Spare ribs and crispy duck...

Proper blog block at the moment. Hence, partly, all those quotes, which are not posted to bore you but because I found them interesting. As I've said before, this is my place and if you must insist on dropping by you'll live by my lack of rules.

Went for late lunch yesterday with daughter Danielle, who was celebrating being 20 (late, because she was actually hungover at the alotted time, bless). 20?! Really hard to fathom where all those years went. We had John Prescott's favourite diner - Mr Chu's China Palace in Hull - to ourselves and filled up on copious amounts of rather good fodder. When we'd done we made some sham attempt to walk some of the food off by trotting around the shops across the way but it quickly became clear, as we coated touch screen monitors in PC World with the remnants of spare ribs and crispy duck that lurked on our finger ends, that it wasn't going to do any good. A nice afternoon, anyway, in the company of someone who I am incredibly proud of.

Now? Working on new things. Seeing as the old things...well...I better not get into that.

Two today...

This day is all about Finn, who is two today. The house is full of toys and people and noise and food and laughter and it's bloody brilliant. He was up at 5.45am listening to TalkSport (erm, ok, I picked the station) and headed downstairs at around 6.20am to be amazed by the day ahead of him.

Happy Birthday Finn!..

One today! Wow!

Dip in proceedings...

Last night we went to a Mexican restaurant, to celebrate mother's birthday by eating spicy food. There was an incident, when M found a shard of plastic on her plate of Jalapeno Poppers. She mentioned it to a waiter, who was very apologetic. As he was about to leave, having told us that he would be mentioning it to the manager, he opted to clear some of our plates, and promptly upturned a dish of garlic dip over mother's jacket. It was a piece of comedy genius, only flawed by the following points. 1) M cut the roof of her mouth on said plastic and 2) mother's jacket was damaged. But, that aside, I laughed out loud and really enjoyed this moment, which was funnier than all 79 series of My Family put together. Later, when I had stopped laughing, M's mouth had been cauterized by a piping hot burrito and mother was getting a little tipsy on Mexican cocktails, the manager informed us that he would ensure that all of M's food was free of charge. In return, we promised not to mention his restaurant's name in any subsequent blog post. See, that's all it takes, I can be bought. For a starter and a main course.

Cause for celebration...

Daughter was 18 today, so we celebratated that. Then, Hull FC beat Wakefield to get to the final of the Challenge Cup final. Yay! The final takes place on eldest son's birthday, so, if the birthday coincidence continues, maybe this is the year that the Wembley hoo doo will finally end for the black and whites.

Binary 101010...

As we all know, the answer to Life, the Universe and Everything is 42. It took the computer Deep Thought 7½ million years to compute and check that this was indeed the answer, and Douglas Adams a few minutes staring out of the window to come to the same conclusion. So you can't argue with the answer, it's definitely 42.

Today I am 42.

We still haven't worked out what the question is and, even at my mightily old age, I certainly don't have even 1% of the answers to the big questions that you're supposed to have at your disposal once you've hit this ripe age. No, all I know for sure is that I know nothing.

Like a lot of freaky geeky people that turned to The Hitch Hiker's Guide To To The Galaxy for some comedy relief back at the end of the 1970s, the number 42 has cropped up every now and then as I've lived my life heading towards the big number. It is a number that has induced many a wry smile when I've heard it and the odd tear (I won't go into the details).

So here I am. 42. It feels important. And I still haven't grown up.

Tags: 42, birthday, Douglas Adams

Happy birthday Sam...

Happy birthday to Sam. 12 today. And a big mound of cash to show for it, much of which will be heading the way of Matt Groening if Sam's usual shopping habits are any marker of such things.

And well done Hull FC who, after a scrappy victory over Huddersfield, now advance to a contest with an alarmingly running-into-form Wigan. Busy day at the KC next Saturday, with a Hull City game taking place at 12:30pm and then a quick sweep under the seats before us much nicer rugby lot move for the 7pm kick-off. Not a good day for anyone working behind the bars there, I shouldn't think.

Tags: birthday, Hull FC, KC Stadium, rugby league

Happy birthday to you...

Dad's birthday today. He'd've been listening to jazz, drinking Mackeson Stout and will have started the day by doing a spot of gardening. I spurned the jazz and Mackeson but did actually overhaul the front garden and pruned a rose bush. If you're interested in National Service in Iraq between the years 1951-1953 you can read my dad's ridiculously succinct first hand account of two years of Middle East experiences here.