When I was a student in Leeds, there was a young woman who I came to know affectionately as “Mort”. We went clubbing occasionally and she used to enjoy getting all emotional with my friend David (“Tell me David, do you find me attractive?”) and I used to enjoy having a drink and a laugh and a dance.

A great hit in the clubs back then was Rob Base and DJ E-Z Rock’s “It takes two” and Mort had a fantastic way of dancing to this track that involved her sort of bending forwards with her head down and shaking, bouncing at the hip while waving her arms out in front of her and ever alternate beat, she’d jump to one side, then back to the other. If only I could demonstrate it to somebody. It was so good, and she’d be so wrapped up in her dance, and her desire to get into David’s knickers, that she never noticed that we all used to mimic her, only with exaggerated movements.

Anyway (!) has anybody got a copy of this as I can’t find it on the internet except for a £4 download and I ain’t paying that much for it. Nooooo way! I can do a swap for Kylie’s “Hand on your heart” or Kelly Marie’s “Feels like I’m in love” – I’ll even throw in a Tina Charles for the 12″ remix of it.

Someone taught me how to dance last night
What a mover, he was
And someone taught me how to do it right
What a groover, he was

He taught me all the steps you need to rock and roll
I found my sense of rhythm,
But I lost my self control, when he said

Dance, little lady, dance

Sing along now!

Dance, little lady,
Ohh that’s what he told me…

I could just say no I suppose….

A fisting of facts

1. If you were to be re-incarnated, who or what would you want to come back as and why?

A cat that is good looking, even tempered and happy, thus ensuring a life with a nice family and lots of cuddles, decent food and top class healthcare.

2. What’s the nastiest thing you’ve ever done to a friend?

Stalked them and made their life a misery.

3. What is your FIRST memory (and don’t say ‘I can’t remember’)?

I think I was in my cot, stood up and hanging onto the side rail. The cot was in my Mum and Dad’s room and I was looking at them as they slept.

4. What’s the most embarrassing thing you’ve ever done when pissed/blind drunk?

Where do I start? I think just the general loudness and topics of conversation that you engage in when you’re drunk are hugely embarrassing. I had a row with my boss and told to to fuck off and called him Jacob Marley.

I once tried to drive one of those big earth moving things that was on a construction site that I was taking a shortcut through. I couldn’t get it started (obviously) but sat there, shouting “Toot, toot, Nyyyyyyyyyyrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr!!!” at passers by.

5. Your 3 best and worst qualities?

Good: Fairly clever; sense of humour…. stuck now
Bad: Moodiness and bad temper; my foul fucking mouth; I’m too shy.

6. You can change one thing about your partner. What is it? And what is the thing you would NOT be happy to change about them?

The first thing I’d change is having one to start off with and then I suppose I’d have to take it from there.

7. Have you ever taken drugs (illegal)?

Yes, just a bit of gange on a couple of occasions and I think some speed once when I was a student. Didn’t really do much for me and I wasn’t at all impressed.

8. Your perfect night/day?

Sunny day in June or July, spent with somebody special. Get up nice an early, breakfast of crispy bacon with brown sauce on toast. And a nice walk, either to a zoo-type thing (somewhere with nice animals) or somewhere secluded like a nice woodland or beach or something. Picnic lunch, curry for tea.

9. Have you ever had anything up your bum that ain’t human?

Glycerine suppositories all the time when I was a child.

10. Three things that make you really angry?

Ignorance; cruelty to animals; selfishness

11. The saddest thing you’ve ever seen on TV?

I think Diana’s funeral was so sad because there was this amazing peer and media pressure on everyone to be distraught. So yes, it was a very sad occasion, but Elton’s eyebrow made up for it.

Big Brother is quite sad too.

An edit: Slobodan Milosevic died today. Good.

