Conversation over the hand-dryers

Stranger:- So are you staying here?

Me:- Yes

Stranger:- How long are you staying for?

Me:- We are going home tomorrow

Stranger:- Do you have children?

Me:- Yes 2 teenagers. 13 and 14

Stranger:- Not yours?

Me:- Yes they are

Stranger:- No, you don't look old enough to have teenagers. How old are you?

Me:- *whispers* 37

Stranger:- You are kidding me, You only look about 20.

THANK YOU

Oooh another to add to the list

Jill rang me tonight and as we were chatting about the people that had confirmed for the reunion she mentioned another very important name. I had already told Brian he would be a very important attendee but he didn't seem too sure that it would happen.

Anyway, Jill said she had mentioned the event to PAUL and he said he would love to come.

I told her to give him my number!

Did I mention that Ian Kelsey used to work there too? I had totally forgotten about it until I read an article the other day about him...What a coup that would be for the papers if he attended - I am on it!!
I do wish we could get hold of Adrian, I can imagine that he is fat and bald now though. Don't ask me why, It was just a vision I had.

I wish that Emma and Bev would get back in contact though, I wonder why they haven't.

This is fun

OK so now Albion have a profile on Reverb Nation
So that is more stuff to join and more passwords to remember.

Anyway you can add this thing to websites to promote them so I thought I would start here.








So, just click to play!!!

Meeting up

I have had a Tremendous day today.
I started chatting to Jenn on MSN a year ago. She and her mother were big James Fox fans and she was also a fan of JK and Joel. In fact Jenn and I had another thing in common in that she also was a contestant on Andy's Box. She shared the spoils on the morning she took part but unlike me, she never received her prizes... A year on she is still not happy!

Today, Jenn just happened to be visiting Derby Uni on their open day so I thought it would be a perfect opportunity to meet up finally.
I met her at the train station at about 2.45 as it was easier for her to get on the special buses set up by the University for the day.
We went across the road to the Waterfall pub where we had diet cokes and Jenn had some lunch.

We chatted about all sorts of stuff. Football to Movies to Harry Potter to Doctor Who. It was so great to have so many things in common with someone that things didn't go stale.

After a while there was a rowdy old man that started shouting at the TV so we walked into town as Jenn needed to get a new pair of earphones for the long train journey home to Liverpool.

Although it was only 3 hours, it passed by so quickly and before we knew it, it was time for Jenn to get her train home again.

I am hoping that we can meet up again sometime but next time I would love to go up to Liverpool for the day.

Never be Lonely

So it's 10pm and here I sit all alone.

DD has been to the match tonight with her friend (Won 1-0 Thank God) and she is staying over at her house. DS came home from Youth club at about 9.30 and said he is staying over at his mate's.
So here we are, I will be staying on my own tonight.

It feels bizarre that I can't do anything with my freedom but hey!

Something about Martha

OK so this is my Doctor Who video.
Its all about Martha Jones from the first 3 episodes of the new series.
Music is "Something about her" by Alistair Griffin

Free bowling

Postie was exceptionally good to me yesterday with a big parcel plus an envelope with 6 free bowling passes in.

Even though DS birthday party was a bit of a debacle I didn't bother making a complaint as the boys still seemed pretty happy with it at the end. However when I got a post-party call a week later I somehow felt compelled to tell the truth of the whole thing. I don't think the caller was expecting this as I bet most people just say "Yeah it was great Thanks" but she sounded a bit shocked when I said "Well no actually..."

So she noted what I said and told me that she would pass it along to the manager. I didn't hold my breath for a call but a week later I did get a call so I explained to him about the hosts swapping over then our new host disappearing before the end then not having the party bags ready then of course the fact about the food being 20 minutes late. He didn't sound pleased at all and promised me that I would get some kind of compensation to make up for it.

So now we have 6 free games of bowling to take sometime before the end of June. I think I may just take DD & DS and let them play for free.

Randon link

I randomly found THIS LINK when searching around Cafepress today.

Jen Rocks Stein provided by: Grandma's Kite for kids and kid wannabes

Well that cheered me up!

Its contagious!

Further to my new Movie maker addiction, DS has now started having a go and he has uploaded his first video to Youtube.

This is his own interpretation of the Doctor Who credits. It is a little bit blocky and can probably do with having the res changed but it is a brilliant first attempt.
He is now working on a Robin hood tribute so watch this space.

