I give my complete attention to a very good friend of mine

VAT went up by 2.5% to 20% today, as if things aren’t expensive enough these days. But prices seem to be all arse about face. Some things that we used to think of as expensive, such as music, dvds, or clothes are relatively cheap. Food and fuel, meanwhile, is now becoming astronomically expensive. As is postage. It is shortly going to cost us just under 10 shillings to send a letter first class! It’s outrageous. If I’m not careful, or if interest rates don’t start to go up soon, I’m going to have to rethink my whole budgeting strategy. ‘Luxuries’ appear to be fairly safe as they are relatively inexpensive, but we may have to starve, shiver and walk everywhere in the future. If nothing else it will help with the Christmas weight gain.

Talking of luxuries, we finally bought a new TV yesterday. We’ve been looking seriously since about last May, but there are so many to choose from, and so many different things to take into account (half of which we don’t understand), that we just kept wandering out of the shops in a daze, having spent around 30 minutes talking to an assistant. Choice is not necessarily a good thing. It’s a bit like information overload. Too much, or in this case, too many, and your brain just can’t take it all in. Who knows what the differences are between leading brands and their different technologies. And brands that were reliable in the past aren’t necessarily reliable now. Chris and I decided that in the end, you pays your money and you takes your choice. We opted for a Sony Bravia with internet connection. It was expensive, but at least there was £400 off in the sale. And we’ve found that the built in Freeview works absolutely fine (rendering our cable virtually useless).

So we bought our new TV, then we had to queue at the collection point to pick it up. Once we got it home the fun began. Connecting things like TVs, DVDs, cable and games consoles falls to me: Chris has got no idea, and wouldn’t even know where to start. So while he prepared dinner, I set about setting the thing up. It took some time. The cable and DVD recorder only have scart outlets: the set was supposed to have two scart compatible inputs, but it turned out it only has one. Oh, and neither the cable nor the DVD player have component or HDMI outputs, which is what the TV requires. Even the Wii, which is less than a year old, only comes with a composite cable, and there is no composite input on the TV. Apparently you can buy component cables for the Wii (at around £18) but no shops seem to stock them – I can only find them via the internet. Modern technology is not downwardly compatible: a ploy by the manufacturers to ensure that we have to upgrade our equipment every few years, even though the old model is perfectly serviceable.

I managed to eventually get to the TV working last night, although I still had not got everything connected properly, and while we had dinner we watched an old Morecambe and Wise from the 1970s – as Chris pointed out, it was somewhat ironic that we chose an old show as the first thing to watch on our new TV. After dinner, and after Chris had taken the dogs for a quick walk, we sat down to watch the Christmas edition of Doctor Who, which we had not yet got round to watching. We were pleased with the picture we got, as we were taking high quality streaming from BBC iPlayer. We enjoyed the programme as well: I thought the fish were very imaginative. And at least this year it wasn’t some sort of Christmas disaster set on Earth.

Today has been another grey, miserable day, where everything appears drained of all colour. After I took Max for his morning swim in the smaller of the two Creekmoor ponds, a ploy to help reduce his weight and help repair his injured shoulder, I went back to sorting out the TV. I’ve concluded that I cannot plug both the DVD recorder and the cable box into the TV, but now we have a decent Freeview decoder on the TV I don’t think it’s important. I can use the cable box to provide a signal to the DVD recorder, whilst we watch something else on Freeview on the TV. Eventually we will most probably get a Freeview recorder, but as our old one is working fine at the moment we don’t see the point. We’re also hoping that they will come down in price. I sorted out the Wii, at least temporarily. I worked out which component sockets to use for the composite lead, such that I get a picture and sound. That means at least I can go on playing my new game (the original Mario Galaxy). I’ve also set up my Flickr account on there, so that I can view photos from Flickr on the TV, and I’ve set it up to go to my You Tube account. The TV comes with a connection to the Love Film dvd hire service, which now offers streaming of many titles. Currently we are with Tesco DVD rental, which is run by Love Film anyway, but which doesn’t provide streaming. So I’ve signed up for a free trial of Love Film and we have 14 days to decide whether we want to swap. I’ve noticed that most of the newer films, which are mainly the ones we watch, and the US TV series we tend to hire, are not available for streaming. Also, although streaming of over 4,000 films is free, they charge for many popular titles: this is in addition to your monthly membership fee. Oh, and one last thing I didn’t mention, is that as I am using a Wi-fi internet connection for the TV it has found my PC, so I can play any photos, videos or music that are on the PC on the TV without having to go to all the trouble of connecting the two.

