Zizzi - restaurant review

So after a long day yesterday, (having been out to visit a Despatch Company then finding upon my return to the office that T/O Billing had arrived) it was off to Zizzi's; the new Restaurant underneath the building in which we were situated.

Arriving around 5:15pm all seemed quiet, the staff seemed very friendly indeed and we settled down to enjoy a pre-meal drinky or two.

The decor is interesting, cut logs adorn a type of partition between the Smoking and Non-smoking areas, and the open kitchen area's centrepiece is a wonderful large wood fire oven. The sight of the chimney protruding from the top and up through the roof goes some way to explain the awful bloody racket has been eminating from the roof.

Tables and seats look nice, though the seats must have either been designed by somebody with slightly more padding around the "Gluteus Maximus" region than most or was just not tested by them as they were rock hard. Some of the tables do have sofa type seats on one side of them so I think I will have to try and arrange to sit on one of them next time.

Sadly no beer on draught, so it was Peroni bottles for £3 a time, a touch expensive and also a touch disappointing as Pizza Express across the road serves the same beer. It would have been nice if they had gone for something a little different but never mind, beer is beer is beer, and it went down very nicely thankyou.

Here is a link to the menu - http://www.zizzi.co.uk/zizzimenu.html I was very impressed by the range of food, but having no will power at all I plumped for Pizza Sofia, Marinated Chicken, Peperoni, Pancetta, fresh Rosemary mozarella and tomato. Which was really nice.

Not a huge selection of desserts, which was disappointing, though the Mela Croccante, an Italian Apple and Amaretto crumble, baked in a Skillet sounded really nice. I definitely recommend a visit, good staff with top food in a lovely surrounding (and good company too).

And then off to the station, that's the Pub the Station as Barbara and I had 25 minutes to spare before the train arrived, a swift pint in there and then off home.

From Alton station to my friends house to join them for the rest of their Poker evening, which as always was a great laugh.

Let us see what life has in store for us today!!

Decent food without having to run the gauntlet of crossing the road

Oh what a night!!!

Now that is how Football should be played!! Arsenal 2 - Juventus (Champions of Italy and currently 8 points clear of Serie A) 0.

A superb performance from the boys as they swept aside the Bianconeri as if they were a Conference side. Another solid Bernabeu like performance away at the Stadio Deli Alpi next Wednesday and we are through to the Semi finals for the first time in our history.

Wenger finally shrugged of the shroud that had been placed around his shoulders by the English press, who had accused him of having sold Patrick Vieira far before his time, as young Fabregas controlled the game from the middle of an excellent and hard working 5 man midfield. Toure and Pires put in superb peformances, goals scorers Cesc Fabregas and that man Thierry Henry (after great work from Hleb and Fabregas) role on Aston Villa saturday.

A little more about me

I am not really sure why, but for many, many years I have been very interested in the assassination of John. F. Kennedy. Whether it is purely the mystery that has surrounded the event, I am not really sure. Read on if you're interested, other wise come back tomorrow when normal blog service will be resumed.

I have used a vast number of resources whilst looking into the assassination for myself, including watching dozens of documentaries (sometimes three or four times) various books and a couple of websites.

It is like a fascination, I feel that I must try to discover as many "facts" about the shooting as I possibly can to feel comfortable that "I" know the truth. Sadly, by the time the US government releases many of the documents that are sealed until sometime around 2030 or so, very little information of interest will remain either unknown or de-classified.

Over the years I have mellowed in my view of the events of that Dallas day back in November 1963, I firmly believed for many years that the fatal gunshot had to have been fired from in front and to the right of the motorcade, basically meaning that there were at least two people firing guns at the President that day. Evidence available to me at the time made it impossible to believe anything else, none of the Warren report's findings regarding the whereabouts of the shooter were firmly backed by the physical evidence, and where there was evidence to back up these claims, they had the feel of having been doctored somewhat (specifically x-ray and Post Mortem photograph evidence).

