June

Well I couldn't let June go by without a blog post could I?
I've been a bit depressed lately, hence my lack of blog activity. Hope you all understand. I'll be back when I've recovered a bit more of myself.

An expensive month in prospect

I completed my job application and was totally fed up by the amount of time it took up outside of work hours - I felt cheated that it was taking my free time but what else can I do? I stopped at a Post Office in a village I've driven through many times to post it. I have never called in at that Post Office before but it was truly lovely, that might sound like a strange thing to say about a Post Office but it was set way back from the road and had a small pond outside. Inside it was kind of a general store/Post Office and sold practically everything you might need from a village store. They even sold sweets in big jars, I love that excitement of seeing big sweet jars come down from a high shelf to be shaken out into the weighing scales. The village is really nice and has lots of trees, it just had a good feeling about it.
Monday of this week was a Bank Holiday, which meant a day off from work. The weather was really good, so I decided to try and put up the tent I bought last year. It was the first time we have tried to erect it. It's a 4 person family tent and has an inner (bedroom) tent that you can divide into two. I hope the prediction of a hot summer is right, I hope to take the family to a camp site at some point. The tent took a bit longer to erect that I thought it might and it only just fitted width-wise into our garden - so it's comfortably large. I just need to work on my wife because she's not keen on camping, I love it (for a few days) because it's such an alternative way of life.
I've been hoping to replace my slow, ageing PC with a new laptop this month but yesterday I had to get some new tyres. I've been driving around with a screw in my front tyre for a few weeks and it has been praying on my mind. I eventually got it sorted but I needed two new tyres. They aren't cheap are they? They also called me up during changing my tyres to say I need new brake pads urgently. Also I have my MOT and annual service check in just over a week, so I won't be able to afford my new laptop this month and next month I'll be paying for our family holiday - so basically bye bye laptop until August/September and by then I'll be thinking of Christmas. I'm also considering selling my car for a smaller, cheaper model - I'll let you know how that goes.
Today, I have a day off from work. We're going to see Monsters vs Aliens with the kids after lunch, for lunch we're going to a nice pub that sells good food and this evening just the two of us are going to go and see a Swedish horror film called Let The Right One In - fortunately we managed to get a babysitter. Don't know how scary the movie is meant to be because I haven't read any reviews of it.

Eurovision 2009

Well another year and another Eurovision has come and gone. I just didn't feel as excited about it this year, don't know why that is. I did watch it and score the acts alongside my daughter who was doing the same. The UK song did well, within the top 5 I think - I wasn't paying too much attention to our entry because I thought the song was rubbish. There were much better songs, I thought the song from Malta deserved to win but it didn't really come anywhere near. The German song was catchy but having Dita von Teese on stage with them was a bit too gimmicky. I thought there were about 5 songs that would have made ideal winners, Turkey was the only one I liked that came close. The runaway song of the night was from Norway, I didn't think it was bad but I didn't think it was the strongest song either. The voting this year was shaken up a bit, or it appeared that way, so the political voting wasn't quite as blatant as it was in previous years.
In other news, I saw Derren Brown on Tuesday night last week. It is amazing what he can do with his mind games, I'm glad though that I didn't go up onstage. He does use a lot of the audience, I'm just not that susceptible to his screening, I'm always in the half that deselect themselves.
In film news, I'd like to go and see the new Star Trek and Wolverine movies but I don't think I'll get the chance to see them before DVD. I also missed the Watchmen film too.
Tomorrow I have the day off from work. There's a couple of things I need to do. Complete a job application, watch my son's sports day at school and collect a piece of mail from the post office. I hope the weather is fine for my son's class sports day. I'd like to cheer him on but tomorrow is the only day I could get, so I really hope the weather is kind and it still goes ahead. The forecast is "chance of rain", which gives me hope that there is a chance it might not rain.

More videos

I think I'm getting the hang of these video things, here are a couple more I shot on the beach.

A day out

We had a day trip to Brighton yesterday. It was nice to see the sea, we live so from it that I forget what it's like. I have a couple more videos. We were walking on the beach just after 10am and surprisingly it was pretty quiet, it was lovely. I have a couple more videos to post.

Take the stairs

Tara has made me remember another thing this week. Speaking of how she influenced someone to take the stairs, I was reminded of an advertising campaign I really liked by The British Heart Foundation, the campaign was called The Big Red Fight Back and featured groovy posters that were designed in an art style used for wartime propoganda. The one I was reminded of was about stairs being your friend, an image of the poster is above. I thought the campaign was a great idea.

Movies I watched this weekend

It's an older film now but I watched Re-Animator last night. It made me laugh with the over-the-top gore and silly plot. As a fan of gore horror, I enjoyed it and the acting was brilliant.
I also watched Girl From Next Door which starred Emile Hirsch and Elisha Cuthbert. In honesty, it was a film I watched only to see Elisha Cuthbert. It turned out to be quite different from what I was expecting and not in a good way. As the film closed I just thought what a wasted opportunity it was to have such a good cast and still to end up with such indifferent fodder. The cast looking great is about the only thing it is worth watching for.

Childhood memory

Tara's trespassing post reminded me of one of my earliest childhood memories, not about the act of trespass though.

It was in my pre-nursery/pre-school years so I must have been under 5. The airforce did recruitment open days every year in our town, they had a couple of planes, a mobile caravan and various other events and displays in an area of the town. My mum must have thought I would be interested to see a jet plane up close. They had two sets of narrow stairs up to the jet's cockpit and there were a lot of guys crowding in on both sides. Somehow my mum managed to get up the stairs carrying me and I don't know if I was a special case or not but she was allowed to sit me in the pilot's seat. Great! What a treat! Then it all went wrong for me. Seems such a silly thing now but the guys were all crowding around and were interested in the flight joystick, that's where their focus was - I think an airforce man was moving it around and telling the other guys about it while I sat quietly. Being an infant I was naturally curious, so as soon as he let go of it I grabbed hold of it. It must have been amusing because all the guys erupted into laughter. That cockpit turned into a pit of hell as all the attention turned on my young self. I was probably a bit frightened when they all started laughing and it was really laughing at nothing but my infant curiosity however I remember crying and wanting desperately for my mum to remove me from the cockpit. What should have been an enjoyable experience became something much less pleasurable.
It was an experience that has stayed in my memory for a long time. I often have to talk to groups of people for work, often times they are strangers to me and I have no problem doing that. I am in control and am confident. However, when I find I am suddenly the centre of attention in situations where I haven't been warned or haven't instigated it, I hate it. The simplest example of this is when I join a group of friends at a pub or restaurant and they are already there and seated. They might be talking and laughing about something completely not related to me but as I walk in and hear their laughter, my sensitivity is "are they laughing at me?". I am suddenly thrown into the limelight and I dislike it intensely - I much prefer to be part of the group from the beginning or walk in with someone else. We all have insecurities, this is mine.