Executions And Expletives

It’s done then.
Saddam is dead and I have to admit to having a bad feeling about this.

Don’t get me wrong, the man was an absolute horror of a human being. He deserved to be tried for crimes against humanity and to be tried under Iraqi law.
Brutal laws that he played a part in formulating. Laws, that Amnesty and other humanitarian groups having been telling us for years, aren’t even on nodding terms with fairness and justice.
So fucking what?
Tell that to the thousands that he had executed. The 148 men and boys executed for no reason in Dujail. The 100 000 Kurds gassed to death. The unidentifiable remains of 400 000 people, found to date, in over 200 mass graves. 2 million since he came to power.
His trial was a 100 times fairer than theirs.
Those laws were perfectly fine when he was in power, why not now?
It has been argued that he should have been made to live and suffer. How do you do that? Prisoners have rights, lots and lots of rights. He wouldn’t have shut up and his supporters would have had a focus.
Schnee tells me that he said he ‘hated being incarcerated’. Maybe that was reverse psychology! Trying to save his worthless neck. He also wanted to be shot and not hanged like a criminal.

I admit I spent my long, sleepless night watching CNN waiting for footage of his execution.
I’m only human!
When I did see it I was surprised at the calm way he appeared to accept his fate. I know he has managed to convince himself that he is dying as a martyr and that in Islam martyrs go straight to paradise. Still, I have a bad feeling.

Now for a rant.
I hurt my back yesterday. Really bad. I have a dodgy back and I can usually self medicate back to health. Not this time, I have gone into a wicked spasm. Not the pleasant kind.
It got so bad today the emergency doctor was called. It took her 4 and a half hours to call back. Which irked me a bit and did nothing for my already foul mood. She asked all the wanky questions that doctors ask, “Does it hurt?”, “How did you do it?”, “What kind of pain is it?”
Well, the hurting sort of pain!
Not being into BDSM seriously limits my pain adjectives you fucking moron.
FUCK OFF AND GIVE ME DRUGS!!!
Then she asked if I could make it to the Drayton Surgery to which I answered,
“Lady, I can’t make it to the fucking toilet! I can‘t walk.”
“Ok, Ok”, she ponderously replied.
“How about St Mary’s walk in centre?”
I lost it a this point and screamed down the phone,
“Are you taking the fucking piss? A fucking WALK IN centre?”
She saw the error of her ways and agreed to fax my ‘script to the Pharmacy. A Housemate has been dispatched for the lovely Diazepam.
To top off a shitty day, my beloved Spurs lost.

Reparations

Another era has come to an end. Housemate Mikey left yesterday for his new life in Leeds. He is at the University to do his Msc in Geology with a view to doing his PhD.
Good luck, you have worked hard for this. Now, get out there and make us all proud!

Today Britain pays back the last instalment of the loan taken out during the War. £43 million to the Septics and £12 million to the Canadians.
At last!
Now perhaps the Yanks will stop going on about how they ‘helped us out’ and basically won the War.
Tossers.
Maybe we can start saying ‘No’ to them. Pull our troops out of ‘their’ war and sit back and watch The Fall Of The American Empire.
That will give me great pleasure.
As I have said before, most of them have absolutely no idea of how much they are hated throughout Europe as well as the Arab world.
A nation that managed to elect the village idiot to the Presidency and still expects to be taken seriously.
They worry about Iran having nuclear weapons, I worry about them having ANY kind of weapon with that prick in charge.

The ‘No Shit?’ award goes to Mr Brian Witcombe a consultant radiologist at The Gloucestershire Royal Hospital.
According to him, sword swallowers are prone to sore throats.
You think?!
I wonder how long it took for him to come up with that.
This was actually published in a medical journal. No doubt he got some sort of funding for that fucking gem.
The NHS is haemorrhaging cash left, right and centre and this genius spends time coming up with that.
Brilliant.

Apparently, Saddam is going to be executed tomorrow while other Muslims take part in the Hajj. I’m going to be keeping my fingers crossed, hoping that it all doesn’t kick off because if it does, we’re fucked my friends.

Hanging Out....

The last two days I have been catching up on my film watching.
I’ve watched The X-Men, The Da Vinci Code and Pierrepoint.
I was under whelmed by The X Men and mildly entertained by The Da Vinci Code.

The last was an absolute blinder and ironically appropriate with the situation with Saddam Hussain.
What a Gentleman and a gentle man Albert Pierrepoint seemed to be.
He approached his job with such humanity it choked me up at points to watch it.
When he was hanging the Nazi War criminals I wanted them to be begging for their lives, snotting and crying.
I suppose that was the ‘revenge’ element coming out in me.
But as he said, “They’ve paid their debt. Now they are innocent”.
When he had to hang his friend, I think it was one of the most touching scenes I have ever watched.

I’m sure they will have people queuing up to do Saddam. I just hope, for all our souls, they have someone like Albert Pierrepoint.
Someone who will approach it with dignity and see another human being stood before him, no matter how distasteful his crimes. Then afterwards, respectfully, deal with the body of a man who has paid his debt. Someone strong enough to carry the burden of what that job does to a spirit, on behalf of us all.

In 1974 he said,
“I have come to the conclusion that executions solve nothing, and are only an antiquated relic of a primitive desire for revenge; which takes the easy way and hands over the responsibility for revenge to other people…. The trouble with the death penalty has always been that nobody wanted it for everybody, but everybody differed about who should get off…”

This man executed over 600 people in his time. He should know. Wouldn’t hurt to listen.
I will be adding Albert Pierrepoint to my list of heroes and praying that his soul rests in peace.

As many of you are aware, it doesn’t take an awful lot to piss me right off.
Today, it is the calendar.
At the beginning of the year I sit down with the calendar and transfer all the important information from the old one. Birthdays, anniversaries, holidays etc. I cross the days off as we work our way through the year.
Now, one of the Housemates has decided that they are going to do it. This means I don’t get a chance to look at it and miss birthdays.
More to the point, it’s my fucking calendar! Get your own! Tosser.

Christmas Carnage

In the words of Ferdinand the Duck from ‘Babe’,

“Christmas? Christmas means dinner, dinner means death! Death means carnage; Christmas means carnage!”

I got six hours of sleep Christmas Eve, that’s almost a coma for me!
My Christmas day started with a cup of tea and the news that two entirely different legends have died.
Charlie ‘ello my darlin’s’ Drake and James Brown.
If you follow my Nan’s thinking, there will be another one. According to her, deaths always come in 3’s.
The first film of the day was The Chronicles of Narnia which has the absolutely cracking line,
‘We are not heroes. We’re from Finchley’!

I peeled sprouts, boring but very necessary. It is a law that sprouts are consumed on Christmas Day. I peeled potatoes and cooked the starter. Scallops with tangerines and it went down a treat! Which was handy, seeing I made it up as I went along. Main meal was stuffed leg of lamb.
Half way through the meal I started thinking about clothes.
What is the point of putting on your best clothes just to eat like a pig and get pissed?.
Surely, you want baggy comfy clothes for such an endeavour.
Anyway.
I drank Macon Village, Puilley Fuisse, Sancerre, Port and Brandy. Ate cheese with blue bits in it. Laughed to the point of tears, got choked up, Had weird and wonderful conversations, sang The Wild Rover at the top of my lungs and danced! Oh Yes! There was dancing.
Later on, there was vomiting. Not mine, thankfully!

So, to end with another ‘Babe’ quote,

“That’ll do pig, that’ll do.”

Christmas Eve

The usual Christmas bollocks is on the TV. Although , I have to admit to enjoying ’Turner and Hooch’ this afternoon. 100 Greatest Inspirational Movies is the one I’m screaming at as I write this.
Forrest Gump, The Wizard of Fucking Oz! The Sound of Music, inspirational? Fucks sake.
I Am agreeing with some though.

Guess Who’s Coming To Dinner.
Seabiscuit
Field Of Dreams
Spartacas
Shawshank Redemption
One Flew Over The Cuckoo’s Nest.

I lost interest very quickly. I’m sure there were many much better than that, but I could cope with it no longer.
It did make me think though, I’ve never been able to re-watch Schindler’s List. It’s one of the very few films that I have seen at the cinema.
I never go. I can’t sit still long enough or stop myself from shouting out.

Who has had the Christmas card with the ’Seasonal Newsletter’ in it? Fuck off… I couldn’t give a shit. Their lives always sounds so much more interesting than mine.
’We spent our holiday in Bali’, ‘Tarquin is going to Cambridge’, and ’We bought a castle’.
If they just mentioned ONE nice thing they had done for someone else, I’d read it.
That never happens.
It’s all about ‘Conspicuous Consumption’ and Wealth.
What really burns is that I’m related to or know people who think that’s important.
Even worse, they imagine that it’s important to me.

Just a question…. Who told you there was no Santa?

Looking Back

Things I have done, noticed, discovered, re-discovered or learned about myself during 2006.
This may look like a 'cop out' post but it took a lot of thinking about.

There is no easy way to carry a mattress.
My cats will puke anywhere.
Some of our neighbours are scummy.
Vancouver is 8 hours behind us.
Tomato plants are fucked by ‘blackspot‘. (Don’t compost them either)
One of the Housemates cooks a really shit Roast Dinner.
I don’t need dope everyday. I want it, but don’t need it!
Boston Legal is fucking genius.
Just because I keep my word, it doesn’t mean others do.
My hair really does need cutting every 5 weeks.
People don’t feel your hate. So why bother.
Wine makes me fat.
I need new socks.
I can draw quite well.
My house ‘phone rings a lot, 1 in 10 leave a message.
I started a blog.
I haven’t read enough this year.
I can’t cope with people with Alzheimer’s Disease.
Yale locks don’t last forever.
I quite like growing herbs in the garden. (Real herbs!)
£199 is apparently cheap for a sewing machine. (Mmmmm)
A Moscow Mule is Vodka and Ginger Beer.
I’m just shy of 4000 songs on my ipod.
I remember more French than I thought I did. (A worry!)
Not everyone can make a good cup of tea.
I learned the names of different kinds of Muslim veil.
People don’t expect soldiers to die during a war.
Most people are as fucked up as you first suspected.
I really dislike Jose Mourinho.
I’ve had my slippers 10 years.
I got a new bike.
I lost my glasses and need to replace them. (See Below)
Must remember not to smoke a joint before I go to the Optician.
Energy efficient light bulbs are expensive and take ages to get bright.
Nag Champa is still the best incense.
The Composter is working a treat.
I put some of my photos on flickr.
I should eat seafood more often.
Got hooked on ‘Lost’.
Learned how to use the Nespresso machine.
Picking up dog shit still makes me gag.
I don’t like chicken on the bone, it’s too labour intensive.
I love the programme, Jam and Jerusalem.
You can never have too many food storage containers.
I don’t like my mobile phone.
There is something very sexy about black stockings. *Blush*
I did the grocery shopping online.
I held a baby. (Jessica Shillingford)
I wouldn’t mind if someone punched Bruce Forsyth.
‘Chasing Cars’ by Snow Patrol is a brilliant song.
Aira Force is a fucking long walk for very little.
I ate Venison.
Shoes last me a long time.

