“When two events happen simultaneously pertaining to the same object of inquiry, we must always pay strict attention.”

– Agent Dale Cooper, Twin Peaks

I had a scary moment of the holiday period. I started becoming ill on Boxing day, just the usual trivial stuff – nose and throat, and by New Years Eve it had settled in good and proper. Now, I’m not someone who subscribes to Manflu and I tend to handle illness relatively well. However, by New Years Day it was well and truly getting on my proverbials…

New Years Eve had been a late night, going to bed about 4am, and then New Years Day involved going out for a walk. So by 9.30pm I was well and truly knackered – soaked in the bath and early night.

I woke at about 2am to the smell of some kind of burning. It wasn’t the smell that had woken me, it was just there. As I woke I noticed that the whole room was misty/smokey. I jumped out of bed and rushed into the kids room. I checked all the rooms upstairs – everything ok apart from the smoke.

My rationale at the moment of time was that I didn’t think there was a big roaring fire, just some kind of small simmering type fire, or more likely, something bigger outside that was filtering in through the windows.

Anyway, I rushed downstairs and systematically checked all the rooms – everything ok – except for the smoke. I looked outside, but there was nothing obvious. By the time I returned to the kitchen Victoria was there wondering what was up. She wasn’t at all panicked by some smoke, more likely by my irrational behaviour.

[Paraphrasing a strange conversation that followed...]

“What’s up?”
“The whole house is filled with smoke or mist or something,” I said.
“Go and look in the mirror,”

I looked in the mirror, and my eyes were filled with yuk! A few minutes of vigorous washing later, and everything had returned to normal.

So the smoke turned out to be my cold coming out of my eyes, or a possible reaction to the bubble bath!

The smell – Victoria had lit an incense thingy when we’d got in on New Years Day to attempt to remove the smell of the stale house.

I didn’t sleep anymore that night…

Needless to say, Victoria bought extra smoke alarms and stuff over the weekend…

As my computer finally gave up the ghost after giving me the most grief for a long time… it is now an ex PC and my Apple iMax 24 has now been ordered!

Why do people muck around with food? I used to eat Tesco’s Maple and Pecan Crisp for breakfast… last month a box turned up with the shopping that was “Newly Improved”. I don’t like it anymore!

Victoria eats some Oaty Crunch thing.. this month, “Newly Improved”. She doesn’t like it anymore!

Why mess with things…?

I suspect costs; they’ve change the makeup to reduce the costs. But now it tastes shit!

I was idling some time today over lunch, and for some reason while browsing around Amazon I clicked on watches. I think the first watch that came up was for about £20. I’m thinking, if I was buying a watch I’d probably pay a little more than £20 so I’ll sort on Price – High to Low…
The first watch to come up was Breitling Bentley GTK13362. It’s a bargain at the moment because you can save 18% at the moment. That’s £4,445.00!!! Yep it’s currently down from £24,695.00 to £20,250.00!
Now, the first page of watches listed in this fashion are all over £5k – in fact, you have to go through 20 pages before you get a watch under £1K. That’s about 450 watches. Now, I’m fully aware that there are some rather expensive watches out there, but the point is, the thing that I really need to know, the question that will trouble my sleep tonight, is; who, in their right mind, who has over twenty thousand pounds, burning a hole in their pocket, goes to Amazon to order it? And, do they tick the Super Saver Delivery option?