Author Archives: Tina

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About Tina

Unleashed for a second term of blogging.

The love of common people

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I went to a restaurant on Friday night. I also went to a restaurant last Saturday night. I ate out for lunch yesterday too.

Fat pig.

Anyway, I love eating at restaurants; there’s something absolutely lovely about having having a choice of meals that you’d probably not cook for yourself, about having food brought to you, about being waited on, about enjoying the company and conversation of others while having a meal.

Canal Street, Manchester
Canal Street, Manchester

But a pleasant experience like having a meal out wouldn’t be the same without one of the party being slightly annoying; not even annoying, just doing something that I wouldn’t think acceptable. For instance, at the restaurant last Saturday, there’d been a mistake with the booking and we had to wait for a table to come free instead of being seated immediately. The waiter gave us each a menu and asked if we didn’t mind waiting in the bar until they could free up a table. Forty minutes later, we were seated and given another five minutes until the waiter returned to take our order. It was at this point that one of the party decided to look at the menu for the first time.

I held my breath.

More wine flowed, I enjoyed my Diet Pepsi (no ice) and the starters came. Mine was moules marinere – fuckin’ delish, if you like that sort of thing. My good friend, and she is a great friend, then said that she didn’t fancy trying mussels because she was scared, but could she dip some garlic bread into the sauce to give it a try? Of course she could, which she did, repeatedly, while I was trying to eat my food.

Don’t mind me.

And then my main course arrived. Essentially it was steak and chips, but the chips in that restaurant (Velvet, Manchester) are wonderful. My companions weren’t getting chips with their meals, so they took it upon themselves to tuck into mine.

What the fuck?

Is it just me? Would you do that? In the pavilion of etiquette, does that count as being really fucking rude?

I don’t mind toooo much because the company was exceptional apart from their unconventional dining standards, and they’d been drinking and I was stone cold sober, so I tend to notice more.

It’s like that thing, isn’t it? “Oh I don’t want any crisps, I’ll just have a couple of yours”. No you fucking won’t! You only get about ten in a packet and you’re not touching them, cheeky twat.

On Friday, me and another friend went to a very nice restaurant together (Choice in Manchester), where the ambience is perfect, but the food always gives my friend an excuse to find criticism. She’s a bit of a foodie, so she likes things to be just right. I suppose if you’re paying, then you’ve a right to expect good quality. And it’s fair enough to give feedback to the waiters when they ask if everything’s OK, but there’s a certain point where you need to stop, generally when the message has got through, and just before the waiter reached the threshold that makes them instruct the kitchen staff to spit in your pudding.

But it was nice, another lovely night out. Me and Sarah now find ourselves single. She’s a good friend and I enjoy her company and I’m looking forward to getting out and about with her as my wingman, although I am slightly scared of her when her confidence is in Rioja-fuelled hyperdrive. We’ll see.

Rocky and the Dog Whisperer
Rocky is in remedial behavioural classes. One-to-one behavioural classes at £25 a time. His trainer is quite famous apparently. I arrived at her little yard and her appearance was as I’d expected: rambler clothing; a hat (fair enough since she’s outdoors all day).

Lesson 1: The the gentle leader; the dummy and the heart of an ox
We discussed his diet. “Why do you give him dry food? He’s a dog! Dogs are carnivores. I recommend this. It stinks, but it’s really good. You need to get him motivated by food. One great way of controlling your dog is to control his food and you can’t do that if he doesn’t like what you give him. He needs to be almost begging for his meal and then you can control him with it”.

Fair point.

I wondered how much the smelly meaty food would cost. Jesus, this is going to rack up.

“Let me see him on his lead”

By this point, the little dog had reached ten thousand feet mentally and was bouncing like something on a bouncy castle. She got the message about his woeful lead skills (my woeful lead skills) pretty quickly and went into her little wooden cabin to retrieve a Gentle Leader head harness and double-ended training lead. To entice him to walk on his lead, he was fed bits of boiled ox heart every couple of paces. I had a pocket full of cheese and ox heart bits, my hands were covered in it. Fuck.

After getting him used to walking with the new lead, she had me lead him round a little activity course while she brought out a life-sized dummy dog and stood with it at the other end of the yard. Rocky had already gone mental at a dog silhouette, so he went berserk when he saw what he thought was a dopey looking black labrador staring at him from the distance. I calmed him down by the power of cheese and he was a little better when she brought the next dummy dog out. She moved the head and tail of this one and, while Rocky had a look at it, he didn’t jump out of his skin. And when she brought out a real dog, while he was far from perfect, he managed to walk around it without an unmanageable degree of distress.

