Cleaning House

It's that time of the decade again and the house must be 'sprung cleaned' Spring, Sprug, Sprig..... Forget it. Lluckily, Heather did most of the work before I had seen the light of day, a rare sight to me anyway. Noisily hoovering on the landing repeatedly banging my door as if to drive home a less than subtle hint. I'm still not sure what she wanted so I simply opened the door and went back to bed.

Today, being 'not the day of rest' and the drive to the event too damn far for my liking I gave paintballing with Babestation a miss (Madness I hear you say) and went about doing the front garden with Heather. We couldn't bring ourselves to weed the new drive but are both somewhat loath to do so just in case we irreparably damage it somehow. I mean how do you get in contact with 'Cowboy Irish contractors' should anything go wrong.



Proof that we did work once, that and I was seen out in 'the big room' during daylight hours. Also having developed a quiet calm to lawnmowing I decided I should go round the garden with the strimmer. However, after my haphazard job of the bit round the pond. I resigned myself to the secret knowledge that no-one should ever have to lay eyes on my handiwork and quietly put the baffling contraption back in the shed, never to be touched by me again.


The 'Kingdom of Vegetables' is doing well. We have all eaten plenty of fresh Lettuce and are waiting for the Cucumber to get just a little bit bigger before we can have a slightly more exciting salad.



All in all things are ok in the Swinhoe house at the moment. All the appliances are working fine, the hoovering gets done but that damn fridge door never got repaired by Dad leaving me to look behind the freezer door situated underneath to better understand the mechanism. I'm thinking that door needs to come off too, if only to clean the rather disturbing 'gunk' running down the inside. Here, have some pics of our lovely home grown produce to take your mind away from what may be lurking under your cooker, behind your fridge or standing over your shoulder right now.

Kingdom of Vegetables!

Antonia and I thought it would be a great idea to start having babies, but since children are just so darned expensive we both thought it would be easier if we grew some plants in the currently unused greenhouse down at the bottom of the garden.

A mere £25 was required for some giant grow bags, Tomato plants, Chillies, Peppers, Cumunger (Jared-ism), Courgettes, Broad Beans, Peas and two types of Lettuce. Having spent a pleasant Monday morning planting the aforementioned i had an epiphany of what to do with the Lettuce to avoid the predictable ravages of the slimy type of creature so fond of soft leaf veggie produce.

I decided to put them in Hanging Baskets, because of this I think i'm a genius and only hope no-one has thought of it before. It seems such a simple idea, i'm hoping it has been overlooked, because the last time I checked, slugs can't fly. I'm half expecting to come down one morning and find one of the slimy bastards doing a 'Tom Cruise' from Mission Impossible down into one of the baskets. If that happens i'm gonna eat my new inflatable boat.

Speaking of which, the new boat is awesome. I got it for the upcoming trip to the Norfolk Broads. After speaking to a few locals, funnily enough, down one of the locals. They informed me that sometimes it is difficult if not impossible to moor up along the banks of some of the more popular or just plain small stops along the way. Therefore it is not unusual to moor up in the middle of a 'broad' and then take a dinghy to shore. Sadly the 4-man inflatable I ordered was not going to be available in time, so I opted for a three man. Which should do fine, either we somehow all fit in (and hopefully don't sink) or we do two trips. I reckon it will not only be amusing, especially when we're pissed, but also a good bit of excercise. Wisely, I also bought some triple braided rope. Small but durable, for attaching to oars and possibly the boat itself. I was considering getting an electric winch fitted to the boat and a laucher so someone could send off one end of the rope to the dinghy, which could then be pulled in. Then I remembered this was a holiday, not an episode of the A-Team.

Ahoy There!

And welcome aboad the craziest cruiser on the Norfolk Broads!

As it turns out there is so much going on this year with regards to the 'Nurburgring plan' it has been put on hold till 2010, which is a shame.

In the meantime however, i've decided to take a trip to the Norfolk Broads with Antonia, Naomi and Mark. We all know each other really well and as far as silly couple things go it should be a hoot.

The boat in question is a 42ft Cruiser called 'Star Time 2' and looks like this bad boy here. Considering the biggest thing I have ever sailed is an 16ft Enterprise then it ought to be a pretty steep learning curve.

