The empire strikes back

It’s hard to be a metric person in the UK.
Metric measures became legal in the British Empire in 1873 but it appears that your typical Brit will never accept them. There are several societies who appear to have the sole purpose of opposing metrification in the UK, and those who have been [...]

Lovely day

Freezing night.
Amazingly, the under-19 Rubgy sevens competition down at the Riverside today resulted in a truly beautiful spring day. There are a lot of tomato-coloured people walking around this evening. The downside of this is that once the sun went down, it got cold. And guess who was outside on bouncer duty [...]

I need

to finish something.
Anything.
Really.
I’ve been rushing about like a hen with 24 different, but equally yummy, bits of grain to choose from. Sadly, this has been occasioned by rather too much work, and nothing yummy at all, but you get the picture I’m sure.
I have started (and stopped) so many different things over the past [...]

Why move to the borders?

Well, that’s one reason anyway….
However, it is a question we get asked rather a lot. Often by random strangers in the pub, it must be said, but I think it’s worth taking a little time to think it through. Particularly as we’re debating getting some staff through an agency, and it might help [...]

Risk assessment, anyone?

Left – Right – Left – Right -

Or: how to go about choosing the Saturday newspapers you wish to provide for your guests.
I’m not sure if it applies in any other country, but in the UK one can make some fairly accurate, but nevertheless sweeping, generalisations about a household based on their choice of newspaper.
Left Wing:The Guardian (otherwise known as the [...]

Spring (take II)

It’s a lovely day out there, and I am in a blue funk. Nothing serious, mind, just the absence of a garden to play in (or time to do said playing) now that the weather seems finally to have decided that winter is over.
The laundry is calling (loudly) the end-of-financial-year PAYE returns are waiting [...]

Cold

It is, and I have. Not the best of combinations, especially when I was on bouncer duty for several hours in the rain on Saturday night.
The message about underage drinking (we won’t tolerate it) seems to have got out, as most of our regular crowd of young people arrived clutching driving licenses. [...]

You should have gone to

Specsavers.
Non-UK readers will, no doubt, be mystified by this phrase.
Suffice it to say that I went to a local optician (not Specsavers, which is a half hour drive away) to get new glasses. Very expensive new glasses, as it turned out. Having collected them yesterday, I discovered that one leg was [...]

If I wasn’t already blonde….

I would be out in search of peroxide.
I have been working (for about 3 years, on-and-off) on a cabled toddler pullover. The pattern has you work the usual front, back and sleeves, and sew them all together. Aha, thought I, this is a perfect situation for working front and back together in the [...]