A giants life

Wine to testicles

2012-01-15T09:36:00.001-08:00

Strange title I know, but stay with me for the moment and all may become clear. Have you ever followed the direction of your conversation? If you are socialising with friends the chat will meander backwards and forwards, round in circles, double back on itself and generally go in some really strange ways. I found this yesterday.

Yesterday myself and Mrs Giant68 went to visit some good friends for dinner and a few drinks. To protect their identity we’ll just refer to them as Nicky and Neil (Bugger! I’ve done it again and let slip their real names! Never mind, I don’t suppose many people will read this anyway.)

We do tend to have some weird conversations as we are all slightly mad, and that evening was going to be no different. While sat at the table after dinner we were talking about wine, Mrs Giant68 left the table at this point to answer her phone (damned rude if you ask me, what on Earth did we do before we had mobile phones??) when she returned we were discussing testicles. The conversation went from the merits of certain wines, hospital, x-rays, Neils damaged thumb, vasectomy and testicles. All in the space of 2 minutes and 57 seconds. And as she left us talking wine and returned to us talking b*££*cks she was a little confused.

Mind you, by the end of the evening I was confused myself. Far too much alcohol, in fact I was still drunk this morning when i got up!

Next time you are chatting try and follow the path and see not where it ends up but how it got there.

Regards

Giant68 x

Who is your favourite?

2011-12-01T08:34:00.001-08:00

I read a report the other day, in the newspaper, that stated that we have favourites among our children. Those of us that have children, obviously. Now that strikes me as a bit of a no-brainer. I expect that the people who wrote that earned a small fortune on the way to that discovery. I could have told them that.

It is human nature to have favourite. My Nokia E72 was my favourite mobile phone, but then the Samsung Galaxy 2 came along. Now my favourite phone is the Android powered Samsung, because it is much more powerful, does more and, to be honest, it looks a lot better.

Now no.1 daughter came along and she remains my favourite. But then the boy turned up. Now he must be my favourite as he has lots of cool features. No he doesn’t, I was thinking about the phone again.

Then just to confuse matters, no.1 daughter presented us with a granddaughter. She does have lots of cool features! I can buy her chocolates that she can spread all over herself and the carpet, and the furniture, she giggles, cries, sleeps, etc. So now she is my favourite.

What it all boils down to is that whichever child is around will be my favourite at the time. When they are all here, such as Christmas, they will all be my favourite and will be treated as such.

Until the next gadget comes along.

Regards

Giant68

I think that I should be getting a Nobel Prize

2011-11-20T09:24:00.001-08:00

I think that I deserve one. I have done something that the entire scientific community has failed to do.
I have invented invisibility.
I buggered if I know how I have done it but I have. It seems that while I have been driving my car around I have inadvertently left the invisibility device that I have invented turned on.
I also have a personal device secreted about my person for when I am walking around the streets, or in the supermarket.
I must have left them turned on as people seem to have an inability to see me, whether I am walking or in the car.
I AM 6’8” tall. I weigh 18½ stone. But at times I am invisible.
The only problem is that I haven’t invented the off switch for it yet. And because the device is invisible I can’t find it to take the batteries out of it. My only hope is that I didn’t connect the the solar panel that recharges it or I may never become visible again! I will always have other cars trying to be in the bit of road that I occupy. I will always have people walking into me in the street.
Still, on the plus side I can spend my life hiding in the ladies changing rooms and generally being a pervert without fear of getting caught.

Obviously the above frame is empty to you, the reader, and I am wasting my time putting it there.

Regards
Giant68

I’m a bit of a foody.

2011-11-20T08:59:00.001-08:00

I am never going to be thin. That is a fact. Me and food have this understanding, It looks good (actually sometimes it doesn’t) it smells good and it tastes good so, therefore, I will eat it. There are some people who use food just as a mechanism to stay alive. There are some who use their food to make them look good, or intelligent, or just plain pretentious.

I know someone who will make scrambled eggs with the whites of ½ dozen eggs and only 1 yolk because he has been led to believe that it is good for him and will help build muscle mass. he also rinses all the tomato sauce from baked beans. To me this is a waste of good food, he may as well have a meringue and some haricot beans, whether it will help with the aim of looking a bit more macho I don’t know. Nor do I care.

There are people who will cook the most fantastic sounding meals that turn out to be half a portion of something expensive but has no taste. When did sauce start being called a jus?

Now Mrs Giant 68 thinks that I am a little weird in my choice of food and the time of day that I will eat it. Just the other day I woke a little late and didn’t have time for my usual toast and coffee before I left for work. By 9am I was starving. There is a sandwich van that does the rounds where I work just after 9am so I bought a kebab with extra hot chilli sauce. I have had numerous comments about kebab in the morning, and sober, but it was bloody lovely. Mrs Giant68 is a firm believer in breakfast foods at breakfast time. Cereal, bacon, eggs etc. Not on the same plate, obviously, but the idea of cold meat and cheese is very odd for her. But on the continent it is the norm. Personally I can eat anything at anytime of day. Maybe because I have spent most of my working life as a shift worker working earlies, lates, nights. I have come home from work in the morning and had a beer in the summer or a whisky mac in the winter. My next door neighbour would see me sat in the garden at 6:30am on a summer day and accuse me of being an alcoholic. (OK, so he may not be entirely wrong…) And food is the same. I could eat a pie and mash or a full English, it matters not what time of day it is.

Lets not be precious about our food. Lets just eat good, tasty, healthy food with no sign of a jus or a couli anywhere. Lets have gravy and custard. Good old tomato ketchup and brown sauce. Whenever you want to eat it. Today I spent Sunday lunchtime sat in a curry house (The Jewel of India, in Southampton. If you ever down this way please try it, the food and service are excellent.) eating curry and drinking beer. Mrs Giant68 was with me as were our daughter and son-in-law and the granddaughter. No Sunday roast. No roast spuds or brussel sprouts. I know some of you will be happy with the no brussel sprout bit but I love ‘em.

Even the much maligned Big Mac tastes good at times, don’t deny it. I would eat one. With fries. And maybe some onion rings and…

Mmmmm!

Giant68

PS I make no apologies for the shameless advertising of my mates curry house. Other curry houses are available, but not as good. (In my opinion)

i sit here in amazement…

2011-10-27T09:13:00.001-07:00

I do. I sit here in amazement at the world around me and the things I hear and see. I am trying to finish a pub quiz that I am writing for tonight but I have been distracted by the telly and the internet. The internet purely because it is a brilliant tool for researching into questions, but also a distraction. I was looking at music downloads and found a band called ‘Mustard Pimp’. What on Earth are people taking when they come up with these names??

‘Come on, lads, what are we gonna call ourselves?’

‘Howabout Anchovy Wallpaper?’

‘Chrysanthemum Butt Plug?’

‘Nah. I’ve got it! It’ll be a sure fire winner with the oldies! Mustard Pimp!’

‘Brilliant!’

‘Superb!’

‘Why can’t you be happy staying plain old Justin Beiber?’

Then the telly. Purely because it was on and the adverts came on and distracted me with a child's game that is set to be the hottest, and most wanted toy this Christmas. ‘Doggy Doo!’ A game about canine crap. You feed a plastic dog and eventually he will defecate. I imagine that the winner is the one that collects the least poop. And I used to think that Buckaroo was weird!

I am no longer a grumpy old man. I am a grumpy, bemused old man.

Giant68

Uno cerveza, Jose, por favor…

2011-08-17T12:04:00.001-07:00

I have been to Spain again to visit Jose the surly barman. The sun was shining, the sky was still blue, and Jose, bless him, was still surly. But he remembered us from last year and smiled, sort of, or it could have been wind. In fact it probably was wind.

It still feels a little strange to be sat under his shiny new awning in the middle of the road. Cars driving past, people strolling by. And there are me and Mrs Giant68, and our friends, sitting there downing the cerveza like a bunch of thirsty alcoholics!

The bbq is showing signs of wear and tear, in fact, the bottom was hanging out of Joses bbq. All he did was lay a tin plate across the inside to hold the broken pallet that he was burning to cook the food over. But the sardines were fantastic that he cooked on it, and they were free.

We learnt several things while were there. Jose has a good memory (he remembered us, possibly due to the size of our tips, I expect that is how he could afford the new awning!). Friendships don’t die out over the course of a year, it was really good to see Harry, Ann, Sian, Amy and Jeremy again. And we learnt a new use for cola. I will not enlighten you over this last one, but all that were on the roundabout that night will remember it.

Now to the flights. Aircraft, it has been said, are metal tubes full of other peoples farts. The flight out certainly was. It must be the change in air pressure but the intestinal gasses are just sucked out of me when I am on a plane. I apologise to everyone that had to share the plane with me that day! But on the way back we suffered more. Not gas. Our ears were assaulted by the young children that some inconsiderate individual had sneaked on board. If you are a regular reader of my blogs you will know that I am not a fan of children in places that are not suitable. I would not consider taking a very young child on plane to a country that is very hot and the food is different. It doesn’t strike me as much of a holiday when you, continually, have to keep the sprogs entertained and fed with English food. They will get sunburnt and cry. They will get hungry and cry. They will get tired and cry. Their ears will hurt on a plane and they will frickin’ well cry!

Take them to Butlins, for God’s sake! They will be catered for. They will not get sunburnt as there will be no sun. They will eat ordinary food. They will sleep because the nights are not too hot. They will not cry. But most of all they will not irritate me.

Normal service has been resumed. I am grumpy again.

Regards

Giant68

I can hear music…

2011-07-19T11:00:00.001-07:00

I have a very eclectic taste in music. This means that I have a music collection that contains albums from the likes of Black Sabbath to operettas by Gilbert and Sullivan. Now, most people I know generally stick to a relatively narrow range of musical styles, some like punk, i have a friend who is seriously into ska, each to their own i suppose.

I have my favourites and this changes depending on my mood or the time of day. My all time favourites are The Moody Blues, Pink Floyd, Joe Bonamassa and now Caro Emerald.

I have a tendency to buy albums based on hearing one track from it on the radio, or the artwork on the cover. This has led to me buying some real crap, but also some real crackers. I read a series of books by a woman called Rachel Caine, and at the back of one of them, in the credits and acknowledgements, she stated that she was inspired by listening to Joe Bonamassa. Ok, thought I, I’ll find some Joe Bonamassa and have a listen. Loved it, and now have all his albums plus one he has done with some others calling themselves Black Country Communion.

Because I am over halfway through my life I can remember when Dave Lee Travis was on Radio 1 at the weekend, to be honest I can remember Junior Choice at the weekend with Ed ‘Stewpot’ Stewart (I can still hear ‘Sparkies magic Piano’ by Henry Blair!). DLT used to play some cracking tunes and after hearing them I would, sometimes, go out and buy the album, Marc Cohn had a good album and I bought that after hearing ‘Walking in Memphis’ one Saturday. Forget that horrible cover version by Cher!!!

I have just bought an album by a woman named Caro Emerald based on listening to one track on the radio while I was out and about in the car. She sings with a very 1950’s style and I can imagine myself suited and booted in some smokey club…

I nearly added dancing to that last statement but, unlike Mrs Giant68, I have 2 left feet, in 2 right shoes. I fail to understand how people can get their bodies to move the way they do. Mrs Giant68 likes to watch ‘Strictly Come Dancing’ and, I must admit, that I occasionally glance up from my book and take a peek. I would love to be able to tango, but the bodies change direction instantly. My body was pretty obviously designed with comfort in mind and has the turning circle and stopping distance of an oceangoing supertanker! But the whole thing looks very elegant, very smooth, very not me. Still, I can dream.

Regards

Giant68 x

The meek will not inherit the Earth!

