Update

Catfish News..

The babies are starting to venture out a bit more and Faye managed to get the above photo of one of them.

Kitchen News.

Getting there, still needs a paint, the handles screwed on, under sink area sorted, plug socket set it wall, new window ledge installed plus of course the blue protection removed to show off the nice white under them plus a 101 other little jobs.

This is the cabs going in.


This is Bill (My father in law) working on the plumbing.


And this is the hob and sink plus oiled worktops. They have had about 4 coats of oil so far with a light sand in between. Hard work but have been told numerous times that it is so important to oil it at the start. I am going to try and oil it once a day for first week then every 3 days for a couple of weeks before going to once every other week. That should sort it.



I was thinking of having oak ends but once we started looking it would of been too much. So I now have 2.9m of solid oak going on ebay !

Catfish Parents

Faye cleaned out the fish tank and discovered that our catfish have mated and we have at least 2 baby catfish !!

I will try and get a photo when I can but they are quite quick !

Here is a picture of our worktops, all ready for cutting. The kitchen is still drying so we can not paint it just yet but I have started to put some units together and set them up on the wall that has not been plastered. My father in law is down tomorrow to give me some help with the kitchen for a couple of days and it is still on course to be finished in a few days time.





Went to the football on Saturday and well, sometimes you have to ask why.....

Warnock to replace Taylor is the latest rumour, not sure if that is what I want.

Plastered

Kitchen walls have been plastered, we used a company called ATM in Berkhamsted and they have been brilliant. They did what looks like a good job and kept everything clean and tidy.



Also took delivery of the worktops. Man they are heavy, I had to help bring them in, all part of the cheaper option ! they look really good. They are Oak and 40mm depth and currently 4 meters long ! i honestly thought I was going to pass out when I helped carry them. Gawd knows how the guy can do that all day long. Will take a picture on them in the morning.

Kitchen

Sorry for the lack of posts but the kitchen has been taking up most of my time !

It's been hard work but we are starting to see the end now.

Tiles have been taken off the wall. The tiles where put straight on the plaster boards rather then a skim so now we need new boards up.


The gas man has disconnect the hob so everything could be removed out, the Ikea bits have been delivered.


A new wood floor was installed last week.



New tiles laid on the floor over the weekend.



Needs a clean but gives you an idea.

Friday the plasterer is coming, as is the new worktops and in the mean time I need to sort the electrics out. Next week my father in law is coming down for a few days to help me and Mark the man to install worktops is out on Wednesday before the gas man connects the new hob on Thursday. Be glad when it is a week Friday and we can start to look at the finishing touches.

Looking forward to Friday.......

Beer, Beer, BEER

I have taken the above photo from flickr user Yyokota, I hope he does not mind and I have sent an email.

The reason for the use of the photo is because Max has started shouting beer at everything I drink ! I could be drinking water and he shouts beer , I could be drinking a coffee and he shouts beer. Ask him what i drink and he shouts beer !

I dont even drink that much beer, I prefer a nice red to be honest... although I did crack open some Foster twists and managed to have 4 in a hour because they were so refreshing. Not getting them again as they go too fast.

Now then....

Max drives us up North

We went to see our new niece yesterday up near Barnsley / Sheffield, we could not get Jasper in the kennel so we decided that we should buy a new tent and try camping with Max and the dog.

Had a great time although it got very cold and rained during the night. Only cost £5 for all of us and the dog ! Max thought it was great and really enjoyed being next to the chickens and sheep. He loved all the tractors !

My Niece is very cute and you just forget how small new borns are.

Max ready for bed?

On the way up we stopped just outside Loughborough at somewhere called Beacon Hill, Max found a chair made just for him !

King Max


I have also managed to rip all the tiles off the kitchen wall, had to call my plasterer up though to get him round to have another look because it looked a mess. I might also add that i did try and take the tiles off neatly.

Oh dear

He said it was not great and he will have to put new boards up before plastering over the top of those. He said that he could not believe that someone would put the boards up and tile straight over without any plaster. Must of been the original builders. I want nice straight clean walls with no tiles so need it sorted. The plasterer though has said he wont charge me more because I have given him time to sort it out :-) Will let you know what he is like. He is due 31st to do the job.

