holidays

The holidays are coming and so is the SNOW. Hopefully it will hold off before I drive to Scotland but think not!!!!

DIY done

Well the 2nd phase of the DIY is now more or less done. I have completed the tiling and grouting of the bathroom and must admit that it is quite good. I still have a little bit of masticing to do but only in a couple of corners really.
+The next phase is to get a pump and a screen for the shower as the hot water pressure isnt strong enough to give a hot shower at the moment and the screen is needed to protect the floor. The 4th phase is to paint and put new florring down.

After that its into the kitchen to put in a new one of those. Think I need to win the lottery!!!

DIY Continued

The tiling is going gquite well. The best part of this morning was spwnt cutting tiles and trying not to break them. Every time I thought I had the perfiect nack to keeping the thin strip I was cutting hole it descided to break again.

Anyway here are the progress pictutes until Lunch today.

DIY

Over the past few weeks I have after many requests from my girlfriend to do some work on the bathroom and therefore I have.

During an evening last week I replaced the taps on the basin to lovely silver and gold ones along with puting in service valves on the pipes underneith. Then yesterday I spend the day fitting new taps in the bath so that there will be a shower in there too. The taps are in they need tightening as they move slightly however there isnt enough pressure in the hot water to provide a shower as yet but Im sure I will find a way of sorting that.


Totay I have spent the day tiling the bathroom above the bath I am about half way through the main wall that runs the length of the bath and have done sections of the other two walls that encompass the bath. As yet I havent grouted but I will do that when I have completed all of the tiling. However I am pleased with my first efforts of both plumbing and tiling. As we said in the pub last night "It ain't leaking so the plumbing is good" so I guess tonights comment should be "the tiles are staying on the wall so the tiling is good too".

Six Nations Week 3

After a week off the 6 nations got back having a go at each other. For the first time in history (both 5 and 6 nations) there was a game on Friday night which saw the French host the Welsh. Must admit I didnt see the fixture as I was in Manchester at Andreas's Scout Troups Race Night (I broke just under even for the evening) however back to the rugby despite an equally shared first half the French beat the Welsh by 21-16 making life difficult for the french to retain the championship and negating their chances of a grand slam.

Scotland took on the Italians in th eearly KO on Friday and took the spoils quite happily with a 20 point victory winning 26-6. The game was quite good and I was glad to see the Scots win their first game of the 6 Nations, I dont expect another win but atleast we have reduced the chance of the wooden spoon this year.

Ireland managed to have a very luckey victory over the English beating them by just a single point. I only saw the first half and it wasn't anything special. The second half for me was spent travelling to a dinner that I went to with Andrea and her brother and sister.

All change

The weather in the UK is slowly springing into spring. Having faced the lowest temperature for a long time in January and then tons of snow just two weeks ago the weather has changed drastically and the temperature is starting to hit double figures. The weather is also matching with the sun beating down all of today, even the flat is celebrating and Ive managed to open the window in the kitchen to allow some form of air flow.

As you will remember from my early posts about my flat and how awful the bathroom looked the day I moved in I am finally starting some more DIY and plan to make a few changes in there. Im not getting rid of the existing suite as that would be too much work I would think, however I have bought some lovely new taps this week and hope to get them fitted one night this week without too much hassle. After that the area around the bath is to be tiled with plain white tiles with a black strip of tiles through it to break up the colour. After that the walls are being repainted with a grey colour (I wanted to keep the blue but the boss has other ideas) probably a light grey but that still has to be determined. After that tile laminate will go down as the flooring which should add a bit of temperature to the floor in the room as well as a contrast in colour (plan to put a grey/black colour in there).

Once that is done it will be the turn of the kitchen to have new worktops, cupboards, tiles and flooring. When that will be Ive not quite worked out but hopefully in the next month or so.

Basketball the Questions

OK Im a bit of a fan of most sports and this evening have been watching the Duke - UNC game from last Wednesday night and would like to ask a few questions about the game. Firstly appologies on how stupid the questions maybe but I need to get some answers to assist me.

1) What exactly is a Field Goal?
2) What are the rules on players in Collage basketball?
3) How long do players get to stay playing for collage teams?
4) Where do they go after Collage basketball, surely they all dont go to the NBA?
5) Are all home supports like the Duke support? by that I mean colourful and loud.
6) I know why shot fouls go to the free throw line but why do other fouls go there too?

Im sure that I will think of some more in due course however I would like to make the following opservations about the game.

1) The crowd were exceedingly loud and colourful.
2) Although used to ice hockey (my #1 American sport) I found this game exceedingly fast and frantic.
3) Duke seemed to be slow off the staring blocks in the two halfs going down 11 early on in the first and then loosing wha appeared a good in the second and then failing to recover from going down.
4) Dukes #3 Paulus seemed to be everywhere early on making some great plays. I presume he is one tio watch in the future to hit the NBA

6 Nations Rugby - Week 2

Ok firstly you will have noticed that I didnt update the results last Sunday, it wasnt anything to do with the fact that Scotland lost 26-13 against Wales but more the fact that I forgot. However Wales deserved their 13 point win and infact should have won it by some more points after Wales missed quite a few kicks. The Scots were never really in it to be honest.

