It's two hoots past tweet-tweet o'clock

An unusual complaint

Last night could have seen me (tired and grumpy after getting up at stupid to catch the tide and walk the dog) calling the police out to the noise nuisance from the neighbour's party, while BLISS was in attendance. No doubt it's happened before somewhere. But it wasn't that sort of party. It was a stand around and chatter party. BLISS described it as four hours of “like, networking”. Now, normally those parties make up for the lack of music, noise, er, fun and joy, by at least providing some decent nosebag for the unfortunates having to look interested in the other guests.

Nope. Not even that. Not much choice and little quality or quantity by the sound of it.

It sounds as if the highlights were playing faux par bingo. Apparently the cards filled rapidly.

Leftovers, almost the final instalment

Getting ever more inventive. Turkey Dhansak. Hot and sour, with lentils (the menu would've said), served with pilau rice. Salt and spice lassi to drink. Had that with MM watching the Arsenal...

...A wee club from the North East...

According to, as we like to call him, Demento. Or That [insert whatever you like here] Ferguson. Newcastle looked okay for about sixty minutes. Injury crisis and tiredness after the 4-3 defeat notwithstanding. They came back from 1-0, 2-1, and 3-2 down to square it up at 3-3, before it went 4-3 (still nervous), then 5-3 (phew, two-goal cushion), then 6-3 (thank god, three-goal cushion), then 7-3 (enough guys, don't waste all those goals on this cushion thing). Even then Giroud hit the bar when he could've completed a twenty-minute hat trick.

Wenger and Pardew got another ninety minutes at the same venue, together, without punching up (a pity, Wenger spent most of the game trying to fix the zip on his stupid Michelin man coat – you'd think they'd just run over to the shop and grab him another one, not great advertising when you think he probably gets better quality than mere mortals), although judging by their handshake at the end, relations remain on the absolute zero side of 'frosty'.

It's, er, tweety o'clock

Not the most inspired Christmas gift purchase in history. A clock with a bird positioned (that's a picture of a bird, not a stuffed or tethered live 3D version) at each hour, that plays recorded birdsong at that hour. It had rave reviews on Amazon. It looked bigger in the photos. Maybe the last of samples of the bird noises should have triggered some suspicions.

I don't know why, but some of them really make me giggle when they go off.

This tidying up electronic files thing...

...never ending, isn't it? It might help if BLISS were not such a memory-stick black hole. I'm still trying to finish off saving the Christmas day photos from the various cameras that were clicking away during the day.