I’m forever having people call at my front door, annoying me.  Nobody I know ever comes to the front of my house, so a knock is always a sign of trouble.  It’s usually not even for me.  It’s usually somebody from a power company asking if the previous owners want to change their energy company.

The answer is always no.

These people know this too.  I tell them to make sure they know:  “I’ll just look on uSwitch and do a comparison there – there’s no way I’m taking your word for it.”

So why do they keep calling?  Because they’re paid to annoy people, be given the brush off by people having their evening meal, and to be growled at by the dog that has to be held because they always stand there with the fucking gate wide open onto the main fucking road.

Fucking idiots.

I feel forced into putting one of those horrid signs up that you see in the Easy Living catalogue: “No salesmen, No takeaway menus, No, No, No.  Just whatever you want, NO!”. 

Or I could continue to take pleasure at watching them being dripped on from the guttering that seems to be leaking directly above where they stand.

Easy living
Is that what it’s called?  The little booklet that’s the official Nazi Party version of the Betterware catalogue?  It comes with the Sunday supplements every couple of months.  Google tells me it’s Easy Life (easy life if you’re a member of the Daily Mail hang ’em high collective, that is).

I think they used to be Innovations, but they were clearly taking the piss.  I’m sure some of the products are quite good if you’re retired, bored have reduced mobility, but have too much money.  However, some of the stuff is just really a bit mean spirited and designed with the intention of shooing things off, such as:

• Cats
• Spiders
• Flies
• Door-to-door salesmen
• “Foreign-looking and gypsies”

Check out their two page range of pest repellents.  The bit about signs for deterring salesmen and foreigners isn’t true.  I’m just going to stop opening the front door from now on.

Here’s to good health!
That was always the toast at Christmas and New Year.  Add love and happiness and you can”t ask for much more from life.  In fact, if you have all three, you’re pretty much laughing I reckon.

If you have a chronic problem with your hip (for “chronic” read two months) it starts to get you down after a while.  I’m starting to think that I might have done something to it while I was skiing.  Anyway, I’m going for an assessment in a couple of weeks. 

People keep recommending chiropracters and osteopaths to me.  These people swear by theirs, who they’ve been seeing for YEARS with their back problems.  I point this out to them.  They don’t get it.  I also point out that homeopathy has been shown to be buncum, yet it’s still sometimes funded from the Public purse, but the fact that osteopathy and chiropracterism (??) isn’t offered on the NHS should indicate that they’re viewed  as even crapper than homeopathy. 

Nothing is more effective than homeopathy.

Think about that one.

Anyway, I assume that the assessment will show that there’s nothing can be done for me and that I’ll have to rely on time and the correct exercises to help ease my problem.  I guess it’s also important to find out whether there’s anything I should absolutely avoid doing.

I think the days of me getting my ankles round the back of my head are way behind me.

Bed time
You know, I have no idea where time goes. 

It seems that one hour of not work time is worth three hours of work time.  I swear I’ve only been home for two hours and it’s bed time already.  Yet I get to work at 8am, send off a load of e-mails, do some spreadsheety things, have a cup of coffee, go for a poo, look at the clock and it’s 8:08.

I get home from work, prepare and eat my dinner, take the little feller out for his walk, come back, and it’s bed time.

This is where I take him:

It’s just up the road from here.  He can run along pathways, bounce through the long grass, completely missing the fact that there are fifty rabbits bouncing around him.  This evening the swallows were doing stunt flying at his height and within a metre or so of him.  He didn’t really notice because he’d found another dog’s poo to sniff at from close up.

I wish could report that my back troubles are behind me (there’s a pun in there somewhere), but there’s still quite a bit of residual pain and weakness in my lower limbs – they being my legs.

But enough of woes and worries, life is good.  Observing my parents over the years, I’ve learnt that you can’t dwell on things that are wrong; you have to appreciate the things that are great, and I’m so fortunate to so many things that are fantastic:

• My job
• The healthy state of my finances
• My lovely little dog who provides me with such joy

… hang on a minute

There, I automatically concentrate on the things that cause me anxiety.  I must stop doing this and break down the things that cause me anxiety and turn them into positives.

