Born in Chicago, raised on the city streets, his momma taught him the basic facts of life.

That was my Angry Chimp, my muse, the one who brought us the classics:

Years have gone by and in the past day or so, I’ve become aware of the angry chimp residing in my head. My chimp takes over when I’m tired or depressed, when I lack the capacity for reason, bypass rationality and just let rip.

The chimp in everyone is the emotional thinker, it doesn’t deal with facts, just feelings. My chimp is going to be trained to behave, but today has been a bad day and it has been well and truly unleashed. In the office, the air was blue, at home, I lashed out. All because of a combination of tiredness (yes, from a boozy weekend) and a little bit of stress from having to balance the moth-like fluctuations in demands from the people who I’m there to help.

Reflecting on things objectively is useful because it was actually a really enjoyable day at work; the stress I experienced wasn’t because of lack of control, or inability to achieve the tasks, but more to do with managing the expectations of others, offering reassurance, allaying their anxieties at an important time for them, ensuring that I delivered. Which I did, for them at least.

Added to the mix was a telephone conversation with a stressed academic in which I told her that she had a week longer for a deadline than she thought, which then descended into our usual discussions about our dogs and her sending me the details of a house she’s thinking of buying in the Derbyshire Dales.

All in all, not a bad day, but I really must maintain a tight control on the primate within.

The hypnotic gastric band
I’m hungry again, despite being given a huge bowl of pasta for dinner at my folks’ earlier on this evening.

Clearly this freezing weather has set my metabolism racing, or maybe I’m just a greedy fat pig. I think I can blame my inner chimp for this flaw in my personality too, this inability to control what I eat and to maintain a healthy balance when it comes to food and my resultant weight.

Short of getting an actual gastric band fitted, which alongside vitamin D therapy must be the ultimate in embarrassing treatments I could request from my GP, I’m going to do the next best thing. No, not the coffee and cigs diet again, instead I’m going for the “Hypnotic gastric band”. Yes, it’s a Paul McKenna book, yes, everything will get kicked into touch as soon as I’m faced with a large Domino’s Mighty Meaty, but it’s got amazing reviews.

Now that I know that I’m (probably) not going to meet a premature end from terminal cancer, I really must start preparing myself for a longer life in which the last thing I want is to be left a dribbling wreck with somebody having to wipe my backside because I’ve had a massive stroke (in the medical sense). I’m also fed up of feeling like rubbish and looking rubbish. Most important of all, if I ever get into the position to get jiggy with it with somebody, I’d like to be able to get my ankles behind my head.

I don’t think I’ve ever been able to get my ankles behind my head.

So, sensible eating and smaller portion sizes. Not to mention early nights and lots of sleep (she writes at 11.20pm)

Ice
How do you correct somebody’s poor use of language without making them hate you? Do you want to be popular who can’t use their native language correctly? It’s Ok with my little niece, she knows she forgets things and it’s easy for her to pick up bad habits from her school friends, it’s also easy to correct her and it does sink in.

Unfortunately, you can’t speak to grown ups in the same way as you’d speak to a young child, so when they come out with things like “youse” instead of “you”, what the hell do you do? I know what chimp would do:

“It’s YOU, fucking YOU! There’s no such fucking word as YOUSE and YOUSE WENT is utter fucking nonsense. How the hell did you get a job speaking like that?? Surely you don’t write “youse” in e-mails, so why do you say it?”

I could write a memo. Or do that wonderfully passive aggressive thing of putting up a notice and laminate it to make look important. Passive aggression is useless, it just prolongs the agony without any certainty of success. Aggression is the only way forward.

Of course, it being winter, we’re often met with icy cars in the morning that we have to… that’s correct: de-ice. You don’t defrost a car, you defrost a bloody turkey. You defrost something in which all the water content has frozen, not something that has a coating of ice.

For fuck’s sake.

Don’t get me started on hung/hanged. Just… actually, maybe the world would be more how I’d like it if I let my chimp just take over. Repressing it just makes me annoyed.

What did I do with my cattle prod?

I love my bed: swaddled in feather and down, the crisp cotton bedding crunching as I move, resting on a mattress that hugs me, warmed by the electric underblanket. This is luxury. The silence is broken by the tapping of the keys as I type and the snuffling of the little dog besides me as he licks and sniffs his anus.

Rocky does have his own bed that lies on the floor next to mine. He prefers to drag it around the house though since, to him, it seems like a large stuffed toy. I point out to him that his teddies squeak. He pays little attention to me.

