Mum logic

Before I set off for Ynys Môn (that's Anglesey to us English-speaking pig dogs), here's a little bit about that wonderful thing called "Mum logic".

Mother (aaaawwwww, bless her) phoned me up at work yesterday: "Did you go in the shed last night?"

"No, not at all, why?" Oh gawd, has something been stolen from the shed again??

"Did you go in there this morning before going to work?"

"No, why????"

"Well, we can't find the shed keys anywhere"

Ahhhhhhhh, it suddenly dawned on me that the subject of her query wasn't the shed, but the keys to the padlocks on the shed. Moreover, the keyring that contains the shed keys, but also holds various other keys, including the one to the padlock that locks the gate over the drive. Yes, I'd had the keys. Why didn't she just ask if I'd had the keys?

"Oh, I used the keys to unlock the gate padlock last night, but I thought I put them on the worktop in the kitchen. Try the pocket of my hooded top" Etc, etc, etc. No success, so I left her to her panic and got back to my staring into space very hard work.

She phoned 20 minutes later. "Why did you put them in my handbag?"

"I didn't"

"But you must have, because that's where I've just found them"

"I probably left them on the worktop and you must've picked them up with your car keys before going to bed".

"Why would I do that?"

Bugger only knows!

She still insists that I drank tea until I was ten and that I had both little toes (not just the one) operated on when I was 12. She also insists that both of the offending toes had pins in them. I think I'd have noticed that somehow.

I'm waiting for her to exaggerate the story of my totally benign, totally nothing to worry about and never was, breast lump into second stage breast cancer for which I'm receiving the most terrible chemotherapy and for which I am engaged in a high-court battle to be given Herceptin.


Em pee three
Just bought myself a little MP3 player for while I'm in Wales. It's just a simple little Creative Muvo thing that only plays MP3s and uses drag and drop via the USB port. Fab. If I find that I use it lots, I may consider getting a proper grown up, all singing, all dancing thing, but this'll do the trick for now.

I'm going to Trearddur Bay, which is on Holy Island. The hotel overlooks the sea. Shame that I have to do conference things really as Anglesey really is beautiful and I'd like the opportunity to explore it a bit.

Weirdo freak man ahoy

A few weeks ago, me and my sister took off for a walk down the local woods. I had planned to bludgeon her to death and throw her in the river Irwell, but the water levels were too low and she'd have just stuck to some reeds and been discovered before I could make my getaway.

Anyway, as we headed off towards the woods, we passed the entrance to the DIY place over the road and this bloke was parked a bit weird, just sat there:

And in close up...

When we got back an hour or so later, he was still there, being weird and freaky, so I snapped him. He must've been sat there a good 2 to 3 hours before he disappeared.

Then last night, look what I saw again:

He was there for at least an hour again last night? What the hell is he playing at? When he finally buggered off, he drove his car further up towards the goods received entrance and got out:

So I don't know what he was up to, but I was still agitated about him when I got to bed. Then I was woken soon after dropping off by the sound of the police helicopter circling the house. I got a bit paranoid after that.

Why can't people just be normal? Why do folk have to do weird stuff like parking their car the wrong way on the entrance corner of a road, then just sitting in there for hours on end? What is he up to????

I might start a new website called "Seen something weird", where people can post photos of suspicious people or document their sightings of oddness, just in case something bad has coincided with it.

So anyway, if you hear that I've been murdered. Contact the coppers and tell them about Mr Weird. They may give you a crime number if they're not too busy eating biscuits.


Wales
I'm going to Wales tomorrow: two day conference in a posh hotel in Anglesey. I'm just saying that in case of concern and false arrests of weird Ford Mondeo drivers due to my lack of blogging. Wait till the fucker actually does something before telling the coppers about him!


Headache

I have one, it's a stinker. I blame Tony Blair. Why? Because there no spare capacity in the NHS to buffer things when somebody is sick and the knock-on effect on is that the clinics used to mop patients from cancelled appointments then run TWO HOURS behind. Hence my tea was delayed this evening and when I get hungry, I get a banging headache.

But anyway, I've had a cut and blow on my stitches and I've been discharged. YAY!

Don't know what I'm yaying for, my bloody breast, yes grown up word breast, is murdering me. I won't be doing star jumps for some time yet.


Infinite blogger
I'm being literally inundated with photographs as people wish to participate in the Infinite Blogger Project. I might actually get some with peoples' faces in the shot eventually.

You know in years to come, Infinite Blogger is going to be one of the BIGGEST things to ever hit the internet. Imagine what it'll be like to be part of the first series?

Oi! Mouth!

My gob will surely get me into terrible trouble one day. I'm sure it has been the main contributory factor in my general failure to climb the career ladder at work (but on a one-rung ladder, that's not a great problem).

Skip to the end...
I have a terrible habit of taking people's understanding of me for granted and making jokes. Today's was throwing in a "skip to the end" as a colleague was telling us all a bit of a long-winded story. Not a boring story by any stretch of the imagination, but a touch convoluted. I wasn't at all bored with what she was saying, but I couldn't help interrupting with a "are we nearly there yet?" comment.

What is wrong with me? Luckily she knows I'm taking the piss, but I'm going to do that to the wrong person one day; like the Director when he's telling us all something really important, droning in, "blah, blah, blah, blah ..." like Charlie Brown's teacher in Peanuts.

"And the really important thing for us is to ensure that we're in the position to make a really good bid where we stand a chance of real success instead of expending our energis on lots of minor....."

"Oh, for fuck's sake man! What's your fucking point???"

"My point, Tina, is that we won't have enough funds to staff the department..."

"And.... we're waiting...."

"...department at current levels and we're going to have to be making redundancies based on a number of criteria!"

Ho hum.

Date
Some kind soul has suggested that I sign up to an online dating agency. Working in cahoots with Clicky, Whinger has come up with a profile to upload somewhere. Here it is:

Crazy Hair Seeks Non-Crazy
About Me, What I'm Looking For
I am a single professional with a biting wit. I am skeptical of true love, but am willing to give it a go for the sake of filling the nights. I am interested in finding someone who loves a good gripe about the everyday annoyances, and can hold her own in conversation. I am not interested in those who make life overly complicated: there is no need for a toaster when one has a broiler, there are correct ways of doing the dishes, and driving rules must be observed.

For fun:
Taking the piss out of others.

Favorite things:
My lovely felines (I swear, I SWEAR I'm not THAT lesbian), Pepsi products, my computer, and irritating the inbred neighbors.


Now, the question is, should I sign up for a dating thing and post a profile? Would blog world help identify my better attributes? How about holding some online auditions of potential dates right here?

Could you imagine me on a date? Bloody hell. I could imagine me eating some dates, but on a date? With like a real life person? What do you do if you're not enjoying it and you need to get out of there? What if somebody you know sees you???

Oh God, I don't think I can cope! Gets me all agitated.

Rip off

It's one of those days today. You know the made up days where the card shops, florists, restaurants and chocolatiers are rubbing their hands with absolute glee?

Yes, today is Mother's Day, or Mothering Sunday or whatver. I've no idea what the tradition behind this is, but at least it is a "celebration" that has some tradition from way back - churches have special services so it must be sort of legit.

But Mother's Day needn't be expensive (having spent £30 on it myself - flowers from Marks's that'll be dead by tomorrow - I reckon I got off lightly, considering all the grief I give my mum) and Asda have produced a 6p Mother's Day card. Six pence. Surely nobody would have the gall to give one of those things??? When I was skint a few years back, I used to take the time to make my mum a card, which she appreciated of course.

There are other stupid "Days" creeping into the calendar, no doubt directed by the hand of commerce. These are things like grandparent's day, foster carers' day, etc. Oh and I've no idea what's going on with my apostrophes today, I blame sleep deprivation because of the clocks going forward. But yeah, all these crap "days" coming in, just so the needy can feel loved (or less loved). At least Mother's Day and Father's Day are legit.

In fact, Mother's Day is so legit that primary schools have special assemblies to which all the mums are invited for the morning (on a FRIDAY) while the little angels sing with their horrid squeaky/whispering/lisping/out of tune voices and all the mums shed tears of joy and pride. One of my colleagues actually took Friday morning off to go to one of these things - without asking, without having to take annual leave, without ensuring that the people she is supposed to supervise were ok with it - she just did it then waltzed in at 11.30. Nice one.

So let's celebrate all those wonderful, loving, caring mums out there today. If you still have yours, treat her special. Then again, she won't be as good as Connie, but don't tell her that.

