Murder Mystery and toilet roll expense

For those of you who read the last BlackLOG I left you in a bit of suspense.   As I exited the Love and Money gig I realised that in my excitement of having a photo pass and the stress of fighting my way through London rush hour traffic, I had forgotten where I had left  Carruthers (our black BMW) having dumped him in the first free space that I could find before sprinting (as much as the weight of  The Beast and the kitchen sink would allow – so more of a slow lollop really) to the venue doors. 

It took me three streets and a few panic-filled  moments to find Carruthers because in the dark and in a blind panic all roads start to blur into one.  I almost hugged  the car in my excitement at finding him, although that was mainly due to me  tripping over the pavement as I surged towards the familiar shape.  Wasting no time I  leaped on board,  with just a brief pause to drop the roof before speeding off into the west London night.  I felt a bit like King Harold,  almost 950 years before me, rushing towards his destiny with William the Conqueror* at Hastings.  

* Although it would have been William the Bastard in those days – it’s amazing what a major victory in battle can do for your historical standing....  

I arrived at the Oast House at about half past midnight and made my way in through the unlocked front door to be greeted by a deafening silence. I checked in the living room, kitchen and dining room, the two bedrooms downstairs, all empty – it was like discovering a land-locked Marie Celeste – 4 cars out front but no sign of life inside ....  I made my way upstairs and discovered a second living room, kitchen and dining room and to my relief Mrs B and the gang chatting away.  The weekend away could begin....     

On Saturday we piled into 3 cars and made for Battle –  The Abbey and Town built around the battlefield for the last English defeat on home soil, if you exclude the many sporting disasters that seem to haunt our football, cricket and rugby teams.... returning early in order to prepare for the evening, changing not only into 60’s style clothing but also into character for the nights entertainment, a murder mystery dinner party.

Interactive bit

While you might not have attended our weekend I don't see why you should miss out on all the fun. So after attempting the difficult task of trying to work out if I survived last week’s adventure**,  this week you have the relatively easy task of studying the nine reprobates below and deciding which of them was guilty of the weekends murder....

** OK,  I was a bit disappointment that some readers seemed to take this as an opportunity to never return – well the laughs on them, I did in fact survive...

The nine suspects

Mary-Jane Faithless – AKA -  Shonagh

Used to be famous as the girlfriend of Lord Michael Jagged,
now famous as a pop singer.   Like her fellow Scot –
Sean Connery – you get the impression that no matter what
part Shonagh plays it will be with a Scottish accent :-

-    You want a Spanish actress  meet Penélope McCruz            

-    You need a female Russian Submarine Captain may       
I present to you Anastasia Morag Menshikov           

Terence Shrimp – AKA – Phil

An East end London boy who has made it big as a  Society
photographer a dedicated follower of just about anything....
Like Alfie – although more like the Jude Law version than
the Michael Caine one. 

Martin X - AKA - me***

A highly controversial loud American political theorist, some people find
him intimidating, while others think you are just mad – The only thing
that I was guilty of murdering was the American accent – as it hopped
around  the west coast, the east coast, Texas and other parts of the world
not even vaguely connected to America. The only good thing to be said
about my attempted accent was that it was consistently inconsistent  and
so spectacularly bad that anyone watching was too horrified to even
notice my appalling attempts at over acting...

*** For someone who hates smoking with a passion
I rather worryingly quite enjoyed using a fake pipe  

Big Ron  AKA  Oliver Steed

Actor, Raconteur, hell-raiser, larger than life and twice as
 loud...At times Big Ron was like Gary Oldham with accents
and facial expressions .

Kitty Killer AKA Mrs B

Celebrated journalist and biographer so glamorous that  she is
often more famous than the people she writes about....Played  it
like a young Joanna Lumley (but not as Pasty from AbFab) and
showed off Mrs B’s diverse AmDram heritage which included
playing a goat, the Statue of Liberty and her commended part
for her Liverpool accent while playing a Welsh Bus conductress

 

Christian AKA Brian Sewer

Wine critic and wine-snob.  Sneering, patronising and often
downright rude,  Christian went off script and added a
number of "pfnarfs" and a "guffaw" that were
Oscar worthy...

