Author Archives: Tina

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About Tina

Unleashed for a second term of blogging.

Sundays are rubbish

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Sundays are rubbish for so many reasons, but mainly because they mean that:

Tomorrow

= Monday

= Oh dear Lord please how much more of this torture?

= if you feel like that, you need a new job

= but there are fewer and fewer jobs in your field

= but you hate your field anyway

= you’ll have to re-train

= you’ll have to take a MASSIVE pay cut for a number of years

= you’ll have to see if somebody wonderful doesn’t mind supporting you for a while

= you have somebody wonderful, but she’s had to go home and you won’t see her until Friday because today

= Sunday
Still, at least I no longer have to endure Songs of Praise and the Antiques Roadshow on a Sunday evening.  Not like when I was a child and there was only one TV in the house and we HAD to watch BBC1 and this meant torture from crap like Last of the Summer Wine, Howard’s Way, Bergerac, Mastermind and, not forgetting, That’s life! (!).  Oh how the sombre tones of the Mastermind theme were perfectly in tuned with my mood as I sat in front of the fire, trying to get my hair dry without suffering third degree burns.

Back in the 1970s, nothing was open on a Sunday, there was nothing to do in terms of today’s options of going to the shops, the choice of cinemas, places to eat.  The only things that opened were bookies and churches and the odd corner shop (as in strange, rather than infrequent).  This meant that, in the afternoon, we were dragged out to visit old people, or they came to us and we had to be quiet unless spoken to.  You might think that a child would find this torture, but it was OK; old people are nice and funny and there was usually cake and biscuits.  I can’t remember what they used to talk about, but it was far more interesting than anything I could ever interject with, so it was worth listening.  We’d get taken for walks in the local woods and hear stories of the old mine workings down there as well as learn a little about the natural environment.  These days, such activities are the luxury of kids from middle class backgrounds, but for us, this was free and there was bugger all else to do.

Back then, Sundays were always bright and sunny or pissing it down with rain.

So back to now and Sunday evenings still fill me with utter dread.  The feeling starts at waking when I realise that the weekend is over, that there’s not much point making plans for the day because my girlfriend has to leave at teatime.  And then she goes, and the depression closes in.  Today’s departure was worse than usual for some reason.

Five more sleeps.

The thing about Facebook

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While unable to contribute to my blog for a while, and particularly since this coincided with a period in my life when I didn’t really fancy writing a great deal, I sought refuge in the simpler and less creative world of Facebook.  This allowed regular updates and discourse with friends, many of whom are far afield, but often in a more censored “real life” sense than my blog permits.

But the thing about Facebook is, well, there are many things about Facebook, particularly in terms of privacy – users have to be careful to set their options carefully, or all their information could become available to everyone else (but why put all that information on the internet in the first place if you don’t want others to see it?) – but the best thing about Facbook is the disposability of users’ so-called friends.

  • Add me as a friend

  • I don’t like you – click “ignore”

  • I don’t like you – click “delete as friend”

And that’s it – somebody could be gone from your life in an instant and you wouldn’t care.  Brilliant.  It’s like the woolly monkey scenario*… and then you saw them… well, you just don’t see them anymore.

During a turbulent two months in the summer I encountered the strangest of women, who declared me her soulmate within 36 hours of her becoming aware of my existence, weeks before we met.  She used Facebook to torture me.

  • Day 1: “You’re my soulmate, add me as a friend”

  • Day 1 (a bit later on): “You are not emotionally mature enough for me, goodbye x”

  • Day 1 (even later): “?”

  • Day 2: “I love you baby”

  • Day 2 (later): “You are friends with bullies, goodbye x”

  • Day 2 (even later): “?”

Repeat days 1 & 2 for about six to eight weeks.

Anyway, over the course of six weeks or so, during which time we’d met on three occasions and spoken even less on the phone (her demands, not mine), she decided that I was her soulmate and her life partner, that I was a murderer because I wasn’t a vegan, that all my friends were abusive bullies, that I had crippling low self-esteem, that I was Satan’s representative on earth.  Try as I might, it’s difficult to describe the insanity of that crazy, fucked up time, but what better way to illustrate than by telling it from the horse’s mouth… a short (honestly) excerpt from a heated exchange that occurred while I was on holiday in Las Vegas….

