Are you watching...Black Sails?

Have you seen Black Sails, the pirate action drama series from Starz Originals? If you haven't, you really, really should. All four series are available now on Amazon Video for free if you have a Prime subscription.

The show has a cracking title theme

Round and round the garden

I came to the realisation recently that I’m getting old. It wasn’t due to the aches and pains I’ve had for a while now; the little creaks and groans my joints give off every time I move, but more that my attitude and interests were shifting to things that young me would have scoffed at. I distinctly remember going to a house party, many years ago. My friends were talking about the virtues of various garden sprinkler systems. I laughed at them, called them old buggers and wondered off to find more scintillating conversation. But here I am, 12 years later (give or take), thinking about gardening equipment.

Take, for example, my new garden storage box. Our garden has long been a point of contention: we’d love it to be somewhere we can use to relax, that our son can play in and that we can have dinner in during the warmer summer. Instead, what we generally have is a garden that looks like a set from Jurassic Park. 

An actual picture of me last time I ventured out into the garden

It's oh-so-quiet

Sorry I've not posted anything this week, it's been a busy one at work and we also had a sick toddler to contend with for the start of the week. I've got a few post ideas I want to get off the ground in the next few days, but just to let you know I haven't disappeared!

This is how ET spent most of Tuesday.

My Sunday Photo 21st February - sunrise over the Fort

The story of why I have this photo is extremely funny. K sold some Pandora charms on eBay and agreed to drop them to the buyer at their home late one evening. She was a little nervous, so I agreed to go with her. It was really dark by the time we arrived at the house and I said I'd 'do the deal', so I get out of the car, walk up to the house and see a woman in her dressing gown open her kitchen window and look at me cautiously. 'You got the charms?', I imagined her saying, to which I'd reply 'you got the money?', like some bizarre, middle-class drug deal. Anyway, she was pleasant enough, the 'deal' went without a hitch, with no PoPo in sight.

Cut to a few days later and Kelly has sold some more charms to the same woman. This time she asks us to meet her at the Fort Shopping Centre at 8am one morning. Sure enough, there she is, waiting for us outside W H Smiths. This time Kelly comes with me and does all the talking, so I'm just stood slightly behind her like an enforcer, or something. The woman hands over the money, we say our thanks and head to Starbucks to grab a latte (something I bet no drug-dealer ever did right after a deal) when Kelly notices the lady has shortchanged us. The woman has made it almost across the car park at this point, so I give chase and flag her down. She is understandably embarrassed and checks her pockets, handing over the missing cash. Once again I thank her and walk away. As I'm walking back to Starbucks, cringing at how embarrassing the whole situation has been, I see the sun cresting over the top of the shops and felt compelled to take this picture.

Kelly, who had been watching the entire ordeal from the warmth and safety of Starbucks and providing a running commentary with one of the Baristas, couldn't stop laughing at how dodgy the sight of me running across a car park, in my long coat and leather gloves, after a woman must look to anyone observing, and has taken to calling my gloves 'come strangle me gloves'...nice.

Anyway, I promise no one was harmed in the taking of this photo...

#MySundayPhoto

#MySundayPhoto 14th Feb 2016

It's Valentine's Day, so what better photo than one showing the two loves of my life: ET and penguins...erm... I meant ET and my wife K, of course! Also penguins.

#MySundayPhoto

Warcraft Weekender...I'm an altoholic

My name is Stephen, and I'm an altoholic.

Hmm...who to play today?

Warcraft Wednesday - Returning to the World of Warcraft

I've played World of Warcraft (WoW) since just after release. I'd not really played an MMO prior to that, apart from a quick go of Star Wars Galaxies (my computer at the time wouldn't run it properly) and a grindathon called Ragnarok Online. I don't know what made me suddenly sit up and take notice of WoW, either. Whatever it was, I remember it being sold out everywhere in Birmingham, but my brother managing to get us a copy each whilst he was working away from home on a training course. Since then, I've played for hundreds of hours (I'm too scared to look at my total time played), got one of every class to at least 90 and currently have four level 100 characters. I've raided, I've been casual, I've done PvP and I've never done a single pet battle, because screw that Pokemon crap.

One of my first and most vivid memories of that time is cresting a hill in Dun Morogh as a lowly Gnome Rogue, not having a clue what I was doing and just being amazed by how seamless and vast the world was. I saw the Dwarven capital of Ironforge, built into a distant mountain. I wondered if I could run all the way there; turns out I could, and so much farther.

Sadly I lost all my original screenshots of my early adventures

I went to Butlins and hated it

Butlin's has long been a holiday destination of choice for the price-conscious but, having visited for the first time last year for a friend’s 30^th birthday, I have to say I was less than impressed. Now, I'm usually pretty easy going with this kind of thing and I'm certainly not a snob but, on this occasion, there were just so many things wrong that it made the whole thing seem that much worse.

Here are five things I hated:

Shave and a haircut

I recently decided to start shaving my head again. The reason for this is that genetics are against me and I'm slowly but surely losing my hair anyway. My hairline has receded and, in the last year or two, I've thinned on my crown, too. I always said that, should I get to the point where I started to get a bald spot, I'd just man up and shave the lot off. I read somewhere once that bald is a choice, balding isn't, and took it to heart. If I'm going to have no hair, I'm going to do it on my terms. I'd allowed my hair to grow for about 6 months and it was getting pretty long, all things considered, but I was so paranoid all the time about how big my bald spot was getting, or how much my hair was thinning.

