A couple of weekends ago, Premier League football had one of it's best weekends. Record-breaking numbers of goals were scored, matches with eight goals altogether, penalties, men sent off, that kind of thing. Mr C and I figured that although our taste for football is still vague, we didn't want to miss the highlights of an epic day. So, we sat and we watched Match of the Day, and it …

I went for my first run post-flu today and it did not go at all well. I'll save the story for another post, because what it did inspire me to do was to decide how I'm going to blog this next phase of my running journey. As you can see, I have created a rather whimsical banner to highlight the running posts, and I intend to blog each "week" of …

It's done! And yes, I totally cheated. My dad found this book in his attic, and it is the very same book that I used as a child. As I mentioned before, this is the book that we had sitting around the house and even with that in front of me, as a little kid I still couldn't get the cube to work properly. I don't know what planet I …

LibriVox is an organisation with a simple goal - to make all public domain works accessible in audiobook form. I've been involved for a long while now, part of an enormous group of volunteers who record chapters, poems and entire books to attempt to reach this goal. The third book in the Grace Harlowe series follows the girls as they face off against another enemy, only this time they create …

Franck!!! Taking part in a Peugeot press conference. And by taking part, I mean sitting looking a bit bored. Although he did get to speak for about ten seconds, so he was a bit less bored then. ♥

So far, 2011 hasn't shaped up all that well. I started the year feeling a bit peaky, and I blogged it, thinking to myself - well, it's been a while since I had a proper cold, perhaps I should mark the occasion so I can look back in three years when I next get one and remember it better. Silly girl. I even made the mistake of saying: I don’t …

Naturally, this month has been dominated by the repercussions from Nigel's death - both in Ambridge, and in real life as well. The outpouring of indignation from Archers listeners is quite incredible, with some even going so far as to demand a rewrite for Nigel to be reinstated. I can understand some of the anger - previous Ambridge deaths have coincided with real-life, with the death of the actor playing …

Mr C spotted the tutorial for this over on the Pixelmator site, and I was keen to give it a go. It certainly looked like a challenge, and it came right about the time we were talking all things space, and that programme was on the BBC and everything. I didn't really like the clock bit in the middle, so I just replaced it with another planet. It kinda makes …

Sincere apologies for the delay in getting this final part up, I wasn't trying to drag out the ending in a reality show results style, honest. Here's how the last voting of this series went: Sometimes we like to play it safe, sometimes we like to take a risk. --- Mitch watched as both the cars in front of him peeled off the racing line. In his mirrors, he saw …

Can't quite believe this is the penultimate part already. Time flies. As Ian mentioned in the comments, I am still chasing that second unanimous vote but it was not to be this time. Here's a bumper edition to see us into the final part nicely. --- "Come on," Pierre said, pushing Mitch back towards the car. "Do you want to give Mason more reason to consider Diaz?" "What?" "Get back …

As with most of my Life List items, if you'd told me I would be doing them a year ago, I would have thought you were crazy. On Saturday evening, I found myself in a stadium with more than 37,000 other people, cheering on Aston Villa as they scored the winning goal. Well, they might not all have been cheering for Villa, but you get what I'm saying. A football …

I was secretly hoping for a repeat of the unanimous vote achievement, but this one was not quite so straight forward. A couple of people are concerned for Mitch's welfare, but most want to see him back behind the wheel. --- "I'm in!" Mitch yelled, bursting back into the motorhome with glee. He stopped abruptly, when he realised a group of fans were being shown around. Melissa hurried over to …

Twitter is a strange beast, isn't it? Everyone uses it differently. For some, it is a means of promoting their work. For others, it is a place to follow comedians and laugh at jokes. Some use it as a replacement RSS feed, following those streams that are simple "new blog post" updates. Others use it as a way of keeping in touch with the family. A handful of people follow …

Here we go then. My attempt to get back into running. I've picked up the 10k app because I want to continue moving forward with help from the training app, not necessarily because I'm intending to run a 10k. I think my main aim is to complete a 5k in a better time than before. Previously, I have used the My Tracks app from Google, but the Runkeeper Pro app …

I thought I would throw this poll open as it was great fun when we did that last time. You guys didn't disappoint. Sandro was the top answer, the obvious choice really, I suppose. I do love the options, although I'm not sure Mr C has a super-licence at the moment. Also, I'm quite intrigued by Mason's cousin. Would that make him Uncle Mortimer's son, and what kind of family …

Party people! It's only right to celebrate, no matter what kind of a headache you've got! See? Let us see what a Mortimer celebration is like! --- Mitch sat at the hotel bar, watching the celebrations going on around him. Mason and Bella were entertaining a large group of mechanics, regular bursts of laughter drowning out any other chatter. He sipped at his orange juice. Melissa appeared at his side, …

