Groan Up

Classic Eighties Movies

Over Christmas I watched a few movies from the Eighties. Time to reminisce for a minute about my childhood…

Yes, I am at the point where, although I am only 41, this is the sixth decade that I’ve lived in. Whilst the Nineties was the best, there are films from the Eighties that are classics and are still great to watch!

Back To The Future

The Goonies

Short Circuit and Short Circuit 2

Indiana Jones

Return Of The Jedi

Ghostbusters

Stand By Me

Die Hard

Gremlins

Beverly Hills Cop

Who Framed Roger Rabbit?

Big

Bill And Ted’s Excellent Adventure

Coming To America

Mi Smart Band 4 – a review

It was my birthday earlier this month. My wife bought be a great new watch and I’m really pleased with it. It’s a Mi Smart Band 4.

I’ve had a Pebble for the last five or six years and I’ve loved it. Recently, the watch has started to feel uncomfortable and heavy on my wrist. I was sure that the step count tracking was a bit off. And I was having to charge it up every two or three days. It was getting a bit frustrating. So started looking for a new one. Fortunately I spotted a tweet recommending the Mi Smart Band 4 – what a bargain!

You can buy the watch in various colours, but I went for black.

So, it arrived just after my birthday, but this means that I’ve had it around a week now. I guess it’s early days, but so far, I love it! And it’s affordable to replace if I have issues with it. I’ve ordered a screen protector as I’m paranoid about damaging it.

The watch was packaged well and it was very straightforward to get it on charge. Charging took a couple of hours, maybe. I was then able to link it to my phone after downloading the free Mi Fit app. This was dead easy and took seconds.

Once connected by Bluetooth, the watch had the correct time and immediately started counting steps.

Using the app I was able to set up notifications from different apps. To be honest, this was a bit annoying as they didn’t come through the following day at work. When I got home in the evening I rebooted the watch and suddenly they started working. I’ve had no problems since.

The big difference between the Smart Band and my previous watch is that this is so comfortable to wear. Instead of taking my watch off to go to bed, I can now sleep wearing this. So now it records my sleep pattern, which is interesting. The watch is waterproof too, which will be handy at some point.

After a week of wearing it, the watch still has 65% charge! Amazing, compared to what I’m used to.

I can’t recommend it highly enough.

3D Models of Landmarks at Lidl

My daughter and I had fun building a model of Neuschwanstein Castle this afternoon, using a set bought from Lidl.

Before Christmas we bought a couple of 3D landmark puzzles from Lidl. We bought two – Big Ben and Neuschwanstein Castle. Today we had a go at the castle and really enjoyed it.

The models are made without the need for glue and scissors as you assemble them using folds, hinges and joints. Having said that, I would recommend a small kitchen knife to help you cut out the holes for the joints, and some craft glue might be worth having for certain details.

It took around 45 minutes to make and it was good fun, actually and we would definitely recommend picking up a couple of you spot them in store. They were about £4 each. There were a few other options including Big Ben, the Eiffel Tower and Tower Bridge. We intended to go back and buy some more but haven’t been back to Lidl since then!

Board Beans Cafe

We finally got to try to Board Beans Cafe in Northwich today.

The Board Beans Cafe opened in 2019 and we’ve walked past it on many occasions but not actually tried it, for no particular reason. Today we finally did and it was great!

We were there on a Saturday afternoon. It was fairly busy but there was a spare table for us. It seemed like a great way to keep the children busy. We ordered drinks and an ice cream sundae. We were charged £3 per adult to play games – this would cover us for three hours, although we never planned to be there that long.

The was a huge choice of games. Because we had the children with us we only really focused on the children’s games, but we could see shelf after shelf of more adult games. The website says there are over 350 available!

We played a few games but the children made it a little difficult as they couldn’t agree on games and couldn’t agree on rules! But the staff were really friendly and patient, even explaining the rules for a balance a penguin game!

The food and drinks look great and I’d like to visit again but without the children so that we can play some decent, unusual games. There was one called Cash and Guns which sounded and looked fun on a nearby table!

This is a unique cafe in Northwich and, in fact, unique in the local area – there’s nothing else like it that I’m aware of. It’s well worth a visit if you’re passing.

Top Cashback

Over the last few months I’ve been using Top Cashback. You will have heard of it – it’s the one with the annoying adverts. But it’s the one that can make you a little bit of money for doing nothing.

I have been massively trying to cut back on spending so I haven’t made masses of money, but each time I buy something online I’ve checked to see if it’s a site that’s on Top Cashback.

So far I’ve made nearly £50 – which is great because, like I say, I have done nothing out of the ordinary. But I have made a little bit of money back just when buying things I needed to buy anyway.

If you sign up using this link then you and I can both earn some extra money: www.topcashback.co.uk/ref/member1012623211609.

Josh

The latest comedy that we’ve rewatched is Josh, starring Josh Widdicombe, Jack Dee, Beattie Edmondson and Elis James. It came out in 2014 and ended in 2017. It’s an underrated classic!

Our Sunday night tradition is to have an earlier night and watch a couple of episodes of a TV comedy. The latest one is Josh. It’s one I watched when it was first out. I think I probably appreciated it even more the second time around.

There are some real laugh out loud moments as the three flatmates make their way through life whilst dealing with their weird landlord.