And let's celebrate all those skiving bitches who use any fucking excuse to take time out from work so they can go to school sports days, Nativity plays, Mother's Day assemblies. Selfish fucking morons.


NHS job cuts scandal!
The NHS is the UK's publicly-funded National Health System. It is the country's largest employer. Despite having billions of pounds of tax payers' money thrown at it, the NHS continues to slide further into debt - with not much value for money in terms of services.

Many hospitals are now in the position where they're having to make staff redundant and the tabloids are shocked and appalled by this, with headlines such as "Hospital makes 200 nurses redundant and advertises for a £40,000 pa manager!".

Shocking, but 200 nurses cost at least £4 million a year by my reckoning. And then when you take into account the cost of covering Mother's Day assemblies, sports days, Nativity plays, kiddie sickness. And then you get the "professional mother" nurses, who simply see their job as a method of bankrolling their own propagation: they get pregnant, take mat leave for a year (paid for 6 months) - their job has to be covered by somebody, so that's two salaries covering the one job; they come back, work for a year, get pregnant, etc, etc.

Ninety percent of the cost of the NHS is on workforce and it'd be interesting to see how much of that pays for sickness absence, recruitment and the cost of secondment and maternity cover.

So what am I saying, that women can't be mothers and do a good job? Not really, because I've seen far more examples of women who are great at both. But there is a significant minority that is seriously taking the piss and this costs loads of money and affects morale in the workplace.

Think on and look sharp.

Happy Mother's Day to all of those who qualify.


Oh bollocks, a PS
For those who haven't seen it, take a look at this from The Cloned Corpse of Marcus Tal over at Marcus Tal is Dead. I'm not sure what to make of it (I don't understand this sort of thing), but I'm honoured to have been included in this scheme... I think. Thank you.


Another PS: wound update
The plaster stitches came off the other night and the exposed ends of the internal stitches are playing merry Hamlet. To see why, click here.

Always happy to make people gag on their tea.

Lazy bones: An introduction to an irascible forensic anthropologist and her psychic side-kick

"It was a hot, steamy morning in Manchester as I drove along the Crescent, past Salford University and former Salford Royal Hospital (now luxury apartments) on my way to work..."

Let me introduce you to Temper Rants Brennan, a forensic anthropologist with anger management and alcohol issues. She works between two locations in the UK and has bases in the bustling city of Manchester and the sleepy back(ward)water of Runcorn. There, she analyses the bones and the bodies of the dead to discover the truth about their final moments alive.

She solves these riddles with the help of her assistant Otto, the psychic cat. He has a mystical ability to know when Temper is so much as thinking about tuna fish and comes running to be by her side in an instant. Despite his mysterious, higher plane-like consciousness of tuna availability, Otto has no capability in solving crime.

Of course, our heroine is not to be mistaken with Temperance Brennan, the forensic anthropologist with alcohol issues in the crime books penned by Kathy Reichs, who is, errrrm a forensic anthropologist.

I like the Tempe Brennan books; their plots and characters. I enjoy how the science can be made interesting and how the scientists are portrayed as heroes and not geeks.

Imagine my delight when I heard that a forensic anthropologist had been called in to identify a torso that was discovered as contractors worked to clear the burned-out rubble of a recent warehouse fire. Here in Salford of all places!

I can see it now, the latest in Salford City Council's "IN Salford" advertising campaigns:

"Get shot at while down the boozer: IN Salford"
"Die in a horrible arson attack while sleeping rough: IN Salford"

Still, so long as we've got Temper Rants on our side, justice will always be the winner.

Yeah, right.

I'm taking to my bed for a while. My bosom hurts like a bastard today and gravitational pull isn't being kind on my stitches.


Song of the week
This isn't deserving of a post in itself (especially since Blogger couldn't cope last time), so it's being tagged on here. Have a listen to this and tell me what you think. I like it and I'm making it my song of the week.

Hrrrm, that's odd. I may be contacting technical support about something... T&P???? T&P????

Here's something special to thank Piggy for all his support...

Embedded it wrong indeed!

Infinite blogger

There's some weird website, Infinite Cat, that displays hundreds of photos of cats looking at other cats that are displayed on a PC monitor. Here's the synopsis: "It all began innocently enough when a user on an Apple help web site posted a picture of his cat, Frankie, contemplating the beauty of a flower. Shortly afterwards another user posted a picture of his cat bristling at the image of Frankie on the monitor. I decided this was too much fun and advanced the concept as The Infinite Cat Project which is, simply, cats regarding cats regarding cats in an electronic milieu. If you like this web site then thank your lucky stars that the world is populated with cats, Macs, and people with wayyyy too much time on their hands."

Still don't get it? Well here's a screen shot:

So here's an idea: why not try an Infinite Blogger Project? You know, I'll post a picture of me, and then somebody can take a picture of themselves looking at the photo of me, and then somebody can take a photo of them looking at image of whoever's looking at the photo of me, etc. You know, something sort of like this:

Does anybody fancy having a go at doing this? Of course, since most people don't want their faces to be shown, it could be difficult, but perhaps a shot of the back of somebody's head might be OK. Weirdos.

Shall I start?

Hang on a sec, I've done it wrong...

THIS one is the one I'm starting with:

And here is my first effort:

Note: It's much easier and much better for your back if you can get somebody to take the photo for you. I'd have never been able to explain it so it took numerous aborted attempts with the tripod and self timer.

Take it away folks!

I've started a special new blog to host these things. It'll just make it easier to keep track of them if the idea takes off, which it won't, but if it did, it could get confusing. The link? Infinite blogger

Yay!

People have been asking what "Yay!" means next to a blog title in my blogroll. It just means that there's been an update within the last 12hrs. Blogrolling does it automatically from the RSS or atom feed or something like that. I used to have the Blogroll ordered according to most recent update, but this was confusing as the blogs weren't listed alphabetically. Etc, etc, etc. For some reason, it doesn't pick up feeds from Wordpress, so they don't appear to be updated.


Calvin and Hobbes
I discovered Calvin and Hobbes in 1989. A friend of mine lent me all of his collection of the books (Calvin and Hobbes, Something under the bed is drooling, Weirdos from another planet) on the night of a party where I got very drunk then walked home through a construction site. This was the night that I tried to start a mechanical digger....

The books survived and I bought my own copies and added to the collection as and when. I then lent my entire collection to somebody and never saw them again. Fuckers.

Having a look around yesterday, I discovered that you can buy a special boxed set: "The Complete Calvin and Hobbes", for £70, so that should be nice.


"Do you want a paracetamol?"
Mentioning that I had a slight headache this morning, a caring colleague asked whether I'd like some paracetamol. Well no, not really, thank you. I've never known paracetamol to be much use for pain relief. In fact, they're totally, 100% ineffective. Do they actually work for anybody? I think it is one of those conspiracies directed by The Mysterious They to try to kill off large sections of the population who accidentally overdose while trying desperately to get rid of a persistent headache.

That's what I reckon.

Do you ever get days when you wish you could take to your bed? It used to be a perfectly acceptable thing to do in them days (don't know which ones, but sometime back then). You'd give the staff their chores for the day, come over a little wan, then take to your bed for a day or two.

It's called ME these days I think.


Well done, you did it!
I do find the people here at Base 2a wonderful. Yesterday was my first day back here after my sick leave - there was card waiting for me. I opened it up and was thrilled to see that it had been signed with amusing messages from well-wishers. Then I looked at the card itself. On the front, the message reads "Congratulations, hic! hic! hic!" and there's a drawing of little puppies bouncing on upturned champagne corks, each enjoying a glass of bubbly. Inside, the card's message reads "...Well done, you did it!". How appropriate for somebody recovering from surgery.

Smell my fingers!

This was quite funny:

Sometimes when I arrive at work, or home at the end of the working day, my throat is sore from all the shouting and rage that other motorists invite upon themselves because of their own stupidity. Gives me a headache too, so it does.

My particular favourite is when you're on the motorway and somebody in the outside lane is trying to overtake another vehicle at something like 1mph faster than the vehicle they're trying to overtake. Surely the point of overtaking somebody is getting past/passed them in a reasonable time? Wagons are usually the worst offenders, but you can have some degree of sympathy with them because of their nature. Somebody who does this in a new 2.0L Ford Mondeo deserves to be run off the road. Useless fuckers.