I still feel that this evidence was tampered with, but not for the reasons that we perhaps believe, (that it covered up that the fatal bullet was fired from the Grassy Knoll) but that it amended to ensure that although the shot was fired from behind (* discussion on who fired and from where to come a little later) the medical (and Abraham Zapruder's film footage) evidence was such that it made it look like the shot came from the front.

An excellent and almost unbelievably unbiased resource for anybody looking to learn more about the Assassination is shown below, I recommend anybody view, it provides excellent commentary and dispells many myths whilst providing truly a staggering amount of information, almost more than you could ever be able to read.

http://mcadams.posc.mu.edu/home.htm

(*) Right so here we are then, we are happy that Kennedy was shot from behind, new evidence has proved that there were three shots (timings indicate that one person WAS able to fire all three shots) all fired from the rear of the motorcade. Conspircay theorists always complain that if there was a single shooter hiding on the 6th floor of the Texas School Book Depository (*TSBD) why the shots were not fired as the motorcade proceded along Houston Street, before making that slow turn onto Elm. A good question, although by firing from well in front, the Assassin would be limiting his/her chances of successfully escaping the building. By firing from behind, there should have been enough confusion for the escape to be made.

So who killed Kennedy, it was moer than likely to be Oswald, but there does appear to be a lack of actual physical and believable evidence proving this fact. More likely was that Oswald was involved somehow and was indeed waiting in the lunch room where he was seen by a Patrolman and a co-worker around 60 seconds after the shots were fired. Realising that the plan had gone to plan, or not, Oswald apparently left the TSBD quite slowly and deliberately, prior to the building being cordoned off, these actions do not necessarily appear to be those of a man who has just shot the President of the United States of America.

Reports from there are a little confused, the offical version of events being that, whilst making his escape, Oswald took a bus away from the area, eventually walking back to his lodgings, where he collected his revolver. By this time an incredibly accurate description of Oswald was already being broadcast over the Police radios, Oswald was apparently challenged by Officer J.D Tippett and alledgedly shot and killed the Patrolman.

Oswald was then seen acting suspiciously outside a shoe shop, before entering a Theatre without paying and was then arrested, after a struggle, for the murder of Tippett.

My personal belief was that Oswald was set up, literally the Patsy that he said he was. Although it has been proven that Oswald ordered the Mannlicher-Carcano rifle (under the Alias Hidell) and was present in the TSBD at the time of the shooting. I believe that he was there because he was told that whoever he was involved with had intended to show how easily they could have assassinated Kennedy, to make a point and to apply pressure on the President to have him reverse his decision to pull the USA out of the Vietnam war.

Sounds perfectly logical, but then that's only my personal opinion, part fact I am sure and part fiction I am certain. If you have an opinion of your own, any resources to share, or comments to make de-bunking my fine piece of reference work here (yeah right) please feel free to post a comment.

The Clio is dead

No real surprise but the Clio is indeed dead..but the good news is that it has been replaced by a S reg Silver Peugeot 306, which Lucy picked up today, we are mobile again.

You could tell it was the start of British Summer time as it pissed down all weekend, and Portsmouth's Fratton Park was just unable to take the late deluge so the Pompey - Arsenal game succumbed to the weather. Still it means that the Arsenal are free and hopefully fresh to concentrate on tonights' vital Champions League quarter final tie versus the mighty Juventus. Juve without Del Piero (thing strain) and Pavel Nedved (suspended) arrive at Highbury looking to avenge the defeat they suffered on their last visit to the famout old ground. Welcome back to Patrick Vieira, a true Arsenal legend.

Arsenal, without Campbell (bruised toe!!) and Ljunberg (calf strain) are looking to build on a series of excellent peformances of late, and must be confident of keeping another Champions league clean sheet.

ITV 1 19:30, UP THE ARSENAL!!.

