At last… a decent view from my bedroom window.

This week I am staying in a Premier Inn on “The English Riviera”. Torquay, to be precise.

The hotel has two parts – an old part and a new part. I have been placed on the top floor of the old part, which has bags of character. The first bit of character I noticed was that the lift doesn’t work. Fortunately, there are only a couple of floors to go up and I am still young enough and fit enough to bound up them with ease (only one bit of this sentence is true).

Another characteristic is that my room is e-bloody-normous – at least the size of two normal rooms. And from my bedroom window I have a lovely view of some tended gardens and the seafront. I can see the sea!

It’s also a very quiet hotel, with the majority of the guests being retired couples and old people in their seventies and eighties. Some look like they may have actually come here to die.

Being a Tuesday night, I went to the cinema earlier. No huge multiplexes here though. The nearest cinema was a 15 minute walk away, in a residential street. I walked into the foyer to find it was deserted save for the young girl in the ticket kiosk. “Hello”, she smiled brightly at me. The badge pinned to her ample bosom proclaimed her name to be Mel and that she was here to help.

“Hello”, I said. “I’ve come to see Mel Gibson”.

“Ahh yes, he’s in screen 4. He won’t be ready for another ten minutes yet. Still putting his makeup on”, she joked. “Take a seat and I’ll call you” she said, as she took my money. I smiled at her sense of humour.

I sat on a hard plastic chair for a few minutes whilst I waited and still no-one came in. “Mr Gibson will see you now”, Mel called out to me over the carefully stacked bags of popcorn.

I followed the signs for screen 4 and found myself heading down several flights of stairs, going off in various directions. Like my hotel, this cinema had some character and olde worlde charm to it.

I opened the door to screen 4 to find myself in one of the smallest cinemas I have ever been in. Possibly the smallest. I was so amazed at it’s smallness that I stood right at the back and took a rather grainy photo using my phone camera. I could do this without embarrassment as I was the only one there. No-one else turned up. At all.

It was a bit like sitting at home alone, watching telly.

Except it reeked faintly of piss.

But it was good to see Mel Gibson back to his old self.

It’s bloody happened again!

This week, I am working in Newton Abbot in Devon.

The picture to the far left, is what could have been the view from my room, had I been allocated a bedroom at the front of the hotel (I took this from the fire escape stairwell). It is, of course, Newton Abbot racecourse. The picture on the right is the actual view. Lovely, eh? OK, the racecourse isn’t THAT nice to look at, but it’s a bloody sight better than what I ended up with.

Anyway (he said, going off at a tangent).

I have a problem. Something that my mind has been mulling over since last week when I went to the pictures to see The Avengers. And my problem is with The Hulk. The Hulk has long been one of my favourite comic book, superhero characters. But one of his traits has always annoyed me and now that I’ve seen the film, it is annoying me even moreso.

You see, when he gets angry, he turns green and he gets bigger and stronger. Much, much stronger and much, much bigger.

And then he starts throwing tins of sweetcorn at people. No, no, no. That’s a different Green Giant, isn’t it?

Now, where does all that extra bigness come from? How does he make that extra mass?

He can’t just GET bigger: it violates a fundamental law of physics: the conservation of mass. E=MC²  and all that. If his mass is going to increase and the co-efficient of the speed of light is to remain constant – which, of course, it will – then extra energy must be derived from somewhere to make it.

Popular thinking is that the most likely source is energy from the quantum vacuum – or Zero Point Energy, to the likes of you and me. This is in abundance, but the mechanism The Hulk uses to extract it and then convert it to mass, is unknown.

Maybe I’m looking into this a bit too deep and should just enjoy it for what it is. Hell, none of the other superheroes give me this grief and they all break loads of physical laws and rules.

But I can’t help it.

The Bionic Man. He was another one. I remember trying to explain to my mum once, whilst we were watching The Six Million Dollar Man on telly, that – strong as Steve Austin’s bionic arm was – there was no way he would be able to lift that truck off of the car that was underneath it. The truck weighed several tonnes whilst he weighed perhaps fifteen stone (allowing for metal legs and arms).

If he tried to lift it, all that would happen is that he would headbutt the truck as he genuflexed his arm and his relatively light body was pulled in toward the much heavier vehicle. Or – if he somehow managed to get decent purchase on the ground – his arm would be ripped from his shoulder as it was only grafted onto normal flesh and bone.

Mum told me to just shut up and watch the telly or go to my room.

It’s Mrs Masher who bears the brunt of my televisual irritations nowadays. But, as we sit on the sofa watching  a Sunday afternoon Sci-Fi flick, she now knows better than to ask when I snort derisively at something that’s just happened on the screen.

I want her to ask, of course, but she knows better.

Of course, I’m not alone in being so anal about such things. Following on from the Superman film where he finally gets to shag Lois Lane (I can’t remember which one it was but I’m sure it happened), the writer and scientist Larry Niven used maths to work out that such an act couldn’t actually happen. His calculations showed that Superman’s super ejaculation would be so powerful, it would actually knock Lois’ fallopian tubes right out through the top of her head, thereby killing her.

And that didn’t happen.

And that’s the problem I have with films nowadays: no realism.

This week, I have mostly been working in Plymouth. I have selected a hotel right on the harbour.

My hotel bedroom would have a picturesque view like the first picture here, had I been allocated a room at the front of the building.

Unfortunately, I was given a room at the back and the view from the window is actually the second picture, with the lovely view of the tyre place. Oh well.

Monday night, I had a terrible sleep. I like to have the window open to keep the room airy, especially when I sleep. But the road outside has to be one of the noisiest ever. Cars and motorbikes speed along there all night long and the only thing noisier are the drunk students walking past going to and from various parties. Shouldn’t they be studying or something, rather than singing dirty songs at the top of their voices at three in the morning? And that’s just the girls. The boys seem to want to fight each other most of the time.

There is student accomodation across from where I’m working and it’s rare to see the curtains open before midday.

Anyway. Tuesday was my birthday. I may have mentioned it. I knocked off work early and went to the pictures to see the Avengers film. It was this: excellent. Go see it. Back at the hotel I went for dinner and felt a bit melancholy, spending my fiftieth birthday sitting on my own in an already pretty empty restaurant. I mentioned it to one of the waitresses (there are two – both called Emma, so I can’t get them mixed up) and at the end of my meal, they brought out a small cake with some ice cream and a candle and they both stood and sang Happy Birthday to me. It made my evening and – going against the grain – I tipped them well.

Wednesday, I took a wander into town after work. I found two motorcycle clothing stores and spent a fair amount of time trying on different crash helmets before giving up. My old helmet is a bit knackered (ooer, missus) and I need a new one if I am going to look like the Fonz. OK, I know Fonzie didn’t wear a helmet, but he’d have had to if he’d lived over here. And he did ride a Triumph, I believe.

