About Tina

Unleashed for a second term of blogging.

The VERY best of British

Posted on 16 August, 2014 by Tina

I’ve always hated him

When you think of these great isles of ours, this wonderful Britain, what springs to mind? The Queen, our history, culture, the Empire and Commonwealth, a land of opportunity and fairness, rolling countryside? Then there’s the summer: cream teas and picnics, the sound of leather on willow, strawberries and cream, the gentle knock of the tennis ball over the net….. Wimbledon perhaps? Timmy’s tried his hardest, but we need to accept that Britain may never produce a Wimbledon champion. However, one person that will ALWAYS excel at the All England Lawn Tennis and Croquet Club is the Peter Pan of Pop, our very own…..

Sir Cliff Richard

A “complete tosser”

Some would describe the narcissistic “rocker” as a complete tosser and they’d be absolutely right.

Many have questioned his reasons for never settling down with a nice girl. Some have questioned his sexuality, pointing…

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Perfect timing

Posted on 14 August, 2014 by Tina

As I set off to take the little dog for his walk down the woods, I looked up at the sky: after a sunny afternoon, the clouds had been gathering and the sky was getting darker. We take the car to the local country park because it’s a little too far to walk. On our approach, the rain started spotting on the windscreen and within a few minutes of our walk around the lake, it was raining heavily.

I was dressed entirely inappropriately without a coat.

Some of our circuit was sheltered partially by a canopy of trees, but it was, on the whole, pretty wet. We encountered fellow sufferers on our way round. Our canine companions didn’t mind one iota as they ran through the muddy puddles that increased in capacity with each second. We humans though, gave each other that knowing look of despair at the duties we have to fulfil as dog owners.

“I thought the rain was going in the other direction”, remarked one man, a regular on our walks down there. His large, curly-haired beast bounding around with my scruffy, overgrown and now sodden mutt.

“Yes, I timed this perfectly!” I responded as he ran on ahead.

Perfect bloody timing! I was drenched. We got back to the car and I buckled him in. He wasn’t happy and I knew he hated me for taking him out in the rain.

“Why couldn’t you bring me out an hour earlier when it was nice and dry, Mummy, you fucking bitch?”

Well, little Rocky, yes, it would’ve been nice to have a nice dry walk and for you not to have got the inside of my car soaking wet when you had a shake after jumping onto the seat, of course it would. But look at this, you didn’t notice this because you’re a pea-brained dog. If we’d come out an hour earlier, I wouldn’t have seen this. And this, dear little dog, as far as I’m concerned, was perfect timing.

Twitterer service

Posted on 12 August, 2014 by Tina

I have a bit of history when it comes to documenting my dealings with customer services departments of various companies. My confrontations with GE Capital Bank and Tesco are legendary (in my head), as are my bizarre complaints about the lack of availability of Pepsi in Rome and granulated sugar-coated doughnuts at Greggs.

Before the days of social media, dealings with companies had to be via e-mail, or over the telephone. I’m not very good on the telephone. I’m certain there’s something wrong in my head whereby I completely lose track of what I’m saying when I’m talking to people. Stress takes over, my synapses misfire and I go into a confused meltdown, during which I could well be reciting the lyrics to Dance this mess around instead of formulating a logical argument and presenting my position in such a way that I get what I want.

“I ain’t no Linberger!”

I find it a lot easier to write things things down.

Making complaints, or raising concerns, about products or services has become so much easier in the age of Twitter, but I bet this presents a nightmare the customer services teams of any company with an internet presence, unless it’s Whirpool, because they just don’t give a crap what people think of their shit products and terrible customer service.

The thing about Twitter is that, whereas a telephone conversation or e-mail exchange is privy solely to the parties concerned, a person’s comment or complaint about a company on Twitter shows that company’s performance up to a global audience. This means that the companies must have people scanning their twitter feed 24/7 in order that they can respond to a comment in a timely fashion… for all the world to see.

It’s fucking BRILLIANT!

Until that is, you get something like this happening:

Which was then followed by this:

Which was fine, great in fact. Then THIS happened:

This is their equivalent of saying, “Ok bitch, we’re looking into your query, just keep your fucking mouth shut until we get back to you or we’re sending the lads round to set fire to your hair.”

The same thing happened with the impossible-to-leave LinkedIn last week.

But of course, the reason they followed me was because of this:

Yep, so I could direct message them with some personal information so they could only credit me with £3 worth of Nectar Points!

All sorted and I didn’t even have to take the dodgy tomatoes back to Salford. They wouldn’t have made it anyway. It was like something out of one of those old Sinbad films from the 1970s and 80s where the many-headed mythological monster is vanquished by the hero and decays, jerkily, before our very eyes. Or the Wicked Witch in the Wizard of Oz… “Melting… I’m meltiiiing!”

