I’m going to close this thing down. I’ve nothing to say about anything. I’ve no enthusiasm for this, which is evident from the lack of and content of posts,  or much else for that matter.

One of my laptops started breaking its wireless connection recently eventually giving no connection at all. I fiddled. I fiddled some more into the very wee hours. Updated it’s Windows driver, all sorts. Tried it  in Linux, same story. Router seemed okay and everything worked fine on a wired connection. Must be the internal wireless card then. Fuck. Expensive to send for repair so I’ll check it out myself. Much internet searching later I found a disassembly manual for the laptop online and found a couple of sources for an identical replacement internal wireless card ( I know a wireless dongle would have done but aesthetically and practically it would have grated with me). Tonight, just about to order it up and the damn thing starts working perfectly again. Fuckers. That’s what they are. Computers are illogical, cantankerous, fickle, selfish bastards.

If I had one day left on this earth I think I’d try to find a few minutes in it to do the country a favour and shoot this waste of oxygen in the head. As I’m not planning to die in the next 24 hours though I propose what I think is the next best solution. Can we cancel her next operation and just let the stupid fuck eat herself to death. It seems the most cost effective solution and as the greedy fuck just wants to keep stuffing her fat face with chocolate (“not feeling emotionally right to eat an apple”…. WHAT?) she’s clearly a lost cause and the wrong person to be spending my taxes on.

All in favour say “aye”.

About a week ago I narrowly missed a small tornado that swept across the 528 Beeline Expressway in Florida. Just prior to that I came down with something that may have been swine flu. Just before I flew home I got stuck in a conversation with someone who thought Billy Graham was a “great man”. America is a dangerous place.

Firefox 3.5 is now available. The Mozilla website will have official links later today and your browser will update automatically over the next few days. But if you can’t, or don’t want to,  wait then follow these links to Softpaedia who have linked to the Mozilla download mirrors for Windows, Mac and Linux versions.

I tried a beta version a few months ago. Let me know what you think.

I imagine this will leave me a lot more devastated than you, and I don’t mean to diminish your sense of loss or much appreciated sympathy. My life will be different from this day on, no doubt about it. But it’ll definitely have a bigger impact on me than it will on you.  I’ve hardly been able to eat since it happened, probably won’t be able to eat properly for days.

Yep, it’s not everyday you lose a tooth.

I see Manuel’s been moonlighting. All that cycling into work. Secret’s out.

Fuck me, it’s fast. Looking forward to the full release (which I think is going to be called Firefox  3.5).

All but 1 of my add-ons work with it too. Nice.

Get it here.

To complicate my life, lest it be at risk form being uncomplicated, I’m studying for more job related exams. Got one under my belt last year. Another 4 I want to do. There was a short period in my life when I found studying relatively easy. No so now. I have the ability to concentrate for about 5 minutes at a time when a dozen or so years ago it was a couple of hours. I could get through, digest, take notes on and understand about 50 typed A4 pages pages a day. Takes a week to do that now, or longer. An exam beckons next week.  I should be ready to start some sample questions mid Saturday and sqeeze in 8/10 hours before the exam. After that I’m taking a book break for the summer. I need me time. Lots and lots of me time.

Do you remember Kylie? Do you remember what she looked like? Wasn’t like this was it?

What’s wrong with aging? What’s wrong with lines?

Ever rented a place? Not a holiday place, a semi-permanent place. Perhaps somewhere nice like a small detached house near the centre of town yet, at the same time, nicely secluded, peaceful, quiet? Warm, clean, freshly decorated. New kitchen, new bathroom , new floors, freshly decorated. Reasonable rent. Dare I say reasonable landlord?

If your oven broke down on a Saturday and this caused you great distress did he go out and buy a new one on Sunday and fit it himself? Did you ever ask your landlord to give you first refusal, because you liked the house so much, should he want to sell? Did he keep his word?

After all this would you hmmm and haaa for months, stalling a decision, safe in the knowledge your landlord was conscious of not wanting to throw you out with your partner and stepchild (who weren’t part of the original deal) and make you homeless in the run up to Christmas?

When you did choose not to take up your requested offer and moved on to somewhere else would you leave forgetting to tell the landlord about the broken sink in the bathroom (which you’d hidden under a roll of kitchen towels)? When your landlord discovered this and asked you to replace it would you begrudgedly have a new sink delivered but see it as his responsibility to fit it and throw a major wobbly fit when asked to pay for making good and leave the place in something close to the condition you found it?

