That dog has distemper!

A wonderfully lazy Saturday morning had seen Trump force me out of bed at 10am. I didn't want to get up, I was still tired, but she made me. After taking a couple of hours to come round, I realised that Rocky was restless, so I took him for a wander.

He's hopeless at walking on a lead; choosing to pull and half choke himself, resulting in him wheezing, grunting and ultimately throwing up (spray collar to come). Anyhoo, I didn't care as I was accompanied by music from my wonder-gadget, so I just plodded along, allowing him to sniff, leap at crows that was hundreds of metres away, wee, sniff, pull, poo - dog things.

As we pootled along, a little girl on a bike approached, as she neared, I saw that she was saying something to me. For fuck's sake, I've been walking this dog for months and no fucker has spoken a word and now that I choose to listen to some music on my walk, I am bothered by a child seeking my attention! I removed the earphones. She was pleasant enough and very polite. She asked if she could pet Rocky. Of course she could, but I warned that he might want to jump on her velour trousers (how very oo-la-la we are in Levenshulme!) because he gets excited with the attention but that he had muddy feet and so she should be careful. At this point, he vommed up a few swollen dog biscuits in front of her.

"He does that because he pulls on his lead", I told her.

She wasn't too keen to pet him after that.

We continued our journey and the wind picked up like a bugger. It sent him bonkers; he pulled, leaped, spun round in the air. I noticed another couple approaching, then as they passed, the man said something to me. I didn't understand because I had my earphones in so I removed them. He repeated what he'd said and I still didn't understand because he was Irish or something weird.

"Sorry?"

"How old is dat dog?"

"Eight months"

"Dat dog 'as disdemper! You can tell from da noise he's makin' from 's troat."

"Oh no, he's fine, he's just choking because he pulls on his lead too hard"

"Does 'e 'av all 'is jabz?" He gesticulated an injecting motion.

"Oh yes, he's fully vaccinated. He's fine"

We continued our journey.


Mr tambourine man
I think I'm going to develop a new skill. Nothing particularly useful or "transferable", but something fun. Something that will make me stand out at a party. I'm going to learn to play the tambourine and bongos. Perhaps I could be a mercenary for the Salvation Army.


Noise reducing
I bought some in-ear, noise-reducing earphones today. You know the sort that prevent others being annoyed by the tst-tst-tst noise that usually emanates from people with iPods? Anyway, they're really good, but they feel quite weird, a bit like they're going to come out through the back of my throat.

People might make the mistake of thinking I have distemper. Or just a temper.



Dinner for one
Apparently, it costs $14CDN to send a box of Kraft dinners from Canada to Barnsley. But did you know that you can get Canadian delicacies from the Canada Shop Online? Here, you can buy Kraft Dinner original or spirals for £1.95. I'd better stock up for when April gets here. I want to make Manchester a home from home for her. Things I need to arrange:

• Somebody to keep her warm at night
• Telephone local donkey sanctuary to see if they'll lend me one of their residents for a day or two
• Finest Canadian cuisine
• Kraft dinner
• Bicks pickles
• Lays crisps (chips, whatever the fuck they call 'em)
• Must remember to buy some Twiglets for her to try
• All washed down with some Clamato
  
• Sporting activity
• Waterskiing down the Ship Canal
• Hoodie clubbing in Gorton

Oh yes, we're going to have so much fun! I wonder how she'll cope with being taken out in the big city? Probably something like Crocodile Dundee with foul language.

Random

"Oh my God, this really random thing happened. There was this random guy who was really cute and we got together and it was so random!"

I once worked with somebody who spoke like that. It was almost ironic the way she randomly inserted the word "random" into her sentences.

In some respects, despite the general structure to our daily lives, many occurrences might be attributed to random chance, although not entirely. There are certain constraints that apply, depending on location, time of day, time of year, time of month.

So I guess things aren't so random afterall. Like having music on random play on your MP3 player or PC's media player. It's never random is it? With a thousand tracks on my new media player, and the player set to shuffle, how does it manage to keep playing the same song? Weird.

Oh, did I drop a hint? Yes, Father Christmas spoiled me rotten this year and I got so many wonderful presents from lots of lovely people. Ruined, that's me. Top gift, techno-wise, was a Creative Zen media player. Not an iPod, a Creative. And it's great. Does it play MP3s? Yes! Does it play videos? Yes! Does it play WMAs? Yes! Would an iPod? Er, nope. Has it got a radio? Yes. Does the iPod? Don't think so! Has it got a slot for an SD card? Yes. Does the iPod? Does it bollocks.

Creative wins hands down.


Christmas cheers
I had quite a few liqueur chocolates this Christmas. Being a non-drinker, these made me quite tipsy. Lovely.

Christmas was nice. I spent it between the Sniffy homestead and Trump's family home, it was lovely. Lovely. Lovely.

I love Christmas.

Now, how do I avoid New Year?


Happy holidays
Apparently, our MPs have said again that we in the UK should have an extra bank holiday, since our European neighbours all have more than us.

They say this every year in the middle of winter to make us feel a bit better about the shit weather and the dark. They also say it in the middle of a couple of bank holidays, so as it doesn't hit as hard as if it was mentioned sometime in October. Cunts.


Merry Christmas!

One more get up

Yep, just one more get up to go before I break up for Christmas, then I'm off until the 3rd of January.

Thank fuck!

Did my Christmas shopping in Manchester this evening; it was pleasantly quiet. I wandered around the shops looking for inspiration, but didn't find much. So it was something smelly from Boots for my brother, something smelly from Selfridge's for Bomb, a jumper type thing for my dad from Marks's, a toy for Little Con, something for the in-laws.