2011-07-10T07:30:00.001-07:00

I was taught to be courteous. I have taught my children to be courteous. I was taught to stand aside and let people pass. Hold doors open, give up my seat on the bus or train, say please and thank you.

I am proud that my children have listened to me and are polite and courteous. I have been congratulated by friends, family and various people that I don’t know from Adam, on having such well behaved and polite children.

But there comes a time when I am really fed up with being so polite. When will people get out of my way, or give up a seat for me or even say thank you? If I am walking along the street with Mrs Giant68, side by side, and people are approaching, I will step ahead and move over so that they can pass. But more and more often i am forced to leave the pavement because people will not move over for me. They want the whole pavement. Well, I am so sorry, but the worm is turning. I will no longer give you all the space you want. You will get exactly what you need. If you want more you will find that 18 stone of Giant68 is in the way.

I remember when I was a kid that people in a crowded place tend to not notice that there is a small person in the way and they do try to walk through the space where there is a small child. When my kids were small i would get them to walk in front of me. It seemed that I was invisible at this point because people would still try and walk through my kids. There have been a number of people that have suddenly come up short when they realise that I was there!

It still makes me chuckle that I seem to have a stealth mode fitted to my body. People will not see me. If only it was true. Stealth mode on the body? I would be in the ladies changing rooms having a good look! Unfortunately it doesn’t work like that. It’s only stealth mode when I am walking in the street or in the car (the stealth field stretches to fit around the car when I am in it!).

And then there is the, now common, greeting of a’right mate from the checkout person in the supermarket. Get it straight! I am not your mate. I will never be your mate! I am a customer. I am Sir. Or Mr Giant68. I will not be referred to as mate by someone with more piercings than a second hand dartboard, greasy hair that needs a damned good trim and rampant acne! Courtesy should be compulsory, it should be a law of nature!

I can feel my blood pressure rising just thinking about it, so I am going to open a bottle of South African Pinotage and relax for five minutes.

Bye for now.

Giant68 x

Competition

2011-06-12T03:31:00.001-07:00

Now I have some competition. I’ll have to up my game a little, I think. I made a suggestion, a while back, to a friend that he ought to put his money where his mouth is and write his own blog. Well, he has gone and done it. If you would care to have a look at what he writing pop over to www.fiveminutewander.blogspot.com
He is sure to have an interesting take on many things as he is a little older than me and, therefore, has more life experience than I have. Go on, have a look.

In the meantime, i am sat in my conservatory, on a Sunday morning, listening to the rain pattering on the roof, having had a very pleasant full English, dreaming about heat and sunshine.
It is June and it is cold and wet. In some weeks time myself and Mrs Giant68 will be off to sunny Spain again, and i can’t wait. I know we have had some decent weather and we need the rain but I really want heat and unbroken sunshine, Spanish beaches and Sangria…
I’m looking forward to renewing friendships with people I haven’t seen for a year, Jose the surly barman, Harry and Ann, Amy, Sian, Jeremy, alcohol and bbqs. Sleeping outside because it is too warm inside, alcohol, tapas, alcohol, you get the idea.
Before that, however, I have to make a start on the bathroom and kitchen. Mrs Giant68 has decided that we need them renewing. I don’t see what is wrong with the avocado bathroom suite. But she who must be obeyed has decreed that it will be done. So if I fail to regularly post a new blog just assume that I am up to my elbows in a new toilet.
Regards
Giant68 )

Camp or what?

2011-06-10T09:26:00.001-07:00

Did that camp thing again last month. You know, the thing with the ropes and the canvas. Oh, I see. You were thinking of the other camp thing… What do you think I am, some kind of pervert? That was a rhetorical question.

No, once again we packed the entire contents of my house into the car, good job the new car is bigger than the old one, and drove to a field just outside Salisbury. Emptied it all out onto the grass, drank lots of red wine (other types of alcohol are available) and then loaded the cars back up and went home. Sounds fun, doesn’t it? Bet you wish you had been there.

There was one subtle difference this year, though, or two. One. The weather, while good during the day, was bloody freezing at night. We were sat around the table with every article of clothing on that we could find. The alcohol did give a little warm glow but that was quickly stolen by the freezing air temperature.

The other difference was that we had our granddaughter with us. Thoughtfully, though, the little one had brought her parents with her. Now I love my grandchild to bits, but she can be a little cow at times. She knows that she shouldn’t do some things but she does them anyway. Then gives you a look that dares you to tell her off. But as Guns ’n’ Roses once said “She’s got eyes of the bluest skies…” And besides that, I am her granddad. I am here just to lead her into trouble. But it doesn’t lead to a very relaxing camping experience.

We’re going again at the end of this month. Just me and Mrs Giant68 and maybe a couple of friends.

Cheers

Giant68 x

Far East, Leather…

2011-05-13T23:49:00.001-07:00

I saw the last of an old friend this week. I have known her for nearly 8 years and in that time she has taken me to allsorts of places. We have been in obscure places after dark, obscure places in daylight. We have seen each other nearly every day over the eight years that we had a relationship. And now that she is gone I, sort of, miss her.
My friends shared her, sometimes. We did it all together. We had some fun. Lots of fun.

I am talking about my car. I bought her brand, spanking new in August 2003. Now, for all the petrolhheads out there, you will not be too impressed. She was a Kia Rio. She was black, leather lined, automatic gearbox. And to me she was the best car I had ever had. I had never bought new, all my previous cars were at least 10 years old. Some of them were heaps of junk, most of them were ok. But this was brand new. When I drove her off the forecourt people looked and you could see them say “Look, a new car”
In my early days I never owned a car long enough to put it through an MOT. Probably a good thing really, thinking about the state of some of them. I remember the MK1 Escort that I cut the bumpers and installed spotlights so that it looked like the Escort Mexico. I had a 2.8 Ford Granada, she was one of my favourites. She was fast, and comfortable and saw some action (If you know what I mean)
I had a Renault 5 that you had to stall to stop the engine due to the head gasket being blown and when the key was turned off the engine would splutter on and on. And it had no radio. I traded that in for a Ford Cortina that did have a radio. Gotta have music while I drive!
But the last one lasted a long time. She had been all over the country with me and Mrs Giant68, and the two mini giants. Dusty, our dog, had drooled all over the boot on the way to the park or the beach. And now she has gone to a dealer to be refurbished and sold to someone else. I hope that whoever it is they look after her. I wonder if they will ever think of her history, of where she has been and what she has done?

I, now, begin a new relationship with a new car. She has a few miles on the clock, been around the block a few times, but times are harder than they were and a brand new one was a little too dear for me this time. But we will have fun, and travel, hopefully, to places that she, and I, have never been. I wonder what she has done and where she has been over the last 5 years?

Let’s take the kids!

2011-04-16T11:32:00.001-07:00

Following on from the last blog I would like to ask a question of parents everywhere. What makes you think that you should take your young children somewhere where they will be bored to tears? Literally.

We walked round various parts of Dorset and some of these places were calm, peaceful, and places where I could relax and be at one with nature. But there were some places where parents had thought: “Darling? Lets take little Johnny ( or whatever implausible name they had decided upon 4 years ago after a sniff of the Chardonnay) and go to the Museum of Boring Life. He will love it”

Kids want two things. They want to be fed sweets and they want to be entertained. If they can’t get at least one of these then they are going to be trouble.

We sat in a Tea Shoppe ( yes, I know that Shoppe is terribly twee but tough, it fits!) and we tried to have a quiet cream tea, well Mrs Giant68 was, anyway, i was trying not to think about the pint that I could have had in the pub over the road. Anyway, there were a couple of families in the Tea Shoppe garden waiting for their pots of tea and the scones. They had their children with them. They were neither entertained or being fed sweets. They were a pain in the posterior!

For God’s sake! take them to McDonalds and feed them E numbers in a bun and wash it all down with a paper cup the same size as them full of liquid sugar. Let them play in the ball pit or just smear their ketchup covered hands on the tables and chairs. They will be happy, they will laugh. But take them to a stately home to see the artwork or the Capability Brown inspired gardens and they will be bored out of their tiny minds. Why do you do it? Surely you can’t be doing it for the kids? You must realise that they don’t want to go? Or are you trying my patience? Waiting to see how long it will be before I snap and beat you to death with their pushchair?

At least once they reach puberty they will just sulk. At least they will be quiet. But any child below the age of consent really should be left at home if you are not going to take them to the beach, swimming pool, cinema, etc.

Yes, I am a parent. And a grandparent.

Regards

Giant68 x

Two Go Mad in Dorset…

2011-04-16T10:55:00.001-07:00

Mrs Giant68 and myself have been away for a few days. This is the first time that we have gone away from the stresses and strains of everyday life since we went to Spain last August and we needed to get away. We didn’t go too far, only to Swanage in Dorset which is only about 40 miles from home as the crow flies.Incidentally, who decided that it should be measured as the crow flies? And why should that mean a straight line? have you ever watched a crow fly? Like any other bird that I have seen they don’t necessarily fly in a straight line, they are easily distracted by shiny things and go off at a tangent a bit like a woman shopping.

No camping this time, though, as it is a bit early in the year and a bit too chilly at night. We stayed in a B & B, and rather nice it was too. ( If you want to try it it is Firswood, just round the corner from the train station.) Nice clean room and a decent brekkie, what more could we want?

We got there after lunch and herself decided that we could go for a walk. After what felt like 100 miles, all uphill, we had reached a point on the Purbeck coast that, I’m sure, only the dinosaurs had seen. For some unknown reason someone had planted a large stone globe on the edge of the cliff. All countries of the Earth marked upon its surface and stone slabs in the cliff around it. The stone slabs were marked with various poetical and scientific writings and while it was very random thing to see it was was thought provoking.

Pint and a curry later in the evening and we went to bed knackered. Didn’t last long though, at home we have a king-size bed. My nickname should explain why. I am a little on the large side and a normal double bed is a little small. I found that Mrs Giant68 kept pushing me out, I guess she is more used to a large bed than I am!

So bleary eyed we both appeared for breakfast in the morning. Like a fool i agreed to a walk from Swanage to Corfe. Now i didn’t think that England was that big. I am sure that the walk from Swanage to Corfe was, at least, 300 miles and all uphill. We found the entry to the path under an arch of human bones and a sign that said “Abandon Hope All Ye That Enter Here”

We reached a point that was so high I could reach out and touch the Moon! Bodies of previous walkers lined the path, obviously not as hardy as us. There was a point where I thought that I would have to gnaw my own arm off as i was so hungry. And then Corfe Castle appeared out of the mist and we were saved! A pint at the local hostelry? No. Herself wanted a bloody cream tea! So we sat in a Tea Shop and i had a coffee, all the while dreaming of gnawing her arm off!!

Fortunately we caught the steam train home. Corfe exists in a time warp. It is forever 1932 and Will Hay runs the railway with the help of Richard Wattis (Look the pair of them up on Wikipedia, or if you are old enough you will know who I mean.) There is always ginger beer and sandwiches and the sun always shines, except when I was there!

We are home now and I am recovering with a glass of Cabernet Sauvignon.

Regards

Giant68 x

How Much???

2011-03-25T11:13:00.001-07:00

I went to an antiques fair at the weekend. On a coach. I felt very young. Myself, Mrs Giant68, and our friends Nicky and Neil were the youngest on the coach. When the coach hit a bump you could hear the colostomy bags sloshing around! And as for the clacking of the false teeth...
Mrs Giant68 likes a wander around the antiques stalls and shops every now and then. She says it’s because she lives with an antique. Bloody cheek!
So, anyway, we set off on the coach to Shepton Mallet and the Royal Bath and West of England Showground for a good wander around the relics. Sitting on a coach is quite relaxing, letting someone else drive while you are rocked to sleep after a heavy night. The previous evening we had been to a friends house where we had some good food and copious quantities of red wine, not very conducive to an early start!
I am amazed at the prices that some of these so called antiques sell for. To be honest with you, a lot of it I would call tat and wouldn’t give you tuppence for it. Yes, there was some really nice stuff there and the prices reflected that. I was a little disappointed as I like books, and I found very little in the way of the printed word there. But I am also a Freemason and I always keep my eyes open for anything with the Masonic mark on. I cannot believe the way that the price is inflated when there is a square and compass etched on the surface!

