Come dine with me

I'm still trying to get a quote for the car insurance, and it's proving a remarkable experience. I went through Compare the Meerkat and then through Go Compare. Both came up with quotes by the same companies....even though the quotes varied widely with the same insurance company quoting £50 more through Go Compare than they did through the Meerkats...even though they were supplied with the same information within a couple of minutes of each other. Just shows what nonsense it all is.

At the same time my motorbike tax is up for renewal...I've tried to do it on line, but the DVLA have decided I don't have insurance, so I can't, even though I've got the certificate in front of me. I tried to ring them but they're 'exceptionally busy so can't take your call right now' according to the message before they hang up on you. Yes, right, drinking tea, stuffing their faces full of biscuits whilst waiting for their fat index-linked government pensions...and thinking they might go on strike because they're going to have to contribute more. Feckers...not surprisingly I've battled with them before and I'll shout four letter words at them again. It's the only place I now of that it's more expensive to buy on line than do it in a shop. Just how bad can government services be?

So back in Sarf Lunndunn, and round the corner from my office in hyper hip Bermondsey, here's a traditional sight - Manzes pie and mash shop. It's charming and quaint and full of history...in fact so full of history I think there should be a preservation order on the idea as well as the shop itself. Most days, there's a queue out the door and round the corner...it's as popular now as it's always been...probably more. The menu is not extensive. It's meat pie and mash eels (stewed or jellied) and liquor. I've no idea what the meat is (they say beef), nor the liquor. I tried a meat pie once and it wasn't quite to for me....I'd love to love it...I'd love to love eels and mash too, but I just don't. In fact the thought of eels repulses me. But as an institution, this is an absolute treasure....

Rainy Sunday

I'm building up to a little rant about things Middle east and things Banker...I wonder if I can keep a lid on it for another few days?

If all else fails, I think I may yet become a computer engineer. My computer has been making some peculiar noises over the past several months...to the extent that one clever computer engineer decided I needed a new hard drive. The noise didn't abate after the change of bits and bytes. Then last week, someone pointed out it might be just the fan. I opened up the casing and it was quite dusty in there, so I whipped out the Dyson and Hoovered it. I can't tell you how much fun it was making the fans spin with the suction action of the vac. And low and behold, as quiet as a quiet thing. I'm dead chuffed.

Yesterday we were going to go out on the River Lee...there's a place near Nazeing where you can hire little motor boats. the added benefit is that it's based at a pub. Unfortunately, instead of us going to the water, the water came to us, trapping us all indoors. All day. There were no black and white Stuart Granger movies to watch, nor cakes to consume around the fire in the hearth, so no wonder we were all a little tetchy by the time we went to bed.

Bucket loads of fun

We managed a walk round to the local pub yesterday with the aim of sitting in the sun and getting some fresh air. Unfortunately the sun and clouds had other ideas so we sat inside....it was good to be out. The Cat was out having a coffee with her Dad...I'd report the name given to him by The Boy, but I'd be in deep trouble. The Boy himself was revising, but given that history revision recently involved playing a WW2 game on his X Box, I'm not sure what it may have meant...possibly watching 'end of the world film' 2012 will count towards his geography grade? I guess all the skiing videos are something to do with physics...

...in the meantime we went shopping and bought this beer bucket in anticipation of all the BBQs we'll be having this summer. Naturally as the drought has been declared in parts of England, the rain has started the garden is in drowning. The Boy of course is most excited by the bucket, but judging by the fact that it stayed on his head for an hour, he may not have fully understood what its purpose is...

Counting sheep

There's not much to do, let alone take pictures off when you're laid low by a bug. And much as I would like to wallow in self-pity and sorrow, I doubt I'll get too much sympathy when the Cat's Mother is down somewhat worse than me. And let's face it, it's a damn sight better to be cooped up in your bedroom than be caught protesting in Syria. So much for the Arab spring.

None theless I have a challenge to take a picture a day, and here it is. This hangs in our room....and what more fitting picture could there be?

Hanging on the phone

In all honesty, it was never going to be a great idea...staying in bed all day with man flu and then going off to central London to see the ballet. Twenty minutes in and we were beginning to fade...and it didn't make for a great night's sleep either. Oh dear.

