It’s the end of rem as we know it

So this was the week that rem split. It was only the day before that lisa and I were watching an old rem storytellers on MTV. At the time I reflected on how even hearing one song takes me back immediately to my teenage years. I used to listen to those albums so much. Strangely because they are so familiar I maybe forget to listen to them now. I can kind of play them in my head but from time to time one song will kind of sound new again. Most recently it was Harborcoat. I suppose because Stipe mumbles through the first few albums it’s easy to miss the lyrics and just like the song for its overall sound. The words just being another instrument.

That said its not as though any of them died. Some of the reports kind of felt that way. It does make sense looking back. Collapse into now was the last album of their deal with Warner bros and there was already speculation as to whether they would do a radiohead or commit again. Of crowded house or gorky’s are anything to go by some of the most interesting stuff comes after the split.

eating dried squid with my head in the cloud

so i’m typing this from my reinvigorated laptop. once so slow that it was easier just to go out and actually speak to people face-to-face. i know. that bad. that was before a embraced cloud computing. Jolicloud to give it a name. i believe its a linux based OS but you can install it alongside windows so you can choose which one to boot up. when you are using Joli OS you dont have all the baggage of Windows as its all in the cloud man. so i now have a zippy little, app based laptop. There is nothing worse than waiting for computers to do something then just beeping at yo
so lots of other important things this week:

Bin Laden killed – i guess like most I feel uneasy about the whole business though of course intrigued also. With each new bit of information that comes out and not so sure they couldn’t have taken him alive. obviously an assassination makes things simpler and i’m sure not much will come of it but I think the US (and us) walk a very tight moral line. If anything is to come of this I think the west need to look at the root causes of the animosity. obviously nothing justifies the tactics of al qaeda but often the response has not been justified either.

Lib Dem bashing- we actually didn’t get to vote this time as we didnt manage to register at our new house in time. but I would have voted yes to AV and probably for the Lib Dems in the locals. As it happens the LD’s kept Marple and most of Stockport but suffered most palces. It seems quite narrow sighted to blame everything on the Lib Dems yet let the tories get away unscathed. How much influence do people think 50 or so MP’s have compared to the tories 300 or whatever. seems like the Tories have done very well with a designated scapegoat. And as for AV well i think the LD’s were set up a little. It’s not Proportional Representation by any means yet that is all the Tories would allow a referendum on. Labour are no better. they had years to reform the voting system when they were in power but they quickly dropped those ideas in 1997 when they saw they didn’t need to. Now i’m not saying the Lib Dems automatically have my vote any more but i refuse to get caught up in this idea of voting for ‘change’ and swinging between parties from one election the next.

Finally we got a care package from korea through the post. pretty exciting eh. who knew these things were 2 way. our man in korea, mark payne kindly sent us a box of asian goodies to turn a questioning eye on. verdicts so far: dried squid is very tasty, sort of a fishy beef jerky, soju- a bit bland, higher quantities needed, korean tea – ok once you get used to the bits. Not forgetting 2 very colourful tshirts for the twins birthday. That man mark- never forgets a date.

followed by my iPhone

There’s been quite a lot in the news recently about the tracking data that is stored in your iphone. Since i don’t actually have anywhere exciting to go that I dont want anybody to know I think its actually quite cool. Well i found a program to view it on windows so here it is. My exciting travels over the last 8 months or so.

The MDZ (Marple Demilitarised Zone)

What you see here is the result of the recent escalation in first marple war. The erection of the Marple Demilitarised Zone.

Over the past few week Snoop, a forward soldier of the Canine Brigade has been making numerous incursions in our garden on ‘bombing’ raids while also ‘claiming’ extra territory for himself.

Peace talks were attempted after said agent was captured in the act. Red pawed, so to speak. But to no end. Another day, another covert sortie.

So today has been a day if fortification and diversion. And thus stands the Great Wicker (and chicken wire) Wall.

to be continued in sure…

List 2: words mastered by twins so far

-socks
-no
-toast
-eggs
-shoes
-(gi)raffe
-daddy (no)
-mum
-I don’t know
-Peppa pig

Wherever I lay my Blog that’s my home

After my flurry of 2011 posts I’ve come to the realisation that in this iPhone app friendly, wifi, 3G,web 2.0 world -Blogger just don’t cut it no more. I always think that the wordpress blogs look so much better when you read them on your phone so I thought I would make the leap across.

