Diary

I was in Edinburgh for a meeting today. Afterwards, as I waited in Edinburgh Airport for three hours for my flight home I took the opportunity to visit the toilet.

On my way in to the gents - the one at the end of the concourse near gates 12-16 - who should be walking out but none other than very very famous newscaster Sir Trevor McDonald!

"Incredible", I thought as I did my business, "I've just seen Trevor McDonald in the toilets at an airport!".

I thought about this some more as I wandered back out again, and in doing so almost bumped into Wayne Hemingway who was on his way in. I hung around outside trying not to look decidedly dodgy and waited for him to emerge just to confirm it was definitely him.

Typical isn't it - you go for ages and ages without seeing a celebrity and then two turn up within minutes of each other in an airport toilet.

(I really ought to update my Lame Claim to Fame website and improve it but laziness keeps getting in the way)

It looks like our house purchase has fallen through due to a number of things that the current owner neglected to tell us about.

That's at least £800 and six months invested so far down the pan. Great.

For some totally irrational reason Claire is petrified of spiders. Therefore, when she awoke this morning to find she had ground a MASSIVE spider into the matress overnight she was just a little freaked out. It was horrific - there were hairy spider legs and bits of spider body and spider juice all over the sheet. Mmmm. Nice.

While I was busy in the kitchen cooking a yummy smoked haddock and salmon fish pie (invented recipe) this evening Claire came rushing in to tell me there was a megaflock of birds on the grapevine I have lovingly cultivated at the bottom of our garden.

This could mean only one thing - the grapes were ripe enough and sweet enough for birds to enjoy scoffing and so therefore they were also ripe enough and sweet enough for people to scoff. Harvest time is nigh! I grabbed a bowl and dashed out, doing my best scarecrow impression as I went, and scaring the scavenging sparrows so they scarpered South (look out! Alliteration!). Click pic for bigness.

It turns out that the birds must have been brought up sucking lemons because the grapes are actually pretty sour. Far too sour to eat as dessert grapes.

So, now all I need is a recipe for grape jelly or fine wine, lots of sugar, a pair of willing feet with which to do squashing, a fine seive with which to filter out the earwigs and weird beetles, and some jars and/or bottles with which to hold the resulting produce. Anyone got any reccommended recipes?

Some of you might know about the previous troubles we had trying to get Sam into the local primary school. To cut a long story short, the local school was oversubscribed, as were the next 4 local schools. We took it to appeal and lost, and are now left feeling totally bitter and twisted towards Hampshire County Council.

Anyway, recently there has been the possibility of a second primary school being built in Whiteley (where we live). I am very much in favour of this, given the troubles we had, but for some weird and inexplicable reason HCC want to build it on some football pitches and leisure land instead of an alternative undeveloped piece of land just down the road. This has divided the community and led to a lot of bad feeling ([link removed - no longer publicly viewable!]).

This evening South Today, the BBC local news proggy at 6:30 ran an article about how great Ken Thornber (leader of HCC) was for making a U-turn and allowing some children in to an oversubscribed school near Fleet, despite the family losing at appeal in much the same way as we did. Councillor Thornber was portrayed as a caring and compassionate individual.

This made me really angry because of what we went through, so (egged on by Claire and having the confidence of a strong G&T inside me) I phoned up "my friends at the Beeb" (© Lois) to give an alternative view of HCC.

The upshot is that they want to run an article on it later in the week. They want someone articulate ("like you!") to appear on the telly and give the whole story.

Oops.


Oh, and on another issue, happy birthday Mum! And happy anniversary Mum and Dad!