Trump has been slightly concerned that, moving to Rochdale, we’ll be leaving behind our cosmopolitan lifestyle (yes, in Levenshulme), or perhaps she means bohemian. For all its faults, Levenshulme has three things going for it:

1. Proximity to the city and work (for me)
2. Village stores on the corner
3. Isis cafe

And that is it.

However, Trump feels that we might be rather conspicuous as a gay couple in the suburbs and she might be right. Will the only gays be hounded out? I think most people just keep themselves to themselves these days and don’t really bother about their neighbours so long as they don’t piss them off. I’ve been warned.

Anyway, Trump went to do the snagging visit at Bellend Towers this afternoon. It turned out to be a full training session on how to use everything in the house (I knew I should’ve gone with her), but she happened to meet the neighbours. We’d seen one bloke there on a couple of occasions – he has two dogs – and this afternoon, Trump met his boyfriend.

Cheers to queers!

Turkey breast
I bought a new lady shave today. The other one bust and things were getting out of hand in my ladygarden. It had reached the point where I might have been asked to produce a licence for my trouser pet. Anyway, anyway, I finally tackled my unruly bush, but I think I went a bit too far and I’ve been left with something that looks like the badly plucked breast of a ginger turkey.

It’ll grow back.

Cleansed
Rather than going to the GP to get my chronic sinus problem sorted, I decided to go to Ebay NHS Trust and seek treatment for my blocked tubes. I found this:

This is a “neti pot”. What you do is dissolve some of the Sinucleanse solution (sodium chloride and bicarbonate of soda) in lukewarm tapwater, then shove the spout up one nostril, tilt your head, breathe through your mouth let gravity do its thing – the solution goes in one nostril and out the other, thus:

Insert

Tilt

Flow

Does it work? Well, I have been feeling slightly better these past couple of days, but I still get the feeling that there’s something growing high up in one of my sinuses, so we’ll wait and see. I always have a desire to stick a probe up my nose and have a good poke about to see what I can pull out. But in terms of entertainment, this is brilliant and everyone should try it.

Next week, Sniffy provides a step by step presentation of her high colonic irrigation.

Most of the things I cook involve two pans: one for cooking something in boiling salted water (pasta, rice); one for cooking a sauce (curry, chilli, bolognese, etc). Most of the things I cook start with me peeling an onion.

The first act in the preparation of 80% of my main meals gets me really, really annoyed.

Onions. They either have a tissue-thin skin that comes off in the tiniest bits, or you find that the first five layers of onion are bad and have to be removed with the skin; leaving usable onion amounting to something the size of a pickle. So then you have to peel another of the fuckers, by which time your eyes are streaming and nose is dripping.

If only the chippy wasn’t still shut. Where the hell have they gone? I really hope they weren’t on holiday in Szechuan when the earthquake hit. Then again, we’ll be moving soon anyway, so it won’t matter whether they’re dead in a hellish nightmare of a natural disaster.

And, back to peelings, is there an easy way to peel a hard boiled egg? There must be some method to getting the shells off without digging your nails into the eggy whiteness; it doesn’t lend itself to good presentation. Or hygiene.

Heathens in hot places
Very hot places, in fact. It seems that Kenya has a problem with witchcraft and this makes people think they have the right to burn elderly people to death.

Trump’s response to seeing that was “what fucking century are we living in?”. Indeed, it seems that there increasing numbers of total fucking lunatics on this planet and, what’s even more worrying is that they tend to breed faster than the rest of us. We’ll be over-run with religious nutcases in a generation.

Cadbury’s chocolate digestives
I bought some of these last night, thinking they were McVities. They’re OK in an emergency, but not as nice as McVities.

We had to go to Tesco this afternoon. Needing a paper shredder, we figured it’d be better if we went to a Tesco Extra (wider range of stock) so we headed off to the big one in Portwood.

