Tag: random

Here at The Rambles of Neil Monnery sometimes we tackle frivolous subjects like progressive alliances, where the Lib Dems went wrong this time, how funny it was that Senator John McCain proper screwed President Trump and how Sol Campbell is not a sympathetic human being. Yet sometimes we go all important and this is one of those types of blog posts people, yes it is the review you were all waiting for and the world needs, an entry all about the Cherry Bakewell shower gel I purchased last week.

Yeah you are probably regretting clicking on this post already. I can feel it.

Well lets go back to the start, on Friday night we were doing the weekly food shop (yay – adulting) and my usual preferred shower gel wasn’t on offer. My heart sunk. Crestfallen would be a good word to use (a nod back to my Fubra days there) but as I stood there perusing the other available bottles, the other half chirped up and pointed out the Cherry Bakewell scented shower gel that was a few along from where I was looking. For one English pound I had to try it for you see, I loves me some Cherry Bakewells. Loves it.

So Saturday was the big day. I had a shower and poured some of the gel on to my exfoliating sponge (yes I have one of those – they are amazing) and lathered up before starting to wash myself with it and bloody hell, it really smells of cherry bakewells. If I didn’t know better, I’d have thought a nice six-pack of Mr. Kipling’s finest were waiting for me just outside of the shower awaiting me to take them down in a five-minute frenzy. Yet no pastries were waiting for me, just the scent of them smothering and cleansing my skin.

Once washed off though the smell doesn’t really stay on you at all. The cherry bakewell-ness of the shower gel is very much short-term. Still, it provides a swift reminder of how delicious cherry bakewells are and gives you the urge to go and buy yourself a pack. I managed to resist (for now) but as a novelty purchase it wasn’t the worst one I’ve ever made (I once had cola bottles scented hand soap and now have a bubblegum scented one) but if you are hoping to use it and spend the day wandering around the office making everyone crave some of Mr. Kipling’s finest, you’ll need to come up with another idea I’m afraid.

I’ll get back to pointless politics type stuff soon I’m sure…

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So from Thursday through to Saturday the Tesco Neighbourhood Food Collection is taking place, in association with the Trussell Trust and Fareshare UK. These events are taking place in Tesco stores up and down the country and I put myself forward to volunteer for two stints, in two different stores, one for the Trussell Trust and one for Fairshare UK and I had two very different experiences.

We’ll start with the bad. On Thursday I was down to volunteer for Fareshare and I went to that store. First things first, when I turned up they had pretty much got nothing sorted and this was deep into the afternoon. All they had was a table, a trolley, the shopping lists to hand out and the tabards to wear so people knew what you were there for. I went to the customer service desk to sign in as instructed and the lady there told me that a guy was also volunteering, went up and spoke to him and he said he was leaving and that all I had to do was hand out the shopping lists, simple enough really.

The problem was that there was no-one else there to help so people walking in would generally see you and go the other way. You can’t cover the whole of the entrance alone and quite quickly I became dispirited. With no staff to help or any other volunteers it was also quite lonely and to be honest pretty boring. I know that some good was happening as some food was being donated and that would go to needy people but it certainly what I would call an enjoyable afternoon. I have done plenty of charity/voluntary work in the past and this was certainly the least enjoyable situation that I’d been in.

After an hour or so I was really thinking about how long I could stick it out. The public weren’t taking the shopping lists and it just wasn’t a good experience. About an hour or so later I’m presuming a manager of some sort came up to me and said they would put over some announcements on the tannoy to announce what was going on to help and then said words that would resonate in my brain, ‘it is always nice to have an extra pair of hands to help’ and all I could think was that no-one at that store was helping that food collection in any way at all. It felt like that had no desire to be involved at all. That really annoyed me that they welcomed an extra pair of hands but did nothing to help at all. About 45 minutes later and still no tannoy announcements and I decided enough was enough. I knew there were no other volunteers for the rest of that day to hand over to and I had planned to stick it out until the end of the day but I just couldn’t do it.

So I felt pretty down that despite having done some good and a trolley brimmed full of donated produce, I had not felt either a) wanted or b) respected by my experience. I know volunteer work isn’t really about what you get out of it but when you feel that badly about your experience, it doesn’t really make you feel good.

