Yesterday George Carlin dead of heart failure, It’s very rare for someone death to get to me and with recent goings on with family it makes it even weirder.

The first time I knowingly seem him doing standup was at a party at Mark’s house where Mark, Willie, myself and I think Dave as well sat through one of his shows. We were in tears laughing but it wasn’t until I started going through his back catalog that I realised just how long ago I’d been listening to his stuff. I was downloading his routines back when I was 19 and had just worked out how to get usenet groups working. When I was 14 I was given a comedy book for Christmas that had his Football V Baseball sketch in it.

Along with Bill Hicks I feel that George was one of the few people in this world that made me think. His subject matter was never the most appealing at times but his delivery and rhetoric were what made him. Everything had a flow to it and he’d take you along wherever he went, even places you didn’t want to go. And you know what…you always laughed. Bill Hicks sometimes forgot to make you laugh when he started on his political material and Mark Thomas was always sure to take a break from dick jokes to get a dig in against the government but even when Georges material got a bit edgy a laugh was never far away.

Tags: Bill Hicks, christmas, George Carlin, heart failure, Mark Thomas

Originally published at The Apochrypha. Please leave any comments there.

That Findlay was given a late Christmas present of a Lego ambulance and I’m more excited about it than he is?

I need a night out. I get so antisocial and hermit like over time that the only way I can snap myself out of it is a good night out usually. It works every time. Just need to try and secure a babysitter so that Vonnie can join me and I’ll be all set

On another Lego note when we were in London we seen the original scale model they used for building the Forth Bridge. Someones only gone and made a Lego version of it!

Click the pic to go to the guys blog.

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Tags: christmas, Forth Bridge, London

Originally published at The Apochrypha. Please leave any comments there.

To call it a holiday would be doing all my holidays in the past a disservice. I don’t think we stopped the entire time and Vonnie was going into this with all the present buying etc already behind her so she deserve extra praise for lasting the distance.

To put the last ten-fourteen days into context I can’t actually remember much except for the long nights. I was up until god knows what time on Christmas Eve wrapping presents, baking a cake and making a trifle. Christmas day itself was a complete blur with family visiting and then Boxing Day was similar but for that we went to my parents but after about 8pm I haven’t a clue what went on through sheer exhaustion. The rest of the time just blended into one day with periods of restless sleep and zombie like movement about the house. And to think I managed just 4 beers this entire time. I then spent until 2am on Saturday night stripping the wallpaper in the living room and until after 1am last night painting said living room. Roll on Saturday is all I can say!

I don’t know whats been up with me over this time but somethings stressing me out and I can’t put my finger on it. It’s not the wedding. It’s not work. It’s not the kids and it’s not the house. I really don’t have a clue One minute I’m fine the next I’m not and the main problem I get from stress isn’t anxiety but lack of energy and grumpiness. Never a good combination.

So to sum up apologies to all that have had to deal with me over the last two weeks. Apologies to those I’ve not talked to over the last two weeks as well as if you’ve tried talking to me in person I’ve been spaced out and if you’ve tried to instant message me I’ve been lucky to sit staring at the screen and actually be aware of what I’m doing for maybe 5 minutes during this time. Apologies to the kids for being an a-typical bah humbug type of person this Christmas and apologies to Vonnie for having to put up with my sorry arse.

So work for today…get away from the office asap and get the downstairs tidied up for tonight.

By the way, those that haven’t been invited yet but think you’d be on the list at the door we’re having a soiree tonight to celebrate the bringing in of the new year. Feel free to pop along for a while and say hi.

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Tags: Boxing day, christmas, Christmas day, christmas eve, energy, New Year's Day

Originally published at The Apochrypha. Please leave any comments there.

