… got up and went.

I’ve been somewhat tardy on the posting front lately. Sorry ’bout that.

It’s not that I’ve had nothing to write about, because I have. In fact over the past couple of weeks, I’ve written half a dozen posts.

In my head.

Just can’t be bothered to sit down and type them out.

Anyway.

I had big plans for this week. I’m currently not working y’see… between contracts, you could say. And I wasn’t going to squander the free time I’ve just been given. As I say, big plans, involving the sorting out of all the crap in the loft and in the garage; some aerial work for my radios; a bit of electronic construction (my MSF clock has finally died and I’ve decided it’s time to build a new one) and a computer repair job that I’ve been promising a neighbour I’d do for about six weeks.

But, so far, I’ve done bugger all, because I have been stricken down with the lurgi. My arms ache; my legs ache; my head is pounding and I have a temperature. In short, I feel shit.

It’s as much as I can do to lay on the sofa, sipping a hot lemony drink and watch daytime telly.

But, I’ve decided that once I am back on my feet, the first thing I’m going to do is consolidate all my debts into one easy monthly payment. Thanks Carol.

Well, I managed another twenty-miler on my bike yesterday. Got to admit, I struggled a bit: the last five miles or so, I just didn’t seem to have any energy. I must remember to take some Jelly Babies with me next week.

And, I thought my backside had stopped aching from last week’s ride, but as soon as I sat in that saddle… ouch.

It’s my own fault for having such a pert arse.

Ahem.

And, talking of bikes and arses, I’ve just been out for a couple of hours on my motorbike and I saw a couple of young lads idiots riding in front of me.

Now, every motorcyclist knows the dangers of falling off, which is why we wear suitable clothing.  Just. In. Case. But the two chaps I saw today, were wearing just shorts and tee-shirts.  With no gloves. Or decent footwear. And they were both on the one bike, which is probably why they only had one crash helmet between them. And they were riding down the A6 dual carriageway. At sixty-five miles an hour. On a very wobbly and unsafe-looking Suzuki 125

Contenders for a Darwin Award, possibly.

Fucking idiots, definitely!

I reverse my car into the parking space and step out into the chill morning air. It’s still dark and I’m pleased. It’s 4:30 and it’s the earliest we’ve finished on this, the last night of two weeks of night work.

I walk quietly into the hotel, tip-toeing past the night porter who has nodded off in his chair. He’s stretched curiously across the counter, his hand clutching a biro, which is resting just an inch above the pages of an open red folder, and has obviously dozed off whilst doing some mundane paperwork. I’m pleased that he’s asleep. A nice enough chap but he’s old and likes to talk and I can barely understand his strong East European accent.

And I just want to go to bed.

The corridor is soundless as I walk down it, with just some soft snoring emanating from behind the occasional bedroom door. The fire doors close silently behind me, but I know the final one has a bit of a clunk when it shuts, it’s automatic closer having grown weak with age. I close it carefully behind me, so as not to make any noise and I stealthily tread the final steps to my room.

The key clicks noisily in the quiet of the corridor, as I slide it in to the lock, and I do so as slowly and as quietly as I can. Again, I shut the door carefully behind me as it has a tendency to slam, but before I do, I hang the purple and white card on my door handle. “Shhh”, it says. “Shhh. I’ve been working all bloody night and need some kip, so keep the damn noise down”.

Or words to that effect.

The room is stuffy and I open the window wide to let some air in before sliding under the duvet. I read my book for twenty minutes until my eyes feel sufficiently tired that I might fall straight to sleep.

But I don’t. The bed is too warm. I try to stick my feet out of the bottom, but the maid has nailed the end of the duvet to the mattress and I have to kick furiously to get it free.

Then I realise that I haven’t cleaned my teeth. Pah! It doesn’t matter, go to sleep. But I run my tongue across my yellowing tombstones and they feel yuck: a consequence of eating chocolate biscuits and malt loaf all night.

So, I get up and go to the bathroom. All too late, I realise I’ve made the mistake of turning on the bathroom light. This automatically starts up the extractor fan set into the ceiling. The extractor fan that I’m sure is made by Pratt & Whitney. I sigh inwardly as I recognise the consequence of my mistake. Five seconds later, the jet engine bursts into life and will continue it’s deafening roar until it automatically shuts down fifteen minutes later.

I lay in bed listening to the muted rumble of the fan behind the now closed bathroom door. The noise it makes belies it’s punitive power, as it seems to do bugger all. Placing my hand in front of it, I can feel absolutely nothing. Eventually, it stops.

I look at my watch and it’s now 5:15  Thankfully, I fall straight to sleep.

BANG!

I awake with a start at the unmistakeable sound of a door slamming. I look at my watch: it’s only seven o’clock. But I quickly fall back to sleep.

BANG!

There goes another one. And someone whistling as they walk down the corridor. Bastard!

BANG! Thud. Shuffle. Chatter. Squeak.

The two old people in the room next to me, talk noisily as they teeter along the corridor, dragging their suitcase with the squeaky wheel and bashing it on the fire doors. It’s just past 7:30

What’s wrong with these people? Can they not see the card on the door?

READ. THE. FUCKING. CARD!

Back to sleep.

Vroooooo, vrooooo, vroooo

What the…? It’s the maid, hoovering the room above me.

I give up. That’s as much sleep as I’m going to get. I may as well get up and go to breakfast. I look at my watch through bleary eyes. It’s 9:30 Shit! Missed breakfast. Oh well, it’ll have to be tea and biscuits. Again.

I’m now feeling quite miserable.