If you can answer yes to all these questions then you can only be one person and I will have much, much bigger revenge you cheap, nasty piece of shit and your two-faced girlfriend. But not for a few months. And it will be big and it will be served stone cold. And it will come at you from so many directions you won’t know who it’s coming from or why. But it will cost you much, MUCH more than an odd-job plumber would have. So, enjoy your new place.

Ah, I feel alive again. Nothing like a good old grudge and a bit of revenge plotting to warm the cockles, eh?

Thanks. Thanks for having a fucking party at 2.15am  and waking me up when I’d done my best to drink enough wine to induce a comfortable coma. Thanks also  for managing to keep me awake for the next 2 hours as various of your number spent the next 2 hours getting locked out of your room due to your mate falling asleep every time you went out to get ice/more drink/visit other rooms. I particularly enjoyed the knocking and rattling of the door for 10 minutes (twice). Still, I did manage to get a teensie, weensie bit more sleep before my alarm went off at 7.15. I was debating whether to rudely awake you by ringing your room number over and over. I changed my mind, however, when I heard your alarm and early morning call repeatedly going off without being answered.  Sometimes the best  revenge comes from doing nothing. Hope your day went well.

It’s home made pizza tonight for dinner. Why should you care? Well, a word of warning. You see, I made the dough from scratch. It was a bit of an experiment, I never (completely) follow instructions. Always a tweak, a twist.  Can’t resist. Ingredients, blah, blah blah….. I’ll just add some course wholemeal flour in. It’ll make it a nice earthy sort of colour. Rustic. Yeah,  that’s it. Yeast, two sachets, don’t want a frisbee. Better to have a nice puffed up pizza like Dominos, or a cushion. Yeah.

So, the dough got rested for 24 hours, a smidge longer than the 2 hours recommended. Even putting it in the bottom of the fridge hasn’t really arrested it’s expansion. It’s now parked in the garage coming to terms with it’s wholemeal acne and deciding whether to take over the rest of the house. It seems to have attained critical mass. I’m pretty sure than no matter how much I lop off  it it’s rate of growth will more than compensate. It’s gone nuclear.

Lifted from here…

According to new scientific research, it’s not various mental conditions that affect our sleep and make people tired all the time, but vice versa. That is to say, too little sleep or agitated rest can easily trigger “malfunctions” as far as brain health goes, and may open the way to the development of some serious affections. Also, sleep deprivation can cause people to act in ways that can mislead doctors in believing that they are mentally ill.

There is also good news revealed in the study, in that people suffering from some mental conditions can cure them by simply regulating their lifestyles and sleeping sufficient amounts of time every night. On the other hand, the bad news is that many individuals may be taking psychoactive drugs that might be doing very little to help their conditions. Furthermore, these types of medication may actually be making things worse, by acting on parts of the brain that are not ill or otherwise affected, but simply fatigued to the point where they cannot function properly.

This “is very frightening. Wouldn’t you think that it would be important for us as a society to understand whether 3 per cent, 5 per cent or 50 per cent of people diagnosed with psychiatric problems are simply suffering from sleep abnormalities?” psychologist Matt Walker, from the University of California in Berkeley, asks. It’s crucially important then, he adds, that researchers further look into this issue in order to realize exactly to what extent sleep influences mental health, and just how many people suffer from actual disorders, as opposed to those who are just utterly tired and sleep deprived.

As an example, the researcher notes, individuals affected by depression are approximately five times more likely  to experience difficulties while breathing in their sleep than others. This means that less oxygen reaches the brain, which is basically starved to the point where “errors” occur. Similarly, somewhere between 25 to 50 percent of children and teenagers suffering from the Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD) experience sleep disorders, as opposed to just 7 percent of their healthy peers, who are not diagnosed with the condition.

“It was just so easy to say about a patient, well, he’s depressed or schizophrenic, of course he’s not sleeping well – and never to ask whether there could be a causal relationship the other way,” Harvard University sleep researcher Robert Stickgold comments, and adds that a thorough reassessment of psychological procedures is in order, considering the new facts.

Moral of the story? Sleep well.

