Organised crime

Some might say that my taste in clothing borders on the criminal. Well, I've finally organised my wardrobe with the cheapo Ikea hangers.

I'm sure I'm not alone in my obsessive requirement for all garments to hang facing the same direction. In fact, I find it hard to believe that there's any other way to hang clothes. Could you imagine? Doesn't bear thinking about.


Car trouble
I'm crap at driving. I have no idea where the kerb is in relation to the nearside of my car. It's surprising that I've never twatted the wing mirror of a parked car while driving passed. I guess it's just trying to figure out where the wheels are in relation to the rest of the world that causes me a problem. I'm generally better at going backwards than forwards. It's no surprise then that something like this:

Would result in this:

and this:

Idiot.

It didn't half make an impressive noise when I hit it. BANG! Hisssssss..... Even more impressive was the fact that I did this while parking alongside the kerb outside' my girlfriend's parents' house and EVEN BETTER was the beligerent V-sign that I directed towards some abusive youths while said GF's dad was being really kind and changing my spare wheel. She saw me do it and scowled at me too.

It's a bit weird, having to behave yourself.

Why don't more junctions have filters for turning right? It'd save people racing through on red.


Soya
Why is there an anti-lactose movement that seems to be gathering pace at the moment? What is it with all these soya milk products all of a sudden?

This stuff claims to be a "dairy-free alternative to milk". Well so what? So is Pepsi and beer, for fuck's sake. It tastes like shite and leaves a residue on your teeth that makes them feel kind of itchy.

My sister claims that you "shouldn't take in too much lactose". I've no idea where she gets this from. It's probaby something that's being sent down from the Mysterious They, along with the idea that taking in extra gut bacteria from "live" yoghurt is an essential fro surviving the modern world.

"I'm lactose intolerant" is the cry from many a freak who champions this crap. Bollocks you are. You're just a fucking crank who's read something in some crackpot vegan magazine. They'll then go on to say they're cutting out carbs and other "yeastie" things because "Dr" Gillian McKeith says they're bad for you. Yeah, you're so concerned about your health, but you'll go out and get shitfaced 3 times a week, eat a load of processed crap and smoke 20 fags a day. It's that shit that's making you bloated, not milk you dickhead.


Swimming costumes
Whoever invented these things should be tried for crimes against humanity. I'm waitng for those Victorian-style ones that cover down to your elbows and knees to come back into fashion.

Do they have an active whaling programme in Canada?

On the wane?

I'm afraid not. I'll be back with a vengeance later on today. But in the meantime, I'm just posting a quickie because there appears to be a problem with stuff again.

Does anybody care? I don't.

More later....

Stuff on my cat

This deserves a mention: Stuff on my cat.

I could start a similar thing called "Stuff on my clothes", which would invariably be stuff that comes off cats. Hairy little fuckers.

Wrong way!

I took a minor detour and sent myself on an errand to Ikea on my journey between Bases 2b and 2a this morning. I have visited this store on a number of occasions in the 16 or so years since it opened. It's situated on a large retail park that is also home to a Marks and Spencer, Next, Boots, etc, so I visit the retail park itself fairly regularly even if I'm not inflicting myself with Scandanavian confusion; surrounding myself with stuff that is named in a similar fashion to the bits that kept falling off the Mir space station.

Anyway, I got lost. I got lost going to IKEA. Didn't have a fucking clue where I was and managed to divert myself so ended up at the wrong end of the park. Dick.

So, that got me annoyed. People who know me will testify that I get grumpy when I'm confused, I get even grumpier if I'm confused with myself. I went into the blue and yellow building, to the downstairs bit where, following a previous trip where I'd walked the entire first floor of the store before I found them on the ground floor, I knew picture frames and things were. I then realised that I'd need a trolly, but couldn't figure out how to get to them to get hold of one. More confusion, blood pressure rising.... but I eventually got one and picked up the frame.

Onwards! I was on an errand to find a throw (like for over a sofa that you don't like the colour of) and carried on around the ground floor, following the arrows on the floor, while looking out for what I was after. You see those arrows are great; they guide you around the store so you don't miss anything, but because everybody is going in the same direction, the flow is nice and steady. Nice and steady until you realise that you've got to the checkouts and haven't seen what you're after. You have to turn around and make your way back to the very beginning to take the travellator to the first floor. You have to do this while working against the flow of what seems to be the entire population of the North West and their children and prams.

At the top of the travellator, you and your trolley are thrown off pretty unceremoniously, yet some fucking smug retiree numpty is stood on the landing point, looking around obliviously while whistling and fiddling with something particularly fascinating in the pocket of their beige slacks (beige socks, beige slip-ons too, no doubt). Having regained composure after near death "by the power of grey-skull", you have a look to see where you're going. The floor plan isn't really that useful, but it seems that the best way round to where you might want to be is against the flow of the on-rushing Scouse-Manc hybrid mutants that frequent the store.