On to today and a much better experience, the local Food Bank here is overseen with the help of six local churches and they had divided the shifts into two hour slots. One of the guys picked me up and there were three of us so we could cover the the whole entrance area and indeed there were people to talk to and bounce off of each other. This time there was a whole display that had been set up and a whole area devoted to the event. The people I was with said that it wasn’t as good as last time as that Tesco store had put on an excellent display in previous collections.

Again no Tesco staff were actually on hand to help although this time with the food bank having organised the volunteers etc. – there wasn’t as much of a need but looking on twitter and you can see in many of these collections, Tesco staff seemed to mingle and help out with the volunteers, that didn’t happen at either store where I volunteered. This was disappointing. More so yesterday than today.

Today was more enjoyable and more productive. It certainly felt good to see people you’d spoken to as they had walked in donate and we took away probably 10-14 crates of food to the food bank warehouse after our two hour shift.

Two things of note. The 12:00 minute silence for the Tunisia victims was observed but I certainly had no idea of it until it actually happened. The store stopped and went silent and people were walking in and were completely confused by what was going on. That was surreal.

Secondly we had one person take umbrage with what we were doing and claimed that food banks were ruining this country because food banks stopped people from getting jobs. He walked up to me going on about how people would line up if people were handing out ten pound notes and whilst some would, many people wouldn’t but he kept going on and on about it and one of the food bank regulars took over and spoke to him but he was going on for a good 15 minutes, it was madness. I know there is a lot of misinformation about food banks out there but the fact of the matter is the vast majority, the vast majority, are in real need of a meal. I don’t know the ins and outs but poverty is a real issue and poverty is not a choice, no matter what anyone thinks.

So my two stints volunteering were wildly different. I felt down after one and the other I felt some real good was done (a lot more food was donated today). As I said earlier, doing voluntary work isn’t about what you can get out of it but more what you can do to help others but when you feel as though no-one wants you there then it is really tough.

One thing I did notice though was who donated more, who took the shopping lists more and who went out of their way to ignore you and not make eye contact. Step forward the women of the world for being the far more polite sex on this front. Also age ranges, the best sections were clearly women who were mothers, women who were grandmothers were amongst the worst, the retired generation as a whole didn’t could away well from my unscientific survey of my memory. Most men who declined though would at least make eye contact and say no thank you whereas the majority of women who didn’t take one would avoid you or look at you like you were beneath them. It was quite eye-opening.

I’m not sure I’m recommend it to anyone else, if I could guarantee they had a similar reception to what I got today then I would but yesterday was so bad. I think I’d tell anyone planning on doing it to ensure they weren’t doing it alone and to rope in a friend or colleague to go with them. I think I was just really unlucky yesterday but it did really make me feel like shit. The food banks do such great work and those of us who are lucky not to have ever dealt with them are indeed just that, lucky and there but for the grace of God as they say.

Food banks need all the support they can get and I think Tesco do a great job getting involved centrally but at a store by store level the experiences seem to be so different. I’m not sure if that is a management issue at stores locally but looking at photos on twitter you can see the differences between the stores that really go out and promote the event and those who bury it in the background.

If you are in Tesco at any time between now and Saturday then please don’t be rude to any volunteers and donate what you can. The Tesco Neighbourhood Food Collection will no doubt happen again in November/December and there are always plenty of ways to donate to your local Food Bank, whatever you donate goes straight to people in need and knowing that is part of the reason why I think volunteering for such an event was a good one to do. This isn’t money going to pay whatever overheads but this food goes straight to those who need it, what could be better?

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This morning I received the e-mail below. Straight away I knew it was a virus of some sort but some googling has shown that by opening the file attached to the e-mail, it will attempt to download a binary trojan horse on to your computer. So if you get the following e-mail please delete straight away and do not open the attached file.

Dear ,

Kind regards
Imelda Myers
Anglia Engineering Solutions Ltd
Tel: 01469 936919

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Last night I was sitting in this very seat and I commented in an IM that I was really looking forward to stretching out in bed when Peyton Manning was finished doing his thing. Sometimes I really do look forward to bed, maybe much more so than I really should. This feeling is more prevalent in the autumn and the winter and last night was the first time that I was genuinely anticipating stretching out and lounging around in the warmth of my bed.

