The Frumplingtons

Since the arrival of our new computer, sadly with Vista installed, we’ve amused ourselves playing with the installed games. I’ve just played a game of Chess which has really cheesed me off. I’ve lost quite a few games, due to the fact I’m rusty, but I have won one and drawn one.

Tonight I was down to my King and Queen, I’d managed to get a pawn converted to another Queen and the computer only had a King left. So slowly I backed it into a corner for my grand win. One move to go and what happens?? The computer calls it a DRAW. Excuse me, a DRAW, I won that game fair and square…now where do I go to uninstall Vista?!!

If there had been any more blue patches on yesterday evening’s weather map, the land wouldn’t have been visible at all. This had to be the easiest forecast in the world. No-one, we were assured by the BBC’s man from the Met office, would be able to escape a drenching, and thunderstorms were a definite possibility.

We quickly donned our cagoules, each of us setting new personal bests as we beat the times we had previously recorded in our regular Frumplingtons emergency weather drills. Now that’s what I call enthusiasm, especially as we weren’t planning on going anywhere — least of all outside.

Alas! all we got was an hour of light drizzle. Not even a hint of a storm. And this morning it’s bright and sunny. Some forecast that turned out to be! Here’s a tip for those Met office chappies: ditch the satellites — just toss a coin instead. We’ll keep our brollies to hand.

[Or, ‘More waffle about feeds‘]

Just a small change, but observant readers might have spotted it: the link for our RSS feed is now down at the bottom of the page. It’s never been our main source of traffic, but if you want the link, there it is.

I also decided to go back to Blogsome’s own feed service. It works fine, so why not? And, in any case, Feedburner has seemed to be getting slower and slower every time I tried to log in (i.e., not very often but often enough to notice how slow it was).

All of this might mean nothing to you. Trouble is, RSS feeds (and their little cousins, Atom feeds) seem to be beyond most people’s understanding, certainly those in the UK. If you read lots of blogs, feeds are so convenient I don’t know how anyone manages without them. So, is it possible to educate the British public about the wonders of RSS? Does anyone feel up to the challenge? Don’t all volunteer at once.

We got an award this week. That old sweetie, Big John (vide sidebar for live link), decided we were worthy of something called the ‘Brillante Weblog’ award. If you’ve got one of those modern graphical browsers you might see it at the top of this entry. If I were you, though, I’d cover it up with a post-it note or something, ‘cos it sure ain’t pretty, is it? We don’t go in for lots of sidebar ‘bling’ on this blog, so it won’t be appearing on our menu any time soon. But we have had a bit of fun with it, as I shall explain.

SilverTiger — another of our Dwellers on the Sidebar — discovered the source of the Brillante Weblog award-meme. Presumably, a quick Google search was all that was required.

I, however, took a more arduous route. My journey took me down into the Hades of blogging, where otherwise mild-mannered people consider it ‘cool’ to display garish page backgrounds, memory-sapping widgets, and blogrolls with even more names on them than the London telephone directory (unexpurgated edition). I took several alternative routes, one of which took me to twenty blogs. Each time, though, the award-meme eventually resulted in a return to a blog I had already seen.

I felt like a man lost in a desert, who goes in search of help, only to find himself back at his starting point, not realising he has been walking in circles. There was one consolation, though: at the end of my journey, at least I hadn’t run out of water. At the end of my journey, though, most people would need something a bit stronger than water. Here’s just one version of my Journey Through the Brillante Meme.

I have just discovered that there is a town called Haslet, and we would like to move there, because both Shana and I are keen haslet fans.

Unfortunately, Haslet is in Texas. (Yeah, that Texas!) Oh, well, never mind. It would have been the perfect address for us, though. Guess we’d better get the local map out instead and look closer to home; I wonder if there’s such as place as Corned Beef, Lincolnshire?

The Peugeot website has a car parking game you can try. You’ll need that shockwave Flash thingy installed if you want to have a go. Oh, and don’t have too many drinks beforehand; you wouldn’t if it was real driving, would you? And no talking on your mobile phone. And whatever you do, mind the little dog when you get to the last level. Yes, I know I sound as if I’m nagging, but I just want you to do well, that’s all. I finished in just over two minutes. If they bring out another version where the car’s towing a trailer, though, it’d be more like two days!

Here’s our latest project: a postcards site. Or mini site, to be exact. Although you never know: it might expand to, oh, two, maybe even three pages in a year or two.

Postcards is the end result of our browsing through the bargain boxes at several junk shops and then forking out whole pence for our favourite cards.

The exotic locations on the cards contrast nicely with the sentiments on the reverse. Some of the writers actually manage to be quite witty. And then there’s the one who writes home from South Africa’s Cape Province to send get well wishes: “hope your sinus trouble’s clearing up”. Go see…

The human tongue, it is said, can tell the difference between only four kinds of flavour: sweet, bitter, sour and savoury. But today, we made scientific history by discovering a fifth flavour. Violet.

No, we haven’t been munching on the neighbours’ hanging baskets again. We’ve been sampling the delights of one of Beech’s Fine Chocolates ‘traditional’ range, namely their Violet Creams. We found them quite by chance this morning while we were in Boyes looking for a cheap birthday card for a distant relative (60 miles distant, to be exact).

Beech’s are quite clever when it comes to packaging their choccies though. You see, our little box of Violet (or, as we prefer to call them, ‘Violent‘) Creams contained 13 chocolates. And as there are two of us, we would usually have to buy two boxes if we wanted equal shares. What an ingenious marketing ploy. However, we managed to scupper Beech’s fiendish intentions quite easily: we simply broke the thirteenth chocolate in half! And we shall do exactly the same with the next box we buy. And the one after that. And the one after that. So there!

And still on a food theme: y’know those bobbly sweets you get in packets of licorice allsorts? (They’re usually either bright pink or bright blue.) Well, there’s a proper name for them. They’re called spogs. Remember that; sooner or later, it’ll probably come up as a question on Uni Challenge.

For the last three days the pavement to the front of our house has been covered in frost. Only today has it started to thaw. The permafrost, Shana called it. Sounds about right to me. OK, we might not have had any ice storms round here recently. And describing our location as the tundra could be taking it a bit too far: the big sycamore across the road indicates that we are definitely still below the tree-line.

But whenever the temperature drops below parky degrees centigrade you can bet it won’t be long before you hear the odd hint coming from my direction. Subtle suggestions that it might soon be “time to ‘don The Woolly’”; this being a thick black chunky-knit cardie — a prezzie from Shana — in which I envelop myself, usually clutching a steaming mug of tea, while making loud Brrrr!!! noises and looking decidedly pathetic.

Whoever my distant ancestors were (and so far I’ve only managed to trace them as far back as the late 19th century) I suspect that the Frumplington family tree did not include many prominent outdoorsmen (although there were probably plenty of wimps). I am, therefore, despite the fact that:

1. I used to own a pair of camouflage trousers many years ago and,
2. Once bought a pair of thermal gloves from campers’ and hikers’ top shop, Millets,

most likely not related to the great Ray Mears.

And if he’s reading this (hello Ray!) he’s probably mighty relieved that I’m not.

Brrr! Can someone turn the heating on for a few minutes? It’s freeezing in here.