I was draining my boiled rice for my tea earlier. What should fall into the sieve-full of nutty white grains but a big fuck-off moth! It was like a scene from Silence of the Lambs.

Hideous bloody creatures, flapping around with no real purpose.

What do moths do?

They go on my Judgement Day Z list, and there ain’t no way ANYTHING on the Z list makes it into the Sniffy eternity.

I’m sure the washing machine’s been running for two hours! It’s like an aeroplane flight deck with all its computerised lights. I’ve no idea what cycle it’s on. I hope it finishes before it goes dark.

As much as the automatic washing machine has to be one of the top ten inventions of the 20th century, I’d be tempted not to have them in paradise with me. I always have such traumas with washing and washing machines, I’d rather my eternal life wasn’t bothered by their presence.

So anyway, back to my Z list. Most other creepy crawlies would join the moths, along with snails and slugs. Reptiles would be on their too, weird creatures. As much as I love animals, I don’t have much time for anything without feathers or fur, so land-dwelling scaly things would be left behind, although fish and sea mammals would be made welcome, perhaps even octopuses (because they taste nice). Are you allowed to eat things that you invite into paradise? You can do what you want if you’re in charge I suppose.

The Z list includes certain types of people, microwaves, toasters and caravans. I have an eternity to decide whether things on the Z list have to stay there. Take caravans for example. Without a doubt, those caravans that you pull along at the back of your car (Vauxhall Omega) at 38mph will stay parked in Z list hell to burn there forever, but I think I’d love a Winnebago.

I’ve been looking at them and new, they cost £175,000 – that’s the price of a mid-range house on the Bellend estate. Who can afford that? And if you can afford that, why can’t you afford to stay in a hotel?

But a Winnebago is the ultimate mobile luxury. Just look at these photos:

Amazing.

And imagine how many motorists you could piss off driving one of those buggers!

We finally got connected to our broadband yesterday. It wasn’t as simple as it was supposed to be, i.e. we couldn’t just plug in and go, we had to phone Sky’s technical support. After a bit of faffing with a very patient technician’s help, we were “connected”.

I say “connected” because the speed was no better than dial up. Absolute rubbish. I know ADSL was rubbish, but not that rubbish.

We were connected on Sky’s basic package – up to 2Mbps, allegedly. I decided to see what would happen if I upgraded to their mid-range package, which should allow up to 8meg, but for a fee of £5 a month.

Having gone through the upgrade process online, the instructions said that the modem would have to be turned off. Within seconds, we lost our internet connection. Multiple attempts to reconnect by rebooting the modem were unsuccesful. Bollocks.

So, we left it overnight and turned it back on again this morning. Still no internet. I was then inspired to use a filter provided with the modem to connect the phone to the socket. Hey presto, the internet came back on.

What sort of fucking hocus pocus shit is this? You can’t connect to the internet unless your phone is connected via a filter device? And if you don’t use a filter device, you get such interference on the line that the phone is unusable?

PLEASE VIRGIN, COME AND CABLE FOR US!!!!

Anyway, we were reconnected to the internet and, surprisingly, it’s much faster than with the basic package. I did another speed test:

Basic (free) package Maximum: up to 2meg Actual: 150kbps
Mid (£5) pacakge Maximum: up to 8meg Actual: 3.8meg (which is the maximum allowed by our BT line)

Aint that weird? You get 1/25th of the potential connection speed on the free package, yet paying a fiver allows you to get the maximum for your line.

Twats.

So we’re both back online and it feels like our severed limbs have been restored to full functionality.

Aaaahhhhhh.

Sniffy was invited to lunch with a colleague yesterday. Faced with the prospect of a McDonald’s Quarter Pounder avec fromage, she jumped at the chance.

I approached the counter: “Quarter pounder with cheese and regular fries please”, I beamed with anticipation.

“Sorry, we only have a limited menu, this is all we have”, the assistant gestured to the sad-looking display and empty menu, “but we have our special of the month on.”

Limited menu???? Have they started rationing since I left home this morning?

Confused, and unable to figure out what the hell the special thing was supposed to be, I went for the safe option of a Big Mac and fries. Plenty of people seem to like Big Macs, Trump likes them, Bomb likes them, so why not give it a go?

I think I’d had one of these things once before. Just the once. There’s obviously a reason why I’d only ever had one Big Mac prior to yesterday’s:

Big Macs are fucking rubbish.

Two crappy beef burgers, shredded iceberg lettuce (!), some dodgy slimy stuff – is it mayonnaise, one slice of cheese, one slice of gherkin, shredded processed onions. And then the thing falls apart as you try to eat it.

Why do people go for a Big Mac over a quarter pounder? And why the fuck does the McDonald’s on Oxford Road in Manchester have such a shit menu?*

RUBBISH, RUBBISH, RUBBISH!

