Wind

There's something about wind farms - they're utterly captivating, dominating landscapes, seascapes, discussions, debates...

I sometimes find them beautiful, sometimes scary. Sometimes, my imagination gets the better of me and I visualise them uprooting from their concrete anchors and invading the suburbs. I'm less than convinced of their eco-friendly credentials: all that concrete; are they beautiful or a blot on the landscape? are they just folly?

Why is Wagner still in the X Factor?

Anyway (;@) here are some photos of wind farms.









Wedgied
I went on my third skiing lesson yesterday and found the whole experience terribly frustrating, to the point that I almost slid out half way through. I tried to do turning yesterday and just could not get it... at all... whatsoever. How difficult an it be? But it's totally unnatural; apparently you put your weight on the ski on the outside of the turn and lift off on the ski that's on the inside of the turn.

It's called a simple wedge turn. I've even looked at how it's supposed to be done on the internet. I'm going to digest everything that I've been told, everything that I've seen and take it all with me when I go to remedial spaz ski school.

I've never, EVER been comfortable with doing anything where I had to use my body - I'm so awkward; never been good at games, can't dance, can't stand on one leg, can barely ride a bike, can't climb trees, can't walk on ice. And I expect to be able to ski after three lessons.

I might get to the stage where I can ski, but whether I'll ever get to enjoy it will be very debatable.

Oh Ruthie, you fucking fruitcake
I told her she was despicable, disgusting, waste of space, piece of shit the other week. I wasn't wrong.

After not working for 15 years (because of "stress"), she's trying to get back into gainful employment - good on her - by volunteering, starting off with Childline (those poor kids, as if it's not bad enough that they have to phone Childline!). She's been sacked by Childline and is now trying her luck with the Samaritans. God help those poor, desperate bastards in Liverpool, that's all I can say.

Stay in lane

Knowing the general levels of intelligence in the UK population, it always amazes me how there aren't more fatalities on our roads.  The number of utter fuckwits who are allowed behind the wheel of a car is frightening.  The biggest, buzziest, most irritating bee in my bonnet is poor lane discipline, or total lack of it, judging by so many drivers on the roads around Greater Manchester.  Even when guided by lane markings, whole blocks of colour to indicate where they should point their cars and, needless to say, big, fuck-off "STAY IN LANE" signs painted all over the carriageway, the idiots still manage to wander out of their lane and into my path.

I want a rocket launcher.


How many sleeps?
It took me until 3pm to realise that today is Tuesday and not Wednesday, as I'd been telling myself all day.  How cruel our minds are at times.

I tend to spend Monday to Thursday watching the clock and counting down the minutes until Friday arrives.  I like my job, although getting out of bed in the dark mornings gets more difficult with every year, but I just can't wait for the weekends when I'm reunited with my other half.  Long distance relationships aren't brilliant, however, this particular one is pretty special and so worth the wait for us to find the opportunity to be together properly.  I just end up feeling a bit lost and out of sorts during the week when I'm alone, eating too much junk and effectively staring into space during the evenings until bedtime comes round.

Hence the blogging again I suppose. 

Yay, it's nearly bedtime.  Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday... that's three more sleeps.

Phantasmagorical

Fantastic imagery and incongruous juxtapositions.

Any word with juxtaposition as part of its definition is top notch in my book.

Of course, another sort of meaning of phantasmagorical is surreal, and I suppose you'd describe Salford City Council's raison d'etre as being to make all those who encounter them shake their heads in wonder while muttering, "phantastmagorical!", or "that's totally fucked up".

This not-so-great metropolis's latest totally and utterly unbelievable fucked up plan is to take the A6, a major three-lane road that runs into and out of Manchester City Centre, reduce the capacity to one lane plus a bus lane and, along with this, reduce the speed limit from 40mph to 20mph.  That's nice of them, vastly increasing journey times, pollution and tempers.

Why do they have to do this?  What good could possibly come of this?  Why can't they just do something to make peoples' lives a little bit easier instead of totally fucking miserable?

Because they're a bunch of left winged, money-wasting morons is what I'm guessing.

Useless, waste of space cunts.


The power of Google
Anyway (:@,), hopefully they'll Google themselves when they're not too busy sat around on their fat arses, thinking of other phantasmagorical schemes for making people who visit the city, or even worse live there, think they were on mind-bending drugs.

And back to Google - they've decided at last that the Taz and Pig hosted version of Sniffytastic wasn't a danger to peoples' PCs afterall.  Idiots.  Anyway, I've farted around enough now, so I'm sticking with Blogger.


Will I am
I need to write a will sometime quite soon.  How exciting is that?  Essentially, my other half would get the house (she'll be thrilled at being saddled with £95,000 debt) and everything in it (she'll be even more thrilled at getting my collection of "I'm sure this is useful for something" things and, of course, the little dog).