I put the kettle on. The room is cold and I put the heating on and close the window before climbing back into bed, whilst the kettle takes it’s customary twenty minutes to boil.

I pick my phone up from the bedside table and take it off of silent.

There are two texts, both from home.

“Happy Birthday Darling. xxx”, says the first.

“Happy Birthday Daddy xx”, says the second.

I smile: I’d forgotten all about that.

My backside is killing me!

So are my knees.

Yesterday morning – still training for the London to Brighton ride – I did 26 miles on my bike. 24 miles of it was uphill, I think.
Several of us went out together – all part of the same team – and rode from Luton to Woburn Abbey and back. It was hard work, but also an enjoyable ride.

Today, I am paying the price. My legs ached a bit yesterday afternoon and I fully expected them to hurt like buggery today. Surprisingly though, they don’t.

My knees however, seem to give me grief after every training ride. They’re OK whilst I’m riding, but afterwards, any attempt at genuflexing leaves my groaning with pain, like an 80 year-old with arthritis.

And my bum! That feels like I’ve been perched on a very small, uncomfortable saddle for several hours… which is exactly what I have been doing. It doesn’t hurt for any other reason.

No, it doesn’t.

Mrs M is keen to get me into some lycra cycling shorts… the ones with the gel padding. That might help.

And maybe some stick-on sideburns, á la Bradley Wiggins.

I’d probably just look like John McCririck. In Spandex.

Like my sore arse, it doesn’t bear thinking about, does it?

I was in B&Q yesterday afternoon, as I needed to get a new extension lead.

Whilst I was standing in the aisle, looking at the array of different types and lengths, I couldn’t help but notice the chap standing next to me.

He was picking out various items from the electrical section and was slowly filling his basket.

Dressed in some shabby work clothes, he looked like any other workman that you might bump into.

His phone rang and he answered it.

“Oh, hello mate. Yes… no, not at the moment, I’ve got a job on… yeah, well, it’s just a day’s work… no, I’m just putting in a couple of electrical extensions for my dad’s boss… gotta move his TV and surround sound system… easy enough, shouldn’t take me long.  Yeah, OK then, I’ll see you tomorrow. Bye.”

And then he walked over to me with his basket. “‘scuse me mate, do you know much about electrics?”

I nodded an affirmative. “Yes, a bit”, I said.

“Is this the right cable for these plugs?” he asked, showing me some three-core flex and a couple of regular 3-pin mains plugs.

I looked him in the face to check he wasn’t winding me up, but his eyes told me he was being completely serious. “Yes”, I said, “that’ll be fine.”

He thanked me with a smile and strode off.

Put in an extension and move a surround sound system?  I hope his spurs didn’t ruin the carpet!

The vagaries of the Royal Mail have struck me down twice, this month.

On the 2nd of April, having filled in the 11-page form and enclosing my cheque for 20 quid, I posted off my application to have my Amateur Radio license renewed. I was told it would take about 5 working days for it to arrive.

On the 3rd of April, I logged on to the Royal Mail website and ordered a presentation pack of the Dr Who 50th Anniversary stamps (because I’m a bit nerdy). I paid for them online and was told it would take 5 working days for them to arrive.

So, yesterday, when there was still no sign of any license amongst the bills and junk that Postman Mick merrily stuffed through the letterbox, I phoned OFCOM. “Oh, we posted that last week”, said the girl on the other end of the phone, “On the 8th of April.  It must have got lost in the post. Tell you what, I’ll email it to you”.

Sure enough, 2 minutes later, a pdf dropped into my Inbox, stating that I was now legally allowed to wrought havoc on the airwaves.

Today, with no sign of any stamps amongst the brown envelopes and pizza delivery leaflets lying on the doormat, I phoned Royal Mail to find out what was happening. The very friendly Scottish chap on the phone took my details and then said “Och, we seem to have made a bit of a boo-boo, laddie. Sorry ’bout that. You’ll have had your tea, of course?”

It seems that whilst they had my order on the system, no-one had actually bothered to deal with it.  But, he has dealt with it now and apparently I will have them in 5 working days.

It’s a pity he can’t email them.

And also: cheques! Who still uses them, nowadays?  It took me a while to find my chequebook – in order to pay for my radio license –  as I use it so little nowadays.

My current chequebook has just four cheques torn out of it and the stubs detail the following:

No. 126 – Parking Fine in Stevenage – £30.00 – Oct 2007
No. 127 – Amelia’s Passport Renewal – £46.00 – Jan 2008
No. 128 – Cine to DVD Services – £150.00 – Oct 2009
No. 129 – OFCOM Radio License – £20.00 – Apr 2013

That’s how little I use it.

Chequebooks: not quite keeping up with the times… a bit like Royal Mail.

So, despite the current spate of April showers, I think Spring has definitely arrived.

The temperature has gone up a bit, daffodils have started poke their way out and, today, I’ve had the second lot of Jehovas knocking at the door.

Yes, Spring has definitely sprung.

Of course, this means it will soon be time for gardening.

I HATE gardening!

But here’s the rub: I do like to sit in a nice garden. So, I’ll do the absolute minimum to keep it looking reasonable. This usually means cutting the grass and trimming Mrs Masher’s bush [snigger].

We have this large bush in the garden, see, and ever since I made a mess of pruning it some years ago, Mrs M has forbidden me from touching it. SHE will take charge of it from now on. It’s her bush.

However, she tends to forget about her bush (like most married women) and so it’s often left to me to give it a quick trim when she’s not looking.

And, of course, there’s much jollity and schoolboy sniggering to be had whenever we refer to her bush… because we’ve all been touched by Benny Hill.

