Back to work tomorrow after my Christmas break.

Bollocks to it.

“Hey Tina, Happy Ne..” THWACK!

It may snow tomorrow too. Joy. Snow on a work day is bollocks.

F
E
D

U
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A wonderfully lazy Saturday morning had seen Trump force me out of bed at 10am. I didn’t want to get up, I was still tired, but she made me. After taking a couple of hours to come round, I realised that Rocky was restless, so I took him for a wander.

He’s hopeless at walking on a lead; choosing to pull and half choke himself, resulting in him wheezing, grunting and ultimately throwing up (spray collar to come). Anyhoo, I didn’t care as I was accompanied by music from my wonder-gadget, so I just plodded along, allowing him to sniff, leap at crows that was hundreds of metres away, wee, sniff, pull, poo – dog things.

As we pootled along, a little girl on a bike approached, as she neared, I saw that she was saying something to me. For fuck’s sake, I’ve been walking this dog for months and no fucker has spoken a word and now that I choose to listen to some music on my walk, I am bothered by a child seeking my attention! I removed the earphones. She was pleasant enough and very polite. She asked if she could pet Rocky. Of course she could, but I warned that he might want to jump on her velour trousers (how very oo-la-la we are in Levenshulme!) because he gets excited with the attention but that he had muddy feet and so she should be careful. At this point, he vommed up a few swollen dog biscuits in front of her.

“He does that because he pulls on his lead”, I told her.

She wasn’t too keen to pet him after that.

We continued our journey and the wind picked up like a bugger. It sent him bonkers; he pulled, leaped, spun round in the air. I noticed another couple approaching, then as they passed, the man said something to me. I didn’t understand because I had my earphones in so I removed them. He repeated what he’d said and I still didn’t understand because he was Irish or something weird.

“Sorry?”

“How old is dat dog?”

“Eight months”

“Dat dog ‘as disdemper! You can tell from da noise he’s makin’ from ‘s troat.”

“Oh no, he’s fine, he’s just choking because he pulls on his lead too hard”

“Does ‘e ‘av all ‘is jabz?” He gesticulated an injecting motion.

“Oh yes, he’s fully vaccinated. He’s fine”

We continued our journey.

Mr tambourine man
I think I’m going to develop a new skill. Nothing particularly useful or “transferable”, but something fun. Something that will make me stand out at a party. I’m going to learn to play the tambourine and bongos. Perhaps I could be a mercenary for the Salvation Army.

Noise reducing
I bought some in-ear, noise-reducing earphones today. You know the sort that prevent others being annoyed by the tst-tst-tst noise that usually emanates from people with iPods? Anyway, they’re really good, but they feel quite weird, a bit like they’re going to come out through the back of my throat.

People might make the mistake of thinking I have distemper. Or just a temper.

Dinner for one
Apparently, it costs $14CDN to send a box of Kraft dinners from Canada to Barnsley. But did you know that you can get Canadian delicacies from the Canada Shop Online? Here, you can buy Kraft Dinner original or spirals for £1.95. I’d better stock up for when April gets here. I want to make Manchester a home from home for her. Things I need to arrange:

• Somebody to keep her warm at night
• Telephone local donkey sanctuary to see if they’ll lend me one of their residents for a day or two
• Finest Canadian cuisine
• Kraft dinner
• Bicks pickles
• Lays crisps (chips, whatever the fuck they call ’em)
• Must remember to buy some Twiglets for her to try
• All washed down with some Clamato
• Sporting activity
• Waterskiing down the Ship Canal
• Hoodie clubbing in Gorton

Oh yes, we’re going to have so much fun! I wonder how she’ll cope with being taken out in the big city? Probably something like Crocodile Dundee with foul language.

“Oh my God, this really random thing happened. There was this random guy who was really cute and we got together and it was so random!”

I once worked with somebody who spoke like that. It was almost ironic the way she randomly inserted the word “random” into her sentences.

In some respects, despite the general structure to our daily lives, many occurrences might be attributed to random chance, although not entirely. There are certain constraints that apply, depending on location, time of day, time of year, time of month.

So I guess things aren’t so random afterall. Like having music on random play on your MP3 player or PC’s media player. It’s never random is it? With a thousand tracks on my new media player, and the player set to shuffle, how does it manage to keep playing the same song? Weird.