Despite the happy and very swift conclusion to our exchange this evening, they’re still following me. I’m expecting a punishment beating next time I go to Salford. Nothing new there then.

But it must be great being on the Twitter desk of a company’s customer service team. Imagine some of the bizarre tweets that people send. In fact, as I was paying for my goods this afternoon, I was insulted by the volume of the woman on the self checkout. It was ludicrously loud. I felt like I was being shouted at and was on the verge of tweeting @sainsburys to ask why the default volume isn’t set lower and why they need to go that loud anywayforfuck’ssake. Anticipating the “why didn’t you just turn the volume down?” response, I decided to leave it. Until the next time. Why though? Why are they so fucking loud? Could you imagine if the till assistants shouted at you at that volume?

High anxiety

Anyway, since it is approaching my bedtime, I should try to relax and be calm. The Anxiety levels in the house are at an all time high at the moment. The little dog is insanely jealous of the little cat. Well, he’s insanely jealous of the little cat’s food, which smells like poo. Poo that has to sit on the desk in my back bedroom because it’s the only place that the dog can’t get to it and the cat can eat in peace. The cat eats like a spas and throws his food all over the place. My beautiful computer and its accessories are covered in Felix splashes. I woke this morning to find that he’d nudged his bowl from the desk and spilled the faeces-like contents all over my desk chair.

Then there’s the litter tray, which because of lack of space elsewhere in the house, is in the bathroom. He throws litter all over the place when he’s done his toilets and I’m forever stepping out of the shower and getting Catsan between my toes.

The responsibility that goes with looking after this cat cannot be underestimated. If anything at all happens to him, I might as run off to Iraq and join the nearest Islamic State boys wearing nothing but a rainbow flag and a smile. He means THAT much to my dad.

In the meantime, I’m sure my family is having a lovely time in the sunshine in Italy. So that’s all good.

Mirror in the bathroom

Posted on 11 August, 2014 by Tina

All I want when I go to use the toilet is a little bit of privacy. I don’t get this at home because I’m accompanied by the little dog wherever I go. Like Lyra’s pine marten, Pantalaimon, he is my daemon; I’m sure he feels that if he’s ever more than two metres from my ankles, his entire being will evaporate. So when I go to the bathroom at home, he follows me, sits by my side, tries to jump on my lap, paws me, has a sniff while I wee. If he gets a little too excited during my pre-walk call of nature, I have to pacify him with the tube from a used toilet roll, which he shreds in the time taken for me to have a wee (TMI). Visitors to my house might think that I’m just lax in sorting out the recycling, but these things are wonderful to keep on hand for this purpose.

Anyway, if the lack of privacy in my own bathroom makes me weep, it is nothing compared the anxiety I face when using a public toilet, particularly the one at work. It’s one of those hideous arrangements with five interlocking cubicles. As if assembled from flatpack furniture, these fibreboard contraptions merely separate each toilet while leaving huge gaps at the bottoms and tops. No sound-proofing, no privacy.

I hate people hearing me when I tinkle. The sound is amplified so much in the echoey communal bathroom. Then there’s the possibility of gaseous escapes, or even worse. At work, I never take a comfort break unless there is a full complement of female colleagues in my office. This reduces the risk of one of them being in the toilet at the same time as me. But on a floor of many offices, staffed in the majority by women of the female persuasion, there is always a high risk of there being company whenever I make a call of nature.

Today was such an occasion, but it was company of the absolute worst kind: a mirror hog. She was there as I entered the room. Stood in front of the mirror, brushing her short, faux-blonde hair. For fuck’s sake. I’d just got into work after a waste of time hospital appointment and I hadn’t “been”. My heart sank. I knew that I needed more than just a wee.

Jesus.

I gave a cursory nod, rolling my eyes in thoughts, and brushed by her to my favourite cubicle. My old favourite cubicle (number 1) is dead to me since the flush became unreliable and the cistern’s delayed refill time became too much to bear. I now go for number 3 because I like to use the sink opposite it when I exit. She was stood in front of number three. I hated her.

I entered the cubicle, locked the door and followed my usual routine of wiping over the toilet seat. This serves two purposes: it clears up the water splashes from the previous flush and also creates a cushion in the pan to reduce tinkle noise. As I took my seat, she entered cubicle 4 – next to me! I wanted to kill her. She won the wee race – obviously she didn’t care as much about me re toilet seat hygiene – and was back at the sink as I left the cubicle to wash my hands. I glanced across to where she was occupying my favourite sink. She had placed a makeup bag on it and was applying some whatever it was to her face. What the fuck? What was wrong with this bloody woman? Why couldn’t she do this before she got to work?

My head was raging with images of bludgeonings as I left the ladies. This exploded into a full-blown rant when I got back to my desk.