Friday saw an evening in the Dukes, just to make a change, all the regular characters were there, and a decent night was had by all.

Saturday, spent most of the day looking forward to the game only for it to be postponed as kick off approached, Dukes and more beers in the evening.

Sunday, chilled during the day, beers in the evening. Monday Lucy was out with her Mum looking for cars while I got some game time in on the Dreamcast.

Managed to get to Sainsburys late afternoon to do the shopping that we hadn't managed to do over the weekend, so Monday Roast dinner, lovely. Buzzcocks in the evening, most amusing.

PAYDAY, thank christ for that, it was looking a bit tight there for a while but we made it through.

Blog again tomorrow after the game.

Links to my favourite websites

http://www.google.co.uk/
http://home.skysports.com/
http://www.stickcricket.com/
http://www.arsenal.com
http://www.elitegolfonline.co.uk/
http://www.amazon.co.uk/
http://www.miniclip.com/
http://www.mousebreaker.co.uk/
http://gamehouse.com/

Friday last thing

Off out this evening, only to the Dukes Head I would imagine, but if it has a darts match on then perhaps across to the newly refurbished White Horse, very nice in there it is nowadays.

Day off Monday, nothing planned just chilling out after a busy weekend (dependent on car situation of course)

Will update the blog Tuesday morning

Friday at last

It feels like it has been a long week, made slightly longer by having to try and pick Lucy up last night as she is obviously a bit down in the dumps having crashed her car yesterday.

Apparently the road on which she was travelling has quite a lot of turnings off of it and by the time she realised that the van in front had emergency braked (to avoid a dog which had run out into the road) and come to a stop rather than braking and turning off it was too late to avoid driving into the back of him.

We expect to hear from the garage today to find out whether they reckon it is worth fixing, I don't hold out an awful lot of hope I must admit, so if it get's written off, lets hope we get a fair price to enable us to go and buy a new car over the weekend.

All the plans are up the shute, we were due to go to see my Brother and his family tomorrow as it his and his youngest son's birthdays, and we had also planned to travel down to Hayling Island to take my Mum and Dad out for lunch for Mothers day on Sunday. I have no idea what is going to happen now.

These things are sent to try us.

Still positives for the weekend must be Portsmouth V Arsenal tomorrow afternoon on PremPlus and of course it is payday on Tuesday.

Radio and Multimedia problems sorted

Have just spent my lunch hour having another look at my phone to see if I can work out why the Radio and Multimedia applications were not working.

Well, I have definately sorted the Radio, and have now saved Radio 1 and accidentally Radio 2 also, so that is going to be Delta FM tomorrow morning on the train (or walking home from now on seeing as we now have no car).

Multimedia mesage arrived from Kelly, showing his Tatoo so far, looking very groovy indeed, he is a braver boy than me I can tell you. I was expecting something slightly smaller for his first one, but anybody who knows him knows that he doesn't do anything by halves (except the occasional Guinness).

I think that the test Multimedia Message I sent to him earlier went ok also, this fix may have occurred when I turned my phone off and turned it back on again, perhaps the service update text from Orange had not quite taken effect when I turned the phone back on again Tuesday. Either way we will have to wait and see if I get any more.

M

An eventful start to the day

Afternoon all,

We are once again "sans voiture" as Lucy has crashed her car, this time into the back of a lorry that had braked heavily after a dog ran out in front of it.

Thankfully she is fine, but the car, our beautiful N Reg Diesel Clio, is likely to be a write off, we will have to wait and see, but the age of the car suggests that it will not be viable to repair it.

Well these things happen, but it's back to trawling the papers for a new car by the sounds of it.

A quiet evening in front of the PC last night, attempting to find more out about my N70, like why I can't send or receive Multimedia messages and why the internet connection isn't working, nothing obviously helpful as yet, but I hope to have the answer sooner or later.