Don’t worry I’ll be suitably full of cheer once Erica decides to go back to sleep without screaming the house down. Thats to nights in a row that shes woke up for her 3-4am feed and decided that at 5.45am she’s slept enough. Rather than disturb Vonnie’s sleep anymore than I have to I’ve brought her downstairs again and gave her a yoghurt which usually fills her up enough to get her back to sleep but no not this time. Anytime she even looks like shes about to go back to sleep or actually does by the time I have her back in her cot shes screaming again because I have the audacisty to want to sleep.

Fingers crossed she’ll go back down in the next 10 mins. Daddy needs his beauty sleep and the boys are quite good about not getting up before 8am usually. Last year we had to wake Findlay up I think!

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Tags: christmas

Originally published at The Apochrypha. Please leave any comments there.

It’s that time of year again. The freezing fog and mists that usually come right before a big freeze or snow have hit us pretty badly over the last coupe of days but nothing like today.

At lunchtime I nipped across to the local Lidl’s to pick up something for lunch as our canteen is only serving the customers that pre-booked the christmas lunches for the next three days. You could easily make out fields in the distance and everything was going not bad weather wise. The office even turned the heating on for a change so for once I was able to sit at my desk without wishing I had a scarf and jacket on.

I just turned around there to look out the window only to see almost nothing. I can make out most of the street lights from our carpark but thats it. I can just about make out the Lidl’s sign as well but thats just a faint blur rather than anything recognisable. What makes this worse is that right outside my office is the A726 which joins onto the motorway. It’s one of the busiest roads in East Kilbride at this time of night and even in bad snow storms we can still see or hear it from the office if the windows open. Not a thing.

I’m beginning to wish I had my tripod with me as the building site next to us is looking very creepy

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Tags: christmas

Originally published at The Apochrypha. Please leave any comments there.

Yes it it was great but by god did some things I seen and heard really make me want to rock back and forth and murmur about taking the bad man away from me.

The Tube
For all the London Undergrounds got going for it they sure know how to piss off people. It’s Christmas time and Covent Garden tube station still isn’t open properly. Once the platforms full they close the gates on you and say it’ll be quicker to walk to Leicester Square and get the tube from there. That would be OK if it wasn’t for the fact that Covent Garden is a huge tourist trap and so no one knows where anything is. The only reason we managed to find it is because we had walked to Covent Garden from there earlier in the after getting the Northern Line down from Camden Market. I lost count of the number of people trying to ask for directions and being completely ignored. And don’t get me started on Camden’s tube station. How can they possibly think its OK to allow prams and wheelchairs to be carried up those 96 steps that are in use because they’ve shut down every other way of accessing the station.

Upper-class goth kids with the social skills of logs

What the hell is that all about? Walking through the pissing rain we managed to make it into one of the markets in Camden that had the walkways covered by umbrellas. I heard a squeel in front of us and two girls blocked our path.

*puts on posh North London accent and inhales some helium*
“Ahhh, I wish I’d worn a belt my jeans are falling down”
“I know what you mean. I’m the same but I just couldn’t find anythi..”

“KNUCKLEDUSTERS! KNUCKLEDUSTERS!”
“Where? Where?”
“And they’re pink! I so have to have them”
“They look so cute.”

“They’ll go with my *insert fashion designers name* zipper top”
“Oh they so will”
“Wheres Daddy’s credit card?”
*fumbles in bag*

ARRRRGGHHHHH!
*Bangs head off desk*

City Hall, Westminster
Who’s bright idea was it to place 4 mannequins brandishing guns on top of the entrance to City Hall just metres from the bridge leading to the Houses of Parliament. It might have been OK if they looked a bit like armed police but they don’t. They have stuck 4 Imperial Stormtroopers from the Star Wars Exhibition on the roof of the entrance and I don’t think anyone that seen them didn’t get a fright until they realised just what they were. It’s just asking for an elderly person to hobble past, look up and then have a heart attack.

