Slow, slow, quick-quick, slow.

This one could be described, in a more print-based environment, as being 'hot off the presses'.

The weather in Britain has been unpleasant lately, although not nearly as bad as the weather experts predicted. That's only for this country, of course. Other parts of the world have far worse weather, but moaning about the weather seems to be a well-deserved cliche.

I was out, attending to a couple of chores, and happened to notice that the clouds were rather - as Julie would put it - "ominominominous". Since it was late in the afternoon, I thought it might be nice I collected Julie from work, as opposed to letting her trudge home in the grotty weather. I'm nice like that.

It was an uneventful drive to her and then home, which was nice, especially since there are roadworks that have blocked off one section of a major road on the seafront very close to us. Putting it bluntly, it's fucking chaotic. While getting home was a relative breeze, it took me twenty minutes to get further than a hundred yards from our house on the way out.

Once parked up, though, I sat still for a moment to let the controlled ire of idiots subside. Julie also remained in her seat, too, but for a different reason. Coming up the road was a learner driver.

Seeing one of these ahead of you on a narrow road.
Never cheering.

Since I had parked on the right-hand side of the road, Julie thought it best to let them by before making a move. Unfortunately, it seems like the learner had not long begun their lessons,* and was proceeding very cautiously (i.e. 'very slowly') up the road.

Obviously, it probably was less than a minute, but to Julie, with her hand on the door handle, it must have seemed like an age.

Yep. That one earned her The Look.

*Poor bugger, eh? Just started learning, and they're being dragged around near closed-off roads during rush hour.

Say you, say me, say what? [Part II]

Part II? Oh yes. The first time around was when I got a little lost in my own sentence. Those with memories as poor as mine can see it HERE. This time around, though, it's Julie who is doing the sentence-stumbling.

My wife often denies having said something - usually right after we've finished laughing about it, oddly enough. However, when she finally remembers it, Julie will try and hurry us on to the next subject, saying something like, "I can't be expected to remember everything I've said, can I?" It's something I can't normally argue with - unless, I have pointed out,the original conversation is not yet five minutes old...

Of course, when Julie tries to deny or correct something she has said, she'll find she hasn't yet left the Gemzone and falls right into another verbal trap...

My own personal trap is that I will all too often find myself trying to point out the lack of logic in something Julie has said. We then get into... not an argument, but a back-and-forth discussion about what was said, who said what, and how it was said.... and I get completely lost myself. These days, I know better. When we have a situation like this, I stay quiet, apply The Look, and remain quiet when Julie asks me, "...what? Wha'd I say?"

The Look. As supplied by Sceptical Dog.

The placing of the platypus

Once more, we return to the veritable minefield that is Trivial Pursuit. And to what is apparently becoming the signature beastie for Julie's Gems - the platypus.

Just when you thought the pesky thing couldn't cause us any more trouble, up pops its leathery beak. In all fairness though, the problem isn't due to our mighty monotreme. Instead, it's human hearing all the way. That, and the serial misunderstandings that begin once Julie asks me the question...

Now, why does Abbott & Costello come to mind...

For those of a curious mind, here's where Tasmania happens to reside.

The conundrum of the cupcake in the container

When we reached Canterbury, there were two things foremost in our minds, both of which involved liquids. Lucky for us, then, that we very soon stumbled across the most delightful tearoom.

Set in one of the oldest buildings in Canterbury, there is much that is good about this place. The tea is loose leaf and you have a varied selection. For something more substantial, there is a special menu based around the theme of eggs benedict, along with a few daily specials. However, if you are not in the mood for cooked food, then you could always sample the baked wares, of which there are plenty and of wide enough variety to give you much pause for thought.
The portions will also give you pause for thought, too. The kind of thought that goes, "I'm not sure I can finish this..."

One cake caught my eye immediately - it was a cupcake in a jar...

Please note these are not from Tiny Tim's. I didn't get a photo of
those cakes, so I pinched this from The Swelle Life. Link at the end.

What a brilliant idea; if you didn't want to eat it at that time, you could take it away and maybe even give it to someone as a little gift. I was very much taken with this idea, as was Julie when I mentioned them to her. Unfortunately, Julie is a little... traditional in her cooking methods, and had difficulty in working out the mechanism of the concept...