Tamara Fara-Buckworth AKA Lisa

Famous for being famous , no social event would be complete
without her....big Ron named her Banana hairy F*cktooth

Champagne Charlie Bunson AKA  Stunt Cock AKA Joe

A businessman and entrepreneur, who for some reason is feared
throughout  the East End of London.  Some people think he is a
gangster but have never been convicted of anything - Not even
for Stunt cock’s terrible accent or acting. Possibly as bad as me..

Babs Crayfish – AKA Kirsty 

Champagne Charlie’s latest squeeze but an actress in her own
right or will be if someone is looking for a role for a complete
airhead... Kirsty was fortunate to have been born in Harlow
hospital so could draw down on her blonde Essex roots...she
took to the part like a duck to pâté and unlike her H’s Kirsty
never dropped the accent or her persona  once throughout
the entire evening....

 So if you want to play just drop down to the comment section and name the murderer.

The Oast house our venue for the weekend  

The venue for our weekend reunion was a rather fabulous Oast House near Hastings which was only slightly tainted by the owners request to replace any toilet paper we used...surely you build that into the rental costs.  I was all for sticking individual sheets onto the rolls with sell-o-tape but was banned from doing it by the others...This was getting a bit like a Ryan Air flight with hidden Extras at every turn. I was waiting to see if we got a bill at the end of our stay :-

• Use of the front door £1 each way per person – the main reason why I used the windows to go in and out
• Use of beds £5 per hour (or part of an hour) per person
• Use of video recorder (who has video’s these days) £5
• None use of Video recorder £20

Watch of the week

The regular section in support of Joe (Stunt Cock) and his growing watch business Xupes. Joe mentioned that they had been getting a number of hits via the BlackLOG.

Xupes has been trading for over 2 years and  Joe has recently developed some great contacts in the trade which enables him to pick up surplus stock and sell them at great prices. Mrs B is a regular purchaser from his jewellery section, going self service once she finally realised that her husband is not the jewellery buying type…

Franck Muller

King Conquistador

Chronograph 8005  

Xupes price	£10,995.00
RRP	£20,200.00
Saving	£9,205.00

Xupes price

£10,995.00

RRP

£20,200.00

Saving

£9,205.00

This is your chance to acquire an unworn mens Franck Muller King Conquistador Chronograph 8005 K CC stainless steel mens watch on black rubber strap with stainless steel tang buckle. This is the mens size measuring 40mm by 47.5mm. The dial is Black with silver subdials. 

Record of the week

Murder on the dance floor by Sophie Ellis Bextor - well more like murder in the Oast House

Country house by Blur - I can confirm it was in the country and it was a house..... 

Kite by Nick Heyward - In memory of Camber Sands - in truth I was struggeling to find appropriate tunes this week....

Photo Finish

A few snaps to end with



Kite flying on Camber sands



I'm not sure if Big Ron is re-enacting the part of

Christopher Walken (Nick)

in the Deer Hunter

or

Marlon Brando (Colonel Walter E. Kurtz)

in Apocalypse Now.

 

End of another great weekend



 Hope to see you next time....

Discovering that scoring a photo pass does not get you through London traffic

Last Friday night it was off to Shepherds Bush to see Love and Money for a one off show in London. I was a little bit in the doghouse with Mrs B as we were already pre-booked for a Ski reunion weekend, at an Oast house near Hastings.  What saved my bacon (apologies to any passing vegetarians) was that through a mutual acquaintance the Lead Singer organised a Photo pass for, gulp, little old me and The Beast,  allowing us to play with the big boys…..Not enough to convince Mrs B to join me but enough to take the pressure off about arriving late for our weekend...


