This Is My Affair

Has spring sprung?

2007-02-16T21:28:00.000Z

Crystal clear really. I'm gonna scrub that man right out of my house. The minute the fat bastard is gone out come the chemicals, the scrubbing brushes and I'm off. Today I had help from all sorts of quarters and we got through wall and floor scrubbing, vacuuming and dusting, nine loads of washing, a thorough going over for the bathroom and the kitchen, furniture hauled about and cleaned behind, seven bags of rubbish collected together and put out for collection. I even started on the garden (well, I got outside, looked at it and began to draft a plan of action).

Most things can be done one to one-and-a-half handed, as I am discovering. I have to beware of under utilising my right hand while avoiding too much strain while the bones continue to knit. A fine line to tread.

The piece-de-resistance was making inroads into the slum that is his domain. Half of it has been largely cleared, vacuumed, dusted and washed down. Of course I've achieved that much by throwing and kicking the crap from the now cleard side on to the pre-existing pile on the other side. That's his problem for whenenver he gets back whether it be late tonight or early tomorrow. I left him a string of cups, glasses and mugs I uncovered that have stuff growing in the bottom, plus a severely shrivelled ex-carrot, as examples of what I don't expect to find in the bedroom of a self-respecting adult of 46 years. I threw away very little from his room (mostly cigarette packet tops - that bit of paper you have to rip at to get at the cancer sticks, and similarly obvious crap). I was quite diligent in gathering up the scattered loose change and putting it in a jar on his dresser - which I dusted and washed down. Oh, and I rescued a couple of my books which he's 'borrowed'.

Then we all sat down and ate a take away. Now it's back to just B and me, and she is up in bed asleep. I won't be far behind.

10 wicket defeat today, bloody hell! Hand aches, so that's it. Feels good to be back-ish. Hello, everyone and good-night.

Not 'armless, let alone fingerless

2007-02-15T23:26:00.000Z

Lots and lots and lots of thoughts. Most of them scribbled on pages of a note book I've kept close to my chest (and stressed deeply that he'd find - a big reason for starting this damn fool thing). Most of them nearly illegible for being written with my left hand when I'm naturally right handed. Didn't know that about me before this.

Thought one. Never allow yourself to be operated on by a surgeon who doesn't share your sense of humour. Mine didn't appear to be amused when I joked as I went under that 'at least I'd broken it accidentally', which I like to think is why the second op (the one after the first quick job when the swelling went down) wasn't a success and I had to have the bones re-set; something that involved re-breaking them. So that's three times in total.

And you were wondering why I hadn't been doing much typing?

This time off hasn't been a complete waste though, because I've nailed the stupid cow he's currently stringing along.

Difference is this one's a harder cookie than the last one ... doesn't want kids and rather likes her independence thank you very much. She's also a short, rotund grandmother of three. And I think she knows I know. And I think she knows that I'm pretty sure she knows I know.

KEEP UP.

So the pair of us get on quite well actually, now that she's got over the shock of realising she's said something she couldn't possibly have heard except from him, and that it was exactly the sort of thing a husband would know but would only share with a part time bed buddy.

My only gripe is the same one I had with poor sad deluded Beth (aka The Phool from Philadelphia) ... why isn't she woman enough to get him to work up the guts to actually GO.

We had a full moon recently ... yes we really did. I checked in the paper to make sure I wasn't imagining. Last time I mentioned that I could see a purrfect full moon through the window next to me I had some damn fool dickhead from Yorkshire posting gibberish ... insulting gibberish at that.

Probably don't get much else from yorshire folk. Should have said that at the time. Darren Gough thought he'd need to pack his PJs for this spring's trip to the Carib. On that subject we've won th'ashes and thrown away the one day series that followed ... poor team selection and hubris. Though Shane Warne's blaming the coach - then Warnie thought he was eating smarties when he got caught doping himself!

What else.

He's fucked off to Ireland with his mother for a funeral. There's a very accurate piece of bio for him to fasten onto if he can be bothered. So B and I have a couple of girlie days home.

My hand?

It's early days. I knew from a few days after the initial injury I'd probably never recover full mobility and dexterity and that I'd probably always be able to 'feel' it. The scarring's quite livid, although they did get someone in to tidy things up so the fingers are now straight and I'm told the lumps will go down. (That's the lump's where the bone came out, since you asked.)

My mood has been more erratic than ever. I've never had down days before like the ones I've had in the weeks since Christmas. For some reason I feel better tonight than I've felt in a long while (did I mention that the Fat Bastard is away?). I've got Breakfast in America on, having stumbled across it during a bit of a tidy up. Right now it's playing Crime of the Century.

Brings back strange memories of my first boyfriend, who was the son of a former high school geography teacher, who I later found out was the sister of someone very, very famous. Typing few fingered is exhausting.

Thanks for reading to then end of this and hello to you. Have a good life. It's the best you can do.

I'm off to bed.

a bit more detail ...

2006-12-22T15:22:00.000Z

NORMAL SERVICE SOME WAY AWAY BUT...

a very BIG thank you to those who expressed concern at my whereabouts and pleasure when I briefly resurfaced. with only one and a bit fingers at my disposal this post has been cobbled together in bits and pieces and then edited. no apologies for lack of capitals ... typing is slow enough as it is.

we are experiencing the second bout of genuinely wintery weather here, which is pleasant in a way because it makes imminent english christmas seem plausible. i'm sitting here in the house on my own and I should be wrapping christmas presents while i have the chance. for reasons explained further on i'm working myself up to that.

during the previous and very short spell of cold i succeeded in mangling my right hand (see previous post).

friday is homework submission day and b. had forgotten to take hers with her; she was sufficiently upset i promised to come back with it. by the time i returned the gates which are heavy metal things had been closed - to keep the inmates in as well as the undesirables out. due to the cold and the fact that the gates haven't been hung so they close head on, but at an angle, the sliding bolt was sticking and hard to get at from the outside. when it gave it gave with a rush and my right hand got caught behind it - blood, broken bones the result.

it is now clear how close I]i came to losing a couple of fingers, so i'm hugely grateful to the surgical staff and all the other medical staff who got me to hospital and rebuilt the hand. The worst of the scaffolding has come off but it will be come time before the bones can safely be left to their own devices.

i'm also grateful to everyone else who has rallied round. everything has been difficult, i am being awkward about the prescribed pain killers and because of that i've not been sleeping well and so on and so forth.

a friend took me out of town to a big shopping centre and helped me to get gifts together for everyone - wrapping them with one good hand and a fist encased in hard plastic is this afternoon's project. the fat bastard has actually done a little house work, not a lot, but something.

i feel like a lot of life has passed me by in the meantime. i didn't even get much of a kick out of us getting 'our' ashes back, though i did get to listen to quite a bit of it despite the time difference between here and home. i haven't been to work, the only time i got out of town was to do the christmas shopping. when did teenage boys start looking so bloody young? i feel 100.

i am missing my mum and since we're not on speaking terms i could go on missing her for a while yet.

we will be doing christmas in fairly traditional fashion ... turkey and ham and the usual trimmings, mulled wine, pudding with brandy butter and so forth. i really need to apply myself to getting these presents wrapped before the other two get home.

once again thank you to michelle and wendy and lily for posting their thoughts and to everyone else too.

merry christmas to you all and very best wishes for a better year to come, however good this one might have been!

you don't want to do that ....

2006-12-11T09:39:00.000Z

what seems like months ago I managed to crush my right hand in the school gate during the first truly wintery cold morning of the year ... several broken bones are healing and the worst of the scaffolding is off. It isn't yet clear how completely my hand will recover. I'm having to peck at the keyboard with my left hand and (very cautiously) with the undex finger of my right. Damn.

No long posts for the time being.

Apologies for the break in transmission. May post gruesmone pictures, of bloated yellowed hand sans nails in due course.

Smirk

2006-11-05T17:29:00.000Z

Now that we've won the Cheap, Nasty and Totally Pointless Cricket Knees-Up that has been taking place somewhere I feel liberated to smirk at the defeat of the NSW/QLD Rugby Nutters by Great Britain in the thug-fest* that is taking place in Sydney, which hopefully made raft-loads of Sydney-siders miserable. Rugby league is a stupid game played by stupid people* and watched by people who can't know better.

I don't like rugby league for a host of reasons but mostly because smug bastards from Sydney and stupid people from the Deep North do.

And sometimes, like this weekend, because they're good for a hearty snigger.

* what follows is an extracted from a match report:

Up until that point GB had dominated a brutal opening phase of the match that saw Australian forward Mason floor Stuart Fielden with an early punch.
Mason escaped with a telling-off from referee Ashley Klein and then, with 10 minutes gone, led with the elbow in a very late challenge on Long after the GB half-back had kicked the ball.
Again Mason, who had now been guilty of two incidents of serious foul play, remained on the field.

Or if you don't rate the B(ritish)BC's version then try this from an Australian media outlet:

Australia last night lost to Great Britain here for the first time since 1992. In a match that started in drizzling rain, and was remarkable for forward Adrian Morley surviving a game without being put on report for almost knocking someone's head off, the visitors conjured up a massive boilover, 23-12, to throw the series open.

Bah Humbug Number Two

2006-11-05T17:04:00.000Z

No Christmas 'Do' with work colleagues again this year.

Last year I'd only been there a few days when the invitations came in. Yes, that's invitations, plural. In bewilderment as much as poverty I declined them all. I'd already been stung in saying yes to the Secret Santa Stupidity only to find out that the stipulated spend was £15.

This year the same sort of farce has been developing. I could see it coming and so said yes to the first invitation I received and that I could accept (no clash, within reach, etc etc). I didn't make a song and dance about my decision making process or the result, but when that came out this week all hell broke loose. Quite bluntly the rest of the management team made it clear I should tell the organiser of the event I'd accepted for that I didn't want to go to her (and the adjective used was poxy) Christmas meal - I'd prefer to swan off with the rest of the White Shirts (all 7) for a slap up meal out of town.

So in a spectacular example of cutting off the nose to spite the face I've now said I'm not going to anybody's sodding Christmas dinner. If they can't set aside their differences and their tribalism for one evening, and at Christmas of all times of the year, then I don't bloody well want to sit down to eat with them.

Bah!

Bah Humbug Number One

2006-11-05T16:50:00.000Z

The opening salvos have been fired ahead of the first skermishes of what promises to be the usual War of Attrition. He's already limbering up for the usual excessive drinking, eating and throwing money away on various things utterly useless.

I'm already tensing up in anticipation. This being November it is card writing season, particularly for those abroad. Of the remainder most are within walking distance.

I love doing Christmas cards. I have a lengthy list of people who, for one reason or another I don't have a great deal to do with from one year to another but who never the less occupy a small but nevertheless enduring place in my heart and memory.

I'd also go to church: I put my lacadaisical attitude towards formal observance down to having been raised with such a mixed heritage to draw on, and so much of it conflict-strewen. I'm prone to likening myself to a kid at the sweet counter not sure which sugar and E-number confection to pick. In truth this reflects a characteristic in me also to be observed when I drive into an empty car park and drive about for a good five minutes before deciding where to park.

Hmmn.

I'd also go to church but that would only open up a can of worms so it's a jolly good thing winter has finally and very belatedly turned up. The past week has been a shocking, er, shock to the system (the central heating system, that is) which has had to go to work. Now it looks like snow, though we're too low-lying and southerly to be in for it yet. Anyhow with a bit of luck it will be bitterly cold and I can use that as an excuse to avoid traipsing up the hill.

Last year we went with friends (the same friends we went camping with). I've only just remembered that. Perhaps there won't be conflict and we'll just fall in with them (they'll take their 11-seater so we can get a lift).

And I've again managed to get out of working on Christmas Eve.

So why the Bah Humbug?

Well, I'm already coming under pressure to spend money I don't have. I'm already coming under pressure to consume alcohol I don't particularly wish to drink. I'm already coming under pressure to cook mountains of food we've no serious prospect of consuming. I'm already coming under pressure to purchase and accommodate piles of Stuff! that he has to have, though within day he'll be bored with it and within a week it will either be lost or damaged.

Bah! indeed.

Congratulations are due to

2006-10-29T21:31:00.000Z

Julian Worricker who was the first person I've heard, in discussing that crackpot and his comparing women to lumps of meat - who get themselves raped if they're not wrapped up, to actually point out that as well as displaying a total contempt toward women was actually being quite rude about men.

... and to his guest Paddy ? who promptly agreed.

I meant to post this earlier but got bored with getting that error message and sloped off to do something equally but differently unworthwhile.

Now I'm working my way through a box of Barbeque Shapes and I'm as happy as a ... well you can add your own adage ... but I am making rather a pig of myself.

Night all.

There were errors

2006-10-29T15:13:00.000Z

Here I am talking away to myself (to a more than usually absolute degree) because of some technical glitch or other. You bet there were errors: blah, java, blah, forward-slash, blah

What ever all that techno-babble means; seems that any number of people are currently unable to post. If this goes on much longer I might just have to pick up the telephone or (shock, horror) actually go Out .... and ... Talk to Someone.

Now if only I could remember how. I'm sure I've got an address book somewhere with the names and numbers of all those friends I had before his boorish tendencies became too unbearably distressing.

Why?

2006-10-29T15:08:00.000Z

Given that the English drive cars fueled by petrol, whether leaded or othewise, or LPG or deisel (and very, very occasionally in Highgate and Hamstead and Notting Hill and Chelsea Village a hybrid) why oh why do commentators, when wading into the 'environment/go green/cars and planes are going to be the death of the planet' debate, insist on referring to low mileage vehicles as Gas Guzzlers?

Why?

They're usually the same people who blame the world's environment ills (and most of the others too) on the US.

The New Free Market

2006-10-29T10:31:00.000Z

Benign Self-Interest?

The Sunday Torygraph touts news from the feral fringes - an experiment in local taxation whereby "the nicer the neighbourhood the higher the local taxes you pay". I only read the headlines while buying that other paper (and taking the chance to prime my knowledge of serious current affairs via a scan of the red-tops: for detailed analysis I'd need to actually buy the Torygraph).

My first inclination was to get out and about with a couple of cans of spray paint and tag every brick wall within walking distance, set fire to the local bus shelter, throw a brick through only nearby public telephone and/or rip the hand set out and then set myself up outside the local Tesco express with very loud music from my youth, cheap wine, soft drugs and a generally threatening attitude.

Do you think that will be enough to bring my local taxes under control?

I figure I could go further and super glue car locks, scratch duco, strew my domestic garbage in the neighbours' gardens (they'll thank me when their tax bill nose-dives), um...

Any other inspiring ideas welcome.

Oops

2006-10-27T22:22:00.000+01:00

Only inadvertently picking up on the theme provided by Lily in her comment on my Guy of Gisborne post (and if he does float your thingummy, Big Hint - Don't Drool Over The Keyboard) ...

I was a bit premature with the old button pushing. It seems that his dreams of rolling in unearned stuff are edging closer to realisation and he's got a veritable spring in his step this evening. Thank fully he's sprung off to the pub now and I don't have to gaze down from my Olympian heights at the greed-fired glint in his eye.

Mummy's just about sold her (huge) house preparatory to moving into something smaller and for her almost infinitely more sensible and manageable. He's expecting some dosh now as a down payment on the future inheritance. That's more money to squander. The number and total value of the windfalls he's let slip through his fingers makes me want to weep.

Anyhow that will shake things up a bit if it happens. Of course it could all fall through but if it doesn't I have some chance of recouping the money I earned and which he frittered away (without so much as a by-your-leave let alone a consultation).

dilemmas and other frustrations

2006-10-27T22:05:00.000+01:00

Yesterday evening I went to loads of trouble (really) to knock together a reaction to some numbskull back home. He's a self-appointed community leader who trotted out that threadbare and much derided view that women who aren't covered from head to foot and are outdoors unsupervised are asking for it when they're then raped.

The predicable response flooded in, and it was the tenor of that response which caught my attention. After all the comments I've still to see one man say something like "hang on, I don't like what your suggesting about me here." After all, the explicit contempt for women being expressed here only imperfectly masks an implicit contempt for men.

Anyway the moment has gone and the mood with it and I'm now grappling with (not to say agog at) the spectacle of evidence of subtelty in Dubya. He's reacted to Cheney's answer when asked about dunking in water by saying "we don't torture, we interrogate". That's an answer worthy of Little Johnny and I can't help wondering if our Glorious Leader has been supplementing the meagre stipend provided out of tax revenues for his role as Australian Premier with a little bit of high-fee coaching on the side.

God on yer, wee man. It's a long time till you'll get your next chance to bask in the reflected glory of Australian sporting achievement (and please, please let us not fail to win the Ashes ... I still grimace every time I call to mind the gracelessness with which the Accidental Prime Minister handed over the Rugby World Cup).

Guy of Gisborne

2006-10-25T21:52:00.000+01:00

I wandered over to the BBC web site to half-inch this photograph (I hope that's adequate acknowledgement). Now I can't remember the name of this guy and I certainly haven't watched anything else he's appeared in ... but he isn't bald and he isn't called Keith Allen ... and I think he's rather yummy.

And better yet we had someone turn up at work today who looked so rather like him I just had to hover and enjoy the view for a while.

My navel isn't the only fascinating view from this pew

2006-10-25T00:27:00.000+01:00

England are playing crap cricket just in time for the start of the Ashes. Not excellent. It would be nice to thrash a half decent England cricket team.

Which reminds me I MUST pay my MCC subscription.

Schappelle (Is that enough letters?) Corby has discovered the horrible truth that life inside an Indonesian prison is no picnic - and has decided to build herself a little nest egg by bleating about how awful her existence is for profit. I might be delighted to learn that this incredibly, embarassingly stupid Australian tart can write if I didn't have to assume that a ghost writer (aka schlock journo) had, er, taken a hand.

The british governing body for ob & gynae practitioners has had to back pedal furiously after proposing that very premature babies ie, those born around 22 and 23 weeks not be automatically be registered BECAUSE OF THE EMOTIONAL PAIN SUCH A REGISTRATION CAN CAUSE WHEN THE LIVE BIRTH WAS THE UNINTENTIONAL RESULT OF A LATE TERMINATION.

I do know about Macca vs Mucca.

I also know about the baby buying antics of that ghastly woman who used to prance about in the gaultier bustier.

See, I have been paying attention to all the important stuff

I accidentally watched that Celebrity Dancing thingy on the weekend. Mark Ramprakash has quite a smile on him! How come I never noticed that when he was playing all that test cricket against Australia? Oh, yes....

I was forced to watch the latest episode of the new Robin Hood; so awful, so splendid. And who is that actor who plays Guy of Gisborne? I have to find out. He'll do as a replacement for my ex-lust object who is no longer a public figure.

The Romanians and Bulgarians should be allowed here on the same terms as the Polish. One of the Poles living in this town has just married and is now about to return home with one of my least favourite colleagues. Perhaps if the English let enough of them in they'd clear themselves of peroxided women of a certain age with mouths like Billingsgate fishwives, and slack attitudes of the 'doing the minimum required to keep my job' variety.

Oh, there were a couple of other things

2006-10-25T00:01:00.000+01:00

First of all, he lied. He does it all the time, admittedly, but this was special lying because he gave me a lie I passed on to other people which I then forced him to contradict before those same other people. So they've got his measure more accurately, which is some compensation for what he's put me through since Wednesday.

Secondly his occasional fascinating tendency to display psycopathic behaviour* re-emerged: his apology was all about how he "hadn't thought", and he "hadn't meant to get me into trouble" ... for real awareness he'd have to have displayed some consciousness of the reason why what he did could have got me "into trouble".

He humiliated a whole lot of other, perfectly innocent people. He hasn't said a word about them. He's oblivious to their suffering, all but oblivious to their existence. For him they're agents, pawns; nothing more.

This isn't any consolation at all, really.

*I'm sure I did a post on this but months and months ago. Years ago he gleefully produced one of those Is Your Boss a Psycopath-type questionnaires. For him, the point was that he could tick off so many indicators for his own boss; for me the increasingly compelling point to emerge as he worked down the list was actually how many indicators I could tick off for him. One of the indicators is around self-awareness. Another is around empathy.

.,._(@@)_.,.

2006-10-24T22:54:00.000+01:00

I had to take a step back for a few days and consider what he did. I will never know for certain if he did what he did deliberately and maliciously; I do however know that he is highly intelligent, and it is very, very difficult to see how someone so intelligent could do what he did without having some appreciation of how wrong it was.

It very, very nearly cost me my job and it has certainly cost me what ever faint chance I had of promotion. Which is a bit of a bugger, given the limited options within reach of where I live. It has cost me the regard and respect of colleagues and the trust of my boss; I can't replace any of that.

Of course I'm shaken mostly because I put myself at risk by giving him the ammunition he needed; I guess I will never ever learn how to live safely with him - I suppose that more than anything else is precisely why I must get shot of him. And if it were legal to own a gun I might easily have just walked in and shot the fucker on Thursday night and pleaded temporary insanity based on what he'd done.

Instead we've returned to our world-famous performance art which we call Happy Families.

I'm back, sort of.

Difficult Woman

2006-10-19T23:39:00.000+01:00

This has been a very, very BAD day. The Fat Bastard has been up to his tricks again but he realises he's overstepped the mark and there are all sorts of ramifications which include me being fortunate tonight to still have a job. I need to internalise this. Yes that's me again, not using this blog for the purpose for which I intended it. There you go. If you don't like it you can fuck off to. If you're still reading after that crudity...

I love and leave you with the wise words of the wonderful Paul Kelly* who, for the uninitiated is one of Australia's finest singer songwriters. The only recording I have of this song is by the incomparable Renee Geyer, but I always believe that if one holds a recording by Ms Geyer, one needs no other rendition. Here's the words, if you can, get a recording.