When I pointed out that the cakes had actually been baked inside the jars, Julie was a tad incredulous. I had trouble with the situation myself; I facepalmed hard enough the thump drew attention from the other customers.

In case you're interested in having a go, here's a recipe for carrot cake in a jar; a good idea for Easter, perhaps?
Why not visit The Swelle Life - they feature some amazing baked products.
Finally, here's the site for the Tiny Tim's Tearoom - which is also allegedly haunted!

If you're Mental as Anything, you may like this

Julie and myself may have our difference, plenty of them, in fact. However, we get by despite them, and sometimes we even celebrate them. One area of our life together where we come together is our appreciation of music. Then again, it's also where we tend to have some of our greatest differences. Julie likes the danceable poppy stuff, like Steps or S Club 7, although currently, her favourite band is Bucks Fizz (most famous for winning the 1981 Eurovision Song Contest). In previous, more hormone-driven times, the bands du jour were The Osmonds and obscure boy band, Child.
In the meantime, I listen to... well, almost anything and everything. I checked my external hard drive earlier and discovered I had 182GB worth of music on there. Enough to keep my ears busy for over three and a half months.
Oy vey.
Inevitably, there is going to be some overlap with our respective tastes, but I'll guarantee it won't be the likes of Rodrigo Y Gabriella, N.W.A. or Kraftwerk. No, when it comes to mutual musical tastes, it will be things like Madness (which is good), The Sweet, Scissor Sisters and a whole host of near one-hit wonders from the 1970s and 1980s.
All of which brings us to a track that was played on the radio recently, 'Live it Up' by Australian band Mental as Anything.

It's a good track, one I first came across in a 'rock' compilation album.* And that's it. I've played that album loads of times since then, but I had never heard the track in any other context until the other day. I mentioned this to Julie, that hoarder of 7" singles (he proclaimed somewhat hypocritically). Out of that innocent remark sprang this little exchange.

Quite.
After all that, it would be rather remiss of me to avoid posting the video now, wouldn't it? Here you go.

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* You know the kind of rock album I mean. Nothing heavier than a bit of Meatloaf and averaging out at Status Quo's cover of 'The Wanderer'. And featuring some Sad Cafe, for some weird reason.

Causing The Count some confusion

So - back to our favourite board game, Scrabble. We were playing a game one day, when Julie decided that playing Scrabble wasn't enough - she also wanted to play silly buggers. Guess what? She's pretty good at it!

I was looking at a particularly awful set of letters on my rack - seeing something like this near the start of the game, never mind later on, is pretty awful.

Doesn't this seem slanted?
Superb optical illusion..

After a short while, I became aware of a persistent noise. I looked up, and watched Julie tapping her finger up and down her line of letters. I watched, bemused, for a while... Suddenly, Julie realised I was watching her, and pulled her hand away sharply, laughing in embarrassment, her face blooming like a field of poppies.* I laughed and asked what she was doing.

Silly me.

Yes, dear.

*Julie does this quite often. Sometimes, I'll be taking my turn at Scrabble and sometimes, I'll be reading. Whatever the situation, the result is usually the same; Julie suddenly becomes aware that I'm watching her and she pulls into herself and starts laughing in embarrassment. I think it's rather sweet, actually.

The Great Platypus Debate rambles on...

Oh deary me. First, Scott decides that being different equates to being a platypus. Then, Julie joins in and gets herself, me and pretty much the rest of the world confused about how a platypus may be different from, say, a tortoise. And now my father joins in. You may recall that, when the mood strikes him, he can be as whimsical and off-beat as my lovely wife. And that, when the two of them get together, all you can do is sit back and try to stay afloat. Because once they're off, you have no chance of keeping up with the glorious oddities the pair construct from thin air.
It's quite charming, actually, that my father gets on so well with Julie - almost better than he does with me, I sometimes wonder, but that's fine with me. In my opinion, Julie is one of the personable people I know. It's almost impossible to not like her, she's that scattily charming. And considering that I'd always said (before they met) that Dad would be the one Julie would have to be the one to win over; Mum being so staunchly liberal it's beautiful.

