A terrible smell

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I fear something awful might have happened in cubicle 4 of the ladies’ “facilities” at work.

Generally, on entering the ladies’ to avail myself of the wobbly, splash-sodden toilet seated lavatory in cubicle 3, I always check the doors of the other cubicles to ascertain occupancy levels. You know, just in case there are gases and I feel the need to relieve. Anyway, on one or more occasions last week, I noticed that cubicle 4’s lock indicated that it was engaged. I let my disappointment go unnoticed and continued to my favourite toilet. A couple of times, however, I couldn’t use my favourite toilet because some filthy bitch had left a dirty protest on the actual seat. On the actual fucking seat. How this can even happen is beyond me, other than the culprit hovering over the seat and making a mess without regard for hygiene or even attempting to clean up after themselves. Dirty fuckers. How? How does this even happen?

Back to the point. On each of the occasions when it seemed that cubicle 4 was occupied, I carried on, while listening for signs of life elsewhere in the room. There was none.

Now, usually, I take this as being in one of those uncomfortable situations where another occupant needs to “go”, but is holding back because somebody has walked in and they don’t want to be heard, astwer. This being my assumption, I got on with things, finished up, washed my hands and made an obviously noisy exit as a courtesy to them, letting them know that they could stop crying with pain and carry on.

Anyway (:@)), on my return to work today, female office colleagues were warning of a bad smell from the ladies’ and advising that the disabled facility might be the least offensive option. I don’t fucking think so! I know what people go in there to do and some of them are men! Some of them work in the NHS!!

So, unperturbed, I went about my business in the proper place, but my word! The smell was as if something had crawled into the toilet pan to die, and evacuated every orifice as the life force exited its mortal being. It was horrendous. I noticed that some other user had attempted to mask the smell with a spray of cologne, but as with toilet air fresheners, all this does is produce the nauseating smell of shit and nasty perfume.

I decided to check the cubicles to see if something had been left that needed disposing of. As usual, cubicle 1’s unreliable flush had resulted in some toilet paper that hadn’t fully cleared – got rid of that. Cubicle 2 – fine. Cubicle 3 – (mercifully) fine. Cubicle 4 – locked, but silent. I NEVER venture to cubicle 5 because, well, there be dragons!

Visiting the ladies’ a couple more times today, with the smell as intense as ever, I noticed that cubicle 4 was still locked yet silent.

People seemed happy enough complaining about the stench without doing anything about it, so I reported it to the estates team to deal with. I also checked the BBC News website for reports of missing people, but I might as well have checked a shopping list from last week.

But what if somebody has actually died in there? Won’t I feel bad now after writing this? Not particularly. I’ll stick a red banner on it and call it “BREAKING NEWS”, with live updates from the scene.

What I find remarkable though is that nobody did anything about it. I was off yesterday and apparently it was a bit whiffy then. Why do people just leave it to somebody else to sort out? Because they’re fucktards, that’s why, and that’s one of things that makes me resent spending my time in a place that I have to share with nobheads.

Anyway, if I find that the building has a police cordon around it tomorrow after I’ve struggled through an hour and half of shit traffic to get there, I’ll be pissed off. I should probably have left reporting it until tomorrow, or left somebody else to do it.

Fuck the sad

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Another autocorrect mishap caused by my inability to monitor what my phone is doing against my will.

Screen Shot 2014-10-06 at 19.11.53

What a concept though, “fucking the sad”.  I’d like to think that most of my sexual encounters have been because I’m clearly highly desirable, rather than because people have taken pity on me.

And that’s probably best left there.

I was indeed going to roast a chicken today. It was my plan for October bank holiday Monday, however, given the pain of cleaning the oven after cooking a roast in it, added to Rocky going into meltdown every time there’s the remotest chance of atmospheric particulates hitting any one of my three smoke alarms, I decided against taking the thing from the freezer and went for the safer option of making spicy butternut squash soup instead. [Cue food photo opp]…IMG_8363

I even adorned it with a swirl of olive oil.  Get me.

Ovens

Anyway.  I decided against the chicken because roasting anything means cleaning the oven afterwards (plus the trauma inflicted on the little dog whenever the oven or grill goes on, and no, I don’t burn that much stuff!).  It’s such a massive fag.  The oven isn’t eye-level, so I have to get on hands and knees to spray noxious chemicals on the interior surfaces.  You leave it for ten minutes, then simply “rinse off with a wet cloth or sponge”.

