Gingerjo’s Blog

I probably shouldn’t be posting this as I’m sure it will be costing me a fortune on my Vodafone mobile connect card, but I’m a long way from home and I need to communicate so what the hell! At present I’m staying in an Express by Holiday Inn in Newcastle or Gateshead (not sure where exactly) trying to persuade a teabag to give me a third cup of tea.  I’m losing the argument. Why are these places so stingy with the tea bags?

I peddled our university’s wares to the sixth formers of County Durham today (after staying in the similarly unimpressive A1 J61 Premier Travel Inn last night).  Frankly, I’m amazed that anyone ever makes it to university from County Durham. The schools seem utterly apathetic about tertiary education.  Half the schools would only let their students come to the HE Fair if they had a free period so of course hardly anyone came to the afternoon session. Don’t these schools realise that their stats look bad if none of their students progress to HE?  What the hell are they thinking?  Of those students that did attend very few were prepared - most didn’t have a clue what course they want to do or what careers they could lead to.  What are the careers teachers doing around here?

On the plus side though the sun was shining, and County Durham is very beautiful.  So I guess I shouldn’t complain too much.

This is the reason I’ve been feeling pressured by the blog-monster - I haven’t posted for two weeks.  During the first week we were DIYing (putting up shelves to be precise). This may sound daft - you can’t possibly DIY 24/7. However, my Dad came up from Wales to put up the shelves for us and because this is the world’s most higgledy-piggledy house every shelf had to be precisely measured and hand-cut to fit the walls that curve off at random angles.  He also plained all the doors so that they actually shut - guests can even lock the bathroom door now should they so choose!  Obviously it would be incredibly rude to say thanks for all your hard work all day Dad - now you’ve stopped for a chat and a rest I’m off to play on my computer for a couple of hours, feel free to watch the telly. 

I don’t know what we’d have done if Dad couldn’t have done this for us - there’s no cupboard space in the house and we were already fighting about tripping over each other’s clutter before Mark decided to buy a new drumkit.  Since we have an abundance of alcoves the obvious answer was shelves, lots and lots of shelves.  Unfortunately there isn’t a straight wall in the house and we knew it would require a highly skilled carpenter and joiner to makes shelves to fit.  Fortunately, I happen to know an expert in the field, my Dad, who did a seven year apprenticeship in the days when tradesmen were properly trained to do the job and took pride in the quality of their workmanship.  Our shelves are a work of art (not to mention geometry) so thanks Dad - we could never have done this by ourselves and I doubt if we could have afforded a suitably skilled carpenter even if we could have found one.

The second week we went to Norfolk on holiday and I was completely cut off from the digital world.  All about that in further posts/webpages (when I get around to it).

THANKS AGAIN DAD!!

The crew of Bolton fire station have been holding a charity car wash today to raise money for Red Nose Day.  I’m afraid the idea of getting my little zebra car all soaped up by 6 burly fellas was far too tempting an opportunity to miss so I joined the queue and handed over a hopefully generous amount of cash.  To start off we got thoroughly soaked with a fire hose and then drove inside the station where the guys pounced on us with their sponges and gave us a thorough going over.  I confess to a little guilty delight, but hey, it’s for charity.  I love RND is all I can say.  How long is it till next year?

I’m ashamed to say it, but I’ve been losing my ginger for some time now.  My hair has slowly been getting darker and darker each year so I’ve finally had to resort to getting my hair highlighted to put the ginger back.  Drastic action I know but it seems the only way - otherwise I’ll have to change my name to ‘brownjo’ or possibly ‘plumpjo’ (although that wayward attribute is also on my hit list). Either way it just won’t do.

It’s blended in very nicely, but because this was only the first treatment I’m still verging on brown (or dark auburn as I keep telling myself).  My hairdresser promises me it will ginger-up significantly next time on the second treatment.  It should also thicken my fine, flyaway mop making it easier to command and less lifeless and flat. That’ll be nice.

So much for the 10 inches of snow we were promised. We haven’t even had a few millimetres settle here in Manchester. It has attempted to snow though, via a bit of sleeting, and a fairly standard amount of rain. However, it was snowing as I was driving home from work this evening. Watching the headlamp-lit snowflakes flying towards my windscreen against the dark of the night sky it occured to me that this was probably the closest visual effect to accelerating towards lightspeed in the Starship Enterprise I was ever likely to experience in real life. It’s definitely a bit spacey.

Finally, Mark has told me that I’ve made him a nice cup of tea - it’s only taken 14 months!! In all that time he’s never once commented on a cup of tea I’ve made him and he drinks a lot of cups of tea. Tonight was special, however, the tea was at last worthy of comment.

Here’s Mark enjoying the special brew …

In a few spare, bored moments I decided to see what other me’s have been up to on-line. It seems my name has an interesting pedigree and certainly some of my namesakes have been having considerable fun.

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