*As if any McDonald’s menu is the height of culinary achievement!

Snail’s pace
Where have all these snails come from? We never used to see snails in these parts. Slugs? Millions, but snails? Never.

Over the past couple of years, we have been overrun with the little bastards.

Have the slugs finally saved up enough for a mortgage? There are MILLIONS of them.

I never really studied slugs or snails that much when I did biology at school; I don’t like them, therefore I don’t want to know about them or their weird ways – they make me feel a bit ill.

How do snails grow their shells?

What do they do all day?

Do they look down on slugs?

Do they communicate? I bet they get really dirty with those slimy antennae of theirs. Dirty little things.

Bugger only knows.

Le weekend
Yep, it’s nearly the weekend. What’s in store? Praying for a couple of dry days for a start. We’re having another one of those summers: cold and wet.

I have a hover mower to test drive, you know.

Le Dog Whisperer
Rocky had an altercation with the neighbour’s dog this evening. Apparently, the other pooch went straight for Rocky’s beard.

At least it gave Trump the chance to meet one of the blokes next door. How we’ll laugh about it at dinner parties over the coming years!

An edit from the bedroom
It’s now 23.37, I should’ve been asleep an hour ago, but I never get enough sleep, so I’m used to it.

Here I am in the bed that I slept in for so many years. It’s a comfortable bed and I’ve always liked it. Big Con has done the motherly thing of putting my favourite bed linen on, the pillows are plumped up. radio is on quiet (Country night on Radio 2). All set for dreamland.

I should be comfortable, I should be tucked up, dozing off. But I am bent like a paperclip, surrounded by all four of the cats, Otto is in his usual place under the quilt alongside me. Such odd creatures. And the dirty looks they give you if you dare to move to get into a position where your back isn’t creasing you in pain.

Yes, I am online, courtesy of house and cat-sitting at my folks’ place while they’re on holiday. Broadband won’t be coming to Bellend Towers until the end of the week. Why? Because BT and Sky are a bunch of fucking jokers.

I ordered my BT (telephone to those not in the know) connection the week before we moved – that was the 20th of June. We moved in on the 27th of June, our telephone was connected on the 8th of July.

I ordered Sky satellite TV and broadband on the 20th of June. We couldn’t get connected without a live BT phoneline, so the telly couldn’t be installed until the 9th of July. Sky then have to tell BT that one of their customers wants broadband access, then BT twiddle their thumbs for a bit before deciding to activate it. Our estimated activation date is 17th July; about a month after ordering the service… if we’re lucky.

And then the maximum speed we can get through our oh-so speedy BT phoneline is about 3.5mbps.

Fucking useless.

Why they get the monopoly on providing the broadband infrastructure is beyond me. And why don’t Virgin lay some fucking cables? Tossers.

So, how is Bellend Towers? It’s OK. Rocky has eaten the bottom of the kitchen door and half a door mat. Loosh the cat has started pulling the carpet on the upstairs landing and depositing her hair all over the place. We’ve settled in really well.

There are four of five boxes still to be unpacked, but we’re getting there. We bought a lawnmower yesterday and our SECOND shower tidy (we can’t seem to get them to hang properly).

So what’s so good about where we are? Check this out…

Good eh?

I’ve kind of got used to living with Trump; it’s nice, it makes me feel complete – I guess that’s the idea. Despite being apart from her for a few days, there are a few advantages, mainly checking out all the weird shit that my parents buy in from all the dodgy shops they go to. I’ve just tried a tiny tin of squid in ink sauce. It was surprisingly nice.

I’ve just noticed a disturbing note from Connie – she wants me to tape something. Bollocks. I have no idea how to work a video recorder anymore.

We’re moving house over the next couple of days. Thanks to Virgin not cabling in the area we’re moving to, we’re having to rely on BT and Sky for telephone and broadband. Because BT are shite (as well as being robbing bastards), we won’t be connected for some time. Blogging activity will be mercifully patchy, but I’ll be back soon enough.

Adios!

Back in the blogging heyday of 2005, a whole load of us used to do the rounds of a number of blogs from all over the globe, but mainly the UK, Canada and the States.

There was me, Herge, Sam Black, Connielingus, April Pissoff, Michelle, Rowan Mayfair, Trillion, Lisa from Alaska, Garfer. We’d not even HEARD of the filthy yorkshire homos – they were doing their thing, being dirty boys somewhere.

But it was great and we’d keep up with folks’ lives on a daily basis. As time drifted on, I became less disciplined in checking on other blogs, but it’s with great fondness that I think back to those days when it was all a bit more hectic.