Several times on this blog I have talked about how very excellent the Four Chords song is by Axis of Awesome. And it is fabulous, I'm not going back on my word. At the same time, though, it's fair to say that those four chords have ruined my musical life. Twice in the past couple of weeks, Mr C and I have ended up racking our brains for hours and …

I'm not sure we've ever had a unanimous vote before, how exciting! I hear ya! --- Mitch brought the car in, stopping perfectly inside the Mortimer GP pit box. He was hoisted up on jacks, the crew changed his tyres, and out of the corner of his eye he spotted an extra mechanic having a closer look at the rear end of the car. It felt like he was stationery …

We recapped Mr C's top five films at the very end of 2010, and after a little bit of pondering (and a little bit of tardiness on my part), he's back with his top five songs released in 2010. It was a good year for us and music, after a few years of not being that interested in the output of that particular industry. So, here are his top five: …

I mentioned this in my recent Life List recap of 2010, but it bears repeating here. I've been finding these episodes of Doctor Who a bit of a struggle to get through. It turns out that I'm really just not that big a fan of Christopher Ecclestone. I still think he was absolutely necessary as the Doctor, and it wouldn't have worked if David Tennant had just dived right in …

I haven't had a proper cold for a long time, well over a year. The occasional sore throat descends upon me, and I always prepare for the worst, but then it just goes away. I don't know whether that means I have a better constitution than I used to, or if I am just lucky enough to have already had all the germs that have been circulating recently, and therefore …

Here are the results of the gridwalk poll: As noted in the comments, Mitch is normally painted as the good guy, and I had thought the gridwalk would be a sure thing, but as a die-hard racer, Mitch is more professional than that, and Pierre wins his attention. So, on with the chapter. --- Mitch waved a hand at the cameras and offered a positive thumbs up, but turned his …

You're all so adventurous! I will not chatter too much now, except to say the wiki page is pretty much done, so head over and have a look at everything you could possibly need to know about Life in the Fast Lane. Don't go yet, though, we've got a chapter to get through. --- The dry tyres were on, and Mitch's car was lowered to the ground. He could see …

Ahh, I missed this. Mitch and Mason and them all. As my favourite lady of the moment would say: Such fun!I must point you towards the brand new section of the wiki dedicated to Life in the Fast Lane. It has all kinds of crazy information about characters and plot points, plus some fantastic livery designs from Lukeh. It's a work in progress but it's going to be excellent. Anyways, …

For some reason, I saw the word 'witch' this week and it started me thinking about all the different witches that are out there in books and on TV. There are quite a lot when you give it some proper thought. To narrow it down to five, my top five at that, I decided to pick only the good ones. Sabrina the Teenage Witch. My goodness I loved Sabrina. Those …

I'm rubbish at birthdays, okay? Many happy returns to Franck who turned 33 yesterday. I wonder what he did to celebrate, wherever he is hibernating away for the winter. The worrying news is that Franck's website is no longer working for me. Anyone else? I mean, it's not like it had been updated in forever anyway, but even so. At this rate, I will not only forget FKM's birthday, but …

From the Chengdu Panda Breeding Centre, the subject of that BBC programme I sort of live blogged. Credit: tinachensf/Flickr

"WHERE IS IT?" Mason roared. The mechanics nearby jumped, and rapidly turned their attention to minute tasks. Mason glared at them, but getting no response, he began stomping around the car. "What's going on?" Melissa asked, approaching Mitch with his drinks bottle. They watched the spectacle from their side of the garage. "Mason has it in his head that he needs his lucky wristband," Mitch shook his head. "It's a …

I've made lots and lots of New Year's Resolutions before, both on the blog and in my head, and very few of them have worked out. This year, I changed the concept around completely and debuted the Life List - a long-term set of goals and things to aim at. Some are crazy, some are impossible, some are easy and most will take time. I figured a quick review for …

The BBC have gradually been building up to this evening's episode, with behind the scenes stories and footage littering the news and blogs and a great campaign to get listeners to tweet-along with the episode. Although I knew it was supposed to be something special, I was just going to treat it like any other episode and listen to the podcast when I had the chance. How much damage are …

For the new, I'm switching up the way I change headers on the site. I'd come to a position where I could make a perfectly good header in a week and that was fine. I could keep on finding brushes and doing what I could, but a week wasn't really long enough to make anything particularly special. Instead, I'm going to do a monthly header, with the hopes that I …

To celebrate Christmas with the Archers (and a year since I have been blogging about Ambridge - a year? Where's that gone?), I thought I'd do this post a little differently. I'm experimenting with the format a little, and will go through the month show by show. It's not as scary as it sounds. Let us just begin. 1st - Tony is mean to Kathy again, but she is still …

This may be the first time in a long time that we have watched enough recent films to create any form of top five list. We have indulged in many a movie night, so I tasked Mr C to choose his top five films that were released in 2010, that we watched in 2010. Here is what he came up with: Inception. "The closest thing to the Matrix since the …

