Mikes weather bits & Photo Blog: Sydney siege horror & an old friend is re-discovered

The Sydney siege is headlining everywhere after the dramatic ending yesterday. After reading what "Monis" was free "on bail" for the questions have to be asked, is this taking human rights freedom of speech and all that other bullshit just too far? - - -

The Express however finds yet another miracle cure for ageing and tells us Elvis is coming to Britain - - -

Here's an interesting piece, and no i don't follow or are part of Linkedin, Its quite a big article but the top bit and the one below caught my eye. Being long in the tooth my "aspirations" are way down the list of "why am i doing this job" but there are some interesting pointers for aspiring youngsters. - - - Dont read it if you are over 40 and a failure - - -

The headline should have read, "Try's hard fails miserably" when this attempt at a novel marriage proposal went as bad as it could
The idea was to employ the crane to reach over the house and for the bloke to tap on his girlfriends bedroom window to eventually propose marriage.
What it should read is "Don't bother using the company whose name appears on the crane" - - -

If Santa did exist - - - Ooooops sorry, As Santa does exist, Just one of these please - - - any colour - - -

I was trying to remember "when" a particular event happened for "my book", was it 76 or 77 and for no apparent reason i remembered when i was looking at this photo

Yes i'm trying to toast a slice of bread on a primus stove! it suddenly came to me that this was the day after Virginia Wade won the Ladies Final at Wimbledon in 1977. The place is Medinat Al Haq (White City) in the Oman and we had sat up listening to the match on the world service. So its all guns blazing now to get this bit of the book finished,

Another tale from "the book" I had wanted a particular photo to put in the book and went into my pic archive to fish it out. The year was 2005 when, just after the 2004 tsunami we had been asked to switch planned Jan holiday and picked Salalah.

I was struck by the high quality of the colour and clarity of the pics. I had an old Kodak DX7630 back then and only stopped using it because it would switch itself on and off when it liked. So having "re-discovered an old friend" I'm about to give it a test this morning and am already lining up its successor a Kodak C195 - - -

The fun factory (Sainsbugs Matlock) is already in high gear for the goggle eyed Christmas shoppers who have already made their "presence felt". - - - I was casually kneeling down popping the bread on a lower shelf yesterday when this old guy wanders down the isle bang on 08:00 when the store opens. "Morning" i mumble and he mumbles back, before i get on with the job. The next thing i sense the stack of bread i am working from being moved by the bloke and he takes something off the shelf and without a word wanders off. I had to stand up and pretend to be doing something else to stop me telling him where to shove his part baked baguette! - - - hey ho only one shift to go (Wed) and I'm not back in until Boxing Day! - - -

Here's one of those moments when happy memories come flooding back. Little Man is trying to take off the red bauble from the christmas tree. When Tesco his sister was around and they were kittens they would do the same although she would climb up into the trees! - - - The cat(s) had a Christmas card from the Kool 4 Cats place we use when we are on holidays and they had forgotten to note that Tom has died - - - it was nice though to remember him when we saw his name on the envelope - - -