Difficult Woman

A difficult woman
Sometimes hurts her friends when she don't mean to
A difficult woman
Makes it hard for the ones she loves
It's easy to do
She's had to be tough all of her life
So she's built herself a wall
She doesn't know how to trust herself
So it's hard for her to trust at all
A difficult woman needs a special kind of friend

A difficult woman
Swings between shame and pride
A difficult woman
Has strong, strong stuff deep inside
And getting her is no easy affair
It's like working a mine
You'd better prepare to pay the price
If it's treasure you want to find
A difficult woman needs a special kind of friend

And living with her is better and worse
Than living with anyone else
She can be cruel or so kind
Oh you got from heaven to hell
If she got what she wanted
If she got what she needed
She wouldn't be hard to understand
A difficult woman needs a special kind of man

* Actually it is Leaps and Bounds that has the capacity to reduce me to tears, a facility matched tonight by the Fat Bastard, but that only takes me back to territory I currently prefer to avoid. Sweet dreams

Bonkers

2006-10-18T23:36:00.000+01:00

I'm not certain but it looks like my weather pixie thinks it is snowing outside. It isn't. In fact I just walked up to the convenience store wearing nothing but shoes, trousers and think cotton shirt and I was comfortable. She is clearly bonkers.

Those chemicals have got to him

2006-10-18T22:52:00.000+01:00

Bizarre behaviour. If he were female I'd attribute his peculiar behaviour to the hormones, PMT and it being That Time Of The Month.

He's been doing housework. Yes really. Not ordinary housework though, oh no. That involves what my grandfather referred to has Elbow Grease. Elbow Grease = hard work and that is absolutely a No-No on Planet Fat Bastard.

On Planet Fat Bastard when there's housework to be done wait until it demands an heroic gesture and then perform said heroic gesture with the aid of Serious Chemicals*. God alone knows how much ozone he's depleted today, how many centigrade the mean temperature will rise as a consequence of him deploying some unholy chemical cocktail on our kitchen floor and stair case, innumerable are the species that have vanished from the planet in the cause of a clean kitchen floor, the North Atlantic cod stock certainly was obliterated this afternoon.

But we have a clean kitchen floor.

*Let me make it abundantly clear, Ladies and Gentlemen, that the chemicals herein referred to are not by any means general household chemicals of the type or in combinations freely available on supermarket shelves up and down the country. The chemicals to which I refer are INDUSTRIAL grade chemical compounds, no less, and subject to certain constraints as to their distribution and deployment that are not applied to standard grade domestic chemical weaponry.

First things first

2006-10-18T22:40:00.000+01:00

Lurid headlines on this week's local rag: Local Man Trapped in Car Crash...

But Magda's husband was released from hospital this morning and she was at work today. He had been complaining of lower back pain to paramedics while the fire brigade were working to cut him free but the pain now is in the upper back. He's wrenched everything and will be in pain for a while. Fortunately he's young and fit and so he's expected to make a good recovery.

I haven't had the heart to tell him that while I felt great for many years afterwards I can once again feel the pain that is the consequence of breaking three bones in the lower part of my spine when I was 15 years old. And I know that now, it isn't going to get any better.

Inch by inch

2006-10-17T13:04:00.000+01:00

Attaining freedom one piece at a time.

Passport application is now to all intents and purposes complete. I can afford the fee. If there are no further hiccups I'll have a full set of documentation by January and be in a position to go back into the workforce properly rather than fannying around in my current job. A half decent salary will free me to run my life on my terms once again, and once I can do that he can take his crap and please himself with it some place else.

My birthday falls in March and that is now my deadline for a well-paid job. See, no illusions, no assumptions; this won't be easy but the hard work I'll have to put on will definitely be worth it. Among other things I have this morning made another pile on the lounge room floor out of the crap that's been dumped about my house. And if he makes the mistake of getting the hump about it and taking his anger out on her I shall have no qualms about pointing to the slum at the top of the stairs that is also occasionally referred to as his 'bedroom'.

Good news bad news

2006-10-17T00:04:00.000+01:00

I had a visit from a friend of a friend. This older woman had news of my friend who I haven't seen much of since spring for the simple reason that back then she had her first baby who unfortunately was born with a host of serious complications. Most of these had been anticipated due to the wonders of modern medical technology but I have to say that having seen what my friend K and her husband have been through I'm not sure that things are better for people like them than they once were.

A hundred years ago their little girl would have been born and died not long after - and because all of the problems were internal and therefore invisible to the naked eye it would have been put down to 'one of those things' or 'God's Will'. They'd have mourned decently and then got on with the pleasant business of producing another one.

Instead they spent the near entire duration of the pregnancy going up to London to consult one expert after another - one of for the heart, one for this one for that one for the other. And each interpreted the bloods and scans differently. K and her husband got a different spin on things each week and didn't know what to expect.

Then when their little girl was scheduled to be delivered no bed was available. She was born later than planned but still early. She's still in hospital. She's in a hospital closer to home now which means she's been liberated from the high dependency highly specialist London unit which is a vote of confidence. Unfortunately this isn't the first time she's been this close to home. There was a time in late spring early summer when we hoped that she'd be back her before the end of summer. Now we'd like her back for Christmas. Another set back and it will be 'please let her spend her first birthday at home'. K and her husband who have been and will continue to make great parents won't have another one. This has all been too much for them.

On balance though the news about K and hubby and baby was all positive. Then tonight I learned that the husband of a work colleague was in a road accident, a collision with a tractor on a bend on an unrestricted road.

He's in hospital tonight with his wife at his bedside. She isn't English and she has no familiy in this country. Her closest friend is looking after their 18 month old baby tonight; I saw the pair of them and stopped for a chat. The little girl is utterly oblivious to the fact that her father is in hospital fighting for his life; mummy is usually at work in the evenings so in that respect tonight was just a normal night.

Lots and lots to ponder as I go to sleep. Good night. God bless K and S and baby N, and also M and S and their little girl.

Someone elses's problem

2006-10-16T23:35:00.000+01:00

I'd really, really like to write one of those spanking posts you read from time to time that have clearly been put together by very clever and literary people who probably compose thoughtful, incisive pieces as part of their day job and so have lots of practice unlike someone such as me.

I'd write that piece on the chain of cause and effect that has led us to the sorry sitution where UK schools are to have (if some minister has his way) airport-style detectors installed at entrances to reduce the amount of student-on-student and student-on-teacher violence that is currently at worrying levels.

I'd point out that tax-payer provided funds will finance this initiative.

I'd point out that those same tax-payers until they reach a certain income threshold are already clawing back some of their tax in credits calculated and organised by civil servants whose salaries are paid by ... civil servants.

I'd point out that these tax payers are buying their four-year old children their own personal television set which will be installed in the child's bedroom in the tax-payer subsidised council house the family occupies.

I'd point out that these same tax payers, having eaten crap all their lives now require the tax-payer to pick up the dental bill for major rotten-tooth extraction work.

I'd point out that these same tax payers, having eaten crap all their lives (and usually while seated in front of a television filling their brains with crap) are never actually healthy and so are chronically dependant on the National Health Service which is funded by ... the tax payer.

I'd point out that the children of these tax payers, when not actually watching television are being touted about the supermarket with snot running from their noses, leaving streak marks across their filthy chins and necks and clotting on their filthy cheap clothes. And I'd point out that these children, when kicking-off in the supermarket can always be pacified with cheap, E-Number filled crap available at each checkout and at strategically placed impulse points throughout the store.

There's a thread here, but every time I think I've got hold of it, the damn thing slides out of my grasp. I think I'm headed towards a load of tax abolishing that could be funded by abolishing a shed load of civil servants who exist only to administer the redistribution of those taxes leaving everyone having to actually make sensible decisions about their income.

I've long been of the view that Gordon Brown is just about the most cunning bastard that ever walked the planet; a bastard so cunning he'd give Little Johnnie Howard a run for his money at least over a short distance.

Basically Gordon Brown's tinkering with the tax and welfare system have resulted in it being more comfortable than ever for more people than ever as a proportion of the British population to rely on someone else to get them through the shit (but not necessarily out of it - because shit's so warm and provides such a cushioned landing) .

What does this have to do with Knife Detectors? Well these knife-toting thugs in short trousers are getting their ideas about carrying knives from somewhere - and I suspect it just might be from something they've been exposed to like perhaps the television they've got in their room and have had there since they were four years old.

The kids from that age are someone else's problem - TV will take care of them. Then kids grow up and someone else will take care of them. At first that's school, then that's those people who are net contributors to the nation's fiscal balance.

Bitch moan gripe whinge carp whine grouse

2006-10-13T21:38:00.000+01:00

I am so easily distracted ... I went in search of a few additional synonyms and wasted 10 whole, entire minutes of my life on the origins and variations of the name Katherine (having discovered that among the many nearly useless appendices at the back of my dictionary there is one on the subject of names).

I'm at home, alone (the infant is asleep) and if I thought I could get away with watching the entire thing uninterupted I'd put a film on. There are many more annoying things to me than having my viewing pleasure interrupted by his inane drunken witterings, except when he's interrupting my viewing pleasure with his inane drunken witterings.

So instead I'm thinking about stupid things like the fact that when I was in my twenties if a dropped a stone and a half in weight my tits would just about vanish. I'm sure I remember owning [and what's more to the points properly fitting into] a size 34B and wondering if I shouldn't move down to an A. If I put on a bit of weight they might expand to fit a 34C.

Last year when my weight ballooned I got up to a 36D. Phew. Now my weight's back down to 34B/C levels but my tits still require a D cup. It isn't as though they jut out like twin early warning signs that the rest of me is about to arrive. They've just spread. I know someone else who's been contemplating perkings up and now I am ... at least then they'll be in proportion.

There's always someone worse off

2006-10-13T18:01:00.000+01:00

I called those bastards at Carphone Whorehouse yesterday, finally, having given up waiting for them to call me. I called them via the 0800 (freephone) number and so I was almost happy to hang on to innumerable repeats of Thunderclap Fucking Newman....

When I did get past the menu system and have a human on the other end of the line I was perfectly happy to be transferred all around the CPW network, content in the knowledge that this time it would be costing them money.

I can't recommend too highly the SAYNOTO0870.com site. It should be obligatory for those in the UK who want to get one over on the bastards who are only endeavouring to claw back some of the cost of operating a call centre to handle your calls, which you're only making because they're providing an under-investment driven, cut-price service to start with.

Eventually some young thing came on the line.

"I want you to take your lousy phone and your lousy contract and you can stick 'em."

"You can't get out of the contract."

"What the hell do you mean? You lied to me, I agreed to the further contract on the basis of false and misleading information - of course I can get out of the contract."

"In what way were you given false information?"

"First of all I can only contact you - Carphone Whorehouse via an expensive 0870 number; your [fucking] menu system is enough to drive a sane person round the twist; then I have to give it, your [fucking] menu system, highly sensitive personal information [my bank account number]; for my pains and expense I am then subjected to crap music. This isn't customer service. I'm completely pissed off. I made that point when I spoke to some other flunky last Friday afternoon and I was given an undertaking that I'd receive a call from a manager with an apology and an offer of compensation for the way I've been buggered around."

"There's no record of that conversation on your account"

"Why doesn't that [fucking] surprise me! I suppose it goes some way to explaining why no-one's had the decency to call me back. Well I want to speak to someone now about cancelling the contract."

"I'm sorry but that isn't possible."

"You people misled me. I don't want anything more to do with you. You can take your phone back and the SIM which finally arrived. And you can do it at your own expense. "

"In what way did we mislead you."

"Your colleague in Customer Entrapment (aka Loyalty) advised me that the phone would come with new SIM and that isn't what happened. Your colleague in Customer Entrapment told me that the cheque for £150 would be sent in one instalment automatically, but the literature accompanying the 'phone makes clear that the money will be sent in instalments over the course of the contract and only provided I go to the trouble and expense of submitting back to you the bills you've already sent me. How's that for starters?"

"No the cheque will be sent automatically in one instalment."

"You're asking me to believe you over what I have in my hand by way of corporate literature? Don't try and make me laugh, I'm not in the mood."

"Please hold one moment while I confirm that you will receive the cheque automatically."

pause and then "I have confirmed that you were sent the wrong documentation. You will receive the full amount within 60 days automatically."

"I want that in writing."

"I can send you an email."

"I want it in writing, through the post."

"I can send you an email." [Does she have an email fetish, I wonder to myself. How terribly 21st Century.]

"Just put it in the post."

"Can I confirm your address?"

[You have to be fucking kidding - I've given you everything up to but not yet including my cup size.]

"It's blah, blah. But I'm pissed and I want out. Nobody had the decency to call me back. So when will someone be coming out to collect this phone from the address I've just given you. I'm going down to the bank tomorrow to cancel the direct debit. You've probably recovered what you'd otherwise be losing through your 0870 scam."

"I can offer you £20 as a credit on your account, towards the cost of the calls to Customer Entrapment."

"Okay."

That was all yesterday. The correct corporate literature didn't arrive today. If it hasn't arrived by Tuesday I'll be making a further dent in their profitability via their 0800 number.

In the meantime worse news for Carphone Whorehouse than my little who are losing suppliers to High St rivals the way some business shed staff. Speaking of which AOL UK which Carphone Whorehouse acquired yesterday (even as I was telling them what a pile of crap I think they are) has today announced that it is stripping out 20% of its workforce. They don't yet appreciate their good fortune I suppose.

I'n the meantime I've had a look at the OFCOM [UK telecommunications industry regulator] and to my total non-surprise Carphone Whorehouse doesn't have a Code of Practice. Well not one they're prepared to admit to anyway.

I was going to add something more to this story but the smell of roasting chicken is a total distraction so I'll come back and add it when I can concentrate.

In the meantime this is a blog I've enjoyed reading hugely but not got around to adding. As it happens ACW has had an epic confrontation of his own for much the same reason and you can read all about it here.

Wanted: A Winner

2006-10-11T22:10:00.000+01:00

This is absolutely a digression from the really very pressing but currently insoluble problem that might be called "How do you solve a problem like Fat Bastard", sung to the tune of How do you solve a problem like Maria" from the Sound of Music, which I have selected because he particularly dislikes that musical.

I came home tonight to the news that England, Mighty England, managed to secure a 2-0 defeat away against Croatia. There are a lot of grown Englishmen (presumably including everyone within the FA connected with the current Head Coach's appointment) weeping into their cheap and nasty English lager tonight as the godawful truth begins to dawn that the only option on the menu is More Of The Same, which is to say going out in search of a nil-nil draw against any opposition that isn't Faroe Islands*.

Lots of grown men complaining that the men who turned out either were not the right men or they were the right men but they weren't playing in the right position when the simple fact of the matter is that this mob are playing Good Enough football when if they were anything like as good as they could be they'd be crushing the Faroe Islanders* and grinding Croatia into the turf.

The problem seems to be that England's players tend to believe their press. If only they believed that they were no better than anyone else, they'd go out believing that they were playing against equals commanding their respect and they'd play accordingly, they'd play with all their heart.

Professional and personal pride would demand that they'd burst out of the tunnel determined to leave the pitch held in higher regard by the spectators than they'd entered it.

Instead they believe they're infallible Gods, and such is the power of the sporting press in this country they continue to believe it in the face of all the evidence (such as that to be found in the final score-lines of the team's last two competitive matches) to the contrary.

More on the Fat Bastard when I'm in a better frame of mind. Sometimes it's rather pleasant to let my hair down and be fundamentally Australian (ie, sports obsessed).

The fridge shelf saga

2006-10-11T11:09:00.000+01:00

I mentioned in an earlier post that another of the shelves in the fridge has all but given way. Well last night, by way of conversation since he wasn't going to just go away I brought this to the fat bastard's attention. I did this without prejudice which is to say I didn't apportion blame or make accusations or resort to "I told you so." I just made the point that we need now to be more careful than ever about not overloading the poor thing.

His reaction was just beautiful in that it quite perfectly sums up the insane take he has on the world and all its parts.

Yes, why don't I spend a whole morning trying to find someone who can supply me with replacement shelves for the cheap and nasty and now relatively old fridge we've abused for years.

I'm sure I can't think of a single better way to spend my morning.

And what will we do if I can't find a supplier of replacement shelves?

I know what I'll be doing - I'll be listening to endless re-runs of "I don't believe it ... these people are hopeless ... they're pathetic ... how difficult could it be ... why can't they ... and blah, blah, blah.

What he can't envisage is the conversation whatever call-centre operative I speak to during the course of the morning would have with his or her partner when they get home at the end of the shift:

"Oh God I had this woman on the phone today. She bought some cheap fridge, years ago. I mean it isn't as if she's not had her money's worth and now she's acting all surprised when the shelves give way (eventually) and she actually expects us to still make replacement parts for her archaic fridge when it would be cheaper for us to simply supply her with a whole new fridge. Some people!"

Memories are made of stuff like this, I guess

2006-10-10T23:16:00.000+01:00

The Fat Bastard and I have been married for thirteen years, six days and sundry hours. I honestly cannot remember what time of day; couldn't even tell you if it was morning or afternoon.

You can take it as read though that I've known for a long time that he snores. His snores have a particular basso accent that sets panes quivering in their window frames. During the years we occupied the same bed the earplugs were the one thing I absolutely never went to bed without. Other men can have me in nothing but Chanel No 5. (I wish).

After my last post I was pretty much ready to go to bed and put the day behind me. I fiddled around for a bit and then slowly it dawned on me that the background noise had a particularly familiar rhythmic quality to it. I'm on the floor below him and on the other side of the house, in the extension to which sound should not carry efficiently. But I can hear him snoring quite loud and clear.

At first I wasn't certain that it was him snoring. I've not been aware of hearing him from my vantage point before. But then he reached a crescendo and broke off then started again. No doubt about it. That noise is emanating from him. And sometime tonight I'll have to follow him upstairs and try to get some sleep in the room right next door.

Now if only I could remember where I'd put those earplugs.

Memo to self

2006-10-10T22:32:00.000+01:00

This has been a difficult night.

I came home and it was obvious that he'd been drinking heavily. To get himself into the state he was in when I got home he has to consume alcohol in quantities it would be utterly inappropriate to describe as 'heroic'.

He isn't a pleasant drunk either.

As long as he isn't contradicted or criticised, provided his will isn't crossed, he is 'safe', but the alcoholic fog serves as a reminder that he and alcohol create a highly volatile, unstable compound.

I got home at about 21:15. He'd been at home since about 14:00. That's quite a few drinking hours. The problem is at 15:00 he had to go to the school and collect the infant and she was in his care from then until the moment I walked through the door. That's six hours she was with him and at some point he crossed the line from tippling to being well and truly plastered.

In the forty five minutes I had to put up with his company before finally he wandered up to his ~~slum~~ bedroom I had to observe him swaying about the kitchen and listen to his interminable rambling nonsense. Then after he left I had to get down on my knees and scrub clean the kitchen floor where he'd first dropped half the bowl of pasta bake he helped himself to, then trodden it in.

There really isn't anything I can do immediately. This is the first time I've caught him incapacitated while having sole care of the infant. This is the first time I'm aware she's been exposed to him insensate. The danger is that time might pass and the impact of this, the quiet fury I've felt since I got home, will be dimmed. So I'm posting what I found when I got home so that when the time comes I've got it here as a reminder.

Snap

2006-10-10T13:10:00.000+01:00

Our refrigerator is neither particularly large nor particularly 'good' in the sense that the model we have is not at the top of the range of the make we settled on, and it isn't a particularly 'quality' make.

You can take it from this it isn't a smeg or anything fancy dan like that. On the other hand it was cheap and it has been reliable. In fact I think we've probably had the thing six or even seven years.

And it still keeps stuff properly chilled (in the fridge bit) and frozen (in the freezer bit). The problem though is that for years the poor thing has been struggling to handle the culinary dimension of the Fat Bastard's obsession with Stuff!. He can't help himself, he sees stuff and he buys it - and that habit is as true when he's on the loose in a supermarket as it is when he's in a charity shop or Harrods. It's stuff, he's got to have it.

The upshot of this behaviour is that the fridge has been forced to accommodate far more than it was ever designed to hold. For one thing this cramming tends to work against the ability of the unit to keep the contents at the correct temperature. Worse however (in the near future) is the fact that two of the cheap and nasty plastic shelves, which were always the most obvious expression of the 'inexpensiveness' of the fridge, have now cracked. One developed a crack a while ago and is holding together with a bit of packing tape. Yes, I know, but I can't afford a new fridge. Alright? Now, I guess overnight, the bottom (from which the two salad baskets depend) has gone too.

All this in the run up to Christmas when his propensity for over consumption sheds the last of its limited constraints.

ARGHHHHHHHHHHH Now perhaps he'll understand why I've been so 'awkward' about all his food Stuff!

The Get Rich QUICK scheme

2006-10-09T23:28:00.000+01:00

Blue plaque ahoy. The powers that be have contacted his mother and she has reciprocated. A commemorative knees-up to mark the commemorative marquing of the house will take place. Arrangements (including invite list) are being put in place; seems I'm on it. Please, please I win the lottery (I only need half a million quid, and I'll go quietly - promise!). I'll tell the entire show to sit on it and swivel. I don't need a swanky cocktail party thrown by someone else to the memory of some obscure third party to make me feel good about myself.

What I do need is compensation for the flat and car and small savings I had (once upon a time). The figure quoted above takes the losses into account and builds in a modicum of capacity for independence.

In the mean time I'll trudge back up the hill to my day job to earn the money that keeps the roof over our head and the food on our table.

Some small compensation came my way, today. D was back in, flashing that totally indecently gorgeous smile. He's stopped growing upwards and started to feel comfortable with his height which has done him no end of good (not that there was anything faulty with the aesthetic, he just looks so much more grown up). And I've stopped feeling like a child molester every time I think to myself how utterly gorgeous he is.

A nice little earner

2006-10-09T12:01:00.000+01:00

It will cost £5.4billion (and that's a million million) to set up and run a national identity scheme according to a release today by the UK government. Without having seen any of the detail it does strike me that the government hasn't said how much it will cost to track down and prosecute those involved in the manufacture, distribution and (mis)use of fakes. And it hasn't said how much untaxed revenue will be accrued by the manufacturers and distributors which will then be ploughed straight back into the country's economy, by-passing the depredatory Inland Revenue and Customs & Excisemen, in the form of conspicuous consumption.

