The title isn't strictly accurate. The Han Dynasty in the city centre is handy but certainly not nasty. The buffet might be a bit more expensive than last year (now £5.99) but there is a decent choice of food and what I had was consistently tasty.

The buffet foods were a mixture of things either deep fried or stir fried. My first plate had prawn toast, spring rolls, stir fried cauliflower & broccoli, noodles, mushrooms (stir fried and deep fried). The second plate was a selection of stir fried and curried meat dishes.

The restaurant interior is a bit more basic than China Red but the food was of a similar quality.

This morning we discovered a stall in Coventry Market which was selling American sweets and snacks. We're not sure how long it's been there because it's been quite a few weeks since we last went to the market. It was a welcome discovery - they sell the same kind of things as Cybercandy in London, but without the hassle of going to London or the expense of paying for postage.

We didn't go mad and buy lots of stuff. We only came away with few cans of Mountain Dew - one of each flavour apart from 'regular'. Let's hope the place does well. It's good to have that sort of thing available locally.

It may come as a bit of a surprise but I'd never seen this film before. We taped it when it was on TV a few weeks ago and finally got around to watching it today. I tried to watch it once before, many years ago. I rented it from a video library and started watching it. I found the opening few minutes to be excruciatingly boring and decided that I would rather be outside on such a sunny day instead. The video went back to the shop unwatched.

Since today was cold and wintry, I had no such distractions. I still found the start to be very slow and boring. The rest of the film was more like a second rate kids fantasy film, rather than a sequel to the first two films. The alien costumes looked more like something from a low budget TV series. The acting was very poor as were most of the special effects. One the whole I found the film to be very disappointing.

Last night we put some dried beans to soak, so they could go in a soup today. The main part of the soup was made by boiling some veg (potato, carrot, onion, garlic, butternut squash, herbs) in chicken stock. When the veg had gone soft, everything was put in a liquidiser.

I started cooking the beans by boiling them for 10 or so minutes in water. They then needed an hour or so of slow simmering so I decided it would be easier to do that in the soup rather than in another pan of water. Unfortunately our pans didn't seem to be up to the job. They aren't cheap rubbish pans - they are stainless steel with copper bottoms, so the heat should distribute evenly and prevent localised burning. The trouble is the pans aren't non stick. The beans would sink to the bottom of the soup mixture and just sit there, eventually sticking to the bottom of the pan. I needed to get up and stir every few minutes to stop everything from sticking and burning.

Next time I think I'll simmer the beans in water or stock, rather than a thick soup. Or cheat and open a tin of mixed beans instead.

Happy New Year everyone.

After watching the New Year begin on TV, we walked down our street wishing Happy New Year to any neighbours who happened to be out. The street was pretty well deserted and we only saw a few people. We had some sparklers left over from last years bonfire night so we lit those and waved them about while we walked down the road.

When we got to the end of the road, we decided to walk a bit further and see if the take-aways were open so we could get a bit of supper. So the new year didn't exactly start healthily, with a serving of garlic bread and a southern fried chicken. There's plenty of time for healthy eating later in the year.

Christmas brings out the usual crap drivers. While we were away we saw one idiot on the A6 south of Stockport. He was driving along perfectly normally then, without warning, he would swerve violently from left to right for a few seconds, then get back to driving normally again. It looked a bit like when racing drivers swerve to warm their tyres before a race. We couldn't decide whether he was a moron, was drunk, or just thought it was funny.

On Top Gear, Jeremy Clarkson has commented on how 'cocks' have started driving Audis instead of BMWs. We saw a prime example of this too. We were driving through a village where there was a 40mph speed limit. A knobhead in a black audi decided that the speed limit didn't apply to him, and he was swerving past the other cars in his haste to get past everyone. We saw a similar moron on the motorway driving a silver Ford Focus, changing lanes every few seconds because he didn't want to drive sensibly behind people at a junction.

We encountered our final knobhead of the season (so far) on our way back home, driving along Holyhead road towards Coventry. A moron in a crappy little Renault was tailgating me. I braked in an attempt to force him to slow down and increase the gap but it didn't work. We finally lost him at a junction where he went a different way. At our last sight of him, he was still driving like a knobhead, tailgating a taxi.