K tells me I don't have a bald spot, but I've seen enough
photos like this to know she's just being nice...

#MySundayPhoto

#MySundayPhoto

#My Sunday Photo

A trip to West Midlands Safari Park this weekend yielded some pretty cool shots, including these two which I took:

#MySundayPhoto

A pirate's life for me!

We've been going pirate mad in this house lately. ET has had the ELC Happyland pirate ship for ages but, recently, he's been much more aware of pirates as a 'thing'. Now, I've been a bit of a pirate geek since I was a child (I even have a pirate themed tattoo!), so I'm happy to see my little landlubber taking an interest in the subject. I'm been (possibly over) encouraging this over the last week or so, so I thought I'd give you a roundup of what we'd been up to.

I hate Bing

Have you seen Bing? It's a newish CBeebies cartoon featuring a young rabbit named Bing who lives with a little stuffed animal thing named Flop who isn't his dad, but does sleep in the same bed as him. In fact, all of the 'children' are anthropomorphic animals and all of the 'adults' are stuffed toys. It's pretty weird.

Life's little worries

I regularly worry about whether or not I'm a good dad. I read somewhere that if you worry about being a good parent then you already are a good parent. There might be some truth in that, I suppose, but it doesn't stop me worrying.

Finally Finished...Final Fantasy VII

This is the first post in one of my new features, 'Finally Finished...', where I write about games I've finally finished playing. In today's hectic life it's rare I finish a game and that means some classics get left behind. Join me as I try to finally finish them.

It’s taken almost twenty years, multiple attempts across numerous platforms, but, over the Christmas period, I finally, finally finished Final Fantasy VII.

Game over - do you want to continue?

A friend got in touch earlier in the week. We haven’t seen each other in years (he moved out to Australia some time ago), but we catch up regularly to see how we’re both doing. Whilst catching up, he asked me a simple question: ‘do you still have much time for games?’. We’d known each other since we started secondary school, and gaming was an interest we’d shared ever since, from racing each other to see who could complete the original Tomb Raider fastest (and avoiding homework to do so), or going to each other’s houses to do link up Duke Nukem 3D on Playstation in the days before easy internet console gaming, to even running an internet café together where we held local Unreal Tournament and Counter Strike championships (we always won).

I can still hear the theme tune in my head....and the screams of noobs as I wasted them

Every day is a school day

Despite ET being too young to start worrying about this, people I know are currently running the gauntlet that is picking a primary school for their child. Little did I know just how difficult and stressful this could be, as children are categorised based on any number of arbitrary categories. Seriously, it'd be simpler and fairer to just give them a weapon and pit them against each other in a fight to the death, Battle Royale style.

Have you seen Battle Royale? It's like Hunger Games, only good.

I'm now on Bloglovin

Follow my blog with Bloglovin

Damn that bear!

Some time ago, and completely out of the blue, ET started telling us about 'We're Going on a Bear Hunt'. It was a book he didn't own (one of the few - he's a little bookworm), so we naturally assumed it was something they read to him at nursery. He mentioned it every so often and, over the Christmas break, we were lucky enough to go see a live performance for the 25th anniversary. ET loved it; he clapped, he (tried to) sing along and he particularly liked it when the cast squirted the audience with water pistols and super soakers (I was less impressed by that).

Yeah, you  better run! I'm soaked!

The Book People regularly visit my office. On Tuesday this week, as I went to leave for lunch, I noticed a rather special copy of We're Going on a Bear Hunt; it was a 'deluxe edition'. What this meant was that it came in a cardboard sleeve and the book itself was hardback, but that was about it. It only cost £4, so I felt it unwise to quibble over the definition of 'deluxe' in this instance, plus I was excited that we'd finally got a copy of this wonderful book, a book my son had gone on and on about for months now. I looked forward to reading it to him that very night as part of his bedtime routine.

Omar

Omar is a friend of mine, though we've not actually spoken in far too long.

Omar has an infectiously positive personality; his big smile and cheeky chappy attitude make him someone you want to hang round with, someone who brightens your day just by saying hello and makes you feel good about yourself on even your worst days. His almost encyclopedic knowledge of Simpson's quotes kept us laughing for ages.

I first met Omar in 2005; we were both working for Pertemps People Development Group (or PPDG for short) as Employment Consultants; he'd been there a while and knew the lay of the land. It was my first 'proper' job, fresh out of uni, so he took me under his wing and helped me learn the ropes. He taught me many, many valuable things: to never judge people at first glance; to always treat them with respect, no matter their background; to always believe in yourself, even when your path was beset by challenges. Omar used to put pictures of Muhammad Ali around his training room, featuring  inspirational quotes like 'he who is not courageous enough to take risks will accomplish nothing in life' and 'I hated every minute of training, but I said 'don't quit; suffer now and live the rest of your life as a champion'. I used to think they were cheesy, but I can't deny they were effective.

It was Omar that helped me get into training and helped me find a passion for helping others through my work - something that I still need to feel job satisfaction even now. I need to know that, no matter how remotely, what I do matters and is having a positive effect on the world and the people in it. Omar had a profound impact on my life and I've never thanked him for that.

I left PPDG in August 2008 and I've not seen Omar since, though we've spoken via Facebook a few times. We'd always make plans to meet and have a proper catch up, but life often got in the way and plans fell through.

Omar died on January 1st, 2016.