In A bun dance!

Yesterday I was devoid of any chocolate eggs. I had bought myself a couple of small eggs at Easter but as you can imagine they didn't last long.
Yesterday DS came back from town with a mountain of cheap eggs that were being sold off in the market. I was of course horrified that I hadn't spotted them while I was in town.

Today, I have an abundance of Creme Eggs around me.
I have been shopping in Iceland this morning and they were selling Creme Eggs off so I bought £1 worth. I popped into Somerfield on the way home and they were selling off small Creme Egg Easter eggs for 69p so I got myself 1 of those.
I have returned home to find that my lovely children have bought me a very large Creme Eggs Easter egg that contains 3 hollow chocolate eggs and 7 Creme Eggs.

So in total I have 12 Cadbury's Creme Eggs, 4 Cadbury's Eggs and a pack of mini Creme Eggs.

PHEW!!
Don't worry, I will pace myself!!

Excitement building

Brian called to tell me that yet another infamous part of our hazy days back at the AA has also confirmed that she will indeed be attending our reunion in June. I am even more excited now!

She and Brian were very close and I sort of tagged along but back then she was my inspiration and I really looked up to her. She also played Janet 2 years running in our production of the Rocky Horror show.

For me that means there are only 3 more people I really want to get hold of. I already have a lead on a brother and sister so if that works out this night is going to be better than we could ever imagine!

PUT THAT CHICKEN AWAY MRS!!

Skins vid 2 Effy -Is it me

If you watched Skins you will know that Effy is the younger sister of Tony the Wa**er.
Episode 8 of the series was devoted to Effy so I have used clips from the episode to tell her story.

I have used another Albion song only because it screamed out Effy to me.

My first music video

So as I am a bit Skins mad at the moment I decided to join the throng of Sid/Cassie fans at Youtube and put together my own fanvid.

I have set it to Albion's "Born again" as I thought it suited the mood.

Its not brilliant but It is my first attempt.
I have the bug now so expect more to come including Doctor Who, Torchwood, Robin Hood and maybe even so House action!

Job done!

Tuesday was a very productive and successful day.
DS and I travelled over to Brian's house to put the finishing touches to our Re-union plans. Unfortunately Tim couldn't make it but we relayed progress to him so that he wasn't left out of the loop.

I had been playing phone tag with 1 very important person who had been a big part of our lives from that time and I had been stalling telling Bri that i had accidentally deleted her number from my phone. As we sat there i suddenly had an urge to go get my phone from my coat. Telepathy? Well something like that as my ass was saved because moments before i had recieved a text from (lets just call her) D asking if i was home as she wanted to ring me there and then. I texted her back with Bri's number and we finally got to talk to each other again for the first time in years. I would say in 18 years but I did bump into her at Allenton Market once when I had DS in the pushchair so that would probably be about 12 years ago. Still it is a long time and things have moved on considerably.

It was great as we chatted on the phone for about 25 minutes. Brian prompting me to ask the vital questions and then of course I had to feed all the info back to him after.

We also managed to contact the 3rd Team leader from the beginning. I of course had to make the call to his parents and we got his mobile number so Brian promptly texted him. God only knows what he would have said to his mother when he got home for giving us his mobile when she didn't really know who we were. Although Brian is hopeful that he will come, I am not so sure but we will see.

It wasn't all work of course. We did nip to Maccy dees for lunch as per DS's request and Brian had wanted to see the 500 miles video from Comic relief so we watched that and ended up watching most of the CR stuff that I had recorded - including Hider from the day after (which unfortunately had cut off before the end. )
Well I wasn't complaining at a bit of JK and Joel honestly!
The only downer to the day was that we just missed the train home by a couple of minutes and had to wait an hour for the next one so we didn't get home until gone 8pm.

So roll on our 20th reunion as now it has something to look forward to...

HAPPY EASTER!!!!

I spent my Easter mainly Watching footie and movies on TV and scanning all the Skins sites and blogs and forums.



No Eggs for me this year but luckily I did buy myself a couple. So it's all good!

Deadline

Stumbled across this show by accident on Wednesday night and now I am addicted to it just like any other celeb reality type show.

The format - 10 celebs working together for a celebrity gossip mag. They are sent out on jobs to interview /pap other celebs.
Each week 3 people are up for the sack and Janet Street-Porter (magazine editor) will decide which sherker is binned.

