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Most of my friends in Colchester are into rugby in a big way. Now, unlike football, I don’t mind rugby and they’ve slowly been teaching me the rules (still got a long way to go on that one). Anyway, since they all go out sporting their countries rugby tops (we’ve got English, Australian and South African contingents among my friends) I decided I would join in. That said quite a few football fans also tend to wear England rugby tops during the world cup and to be honest their behavior is despicable. Rather than possibly get lumped in with that crowd I’ve gone out on a limb and asked my dad to get me a Bajan Blues (thats the Barbados nation team… and no, I didn’t realise they had one either ) top. Now I can go to games wearing a rugby top and I don’t have to worry about getting grief off anyone. It’s not like we’re† going to win anything is it?

†My father was born in Barbados and most of his family still live there so I can, and do, claim Bajan heritage and colonial roots.

Go out, get one (or more) of these, burn them in your house. The smell gorgeous. Seriously, my place smells good enough to eat at the moment. Going to have to get some ginger cake if I’m going to continue burning them though since every time I walk into the living room I think “Oooh, I really fancy some ginger cake.” Thanks to Bathgirl who got them as a house warming present for me.

So I’ve been after a bread bin for a while now, however, me being me, I’m picky and it had to be just right. I was heading up to Norwich to have a pootle round John Lewis and spend some time with my parents so I figured I would probably find something then. I was right. In a lovely little [well, quite large actually] kitchen shop in Holt I found what I was after. I didn’t realise it was what I wanted until after I saw it but I knew it was just right. Sale price £23.99 which wasn’t too bad.

Given the amount of weight I was carrying back from Norwich (I also had a marble chopping board) I didn’t get everything I wanted. I also forgot my John Lewis vouchers so I figured I’d toddle up another weekend and get the rest of the stuff.  I figured I could have a look in Dunelm when I went food shopping after I got home (it’s right next to the supermarket) to see if I could find any of the other bits I wanted and while searching for my elusive perfect sugar bowl I discovered my bread box. For £19.99. Arse

…or, if you’re going to be really picky, my flat. Anyway, I had my camera out today and thought I’d take a few photos of the house for people to see. Few things to note, the odd angles are the wide angle lens I used to get the shots, my walls are all straight and parallel Also this is actually how I live (just ask anyone who’s been to visit), I haven’t been through and tidied up (although the cleaners had been since I was last in), I came home, unpacked, put out the new stuff I bought over the weekend, grabbed the camera and wondered about. You may call it anal, but I like living in a tidy house. Oh, usually there is a clothes horse with washing on it in the main bathroom (running joke with people who visit). Since the cleaners came on Friday I’d put the clothes horse away. It’s back up again now

OK, so, you come in through the front door into the hallway. With the exception of the en-suite you get to all the rooms from the hallway:

In the first photo the two doors on the left are to the master bedroom and livingroom. The door at the end is the spare bedroom, the far door on the right is to the main bathroom and you can just see the kitchen door on the near right. In the second photo the front door is at the end, bathroom and kitchen doors on the left and living room, bedroom, closet and airing cupboard on the right. The two bedroom doors, the living room door and the kitchen door tend to be kept propped open to get some air in the house. Not a great photo but the wooden thing on the wall in the hall is a display cabinet my step dad made for me many years ago. I’ve got some Myth and Magic figures in there, some Warhammer figures and some wooded, hand carved chess pieces from Nigeria.

As you come in the first door on the right is the kitchen. I would have designed things slightly differently if I’d had a choice, but I didn’t. It’s not a bad layout but I would have put a thin, high cupboard above the sink, made the tall end cupboard wider and the space for the fridge smaller (it’s a full size space for a small sized fridge). I’d also have picked a different hob and tiled it. Since the kitchen itself isn’t bad I think all I’ll end up doing is replacing the hob and getting it tiled.

The butchers block on wheels is great. It gives me more work surface to use and I can move it out of the way when I need to get into the bottom part of the tall cupboard, of if I need to get into the washing machine. I tend to do all my food preparation on the butchers block looking out of the window. The work surfaces either side of the hob are taken up with toaster, kettle, cooking oils and I rest my cooking utensils on the space that’s left when I am cooking. On the sink side the door covers a lot of the work surface (plus I’ve got a microwave there), and I tend to put stuff to be washed on the other side so having a clear space to work on is ideal. The other cool thing about the kitchen is the cooker hood which you just pull out and it turns the extractor fan and lights on

Next door on the right is the main bathroom. I tend to use this for drying washing and (apart from every other Friday when the cleaners come) there is generally washing hung up on one or two clothes horses. I don’t do baths so I haven’t used it yet. Others have though Guests get their own cotton towels and matching dressing gowns. If you’ve not bought shampoo, conditioner and soap then there is Molten Brown stuff provided. Just like in a hotel, if you nick any of this stuff I charge you through the nose for it

Oh, those are rubber duckies on the window. They’re iDucks and they light up when they’re in water.