I was so impressed that James Grant took the time and
trouble to organise this for me,  well above and beyond
 the duty of your average Lead Singer of a pop group.

Skip to the bottom if you can't wait for the results....

The concert was split into two halves – the first half was dedicated to the performing of Dogs in the traffic – Love and Money’s third album.  While the second half saw them cover their second and most commercially successful Album ”Strange Kind of Love”  - Shame on you if you have never heard of them - a most under-rated group….

Dogs in the Traffic – just happens to describe the first part of my evening – getting to the venue.

I set off from Canary Wharf at around 5pm, expecting the 11 mile journey to Shepherds Bush to take 45minutes….four miles and one hour later, I was stuck in Friday night motor misery, as a crash on the Euston Road had ground the rush hour traffic to a standstill….

Aaaaarrrgggghhhh………..

didn’t the traffic gods know I had a photo pass…?  

Of course they did, which is why I was sitting going nowhere.  This is, after all, the BlackLOG.

At least it was warm enough to have the roof down on Carruthers*  which helped to keep me a little bit calmer than I would have been.  It looks odd screaming and pulling what little hair you have left when enclosed in a car. (There may even have been some four letter words but with no witnesses coming forward, I’m admitting nothing me lud….)   

* I may have failed to mention that ElleGee has gone** and been replaced with an almost identical car, only with a 2 litre turbo diesel in place of the very underpowered 1.8 petrol engine – Yes Teach, ElleGee was a terrible name but I did manage to keep using it.…Inspired by your comment that I would not keep it up…

** Hard to believe but ElleGee reached three years of age and despite good service was discarded like an unwanted shoe.  Although to be fair we liked him enough to have the same black exterior and red leather seats on the replacement….

Once the clock struck 6pm (I have a complete aversion to paying the congestion charge and I’m normally adept at skirting around the outside of the charging zone) I managed to wriggle down a side road and tried to cut across central London,  only the Tom Tom kept trying to pull me out of the congestion zone.  I had originally set it to avoid the congestion charge but could not seem to turn this instruction off – despite my heated argument with the Tom Tom trying to explain to it that “once you have crossed the zone entrance you don’t get a rebate for leaving” and then, rather more slowly,  telling it that “you don’t actually get charged after 6pm”…. The result was me trying to guess a direction to avoid hitting the static traffic whilst still continuing to make my way in the general direction of Shepherds Bush….The upshot of this rather stuttering and haphazardly-directed journey was an average speed of less than 5 miles an hour  - I could have walked it quicker.

Some simple maths

11.5 miles / 2 and a half hours  = 4.6 miles an hour

I finally arrived at the venue at 7:30pm but since it was allocated seating this was not the end of the world.  The only issue was that my normal parking area had long since been filled up so I had to hunt around a bit and park in a different area….

The second album  “Strange kind of love” – kind of relates to the actual show itself  

As already discussed, Mrs B was otherwise engaged and my attempts to lure people along at first appeared to be successful because I had a number of initial positive responses.  One by one, however, people discovered life got in the way.  This left me and The Beast to face the evening on our own.  The upside of this: The Beast got his own seat…..

It had never been my intention to try and compete with the professional photographers, so I was happy to take pictures from my seat – which happened to be the fifth row so not too far back. After I picked up the Photo pass I was initially challenged about my Rucksack (The kitchen sink) before I entered the  auditorium – a quick flash of the photo pass and that was my first obstacle cleared.  I settled in my seat, luxuriating in the extra space that was available to me. I was next to the aisle which was a bonus as it gave me clear line of sight to the stage.  I settled back and waited for the band’s arrival.

I had decided on a couple of strategies:

Not to use flash; and

to shoot single shots rather than rely on constant shutter

This was mainly to make sure I did not annoy the people around me. 