It was Budget day in the UK yesterday and as usual, normal working people got clobbered for yet more tax. Thieving bastards, this government. Their latest brainwave is to set road tax tariffs that are dependent on a vehicle's CO₂ emissions. We also pay about 90% tax on petrol so this makes you question the logic of this decision: surely if you drive more, you produce more CO₂, and the more you drive, the more petrol you use, so the more tax you pay anyway.

This just means that Britain's roads are now going to be overrun with annoying little shit cars being driven by annoying little shites. Annoying little shites that can't go faster than 65mph, but still insist on trying to overtake on an uphill stretch of the motorway... pulling a fucking caravan.

Oh joy.


Past tense
Nothing causes me tension and anxiety more than the use of past/passed. I am always utterly confused by this and I don't think I'll ever be able to get my head round it. Obviously there are easy situations, but others just leave me feeling bewildered and let down by my powers of logic and reason.

"It passed me by" - that's OK
"I walked down the corridor; past the registrar's office, past the display cabinet, past out" - no chance.

You see, we don't get taught grammar over here. I'm just lucky that I wasn't off the day we did apostrophes when I was eight. I think past/passed coincided with a few days off with a swollen knee following the horse incident.

It's odd how certain things cause long-term hang ups. I can't cope with statistics, probability or chance. I was once shouted at by my maths teacher because she thought I was taking the piss when, having sailed past/passed trig, calculus, algebra and all the other shite on the curriculum, I came severely unstuck with coin tossing.

If you toss a coin on ten occasions and on each of those occasions, it lands heads, what's the probability that it will land tails on the 11th toss? Well, I know that it's 50%, but things then get complicated by the chances of it landing heads in a certain square on a 8 by 8 grid when there's a full moon.

I've also admitted to not knowing where to put full stops when it comes to quotation marks and I basically make commas up.

None of this is particularly important in the grand scheme of things, but I'm trying to find another excuse for explaining why it sometimes take quite a long time for me to write reports that are delayed due to extensive ponderings around the probabilty of getting the correct past/passed choice.

Ho hum.


Doctor, doctor!
Was supposed to be seeing my consultant this afternoon for a post-op chat, but the appointment was cancelled due to illness. Bumholes. Anyway, the nurse phoned me up and it's all OK as we thought. Sorry Piggy.

Blog Movie, Scene 2: James and the cold gun

ALICE
So, I celebrate my 365th entry today. One-year blogging and what have I achieved? Finally got the official nod that me and Darren are no longer a functioning family unit. Could have told them that years ago. Lizzie is no longer my sweet little girl, but a petulant foul mouthed little madam, although her schoolwork is good. As for Dan, the less said about him the better.

One year on and what have I achieved?

(We pull away from the Earth with incredibly speed, the darkness of space being taken up by huge letters, quickly forming the desk top of a generic blogging tool. The Earth is now in the top right hand corner, spinning round to inform the user they are on line. We can see all that Alice has just said as typed prose. The arrow hovers over the publish icon.

And then more words are added, Alice reading as she types).

In fact, why did I start this blog lark in the first place?

(The arrow hovers back to the publish icon and becomes a little hand which punches down on the icon sending Alice's thoughts out for the World to read).


2. James and cold gun
It is early-morning across the Atlantic and the camera pans across a city scape of tower blocks as the sun rises behind them. The lights flicker on in one window of an office block and the camera zooms in to show James putting his takeaway coffee onto his desk and then hand his coat and bag on the stand in the corner of the room. He turns on his computer, logs on. While his e-mails load, he starts his internet browser... the cursor flashes in the Google search bar, "Inbox" mimics this in glorious orange from the task bar.

"Fuck that. Just more crap that can wait for later". James concentrates on the web and navigates to his Yahoo mail account and checks his feeds for updates.

Sixteen new comments from Blogger this or that at [Cold gun]. He opens them in sequence:

Hey James, are you winding us up with this stuff or what? If any of this is true, you're a sick asshole... but I like you. I wish I had the guts to to that to my fucktard neighbors.

Yeah, I agree, shitheads.

...

...

Hey, great blog, I'm definitely going to bookmark you! You raise some really interesting points and you might want to come and read my blog on Dog hair extensions. It pretty much covers dog hair extensions and related stuff.

"Fucking spam cunts", he sighs and checks out the new post from Alice in England.

We see the reflection of James's PC in his spectacles, the pages scroll as he reads and talks to himself:

"Heh, heh, good old Alice. Yeah, come on Alice what have you achieved? Same old crap every day for a year, tell us what's really going on. You haven't achieved anything because you really don't want to. You're happy to whine on about your crap life, but you're never going to do anything to change it. You wanna change it? Perhaps James can help you".

The system clock shows 7.28. James moves the pointer to "E-mail me". Right click, "copy link location", paste into a new Yahoo message window. James starts to type.

Dear Alice,

I read your blog most days and I am fascinated by your everyday life. I just thought it would be nice to e-mail you rather than leave a lengthy comment on your blog. I hope you don't mind.

I had been in my last relationship for a number of years before realizing in a moment of clarity that it was all over and I wanted out, so I fully sympathize with how you're feeling right now. It is very difficult to take that big step and move out, but you'll be grateful when you do. Find strength in God and use the help of your friends and you'll be OK.

If you'd like to get in touch, please do, but I'll understand if you think it's weird and don't want to.

Take care,

J

The cursor moves to the Send button. Click.

7.39 He types into the address bar of the browser http://coldgun.blogspot.com*, the page changes to one displaying a page entitled "You got a friend" above a photo of a burning house: fire appliances and ambulances are in attendance, a crowd of onlookers huddle together.

"Heh, heh. Dumb fuckers never do believe me".



Hrrrrm, next up in this little venture, I challenge.... Michelle. Will she manage to cheer things up a little bit??? We shall have to wait and see.

*Disclaimer: Any similarities to any persons living or dead or their blogs is purely coincidental and I didn't mean it or anything. Jesus, it's only a bloody story, for fuck's sake. Nobody's even going to read this because it doesn't involve a cat in a box or a photo of my injured breast and photo of me in a comedy pose.

Dunking

Not quite ready for the blog movie just yet. I need a bit of time out from stuff to be able to incubate ideas. God, what sort of a prize tosser does that make me sound like? A big one with a big rosette and bunch of flowers (not dead ones though).

But anyway, there's nothing finer than enjoying a nice cup of coffee and a biscuit. Strong, sweet coffee and a ginger biscuit or two, or three.

The advantage of having biscuits with hot drinks is that they afford a mechanism for premature enjoyment of the steaming hot brew by virtue of dunking into the otherwise undrinkably hot liquid. There's nothing finer than the flavour of ginger biscuit dunked in sweet, strong coffee. Well there is, but you know, this is the start of a dunking discussion.

Here are some good biscuits for dunking:

• Ginger nuts
• Fig rolls
• Digestives
• Hob Nobs
• Kit kat*

*I'll try to remember this one, promise

I don't eat crap biscuits, but I can't imagine that dunking a chocolate digestive would be much fun - a waste of chocolate, you see. Chocolate digestives are best enjoyed by cramming as many into your mouth at once and successfully eating them without choking to death.

*Kit kats (Yay! I remembered the asterisk) are great fun for dunking because you nibble off a small amount from the end of one and then use it as a straw, sucking up as much coffee as you can before the wafer centre collapses and creates a disgusting mess in your mug and all over your fingers. Try it in your next meeting - the Chief Exec will be highly impressed.


Is it wrong to go to bed at 7.30? Depends on who with I suppose. Ho ho ho.


Travel
As a seasoned traveller, I am clued up about things such as visas and travel insurance and stuff. Oh yes, I shall be the most well-prepared traveller on earth by the time I step onto that plane to jet off to BC in the summer. My bank provides travel insurance, but I'm going to make sure that it covers me against waterskiing and helicopter accidents, as well as personal injury resulting from horse play with horses and mugging by 3 year old terrorists.

I think I'm OK if I get hijacked though.

Waaaaaay too tired today.

Blog movie

I want to prepare people for something that might be quite good fun.

Herge over at the FANTASTIC Angry Chimp has had the great idea to write a blog movie to which any blogger can contribute.

He has written the introductio and I'm going to try to put scene two together sometime over the next couple of days. Check it out and see what you think.

I feel a little inadequate though. Still, it's all good fun - a bit like those games you played when you were children.


Booze
I had some alcohol-free wine tonight. I thought it was one of those poncy adult soft drinks "with herbs" and I almost choked when I took a sip. Far too similar to the real thing and it threw me a little bit. Not sure I liked it (the feeling).