At least that’s what Cif says is supposed to happen.

In real life, any contact with a moist (MOIST) cloth or sponge sends this stuff into a foamy nightmare that is impossible to eradicate.  You spend at least an hour in the confined space, breathing in gaseous sodium hydroxide (probs no such thing, but you catch my drift) as you try to wipe the stuff off before it burns out your eyes and through your Marigolds.  And how on earth are you supposed to clean behind the wire racks that support the oven shelves?  How?  HOW IS THIS DONE?   On more than one occasion, I’ve been tempted to drag the hose in from the yard to water board the bloody thing.  Bad idea: ‘electrics and that.

Once all the remnants of the oven cleaner have been removed (I often just turn the oven on and let it evaporate), there comes the task of dealing with the glass of the oven door.  Now, I am blessed cursed to have two ovens.  My dearest ex decided that the single oven that came with the house simply wasn’t good enough and so she bestowed on me a double oven.  So, along with the psychological scars that I still bear from that relationship, I now have two ovens to maintain.  Thanks a fucking bunch, a million times over.  Anyway, in one of my OCD cleaner moments, I took it upon myself to give the glass of the top oven a thorough cleaning.  This meant removing the panel that faced the oven, removing the rubber seal, and cleaning both.  Needless to say that the rubber seal has never sat in position properly since that, and subsequent cleaning operations and the bloody thing now sags away from its metal rim.  No doubt this causes all sorts of inefficiencies and is a deeper metaphor for something.  It’s definitely a lesson in leaving the fuck alone.

Do people who use Agas suffer the same problems cleaning their ovens as the rest of us? Perhaps they’re too scared to even use their ovens for fear of using the wrong one.  “Oh GOD! I tried slow cooked porridge overnight, but put it in the bread-making oven and had to eat it at 11pm.”  I quite like the idea of having an Aga; that thing of permanent heat, the Russian roulette nature of the cooking.  The only thing is that I’d have to buy the house next door to accommodate one, so it’s probably not the most cost-effective idea I’ve ever had.

Heating

What with it being October bank holiday Monday (for me at least, and two other colleagues, actually… rude of them to rain on my parade!), I’ve been at home for pretty much all the day.  It’s been lovely, what with soup-making and stuff, but it’s been cold.  Autumn is well and truly upon us and today, I put the heating on.  I used the excuse that I needed to dry washing, but well, sometimes you just have to accept that it’s that time of year and give in to it.

My neighbours were at home most of the day again.  They have a wood burner – in Stoneclough!  For some reason, they seem to chop a lot of their logs indoors.  Rude!

Anyway, happy autumn, one and all!

Cheese

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Some people are quite obsessed with cheese. To some, a savoury dish isn’t complete without, what is quite frankly, the compressed solids of gone-off milk. Cheese with baked beans, cheese with pasta, baked pasta with cheese and tuna, cheese on chips, cheese on chilli, cheese on burritos, cheese with wine, cheese with biscuits, cheese, cheese, cheese.

I’m not such a fan. Don’t get me wrong, a bit of crumbly Lancashire with piccalilli is divine, and parmesan definitely has its place, but it’s the sort of thing that I can enjoy in moderation.

There’s this weird thing that you’ll see on menus at restaurants amongst the desserts: cheeseboard. Cheese is NOT a pudding. When I own my restaurant, I will replace the cheeseboard with “chessboard”. Oh, how I will laugh at the faces of customers who order a strategic boardgame, thinking there was a typo on the menu. The chess pieces will be made of intricately-shaped mini puddings: take one of your opponent’s pieces, get to eat it. I bet it’s already been done in some fancy schmancy eatery somewhere, only with pieces of carved cheese. Nobheads.

Nob cheese.

Vegans
What I certainly can’t comprehend is the concept of vegan cheese. For goodness’ sake, aren’t these weirdos’ lives miserable enough as it is without more self-punishment? It’s no less than they deserve. I find it puzzling that people who take on a lifestyle that eschews all animal products think it’s acceptable to have animal-product substitutes. There’s a deep philosophical argument in there somewhere that I don’t have the intellectual capacity to engage in. But surely if you have an attitude with the supposition that it’s wrong to exploit animals in any way, then having fake animal products is akin to saying, “Well, actually, I really like eating animals and their by-products and I can’t really live without them totally, not psychologically at least, so I eat pretend animal by-products”. If you were to fully embrace the whole vegan thing, then you’d consume only things that have ever been and only ever pretended to be vegetables, or soil, or whatever, not things that maintained that mental link to your meat-eating past.

