Mark my words...

IT'S MY BIRTHDAY
ROB HALFORD
(AND THEIRS TOO)
I've got some new people to add to the 25/8 list this week. As you'll know by now, if you've been reading this blog recently, that I'm doing a thing about people who share my birthday - August 25th. Anyway, the latest recruits are as follows: John Badham 1939 Film Director Saturday Night Fever. Ludwig II 1845 mad king of Bavaria. Shock G 1963 Rapper. Ivan the Terrible 1530 Russian Tsar. Jeff Tweedy 1967 singer/songwriter Lead singer of Wilco. Tom Skerrit 1933 Actor. Allan Pinkerton 1819 North Western Police Agency Founder (US). Walt Kelly 1913 cartoonist (US). And Rob Halford who was born in Birmingham, Rob is of course that man from Judas Priest, if you want to find out more about him and his evergreen career you can clink the link HERE.
And don't forget! If you share the same birthday as the above mentioned - Please write to me and I'll post your story on this blog!!!
FOOTBALLING
If you can't play football -
just pick up the ball + run!
Shouting Uni-ted! round here is akin to swearing, perhaps worse, maybe these days you can actually be arrested/locked up for mouthing the offensive words. In Manchester, where I live and the city of my birth, there are two great football teams! City and City reserves! We are the Mancunians, The Blues! We play at The City of Manchester Stadium. There are other football clubs around the area including Stockport County, Bury FC, Oldham Athletic, Wigan Athletic, Altrincham Town, Timperley Bigshorts, Stalybridge Celtic and Bolton Wanderers. For the most part they are in walking distance of this keyboard, the rest I can cycle to if I had to. Then, there are the Destination Football grounds like Wembley Stadium 180 miles south of here and of course our near neighbour, situated just outside the city of Manchester boundary at Old Trafford is the Theatre of Dreams - Gold Trafford, where Manchester Uni-ted play to capacity crowds on a regular basis. However, I have only ever been there a handful of times, when my team City have been playing there. I am certainly not a supporter. However, a certain red rag blog has listed me as a new member, apparently because I mentioned that City had been knocked out of the FA cup a couple of weeks back. Well, thanks anyway, Manchester United Unofficial Supporters Thingy, for giving Properjoe's a link - but, please rescind my membership forthwith as it is a teeny-weeny-itsy-bitsy-diddy-bit EMBARRASSING!
StraightTalkingStreetTalkingSweet..
This week on my really bad poetry and even worse song lyrics blog STSTS.. I have posted the words to my daft performance piece entitled My Two String Violin! If you really want to sing along to it you just need to think Cliff Richard! Go and take a butchers and don't laugh at the mad photo on the previous posting. Anyway, I actually performed this piece at a community centre in Levenshulme, a few years ago. I've been looking at all the venues that Performance Poets can go to these days and it's pretty impressive. I really need to get out a bit more often myself, I'd love to do some of my newer stuff, someplace soon! I'll keep you posted. On the publishing front, I have news of two new publications for you. Suzanne Batty - twin sister to my Nicola, has her new Poetry Collection title listed on Amazon, you can order a copy! It's called The Barking Thing. Nicola herself, also has a new publication out this week, 50 Bites! which is a compilation of the first fifty editorials from her monthly Newsletter Raw Meat..
EAT-ON-DEMAND
Week nine and all is going well. I had hoped that eight weeks would be enough of this mad non-diet but unfortunately it's NOT! It looks like I'll have to go the full twelve weeks that I set aside, to reach my target weight. So, week nine and this crazy eating plan is getting easier by the day. Sometimes I really have to force myself to eat. Most mornings, I completely forget about food and find myself distracted by the jobs I am obliged to do. It is often noon or one pm when I have my first bite of the day. Othertimes I do feel peckish, mainly in the evenings after everybody else has eaten. The nature of this non-diet, allows me to eat when I like. It truely is an eat-on-demand-program! One thing I always make sure that I do, is to drink my four pints (min) of water every day. If I even miss one pint, I usually wake up in the night feeling really dehydrated. Water, really is, it seems, the kill or cure all commodity, in this life.
BIKE BITS, ZIGGY BIKE
I still want to build/buy a proper Ziggy bike so I/we can take Nic out cycling with us. Nic is confined to a wheelchair and she calls her wheelchair Ziggy. Hence the name Ziggy bike! I have figured out a basic design and now just need a donor mountain bike and a spare front wheel and a couple of lengths of threaded steel to attach the front forks of the mountain bike to the back of a Ziggy. Oh yes, that's the other thing I need a basic wheelchair that I can convert for the purpose. I am hopeful of finding most/all of the bike bits and the Ziggy on my local FreeCycle. However, if anybody does have a spare Ziggy bike for sale, I would certainly consider buying it!
FINALLY
THE MYSTERY SHOPPER!
I used to do a column called Consumer Girl! Where I used to beef about the price of cheese and complain about the state of the nations chip shops and stuff. Well Mystery Shopper is a bit more of the same old tripe, if you get my drift? I get really mad sometimes when illogical/irrational things occur in retail premises. For example, I was in my local Asda supermarket today and I needed a new strap for my watch. I went to the jewelery counter where I had previously purchased my watch from and asked the nice lady if I could see the watch straps Please? Sorry, said the nice lady, we don't sell watch straps! But you sell watches! I said. Oh yes, she replied, but we don't sell watch straps. That's crazy, I said, What do you do if you break your watch strap? You have to buy a new watch, said the nice lady. But the watch is fine, I just need a new strap for it! I told her again, but it was like talking to someone who couldn't hear. How mad is that? Surely if the jewelery section was a stand alone business it would be bankrupt by now! You can't treat paying customers like idiots! Wake up! Asda! You've just been blogged by The Mystery Shopper!