But I enjoyed myself anyway.We were with a couple of friends. We sat in the sun and drank coffee and ate sandwiches in the sunshine. Our friends bought a blanket box and a drop-leaf table which were duly loaded into the luggage lockers on the coach. At some point on the way home I think I must have dropped asleep and dreamed that I was in a poor Carry On film, as Mrs Giant68 and Nicky giggled about getting Nicky’s chest out. And then when I was sat in the back of Nicky’s car and holding the table still while it was on the top of the blanket box being giggled at for holding holding Nicky’s legs down on her chest. Children! How immature. I got cramp in my hand while I was doing it...
Regards
Giant68 x

Old age cometh!

2011-03-06T03:13:00.001-08:00

That is what Mrs Giant68 has discovered recently. No she hasn’t just found some grey hairs, she already had those ( bugger! I hope she doesn’t read this or I’m in the brown stuff!).

No, she has had to obtain her first pair of prescription spectacles. She is now a speccy four-eyes! And has found that what I said some months ago in that glasses are made from the most expensive material known to man is true. She only needs reading glasses, unlike muggins here, who now wears varifocals, but they still cost here over a hundred quid.

I have also discovered that now I have an Amazon Kindle I may not need to wear the varifocals so much for reading as I can increase the font size of the book I am reading to the point where i can read it from over the road! Unfortunately, although Mrs Giant68 bought me the Kindle for my birthday, she has pinched it supposedly “to see if it is worth me having one” she said. Every time I think I’ll sit down and read a book on the damn thing she has it.

It’s a good job i have a few ordinary books around the house so that I can still read something. That’s something that annoys herself, the approx 5000 books I have kicking around the house. I did say that I would not buy anymore books if she bought me a Kindle but now she has appropriated it I may have to continue. Waterstones here I come!

Regards

Giant68 :0)

While the cats away

2011-02-13T01:23:00.001-08:00

Unfortunately mice don’t play. Not anymore anyway. It was like this: Mrs Giant68 was away for a four nights last week. She works in a school, as a librarian and learning assistant, and she was going with the kids and a few of the teachers on residential week in the New Forest. I was staying at home. Now I can visualise men out there in the wide world thinking “ marvellous! Beer, sport and porn for a few days” By the time she comes home i would be drunk and blind! In the real world it doesn’t seem to work like that. She went on the Monday morning, i had already left for work, so I didn’t see her (apart from the back of her neck when i sneaked out of bed at ½ 5, in the dark!) I put in a 9 hour day and came home knackered. Spent a while in the kitchen cooking dinner, washed up, put everything away, dozed off in front of the TV. No beer, no sport, no porn.
Tuesday, almost the same apart from the trip out into the New Forest in the evening to visit Mrs Giant68. Came home, had a coffee, dozed in front of the TV, eventually went to bed. Again no beer, no sport, no porn.
Can you see a pattern emerging here?
At the end of the week I had, probably, spent more time at work and in the kitchen than I had in front of the TV watching Sky Sports. I had spent, maybe, ½ an hour checking my emails, several hours asleep in front of the TV and a few hours a night in bed.
The best thing about being at home on my own was that in the morning when I got up I didn’t have to sneak around the house in the dark trying not to wake Mrs G up. I could turn all the lights on, turn the radio up while I made my coffee, and could get dressed in the light for a change.
I think that I must be getting old. Or as Mini Giant68 says “already old”
When I was home that week I didn’t speak to a single person, there was no one to speak to. In the past I talked to the dog, but if you follow my blog you will know that is in the past. Most of the time I was pretty bored. You get used to having someone around and miss the social interaction when they are not there. Even if you spend the time in separate rooms there is still the availability of interaction and when it is not there you find that there is a black hole. Just goes to show that we humans are social animals. And having physical social networks is vital, not the cyber networks that are available through Facebook etc. I think that if I had to live on my own I would probably go crazy
Also it proved to me that I can cook quite well. I ate very well that week. Started off the week with the remains of a stew leftover from the weekend but as the week progressed the meals got better. Only had oven chips once and no takeaways! I made a mean gravy to go with the faggots I bought from the butcher. And when Mrs Giant68 came home I bought some decent steak from the butcher which I cooked with a few onions, and I spent the afternoon making bread.
Anyone fancy a slice of Chorizo and Thyme Fougasse? Oops, sorry it’s all gone.

Regards
Giant68 x

Fascinating world of the Blog

2011-01-30T07:58:00.001-08:00

This blogging thing is quite a fascinating thing. A couple of years ago I decided to start writing this blog, basically because I wanted to write a novel but didn’t have the time or the inspiration and blogging seemed to be the next best thing. It is very difficult to come up with an idea for a book when you have read so many. Every idea I had for my novel would turn out to be already taken. A while back I had an idea for a book involving zero point energy. Then found that there were references to it in books by Ian Banks and now one by Neal Asher, bugger! Never mind, I expect that they are writing books that will be far more entertaining than anything I could ever write. And, to be honest, I’m now quite happy to read the Asher and Banks novels and I’ll stick to blogging.
Even blogging can be hard. Sometimes I have no ideas and sometimes the ideas come when I have no way of recording them and then I forget them. Yesterday I had a brilliant idea for a blog, I didn’t write it down and now I have forgotten what it was. I must learn to have a notebook to hand and write these things down. Although I think that the ones that come to me while I am sitting at the laptop and just flow from the brain through the fingers to the keyboard and then to the blog site are the best ones, generally funnier and more interesting.
I set up the blog on this site for no other reason than it was the first one I looked at and it seemed easy. And it was easy. Set up the account, as I already had a Google account I was ½ way there, and Bob is your parents brother, so to speak. I write about things that bug me, that I find interesting, or just weird things.

There is a rather interesting feature of this site. You can look at the statistics for your blog. Now I am sure that some blogs will have thousands of hits every day, Walker of Worlds, one that I follow and have contributed to, is one of them and I'm sure that Mark is justifiably proud. I, on the other hand, have only a few hits. But I can look at them and sometimes I am surprised by what I find. I have just had a look and find that my blog is read by people around the world. The Canadian I would imagine might be my cousin. The English ones would be Ralph, my family, other friends and relatives. Once it was read and commented on by one of my favourite authors, Neal Asher, that gave me a great feeling of satisfaction, someone important had read what I had written! The reader in India? South Korea? Russia? Finland? Don’t know. But it would be nice to know who they are. If you are reading this in some far away place then add a comment at the bottom, let me know where you are, I would love to know. Even if you are not so far away, put a comment, be it Milton Keynes, Slough, whatever, I want to know.
Cheers, where ever you are! Keep reading my blog and allowing me to have that have that warm feeling of satisfaction…
Giant68

The menswear Black hole

2011-01-07T11:21:00.001-08:00

I have noticed something over the last year. I find it harder and harder to buy clothes in my size. And, to be honest, Clothes in any size.

As you will, no doubt, know from following this blog on a regular basis, I have lost a little bit of weight. I am now somewhere in the region of 4st lighter than I was a year ago. This has led to various shopping expeditions to buy clothes. Losing weight is costing me a fortune. Boy, do I wish I’d kept the clothes I expanded out of! I’m sure I would have looked a treat in my skin tight jeans, Frankie says… T-shirt and leg warmers!! Maybe I ought to grow the mullet back again, or maybe not…

But i have discovered that menswear departments and shops are shrinking at an alarming rate. I walked into the local BHS just recently and went in the direction of the menswear dept. I think that I must have blinked and missed it! Oh! There it is! Over in that corner, hiding behind the lingerie section. Well at least I can have a snigger on the way through.

Some days later I found that Asda are the same. menswear has been pushed into the furthest corner of the shop, on the upper floor.

Will it come to a point where the male of the species will have only a choice of size for the one style of clothing that is available. Look around the High Street where you live, in the UK as that is where i have the most experience, and you will see that the traditional Men's clothing shops are shrinking. Burtons is a pale shadow of what it used to be. Next seems to only supply clothes to those who are in touch with their feminine side, and couldn’t put a shelf up if they tried.

But if you are a woman! Wow! The choice you have. Colours, sizes, styles, whatever you want. Shops that go on forever.

Only the likes of Marks and Spencer and Debenhams are holding back the flood of womenswear. Although their menswear departments are still shrinking, but much slower than anywhere else. I expect that they will vanish completely at some point in the near future.

Imagine the conversation in 50 years time:

“Daddy?”

“Yes, son”

“Do you remember when you could buy a suit?”

“Oh yes, son. Those were the days! I remember it was just before global warming and the rise of sea level. Men could buy allsorts of clothing. Trousers, shirts, jackets, ties, a whole suit of clothes if he felt that way inclined. Good old days. I miss that more than i miss the Maldives…”

So that was 2010??

2010-12-31T04:36:00.001-08:00

That’s it then. 2010 is over. Gone. Kaput. Was it a good one for you? Personally it was ok, I suppose. I did not take up smoking again, I kept up my weekday abstinence from alcohol, and I kept losing weight until I reached a target. I got a promotion, sort of, although sometimes I wonder why I bothered. And I watched my granddaughter grow up a little bit more.

On the down side we had to have our dog put to sleep a couple of days before Christmas. She had been a part of our family for 16 years and it came as a bit of a shock.

What of 2011?

I have started reviewing books for another blog. They should start being posted in January, provided Mark likes them. So pop over to “Walker of Worlds” and have a look.

I am looking forward to more camping in 2011. I know, you can’t believe the change in me, can you? Only a short while ago I was dead against that sort of thing. Nothing short of a hotel with room service for me! What happened was that aliens came down and replaced me with a pod person, a la "Invasion of the Body Snatchers”. My real body is probably being anally probed somewhere out there in the vast universe. rest assured, I am, probably, not enjoying it!

Mrs Giant68 is probably hoping that I will get around to building her new kitchen and bathroom. I did promise her that about 6 months ago! Amazing that as the kids have left home I end up spending a shed load of cash. When no.1 daughter left I bought and built a conservatory. Then mini Giant68 left and I am going to end up spending a reasonable fortune on the kitchen and bathroom. Personally I think that we should downgrade to an apartment. Unfortunately Mrs Giant68 doesn’t want to so I’m stuck.

I am also hoping that I can get together with my mate Steve, him of Spanish holiday fame, and play cribbage a little more often than I managed in 2010. Cribbage is something that he introduced to me some years ago. I hate playing cards but for some reason crib is a game that I enjoy. Probably due to the rule we have that it cannot be played unless there are copious quantities of alcohol involved.

I am not going to make any resolutions, why bother? They would only be broken within the 1st 24 hours. And if they aren’t, then they weren’t worth making in the first place.

Happy New Year!

Giant68

We wish you a merry Christmas…

2010-12-11T10:19:00.001-08:00

“It’s Christmas time

There’s no need to be afraid”

First lines from a famous song. Well, I’m afraid, there is a need to be afraid. It is the second time of the year that young people feel that they can go out and beg for money with menaces. Obviously, the first attempt to get you part with your hard earned dosh is at the beginning of November. A time when we celebrate the failure of some bloke to blow up the British parliament.