Hamleys staff
The amount of nonsense they spout just to get a sale. The Astrojax ‘rep’ was showing off and his spiel was tripping off his tongue until I heard him say, “We sell 6,000 of these every day.” Now I could believe that if it weren’t for two things. They only have two shippers in the whole shop and they hold something like 20-odd boxes each and although the guy refilled them whenever he passed by I spent a good half hour and not one box was lifted during that time. Add to that the fact that they aren’t sold on the website means I’m lead to believe he meant Hamleys as a chain rather than a single store. If thats the case 6,000 Astrojax a day isn’t that much considering. I only found two members of staff that actually made sense and were helpful without sounding as though they were a circus performer or a street market seller. One was Santa surprisingly enough an the other was the deep voiced mad professor guy from the Lego dept.

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Tags: christmas, City Hall, Covent Garden, Covent Garden tube station, heart attack, Leicester Square, London, the Star

Originally published at The Apochrypha. Please leave any comments there.

We were very close to not going on this holiday. Between the stresses of the house and straining bank accounts from Christmas and the upcoming wedding it was a close run thing.

Thursday
I’d managed to get a half day to help finish the packing as we’d only finally decided to go that morning. Once Finn got home from school we headed straight to the airport. I’d never flown from Prestwick before and to be honest its certainly not my favorite airport in the world. Largely forgettable and the closest I’ve ever gotten to finding an airport that looks like the one I flew out of Moscow from. It is a barn. Anyway on the way there the wind and rain were terrible and we actually thought we’d either be delayed for hours while it calmed down or the flight would be canceled. In the end though it went ahead but the turbulence was horrendous and the landing was the worst I’d ever experienced.

Yet again I was using an airport I’ve never been in before. I usually fly into Heathrow and get the Heathrow Express right into Paddington so I know my way about the Circle Line and getting to and from Victoria. Getting the train from Stanstead to Liverpool Street totally threw my bearings. Thankfully where we were going was on the Central Line anyway so it was actually quite simple. Kirsty’s brother Simon was kind enough to let us stay at his flat while he was in Barcalona for the weekend so financially we could actually enjoy ourselves. Simon met us at the station and led us round to his flat we’re we took over his bedroom. Both Nairn and Erica were beyond tired though and so screamed for at least an hour. It couldn’t have been good for Simon or his flatmate but at least they were in a different room.

Friday
We hadn’t actually worked out what we were going to do during the weekend other than to say what we’d like to do in general. We got up that morning though and decided to hit Hamleys first and start off as we meant to finish and let the kids enjoy this weekend as much as we hoped to. We managed to navigate from the flat to Leytonstone Tube Station very easily which was actually a sign of things to come. Being fifteen minutes by train outside of the centre of London sounds great until you realise that it can take another 30 minutes at least to get from one side of the centre to the other and even more if it involves changing trains. Anyway we got off at Oxford Circus and sauntered round to Hamleys. It was mobbed. We managed around the top 3 floors but had to leave after Findlay spent a while playing with a remote control car and bike. It was just to claustrophobic but the boys were loving it though.

We then headed down the Victoria Line and got off at Victoria Street Station to head up past my work and onto Buckingham Palace. I took everyone along Victoria Street until we found Westminster Cathedral. WE wandered around there for a wee while before I dragged them up Palace Street past my work whilst confusing my mate who was in the office by asking him where I could get a bottle of juice from. Buckingham Palace isn’t really much to see. Unless you catch the changing of the guard I can’t quite work out why such large crowds would come and see it. Anyway we walked up past a park and down to the riverside. I’ve seen the London Eye from a distance before but even although its ‘only’ 135m high you just don’t quite get how high it is until your standing underneath it. We’d had a choice to make earlier about whether to go up during the day or go up after the sun had set. Thankfully we went up when it was dark and the whole of London was lit up. It made it look more like a toy town from the very top than the grey mass it really is that you see during the day. We managed to get back to the flat for about 8pm going past Tesco on the way. There is a Christian charity shop on Leytonstone High Road that has some of the most amazing furniture and we clocked this amazing dolls house in the window but on closer inspection it was actually a birdcage!