See, they can't even get their act together and give us a proper economic impact statement.

Get Rich, QUICK!

2006-10-08T22:34:00.000+01:00

The Fat Bastard is forever coming up with what might be classified under the umbrella of Get Rich Quick Schemes ... more often than not they're stupid, occasionally they're rather tasteless, usually they're gone almost as soon as they're thought up. They do however have one characteristic : maximum output for minimum input.

His perennial favourite however is the one called Mummy Dies And I Get the Loot. Right now MDIGL is No.1 favourite topic of discussion because the Fat Bastard has discovered that someone is about to enrich ~~him~~ his mother by about £100,000 by sticking one of those blue plaque things on her house.

Smug Fat Bastard.

Sunday snitch

2006-10-08T19:13:00.000+01:00

I worked today.

I didn't work last Sunday and it was a bit of a shock to discover how boring it was not to work. It wasn't much comfort to discover that the person who covered for me found the whole experience slightly traumatic.

Sunday brings the gossips in and I had a chance to speak with someone who works with the Fat Bastard during the week.

I wasn't, as it happens, all that keen on a conversation on the subject of the Fat Bastard. My housewifely zeal has been met with an equal (or perhaps superior) but opposite force: Fat Bastard in Full Slob Mode. So last night, after he'd fucked off to the pub leaving the dishes undone and after the infant had been shepherded complaining all the way to her bed I came downstairs and gathered up all the crap the pair of them had dumped during the course of the day into a pile in the centre of the lounge room floor.

When the Fat Bastard came down stairs this morning, as I was getting ready to go to work upstairs, he got his first glimpse of this pile and he wasn't best pleased if the slamming of doors was anything to go by. Presumably he hadn't seen the pile last night (or early this morning) through the alcoholic fog by that time surrounding him.

So obviously I'd made a mistake ... picked the wrong day. Because the infant by the time I came downstairs to intercede was sitting on the floor huddled in her dressing gown looking completely distressed.

I did my best for her. Once he realised that his gargantuan sulk had accomplished its end - which is to say I was now feeling like a wreck for having had the temerity to point out to him that his habits disgust me - he was perfectly happy, charming and reasonable; and quite safe to leave the infant with.

I knew that this was happening: slam enough doors and I'll grovel and let him believe I've come to realise how much in the wrong I was to call him up for anything. It is his standard grade tactic for evading responsibility for his own actions.

Anyway, I wasn't in the mood for anything by the time I got to work. The day was slow though and I fell into conversation with his colleagues who happened to be in.

Seems back on Monday the Fat Bastard's boss went out into the back office and lost his temper at the state the Fat Bastard keeps his section in - I'm told the boss swept all the crap off the shelving and desk space onto the floor and kicked it about. Funnily enough, while he's usually all to keen to share his Boss's idiosyncratic behaviour with me I didn't hear diddly about this incident.

I guess he's feeling rather put upon at the moment, poor lamb!

Sexy beast stuff ... which will make it clear how bored I am

2006-10-07T18:27:00.000+01:00

My new sexy beast comes with a long sleek manual. To the disgust and frustration of the Fat Bastard and the Infant who both wanted to play I insisted on turning first to the manual. It comes with three pages of lay out drawings, two pages of manufacturer guff, a two page table of contents, a two page menu layout and then twelve (12) whole pages given over to safety warnings.

I now know that my phone contains a transmitter and receiver and that it both receives and transmits Radio Frequency Energy (when it is switched ON).

There follow two pages of dire warnings of the consequences of tampering with the phone or using it other than in the manner intended or with approved manufacturer-provided accessories: "When placing or receiving a phone call, hold your phone as you would a fixed line phone."

Then there's stuff about not using the thing in hospitals when directed to turn it off, to obey the instructions of airline staff, to be very careful if you've a pacemaker or a hearing aid (or some other unspecified medical devices.

Then we get to the phone and driving. The fact is driving while attempting to much else besides breath in and out is potentially lethal (though not breathing in and out would almost certainly be lethal too). Banal conversations are normally safe but contentious or complex conversations by their very nature demand concentration and are distracting and therefore not conducive to safe driving; something that holds true whether the co-conversationalist is sitting beside one or on the other end of a phone line.

So the point isn't or shouldn't be what the law says but what is right (though I can't object to the injunction to Always Obey The Law). The trouble is the manual says "give full attention to driving and the road" but then proceeds to imply that it might under certain circumstances be safe to hold a conversation using the phone while driving [hands-free, of course].

Quite amusingly on the following page the manual goes on point out that airbags inflate with great force and anyone being stupid enough to keep their phone over the airbag outlet is likely in the event of that airbag inflating to be injured.

There's more after that about petrol stations and other potentially explosive atmospheres (such as the inside of boats and grain silos). Then under the headline Blasting Caps and Areas there's a warning about using the device near electrical caps or in areas that (again) with warning signs and yet again there's a warning to Obey All Signs and Instructions.

The manual then turns to the battery and much of the following six and a half pages is given over to their use, charging, storage and disposal. Somewhere in the midst there's a brief piece on repetitive strain-type injury.

I'm now going to sleep of the strain of getting to the point in the manual wherein it explains how to place or receive a call.

Sexy Beast

2006-10-07T09:02:00.000+01:00

Yes the phone's gorgeous (it did arrive yesterday in the late afternoon when it was no longer raining quite hard enough to flood us out).

By that time the offspring had been given weekend release and the Fat Bastard was back from work so I didn't have a chance to savour my phone in privacy.

Immediately it became clear that I'd been misled: no SIM card with the phone. I'd been told by the sales person (Chris) that I'd spoken to at one point towards the end of the grisly process that I'd get a new SIM card accompanying the new upgrade phone. In my not at all humble opinion it is reasonable to interpret the word 'accompanying' to mean 'travelling together' and thus arriving at the same time.

After getting myself suitably steamed up by reading the fine print I dialled their damned 0870 number again and settled down to endure interminable Thunderclap Newman again.

By way of ensuring that I was in the ideal frame of mind for the conversation I was about to have I made my way to Customer Loyalty via the Carphone Warehouse's diabolical menu which culminates with a demand for sensitive personal information. I had thought that by providing bank account details to The System the previous day and resetting the PIN I'd surrendered to The System and given myself over to it. But no - to my fury I was required once more to provide that information. By the time I had another human being on the other end of the line I was once more ripe for murder. Ever time he opened his mouth to apologise I gave him another barrel load of complaint.

Before long he was emailing 'management' with what he told me was details of my complaint and request for further compensation but what was probably a plea to be rescued.

I haven't even finished yet. Those mendacious bastards at Carphone Warehouse (and particularly the representative Kate I dealt with in regard to the upgrade) claimed that the cheque would be sent 'automatically' and three months after the contract renewal. But according to the literature the cheque isn't sent as one lump sum but in three instalments, and isn't sent automatically but rather has to be claimed by sending off copies of the previous four monthly bills or statements.

The young lad who had the misfortune to deal with me yesterday afternoon took details of telephone number and times I'd be available to discuss further compensation with someone from 'management'. And added that if I haven't heard from anyone by Tuesday morning the deal's off and they can send their bloody courier to take the whole bloody lot back again at their own expense. By my calculation that should claw back from their bottom line what ever profit they've made from my calls to their bloody 0870 number.

Ironically I'd only been reading this week about the website SAYNOTO0870.COM but due to the publicity it has been receiving in the media it has been difficult to reach. This morning I've been able to get through and now I'm armed with a freephone number (assuming it does work) so no more profiteering from my misery for Carphone Warehouse. Bastards.

But even better

2006-10-05T11:55:00.000+01:00

In the end I only posted the bit about the Canadians for the record. They've already been overtaken in the race to be top of my 'call-centre menu driven psychosis-inducing' shit list by Carphone Warehouse who are suppliers to Me of mobile telephony services - but it has cost them! Hee hee.

I phoned to cancel my contract which rolled on for years and years due the wonder of nature that is inertia.

I finally got off my backside and rang their customer 'service' number which is 0870 111 7200 (in case the call to the Canadians hasn't done the job). I immediately entered a nightmare world of looping menus and unanswerable questions, abrupt cut offs and demands for highly sensitive personal information - over and over and over again.

Hideous Tesco really needs to get its act together if it is even going to retain a place in my Shit List Top Ten.

CPW wants your telephone number and then a pin number and then a bank account number and then, when you've given them all that and your cup size they still haven't got the menu item you need so you get put through to someone else and get to listen to Fucking Thunderclap Newman, alternating with some anodyne faux-jazz piece. There was something in the air alright and it was mostly very blue.

Round and round and round I went and never did I get anywhere near then end and then, suddenly it all seemed to magically disappear and I had a very helpful young lady on the other hand who put me through to Customer Loyalty who bribed me with a new phone and a check for £150.00 to stay with them for another year on a tariff that is less than half that I'm currently paying. Now you know what my scruples are worth and how very easily I can be bought.

Funnily enough a colleague had told me of doing something similar for her son - calling towards the end of a contract to end it and getting a new phone and some money back too. I might be on to a nice little earner provided I don't forget to call them at the end of the year.

The tariff is cheap because it is rather nasty but the phone I'll be taking delivery of tomorrow is unlocked so I can stick my alternative pay as you go card in it and use that rather than their 'won't cost you too much as long as you only text - or ring subscribers to the same network between 8pm and 10pm on the second Thursday in the month provided it happens after the Full Moon in that Month' plan [which also comes with some fine print which I shall go over when I get the phone.]

I switched back to the old network sim card and promptly put the wrong code in twice and rang them back (do I have a death wish?) for help. The twit I spoke to told me to put the number in a third time as she'd then give me the unlocking code. When that didn't work she got her supervisor involved who advised me that for £15.00 I could have a new SIM card.

Not unreasonably I huffed at this. I'd only blocked the card at her underling's direction and now they were to sting me for a replacement. The underling 'fessed to her gross error in not telling me before hand that I'd be incurring a charge so the Supervisor directed me to sales who would be able to credit my account for the £15 so that a card could be sent to me at no charge.

At this point let me stress that I'm inventing NONE OF THIS.

Sales initially tried to unblock the card again then went into a bit of a conflab, then came back with "you said you're getting a new phone tomorrow?" something I'd mentioned at the start of a sentence that ended with 'and I'd really like to able to use the thing'.

Them: What sort of phone is it? Is it an upgrade?

Me: Yes

Them: What model?

Me: Er (rapidly thinking do I know anything about it other than it qualifies me for £150 back and takes photos?)... it's a Motorola ... 'Thingummy'

Them: Do you mean Motorolo 'whatever'.

Me: Oh yes, that's it..

Them: Well it comes with a new SIM card.

Me: Right, so I'll be without a phone for 24 hours but then all will be ok?

Them: Yup. And it will be your old number. You could stick a thousand sim cards in it and it will be your old number.

Me: Fine. Thanks for your help. Bye

Phone down.

Me thinking: But my PAYG SIM card is a different number. Have I just been screwed? Update when my new Motorola Whatever (black, takes photos) arrives tomorrow.

On the other hand

2006-10-05T11:42:00.000+01:00

Yesterday there was a thumping at the door from my very pleasant but rather alarmingly muscular post-lady with a big buff envelope I had to sign for. I could only think of one thing that would be coming to me by registered post and I wasn't expecting that for months so I was a bit mystified. But the envelope was undoubtedly addressed to me so I signed for it, brought it inside, flipped it over and discovered that it was from the people I wasn't expecting to hear anything from for ... oh ... maybe even a good year or two if they really took their time.

Hats off to IND who have excelled themselves, turning my application for a visa renewal around in less than the minimum turn around being quoted on their web site.

Public servants are all too often derided as work-shy sponging layabouts (and all too often they're worth the criticism), but someone did a fine job of work and whoever you may be I salute you.

Bloody Canadians

2006-10-05T11:30:00.000+01:00

Approach 1: You might be labouring under the misapprehension that Canadians [and in what I'm about to say, bear in mind I carry a Canadian passport] are nice people. Never mind the debate about whether or not that perception is even remotely reasonable; consider instead do they really exist. You sure as hell don't get to speak to a fucking Canadian fucking human being if you call the fucking Canadian ~~Head Office~~ fucking High Commission in fucking London. Yes I got a bit wound up.

My alternative approach was: Do you really hate someone enough to have them phone the Canadian Consulate in London and request a copy by post of their wretched Passport application form?

And in the middle of wanting to strangle someone (thankfully I was on my own in the house when I was calling these people yesterday) the woman would start droning on in that oouutrageous French-Canadian of hers and reduce me to laughter. I call that cruel. Only the context enabled me to comprenez 'besoyne' and 'passpart'.

If you have someone you truly loathe and would like to send loopy the telephone number for the Canucks in London is: 020 7258 6600 (or from abroad +44 20 7258 6600).

The single, solitary positive aspect of this experience is that they don't have a 0870 number to fleece people with. Very sporting of ~~them~~ us.

Bombs away

2006-10-02T11:24:00.000+01:00

I don't think that the Fat Bastard is quite sure what's hit him, though he's in no doubt he's been thumped.

I've been a very, very busy girl. He can't see yet where this is leading and I'm looking forward to the moment what that does dawn on him. More bags of crap than I could count have I decanted from this house in the past week, along with several boxes of books. The difference this has made to the feel of the house is impressive though I've barely begun. Before the end of the year the amount of 'stuff' in this house will be reduced by about 90% and he'll by no means be the only 'victim' of this. By Christmas this house will feel Big rather than Suffocating.

I've picked through the summer clothes that are realistically not going to get much further wear this year. The very best stuff can go away for now; some of the remainder has already gone, the rest will follow next rubbish collection day.

Of the clothes that have come out of storage those that don't fit (I've lost over a stone in weight since the spring) will go rather than hang around just in case I put that weight back on. I'll just have to keep it off. If that doesn't reduce my stock of clothes to manageable proportions then I'll just have to do something else. If all else fails I'll roll a dice. The problem isnt' with my shoes and handbags, of which I have actually very few - a couple of pairs of boots, a couple of pairs of dress shoes, a couple of pairs of work shoes (the summer footwear has been mothballed along with the clothes).

On top of that I've done one of the gardens - pruned and weeded and turned over the soil. On Friday I'll pop out to the garden centre and pick up some winter colour which the Infant and I can plant out after school. I also picked up the bits of the dismantled pool that he left lying about and put them away in their storage box. Unfortunately the liner is still lying in a dirty heap at the bottom of the hole in the yard - I couldn't quite bring myself to grapple with it. I know that such squeemishness is unbecoming in a 50 foot tall Greek Goddess but, well, it is absolutely filthy and filled with pockets of nasty green water.

The plan now is to finish the hole and then turf over it so that it will still be there next year. He also wants to move the washing line from the other garden to this one. Let's examine how his proposition would work: we move the washing line, which in this country can only be used for a handful of weeks in July and August, relocating it to the same patch off garden we've just redeveloped for the swimming pool (which can only be used for a couple of days in July and August).

The man's capacity for making stupid decisions is limitless.

The roses are pruned which may or may not be a good thing for them. I've no idea about roses except that mine seem to flower all year round if left to their own devices which strikes me as odd. I thought that roses were delicate things that needed to be pruned and mulched and shielded and blah, blah. Oh well.

Enough of this nonsense. I must away to work. Perchance to meet my dream baby.

The Fireworks Display

2006-10-01T22:56:00.000+01:00

At approximately 1935 hours the family straggled in from its visit to the metropolis. At the time I was engaged in the labourious exercise of transferring the numerous black sacks of crap I'd evacuated from the house up the lane to the furthest point the council-employed refuse collectors will venture.

After waiting until I'd moved all but one back of crap and one back of newspapers and the actually newspaper recycling receptacle the Fat Bastard stepped in and very heroically carried the receptacle to the top of the lane.

Then, after donning heavy-duty boots and coats we set off for what was until very recently the town's playing field for the ~~pyromaniac's~~ pyrotechnician's display. And alas at the corner where until this morning had stood the board promoting this evening's 'specacular' stood a board making somebody's apologies. To the great sadness of the town's children (and relief of every adult and animal within a jolly good radius) the extravaganza had been cancelled due to that had the scribe been up to the task would have been described as inclement weather.

Oh well, there's always the Fifth of November. Remember that?

We live in hope

2006-10-01T16:43:00.000+01:00

In the past half hour we've had thunder, lightening and great chunks of ice pelting down - note, not hail (neat little white spheres of ice) but genine chunks of ice; some cubed, some looking like the chippings from an ice-climb. In fact the temptation as I watched my garden turn white from the safety of my kitchen was to nip out (under the protection of an umbrella, of course) to gather up a bit.

Of course the best thing about this dramatic weather was the delay to this afternoon's festivities but the sky has cleared and the racket has set up: sadly it looks as if I will now have to go out and watch the tawdry bloody fireworks display that marks the absolute end of this long, drawn out week.

issed Off!

2006-09-30T21:11:00.000+01:00

From my earlier list of trials in the wake of Carnival week I omitted pick-pockets and those parasitic purveyors of gaudy gimcrack.

Enough alliteration already.

gimcrack, jim'krak, n. [Probably from Prov.E. gimp, gim, neat spruce and old crack, a pert boy; originally applied to a boy.] A trivial piece of mechanism; a toy; a pretty thing.

Clear evidence that God does exist

2006-09-30T21:06:00.000+01:00

and has a wicked sense of humour.

The whole tawdry cavalcade set out at about 7:30pm. The outriders had very nearly reached the summit of the hill we're on and could see the finishing line ... the vanguard were rolling out ... and the heavens opened.

Fab excuse for me to slink back to the warmth and dry. Only another twelve months until the whole bloody circus starts up again.

Happy Days

2006-09-30T10:28:00.000+01:00

We're in the midst of carnival week, the town's autumnal knees-up. Somewhere, sometime ago, a girl in her mid-teens was plucked from the crowd to be carnival queen and a handful of younger cuties were offered the consolation prize title of carnival princess. In consequence mum and dad get to shell out for a posh frock, or the refurbishing of a second hand posh frock.

I believe the idea might initially have been to reward some particularly community spirited young woman of comely appearance for fund raising work or some other form of public endeavour; in lean years when such a suitable candidate fails to come to the fore the title goes to the mayor's best friend's daughter or whoever else can agitate most effectively in favour of their own particular precious.

The totally committed get to work with the grey matter (hopefully) and ingenuity and dexterity to produce a more or less compelling 'float' and supporting costumery.

In the mean time a few auxialliary events are staged ... or so it is rumoured; this is a town of seven thousand strung out along one main road that follows the course of a river. How hard could it be to publicise the carnival fringe?

At the beginning of the week the fair rolls into town. No side show freakery these days; instead we get loud, loud music, lots of light and frantic movement. We get endless Eye of the Tiger and other similar thumping 'classics'. We get the stench of very cheap food being cooked very, very badly. We get flashing lights, relentless movement, spun sugar, rip-off rides and a foetid atmosphere in which underage drinkers and police play a game of cat and mouse in the midst of families impelled to the field by the incessant demands of wide-eyed children.

The children don't see the mercenary glint in the eye of the unwashed, illiterate community that operates the fair. The children cannot sense the total contentment of these people - to spend their lives touring the country. The children don't see the lank, greasy unwashed hair, the pock-marked skin, the sunken cheeks and eyes, the black teeth, the scraggy beards, the pallid complexion, the dirty nails, the smell of body odour and unwashed clothing.

These ghastly people are a breed apart happy to spend their lives apart - moving from community to community, sucking all the potential before leaving. They put nothing in at all except ofr an uplift in the shoplifting problem for the duration of their stay. And they breed like fucking rabbis.

In their wake we have a destroyed playing field - they've driven their heavy vehicles onto it in autumn, and over the course of the fair the thousands of people who visit will finish what they start.

I loathe the funfair.

Tonight the floats and the costumed will gather as the sun goes down and parade through town collecting for a range of good causes; with the rest of town we'll be there to cheer them on and put a bit into the collection bins. Then tomorrow I'll go out and help clear up the mess that's been left behind.

Okay, Joy's dead. Who shall I slay next?

Speed cameras?

2006-09-29T23:29:00.000+01:00

Three times today I've had to listen to (male) correspondents advocating their removal from the armoury of the law.

The fact is all roads have a speed limit. All drivers (with certain limited exemptions related to emergency services and select individuals) are required to observe these speed limits at all times. These speed limits are absolute maximums; prevailing conditions may from time to time dictate that a lower speed is the safe maximum.

It is manifest that a campaign is underway in this country to remove speed cameras from our roads. The problem seems to be that they cause drivers to be too concerned, too abruptly with the presence in the near vicinity of a camera.

Intriguingly the proponents of the new camera-free world seem to advocate a return to placing greater emphasis on human patrolling of driver behaviour. It strikes me that human patrolling could be entirely random and unpredicatable and more tightly focussed on emerging hotspots than is possible with static speed cameras.

So let's abolish these static speed cameras.

Let's revert to a regimen under which drivers can only be caught breaking the speed limit on a particular stretch of road entirely unpredictably and randomly.

Yes human patrolling has a part to play in this but let us also deploy speed cameras (but without the advance promotion).

How the hell do speed cameras impact on the quality of driving skills? That's the latest hoary chestnut to be floated (do chestnuts float?) by this lobby group.

The fact of the matter is that these people lack the balls to set out what it is they really want which is the abolition of fixed speed limits. They know, and I know too, that the safe maximum on any given stretch of road fluctuates according to a variety of factors that includes: the skills of the driver, the vehicle being driven, the time of day, the light, the weather and the traffic conditions.

The fact they will not acknowledge is that the law cannot be drafted to account only for what might (for the sake of argumement) be referred to as "the highest common denominator".

So perhaps we should reset the speed limits for the maximum safe speed under the worst conceivable conditions (the M25 being a parking lot is exempt) and fine the complete and utter crap out of anyone who has the temerity to drive even a mile per hour over that maximum. Provided traffic plod in their supercharged mini metros can catch them. OK?