I'm sure there is much that I have forgotten, but as we know, that is the nature of my existence.

Moving And Shaking (with anger)

Yesterday I helped Crisp-e and ‘Chelle move in to their new home. It took me 2 hours in front of a blazing fire to get warm again. It was as cold as the hair on a Polar Bear’s arse out there and really foggy too. The kind of fog that when you breathe out the vapour just hangs around your head.
Misty the Magical feline didn’t take to well to the move and spent the day under the kitchen cabinets.
I met ‘Chelle’s mum and got to spend the day trying not to swear!
I only slipped a few times and that was as I was taking chunks of flesh out of my knuckles, so I think those ‘Fucks!’ don‘t really count.
As moves go, it was a sweet as a nut. I got a gorgeous bottle of Chablis for my humping efforts, which went down a treat.

The shitty world has touched my mellow Wiltshire hideaway. Yesterday a woman was found stabbed to death in her home. From the sparse online news reports it appears that her husband did it. She leaves 3 primary school aged kids behind.
The ‘festive season’ seems to be when most of the domestic violence and murders happen.
My Dad beat ATM. She says he only did it once and she left him immediately. He broke her jaw, blackened both her eyes and ripped handfuls of her hair out. I don’t often have good things to say about ATM but I really admire her for leaving him. She was 18 and had two children under the age of three and in the early 70’s you were supposed to just get on with it. Luckily, her parents were prepared to have us all live with them.
My Dad’s Dad was a beater too. He abused my Gran for 50 years and even beat her as she lay dying in the hospice.
It took my Dad years to admit to me that he had done it but when he did, all he could go on about was how my Pampam turned up and battered him. Like he was the wronged party.

Again, it has gone dry. Not a bit of greenery to be had anywhere.
Most annoyingly, people whom I have gone out of my way to help in the past, are suddenly not answering texts or reply that they have only enough for themselves.
Well, fuck every single one of you. You will not even get the time of day from me now. If I can cut my family dead I’ll have no problem with any of you.
Except Looby, you are a goddess!

Revenge Is Sweet

Today I have been trying to list my top 5 Revenge films. Not as easy as I first thought.
The hideous hangover I had all day didn’t help the thinking process.
Pounding, pounding, pounding…. I wasn’t sick and I am so thankful for that small mercy.
Anyway, this is what I came up with and in no particular order:

The Count of Monte Cristo
Kill Bill (counting both films as a ‘whole’)
Leon (absolutely brilliant film)
Gladiator
Sleepers

That, my friends, was a monumental effort and I’m sure that there are loads I’ve overlooked. So have a go, see what you can come up with.

Right, now for a bit of a rant.
If you can’t pronounce ‘specifically’ or ‘statistically’, Then I suggest not fucking using them; and for fuck’s sake don’t use them when you are interviewed on TV. It makes you look like a complete prick in front of thousands of people.
More importantly, it annoys the arse off me.

Panto. I fucking HATE pantomimes. Even as a kid I hated them and would feign illness to get out of going. It just seemed so fake to me, even then.
Fat, ugly men dressed as ugly women. Shit jokes. Jokes so unbelievably terrible they make me want to punch people. The appalling celebrity Z listers, thigh slapping and ‘it’s behind you’. Grrrrr.
I’m getting wound up just thinking about it.
I felt much the same when I was forced to go and see The Pirates Of Penzance. Panto by another name and as equally mind numbingly boring.

An Absence

I don’t know whether it’s the time of year or what, but I think I am missing my sister.

We haven’t spoken for three years. She and her boyfriend stole £5000 from me. I paid him ‘up front’ to do some building work and he never completed it. Barely got started in fact. I stopped speaking to ATM at the same time because she seemed to have absolutely no problem with what they had done to me. Even though ATM’s own brother, who completed the work, told her I’d been ripped off.
My sister is 13 months younger than me and for a long time people mistook us for twins. In a way we were. We were so close.
We had the shared experience of a Step Father who abused us and a Mother who insisted she didn’t know. I took beatings for her, one that involved fractured ribs and a broken nose. I used to listen out for my Step Father going in to her room at night and stand at my door staring at him. That way he would leave her alone BUT would come in to me instead.
I did used to laugh with her though. Really, really laugh. We could crack each other up with a look, knowing that the other one would know exactly what was funny without a word being said.

But, I have been told, our relationship was odd.
ATM set up a kind of rivalry between us, whereby we would grass each other up and drop each other in the shit just to curry favour with her. Somehow trying to make her love or prefer you over the other one. I seemed to grow out of this but my sister never did.

When she was pregnant with her third child she became seriously ill with Crohns disease, which went undiagnosed for 2 years.
I used to go to her house everyday and look after her and the 2 kids. ATM would turn up and tell her to pull herself together, that she had two other children to look after and that her house was a shithole.
I cooked for her, cleaned for her, bought her shopping (my money), paid her mortgage (my money) and intimidated her doctor until she had the correct diagnosis.
She underwent three lots of surgery and at 24 was given a permanent colostomy.
That changed her. She became very bitter and angry. Her personality changed, she became selfish and aggressive.
To tell the truth, I didn’t like who she had become very much.

I’m still not sure if I miss her, but I feel the absence of her.

Cruel And Unusual

Today I have managed to wind myself up over something I don't really agree with. The death penalty.
The Independent newspaper reported the story of a convicted killer put to death earlier this week. Apparently the lethal injection missed his vein and it took 34 minutes for him to die.
So what?
A judge called off the execution of a rapist and murderer because of concerns that "the condemned inmate might suffer an excruciating death".
Again, so what?
Why should they have 'easy' deaths? Did the individuals these people raped and murdered drift off into an easy unconsciousness before dying?
I think not.

On a lighter note, I would like to revisit the issue of the Bishop of Southwick.
I am sure every single one of us has come up with an excuse for our hangover, Bad pint, dirty pipes, food poisoning etc.
Well, get this, the Bishop's spokespeople have come up with one for the reason he was pissed in the first place...
He had a mini stroke! Yeah, Right!
From now on I will not be announcing, "I'm going out on the piss". I will be saying, "Right, I'm off out for a mild brain accident, anyone coming?".

This cracked me up.
A woman called Louise Clark suffered a brain disorder that made her think she was French.
Worse than that, Parisian!
Now, this has got to be one of the quotes of the year.

"It might sound funny to others, but suddenly thinking you are French is terrifying."

Terrifying? Too right Louise, too right!

Holiday Optimism

Sundown today is the first day of Hannukah (Festival of Lights) which celebrates two events. The rededication of the Temple in Jerusalem and The Miracle of the Oil.
A small Jewish army beat the Greek Syrians who had banned Judaism and desecrated the Temple.
There was only enough oil to keep the eternal flame going for one day but it burned for eight. Long enough for more oil to be prepared. So there are eight days to the holiday.
This is when the Menorah is used. (The big candlestick.) A candle is lit each night. The right side is lit on the first night, the left on the second and so on.
Food at this time involves a lot of olive oil, stuff that is deep fried and all sorts of doughnuts!
Hannukah Gelt (money) was given out to kids but nowadays that has changed in to chocolate money and presents so that kids have a kind of ‘Christmas’ gift.
It’s a cool holiday!

While on the subject of cool.
Dr Katherine Zappone and Dr Ann Louise Gilligan were told by the Irish High Court that their marriage would not be recognised in Ireland. They married in Vancouver in 2003 and wanted it recognised for tax purposes and the like.
At the end of the case Dr Zappone thanked the judge and said,

“Ann Louise and I love each other. We have requested that the human right to marry is extended to us. We are the only kind of human beings in Ireland whose right to marry the person they choose to love is not acknowledged, not protected and not respected.
We believe that Ireland will be a land of justice and equality for all human beings… We believe that the Irish Constitution does protect and promote our rights - as it does all others.”

She didn’t freak out and start shouting and bawling. She just stated the facts of the case.
They are discriminated against.
What makes her cool, in my eyes, is her optimism that things WILL change. I pray for that kind of optimism.
Absolutely spot on. Good luck ladies.

Yesterday Crisp-e got stopped by one of the new Community Police Officers for, get this, speeding on his push bike!
He was on a main road and was screamed at to stop. He was then informed there is a law about riding dangerously in a built up area.
Fuck off!
They want to have a look at the bitter and twisted people in the Mong-Mobiles, who drive along the pavement forcing pedestrians into the road just because they have working legs or aren’t too fat to walk.
The ones who have fucking number plates on the back should have their disability benefit to stopped until they get a life.

The Loneliness Of A Long Distance Insomniac

Being an insomniac is a lonely existence. You only get to interact with people for a short space of time. Then they go to bed.
Rubbing your nose in their ability to sleep.
Some will even give you examples of epic slumbers they have had in the arms of Morpheus.
“Yes, the tree came straight through the window and I slept through it!”
Or they come out with the line that makes me want to break their nose,
“I NEVER have trouble sleeping. Head hits the pillow and I’m gone”
I am sure there is someone in the ‘great beyond’ telling someone else,
“Yeah, I was on the Titanic. Slept right fucking through it, me. Didn‘t even hear the band”
Well, fucking bully for you. Twat! How is that helping me?
This afternoon I was so tired my eye sockets ached and I felt sick.

The other day I made a comment about ‘Extreme Makeover’.
Well, I need to revisit it.
I was waiting for CSI and watched an episode. I want to know how many of the newly ‘made over’ have blown their partners out afterwards? Especially when they realise they can do so much better now.
Come on people lets not be shy about this.
The partners of these people are fucking monsters too. They need to do people as a couple otherwise there are going to be tears.
In this one a guy had lost 200lbs in a year. He had loads and loads of baggy skin just hanging around waiting for a burger and pizza relapse.
When they took him back to his loved ones we got a squint at the wife. She was fucking enormous. Another half inch in any direction and she would have been perfectly round. Verucca Salt style.
It was obvious to me that future fornication for these people was going to be a logistical nightmare. Not that I’m a great expert on the practicalities of Heterosexual intercourse!