Sorting out the TV and doing a bit of cleaning took all of the morning. This afternoon I went to Wimborne to do some shopping, but was not wholly successful. The cook shop didn’t really have a sale on, and I tried to get some new wellies in the outdoor shop, but they were so busy and only had one person serving, that I gave up. Even in Waitrose I had to queue for the Quick Check checkout, and then had to have all of my shopping re-scanned, which is a real pain. I came home via Broadstone where I called into the library. I was armed with a long list of teenage reading (part of my writing project) but could not find a single book on my list. And when I did find one of the authors, they only had the book that was second in the series. So I picked books at random. I did bring home a couple of Neil Gaiman books to read though: Stardust (I really enjoy the film) and Anansi Boys.

Well, that pretty much brings me up to date: time to think about getting dinner. Tonight we’re having Gordon Ramsay’s Bengali Prawn Curry, something I’ve made before which is fairly quick and easy and definitely very tasty. I’ve bought some baby Pak Choy to go with it.

I was going round and round the hotel garage

Well so much for my regular blogging! Too many distractions at the moment, I think. I’ll try and fill in most of the key bits of the past couple of weeks since I last posted, although I think I’ll leave the saga of my falling out with B&Q until I’ve got a bit more time.

So the Wii arrived. I’m very pleased with it, and have been having lots of fun. I’m using the balance board to do some warm up type exercises and hoola hoop stuff, but am still doing my pilates. I’m useless at the balance games on it, but they’re still good fun. I seem to excess at the obstacle course in the Wii Fit Plus games for some reason.

At Katja’s recommendation I bought Mario Kart and Chris & I are now wasting many hours failing to win a race! That’s not strictly true, but there are some courses where I don’t seem to be able to come anywhere other than last. If I thought I was bad at driving in GTA IV then I’m hopeless in this. I also splashed out (well used my Tesco reward vouchers) to buy Band Hero (with the guitar, mic & drum kit) and the Beatles Band Hero game. We haven’t even attempted the drums yet, but are totally useless at the guitar. I don’t think I’ll ever be capable of progressing to using all 5 buttons. But then, in a way, who cares – we are having fun and enjoying ourselves. I think it’s rather surprised Chris – he didn’t think he’d use it, but is enjoying it. Then yesterday I bought the Dance routine game, as Maria said it was really good exercise and I enjoy dancing. But it’s odd. I always thought I had quite a good sense of rhythm, but either the game/remotes are playing up or my timing is crap.

This week Tiger Woods PGA tour golf arrived on loan from my DVD rental company. Chris was a bit miffed that I could hit the ball a lot further than him right from the start. And he found it really tiring (mainly cos he kept taking massive swings at balls which failed to go the distance in the tutorials – LOL!). I’ve told him it’s good exercise. I got a big groan when I asked if he, as he was playing as Tiger Woods, he got to shag the women in the crowd.

So, that’s the Wii.

Last Saturday was my Dad’s birthday, so I asked him and Pat over for Sunday lunch. I did the Caribbean Pot Roast again as it was so nice. It was a good choice. At 89 Pat doesn’t tend to eat a lot, but she kept taking more and said it was the nicest meal she’d had in years. I was really pleased. In the afternoon I introduced them to the Wii which was fun. They enjoyed it, and Pat did really well at the boxing! Anyway, here’s a couple of photos from Sunday for you.







I was beginning to think that we’d never see the last of the rain. I am sick of tired of muddy walks, muddy dogs and a muddy house. And I’m forever cleaning. But the weather looks as though it might finally have broken the past couple of days as we’ve been having quite a bit of sunshine. It’s making walks a lot more pleasant, as you can see from the photos I took at Hamworthy on Tuesday.









Also, since my last blog, cattle have been bought over to this side of Canford Heath as part of the heath maintenance programme. They keep back the gorse and trample in seeds etc, apparently. We managed to meet them last week – Jez and Max were most excited. There are about 8-10 of them, I think (they were in the trees when we met them). I was surprised how big they were – for some reason I had been expecting them to be slightly smaller (although it’s not as though I don’t know how big a cow is).