He pays little attention to me, but he makes such a fuss when I leave him, howling and whining until I return, at which point he launches himself at me repeatedly. I know that he howls and whines for me because people I leave him with tell me. I also know this because of the number of doormats he’s destroyed over the years.

And now he snores, stretched out on my clean bed linen. I stop short of turning the electric blanket on on his side of the bed.

Fifty ways to tell your mother
Jodie Foster gave an impressive and emotional speech at the Golden Globes this week in which she came out as being fifty (FIFTY????) and single.

I liked her style and argument, which is one that I have used and still do. Why on earth does society think that people who are gay need to come out and proclaim their sexuality? It defies logic, but it demonstrates the negative attitudes towards homosexuality that are still very much inherent in this so-called enlightened world of ours. Could you imagine if the straights had to do that?

“Mum, Dad, I’ve got something to tell you, I think you’d better sit down.

“I’ve been trying to think of a good time to tell you this, but there may never be a good time, so I’m just going to have to this now, so don’t interrupt, just listen.

“I’m straight; I fancy boys. I know this is going to be a terrible worry for you, but please don’t hate me, or yourselves, it’s not your fault, it’s just the way I am. I’ve read a few books and been on the internet, spoken to my friends and they’ve been great with me – some of them are straight too as it turns out. I know there are terrible risks and I promise to try to be careful to choose the right boy, not to get pregnant or an STI, not to end up in a loveless relationship, or even worse, an abusive one. I know a lot of straight people who just want to sleep around, but I’m not like that, I want to find love and eventually I might. So please, don’t reject me because of this, it’s going to be really difficult, but I need you more than ever right now.”

Straight people just do their thing, talk about who they fancy freely, meet a boy or girl, tell their family and friends that they’ve met somebody and it’s generally no big deal. Yet it’s expected that people come out as gay even before they meet somebody worth going out with.

One of these days, I hope in the next couple of decades, we’ll get to the stage whereby everyone will be able to feel comfortable expressing who they fancy without it being such a massive deal. Schools have a big part to play in this, but there seems to be little done to tackle homophobic bullying in schools and with more and more religious schools, I fear that the problem will become worse, not better. Let’s face it, if you’re gay and an atheist, things could start to get fairly hideous a few years down the line.

But nobody really bothers about this shit so long as they’re OK.

Le Weekend!
It’s only Thursday evening but that’s as good as le weekend in my book. I’ve already started going a little bit mad by clipping off some hard skin from my foot. This girl knows how to live.

Venerdi sera will bring even more excitement with the arrival of Skippy at my sister’s house. Skippy – his current name is Bobby – is a two year old tom cat who is residing in a cage at a vets where he’s been since he was found in a skip two months ago. While I’d love to go and visit him tomorrow (sans chien, bien sur), I’ll leave him a few days to settle in before assessing where he sits on the cuddle scale. I do love cats.

Sabbato, io va a la distritto lago. That’s nothing like Italian, but then again, nor am I. I’m off to Keswick on Saturday and I think I am in the mood to have plenty of shits and giggles. I’m now curbing my alcohol intake significantly, it’s for the best, but I’m not doing the Dry January thing so I’m planning on getting fairly drunk. This past year has taught me a few lessons, which I knew anyway:

Domenica could be very tricky for me if I take the last point too far, so I do need to be careful to limit my intake to just two bottles of wine. And Pedro Ximenez can jog on.

I don’t know what the Italian is for weekend, but I do know the French.

Channel 4 has prompted me to think about getting healthy and putting myself out there to start dating again, but also to make a documentary as I do it. Over the past few nights I’ve been watching bits of Embarrassing fat bodies, Supersize vs Superskinny, Undateables and Gok’s style secrets. Merging them all together into one megamentary would be amazing.

First off, I could bare all on national TV to Drs Christian and Pixie and they can marvel at just how much I can carry under my breasts: not just a pen, but also a stapler, ruler and a calculator (I ought to remember this next time I go shoplifting in Staples). I’d gain great pleasure in the eat-off with an anorexic as I watch them eat my daily intake of enough pasta to feed three people and so much pop that their head explodes.

Next up, I’d challenge a dating agency to find me a woman who matches my specific needs, which is essentially me only thinner, sexy and feminine. Watching Undateables last night, there was a clip of a woman suffering from OCD. They showed her scrubbing her hands and then a short interview with her in which she was saying “I can’t have them touching me or coming near me, and I can’t have them in my house”… I couldn’t agree more. I’m not having anybody come into my house unless they come up to scratch domestically and have impeccable personal hygiene and grooming.