Weird.

I think I'll stick to cough mixture for my sneaky alcohol intake; it's safer that way.

Like a little flower

Anyway, I followed Tesco's customer care instructions for the situation when you receive dead flowers: let them stand in water for 24hr.

But look! C'est un miracle!!! Little Max has indeed risen from the dead.

Separated at birth
There was a wonderfully vile woman in the Lidl (cheap, nasty, foreign supermarket that doesn't really sell many well-known brands) near work this lunchtime. Me and a colleague were on the look out for dolphin-friendly tuna (in Lidl???), tinned sweetcorn (maybe, but not) and Heinz baked beans (no chance) and we kept hearing this woman shouting, "I said I'd just be a minute, I'm not queue jumping!".

As we got nearer the only open till, at which there had amassed a sizeable crowd of people waiting to pay, she ran to the front of the queue, shouting "Who's moved my stuff off the conveyor? I only went to get something that I'd forgotten, I'm not queue jumping!"

In fact, what she'd done was grab one item, stick it on the conveyor belt of the till, then gone round the store to do the rest of her shopping.

Definitely separated from her brain at birth, but not her downright cheek. Twat.

I wonder if Lidl and Aldi were separated at birth, they only differ by one letter.

Tesco's revenge

Well, after all my slagging off of retail giant Tesco (did you know that £1 in every £8 spent in the UK goes to Tesco?), I thought there'd been some action on their part to rectify their shocking failings in customer care.

Look what was waiting for me on my bed when I got in from work tonight:

After declining replacement flowers for the ones that were killed in transit, it seemed that they'd decided to send me some afterall. Aawww, how sweet of them.

Imagine my horror when I opened the box to find this:

Poor little Max! Murdered by the Mob.

Accompanying his stiffened little body was a note:

I must say that, despite the obvious disappointment of receiving a bunch of dead flowers 2 days too late and having my complaints met with the most appalling customer service imaginable, I can see why Tesco is such a HUGE retail success and I think everybody should buy their mums flowers from Tesco online for Mother's Day.

I wish Tesco every luck with their venture into the US market.

No cats were harmed in the making of this blog post. Even Tesco aren't evil enough to murder a family pet... give them time though, give them time.

Testing

Can anybody see this?

Pheasants are the stupidest birds alive (but mainly very DEAD)

Back from my convalescence in Norfolk. I was very relaxed until Sonny the ADHD cat started mithering me as soon as I walked in the door. I'm sure we'd get loads of welfare benefits if he was a child - and probably an extenstion put on the house for free too.

So, despite it still being icy cold in the UK, spring is springing across the land and it was quite noticeable down there, where there's lots of countryside and stuff. There were new lambs in the fields, baby rabbits leaping about, baby birds twittering, the ducks were going mental after a bit of action. And then there were the pheasants.

The pheasants. Oh deary me. My friends are lucky enough to have pheasants roaming through their garden, in and out of the hedges in that headless chicken panicky style of theirs. Of course they run in and out of the hedges that line the roadsides too, generally into the paths of oncoming vehicles - BLAM! I've never seen so many squished birds in all my life. Stupid friggin' animals.


Songs of the week
I don't know why, but the embedded music thing in the sidebar seems to disappear after a while and, since it's such a fart pissing about with the templates, I decided to put the tracks in a post instead.

So anyway, here are this week's specials.

Rocky
Never heard of it myself, but Jo requested something by The Pixies, so here is Gigantic.


Gay disco
This week's disco hit comes from Seamus Haji and his mate thingy Emanuel. That's right, it's Take me away! I love this one and I play it REALLY loud, well as loud as my mum will let me.


Nice
Who can't like the lovely Natalie Imbruglia? She sings effortlessly and she's dead fit too. The thought of her certainly makes me shiver!


Like I said, I'm more than happy to take requests and you can see them here every Sunday.


Nippy
Tell you what, you don't half notice a nipple injury when it's cold and you get all shivery. It's like being stabbed in my bosom. Can you imagine that?

what the fuck?

Tits

OK, I thought for the sake of common decency that it was best to move the picutre of my injured bosom to here. You sad bastards.

Right, there it is. Nice and crumpled because I'd just got out of bed when I took this. No doubt the bruising will get worse over the coming days and this might present a blogging spectacular, but this my friends is all you're going to see. I think it's way too much anyway.

I'm actually feeling OK, although it's quite painful when I try to do star jumps. I've also been a bit tired, but I think this is just a hangover from the anaesthetic and a couple of painkillers I took last night.

I'm off to Norfolkland to finish my recuperation. I'll be fine to drive so long as I don't do any emergency stops.

While I'm away, feel free to leave requests for songs of the week - I can also put up different categories, but I won't be doing opera. Any suggestions for Patsy Kline, Andrew Lloyd Webber or Jennifer Rush will result in your house being burnt down. So think on and look sharp.

Tesco's dead parrot

After I'd woken up from my anaesthetic yesterday, I was given the opportunity to have a bit of a snooze before being given a cup of coffee and some toast. I started to feel more human with every minute, but couldn't see (no specs) and I was curious to see whether I'd had any text messages. A neighbour of mine works in the hospital and is ALWAYS present, whenever I happen to be there - no matter what area or circumstance. He was there yesterday, so I called him over and asked if he wouldn't mind reaching into my pocket for my glasses and my mobile; he passed them to me.

One text message from mother: "Are you sleepy? Some flowers have come from Trillion."

Eh, flowers? For ME? I was thrilled. You see, Trillion is lovely; she has the most enormous heart and I love her to absolute bits. She'd phoned on Saturday to ask if there hadn't been delivery for me, so I realised that this must've been it. What a lovely gesture.

Anyway... in the car on the way home, I asked Mum about the flowers. "Well, there's a problem you see. It says on the box that they should've been delivered on Saturday. And they aren't packed in water. And they only came today. And, well, they're all dead."

Indeed they were.

Despite being groggy and tired and sore, I decided to kick some serious arse with the people the flowers had come from. Yes, that's right, good old TESCO.

I phoned them up. Their customer services centre seems to be in Scotland, so this automatically got my back up as I realised I probably wouldn't be able to understand who I was speaking to. Great. If anybody wants to hear what sort of accent you have to deal with, then phone this number and use the automated menus to navigate to "Tesco Extra" before hanging up: 08457 225533.

Me: "Hello, I've had some flowers sent to me by a friend as wonderful gesture because I've been in hospital for an operation and I've just got out. They should have been delivered on Saturday, but they came today and they're all dead."

Tesco: "Can I have the order number please?" I gave it to him. "Well, it only says Saturday delivery as a guide, it could mean any time... can't be guaranteed."

Me: "No, it says quite clearly on the box, with a yellow sticker: "DELIVERY SATURDAY". That means deliver Saturday to me."

Tesco: "Well, what we suggest is that you put them in water for 24hr and then phone back"

Me: "And what is that going to achieve, apart from a mess in the kitchen? These flowers are dead, there's no going back, they ain't gonna do a Lazarus on us. Dead, do you understand? Have you seen the Monty Python Dead Parrot sketch? Well, substitute the parrot for these flowers. THEY ARE DEAD and they will still be dead in 24 hr."

Tesco: "But the policy set by our suppliers says they need to be left for 24 hr before we can do anything."

Me: "Who is your supplier?"

Tesco: "I'm not allowed to tell you that."

Me: "What is this, the KGB? Can I speak to your supervisor please?"

Tesco: "I'm the manager here."

Me: "Right, well I know all about the training they make you go on, how you're told to think about the motivations of and the perspectives of the people who phone you up. Most people don't phone to congratulate you, they phone because there is a problem that needs resolving. Telling them to wait 24hr on dead flowers is not helping people, it is winding them up.

And then I did it, shame on me, but I did it...

"Could you imagine if your mum, sister, girlfriend had been in hospital to have a breast lump removed and they came home to find that somebody had sent them dead flowers? How do you think that would make them feel?

Tesco: "I understand and it's not acceptable."

Me: "Why are these things not packed in water like you get from Marks and Spencer or Interflora?"

Tesco: "The ones that are sent by courier are packed in water, those sent by Royal Mail are sent frozen."

Me: "I don't understand why there's a difference, they should be packed exactly the same, no matter what the method of delivery is. This gets more ridiculous by the second."

Tesco: "All I can do is suggest that you give them 24hr, I can't do anything until then."

Me: Well there's leadership for you. Where were you when they bombed Plymouth? "Well, they've already been given 48 hours and they are dead, and they will be dead tomorrow.