Thursday, well that’s today and although my plan was to go home on Friday, I’ve realised that it’s a Bank Holiday weekend and the roads are likely to be a nightmare on Friday afternoon, so I’m going to check out a day early. And I won’t even feel guilty, because I have paperwork and other work related stuff that I can actually do from home.

Whilst watching Loose Women.

Heeyyy!!

Today is my birthday.

I am old.

And I am spending it alone. Both at work and then in my hotel room. How sad and miserable is that?

But, to make up for it and to celebrate this most auspicious of occasions (ie. me reaching half a century), we had a bit of a party at the weekend.

Much drink was drunk and much daddy-dancing was performed and I believe most everyone had a good time. I think the DJ must have played the music a bit too loud though, as my head was thumping on Sunday morning. Still, a good fry-up soon sorted that out.

Fifty is supposedly the new forty (actually, it’s probably not, because I just made that up) so I shouldn’t be thinking of myself as old.

But I am.

Club 18-30 holidays have long been a distant memory, but it’s the realisation that I now qualify to join a club that caters for an entirely different age group, that has made me acutely aware of my advancing years and the inevitable onset of old-man ailments.

Heck, I’m already getting cravings for Werther’s Originals.

I know that resistance is futile and that I will eventually succumb to the comfort of a pair of Hush Puppy shoes and a flat cap, but until then, I will hang on to what vestiges of my youth remain.

So, come on Saga Holidays, let’s see what you’ve got. Bring it on!

I needed to pop into town for a few things on Saturday. My heart sank when Mrs M said she’d like to come too as she needed to get herself some new clothes and also some for the kids. I knew right there and then, that my entire afternoon had just disappeared.

We parked up and Mrs M took Amelia in one direction whilst I took Harry in the other. “Meet you outside Costa in half an hour” she said.

Harry and I strode purposefully toward the Post Office, where the inevitable queue kept us waiting for fifteen minutes. A quick stroll to the bank and the compulsary ineludible visit to Maplin’s and I was done. Had I been on my own, I would have headed home at that point.

Harry and I sat down at a table outside Costa and waited. And waited. And waited. We were just running out of “Eye spy with my little eye…” subjects when the girls finally turned up. I noted the lack of carrier bags in Mrs M’s hands. “They haven’t got anything” she moaned. “They haven’t got anything I like and I can’t find bugger all for Amelia. Let’s try Next”.

“Oh good, my favourite shop”, I said, putting as much apathy into my voice as I could, in the vain hope that she’d show some mercy and decide we could go home. But it fell on deaf ears as she was already on a beeline for her favourite clothes shop, with Amelia in tow.

When Harry and I eventually caught up with them, Mrs Masher had already picked several dresses out for Amelia and had them slung over her shoulder as she continued going through the rails in search of several more. “Harry needs a new shirt for the party next week”, she said. “Can you take him over to the boys section and get him one please?” she asked.

Harry and I walked the short way over to the boy’s shirts. There was a blue and white checked one with short sleeves that looked OK. I picked it up from the rail. “Do you like this one, Harry?” He nodded. I checked the label and was pleased to see it was his size.  We walked back over to the girls. I doubt it had taken anymore than a minute and a half. Mrs M and Amelia were arguing over whether a blue floral print dress looked better than a yellow one and whether Amelia should wear a dress or go in trousers as she wanted. Eventually, in a fit of temper, Mrs M threw most of it back on the rails, grabbed Amelia by the wrist and stormed into the changing rooms with just two items to try on.  Harry and I waited patiently outside.

Clutching his little blue and white shirt, Harry looked up at me and asked “Daddy, why do girls take so long?”

“Get used to it, mate”, I said. “You’ve got a lot more to come.”

After about five minutes, the girls emerged from the changing room. Mrs M handed the two garments to the girl attendant. “I’ve had enough. Let’s go home”, she said.

We arrived home three and a half hours after leaving.

We’d bought a shirt.

I haven’t written anything here for a while.

Sorry.

Kinda lost my blogging mojo.

It happens.

So, what has been happening at Masher Towers?  Not a great deal, to be honest.

I’ve been working in Hemel Hempstead for the past week and a half, which has been great.  At only 16 miles or so away, it is virtually on my doorstep – a refreshing change from the hours I normally have to spend driving to work.

The kids are now back to school, following the Easter break. Two weeks they were off for, two whole weeks! I’m sure we never had two weeks off at Easter when I was a kid.  And as the current Mrs M and I both have to work, we have to put the kids into kennels for the duration… and it costs a bloody fortune!  My wallet wasn’t helped by the fact that they had an extra two days off this week thanks to Teacher Training Days.

Teacher. Training. Days.  That’s something else I don’t remember us having when I was kid… back in the Stone Age.
I mean, couldn’t they have had their two days training during that fortnight off for chris’sakes?
Don’t get me wrong: I have nothing against teachers. I think they do a great and sometimes difficult job – I know I certainly couldn’t do it – but jeez, they don’t half get a lot of time off.

In other news, I am having a birthday in just under a couple of week’s time. And so, I’ve just been out and bought me a little birthday present.

Ain’t she priddy?

Cleaned off the bird poo, what a pile
Looks much better, by a mile
Anthea Turner, she would smile
‘Cos I’ve cleaned the windows

Oui. Les fenêtres sont propres.  Inside and out. It’s a job I hate, but it’s a job that needed doing. They were filthy and – as alluded to in my little George Formby-esque verse above – one of the upstairs ones had a huge dollop of bird crap on it from one of the pigeons (there’s a pair of the flying vermin that nest in our tree and if I had an air rifle…).

This all came about because Mrs M was in a Spring cleaning frenzy yesterday, flying round the house like a mad thing with hoovers and dusters and damp cloths and rubbish bags. She was making it very difficult for me to relax and enjoy my Star Wars box set. There was much harumphing and skunk eye sent my way as she huffed and puffed around me, and so I decided I’d best lend a hand. Because I’m good like that.

Along with everything else, I also cleaned some bird shit off the sofa.

Off the sofa?

Last weekend, whilst were out shopping in town, I got a phone call from our neighbour. “Your burglar alarm is going off”, he said. “I can’t see anything obvious outside. Do you want me to go in and check?”  And so he did (I hasten to mention that he has a key – he didn’t have to break a window or anything). Ten minutes later, he rang back to tell me that he’d found the problem. “There’s a bird in your living room”.  Somehow – and we’ve still not figured out how as all the windows were closed – a starling had got in the house.  The neighbour managed to shoo it out through a window, but it had left a bit of a mess in the living room in its attempts to get out. I thought I’d managed to clean up all the crap it left behind – mainly on the window sill – but I’d obviously missed the bit that went down the side of the sofa.

Anyway, the sofa was now clean and between us, the house was done top to bottom and we were both knackered at the end of it.

