I went to the Red Carpet Dance Club last night. Not the sort of sentence I get to write very often, because I enjoy nightclubs less than I enjoy having a colonoscopy. But because one of my staff had her 21st birthday and the entire department was going and because they expected me to pay for the drinks………..I promised to come for a few minutes

Obviously, at 45, I was more than a decade older than almost everyone else, and subsequently may as well have been smeared head to toe with my in yak poo. (more…)

There are signs that your life has reached a certain level. You haven’t visited the dentist in 11 years, though you have a hole in your tooth so big you can rest a buffalo’s tongue in it. You still have the same pair of underpants that you spent your honeymoon night in. And you have more leads, chargers and adaptors than a Radio Shack superstore yet none of them fit the thing you want to charge.

This is probably what life coaches would call “poor personal management.” I prefer to call it “just being total crap.”
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“Your toothbrush may be killing you”……..so screamed the pop up thingy on my computer this morning as I turned on the BBC News website. Obviously this was met by me shouting “what a load of bollocks” at Mr. Dell but curiosity got the better of me and so I read the commercial.

And according to this online advert it turns out we are so cavalier about tooth hygiene that it’s not uncommon to find all manner of nasties on a toothbrush and it got me thinking. We use the same brush for months…..and in my case probably years, letting it fester in the bathroom gathering bacteria in its moist bristles and then we shove it in our mouths.
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I’m writing this on a train. Yep……….I am on a train….and they’ve just announced that we’ve had to stop near some cows because the train in front of us has broken down. I should have known ….it’s a train operated by Virgin………which means of course it was never going to go all the way.

So, good morning everyone and I hope you missed me as much as I missed you and before I forget  …….thanks for allowing me that week off….it was simply marvelous. So why am I on a train? Well, that’s because I am heading to Liverpool, home of the Beatles and tomorrow it will be home to the Queen Victoria, more of which I will write about later. I was going to drive to Liverpool from my home in Essex, but it’s a 4 hour drive.
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Oh no………………….oh please God no.

My cry for heavenly help is not because I have discovered a wart on my thingy or that my first cruise on the Carnival Splendor will be a charter of French nudists. Nope………….my agony is because my daughter Kye has recently discovered ……………I can’t even bring myself to type this word…………….I feel sick……………come on John …………..try………………….OK here goes …………… she has recently discovered………………….Barney.
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One minute life is all rosy and happiness and contentment fills the air and then BAM……without warning………that’s me in the dog house. And it’s Heinz’s fault.

That’s because I did something shockingly terrible last night. (more…)

The World Cup is over and as LeBron James and the Miami Heat are not making the news as they are each day in the States the BBC has turned to slightly more mundane stories. For example British Airways announced that due to the strikes held by the flight attendants the airline will no longer be serving food to economy class passengers on flights of 4 hours or less.

This has prompted a lot of moaning and complaining and is surely yet another nail in BA’s coffin and one step nearer Air France becoming our national airline. But actually ………..thinking about it…………..who cares?
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It was a strange weekend. Holland got their arses kicked by the donkey throwing Spanish in the World Cup final and this meant that Heidi cried………….and my life as a monk continued.

It was also very, very hot in here in the UK and when it’s hot us Brits get very cranky because air conditioning hasn’t been invented. It’s not worth having it really because the British summers last about three days. In fact as I write to you now it is raining really hard. But as I said, this past weekend it was so hot I saw a squirrel holding its nuts with a pot holder.
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Good Morning Everyone

This is Kye writing the blog today as Mummy and Daddy are upstairs shouting at each other. I think it’s about packing for our trip to the big boat called New Amsterdam tomorrow. Daddy is shouting at Mummy that she has put too much stuff in the suitcase. I heard Daddy say that he isn’t going to pay any money for having packed too much stuff. Mummy called him a cheap bastard. I don’t know what that means but as long as I have my toys and my diapers I am OK. (more…)

I have always loved a good spy story. From John le Carre to Jack Bauer, whether it be in a book or on film. In recent years though spy films and books have been centred around stopping bad guys from exploding bombs in their underpants in New York and London. But as you will have seen from the news yesterday and today…….the Russians are back! Ten deep cover spies leading lives of dead drops, data bursts and proper spy stuff have been arrested by the FBI. What a brilliant story.

And did you see the spy who was using the name Anna Chapman came? If not……….here she is. (more…)