We were driving to the supermarket past Hearsall Common, where the fair is still going. There was a group of teenagers on the pavement. Suddenly one ran out into the road in front of another vehicle. He got to the middle of the road before he noticed that we were approaching from the other direction. Emma was driving and managed to brake in time but we got a nice close up view of the terrified look on his face, while he was in the middle of the road with cars heading towards him from both directions!

The trains were particularly rubbish this morning. Engineering work at Rugby had over-run so all the trains on the line between there and Birmingham were horribly delayed. As a result the local stopping train to Birmingham was very crowded.

When we got to Birmingham International it was announced that the express train on the other platform would be leaving before us and so everyone who was going direct to Birmingham (myself included) moved over to that train.
After a couple of minutes where neither train moved, the train manager came onto the tannoy to explain that the driver refused to move because the train was over crowded. He wanted around 100 people to get off the train. I joined a few other people in moving back to the local train, which thankfully was still there. Some people decided to stay on the express.
We had the last laugh - our train moved first while the express was still at the platform.

The travelling fair comes to Hearsall Common most bank holiday weekends and this weekend was no exception. Unlike the amazing 50p fair from about a year ago, the rides were a bit more expensive at around £2 each. We only went on a couple of rides: the dodgems and the rapids. Neither of us had seen a rapids ride on a travelling fair before. Thankfully we didn't get as wet as we did at [Thorpe Park][1] but I did get splashed on the back of my trousers so I was wet on the walk home.

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I didn't realise you needed to be over 16 to buy either prawns or the Mail on Sunday. Sainsbury's seems to think so.

Update: 11/06/06
It's definitely the Mail on Sunday. We bought it again today and it had the same confirmation. We bought alcohol and it had the 'over 18' confirmation above that as well.

I've noticed a huge increase in spam recently both to my email and comment spam. Thankfully the spam protection on the comments field has managed to stop most of it from appearing on this site. Looking at the server logs it appears that over 200 spam comments have been prevented in the last few weeks.

Thankfully I don't get anywhere near that much spam email, but what does make it through is often quite surreal. Recent messages have had the following subject lines:

• runaway cottage cheese
• madreporic tubercle
• Your family, winking cartilage

Apricot Wine
It was drunk at room temperature rather than chilled but it was good. Quite light flavoured but you could make out the apricot taste. If I tried it again I might try more apricot or leave the dried apricots to soak for longer.

Jam Wine
Quite light in flavour. Served chilled it worked well as a mixer. Tried it with white rum (ok), gin (worked well), Tropical Sourz (worked well) and Grenadine (just seemed to make it taste sweeter).

Berry Wine
This is the strongest flavoured of our wines so far, and with (in my opinion) the right balance of sweetness and depth of flavour. Also works well in a turbo purple

This test did the rounds at Uni but it looks like it's been updated since, so I thought I'd try it again to see if my score had changed. Not much. It was around 27%. This time I got 26.0% so it has actually dropped slightly. That might be because I'm not running Linux on my old laptop any more.

Find the test at: www.innergeek.us/geek-test.html.

British Prime Ministers, 1721-2006

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Presidents of the USA from 1789 to present.

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... but not when they're growing out of the kitchen wall.

We noticed it when we got back to the house on sunday. All the rain over the weekend had led to water seeping through a crack in the kitchen wall. There was a piece of mushroom/fungus growing out of one area. Yesterday I phoned the letting agents to report it. This morning someone came round to take a look. Hopefully it won't take too long before someone comes back to fix it.

I was driving along Earlsdon Avenue when some idiot cycled out of a side turning, completely oblivious to myself and the van coming towards him from the opposite direction. He was weaving and swaying and looked drunk. He swerved out in front of my car again so I tooted the horn. He leaned over (swaying some more) and shouted angrily and tried flicking 'v' signs. When I drove back a few minutes later I half expected to find him squished under a lorry or bus but he seemed to have escaped unscathed.

Possible the most deserved Eurovision win since Bucks Fizz and Making your Mind Up. I never thought I'd live to see the day when a Scandanavian heavy metal band would win Eurovision. Especially not one with lyrics such as 'arockalypse' and 'day of rockening'. Unmissable TV. Well done Finland!

Click on the thumbnail to view the image

Yesterday morning, whenever I received a text message it would silently sneak into the inbox without my phone (nokia 6630) playing the 'text message arriving' alert. This afternoon it wouldn't even receive any. I checked the phone settings but they looked ok. I hadn't changed any recently so I couldn't see what the problem was. I could still send messages and send and receive phone calls.

This morning I put the sim card in my old phone and 8 new text messages arrived. A lot of them were 'test' messages I sent myself yesterday but some were actual messages which I should have had.