But not in a Jimmy Saville kind of way.

And then, yesterday, this  flopped onto the doormat and I made serious sniggerage. I’m not even sure why.

Bloody Benny.

For the past two Sundays, I have gone out on my pushbike with my neighbour and his mate, Phil. We are all doing the London to Brighton ride and now that better weather has arrived, it’s time to get a bit of training in. Better weather? It was still freezing cold!

We all met up outside on a Sunday morning. Both Phil and Frank – my neighbour – were kitted out with all the proper gear: cycling helmets; track suits; cycling gloves; water bottles and a small rucksack each, carrying a selection of tools and puncture repair kits and Mars Bars.

I didn’t have any of that. A pair of joggers with the bottoms tucked into my socks and an old, baggy fleece; that was me ready to go.

The first week we did just 8 miles… easing ourselves in. The following week we did 10 miles, with a few hills to get the legs working.

I really enjoyed it.  I welcomed the burning sensation in the legs as we hit each uphill climb, then paused for breath at the top. It reminded me of when I was younger and fitter – though back in those days, I didn’t need to stop and catch my breath!

And whilst they complained a bit, I was pleased that my knees held out OK.

Yesterday morning, I donned my fleece and joggers, ready for the off, only to find that Frank and Phil had decided to go play golf instead.  Not a problem, I’ll go on my own. And I’ll go just a little bit further.

I did 20 miles.

Twenty miles with some serious hillage  (I don’t think that’s a real word, but it probably should be). Quite a big step up from last week.  I had to walk up one of the hills as I just didn’t have the strength to get up it. Others, I should have probably walked up at this early stage in my training (only my third time out), but I pushed myself to get up them. And get up them, I did.

I paid for it later when I got home though, as my legs ached like buggery and pretty much the rest of the day was spent stretched out on the sofa.

Another sufferance was the state of the roads: bumps and potholes everywhere. Each one I hit – and I hit many – caused a shooting pain in my chest, as I currently have a cracked rib from taking the kids sledging in the snow a few weeks back. “No, look Harry, this is how you do it”. I’d only gone about ten metres before I fell off and landed badly. Ouch!

So yeah, I think twenty miles with a cracked rib, old legs and dodgy knees isn’t too bad going for an ageing, fat bloke like me.

I took a drive up to Newark-on-Trent t’other day, to pick up a piece of test equipment.

The chap who had the OTDR lived much further north, so we met in the middle, at a McDonald’s in Newark: a two-hour drive for each of us.

I arrived five minutes before he did, so I got the coffees in.  ”Ahh,” he said as we shook hands, “I thought it was you.”

I’ve never seen him before in my life.

“We met some years back in… Hemel, I think it was.”

There was a good chance that it was, as I worked in Hemel for many years. But still, I’d swear blind that I’ve never met him before.

On the way home, I took a small diversion and called in to see my mate Dave, so that we could have a cup of tea and chat about nerdy amateur radio for a bit.  Knowing that I was on the lookout for a secondhand HF rig, Dave contacted his mate Martin who had one for sale. Martin remembered me from my old operating days. I looked up his callsign and, again, would swear blind that we have never conversed. I daresay though, that if I still had my old logs, I’d probably find that we’d worked each other several times.

This happens to me all the time. I have a terrible memory for… well, people. I can remember my home telephone number from thirty-odd years ago (several houses and about half-a-dozen different numbers since), yet I can’t remember the name of the friend of a friend that I met only last week.

I have a habit of calling people “mate”, because I can’t remember their actual names.

And yet, people always seem to remember me.

A few years back, as I was coming out of Sainsbury’s, a chap stopped me with a tap on the shoulder. “Long time, no see!” he stated, going on to ask me how I was. Was I still married? How are the kids? etc, Then he went on to ask about people at work: How’s Mr C these days? Is Steve still driving that little sports car?  He obviously knew a lot about me and about the place where I worked. We had possibly even worked together at some point. And yet…

I had never seen him before. In. My. Life.

We chatted for several minutes and all I had going around in my head was: “Who the fuck are you?”  The only comment I made in the whole conversation that might have indicated to him that I actually knew who he was, was “So, you’re still working at the British Standards Institute, then?”  An educated guess, as he was wearing a tie adorned with the BSI logo.

To this day, I don’t know who he was. But, he knew me.

Which is kind of worrying.

I learnt today of the death of an old friend of mine.

Some years younger than me, cancer took him from his family long before he should have gone.

It’s been several years since I’d seen him and – in truth – I was unaware that he was ill, so the news came today as a real shock.

Generous to a fault and good humoured, it’s a sad loss to all those who knew him well, and I consider myself privileged to have known him and to have called him a friend.

So long, Spud; you’ve left us all with plenty of fond memories.

Today is KKK Day.

That’s not a reference to the white supremacy group in the US, but the rather more mundane – and little heard of –  Keep your Keyboard Kleen (sic) Day that Microsoft started a few years back. It hasn’t really caught on – probably because it’s a stupid name and Hallmark don’t make a card for it. Yet.

Stupid name aside though, they do have a point.  Our keyboards are used daily. Crumbs of food and bits of detritus often fall between the keys, lodging themselves underneath. Food will rot and decay, spreading onto the circuit board and causing short circuits. Fingernail clippings will get stuck in the key pillars causing the keys to stick and be unresponsive.

Worse than that is the sanitary side of things.  The average home computer is used by two to three persons, each leaving their own grubby prints on the keyboard and mouse. Of course, nobody washes their hands before tapping away at a keyboard and so a panoply of different bacteria can build up on the keys, transferring between keyboard and operator. Last year, it is estimated that 600 people in the US alone, were admitted to hospital with illnesses picked up from dirty keyboards. Fortunately, only 1 of those proved to be fatal, which was ironically caused by somebody swallowing the pipe key and choking when it got lodged in their trachia.

