Vintage fodder for your ipods

Now me, I'm a sucker for vintage radio (currently listening to "Omar, the Wizard of Persia", that's him up above. Verdict.....bloody brilliant example of high-camp american acting circa mid 30's last century. Favourite quote, "Quiet Jerry, it's the bells....the mystic bells of Omar") Thought you guys might be interested in some of my sources for 'stuff to snooze on the metro to' (all free AND legal)....and not just vintage radio shows!

There's lots of old-time-radio (OTR) downloads available here (including "Omar" should you feel like setting up a discussion group talk about its literary merits in depth!)

Science fiction your bag? Try "The Seeing Ear Theatre"....even though they're American they've made an effort to spell theatre right and they do a damned good drama! Then of course there's that old classic "The War of the Worlds" with Orson Welles

Moving swiftly along to the weird and wonderful (usually vintage jumble sale type material)...and you can't do better than the "365 days project". As suggested by the name a new gem is posted each day this year. The parent site is worth a look too.

Look, there's loads more and not just audio......but I'll wait to see whether anyone is interested before I post the links

Test posting by email

Will it work I wonder?

Showing Sarah how to Blog

This is a test mssage.....ignore

This looks more like it!

The 'Jerry', as Ma calls it (reasons for which she either never knew or, more likely, has long since forgotten!) is more forthcoming in the menu department, short sample of which reads

Homemade Soup; served with crusty bread £2.50, Deep Fried Breaded Garlic Mushrooms; with garlic mayonnaise £3.95 Game Pate; served with wholemeal toast £3.95 Prawn Cocktail; served with wholemeal bread & butter £4.25 Hot & Spicy Chicken Wings; with a sweet chilli dip £3.95

Full menu here if you're interested. They're open for lunch 12.00 - 3.00

Twice Brewed

Eating on the way to Ma's birthday bash....had a look at the Twice Brewed website and have to say they're decidedly coy when it comes to the lunchtime sandwich menu department! Still....they advertise they do food even if their website leaves a lot to be desired...ANY OTHER HOT SUGGESTIONS?

Alls fair at the fair....

Haven't even watched this myself yet.....but I'm sure it'll be good!

Re previous posting....they're wrong!

Re previous posting....I had to look, didn't I....just couldn't resist! Now, is that cool or what? (though I believe the blonde in the first row behind is still waiting for settlement on her small claims court action for 'intentional blinding with a microphone stand'!)

It's billed as the worst music video ever.....

And they could be right!! Of course I haven't seen any of the latest David Essex contributions to the genre recently so I'm willing to stand corrected.....

Optical illusion

Believe it or not, squares A and B are the same colour......check out the proof here!

Problems with posting and commenting

Confession.....I updated the blog template and I think I may have locked you all out (except John)...see Chris' comment in the chat box The new template needs a gmail identifier to log in properly. It's easy to do, just go to the sign-up page and invent an address, use that to log into blogger (left hand box at the blogger sign-in page) and that SHOULD work!

Cat litter

Just checked the comments on the puddytat video. So Syrah and Merlot can't be arsed to master a simple wind instrument?.....Maybe this is what they need instead. Check out the full range of catty goodies at http://www.catsplay.com/ .....hey, it's not expensive, the contraption above only costs $444.95 (+ US postage $79.99....the UK might be marginally more I guess) and it's a positive design statement for any modern home. I've ordered two!

Chicken tagine Recipe

Serves 4-6

Ingredients

Chicken Breasts
Olive Oil
2 Medium onions (sliced)
2 Cloves Garlic
1 Tsp Cumin Seeds
1 Tsp Ground Coriander
1 Tsp Ground Ginger
1 Tsp Turmeric
1 Tsp Ground Cinnamon
1/2 Tsp Chilli Powder
1/4 Tsp Ground Nutmeg
375 ml Chicken Stock
250 ml Water
85g Seedless Dates halved
60ml Honey
80g Blanched Almonds Toasted
1 Tbsp Chopped Coriander

Recipe

Cut Chicken into chunks and brown in oil in Skillet/Tagine then remove.

Add a little more oil add onions, garlic. spices and cook stirring until onions are soft.