“What the fuck is wrong with women that they have to fanny around in front of the mirror in the bathroom instead of just going in there to use the fucking toilet? If I had my way I’d remove all mirrors from public toilets, they just encourage stupid women to preen and get in the way of people who want to use the toilet and wash their hands!”

This is particularly true on the rare occasion when I find myself “out” of an evening. You go to a bar, find yourself in the unfortunate position of having to use the facilities, then can’t get to wash your hands because of the three-deep queue of bloody women slapping on makeup. More often than not, they dispose of tissues (usually the last of the toilet paper) in the sink, thus blocking them for people who want to use them for their intended purpose.

The mirrors in public toilets serve no logical function, they are surplus to the main requirements of having a wee and washing your hands afterwards. They are often harshly lit and never show anybody at their best, exposing the tiniest of flaws that make the less confident amongst us despise ourselves even more than we have to. Why do they even exist? If mirrors do need to be available for those who can’t go a few hours without pandering to their vanity, they should be placed well away from where normal people just want to use a toilet. Preferably in a stinking pit of venomous snakes.

World Lazy Day

Posted on 10 August, 2014 by Tina

Apparently, it’s World Lazy Day today. As if I need an excuse on a rainy Sunday.

I have housework to do. The bathroom awaits. I resent the grouting that separates the tiles. Surely there must be something better that can be used for this purpose, something that doesn’t act as a perfect habitat for the growth of mold, something that doesn’t suffer discolouration with time.

The discoloured grout gives me an excuse, as if needed, to do the bathroom in shifts: the grout is currently soaking in bleach foam. This gives me twenty or so minutes to lounge around in bed a while longer and muse about the relative merits of Cif versus Flash spray for achieving a streak-free finish and lemon freshness. Flash is easier to rinse, but it’s in the kitchen cupboard, so Cif wins out today. When I can be arsed to do it.

Pffft.

Women
Of course, having sold out on my “no telly in the bedroom” principles, I am able to watch episodes of Frasier from YouTube, which I can stream to the telly using my little Chromecast device. With eleven series of twenty-odd episodes, most of which are available in full online, I could spend many happy days tucked up under my duvet enjoying the fast-paced dialogue and story lines that take themselves from classic British farce.

I love Roz Doyle in this show. I think that I want to marry Roz, or somebody like her, or Nigella of course. Somebody smart, funny, feminine, vivacious, irreverent, sexy.

I don’t think women like Roz really exist, not in my world at least. When lesbians try to be smart, funny, vivacious and irreverent, we get this:

Sue Perkins

Sandi Toksvig

Ellen Degeneres

And are these women sexy? No, not to me. More to the point, they’re fucking annoying as fuck. I don’t know what it is about them, but it’s as if they try too hard to be something, to act a particular way… a bit cheeky maybe. Like an over enthusiastic puppy that yaps innuendo. I guess they’re just being themselves and they’re probably very nice women; I just despair at the lack of lesbian role models who don’t conform to this stereotype.

There’s always Jodie I suppose, but I suppose normal women who happen to be gay are just that, normal.

Profligacy

Despite it being World Lazy Day, I nipped to the supermarket this afternoon. I only went for some bits and ended up spending £60. How does this happen? I even had a list in my head. I suppose that list didn’t include a new clock for my kitchen, five packets of Pepsi Max and enough shower gel to last me three months. Sixty pounds. That’s a hell of a lot of money for a booze and fag-free shop.

Still, come the apocalypse, at least I’ll have a freezer full of sausages and a cupboard full of pasta to keep me going. That’s as long as we still have gas supplies and fresh running water, so you know, not like a real apocalypse, just one where I don’t leave the house for a couple of weeks. Watching Frasier.

Beep beep boop

Posted on 8 August, 2014 by Tina

There are certain things that happen when you’re using technology that makes you go ooh, look at that. On certain occasions, Google’s search page picture of the day can make the news. Not today though, it’s just boring old Google search. These are things that add absolutely no functionality to the application or device that you’re using, but they make the user interface a little nicer, usually while you’re waiting for something to happen.

People who use WordPress online will be familiar with this:

It pops up for a few seconds while a new post is launching. You have NO IDEA how quick I had to be with my CMD+SHIFT+4 selection to get that screen grab. Quickasaflash, that’s me.

Things have come a long way since the early egg timers of Windows, whichever it was I started out on – the one that was out around 1989? Windows 3.0?

That might be from a Mac, but I remember the absolute thrill of Windows 95 and the arrival of: ANIMATED HOURGLASS

Not only was it colour, it spun around and the grains of sand moved in the icon. So many man hours must have gone into the creation of this single element of the whole desktop experience. And you could customise the whole thing.

It never ceased to amaze me that people didn’t invest that two minutes of their time to do this and to make their desktop beautiful (as much as Windows 95 would allow). Oh. My. Fucking. God. [I never spoke like that back then] What was wrong with these people that they didn’t change from the default background? And why didn’t they alter the screen resolution so everything wasn’t so fucking MASSIVE? These were really options that suddenly came available to us and people just ignored it.