I think one of the saddest things I ever witnessed on TV was the systematic massacre of people at Milosevic’s (and others’) hands. To have something like this happen on your doorstep is shocking. For something like this happen on your doorstep and know that those who could help don’t have the guts to makes you want to scream. The whole world stood by as Yugoslavia was torn apart by civil war in early 1990s. Men and young boys were sent to their deaths in concentration camps, or at the hands of firing squads. We saw images of civilans being taken out by snipers (for sport) as they ran for cover on the streets of Sarajevo. This happened just over ten years ago, in the 1990s, on our doorstep, in a country where people used to go on holiday. The UN eventually sent in the peace keepers when it was safe for them to do so.

Later on in the same decade, we saw ethnic cleansing on our TV screens as Serbian forces displaced people. These were ordinary people, like those you whinge at down the shops, the people in front of you in the queue at Tesco. The people of the world called on the UN to help, but the UN was too gutless as usual. Eventually NATO got its act together and dropped some bombs – mainly on convoys of refugees. Again too gutless to send in ground troops to help out.

That, I think, is the saddest thing I’ve ever seen on the television.

12. Apart from a sexual organ/region, which part of your body do you really liked being touched by a partner?

Just above my hip, ears, back of neck.

13. You’re fave jelly flavour?

Orange (with those little tinned mandarines set in it, with cream). Or trifle-flavour jelly, the red one. Don’t like the green one… or yellow.

14. Tell everyone something you’ve been too ashamed to tell anyone before. Your answer to this will guarantee your entry into Heaven

I know no shame.

15. Something you don’t tell you’re partner, or do enough and know that you should.

Pfhah!

16. You are a cunt. Explain why.

There are some things that just come naturally to a person I guess.

I’m almost officially on sick leave. It’s a weird thing, “planned sick leave”, I don’t feel comfortable with it. There are some people who actually count their sick leave as an entitlement and ensure that they take their full count of days each year. Lazy fucking scumbags.

I feel really odd taking the week off when I could easily be fine by Tuesday, or Wednesday at the latest. But that’s what I’ve been told to take off by various colleagues and managers, so I’m not going to argue with anybody.

So… you spend the week before you finish much as you would if you were taking annual leave: making sure that any deadlines that occur during your leave are met beforehand; having a general tidy up; letting folk know various bits in case there are any queries. But this is different to the run up to annual leave: you’re not demob happy, you’re just stressed; there’s very a slim chance that you might not be coming back, either on the date you plan, or at all. So, you have to prepare people a bit more and get the work ready for the week that you’re due back too, as well as telling colleagues what to do with it.

Of course, should I die, all my colleagues will be too distraught to even contemplate doing any work and they’ll be given the week off for mourning. More importantly, they’ll need that week off to get their outfits sorted for my fantastic funeral.

There will need to be lots of wailing as my coffin is carried to the altar and then off to the graveside. We might have to arrange a video link showing clips of little baby animals being eaten by big predators, or slaughtered in abattoirs to ensure there are enough decibels of snivling.

Take a chance
There’s a slim chance of me having a reaction to the anaesthetic and there being complications that result in death. This chance isn’t peculiar to me, most normal people are exposed to the same risk and the chance of something going wrong is slim for everyone, but increases if you carry certain risk factors, such as being a pathetic asthmatic, a big fat bloater, having heart disease, kidney stones, etc.

“As with all anaesthetics, there’s a very small chance of complications, but it happens very rarely”, the doctor told me.

“Oh yes, I know that, and that’s fine, but in reality you either have a reaction to the anaesthetic or you don’t, so the odds are 50:50, aren’t they?”

Think on and look sharp.

A very special day
Sunday could turn out to be a very special day. If all goes to plan, kidney stones and map-reading permitting, I should be having tea with my two favourite poofs. I am very excited about this. So much so that I’m taking them to my favourite restaurant – well I’m meeting them there because Piggy is too scared to come here and meet Connie.

It’s a good job that they won’t be meeting mother because she does this thing where she mimics people’s accents without realising it. It gets extremely embarrassing.