Baby,

I hope you arrived at your holiday destination safely and that this email finds you safe and well.

I am neither safe nor well and due to you being thousands of miles away and having left without making any arrangement with me about how I can contact you while you are away if the need arises I am consequently left to deal with the shit your friends are causing me without any support from you whatseover.I’m guessing that your hotel has internet access so you could have at least arranged that we would email each other once a day and check each others emails once a day just incase anything cropped up where we required each other’s support but you didn’t so here I am without your support and having to deal with this…

…

Piggy: Are you there yet? Are you? Are you?
Has April rubbed her muff all over your chops yet?

Ruth: Piggy your blatant attempt to bait me is pathetically transparent and contemptably unsupportive of Sniffy.Grow up man! *yawns*

Then:

And their abuse of me and more importantly their abuse of our relationship itself just goes from bad to worse, the following quote from Tazzy being just one of many examples of that…

Tazzy commented on your wall post:

“You’ve only ever met Sniffy ONCE!
Was it YOU that said you were ‘in a relationship’ with Sniffy? I’m sorry but you don’t start a relationship with ANYONE after meeting them ONCE!
I ONCE met Elton John… I don’t go around saying I’m ‘in a relationship’ with him!
Glenn Close springs to mind!”

Bearing in mind that this was already kicking off while I was in transit and hadn’t even made to Vegas… much more was to come…

Ruth sent you a message.

Subject: Judas

“Oi!Judas!Do you have you ANY idea how it feels for me to watch you engaging in banter with people who have, by their own admission, abused me?!DO YOU???!!!”

Nice! But still, I was 40,000 in the air, 8 hours behind, with no internet connection, so it was obvious that there was not a lot I could do about it.

And more, much, much more…

“I gave you a whole calendar month of my life and you gave me a whole calendar month of hurt and stress but no more.I am walking away from your arms and I am walking straight back into the arms of sweet sanity…”

“I would bet my life on it that those bullying bastards are feeling as smug as fuck that they were able to abuse and bully me AND still get to keep you as a friend.
Loyalty my fucking arse!”

“I would bet my life on it that those bullying bastards are feeling as smug as fuck that they were able to abuse and bully me AND still get to keep you as a friend.
Loyalty my fucking arse!”

“Oi!Judas!Do you have you ANY idea how it feels for me to watch you engaging in banter with people who have, by their own admission, abused me?!DO YOU???!!!”

“Or better still and oh SO apt, “There’s A Place In Hell For Me And My Friends” by Morrissey!”

“Sniffy’s current personal karaoke fav at the moment would have to be, “The Scientist” by Coldplay but hey baby you  neglected to take enough care to ensure that I was wearing my seat belt  because…you were too busy taking care of your other passengers so there’s really no going back to the start which was actually one calendar month ago today, que sera sera!

“Sniffy’s current personal karaoke fav at the moment would have to be, “The Scientist” by Coldplay but hey baby you neglected to take enough care to ensure that I was wearing my seat belt because…you were too busy taking care of your other passengers so there’s really no going back to the start which was actually one calendar month ago today, que sera sera!

“Or better still and oh SO apt, “There’s A Place In Hell For Me And My Friends” by Morrissey!”

“Sniffy’s current personal karaoke fav at the moment would have to be, “The Scientist” by Coldplay but hey baby you neglected to take enough care to ensure that I was wearing my seat belt because…you were too busy taking care of your other passengers so there’s really no going back to the start which was actually one calendar month ago today, que sera sera!

“I would bet my life on it that those bullying bastards are feeling as smug as fuck that they were able to abuse and bully me AND still get to keep you as a friend.
Loyalty my fucking arse!”