I managed to get the Radio working, not sure I should be happy with that as the only Radio Station currently on it is "Delta FM", great, still I listened on the train to some cheese doing the breakfast show with an annoying woman called Saskia, finally lost the signal around Aldershot, perhaps a blessing in disguise. The internet access problem is stopping me from downloading a new station so I am stuck with Delta FM for the time being.

Full Nokia N70 Road Test

Having spent the majority of yesterday evening playing around with my new phone, I must say that I am very impressed indeed.

Having the odd problem as you might imagine (my previous phone the 6170 was brill and nice and straight forward for me to figure out) the N70's buttons are a touch small for my podgy fingers but as long as you are careful; texting has not been too bad so far. The real test comes when I try and text someone after the Pub closes, could be in for some interesting messages.

The two cameras are an excellent touch (one on the front and one on the back) the slide phone on the back just looks really cool, with 2 megapixels, which is pretty damn impressive.

As per usual, the manuals are not as helpful as they could be and it has taken me some time to find the functions that I need.

Also having a few problems launching the FM Radio which I thought I could use to listen to the final day of the third test today, but as it turned out I don't think I would have had much to listen to anyway, well played England, squaring the series at 1-1.

No doubt I will eventually work out how to get it working, probably cost me a bomb but that's life.

I haven't downloaded any music to the music player as yet, but have invested again in Bad Day by REM for my ringtone, so at least I will recognise my phone if it does actually ring.

I am a bit of a novice with Bluetooth and have activated it a couple of times, will see if Tom has any decent files to share hopefully when I catch him nect on the train. I may even be able to connect wireleslly to his laptop (not really sure whether I can or not all this technology confuses my country bumpkinesque mind I'm afraid.

Overall I would say that the N70 has gone beyond my expectations, and I would recommend it to anyone really.

Right, that's all for now blog again soon.

M

Phone issue resolved

My brand spanking new Nokia N70 arrived this morning, a day earlier than suggested by Orange, very smooth it looks too.

All I have to do now (other than the fact I am still waiting for the SIM to register) is to figure out how the hell it works.

I keep choosing Nokia's so I can always know my way round them, but this one is stumping me at the moment.

The destructions manual doesn't appear to be that helpful either, "looks like you're on your own kid"!!

Actually Melanie here in the office has an N70 so she has helped me a couple times already (again not that I can do much until they register the SIM etc etc etc).

Will blog again tomorrow with a full "Mooseblaster Product Review"

M

Mobile Phone Issue Solved

Hurrah, Orange to the rescue, the website worked here and I have sorted an upgrade to the Nokia N70, which I must say looks rather nice indeed.

http://www.nokia.com/nseries/index.html?loc=inside,main_n70&lang=en&country=GB follow the link for a groovy view of it, due to arrive Wednesday so will keep you all posted as to how impressed (or not) I am then.

Back to the grindstone.

M

Another weekend just flies by

Monday morning again!! Not a bad weekend, obviously disappointed to have been turned over by the Irish in the Rugby (although not without the help of a Scottish touch judge), it all could have been so different had those decisions gone for us, but hey that's sport for you.

Another clean sheet for the Arsenal, running out comfortable winners 3-0 against Charlton, Mr Wenger says that we did not play especially well in the second half but Hleb managed to grab our third which made things nice and comfortable. Roll on Portsmouth next Saturday.

England's cricketers seem to be having a good third test match, another solid day with the bat should see England square the series.

Far too many beers led to two rather late starts, mostly chilled both days, a bit of excitement over the weekend as Lucy lost her Purse Friday night, she was absolutely convinced somebody had lifted it so once we got back home she went about cancelling all of her cards etc. It was only Saturday morning, when it was located in the bag of one of our friends and the panic was over. Now starts the wait for her replacement cards to arrive.

Saturday saw the destruction of my mobile, so am currently back on the 3310, oops, a concrete floor even with the carpet on was just too much for my phone. Typically the Orange website was not accessable from home, I think there must be something wrong with the website URL for the link I need, here at work the link works but there is a technical problem which is preventing me from sorting this problem out, hrumph.