This weekend saw the Scots travel to Paris for the first game of the weekend. The scots had a slightly better result Scoring their second try of the competition however giving away too many penalties which led to the Scots 8 point loss. In the second game of the weekend the Welsh showed that the win of last years chamionship by beating a stuggling English side by 8 points with penalties again winning them the tie. In the Sunday game Ireland struggled early on to go into the half time interval down a point but took over in the second half to run home in excess of 30 points to no reply in the second half.

6 Nations Rugby - Week 1 - Day 1

Well the 6 nations rugby has officially started today with England hosting Italy in the first of todays games at 3 this afternoon. England won their opening encounter of the championship however their performance was quite poor. Errors in selection left the Italians in trouble as their scrum-half for the day had his hand in gifting the English with their first 3 tries in the first half of the game. The Italians eventually lost the game by 36-11 however they had the higher percentage of both possetion and territory in the game however lost the game due to their first half errors with England running in 2 further tries in the second half to seal a fortunate win for the English.

This evening the French have travelled to Dublin with the game fairly close. The French scored the first try of the match and both teams playing reasonably well to entertain the Croke Park crowd. Ireland took a 3 point lead into the interval at half time. During a closely fought second half they extended their lead to come out on top with a 30-21 victory over the French

Tomorrow sees the Scots host the Welsh in the Sunday afternoon game.

The snow continues

Its now Friday, went back to work on Wednesday although due to the car being stuck still I managed to grab a lift off my friend. Thursday I managed to get the car out and they finally salted the estate so driving away from home is a bit easier.

It snowed again today not so much as there had been but still a little to turn the roads white for a bit atleast. Not sure what it will do this weekend snow wise maybe a bit more we will see.

On a sporting note the 6 nations championship starts this weekend with Scotland facing Wales on Sunday at Murrayfield. Hopefully we can score a few tries as the main kicker is not believed to be starting not sure why he isnt starting as I dont think there is a better kicker in world rugby at the moment let alone in Scotland. Maybe I will be proved wrong but here hopes that they win anyways.

Snow Day 2

Ive got a second day off work today I tried to get the car out, having removed the 20cm (8in) of snow off the car I then reversed out of the spot into the snow. where the car got stuck on some ice. Thankfully some guys gave me a push back into the spot with the wheels just spining and I got back into the flat. The snow is melting (slowly) but it is now a bit icy so dont think the car is going too far too soon. Wonder if work will be open tomorrow?View out the window yesterday

Icicles on the lamp-posts

My car with all the snow on it

Ground to a halt

Well I think I might just post once a month unless anything really exciting happens. This way I will have a bit more to say and I will manage to update things with a bit more regularity, who knows I might even get into it a bit more.

Well January has now departed and Rabbie Burns was born over 250 years ago, not that I went to a Burns Supper, not a huge fan for Haggis or whisky so dont see the point really. Anyway January was its usual busy self. With New year out of the way it was back to work and the fun that that brought with burst water pipes due to the freezing temps (see earlier post). January for the past few years brings the Bentley Copse Frost Camp, as yet we havent had a frosty one and this year was no exception as the temperature had heated up quite a bit from the previous week. This year Andrea was down for the weekend too so that was good we spent the weekend together working on the campsite. I managed to do my ankle in when I fell over and two weeks later Im still getting some pain in it but for the most part it is healing quite nicely.

Today I have managed to get another Monday off work, it wasnt planned that way it just happened. Last night about 7-10 inches of snow feel, now to many that isnt much however to us here in the UK that is a disasterous amount of snow as the country just colapses. You see we are not geared up for snow regardless of how much warning we get. Im not critisising anyone as that would be unfair but sections of the Motorway were quite bad last night at 9pm only a few hours after the snow had started and sections of roads were closed. Now had these been country roads I could understand but they are the major trunk routes about the countryt that should get priority. Anyway less of the moaning after all I am sat at home watching snowflakes continue to fall out of the sky whilst laughing at people digging their cars out and reving their engines hard so that they can go out somewhere as they have the day off work. As for the outlook its to snow off and on all week with the risk of some rain at some point, Ill be back at work tomorrow Im sure, dont think that I could stand too many days watching day-time TV.

Last nights view when I got home

Had I know that I was going to have the day off I would have stayed up and watched the whole of the Superbowl incidently apparently the steelers won the game.

Off to apply for some jobs and look at somewhere to go on holiday. Might arrange some DIY and watch a movie. Have a good day.

