Posted on Monday, May 29th, 2006 at 5:05 pm by Philip Devitt
After spending the previous weekend in Puerto Banus on a company paid back-slapping exercise I was disappointed to find that the my “man flu” was making a return for the upcoming weekend. While in a muscus filled delerium I was acosted by ones heavily pregnant sister to go see “The DaVinci Code”. Good Jesus, it was tedious — I almost wanted the sister to drop the kid during the film so I’d have an excuse to get the hell out of there, but was reminded during the trailers that 6.6.06 was almost upon us and I could be uncle to the Devil’s Spawn — all she has to do is keep her legs crossed for another week.
I remember reading the Dan Brown book. From what I can recall it was a fast enough read with fairly short chapters (a mechanism to prevent yanks from nodding off) and a controvertial storyline that attacked the Catholic church and helped finish off the last Pope (God bless the little fella). I don’t get what the big deal is, so what if some bloke called Jesus had a ex-whore for a wife — as long as there’s tread on the tyres who gives a damn. Forgiving the questionably implausible storyline the film had two main failings.
Firstly, the female lead never got her kit off, not that the pigeon breasted French bird did anything for me, it’s just it would have made the film less tedious; and secondly, Tom Hanks never died during the filming. Surely if there was a God He’d have looked down on all of His creation and smited Hanks, preferably in a painful way. On second thoughts, maybe God just didn’t want to endure yet another “Hanks” mini-season on TV — which I’m hoping some TV exec would have the called “A load of old Hank”. Stay tuned for some “I’m a TOM HANKER” sudoku puzzles.
This weekend saw the first gathering of the St Mary’s old boys for almost 15 years — anyone who remembers St Mary’s (Radcliffe) and Peter’s/Monica’s (Prestwich) from the 80’s and 90’s are welcome to have a beer with us during our next meeting — which will be announced here before the actual event happens. I’ll also be converting the www.bonkers-in-bury.co.uk website into a forum and offering email redirects for anyone interested.
Posted on Sunday, May 7th, 2006 at 9:01 pm by Philip Devitt
Another weekend is over and we’re steam-rollering into the summer season — it’s not that I hate summer time, far from it, the longer, brighter days are a lot less miserable than the winter equivalent, its just that with the sun comes exhaustingly hot days, sleepless sweaty nights and a new wave of those little buzzing bleeders know as wasps.
There’s nothing worse than waking up to *that* humming noise, and listening intensly to try and figure out where it is and more importantly which way its heading. I know they are smaller than me and that the harm they could do would be short lived, its just a matter of the inconveniance of finding a slipper/newspaper/book and clearing the resultant mess made when its tiny body is rapidly introduced to my weapon of choice and the window.
Of course, wasps aren’t the only creature to come out at summer. I’ve also got to contend with ants, flying ants, arrogant little bleeders that stubbornly try to invade the house every year. Nothing stops ‘em, not bleach, not ant powder, possibly not even molten lava, though I’ve not got any actual lava to test the theory.
Speaking of hot places, the Australian government announced last 
week that they are to allow any holiday workers to apply for up to a years extension to their visa if they spend part of their time working within certain seasonal and agricultural sectors. Full details of the Australian visa extension scheme are available on the BBC’s website.