Can’t

Use

New

Technology

Still

These days, our devices and desktops still have ways of telling us that they’re fannying around, unable to cope with, oh, I don’t know, being just as slow as they ever were when you really need them to do something right away. We get aero themed timers, or other flash things that spin around to calm us, to placate us, to reassure is that our software really is trying and not to throw our smartphone or PC out of a first floor window.

Awww, the spinny thing in different contrast make it all better. No shouty hypnosis.

Aero thing whizzy round, take my mind off killings.

Bouncing iMac desktop icons

One thing that Mac users, and I am one, and yes I’m also a fucking hypocrite, in fact, my anti-Apple rants are so numerous that I can’t even link to them, but there are examples here, here, here, here and here. Anyway… one thing that Mac users encounter, along with a file system that you can’t customise, beautiful design, the loveliest clicky keyboard, super mouse and all round “ooh, you got a Mac” factor, is… the bouncing desktop icons in the dock.

This is what my dock looks like.

Screen Shot 2014-08-08 at 22.16.10

It needs tidying up. It’s the thing on the desktop that gives you immediate access to all the applications that you use most frequently. It’s not a bad concept. Whoever at Apple was in charge of this, whoever it was who decided that it would be a good idea for dock items to bounce when an app needed your attention, that person needs to die… on fire.

Why even do that? When you start your computer, you generally want to get going pretty quickly, you want to concentrate on doing what you need to do. You do not want to be distracted by the fucking Spotify icon bouncing because, fuck knows why, it just does, every bloody time! It’s just the way things are designed, if an app needs your attention, it bounces.

There’s a sound effect that goes with it too.

The person who designed this is Animated Hourglass’s doppelgänger. Some evil little fucktard who just has to take desktop aesthetics that little bit too far. Skeuomorphism is dead… nearly dead, but this shit lives on. It’s almost as bad as these fuckers:

Windows help Unknown

Now confined to the dustbin of time, they will haunt office workers’ nightmares for the rest of their lives.

Geek chique

I saw a man walking down the street the other day. He looked fairly ordinary. He was wearing normal clothes: jeans, shoes, t-shirt. On the front of the t-shirt, in white lettering, was the word “Geek”.

Would a geek wear such a thing? Would a geek even be out in broad daylight? Wouldn’t they be indoors, doing indoors things with technology? Or on an internet forum or something?

Over the past five years or so, it’s become quite trendy to be a bit geeky. Girls wear big glasses… I wear big glasses. I say it’s trendy to be a bit geeky, it’s trendy to look geeky. If any normal person came across a high-up-the-aspergers scale, into gaming and comics, background in science and technology, obsessive-compulsive real geek, they still might make fun of them, or find them odd, or find it difficult to make conversation with them. But conversely, who with any ounce of intelligence want to try to drag out some tedious conversation about shit new music and whatever else real people talk about these days. Hashtag GBBO.

Otto

Otto is staying with me for a fortnight. Rocky is extremely jealous. He can’t stand anything or anybody else getting my attention.

The little cat has had enough of being sniffed and is currently hiding at the bottom of my walk-in wardrobe, lying on top of my shoes. Some things never change, but at least he’s kicked his ketamine habit.

Life in the refugee camp

Posted on 6 August, 2014 by Tina

I went to a festival this weekend! This presented a number of challenges:

My sister, her boyfriend, my niece…
… camping…
… in the same tent…
… a terrible weather forecast…
… my impending period…
… chemical toilets…
… recent withdrawal of nicotine…
… thousands of people…
… all sorts of other unknowns…
… my natural tendency to get extremely stressed due to all of the above

The festival started on Friday, taking place about an hour’s drive away in Cheshire. The rain was due to start at about 8.30am, so I’d suggest we set off before 7am to give us chance to get there and erect the tent before the weather took a turn for the worse. I got to my sister’s for 7am… we left at 8am, in separate cars. As the motorway took me into Warrington, the spots of rain started to hit my windscreen. I pulled my windscreen wiper down a notch, altered the control speed: intermittent slow; intermittent intermediate; intermittent fast; down again to full on.

My mood undampened by the weather, I arrived at the festival buzzing with excitement where I was guided to the furthest possible parking space from the entrance to the festival campsite. It was pissing it down. I phoned my sister to see how far away they were. “We missed the exit from the M56 and now we’ve come to day parking instead of festival camping”. I hung up and trudged up the hill to pick up my pre-ordered trolley. By the time I’d unloaded the car and got everything piss-wet through, I saw them arrive. Dragging the laden trolley uphill, I met them at the festival entrance where we exchanged our tickets for wrist bands (me, with a festival wristband!) and made our way into the camping area to find our pitch.

