Loch Lomond
Spent the weekend at Inveruglas. Typical Scottish weather – sunshine and showers, but then it’s thousands of years of that weather that made the scenery. And the view was just a bit special.
Loch Lomond taken from Inveruglas
And all this just 45 minutes from Glasgow.
Oban
I’m somewhat ashamed to say that my first visit to Oban was this holiday weekend. Three sunny hours is not a long time to make a judgment about the place but certainly worth a weekend break in the future.
Bad Things
One again it’s the Virgin Mobile call centre.
I’m not sure exactly where it is; I have heard it may be Bombay.
Suffice to say it was just so much easier switching to Vodafone.
Merrylee Road
The jury is still out on the Merrylee Road kitchen.
Thirteen quid for a small sirloin steak, the greyest steak I’ve ever had.
£2.50 for sides – so an extra fiver if you want fries and veg.
Opted for fries only; fairly horrible and hard.
Overpriced dining in black and white; maybe it’s a new concept.
STRIKE 2!
Morrisons
Now I know a store can’t inspect every bit of fruit and veg it puts on the shelves, but it was a case of one onion too many.
How often do cut into an onion and …..
It must be the current climate but coming up with this week’s Good Things Bad Things was a bit of a struggle. So here are the feeble offerings.
Good Things
Merrylee Road Kitchen and Diner
(but subject to the Bad Things below)
Orchestra Seats
Delightful little French film shown on BBC4
The French have a knack of making the simplest of films good.
City Slickers
Okay, so we’ve seen it God knows how many times, but it’s still addictive.
Favourite bit: Mitch Robbins (Billy Cristal) at a career day at his son’s school, foreseeing a bleak future for everyone there and sharing his own misery. “Value this time in your life kids, because this is the time in your life when you still have your choices, and it goes by so quickly. When you’re a teenager you think you can do anything, and you do. Your twenties are a blur. Your thirties, you raise your family, you make a little money and you think to yourself, “What happended to my twenties?” Your forties, you grow a little pot belly you grow another chin. The music starts to get too loud and one of your old girlfriends from highschool becomes a grandmother. Your fifties you have a minor surgery. You’ll call it a procedure, but it’s a surgery. Your sixties you have a major surgery, the music is still loud but it doesn’t matter because you can’t hear it anyway. Seventies, you and the wife retire to Fort Lauderdale, you start eating dinner at two, lunch around ten, breakfast the night before. And you spend most of your time wandering around malls looking for the ultimate in soft yogurt and muttering “how come the kids don’t call?” By your eighties, you’ve had a major stroke, and you end up babbling to some Jamaican nurse who your wife can’t stand but who you call mama. Any questions? “
Bad Things
10% pay cut
Seriously bad.
And while we’re on the subject of the sorry state of this nation, can somebody tell me WTF the government are up to?
Merrylee Road Kitchen and Diner
Okay, so the food’s pretty good and reasonably priced but the owner really wants to find himself a smile and a bit of charm. And the lager policy is a bit restrictive; ‘You can have anything as long as it’s Heineken’. This, believe it or not, is also the option for non-alcoholic lager. ????
Now two months since the last post. This laziness is becoming a habit.
So briefly,
Good Things:
The extension/kitchen is almost finished (no, really)
Just few little things to get sorted.
32″ TV arrived and is on the kitchen wall.
Bad Things:
Just one ‘Bad Thing’
I’ve known about this for a while; it seems the Americans have binned ‘Moonlight’. No second series. I loved this. And now, no more Sophia Myles.
I promise to update this blog more regularly. Let’s face it, there’s tons of stuff to moan about.
So this will be really just be an update on the previous item ‘Birdsong and Free Goldfish’
First off the ‘Good Things’ update
The extension is not finished. This was blatant over optimism to say the least. Unfortunately the kitchen fitters seem to suffer from the same affliction. Oh for the Icelandic endeavor of Magnus Magnusson, ‘I’ve started, so I’ll finish’
Rubble?
Builders rubble, kitchen rubble – my nickname should be Barney
Staropramen – Well obviously that’s finished. (About the only thing that is)
And the ‘Bad Things’ update
George Foreman is taking a back seat.
The kitchen may not be finished but we do have ovens. Just need to work out the instructions.
Middle Age
Fully five weeks for the effect of that little fall to wear off. Maybe I should call it Old Age.
Free Goldfish BEWARE OF FREE GOLDFISH!
This suicidal scrawny demon of the deep took out himself and Bully while we were away on a week’s holiday. Never go by first impressions – he had obviously been trained in the cool running streams of Northern Afghanistan.
A fish bowl looks empty with just air in it.
Builder says the extension will be finished next week.
Thank God!
(See Bad Things)
Cleared a space in the builders rubble and lay in the sun on Saturday afternoon.
Not the most congenial of surroundings, but if you closed your eyes and tuned into ‘Birdsong’ on DAB radio, you could have been lying anywhere.
Drinking chilled Staropramen in the rubble
Bad Things
Eating out of a microwave and a George Foreman grill for a month (probably more)
This genuinely isn’t a Good Thing.
Middle Age
I don’t know at what age you should start becoming unsteady on your feet and start falling in the street (and I mean when sober), but I made an impressive start last Monday. Outside the pub – of all places. Went down like an elephant that’s just been shot – you know, the slow motion thing. Twenty or thirty years ago you’d have shrugged this off and been back on your feet in no time. Not any longer. And doesn’t it take longer to get back to normal? The aches are still there a week later.
Free Goldfish
I won’t go into the details of this, suffice to say it was a Buy One Get Two Free sort of deal. Anyway there was a ‘free’ one spare, so it is now sharing the big bowl with Bully. Now this fish was ‘free’ for a reason. It has to be the poorest looking specimen I have ever seen (although I heard the second of the ‘free’ fish has since expired). What’s the betting this little scrawny little minnow will last forever?
Nacho Novo gets caught at last
Well, the wheels all but fell off the Rangers bandwagon. I remain impartial as to whether or not this is a ‘Good Thing’.
What is good is that Senor Novo finally got caught doing what makes him so popular with football supporters of the non-Rangers variety.
Australian street entertainer in Buchanan St, Glasgow on 17 May
Bad Things
Eurovision
This had to be the worst one ever. Blame it on political voting if you like (and there was plenty), but the United Kingdom deservedly finished 25th out of 25. Only Bosnia Herzowhatever brought a smile to the face.
Poor stuff all round and a waste of a Saturday night.
Little wonder Tel is considering giving it up.