Better go now – Chris is on his way home with the dogs and I’ll be expected to towel Max off.

I'm always crashing in the same car

Oh dear. I thought I’d only missed a few days blogging and it’s been over a week. Sorry about that. I don’t know what I’ve been doing that I haven’t got round to writing a post. Nothing in particular, that’s for sure.

Well, that’s not exactly true. There are a few things that to update you on. I think the first of these ought to be Jez. I took some video of her and put together last week, and then wrote a long email to her orthopaedic vet, setting out what the issues with her are and giving him the link to the video on You Tube. He phoned me back last Thursday evening. I had a long chat with him, but the long and short of it is that he’s not bothered by the fact that she still seems to avoid putting her full weight on her poorly leg when she’s standing around. He thinks she’s 95% there, and that any surgical intervention is unlikely to improve matters. We agreed that I should continue to medicate her if her leg seems particularly sore. Otherwise he suggested another course of carprofen, which is something which will help strengthen the cartilage in her knees. She had a course last year after the operation on her left leg. So Friday morning I carted her off to the vet for the first of four weekly injections. And the good news was that her vet thought that her histiocytoma is resolving itself. Since then it has certainly continued to get better, so it looks as though she won’t need to have it removed.

On Sunday we went over to Dad & Pat’s for lunch. Dad cooked roast shoulder of lamb for me. I love roast lamb, but can never have it as Chris doesn’t really like it (unless it’s in Indian food). Lunch was lovely (Dad cooked Chris some pork instead of the lamb) and in the afternoon we all sat around and had a game of Rummikub (which is a bit like playing Rummy at cards but you play it with plastic tiles). Come to think about it we haven’t played cards for ages. I found a book of card games when I was clearing out the bookcases, which sort of reminded me. As a family we used to play cards a lot when we got together (Pontoon was a favourite at Christmas). Perhaps I’ll suggest it when Dad & Pat come over next week-end. My Dad will be 83 on 27 February, so I’ve invited them to lunch on the Sunday. At least, I think I’ve invited them on the Sunday – I’d better check they didn’t think I meant to come on the Saturday.

On Monday I headed over Bournemouth way to meet up with my friend Val, who I used to work with. Val is the one who shares my birthday and she has just taken early retirement. We didn’t do anything special: just met up in John Lewis and had coffee and a light lunch, plus did a bit of shopping. But we had a really long chat as we haven’t been able to get together for ages. Hopefully we’ll manage to meet more regularly in future, even though she lives in Southampton. I’ve suggested I go over there next time but that after that we could meet in the New Forest. I could take the dogs occasionally and we could go for a walk before heading to a pub for lunch once the weather gets better.

I have once again been debating whether to get a games console this week after my failed attempts to get GTA IV to work on my laptop. It’s been a toss up between the Wii and an Xbox. I’ve been thinking about it for about 18 months now! Anyway, I’ve finally plumped for the Wii. I’ve got one on order from Amazon, together with a Wii fit and balance board. I’ve also realised that for an extra £2 a month I can rent games for it from my video rental company, which will be useful as we are running out of films to put on our list. Talking of which we watched Drag me To Hell at the week-end. I liked the twist but otherwise wasn’t very impressed with the film. Currently we’ve got The Last King of Scotland (about Idi Amin) and Transformers 2 to watch. I think Transformers might be our Friday night viewing this week.

I’ve been busy doing bits of cleaning this week. Despite being decorated last summer the kitchen desperately needed cleaning, but it’s a bit big to do all at once. So I’ve been doing it a section at a time. I’m not doing the insides of the cupboards at the moment – that will come next – but I’ve almost finished. It’s much easier doing it this way.

Today Chris has had to go to a meeting up near Bath. So he dropped me over the Heath this morning with the dogs before he went. They tend to pull on the lead a bit in their excitement to get there on the way over, which aggravates my back: they are ok on the way home though. He’s only just phoned to say he will be leaving shortly, so he won’t be home until gone 7.30pm.

So, time for me to play a game soon. We’ve managed to get GTA IV to work on Chris’ PC, so at least when he’s watching the footie I can go upstairs and crash a few cars. And I’m very good at crashing. I’m less good at driving in a straight line and turning corners!