Well, here’s how it’s looking today – it’s regained its shape nicely and you can even see the prescription marks on it. It is currently having a bath in tap water (bottom) and this is having some weird effect in terms of gas exchange from within the lens (see the bubbles?). Zerrrry interestink!

Here we go! I’m not certain that this thing will ever get back into my eye (I’m not that fucking stupid), but we’ll see if it regains its shape after a good soak in the tub.

Water constitutes about 90% of a contact lens’s composition. This is what happens to them when they ping from your finger and land on top of a fluffy radiator, only to be discovered two weeks later when you stand on them in bare feet:

I’m going to try to reconstitute it. A bit like the 6 million dollar man, only for a contact lens worth a fiver.

I’ve got a camera on my phone. The phone is great, but the camera is shit. I was in Carphone Warehouse recently and the sales assistant actually came out with “You can really tell how good a phone is by the quality of its camera”. Surely you can tell how good a camera is by the quality of its camera, but it’s important that a phone has good memory, battery life etc.

Cameras on phones eh?

But still, there are times when you want to capture a moment and a crappy camera on your phone is better than the one you haven’t got.

Here are some things that I’d never have had the opportunity to capture without my phone camera thing.

This one’s very close to my heart. A particular stretch of the M6 motorway on my commute to and from one of my bases was shut for two and a half years up until December last year. It caused misery and chaos for many. This was my last Friday commute home in the roadworks before they reopened the carriageway.

I went with some friends to see a house they were viewing in Norfolk. There was a pond at the house. There were tadpoles in the pond.

These fish live in mine and Trillion’s favourite Indian takeaway: we go there so often they even wave at us.

This is the entrance to my drive at home. There’s a community centre alongside the drive. The twat who abandoned this Rover had at least two metres more space to drive forward into, but decided to overhang the drive. Rover drivers are cunts.

This button operates the door to a bank in the Shopping City in Runcorn; it’s handy for wheelchair users and folk in those scooter things who can’t push. I saw a perfectly able-bodied woman use this instead of pushing the door. How lazy is that? Twat!

Yes, I was in Tesco and I noticed this in the “Outdoor Summer” section. I felt compelled to buy a very solid, very heavy rounders bat after I saw it. Not long now, folks – just 2 weeks till Wimbledon!

Gettin’ off, gettin’ off, while they’re all downstairs… I love that line.

Temp-in bawling tirade: reveals how bigotted gossiping colleagues made her life hell!
Yes, I’m afraid to say that Katherine’s legacy is still very much with us. I had a nice chat with my line manager this morning (the librarian) and she told me that me and my colleagues need to be careful about what we talk about. “I don’t care about people talking about my sexuality, I’m used to it, but others who hear things from your office might not realise that you’re just engaging in banter”.

Apparently, Katherine went back to her temping agency for a meeting to discuss what went wrong with us. She told the chap there (who’s gay and this is obvious even over the phone) that we’d been commenting about people’s sexuality and making nasty remarks about him and our line manager.

The lying, manipulating fucking bitch!

The temp agency man is a real sweetheart and I’ve had a few conversations with him over the phone. After one, I said, “Now he’s a lovely feller, really sweet”. Now Katherine was always trying to gossip about my suitors and it got a bit tiring to be linked with every man I ever spoke to, so she of course butted in “Well, he’s single and you have his number, why don’t you go for it?” to which I responded, “I don’t think he’s my type, I think he likes his mum a bit too much to be interested in me”. You see, she’s such a fucking homophobe that you have to use gentle euphemisms so as not to offend her sensitivities by coming out and saying straight up that somebody is gay (especially if you’re gay too). But that’s all that was said about him and nobody has said a word about our poor line manager’s sexuality.

Lying, mental cow.

It was also pointed out to me today that I’m the only white person working in my office, there are four of us in total. It hadn’t even dawned on me. I really don’t notice these things. Of course I can tell if somebody is black or Asian, but it’d never occurred to me that I was the only white person out of the four of us.

What I do do is take the piss out of one of my colleagues whose parents originally came from Pakistan, call her an al qaeda operative and that sort of thing. Well, you never know!

So yeah, I’m homophobic and I could be mistaken for being a racist bigot too.

Thanks Katherine, you fucking cunt!

(PS Get it? Temp-in bawling, ten pin bowling? There’s no connection, I just thought it was a nice play on words).

Is Sam Black back?

Is she back under another guise?

Zerry, interesstink!

Anyway, my cat, Max, is a clown. Any opportunity to act the goat and he takes it.