Coat hangers £1.24 for an 8 pack? BARGAIN! Get 4 of those.

You get to where you think you need to be, having negotiated a number of abandoned trolleys and abandoned screaming children. Welcome to bedding and textiles. It's really difficult to concentrate on the task in hand when you overhear the conversations of people who are admiring the most vile things with far too much enthusiasm and volume... in a Scouse accent and a speech impediment. But, you soldier on and eventually find what you need and make your escape, following the arrows and uttering loud noises of disapproval at anybody who dares to be going in the wrong direction.

Downstairs, and you pick up a second picture frame and some more hangers - just in case - before following yet more arrows on the convoluted journey to the tills.

Jesus, what an ordeal! I was absolutely exhausted and emotionally drained having spent 40minutes in the vicinity of some complete fucking idiots and their stupid, spazzy kids. I decided to "nip into" Marks's to pick up some bits from the food hall.

Marks and Spencer's food hall is brilliant, but the layout is impossible to understand. You don't just buy chicken goujons there, you buy mini-fillets from East Anglian corn-fed, organic, Christian, singing chickens. As such, you pay a fucking fortune for them. You pay a fortune for the sweet red, yellow, and orange peppers - ideal for salads, but not just salads; salads with the finest 20 year old balsamic vinegar and extra virgin olive oil, cold-pressed by virgins wearing virginal white dresses, straight from their confirmation. Anyway, for a load of old crap that's going to be fried to death in the presence of overpowering Mexican fajita spices, I'm not sure it's worth the extra cost, but I couldn't face Tesco or, even worse, Asda!

Talking of Tesco and Asda, this 24hr opening lark is getting a bit out of hand. More and more people are doing their shopping in the evenings and I can't say as I blame them. It's nice to go shopping when it's only grown ups there who get things in their trolleys without any fussing from their whinging parastic shitbag kids. Unfortunately, people with whinging parasitic shitbag kids have also started going shopping in the evenings. Can't they be banned? Can nobody impose a curfew on these annoying fuckers? I'm sure Tesco would do a roaring trade if it started a "No under14s after 8pm" rule. Don't people with kids ever think that normal people might want to be able to do stuff without being exposed to them and their noise, whining, oversized buggies and snot? Selfish cunts.

It's in the evenings that the supermarkets try to stock up too, so the aisles are jam packed with cages of produce as the harrassed and underpayed staff try to ensure the availability of all us selfish bastards who won't leave our shopping till the weekend.

When I was in my local Tesco the other night, I noticed a smallish woman, probably about my age. She had a trolley full to overflowing with shopping, which she was pulling along behind by its front edge. We made eye contact and she must've mistaken my look of contempt for one of compassion and she smiled at me as if to say "These things certainly aren't easy to manoeuvre!". No, but try pushing the fucking thing instead of towing it, you stupid FUCKTARD!


More anger!
Trump doesn't allow me to shout at other motorists, no matter how crap they are. For example, behind a car at a roundabout yesterday. Car sets off, I follow. Without applying its brakes, the car in front inexplicably reduces speed to 5mph as both of us are trying to avoid being hit by another oncoming car. I get shouted at for driving too close. This happens all the time; the car in front will set off from some light and start to turn a corner and will then just slow down without warning. I get shouted at for driving too close. And when I shout at the other motorists, I get told off again. I'm not rating my chances of getting a roof-top rocket launcher for my birthday. Motoring isn't what it used to be.

Before my Ikea ordeal, I'd filled up with petol. I was exiting the petrol station, turning left onto a one-way dual carriageway. I'd stopped to have a look for oncoming traffic and, as I was stopped, a boy of about 13 or 14 on a bike crossed my path from the left - as he did so, he was shouting at me and sticking the Vs up. I wound the window down and shouted back, told him to "come back here so I can rip your fucking head off, you little shit!". He rode off. I've still absolutely no idea what his problem was, other than he should've been terminated at 6 weeks' gestation. Little shit.

Should I go into teaching?

Violated and victorious

I'm ashamed to admit that I have been left feeling violated and dirty by one who I thought I could trust and who would never do anything to hurt me. The pain sits with me still now.

I made the mistake of arriving at Trump's as she was tucking into her tea (dinner to you lot) last night. I recoiled at the sight when I thought that somebody had vomited on her plate, but soon realised that she was eating cottage cheese on a baked potato.

Not wanting to get involved, and to save my stomach doing summersaults of nausea, I sat, eyes forward, while she continued eating.

Then it happened. I sensed her turn to me and, in her charming, appealing, irrestible voice, she said, "Try a bit of cottage cheese".

I ignored her.

She persisted: "Go on try some for me. Please"

"Errrm no, I really don't want to, honestly, I don't think I can"

I'm sure she could sense that I was going into a cold sweat at this point, bit she tried again. "How can you be so sure that you don't like it if you never try it?"