Cold Cold Temps

Well the UK is currently suffering an exceedingly cold snap the outside temperature has failed to get above zero for most of the week with very little thawing out. The trees look fantastic with layers of snow-like frost on them. As yet there hasnt been much snow in the SE (apparently there was some on Sunday night but I was still up north) so didnt see it, although it has tried to snow a few days this week, without much luck.

View from the car window when stopped at lights

At the moment it is a case of keeping the cold out and and keeping the heat in. therefore with this in mind Im off to the DIY store in the morning to purchase some draft excluders for the windows and under the kitchen door to see if I can reduce the heat loss from the flat as I appear to be loosing about 5C from the flat during the day, damn storage heaters.

Christmas and New Year (part 2)

The Sunday after Christmas was spent traveling to Scotland after a fairly quiet day in Manchester we flew (not a huge distace but still able to fly the 40 minutes air time). My parents picked us up at Edinburgh to drive the 60 minutes back to the house. Sunday night was fairly quiet.

Monday saw us have a roast with the family, my sister and her husband came over to join us and we all opened Christmas presents for a second day over the 2 weeks. I guess that is one advantage about our parents living so far apart.

New Years eve or hogmanay as its known in Scotland is the big celebration. Having borrowed dads car we headed off to meet up with Doug (one of my Scouting friends) at his flat in Glasgow where we had tickets for the New Years party there in Georges Square. After a beautiful full roast and quite a few beers we headed out into the cold to bring in the New Year with up to 15,000 people, live music, fireworks and also a few more beers that were served up out of a Platapus drinking devise as not glass bottles or cans were allowed in the street party.

Once the fireworks had gone off and as the music started to wind down we headed back to the flat to play on the Wii and have some sausage rolls. Then as we were all flagging a well earned sleep.

The Thursday (New Years day) was spent visiting my Gran and Uncle after a full Scottish breakfast (although we had link rather than square sausage but haggis was on the menu) before heading back to my parents for a few days.

On the Sunday we headed back to Manchester before I dealt with train delays and cancelations to get me back to the south of the country on the Monday.

Tuesday was back to work and the groups Christmas lunch.

Christmas and New Year

Well once again Ive decided to see what I can put up on the blog, I must firstly confess that over the past year I have not been very good at doing this. Im not quite sure why and I dont really have any real excusses, however I will make some.

1) I got into facebook and for a while that took over
2) Over the past 3 months I have been putting together a website, which I am fairly proud of, its not quite finished however Im still awaiting input from others. Have a look see what you think and let me know here (www.brookwoodscouts.org.uk). Ive even managed to make sections of it update live so that it can be fairly up to the minute.
3) Ive attended 2 family weddings this past 6 months.
4) I dont spend a huge amount of the time on the internet unless its at work (where I dont up date this) or for the website above.

Anyway its now a New Year and therefore I think I should try and make a resolution to try and up date this a bit more, mind you not sure if anyone reads it or not (comments please to show that you do).

This year Christmas was a bit different. For the first time in my life (the whole 30 years of it) I spent Christmas day without my mother but instead with my girlfriend and her family (another first). It wasnt as stange as I thought it would be but I appear to have coped and live on.

The weekend before Christmas was a bit busy and actually started on the Thursday with Christmas lunch at work followed on the Friday evening with the works Social Club bash. On the Saturday I spent the evening with some of my mate in Guildford having a few beers. Sunday was spent on the train to Manchester.

On the Monday a stepped foot on an ice rink for the first time in years and I mean years. Scared wasnt the word infact my girlfriend complained that for the whole hour I never smiled at all, I felt that everyone was out to get me and make me fall over. Dont think I did, how I havent a clue. We also went out for some food in Manchesters China Town followed by a trip to see Escape From Africa and it was well worth going to see.

Tuesday we travelled to North Wales to collect Andreas' sister and her two kids to bring them to Manchester for Christmas.

Wednesday was a quiet day followed by some drinking in the evening and the start of a 3 day drinking spree.

Thursday (Christmas day) I made Andrea the most beautiful (and unusual). The omlette contained 2 eggs, 5 strawberries and 50g of salmon (thats for each one), it tasted delicious I recomend it. The opening of the presents then too center stage, Andrea had missed the fact that I had hidden a wrapped wii under her bed so she got to open them and have her breckfast at the same time. My DS was opened later. The day (and night) was then spent at Andreas parents house eating, drinking, opening presents and playing both the DS and wii.

Boxing day was spent at the Panto. All Im going to say is Alladin had exceedingly long legs and a very short skirt on, and the princess wasn't bad either. However Im quite happy with my Andrea. More drinking and wii playing continued well into the night at friends.

The Saturday Andrea spent quite some time shopping so I spent an hour on the driving range and the rest of the time practicing my hand at Wii Sports and Mario Kart.

on the Sunday we headed north to Scotland to see my family.