Setting up camp

Whether it was wise or not, I chose a spot directly beneath a tannoy, next to a power generator and only a few yards from the massed banks of the chemical toilets. We set to work. Well, I stood around being generally useless while Chris directed us all

Take. Tube. A.

But eventually, with me doing very little to help, it was up, and we managed to get our stuff in still relatively dry.

Ta-DAAAAH!

The voice of the Scottish man came over the tannoy: “Oh God. Oh Jesus CHRIST!” He sounded remarkably like Sergeant Howie. “The crossing points will remain open until 1.15pm. I repeat, the crossing points will remain open until 1.15pm”. We were, of course at Carfest 2014, which was located at the Oulton Park motor racing circuit. We had ten minutes to make our wellied-feet over the racing track and into the festival site before the cars started flying around the track for the afternoon session.

Once into the festival ground, my little niece spotted the fairground rides – big wheel, helter skelter, bouncy inflatables. “Can I have a go on…” name it, she wanted to go on it. But that was the idea of taking her, to let her have a new experience like none of us had enjoyed when we were little.

The throbbing of engines

We made our way around the site. Drooled over some beautiful new cars on the trade stands; admired the Aston Martins from afar, all the time having one eye and an ear on the race track that surrounded us. Supercars, Formula 1 cars, ridiculous cars, rally cars, muscle cars and cars from films paraded around the track in their groups as the massed crowds looked on in admiration and bewilderment. Eyes took to the skies, prompted by the throbbing whir of Royal Navy Blackcat helicopter engines above us, our gazes captured by their skill and the ever blackening skies.

Rain

And the rain started again. We made our way to the Big Top, one of the many tents that provided various types of kids’ activities, but more importantly – SHELTER from the thunderous downpour that was pelting the festival. Kids’ entertainment. I was in a living hell. Surrounded by middle class parents and their offspring, engulfed by noise, in an oversized plastic bag. I recited my mantra: “I am in my happy place… I am in my idea of fucking hell on earth”

I checked the programme. What sort of shit were they going to inflict on us? Dangerous and deadly what? I sighed to myself. BRACE BRACE BRACE! People, busy people, ran onto the stage carrying tupperware boxes of increasing size, the largest one being the size of a small shed. What the hell is this? The anticipation of the crowd grew; excitement fell to silence as an enthusiastic man bounded onto the stage: “Hi, I’m NICK!!!!”

And I’m going! I gazed at the exit, the rain was still falling in torrents outside. Jesus! Go out and get drowned or stay in and risk murdering hundreds of primary school children… well, their parents.

And then it started. Nick, took us through a natural history of those critters that have been on this planet for millions of years: millipedes; giant snails; poisonous spiders; massive stick insects… and snakes. It was pitched perfectly for the children in the audience; they LOVED it. It provided a taster for the main Bugfest tent where they could go and learn about creepies at their leisure. And it gave us our first sighting of the famous charity mascot for the event, which was all in aid of the Children in Need charity:

I’ll save The Flying Seagulls for another time.

Once the rain had eased off, it was time for Tina to go and have a look at some of the beautiful cars that members of owners’ clubs were displaying in the paddock area. I trudged (I was wearing wellies) passed the Monster Truck – want one – and over towards the cars, guided by the smell of exhaust fumes. It was at this point that heavens opened.

Fuck me, after all the dry weekends we’d had, this had to happen the weekend that I’d organised to go fucking camping, with a period, at a fucking festival. FOR FUCK’S SAKE!

This was real rain:

But it stopped after a few minutes and what followed was a long dry spell, and this was the pattern of weather for the Friday and the Saturday of the trip. More importantly, the evenings were dry and bright and this meant that we could enjoy what I’d been looking forward to the most: the music!

Music for dead people

Carfest is ideal for those of my age, it caters to our many interests and panders to the cultural references that were formed when we were growing up, so there was headline music from bands from our formative years (Erasure, Simple Minds, Texas, 10cc, Jools Holland), tribute acts to middle-aged dad favourites (Coldpla[ce], [One night of} Queen, Kings [ov] Leon) as well as some established BBC Radio 2 favourite Seasick Steve (simply awesome), along with younger artists like Scouting for Girls (MUCH better than anybody could imagine, brilliant in fact), Eliza Doolittle, Tom Odell, Jack Savoretti and the like.

I never thought I’d enjoy the festival atmosphere, but once I’d managed to negotiate the oldies at the periphery who were sitting in their camping chairs, and made it to the main crowd in front of the main stage, I was absorbed by the enthusiasm of the crowd and the loudness of the music. It was BRILLIANT.

My niece, I think was a little overwhelmed by the crowds and the noise, until of course, she did that thing to which all young girls seemed to grow accustomed: she sat on our shoulders.

