Mutterings for the Minority

Katherine Jenkins’ Drugs Revelation

Poor old Katherine Jenkins.  How difficult it must have been for this talented multi-millionaire songstress to come clean and reveal to the tabloids that she’d done various drugs in her pre-stardom days.   Grown men and women have leapt to her defence and expressed admiration for her having the strength to come clean.

Oh come off it.  I mean really, how hard could it have been for her.  She’s well liked (as the public/media reaction illustrates) and financially secure (having recently been awarded a £6 million pound recording contract). 

Can you imagine the outcry if a lesser known/squeaky clean personality had come out about their past misdemeanours. Need I say more?

Of course there is the issue of Christmas being just 51 days away and a certain ‘Sacred Arias‘ album having been released just a couple of weeks ago - so it couldn’t be one massive marketing and media push by her agent could it?

Nah, our Katherine is too nice for that.  Surely.

Goodbye Dad

Today is a very sad day indeed as my Dad finally lost his battle against cancer at 15:35 this afternoon.  Fortunately, we were at his bedside to say our last goodbyes.

The last 5 weeks or so have flown by and if the truth be known he was always fighting a losing battle against bowel, liver and lung cancer - so it is perhaps with as much sadness as relief that he is now suffering no more.

Rest in peace Dad, you might be gone, but you’ll never be forgotten.

Welcome to the world Baby DDWT

Our very special daughter and sister to DDWT Junior came into the world today at 18:17 and weighed in at a healthy 8lb 8oz.

I’ll now try and tell you all about the day - from what I can recollect.

03:10 - Mrs DDWT wakes up because baby is starting to rumble her tummy - consequently I start to mildly panic and insist we call the hospital.

03:50 - I go and get my Mam (in order to babysit DDWT Junior) and the first words I hear on the radio on the way are “Relax, take it easy” (from one of Mika’s songs). How apt! My Mam duly arrives and is as nervous/excited as we all are.

07:00 - Baby was now beginning to get a good contraction rhythym going and it was time to head off to Singleton hospital. Details of my nervous system and my urgent requirement for the toilet shall remain undisclosed - except to say that I made it in time…just.

07:30 - Ok, we’re on the labour ward. Mrs DDWT starts to crank up the TENS machine a notch or two.

09:00 - Baby decides to take her time and slow down the old pelvic thrusts. This meant Mrs DDWT was taken down to the maternity ward to wait and “see what happens”.

11:05 - Things start to gather pace again and we were on the move (literally) - this time to the delivery unit. Here we were greeted by Fran Hathaway and Eleri Beckett the midwives on duty at the time. Everyone thought it would all be done and dusted by clocking off time at 14:00. Little did we know at that stage eh!

14:30 - Baby was still inside Mrs DDWT’s tummy and had seen off two midwives when number 3 arrived, Linda Richards. Linda was going to be with us until 21:00 - if it took that long. Mrs DDWT was getting well into the gas and air.

17:15 - It was decision time as Mrs DDWT was now beginning to tire and was in a lot of pain - with no sign of baby either. A quick examination showed that baby had moved the wrong way and it was decided that the best course of action was an epidural - which neither us were very happy about. At this stage in proceedings Mrs DDWT gave me a slap for my efforts and tried to ‘trap’ the midwives arm whilst trying to break the waters! I can laugh about it now.

17:50 - The thought of the epidural was too much and the sight of the anaesthetist all tooled up and raring to go was enough for Mrs DDWT and baby to get their skates on and quickly. Thankfully Linda could see that the situation had dramatically changed and the threat of the injection went away as we were now well and truly into the final stages of labour.

18:17 - will now go down in history as the time that Baby DDWT came into this wonderful world.

So there you have it, my account of our little daughters journey into the world.

Washing machine woe

It’s not been the best of days really. Our Zanussi FL1082 washing machine started leaking big style this morning and some baby items got damaged in the process.

Now you’re probably wondering what the connection is there, well I’ll tell you. Mrs DDWT - currently in the midst of baby ‘nesting’ mode - decided to ’spring clean’ some baby items in the washing machine. However, whilst the wash was in progress the said baby items got jammed in the seal between the washing machine drum and door - cue a ‘burnt’ seal and damaged baby items. The end result was a leaky washing machine. Grrrrr.

