Erasure Radio!! Radio!! Tour

We’re going to see Erasure!

They were one of those 80s pop bands that Debs and I both loved back in the day, and we still listen to them pretty regularly now, so when the Radio!! Radio!! Tour was announced we couldn’t really let it pass us by.

We’re seeing them on Saturday 8 May 2027 at the first direct bank arena in Leeds, which also gives us the perfect excuse for a nice meal at Trinity Kitchen beforehand.

The timing couldn’t be much better either, as it’s Debs’ birthday the day before, so it should make for a cracking birthday weekend.

OK, I paid a little more for the tickets than the face value, but worth it for my wifes birthday.

Based on some of the other 80s bands we’ve seen over the past few years, I’ve got a feeling Erasure are going to be ruddy amazing; although Vince Clarke has said that he's retired from touring, so it will be interesting to see what Andy Bell will be like on his own on stage, Vince is still doing the music for it, so I'm sure it will just sound the same.

Once we’ve been, I’ll come back and turn this into a proper review.

Crossword

I'm not really a fan of crossword puzzles, but I spotted this AI one as a widget on a Firefox tab and somehow became a little bit obsessed with it.

I think it's the simplicity of it that I like. It's quick, easy to dip into and strangely addictive. If you fancy giving it a go, you can either play it below or play it here.

Is Hela a 70s Footballer?

Hela, our GSD, adores playing football. She loves chasing her hard Boomer Ball around our garden and, while we’re kicking it for her, she often gets hit by the ball. It’s just smacked her right on the nose as she leapt for it.

When I called her over to check her nose, she just shrugged it off and carried on playing, like an old fashioned, hard-as-nails 70s footballer.

Discos

I'm generally a maize crisp sorta guy. If you ask me to pick a snack, nine times out of ten I’m reaching for Skips, Wotsits, or something else with that light, puffed corn crunch.

Which is why my complete and utter obsession with Discos makes absolutely no sense. There’s just something about that satisfying crunch and the flavour, which is always just enough.

I also think they’re one of those crisps I’ve never seen a cheap supermarket version of. Maybe even the supermarkets know they can’t mess with perfection.

A bit late but today (21st Sept 2026), I just had the pickled onion flavour ... oh yes, a great addition to the range.

We've Paid Off Our Mortgage

A momentous day today, and we have paid off our mortgage.

Yeah, we have finally paid off our mortgage. The last payment of £566.11 went out of our bank account today, bringing a permanent end to our monthly housing debt, because that's what it is.

We’re heading out for a meal this weekend to celebrate, nothing too extravagant because that's not really us.

But I have to admit that, for me, the milestone feels surprisingly flat; Debs is over the moon, but for whatever reason I just can’t seem to get that excited about it. Maybe it’s simply an anti-climax after thinking about it for so long.

It has been a long road. Like most families, we’ve had our financial ups and downs along the way. We had to speak to our mortgage provider on several occasions over the years and, without naming names to protect the guilty, they often acted far more like a debt collection agency than the warm, supportive institution their literature paints them to be. But we survived them, kept chipping away and eventually made it through.

Adding a little extra to the monthly payment whenever we could certainly helped. At some point I might sit down and work out how much time and interest those overpayments actually shaved off the total term. I suspect it’ll be quite satisfying to see what those little extra payments added up to over the years.

I had wanted to mark the occasion by sending off a cheque for our final payment with a small rant, or perhaps a large "FUCK YOU!" written on it. I decided against it though. Well, if I’m being perfectly honest, I started asking AI what I could do, and how should I word my insults, ChatGPT suggested it probably wasn’t a particularly clever idea, and perhaps we quietly go out for a meal to celebrate instead, make it about us, not the mortgage company.

Right now, I’m still not entirely sure whether I wish I’d ignored that advice and not to send a cheque with my thoughts of them on the back!

So that’s it. A fairly major life milestone reached, one monthly payment gone forever, and yet somehow it all feels much quieter than I expected.

Sky Bet Has Had Enough of Me Winning

I just opened an email from Sky Bet expecting the usual promotional noise, only to discover they’ve pretty much banned me from free bets and promotions.

Following a "review", I’m still perfectly welcome to place regular bets with my own money, they just don’t want to give me anything free anymore.

I barely bet, but I do have a habit of turning up for their free bets, Sky Vegas Prize Machine, Super Spins and whatever else they’re giving away. Reading between the lines, I can only assume I’ve been taking rather more value from their promotions than I’ve been giving back in actual gambling.

The best bit? I currently have just over £23 sitting in my account, all of it effectively won from freebies.

So there we have it. Sky Betting & Gaming has finally taken decisive action against my £23 gambling empire.

