Category Archives: Asda

Love and the common people

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I am a confirmed and happy atheist; I make no secret of this. For all my thirty-ahem-nine and a bit years, I have never felt the presence of a deity within or without me. Logic tells me that the existence of any sort of higher being is simply not possible – my take on life tells me that such a supernatural caretaker is unnecessary.

While I accept that personal faith is often beneficial for believers, I have a strong dislike of organised religion and how it is used for subjugation, how it used to find excuses to turn people against one another, to be downright fucking nasty. Conversely, many people with faith take great comfort from their beliefs, they use their scriptures for guidance on how to behave in a way that makes them living examples of their gospel.

Good behaviour, citizenship, morals, ethics, philanthropy are not the exclusive realm of the religious though and humanists take the world view that all are treated equally and with respect, irrespective of belief. They believe in the good stewardship of the planet, based on rational thought and reason, and that.

So, if you take a humanist like me (I guess, if you’re really bothered with labels) and a Christian like my girlfriend, you might expect there to be potential for conflict. I guess I’m lucky, I’ve got one of the good ones who has a pragmatic relationship with the scriptures, one who has the intellectual ability to see past her preacher’s sometime literal interpretations of the bible. She lives her life according to Christian deeds, rather than words. And hallelujah for that. We don’t talk about the things we know to be contentious (evolution is out of the question, well, creationism is) and we get along with it. I have absolute respect for her and her faith, she has respect for my lack of any and would never try to pressure me into believing.

We were having a discussion the other week and asked her if she’d prefer it if I was a Christian and she answered, “I only wish you could feel what I feel when I worship.”

“But how do you know I don’t feel that anyway? There are times when I’m out and about, or I read something, or see something, or hear some music, and it fills me with wonder and I get a great deal of energy from it. Honking geese, for example!”

“Yes, I know that, but this is something that completely fills you, something tremendous.”

“What, like the first time I heard you tell me you loved me?”

“No, like the first time you thought you heard me to tell you I love you.”

Power to the people
We have a new government with a Mega Prime Minister, it’s exciting. The country is in a mess and the next few years are going to be rubbish no matter who is in charge, but a coalition of Conservatives and Liberal Democrats might be just what we need. I’d describe myself as a liberal Conservative, so I’m actually quite delighted with what’s happened. If the Conservatives manage to get rid of a load of right winged fruitcake bigots, then this could be the best thing that’s happened for generations.

I’m definitely one for doing everything possible to help the vulnerable, to providing opportunities for those less well-off, for building real aspirations to allow folk to move out of poverty, but when it comes to certain things, certain people, I have no patience. Lazy slobs who for generations have lived on welfare need a good kick up the arse, no excuses: you’re offered a job, take it or lose your benefits. I don’t think I’m alone in this either. Out for a meal with my other half and a couple of her friends, the topic came up for discussion, along with a number of things relating to what the new government might do. We were also talking about environmental issues, how many people cycling it takes to power an average home in the UK, that sort of thing. In combination with a cocktail and a few glasses of red wine, my beautiful, benevolent, caring, Christian girlfriend made this statement: “They should be made to get off their lazy, fat arses and take what ever job’s offered to them. I’d make a load of new power stations with lots of bikes in and get the bastards to cycle to produce energy – this carries so many benefits. And if they refuse to do this, we should fuckin’ burn them!”.

No matter where you go
…Asda is horrible. Up there with Asda Hume in terms of taking the prize for supermarket scum is Asda Bolton, which I discovered today. In fact, I’ve discovered that every supermarket in Bolton is patronised by the most hideous people, even the Sainsbury’s there leaves me feeling dirty.

I’m off to write to our new Energy Secretary with my idea to build a Super reactor in the heart of Bolton.

It’s the final countdown

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Well, in ten hours time, I’ll be packing up my car and heading off to north Wales.  I have bought provisions; I have responsibility for coffee (instant and ground), but I’m also taking Coffeemate and sugar, without which I’ll be in a REALLY bad mood while I’m there.  I’ve also had the forsight to buy toilet paper and handsoap.