I got an e-mail this morning from Rowan Mayfair’s husband in Canada. Rowan is really called Heather and she’d been having a rough time of it over the years before things finally started turning round. She and her family moved into their new home a couple of weeks ago, then at the weekend, tragedy struck. A fire broke out in the home. Rowan suffered smoke inhalation problems and her youngest emerged unscathed, but tragically, her daughter died in the fire.

I’m not sure what sort of response there should be to this. Why should something that’s happened to somebody who you’ve never met have an effect on you? I dunno, it just does. Is it appropriate to write a post about it? Possibly not. But if we are a global community, then it’s probably right to share the news about its members.

Anyway, people who read this blog regularly will probably have come across Heather at some point. I’m sure there will be strong sentiment of shock on learning this news and sympathy for her and her family.

(copyright Jamie Smart and that)

This is how I felt after an exasperating visit to Manchester’s main post office today. God I was furious.

The long protracted move to Bellend Towers is on for next week, definitely, absolutely, no doubts – we’re moving.

We’re frantically changing our addresses on things in preparation, but there’s always something that slips the net – and goodness knows how I’ll get on without my junk mail – so we want to do a redirect of our post to the new place. Makes sense, non?

You can do it online through the Post Office’s website… only you can’t, because it doesn’t work. So the alternative is to go to a post office and do it in person, armed with ID and stuff. So I grabbed my wallet (photo drivers licence, bank cards, etc) and a recent Criminal Records Bureau disclosure certificate, Trump picked up her wallet and a credit card statement and off we trotted.

I was fuzzy headed and a headache was brewing.

Town was mental and we had to negotiate the usual hordes of people who just hang around in the way; standing at the top and bottom of escalators, walking right at you, being generally smelly and retarded. We got to the post office, picked up the relevant form, and I searched my pocket for a pen. Curses! I’d forgotten it. There were no pens to use, apart from at the counters themselves. Or I could’ve bought one, but only a blue one and the form needed to be completed in black ink.

Off to W H Smiths… off to Cafe Kasbah for caffeine and somewhere to sit to fill out the form… back to the post office.

We got to the counter, the woman checked the form and asked for our ID. We passed her our drivers licences.

“Have you got the paper counterparts?”

Er, no

“It’s just that we need both parts.”

“Why?”

“Because if somebody found or stole your wallet they could use your photo licence, but it’d be unlikely that you’d be carrying the paper counterpart too.”

“Exactly”, besides, the dog ate mine. “And if they happened to find or steal my photo licence, what is the likelihood that they’d look like my photo? What is the likelihood that two identity thieves would steal two photo drivers licences and look like the people on them?”

“We need both parts. You wouldn’t like it if somebody got hold of your post and pretended to be you.”

They can have my post, they can pretend to be me, more fucking fool them!

“Have you got a bank card?”

We handed our debit cards over. She took the numbers off them.

“Have you got any other ID?”

She took my CRB disclosure and looked at it thoroughly.

“I need to check whether I can use this”

Oh, for fuck’s sake. My head was really hurting by this point.

“Sorry I can’t accept this”

No, but you had a good fucking look at it, didn’t you? Nosy bitch.

I was so annoyed. You need about four pieces of ID to get a CRB check, the document is a certificate of who you are and where you live and that you’re not a fucking criminal, but it’s not good enough to get your post redirected.

“Oh fine, just take my name off the application. I’m changing all my address details anyway and I could do without getting a load of junk mail redirected.”

She turned to Trump, “Have you got a utility bill with you, I can’t accept this either”.

Fucking retarded mongs.

It’s OK for them to lose half the post, deliver it to the wrong addresses, have postmen steal a load of it, or sign for things that only the recipient is supposed to sign for, but they won’t accept perfectly valid ID so somebody can redirect their own post. You can buy a house with less ID than they require.

Last week, I signed a petition to stop the closure of post offices around the country. Fuck that, I’m going to start a campaign to burn the whole fucking lot of them down.

Of course, this is all part of a government ploy to make ID cards seem useful. For years, certain pieces of documentation have been perfectly acceptable to demonstrate a person’s identity, but not any more… but if we had an ID Card…. Would we still need the paper counterpart, just in case somebody had stolen the photo part? No, thought not. Probably because we’d all be barcoded by then anyway.

Cunts.

I got this in the post this morning.

Hoping it was a stick of dynamite, I tore the paper open to find this!

Good eh? It’s a stick of Brighton Rock from my good friend Mr Herge.

I think I like the idea of rock more than I like eating it. Just look at it, beautiful colours, and that lettering running through it, wonderful stuff.

Unfortunately, Royal Mail couldn’t manage to get it to me without dropping it, but hey at least they managed to get it here within a day; almost unheard of around here, especially when something is addressed to “Tina, Levenshulme, M19”.

See where it was made though? Yep, up in Blackpool. The cheek on it!

