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Look! It’s so cool. Pile of socks, which before would involve looking closely at each one, checking the top, the sole, the shade just to try to match it. No I match the colours (and they still stand out from my gym socks). Then when they go back in the drawer I know what order to put them in so they all get worn in rotation and wear at the same rate. How cool is that?

And yes, I’m brutally aware that I need to get laid.

On the morning of Friday the 22nd of February at 0930 zulu a specialist crack shopping unit was dispatched to Colchester Town center. Primary targets were Marks and Spencer, Next and Gap. Free Spirit, BHS and Debenhams were also identified as secondary targets.

These strikes were precision guided using the latest in handheld shopping technology allowing for specific, surgical strikes and minimising collateral overspend.

At 1230 zulu, coupled with elements purchased during the morning raids Operation Sock was officially launched. Initial reports showed that all members of the previous Underwear Regime, from both the Sock and Boxers faction were captured or eliminated. Undesirable elements from other radical clothing factions were also targeted.

By 1300 zulu new, friendly elements had been installed in the Underwear Drawer. A blue on blue incident Marks and Spencer meant Operation Sock had to be hastely aborted due to the incorrect size being aquired. Less militant members of the old Sock Regime were reinstated temporarily under heavy sanctions including an imbargo on entry to the Laundry Basket or Washing Machine.

Hostilites had ceased by 1330 zulu. No coalition casualties were reported, however in some areas it was impossible to completely overthrow the old regimes so peace keeping forces were installed. This was most prevalent in the areas of Short Sleeved Work Tops.

On Sunday the 24th of Febuary at 1400 zulu the crack shopping unit struck at the heart of London reporting sucess in Marks and Spencer and John Lewis. Results from Gap were dissapointing, however no casualties were sustained and the operation was declared a sucess. An investigation is currently underway regarding gap as it appears initial reports on the prevalence of Mens Work Trousers (WMT’s) was over exagerated.

The Interim Sock Government was officially retired at 1600 zulu and Operation Sock was declared a success.

The new socks purchased feature coloured toes and heels. This allows for fair and easy rotation of socks, minimising excessive washing of any one pair and aids in pairing of correct partners should they be separated. The gains for the Dom Empire cannot be overstated.

It should be noted that the existing arsenal of Work Trousers has been retained, with the exception of one damaged pair that has been retired. These have been augmented with three more ‘Combat‘ class trousers bringing the total Casual fleet to six. The Dom Empire still has plans to further incease the Work Trousers fleet by two, or to invest in two Smart Combat or Smart Cargo class trousers which can be used in a multi-role capabilty. This is required to defend ourselves from the WMT threat from rogue states.

The following intelligence photograph has been declassified. Note the incorrect size of the socks. Due to the sensitive nature of the items and their classification as ‘combatants‘ they are being held in a secure detention facility rather than being passed to a charitable group.

Finally, there have been rumours of a covert black op being operated by the Dom Empire in the past 24 hours. Details are classified but I can confirm that Operation Wind Up You Lot has been a massive success. Sorry Bathgirl

I’ve had just about all I can stand with this cold. As we know, given my lack of cocopops I have been trying to carpet bomb the thing into submission with a vast array of pills which has worked to a limited extent but is not the worlds best idea. So we’re stepping it up a gear. Behold, my new medication regime (thanks to Blue for the idea):

Die cold, Die!

(And, yes Mother, I am aware you will disapprove, but… tough )

So Pinky mentioned on her blog that she was after some necklaces and asked for the men reading the blog to buy them. Now, we know she’s not single (she’s moving to Spain with her bloke ) but basically we’re that desperate to get women to talk to us (my excuse and I’m sticking to it) that I took her up on her request and called her bluff. Well, you can see in the comments how it went. Some (not many) quids and 24 hours later and Miss P Jellybaby (as we were not quite on first name terms yet) got her nice necklace. I promptly forgot about it (some sort of problem with becoming a drooling idiot over a girl over the weekend or something like that).

Anyway, today as I was about to tuck into my [free] banana I got a call from reception. Apparently some cakes were being delivered for me. My first thought was perhaps this girl from the weekend had changed her mind, had tracked me down and was buying me cakey goodness as a precursor to jumping me then asking me to marry her, then I realised this is planet earth, muttered something about Bathgirl buying me too much stuff and toddled off to claim my cakes.