I don’t know what it is about this particular store, but it just drains me of my will to live; me and Trump always end up getting into a strop there too. This usually happens at the fruit and veg section, but today, tempers started to rise by the time we got to shampoo. By the time I got to fruit and veg, I wanted to kill. I wanted to kill everybody.

The fruit and veg section is never helped by a lot of aisle space being taken up by cages being left all over the place, but the people who dawdle and make passage from one end to the other absolutely impossible. And it’s not even worth thinking about actually trying to pick up any veg because of peoples’ trolleys blocking the shelves.

Today, my progress was blocked by the entire width of the aisle being filled with people, trolleys, children, walking at 0.2 miles per year. Why aren’t you allowed to run at them really quickly and ram a trolley into the backs of their legs?

And then there are the children: pushing trolleys (sideways); walking alongside their parents, taking up space; standing in the way; screaming; breathing.

Fuck.

The only compensation is knowing that I don’t have to go home with the little shits.

Cilantro is what the Americans call the leaf of the coriander plant – it makes sense and saves confusion between the green bit and the seeds.

Coriander leaf is a major component of Asian and Oriental cooking, it adds a pungent, fragrant flavour to dishes that I really enjoy. I love coriander, but coriander doesn’t like me!

Apparently, coriander is an aphrodisiac (weh-hey!), but also a laxative (ah). I must admit that I’ve never experienced its aphrodisiac effects, but I often fall victim to its laxative properties. Yes, I love curries, but I find that within an hour or so of finishing, my guts start churning…

… and then I shit myself.

Without fail.

Annoying eh?

People who understand databases are weird
I’m trying to write a simple database. I can’t do it. I think people who understand databases can also do cryptic crosswords. In fact, the workings of a database must be something akin to Lyra’s alethiometer in the Dark Materials trilogy: lots of different overlapping planes of information all linked by jiggery-pokery and squinting.

Bah!

Bover?
I said I’d mow my parents’ lawn tomorrow. Groan. Of course, Bell-end Towers has a lawn, and this means we’ll have to buy a mower. But the choice! I’m inclined to go for a hover mower, simply because it feels like you’re mowing the lawn with a space ship – how cool is that?

Something like this wouldn’t be any good because it it’d be too big to get into the corners of lawn and it doesn’t have a grass collector.

Rocky’s beard is a bit long.

That’s him with his seatbelt on

When he got shaved the other month, the only things to survive were his eyebrows and beard. The rest of his fur has grown back, and his beard jest kept on growing too.

Him having a long beard wouldn’t normally present a problem, but we’ve gone back to Gravy Bites for his dinners, which he loves. He uses the gravy to condition his beard:

Goo!

It’s like having a little furry leper in the house after he’s had his tea; both of us try to avoid him, prevent him from coming near us and smearing his tripiness on us.

At least he’s not a toddler – they’re always full of snot and slobber and stickiness. Manky little bastards. I’m sure that between the ages of 8 months and 5 years, all children constantly have snot dribbles on their top lips. Disgusting.

I fail to see the attraction in them.

How do I tell my sister??? As much as I love my little niece, it makes me feel a bit queezy to go near her; she’s had a cold and terrible bogies since she started nursery in November.

Children: disease-carrying parasites or bringers of joy and pensions?

Cold

After a couple of weeks of lovely warm weather, it’s gone quite nippy again. Brrrrrrrrrrrrr.

Things are exciting!

Me and Trump signed the contract for Bellend Towers today. Trump’s already bought a house, I’ve never done this before; it feels a bit odd, but great. A little place for us and our menagerie (and menorrhoea) up in Rochdale, away from the ghetto and towards greenery.

We have a canal running outside our front door. It’s the same canal that runs into Manchester, to Canal Street where the queers are. In the other direction, it runs to Todmorden and Hebden Bridge, where there are even more queers – it’s where lesbians go to let their toe hair grow and retire in Camper sandals and camper vans.

