Films Online

This week week we took advantage of Netflix free for a month trial. Put it this way.....I am glad it was a free trial because I am seriously disappointed!!! I thought we could have the trial, and as it was only a few £'s a month after, we would keep going after that. As we started browsing it was painfully obvious that we were not going to be carrying on with the service! My husband is a bit of a trekkie, and when he found there was absolutely no Star Trek films or T.V episodes (for some this may make it an attractive site!) he was mortified. The choice of films were poor to say the least.
The other option, as I do think films on-line are a good idea, would be Love Film. We did have this service a few years ago when you gave them a list of your film preferences and they would send the films off to you. You take out as many films as you liked for a monthly fee, but only two at a time. This was a bit of a sticking point for us as we were completely useless at sending the DVD's back after we had watched them!! It turned out quite expensive then as we were averaging to watch around 12 films a year!! Not good at £12 a month. However, Lovefilm have now started to use the same format and you can watch their films on-line aswell now. As this eradicates the need for me to actually remember to post something, I think this one might be a bit more beneficial to us!!

£1 Million Raised for Claire Squires Charity

On Sunday 22nd April 2012, Claire Squires expected to raise around £500 for her chosen charity, the Samaritans, when she ran the Virgin London Marathon. Tragically she never made it to the end and collapsed around the 25 mile mark. Although quickly treated by paramedics, she died on Sunday, with no apparent reason why. She was a tremendously fit lady, going to the gym every day. Friends say that her love for life, and want to help others were beyond measure, which I am sure makes this tragedy even harder to bear for her loved ones. Claire s family had already suffered lose when her brother died aged 25 in 2001. Her mother was a volunteer with the Samaritans for over 20 years, and these two reasons are why Claire chose them as her charity to run for. Since the news of her death came out, Claire s Just Giving web page has been inundated with well wishers and donations topping £881,000, with the gift aid given, this figure has now past £1 million pounds. The website Just Giving have also agreed to give their fee, which would now be around the £26000 mark. It really does put a lump in my throat at the generosity of these strangers, coming together to acknowledge the wonderful life a lady they didn't even know, It shows there are still some very decent hearted people out there. If you would like to be one of these people follow this link and give as little or as much as you can. Over 76,500 from all over the world already have. http://www.justgiving.com/Claire-Squires2

Wettest Drought Ever !!!!!

Isn't it funny how things can change so quickly ? On one day a couple of weeks ago, the BBC had a reporter on the morning breakfast show, reporting from a dry river bed about how bad the drought was, and even a steady flow of rain will not bring this river back to life quick enough. Then, as if Mother Nature herself was listening in, the reporter was back at the same river to report that, you guessed it,  it had burst its banks!! One very sheepish reporter! It is also just as ironic that counties that have a hose pipe ban in force, were yesterday issued with flash flood warnings! Some people might like to call it global warming or climate change, but these things have been happening since the dawn of time. I am not saying that these things do not have a direct effect on our weather systems, just that our weather has always been erratic i.e the several ice ages we have had. Whose to know what is to come, but this is Great Britain, so I expect alot more rain.........especially as summer is almost upon us!!!

Confessions of a window cleaner !

My husband is a window cleaner of quite a few years now. He sort of fell into the job when we moved into our new house at the time. We asked a local window cleaner for a quote to clean our windows, fascias and guttering. He nearly fell over when he was told it would be £50 per side. That means it would be £150 for just a few hours work!! And then another £10 to clean the windows on top of that! Well, there was no way my husband was going to pay that. 'I will get up there and do it myself' I remember him saying. Ha, that will be the day I said seeing as he has a severe fear of heights!! I remember him crawling along some scaffolding he hired once to fix the roof with, because yet again he didn't want to pay someone else to do it. Once up there he completely froze and couldn't get himself down! I had to open one of the bedroom windows (through fits of laughter) for him to climb through as he couldn't climb back down the ladder! Even then I had to drag him through as he was too scared to get up and do it himself! So, I hear you asking how on earth is he a window cleaner now then. Well its simple.....he only cleans bungalows lmao. No I am only joking, he has managed to curb his extreme fear of heights and he does get up a ladder now, but only due to the fact he is the tightest git you will ever meet, and he refused to pay someone else for a job he knew he could do himself.

Happy Birthday Ma'am

Today (21st April) is our Queen, Elizabeth II s 86th birthday. Born in 1926 at 17 Bruton St, London, Princess Elizabeth Alexandra Mary. The Queen will celebrate today, her birthday proper, in private with her family. But on the second Saturday in June she will celebrate her official birthday by Trooping the Colour in London. The Sovereign has an official birthday simply to be able to celebrate the birthday during the summer in what would hopefully be better weather. This has been a tradition since around the time of George III when he became King in 1760. It is now a day of pomp and circumstance and Great Britain at its best!
Princess Elizabeth as she was, was never intended to sit on the throne though. Her father acceded the throne in 1936 after his brother abdicated after his love affair with divorcee Mrs Wallis Simpson.
Her reign as Queen is the second longest in British history, second only to Queen Victoria. However she is the oldest reigning monarch of 86 years.
This year is set to be a very big year for her though as this is the Queens Diamond Jubilee year. Many celebrations are set to be going ahead around the country, lets hope its a good year for her.