I’m going to be taking my camera so there’ll be photos, and I understand that Tazzy will be taking his too. I won’t take my good one though because I don’t want to upset gadgetboy with my superior zoom.

So that’s that. It’ll be a fucking scream! Unless my sister tags along, then it’ll be a fucking nightmare. “But I want to meet them too.”

I called her a fag hag. “I am not!”

“But you’re living with a gay man!”

“I don’t go down Canal Street all the time.”

“Not any more you don’t. You don’t go anymore because you’ve been barred for harrassing the queers.”

I didn’t say that.

She’s having a party tonight and I would’ve gone only I daren’t leave the house for fear of getting a cold or cough that’ll mean my op has to be postponed. The bitch couldn’t have waited, could she?

I also told my line manager what my plans for the weekend were:

Blokes you met off the internet. How dodgy is that?? Why are you meeting? Are they photography geeks too?

You are too weird for words at times….

I don’t think it’s THAT dodgy just because they’re men – you are so sexist! Maybe dodgy because one is Scottish and they live in Barnsley, I’ll concede that point. But they are very sweet… and excellent bitches, so that always makes for a good time.

They’re fairly geeky and into techno things – they have this VERY rude website and we got in touch through there. That does sound dodgy… but it’s not really.

Nope, that is quite strange. I can’t even begin to understand boys, so you are obviously way ahead of me there. What’s the website??

You having a laugh? There’s no way on EARTH that you’re seeing that website! Ever.

I’m not sure anybody understands boys, but they’re quite amusing at times. And like I said there’s nothing on the planet that’s better for a good bitching session than a couple of gay blokes.

Oh I didn’t realise they were gay, well that’s alright then, they are normal and I am no longer thinking you are a freak!

Pls pass on details of website, I need cheering up and a good perve!!

I called her a bigot.

Twiglets
What is it with Twiglets that you can’t stop eating them, even to the point where it feels like you’ve had a mouth full of potassium? The roof of my mouth is burning like a fucker. Then again, I did eat half a tub of the things while watching much sauciness in the L Word. Christ, what a show!

Well, that was fun!

Just got back from my pre-op assessment; it only took 3 bloody hours. In all fairness, the first hour was spent waiting around because the nurses thought my appointment had been cancelled. They didn’t realise what was going on until one of them found my notes and I heard her say “Tina Cakesniffer has been cancelled with the rest of Mr Chat’s clinic”.

“No I’m not, I’m here!”.

But aside from the mixup, it was good fun. I had:

• 4 blood samples taken (2 from each arm) – difficult
• Height – 5’3½” (OK)
• Weight – yeah, well, we know what lets me down there, let’s just say that i need to lose a stone (14lb, ~7kg)
• Blood pressure – 142/85 (bit high)
• Heart rate – 53 (bit low)
• ECG – never had one of those before (normal)
• Chat with junior doctor and consent form signing and stuff
• Heart and lungs listened to – must be OK

Can I have a little widdle on ya?
I also handed over my fresh wee sample. Whenever I try to do weeing into a tube, I always dry up – quite literally. With ten minutes left before we had to leave to go to the hospital, I still couldn’t squeeze any pee out, but I was desperate for a poo (I’d had butter beans with my tea last night). I daren’t do a poo in case I peed at the same time though, and there was no way I was going to have my hand under my arse at that moment. Anyway, I was eventually successful using these two receptacles:

I managed to achieve the task of collecting urine without touching my own pee (for a change). This gave me great relief, but I found carrying a tube of my warm wee a bit disconcerting. I don’t quite understand how people can get turned on by piss.

Here’s a question for you (women, don’t know about blokes): How long does it take before you can have a wee after having an orgasm?