Hrrrm, that's a tricky one. I ended up in Lush and my olfactory senses were immediately assaulted with the overpowering odours of soap that smells of foodstuff... mainly because the soap is made of foodstuff. I couldn't distinguish one thing from another so I gave up on that one. Rubbish.

There's so much pressure, and it's all so easy, to spend loads of money on crap that you don't need. As I queued for the tills in the shops I visited, I looked at the items for sale, all especially packaged to be sold as Christmas presents. By Monday lunchtime, they'll be a third of the price. I'm tempted to nip into town on Monday lunchtime, but STOP! It's all tat! there's no need to even consider buying any of that stuff... apart from perhaps the puppy chaise longue I saw. Rocky would look the biz on one of those.

Trump bought herself a new games console. She's doing skateboarding now. I'm sure it's much easier to do the real thing, judging by the complexity of controls. The soundtrack to most of these games consists of hard rock music and shouting, or hip hop. It's no wonder kids are mental.

Homemade veg and pasta soup + puppy

I'm thinking of having a sweepstake on the outcome of providing leftover beany veg and pasta soup to a little doggy. How many hours before he shits himself on the new carpet? I'm going for five.

The things you do when you can't be arsed to empty the slops into the bin when you know the collections are going to be erratic next week.

There's a fucking huge bluebottle buzzing around the living room. It's been struggling to get about zero for the past ten days and there's a blue bottle in here. Outraged!


You scumbag, you maggot, you cheap lousy cunt!
Radio 1 here tried to censor one of the finest Christmas songs of the modern era today. They'd backed down by 5.30pm.

The Pogues and Kirsty McColl's Fairytale of New York, twenty years old; twenty years of a song that tells the story of a squabbling couple at Christmas; twenty years of people of my age thinking fondly of all the times they'd heard it, all those associations.

In all those twenty years, I had never thought the song was offensive, I'm sure nobody else had either. The most offensive thing about it is Shane McGowan's face.

Yes, faggot can be used in an offensive way, as can so many words, but the problem with political correctness is that it generally means there's a bunch of white, well-educated, middle class numpties scouring the globe for things that they think people who they've never met might or should find offensive. I find political correctness utterly offensive. How dare people be offended on others' behalf without even asking them.

Patronising CUNTS!

Tell you what, why not be grown ups and let people just get on with stuff and if somebody finds it offensive, then address why that is if and when it happens?

And the bells were ringing out for Winterval!


Rocky around the Christmas tree
Here's Rocky in his outfit for Christmas Day. Cool eh? One of my friends said he looks a little camp. I think he looks like he should be supping a martini: licked, not stirred.

He's so handsome!

The last resort

Well, faced with the alternative of reading The Observer magazine supplements and their incessant bombardment of ethical living, I thought that contributing to my blog would be the best option prior to turning in this Sunday evening.

FIVE MORE WORK GET UPS TO GO!

Thank fuck.

I have been very tired and a bit down in the dumps of late. The lack of summer and now the long darkness of winter have had an adverse effect on my mood. As such, I am lacking in motivation for many things.

Still, it's nearly Christmas. Yay, and all that.

Oh for the excitement of bygone years. Now I just look forward to Christmas for the time off work with Trump and my Mum's Christmas dinner. In the future, with any luck, we'll be looking forward to resurrecting the excitement.

I'm planning on having dinner parties if and when we get to buy our little house near the hills. But who would you invite? An occupational hazard of being queer and having queer friends is that they tend to be a bit liberal and, horror of horrors, vegetarian... arriving at the door with strict ethical principles instead of a bottle of plonk. You'd try to impress them with simple but tasty cooking and they'd insist on checking the source of all the components - "Is it organic and free trade?"

"Well, no, but it's cheap and it tastes nice, so eat it, el fucko!"

I don't think we'd ever get to the coffee, what with my insistence on using either Illy or Lavazza.

Tap water OK, or do United Utilities exploit their workforce too much?

I was out on my Christmas do with my colleagues on Friday night. It was excellent. I sat opposite my manager, the one who outed me a few years back. She was telling me what she'd bought for her partner's birthday presents and told me that she'd only given "ethical" gifts. As I shouted a disparaging "Oh, for fuck's sake!", she cut in and explained "No well, ethical means that I buy things that she wants and will enjoy."

Hang on a minute, so ethical presents are things that people actually want? Well, I've been trying to do that for years! But you don't want to go as far as getting a list from the recipient so they know what they're getting - you might as well just give them the cash.

For goodness sake.

Or you could always buy a cow for some village in the back of beyond where the locals end up sacrificing the poor thing and smearing themselves in the blood in the name of some backward religion.

But that's Barnsley for you I suppose.

I'm sorry, but if I'm not spending money on my loved ones, I'm spending the money on me... and gadgets, which I need far more than some heathen in a hot place needs fresh water!

But back to the Christmas do. I wasn't drinking, of course, but my colleagues were and my manager showed no inhibitions in front of her team. Good on her! We tried the normal pubs in Manchester, but they were packed, so we ended up making our way to Canal Street. She kept trying to make me dance, I was having none of it. I don't do dancing anymore. And it didn't seem appropriate somehow.

I really hate dancing now that I don't drink. It just seems like one of those activities that you should only engage in when you're totally off your tits. Same as job interviews I suppose; much easier to deal with (both during and afterwards) if you're shitfaced during the experience.


SAD
I'm sure I suffer from seasonal affective disorder. I really feel rubbish from the end of August to the beginning of April. For my birthday, I'm going to insist on a SAD lamp. They're a bit expensive, so I might have to slum it with a couple of torches strapped to my eyeballs.

And, along with the possibility of buying a bungalow, so begins the decline of wanting things from the Sunday newspaper supplements (not The Observer, obviously - I'd end up with a cow in Darfur).