Return chicken to the pan with stock and water simmer covered for one hour.

Remove lid simmer for about 30 minutes or until mixture slightly thickens and chicken is tender.

Stir in dates, honey and nuts and sprinkle with fresh coriander.

This one's for Anne

I vote Anne and John should buy Merlot and Syrah a tuba and a saxaphone (I'm side-stepping the possibility of 'strings'...the catgut choice maybe not a a good one!)....for info, Moocah just got his grade 3 French Horn!

An experiment gone wrong

I promised Chris I'd post this...it's a science teacher thing, apparently, to mock ones peers. Personally I think it's all down to him wearing that outrageous rainbow coloured smock!Instructions/explanation for the gizmo on the right in the post below.

A couple of new additions to the blog

Over on your right ladies and gentlemen, you'll spot a new addition, it's a sort of 'Instant Messenger' affair. So, given the vague possibility that more than one of us happens to be viewing the blog at any one time (OK, probably VERY vague!) we can chat away in real time and with abandon. Being realistic, it's probably just a temporary visitor....I was just trying the idea out for work! If you want to give it a whirl just type your name in the 'name' box so everyone else knows who's talking (duh!), then type your message in the message box (am I boring you?) and click on the 'tag' button. The newest messages appear at the top. WARNING....if you want to add something more lasting and meaningful use the 'comments' option at the bottom of individual posts....there's no way of saving the tagbox content without paying out hard cash!
I'm also going to try adding 'labels' to posts, it's a way of sorting and searching for particular posts in a blog, more often used in ones that have a much larger volume of posts than this one. Just click on one of the labels at the end of the post and you'll get a full list, at least of the ones I remember to add labels to in future of course, there's also a handy list of labels on the right hand side under the archives....lecture over boys and girls, class dismissed!

Embedding a presentation experiment

Well, I wonder whether that will work? I created the presentation in Empressr (link to the right under 'BLOG GIZMOS') then copied and pasted the code into the 'Edit HTML' box. If it works it could be yet another way we could all bore the pants of the rest of the family with our holiday snaps!

Later....it worked BUT the pasted HTML needed a bit of a tweek, the width of the original box the presentation ran in was too wide and it forced the side bars down to the bottom of the posts. Easy to change tho!

Truth In Advertising

Watch it and die laughing!!!

Test Posting from WriteToMyBlog

This is a sample table	Just to see if it works
and some text	to fill the cells

Here's a bit of straight text

here's some in colour

I've added a link to this web-based service on the right hand menu bar for anyone who wants to give it a whirl or has a pressing desire to do something fancy

February update....when I updated the template last weekI managed to lose a couple of links including the one to WriteToMyBlog. I've added it again but while I was at it I realised the service has improved a lot since I last tried it....it's now a fully fledged on-line word processor with a lot of the bells and whistles of Word....worth a look if you feel the urge to include chemical formulae in any of your posts!

A Beautiful Day

Posted on Anne's behalf due to further technical problems

Off on our travels once again we headed down to Peterborough and booked into the Bull Hotel (where we spent many a happy night boozing on our speedway travels). Spent the afternoon savouring the culinary highlights of the City…not something I would recommend as it can basically be summed up as what do you want with your chips!

After John topped up his alcohol intake in readiness for the night ahead…we headed for the Broadway theatre and a night in the company of the great man himself (see above for photographic memoir of the evening. A packed theatre resonated to the sound of those old classics as well as some new hits…yes he is still producing new albums…and gyrating grannies. After dragging Anne away from the stage door we headed back to the hotel bar and the delights of Match of the Day…disturbed unfortunately by twittering women of a certain age swooning at programmes and calendars.

And just think it is all to be repeated again this Saturday in Preston…less the alcohol unfortunately says John!!

Hot news

It's official.....Sarah is possibly the new Quentin Blake. She's been hired by the BBC to illustrate 'Laura's Diaries' (Radio 1 cult classic ....no, I hadn't heard of it either!). Just imagine, being paid to doodle......sample of her winning submission above. Somehow, the scribbles on her bedroom wall now seem worthwhile!