Little Princess Trust / Hair Donation

Now, I have been growing my hair for around 2 years. This was not an intentional thing....I just haven't had either the time or the inclination to get my backside down to the hairdressers and get it loped off! As a result I now have a ponytail that is around 13" long!! Now enter my saviour......a work colleague of mine that is also a qualified hairdresser, and does it in her spare time, has said she will take on the now mammoth task of getting my hair into some semblance of order. Good luck to her!
Now I can put my laziness of not getting my hair cut, to some very good use. I had been aware that you can donate your hair to make wigs for cancer patients, so I started trawling the internet and came across a fantastic organisation called 'Little Princess Trust'. Here is a small extract  from their website ;-
 The Little Princess Trust provides real hair wigs to children suffering hair loss due to cancer treatment.

We supply and fully fund the best wigs available from all over the world, especially designed for children.  We also provide personal fitting and styling to ensure the wig is as close as possible to the original hair.

For any parent, discovering your child has a serious illness like cancer or leukaemia is devastating. The trauma for both parent and child can be increased by worrying about the side effects of the treatment, particularly hair loss.

To me, this was just the most perfect place to send my hair. What a magnificent charity this is. 

100 Days till the London Olympics!

So the London Olympics is only 100 days away, and I can't believe how fast time has gone since the games were awarded to us, now, 100 days before the big event, the official London 2012 Olympic motto has been revealed!

"Inspire a Generation"

 The torch relay around the UK has also started, and will be coming very near where I live, so I definitely will be going to see it! The whole thing is a once in a lifetime event, so I want to get involved as much as possible!
The stadium and all the buildings, and the Olympic Village is all on track to completion. The country is getting excited, and the world will be watching, I can't wait to witness the events and get into the atmosphere!

I a will be watching the cycling team, as Team GB is, in my honest opinion, one of the best velodrome teams in the world. I hope the whole event goes well, without any hitch, and I hope we can show the world what England can do! I'd like to wish good luck to all the athletes, and hope it all goes well!

Will you guys be watching? Maybe you're even coming to London for it!

Legoland holiday package

Legoland holiday package

My family and I booked a night at a hotel with two day tickets to the Legoland park. Booked Sunday and arrived at Legoland 9.45 Monday morning! Nothing like doing things last minute!!!
We took my 13 year old and 15 year sons  and we all had a great time. Because we had printed the tickets at home we were able to go straight to the gates rather than have to stand in line and buy the tickets when we got there.....much quicker!!! The longest we queued was 20 minutes, and we walked onto most of the rides. The dragon rollercoaster at The knights Castle was fun but I think that anyone over the age of 10 looking for a white knuckle ride would be dissappointed. This is probably a theme park for the younger families, not quite the white knuckle parks like Thorpe or Alton Towers.
The staff were all friendly and the park was clean with plenty of bins for rubbish. 
We took our own food but I could see that if you were to buy food for a family of four it could add up but having said that there was plenty of advertising advising that kids eat for free after 5pm.
We had a fabulous two days at Legoland. We will  visit again

Pooh Potty Jokes

Q. Where does Pooh like to swim? A. In the toilet.

Q. Why did Tigger look in the toilet? A. He was looking for Pooh. Q. What did Piglet flush down the toilet? A. Pooh! Q. What do you get if you cross Winnie the Pooh with   a donkey?  A. Dhiarr-Eeyore! Q. Why is Tigger always dirty? A. Because he plays with Pooh. Q. What do you get when you cross Rabbit with Pooh? A. A well fertilized garden Winnie-the-Pooh, also called Pooh Bear, is a fictional anthropomorphic bear created by A. A. Milne. The first collection of stories about the character was the book Winnie-the-Pooh (1926), and this was followed by  The House at Pooh Corner (1928). Milne also included a poem about the bear in the children’s verse book When We Were Very Young (1924)  and many more in Now We Are Six (1927). All four volumes were illustrated by E. H. Shepard. The Winnie-the-Pooh stories are set in Ashdown Forest, Sussex, England.

Chinese and Bahrain Grand Prix

What a fabulous qualifying session in Shanghai. An amazing final qualifying lap for Nico Rosberg put him half a second faster than his nearest rival, Lewis Hamilton, who, due to a gear box change will now start seventh. He incurred a five place penalty when the team were worried that the previous gear box would not be able to finish the race. He now starts in seventh place, with his team mate Jenson Button in fifth. This is the first ever pole position for the Mercedes driver, with his team mate Michael Schumacher 0.57 seconds slower and now second on the grid. Its also the first pole that Mercedes have had since 1955. The team pulled out of formula one after that season, not returning to formula one until 2010 when they bought the Brawn team.
The surprise of the morning was current champion Sebastian Vettal's early exit, going out in Q2 in 11th place. He was using a different car to his team mate Mark Webber who qualified in sixth place.
Moving onto next weeks Grand Prix in Bahrain, although some drivers and teams have expressed concerns about the race, the FIA (the governing body) have decided to let the race go ahead even though there has been civil unrest in the region since February 2011. A statesman has said it was "satisfied that all the proper security measures are in place for the running of a Formula One world championship event".
I cant wait to see what happens in the race tomorrow, fingers crossed for the Brits....especially Jenson, who is a local boy for us coming from Frome in Somerset which is just down the road, Good Luck !

