By Scottish Keith Stodart

No diaries for the last few days for which I apologies but I have been up to my eyes in it with one thing and another. (Now I know how Mike feels) and I didn’t feel particularly motivated either so that doesn’t help.

What’s been happening in the world according to Scottish Keith, quite a lot really.

My wife is currently away for a weeks holiday in Tenerife with two of her friends so I’m currently holding the fort and watching the kids and dog, my mother actually came down from Scotland on Saturday for a few days to help out as I am working all if this week. Now on theory this may seem the easy way out but I can assure you it’s not. She stays herself so hen she comes to visit it gives her the chance to talk about all the people that have died or are dying in my hometown. It usually goes something like this “You know Mary Stewart that lived up the top of the street, well her sister who emigrated to Canada died suddenly” “Oh is that right mum” (who the hell is Mary Stewart) ” and remember that lad who used to deliver the milk to us in our first house” well his brother in law that moved to Aberdeen was involved in a car crash, he’s OK but the passenger of the other car is in a bad way” “Is that right mum” ” oh yeh, and the old neighbour of your gran has been moved to a nursing home” “Is that right mum?” (Who are these people??)

I know we all will get old eventually but I gotta make sure I don’t end up telling stories like that to my kids, although I probably will.

Well I suppose everybody will be thinking, that because my wife’s away I’ll be out with the lad’s drinking as I’ve a ready made babysitter in my mother, well sorry to disappoint you but I had a really quiet weekend, mainly watching sport. I watched Rangers v Celtic live on TV on Saturday and I went to watch Middlesboro play Chelsea on Sunday (I’m a Chelsea supporter and we won 2 v 1 so I was happy). I have to say football is a bit of rip off; it cost £54 for myself and one of my sons to go to this match, daylight robbery I say.

Last week I met an old business colleague of mine and we went out for a couple of beers and a bite to eat. There a really good tapas bar where I live in Darlington so we went there. For anyone that has been to Tapas bars it’s excellent as you can order lots of different small dishes of food and wash them down with a few drinks. As both he and I like hot food it was deep fried stuffed Jalapenos, stuffed chillis with feta cheese, spicy chicken salsa..you got the message (anyone hungry yet?) all washed down with a few beers , well actually I was drinking vodka and cranberry and my mate was drinking Old Peculiar. O.P. as it’s called is thick black ale brewed by Theakstons in Yorkshire, it’s quite strong and it resembles a pint of treacle. I never saw him next day but with all the chilli and all the garlic we had on top of this stuff then I guess he may have been one to avoid next day.

I started college a couple of weeks ago, one night per week for eleven weeks doing web-page design, it’s an HTML course and you simply write the page using notepad it’s pretty interesting, especially if you’re into hieroglyphics.

Tickets, tickets and more tickets

Get my drift.

I have learned a few things so far but don’t you just hate I.T. guys? They just assume you know everything and go off like the clappers , by the time you’ve caught up there onto something else. I’m going to try and hang in there, as I’m interested in building my own site at some time.

On the music front I’ve been buying a few bits here and there, mainly old stuff that I always wanted but could never find. I use a site called http://www.gemm.com as it says on this site “If you can’t find it here, fuhgeddaboudit!” Try it out you’ll be amazed.

I bought a 45 by a band called the Luds, the songs called Doppelganger and another 45 by The Astronauts, Astronaut E.P, I’d been looking for them for over 20 years and it was great to get them, I also bought a Jim O’Rourke and Mathew Sweet CD.

It simply amazes me the amount of music available via the web now, it’s fantastic, but you gotta watch that you don’t go too overboard and end up spending a fortune.

Mike Randle