So, that was lesson one: change his diet (kerching!), get him a double-ender (kerching!!) and a gentle leader (kerching!!!); that’s £25 thanks and I’ll see you in a fortnight (KERCHING!!!!).

Anyway, I’ve changed his diet, bought his new equipment and I’ve been trying to install the new world order on our cheesy walks – he must get through half a pound each time I take him out. Of course, my back is wrecked from all that bending over to give him a treat every four paces, but it’ll be worth it, I hope. Today wasn’t too good unfortunately – we encountered a jogger being followed by his dog (who then turned round and ran passed us from behind within a minute of passing us in the forward direction); this was followed immediately by two cyclists; a walker; and another dog walker – all in the space of about 2 minutes. Rocky couldn’t cope – knowing that pulling would hurt his nose, he defaulted to barking his head off for the remainder of our ten minute walk home.

We’ll get there. He’s got two years of bad behaviour to unlearn and I’ve got to train myself to be more disciplined with him.

Yawn.

One interesting thing about Rocky’s new therapist is that she trains Police dogs for GMP. I must ask Jo if it was her who house-trained Pigsnout.

Out of sync

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You know that thing from the 1970s when, for one reason or another, foreign films were always dubbed into English, as opposed to the translation being provided by subtitles? I think this might be related to the sorts of foreign films that I used to see back then; they were mainly spaghetti westerns, whose audience probably wouldn’t have appreciated having to attempt reading while trying to keep up with the twists and turns of the intricate plot and character interactions. Anyway, the thing about dubbed films that really bugged me was the way the characters’ mouths didn’t move in time to what was being said. I’d go further and say that it really got on my tits. Of course, a spaghetti western’s dialogue was limited to the odd grunt from Clint and Lee van Cleef, and the occasional “This is my moment of stardom” from a young Spanish actress playing the whore in the only saloon bar for miles, so there was never much of a mismatch between mouths moving and sound coming out.

These days, if I’m watching a foreign film, it has subtitles, which I like. I’m sure the translations are pretty faithful, since I find myself enjoying the film and generally understanding everything that’s going on. Watching a film in its original format is also often much better than watching it after Hollywood have given the story its own particular brand of sparkle (The Ring, The Grudge, etc). So that’s good.

Now, I have a thing for the cinema – I really don’t like it that much: too expensive, too many other people, too dark, too loud, too not at home. This being the case, I’d much rather watch a film at home: no rushing to get to the cinema on time; snacks to hand; pause button; volume control. It doesn’t take too long for a film to come out on DVD these days, but if you really can’t wait that long, all sorts of cheeky people put them on internet even before they’re released at the cinema and you sometimes come across them and download and burn them to DVD by accident. Sometimes though, when you come to watch them, the sound is hopelessly out of sync with the image.

What’s all that about then? It’s really annoying and I’m certainly not going to watch a film at the pictures when they can’t sync the sound properly. No way Jose!

And why don’t people who make DVD players or TVs come up with some sort of technology where you can re-phase the sound with the image?

Politics
I might get political. I’m thinking of getting involved in politics so I can feel like I’m doing my bit in the fight against the systematic erosion of the British people’s civil liberties.

Here are some of the laws and proposed laws (quoted from Philip Pullman, writing in The Times) that we have had forced on us under the Labour Government over the past ten years or so:

It is inconceivable to me that a waking nation in the full consciousness of its freedom would have allowed its government to pass such laws as the Protection from Harassment Act (1997), the Crime and Disorder Act (1998), the Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act (2000), the Terrorism Act (2000), the Criminal Justice and Police Act (2001), the Anti-Terrorism, Crime and Security Act (2001), the Regulation of Investigatory Powers Extension Act (2002), the Criminal Justice Act (2003), the Extradition Act (2003), the Anti-Social Behaviour Act (2003), the Domestic Violence, Crime and Victims Act (2004), the Civil Contingencies Act (2004), the Prevention of Terrorism Act (2005), the Inquiries Act (2005), the Serious Organised Crime and Police Act (2005), not to mention a host of pending legislation such as the Identity Cards Bill, the Coroners and Justice Bill, and the Legislative and Regulatory Reform Bill

We are the most watched nation in the developed world and nobody seems to be doing anything about it. We are turning into a Police State, where anti-terrorism laws can be used against people taking photographs in public places. We’re not allowed to gather to protest in numbers greater than two at a time. We have our DNA stolen and stored on a database if we are arrested, and the information retained even if no charges are brought – there are about one million innocent people, some never even charged with an offence, whose DNA is stored.

