So I said to t'old man
"Tomorrow's my last shift for three weeks"
"How's that?" he said " you mean you've put in two days holiday and you don't go back for nearly three weeks"
"Yes" I nodded, "seeing as how one day is a complete working week for me"
"That's grand"  he murmered uninterestingly
"I'm bored" I said  
" can't we do something ?...together...for a change?"
"But you've done lots this year" he retorted
"I know but wouldn't  you like a little break before you have your hernia op later this month?"
"I suppose so " he replied "but it will have to be short haul, somewhere interesting where there is plenty to do and doesn't cost the earth!"
" I know the very place" ...my voice drifted as I disappeared up the stairs to book some flights.

A pair of castanets if you can guess where to

Two years ago I posted this pic taken at Carnival 06, her posterior was very well received and i've been trying to take one to equal it ever since

I don't think i've succeeded this time but I had a jolly good try
You have to appreciate they come in all shapes and sizes
Here you are then the best of legs t**s and bums from Leeds carnival 08

..the final one is for the ladies

I have had a very enjoyable afternoon in Chapeltown Leeds for today was the day of the Carnival. Who needs Notting Hill when when we've got Leeds carnival now in its 41st year.
I got the bus to Leeds and then another to Chapeltown it was funny to see the stragglers from the Leeds music festival in the bus station en route to home.
As one party finishes

another one begins.

Legs and bums next I think

There's really nothing new left to be said about Evita, it is now in it's 30th year!
It is 12 years since I took my mother on a rare visit to the cinema where we saw the film version with Antonio Banderas and Madonna starring. I had never seen the stage show but enjoyed the film so much that I vowed to go see the touring production if it ever came my way.
My chance came yesterday..I had been meaning to visit Whitby all week to enjoy the folk festival but the weather was so miserable that I didn't bother. I bagged a cheap ticket (full house when I got there) and took myself along to the Leeds Grand Theatre for the Saturday matinee of
Evita ..the musical
My fondness for the film remains intact as the show was a delight.
Firstly, the set keeps seamlessly changing with lighting and sound that is nigh on perfect, the show’s many moods were brought together beautifully. The performers were all well suited to their parts with fine singing and dancing all the way through.
Seamus Cullen, the curly-haired finalist of last year’s 'Any Dream Will Do' was billed as 'Che' but as is often the way with matinee shows we had the understudy for this performance and a good performance he put in too. Mark Heenehan played an understated Peron but it was Louise Dearman who outshone them all.
She was emotional and beautiful, when she sang 'Don’t Cry For Me Argentina' the audience were awe struck and apart from the old lady who couldn't stop coughing ...nobody made a murmer.
So all in all yesterday was a good day and the sun shone too.

The building site next door has had a huge amount of bricks and sand delivered.
They arrived in a huge builders supply wagon which had about ten gigantic wheels roaring down the lane and finally coming to rest on the grass verge which adjoins the tarmac pavement, yes the pavement that t'old man has so far successfully managed to keep wagons and skips from parking on.
Needless to say the wagon churned the turf up by about a foot deep and left tyre ridges for the whole length of the verge.
T'old man went ballistic as there is space in front of the neighbours house to offload deliveries where they could have quite easily parked.
He phoned up the council to try to take some preventative measures (i.e place cones in front of it) to minimise the risk of the whole pavement looking like a bomb has dropped on it but to no avail, the advice given was that we should wait until the next delivery and capture them red-handed by taking video footage of any destruction of the verges...err..I don't think so, it could be days
Prior to this, in the course of the builders starting the 'Groundworks' for the extension they somehow managed to cause a blockage in the sewer which runs across the back gardens between the houses. It took them two days to sort it out and in the mean-time our man hole cover was off in order to moniter the toilet waste water level .
Of course, all I could think about was that rats live in sewers and I imagined that there would be scores of them climbing out and invading the house
all in all it has been a crap couple of days so I won't bore you any more ..instead I will leave you with a joke that was e-mailed to me today

Last night I went out to a new Indian restaurant in town with my two favourite girls Bella and Lulu.
The food was excellent and the company was good.
My daughters don't see each other very often so as I had been working all day and was a little tired it was nice and easy for me simply to sit alongside them nodding wisely and throwing in a few choice sentences here and there. There was laughter, smiles and the talk was about jobs, partners, holidays etc.
At the end of the meal coffee was ordered then simultaneously the girls picked up their sachets of sugar and handed them to me.
"Here you are mum, we know you still collect them"
I laughed  "What's this"
Bella replied "every time I go into a cafe and get given sugar I think to myself "Hmmm..pity mum's not here she'd want these"  
Is it just me?...It's not that I can't afford to buy a bag of sugar but I haven't bought any for the last twelve years...admittedly we don't use sugar at home, only for visitors and I always have a good supply of sachets.
 I don't save them, I use them as and when needed, so as I placed these new sachets in the jar I was bemused to see that there are still two from Cairo, some from Portugal and loads from Spain nestled in there

 my sugars

So please tell me i'm not alone in my compulsion never to leave a sachet of sugar on a cafe table where-ever I am.

How many hernia patients does it take to screw in a light bulb?
None, They shouldn't be stretching. ...