At the kids’ insistence, we all sat down to watch Karate Kid on the telly.

Both Mrs M and I fell asleep.

Wax on… wax off… wax on… wax off… wax on…

This week I am mainly working nights up in Warwickshire.

Last night was the first of six scheduled nights and as far as we can tell, all went well.

I got back to my hotel – in Coventry – at about 5am. I had a cup of tea, sent off a couple of emails then climbed into bed for a well earned kip.

Three hours. That’s all I got: three bloody hours.

I hadn’t realised, but my room is directly over the Goods In entrance and there was a non-stop convoy of lorries turning up, clattering and banging as they loaded and unloaded right underneath my window.

If I stay here next week, I shall ask for a room at the far end of the hotel.

Anyway, this afternoon, I went to the pictures. There is a big 14 screen cinema just a few minutes walk away, but as the heavens had suddenly opened, I drove there.

When I returned, I parked my car outside the Premier Inn and as I got out, my foot kicked something. I carefully picked it up. It was a small drug bottle with the needle still stuck in the top.

OK, what to do with it? I’ve picked it up so I can’t just put it back on the ground where I found it. It wouldn’t be sensible to throw it away in the rubbish bin outside the hotel, as the needle might stick somebody.

And so, I ended up bringing it back to my room with me. There’s a big Tesco across the road with a pharmacy in it and I shall take it there tomorrow for proper disposal.

Meantime, I got to wondering what the actual drug was. The label on the bottle pronounced it to be Alprostadil.

A quick Google revealed that it’s a drug ostensibly used by men having a bit of trouble in the stiffy department.
Reading up on it (I was intrigued now) it seems that when your little soldier won’t stand to attention when you need it to, this injection will make it solid as a rock for an hour or so.
That sounds great! The downside is, you have to inject it into the base of your willy. Ow!

How desperate must you be to have a quick shag in the car park outside of a hotel – get a room for chris’sakes, they’re only 29 quid! – that you are willing to sit in your car and stick needles into your cock?

Actually, thinking about it, the guy probably did have a room and then said to his wife/girlfriend/new acquaintance/prostitute “Oops, I forgot. I just need to pop down to the car for something.”.

But then, to discard it in the car park, like an old condom, is just downright irresponsible.

It was my daughter’s birthday yesterday. She’s nine years old.

I know: nine!  Where do the years go?

I bumped into a friend in the supermarket yesterday whilst I was buying my lunch and mentioned it to her. “Nine?” she said, “Oh my, that has gone quick. What did you buy her for her birthday then, a  mobile phone?”

“Good Lord, no. She’s only nine. She’s not having a bloody mobile phone.”

She wants one though. It amazes me that so many of her friends have phones already.  She obviously feels a bit left out.  But for me, that’s too much, too soon. She’s nine and should still be playing with Barbie dolls and riding her bike, not texting and updating her Facebook status.

She’s my little girl and I don’t want her to grow up too quick.

But it didn’t help when I learnt that it’s now quite possible that within just a few short years her… um,  female plumbing issues could start.

Oh God!

I’m trying not to think about it.

… it’s not quite a Jag-u-ar.

But it’s starting to get expensive.  The news tells us that fuel prices have reached a record high and, filling up yesterday, I can confirm that: it was the most I have ever paid for a tank of fuel. Ever.

And I have a big service coming up. Well, the car does, not me. Obviously.

And I keep looking at the wear on the back tyres and wondering how much longer they are going to last.

I haven’t checked, but I bet road tax went up in the Budget. And my car insurance will likely rise next year, as it always does.

Surely, at some point it’s going to become economically non-viable for me to run a car – unless I downsize to a Renault Clio or something (shudder).

But all this cost just adds to the joy and experience of driving.

There’s nothing like getting on the open road and putting your foot down, radio blaring and the wind from the open window blowing your hair as you grimace and wince as each. and. every. pothole. jars your spine, knackers your suspension and dents your alloys.

Speed cameras lurk around every corner, giving that unexpected thrill of  ”Did it flash me or not?”

And then there’s the inevitable roadworks. Almost any journey on Britain’s roads today will involve spending some nice relaxing time sat in a sea of brightly coloured cones. It’s a  good time to de-stress, as you safely inch along at two miles an hour. And did you know that Britain is the cone capital of the world? Yes, we have more cones protecting our roads and making them safer than there are in the rest of the world put together.*

There is some major roadworks going on where the motorway passes through my neck of the woods. Traffic has been slowed to a safe and relaxing speed there for months, but they have just finished rebuilding junction 12 and earlier this week I decided to give it a try to see how much it had improved.

For years, early morning rush hour traffic has backed up along the B579, as turning right there to get on the motorway was made very difficult by the flow of traffic. But now, with the newly designed junction, they’ve thoughtfully put in some traffic lights to allow the B579 traffic to get out. I sat there on Monday morning and found that getting out was even slower than before. This is because they have cleverly phased the lights to allow you more time to sit there, take in the gorgeous surroundings and listen to Radio 2. I timed the lights (I had the time):

Red: 58 seconds

Green: 6 seconds

You don’t get many cars out in six seconds. Damn clever of them.

Anyway, better go. Gotta wash the car.

PS. I bet you’ve got Madness in your head now.

* I made up that particular fact. It’s probably true though.

In other news, this is most amusing.

“Hi, my name’s Karen and I’ll be your waitress this evening.”
“Hello, my name is Masher and I’ll be your customer.”

That’s how dinner started for me tonight. In fact, that’s how it starts most nights, because I work away so much.
But dinnertime has started to become a bit traumatic for me. You see, I hate tipping. Always have. I hate it because I’m naturally a tightwad but also because it seems to have become a customary thing to do.

Waiters, taxi drivers, hotel porters. It has become the norm nowadays to give them a tip. For doing their job. That’s always seemed wrong to me.

When I go to work, my boss doesn’t give me a little extra on top of my wages just for finishing a job off. Just for doing what I have been employed to do. So why should it be any different for someone whose job it is to serve me my evening meal?

Certainly, if there’s a party of us at a table and the waiter/waitress has had to work hard to ensure we’ve all been served satisfactorily and has been attentive to our needs throughout the meal, then a little bonus at the end is well deserved.

But, when it’s just me and all she has had to do is bring me a glass of Coke and a burger and chips, I don’t see that a tip is really justified.
I still leave a tip though because, well, it’s customary to do so. But it irks me.

Another reason I think I dislike the act of tipping is that I’m not very good at it. How much should one leave as a tip? Is it 10% or has 15% become the norm now? I never know. Nine times out of ten, I never have enough change in my pocket anyway. Leaving 67 pence in small denomination coins is probably more of an insult than not leaving a tip at all.