I’m considering buying a jet-ski to get to work. Although a scooter might be more economical and less damp.

Bellend Towers has three places to wee (not including the canal or kitchen sink), two to poo (we’re not allowing solids in the downstairs lav). This is a little excessive I feel, especially since there are only two of us and we never allow visitors, but hey, that’s modern homes for you.

Everything is beige. I can live with this, although it is rather like living in a tub of margarine. We didn’t choose the light fittings (then again, we don’t have to pay for them either) and we have a huge fuck-off, twelve-lamp, chandelier in the main bedroom. That’ll be nice, having our retinas blown out by having that put on first thing in the morning.

How did we come about acquiring this property? Well here’s how to do it:

1. Put your house on the market, but get fed up of not being able to sell it because you’re trying to sell in an area where only total idiots seem to want to buy;
2. Happen up new developments in the same area where you were looking to buy, decide to check out Persimmon’s coach houses;
3. Drive to Rochdale;
4. Find development, drive in, wander into sales office and look bemused at the house types: “Don’t you have two types of coach house?”
5. Encounter Carole, the shortest, yet most powerful saleswoman on the planet, “No, just the one, well, the foundation’s only just gone down, but it’s a belting property”
6. “Oh, we thought you had two types…. Oh hang on, we were looking at Persimmon, this is Bellway! But oh, right, you do part exchanges do you?”
7. Find out that we can’t a part ex for a coach house, “But go and have a look at a Hamilton, it’ll show you the build quality and kind of finishes we do. Check out Plot 9”
8. “…Hrrrm, this is actually quite nice, and with the part ex and discounts….”

Two months later and we’re almost moved in. I think I’ve signed all that I need to, I might go on holiday and leave Trump to do the packing and moving.

I started my new job today. It’s nice. My new boss had a jiddy fit. It was OK.

Spring is with us and there’s no doubt about it. Just a few weeks ago, we were suffering very cold spells and overnight frosts; just three weeks ago, I had to rid my car’s windscreen of ice before I could drive it to work.

Now, we’re basking in sunshine and temperatures of 19°C, rising to 23°C by the end of the week (a good temperature for July over here). This has brought out the daisies and dandelion wet the beds (more later) on the field at the back of Tumpsniffer Towers. The fine weather has also brought out the children and families who play there.

Kids playing football, kids playing cricket. No bother, just enjoying themselves and getting hot and sticky before teatime. There’s no better way of enjoying your evening meal other than red in the face, head pounding, sweaty and covered in dirt and grass stains. Good for them.

On closer inspection, one thing becomes apparent: cricket is played exclusively by the Asian kids; football by the white ones. No black children are there; they’re probably doing their homework under threat of death from their mums.

I wonder why Asian folk don’t seem to play football. Cricket is such a shit sport: five days to play a game; you stop for tea; stop if it goes a bit dark or wet; five days to play a game and you can still get a draw! What sort of nonsense is that? Make them play in the rain, that’d make it a bit interesting at least.

Ongoing sagas
Since starting this blog, I have on numerous occasions, made mention of my long term battle with contact lenses. I got some new ones through the post this weekend. Firstly, I couldn’t tell which one went in which eye because the only information about this was on a label on the box that had been thrown in the bin. When I finally got them the right way round, the prescription on one of them is out and I can’t see too well through it.

My right eye aches like a total bastard because I’ve been squinting all day and now I’m getting a headache.

When the moon hits your eye
This filled me with glee. I always give those face on speed cameras the two fingers, but I wish I could persuade Trump to do this.

Newness
Orange phoned me up today and told me they were changing my tariff and sending me a new phone. Good old Orange.

Dandelion wet the bed
Dandelions make you wet the bed if you touch them.

Down in Norfolkland last week, we had a lovely pudding; something made with rhubarb and polenta and yoghurt (blame Nigella). It was delish. Trump decided she’d make it for our Sunday tea (no main course – straight to the pud), so I was sent on an errand to buy provisions from the supermarket. “Get custard and bio yoghurt”. Those were the instructions.