I treated myself to the first series of Miranda, and after watching the first episode I found myself ever so confused. The iTunes version has the Channel 4 logo at the beginning. How odd, I thought. Miranda couldn't be more BBC. Created by BBC Productions, broadcast on the BBC. The show came about because of a radio comedy that was on... wait for it... BBC Radio. But there it was, …

Just cuteness today. Credit: Ross Manges/Flickr

Today I braved the supermarkets to pick up ingredients for the mammoth piece of gammon we received. I told you about it yesterday, and the fact that I am even blogging about the results means I didn't burn it. That is a bonus! I was following this BBC recipe, but I sort of modified it for my own results, due to constraints with both time and the size of the …

Last night, there was a Celebrity Mastermind episode in which one of the contestants chose the Back to the Future trilogy as their specialist subject. Thanks to Alex for pointing this out to me, these questions could have been made for me! As is becoming a bit of a tradition when there's a subject we know about on Mastermind, I thought I'd gather the questions for others to see how …

Someone gave us a gammon joint! Mr C is partial to a bit of gammon, and I normally buy the ready made slices that just need grilling or frying up, with a bit of pineapple thrown in for good measure. Now I am faced with this: I didn't have a clue what to do with it, but after a quick search, I found a nice, simple recipe. It starts with …

Remember a while ago I was blogging about my Rubik's Cube? That is still in progress, by the way, but I am in the same predicament I was before - keep trying to achieve something but messing it up and finally scraping back to having just one side complete. At some point I will just go ahead and buy the book to attempt to move on, but I am not …

When they announced that this year's Christmas Doctor Who would be based on the Charles Dickens novel, I thought that sounded quite interesting, particularly as I knew they would be incorporating time travel and that's my favourite bit. Then they made a big deal of announcing the name, drum roll please, A Christmas Carol. I felt a bit deflated. That's not very creative at all, is it? Naming the story …

I really just have to point out this amazing food blog called Zoom Yummy. I think perhaps I discovered it via Wordpress's Freshly Pressed feed - a daily selection of the best posts from anyone using Wordpress, and it turns out that's quite a lot of people. I usually only scan through the list and see if anything catches my eye, and this blog certainly did. I can't really do …

At the weekend, Lukeh posted a great item on his blog, the age-old game of who you would invite for a dinner party. It never gets old because your tastes change, there are always new people to discover, and mostly because it is always fun. At the bottom of the post, Lukeh warns to give it some serious thought - if you're going to be spending an entire evening with …

Part of the BBC's festive output this year will be a one-off special comedy show from Ronnie Corbett, quite sadly entitled The One Ronnie. I don't particularly like the naming convention of the show, and I wasn't at all convinced about watching it. There are times when these comedians really should hang up their hats, you know? However, Mr C pointed me in the direction of Engadget, who particularly enjoyed …

Travelling in and amongst the snow is a nightmare, but I refuse to moan as I know plenty of people have had it a lot worse than me. What I would like to do is plug the RAC Traffic App, available via both Apple and Android. It is super duper useful, pointing out the tricky situations on the roads - from slippery bits, to hefty delays due to accidents, to …

I wanted to do something to commemorate all the snow we have been having recently, and I pondered the idea of taking a photo of the white stuff, but didn't find it all that inspiring. Instead, I went in search of some snow-related brushes and found some really good ones. With a bit of adjustment to the scatter patterns, this is what I came up with. Made with: Pixelmator Font: …

This morning, Mr C pointed me in the direction of the Quest Visual site, where they demonstrate a brand new iPod/iPhone app called Word Lens. It is crazy! You open up the app, hold it up in front of some signs and it translates them on the fly. At the moment it only does English to Spanish, or the other way round, but I would imagine there are more dictionaries …

I must say, being back on Wordpress is just like putting on your favourite jumper. It may not be pretty, but it's warm and comforting. The Squarespace adventure was a bit of a disaster. I have never known such unfiltered spam to be allowed through. At first I thought I was doing something wrong, missing some kind of obvious step but no. The commenting system over there just isn't up …

It's getting to that time of year when the inevitable will happen. It's unavoidable, you will be sucked in. It's that dreaded period of indulgence known as: Christmas TV. Actually it's not all that bad. This is the one time of year that I buy a TV guide to help keep track of what is on and when. Most of the year I can rely on perusing the iPlayer and …

I had a few minutes to spare, so I browsed to the App Store on the iPad for a new game to play, and there was iPad Jenga - a featured game just pleading for me to buy it. So I did. It's brilliant. For £2.99, you get to play Jenga without having to stack up the bricks every time, without the noisy clatter when they fall down, without having …

Remember last week I told you about the Natural World Special that was to be shown on BBC Two on Tuesday? Well, I watched it and here are my findings. "We have pushed the symbol of conversation to the brink of extinction." Hehehe, he said International Rescue. Around 2000 giant pandas remain. How can it be a carnivore but only eats grass? Founded with just six pandas. AWWWWW. That woman …