Anyway, you can never accuse the Royal Ballet of offering value for money. The programme went: 22 minutes performance, 25 minutes interval, 26 minutes performance, 25 minutes interval, 36 minutes performance. It was the third part that we'd come for...Stravinky's Rite of Spring. It's a corker...something that I regularly listen to on my iPod, just after the Foo Fighters. Although it was spectacular...I'm not a ballet expert..... it was easy to see where they haven't got it right...a few minutes at the beginning when the curtains stayed closed, yet the music was in full swing, a very 'delicate' dance when the music is heavy, malevolent even...still we did enjoy it.

And then we walked out at the end to see this:

Flower power

Disaster. I've gone down with a cold...surely a sign that summer has arrived. Hopefully gallons of Lemsip, TLC and a good deal of moaning and groaning from me will put things right again. Although it's midday and I'm still in bed, I don't intend it to stop me going out for a civilised evening at the ballet tonight.

So to the daily photo...and it's been a tough choice. Yesterday I cycled to work which provides a wealth of photo opportunities over the 17 mile route. An obvious choice would be the Olympic site, but in truth the best views are out of reach at the moment; another obvious choice would be the street art which is a particular favourite of mine; or even the canal boats...there are so many along the ten miles of canals that I ride along and they are all delightful. But instead, I've chosen this one of the wild flowers...that may just have had a little help from human hands getting here...certainly I've never seen so many poppies along the canal side as this year. It amazes me that even in deepest, darkest central London there are these oasis of paradise...barely a noise, fabulous colours, fresh air, lovely surroundings...just beautiful and really, really uplifting.

Building BRICS

I arrived in the office this morning after a long cycle...eighteen miles is a good way to wake up before you start work. The trouble is that by 11, I'm generally ready to go back to sleep again. Anyway, I arrived and my bladder spread its contents all over the floor by my desk. Quite embarrassing really Mr Film Man was just introducing me to someone. Someone just happened to be a cyclist as well, so immediately realised what my problem was...my valve wasn't sealing properly so capillary action meant that the liquid was just spilling out everywhere. Anyway, I guess a quick trip to the cycle shop to get a new valve should solve my problem and once more my Camelback (TM) will be water tight ready to refresh me for my next cycle. Enough about rucksacks and water bladders. It had been a slow cycle as I was trying to take a picture for tomorrow...I have plenty and it will just be tricky deciding which one to choose.

Today, however, I give you this to summarise my day yesterday.



Ha ha...no I'm not emigrating to Turkey. I've been there once. Twice if you count the day trip to Turkish Cyprus with Grandma in Cyprus. Lovely place. Fascinating place. I'd love to go back, but not to live. I was in the building beyond...the IPA. This is Belgravia Square...one of the poshest in London and full of embassies and wealthy people. It makes you realise there's a whole different world out there when you see nothing less than a top of the range Mercedes parked there and mostly it's Rolls Royces and Bentleys. I had my first London job, so not a bad start. My first day was a Friday and on my desk was a memo to every employee explaining that rumours that the company was about to be sold were without foundation. When I arrived on Monday, there was another memo welcoming everyone to their new employers. The company had been bought.

Back at the IPA, I was learning about how companies are doing business in the BRIC countries...that is Brazil, Russia, India, China. Mexico got an honourable mention. These are the countries whose economies will dominate our children's futures. I learnt many things. Inspite of the headlines about drug lords, Mexico is a great place to do business...especially as it's all done over lunch. India is not one country but many, with food, customs, business etiquette changing every few hundred kilometres; it's difficult to start doing business there so make sure you're in there for the long haul. They are adding 15 million phone subscribers every month. Can that really be the case? China is easy to start doing business in, but difficult to sustain a business there. Staff turnover is 200% per annum. And the bureaucracy is almost unbelievable. Anyway it was fascinating for me...I learnt a lot.

Down on the underground....

Well it was a bit of a struggle yesterday to find a picture to take...and I guess that's why I'm doing this. If at the end of the month I look back and see that it's been very dull, I'll have to change things. That's quite an incentive!

Yesterday I came in on the tube. If you commute on the tube, it's hard to know just how awful it is....crush, crush; sweaty, sweaty; odour, odour; hot, hot; knock, knock; airless, airless; squash, squash; ache, ache; rattle, rattle; unbalance, unbalance; stop, stop; start, start; stutter, stutter; smell, smell....and so on.