"I will call back tomorrow, as will the person who ordered these for me. She is going to be very upset about this and if you think that dealing with me had been bad, just wait till she phones you up.

"And what you need to do is take the transcript from this telephone call and pass it on to your mysterious supplier and tell them that they are inept."

Tesco: "Ok, well I'm sorry that I couldn't be any more help."

You fucking will be.

Round two
So now that 24 hours have passed, I've just phoned them up to tell them what to do with their flowers.

Me: "I phoned yesterday to complain that I'd been delivered some dead flowers that should've arrived on Saturday. I was told that, despite the fact that they're dead, I have to leave them 24hr."

Tesco: "That's correct."

Me: "But it isn't correct though, is it? What's the point of leaving dead flowers for 24hrs to see if they perk up?"

Tesco: "I meant, that's our procedure."

Me: "Well your procedure is wrong. Anyway, surprisingly enough, they're still dead and I want some action taking.

"First of all, you've got to pass this message onto your supplier to tell them that they are rubbish and that they have no idea how to pack flowers. Better still, change your supplier to one who knows what they're doing.

"This "give them 24hr in water" thing is ludicrous. Who on earth wants flowers delivering that look half dead? They're supposed to arrive in tip top condition. Mother's day is coming up in a couple of weeks, can you imagine all the mums in the land being delivered half-dead flowers and having to wait until the Monday before they can appreciate them? It's not on."

Tesco: "So what did the flowers look like?"

Me: "Well, you know what dead roses look like? They look like that: shrivelled up petals, wilted leaves and stems. Like something that's been at a graveside for a couple of weeks."

Tesco: "I'll certainly pass that on. How would you like to proceed?"

Me: "Well, I certainly don't want any Tesco flowers, but I want you to give a full refund to the person who sent them to me and I want you to give her some compensation too."

Tesco: "Ok then, we'll certainly do that: a full refund and a good will gesture."

So long as they don't think a good will gesture is a bunch of flowers.

Fucking morons.

The thing is, I love Tesco, it's one of my favourite shops in the (my) entire world. Tesco is one of Britain's best ever retail success stories and it deserves to be - the stores are great. I hate having to knock them, but things like this really get on my scarred and painful tits.

5.50am, knackered, starving hungry

Couldn't get to sleep.

Kept awake by Sonny and Otto growling at the howling cats outside.

Finally fell asleep and was woken at 4.30 by a wagon starting up then parking outside on the road with its engine running for 5 minutes before fucking off to wherever it's going. Hope it crashes, the fucking inconsiderate tosser.

Didn't get back to sleep.

Am now sat here: knackered; starving hungry; thirsty; caffeine-deprived; cold.

Do I care if I don't wake up again?

Not really.

Waterskiing

More people die under anaesthetic than they do in waterskiing accidents.

But I'm not at all concerned about that, I'll be fine. Aand I'll be back here, if not tomorrow, definitely the day after that, to tell you how I got on and how much pain/discomfort I'm in. Of course to help with mopping up the seepage, my new friends T&P bought me some of these:

So that'll save on a lot of embarrassment when I'm down the bingo.

But yes, I've just met my first real-life bloggers and they are so LOVELY - for a complete pair of cunts. Just kidding, they're lovely and funny and everything you'd expect from them their blog.

They showered me with gifts and sparkly love...

... and the whole thing was quite literally magical...

"Am jus' doin' ma magic!"

They're lovely blokes and I'm really glad to have had the chance to meet them before I suffer hypoxic brain damage tomorrow. We discussed all sorts of things: Canadians; our favourite and least favourite bloggers; plans for future blog japes; kidney stones; theme parks...

To find out what they thought, click here.

Of course, even lovely blokes suffer at the hands of humourless bastards and their latest masterpiece podcast has been stripped from their blog because somebody is running a personal vendetta against them and keeps complaining to their webhosts. I don't understand this; if you don't like the content of somebody's blog, don't go back, simple as that. Don't be an utter tosser by running to teacher and complaining just because people find things funny and you don't quite get it, or because you feel left out.

Wankers.

Anyway, if you didn't catch the T&P podcast, you can download it here if I've done it right.

I'd like to thank Tickersoid for a) explaining the derivation of his name and b) sending me an odeo message. I definitely heard noise and voices in the message, but it sounded rather ghostly and I became rather spooked by it all. An excellent edit: this is a brilliant Tickersodeo message. Love it!

I reckon that's it for now. I'll be back with an update post as soon as I'm feeling up to it.

It takes two

When I was a student in Leeds, there was a young woman who I came to know affectionately as "Mort". We went clubbing occasionally and she used to enjoy getting all emotional with my friend David ("Tell me David, do you find me attractive?") and I used to enjoy having a drink and a laugh and a dance.

A great hit in the clubs back then was Rob Base and DJ E-Z Rock's "It takes two" and Mort had a fantastic way of dancing to this track that involved her sort of bending forwards with her head down and shaking, bouncing at the hip while waving her arms out in front of her and ever alternate beat, she'd jump to one side, then back to the other. If only I could demonstrate it to somebody. It was so good, and she'd be so wrapped up in her dance, and her desire to get into David's knickers, that she never noticed that we all used to mimic her, only with exaggerated movements.

Anyway (!) has anybody got a copy of this as I can't find it on the internet except for a £4 download and I ain't paying that much for it. Nooooo way! I can do a swap for Kylie's "Hand on your heart" or Kelly Marie's "Feels like I'm in love" - I'll even throw in a Tina Charles for the 12" remix of it.

Someone taught me how to dance last night
What a mover, he was
And someone taught me how to do it right
What a groover, he was

He taught me all the steps you need to rock and roll
I found my sense of rhythm,
But I lost my self control, when he said

Dance, little lady, dance

Sing along now!

Dance, little lady,
Ohh that's what he told me...

Facking facts

I could just say no I suppose....

A fisting of facts

1. If you were to be re-incarnated, who or what would you want to come back as and why?

A cat that is good looking, even tempered and happy, thus ensuring a life with a nice family and lots of cuddles, decent food and top class healthcare.

2. What’s the nastiest thing you’ve ever done to a friend?

Stalked them and made their life a misery.

3. What is your FIRST memory (and don’t say ‘I can’t remember’)?

I think I was in my cot, stood up and hanging onto the side rail. The cot was in my Mum and Dad's room and I was looking at them as they slept.

4. What’s the most embarrassing thing you’ve ever done when pissed/blind drunk?

Where do I start? I think just the general loudness and topics of conversation that you engage in when you're drunk are hugely embarrassing. I had a row with my boss and told to to fuck off and called him Jacob Marley.

I once tried to drive one of those big earth moving things that was on a construction site that I was taking a shortcut through. I couldn't get it started (obviously) but sat there, shouting "Toot, toot, Nyyyyyyyyyyrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr!!!" at passers by.

5. Your 3 best and worst qualities?

Good: Fairly clever; sense of humour.... stuck now
Bad: Moodiness and bad temper; my foul fucking mouth; I'm too shy.

6. You can change one thing about your partner. What is it? And what is the thing you would NOT be happy to change about them?

The first thing I'd change is having one to start off with and then I suppose I'd have to take it from there.

7. Have you ever taken drugs (illegal)?

Yes, just a bit of gange on a couple of occasions and I think some speed once when I was a student. Didn't really do much for me and I wasn't at all impressed.

8. Your perfect night/day?

Sunny day in June or July, spent with somebody special. Get up nice an early, breakfast of crispy bacon with brown sauce on toast. And a nice walk, either to a zoo-type thing (somewhere with nice animals) or somewhere secluded like a nice woodland or beach or something. Picnic lunch, curry for tea.

9. Have you ever had anything up your bum that ain’t human?

Glycerine suppositories all the time when I was a child.

10. Three things that make you really angry?

Ignorance; cruelty to animals; selfishness

11. The saddest thing you’ve ever seen on TV?

I think Diana's funeral was so sad because there was this amazing peer and media pressure on everyone to be distraught. So yes, it was a very sad occasion, but Elton's eyebrow made up for it.

Big Brother is quite sad too.

An edit: Slobodan Milosevic died today. Good.