This time it’s Christmas. A time when the gormless chav adolescents feel they can knock on my door, and yours, sing the first few words of “We wish you a merry Christmas…”and then hold their hand out for cash.

Well, let me inform you now that “We wish you a merry Christmas” is NOT a Christmas carol! If you want money from me I want a proper carol. It could be “Oh Come All Ye Faithfull”, God Rest Ye Merry Gentlemen”, “Oh Little Town of Bethlehem”, you get the idea. There are quite a few to chose from. And I want a full verse and a chorus. Not just the first line. If you want to get a shiny penny from me you’ve got to work for it.

Have a nice Christmas. I wish you all you wish yourself.

Oh, and a happy New Year!

Giant68 x

Strictly Health and Safety

2010-12-05T11:58:00.001-08:00

Mrs Giant68 does like to settle down in front of the telly on a Saturday and Sunday evening with a glass of wine and Strictly Come Dancing. Nothing like a bit of Brucie and “dead behind the eyes” Daly. Now,I wouldn’t go out of my way to watch it, but it is on and I will peek at it over the top of my laptop or my book and it is, somewhat, entertaining. But I find something very strange about it all.

I have been trained in Health and Safety by the company I work for. I can carry out risk assessments and create safe systems of work, and I know most of the regulations. I Can’t see how they can get away with what they do on the dance floor.

Firstly, lifts. Now the manual handling regulations state that you can not lift anything heavier than 25kg. And even then you have to lift properly, legs bent, back straight etc. Well, I didn’t see any of the lifts carried out in the proscribed way. And the dancers, while slim (apart from Ann Widdecombe) are, certainly, heavier than 25kg.

Tonight the professional dancers were standing on chairs. How dare they. Do they not realise that chairs are meant for sitting on. If you want to work at height you must use equipment that is designed for that purpose. If they fell off they wouldn’t have a leg to stand on, so to speak.

The investigation would have to carried out. Photos would have to taken and, ultimately the dancer involved would have to be sacked.

And you have to admit that there are a certain amount of distractions on the floor. How can anyone concentrate on what they are doing when Ola Jordan is dancing in one of her skimpy outfits! The risks are tremendous! I am surprised that there are no accidents. The Health and Safety officer for the BBC must be a nervous wreck on a Saturday evening, and I don’t envy him.

Machismo vs. Metrosexual

2010-12-01T11:46:00.001-08:00

What is it with men and women at the moment? There seems to be a propensity for the slightly effeminate look for the men, and women seem to like it.

I find it a little bit odd that the male of the species seems to be gravitating to this androgynous look (go on, get your dictionaries out!) Can you imagine any of these metrosexuals putting a shelf up, or taking the bins down?

Please don’t get me wrong, I have nothing against the metrosexuals, I do like a drop of the old moisturiser at times, but I just don’t understand what women see in them. In the days of the caveman, the man would be the hunter gatherer while the woman would stay at home and look after the family, after being clubbed over the head and dragged to the cave, of course. Therefore the woman would want a strong, healthy man. His mighty muscles and rippling thews proclaiming that he was a good hunter who could feed a family by dragging a diplodocus through the primordial jungle back to the cave. Once there he could hack into steaks that would fit over the fire that he built and lit with his feet while he was butchering the dinosaur. (And the first bbq was born, all Neanderthal man needed was a cold beer and his mates!).

Throughout history real men have fought battles, first with fists, clubs, axes, swords and working their way through various small arms. Now I know that there are still a few macho men around, but they all seem to be in Afghanistan fighting the Taliban, while the effete creatures left at home are scoring with the girls. All the while starring in the hit films of the day and making a pot of money, just look at Robert Pattinson, I wouldn’t put him up against a strong wind!

Whatever happened to the macho film stars of yesterday? OK, maybe not a good argument as most of them turned out be gay, but you know what I mean.

I reckon these women will regret it in few years time when they need a jar opening or a shelf put up. Oh, and it’s bin night!

The Zombie War is on its way…

2010-11-13T07:05:00.001-08:00

There is a new TV series just started on FX channel. “Walking Dead”. It’s a standard story of a plague turning almost everyone into the walking dead. Now programs and films of this nature have been around for 30 odd years, ever since Romero decided to start making zombie films. They all follow the same format, as I have already said, and this is what I can’t understand. The hero is always damn lucky to survive the first five minutes. Surely people watch TV and go to the cinema, even read books? They should understand that when the zombies come after you you need to have your wits about you. Oh! and some weapons.

In this latest TV show the hero wakes in hospital after having been shot chasing criminals. The hospital is empty and trashed. Surely that would start alarm bells ringing? First job would be to find clothes and something to fight with. No, not this guy. He stumbles around the building in the ubiquitous backless hospital gown. At least when he spies the zombies he won’t crap in his trousers.

I have a plan. I know exactly what I would do when the zombie/alien/whatever invasion happens. I’m not going to tell you what it is as that might lessen my chances of survival. And survive I will!

Hide from the zombies, don’t trust the alien leader who tells you he has come in peace, and let the vampire bite you. Yes, you read that right. Let the vampire bite you. I reckon it could be fun as a vampire. Turning into a bat at will and flying away, seducing innocent maidens, sleeping through the day, burning up in sunlight… ok some of it, probably, isn’t going to be fun but I have never been much of a sun worshipper.

Obviously, I can’t post any pictures of me this time as vampires cast no shadows or images. Now if anyone knows where I can find any innocent maidens…? I bet it was a lot easier in Draculas time.

And there will be fire from the sky…

2010-10-27T12:21:00.001-07:00

My friend Steve is an arsonist. I’m sure that in a previous life that was how he spent his time. A pyromaniac. I have never seen anyone so keen to use lighter fluid on a bbq. The Steve method of lighting a charcoal bbq is this:

1. Lay a sheet of tin foil in the bottom of the bbq. (good idea this. makes cleaning the bbq much easier)

2. Break up ½ dozen fire lighters.

3. Lay in the charcoal.

4. Add more firelighters.

5. Spray liberally with lighter fluid.

6. light.

7. Spray more lighter fluid.

8. Clutch at face moaning about the fact that you no longer have eyebrows.

It was useful when the kids were younger as they would be round at the pool. They would know when the bbq was lit by the sudden conflagration that would rise to the sky.

We had some good food from Steves bbq, though. We sat outside the house in Spain, full of good food, full of good booze and full of contentment. And now that the winter evenings are here, and the temperature is starting to fall drastically, I miss the summer evenings in Spain. Even though it was only for a couple of weeks. Or maybe because it was only a couple of weeks.

Adios.

Back to Spain…

2010-10-27T12:01:00.001-07:00

There is a game that the Spaniards in Torrevieja play. And I have to learn to play it.

Now, if you remember we went to Spain in the summer and stayed at our friends house in Torrevieja. You’ve read the blog about that, I know you have. You will also remember that we were frequenting Joses bar, the surly bartender.

Me and Steve like to play a game of cribbage or two, and most days in Spain this is what we would do. After lunch we would take a walk down to Joses and have a couple of cervesas, a plate of tapas and play cards.

Generally, after an hour or so, three or four old Spaniards would turn up, looking like they had stepped off of the set of The Sopranos. You wouldn’t want to upset them, that’s for sure. They would have a coffee and something in a small glass and break out a deck of cards. They then proceeded to play this card game, which we eventually found out was called Mus. After a few days of watching them while we played crib we started to show a more open interest. And they showed a little interest in our game. To be completely honest, neither of us understood much of the rules or what they were saying to us. I would imagine that they were saying something along the lines of “You stupid English will never be able play this game. It is for real men only. Now p*ss off and leave us to real mens pastimes!”

They did seem to hold cribbage in some contempt. But in the end we parted as friends with a promise that we would go home and learn to play Mus and return next year to play them at their own game.

Unfortunately this is a strange card game. Devised by the Basques and, like them, devilishly complicated. If you play it one area of the country you play by one set of rules. Play it somewhere else and a different set of rules apply. If it is raining you play with no aces, if it is Tuesday aces are high… Well that is the way it seems.

They have given us a bag of metal discs that are used for betting during the game, so that no money is involved. But I bet when we play them it will be Euros rather than metal discs! I bet they are rubbing their hands in glee at the thought of fleecing a couple of naive Englishmen. They will be living off of that story for months.

But at least Jose started to warm to us and we were almost his best friends by the end of the holiday.

We have bought a deck of the Spanish cards, a strange deck that when you play Mus you remove the jokers, 8s and 9s. The scoring is strange, with Aces and Kings scoring the same while collecting a hand worth 31 is worse than scoring 30. I am bewildered by the whole thing.

I have never tasted lobster. I wouldn’t know what to do with one if it fell on my head. But we all decided that, as we had seen fresh lobster on the fish counter in Carrefoure, we would all like to try it. So Harry and Ann, on their way back from a day trip to somewhere, and their daughter Amy and boyfriend Jeremy, brought back a couple of lobsters. Not quite as fresh as the ones we had already seen, these were dead. All we had to do was chop it up and eat it.

Steve lit the barbeque.

And Sarah and myself laid into a pair of crustaceans. We were drunk. I had to look up on the internet what to cut, what to remove and what to eat. And, to be honest, it really wasn’t worth the effort. Next time I will buy one that has already had its innards removed, cleaned and laid on a plate. No matter what i have to pay for it.

In the next installment: the cycle rides, nicking stones and what happened to Steves eyebrows.

Who killed Cock Robin?

2010-10-14T10:18:00.000-07:00

I’m in trouble again. I have not been keeping up my blogging rate and one of the few people who follow me has complained. Sad bugger, obviously has nothing better to do!

I’m at a loss as to what to write today. Summer has gone, winter is knocking at the door and the camping season is over. The tent will have to stay in the cupboard till the spring. All the shops appear to have the Christmas decorations up and Halloween hasn’t been yet! We now have to look forward to the neighbourhood children knocking the door and begging for money with menaces. Another American “tradition” that we have imported and twisted to suit the greedy bastards that we are bringing into the world. They don’t really want to see a carved pumpkin. They don’t want sweets. They want good, hard cash. If they don’t hear the jingle of pound coins or the rustle of a fiver they’ll probably carve your face into a Jack ‘o’lantern. Kids round our way are hard.

Mrs Giant68 has just come in complaining that some of the kids she works with in the school do not know what a sparrow is, or looks like. I find that quite sad. I expect that if there was a video game called “Kill Cock Robin” they would know. I can imagine it now:

“Oi! You feathered b*stards! Which one of you killed Cock Robin?”

“I” said the sparrow “With a f*^%in’ machete! Carved his face right off!”

My kids know what a sparrow looks like, we have a large number living in and around our garden. They know what cows are (mini Giant68 is scared of them!). They’ve seen pigs and sheep. Horses and donkeys. They have been round safari parks and seen more exotic creatures.

They also still like some of the things they learnt as young children. Winnie the Pooh, The Hungry Caterpillar and such things. They had nursery rhymes told to them and stories of Scraggy Rabbit courtesy of a family friend.

When I was little, ok I have never really been little, my grandmother would tell me stories that she had in her head. None of this written down rubbish. I have never been able to remember them, apart from the first few words, and google searches have failed. But, recently, my mum found a copy, that she had written down, of one of these stories. It begins: At number one in Rabbit Row, A crowd of bunnies live, you know. The oldest one was Bobtail bunny…

I have to try and learn this so that I can tell it to my granddaughter when she is a little older. All I need to find now is the one about the tin soldier. I wonder if anyone reading this knows it. Kate?

The important thing is that I think that the children we have should retain their childhood for as long as they can, and we should help them. Even when they are older they should remember the childish things. Myself and Mini giant68 can behave quite childishly at times and it does relieve some of the stress of being an adult.

Time Warp?

