Think! Don’t drive and drive.

Think! Don’t drive tired, take a break at the services that just happen to be a mile away and who’ll charge you a fiver for a can of pop.

Think! Don’t let somebody wank you off while you’re doing 90 in the fast lane (but it’s ok if you pull over into hard shoulder).

I’m referring to motorway information signs that we have over here. They can flash up a variety of messages that warn drivers of trouble ahead or, in other circumstances, they’ll just given general road safety messages to attack the conscience of the wayward motorist. Unfortunately, they just cause people to slam on the brakes as drivers automatically think that there’s been an accident up ahead when they see them flashing from a distance. They’re all linked up to a big computer and you can track what each one is saying on the Highways Agency website. I’m not joking – some sad fucker actually thought this was a good idea. I’m sure they’ll go far… in the NHS.

Blah….. Anyway, another useless waste of money from The Ministry for Speaking the Blindingly Fucking Obvious.

Certain things are supposed to be absolutely unacceptable whilst driving: drinking is the main one. Over recent years however, the great British public has got itself whipped up into a right old lather over people using mobile phones while driving. I’ve known of people get so angry at seeing other motorists on the phone that they’ve lost concentration and crashed their own cars.

Britain really is great.

So, and we finally get to the point of this post, we’re either supposed to use a hands-free system of some sort or not use the phone at all while in charge of the car. Fair enough.

My mobile came with a bluetooth earpiece and a little cradle that holds the phone in the car. I was thrilled. However, bluetooth headsets are fucking rubbish. Here is the procedure for using your bluetooth headset for making a call while driving:

1. Get to your car
2. Place phone in cradle, ensuring that bluetooth is activated
3. Retrieve bluetooth earpiece from ashtray of car
4. Press and hold “on” button for 5-10 seconds to turn it on
5. Press the “on” button again to connect to phone: “Connected: crap earpiece” Success!
6. Place earpiece back in ashtray and commence journey
7. Get on motorway and get bored very quickly: decide to see if Trillion has left work and if she fancies a chat on her way home
8. Retrieve crap earpiece from ashtray and balance over ear and slightly in the ear
9. Press “on” button to activate voice dialling
10. “Speak now”
11. “Trillion”
12. Nothing
13. “Trillion”
14. Nothing
15. Press “on” button to end call
16. Press “on” button try again
17. Phone dies
18. Press and hold phone “on” button to turn phone off
19. Press and hold phone “on” button to turn phone on
20. Enter pin
21. ****
22. “Welcome to Orange”
23. Emergency brake to avoid stationary traffic ahead
24. Repeat step 5: “Connected: crap earpiece”
25. Activate voice dialling AGAIN: “Speak now”
26. “Trillion”
27. “Found: Trillion, Dialling: Trillion”
28. “Tum-te-tum… Come on, answer!”
29. “Welcome to Orange answerphone. The person you are calling is not available. Please leave your message after the tone. If you wish to re-record your message, press 1 at any time”
30. Hang up, disconnect crap earpiece and return it to the ashtray
31. Phone rings

I’ve been invited to dinner today – that’s “tea” if you’re from the north of England; as far as I’m concerned, “dinner” is either your midday meal, or an evening meal that you dress up for.

The woman who is in charge of the cooking wanted to know what sort of food that I like. Well, I don’t think I’m particularly fussy, I’ll eat most things, but I’m quite particular about the way things are prepared. I said it would easier for me to tell her what I wouldn’t eat, so I sent her the following, which is reproduced from a post that was written back in March:

There are loads of things that are supposed to be nice or good for you, or so “the mysterious they” tell us. Just who are “they”? Whoever they are, “They’re” responsibile for telling all sorts to the masses.

Anyway, enough of that. People, real people, tell us that certain things are nice and you should try them, but there are certain things that I won’t touch with a bargepole. Here are some of them, starting with foods.

Will not try under any circumstances:

• Cottage cheese: No fucking way; it looks like puke. Next!
• Swede, turnips: What the fuck? You trying to kill me with your root vegetables? NO WAY!! Next!!!
• Muller rice: Absolutely not, no way, not under any circumstances.
• Tinned spaghetti/spaghetti hoops: Hoops! Need I say more?
• Bread sauce: Y’what? I’d never even heard of this pig-swill till a couple of Christmases ago, then I saw some!
• Pringles: All that crunching in the ads and that stupid moustached man on the packaging has put me off.

