There’s a report in the news this morning about a standard appraisal questionnaire, used for staff in the Indian Civil Service, that has caused a bit of an uproar. Apparently, it asks women about their menstrual cycles and when the last time they were off with “confinement” (mat leave). The women who are subject to undertaking the survey as part of their annual appraisals are apoplectic with rage, but give them a few days and they’ll probably calm down once their progesterone levels settle down.

Ho ho ho.

Sleeeeeeeeeeep
I decided to come to Base 2a today. I couldn’t face the other place for some reason and, despite coming here involving a 30mile drive, I get half an hour extra in bed and I can wear my jeans and lesbian shoes (since there’s barely anybody here). I don’t know why they do, but the extra bed minutes count a lot when you’re so tired.

Sleep isn’t coming easily at the moment. At home, I get woken by a crying baby – well, not so much the crying baby, but its grandmother who leaps out of bed to assist as soon as her “mum radar” kicks in to detect the slightest bit of moses basket disturbance. Once I’m awake there, I notice the birdsong outside, which now starts at about 3am. At Trump’s, the local demographic seems to include some very nocturnal and very loud men from somewhere in Africa (from the sounds of their accents) who choose to stand in the street and have lengthy conversations at all times of the night. You know those deep and booming voices that certain blokes have? Well, those ones. It’s strange really, because if they made that sort of noise in the Serengeti, they’d be lion bate. Not that all men who originate from Africa here in the UK come from the Serengeti or anything, just the ones who come here to escape repeated nocturnal lion attacks.

Anyway, back to Base 2a. The fuckers have blocked Blogger access, so I can no longer post from here (I can’t even READ T&Ps’ pages from here – they have a firm “ACCESS DENIED” slapped on them). Instead, I have to write things in Word to upload later. Things kind of lose their vitriolic edge this way, as I tend to have calmed down once I am away from the incessant onslaught of insanity. But hey ho, it’s better than trying to fight with Microsoft Access, and typing in Word at least makes it look like I’m working.

Down tools!
I think most people have it hard in the workplace, none more so than our poor beleaguered teachers. Apparently, they’re going to refuse to work once classroom temperatures rise above 26°C. Bless their cotton socks, or sandaled feet, or whatever it is they wear these days. Let’s face it, we won’t get our first proper hot day until June and by this time of year, most teachers are already winding down their classes in readiness for the exam season and summer break. Perhaps they find it too hard to invigilate over students taking exams when it’s a bit warm. When you think about it, sitting at a desk at the front of a sports hall doing fuck all while a bunch of stressed out kids work through exam papers really saps your energy.

From May onwards, primary school teachers just fuck about outside doing “nature projects” or sports events. We’ve all been school children; we know what it’s like.

Hair bare
My phobia of hairdressers is getting worse. It’s getting to the stage where I’d rather look (even more) like Ronald McDonald than just bite the bullet and go and get it cut. I just never know how to describe what I want and they never seem to know what to do anyway. So I am currently suffering from something akin to an overgrown curly mullet. How do you tell them what you want, especially when you’re not sure yourself? And hairdressers are hardly the most attentive people on the planet are they? All that seems to be going around their heads are thoughts of:

a) Going out at the weekend
b) Going away on holiday
c) Latest bargains from Primark

All other intellectual activity has long since been obliterated by overexposure to hair styling chemicals. The combination of lack of residual synapses plus them being confronted with my hair leads to total sensory overload and meltdown, resulting in Sniffy looking like Elaine Paige.

So I find myself at the mercy of my sister and her hormones. She doesn’t do a bad job, but she won’t cut my hair short enough. Trump has now offered to pay for me to get my hair cut. I’m tempted to take her up on this offer and go to either:

a) The bloke in Afleck’s Palace who wears loads of makeup and talks a lot, or
b) The hairdressers in “The Village”, where they’ll probably try to make the most of my hair’s innate ability to grow in a mullet

What a life.

“Getting warm up here isn’t it?Whooph!”

The clouds have cleared and as we approach mid afternoon, the sun is shining.

It’s too warm for a jumper and a coat, but it is really pleasant in the April air, with a gentle breeze to freshen things up.

Posh Scouse will be in linen and sole-slapping flip flops tomorrow, complaining about the heat and demanding that all windows and doors be opened from 8am. I’m glad I won’t be here to witness it.

What a great plate of food
I’m getting to really dislike cookery programmes on TV. That’s not strictly true; I only really dislike anything with Antony Worrall Dwarf-face (mumbling little shit) in it and “Masterchef”.

