Long overdue update - part 4

This is the final part of my big update and covers everything that I didn't cover in the previous 3 updates. If you missed them you can read part 1 here, part 2 here and part 3 here.

I just wanted to mention that Becky who often reads and comments on my blog is on a school trip in the USA. I hope she's having an amazing time and I can't wait to see her photos when she returns :) On Facebook chat earlier in the week I spoke to Catherine and it was great to catch up with her. And very oddly this week I've had a friend request on Facebook from my best friend from primary school, who I've not spoken to in years! I'm not sure I'm ready to accept her as a friend and let her see all my profile and photos etc, but I've been talking to her via email for now. And on Facebook I was shocked by my cousin J's latest status update, which said that she was very happy because her little boy (who is 3 or 4) is going to start XXX College P
rep in September! He's only little! I heard a little while ago that a friend, R, from AYME had been admitted to hospital. I hope she soon feels a lot better and I've been keeping in touch with her via text for now. A great positive I've heard this week is that M (the little girl from Hosp B who was seriously ill with severe rejection just before Christmas) got home a couple of days ago! :D

Last Wed would have been Will's 17th birthday. His dream was always to be able to drive a car, as he loved cars. He would have been able to achieve his dream last Wed if he was still here. It's so sad that he's not :( I keep in touch with his mum.

I'm not sure how much I've mentioned my dad's swimming before. When me and Alf were little mum used to take us swimming a lot and dad would never come along. He always hated swimming. Just after Christmas he started improver swimming lessons at a local swimming pool once a week because he wanted to get a bit fitter. He used to go to the gym but had to stop due to problems with his achilles tendon. Dad could swim, but these helped him improve his technique. He began to love swimming and started to go more and more each week. Now he's going 5/6 days a week! It was costing him a lot in petrol travelling to the local pools (though he did swim for free because he's over 60 now), so has just joined a local members' only swimming pool which is much closer. Although the membership fees are high it works out about the same price as all the petrol was costing him. And with that and eating less he's lost loads of weight and is feeling loads fitter :)

In the post last week I received a lovely letter from Catherine and a knitted reminder of Japan, which looks just like one of the sweets we made when we were there :) I said in my last blog update that mum was knitting me a monkey. He's now finished, what do you think?


And this is a photo of my monkey with another monkey that mum has knitted for Alf for his birthday:
I've shared these photos on Twitter, Facebook and AYME and everyone who has seen them has been very impressed. Lots of people have suggested that mum should enter The K Factor on Harry Hill, so I think she is considering that :)

I've recently bought part of Rosie's birthday present, even though her birthday isn't til May. I feel very organised! :D I can't say any more here though because I know she'll be reading :) And recently the Dr Who books I ordered from the Radio Times arrived in the post. One for me and one for Claire for her birthday in April. I think I'm a bit disappointed as they're not as readable as I expected, but hopefully Claire will like her copy. And I've been thinking about Alf's birthday which is coming up on March 3rd. I've decided that I'm going to give him an IOU for an iPod charger of his own as he currently has to keep borrowing mine. And I now have to make him use it in my bedroom because otherwise he forgets to give it back and then I don't know where it is when I need it, boys! I've had a look at iPod chargers on the Internet but they look so confusing as apparently different ones work with different models of iPods, so an IOU means that Alf chooses it (so it's not my fault if it doesn't work with his iPod!), but I'll pay for it for him.

This week I have read the entire latest issue of the Official Nintendo Magazine, which I subscribe to. I cancelled my subscription to Focus but am currently still receiving magazines as the last payment I paid via direct debit before I cancelled the subscription was one for 3 months. So I've looked at a couple of bits in the latest issue of that. And one of my 3 issues of the Lonely Planet magazine for just £1 came in the post, so I'll see what of that I can read.

I've bought a new game for my Wii called A Boy And His Blob. I've only played on it once so far, but I like it. The animation is fantastic, everything is handrawn and it looks lovely. The controls aren't properly explained though, so that took a little while to get the hang of. I've played on New Super Mario Bros Wii a lot, both with Claire and on my own. I've made quite a lot of progress on it this week though, getting from World 3 to World 6 (there are 8 worlds in total). I went on Mario Kart Wii briefly to add the codes of some of my friends from AYME and then I had a race against some of them online which was good fun, but very tiring!

On my DSi I've played one of my new games, Picross DS, quite a lot as it's a very good puzzle game and is quite addictive :P I've not tried my other new game yet.

I've recently listened to music from Little Boots, The Noisettes and Marina and the Diamonds. I've also found some good Marina and the Diamonds Youtube videos, including a preview of her upcoming album, which I'm very excited about, which you can hear here. And I found some photos of the Taylor Swift concert which I went to back in Nov here.