I’ve just cleaned my keyboard with the hoover and some Mr Sheen. It’s so shiny now that I could eat my dinner off it. Which would defeat the whole object, so I won’t.

May 1st is Immaculate Mouse Day, where the same  will apply to the little plastic rodent,  but for now, you might just want to give that filthy keyboard of yours a bit of a scrub.

You’d be a fool not to.

As I write this, the family are seated in front of the telly watching The Voice, which was recorded earlier tonight, whilst I’m shut in my little study room listening to Mahler’s 1st Symphony and trying not to burn myself with the soldering iron… because I’ve had a few beers.

They are watching Tom Jones, Jessie J, William (I refuse to put un-needed punctuation into his name) and that Irish fellow that nobody knows.  I’m watching Simon Rattle conduct the Berlin Philharmonic on YouTube.

When it’s all over, they will all totter up to bed and I’ll have the telly to myself. Another bottle of beer, a bag of chilli-flavoured peanuts and Dr Who will ensue. And then I’ll probably fall asleep on the sofa.

[31.03.13 The rest of this post has been deleted as, in the cold light of of sobriety, the moderator found it too full of introspective self pity.]

I’m working nights this week.
And days, it seems.

I think it’s safe to say that last night’s work – the first of several on this particular project – did not go well.
It did not go well at all.
It was – to use an American military term: FUBAR

So, today has been a day of conference calls, emails and head scratching, with everyone trying to figure out what went wrong and to not point fingers at anybody else, even though they probably want to.

We’ll figure it out, I’m sure. We have aborted tonight’s changeover and will use the already scheduled time to do some investigatory work, with more calls already arranged for tomorrow to discuss the situation further. So, even though the actual changeover has been cancelled, I shall still be working tonight.

And tomorrow, during the day.

I don’t mind working days and nights at the moment though, as there is bugger all on that I want to see at the pictures at the moment and there is naff all else to do here.

I know from experience though, that the long hours and lack of sleep will catch up with me at the end of the week.

But, hopefully not when I’m driving home, as it did once before.

Hello?

Sorry I ain’t about much at the moment. As I mentioned before, I’m working away from home and have rubbish Wi-Fi. And when I’m home at the weekends, I have plenty of other things to keep me amused/employed, but just not enough time.

Anyway, Mrs Masher has taken the kids to a birthday party this afternoon and I have a little bit of free time to fill, so I thought I’d give you a quick update on what’s been going on.

Training for the London to Brighton Bike Ride – Well, thanks to the inclement weather, my arse has only once sat on the saddle of my new steed since I bought it. That’s probably not a good thing.

Radio – This has been taking up much of my free time, I’m afraid. Since ‘rediscovering’ this old hobby of mine, I’ve been pretty much immersing myself in it. Hours are spent up in the loft, installing stealthy half-wave and trap dipoles for various different bands – with some degree of success – and yesterday, I spent a happy six-hours with a soldering iron, applying various modifications to my aged HF receiver.  I’m pleased that all the hard work seems to have paid off and radio-wise I am not as deaf as I was just a few weeks ago. This weekend I have pulled in stations in Italy, Bulgaria, Poland, Russia and the Ukraine on Morse Code and RTTY.
In the photo above you can see the sorry state of my study/shack, as I have been so busy that I just haven’t had a chance to even tidy it up. Mrs Masher just shuts the door on it all.  Of the two radios on the desk, the one on the right is the HF receiver that I’ve been working on and the mods have improved it no end. The left hand radio is a scanner which I use for monitoring the VHF bands.

Geocaching – This is what has been taking up much of the remaining free time that I have. Not me actually going out caching, but building the next one that I am putting out there.  I’ve struggled with some of the C++ coding, but I think I’m finally there and it all seems to be working now. There’s still a lot of work to do on it (build the electronics, finish building the enclosure, find somewhere to stick it, come up with a suitable puzzle, etc), but I’m glad to have got another milestone out of the way.  I’m keen to finish this sooner rather than later as I want to get it out into the public domain as soon as the decent weather comes. My last one has received fantastic reviews from those that have played it, but it has suffered from poor attendance because I stupidly put it out there far too late in the year. I’m hopeful that the numbers will pick up significantly when the good weather comes.

Computers – Again, looking at the photo, the monitor on the right is connected to my old back-up PC which I have finally managed to get working properly on Ubuntu. Now, that’s something that should have been a piece of cake, but took bloody ages, thanks to a dodgy video card – oh why didn’t I just change it right at the start, instead of faffing about trying different drivers! But now it’s working OK and doing a fine job of decoding the data signals from the radio, so I’m pretty chuffed.

Teeth – I went to the dentist on Friday to have two fillings done. Bummer. On the plus side though, she says she now doesn’t need to see me for another nine months, instead of the usual six. Whether that is an indication that my teeth are getting better ( in other words, getting worse more slowly), or that the dentist can’t do any more with them, I don’t know.  Either way, we did a high-five, and that’s a first for me: I’ve never high-fived a dentist before.

Telly – I watched the F1 this morning, on my  El Cheapo satellite setup. I was pleased that despite it still being in its ‘temporary’ position and having been hit by a football several times recently, the dish was still working OK and locked on nicely, allowing me to watch the race for free. I wasn’t so pleased about McLaren making a hash of it all. Again.