I don’t know whether I’m looking forward to it or not.  On the whole, not, I think.  I mean, come on, getting up early on a Sunday and driving for over 2 hours so I can spend two days with people from work, in a shared house, sharing a bedroom with somebody – would you?

I’ve been trying to think of a happy place that I can escape to in my head for if it gets really bad.  I can’t think of one off the top of my head.  Perhaps I could go for the eight hour  trip over the Cascades in Washington with April and her three year old?  “I want my daddy, I want my daddy, I want my daddy, I want my daddy.  Are we seeing daddy soon?  Can we see the boys tomorrow?  And then you saw me dead”.

Or perhaps I could relive the three months after Jo split up with me?

Maybe I could take myself back to the most excrutiating pain I’ve ever experienced.

Of course, such pain would either come from sickening stomach ache that once rendered me doubled-up in pain in bed for eight ours once, or the alternative is the back ache that cripples me on occasion.  Like today for instance.  It always gets me at the weekend.  I don’t know whether it’s related to having a couple of extra hours in bed on Saturday morning, or the fact that I’m not up and at them straight away like on school days, but always at the weekend  I find myself unable to walk because of back pain.

Today’s experience was made doubly worse because it coincided with a trip to the local Netto.  I’d only gone in there for a quick browse, but once inside, I realised that there was no escape without going through a till – the tills are only wide enough to get one person through at a time too.  Why do these horrible povvy shops trap their customers inside?  They have those stupid entry barriers that only open inwards into the shop and the only way out is through the till.   Fucking cunts.  Then again, my limping, groaning under my breath and grimmacing helped me fit in perfectly with the rest of the shoppers in there, all of whom were a pretty good representative cross-section of Rochdale’s finest citizens.

Returning home meant me crossing over the main road.  There isn’t a pedestrian crossing to use, so you just have to wait for a gap in the traffic and hope for the best.  I’d made it half way across to the safety of a hatched area of the carriageway when a kindly car driver slowed down and flashed his headlamps to indicate that I could go.  So as not to cause undue delay to him, I tried to run.  My left knee and lower back simultaneously emitted agonising thrusts of pain and I kind of ran, kind of lumbered forward a la Hunchback of Notre Dame, making it to the other side of the road, but almost unable to lift my foot onto the kerb.

I’m a wreck.

On the subject of scumbag supermarkets and scumbags in general, what about that Karen Matthews eh?  She’s the woman from Dewsbury in Yorkshire who arranged for her own daughter to be kidnapped so she could get a load of media attention and sell her story for £50,000 to whoever would pay.

You can have a look at Karen in this photostream from the Times online, but this particular image speaks a thousand words:

Karen Matthews shops at Asda

Karen Matthews shops at Asda

Just look at her, lugging her shopping back from Asda.  Typical of the sort of person you get at Asda.  And that’s exactly why I never shop there myself.

Big Brother

Depending on how things go in Wales, I might be tempted to audition for this summer’s Big Brother.  Imagine it, Sniffy trapped in a house for up to 12 weeks 10 or so other people, all of whom are utter freaks, their every moved covered on camera, broadcast to the nation on Channel 4.

Milk

I watched Milk this evening.  A very powerful film documenting the rise of San Francisco’s gay rights movement, led by Harvey Milk (Sean Penn).  Two words: watch it.

Au revoir, mes amis

So this is it for now.  I’m sure the next few days will fly by.  I will return with hopefully, nothing much to report.  Stuff to report will mean that I spent the duration in my happy place, whichever one I opt for.

Florence Nightingale at your service

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More of that in a bit…

But first this:

Well, I would be blogging if my internet connection was stable, but it seems to be having a bit of a time out, it being Sunday and all that.

There are a few things that I’ve noticed of late that have made my usually mild-mannered self turn into a foaming-mouthed maniac. I don’t know what it is with some people, but they are criminally thick and should be locked up for their own safety, or preferably executed to prevent them causing damage to people’s cars.

There’s a current trend for people to cross the road with their backs to the traffic, either talking on their mobiles, or listening to the latest toonahs on their iPods. They don’t even cross straight, following the shortest route to safety. No, instead they choose to cross along the diagonal to make their journey to the kerb as long as possible. Stupid cunts.

