Indoor skiing and trouble with towels

Blog of War

Anyone fancy a bit of fun – if you have not already signed up there is still time…

It will be  blog on blog action – with competitors going head to head against each other in a knock out competition.

The ultimate prize will be bragging rights as the inaugural Blog of War Champion (I might even create a special one off button) – along the way you will discover other great bloggers, have a bit of fun and hopefully attract, or possibly repel, some new readers….

If interested send me your Blog address and a contact email to

niel.black@ntlworld.com with a subject title “Blog of War – I’m interested in giving it a tug….”

Closing date for entries is 2nd April.

If you like the sound of it, I would appreciate it if you would advertise the “Blog of War” on your own blog site, whether you wish to enter yourself or just want enjoy the competition as a voyeur...

Indoor Skiing
We went skiing this week to the Hemel Hempstead snow dome. The best description I can give it, is 160 metres of slightly sloping fridge. I think I managed to get halfway down my second run (around two minutes into our hour long session – which is 240 metres for any amateur mathematicians out there or 240.3567876 metres for you pure mathematicians, I know how precise you guys like to be….) before boredom started to set in.

Indoor slopes are OK if you are a beginner. In fact I would actively encourage more beginners to go to the slopes , as the nearest I came to entertainment was skiing as close to the novices as possible, without actually touching them, with the aim of making them fall over. I got to about a 75% success rate before the ski patrol gave me some warning glares. It’s a shame I didn’t make a ski for it, I could have had some Key Stone Cops style fun dashing down the slope and then back up the pommel with security in hot pursuit . Not too hot though, I wouldn’t have wanted to see the fridge thawing out on us.

At least Mrs B got to demo some skis*. One pair was said to be good for the moguls (No, not muggles, you filthy mud bloods, I said moguls) while the other pair were recommended for rocketing down pristinely manicured pistes. Since there were no moguls or even enough of a slope to get much above 50mph, before having to yank on the brakes and pick beginner skiers out of her teeth, Mrs B could only give them the following fridge rating :-

• The first pair looked very good on the top shelf but were a bit too thin and kept slipping down to the shelf below

• While the second pair kept clashing with the slightly out of date yogurt and a leftover chicken carcass….

The search for a replacement set of skis for Mrs B goes on…..

* Her last pair having worn out after 7 years of stylish service. My skis tend to last longer because I don’t go in for any of that fancy turning malarkey, preferring to just point the skis downhill and aim for the soft spots…..

The trouble with towels
I’ve been in a bit of bother with Mrs B this week. Apparently for the last 20 years we have had a colour code for our towels. I was never informed of this or for that matter even noticed that each week we have a different designated towel colour - I vaguely recall being admonished for taking the wrong colour towel to the gym but I was always too exhausted, on my return, to take it all in.

Since I often get into the shower (I told you that smell wasn’t me) without checking the contents of the towel rail, I frequently find myself dripping around the house, belatedly looking for something to dry myself off with …. At this point I don’t have time to run through any complicated matrix to establish what towel colour I should be using. I work on the more immediate “find whatever is nearest system” (The cats have learned from experience to stay well clear) grabbing the first towel that comes to hand (I use a similar system for discarding towels, i.e drop it as soon as I no longer need it, which for some reason Mrs B also finds objectionable. That might be because, more often than not, the damp towel seems to end up on the bed - more specifically on Mrs B’s side of our bed. Now either I’ve been lucky in the past and always managed to accidently grab the correct colour towel or I’ve finally worn away Mrs B’s tolerance.

In either case, here’s an idea, why don’t all our towels come in the same colour…? I can then use any towel I come across, in my soggy travel around the house, without cocking up “Towel Feng Shui”, or whatever the hell is the driving force behind our draconian colour co-ordinated towelling system…. Certainly works for me, otherwise I’m going to have to fall back on the old colour-blind defence…..

Possible future conversation with Mrs B

Let’s see, I was on the road to Damascus (no that won’t wash, rather like our un-washing machine - See show me the Sunny below)…. I was on the road to Tescos (better, remind me to try and get some revenue for future product placement) when I ran into an Angel of the Lord  a second hand towel salesman (played by Samuel L. Jackson) who was so annoyed that I had run him over that he smote me down and in a deep voice declared (See? It had to be Samuel L. Jackson, only he has the power in his voice to carry the scene):

“From this day forward you will be colour blind….. but only for towels….”

There were mitigating circumstances…. He had stepped out right in front of me and I had hit the brakes almost immediately and only knocked him back a couple of hundred feet. (It’s all in day’s work for Mr  Jackson.). Plus luckily for me he only had powers limited to towel and towel related products.... 

What chance of Mrs B buying any of it?

What chance of my Editor (Mrs B) not censoring it?
(Please note if you have got this far and have not seen a reference to towels she probably censored it, either that or you have been skip reading again...In which case don't, in between the rubbish is some blogging gold)

Tune in next week, where I can guarantee you won’t find out the answers as I will have no doubt moved onto a number of other random subjects….

Show me the Sunny
Monitoring our way to a fortune (or not) with our Solar Panels

The end of a week of relatively sunny weather has coincided with the replacement of our Vampire solar panel system (see last week if you missed out on that story) with what appears instead to be a scare-the-shit- out-of-the-sun model . This has proved  very effective and we have not seen a single drop of sunlight since it was installed….Grrrrr. Thus our cloudy investment has given us the following return so far

KW Produced so far - 286

This has earned us approximately – £121 so far

KW generated in the week – 23 (Actualy this was for the last two weeks, much of which our solar panels spent in a coma, brought about no doubt by sunstroke....)

Putting us another 500 years behind on our break-even plan….

Some good news, we did make some minor power savings this week when our washing machine broke down but these were adequately wiped out by the hefty repair bill….

Record of the week

Love is a wonderful colour by The Icicle Works - but only if it matches this week’s towels

Bring Me Sunshine by Eric & Ernie – No longer depressed by seeing the sun, I'm now like the majority of people on the planet (excluding without prejudice - Albinos, Vampires and Scottish people) depressed by not seeing it....

Photo Finish
The Beast had a quiet week, so no new shots.  He could not even be bothered to take some seditious towel shots.  However, to get over the disappointment that is fridge skiing and to put us in the mood for our skiing holiday in 9 days time I have resurrected some shots  from last years holiday.  You may well ask why no shots of me skiing, well someone has to hold the camera and looking at some of the crash shots I think it more than justifies my decision to be that person……

(Shot 1)

Joe's little brother Alex, proving that

snowboarders are at least good for

something, even if it is only

 great jumpshots....

 

(Shot 2.1)

 Mrs B floating like a butterfly.....

(Shot 2.2)

 lands like a tree....

(Shot 3.1) 

 Joe, proving the harder you ski..... 

(Shot 3.2)

the more spectacular

your demise will be....

(Shot 4)

 Kirsty – Joe’s iPhone footage of her fall was classic

but Sadly it would not load onto the blog....The

 photo gives a little bit of the flavour .. 

Kitsty.:- “Wooooooaaaaaaaahhhhhhh!!!

Crash......

(Shot 5)

 I do hope we see the return of the tourettes

skiier this year.  The holiday would not be

 the same without a solo from Lisa...

Turn

Turn

Fuck

Turn

Turn

Fuck

That's another week gone, hope to see you next time...