I think one of the saddest things I ever witnessed on TV was the systematic massacre of people at Milosevic's (and others') hands. To have something like this happen on your doorstep is shocking. For something like this happen on your doorstep and know that those who could help don't have the guts to makes you want to scream. The whole world stood by as Yugoslavia was torn apart by civil war in early 1990s. Men and young boys were sent to their deaths in concentration camps, or at the hands of firing squads. We saw images of civilans being taken out by snipers (for sport) as they ran for cover on the streets of Sarajevo. This happened just over ten years ago, in the 1990s, on our doorstep, in a country where people used to go on holiday. The UN eventually sent in the peace keepers when it was safe for them to do so.

Later on in the same decade, we saw ethnic cleansing on our TV screens as Serbian forces displaced people. These were ordinary people, like those you whinge at down the shops, the people in front of you in the queue at Tesco. The people of the world called on the UN to help, but the UN was too gutless as usual. Eventually NATO got its act together and dropped some bombs - mainly on convoys of refugees. Again too gutless to send in ground troops to help out.

That, I think, is the saddest thing I've ever seen on the television.

12. Apart from a sexual organ/region, which part of your body do you really liked being touched by a partner?

Just above my hip, ears, back of neck.

13. You’re fave jelly flavour?

Orange (with those little tinned mandarines set in it, with cream). Or trifle-flavour jelly, the red one. Don't like the green one... or yellow.

14. Tell everyone something you’ve been too ashamed to tell anyone before. Your answer to this will guarantee your entry into Heaven

I know no shame.

15. Something you don’t tell you’re partner, or do enough and know that you should.

Pfhah!

16. You are a cunt. Explain why.

There are some things that just come naturally to a person I guess.

Sick leave

I'm almost officially on sick leave. It's a weird thing, "planned sick leave", I don't feel comfortable with it. There are some people who actually count their sick leave as an entitlement and ensure that they take their full count of days each year. Lazy fucking scumbags.

I feel really odd taking the week off when I could easily be fine by Tuesday, or Wednesday at the latest. But that's what I've been told to take off by various colleagues and managers, so I'm not going to argue with anybody.

So... you spend the week before you finish much as you would if you were taking annual leave: making sure that any deadlines that occur during your leave are met beforehand; having a general tidy up; letting folk know various bits in case there are any queries. But this is different to the run up to annual leave: you're not demob happy, you're just stressed; there's very a slim chance that you might not be coming back, either on the date you plan, or at all. So, you have to prepare people a bit more and get the work ready for the week that you're due back too, as well as telling colleagues what to do with it.

Of course, should I die, all my colleagues will be too distraught to even contemplate doing any work and they'll be given the week off for mourning. More importantly, they'll need that week off to get their outfits sorted for my fantastic funeral.

There will need to be lots of wailing as my coffin is carried to the altar and then off to the graveside. We might have to arrange a video link showing clips of little baby animals being eaten by big predators, or slaughtered in abattoirs to ensure there are enough decibels of snivling.


Take a chance
There's a slim chance of me having a reaction to the anaesthetic and there being complications that result in death. This chance isn't peculiar to me, most normal people are exposed to the same risk and the chance of something going wrong is slim for everyone, but increases if you carry certain risk factors, such as being a pathetic asthmatic, a big fat bloater, having heart disease, kidney stones, etc.

"As with all anaesthetics, there's a very small chance of complications, but it happens very rarely", the doctor told me.

"Oh yes, I know that, and that's fine, but in reality you either have a reaction to the anaesthetic or you don't, so the odds are 50:50, aren't they?"

Think on and look sharp.


A very special day
Sunday could turn out to be a very special day. If all goes to plan, kidney stones and map-reading permitting, I should be having tea with my two favourite poofs. I am very excited about this. So much so that I'm taking them to my favourite restaurant - well I'm meeting them there because Piggy is too scared to come here and meet Connie.

It's a good job that they won't be meeting mother because she does this thing where she mimics people's accents without realising it. It gets extremely embarrassing.

I'm going to be taking my camera so there'll be photos, and I understand that Tazzy will be taking his too. I won't take my good one though because I don't want to upset gadgetboy with my superior zoom.

So that's that. It'll be a fucking scream! Unless my sister tags along, then it'll be a fucking nightmare. "But I want to meet them too."

I called her a fag hag. "I am not!"

"But you're living with a gay man!"

"I don't go down Canal Street all the time."

"Not any more you don't. You don't go anymore because you've been barred for harrassing the queers."

I didn't say that.

She's having a party tonight and I would've gone only I daren't leave the house for fear of getting a cold or cough that'll mean my op has to be postponed. The bitch couldn't have waited, could she?

I also told my line manager what my plans for the weekend were:

Blokes you met off the internet. How dodgy is that?? Why are you meeting? Are they photography geeks too?

You are too weird for words at times….

I don't think it's THAT dodgy just because they're men - you are so sexist! Maybe dodgy because one is Scottish and they live in Barnsley, I'll concede that point. But they are very sweet... and excellent bitches, so that always makes for a good time.

They're fairly geeky and into techno things - they have this VERY rude website and we got in touch through there. That does sound dodgy... but it's not really.

Nope, that is quite strange. I can’t even begin to understand boys, so you are obviously way ahead of me there. What’s the website??

You having a laugh? There's no way on EARTH that you're seeing that website! Ever.

I'm not sure anybody understands boys, but they're quite amusing at times. And like I said there's nothing on the planet that's better for a good bitching session than a couple of gay blokes.

Oh I didn’t realise they were gay, well that’s alright then, they are normal and I am no longer thinking you are a freak!

Pls pass on details of website, I need cheering up and a good perve!!

I called her a bigot.


Twiglets
What is it with Twiglets that you can't stop eating them, even to the point where it feels like you've had a mouth full of potassium? The roof of my mouth is burning like a fucker. Then again, I did eat half a tub of the things while watching much sauciness in the L Word. Christ, what a show!

Really borin'

Well, that was fun!

Just got back from my pre-op assessment; it only took 3 bloody hours. In all fairness, the first hour was spent waiting around because the nurses thought my appointment had been cancelled. They didn't realise what was going on until one of them found my notes and I heard her say "Tina Cakesniffer has been cancelled with the rest of Mr Chat's clinic".

"No I'm not, I'm here!".

But aside from the mixup, it was good fun. I had:

• 4 blood samples taken (2 from each arm) - difficult
  
• Height - 5'3½" (OK)
• Weight - yeah, well, we know what lets me down there, let's just say that i need to lose a stone (14lb, ~7kg)
  
• Blood pressure - 142/85 (bit high)
• Heart rate - 53 (bit low)
  
• ECG - never had one of those before (normal)
• Chat with junior doctor and consent form signing and stuff
• Heart and lungs listened to - must be OK
  

Can I have a little widdle on ya?
I also handed over my fresh wee sample. Whenever I try to do weeing into a tube, I always dry up - quite literally. With ten minutes left before we had to leave to go to the hospital, I still couldn't squeeze any pee out, but I was desperate for a poo (I'd had butter beans with my tea last night). I daren't do a poo in case I peed at the same time though, and there was no way I was going to have my hand under my arse at that moment. Anyway, I was eventually successful using these two receptacles:

I managed to achieve the task of collecting urine without touching my own pee (for a change). This gave me great relief, but I found carrying a tube of my warm wee a bit disconcerting. I don't quite understand how people can get turned on by piss.

Here's a question for you (women, don't know about blokes): How long does it take before you can have a wee after having an orgasm?

Patients is a virtue
Hospitals are great places; you get the whole spectrum of society there, even if it is generally skewed towards the lower end of the IQ scale. There were a few noteworthy examples today: a big bloke - huge - who was about 45-50, with a few tattoos on his neck, shaved head. During the entire time there, he'd mutter something to himself, then do a really loud "hee, hee, hee" laugh before continuing chunnering on to himself. His mobile phone rang at one point and I'm sure he answered, but all I could hear was "Chunner, chunner... Hee, hee, hee!".

My favourite visitors to the department was the couple who were wearing matching lumberjack jackets. They were in their fifties I guess and I could tell they weren't blessed with much up top as I saw them approach as they came shuffling down the corridor: his jacket green/turquoise/black check; hers red/orange/black check - straight off the Paris catwalk.

They sat behind me in the waiting area and immediately started going on: "Do you think we got time to go and get something to eat?" the woman asked the receptionist. She was told that she'd probably be seen within ten minutes so it was best that she waited. Of course, after twenty minutes had passed, she started to become agitated: "Could've had something to eat by now, SHE said it only be ten minutes and that was 25 minutes ago." She spoke as if she had cotton wool in her mouth, her accent was strong and local (more common than mine, obviously).

Eventually she was seen and she had her ECG and was told she could leave. "All that for having a few teeth out. Come on, we can go and get something to eat now."

