So the first BBQ of the year in sunny York. We’ve been up here for over a year in what we thought was a temporary spell in Yorkshire. Ah well, sun is shining and boy did the BBQ taste good! We have even had the cycles out lately to cycle to a teeny pub at the side of the locks. Life is good so long as we have food, wine and sunshine. So baa for now- off to watch movies.
Ah the British summer has arrived and Me and Mrs Foggy have broken out the bikes for a little trip to benningbrough hall, obviously via a pub(you sound surprised!).
So just a couple more cooling drinks then onwards, oh by the way we made less than half a mile before hitting the pub down at Linton Locks
So here’s me making Steve Jobbie even more cash by actively selling iPhone’s for him. Here’s Mrs Foggy the new recipient of her iPhone complete with “lady” screen protectorthat doubles as a make up mirror when it’s not in use(good grief!).
So when I go onto commission for sales of iPhone I will be a Hundredaire(not exactly a millionaire cos I don’t know that many peeps).
So this is Mrs Fogg and the Caddies enjoying a lovelly curry at Aakash in Cleckheaton. A fantastic evening especially watching the steam coming out of Mrs Foggs ears.
Aakash also appear to have a 30ft Easter egg one display, but you can’t have any, boo.
A fun evening of alcohol, food and fun. Mrs Fogg is now a serious curry lover, well providing there are no onions, peppers or spices.
Say hello to my new ride Sevn(named after Seven of Nine in Star Trek Voyager, and the fact it’s 7 yrs old in 2009)! Well on Sat 4th April I’m off to collect my new(well 7 year old) Suzuki VL125 Intruder. I chose this bad boy for 2 reasons: 1 it looks like an “Easy Rider” and 2 my titchy legs touch the floor for once.
Now all I gotta do is learn to ride
Well I’ve had lil ole sasha for 18months and covered 4000 miles commuting to and from work, but it’s time to move up to a real mans bike. So in 2 weeks sasha will be relegated to the sidelines and I step up to a manly looking cruiser.So all I gotta do now is learn how to ride a geared bike without stalling every 3 minutes and I will be fine.
And so little time.As you can see Mrs fogg indulges in her favourite pastime,yep wino time.Well lots of work to do and only 2 months to our next break(Florida here we come).We will be catching up with the Caddies very soon (so those 2 bottles are nowhere near enough).Can’t wait for the Weekend of fun or our holiday.
Well hello dare, we have just come back from a nice weekend in Dublin. Me and Mrs Fogg flew out with bucket air from err hem “Leeds Bradford International Airport”, now surely an international airport would be open past 8pm for food wouldn’t it?
Unfortunately everything closes especially the one dodgy restaurant. So a surprising on time flight on no frills Ryan Air and we are away to the land of little people. The flight well all the attendants are eastern European and speak not a word of English.
So a 12am arrival and a rather jovial taxi driver tellin us how to put the world rights, but advising the best place to eat and drink at 1am. It was time for a trip, by foot 1 mile back to the Arlington Hotel which turned out to be watered down Guinness. At 2am we headed back to the hotel.
Friday morning, saw us wake, tired, but refreshed and ready to see the sights of Oirland’s Dublin. Off we trot to walk round and round and round and round, stopping at all the tourist sites that Mrs Fogg had highlighted. First order of the morning was brekky and stopping a copper to ask where the best place was, took us to Bewley’s Cafe on Grafton Street, wow what a dissapointment was that, cold, horrible and yuck, if you really wanna know ask a coppa!!!!
Not that this is a food related journey but after some more wandering through the Powerhouse we headed up to find Dublin’s most famous Fish ‘n’ Chippy “Leo Burdoch’s”, well you certainly get a lot, but at 9Euro’s and soggy batter, we have had a lot better from a Wetherby Whaler and cheaper too.
Put off by the fare we headed to Temple Bar to sample quaint Dublin bars in the heart of the party area. Plenty of cobbled streets, beggars (from eastern europe), market stalls and a mix of restaurants and bars we ambled around until we came across O’Flannery’s Temple Bar. A bright red bar located conveniently right on the corner. Stepping inside it is dark and broody, but huge! We picked stools by the window to watch all the tourists go by and sat having Guinness and Oysters – hmm an acquired salty taste, but good with the Guinness, Mr Fogg loved them, Mrs Fogg said they tasted yuck.
So, a couple of hours later and a further amble around Dublin, we decided we had seen most of the sights, but with one last major sight to see off we went to see the Book of Kells. Nine Euros each to get in to see a small museum and three very old books – Mr Fogg’s dream destination ( I think not!), complete with dozy american tourist “Doh, why is this really really old book in tatters, where are the rest of the pages, Doh?” Quite impressive to see anything given the thing was created in 600AD.
With tired feet by this point we opted to start wandering back to the hotel, stopping at a quirky place on the way called the Science Foundation – a melting pot conceived by Google among other names which has a few little toys to play with and a cafe. The best bit is a ball game were you strap on headbands, relax your mind and in doing so encourage Alpha and Theta waves which move a little ball towards your opponents goal. Seems like Mrs Fogg is ace at blanking her mind (and therefore winning!) whilst Mr Fogg appeared to have a wandering mind….. (more like woman thinks of warm fluffy bunnies and man is thinking of worldly important matters).
