Fly on the wall, overpricing and special offers

Another week and another eye-opening fly on the wall television programme.  This time the cameras follow the emergency services in Blackpool and show what the crews have to deal with day and night.  The episode this week focused on young people..............well, what an entertaining bunch those featured turned out to be.  One 13 year old was arrested for head butting a police officer followed by swearing at him, which earned the lad a night in the cells.  The programme makers interviewed his mother who couldn’t understand why the police didn’t just bring him home “like they used to do to me at that age”.  Oh right then, that is totally acceptable.  Another woman (I use the term loosely) was arrested for prostituting herself under the pier in broad daylight with a group of young lads for a fiver “a broken fiver at that” she said.  This piece of loveliness claimed she didn’t think Blackpool is a family holiday resort – in fact she described it as a shit hole.  You can’t beat the education standards these days.  Chavs displaying their finest qualities – I feel sorry for the decent citizens of the town who have to live amongst these people.

Despite the poor weather this summer I seem to have a garden of triffid proportions which all need cutting and sorting before the autumn sets in.  How on earth can everything have grown so much without any sunshine?  The ground has been so wet over the past few months that I considered growing rice – I quite fancy standing in a paddy field to harvest my crop.  I made a start on the chopping at the weekend and have bizarrely given my Dad the go ahead to prune selected areas when I go on holiday.  Once more I will be trying to source some police tape to cordon off certain parts of the garden to try and prevent an unnecessary cull.............perhaps a local farmer has a spare length of electric fencing I could utilise?  Hmmm, must look into this further.

I had a reply from London Zoo in response to my email following the overpriced visit where the lack of main attraction animals was evident.  Apparently they have over 650 species on display, this includes hundreds of varieties of insects........who on earth wants to see these?  The response also states that “we do not advertise anywhere at all that we have these animals here at London Zoo”.....I beg to differ as the onsite maps around the zoo clearly show the camel and gorilla areas, neither of which were evident on the day of our visit.  The extortionate food prices are, apparently because “we do source our food from local, high quality suppliers and this does mean that this is reflected in the costs we charge our visitors”..........how can two sandwiches with not much in the way of fillings, two bags of crisps (branded, not locally made) and two bottles of soft drink cost over £14???  Sadly this is another place that is on the ‘do not bother to go again’ list.  The food prices at the zoo made Waitrose seem like a bargain store.

My parents are off to the Lake District for a short holiday with their wellies and umbrellas packed.  Plenty to see and do in the area and I daresay there will be a few amusing tales to tell when they return.  Twelve months ago my Mum couldn’t have entertained the idea of such an active trip but since her new hip was fitted there is no stopping her.  I am not entirely sure she will be scaling Scafell Pike but at least walking around the towns and doing some Christmas shopping should be okay. 

This week’s special offers via email...........a pack to help me stop smoking (bearing in mind I have never even tried a ciggie); the mobility scooter has made a reappearance; offers of payday loans with repayment rates in the thousands of percents; and finally, private healthcare – I guess this will come in handy for the vasectomy I was offered a couple of weeks ago.  I just love the total lack of research done prior to the send button being pressed on these messages.  I can hardly wait for the next crop to land in my inbox!

London, football and animals

What an amazing weekend at the Paralympics!!  Well in fact it was a weekend in London for the sport plus some sightseeing and with the 80 plus degree temperatures thrown in for good measure, two brilliant days were had.  First port of call was the Cutty Sark now that the burned bits have been scraped off and repainted.  I had been as a child but with the addition of a visitor exhibition it is a real crowd puller now.  However, the high entry fee was off-putting so we admired it from the outside and took a few photos.  From there we walked to the Greenwich Observatory (the hill was very long in the hot weather............) and stood either side of the Meridian Line (had to pay for the privilege of course).  After a reviving cake and bottle of pop we skipped down the hill and climbed aboard the driverless Docklands Light Railway to head to Stratford for the night.  I was really looking forward to a long hot bath to relax my muscles............however, we had been allocated a room with disabled facilities – no bath, just a floor level shower with no tray.  Hmmmm okay then, it was functional and obviously saves the maid a little time as the water flows across the floor thereby washing it, but I wanted to have a bath!!!

Anyhow, onto the main event, the Paralympics 7 a side football.  We were lucky enough to see Team GB beat the USA in the first game of the morning, followed by the Netherlands thrashing Argentina in the next game with a hat trick in the first 18 minutes.  Watching these guys playing quality football put the overpaid prima donnas of the Premier League to shame.  Each of the team members yesterday had some degree of impaired mobility but they played as a team; when they fell over they were straight back on their feet; they could actually do stuff with the ball like dribbling not just passing it from one to the other........the FA would do well to look at the high priced rubbish that is fielded every weekend and make some serious changes.  Sign up some of these chaps instead and the fans will see proper skills. 