Food – Whilst doing the food shopping yesterday, I spied some tins of corned beef on the shelves, and suddenly had a pang for a corned beef sandwich. Ahh, I used to love corned beef sandwiches, especially with a bit of mustard or tomato, but I can’t remember the last time I had one, it was so long ago. And so I bought a tin.  As Mrs M is out with the kids, I decided – just half an hour ago – that I would make myself a sandwich. I cut two thick slices of fresh, crusty bread and lavished them with butter (I still can’t believe that it’s not). I opened the tin using the twisty key thing on the side. Worryingly, it looked more like dog food than the corned beef that I remember, but I cut a few thick slices and laid them on the bread with some salad and wholegrain mustard.
And then I ate it.
It was this: fucking awful.

How remiss of me!

We are now well into March and the dark winter nights are seemingly far behind us. The lark is on the wing, snowdrops and daffodils are starting to appear and the first Jehovas of Spring have been round, knocking on my door.

So yes, here we are, well into the mad month of March (soon be Christmas) and I haven’t yet mentioned the February Blogathon – my own little self-imposed blogging marathon that I set myself each year, but in which I am now ably supported by some others.

So, how was it? Well, I think it went OK. Yes, I struggled with some posts – and I think it showed! – but all in all, it wasn’t too difficult. And it had the beneficial effect of getting my blogging juices flowing again – I have several ideas lined up at the moment. The current paucity of posts is purely down to me working away from home and having bugger all time and very little internet access at the moment.

I’d like to thank and congratulate both Bren and Graham for joining me in my quest and for making it look so easy. But, commiserations to Dave, who sadly fell half-way through, after such a promising start. However, his brilliant poem, right at the beginning, more than made up for it.

But also, thanks to you, my lovely readers (oh god, I’ve gone all Vanessa Feltz now – though it probably needs some alliteration to be truly Feltzian)… thanks to you, my er, radiant readers, for your comments. Writing this crap is hard enough, but knowing someone out there is actually reading it, worries me helps a lot.

And next year’s will be bigger and better than ever… if Dave can be arsed to see it through to the end!

“Can I have three pounds and fifty pence please, Daddy?” Harry asked me this morning.

“Why?”

“To buy a book from Henery Winkerler.”

“Henry who?”

“Henery Winkerler. He’s coming to our school today. It’s for World Book Day, which was yesterday, but he’s coming to our school today and we can buy a book off him. ” I was still confused. “Sunday, Monday, Happy Days…” Harry sang. “Our teacher showed us a video of him yesterday.”

“Oh, you mean Henry Winkler! Yes, he was in Happy Days. I shouldn’t think he would be coming to your school, though”, I said, rather condescendingly.

“No, he is coming”, Amelia chipped in, “and he is signing his books for us.”

“For three pounds fifty?”

They nodded their heads vigorously.

I quickly found the latest school newsletter, laying unread in the kitchen drawer, and scanned it’s contents. It confirmed that The Fonz was indeed coming to visit them in school today. Rapidly, I sorted out some change and put it in an envelope for each of them. “Be polite when you meet him and tell him daddy is a big fan and has the same motorbike as him.”

They strolled into school, completely non-plussed at the prospect of meeting one of my boyhood idols.

“So,” I said, when I picked them up after school, “did you get to meet Henry Winkler? Was he cool?”

“He was really nice” said Amelia, “but he doesn’t look like he did on the telly,” and then they proudly showed me their autographed books.

I Googled Mr Winkler when I got home and was astonished to see that there is no longer a black hair on his head.

I’d never have believed it, but The Fonz is now 67 years old and completely grey.

He’s still pretty cool though.

I took my new pushbike out on it’s maiden voyage yesterday.  In fact, 20 years out of the saddle, it was a bit of a maiden voyage for both of us!

The kids were keen to come out too, and so we took a short ride up into Streatley village, to visit the wife’s brother.

Man, it was hard work. It was only three miles to get there, but I’ve never ridden so slowly. It took us about 40 minutes!

Amelia refuses to change out of first gear and so her legs were going like the clappers whilst tortoises and sloths lazily made their way past. Meanwhile Harry was stuck in fourth gear, again refusing to change and then getting off and walking whenever we hit the slightest of inclines.

However, I found my new steed easy to ride, though only ever having ridden road bikes in the past, the hydraulic suspension on this hybrid takes a bit of getting used to.

The other thing that will take some time to get to grips with, is the gearing. My old bike had five gears, which was plenty. This one has twenty-one!  Having now tried them all out, I reckon there are about fifteen gears that I’ll hardly ever use.

I’m looking forward to going out on it again though- sans kids this time – so I can get a proper feel for what it’s capable of, but I consider my first sojourn a success… despite being a little saddlesore this morning.

I made an appointment to see the dentist, today.

I have a check-up every six months, because my teeth are bloody rubbish. And I’m sure that I’ll need some work doing when I go next week, because a bit broke off one of the back ones a few weeks ago.

Cost me a bloody fortune, they do!

I dunno why they give me so much trouble. I clean them twice a day and I don’t eat a lot of sweets or drink a great amount of sugary drinks.  Yes, I did when I was younger, but I doubt it was anymore than any of the other kids and maybe I’m paying the price for that, today.

But, whilst it’s obviously important to look after your teeth, I think that a lot of it is down to your forebears. If they had bad teeth and you inherit that particular family trait, then it doesn’t matter how much you keep them clean, they will deteriorate and give you grief.

I remember that my mother used to have a lot of problems with her teeth, and both her parents wore dentures, so I reckon that has been passed down to me. I’ve had so many fillings over the years, there’s probably more metal than enamel in my mouth!