• My job is relatively well paid and relatively secure.  I work for a really good employer, get great holidays and have a good pension.  The work is flexible and I am privileged to work with some of the most academically brilliant people you could meet.  The fact that I am high up on the autistic spectrum makes it ideal for me in many ways, what with all the spreadsheets and that.

• My finances are not and will never be in a healthy state.  I don’t have any credit card debt, but my overdraft suffers as a result. I should be rolling in it, but I’m not.  I don’t know where my money goes.  I’m too scared of money to look at where it goes.  I’ve tried; every time I think I’m sorted, I try really hard to keep track, but then it gradually drifts into the red again and I get scared to look.  I’m a grown-up, for goodness’ sake – I should be able to deal with money.  At work, I deal with accounts worth more than I’ll earn in a lifetime, and I can account for every single penny in them, but at home, it just doesn’t work for me.

• My little dog has never, and will never be well behaved.  I’ve come to the conclusion that he’s just not wired right.  I can control certain aspects of his behaviour – every afternoon when I get in from work, I raise my head to the skies and start howling and he joins in – but I’ve learned that he is predictably unpredictable.  It’s just the way he is, and I love him all the same.  I love him for the way he greets me with his entire body when he’s not seen me for a while.  Even though it’s mildly irritating and painful having him rake his claws on me as he jumps all over me, I know that this type of unconditional love and joy (and relief) cannot be bought with all the money in the world. 

Even the most negative aspects of my life have huge positives.  The simplest things that most take for granted bring me so much pleasure.  And the most wonderful parts of my life make me feel like I’m the wealthiest person on this planet.

And I love cocodamol and diclofenac.

Vegone
My flirtation with the vegan diet is very much on the wane.  It’s one of those things that’s observed with so many things, but especially things like taking medicines: compliance is so much better when there’s an obvious benefit.

• I take diclofenac for pain relief – my pain is relieved – diclofenac is effective for pain relief
• I take cocodamol as a recreational drug because I don’t drink or take other drugs – cocodamol makes me a bit squiffy – cocodamol is OK if you fancy getting off your tits
• I tried a vegan diet to lose weight, it meant changing my entire eating habits and depriving me of pasta and sausages – I stuck to it and didn’t lose weight – a vegan diet makes you depressed

I need to come up with a healthy eating plan that’s easier for me to stick to (or get depressed and start smoking again).  I’m sure the vegan thing would have been more effective had I given up sugar and reduced my portion sizes to just half a kilo of rice a day, but I don’t have the patience to stick to something like that unless the results are better.

Stairway to the top of my stairs
Here’s a thing.  I take photos… LOTS of photos.  I’m not quite as bad as Rainman, or in need of a memento of all my movements (“remember Sammy Jenkis”), but I do document my life on camera.  I rarely show my photos to anybody;  I think they’re shit.  I have on my computer thousands of images, amounting to nearly 60GB disk space, that I’ve captured over the years, yet I’ve struggled to find sufficient to do this:

I wanted to have a display that journals some events and travels with my girlfriend.  My life before her can go shit off for all I care – well, my life with the other one can, that’s for sure.  Anyway, I think they look pretty cool (with varying degrees of help from photoshop… and cocodamol).  I must learn to be less self-critical, to see the photograph within the image.  Out of all of them, my favourites are:

So, that’s two photos out of thousands.

I am awesome.

I’ll be back again soon with some venomous ranting.  I’m storing quite a few subjects up and top of my hitlist are Salford City Council and car headlamps.  Oh, and students, motorcyclists, supermarkets… and Scottish Power meter readers… idiot colleagues.

CAAAAAALM

Crikey, I’ve been crap at this.  Have we had winter and Christmas yet? 

Yes, well, anyway (:@) I only popped in to check on things, but it might be nice to regale you all (two of you) with stories of skiing exploits (twice) and other stuff that hasn’t really happened.

Sniffy, what are you doing?
The words echoed around my head for weeks after my first encounter with alpine skiing in France in January.  Poor Noel, my instructor.  Poor, poor Noel.  I’d be taking a rest, or being unsuccessful at what I was trying to make my skis do, or falling over and his words would ring out through the crisp January air: “What are you dooeeeeng?”

I never really had an answer for him, so I just smiled, hoping that the pain would go away at some point.  Because it hurts, you see, skiing.  Everything really, really hurts.  Mainly shins and knees, but also arms (from using poles), feet, head (from concentrating), lungs (through lack of oxygen), stomach (from overeating).

