Rare visit

As you can see I am no longer here but you can now find me here these days here instead.

http://twitter.com/mrstu69

Currently experiencing a great thunderstorm out side tonight, virtually no rain coming down but the clouds are crashing together and making some great sounds as I am sat here typing away, the lightening flashes are not as good as night time as it's only 5.20pm at the moment.

Work has been unbearable at the moment, there is no air conditioning where we are most of our country is still in the stone age. We work under Victorian, (Not Australian Victorian, as they are more advanced than us here), rules still where I work in my department. It has been 30C and very humid and it is not very nice, as most of the day is stood up. How people from hot climates most of the year cope I have no idea, we have a run of three days and people start to suffer. I called up our uniform stores to ask about wearing shorts and the reply that came back was, "We don't issue shorts as Health and Safety have not approved them yet!!!!!!!!". How utterly bollocks can you be about something, so we have to suffer in trousers for the time being.

yay, holiday time is getting very close now 37 days away for me, 21 for everybody else, still not sure where we are going to get to while we are over in Oz, but Brisbane has cropped up again. We did it last year for a few days and basically just explored the city and went out to Tangalooma, to see the dolphins. Might go down the Great Ocean Road, but that just might be a bit cold in August. Did it in October & that was quite nice. Oh well time and money will tell I suppose

Washing and ranting!

Well the washing machine situation has been resolved we finally went out and bought a new one, oh no that's wrong Mrs Stu finally went out and buy one. I wanted to throw everything in the bath, fill it up with water, add some liquid and then stamp on it all using my feet until either clean or destroyed!

It was so difficult to buy one they were all so alike and basically did the same thing so I thought, until you start reading into all the special things each one could do. There was one model that had a program for washing trainers, that one amazed me as I just use the same setting for everything I was and up to now there has been no problems. So in the end we ended up with a 7KG front loader and it is superb and all so quite even on the fastest spin.Mrs Stu has now washed everything in the house twice to make sure it cleans better than the last one!

It has been pretty quite here recently as you can see from the postings as we have not really been up to anything at all besides getting things ready for Australia, so remembered have not got the visas yet...yipes better get that sorted pretty quick on the internet.

Work pissed me off these past few days it's not very often I get angry, but when I do you wouldn't like me! There was a project we were all involved in last year and it went so well we were put into the companies annual awards that is taking place in a swanky hotel in the city centre for employees and partners. Now there was some long hours worked to get the project ready and out. It now turns out that the people who did all the physical work and worked the hours to set everything up have been over looked and have not had an invite, while everybody else got one so three of us out of a team of seven will be at home Saturday night while everybody else will be out on a free nigh out with booze included! It seems everybody has known weeks, even the boss and when questioned he said there is nothing he can do!!!!!

I can see a work to rule staring now and pulling people out of the shit is something that won't happen again arghhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh going to go scream....and read blogs!

Kicking and spinning

Today was the day that Mrs Stu and Little g took place in their first ever tournaments at a inter dojo karate meet. This is where all the clubs under the same style get together to kick the hell out of each other for the highly regarded bit of metal to go around their neck. We had to be at the competition for 9.45 for it to start at 10 and with 130 people entered it was going to be a long, but enjoyable day.

There were lots of various stages to go through for all the different colour belts. There was the kumite, which is basically fighting an opponent in a knock out stage and the kata, which is on your own doing a set combinations of moves and then like the kata there is the team kata, which is three people doing the same moves in unison and imagine watching this for every colour belt of white, yellow, orange, red, green, purple, blue and brown for both male and female! Luckily there were three rings for everything to take place in and everything moved on at quite a pace.

When it was time for Little G to do her kata, being the totally unbiased parent I am I thought she did better than everyone and Mrs Stu in her group was going up against brown belts who have been training for years longer instead of five months and she also did really well. After a long day sat waiting and watching the medal ceremony finally came around and both Mrs Stu, silver medal and Little g bronze medal did really well. With Mrs Stu kicking all the higher belts to nearly beat them.

So that was my Sunday, but on Saturday my loyal servant of 11 years the washing machine broke down mid cycle. Now have you bought one recently, there are so many different models out there, we had an afternoon out yesterday and my head was spinning afterwards after seeing so many. Then tonight I was searching the net and my head is spinning once more, unlike the washing machine. So the quest continues and the clothes pile up!

Hi de hi

Another day another pound for the tax man, when will they leave me alone so I can have some fun with my money besides it going towards their expenses!

Another beautiful day here today although once more work is in a steel box so I don't see it all day. I need a ball like Steve McQueen in The Great Escape, so my day goes faster sometimes. It doesn't help this week that somebody has called in sick and I am having to cover for him as well while he is away so I am running around like a headless chicken this week trying to get all the jobs done and out. Just hope he has not passed anything onto me as he has not moved from the toilet in the past few days.

Mrs Stu has decided to enter a karate tournament this weekend with Little G. It is nothing to serious just an inter club thing. It is an all day event with all the competitions so I have to find something for The Terror and myself to do, as trying to keep him happy where the tournament is taking place is not an option. I'll have to hope it's nice this weekend so I can get on with some gardening I need to catch up on.

The Twenty Twenty cricket is not going well for us at the moment the South Africans are knocking us to pieces as I speak, wickets falling all over the place....yikes!

Bye, bye Australia!

So great to be back in work today it felt as if I had never been away and my holiday had not even taken place last week. My day was filled with so much joy tonight when the once mighty cricketing team Australia, went down with no guns blazing in their second game against Sri Lanka. It was such a joy to watch the final ball being bowled fir another wide. All I am hoping for now is the same bowlers to face England in the Ashes, that is coming up real soon.

Doesn't a week fly by when you are having fun camping in the great outdoors. The kids had two weeks break this end of term and as every other school has only one we decided to go on holiday when all the others were back. So off we went to a place about 30 minutes drive from Nottingham.

It was a beautiful first few days and we had the camp site almost to ourselves with the temperature getting up to a mighty 27C driving down there so it was a bit unbearable in the car and going up and down the hills made Mrs Stu a bit sick, so she did most of the driving which was a bonus for me as I could look out at the scenery around us as we drove there, through picturesque countryside and little villages.

The tent was pitched in a perfect spot with the trees acting as shade for most of the day from the sun which made it ideal, the only downside of the pitch being it was so far from the showers and toilets. I think they put us there due to The Terror's reputation going before him of being to noisy!

We actually never did very much during the stay and just basically did nothing due to the rushing around every other day, the only day that was a bit off putting when we had to drive the sixty miles back home to Mrs Stu's dentist as she had recently had some dental work done on a tooth and it decided to flare up again so she had to get that sorted!

We had one day put to the Heights of Abraham, above the town of Matlock Bath, a 30 minute stay from where we stayed. You got to it by a ride on a cable car which was a fantastic kids for the kids.

From here you could see the town of Matlock Bath below.

Another picture from the hill across the valley shows a castle built by John Smedley, in 1862 and although now in ruins it makes a great site when viewed from below.

The Heights of Abraham are mainly full of cavers to explore, being mined since Roam times for lead but are now just a big money spinner as a tourist attraction.

Some very old graffiti they found in the caves and it was researched to find it belonged in old Parish records to the miners who worked down there.

All in all a great few days away, despite the rain on the last day when a waterfall opened up above us while we packed the tent away!