I Had A Bit Of A Busy,

and interesting day,

as I was typing the blog, looking down on to the garden there was a heavy frost, 

only the second so far this winter, Diana was on late shift, and as we needed a few things in town, I walked with her to the bus stop,

into Sainsbury's for the usual milk, etc,

but also two chocolate advent calendars, well it is nearly Christmas! I had also been trying without any success to buy a butane gas refill cylinder, every where I went none were any longer being sold, we need one to refill our candle lighters, again in Sainsbury's I was told they no longer stocked them, but the assistant did mention that across the road the newsagent they did, so I called in and hey presto!

we now have two candle lighters fully filled and ready to go, next for myself it was down on hands and knees, a job I had been putting off, for the first time to clean out the water filter on the washing machine, as it happens it all went remarkably well, and was in fact quite clean, I just hope it does not leak the next time Diana uses it!

next on to the Internet to order 4 tickets to the Lightopia at Crystal Palace, we will be going with Steve and Kai, and now for some really, really bad news,

you may remember just about 3 years ago almost to the week, after we moved back here from Thailand we received our new television, on the 8th. December, and featured it in our post on the 8th. 2019, well it was going well, we were even contacted to say in May this year that a power card needed to be replaced free of charge,

LG arranged for two technicians from DX AVS Horley to make an appointment to change the board,

which they did with no fuss or problems at all, but a green patch over the past few months started to appear in roughly the center of the screen, it became obvious that it was not going away so I called LG customer help line, and spoke to a very nice gentleman there who asked me to send some photographs of the problem, and that was the problem you could only see it is there was a predominantly yellow screen, as in say a dessert, a Weston or as when we first noticed it, Homer Simpson's face was slowly but surely turning from yellow to green! but how to get a screen shot? enter a cunning plan, Diana had shown me how to watch YouTube on the television, so I typed in yellow screen and there it was, 10 minutes of yellow screen, 

photograph taken and here it is,

I have not added any effects, the green patch is plain to see,

this is straight out of the camera, the black lines on the left are dust on the camera sensor, is just the green patch that is the problem, so I sent these to LG, but whilst chatting to the LG assistant he did mention it might be an idea to run a program in the television that was called pixel refresher, he talked me through the buttons to press to open the program in the television, it takes about an hour to run, and he suggested running it one after another 4 or 5 times, so I ran it 5 times through the course of the afternoon/evening, 

at the end of the fifth cycle you can see the message in the top righthand side of the screen, Pixel Refresher process has finished, and guess what? 

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

it made no difference at all! well you know my luck with anything electrical, why does this sort of thing always happen to us? as an aside if you want to see if your television has any color abnormalities, I typed in yellow screen on YouTube, but I guess there might be other plain colour screens, red, blue, green but I did not look to see if there was, it was just the yellow one I was interested in,

I was going to read and then remember that tonight the new Hornby episode was going to be shown, tonight's was about the new model of the Airfix Vampire jet amongst other new products, so I watched television on my laptop, Diana arrived home after her shift, so it was feet up for a New Tricks, tomorrow it is Diana's day off so we will be out, but first thing I will send the latest photograph of the screen mentioning that the 5 pixel refreshes did not work, hopefully LG will have another clever trick to bring the screen back to normal, and with that we were off to bed.

In Today's Competitive Market Place,

how can you get your business noticed?

well a play on words in your business name is a good way to start, here are a few, credits in blue unless otherwise stated, goulcher

socialmediajon1

Danny Nicholson and a couple we found ourselves when out on our travels,

 this one when we visited Littlehampton in November this year, The River Thai,

our second nomination, The Cod Father from out trip to Hastings in August this year, for more have a look here at Boredpanda, but there must be so many more!

It Is Enough To Make Goldfinger,

green with envy!

all images credit: VATSYAYANA/AFP VIA GETTY IMAGES, welcome to the Dolce by Wyndham Hanoi Golden Lake in Vietnam’s capital city,

and yes if it looks like gold, it is gold, 24 karat gold as it happens,

the five-star hotel is filled with golden touches, including gold tubs, sinks, and yes, even toilets, according to Reuters,

there is even a 24-karat gold tiled infinity pool on the rooftop, located near Giang Vo Lake, the 441-room hotel is 10 minutes away from Hanoi’s city center and quite a juxtaposition compared to the other buildings in the area, which are mostly stark Soviet-era structures. “At the moment, there is no other hotel like this in the world,” Nguyen Huu Duong, chairman of Hoa Binh Group, which owns the property, told Reuters,

rooms start at about $250 a night, relatively similar to the area’s other luxury hotels without any gold adornments, the hotel even serves dishes topped with edible gold flakes, and rooms have golden cups next to the coffee maker with gold-colored details, I should of course say the gold is actually gold plated, but even so Duong said that about a ton (or 2,000 pounds) of gold was used to decorate the hotel, now how much could some unscrupulous person scrap off without anyone knowing? sweet dreams!