Patients is a virtue
Hospitals are great places; you get the whole spectrum of society there, even if it is generally skewed towards the lower end of the IQ scale. There were a few noteworthy examples today: a big bloke – huge – who was about 45-50, with a few tattoos on his neck, shaved head. During the entire time there, he’d mutter something to himself, then do a really loud “hee, hee, hee” laugh before continuing chunnering on to himself. His mobile phone rang at one point and I’m sure he answered, but all I could hear was “Chunner, chunner… Hee, hee, hee!”.

My favourite visitors to the department was the couple who were wearing matching lumberjack jackets. They were in their fifties I guess and I could tell they weren’t blessed with much up top as I saw them approach as they came shuffling down the corridor: his jacket green/turquoise/black check; hers red/orange/black check – straight off the Paris catwalk.

They sat behind me in the waiting area and immediately started going on: “Do you think we got time to go and get something to eat?” the woman asked the receptionist. She was told that she’d probably be seen within ten minutes so it was best that she waited. Of course, after twenty minutes had passed, she started to become agitated: “Could’ve had something to eat by now, SHE said it only be ten minutes and that was 25 minutes ago.” She spoke as if she had cotton wool in her mouth, her accent was strong and local (more common than mine, obviously).

Eventually she was seen and she had her ECG and was told she could leave. “All that for having a few teeth out. Come on, we can go and get something to eat now.”

Off they shuffled.

Fucking hell. You’d think these people hadn’t seen food for weeks and were using the opportunity of the hospital visit to access a hot dinner. Bugger only knows how she’s going to cope when her mouth is swollen and full of packing after a few extractions. I hope she gets a really hard chip stuck in her wound.

This is good
Real life Simpsons titles

I’ve got tomorrow off work. Will I be doing something nice? No, I will not. I’ll be having my pre-op assessment, which will involve: peeing onto my hands; having a scrap with the people smoking in the main entrance of my hospital; being prodded and poked while I have all sorts of tests done to me – the main one being made to stand on one leg while I balance a glass of water on my head and eat a dry cracker.

Talking of time off work, I’ve been given next week off as planned sick leave – the whole week, and today I was also sorting out my annual leave entitlement for next year (from 1st April onwards). I have a 27d entitlement (going up to 29d in June!) plus I can carry 5 days over from 2005-06, but I still have 6 days, so I’ve got to take an additional day off sometime between 20th and 28th March. Woe is me.

When do I have my day off and what should I do with it? You see, instead of letting me carry 6 days over, my line manager has put this additional stress on me by making me take an extra holiday day sometime in March.

But if I’m off with stress, that’s sick leave and not annual leave and I’m still left with the troublesome extra day.

551
Yep, this is my 552nd post on this blog. If I’d spent that time more constructively, I might have evened out my top:arse ratio, got myself a decent job, done some work in my current one… who knows? I think I’m lacking direction and motivation.

Ignorant fuckers
As I drove out of the car park at work this afternoon, a pair of women stopped in front of me in the middle of the entry/exit road as they were crossing it. I slowed down to let them continue crossing. They stood still and one glared at me. So I decided to start off again and as I drove past them, one shouted “Decide where you’re going, you stupid woman!”.

Excuse me, but I’m not the fucking gormless twat who’s stood in the middle of the fucking road, not moving while people are trying to let you cross! FUCKTARD!

I very nearly stopped the car and had a go at her, but I probably would’ve been told off for twatting a patient. Braindead fucking mong.

Actually, that’s unfair on mongs. But when I say “mong”, I’m never referring to mongs – people with Down’s Syndrome – I’m referring to gormless fuckers who have less intelligence than a fucking slug and fewer manners than Atilla the Hun (or appropriate ill-mannered cunt). Same with spazzes. These words have taken on completely different meanings over the past couple of decades – well they have to me at least.

I hate people.

I hate most people. I really like SID, he’s an angel (:|) and he has done something very very special for me over at his blog. Thanks, you soft twat.

When I was a PhD student, there were quite a few characters in the lab where I worked; some good, some not so good, most very interesting and entertaining. There was a particular Romanian double-act that always provided much amusement, but also stacks of irritation and tension.