Saturday
It rained. And rained. And rained. It was also bloody freezing. Did I mention it was a bit wet? I don’t know wether it was stupidity or sheer brilliance but we headed to Camden Market that morning. I really must look more into the tube stations though before we do things like that. Trying to carry an occupied pram up and down the 96 step ‘emergency’ stairwell because its the only way in and out is just sheer lunacy at the best of times but when you’ve got a train full of folk around you as well it just gets silly. We made it though. And this is where we discover the one thing that annoys the hell out of me about London. Unless your at a huge supermarket or a tube station there are no speed bank machines anywhere! We walked the full length of Camden looking for one until we hit Morrisons and ended up in there for a cup of hot chocolate. Thankfully the boost of heat brightened up our day so we went back around the markets for another look. Vonnie was a bit disappointed that we only spied one ‘fake’ celebrity in the form of Peaches Geldof but in a town of 5 million people what are your chances? We came to the conclusion that we could actually live in Camden but I can’t stand the commuting

After that we headed over to Covent Garden for some more markets and shops. It looked lovely but my god you get some amount of pretentious folk down there. I was also in what has to be the worst laid out shop on the planet. Lush in Covent Garden really needs some traffic lights and a one way system put in. I’m not joking when I say there is barely enough room for one person to move in an aisle never mind a shop full with bags of shopping!

We finished the night off with the Transport Museum. I didn’t think it was as good as the one in Glasgow but then it only deals with London transport rather than any and all forms. No row upon row of old cars but plenty of buses and trains. The kids loved it though which it why we were there.

Sunday
We were up early so that we could meet Despina and her family for a jaunt around the Science Museum. Lovely people and Findlay got on great with Josh. I don’t know how we managed it but we managed to spend about 5-6 hours in there and it flew past! Nairn did a bunk at one point though from one of the kids areas and almost made it to the lifts but we caught him just in time. On the way out we were surprised to find a piper so Vonnie had to get him playing Flower of Scotland and Scotland the Brave! We went for dinner in a wee Italian restaurant around the corner which was nice. The pasta was a bit weird but still nice despite that. I don’t actually remember much after that as I think I dozed off on the tube back to Leytonstone.

Monday
How there wasn’t any bloodshed I really do not know. We headed back round to Hamley’s to pick up a few things and then jumped the train back out to Stanstead. We decided that rather than rushing about with the kids and possibly being late for the flights we’d get there early and try and relax. Between all the carrying of prams, bags and very little sleep from the night before I was a walking wreck and how Vonnie didn’t snap and stab me at several points I really do not know. Anyway we made it onto the plane only for Erica to scream the entire flight and Nairn to act up. If he wasn’t headbutting Findlay for his toys he was trying to open the lifejackets under the seats. We did win a free flight out of it though so its not all bad. We will be using that for a night/weekend away for us and ntothe kids though as I don’t think we could handle that again until the kids are a wee bit older.

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Tags: bank, Buckingham Palace, Camden, christmas, Covent Garden, Glasgow, Italian restaurant, Leytonstone High Road, Leytonstone Tube Station, Liverpool Street, London, Moscow, Palace Street, remote control car, Science Museum, Scotland, Simon, speed bank machines, Tesco, Transport Museum, Victoria Street, Victoria Street Station, Westminster Cathedral

Originally published at The Apochrypha. Please leave any comments there.

Vonnie realised something last night. It’s only 2 months until our wedding. Theres still loads to do and to be perfectly honest I have not done a thing about it. By the time I get home from work and do the housework and cooking that I do it’s generally late enough and we’re tired enough that we’ll think about going to bed. That’s not getting anything done about the wedding.

Between DIY, decorating, kids and the wedding we have enough on our plates to keep 6 people going for 6 months and thats without factoring Christmas into the equation. Somethings got to take that number 1 slot and to be honest the wedding is the only one that literally can’t wait. The kids are kids and no matter what we do we’ll be looking after them anyway but the DIY and decorating will have to take a back seat until we at least get the invites for the wedding done.

