Here is a (hopefully) hypothetical question.

If you had to spend some time in hospital would you prefer your bed to be in:

1. A single room
2. An open “Nightingale” ward of up to 20 beds (mixed sex)
3. A smaller side ward of 4 beds (single sex)
4. A twin room with en suite bathroom facilities (single sex)

…all with access to Patientline of course.

Taking option 1 out of the picture – because that doesn’t really happen here – I know which one I certainly WOULDN’T be going for and that is the twin room option. Imagine being trapped in a room with another occupant who can’t help wanting to strike up a conversation, but the only person available for them to converse with is YOU!

Jesus, I’d rather die. Actually, I’d willingly buy them £20 Patientline credits so they could watch TV, shut the fuck up and leave me alone.

Connie has been transferred to a twin room on her new ward. It’s a great room, really modern, with fantastic facilities, but the downside is having to share with somebody who gets wheeled back in to the room and introduces herself by saying, “I’ve just come back from having a camera shoved up me bum; they thought I had cancer, but I’ve not.”

Nice to meet you too, I’m sure.

“Do you want a biscuit, love?” (“Love”)

“No thank you, I’m diabetic, I can’t have any.”

Two minutes later, she was at Connie’s bedside “Would you like a biscuit, love?”

“No thank you, I’m diabetic, but thanks anyway.”

Not that being diabetic has ever stopped my mother from indulging in sugary food.

Imagine being trapped in that situation. What is wrong with people that they have to talk to you? Just fuck off, for fuck’s sake. I felt like sneaking in and hiding in the en suite so I could creep out in the dead of the night and wheel her bed away from my mum. Preferably down three flights of stairs a la Carry on Nurse/Doctor.

Hamster
Did anybody see that story about the pissed up students who tried to post a live hamster to somebody? Dickheads.

Sniffy
Being paranoid about people from work finding my blog, I’m not going to move for full anonymity, but I’ve just changed my display name to Sniffy to make it less obvious that it’s my blog at first glance if somebody should stumble across it. Not that I should have to explain anything to anyone, but that’s why.

Why am I paranoid about people from work reading my blog? Well, they think I’m weird enough as it is and I don’t want to make it even any worse.

It’s not often that I have passengers in my car. I hate having passengers in my car because it means that I can’t have my stereo on as loud as I like, or listen to what I like to listen to. Passengers in my car often want to have conversations with me, which I don’t want to do while I’m trying to concentrate on driving. When there is more than one passenger, they often want to talk to each other; resulting in me having to turn the stereo off so they can blab on to each other.

Fuckers.

The absolute PITS about having people in my car is when they piss about with stuff. They change the seat settings or the seatbelt tensioner on the passenger seat: the next passenger is too short, and they don’t know that they can lower the seatbelt to stop them having to do that fucking annoying thing of holding it away from their chest. On the occasions when the seatbelt has been lowered, Dad will always make a point of raising it again, very loudly with a huff and a grunt.

I can’t have my sister in my car without her whinging about my music. She’ll skip tracks on the CD, alter the volume to her own comfort level (depending on track). But God forbid that I should be allowed to listen to MY music in MY car should she receive a call on her mobile. On average, she gets a call on her mobile every 2 minutes: “OK, hon, I’m just with our Tina, I’ll see you in a bit hon. Yeah, I was out with them last night and I still feel like shit…”

Just fucking shut up, HON!!!

And why, oh why, oh friggin’ WHY can’t people sit in the back of my car without smearing their fucking hands all over the insides of the windows, OPENING the windows (but never completely shutting them), or kicking the backs of the front seats? Why can’t they do it? What is it that compels people to touch the insides of the windows? I’m going to break the fingers of the next person I find doing this.

Fucktards.

I could never be a taxi driver.

Connie update
Mother is still in hospital, where she was allowed out of bed to use the bathroom facilities this morning. Her heart responded by increasing bpm-wise, but it is still erratic. She’s having a trace and a scan (?) today. She is feeling much better, but is still concerned by the strangeness of her heartbeat. I reckon she’ll be in at least till the weekend while a definitive diagnosis and action plan are devised.

