Some things I'm not planning on doing over the new year

 Heres a few things I probably wont be doing over the new year.

1.  I wont be going to Trafalgar Square to welcome in the new year.  Frankly if it needs a ring of steel and rooftop snipers I'm probably safer sitting on the sofa watching it on telly!

2.  I wont be taking down the fairy off the Christmas tree by standing on the sofa with a bulldog trip hazard and a large box of Christmas decorations to help break my fall and help reduce the impact between head and fireplace (CoughShirleyCough)

3.  Loose weight by inventing an anti gravity device

4.  Using my brand new electirc toothbrush, because it comes with a bloody two pin plug and I don't have an adaptor!

Nearly 2018 Happy New Year

 Well it's nearly 2018, so I'll wish you all a very Happy New Year, may you have health, happiness and wealth for the next year.


 Some stars/celebs we lost in 2017.

Malcolm Young (ACDC) Fats Domino, Robert Guilluame (Benson) Tom Petty, Hugh Hefner, Jake LaMotta, Harry Dean Stanton,  Don Williams, Jerry lewis, Glen Campbell, Robert Hardy, Sam Shepard, George A Romero,  Martin landau, Stephen Furst, Adam West, Roger Moore, Powers Booth, Erin Moran, Clifton James, Don Rickles, Chuck Berry, Bill Paxton,  Ritchard Hatch, Mike Conners, John Hurt, Mary Tyler Moore, Gorden Kaye,  Bruce Forsyth, keith Chegwin, Christine Keeler, Heather North, David Cassidy,  Rodent Bewes, Keith Baron, Liz Dawn, Sonny Landham, Hywel Bennett, Deborah Watling,  Barry Norman, Peter Sallis, Roy Barraclough, John Noaks, Geoffrey Bayldon, Tim Piggott Smith, John Surtees, Alan Simpson.
 And many many more.

The Foreigner 2017 (film review)

 "A humble businessman with a buried past seeks justice when his daughter is killed in an act of terrorism. A cat-and-mouse conflict ensues with a government official, whose past may hold clues to the killers' identities."IMDb

 Staring Jackie Chan,  Pierce Brosnan, Rufus Jones,.

 The plot is simple, Quan (Chan) daughter is killed by a rogue splinter group of the IRA. Quan then goes after those responsible using Liam Hennessy (Brosnan) a Gerry Adams look-a-like to get to those behind his daughter death.
 The problem for those responsible is that Quan (Chan) isn't just a normal bloke on the street, he's got some very special training....

 The film is quite gripping, theres action from pretty much the start and for once Chan is playing a serious role. Most of the details are actually right (for a change) the special forces observation team even has the "lingo" right, clearly someone has taken the trouble to get a proper adviser which makes a big difference.
 Like all Chan films theres a few explosions and a few fight scenes, although less than we expect, it works with the serious nature of the film.

Waynes rating   8.5/10   Well worth a watch even if your not a Jackie Chan fan

Christmas dinner is over THANK HEAVENS!!!

 Well a big thank you to all who let me do all the work, all the cooking, shopping and dish washing! I'm totally buggered now and it's only 7.00pm (mind I was up at 4.30am).
 Many thanks for the presents. Thanks for the £60 bet Rob, fancy thinking I wouldn't eat a pre-Christmas dinner real scorpion. If your interested scorpion tastes like very chewy crunchy off meat. Plus it's not every Christmas dinner you get to pick legs out of your teeth after. And I've kept the tail if anybody fancies it  He made the same mistake with Sam, only with mealworms, that cost him another £60 (thats my boy lol)
 More importantly thanks for the malt whiskey, I'm having a tot now to wind down.
Oh and thanks to my dentist for texting me on Christmas day to remind me I'm due my 3 monthly check up.... everybody else gets a check up every year....

 Right wheres the first bottle......

Had a titfull of Christmas already!

