Big Al's Spot (& Annie too)

Having not finished what we have started on the old "decorate a room" gift front we will be going back down to the cottage to get started again. Hopefully Turbo will not get covered in paint again like last week.

We have been to our wholesalers to get wood hardener and wood filler to sort out the hole below:

Hole for filling 

All the skirting boards need painted and the floor when we took up an edge of the carpet is a no brainer for varnishing, as it is in superb condition, just a few nail heads to be driven in a bit further a light sand and 3 coats of varnish.

About a year ago Annas brother Matt got married and a very good do it was too. Anyway as Anna and myself knew they were pretty busy we thought it would be nice to offer to decorate a room of their choice as part of their wedding present.

So low and behold almost one year later we have got down to the nitty gritty and are actually decorating the room of their choice, at the cottage. Some of our before and after pictures are below:


Corner of room before painting 

Corner of room coat 1 

Before the window was painted 

After the first coat of paint 

The wall before we started painting 

After the first lick of paint 

After having come up trumps in actually fulfilling a "voucher" we gave to Anna's brother - to decorate a room of their choice - for their wedding present. I had a rather eventfull week at my job in London.

Eventful? Well a lovely West Indian lady called in looking the doctor about 1 hour before he was due to take his afternoon surgery. She didn't have an appointment and was complaining of a trivial problem, but luckily I got the vibe and didn't try to put her off or make her book an appointment. A few minutes after the doctor arrived I was holding the lady's hand taking her pulse and waiting for an ambulance to take her to A&E, scary stuff to be honest, it would have been so easy to dismiss her stated problem and have a dead person on your hands. It is pretty difficult to cope with people who think they are a burden, when they obviously aren't in the slightest & those people who insist on an obviously trivial ailment being the worst thing in the world and requiring immediate treatment.

An attempted suicide, with details from a hospital ward, absconding from the ward after pumping their stomach and the subsequent hunt to ensure the person was okay and not going to hurt themselves.

I could mention lots of other things, but the less said the better (I've read how bloggers can lose their jobs by talking about their working lives)

I've been working hard this week and even managed to miss my lunch break on 2 separate days, not that I couldn't do with a good starving. I've managed to push one of the performance measurements, I need to hit from 21% to 32% in a little over one week, I need to hit 55% and 75% before I get the points and ultimately money for my GP.

I've also managed to start creating templates to the various consultants we refer our patients to, while it took a bit of time at the start, I've managed to get into the swing of things and I reckon we will be spending about 10-15 minutes less on composing each referal letter.

It is the old chicken and egg situation you don't have the time to spend changing things, but you need to spend time changing things to ensure you have enough time to start doing new things.

Well I haven't really commented on the recent goings on in London, as having had plenty of experience of terrorist activity growing up in Northern Ireland I guess I'm rather blazé about this sort of thing. Fatalistic tendancies aside, I'm more of a don't feed the publicity machine sort of guy.

Anyway I took the train-tube-train home tonight and to be honest my thoughts are with the entirely innocent young men of Asian extraction. What must they be going through at the moment and what damage is it doing to their self esteem? My guess is a lot of the feelings and frustrations of less understanding UK citizens are playing right into the hands of the radicals.

History tends to repeat itself and having bungled internment in Northern Ireland I hope the government can handle the real pressures they are going to be up against and not bungle their handling of episode like they have in the past.

I've been taking a look at some of the features in Google and I came across their satalite mapping. I looked up our village and came up with this:Google Maps - Berkswell it is not at all bad, I'm just wondering who had a white car parked on our street :-)

I waited until I was sure that we were down in print and I'd actually seen it, but our plus size dress business - Berkswell Direct was in the Friday 15th July edition of the Daily Express.

Its not a big article, but it is a start, and of course they didn't get the name correct either its "Berkswell Direct" rather than "Berkswell", but beggars can't be choosers.

The journalist yesterday couldn't believe we went up to a UK size 44 rather than a 44" waist, but I guess there was not a great deal of room in the article to put those details down. I think it might have upstaged the designer they were showcasing in the main article as they go up to a maximum UK size 24 (or maybe thats just my wishful thinking).

Die Wagenschenke

Drunk guy walking down the street see if you can give him a hand to stay on his feet. I thought it was pretty good.

What, I hear you ask can be this earth shattering news that I have to impart?

I have replaced the plug for the Bath!

After struggling once to often to try to remove the unchained plug in our bath, I purposely motored on past the house this afternoon and ended up in a small DIY shop where I managed to purchase a 1 3/4" plug.

I also managed to suss out a supply of quadant (for hiding the expansion gaps around laminate flooring) in various shades (I'll bring my sample up and decide on cherry, white oak or just plain white) and now have my eye on getting a couple of extra shelves for our cupboards.

Went to a new cinema venue (for us) tonight to see what I think is a great movie.

That movie is "Sin City" Cert 18. Violent? Yes - extremely. Graphic? Yes - very cartoonish. Moralistic? Most definitely.

Much as I dislike Mickey Roukes politics and he is certainly no oil painting in the looks department these days, he did a great job acting his part as Marv.

Loved Clive Owen's Dwight, I've never really rated him, but I really liked his style:

Jack Rafferty: You're making a big mistake, man. A *big* mistake.
Dwight You made a big mistake yourself... you didn't flush.
[Dwight shoves Jackie Boy's head into a toilet filled with his own urine]

A lot of people have said that women are exploited in the movie, if I hadn't seen it myself I might have agreed, however I think Rosario Dawson as Gail certainly held her own and the lighting of the girls eyes really stood out.

While some of the violence really has to be seen to be believed, I'd go watch it again in an instant.