Oh Yeah, Almost Forgot

Happy New year.

Keep Them Fingers Busy!

Today marks the end of my smoking cessation programme. The last of the patches went on this morning…. I’m now staring down the barrel of spending my much deserved three day weekend enjoying the pleasures of nicotine withdrawal…

Here’s a little something from the first few days of making the acquaintance of my good friend Patches…

… and I’m expecting a similar burst of activity over the next three days…

..Indoor/outdoor distractions for the crazed individual have been prepared, I’ve warned everyone to avoid me and even selected the blanket that I’ll be cowering under if it all gets to be too much (placed in a darkened room, of course).

… it’s been nice knowing you… I may be a completely different person when next we meet.

Come On In – The Cardboard’s Fine!

Some times you wonder where all the Health & Safety fanatics are when stuff like this goes down…

The vista from my shop window includes a great view of the rear end of my local supermarkets loading bay….

Instead of buying an expensive compactor to squish up their contribution to world wide de-forestation they “allow” junior members of staff to mount the adjoining container and leap into the cardboard cage to accommodate MORE cardboard….

… in my capacity as non-involved by-sitter there will be pictures if this does the inevitable and goes horribly wrong.

(or should I report it… Oooo, conflicted!)

Wail While You Wash

Another from the Mrs Axelgrinder archive…. hope that tune doesn’t get stuck in your head… like it did in mine!

Missing Men Department.

This is a public service announcement.

In the busy post Xmas sale season we seem to have accumulated quite a number of husbands, boy friends, partners, other halves and man children in our Missing Men department….

…. and while all of them appear to be content at this point, we’d appreciate it if they were collected before the end of trading today as we certainly don’t want to have to feed, bathe and tuck them in tonight.

…. P.S. They have YOUR credit card.

Should be at the beach!

Clicked this out at the beach before Xmas…. No shells were moved in the making of this image…

No post pic editing required…

…. and considering what the weather is like , I should be out there with my camera again today!

Here we go again

Wow…. yesterday I was going to catch up on all the stuff I was going to post pre-xmas…

Stuff that went by the board ‘cos my MacGuru came round to wish me seasonal well being (Hi Matt) and stayed for four hours re-building my blog from the ground up ‘cos I’ve been offending everyone on the intraweb with my  HUGE  image files, when he should have been out enjoying the sun shine….

Yesterday was off the hook….

Phone call from an ol’ buddy who I haven’t spoken to for twenty-odd years (Hi Chris)…

Drive-by and visit from another ol’ buddy & his wife, who I get to see once a year if they can find a gap in their busy Xmas visit to these fine shores (Hi John & Tania)….

…and everyone else in the world decided it was a good day to shop for records!

Busy!

So here’s a picture for you to look at whilst I try and figure out what all these notes that me and Matt scrawled actually mean (Hi Matt)…

Jingle Bells!

Jingle bells jingle bells jingle all the way…

Jingle bells jingle bells jingle all the way..

Jingle bells jingle bells jingle all the way…

Jingle bells jingle bells jingle all the way…

Jingle bells jingle bells jingle all the way…

I’m dreaming of a white Xmas….. but will have to settle for this file shot of the shop, winter before last, at 4 in the morning!

Be safe folk…. dont excess on tooo many nice things… see you Thur’s….

Have You Made A List?

My Mum has…. and the only thing she hasn’t got sorted yet is that pesky Grateful Dead fan at the bottom of the garden….

…. this list has been rolling along since I was a kid… old diaries from the dark ages (70s), page after page of neat columns, each chore crossed out in what can only be described as “Jersey-College-Neat”… the same script as used by all my Aunts and my God Mother….

Tentaclely Thing

You know how sometimes you get a graphic idea in your head and it HAS to come out…..

…twice…

….thankfully the “tentaclely” period was brief, although the 50s/60s wallpaper inspired patterns are a recurring theme… the second attempt nearly blew a few valves… Drawing till 1 in the morning then getting back to it the next day, only to find that you can’t quite remember which bit of tentacle is attached which…. had to go thru the whole damn thing like a kids activity book maze and number the each bit!…. shoulda taken pics… it looked like paint by numbers!

…er… and its probably worth mentioning that HP Lovecraft mentions Dunedin, NZ in his marvelous historical document “The Call Of Cthulhu”…. something about drums booming in the surrounding hills… was fully expecting the big guy to turn up yesterday…. had a sacrifice picked out and everything!

*sigh*