I remember some years ago when Mrs Masher and I went to Kenya, we dined out for a couple of nights in the hotel’s posh (no shorts) restaurant. The young chap who was our waiter had been incredibly attentive and the food had been marvellous and I felt I actually wanted to leave a tip. However, I didn’t have much of the local currency in my wallet. The lowest denomination note I had equated to about 25p, which I considered to be a bit of an insult. The next highest worked out to about a fiver. So, I gave him the fiver.

The next time we visited that restaurant, the young lads were almost fighting each other to be our waiter. I found out later that what I thought had been a somewhat generous tip, had actually worked out to be over half a weeks wage for these young waiters!

So, I’ve stopped ‘casual tipping’ – tipping for the sake of it. Not just for the reasons I’ve outlined above, but also because I realised it was costing me a fortune. Leaving a couple of quid at a time, several times a week, nearly every week, soon adds up. I’ve worked out that I’m spending – nay, giving away – up to about 25 quid a month.

But – and here’s the rub – despite everything I’ve written above, because tipping is so ingrained in our social conciousness, because it’s considered etiquette to do so, I feel a bit shitty when I leave the table without leaving a a tip.

But, feeling bad about it or not, I shall continue to act the skinflint except in cases where I believe I have received exceptional service.

Or if the waitress is very pretty.

The first formula 1 race of the season took place this morning in Australia, with the qualifying session happening yesterday morning.

This was the first opportunity to properly try out my “Watch F1 on a shoestring” solution, following the BBC handing half of their coverage to those money-grabbing gits at $ky, so I thought I’d give you an update as to how it went.

It was this: excellent.

The actual coverage of the race on RTL was pretty much exactly the same as that shown the BBC. They obviously take the same feed. The audio coverage on Radio 5Live was almost as good as that given by Jake Humphries and the team and was within 1 second of the video feed. In that respect it was hard to fault and it all sync’ed pretty nicely.

The only downsides were the adverts. RTL showed about four lots of adverts during the race. The first only lasted about 20 seconds, the rest about two minutes. The last two sets of ads though, were shown with the race continuing in a window in the bottom corner of the screen (Picture In Picture), so it wasn’t too bad.

RTL – being German – have a propensity to interview only the German drivers before and after the race, but that didn’t worry me too much. Interviewing Martin Whitmarsh after the race – which they had to do following a McLaren win – was obviously in English, but unfortunately one couldn’t hear what was being said thanks to the German translator talking over the audio feed.

But, on the whole I am really chuffed. I watched the whole race from start to finish, live. Much better than watching highlights several hours later. And I’ll be able to do so for the rest of the season. And all for just forty quid.  And, assuming RTL continue their coverage next year (they’ve covered it for several years now), I’ll be able to watch next season as well, for no extra cost.

Stick that in your pipe and smoke it, Murdoch!

“Ooh…ahh…ahh…ow…”

That’s the sound of me driving to work at the moment, grimacing in pain as I drive over every bump our British roads have to offer. And they offer many.

Because, you see, I’m afflicted.

In the bottom area.

It got quite sore a couple of days ago.  So, whilst I was in the shower, I had a bit of a… er, feel.

Bugger! I’ve got hemor… hemmeroi… haemmoramerrooi…

Bugger, I’ve got piles.

I went to our local chemist to get some cream. For some reason it was packed in there – there must have been a dozen people. I searched the shelves, but could find none so I stood in the queue for the counter. When I reached the front of the queue, I could see several different flavours of hemmmer…haemmiroi… pile cream on the shelves behind the pretty young girl who was serving.

“Can I help you?” she asked, brightly.

Acutely aware of the proximity of those around me and faced with having to ask this fresh-faced young thing for some cream for my bum, I bottled it. “Er, no. It’s alright. I’ve changed my mind”, I said, turning sharply on my heels and fleeing the shop.

I drove to another chemist a bit further away. This one was almost empty and the counter was staffed by an older lady. “Can I help you?” she asked, as I looked past her, scanning the shelves behind for some suitable cream. But I couldn’t see any.

“Er, I’ve got a touch of the farmers and need some cream”, I said in a slightly hushed tone, despite there being no-one else within earshot.

She looked at me, quizzically. “The what?”

“Piles”, I said, still keeping my voice down.

“Oh, I see. You’ll find some ointments for that over there on the shelf”, she said, pointing halfway down the shop, “…on the top shelf above the cold & flu remedies.”

I reached up, over a little old lady who was reading the small print on the back of a box of Beecham’s Powders, grabbed the first treatment that I recognised – “Preparation H” (I assume the H stands for hemer…haemor… I assume the H stands for piles) – paid up and quickly left the shop.

Back home, I read the instructions on the box and suddenly got to wondering: what if it wasn’t the farmers, but something else. I needed to check it out really.

Have you ever tried looking at the ol’ chocolate starfish in the bathroom mirror? Of course you have. Everybody has. Surely? Ain’t easy, is it?  Didn’t matter how I contorted myself, I couldn’t get the right angle to see it properly. I gave up in the end. Then I had a bright idea and used my camera to take a photo – even that was hard work! But, at least I now know that my initial diagnosis was correct.

I immediately deleted the picture – cripes, if ever I lost my phone, I certainly wouldn’t want anyone seeing that!

Hope the cream works soon, else I can see me getting one of these.

“Ooh…ahhh…”

I’m a big fan of Formula 1 motor racing. Not so big that I travel all over the world to follow it, but big enough that I go out of my way to ensure I catch all the races on TV.

The BBC’s coverage has thus far been superb, showing all the races live and in high definition.  They’ve also shown all the practice sessions live and they’ve complemented it all with extra material on both the Red Button and online.  As a fan, I couldn’t ask for much more.

But this year, the beeb has let me down. And not just me. Thousands of us are up in arms and feeling very let down, because the BBC – probably due to one of its many austerity measures – has done the dirty and made a deal with the devil.  Sky TV will now be showing all the races live, with the BBC showing just half of them live along with edited highlights of the rest.

Sky, to their credit, seem to be taking the sport seriously and have devoted a whole channel to it.  But, can you order that channel on it’s own? No, of course not. In order to get it, you have to subscribe to the complete Sky Sport package. Money grabbing bastards!

Now, I don’t have the Sports package as it would be a waste of my money: F1 is about the only sport I follow with any level of real interest (the coming and goings (mainly goings) of the Arse, are only of interest to me when they are winning, and I’m happy to catch that increasingly rare occurence on MOTD). So, in order for me to watch the F1 in its entirety I will have to fork out £22.50 a month just to get the one channel that I want. On top of that, I’m sure the contract will say that the Sky Sports package needs to be signed up to for the full year, despite the F1 calendar only running for 10 months.

So, unhappy at the thought of lining the pockets of those Australian shysters Murdoch & Son any further than I already do, I began looking at other ways of viewing my favourite sport. And I found one. And it’s legal.