I'm tempted to insist on something wonderful in my will, since I'm paying for it and all, but I can't think of what.  Strange funeral requests are no good because the whole concept goes against my beliefs, although it would be grand if everybody arrived on a penny farthing at my behest.


Fanta-smagorical
My sister, Bomb, took part in the filming of a TV quiz show in September.  I had to go with her and I will also appear on the telly when the episode is screened.  How did I get dragged into an overnight stay in the grottiest hotel in Glasgow, losing my identity to become known as "Bomb's sister" and being filmed for national TV without any chance of a share in a potential cash prize of £100,000?  What's more, I didn't even get to meet Dale Winton!


Waxy

So here it goes

It's been such a while since I did the whole blog thing; I'm not sure I have it in me any more.  But I still experience things, I still have opinions (so many opinions) and, before I started trying to type this, I thought I could still write.

Life sometime throws things at you from left field that take you completely unawares.  When I was going through counselling a couple of years back, I was once presented with this scenario: "You're on a boat and the waters have been calm for days, since you started your trip.  You bob along and all is well, then a storm hits and the boat gets tossed around on the sea.  What do you do?"  Well, you have to change, you're no longer in your comfort zone and you have to adjust and do things you've never had to do before.  I'm still appallingly bad at this, but I have recently been witness to one of my friends encountering one utterly hideous thing after another: unimaginable heartbreak, confusion, loss, despair - his world collapsed in the space of a fortnight.  He could have fallen apart, he could have given in, but he didn't, and I have never felt so much pride and respect for one person as I do for him.  Martin, you are amazing.


Skiing?  You?
Yes, I'm learning to ski.  With a holiday booked in a bespoke ski chalet in France in January, I'm GOING to fucking ski!

It's hard to describe the whole process.  Anybody who has learned to drive will understand: the whole thing is totally alien to you; your ankles are locked into position in rigid boots, feet are strapped to 5 foot bits of fibreglass, and you're expected to shuffle about on snow - to enjoy sliding on it, when all your life you have navigated to the stuff with super-grip souls, terrified of slipping. 

So you learn how to side step up a snowy slope, to hold a position there - knees leaning up the slope, skis slightly on their edges.  Knees are NOT suppose to bend this way, the joints don't allow it, but you persevere so as not to start some hideous domino slide with your classmates. 

And then comes the standing at the top of a slope, trying to hold position without sliding down.  What the fuck?  No.  Again, this is just wrong - knees are not supposed to do this.  But you smile at the instructor and then try to "roll the knees out" to start moving, which you don't.  What do you mean, "just roll the knees out"?  I'm doing that, nothing's  ha........!!!!

And so the snowplough comes in really handy.

I'm at the stage where I can get up a slope, stand at the top, and get to the bottom without much incident.  I can't turn though.  No matter how hard I try, something stops the "feet, point in that direction!" signal transmitting through to the tips of the skis.

Like driving, I can see this being a long and arduous process.  But I'll get there in the end.


House
We're buying my house.  It's fantastic.  I'm so excited.  This time, it's going to be fantastic.


So, despite life throwing me that wicked curveball on the high seas a few years back, despite me thinking that the sun would never shine, that I'd never be happy again, all those people, but especially my dear Piggy, proved me so very wrong.

On the move... again

Recent circumstances mean that Sniffytastic will very possibly no longer be able to have its home here, so it’s on the move again, most probably to www.sniffytastic.wordpress.com, but maybe sniffytastic.blogspot.com, depending on the features available to me.

I may even update things more regularly, or may just leave things as they are as a kind of tribute to a dearly departed, very special and much loved friend.

My online exploits won’t  have the same bite knowing that he’s no longer there to issue a witty and derogatory response; I have lost my muse.  Another friend, his partner, has lost so much more and I wish I could do something to ease his heartache.  Maybe carrying on may help to ease his pain just a little bit.

John and Martin, I love you as my brothers and, without you, there’d be no me.

WTF?

For some reason, Firefox is blocking Sniffytastic. Cunts.

No explanation

I have absolutely no explanation for the two images below, other than I was high on the enthusiasm of youth, and I was a total nerdy geek.

Back in April 1989, I was coming towards the end of my first year at University, but I still enjoyed regular correspondence with an old friend from sixth form college where we'd spend much time laughing at a couple of my teachers (very good teachers, incidentally).  Anyway, for some reason Dr Gibb and Miss Exley drew our attention and this cartoon, written on the back of a letter nearly a year after being taught by them, was produced at a time when I should've been learning the Krebs cycle for the umpteenth time.  I have no idea what the content refers to, other than Dr Gibb's partner's car and my friend Peter's car.  Nice to see an early hatred of the Guardian building in me though.