Conversely, Mrs Masher’s parents both had good teeth, apparently, and this is a trait she has luckily inherited.  In her mid forties now, she has just one tiny filling in her mouth. She drinks Pepsi Cola like it’s going out of fashion (at least 2 litres a day!) and she only cleans her teeth once a day. Sometimes not even that much. Yet, her teeth are straight and strong and clean.  She went to the dentist this morning for a check-up – for the first time in three and a half years – and was told exactly that: her teeth needed no work at all. Not even a clean and polish. They were, to quote the dentist, “perfect”.

As Pam Ayres says, I wish I’d looked after me teeth, when I was younger, but I doubt it would have made that much difference. If you’ve inherited a bad set of gnashers, there’s little you can do about it.

I’ve always taken some pride in my car.
I’ve tried to look after it.
I clean it each week.
And I’m obsessively careful about parking it.

But, it doesn’t matter how careful you are, some git will always open their car door onto yours, in Sainsbury’s car park, and I have several marks on my car as evidence to that.

Even when the car park is fairly empty, I will exit the shop to see that someone has parked right next to me. Why? There are rows of empty spaces! Why park right next to me?

And my front wing picked up a serious dent a couple of months back, in the Premier Inn car park in Plymouth. I spotted it as soon as I came out of the hotel. Not a big dent, but deep. It’s creased the metal and broken the paint, such that rust is now starting to appear.

So, I’ve been thinking that I need to get it fixed, before it gets worse. And it will be good for my OCD, as I just don’t feel right driving around in a car with a fault on it. Never have. I should say that I don’t actually suffer from OCD. I actually have CDO, which is like OCD but the letters are in their correct order.

But anyway, I decided the other day that I shall take the car to the bodyshop to get a quote. Sometime soon.

Today, as I walked to my car – I’m in a Premier Inn in Tunbridge Wells – I noticed that my car has been hit again. Same spot on the left wing. It’s much worse than before. So bad in fact, that you can’t even see the original dent. Bastards!

So, that’s gonna cost me even more to get fixed. But I’m thinking, what would be the bloody point?

At breakfast, this morning, there were two girls seated together at a table ( I should mention that I am working away at the moment, they weren’t in my dining room). But, throughout the whole of breakfast, they hardly spoke a word to each other, engrossed as they were in their mobile phones.

I had something similar last week when I’d visited a friend who lives about an hour’s drive away. I left his house for the journey home and almost immediately needed a wee. So, I stopped just a short while later when I happened across a McDonalds. Whilst there, I thought I may as well have something to eat, as it was getting late and I suddenly realised that I hadn’t eaten for several days.

I took my tray – laden with fast food goodness – to the nearest table and sat down.

Seated around me were five couples: two girls in one corner; two boys in another and three girl/boy combos.

It was deadly silence in there. No-one was speaking. Everyone had their mobiles out and was busy texting or doing the Twitters or whatever… their thumbs flying over the tiny keyboards.

All apart from one lad, who, everytime he tried to whisper something to his girlfriend, was told to “sshhh!”, her concentration entirely on the phone in her hands.

I wolfed down my food and left. In all the time I was there, I don’t think I saw any of them speak more than a sentence or two to each other.

It’s truly ironic that mobile phones seem to be killing the art of conversation.

“Every man should have a hobby…” I can’t remember who said that, (was it Mae West? – I can’t Google it, because I don’t have enough time left on my free 30 mins of Premier Inn internet access) but it’s certainly true.

Women have their hobbies: ironing; washing; cleaning; having babies, etc, so there’s no reason why men can’t have hobbies too.

I’ve had plenty of  them over the years, and you’ll probably not be surprised to learn that as a kid, I collected stamps and made Airfix models. Children nowadays – the MTV Generation (no, isn’t that us? Aren’t we the MTV Generation now?) OK, the Phineas & Ferb Generation – don’t have the patience for such things. “Build an Airfix model? I’ve probably got app for that.”

But one of my hobbies has just resurfaced, after a fifteen-year hiatus.

Radio.

Or, more precisely, Amateur Radio.

Passing my exam in 1984 (I think), I was a keen player of the hobby right up until when I moved house in 1998. My old house was on the top of a hill – the highest point in town – and signals from far and away were easy pickings. But, then I got married and our new house was located in a dip (it still is) and all my radios suddenly went deaf.

But whilst I’ve been away, things have changed. Back in the day, my licence restricted me to operating only on VHF and UHF frequencies, but the rules have changed and I can now operate on HF frequencies too. That opens up a whole new world, as HF frequencies propagate differently and with a half decent aerial system, I should be able receive and transmit out of our dip.

But there have been other changes too. It was always the ‘data modes’ that interested me the most, especially RTTY (Radio TeleTYpe) and AX25 ( a highly resilient packet protocol based on the X25 system used by the likes of BT for data transfer). I’m pleased to see, from reading the amateur pages on the internet, that not only is RTTY still alive and well, but it has been joined by a whole host of other systems, offering more resilience and improved performance under weak signal conditions. And whereas, in the old days, I had to build/buy a suitable demodulator to operate these modes, it’s now all done just using the sound card on your PC.

So, this last weekend – despite having enough other things to do – I dug out my old HF receiver from the loft and downloaded some suitable software.

It was hard work trying to get anything at all, as my receiver is just a ‘cheap’ one with limited sensitivity and rubbish selectivity. And I was just using the built-in telescopic aerial, which is next to useless. But when – on Sunday morning – I managed to resolve some morse code being sent by a chap on the west coast of Wales and then some RTTY from the German weather service Deutscher Wetterdienst, I was more excited than than Jimmy Saville was, when it was announce that the St Winifred’s All Girls School Choir were to appear on Top Of The Pops.