This information is brought to you by Patientline at a cost of £15.

Apparently, they’re so pleased with her progress that she is probably going to moved to a less intensive unit later on today. She still requires observation and care because of her erratic heartbeat, so they want to keep her there for the moment. So they’re moving her to “L7”, which I assume means L for “Ladywell” = elderly care = elderly neglect, although they “claim” the L7 is for cardiology and rheumatology patients. Yes, all elderly patients with heart and rheumatic problems who the NHS would like to kill off through systematic neglect.

This information is brought to you by my annoying sister Anna.

Of course, while Mother (awwww) is laid up in hospital, Dad has regressed and is acting like a pathetic 5 year old. Admittedly, he loves my mum to bits (awwwww) and is completely lost with out her (awwwww). He is also worried sick about her, as we all are. However, he is being an annoying bastard. He is now incapable of doing things that normally come as second nature to him. I now need to hear his over the top reaction to the news that Mum may have been moved by the time he gets to visit this afternoon.

An edit: Congratulations Tony Blair (and Gordon Brown of course)
This is wonderful news for all us hard-pressed, impoverished tax payers.

BBC News article that says how shit the British government is

Yes, the economy is safe under New Labour, everything’s brilliant, the UK is the best place to live on the PLANET. Nearly 8 million people in the UK are economically inactive – that’s about 13% of the population .

Shocked and appalled, but are we surprised?

Hospitals in the UK have this wonderful system called “Patientline”, which provides TV, radio, telephone and internet at a patient’s bedside. Patients pay up front and can get a number of hours’ worth of TV or telephone calls at a specific rate. Family members can contact their loved ones at the rate of 39p/min off peak or 49p/min peak (mobile and international rates vary, please contact your operator for more information). Fuck off, you parasitic bastards.

I just phoned Connie. It took 2 minutes to get through to her after hearing all the shit from the automated information line.

She’s OK, but annoyed that we forgot her makeup bag: “I haven’t got any eyebrows, I need my eyebrow pencil!”. And she’s not had any sleep because of a death on the ward and a talkative neighbouring patient. When she did finally drop off, a nurse woke her to see that she was OK (not dead): “Constance, Constance, are you OK? Your pulse has dropped to 20!”

The doctors seem to think that she’d had a reaction to long term beta-blocker use and that a few days off them would restore her to “normal” without the need for further intervention (e.g. pacemaker).

We’ll see…

Coloquialisms are great. All over the UK, you can go from place to place and, despite people supposedly speaking the same language, it’s often quite difficult to understand what people are saying to you. Particulalry difficult are the Jocks and the Yorkshires, oh and not forgetting the Newcastles.

After being taught some Hul’qumi’num by everybody’s favourite squaw, I thought it only fair that I reciprocate – in the name of intercontinental cultural exchanges and such. She got my best “Salford”:

• You’re dead right, love!
• Y’righ’ thenorwha’?
• Y’arigh’ cock?

“Cock?” she spluttered over messenger, “I really don’t think “cock” is polite”

Anyway, some questions answered:

Connie said…

Are you going to come see us too?!?!?!

Jenn and I will take VERY good care of you… take care of your every need.

It’s only a cheap 1 hour flight from Vancouver to the most wonderous place in Canada… The Okanagan!

Certainly hope to, Connie. We’ve got time to have a look at the itinerary and I’ll hopefully get to get over and see the pair of you.

funny thing said…
So give us the itinerary then, T. I’ve got questions. Don’t know yet. Land in Vancouver on 30th of June, take off for Manchester on 14th July

Are you: spending two weeks with PO or just popping in? Spending the time with April and her tribe (poor bastards)

Are you: Planning to move there (hurray!) (oops) I’ve only ever heard wonderful things about Canada and, looking at it, it’s certainly the type of place where I’d be happy

Have you: ever done a whole holiday on your own? No, I’ve never really done a holiday

Have you: ever survived a plane crash before? No

Anyway, if things go well, there’s a chance that there’ll be blog news involving pizzas, Cakesniffers and YorkshireJockmen. Unfortunately however, my blogging activity may be curbed a little this week because Connie (awww) – no, not Connie, CONNIE – is in hospital: rushed in with a pulse of 25 and hardly any blood pressure.