HOW do you people DO it? There you go..
I’m sure that’s not the second or third question most of you are asked when you introduce your partner to people.
Turning you into an unwitting ambassador for your lifestyle choice.
Strangely, it’s usually some married, middle class, middle aged woman who asks. Especially when they’ve got a few drinks on them. Most will tell you of a ‘crush’ they had in school and that they have thought about ‘it’ a few times. Eeeesh!
Welcome to my world.

Fragmented

I’m feeling fractious.
Four hours sleep in the last 48. I’ve run out of things to read, I’ve cleaned the house to within an inch of it’s life and I’m bored with porn, such as it is.

Fucking adverts of children singing ’Christmassy’ tunes together are doing me in… Fuck off.. It’s unnatural. Stepford children.
Makes me shudder in fact.
Sounds like that don’t come out of normal children, they don’t look like that and they definitely don’t speak Latin!
Not in Pompey anyway.

I still bear the scars of Sister Ruth Mary beating Latin verb conjugation in to me and one wonderful memory of punching Sister Bernadette spark out! There ended my Catholic school days.
I was expelled and had to go to the local comprehensive.
I’m not saying all Nuns are wicked, spiteful bastards. I have met a few whom I consider truly holy and a Novice who was truly horny! Sister J, you know who you are and what you let me do to you.
My eternal thanks and prayers are yours! You set me on a path and I’ve never looked back, no closet, no apologies, no regrets.

Also, clips of the Christmas films have been advertised SO many times I don’t want to watch any of them now. Which is a real piss off as there were a couple I was looking forward to seeing.
Equally, there is some complete and utter shit on as well. Footloose? Fucking Footloose?! How is that a Christmas film?
What films would you like to see Christmas Day?
I think my morning film would be Yankee Doodle Dandy. Drinking Bucks Fizz, eating Bagels and Lox, watching Cagney dance, there is no better start to the day.
I’d probably go for something long for the afternoon, Once Upon A Time In America or The Godfather Trilogy.
For the evening I want something that will make me laugh ‘til I hurt.
Topped off by Withnail and I. Of course.

BBC News 24 informed me, sometime in the early hours, that obesity is now a bigger killer than cigarettes in Britain.
But does the government bring in a law banning the Clinically Obese from eating in public?
No.
Does it bring in a law banning them from anywhere that serves food?
No.
Is food advertising banned?
No.
Does it put a crippling tax on burgers? Make a Big Mac £6?
No.
Then let me smoke in a fucking pub then!
I’m not making anyone fat, in fact I’m doing the Salad Dodgers a favour, freely suppressing their gargantuan appetites with my second hand smoke.
I’m providing a service.

Bashing The Bishop

I am loving this. One day last week the Bishop of Southwick phoned the police and complained he had been mugged. It was reported on the news and seemed quite serious. I must admit I pissed myself laughing when the very serious radio 4 reporter said,
‘the Bishop’s head was so swollen he couldn’t wear his Mitre’. Classic!
It turns out he wasn’t mugged but absolutely pissed. A couple had found him in the back seat of their Mercedes flinging out all of their kid’s toys. When asked his name he said,
‘I’m the Bishop of Southwick. It’s what I do’.
All the stuff he thought had been stolen was left in the back of the car.

One of the papers tells us he had been to the Irish Embassy for some sort of party.
Ahhhh.. That explains it!
EVERYBODY knows if you spend more than an hour with the Irish you will be pissed or at least well on your way!
I think I know what happened.
Embassy staff saw the Dog Collar and just kept the booze coming.
In my experience, Catholic clergy can drink. And I mean DRINK.
One of the Housemates has an uncle who is a Priest, he can put away a bottle of Whiskey in a sitting and still say Mass.
Protestant clergy aren’t so hardy! What does the occasional sherry prepare them for? Nothing. Especially not the Irish!

Now everybody is calling for him to make a statement. What would absolutely make it for me, is if he stood up and said the words at least 90% of us have uttered,

“I went out with some Irish mates and they got me fucking wankered! I don’t know how I got home, I’ve left my fucking mobile somewhere, lost my glasses and I’m covered in bruises!. Excellent night!!”

Fortunately for us, what we did in that state comes back to us gradually over a few days. This poor bastard gets it splashed across all the headlines!
Where’s the crime? He got pissed. He wasn’t curb crawling (unless you count him falling over in the gutter) he wasn’t chasing choir boys or worrying sheep.
Think about the most embarrassing thing you have done whilst drunk….. Got it? Right, would you want it in the paper?

Give the guy a break.

Trouble, Bubble, Toil And Leak

The delightful Augusto Pinochet is dead. In the process, avoiding punishment for his human rights abuses. Who the fuck is going to go to his funeral and still hold their heads up?
Thatcher I suppose, but she’s a bit ‘Daggers’ now.
She claims he’s ok because Chile helped us out in The Falklands. Amazingly, during the late 70’s, Chile was on the brink of war with Argentina over the ownership of some Islands off the coast of South America. Funny coincidence that.
He also got rid of the minimum wage, Trade Union rights, disappeared/murdered the people who disagreed with him and privatised fucking everything. The real cheek is that he wants to be cremated so that his grave is not desecrated by ’people who always hated him’.
Does he mean the families of those people he murdered and have no known grave?.
What a guy! Fuck him, he’s no loss to humanity.
Fidel Castro isn’t looking long for this world either.

Last night the weather was brutal. Gale force winds and driving rain. If people had bins out they are now in a collective heap at the end of the road and beyond. The lids will never be found.
I came down this morning to discover we have a serious leak in the downstairs toilet. It is something to do with the window frame, so the man from Everest will get some shit. The cats didn’t seem to mind it at all, evidenced by their wet, muddy footprints all over the kitchen. Brilliant. We can all afford that just before Christmas. The likelihood that I will find a builder before the 25th is slim in the extreme. So it appears the jug to catch the drip will be there far into the New Year.

Another thing that pisses me off about this time of year is Cliff fucking Richard. ‘Christian Crooner’ the media calls him. I think he is evil. Totally fucking evil. As they say, the Devil’s greatest triumph is that he makes us believe he doesn’t exist. He does and his name is Cliff. Do not buy this man’s music and definitely don’t listen to any of his crap. He is evil.

This evening I have had Bubble and Squeak for dinner. Yummy. Another reminder of childhood. We always had it on Mondays and Boxing Day. It is such a comfort food and a good way to use up all the leftovers from the roast dinner. I also have a chicken carcass which will be transformed into Jewish Penicillin tomorrow, in anticipation of the nasty winter bugs that are about.

From Marple To The Ridiculous...

My most favourite thing about Sunday mornings is watching Miss Marple played by Joan Hickson. This morning it was ‘The Mirror Crack’d’. This was the last one in which Hickson played the part. She was 86 years old. The last line said by her is, “More tea, Vicar”.
Brilliant!
She is absolutely the definitive Jane Marple for me.
Margaret Rutherford played her with too much humour. Although, as Madame Arcarte she was perfect.
Angela Lansbury had a go and was totally crap. Helen Hayes was too cute and Geraldine McEwan just wasn’t her.
Another Agatha Christie character I love is Hercule Poirot but I adore Peter Ustinov’s portrayal him. My friend Ingrid, insists that David Suchet is the definitive Poirot and I’m inclined to agree. Christie herself didn’t think Ustinov was right for the part. I have a thing for logical minds!

(Schnee, engage sports filter.)
The other great thing about Sunday, is the afternoon football match. Although, today two of the clubs I hate the most were playing. Arsenal and Chelsea. (Disengage)
At this point, I have to admit to tucking in to one of the bottles I bought yesterday. There was never much hope for them anyway and I could be dead in the morning. I’d get really bitter and twisted if some other fucker were drinking my wine.
I must remember not to brush my teeth just before drinking wine. Not only does the wine taste shitty, the toothpaste tastes bad as well. No happy medium.

It’s like that, ‘eat parsley if you have garlic breath’ one. You end up with lots of green bits in your teeth. I’d definitely go with the garlic breath for a first impression over green teeth.
It might do it for Popeye, huge turn off for me.
I do like nice teeth though. I find them extremely sexy. My first ‘tooth’ based crush was on the dark one from Abba. Mmmm… Yummy.. Shame her Dad was a Nazi officer. I didn’t know that when I was eight, so I think she still counts.

Yeah! Zara Phillips is BBC Sports Personality Of The Year! Go Girl!

Booze And Boos

This morning I was rudely awoken by the postman, who for some reason couldn’t be arsed to use the letterbox.
I staggered out of bed and dragged on some trousers and patted my big hair down. I opened the door and stared at him with the one eye I could open. He looked at me as if I had just got HIM out of bed and more or less threw my post at me. All done without a word or a smile.
Fuck you too.

This is the time of year when everybody who delivers to, or takes stuff away from your house starts ringing the doorbell to wish you a ‘Merry Christmas‘.
This is bollocks. They want money.
And if you don’t pay up?
For the next year your dustmen will leave a fair proportion of your rubbish scattered around the forecourt. Your Green Bin will be 3 millimetres too far from the gate, will have a huge red warning sticker attached and won’t get emptied for a fortnight.
Your daily newspaper will look like it’s been through a shredder rather than just the letterbox. Or you will get the top paper of the bundle left in the rain. If it turns up at all.
Got to be worth a fiver for an easy life. But I fucking resent having to do it.

At last! Tony Blair has said what everybody (including those who believe they are a liberal) has been thinking for a long time.
“Conform, or don’t come”.
Fair enough. What’s wrong with saying that?
I can’t go to Saudi and walk along the street swigging from a bottle of Vodka.
I can’t walk through certain areas of Jerusalem in shorts and a tee shirt. There are buildings I can’t go in at all, no matter how I am dressed, because I am a woman.
I can’t trundle around the Vatican in a crop top and cut-offs. Or snog a woman beneath the ceiling of The Sistine Chapel.
If I want to go to these places I have to conform or fuck off.
What’s the problem?

Sassy and I have been out and about with our Threshers vouchers. I got six really nice bottles of white wine for £25. Pouilly Fume, Sancerre, Chablis, Macon etc. Not bad! The trick will be staying away from them until Christmas. In all honesty, I can’t see it happening.
I have some ‘deferred gratification’ issues with certain things.