With tempers flaring - “what the hell did you want to wash x in the washing machine for?” - I decided to take solace in the Yellow Pages and find a local Zanussi repair centre. Fortunately, there was one in Morriston - ‘H. Phillips’. A quick call and estimate later and our repair said he’d be with us shortly to collect the washing machine - which he duly did.

Some 3 hours or so later our washing machine returned and was thankfully now back in it’s original state - i.e not leaking! The service was excellent in fairness and I’ll be sure to use them again if the need ever arises (which I hope it doesn’t!).

Unfortunately, the whole episode meant that a leak had sprung in my wallet…. to the tune of £75.

Spring snowfall

Like most of Wales, we awoke this morning to find a 1cm covering of snow outside - which was totally unexpected as the forecast had been for ‘light snow showers’.

Having been up since around 7am DDWT Junior and I got to see most of the snow and the snow showers, as by the time Mrs DDWT surfaced from bed (around 9am) most of it had started to melt away in the warm ‘ish spring sunshine. Come mid-morning and you’d never have said it had snowed at all!

With the afternoon sunshine, I decided to take the family down to Swansea’s new central library - which they hadn’t yet seen. Having been before I was in little doubt that they’d be impressed and I was proved correct as we spent the best part of an hour and a half in the children’s area alone!

It really is a super library and if you are ever in Swansea, then I’d recommend a visit. You can even grab a bite to eat or have a nice cuppa in the coffee shop adjacent to it in Swansea City Council’s civic centre.

I suppose it goes without saying that we couldn’t leave without DDWT Junior borrowing a couple of dinosaur books and Mrs DDWT picking up her usual batch of autobiography’s - Marie Helvin and Leslie Grantham in this case. Me well I went for my usual techy stuff, “Going to Bed With Google”!

No visit to Swansea is complete without a visit to the beach, so we took the short cut from County Hall straight onto the beach. At this point I thought it would be a good time to take a snap of the progress being made on Swansea’s highest (to be) building - Meridian Quay - since the last time I took a picture.

It’s grown quite considerably as you can see!

After last week’s weight horror show, I decided not to put added pressure on myself by weighing this week, especially as I have been exercising and watching what I’ve eaten. I couldn’t have handled the disappointment of not losing any weight this week.

Anyway, yesterday I did a 30 minute stint on the elliptical worker (10.8KM) and I did another 30 minutes today (11KM) and burnt 302 calories in the process. So I’m getting there, albeit slowly.

Shunting cars

I don’t if it’s me but there seems to have been one hell of a lot of road traffic accidents in the Swansea area over the last couple of weeks.

This week alone I’ve seen (well driven past) at least 5 accidents, all of which appeared to be shunts. All of this has been whilst driving approximately 12 miles a day (roundtrip) to work and back. That’s a lot of RTA’s for such a short distance.

Perhaps the poor visibility and saturdated road surfaces haven’t helped matters or maybe that’s just a coincidence. There’s no doubting that drivers appear to be driving faster and in some cases tailgating more than ever before. A reflection of the ever increasing pressure on people to be at destinatation A before X time perhaps? Let’s face it, life today is a hell of a lot quicker than it used to be. That’s no excuse mind you for being aware of what’s going on around you - especially whilst behind the wheel.

Talking of saturation, it’s quite astonishing to think how much rain we’ve already had this month and with some the forecast being for up to 4″ of rain over the next couple of days, it’s little wonder that Janaury 2008 is heading for the wettest January since records began in 1914.

How many forum users…..

Someone sent me this little gem via email today, I’m sure you’ll all agree it’s pretty much spot on!

How many forum members does it take to…

1 to change the light bulb and to post that the light bulb has been changed

14 to share similar experiences of changing light bulbs and how the light bulb could have been changed differently

7 to caution about the dangers of changing light bulbs

6 to argue over whether it’s “lightbulb” or “light bulb” …

another 6 to condemn those 6 as stupid

2 industry professionals to inform the group that the proper term is “lamp”

15 know-it-alls who claim they were in the industry, and that “light bulb” is perfectly correct

19 to post that this forum is not about light bulbs and to please take this discussion to a light bulb forum

11 to defend the posting to this forum saying that we all use light bulbs and therefore the posts are relevant to this forum

36 to debate which method of changing light bulbs is superior, where to buy the best light bulbs, what brand of light bulbs work best for this technique and what brands are faulty

5 People to post pics of their own light bulbs

15 People to post “I can’t see S$%^!” and their own light bulbs

7 to post URL’s where one can see examples of different light bulbs

4 to post that the URL’s were posted incorrectly and then post the corrected URL’s

13 to link all posts to date, quote them in their entirety including all headers and signatures, and add “Me too”

5 to post to the group that they will no longer post because they cannot handle the light bulb controversy

4 to say “didn’t we go through this already a short time ago?”