Gotta go! Back to do my Sniffy Nightingale at mother’s bedside.

I’ve finally done the deed and booked my holiday for this year. I must be fucking mad. Last year, I booked my holiday in Rome about 5 months in advance and I was so stressed out for every single day in the run up to jetting off. I don’t travel very often and, rather than looking forward to a wonderful holiday, I get myself worked up about worst-case scenarios.

So this year, I’ve given myself about six months in which I can panic each day. And we’re not talking a couple of hours in a plane going to Italy, oh no, I’m talking fucking ages in a plane, going back in time eight hours, covering thousands of miles to get to….

British Columbia, Canada

I must be mad. For somebody who has hardly travelled, going on a trip like this on their own is some feat. Luckily though, there’s a direct flight to Vancouver from Manchester, so at least there won’t be the apprehension about missing connecting flights and baggage getting lost. I was checking out the Zoom airlines website last night and it shows you a graphic of the routes that its flights take from various cities to their destinations. My flight will go over Iceland, Greenland, Northern Canada – right through the Arctic Circle. I bet it crashes. But I’ll survive, only to be eaten by a polar bear.

But who do we know who lives in BC?

Yep, he’ll be there. And there’ll be a wonderfully warm welcome from this young lady.

“pissoff”

Those Canadians are so friendly.

But Canada is one country that I’ve always wanted to go to, so when this chance presented itself, I decided to take it. So, I’m going to have to spend the next few months learning how to speaka da language, strengthening my arms for my day out seal clubbing and harpooning whales, dancing round a fire wearing a bear skin, that kind of affair. I’m also going to have to lose weight because I want to be able to wear normal clothes.

I’m going to need a higher-capacity memory card for my camera.

Me at my desk
This one’s for Piggy and Tazzy (Jesus, they’ve changed the template AGAIN!).

Maisie the cat helps set up the shot

Me at my desk.

Look at how fat my face is! Christ, I’m off to the gym.

Unusually for me, I commented to somebody the other day that their hair looked different. She then told me “Oh, I’ve not done anything different with it. I washed it last week and then it got wet yesterday and dried like this”.

Eh? You washed it LAST WEEK? This isn’t some blue-rinsed old lass who goes to the hairdressers once a fortnight for a wash and set, it’s a forty year old woman. She’s not a skanky mare by any stretch of the imagination either, so I think that’s why it took me by surprise.

Last week?

I have to wash mine every day, not because it gets particularly scummy, but because it needs “styling” and I obviously need to wash the crap out of it that’s been there from the previous day.

I remember when I was a teenager, none of my class mates ever washed their hair more frequently than once or twice a week. If the entire lot of us washed our respective barnets on a Sunday, the RSPCA would be washing marine wildlife with Fairy Liquid come Monday afternoon.

But how often should we really wash our hair? If you have a shower every day, it’s just part of the process. It’s actually quite therapeutic, a nice head message in the morning, all that warm foaminess cascading all over… Eh, Piggy? I have a routine: wash and rinse hair (twice); wash face; apply conditioner; wash pasty white body; rinse hair; rinse body; rinse foam from bath, etc, etc.

On the other hand, there are those manky bastards who do that “If you leave it for about six weeks, it goes through a really manky stage then it’s just as if it’s washed every day” thing. Yeah right. I bet it stinks of shit.

League of Gentlemen
I went round to a friend’s house last night and we enjoyed watching the League of Gentlemen’s Apocalypse. We ran through the extras on the DVD and it struck me how lucky this group of four blokes, who have been friends for years, are. It must be wonderful to have the talent and the opportunity to be in a position to work with your friends, making a living out of making each other laugh.

Bastards.

