ckn

Report to your nearest GP surgery, inform them that you've just returned from Afghanistan and think you may have PTSD.

Doesn't it make you really glad that Super League is a summer competition?

I now have a mobile phone mast in my house (linky)

My game was called off today, pity it was only called off just before kick-off. Home side wanted to play, away side said the pitch was unsafe meaning the decision was the ref's, he couldn't make his mind up so left it to the last minute when both sides were changed and warming up. The pitch was unsafe because it was rutted heavily from last week's game, the sun facing bits of the ruts had defrosted but the shaded sides were still hard ice meaning that the ground was taking a stud but had far too many sharp icy bits to be anywhere near safe to play on. 70 minutes there, 70 minutes back... ah well, it's better than having to go shopping with the wife.

My wife is off sick today. She thinks that because I'm at home that all I'm doing is messing around on t'interweb () and that I should be her personal servant for the day. It's not as if she has man-flu or anything...

I suppose urbanisation is doing to them what it did to foxes.

I am now a trained "Power of Well-Being" Councillor. New fancy thing for us Parish Councillors that means it's easier to abuse our powers!

The magpies round our way will fly off if I open the window or knock on it but will happily sit in the trees en-masse and make a right racket at the cats. I've found they're bloody useless at getting things from hanging feeders so have gone from openly putting food on uncovered bird tables to covered ones that they can't access. I live right at the edge of the town bordering on the countryside and the jays only come this way 2-3 times a year at most.

Jays are shy birds who rarely come into urban areas. We're very happy for the rare visits our local jays give us. Then we look into the field out back and see about 20+ magpies.

Pigeons rarely come in our garden as they're ungainly birds who struggle getting out of the garden in the time the cat has run from cover. Our feeders and bird bath are all at least 10 feet from cover meaning smaller birds never come close to getting caught. The cats don't seem to bother with small birds but get all starry eyed when one of the chicken-sized pigeons decides to brave the garden. That said, pigeons are fairly harmless, it's the ****ing magpies that are a nuisance with their constant bullying of all other birds. I'd be quite content if the cats took down a few magpies with their bodies left as an "encouragement" to the others to keep away.

Yep. 5 big pots of paint, ready mixed retail boxes. No idea of the colours but I don't think any were too objectionable.

Not only are there colours of paint I've never heard of out there, there are multiple different shades of those colours I've never heard of. For example, "Tuscan Glade" comes in 5 different shades whereas to me it's dull-greeny-gray. Women really need to learn that for men there are only a few colours. Colours should be preferably be primary plus black, white, gray, yellow and brown. And maybe pink and orange on good days. But that's it.

I get a veto. Unfortunately, it's only a veto against things I truly despise, not against things I think look fairly rubbish

I've been told I'm meeting my wife at lunchtime at B&Q where we'll finally decide what paint we're buying for the house.

Why bike seats generally aren't skin coloured:

The latest Transworld Sport programme (accidentally viewed while flicking sport channels) has a section on a pie eating contest in Wigan. All full of controversy over gravy tampering and disputes over ingredients.

Just had our Sky HD box replaced. Power supply died on it, engineer said he was very surprised it had lasted the three years that we've had it as he has no faith in Thomson boxes. Got a new Amstrad one now. Had a callback from the helpdesk asking whether I wanted to buy the insurance at

We've now got very wet roads with slush on them and the temperature is already below zero C. I predict fun driving tomorrow morning.

We had a moderate thaw last night and this morning was the first morning since before Christmas that I've not had to defrost the bird bath. Light sleet/rain now that'll help get rid of the snow from the side roads.

We've had a couple of decent sized segments on local news about helping wildlife in this exceptional winter. Biggest problem is water followed by food. We put out two piles daily, one of nuts, the other seeds (split between the ground and bird feeder table). I usually have to chase the magpies at least two or three times before they get the message that they're greedy fat bullies that aren't really welcome. It usually takes a full kettle of boiling water in the morning to encourage the ice-block that is the bird bath to come loose then a large basin of warm water to refill it and hopefully keep it from freezing for a while. I just put a kettle full of boiling water in the bird bath to get rid of the ice that was building up.

We had our first song thrushes in our garden last week, the gossip must be out that we're de-icing the bird bath every morning and putting out plenty of food. We've also had some moorhens hanging around, again never seen them here before.

Deleted the stuff that was in breach of the General Forum Rules. Specifically: I also deleted the posts quoting and referring to this material. As I asked above, please keep this thread for discussing the WEATHER, it's impacts and generally keep it light-hearted and in keeping with the forum's spirit. If you wish to discuss CLIMATE CHANGE, go here. You can throw around conspiracy theories, paranoia and refusal to accept others' opinions all you want there.

Can you lot please take your climate change stuff to the climate change thread please and leave this one to people talking about the weather? ... On topic again: Self-rolling snowballs

Decent snow now. About 1" of snow in 30 minutes.

No snow here in Ipswich. Not a single flake of snow. Hard frost though, it took three kettles full of water to defrost the bird bath and the garden blackbird was fairly getting snotty about it when I finally got it going to the point where the ice block had detached and could be lifted out. My client cancelled today's work late last night as he didn't think he'd make it into London from deepest Surrey.