It’s unfortunate that I can’t really name either of the pair involved, but anybody who’s particularly interested can e-mail me for more details. The couple consisted of a PhD student and her supervisor. The student, “Marianna”, was a medic (obs & gobs I think), but she’d come to the UK to work on her PhD with, oh fuck it, “Marcella”.

Marianna was the oddest person you could ever meet; she was quite tall, but always spoke to you as if you were the most revered person on the planet, bowing down to, but invading your personal space a little too much. She spoke in a high-pitch, monotone, whisper – anybody who has heard the cosmetic surgery junkie character Maxine Bendix in Tittybangbang will know how Marianna spoke.

She was highly suspicious of everyone: she was convinced that Marcella was in cahoots with the KGB because she had managed to leave Romania during the Ciaocescu regime – “But nobody else could get out!” she complained. She once tore down a newspaper cutout from the Daily Mirror because she thought it was an instrument of the Communist Party. She was also very supersticious of everything and generally rather weird: a housemate of hers told of a time when they’d gone down to the kitchen to find her on all fours, cleaning over the kitchen floor with the two cut halves of a white cabbage.

Marianna’s relationship with her boss was very strained. It didn’t help that the both of them had the most horrendous tempers and things degenerated to such an extent that they would often engage in screaming at each other in the lab.

But Marianna was fab. She was doing work on embryos. That’s right, the things that are made when daddy plants his seed in mummy. She mainly used mouse embryos, but would occasionally need to go to the hospital (which was a fair way out) to pick up human embryos – they were the excess from IVF and deemed unfit for implantation, but the patients had given their consent for them to be used for research. There was a slight problem in that Marianna didn’t drive and so she had to catch the bus to pick up her embryos from the hospital and then transport them back to the lab in a portable, battery powered incubator. On one occasion, the bus was either stuck in traffic, or it broke down and this coincided with a battery pack failure on the embryo incubator. She retold the story to the lab, how she’d pleaded with the bus driver: “But my embryos, my embryos! I need to get my embryos back safely!”

Every time I’d try to use a flow cabinet, she’d be hovering near me or rushing about: “I need it, you see, my embryos!”. Oh for fuck’s sake. Anything for a quiet life and a 3 hour coffee break.

She was an absolute darling and was treated extremely unfairly. I guess she just didn’t help herself with her attitude towards her boss and her general level of being a bit of a fruitcake.

My embryos!
Rightly or wrongly, the European Court of Human Rights has judged that an infertile woman can’t use her frozen embryos because her partner at the time of the treatment has withdrawn his consent.

I agree in respect of the fact that consent must be given freely for all stages of the treatment. Let’s face it, the potential father would have absolutely no chance of trying to force his ex partner to undergo embryo transfer if she’d changed her mind, so I don’t see why it should be any different the other way round.

On the other hand, I bet there are a load of fathers out there who wish they could be given a second chance and not have children with previous partners.

Quick count
Guess how many posts Cakesniffers contains (as of this point) and win a prize!

I’m sure it’s purely psychological, but my car seems to prefer fuel from certain petrol stations over others. It’s OK with Morrison’s, Tesco’s and BP, but it’s not mad keen on Esso or Asda (no surprise there) at the moment. Of all the petrol stations I use, my car loves Shell fuel.

I’m a kind of standard, no-nonsense type and just fill up once a week on unleaded. I filled up last Friday at the local Shell and, as I entered the shop to pay, a woman customer who was in the queue turned to me, smiled and said “Excuse me…”

Oh God, what’ve I done? Have I been mouthing off at other drivers again and I’ve finally met one who’s going to challenge me? “Yes?” I smiled, sweetly.

“I noticed you put Shell Optimax in your car, was there any reason for that?”

Did I? Fuck! That’s so much more expensive than unleaded. What an idiot.

“Oh, no particular reason,” I responded, lying, “I just like to use it one tank in every four.”