Are you supposed to enjoy playing Monopoly? I suppose Monopoly Smackdown Challenge might be fun and, let’s face it, that’s how the game usually ends up anyway – somebody always ends up in a strop.

I once had a major hissy fit when I got trounced at Scrabble by the blogger formerly known as Trillion. Or the former blogger “Trillion”. Whatever. She was supposed to be being nice to me but did the queyntish thing of, well, this:

“How many points for queynte?”

Yep, the addition of “cove” to “omit” gave her a triple word score on “cove” plus the additional points from “vomit” quite literally made me sick. With an unassailable lead, I admitted defeat by throwing the board off the table and stropping away, muttering “I can’t even fucking play fucking scrabble”.

Everyone knows that cheese and onion is GREEN!
But back to Monopoly, or monopolies. This consumer champion wants fairness in the market place. It should be up to us, the consumers, to decide what brands we want to buy and things shouldn’t be forced on us by the large retailers. My main argument is the availability of Coca Cola brands over Pepsi brands, there only ever being chilled still water and never chilled fizzy water.

This week, salty snack manufacturer Golden Wonder called in the administrators as it admitted financial difficulties. There was a time when Golden Wonder brand crisps dominated the market. The “golden age” of snacking was the late 1970s and early 1980s when, not only did they have a healthy share of the crisp market, but they also had the genius idea of coming up with the FUCKIN’ DELISH Pot Noodle. Things couldn’t have been better.

In the late 1980s, something odd happened: a new brand of crisps emerged in the North West. These were weird, their packet colours didn’t conform to the traditional norms: cheese and onion (always green/yellow) were blue, salt and vinegar (always pale blue) were green. What the fuck was all this about?

The brand that suddenly appeared was “Walkers”. We’d never had them before, but when I moved about to universities and things, I noticed that Walkers were becoming more and more prevalent. It got to the point in the mid 1990s whereby you’d notice similar product placement in supermarkets: Walkers would take prime spot in Tesco, weird colours and all. Why? What was going on?

Walkers crisps are OK, but they’re not as nice as Golden Wonder. I guess I still can’t come to terms with having salt and vinegar crisps in a green packet. Green??? Everybody knows that green is cheese and onion.

INCORRECT!

I find it a shame, but also very annoying, that companies that have done nothing wrong (except selling Pot Noodle to Proctor and Gamble or some other weird multinational conglomerate) have essentially been driven into extinction because of aggressive marketing within our supermarkets. It shouldn’t be up to the supermarkets to decide what brands we buy. In fact, I’d expect the supermarkets to be entirely independent and give all brands an equal footing once they’d decided to stock a product.

Gets right on my tits so it does. Queynting fuckers.

Cove and vomit indeed.

I’m not very good at English and I get bored with reading if it’s too difficult. I’ve never read any proper literature; it was never something that I was in to as a youngster and I guess it’s a difficult thing to get into the habit of. I was more used to reading text books I suppose, and with my studies, I had little time for reading as a leisure activity.

As a child, I was lazy. I shared a bedroom with my sister and she used to read stories to me. She was very good at this and anything that meant that I didn’t have to read was good in my book (no pun intended). I think the problems started with how I was taught to read. There was this weird phonetic alphabet called ITA that schools experimented with in the early-mid seventies. I picked this up really quickly, but like many children, found the transition to proper reading very difficult and quite confusing.

Laziness and studying had the consequence of me only really enjoying easy books to read once I started to pick up the odd work of fiction when I was in my twenties. I did the Stephen King thing and the usualy horror writers, moving on to thrillers and the like. But there are only so many axings a person can take, especially when they’re going slightly mental as I’d found myself going a few years back. This was when I discovered the Harry Potters (three had been published at the time). I liked the way the books just told a story while capturing the imagination. But they were a doddle to read.

It was during this period that I discovered two other children’s fiction writers: Robin Jarvis and Phillip Pullman. Robin Jarvis wrote, amongst others, a trilogy of Wyrd Museum books. I enjoyed these immensely. One of the characters is a barm pot old woman from the beginning of time. She and her two sisters work to weave the threads of fate of man, but are old and frail when we meet them. The youngest of the three was always obsessed with grand parties and flirting with suitors. She sent out invitations to imaginary guests for parties that would never happen. The invitations would promise “There will be dancing”, but the poor nutter would end up walzing round the ballroom on her own.