Psht, Psht, Psht, Psht, Psht, Psht, Psht, Psht

can get pretty annoying when it is constantly in your ear….So Mrs B informs me anyway…..

The Beast can’t help getting a bit over excited at times.

The down side with single shot is that you have to work harder to get a good picture, as the light at a gig is constantly changing….The upside is you don’t have to sort through thousands of failed shots….

Part way through the Dogs in traffic set a steward came over and asked me about The Beast.

I said I had a photo pass and went to get it –

“No problem” he said as he wandered off.

I felt a bit cheated  as photo passes are not easy to come by.  I continued clicking and enjoying the show until after the interval when the group moved onto the “Strange Kind of Love Album”.

Another Steward popped up – rather like the shop keeper in Mr Ben....

Over officious steward - “Can you come with me sir?”  

Me - “It’s alright I’ve got a photo pass…”

Over officious steward - “Yes but you’ve broken the three song rule, sir.”

Me  - “What three song rule?”

Over officious steward - "The photo pass only allows you to take pictures during the first three songs of the set."

Me - “Huh?” No one told me…

My legs went all wobbly for a second, especially when he talked about having to delete some of the pictures.

But I decided it was best not to argue and to keep it nice and polite. Showing him a copy of the email from James Grant probably saved my photos from being deleted.

Phew….

But he still insisted that The Beast was going to have to go in the Sin Bin until the end of the gig.

Gulp….

Thank god I had been through the same process with the, somewhat more illegal, Mega Mini Beast a  couple of months ago….So I knew it would be stored in a nice safe warm room….

When I  got back to my seat the gruff Scottish*** guy in front of me said -

"Ah thut yud bin threwn oot man”

Thanks to Mrs B for providing the scottish accent  

*** in truth I would estimate that  90% of the audience had fairly strong Scottish accents – Damn foolish English (For once I was happy to fall back on my Scottish roots – have I mentioned that I got married in a skirt …sorry Kilt?) really don’t appreciate good music when it is set in front of you…

No Mrs B …. No Beast. How could I go on …?  (I told you it was a Strange Kind of Love….).

….Quite easily actually - I lost myself in the music.

I would love to say that the nostalgia brought memories flooding back from years ago but when I had contacted Mr Grant and said I still listened to his music on a regular basis I wasn’t kidding, Love & Money, Friends Again (an early version of the band) and James’s solo work has never been far away from the play button of first the record player, then the CD player and more recently the Ipod.

One thing that had changed in the years since I last saw Love & Money live was James.  He was a lot more relaxed with the audience - chatting to us as if we were old friends, talking about some of his experiences including:

Being thrown off the Tina Turner tour  when he introduced the band at a show by saying,

“We’re not Tina Turner. She’ll be along in a wee bit.”

Hardly the crime of the century and personally I hope it was Tina’s management who had a sense of humour loss rather than the Octogenarian.

Discussing his cold and describing his need to blow his nose on stage as not very Rock n Roll, before going on to mention the reason why rock stars never leave the stage for toilet breaks (I have a feeling that we once saw Ray Davies - Lead singer of the Kinks - leave the stage for a toilet break) was the use of incontinence pants …..I think he might just have been joking….

They announced they were releasing a new album next year and more tours  

Oh, sh*t. 

Absolutely brilliant news but I had promised Mrs B that it was a one-off and my last chance to see them….even going as far as promising Mrs B that I would join her at the ballet if they ever toured London again, something I had sworn I would never attend….Fortunately Mrs B hadn’t actually enjoyed the ballet that she failed to get me to attend and had no intentions of going again…Phew a bit of a lucky escape there…..    

 As I walked away from the gig, having retrieved The Beast, there was a mixture of elation and a certain amount of sadness…. Was this the first and last Photo pass I would ever get? I hope not….

I then had a small problem to deal with -  in my excitement and all the confusion of being stuck in traffic and running late, parking in a new street and then hurrying to the venue I kind of forgot where I had abandoned …left the car…..  

