.... 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!