2010-09-08T11:35:00.000-07:00

Time is fleeting…

Where does it go? Only yesterday I was still at school, young, innocent and full of excitement (or was it drugs?) over what the future held for me. Now I am a 45 year old father and grandfather, jaded and made cynical by the blade that shaves the hours, minutes and seconds off of the thread that is my life.

But on a happier note…

Just over a year ago my daughter and son-in-law presented myself and Mrs Giant68 with a granddaughter. Last weekend we had the parties for the children and then the adults. I am ashamed to say I did get a little drunk. But in my defence I will say that I am not used to alcohol anymore so all I had was a sniff of the cork. (ok, I did sniff so hard that all the wine came out and drenched my liver but…) I have changed with time, I feel as though I have gone from that childhood innocence thru married bliss, divorced depression, single fun, married bliss, big softy as the kids were born and grew, jaded middle age and now back to old softy. I find that my granddaughters energy and inquisitiveness are fascinating. At her christening, while laying in the vicars arms, she noticed the water in the font. “Ooh, water! Lets play!” and proceeded to splash it all over the cleric. Maybe I look thru biased eyes ( “No!” I hear you cry) but she is the most amazing thing. Put her down and she is off to investigate. I have pulled some strange things out of the sub-woofer of my surround sound system! My dog hides before she can investigate how hard you have to pull fur before it comes out. And it’s a good job I have a carpet shampooer to clean up the soggy biscuit that has been ground into the carpet to see how long it takes granddad to clean it up.

All this probably means that the blade may be shaving time off my life a little quicker but what the hell?

I have several hundred photos of my granddaughter if anyone wants to see…
That is if there any people left on the face of this planet that I haven’t shown them
to…

I have also discovered that my chest hair is going grey, but that is a story for another day.

:o)

Sombrero anyone?

2010-08-26T11:20:00.000-07:00

A stuffed donkey and a sombrero. That used to be the image that people had of Spanish holidays. Coachloads of sweaty, fat northerners heading to the airports on their package tours singing “E viva Espagne” at the top of their drunken lungs.

Not far off the mark really.

Mrs Giant68 and myself have just returned from 2 weeks at gas mark 8, liberally doused with booze in Torrevieja. As I have said before, I have been blessed with some really good friends. Now 2 of my friends have a house in Torrevieja, and they let us ruin their own holiday for a fortnight while we join them.

I will change all the names to protect the innocent so we will refer to them as Steve and Sarah (bugger! That is their name, oh well, never mind. They were never that innocent anyway!)

We have been to their house a few times and, therefore, know our way around and we know everyone in the area, all the expats and some of the Spaniards. So getting off the plane is almost like going home. This year, within a couple of hours we were sat in a Chinese restaurant eating and drinking and being remembered by Richard the waiter. Richard doesn't sound very Chinese but, to be perfectly honest, I can’t pronounce his real name let alone spell it. We were getting up in the morning and meeting people that we have known for some years.

This year Carlos had gone. For years we have gone to what we called Carlos Bar to drink and play cribbage. Carlos knew us, and even after a year away would remember that we liked to drink Guinness. His was generally the first place we would visit as it was the best pint of the holiday. A cold Guinness served in a glass that had been kept in the freezer. And when the temperature outside is in excess of 35°C, that is wonderful. But this year he has gone. The Meson Gallea is run by Jose and is not quite the same. So we went somewhere else.

Marys Bar is a little different. We had always walked past it thinking that it was a little run down and rough. It was. But the beer was good. The landlord, another Jose, was a surly bastard and we had the feeling that everyone stopped talking and stared at us as we sat down, and they did. But we persevered and by the second week of the holiday we were Joses best mates. We had free sardines, pork and sausages cooked by our hosts fair hands on his BBQ. The BBQ looked like it harboured all the e. coli and salmonella bugs in Spain, but the food was good and tasty and none of us were ill. We got into the habit of passing by after meals elsewhere for a coffee and brandy before went home.

As for the rest of the holiday, we had barbecues at the house, where we cooked our own sardines, meals out at Shellys bar, where we played pool. We went into town and ate ice cream at a shop that sells more flavours than there are flavours. My particular favourite was amaretto ice cream, I love marzipan and this was just marzipan ice cream, I had died and gone to heaven.

We sat round the pool, we swam, we went to the beach, we watched as Ann ranted about something or other while under the influence of a chilled Rose’. Steve, a notoriously fussy eater, ate the sardines, olives and battered prawns. I ate raw onion and garlic mayo ( I can’t face cold garlic usually, makes me want to puke!)

We listened to the sound of the Russian lap dancer being pleasured by her latest boyfriend, and cheered when she finally climaxed. We watched lightning and listened to the thunder. The rain was torrential for a couple of hours, a kid was actually surfing in the road! We trimmed trees and cut our fingers. We slept outside under the stars ( apart from the night it rained!) But mostly we had fun.And we were disappointed when it was over.

I will raise a glass of cerveza to Steve, Sarah, Harry, Ann, Sian, Amy, Jeremy, Roger, Pat, Christine, Mark and Steven. To the memory of Shelly, whose bar we drank and ate in. To Jose, the surly Spaniard, and the Spanish mafia for interrupting their card games with questions. Cheers! Here’s to next year, if we are invited back.

Ridin' along on my pushbike , Honey...

2010-07-31T04:36:00.000-07:00

In the name of appearing fit, instead of fat as I used to be, I signed myself and Mrs Giant68 up for a bike ride. I’m not sure that she was that impressed but I told her that it would be a good day out in the sun, I’m not sure that believed me.
Sky, of the tv fame, and the British Cycling Association had got together and with the aid of Southampton City council had shut most of the roads around the town centre for the day so that us cyclists, who pay no road tax, insurance or any contribution at all to the upkeep of the roads (I am a driver as well and I hate those damned cyclists!!), could take over the city streets.
It was a 10km circuit up through the town centre and round the common. I didn’t factor into the equation the ride into the town centre itself. That added another 12km, at least.
We got a free hi-vis vest and there were free bottles of water and energy drinks, “whoopee!” I hear you cry. Some lotion for my sore arse afterwards would’ve been nice!
Bearing in mind that for the last 20+ years I have had knackered knees, this is the first serious cycle ride I have done in that time so I was quite impressed that I managed 2 laps plus the ride home, a total of 32km (20 miles for those of you still thinking pre-decimalisation). All the time riding with our heads on swivels as the little kids that were taking part had no concept of the straight line, and the more sporty types trying to do it at warp speed would, invariably, try and overtake as you were trying to avoid a small person!
We could have just done the ride but we decided that we would try and raise some money for charity. So far, with money promised but not collected yet, we should have somewhere in the region of £150, all to go to Naomi House, a childrens Hospice in Hampshire.
So a big thank you to Ted and Karen, Nicky and Neil, Louise, Gadget, mum and Geoff, the Wilson family (jnr.), The Boy, No.1 daughter, Brett (who actually rode with us), Bob S, Jackie W, Karen F, AC, promised cash from the Fishwicks, Teddy Mac, and Sharon. And to the one person who said "Charities? F**k 'em" I sincerely hope that you when you need a charity they give you the same answer.

More expensive than Gold

2010-07-09T01:28:00.000-07:00

I have discovered the most expensive substance on the face of the planet. More valuable than gold, platinum or even saffron. I read a report a while ago that said printer ink was the most expensive commodity on the planet, but it was wrong. I can understand that the manufacturers of printers and the ink that goes in them spend fortunes on developing ink that flows without drying out in the cartridge. Has the correct consistency, colour, durability, and staying power so that when you print a picture it will not fade over time. They obviously want a return on their R & D investment. But they have it wrong. They have the wrong substance.

Yesterday I went to the opticians. I had my eyes tested after 2 years, as advised. To be honest, I knew that they were a little worse and last time I was told that I would probably need reading glasses this time. I sat in the chair and read the test card, you know, the one that says

Making

A mint out

Out of you, mug!

Then comes the fun. The funny, adjustable lenses go on and various magnitudes are put in front of your eyes and I emerge knowing that I need varifocals so that I can read and see things that are further away than the end of my nose.

Fine, they have deals on the frames and lenses so this shouldn’t cost much. £317 later and I am in shock, but at least I will be able to see.

Now here comes the expensive substance. It is whatever they use to make the frames of spectacles. I have bought rimless specs. They are nothing more than 2 arms and the bridge to join the lenses. Must only weigh in at few ounces, but they have cost me £120. I can understand the varifocal lenses costing over a hundred quid, as they have to be cut and ground and polished. But three bits of, what is effectively, wire? Someone is having a laugh at the expense of all of us speccy four-eyes!!

Think I’ll go online next and buy some that are manufactured in a sweat shop in India. They may make me look a bit stupid but they will be cheap. The lenses may be so poorly polished that I wouldn’t be able to see myself in the mirror, anyway. But I will still have money in my pocket!

A Tale of Two Tents...

2010-07-06T10:18:00.000-07:00

Ok, so I went camping again. I must be some sort of masochist. I really don’t know what has got into me lately. I have started eating salads, exercising, living healthily, and now I enjoy camping. Will somebody please shoot me now! Before long I may turn all new age, and start getting in touch with my feminine side!

So, we loaded the entire contents of our house (and the neighbour’s house, I think) into the car and drove off down the road with a shower of sparks coming from the exhaust as it dragged along the ground. This time we were off to pastures new. Dorset, and Corfe Castle to be precise. We had plans for riding the steam train into Swanage on Saturday, barbeque in the evening, plenty of booze, bit of music and a good laugh.

It didn’t start well, with only four of us showing up out of the many that were invited, but that was their loss. The four of us decided that we could survive without the miserable buggers. Set the tents up and unpack the cars. Then off to find a chippy. Sated with a good portion of cod and chips, we set about demolishing a pile of bottled alcohol while we watched the sunset over the sheep and cows in the next field. Mooing and baaing was going to be least of our problems overnight as a group of Duke of Edinburgh students moved in at 10:30pm and made enough noise to wake the dead all night. And, yes, I do mean all night. In the end they were thrown off the site. But, by God, were we tired!

Never mind. We still managed the steam train into Swanage. Our daughter and granddaughter turned up for the train ride as well. Now the newest member of the Giant68 family is still not a year old so this was a big adventure for her, and she loved it. As she has me wrapped around her little finger I spent a fortune on her, but that’s what a granddad is for.

Barbeque was lit, as was the camping stove and we all set about demolishing a pile of food and the obligatory lake full of alcohol. Fuelled by the aforementioned alcohol we decided it would be a brilliant idea to climb the hill behind the camp and watch the sunset. We lost our team of Sherpa’s along the way and as we climbed through the cloud layer we could see the curvature of the Earth! It certainly felt like it! We all slept like the dead that night!

The sun came up and illuminated the interior of my tent. Why, in God’s name, do tent manufacturers not make the tent out of something that block the light from the Earths star? So I was awake pretty early, as always. One day I will get a lay in, that’s the problem with being a shift worker for the last 25 years, no lay ins.

Good job that I was awake, really, as we had to pack up reasonably early so that we could rush back home for the granddaughters christening. So with the help of a large shoehorn it was all squeezed back into the car and off we went.

Another camping trip over. I am becoming a veteran camper. Should I be proud of this, or should I be hanging my head in shame. When people ask how I spent my weekend should I say “Oh, I went camping” or should I just tell people that spent the entire weekend downloading gay porn?

Guilty Pleasures...