“Does it increase fuel efficiency?”

How the fuck do I know? It was a mistake! “Errm, it may do. My car just likes it, it seems to run more smoothly on it. Give it a go and see what you think.”

“Oh right, thanks. I might give it a go sometime.”

Anyway, I must recommend Shell Optimax; my car certainly is very happy at the moment. At 6p/L more, it better fucking had be bappy on it.

Coffee-flavoured Pepsi Max
You know how Pepsi Max is one of my favourite, if not my absolute favourite soft drink? Well, I thought I’d try something new the other week. I had a go of Pepsi Max cino, which is supposed to be a coffee-flavoured cola drink.

It

is

absolutely

fucking

disgusting

Trash
Ok, some of you wanted to see some photos of the new jacket. For fuck’s sake, am I your performing poodle all of a sudden? I suppose I must be. Here goes then:

There was a band called Suede that had a bit of success in the UK during the 1990s. Their hits included the songs Beautiful Ones, Trash and Animal nitrate. They were OK and I quite liked their stuff…. until, that was, when I realised that their lead singer sounded like Tommy Steele singing Little white bull.

But suede and other leather goods have quite a strong smell that can be a bit nasty at times. There’s something not quite right about being able to smell the leather from your shoes; it’s usually an indicator that your feet are too hot = sweat = manky, manky, manky.

Anyhoo. I bought meself a suede jacket the other day. It’s really rather nice and it was only £30 from good old T K Maxx. I reckon it’s ideal for a night out on the town and it’ll go really well with jeans and a nice blouse. More’s to the point, it doesn’t look likely that I’ll ever have my coy-du-roy (corduroy) blazer back from my darling sister, so I just HAD to have a going out jacket. Because I’m always out, social animal that I am.

The thing about suede is that it smells a bit nasty and can sometimes have fart undertones. The jacket is hung up in this room and I can smell it from here. I’m a bit worried about wearing this thing on a night out on the pull and people nearby thinking that I’m a bit excited about getting out of the house for a change.

Oh, the Big Gay Bash has been postponed until after I’ve recovered from my op since my colleague doesn’t want anything to curtail my pulling potential. As if my fat arse isn’t going to do that anyway.

Hey ho.

Trichlorophenol

This stuff was the pervading smell of all pensioner homes during the 1970s. Trichlorophenol? TCP to you and me, or THIS:

I don’t know why the UK’s elderly population were so dependent on this stuff back then, but I swear they bathed in it, gargled with it, used it as a cologne, cleaned the bathroom with it and boilwashed their smalls in it.

And the smell of even the tiniest amount of TCP is extremely persistent, even without this total saturation of their geriatric lifestyles with the stuff. I once lived in a flat for 18 months. During all that time, I could never shift the smell of TCP from the bathroom cabinet. It felt like the place was possessed with the spirit of an elderly lady who died of a chemical overdose in 1976.

There’s a disturbing smell of cat wee filtering into this room. Where’s the Zoflora?

Freebies
Yeah, look at me, giving away music for free. All thanks to tunebite, I might add. If you hadn’t noticed, our good friend Connie is trying a new venture in her music blog Indie Anna Jones. Check it out, there are some interesting things to listen to.

A bear, a lion and chicken meet in the street and are comparing notes.

The Bear says: “If I growl in the forest, the animals run and hide and the undergrowth quivers”

The Lion says: “If I roar in the jungle the animals scatter and the tree-tops shake”

The Chicken says: “If I cough, the entire world shits itself!”

Those pesky birds must be having a right old laugh at our expense.

Animals and strange weather
Ever noticed how bonkers cats and dogs go when it’s really windy? Cats either run around after themselves, probably in the belief that something is nipping at their tails. The result is a high-speed circular chase as the animal tries in vain to catch the culprit.

Snow is quite good fun too. Cats try to do this thing where they run run along and dive into it, the snow flying up over their heads as they skid along, paws in front of them. They look a bit like furry snow ploughs.