But yes, skiing: it’s actually fun.  I never thought I’d find myself admitting it, or even trying it in the first place, but it’s great fun.  And nothing can beat the fresh air, the wonderful views, the feeling of achievement in actually being able to do something physical rather than intellectual.  And that feeling of cruising along, with only the sound of crisp snow shooshing beneath you (because you’re on a spaz slope that accomplished skiers wouldn’t be seen dead on apart from the end of the day on their last run into the village).  But you find yourself at peace…. until you inexplicably lose it and have to figure out how to get up.

So that’s skiing for you.  Painful, but fun, and every ache and pain is worth it when you consider the boutique catered chalet life that you enjoy for the week.  My word.  Spoilt.

Falling apart at the seams
Life is blissfully dull, although my 41st year has brought with it the onset, or aggravation, of a number of persistent niggles that are achy and annoying and ridiculous.  I recently gave myself a stomach ulcer from prolonged use of ibuprofen (back); I can’t walk more than a couple of miles without my feet giving me crippling pain; I’m having blood tests “for my glands”.

But life’s great.  The sun, it shines, and with it I am filled with happiness.  I still detest people  (hateful, selfish morons), but my shouty episodes are soon forgotten and I find it very easy to appreciate that I’m very wealthy and terms of love, contentment, and shiny things that make it all better. 

Hot water
One thing that I really appreciate is hot water.  Nothing is more soothing than being able to take a hot shower whenever I like; washing my hands under hot water with nice soap – an absolute luxury.  Just think about it, washing your hands in cold water, or not being able to at all.  *shudders*

And people are whinging because they have to wait for a bit until they can have their next gadget or a new car.  Get a fucking grip.

Vegan
I’ll come back to this one.

Or whatever…

A couple of years and a bit ago, there was a song in the charts by the Irish group The Script called The man who can’t be moved.  The singer told the sorry tale of breaking up with his girlfriend and, hoping that one day she’d change her mind and want to find him, he’d be there on the corner where they used to meet.

Awwww, what a sentiment.

Shortly after, they followed this sorry tale up with Break even; a song about a bloke being dumped by his girlfriend “I’m still alive, but I’m barely breathing…. I got time while she’s got freedom… when a heart breaks, it don’t break even”. 

Well, he was still hurting, obviously.  As I was at the time – things were still terribly painful for me after my own horrible break up and no, when a heart breaks, it don’t break even.  Not when your ex other half is a complete twat who dumps you for somebody else then rubs your face in it while you’re still sharing a house. 

But two years on, during which time I eventually got myself back on track and met somebody wonderful and found myself happier than I’ve ever been, Mr The Script is STILL going on about breaking up with his girlfriend… for fuck’s sake.

Talk you down (2009) – yep, she’s breaking up with him still

Before the worst (2009) – still trying to persuade her not to break up with him

For the first time (2010) – now they’re drunk, and wondering whether they can make it work

Nothing (2010) – his mates take him for a drink because he’s broken up with his girlfriend, he gets pissed and starts shouting around the streets, trying to persuade her to take him back

Now, Mr Script, can I suggest something to you?  She doesn’t want you.  I could’ve told you this in 2008 because, after a few weeks of begging somebody to change their mind, you actually know in your heart of hearts that you lost them as soon as they took somebody else’s phone number.  Just move on.  Get some counselling.  Have a rebound shag.  But move on, she doesn’t want you.

I think Mr The Script should listen to some B52s, turn his hand to writing songs about out of control parties, shopping malls, sea creatures and the like.

Misery
I wouldn’t say that I’m feeling miserable as such, just a little fed up.  There’s nothing to make you feel quite so alone as when you’re left to wonder why there’s a tree in your dining room; we got the Christmas tree at the weekend and Ali decorated it beautifully.  I recalled crushing one of the LED Christmas lights last year after noticing that a few of the diodes remained unlit.  But with just me being here, with me being on my own here for the next few weeks, I can’t help think it’s a bit odd to have a tree where Deirdre the sideboard should be.

Winter isn’t treating me well this year.  The darkness that descended in September has had an usually adverse effect on my mood; I am constantly tired and achy.  And it’s fucking freezing. But at least I have an electric blanket.  And the love of a wonderful woman and a smelly little dog.