Recently, we visited my folks and we were playing Scrabble (yes, there WILL be a Scrabble-themed Gem along soon...), and talking about what had been featured on Julie's Gems. Naturally, The Great Platypus Debate reared its unique head. I didn't have a computer handy, so I referred to the original notes I had jotted down in my omnipresent pad.

"Are platypuses like giant tortoises?"
"...no."
"Well, they're similar shapes, aren't they?"
"...no.""They're both flat aren't they?"
"...no."

At this point, amidst the general laughter around the table, Dad decided to side with Julie in his own little way

Although I wouldn't put it past someone to try. Before various animal welfare societies heard about it, obviously...

John, Ringo, George and Pun.

On one of our many trips out, we were sat in a cafe, supping tea and discussing various letter-themed tunes that we could install on our mobile phones - just to use for an alert for any incoming text messages. I know; sad, isn't it? The usual suspects turned up pretty quickly - The Proclaimers' "Letter From America" and The Carpenters' "Please Mr. Postman".
It didn't take long before we fell quiet, having run out of obvious choices, but then Julie threw something in that was so left-field it was positively trippy.

"Oh dear," I thought, "It's going to be like that is it?"

Saturday Bonus - Dead in Bed

I was trying to explain the expression Julie usually manages to evoke from me. You know, it's The Look.

It's a little self-contradictory, as it's an expression without much expression. To put it in one word. 'Deadpan'. Julie, however, seems to have a little trouble with mastering The Look.

There's only one possible response to that.

Saturday Bonus: Julie writes the Gems

Ah, Facebook, that repository of the weird and wonderful. As a good example, here's an exchange between myself, Julie and her cousin, Les - with our commencing commenter, Pierre. The original post has absolutely no bearing on the comment stream, oddly enough, except that at one point it mentioned this site..
Take it away, Pierre!

In one sense, love, you were never on this planet, but I'm so very glad you are still here.
By the way - that bit where I was 'literally raging'? That was because I was frustrated I had no way to get down all the amazing and hilarious stuff that was coming from the talk. I am definitely saving up for that voice recorder..

Clearly in the dark about lightships.

Julie was on form today. Seriously; it was one of those days where I was really wishing I had a voice recorder to get all those little bits I couldn't quite hear properly (even though I heard enough to get the gist of it).
Things were slow at work, so I decided to take a half-day. As it turned out, Julie had finished work and arrived home a couple of minutes before me, so, after a spot of lunch and a natter, we thought we would go for a stroll, seeing as how it was such a nice day. Really nice, in fact. Cold, but really nice. Beautiful blue sky with just a few wispy clouds and not much of a breeze. Like I said, though - bloomin' cold.

Following a spot of tea and a bite to eat in one of our favourite cafés, we wandered up the road towards the seafront. After we crossed the road,* the wind was a tad stronger and the chill bit a little more, so we zipped up our coats to the top. While Julie was sorting herself out, I looked out to sea and saw something that made me realise just how clear the weather was.

This is the woman who has lived in Eastbourne all her life. Mind you, it turns out I was a little incorrect in my terminology. Until today, I had no need to research the lightship. Julie had told me it was out there, and that was all I needed to know. However, a search for images of an 'Eastbourne lightship' turned up precious little, and much of that seemed to have very little to do with the sea, let alone big lights that warn shipping of dangerous areas. I mean come on - what the hell was a picture of a cricket pitch doing in that lot? Eventually, I found something that seemed to fit what I had been seeing from a distance, but found it was a lighthouse.
Eh? Oh yes. A renewed search found a plethora of pictures of the lighthouse - here's one such photo.

Yep - that's Eastbourne & Beachy Head in the distance.

As it turns out, the lightship had been retired back in the 1970s and been replaced by this thing.
Anyhow, back to Julie, whose eyes (and memory) had suddenly decided to work. I suppose it helps if you're looking the right way...

My glasses??
Erm... yes, dear.

That's it - have a great weekend, folks!

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Considering it's Friday 13th, we had some brilliant timing every time we needed to cross a road - not once did we even have to pause before crossing a previously busy road.