Swedes are said to be relaxed in the their views with regard to sex. To the point it would seem of sending an email to their boss to inform them "I have had sex at work today". A 30-year-old unidentified woman from one of Swedens main banks did just that. However she manage to type the wrong address and sent the message to a friend instead. In the true style of the interent the friend in turn forwarded the message to everyone in their list and began a chain reaction of email sending.

All however is not quite what it would seem. A spokesman for the bank said "It was completely innocent" the e-mail had nothing to do with sex, but the number six. In Swedish, sex means six, but it also means sex. The bank had a local campaign encouraging workers to try and sell six financial products a day. Internally, the campaign was referred to as "Sex paa jobbet," meaning either "Six at work," or "Sex at work" depending on the reader's mind-set. Just going to prove a little knowledge of swedish can be a dangerous thing...

After a week of working the morning shift and coming home to pack boxes ready for our move and make plans for our wedding I think I may actually find some time to blog this weekend. I will try to post as often as possible but I may also be prone to dissapearing from time to time. Oh and my first charity auction has just started. If you fancy a guided tour of Middlesbrough FC's Riverside stadium then why not make a bid, you know you want to.

The trouble with being away from the world of blogging for a week or more is the return post. I haven’t posted anything for over a week, so you would expect that I must have something interesting to write about my now right? What if I haven’t, should I wait longer until I do all the time increasing the expectations of something interesting to write. Well forget that I will just waffle like usual.

Thankfully work has continued to be available, so that has been taking up most of my time. I had hoped to be able to tell you all about my first attempts at skiing but the weather has turned against any hopes of that. The snow has starting to melt away so my bruises have been postponed until another year. So there will be no lyrca suits this year. Instead we spent a day at the next town choosing my suit of our wedding, (what a slick link that was, I think I should be working on television or radio) After trying all the shops we ended up back at one of the first places we tired and ended up purchasing the suit in the picture below. The waistecoat will probably be changed to something with a lower cut, but at the moment this is what I will be looking like on the big day.





The wedding invitations are in the post now, after much screaming at our printer. The gremlins were having a field day. The envelopes were only in partly so only half the address was printed. Of course when I tried to put it through again for a test it work perfectly, only to do the original error once again as soon as a fresh envelope was tried. That together with the thicker paper being more susceptible to ink smudges resulted in the air being turned blue for many an hour.

Other than that we have been busy taking our apartment apart. The contract has been signed and we will be moving at the end of February. Only Jamaica has more banana boxes than us at the moment. A large chunk of the packing is already done, and a small army has been enlisted to help on the day. The local garage hires out vans so we can do everything ourselves and not have to splash out on a removals firm.

Oh and I have taken up a Sunday job once again. Well to call it a job is an insult, it’s more like something that teenagers do for some extra pocket money but what can you do. In a nutshell I have a pile of leaflets dumped on my doorstep each Friday. These I am expected to sort into a pack for each household before posting them into peoples doors on a Sunday. It’s not something I would want to do for long, but in the short term it’s not so bad. The extra cash however small is always welcome, and the exercise will help work of the belly that has built up over the snowy winter.

Sorry if I have been a bit slow with my postings of late, but there's planning to be done and you can read about it here.

Over the last few days to have developed an underground movement to encourage me to fly off the end of the ski jump. Well I am sorry people it is just not going to happen. Karen, stating to cross country ski will not develop into a desire to fly to my pending death with just a couple of chopsticks tied to my feat to save me. No mum, just because you have spent ages coming up with the name James the Jumping Jackass doesn’t make me an ungrateful son for not taking advantage of your thoughts. And as for Paul the least said about your wishes to see me cad in a body hugging snazzy lycra suits with a tea cosy pulled over my face the better….

We should have been signing the contract on our new apartment today but unfortunately Maria has come down with an illness. Bugs and germs allowing we will hopefully be signing on the dotted line later this week. Without trying to sound smug or tempt fate I have managed to get this far into winter without being sick or falling on my backside. Something is very very wrong there. We spent the weekend trying to pick out wallpaper for what will be our new bedroom. Well I say “we” what I actually mean is Maria looked at the options while I tried to steer her away from the grey/silvers or spot the difference from the last handful that we had looked at.


In response to a question by Karen No I haven’t tried my skis out yet. I have cleaned off all the old wax from the underside of them and sanded them down. Now all I need to do is purchase some fresh wax and I will be ready to glide into the distance. I have surfed around a couple of websites and have a rough idea of the technique that is required. The methods suggested have been practiced using the well-known slide about on wooden floor with thick socks on technique. This of course does result in regular bouts of static shocks whenever I touch anything. I have also learnt the Swedish for “oh dear it seams I have fallen over again” as I believe it could come in useful in the near future.

Ski James Ski



If you can’t beat it join it. Faced with the thought of having snow well into April and the chances to run before that date limited I have decided to take another route. I have purchased a set of skis. A cross-country set I should add. While I would love to fly down the ski jump that you may have seen on my photos from a couple of days back my new skis are just not suitable for that kind of activity. If you believe that you will believe anything. Contrary to the evidence I do have a brain cell or two more than is require to begin that sport.

Instead I will be hitting the cross-country trails. If I will be any good is a totally different matter. I can see myself sliding backwards down any slight inclines that I incur on route or worse still not being able to move at all be it on a hill or otherwise. May I apologise in advance to any Swedes who may come across my interpretation of skiing. I don’t mean to be a nuisance; honestly I am trying to get out of your way. Is it my fault I was born clumsy? Just because I blocked the ski track by falling over when I was trying to get out of your way doesn’t mean you have to shout at me.