 Well frankly I've had a titfull of Christmas already, I've been food shopping four bloody times this week, today just to pick up the turkey took the best part of two and a half hours.
 To be fair that wasn't Tescos fault, we didn't actually wait two and a half hours just for the turkey. Oh no, first we went looking for a fresh turkey (note we'd gone over to collect an ordered turkey crown) this turned out to be looking for a chicken, then it turned into looking for tissues, then back to salad stuff.
 Eventually I managed to get my Mum and Shirley to the counter where you now take a number and wait, we were number sixty eight, the number on the telly there said serving number fifteen.
 We waited, then we waited some more, then our turkey crown arrived, WOW that looks big, and for forty eight quid it bloody should be. We walk away to get more shopping, Ahhhh wait a minute, should a turkey crown have legs......   Errrr, hang on, thats not right.
 Back to the counter, take another numbers, wait etc etc, woman on till looks it up, oh yes, it's the wrong one.  Errrr yes we figured that out ourselves.
 Minion sent off to find right turky crown.... wait... wait a bit more... free bottle of wine for the inconvenience.  I did mention I'm more of a Mcallans whisky drinker but that didn't work, still worth a go!
 Eventually a turkey crown arrives, oh joy now we can do more shopping.
 Finally I get home have a salad and the phone rings, I answer (will I never learn) it's my brother having a moan about going to Mums for Christmas dinner, it turns out he's called in while I was on my way home and had a row with my Mum, she's in tears and I'm very pissed off. As usual I have to pick up the pieces and calm it all down.
 Yep roll on Christmas, I've had a guts full already. Next year I'm going to get shitfaced Christmas eve and have a bloody bigmac for dinner.

So MERRY CHRISTMASS ALL!!!  May all your problems be small and all your presents big, oh and if any of you get a Canon 5d mk3 you don't want pass it on to me.

Oh the joy of Christmas shopping...

 Well it's the week before Christmas, the shops have moved into high gear, people are spending money and.....  And, well...  Actually the shops haven't moved into high gear, in fact they haven't got out of bleeding neutral!.
 I been in a good few shops this week and one thing they have in common is no staff! Yes the week before Christmas, the busiest selling week of the year and they were too tight and stupid to hire more staff.  Yes having one till open and a queue out the front door is such a good idea.  Well it's a good idea if you want people to shop online and buy it cheaper without having to stand like a row of lemmings waiting for the brain dead 16 year old you have on the till.
 Then there was Natwest Or GnatPissed as I call it (the bank that likes to say fuck off bignose)
 Yes the joy of only having three people in the queue in front of me. The sadness of the one window that was open taking twenty five fucking minutes to serve three people.
 Fuck me! Slow!  Even bank robbers would go elsewhere, just telling them to to put the money in bag would take them a half hour in there. I was lucky, just three people in front of me, when I eventually left there must have thirty odd in the queue behind me, some of those probably died of old age before they got to the window.
 Then today I went to get cards, oh yes very helpfull "excuse me but where would nephew cards be?" answer " next to neice"  Well that helped a fucking lot as I couldn't find those either. Looks like I won't be buying my Christmas cards in neath next year.
Then I went for food, yes the joy of being served hot food by a pig ignorant bitch who talked on the phone wedged under her ear the whole time she made and served my hot food.  Mind I got my own back a bit,  I started to walk away without paying when she said £6.20, she panicked and called again, I said "sorry, I thought you were talking to the person on the phone" then paid in a pile of loose change so she needed to stop and count it all out. 
 Next year if I'm still around I think I'll do it all online myself, the local shops can fuck off, frankly if they can't be bothered neither can I.

The Operatives tv series (again)

 Well I caught another episode of the Operatives tv show today, they were in Costa Rica chasing illegal gold miners.
 Where do I start... this group of supposedly ex military (I have my doubts) are out in the jungle. Well, first obviously none of them have ever seen a jungle before. There they are following a stream and they run out of water as they underestimated the distance they could cover. Now anyone who has actually been in the jungle will tell you that time and distance mean nothing, it could take you two hours to cover half a mile, it could take you ten minutes, or all day!
 Add in the fact that despite being in a stream they had no water purification tablets or filters so they had to drink the unfiltered stream water, the last straw for me was watching them sitting on the jungle floor, thats a no-no, you always sit on your pack or anything except the floor. The floor is covered in stinging biting things..
 Then the cameraman fell and broke the camera so they called it a halt, even though theres footage of the cameraman there with the broken camera getting up after his fall, so obviously they have another camera.
 While this is happening a second group are planning on using a paramotor ( motorized parachute  sort of a hang glider) Except... none of them have ever flown one before, oh they did read the manual and watch a video on how to do it, needless to say after loads of attempts they end up crashing before finally one of them gets off the ground.

 These are supposed to be the professionals?????  Hell you'd be better off with half a dozen old ladies from the local Woman's Institute.

Going abroad and thinking of flying on one of their airlines?

 If your going abroad outside of Europe and planning on using one of the visited countries own airlines for short hops keep this in mind.
 Currently there are 178 airlines banned from EU airspace for safety concerns. Of these 172 airlines from 16 states are banned because of lack of safety oversight by the aviation authorities from these states.
 The remaining 6 airlines are banned because of individual safety concerns with those companies.