The German channel RTL will be showing all the races live. RTL can be easily picked up, free-to-air, from the old Astra 19.2E satellites.
OK, it’ll be in German, but that’s easily rectified… with the mute switch. BBC R5 can then provide the audio and even if it’s out of sync, with a little bit of either video or audio stream buffering, I should be able to get it pretty close. I think.

And so this morning I popped up to B&Q and spent a whole £40 (forty quid!) on a free-to-air satellite system. A couple of hours later, it was installed and Phineas & Ferb were being all teutonic on my telly.

I’ve only done a temporary installation  - tucked it away in the corner of the garden – so that it can be easily put away at the end of each season, but it gives a good signal and the picture quality is really quite good.

The only downside I can see is that RTL, being a commercial channel, will be showing adverts during the races – much as ITV did when they had the contract – but I think I can live with that if I’m saving myself 270 quid a year.

As I mentioned previously, I’m currently working up in Warwickshire.  To break things up a bit, I stayed over for a couple of days and travelled the rest.

When I got home on Wednesday night, there was a brown envelope waiting for me. It was from the DVLA and was quite obviously a road tax renewal reminder. I opened it to see that it was for my bike, the tax for which runs out at the end of March. And that got me thinking as to when the tax on the car runs out, so I popped outside to check, only to find that it had already expired. I’ve been driving around illegally, this month.

So, why hadn’t I received a reminder? Maybe I had.

Ichecked my In Tray (the pile of letters – opened and unopened – piled precariously high on top of the printer lid, that I will get around to sorting. One day.) but there was no sign of any missive from Swansea. I checked down the back of the desk, where letters that sometimes slip off the top of the pile end up. Nothing.  Except an old bank statement from last November.

I assume it got lost in the post. Either way, I got straight on to the DVLA website and ordered a new tax disc. Whilst I was at it, I ordered the one for my bike, as well – no point in leaving it till later and then forgetting.

And whilst I was there, I noticed a very useful new service: for a one-off charge of £1.50, the DVLA will text you when your MOT is due. Excellent! I am always forgetting when my MOT is due (last year I rode around on my bike for over three months, not realising my MOT had long since expired).  But just as I was about to sign up for it, I noticed something else in the not-so-small print. Once you have had your MOT, you then have to register again (with another “one-off” charge”) to continue receiving the reminders.

What’s the point of that? That means I then have to remember to register again to get my reminders.

Helpfully though, the DVLA will send a reminder text. To remind you to register again. For your reminders. At thirty bob a time.

They can sod off.

There must be another way (he said, eyeing Google Calendar thoughtfully).

One of the downsides, for me, of living in Premier Inns – or any budget hotel used extensively by business men and women – is running the gauntlet of Deodorant Alley each morning.

I usually get down to breakfast quite early – in an attempt to stick to some sort of homelife routine – but by the time I return to my room, most people are up and have left their rooms to either go to breakfast themselves or to checkout.

Everyone has showered and readied themselves for the day, slapped on some aftershave or perfume and then applied a generous spray of deodorant and anti-perspirant to ensure that not one bead of sweat escapes their pores – because the TV advertising people tell us that’s the way it should be.

As such, the air that I breathe in the corridors – as I walk back to my room – is now infused with a heady mixture of Lynx-Gillette-the-best-a-man-can-get-Old-Spice-Chanel-Anais-Anais and many others that I can’t be bothered to mention… or remember.

And it’s a bloody horrible assault on my senses. There have been occasions – when it’s particularly pungent – when my eyes have been actually stinging by the time I get to my room.

Personally, I’m not one for anti-perspirants – they don’t seem to work for me, I’m a very sweaty person and have defeated all of Sure’s and Right Guard’s claims to “24hr protection” over the years.

Deodorants don’t seem to work for me either – they smell OK for a while but after a couple of hours, for some reason, I end up smelling of fish.

Not wanting to walk around all day smelling like a dead haddock, I tend just to have a rub down in the morning with a bar of carbolic and that will last much of the day. I will resort to a quick squirt of smelly stuff in emergency situations though.

Perhaps I should give up washing altogether and walk around in a fug of my own body odour, with flies buzzing around my head. That would keep the whiff of Deodorant Alley at bay. It might also have a detrimental effect on my social life though.

Maybe I’ll just practice holding my breath for a bit.

… that is the question.

With more and more films being made in 3D, it’s sometimes difficult to find a film that I’m willing to watch.

Because I refuse to watch 3D films.

I refuse to pay the extra ticket cost that most cinemas impose on 3D films. And I refuse to wear those bloody stupid glasses that keep sliding down my nose.

I still think that 3D is a gimmick that will die out once the novelty wears off, but I’m wondering more and more if I’m right.

Film-makers seem more than keen to make their productions in both 2D and 3D, despite the extra cost and technicalities involved, so they must be pretty confident of it’s take-off.

TV manufacturers too, are piling money into developing 3D tellies and the market is now littered with them… and they seem to be selling.

But my personal experience with 3D – both cinematic and televisual – is that it’s just a gimmick that adds very little – if anything – to the watching experience.

The last film I saw in 3D was Shrek 3. Harry and I saw it in Leicester Square last year and I just found it… well, annoying.

The glasses – apart from annoying me by continually sliding down my nose – made the film darker (I’m refering to the brightness of the film now, not its moodiness).

Yes, some of the 3D effects worked… to a degree, but I didn’t feel that any of them contributed anything positive to the overall experience.

In fact, I found that because I spent so much time rating each 3D effect on its effectiveness or not, it actually detracted from my enjoyment of the film, because I wasn’t fully immersed in it, as one should be.

But maybe that’s just me.  For his part, Harry enjoyed it, but also got annoyed with the glasses as they kept falling off his head.

3D TVs also require the use of glasses to get the proper effect. These glasses however, aren’t just the polarised type that you get in the cinema, but are actually active and will work in conjuction with the telly, passing the right bit of info into each eye as required for the brain to be fooled into building up a 3D image.

Of course, glasses as clever as that don’t come cheap: roughly 60 quid a pair, I think. So for the average family of four, that’s about 180 quid extra required to buy the glasses, as most of the tellies only come with one pair.

It could get quite expensive if you want to get a few mates round to watch the footie!

Anyway, what started this rant into the big and small screens and the pointlessness (IMHO) of adding an extra dimension to them?

I’ve just been to the flicks, that’s what, and I watched a film in glorious length and breadth, with no perceived depth (because folks, it ain’t real 3D you know, it’s just your brain being fooled. Yet again).

A couple of films that I was keen to see were only available in 3D, which pissed me off somewhat, so I started ranting to myself. And then I remembered you two and thought I’d share. Because I can be nice sometimes as well as grumpy.

Oh, and at the moment, I’m staying up in Warwickshire – Shakespeare’s county; hence the title.