At least I don’t make a wanky Christmas card out of these shots

Fuck, my dining room has turned into Narnia!

I might be a bit miserable because of weekly separation from the person I want to be with, but at least I have her.  I count myself very lucky every day.

Now, I wonder if I can attack the little dog’s dew claw while he’s sleeping….

I bought a washing mashine in the middle of October 2009.  It wasn’t the one I wanted, the one I wanted couldn’t be sourced for weeks, so I was offered a Whirlpool one for the same price – brilliant! It’s quite fancy, it has a big drum, lots of cycles, it’s sleek, it’s black, it’s sexy …. it’s broken.  Twelve months and three weeks after buying it (ok, thirteen months), the digital display died on me, so without being able to see what settings I’m using, doing my laundry has become a game of Russian Roulette (some might say they’d assumed this had been the case all my adult life).

Did I take out the extended warranty at £xx per year?  For a £500 washing machine?  Surely with an expected lifetime for a washing machine of 7 years, you’d expect it to last more than four years before anything went wrong on it?  So no, I didn’t, the robbing fuckers.  Are they domestic appliance manufacturers or insurance agents?  Or just twats?

I e-mailed them last week:

Message: I purchased this washing machine in mid October 2009. I ran a load earlier, and when the cycle had finished, the digital display was showing in green, but the numbers were not showing properly. On further investigation, there is no temperature display at all, the time display is very distorted and the spin speed indicator is barely legible. While I realise that this machine is possibly a whopping 2 or so weeks out of warranty, after just a year of low to moderate use (I live on my own), I wouldn’t expect a well-maintained, £450 appliance to start showing signs of malfunction after this period of time and nor would anybody else. This is clearly a fault with the machine and I would like it to be repaired, can this be arranged please? Many thanks. Sniffy.

Their response today: 

Dear Dr Sniffy,

Thank you for your email.

Whirlpool is the number one white goods manufacturer in Europe and our appliances are made to the highest standards. They enjoy a world-wide reputation for reliability and durability but of course any appliance that has functional parts or electronic components can fail at any given point resulting in repairs being required.

As a safeguard against unexpected and sometimes expensive repairs after the initial warranty period has expired Whirlpool offer both extended service and parts cover at prices that are competitive with other major manufacturers. These contracts are considered a wise investment by many of our customers.

Whilst I can sympathise with your disappointment that this repair is required unfortunately in the absence of any warranty this would be fully chargeable. I understand this may not be the response for which you had hoped but I apologise nevertheless for any inconvenience caused.

Kind regards

Whirlpool UK, C.U.N.T.Y.

And my response to them: 

Dear Whirlpool Cuntstomer Service,

Thanks for your response.  Disappointngly, it was as expected, which is quite frankly disgraceful and an admission that Whirlpool doesn’t expect its products to last for any decent length of time or care when they don’t (in this case, three weeks out of its warranty period – THREE weeks).  Consequently, it effectively blackmails its consumers with overpriced insurance policies to cover for its products’ shortcomings.

I can confirm that I will not be buying any Whirlpool products in the future and I will make strong recommendations to anybody I have contact with that they avoid Whirlpool like the plague. I will be starting with the shop I bought the machine from so they can inform their customers about the fault with these machines and Whirlpool’s attitude when alerted to them.  In fact, the only reason I ended up with a Whirlpool was because there was a pan-European delay on the Hotpoint (how I wish I’d have waited). 

With all due respect,

Sniffy

So to all you people thinking of buying an appliance – don’t bother with Whirlpool

And this is just the start.  I shall soon be waving the Sale of Goods Act at them, with reference to the section on durability.

Why can’t these idiots realise how word of mouth from satisfied customers is their most effective way of advertising?

Contrast my sister, Bomb’s experience with Bosch when her lawnmower blew up, way out of warranty.  They were so embarrassed that they were really apologetic and gave her a replacement free of charge.  That’s the Germans for you.

And do you know that Bosch tumbledryers have a light inside the drum?  They do.  Fabulous.

Exciting times lie ahead for me.  The house purchase will complete this Friday and I can look forward to being in phenomenal amounts of debt for 25 years, rather than just moderate amounts of debt for the rest of my life.  But you have to see the positive side of things – it’s a long term investment that will keep me in incontinence pads and Bepanthen in my old age.  And the mortgage will cost a less than the rent.

