Costa Junkie

It used to be that I would do something outlandish with my weekends but these days I seem to have a burning desire for the sedate. Take Saturday for example. The sixth day of the week has become my day to take control of the child and do whatever I see fit which is great as it means I get to spend quality time with the little cherub and my good woman gets a chance to put her feet up and enjoy a well deserved break from child rearing. Once I've managed to get myself out of bed (which is easier these days as my idea of a wild Friday night is playing Xbox until 11:00) I strap little 'un into her car seat and away we go to the nearest Costa.

I order a chicken and bacon sandwich and a medium size Latte (I can't figure out what the official Costa term is for medium - grande, midi or some other fancy foreign word.) and sit down at my favourite table which is located at the rear of the establishment. This table is always empty so I like to think that it is my own personal spot that only gets used when I turn up. For the rest of the week I like to think it is roped off, reserved for their favourite customer should he happen to pop in. This has led me to wonder whether I have become a "Norm from Cheers" type of character.

I find a newspaper (preferably not a red-top one as I like to spend more than 5 minutes reading it from cover to cover) and settle in for the next hour. One advantage of having to push a pram around is that my order is brought to my table rather than having to wait in line. During this she will be sleeping like a, well, baby and doesn't wake up for at least an hour. Maybe it's something to do with the coffee aroma.

Sundays are reserved for all three of us to do something together and yesterday was no exception. First stop was the swimming pool where I was surprised to find that Little angel didn't cry when repeatedly dunked under the water. Instead she looked at us as if to say, "is that all you got?".

Once we had dried off I was again adamant that we should go back to Costa. Similarly to smoking I can always find a reason for a medium Latte in my favourite spot. If someone wanted to shoot me I'm sure they would have no problems tracking me down on a weekend.

BA - (British Arseholes)

I awoke this morning to the earth stopping news that as a result of Heathrow's fifth terminal being a total cock-up; Britain's air traffic was at a standstill.
For us living outside of the M25 everything seems to be going tickedy boo thank you very much but after I've stopped laughing I will spare a thought for all those poor people forced to spend another night in London.
My previous experiences of BA are not good so I find it rather amusing that it has been found out for being an incompetent airline masquerading as a great British institution.
Only once have I flew BA and this was out of a misguided sense of patriotism. I had been out of the country for nigh on 18 months and thought the idea of returning to the motherland on Britain's flag carrying airline to be a jolly good one. They were by no means the cheapest option available but It was one of the rare occasions where I have felt a sense of brand-loyalty. I was looking forward to "cup of tea Mr Genius", or even a "Would sir care for a hot towel?" but I soon found that the air hostesses were of the obnoxious variety. A smile was obviously too much to ask for and expecting a anything other than a Vicky Pollard shrug of the shoulders was plainly stupid of me.

Phrase Of the Day

Fuckhole

Is it really two words? I neither know nor care because this is the best collection of letters I have seen in years. I realise that it is obviously an American phrase, but this proves that not everything to come out of the land of the Cheese Burger is bad.

What a glorious way to insult someone you despise. Oh how I would love to call one of my colleagues a whithered old fuckhole.

The look on her face would be worth my instant dismissal.

The fuckhole

Back to work

It was really nice to have four consecutive days off without needing a sick note.
It goes without saying that I watched the Malaysian GP - thanks to the little one I managed to see it live - but unfortunately it was not as exciting as the previous one in Melbourne.
Ferrari are back to their old tricks, i.e. winning, and Mclaren looked as if they shot themselves in the foot on a couple of occasions during the weekend.
It was good to see Webber finally getting some just deserves for Red Bull and BMW continuing to look quicker at each event.
A smiling Jenson Interceptor was nice to see instead of the grimacing individual he became last year.

Role on Bahrain.

Good on ya BBC

I just heard the news that from 2009 Formula 1 will be broadcast on the BBC. For once I think the BBC has got it right. It may blur out the tobacco sponsorship on some of the cars (just in case they offend someone), but at least we won't have to suffer anymore bloody adverts.
The ITV broadcast has been really informative and was far superior to the coverage provided previously by the beeb but those adverts are a real pain in the ass. During a processional race (not uncommon for F1) ITV would invariably cut to an advert only to miss the only bit of on-track drama.
I guess this was down to sods law but it was (and still is) highly irksome.
All we need now is for Murray Walker to come out of retirement and the re-introduction of Fleetwood Mac's "The Chain" as the musical score and it will be F1 Nirvana.

Oh, and to get rid of Martin "I never won a race but still think I'm better than every driver ever" Brundle.