"I don't think I'll try bum sex either, but I don't want to try it to make sure!"

It wasn't working. At this point, I'd got up from the sofa and gone into the dining room. She followed me, threatening me with the vomit-laden fork. "Please try some. Pleeeeeeese".

I gave in.

I was horrified. The taste and texture of the stuff confirmed that I have been absolutely 100% correct in avoiding this shite all my life. It is fucking disgusting. Watery sour cream with bits of rubberised vomit in it. No thank you.

She seemed to enjoy it though and at least I beat her at Trivial Pursuit.


Pay day confusion
I have no idea how much I earn anymore. I few bits of back pay, along with a national restructuring exercise has left us all over the place. On a new pay scale, and up an increment - my first one since starting the job 5 years ago.

And still there's not enough in my take home pay to get my eyes lasered. I think this is definitely the way forward, but it's so expensive. So much so that I'm revisiting my options for buying new specs.


Parents on holiday
Do I need to add any more? They've gone away for a week, visiting the "home country". It's quite nice being given the run of the house. Even better since my sister is here recovering after surgery, so the hous is secure while I'm work and my tea is ready for me when I get in. What else was ready for me when I got in yesterday afternoon was a cat with a diarrhoea and sickness bug. Why do things always go wrong with the animals when the parents are out of the country?

Umbrellas

I hate umbrellas.

As much as I've tried to open myself up to the idea of these things being a good idea, I simply can't accept them into my life.

It's been raining a LOT over the past week. Here's what it's going to be like for the next week:

Still wet, yet I refuse to use a brolly:

• They're a right old pain carry aloft above your head
• You're left with only one free hand
  
• They don't protect you from sideways rain
• They are vulnerable to wind
• You have nowhere to put the things when you're nipping in and out of shops
• They take up too much space when lots of people are carrying them on a busy pavement
• Some bastards even poke your eyes out with the pokey end bits of them
• They're a right old pain to carry around "in case it rains"
• Entire corridors in the work place are often rendered umbrella assault courses as users dry theirs outside of their offices
• They're for tossers
  

Stupid things, that's what they are.

Not like Kagouls! Kagouls are ace. I managed to find myself a plain black one (from Millet's, thanks FT) before the journey up to the Lakes. Trump got one too, but we didn't go for matching; there are plenty in the Sisterhood who dress in matching clothes with matching hairdos (see any civil partnership ceremony photos) without us two joining the ranks.

I was very pleased with my kagoul. Look, here's me being pleased while wearing it:

So the Lakes, what were they like? Wet, but not so bad as we were trapped in the hotel; trapped with this bed head! Not bed head as in "bad hair brought about by sleeping", as in the head of the bed- just look at that chintztasticness!

Anyway, I now have to write this again because my PC went tits up while I was trying to compose the frigging post. Pile of shite.

So what was it like up there? The weather could've been better, but it wasn't raining all the time and we managed to go for a few wanders, starting off at Bowness on Windermere, which I think is the largest lake up there.

Bowness is a nice little town, but you can see that it could be in danger of becoming run down. This chap was clearly disgusted at the high levels of duck excrement that was all over the shore of the lake. It's hard to understand why the dirty little fuckers don't do their business while in the water, like I would.

A few miles up the road, you can grasp the full beauty of the area when you pull into a parking area to see this.

See, the sun did shine while we were there. It was nice to be able to park up and take in the calming scenery while enjoying an ice cream. Particularly since I'd just been run off the road by yet another shitforbrains coach driver who didn't know the width of their own vehicle and didn't have the sense to reverse 10 metres so I could get to a passing space and instead forced me to drive through the shrubbery in the verge. Idiot.

Further up the road, it becomes the Kirkstone Pass - I think this is the highest bit or something. See how it's so high it's in the clouds!

There's a pub at the summit called the Kirkstone Pass Inn. It's a very traditional place with roaring log fires in the winter - it also has the tiniest ladies' toilet on the planet.

Spring is a nice time to visit anywhere in England (apart from the weather being predictably be awful). Everything is very fresh and the spring flowers and blossoms can be spectacular. This photo doesn't do any justice to this bit of bluebell woodland that we came across, but it gives some of the idea of what it was like.

The Lake District prides itself on its unspoilt beauty, with lots of lovely quaint towns and villages dotted about it. Most of the towns are tourist traps that are rich in their variety of shops for the lovers of outdoor pursuits. Similar to our cities, the towns of the Lakes are becoming clones of each other. Ambleside is a pretty popular place, full of walkers, all in matching kagouls (it's just not the done thing!), carrying those walking pole things. But you can feel the charm there. There's something nice and English about it - expensive and wet.

At Ullswater, you can get yourself very dizzy by watching the swallows dunking into the water. These little buggers are impossible to photograph, but you have to try...