No. I for one will not stand (or even sit down and type) for a two tiered driving population.

What would I do

2006-09-24T22:17:00.000+01:00

If I were to be offered a half-decent paying job, but one that required more flexibility of me than I can currently offer.

Anyone who thinks it is easy to be a two wager earner family when your both earning a low salary is a complete jackass.

Right now I'm getting the faintest sniff of a better paid and more demanding job than the one I'm currently in. It might seem perverse to be seeking a promotion or groping towards some semblance of a career when what I really want is a couple of one-way tickets to Melbourne, but this just might make sense.

My former career is effectively dead in the water, way beyond resurrection. Successs was based on being there, in the mix and I've been out of it too long now to be credible in the job market. Sayonara Super Salary.

Somehow, though, I have to make a way of supporting the two of us once the Fat Bastard has finally buggered off, so that means making something new, and this might just be it. It's something I've some aptitude for. An opportunity might be opening up for me and I have to decide how to play this. It could mean more than doubling my present salary and putting myself onto a career path, but I'd have to sacrifice the Fat Bastard to do it.

I've no objections to doing that, needless to say, but I can well imagine if this opportunity were presented the objections he'd raise. Because we'd be back to me working and him doing the child bit. Specifically he'd have to do either the waking/taking or the collecting/feeding end of the school run. Which days he'd be doing what would be variable both within a week and from one week to the next and he'd have no chance to develop much in his own right. He'd be free to work within school hours but that would be it.

From his point of view not having to work (much) would be a bargain ... except that it would look suspiciously like me taking a step closer to independence. He's one of those cunning individuals who can feel an ill-wind a mile off...

This is going to take some finesse and delicate salespersonship. Ever heard of a 50 foot tall and bloodthirsty Greek Goddess with a side-line in finesse? Me neither!

Variation on an Enigma

2006-09-21T23:41:00.000+01:00

Or something.... I was all fired up for a bit of housework this afternoon. I swept up the detritus of our lives that has accumulated indoors over the last few days and put it into a black sack with the usual rubbish. I put the newspapers together for the paper recycling collection, I put the glass together for the glass recycling collection... and I got told off.

Those (yes, elegant) cider bottles "I'm keeping" because the Fat Bastard has a Dream... he wants to go into business making ******, and he's going to put the ****** into those bottles (presumably washed first) and sell it thus to the general public.

Never mind the how, and when and where of the production, the necessity for a certain level of hygiene (so far an alien concept to him based on all the evidence he's offered). It's the overall when of this that really is getting on my tits. I've got jars and racks in the garden, baskets in the under-sink cupboard, labels and plastic bags in the lounge (not food-grade, you should understand) and more bottles somewhere out of sight [where has he put them?]. Now I've got used cider bottles that I'm not allowed to throw out.

When I'm shot of this fucker I'm shot of everthing. I'll make a calculation down to the nearest knicker, bra, sock, piece of paper, knife, fork, plate, glass, cup, mug, bowl and so forth and so on and the rest is the property of the first person to turn up and make a claim. Anything we can live without we will leave behind.

Up, up and then back down to earth

2006-09-21T16:16:00.000+01:00

I have fits of enthusiasm for my job. I tend not to worry about this a great deal, as they tend to pass quite quickly. My current fit of enthusiasm has coincided with final confirmation that another of the admin. staff who has been on maternity leave will not now be returning.

From a financial point of view this has been good news for me... I've been working a lot of extra hours per week since her leave began and I've now been offered those hours on a long term basis. So that's my hours up, and we still need an extra body so I can push to get my weekends back.

Another colleague who is struggling with endometriosis and stress related to the fact that she's in a job she absolutely loathes got married almost three weeks ago (remember my big night out on my first ever Hen Night?). Well she was due back on Tuesday, but instead she phoned in ill. Then when she dropped in the note about her illness she added, almost as an afterthought, that she had decided to quit and was therefore handing in her 'notice'.

Immediately I went another notch up the ladder, oh to the heady heights of deputy chief paper-pusher.

Then the following morning (yesterday) she decided that she isn't actually depressed and she's withdrawn her resignation and I'm back down at the bottom of the ladder.

Oh well.

A Score Draw...

2006-09-20T22:52:00.000+01:00

The most pressing concern, the most important thing going on in my life right now, is getting the extension of my visa. That might strike you as odd, but I can't jettison us (the Infant and Me) out of this from an unstable platform, or rather it might be possible but I'm just not made the right way to take that approach to life.

That said the application's in, the fee's paid, the HO has accepted my application. All's well. I just have to bide my time as the application wends its way through The System.

Except that this morning, and right as I was getting into my stride on the housework front the post arrived - one item, hand addressed but on a business envelope and from Sheffield (which is in the big Ooooop North for the benefit of the uninitiated). Needless to say I was intrigued. Then then I flipped the envelope to find a printed sticker return address that also 'rang bells'.

Inside a letter from the HO asking for an original of a document I was ready then to swear I'd sent to them with my application.

To a chorus of much blue language I dug out my 'file'; sifting through it I found the copies of the documents I'd included. At that point I rang the telephone number given and eventually (after much languishing against the kitchen cupboards to strains of Vivaldi) spoke to human being. After much explaining she put me on hold and when she came back she rather proudly announced that she'd spoken to the person who had written to me.

He was insisting that the document was not among the things I'd submitted but would call back. As it happens I was running out of time to get washed and dressed and up to work by this time; she said she'd get him to call me back tomorrow when I would be at home all day.

In the fullness of time I arrived at work to learn that the signatory had phoned work and would be phoning back in a while.

When he did, and to give him his due he did (and was polite), he insisted that the document he wanted was among the papers I'd sent and also not on the list of documents I'd given them.

I was equally insistant at I'd copied it along with all the other documents and sent the original. He told me not to panic, and if I couldn't find the original, send him a copy. The irony for me was that the document he wanted was the one piece of paper I could send him is actually HO issue.

Tonight and in less of a panic I've gone back through the papers and found the photocopy to send him - and then I've been through the papers one more time for luck and found the original.

Damn.

Still the little paper shuffler had three attempts within the first quarter of a page to spell my life correctly and got it correct once (in the salutation) - with two alternatives (in the address and the subject)

I might not be perfect but neither is he. This is called a score draw, I believe.

No idea

2006-09-18T23:34:00.000+01:00

I got up this morning, took a long look at the house and then decided I'd be best of going back to bed.

Unfortunately I couldn't ... the infant can't yet get herself up, dresssed, breakfasted and to school without some 'encouragement' and assistance. So I hauled myself about the place endeavouring all the while not to see the writing on the wall (and the detritus on pretty much every other surface - three people and a cat live in this house; one spends all her time cleaning up after the other two and driving herself nuts in the process)

I worked at home this morning then took myself off to the job that actually pays ...

By the end of that eight hour shift I was in no mood to be entertained by any amount of Green Bombs, though the story about the chinese bloke who had a 10" penis grafted on to replace an original lost in an industrial accident - only to have it amputated a fortnight later at the request of his wife did capture my attention for a nanosecond or three.

This week's highlights include a senior teacher at my daughter's school coming in and in her pathetically plaintive voice insisting that her card had been cloned in our store back in January so she was very, very, very distressed that when the chip and pin system fell over on the weekend we'd taken her card away so as to obtain transaction authorisation manually.

Baseless allegations of card cloning are so welcome when delivered in the middle of the shop floor. Just what we need to bolster consumer confidence.

Then we had the jerk with his arm in a sling and his trousers at half mast. He's been around a lot and I only learned tonight that he's been issued with a banning order - not for theft but for abusive behaviour. Sure enough he was on form tonight. Foul mouthed and threatening towards one of my colleagues he was run out and then reported to the police who tonight have him in custody.

The pustule covered yoot from last week was in again but since he hasn't yet received his banning order I could only stand helpless as he came in and, being fair, purchased what ever it was he wanted.

The clown prince tonight was the thug who slipped in and got to the drinks aisle where he gathered up a bottle of what later turned out to be Southern Comfort. He headed out of the drinks aisle in the wrong direction and I managed to catch him attempting to slip out the other exit (with the bottle in his back pack)

He can expect a banning order as soon as we can get one drafted up and get around to his home (he lives next door to the grandmother of the shop floor staffer who spotted him - OOPs).

After all that I got home and the Fat Bastard was in one of his droning moods.

In all honesty no amount of good news from caring, kind sensitive bomb makers or foolish chinese could amuse me so I'm off to bed.

Good night.

Almost entirely pointless Shit post

2006-09-17T23:39:00.000+01:00

Pig Shit stinks. That's a fact. It smells worse than the excrement of another person's baby. It smells far, far worse than cow shit or chicken shit.

Pig shit is diluted and used as fertiliser in these parts and right now the aroma of dilute Pig Shit hangs over the entire peninsula like a cloud of blowflies over a carcass.

For fertiliser nothing beats chicken shit.

A friend of mine called Jackie was into all kinds of eco-friendly stuff long before it became fashionable. Essentially she wanted to be the lady of the manor (she's english) on a typical Melbourne suburban quarter-acre block. And since that wasn't possible she cribbed as far as possible from the Good Life (that might not translate for American readers, a sit com set in Surbiton, London featuring an ad-agency exec and his wife who drop out in suburbia and live off the 'land')

Then one year Jackie and her husband Phil planted some corn. Phil dutifully fertilised the ground with Chicken Shit. Somehow or other and due to a domestic misunderstanding this fact was lost and the same patch of ground was refertilised with Chicken Shit. When the corn matured they were about twelve feed tall and bounteous.

And the smell in the meantime was bearable.

And the corn that came forth was wonderous, as I can testify 'cos I ate some.

Now I warned you this was a pointless Shit post, didn't I!

Why the British Empire declined and fell...

2006-09-17T23:03:00.000+01:00

Here we go ... the article titled "Watch out Sarge! It's environmentally friendly" fire can be read here. I only include this link so that you can see I'm not making it up. The gist of it for those who can't be arsed is that BAE which is the UK's and one of the world's largest Killing Machine developers and manufactures is going eco-friendly (or will die trying). Pardon me while I die laughing

The company's initiative is being backed by the Ministry of Defence which itself wants "quieter warheads" to reduce noise polution and Grenades That Produce Less Smoke.

The article claims that experiments have been conducted to see if explosives can be turned into manure. Surely it would be cheaper to go into the manure making business more directly either by sitting at desks and producing shit or, um, going into the pig* farming business.

The promulgator-in-chief of all this crap (no pun intended) is a certain Dr Debbie Allen who is quoted in the article as saying that "it was important to consider the environmental product of all products".

I bet she enjoyed drafting that. But not as much as she enjoyed putting together the following: "Weapons are going to be used and when they are, we try to make tham as safe for the user as possible, to limit collateral damage and to impact as little as possible on the environment.

It seems that in BAE-World people (and their possessions) are in some way divorced from or otherwise entirely separate from The Environment.

Geez. All this green advocacy has got us to the point where the environment matters in its own right rather than because we humans, whether we like it or not, are part of an infinitely and intricately interlocked eco-system.

More progress.

In BAE-World we will have:

bullets with lower lead content because "lead used in annunition can harm the environment and pose a risk to people"
armoured vehicles with lower carbon emissions
weaponry with fewer toxins (no more volatile organic compounds or other hazardous and often carcinogenic chemicals
safer (yes, that's safer) artillery
energy saving measures and recycling

In its entirety this is predicated on the assumption that we need such weaponry, when the reductio ad absurdum of the green argument is that we should all retrench to fisticuffs.

To the Brits who are frantically endeavouring to be all things to all people simultaneously I say: "make up your minds". If you wish to continue to be something like a significant military power, fine. I'm not a citizen/subject. It isn't any of my business.

But for fuck's sake and just this once do it properly. If you must design bullets, focus first on the primary object which is the termination of the target. If you must build bombs, make sure that the crap really is blown out of what ever they're dropped on. If you must rampage across what ever environment, make sure that your primary objective is achieved and concern yourself with the exhaust fumes only when material issues have been resolved.

Stop fannying around - that's how the empire was lost.

Your caring sharing artillery manufacturer

2006-09-17T00:08:00.000+01:00

What do you look for in an armaments producer?

Personally I look for financial ruin, but that ain't likely to happen anytime soon. I've been in a foul mood since about 1:00pm of what is now yesterday and in need of amusing.

Thanks to tomorrow's newspaper I'm now in a fabulous mood. I feel so much better for knowing that some death peddling corporation or other has been ploughing some of its ill-gotten gains into R&D into environmentally sensitive weapons of mass destruction.

Look out for a lead-free bullets which will be next slaughter season's must-have accessory; so much kinder to swans and other vulnerable birdlife. And the next generation of ballistic missiles will be far quieter as they travel overhead on their way to wrecking death and destruction somewhere or other, thereby causing far less noise pollution en route.

These days very very few stories cause me to check the date but this one did. It is right up there with my favourite April Fools news stories, but it isn't one - it should be. It is simply fabulous. I only heard the gist (at least I hope I got the gist) during a preview of the main stories in tomorrow's (now today's) papers.

Any further developments and a link to the actual story will follow in due course.

Bad mood post

2006-09-16T23:00:00.000+01:00

I've been at work since lunch-time come home and all the Fat Bastard wants to do is talk.

He has this incredible knack of waiting until I've come to the conclusion that he's finished droning on, and turned to something more interesting (growing grass, drying paint), before starting up again in this voice which brooks no shutting out... And despite the fact that he's monopolised my attention for half an hour I couldn't tell you a damned thing he said at me.

Work was a complete bitch today; so much so I hardly know where to start. I have a menu of:

deficient software and technology which supposedly were introduced (possibly last century, more probably during the one before) to, um, make our lives easier and the business more efficient and effective;
'big corporate' inability to run a business; any business;
the fecklessness (indolence, incivility and illiteracy) of so many of the people who turn to us for employment
the system which makes it worth someone's while declining more than 15 hours per week - because the Job Seekers Allowance pays better than we do;
customers.

The saddest thing though is that even if I could get a baby sitter tonight I couldn't be bothered getting dressed up and heading out for a night on what tiles this town has to offer.

Our software is chronically and possibly terminally ill. This morning we struggled for a prolonged period to process credit / debit card transactions. The only mercy for us was that the supplier did finally get around to filling the ATM outside and so some customers could withdraw cash to cover their transaction. This evening one of the check-outs 'fell off the system' which meant that I couldn't process the back off financials properly. The checkout that fell off the system isn't the same one that was falling off a month or so ago, but it will need an engineer to come out and coax some life into it.

That might happen tomorrow, but tomorrow is Sunday.

I'm not even going to start tonight on the inability of corporations to run businesses ... something I read last night got me thinking but I made no notes and will come back to that later when I'm in a more suitable frame of mind.

Tom Tom the senior clerk's son decided to hand in his notice because he couldn't change his weekend shifts so as to give himself free time to play football, with the particular team he wants to play with. Like all general assistant staff he's expected to work his notice period which is one whole week. That week ended today for him with a 5-9 shift. He didn't turn up but I had to endure a conversation with his mother who went on and on and on about how difficult it is to get a 16 year old to do what he's told.

When I was sixteen I went to school, I came home, I practiced tennis/violin, I ate, I washed up, I did my homework and then I went to bed. That was it. Five nights a week. Then I did lots of tennis and music practice and housework on the weekends. I wasn't expected to go out to work but on the other hand I wasn't treated an adult in any other way. My reading, music, tv, movies and friends were subject to scrutiny and my mother held the power of veto.

The message was really simple. When you're an adult and you have a place of your own you can do what you like. Until you're an adult, and so long as I'm responsible for you, you will do as you are told; this is not your house and you may not do as you please within it.

I've long since come to the conclusion that we (my generation) have fucked our children up good and proper and the only thing that remains unclear is who will pay the heaviest price. I suspect the answer might actually be an as yet unborn generation. What we seem to have don is treat them as adults part of the time - and then we do nothing more effective than scratch our heads when they won't behave like kids when we want them to.

As for the Job Seekers Allowance and how it acts as a block to perfectly employable individuals seeking full time employment, I could say lots and lots of complex stuff but what that boils down to is 'scrap the social welfare system as it exists and starts again'. Each successive administration since the end of WWII has added a layer of administrative complexity until we've reached the point at which nothing short of the 'nuclear' option could eliminate the faults and failings in the system. I'm not sure what should be built over the ashes of Nye Bevin's dream but it sure isn't a cradle to grave, free at the point of consumption type welfare system such as that in place now.

As for the jackass who walked out leaving his paper and 2 pints of milk behind I have three words: "Go to Safeway". At the time I was short staffed and struggling to nurse the check-out software through its nineteenth nervous breakdown. Safeway, as far as I'm aware, are no long trading in this country (at least under that name) and to the best of my knowledge the nearest ex-Safeway store is a good 25 minute drive from us. I think that even in the worst case scenario waiting at the checkout would have taken less time. Damned fool. Damned fool me for putting myself through this for a pittance.

It's a shame he didn't realise he was tangling with a fifty foot Greek Goddess who is rather unpleasant at the best of times. I might just take it out on Mrs Jackass next time I see here but then she'd be poor sport. I suppose she and her husband have reached an amicable accommodation and she's found some kind of tolerance for his notoriety, but from the outside she looks like just another fool - and yes, it takes one to know one. Sorry that's cryptic but it is someone else's life.

The fact that I had to drag myself out from under a check-out to have what little conversation we had (words flung at me as he stalked out) should have served as some indication that we had what might be termed technical difficulties to resolve.

The fact that we had an insufficiency of tills open ought to have been taken as an indicator of short-staffing. Does anyone out there seriously think that store managers deliberately run their stores ineptly, with insufficient staff thereby creating frustration in customers who might well go elsewhere in future?

Now I know I married the Fat Bastard, but I'm not that stupid.

Beta Blogger

2006-09-15T00:54:00.000+01:00

Is it worth it? Is it better than an Alpha Blogger or an improvement on a beta blocker? I need to know.

Night all.

That sound? It's me sniggering

2006-09-15T00:43:00.000+01:00

Well I asked for it I suppose. I hit that damned Next Blog button again and I got this. I'm going to crawl off now and cry myself to sleep (with laughter that is).

It's either that or I beat my forehead to a pulp by driving it rythmically into something very, very hard and solid. Or perhaps the whole thing is a joke I'm not in on. Life's too short; I'm not going to try and work that out.

PS Toddman - in the oh, so appropriately named Painsville, OH; if you're out there and discover this link to your 'marriage saver' let me save you the trouble of abusing me by 'fessing up front that I'm a heathen (Greek Goddess, okay?), I'm a bit erratic in my leg-shaving habits and they might, from time to time be other than absolutely, entirely hairless, I didn't change my name when I married (more's the pity since the changing back obviously has some cathartic purpose) etc etc. In fact If I were a closer approximation of the woman I wish I were I would be your worst nightmare. Now get back to the woman you've got barefoot and metaphorically chained to the kitchen sink!

The Erection Problem - how big is it?

2006-09-15T00:11:00.000+01:00

I'm being quite serious. Really!

All I did was click on the Next Blog button after landing on a blog written in some language (either Portuguese or Spanish) I don't read well enough to make sense of and I get something called Search---.com.

What I'm looking at is a search results page, for a search on that holy grail of pharmacopoeic research known to you and me as VIAGRA.

And more specifically I'm looking at:

Buy Big V at $x.xx per dose
Big V in our directory
UK ".." - The UK's Trusted Impotence Specialists
Big V 100mg for $x (in 10 languages)
Order prescriptions online (FDA approved)
Top Ten Big V products
Generic Big V
Big V - $x per pill
Obtain Impotence Products Quickly and Discretely
Half Price Big V

Apart from the absence of competition the thing that hits me in the eye about this is the curious way that all bases are covered.

I want to ask, boys, what is the Big Problem? Some further thoughts: a hard-on isn't worth the money that's been spent on it if you don't know what to do with it, boys; there's nothing discrete about a ~~nine~~ six-and-a-half inch bulge; a hard-on for hard-on's sake is just a money shot for a porn mag; Big V in our what?

There are many, many ways to make love to a woman. No one I've ever discussed this with (and yes boys, our conversations are exactly as excruciating as you've heard they are) was turned on by a blue pill.

Now the next thing is, do I go back and press the Next Blog button again?

Another mundane weather post.

2006-09-13T23:14:00.000+01:00

My weather pixie who is always slightly behind the times is a lying Minx. There, I've said it. She should be ashamed of herself, suggesting as she does that a pair of decorative trousers and a light top would be appropriate in these parts.

The only thing for it this evening is a smart one or two piece (according to preference) accessorised with sou'wester and wellies.

For the weather that would have had us floating out into the North Sea on Monday has arrived tonight, or perhaps this afternoon - I was at work.

I became aware as evening grew to night that the road outside was a trifle, shall we say, damp. Then some time later, that the puddles in the gutter were still being dappled by continued rain fall.

Then around 8:00 the Fat Bastard phoned to announce, with something suspicously like glee, that the storm water drain at the top of the lane leading to our house is blocked and overflowing - down the lane and in the direction of our front door.

I became aware that stuff that sounded like thunder which I'd been hearing for the past hour was not, as I'd assumed, the sound of racks being rolled about in the upper warehouse but actually er, thunder.

I asked the fat bastard to unplug all electrical appliances not actually essential (ie, my 'puter) and put sand bags or equivalent in the appropriate place to fend off the flow and divert it away from our house if at all possible.

At 9:00 I left. I stepped out into something almost biblical in scale, and then it got heavier. I squelched across to the road, waded across that, forded the carpark and aquaplaned down the road. Over my right shoulder all the way I had the dubious priviledge of a light show spectacular over Kent. Unless I'm mistaken, and I am no meteorologist I admit, we had sheet and fork lightening. The entire sky above the wide plain that extends from our river south towards Kent was lit up almost constantly.