Our Information Commissioner, the man put in place to try to ensure that privacy laws are adhered to, wrote an excellent piece in The Times too. In it, he warned that proposals to allow widespread data sharing between Whitehall and the private sector were too far-reaching and that plans to create a giant database of every telephone call, e-mail and text message risked turning everyone into a suspect. “In the last 10 or 15 years a great deal of surveillance in public and private places has been extended without sufficient thought to the risks and consequences,” said Mr Thomas, 59. “Our society is based on liberty and democracy. I do not want to see excessive surveillance hardwired into British society.”

Nothing to hide, nothing to fear? What happens when you don’t want the government to know which websites you visit, who you phone, who you e-mail? We have everything to fear.

I know it’s hypocritical for somebody to complain about lack of privacy and then go and spout off on the internet, but how long before we’re not allowed freedom of speech in these sorts of forums before the Police come knocking when what we write is deemed inapprorpriate?

Will the people do anything? No, I doubt it. I’m sat here whinging about it and doing fuck all. But no more, I’m going to be stand up and be counted! I’m off to join the militant wing of the Women’s Institute.

Local news

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I’m watching the evening local news bulletin, Northwest Tonight.  The stories swing from relatively interesting to totally dull.  The sports reporter looks like a badly turned-out chimp; the weather reporter is nice, but  is a bit too thin.  But the main presenters, Jesus, a robotic TV presenter with no charisma who shares the sofa – and each storyline – with the youthful female presenter of Asian origin, who eclipses him in talent, looks, charm.

Why do they have to share each report though?  One of them says the opening line, the other says the next, and they alternate the lines through to the report’s conclusion.  I say “report” in the loosest sense of the word, some story about a school play or Google Maps putting Lytham in the wrong place hardly classes as hard-hitting journalism.

OMG, that man from Queen looks like Mick Hucknall.  Not the one with all the hair who’s married to Angie from Eastenders, who also has all the hair – the other one.

Oh, it’s finished.

Pootling

I took the day off work and did a bit of pootling today.  Pootled with the dog on his new favourite walk; I’ve found that the rough ground beyond the playing field isn’t guarded by dragons and spectres, it’s just some rough boggy ground that leads to a big drop… with dragons… down to a river.  Rocky is getting braver and has started trying to clamber down the steep bank towards the river tens of feet below.  But here he is enjoying himself.

Rocky's realm

Rocky's realm

Rocky hunts for dragons

Rocky hunts for dragons

Rocky river

Rocky river

Rocky river racer

Rocky river racer


eHarmony – anti queer?

No I’m not dating, but I did check out an online dating agency this evening after hearing their cheesy adverts on the radio.  EHarmony promises something different, things like shared values, aspirations, love of chick peas.  Anyway, I had a look and went to the search page.  Can we all see what’s wrong with this picture?

Oh dear, someone's gonna get in trouble!

Oh dear, someone's gonna get in trouble!

Yep, that’s right, us queers can’t use eHarmony because you can only be a man seeking a woman or a woman seeking a man.  Now, while it’s no great loss to me that I may never find a fellow lover of chick peas by using eHarmony, it might be a great loss to eHarmony themselves as this is illegal under the Provision of goods and services Act.

I e-mailed them to tell them so.

Naughty, naughty, naugty.

I’m not particularly interested in campaigning  on behalf of people who should be able to look after themselves.  They’ll probably get back in touch with me and tell me that they don’t provide services for queers because trying to match  a bunch of self-obsessed, lentil-eating, cat-loving, boiler suit-wearing, hairy munter lesbos would crash their database and ruin it for normal people who are trying to find real love and not somebody to go walking with while wear matching fleeces.

You can’t blame them really.  Perhaps they know that most lesbians aren’t interested in proper relationships, that two years is the limit  before they get bored and move on to  growth hormone-enhanced members of the constabulary.

Oh no, that’s not ALL lesbians, it’s just Jo.

Cunt

On the pull

I’m going on the pull at the weekend.  Not really, but I’m going out in The Village, on a Saturday night, for the first time since becoming single (actually, that’s a lie, but I had responsibility for somebody last time).  I’m just going out for a meal with friends, but I’m going to keep my eyes peeled for talent and go in for the kill if somebody catches my eye.

Yeah right.

