From the Here is the City website, a note from 'The Management' re the possibility of a Christmas party:

'As you are already aware, due to the fact that investors are upset with us over the firm's stock price (and the government is pretty miffed as it had to bail us out), earlier this year we decided to cancel our annual staff Christmas bash.

Many of you have, however, expressed anger at this decision, especially as some of our rivals have covertly arranged parties out of the public eye. And this year has been a difficult one to say the least - cheap food in the canteen is no more, cabs home are a thing of the past, and that lovely luxury toilet paper we have used for years has been replaced by something more akin to sandpaper. Not to mention that the chats we all used to enjoy around the water coolers are no more - as there are no longer any water coolers. And the tea and biccies in the meeting rooms have also been canned, along with the fruit trolley. The bar outside the canteen has also been mothballed.

We do appreciate that a year-end p.ss up, and an opportunity to make inappropriate comments to females colleagues, is the only fun many ...   more »

Who would have thought she'd be back from the brink after last years head shaving and going a bit mad nonsense?   It certainly wasn't pretty to witness...and although I did not see her X factor performance or Simon Cowell meeting her and subsequently suggesting she was in awe of him (Simon, you need to spend a little time out of your own ego) I did like the lyrics to her last hit, Piece of Me.   Someone has a sense of humour:

I'm Miss American Dream since I was 17
Don't matter if I step on the scene
Or sneak away to the Philippines
They're still gonna put pictures of my derriere in the magazine
You want a piece of me?
You want a piece of me...

I'm Miss bad media karma
Another day another drama
Guess I can't see the harm
In working and being a mama
And with a kid on my arm
I'm still an exceptional earner
And you want a piece of me

So happy birthday Miss Spears.   And welcome back.

From Shipmate, too good not to share these useful driving tips...

Save the expense of buying a Caterham by sitting in the bath wearing a helmet while a friend fires pieces of mud and rubber at your head and you pretend to get all indignant when a normal car overtakes you.

TVR drivers, save the expense of a trackday by simply getting up early, finding a local road, accelerating as hard as possible down the straights, crawl round the corners and go home at 11am due to mechanical failure.

Rich people, don't bother learning to drive. Just buy a GT3 RS, a brightly coloured race suit and always drive in Novice sessions. No one will pass you so your ego will be intact.

Internet forum posters, save the expense of going to the Nuerburgring for the weekend by staying at home with your mum and then on Tuesday posting that you managed an 8:15 bridge-to-gantry time in your Clio, but there is more to come if the traffic and weather conditions allow.

Lotus Elise drivers, after crashing maintain the internet illusion that you are a great driver by claiming that there was diesel on the road, after all no one ...   more »

'Good trade....'

I have to share this note recieved via e-mail last week......who knows if it is true.   I hope so...

Bill Gates recently gave a speech at a High School about 11 things they did not and will not learn in school. He talks about how feel-good, politically correct teachings created a generation of kids with no concept of reality and how this concept set them up for failure in the real world.

Rule 1: Life is not fair - get used to it!

Rule 2: The world won't care about your self-esteem. The world will expect you to accomplish something BEFORE you feel good about yourself.

Rule 3: You will NOT make $60,000 a year right out of high school. You won't be a vice-president with a car phone until you earn both.

Rule 4: If you think your teacher is tough, wait till you get a boss.

Rule 5: Flipping burgers is not beneath your dignity. Your Grandparents had a different word for burger flipping: they called it opportunity.

Rule 6: If you mess up, it's not your parents' fault, so don't whine about your mistakes, learn from them.

Rule 7: Before you were born, your parents weren't as boring as they are now. They got that way from paying your bills, cleaning your clothes and listening to you talk about how cool you thought you were. So before you save the rain forest from the parasites of your parent's generation, try delousing the closet in your own room.

Rule 8: Your school may have done away with winners and losers, but life HAS NOT. In some schools, they have abolished failing grades and they'll give you as MANY TIMES as you want to get the right answer. This doesn't bear the slightest resemblance to ANYTHING in real life.

Rule 9: Life is not divided into semesters. You don't get summers off and very few employers are interested in helping you FIND YOURSELF. Do that on your own time.

Rule 11: Be nice to nerds. Chances are you'll end up working for one.

I particularly like, 2, 4 and 8.   Much of the yoof of today would be well advised to listed.   However, like us, they will make their own mistakes.

Good advice.    More of the yoof of today should take it.

Big Mike alerted me to the fact that today is Bill Watterson's birthday.

Who?

Bill Watterson, creator of the greatest cartoon strip ever: Calvin and Hobbes.   The six year old boy with the stuffed tiger alter ego ran in the South China Morning Post (amongst many others) and, when withdrawn in a 'revamp', attracted so many complaints that it was reinstated the following week.