So yes, it was all very pretty and enjoyable. The bed in the hotel was a bit "soft" and it dipped in the middle. With unavoidable roll-together, Trump was a little annoyed at waking with my elbow in her face on Saturday morning. Being the loving type, she gently kissed it and pushed it away, uttering the words "there now my darling, you have plenty of room over there". Oh, no, it was more of an angry shove and a "get your elbow out of my face!". Ho hum.

British hotels are ace - all too similar to Fawlty Towers ("Flowery Twats") - and the reception guy did a bit of a double take when he saw the two of us were sharing a "that's a double room with bed and breakfast?" He didn't make much eye contact.


The number of the Beast

On returning to civilisation, we engaged in chimp activity and it was during this that THIS was discovered:

it might be easier to see it on this one....

When I questioned "Mother" she claimed that I'd always had this "birth mark". So why hadn't she told me? I still believe that I am adopted, but now I am sure that my natural parents aren't gypsies as I'd once thought. No, I am convinced that I was born to a whore of Satan who engaged in depraved sexual acts with a hound from the very depths of Hell!!!!!!

Actually, I think it's actually just a birth mark, but it's weird when you find something out about yourself for the first time.

For Mat

I could write an ode
- If I knew what one was -
To a guy named Mat
Alas, my world is bereft of Mats
Yet I am blessed by the presence of so-called secretaries
Who do not know how to format
So this is for them instead

You see, that's great poetry that is. Poetry is just sentences that have hard returns shoved in them in weird places. Change the format of a sentence and it becomes a poem.

So, what has me rattled? You'd think that people who have the job of doing stuff like word processing, secretaries and the like, you think that they'd know how to format a document properly. Now, I've never got myself a typing qualification, but I soon learned that there is something called "tabulation" that helps align rows of text into columns. Using tabs is fantastic and it's so much tidier than simply hitting the space key in the hope that things will work out.

This is the effect you get when you let some secretaries loose on a piece of work:

Perhaps I'm just cruel. Perhaps you shouldn't expect people to worry if their work looks shite when they're preoccupied with worrying whether the outside temperature will hit 15°C before hometime.



Who the hell are you?

E-mails are fantastic. Very quick, very convenient, you can attach all sorts of stuff to them - I love 'em! But it's always handy to know who you're dealing with and what capacity they're working in.

I got an e-mail yesterday from my ex-boss, I wanted his contact details so I could put him down as a referee for a job that I'm applying for. His e-mail signature is something like this:

John
AB&C Manager, WXYZ

Completely fucking meangingless.

Drives me mad.

Me? I give the grid reference to my desk. I know some people who put the bus numbers and other local transport links. They stop short of putting the car parking charges and "Sub of the day" on there though.



Dirty weekend
I'm looking forward to this weekend; going up to the Lake District with the lovely Trump. It's going to piss it down the entire time we're there.

You know, you can't buy a plain black kagoul anywhere!

Still, it'll be nice to spend time together. Nice for me at least, I'm not sure whether she'll be as thrilled having endured my shouting at other motorists for the two hour drive up there. I'll make sure she has her iPod and PSP charged up so she can be preoccupied with that instead.

I'll report back on Sunday.

And so it came to pass...

...That Sniffy finally got her arse into gear and wrote something to impart her infinite wisdom on the world.

As if.

Things are good. However, I am currently preoccupied with writing a job application. It's a pile of shite. I hate this whole having to sell yourself thing. I'm pretty self-deprecating in real life and it's just not in my nature to be able to highlight my achievements for the sake of making myself look good. Of course, it's probably just the case that I haven't got any achievements worth highlighting in the first place....

Five years in the same job is not good for morale. You lose your confidence and become negative about all aspects of your work. I just know that I'm not happy and I need to get out.

I think the whole idea of work is pretty shite. In evolutionary terms, it's just something to keep people occupied after they breed. Humans were probably better off being hunter-gatherers. Make it through childhood, have some offspring, die when hubby doesn't come home from a day's hunting after he's been eaten by a woolly mammoth - or something like that. What with becoming proper, thinking beings who live past our biological usefulness, we have to think of things to do to earn income. Of course, some people continue to rely on their biological usefulness and make a living out of breeding - very successfully too in the UK. The rest of us have to find jobs to do that pay us money in compensation for taking our time.

Does anybody really enjoy their job? If they did, they wouldn't want to be paid for it, would they?

I'm desperately trying to think of my next career move. Well, a career would be nice I suppose.

Bah! To it all.


Don't panic!
"THEY'RE TESTING THE FIRE ALARMS!" Posh Scouse has just informed us as the bells rang around us. Really? And here's me thinking I was suffering from tinitus. I hope there's a drought and hosepipe ban on Merseyside and Cheshire this year - I cannot WAIT for the whinging and tales of standpipe traumas from this lot.