Mess

A friend of mine came round on Sunday afternoon and she kindly cooked tea for us.  But my, what a mess she made of my sparkling kitchen.  I don’t understand how some people can be so messy when they cook, but when somebody has been so kind as to do that, there’s no way I can hover in the kitchen, meeping in anally-retentive anguish with each microscopic bit of stuff that hits the worktop or hob.

Still, five minutes’ clearing up is small price to pay to have decent company and a nice meal cooked for me.

Cash machine

I went to a cash machine today; had to wait while the woman in front of me finished, but she soon walked away and I approached the ATM.  And there, in the machine, waking to be plucked out, was about £60-80 that the previous customer had neglected to take with her.  I disappointed myself, it didn’t even cross my mind to do anything other than take the cash and call after her to tell her she’d forgotten it.  Honesty, decency, morals, bollocks.

Finger licking goooood

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I’ve just had to curtail Rocky’s blast on the field because he PISSED ME OFF!  We’d been having a lovely time, hiding from each other in the undergrowth, chasing after crows, sniffing (him, not me).  After covering the perimeter of the playing field just the once, I took him back over to the wooded area that leads to the canal to have another sniff and a game of sniff and seek in the undergrowth.  Ready to start my second circuit, I set off walking away from him and, as the distance between us increased, I realised that he was paying even less attention to me than usual – he was concentrating very closely on something, picking it up, throwing it about, catching it again, chewing it.  Had he finally, at long last, caught a mouse?  Had he done what he was bred for?

I started towards him to see what he was up to, but he was having none of it and decided to play the “act like cheeky robin” game, whereby I’d get within a couple of metres of him, he’d pick up whatever it was that he was tormenting, then bounce off.

Then he spotted the dog on the other side of the field.  I’ve given up trying to run after him, especially while wearing wellies, and I just hope that the object of his attention (and its owner) is friendly enough not to chew his face off. He never comes when called, ever.  He’s a total shit and I could kill him.  Anyway, trudging through the mud, I finally got near him to find that he was still chomping away on whatever it was that’d he’d picked up on the other side of the field.  He made the mistake of a dropping some of it.

What could have been so fascinating?  What could’ve been so very good that he played with it for finve minutes and carried it from side of the field to the other?  Was it a small furry animal?  No, it was a bit of chicken carcass.  No meat or anything, just the bone.  I pulled the remainder of it from his mouth and, my fingers covered in dog spit, I dragged him home.  Finger licking good.

He came so close to being left there, the little fucker.  He’s so disobedient, annoying, embarrassing.  I have a friend coming over on Sunday and we’re supposed to be taking him on a nice walk.  Nice doesn’t come into it, it’s always such a fucking toil.

All I ever wanted was a dog that I could take on a nice walk, that’d bring things that I threw for it, that wouldn’t hassle other animals, and that would come back to me when called.

And I get him.

He’s funny as fuck when he runs at full pelt though.

Le Weekend

Yay, it’s the weekend.  At last!  I’m going to be creative in the kitchen tomorrow (after tidying up in there), make a lasagne for me and a special one for the freezer… just in case unexpected visitors drop by.

As I said, I have a friend coming over on Sunday and she’ll be staying over too.  A sleep over, at my age!

And I think I’m taking Monday off because I can’t be fucked going in to work

But the weekend starts properly at 8pm this evening when Taz Radio goes live.  An evening of all my favourite music.  Fabulous!


Peanuts

I see that the end of peanut allergies might be in sight.  A small trial in 4 children showed that they could be desensitised to peanut allergens by gradual exposure to increasing amounts of peanut flower.  After suffering severe allergies to peanuts all their lives, the children can now eat up to ten peanuts.

But where’s the fun in that?  The good thing about having friends with peanut allergies is the tricks you can play on them.

“I’ve cooked you a meal.”

“Ooh, thanks, I’m STARVING; been saving myself for this all day!”

“Great, I bought some really special ingredients.  Now… what did it say about being packaged in a nut-free environment?  It either was, or wasn’t, but I can’t remember which.  Have you got your epi-pen handy?”

Fag patchwork

I’m running out of places to stick my fag patches to.  Every bit of skin that has previously had one attached to it is now very red, quite sore and rather itchy.  The things are a nightmare.  I’ve taken to cutting them up so they’ll fit into what remains of my unaffected skin.  I’ll be moving on to my shins next.