To the twat in the BMW in St Ronan’s Road. Don’t fucking bib your horn at me, when you are performing an illegal manoeuvre, I WILL ignore you. Tosser.
The same to anyone who tries to get my attention by whistling.. I am not your fucking dog!.

Freaks And Freebies

For some reason David Gest is on every conceivable TV show and he didn‘t even win ‘I‘m Celeb….’. He is quite possibly the strangest looking man I have ever seen.
Is that the result of plastic surgery? If so, what the fuck did he look like before?!!
Most people undertake plastic surgery with the hope that SOMETHING will look better. I’ve seen ‘Extreme Makeover’, nobody has ever gone on and said, ‘make me look like a balding, half-choked Pug dog, please’.

ATM always wanted to ‘have her eyes done’, whatever the hell that meant. There is no operation that could have made them less evil. That was what she planned to do with her inheritance once she had paid off debt. As far as I know, she got a new bathroom and my Step-Dad got his eyes lasered.
I’d probably have my nose done. Nothing changed, just put back. It’s been broken three times and looks a fucking mess. I can’t remember what it used to look like anymore and I’m always too stoned to recognise myself in photos.

One photo from my childhood really sticks in my mind.
It’s me, stood in the garden. I’m wearing a pair of blue/green cord trousers and a tee shirt. My fists are jammed into my pockets and I don’t look at all happy. In my hair are fucking ribbons! Ribbons, and my hair is in bunches. It’s obvious I’m furious.
I can’t remember the photo being taken, but when I look at the picture I remember the ‘feeling’, exactly.
I hated it. Hated the hair. Hated being made to pose for the photo. Hated it! (Thank G-d for nits!)
The photo was dated, I was three at the time.

Tomorrow, I’m off to spend my 40% off voucher from Threshers. The one that was meant for a select few, and everybody in the country has got! Bless Thresher, they are going to honour them.
Can’t help but think it is all a scam to stop us from going to France and stocking up. 40% off just gives us the booze at Euro prices. This way I only have to bimble up to Albert Road and not have to remember ‘please may I…’ and ‘Thank You’ in another language.

The Elements

Today a tornado tore through Kensal Rise in London and I pray to all that’s Holy, that the houses ripped apart were those with all the fucking Christmas lights and blow up Santas!
The weather is foul. It’s blowing a hoolie and pissing down with rain. Roads in Pompey have been flooded and what gets me, is that people are surprised. Why?
The drains are full of leaves and fucking rubbish, water doesn’t dissolve these. The ground has been as dry as a bone for months, remember the drought? Water doesn’t soak in as well.

Alexander Litvenenko and Polonium 210. I know this sounds cruel and heartless, but I really couldn’t give a flying fuck! Had anyone heard of him before all this?
I hadn’t.
If he was one of Mr Putin’s strongest critics shouldn’t we have heard of him? Ex KGB agent granted British citizenship, how did the media miss that one I wonder?
Britney flashing her gash, that we get for days on end.
Potentially dangerous spies and radioactive elements, not a fucking whiff.
Three aircraft were found to have traces, thank G-d for all that increased security on flights, eh?. No fucking eyebrow tweezers or face cream but radioactive poison, no problem. What Bollocks!
Polonium was the first element discovered because of it’s radioactivity by Marie Curie. We know what a picture of health she ended up.
Livenenko was buried in a lead lined coffin because this shit has a half life of 103 years. I thought we were in the business of shipping OUT radioactive waste.

Barry Manilow’s ‘new’ (60’s covers) album is being advertised to death at the moment. Please check out the picture and tell me if he looks like Julian Clary. Something really weird has happened to his face. It looks wrong somehow, too symmetrical and too smooth. Not that he was overly blessed with fantastic looks to begin with.
Pete Docherty, another ugly bastard, didn’t go to prison YET AGAIN!
But the pensioner who was growing Cannabis for herself and a group of other arthritic old dears gets 6 months. There is also an on-going case against a husband and wife team. They were growing it, putting it in chocolate and flogging it to MS sufferers. They claim they made no profit which I find hard to believe, but at least they were trying to help people.
Docherty deserves prison. He is scum.

Love And Hate

Today is my baby brother’s birthday. He is 19.
19 years ago I limped to St Mary’s hospital for my first look at him.
I limped because a few days previously I had been in a motorbike crash and had 40 stitches in my knee.
He was very ruddy, his eyes were swollen shut and he had loads and loads of jet black hair. I loved him instantly. I’d always wanted a brother, someone to play football with, build tree houses and cheer on my beloved Spurs.
He was 17 years too late but I had a brother!
As he grew up I realised he wasn’t going to be that sort of brother. I have to admit I thought he was a spoiled little brat who just sat indoors, playing computer games and getting his own way all the time.
He has grown up in to one of my favourite people. He is intelligent, honourable, quick witted and we share a sense of humour.
He loves music and plays the guitar brilliantly.
I introduced him to ‘Withnail and I‘, which he shared with his mates. I bought him ‘The Diceman’ to read and like me, he loved it. He introduced me to Rodrigo Y Gabriella and Nine Inch Nails.
He is 6’ 4”, has hair down to his shoulders and goatee beard. I call him ‘my big little brother’ and I adore him.

I am SO fed up with Christmas adverts, Christmas music and TV programmes telling me how to cook a fucking turkey. They are boring the shit out of me and winding me up at the same time.
Also, this seems to be the time of year they advertise all the cough ’n’ cold remedies, all the charities and CD‘s compilations from dead people. Fucking Lockets, battered children, starving animals and Johnny Cash. Piss off.
You can piss off with decorations too. Houses with fucking lights that can be seen from space? I pray for electrical fires!. Tossers. Carbon Footprint suspended for the Festive fucking Season is it?
I fucking HATE Christmas, just in case you were in any doubt.
Give it three weeks and all the ad’s will be Summer holidays galore, tampax and fucking Easter eggs.

Housemates… What is the point of leaving 14 fucking Pasta shells in the packet? It is NOT a single portion for fuck’s sake, it’s pointless! So is the half a teaspoon of milk left in the bottom of the carton. Especially if there is another 4 pints in the fridge.
Drink it, pour it away. Nothing can be done with it.

.... Sting Like A Bee

Today, I rose at 5am and by 6am was in a car, with strangers, heading to Lambeth. They turned out to be really lovely guys and were very supportive of me during the day.

I have done circuit training, pad work and a lot of boxing, with gloves that smelled like the last person had had them on their feet. Not an entirely pleasant experience. I have sparred with champions and potential champions. I have perspired like a pig and at one point was close to vomiting.

My body is now a study in pain. My shoulders and arms are sore, my knees are on fire, my lower back throbs and even my hair aches.
But, in a weird way it feels great, like I have achieved something today.
And I have.

I am now a Qualified ABA Boxing Tutor.
I’m celebrating with a Radox bath, 600mg Ibruprofen, 30mg Dihydrocodeine and a glass of wine.
That should sort me out.

Sorry it’s short today, but I’m sure you will all understand.
Thank you, one and all, for your words of encouragement.

Float Like A Butterfly...

Tomorrow I’m off to London on a course to become an ABA Boxing Tutor.
I’m looking forward to the course but am really nervous about being the only female there. My friend Q, who is the Combined Services boxing coach and National coach for Dominica, has arranged it all for me. I will be travelling with a couple of his Navy guys, whom I don’t know. So all in all, I’m shitting a brick!
I’m not good in new situations or with new people but I don’t want to let Q down.
At the end of the course I will be able to go into Junior schools around the city and deliver the programme in after school clubs.
It’ll be fun to be back working with kids but I’m not too sure how I am with the younger ones. I will have to wait and see with that one.


Housemates.. I did say a while back that I would address the issue of the toilet.
Well, here we go.
Upon lifting the lid, I have been surprised by a ‘foreign’ jobbie twice this week.
If you manage to ‘lay a floater’, you stay with it until the cistern re-fills and you flush again. This process may need to be repeated. Several times.
If this doesn’t work. You are going to have to fill a bowl with water, flush and pour at the same time. The extra volume and weight of water may just help.
Failing that, you are going to have to break it’s back.
I don’t care how you achieve this, a stick or a hand, just get rid of it.
The same goes for those ‘melted’ ones at the bottom of the pan.
For those of you achieving ‘splash back’, guess where it goes?
YES! The underside of the seat!
There are cleaning products for the toilet. They are cunningly situated right… fucking… next… to… it! As is the bog brush.

I also see, we still haven’t learnt that a tea towel over a chicken carcass, doesn’t render it invisible to a cat. Ho Hum..

Six Degrees....

My cousin, Markus, popped in this morning. I have only really known him for 18 months or so. His Dad (my Uncle) wasn’t allowed to be in his life when he was growing up.
We have so much in common. Our reactions to things, sense of humour, our strong depressive streak, our bouts of introspection.
We sit, we drink tea and we talk.
He tells me about his difficulties in not having his Dad around while growing up (Which I can relate to) and I tell him about his Dad. When he reveals something about himself he doesn’t understand I chuckle and say,
“You get that from us!”
He smiles and says,
“Really?!”
We can do this for hours. When he leaves he says,
“Thanks for making me belong”.

Today we spoke about names.
Because of how his maternal Grandparents felt towards his Father, they changed his name to James. He explained that by doing that the made him into a non-person. If he was praised it didn’t matter because it wasn’t his name, wasn’t him. The same when he was bollocked.
This made me think about how important a ‘name’ is. To be called something. To belong. ATM changed my surname and I really didn‘t like it, but that just removes you from the ‘group’ of people to which you belong. Taking away your first name seems really brutal to me. Your name must be one of the first sounds you learn to recognise. How you place and define yourself in the world.

On a lighter note….

We are going to play a little game I have named, ‘Six Degrees Of Separatist‘.
Click on the ‘Next blog’ button at the top of the page and help me with an experiment.
You have got to click on the next six blogs then I want you to let me know how many clicks it took before you hit a Christian/Fundy/Happy Clappy site. In fact, any kind of ‘religious site‘. Or a picture of a car.
I bet it doesn’t take long.
Fly my pretties! Fly!

Why in films or on TV shows, is an axe always needed to open malfunctioning lift doors?. I have seen this in 3 different shows today and it’s putting me right off using them.. Lifts that is, NO problem with an axe!