“One of my closest friends who I regarded as a beloved brother killed himself recently by hanging himself and nobody who knew and loved him, including me, had any clue that such a horrific thing was about to happen.He was 29 years young.I attended his funeral and watched his coffin being lowered into the ground only a week ago which was deeply disturbing for me because a few weeks before that he had visited me at my home and had been his usual vivacious self.I lost both of my parents to suicide so the way my friend died is even more painful because of that.
Add to all that the additional stress being caused by Piggy’s cheap joke about another person performing oral sex with my life partner and Piggy and Tazzy’s bullying attacks on me after I made it clear to John that I didn’t appreciate aforementioned cheap joke, do the maths and you might be able to imagine where I am currently at…”

“I truely love Sniffy.What I feel for Sniffy is not infatuation or lust alone but authentic love but love alone, no matter how sincere and how deep, is not enough to sustain a relationship which needs other things beside love such as respect and loyalty to survive.

All of us always has room for personal growth and personal improvement is an on going, life long project for us all and therefore I do not excpect perfection in a partner.What I do expect from them however is that they not be detrimental to my emotional health and sadly Sniffy is currently in a headspace where the mistakes she makes are big enough to be detrimental to me, thus the reason I have withdrawn from her so many, many times during the past month.Each time I withdraw from her Sniffy has asked me to give her another chance, which I do, but the result of that has always led us back to square one where I feel the need to withdraw again to protect my emotional health from the negative impact her mistakes have on it…”

“LISA – One of my closest friends who I regarded as a beloved brother killed himself recently by hanging himself and nobody who knew and loved him, including me, had any clue that such a horrific thing was about to happen.He was 29 years young.I attended his funeral and watched his coffin being lowered into the ground only a week ago which was deeply disturbing for me because a few weeks before that he had visited me at my home and had been his usual vivacious self.I lost both of my parents to suicide so the way my friend died is even more painful because of that.

Add to all that the additional stress being caused by Piggy’s cheap joke about another person performing oral sex with my life partner and Piggy and Tazzy’s bullying attacks on me after I made it clear to John that I didn’t appreciate aforementioned cheap joke, do the maths and you might be able to imagine where I am currently at…”

“This said, I hope you can better understand me and why Sniffy and I break up with bewildering frequencey.

Our current break up has occured due to Sniffy continuing to regard Piggy and Tazzy as her friends which to me, in view of their bullying of me, stinks of disloyalty.How do you suppose you might feel if you found yourself on the recieving end of Piggy and Tazzy’s brutal bullying but your own life partner, if you had one, insisted that they continued to love the people who had abused you?I will leave you with that thought.

I wish you well.

Ruthie.”

No, the repeated statements aren’t down to me being over enthusiastic with my ctrl+v, they’re down to Ruthie being mental and pasting the same thing over and over and over again…. on my Facebook page, that colleagues from work have access too, while I’m 8 hours behind and forced to pay $10 per day for wi-fi access to delete them.

Ruthie has an internet  footprint of insanity all over the internet, and probably in many, many places in real life too.  Just do a search for Vegan Heart, Donaldsdevotee, Moonbeamzzz, and the name and her rants against well-meaning people, come up time and time again.  She’s been banned from more forums than it might be possible to be banned from, and here’s one where she changed her ID, just so she could go back and cause more trouble:

http://www.veganfitness.net/viewtopic.php?f=11&t=6437&start=0

Of course, I can look back at that crazy, crazy episode now and laugh, laugh a LOT, but the whole thing has left me very wary of who I give my Facebook access to.  And from now on, I will always Google somebody by each of their strange names whenever I encounter them.

One other thing about Facebook is that many people don’t update their privacy settings and so it enables others to see what they’re up to.  You’ll be glad to know that Ruth recently had an interview for a job as a social worker.  Fuck-a-doodle-do!

iTampon

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I was going to write a post about Apple’s new gadget that’s coming onto the market in March and April this year.  The iPad will transform the way we view media, it will change our lives – according to the Antichrist, Steve Jobs.

There have been many observations about the iPad, mainly concurring that it’s a huge disappointment and is basically going to be a waste of space, but in one discussion, an observer came out with the following, which I found most astute and which sums up exactly what the evil empire that is Apple is all about:

The language here (and in other iPad propaganda) is interesting. They don’t talk about technology, or specifications, or even value or use cases. They talk about “magic”. Or “desire”.

These are loaded terms – who could be against “desire” or “magic”? But these are not terms we can define easily, or that have a meaning outside of personal experience.

And if you are resorting to vagaries like that to sell a device… then there is something wrong with your product.