But, that tiny, little success has encouraged me to pursue it further and already I have ordered a load of cable to make an aerial and some bits to make some modifications to my HF receiver to improve its performance.

Mrs Masher has ‘fond’ memories of me cooped up in my room, with a set of headphones on, till stupid o’clock in the morning.

As recompense, I may have to get her that bloody dishwasher after all.

As I mentioned a couple of posts back, a little while ago, I’ve signed up to do the BHF cycle ride from London to Brighton.

So, I’ve been looking around for a new bike.

I’ve actually got one in the garage, that has been there a while. It’s an old road bike that my mate Danny gave me a while back. The frame had sat in his fir tree for a number of years and he had a couple of very rusty wheels tucked behind the garage. The rest of the bits – crank; pedals; various bits of gearing; inner tubes; etc, he gave to me in an old Tesco carrier bag. It was – in essence – a bike in a bag. With some bits missing.

I decided I would do it up, but it was obvious from the outset that it would need some money spending on it. The tyres had all but perished; the wheels were rusted beyond what any metal polish could fix; the brakes needed completely replacing and the mould on the saddle wouldn’t come out no matter how hard I scrubbed.

The first thing I bought for it was a new chain. I was surprised at how expensive it was (only two and six, in my day!), which got me to looking at how much it was going to cost to rebuild it.

Lots, was the answer. I figured it probably wouldn’t cost much more to get a new one.

And so I looked online to see how much a new one would cost. Halfords had the biggest range and prices started at about 140 to 150 quid for their Apollo range.  Not too bad. 150 sovs would be about the most I’d want to pay. No point in spending too much when I don’t know for sure if my knees will hold out. It might end up spending most of it’s life in the garage. So, yep, 150 will do. No more than that.

So, during the week, once I’d made my mind up I was definitely going to get one, I checked online again, only to see that Halfords were selling a particular bike  - a Carrera – for half price. It had very good reviews and at 200 pounds, was still inside my budget, because, let’s face it, we always pick a maximum price and then fully expect to pay a bit more. Don’t we? Or is that just me? Anyway, 200 quid was the absolute max that I wanted to go to. Absolute. No more.

Anyway, our local shop had fully sold out, but the Hemel store had one left in stock. I reserved it and Mrs Masher and I headed over to check it out.

We were shown to it by Megan. Resplendent in her black & gold uniform, she seemed to know her way around a bike. “Too small,” she said, as soon as I planted my ample backside on the saddle. “You need a bigger frame”. Mrs M nodded in agreement.

“Oh well, that’s that then”, I said dejectedly. “It’ll have to be the Apollo, because I’m not going to spend too much on a pushbike.”

Megan wheeled over an Apollo and I sat on it.  It felt horrible. Well, not really horrible, but horrible compared to the Carrera. Not as comfy. Cheaper gears.  Mrs Masher could see my disappointment. “Here’s a Carrera. It’s a bit more expensive, but just try it for size,” she said.

I tried it.  I liked it.  I bought it.

So much for setting myself a budget.

It’s bloody freezing!

And not just outside, where it is snowing again, but also inside the house, because we currently have no heating.

It isn’t broken though. We have a plumber in and he is doing a ‘powerflush’ on the heating system, cleaning all the crap out before we get a new boiler fitted.

Not only are all the radiators freezing cold, being flushed – as they are – with cold water, but we also have doors and windows open to facilitate the passing of mains cables and hosepipes into the garden.  Where it is snowing. And bloody freezing.

Mr plumber was supposed to do this job yesterday, but phoned in sick.  So, as the kids were bored and we no longer had a reason to stay in, I took them swimming, up to the new pool that has opened in town – you may have seen it on ITV’s Splash!

Being half term, it was packed in there – mainly with kids of all shapes, sizes and colours, but there was no sign of Tom Daley and his skimpy little trunks.

One teenage couple – I’d put them at only about 14 or 15 – spent most of their time just sitting on the side of the pool, feet in the water. One couldn’t help but notice them as they were constantly snogging. Not just little pecks, but full-on tongue down the throat stuff.

Twice I saw the lifeguard go over and speak to them and each time they would relent, but then carry on again about five minutes later.

Finally, the lifeguard had very stern words with them and they got up and left. Maybe to get a room. Or a cubicle.

But it reminded me of the time on holiday, when Mrs Masher and I were asked to leave the poolside over a complete misunderstanding.

I only asked her to toss me over a towel.

“I literally shit a brick”, said a colleague at work who is afraid of dogs, as he recounted the story of how his next door neighbour’s Alsation chased him up the garden path.

“You should have thrown the brick at it,” I said.

“??”

“That brick that you crapped out… you should have thrown it at the dog.  Was it like a house brick?”

“No. There wasn’t any brick.”

“But you said that you literally shit a brick. Which means that you did actually pass a brick of some sort out of your backside. Have you still got it?”

“Don’t be stupid. I didn’t shit a brick of any kind. It’s just a saying.”

“So why did you say you  ’literally’ shit a brick,  if you didn’t?   ‘Metaphorically’ or ‘Figuratively’ would have been more correct.”

“Fuck off, before I shove this soldering iron up your arse!”

“What, literally?”

Amelia went to London yesterday, accompanying her friend to Great Ormand Street Children’s Hospital.

So, I was stuck at home with Harry. Now, he’s a doddle to look after. Left to his own devices he’ll just spend the whole day on his X-Box.

Which is not a good thing.

