Well, first day at work after a two week break…it’s hard getting back into things. Last year I was asked by the local pool team if I’d play for them for one week as they were short a player and didn’t want to drop a game. Anyway, as I wasn’t a registered player, the captain decided to play me as: ‘L.Lister’ Well, I played (and won – both games), and was referred to as ‘Luke Lister’ on the score sheet. Sneaky huh? well, it was hilarious because every time I played a good shot (most of the time of course…) […]

I slept properly last night for the first time in a while – I only woke up at 10.30 this morning. It’s going to be another beautiful day – I should really spend some time getting the garden into shape…I need some hedge clippers. Maybe I’ll leave all that until tomorrow…

This whole week has been tough for me – I can’t imagine what my mum feels like. I can only say that her family has been there – all us kids, and especially her brother John and his wife Joan – without them, I don’t know what we would have done. The funeral is tomorrow – I’ll be in a suit for the first time in years…since the notice went in the local paper, I’ve had quite a few people saying they didn’t realise who my dad was until they read ‘Bike Clinic’ – like I said before, it’s not […]

My dad passed away this morning – I’m going to miss him so much. In the weeks before this, he’d expressed so much interest in computers, contacting family members worldwide etc. My sister told me she’d shown him this site and he was impressed. That means so much to me – something I did, however little, made him proud of me. Everyone he ever met will miss him – he was that kind of man, my family is totally distraught, these next weeks are going to be tough. For 12.5 years he fought Leukaemia without a word of complaint – […]

This last week has been bad. I mean REALLY bad. For years now we (my family) have known that dad is on his way out, but this week, we got the time scale – it’s completely shit. To compound matters, my elder sister was admitted to hospital – she’s been “doing the dad” and hiding it from us all. Everyone seeing this, please just pause for a moment and think of those you love – they’re not always gonna be there. I apologise for nothing upbeat here, but the only thing I can think about is my dad and my […]

Phew! it’s been a warm one today – temperature reached 32 here. It’s hard to concentrate on work when it’s hot and sticky – all I could think about was getting home and having a bath…

As most of you know, I spent some time working in Lebanon in 2004. We were working at Beirut Airport as it had recently opened after the 15 year civil war finally came to a close and they wanted their jacks serviced. At the time, there were work crews on and around the runways repairing damage sustained to them over the years. Today’s news that Israeli shells had hit the runways made me sad – I’m not condoning either side in this, both have rights and wrongs, but my time in Beirut was eye opening – during my childhood, all […]

And so another World Cup draws to a close. I hate to see it go to penalties – someone has to come up with a better way to resolve these games, the golden and silver goal ideas worked for me. I’m gutted France didn’t get their second star – it would have been awesome to see Zidane bow out of football with the ultimate prize – instead he got sent off. No more football. Maybe I’ll have some time to learn more about PHP…