Or, just not eat at all and fuck off and die, you fucking crackpot weirdos.

Cafe culture
As I ate my, wait for it, cheese and piccalilli sandwich this evening, I was taken back to my childhood when Mum used to treat us to lunch at the Kingfisher Cafe on Swinton Precinct. There, I’d always have the same thing: cheese salad barmcake with a strawberry milkshake. I always took great pleasure in making as much noise as possible as I sucked the last foamy bits of pink milk up through my straw. It was one of those places that was always busy with people who were taking a break from their shopping. The smell was coffee and Embassy Regal, with a little bit of the chippy from next door that wafted in when the door was opened.

It was delightful. Everything was back then, when life wasn’t complicated by the need to have things, to be a certain way.

Every time I go to a cafe, I always look to see if there’s a milkshake option on the menu. More often than not, my pursuit of childhood pleasures ends in disappointment and an Americano or a fruit smoothie. Living in the 21st century isn’t always all that it’s cracked up to be and it would be nice if we could maybe stop and think about what made us happy when we were kids, bottle all that up and recreate it somewhere special that’s insulated from from the worst bits of what stresses us all in adulthood. Back to a place and time when cheese was the main part of a sandwich and not an unnecessary accompaniment.

Le weekend
The tiredness I’ve been experiencing for the past couple of weeks – brought on mainly by the onset of autumn and restless nights’ sleep – has me looking forward to this le weekend more than I have done for a while. What’s even better is that I have given myself an October bank holiday Monday and so, when the majority of the working masses are having that Sunday night feeling, I shall at least for one weekend, be immune to the dread of the Monday morning alarm clock.

And it’s things like this that make me an absolute winner.

Oh see dee

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I have a fear that my sister is, through acts borne purely from the best intentions, planting the seeds for potential problems in my niece’s psychological makeup. My dear sister is a fantastic person and a wonderful mum, she only wants the best for her daughter, but sometimes, things said to an impressionable seven year old really do stick. With a background as a dedicated healthcare professional – she’s a former intensive care nurse – she now works in the field of infection control and health improvement.

On our recent trip to Keswick, after her point out the “DWARF ON A SCOOTER!!!” the little one wanted to have a look around a soap shop in the town. She loved the shapes, colours and fragrances of the products and she picked out a bar for me to buy so that she could give it to her mum as a present. As she took it to the till to pay for, she said to the owner of the crowded shop, “My mum said you should only use liquid soap because bar soap is full of germs.”

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Tonight, the little one was all of a tiz because of tooth decay, declaring, “I’m never eating sugar again!”after her mum had given her the lecture about tooth decay being on the rise.

I pointed out that we ate loads of sugar as kids, didn’t brush our teeth twice a day and never visited the dentist until we were thirteen, “… and I only have eight fillings, look! So long as you drink plenty of water, which you do, brush your teeth before going to bed and when you get up in the morning, you’ll be fine.”

Jesus, when I was her age, I was scared of monsters under the bed and the recurring nightmare giant who used to come off the motorway to come and get me as I hid behind the post box near the bus stop. Tooth decay? Germs? Still, I don’t claim to be the epitome of robust mental health, so maybe it is better to be wary of things that are actually dangerous. I’m still giving her Haribo when she comes to visit, no child should miss out on that… unless they have crackpot vegetarian parents who, by definition, are borderline child abusers if they don’t allow their kids the pleasure of McDonald’s chicken McNuggets and funny bear face lunch meat.

Oh, she also protested that she’s not eating chicken McNuggets again because of the salt. I recently tried these things: having bought nine for Rocky, I needed to be sure they were safe for consumption by my precious little dog. Anyway, they’re the most flavourless things I’ve ever had the displeasure of eating, so I’m certain that salt isn’t a problem. They do, however, carry the Rocky and Nanna Con seal of approval, so I’m sure that, so long as they’re not accompanied by ketchup or barbecue sauce (i.e. flavour), they’re fine for kids in moderation.

I do hanker for those days when Pot Noodles were first introduced by Golden Wonder, when they had that lovely flavour of soya meat and salt. The bastardisation of this delicacy by, is it Unilever?, is nothing short of criminal. All they’re good for these days is filling a hole when hungry. And the fact that all the flavour has been substituted with potassium chloride means that it has to be supplemented by the user adding their own salt anyway: firstly enough to mask the mouth-burning potassium; secondly, additional salt to provide some sort of flavour. This results in you taking in more salt than you would have done had they left the fucking thing alone in the first place. Cocks.

