UK also..Birmingham also..Sutton Coldfield exactly

[AP] (ignoring the obvious rspca-needing overtones) You just told me it wasn't that bad! :)

Kicking about in a small, scruffy semi in Herts. [Angus - where are you in Bucks? I'm just 500 yards from the county line, sheriff]
[Chalky] It's a laptop on the kitchen table. Very handy for grilling sausages while I surf, although there's never anything interesting left in my fridge. Sometimes I take the laptop upstairs to watch DVDs in bed :o)

[Pen] Does that mean that it is used as an electric frying pan cum hot water bottle? How often do you need to wash the bedding?

[Dujon] It only really needs doing if I fry fish.

When I was small, I read a book in which a character declared that mangos should always be eaten in the bath, because of the mess. For years, eating mangos in the bath has been my idea of utter decadent pleasure. But I have since revised this to watching DVDs in bed on a laptop, which I now do frequently and with enormous satisfaction.

[Pen] *Urrgh!* ... ;-) [Pen & Breadmaster] Without mentioning names, there are some who frequent this web site who worry me!

Not those kinds of DVDs. Dear me...

I'm in Cardiff - which has finally got rather cold..

Pretty chilly in Mancatraz this morning too.

Got a delightful letter from my Grandma this weekend. My favourite comment was "The things that go on in the Villages. I could write a book about it, but they'd have to bin it.". I presume she meant that it would have to be binned because of the scandalous content, but with that combined with her rather free-form jazz writing style, there could be a Booker Prize in her...

Narrrch here, in the flatlands north east of London. Cold and sunny today.

[Dujon] Lord no, not those kinds of DVDs! The ones I can remember watching in bed are the Lord of the Rings, Harry Potter and Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon...and it's generally when I get 'flu, which isn't very often at all.
The NW London 'burbs are very bright and sunny. At 11.30GMT, my car is still thoroughly frosted over.

Icy here. The water inside the chicken coop froze last night. Poor chooks.
Is there a dress code for tonight? May I suggest Inuit?

[Bob] Bring your own igloo party? As long we can speak in English this week...

It's -10 C here in balmy Pittsburgh, after Friday's 8-10 inches of thick, wet snow. Woo-hoo!

As my damn 'puters still doolally, I probably won't be there again.. :( I'll take a hammer to it tonight and try to threaten into submission, we'll see how that goes!

Currently lurking in the Essex suburbs, to answer the earlier enquiry...

[ZK] Portland, Oregon USA now, but formerly of various parts of the UK, and originally growing up in the fine Surrey outpost of Ilkley, W. Yorks.

Alan Titchmarsh grew up in Ilkley. Fact. Is Oregon east or west?

[ZK] Of what?
[Location] Currently, just in Bucks (by about 300 yards from Beds) Very close to the Herts border, too - in fact, I drive through all 3 counties to get to work.

[Watty] Well that's a coincidence. I was born in Chorleywood, which happens to be on the Herts/Bucks border: I was born on the Herts side, by a couple of hundred yards. (A road actually runs along the border, and is appropriately called "Shire Lane" - the odd-numbered houses are Herts, the even numbers are Bucks. Or it may be the other way around.) Not so near to Berks or Beds, though.

Whereas, having gone to school in darkest mid-Somerset, now I live in Manchester...