Bye bye Simon (Apprentice major spoilers)

Yet another yelling at the TV episode of The Apprentice, definitely something not to be watched passively. In tonight’s episode the two teams have to take photos at Bluewater; Simon’s team doing glamour and Helene’s team going down the rather clever route of hiring a Beckham lookalike. Both teams seemed to be doing ok at actually taking photos but both teams had problems developing the photos, however it was Simon’s team that lost.

Now I’ve always liked Simon, he came across well in the other challenges but with Claire on his team, yet another of this year’s Apprentices who takes bullying in the workplace to a fine extreme, he struggled keeping it all together. So when they lost Simon took Claire and Alex back into the boardroom with him. Now much as I liked Simon, I had assumed that him being fired was pretty much automatic but once Sir Alan got his claws into them it was looking more and more like it would be Claire as he ripped her to shreds. Alex was not without a knockdown, when he tried to deny not wanting to be Simon’s second in command, something which the ever wonderful Margaret (Margaret and Nick are such the unsung stars of the show) put paid to Alex’s excuses when she retorted with something along the lines of “You forget I was there! If you’d backed off anymore you would have been out of the door!” which shut Alex up!

When it came to Sir Alan’s summing up, it really looked like Claire was going to get it, with Sir Alan yelling “I’m sick of the sight of you, get out of here, get out of here back to the house!”. So then it was obvious it wasn’t going to be Alex, so bye bye Simon sadly, however I think Claire’s card is very very marked, I know I certainly wouldn’t want to work with her, would Sir Alan?

Sometimes a car would be useful

After yesterday’s discovery of green sand in the sand pit, as promised we had to go into town to buy some more and nothing (well not much) can make me more grumpy than the prospect of having to carry a 10kg bag of sand home (half hour walk my speed, longer kid speed). So although I can often spout on about how ‘you don’t need a car in the city’, yes sometimes it would be useful. Actually I would still quite like one of these

It’s a Christiania bike, a far greener alternative to the car and would have solved today’s play sand transporting problem. We have seriously looked into these in the past (well I have) and at one point we did have the money spare for one (they’re about the price of a second hand banger) but Mr. Lacer wanted to spend the money on something else (can’t actually remember what) and there was the storage issue, I doubt I would have got it through my front gate and the town I live in has the highest bike theft rate in the country or something, so it didn’t happen, I still hanker after one though.

The only other news for today is that the first of my victims baby plants have arrived! It took a little working out what it actually was at first (I am so not a gardener) but after remembering to look on the address label, I discovered it was my burpless cucumbers from Sarah Raven. I had been tempted to Sarah Raven’s site courtesy of a discount from Boden and I was principally after some aubergines and chillis to supplement my (not yet arrived) order from Rocket but I came across the intrigingly named burpless cucumbers and I had to try them, now buying them from Waitrose ready grown would in this case perhaps have been easier but I don’t know if Waitrose cucumbers are burpless or not, so know your source (in this case my back garden) and all that. You see, when I was pregnant (both times but particularly for Girl Lacer) I had such a craving for cheese and cucumber sandwiches for the whole pregnancy but everytime I indulged they would make me feel so sick. Now not that I’m planning on becoming pregnant again anytime soon (family planning firmly linked to the housing market) but even now cucumbers still make me feel a little bit queasy (didn’t used to pre-pregnancy) so I’m figuring maybe if I try burpless (hopefully it’s not just a meaningless name) it might be better because I do still like the odd cheese and cucumber sandwich! Now I just have to grow them.

Please nobody tell me I’m doing it wrong, let me live under the illusion that a childhood spent with a gardening father and the occasional watch of Gardener’s World is all I need.