I'm just waiting for Paddy Power and Midnite to do the same. I've got another £57 tied up with those two, again from winning on freebies!

I’m taking it as a badge of honour.

DDoS attack on my little site!

This has happened on business websites I’ve managed over the years, but never on a personal website like this.

Yesterday, Monday 17th August 2026, my little site had just over 1.61k visitors. I know I’m not that popular, so I knew something was probably up.

According to Umami, 99% of that traffic came from Singapore, and at around 2pm, those 1.61k hits were all aimed at my site search function.

So yes, that feels less like sudden global fame and more like something automated having a little poke around.

Still, it does leave one important question...

Who the hell have I upset in Singapore?

Interestingly, our site at work as a DDoS attack today, but those came from the UK ... how very strange!

When the Sun Disappeared

So, we’ve just had a partial solar eclipse here in the UK. 

The last time we had one like this, my girls were only three weeks old (August 1999) which is a slightly alarming way of measuring the passing of time! 

The whole thing got me thinking about what our ancestors must have thought during a solar eclipse (yeah I often think weird things like this).

It’s easy for us today. We understand what’s happening, we can predict an eclipse years in advance, and we know that the Sun is going to reappear. But imagine living 1,000 years ago and watching the Sun slowly disappear over the course of an hour.

People understood just how predictable the rising and setting of the Sun was, and more importantly, how essential it was to their lives. Then, one day, in the middle of its normal journey across the sky, something starts taking a bite out of it.

Without knowing why it was happening, or whether the Sun was actually going to come back, that must have been terrifying.

One of my photos from the evening.

Why Raleigh Lost Its Appeal

I was sad to hear about the problems facing bicycle brand Raleigh, but the news got me thinking about why the company might have struggled over the kast decade or so.

When I was a kid, we dreamed about owning particular bikes. I wanted a Raleigh Chopper, and God, I loved that bike when I finally got one. Other friends of mine wanted a Grifter or a Chipper. These weren’t just bikes; they were bikes you knew by name and desperately wanted to own.

Do children feel the same way now? Those who do want a bike often seem to want a fairly non-descript racing or mountain bike, rather than a particular make and model.

I wonder whether that loss of aspiration and brand attachment is part of what has hurt Raleigh. It once made bikes that children dreamed of owning, but somewhere along the way, that connection seems to have been lost.

Brain Freeze isn't Real

Is brain freeze real? Apparently people are convinced it is, but I’m still entirely convinced that it doesn’t.

I’ve eaten ice cream too quickly, gulped freezing drinks and generally treated cold food with very little respect, yet I can’t remember ever experiencing that sudden stabbing headache people describe.

Now there is something called cold-stimulus headache, but your brain doesn't freeze.

Perhaps I’m immune to this phenomenon, perhaps I know brains don't freeze so I don't suffer from it!

Social Care Should Be a Shared Risk

It seems like a complete no-brainer to me that social care should be risk pooled across the UK.

That is already how we treat taxation and the NHS. We all contribute, knowing that we may never need expensive treatment ourselves, because none of us knows what illness or misfortune might come our way.

Social care is no different. Some people will never need much support, while others may develop dementia, suffer a stroke or simply become unable to care for themselves as they grow older. That is not something anyone can sensibly plan for, and it should not become a financial catastrophe simply because you happen to be one of the unlucky ones.

We do not ask someone with cancer to sell their home before they can receive treatment, yet we are far more comfortable doing something very similar when somebody needs long-term care.

Of course, risk pooling would mean all of us paying something towards a service that many of us may never use. But that is the whole point of pooling risk. We pay collectively so that no individual or family is ruined when that risk becomes reality.

UK Green Party is just 6th Form Politics IMHO

There is quite a lot about Green Party politics that I agree with. Recycling matters, protecting local habitats matters, reducing pollution matters, and opposition to war is hardly a ridiculous position. Yet the party still often leaves me feeling as though I am listening to a sixth-form political debate.

I can say that with some affection because I used to be a long-haired, spotty sixth-former myself. The problem isn’t the ideals. It is that the arguments too often stop at the point where everyone has agreed what a nicer, fairer world would look like.

Politics has to go further than ethical or moral intent. It has to explain how a policy would work, who would deliver it, how much it would cost, where the money would come from, what might go wrong, and what compromises would be needed.

The Green Party has moved on a little from the old caricature of “let’s all recycle”, “stop the bombs” and “save our village pond”. It now puts forward much broader (and I mean broader) economic and social policies. Even so, I am often left with the impression that the ambition comes first and the operational reality is worked out afterwards.

This all matters because government isn’t a campaign meeting. Good intentions do not build houses, reform public services, transform an energy system or balance competing demands on public money. Those things require competent administration, credible funding and an acceptance that nearly every serious political decision creates losers as well as winners.