Philip Pullman is perhaps most famous for his trilogy His Dark Materials – an absolute masterpiece. However, he also wrote another successful series of completely different stories based on the trials, tribulations and adventures of Sally Lockhart. Viewers of the BBC’s Dr Who might be interested to know that Billie Piper, who plays the Doctor’s assistant Rose, will be playing Sally Lockhart in a new drama series that has been commissioned by the Beeb.

So, those of you who read this blog and mutter “Tsk, Tina is right crap at English”, I hope this rather lame post goes some way to explaining why: I couldn’t read until I was about 14 and I never read any fiction till I was 20; to this day I only read kids’ books. Still no excuse for poor spelling and grammar, but it’s a fucking blog, not the Booker friggin’ prize.

Some people speak in a semi whisper, but are still very loud all the same.

Odd.

The same peoples’ normal talking is EXTREMELY loud.

Annoying.

These are the type of people who try to say too much and run out of breath at the end of a sentence, rushing the final words as the last millilitre of air expires from their lungs.

Gasp.

Toxic soup
Today I’m having a rare old treat: Connie’s homemade soup for my lunch. I’ve got a flask full and I’m going to tackle the microwave and see if I can make it hot. My mum’s soup is packed with all sorts of great things and it’s lovely and tasty too. But it sometimes disagrees with the already sensitive lining of my colon. This is BAD news today as I am suffering from whipped-up poos. These are not quite the consistency of diarrhoea, but are no way near solid – a little like whipped cream. Lots of vegetables on top of this might make my journey hone very interesting today. Just how fast can a person drive 30 miles in rush hour traffic? We’ll probably find out later on.

There’s a lot of noise around the offices here today; lots of people rabbiting on about stuff, none of it work related. Unless you count the usual ongoing whining about “Agenda for change” as work related.

Queyntessential
Can I make this be a real word please? It can be a new word to describe typical colleagues. I like it.

Snappy Tomato Pizza
The midlands are very greedy. Looking at the Snappy Tomato Pizza (UK) website, I’m outraged at the fact that Coventry has THREE of these outlets, Aberdeen has three too. In between Burton on Trent and Aberdeen, there are precisely ZERO Snappy Tomato Pizza outlets.

Of all takeaway pizzas that I’ve sampled over the years, STP are the best. I was addicted to their South of the Border variety when I lived in Coventry. This variety of pizza has all the usual with a topping of chilli beef, spicy chicken, peperoni, jalapenos, chilli powder – I’d ask for extra mushrooms, olives and chilli too. Fuckin’ DELISH! Not so delish for my hoop the next day mind you and my colon would cry with despair after one. The beauty about Snappy Tomato Pizza was that, if I was working late, I could order one as I left the lab and the delivery chap would be rolling up at the house as I got there.

I want to know why there’s such a concentration of these stores in the Midlands and little place else in England.

Then again, while I was in Coventry, I put on about 4 stone in weight (many thanks to The Albion pub, Royal Bengal Indian restaurant, Coventry Kebab House and Snappy Tomato Pizza), so perhaps it’s for the best that they keep their lard peddlers.