So from now on the blog address is http://itsnotthethingyoufling.wordpress.com

Much better iPhone app to update it from and all the old post are wooshed over at the click of a button. Whats more it was all done from the comfort of my iPhone while two kids were covering themselves in pasta. And just to prove my point it wouldn’t let me post this from my phone to blogger. so there you go.

And yes I am just copying mark rainey. He’s such a trend setter.

>List 1: "If it’s in the house it’s not lost"

>Lost (and sometimes found) through the years.

• Monkey- Lost 29/3/11 11.00am Found 14.27 29/3/11

• Evan’s right shoe – Lost Marple Carnival 2010 Found the next day by Greenhalgh’s the Bakers

• 2 skateboards-Lost March 2009 while moving house from Stalybridge-Marple- Still Missing

• Howies Jumper- Lost 10/9/07 Castrojeriz (Northern Spain-Camino de Santiago) Found 13/9/07 90 km and 3 days later in Carrion de los condes. Picked up by unknown fellow pilgrim and carried to they found out who it belonged to!

• Tomy Tronic Sky Attack c.January 1983 Last seen underneath seat of rental car. A christmas present taken far too soon

>lost and found

>

Monkey (23 months) pictured right

A few weeks ago we had quite a crisis as a family but I now feel like I can write about it. It all ended well and more importantly brought to my attention a new menace that is threatening our families ( but more on that later).

Having not long moved back to Marple, Finn, Evan and myself were taking in all the old haunts….first the playground, then the library then and quick stop at the famous co-op cafe for a quick fruit shoot and cake. but wait…..a quick head count on leaving the coop revealed we were one short. Finn, Dolly, Evan …….no monkey.

What followed was a hurried dash around the aforementioned sights of Marple retracing our steps. Now Monkey isn’t just any old toy. Monkey is THE toy. Evan literally will not sleep without him. Likewise Finn and Dolly (we’re good on original names- pretty lucky finn and evan they didnt get named Girl and Boy).

Coop…nothing…. Library…nothing….playground….nothing…. inbetween…you guessed it…nothing. we retraced most of the way home before I began to admit that the situation was now bigger than I could handle. 6 hours until bedtime and the Ratcliffe clan were informed. lisa rang her mum who went and scoured the streets afresh.

It was at this point i turned to other possible solutions and stumbled across the immoral trade in cuddly toys. we’d checked with mothercare only to find out that our monkey model had been discontinued but low and behold i found one on eBay.

but what was this.. a starting price of £20. and not just the one spare, “oh my child no longer plays with this” toy. this was organised. well these were desperate times. i scrolled down further to the description:

“New. Ideal as a spare or as a replacement for a child’s must have toy”

Were people really buying up cuddly toys in the hope of selling them on to the vulnerable and desperate in the event of unfortunate tumble from the pram? oh no Monkey wasn’t alone, there were scores of others caught up in the toy exploitation ring. And we seriously considered bidding for it. what could we do . we had tried to slip Elephant to evan as a stand in but he isn’t stupid- he was starting to guess that something was up. But we knew we couldn’t become part of this underground immoral trafficking.

Then the messages starting coming in from Lisa and from her mum. Monkey had been found. In front of Tittertons ……..no Senior Citizens……. by a stranger? No….Great Granny Syb.

By some stroke of luck or fate or divine intervention Great Granny Syb had been going about her normal Marple business- helping out at the hatch at the Senior Citizens centre. She stepped out the door and looked down to see a fallen monkey. She didn’t know at the point that Evan had lost it but “the tail was still wet” so she knew it was THE monkey.

So the day was saved (and the night). Now if monkey had dropped even a couple of meters in the direction of the library then she wouldn’t have spotted him and of all the places for a sleeping evan to drop monkey, the chances of dropping him in front of the doors of his great granny’s hang out seem quite slim. but there we are…reunited.

But lets just spare a thought for all those monkeys and bears that could be keeping kids safe at night but instead are being bought up and sold for huge profits when misfortune falls.

>are you still here. there really is nothing to see here. maybe pop back in 2011.

>Tamburello’s on streetview

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