Oh no, responsibility! Posh Scouse has gone to make a cup of tea and I'm alone. Thank goodness I know she's not far away in case any of their phones ring! I've noticed that everytime anybody leaves their desk here, they announce what they're up to: "Just popping down to the library"; "Just popping over to suchabody's office"; "Just going to the kitchen"; "Just going on my lunch"; "Just going to get my kalashnikov from my car so I can come back in and blow your fucking brains out!"



Ain't it a shame
Flyng saucers could land
But it wouldn't make much difference to my man
I could walk aboard and thank the Lord
And I'd leave this damn town in seconds flat
Check my bags and never come back
Oh, our love is
Like a fuse that's burned out....

Yes folks, alas it's true. The fairytale seems to be over for the most reviled money-grabbing, attention-seeker of the last decade. Ex-beatle Sir Paul McCartney and his gold-digging missus have split.

HA!

HA!

HA!

I bet Stella is pleased.

I don't know why, but i have an irrational (well, sometimes perfectly rational) hatred of certain "celebs". My top ten British(ish) ones are:

1. Sir Paul McCartney (and Heather)
2. Sir Cliff Richard
3. St Bono de Bonio
4. Stephen Fry
5. Chantelle and Preston (who the fuck?)
6. Billy Connolly
7. Sienna Miller (I've no idea who she or what she does, is she supposed to be an actress?)
8. "Tiger" Tim Henman
9. Sir Ellen MacArthur
   
10. Olive from On the Buses

I don't really dislike Olive from On the Buses, I was having trouble getting up to 10.

There are loads of people who are famous or "celebrities" just because they hang around with famous people. Heather Mills-McCartney lost her leg in a road accident, met Sir Paul, thought "Aye, aye, me luck's in here", got married, had baby (v clever for the D-I-V-O-R-C-E), annoyed the fuck out of everyone and now everybody is laughing because Macca is ditching the bitch!

I wonder if she'll be signing up for "I'm a celebrity: Get me out of here!". That'd be brilliant.


Hoo-har
The press has been whipping up a frenzy following the murder of an off-duty special constable in London last week. Special constables are volunteers who work with regular police officers for a few hours a week. The press are loving it because a) she was a woman and b) she was an asian lady. It was an horrific crime, but the headlines have escalated to include "Brave PC killed in frenzied knife attack", "Public urged to come forward in hunt for policewoman's killer", that sort of thing.

Now, I'm not wanting to be horrible about any of this, and I'm sure none of these headlines have anything to do with the woman's family, but she wasn't a policewoman, she was a hairdresser. She wasn't on duty when she was killed, it was the night time, she'd been for a meal with her hubby and it seems that she may have been killed with her own kitchen knife that she'd taken with her to investigate a disturbance outside her home.

I wonder what the headlines would be if I was murdered in a frenzied attack? I'm guessing something along the lines of "Thank fuck for that!".

Great expectations

I love gadgets and I'm particularly enamoured with cameras. I love 'em and I regularly check out the prices of digital cameras on the Amazon website. Having started off my love affair with a Canon point and shoot, it's always the Canon range that I look at first. Despite having a WONDERFUL camera at the moment, I'm sorely tempted to take a step up and go for a digital SLR, but I need to be calm and save my money for important things.

Anyway, I've just been looking at the compact cameras and there are some fantatstic models out there. Compacts are great for their point and shoot capabilities, some have some excellent features in their manual modes, and you can take some great photos with them, mess about with the settings and get a bit creative here and there - learn a bit about photography too, which is good (and the more you learn, the more you become tempted to get an SLR, which I AM NOT GOING TO DO!). But £479 for an EOS 350D is pretty good... NO! Not doing it. But compact cameras are fab, yes they are. As Bomb would say: "Point and shoot, that's all you need. Point, shoot, photo - see?".

You can read customer reviews of products on the Amazon site. I was checking out those for the Canon Powershot A620 - a really nice entry level compact digicam with lots of features, shooting modes and the like. I was a bit dismayed by this customer's review of the camera they bought:

A disadvantage of this camera ..., April 21, 2006

Reviewer: Bill Monir "Bill Monir" (UK) - See all my reviews

is that you can't make the aperture smaller than F8. I had no idea that this was the case before I bought it : no reviews I've seen mention this . It does bother me , particularly when using the longest focal length because I can't increase the depth of field to what I'd like it to be .
It hasn't been enough to make me return the camera though. I agree with people who have commented on the incredibly flimsy cover for the usb lead ; this can be overcome by using a card reader .
It's worth the money but it certainly isn't as good as an SLR

No, Bill Moaner, a compact digicam certainly won't be as good as an SLR, you fucking dick. Is it just me, or are some people completely fucking stupid? It's like buying a Toyota Corolla and telling somebody "It drives around OK and is fairly comfortable and reliable, but its top speed is only 105mph and and it only has 86bhp (I've no idea if either of these figures are remotely correct). It's certainly not an Audi RS4!".