Have tried, donlikit, don’t want ever again:

• Cooked carrots: Love ’em raw; they turn into evil nasty things when cooked. Next!
• Polenta: Yeeeeuuuchhh. Not nice as a slop, been put off other ways of preparation.
• Tea: Fucking disgusting; the smell makes me want to be sick.
• Lychees: Bell ends that taste like Parma violets. Nasty.
• Cranberries: Come on! You lot who claim to like these little sour bastards are having a laugh aren’t you?
• White cabbage: What’s the point of this stuff?
• Salad cream: What on earth is this crap? Doesn’t even need commenting on. Mayonnaise isn’t much better.
• Coca Cola: Vile.

Things that I’m quite fussy about:

• Peas in things: Lovely on their own, but don’t put them in my bloody curry!
• Mashed potatoes running into my gravy: Better keep it safe and not have any sauce on the same plate as my mash. Shepherds pie can be quite traumatic.
• Things mixed in things: Back to the pea scenario here. Keep stuff separate on my plate or there’ll be trouble.
• Mashed up stuff: Don’t mush my food up. Go ahead and put tuna in my pasta sauce, but keep it chunky; let it go flaky and you’ve ruined the entire meal because I will not eat it!
• Cream sauces on pasta: Don’t be ridiculous.
• Drinks must come in cans (or glass): Don’t bother buying a 2L saver bottle of Pepsi Max because you’re wasting your money. Drinks do not taste the same out of plastic bottles. The only exception is fizzy water.
• Lack of salt: You DO need a bit of salt to bring out the flavour of food. I admit I eat far too much salt, but don’t give me your “no salt is better” crap because you’re just cooking something that won’t taste of anything. And Lo Salt tastes of potassium, it also burns your mouth, it’s horrible.
• Cucumber: Take the skin off!
• Bread: Don’t butter it if you’re making me a sarnie (unless it’s a chip butty, then you need to put plenty on).
• Crisp packets: Red/dark blue = ready salted; pale blue = salt & vinegar; green/yellow = cheese & onion. Not difficult, but Walkers had to fuck it up for everyone.

Easy, n’est pas? Anyway, she’s got the message and we’re having two veggie curries with a grilled haloumi starter. Fuckin’ delish.

Thanks to Andy, I’m now going to tell you about some books and things. This is very difficult for me since I only learnt to read when I was 29.

Here goes…

Total number of books owned, ever
Is this some sort of joke? I’ve no idea, probably around 400-500. I currently have about 200, or is it 80? I really couldn’t say.

In space, no-one can hear you scream.

The same is true of a locked bathroom when you’re sat on the pot for your night-time wee and these fuckers come flying through the window at you:

You may have seen the Sniffy photo-shoot post below. This strange collection was what happened when I tried to click and drag the photo montage from Powerpoint into Photoshop.

Some call this sort of thing “art”, I call it “Photoshop fuck-up”.

When I was a kid, well admittedly even now, my favourite insults to hurl at people generally resort to likening the recipient to a person with some sort of disability. The favourites being:

• Spastic / spaz / spack / spacker / Joey (Deakin, the Blue Peter in-house spastic)
• Mong / mongoloid / mongo
• Windowlicker
• Dur-brain

You get the message.

There was an incident a few years ago when I was doing my PhD and some twat of a security guard had locked one of the lab doors so I couldn’t get access to a particular room when I was working at night. I found the woman and, after a bit of a rant in which she didn’t bother listening to my request to have the door unlocked, I stormed back the lab, and wrote a note with the wording “Do not lock this door, you spastic” to stick on the offending door.

Let’s just say I got a telling off. It was quite amusing to see a photocopy of the note attached to the security guard’s transcript of our coming together. Cunt.

Anyway, I’ve learned my lesson now and I never write down insults, and I never tell people who might get me into trouble that they’re “spastics”.

Political correctness gone mad! I hear the populus cry.

Well, I think we’ve been forced into resurrecting some fantastic Olde Englishe expletives because of this. It’s because of this that I’m now fully justified in using:

• Twat
• Cunt
• Nob’ead
• Dickhead
• Fucker
• Fuckin’, fuckin’, fuckin’, FUCKIN’, TOSSPOT FUCKING TWAT!
• Shithead
• Tosser
• Wanker
• (Shit off you) Shitting shitter

I can say any of those without the slightest bit of concern whatsoever.