And, what you can do when a place is your own is DECORATE.  I could’ve decorated this place as a tenant, but why waste money on Farrow and Ball for future tenants who would probably only appreciate huge floral patterns… in black?  The spectrum of colour options is limited to “neutral” and, as far as I’m concerned, nobody ever went on the rampage after painting their home natural hessian. 

Actually, some of these look a wee bit pink for my liking, but my niece will love them.  She cried her eyes out when I told her she could help paint the house, but that we weren’t having pink.

There’s a word for that – spoilt.

Anyway (:@), I’m looking forward to all sorts of fabulous trips out to stores where I want to kill people – Ikea being the main one.  That awful procession, following arrows, being run into by people displaying no control over their prams (or children).  And there are always so many Scousers.

Wherever you go, there are Scousers; be it Manchester City Centre or the Trafford Centre, concerts at the MEN Arena, theme parks, Ikea in Warrington, Ikea in Ashton.  And yet they all profess to love Liverpool so much… why the fuck don’t they stay there then?

But yes, the house is a kind of blank canvass of beige, which is great, but making it a home will require some thought, design sense and money; none of which I have.  I guess we’re lucky in that my landlord is happy to come and do bits of joinery for us at cost price… but now I kick myself for not getting him to do it for free while I was a tenant.

Ali wants an airing cupboard and I’ve told her – you don’t need an airing cupboard when you’ve got Jesus, but she’s having none of it.

Rocky wants carpet instead of laminate flooring.

I’m just happy to have a home that will be a foundation for many happy years of mutual debt for me and my other half.

Exploding sinuses
I woke up to throbbing swollen glands in my neck and pain in my face, ear and teeth. Sinus infections are hideous, but they’re also rather fabulous in what they can offer once your immune system has done its thing: that wonderful gloopy, bloody snot that can only be expelled by what feels like blowing out from the behind your eyeballs.

My last great sinus infection resulted in probably the best snot clearance I’ve ever had.  I actually think it was an undiagnosed siamese twin – it was about an inch and half in length, with its own blood supply, nervous system and pulse.  I disposed of it carefully, but it escaped and became leader of the Labour party.  Apparently it outshone all the other candidates, especially in the eyes of the unions who recognised its ability to empathise with public sector employees and generally get up everyone’s noses.

Fantastic imagery and incongruous juxtapositions.

Any word with juxtaposition as part of its definition is top notch in my book.

Of course, another sort of meaning of phantasmagorical is surreal, and I suppose you’d describe Salford City Council’s raison d’etre as being to make all those who encounter them shake their heads in wonder while muttering, “phantastmagorical!”, or “that’s totally fucked up”.

This not-so-great metropolis’s latest totally and utterly unbelievable fucked up plan is to take the A6, a major three-lane road that runs into and out of Manchester City Centre, reduce the capacity to one lane plus a bus lane and, along with this, reduce the speed limit from 40mph to 20mph.  That’s nice of them, vastly increasing journey times, pollution and tempers.

Why do they have to do this?  What good could possibly come of this?  Why can’t they just do something to make peoples’ lives a little bit easier instead of totally fucking miserable?

Because they’re a bunch of left winged, money-wasting morons is what I’m guessing.

Useless, waste of space cunts.

The power of Google
Anyway (:@,), hopefully they’ll Google themselves when they’re not too busy sat around on their fat arses, thinking of other phantasmagorical schemes for making people who visit the city, or even worse live there, think they were on mind-bending drugs.

And back to Google – they’ve decided at last that the Taz and Pig hosted version of Sniffytastic wasn’t a danger to peoples’ PCs afterall.  Idiots.  Anyway, I’ve farted around enough now, so I’m sticking with Blogger.

Will I am
I need to write a will sometime quite soon.  How exciting is that?  Essentially, my other half would get the house (she’ll be thrilled at being saddled with £95,000 debt) and everything in it (she’ll be even more thrilled at getting my collection of “I’m sure this is useful for something” things and, of course, the little dog).

I’m tempted to insist on something wonderful in my will, since I’m paying for it and all, but I can’t think of what.  Strange funeral requests are no good because the whole concept goes against my beliefs, although it would be grand if everybody arrived on a penny farthing at my behest.

