Mrs B's Strictly party 2 + Nafman the final curtain?

Mrs Bs second Strictly Come Dancing final party was a resounding success, despite the BBC programme itself turning into a Formula one style farce. Personally I think it is sad that the weakest of the final contestants waltzes off with the trophy. Yes the public has the right to vote but why then bother with the actual dancing when they clearly can't tell a fleckle from a clusters of concentrated melanin and think a rise and fall has something to to with the Stock market (although this has recently become just a free fall). It is very telling that Rachel 'if only I had a personality' Stevens appears to be a better dancer than Tom Chambers' "Equine" professional dancer Camilla Dallerup(or should that be saddle-up, harsh but fair, it's a teeth thing), at times during her performance I thought we had tuned into the horse of the year show.... While Mrs B looks terrific, as usual, my attempts to impersonate Bruce Forsyth sees me look more like I just went 10 rounds with a fondant frosting factory
The girls get carried away after Tom went clear on Camilla Saddle-up
Yet more voting scandal as Craig is tricked into voting for Tom by the girls.....
Craig, Bruno and Bruce relaxing between shots....
Credit Crunch what Credit Crunch
Our attempts to snag ourselves a late ski bargain for New Year have gone astray once again. (Last time it was the "No snow" show in Europe. This led to a last minute scramble to get to a snow bound Canada. Since everyone else was in the same boat and all direct flights to Canada were full, it resulted in us having to get to Canada via Dallas - hardly the most direct route from the UK). This year, while there is plenty of snow in Europe, there appears to be a lack of holiday places (The fascist holiday companies appear to have cut back the number of places available, in order to maintain or even drive up the prices. Something about wanting to make it through the current crisis, how mean spirited is that?*) Instead of getting a bargain, we have ended up having to pay more than the brochure price. OK it is only around an extra £20 each, so not the end of the world, but it can hardly be described as the bargain of the century.

* The saddest thing I heard this week was the story about the scum that descended on Woolworths in the hope of getting bargains. These lovely people felt so incensed that the prices were not as low as they had wanted that they started verbally abusing the staff. The very same staff who had just been informed that they will be out of a job, just after Christmas. Sorry if you are offended by my use of the the term scum, I personally feel they deserve something even stronger but I know it would not get past Mrs B's watertight censorship....
McG's take on our pitiful attempts to snag a late holiday bargain.
Nafman the final curtain??
After years of moaning about Nafman**, our badly behaved in-car navigation system, I have finally got around to replacing him. I'm afraid I did the really pathetic thing and had a match-off between Nafman and the new TomTom, setting them both up on the dashboard and watching them fight it out. The main difference I have noticed so far, if you don't count the out-of-date maps that Nafman had from day one, is the estimated time of arrival. The TomTom uses IQ which takes into account the day and time of day (i.e during rush hour it takes quite a bit longer than at say 3am in the morning) and has so far always been within two minutes of the original estimate. To be honest, Nafman's predictions can only be described as optimistic to say the least - Like a politician in power it just does not like to admit to the true position - 30 miles in 10 minutes would be optimistic on a rocket ship at whatever time of day......

** It is actually a Navman but picked up his name after a number of interesting navigational incidents. Some of the highlights of Nafman's career include :-

Never actually being able to admit to the existence of our house. He managed to find two doors down and one door up but not ours. I guess it is lucky that we know where we live.

The day when Nafman decided that he was only going to go left - I guess he was going through his communist phase....

A couple of occasions where he took us off route, around the houses before spitting us back onto the original road a few miles further along.

The time he locked himself in the glove box when we were in Norwich. No amount of coaxing would bring him out. The result was that we were left attempting to leave Norwich without the aid of a map or even some "non-directions" from Nafman, which we could have at least ignored and taken the opposite direction. I'm glad we were only on the outskirts of Norwich. The road signs were so bad that if we had been in the centre we would probably be still there. I ended up having to break the lock on the glove box the following morning. Nafman was banished to his draw, without power, for a number of weeks after that.

Nafman has not yet gone into retirement as I have loaned him out to my Yoga instructress(Lorna)who mentioned that she was thinking of getting one. I explained his limitations and warned her it was just to get a feel for using one before spending out on a more modern version. I don't hold out many hopes though, for as soon as I switched Nafman on and started to explain how he works Lorna visibly switched off......Lorna bright eyed and bushy tailed with barely a hint of the pain she puts me through during yoga. I believe the corrections Lorna makes to my poor beleaguered body gives her a full weekly work out....
As if by magic, once I switched Nafman on, Lorna switched off.
No matter how good the TomTom ultimately proves at the task, it just won't have the same character and blogability of Nafman. It's a bit like Formula One has never recovered from the loss of Murry Walker's incompetent commentary......

I hope you have enjoyed and been entertained by the BlackLOG through the last year. Have a great Christmas and New Year, don't forget to drop into the " BlackLOG - Historical" and tune into the BlackLOG next year....