Oh fucking hell! Just did a massive post and clicked “publish” and it fucked it up! SHITBUMTITWANKFARTSCUNTINGARSEHOLES!

Well, the sun’s been shining here for two consecutive days, so I guess that means that summer’s finally here with just two weeks left before the days start to get shorter again.

Fab.

Of course, summer brings out the worst in people over here. British folk can’t deal with the sun shining. The following things tend to happen as soon as it gets above 20°C:

• Fat women’s arms are forced on us from everywhere. These aren’t just large arms, they’re large arms with dry, scaly skin, with horrible armpits, with huge flabby bingo wings flapping about underneath the upper arms. Why do fat women wear sleeveless tops? There should be a law against wearing these garments unless you’ve got an licence. Sleeveless tops also reveal unattended armpits and I can’t cope with any armpits so I’ll leave that thought right where it is.
• Hobbit feet. The same type of people who unashamedly expose their upper arms and armpits also expose their disgusting feet: horrible horny, yellow toenails; hairy toes; hard, yellow heel skin. Jesus, where do these freaks come from?
• Legs. No, no, NOOOOOOOOOOO!!!!!!!!!!!!!
• Topless men congregating outside the boozer from 11am. No sun cream, plenty of beer and no food leads to the sort of behaviour I encountered on Sunday night. They finally decide that they should perhaps get something to eat when they’re burnt to a crisp, pissed as farts and suffering from sun stroke. The gathering of these fucking numpties and their bits of skirt (blonde with orange skin) in the local takeaway always leads to trouble when there’s a fight over the last kebab in the shop.
• Cooked-out food: raw on the inside, burnt on the outside and with a slight tinge of lighter fluid – we love our BBQs over here!
• Offensively loud music. Either in cars or through open windows, people can’t help making a racket – usually while burning food on the BBQ and getting pissed on cheap French lager. Of course, the music tends to be so loud that everybody has to shout over it, then the music gets turned up more….
• Shelves stripped of salad veg and bread rolls. Again, the supermaket suppliers simply cannot cope with the demand for lettuce, tomatoes and cucumbers on the two days a year when the sun comes out. However, if you ever attend a barbecue, you’ll notice that all the salad ends up in the bin at the end of the night.
• Lawnmower Man. All the neighbours have ALL the garden power equipment and they have to use it. But you don’t get everybody doing their gardens at the same time to get it over and done with. No, one will be done Saturday morning, another Saturday afternoon, another Sunday morning, another Sunday afternoon. Eventually, there’s a constant whining of electrical or petrol-powered mowers, strimmers and vacuums and above this, there’s the loud music and pissed up people screeching.
• Screaming kids. They hang around in gangs all the time anyway, looking useless and mouthing off to anybody who’s older than them, but in summer, there are more of them and they’re there ALL THE FUCKING TIME! Schools out and so are they and they never go home. They just wander up and down the streets from July to September. Bastards.
• Sunglasses. Wear your sunglasses in the sun – fine! Nip into the shop and keep them on for a minute or two – fine! Do not, not, NOT wear them propped on your head while you’re indoors all fucking day! This particularly grates on me in women over a certain age who also wear normal specs for their work. Fucktards.
• Moth attack. Moths are evil. Those big bastards that lie in wait for when you open the door in the evening are the sporn of Satan, I swear it. They’re HUGE and they buzz and flutter in their drunken way; sort of aiming for a light source, but always managing to knock into you with their weirdness. The worst scenario is when you get trapped in the bathroom with one if you’re having night-time shower or bath, particularly if you have a shower curtain and they get right in there with you.
• Henmaniacs. They’re on their way folks! They’re already revving up at Queens and they’ll be out in full force within a couple of weeks.
• Cliff Richard at Wimbledon. Fuck.

Of course you get jealous of those people with nice convertible cars. My, I bet that’s nice on a warm day. You see though, even with the right climate, I doubt I’d have one for fear of having done to me what I think about doing to drivers of convertibles. Such things include: using my windscreen washers while driving passed (or is it past?) them; aiming litter at them; trying to jump in the back for a bet.

So no, I don’t think I’d have one. I’ll stick to air con. Besides, I’d burn to a crisp within an hour and my hair would never cope.

I do believe I’ve encountered true insanity.

Our temporary secretary at work was finally given the boot yesterday after 3 months of progressively worsening and progressively more insane and irrational behaviour. I’ve mentioned her before, so check out Workplace stress if you want a bit of the background.