To understand the mind of this genius you only need to know one quote:

I won't eat any cereal that doesn't turn the milk purple.

See?

The lack of posts in recent days should not be interpreted as anything other than the practical consequence of the overwhelming amount of work that seems to have come my way recently.

It should in no way be linked to the current postal strike afflicting these shores.

Unkind people have suggested they did not actually notice any perceptible difference in the service of delivering letters.

But I couldn't possibly comment.

OK, it's been a very long time since I managed to post an update or a whinge on anything.... well, we've been busy.

Last week was half term so, after a few days at home in the rain, Shivs and I went off to do the Three Castles Welsh Classic Trial in Llandudno.    This was the same format as last year and despite the promise of terrible weather, we had a practically rain free 4 days of fabulous driving.

Toolkit Tim was also entered and purely through luck and a bigger engine he managed to beat us into 31st place overall and 2nd in class.   He was 25th and won our class.

The pic above was taken on the way home at the head of Horeshoe Pass with rally friend Derek and daughter Aimee in convoy with their MGA, 5 minutes after we'd stopped for an hour to fix Tim's cars' broken throttle cable.

If only it had happened during the rally, the results would have been so different........

Ah well.   There's next year.

My cynical blog the other day regarding the impending new Home Information Packs, seems to have turned out to be at least partly true, as their imposition from June 1st this year has been deferred to August due to a lack of adequate inspectors.

Well, only party deferred.   I suspect in order to save a little face - and of course raise money from us to pay for the investment to date in more state funded bureacracy - the HIP's will be required for homes with more than 4 bedrooms.

This part volte face was announced by Communities (sic) Minister, Ruth Kelly, just one week after her sidekick Yvette Cooper denied there was any shortage of inspectors and all would be well.

Spin spin spin.   You couldn't make this stuff up.

It's worse.   In what seems to have been a decision taken on the hoof as they walked to the House, the idea that only 4+ bedded houses will be included at this stage means that every estate agent in the land will be reaching for the euphemism handbook for new ways to describe Bed's 4, 5, etc. as there is no definition for what constitutes Bed 4.

Expect to see a lot of marketing guff for 3 bed homes, with studies, boxrooms, playrooms, dressing rooms, store rooms, wine stores, libraries, attics etc. etc.

Government.   It violates the Trades Description Act in my view.   But then, what would I know... I have a 3 bed house with 2 studies, a boxroom and an attic.

Well well, in another really well thought out scheme to add bureacracy, control and state meddling, in what is already a stressful experience, Home Information Packs are due to become a legal requirement on June 1st.

However, whilst there has been a last minute rush to instruct estate agents to put homes on the market to avoid having to pay the costs and deal with the pain of preparing these packs, the latest is they may not become law after all.

In a rare moment of clarity His Tax and Wasteship is considering whether or not to support them.

Now, a cynical person might say this is just a PM in waiting looking to improve his public image in advance of starting his new job.

But I couldn't possibly comment.

When we first pulled off the cover, it was very green.... but a week and some helpful chemicals later, it is deep inviting blue.   The clarity is not quite there, particularly at the deep end, but it was good enough for us to swim, both days, at the weekend.

The water remains cold, but we moved it up from 16C to 20C on Sunday and as of this evening it is 22C.

Here's hoping the warm weather lasts until next weekend.   Four perfect weekends in a row would be fabulous.

A young man named Gordon bought a donkey from an old farmer for £100.00.

The farmer agreed to deliver the donkey the next day, but when the farmer drove up he said, "Sorry son, but I have some bad news... the donkey is on my truck, but unfortunately he's dead."

Gordon replied, "Well then, just give me my money back."

The farmer said, "I can't do that, because I've spent it already."

Gordon said, "OK then, well just unload the donkey anyway."

The farmer asked, "What are you going to do with him?" "

Gordon answered, "I'm going to raffle him off."

To which the farmer exclaimed, "Surely you can't raffle off a dead donkey!"

But Gordon, with a wicked smile on his face said, "Of course I can, you watch me. I just won't bother to tell anybody that he's dead."

A month later the farmer met up with Gordon and asked, "What happened with that dead donkey?"

Gordon said, "I raffled him off, sold 500 tickets at two pounds a piece, and made a huge, fat profit!!"

Totally amazed, the farmer asked, "Didn't anyone complain that you had stolen their money because you lied about the donkey being dead?"

To which Gordon replied, "The only guy who found out about the donkey being dead was the raffle winner when he came to claim his prize. So I gave him his £2 raffle ticket money back plus an extra £200, which as you know is double the going rate for a donkey, so he thought I was great guy!!