We Had A Lazy Morning,

it was soon time for our Sunday lunch,

first a read and a sherry,

smoked mackerel on toast for Diana, lobster bisque soup for myself,

followed by smoked gammon ham,

with gravy for Diana,

for dessert toffee meringue,

eyes down and tuck in!

we had some how finished lunch early, so a film fest it was then, staring with The Bounty, of the four films depicting the mutiny this it appears is the closest to what really happened, as an aside I read this article about the mutiny, if you have time grab a coffee, it is interesting read,

 we followed that with The Great Wall, what a spectacle, almost all action with fearsome creatures that every 60 years try to storm the wall and eat the population, but this time the creatures had a cunning plan, so it is then for us mere mortals to catch up, and no I am not going to do the Ketchup joke, what a great movie, we really both enjoyed it,

 followed by The Lone Ranger, which was great fun,

we rounded off the evening with Tomorrowland, if only we had a pop corn machine! and with that we were off to bed.

It Looked So Real,

and that was the problem, it was!

68-year-old Nehemias Chipada was visiting the Amaya View amusement park in Cagayan de Oro City, the Philippines, on November 10 when he spotted what he thought was a life-like model of a crocodile, and that was when the trouble started, Nehemias who was celebrating his birthday with his family at the amusement park, climbed down to take a selfie with the cold-blooded reptile and even tapped it on the head. The thought that the 12-meter “model” could actually be a real crocodile never crossed his mind, at least until he got dangerously close to it and the reptile sank its teeth into his left arm,

shocking footage that has since gone viral on social media shows Nehemias screaming and trying to pull his arm out of the crocodile’s mouth as it attempts to pull him deeper into the pool. He was eventually able to break free from the crocodile’s vice-like jaws before it could rip his arm off, but he did sustain terrible injuries, a on duty at the resort administered first aid to the 68-year-old before an ambulance rushed him to the hospital where he underwent multiple surgeries. According to sources at the hospital, the man sustained fractured bones and eight wounds on his arm and thigh that required stitching and had a crocodile fang lodged in his flesh, hopefully Nehemias will recover and the amusement park will put up warning signs and a much taller fence!

Do Not Mess With Fish 270,

and you thought fish were fun!

well this one certainly is not when it comes to teeth! photograph Magnus Kjaergaard/Wikimedia Commons, meet the Lingcod, (Ophiodon elongatus), it has18 canine like teeth and hundreds of others, in fact the Lingcod has 555 teeth razor-sharp, losing up to 20 of them every day and growing them right back! instead of the incisors, molars, and canines we’re used to seeing, it has hundreds of nearly microscopic teeth lining its jaws. Their hard palate is also covered in hundreds of tiny spikes, as are the pharyngeal jaws, a set of accessory jaws that the lingcod uses to chew its food the way we use our molars, research at the University of South Florida and the University of Washington set out to learn more about the lingcod’s tooth-shedding by placing about 20 of them in a tank filled with a diluted fluorescent dye called alizarin red for 12hours, which stained the fish’s teeth red. Then they were put in tanks spiked with another fluorescent dye, calcein fluorescein, which turned new teeth green. So teeth that were in place one day were red, while those that appeared later were green,

photograph Facebook Michael Packer, the teeth were then painstakingly counted and classified all the colored teeth of the 20 specimens, coming up with a grand total of 10,580 teeth. Study lead author Emily Carr also pointed out that the fish seemed to lose an average of roughly 20 teeth per day, but grew them back just as fast, "It blew our minds that fish were replacing their teeth this quickly,” doctoral student and co-author Karly Cohen said. “For you and I, that looks like waking up every morning and losing a single tooth.” the findings of this study challenge the general notion that teeth are hard to make and replace. Apparently, for some species, they are just as easily lost and replaced as hair is for us, now why is it that I do not have teeth like this?

Diana Did Not Have To Go Into Work,

until midday,

so we had breakfast together, spaghetti for Diana,

a bacon sandwich for myself, 'Cheers!', with a mug of tea in a Britannia Coconut Dancers mug,

after Diana left for work I did my househusband thing, hoover the floors, water the plants, as I had a full container of RO water a big tidy up and water change on the aquarium, I mentioned how nice the village lights were, here they are in the afternoon, I have to say it, they look much better when it is dark outside, but there it is, in the afternoon I watched,

  Freaks: You're Are One of Us, a German film with English subtitles, which was quite enjoyable as it happens,

as opposed to Freaks (2018),

both of which should not be confused with the best of all in this genre, the Tod Browning film Freaks,

the cast of the original Freaks, as an aside the original preview version of "Freaks" allegedly ran 90 minutes. After a disastrous reaction from the audience, MGM executive Irving Thalberg deemed the film "too horrific" and had it cut to its present length of 64 minutes, the cut footage is not known to exist, which is a shame,

in the evening a 'Cheers!', and a read,

I had another smoked mackerel, for my starter,

a roast beef diner for one,

tuck in!

cheese, gherkins, silver skin onions and biscuits for dessert, after Diana arrived home, 

it was feet up for Now You See Me 2, 

perhaps the most famous pub in Greenwich as it was used in Now You See Me II, it was so nice to see so many parts of Greenwich and London used in the film that we had visited, all to a chorus of 'been there!', followed by 'been there!' and with the end of that we were off to bed.