2010-06-20T10:57:00.000-07:00

Guilty pleasures. What’s yours? Nothing kinky or perverse (OK, then, just this once), just simple guilty pleasures that you would be ashamed to admit to even though they are really nothing to be ashamed of.
I am sat in the office looking out of the window, as I do, sun is shining down out of a clear blue sky and on the radio is “Me and you and a dog named Boo” by a band called Lobo (I think). And at this particular moment, as I sing along, all is well with the world, I am at peace. President Obama and the BP saga, the “Bloody Sunday” report etc may as well belong to another universe.
I have many of these “pleasures”, all the sort of thing that you wouldn't want to admit in public. I'm far too old to worry about what people think of me now. And they will all transport me to a different place. Sometimes they may transport me, mentally at least, to another place, sometimes to another time. On our way to a pub quiz a few weeks back, one of our friends had a perfume on that took me back years. I couldn’t quite grasp the memory that it evoked, every time I tried to grab it it would flutter just out of reach. Lincoln biscuits and malted milk biscuits take me to my childhood when I would stay with my grandmother in Nottingham
Sometimes these pleasures transport me nowhere, but are just pleasures. Tinned hotdog sausages, Big Macs, the smell of hawthorn blossom. To be honest, I should have probably kept quiet about the tinned hotdog sausages, people will now think that I’m weird.

My name’s Giant68 and I’m odd…

Under canvas...

2010-05-25T05:36:00.000-07:00

Well, the next episode in the camping saga is over and went quite well. But there are a few things that concern me, apart from the fact that I thoroughly enjoyed it (oh the shame!). Camping, in principle, seems to be a cheap way of having a holiday. And easy. Just load your tent into the car and off you go.

No. In reality you will load the entire contents of your house into the back of your car, drive for however many miles it is to your destination and then take the entire contents of your house ot of the car and put them in a field. I didn’t realise that my car could carry so much. It must have been designed by the same alien race that built the TARDIS. I am sure that the exhaust must have been dragging along the road leaving a trail of sparks behind.

Then you have to pitch your tent which takes a while. But not as long as those who take the trailer tent. Trailer tents are a completely different kettle of fish altogether. Unhitch, unfold and off you go. A fully fitted tent with all the luxuries of home. But, again, it’s never that easy, is it? Once you have ben allocated a pitch you have to get it aligned properly, then level it. Spirit level out and wedges to put under the wheels and a team of hunky blokes to drag one side up on the wedge. Fine if these hunky blokes are available but if it is you and the wife it can get very frustrating.

No Ted this time, so no purple shorts. Just nine good friends, lots of food for the bbq, lots of beer/wine. Bacon sandwiches for breakfast and plenty of coffee.

Interestingly, though, was discovering that Mrs Giant68 turned the inflatable mattress end for end when I decided I wanted my head uphill instead of down. I would have just moved the pillows to the other end. Female logic for you…

I may, now, go and buy my own tent instead of borrowing one. I may never be able to face the world again! :o)

Carry On Camping II, "This Time It's Personal"

2010-05-11T09:27:00.000-07:00

You will know by now, well you will if you read these things I take time to write and post, that I have had an experience camping. If you don’t know this you need to go back to the beginning and see what started all this blogging nonsense for me. You will find out interesting things such as: what colour shorts Ted wears when he goes running, although you won’t be as traumatised by this fact as we were seeing it.

Well, it looks as though I am going to have this experience again. So I decided that I would look around and see what equipment I could purchase to make the weekend a little easier. I spent a morning surfing the net and found that I could buy portable washing lines and a laundry basket, a cooker with grill and double oven, wardrobes, beds of all types and sizes. I could get a power invertor so that I could run my portable microwave and fridge from the car. That is, of course, if I didn’t have the luxury of an electric hook-up on the site... . There are fancy little stands that you can stick in the ground to hold your can of beer, Lord forbid that you should have to put your beer on the cold ground! Armchairs and sun loungers, the list goes on ad nauseam…

The question is: if you have bought all this so that you have all the comforts of home, why not just stay at home? It’s warm, comfortable and hedgehogs don’t bother you in the early hours (well, maybe they do, but to be honest I was very drunk at the time, please don’t tell the RSPCA!)

Looks like the boy is not coming this time. I don’t think that he can handle another night sleeping in his car due to the hedgehogs.

I am going to have to do this, relatively, sober as well as the diabetes still has to kept under control.

Am I a god, or what??

2010-04-23T08:44:00.000-07:00

What do you see, in your head, when you think of yourself? This was something I was thinking today while eating an ice cream, people watching. I and Mrs Giant68 were sat in a shopping centre, somewhere in Hampshire, with a Thornton’s ice cream each, just watching people go by. I have spoken about this before, so you shouldn’t be too surprised about our pastimes.

Everyone is different and it takes different strokes to make a world, and boy did we see some different strokes this afternoon. Tall skinny ones, short fat ones, tall fat ones… You know the sort, the intelligencia mixing with the dregs of humanity. The Chavs and the Chav nots.

But what do they see when they look in the mirror? The middle aged bloke with his trousers slightly too short, shirt a bit too tight, the comb-over and the tattoos on show? Does he see an Adonis with the sartorial elegance of an Italian fashion house? Does the Chav single mother with the bacon belt see some sophisticated super model, as she looks at her reflection in the shop window, with a cigarette stuck between her lips?

When I look in the mirror, intellectually, I see a middle aged, overweight, exceedingly tall bloke. Yes, I have broad shoulders and, apparently, a nice backside, but I want to see a tall, broad shouldered, narrow hipped god of a man. Do the people that are out and about sometimes let their “want to see” take over from what they actually see. Does the 60ish year old woman in tight leggings and high-heeled shoes think she looks like a goddess instead of hooker for a niche market? Sometimes I wonder.

I also wonder if I will ever follow that route. Not the leggings and the shoes, obviously, but maybe dressing like a tw*t in some other way. Mini Giant68 reckons I already do! Thanks, son!

The Tall Guy

2010-04-14T00:33:00.000-07:00

It’s time to get grumpy again. Let’s face it, I seem to be better at grumpy than I am at deep and philosophical. Yet again I am p*^^ed off with the world, nothing unusual there. So far, over the last couple of months I have lost over 2 stone in weight. This leads to the fact that all my clothes are now too big. OK, so when you are 6’8” and weigh 21 stone the clothes are going to be damn big, but now I am smaller in girth, and without a tight belt my trousers fall to the floor.

So now I have to go and get more trews. Difficult at the best of times. I have walked the floor of the department stores and drawn a blank. This is due to the fact that I need a 35” inside leg trouser. Now, they are available, but only if you are built like Peter Crouch. If I have the waist size equivalent to something that a gardener would grow beans up then I can buy trousers. But if I am a more normal size I may as well forget it. 32” waist, 35” inside leg, certainly Mr Beanpole, 40” waist, 35” inside leg, forget it you fat b*^$^rd.

Now I can’t be the only one that is slightly larger size, can I? There must be a clothes shop somewhere that can help me.

I have been, pretty much the same size for the last 25 years so why is it that whenever we get a new issue of t-shirts at work do I always get issued with a size to small? Everytime I have to hand them back and ask for bigger ones and then wait while they are ordered?

It strikes me that all this is a form of discrimination. If I was a midget, black, a homosexual, female, missing a limb or all of the above I could scream from the rooftops that I was being discriminated against. But I am just tall. I can’t buy trousers. I struggle to buy shoes, shirts and trousers. I bang my head when I walk through doorways. I can wedge myself between the floor and the ceiling on buses so that I don’t fall over. Buying a car is a bloody nightmare. But it seems that the only solution is to have a couple of inches surgically removed. (Heightwise, what were you thinking?)

Maybe I ought to start a support group? Suggestions for the name on a postcard please…

What's your story?

2010-04-05T06:41:00.001-07:00

What’s the story? I was having a conversation with a friend the other day. He was lambasting me for my terrible blogging rate again. I try, I really do. But sometimes the blog just doesn’t flow. Anyway, we were talking about people, and how we never really now the people that touch our lives. And what is the story of some of the people that we pass in the street. This came about after a story in the papers about an old woman who turned out to have been a spy during the war.

So when you are sitting in some café having a cup of latte and just watching the Saturday morning shopping crowds wander past do you ever wonder what people do, or have done. Do you make up stories about them? If you read my blogs you will have read about the courier van stopping by a man stood at the side of the road, that sort of thing. Mrs Giant68 and I quite often people watch. It can be quite entertaining. We have awards for the weirdest person of the day, largest boobs (yeah, I know, kinda strange) Tallest, shortest, fattest etc. But sometimes I look at people and wonder what they have experienced.

Older people will have lived through such different times than we ever will. I used to have a friend who was a gunnery officer in the Royal Navy during the Second World War. He used to tell me all sorts of stories over a few pints down the pub. He talked of sippers and gulpers and cockers p’s. There were other old boys I drank with who were serving in the navy escorting Baltic convoys. These people have been through things that anyone of my generation and younger cannot imagine. Their experiences have shaped their lives in directions that ours will never go. The way the world is going, the younger generation will have their lives shaped by which computer games they play, what films they watch and which lager they drink. What sort of stories will they be able to tell people in the future over a pint in the local? Of how they set their trophy dog on some other chav after he spilled their Stella?

So when you are people watching bear in mind that the old guy shambling down the street could have a story that is far more interesting that the one you have just made up about him. When I think of all the people I know, and what I know about them, there must be some really good stories to hear. My great uncle Norman, ex RAF warrant officer who has served all over the world and tells the most amazing stories, Oggy the ex-gunnery officer, Jumbo from the Baltic convoys. Listen to the stories before they are gone, because the story of Norman getting a tank transporter stuck in Woolworths In Salisbury will be lost forever. Laugh, I very nearly p*$$ed myself over that one!

Abracadabra!

2010-03-12T12:04:00.000-08:00

Magic or science? Which do you prefer?

I read science fiction, but if you read my blog you will already know this shameful secret. I also like the popular science books, you know the sort: A Brief History of Time and Why Don’t Penguins Feet Freeze, that sort of thing. I like to think that I understand technology and the science of the world around me. I don’t want to end up like some of the elderly that you see walking around the town looking totally bewildered at the modern world. I know how to use my mobile phone, actually a smartphone, and can surf the internet like a pro.

But I can’t help feeling that something is missing.

Where has the magic gone in the world? There was a time when the television was a thing of magic. Pictures that appeared in the glass fronted box in the corner of the room. Now we know that the pictures are converted into a mass of 1’s and 0’s, transmitted through the air as a stream of microwaves or radio waves to a satellite 36000km up in geostationary orbit, bounced back to the dish and reconverted to pictures again in the telly. Magic was better. In theory planes stay in the air due to Bernoullis Principle, that says that the air flowing over the top of the wing is faster and therefore at lower pressure. But I also read somewhere that scientists aren’t really sure. Why would the air flow faster over the top? Just because it is a longer distance over the top of an aerofoil doesn’t make the air go faster, it is not a race between top and bottom. Maybe it is magic, or will power. 200 people not wanting to drop out of the sky like a stone!

Would we all be happier if the electric light worked by magic? Father Christmas really existed and the Easter Bunny laid chocolate eggs in your garden? And a Pangolin was a musical instrument?

Don't take me seriously...

2010-03-10T08:37:00.000-08:00

Don’t overdo it. Oh, and don’t take it too seriously.

As I have gotten older this is the one universal truth that I have learnt. Throughout my life have taken part in various things, sporting activities, hobbies etc. And there has come a point where I have started to take it far too seriously. And that is the time to stop and reassess what you want out of the activity, hobby, whatever.

When I was 13 or 14 I got interested in astronomy. I bought the books, a telescope and joined a society. I really enjoyed looking at the night sky with the scope or binoculars or just naked eye. It was amazing. Seeing the rings of Saturn with your own eyes rather than in a picture is just something else. But before long I had joined a national society and become a committee member of the local society. Then I started to get lost in the politics of running a society. Enjoyment gone.

