Stuff Archives

Iron Maiden that is, although I doubt anyone who knows me would think that I was a maiden of any other description. The first concert I went to was Iron Maiden in 1982 to see them on the Number of the Beast tour at Leicester's DeMontfort Hall. My mother was kind enough to take me and one of my friends as we were only wee nippers at the time. Rather fitting that the row in front of us at the concert last Wednesday was occupied by a mother and two young kids (possibly one or both being her sons).

The interesting thing though was the fact that the tour was called “Somewhere Back In time” which featured songs of the past - most of Maiden's greats from the '80s. So what's interesting is that the kids in front of us would not have been born when any of the songs were written. What's pleasing is that a new generation is getting to hear and like the music for the first time ... whilst us old folks rock on in the background.

I have to say, this was an absolutely fantastic gig. I've never been to a bad Iron Maiden gig, but this one was really well put together with a great stage set and accompanying pyrotechnics. And what's more, they played Rhyme of the Ancient Mariner - a song I didn't expect to hear, but was extremely pleased that I did.

It's going to be difficult to tell exactly when this website started as there were bits that were done to prepare and get something going, but today marks the one year anniversary of the domain registration. So I guess today is as good a day as any to celebrate the the fact that this wondrous site has been up and running for a year.

It's quite amazing when you think about it - a whole year without producing anything of any use or interest whatsoever. That's quite difficult to achieve when you think about it. You'd think that from time to time you would accidentally produce something of value.

Many thanks to Mr O for his continued support and completely irrelevant contributions. Unfortunately there is an illness with one of Mr O's family members so we wish him and his family all the best.

Finally, thanks to all of you out there that continue to read and contribute to this site. Here's to both of you. Actually, I'm getting really excited as my mum has decided to take a computer course which means that my audience may go up by 1 (or 50%).

I just got an email from my beloved Leicester City to see if I wanted to take advantage of an early bird discount and buy a season ticket for next year. Hmmm - let me think about that and get back to you.

I just landed at Houston IAH and as I was walking through I saw a sign for the “pet relief area.” The sign (which I should have snapped a photo of with my mobile) had a picture of a dog on it. If it were me, I'd have added the Mr Whippy steaming pile at the back of the dog so that it would be clear what kind of relief was going to be afforded to your pet, but that's just me. Also, my mind did wander briefly to wonder how many pets they actually catered for and whether there had ever been any problems with someone going there with a strange animal. But again, that's just me and it was only a brief thought.

We are in the middle of a mini heatwave here in the Bay Area. Since Wednesday it's been so hot here. Even in the City which is normally a little cooler than the surrounding areas. Hard to explain what this is like for those of you back home in the UK. Basically, each day there's this big fiery ball that rises in the sky called the Sun. This puts out a lot of light and heat. Try and imagine the UK, but a lot brighter, warmer and no rain. Yeah - told you it was difficult, but if you close your eyes and try really hard you might get the picture.

I've had many comments about the posts I made describing the things that were going on whilst I was ill. Generally along the lines of the fact that they were funny and I should keep them up. Kind of got mixed feelings about that as I'm pleased that people found them fun to read, but I'd rather miss out on the whole being ill thing that led to them being created in the first place.

I do, however, feel rather boring at the minute as I've just slipped back into the drudgery of the rat race and am merrily running around on my wheel. The biggest thing being that we are currently in the process of moving house, but there's nothing funny to write about that - the whole thing is rather annoying and really just leads to a lot of time being spent worrying about what could go wrong. Very unproductive, but I don't seem to be able to stop myself doing it.

So back to the illness. Well, I had to go into hospital this morning to inject myself again. They wanted to watch me do it without any guidance to make sure I was OK doing it. Everything went well and I've now graduated from the jab class and have been let back into the big wide world free to prick myself whenever I choose to do so.

Other than that, fairly boring - but I could do with a bit of boring for a while.

This site was named EastBayRag for a number of reasons:

• One of my nicknames is Rag
• Rag is another name for newspaper
• SFRag was already taken as a URL
• We intended to move to the East Bay

Well, it looks like we are finally going to be moving to the East Bay. We have sold our house in the City and have had an offer accepted on a house on the East Bay. To protect the innocent, I've changed the names slightly (but only slightly). We are selling our house to two gentlemen “friends” Well Hung and Two Stroke. We are buying the house from Mr & Mrs Hairy Mary.

It's interesting going through this process in a different country as it's totally different from the UK. The house buying process in the US is much simpler and much quicker than the UK. Basically, each transaction is separate and you don't really get into chains. Also, solicitors aren't involved as it's a pretty standard contract, so once you've made an offer and it's accepted, you're pretty much done barring anything coming up in any of the inspection reports.

What this does mean is that it's almost impossible to organize a move on the same day - i.e. to have the people complete on your house on the same day that you complete on the one you're moving to. What's more, the county we are moving to has made it illegal to do same day title transfers so we wouldn't be able to do this anyway. Apparently the reason for this is so that chains don't fall through and you're guaranteed to sell your house on the intended day. So, we are trying to time it so that we complete on the sale of our house four days before we complete the purchase of the next one. We've put a rent back clause into the contract of the sale of our house so that we can rent it back (at an extortionate amount I might add) for up to four weeks. All going well, we would exercise four days of this and everything will happen as planned.

So what can go wrong? Well, I guess worst case is if Well Hung and Two Stroke fall through for some reason like not being able to get financing. We have a backup offer on the house, but if that fell through as well, we would end up with two houses and two mortgages as we would still be obligated to purchase the one we are buying. The other scenario is that something goes wrong for us and we can't complete with the Hairy Mary's then we would be without a home. The thought of living with Karen, William and two cats in a cardboard box under the freeway doesn't appeal to me very much.

Still, they say that moving is one of the most stressful things ..... hmmm, now to do this week's vote.

The Owl and The Fox didn't go to sea in a beautiful pea green boat. Instead, the owls came down the M1 from Sheffield to Leicester in order to administer a severe beating to the foxes.

I will be gracious enough to say congratulations to my Sheffield Wednesday friends. It looks like it's going down to the wire this year. Good luck next week - maybe we can both stay up, but I'm not holding my breath.

I heard this on the radio this morning. Apparently this is from a training video or people that make training videos on how to speak English from Japanese. The idea being that they act out a situation and then go through repetition in song to force the learning.

It seems as if they put this together specifically for me. All I need to do is reverse engineer it so I can learn the phrase if I'm ever in Japan. See what you think.

(Video has been removed from YouTube due to a copyright claim https://youtu.be/miSADG9yihM)

Seems that an ex-pat Brit pub in Azerbaijan is creating a concern for the locals. The pub is named “The Camel's Toe” and apparently the locals have just found out that this has a double meaning. According to the today.az that is carrying the official word, that double meaning is “clear visible presence of a woman's vulva, as a result of wearing overly tight pants.” Part of the concern is that the Brits were pulling the wool over the eyes of the locals by using British slang.

I'm trying to figure out how they get the translation from British slang. First, there's the use of the word pants which, unless they mean underwear, would be American and not British. But most of all I'm trying to picture the origin of the term - a couple of brickies working on a site and some bird walks by wearing trousers that fit too tight and you can make out her nether region. Did the conversation really go - first brickie “look - there's clear visible presence of a woman's vulva, as a result of wearing overly tight pants.” Second brickie replies “you're right, but that'll never catch on. Say, it looks like a camel's toe - lets call it that.” I think the translation may need a little work.

I guess I can't leave this without saying that the pub is known for the camel toe liquor. But that's only because I'm sad.