Still, I’ve not had a cigarette in about ten days and not really thought of having one.  More than anything, it’s just breaking the habit, but wearing a patch kind of adds a psychological boost to my efforts.  “It’s called a PLACEEEEEEEEEEBO”.

Put that away

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What do these photos have in common?

Well from today, here in the UK, you can get into an awful lot of trouble for taking them.  The authorities can confiscate cameras, remove film, or delete digital images, or even arrest you if they don’t like the look of you taking photos of public places, shopping centres, people, parades, government buildings, transport hubs, members of the armed forces, but especially our boys and girls in blue.  In fact, taking a photo of an on-duty police officer can get you a ten year prison sentence.  For more information, see here.

It’s all part of the Government’s anti terrorism legislation, you see.  But we all know it’s part of the Government’s planned destruction of our civil liberties and desire to turn the UK into a Stalinist Police State.

We’re already the most watched nation in the world.  From March, all our e-mail records will be kept, as will records of our mobile phone usage.  Soon enough, they’ll be tracking which websites we visit.

Already, more than two people can’t gather in protest without permission from the police.  We’ve had concentration camp survivor who dared heckle at the Labour Party conference arrested under anti-terrorism legislation.  An opposition MP’s offices and home were raided by anti-terror police and he was arrested under the same legislation.

We are having ID cards forced on us (to help prevent terrorism) too.  Of course, the terrorists that have been  involved in attacks here were all British anyway and all would’ve held an ID card anyway.

And yet we sit and let it happen.  The people are either blind or apathetic, or maybe they’re too scared to protest.  We had fewer restrictions on our liberties when we were under threat of invasion from the fucking Nazis.

Fucking nobhead government can go fuck themselves right up the arse for all I care.  It’d be nice if everybody took their camera out with them and took as many photos of the police and public places as they can and then e-mail all the images to Jackie Smith and Gordon Brown, the pair of useless cunts.

iSniffy

Those delightful poofs, Tazzy and Piggy, have done some wonderful technological things to my blog and visitors who drop by on their iPhone will see a very nifty version of my site.  Loverly.

Paint the whole world

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Following a poor approval rating for my previous blog template, I’ve decided to change it to something slightly more colourful. There are still a few bits that I don’t like, but in general it’s OK.

Also adding a bit of colour to the world, I’ve started my own version of the atheist bus campaign. It’s actually going to be a nationwide thing that was started by the Yorkshire Poofs and is now being rolled out across the North West by me.

Sniffy's bus campaign

Sniffy's bus campaign

These boots were made for limping

I bought some new boots for school yesterday.  They’re OK, but they’re not as comfortable as my normal “comfortable” shoes, mainly because they’re women’s boots.

I am crippled this evening and I’ve come to realise that my toenails have gone past the point where I can no longer get away without cutting them.

These dreams

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As predicted the other day, wearing a 24hr nicotine patch has resulted in four nights of sleep that have been disturbed by vivid dreams.  I’m knackered.  In addition to this, the first few hours of wearing a new patch each day bring unwanted physiological effects, mainly nausea.  Still I suppose it’ll be worth it once I can do without both fags and patches in a couple of weeks’ time.

But back to the dreams, they’ve been quite odd.  Perhaps all dreams are; I don’t usually have or remember them, but these ones have been odd.  Here’s what I can remember of a few of them:

Night 1

Hovel

Jo had forced me to move out.  She’d identified a lovely little bedsit that was a bedroom and a sink to have a stand up wash in and was showing me around, very proud of herself.  I can’t remember much else, other than complaining that there was no Coffeemate – not that there was a kitchen or a kettle or anything.

I woke up annoyed.

Ireland and the magic fag packet

The second dream that night found me in Ireland of all places.  It was Ireland, but it looked more mediterranean.  I think there was a castle, a shopping centre, a monorail, some chips, the obligatory argument with my sister that resulted me dropping the empty duty free Marlboro Lights carton (you know the big cartons that hold ten packets, but look like a big fag packet?).  I’d been carrying this huge empty fag packet around with me and dropped it at the table of a cafe after the chips (I think this is where the chips came in – no gravy, just ketchup).  I went back to pick it up from the floor and found that it had come open to reveal a solitary cigarette inside it.

I decided to save the cigarette until later, but as the dream progressed (probably about a millisecond in real time), more and more fags found their way into the once empty carton until it was nearly full by the time I woke up at 5am.

At that very moment of hazy waking, I remember being really happy that there was a full packet of cigarettes in the house, only to realise a second later that a) there wasn’t, b) I’d been dreaming and c) I was supposed to have stopped.

