Well Alton towers have got back to me about my t shirt printing idea and they are thinking of starting this summer season.

They are buying direct from the t shirt manufacturers such as Gildan and Fruit of the Loom. They are looking at charging a low price per unit, and doing all the t shirt printing within the booths that do the printed photos. They are only offering T shirts for the time been and if the campaign is successful then they will expand in to other printed items.

They are saying that it will be around a 15 minute wait from your photo bee picked to it been ready to wear on your day out.

I can’t wait to see what the t shirts will look like, hopefully they’ll be really fancy and graphical like only Alton Towers could do.

While driving home from work last night, I ended up stuck in traffic (as I so often seem to) behind a large 4×4. As my commute routinely involves 40 mins in slow moving traffic, I habitually spend a large portion of my time staring at the back end of various cars. This one was unremarkable, save for the fact that it was sporting a personalised number plate, reading 17A. As I continued my walking-speed journey home, I found myself thinking the two thoughts I always think when encountering a personalised number plate –

1) What is the significance of the numbers and letters?

2) How much did it cost?

Of course, the first question sometimes answers itself. “Boss 1” or “J4MES” are pretty self explanatory, but sometimes it’s not so clear. In this case, what was the significance of 17A..? Presumably the number has some special meaning to the owner; in particular (as I intuitively thought) as it must have been expensive.

Which brings us to question two – price. I’m aware that private registration plates can be hugely expensive. In fact, I’ve flirted with the idea of getting some myself, despite the dark looks and mutterings of “mid-life crisis” from my wife. They are unique and individual, and would add that extra special touch while adorning my Merc. However, then price can indeed be prohibitively expensive. Plate prices can range all the way from around a grand, to being more expensive than your average super car. Indeed, the most expensive licence plate ever sold simply read “1” and was purchased at a charity auction in the UAE in 2008 for the eye-watering price of £3.5 million. So possibly not the cheapest car accessory you could come by…

Of course, there was no way of knowing the cost of that 17A private number plate, or what it stood for – but I wondered all the way home.

Well I got an email from my dad yesterday saying that he’d received his box of rolling papers a few days ago, he was over moon as I’d sent him two boxes and not just the one like I’d told him about. They should hopefully last him a while unless he sells the second box on to a friend to make a little bit of cash.

I’ve kind of dropped off watching the Olympics, I was right into watching it but I just haven’t had time this week, and now I can’t get back into it I’ve seen bits of curling but not like I would of been watching.

The weekend should hopefully be quite, but it never really turns out how its planed so I don’t know why I am thinking it’s going to be quite.

I’d like to go to Alton Towers again but in the summer when it’s a little warmer, I know though that I’d be trading in the nicer weather for longer queues though. Maybe I go with my idea of t shirt printing on some of their merchandise.
Actually it’s probably better to email them when I think about it.

I’m just looking through my window at work now and its starting to snow, I’m so glad it’s been raining beforehand so the snow won’t lay.

So I’m stuck in the bus station and all there is to hand to pass the time while the driver of the 117 nips off to the toilet or buy a pastie or whatever is the ’style’ section of The Sunday Times.

Apparently, it’s London Fashion Week and my eyes were fair boggled by the ’styles’ on offer. Weird angular chicks wearing weird angular clothes with too-prominent cheekbones and zany eye makeup. I can’t say all that appeals to me.

The men weren’t much better, decked out in clobber that no self-respecting man North of, say, Hemel Hemstead would be seen dead in. You see the occasional fashion victim down in town wearing an indoor scarf and drainpipe jeans.

I sometimes think that my dad had the right idea: his traditional Asian robes literally never dated as they’ve  been much the same for centuries I imagine. 

In other news, the £100 ghd straighteners I blogged about a few weeks ago? Well it transpires that my wife doesn’t much care for them after all. Perhaps it’s just because the first time she tried them she managed to burn her ear, but pretty much they’ve sat unloved and mostly unused ever since. At that kind of outlay I wonder if a new wife might be a cheaper bet.

(If you’re reading this babes… love you!)

I had the weekend all to myself as my wife was at a massage parlour in Manchester as part of a hen party and the kids were at their grandparents. So as I don’t get a lot of chance to watch what I want on the TV I decided to chill out and watch Everton v Manchester United. Not a great game, but Everton did manage to win 3-1 blowing the title race open once more.