Off they shuffled.

Fucking hell. You'd think these people hadn't seen food for weeks and were using the opportunity of the hospital visit to access a hot dinner. Bugger only knows how she's going to cope when her mouth is swollen and full of packing after a few extractions. I hope she gets a really hard chip stuck in her wound.


This is good
Real life Simpsons titles

Assessment

I've got tomorrow off work. Will I be doing something nice? No, I will not. I'll be having my pre-op assessment, which will involve: peeing onto my hands; having a scrap with the people smoking in the main entrance of my hospital; being prodded and poked while I have all sorts of tests done to me - the main one being made to stand on one leg while I balance a glass of water on my head and eat a dry cracker.

Talking of time off work, I've been given next week off as planned sick leave - the whole week, and today I was also sorting out my annual leave entitlement for next year (from 1st April onwards). I have a 27d entitlement (going up to 29d in June!) plus I can carry 5 days over from 2005-06, but I still have 6 days, so I've got to take an additional day off sometime between 20th and 28th March. Woe is me.

When do I have my day off and what should I do with it? You see, instead of letting me carry 6 days over, my line manager has put this additional stress on me by making me take an extra holiday day sometime in March.

But if I'm off with stress, that's sick leave and not annual leave and I'm still left with the troublesome extra day.


551
Yep, this is my 552nd post on this blog. If I'd spent that time more constructively, I might have evened out my top:arse ratio, got myself a decent job, done some work in my current one... who knows? I think I'm lacking direction and motivation.



Ignorant fuckers
As I drove out of the car park at work this afternoon, a pair of women stopped in front of me in the middle of the entry/exit road as they were crossing it. I slowed down to let them continue crossing. They stood still and one glared at me. So I decided to start off again and as I drove past them, one shouted "Decide where you're going, you stupid woman!".

Excuse me, but I'm not the fucking gormless twat who's stood in the middle of the fucking road, not moving while people are trying to let you cross! FUCKTARD!

I very nearly stopped the car and had a go at her, but I probably would've been told off for twatting a patient. Braindead fucking mong.

Actually, that's unfair on mongs. But when I say "mong", I'm never referring to mongs - people with Down's Syndrome - I'm referring to gormless fuckers who have less intelligence than a fucking slug and fewer manners than Atilla the Hun (or appropriate ill-mannered cunt). Same with spazzes. These words have taken on completely different meanings over the past couple of decades - well they have to me at least.

I hate people.

I hate most people. I really like SID, he's an angel (:|) and he has done something very very special for me over at his blog. Thanks, you soft twat.

"Stop, stop! My embryos!!"

When I was a PhD student, there were quite a few characters in the lab where I worked; some good, some not so good, most very interesting and entertaining. There was a particular Romanian double-act that always provided much amusement, but also stacks of irritation and tension.

It's unfortunate that I can't really name either of the pair involved, but anybody who's particularly interested can e-mail me for more details. The couple consisted of a PhD student and her supervisor. The student, "Marianna", was a medic (obs & gobs I think), but she'd come to the UK to work on her PhD with, oh fuck it, "Marcella".

Marianna was the oddest person you could ever meet; she was quite tall, but always spoke to you as if you were the most revered person on the planet, bowing down to, but invading your personal space a little too much. She spoke in a high-pitch, monotone, whisper - anybody who has heard the cosmetic surgery junkie character Maxine Bendix in Tittybangbang will know how Marianna spoke.

She was highly suspicious of everyone: she was convinced that Marcella was in cahoots with the KGB because she had managed to leave Romania during the Ciaocescu regime - "But nobody else could get out!" she complained. She once tore down a newspaper cutout from the Daily Mirror because she thought it was an instrument of the Communist Party. She was also very supersticious of everything and generally rather weird: a housemate of hers told of a time when they'd gone down to the kitchen to find her on all fours, cleaning over the kitchen floor with the two cut halves of a white cabbage.

Marianna's relationship with her boss was very strained. It didn't help that the both of them had the most horrendous tempers and things degenerated to such an extent that they would often engage in screaming at each other in the lab.

But Marianna was fab. She was doing work on embryos. That's right, the things that are made when daddy plants his seed in mummy. She mainly used mouse embryos, but would occasionally need to go to the hospital (which was a fair way out) to pick up human embryos - they were the excess from IVF and deemed unfit for implantation, but the patients had given their consent for them to be used for research. There was a slight problem in that Marianna didn't drive and so she had to catch the bus to pick up her embryos from the hospital and then transport them back to the lab in a portable, battery powered incubator. On one occasion, the bus was either stuck in traffic, or it broke down and this coincided with a battery pack failure on the embryo incubator. She retold the story to the lab, how she'd pleaded with the bus driver: "But my embryos, my embryos! I need to get my embryos back safely!"

Every time I'd try to use a flow cabinet, she'd be hovering near me or rushing about: "I need it, you see, my embryos!". Oh for fuck's sake. Anything for a quiet life and a 3 hour coffee break.

She was an absolute darling and was treated extremely unfairly. I guess she just didn't help herself with her attitude towards her boss and her general level of being a bit of a fruitcake.


My embryos!
Rightly or wrongly, the European Court of Human Rights has judged that an infertile woman can't use her frozen embryos because her partner at the time of the treatment has withdrawn his consent.

I agree in respect of the fact that consent must be given freely for all stages of the treatment. Let's face it, the potential father would have absolutely no chance of trying to force his ex partner to undergo embryo transfer if she'd changed her mind, so I don't see why it should be any different the other way round.

On the other hand, I bet there are a load of fathers out there who wish they could be given a second chance and not have children with previous partners.


Quick count
Guess how many posts Cakesniffers contains (as of this point) and win a prize!

Take it to the MAX!

I'm sure it's purely psychological, but my car seems to prefer fuel from certain petrol stations over others. It's OK with Morrison's, Tesco's and BP, but it's not mad keen on Esso or Asda (no surprise there) at the moment. Of all the petrol stations I use, my car loves Shell fuel.

I'm a kind of standard, no-nonsense type and just fill up once a week on unleaded. I filled up last Friday at the local Shell and, as I entered the shop to pay, a woman customer who was in the queue turned to me, smiled and said "Excuse me..."

Oh God, what've I done? Have I been mouthing off at other drivers again and I've finally met one who's going to challenge me? "Yes?" I smiled, sweetly.

"I noticed you put Shell Optimax in your car, was there any reason for that?"

Did I? Fuck! That's so much more expensive than unleaded. What an idiot.

"Oh, no particular reason," I responded, lying, "I just like to use it one tank in every four."

"Does it increase fuel efficiency?"

How the fuck do I know? It was a mistake! "Errm, it may do. My car just likes it, it seems to run more smoothly on it. Give it a go and see what you think."

"Oh right, thanks. I might give it a go sometime."

Anyway, I must recommend Shell Optimax; my car certainly is very happy at the moment. At 6p/L more, it better fucking had be bappy on it.


Coffee-flavoured Pepsi Max
You know how Pepsi Max is one of my favourite, if not my absolute favourite soft drink? Well, I thought I'd try something new the other week. I had a go of Pepsi Max cino, which is supposed to be a coffee-flavoured cola drink.

It

is

absolutely

fucking

disgusting


Trash
Ok, some of you wanted to see some photos of the new jacket. For fuck's sake, am I your performing poodle all of a sudden? I suppose I must be. Here goes then:

A victory for sanity
Thank goodness for the House of Lords; they've thrown out the Government's plans to make people who want a passport require an ID card from 2008.

Ha

Ha

Ha!

High on diesel and gasoline

There was a band called Suede that had a bit of success in the UK during the 1990s. Their hits included the songs Beautiful Ones, Trash and Animal nitrate. They were OK and I quite liked their stuff.... until, that was, when I realised that their lead singer sounded like Tommy Steele singing Little white bull.

But suede and other leather goods have quite a strong smell that can be a bit nasty at times. There's something not quite right about being able to smell the leather from your shoes; it's usually an indicator that your feet are too hot = sweat = manky, manky, manky.

Anyhoo. I bought meself a suede jacket the other day. It's really rather nice and it was only £30 from good old T K Maxx. I reckon it's ideal for a night out on the town and it'll go really well with jeans and a nice blouse. More's to the point, it doesn't look likely that I'll ever have my coy-du-roy (corduroy) blazer back from my darling sister, so I just HAD to have a going out jacket. Because I'm always out, social animal that I am.