Oh, did I drop a hint? Yes, Father Christmas spoiled me rotten this year and I got so many wonderful presents from lots of lovely people. Ruined, that’s me. Top gift, techno-wise, was a Creative Zen media player. Not an iPod, a Creative. And it’s great. Does it play MP3s? Yes! Does it play videos? Yes! Does it play WMAs? Yes! Would an iPod? Er, nope. Has it got a radio? Yes. Does the iPod? Don’t think so! Has it got a slot for an SD card? Yes. Does the iPod? Does it bollocks.

Creative wins hands down.

Christmas cheers
I had quite a few liqueur chocolates this Christmas. Being a non-drinker, these made me quite tipsy. Lovely.

Christmas was nice. I spent it between the Sniffy homestead and Trump’s family home, it was lovely. Lovely. Lovely.

I love Christmas.

Now, how do I avoid New Year?

Happy holidays
Apparently, our MPs have said again that we in the UK should have an extra bank holiday, since our European neighbours all have more than us.

They say this every year in the middle of winter to make us feel a bit better about the shit weather and the dark. They also say it in the middle of a couple of bank holidays, so as it doesn’t hit as hard as if it was mentioned sometime in October. Cunts.

Merry Christmas!

Yep, just one more get up to go before I break up for Christmas, then I’m off until the 3rd of January.

Thank fuck!

Did my Christmas shopping in Manchester this evening; it was pleasantly quiet. I wandered around the shops looking for inspiration, but didn’t find much. So it was something smelly from Boots for my brother, something smelly from Selfridge’s for Bomb, a jumper type thing for my dad from Marks’s, a toy for Little Con, something for the in-laws.

Hrrrm, that’s a tricky one. I ended up in Lush and my olfactory senses were immediately assaulted with the overpowering odours of soap that smells of foodstuff… mainly because the soap is made of foodstuff. I couldn’t distinguish one thing from another so I gave up on that one. Rubbish.

There’s so much pressure, and it’s all so easy, to spend loads of money on crap that you don’t need. As I queued for the tills in the shops I visited, I looked at the items for sale, all especially packaged to be sold as Christmas presents. By Monday lunchtime, they’ll be a third of the price. I’m tempted to nip into town on Monday lunchtime, but STOP! It’s all tat! there’s no need to even consider buying any of that stuff… apart from perhaps the puppy chaise longue I saw. Rocky would look the biz on one of those.

Trump bought herself a new games console. She’s doing skateboarding now. I’m sure it’s much easier to do the real thing, judging by the complexity of controls. The soundtrack to most of these games consists of hard rock music and shouting, or hip hop. It’s no wonder kids are mental.

I’m thinking of having a sweepstake on the outcome of providing leftover beany veg and pasta soup to a little doggy. How many hours before he shits himself on the new carpet? I’m going for five.

The things you do when you can’t be arsed to empty the slops into the bin when you know the collections are going to be erratic next week.

There’s a fucking huge bluebottle buzzing around the living room. It’s been struggling to get about zero for the past ten days and there’s a blue bottle in here. Outraged!

You scumbag, you maggot, you cheap lousy cunt!
Radio 1 here tried to censor one of the finest Christmas songs of the modern era today. They’d backed down by 5.30pm.

The Pogues and Kirsty McColl’s Fairytale of New York, twenty years old; twenty years of a song that tells the story of a squabbling couple at Christmas; twenty years of people of my age thinking fondly of all the times they’d heard it, all those associations.

In all those twenty years, I had never thought the song was offensive, I’m sure nobody else had either. The most offensive thing about it is Shane McGowan’s face.

Yes, faggot can be used in an offensive way, as can so many words, but the problem with political correctness is that it generally means there’s a bunch of white, well-educated, middle class numpties scouring the globe for things that they think people who they’ve never met might or should find offensive. I find political correctness utterly offensive. How dare people be offended on others’ behalf without even asking them.

Patronising CUNTS!

Tell you what, why not be grown ups and let people just get on with stuff and if somebody finds it offensive, then address why that is if and when it happens?

And the bells were ringing out for Winterval!

Rocky around the Christmas tree
Here’s Rocky in his outfit for Christmas Day. Cool eh? One of my friends said he looks a little camp. I think he looks like he should be supping a martini: licked, not stirred.

He’s so handsome!

Well, faced with the alternative of reading The Observer magazine supplements and their incessant bombardment of ethical living, I thought that contributing to my blog would be the best option prior to turning in this Sunday evening.

FIVE MORE WORK GET UPS TO GO!

Thank fuck.

I have been very tired and a bit down in the dumps of late. The lack of summer and now the long darkness of winter have had an adverse effect on my mood. As such, I am lacking in motivation for many things.