Gordon grew up and eventually became the Chancellor of the Exchequer, and no matter how many times he lied, or how much money he stole from the voters, as long as he gave them back some of the stolen money, most of them, unfortunately, still thought he was a great guy.

The moral of this story is that, if you think Gordon is about to play fair and do something for the everyday people of the country for once in his miserable life, think again, because you'll be better off flogging a dead donkey.

This weekends fabulous weather allowed us to enjoy every meal outside on the terrace - and I can't recall when we last did that, in Hong Kong, or here in the UK.

Needless to say, each meal was accompanied by a variety of wines and on Sunday the talk turned to the perfect wine glass.   Those in the know favour Riedel - the shape of the glass really does make a difference to how it tastes - but as long as said receptacle is of sufficient size to accommodate the wine and room for it to breath I'm usually happy.

The perfect wine glass was proposed - I think by the Fisherman - as a glass with a bottle for a stem... and Shivs found the photo:

Perfect.

Progress.   Deep Blue pools arrived early on Saturday morning and worked their chemical magic on the pool.    The pH was spot on, chlorine high and algae quite bad.   Treatment was 'shocking, floccing and vaccing'.

First, a heavy dose of hydrochloric acid (no kidding) to kill the bugs followed by floccing with Aluminium sulphate which combines with the dead algae and drags them to the bottom where they can, after settling out, be vaccuumed away to waste.

The results were pretty dramatic as by Sunday eve I could vac the pool and remove all the dead leaves from the bottom of the deep end as well as most of the sediment.

By now it should have improved further and be ready for the weekend.... here's hoping for more of that glorious weather.

Finally, we've ordered a new solar cover - the old one was completely stuffed - which should be delivered in a couple of weeks.   Can't wait for the first dip.

Summer is almost upon us and with the stunning weather last weekend it was time to open up the pool.   Over the winter it has been 'winterised' with a cover and some chemicals but, as you can see from the pic, it has gone rather green.   I had the pumps working on Saturday, but will leave it for the pro's this weekend to restore it to it's former blue glory.  Hopefully I'll have a better picture by next week....

In the meantime I've pressure washed the patio with help from Ash and Bennet has reset a few tiles that were loose.   All we need now is for global warming to keep bringing us the hot weather.

It took 7 years to get the series made and against all the odds it has been a huge hit for the Beeb.   For those who haven't heard it is the story of a police officer, Sam Tyler who, after a hit and run accident, finds himself in 1973.   While struggling to understand whether he is in a coma, mad, or has gone back in time he joins the CID team lead by DCI Hunt.

Hunt is a solidly 'unreconstructed' '70's man.   His blunt speaking leaves no room for ambiguity ("Don't move - you are surrounded by armed bastards"). He cuts through Tyler's 21st-century, politically correct pseudo-babble to expose the nonsense we can end up speaking (Tyler: "I think we need to explore the chance this was a hate crime." Hunt: "What? As opposed to one of those ''I really, really like you murders?'').

When accused of being an "overweight, over-the-hill, nicotine-stained, borderline-alcoholic homophobe with a superiority complex and an unhealthy obsession with male bonding", he retorts: "You make that sound like a bad thing."

Famous for his one liners (''She was as nervous as a very small nun at a penguin shoot'') practically everying he says is either homophobic, racist, sexist or politically incorrect.   And as an antidote to the environment we live in today, it is refreshing.   Witness the exchange between Hunt, Tyler and WDC Annie Cartwright:

Hunt:  'Oi, Flash knickers, mines a coffee, two sugars'

Tyler:  'You can't speak to a woman police officer like that, she's a detective'

Hunt:  'Well luv, see if you can detect me a garibaldi to go with my coffee'

So how did they get away with reprising The Sweeney in 2007?   The secret was Tyler.   He is the moral guardian of our 21st century sensibilities, regularly reprimanding his boss; they squabble like an old married couple.

And the other reason is that Hunt has personal qualities that are, thankfully, still held in high regard.  In a world of short-term contracts, job insecurity and portfolio careers, Hunt's undying loyalty to his squad (even while rabidly insulting them) make us wistful for a time gone by when you had a job (and colleagues) for life.   And plain speaking was en vogue.

Back home after our ski trip I've downloaded my photos... had to share a few... starting with this one.    Taken with my new camera - an impulse purchase at Heathrow - a new Casio Exilim 7.3 megapixel to replace my ancient old 2 mp which has done very well, but whose battery life is now probibitively short.

The new one has fabulous image quality, but I've had to reduce it here for space reasons.. files are otherwise 5.5MB each and take far too long to load on a website.

This shot is taken from the top of Whistler mountain on the Burnt Stew Trail looking back into Garibaldi National Park above Singing Pass.  Spectacular scenery indeed.