Half the country has a bad cold and you know whose fault it is…….those pesky Canadians. Apparently, the artic weather we are experiencing here in the UK is due to the Gulf Stream blowing cold air and bits of Tim Horton’s doughnuts over here and that’s why I spent yesterday sneezing, coughing and generally feeling like crap …….oh, Canada!

You know, whenever there’s a global survey to find the best places in the world to live, Canada always does well.
We’re told that no one in Canada is ever robbed, butchered, stabbed or murdered. And I don’t doubt that all of this is true. Canada is Switzerland…………. with lots of wheat.

They try to tell us that it’s a wilderness full of bears who’ll kill you if you run away or stand still – I can never remember which. But do you know how many people in the whole of the vastness of Canada have been killed by bears in the past two years? It’s one. Honestly, more people than that are killed in America and the UK by their underpants.
(more…)

Hello Everyone.

It’s Heidi here. I thought I would write to you to wish you all a very happy new year as I am sure John will forget in tomorrow’s blog. My tummy is getting bigger and the Thingy feels like a flock of butterflies live in there with the Thingy especially at night. It is a wonderful feeling though. I wanted to thank all of you who sent Christmas cards and baby gifts. I have sent you all cards, as well, so I hope you get them soon. I read the comments you write on the blog everyday and so many contain such kind words for John and I so thank you so very very much.

John has a cold or if you listen to him he is “extremely ill.” He has a runny nose, a sore throat, a bit of a cough and every few minutes his eyes fill with water: He is currently in bed telling me and anyone else who will listen that he has the flu. He does not have the flu. He has a cold. The same cold that I have had and hundreds of thousands of other people here in the UK have had. John refuses to say that he has a cold because that is not manly enough. So John says he has the flu because that makes him sound less of a wimp. Is that how you spell wimp or is it whimp? In Dutch we would say “zeurpiet.” It is also an excuse for him to stay in bed, watch re-runs of the Sopranos and West Wing and for me and the Thingy to feed him poached eggs and chicken soup all day.
(more…)

Well………it’s all over for another year. I do really enjoy the Christmas holidays; it’s just that the lead-up to the event is so bloody stressful. I realized that as I didn’t write a blog thingy on the 25th and 26th that I had forgotten to tell you about the hell of shopping at Christmas……….not for gifts………but for food. Heidi and I decided on a dawn raid on our local supermarket which is called Waitrose the day before Christmas Eve. Unfortunately, our plans were discovered and the secret was out. We arrived to find that everyone in Essex was trying to do the same – it was a total and utter nightmare…

In one corner families struggled for control of the pancetta……….which seems to be the “in thing “this year. Elsewhere pitched battles were being fought in the goose fat aisle after celebrity chef Jamie Oliver had announced that this was what you should put on your roasted potatoes this year.
(more…)

I hope you had a good Christmas ……..what?…….. You didn’t ……….. Your turkey was too dry, your kids spent all day glued to their PlaystationXboxes, and you didn’t bother watching the Big Christmas Film because you’ve owned it for years on DVD.

What you should have had to liven things up was my mother. Because the family was all together with my sister and kids in from Hong Kong, Mum had a steely resolve that the Christmas holidays would be exactly like the Christmas holidays she enjoyed when she was a child. Only without the rationing of meat or the German’s dropping bombs on the proceedings. My mother does not like American television shows because she “can’t understand what they’re on about.” She doesn’t like PlayStationXboxes either because “they rot your brain.”

And so it was that my niece and nephew and the rest of us took a break from trying to be Jimi Hendrix on Guitar Hero and paused from watching a Zombie’s head fall off in Shawn of the Duty Grand Theft Invaders 89 and we all played charades
(more…)

Is it just me or is this dollop of days between Christmas and New Year ………. uummm ……….a bit weird? People sit around in a comatosed state of fatigue and flatulence. Their festive decorations already look as sad as Judge Judy in stockings and suspenders, and as you sit in your chair wearing your Christmas sweater you already know that yep …………. it’s leftover turkey again for dinner tonight.

Well, here’s something that’ll cheer you up. Let’s start planning Christmas 2009! Oh, why the sour face? Lots of people have it all boxed off already by now and some aren’t even mentally ill.

Yes, I know. It’s sick, isn’t it? The very idea of thinking about next Christmas when this year’s sprouts are still passing through the digestive system not is in my humble opinion ……………grotesque. Yet plenty do. Which is why, as we speak, there are people out buying reduced wrapping paper, slightly damaged cards, cut-price shirt-and-tie sets, just so that they can say smugly, around next August, “Oh. We’ve had Christmas done and dusted since last December.” ………before they climb into their Toyota Prius and drive home excited about the fact that there is tofu for dinner.
(more…)

Good morning everyone

As an early Christmas gift I thought you might like to see a taster of our new commercial. This marks the start of our new advertising campaign showing that once again the Fun is waiting oboard the ship’s of Carnival.
(more…)

The credit crunch……….has I am sure put a damper on some people’s choice of Christmas gifts. Television pundits give the impression that they know its source. The bloke cold-calling from India, attempting to sell me shares on the basis that a tumbling market was precisely the time to invest, claimed he had pinpointed it.
In fact, the key to how we might emerge from this economic thingy lies in a spot to which no one has yet paid much attention, largely for fear that if they did take an interest, people might get the wrong idea.

Hope, you see, can be found in a lingerie shop in Tokyo. According to a newspaper report, the shop, called Wishroom, has been selling out of its new line of luxury bras so quickly it is barely able to keep up with the surge of customers…….. yep ……… bras. And so, in these difficult times and with just one last shopping day before Christmas, I think I have found the perfect gift for you all to buy your loved ones ……. Oh…..I forgot to mention….This is a man bra. A moob tube. A gentleman’s uplifter. A top bollock holder.
In less than a week, the shop sold 11,000 of the dainty little numbers – tailored for the male contour and finished in black, leather-look nylon – retailing at just under $25 each.
(more…)

So, what did I get Heidi for Christmas?………Well, hopefully she won’t read this because that will give the game away. However…………..I will tell you that I bought her a plasma TV for the bedroom. This means she can relax in bed on cold winter mornings and watch her favorite soap operas and that gardener chap on Desperate Housewives have rumpy pumpy with anything with a pulse.

However, buying said TV was not easy. I went inside the TV shop with my credit card greased and ready for action. The salesman opened proceedings with a lot of technical bollocks I didn’t care about or understand, but I was expecting that. What I was not expecting was the sheer complication of giving him my money.
(more…)

It’s good to be home. Last night Heidi and drove to Manchester to attend the first of many Christmas parties (more about that later) and rather than drive the 200 miles back afterwards we decided to stay at a hotel for the night……….what a mistake that was.

I guess I had better not mention the name of the hotel but let’s just say it rhymes with a famous British cheese called Stilton………and it was beyond dreadful. The room we slept in last night was hysterically bad. The bed cannot possibly have cost more than $1 and couldn’t have been more uncomfortable if it had been made from barbed wire and cactus.
(more…)

I want to talk about the very first time I went on stage on a Carnival Cruise Line vessel. It was 1988 and I was a very attractive and slim assistant bar manager. I used to stand at the back of the theater on the Holiday and Celebration and watch the king of the ship entertain. That king was the cruise director and how I dreamed of one day being them.

Bill Panoff, Gary Hunter, Kenny Day, Malcolm Kennedy, Dave Armor, Eddie Capone, Bob Goss, Bob Hamill, David Fee, J.B. Anthony but not some Elvis impersonator called Gene Cook……..he was an idiot and had no more right to be a cruise director than a food blender.
(more…)