Tonight I put the sim back the phone with the intention of backing up my data and resetting the phone. The battery had been out of the phone all day and when I switched it back on it asked me for the time, date and my timezone. I sent myself another 'test' text message and to my surprise it arrived ok. Having the battery out of the phone seemed to be all the 'resetting' it needed.

In the kitchen in work we have a water heater. It's fairly new, only about a month old. It's also not very good, spending most of it's time holding water at around 80°C, not enough for a proper cup of tea.

There's a button to press to force it to reheat the water but it often has the opposite effect. If I press it when the temperatures reading in the 80's, it often drops to 70-odd degrees before slowly climbing.

I managed to watch the infamous Ricky Gervais episode of the Simpsons today (titled Homer Simpson, this is your Wife). It started off quite funny and the plot revealed itself to be about one of those wife-swap tv programmes. The problems began when Mr Gervais made his first appearance. He decided to use that unfunny annoying I Wish For God's Sake He'd Shut Up persona which crushes the life out of any humour which might have been present.

Seen in Asda, their version of Love Hearts but for the modern generation:
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I'm sure there must be some irony there somewhere. After commenting on the report that Americans are sicker than British, my bad back decided to come back. It was really bad yesterday and was very painful when I stood up, but the pain went away after I'd been standing for a while.

After an uncomfortable night of not sleeping well and it hurting every time I turned over, I phoned in this morning to let them know that I wouldn't be in. I don't know what's wrong with me recently. I used to be able to go years without having to see my doctor or take time off.

There seems to have been some outbreak of politeness in Coventry. I lost count of how many people said 'sorry' if they walked in front of me or accidently brushed my with their bag. Nobody actually bumped into me. It was all very civilised!

Essentially a pub crawl around the Black Country, by bus. The trip was organised by someone from work and most of the people there were either employees or friends of employees. The bus was half an hour late because they had to double back to avoid a low bridge. This meant we only had 10 minutes at the first pub (The Forge in Halesowen) but we were allowed to take our drinks onto the bus as long as we poured them into a plastic 'glass' first.

It was very difficult drinking on the bus, mainly due to the bumpiness of the ride. Despite that, the on board bar seemed to do good business. The next pub was the Dry Dock, in Dudley. Notable for having a bar made out of an old canal boat. The third pub was the Blue Brick, then last of all The Pie Factory in Tipton.

It was a good night out and a good way of seeing other parts of the midlands.

Update: A number of people have contacted me asking for details about booking the beer bus. Their website is www.blackcountrytours.co.uk.

On my way home from the station, there is an old derelict shop on Albany Road and a footpath which goes up some steps. Today I noticed the front of the shop had 'incident tape' across it. Climbing the steps, I could smell smoke. I looked through a gap in the fence and noticed that there had been a fire. The building seemed to be used as a scally hang-out and I occasionally saw shifty looking kids in the alleyway and noticed them disappear through the fence when they thought nobody was looking.

According to a survey, Americans are much less healthy than the British. Even the British at the poor end of the scale are healthier than wealthier-than-average Americans. Woo-hoo. Pass me another jumbo bucket of chicken bits, fries and a gallon of (non-diet) coke.

As if yesterdays bad back wasn't enough, today I've got a cold. I'm sure my body is slowly trying to kill me.

At lunchtime I had a walk round the shops. I went to Jessops in the Bullring to get some of the medium format black and white film I use in my pinhole lubitel. I was wanting some of their own brand film because it is cheaper and works well enough. I was told it was out of stock and had actually been discontinued. I checked their website and where they used to sell 3 different versions of the film, they only had one listed and that was out of stock. It looks like if I want to keep doing more pinhole photography I am going to have to bite the bullet and buy some more expensive branded film, which always seems a bit overkill when the camera is a bit cheap and rubbish!

Lost returned to channel 4 tonight, with the first 2 episodes of the second series. We finally found out what was down the hatch, and what happened to the people on the raft.

I don't know what caused it but I first noticed it when I stood up to get off the train this morning. My back gave out a little twinge of pain. It got worse during the morning, but would only hurt when I first stand up. Once I've been standing up for a while, the pain goes away. When it was time for my morning cuppa, it meant I hobbled to the kitchen but could walk back normally.

Last bank holiday, we went for a drive over to Melbicks, mainly for a look around (because that's what you are supposed to do on a bank holiday) but also to buy some veg (for the kitchen, not for the garden - they sell food there as well). There were a lot of samples of free food available.

We decided to go back today (it being may bank holiday) to see what was available. Rather disappointingly, there weren't many free samples on offer. We did buy a bag of frozen summer fruits, to make a smoothie. When we got home I left the fruit out to defrost before making the smoothie, adding pears, apples and grapes. It ended up very thick and dark, and the summer fruit flavour was very strong. It tasted great but I think next time we will need to use less of them.