Bummer.

I spent the day completely shattered and slept relatively well that night, and the night after… I think, can’t quite remember.

Last night

The stroll, the sneaky fag and the curious incident with the BMW

I’d been at my parents’ and it was getting a bit too much for me, so I found myself taking a walk and having a fag.  The top road had somehow turned into a motorway, so it took a while for me to buck up the courage (and speed, and ability to assess distance and speed of oncoming vehicles) to get across.  For some reason, when I’d got to the safety of the other side, I stopped behind a stationary BMW, which then reversed over me.  I think it was a BMW, it might have been my old car that I wrote off  – it was black anyway.  While I was nursing my bruises and being told off by the driver of the offending vehicle (a fifty-something bint with blonde hair), my sister turned up and got run over too.  She complained for a bit and blamed me… and then I woke up… at 2.39am.

An argument over a washing up bowl

After recovering I was back in the kitchen at my mum and dad’s.  Dad was doing something in the sink; he was messing about, washing something in the washing up bowl – orange bits of plastic.  He got into a strop when I told him he wasn’t doing it right, so he took the bowl out and put it on the kitchen floor.

Actually, that might’ve happened in real life a few times too.

Bette from the L Word falls in love with me

This was the best one so far.  I don’t know how it happened, but I met Bette (Jennifer Beals) from the L Word and started doing really dirty things with me.  And then she told me she loved me.   And then I woke up.

So the dreams you get with nicotine patches aren’t all that bad.  I think everyone should try wearing a 21mg patch for a few days and then tell me what dreams they’ve been having.  I don’t want to know about dreams where Bette tells other people she loves them though.

Out

I’m going out tonight, round to some friends who I’ve known forever.  It should be good, but I need to go through the rigmarole of getting ready.  In terms of outfit, this never presents much of a problem because I always wear the same thing – jeans, blouse/shirt, jumper.

The thing I’m looking forward to least is plucking my face.  Eyebrows, moustache, beard, hairy moles – they all need attention.  This will bring about much pain and much sneezing.  And lots of frustration too, as the lighting in the bathroom doesn’t favour such detailed activities.

It’s not as if there’s the chance of pulling anyone while I’m out since they’re all straight.  Then again, I have this thing about flirting with straights… and that’s probably why I’m still single.  But it’s just that knowledge that most straight women are probably curious, some have tried a bit of ladylove, so it’s nice to play on that curiosity and see how far it gets you.  In my case, nowhere, but there’s always a first time.

Template

I’ve changed my template.  What do you think, does it need a bit of colour?

Crunched

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I’ve been shocked and appalled by the price of things these days. After not really eating for three months, and not buying groceries during this period, I have returned to the world of supermarket shopping to be truly horrified by the escalating cost of living.

Here are some frexamples:

Antiperspirant: was £1.96, now £2.96

Chopped tomatoes: were 24p a can, now 33p a can

Lean minced steak (250g): was £2.19, now £2.69

I can’t think of anything else, I never really look at the price of stuff, but those things really stick out.

All I can say is, fucking hell, things were much cheaper when I was starving myself.  But not as much fun, obviously.

I’ve now rekindled my fondness for messing about in the kitchen and seeing what I can make from my cupboard that includes the staples: onions, garlic, chilli, ginger, chopped tomatoes, chick peas, olive oil, herbs, spices, pasta (a variety), rice.  It’s not surprising that I’m a whiz at dishing up a red sauce for pasta and chick pea curry.  Nice though.

I should be more adventurous, I have the skills.  I’ve threatened my good friends Taz and Pig with a lasagne.  It’s not really a threat, my lasagne is usually fuckin’ delish, even if I do say so myself.  Based on Mum’s recipe, which she stole from a genuine Italian woman, so it’s authentic and everything.  I even do a veggie version for my friends that uses Quorn instead of minced steak and it goes down a treat with them, and me.  Apart from the first time I made it….

Take yourselves back to the summer of 2000.  I was having a bit of a rough time of things for one reason or another and my dear friends opened their home in Leeds to me most weekends so I could spend some time away from the solitude of my life in Sheffield.  We did normal, boring things, like doing a bit of gardening, sitting in the sunshine, cooking, watching TV, smoking… lots of smoking.