For Windows users (XP, Vista etc) I thoroughly recommend trying out one of the newest flavours of Linux, Linux Mint 6. I’ve been a fan of Linux Mint for a while now and find I can use it practically out of the box, so to speak. In fact the install takes a lot less time than a windows install yet practically all the software I need is there from the outset instead of me having to install CD after CD. Even adding some peripherals, like printers, is now even easier than with a Windows based system as the software will detect your printer and take it through an install wizard where it configures the correct drivers. You won’t even need the software CD that came with your printer. Same for wireless network cards. Like most Linux operating system distributions it comes packed with Open Source (free or donate) software equivalent to Windows applications including full office suite, instant messenger, mail client etc, media player and much, much more. And of course it’s much less likely to fall foul to the ever increasing malware out there predominantly aimed at Windows based PCs.

Best of all though is the fact that you can now very simply install it side by side on your XP or Vista machine without it overwriting anything and have access to all your files and folders you currently have access to. When installed at boot you get asked which operating system you want to use, Windows or Linux Mint. If you don’t want to keep Linux Mint you can just uninstall it without affecting your Windows installation by removing it in your XP/Vista control panel. Painless.

Linux Mint constantly informs you of all security and software upgrades and a slick upgrade process means all your software, not just your operating system as with a Windows based machine, is updated to the latest stable version automatically. The newest Mint operating system is also upgraded (free or donate) every 6 months or so. You read that right. Every 6 months. It’s constantly being updated and improved. Install it on as many PCs as you want.

Don’t take my word for it. Download it (Main Edition). Install it. Try it. You’ve nothing to lose.

Driving my 5 yr old chip of the block home today she chirped up and asked if everyone in Gotham City moved house how many removal vans it would take to do it. Now part of me is happy she is applying her tiny Nick Jr obsessed mind to constructing mathematical puzzles. The other part of me is disturbed that she seems to have inherited from me a need to worry about and consider things that have no bearing on anybody, let alone a five yr old. So it’ll come as no surprise that I instinctively blurted out

“On the same day?”

“Yes, dad. 500. 500 dad, that’s how many lorries you’d need for movin’.”

“Weeeeell, 300,000 people, hmmmm, that’d be roughly 75,000 households, maybe 100,000, one lorry per household,  I think it might need about……”

“560 dad.”

God knows why I’m doing this. Actually, I have a plan. And you might be part of it.

99 words

Posted in Uncategorized ]]> http://bendersbetterbrother.wordpress.com/2009/01/10/as-if-i-dont-have-enough-to-deal-with/feed/ 7 bendersbetterbrother http://bendersbetterbrother.wordpress.com/2008/12/31/new-year-dis-honours-list/ http://bendersbetterbrother.wordpress.com/2008/12/31/new-year-dis-honours-list/#comments Wed, 31 Dec 2008 11:42:26 +0000 bendersbetterbrother http://bendersbetterbrother.wordpress.com/?p=632 ]]>

The Queen releases a New Year’s Honours list today. I’m not on it, again. Being the bigger man, however, I have decided to come up with my own alternative New Year’s Dis-Honours list, not that I’m the sort to bear a grudge or anything.

Awarded M.H.O.s (Muppet of the Highest Order)

Britney Spears – for believing that we’re so stupid we really do think she’s actually singing live. The Matrix mic would suit you better working in a call centre love. In fact, I’d start to get some practice in now. Oh, and stop showing your scabby flange.

Mariah Carey – most of the above (excluding flange flashing) except a bigger crime in your case as you can actually sing. Mariah, just a snippet of information….only 3rd world dictators think it’s normal to instruct a flunky to hand pick 5 thousand petals and lay a path of them from your suite to the bath. Royalty doesn’t do it.

Heather Mills – how much charity work have you done this year then? And I mean apart from the £25million you raised yourself. On a positive note if you became permanently mute you’d instantly become 10 times more attractive, or as my mate would say, doable. Just saying.

Amy Winehouse – psy-cho-ther-apy. (Washing now and again wouldn’t hurt either).

Fuckwit husband of Amy Winehouse, Fielder-Civil whatever – I’m sending you a £100 megadose of the best brown around. Recommend taking it all at once. Bye.

Gordon Brown – “no more boom and bust” eh? How does a Labour chancellor manage to adopt a more pure version of monetarist policy than Margaret Thatcher? You have fucked this country for the next 5 years.  Thanks for that.

The D.U.P. – for continually producing the highest quality of small minded conservatives who are so far off the track they can’t even understand why the things their M.P.s says offend. Iris Robinson, Ian Paisley Jr,  spring immediately to mind.

Premier League managers – stop whining. And if you watch the replay you’ll see you were talking out your arse. (Martin O’Neill excepted).

I could go on……and on….and on.

Anyway, Happy new year to all visitors (including the aforementioned who will find their way here from the referral links).