Of course, once I got to reception and discovered it was cupcakes I suddenly remembered my random necklace purchase and twigged it was Pinky saying thank you. The card confirmed it (and put us on first name terms… well, I now know her first name, its tough if she doesn’t want me to use it when I email her ). My banana was promptly forgotten about and cakey goodness was descended upon as a starving man descends on his first meal in days. Cup of tea washed it down nicely.

Pinky, we salute you

I love Jif Lemon Day. There was a time, a dark evil time, when my mother kept forgetting that it was Jif Lemon Day and we would be without pancakes. Obviously this wouldn’t do so I went and did the only thing I could, learn how to make the bloody things myself. I shall now impart that knowledge so that others may partake, even if they’ve lost or never had it. Note, the knife block shown in this article is not required for the preparation of pancakes and is only included as it lives there. 

Step 1: The Preparation

You will need the following: A mixing bowl and a spoon

The following are useful: a small bowl (in extremis you can just measure direct into the mixing bowl), a sieve (can do without but you’re going to have lumps no matter how careful you are), scales (although it is possible to do without them), a whisk (you can just use a spoon, or, if you’ve got one a hand held whizzy whisk), a measuring jug (this is actually used for pouring so if you don’t have one you can just decant from the mixing bowl).

For every 3-4 pancakes you’ll also need:

4oz flour
1oz sugar (you can reduce this if you’re on a diet or want savory pancakes)
1/4pt of milk (I tend to go by consitency rather than a fixed amount)
1 egg

Place the small bowl on the scales, the sieve in the bowl and zero the scales. Measure out 4oz of flour (4 heaped tablespoons if you’re doing this by eye). Sieve the flour into the small bowl, then sieve the flour into the mixing bowl making sure the flour gets lots of air (basically hold the sieve up, but be careful not to throw flour all over the place. Repeat with the sugar, although that only needs to be single sieved into the mixing bowl and doesn’t need air.

Take the egg, place it into the mixture making an indentation, then break the egg into hole. Now pick out all the bits of eggshell. Add a splash of milk.

Break the egg yolk and start mixing the dry ingredients with the wet ingredients slowly from the center with a spoon. As the consistency gets stiffer add a little more milk. Once you’ve got everything mixed together move to the whisk (if you’ve got one), adding more milk until you have the desired consistency. This should be slightly thinner than shampoo Too thick isn’t a problem, you just end up with American style pancakes, too thin is a disaster. Go easy. Decant into the measuring jug. If you have an uberwhisk now is the time to go mental with it and get the mixture nice and smooth. I also use this time to fine tune the mixture adding the last bits of milk. Leave to stand.

 Step 2: The Standing

This step is often ignored (especially by men) but is vital to effective preparation. You will need a washing up bowl (or just a sink at a push), washing up liquid and some form of sponge or cloth.

Apply a small squirt of washing up liquid to the washing up bowl (or direct into the sink) and fill with hot water. You should end up with a nice foam on the top. Take all dirty items and using the sponge or cloth liberally apply the soapy hot water to all parts of the dirty items. If you start with glassware first, then in order of how heavily soiled the items are it keeps the water cleaner for longer and stops streaks on the glassware. Only wash one item at a time. Putting too much into the bowl just makes life awkward. Feel free to add any other dirty items that happen to be about, you’ll see I’ve throw a few into the mix just to spice things up. If the water is still hot when you’re done then keep it, otherwise sling it, but you’ll need to prepare a fresh batch in a little bit.

Step 3: The Cooking

Ah, the fun bit. You will need a pancake griddle and griddle cloth (or if you must a frying pan and some kitchen roll), some from of spatula thing, oil, some kitchen roll a plate to put the pancakes on and a clean tea towel (men, if you do not have a washing fairy, or your washing fairy is on strike, please refer to the washing machine to procure a clean tea towel. A picture of a washing machine is provided for reference but instructions on its use are beyond the scope of this article).

Apply a small amount of oil to a folded square of kitchen roll. Oil the griddle (or pan… actually, no. Put the pan away and go buy a bloody griddle. Philistine. And get a griddle cloth while you’re at it, you’ll ruin it otherwise.) by wiping with the oiled kitchen roll. Depending on the griddle you may need to repeat this every pancake or every other pancake. Heat the griddle over a medium heat.

