As I was walking to my car yesterday I passed a few children on their way to school, nothing unusual about that but what I did find rather disturbing was the fact that the majority of them were walking through the town with lit cigarettes. As of 1st October 2007 the law in the United Kingdom changed and it became illegal to sell tobacco products to anyone under the age of 18 (an increase from 16). Now the group of children I saw were by no means over 18 and a few minutes later I walked past a young girl who could have been no older than TWELVE puffing away.

It would be rather naive of me to think that only people over the age of 18 would be smoking but whatever happened to underage smokers sneaking off for a quick smoke behind the bike sheds, when did it become acceptable to just stroll about in public smoking.

I have tried to find out what the legal age is for smoking, all I can find in the legal age for buying tobacco products which is a different thing (common sense would dictate that if you were not legally allowed to buy a product you were not legally allowed to use it), I know you are not allowed to buy alcohol if you are under 18 but you can drink it at home. So maybe those children were doing nothing wrong if they were given those cigarettes by their parents - I still think it is wrong.

It seems like ages since I last went to the cinema and to be honest with you there does not seem to have been much on that I have wanted to see. However on Friday I decided to pop along to the cinema and ended up watching Tropic Thunder.

It is not very often that I will go to see a film and have absolutely no idea what the film is about and I had heard a little about Tropic Thunder, in fact a lot of what I had heard was about the complaints made by disability groups about certain themes in the film.

Ben Stiller, Jack Black and Robert Downey Jr. lead an ensemble cast in Tropic Thunder, an action comedy about a group of self-absorbed actors making a film of Vietnam veteran "Four Leaf" Tayback's (Nick Nolte) memoir Tropic Thunder. With fading action star Tugg Speedman (Stiller), Academy Award-winner Kirk Lazarus (Robert Downey, Jr.), low-brow drug-addled comedian Jeff Portnoy (Jack Black) all behaving unreasonably during filming which results in the film being a month behind schedule after only five days and massively over budget.

Director Damien Cockburn (Steve Coogan) is ordered by studio executive Les Grossman to get the production back on track or risk having it shut down, with some inspiration from Tayback, Cockburn drops the spoiled actors into the middle of the jungle, where he has installed hidden cameras and special effect explosions rigged so he can film "guerrilla-style". The actors without their assistants or mobile phones have only a map and a scene listing to guide them to the helicopter waiting at the end of the jungle.

Unknown to the actors, they were dropped in the middle of the Golden Triangle, the home of the heroin-producing Flaming Dragon gang, which believe the actors to be DEA agents. Tayback and pyrotechnics man Cody (Danny R. McBride) are captured by the drug producers and are soon joined by Speedman who believes it to be a POW camp from the script.
The gang soon realizes that he is the star of the box office bomb Simple Jack (this is what would have caused all the controversy) and force him to reenact the film several times a day.

Meanwhile, in Los Angeles, Speedman's agent, Rick Peck (Matthew McConaughey), is trying to negotiate with an uninterested Grossman a previously laid out term on Speedman's contract that entitles him a TiVo on location when they are contacted by the Flaming Dragon gang and are asked for a ransom…
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I can't remember the last time I went to the cinema and heard the majority of the audience all laugh at the same points during a film. There were some good performances and a few cameos during the film I really don't understand why there was such a fuss over the film okay some people might have taken offense to the references made about retarded people and the whole "Simple Jack" character, I am also sure people could find fault with a white man (Robert Downey Jr.) playing an African American character.

In fact if people wanted they could find something to complain about in any film. This will be one film I will get on DVD and would suggest you go and see it if you have not already done so.

Well today I finally got the battery in my watch changed, since my last entry I had toyed with the idea of just changing the watch completely but after having a look at the prices of new watches I decided to stick with the one I have and get the battery changed. I had a meeting with the bank this morning you would not believe that I have been with Barclaysfor years and think I have only every been to see them twice before. I am guessing with the way the financial markets are banks are having to look after their customers and encourage them not to get any products from competitors. Today it was all about the various types of current account that they offer, by that I mean the current accounts that they give you all sorts of extras but will charge you a monthly fee for.

I will admit I was tempted but when you consider the monthly fee that you would have to pay it would make no financial sense to change so instead I spoke to them about the various type of savings accounts that they have as I really do want to start putting money away in a more organised fashion - and it is handy to have the opportunity to speak to someone face to face about these things rather than look them up online or flick through a leaflet.

So new savings account has been sent up, I did not ask for a card as it would be too easy to access the money and I have set up a standing order so that the account gets topped up each month without me having to think about it.