13 to say “do a search on light bulbs before posting questions about light bulbs”

1 to bring politics into the discussion by adding that George W. isn’t the brightest bulb.

4 more to get into personal attacks over their political views.

1 moderator to lock the light bulb thread.

1 forum lurker to respond to the original post 6 months from now and start it all over again.

Funny but true!

Marks and Spencers

After reading the BBC’s article online about “retailers suffer after M&S slump“, I couldn’t help but chuckle given the recent experience I had at the hands of the Marks and Spencers sale.

Here we were on Christmas Day (yes sad I know) shelling out almost £300 in the M&S sale only to find days later an email arrive from M&S stating …

Dear Customer,

Thanks for your recent order.

We experience extremely high levels of demand during the M&S SALE and occasionally items sell out as other orders for them are in the process of being placed - orders are confirmed on a first come first served basis. As a result we’re sorry to tell you that since your order was placed, one or more of the items you ordered are out of stock. These items have now been cancelled from your order and will not be visible in your online account.

Obviously you have not been charged for any of these out of stock items. Please check your online account to view any remaining items that will be sent to you.

We apologise for any disappointment this may cause. If you have any questions about your order, please feel free to call us on 0845 609 0200. If you are calling from overseas please call us on +44 1925 672 317.

Kind regards

Customer Services

Eventually I got my order, but the value had shrunk to under £200!

If we take a cynical view of this episode, surely M&S must have some idea of their stock levels PRE-SALE? And as a result you’d expect that their website (which is driven by Amazon I hasten to add) is capable of keeping tabs on stock levels. A quick google around finds that I’m not the only one who’s suffered this fate.

I mean the Christmas season does come around the same time year in year out doesn’t it? So you’d expect them to be stocked up to the hilt. Or maybe I’m just expecting too much *sigh*

I know the BBC article refers to the high street in particular and that the M&S online effort was indeed up on previous years. BUT for me profit and sales to any business are it’s bread and butter regardless of the channel (high street, web, phone, whatever) used surely?

Little wonder then with retailers being unable to fulfill orders online (or not) that they’ll lose money.

Back in school

I’m glad to report that DDWT Junior’s first day back in school went without a hitch - thankfully! He even managed to be the first one there which was a surprise.

Perhaps what was more surprising however was that at least six new classmates joined today - taking the number in attendance up to around 20. A number - in my opinion - which is quite small even if the class is only a nursery one. Not that I’m complaining of course

It’s quite weird actually that as first time parents we often think is it only us who has a child that perhaps (delete as appropriate)…. doesn’t sleep through, won’t eat fruit, doesn’t like vegetables, has tantrums, etc, etc.

Then, as I have today, you strike up a conversation with work colleagues about said topic and guess what - yes indeed, they have exactly the same problems as us. Will we ever remember that when we’re faced with the same dilemma next time? I doubt it. Human nature eh.

Road to/from hell?

Today is my first day back in work after my 2 week festive holiday and unsurprisingly I’ve been faced with a deluge of email and voicemail. Typically this usually means I can kiss goodbye to the best part of the day as I trawl through what I’ve been sent. This process usually reveals that 70% of the stuff is crap and I can either simply delete or ignore it. It begs the question I guess of how did we manage before the advent of email, etc. Ah yes I remember, a mound of scribbled notes on my desk

And what with no lunchtime training to look forward to for a few weeks, the days ahead are going to feel rather long and increasingly frustrating no doubt. Just what you need before a nice slow commute home via Oystermouth Road - which just happens to be at the centre of 13 weeks of roadworks commencing today I hasten to add! Now, where did I leave my bike…

I’m currently wasting the bandwidth (LOL) of work’s internet connection listening to Radio 5 Live in readiness for the FA Cup 4th round draw. Hopefully the Swans will get a decent draw and then go on and paste the cloggers from Havant & Waterlooville in their 3rd round replay on January 16th. Let’s hope that Stuart Atwell isn’t reffing that game shall we!