One day me and David decided to make a lasagne together.  The red sauce was made and it was time to get on with the bechemel – easy peasy, I’d seen my mum do this a million times and it looked a doddle.  Using her method, I warmed milk in a pan and made an emulsion from cornflour and cold milk.  At least I thought it was cornflour, but I couldn’t be sure because David had a habit of taking the labels off everything, it had the right powdery consistency, so I went with it.  The warmed milk was added to the flour/milk emulsion and returned to the heat to thicken.  Only it didn’t.  So more flour emulsion was added without much success.  I found some different flour and tried that and it thickened a little bit, so I went with it – adding grated nutmeg, salt, pepper, mozzarella, parmesan, etc, etc.  The dish was assembled and cooked and we sat down to eat with the summer sun still relatively high in the evening sky, shining through their dining room window where it emanated a warming yellow glow.

We each took a mouthful of our meal, paused simultaneously and looked at each other with puzzled expressions on our faces.  Speaking over each other, the three of us uttered the words “Does this taste a bit sweet to you?”.

So the moral of this story: don’t take the labels off things in your store cupboard; icing sugar doesn’t half look like cornflour to the clinically depressed.

Fag patches

Following my short-lived attempt to give up smoking back in October, I have decided that the time is right to make a proper effort at weening myself off the delightful weed and today, I am wearing a fag patch.

Apart from itching like a bastard and nearly falling off after just ten minutes, things have settled down and I’ve been OK today.  On a day when I have been looking at spreadsheets from the comfort of my own home, a day when normally I’d have been chain smoking to get me through the boredom, I’ve not wanted one.  Well, of course I’ve wanted a cigarette, but I’ve decided that I’m not going to have one, so I’ve been OK.

The problem with being a bored smoker as opposed to an addicted smoker is that nicotine patches don’t really do much to substitute the punctutation of your day that smoking a cigarette affords.  Instead though, the slow and constant release of nicotine provides a different type of punctutation in that you find that you nearly shit yourself every hour, on the hour.

I’m looking forward to going to bed wearing my 24hr patch.  It’ll bring nightmares and much grinding of teeth, and possibly a few emergency trips to the en suite.

All part of life’s rich tapestry.

Yackety Yack

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Haggis power

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I had a run in with my energy company, Scottish Power, this week. They provide both gas and electricity and the bill they sent out for the winter quarter was a touch high, despite it being based on an actual meter reading, rather than an estimate. At £200, the gas portion was relatively reasonable, considering that it’s been freezing for five months and the heating’s been on seemingly permanently for this period. And even though I can never be bothered to turn off electrical appliances at the plug when I’m not using them, I’m not that bad at turning off lights and not using power excessively, so when the electricity bill was £550, I was a little puzzled to say the least. A check of the meter reading and a phone call to the company rectified the problem – they’d fucked up and the electricity bill was actually only £150 for the quarter.

But how to stop a payment of £850 going out of my account?

“Oh, just cancel the direct debit, and when you get the new bill, set up another one, it’ll be fine.”

Fair enough, so the direct debit was cancelled and I waited for the correct bill to arrive.

On Tuesday, I got another correspondence from Scottish Power:

“Since you’ve cancelled your direct debit, you now have to go on a monthly payment plan and pay your bill for £850 over the next three months, starting with an instalment of £220 on 14th February, please set up a direct debit.”

Fucking numpties.

So I had to phone them up and this meant that I had to get embroiled in their automated answering system, with instructions being given to me in Scottish.

“Och nock nook, accoont numberrrrrr”

“Och nock aye the noo, date of birrrrth”

I could just about make out the important requests for input, but their system relies on voice recognition that doesn’t understand an accent unless it sounds like it’s from Take the High Road, so I ended up shouting at it, very slowly, the way you have to do when you’re trying to be understood by foreigners.

Eventually, I got through that bit and was put on hold because “All oor ooperatorrrrs are extrrreeemly buzzy at the mooment, yoor call is verrry impoortant te us” whatever the fuck that meant.

And then the “on hold” music started. For fuck’s sake. I can’t remember whether it was Vivaldi or Beethoven, but it was shite. I was in hell. There was the obligatory 20 seconds of music, which faded out momentarily while some Scottish words interrupted it; I don’t know what they were saying, some sort of recipe for root vegetables cooked in sick or something, then back to the music.

After a while, I got through the Tracy, who had had special training in speaking in English as part of a five day residential course on Summerisle. It’s the course where they learn to speak to English people on days one and two, then the rest of the week is spent learning how to build a huge wicker effigy of a man for burning English people and baby animals in while they all stand naked, swinging their arms and eating haggis.