From this vantage point, she soon got into the swing of Queen’s Radio Gaga hand clap salute, along with Simple Minds’ “Hey, Hey, Hey, HEY!” fist pump. She even managed to blag a shoulder mount from a very lovely and enthusiastic man when all our backs had given out. She’ll do well when she’s attending V, Parkfest, “Glasto” and whatever other social gatherings of that ilk take her fancy when she’s older. Start ’em young.

Sunshine on a rainy day

Seasick Steve

Scouting for Girls

Hey, hey, hey, HEY! Simple Minds

Erasure

Chris Evans revs up the crowd

Ridiculously expensive booze

The Blitz spirit

Back at the campsite, things had taken a turn for the worse. I was drunk, and decided to have just one more glass from the box of Aussie red that I’d taken with me. Added to this, my airbed had deflated completely. I reckoned that if I reinflated it before I went to bed, I’d fall asleep and not notice that it had gone down until morning. Needless to say, I woke up in agony, hungover and in need of a pee, water and nurofen at 4am. In addition, the cramps in my lower abdomen were telling me that it was here! Joy!

I deployed my secret weapon – no, not a Tampax, a one of these:

Yes I know I need my eye bags doing, but it seems that I’ve found a way of covering up my frown lines.

And crawled my way to the nearby bank of chemical toilets. It was using these things that I dreaded most about the whole experience, but they’re actually fine so long as they’re maintained properly and these were great. It got to the stage where I found the pumping of the disinfectant release handle and associated squirting noise rather therapeutic, although not at 4am when my head was pounding and I was still half drunk.

One thing that did happen quite a bit was women not locking the doors – green sign = vacant = open the door = oops! Thick bitches. One vision that scarred me was one poor cow puking up in one. Must’ve been a dodgy sausage. Or the fact that the water kept going off so we couldn’t wash our hands or brush our teeth. And those Syrians think they’ve got it bad! They want to try living through what I went through, what we all went through and we laughed about it. Because we are British, and that’s the British way.

The Lamb National

One final thing that absolutely thrilled me about my weekend was The Lamb National. Yes, that’s right, racing hardwick sheep, over jumps. The funniest thing ever.

So, that was a very long summary of my first ever festival weekend and camping weekend. After scoffing at festival types for many years, I can admit that I now see what the fuss is about, I can also maintain my assertions that you have to be prepared for third world living conditions and permanent back injuries, but so long as you know the adversities that you might face, then you can prepare for them.

Lessons:

Take salt, oil, washing up liquid
When somebody says “take tea bags” they mean it
Waterproofs make for a happier life
Wellies are instruments of torture
No matter how much people might mock your Crocs, take the fuckers
Spare air bed
Spare air bed
Spare air bed
Spare air bed

Comfortable shoes

Posted on 29 July, 2014 by Tina

I work in an office in the middle of a big city. Everything is concrete and tarmac. Not a fell or a rocky path, no mud, no stiles, no nothing that could possibly warrant anybody wearing hiking boots or fell walking shoes. There is a sub-species of “that sort of woman” that dresses as if they are going out for a hike, irrespective of where they actually are. You know the look: Merrell shoes; walking trousers (beige); fleece jacket (invariably red); ruck sack filled with fuck know what shite, a rolled up copy of the Guardian in the side pocket; non-descript short hair; metal-rimmed glasses; miserable-looking.

There are quite a few women who go for this look and it makes me wonder what they wear when they’re playing out, or if they go out for dinner at a restaurant. Or a wedding… or funeral…

They probably don’t get invited out, other than to occasional gatherings of the local women’s walking groups where they can compare their latest support insoles and rambling sticks; discuss the Women against feminism debate and how it’s put women’s rights back fifty years (yeah, because them dressing like men helps a whole fucking bunch, eh ladies?).

I don’t know what my opinion on feminism is. I don’t know whether I know enough about it to have an opinion. My world view is that everybody should be treated equally, irrespective of everything. Other than if they’re a complete dick, in which case, they deserve to be treated as such. Treat somebody based on what they say or do rather than who they are I suppose. I’ve never experienced sexism, not to my knowledge, but I’m not saying that others haven’t. I’m not a fan of positive discrimination, and for organisations to be criticised because they don’t have X number of women, ethnic minority people, LGBTQ represented at A, B, and C levels of the hierarchy is just ridiculous. Surely, people should be given a job based on merit and merit alone? That’s true equality.

I suppose the reason why I naturally recoil when I hear somebody proclaim “I’m a feminist” is because people who say this sort of thing are often members of the professionally offended; they actively look for people tripping up so they can be offended, generally on somebody else’s behalf. Get a fucking grip, loosen up. If people like this had their way, workplaces would be so dismal – I dread to think what the professionally offended would think if they overheard most conversations on my office for example. We can joke about my sexuality, a colleague’s son turning sixteen, who wins most points in the persecution stakes out of a gay woman and a black man, whether women are useless when they come back to work after having a baby. It’s these conversations the break up the day, help ease the stress, let us all feel at ease. They are conducted openly, irreverently, but respectfully and in good humour. There’s no need for anybody to qualify anything by saying “Joke!” because we are all normal people who know which lines should never be crossed.