Next round (the door at the end of the corridor when you come in) is the guest bedroom. This has my slobbing sofa in it which also turns into a double bed. The computer desk is temporary and I will replace it with a nicer one. The idea is that the 30″ monitor will be more central and it can be used as a TV when we’re using the slobbing sofa. It may be a few months before this comes to fruition.

The huge wardrobes in that room are not for clothes, that’s where I’ve hidden all my stuff to keep the house clean Oh, and that is a Fast Aeron chair. It’s wonderfully comfortable, and very expensive. If you do stay round please don’t sit in it, it’s set up for me. Also there is a perfectly serviceable towel rail in the bathroom so don’t hang towels over the chair

The spare room has a balcony which overlooks… the car park the balcony has a couple of chairs on it and the remains of my garden. If we bear in mind that I had a slightly larger garden before you’ll understand why I have a bird bath.

If I’m honest, I don’t use the balcony all that much, but it’s nice to have somewhere to go sit in the sun if it’s a warm day. Usually it’s just used by my friends who want to have a cigarette. Be warned, on a hot day the balcony gets very warm so wear shoes

Moving round the furtherst door on the left when you come in is the living room. The rear half of the room is the dining area where I can entertain up to 4 guests. I eat all my meals at the table but I can see the TV from it so I’m not being all that civilized. During the summer the juliet balcony doors are usually open to let air in. The other half of the room is what I refer to as my ‘cinema room’. Two reclining seats slap bang in front of a 46″ HD TV. People claim it’s too close to the TV but because it’s an HD set you can sit quite close to it without your eyes hurting. I spend a lot of my time sat on that sofa watching TV, films and playing games on my games consoles. The right hand side of the room is dominated by my large book shelf. Only 3/8th of the self is actually used for books, 1/4 is for CD’s, DVD’s and games, and I also have my alcohol stock in it (I don’t drink, but guests do).

The feature piece of the room is the Japanese table. It lacks the bonsai tree (I killed my last one, but I have another, fake,one being delivered to me) but it does have the nice bits of glass, many of my candles (which I need to move as I’ve just noticed the cleaners didn’t put the white ones back properly) and my two real swords. There are actually 6 swords in this room, 2 real, 2 replica and 2 wooden ones.

The last door that leads to a room leads to the master bedroom. Not much to see in here as all the clothes are put away and I really just sleep and get changed in this room. I do have my two pieces of art up here and a few more swords. We can ignore the two fakes on the big chest of drawers, they’re not great, however, I also have my training sword in this room which is actually my favorite one (despite, or perhaps because of, its lack of sharpness).

The keen eyed among you will have spotted soft toys . The bear is almost as old as I am and is wearing a pair of dungerese with a T on them made by my mother many years ago. My brother and I also had a pair with a D on them (for Dom and Dan).

The door in the second photo leads to the en-suite. For an en-suite it’s quite large and it has the best shower I’ve ever owned in it. It almost makes 5am bearable

So there you go, a guided tour of my flat I still need to get my photos printed and hung on the walls (I’ll take a selection from here) and some nice lights, but it’s pretty much all there.

Bluesoup and I have met up a couple of times to talk cameras. I thought I’d share a few of the photos of me she took:

Which ones do we like best (answers in the comments please)?

Every morning I wake up, throw my duvet back and get out of bed. The resulting bed looks like this:

Once I’ve had a shower I then make my bed, basically sorting the duvet out and folding it properly, thusly:

Leaving the bed like this lets it cool down properly and airs the sheets. It would seem my cleaners don’t feel the same way about bed making as, on days when they’ve been, I generally come home to find my bed like this:

OK, so I’ve slung a bag on these when I came in so it’s a bit more wrinkly than I found it but I just find it amusing that they don’t like leaving it how they found it. It’s not like I leave it in a state

[big booming voice] “One if four women misread a pregnancy test…”, cue an advert for a pregency test with a ‘digital display’ and the ‘result in words’.  do we really need this? Are 1 in 4 women really that stupid? I find it hard to believe, even if it did used to be ‘13 red bars, 5 blue ones and a half yellow one for pregnant, 1 green bar to shout at your husband for no apparent reason’. You read the instructions, look at the result and work it out, surely? If the laydeez would like to comment I’d be most intrigued to find out of any of them would place themselves in the lower 25% quartile, or if my entire female readership is in the upper 75% quartile.

Behold the following URLS:

http://www.britmilfit.com/ 

http://www.penisland.net/ 

If you, like me, were worried about Brit MILF It or Penis Land don’t be. Both sites are very much safe for work

Well I fear some people are going to have very… slow starts to their 2008 given the state they were in I met another one of the people who lives in my block (who also, it turns out used to run the pub I was in) plus a whole gamut of other people that probably wont remember who I am given they were all rather swayingly refreshed at the time Once the Hole In The Wall closed we then moved of for a [rather bad if I'm honest] kebab while trying to keep people upright, then off for a swift drink in one of the other pubs before I toddled off home in search of sleep. I’m now watching high definition snakes killing people on a high definition plane while contemplating what to do with the rest of my day.