The good folk of the Pas de Calais must have been having a dreadful time of it. We almost always have the same weather as them. It is a bizarre truth that I have a better idea of what the weather will be like if I tune into RTL from Paris than anything broadcast from this side of la Manche.

In all honesty I've never been concerned about being out in a storm until tonight. The lightening never seemed to stop and also seemed to be all about and there were bits of the walk where I seemed to be awfully exposed. A few yards from the lane I met my next door neighbour going the other way. We could only laugh at the state we were both in. My trousers by this time were clining to my legs in a decidedly uncomfortable way, my eyes were stinging and my feet were shifting about in my shoes in a manner that leads me to fear they (the shoes, not the feet) are ruined.

Damn it.

I stripped off just inside the door, and I mean right off. I haven't seen proper weather like this since I left Melbourne and it made me feel good to experience mother nature's raw power. [Actually the rain, for all it has created problems still wasn't even truly sub tropical but it was heavy and it was sustained, but I've not seen such a prolonged electrical storm, and almost stationary too.]

Obviously the 'puter and I have survived. Since the light show went out the Infant has finally gone to bed, and I'm not far off that way myself. The Fat Bastard presumably enjoyed the hasty strip tease. I can't remember the last time I 'got 'em out for him'. Now he's off in the pub - now there's a surprise. Sorry, but you are definitely not supposed to make a link between my strip tease and him hastening to the pub, ok?

My hair is just about dry so I'm going to tidy up and get myself to bed.

Take care all.

New reasons to be dangerously annoyed

2006-09-12T14:59:00.000+01:00

First of all the noisy grandchildren of the people next-door are out in force. These people had too many children and they in their turn are having way to many children, including in pairs. As babies they howl, constantly, then when they're big enough to run about and talk they run about clubbing one another with anything that comes to hand and then swearing when they in their turn get hit.

Generally I get a bit wound up when they're about, but one of the little shits has just kicked a football into our garden and knocked over (and broken) a flower pot.

I've spent the time waiting for someone (a parent perhaps, or even a grandparent) to apologise looking for my upside down apple cake recipe and I can't find it.

A friend has brought round several pounds of apples and the only thing to do with them is cook them. Cakes, muffins and tarts are on the agenda, but I need that damned recipe in order to make the cake I'd promised to another friend.

The internet has proved utterly useless as it so often does for recipes. Most of the ones I find are US or prepared for a US readership. Non-metric measurement systems don't cut it with me at the best of times, but what the F*&% is a 'stick of butter' or a 'cube' of butter or ... I could go on but I have to get to the supermarket and buy baking stuff as part of the school run.

Maybe by the time I get back the people next door will have scrawled a note of apology ... assuming they are, against all odds, literate.

September 11, Part II

2006-09-11T22:57:00.000+01:00

Today is an altogether more personal anniversary. The atrocities of five years ago today were the catalyst for my lying, cheating, thieving, feckless husband to drop an email on the off chance to an old acquaintance who goes by the name of the Fool from Philadelphia in these parts. Until very recently the chronology of the affair he launched with avowed intent of providing himself with a safe landing should I tell him ever to 'sling his hook' has puzzled me, but Top Buddy has recently confirmed that he and the Fat Bastard really working remotely this day five years ago and all but oblivious to the day's events.

The away trips with Top Buddy segued so pefectly into away trips to be with the Fool from Philadelphia that I struggled to take the evidence from her that he'd only contacted her in the immediate aftermath of 9/11 at face value.

Mea Culpa.

He really did contact you then and not months or years earlier. Not that it makes his behaviour any better. But at least now I do know the timing because I've got it from someone who isn't you and isn't him. You're welcome to him, but that doesn't mean I have to believe a single word either of you says or writes.

On an altogether different note someone asked today how the events had altered me, my life and my perception of the world about and I had this to say:

I was at my desk, at work in the City of London. I had the BBC world service streaming, while another colleague had CNN. We listened in real time through the afternoon as events unfolded. Then I fled to the country and hid out there for a couple of days. I went back into work to learn that the lead partner for one of my clients had been on one of the planes along with his partner and their son - the same age as my daughter; and it is that last fact that makes what happened that day enduringly painful. There was a three year old boy on UA175 which was directed into the south tower. He would be an eight year old now, like my daughter, but he didn’t get the chance.

I don’t expect an act of terrorism ever to envelop those me or those I hold dearest, but on the other hand it might one day happen. In the meantime I’ve given up work in London for a slower pace, a lower salary (and standard of living) and lots more time with my daughter.

I won’t adapt my value system one bit to accommodate or appease the sort of people who perpetrate such acts and moreover I won’t be swayed by the bland protestations of their fellow travellers who with one breath disavow those behind 9/11 but then proceed to insist that somehow the west brought this on itself through its decadence and its ruinous economic policies.

Which is a lot more like what I wanted to write this morning than I managed to achieve before I had to leave off to get ready for work.

September 11, Part I

2006-09-11T08:57:00.000+01:00

Blah, blah, blah.

I've been sitting here all morning attempting to put something suitable, appropriate and meaningful together to mark the fifth anniversary of the hijackings.

Where was I? At work, in London. Because of the time difference (5 hours) it was already early afternoon. A nearby colleague was the first person to become aware of what was happening; he mentioned a plane had flown into the World Trade Centre. He showed me the CNN window he had up. It was impossible to gauge the scale. I wandered off under the mistaken impression that a light aircraft had flown into the building due to pilot error or illness.

Within ten minutes perceptions changed and I spent the afternoon listening along with colleagues to news from the east coast of America. We heard rumours that London might be a mirror target. I walked through the city that evening, through London's financial heart to Liverpool Street station. I walked eerily quiet, unusually empty streets, people huddled in doorways talking in hushed tones. From the upper level the concourse of Liverpool St looked like bedlam, I plunged in and caught a train that took me most of the way home then got a lift with a friend the rest of the way.

My little girl then was three years old, too young to understand the nature or the scale of what had happened, only that she didn't like the look of it. The Fat Bastard was away that week; I only got confirmation of exactly where he was this week.

I stayed home the day afterwards and the next day went into work to learn that a colleague, the Lead Partner on a client of mine, was among those on Flight 175 which ploughed into the south face of the south tower. He was travelling home after a holiday with his partner and their three year old son. They died at 9.03am on September 11, 2001.

This is when it all becomes blah, blah, blah. Discovering that I knew an individual who'd died did alter my appreciation of events subtly. It isn't that I couldn't already see how vast and terrible the events were. But knowing about Dan, and particularly with his son and my daughter being of an age, rendered it all that bit more personal. And I don't know how to articulate any of this because the truth is I didn't know him at all well. I didn't lose a huge part of my life. I can't write personal memories of him because I don't have them. He was a voice on the end of the telephone, the sender of emails that would turn up overnight.

He's a conduit for me to the pain and suffering of everyone who lost someone or who in some other way was immediately and directly caught up in what happened that day.

So I remember, and I remember on all sorts of occasions and not just on anniversaries. But I remember particularly today.

Weather Post

2006-09-10T23:19:00.000+01:00

Well we've still our heads above water, and our feet too.

But only because (a) there was only ever 6" of water in the swimming pool and (b) because there's not a breath of wind out there [whatever the weather pixie thingy says].

We're a lick and a spit from the North Sea here. The Fat Bastard's been muttering occasionally for weeks now about how 10/11 September were when we would be flooded out. He didn't do anything practical like fill sand bags or move everything valuable/electrical plus some stores of useful stuff like fresh water upstairs. But he did tell me all about it.

I even took some of it in. Not much, but some.

And then I caught a piece in yesterday's Times.

The headline was "Highest tides in 20 years threaten coast towns this weekend". What do you know; it turns out the Fat Bastard wasn't lying, exaggerating or ....!

The environment agency has identified a three-day period from today
[Saturday] until Monday evening when high astronomical tides are likely because
of the gravitational pull of the Sun and the Moon.

The article goes on to explain how a certain local council a bit up the coast from us in Norfolk has issued its people with sandbags and encouraged people to install flood defences on their front doors.

Our council on the other hand with an eye to the main chance and with its Green credentials uppermost in its mind has focused on the primary issue which is of course deforestation. If trees were not needlessly felled to provide raw material for the paper industry, a practice that is demand-led and as such underwritten by rabid pinko councils nannying citizens with redundant tips on how to respond to potential flooding, then none of this environmental catastrophe stuff would happen.

In fact I am putting words in the Council's mouth. It hasn't even bothered to explain its singular lack of effort and failure to communicate.

Something similar to this particular conjunction of moon, and sun and earth (partly evidenced by the big white moon I didn't see, according to some people) happens again next month, so if Mother Nature doesn't get us this time round she gets a second crack next month when the conventionally crappy autumn weather in these parts will be working harder in her favour.

Anyone have a spare snorkel?

The Silence of the Frogs

2006-09-10T22:46:00.000+01:00

Sunday is normally my day of rest.

I go to work, but only for 7 hours. I'm so busy there ordinarily; I exist in the moments of those and have no time to think. Thinking is exhausting and all too often painful. Well today D. was back in. In the immediate aftermath of his resignation it seemed he was in every other day, but I hadn't seen him for weeks. Not only was he in but he made a point of stopping for a chat which was utterly distracting. If, one day, I do have a verrrrrrrrrry big boat ... well every big boat needs a cabin boy, doesn't it.

Sunday being my day of rest I'm home by 4:15pm. The house is then empty because Sunday is the day the Fat Bastard takes the Infant across to London to visit his mother. I have the house to myself for three or so heavenly hours. I get to watch the repeat of the week's episode of Lost in peace.

Not this week, oh no. The Infant has picked up some bug or other and is feeling poorly, but not half as bad as me. Anything she picks up she immediately passes to me and I'm always twice as ill with it as she is. But I can't have a couple of days of school, can I. Oh no.

The worst thing about these bugs is that they never amount to much. They just malinger in the most unpleasant way, at the back of my throat most of the time. I feel lousy without any particularly spectacular and obvious symptoms so I just get on with it. This is probably the most conventionally maternal thing I do.

Which is my way of pre-empting the post of millions of mothers who do exactly the same thing, over and over again, and are shouting a big fat "so what" in unison. See I do know .... nothing special.

I was greeted at the door by news that he's 'started' to dismantle he pool.

Which is his way of explaining a frame that is now in pieces and scattered all over the garden, a bit here, and a bit there and a bit some place else, while the plastic liner is laid out, nearly emptied of water and a charmless shade of green where the water once was.

He's so proud of what he accomplished today, and by my calculations it took him all of half an hour. Half-a-fucking-hour. Oh, and he proudly listed out what he fed the ailing Infant today: A bowl of rice crispies and two bacon rolls cooked on the Trangio. Fruit? Vegetables? Jesus Christ!

The man is an imbecile.

She had home made pizza tonight. That was my way of getting some fresh tomato, fresh pepper, fresh onion, good ham and good cheese into here on a home made dough base. She had fresh strawberries and cream to follow. Home made Pizza is my way of conning her into consuming most of the major food groups in a balanced way at one sitting.

While I was cleaning up afterwards the Fat Bastard announced his other accomplishment of the day which was the extermination of a future army of amphibians.

Since we weren't using the pool a frog couple had co-opted it ... she spread her eggs, he did his thing and in due course a million baby frogs-to-be hatched out.

And now they're dead, because the Fat Bastard pulled the plug. And he's so proud of himself and I'm left regretting the premature demise of the swimming pool. Ironic or what?

Self-protection

2006-09-09T23:21:00.000+01:00

I have a wonderfully well-developed self-protection mechanism.

It keeps me strong.

It disables those processes that might otherwise lead me inexorably down the path to suicidal depression.

It enables me to make fun of his Swimming Pool escapade (chronicled mostly during June/July).

It prevents me from considering the consequences of his actions from me.

Why?

Because If I had considered those consequences fully back in June I'd have spent the past 7 weeks contemplating what I'm only now having to deal with.

What's that?

'That' is dismantling a swimming pool that wasn't swum in this year. It never amounted to anything more than a large hole in my back yard lined with plastic draped over an aluminium frame and filled with 6 inches of water that are now verdantly stagnant.

And someone is going to have to go in there get that water out, get that plastic clean, get that plastic dry, dismantle the entire thing and put it somewhere (any suggestions?) until next high summer, when he will once again think about how good it would be to put the swimming pool up.

And that someone won't be the Fat Bastard, and I sure as hell won't let it be the Infant. So that leaves Guess Who.

Shit, what a lousy way to spend Sunday afternoon ... even if it is supposed to be what English forecasters are describing as 'warm'.

Ha.

Oh ... I have a really excellent weather story that also involves the moon (and the sun) but I'm not going to do that tonight. But I am going to do that 'that' before we're [big hint here] flooded out.

My life is just fabulous. How the fuck did a fifty foot tall, bad tempered and very blood thirsty Greek Goddess wind up here listening out for the flood siren? If you don't know the answer read on (that's how the posts work, in reverse chronological order).

Good night.

To lose one icon may be regarded as misfortune

2006-09-08T10:45:00.000+01:00

to lose both Steve Irwin and Peter Brock inside a week looks like carelessness.

Not that Steve Irwin was ever my cup of tea; he struck me as a man weighed down by the burden of his Australian-ness, it was a thing he did not wear lightly. Brock never achieved the kind of international recognition Irwin had; on the other hand Peter Brock had been an accomplished and successful racing driver for as long as I could remember. News that he has died in a accident while taking part in the Targa West Rally has shocked me and saddened me deeply. You know you're getting old when your childhood icons are passing away but Peter died still doing what he did best.

He was the King of the Mountain and inextricably bound up with the Holden marque. My first car was a Holden.

Farewell Peter Brock.

Missed again

2006-09-08T10:27:00.000+01:00

I've never had anyone attempt to 'dishevel' my 'theorising' before. Perhaps it is a curious northern practice that goes well with whippets, warm beer, flat caps & etc.

Thanks to YorkshirePudding who is a man blessed indeed I gather that I missed a bit of a show last night. No, not DeadEnders which is something I miss on a daily basis and twice on Sundays; I mean the partial lunar eclipse.

Tipped off by his comment, and fearing that I might have been imagining the big white round thing in window (or was it merely a misinterpreted reflection of one of the kitchen spotlights?), I've called upon the National Maritime Museum this morning.

There was indeed a partial eclipse of the moon last night, and I missed the whole damned thing. First of all I was being a Domestic Greek Goddess (Lamb roasted to perfection, sweet potato, asparagus, steamed carrots, red current gravy - with raspberry cheesecake afterwards) then I was cleaning up, then I was ... winding myself up about Bloody Tesco.

I'm still baffled about the dishevelled theorising. But I'm baffled by a lot of things. I shall now return to concocting new and excruciating fates for the Bloody Tesco Board of Directors. Which is lots fun.

Oh, and the partial eclipse over by 2200, so the big white thing in the window probably was the moon.

Beautiful

2006-09-07T23:27:00.000+01:00

Tonight we have a quite large and utterly perfect moon*. Round and white and bright and sitting as I type this in the top corner of the window to my left. Big, round, white moon with a hole in it where some damned fool crashed a space vehicle recently.

You'd think we caused quite enough crashes accidentally, both here and beyond the earth's atmosphere - the Open University's Mars exploration vehicle springs to mind, but no, we've got to go and put further crap and other samples of human detritus in space.

And today I read somewhere that a substantial segment of one of Mont Blanc's glaciers has been turned yellow by the volume of climber urine it has been required to absorb (or be coated in, whatever, I'm not interested in the grisly details).

These two fine examples of humanity's regard for the space around and about it fit neatly with the quite perfect contempt the legions of fools who annually ascend Mt Everest display for the mountain they invade and .... but I'm already boring myself and there are so many more examples I could cite.

Good night.

*though as Yorkshire Pudding has pointed out it was also partially eclipsed - from shortly after sunset to 22:00 - I missed it

Bloody Tesco ...

2006-09-07T21:26:00.000+01:00

You're everywhere. You think you're God's Gift to supermarketing. You are total )%*&(£$. You are parasites who nurture a fear that seems to reside in most of the population of this tawdry little island that it is necessary to buy Stuff .... NOW .... and that Stuff must be bigger, brighter, newer, noisier, quieter, smaller, more powerful, longer, shorter, anything, than last year's model which this year's model Stuff will replace.

But you can't find it within you to deal in a civil fashion with a customer query even when you've asked for that customer query.

The people responsible for Bloody Tesco ... for creating and maintaining the monster ... are here and what a sad bunch of jaded hookers and deviants they appear ...

Next time Bloody Tesco pisses you off remember to blame them; they're the ones in charge of it.

Citizens of Romania!

2006-09-07T16:15:00.000+01:00

This country needs you ... NOW!

The Right-of-Right is as usual muddled in its thinking as the events of the past 24 hours have made painfully clear. For weeks the ROR have been agitating for the government to take unilateral action that might or might not be in contravention of some EuroObligation or other, in advance of Romania's accession to the European Union. The ROR are concerned that unless steps are taken to choke the tide at source we'll be flooded out by a wave of immigrants from that country determined to take advantage of the open EuroEmployment market.

The ROR also looks forward to the demise of Blair's pinko socialist government.

The shame of it all is that the Romanians are the Europeans with the most recent track record of resolving a political impasse of the kind we're now faced with most robustly and effectively.

At this point I should confess to planning a Totally Tasteless Post, but chickening out of actually posting the extant proof here. Instead, if you need it you can find it by googling "ceausescu dead".

The Italians have also proved themselves in the more distant past equally effective: for proof google "mussolini dead".

British resolve taking a very different form to that of the Romanians and the Italians they (the Brits) shall instead demonstrate their heroism in the face of a politician they're sick to the back teeth of by, well, displaying particularly stiff upper lips. Plucky chaps and chappesses (?) that they are.

Alternatively, this being a Socialist Workers Paradise, what we're seeing might be nothing more than a Job Creation Scheme for Indigent Political Journalists. Wor' Tone's Long Goodbye is going to last months ... and months ... and months and (anywhere up to but not including 12 of them).

I feel cheated

2006-09-06T22:38:00.000+01:00

I arrived in this country when John Major was Prime Minister. I went to work at a small agency close to the Treasury in Westminster. My greatest claim to fame as a professional pundit is that in the week before the 1992 General Election which the professionals were then suggesting would go to Labour I backed the Tories to hold on ... and I was just one seat out.

Anyhow... a lot of water has passed under a whole lot of bridges since then.

I woke up this morning to news that Tony Blair's self-induced little local difficulty (persistent speculation about the date of his departure from office) had rather abruptly evolved into a not-inconsiderably large problem. Wor Tone's turned to the Australian Right in the past for tactical and strategic support, but he's clearly not learned the lessons that were always available.

Little Johnny's clung to office through an enduring speculation that directly parallels the challenge facing Blair, to whit the Man Next-door. In Blair's case the Man Next-door does literally live in the adjacent house. Peter Costello holds the two posts analogous to those occupied by Gordon Brown which are senior Finance Minister and Heir Apparent.

Somehow Little Johnny to date has succeeded in keeping Costello somewhere other than entirely off-side while retaining a firm grasp of the levers of power. I may loathe the man and also in large part his policies and what he 'stands for' but I cede to no person in my admiration for his skills as a politician. In that sphere if no other Little Johnny is peerless.

When I left for work today, with letters from junior minsters calling on the Prime Minister to step down, junior ministers resigning to agitate from the back benches, it looked like the Prime Minister might be gone before I returned home. Sadly, he's still with us even in the political sense.

Like Costello Gordon Brown does appear to have learned hard lesson served up by Hezza who observed with some prescience that He Who Wields the Knife Seldom Wears the Crown. One can't help but wish that Heseltine had kept his smattering of classics to himself since Brown, Costello, Johnno and all the other viable would be challengers are tonight sitting on their hands. Which means that this 'thing' could go on and on and on until ~~Cherry~~ Cherie says otherwise.

Kiss my Arse (please)

2006-09-06T22:27:00.000+01:00

If I sound chipper tonight there's a pretty decent reason: even making allowances for the fact that they were members of staff who are frankly shit-scared of me (sensible) having them unsure where in my thirties to put me was just perfectly delicious after the lousy night I had last night.

Phew ... what a scorcher

2006-09-06T22:23:00.000+01:00

We're enjoying a balmy Indian summer here, and allegedly it was 24C as recently as an hour and a half ago.

Don't I look fabulous in that little pink number? I might even take a photo of the real thing, which is hanging up in my wardrobe waiting for a suitably good excuse to strut its funky stuff (not to mention a pair of sandals that don't clash).

Its almost as fabulous as me!

Pond Life

2006-09-05T22:12:00.000+01:00

My main reservation when I agreed to take the hours I work was not my own personal safety but the practical stuff like getting the Infant fed and washed, homework supervised, uniform prepared for the following day...

It didn't occur to me that I meet new and lower forms of life...

We had pond life in tonight; verminous, drug raddle, alcohol steeped and gobby. They began their raid at shortly before 5:00pm which is when a major shift change takes place and everyone's slightly flapping. A concerned member of the public spotted the 'carrier' and alerted us but too late to actually catch him. But several of us recognised him and when he and his mates came back later we were after them.

Of course they realised we were on to them. First they treated it as a game, splitting and heading in various directions, lippy too. Then they got bored and simply became unpleasant. Then they became verbally agressive. At that point we called the police. Before they could get to us a male customer intervened to scare them off and the police didn't attend, but the scum came back and this time they did some damage to the outside of the store, broke glass all over the public approach and rounded things off neatly with threats that "you're dead" over and over to me, the Store Manager and another member of staff.

How utterly charming I thought, this being the first time anyone has actually threatend to kill me - at least since the fall of Troy. So stupid of them not to recognise what they're dealing with - me being a bad tempered 50 foot tall Greek Goddess and all... Only later did I realise that I could and should have kneed him in the nuts at that point.

Ever since I got home I've been day-dreaming about driving my very bony knee-cap into that oh-so delicate part of his anatomy. Secretly it's something I've long dreamed of having the chance to do to just one inadequate bastard, just once in my life; and right now there isn't a better candidate (and that includes the Fat Bastard).