Find out next week if I actually made it to the weekend or if I really put myself in the doghouse….

  

As promised last week the return of some regular features

Show me the sunny

Monitoring our way to a fortune (or not) with our Solar Panels -

KW Produced so far –  3012 (My target was 3000 for the year, so I was delighted that we had made it with almost a month to go…)

This has earned us (including saving on electric and gas) approximately £1,500 for the year.  Not bad considering the weather has been pretty pants this summer ….The end of September and early October weather saving the day….  

Record of the week

Love And Money - Shape of things to come

Love And Money - Candybar Express (The Shep Pettibone Mix)(1986)

Love And Money - Looking for Angeline

Love & Money - Cheeseburger

Friends Again - Sunkissed

Friends Again – "State Of Art"

Love and Money – Wanderlust

Friends Again - lucky star (1984)

James Grant - Winter

I woud have loaded more songs if I could have found them - go listen to the tracks, be amazed that you have never heard them before - rush out and track the music down and add it to your collection....

Watch of the week

The regular section in support of Joe (Stunt Cock) and his growing watch business Xupes. Joe mentioned that they had been getting a number of hits via the BlackLOG.

Xupes has been trading for over 2 years and  Joe has recently developed some great contacts in the trade which enables him to pick up surplus stock and sell them at great prices. Mrs B is a regular purchaser from his jewellery section, going self service once she finally realised that her husband is not the jewellery buying type…

Tag Monaco

Video link for the watch

This is your chance to acquire an excellent condition mens automatic Tag Heuer Monaco Steve McQueen Ltd Edition Stainless steel on navy blue crocodile leather strap and stainless steel deployment buckle. The dial is blue/white. This is the mens model. The watch is in excellent condition with slight wear to strap. Complete with Box, manuals, and guarantee with original receipt dated 15th June 2002. 12 months Xupes warranty included. Also known as CAW2113.LE6183. Xupes Ref. X125

Photo Finish

Hope you enjoy The Beast properly unleashed at a gig  at last

James Grant - Lead Singer

"Candybar express"

Paul McGeechan - Keyboards

"Don't be afraid of the dark"

"Pain is a Gun"

Douglas MacIntyre- Guitar

"Temptation Man"

"Razorsedge"

Fraser Speirs on harmonica

"Papa Death"

"Keep Looking for the light"

Gordon Wilson - Drums

"Lips like ether"

"Halleluiah Man"

Ewan Vernal - Bassist

"Sometimes I want to give up"

"Axis of love"

"Pray for Love"

Douglas MacIntyre
"Cheeseburger"

"What time is the last train?"

Fortunately with two sets you get two endings,

so I could get closing shots even though I

 didn’t have The Beast at the end of the gig...

"Walk The Last Mile"

In memory of Bobby Paterson 1956 - 2006



Hope to see you next week (please remember this is a BlackLOG week, which may run for more or less than your average  run of the mill 7 days) in which we find ourselves embroiled in a murder mystery – Has Mrs B finally come to the end of her tether with me and snapped?

Mauritius - rumours of my death may have been slightly exaggerated

Our summer vacation in 4 parts
Safari day 1
Safari day 2
Safari day 3
I’ll start this week as all good blogs should finish, at the end…

I was greeted home from holiday by a number of people with variations on:

“Oh, so you’re still alive”

“So it wasn’t you that got shot then”

Apparently while we were away there was a breaking news story that a Bishops Stortford couple had been attacked while on Safari. He had been shot and killed while she has been kidnapped. The fact that I’m writing this indicates that it wasn’t me, unless I’ve got a whole Bruce Willis sixth sense vibe going on…. So if you find yourself not reading this perhaps I did die after all …

Any hoo I’m making the assumption that I didn’t get shot

……………..so…………

back to Mauritius….