My spare standing tickets for the Mika concert on the 28th arrived in the post just over a week ago and I'm now trying to sell them. I advertised them on the Mika fan club website, but have only found a potential buyer for one of the three tickets so far. Hopefully I'll find someone who wants them soon. I can't wait til the concert :D Unfortunately though it has recently been announced that Erik Hassle will be Mika's support act. I saw him supporting Little Boots and wasn't very impressed. I found this video online which goes behind the scenes of a Mika concert. I don't know if it was a one off concert though or part of the tour I'm going to see. But it was interesting to watch anyway :)

On TV I watched Marina and the Diamonds performing on Jonathan Ross and Mika performing on Alan Carr Chatty Man. His latest single, Blame It On The Girls, is out now. I hope it charts well on Sun but I have a feeling that it won't. I've just looked at the iTunes chart and it's currently 130, so it's not going to chart on Sun :( And I saw this Mika programme on Channel 4, which me and mum really enjoyed watching :) I also watched some of a concert on 4 Music (I think it was raising awareness of and money for cervical cancer) and liked Pixie Lott's performance. I was disappointed when she announced that before she does her own tour later in the year, she'll be supporting Rihanna on tour first. I hope it's not too long til she tours on her own as I'd love to see her live, but have no interest in seeing Rihanna in concert. You can see Pixie Lott's new video for Gravity here. And I also saw her performing on Cry Me Out and a cover of the Kings of Leon's Use Somebody on Dancing on Ice. Also on the 4 Music concert was La Roux performing Bulletproof. Mum looked at me really puzzled and said "pudding proof?". Hehe :P A couple of years ago I really liked a young Australian singer called Gabriella Cilmi (you might have heard her most famous track - Sweet About Me) and had her album. I liked her because she didn't seem the same as everyone else. I've just seen her new video and think both it and the song are horrible! I've watched quite a bit on the music channels and me and mum enjoyed watching a chart featuring the best selling single from each of the last 30 years. There were some great 80s songs including Madness, Dexy's Midnight Runners, Culture Club and we loved seeing old Spice Girls videos from the 90s :D

Before I watched the Brits tonight I found this round up of all the nominees on the BBC website and some of the 'We say' parts made me laugh. I enjoyed watching the Brits, but thought some parts weren't so good. There were lots of mess ups and the audio muting got annoying as it was cutting out parts of speeches. Peter Kay was a great host though :D

Lily Allen's opening performance was disappointing, although her vocals were strong I thought it just looked a bit of a mess. I didn't get Lady Gaga's performance and think she would have been better doing a song that people would know. And Cheryl Cole's miming was atrocious! I don't like Jay-Z, but I thought Alicia Keys proved that she had a very powerful voice when they performed Empire State of Mind together. I didn't like Dizzee Rascal and Florence's duet, but I don't like either of them usually when they're alone, so wasn't surprised that I didn't like their collaboration.

I wasn't very impressed by most of the winners - Mika didn't win the award he was nominated for (British Male Solo Artist), Taylor Swift didn't win the award she was nominated for (International Breakthrough Act) and Pixie Lott didn't win any of the 3 awards she was nominated for (British Female Solo Artist, British Breakthrough Act and British Single). But I was very happy that Lily Allen won one of the 3 awards she was nominated for - British Female Solo Artist :D And I'm not a Lady Gaga fan, so wasn't very impressed when she won all the 3 awards she was nominated for (International Breakthrough Act - where she beat Taylor Swift, International Album and International Female Solo Artist) although I did expect it. Oasis winning Brits Album of 30 years was also predictable, but the Gallagher chucking the award into the crowd wasn't! JLS winning British Breakthrough Act and British Single were also predictable. I don't understand how Dizzee Rascal won British Male Solo Artist, Jay-Z won International Male Solo Artist and Kasabian won British Group - I can't stand any of them! I'm also not a Florence and the Machine fan and would have preferred Lily Allen to win British Album rather than her. Never mind though. I was happy that Ellie Goulding won the Critic's Choice award as I think she's great and I loved that the award for the best performance of the last 30 years went to the Spice Girls :D

I'm not sure how Robbie Williams won the Outstanding Contribution to Music award. I thought that award should go to someone who had influenced the music industry or made a difference to it somehow, but now I suspect that it is just who makes the most money for the music industry. He is a good performer though and I liked watching his medley. It looked like he was miming, but apparently he was performing live but it was just out of sync. I don't know.

Despite all my moaning I did actually enjoy watching the Brits! :P

Also on TV since my last update I've watched Ready Steady Cook (because it had the actress Joanna Page - who plays Stacey in Gavin and Stacey on it), 2 episodes of Nurse Jackie, 2 episodes of Film 2010, Horizon: Don't Grow Old, 2 episodes of One Born Every Minute on C4, I Hate My Mum (part of the BBC Being Mum Season), Leaving home at 8 (a documentary about young children going to boarding school) and a BBC documentary called Having A Baby To Save My Child about families trying to have another child via IVF to provide a bone marrow transplant for a child they already had who needed one. It was interesting, but I thought the programme was quite unbalanced. It was all about the positives. The negative aspects of having a child to be a bone marrow donor for a sibling weren't even mentioned.

I've not watched much on DVD since my last update. I've watched some of Notting Hill though, which I enjoyed. I need to finish it though :P Claire thought that I might like a TV programme called Coupling (which apparently is like an English version of Friends, but better) so I've rented that but have only watched the first episode so far. Me and mum weren't sure what we thought so are going to give the second episode a try when we get chance. And the other rental DVD I was sent from Tesco was Club 7 - Party Live, so I watched that too. My latest DVD rental is Pixar's Up which I saw in the cinema last year, so I'm looking forward to rewatching that.

As I said in part 2 of my big update, I was planning to go to the cinema today. I pulled a tendon or something in my shoulder though (which may or may not have been due to playing on the Wii yesterday evening) which was very painful this afternoon so we decided not to go. My shoulder is feeling much better now though and me and mum are hoping to get to the cinema to see Valentine's Day another day this week, maybe tomorrow (Tue) :)