Dicta Apr 1989 by cakesniffer

Tina Apr 1989 by cakesniffer

This little gem of a self portrait is quite good fun, it has my hair as it has been much of its poor life: mullet.  My hair has three main states:

1. Mullet


2. Out of control mop


3. Accident

It's currently a Number 2, having not encounter cutting implements since September 2009.  The little dog has had four haircuts since then.  He always gets better looked after than me.

Holiday!

We went on holiday the other week, to Northumberland.  It was lovely!  The little dog came and he had a fabulous time, enjoying the freedom of running around huge stretches of near-deserted beaches, biting waves because he didn't know what they were.  He's so crap at water, just doesn't do the things normal dogs do.  I had to coax him into a shallow stretch of water so we could go for a paddle at the shoreline, but he froze in fear when the water touched his tummy and had to be rescued.  Pathetic.  But quite sweet.  Once through that trauma, his bravado returned immediately and he was off hurtling around, harassing anything that he could get to without having to go through water more than 3 inches deep.

We did self catering, which is great because it gives you the freedom to do what you like and there are plenty of places that allow little bastards to stay too.  So, you don't have the worry of getting up for breakfast, people hearing you have sex (in the middle of nowhere... unless you're REALLY noisy), the little dog disturbing people in other hotel rooms, etcetterah, etcetterah.  And you can eat what you like too: cook for yourself a few nights, go out and sample the local restaurants a few others.  Only this is where we came across a major problem because there's nowhere to eat out in the whole county, nowhere open at least.  Such an unbelievably poor choice of restaurants in a county where you should be spoilt for choice.  We weren't.

"Would you like milk in your espresso?"

Anyway, I VOW that the next time, some numpty waiter/ress brings me an espresso in a mug and asks if I want milk in it, I will throw the offending, watery brownness over said numpty and drag them by whatever is easiest to get hold of over to the coffee machine and make them watch while I show them how to make an espresso, not an Americano, an esfuckingpresso!  And then I will set them on fire, which I am now an expert on.

Because being on holiday, and the paucity of restaurant choice, meant that I did BBQ!  Yes, I was allowed a box of matches and a couple of disposable barbecues and I set fire to things.  "I make fire.  Woman bath child!", which loosely interpreted means "Ali, I'll try to get this barbecue going, are you OK giving Rocky a shower?"

Of course, you had to burn food up there too because shopping in the supermarkets, nice and shiny as they are, was like trying to get supplies in post-communist Russia.  The nice big, shiny, new Sainsbury's in Alnwick (yes, where the castle is that they do the Hogwarts in, that doesn't allow dogs in, so we didn't visit) is shit.  It doesn't stock ANYTHING.  No fresh meat counter, no fish counter, only one aisle for fruit and veg, absolutely terrible shop.  And the checkout people are ignorant too.  Wendy (who I got) was really pleasant to the older couple in front of me, taking time to talk to them about their holiday there, and when she came to me, she threw my stuff at me (struggling to identify a lemon in the process) and barely made eye contact with me throughout the transaction.  Witch.

But don't let any of this, or gun-wielding maniacs on the run from the Police (we were in Rothbury the week before, don't you know), put you off Northumberland.  It's a beautiful part of the world and I'd highly recommend it.

And I'm sure there are some wonderful places to eat there too.  Just not the Olive Tree in Bamburgh.  Got that?  The Olive Tree in Bamburgh has the worst service I've EVER ENCOUNTERED in my entire life.  Shame really, since the food was pretty nice.  But bloody hell, here are a few tips:

1. Don't ignore people when they arrive - about four people walked past us when we arrived without even acknowledging our presence, and it wasn't busy


2. When asked "Do all these spotlights flicker, or is it just this area of the incredibly brightly-lit restaurant where diners are given a free migraine?", don't just shrug your shoulders


3. When asked to "please bring the olives with our drinks", do NOT bring drinks, starters, THEN olives.


4. Try putting some bottles of water in the chiller and if you don't have a chilled one, BRING SOME FUCKING ICE! Don't serve it at 24°C, for fuck's sake.


5. If a waitress asks "would you like coffee after your dessert?" and this is confirmed with a very affirmative "yes, AFTER dessert please", don't bring it BEFORE the dessert, then bring exactly the same cups of the worst excuse for espresso I've ever seen once the diner has had chance to finish their pudding.


6. Never, ever, EVER ask somebody if they want milk in an espresso, that would make it an Americano.  If you don't know your coffees, you shouldn't be anywhere near a coffee machine.


7. FOR FUCK'S SAKE!

But anyway, for a Fawlty Towers dining experience - go to the Olive Tree at the Lord Crewe Hotel, Bamburgh.