I was in an unfamiliar supermarket (Morrison’s in Rochdale) and, not knowing where anything was, or whether the natives were hostile, I felt a little flustered. I finally found the custard, or what I thought was custard – the shelf edge label said “creme anglaise”, but the main product logo was obscured by a sticker, but in the trolley it went, along with the other provisions.

We’ve just had our tea and I was a little disappointed with my expensive, creamy, vanilla custard. Investigating, I removed the “Try me free” sticker that had been obscuring the name on the pot and I read it. It dawned on me that we’d been hoodwinked into buying “Nomoo“, a dairy-free alternative to custard. Try me free, I wouldn’t have tried you at all had I known.

FUCKERS!

How dare they call it “Nice vanilla custard” advertise it as creme anglaise, cover up its real name with a fucking sticker and pretend to be high quality custard when it is in fact, crank food for flip flop-wearing Guardianistas, with the information relating to its crankiness being in the tiniest of shitty writing.

Bastards, ruining my tea. I can feel an e-mail coming on. Morrison’s and NoMoo watch out.

Leave it on the table
I love eating out. We went into Manchester yesterday afternoon. It was quite late when we went in and, since it was approaching teatime and since I’d been starving after finishing my lunch, we decided to eat at Croma in the City Centre.

Croma is lovely; with a simple menu of unassuming appetisers, salads, pizzas and pastas. You know what you’re getting when you go to a Croma, and it’s always great quality and a nice environment.

Yesterday was no different, but when my starter arrived, my hunt around the table for the salt pot led me to realise that none of the tables had either salt or pepper. What? Why the hell not? Just put a salt pot and a black pepper grinder on each table, then you don’t have to yell at the busy waiters to get their attention so they can bring them over.

Just put salt and pepper on the bloody table, for fuck’s sake.

And when he brought it over it was a salt mill, not a salt pot. A salt mill with one setting: coarse. Coarse to the point where they might as well have brought the packet of rock salt to the table.

So, to repeat: table salt in a salt shaker; white pepper in a pepper pot; black pepper in a mill.

And dairy products in my fucking custard!

Neighbours are cocks.

All the parking spaces near here were taken up by the usual hoards of visitors to them over the road last night. I ended up parking outside the house of bling with the intention of moving my car, should a space nearer here come available.

One didn’t, and it wasn’t as if the wind chime obsessed bint couldn’t park relatively near to her property when she got back from wherever she’d been, so I started doing bedtime things at 10.30.

At 10.45pm, there was a knock at the door, trump answered.

“Hello, is that your car [reciting some numbers from my registration]? It’s just that it’s parked outside my house. Can you get him to move it?”

“She. She only parked there because people have parked outside our house. And she’s in bed. But there’s nowhere else to park, look”, Trump indicated at the full road outside the house.

“Well, OK, but don’t let it happen again.”

Stupid fucking cunt. Did she really think that I’d parked there for the sake of it? Did she really expect me, or anyone else, to move a car at 11pm? Was it really such a hardship for her to park behind my car?

I hate people round here; they’re all total fucking retards with either no pride in their homes, or so much that they think we all want to appreciate their awful taste in wind chimes and other ridiculous house jewellery.

This is only a fraction of the shite that she hangs from her house, but you get the picture.

When we finally get out of here, those wind chimes are coming down.

And then I’ll burn her house down.

Lesbosians
I see that people from Lesbos are objecting to the word Lesbian being used to describe gay women rather than people emanating from there. They first want its “gay” use to banned in Greece, and then they’ll take on the rest of the world.

Why don’t they just use their common sense and refer to themselves as “Lesbosians”, or even “Fucktards”?

We’re here…

For now at least.

We’re off home again in the morning after spending the past few days here in Norfolk. It’s been nice. Look, the beach at Wells in sunshine!