Hosted by two of the most repellent men to have been let loose on the UK’s telly-viewing public, Masterchef pits amateur cooking enthusiasts against each other in a competition to win something like a cheese grater or something. It’s a great idea for a programme, and quite enjoyable apart from the nob judges, John Torode and Gregg Wallace.

Utter fucking twats, the pair of them. One is a toad-faced prat while the other (Torode) is a po-faced big-head who is incapable of stringing sentences together, opting merely for adjectives.

Clip from the show:
Wallace: “Right, let’s have a look at this plate of food that you’ve prepared. Hmm it’s a simple salad of shredded pan-fried duck on Thai greens and a chilli dressing. I love the way the dressing cuts through the fat in the duck. It’s really out there.”

Torode: “I’m getting: duck, green, leaves, meatiness, lemongrass. A great plate of food”

And it never matters how “really out there” any of the women contestants are, they ALWAYS choose a man as the winner.

A couple of things that particularly annoy me are:
“plate of food”
“cuts through”

“This is a wonderful salad dressing whereby the lime gives a gentle flavour, while having the acidity to cut through the wonderful olive oil without diluting its flavour.”

Oh fuck off you fucking stuck-up spastic.

You hear the same thing with people tasting wine to accompany a dish (sorry, plate of food). “This is a great wine that stands up in its own right, but is great for cutting through all those wonderful fats in the dish.”

Well, try a can of Pepsi Max pal, that’d cut through your stomach lining, teeth and bones!

Have toy
Yes, Sniffy has a new toy. I’ve finally got myself a digital SLR camera. It is divine. There’s a kind of connection between the user and the camera that means you can feel each shot as it’s taken. A beautiful bit of gadgetry courtesy of Canon.

I hope to be taking lots of photos, ably assisted by Trump, who can look out for bandits while I compose shots and the like. In anticipation of her not being mad keen on the idea, I’m also checking out a camera club and I might meet some new friends. I’m not really one for meeting new people, since most people are cocks, but I’ll give it a go. I don’t have to talk to any of them.

Keep Sniffy in gadgets
I’m thinking of having a Paypal “donate” button on here so people can donate a pound at a time and contribute to my gadget fund.

Blogging code of conduct
I know that the filthy Yorkshire homos have already covered this, and very eloquently too, but this is something that’s hovering in the news and is getting me a bit annoyed – let’s face it, it doesn’t take much.

Essentially, some woman in America has a blog or something that isn’t really a blog because it’s actually a commercial enterprise, but she posts her daily musings on there and invites comments from her adoring readership. I can’t even be arsed to find out what her name is or what her blog is called, but we’ve all seen this sort of shite before when we’ve clicked on the “next blog” button. Anyroadup, somebody has been leaving threatening comments on her blog and she’s got upset and some people have come out in support of her and have demonstrated their support by suspending posts to their own sites. These same people, whoever the fuck they are, have come out and proposed a Blogging code of conduct. Excuse me, but who died and put them in charge?

Tossers.

In some respects, you can have a modicum of sympathy because the woman in question was targeted at her own site. What I don’t understand is how people have the audacity to complain and get offended by blogs that they visit voluntarily, especially when the blog author gives it back to them. For a “frexample”, check out the comments on the following posts.

Arise, Sir Bonio
Blasted from the past, and when I stopped allowing comments on this post, she found me at:
The very best of British

And just for fun, Solitary mind games

As you can see, I am sometimes targeted by a Cliff Richard-loving visitor from Alabama, who never leaves a link to their own blog and rarely leaves a name.

If you ask me, any blogging code of conduct should include the obvious clause that if you leave a critical comment on somebody’s blog, expect it back at least ten-fold.

Tossers.

Babies are crap at burping. I’d have thought that anything spawned of my bilious sister would have no trouble letting rip, but Little Con doesn’t burp, so she gets trapped wind and then her tummy hurts.

Blah, blah, new parent diary shite.

But have you seen the crap that people peddle to new parents? You can buy DVDs showing you how to wind a baby. The demonstrations show people doing exactly what you do anyway, with a model child that is obviously sedated with strong opiates. It doesn’t work with the Sniffy infant. Then again, her mother’s milk might just well be very bitter and poisonous and she could well be better off being bottle fed.

It’s weird though, how we are so eager to congratulate a belching or farting infant, yet this turns into admonishment as soon as the poor child learns a language and starts to develop manners. Well, this happens in some houses, but I still congratulate myself on every loud or noxious trump.

