I think my cold is getting worse. However, as so many others in the office have a cold too, I think this is appropriate.

A Jelly Baby walks into a bar and starts talking to a Smartie.
After a few beers the Smartie says "Ere, a bunch of us are heading to
that new club, fancy tagging along?"
The Jelly Baby says "No mate, I'm a soft centre, I always end up getting
my head kicked in."
"So", Smartie says. "Don't worry about it, I'm a bit of a hard case,
I'll look after you."
Jelly Baby thinks about it for a minute and says "Fair enough, as long
as you'll look after me", and off they go.
After a few more beers in the club, three Lockets walk in.
As soon as he sees them, Smartie hides under the table.
The Lockets take one look at jelly Baby and start kicking him, breaking
cola bottles over his little jelly head, lumping him with little sugary
chairs, and generally having a laugh.

After a while they get bored and walk out.
Jelly Baby pulls his battered Jelly Baby body over to the table and
wipes up his Jelly Baby blood.
He turns to Smartie and says, "I thought you were going to look after
me."

Aye.." says the Smartie..

"...but those Lockets... they're MENTHOL!!"

Rough

I feel awful. I've felt it coming on for a few days now and it's hit me today. So I'm staying in bed in my favourite PJs and wooly socks, and a hot water bottle.

Hopefully, the sniffle will pass soon, although at the moment I don't think I'll ever be able to leave the house again.

Glove Puppets

Having retired my by now infamous green jumper, I have taken the opportunity of the cold snap to showcase it's replacement, a rather fetching beige number. I'm quite pleased with it, although I will need to get it washed for that Lenor smell I love so much.

Headed out for a curry last night to a great place that does a buffet. It's my idea of heaven. You go in, they give you a table, and then no mucking out waiting to order - you can just go straight up to the buffet and get stuck in. Within 30 seconds of arriving, you can be eating and there is no limit as to how many times you can go back!!! Brilliant! Although in retrospect, perhaps 3 times was a little much... Stoker mentioned that he used to work down the road from the eating establishment for a popular catalogue many years ago. Turns out, he used to be a glove model for them! Who would have guessed it that we had a world famous glove model in our midst. No wonder he gets better service in bars.

Following on from the language discussion last week, we followed it up by Stokers advance French class. Somehow, I can't see "mucky buckets" working very well as a method of thanks.

Row, Row, Row your boat....

I was being picked on last night. Over a pleasant curry with some collegues (and Stoker, who ordered about every side dish available and STILL didn't eat his mushroom pilau, the wuss) the subject turned to what everyone did at University, and if it was actually related to the job we did now. The results were interesting and varied, although they did find my choice very amusing.

Oh, and Stoker .....

Assortissez vos propres issues à bande large !

If that's lost on you, try

¡Clasifique sus propias ediciones de banda ancha!

or finally -

Сортируйте ваши собственные широкополосные вопросы!

Fruity

I've my wife has been out shopping for some new clothes for me. Needless to say I'm looking as sharp as ever. And now the weather has turned cold, I can get my favourite green jumper out again! Brilliant!

In other news, I headed into Worcester to get some odds and ends the other day. Turned out it was market day and they had so much fruit! So I bought some. I think I may change my eating habits and become a fruitarian. There have been some comments about the "fruity" smell in the air, but I think that's just my new aftershave.