I am fairly sure that my phone is insured so should sort a replacement, though I was never really impressed with the 6170 and it must be close to being upgradable so hope to get a different one.

Nothing gripping planned for the week, there's a surprise eh, plus funds are running a little low now.

Catch y'all later.

Poker evening.

Morning all, an excellent night was had last night at a friends house, where six of us had gathered for a Texas Hold'em Poker evening.

Althought only for fun this time, the six players are all getting used to the vagaries of the game and there could be a small pot to play for next time.

The potential is there to try and arrange a Poker Competition at work and I will ask around to check how many people would be interested.

The evening went nicely with beers and the odd brilliantly funny story so finally off to bed around 12:30am.

Out this evening with Jo and Lucy, Jo has just got back from the Dominican Republic, where she had gone with some of her family for a wedding. Unfortunately several of her party picked up a nasty stomach upset which delayed their return by 3 or 4 days but she is back and rested and ready for the Dukes on a Friday night.

Nothing really planned for the weekend, though if I am out at 3pm Saturday I will be constantly checking my phone for updates to see if we can turn Charlton over, up the Arsenal!!

Will blog again this afternoon if anything worthwhile happens during the day, otherwise be sure to come back Monday when you can see what I got up to over the weekend.

So I am slowly getting the hang of this

With some help from my mate Tom, I am slowly working out what buttonn do what etc.

Hopefully I will be posting picture(s) shortly, in the meantime here is a little bit more insight and background into me.

I was sadly born in Basingstoke Hospital, which I guess doesn't make me a true Altonian, but bloody well close enough for my liking, having lived in Alton for all of my life so far.

I am an Arsenal fan, (ok you can stop booing now) I get to games when I can, this season I have managed to get to three games, Sparta Prague in the Champions league, Birmingham and Liverpool in the Premiership. (100% record as well).

I enjoy lots of things, especially sport, but comedy is also an important part of my life. I used to play Football and Cricket, a dodgy knee curtailed my Football when I was about 21, and a different problem with the same knee forcing two separate operations finally convinced me to hang up my cricket spikes when I was 28 or so.

I still enjoy watching both sports, whenever I can, and still play golf when I can.

Humour and Comedy. Favourite comedians are Eddie Izzard, Billy Connelly, but shows like The Fast Show, Have I got News for You and Monty Python always make me laugh and cheer me up no end.

I have a rather nice Epiphone Les Paul Electric Guitar and a Line6 Pod, (effects and Amp Emulator), which is a really groovy gadget indeed and I recommend it to anyone who has a "leccy guitar". I really need to get practicing (boy do I need the practice)

Musically I obviously enjoy Rock and Roll type music, so Metallica (from Black Album onwards), REM, Oasis, Beatles, Beach Boys, Carter USM, James, Queen.

Have been fortunate enough to see Metallica, REM and Oasis live, but also seen "A kind of Magic", "The Bootleg Beatles" and "The Silver Beatles" three expertly reproduced tribute bands who knocked my socks off. I would especially recommend seeing the "Bootleg Beatles" they are regular giggers at the Anvil (Basingstoke), around February time and The Albert Hall (London) in December.

Apologies for any typo's please don't comment if pointing them out is all you do, life I promise is far too short to be THAT pedantic.

That's all for now, catch y'all later

Welcome to anyone who finds me

Good afternoon to one and all, and welcome to my blog "The everyday life of Elias Mooseblaster".

As the name gives away, I am a fan of the Radio show "Round The Horne" among other classics of comedy, and it is such a classic name that I just had to call my blog after it.

Over the coming months, I hope to keep you updated with the interesting things that happen in my life, the odd amusing or entertaining link and generally give you an insight as to what it is like being me.

I should blog again tomorrow so be sure to come back then.