Yes Mrs Fogg is now another year older and wii bit sexier (if that was at all possible).

 We spent Lorna’s Birthday Weekend at Whinstone View near Great Ayton (www.whinstoneview.com) and what a fantastic place it is, log cabins, hot tub, nice food and excellent service (for those of you that have heard me whinge before, this is my biggest bug bear in this country).

Whinstone have a fab addition to your rooms in the shape of a little rubber duckie, complete with his own brand sun glasses.  He was ours to keep and only asked to be taken on exotic holidays, photographed and for us to send piccies back to his family at Whinstone – if they like where he’s been it may result in a free night away!  We think this is a lovelly addition.

 It poured it down all weekend, but we didn’t care, sat out in the hot tub, champagne in hand (again there’s a surprise), watching the rain and just chilling.  It was a perfect weekend spent doing very little in and around the Lodge – we even managed to miss the evening meal on the Saturday night – ho hum…..

As part of the birthday treat we reinstated our long overdue Scrabble matches – commenced in St Lucia and incorporating the revised “Rude word scrabble rules”.  So, nicely chilled by Sunday morning, and just time for another dip in the hot tub we sadly left Whinstone and headed home.  However we plan to return……

 Now Mrs Fogg kept blathering on about wanting to go visit Helmsley on the way back so off we went along the North York Moors route – full of winding roads, several hundred Sunday drivers, four mad families with scores of kids cycling all over the road and, on arriving in Helmsley, the full membership quota of the over 50’s Hells Angels Rejects Club.  Oh boy, old boys and their Missus’ everywhere clogging up the car park, checking each others bikes out and generally getting in the way.  Pure hell, some of the worst parking ever and about three shops – one of which was the Edinburgh Woollen Mill selling clothes that required the wearer to be at least 80 years old.  We lasted 10 mins before negotiating the pensioner chicanes, climbing back into the car and heading off.

A fab weekend  – we just need to unpack the case now………

  So, summer has been and gone (you can tell by the wonderful weather we have had), petrol prices are on the rise, but petrol stations and the govt are not profiteering, oh no!!! Council tax is on the rise and the wonderful council staff (who voted unanimously, yes a whopping 54%, although only 27% voted, so realistically that only equates to 15% in favour) have decided to strike for 2 days to achieve a 6% payrise (if only we could all walk out to obtain that, on top of the flexi-time, final pension salary and the right to do bugger all if we didn’t want to). But I digress.

 This is not a rant, this is about our pet hedgehog, or hedgy as he is/was  known. Hedgy lived (yes past tense a story with a sad ending) in the bushes at the back and Spike had a friend to play with at long last, by play I actually mean, run away from really (Spike the hero). Hedgy has been there for a good few months now, helping to tidy all the garden. We came home last night and saw a leaf on the road, then ran over it, I was convinced it was Hedgy, Mrs Fogg said it was just a leaf, so we went to investigate. Low and behold there was old Hedgy flatter than a note out of a popstar wannabe. Poor little bugger I had run over him and killed him (Mrs Fogg is still convinced he was dead before I hit him, but I am not too sure).

 Now all I can keep humming is that silly tune to the safety road crossing advert “Woo woo woo woo”:

• Be Safe
• Be Bright
• Be Seen
• At Night

If only Hedgy had listened to his com-padres on the advert and worn a reflective jacket then he may still be alive today.

Hedgy rest in piece (well he is still sat at the bottom of the garden and we are debating whether he can go in the green bin waste, along with all the birds that Spike plays with).

Click the Picture to see Al in his heyday as a 20 yr old. 

So in the oh so early days (1984), a little around 24 years ago (yes even then I had my dashing good looks, charm and body of a god, ok so a god on a very bad day), I started college on day release to become an engineer. This was back in a sleepy little town called Hemel Hempstead (famous now cos some monkey decided to smoke a ciggy at the Buncefield Depot, tossing his butt end to the ground and thinking to himself that its christmas soon and all the wonderful overtime about to come my way, how little did he know eh).

So my first day at college was awful, I had left school, hating every minute of it, never wanting to go back and knowing that I was a worker now, I would never need to go back (oh boy little did I know that I had 5 years of this crap to endure). I sat in this cold awful building with a bunch of strangers, who were from such places as BAe and Lucas Aerospace, everyone seemed to know everyone else and I just sat there wondering what on earth I was doing here.