Legless
I’m sure everybody’s now heard the reports of disembodied feet washing up on the British Columbia coastline. The first feet (two right feet, both in trainers) rolled up in August last year. This was followed by 2 other right feet over subsequent months and the first left foot turned up on Monday.

And today THIS!

Yes, a sixth foot has washed up on Vancouver Island. I was there. My GOD, I even swallowed Vancouver Island lake water. That water may well have swirled between the toes of that foot.

Eeewww.

And all this not long after that pig farmer killed loads of women and fed their remains to his animals… that no doubt ended up as sausages and bacon sold in Vancouver…. that I MAY HAVE EATEN!!!!!!

A holiday of a lifetime may well have been a holiday from hell.

1976
It was a colleague’s birthday today. During the civilised celebrations over cake and biscuits, somebody inquired as to the birthday girl’s year of birth – 1976.

Ahhh. A number of us sighed, reminiscing back to our childhoods and that summer. I was approaching six years old during that summer; the longest, hottest summer ever – the one that we still refer to today.

I just remember the sunshine, and popping tarmac blisters on the road (and getting told off for making a mess of my clothes). The good thing about being a child is that you’re never too hot or too cold – I certainly don’t recall being uncomfortable in the sunshine (or the snow that we used to get in the winters back then). Adults are whingers.

A lot of people criticise the 1970s, and I’m sure it was rubbish if you were a grown up back then, but it was a fantastic time to be a kid. Proper summers, no responsibility, power cuts because of strikes, Father Christmas, The Banana Splits, Mohammed Ali, Elvis, Evil Knievel, snow… and then… The Sex Pistols, Blondie, The Bee Gees.

Fantastic.

Were the late seventies really that good, or is it always good for every kid at that age, no matter when? (Apart from in them days before sanitation, healthcare and education of course.)

Bloody hell, it’s a Coldplay love-in at the BBC and Guardian at the moment.

I hate Coldplay, they’re shit. You listen to their new release (and you have no choice if you listen to BBC radio) and you think, My God, please take me now, spare me the pain! Awful, awful, dirge from a boring, self-satisfied, sanctimonious, but really shit band.

G

O

D

!

!

!

!

Make them go away.

What the hell is wrong with this country that they celebrate such utter crap as Coldplay and Radiohead? Fair enough, some people like that sort of thing, they can’t help it, but why does the national broadcaster have to impose this shit on the licence-fee paying public? They appear incredulous that some people, most people, don’t like Coldplay. Shock, horror!

But what REALLY got my back up was learning that Coldplay’s front man Chris Martin, walked out of a BBC Radio 4 interview last week because he didn’t like the questions. This man gets so much free advertising from the BBC, yet the fucking shit-for-brains didn’t have the manners to sit out an interview.

Cunt.

Point made. Just gone to the BBC website and look at this:

The Guardian is the same, but let’s face it, the BBC is essentially Guardian Lite so what do you expect?

Thank goodness for Johnny Rotten, he called them “a gang of poncy little masturbators” and added: “I pity the poor bastards who have to watch them”.

Take a look at these images…

They looks like they could have been taken at three entirely different locations, in different eras perhaps.

But no, on my wander through the city on Saturday, I saw this.

How old is that building? It looks like something from them days, when Dickens was around. It looks like it’s ready for falling into the river. No idea what it is, but I liked the bricks.

Anyway, not much else to report, other than my new lens.

It’s a Sigma 10-20mm f/4-5.6 USM etc, etc, wide angle thingy. It kicks asssssss. I figured I could get some pretty decent shots with this baby and it just about completes my lens collection… I think… although, hrrrm, yes, it’ll probably do.

This is the sort of effect you get with a wide angle lens – see what it does to the clouds, how it makes it seem as though they’re rushing to/from the horizon?

Anyway, we hope to be saying a fond farewell to that field in the coming weeks. It’s nice for walking Rocky, but it’s a total pain in the arse when you get the local numpties riding motorbikes on there like total lunatics; plus the fools who set fire to anything that moves on bonfire night.

There’s a “residents association” that was formed when the field came under threat of somebody who wanted to build a couple of football fields and changing facilities on one half of it. I thought this would’ve been a decent use of the space and would still have left plenty of room for the dog walkers, etc, etc. But their protests were successful and the field remains as it was. They now do things like make suggestions for the best use of the field; like planting trees, although I don’t know what powers or permissions they have to do this, if any.

So they’re really handy when the local youths are tearing around like chimps on their motorbikes and quad bikes; they always come out to challenge them and see them off… by planting a shrub or something.

But hey at least they try. Whereas I stand back and do something useless like phoning the Police, who came in time to see the little shits off yesterday.

So HURRAH! for Greater Manchester Police… until they piss me off again.