Pain
I’ve been suffering of late from night time waking due to back pain. Every time I try to change positions during sleep, I am woken by discomfort in the area that suffered that injury because of the car headlamp bulb changing incident back in 2003. The GP I saw about it at the time was brilliant. He asked me to point at the area and, without looking or examining me himself said, “Well, that’s you with back problems for the rest of your life.”

I thought he was making a statement of fact, I didn’t realise that he was actually cursing me. Maybe I should see my doctor about it (Dr Foreman has since retired from the practice), but after two years of being there almost constantly for another problem, I’m so reluctant to go back there for something else. I feel as if I’ve had my money’s worth out of the NHS and I shouldn’t really be bothering them with anything else for a few years. It’s a good job that everybody else who accesses our health service has the same attitude as me or it would buckle under the pressure of people who constantly visit their doctor for the slightest thing.

Roll with it

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As the days get shorter, I face a race against time if I am to get the little dog down the woods for an off-lead run before darkness sets in. This evening though, despite an horrendous journey home (thanks to Salford Council fucking about, putting a bus lane where are there are no bus routes on a major road out of Manchester), I got home in time to grab a quick cup of coffee before grabbing his nibs and taking him for a nice run in the warm air of the early autumn evening. He repaid me by trying to have sex with a collie’s face. That wasn’t the worst of it though, he also took himself off into the undergrowth, where inaccessible to me, he found great pleasure in rolling in undefined animal excrement.

One of these days, I will leave him there, but knowing my luck, he’d find his way back to me.

Why are dogs so vile?

Anyway, I’ve taken myself to my bed and he’s curled up next to me, snoring.

Hibernation
I don’t know what it is with this time of year, but until I grow accustomed to the change in seasons, I always find myself coming to bed as soon as possible after all my evening activities have been accomplished. I use the word “accomplished” loosely. What I mean by this is, get home from work, walk dog, feed dog, feed myself, close curtains. It’s about all I can manage at the moment, with a little bit of housework thrown in. Once all these tasks are out of the way, there’s nothing more to do other than make myself comfortable and the most comfortable place in my house is my bed. I suppose I could sit in the living room for a while, it’s certainly nice enough there, but I can’t really be bothered with the television during the week, I’m not really in the mood for listening to music at the moment, my Kindle is by my bedside… my bed is more comfortable than the sofa…

So here I am, the bedroom window is open and I am being serenaded by the rain and the snoring, stinking dog.

Come winter, I might make this my default living space. Do like they do in stately homes and close down the rest of the house to conserve energy. I could set up a little kitchen in my back bedroom: coffee making facilities and a two ring electric hob. Maybe I could even bring my barbecue up here. Try to explain that one to the insurance company after I’ve destroyed the west wing of Rocky Towers in a greasy inferno.

This will be taking “loft living” to a whole new level. I could refurbish my outside toilet and let out the whole of the ground floor of my house, leaving me to enjoy the luxury of upstairs. I’ve already started drafting plans for a dumb waiter to be installed outside my bedroom window so that accept takeaway deliveries and offer rides to Rocky when he gets bored.

Winter: sorted.

I wonder what the John Lewis Christmas advert will be this year. No doubt, the first commercial break of the X Factor live shows will be given over in its entirety to showing it. I’m betting, and I might be going a little off-piste here, that it features something cute that portrays a non-faith-based true message of Christmas, accompanied by a pared-down folky version of a classic rock song (I’m going for Gary Glitter’s Rock and roll Christmas.) Call me mad, I know it’s never been done before, and it’d be a big risk for them, but it could be a winner! Never knowingly going to beat the Liquor-saving Kwik Save Christmas adverts.

Gosh, one thing about hibernating is that you’re actually supposed to sleep for a bit longer, something that I’ve been failing to do, even though I’ve been taking myself to my bed while my evening meal is still in my oesophagus. It’s now 9.30pm and I’m sure that if I got to sleep in the next hour or so, I might actually feel refreshed when the alarm wakes me at 6.25 tomorrow morning. Alas, the best way of enjoying the comfort of Apartment 1a, Rocky Towers, is to remain awake and marvel at the neutral decor, become one with the memory foam, settle into feather and down.

Bon nuit, lecteurs.