There's always tomorrow night, or if not then Saturday. What are the odds?

Quite why I have taken it upon myself to slot the Swindon Appreciation Department blog among those I (really do) read regularly shall remain a matter between me and my conscience; however if you do call on the Sub-Comandante you can read of his recent experience of equally effectual policing (though a different constabulary) there.

Blog etiquette...

2006-09-05T11:12:00.000+01:00

I've been carping recently about shoddy English driving and the Shoddy English education system and most recently about the declining standards of social intercourse, particularly in more formal situations.

Which is a round about way of saying that I sounded off a few days ago on the execrable telephone manners I have to endure on pretty much a daily basis.

I work in a supermarket. People phone up. Members of the general public phone up to ask if we stock something in particular or if we have something in stock or to complain. Colleagues from other stores and from head office for a wide variety of reasons. Suppliers ring up, potential suppliers cold call us. Then staff receive calls ... and my job means I'm one of a handful of people most likely to be near the phone when it rings. So I answer it.

I posted a question on telephone etiquette a day or so ago here, and your comments would be more than welcome.

Now it turns out that Anonymous has commented. Far be it for me to appear ungrateful that a passing caller has taken the time to read the post and compose a comment, which after all is precisely what I'd requested. And responding to my request with an anonymous reply might be a finely crafted exercise in irony or something...

On the question of anonymity in blogging I should (re) lay my cards on the table. The cast of villainous characters about whom I vent or pontificate or on whom I shower random sprays of pity include my big, fat, mean spirited, drunken, thieving, cheating, feckless and generally thoroughly rotten husband. I don't particularly wish to provoke him and some of the stuff I get off my chest by posting here would undoubtedly provoke him.

I mention in passing my daughter in the course of my postings and I've got an obligation above all else to protect her, both from any rage I might other wise provoke and from involuntary publicity; I've no right to make her a public figure against her wishes. She can become a celebrity in her own right in the fullness of time if she so wishes.

I mention the mother-in-law who was from hell but is now seriously ill. However she brought him up if he were man enough he wouldn't lie and cheat and steal and use people up the way he does.

I mention the Fool in Philadelphia, the unfortunate and thoroughly deluded 'other woman'. He conned me, he's got her believing his lies. The only grudge I have in respect of her is that she didn't make a bigger push to get him to fuck off to the USA and live there with her; leaving me in peace.

So I'm in no position to demand candour of visitors. But anonymous comments leave me unable to learn anything of those who pass through and are moved to comment.

Probably this isn't a question of manners or etiquette; just me being frustrated that I can't reciprocate the visit by Anonymous.

Crap driving

2006-09-04T22:27:00.000+01:00

First let me thank W. who took the trouble to comment on my previous post in which I posted a question concerning Telephone Etiquette. All comments, including those telling me to get a life are welcome. I'll still think I'm right, but your comments are welcome.

Apart from the Sudden Death By Dangerous Animal of Steve Irwin who was Australia's real life Crocodile Hunter the news here has been dominated today by Iraq, Israel, the murder of one Brit in Jordan, the start of the new school year under the new Good Food regimen and the release of a pugilistic has-been called (Prince) Something Or Other.

Now Steve Irwin did not rise to prominence until after I left home; and when I finally, accidentally stumbled across him I was quite horrified by the way in which (a) he was being given airtime and (b) he was being embraced by the Poms about me as the epitome of an Australian. Sorry, but whatever Irwin's credentials as a wild life conservator and custodian he was also several parts show-man with his eye on the main chance and for any opportunity for commercial exploitation. He got that, as much as his taste for and talent with animals, from his parents.

He was swimming with an animal that does have a track record for inflicting fatal wounds; not a long rap sheet, but a rap sheet all the same. Suggestions are already being made that link Irwin's notorious buffoonery with his proximity with this animal and drawing the inevitable conclusion. On the other hand Steve Irwin has died leaving behind a wife and young children and my sympathies are with them tonight.

Early today I had to endure a visit by the local radio station I to a grammar school somewhere oop noth and pompous Year 12s attempts to argue that because they're so much older they can safely consume deep fried foods and soft drinks (and other forms of gastronomic crap) every school day of the year ... and even if they can't then what about freedom of choice?

What happened to 'sit down and eat what's on your plate'? The French don't get everything right, but every day of the school year French students taking a school midday meal eat from a set menu that is chosen by their parents and not by a school board, a local government committee or worst of all some commercial organisation brought in to cut costs. The French spend four times what the Brits do on food for their children.

As a result their children don't eat economy sausages and burgers made from mechanically covered meat and God alone knows what else. The accompaniments don't come out of a freezer or a can or a deep fryer. Nor are they boiled to buggery during preparation. And if Mademoiselle doesn't like it, she can lump it. They don't get a choice but then they're not being offered a choice of Crap.

Right now over the airwaves a tide of agitation at the 'early' release of this pugilist is flooding. Fact though is he's being released in accordance with the sentencing guidelines which quite properly take no account of the fact that he's a clapped out, gaudy, ostentatious, exhibitionist twat of the highest order.

They also take no account of the fact that when his '£One Third of A Million' high performance sports vehicle, being driven in excess of the speed limit and in which the driver (The Twat) was attempting a highly illegal as well has highly inadvisable manoeuvre collided with the bog standard, run of the mill and thoroughly ordinary vehicle travelling in the opposite direction every major bone in the body of the driver of the on-coming car was broken. He will never be the same man again. He will always be in pain. He will never be properly mobile. He will live with what happened every moment of his life. It will never go away.

So what is the appropriate punishment for such an act? The answer to that question hinges, as it happens, on the answer to another question which is 'what sort of act did he (The Twat) actually commit? Is this a case of reckless driving or driving without due care and attention? Or is this rather a case of dangerous driving?

The law takes no account of consequences in determining the act and therefore the offence and the sentencing guidelines to be followed if a conviction is secured.

I was struck some years ago by an something said in an early episode of The West Wing. A young gay kid was killed and CJ was all gung ho for using the murder as a platform for a Hate Crimes bill. Others within the administration were wary of such a course on the grounds that it smacked of (and I can't remember precisely how it as put) legislating against thought. In other words it didn't matter why, it only matter that it had happened and who 'dunnit'.

Those who believe The Twat should still be behind bars can safely be ignored since they clearly have no understanding of the sentencing guidelines which in fact caution against early release of prominent prisoners. In otherwords it is more difficult rather than easier for a 'celebrity' to secure early release.

But the bigger problem is with those who believe that just because The Twat severely disabled someone he should be locked up for years and years and never be allowed to drive again. The Twat is actually guilty of driving too fast and attempting an overtaking manoeuvre on a stretch of road whereon said manoeuvre was either reckless or dangerous. And that's it.

Except it isn't. Because the Twat has form. The Twat's lost his driving licence previously for driving in a manner that contravened the laws which govern driving. He's been punished previously for excessive speed. If he hadn't acquired an appreciation through those convictions of the basis for the law then is he not too stupid to drive?

Let us explore an hypothetical Twat who likes to show off with a knife rather than a car. He performs stunts with his knife for his mates and a wider audience though there are laws covering concealed weapons and specifically knives. He's punished for being caught with the knife and warned that it is something with which he could hurt someone, that it is by definition, a dangerous object; perfect when used for the purpose for which it was intended but potentially lethal.

He subsequently in performing a knife stunt misjudges things and wounds someone seriously. Is this nothing more than careless / reckless knife-stunt-performing, or even dangerous-knife-stunt-performing?

To make the analogy clearer (and for the purposes of my argument) it might be better to presuppose that the driver and the knife stunt victim die. Is this an accidental death, is this death by misadventure? Or is the wielder of the knife/car somehow culpable? If so, of what? And does sure knowledge that the wielder was aware of the potential consequences of his actions as well as their specific illegality a significant factor in determining what happened, as opposed to what consequences should flow from the actions? And should that have any bearing on the sentence imposed upon conviction?

All this is too tortuous for talk back radio, of course.

Those clamouring for Hamed's longer term incarceration over look the fact as observed earlier that all he did was what countless Brits do every day of the year, albeit in slightly posher car.

Not one of them has had the good grace to add "there, but for the grace of God", to the clarion call that Something Must Be Done.

Not one of them has recognised that only when the common and garden domestic motor vehicle is recognised in law as a lethal weapon will the punishment fit the crime this tawdry ex-boxer is perceived to have committed.

Telephone etiquette?

2006-09-04T10:18:00.000+01:00

I'm running a bit of a risk here, bigger even than the risk that no body answers, but there's a question here for anyone who will take the trouble to wade through the preamble and get to the point, which I promise I eventually do.

Let's start with a helpful hint for anyone struggling the title; it comes from Webster's because that's what I happen to have to hand - etiquette, et'i.ket, n. [origins/derivation] Conventional forms of ceremony or decorum; the forms which are observed towards particular persons or in particular places; social observances required by good breeding. Well, it is a rather old copy of Websters.

Elsewhere on the web I found this rather more direct definition of etiquette: RULES GOVERNING SOCIALLY ACCEPTABLE BEHAVIOUR which continues with: Etiquette fundamentally prescribes and restricts the ways in which people interact with each other, and show their respect for other people by conforming to the norms of society.

Now ...

When I call someone, upon my call being answered, how I respond depends on the circumstances ...

If I'm calling my mother and she answers she gets Hi Mum. My sister's lucky to get more than G'day, though I'll usually add 'got a few minutes' because I'm a sensitive, caring older sister and she is a very busy single mother and chaser of men.

My best and closest and longest standing friends don't need a chapter and verse introduction either.

BUT

I have never placed a business call in my life and not started the conversation when the phone is answered with any thing other than "Hello, this is (or its) X." And if I don't get the person I was hoping or expecting to speak with I follow up with "May I speak with...".

In my job, which I've now been in for 10 months, I do quite a bit of telephone answering, just because I'm the one who's most often closest to the phone. I'm answering calls from the general public as well as colleagues from head office, suppliers and other stores and people making personal calls to other members of staff (oh and also jackass cold-calling suppliers of whiz-bang utility/phone/packaging/insurance/penis extension miracle solutions).

99% of these people don't have the decency to identify themselves. Apart from leading to crass misunderstanding when higher life forms from head office trip over themselves and confuse me, because they haven't bothered to tell me who I'm dealing with, I just find this incredibly rude.

Am I making too much of this?

Footnote

2006-09-03T22:01:00.000+01:00

The boxes of crap that I'd put together for him to take down to the charity shop or otherwise dispose of, which he took upstairs to his bedroom in lieu of a more durable solution to the whole Living Room Space Issue, I eventually successfully needled him into bringing back downstairs and getting out of the house.

They are now sitting outside the house on the path leading to our front door.

When I made the mistake of suggesting that his behaviour might be defined as passive-aggressive he snarled that 'this doesn't need psychoanalysis' and proceeded finally to do a little bit of what I was asking to do, though not without snidely adding that I could have taken the boxes down myself.

Yes, and my reward for doing that would have been to endure a monumental sulk because I'd thrown out (among the hundreds) that one paperback he'd been intending to read or read again. Yes, and they're not my fucking books either, you grossly overweight lazy, cheating, thieving, feckless, amoral, sick, twisted moron.

Well hey, 48 hours after he took decisive action those boxes of books are looking a tad limp, having been out in the wind and rain that is so typical of late English summer. Now those books he wouldn't have me simply throw out are, um, ruined. Guess what the charity shop will do with them when they unpack them (if they even do that).

Silly me

2006-09-03T20:16:00.000+01:00

I though Geoffrey Chaucer was dead, buried, mouldered, turned to dust, clapped out anew from much daisy up-pushing. Happily, I was mistaken (and not for the first time either).

Quiet, and even a bit of peace

2006-09-03T20:03:00.000+01:00

The house is empty but for me and the cat who is curled up on the floor on the business side of the bathroom. I can only get in sideways, so no more tea for me for now. Autumn arrived this week, although still not cold (or even cool) the skies are different and it is much windier. In this part of the country, near the North Sea, the autumn winds can be brutal. Also the days are getting shorter, I'm sitting here pecking away at the keyboard and my screen is a rectangular pool of light in deep gloom.

Since getting home from work I've watched the repeat of Lost in peace. The Fat Bastard has taken The Infant to visit his mother. I'm not sure why Becky's so enthused by these closing episodes of Series II. Perhaps I'd enjoy them more if I wasn't constantly alert to the sound of the family coming back.

Several of those who went out last night made it to work; and some of them started an hour earlier than me. On the other hand they are half my age so I'd expect them to have better powers of recuperation than me. And then one of them let slip that they'd all baled out within half an hour of me going.

Ha! The youth of today have no stamina.

One thing leads to another

2006-09-03T19:53:00.000+01:00

I'm fascinated by the way individual blogs, like so many stepping stones, link to one another according to forces so vast and so small as to make them unseeable. Start at the same place two days running and see how far apart one may end.

Or even better try a new starting place.

Today Lily who has visited and who blogs here provided me with a new starting place. Welcome, and thank you. Brief messages from visitors, even one-off visitors are really appreciated.

A charmless bundle of mystery

2006-09-03T18:50:00.000+01:00

Somehow some sad sack has found its way here via the following Google Search: "how much do the abos get for ayres rock".

For you, I have two words: "Fuck Off*". If you don't, I might get cross - and I'm a very old and blood thirsty fifty foot Greek Goddess. You don't want to make me cross.

* for some reason this isn't exactly what I put here initially, but it is what I meant

Picking precisely the correct moment

2006-09-02T23:34:00.000+01:00

The delicate art of choosing absolutely the right moment has not left me. I stayed until I was clearly under the influence, until we'd visited more than one pub. Then I strode away, head held high and appreciating the fresh breeze off the river. Nobody was offended by my departure. Enough left in the tank to get a small post out.

More later.

Whooops

2006-09-02T16:30:00.000+01:00

I accidentally on purpose forgot something.

Actually it was more probably a case of my subconscious trying to look after me ... my the Fat Bastard's been tapped up and come home with a reminder that I'm expected at a Hen Night tonight. The 'Girls' from work are doing a Pub Crawl of town (I think that means 9 pubs). Notwithstanding the fact that I'm supposed to be working tomorrow, actually scratch that I am working tomorrow but moreover expected to be functional, I clearly am not going to be able to stay the course.

Now it turns out I need to rendezvous with the (what is the collective noun for hens?) lot of them at around 8:00pm in order not to miss them at the rendezvous point. But the serious business of getting pissed as a [what ever the collective noun for newts is] whole lot of pissed things.

Christ Almighty, this is going to be a couple of the longest hours of my life and I've spent some very, very long hours in the company of the Fat Bastard.

In this part of the country a girl doesn't give herself the quick once over to make sure her jeans aren't too stained or ripped (or smelly?) and pull on a clean shirt. She takes hours over selecting the right items from her capacious wardrobe, ensuring that the whole thing adds up to a co-ordinated ensemble. Then she puts in another few hours work on hair/make-up etc.

It's after quarter to 5 in the afternoon now and I be most of them have been agonising and primping for hours. I suppose I should get in the bath.

I've got a couple of clean pairs of jeans somewhere. I suppose I could find a warm and presentable top to go with them. I have a high-heeled pair of boots that are not yet ready to be thrown away. There's some slap in the bathroom cupboard that might be past its sell by date but is probably serviceable.

That's me sorted then.

If I'm not a total gibbering wreck after this I'll come back and explain just how ghastly it all was. This is my very first Hen Night by the way; and I think that's damned fine going.

Red Letter Day (How did I fail to mention it earlier)

2006-09-01T23:09:00.000+01:00

That I'd cleared some Crap and Stuff from my living room this afternoon what I really meant to say was...

The Fat Bastard spotted his candle which I'd extracted from bedroom (bedroom, for fuck's sake!!) the moment he walked in the door. He then spotted that I'd put up his tent in his absence all on my own, without any help from him or prompting. I explained why I'd been concerned about the candle and he denied that there'd ever been a lit candle, but that he'd only used the metal shell of the tea-light as a holder for an incense cone. Right.

Anyway he then returned to buggering around with his he-man, mucho macho form of camping stove which basically amounts to a little tin (ie baked bean tin or soft drink can) inside a big tin (eg, industrial scale baked bin tin) that has had air holes punched in it. I think he calls it a buddy burner or something similar. After I stopped him from using my best scissors to do the punching he used a screwdriver. Sensible chap!

In the discussion that followed the phrases 'displacement activity' and (big mistake this next one) 'passive-aggressive behaviour' passed my lips. He slouched back into the house with a face like thunder having had to put aside his toys, and muttering darkly that his behaviour wasn't something that needed 'psycho-analysing'.

Well first of all, as I explained to his retreating back, it either needs psycho-analysing or it needs some more direct form of explanation. He turned around, looked me straight in the eye and admitted that he'd done nothing about his room because of laziness.

We've been married since October 1994 and I'd say that I could count on the fingers of one hand the number of times he's previously been as honest as that.

Except that I don't think he's being honest, at all. I think I hit a raw nerve with the passive aggressive line. I think he's heard it before. I think that he heard it a long, long time ago either as a teenager or in his early twenties when his mother had him sit down with someone in order to work towards understanding why at the very last minute (within days of sitting the first of his A Levels) he got himself expelled from his very good school or why later he dropped out of university.

For good measure he turned around and pointed out that I could have taken the boxes I'd prepared down to the shop but this conveniently fails to take account of his previous offer to take them down. His renewed offer to take them down one box per night overlooks the reality that if he'd only done that from the start all the boxes would be out of the house by now (and I'd be on his back about the fucking supermarket trolley park he's building in our garden).

The other thing he was ignoring was the reality that had I had the temerity to dispose of even one book that he wanted to read or re-read or just keep (because it's stuff, and stuff makes him feel good) then I'd have been and Even Bigger Bitch Than Usual.

Goaded by my jibes about displacement activity and passive-aggressive behaviour he went upstairs, brought down a couple of boxes, picked out just three books he wanted to read or re-read and then took them down to the shop.

Good boy!

Punch and Judy, and Monty too

2006-09-01T22:00:00.000+01:00

They've been so good to us in the last couple of weeks. I started putting some notes together in Neighbours. Now Mac has helped me take out the last of Monty's stitches.

When he went back to the vet on Tuesday for a check up he was knocked out so that his chest could be x-rayed to confirm that all was well there and was also to have all his stitches out. Mac drove me over there and apart from missing the turning at the duck pond and taking us to the town where the vet clinic is via a series of back roads nothing happened to back up the Fat Bastard's disparaging remarks concerning Mac's driving - which does serve to back up my belief that when it comes to driving the Fat Bastard really does know Fuck All.

One the way over Mac told us about making Elderflower wine with an alcohol content little less than that of whiskey. We swapped stories about champagnes and the Australian wine industry or perhaps that should be industries and the decline in real terms of the French wine industry which has stood still (resting on its well deserved laurels) while the rest of the world has worked its whatsits off to improve the quality of its wine output. [Which reminds me of something I need to add to myotherlist which is where I jot down the things I miss from home. Wall to wall Australiana and ancient personal history.]

Mac also waxed eloquent on home made jams that he and Judy once would make but longer have the time or space for. Instead they buy in their jam from France, holding English jams in low esteem.

This was the journey which confirmed I'd not be on the wrong track if I offered them a bottle of bubbly as a gesture of appreciation for what they've done.

Mac went on to explain how he'd scraped a living in Paris when he lived there before The War. If he's in his 80s he must have been very young to have been there before the war but that fits with Judy going there straight from school.

I also remember Judy telling me how they'd had to get some kind of dispensation or make some kind of fix because when Mac first applied for a passport - so that he could join her in Paris, it emerged that his birth was never registered! Oops. No registration = no birth certificate = no passport.

These days they spend a good deal of the time they're in the UK in the countryside where Mac flies the model aircraft he builds from scratch. I've not figured out exactly what Judy does while Mac's standing in the field with his remote control in his hand - perhaps she's topping up her suntan.

Anyway Mac drove us back to the vet to collect the cat in the afternoon. The x-ray had been clear as everyone expected, but not all the stitches could come out. Some of the cuts were on parts of his legs that are subject to major stress when he leaps or stretches and the vet thought it prudent to let them stay in for a three extra days.

Three extra days from Tuesday is Friday. The vet said he could take them out here in town which is within walking distance, even with a heavy cat in a heavy case, but added that if I felt I confident I could even take them out myself.

Now I'm not sure if that strikes you as an odd thing to say. It struck me as an unlikely thing for a vet to say but not particularly odd. About twelve years ago I cut my arm and had to have about half a dozen stitches in it. On the appointed day to return to have the stitches out something came up at work and I couldn't get away. For one reason or another the next possible chance to see someone and have the stitches (on my left arm and I'm right handed) out was a few days later. In the mean time the wound and the stitches began to itch like crazy, and one afternoon while I was on the phone I absent-mindedly scratched at those stitches caught one of them with a nail and whipped it right out before I realised what I was doing. A couple of minutes later I had all those stitches out. I had to be careful because the actual wound was quite tender and wouldn't take the touch of anything but otherwise it was the easiest thing in the world.

Monty was as good as gold and now is without stitches.

Earlier in the day I posted that I was putting up his tent so that it could be cleaned and dried before being put away for the winter. The cat has taken a liking to sleeping in the tent. As has the Infant to the idea of sleeping in the tent. So after all that work to clear my living room of Crap and Stuff, it has now been overtaken by a large-ish two-berth tent.

Bloody hell.

Hypothetically speaking ... and what does this mean?

2006-09-01T13:40:00.000+01:00

The Infant has taken to camping. I enjoyed myself too. So let's imagine for a moment that next year (this year's camping season being all but over) we go camping again. Not necessarily with the Fat Bastard in tow, of course.

This is speculative, but assuming it might happen and hypothetically only we're in the market for a tent; not one of the two person tents we took with us, but something a bit more substantial. Two women in a two person for days on end isn't feasible, particularly when one of them's my Infant. Besides I need somewhere I can get dressed with just a bit of dignity.