Pour a small amount of batter into the center of the griddle then pick the griddle up and tip it so the batter spreads evenly. If you feel the need to use some kind of wooden stick thing to spread the batter very evenly and thinly then sod off back to France. These are pancakes, not crepes! After a minute or so you’ll be able to run the spatula thing round the edge of the griddle gently teasing up the pancake. Toss the pancake (if you have to turn it over using the spatula thing pack up now and go get some McDonald’s or something. Useless!)

Once your pancakes are done decant them onto a plate with the tea towel on it. Fold the tea towel over the top of the pancake to keep it warm while you make some more. If you have others round they may well want to tuck in straight away. Depending on your temperament you may allow this, or you may take any number of the knives from the knife block and stab the greedy gits to death. If you do go for the former option you will need to have sorted the next section before attempting the cooking. Note, the once the last pancake is poured you can wash the measuring jug while it’s cooking on one side. Once the pancake is flipped the spatula thingy can also be washed while it’s cooking on the other side. Wipe the griddle down with the griddle cloth. If you put it anywhere near a washing up bowl I’ll beat you to death with it. In fact, you don’t touch my griddle. Ever. Got that? Excellent. Leave it to cool.

Step 4: The Serving 

You can just taste them! You will need: A plate and cutlery for each person involved, toppings of your choice. I’ve gone for butter and honey, but tuna mayo is good for savory pancakes and sugar and lemon juice for plain pancakes. My personal preference it to eat at the table (and yes, I do actually eat at the table every night, and now I have candle lit dinners with flowers every night… would be nice to have someone to share it with, but thats drifting from the point a bit) so lets lay that properly.

Step 5: The Eating 

Apply the toppings of your choice, then roll the pancake up. Using a knife and fork (because, lets face it, we’re not chimpanzees) cut off a section at a time and eat. Yummy.

Step  6: The Clearing Away

People so often skip this step (again, it’s often the men) but it doesn’t take long and polishes off the night.  Using your [possibly newly acquired] washing up skills wash up the plates, cutlery and other sundries. Put the toppings away and, if it’s cool enough, the griddle back where it lives (bottom drawer… No, under the tea towels… and don’t just throw them back in). The tea towel and griddle cloth can be put in the washing basket (you do have one don’t you?). Any extra mats or trivets on the table can also be cleared, but you may want to leave the candle if you’re going to continue using the room that night. Empty the washing bowl, wipe down the surfaces and you’re all set. Wasn’t that hard was it?

I do pancakes for people on request, you just need to ask and we can organise a mutual time for you to come round. Obviously the cuter and singler (is that a cromulent word?) you are the higher priority you’ll get over other things I may want to do. For example, there is a certain girl I’d ditch my own parents for (sorry ).

I was made at 4:55pm on a Friday afternoon. How do I know this? Well, I’m very badly put together with poor wiring, dodgy plumbing and extra bits just thrown in willy nilly. So it’s not as bad as some people (my dad has a carrier bag full of drugs to keep him going) but this was my breakfast this morning (photo fuzzy due to crap camera on iPhone, it not coping well with macro mode and me not wanting to advertise the exact drugs I’m all to all and sundry ). I’ve cheated slightly as I have a cold today, but then again the pill count would be up by 2 if I had stones (with the wussy pain killers being replaced by serious ones) and by 3 if I had a full on kidney infection. The sodding great multivitamin pill gets taken first, the rest are just thrown down my throat in one handfull.

Must admit, it reminds me of a line from Scrubs when J.D. asks Dr. Cox about the correct dose of Tylenol to give a patient: “It’s Tylenol! Regular strength Tylenol! Take a handful, throw it at the patient, whatever sticks is the correct dose.”

If you get a package at work and you don’t want people asking you what it is tell them it’s a butt plug. This stops all lines of inquiry dead. Incidentally, I noticed that my bandwidth usage had shot up and I was getting a lot of hits from Craigs List.  Turns out someone was pulling one of my images from this server to go in their posts. This has now been replaced with a picture of a butt plug and I’ve updated the post to use a renamed version of the proper picture. Be warned, steal my bandwidth and get butt plugs

For those who are interested here is the original image and here [possibly NSFW] is the new image that will now show up everywhere all over this guys posts

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.

…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.