Ripper!

Excitement
Tomorrow marks the first anniversary of the day when I met my lovely, gorgeous, funny, kind, compassionate, clever, trumpy Trump. It’s been a wonderful year and I am very lucky.

What should I do to mark the occasion? I have planned very very badly indeed. In fact, I haven’t planned at all. I am hoping for some inspiration by the time we mark our official anniversary of when we started seeing each other… officially, i.e. when we became a couple after she split from her missus. This happens at the weekend. She was a quick worker.

Now that spring has finally arrived and the sun is shining on us (all be it with freezing cold gale-force winds) I thought I should persuade Trump to venture out of the urban sprawl of the city and have a wander where the air is clean. It’s not far to go to get to the edge of the Cheshire countryside, so we headed off to Lyme Park “Just for a wander round, nothing strenuous”, I promised her.

As we got into the car to set off, I noticed that there was a touch more than a gentle breeze. Once we arrived and we opened the car doors, trying not to worry about the people wearing winter fleeces and woolly hats, we caught a blast of arctic air that said “You’re not wearing the right clothes for this weather!”. I found my emergency “cardie of much mirth” and thin rain coat in the boot of my car. The cardie just about kept out the freezing cold wind for me, but I felt for Trump in her t shirt and double layer of painfully thin jackets. We needed coffee before we could do anything else. I hugged a radiator in the hope that residual heat would be retained in the fibres of my cardie.

“Come on! If we walk up to The Cage, there’s a deer sanctuary and a nice view, we just need to go up this hill.” She looked up the hill and the mud-covered steps that we were to use to ascend it, her mood darkened, she got a face on. We walked in near silence for twenty minutes, with Trump kicking the odd stone at unsuspecting children up ahead of us. We got to the deer sanctuary, I decided we should turn back.

She always told me she didn’t like the countryside, I thought she was having me on. She wasn’t. Not even cute puppies could lighten her mood, which only lifted as we approached the coffee shop. But she was freezing, and she had warned me. What she DIDN’T tell me until it was too late was that she’d have liked to have gone around the stately home that sits in the park. Tsk.

Anyway, all was well once well once we returned to the land of walkers in matching fleeces and walking skewers (some even had two!), and I FINALLY got a photo that I’ve been thinking about for some time:

Cool eh?

Timewarp
It was a day of contrasts with our evening plans being centred around seeing the fabulous Sugababes in concert. We decided to eat out and I fancied returning to a restaurant that la famiglia Sniffy used to frequent when there was only one Italian restaurant in the whole of Manchester.

I don’t know whether it was comforting or disturbing to note that Pizzeria Italia hadn’t changed one tiny bit since the last time I was there thirty years ago. Everything was exactly the same, including the menu and crockery. The queue outside the door to get in was an indicator that the proprietors had found a winning formula forty years ago and they were jolly well going to stick to it. Good for them, but not quite good enough for me.

Push the button
Sugababes were ace. Enough said. Actually I’d like to add that seeing three very attractive young ladies virtually pole dancing while singing – to me – was an excellent way to spend an hour and half. Well done girls.

This picture says a thousand words

But the only word required is “cunt”.

And this story has done nothing to ease the churning in my stomach, pounding in my head and grinding of my teeth that are the result of trying to deal with NHS bureaucracy that has been causing me much stress for the past few weeks.

The following people have been knighted or damed:

Sir Bob Geldof
Sir Paul McCartney
Sir Ellen McCarthur
Sir Kelly Holmes
Sir Cliff Richard
And now Sir Bonio of iPod

These people quite a lot in common, but in the main, they have featured in my blog because of crimes against humanity. Although admittedly, Kelly is only in that list because she’s got better abs than is humanly possibly in a woman and that makes her a total bastard in my book.

Stress
So Sniffy is stressed and she wants to kill something; a plate of chips and gravy would be a good start, followed by all the people who have pissed me off…. EVER! I would have a big, massive skewer and I’d make a huge kebab, threading each one after the other, while they watched on. Oh, how I’d enjoy hearing them plea for their lives as they waited their turn, the blood and gore splashing on them!

Bastards.

Or… I could just get on with things as best I can, think nice thoughts and look forward to a) the weekend, b) the Easter break and c) a week off at the end of April.

Oh, my poor, aching head. I’m going to take to my bed for the evening.