We all went out for a curry to discuss the finer points of what we should be taking with us, apart from most of the written off stock from at least two different Wine-Racks. Unsurprisingly I thought it would be rather entertaining if we got some 'nautical themed costumes'... As you do. Of course, I want to actually pick up the boat dressed in said attire. I'm not entirely sure they will let us walk away with it, but nonetheless I am growing my beard for the occasion regardless.

Mark foolishly suggested we should buy RC Boats to race down the narrow waterways... Of course such a throwaway comment is never lost on me and I quickly bagged one off Amazon.

Unfortunately, the night in question that I ordered the above boat, I happened to be working. As usual I was a little 'out of sync' with the whole Daytime/Sleep/Alertness ratio and when I read 30 inches in length I thought of my old ruler from school (It was 30cm/12inches). I held my palms out in front of me and thought "Yeah, that will be cool" and placed the one click order.

Two days later Antonia comes in my room at about 15:00 saying "What have you been ordering?" and brings in a box the size of which I can only describe as a 'Coffin for a medium sized dog'. It's my last night at work for two days now, so it will be going on charge when at get home at about 07:00 Thursday morning and depending how much sleep I feel like having, considering if i don't get up early I lose a day off. Then it's straight down the local resevoir for some trial runs!

The road is long

Roads are long, they would be frickin' pointless if they weren't. They all lead to Rome.... and everywhere else. Since i've started off about roads I might as well put in my few cents worth about the paths we follow.

Whether it's hereditary or environment, peer pressure or perception. As the quote goes: "a lot of the truths we cling to depend greatly on our own point of view." As most people, we all see our own limits to be the limits of the world. We all make our own boundaries and because of our pre-determined comfort zones, we very rarely step outside of them. Which is a shame, because when your comfort zone is not expanding it is either contracting or reinforcing boundaries. This is when we all find ourselves 'in a rut' and feel unimaginative. Not to mention increasingly frustrated with loved ones and those close to us.

Thats why I would highly recommend doing something out of the ordinary. Nothing that will cost the Earth, but something well outside any of you or your friends comfort zones... Something like buying a car for £500 between a few of you and driving to Germany and racing round the Nürburgring.

This idea started off innocently enough over, shockingly after only a pint and a half down The Stand Up in Lindfield. It all started after mine and my friend Joel's epic road trip across the USA the previous year and we both had started to get itchy feet.


The rules for the Nürburgring were simple:

-Spend £500 for a car, on the road (thankfully not including insurance)
-For every £1 over £500 spent incurs a 1 sec penalty at 'The Ring'
-Minimum 2.0 litre engine
-Manual transmission
-No vans or trucks
-Pre 1997 registered (not including '97)
-Minimum 2 people insured (for sensible reasons as well as it working out cheaper)
-Every team must have matching jumpsuits (why the hell not)
-Every team to have tents and sleeping bags
-No GPS allowed (where's the fun in navigating Europe if you have tech)
-All people taken in a specific car has to be in said car for lap timings

I would prefer a route that goes from Newhaven to Dieppe and then on through Paris. Just to see how we would all handle the Arc de Triomphe in cheap cars that we've probably bought from a shady bloke called Dave in a Crawley pub.

It looks as though something similar to the above route will be more likely. Even though it's roughly 400-500 miles no matter which way you go. Nontheless I have no doubt it will prove entertaining. As we try to coax our decade old deathtraps across the backyards of our closest neighbouring Europeans and head first into peril.

On my team I'll be taking my lovely and 'clued up' girlfriend as navigator (which I may live to regret) and the inimitable Mr Dan 'Splintz' Spencer, who is quite simply a living legend. Between all three of us the combined driver/passenger weight should be something in the region of 30 stone, which I hope should be just about right. I'll be posting up some of the hilarious cars I'm bidding on closer to the time, but so far we all look set for a June-July date for this insane trip.....

Oh and I forget to mention, if any of the cars blow up en-route (betting odds to follow in a future post) we'll probably consider burning them and leaving them in a ditch... Just for jokes. OK maybe not, but this of course means they have the opportunity to jump in other racers cars for the continuation of the trip, thereby weighing down their cars and impairing their times when they reach 'The Ring'.

So I implore all of you to go out and ignore the foolish 'fear tactics' of the newspapers Credit Crunch and go out and enjoy a bit of spare cash while you have some! Seriously, if you can spare £300 between three of you I'm sure you can come up with a similar 'Top Gear' style challenge and no doubt it will be an absolute hoot.

When it all goes wrong it will all be on this Blog for reprisals.... Stay Tuned.