Pun intended, forsooth.

The latest news from the Department Of Stating The Bleeding Bloody Obvious is that using a smartphone to access the internet and update your Facebook status whilst driving, is dangerous.

No shit, Sherlock!

A study by the Transport Research Laboratory has shown that answering emails, checking social networking sites and ordering Tom Clancy books from Amazon whilst trying to negotiate Hyde Park Corner at rush hour, can easily lead to an accident because you are not concentrating fully on the road.

Now, who commissioned this study and why didn’t they give it to me? I don’t know how much it cost for them to come to this somewhat obvious conclusion, but I’m sure I could have told them exactly the same for much less.

It’s already illegal to use a mobile (handheld) when driving, so why have this study at all?  Maybe just to compound it’s illegality even further: yes, smartphones are even more illegal to use handheld when driving than your Dad’s old Nokia 6310 (which should be made illegal purely on the grounds of street-cred).

Or could it be that the end of the financial year looms and TRL had some cash to use up in their budget?

Not that I’m a cynic or anything.

So, why is that February 29th, The World Cup, The Olympics and my Great Uncle Colin only come once every four years?

Well, I’ll tell you, because I wondering just that, so I looked it up on the internets.

We have Leap Years – where an extra day is added – simply because the Earth doesn’t rotate around the sun in exactly 365 days. It actually goes round in 365 days and six hours. Give or take. So, adding an extra calendar day every four years just keeps the calendars in sync with the planet.  I’m sure you all knew that, but did you know that, interestingly, it was Julius Caesar (allegedly) who first proposed the idea, but he made a hash of it.

The Olympics are held every four years mainly in keeping with tradition, because that’s how the ancient Greeks did it.  A period of four years is known as an Olympiad and starts on Jan 1st, running till Dec 31st four years later. The 1st Olympiad was in 1896, the date that the so-called ‘modern’ Olympics is heralded to have started, when the games were held in Athens – the first to be held under the guidance of the new International Olympic Committee (IOC). We are currently in the 30th (or XXX) Olympiad, which started on 01/01/2012

The World Cup is held every four years because… that’s how long it takes, apparently. With qualifiers to play and various other cups to play for each year – never mind the requirement to play at club level each week – it would be unreasonable, nay, impossible to have the World Cup any more frequently.

My Great Uncle Colin only comes once every four years because he lives a long way away… and not because he belongs to a weird Olympics-based, male only religion that only allows masturbation on one special day out of the 1461 in an Olympiad. You filthy-minded lot.

But this Leap Year business is certainly a strange thing. Amelia was telling me that there is a girl in her class whose birthday is today.  As such, although she is eight years old today, this is only her second proper birthday.  Poor kid.

But that made me realise I missed a trick: I should have got married on February 29th: it would have saved me a bloody fortune in anniversary presents!

“Life’s too short to be doing the washing up”, someone once said to me.

That’s something that more and more people seem to have in agreement nowadays. I think that almost everyone I know has a dishwasher (and by that, I mean the electric variety, not a hen-pecked spouse who is resigned to be doing it each night) in their kitchen.

Whilst many see them as a necessity in this day and age, I think of them more as an unnecessary extravagance.

I’ve used them many times – my dad has one  - and I know how long it can take to load it up fully; trying squeeze every last item in there whilst still allowing the door to close. And you still end up having to hand-wash larger items such as saucepans and frying pans, because they won’t fit.

The other thing that annoys me about dishwashers is that they become an extra cupboard. On many an occasion I’ve visited someone and in order to make me a cup of tea they have had to retrieve  a cup from the bowels of the dishwasher.

As you may have already guessed, we don’t have a dishwasher – although I think that Mrs M secretly hankers after one.  I just don’t see the point.  After she has spent an hour and a half cooking up a fabulous Sunday roast and I have then spent just ten minutes shovelling it down my gullet, Mrs M and I will spend some quality time together at the kitchen sink. I’ll wash and she’ll dry.

And all the pans, trays, plates, cutlery and other paraphernalia that goes with a four-person Sunday roast dinner, will be washed, dried and put away.

In about 15 minutes.

It can take that long just to load a fully laden dishwasher! Then it takes at least an hour (and lots of electricity) to wash and dry and then another 15 minutes to unload it and put it all away. If you can be bothered.

To me, it’s a no-brainer: dishwashers are just unnecessary.

Like Teasmades.

Again, what’s the point? Does anyone still use these? They’re certainly still available to buy. But to me, it seems all they are good for is for making a cup of tea… the hard way. Can anyone really be bothered with having to set it all up the night before and then having the extra items to wash and clean, just so one can have a cup of tea in bed?  Just get up and put the kettle on. It’s got to be easier.

Amelia asked me to teach her how to play chess.

Though somewhat surprised, I willingly agreed. I don’t like the kids games that they have anymore:

Ker-Plunk – It’s not as good as it used to be. They’ve changed it… and not for the better. And it takes bloody ages putting all the straws in.

Hungry Hippos – WAAAYYY to noisy!

Operation – BORING!

Monopoly (kids version) – Dull AND boring

But I love playing chess – always have. Ever since I was a kid myself. I don’t get to play very often nowadays due to a lack of opponents. Playing it against a computer isn’t the same (I always lose).

And so, I taught Amelia how to play. It took a few games for her to get an idea of how the pieces move, but she sort of has the hang of it now.

But – it has to be said – she’s rubbish: I beat her every time.

She did surprise me the other day when we suddenly found ourselves in the Sveshnikov Variation of a Sicilian Opening Gambit, but then she lost concentration when Scooby-Doo came on and I crushed her unmercifully.

Checkmate.

My house is filthy. It is riddled with germs.

My dishcloths are smothered in salmonella and E.coli and my kitchen work surfaces aren’t much better. Licking either will have me hospitalised within 24 hours.

The toilet bowl has streptococcus and staphylococcus germs lurking within it, just waiting to reach out and bite me on the bum.

And the kitchen floor is a veritable petri dish full of every disease known to mankind. I take my life in my hands every time I walk across it.

I know all this to be true because I’ve seen it on the telly; on those little films they put in-between the programmes.

A while back, a series of these films told us how advantageous it would be to replace the bars of soap on the kitchen and bathroom sinks, with handy pump dispensers that contained antibacterial soap, so as to make sure our hands would be cleaner than ever and not give a mild case of cholera should one inadvertently lick the back of one’s fingers. Such good thinking.

However, thanks to research by a company called Dettol, it has now been discovered that the pushy-down bit on these handy pump things, is covered with a thick layer of the bubonic plague.  To get around this they have developed a new soap dispenser that detects your filthy hands and dispenses just the right amount of antibacterial soap without you even having to touch it.

How splendid!

I count myself lucky to be living in an age where all these germs and bacteria can be detected and eradicated so easily.  It must have been so difficult years ago, trying not to get infected when all you had was a bar of soap and some bicarbonate of soda.