I much prefer calling call centres in Bombay, or Mumbai, or whatever it’s called at the moment. Yes, yes, I know Bombay was the colonial name and we need to respect the Indian peoples’ name for their own city, but how come you don’t see Mumbai potatoes on the menu in Indian restaurants eh?

However, my favourite call centre is the Orange mobile phone one. They’re usually based in the north east of England, so this brings its own language barrier, but the people, “associates”, I think they’re called these days, are always brilliant. You phone up, get put on hold, but get to listen to chart music instead of Vivaldi (or Beethoven, whichever it was) and when you get through, the associates do anything to keep you as a customer, even if you have no intention of leaving the company.

“Hello, I’d like to know what my handset upgrade options are please?”

“Oh, are you thinking of leaving Orange?”

“No, I just want to know whether I can get a new handset and how much it’ll cost me.”

“I’m sorry to hear that Sniffy, we really value our customers and don’t want to see them leave. I’ll put you through to our customer retention department and tell them that you’re going to leave unless we give you the best handset possible for free.”

Eh?

Next weekend’s Mail on Sunday is actually giving away a free CD of all our on-hold music hits. Imagine that?

Implicit association
Because I’m not quite insecure enough about my personality, I visited Harvard’s Implicit Association Project website and had a look at the tests you can take there. Implicit association tests measure a person’s subconscious attitude to a variety of things: sexuality, race, gender, age, curly hair.

The tests work by measuring reaction times when images relating to, for example homosexuality, are associated with words relating to good (“glorious”, “joy”, “fabulous”, “dahling”) or bad (“awful”, “hate”, “whatthefuckareyouthinkingthat’shideous!”).

I took the race one and found that moderately favour white people over black people. I suppose this is understandable because of my cultural background and upbringing. I’m not a racialist, honest, no I love black people, honest!

When I took the sexuality test, I found out that I have a strong preference for straight people. That’s because most queers (well, lesbians) are self obsessed, mental, Guardian-reading, lentil-knitting, duplicitous, selfish fucking cunts, that’s why.

Waiting for Aslan

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I know it shouldn’t be surprising that it’s still wintery in February, but I was kind of hoping that the new month would bring some sign that spring was coming. Certainly, it’s getting lighter earlier in the mornings and taking longer before darkness descends in the evening.  In addition, the green shoots of the bulbs I planted in the autumn are showing through; the shrubs that I thought had died over winter are also sprouting new buds of leaves.  Where there is broken bark, there is hope.

And then the snow came again.  The east and south of England were worst hit, but here in Rochdale, we got a nice covering… along with gale force winds and freezing temperatures that made the -1°C temperature feel more like -5°C.

Here are some photos:

February snowfall

February snowfall 2

Rocky really loves the snow.  I really love the way the snow sticks to him and then leaves little puddles of water all over the house as it melts.

Rocky snowdog

Rocky snowball toes

But as usual, it seems to have been winter forever, and there’s still at least two months of it to go.  And summer never, ever, follows.  It’s like living in Narnia under the spell of the White Witch.  Always winter and never Christmas.  And even though we do have Christmas, that was crap this time.

At least the sun is shining.  We certainly won’t see that between June and September, so I should be thankful for it now, even with the freezing temperatures.

Blind in one eye

Anyway, things aren’t that bad and the prospect of spring and sunshine has prompted me to start wearing my contact lenses again.  Why, when I can’t see out of my right eye with them, I don’t know, but being able to see is a small price to pay to be able to wear sunglasses.  Sunglasses are the most fantastic addition to any outfit (apart from a beige jumper of course).  Unfortunately, I always look a total twat when I’m wearing them, but I look a twat whether I’m wearing sunglasses or not.  The best thing about them is the way they hide the dark circles and bags under my eyes…. oh and the way they protect my eyesight from harmful UV rays of course.

Working from home

I’ve been working from home these past couple of days. Aware that the weather might turn and delay my journey home from work and being worried about getting home for the dog, I thought it sensible to stay here and be very productive indeed.  It’s OK working from home, coffee on tap, warmth (compared to my office at work), saving on petrol… Rocky.

Rocky is a lovely little beast, but he won’t leave me alone while I’m trying to work.  Always insisting on sitting on me, jealous that my fingers are tapping the keyboard and not tickling his ears, he has a habit of nudging my hand away from the keys.  It’s quite irritating, but kind of lovely.

Here he is on my knee:

Rocky suspects

Awwww.

Better get back to work and send some very stern e-mails to people who don’t know what they’re talking about.