Still, it’s nearly Christmas. Yay, and all that.

Oh for the excitement of bygone years. Now I just look forward to Christmas for the time off work with Trump and my Mum’s Christmas dinner. In the future, with any luck, we’ll be looking forward to resurrecting the excitement.

I’m planning on having dinner parties if and when we get to buy our little house near the hills. But who would you invite? An occupational hazard of being queer and having queer friends is that they tend to be a bit liberal and, horror of horrors, vegetarian… arriving at the door with strict ethical principles instead of a bottle of plonk. You’d try to impress them with simple but tasty cooking and they’d insist on checking the source of all the components – “Is it organic and free trade?”

“Well, no, but it’s cheap and it tastes nice, so eat it, el fucko!”

I don’t think we’d ever get to the coffee, what with my insistence on using either Illy or Lavazza.

Tap water OK, or do United Utilities exploit their workforce too much?

I was out on my Christmas do with my colleagues on Friday night. It was excellent. I sat opposite my manager, the one who outed me a few years back. She was telling me what she’d bought for her partner’s birthday presents and told me that she’d only given “ethical” gifts. As I shouted a disparaging “Oh, for fuck’s sake!”, she cut in and explained “No well, ethical means that I buy things that she wants and will enjoy.”

Hang on a minute, so ethical presents are things that people actually want? Well, I’ve been trying to do that for years! But you don’t want to go as far as getting a list from the recipient so they know what they’re getting – you might as well just give them the cash.

For goodness sake.

Or you could always buy a cow for some village in the back of beyond where the locals end up sacrificing the poor thing and smearing themselves in the blood in the name of some backward religion.

But that’s Barnsley for you I suppose.

I’m sorry, but if I’m not spending money on my loved ones, I’m spending the money on me… and gadgets, which I need far more than some heathen in a hot place needs fresh water!

But back to the Christmas do. I wasn’t drinking, of course, but my colleagues were and my manager showed no inhibitions in front of her team. Good on her! We tried the normal pubs in Manchester, but they were packed, so we ended up making our way to Canal Street. She kept trying to make me dance, I was having none of it. I don’t do dancing anymore. And it didn’t seem appropriate somehow.

I really hate dancing now that I don’t drink. It just seems like one of those activities that you should only engage in when you’re totally off your tits. Same as job interviews I suppose; much easier to deal with (both during and afterwards) if you’re shitfaced during the experience.

SAD
I’m sure I suffer from seasonal affective disorder. I really feel rubbish from the end of August to the beginning of April. For my birthday, I’m going to insist on a SAD lamp. They’re a bit expensive, so I might have to slum it with a couple of torches strapped to my eyeballs.

And, along with the possibility of buying a bungalow, so begins the decline of wanting things from the Sunday newspaper supplements (not The Observer, obviously – I’d end up with a cow in Darfur).

Filth!

Anyway, what’s been going on? Oh, the usual… it’s getting freezing-my-tits-off cold now. And it’s dark to match as we descend into the depths of winter. Bums.

Trump may have found a buyer for her house. This would be amazing and great, but I’m not counting chickens.

I’ve forgotten how to type.

I’m trying to remember what I was going to blog about, but Trump is playing maniacally on her Nintendo DS. It sounds like a Super Mario game. I like the way she does the sound effects. I have convinced myself that it’s endearing.

She sometimes plays on her DS at bedtime, this isn’t nearly as irritating having to listen to BBC Radio 4, which I despise. It’s politics 90% of the time. People droning on and on and on. It’s maddening. Last night it wasn’t politics, it was some woman with the poshest voice ever talking about one thing after another, seemingly without paragraphs; cooking, travel, knitting all sorts of things in a plum in her mouth monotone.

And then the relief.

A lull in the talking and the sound of Sailing by started. I was relaxed in an instance. This piece of music transports the listener the deck of a boat, drifting in a slight summer’s breeze. It is lovely and is used to introduce the Shipping Forecast every night. The forecast itself is enough to send me to sleep happy.

With all the digital channels that the BBC has, why can’t it give one over to have the shipping forecast and Sailing By on loop, 24 hr a day? Perhaps inter-dispersed with a few numbers station broadcasts from the Lincolnshire Poacher.

It’d be far more entertaining than most of the utter shite they churn out. It pisses me off that they think they can get away with producing self-indulgent rubbish because they don’t have commercial sponsors to answer to. The other day on 6 Music, listeners were subjected to a good ten minutes of tuneless noise, simply because they could play it. Arseholes.