Poo

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Well, here’s a thing. As a person who is privileged to have a little dog as a companion animal (that’s the “political correctness gone mad” term for a pet), I try to be a responsible keeper of my little friend. He is microchipped, insured, vaccinated to the eyeballs, cuddled, fed, watered, walked and regularly checked over by the wonderful nursing and veterinary staff at White Cross in Walkden.

His behaviour is, what I call, sub-optimal, at times. People who don’t have to live with him might say he’s an out of control nuisance. I pity my neighbours because I know he barks and howls when I leave him. But saying that, it’s not my fault they’re at home too much to hear him. Spiteful!

When we’re out on our walks, he is a bit of an embarrassment: he barks at cyclists (his fear of them emanates from numerous episodes of him running into the wheels of passing bike, so, his fault); he barks at other dogs when he’s on his lead (my fault for not using positive reinforcement effectively); he’s a bit of a sex pest, and any off-leash walk is considered a major failure if he doesn’t manage to get his willy on at least one other dog’s face. I carry a look of apology with me wherever I go with him. In general though, he’s a good-natured little thing and his poor behavioural traits are a result of terrible training and his innate fear of life. Also, his worst behaviour comes out during the first ten minutes of our walks together, that is, the poo-brew time. Once he’s off-loaded, he relaxes and gets on merrily with his sniffing and weeing.

I always pick up his poos. Always. And so what I’ve come to notice recently here in sleepy Stoneclough fills me with disgust. I live in a post-industrial residential area that is sandwiched in the outskirts of Bolton, Salford and Bury. It’s not the most affluent area in the world, but nor is it blighted by poverty. I would assume that most people around here work, are fairly up to date with current affairs, they vote and there’s a good proportion of home ownership. These sorts of people should, in general, make fairly good citizens. So, why is it that there are dog owners who allow their animals to poo on the pavements and grassed areas and think it’s acceptable to leave it? On recent walks with the little feller, I’ve had to dodge dog poo every couple of hundred yards.

The local council’s threats to prosecute offenders are empty without enforcement. Similar to the situation with those who use mobile phones while driving – we all know it’s wrong and dangerous, but people do it a) because they’re cockrings, and b) because they know they’ll get away with it.

One of the things I’ve noticed about the poos I encounter is that they are often huge, i.e., coming from big dogs. Now, I have a little dog and I have little hands. The little dog’s productions are conveniently-sized so that I can bag them up in a, and I’m trying to be delicate here, “handful”. It seems to me that some dog owners who have larger pooches can’t handle the size of their dogs’ deposits. It could be that they’re repulsed by the notion of picking up, or their hands are too small to accommodate the massive piles of stinking shit that they then think it’s perfectly OK to leave on the pavement for the rest of us to dodge.

They are inconsiderate, lazy, knob-jockeys who, quite literally, need their faces rubbing in it.

IF you are going to take a dog under your responsibility, there are some things that you must accept:

1. Feed it
2. Water it
3. Exercise it
4. Keep it safe
5. Keep it healthy
6. Make sure others are safe from it
7. YOU WILL HAVE TO DEAL WITH ITS POO

If anybody considers any of the above to be beyond them, then they should not even for one second think about having a dog as a pet… or a child for that matter because, Jesus, you have to clothe and educate those buggers as well.

One thing that I will never comprehend is the situation whereby people bag up their dogs’ mess, then throw the bag and its contents into the bushes, or just leave it on the pavement, or even tie it to a tree or fence. Why? What possesses these morons? I’ve never seen anybody do this, I don’t know anybody who does this, but I’d really like to subject these people to in-depth psychological testing… or torture. I think torture would be good. Torture them by shoving filled poo bags in their mouths until they beg for forgiveness… or just die… on fire… in a wicker effigy surrounded by dog poo.

The vanishing
Of course, one of the perils of being a responsible dog owner is the poo bag itself. I don’t think I have on coat or jacket that doesn’t have at least one of these things in its pockets. I’m forever retrieving them from the washing machine too after I’ve washed trousers before forgetting to check the pockets beforehand. I am referring to unused poo bags of course. But even though just about every pocket-furnished item of clothing always has a poo bag in it, these things are prone to escaping at the most inconvenient moments. I don’t claim to have a 100% clean-up rate, let’s just leave it at that. This isn’t because I don’t carry the equipment with me when I’m out with the little feller, but because sometimes, when it comes to the vital moment and you search your pockets for the five bags that you absolutely know you put there before you left the house, sometimes, they’ve disappeared by the time you need to use one. It happens all the bloody time… your honour… and I often have to re-trace my steps to find the crumpled-up polythene sacks as they sit there, taunting me.

