Is a little entertainment really too much to ask for?

As I’ve spent much of this week chucking myself down the horribly sunny slopes of Val d’Isere, with any remaining time being used to attempt to recover from the aches and pains that accompany such an active sport in your mid 40’s, I have not had time to put together much of a blog this week so I thought I would torture you with a BackLOG (see what I did there? This is almost genius level of creativity, well for me anyway) from a couple of years ago. In most cases before many of you had discovered the torments of reading this here blog. Apologies to anyone who has read it before but in a pathetic attempt to retain your interest I have made a few minor adjustments…well a gap between a couple of words, why not see if you can spot it….I guess in the spirit of completeness I should also a pologise to anyone reading it for the first time….


Air Canada – Just say no
Correct me if I'm wrong but isn't there some sort of international sky law covering unnecessary cruelty to air passengers? Top of the list of crimes against humanity has to be "not providing adequate entertainment on long haul flights" (aside 1). I felt like I had been taken back in time as I noticed, with horror, that there were no video screens in the back of the seats. I half expected the people around me to light up their ciggies, aided by the trolley dolly who was holding the match. (Please note that since I have been transported back to less enlightened times I am not only allowed, but legally obliged, to use non-PC terms such as Trolley Dolly; Serving Wench etc... )

(1) Personally if I was in charge of all things aeronautical I would ground any planes that did not provide a choice of at least 10 films for flights over 35 minutes in length - even for us povs at the back.

Thankfully no one did, as the haze of smoke would have obscured our, already compromised, view of the video screen, way off in the distance, at the far end of the cabin. If I craned my neck thirteen degrees to the left and sat balanced precariously on my left buttock, I could see about 1/3 of the screen. Mrs B had to jump up and down on her seat to see 1/4, none, 1/4, none, 1/4, none etc......

As it happens this was irrelevant as, shortly before take off, there was an announcement: "Due to circumstances beyond even our normal incompetence, passengers in rows 12 to 26 will not miss 2/3rds of the film or even 3/4, all, 3/4, all etc..as the screen in this section has been switched off in an experiment to see how far we can push our passengers' tolerance levels" . If you think really hard you can probably guess which section Mrs B & I were sitting in ....

Far from being the straw that broke this camel's back and giving me the right hump to boot, a calm realisation crept over me after I accepted this was not going to be a fun-packed flight. Besides, rather bizarrely I didn't feel I was actually missing out on anything. It would have been a different story if the plane had been packed with the latest entertainment systems, which had been disabled by someone demonstrating more incompetence than Bishop Stortford's road planning department (aside 2). I would now probably be writing this from a jail cell, with rather shakey hands following a rather nasty air rage incident, including free tazering and a good kicking to boot. I'm afraid Mrs B and her legendary ability to sleep through anything (Nickalepsy, as you might recall from a previous blog), would be partially to blame, for not being available to calm her technology deprived, distraught and broken husband.

(2) I challenge anyone not driving a Tank to extract their vehicle from the Sainsbury's car park on a Saturday afternoon in less than 2 hours and that includes Harry Houdini).


- Update and to make me feel slightly less guilty about reprinting this anecdote - The Bishop Stortford road planners have created a second exit from the car park, which has resulted in the loss of 4 spaces with the direct result that the average time to find a parking space has increased by an extra Qtr of an Hour. The good news is that you can exit the car park 10 minuets quicker but the roads around are now in such chaos that it takes an additional hour to get away from the vicinity.

Even after unexpectedly managing to cheer me up, by not being able to supply something, Air Canada managed to blot their copy book once again, this time by offering me something (god this makes me sound like high maintenance). The offer was a card which gave the recipient a couple of dollars off their next flight. Is it just me (probably) or does anyone else out there have a problem when they feel they are being ripped off by someone with a huge grin on their smug little face as they do the ripping off? I never had a problem with BT ripping the British public off for years. They were a monopoly and frankly that's what people expected of them. My deep-seated loathing for all things BT (aside 3). stems from an advertising campaign they ran, as they faced competition for the first time. Basically stating "We are sorry we ripped you off for all those years, please come back to us" For some reason this really hit a nerve and I have been unable to give them my custom since. I have no doubt they are all very nice people now and probably provide a much better service than anyone else, at a much better price, it's just I'm not ready to forgive them......

(3) I'm excluding my friend Paul from this rather sweeping statement. As it is my prejudice, I feel empowered to cherry-pick how it manifests. So despite the fact he works for "them", he has too many other, finer, qualities that offset this blip in his life.

To add insult to injury, the second and much shorter leg of our flights was on a brand new state of the art aircraft, with full entertainment package including 9" seat-back screens. I took so long making my film selection that I only managed to watch half of it before the entertainment was switched off for landing. Oh where are those hour-long plane stacking delays when you really need them....

Bear in mind that was just the outward-bound part of the trip - Air Canada had not finished toying with us by a long chalk. Let me know if you want me to tell you about the true horrors of flying Air Canada that is not just a tongue in cheek rant about not getting entertained.

Blog of war
Thank you to Lilpixie over at “It's a Lollipop world” – who literally dragged herself from her death bed to promote this competition, Pop in and say hello. Despite her efforts and others the Blog of War looks destined to be a depressingly small affair.

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

KW Produced so far – 465

This has earned us approximately – £201 so far of that £114 paid

KW generated in the week – 72

Record of the week

Let me entertain you – Robbie Williams

Photo Finish

As a taster for next week I’ve added some photo’s from the current Ski Holiday ….

Jo was so excited about the holiday 

he was jumping for joy over  dwarves....

Mrs B and the tourette's Skier both celebrated

their Birthdays on the slopes. As a refreshing change

from last year Mrs B decided not to breaking her

 leg on her Birthday. This worked out surprisingly

well for everyone and she has promised not

to break her leg next year either…

I'm sad to report that going blonde and having Pigtails

did not make it any easier for me to get served in the bars...

Tune in next week for a full account and loads more pictures….