It was my Sunday to work in the bakery today which follows that last week was my Greeting shift. T'old man is still bemused that a company will employ some-one for six hours a week on a rolling rota involving two departments. t does seem a bit daft but from their perspective I think they would rather keep us "oldies" on the books with the idea that we might co-operate and work overtime in busy periods. I would have left the job years ago but they have been so accommodating with the contract that there has been no need to leave..I simply look at it as a way of meeting and having a chat with a few friends
Today there was a couple of new starters in the bakery..one is a young lad from Barnsley who is studying economics at Uni, he's a personable enough lad who has an old head on him, not at all like the young bakers who have the radio blasting away while they're baking..all very well until the volume levels have reached such heights that it is hard to converse with custumers at the bakery front
Of course when I ask them to turn the volume down i'm just an old fuddy duddy and a spoil sport..'til that is until I tell them what I was doing at their age........they're well impressed when I tell them I saw the Rolling stones '69 concert in Hyde Park and Bob Dylan in the same year at the IOW and how I was going to follow the overland Hippie trail but ran out of money in Malaga and had to be repatriated
Anyway as it happens we manage to manouvre our way through the shift quite nicely with no burnt bread and reasonably full shelves.

Builder's fashion range ------------ Just filling in the cracks.

It's great to see  Welshceltgirl  and  Pompadour  blogging again after lengthy periods of absence.

Following on from my earlier post.

Well, how far have we got today ?
I managed to prepare the onion, peppers, salad etc. for tea as i'm making a pasta dish. I put some washing in the machine then due to being engrossed in what the builders next door were doing I forgot to hang them out..done it now but i've missed a good drying day so I hope it doesn't rain for a few hours yet!
The skip has arrived and I nearly had palpitations as it seemed as if they were going to plonk it down on the recently tarmacced area outside our window, t'old man wouldn't have been pleased as it took him months of haranguing the council to repair the damage caused by the utility companies ..but no they have put it on the (what was once)a grassed verged area in front of next door.
They are making headway with the demolition; it looked a bit dodgy for a while but so far the sat dish and shed are still unscathed.

They would have to choose today to demolish next doors garage..wouldn't they.
T'old man's got a long standing appointment at the hospital and the neighbours have conveniently disappeared out, so it's up to me to make sure the builders (one of whom looks like Andy Capp and the other like a new age traveller complete with earrings and tattoos) don't bring our satellite dish down or uproot the bushes at the back.
I've just been out and pruned the climbing roses at the back just in time as I can now hear the machinery at work..EEK..I daren't look.

Back later..maybe with pics of the destruction!

It has been said that Communal showers can be liberating, and they can help build people's confidence.
Well, i'm not too sure about that but my abiding memory at school was of trying to avoid having one as often as possible after the PE lesson at school.
I wasn't often successful though as the female PE teacher would try to ensure we all washed down without exception (hygiene and all that y'know), so I would dash in and dash straight out again and hope that no-one would notice that I was somewhat under-developed compared with some of the other girls in my class.
As the years went by and when I was in my prime I overcame my inhibitions and looked forward to my after gym showers and sessions in the saunas, positively revelling in them.
Now of course being of an age when it doesn't really matter that one might be carrying an extra pound stone or two and have a few saggy bits I didn't think twice about using the communal showers at the folk festival, I hasten to add that if they were mixed sex showers, like I have heard some places have, then I would feel different.
Fortunately the ones I used at Warwick were for females only and although there were no shower curtains the water was hot and there was a large changing area.
So there we all were, teenagers, oldies, young mum's and their bemused children all stark naked and together in the noble cause of washing away the camping blues!...no problems there then.

Yep, Athlete's foot ....flamin' well hate it ....grrrrr....

It's Yorkshire day.
Yorkshire Day was started in 1975 to restore pride in a county undermined by the loss of its traditional industries.
It falls on 1 August to mark the date in 1759 when soldiers from Yorkshire regiments placed white roses alongside fallen comrades on the battlefield of Minden in Germany.
Since its inception, Yorkshire Day has grown in popularity and each year there is a Civic gathering convened by the Yorkshire Society of Lord Mayors, Mayors and other Civic Heads from across the county. Many Cities, towns, and villages in the county also organise events to mark the day with many Yorkshire traditions taking place including Long Sword Dancing, eating Yorkshire Puddings and welly wanging! Yorkshire Day is also the day when many Yorkshire men and women proudly wear the county's emblem of a white rose in their lapel.

On Ilkla Moor Baht 'at (Standard English: On Ilkley Moor without a hat) is a popular folk song from Yorkshire, England. It is sung in the Yorkshire dialect, and is considered the unofficial anthem of the county. According to tradition, the words were composed by members of a Halifax church choir during an outing to Ilkley Moor near Ilkley, West Yorkshire.

I have posted a Spinner's version of this song on my isadoraplays blog, but did you know that someone has written a rival song to oust this classic from its position as the Yorkshire anthem?
Brothers Ian and Paul Wills, of Meanwood, are hoping that their song 'Yorkshire' – an upbeat, feelgood rocker which extols the proud virtues of our county – will be adopted as the White Rose's No 1 anthem for Yorkshire Day on August 1.

Yorkshire
by Ian Wills of The Loose Chippings

The County of the White Rose is where I live,
It's got so much to offer, got so much to give,
With skies of blue and fields of green,
It's as real as it gets but it feels like a dream,
Unspoilt beauty is all around me.
So easy to come by such a pleasure to see,
I sit up on the Chevin I'm drinking a crate,
I'm so far from the anger, so far from the hate.

Chorus:

I won't be wearing a white rose in my lapel today but I s'pose that t'old man will herald the day in fine style with a pint or two of Yorkshire's finest Tetley's bitter

and as for me a cup of Yorkshire tea
with a slice of fruit tea loaf will do nicely thanks

Have a nice day.