Foreign Perspectives

Tiles are a bit of an oddball topic in our house at the moment as we’re looking at redoing both the bathroom (probably) and the kitchen (definitely) which are both more ancient than I’d care to say here. Like really ancient.

Now one common theme in relatively old bathrooms and kitchens was the tiling which, in our case, is just about everywhere and also looking particularly dated in some respects too. So dated that the OH has provisionally ruled “no tiles at all” as a starting point and that’s even including some of the really modern styles like the glass tile which is used really imaginatively in some designs we’ve seen lately.

Of course the problem is that tiles are definitely required in some areas if you’re wanting a new look that will actually stick up the the wear and tear that both rooms get on a regular basis so we’ll have something of a compromise I expect.

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Much as we would like to have been able to leave the bathroom well alone after our last experience with a plumber, it’s starting to look like we’ll have to undertake a more major upgrade to the bathroom and possibly something really major will be needing done to the kitchen as well.

That being the case we’ve started revisiting the bathroom faucet issue once more. Although we had all of these replaced earlier in the year if we’re needing to redo the whole bathroom this time then we’d be wanting to take a little more time over the issue rather than going for the quick fix option that we did the last time around.

Regardless of the work needing done in the bathroom, the kitchen is definitely going to need some quite major work done on it over the next few months courtesy of the leak (or, probably, leaks) that we’ve developed. Quite where we’d start on that though is an issue for another day!

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Last night Britain’s got Talent rewrote the rules of auditions for itself by allowing Hollie and her mother to get another, undeserved, chance to perform her act. Well, her second act I suppose you could say.

That’s really no surprise as the judges this time around seem to be completely biased in favour of the “cute & vulnerable” where a child performer was involved. Hollie merely took this advantage much further than the other children on the show already have.

Whilst it wasn’t a surprise that they’d do this, it does show just how much the show can get taken in by that cute & vulnerable label. That would be fine if the child concerned was very good but Hollie just isn’t. Whether she’s got the potential to be, I don’t know, but at the moment it just looked like a pushy mother wanted her little girl to succeed regardless of anything else.

Although it’s notionally all down to a public vote in reality the judges by their comments can exert a lot of influence on which acts will go forward. They’ve made no allowances for lots of very professional acts in this and previous editions of the show but then they didn’t fall into that cute & vulnerable category.

Sadly this time around a poor performance from Hollie knocked a very good one from Greg Pritchard. That’s just not right.

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