After the match a couple of my friends came round and we had a few beers whilst playing Fifa 10 on the Xbox, I won of course as my friends are PES players and don’t normally play Fifa. I couldn’t be bothered to cook so ordered a pizza from my local takeaway and watched some random TV on Saturday night till I went to bed.

Sunday was much the same, watched the football and some documentaries until my wife came home. She had a great time at the massage parlour and we had a bite to eat before picking up the kids from my parents.

My kids enjoyed getting spoilt by the grandparents so all in all a great weekend.

Some of the skiing in these years Olympics has made me laugh. Marion Rolland fell about 5 second after leaving the start. The British boarder Lesley McKenna fell twice trying to do a 540 turn. If you don’t do it on your first run, don’t do it on the second.

We do seem to be doing well in the Curling and Skeleton though which isn’t too bad. We aren’t going to be up there with the USA and Germany, who have 18 and 11 medals. Oh we have 0.

Theres some great merchandise over at Vancouver 2010

Well another week nearly over. This week as been hetic at work and pretty much the same at home. Hopefully a nice relaxing weekend is in order

I can’t believe that we are half way through this week all ready. My dad’s asked me to send him over some rolling papers as his friend over in India has been using Rizla and they pay a high premium to get it, so it work out cheaper for me to send him some.

I’ve just bought 2 new games for the xbox 360, Grand Theft Auto 4 / IV and Need for Speed Pro Street. I’ve done a few missions on Grand Theft Auto 4 and I’m pretty impressed so far, it’s one of those games that i can see me getting hooked on easily.

I bought Need for Speed Pro Street last night for £9.99. This game again impressed me but the driving style isn’t very realistic the cars are very twitchy but I do like the game playing style of different types of racing from drift to drag.

I did buy Far Cry a few weeks back but it’s a bit difficult for me, i only bought it because i’d played the demo on the PC and really enjoyed it.

I was round a friend’s house on Friday night having a few beers and a general catch up, and he was saying how he has started playing a bit of online poker. He says he made about £20 last week over the £15 he put in his account. He was trying to get me to sign up to play online poker so that we can play against each other when we’re both online.

Alton Towers was great till rained slightly during the morning, but we soon dried out as they have these drying units similar to posh swimming pools. We paid around £2 to use them but they dried you off really quickly. The afternoon was better still as it was slightly warmer and the sun was out so the weather was perfect.

The queues weren’t that bad either, Nem was around 20 minutes and so was Air, Oblivion was around 10 as we went at lunch time.
Lunch wasn’t all that expensive and probably only cost me around £15 which was less than I thought. We probably spent around 7 hours there and even managed to get on some rides twice.

I’m taking my nephews to Alton Towers tomorrow A: because it’s cheap and B: Because I love it their it’s the best our country has to offer.

I think that the Alton Towers merchandise range is really good and well marketed in the themed shops, When I was younger I when and got a oblivion key ring and the middle spun how cool. I know that they take photos of you when you’re on the ride but I’m not sure if the Alton Towers do any t shirt printing, I think it would be cool if you could have your ride photos put on a t shirt. My Kids would love an oblivion t shirt with their funny faces on.

Check my mock up below

Its a while since I’ve been and Alton towers may offer this type of merchandise but if they don’t they should, I mean £9.99 for printed t shirt would be great. I’m sure they could do it for most of their big rides like Air, Hex, Rita.

I’m hoping it should only take me around 1hr ½ to get to Alton Towers. What will be expensive is food, I’m sure that the likes of McDonald’s will add a small premium to all of their meals so getting lunch is likely to cost as much as getting in.

I’m planning on going on wet rides first so we hopefully dry out. I know the kids will only moan at the queue times if there over 20 minutes, I know that the log flume seems to have a short queue but because there’s nothing to look at it seems to take ages to get on to the ride.

I’ve been messing around on the DVLA website this afternoon looking at a personalised number plate. It is my 40th birthday this year and thought I’d mark this milestone (if you would call it that) by getting something special.

I went to the DVLA website and typed my initials in as I definitely wanted them and clicked search. 23 pages of number plates came up and I started trawling through them until I found the perfect one. I previewed the number plate on Volkswagen Golf as that’s the car I have, although not that new and nice looking!

Check the picture below, what do you recon? Not bad for £250 and it has 40 in it as well. Might have to ask the wife nicely if I can order it now so I don’t lose out on it, which might be a struggle because my birthday isn’t until July