Hoping all you peeps had a relaxing, quiet Christmas.  Me, not quite.  Even if you just had a run-of-the-mill boring one please let me assure you how privileged you have been.

My Christmases usually involve some drama, less self-induced these days than it used to be in the past. This year’s included….

• coming home pre-Christmas after a few days away laden with lurgy involving a full soak-the-bed fever each night for a week
• a 10pm Christmas eve throw-all-the-toys-out-of-the-pram meltdown by mother of 4 yr old leaving me to to do all Santa preparation because I wouldn’t get her presents out of her car. Exhausted and still very ill I got to bed around 3am just leaving sufficient time for a soak the bed sweat before dawn. Surely there are some circumstances where murder should be legal?
• 4 yr old’s mother taking her ” for 10 minutes” to visit friends on Christmas day. 2 hours later, when they haven’t returned and 7 calls to her mobile remain unanswered  I track them down by car and eventually take my daughter to visit her grandparents and aunt (her uncle having already left due to the delay). Ditto the comment regarding legal grounds for murder.
• I gave my 80 yr old father the gift of lurgy so he could enjoy his  Christmas too.
• spending days when I was supposed to be enjoying the holidays dealing with clients who couldn’t follow instruction or pick up the phone themselves (each of who knew well in advance I’d be on holiday)
• spending the last day and a half completing spreadsheets and the like because my boss sprung some unexpected ones on me immediately before going on holiday (and which had to be done in the time I’d allocated to do the normal reports).

I’ve supposedly been off for a week but can’t say I feel like I’ve had the benefit of it seeing as I’ve done work on 5 out of the 7 days and dealt with a headcase on the other 2.

If you can match or beat that I’d be interested to know.

Recently I went to my daughter’s first school play. Everyone was given a part, though she wasn’t a headliner, but the teachers made sure everyone felt their bit was important and had them all learn all the songs from the show. She’s still singing them now.

She told me next year she wants to be a camel. They did have the best costumes and I suspect as she likes dressing up in her Scooby-Doo or reindeer outfit that she’s experiencing her first episode of costume envy.

Part of what  I enjoy most about her age is her mispronuciation of words which I’ve written about before. It really tickles me. Since the school play she’s seen fit to correct me twenty dozen times. Camels and donkeys have  hoobs.

I stand corrected.

Still not dead. Not feeling particularly alive either though. Financially I’m surviving, have plugged some holes and postponed my complete demise. Definitely not out of the woods, still fighting.

Physically, hmmmm. Still haven’t went back for tests. Tomorrow…

There’s some crazy, crazy shit going on in the world so I have to count my blessings. Blessing actually. Four years old, funny, clever, cute  and loving. I wish she’d been twins.

I’ve allowed myself a 2 day break to see  a friend in London and then I’ll  have a workbreak until New Year.

Hope everyone else is faring OK.

Some folk have been caught out by the credit crunch. I’m one of them. Unexpected building delays of a year on some property investments catastrophically followed by a tightening of mortgage credit has put me in a tricky position.  For months I’ve been trying numerous plans to extricate myself from the situation and minimise the impact which has distracted me from the day job. Work is now squeezing hard as the effects of the credit crunch also impacts my clients.

To cut a long story short, between that and other things, life is not as good as it shoud be at the moment and despite my best efforts my situation is going from bad to worse as each month passes. I think we’re all in for an extremely tough couple of years. I’ll catch up with you in due course but need to discipline myself to leave this blog alone while I try those options that are still open to me.

Found this on the interweb last week. Pop your name in the fist box. You don’t have to put your email address in the second box. Press enter and answer the multiple choice questions.

Your Brain Usage Profile:

Auditory : 41%
Visual : 58%
Left : 50%
Right : 50%

bbb, you exhibit an even balance between left- and right- hemisphere dominance and a slight preference for visual over auditory processing. With a score this balanced, it is likely that you would have slightly different results each time you complete this self-assessment quiz.

You are a well-rounded person, distinctly individualistic and artistic, an active and multidimensional learner. At the same time, you are logical and disciplined, can operate well within an organization, and are sensitive towards others without losing objectivity. You are organized and goal-directed. Although a “thinking” individual, you “take in” entire situations readily and can act on intuition.

You sometimes tend to vacillate in your learning styles. Learning might take you longer than someone of equal intellect, but you will tend to be more thorough and retain the material longer than those other individuals. You will alternate between logic and impulse. This vacillation will not normally be intentional or deliberate, so you may experience anxiety in situations where you are not certain which aspect of yourself will be called on.