I can’t imagine women who wear hiking gear to work understanding this, but they could probably write an article criticising workplace banter and discuss it with their like-minded friends, while pitying people who they assume aren’t as educated as they are. Titwanks.

On the subject of bad hair

I had my hair cut this evening… by my sister. I’ve given up on hairdressers now, they irritate the fuck out of me and never do what I ask them. Blessed with curly hair, I can get away with a terrible hair cut and just hack off any bits that stick out on a bad day. I currently look a little back-combed, but it’ll be fine once it’s washed and dried properly.

Fags

I’ve not had a cigarette since Sunday. I feel OKish. I think going cold turkey is the best – just get it out of the system and get out of the habit.

My fingers are a little bit chewed this evening because of building anxiety regarding preparations for going to Carfest this weekend. I’ll be camping, which I’ve never done before, and I’ll be going with my sister, her feller and my niece. It’ll get to Thursday evening and my anxiety levels will have reached such heights that I’ll be ready to do my usual “No, not going, can’t cope, too much to do!” like I always do whenever I have to go away anywhere. There’s no way I’m missing out on this weekend though, no way. I mean, who’d want to miss Lamb National? That’s right, it’s like the Grand National, with lambs!

Anyway, updates as and when. I’m off to read up on feminism, starting with the history of Page 3 WINK!

Arbeit macht pfffft

Posted on 28 July, 2014 by Tina

I don’t like work. It’s not that I don’t like my job, which is actually ok, if a little dull at times. I resent the concept of work, of doing any activity that takes me away from my home or place of comfort for too long. The whole thing about work is just dreadful: being forced to wake up when your body isn’t ready; rushing around for forty minutes or so while you get ready; fighting whatever hideous travel atrocities you have to face; to spend eight hours with people who are OK, but you probably wouldn’t socialise with them (I don’t socialise with anybody), sitting at a desk, answering e-mails and making spreadsheets just waiting until it’s time when you can go home again. Ninety percent of the things I do at my desk at work can be done at my desk at home. If I got myself a new printer cartridge, it’d be 98%.

This situation is nothing new. I have felt this way since I was a youngster. I loved my lessons when I was at school and sixth form, even liked the environment, but couldn’t wait to get home – loved it when we got an hour off because of the teachers’ walk outs in 1985. The same was true at university, and when I came to do my PhD, it was such a huge shock to me because I actually had to basically do a proper job for six days a week, for often more than twelve hours a day. Well, occasionally, when I’d fucked something up and had to do it again, and again. Because I was shit at it.

I think the only time when I actually really enjoyed working, really enjoyed it, was when I was doing my first couple of post doctoral associates positions about twenty years ago. Even then though, I still couldn’t wait until home time.

The day is, at best, one big sigh – a big, massive pfffft. I find myself restless and bored, unable to concentrate. I become disruptive and petulant, like a stroppy teenager who needs a good kick up the arse.

There are two parts to this problem. Firstly, I need something to do that will earn me money, that will challenge me, that I will enjoy doing and that will keep me out of trouble. Secondly, I need to not leave my house to do this. I could do fantasy dress-up sex for middle-aged men; that’d CERTAINLY challenge me, well, them: “Yes, you are definitely going to have sex, but it’s all going to be in your head and no, you’re not coming anywhere near me with that thing. Which would you prefer, dominatrix librarian or the school dinner lady with two huge ladles?”

Trolololol

Maybe I could offer other services from the comfort of my own office. I could take people’s Buzzfeed quizzes for them and let them know how sexy/clever/popular they would be if they were me. Or maybe a useful service would be to scour people’s social media presences and give them advice on the things they might want to think about avoiding posting, over and over again. We’re all guilty of this to a certain degree, but it just takes a true friend, out of real concern, and friendship, not annoyance or irritation or anything, to tell somebody to stop posting the same fucking status update over and over again: Oh look, another cream tea and champagne from you; Another moan about being stuck in work from you; You do realise that’s the twentieth photo of your child in the same pose in the last half hour. To stop living your bloody life through what Timehop tells you what you did one year, two years, four years ago. STOP STALKING THAT PERSON ON TWITTER!!! Just look at your bloody tweets! Every single one is a direct response to the same celebrity, who by now has realised that you’re clearly insane that ignoring you or blocking you would destabilise you completely… just like all the other episodes.

When does offering people “friendly guidance” on social media become trolling? I would make quite a good internet troll: I have the feet and hair for it.