Dogs, on the other hand, run around, trying to catch the falling snow in their mouths. This little chap happened to be playing outside when the snow came down heavily yesterday afternoon.

He wasn’t sure whether he was having the best time of his life, or whether he was a bit fed up because he was getting cold and wet (and confused). Still, it was fun to watch.

Anger
Nothing has happened to raise my blood pressure much today, apart from a session at the gym and a few dickheads on the road on the way there. YAY!

I’m having takeaway for my tea (lamb tikka jalfrezi). YAY!

The sun is shining (for now, it’ll be setting soon). YAY!

I’ve figured out how to change the attributes of blogger header description. YAY!

All is well with the world… except my sore back, the cold weather, Tony Blair being an utter wanker, my clothes still being a bit too tight.

Ho hum.

So here it is, work it out for yourself…

… Hang on, I was coming over a bit Jazzie B there for a second.

So what does everybody think? I’d been fed up of that old blog template since the day I started it, but I never had the wherewithall or courage to mess about with it. But then I thought “Blogs be blown!” and went for an overhaul.

I’m quite pleased with it. It always annoyed me how the other one was squished in the centre of the screen and there was no way of changing it because of the template components. Ah, how foolish we are when we embark on these adventures; if only I’d known that other template would be impossible to change when I started out…

But still, I’ve got four paragraphs out of this. Not bad, I reckon.

Taxing times
I had a look at my tax code on my payslip this afternoon. Just how exciting can a person’s life get? Anyway, expecting to see “489L”, I was surprised to see “489LI”. Eh? An I code?? So I had a look at the Inland Revenue website to see what it meant.

Fucking useless.

They’re too busy worrying about tax evasion, self assessment and basically robbing as much money off people who work to actually give anything like useful information out. The most annoying thing is the way you can only have online contact with certain departments, depending on the nature of the query, anything else and you have to phone them up.

I left them some feedback, telling them that their website wasn’t at all informative and that people use the internet to AVOID having to phone people up, so why are certain queries only answered over the phone?

Idiots.

For those who don’t know, the tax code tells a person their tax allowance – that’s the amount you’re allowed to earn before you start handing over your cash to the nation’s workshy. For most people, this is £4,895, hence the tax code “489L”.

Sickened
This news report got me so very upset this afternoon. I was absolutely sickened by it.

I know it’s probably wrong, but I certainly care more for animals than I do for people and I detest any form of animal cruelty.

When I win the lottery (and it’s probably for the best if I don’t), I will open an animal santuary – I will start it off with a couple of donkeys and work from there. I will also fund lawyers to go out to the hot places, where they will work to prosecute poachers who pray on endangered species. The most fun I will have, however, is the hiring of a crack squad of hit men who will hunt down these fuckers who do things like drown pregnant dogs and tie lighted fireworks to cats and they will inflict the most prolonged and agonising deaths imaginable on them.

DRINK!
I mentioned somewhere earlier that I’ve not had a drink for nearly six years. It’s odd that something that was once the central part of my being now rarely enters my mind.

Perhaps giving things up like that is like losing a loved one: unbelievably painful at first, to the point that you’re convinced that you’ll never be able to continue, and then gradually, you realise that the pain isn’t there one day. You feel guilty or confused about it for a while – you’re supposed to be in mourning and so you regress a bit, but more and more, week by week, you get better until you reach a point where you hardly think about it at all.

So now I’m at the stage where it’s all a bit weird. I may well be OK to have a drink, probably be fine, but why would I and what would the effect be? Would it make me complacent? Would I be OK to have a drink every now and again? Would I start to drink more regularly again, to the point where I got back in to my old bad habits?

So to avoid any problems, I have to avoid drinking for ever I think. I think, I don’t know for sure. I do know that it’s not worth the trouble and that I can get by without it, even thought it does make me a rather miserable and tetchy fucker at times.

God, my feet are bloody freezing!