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Gargoyle

Fried Fey.

On Saturday I had friends Leslie and Samantha stay over, Leslie was unfortunately caught up in the railway chaos and arrived much later than expected.

Both Sam and Leslie have fussy diets, Sam’s being wheat and a few other things free and Leslie being a vegetarian who does not like eating, so while I did offer in the end I left them to cater for themselves which meant in Sam case lots of fried food which made my house smell for several days.

During the evening Sam caught a sight of my copy Sapphire and Steel an old surreal, spooky sci-fi TV series from the late 70’s early 80’s .We put in the DVD player and watched 6 half hour long episodes of the first series. While the sets, special effects and even some the acting is dire, the atmosphere and mood they create with music, lighting, and long pauses is excellent and while not always making sense, the plot/storyline I still find interesting a quite gripping. It’s reminded me I should order the 2nd series if it’s available.

Jasmine has discovered she likes climbing into bags see photo below.

Sunday was the latest Ascendancy battle; AndyL pitted his wits against RichS who had lots of help (or hindrance) from about 10 other players, see photos below.

The game gave AndyL all the initial tactical advantages in deployment which he used to good effect, while RichS had a 15% points advantage after his initial losses which were written into the scenario and not counted, RichS also could only really react to what Andy did since he was on the back foot from the start. The battle ended in a draw with 7 victory points each side, although Andy was 2 points ahead until very last move.

A good if very tiring couple of days.

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A big rat or Capybara

Ham roll compalaint

This is not my normal post since I don't use this blog to moan however this time I have.

I bought a Ham salad roll (Ham salad cob if your from around here) from a mobile delivery van and found for the second time in less than a week it had very little filling, at least by my standards see the photo below it, the piece of ham covered half the surface, a tiny bit of lettuce tucked near the visible edge, some thinly sliced tomatoes, onion, cucumber and a thin scrape of butter. (Note there is no ham under the tired looking cucumber)

I was annoyed so sent the supplier a fax saying I wanted my money back £ 1.60 and that they needed to improve or I would not be buying any more from them.

The supplier however did not take criticism well, he rang me up saying he relied on word of mouth and nobody else complained, and said they would no longer deliver to our company since I would apparently bad mouth him and no one would buy. So instead of dealing with the complaint in a sensible way he’s lost his half a dozen customers totally, needless to say he kept to his word and the van has not turned up this morning and unfortunately I’ve not got my money back and I’m very disappointed.

Polling the building I’m in by email, it would seem other people had already stopped buying anything but crisps, cakes and sweets and did not rate his food anyway and nobody seem bothered the van will no longer turn up, so not feeling guilty for being the person responsible for loosing our delivery service.

On the plus side it will stop impulse purchases of food and the down side I will need to drive to the nearest shop if I need anything for lunch.

I somehow feel the supplier won.

Twycross video

Compilation of video from my still camera taken during my visit to Twycross Zoo, only watch if your really bored.

Day out at the Zoo

Spent the day with the primates at Twycross zoo yesterday, 3 of which you can see below.




Julie (centre) as already posted on her blog about various things such as the Guanoco getting a bit feisty and the banging of windows when it says please don't!, she also got some nice photographs, so I will leave you to read her blog about those items.

I took lots of photos, most of the enclosures, other members of public, awkward position of subjects and reflective glass screens made it incredibly difficult to get good shots, particularly of the apes and monkeys the zoo specialises in breeding, so a lot of my photos did not come out well.



As can be seen below the new 3 and bit week old elephant was very popular and I could not even get to the fence, I did eventually get a shot from the other side by going down a closed off path.




The zoo has plenty of apes but not much else, we have Capybara the worlds largest rodent, about the size of pig (see below).



Meercats and Prairie Dogs which were fun





I have a couple of cat photos one of a Scottish wild cat which is about the same size as Charlie and a leopard which I edited away the bar from.





We all had a good day out Dave left some ice cream which was too sweet for him and after a few mouthfuls too sweet for me.




We arrived not long after opening and left as the final gift shop was closing so I would say we got a good days entertainment out of the zoo. Julie fed us, Dave provided drinks and I did the driving and even the roads managed to be not blocked by heavy bank holiday traffic, apart from not being able to get off at my junction on the way home due to the road works.



I didn't wear sun block so my exposed arms are a little red today.

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Two photographs with reflections involved, 1 in the glass of a monkey cage, the other me in sunglasses.