So I laid there and thought that I’d write a blog post on it but there was this nagging thought that I had already done so. A bit of research later and I found that I had a blog post about my bed drafted but never published. Sometimes my brain does work in weird ways, so I’ll use some of that post along with fresh material to flesh out my thoughts. What is in italics are what I wrote months ago in a draft of a similar blog post.

I wanted to pen something a little less serious. For a while I have laid in bed and thought about just how much I like my bed. It might be one of my favourite places. I often talk about how amazing my 15-tog duvet is (it is so seriously awesome, trust me) and how it is one of my favourite ever purchases (£19.99 from Bookers Cash & Carry in Aldershot).

I had no plans to buy it but I was idly wandering about whilst one of my housemates was looking for something and I came across it. The moment I put it on my bed I was far warmer. Good times. I didn’t get the full effect until I had moved out of that place and bought my own bed. My mattress is extremely comfortable. Couple that with the 15-tog beaut and I’m a happy chappie.

Ah yes, my winter duvet. This is still the best thing that I have ever purchased. I’m sure if I was to really think about it then I could say I had bought better and more important things but in terms of simple things that make me happy, this duvet really does stand alone. At the moment I still have my summer duvet on but we are getting close to the crossover point.

So anyway when that warmth envelopes me, I feel at ease. In the winter months I tend to spend a lot more time in bed. I will watch more TV from there and surf the internet from there. My sleep pattern is pretty haywire as well but I really get a great nights sleep from this bed.

I really do. I’m very lucky that I have employment where I can be more flexible than most in terms of times I work. For example this weekend I was working both on Friday and Sunday nights but that meant I was very much up to speed and therefore when I went to bed on Sunday night, I knew I didn’t have to get up early on Monday morning to do any work. I knew I could wake up and instead of rolling over and checking e-mails and work, I could just lay there and let myself drift in and out of sleep for a while. There are few things better than just doing that.

Just laying there drifting in and out of sleep. I did this the other day and had a lucid dream, my first for ages, I was in the dream and promptly stated, ‘what on Earth are you doing in my dream?’ and knew it was a dream but was in a place where I could just lay back and enjoy the show. It was so much fun but was a very strange one.

Now I know a lot of people when in bed enjoy the company of another, I have never slept well when sharing a bed. I like to spread out and use the whole bed, moving from one side to the other as I love the coldness of the sheet but the warmth of the duvet. I often wonder if I’m crazy but I’m writing a blog post about how I love my bed but don’t like to share it, I think that answers the question of whether I am crazy or not pretty well.

Ah yes. When planning this in my head last night I was trying to work out just how many nights I had not slept alone and I had a number in mind. Cue some thought later and I think I was pretty much bang on. I think this should indicate just how infrequent this situation has been that I could guesstimate the number and be pretty much spot on. How do people share beds and still get good nights sleep? Do you get used to it? It is a bit like how I just can’t sleep in a single bed any more, whenever I have to I just sleep terribly. I am used to spreading out and rolling over instead of turning over.

So there we have it. A totally pointless blog post. Well aren’t most of them in all honesty? I just thought it was time to appreciate my bed. I spend around a third of my life in it. Sometimes I think too much in it. Sometimes I’m too restless in it. I don’t do half the things that most people do in their own beds depressingly but I still love my bed. Sometimes just stretching out in it with the sound of the rain beating down outside knowing that I have nothing urgent to get up for so I can totally relax is just flat out awesome.

Thank you bed. I don’t appreciate you half as much as I should.

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In the early minutes of Sunday morning I was laying in bed and doing what I often do, I leaned over and picked up the iPad to look something up and my internet wasn’t working. So I got out of bed and rebooted the modem. I got back into bed and the internet still wasn’t working. Cue panic. Mass panic.

The next four hours (remember I had already gone to bed before this has all started) were spent trying to work out what was stopping my internet from working. You see I’m kinda, ever so slightly, you know, possibly, at a push…addicted to the internet. Not only that I work in websites and I work from home. No internet access means no ability to work. The ability to work is pretty important when it comes to my bank balance. Seriously I was not amused.

