At least with you, 50% of what you say is relevant...

Good morning CATCOUK fans!

Apologies for late blogging, but I have had a VERY busy weekend. Today's title is brought to you by a friend of mine, and you'll find out why later on in the post (keeping you gripped!).

Monday of this week, I bought a new mobile phone, bringing myself into the 21st century. As well as being able to make phone calls, and text people (yep, phones can still do those things) this phone has an MP3 player, can make video calls, and take photos! As I told you in a previous post, my camera is broken, so this camera has come in handy!

But I'm going off on a tangent. This weekend has been exceptionally busy. I was up at 6.30am Staurday morning to take Hannah, Holly, and Luke to the NTC's sailing centre to go on the powerboat course I got them booked on. I picked up Hannah and Luke first, and then went on to Holly's house. She got in the car, and looked a bit ill (she's had a cold recently, and I'm guessing the 7.30 start for her was a bit early).

By this time of course I'm quite bouncy and enthusiastic. Holly looked at me with quite a sour expression, and asked 'Are you always up at this time of the morning?'. Of course I am, most weekends I have to be up ready for the NTC with all of my usual enthusiam in front of kids. Needless to say, Holly would have been quite happy to go back to sleep.
Did I mention last week that we won a couple of trophies...

So I dropped the three of them off in Portsmouth, at 8am, and then drove to Lancing ready for a Band performance with our award winning Marching Band. I arrived at the Parish Hall at 9.30am, and we were there until 1pm. Thanks to Lancing & Sompting Lions club for a really good morning, and Mrs. Orchard raised £60 on our stall! We're now a wingmirror closer to a minibus for the group!!!

In the afternoon I took Mum shopping. By this point, as you'll see below, I was getting a bit snap happy with the camera on my phone. This next picture shows you a happy little character that Sainsbury's are selling for Christmas. I'm sure you've all seen this type of thing, you squeeze thge paw, and it sings.

Me and Mum is Sainsbury's, we just love it... not.

Me with a nearly whole hand on bananas (there's only 6 there, and 7 make a hand).

This week whilst I was sitting on the till, a small child was setting off this particular toy over and over again. Now I'm no humbug, but is it wrong to think about axing an entertaining stuffed raindeer to death? My goodness, it was driving me bonkers! I quite liked it the first couple of times, but on the tenth playing...

Jingle and indeed Bells. The bells, the bells... HELP!!!

But back to my weekend. 7pm came, and my £300 dinner jacket got it's annual dusting off. The Lions Charter Night (dinner dance) was a particularly good evening. Unlike most posh restaurants, the food here was actually quite good. And by that I mean we actually got some food. With these posh places, the food is normally all art, and no food. A couple of leaves sprinkled with a dribble of colour stuff.

Incase you wondered, I'm on the right, and good lord, is that a bowtie?

Well, the starter was like this, three thin slices of melon, and a dribble of red sauce over the top. Oh dear. But the main course was a reasonable sized piece of chicken, and then a huge bowl of crumble for afters! Well done.

10pm came, the speeches were over, and dashed back to the Mark 4, and drove back down to Portsmouth. I arrived there at 10.45pm. Whenever I've been down to NSTC Lion (the sailing centre) with the youth group, we send the kids to bed at 10.30, and then the officers are up until the smal hours chatting. So you can imagine my suprise when I arrived, and everyone either in bed, or on their way to bed! Light weights...

Sunday, I spent the morning assisting on the powerboat course, and everyone passed. We were talking about other members on the Powerboat course, and Holly had said how she couldn't understand how on particular bloke could keep talking about such irrelevant stuff. And here comes the quote.. 'At least with you [Andy], 50% of what you say is relevant'. Oh thank you very much!

I should also point out that Hannah is a trainee teacher. She's obviously not very well behaved on her course, because she's been sentenced to doing her teacher training at Lancing's Boundstone Community College (the t's are silent if you talk to any of the kids). But I told Hannah that she'd be alright, just as long as she kept wearing that stab vest!

Driving... yeah I did alot of that this weekend.

Luke and Hannah - drugs aren't cool kids!

Holly (she's really worried that she didn't look good enough - well you can't look good all the time... lol)

Anyways, 2.30pm, and I left Portsmouth, droppedmy friends off in Chichester, and arrived in Lancing (again) at 4pm - ready for yet another band engagement. There was also a band engagement last night, but I was at the Lion's dinner dance. So we loaded up the cars, met up with our sister ships, and formed a huge combined marching band to lead the 15 000 people at the Guildford fireworks carnival procession.

I eventually got home last night at 11.10pm, had some dinnr, and write a quick blog post. But before I finish, I really must say a big thank you to the one person that made this weekend possible - Ernie (my 1986 Ford Escort 1.4 GL Estate in Champagne Gold). Over the weekend, my 20 year old car did 390 miles! 20 years old, and my car has never let me down. That's better than most modern cars!

87 000 miles young - Good ol' Ernie, he's not let me down yet!

If you've had busier weekends, and think that I'm pathetic, and should really stop complaining (did I mention I also have a cold), leave me a message saying that your car has down 1390 miles!

If you now understand me better, and no longer think that my work in the NTC is a bit geeky, you could leave a message saying that your name is Holly....