Do you think we’re allowed to kill them? Probably not, but in my defence I’d say it was obviously a mercy killing and that I was doing themselves and society a huge favour by extinguishing whatever lights were burning inside their thick skulls.

Another current favourite pastime is for cyclists to ride in the cycle lane, but on the wrong side of the road, at night, with no lights on, dressed in black, and being of black ethnicity. In the Hulme area of Manchester (real bandit country that is home to the dregs of many societies from around the world), these guys also probably carry guns, so you just let them get on with it, while fighting the urge to swerve into them and wipe their sorry arses from the face of the planet.

Tossers.

He’s a bear, he’s a bear! He’s made of human hair!!
Well that’s not strictly true, he’s made of wool and proper flame-retardant stuffing, but he’s got a lot of Connie Cakesniffer in him, so that makes him almost human. To whom am I referring? Why it’s none other than Bear:

Bear

Bear has been created as the arch-nemesis of his very own evil twin, known as BEEEEEEEAAAAAAAAAARRRRRRRR!! (or Bad Bear), who was also created by the fair hand of Connie. Bad Bear has been made for the much anticipated Bombino, who is due to be endearing itself to us with much screaming and uncontrolled bodily functions in March. Having seen what my elderly mother could do with some knitting needles and a bit of wool, I must admit that I got a bit jealous and, realising that I never had a bear when I was a baby, I asked Mum to make me one. I thought this was particularly fair since I won’t be having any children of my own. So Bear is the result.

Oooh, Matron!
I’m rubbish around sick people, having no patience or stomach for vomiting, groaning, moaning, sniffling, coughing, and all the other things that happen to people when they’re ill. My mother is really good with me and puts me to shame, often killing me with kindness. Last week, I had yet another one of my “heads” – I woke up in agony on Thursday morning, couldn’t move my head, then started being sick. I was laid up in bed all day and Mum was really good. I think. Actually, I think she just left me alone to get on with it, but was pleasantly fussy once I finally emerged from my pit of doom in the evening.

Of course, when I got to work the following day, I was talking to a colleague about my previous day’s brain tumour, I think I called it a migraine so as not to alarm her, and she said “Well, there’s a lot of that going around at the moment.”

What? Contagious migraines?

Apparently, hers were cured by having a hysterectomy when she was 31. I think I’ll stick to ibuprofen and bed rest in a dark room.

Weird.

And when another colleague phoned in sick today (on National Sick Day, would you believe?), she again said “Well, there’s a lot of that going around at the moment.”

Back back? “Loads of those at the moment, you wouldn’t believe it!”

And how about Semlicki Forest Virus? “Tonnes, Tina. There were four people in Tesco with it last night!”

Amazing.

But what IS going around at the moment is a bit of a cold thing that has laid dearest Trump low for the past few days. She’s not been too bad with it, but got terribly depressed when it went on her chest. Any chesty cough means Ordeal by Covonia, which I don’t mind, but it makes her sick (I think this is the idea of expectorants).

Anyway, poorly Trump was indeed pretty sick today and had to take National Sick Day off with a genuine illness. But this gave me the opportunity to go and see her, via the fucking horrible Asda in shithole Hulme, where I bought her some food, and a variety of chesty cough medicine.

Poorly Trump is off work tomorrow too, but she’s already taken the day off as leave because she’s getting cable telly. That means that, when I finally move in there in the hopefully not-too-distant future, WE’LL have cable telly. And this means Series 4 of the L Word when it comes out over here in the summer. Bring it on!!!!

Despite getting carried away with myself at the thought of the impending arrival of Living TV, I did the dutiful thing and tried to be Florence Nightingale to Trump of the Crimea. I was very attentive (once I’d calmed down about the spastic parking habits of one of the residents on her street) and even let her kiss me – germs and all. She then shoved my face in her slippers and rubbed her sock in my face.

Question of the day
Four months’ suspended sentence for killing a cat by putting it through a washing machine cycle – appropriate?

Certainly not. How about ripping the fucking bitch’s head off with something like a, oh I don’t what, something like a pride of hungry lions?

According to the RSPCA inspector, the suspended sentence sends out a strong signal that animal cruelty will not be tolerated. How exactly? I think my alternative certainly would.

TOSSERS!