Fanta-smagorical
My sister, Bomb, took part in the filming of a TV quiz show in September.  I had to go with her and I will also appear on the telly when the episode is screened.  How did I get dragged into an overnight stay in the grottiest hotel in Glasgow, losing my identity to become known as “Bomb’s sister” and being filmed for national TV without any chance of a share in a potential cash prize of £100,000?  What’s more, I didn’t even get to meet Dale Winton!

Waxy

It’s been such a while since I did the whole blog thing; I’m not sure I have it in me any more.  But I still experience things, I still have opinions (so many opinions) and, before I started trying to type this, I thought I could still write.

Life sometime throws things at you from left field that take you completely unawares.  When I was going through counselling a couple of years back, I was once presented with this scenario: “You’re on a boat and the waters have been calm for days, since you started your trip.  You bob along and all is well, then a storm hits and the boat gets tossed around on the sea.  What do you do?”  Well, you have to change, you’re no longer in your comfort zone and you have to adjust and do things you’ve never had to do before.  I’m still appallingly bad at this, but I have recently been witness to one of my friends encountering one utterly hideous thing after another: unimaginable heartbreak, confusion, loss, despair – his world collapsed in the space of a fortnight.  He could have fallen apart, he could have given in, but he didn’t, and I have never felt so much pride and respect for one person as I do for him.  Martin, you are amazing.

Skiing?  You?
Yes, I’m learning to ski.  With a holiday booked in a bespoke ski chalet in France in January, I’m GOING to fucking ski!

It’s hard to describe the whole process.  Anybody who has learned to drive will understand: the whole thing is totally alien to you; your ankles are locked into position in rigid boots, feet are strapped to 5 foot bits of fibreglass, and you’re expected to shuffle about on snow – to enjoy sliding on it, when all your life you have navigated to the stuff with super-grip souls, terrified of slipping. 

So you learn how to side step up a snowy slope, to hold a position there – knees leaning up the slope, skis slightly on their edges.  Knees are NOT suppose to bend this way, the joints don’t allow it, but you persevere so as not to start some hideous domino slide with your classmates. 

And then comes the standing at the top of a slope, trying to hold position without sliding down.  What the fuck?  No.  Again, this is just wrong – knees are not supposed to do this.  But you smile at the instructor and then try to “roll the knees out” to start moving, which you don’t.  What do you mean, “just roll the knees out”?  I’m doing that, nothing’s  ha……..!!!!

And so the snowplough comes in really handy.

I’m at the stage where I can get up a slope, stand at the top, and get to the bottom without much incident.  I can’t turn though.  No matter how hard I try, something stops the “feet, point in that direction!” signal transmitting through to the tips of the skis.

Like driving, I can see this being a long and arduous process.  But I’ll get there in the end.

House
We’re buying my house.  It’s fantastic.  I’m so excited.  This time, it’s going to be fantastic.


So, despite life throwing me that wicked curveball on the high seas a few years back, despite me thinking that the sun would never shine, that I’d never be happy again, all those people, but especially my dear Piggy, proved me so very wrong.

I have absolutely no explanation for the two images below, other than I was high on the enthusiasm of youth, and I was a total nerdy geek.

Back in April 1989, I was coming towards the end of my first year at University, but I still enjoyed regular correspondence with an old friend from sixth form college where we’d spend much time laughing at a couple of my teachers (very good teachers, incidentally).  Anyway, for some reason Dr Gibb and Miss Exley drew our attention and this cartoon, written on the back of a letter nearly a year after being taught by them, was produced at a time when I should’ve been learning the Krebs cycle for the umpteenth time.  I have no idea what the content refers to, other than Dr Gibb’s partner’s car and my friend Peter’s car.  Nice to see an early hatred of the Guardian building in me though.

Dicta Apr 1989 by cakesniffer

Tina Apr 1989 by cakesniffer

This little gem of a self portrait is quite good fun, it has my hair as it has been much of its poor life: mullet.  My hair has three main states:

1. Mullet
2. Out of control mop
3. Accident

It’s currently a Number 2, having not encounter cutting implements since September 2009.  The little dog has had four haircuts since then.  He always gets better looked after than me.

Holiday!

