Wedding anniversary today!

Yes, we've been married 41 years today. Only nine years left to the Golden one.

One of the cards, as you can see, has a window in it, and suspended by a piece of wire is a picture of two champagne glasses. A great card!

But there are hidden dangers! There is a warning on the back!

It reads:

WARNING!

Not suitable for small children under 36 months due to small parts.

Please retain for future reference.

Of course its not suitable for a baby - a baby isn't going to be celebrating a wedding anniversary!

But I must remember when the cards are taken down. I'll cut out the warning notice as I must keep it for future reference. I mean, you never know when you might need to know that kind of stuff.

Arachnophobics, don't read this.

On Friday morning Chris Evans mentioned "wing mirror spiders" on his show on Radio 2. I remember having one of them a few years ago, but not recently.

But blow me! Later that day I went out, and as I drove off, I saw I had a wing mirror spider also! So there I was, driving slowly down the road, but even so, the web was 'vibrating' madly! But he didn't want to run off and hide behind the mirror! However, reality kicked in and I began to concentrate on the road.

And soon I had forgotten about the spider and it was 60 mph down the Southend Arterial Road, and come to think of it, I haven't seen it since...

But in the evening, I noticed a larger spider in his web behind the loo at home! I ask you, how many flies will he catch there? My wife, armed with her just purchased loo brush (actually there was nothing wrong with the old one, why spend out a whole 39p on a new one?) managed to "sweep" it up, but did it get washed down the plug hole of the wash basin or did it get away?

I think it got away. Or, it's another one that's just spun its web by the computer. I think there is even less likelihood of a decent lunch there.

It's a pity really, I don't like to think of the poor thing staving to death.


P.S. to this blog - 39p loo brushes available from IKEA.

Strike averted

When the Unite union announced that their members had voted to strike in their dispute with BAA, David Cameron called on the union to halt the threat of strike action. "These sorts of strikes never achieve anything apart from damage," he said.

But as a result of impending strike action, the two sides got together at ACAS and came up with an agreement that the union are recommending their members accept.

Au contraire, Mr Cameron! I would have said the threat of strike action achieved a lot!

Did they listen?

Further to my rant about road signs blocking other roadsigns -

http://ericgreymatters.blogspot.com/2010/06/traffic-mismanagement.html

- they have moved it! You can now follow the sign to Laindon again - assuming you want to come to Laindon, of course.

Now, the big question is, "Did they move it because they read my blog?"

By the way, I have another sign-blocking-sign to bring you; just as soon as I get my camera out ...

Le Saucier

We're back home from France now, and we'd like to say a big thank you to our hosts whilst there - we had a great time!

One particular item of interest was their "sauce maker". It heats up the liquid whilst continually stirring the mixture. See the (very) short video, just to give you a flavour of the sauce maker (but not of the sauce itself!).

We were so impressed, we started trawling the Internet to see where we could purchase one in England. But we could find no mention of it. However, we managed to get our one on French eBay. Vive Le Saucier!

The wonders of technology!

Decisions, decisions ...

Whilst away on holiday, I read an article in The Times. It was about the difficulty we have making decisions, because we have too many choices. It says the average supermarket has about 10,000 different products on its shelves.

I remember when we went down to our local shop, run by Mr. Griffiths, for our groceries. You couldn't fit more than about 6 people in the shop, yet we managed to buy most of what we needed. AND he served you! Do you remember those days? He had a marble counter and he wrote on it the price of each item you bought on the counter with a pencil, then he added them all up. Do you remember those days when people things added up?

But back to today. If you shop online at Tesco's and search for 'cereals', you get back 346 items. It used to be just Corn Flakes, Rice Krispies, Weetabix or Shredded Wheat. And Mr. Griffiths stocked them all!

So there's the problem, we have so much choice these days, it makes us more indecisive. The article tells of the jam experiment, where, apparently, people bought ten times less jam when presented with 24 varieties than when their choice was six! But even six seems about three too many!

But back to the article again. They reported on various surveys and we are a "nation crippled by too much choice". In fact, in one study a third of people described themselves as "very indecisive". But what I want to know is, How did they manage to come to that decision?

Steak and Kidney!

When the kids were young, we had a touring caravan and used it for a number of holidays. We did a minimum of cooking (we were on holiday!) and couldn't afford meals out, so a favourite was a Fray Bentos steak and kidney pie, with tinned new potatoes and tinned peas. Just a tin opener was needed!

This is clearly fondly remembered by one of our daughters - for when we suggested we might have one a few weeks ago, the response was, "I'm salivating already!"

But back to our week here in France. We went into the local supermarket - Carrefour - and I noticed a small section of one aisle labelled Angleterre. Interested to find out what they considered English, there they were! Fray Bentos steak and kidney pies! As you can see, the picture proves it!


Clearly steak and kidney pies are quintessentially English.


Click on the picture for a larger image and to see what else is 'English'.