With a slight preference for visual processing, you tend to be encompassing in your perceptions, process along multidimensional paths and be active in your attacking of situations or learning.

Overall, you should feel content with your life and yourself. You are, perhaps, a little too critical of yourself — and of others — while maintaining an “openness” which tempers that tendency. Indecisiveness is a problem and your creativity may not be in keeping with your potential. Being a pragmatist, you downplay this aspect of yourself and focus on the more immediate, obvious and the more functional

Bollocks.

Now and again a tiny sparklet fizzles across the vacuum that currently occupies the space where my brain used to reside. It’s never the genesis of a eureka moment like Newton’s third law or the Archimedes Principle. Today’s spark came after spending too much time trying to avoid thinking about drink or smokes.

Was I a tit or an arse man? Told you! Of course the answer changes from day to day and whoever happens to be the unlucky recipient of my gaze at the time. The decision du jour appears to be dependant on such weighty aesthetic variables as;

• size
• presentation
• setting

I’ll try to explain each in turn. Size, I’m not saying big’s good and small’s bad. It’s more complicated. It’s a combination of shape and size. There’s an X factor. I think there must be an optimum rate of curve programmed into mens’ heads that just presses buttons. That’s why cleavage works and Wonderbras sell. Which brings me on to …..presentation. Ladies, do yourself a favour and get a proper fitting bra (try one back size down and a cup size up) and see what happens. Now turn sideways and adjust it properly. See, that didn’t take long. I used to sell those things a long time ago. Can call out a bra size at 40 paces (or alternatively, close up with my eyes closed), a unique talent that is completely fuckin’ useless to me. And buy a nice bra. Never buy a cheap bra. Same goes for matching pants (knickers, U.S. peeps) Don’t buy a size too small here though or you’ll separate things that just weren’t meant to separated. Thongs are seldom a good choice, they don’t help to shape anything. Proper pants and knickers please though not Bridget Jones’. Bums can benefit from jeans, trousers, skirts, dresses, yep anything, as long as they’re a complimenting shape. If you’ve got a big arse wear a top or dress that narrows your waist. Keep away from baggy stuff. Same goes if you’re a skinny arse too actually. Can’t work out why so many women get it wrong.

O.K. So now I’ve given you a perkier chest and rounder arse I have a dilemma. Which looks best? Actually, that’s the simple one. Setting, just depends if I’m standing in front or behind.

If you need free, unbiased, confidential advice on these important issues my mailbox is always open for sample photographs.

Today’s entry has been sponsored by dirty old men everywhere, Gossard and Victoria’s Secret.

Don’t ask me what made this jump into my head. I was lying awake last night having been up late doing some work and Wallop! in it came. The title refers to something that happened when I was at school and about 14.

One day in one of the playgrounds I was quietly minding my own business walking from A to B when I saw bearing down on me “Benners”. That’s not her real name. It’s a convenient derivation of her nickname I’ll use just in case she ever does a Google search of her real nickname and ends up here because she wouldn’t appreciate what I’m going to tell you. I didn’t call her Benners, only her girlfriends did (one of whom had a particularly nice arse). I called her Horse based on the fact that she was built like an East European female Olympic athlete from the 80s complete with back hair and a guinea pig under each arm.

For all she was worth she tried to be as girly as possible and hung around with a really choice assortment of lovely looking girls. This was in vain however as she had …… an over-large lower face characterised by cheeks on steroids and a nose you could cut wood with. Anyway, Benners or Horse bore down on me a grande vitesse and raised me bodily in the air only to crash down in a lump, specs broke, nose bleeding, my eye already swelling up. I wasn’t happy as I picked myself up but due to the fact Horse was lying whimpering on the ground complaining about a slightly skinned knee a crowd gathered thinking I had “emptied” her (how she avoided landing on that over sized face I’ll never know).

Around this time some brave soul gave me a wallop which helped me complete my collection of facial injuries. Funnily enough I never did get to like her. I did however get some Karmic justice when about 3 years later her then boyfriend shared a titbit of information that haunts me to this day. For this you will have to try and imagine how she looked according to my description above then add the fact that he once inserted a Mars bar a la punani and gorged himself (Marianne Faithful and Mick Jagger style) on the resulting melted best-selling confection .

Now, can someone please help me get rid of the Horse ?