 Maybe they should put this in the inflight magizine, it might make people read the safety cards.

I'm not a celebrity get me the smeg out of here!

 Well good news, I have some of  the leaked next seasons list of celebrities for next years " I'm not a celebrity get me the smeg out of here!".

Dr Edwin Flangeplate. Butterfly collector appeared on BBC's countryfile in 1992

Donald  Seedratter  Butchers assistant who has served Michael Winner twice.

Katie Price.  Used to get her jugs out a lot back in 1996, more recently known for getting married a lot.

Betty Moredock. Worked at a hairdressers next door to the hairdresser used by Joan Collins.

Derick Collins. Appeared in the background of Top of the Pops in 1969 (now slightly dead but says that wont stop him re-booting his career.

Jayne Morley-Smethwich. dog trainer who trained a dog for Mel Gibson, sadly the dog was run over before Gibson got it.

Proffesor Harris Baconslice.  Nearly appeared on the sky at night in 1975.

Mary McDonald  Appeared in the tv series  The Sweeney when she accidentally walked past the camera.

Richard M Dickson. Cousin of the man who was the great nephew of the great grandson of the man who wrote the music for the film Village of the Dammed 1960.



Seriously though how hard is it to find real celebrites, not the bunch of has-beens no hopers and who the bloody hell are they's that they have now!

The Orville tv series)

 I started watching the Orville tv series when it first launched, to be honest I wasn't expecting a lot. Written and staring Seth Macfarlane of Family Guy fame. Sadly films and series staring the writer have a nasty habit of being terrible. The Orville is different, it works, and it works well.
 The idea is a sort of Star Trek spoof, but in fact while having some comedy especially in the early episodes it's turned into a proper science fiction show that stands on it own, with good stories.

Waynes rating 8/10 well worth a watch if you like science fiction.

Red Dwarf last ever series??? (spoiler alert)

 The week saw the end of series 12 of Red Dwarf. The series has been different is a few ways but over the last two episode we've had sort of "flashbacks" of the first ever series, it's a bit like the series is paying homage to it's origin before it stops.
 We've seen Lister back in his first uniform and back in the setting we first see him in episode one of the first series, munching a pie with a cigarette in his ear.
 We have Rimmer back in his original uniform, Holly back, Captain Hollister returned, and lastly the old sleeping quarters.
 I hope it's not the end of Red Dwarf. But if it is goodbye and thanks for the laughs.

Yeah the boys from the dwarf!!!

Fitbits Blaze (review)

 The Fitbits Blaze is a fitness tracker watch.
 It's able to track steps, heart rate (resting and active) monitor smart phone notifications, link to your music, give guided breathing relaxation sessions, has reminders to move, sleep monitoring and lots of other features.
 It's claimed to have a 5 day battery life, although many people claim it's more like 2 days.
 So whats it like to use?  Well first off it's big and chunky, the squarish design tends to catch on shirt sleeves or bag straps. The heart rate monitor seems pretty accurate, I'm not so sure about the step counter, that seems...  lets say optimistic and be kind, just swinging your arm counts as a few steps on my model.

Things I don't like.  First off the charging system if frankly bonkers, you take the firbits off your wrist then push the black part of the watch out of the frame, this then drops into a box with a frame on the front that plugs into a usb.  Really taking the bloody thing apart was the best idea they came up with?
 My issue with this is it's going to stress the thinish frame and sooner or later thats going to break, then I'm worried about the watch part falling out the front and loosing it. Now I know it's not suposed to be able to do that but I'm just not convinced
 Then theses the water proofing issue. This is a fitness tracker for outdoors types, yet it's only water resistant, WTF?  Theres no good reason whey this isn't waterproof, there 2 contacts on the back for charging no USB socket, so no problem making that part watertight.

 Ok is it worth the £150 which is the going rate at the time I write this...  Well no is my answer, you could pay a bit more and get the supposedly miles better Apple watch, or pay a lot less and get a heart monitor watch. Ok it won't have all the functions on a fitbits but to be honest 90% people will never use much more than the basics.

Mountains and dry sone walls

Some pics of guess what... Yes the title did rather give it away.

The dark woods (for halloween)

 Nothing to be scared of in this delightfull killer clown filled woods.......

Oxwich and three cliffs wander (part 4)

Heres the last of this walk.

Oxwich and three cliffs wander (part 3)

 The third installment.