Ahhhh, my blood pressure just dropped by a few millimetres of mercury for getting those out of my system. It’s just a shame that women have to degrade themselves by using foul language.

Here are the out-takes from my sniffy photo-shoot. I had to set the camera on self-timer and I also took the opportunity to act like a complete twat in front of the lens, clearly trying my best to emulate Sir Paul McCartney. Thank fuck I didn’t even try to do “sultry”.

“Twat”

BBC SPORT | Tennis | The Tim-ometer

What with BEING AT WORK until 9.30pm, I’ve only just seen this.

Everyone will want one of these once the world knows my name! I might even be able to treat myself to some foundation garments that fit me when I’m famous. Bad bra and too tight top is not a good combination.

What am I hiding? (Not the tops of my massive arms, that’s for sure!)

Mongoloids
Some of the people I work with are complete mongs. As I’ve alluded to, I work across 2 bases, so my week is split 50/50 between them. That’s the theory. In practice I tend to spend more time in one because of the workload, so I only end up coming here (Base 2) one or two days a week.

We have “housekeepers” at Base 2. There are two of these ladies who job share, so they work alternate weeks. I came in this morning and Pam, who’s pretty thick, said “Oh hello, long time no see”, as if to say, “Where the fuck have you been, you lazy cow?”. She obviously failed to realise that it’s her that’s not been here, not me.

I hate being called a part-timer when I work longer hours than any of these bastards. I travel 30-odd miles to get here, arrive at least an hour before everybody else (during which time I blog away to my heart’s content) and they all saunter in at 9.15, complaining about the queues at Asda where they’ve just “nipped in” before coming to work. They then have a go at me for leaving before 5pm, despite the fact that I’ve got an hour’s drive ahead of me.

The world would be a better place without them. Pam doesn’t even make us toast. I think this is because she doesn’t know how to work a toaster, or a loaf of bread. She hasn’t got any eyebrows either.

Hot
Summer’s here in Britain (except Scotland I think). About fucking time too. We’re expecting temperatures of about 24°C today and it’s going to be sunny. I’m ashamed to say that I’m wearing sandals, no socks, and I haven’t even got nail polish on my toes. Disgraceful. My heel skin is in need of a bit of pumicing, but these sandals don’t show heel anyway.

At least I haven’t got my big, fuck-off flabby arms out though!

I do love the summer. I love that inability to control your temperature. It’s wonderful being so uncomfortably hot. Other people can’t cope though. At Base 1, I have to suffer the indignity of Park & Ride to get to work while there’s a huge construction project going on. I was on the bus the other day and this big, massive woman got on, sat next to a colleague of hers and said “I can’t wait till winter, I hate this weather”. I almost turned round and slapped her. If I’d have knocked some of her teeth out, perhaps she wouldn’t be able to stuff her face for a week or so. Consequently she’d lose a bit of weight and the insulation that’s making the ever-so hot 23°C temperatures we’ve had to endure for all of 2 days so fucking unbearable to her! Twat.

For my other thoughts about NHS employees and summer in general, you may wish to cast your mind back to:

Plastic spoons and used teabags, 17th February 2005
Farts, 26th April 2005
Tiger Tim Henman, 4th May 2005
Workplace stress, 13th May 2005
Summer bees, 24th May 2005
Summer madness, 8th June 2005

Periods
In the words of Tina Turner, Women of a certain age… well, I can’t remember what comes after, but all I know is that most women of a certain age (between about 13 and 45) have periods. I’m not getting into the whole menstrual cycle, PMS, butcher’s slab thing – it’s been done to death and it’s not interesting.

Women are a bit funny when they’ve “got the decorators in”: like I said, nearly every woman has periods, but even in a female-dominated workplace, most try to hide the fact when they’re having theirs. Not that I go looking, but there are telltale signs, the biggest one being, taking their handbag to the toilet. I don’t get that. I just get my toxic shock tampon from wherever it’s been mangled in my bag or desk drawer, and I go.

One of the worst things about periods, and ladies’ toilets in general, is the sanitary disposal unit.

These things stink. I don’t know what they use to clean them out, but it’s disgusting. You sometimes knock the foot pedal that opens the flap of doom by accident and you get this waft of death that circulates the entire lav.

Hang on a minute!
Hazlenut flavoured coffeemate? Why haven’t we got this in the UK????

Joke:
Q: What’s better – Parkinsons or Alzheimers?
A: Parkinsons. It’s better to spill half your drink than forget where you put it…