Frankly, I’m surprised the human race managed to get this far.

It’s been a long week – or at least it feels like it. Always does when I work a mixture of nights and days. By the end of the week I feel exhausted, don’t know what day it is, where I am or whether I have the right pants on. Today I felt really knackered because young Harry had me up half the night with his bad cough, thereby preventing me from catching up with some much needed shut-eye.

This morning I had to pop into town to pick up my new meter from Maplin (as I mentioned in an earlier post). Walking through town I passed the Blood Donor Centre and – feeling a bit guilty because I haven’t been for several months – decided I’d pop in and give a pint of the red stuff.

I was seen pretty quickly as there weren’t many people in and within a few minutes I was laid out on the bed with a needle in my arm, having the life-force drained out of me.

I nodded off.

Well, nearly. You know that point of extreme drowsiness where you’re awake but having weird dreams at the same time?

I was there.

There was a gentle shake of my shoulder and I opened my eyes to see a slightly concerned nurse looking at me. “You OK?” she asked.

I explained the reasons for my soporific state and she said that I shouldn’t have really come in if I was feeling that tired.  I assured her I was fine and she went away.

When I got home, I decided the rest of the afternoon was going to be spent vegging out in front of the telly. Mrs M took the kids with her to the shops so I could have some quiet time and I settled down on the sofa with a cup of tea for a couple of hours of whatever was sitting on the TiVo’s hard drive. If I was to nod off, then so be it.

Five minutes into last week’s Graham Norton Show and the phone rang. It was the brother-in-law. He’d changed his telephony provider at his office and – having several numbers – he had accidentally given his new supplier the wrong phone number on which to supply his broadband. Typically, he had an important client waiting for some documents and, of course, he couldn’t email them. He was desperate.

I finished my tea and headed round there. It took about an hour and a half for me to figure out the mass of wiring in his telephone junction box(es) and then rewire it so that the broadband signal now appeared in the adjoining office where his computer was. A little bit of fiddling with his SMTP settings and all was well once more.

Just as I was leaving, my mobile phone rang. It was my aged auntie who lives round the corner. Her burglar alarm was playing up and could I come and have a look at it?  As she wasn’t far away, I headed straight over. The problem was just a fuse in the battery-backup charging circuit. An easy fix – though I’m slightly concerned as to why it blew in the first place.

Back home, I resumed my position stretched out on the sofa and switched on the TV.  At that very point, the front door opened and the kids tumbled through and shot straight up the stairs to their bedrooms, making a noise like a herd of elephants as they did so.

Mrs Masher poked her head round the living room door. “Had a nice couple of hours to yourself? Give us a hand with this shopping willya?”

I’ve been meaning to write this post for ages, but keep putting it off.

If I had to choose what I consider to be my worst fault, I’d say it’s procrastination.

Or tardiness.

Or picking my nose.

And eating it. That’s gross.

Not listening properly to the wife as she tells me how banal interesting her day has been, can be quite irksome. To her.

And beating the children on a regular basis is a bit off. Probably.

But as bad habits go, procrastination is right up there with them and I practice it far more than I should.

Doesn’t matter what it is, I’ll always put it off till later if I can.

There’s always mañana.  That’s my motto.

If there is a job needs doing around the house I can always find something to do that is FAR more important, like watching that film on telly that I’ve meaning to see, or reading that really long article in Cosmopolitan, or alphabetizing my DVD collection. Again.

I wish I could be more like my dad, a firm follower of the Nike ethos: “Just Do It”.  He’ll redecorate his whole house in the same time it takes me to pick some paint from the Dulux colour chart, vacillating as I do between the 200 different shades of white, before being overruled by the current Mrs M and settling on magnolia. Again.

I need to sort myself out. Make a pledge here and now that I’ll procrastinate no more. Put it in writing for all to witness.

“Just Do It Masher!” That shall be my new motto! No more rain-checks; no more dilly dallying; no more putting things on back burners! From now on I shall be Captain Dynamic; a doer; Mr Get-things-done.

I’ll do it now. I’ll write that pledge for you all to see!

Ooh look, SpongeBob’s on.

After reading one of Dave’s posts earlier this week, I got to thinking about social networking.

Now, I’ve never done the social networking thing.

Which is blatantly not true: I’ve been down the pub with mates on many occasions.

What I mean is, I’ve never been interested in the internet version of it.

Facebook is huge and just about everyone I know is on it.

But I’m not. Never have been. Never wanted to.

I can see how it can be useful for keeping in touch with family and friends, but I’ve always managed to do that pretty well just using the older technologies of email and telephone.

And I’ve never subscribed to the banality that is Twitter.  I’ve seen some of the things that people write on there:

“Just had a lovely cup of tea and a biscuit. Mmmm”

” OMG I just saw Fergal Sharkey in Waterstones!!”

“Rachel is insane. Vote her out now #BB” (I think I’ve got that right – I don’t really understand the hashtag thing).

“I’m just going to bed now. Goodnight everyone.”

It’s the mundane taken to a whole new level.  I think one reason Twitter is so popular is because celebrities use it and it makes ordinary people feel more in touch with their heroes. Like they’ve been accepted into their circle of friends because they now know their innermost thoughts – well, the ones they twitter about, anyway.

Actually, I’ve just checked my Twitter account – yes, unbelievably, I have one. I set it up several years ago for a specific purpose but lost interest in it after only two weeks. But anyway, going back to my account, a quarter of the people following me are well-known celebs. Yes! 25% of my followers are high profile celebrities! Not many Twitter users have that claim, I’m sure.

To quantify that though: I actually have just four people “following” me.

My mate Graham W.

A bloke called Mike, who I don’t know.

A girl spammer called Danielle.

And Stephen Fry.

And they are all, I’m sure, disappointed with the paucity of titbits from me – seeing as in the 3 or 4 years (I’ve no idea) that I’ve had the account, I’ve never sent one single tweet (God, I hate that term!).

I did do the Friends Reunited thing when it first came out, only to find myself being contacted by people from school who now wanted to keep in touch with me. They never did that when I was at school!  Out of all the people who did contact me via FR, only one of them was an actual proper mate at school  - my old best friend Graham, who now occasionally comments here.

I’ve since removed myself from Friends Reunited.

I do have a Linked In account though. I was sort of forced into setting it up by my old boss who was insistent that it could be beneficial in finding me work. It hasn’t been. But that may be due to the fact that I’ve not taken it seriously and have entered false/comedy information into it. And my photo on there bears more than a passing resemblance to Mr George Clooney.

Oh, and I have a Google+ account (googles version of Facebook). Again, I got talked into it by a friend about a year ago. I did actually use it.

Just once.