This week I have the units all coming from Ikea on Thursday and everything is still on track to be finished around the 7h September. Wish I could just crack on get it sorted but I cant get the plastering done prior.

New Niece

Say HELLO to my new niece. She is called Connie Isabel Crossfield. Not sure on the exact spellings !

She was born on Monday 6th at 07.50 and weighed in at 6lb12

Mike Reid

"G-g-g-g-go!"

"Runaround... now!"

Bit of a late post, I was sad to hear that the legend of a host on Runaround Mike Reid died.

He is better known though for this classic in Eastenders.



Nice to see though that a local band in Berkhamsted will still carry on... Bass player, Matt Tinsley, said "We will most definitely carry on under the name Frank Butcher and the slags. We feel as though Mike would of found it funny and would have recognised that we named it in good spirit. We are all fans of him." Catch him at their web page on myspace here Also read down the comments for a jpeg of the article.

It's Over

I have been picked to be a beta tester for the FM LIVE game from sigames, here is the
link and between that and watching the last couple of Prison Breaks see you all soon !!!!

I will post about the game and the other links soon........

Kitchen

CURRENT KITCHEN

Well we have finally started to order the bits for the kitchen. So far we have a sink and tap physically in our hands and have made an order for the units from Ikea. We ordered them over the web rather then actually making the painful trip to Ikea.

We have gone for the high gloss white Abstrakt ones and I will try and post some plans up. We are getting the worktops from somewhere else though and have gone for solid oak ones.

Update more later. I'm addicted to Prison Break at the moment so have to watch that now !!!

James

Harry Potter

Faye got the book and I read the back page......... It was all a dream :-0

Nothing in life is FREE !!!!

OK so we now have two 16 year old girls that say they have been duped in to carrying drugs.

Yasemin told Channel 4 News on Thursday night they were tricked into carrying drugs to London.

Speaking by telephone from prison in Accra, she said: "There were basically two boys over here who gave us two bags and told us... it was an empty bag.

"We never thought anything bad was inside... and they told us to go to the UK and drop it off to some boy... at the airport."

"It was basically like a set-up. They didn't tell us nothing, we didn't think nothing, because basically we are innocent.

"We don't know nothing about this drugs and stuff."

First of all you get asked to go on a "free" holiday and then to carry 2 empty bags back to the UK, what the fuck do you think are you going to be carrying? I'm sorry but I say lock them up for 10 years at least and lets hope they dont have kids !!!

I'm sure at 16 years old I will still be helping Max out and lets be honest if we ever let him go on a "free" holiday to bring back an "empty" bag then we also deserve to be sharing porridge with him.

Fuckwits and I do try really hard never to swear on this site !

"I'm carrying back an empty bag but it is weighed down a bit by 300K worth of Coke." Well it ain't empty then is it !

Bubble Boy

Today, thanks to a work health plan, I went to the Bupa hospital over in Harpenden for some test because I have not been able to breath through my nose and snore quite a bit. I also wake up with bruised ribs but then that is where Faye jabs me during the night to turn on to my side.

I had a thing shoved up my nose and ended up taking an allergy test, As it turns out I'm allergic to my house i.e. Dust and Dogs :-) ! The Dr though wants me to get floorboards rather then carpets etc. etc. well it wont happen because personally I'm not a fan of wood floors. We will get the carpet cleaners in and will also start to look another hoover. Ours is only a couple years old but it's suction is not as good as it was. I have tried cleaning it out etc. but it's just not that good. Was a £200 hoover like a Dyson but maybe not as good as it turns out.

I have been given a spray and some allergy tabs and go back in a month. If it solves the swelling in the nose and my sinus and breathing is better then I will probably be on the spray and tabs for ever and if not then I need to look at surgery to "bore" the nose passage a bit bigger.

I called Faye and she seemed almost disappointed that they never found any lumps or bits obstructing the nose and it was only swollen ! Think Faye wanted a quick answer by surgery to my snoring !

Kitchen

Above photo by Flickr user John Wilkie what a stunning shot.

Found it while looking for a shot of "Oak" because Faye and I are looking into replacing the kitchen and one option is Oak worktops. I would like to know if anyone has them and what their thoughts are on them.