At around half two in the morning I picked up my phone and there was no dial tone. Cue even more epic panic. If there was a fault with the line then I knew I could be out of commission for a while. I eventually gave up and fell asleep. I woke up at around eight and heard my neighbour was already awake so went and asked her if her phone line was working. She checked and there was no dial tone. Cue relief on one hand knowing whatever fault was not just on my line but also a small bit of panic as my backup plan of using her wireless internet was also up the swanny.

So I used my 3G on my phone and searched twitter for ‘sky broadband’ and I breathed a huge sigh of relief as I saw lots of people complaining that their internet was down in my local area. I checked Sky’s Help Team’s twitter account and it confirmed an outage that spread all across Essex and East Anglia. I knew it a large number of people were without internet and phone services that they first of all knew all about it and secondly that they would be attempting to fix it.

I went out and came down around midday and still no internet, I watched some TV, still no internet, went on the exercise bike and still no blinking internet and then after I finished my second 45 minutes on the bike (I watched the footy and took a break a Half Time for a drink) I was walking to my shower and saw the fourth light on my modem lit up, the internet, it lived, it lived again!

All in all I was without the internet for 16 hours. This should not cause the deep-rooted panic within me that it did. I think the mitigating circumstances of I work from home and in websites was a large part of the panic (I know it was a Sunday but I do plenty of work on Sunday’s) and if it was a problem with my phone line individually (or the line coming into this block) then I know from experience that these things can take a significant time to be fixed. Still after saying all of that, I should not be completely freaking out about not being able to go online.

The thing is, I suspect I’m not alone. I have been using the internet daily for pretty much 15 years. These days I have so many devices connected to the internet that whilst I can’t go online from the shower, I can pretty much be online doing anything else. Even when I’m cooking I take the iPad into the kitchen and stick on YouTube or Sky Go to watch/listen to something whilst I cook. The first thing I do in the morning is reach for the iPad to check my e-mails, then check the news, twitter et al.

I survived 16 hours without the internet but it reinforced just how reliant I am on it just to function. It is deeply concerning. With that I shall commit this blog post to the internet and go and watch an episode of The Apprentice from YouTube on my iPad that I have connected to Apple TV so I can watch it on the big screen. Technology folks. When I eventually join the world of being a home owner I wonder just what I’ll do but I can assure you of this – I suspect I’ll have one or two gadgets and I certainly want to be able to turn the heating on from my smartphone.

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The autumn is descending and the Neil starts reverting to type. The lesser spotted Neil (that blimin’ spot is still fighting for life on my chin – come on just die and let the beautiful pink skin win already) is a creature of habit. When the nights draw in and the sporting seasons get going then he’s rarely to be seen socially unless you happen to catch him between the apartment and a local takeaway establishment.

Unlike previous years this year the Neil has invested in fibre optic broadband and that has led to even more options for him to watch. With an iPad purchased coupled with an Apple TV box the odds of him not spending the whole of his weekend camped either on his chair by the PC watching sport or lounged across one of the sofas doing exactly the same is shall we say low.

People who have lived with the Neil will know all about this. On Sunday’s (and to a slightly lesser extent Saturday’s) it was known for him not to be seen at all bar forages to the fridge for a cold can of Cherry Coke. A common occurrence used to be doorbell ringing at some point on a Sunday evening and for a bemused housemate to answer it and see a takeaway delivery man or woman standing there. Luckily the housemates knew what this was and a shout upstairs would see the Neil sprint out of his room and bound down the stairs to pay for said food before swishing into the kitchen to pick up a bowl and a spoon before making his way back upstairs to dish out his dinner.

You see the Neil has an issue. That issue is he has no spare time on a Sunday from September through to the Superbowl in February. Yesterday it was noted that he made and ate his dinner during the build up to the Formula 1 as he realised that was the only time he had in the day to make dinner without missing some sporting action unless he wanted to eat dinner at around half past midnight.