The thing about suede is that it smells a bit nasty and can sometimes have fart undertones. The jacket is hung up in this room and I can smell it from here. I'm a bit worried about wearing this thing on a night out on the pull and people nearby thinking that I'm a bit excited about getting out of the house for a change.

Oh, the Big Gay Bash has been postponed until after I've recovered from my op since my colleague doesn't want anything to curtail my pulling potential. As if my fat arse isn't going to do that anyway.

Hey ho.


Trichlorophenol



This stuff was the pervading smell of all pensioner homes during the 1970s. Trichlorophenol? TCP to you and me, or THIS:

I don't know why the UK's elderly population were so dependent on this stuff back then, but I swear they bathed in it, gargled with it, used it as a cologne, cleaned the bathroom with it and boilwashed their smalls in it.

And the smell of even the tiniest amount of TCP is extremely persistent, even without this total saturation of their geriatric lifestyles with the stuff. I once lived in a flat for 18 months. During all that time, I could never shift the smell of TCP from the bathroom cabinet. It felt like the place was possessed with the spirit of an elderly lady who died of a chemical overdose in 1976.

There's a disturbing smell of cat wee filtering into this room. Where's the Zoflora?


Freebies
Yeah, look at me, giving away music for free. All thanks to tunebite, I might add. If you hadn't noticed, our good friend Connie is trying a new venture in her music blog Indie Anna Jones. Check it out, there are some interesting things to listen to.

A bear, a lion and a chicken

A bear, a lion and chicken meet in the street and are comparing notes.

The Bear says: "If I growl in the forest, the animals run and hide and the undergrowth quivers"

The Lion says: "If I roar in the jungle the animals scatter and the tree-tops shake"

The Chicken says: "If I cough, the entire world shits itself!"


Those pesky birds must be having a right old laugh at our expense.



Animals and strange weather
Ever noticed how bonkers cats and dogs go when it's really windy? Cats either run around after themselves, probably in the belief that something is nipping at their tails. The result is a high-speed circular chase as the animal tries in vain to catch the culprit.

Snow is quite good fun too. Cats try to do this thing where they run run along and dive into it, the snow flying up over their heads as they skid along, paws in front of them. They look a bit like furry snow ploughs.

Dogs, on the other hand, run around, trying to catch the falling snow in their mouths. This little chap happened to be playing outside when the snow came down heavily yesterday afternoon.

He wasn't sure whether he was having the best time of his life, or whether he was a bit fed up because he was getting cold and wet (and confused). Still, it was fun to watch.


Anger
Nothing has happened to raise my blood pressure much today, apart from a session at the gym and a few dickheads on the road on the way there. YAY!

I'm having takeaway for my tea (lamb tikka jalfrezi). YAY!

The sun is shining (for now, it'll be setting soon). YAY!

I've figured out how to change the attributes of blogger header description. YAY!

All is well with the world... except my sore back, the cold weather, Tony Blair being an utter wanker, my clothes still being a bit too tight.

Ho hum.

A change is as good as a rest

So here it is, work it out for yourself...

... Hang on, I was coming over a bit Jazzie B there for a second.

So what does everybody think? I'd been fed up of that old blog template since the day I started it, but I never had the wherewithall or courage to mess about with it. But then I thought "Blogs be blown!" and went for an overhaul.

I'm quite pleased with it. It always annoyed me how the other one was squished in the centre of the screen and there was no way of changing it because of the template components. Ah, how foolish we are when we embark on these adventures; if only I'd known that other template would be impossible to change when I started out...

But still, I've got four paragraphs out of this. Not bad, I reckon.


Taxing times
I had a look at my tax code on my payslip this afternoon. Just how exciting can a person's life get? Anyway, expecting to see "489L", I was surprised to see "489LI". Eh? An I code?? So I had a look at the Inland Revenue website to see what it meant.

Fucking useless.

They're too busy worrying about tax evasion, self assessment and basically robbing as much money off people who work to actually give anything like useful information out. The most annoying thing is the way you can only have online contact with certain departments, depending on the nature of the query, anything else and you have to phone them up.

I left them some feedback, telling them that their website wasn't at all informative and that people use the internet to AVOID having to phone people up, so why are certain queries only answered over the phone?

Idiots.

For those who don't know, the tax code tells a person their tax allowance - that's the amount you're allowed to earn before you start handing over your cash to the nation's workshy. For most people, this is £4,895, hence the tax code "489L".


Sickened
This news report got me so very upset this afternoon. I was absolutely sickened by it.

I know it's probably wrong, but I certainly care more for animals than I do for people and I detest any form of animal cruelty.

When I win the lottery (and it's probably for the best if I don't), I will open an animal santuary - I will start it off with a couple of donkeys and work from there. I will also fund lawyers to go out to the hot places, where they will work to prosecute poachers who pray on endangered species. The most fun I will have, however, is the hiring of a crack squad of hit men who will hunt down these fuckers who do things like drown pregnant dogs and tie lighted fireworks to cats and they will inflict the most prolonged and agonising deaths imaginable on them.


DRINK!
I mentioned somewhere earlier that I've not had a drink for nearly six years. It's odd that something that was once the central part of my being now rarely enters my mind.

Perhaps giving things up like that is like losing a loved one: unbelievably painful at first, to the point that you're convinced that you'll never be able to continue, and then gradually, you realise that the pain isn't there one day. You feel guilty or confused about it for a while - you're supposed to be in mourning and so you regress a bit, but more and more, week by week, you get better until you reach a point where you hardly think about it at all.

So now I'm at the stage where it's all a bit weird. I may well be OK to have a drink, probably be fine, but why would I and what would the effect be? Would it make me complacent? Would I be OK to have a drink every now and again? Would I start to drink more regularly again, to the point where I got back in to my old bad habits?

So to avoid any problems, I have to avoid drinking for ever I think. I think, I don't know for sure. I do know that it's not worth the trouble and that I can get by without it, even thought it does make me a rather miserable and tetchy fucker at times.

God, my feet are bloody freezing!

Fruity

I like fruit. I'm a big fruit fan. This doesn't mean that I don't like puddings and chocolates too (more), but fruit is good.

There are loads of sweets ("candy" to you lot) out there that purportedly have fruit flavours. Excuse me, but I beg to differ. Have you ever eaten an orange-flavoured boiled sweet? Does it taste anything like an orange? No.

Could you imagine if you peeled a lovely juicy orange (washed your hands quickly to prevent the juice from causing the skin between your fingers to sting and burn) and tasted one of the segments to find that it had the flavour of a boiled sweet or wine gum? That'd be fucking horrible beyond belief. Eeeeeuuuuuwwwww. No, that would be plain WRONG.

Boiled sweets are pretty crap anyway. Whenever people go on holiday to Spain or Greece, they return to work with HUGE bags of fruit-flavoured boiled sweets to inflict extra punishment onto their colleagues who can't afford foreign holidays. I wish they'd just go to Tesco and get a bumper pack of Miniature Heros - something worth removing the wrapper for, i.e. Cadbury's chocolate-based sweets, none of your boiled sugar crap.


Bored
It's weird how I can discuss things in meetings; tell people about stuff; explain policies, procedures. But when I'm asked to do a small bit of work that means that I have to write a document about exactly the same things, I can't bring myself to do it. I find it so tedious that I have to really force myself to hit each individual key to get the letters down. I think in the back of my mind, I'm wondering what on earth people want to know about this stuff for, it's hardly of earth-shattering interest to anybody.

It must be part of some mechanism for population thought control; like torturous hypnosis where you're made to repeat the same thing over, and over, and over again. With so many people employed in the public sector, and with most of these people living in key political seats, it's hardly surprising that the Government sees the imposition of endless directives and tick-box exercises as an ideal method for brainwashing a huge section of electorate. Intelligent people become unable to think for themselves because, day after day, they are made to reiterate policies that rain down on them from Government departments. They are never able to ask "Why?", or feed back up to the top with their own ideas.

Patricia Hewitt is a highly intelligent woman, the cream of the crop. The Department of Health and NHS are safe in her capable hands. She's doing such a fantastic job.



The cheek on it!
Gosh, somebody who is attending a course here in the centre has just nipped in to our staff loo. Hope she's not passing a solid in there. Cheeky thing.


Do you think somebody should tell him?
Look at this dick:

This is a chap called Rio Ferdinand. He's an arrogant big-head, who thinks he can play football. For some reason, he's allowed to represent England on the international stage.

Now, look at this:

I rest my case.