I prefer the motorbike or the cycle...but when it's pouring with rain, needs must....

An examination

Here we have a picture of a hare. Just in case you can't see it from the picture, this is one big motherf*kka. He can look me in the eyes when I'm standing on my tippy toes. He' the biggest one here, but there are about a dozen others dotted around the garden. Never let it be said that there is a lack of hare in the Nota Bene household. It's a good job there are a fair few hares for us to enjoy, because we're not getting out much at the moment. The garden is our great outdoors.

We're going through the same as many thousands of parents around the country. GCSEs. They are stressful...and go on for ever. When I were a lad, we knocked off our 'O' levels in a couple of weeks. That was in the days when anything less than 99% was failure, not like the 8% to get a grade A now. Anyway I think end to end it's about eight weeks, with a half term in the middle.

The Boy seems to hop skip and jump through them, whilst The Cat grinds along with more and more worry lines engraving themselves on her forehead. But underneath, it's just as stressful for the pair of them...as it is for teens across the country. For The Cat's Mother and me, we worry that they worry, we stress that they are stressed, we feel helpless as we can do no more than tell them to buckle down and do more revision and prepare for the next exam.

For the last few weekends our social life have been near lifeless...it doesn't seem fair to be whirling away at the local dance hall whilst the offspring are cooped up in their rooms sweating away. Brighton has been abandoned...our absence doesn't encourage focus or productivity.

I can't wait for the exams to finish so I can go and get legless.

First Friday Photos

Yes, I know it's Sunday, but Friday was busy, so I suppose this is Sunday Show. Whatever. I've been snapping.


This poor pheasant didn't make it through the month


The Cat's Mother took this picture of me at Alice in Wonderland


ai weiwei at Somerset House...we met the prodigal godfather for lunch


Pretty rose


The muffin and friends climbing some sculpture


Deckchairs...guess where


Same place


Still on the beach


My brother and his partner came to visit


I loved the atmosphere at Secret Cinema


Another death...fortunately only at secret cinema

....Saturday morning

Breakfast out side is a rare and wonderful thing.

So here we are on Saturday with toast and jam and marmalade and Marmite, tea and juice in the back garden. The plants are looking great at the moment and the lawn is just perfect...although a few more weeks without any rain and I don't doubt it will be brown. Don't mention the broken concrete ballustrade...unless you know someone who can fix it.

We're very lucky to have so many birds come and visit us...the cuckoo is a regular musical accompaniment, we have jays, a woodpecker, wood pigeon, blackbirds, crows, a friendly little robin and sparrows (how rare they seem these days)...there's also some birds we don't recognise...the dark brown one with a little crown for example.

At the moment we're a tiny bit pre-occupied withe the absurdity of the Olympic tickets situation. Not so much the allocation system, but rather the mind set of many people who've applied. I was at a party where someone had applied for £12,000 worth of tickets and was fervently praying that they didn't get them all because they couldn't afford them...and everywhere I read similar tales. The end result appears to be that everyone will get tickets for the Olympics, but not the ones they want...because everyone has just applied for enormous quantities in any old sport. It's an absurd reflection on the state of people's thinking that this is how it is. The system seems fair enough, but greed, insecurity and panic have made people act in a ridiculous way. We don't know yet what we've got...other than I'm pretty confident that it will include the mountain biking...and we did only apply for events we really wanted to see. Looking forward to that ticket exchange getting up and running.

Friday night...

TGIF is something you'll often hear me say. At least once a week. I find four day weeks to be troublesome...there's always some piece of bad news. So imagine how it's been since April. And this was one of those perishing four day weeks. Thank heavens it ended on a high note.

Last night, we went off to see 'One Man Two Guvnors' at the National Theatre. It stars James Corden...and there's a man whose star has fallen. A very short time ago he could do no wrong. And then he could do no right. The Boy and I first came across him in History Boys and had been wowed, so it was a shame to see him fall from grace. He is an undoubted talent of the first order. The play itself is set in Brighton, and coincidentally references Debden which is just down the road from here, as well as the famous Floral clock just at the top of our Square. It is rip-roaringly funny. Mr Corden is brilliant...but then so too are the rest of the cast...it is British humour at its best. I would highly recommend you get to see it...except you can't because it's all sold out. However, don't despair because The National has begun an initiative which sees some of their performances being shown in the cinema for one night...we've seen some great things. And you get your chance to see One Man Two Guvnors on September 15th. Don't miss it. Really don't miss it.

