Backyard Sanity Claus at the Ladybird, Bromsgrove

I’m out on an epic pub crawl with my friend John the Cleaner. We’re off on a quest to find a winter pint of Bathams, a true XXX Christmas beer that’s only on sale for a few weeks because of its popularity. We catch a bus to our first pub, but it’s running a little late. This has a knock-on effect since we need each bus to be on time to get back home, so we decide to skip the first pub. Unfortunately, our first actual pub didn’t have the beer on that we’d hoped for, but we still sink a couple of pints alongside a bag of pork scratchings. Then we decide to give the restaurant pub a try round the corner on the main road. It’s got a few beers so we have a quick half while we work out when the next bus is due to head back to town.

Stop the Trap! #doctorwho #dreamdiary 146

There’s a red and yellow circular patterned frisbee that needs to be intercepted. It needs to be caught by a man in a suit as he strolls through the courtyard on a hot sunny day. If he doesn’t it’ll soar through a round open window into a museum and hit a pair of skulls placed on a windowsill. The skulls will fall to the floor and shatter, which will set a bizarre chain of events into motion through a motion contraption. There’s bones rotating on cogs that are mounted on lab tables, and rubber balls and marbles rolling down gutters. It may be possible to remove or replace certain parts of the contraption to attempt to steer it to its outcome if the frisbee isn’t caught in time. But which outcome is the best? How many times can you change the direction of the machine? And what happens if the machine breaks down altogether?

Party Time

It’s a shame that no-one else has made as much effort as I have to wear Christmas attire. Maybe my position of Chief Elf has usurped me as head of the table. Some are getting into the spirit with their party hats while others have seriously got their heads down to focus on the nosh (after all, we did get it at a decent price). Maybe that’s because they were the unlucky ones who had to wait for their food to be brought out last. The sides of my glasses look like they’ve been edited in Photoshop. Maybe they have to make me look extra stupid. Still, the hardcore partygoers stayed on for the quiz, and we even called in a few reinforcements to help us out. It was a touchscreen quiz to reduce the chances of internet cheating, and there were extra points for being the fastest finger. I think our team name only got one shoutout though. I can’t remember what it was.

Parcel Rooms

I’m all for convenience of parcel deliveries. If you can’t wait in all day and don’t have an obvious safe place to leave your parcel then an automated locker is convenient option. It’s just a case of where that might be. A lot of local newsagents now offer this service in the hope that people will browse and buy something while they queue up for their box. But if you just want your parcel, then an automated option is even better. You just need to know where it is. But perhaps the foyer of a changing room might not be the most appropriate place but this is where I went to pick one up. I just walked straight past the tills without taking anything off the racks and headed straight in. ‘What is he doing in there?’ It all looks a bit dodgy. And what happens if a queue forms up for one service while you attempting to access the other? I understand that there may be security concerns about leaving these lockers outside but there must be a better place to keep them. And all this for a tiny package that would probably fit through your letterbox anyway. It’s a good opportunity to try it out though.

Too Much Tat?

Am I overdoing it a bit? I’m modelling my Christmas Spiderman jumper that I’ve bought off the internet. I’ve got my Rudolph glasses complete with Elton John-styled glitter bling complete with antlers overlooking the frames and a piece of holly in one corner. On top of that, I’m wearing a felt elf hat complete with bobble and a pair of elf ears sewn onto the side. And just to top it off, I’m wearing my purple paper party hat straight out of the Christmas cracker. The light above me looks like there’s a halo trying to shine through too. I must have been hot under there. But why I didn’t shave I don’t know. Perhaps it was a long day at the shop and I thought I could get away with it. I just hope that other people are similarly attired. After all, ‘tis the season of excess so I suppose that we’re allowed to be a little bit silly.

The Larkins (Series 2)

This series was a bit of a mixed bag as rather than the village faced one crisis as in previous episodes, it became a feud between two families with the villagers occasionally getting mixed up in between. Walsh was his usual charming self and it was great to see all the other Larkins back in action, but a few of the other characters including the children of the feuding family and some of the other villagers were a bit less believable. In particular, it’s interesting to see how much people can get away with in rural life and it’s a shame that there’s no parish council or governing body or even club that people could get involved with to corrupt. It would have been fun to have seen a bit more of Pop’s influence in prison. I would have liked to have seen more mischief and episodes and it’s a shame that this spin-off has come to an end.

Bowled Over

Ah, the good old family gathering to roll someone else’s balls down a lane without having to worry about the consequences. Modern bowling seems a bit overpriced. I suppose these centres use a ton of power. The arcade is also a big draw. They’ve got the latest interactive video games but at double the prices that you’d probably at an independent arcade. There’s also games where you can win tickets to claim ridiculously small prizes unless you’re lucky enough to win a million of them. You can have overpriced food and drink brought to your lane by a genuine minimum wage teenager, or dine after your game if you dare. But thank goodness you can book on-line now. You used to have to queue up for a bowl time then wait around for ages while the kids emptied your pockets of all your change and you can’t see what they’ve been spending it on.