We are also looking at Ikea so any thoughts of the quality etc. on their kitchens would be good as well. I have read about there not being enough of a void behind the cabinets but I am now looking at using a wooden baton to bring the base unit out if needed.

Should be fun trying to organise all of the bits to happen in the correct order and making sure I can get the correct people at the right time i.e. Plasterer as soon as the old units are removed. I am going to try and do most of it myself with some help from my Father in-law. I will keep you updated with plans and ideas.

James

Berkhamsted Bird of Prey

We had bit of a "shock" this morning, we was loading Max into the car at about 9 this morning. We heard some rustling in the trees and looked up to see a bird in a bit of distress. Couldn't quite work it out and then all of a sudden a Falcon lands on our front garden really close to us with a chick from the bird box (on the tree opposite our house) in it's talons. It then flew off when the chicks parents came down but it never let go of the chick. Was really quite cool to see and I wish that we had our camera ready.

Spice Girl Post

Well the wife wanted to know why on earth I posted about the Spice Girls getting back together because I'm not a fan, she never got the reason for the post so now I have a feeling that maybe people are going to label me as a Spice Girl fan :-0

The reason for the post was a joke on the flag they were holding and Gerri's mini skirt from all those years ago.

Just for the record I'm not a spice girl fan !

Biube

We are looking at sorting out or should I say ripping out our kitchen and replacing it. The Ikea high gloss with Oak tops seem to be our fave at the moment. I am going to try and I mean try to use Google Sketch to get an idea of the look because the online planner does not work with the mac (or Vista ! so I can not boot into that !)

In preparation of that though we have to do a few things and one is to move the fish from the kitchen to a new home so we went the whole hog and bought them a new tank, stand etc. It is called the Biube and if it does what it says then it should make looking after them a lot easier.

In over a week the tank still looks very clear and the LED light is really good. So it looks good and the fish (2 Fancy, 3 Cat fish and 1 fantail) are all happy. The white fancy fish is Coppell after Steve Coppell as he used to be a more Copper colour and the other fancy fish is Damien because Faye liked the name and I wont call a son of mine that. Those 2 are about 6 years old now. The others have no name.

Who will have my Fowler?

Now that they have all left Eastenders it turns out that Robbie Fowler is the latest Fowler to struggle getting work.

I would have down at the Palace, Get the cheque book out Mr Jordan although I bet it's a lot of money for him and we need a fast pacy forward.
Story here: Click Me

Spice Girls are back

Yes there are more important things happening in England at the moment BUT

the spice girls are back.

Here they are courtesy of the BBC


Cant believe Geri still has her dress....

Blakey

I have had some blakeys fitted to a pair of my shoes and whilst they are dead loud and make me sound like a girl walking down the road they will hopefully save me having to keep getting the heel done.

It did get a couple of us thinking about the era of blakeys. Burgundy stay press trousers, White towelling socks or one pink and one green, karate slipper, highlights, dyeing just the front of your hair !, Choose Life T-Shirts, Parker and harrington coats.

Happy days

Eggs Banned

Can you believe it, an advertising watchdog has banned an egg advert (from the 50's) because it does not promote a balanced diet !! The amount of crap and junk food on the TV and they ban this.

Story is on the BBC site

Ban on rerun of eggs TV advert

Tony Hancock
Comedian Tony Hancock featured in the advertisement

The 1950s TV adverts
Reruns of a TV commercial from the 1950s which urged viewers to "go to work on an egg" have been banned.

An advertising watchdog said the slogan went against the principle of eating a varied diet.

The Egg Information Service had wanted to screen the advert, which featured comedian Tony Hancock, to celebrate its 50th birthday.

Author Fay Weldon, who headed the team which came up with the slogan, has described the decision as absurd.

"When you think of what can be run and what is being run, like low-cost airlines and cars - cars kill, eggs aren't actually likely to do so," she told BBC Radio 4's Today programme.

She said she was proud of the adverts and remembered how Hancock was reluctant to take part.

"He hated doing them, he felt it was a great comedown, he didn't want to do them and did them as a kind of mockery.

"I sat in the studio listening to him moaning and complaining, so we just wrote what he wanted.