So we're in the market for a family tent and I'm a total babe in these particular woods.

I'm stumbling about the internet hopping from one outdoor/camping supplier to another and in my travels I've found the following advert for a Khyam Indiana 6 Family Tunnel Tent.

A family tunnel tent with 3 bedroom inners that can be interchanged or removed
completely to either maximize living space or maximise the number of berths (up
to a maximum of 6) (ideal for Mormons). This tent also offers a 2.4m x 2.4m
central living area, front and rear exits and a generous sun canopy with two
steel upright poles provided. The flysheet is made from double-coated
Weatherweave 2oz polyester with fully taped seams giving a hydrostatic head of
3000mm. The inner tents are breathable polyester and the groundsheets are
polyethylene. The frame is a fibreglass (colour coded) pole construction with
ring and pin system. Living area groundsheet comes as standard.

I've spent too much time reading these adverts. I can read 'double-coated' and 'fully-taped seams' and 'hydrostatic head of 3000mm' without batting an eye-lid. I'm on the way to becoming a camping geek. Who would have thought? I suppose a Greek Goddess ought to be able to take the outdoors in her out-sized stride but this is an unanticipated turn of events.

In fact the only thing that puzzled me reading this advert is the reference to mormons. Ideal for mormons? What the hell does that mean?

Now I feel a bit better

2006-09-01T13:05:00.000+01:00

I'm pretty sure that my temper is going to get worse before it gets much better, but for the moment the tension has eased somewhat. I've put his tent up. Indoors it actually appears larger than it did at the campsite and it takes up pretty much the entire floorspace in the living room, after I've juggled the furniture about a bit. I also had to shift some boxes of books and after checking the contents I've earmarked another four to go with the two that are already in the kitchen and set for taking to the nearest charity shop if not the tip. They're not joining the boxes he took up to his bedroom the day before we left (last Friday) and there's no indication they'll be coming downstairs anytime soon.

They're stuff, and stuff makes him feel secure. Never mind the quality feel the volume. Stuff, and more stuff.

Actually he's a bit of a joke among his friends which was something else that came out while we were away. They're laughing but they don't have to live with all the stuff ... or the predations on the family finances that go with the acquisition of Stuff.

One of our shopping expeditions was to (boo, hiss) Tesco, currently all seeing, all conquering in the grocery sector. The store isn't bit or large or huge or enormous - it is gargantuan. The downstairs has an electricals department that's about as large as our local supermarket. Then there's the food and groceries and booze. Upstairs they sell clothes and stuff for indoors and outdoors (furniture and furnishings and God knows what else). The Fat Bastard was in heaven.

It doesn't matter to him whether he can afford the stuff or not; he has to browse and where possible fondle. And he never, ever, does anything quickly. It drives me insane and from what his TB had to say as we tried to cajole, entice, bribe and bully the Fat Bastard into the section of the store we needed to be in he's experienced Shopping With The Fat Bastard on more than one occasion before.

Well he's now due back from work ... he'll get a bit of a shock to find me and the Infant in the house. He'll be a bit taken aback to find his tent up. He'll be horrified when he realises I expect him to do a few chores this afternoon.

Poor lamb.

Particularly as the Infant is currently using the tent as a play house, which leaves (a) books etc to the charity shop or (b) cleaning his room.

Bits and pieces

2006-09-01T10:21:00.000+01:00

Wow. IND have written to confirm the receipt of my application which is, I suppose a rock solid first step. Next step will be to accept my application and acceptance is contingent upon payment going through and upon my using the correct form and supplying all the required information.

I'm holding my breath. The letter ends with the following statement: "An applicant who has permission to be in the UK when an application is made is legally entitled to remain here on the same conditions previously granted until the application has been decided." I guess that means I can stay here while my application now wends its way through the system. To me that constitutes permission to breathe.

In the mean time I've been offered more hours at work because the woman who was the supervisor and on maternity leave has resigned. She's working as a barmaid at one of the local pubs, cash in hand, and has calculated that she'll be better off with that arrangement than coming back to us. I know she's living in social housing and I have to assume that if she's getting cash in hand she's also getting various other tax-payer funded subsidies not to come back to work full time.

The extra hours will help financially, though there are issues I'm going to have to find a way of addressing such as making sure that the Fat Bastard feeds B properly and makes sure she does her homework and bathes and brushes her teeth and all that boring parenting crap he's been able to remain oblivious to. Feeding her properly means something more than filling her up; any fool could do that. Homework doesn't mean shouting at her to do it, but sitting beside her and helping her through the harder stuff as necessary and generally being firm and supportive.

Washing means washing. The problem is that his poor personal hygiene suggests someone who doesn't understand that basic fact. Brushing her teeth requires supervision; making sure that she does something more than apply paste to brush and waft brush in vicinity of teeth. Oral/dental hygiene is another of his not-so-strong suits. What few teeth he has left are rotten, and he only visits the dentist when one of them falls out, chips or otherwise gives rise to an infection that causes his face to blow up to more grotesque than usual proportions.

In the meantime war is about to be resumed on the home front. Four weeks ago after his stunning act of bastardry involving sending my (our) daughter away for a week when I'd said no, I made his continued residence here conditional upon his better behaviour on the domestic front.

I've just been up to his room, the door to which he's left open. From the doorway I could see and incense burner above which was the remains of a tea-light. The fucking idiot is burning candles in his pig sty bedroom and that must be either when he's sprawled on his bed in a stupor or late at night after he's come in from a heavy drinking session. Either way that would be suicidal behaviour if he lived alone but as he doesn't it could be murderous.

Finding that, nestled among the glasses that were there before we went away on holiday, is too much. We're back to being unable to see the carpet for the clothes and books and other forms of crap and he's going to have to shift his fat arse or I'll shift his filthy crap to the charity shop myself once B is back at school and I have time to walk back and forth.

And time I will have.

Today I went down to the shop for my regular weekly shift. I found the place in a shocking state, the shop floor crammed with stuff of every description and too much of it. Having picked my way through it with the overnight donations and some stuff that came in as I arrived I found that the back was worse. The electricals are still being hoarded though we can't sell them. A lot were left lying about in the work area rather than stowed in the office. The latter is still hoarding electricals but at least they're not in everyone's (ie, my) way while working.

From what I could see, and my view was obscured by the excessive amounts of stuff crammed in, we've reverted to dumping stuff on the floor in lieu of space on the rails, shelves and other display furniture. Never mind how difficult that makes accessing the shop for the able bodied let alone those who are less than perfectly mobile (dangerous).

The place clearly hadn't been vacuumed in days. The window displays were tawdry, very little had been priced up (illegal).

I found records piled before the heating outlet and hauled them out the back as well as tidied up the pictures.

At that point one of the women who works Fridays with me(and is also a committee member) turned up and a bloke who's been co-opted into helping but hasn't formally been signed up (or insured, also illegal) also came knocking and clearly expected to be let in. It was the final straw.

I hate being driven out but as the committee member in charge of the shop on Friday's I'm responsible for its presentation, as well as all the legal (trading standard, health & safety, staff) issues. Almost a year ago I asked the chief executive, who was insistent that the charity would be the defendant in any case where an agency was to take action against 'us', to confirm this vague 'opinion' in writing. No such document has been forthcoming. Her 'hands off' management style has left the old couple who got things off the ground to run things as they see fit and that means ignoring the law, disregarding even the most reasonable concerns for health and safety and generally allowing things to 'drift'.

I handed over my keys and walked out. Later I phoned the woman I'd left the keys with to explain that while I'd left her in the lurch I'd had more than I could bear with the despicable letter written to me a fortnight ago that dragged B into the fight and was otherwise full of lies and distortions and motivated by malice, the squalor (God knows I've got enough of that at home), the peddling of gossip (mostly by her) that fuels all the backstabbing.

I have my Fridays back, at least until the employer who actually pays me decides to fill that particular void with paid work.

I have my Fridays back to harass the Fat Bastard into sorting out the pigsty, clearing the garden of his burgeoning collection of supermarket trolleys and other crap, getting up into the loft and sorting that out.

I've already this morning had to tidy up the remnants of yesterday; the camping trip's detritus is still all over the house downstairs. To be fair the tents do need to go up to be dried out and cleaned up before they're stored. On the other hand I found a plastic bag with his washing tucked away underneath a bookcase that otherwise might have lay there festering for weeks or months for all he might care.

Yesterday I patiently explained to him that he doesn't need to wait for dry weather before getting the tents up to clean and dry. They're small enough to put up inside provided newspaper is put down first. So I'm off to do that or we'll be forking out for new tents.

Jasmine's blog: Laws of Feline Physics - Lesson 1

2006-08-31T12:12:00.000+01:00

I stumbled across this and enjoyed it so much I just had to hang on to it and share it with anyone else who passes through. Enjoy: Jasmine's blog: Laws of Feline Physics - Lesson 1

Consider this part of my contribution to International Blog Day 2006.

Yes, Jasmine's Australian and yes this particular post of hers coincides with a theme I've touched on, myself, but Jasmine's blog is at http://speedcuber.blogspot.com/ and that title says a lot more about the focus of her blog than does this particular post. And I've never succeeded in solving Rubik's Cube, so I'm an unlikely visitor to her blog.

How did I find it? I was searching for references to Australian lollies (sweets or candy) and allowed myself to be distracted.

Neighbours

2006-08-30T23:03:00.000+01:00

No not the naff telly program. Hugely and hugely inexplicably popular over here.

I mean the people living on the adjoining and nearby properties. Over time I've gathered up bits and pieces of information and they weave quite a pattern. For me, for remembrance, I've jotted this lot down.

They come in all shapes and sizes, a perfect cross-section of society. Two young couples in their early twenties. One buying and renovating, the other renting and biding their time. An elderly widow who is hard of hearing and arthritis riddled. A couple in late middle-age; their child or children gone off on their own, pottering about in their end of terrace cottage after downsizing their life. A bachelor in his forties who has his washing done by his mother, an elderly gentleman not good on his feet any longer who has the local taxi company ferry him to and from the local Conservative Club. More young couples either buying and renovating or renting and biding their time. At the end of one terrace Tony & Mark have their extended and immaculately renovated cottage and at the end of the other terrace lives Cat Lady, who is another elderly widow (or divorcee, in her case I'm not sure). Between Cat Lady and the Conservative live Judy and Mac.

They are in their eighties now, but unlike all the other wrinklies they are astoundingly sprightly in both body and mind. They now live half the year in our town and half the year on the other side of the world in Perth. Over there Mac teaches windsurfing. He's an inveterate builder of model planes with 20ft and longer wingspans that he takes out into the country side to fly. They acquired their home in Perth after becoming fed up with there previous 'winter' domicile which was Goa. The walls of their house here are covered in Mac's awesomely detailed paintings of scenes from Goa and the local flora.

As a couple they've always fascinated me, and partly for the simple reason that they are so alike. This might seem obvious but in their case the 'alikeness' is extreme and extends to their build, colouring, mannerisms and the cadence in their voices. Their vocabularies are almost identical and their enthusiasms are equal. They also row quite delightfully and unashamedly and I suspect that they enthusiastically kiss and make up afterwards. The worst thing either will say of the other is "you silly old fool", though in the heat of the moment those few words can be injected with quite an impressive amount of passion and venom.

Sadly they didn't have children but they've channelled their energies and interest into a wide and deep rooted network of good friends and acquaintances. They had a business for many years that they sold to fund their retirement and live well if frugally. At their age they've a whole range of skills and knowledge sets that most younger (including me) people can only envy. They also have experience.

Judy speaks fluent French partly because of her education and partly because after school she took herself off to Paris to work at one of the big old and famous hotels there. Mac lived on the left bank too for a while and presumably speaks French having made a living for a time from hawking something (which wasn't very clear) about the restaurants and cafes. For a time he lived in somewhat bohemian Notting Hill in London in a bed-sit that was effectively nothing more than the closed off end of a corridor. He was a lorry driver for a time before beginning to make headway.

They are the sort of couple who always know what's what. They know how things work, what represents good value for money, how to make do and mend, and all of this seemingly effortlessly. Yet superficially they are also quintessentially Englishly eccentric. Neither could give a stuff about the clothes they wear, though Judy can look fabulous when she sets her mind to it, or what others think of them in any shape or form. In return they assume their fellow man deserves respect until proven otherwise and adopt a stance at the same time of live and let live.

Judy and Mac took care of Monty while we were away. Initially the plan had been for them to come in and feed him, give him his last few tablets, keep him company and generally keep an eye on him. They'd been unsure that they'd be able to make their house 'Monty-proof'. But in the end they gathered him and all his paraphernalia up and took him back to their house, into which he very quickly settled. He spent the nights asleep on their bed between them and the days on the bench behind their kitchen table.

Not only that but yesterday Mac drove me over to the vets - not once but twice. In the morning we dropped him off so that he could be anaethetised, x-rayed and have his stitches removed. In the afternoon we collected him not entirely sans stitches and brought him home.

I'd already planned for and bought a bottle of champagne and a thank you card; the need for which became more pressing when Mac insisted on paying the last of the vet bills. Between us he and I can take out the last of the stitches on Friday (if this sounds unbelievable let me tell you that I've taken stitches out of my own arm and it is really a doddle; yes this is something you can try at home children).

Anyway I think these two people in their eighties are an inspiration. They are Carpe Diem personified. They've lived all over the place and done so much and they haven't stopped yet.

Not everyone at their age can be as physically or mentally active as they are. No one can say that Margaret who lives three doors from me and is in her early seventies would be in better shape than she is had she adhered to a better diet. She did the best she could, ate the diet she'd been raised on and is now all but immobilised by her arthritis. Walking from her door to mine can bring her to tears. She's all alone with nothing but a parrot and the TV for company for large parts of the day. Her two sons, their wives and their children do keep a very regular eye on her but the adults work and the children are all in school or doing further studies.

Margaret's an immensely kind soul whose husband was a complete bastard. For years he ran the local cinema and flaunted a string of mistresses about town. He broke Margaret's heart. She was a poorly educated girl from the North when he married her and nothing happened afterwards to give her the slightest chance of breaking free of the relationship and standing on her own two feet.

She quickly had two sons to raise and by the time she'd done that job she'd had the will to live beaten down too severely to be recovered. Instead her two sons rallied round and protected her to the extent they could.

Then her bastard husband became ill and by the time we moved here he was a broken shell of a man who on warm days would be shuffled from their house to a seat in their garden. He'd had a stroke that had almost paralysed him. Margaret continued dutifully to feed him and otherwise care for him until he died and then she cried.

By the she'd realised that things weren't entirely right in our house. She knew that I was the one working while he was the one lying about the house with hand down his pants all day (okay, she might not have known about the last bit, but she probably guessed). She knew that he neither worked, nor looked after our child, nor did any meaningful work of a maintenance/improvement nature about the house. So one afternoon not long after her husband finally died Margaret told me all about the affairs, the openness of them, the hurt she'd felt.

She's a good soul, with a kindness that soars above the pain she's constantly in, and I hope fervently that she gets her reward. I'm cross with myself when I'm impatient with her. She'll grab me as I pass her house and never for a quick word. Sometimes I'm fretful for the 'lost' time I've got a dozen things I could spend it on.

But Margaret doesn't have a malicious, vindictive or brutal bone in her body (unlike me) and the least I can do is give her a little of my time.

Specimens

2006-08-30T08:42:00.000+01:00

The camp site we stayed at might not feature in the 2006 edition of UK camping and caravanning, but it still managed to be a sell-out over the long weekend. While some of the static tents (up all across the summer and owned) were vacant all the travelling pitches were occupied.

Even as we were registering the manager of the site was fielding calls from optimists hoping at the last minute to secure somewhere to stay. That night we became aware that those we were sharing the site with were largely large and well organised groups from Oop Noorth with a decided taste for red and white clothing. The following morning those same groups were up bright and early, decked out almost to a man, woman and child in brilliant white and bright red - St Helens supporters off to Twickers to watch their team beat Huddersfield (I think, my interest in Rugby League being extremely limited) in Rugby League's Challenge Cup final.

Good luck to them. Despite the convincing win they were admirably quiet coming back afterwards and left early the next morning to get home.

The family next to us on one side were already well set up when we arrived and were still struggling pack as we left for the last time. This was an intriguing set up with a very much older wife (mid forties I'd guess) and a partner who although absolutely immense can't have been much more than thirty plus an assortment of male children ranging in age from about twelve down to about seven, so possibly not all hers, and a female baby. It was never absolutely clear how many of the children were theirs as some of the children swirling about the tent might have been hangers on their children had picked up, as children are wont to do.

The first night the boys were delighted to be able to tuck into McDonalds meals brought in and we sniggered at their inability to set aside for even a few days the trappings of what they consider to be civilisation. The second night we had the opportunity to observe dad or step-dad's barbequing skills and made a rapid reassessment of the kids' position vis-a-vis McDonalds. Whether a conscious act or otherwise their demands for something cooked by someone else were nothing more or less than an act of self-preservation.

Haystacks (immense, shaven-headed and bearded) laid down fire starters then coals then a layer of fire-starter gel, lit the lot then immediately slapped on the food. The result was food (burgers) that was char-grilled on the outside and in all probability still frozen on the inside.

Some of our fellow site occupants are semi-permanent. One jovial jock lives in a two man tent from the time the site opens in spring until the day it closes in October. When he's sober he's almost incomprehensible due to his thick Scottish accent; when he's drunk (and he was, every evening we were there) he's totally incomprehensible. Happy but incomprehensible.

I've already mentioned the cheating site manager who wrote the quiz night questions then took part and the smug cow with her yuppie-mobile (actually one of the new model bugs).

The rest of the site population were exactly the sort of people you'd find on any camp site and pretty much indistinguishable from campers anywhere. Some people regard camping as an exercise in extreme minimalisation while others will travel with and spend an hour each morning using the make-up kit and the hair straightening tongs.

I hadn't been camping since leaving Australia. My father was very keen on the outdoors and we did some camping en famille before he died. After that I did some camping after uni, particularly down along Victoria's southern coast. The thing that struck me was that the experience really hasn't changed a great deal in all that time (which let's face it is heading for half a century of past).

I'm glad we went away because I had a couple of days off work, out of the house, out of town, out of the county, on the road, doing something different that was comfortingly familiar at the same time. Would I do it again? Yes, I would go camping again.

The Fat Bastard walked Hadrian's Wall one summer (with someone who's word I trust, plus he has the certificate to prove it) and wants to get his Winter Certificate. All fired up by all this family activity he wants now to travel up to the border to do the walk this winter, with me and the Infant along for the ride (though possibly putting up in a B&B). His argument is that B will see 'proper' snow for the first time. My counter argument is that unless our finances dramatically improve we'll be spending our budget for next summer's holiday activities on something that's essentially an indulgence.

I guess we'll be up on the border in Winter.

Which is a shame really because our outing to Windsor and the time we spent pootling about on the Thames in our hired boat fired us all up with enthusiasm for a holiday on a narrow boat and that would require some serious effort to save money. Boat hire would run into about £150-£200 per person per week - comparable perhaps to a week in some grotty Euro-resort, but a lot more expensive than a week on a camp site.

Being optimistic I'd like to think that B and I could do it even if not with the Fat Bastard, but that would take some changes to current arrangements.

WeightWatchers rant

2006-08-30T07:05:00.000+01:00

Haystacks (the dad/step-dad next door at the camp site) obviously saw the weekend as a chance to get in some fishing and he certainly had quite a lot of angling gear, and fishing as a pretext for some bonding with the older boys. About three of them were back and forth with boxes and rods all day every day we were there. What was uncomfortable about this was the sight of a young man struggling to walk more than a handful of paces without huffing and puffing; and the biggest of the boys was already struggling to walk normally with the weight he's piled on.

That said the family we were travelling with are all overweight, much bigger than the Fat Bastard. The girl of 15 weighs about that in stones and the mother weighs well over 20 stones. She's also forking over a fortune to the mighty Weight Watchers corporation in her efforts to shed some of that weight. But in the course of our three supermarket expeditions we purchased one punnet of peaches and one bag of grapes. And they were put in there by me because I couldn't imagine shopping for food and not putting in at least some fruit. On the other hand we bought plenty of sweet biscuits and chocolate and pudding and so forth.

I've never experienced the lifestyle of the almost morbidly obese before; though I've never bought the line that its glandular and always tended toward the hypothesis that the problem boils down to taking on too many calories. Having watched these past few days I now know that overeating is the heart of their problem. The mother is too large to exercise, the girl couldn't keep up with the men and me as we set up a pace slightly under that of a forced march on our way back along the tow path from Staines.

The only way she's going to turn her situation around is by changing completely what she eats, how she eats and the volume of food she eats.

Meanwhile Weight Watchers prey on her, seducing her through offers of WW sticky toffee pudding into believing that she can actually have her cake and be thin. Their products sell at a premium and do nothing to alter her mindset. The hard truth is that the mighty Weight Watchers corporation is out to make a profit, and the only people it can make a profit from are those who are, or believe themselves to be overweight. It follows that Weight Watchers' best interests lie in consumers of its products not actually losing weight and adapting to a normal diet that doesn't come at a premium.

WW behaviour is repellently parasitical. Ditch the WW pudding and buy some fruit and vegetables instead.

1215 and all that...

2006-08-29T10:36:00.000+01:00

I've tried to write this post numerous ways; taking various approaches and adopting a variety of tones. But at the end of the day anything I write boils down to 'the English education system is crap'.

This is a theme I've touched on previously in connection with the failure of infant school (preparatory year and then years 1 through 3) to teach pupils to write legibly in print (pen craft) before introducing them to cursive script. And in connection with the failure of infant school to instil essential and fundamental arithmetic skills in pupils. And in the wasting of considerable valuable time on history and keyboard skills. I'm very nearly certain I'd be equally irate about flaws in the approach to imparting English language skills were it not for the fact that my daughter happens to have an awe-inspiring natural talent in that direction and has succeeded despite rather than because of the system.

