Don't tread on the frogs!

Let me paint you a picture; one of which you are all familiar with I'm sure.

It's a sunday morning. I'm sitting ready for work eating a bowl of cereal with some rather boring news show on- you know, the sort you sit and watch on a sunday morning because there's nothing else on. Niall is in the kitchen, washing up a few dishes and boiling the kettle for a quick cuppa before giving me a lift to work. I'd like to add here- the next happenings/thought processes occur in about a millisecond I'm about to take another mouthful of cereal... when I hear *BANG!* And when I say Bang, I mean a LOUD one. First thought: Niall's dropped something large and heavy onto the kitchen counter... but in the next quarter of a second I hear him yell... crap, injury??, something thrown through the wondow??? But there was no smashing of glass?? confusion. So I run into the kitchen scared to death of what I might see... and I'm faced with the following scene: Niall is standing there wearing one rubber (not just that I might add), hot water is dripping over most of the kitchen surfaces... I look at Niall, and he breathlessly says... "The kettle just exploded".

True enough, there was the kettle lying on it's side having shot right out of it's stand. Man, if I hadn't been so bloody scared I'd have laughed my head off. After checking if Niall was okay, I carefully turned off the plug. I guess we were kinda in shock for a little bit... but proceeded to mop up the water everywhere. It seems that a hole had blown in the kettle's element despite it being in perfect condition elsewhere. I'm going to be informing trading standards about it because it's meant to have a safety cut out to avoid any explosions. It's just a bloody good job that the water hadn't been any hotter because Niall could have been badly burnt.

Since there wasn't any injuries or fires or anything, it's kinda funny when I think about it now, but Argos will be experiencing The Wrath Of The Slink for selling shitty, dangerous appliances, even if we have had it for about a year and it's worked fine.

Anyhoo, after work, we had a quick bite to eat in the form of a pre-packed shepards pie (yum) and headed off to collect my little sister and watch an outdoor performance of The Tempest at Shugborough Hall. Now, I'm all for the use of pathetic fallacy in films etc, but witnessing the weather change from perfect sunshine and hot hot heat, to torrential rain, thunder and lightening was just crazy, and more so after the explosive start to the day. Nevertheless, we got there early, and sat in the car for about 45 minutes, listening to Tool and watching the downpour, rainbows and lightening. Fortunatly it seemed to clear a little for the start of the performance so we gathered our folding chairs and ventured to find a good spot. On the way out of the car park, I spotted this tiny tiny baby frog (about the size of my little finger nail) which was directly in the line of an on coming car so I picked it up and moved it to the side of the road. I felt good. Like a saviour of vulnerable baby frogs. However, my efforts were only to be proven completely futile. On turning the corner, we were faced with a swarm of baby frogs. There must have been thousands, and that is NO exageration. We tried our best to dodge, tip toe and even jump over them but they were so small and there were soooo many. All you could see were people walking funny, jumping, hopping, skipping and tiptoeing through the masses of little frogs. It was surreal. There were less frogs, fortunatly, were we pitched up our chairs for the play. We had a little bit of rain, but it was just a shower, and the performance started. It was all rather good, and despite not knowing the story and not being all too academic with funny ancient english, I was quite impressed that I managed to follow it. The second half and ending was a bit of a let down, but it was made more amusing by watching a regular sized adult frog hop and crawl it's way towards an unsuspecting womans leg sitting on a blanket. I waited for the scream or the disgusted flinch when it touched her or hopped on her... and I wasn't disapointed either... hysterical.

So all in all, a rather bizarre sort of a day for a sunday.

Saturday, was a bit of a let down too... whilst I didn't care all that much about England going out the world cup, I was annoyed to see Roddick get beaten by that spotty little prick Andy Murray. Roddick just was NOT on top form. Better luck next year Andy. I can only hope Murry hits puberty before his next match and can't play.

More good news however, I have started work on my Wizard and on another bear so I have plenty to do. We also managed to get tickets to the World Series Renault day at Donnington Park in September and tickets were free so that will be something to look forward too... as long as I can get that weekend off work of course. We have the tickets now, so I'll be mightily angry if I'm not allowed the two days off particularly since I have four weeks of holiday which isn't booked yet. Heikki's going to be there and everything... I better get my stalking shoes out ready.

Oh, and I'm feeling better too- my tummy seems to be recovering and the infection which my doctor told me I had even though I had NO symptoms (?!) should be gone too. Just waiting for those test results, but otherwise I seem to be on the mend. Yey!

Laters.