selected for together with general information regarding rehearsals and what will be required from you.

Cast Group	Olympic Opening Ceremony: Segment 44 Group A
Role Outline	Character/movement and utility role in spectacular sequence in Opening Ceremony
Rehearsal Site Facilities	There will be rehearsals at 3 venues in East London including 3 Mills and the Stadium.

That was the start of the most extraordinary adventure of my life.  I was lucky beyond my dreams, meeting some amazing people who put their heart and soul into it.  I have some amazing memories from every stage of the experience...the initial rehearsals when we didn't have a clue about what we were doing and thought we would never learn the moves, many rainy days in the Ford car park in Dagenham through to our first time in the stadium.  The experience will live with me for ever.

Not forgetting that I could never have done without the support and encouragement of all my friends and family.  Thank you.

Buy, buy, bye!

I got a phone call from Grandma in Cyprus today, just checking I wasn't standing underneath the helicopter that crashed in London this morning.  Fortunately it was a couple of miles away...sympathies to the people killed and injured.  I feel confident that pretty soon the conspiracy theorists will be out in force as the building it crashed into is just a hop and skip away from MI5...or is it MI6...either way, it's the one that blew up in Skyfall.  Before that the only thing of note for me about the building was that a few years ago, when I used to do street roller blading every Friday and Wednesday (15 miles and then a swift pint or two), 250 of us stopped at the traffic lights opposite, and a rather over excited girl came out on a balcony, raised her t-shirt and started flashing her boobs.  Odd.  We all nearly fell over.

I wasn't much saddened about the end of Jessops this week...it deserved it.  Last year we went in to buy a new and pretty expensive camera, but it took us ages to get hold of a shop assistant, who then insisted they didn't have it.  As we were about to leave one of his colleagues mentioned they did have it in fact...several.  They made the sale, but failed to sell us any extras.  Since then I've been in several times for stuff which they either didn't have, or they couldn't be bothered to serve me, or were in a staff meeting and asked me to come back in half an hour.  Yes the service was diabolical.

HMV though is somewhere I go into regularly...very regularly indeed to spend my hard earned cash.  I still prefer to buy physical CDs, DVDs and Blu-Rays...downloads just don't look so good on the shelf, and I still like to read the lyrics on the insert.  I may be a dinosaur on that one, but it does seem a shame...perhaps Play.com will revamp their site so I can feel like I'm browsing the shelves.

Closer to home...office in fact, our local bookshop come cafe didn't open its doors after Christmas.

I assume that Robert Dyas can't be long for this world as I suspect it's tottered around seemingly on the brink for ages.

I'm sure other shops will go into the retail spaces, but what worries me most is that they will be more branches of Costa, Starbucks or Nero.  Much as I love my coffee, I'd like other places to go into.

For the brave world of online shopping, the real weakness is the delivery company...and this week I've been fighting yet another running battle with DPD who've previously proved their incompetence on many an occasion.  I'd ordered a fabulous pair of headphones as my last ones have finally given out.  The online tracking site showed that they had been delivered and signed for 'LOA'.  In fact no one was home, and LOA stands for 'left on authority'  I'm still not sure whose authority...it certainly wasn't mine.  Anyway, we eventually found the headphones which had been chucked into the snow in the back garden.

I'm off to support my local shop now...I don't care what they sell, I'm going to buy it.

This is not a vlog

There is some distress in my life at the moment.

Firstly, we went to see Privates on Parade at the theatre on Friday.  I can forgive the play for being somewhat past its sell by date and reminding me of 'It ain't half hot mum' ...I mean the war in Malaya is somewhat lost in the annals of history, and was probably pretty meaningless to the teenagers; I can forgive the humorous racism...especially as, with a massive twist of irony, Warren Mitchell (Alf Garnett) was also in the audience.  But what I'm struggling with is that, yet again, The Cat's Mother took me to something with MALE NUDITY.  I've referred to this before.  It's not so much that I object to seeing the odd male buttock, or todger, it's just what's wrong with women actors these days...why don't they take their clothes off too? It's not fair.

Moving swiftly on, I cannot tell you how foolish I felt today when I picked up my change from the self-service counter at Sainsbury's.  I said "Thank you".  I feel this is not right on so many levels.

And finally, here's the highlight of our weekend.  If you fancy a ride in a cable car, and see the parts of London that have long been unloved, head for the Emirates Airline.  Essentially it takes you from nowhere to nowhere, but the view 300ft up is fabulous.  We thought it was totally exciting.




Evidently Transport for London think it is part of the public transport network, which is nonsense.,..it's just fun to do....even when the wind is so strong you think the cabin might blow off the cable at any moment.