One of my favourite songs from my favourite band is called Song for a future generation. It’s loosely based on that cheesy old song from the seventies where folk go through their zodiac signs and describe how fabulous they are – Float on, it was called.

It was in this song that I first heard of hot tamales, although now when I hear; “Hi, I’m Ricky and I’m…”, I tend to throw in “DEAD!” instead of “a Pisces, I love computers and hot tamales”.

The song is all about universal domination, or perhaps innocent aspirations and the desire to meet a perfect mate. It’s just a typical jolly B52’s song that cheers me up whenever I hear it. Download it and have a listen. And don’t forget to sing along to the La-lah, la-la-lah bit. It’ll make you smile.

I love computers and hot tamales
I’m not sure whether hot tamales are anything other than cinnamon-flavoured jelly beans that you get in North America, but I like the cinnamon-flavoured jelly beans. Not the Jelly Belly ones, although they’re OK too, I’m referring to proper Hot Tamales.

When it comes to Jelly Belly jelly beans, the most intriguing flavour is jalapeno. Weirdest thing I ever tasted, but brilliant. The really make your nose hurt when you eat about five at once.

God I’m tired. I’m so fucked up by the clocks going forward; takes me a week to get over it.

What do you mean, you don’t go clubbing??
Me and Trump have been cast out of the Sisterhood of Canal Street after admitting that we don’t go clubbing amongst some of the sorority on Friday night. The shock on their faces when I told them that I hadn’t really been clubbing since I was 23 made me feel as if I had to justify myself. “Well, I sort of got bored of it I suppose. And now I don’t drink, it makes it impossible to dance. And I’m thirty six!” They stared at me, I hid behind my pint of pop.

Hey ho.

We didn’t follow them as we lost track of time talking to one of Trump’s colleagues. We were engaged in a thrilling four hour conversation about work-related matters. Much better than clubbing any day.

My commonplace book
I have a commonplace book. I just need to start writing notes in it for it to be of any use I suppose. Had I done this the other week, I’d have been able to remember what book I’d seen that I looked for unsuccessfully yesterday. “It was here, and it was £20”. That’s all I could remember of it.

I’d be able to remember interesting things that come to mind during the day that I could then go on to blog about when the opportunity arises.

Let’s meet and have a baby
Listening to the noise coming from the other room as my niece screams her way through another nappy change, let’s not.

People tell us that natural whole foods are good for us. That we should avoid processed, purified produce in favour of things are they’re meant to be.

I don’t think so.

Could you imagine going to anywhere other than some crank, vegan restaurant and being offered a plate of whole wheat pasta? No. It’s just not right. Advocates go on about the delicious nutty flavour of brown pasta, but no, it’s just not right. It’s like wholemeal bread and wholemeal pitta bread. What if you went to the kebab shop and they gave you a wholemeal pitta bread or naan bread? There’d be a riot, and quite rightly too. I don’t like it when the vehicle for my sauce or sandwich filling interferes unduly with the flavour. Yes, wholemeal pasta and bread might have a wonderful nutty flavour, but I don’t want it getting in the way of everything else.

I’ve been accused of being narrow-minded, of not wanting to broaden my horizons. Too right. Some things I just don’t need to try to know that I won’t like them (bum sex, cottage cheeses). But the other week, I thought I’d make a concession for Trump and give the most evil stuff on the planet a go:

Brown rice.

Utter rubbish. This was no ordinary brown rice, this was found at the back of the cupboard Asda brown rice. I was going to cook it properly, but I hung fire and read the instructions that told me to cook it by absorption rather than immersion. The recommended method turned out to be excellent for producing a pan of inedible stodgy shite. The recipe I was using told me to add grated beetroot and kidney beans. The brown stodge was transformed into a purple stodge. It was still inedible. Top tip: don’t try to grate beetroot unless it’s pretty dry, it just turns into mush.

Disastrous, disgusting, never again.

Of course, another “Brown” that I hate is Gordon Brown; he’s a complete cunt.

Cheeses
If you ever need to trump in the supermarket, and you know it’s going to be a total stinker, hurry yourself along to the continental cheese fridge and let rip from there.

Sunday evening
I hate Sunday evenings. With a difficult week ahead at work, I didn’t really want the weekend to draw to a close, but here I am. I’m Trumpless and I’m watching a documentary about British bridges on Discovery Civilisation. Joy.

My hatred of Sunday evenings has never lessened in 30 years.

Hands up anybody who gets to Sunday teatime and thinks “Oh fantastic, it’s Monday tomorrow, another interesting week at work ahead of me!”