There’s endless lists of concrete things that the iPad hasn’t got… multitasking support, flash support, an open software ecosystem, a camera, GPS, standard 3g in all models. There’s endless lists of things it can’t do… act as your only device (really you need a proper computer, a phone and this), replace netbooks, laptops or smart-phones, again multitask (seriously… what the hell? My Amiga could multitask in the 80s!).

But where are the lists of what it can do differently… what it can do better? There’s nothing. Nothing but magic and desire. And that’s what I want from art, not a productivity tool.

And this was posted as a comment in this fawning article in the Grauniad by “British treasure”,  famous nob and Apple evangelist, Stephen Fry.  Cock.

Anyway, many years ago, I wrote a post about Apple’s diversification into other markets and postulated that they’d soon be getting them while they’re young by introducing a whole range of babycare products.  Of particular interest would be the iPood, their range of nappies and baby bottomcare products.  The iPood range would of course have its own docking station, the iPot, known to you and me as a potty.

But I won’t be getting an iPad.  I have an iPhone – why would I want something that was just the same, only more cumbersome, with less functionality?  iPood indeed.

In search of salvation

Next up, Sniffy brings you: “The great search for spiritual salvation”.  Apparently, although, according to the good Christians around us, Jesus is everywhere, he’s not quite the same wherever you go.  I love my girlfriend dearly, absolutely and without condition.  I love that she’s a Christian – a proper, nice one.  But apparently, proper Christians are quite discerning when it comes to finding places of worship… and the music has to be good too.

I’m off to look at slate PCs.

Until next time.

Sniffy is back

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Sniffy never really went away, but Sniffytastic took a break for a while until life started to sort itself out.

Things are OK: I moved out of the (if I had a) Hammer House of Horror; found myself in love with the most fantastic woman I’ve ever met; kept the little dog all to myself.

So now that’s been established, I can get back to what I like doing – playing with gadgets, spending time with my lady, chilling out with my little dog…. oh, and writing the odd bit of bile here back in good old blog world.

The appearance of “New!” Sniffytastic will change first, then I’ll dredge my memory banks and start spilling out verbal garbage here.

Ci vediamo!

From the mouths of babes

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I don’t get children.  They’re like a completely different life-form, from another planet.  They look like little versions of us, but that’s where all notions of expecting anything like reasonable behaviour or debate end.

You can’t communicate with them properly and the slightest disagreement with whatever thought process whizz through their developing brains results in the most bizarre displays of behaviour.

Don’t like what you’re given for tea?  Well, normal people just tuck in, chew on it till it no longer resembles the thing that caused mental trauma when it was first sighted, put themselves in their happy place and swallow.  “Mmmm, that was DELISH!”, we purr politely, pour platitudes on whoever provided the meal, while grumbling to ourselves.  But we get over it, move on.

Toddlers?  They haven’t developed the social inhibitions that prevent us from throwing our cutlery around, spitting food out, launching our plates across the room and throwing ourselves to the floor, banging our fists and sobbing.  There’s no reasoning with them.  You just have to wait until the tsunami settles back into the ocean and pick up the wreckage left in its wake.  The wreckage is often still a bit wriggly, teary and snotty; still as unreasonable.

And those charged with the care of them are hit by tidal waves of tantrums at least four times a day.

Of course, when you don’t have one of these little critters  in your family, you find them utterly hateful – because they are!  But when your family is blessed (for want of a better word) by one, that particular one is so fucking funny.

Little Con, now two and a bit, is adorable.  For all her tantrums and tears (and all the snot that seems to have been part of her for about 18 months), she’s so lovely.  I like the effect she has on the little dog: one moment he’s being a total pain in the arse – not dissimilar to a tantrum-afflicted toddler himself; Little Con arrives and he’s a different dog.  He sits, calmly.  He sits, watches.  He sleeps.  He lets her flick his nose.  He lets her kiss him (he likes to lick her tongue).  She tells him off:  “Boo-HAVE ROCKY!”.  He knows his place when she is around.It’s brilliant.

Con herself called me Rocky long before she learned to say my real name and, whenever she arrives at my folks’ house and sees that my car is there, she runs into the house calling for him – not for me, for the little dog.