Childless benefit
AT LAST there’s some benefit from the tax man for not having kids. After ten years of being screwed over time and again for the sake of people who keep breeding, those of us without kids are smiling. HA HA HA!!!

Well done Gordon!

I went shopping with Trump and her mum yesterday. Of course, there being 25% off everything at Debenhams meant that I simply HAD to buy a suit jacket for £60 and a leather jacket for £160! Tit. Still, £165 instead of £220 is a bargain as far as I’m concerned.

And I’ve put a claim in for my last six months’ worth of petrol expenses, so that should cover it.

I nipped into Poundland to have a look at the batteries, picked up a pack of 15AAs and took them to the till. “Can you do a price check on these please?” I enquired of the teenage assistant at the counter. She looked at me with disgust: “A pound?”. Oh yeah, of course, silly me.

Now then, what the fuck was I going to blog about? There was something interesting…

Spirito di Connie
My new car isn’t a Fiat Punto (hence “Spirito di Punto” reference), it’s a Nissan (no difference there then) Almera (big difference there!), which is OK and it has some nice features that the Primera didn’t. One such thing that you’d think would be quite handy is parking sensors – really useful for a nob like me who tends to use her rear bumper as a parking sensor. Anyway, rear parking sensors are so fucking annoying; they’re the electronic equivalent to having your elderly mum sat in the bag, going on at you:

Beep! “Oh look you’re going backwards, be careful now!”

You edge backwards slowly:

Beep, beep, beep “Hrrm, I’m getting a bit nervous now, don’t you think you’ve gone back far enough? I’m sure you can stop here, it’s fine here.”

But you know damn well that you’ve got miles of room behind you, so you keep going:

BEEP, BEEP, BEEP (rapidly) “Now, this isn’t funny! I wish you’d just stop, please. I’m coming over all unnecessary”

Oh fuck off, there’s acres of bloody space (not that I’d ever tell Connie to fuck off!):

BEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEP!!!!!!!!!!!!!! “You. Have. Killed. Me!”

House doctor
Trump’s house is on the market. We’ve been redecorating, getting new carpets, trying to de-clutter. There is a viewing tomorrow; me and Rocky have to get out of the way while people are being shown around. Trump has been instructed to tell viewers that her husband is dead (not as in “He is dead to me” because that wouldn’t give the right impression) and that she wants to move out to be close to her elderly parents – things that sound good to certain prospective buyers.

Got to do a sweep of the house to remove stray pairs of knickers from here and there.

Northern Lights
A few years ago, a talented British author wrote a trilogy. A masterpiece called His Dark Materials. The first book was called Northern Lights. There’s a film out on 5th December called the Golden Compass; Northern Lights as it was published in the States. Why did they have to change the name of it? The story is about the Northern Lights, Lyra’s journey there and stuff. Yes, the alethiometer is very important to the story, but it’s not even called a golden fucking compass. For fuck’s sake. Anyway, the film looks really good, so I’m going to go and see it.

Stranger than fiction
This is a good film too. I really recommend it. Emma Thompson is brilliant in it.

Still can’t remember what I was going to blog about, but it was something that got me really annoyed.

I’m not sure I like mobster films, but I love The Sopranos. It’s been the same old scenario whereby I encounter a TV phenomenon as it’s coming to its conclusion. I did the same with Spaced, Frasier, Friends and now I’m currently watching The Sopranos on DVD. It’s not a bad thing. At least this way, I can get it all over and done with relatively quickly and get on with my life, without having to wait for them to make the programme first.

But yeah, mobsters. Having an Italian dad, I’ve often wondered what it would’ve been like if he’d been on slightly the wrong side of the tracks. Fucking brilliant I bet. Imagine having a mob leader for a dad! A phonecall here, a quick word in the ear there, all problems sorted. The nearest we get is him being greeted with a respectful handshake and bowed head at the local Italian restaurant: “Good evening, Mr Donato, I have a fine table for you just here, not too draughty.”

The thing I can’t cope with in gangster films is all the characters, most of them called Paulie or Sal. It’s all too confusing, especially when you can’t hear what they’re saying with they’re mouths full of manicotti and peanuts.

Wiidow
That’s what I am. Trump has rekindled her love for Zelda on the Wii. She doesn’t half shout and swear a lot when she’s playing these games. And here’s me thinking they’re supposed to be fun and relaxing.