After just three days of Safari we were exhausted and when this was combined with a 3am start from South Africa and a full day of travel – Mauritius is hardly “just next door”, as we had thought when we booked the holiday…Mrs B looked like death chilled over and collapsed at our hotel. It was at least three days before there were any signs of a revival.

This left me kicking my heals while she recovered. I spent about an hour trying to hook up our portable Blue-ray player to the room’s TV. I was getting nowhere but as luck would have it when we had booked in, a Welsh guy had come across and introduced himself as the hotel’s chief engineer. He was responsible for the hotel’s infrastructure and explained the hotel policy was to have someone from your own region acting as a liaison in case you had any problems. Because he had said he was an engineer it got me thinking and so he soon received an unexpected phone call. I explained my unusual problem and he dispatched one of his staff.

Just as well I made the call otherwise I would never have made the system work (I have been known to take a TV off a wall in a hotel, as I figured how to plug in one of my portable devices)….I needed a separate remote control and a code to be able to reset the system, which they kindly provided. I do like to challenge any hotels I stay in…


This was only our second all-inclusive holiday package**,   - neither of which have turned out to 100% accurate, as people seem to take liberties with the meaning of the word  “all” – which in this case included and excluded in equal measures : -
** We normally fend for ourselves......

Food – Buffet (which, other than for breakfast, neither Mrs B nor I are particularly fond of – Yum….. lukewarm food that other people have pawed over and decided to leave) and limited menu choices at the other restaurants. Mrs B went a-la-cart once and got stung £20 for a salad….

To be honest the food was not bad and we had a choice of:

2 restaurants for lunch - Pool Bar and Mediterranean style

4 restaurants for Dinner – Indian, Chinese fusion, Mediterranean and Buffet

Our favourites were the Indian and Mediterranean.

We only used the Buffet once – which was at least once too often.

Then there was the Chinese fusion. The food was nice but we seemed to run into problems with the staff’s attitude. We arrived at 9pm for our first visit to an almost empty restaurant – it is advertised as opening until 10pm. The staff asked us if we had booked and then went through an elaborate game of somehow trying to squeeze us in and insisting we should have made a booking.

A couple of days later, when we actually tried to book a table for that evening, we watched the waiter open an almost empty page and then tell us they were fully booked….We went back later when the manager was in the restaurant and asked for a table the following night. You could tell the waiter desperately wanted to tell us that there was nothing available for 9pm but he didn’t dare…Fine if they want to close the restaurant early but they shouldn’t advertise it as staying open until 10pm if they do…

Drink – most soft drinks, cocktails, local wines (I can confirm that Mrs B certainly whined when she tried it…) and local spirits were included. Again Mrs B went off menu once and decided she fancied a Baileys one evening…kerching! Another £10 thank you very much.

Water sports and beach keep fit program
This would have been brilliant if the times advertised in our room actually bore any relation to what was happening in real life. When we got to the keep fit area we were met with the following excuses:-

"No. That happened an hour ago.”

“The instructor has gone home ill” or “Not turned up at all”

“It will be held later” – only when you went back at the new time, no one seemed to know anything about it…

Still we did get some instruction in snorkelling and Mrs. B, who had been very nervous about it and didn’t really want to do it, took to it very well. I was impressed that she progressed rapidly from floating about in the swimming pool to actually going out in a boat to snorkel in the sea…. I lost a few brownie points however when I referred to Mrs B as Flipper the bush kangaroo.

We did have a bit of luck when we went to book a dolphin tour – The organisers wanted £150 to take us across the island to a special area for seeing dolphins. We were tempted but we didn’t have any cash on us and they didn’t take credit cards. We were going to go back later and book it up but in the meantime we went down to the beach to find out about the free glass bottom boat trips that the hotel provided. The next boat trip was about to leave and we were going to go on a later trip but the organiser said we should join this one as you never knew what you would see (Or more likely if they would run the next trip). I’m so glad that we did go and that I happened to have The Beast with me because 5 minutes out some dolphins appeared and we spent the next 20 minutes tracking them. Marvellous - especially as it saved us £150.