The early years are those during which children learn 'times tables' by rote so that in later years 7x6 elicits an instinctive response. The early years are those during which pen craft is developed so that in later years those who do not go on to become medical doctors (the overwhelming majority) can function. The early years are not for plonking children in front of a computer. Should we really applaud to the rafters when little Johnny produces an 'A' on the keyboard but can't recite the 3 times table up to 12 by age 8?

My first hand and direct experience of the English education system comes in two forms; firstly and formerly struggling to coax something approximating standard English from university graduate new employees when I was a senior manager with a global management consulting practice. More recently and brutally my experience has come via being a spectator at my daughter's early years at school.

Had I any aptitude aligned with the requisite domestic arrangements I'd opt for teaching her myself in lieu of packing her off to my alma mater in Melbourne.

Each year that passes only serves to reinforce my anxiety about my Infant's prospects, notwithstanding her effortless upper decile achievements. Each year one teacher after another has told me (and the Fat Bastard) how well she's doing; how well she's progressing through the national curriculum - oblivious to the contempt I feel for said curriculum.

David Starkey may not be my cup of tea; I find him overly manner and besides he and I wrestle with a semi-professional dilemma - in his utterly professional judgement (and by my estimation) Starkey regards the narrow Tudor epoch as the fulcrum on which English history turns whereas I (in my entirely amateur judgement) would place said fulcrum earlier, in the latter half of the fourteen century. On television I find him irritatingly mannered. On radio I adore him and are as one with him (in the non-biblical sense) as to the deficiencies in the English education system.

So here's one to absolutely delight him...

Our first day excursion took us to a site of historic significance not more than a handful of miles from our camp site. The name of that place is Runnymede (or Magna Carta Island in the Thames, we visited both). In June of 1215 at one or other of those places the English Barons succeeded at least temporarily in bending the King of England - King John, to their will in forcing him to sign their list of demanded concessions. The document containing those demands and to which John's signature and the Royal Seal were affixed under duress is known as Magna Carta. If you need to know more about Magna Carta you can start here at the British Library.

As we tramped across a cow field and then down a muddy silver poplar lined avenue towards the river discussing quite why we were visiting this place it became apparent that the two 15 year old English just-done-their-'whatevers' in our party had not the foggiest notion of Magna Carta's significance in their country's development. Rote learning has its limitations and secondary school has role to play in developing students' analytical skills but I simply cannot be brought to believe that 30 or so years of tinkering with 'the system' has wrought even a modicum of improvement when a pair of average mid-teenage school students (and a pair with prospects) will protest, and unashamedly at that, that they've not heard of Magna Carta.

Later that night as we finished off last of the food we returned to the amazement shared by all the wrinkly (forty-something year olds) that the two teenagers could not place that document in its proper context.

Our conversation wended its way to English Lit. and I was inculcated in the modern method of teaching Shakespeare/Dickens et al.

In respect of Great Expectations (their set Dickens text) they watched the recent TV adaptation and discussed. In respect of Much Ado they watched the Branagh film (yes the one with the woeful performance from the usually thorough admirable Denzil Washington and with Keanu Reeves), read some selected passages and discussed. In respect of ... but I hope you get the gist.

If only I could I'd put B on a plane to Melbourne tonight. Old Egg had her deficiencies but at least I knew and could explain (after all these years) that Magna Carta was signed by KJ at Runnymede in the Thames in June of 1215 after he'd brought his Barons to a state of rebellion by his greed and ineptitude and his viciousness, and that this document was and still to some extent is a cornerstone of democracy wherever it exists. (NB his particular forms of viciousness were never spelled out, we had to go to a better library than that at the Old Egg to find out more.)

I tried explaining this to the two teenagers in our party but gave up about the time they asked me to explain exactly where KJ fits in. In the meantime and back at home I've pulled Alan Lloyd's bio of King John from one of my book cases and dipped into it for a contrasting interpretation of KJ's life and reign.

I suppose I ought to sign off with a bah, or an hurumph or an I Don't Believe It. I'm a fifty foot tall and very ancient Greek Goddess and I'm struggling to retain my equanimity in the face of evidence of pedagogic ineptitude, though deep down I blame the bearded sandal-wearers of Whitehall.

PS: We saw this too. The flora expert put it at 1000 years old. He was only out by 1000 years, or thereabouts.

Snap shot of four days

2006-08-29T09:57:00.000+01:00

We went away and got back. Nobody died; no accidental drownings, stabbings or other inadvertent expirations.

Seven of us piled into a very big Land Rover (plug for LR’s capacity for hauling large numbers of people and their stuff about the country), pulling a trailer loaded with assorted tents, cooking, eating, sleeping &etc stuff. The couple we travelled with are old hands and equipped with most of the basic essentials as well as a daughter of their own.

B packed her favourite stuffed toy, their daughter brought a friend along.

The journey out consisted mostly of one motorway after another. I got a bit nostalgic for the days when I was free to jump in my car and move myself a couple of hours away just because I felt like it. I also got a stark reminder of a few reasons for giving up car after I started living with the Fat Bastard.

His incessant smoking and his insistence on smoking in the car, his preference for sailing along at 70 miles an hour with the windows right down. I, on the other hand have an intense dislike of being blown about. Even in the hottest nights I can’t abide a fan; I’d rather be hot. Give me an air-conditioned car one can (and indeed should) drive with the windows UP. Most of all though it’s his insufferable air of knowledgability in all matters motoring-related.

Sailing along, curled up in the middle seats I got the chance to watch many fine examples of bad British driving and admire the determination with which so many Brits continue to flout the exceedingly well publicised laws concerning driving while using a mobile phone. But nothing was as good as the lorry driver upending a bag of some snack or other to pour the contents straight down his gullet (temporarily blinding himself in the meantime).

I was slightly astounded to see a police notice strapped to some central reservation light posts at one stretch, asking for witnesses to an accident on that stretch on a particular date and at a particular date to come forward. We were sailing along at just on the speed limit (unlike those overtaking us) and I couldn’t get the fucking details. Of course as a driver I could have tried, but I’d almost certainly have caused a pile up. I think that the central reservation police notice was the dumbest thing I saw on my travels.

We changed motorways, crossed the Thames and headed into Kent before hooking west and entering Surrey; then made pretty good time until close to where we had to leave this particularly infamous British free car park (the M25, of course). We reached the camp site off, loaded the gear put up the tents, got things straightened and then went for a bit of a drive.

Our driver for the weekend often works in this part of the world and had somewhere in mind to take us. A few country roads and lanes away we parked up beside a derelict farm shed on a concreted over spot at the end of a rutted lane which had a bit of signage planted in its middle.

After a false start involving us tramping in the wrong direction (towards a private gated estate) we headed off across a deserted field, over a bridge and through some riverside woods until quite miraculously we stumbled across one of England’s 50 designated Heritage Trees. This one is a Yew (a species known for its longevity and for being found in churchyards). A little further on we passed the remains of the Priory in the former grounds of which the Yew stands. Beyond the Priory we followed the path through an avenue of Horse Chestnuts to the river and then followed it upstream a bit.

Leaving this heritage site we went shopping. A bill of £100 for one day’s food is not bad going. For seven people, of course, and it must be pointed out that two of those were not purchasing alcohol. Back at the campsite we offloaded the food, got that sorted, put on the evening meal, ate it and then went to bed. Exciting or what?

Actually we did have an illuminating conversation with the two teenagers. Quite a lot of light was shed by them on modern teaching methods, although I’d already experienced the ramifications at first hand. It rained overnight but the day was quite fine. Up and showered I was astonished to find that the Fat Bastard had already crawled out of his tent and been for the newspapers.

Cooked breakfast then off to Windsor, via Eton. I took my camera with me. The first sign of the school was its playing fields. Much quoting of Wellington, then the school itself. I resisted the urge to photograph anything. After all, it’s just a bloody school.

We stopped at a pub for a comfort break and the Fat Bastard managed to tear his pants, creating a hole in a pocket through which most of the money he’d brought with him fell, to be lost forever. He didn’t notice its loss until a couple of hours later, which left me funding our side of the weekend entirely.

We moved on to Windsor which is much bigger than I’d imagined and very much more given over to shopping. We had ice-cream from a shop near the Guildhall, of which building I’ve now tramped the portico. If you want to know what it looks like have a gander at the pictures of Charles and Camilla’s wedding.

From here, and completely ignoring the big old building on what was now our right, we crossed over and plunged down the hill in search of chemists and somewhere for me to purchase warmer clothing for B and me; bad (or just incompetent) mother that I am I’d under catered for this wonderful English late summer weather.

Shopped out we wandered down to the river and hired a motor boat in which we pootled about for an hour; being half an hour up stream then half an hour the other way. Lots of river, river bank, other boats, big houses can be seen from the inside of a small hire boat pootling about in the stretches twenty minutes either way from Windsor in Royal Berkshire. My fourth county in under a day!

After that we went back to the supermarket to buy more food. Amazingly this bill came to somewhat less than or in fact half of that of the previous day. No one bought any sun cream and some of the stuff that we’d bought the previous day hadn’t been used up. For example we didn’t get through all 15 eggs at breakfast (being slightly filled up with a large bloomer, a packet and a half of bacon, a packet of sausages, mushrooms, tomatoes). And we hadn’t used up all the kitchen roll, either.

By this time we needed to get back to the camp and cook, it being a bit late in the day.

The next day we went shopping early, just to break things up a bit. Actually that isn’t entirely true; we did shop early but not for that reason.

The previous evening we’d had a run in with the fascistic side of this particular site’s operating committee. I don’t know the ins and outs but the site’s been in operation since nineteen-0-something, presumably arising from a bequest with certain stipulations attached. The thing is run by a committee elected from within the body of members. There are rules. The most bizarre (and in terms of such sites, unusual) is that cars may not be kept on the site.

Cars may be brought onto the site to get you and your stuff to your pitch, but once you’ve off-loaded you must take your car and park it in the car park. Well that night we’d found the car park full. And we’d found the parking along the opposite wall (reserved for committee members) also full. And finally we found that the barrier to the nearby public car park is so low as to preclude a Land Rover such as the one we’re travelling in getting under.

One or other of us kept going back looking for a newly created space or signs of someone leaving as the deadline loomed. Finally someone in a people carrier moved out, as did the car next to it. But the little car next to the people carrier then drove back in, perfectly taking out both spaces. I remonstrated with the smug cow who got out and explained to her that while she and her little yuppie-mobile could slide under pretty much anywhere (and boy did I wish she would) we couldn’t get the LR in anywhere but in the camp car park. A decent human being would have offered to hold the place while we got the LR round after which she’d retire with what good grace she could muster to the public car park.

I was blanked. She sauntered off so I chased down, peg leg who’d been giving us grief over the LR still being on site and explained what had happened. After sending one of the teenagers back to get the car’s registration we watched in delight as the site manager’s mate reluctantly gave another committee member a ticking-off for double parking less than a couple of hours after the matter had been discussed in committee and an announcement reminding people not to do it had been put out over the speaker system.

It was pretty damned obvious that if he could have found a way of letting them have their way he would have done. But I’m bigger than him as it happens and he decided I suppose that discretion would be the better part of valour, at least on this occasion. The smug cow was dragged, spitting and scratching all the way, to her yuppie-mobile which she moved over so that we could get the LR in. We were left next to the gate to the car park. During the night someone slammed the gate into the rear mudguard. None of us are in any doubt as to who that might have been.

We went shopping early so as to be back before the car park filled. Having got back the energetic amongst us walked what turned out to be three miles down stream to the nearest riverside town only to find that it doesn’t have any river side pubs and also that the pubs it does have are either Weatherspoons make-over jobs (ghastly) or operate a strict Over-21 policy.

This might go someway towards explaining any trouble this town might have with its youth who having attained the age of majority and the legal right to consume alcohol, then do so on street corners in a mildly threatening and thoroughly anti-social fashion. Reluctantly we had a drink in the make-over before yomping back to site to put on the evening meal which, as it happens was a rather splendid roast beef with all the trimmings (some of the veggies and the gravy were not done of the barbeque).

That evening the weekend social for adults took place: a quiz. Another great British institution. We won the first round then lost the next three in part because there’s only so many rounds of those image puzzles (Thing Bats? Ding Bats?) any of us can do before starting to toss our toys out of the pram. I’m nearly certain that we won every round of general knowledge, but the general knowledge only ever made up less than half of a round’s points.

Not only that but the team that won the third round was the woman who’d set the questions. Possibly the fix was in.

Today we came back via non-Motorways. We travelled instead through some of Surrey’s greenest scenery and stopped for a quick drink at a pub offering panoramic views of Box Hill. And then we got home.

My application went in and now I’m on tenterhooks. Pretty much everything else becomes displacement activity for the anxiety I’ll otherwise feel until a decision is announced one way or another.

We collected Monty from the neighbours who’ve been taking care of him: they decided he’d be miserable locked up in our house so they took him back to theirs. Now he’s depressed. Maybe they should keep him. I certain don’t want him. I know that sounds mean, and I don’t actually wish him harm – I just don’t see him or want him as my cat.

We have to take him back to the vet tomorrow for a check up. If he gets the stitches out and the all clear he can be let out doors to make up his own mind.

This long weekend has been reasonably relaxing and enjoyable. I kept wishing though, that I was actually sharing it with someone. We were like two long-term acquaintances rather than husband and wife. At one point the husband in the other couple (who is the Fat Bastard’s best mate with the cable subscription, the great sound system and the even better music collection) said something that made me realise he too has seen through him but tolerates him.

In a way I’m rather admiring of his ability to treat so many people so badly (either with acts of bastardry or by dealing out lots and lots of small disappointments) and yet be held, at least in some quarters, in such affection.

Like me he (Top Buddy who is his Best Mate) has recognised the Fat Bastard’s propensity for what the generous hearted might call tall stories. I heard from TB some variations on some of FB’s cherished stories. One of them concerns driving. Specifically it concerns driving in the US. The Fat Bastard has never held a full British driving licence but he’ll tell you about how he spent some time in the US and did some driving. I heard one version (uncle who is or was a bishop in Florida) lending him a car; TB, it transpires, has heard another which involves driving a car from one coast to another for a relative. Note how the story has been worked on since he told it to me.

The truth is he doesn’t know enough about driving to have ever done much of it. The only words of real criticism of the Fat Bastard I heard the Top Buddy utter were connected with the Fat Bastard actually grabbing the steering wheel while Top Buddy was driving. That little revelation emerged after I’d explained that I’d given up the car in fear of killing the pair of us during a fit of road rage brought about by his instinct for side seat driving.

I’ve got an advanced driving certificate (for what it’s worth now) while he has a Learner Permit.

The flip side of enjoying what I did enjoy about our holiday is that I had it brought home to me the extent to which my current existence is little better than that of a ‘resident’ in one of Her Maj’s Open Prisons. The open road, the leisure activities; they’re all stuff I’ve had to leave behind. The passage of time has acted as a kind of anaesthetic but the wounds are now smarting as they haven’t in a long time. Hopefully that will act as motivation.

‘Nuff rambling. Supplementary posts and corrections to follow.

Bananas ... and so forth

2006-08-24T08:46:00.000+01:00

Little fact about me: I don't like bananas.

I'm about the only person I know who can't stand the things. I've eaten precisely 0 (zero) bananas over the course of my life, as far as I can recall. My mother tried to get me to eat them but I couldn't abide the taste or the texture. The mere thought would be enough to make me gag. She gave up after a handful of attempts that I can recall.

Now that I'm a mother I suspect that that I'd eaten them as a baby. Quite why I decided I wouldn't eat them is something that must remain a mystery.

I mention this because the Infant ate bananas as a baby, then stopped about the time she acquired the ability to construct sentences. I couldn't understand what was happening but suspected that it was toddler assertiveness ... that she'd find bigger and more important issues to fight me over (boys/short skirts/make-up/telephone/homework/housework and so forth) and get over bananas.

Other things that went the way of the banana included Rice. I love rice. I could happily live on rice based dishes. As a baby the Infant would happily tuck into a risotto or paella. Then suddenly, no more.

Fine. I'm happy to cook two evening meals a day in a three person household [hint: you're supposed to detect heavy sarcasm here]. And wash up afterwards. And put away.

Then three weeks ago the Infant was sent away for a week by the Mother-in-Law I can no longer describe as From Hell (because she might be seriously ill and under those circumstances such a soubriquet might be construed as Poor Taste).

What a shoddy excuse for a Greek Goddess I am.

A week ago we had Peking Duck - a kit our local supermarket sells that we all love. Usually I make myself a side dish of steamed rice. I was rather astonished when the Infant asked for some. I was even more taken aback when she actually ate it. What really got me was the way she explained without missing a beat, in response to my slightly sarky question concerning the date of her renewed taste for rice, "I tried it at SuperWeek."

Last night she was still up when I got home. Eating a banana!!. Damned SuperWeek. Damned kids. Meanwhile our house is in total turmoil.

We have all the cat crap : food bowls (new), carrier (borrowed), litter tray (blue) and newspaper (old).
We have all the camping crap - loads and loads.
We have washing and ironing everywhere - too wet outside, no dryer.
We have crap crap - largely this is his stuff crap. Books (mostly) but also other stuff that he's just had to acquire, though without having any purpose for this crap.
We have toys - the Infant's (mostly) but also some of his toys such as weights.
We have all the pictures taken down from the walls ahead of painting (not yet done) and propped up along the walls.

Ordinarily I'm a pretty shoddy housewife - what point cleaning when the Fat Bastard is a couple of paces behind me all the way, making things worse than before I started - but recently I've been frantically trying to do something about the state things have slipped into by working around all this crap. A lot of it is crap he promised me he'd take to the local charity shop, but that stuff is still around the house in the boxes I put it into.

Although I did say on Tuesday that I'd come to regard the prospect of a long weekend away with the Fat Bastard as attractive I'm now quickly working myself up into a state of "bugger it the weekend couldn't be worth all this stress".

In the midst of sick and stroppy cat, fat lazy bastard husband, sleepy infant, lousy weather (we're off camping so this was a given), I've also got to cram forty hours work into Monday-Thursday with a dodgy knee that's led to a dodgy back and sort out this mess with IND.

In fact I'm bloody fed up.

I can't wait

2006-08-22T22:27:00.000+01:00

for this week to be over. Even the prospect of spending four whole days in close proximity to the Fat Bastard looks enticing after what's gone on so far, and it's only TUESDAY.

The cat's decided that he doesn't like the pain killers. Well that's fine. Except they're also anti-inflamatories so he really should be taking them. Silly sod. He's decided that discretion is the better part of valour and used the litter tray once or twice. Which constitutes progress of sorts.

The Fat Bastard was supposed to come up and get his photograph done using our photobooth but FORGOT even though this is crucial material for the visa application. MORON.

More problematic: I can't find his passport. The damned thing's been floating around the house, I'm sure I've seen it fairly recently but right now WHEN I NEED IT I can't lay my hands on the effing thing. Fortunately I have a photocopy. I have to hope that'll be good enough. I wasted a morning already trying to find it, turned the damned house upside down. Somehow I managed to hurt my knee.

This morning my knee had a twinge but as the afternoon progressed (and I was up and down and up and down sorting out one problem after another) it got worse and worse and WORSE. All the time I was walking in such a way as to ease the strain on my knee and that upset my hips which started to complain rather LOUD and then, finally, about 8:00pm my back got in the act. Bearing in mind how VERY OLD and BATTLE SCARRED I am it shouldn't be any wonder that I have a few aches and pains.

I broke several bones in my spine as a teenager and my lower back is prone to taking umbrage at being required to do THE WRONG SORT OF WORK. It takes a bit to bring tears to my eyes but by the end of my shift I was white faced and watery-eyed. I HAD HAD ENOUGH.

I left getting my own photographs done until too late in the day: the ones that came out of the machine were dreadful (and I'm not being the least bit GIRLY about this - they looked like images of someone who had her mind elsewhere, and mine was in the drug cabinet romancing the paracetemol.)

I'm off to bed now, perchance to sleep. (Apologies for the shouty bits.)

Congratulations Tony & Mark

2006-08-22T22:18:00.000+01:00

The following post was knocked together in the early morning of Saturday, but for some reason Blogger chose to eat it. Since Tony's proved himself repeatedly a top drawer neighbor I'm posting it AGAIN. Blogger, do your worst.

Tony was a godsend in what is now yesterday's evening drama involving the cat that isn't mine.

He and his other half actually looked at the house we bought when they were looking to buy but ended up in the house around the corner so we've been here pretty much exactly the same amount of time.

He's the raucous half in his partnership and has been a godsend to me in the past (when the dog belonging to another neighbour broke through the fence into our garden and killed one of my cats for example). Conversation was a bit stilted on the way to the vet which was partly down to having a wailing cat on the back seat to contend with. On the way back though just after we'd set off he casually dropped "we're getting married in December" into the conversation and with admirable aplomb I eschewed the opportunity to say "don't do it".

Followed a long and thoroughly entertaining description of all the usual hassles involving dates, venues, menus, music, seating arrangements, obstreperous relatives and awkward friends. Tony and his other half have sat out the rush and waited while what he tonight described as 'all the old Queens' rush to the altar; he and Mark are making their own way in their own time. It goes without saying that I wish the both of them all the very, very best.

Monty (again)

2006-08-21T23:12:00.000+01:00

A photo post, of sorts - a couple of befores (Monty stretched out on B's bed - Butter Wouldn't Melt etc) and some afters (the stitched wounds). He's not himself, which is understandable. He's not at all happy about the tray - so far refusing to use it but instead attempting to turn the key in the kitchen door preparatory to making The Great Escape.

Poor little thing. His back legs got ripped to pieces; the front of the left is worse than the right...

This is his left flank. The most grim looking injury though not even among the cuts that caused the most concern; they were the two on the front legs (which he wouldn't let me photograph).

On the other hand it is these wounds on the lower part of his right leg that are causing him the most discomfort.