So Little Con may well have saved Rocky from the risk of being destroyed because of attacking a child.  Because of her, and despite his barky protestations, he’s actually quite tolerant around them.  Just as well, since he can’t leave the house or get back in through the front door without being accosted by four of five of the local kids who insist on running over to him, while screaming “It’s the little dog!” (scaring the shit out of him).  They all gather round, stroking him and cuddling him two and three at a time; the smallest of them insists on having his tongue licked by him too.

“Does he bite?”, they ask as he barks and growls at them.

“Any dog might bite”, I issue my disclaimer, “you should always be VERY careful near dogs and try not to scare them.”

“Is that a different dog?”, tongue-lick boy asked me tonight.

“No, he’s just had a hair cut”.

Gonna set my soul on FIRE

I can’t believe it, let’s just check the date… Yep!  I go on holiday next week.  I’m looking forward to it immensely.  The memory of last year’s trip there needs obliterating.  I’m going to have the holiday that I was supposed to have, only more fun!  I didn’t really take much in last year as I wandered around in a haze of despair.  This time will be much different and happier.

I retrieved some shorts that Bomb had “borrowed” (without asking) from the drawer where they’d been kept at my mum’s.  I wouldn’t have fit in them when I went to Vegas last year, but I do now!

Yay! For being shat on and losing loads of weight as a result!

Whatever I said, whatever I did

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I didn’t mean it!

Anyway, I’m back.  At last.

But this is just a short note for now as:

A) I need to get dressed and take Rocky out so he can embarrass me for an hour

B) I’m cooking beans and I need to keep an eye on the pot (and that’s not a metaphor for anything toilet-related – yet)

So yes, nothing has happened:  Vegas looms (YAY!); the weather is slightly warmer but wetter; I hope to be enjoying new living arrangements within the next couple of months (YAY FUCKING YAY!).

Oh, and Rocky has had a haircut at last.  Ain’t he beautiful?

Rockeeeeeee

Love still eludes and baffles me.  Perhaps I’m just not right for anybody.  But perhaps it’s not me, it’s them.  Keep telling myself that and it’ll all be OK.

I need to quit my Facebook habit and learn how to write in structured paragraphs again.

Slacker!

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It’s been a while. Things have happened, but not to me. Life is still in a state of paralysis, and I’m doing my well-practised ostrich impression as just hope all my problems will fuck off and die. But dwelling on that only brings me down, so I’ll forget about all the shit and carry on.

So, what have I been up to, apart from slacking from my blog? Well, spring has sprung, at long fucking last. The sun has been shining lots. I’ve been enjoying the company of the little dog, hanging out together, doing bits of training, telling him to SHUT THE FUCK UP AND STOP FUCKING BARKING! But perhaps the most exciting experience of the past month was my trip to a theme park, Alton Towers, with my favourite poofs, Taz and Pig.

Fuck. That’s all I can really say about it. Apart from looking at the rollercoaster at New York New York and the ridiculous rides at the top of the Stratosphere in Vegas and thinking No fucking way! I hadn’t been near a white knuckle ride since 1995 and my last trip to Alton Towers was in something like 1990. All the tamer rides that had been there on my last visit had been replaced by despicable constructions of terror.

The day started quite sedately with a McBreakfast

McBrekkie

and a ride on a cable car

Taz and Pig

And then it all started with this:

Rita

Rita: Queen of Speed is a bog-standard rollercoaster to look at, but the bloody thing happens to set off by accelerating from 0-100mph in TWO SECONDS before throwing its victims around the track.  The experience is over in 20 seconds, but my word, what a 20 seconds!  I was shaking when I got off it, but I’d been bitten by the bug and wanted MORE.

We headed towards Oblivion.  Now, there’s not much to this, apart from a face-down, free-fall drop from a fucking great height into a massive hole in the ground.  I was up for it, ready to be brave, to stride on up to the queue, take my seat with confidence and go for it.  But as we approached, we saw this:

Oblivion repair man

With the pause in my stride, my bravado evaporated… time for lunch.  KFC.  The worst, fat-dripping KFC I’d ever experienced.  It sat heavy on my stomach and it was decided that an hour on the more gentile rides was called for, so I got piss wet through on the log flume:

Wet Sniffy

And watched Piggy and Tazzy soak unsuspecting victims on Battle Gallions.