It has been quite a while since I bought a daily newspaper on a regular basis, I still get the local weekly paper to keep up to date with what is going on in and around the town. I do however try to keep a look out for any special offers that the national press have running such as freebies with the papers. So last Sunday when I discovered that The Sunday Times was giving away a copy of The 39 Steps I got the paper, knowing that the film was on my list over on 1001 would justify paying £2 cost for a paper. The film itself was okay but I don't think I could go as far as to say it was a classic. The paper has been giving away other Alfred Hitchcock film this week but to get these films you had to go to a particular shop which is just too much effort for me these days. However yesterday they had a second film, The Lady Vanishes again on my list so paying £1.50 was within reason and have to say I watched the film last night and it was really good (but predictable)

Both DVD's have no extra features and no fancy boxes but for the price that I ended up paying for them I still think it was good value. I just wondered what others thought of these sorts of offers are they good value for money or should newspapers stick to writing about the news?

Well it seems if you are trying to change a watch battery in Carmarthen it is near impossible! As I was off work yesterday and my watch has been displaying the wrong time and date for the past couple of days (apparently it is January 1995) I thought I would pop along to have the battery changed. My first stop was my local H.Samuel which is a national chain. This is where I originally bought the watch and where I have had the battery changed in the past so when I went in I asked if they still changed watch batteries (in case it was no longer profitable for them) the girl behind the counter took my watch out the back to speak to the manager. When she came back after a few minutes she informed me that they would have the send the watch to the manufacture for them to change the battery, when I asked why I was told that the shop was not prepared to change the battery themselves as the watch was an obsolete model and if they damaged it they would be unable to replace it. So I take back my watch and head off to one of the other jewelers in the town, the second one I go to have no problem with changing the battery they tell me how much it will cost and head off out the back to change it - only to come back a few minutes later telling me that they don't have the right battery in stock. My last stop was a small family jewelers and as soon as I opened the door I had a feeling they would be unable to help and guess what they did not change batteries in watches that were screwed down as they had "experienced problems with them in the past"

So three shops and still my watch is not working and it is rather annoying, I will be going back to the second jewelers next week to see if they have the right battery in stock but part of me is wondering if it would be easier to just change the watch!

I know they say that Sunday should be a day of rest and I suppose after working all week I deserve to have some sort of lie in and one of the last things I do on a Saturday night is to switch off my alarm clock so that I can wake up at my own speed (normally up just as early as normal).

When I do get up I will normally switch on the Hollyoaks omnibus and have that on in the background when I am clearing up and sorting out rubbish for recycling. I will then watch The Simpsons before going up to my mothers to spend the rest of the day sat in front of the computer!

Today was basically the same but for some reason I feel that I have achieved more than normal, maybe because I finally put up a shelve that has been sitting around for the past few months (the worse thing was that it took less than a minute for it to be jam packed with DVD's) and have put up the brackets for a second shelve that I will finish off later. This is all part of my long term plan to create more useful space in my room and to de-clutter packing up my old computer monitor to give to my brother instantly made the room look clearer. After running the vacuum cleaner around I headed out armed with my camera to take more photos of Queen Elizabeth Cambria School before it is completely knocked down.

Last weekend saw me travel to Leckhampton just outside Cheltenham I was there as I was visiting one of my old school friends over the weekend and he had organised an open day on the 29th August at Leckhampton Hill which is the site of an Iron Age Hillfort and asked if I wanted to come along to take part.

As part of the day they were offering people the opportunity to take part in an archaeological geophysical survey (anyone who has watched Time Team will know what I am talking about) and there were guided walks of the hillfort and the industrial archeology of Leckhampton Hill.

Luckily the weather held and as you can see from the about photo I was able to get a space on one of the sessions held during the day on the geophysical survey team, the session was split and the people from Site Scan (Archaeological) Ltd were pretty informative and ensured that everyone taking part was aware of how the equipment was used (and they also spent a fair amount of time telling everyone how much the equipment cost) and we were given the chance to use this equipment both to set out grids and to carry out the survey.

It was certainly an eye opening session and you really get to understand that archeology is not as exciting as Indiana Jones and that a lot of preparation work is needed before people go digging about in ground.

The guided walk taking in some of the industrial archeology of the hill was interesting and it was hard to believe how much the area had changed in what is a relatively short period of time. I did miss out on seeing a local landmark known as the Devils Chimney but by that time it had been a long day and I was glad to leave the hill and get back to my car. The journey back to my friends house was longer than it should have been after taking a small detour (about 30miles) in the wrong direction!