I must admit I am still a little hesitant when buying from eBay, even after all these years and many, many transactions. I mean some sellers I do feel comfortable buying from, you know those with thousands of sales, but smaller individual sellers or new sellers, leave me feeling a little nervous.

I was looking or some second had photography kits, including some lights, a light sensor and a couple light boxes for a project I am playing with. I found pretty much what I was looking for at a great price, but it was from an individual seller, obviously just selling unwanted items of their won. So their selling history was pretty limited.

Postage wasn’t too expensive although there wasn’t much information about what type of eBay courier they were planning on using. As some of the equipment is quite fragile I want to ensure that the kit will get to me in good condition. And some couriers in my experience well; they don’t understand the meaning of the word fragile!

Anyway my PayPal payment went through yesterday and hopefully my stuff will be dispatched. Just have to wait and see, fingers crossed it’s in good condition and that I bought the right thing! Now football won’t be taking up my weekends I have decided to get more use out of my digital camera and have a good practice. There is so much I have to learn yet and I don’t want to just focus on landscapes, hence the light box. Anyway I will let you know how I get on.

I was stuck at what to get my nephew for his birthday. He is at university and we don’t see him that much but I do like to send on presents every now and then. My nephew is on my wife’s side, but she doesn’t really have a clue what to buy an adolescent teenage boy so she leaves it up to me. Normally game vouchers and CD’s would suffice, but he uses free online media outlets and second hand games now well when he is not studying.

I checked out Firebox and I Want One of Those but to be fair a lot of it just seemed like tat. Then a light bulb went off in my head. I remembered a photo, my mother in law proudly showed off at Christmas of my nephew and I remember thinking what a scruff he is. Tatty clothes ill-fitting jeans and scruffy shoes; the little bugger obviously needs some new clothes, unless he is purposefully going for the hobo look.

Anyway I am not up on clothes or fashion and the missus has no idea about young boy fashion (that sounds wrong). So I had to firstly find out what websites are hip for clothes shopping and then educate myself on some modern brands. Apparently Levis and Wrangler are still cool and the rest well, it was an education. To be fair I am a fan of slogan tees, had a fair few in the eighties and I found Beck & Hersey online which had some cool tees and sweaters they had funky graphics on them and stand out quite a lot. I think my nephew would like them as he is into hip hop style despite being a skinny white kid!

Today is also Shrove Tuesday, aka Pancake Day for all you non-believers. I’m sure many like me don’t believe in this god stuff but do quiet enjoy things like Christmas, Shrove Tuesday and Easter. Having said that Christmas was originally a Pagan festival so maybe can count that out. The perk of Easter is a nice long bank holiday oh and chocolate. Pancake Day is one of my favourites; I love pancakes and stuff myself silly with them. Although I don’t know why we only end up having them once a year there is no rule stating that you can’t have them at any other time.

We went to watch a parade of remembrance through our town, and watch poppy’s being laid. Although it can be a sombre atmosphere it’s the only time you get a good turnout of local people. Afterwards a couple of us went to the pub and some of the guys that have served themselves in the army regaled stories of their tours. There were some sad stories but also a lot of fun ones which highlights the comradery during the hard times. Anyway afterwards I didn’t feel much like playing any war type games on my Xbox so instead I chilled out and used one of my bongs.

My thoughts are now turning to Christmas, although the wife is in charge of organising everything I still have to get her a gift, plus this year she has decided I have to buy my brother a gift, because she has run out of ideas. I have never had an idea of what to get him; since we have been married she has sorted out his gifts. So here begins my (probable futile) gift search.

My brother is pretty much the polar opposite to me, obviously he likes men I like women. He has style I do not. He is very creative, I am not. He likes being healthy, I do not and only have to be because the wife makes me. He has a keen interest in the arts, which bores me to tears. He doesn’t own an Xbox, I have 2! There is probably a lot more but I am already bored of thinking about them. But as you can guess me finding the right gift for him will be most challenging.

Finding a gift for my wife however isn’t. Shoes, a handbag or jewellery would be an instant hit. My credit card in a box for her to have free reign over would be the best gift ever (obviously I’m not stupid enough to give her that!) As with all women though, as much as they say they want to be surprised in reality they prefer final say over their own gift, just in case!

It has been left up to me, to design our pool shirts for our next season. This season wasn’t too successful and we came fourth in the league, however we were plagued by injury and mine and others inconsistency at turning up. More effort will be put into this next season and some motivating team t-shirts is what’s in order. I have printers in London ready to go once I have finalised the design with the guys.

Luckily the printing isn’t too expensive and the t-shirts I have got on a buy on get on free deal online so I can make some money out of this, this time around. I have done t-shirt printing at home myself and although the results aren’t bad I thought for our pool tem it was best to leave the printing top the professionals in North London.

I will be excited to see the results and get going with the new pool season, still got a while to go yet, I think I am just itching to get going though, because I haven’t really done much recently. Getting out and about in my new car or doing stuff in the garden such as relaxing and BBQ’s have been put on hold since we were deluged with a mammoth amount of rainfall.