Pig and Taz Battle Gallions

Great shot Piggy!

Piggy Battle Gallions

I dried off in the aquarium – cue fish thing:

Aquarium monster

Then we headed towards…. NEMESIS.  I hadn’t been looking forward to this one bit after seeing this video.

Sniffy Nemesis
Hrrrm

We waited in the front seat queue, the ride set off ten or so times as we waited.  My bladder twitched increasingly with each minute.  I was scared.

Sniffy and Piggy wait in the Nemesis queue

But it was fucking fantastic, brilliant amazing.  LOVED IT.  We went on again,  went on Rita again, and walked back towards Oblivion.  I wimped out.  I couldn’t do it.  I froze.  As I watched it complete its cycle over and over, hearing the woosh as it plummeted towards the earth, I noticed the silence of the riders – too shocked to scream.  I pondered, and an idea came to me.  In fifty years’ time or so, there might be a theme park where you can actually go to choose a thrill-seeking death.  It would be…

Suicide theme park

Rita: the carriage flies off the track as it hits 100mph and plummets into a snake pit fifty feet below.  Those not crushed in the tangled wreckage endure paralysis and death from snake bites.

Battle Gallions:  AK47s instead of water pistols

Log flume: the log is carried on a wave of concentrated sulphuric acid that bathes riders and slowly burns and dissolves them at the end of the ride

Nemesis:  no safety harnesses, you hold on as much as you can until you are catapulted into the air, landing on a spike-filled pit beneath the ride.

Oblivion:  the carriage doesn’t drop from the top.  Instead, when in position, the safety harnesses are released and the riders fall into a fiery pit below.

If only I was in charge…

Anyway, I never made it onto Oblivion, but Super Taz did.

Taz on Oblivion

The man is a lunatic, he gave a running commentary of every bend, kink, loop, reverse, inverse of every ride.  He even kept his eyes open for the duration of each one.  And actually smiled throughout.  There must be something missing from the part of the brain that tells normal folk to scream like a baby.  Enough loop-de-loops and G forces might obliterate the same part from my brain I suppose.

So that’s that.

Vegas: the return!
In other news, I’m heading back to Vegas to have the holiday that I should’ve had last year. It’s the sort of place where you should have a fantastic time, but circumstances didn’t really allow it when I went.

Am I going on my own?

Hell no!

Who the hell would want to go on holiday with me?

Well, I happened to be having a chat with that April woman today, she told me that she and a friend were going to Vegas in June and she asked me if I’d like to meet them there. Too fucking right I would! So I booked it, and I’m off there for nearly a week in just a few weeks’ time.

Should be coooooool.

I need to lose weight.

A brush with death

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One of the reasons for taking the little dog to the behaviourist (he accompanies me while it’s actually me who gets training) is so that I can learn how to brush him and so he can get used to that sort of mithering contact so I can bribe somebody with clippers to come round and cut his wiginess without them getting their fingers bitten off.

It’s a very slow process that involves bribing him with tasty and extremely smelly treats, namely chopped up bits of braised lamb offal. FYI braised lambs hearts have the same smell as any cooked lamb, which I find bizarre. Anyway, the process of brushing His Lordship involves a handful of lamb bits, a lead, a brush (which he must not see). He gets held in place with a short lead while I shove bits of meat into his mouth and try to touch him with the brush. After an arduous and bad tempered start, and rapid stop, we’re making progress! I have so far brushed quite a bit of his back, his tail, the back of his neck, the top of his head, his beard, his back legs. His tummy is some way off yet, and first rule of doggy fight club is “DO NOT LET IT DEVELOP INTO A FIGHT!” Apparently, Cesar Millan’s way of holding down a pooch until it submits to your will just won’t work with a dog like Rocky and you have to use the softly, softly, catchy monkey method. This means that any sign of stress from the dog and we stop.

Why couldn’t I get a normal dog? I should’ve known when I saw his dad (as mental as he is) and him as a 12 week old pup – I think it was a 12 week old pup that I saw; all I witnessed was a little black blob of excitement tearing around his first mum’s kitchen. Cute though.