We are lucky enough to have been given an insight into how the Neil spent his Sunday…

He was first seen at around 11 o’clock where upon he read his e-mails and read the Sunday papers. He then checked his fantasy baseball team and planned for the big final next week. At just gone midday he remembered the Grand Prix was on and quickly realised about a timing issue that he had. He made dinner just in time for the F1 to start but 25 minutes into the race he switched the F1 to the PC and put the football on the TV. He then remembered the Dundee United v Motherwell math was on BT Sport so put that on his iPad (there is a fellow Neil who follows DU but this Neil has been known to miss occasional sporting events to spend time with his wife – our Neil doesn’t have this option).

By 6PM the football was finished but then the NFL was on – a double header. However the live games did not grab the attention of our subject and whilst he put it on he was playing around on YouTube. Throughout the day the Neil was getting messages from a friend of his who was catching up on a week of Masterchef Australia and passing on her opinions. Come 7PM the latest episode was on TV and the Neil dipped out of sport to watch MCA and because of the terrible NFL games he would also watch The X Factor. At 9PM he returned to the NFL for the rest of the night but used the end of the early games to put his laundry on and then half-time to put his own clean laundry on his clothes horse. At the end of the day he filed some work but decided to record the early morning NFL game.

This is a rare insight to how the Neil lives. Some would say he needs a life and some would say he is living the dream. The one thing we know is that he spent nearly ten minutes trying to work out if he had had a shower that day and after the sniff test realised that he had not.

On the Saturday there was an early EPL game then at three there was Soccer Saturday coupled with a choice of live games via the fibre optic broadband route before the late EPL game. Due to TV regions the Neil was unable to watch the Penn State game live in the evening so spent it watching old Law & Order episodes.

Welcome to the life of Neil – not exactly the life of Riley but interesting all the same…

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Last week I was sitting at this very PC talking to the only person from my first secondary school that I still speak to on a regular basis. We were doing one of the things we always do – discuss food. She was having Steak that night. I sure as hell wasn’t. I had some mince that I had to use and said I’d pop over the shop and get a jar of curry or chilli and make a simple curry or chilli. She said I should make burgers. I deliberated on this and then thought about it a bit after looking up burger recipes. I thought I could actually do this.

I had no eggs but she assured me that wasn’t a problem. Good I thought as I hate eggs and the smell makes me gag. I had onions, bread and thought I could empty the remains of a Jack Daniels Sauce bottle in. Ok I thought. I’m going to do this. So I went to the kitchen and the first problem was I didn’t have a mixing bowl so how on Earth was I going to mix the ingredients? So I opened the cupboard and lo and behold I had a mixing bowl. I don’t ever remember buying a mixing bowl but there it was. I suspect this is down to a former housemate who when I moved out of that place went shopping with me and told me all the things I needed to buy and just put them in the trolley. I assume this is where I got the mixing bowl.

So hurray. A mixing bowl. So I dumped in the mince and the onions and then my very roughly chopped breadcrumbs/large bits of bread before emptying the JD sauce bottle and seasoned with salt and ground black pepper. Then I mixed it all up. So far so good. I separated the mixture into five patties and put them in the fridge to chill. Now we get a problem. I was going to grill my burgers on the George Foreman but guess who had cleaned the grill but left the bits in the sink with a tap dripping? Yes that’s right. Me. Now I could of course wipe dry the grill bits but I didn’t. I made a late decision to shallow fry the burgers. This would be problematic.

So I shallow fry the burgers and put them in bread (I had no burger buns and cba to go and get any) and tucked into my burgers. They tasted ok but the insides of the burgers weren’t cooked properly and were pink. I thought to myself that it was fine and carried on but then Googled it and homemade burger patties that aren’t cooked properly can result in what they call ‘Hamburger disease’ or as scientists call it Escherichia coli (E. coli) O157:H7. It is pretty bad. So I spent two to three days waiting for the food poisoning but happily it never came. I ate the rest of the burgers having grilled them thoroughly and they were cooked through fine.

As for the overall meal. Meh they were edible burgers but most certainly not anything to write home about. Too much onion and needed more seasoning and maybe some herbs. Would I try it again? Sure but next time I would actually plan it. The biggest moral of the story is I haven’t died and therefore no-one should feel any guilt over my potential death for suggesting I should make burgers…

Here is the photographic evidence:

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