Things have become even worse over the last month or so after the arrival of a new colleague, who happens to be a librarian (fancy me having a librarian as a manager – she has short hair, piercings and comfortable shoes to prove it). Well, Katherine the temp, is American, Catholic and completely fucking insane, which is a terrible combination and not a good sign if you’re looking for tolerance. There was a bit of a hoo-har one day last week; apparently Katherine came storming back into the office after an altercation with librarian colleague, mumbling on, and she came out with, “I know she can’t help it if she’s a LEZZZBIAN, but must she really flaunt it about so unashamedly?”. Brilliant. Made me howl. On their own, people like Katherine are just a bit sad and amusing, although in her position, she does have the opportunity to spread quite a lot of poison.

Anyway, our real secretary finally returned yesterday and Katherine wasn’t happy: she see the job as hers and hers alone; she sees the main boss as hers and hers alone, so for Ingrid to come back (despite Katherine’s best efforts to put her off and undermine her) was a great affront to her.

Well, bloody hell, what a nightmare. Katherine was acting very much like somebody who’d had their nose put out of joint by Ingrid’s return and she was impossible from the moment Ingrid walked back through the door.

There was no speaking to her, she wouldn’t do anything, refused point-blank to go and join Ingrid in a handover discussion with our manager. She was behaving like a child. Another colleague pointed out that she’d said something about working in the boss’s office to allow Ingrid to get back to her desk and she rounded her – went mental! I added something to effect that she was acting impossibly and she stormed off, slagging us off to anybody she came along.

Our manager (the librarian) was tearing her hair out and was quite upset and flabbergasted by it all so she decided to tell her to leave (the beauty of temps!). She handled it very well and told Katherine to gather her things and fuck off. And she just got her stuff and left. She accused one colleague of attacking her three times. And she’s going to take legal action against our manager (probably going to try and get her put away for having too many piercings, short hair and being gay). I wonder what she said about me? I really don’t give a flying fuck to tell you the truth.

Fucking deluded, paranoid, mental cow. And she’s going to go off and tell the next people she works with just how awful we all are.

We spent most of the afternoon swapping stories of “Katherine’s Words of Wisdom” that she’d been giving to each of us individually – essentially trying to undermine us and play each of us off against each other. The common theme seemed to be that people shouldn’t try to be like me! I couldn’t agree with her more on that one.

And who said office work was boring?


Menthol as anything
My cat, Otto, likes eating menthol preparations like Vicks and Carmex.

You may have noticed that I’ve added a link so people can e-mail me if they want. It’s supposed to be sort of anonymous so you can’t identify me, but I e-mailed Connie from that account before I thought to change the display name from my real one to my alias. What a dick! Still, I trust Connie because a) she’s lovely, b) she’s thousands of miles away and c) she wouldn’t DREAM of giving out my real name to anybody.

Would you Connie? Nor would Andy, who is very close to where I live. Would you Andy?

But if anybody’s got an idea for something that they’d like me to spout off about, then e-mail me. Or just e-mail if you fancy getting in touch. I’d be thrilled to hear from folk.

How arrogant does that make me seem? VERY! I just like the idea of being given a challlenge to think about from somebody else’s perspective. I do live quite a sheltered life and my own experiences aren’t particularly interesting to post about, but if I’m prompted by somebody else, you never know what might happen.

Yep, I experienced the amazing Tori Amos at her concert in Manchester last night.

I don’t get out much, and rarely go to concerts, so this was quite an event for me. There was lots of tie-dye, corduroy, eye makeup, and long hair. The audience also looked like a librarians’ day out in sections too. Fantastic.

All l I have to say about Tori Amos’s performance is… AWESOME!

It was her, four keyboards (3 organs and a grand) and a mixing desk. She played a two hour set without a break and covered songs from her latest album, The Beekeeper, as well as some others from her previous work.

Here are some photos (sorry, was near the back and wasn’t allowed to use my flash):

Yep, she’s playing two instruments at the same time there

Don’t look back in anger
One part of the show was a break-off into her “Piano Bar” in which she sang a couple of songs by other artists. These were both unbelievable: Oasis’s Don’t look back in anger and good old Favourite things from The Sound of Music (I think that was for all the librarians in the audience – there were plenty). She took this part of the set to have a chat with the audience and this gave her the opportunity to launch into a diatribe against Morrissey. I videod this on my little digicam, so I may transcribe it at some point.



Andy, I’m going to really piss you off by telling you that the two seats in front of where I was sat were empty for the entire show. Their loss. I’m also trying to figure out a way of getting the avi files to you – too big to e-mail.