Now don't get me wrong it isn't an A-list frenzy but there are some would be journos here that are worthy of themselves being papped on a regular basis.

• Yvette Fielding
• Dean Holdsworth
• Dom Joly
• Lisa L'Anson
• Imogen Lloyd-Webber
• Blair McDonough
• Chris Parker
• Ingrid Tarrant
• Iwan Thomas
• Abi Titmuss

As I watch, we are about to have this weeks sacking revealed to us. Chris Parker is the man to go - Bye Bye Spencer Moon.


The actual magazine that they are putting together will be available next Tuesday in Closer magazine. I just might have to go out and buy that. It looks like the cover shot is a picture of The Beckhams taken by ex-Rams no.2 Dean Holdsworth.

Have you met Miss Jones

So Saturday night saw the return of Doctor Who but without Rose.
New companion Martha Jones was introduced to the viewers much the same way as Rose was but she had the added bonus of a trip to the moon and a giant Rhino intergalactic Police Force known as the Judoon.



I have to admit that as I watched it Sunday night I wasn't very open to the change. My preconception was that I was going to hate Martha Jones but I gave way in the end. She is no Rose Tyler but I can see that she is going to give The Doctor a run for his money.

They had only been acquainted for minutes when Martha was lucky enough to snog his doctorness

"That was was a genetic transfer"

Each season seems to have a theme running in the background. With season 1 it was the Bad Wolf references and with 2 it was the Torchwood clues. I can guess that Saxon will be the thing to look out for this time. We know that The gorgeous John Simm will be playing Mr Saxon in a future episode and I noticed that there were several posters in shots saying Vote Saxon...



I will watch out to see if I am right.

By the way Am I the only one who wanted to sing "I've got a brand new Sonic Screwdriver" to the tune of the Worzels "brand new harvester"?

Capital City - Here I come

This weekend it was time for the first ever Cafepress UK Mingler.
Time to travel down to London to meet other likeminded Cafepress shopkeepers to chat ab out the business itself and about current goings on in the company.

I travelled down to London on Friday with the idea to do a little sight-seeing and do the tourist bit that I haven't done of my previous trips down south. Unfortunately though him upstairs had other ideas. As the train pulled into St Pancras I could see the rain pouring hard on the ground. I stepped off the train and it wasn't only raining but also very windy. As i left St. Pancras station and made my way up to Kings Cross for the tube, I could feel my feet getting wet and the bottoms of my jeans soaking already. By the time I reached Kings Cross I knew all I wanted to do was get to my hotel and get changed.

What I didn't know was that there had been a major re-build to Kings Cross Station and I was all disoriented when I found that the ticket office wasn't where I expected it to be. I did get my tickets (a day ticket covering all zones for £5.70) and found my way to my tube.

Note to self: Next time I need to plan for a trip - Do not rely on Google maps to plan the journey. Find real maps that show ALL roads and modes of transport.

I got off the tube and started to walk what I thought was a small distance towards the location of my hotel. After walking for half an hour I came to a fork in the road which wasn't on the map so of course I thought I was going in the wrong direction. So I turned round and started walking in the opposite direction. Now I could go on like this but I will cut it short - After becoming quite intimate with the same stretch of road for a couple of hours I finally discovered that it was twice as long as the map would have me believe and as the rain lashed down I finally spyed my hotel slap bang opposite a drive thru KFC which was slight compensation for my drowned rat look and my aching legs and numb feet.

The room was nice and cosy with a double bed and en suite bathroom. Not bad for £35 for the night especially with the added breakfast too. OK it was a hike out of town but you couldn't rent a telephone box for that in the city.
The first thing I did was change out of my soaking clothes into my PJs and take a nap to rest my aching feet.

Saturday morning my alarm went off at 8am as I didn't want to miss my breakfast. I got dressed and went down to the breakfast area.
Laid out were bowls, plates, glasses and cups so you could help yourself to cereal, Juice and coffee. There was also loaves of bread and 2 large toasters to make your own toast. I decided not to start off greedy so I just had 2 slices of toast and butter and a glass of juice. When I finished I decided to take coffee back to my room and watch Hider before packing up and checking out.

I thought that as I have never been on a London bus, I would hop on the bus to Walthamstow and then get the tube from there back into the city. I was travelling light so that I didn't have any hefty suitcases to cart around the rest of the time.