Was that a blue whale on the horizon or did a small island just sink….
We also might – unconfirmed - have seen a blue whale. We were having breakfast one morning when far out to sea there was a huge splash, I ran to the room and grabbed The Beast while Mrs B trailed the movement along the beach. Just as I returned with The Beast I saw one last splash, before it vanished for good. It was only later that someone mentioned that it might well have been a Blue whale as there have been sightings -  So unless anyone has proof otherwise I'm taking it that I saw a blue whale or at least the splash of a blue whale.... 

Other animal sightings
When we visit hotels in warm foreign parts there are usually tribes of cats and or packs of dogs wondering around enjoying the benefits of free food provided by the guests. Not so much this time, we glimpsed a couple of very timid cats who really were not interested in any human interaction and three (so not really a pack**) dogs, very friendly but only half-hearted beggars – they looked well fed and I think just turned up for the look of the thing. 
**  To be officially called a pack would you need 52?...............or is that just playing cards?

What there was in abundance were sparrows and probably enough to explain why they are such a rarity in Britain’s gardens and hedgerows these days (I won’t have anyone blame Mischief and McG, they are, and I’m genuinely pleased to say this, crap cats having caught precisely 1, I repeat, 1 bird between them in 14 years. To be honest that looked more like a suicide than a genuine hunting triumph…). It would appear that the sparrows have either decided to turn migration into immigration or they could not afford the return fare and so have extended their holiday indefinitely.

(Late breaking news,  I got swooped on by a whole gang of sparrows last night - who landed on the laurel in front of our house – They had a rather raucous discussion - Probably arguing over where they were and why Dave Sparrow was always lead navigator***, despite his unerring ability to get them lost every time.  So much for them not making it back from Mauritius…or was Dave trying to get them out there….Hope to see you next time....

*** Dave almost certainly owned the only map and would not let anyone else look at it, despite his inability to read the damn thing…)

So that wraps up a rather excellent holiday and sadly we have come back to real life. I’m ashamed to say that other than trips to and from the airport we never left the hotel – it is advertised as a resort after all. Mrs B was exhausted and just needed the break and I found there was a surprising amount to keep me and The Beast happy…

If it turns out that I am still alive we will definitely be going on safari again – next time bring on the gorillas, leopards and more cheetahs…

Next week I might possibly have some exciting concert news (well for me anyway), some Olympic news as well as the return of some of the regular sections :-

• Watch of the week
• Show me the sunny (which will move to a monthly spot)
• Record of the week

All that remains is for some pictures of Mauritius –

Photo Finish
All taken with The Beast in Mauritious

Dave came in close to check that he had remembered

to shave his armpits..... He might well be lost but that

was no  reason to let his grooming standards slip…



Sunset - enjoy it while you can - I suspect you will
be rather sick of them by the end of the photo section.



1 of 2

What’s better than saving yourself

£150 seeing a dolphin?



2 of 2

Saving yourself £150 seeing a

 whole pod of them…

A blue whale, no sorry it's Flipper the bush kangaroo...

Reports of my demise might well come a

step closer once Mrs B reads the

above comment.

No flowers please just a

donation to my favourite charity…

Which might prove a little difficult as

I happen to be my favourite charity…



Sunset No.2 of a series of around 1,000....
Don't worry I've only added a few  of them ....

Sunset No.3

Not much more to say - I'll have to work on my
Sunset humour...

The Sunrises didn't quite have the same impact as the Sunsets
other than being much earlier in the day before sensible
people have got up......

I don't know why, but I just love the light reflecting
off this beach hut...

Technically this is a sunset shot but I thought I might try
and sneak it in under a nice light section.... 

A relaxed Mrs B shortly before
being arrested for my murder....

Following my badly timed
blue whale remark....

Hope to see you next time