I’m sat here trying to decide which episodes are my favourites but I honestly couldn’t pick. Seasons Two and Three are sublime.

It’s now on Netflix or it’s available on DVD.

Museum of Science & Industry

I would give the Museum of Science & Industry, Manchester, a miss at the moment.

We visited on Sunday January 5th 2020 – to be fair, it was the last day of the Christmas holidays. That might explain the poor museum, but I’m not sure.

The Museum is free and it has always been a nice day out. We were keen to take our little boy as this would be his first experience of the museum that he would actually remember. “There are trains, planes and lots of games to play,” we told him.

The main entrance is really impressive. The staff were really polite and friendly. We visited the Experiments part of the museum. This is really interactive and fun and was the most popular part of the museum. Our children loved it, but I couldn’t help but feel that it needed some TLC and investment. It needed a good clean. Many of the exhibits were not looking their best. For instance, there is a bike to ride which lights up a skeleton riding a bike. The skeleton’s leg had fallen off. There was an emphasis on sustainability on some of the activities, which was ironic as the picnic area didn’t offer many facilities in the way of recycling.

The cafes, as we walked past, were really impressive. They are clearly assets and the part of the museum that generates a lot of money. The shop looked great too, but we avoided this – it was January.

The textiles area was very quiet and there wasn’t much going on at all.

There was an exhibition about the sun, but this had a charge to go in, and the children weren’t particularly interested.

There was a science show – this was actually the last day of the show. This was great – our children really enjoyed it. The guy presenting was fun and interesting. It was interactive, funny and the children learned some good facts about the sun.

We went over to the Air and Space Hall. We noticed a sign that said the roof had leaked due to the heavy rain a few weeks ago. This might have explained why many of the planes and vehicles were covered up and why some of the paths were closed.

The 1830 Station and Warehouse were pretty much empty. There was a very old exhibit about connecting Manchester. A few years ago these buildings were thriving.

The Power Hall where the trains were was closed for refurbishment.

I am being harsh as it seems that the museum is undergoing lots of developments which will perhaps make it a better place to visit in the future. But sadly, at the moment, to be honest, it’s not a great day out.

New Year’s Resolutions

I am rubbish at keeping to new year’s resolutions. Lots of the promises I make to myself are immediately hard to keep for two reasons. Firstly, because it’s my birthday so early in the year, so I almost immediately break the routines I am keen to get in to. Secondly, because I have no willpower. At all.

But I am going to try to keep to these during 2020, so I am sharing them so I can remind myself about what I’m trying to do.

In no particular order:

Spend less money – a big one. A HUGE one. I need to do this. 2020 is about spending less money wherever possible. The things I buy need to be essentials.
Find out what is wrong with my stomach or at least what foods make me poorly – in the last few years I seem to have developed intolerance to certain foods – bread in particular. I can’t go on making guesses and feeling poorly. I need to get this sorted.
Collect stamps and coins – see, I have no willpower. I am trying to get into buying first day covers of stamps and coins (specifically 50p coins). But this is such an expensive hobby, I will need to see how it goes. If they announce, let’s say Lego stamps – I will get them. If they announce stamps with caterpillars on, I will not. Same with coins – if I’m interested, I might take the plunge. I will write about this potential hobby at some point. This will be the one treat this year. Although I will hopefully buy the Friends Lego set at some point.

Keep the house tidy – I can see clutter, even as I write this. But I can’t carry on having an untidy house. I need to get everywhere as straight as I can get it.
Use my phone for less crap and be more productive with it – I waste so much time reading social media. I want to limit this and use it for more productive things, like keeping a diary, maybe.
Create more social media content than I consume – I want to use social media to build a platform for this blog and for a professional blog. I also want to develop my wife’s online presence for her little craft business.
Go to bed earlier one night in the week – I am beginning to feel my age. I need more sleep.
Read more – I have found it hard to keep up with reading in 2019 for various reasons. Back on to it in 2020.
Regularly spend time sorting the garden – I say regularly instead of weekly as I couldn’t commit to that. Spending any time doing this at all would be an improvement compared to last year.
Iron once a week – hate this.
Eat more fruit – looking forward to this, actually.
Clear the garage and loft – we have so much crap that needs getting rid of. And we have so many things we could sell and generate a bit of money.
At work I want to be relentless in our pursuit of high standards in the school, keep everyone focused on our school development plan and avoid making errors in administration which I have managed to do this year and last.

The Wonder Years

I remember that Scott Mills used to have a feature on his Friday afternoon Radio 1 show called The Wonder Years. Each week he would play tunes from each year to get you in the mood for the weekend. I’m going to try to create and share my own Wonder Years playlist each month.

I use Apple Music so will embed the playlist here. Hope it works and that you love it!

On my own playlist I may have added songs that don’t appear on the public version. This is annoying, so sorry.

Music Flashback: 2015

Over the year I’m going to share ten songs from years in the past. I am going to pick the songs based on the ten most played songs on my Apple Music account from that year. First up is the year 2015.

My favourite song from 2015 is Faded by Alan Walker. There is something about this which makes it feel familiar and yet completely different to everything else. The various remixes are good, including the Luke Christopher remix where someone raps over the top. I love this!

This song is here due to the number of times that our daughter has asked for it to be played. To be fair, it’s a great tune. It proved that a great tune with a strong melody can be a smash hit.