Munching and Gagging

I am considering starting up a business.
Dial-O-Munch.

Had a surprise delivery of greenery last night. It has been so long I was totally wrecked. The guy who brought it round isn’t my usual supplier. He had a guitar shaped bag with him and said,
‘Do you want to look at my bass?’.
I immediately presumed this was some ‘hip’ euphemism for something and exclaimed,
“Certainly NOT!“. He looked totally confused and tentatively pointed to the guitar shaped bag.
He has long blond, curly hair which he held out from the side of his head and told me how his brother was going to get him some ‘straightners‘. With the very next breath he said,
“People think I’m Camp”. Total ‘Stream of Consciousness’ shit!
I replied,
“Really?” I had my straightest face on.
Irony and sarcasm flew over his head, without ruffling his soon to be straight hair.

By 1.11am, I’d run out of fags and had a yen for a box of chocolate fingers. That’s when Dial-O-Munch came to me. How nice would it be, to be able to phone or text a number and those items would be delivered to your door? Pints of milk, some rizlas and a toilet roll would be handy too.
My Grandfather used to use the local taxi service to bring him bottles of Scotch. My Aunt had him on rations!
When you went to visit him, he gave you bags of empties to take away with you. So she wouldn’t find them.

Housemates.. Whoever sneezed in the shower and ‘lost’ the result. (It better be a fucking ’sneeze’ or there WILL be violence!)
Never fear, I fucking found it, you dirty bastard.
Getting rid of it made me retch.
This obviously unbalanced me slightly and I had that other ablutions worry I hate. That is the momentary panic halfway through cleaning my teeth, when I think,
“This ISN’T my toothbrush!”
So, my gag reflex has been totally overworked. Thankfully it WAS my toothbrush.
Also, did everyone have toast this morning? Or have Hansel and fucking Gretel wandered through the kitchen during the night?

Lazy Sunday

Yesterday, was a day of total and utter excess and I’m feeling a little delicate. Started drinking at 11.30am and didn’t stop until 3am. I’m feeling like someone has kicked seven shades of shit out of me but no headache. I am grateful for that small mercy.

It didn’t start too brilliantly. The gene that people have which allows them to wrap up presents is totally missing from my double helix. Even stuff that is square always manages to look like a blind person with Parkinson’s has been at it with garden shears. So, a job in Threshers or the Chippie is out for me. Then there is sellotape. An item you can only find when you are NOT looking for it. If Sassy hadn’t saved me, the presents would have been secured with gaffer tape and blue tack. Not attractive but practical!

The little ‘Princess’ opened her present, looked at the first one and said, ‘Don’t like that’. The second one, ‘Don’t like that’, but the box of make up was ‘Ok’. While I’m thinking about it, I don’t recall her saying ‘Thank You’ at any point. Maybe it’s just me but I would have been battered sideways for that kind of behaviour.
There were also moments of pure comedy! Ricky and Colin arrived and Ricky proceeded to complain about the flood of refugees that seem to have washed up in Portsmouth. ‘This fucking government are ruining this country, and don’t get me started on the fucking Muslims’.. Without realising it, he was sounding like a party political broadcast of behalf of the BNP.
Made all the funnier as Ricky is an British born Indian Sikh!

Schnee and the ’Girls’ came round and we laughed and drank, drank laughed. I couldn’t for the life of me tell you what we talked about but I’m convinced the world is a better place today because of it. Tom Cruise was the victim of most of our venom, with only Crisp-e to fight his corner.

Sunday afternoons are so boring. For some reason it is still in my head that it’s homework day. The day when the adults slept all afternoon and you just had to sit there waiting for something to happen. TV only had 3 channels and everything that was on was shit, (Songs Of Praise, Eeeesh!) and you weren’t allowed out on your own.
I am now allowed out on my own, but it’s probably best if I don’t.

Murder in WHSmith

Housemates… Has one of you got a serious Blue Peter habit?
Today, I have thrown away 6 toilet roll innards. It doesn’t take a lot of energy to put them in the bin. It is right next to the toilet, you can even do it while you are sat on the bog you lazy bastards.
The same with the various bits of soap that are the thickness of an After Eight mint. What the fuck can they be saved for?

I have had a revelation this evening.
I thought it was almost impossible to fuck up Mince but one of the housemates has proved me wrong. It was still in the ‘worm’ shapes of it’s raw state except it was rock hard. The sauce was suspiciously red and if I find out it came from a jar I will go fucking raving. Literally. Additives and I don’t mix well. Even Kenny the Cat wouldn’t eat it. What a criminal waste of food.

Today I had to go and buy a birthday present for a four year old girl. Does anybody else think that sending me to shop for a ‘Girlie’ girl was a bad idea? I fecking do!
I headed for WHSmith thinking, felt tip pens and colouring books, sorted. I ended up with a box of face painting shit, a box of arts and crafts shit and, believe it or not, a box of make up for little girls. Fucking make up, unbelievable. (Make up had been on the list of potential gift ideas her Father text to me.)

Then it happened.
I got stuck in a queue behind an old dear who was producing lottery tickets to be checked. She had hundreds and hundreds. They were pulled from her bag like those long lines of hankies that magicians produce from a sleeve. I was beating my head against the boxes I was holding and wondering if a rolled up Big Issue would be substantial enough to stove her skull in, when the store manager led me away and opened a till for me. An act of kindness I was so grateful for I could have kissed her. She was in with a chance until she smiled, revealing a head full of teeth that looked like Liquorish Allsorts. I’m partial to the round blue ones but that was a sweetie too far.

Driving

Today, wankers on the motorway have pissed me off. As a passenger I get to view a lot more than the driver.
Firstly, old people… Get the fuck off of the motorway and use ‘A’ roads, or better still, walk.
Sitting resolutely in the middle lane doing no more than 62mph makes you a fucking health hazard. Scrabbling around looking for Werther’s Originals and remembering ‘when all this was fields’ WILL cause me to make a gun out of my fingers and shoot you when I pass. Don’t look SO surprised and definitely don’t duck, you know who you are, man in the black Previa. He’d obviously read something in the Daily Nazi about car-jacking and presumed it could be done at high speeds and with body parts shaped like a gun.
Wearing ‘Driving Gloves’ is tantamount to signing your own death warrant. Fine for the Old Days when cars had no roof and no form of heating other than a Woodbine.
Also, why does closing the door of their car make a bloke think they have put on a cloak of invisibility? I can still see you picking your nose, you pig. Your windows are see-through, that is the nature of a ‘window’.

Yesterday I went to Aldershot Military Cemetery to look for my Great Grandfather’s grave.
I found it!
He is buried three rows from the Canadian War memorial. He died seven months before the start of WWII, at the age of 57. I really wasn’t expecting it to be the emotional experience it turned in to.
My Grandfather took me there when I was about 12. He slagged him off all the way there. Said “There he is, the bastard”, emptied a flask of Whiskey on the plot and we drove home.
What affected me the most and hadn’t registered as a kid, was that he had ‘Vaya Con Dios’ on the bottom of his stone. Exactly the same as his son. It hadn’t occurred to me until that moment that my Grandfather had sorted out the headstone for his Father. He always spoke about him with such contempt.
I broke down and cried for a man I never knew and for the one I loved so much.

The ‘Ashes’ have started. What a crap game cricket is. Other than golf, darts and synchronised swimming, I can imagine nothing more boring to watch. Maybe Curling.
It’s also a given that England are going to be spanked like a ginger step-child. So why bother?

On a less boring note, my beloved Spurs won tonight and Schnee will be sat in my kitchen, getting utterly pissed on Saturday! My cup runneth over! The cherry on the top of that would be if the fabulous Steph could join us.

Congratulations to my good friend Q. His Girlfriend had a baby girl on Sunday.
Jessica Eve Shillingford. You are most welcome.

Trundling and Twisting

Today I have been trundling around the Wiltshire countryside and last night's rain has made it treacherous.
Mud, skiddy grass, cow shit, rabbit holes, badger holes, rutted paths and slippery canal banks. Most of the time the sun was full in my eyes. As the mud accumulated, my boots weighed about a stone each.
Along the canal Jessie objected to to two huge Lurcher boys sniffing her arse and I was convinced she was going to pull me in to the Kennet and Avon.
The most galling thing about the whole afternoon was twisting my ankle on the crappy pavement in the village.
I'd forgotten how painful that can be.
At the moment I have no ankle bone, half my foot is blue and I'm slathering on Arnica cream.

This evening I have watched a programme called 'Hitler's Holocaust'. It has been a six part thing and tonight's was The Liberation.
It has caused arguments between me and my host. I have an intrinsic dislike of the Germans but, I'm afraid to say, nothing but contempt for the French. I don't know why but I consider the French collaborators - Awful isn't it? I just can't help it though.
How big is France compared to the UK? How many more inhabitants did they have? Yet they still managed to not to defend themselves. Bringing me to the conclusion far more of them collaborated than they would care to admit.
It's not such a huge leap from Klaus Barbie to Jean-Marie Le Pen.

On a lighter note....
Am I the only person who couldn't give a flying fuck about Tom Cruise's wedding.
Don't care where he is marrying, who he is marrying. Nice he is legitimising the bastard child, but on the whole who cares?
Have tried to find out what Scientologists believe about kids out of wedlock and 3rd marriages. Can't find anything. Funny, seeing as they have an opinion on Homosexuals (Perverts) and depression (Not allowed therapy or medication).
My opinion of them... Wankers.

Charity, My Arse..

The Thai Dragonfly didn't do an awful lot. But fuck me, it went through like a dose of salts. I will spare you the details.

This evening is Children In Need night. An opportunity to raise money for charity.
Pain in the frigging arse I call it.
Overly cheerful people in fancy dress, accosting you on the street with a bucketful of coins.
If you give to one you have to give to all the others, or you look like the tightest, cheapest fucker on earth.
I have carried so much change in my pocket today, I look like I need calipers and I think the spine damage is permanent.

The most annoying thing is the sponsored silences the kids at school used to do.
Ask them a question in lesson and one of their lairy mates will shout at you, 'They are doing a sponsored silence!', like you were stupid.
Unsurprisingly, the silence was suspended at break and lunchtime but the little fuckers still wanted to be paid. Piss Off!
Or the tossers who would spend the day tied together- Good way of getting into another group and totally disrupting.