When wandering around the vast shopping complex by the Olympic Park we kept running into athletes from many of the international teams buying souvenirs, having dinner or simply soaking up the atmosphere.  Everyone involved with running the event from the volunteers up to the armed services integrated with the public, little kids high fived the soldiers, people were smiling and joking...............what a great public relations display this was.  I wonder if the spirit of being nice will continue?

We took the Javelin train back to St Pancras on the high speed six minute trip from Stratford then made our way to Regent’s Park to visit London Zoo.  Having grown up in the London area, this was a favourite place to visit in the school holidays to see all the animals, have a picnic and learn about wildlife.  What a disappointment this visit turned out to be.  After being ripped off for the entrance fee (well it is Britain after all), in we went to see the usual main attractions at such a place.  However, there are now no elephants there (a zoo without elephants, what is that all about??), the many gorillas advertised as being on show were invisible either inside their area or in their outdoor enclosure (I am guessing they may have paddled across the moat surrounding their island and escaped over the fencing) and the camels were not being displayed as their current area is being remodelled to house the tigers.  That should be interesting if they forget to relocate the camels to an alternative place prior to moving the large stripy cats in.  An email has been sent to the zoo but I doubt anything very useful will come from it.

Good news though as I got home to find a letter from Silverstone with a refund for the parking fiasco at the grand prix this year plus a goodwill gesture for 10% off the price of tickets for next year.  As these have already been booked, the admin crew are arranging a refund cheque.  What a result..........perhaps I will be able to afford to head out to another London attraction now?

Carnival, the snip and Zanardi

Another couple of busy weeks have passed by..............I sometimes seem to be living in a whirlwind being blown from one place to another with no let up to pause for breath or to get any sleep!

Over the bank holiday weekend we headed to London for the family day at Notting Hill Carnival.  What a great event!  Having lived in the London area for 34 years, I had plenty opportunities to go but at the time it was often marred by high levels of crime and violence which was somewhat off putting.  In more recent years this has reduced a lot so off we went.  Anyone who doesn’t like very loud booming and bass based music would run a mile, but this just enhanced our experience.  Originally an exclusively West Indian event, the carnival has evolved to be a community project with all nationalities taking part.  The costumes were spectacular, the weather conditions very similar to the Caribbean and the streetside food and merchandise stalls plus a great atmosphere all contributed to a great (and free!!) day out.  Yes please for another visit.  How do I get to be part of the parade or travel on a float?

Regular readers of my witterings will recall how I am continually bombarded with offers of products aimed at more senior members of the community.  However, the spam mailers have excelled themselves now by offering me...............wait for it.................a vasectomy!  Actually I will hold off on that thanks as I am a bit busy at the moment, I have a couple of hours free next week if you can fit me in then.  Market research at its finest.

I am getting excited about my forthcoming trip to the Paralympics this weekend!  The weather is even due to be totally un-British with wall to wall sunshine and no rain forecast, hurrah!  The athletes from around the world have all shown great determination and talent in the various sports and I expect the football on Sunday will be no exception.  So many of the Team GB Paralympians are now household names and our medal total is creeping up on a daily basis.  I was particularly pleased to see that Alex Zanardi won gold in hand biking this week.  I used to watch him in his Formula 1 days and subsequent racing in other classes; however this was cut short when he lost his legs in a terrible racing accident.  Many people would have seen this as the end of their career, however within two years he was racing in Touring Cars, determined to carry on with life.  Absolutely bloody brilliant I say!

Having fancied something other than cereal today for breakfast I headed off to Tesco and purchased some juice and a pack of pain au chocolat (chocolate croissants in case anyone is confused).  Back home, I put two on the plate, settled down in front of breakfast television and took a bite.............never have I come across such hard and stale croissants.  They were impossible to eat and in fact I have the remainder of the packet contents ready to offer to the builders working around the corner in case they are short of a brick of two.  The best before date is still two days off.........these manky offerings have never had a best let alone a best before.  This only reinforces my continued preference to shopping in Aldi where the products are cheaper and far more palatable.  After all, most of mainland Europeans shop in Aldi, Lidl and Netto and they all thrive on it – they also save plenty money by doing so hence the influx of tourists to the UK (I bet they get a huge shock when they see the prices to get into our tourist attractions!).

Now on countdown to Spain, just need to count out all my saved two pound coins, bag them up and ask the lady at the bank to magically turn them into Euros!  Hopefully the forest fires from last week will be extinguished by then otherwise it might be a little tricky on the roads.