I think I'm being stalked by unfunny Christmas Cracker jokes. I was at a Christmas Dinner last week and all the crackers had exactly the same joke. The very same joke turned up again today:

Q: How do you make an apple puff?
A: Chase it round the garden.

It wasn't funny first time around.

Watching crappy films on TV is something of a Christmas tradition. Yesterday we watched the last of the Friends box set, so we're reduced to watching whatever films are on.

Right now, High School Musical is on TV. It's surprisingly bad, worse than I was expecting. I was expecting some level of naff cheesiness but I wasn't prepared for the painfully whiny singing voices and the really bad lip-syncing.

Other film's we've watched include:

• Elf. This was the first Christmas film we saw this year. It had some good moments but on the whole it wasn't as funny as it thought it was.
• Oliver Twist. There has to be at least one version of a Dickens story at Christmas. This was the 2005 film version.
• Alien Autopsy. The Ant and Dec film based on the hoax alien autopsy footage. It would have benefited from more Harry Dean Stanton and less Ant and Dec.

Before we decorated our tree, we decided to see what a Christmouse tree looked like.

The tree with proper decorations.

Tree with Mice.

I have just completed a survey on a website. It was a really badly designed survey where the next question would not use the information provided earlier.

I had already said that I use my mobile phone to make calls several times in a typical week. I then got a question asking why I rarely or never use my mobile to make calls. Another question asked my occupation then asked me to confirm it on the next screen, but gave a different occupation to the one I selected.

Towards the end of the survey I was asked if I had Internet access at home or elsewhere. I was answering an Internet-based survey. Of course I had access to the ****ing Internet! I should have clicked 'No' and seen what happened.

I can't believe the size of the portions they serve at The Bear in Berkswell. For my starter I had the Baked Camembert. I was expecting a few of the breaded cheese cubes on a bed of salad but it was an entire 250g cheese, served in the small wooden box, with toast and a very tasty onion marmalade.

It was good but it was far too much cheese. People would criticise a fast food place if they sold a meal with around 60g of fat but somehow a fancy pub restaurant can get away with it.

The main course followed the trend of large servings. My Lamb Suet Pudding was a decent size. I probably shouldn't have chosen another meal where part of the name was a type of fat. The suet pastry was a bit too thick but the filling was fine.

The meals were good and were reasonably priced, which probably explains why the place is usually busy.

Ikea had sent us some vouchers for a free hot meal from their café. That was enough to tempt us into the shop and get us to do some Christmas shopping there.

Emma had the fish and chips, I had a bit of difficulty deciding what to have but eventually chose the meatballs and chips. I was going to buy a dessert but in the end decided to wait until I'd eaten the main course. That was a wise decision because the meal was fairly large.

We went around the main shop and the food shop. The free food might have been a bit of a gimmick but it worked on us. I think we spend enough for them to get their money back.

Earlier today in work, we were discussing radio listening habits. I mentioned that I sometimes listen to Radio 2 but never in the car on the way home because I don't like Chris Evans.

That may have influenced the dream I had tonight where I came 2nd in a 'Beat up Chris Evans With a Baseball Bat' competition, and won a pile of cakes. The winner cheated by claiming they hit him more times than they actually did.

I was walking back to the car this evening and I saw somebody walking along the path towards me. There was a small dog trotting along a few paces in front of him. As we got closer to each other, the dog turned to one side and ran into the field. I then realised it wasn't someone out walking his dog, but a fox which just happened to be walking in the same direction.

I stopped and watched the fox for a few seconds when I saw a second fox on the other side of the path. It stopped and watched me for a short while before it scampered away into the night.

Some photos of Stevenage. They were taken on my phone, trying to hold it steady for the long-ish exposures, so the picture quality isn't very good.

New Town is very concrete and has no redeeming features.

The High Street in Old Town.

Middle Row - a medieval alleyway running alongside the High Street.

Old Town is much better and is where all the night life is - most of the bars and restaurants seem to be around here. After the training course today, a few of us went for a curry in one of the restaurants on the High Street.