Now 30+ years later I have rediscovered that passion I had at 14. I have a telescope and a pair of binoculars and looking at the sky a marvel again. From the rings of Saturn through Uranus (Oooh, matron!), to sunspots. I have joined the big national societies but have decided not to take it seriously. I will not get involved in organised events unless it really interests me. Otherwise I will read the quarterly magazines and look at the stars from my garden and just enjoy it. It is quite relaxing. I also have a digital camera which I will rig up to the telescope so that I can enjoy the stars when it is cloudy by looking at the pictures that I have taken.

I have a couple of friends who like photography. They have fancy DSLR cameras and they take photos just so. The light has to right, the exposure, the filter stuck on the lens. The subject must be arranged just so. I am sure that they look at the world through a different set of eyes than I do. That obviously suits them. They tell me to remember the rules of photography and do it like this. But I take photos for me. I take photos of things that please my eye and that I like to look at. I hope I don’t start to take it that seriously or I may as well chuck the camera in the bin.

All these pastimes I have taken up and given up when they get to serious, shame really. I enjoyed them to start with, or I must have. But I must also remember not to take life that seriously ever again.

And nor should you.

2010-02-12T09:50:00.000-08:00

For one week in six I sit in an office that looks out onto a busy dockyard.
The job is not too arduous and gives me a little time to just watch the
world go by. It is strange, some of the things that I see from my window.
Today, for instance, there was a man stood by the road, just waiting. Then
a courier van pulled up on the other side of the road, the driver got out
and reached into the back of the van and retrieved a small parcel, walked
over to the waiting man, chatted for a few minutes then handed over the
parcel. Now that struck me as odd. Normally a courier would deliver to an
address, not to some bloke in the street. What was in the package? Was it
some dodgy drug deal, or something else just as illegal? Or was it a
message form the past, as in Back To The Future. A letter written a hundred
years ago and stored until a certain date in the future when it will be
handed to a man in a grey jacket stood by the side of a particular road.
Maybe the boredom is just getting to me.

Some of the funniest sights are when we have a cruise liner in the dock. We
get a steady stream of older people walking through the dock gate to their
ship. Most are dragging suitcases the size of the wardrobe that contained
Narnia. By this point most of them are on their way to a heart attack. They
get off the train at the central Station and can see the ship that they
will spend the next few weeks aboard, it doesn’t look to far. They can walk
that distance easily. What they fail to realise is that the ships are big.
Really huge in some cases, and look closer because of that. It is probably
½ a mile from the station to the dock gate. But from their it is easily
another mile to the quayside, along a pavement that is full of lumps and
bumps and potholes. By the time they pass me they are on the point of
collapse. Generally the woman is ok because the husband has, obviously said
“Don’t worry, dear, I can drag every item of clothing and pair of shoes
that you ever bought in this large wardrobe on wheels the short distance to
the boat.”
Strangely enough, when there is a cruise liner in there are generally a
large number of ambulances entering the dock, wonder if there is a
connection?
I am thinking of setting up a business replacing suitcase wheels from the
ready supply found scattered along the pavement.
These people have just spent several thousand pounds on a cruise. You can’t
tell me that their pension won’t stretch to the cost of a taxi from the
station?

There is also a steady movement of brand spanking new cars through the dock
on their way to destinations, probably, more sunny than this. Hondas, Fords
and the occasional Jag. Every now and then, when there is no traffic along
the dock road, some of the guys that shift these cars like to have a bit of
fun. The car stops, then to a scream of spinning rubber and the
accompanying smell and smoke the car takes off at a significant rate of
knots. Jealous? Me? Yep!

Piercing wit

2010-01-28T13:25:00.000-08:00

Ok, I’m sorry. I received a rollicking today. Nothing serious, it was just that one of the lorry drivers I spoke about a while back had noticed that my rate of blogging had fallen off a bit. I am grateful that someone is actually following the blog. And I’m not worried that it is someone who lives in a tin box on wheels thru’ the week with their only companion: the internet and a CB radio. I’m not proud, God knows I can’t afford to be, I’ll accept anyone as a follower of my blog. As long as they don’t start to stalk me, that would be just creepy.

By the way, Ralph, the little white pills really hit the spot, thanks.

So now I have to think of something to say.

I see in the paper this week that someone has been complaining about scruffy people in the media. I don’t really care what people look like, to an extent. Jeremy Clarkson in jeans doesn’t bother me. The weird girl who served me in Tesco café the other day did bother me. She had piercings in a strange place. In her wrist. Surely, as someone who works with food, she shouldn’t have been allowed near the hot food server, let alone the caffe latte maker. I work in a company that makes food. I am not allowed to wear my piercings at work in case they fall into the product, I haven’t told the boss about the Prince Albert as I’m scared he might want to inspect it, but apparently you can be pierced and serve food. Strange.

Quite often as I walk round the shops I will see some pierced freak with more metalwork than the Eiffel tower hanging out of their face, ears and God knows where else. These are the same people that, when sat at the checkout, refer to me as “mate” At this point the red mist starts to rise before my eyes. I want to be called “Sir” or “Mr…” I certainly don’t want to be called “mate” by someone who is least likely to be my mate.

Mate is a slang term for friend, or a term for a procreational partner. I cannot see myself becoming friends with the lank haired victim of a deranged blacksmith. Nor can I see myself procreating with this missing link. I have been known to explain this in a loud voice, to deaf ears. Probably the piercings are weighing down the lobes so much that the ear canal is closed. I waste my time. Why do I bother?

I’m all for a little individuality, but please don’t call me “mate” unless you have known me for some time or I have slept with you.

Hello Sweetness!

2010-01-08T04:15:00.000-08:00

Went to the doctor yesterday. Just to go over the results of some blood tests I had before Christmas. He told me what I already knew, I’m sweet. Really sweet. I’m diabetic.

I suppose I shouldn’t be surprised, I’m mid-forties, a tad overweight and probably don’t look after myself as well as I should. I used to be quite healthy. I cycled everywhere and was whippet thin and then I discovered the joys of alcohol, women and eventually marriage. I was lucky in that I married a woman who was a good cook, boy, was she a good cook. So really it is her fault that I am now a shambling wreck of a man instead of the athlete I was twenty years ago. I’m only joking, dear, honestly.

Life now presents me with some problems to overcome. I have to change a lifestyle that I have settled into, probably a little too easily. If you read my blogs you will know that I am a confirmed salad dodger, but now I have to try and get five portions of fruit and veg into this knackered body of mine. I also have to cut down on the sugary stuff. This won’t be too hard because I have always been a savoury rather than sweet man. I prefer the cheese board to the dessert. But I do like a bit of sugar in the coffee that keeps me going through the day. I guess I will have to learn to take it without or find an artificial sweetener that actually tastes sweet. I will have to be more careful over what I eat, get the balance of carbs and fats and proteins right. Lose a little weight, do a little more exercise…

Life will be fun again, eventually.

I thought that of the two main types of diabetes type 2 was minor irritation rather than anything serious. But I have now read the diabetes UK website and I am sobered by what I have read. If you think you may be diabetic, or you want to take preventative measures so that you don’t become diabetic read it. I can see that these changes must be made. I will make these changes; after all, I gave up smoking without any help and without too much of a problem, so hard can it be?

I expect Mrs Giant68 will find me whimpering in a corner somewhere in about a weeks’ time.

My Arse!

2010-01-05T09:55:00.000-08:00

For one week in six I spend my days at work directing traffic. No, I’m not a copper. I just tell the drivers of trucks where to tip their load. I sit in an office and look out the window at a lorry either side of me, trailer tipped up and cab facing out into the road. I listen to the radio; do the relevant paperwork, tidy up, whatever.

Now, don’t get me wrong, most of the drivers that come in are nice chaps. Very friendly, although they do tend to take the mick at times, but, I guess, they get as good as they give.

The towns are full of chavs with their trousers ½ way down their arse, showing the colour of their underwear. It really annoys me and makes me feel like telling them to pull the bloody things up! But they are nowhere near as bad as some truck drivers. At least the chavs just show their underwear. Sometimes I look out of the office window and wonder if I can hold onto my lunch as another driver reverses out of his cab with trousers at ½ mast and most of his arse on show! Why do they have to do it? Do they feel that this is a good look for a knight of the road? Surely they should be able to hoik their trousers up inside the cab? Or maybe someone could design a pair of strides that come further up the back and, therefore, don’t expose the rectum to fresh air. Then the poor afflicted driver can spend more of his time worrying about where he can obtain a Yorkie bar.

And as for Tyrone and his reversing…

Black Magic

2009-12-07T07:51:00.000-08:00

We have reached that time of year when the car insurance is due. The evil time. The time when insurance companies use their peculiar brand of black magic to calculate how much you are going to pay for the privilege of driving on British roads. And, let’s face it, they have us over a barrel, sort of. I always thought that as time went by, and you didn’t have an accident or make any form of claim on your insurance, then the yearly premium would go down. I haven’t made a claim on my car insurance in twenty years. The insurance companies should be paying me to drive the damn car!

So I get this years renewal letter and guess what? Yes, it has gone up again. 90 quid more than last year! 90 bloody quid! So like a sensible person I go online and visit the one with the meerkat and the Tesco one as well, just for good measure. I now have a list of 50 ish quotes in front of me, 35 are cheaper than my renewal quote, including, and get this, my current insurance provider. In fact, my current provider on the compare site is £80 cheaper than my renewal!

I’ll sort through these and then phone my current provider and see if they can match any of these cheaper ones. No doubt I’ll be told, by my current provider, that they have provided the most competitive quote. I don’t think so.

I will go for a mid- range quote, somewhere between the cheapest and my renewal quote. My current provider will then break out the voodoo doll of me and stick pins in it as their own black magic has failed. I will also carry a bottle of holy water and several protection amulets just in case.

Shameful pastime...

2009-11-28T08:07:00.000-08:00

So, what is it about science fiction in literature that is something to be hidden, almost ashamed of? It is ok to go to the cinema and watch the latest Star Trek film. Go to a screening of Lord of the Rings and people think you are mildly intelligent. But buy yourself a copy of “Foundation” by Isaac Asmov and you may as well admit to signing the sex offenders register.

Look through the reviews in the papers, or on the TV arts programs and you will never see a science fiction novel reviewed. When I was at comprehensive school I was regularly lambasted by my English lit teacher, Mr Mouncher, about my penchant for reading that “Star Trek rubbish”. It wasn’t Star trek. It was “Cities in Flight” by James Blish, a fantastic story written in the 1950’s.

A lot of science fiction is damn good literature, even the Star Trek and star Wars novels contain some good prose. Yes, I know that for every good sci-fi novel there is a crap one, pulp fiction of the lowest order. But other genres of literature have that as well, so why make us sci-fi fans feel like members of the dirty mac brigade sneaking into the porn shop via the side door?

I would put some of the “classics” against some of the books that I have read any day. Read the Nights dawn trilogy by Peter F Hamilton, anything by Neal Asher or Richard Morgan. Those three authors are relatively new to the field, but there are many more, older novelists from Asimov to Zelazney.

There are the Nebula and Hugo awards for science fiction. Some of the writers are Knights of the Realm, Arthur C Clarke for example.

Go on. Try one. Can’t be any worse than that Mills and Boon rubbish that women read, can it?

And remember, turn the collar of your mac up, keep your head down, and I’ll see you by the side door…

It's a dogs life.

2009-10-29T11:32:00.000-07:00

Today I am going to hand over my blog page to my dog.. She has something that she wants to get off her chest. So here we go.

Woof bark bark woof ruff ruff woof bark ruff bark...