The whole of BBC1's evening programmes are full of wankers with oversized cheques, telling bemused interviewers, "I sailed the Solent in a shoebox" or "I ate a million baked beans with a toothpick".
Makes me want to drive an icepick through my Frontal Lobes.
Tonight it is pissing with rain, really pissing down.
I'm going to pledge 20 quid for Natasha 'look at my sparkley clothes' Kaplinsky to get electrocuted.
Something good should come of this!

Seriously though, the charity does excellent work, but who else thinks that hospices and medical equipment should be provided on the NHS?
They spend millions on IVF - Bollocks, to the kids that aren't here. Support the those who ARE here.
You want IVF... Pay for it yourself.. Having kids isn't a right and maybe there is a reason you are not.
Like the Portsmouth couple, The Wyatt's... Spent thousands in LEGAL AID to keep their disabled kid alive...
Where does she live now? In fucking care because neither of her pointless parents can cope! What a surprise.
Spend my taxes fighting for her then don't even look after her. More of my taxes paying for that.(They are both on benefits)

I'll stop before I go too far.

Cosmic Inbalance

All last evening the ‘Nutty Daddy’ was a complete pain in the arse.
It was a windy night and the letterbox kept getting caught by it, making a tapping sound as the door was buffeted.
“What’s that?”, says ‘Nutty Daddy’
“It’s the wind blowing the door”.
Two seconds later,
“What’s that?”
“It’s the wind blowing the door”.
“What’s that?”
“It’s the wind blowing the door”.
At this point I considered running into a wall head first.
This continued all the way through the first half of the England match. During half time I Blue Tacked every single bit of door furniture down and ‘tacked’ the letterbox shut.
No more noise.

I remembered to unstick it for the paper ’fugee. He doesn’t need that kind of challenge at the moment.
He just got a bike!
He‘s only pushing it at the moment, it’s a start, and Norman Tebbit would be proud.

He then became obsessed with a set of car keys that were on the side. Every time he walked past them, which was once every five minutes, (He was on a mission to find the banging door) he picked them up and asked whose they were.
Maybe my patience was running just a tad thin, but am I the only one who thinks moving the keys out of sight is a pretty fucking sensible move?
So I moved them myself and the cosmic ‘Thank You’ for that?
MY fucking keys have gone missing from their home in the front door.
I think of it as the Universe ‘Tutting’ at me for being so impatient. Just letting me know, ‘Be nice, or else‘.

Today, I have been on a mission to find some sort of legal ‘high’, so I headed out to Hedonic and returned with Thai dragonfly! It is a liquid Kratom extract and is supposed to give a ‘dreamy, Opium like sensation’. I thought being in this sort of state would help me with the ‘Nutty Daddy’!
It says to take 5ml, so, in true Sleepy style, I took 10ml!
The liquid itself is a particularly crappy brown colour, I got over that by disguising it in a cup of tea.

This evening I have been a little bit wicked. It may have been the Dragonfly stuff, but then again……..
The ‘Nutty Daddy’ has taken to eating his dinner with his face about 3 centimetres from the plate. So, I cooked spaghetti and meatballs!
We had a full ‘Lady and The Tramp’ moment, except his head was hoovering round the dish trying to find the end.
It was excellent!
I almost lost bladder control when he asked for a bib because, “This stuff splashes up at me”.
I was wondering, ‘How?… Your face is so close to your plate we could dispense with cutlery’!
I know the powers that be will get me, but it’s war until I get my keys back.

Housemates… What in the name of all that is holy, gives you the impression that the tin opener doesn’t need washing?
For some reason Asda don’t put ring pulls on their tins of chopped tomatoes. So I was forced to use it.
It looks like someone has been opening tins of fucking mud, tar and other assorted nastiness. The blade thingy punches through the lid people, that's how it works! Therefore it gets the contents of the tin on it!

An English Country Graveyard

Yesterday I went to my Grandfather’s grave. I took a plant, wiped the seagull shit off the stone and had a good mooch around. I was amused to see that rabbits seem to spend a lot of their time crapping on him! He would have liked that.

As bone yards go, it’s not all that old. The oldest graves are from the 1800’s but it’s quite weird to see how headstones have changed over the years. You can trace a Nation’s history by the way it deals with it‘s dead.
The oldest are massive stone monuments. Crosses, Angels, Mausoleums and Anchors. Names and dates inlaid in lead. Bible passages and where you can find them, ‘Corinthians 3 blah blah’.
As a kid I used to hate the sarcophagus looking ones, especially if they had cracked open. For some reason I thought the body would be visible, a skeletal hand reaching out to a world long left behind. Things have changed.
Simple ones appear during the period of the first WWI. Engraved name, rank, regiment and dates. Some have regimental insignia and because of the time of year, all had a red poppy.
The same for the dead of WWII but in a little corner set just away there are identical stones, these have an Iron Cross insignia. The level of care is just the same and they too, have a red poppy each. That choked me up and made me think of those well tended graveyards in Europe, with a section that ‘remains for ever England’. I was glad that someone was looking after these Germans in return.
Cremation must have been getting popular because the small flat slabs start to appear and I don’t think being buried standing caught on!
During the 1960’s headstones with photos of the deceased start to appear. Nearly all of these have the surname Verrechia, Napolitano etc. There are also hedged off areas for the Muslims and Jews.
During the 1970’s and 80’s more information goes on, ’John Smith, Dentist’. The 90’s up to the present, Jeez! Pictures, names of those left behind, quotes (none particularly religious). Grave goods! Mugs, toys, flags, teddy bears. Some had perfectly manicured flower beds complete with mini fencing, some people seem to get territorial in death. Stones had trumpets, electric guitars, football badges, sprinters and saxophones on them.
The names have changed. Gone are the Maud’s and the Nehemiah’s, the Smith’s and the Archer’s. We have the Gurdeep’s and the Yao Ming’s, the Singh’s and the Chan’s.
We are totally multicultural in death. Shame about the living.

Phew! That seems a little heavy!

So, on a lighter note.
In the really old part of the graveyard, Moles had been at work. Huge hills on top of a lot of graves. I caught myself having a Temp Brennan moment, I was kicking the piles about looking for bones! How sick is that?
I didn’t want to bring any ancient phalanges home, I just wanted to be mildly horrified!

This morning, we nearly had ‘Alzheimer’s on a stick’. The ‘Nutty Daddy’ has taken to using his umbrella as a microphone. I swear to G-d people, he puts it in my face one more time and it’s going straight up his arse. No warning, no grease and no regrets.

Pampam

Today my Grandfather would have been 90!

He was, and remains, the most important male influence in my life.
He fought with the International Brigades during the Spanish Civil War and was one of the very few who survived the battle at Jarama valley.
He was in the Navy during the second World War (As you can see from his natty uniform!)
It was from him I got my love of learning and I still hear is voice saying, 'Knowledge is power'.
He would have been considered quintessentially English but had no 'English' blood whatsoever.
He is my Pampam and I miss him dreadfully.

Last night there was a programme on Channel 4 called 100% English. People, some famous, some not, were interviewed on what they thought made them English. Then they had their DNA tested. There was a truly hideous woman called Carol Manley, she was probably in her 80's. She hid her rampant racism behind a headscarf, a smile and the line 'I'm only joking'. It turned out she was 80% European, 11% North American Indian, 9% East Asian and 0% Sub-Saharan African. On hearing the last one she replied, "Oh thank G-d for that!". The DNA specialist said that her heritage probably had something to do with the movement of Ghengis Khan. Mmmm, she was slightly to the right of him in her attitude.
Gary Bushell found out he was 8% Sub-Saharan African and according to the specialist that strand of DNA only entered his line about 5 generations ago!. Still want to send "Them" back Gary?
There was a guy called Danny Blue, who made his living dancing naked with balloons (classy). According to him to be English you had to be able to trace back 12 generations. He also came out with the line, 'An English person doesn't have black skin'. It turned out that he was 10% Middle Eastern, 11% South Asian, 37% South East European and 42% North European. The specialist told him that to further investigate his family he would have to look to the Balkans and further East! To say he was shocked would be an understatement. He also did a complete U turn and dropped from 12 generations to 4 and you could be English and have black skin!
A lady called Jane considered herself totally English, she thought her people had fought against the Normans at the Battle of Hastings. It turned out she had the DNA of a Romany gypsy. She wasn't happy and threatened to sue the programme!! Hahaha! Deal with it you racist bitch!
It was a really interesting show and left me thinking that quite a few people could benefit from the experience. Starting with the leadership of the BNP.

It also left me with the question, What is English?

As Schnee requested, a picture of my beloved Jessie!
Today we have been out and about in the countryside. It has been a typical autumn day here, bright but grey,the sun was really watery and it was fecking freezing.

We drove to a place called Inkpen, down some lanes so narrow I was breathing in at some points, to have a look for Red Kites. I'm not a great birdwatcher but if you are friends with Rob you have to know the basics.

We were up high enough to look down on one as it hunted. Beautiful. So languid in flight. There were buzzards too and they are huge!
There was also a pheasant shoot going on which meant hundreds of Land Rovers, black labs and much green clothing.
We could hear the guns and see the beaters but didn't see a single pheasant!
Fifteen minutes after the gunfire stopped there were thousands! I think that must be the pheasant version of, "Fuck You!"
It's even funnier to see them running along the road in front of the Land Rovers full of the 'Guns'!
These people who were blasting them out of the sky 20 minutes ago are really squeamish about running them over. They break suddenly, swerve across the lane or crawl along at 20mph to avoid hurting them. Strikes me as weird.

Right, does anybody else get pissed off with people, who when you are speaking to them, are either mouthing what you say, trying to say it with you or say what you've said about a second after you?
What the fuck is that all about. Is it some sort of tic? Put your hand over your mouth and stop yourself! It'll save me going to court for assault.

I have also made a discovery. The scariest thing in a country village is a hundred year old woman, behind the wheel of a Nissan Micra, in a carpark. I had to run from her! At first I thought we had a runaway car situation until I saw the blob of grey hair through the steering wheel. Christ, did my heart rate increase. She would have it the bag full of wine first.

The Runner

After an incident with the 'Nutty Daddy' last night, I have done a runner to my Wiltshire hideaway. Where I was greeted by Jess the Greyhound, who kept her paws to herself! Unlike some.....