I don’t want the Greens to become less idealistic. Politics could probably do with a little more principle. But if they want to be taken seriously as a party of government, they need to show not only that their hearts are in the right place, but that their plans could survive contact with reality.

Hedgehogs in our Garden

Having a German Shepherd Dog (GSD), I honestly didn’t think we would ever get hedgehogs in our garden. However, we were woken at 1:30am this morning by Hela barking in the back garden.

When I went downstairs to investigate, she was barking at a group of flower pots on the patio. I was worried we might have rats, but after securing her in the kitchen, a hedgehog emerged from its hiding place and wandered over to Hela’s outdoor water bowl for a drink.

So, I have now secured the side of the house and the back gate, so now if a hedgehog wanders into our garden from the front, it's safe from Hela. I've also set up a drinking bowl for 'Mrs Tiggy Winkle' as my wife calls it, some water does seem to be going so the next step is to start putting some small bits of food down (I'll just get some dry cat food down for now).

I need to invest in an inexpensive wildlife camera to see what we are actually attracting!

Breast Cancer in Men

Today, we launched a new phase of our campaign with our charity partner, Breast Cancer Now. It’s an incredibly worthwhile charity and cause, and the figures are stark: in the UK, around 85 men die from breast cancer each year, alongside approximately 11,500 women.

I love what we’re doing at work. Those numbers are a stark reminder of just how many people we lose to the disease each year but, as we work in the construction industry, it’s particularly valuable to get the message out there that men need to check themselves too.

If you’re able to, please donate through our Breast Cancer Now JustGiving page.

A Stress-Free Final

As an England fan, I would obviously have loved us to be in the 2026 FIFA World Cup final, but I have to say, it is lovely watching it without any skin in the game.

It goes without saying that I want Spain to win, but I am not worried about the result. There is no biting of nails and no sitting on the edge of my seat. I can just enjoy the football.

Virgin until Iron Maiden!

I was listening to some 80s music with Debs, which always takes us back to our younger days. We were both born in the late 60s, so it doesn’t take much for a song to bring back a particular time, place or memory.

Anyway, Debs casually mentioned that she saw Adam and the Ants when she was just 13.

Ruddy Nora! I was 18 before I went to my 1st concert, although I didn’t choose too badly. It was the mighty Iron Maiden at the old Town and Country Club in Leeds.

They were chuffing amazing.

More recently, my wife and myself saw Maiden together in their phenomenal Run For Your Lives Tour in London in 2025.

So It's Not Coming Home!

So there we have it. It’s not coming home.

England have exited the 2026 FIFA World Cup at the semi-final stage, losing to Argentina after going 1–0 up. We obviously weren’t quite good enough, although we played well until Argentina fell behind and then had to withstand a constant onslaught on our goal.

It’s strange how much it hurts, and it probably will for a couple of days, perhaps until after the final on Sunday. Still, at least we’ve got Spain to cheer on now.

The Hunted (The Hunt Sequel)

I remembered the movie The Hunt this weekend so I thought I'd watch it again, then I started wondering why there was never a sequel! The Hunt 2, or a The Hunt sequel would be great.

At the end of the first film, Crystal takes Athena’s clothes, money, and jet. In my sequel pitch, she takes Athena's massive financial resources and elite connections to track down other secret elite hunting cabins around the globe. I figure that others like Athena's group would take these online rumours about hunting humans and create their own hunts.

Because she was mistakenly chosen for the first hunt (confused with the real "Justice4Yall"), she becomes a ghost in the system, dynamic and totally unpredictable. Instead of being the prey, she infiltrates these global networks to bust them open and liberate the next batch of targets.

My Fave National Anthems

Another top list I was thinking of putting together was a list of my favourite National Anthems, I thought about this while watching coverage of the 2026 FIFA World Cup, there are some dreadful ones!

I might have to do two lists, one just music and one with lyrics, I think it might make a difference!

Some early contenders are:

• Italy
• Uruguay
• South Africa
• Mexico

My Fave Iron Maiden Songs

I need to list my Top 10 Iron Maiden songs, in order at some time.

The list is likely to include:

• The Trooper 
• Number of the Beast
• Hallowed Be Thy Name
• Iron Maiden
• Rime of the Ancient Mariner
• Phantom of the Opera
• Seventh Son of a Seventh Son
• Man on the Edge
• Transylvania (might come as a surprise to many)

I have noticed that this only goes up to the mid 90s, gonna have to listen to some of their later stuff as there are some good tunes in there.

Ooo. Wicker Man, Hell on Earth, The Writing on the Wall.

But I will listen to albums from the last 20 years before I make my final decision.

Up The Irons