Ooops, sorry, I forgot that you humans are a lazy bunch and can’t be bothered to learn your own languages let alone that of other species.

What I meant to say was mmm nnnm mmm slurp (sorry I had an itch in a private place. Don’t look so disgusted, you know you would lick yours if you could. And for gods sake give up on that “give her a biscuit, she might let you” joke. It’s tired, let it sleep!!)

Now as I was saying. Coats. Why on earth do you insist on dressing us up in coats? We are blessed by evolution, in that we already have a coat. It is made of fur and is warm, ok it does get a bit a bit smelly every now and then, it is always there and we don’t need another one. We don’t need wax, Barbour jackets, we don’t need ridiculous woolly things, we don’t need anything.

Just take us for a walk and feed us and we will repay you with unconditional love and obedience (I’m stretching it a bit with the obedience, but you get the idea.) Give me a woolly coat and I will piss on your sofa!

Woof!!

Childhoods End

2009-10-24T12:47:00.000-07:00

While I have been sat here this evening with Mrs Giant68, watching Strictly Come Dancing, I have had a terrible thought. We are going to have generations of people in this country, and possibly many others, that do not know the words to “Chim Chiminee” from Mary Poppins! This is disastrous!

Childhood is being taken away from children with the advent of the new gadgets I like so much. (see the previous blog. Yes, you. Go on, read it now, don’t be so bloody lazy!) Children will sit and play shoot ‘em up games and racing games on the latest game platforms from Sony and Microsoft et al. They forget that there are forms of entertainment that predate the video game. Parents should be encouraging children to read books such as “Swallows and Amazons” and some of the Enid Blyton stories.

They should watch the Disney films until they are sick. They should learn the words to “On the bottom of the beautiful briny sea” from Bedknobs and Broomsticks. They should learn to hiss and boo at King John from “Robin Hood”. Then the world would be a better place.

I intend to tell my granddaughter the story of Bobtail Bunny as soon as she can begin to understand what I am saying. You know the story, I know most of the people in my family know it. “ At No.1 in Rabbit Row, a crowd of bunnies live, you know. The youngest one was Bobtail Bunny, he was so jolly and so funny...”

Oooh, the shiny things...

2009-10-24T08:48:00.000-07:00

I am a sad man. It’s a fact. Once a new gadget or gizmo comes out on the market I will covet it. I must admit that I don’t always get it, Mrs Giant68 sees to that. But sometimes I have a little luck and something new will appear at home. Just lately I have welcomed a large, flat 1080p LCD telly into the house. And what’s the point of a tv like that without having a source for high definition, so a Sky+HD box now sits under the telly. Then we have all these shiny new gadgets that each have a remote control. That’s quite a lot of remotes. So we now have a rather good 1 for all remote, programmable over the internet from a central database of gadgets and doodads. Brilliant! Fantastic! I’m happy, loads of shiny new gadgets.

A few weeks ago my PC died. I nearly cried. It had been a labour of love for years, built by myself and upgraded over the years so that it was a bit like Triggers broom. It bore no resemblance to the original PC. But now it was dead and I had to replace it. Did I rebuild it with new parts or do i buy new and complete? I had a look around and decided that I really couldn’t be bothered any more with the building. It was not really cost effective to build anymore, not like the days of my first PC when I would trawl through the computer fairs and cheap deals on components.

So I bought a laptop. Huge amount of RAM and a correspondingly large hard drive. Guess what? Now I am in the process of installing Windows 7 on it. Not a gadget exactly, but it is new and shiny, and I do like the shiny things in life.

I think that, at times, Mrs giant68 despairs. She is happy with same old things that she has always had. “Why do we need a new TV, is the old one broken?”

“No, it’s not broken but we just need a new TV”

“Why?”

“Because.” A bit childish really but I have no good answer. Sometimes you just need new things. What can I say?

Ooh, shiny things...

Embarassment

2009-10-12T09:50:00.000-07:00

In my study I have an album of photos from my childhood. They were given to me on my 40^th birthday by my mum. In her infinite wisdom, she decided to bring them along to my birthday party and show them to all my friends. As all my friends were under the influence of copious quantities of booze they all thought them hysterically funny.

There were pictures of me naked on a hillside when I was about 2 or 3. Pictures of me through my school years. Pictures of me... Never mind, I think you get the idea. They were the sort of photo that gets dragged out when the new girlfriend/ boyfriend finally gets to meet the parents.

But there are only about 30 or 40 of them. That was the beauty of the analogue age. When cameras needed to be filled with a film and then, when the photos were taken, had to taken to the chemist and developed. All at a cost.

Now in the digital age everybody has a digital camera that takes no film and needs no developing. Pictures can be taken willy nilly and downloaded onto the family computer, uploaded to Myfacebookspace or whatever. I have just become a granddad, well, a month ago anyway, and I already have somewhere in the region of 500 pictures of my granddaughter on my laptop. Can you imagine how ,long it is going to take to show all these, and the rest that we take over the years, to new love interest when she gets older. Maybe we ought to give her business cards with the URL of where they are stored online and the message “ carry on without me and let me know when you are finished”

A Social Networking Tweet

2009-08-29T07:17:00.000-07:00

OK, now, I have been a member of Facebook and Twitter for some time, and I have built up a collection of just short of a hundred friends. Yeah, I know, my son has over 2oo friends and some people have even more. Here’s my question: Do these people know these “friends” or are they just random people that they have selected? I tend to ignore “friend requests” from people that I don’t know, but how many people will accept, thinking that they have just made a new friend, or maybe it was someone I used to know and forgot about? Or is it the league table of friends? I have more friends than you so I must be better.

Also I have noticed a propensity for people to have conversations through their Facebook status with people that are probably sitting right next to them. And it is generally really soppy messages. The kind that make you reach for the bucket and yak your intestines out. These people would not have these conversations in public so why do they feel that all their friends want to share it? You see, i tell my wife that I love her, I don’t feel the need to do it through a third party

So now I have alienated campers, Skegnness, facebook and social networking. Who’s next?

East of Eden

2009-08-20T03:26:00.000-07:00

Now, some of you may have noticed that I am not a great fan of sleeping under canvas ( if you hadn’t noticed then give yourself a slap and go and read my earlier blog, naughty person!). So when Mrs Giant68 decided that we would have a break away I started to get a bit nervous. But we decided we would drive around the east of the country, a region that neither of us had been to.

Well, it was a very nice part of the world, in places. We went to Skegness and noticed, please don’t take offence if you live in or, indeed, like Skegness, that Skegness has cornered the market for tattoo ink and gold sovereign rings. To say that it may be the capital of the Chav universe could be an understatement. Strange, then, that just down the road from Skegness is the Gibraltar Point nature reserve. This has to be one of the most amazing places on the face of the planet. Miles of grassland and sand dunes leading down to a huge beach. If I had known it was going to be this good i would have ignored skeggy and gone straight here. Some may say that the wind turbines that are out in the sea spoil the view but I quite liked it.

We visited stately homes, travelled in cable cars and drove somewhere in the region of a thousand miles over the course of the week. Then we ended up in Wilmslow. I know, Wilmslow is on the other side of the country. But my cousin lives there, among the WAGS and the footballers and coked up celebs. Fortunately the above qualifications do not apply to her and her husband. We spent the weekend cornering the market for alcohol and food. What a way to finish the holiday.

I am far too young, I think.

2009-07-21T11:39:00.000-07:00

In a few weeks time no.1 daughter will make myself and Mrs Giant68 grandparents. Now, while I am only 44 years old and Mrs Giant68 is a bit younger, I am not averse to becoming what is traditionally seen as an older character in a cardigan, slippers and sucking a Werthers Original.
I am positively looking forward to it. The thing is, though, what will I be called? What will Mrs Giant68 be called? Nanny makes her sound like a goat. Granny? Gran? She feels that these are terms reserved for an older person. She has decided to be nana. Sounds like banana, or bananas, another way of saying that she is crackers. Far be it for me to say anything like that though!
Me? I was told what I was going to be called. Grumps. Thanks!
Werthers Original anyone?

Healthy Options

2009-06-02T03:43:00.000-07:00

Being a professional salad dodger of many years standing I find it suddenly hard to reconcile the fact that I suddenly fancy a plate loaded with green stuff. Where did this weird craving suddenly come from? It can’t be the sun suddenly beating down on the south of England, surely, as the sun has shone before and I have never felt like eating rabbit food. Usually when the sun starts shining I start buying burgers and sausages and charring them on the bbq. Maybe it is a sign that I am turning into my dad, who would, quite happily munch away on a stalk of celery. In fact I have some celery sitting in the bottom of the fridge, much to Mrs Giant68s dismay as she hates the stuff. If this is the case will I also turn into a grumpy old man? "Too late" says Mrs Giant68!
Maybe it is my body just telling me that I need to start looking after it. After all these years of excess, smoking, drinking, burning the candle at both ends… So, I’ll have to get the exercise bike out of the attic, give in to the delights of a herbivores diet and start to look pale and pasty.
I’m starting to come out in a cold sweat just thinking about it, I think I’ll go and have a cigarette!

Carry On Camping (or not...)

2009-06-01T01:09:00.000-07:00

So. A weekend camping. I’ve never really seen the attraction in sleeping on the floor in a field under canvas. But some people like it. So when my friends invited us along Mrs Giant68, Mini Giant68 and myself went along, with an almost open mind. We borrowed a tent from No1 daughter, and a few other bits and bobs then headed up the A36 to Salisbury. Well, they did, I had to work on Saturday morning so while they headed out on Friday I stayed at home with a takeaway pizza and a bottle of cabernet sauvignon.
I followed on Saturday afternoon with some last minute equipment, a list had been texted to me that morning. Most of it was to do with the fact that it still quite cool at night and Mrs giant68 was feeling the cold.
Now, I have nothing against camping as such, apart from communal toilets, showers, cooking over a camping stove, insects, the fragility of the British weather… But ignoring all that nothing. We were part of a large group, some of them people I work with and a bunch of friends. All very nice people and I think that is what makes the whole experience something to enjoy. The site was a beautiful, just outside Salisbury, the weather was sunny and hot. A short walk into Salisbury along the river ended at the market then back to Waitrose for food for the evening bbq. OK so now I’m absolutely knackered, the dodgy hip is playing up and I want some alcohol. From this point on it's booze and food, cooking over disposable bbqs and a camping gas stove. Good job there were plenty of people to do this, with my aging joints I could, maybe, get down on the floor to do the cooking but I would never get back up again! Silly games and more booze then it’s time for me. At least, to sleep. That is a very loose term, to sleep, I tried not to roll down the hill off my mattress, but I felt that I needed crampons and rope to hold me there. At one point I think I rolled onto Mrs Giant68, (stop that! I’ve already told you I have a dodgy hip…) Not much sleep then.
We walked to Old Sarum castle in the sun the next day, had an ice cream and walked back. Then off home to mull over the camping experience, or maybe just catch up some sleep or just use a decent toilet ( not that there was anything wrong with the toilets at the site but it is not the same, having a clearout in someone else’s toilet.)
Would I do it again? Probably, if only for the company I shared that weekend. I would need to make sure that I had better equipment ( and possibly a new hip!) Whether Mini Giant68 will ever do it again is another matter, he’s a teenager, just, and values decent beds and the other comforts of home.
There is something about sharing time like that with some good friends that, while it may not recharge the batteries like a holiday sat by the beach, recharges something else that may be bit more valuable.
This morning, I am still knackered and need to catch up with some serious sleep, my hip still aches, I have sunburn but I am happy.
Think Carry On Camping, and if you were there you can try and work out who was Sid James, Jack Douglas, Barbara Windsor etc…
And don’t mention the spaghetti Bolognese.
Or Teds shorts.