I hate my job
I am feeling demotivated and demoralised. I think I need to do something different with my life. Has anybody got any ideas? I wonder if there's a position of English Ambassador to Scotland going?


Friday
Still, at least it's Friday and I get to go out at the weekend. I wasn't going to introduce this idea here, but privacy be blown, it is nearly the weekend afterall! I'm thinking of getting my nipple pierced - yes or no?

Actually, it's about time I did a Yes or No here. Not done one for a while.


Environmentally friendly Nissan
I finally got round to washing my car last night. I don't know why I bothered because it was covered in tree sap and cherry blossom within an hour of finishing, but it always seems to drive a lot better and I like it a lot more when it's clean. As I was cleaning out the door jamb, I noticed what I thought was a leaf stuck in the deepest recesses, so I pulled it out. To my horror, I realised that I had a fucking sycamore tree sprouting from my door hinge! A tree, growing in my bloody car! Whatever next? Somebody twatting the rear bumper in the car park, that's what! Tossers.

I also cleaned the inside of the windscreen, or at least I thought I did. It appears that what I actually did was smear butter all over the glass. I'm so crap at cleaning my car, but I have a fear of car washes (along with my fear of house alarms and microwaves) so I'm a bit stuck.


Good day: sunshine
I think today is the last day we'll be getting warmth and sunshine for a while. I'm going to take advantage of this and see what sights are on display at the local shops. People generally wear the kind of outfits that wear while washing my car, only they reveal a lot more flesh than could ever be regarded as being within the boundries of decency.

I shall do survey of scorpion shin tattoos.

Comfortable and annoyed

I am comfortable for many reasons at the moment:

• Underwear is good
• Clothes feel right (these ones do, others are far too tight)
• Bosom has finally stopped hurting and I can run again (hopefully my clothes won't be far too tight for much longer)
  
• New contact lenses
• Satisfying poo this morning
  
• Wonderful relationship
• Finances OK
• Spring finally here
  
• Temperature about 25°C in the office at the moment

Comfortable.

I'm fine, honestly, I'm really good. I might get a bit warm by this afternoon and it'll be dead hot when I first get into my car to go home, but it won't be too bad; it's only going to get to about 23°C in the shade today - just right I reckon.

Of course, Posh Scouse is kicking off already: "Please don't close your windows"; "Can we ignore the fire regulations and security risk and wedge the fire door open?"; "Have you got a spare fan, is your fan working OK? You need to get it checked!!!! ".... And now she's just gone round everybody on the entire floor, asking: "I'm getting water, can I get you some? We need to stay stocked up with fluids today!". It's not even going to get above 25 today and she's acting as if we're in the middle of the fucking Sahara!

Mental.

The NHS should use its menopausal administrative staff as a combined resource to power ceiling fans and heat hospitals. I'm sure you could construct a room with a water jacket and stick them in it. By giving them the trigger words: "Agenda for Change", "Pensions", "Heatwave", things will soon hot up and the water in the room's jacket starts to gets heated up and soon generates steam that drives a turbine that produces 'lectric. The byproduct is loads of hot water for the heating system and/or steam for the Chief Execs' saunas!

Move over Patricia Hewitt, the Right Honourable Sniffy is here to sort out the NHS for you.


Motorway madness
The new Transport Secretary, Douglas Alexander (do we suspect he's Scottish?) wants to introduce road charging schemes in certain English cities, Manchester being one of them. That's right, yet another Ock Nock Nook, wanting to impose his hare-brained schemes on the English. The idea is that all motorists get some sort of on board computer that monitors where we go and how congested the roads are at the time and we get charged according to miles driven and congestion levels at the time.

In many cases, congestion can be generated by a simple change in the traffic light sequences - as seen in London in the run up to the campaign to introduce congestion charging there. Congestion can also be introduced by changing road priorities and lane reduction (by introducing bus lanes where there are no buses). A frinstance is something that's just appeared on the motorway that I use to get to work here at Base 2a: the inside lane (lane 1 of 3) of one motorway now becomes the slip road to another, so essentially, if you want to join motorway 2, you have to move into the inside lane a mile before the junction, where you often get stuck behind slow moving traffic. This also means that slow-moving wagons wanting to continue on motorway 1 have to move to lane 2 and all the other traffic is forced into lane 3. What a load of utter bollocks.

They say that they need to reduce the congestion (which I suspect is artificially generated), but hey essentially just want another excuse to tax us all to death. Of course, we already pay this tax because fuel duty currently stands at about 80%. Plus we pay annual road tax at about £190 and tax on our car insurance policies. And despite all this, there is little improvement in our roads or public transport systems (apparently, I wouldn't know because I refuse to use it).