A stop was made at Tescos in Winchester.
Here, I got to relive that childhood panic of being left at the till with the groceries, while the person with the money runs off to some distant aisle to get some forgotten thing.
While I was panicking and packing s-l-o-w-l-y, I got to observe the store and some of the other shoppers.
Tesco at Winchester is fucking posh!
The shelves had not a hint of their 'Deckchair' range, the silver packaging of 'Finest' stuff shone all over the place.
Men in corduroys, cravats, tweedy jackets and brogues.
The women.... Eeeesh! More twin sets and pearls than you could shake a pair of sensible shoes at. They were expensively dressed and looked like David Walliams' character from Little Britain.
These are the people who were wearing Burberry 25 years ago, before it got all chav-ed up.
So different from yesterday's experience.

While I'm thinking of David Walliams; Does anyone else get freaked out by little teeth and big gums? I've seen two sets today! I don't think the gene pool in the Winchester area is up for a 'blue flag', if you know what I mean.

So, for the next few days I will try and share life from a Wiltshire village.
If you think Pompey is weird, wait 'til you get a load of this place! People here traipse through cow shit like it was fallen autumn leaves. Waxed jackets, Wellingtons and muddy Labradors are de riguer.
Get this, there is chicken feed for sale in the local Coop!

Sassy, if I miss a day... Patience!

Roaming and Rambling

I have been totally bundled out of my comfort zone today. I couldn’t cope with the wandering and constant questions so I decided, as it was a gorgeous day, I’d get out of the house and down to the seafront. I don’t like going out too much because, in all honesty, I don’t like people.

My oh my, what a disparate cross-section of humanity is out and about at lunch time. There are hundreds, literally hundreds, of people in those motorised buggy things. I'm convinced that half of these people can walk but are just too fucking fat to bother. People who have driven there with a thermos and some sandwiches but never leave the car. Young lads sat in their cars with no windows open, going for the full Cheech and Chong experience. Huge people on bikes, joggers and power walkers. The last lot piss me off, just because you move your arms like you’re running a sprint doesn’t mean you are! It makes your arse look strange, like you are chewing a toffee with your sphincter. Stop it!
There are the bedsit people who have to be out of the house between 9am and 4pm and the obligatory piss heads. I was serenaded by one and almost got flashed, but he managed to get the old chap away in time.

The second affront to my comfort zone was having to go into Somerfield. Just by walking through the door I lowered the average age by 30 years. The automatic doors should have tipped me the wink, they opened so slowly I got wedged for a couple of seconds. The sensor must be assuming that it has a good thirty seconds before the octogenarians reach them.
Inside I was confronted with the slow moving mass of plastic hips, headscarves, orthopaedic footwear and tartan things on wheels. New Rule, if you have any kind of walking aid, you can’t have the trolley. One or the other, you take up too much room.
Next, I was overwhelmed by the baffling array of biscuits. I used my ‘phone a friend’ option and got outside help on that one.

The ‘Nutty Daddy’ gave his handler the slip this afternoon and I found him on the street trying car door handles. Geriatric Twocker! All he needed was a hoodie, he had a cap and gloves on. I coaxed him back indoors with a cup of tea and a plate of biscuits, but he doesn’t know his arse from his elbow. Now he is roaming the house looking for a cupboard that doesn't exist. It is at his other daughter's house. He also thinks it would be a good idea for the ceilings to be 'up', apparently they 'look better up there'.
I'm inclined to agree.

Old Timers

Why do people buy pillow slips with loads of frilly shit on them? You wake up with imprints all over your face, Fleur de Lys scars all over your cheeks and forehead. I’ve woken up and looked like someone had embroidered my face during the night. Also, what the fuck is it with grown women with fucking teddy bears on their beds?! You got to cut that shit out ladies, it’s creepy!

Jane frigging Fonda is starting to piss me right off. She is on an ad selling wrinkle cream. After all the Oohs and Aaahs about how wonderful it is and how great she looks, she does the typical old dear thing and says,
“I’m 68, you know!”..
In one sentence she has turned into every lavender smelling geriatric and totally ruined Barbarella for me. Thanks a fucking bunch.

Talking of geriatrics, the house has gained a couple. Housemate parents are visiting and the Dad has Alzheimer’s.
Let me just say from the off, if I get Alzheimer’s, smother me. I do not want to wander aimlessly asking the same fucking questions over and over. I don’t want to stand in front of someone showing them how I use the pockets on my jacket and then treat them to a show of the contents of said pockets! Clean tissues in the left and used tissues in the right. I don’t want to get totally obsessive about the bin I dispose the snotrags in.
I don’t want it to be a surprise when I see someone I saw only 5 minutes ago. I don’t want to look at my loved ones and have absolutely no memory of them ever being in my life. I don’t want to eat my dinner and then believe I have had nothing since breakfast. I don’t want to forget where the toilet is and then be baffled as to how the flush works. I don’t want to have prayers said when I take my medication. That really got me. What an absolute horror to happen to any human being.

I am finding this particularly hard as he and I didn’t get on, but seeing him like this is horrendous. I would have him back hating the air that sustains me any day of the week. The light has gone and there is an empty human in my house.
To tell the truth, it’s kind of freaking me out.

It’s fucking grim people, grim.

Catnip and Tunes

I have been berated for giving my cats ‘Catnip’. The reaction I got, you’d have thought I’d cooked up some smack for them and mainlined it with their James Wellbeloved ‘expensive’ biscuits!.
They love it! It makes them all un-necessary and silly. Which makes me laugh. It also doesn’t seem to do them any harm. They have been living with a heavy smoker for ALL their lives and these people are worried about the catnip. For fuck’s sake! It’s the passive smoking and lung cancer that should concern you.
Go on! Tell me you have never done something to another living being just for amusement, especially if you are a parent (or a teacher).
When my baby brother was about 3, my sister and I used to say to him,
“Go on, say, ‘testosterone‘”
He used to try, and his attempts would make us wet ourselves. When her kids came along we did exactly the same thing! But with them it was ‘Vaginismus’, it sounds brilliant with a little lisp! If you have access to a small child I recommend trying it.

I think my laptop must be bored. Today when it booted up I got a pop up message from the Norton Antivirus. One of those ‘Shit! You’ve got a virus! Ohmygod! Ohmygod! Do you want to fix the problem?’
No! I’d love a virus to rip through all my files deleting stuff and stealing my bank account details.
Of course I want it fixed you tosser.
I clicked on ‘Fix’ and waited and waited while it scanned all my files. Nothing. Fuck all wrong with it. Now I think it’s laughing at me.

I have spent today recovering from last nights over-indulgence by ripping all my CD singles on to the Mac. What a trip down memory lane that has been. I have discovered an Atomic Kitten single, Take That (Yep, fucking Take That) and worst of all Celine Dion! She has possible one of the most punchable faces on earth.
Who remembers when CD’s first came out and we were told that they were practically indestructible? What bollocks that turned out to be. A hint of a thumbprint can stop them working. Now we have our music on computers and ipods. Again, we are told of the wondrousness of the ipod. Fuck off! You may as well be carrying a raw egg in your pocket. They don’t like shocks or any sudden movements.
Your computer will, someday, up and die on you. Then ALL your tunes are lost.
So you may as well just accept that track 13 will always jump at the second chorus and track 2 won’t play at all. At least you still have the rest of the album.

Happy Birthday to Becky and Smudge the III!

Trick Or Treat

Probably because of my personality type, I go through serious food fads. This past week it has been Crunchy Nut Cornflakes. I just can’t stop myself. A while back it was Refresher Chews, before that Curley Wurley’s and every so often I have a serious Maltesers habit.
ATM is convinced that the body only craves something it needs and during pregnancy, what the baby needs.
During her first pregnancy, my sister craved 18 bag family packs of Quavers. I used to look at my her and think, ‘What the fuck does that child need with something that is, basically, Styrofoam packaging?’
ATM used to cheerfully tell me that she craved cough mixture throughout her pregnancy with me. It helped that she had a job in the dispensary at Boots.
‘Really Mum? That sugary shit that is full of Codeine?’
‘Yes!’
‘You took it the whole pregnancy?’
‘Yes!, by the mugful! Hehehehehe’.
‘So, you drugged me for 9 months, being born sent me cold turkey and you THEN expected me to sleep?’
It wasn’t such a laugh then, but did explain a lot!

I bought some bags of sweeties for the Trick or Treaters but I have a confession to make. I opened the bags and took out all the sweets I like! Fuck ‘em, I thought. They’re getting a freebee as it is.
So far I’ve had 3 pint sized Grim Reaper’s who went away with Parma Violets and a lolly. 2 pirates and a witch, who just stood there, until the girl said, ‘say trick or treat you dins!’. Ah, Pompey kids, got to love them.
I can remember asking my Grandfather if we could do a pumpkin one year. He came home with two Swedes (root vegetables, not Scandinavian types!) You have no idea how difficult they are to hollow out. I think he just wanted to see my Nan’s face when she came home and found us stabbing at them with her sharpest knives.

Today Mrs Next Door’s weirdness hit a new high. They have had a new back door fitted and for the first time their cat has to use it’s own door. We were pissing ourselves in the kitchen listening to her get more and more frustrated with the cat.

“Sammy, concentrate!” (fucking concentrate?!!)
Then as she got shrill,
“Samuel, you have got to learn this or you won’t be able to get in!”
She then picked it up and said in it’s face,
“You have GOT to learn how to use the catflap, now stop messing about.”

As anyone knows, there is NO training a cat. In fact you can’t OWN a cat. It decides whether it is going to stay with you or not and always has a ‘back up’ home in case you piss it off. Like, take it to the vet or shout at it for puking on the bed!

Got to say a HUGE congratulations to one of the Housemates. Mikey has got in to Leeds to do an MSC in Geology! Nice one mate. You deserve it.

Icon

There is a programme on BBC2 called, ‘The Culture Show’ and they are having a vote for Britain’s greatest living icon.
It’s quite a good show, arts, music, theatre, style etc, not too high brow but not for planks either. Or so I thought. Until I visited the website. Just browsing through the message boards to see what names were being suggested, I found Madonna and Rolf Harris. Rolf fucking Harris!
Maybe I have got the wrong end of the stick, but I thought Britain’s Cultural Icon would actually BE British. Rolf’s family MAY have been British at some point, until a light fingered ancestor got the family transported, but Madonna? Fuck off! The Septic’s can keep her and her ‘rainbow’ family. I’ll even throw Guy Richie in for free.
Also, why every time some self absorbed yank wants to legitimise what they are doing, do they go on Oprah? What’s that all about?
I think Stephen Fry is going to get my vote, just because I believe he is a god. He is one of those people, who if I made them laugh, I could die immediately after. There also seem to be very few females to vote for. So, Schnee, Sassy… Get yourselves on the case girls!