This picture I took outside the Theatre...as we left. The reason I chose it is that I took it with my new phone which has a great camera...and I used a technique/process called HDR: it takes three pictures at different exposures, and then combines them to give you brighter, more vivid pictures...I think it works brilliantly.

Putting on the pounds

Day 2 of my June quest, this may not be a classic shot but it says a lot.



The Cat's Mother is an expensive item. And a bad driver. Evidently.

It's time for me to renew my car insurance, so I've been comparing meerkats. I can't remember how much I paid last year, but this year it's £439 and a few pence. Inspite of my impecable driving record being extended by yet another 365 days of accident free motoring, I still have to pay an enormous sum. But on checking my details, I realised that I was down as divorced/separated, so I ticked the box that said I was co-habiting. I expected it to make no difference, but in fact it meant my insurance went up by a pound. So £440 and a few pence. Now I may be wrong, but as I understood it, living with some one was supposed to be a less stressful experience. I certainly remember (or rather don't remember) some pretty wild experiences after my divorce, and I'd say I was a less responsible person. I may even have read that co-habiting is good for men as they live longer, whilst it knocks a little bit off a woman's lifespan. So I should be quids in. I'm not. I'm a whole pound out. Imagine what I could do with that pound. That's a whole packet of crisps and a Mars Bar. I then thought I should add The Cat's Mother to my insurance. And as I'm very bored with hearing, women are better drivers than men. The Cat's Mother has a clean driving licence and an impressive no-claims history. So surely, surely the cost should go down...even if she drives the car just one day a year, that's one day a year when the risk is less? Perhaps they've seen her reversing technique. It's available as a viral on the interweb. Maybe. Anyway, it put the insurance up by another pound. That's another whole pound. Imagine what I could do with two whole pounds. Because I can't.

So there we have it, in my dying days as a forty-something I have learnt that women make you a worse driver and are pretty dangerous on the road themselves. It's something I've always suspected. That should get me a long way.

I'm not even going to say what happened when I tried to see what would happen if I delayed until after my birthday. It's quite a saga.

Flaming June

I seem to have dropped off the Blogger bandwagon a little bit...so apologies if I've not kept up to date with what's going on in your worlds...I'm no less interested than I've always been I can assure you you.

As it's June, and at the end of the month I have a very special birthday, I thought I would take a slightly different approach. Each day I'm going to take one photo and post it up, just to see what happens over the course of the next thirty days. Probably not much. But who knows? If it is incredibly boring by the time we get to 1st July, I'll know I need to change. If it's rivettingly exciting I'll know I've got a few things right.



Fittingly, I'm starting with breakfast. I'm downstairs alone because the kids are on holiday, so everyone gets a lie in except me. I loathe eating breakfast alone, even though when The Boy and Cat are around normally we're all a bit subdued. I pretty much have the same thing everyday...either a couple of scotch pancakes and a cup of tea or a couple of crumpets...one with honey, and one with Marmite. Delicious. I read the paper to see what's been going on....we take The Times - I prefer The Guardian, but The Cat's Mother has had The Times from time immemorial. If I catch the tube, I'll usually buy The Guardian at the station. I look at the news, read the facts and then usually disagree with the interpretation...it fires me up for the rest of the day. So at the moment, we've got the incompetent (English FA) vs the corrupt (FIFA), we've got the global economy going into stall mode again (I still blame the bankers...in fact they have missed their opportunity to rehabilitate the sector as it is the financiers that are keeping the economy down whilst they continue to make ridiculous profits), we've got Libya turning into a war with no end, and an outbreak of e-coli that seems to relish killing women. Perhaps I shouldn't be reading the paper at all....except that it tells me that the James Corden play we're going to see on Friday is ace!

Once I've finished I take The Cat's Mother up a cup of tea...is that kindness or just revenge because she's still in bed? I don't know, but she seems to appreciate it.