Worse still, this scheme will allow the government to track peoples' movements. Why don't they just barcode and tag us? Oh, they want to impose ID cards too. Brilliant.

They're just a bunch of paranoid, inept, thieving cunts whose only solution to everything is to ban it, tag it, or tax it.

Hate them.

Lundinium!

I had to go to London yesterday to attend an afternoon meeting at short notice. Travel was arranged through work and my train tickets were waiting for me when I arrived in the office in the morning. Imagine my delight when I saw this:

Yes, that's a FIRST class ticket to London. Me! In first class, away from the plebs. Oh yes, this is more like it, things are looking up. Until I got to my seat.... it faced backwards all the fucking journey. And then if that wasn't bad enough, I got fed all the way there: coffee; water; croissants; bacon toastie; more coffee; more croissants. By the time I reached Euston, I was covered in greasy crumbs and I felt a bit sick.

Still I suppose the first class ticket was a sort of sweetener to soften me up, since they all know that I hate: a) deputising for people in meetings; b) London; c) public transport - especially trains.

On reaching Euston, I had to negotiate the Underground. I was a bit scared of this because I didn't really know what I was doing and there never seems to be anybody to ask; everybody always seems in such a rush in railway stations. There are never any police men because they're generally practising shooting the faces off innocent immigrant workers. The rest of the workforce in the stations tend to be immigrants who possibly don't speak English too well and wouldn't have a hope of understanding a strong northern accent. Oh we provincial types must be such a hoot to watch for the natives!

Anyway, the underground is a doddle and I don't know what I was worried about. It's quite spooky the way the train's arrival is announced a few seconds beforehand by a blast of warm air up the tunnel. Woosh!

So I got to my meeting and didn't really say anything, but looked good in my suit. Got back to Euston and fished my going home ticket out and, to my horror, saw this:

Yes, that's a standard class ticket! That's right, they soft-soap you so you on the way down there so you don't kick off in the meeting or just fuck about doing shopping, but they know you'll be so desperate to get home that you'd accept a ticket in a livestock transporter just to get out of there. Cheap bastards. Saying that though, the going home ticket was well expensive compared to the going there ticket.

In all honesty, there's not much difference between the two and it's not really my idea of "first class" to find myself in an It's a knockout-type challenge as I try to drink coffee or eat pastries on a tilting train that's doing fuck knows how many miles an hour. Tilting trains eh? Whatever next?


People I saw
I was pleased to note a couple of people who were sat in the first class carriage with standard tickets.

And then the Inspector lady was nice to me as she tried four times to get me to show her the right ticket for my journey home. They all looked the same and it's a good job I hadn't slung the one she wanted because it was actually the underground ticket for getting to Euston from Victoria. Phew.

This chap had interesting eyebrows. I liked him.

There was a woman across the aisle from me on the way home. She appeared to be a member of the Sisterhood, but she wore her trousers with one of the legs rolled up. I found this very strange. She also used her Blackberry a lot and picked her nose and ate it. I think she worked for the TUC, so I wouldn't put it past/passed her.


Mobiles on trains
It was weird that I had no problem with mobile phone reception on the way down, but hardly had any reception on the way home. Do first class carriages have signal boosters?

One of my favourite games on public transport is "Bluetooth stalking". You just ask your mobile phone or other bluetooth device to search for other devices. I found three on my quick search yesterday. I quite like the names people give their devices too and was particularly fond of "Crumple".

I wrote this post ages ago, but my PC crashed before I had chance to click "post". The original was much better and included the story of the two people having sex near the toilet when I went for a wee. And pulling your trousers up on a tilting train is really difficult.

Wash that mouth out!

I admit it, I'm a bit of a potty mouth.

What started off as a bit of a joke has become a really bad habit and now I can't put a sentence together without including expletives. I really do need my mouth washing out with soap and water.

I was in Norfolkland over the weekend and I used my toothbrush that lives with my friends. People who know me will verify this; I have toothbrushes all over the country. It just saves me worrying about packing mine the night before I'm due to set off to visit my friends. Plus, there's nothing worse than transporting a soggy toothbrush - well there is, but you know what I mean.

While I'm not there, my toothbrush lives in a drawer in one of the spare bedrooms. This is the same drawer that Cath's mum stores her own special brand of 20p a bottle purple shower gel (supermarket own brand purple shower gel has got to be the foulest smelling shite on the planet - apart from shite). Cath's mum brings her own shower gel because the Calvin Klein stuff clearly wasn't good enough. Then again, she takes her own food too. ANYWAY. Imagine my delight to find late on Friday night that my toothbrush had been sat in a puddle of foul-smelling cheapo purple shower gel! No amount of rinsing could get rid of that stuff brushing my teeth brought back memories of a childhood incident when I mistakenly used my dad's shaving cream because it was in a tube that was the same shape as the toothpaste tube.

Yeeeeuch.