Sat in the corner on his own was the chappy seen in the picture, he appeared fairly quiet and normal, so we started chatting, the name “Barton”, “Allan Barton”, who at the time was catching the bus from St.Albans to Hemel or sometimes cycling over. We became friends over a period of time, he even managed to get a car on his pittance of a salary (slightly better than my paltry £30 per week). I thought this guy was a bit on the cool side (well only slightly cooler than me anyway) at the time since he liked different types of music (Nina Simone, ok so someone had to like her), 50’s and 60’s stuff, he always seemed a little aloof but a good guy to be around.

The college at the time was a good bit of a laugh with the tutors Mr Budd and Mr Bott (we always suspected Mr Bott was batting for the opposition) and such interesting individuals as Nigel Palmer (who spent his time driving up and down the high street in his Escort whistling at all the girls, whilst wearing drainpipe trousers, white slip-on shoes and tight sweaters), Spencer Dyke (who rode to college on his Lambretta and then eventually upgraded to a Mini Metro) and a woman who I think we nicknamed Shergar, can’t honestly remember why?

Well college continued and we finished 3 years at Hemel in 1987 and then it was time to move to the big leagues oooh yes Watford Technical College for another 2 years. Suddenly the atmosphere changed at this place and it was not much of a laugh and fun anymore, it was serious business. Mr Barton decided part way through that first year that he didn’t want to continue with this stuff and left. Oh boy how many times did I wish I had left that place, I hated it more than school.

We stayed in contact over those years, whilst I moved through various jobs, McDonnell Douglas working in Purchasing and the ill fated Coffee Machine selling stint that I tried (with the world’s most unreliable car that you had to start by hitting the starter motor on the middle lane of the M40 motorway). Al was seeing a wonderful girl called Belinda and I had my first serious relationship, with a married woman 16 years my senior (oh what a hussy am I).

I eventually moved to the grim north of England after falling for an unmarried girl (made a change I guess), but we kept in contact ever so occasionally over an 11 year period, always sort of starting where we left off and then loosing contact for another few years. Over the last few years Mrs Fogg and I have met up many times, with Al, Bel and their beautiful daughter Hazel and now we are very good friends that stay in touch and meet up from time to time.

24 years is not a bad time to know someone, Al is my oldest friend and I welcome him to the wonderful 40’s club that I joined a few months back (although I am still more handsome, that has never been disputed).

Unfortunately we can’t get down to Hemel to help Al tip over into his 40’s, so this weekend I will raise a glass to a really good friend and wish him well on his ventures into Kidulthood (that is where we move from being a kid in the 20’s and 30’s and start the transition to be an adult around the 50’s to 60’s).

Happy Birthday you OLD GIT!!!

Just a few memories for you to ponder over (providing you can remember them of course):

• Timmy your Triumph Dolomite
• Hemel College and the computer classes for extra credits
• Driving your car without a certain legal piece of paper
• Playing games on the oh so cool Amiga 500
• My crappy Vauxhall Astra Estate (complete with starter motor spanner)
• Going to Aikido drunk!
• Westerdale and Betty Bouston
• Spending lunch hours from college walking down Hemel and Watford High Street
• The wierd physics teacher at Watford with the pinstripe suit
• Dressed as Elvis at our America BBQ
• A heavy night out followed by your head down a toilet after too many Mud Slides
• Lake Bala and Tyddyn Yr Helyg
• August 2007 BBQ
• Bartenga

Here’s to the next 24 years of friendship.

Only 157 Days until we head off to see the Little Green men at the Little Ale’inn

So the planning almost seems to be done, does it Lorna? Apparently “yes” comes the answer from the Tour Geek. Time to show the Foggies in the there Ireland, a little of the Americas:

• Las Vegas
• Grand Canyon Skyway
• Bashful Bobs
• Four Corners
• Zion National Park
• Grand Canyon
• Canyon de Chelle
• Hole in the Rock
• Monument Valley
• More Hinjun stuff
• Area 51

We are also planning to have a go on a shooting range in Vegas (watch out women with loaded guns, not a good idea), visit the Ferrengi in the Quarks’s Bar, Hike into the canyon all the way to the bottom, drive lots of miles (about 2,500), eat Buffalo Burgers and Rattlesnake sausages and get drunk occasionally.

We Cant Wait!