The back garden was finished today, save for the shed, which is going to be delivered on Monday. It’s looking gorgeous too, as evidenced here and here. The front garden is due to be completed tomorrow, and with half of it done, it’s looking pretty nice. The finished product is going to be great if the back garden is anything to go by. Sam and his crew have done a great job. If anyone in the Sheffield area is looking for some work done on their garden, they could do a lot worse than getting in touch with him. Darnall Garden Services, and ask for Sam.

I’m having my back garden revamped at the moment. Given that in the 3 and a half years of being in the house my garden has steadily sprouted more and more weeds (despite being mown, weedkillered, stomped on, etc), it’s been long past due for some TLC. Acknowledging that I’m the worst gardener in the world, I’ve called in the big guns - a local gardener, Sam, who’s mowed the garden on a few occasions. The plan is to level out the terrible slope in the garden, lay a paved-slab patio area, turf the rest leaving border space, and plonk a 6′ x 4′ shed in the far corner.

Sam and his crew turned up yesterday shortly after I’d left for work, and by the time I got home, they’d completely removed all the weedy turf, dug out the horrible scraggly litter-collecting bushes, pulled out the builder’s crap (leftover bricks from the house build, etc) and laid about 3 tons of soil. The garden still has a bit of a slope due to the unfortunate lie of the land, but it’s most definitely flatter than it was, and any improvement is better than none.

Check out the photo of the original slope in the garden (taken in February 2002 when the house was being built) and the current state of the garden (as of last night when the soil had been put on). Seeing the difference in the colour of the fencing too makes me want to dash out and buy several large tins of wood varnish - it looks terribly weather beaten!

Despite the fact that it’s absolutely chucking it down with rain today, Sam called at around 10am to say that he was at the house and he’d be working on getting the patio slabs down. Can’t wait to see the progress when I get home in a few hours.

Having not had a candled birthday cake for…hm, well over a decade, and knowing that any more candles than 30 would require an asbestos blanket and a portable fire extinguisher and a standby team of firefighters*, and having just seen the picture of Heather’s 30th birthday cake, I suddenly find myself lusting after a similar dangerously be-candled cake myself this September.
People that can make this happen, you know who you are. Ta

* saying that, I wouldn’t mind the standby team of firefighters regardless; uniformed lusciousness compulsory

I know it’s been given poor reviews by a lot of critics, but I’ve got to say I totally loved Fantastic Four. It may not have been up to the blockb(l)uster and awe of the Spiderman or X-Men films (hats off to Raimi and Singer respectively), but given Tim Story’s been a comedy director up to now, he did a great job.

Sure, some of fell a bit flat. Julian McMahon wasn’t given much more to do as Von Doom than ham it up as the stereotypical power hungry megalomaniac, and Jessica Alba’s wardrobe specifications must have been headed “Show as much cleavage as possible!” to try and divert the nit-picking fanboys’ attention.

That criticism aside, Chris Evans (no, not the ginger one) and Michael Chiklis were great as Johnny Storm and Ben Grimm respectively. I particularly loved Johnny Storm’s reaction to being transformed; I mean, come on - if you’re going to be turned into a superhero who can turn into a blazing column of fire, impervious to heat and able to fly, do you immediate don a costume and go about fighting crime and saving the world from the Forces of Evil? Course not. You declare how totally cool it is and go have fun, perhaps pausing along the way to save a cute child about to be engulfed in a ball of flame. Time to settle down and be responsible and fight crime later, right?

Go and see it, don’t take it too seriously (i.e. avoid if you’re a stalwart hardline fan of the comics), and enjoy yourself.
Fantastic.

Ok, where’s the logic in this:
I call up my doctor’s surgery for a prescription. They have two separate numbers, one for appointments and one for prescriptions. Both phones are on the same desk. They answer the appointments line, and tell me to phone the prescriptions line. I phone the prescriptions line, and they tell me to phone back after 10.30am. Why?? They’ve answered the phone, they’re obviously there and physically able to take down the prescription details, so why do I have to wait another half hour just to be within their stupid time frame, especially when they could have taken down the details in the time it took them to tell me they had restricted hours and to phone back? To add to the stupidity, if I’d gone into the doctor’s office in person at 8.30am, they’d have taken my request for a prescription there and then!

I woke up this morning to the sound of a dog barking rather than my evil alarm clock. It wouldn’t stop, and I was particularly annoyed - and surprised. There’s no dogs near me that are that noisy. I dragged myself out of bed and peeked out the curtains…and stared. There were 11 policemen out there, surrounding a neighbouring house, all in bullet proof vests, helmets, and carrying guns - a rarity here in the UK! The barking was coming from a big and evil looking police dog. Me and my housemate watched from my bedroom window as five of the police officers stormed the house. I don’t know whether they were looking for drugs or explosives or something else, but I later heard that an arrest had been made. I’m keeping an eye on the news to see if anything crops up.

Update at 5pm - nothing to do with drugs or terrorists; it was a raid in conjunction with Thames Valley Police regarding possible links to a shooting in High Wycombe. A 27 year old man has been arrested and is being questioned by Thames Valley Police up here in Sheffield.

Got to love the British stoicism and resolve. From the London News Review - “What the fuck do you think you’re doing?“…

After a weekend of news and television pretty much dedicated to coverage of Live8 and related snippets, it’s unlikely there’s many unaware (whether peripherally or in more detail) of the situation in Africa. It’s well known that Africa needs aid, desperately so. Saying that, the mindset of the majority of people is that charitable donations will sort things out, oh yes. I reckon that providing charity, whilst certainly helpful, isn’t going to fix things. After all, Live Aid, Band Aid et al only went so far.

Providing money for Africa is like trying to fill a bucket with a hole in the bottom. You can get water in there, and it sort of works temporarily, but you have to keep topping it up. Until you mend that hole, you’re still going to have the problem. Africa’s hole isn’t just financial, although that is a big part of it, and money does help temporarily. It’s economic, political, medical - and until the focus is on those issues, the country is going to remain desperately in need.

On a semi-related note, looking at financial aid, here’s a fact for you.
It’s estimated that Live Aid raised around £150 million for famine relief.
If the 10 richest people in the world (whose names include Bill Gates, the Sultan of Brunei, and the King of Saudi Arabia) donated just 5 percent of their estimated wealth to famine relief (keeping in mind that Bill Gates once donated around 20 percent of his wealth to charity), the amount raised would be approximately £15 billion - 100 times the amount Live Aid raised.
How’s that for disproportionate wealth?