"One of them said 'I hate doing this advertisement' - we just thought the truth might work best."

'Accepted advice'

The Broadcast Advertising Clearance Centre (BACC) defended its decision, insisting that the adverts did not suggest a varied diet.

BACC spokesman Kristoffer Hammer said: "Dietary considerations have been at the centre of the new rules for advertising and in consideration of this we felt that these adverts did not suggest a varied diet.

"The concept of eating eggs every day for breakfast goes against what is now the generally accepted advice of a varied diet and we therefore could not approve the ads for broadcast."

British Egg Information Service spokesperson Amanda Cryer said: "We have been shocked by this ruling as eggs are a healthy, natural food which are recommended by nutritionists."

"What's more, there are no restrictions on the number of eggs people can eat, which was recently confirmed by the Food Standards Agency, and between five and seven eggs a week would be totally acceptable for most people."

Ms Cryer added: "In addition, many other advertisers clearly promote their products to be eaten every day such as breakfast cereals so we are very surprised that eggs have been singled out in this way."

Facebook

I still dont really get it but have met a couple of mates through it all but if you would like to link or be my friend over in facebook here is my profile link http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=622101555

Palace 1 Dowie 0

Finally a judge in the land who understands something about contracts. Foot ball has always made me laugh by the fact that you can do such a bad job mnaging a team that you get sacked but then you get paid up your contract. Anyway this is aboout Dowie getting his just reward. I have nothing against Dowie but I am glad that we won the case.

I posted this last year ....

Tuesday, May 30, 2006
Why Dowie, why?

I'm glad that Jordan is serving Dowie a writ. BBC story here. At the end of the day he left Palace to be nearer his family so was mutually released from his contact at Palace and then he turns up at Charlton (Who for some reason think they are our rivals, your not). Not good and not right, on the Palace sites they are saying he is worse the Steve Bruce when he walked. At least Steve Bruce asked for permission to talk to Birmingham, not that he was allowed but thats another long story !

AJ has signed for Everton and I wish him all the best.

Never a dull moment being a Palace fan !!

Mr Dowie will get one back when he signs Borrowdale though. A good player but again greed has the better of him and he is leaving.

Ouch - Woman jailed for testicle attack

Men, get something to dry your eyes before reading on.....

From BBC

Woman jailed for testicle attack
A woman who ripped off her ex-boyfriend's testicle with her bare hands has been sent to prison.

Amanda Monti, 24, flew into a rage when Geoffrey Jones, 37, rejected her advances at the end of a house party, Liverpool Crown Court heard.

She pulled off his left testicle and tried to swallow it, before spitting it out. A friend handed it back to Mr Jones saying: "That's yours."

Monti admitted wounding and was jailed for two-and-a-half years.

'Pulled hard'

Sentencing Monti, Judge Charles James said it was "a very serious injury" and that Monti was not acting in self defence.

The court heard that Mr Jones had ended his long-term but "open relationship" with Monti towards the end of May last year.

The pair remained on good terms and on 30 May she picked him up from a party in Crosby and went back for drinks with friends at Mr Jones's house.

An argument ensued and Mr Jones said there was a struggle between them.

In his statement, Mr Jones said she grabbed his genitals and "pulled hard".

He added: "That caused my underpants to come off and I found I was completely naked and in excruciating pain."

The court heard that a friend saw Monti put Mr Jones's testicle into her mouth and try to swallow it.

She choked and spat it back into her hand before the friend grabbed it and gave it back to Mr Jones. Doctors were unable to re-attach the organ.

In a letter to the court, Monti said she was sorry for what she had done.

She said: "It was never my intention to cause harm to Geoff and the fact that I have caused him injury will live with me forever. I am in no way a violent person."

The letter added: "I have challenged myself to explain what has happened but still I just cannot remember. This has caused much anguish to me and will do for the rest of my life."

Ouch. I love her statement that she is not a violent person. Could you imagine what she would of done if she was :-0

Stats

I was reading a blog about stats so thought I would check mine out.

My mates are currently doing a round the world tour (see link on the right, Matt and Michelle)

At least I thought they were until I see that they have been on my blog for nearly 24 hours.....

Have a look at their blog there has been some good posts.

