BBC


Stigma – Do I Look Mental? #MentalPatient 5

Well twitter was a fun place tonight. An awful lot of people are deeply offended, upset, angered or plain livid with ASDA and Tesco. If you missed it I’m sure you’ll read about it soon. It’s not the costume that offends me so much as the name. Mental patient. I’m a mental patient actually, thanks ASDA. Read Nickie’s post on this costume. It has offended me and I am not really buying ASDAs “sorry” tweets. Way to go, fuel stigma and prejudice.   Do I look mental? Is there a uniform my psychotherapist forgot to issue me with? If I was cooking and had a big knife would that be a Halloween worthy look? Can you tell by looking at me I’m nuts? Mental? Medicated?


Off On Our Hols 1

I am typing from the M5 – no one panic, I am not the driver! We are off camping for a fortnight, and when we go camping it’s more like “glamping”. We have our new Vango Airbeam With extension porch, and a “footprint” and carpets. This is not just a tent, it is bigger than our garden. We do not have a big garden, but still! Best bits are it has inflatable tubes instead of fiddly fibre glass rods. The main structure is up in minutes as it has a powerful pump. It takes longer to peg in the guide ropes than put the tent up. Last big camp we still had our Vango Sungari, which although it was a lovely tent for a family it was a nightmare to put put. It resulted in arguments every single time we set up camp. We decided last time that enough was […]


Are Smart TVs Too Smart Now?

When I was a kid, TVs were very basic, a few buttons or tuning knobs. It was on-off, channel and volume. No record, save, rewind, pause, I understood the new bits like rewind and fast forwards when they first came in, and it was great. I think now though it has got to a point where TVs are a bit too flipping SMART! It’s like the TV is secretly laughing at me, as I am one of the many parents who get their children to do the set up bits on the goggle box. I’m no technophobe (obviously as I’ve got this blog) but the TV baffles me. So many menus and buttons, and functions I do not understand. In fact the little wall mounted LED TV I bought my partner for Christmas is worse, it has all kinds of functions I can not use, it is almost a pc, […]


Foxes, What Do You Think?

In the last few years Fox attacks are seemingly on the rise. Or at least the number of times the media get hold of these stories is on the rise.The recent BBC news story It seems that foxes are attacking unguarded babies and occasionally sleeping adults. There is a pattern to it from the stories I have read. It’s always in cities, the urban fox rather than the free range variety. It’s often a baby, and it doesn’t bite just anywhere… It goes for limbs. Hands, arms, feet. Not trying to be gross but its like it knows limbs are easier to remove and is that starving that its worth the risks of entering a house for “food”. With the adult attacks it’s similar – biting adults in their sleep. I’ve read about feet, fingers and ears being chewed at. You don’t tend to hear of attacks on say, the […]


Wierd weather, Horizon on BBC

Well we all know its been good weather this week but I was talking about seasons the other day. Can we even say we have real seasons anymore? Hottest March since the 70’s, really snowy icy weather closing airports, and droughts… all happening close together I’d say. The weather is more extreme, by that I don’t mean we are due a blizzard or 2 year drought, or week long lightening storm. I mean its more intense when things do happen. Then this evening on BBC2 I watched Horizon – Global Weirding “weather weirding”, a phrase which made me cringe, but I was very interested despite this. It seems the sun has its own cycle, not just lunar cycles and the slightly irregular pattern earth spins to. Probably best you hit iPlayer than have me confuse you, but its well worth a watch. Http://bbc.co.uk/programmes/b01f893x


The time has come, finally Formula one season again.

It feels like years since the last race, but its only a few months really. The first race this year is at Albert Park, Melbourne, Australia so its on Aussie time. SkyF1 channel is live right now and was playing the practice sessions early hours. Sadly as Sky took over from the BBC I can no longer watch in bed!! Thanks for that guys. The thing is you get Skyf1 channel if you already have SkySports, or you get SkyF1HD free if you’ve already got the HD package. Seems ok if you have one of those options and get it thrown in, but if you need an upgrade to that its not cheap. Ive got the HD package BUT if I want to watch this upstairs I need to pay for multiroom which is another Tenner a month. But then that means paying extra for HD to watch on a […]