It may not be a Tuesday but I thought it was about time I gave you a quick update on how my fundraising is going. The more observant among you may have noticed a slight change in my "next auction" box over there to the right. Seeing as my auctions will partly be held at ebay I thought it was appropriate that I join up to their affiliate programme. Its a very straight forward concept. Just follow the link in that box or eBay.co.uk and sign up for a new account. It only takes a couple of minutes. Its free and for every new account holder I refer ebay will donate 3 pounds all of which will be donated to my fundraising efforts. You don't even have to bid for anything just sign up !

As for new lots I have been in touch with Jackie the wife of Laurence Llewelyn-Bowen. A very kind and helpful lady if every there was one. At the moment she is sending one of Laurence's shirts to the dry cleaners which he will then sign for my auction.

For fans of casualty and Holby city, several of the cast of those shows have signed photographs for the auction. These can be seen on their own page at Casualty auction.
Robson Green and Ross Kemp have also provided signed photographs and these can be seen on my miscellaneous auction page

Our apartment buying has taken another step forward. Today we drew a cheque from our bank to pay for the deposit. All going well the contract will be signed next Monday. After dealing with an unobtainable idiot who didn’t realise that if he didn’t sell his apartment it would be repossessed anyway this new seller is a breath of fresh air. Okay she may look like a school mistress but the worse fear you feel when dealing with her is that she will demand that you tuck your shirt in and straighten your tie. A lot better than the feeling that they might run away with your money and leave a trashed apartment. Assuming we sign on the dotted line next week we will be able to move in on the 27th of February.

On another note I would like to thank those of you who have said how nice my photos are. In response to Lynn’s request for photos of myself and Maria I have contacted by beautician and the lighting specialists they are hopeful we can come up with something sometime this year.

4 new photographs have been added to my pictures page While I have no intention of turning this into a photo blog I do have a new toy and I intend to play with it. Besides I am too tired to write anything anyway...

I do intend to make a proper page with thumbnail pictures and descriptions for each photograph in the near future. However for anyone biting at the bit to have a peak at my latest photos they can be seen here

We have made it back again to the land of the snow. After a week of shopping, television and seeing some friendly faces we are back to the old routine. We ate too much and watch too many repeats on the box. One of the best programmes we got to see was a comedy show which I had forgotten all about. The one-liners had Maria and I falling off our chairs with laughter. “Severe cold” and in one place “snow which nearly covered all the road” Thanks to the folks at the met office for those. This morning we awoke to see temperatures of minus 30 and I still intend to go and take some photographs for you all. I am just too good to you my dear readers.

Another thing that brought a smile to my face was my dear mother. Now she is wonderful in many ways and I wouldn’t change her for anything. That is my view I doubt however it would be the viewpoint of the hardworking people in the ad agencies. The trouble is that my poor old mum doesn’t get the main message of many adverts. She may enjoy the adverts and remember them but misses the point they are trying to get across. Take the latest Corsa advert for example. I am sure the people would agree with her that their car can indeed fit into small places. However I am sure they would have liked her to realise their main message was that the car was putting the fun into driving again. “They are playing hide and seek mum!” was greeted with “Ohhh are they? I thought they were just counting the small places” It makes you wonder how many people come away with a totally different viewpoint after watching a small clip.

The writers of runjamesrun would like to point out that the names of the characters in the last paragraph have been changed to protect the confused

Another couple of busy days shopping. It may sound as if we don’t do anything else while we are over but that isn’t quite the case. The weather has been wet wet and a little bit more wet. So the chances to do more tourist like options have been limited. It my only be a stereotype and somewhat of a myth that it always rains in England, but when we are having to take an umbrella everywhere I can see where the point of view is coming from.

One of my purchases this week has been a new digital camera. So the requests to see photos of the snowy weather in Sweden will be complied with when we return. The less frequent request for a picture of myself may also be met by a positive response by myself. This could take a little longer; it might take up to a month before I have taken a picture that I am happy with.

The deed has been done. They may say that you cannot change your partner, but I have proof, they are wrong. A week ago Maria was still chearing for "yay other team" whenever I listened to the football on the radio. I believe she would still be chearing for the other team in 50 years time if she hadnt surpised me by saying she would also like to go see todays match. To say I was surpised would be an understatment.

So at 2 this afternoon we found ourselves making our way down Belstead Hill. A sight trek, but a walk with the ground coming gradually more and more into view and the crowd increasing with each turn is a required element of a first game. The pouring rain is not, but you cant have everything. We settled into our seats and waited for the game to begin. The ground has changed dramically since I was last there 2 years ago. I had since the changes on previous return visits but this was the first trip where Ipswich were also playing at home. At the risk of sounding older than my years may I add that i remember when the toilets in that stand looked more like a school bike shed. To see glassed stairways and televisions in the stand came as quite a shock.

It seems that we had choosen a good part of the season for Marias first game. After a terrible start to the season things are starting to look up for the team. The first half started with promise and any fears that maria might just sit there bored for 90 minuites could be put aside. As the game went on little whispers of "go on get up there" and "shoot go on shoot" could be heard. There were quite a few chances but at half time there was still no score.

The events of the second half however were to confirm that someone who consistently supported "yay the other team" could be transformed into an Ipswich fan. A goal from Tommy Miller gave Ipswich the lead, but sensing the need for extra drama Millwall struck back for that added tension. This however is to be a first game of dreams and so instead of fizzling out as a 1-1 draw Ipswich went on to add 3 more goals. Each of which were greeted by a round of appluase by a maria bouncing up and down. I never thjought I would say it, but I think Ipswich may just have found themselves a new supporter....