1. Working really hard to get fit then putting on loads of weight over the autumn and winter? Well, it’s something that we all do so Yes, but it’d so much better if the answer could be no. Then again, what’s wrong with comfort eating and staying in the house to keep warm?
2. Flirting with your stand-in line manager (again!). Well, Yes, sort of. I’m told that I’m a flirt and that I don’t even know that I’m doing it.
3. Offering advice to hopeless drunks and fag addicts (not you, Piggy). Defo, YES! It’s such fun to see people doing without for a change. Offering my words of wisdom, sharing my own experiences, being smug as they struggle. HAH!
4. Stalking your readers by checking their ISPs on sitemeter – Bovis Lend Lease is the company that’s doing the PFI construction at the Trust where I work, btw. Yes, I’m addicted. Sorry. I don’t really do proper stalking, not any more, but I just find it fascinating.
5. Traditional school dinners. Yes, love em. I’d love to start a restaurant that had a special menu containing all the best dishes from our school dinners, only made properly. At my primary school, ours were fuckin’ delish (in the main) and, made well, they’d be a hit. Lovely hotpot, beef and onion pie, beef cobbler… And the puddings were to die for: chocolate sponge and chocolate sauce; jam sponge and custard; warm prunes with custard; yoghurt flan. There were plenty of things that were disgusting too (tapioca), but a lot of it was lovely.
6. Having more than two excellent bowel movements per day. It’s a rare occurrence, but I had THREE fabulous motions the other day; all with a perfect consistency, so I’d say YES again here. However, two is usually my limit and anything above that can be a bit dangerous.
7. Porridge. Yes, it’s ok. Nice and creamy (made with milk) with just the right amount of sugar and the slightest pinch of salt.
8. Porridge vomit. Hell no!
9. Winter. No! I’ve had enough, I’m fed up, depressed, tired, cold, miserable. MAKE IT STOP!
10. Going on holiday to Vancouver Island and staying with a fed-up, foul-fucking-mouthed, donkey-fucking Canuck squaw? Why the devil not? And I’d love to do the cooking.

Oh god, they’re STILL going on about Agenda for fucking change! This queynting government must realise that it’s paralysed the entire NHS with this hare-brained scheme of theirs. Twats.

Cutting out the crap from my diet has made me realise that crap must be good for you. Without it, you feel completely wrecked. Tempted to succumb to sausage barm (with brown sauce) for my brekkie, I resisted and managed to hold out until cup-a-soup time. In the intervening period, I couldn’t get the thought of chicken and mushroom Pot Noodle out of my head.

The women here are obsessed with their weight and there are a set of bathroom scales in the kitchen for them to check themselves on a weekly basis. Odd then, that in all the time such weight watching has been going on here (about 3 years), none of them seem to have altered in any way. I made the mistake of availing myself of this facility. FU-KING-HELL! I didn’t really need to since too-tight clothes are generally a good indicator that you’re a fat fucker.

After a couple of hours of gradual loss of brain-stem activity, I thought it’d be a laugh to check my weight again: a gain of 2lbs. How? How can this be when I’d had precisely one cup of coffee, a couple of high-volume wees and a satisfying poo?

What does this mean?

Trust no one. We’re all victims of some conspiracy or other that taps into a person’s insecurity du jour and plays on it.

Either that or the scales aren’t particularly good and I’m better off relying on how comfortable my clothes are.

Fuck, I’m shagged. Not literally, obviously – this is me afterall. It’s that sort of weird pre-cold/flu feeling and my brain (or my brain being manipulated by The Mysterious “They”) is telling me that a Gregg’s pasty and a packet of crisps is what’s required to bring me back from the brink of death.

Jesus, Cynthia is whispering to herself ten to the dozen. She does it all the time: you can watch out the office window and observe her approach to work in the morning, rabbiting on to herself about goodness only know what. She’s over-conscientious, taking it upon herself to try and solve the problems of the world rather than just doing enough to get the job done, or perhaps going that little extra. She’s great, a wonderful, fantastic oddball, but an oddball all the same. I heard her on my approach to the kitchen as I hurried to prepare my coup-de-soup earlier. As I stirred in the hot water and watched in amazement as my hot, delicious soup appeared before my eyes, she said something to me and I swear it was in Russian. She’s fluent you see, after living there for a number of years. I think she was testing me to see if I’d respond, perhaps checking to see if I was a sleeper who’d been planted in the UK at the height of the Cold War. Alas, this is not the case, I’m just an average, boring Brit.

I wonder what my desk tastes like. There must be a couple of calories’ worth of accumulated food stuff that I’ve spilt on here over the years. I shall give it some tongue action and dream of Snappy Tomato Pizza.