Well Done Lewis

Due to be being a responsible parent these days, I decided against staying up all night to watch the first GP of the season live from Melbourne. The race was due to be re-run by ITV at 3pm later that day so I had to dodge any programmes that might spoil the result for me.
I had managed to stay in the dark as to the outcome of the race until half an hour before it was due to start. It was at this point during the pre-race build up that my helpful brother walked into the room and said:"it was a piece of piss for Hamilton wasn't it?!"
I won't tell you what I said in response to this but it wasn't nice.
Indeed it was a piece of piss of Mr H, but the race between the rest of the cars was good fare. It was great to see an F1 car sliding through corners again as opposed to being artificially helped. The engines now sound as if they can breathe again thanks to the banning of the oxy-moronic device that is traction control. These are the best drivers in the world racing the best cars, surely TC has no place in the sport.
I was particularly pleased to see Sebastian Bourdais do well as I think he has been deserving of a race seat for quite a while. I last saw him race in Champ Car at Surfers Paradise where he clinched his second title.
Lewis was in a class of his own and hopefully he can keep it up for the rest of the season. Kimi looked like a different driver - making mistakes etc - so it will be interesting to how he comes back in the next couple of races.
All in all it was a great way to start the season and I can't wait to watch them go at it in round two next week.

Save the Planet!

The queen is to open a fifth terminal at Heathrow today.

Good for her.
Does Heathrow really need another terminal? To be perfectly honest I haven't got a bally clue. What I have noticed is the buzzword "carbon footprint" being thrown about by every politician and eco-warrior in an attempt gain green kudos points. Just walk down the high street in your town or village and keep a mental note of the number of times you see a shop advertising it's green credentials just so you can feel all warm and fuzzy knowing that you have done you bit when you buy some of it's ware.

I also noticed the protesters who climbed onto the fuselage of a plane with a banner stating their opposition to the new terminal. Yesterday we had a chap run onto the runway in order to either: blow something up or attract attention to a particular cause (the terminal 5 one I'm guessing).

I'm all for saving the world but I must admit that I'm very loathe to give up flying. Given the choice between a week on a sunny beach or a damp weekend caravaning in skeggy, which do you think I'm going to go for?

National No Smoking Day

Today is National No Smoking Day.

Do days like these actually make a difference? Apparently 1 in 5 smokers intend to put an end to this most heinous of habits today all because these whiter than white do gooders have proclaimed it so.

As an ex ex smoker I can speak with a little authority on the subject. Having someone provide you with a day to kick the weed makes not a jot of difference. I for one had no idea that today was any different from yesterday and iff I did then I would have lit a cigarette in protest.

Instead making us feel more guilty than pedophiles by banning us from mixing with the rest of society why don't our bleeding-heart guardians use their purile ideals to invent some useful theme-days?

We could have:

Leave the general populous alone day,

They're big enough to make up their own mind day,

Stop being so high and mighty day,

Actually do something useful instead of making us feel shit about ourselves day,

Rant over.

Im going for a fag.

A new season approaches

Finally, after six months (or thereabouts) of waiting the new F1 season gets underway.
If you are anything like me you will have been watching the winter testing times on a daily basis. The seemingly unstoppable growth of you tube has enabled us grand prix anoraks to have a daily dose of new F1 machinery which has only whetted our appetites even more.
Year after year I fight off the effects of fatigue and watch the Australian GP live from the comfort of my sofa. It feels like "the right thing to do" for some bizarre reason. When I actually attended the Melbourne opener in 2005 I felt slightly unreal. There I was at a GP that I had watched live since childhood and I didn't have the feeling of nausea that accompanies staying up all night.
This year I feel that Ferrari - or more specifically Raikonnen - will walk away with the silver ware yet again. "No shit sherlock" some of you might say, but if the boy Hamilton continues to develop at the same rate as he did last year, then we could have a British champion for the first time since 1996. Here's hopeing.

Friday night T.V.

Any regulars readers of this blog - if there is such a thing - will remember that I had a news black out last year. I basically decided to stop watching news programmes as they made me depressed. Having a 10 week old child actually reduces the amount of television you watch by 90% and therefore results in you becoming less and less familiar with whats going on in the world - therefore I'm much happier these days!

Last Friday night the good lady and myself managed to get our darling little child to sleep by eight o'clock so we sat down together, had a drink, and watched some t.v. (we really know how to have a good time!). After flicking through what seemed like 100 plus channels we settled on a programme that listed the top 20 most annoying people - 15 of whom I had never heard of.

What I found most irritating was the fact that the presenters of the show were themselves extremely annoying. Their pseudo-intellectualism regarding all things celeb was particularly galling. How can you make a career out of reading OK magazine and trawling the gossip columns? The amount of profanity spewed out by these brain dead announcers made me wounder whether the producers of the programme had dragged them off the nearest street corner.

Who watches this drivel apart from two worn out parents trying to stay awake on a Friday night?