I hopped on the central line to begin with and made my first stop at Oxford circus. As you know I am not much of a shopper though so 100 yards down Oxford street and I was bored already.
I saw one of those classic stalls selling London gifts and bought the children a cap each then headed back to the tube to make my way to Liverpool st. for our meet up.

Now I was in such a tissy before setting off about getting directions to my hotel that I had totally forgotten to print off the directions to the pub - If they would have been any good anyway - So once again I was wondering up and down the same street. I was totally blind though as I had actually walked past the George 3 times and not even noticed it!

I did get a great picture of the gerkin though


When I finally found the pub I spotted Adam straight away from all the pictures I have seen of him. All my nervousness went out the window and I seemed to settle in right away.

We spent a good couple of hours putting the world to rights and discussing our respective businesses until the noise in the pub became too overpowering (well it was a sports pub and Liverpool were beating Arsenal 4-1) so we decided to go for a little sight seeing tour. Adam really wanted to go over the Millennium bridge so that is where we headed first.

I was a bit tentative about crossing the bridge but there were so many people that it wasn't as bad as I thought it might be.
I even took a couple of photos.



On the other side of the bridge is the Tate gallery. The others in the group did discuss going into the gallery but I was so glad that idea was dismissed. You must know that isn't my cup of tea at all (or maybe it is seeing as I don't do Tea either)
Outside of the gallery though was Budgieman himself.




He is going to be on X-Factor don't you know!!
I don't know how far we walked as we were talking shop and chatting about all manner of subjects. We finally stopped for nourishment at the Royal festival hall
The others ate chips but I just had to have Hot Chocolate and a gorgeous Chocolate chip Muffin. There was a huge Book fair going on and the place was bustling.
We chatted about my obsession with food and the looming smoking ban which we are all absolutely in favour of.

We walked back over the river and along the Embankment until we found ourselves back at the Millennium bridge where we stopped for a last sit down and look at the views before everyone parted company.

The next few hours were kind of a blur really as I passed the time until my 11.30pm bus back home. I would much rather have got a train earlier on in the evening but I got a special National express funfare of £1 and I couldn't pass that up.
It was hard to believe that there were so many people around at that time of the evening but of course they all had £1 funfares.
I passed the time away by listening to my MP3 and reading the hilarious Gospel according to Chris Moyles. I am sure that there were people staring at me as I was crying with laughter. Honestly you have to read it, I just can't do the man enough justice.

I don't remember much of the journey home. I had planned to read my book but once the bus got started up I could hardly keep my eyes open so I drifted in and out of sleep for the whole 4 hours.
As I got off the bus at almost 3.30 am and saw all the hapless drunks wandering the streets looking for taxis I wondered how I was going to get home but as I started to cross over the zebra outside the Assembly rooms a Yellow cab pulled up with his for hire light on so I swiftly jumped in and he took me home.

28th March 1994

13 years ago this day was spent in complete agony screaming and panting and projectile vomiting over anyone within 10 feet of me. I lost a ton of blood and felt lucky to still be alive.

13 years later I have gorgeous intelligent son who makes me more proud with every day.
To celebrate him becoming a teenager I treated him to a bowling party.



I have been to a few of these in the past when they have been invited to them but I have never been the parent in charge of the party. I can tell you that this was the first time that I have felt completely out of my depth. A group of teenage boys are very intimidating and while DD would have usually backed me up, she was too busy being one of the boys.
Don't get me wrong, they weren't being naughty or anything, they seemed to be having a great time and enjoying the bowling, they were also very competitive, only when they got a bit distracted by Vicky Pollard and the dropping 10p machines I found it hard to get the bowling back on track.



The organisation from the bowling alley's point of view was a bit shambolic. We were allocated a party host but then someone else became our host. The food was 20 minutes late and when we finally finished bowling we found that our new host had gone home without leaving us party bags or goodies.
That said, DS and his mates all had a great time and even though we still had to wait 20 minutes for a taxi DS went home happy - already planning his party for next year...Yeah right well we will have to see about that!

When we got home we tucked into a gorgeous Chocolate cream Gateaux that I thought would be more appropriate than a birthday cake and candles.

I didn't mention that I bought DS a new phone for his birthday. A Motorola L6 which although cheap has all the features that he wants from a phone. I am not going to bore you with all the trouble I went to to get this phone but he was extremely happy to get it as I had not let on at all and he probably was expecting a pre-owned game or something equally boring.