We went on holiday the other week, to Northumberland.  It was lovely!  The little dog came and he had a fabulous time, enjoying the freedom of running around huge stretches of near-deserted beaches, biting waves because he didn’t know what they were.  He’s so crap at water, just doesn’t do the things normal dogs do.  I had to coax him into a shallow stretch of water so we could go for a paddle at the shoreline, but he froze in fear when the water touched his tummy and had to be rescued.  Pathetic.  But quite sweet.  Once through that trauma, his bravado returned immediately and he was off hurtling around, harassing anything that he could get to without having to go through water more than 3 inches deep.

We did self catering, which is great because it gives you the freedom to do what you like and there are plenty of places that allow little bastards to stay too.  So, you don’t have the worry of getting up for breakfast, people hearing you have sex (in the middle of nowhere… unless you’re REALLY noisy), the little dog disturbing people in other hotel rooms, etcetterah, etcetterah.  And you can eat what you like too: cook for yourself a few nights, go out and sample the local restaurants a few others.  Only this is where we came across a major problem because there’s nowhere to eat out in the whole county, nowhere open at least.  Such an unbelievably poor choice of restaurants in a county where you should be spoilt for choice.  We weren’t.

“Would you like milk in your espresso?”

Anyway, I VOW that the next time, some numpty waiter/ress brings me an espresso in a mug and asks if I want milk in it, I will throw the offending, watery brownness over said numpty and drag them by whatever is easiest to get hold of over to the coffee machine and make them watch while I show them how to make an espresso, not an Americano, an esfuckingpresso!  And then I will set them on fire, which I am now an expert on.

Because being on holiday, and the paucity of restaurant choice, meant that I did BBQ!  Yes, I was allowed a box of matches and a couple of disposable barbecues and I set fire to things.  “I make fire.  Woman bath child!”, which loosely interpreted means “Ali, I’ll try to get this barbecue going, are you OK giving Rocky a shower?”

Of course, you had to burn food up there too because shopping in the supermarkets, nice and shiny as they are, was like trying to get supplies in post-communist Russia.  The nice big, shiny, new Sainsbury’s in Alnwick (yes, where the castle is that they do the Hogwarts in, that doesn’t allow dogs in, so we didn’t visit) is shit.  It doesn’t stock ANYTHING.  No fresh meat counter, no fish counter, only one aisle for fruit and veg, absolutely terrible shop.  And the checkout people are ignorant too.  Wendy (who I got) was really pleasant to the older couple in front of me, taking time to talk to them about their holiday there, and when she came to me, she threw my stuff at me (struggling to identify a lemon in the process) and barely made eye contact with me throughout the transaction.  Witch.

But don’t let any of this, or gun-wielding maniacs on the run from the Police (we were in Rothbury the week before, don’t you know), put you off Northumberland.  It’s a beautiful part of the world and I’d highly recommend it.

And I’m sure there are some wonderful places to eat there too.  Just not the Olive Tree in Bamburgh.  Got that?  The Olive Tree in Bamburgh has the worst service I’ve EVER ENCOUNTERED in my entire life.  Shame really, since the food was pretty nice.  But bloody hell, here are a few tips:

1. Don’t ignore people when they arrive – about four people walked past us when we arrived without even acknowledging our presence, and it wasn’t busy
2. When asked “Do all these spotlights flicker, or is it just this area of the incredibly brightly-lit restaurant where diners are given a free migraine?”, don’t just shrug your shoulders
3. When asked to “please bring the olives with our drinks”, do NOT bring drinks, starters, THEN olives.
4. Try putting some bottles of water in the chiller and if you don’t have a chilled one, BRING SOME FUCKING ICE! Don’t serve it at 24°C, for fuck’s sake.
5. If a waitress asks “would you like coffee after your dessert?” and this is confirmed with a very affirmative “yes, AFTER dessert please”, don’t bring it BEFORE the dessert, then bring exactly the same cups of the worst excuse for espresso I’ve ever seen once the diner has had chance to finish their pudding.
6. Never, ever, EVER ask somebody if they want milk in an espresso, that would make it an Americano.  If you don’t know your coffees, you shouldn’t be anywhere near a coffee machine.
7. FOR FUCK’S SAKE!

But anyway, for a Fawlty Towers dining experience – go to the Olive Tree at the Lord Crewe Hotel, Bamburgh.