I've known my friends in Norfolk for a long time and I also know parents and things. They're just parents and families the same as anybody else's. Except Cath's mum is a bit odd at times. There was an incident on my birthday last year when we came to blows over a game of Trivial Pursuit that she'd insisted on us playing because she thought she could beat win against three people who have 7 degrees between them. HAH! Anyway, she got a cob on when I wouldn't allow her to sing the theme tune to Chariot's of Fire in lieu of answering the question "Vangelis won the oscar for the theme tune to which record-breaking oscar-winning film about running and that?" And what REALLY pissed me off was when I said "I don't know" when I didn't know the answer to a question, was the way in which she insisted on pressing me and trying to give me clues. "I DON'T FUCKING KNOW!!!!"

She also calls the baby "My lickle pwincess". Pwincess. Deary me.

Mental.


Grief
I can't believe I'm getting grief for not posting every day from some folk who don't even bother on a weekly basis! With all due respect, arse off. I am trying my best, but the problem is that I'm quite happy at the moment and so I'm tending to see the world in a new light. This is making it difficult to find annoying things to lay into here. Parents are always fair game, but there's only so far you go with them.

I tell you what is REALLY annoying though: traffic information on the car radio; I'm sure I've had a gripe about this before. Why is it that you get regular interruptions to the CD you're listening to with travel bulletins from cities up to 40 miles away when you're pootling about on clear roads in the evenings or weekends, but when you're stuck in real traffic trouble, there's no information to be found anywhere? You never EVER get warnings or information about trouble that affects your journey. Useless fucking waste of time.


Hot
It's going to be a scorcher today - up to 25°C they reckon. I can't wait to hear the fuss from Posh Scouse. Can't wait to see the get-up she arrives in. She's here: capped-sleeved white t-shirt; below the knee denim skirt; flip flops (bare feet). I hate that noise, that sort of slurp-slap of foot on plastic.


Brilliant!
Here at Base 2, we've now been given notices to put above electrical appliances such as toasters and microwaves. Risk assessments must also be conducted in all rooms where such appliances are situated. Is it just me, or does this seem like a total waste of somebody's time?

I can't believe that they've botched together this shite and couldn't even be bothered to check the spelling.

Health and safety and risk management people must surely live in a state of total paranoia and near panic in their homes. Do they conduct risk assessments for the layout of their rooms, for each task they perform, or do they use common sense like the rest of us?

Reflections

I decided to get a bit arty farty with my camera when I was down in Norfolk. I'm hoping this isn't the best I can do...

*

*Yes, if you look in the reflection in the window, you'll see a sat nav controller. Hrrrm, the best thing about it was the way it gave you the turning warning beep just as you passed the turning and the way the woman said "when it is safe to do so, do a u-turn". It also had us going round in circles at one point and took us the longest, most convoluted route to our destination, but apart from that, I can see the appeal.

The cherry blossoms are a delight at the moment, as are the magnolias. Such beatuiful flowers. The trees work for eleven months to produce their display of blooms and when they arrive, we marvel at the perfection of the flowers. Then the wind comes and blows the fuckers to kingdom come!

The baby is now nearly a year old and she is a demon crawler - frighteningly fast at pursuing feline playmates and people with cameras. She is also a very messy eater. I don't know how her parents cope and I think they should consider foster care at weekends, or at least mealtimes. Somebody could start a meals on wheels service for busy parents. I'd just cut out the middle man and smear chewed up bread, cheese, fruit and god knows what else all over the house before fucking off with a fat cheque in my hand. Dirty little buggers.

It was OK in Norfolk though and I managed not to get bird flu, although I do have a tickly cough, so there's time yet. One my last views on leaving my friends' was of a sparrowhawk devouring a pigeon (something with white/grey feathers). That scene of carnage will stick with me for some time. Those friggin' birds ARE dangerous. Still, that's one less thick fucker of a pigeon to worry about. Stupid bloody creatures. In fact, that particular house was witness to two horrific murders today as the entire house (except me) was woken in the early hours by the cat dragging a baby rabbit in through the cat flap and murdering it in the kitchen. Little bitch.


Receptions
The weekend was not conducive to text message exchanges or snatched conversations with distant loved ones. The mobile phone reception there is appalling and, despite loving my new phone, it is the worst one I've had for coping with a poor signal. I'm sure my friends do it on purpose: every single house they buy has the shittest mobile phone reception. Or perhaps I'm just with the shittest mobile phone network. Hrrrrm.


Redemptions
I am now being given strong hints to wrap this up by Bomb. She has somehow managed to tear her cornea and so cannot see very well and is unable to drive. I have agreed to give her a lift to her house. She's been sleeping in my bed. She hasn't made my bed to my standards. This really pisses me off and she knows it, but instead of saying "Oh, ever so sorry, I was in a rush before but I'll got and do it properly now", I just get a load of fucking abuse.