The fresh scent of line-dried cardboard

Posted on 27 July, 2014 by Tina

Domestic pride has finally started to win the battle against my inherent slovenly nature; I’ve been doing housework this weekend. It all started with me looking despondently at my kitchen window yesterday morning. There were a few cobwebs, bits of fly remnants, bits of dried, curled-up plant detritus that had fallen from the basil and chilli plants growing there, bits of soil. General mess. As much as the spiders had been my friends in terms of pest control, it was time for them to find a new home inside the dust collector of my hand vacuum. It was time to clean the bloody window. Yesterday was very warm again and despite feeling like I was actually, really dying, the sense of achievement gained from cleaning the window and thefuckingvenetianblinds, spurred me on to tackle other elements of the kitchen that I’d let go for too long. Next up was the cooker hood, which had grown a skin of greasy fluff that probably had sufficient nutritional value to keep a ballerina going for a month. It was so easy to clean only laziness had kept me from cleaning it up to this stage. The back of the fridge freezer and the floor beneath it (absolutely disgusting) got it next, followed by… the dishwasher… The thing about dishwashers The thing about dishwashers is that they’re great for storing all your used crockery, cutlery and pans until the time is right and the load is sufficient to warrant to operate the thing and wash them. This is great because it means that you don’t have used cups, plates, bowls, pans, chopping boards, utensils, cutlery (that covers most cooking and eating apparatus) hanging around on work surfaces waiting to be washed up. It’s nice and tidy and it allows you to get on with kitchen activities unhindered, which is particularly important when space and work surfaces are limited. I thought this was pretty logical: use something, give it a rinse, pop it in the dishwasher. So why is it that this is a completely alien concept to everybody who visits my house? They use a cup, rinse it out, leave it on the side, or on the draining board. They even see me do it: rinse the cup, lean over just a wee touch, open dishwasher, place cup in dishwasher. There are usually one or two items in there already to show them how things go, so there’s a template for them to work to. And just what do they think is going to happen to the item that they’ve rinsed? It baffles me, it really does. ...Anyway, back to my dishwasher… I slid it out from its slot under the worktop, just enough so I could get the part of the floor on which it sits and give it a good clean. To my horror, I noticed that the back casing of the thing had melted. This stuff is made of some sort of heat-labile (not used that word since I was a smart arse) plasticky cardboardy stuff, which is ideal for an appliance that pumps high-temperature water around. The internet told me that this is perfectly normal for machines that are a couple of years old and the stuff is only put on for sound-proofing anyway. Why even bother with it then? The temperature was rising, I was weak through hunger and hot and sweaty, but I only had the work surfaces and the floor to go. I was done in a jiffy. Done in a Cif-fy ha ha ha! It’s the smell of cleaning products. Just as I’d finished, my sister and her feller turned up to pick up my niece who’d spent all this time behaving herself upstairs. My sister was hungover and in need of coffee, which I provided for her. We sat and chatted for a few minutes while she drank up and my niece got her stuff together. They left me in peace and picked myself up to lock the back door to prevent an axe murder while I was in the shower. And there, on the draining board, was the cup that she’d used. Anything for a streak-free finish Today, my kitchen looks like a bomb has hit it, but that’s the unfortunate nature of the universe. Undeterred, I have continued on my cleaning-spree and tackled the glass panels of my interior doors and the inside of the dining room window, the bottom ledge of which had become a graveyard for numerous houseflies and wasps. My cleaning product claims to give sparkling, streak-free results in seconds. It makes no mention of lasting elbow damage and the nagging disappointment that comes with the realisation that you’ve missed a bit. The appliance of a sucky thing and a hot-air blowy thing I’m girding my loins in readiness for vacuuming. This is a chore that is made much easier by the deployment of a cordless, light-weight, yet powerful vacuum cleaner. Unfortunately, the little dog objects to vacuuming more than I do and a good proportion of the activity is interrupted by him trying to bite the machine. My house is full of labour-saving devices that make life more tolerable. I couldn’t live without my washing machine or my melting dishwasher. I also love my tumble dryer for the way it dries towels into big, fluffy bales. Alas, on days like today, with the sun shining and the wind blowing, I can’t justify using my tumble dryer on the towels that are now pegged-out and drying to a cardboard-like crisp on the washing line. What pleasure I’ll get from using them after my shower as they scrape against me and take off layer upon layer of my skin. People who claim to like using line-dried towels are either liars or masochists. I’d pity them if I didn’t feel such contempt towards them. I’m off to take out my pent up anger in a fight with the dog and the Air-ram. Bring it!

The Snoring Dog

It's all just stuff

Author Archives: Tina

About Tina

The VERY best of British

Perfect timing

Twitterer service

Mirror in the bathroom

World Lazy Day

Beep beep boop

Life in the refugee camp

Comfortable shoes

Arbeit macht pfffft

The fresh scent of line-dried cardboard

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