Finally, dear Gok Wan would have to work wonders on me and style me up, give me hints and tips and get me ready for my first date. I’d love Gok to style me. No, I’d love to see his face when he was asked to style me. “OK, darling, I’ve found this amazing combination of cable knit and corduroy that really brings out your personality and curves and says ‘Here I am, BACK OFF!'”.

I’ve just remembered that there’s a packet of chocolate digestives downstairs.

Across the line
I had lunch with a friend yesterday, one of the Old Trafford lesbians. Old Trafford is one of those areas of Manchester where gay people live when they’re settling down in stable relationships, but where it’s much less expensive than Chorlton, which is not too far away.

I often joke that people from that side of town would have a nosebleed if they had to cross Deansgate and head out north from the city and that we from these parts are tagged and that we set off alarms when cross the Salford border. The friend I had lunch with yesterday is charming, but slightly peculiar in that she thinks that anywhere north of the city has its own special Siberian climate. We’ve been enjoying some crips, wintery weather over the past couple of days and yesterday was one of those beautiful cold and sunny days. This prompted my friend to ask “Is the weather really bad where you are?”. I’m not sure what she thinks it’s like here, ten or so miles from Manchester. We have tarmac roads, electric streetlights, supermarkets, central heating, mobile phone signals… parking… we even have pretty much the same weather as people in Old Trafford.

Maybe a cultural exchange is called for. Actually, no. I like my location, with its proximity to lots of green stuff, sheep and other animals on the hill behind me, my neighbours’ chickens, the river just over there, the bats and the owls, with my parking spaces and the feeling that I’m not closed in by other properties in tight streets. And because it’s not the sort of location that people would look at if they’re relocating to the Manchester area, the people who live here are from here, so there’s a shared sense of recognition of certain local historic reference points, a common understanding of the area, a stable population and opportunities for chatting and gossiping with the neighbours. I don’t like the idea of living in a place where everybody is an outsider, it just seems odd.

[NB after edit #4. Proof read before hitting publish. That’s one punch to the head for every error that the internet pedants will come and burn your house down for.]

It’s January. The middle winter month. Winter is the season when the planet earth is furthest in its orbit from our warmth and light-giving star, the sun. As a result, the months of December, January and February generally have the least light and heat than the other nine months in the calendar. Because of where the UK is in latitude, cold can mean as low as minus 15C. When the air temperature gets below 4C, things start to freeze and this can mean icy roads and, if other conditions are suitable, snow.

Today is the 13th of January. Why then is it headline news that snow might be coming to the UK? Why? The BBC is already warning of possible travel problems because of a potential dusting of the white stuff. Snow is due to fall across large areas of the UK on Monday as low temperatures take hold, the Met Office warns.

While a dusting of the white stuff might be a bit wet and cause some spray, the only reason it would cause travel problems is because the entire country is pathetic and needs to get a bloody grip.

The arctic conditions that have blighted us today have meant a maximum temperature of about 1C and a bit of sleety snow. This may continue into tomorrow.

Cue school closures, train cancellations, multiple pile ups, airport delays and all-round moaning that makes rational people want to wear a big jumper and a surly facial expression and pretend to be Scandinavian.

My folks read the Daily Express. When the front page isn’t running a sensationalist lie about immigrants, it can be guaranteed the weather is the main headline. It’s been predicting the “Coldest winter on record” every year that I’ve read it and also, “Hosepipe bans on the cards as meteorologists forecast the hottest summer ever”. Neither of these things have happened, but their obsession with the weather is symptomatic of a country that doesn’t have enough to worry about.

The same sort of thing happens with seasonal flu and winter vomiting bug with the incidence levels making headline news. The clue is in the name – “seasonal” and “winter” – these things go round at this time of year. What also never changes is the fact that flu infections can be reduced by people having the flu jab (which obviously actually GIVES people flu [give me strength]), and people following basic rules of hygiene, you know, like not coughing all over people, staying away from people if you’ve been throwing up for a day and washing your fucking hands you dirty scummers.

Of course, the government is always to blame for not having flu jab snatch squads and for not telling people not to be dirty scummers.

Maybe it’s just me, but why is stupidity and lack of personal responsibility tolerated in a modern society?

And this, dear blog, is the effect that a little bit of sleet has on me. The hottest summer ever can’t come soon enough.