So, game over, back to the hotel for a rest then off to see a free show at the Docklands area called “The Spheres”. Suffice to say it was free….not much to see and very draughty and rubbish. Back to the hotel after the 40 min show via takeway Pizza from Apache Pizza(highly recommended 16inch Bohemoth!!!) and up to the room for tea in bed with Guinness and Pizza. A good end to the day.
Saturday saw us head to the Guinness Factory tour and a hook up with the Folks, for a catch-up and Guinness, oy yes, 5 pints by the time we got out after the glass bar at the top. On then through ethnic eastern european Dublin, back to Temple Bar for food to soak up the alcohol and into a nice little bar where Mrs Fogg had stew and Mr Fogg had a cracking 16oz burger (oh yumm). With the day waning we headed for a bar along with 30,000 others, seems there was a little known St. Patrick’s festival weekend starting, a rugger match between ireland and scotland and every man and his dog there. So we sat, drank and chatted.
After seeing the Folks off to the station for another 2.5 hour journey home we headed off back to the hotel, to pick up guinness on the way and another monster pizza before crashing in bed.
Sunday was back to the airport with mt happy the taxi driver, who’s head could rotate through 180 degrees whilst driving.
And now we are home with Mr Spike, just chillin after a nice change.
Happy St. Pat’s to y’all
Well as you know we are living in a house up in the North of England and we have a pokey lil garden out back, which has a pear and an apple tree in it (anyone that has sampled the Apple Dare or Pear Dare will know). Until October we had employed a gardener monthly to tend to the limited garden (very posh we know, but Mr Fogg hates gardening with a passion, lazy sod, getit, sod as in dirt, ooo I’m just too sharp). The gardener in their infinite wisdom killed the pear tree and Mrs Fogg went ballistic with them. So the gardener fired us, get that, stating that she was too demanding and they couldn’t keep the garden to the standard she had set. Ah well no loss there then.
We got the landlords to arrange the trimming and pruning of the apple and pear trees, since they were in dire need of revitalisation. At the same time they arranged for the “Tree Specialist” (if that is what you call a guy with a chainsaw, then he is hardly a specialist) to recommend what was needed to be done about the 60 foot monsters in the front, since the branches are hiting the roof and cars/ lorries on the main road. The specialist promptly recommended to the landlord that they should be cut back and duly went about his work slashing all the braches off he could find. The poor ole tree looked somewhat empty now, but hey he was a specialist.
Cut (gettit) to a few weeks later and a letter fell on the mat from the Council Planning office, claiminng that the two front trees are subject to a “Tree Protection Order” and that some nosey ole retired fart with nothing better to do with their time than phone the council, had reported the trees as been “brutalised beyond all repair”. The council, yes you know them, “take your hard earned cash, empty your bins once a month, don’t repair roads or grit when it snows”, has employed some “do-good eco-warrior, sandal wearing, kaftan loving, man-hating, Tree Hugger” to send out snotty letters to tell you that you now face a “£20,000” fine for hurting the trees feelings.
The Tree Hugging man-hater council person has contacted the Tree Specialist who did the work, who claims he was told that the trees were not subject to a “TPO” and therefore is not to blame. Surely a specialist in trees would know exactly where to look to see if a tree was protected (sure as hell we don’t). We are not the property owners and therefore did not request or approve the works, so as is normal in these circumstances we too have passed the buck to the landlord and his letting agent, hell we are not paying a fine on two dead trees.
The irony, the letter from the council was printed on paper taken from a tree!!!!
Watch this space, we can guarantee this will branch onwards (ooo look at my puns)
Well it has been a long time since we last updated this site, hasn’t it?
Sorry peeps it has been a very very busy few months and yes I know, that is no excuse, but tough, it’s the only one I got.
What has been happening then, well January was hectic with work as was February and now March and April are booked out too. We had the Barty Clan up for an all too brief weekend and Stu & Jen came to visit as well. Unfortunately Stu & Jen couldn’t stay long, so the alcohol consumption was somewhat reduced (heehee).
In January, Mrs Foggy got to use her Christmas gift of a night at a Boutique hotel in Sheffield, the Leopold. We can definitely recommend it, nice accomodation, excellent friendly service and not a foreign member of staff in site, how cool is that. We spent the night eating at a grotty looking restaurant (El Paso), but the food and service were second to none).
In March we are off on a long weekend visiting that there Dublin , see the sites (no historic garbage I’ll have you know) and generally have a nice relaxing time together.
Like everyone, well the North of England anyway, we had a smattering of white powder hit us and the wonderful councils saw fit to do nothing, so needless to say the country ground to a halt. Ah global warming don’t you know, we haven’t had freakish weather like this ever (unless you count the 1960’s, 1970’s, 1980’s and 1990’s), but you just keep telling us that because my light bulbs give off more illumination than a gloworms bum, it’s all my fault!!
So the next two months will be fraught with working activities, Mr Fogg has his major project implementation going live (recipe for disaster) and Mrs Fogg is embarking on major network upgrades (such a hottie). Hopefully a chance to catch up with Stu & Jen as well.
May sees us winding down for a wee while and chilling by a pool in Florida (ooo can feel it already, House of Blues, Red Lobster, House of Pancakes for Brekky, wonderful).
So for now that is it.