How fucking annoying is a radiator that needs bleeding? The one in the living room is driving me mental. Especially late at night. It sounds like there is someone else in the room, breathing. Freaked myself right out with it this afternoon! The heating timer is still on BST and for the life of me I couldn’t work out what the noise was or where it was coming from. What made it worse was the cat sitting bolt upright and doing the, ‘What the fuck was that? There is someone in the house.” look. That, I can just about cope with. The staring, mesmerised in to space really shits me up. I think he knows that. Bastard.


To calm myself I watched Boston Legal. I didn’t want to like it but ended up loving it!
I do admit to watching it with the vague hope that William Shatner WILL explode on screen. The geezer must be on some serious ‘roids to look like that. That aside, he is brilliant as Denny Crane. James Spader is surprisingly good too!

Now one for the Housemates.
I know the kettle holds 3 pints but if you are making a drink for you and you only, 3 pints of water aren’t fucking necessary. The kettle will still work if you put a cupful in! The water can’t be re-boiled it gets all chalky and nasty. The tea made with it has a film on top that looks like Tectonic Plates, for fuck’s sake!
Not only that, it’s a waste of energy and water. Stern Report anyone? Anyone?

As I typed this, Mrs Next Door went off the deep end!
She could be heard over the BBC News! She ‘Could not believe it’ at least 14 times’, ‘Get to your room’ x2 and ‘Get away from me’ x6. The Naughty Step mustn’t be working out for her! I’m now awaiting the arrival of her long suffering husband so I can hear it all over again and perhaps, find out what she couldn’t believe! I wouldn’t be surprised if the girl had brought home some colourful language from a ‘Scholarship’ child. Or had smuggled in a bag of Wotsits.

Today my niece, Brooke, is 13. I haven’t seen her for three years but I just want to say, ‘Happy Birthday Brooke!’ Love you mate.

Vile

Yesterday Crisp-e told me possibly one of the vilest, in the long list of his vile stories, ever.
He watches this ‘Home CSI’ programme. They come in and totally swab and spray everything in your house. One bloke was found out to be a ‘piss in the sink’ kind of guy. His Mother must be so proud. That is not the worst bit.
I did not know this, but apparently every time you flush your toilet, with the lid up, Faecal Coliform Bacteria is launched all over the bathroom. I will now quote Crisp-e’s email:

“Aerobic bacteria found in the colon or faeces, often used as indicators of faecal contamination of water supplies.

Flushing the toilet with the lid up causes a ‘spray’ that can travel the length of the bathroom. The spray carries with it (amongst other nastiness) Faecal Coliform Bacteria. The so called ‘aerosol’ can persist for several hours before it settles.”

On the programme they showed them this using a spray to show the bacteria up. It had settled all over their toothbrushes! This explained why one of the women, who lived in the house, always had an upset stomach. Turned mine.
Now that is some serious fucking nastiness!. Housemates have been informed and the lids have been down every time I went to use the toilet today. That one got through!

I have neglected my music recently. So, while I was staining the stairs, a cheeky Light Oak, I listen to Kasabian’s album Empire. I am totally taken with ‘Shoot The Runner’. I love how Glam rock it sounds. I also listened to You Are The Quarry by Morrisey. Sarah Down The Road said I would enjoy it. She was right! I think the lyrics to ’America Is Not The World’ are classic. Nice one Sarah!

I also have some serious reading to catch up on too.
Has anyone (other than my mate Rob) read William Horwood’s, The Stonor Eagle? It’s taken me 6 months to get to page 134 and I’m sure every time I open the thing it halves my Chi. It is one of Rob’s absolute favourites and I promised him I would read it. (We swap favourites with each other every so often) This one, is killing me.
Shall I continue reading it? Does it get any less depressing?
The only other book I have felt this much antipathy towards is Robert Tressell, The Ragged Trousered Philanthropists. My Grandfather gave it to me to read. (He started out as a member of the communist party and fought in Spain during the Civil War. When he died, he was a member of the Conservative Club!) He would also insist on discussing it with me, so there was no faking it. I was 14 at the time and seriously considered blinding myself. I loved reading (still do!) but that book nearly put me off for life.

BST

Not being one to complain, I am taking issue with the ‘Easy’ bit of, ’Easy Online Shopping’. It’s anything but.

I have shopped with Waitrose online. Excellent service and an extremely nice delivery lady. Type in ‘Garlic’ and the first thing that pops up on the search is, a bulb of garlic. With Asda all the ‘ready meals’ that have anything vaguely garlic in, pop up. Garlic is hidden away in the exotic herbs, with ginger and chillies. Bread? Fucking forget it! About 150 choices appear!
This, and the vegetables being sold by the kg, made me realise that I am a ‘visual’ shopper. I know the size of the bag the frozen peas come in, ‘kilogram’s’ mean nothing. As evidenced by the 2 portion only bag I managed to have delivered. A litre of yogurt doesn’t look that much online but in person, there’s shit loads!
Then there is the ‘lucky dip’ bag. None of the shit in this bag was ordered by me. As the name suggests, sometimes you get lucky or sometimes you get the bag I got.
Six packets of super noodles, a ‘brown’ stir in sauce and some Pringles. I managed to return it to the driver before he left.
The lucky dip from Waitrose contained Camembert, Brie, Pastrami and Parma ham. They must have got the bag of water biscuits and the olives!

While I’m on food.

Home cooked chips taste shit. There is just no getting away from it. Even if you have your own deep fat fryer they taste cack.
Oven chips are the worst. Do those fuckers EVER go brown? If I have got to have them I prefer Crinkle Cut, they seem to take on some colour. The ‘Chippy’ is the only place for chips. If you are in Pompey, Osprey’s on the corner of Brompton Road is best!

The clocks are going back sometime in the next hour. Lighter mornings, darker evenings and an extra hour of insomnia for me tonight! Apparently it’s all to do with daylight hours and farmers. For me, it is the reason that clocks are not set on anything ‘electrical’ in the house.
I can never remember how to do it. It always needs the remote that has been missing since the last party and the manual is somewhere ‘safe’.

Goodbye British Summer Time, it’s been a nice one. Bring on the cold, the dark and the open fires! Whoo hoo!

I Hear You Knocking

My insomnia has been bad the last couple of nights which, as usual, caused me to watch TV all night long. The TV, most times will lull me off to sleep, but not the last few nights.
Do you have any idea what the ‘signer’ in the corner of the screen does to a stoned insomniac?. I sit there trying to match the hand movements to words. When that doesn’t work it becomes really annoying. I’m not saying that deaf people shouldn’t enjoy the programmes but why would they all be up at three in the morning?

The fireworks have started with a vengeance which means the fucking ‘Trick or Treaters’ will be out soon. Another blight from America.
As kids, we weren’t allowed to go Trick or Treating or do Penny For The Guy. ATM described it as begging and my Nan said it was common. “Oh, No Darling! That is for poor and common children”
Every now and then I remember to get some sweeties in; but most of the time I turn all the lights out, move to the back of the house and ignore the doorbell.
The little kids all dressed up and their Mum or Dad stood at the gate, I don’t mind. It’s the 14 and 15 year olds in ‘Chav-Wear’ I object to. The ones who tell you, “A pound’ll do”. I’m sure it will but you’ll have a fucking custard cream between you and like it. I will then stand there and using my eyes only say, “Go on you little tosser, trick me. I fucking dare you, in fact, I double dare you!” I haven’t had a trick yet.
Same with the Carol Singers. I want two verses, not two fucking lines before my hand goes anywhere near my pocket, you common, beggars!

Anyone knocking on my door selling religion, only ever does it once. (They must have a list!) I’ve had Jehovah’s Witnesses begging to leave but did find out Mormons don’t drink tea, coffee or coke. Just one day I’d love to open the door and find two Amish on the step trying to interest me in a barn raising and not using electricity. Or a Zoroastrian who wants to interest me in equality for all (Regardless of gender) and environmentalism. Now that, I would probably go for!
It’s a religion I think I should learn more about.

Champion and Wizard

“An Eavesdropper never hears good of themselves”.

A line used by ATM after my sister overheard Mother bitching about her. Fortunately, I never uttered a word during the diatribe. Although, I inwardly agreed with every word. So ATM was the focus of my sister’s ire, not me. It didn’t last long, her mortgage was due.
I have a similar thing going on at the moment and it’s really beginning to annoy me.
When I started this blog I told very few people about it. Someone I am close to, but didn’t tell, has obviously discovered it for themselves and has got bitter and twisted. The people I told were the individuals I wouldn’t mind seeing me fall on my arse. I wouldn’t be totally humiliated by them knowing it didn’t work out.
So, when I speak to this person on MSN they will makes little references to things I have written, without actually saying. “I read your Blog”.. Last night the conversation went on and on about her Wellies. How she was going to have to shake them out before wearing, how friends of hers had discovered mice in them etc..
This has got me to the point that I would rather remove my spleen with a tin opener, than say, ‘I’ve got a blog going’..

Now for a Housemate rant…

I’m quite laissez faire about toothpaste ‘squeezage’. It doesn’t send me particularly rabid if you squeeze in the middle.
Do the same thing with the tomato puree and I’ll stab you in the fucking eyes! The packaging is totally different. If you bend the top ‘Spout’ bit over, squeezing it causes leaking fissures along the main body of the tube. Nothing comes out of it, except at unfeasable angles. It’s bad enough that you let this happen, but to then put the haemorrhaging mass back in the fridge is a real piss off!
I have also decided that as I’m the only one who vacuums the stairs, I’m the only one allowed to use them. Kenny and Murphy have special dispensation to use them, but the rest of you fuckers can fly, use ropes, install a Stannah chair lift. I don’t care. Keep your leaf bearing, mud carrying feet off my stairs.

Mad Matt paid us a visit tonight! Jeez, is that guy good for the soul! I have laughed and laughed this evening. I am so glad Sarah Down The Road joined us in time for his absolute cracker of the night, which I feel compelled to share with the rest of the world.
He described a slapper’s panty parts as a,
“Fanny like a wizard’s sleeve”!!!
Belter!
We had tears and difficulty breathing. Mad Matt you are a legend!.

Although, I think you may have ruined the Harry Potter films for me, but invented a new drinking game. Champion!