Micro Chips

We have all been in the Isle Of Wight the last 5 days. We had a great time but wish I was there over the weekend for the festival.

We left Friday and there was loads coming over on the ferry.

I had not been to the Isle Of Wight since I was little and really enjoyed it, we stayed in a caravan and I took my laptop. I wanted the laptop to try and get some wireless but only managed to get online once in Ryde centre.

When I never took the laptop I "hid" it in the grill section of the oven. Great idea I thought until we came home and just put Max's food in the oven and turned it on. After about 30 mins I realised that the laptop was above it in the grill !!! Luckily everything seems OK although it was very hot !

Here are a couple of photos from the trip.

Happy Blog Birthday

Today is the 2nd birthday of this blog and I have managed just, and I mean just, over 200 posts. It's still fun and something to keep my friends and family up to date with things happening in the world of the Simmonds'. Sometimes it feels like a chore rather then a pleasure and I wish I had a "thing" that made people come back to the blog but I do have repeat visitors so thank you if you are one of them. When I started I had various ideas i.e. fact and joke of the day plus what happened on this day BUT again it became a chore rather then something I enjoyed so I dropped it.

What do I wish I could do, well to be brutally honest I wish it was more "secret" i.e. I could never really talk about my work because I know some of my work colleagues read the blog, I know my family read the blog and you know sometimes I would like a good moan about them (very rarely of course !!)

I still love you all though......

Happy Birthday to Slothblog and Wyndham as well

MacBook Pro and Vista Ultimate

Oh my gawd I have joined the darkside... I have loaded on Vista Ultimate on to my Macbook.

I am working on a new project at work and it means working with Vista so I got a copy ordered and have installed it.

Shocking but my first impressions are good :-0, Will NEVER take the place of OSX though.

Will post more on Vista and how it compares with OSX. I am interested to hear how other people are finding Visa and how it runs older apps.

200th Post !! Joost in time

I'm hopefully going to get an invite to have a look at Joost thanks to Random Good Stuff.

I mean I have given him my 200th Post so it's only fair.

Please visit his website HERE

Sore Testicles

Faye is not feeling well and says she has swollen testicles, I think (and hope) she means tonsils !!!

Wonder what sort of google search traffic comes my way this week with the title as is.

Dizzy

Max has now started to just make himself dizzy by going round and round until he stops, giggles and then falls over. Quite a worry really but makes us laugh.

He is also pulling this rather funny face all the time:

The Agents did it...

Charlton are relegated

Last year I posted this:

Wednesday, May 31, 2006

Agent Dowie takes his seat

Agent Coppell moved from Palace to Brighton and took them down
Agent Tuttle played for Palace and took Millwall down
Agent Bruce went to Birmingham and it took a couple of seasons but finally did his job and took them back down, he also gave us Johnson and then gave us back Morrison so in total from that deal we made about 12 million and kept Morrison :-0. What an Agent.

AND NOW

Agent Dowie goes to Charlton or the Clowns as they are somtimes known, lets see what happens :-)

Now it didn't quite happen as posted but it was OK because Agent Pardew (or Super Al as he is known to the Palace faithful after THAT semi V Liverpool) did actually take them down after taking over from Dowie.

Dirty cheating Leeds

Leeds have gone into receivership today and been deducted 10 points so therefore are relegated.

What gets me though is that if they had done this after Sunday OR had already been "mathematically" relegated then they would be deducted 10 points at the start of next season but what they have done is knowing that if they don't have a miracle on Sunday then are down. Hull need to lose by 5 goals and Leeds win by 5 goals !

What I think should happen is that they should play until they have accumulated 10 points starting from now. So should they happen to win on Sunday they would still start next season with minus 7 points.

Guess who bought the club straight off the receivers......Ken Bates the current chairman !
The story is on the BBC here

Lawn Bowls

Went to lunch today with a work colleague, Pete for those that know him, well we went and got a sarnie and strolled to the bowling green because they have seats and also the sun beats down.

Halfway through lunch a few people came out to play when Pete turns round and says "I remember that guy with the beard from last year. I always like to see that they made it through winter"

The picture is "borrowed" from Flickr, it was taken by a member called ukalipt and the original can be found here