Britains got talent Vs The Voice

There are two big show running at the moment, one being The Voice, the Other is Britain's got talent, and they overlap by 20 minutes, but this week, Britains got talent have decided to move ahead by 30 minutes, and the season has already started, and this annoys me, let me tell you why. In this country, the BBC is funded by the viewers, who have to pay TV licence, they don't have to rely on ratings to get advertisement. where ITV HAVE to rely on ratings to get advertisers interested, and although health competition is great, we almost lost ITV to the recession, which would be a bad thing for everybody. I hope the bosses at BBC learn from this mistake, but I don't think they will, because they haven't from previous mistakes.

Easter - The ressurection

Easter has now become synonymous with chocolate eggs, and about 95% of the kids have no idea about why we celebrate Easter. There was a TV show on, where the presenter asked many children what they think easter is about, and a majority thought it was for the easter bunny's birthday. The closest answer was "for the death of Jesus" and even that is wrong, It's really about the ressurection and new life, the reason we give eggs is to show new life.

The walking dead - Review

The Walking Dead

One night two weeks ago I found myself up at 2 in the morning, so I started flicking through the channels, and I saw a program, called the walking dead, I've seen it around times before, but never payed attention, but this time they were restarting the series, so I decided to watch it as there was nothing else on. The show is absolutely fantastic. The next two days I found myself watching the whole of series one and two, and didn't leave my chair once, and now I'm sitting here waiting for series 3, if you haven't seen the series, I strongly suggest watching it, as it is a fantastic show, and don't let the fact it's all about zombies put you off.

The interaction between characters is fantastic, this is a great cast, and they seem to work very well together, and the storyline between between husband and wife, and friends has been very well written, and is believable.

Feel free to comment what you think about the show!

Alton Towers - Review

Hello!

Today, I'm going to be reviewing the Alton Towers theme park!

Myself and my family went to Alton Towers for Easter Sunday, we like to go to a theme park at least once a year, and this year, we decided to go to Alton towers.

First impressions of the park are very good, it has a large welcoming entrance, with friendly staff to usher you in, and direct you to a car parking spot. from the car parks, you can get a train/shuttle to the park's main entrance, because the walk is quite long, depending on what car park you are in.

The shuttles are brightly coloured and great for children, to get them pumped for the exciting day ahead!

When in the Park, there must have been at least 700 travellers, and a very large police presence,  My partner was stopped at the gate, but there was no trouble for the entire day, and everything ran smoothly.

We went on most of the large rides, my favourite being Rita, A ride which goes from 0 to 100KM/h in two and a half seconds, a truly invigorating experience! The ride queue was very fast for a ride of that size, but the staff could have been loading the rides a lot faster, but they were being quite slow if I was honest.

A great attraction for the whole family is the Ice Age 4D cinema, I was a little disappointed with the one in Drayton Manor, it was okay, but it was not amazing, but this one really was, there was snow coming down, bubbles, air on the back of your legs,  and the film was good too! It was a great all round experience!

In a majority of the stores they sell an unlimited drinks bottle, where you can refill it at a any of the numerous facilities around the park.    I recommend bringing a packed lunch as it is very expensive in the food stalls there.

Its a great all round day, and I recommend it to anyone.

Titanic

Just how much can James Cameron screw out of people with the film Titanic/Titanic 3D. Don't get me wrong I love the film and James Cameron is a great director, but come on, in the current climate people shouldn't be paying money for Hollywood to keep regurgitating the same movies over and over again. I just hope no one wastes their money on this, it'd be nice to see something different from Hollywood. I don't know what, or I'd be doing it myself, but it'd be good.

Sunburn and snow!!!

Can you believe this weather? Talk about global warming in reverse !! I have a friend in Scotland who is still nursing her sunburn from last week and yet her back garden is covered in 4 inches of snow. How mad is that? I have told her thou if her burns are that bad at least she can go out and roll around in the back garden!

 I hope the weather picks up for the weekend thou as we are off to Alton towers on Sunday and I dont like the thought of having to stand in queues in the freezing cold and pouring rain! I will however, report back on the new rides (and some of the old ones!) I am such a child, love this place so much the review might be a little one sided lol !!!

This is my first post on my new blog. Alot of my friends are doing this so I thought I would get on the band wagon .(with the help of my son lol)
This blog will contain my views on International and National current affairs, reviews on products I have used and places I have been. If any one would like me to review a product or place for them, then please just give me a shout. Please feel free to follow me and comment on any posts.