Dog's Dinner

I will be holding my nose, and the dogs will be eating liver and rice for the next couple of days, courtesy of the supermarket bargain shelf.

A short ride on the Emirates Air Line

 I stayed at Stuart and Deirdre's house last night and commuted into London this morning with Matthew, who was on his last day of work experience with a firm of Chartered Surveyors. I nipped outside at London Bridge to take this shot of "the Shard", which, for the time being, is the tallest building in Europe. The buildings inauguration ceremony took place last night.


Matthew got off the tube at Canary Wharf, and I carried on to Stratford. I had a wander around the recently openedshopping centre:-



Wenlock and Mandeville, the Olympic mascots:-

 The Olympic park was sealed off like a prison camp, with soldiers guarding the entrances. I went up to the top floor of John Lewis which had a viewing area looking out over the site. This is one of the landmark buildings, Anish Kapoor's "Orbit Tower" - resembling a giant helter skelter:-

 The main Olympic stadium:-

 I took a short tube journey to the Emirates Airline, which opened earlier this week, and rode over the Thames to the Millenium Dome:-

 I walked down the length of the Greenwich Peninsula, through the millenium village:-

 I took a look at the Cutty Sark, for the first time since the fire:-

 I crossed back under the Thames to the Isle of Dogs via the Greenwich pedestrian tunnel, then took the Docklands Light Railway back to South London:-

Extension News

I visited Gillian yesterday and had a tour of Mum's house. I met the surveyor and the builder for the first time, as they happened to both be there when I arrived. Front view:-

Rear:-
 
 The Conservatory:-

Lounge and Lounge skylight:-
 

These don't show much but this is the Study area:-

The downstairs bathroom:-

The kitchen:-

The Understairs cupboard:-

The stairway stripped ready for the plastering, the plasterer starts work on Tuesday:-

Olympic Torch Relay

The clouds cleared for the Olympic flame and half of Nottingham turned up to gawk:-


Spot the flame, the dogs were pulling me in the other direction as I took this, towards a Leonberger:-

Rainy Day

I intended to head to the beach for a couple of days yesterday, but delayed going as the weather wasn't very beachy. I abandoned those plans, this morning, as the weather was like this:-

Instead, I went to see an exhibition at the Nottingham Contemporary, of video's by Mika Rottenberg, and prints by James Gillray, the 18th century caricaturist.

I tried to see this earlier in the month but discovered that the Gallery is closed on Mondays. Here are some photo's I took of the outside of the gallery, last time I visited:-

I was pleased I went as the exhibition ends on 1st July and the Mika Rottenberg video's were my kind of bizarre.

Squeeze is a 20 minute film showing how this spam like cube, made from blusher, rubber and lettuce was made from various body fluids that are harvested in a weird factory:-
 
The Olympic Torch comes to Nottingham today, and there is an evening of festivities lined up. As the weather seems to be improving, I will probably take the dogs out and have a look

Jobsworth

I'm about to resubmit my resident's parking renewal form to the Council for the third time - it keeps getting returned for different, trivial reasons - despite the fact that I have had a permit for all the time that I have lived here.

I shall return their letter with an added tick box.

The Poker Diet

I've been on a diet all this month, as I had been slipping back into the old, bad habits, and my waistline was expanding rapidly.

Breakfast consists of porridge with a couple of apples and a banana. For Lunch and dinner I have been having a big pile of lettuce, broccoli or cabbage (although I have to go a bit easy on the cabbage to avoid unpleasant side effects!) with jacket potato and a portion of meat.

The diet has been working well - I have shed 20 pounds and now tip the scales at 17 stone. I'm getting there - just another 3 or 4 stone to go. The promising thing with this diet attempt is that I haven't felt hungry on it, and am not feeling at all bored with it. I have hardly snacked at all - just the occasional extra piece of fruit/tin of soup. I have had one slip up, when I succumbed to a craving for an ice cream binge after a night on the tiles a couple of weeks ago.

I have cut out bread, pasta and rice completely, limiting my carbohydrates to porridge, jacket potatoes and sweet corn.

Accompanying the diet, I have been working on improving my poker skills - I have been playing online tournaments with larger fields - 90 players rather than the usual 9 player games that I play. I have noticed some encouraging improvements to my game. I have two online tournaments coming up, 1 this week and 1 the next, which offer me a chance to bag a seat at next years game in Vegas.  I have signed up to a new poker site for these games and have used Dad's winning lottery syndicate name as my poker nickname, hopefully that will give me a bit of extra luck!