I’m tired today. My sleep was disturbed for the second consecutive night last night and I’m not happy about it. That feeling that you get when you’re tired; it seems as if somebody has got their hands around your brain giving it a Chinese burn, sort of pulls your eyes together so you can’t focus too.

And then you have to be able to string words into sentences because you’re at work. Bastards.

But why is Sniffy so tired? Well, I was woken a few times on Sunday night by the sack of screaming – moreso by Bomb who insisted on bringing her downstairs to change her nappy. Nice of her, considering I’d given up my bedroom for the both of them because it’s bigger than the downstairs spare room with the tiny bed and ridiculously bouncy mattress!

So last night I went to Trump’s as planned. Thank goodness for an early night and 7 hours sleep! Or so I thought…

As Trump finished her dealings on the internet, I drifted into sleep.

10.30: Theme from Wonder Woman on my mobile. Big Connie wanting to know how to change the timing on the central heating because Anna was going to sleep downstairs that night. Half asleep, I had to talk her through the not-difficult process, but not without me getting annoyed at her lack of comprehension, common sense, attention.

10.40: Drop off with some programme about sleep disorders wittering on in the background. Brrrr… chilly tonight!

Don’t know what time it was but: Woken up by Trump dropping VERY COLD all-in-one remote control on my bear arm. “Nnnnnnooooooooooooooooooo!!!!!!!!!!! I’m sleeeeeeeeeeeeping”

It was almost a tantrum, but not as big as the one I threw when she wanted a cuddle with her freezing cold limbs on my toasty body.

“Why are you doing this? I need some sleep! I’m so tired!!!”

“But I’m cold and I want a cuddle”

Drifted off to sleep again…

11.58: “Phar-phaaar-phar-phaaaaaaaaaaar… And that’s all that happened in Parliament today, now it’s time for the news at midnight on Radio 4. Peep, peep, peep, peep, peep, peeeeeeeep”

For fuck’s sake.

4.44: Inside my head “All my life, watching America. All my life, there’s panic in America…” Visions of Razorlight’s weird-looking singer scare me further from my sleep. I am awake an hour before getting up time.

What the fuck is going on? Why the hell am I waking up before 5am with that awful song going through my head? What sort of evil tricks is my mind playing on me?

It’s no wonder I’m mental.

Use the force, Skywalker
Well, would you?

Four thousand feet above ground on a platform of glass above the spectacular Grand Canyon. Yes, it’s the Grand Canyon Skywalk.

Even crawling on all-fours, I’d get that awful feeling of the ground coming up to meet my eyebrows, bringing my stomach with it. Followed by nausea and blind panic.

So despite my strong desires to visit the Grand Canyon, I think an invitation to walk the Skywalk would be met with a firm “Hell no!” from Sniffy.

What is the first thing that comes into your head when you are dragged from slumber by the alarm clock? I get a fuzzy and groaning “Oh fuck” and try to ignore it. But it’s difficult to ignore the most irritating alarm clock on the planet and its shrill BEEP! when it first goes off at Oh Christ O’clock.

I am referring to Trump’s alarm clock, which has its time set twenty minutes fast for some reason. When it doesn’t beep at us, the alternative wake up is the radio, which comes on set to Radio Four. All I hear with Radio Four is the teacher from the Peanuts cartoon, just voices, nothing worth tuning my mind in to. “And now we hand over to phar-phaaar-phar-pharrrr who will be discussing mumphthth and muuuumphthth after a visit to Keeenya”. That’s all there ever is on Radio 4. Pile of crap. People only listen to Radio 4 so they can sound clever when they come into work and talk about what they’ve just heard on the Today Programme. Wankers. He hasn’t posted for AGES, but Herge Smith once beautifully summed up all that is Radio 4 in the wonderful Angry Chimp blog. I wish Herge would come back to us, I miss him.

Dateline Salford… 17th March 2007
Headlines today:
Boing! Sniffy changes a shitty nappy!

Yep, I changed Connie’s nappy this evening – baby Connie, not mother Connie. It was fine, I’m a natural.

The baby is great; sleeps alot and doesn’t whinge unless I take flash photos of her. She has eyes now too, which are always useful.

She also has a deformity. Nothing serious, but something that has been passed down through generations on Papa Sniff’s side. She has “Sniffy toe”:

It may seem trivial at this tender age, but that’ll be really painful when she tries to use a cross trainer later on in life!