The music is quite sinister. It’s making me a bit scared, what with the sounds of running feet and swishing of swords. Her character keeps getting killed, you don’t get that in Wii Sports. I wonder if she’d do better if I made her a little outfit to wear, might help her be the main character.

I don’t think the main character is called Zelda, I think this is Link, although it could be called “You stupid fucking twat!”, from what I can gather.

From what I understand, the Wii will be in short supply yet again this Christmas. Fucking brilliant marketing ploy from Nintendo, as with others; let the whispers out now that stocks are low and hey presto, everyone rushes out to buy the must have present.

It is a brilliant console though.

Clever puppy
I got in from work this evening to discover that Rocky had destroyed: a rental DVD; bank statement; postcard; car insurance correspondence. He has abandonment issues. He also has cat issues, slipper issues, vacuum cleaner issues and Asda puppy food issues.

He doesn’t have any girl issues since we had him castrated a couple of weeks ago. That’s nothing compared to what we have planned for him for Christmas – dinner jacket and bow tie!

And he likes to pretend he’s pack leader. I don’t think so!

It’s been a while, but that just about sums things up.

Things have been busy, to the point that it feels a little out of control. Stuff going on, decorating bits of Trump’s house, getting my car written off, dealing with that, having to buy a new car, shit like that.

But there’s always one constant that comes back to haunt and taunt me every few years: power tools.

I fucking hate drilling holes in walls for the purposes of screwing things to said wall. You see folk on DIY programmes on the telly; drill hole, insert wall plug; screw bracket – or whatever – to the wall. LIARS!

In Sniffy’s experience, it works this way:

• Climb up rickety ladder
• Take the thing that’s to be fixed to the wall and mark screw holes on the wall
• Take drill, and select a masonry bit that matches the diameter of the wall plug
• Climb up ladder
• Climb down ladder
• Plug the drill in
• Climb back up ladder, position drill bit on the screw mark and start drilling
• Compose yourself, attempt to patch up the wallpaper that’s been ripped up by the wandering drill bit, FIRMLY position the drill bit a the site where the hole is supposed to be, then start drilling
• Climb down ladder, find wall plug
• Climb up ladder, attempt to insert wall plug into freshly drilled hole, curse
• Retrieve drill and drill into the existing hole, wiggling it about to widen the opening
• Use a hammer to knock the wall plug into place
• Repeat for hole number two
• Take bracket and position over newly drilled holes, with wall plugs inserted
• Ponder how the holes can’t be in the right position after all that planning
• Curse
• Screw into one hole, hammer into the other

I won’t go into the palaver of fixing the other bracket to a plaster board wall, but let’s just say that it’s a miracle how a shower curtain rail can be held in place with a solitary screw and half a tube of No-nails.

And why is it that the colour on the outside of a can of paint NEVER matches how it looks when it’s on the wall? The bathroom is now the colour of mint ice cream, as opposed to the more earthier pale sage colour that appeared on the can. I don’t understand why they even bother putting those little coloured labels on at all. They should call the whole range Russian roulette or Tin of Tombola because what you end up with is a total lottery.

I suppose it serves me right from migrating from magnolia or natural hessian.

DIY is crapola ultima.

Rubbish.

Gadget schmadget
Having to get a new car has its ups and downs. I’m now driving something newer, with a rear windscreen wiper that works and an accelerator as smooth as anything. It’s also nice having new bits to play with – mainly the stereo and climate control system – but also playing mind games with the rear parking sensors. On the downside, I’m down on half a litre of engine capacity, I’m in a smaller car with less power and no CD changer, just the single CD slot. Bums, eh?

For a while, I’ve wondered why car stereos don’t come with a USB slot for use with a flash drive MP3 player. It seems obvious to me. Imagine having 4GB of music for Trump to skip every track?

Mistletoe and why?
Christmas is around the corner, Cliff has his 2008 calendar out. Jesus.

Something else for the ladies
As if the lovely Peter Pants of Pop wasn’t enough, here’s something else for all hot-blooded women to consider: have you ever managed to put two tampons in at the same time? I did it yesterday – not deliberately, obviously. It was really uncomfortable for a couple of hours and I couldn’t quite put my finger on it, so to speak. Imagine my surprise when I came to powder my nose…

I wonder how many I could fit up there. It’d be a bit like those competitions where people see how many basketball players can be squished into a Mini. I suppose it depends on what format they took. I mean, you could fit quite a few in if you hacked them up into bits then liquidised them first.