It gets me every time, Channel 4’s Secret Millionaire.  The third series is being run every Tuesday at 9pm. It’s reality tv of a sort but not the purely voyeuristic sort, chock-a-block with wannabes and contrived confrontation. This involves a millionaire secretly (yeah, the clue’s in the title) getting involved in a community doing voluntary work in 3 or 4 projects for the deprived or needy over a period of 10 days. They have to leave their own life and luxuries behind and live and work in the area they’ve chosen.

It pulls you in, you can see the millionaire being touched by the plight of those they serve and work with. Towards the end of the hour you see them revisiting people they’ve worked alongside, the managers and co-ordiantors of the projects. It’s then, while telling them what a great job they do and why what they do is so valuable that they come clean and hand over a substantial donation.

I just start to well up in anticipation. The emotions onscreen are real, the experience changing the millionaire, the money changing the deserving cause and the work they do. Crying like a fucking baby I was tonight again. The program sends a great big hand out of the tv screen and gives your heart an almighty squeeze. Got to be the best thing on tv these days. BBB recommended. (Link to an article about tonight’s program featuring businesswoman Kavita Oberoi).

Channel 4’s site is down but I’ll link to it as soon as it’s up again. In the meantime here’s an article written ahead of the launch of the first series.

Here’s a clip from a previous program.

##update##

Here’s a link to last night’s program featuring Kavita Oberoi. It’s streamed from Channel 4’s website and will be available for 7 days. It can be viewed using Firefox (you may be prompted to install a WMP plug-in, takes just a few seconds) or Internet Explorer. Don’t know about Mac/Safari. Should work from outside UK too, I think.

When I got back to Cyprus I came back with a friend. Me and this friend got acquainted in the hours of darkness that night and were never far away from each other right until the end of the holiday. In fact I was never far away from my room for the rest of the holiday.

I wasn’t completely dissappointed to get home.

There’s a phrase I’ve used once or twice.

Here’s the promised pics of all three main pyramids. It’s diificult to comprehend the scale of these things. The natural perspective when close up and the fact that the pyramid shape “runs” away from you makes it hard to illustrate in 2D. If you zoom in on the first shot you’ll get a much better idea of the collossal size of these things and what a feat it really was to put them together 4000 yrs ago.

in Firefox, click on it then click again.

amazing 4000 yr old Tarmac road

Day 6 was spent travelling hundreds of km by bus to get to the pyramids. Security, and tens of street sellers, greeted us as soon as we got off the gangplank. The security I’m used to, street sellers I’m not. Every road intersection we came across for the next 50km was guarded by Military Police and all traffic stopped. In fact on roads and motorways the convoy of buses always had right of way and weaved in and out of lanes as they pleased,  which must have pissed off the locals no end.

The road bordered the Suez canal for much of the way and as Israel invaded the land up to the Suez in the 7 day war the 200km journey passed countless buildings with lookout posts, some military, some not that were heavily guarded. Our convoy had army outriders front and back, an armoured guard on board toting was was effectively a hand-held machine gun with 50 in the clip as well as plain clothes guards discretely milling anywhere we made a stop. In all I’d guess about 800 people were used directly, many more indirectly, to move 400.

More tomorrow.

security leaving the docks

one of the hundreds of lookout posts along the road

Giorgos and his merry band of minstrels were entertaining though more for how much they missed what they aspired to than what they managed to achieve. The lead female dancer (and choreographer) was accomplished, polished. The other less so but they both made their 2 male companions look as poised as a one legged stool on the side of a mountain. They over compensated for this by making exaggerated facial expressions continually throughout all of their routines. I swore they’d swallowed a handful of Es  each. Tres amusant. The singers and headliners were all Cypriot, Maria (who was quite good), Nikos (obviously a mate of Giorgos) a short balding man who never smiled and wore a course pony tail though well into his 60s, and of course Croossss Direktorrrrrr, Giorgos who gave himself all the Ricky Martin songs in the shows despite the fact that he couldn’t manage the high-notes and was as flat as an ironed wafer.

The funniest thing, however, was that part of Nikos’s solo routine involved him going walkabout through the tables of the entertainment lounge, tracked by a spotlight from the back. On a big cruise liner, and when he was in the ascendancy, the light would have shone down from on high but as this was the last stop saloon the entertainment lounge’s roof was only about 10 feet. I imagine he was once 6′5″ but had to get everything between his knees and ankles removed to fit the lighting arrangements this far down the food chain. In cuban heels he was an impressive 4′10″.