So, I asked what he’d like to do and we ended up going to the pictures to see the latest Disney animation, Wreck-It Ralph.

We arrived just in time, as the lights were going down. It was quite busy in there and we had to squeeze our way past some people to get a seat.

Sitting there, munching from his kid’s box of popcorn and chocolate buttons and laughing at the on-screen antics, Harry was thoroughly enjoying himself.

I enjoyed the film too, clever and amusing, with humour on several levels and some of it obviously aimed at adults. But I also got a lot of enjoyment just from watching Harry, who was constantly smiling and was utterly absorbed in the film.

Then, about an hour into it, we all had to stand as a woman and her two young daughters squeezed their way down the row to take the seats on the other side of Harry.  It seemed strange that they had come in this late, when the film was approaching its conclusion.

Half an hour later, it was over and the lights came up. I looked over, past Harry, to see the late-comers. They were sitting there watching the credits, wearing 3D glasses.

I reached over and tapped the lady on the arm. “I think you’re in the wrong screen,” I said, “the 3D showing is in screen 4. This is screen 8.”

She took the glasses off. “I wondered why no-one else was wearing them”, she said.

I mentioned last month that we had a power cut and ended up getting slightly inebriated as a result.

Well, whilst chatting to my neighbour, Frank, that night, warming tumbler of JD in hand, he said that he would be doing the British Heart Foundation London to Brighton Bike Ride again this year – having done it for the first time last year.

Now, I’ve done the London to Brighton ride a couple of times in the past and really enjoyed it. In fact, I used to really enjoy cycling and did a quite a bit when I was younger and fitter. I was actually quite good. The Bradley Wiggins of my day.

Possibly.

Or not.

But anyway, I stopped cycling about twenty years ago, just after I’d done the last London to Brighton, when my knees started playing up.

In recent years though, I’ve often found myself thinking about starting to ride again. Especially now that the kids have their own bikes – it’d be nice to go on some family rides in the Summer. And it’d probably help to get my fitness level up a tad.

And so, in my somewhat intoxicated state, I readily agreed to join Frank and his team-mates on the ride.

I’ve signed up. I’ve paid my registration  fee. It’s going to happen. In June. On Father’s Day.

Now I just need to get myself a bike.

That’ll help a lot.

Following  our meeting with Extortionate Kitchens R Us, on Sunday, we decided we needed a stiff drink and a good sit down. Some food would be good too.

Our restaurant of choice recently, has been the Toby Carvery that opened in town last year. The food is good quality and plentiful and they are kid friendly too. And they sell Tetley. The beer, not the tea. Though, they may sell the tea as well, I don’t know. I digress. Where was I? Ah yes: good food, good beer and good with kids. Five good reasons to pay them a visit.

“Three, sir!”

Ahh, yes, three good reasons to pay them a visit. And so we did.

I noticed on the menu that ones meal – though already quite reasonably sized – could be upgraded to KING SIZE for just £1.50 extra. Our second bargain of the day. Better than that, it stated that if a member of staff failed to offer you this option, you could have a KING SIZE for the price of a regular meal.

Our drinks were brought over and we ordered a carvery each. Our waiter didn’t offer us the KING SIZE upgrade.

I went up to the meat counter. The chef picked up a plate and asked what meat I would like. I then mentioned that I wanted to go KING SIZE, at which point he replaced the plate and picked up a KING SIZE one, asking again which meat I would like. I told him that I was so hungry, I could eat a horse. He smiled politely, as if he hadn’t heard that one twenty times already. I pointed and he placed large cuts from each joint on display.

“Oh, gone for the large one, have you?” remarked Mrs M, as I sat down, my plate fair brimming with a full monty Sunday roast and ALL the trimmings.  I explained that I’d only gone for it as it was the same price as a standard meal, because no-one had offered it me.

Our food devoured and our hunger sated, I asked for the bill.  I was shocked and annoyed to find that the extra £1.50 HAD been added to it.

My smug satisfaction was replaced with a seething anger. I had been done over by the waiter to the tune of one hundred and fifty new English pence. I know that’s not a great amount, but one pound fifty is one pound fifty.  And, it’s the principle of the matter: they didn’t keep their end of the deal, so there is no reason why I should pay them an extra £1.50

“You wanna complain,” said Mrs Masher.

“You’re right, I do wanna complain, ” I said.

The waiter came over. “Was everything OK?” he asked.

“Yes. lovely.” I said, handing him the correct money.

Mrs Masher looked at me, disparagingly.

“Well, it was only £1.50″, I said.

As I mentioned a few posts back, we are looking to get our kitchen done this year.

As such, we had a  chap from Wickes round last week to measure up and do a design for us.  I was straight with the fella and told him that we wouldn’t be getting it just yet – and that we would be also looking at other kitchen suppliers – and that this was just to give us an idea of what could be done in our awkwardly sized and shaped kitchen and also to give us a rough idea of what it would cost. He was fine with that, measured up, went through a few brochures and went away to see what he could come up with.

Yesterday, we had an appointment at midday with him at the showroom.

He took us through the design he had made, and then patiently changed and adjusted and re-adjusted it all to suit Mrs Masher’s ever-changing whim.  After an hour of this, he printed off the price.

£16,000

I bit my lip and kept a straight face.  Then he applied all the discounts which brought it down to just ten grand.

Which is an absolute bargain.

Apparently.

Even so. Ten flippin’ grand?  On our poxy little kitchen? I definitely need to talk her out of having that dishwasher!  And maybe talk her into getting a smaller cooker. And fridge.

And, I may also need to sell a kidney.

If anyone’s interested.