*Goes off and tries to find a way to get Photoshop on his works laptop, fails miserably and ends up with GIMP*

I’ve been trying for a couple of nights to find a decent brush set for use with the invites and I cant find a thing. I may have came up with a workaround though for that thanks to VectorMagic! I’ve been playing about with it a little over the last week and I think I may have finally found a use for it.

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Tags: christmas, Mainwaring

Originally published at The Apochrypha. Please leave any comments there.

This weekend has been a blur. I honestly don’t have a clue where it’s went.

I havent a clue what I did on friday night and about all I can remember about saturday was that we didnt go for a family day out that we were planning because Allan was wanting to do something with Findlay. Oh wait thats what I did on friday night I looked after the kids while Vonnie went round to her mates for some well needed time out enjoying herself rather than being stuck in the house. Vonnie’s dad also came over with his dog Belle who we are dogsitting for whilst they are away on holiday. Erica really didn’t want to settle on friday night and I think it may have been something to do with having a fair bit of trapped wind along with the sound of Belle pacing in the hall with the toenails/claws on the laminate echoing around the house.

On sunday I joined Vonnie on a trip into Glasgow. While she was with the kids in chuch I was planning on heading into Jessops and having them talk me through cleaning my cameras sensor as alot of dust and hairshad got in from changing lenses all the time. It seems camera shops don’t open before 12 on a sunday so I spent an hour wandering around glasgow until I finally found somewhere that would sell me a blower thingie. Managed to get that fixed and then what was supposed to be a quick visit to Confetti to look for ideas for wedding invites etc ended up in a trip around the Argyle Arcade as well. We ended up getting our wedding rings while we were there which is another of the major things out the way. Need to sort out buying a kilt by the end of the week though so we can get another few things in motion.

After that we had our last treat before locking up the wallets to save for christmas and the wedding and headed to TGI Friday’s. We had some nice food and the bill was alot less than we were expecting so bonus. We headed home and picked up Finn on the way and dropped in on Vonnie’s Nana for a wee while. By the time we got home it was 8pm and the day had flew past. I think I was in bed within the hour after taking Belle for a walk and here I am now.

It’s honestly been a blur and almost completely non-stop since I finished up work on friday.

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Tags: Argyle Arcade, christmas, family day, Glasgow, nice food

Originally published at The Apochrypha. Please leave any comments there.

So this weekend I cooked. And I cooked. And I cooked.

I enjoyed it though which I knew I would but I don’t think I’ll ever be able to do it stress free. Getting the timings right for 2/3 course meal just does my head in. When I make christmas dinner you can guarentee that half of it is going to be cold and the other half scaldingly hot.

Anyway on saturday night Vonnie had the girls round for Emma’s birthday and I offered to cook dinner for them to give me something to do. I made carrot soup to Vonnies recipe and some mexican folding thing with a cheese/potato/spring onion filling with side salad followed by some kind of creme caramel tart thingie that didnt work out that well as it should really sit overnight so the caramel liquifies. Everyone seemed to love it though so its all good. We had loads of the filling left for the main course so I’ll need to rejig the amounts next time I make it.

Sunday seen Vonnie’s friends that she’d refound after several years on facebook over for dinner. Chicken risotto followed by chocolate mousse cake was the order of the day this time and again everyone liked it.

Yesterday we decided to finish off the filling and have the mexican thingies again for dinner but niether of the shops at the square sell tortillas. Cue me learning how to make them from scratch. Considering how easy they are to make I’m always terrified when making bread of any type as I’ve never been a good one for making a good dough. They turned out great though and I think I’ll be making them again next time I make fajitas

Recipes for the things I havent made before will follow. I know you guys couldnt care less how to make these things but it makes life far easier for myself keeping them all in one place rather than having to dig through loads of cookery books anytime I want to make something to try and find the recipe

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Tags: christmas