Maybe I’m out of touch with what makes the Blackberry generation tick (OK, let’s face it: I AM out of touch), but it worries me that nowadays, not only does everybody want to know absolutely everything about everybody else, but that just about everybody is willing to tell them.

“At the roundabout take the third exit “.

“The third exit you say? OK. Done that. Now what?”

“In 100 yards, take the left turning and your destination will be 50 yards on the right.”

“OK. Turning left.”

“You have reached your destination.”

“I have indeed. Thank you.”

I often have conversations in the car with Sharon, my SatNav bird. This isn’t a new thing. I’ve done it for years. I’m quite possibly mad.

Or lonely.

On long journeys, I used to spend lots of time chatting with Wildfire, an advanced and innovative voicemail service from Orange. It was interactive and with the right phrases I could sometimes kid myself that I was having a proper conversation with the Wildfire bird on the other end. Despite the fact that the voice recognition worked really well, the service was sadly scrapped. Probably because I was the only one using it.

Voice recognition has come a long way in recent years though. The system in my car works quite well, though it does have a habit of switching the air-con off when I ask for the radio to be turned on and if there is a loud external noise whilst I’m speaking, it sometimes gets confused and assumes I want to switch languages (it can speak five… which is four more than I can): “Gazeben Deutchen haben schninckenpoppen” it will say – or something like that .

“Er, nine”, I reply and luckily it reverts back to English.

I’ll often also hold a conversation with the Self Service till at Sainsbury’s:

” Please place item in bagging area.”

“Yes. Done that.”

“Have you swiped your Nectar card?”

“You know I haven’t. There you go.”  *swipes card*

“Card accepted. Did you use any of your own bags?”

“Nope, I forgot again. They’re all stuffed in that little gap between the fridge and the larder and I just don’t remember to pick them up…” and so the conversation goes on. People standing next to me try not to make eye contact.

But then the stupid machine does something really annoying: once I’ve picked up my shopping and walked off, it waits till I’m about 20 feet away before saying “Thank you for using Sainsbury’s Self Service Checkout.” 

“No problem” I shout back over my shoulder… because I have to get the last word in.

Talking of getting the last word in brings me to the stupidest talking machine of them all: my telephone answering machine at home. It takes messages OK, but (and I only noticed this a short while ago when I was at home but was screening a call) when the calling party has finished leaving a message and they hang up… when they have hung up… once they have put the phone down and are no longer on the line… they have cleared… gone… probably making a cup of tea or whatever it is they want to do once they have put the phone down, my stupid but very polite answering machine then says “Thank you for calling.”

Machine AI still has a long way to go, methinks.

Yippee ki-yay, Coffeemaker.

Whilst taking measurements for yesterday’s post, I noticed that my digital multimeter wasn’t working properly.

In fact, it was being downright dangerous by not showing any AC voltages. I opened it up and checked the fuse. It was OK. I started to take it apart a bit more and then thought better of it. It had served me well, but I’d had it for almost twenty years. I’d certainly had my money’s worth out of it… especially as I hadn’t paid for it: it kind of followed me when I left BT.

No, it was time I treated myself to a new one, especially as they are now not nearly as expensive as they used to be.

I spent ages perusing the internets, making sure I chose one that had all the functions I wanted – and maybe a few that I didn’t.

Eventually I settled on one from Maplin.

I’ve mentioned before how useless Maplin can be and how they never have in stock what I want, so I was pleasantly surprised when I checked online and saw they had two available. I immediately reserved one and then on Sunday afternoon – having treated the missus to a slap up meal for her birthday, so you can all stop pestering me about it now – I strode into Maplin and presented my reservation number to the first nerd in a blue fleece I could find. He, in turn, presented me with a box containing my new shiny new gadget. I opened it to check everything was in order and had a very quick play with the meter.

I didn’t like it.

It had a horrible knob.

Not that I’m fussy about such things.

But, obviously, I am.

So I had a look through the meters they had on display before choosing . “I want that one”, I said, imitating Andy Pipkin from Little Britain’s Lou & Andy.

“That one is a bit more expensive, sir and I’m afraid I can’t do it at the same price.”

“I know. I want that one”, I continued.

Blue fleece disappeared downstairs shaking his head and was gone for quite a while. Eventually he returned carrying an empty box with a picture of my meter on it. The look on his face showed he had unwelcome news to impart. “I’m afraid the display model is the last one in the shop”, he said.

I explained that was OK and perhaps we could negotiate a small price reduction as a result.

“Unfortunately, the box is empty: it doesn’t have any leads.”

I explained that was also OK: we could take the leads from the box containing the meter that I no longer wanted.

“But then we’d have a meter that we can’t sell because it has no leads.”

“You’ve already got a meter you can’t sell because it has no leads”, I said exasperatedly, pointing toward the display model sitting on the counter. “What’s the difference?”

But he was unbowed: it wasn’t in stock and so I would have to order one and they’d have it for me next week.

Bloody Maplin! They’ve done it to me again!!

Meantime, I’ve gone back to testing mains voltages with a wet finger.

Following my post t’other day about my incredibly rising electricity bill, I decided to check a few items, just to see how much they were actually costing me to run.

To do this is quite simple with just a few bits of info required to work it out: the power the device is using and the charge for that amount of power from the electricity company.

Power is easily calculated because Watts = Volts x Amps.  So, if we measure the current that a device is drawing it’s not too hard to work out the power (knowing that voltage in the UK is a constant (sort of) of 240V.  Mine measured slightly higher, but I’ve used 240 in my calcs.

This picture shows the actual voltage as measured in my kitchen and as you can see it’s slightly higher than 240 but well within tolerance. Note the very safe way I’ve attached the leads to the socket! Do NOT try this at home, kids.

I then measured the current draw of several devices around the home. This picture is of the 21″ flat screen telly in the dining room. It’s drawing a pretty miserly 191mA when switched on and a mere 22mA when in Standby mode.

British Gas offer two tiers of prices depending on your usage. I’ve taken a mean point between the two of 15p per Kilowatt hour which I think reasonably accurately reflects what I pay.

So, that gives us the following:

I took a few measurements and present them here for interest… or not, as the case maybe.

• 40″ Sony flat screen based on being switched on for 6 hours per day and off for 18 = 20p per day
• 21″ Ferguson (yeah right!) flat screen based on similar usage = a mere 5 pence a day
• Cordless telephone = 5 pence a day
• 2.8kW electric kettle = (assuming it takes about 5 mins to boil) 4.5 pence
• PC (if left on for 24 hrs as mine sometimes is) = 25p

These figures are all estimated/rounded up/down and educatedly guessed at, but do give a rough idea of what a few items actually cost to run.

And it’s not as expensive as I thought it would be. Certainly not enough to justify my high bills anyway.

This needs some more thought, so I’m off to spend a couple of hours in my newly installed all-electric hot tub to help me think.