And now he’s doing toxic farts.

Going Dutch
I really hate the way the Dutch speak when they speak in English. I don’t care how they speak when they speak Dutch because I obviously switch off. I don’t care that they have nothing to do but learn fifteen different languages by the time they’re out of nappies, I can’t stand the way they speak English.

I pity my cousin though. She’s from Liverpool, but married a Dutch man and has lived in Holland since the late 1980s. She speaks Dutch very well, but has forgotten how to speak English, which given her unfortunate start in this aspect of her life, puts her at quite a disadvantage when she comes back to England. Her accent/language is now what can be described as Douse, or Scutch I suppose.

Even worse than the Dutch English accent is when English people copy the Dutch English accent for the sake of comedy or advertising. Why do people do it? Why do people think that the Dutch are significant enough to use as characters in films or adverts? And when they do deem it absolutely necessary to include such people, why don’t they go for an authentic Dutch person instead of some English cunt doing a Dutch accent?

Gawd. Just a thought.

Notting Hill
Notting Hill is on telly. It has Hugh Grant playing Hugh Grant in it. There’s not really much that I can add to that.

But why???

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I rarely listen to the radio: I have an intense dislike of the BBC stations presenters’ narcissistic obsession with hearing their own voice at the expense of providing entertainment, or simply playing some music; the adverts on commercial radio are generally too frequent and too irritating. But I do listen to my local commercial radio station as I travel to work each morning; the presenters are actually funny and are almost in touch with their listeners, making references to local events, places, customs, etc. My tiredness at 7am generally means that I can block out the irritating segments and, more importantly, the adverts. Except two:

Lufthansa European flight deals
Woman: “Come on, stop doing that now, we’ve got to pack.”
Child: “But why?”
Woman: “Because we’re going away on a short break.”
Child: “But why?”
Woman: “Because Lufthansa have got some good deals and we’re leaving today.”
Child: “But whyyyyyyyyy?”

After the first “But why?”, I’m ready to unclip my seatbelt and drive into the nearest brick wall at full speed, so by the third, I really want to take a whole load of innocent bystanders with me too.

<strong?Volkswagen commercial vehicles
In this advert, we have a bloke with a rough voice and ridiculously strong Cockney accent, talking about Vowkswaaagen Commerciaw Vayns. He says “vayns” about ten times. I will punch him if I ever meet him.

SHUT THE FUCK UP!

There is something intensely irritating, to the point of driving me to the edge of murder, about the sound of children’s voices, particularly when they’re being deliberately irritating… or singing. Why do advertisers insist on using annoyance and regional accents in their adverts. Will I be tempted to use Lufthansa, or to buy a Volkswagen van because of these adverts? Hell no!

For fuck’s sake.

Come dine with me
I am currently cooking some delectable cuts of meat in the oven. Yes, I am braising some lambs’ hearts. Stuffed with breadcrumbs and fresh herbs for me? No, they’re braised as they come with all their bits for the dog. I actually had good fun washing the things before I put them in the roasting tin. They being hearts, they have chambers and tubes and things; you can fill one chamber with water and it then squirts out of one of the large blood vessels. Brilliant. But holding that cold organ in my hand, and looking at my little dog, I’m led to thinking that his little heart is probably no bigger than the very one that was not long ago beating inside the bouncy body of a New Zealand lamb. Awwww. But that’s life, and farming, and meat supply, and dog rehabilitation.

They actually look quite nice…

Braised lambs hearts - yummy!

… they’re made the house smell a bit though.

During Rocky’s remedial behavioural lessons, it’s been discovered that the best way to bribe the little shit is with bits of cooked heart – the £3 bag of training treats just don’t do the trick sometimes and we need to bring out the heavy artillery when needs be.

Anyway, it’ll all be worth it when I can take him for a walk safe in the knowledge that he’s not going to kick off at the slightest little thing, and when I can invite a groomer round to clip him without being worried that he’ll attack somebody.

Spring has sprung
My mood has lightened somewhat over the past week or so. The days are getting longer, the weather warm, even the sun has been shining. Sniffy feels good.