So Shirley (my wife) is a great fan of the reduced food items at Tesco. She one of those crowds you see huddled round the past-sell-by-date remnants of brie, pork pie and salami at the end of the cold meat cabinets. Yes I have this dream that one day we'll be rich enough to eat food that isn't passed it's best before date. She's also a great believer in home freezing and knows that if you get near sell by date items into the freezer straight out of the car boot they'll be fine. We're also great fans of the Tesco instant Chinese/Thai/Indian/Malay meal for two in a bag.

So it was that the other night, not being inclined to cook, we decided that the "Tesco Chinese banquet for two" that we had in the freezer seemed like a good idea. Having preheated the oven to "nuclear meltdown" setting, opened the bags and pierced the lids of the various culinary delights I gazed downcast at the limp pieces of damp rag that were masquerading as prawn crackers. It was at this point that I noticed that the bag said "NOT SUITABLE FOR HOME FREEZING!" Hmmm. Well between the lemon chicken, special fried rice and sweet and sour prawns, I could see nothing that could be hurt by freezing and guessed that the reason for the no freeze policy must be the prawn crackers. "Not to worry" I thought, "with the oven blazing like a blast furnace, these will soon be crisped up like new", so I lay them on a baking tray, popped them in the oven and went to see what films were screening on Sky Movies.

Faye(who lives with us)'s Dad Paul is a life long smoker. Like many-a life long smoker he's always wanted to give it up. Then a couple of months ago, over the space of about a fortnight, he had not one, but two heart attacks. He's now found a really powerful motivator to give up, and declares he's smoked his last cigarette.

My uncle Peter was also a life-long smoker. Having suffered years with chest problems incuding emphysema, and being told many times to quit, he eventually contracted terminal lung cancer. If you smoke and have never seen anyone dying of n stage lung cancer, you should go and see it for yourself if you want a spur to kick the habit. It was a horrible long lingering death, going on for months with him looking like the title character from night of the living dead. My most striking memory of him in that time though was of him with his oxygen mask/nebuliser in one hand, and a cigarette in the other, alternating intakes of breath from each. He figured "he was going to die anyway why give up now?"

GodBlog welcomes a new blogger Chris Gonin. A retired priest living on the edge of Leiston aged 74 - now in orders 47 years (46 as a priest).

We look forward to some interesting and enlightening "old school" contributions from Chris who is a self confessed a "Liberal Catholic" always interested in new approaches to
presenting the Gospel.

It's the last day of March, Sunday's Palm Sunday and the end of lent is in sight... and soon I'll be able to eat chocolate again..... or perhaps not.

You see I've not told you this before but I've been having load of trouble swallowing in the last year or so and the problem's simply got worse and worse. So I've been to the dostores, had loads of tests and it turns out that I appear to have "Achalasia of the Cardia". Acha-what? I hear you ask.

Well it appears that my own body as made a few decuisions for me and has decided that end of lent or not, it's not going to let me swallow chocolate, or cheese or fruit or.... anthing else for that matter. No matter how hard I swallow everything sort of "bounces" back up (how delightful). And anxiety and stress make it even worse.

This is where I have to confess to being of a certain age where -as a child- this 60's Sci-Fi programme was required viewing. If you can't remember it yourself, it ran on ITV from 1964 to 1969 for 110 episodes, and was for its time of some of the best and most exciting science fiction on TV. While the series became rather fanciful as it wore on, it remained an entertaining, action-filled adventure.

However unlike the CGI enhanced sci-fi of today this was- like many 1960's shows- definitely from the budget department, with wobbly set and ham-ish acting. But to star in this series the auditions must surely have had only one requirement.... to be able to throw yourself uncontrollably from one side of the set to the other as the camera was tilted from side to side... whilst wailing that "we're all going to die" which if you were this weeks "unknown extra" was almost certainly true.

After all I work in the IT business, I develop software, I love new technology, I really should be seen to be at the cutting edge......BUT.

I can't even claim that the expense is too great because we qualify for FREE upgrades on 75% of the PC's here in the office, and then again.....

OK we're forever chasing the upgrade path on our applications here in the office, and barely question whether we should, we just do it. That's the problem with a new operating system, it's all or nothing.It affects everything you do, and can change the way every one of your applications looks, feels and works. You can't just try it out to see how you get on with it, and then if you don't like it decide to revert to the old version, well not without some CONSIDERABLE hassle anyway. And you know for certain that should things go wrong Microsoft's customer support will be next to useless.