So, if those people who are puzzled by the filled bags tied to trees and fences are even more disturbed by the empty sacks that litter the pavements and verges, please take pity on the poor bastards like me who are wandering around looking for them. You have no idea of the confusion and embarrassment we are feeling.

Anyway, I’ve been reminiscing about my little chap over the past day or so, so here’s a photo of him that was taken seven years ago after his very first hair cut.

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And here his is this evening, licking his willy.

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Driving away from home

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Well, it’s that time of year when the youngsters pack up their parents’ cars with duvets, pillows, pots, pans, books, desk lamps and other paraphernalia associated with starting the next phase of their lives in higher education.  Across the country, motorway middle lanes are packed with vehicles whose windows are obscured by all the trappings of impending independence as new students are delivered to their halls of residence at universities throughout the land.

Excitement, uncertainty, dread, sadness.  All those emotions, they’re all there in those cars too.

I recall that journey over to Leeds twenty six years ago.  It was a sunny Saturday morning and I had no idea what or who would greet me.  As it turned out, on entering the kitchen to the flat where I’d share with five others, the answer was nothing other than a drab 1970s breeze-blocked room, from which led the corridor to the bedrooms and bathrooms.  There was nobody there yet, but evidence of another presence existed in the fridge where Mum deposited some perishables.  What to do?  Hang around and wait, or bugger off back home and come back tomorrow?  I took the latter option, although I think I may have left a note introducing myself, saying that I’d be returning the following day.  At least that’s what I’d have done if I wasn’t a socially inept person.  I’m no longer certain of the reality.  But when I finally did get round to introducing myself to my new flatmates, many of my apprehensions evaporated.  They seemed a lovely bunch, much better adjusted than me, and I was made to feel welcomed and part of something new and exciting.

There was one girl who was on the same course as me, Biochemistry SINGLE honours, and I figured we’d be BEST mates because of this.  You know, because scientists are bound to be much more sound and grounded than those arty types.  [I had only just turned eighteen at this point and had many life lessons to learn.  I still do].  There were the girls who were doing non-subjects like English and Philosophy, Psychology, and something else.  Of course we all discussed our recent A level results, our families, where we came from, how much grant we were getting from our local education authorities.  It was the first time in my life that I’d heard of the Duke of Edinburgh Award scheme – who knew? And some of them were vegetarians, although they ate fish, so that made them sort of normal.

There were discussions about social events, Freshers’ week (or “Intro” week as it had been renamed) shenanigans, bands who were due to play at the Union, things that were going on in town.  “What?  What about, you know, getting on and studying?”  I was acutely aware that, since I didn’t receive a full grant, my parents were subsidising me heavily and I wasn’t going to disrespect that by not making the absolute most of my studies.  I still can’t figure out how some people whose parents both worked full time in well paid jobs got a full maintenance grant and me, with my dad a factory worker and mum working one night a week as an occupational health nurse got less than half.  Still, I can’t complain when compared what happened with student fees and loans in subsequent years.

Our only contact with home was via letter or pay phone – this was a card phone, one per block, that was situated on the landing outside our flat’s kitchen door.  Each night there was a long queue to use the bloody thing and we’d stand on the chair, looking through the spy hole to see when the current user was about to finish their conversation so that we could leap out and grab the receiver as soon as they hung up.  Of course, having the phone outside our flat meant that we had to take calls for every other bugger in the block, but it didn’t seem to matter than much.  I’m sure I phoned home every single night.

When we weren’t shut in our rooms studying, we spent many hours around the kitchen table, sat in uncomfortable plastic chairs.  We sometimes treated ourselves to some booze, we sometimes sang (badly) to our music – I recall that Deacon Blue’s Raintown, The Best of the Pretenders, and Prefab Sprout’s Steve McQueen were favourite collections of ours.  I taught them how motorways were numbered as we drew pictures of Viz characters for the kitchen wall.  A lot of the time, we joked and laughed and put the world to rights as only eighteen year olds can do; with me pitting my black and white, working class conservative views against the leftie, middle-class Guardian readers.  As now, I would leave a discussion with my well-educated, well-thought out “You’re talking crap” argument.  But then, as now, my affection towards those who I came to consider true friends never wavered.

In a few short weeks after being driven along the M62 from Manchester to Leeds that beautiful Saturday morning, I met a few people who I am very pleased to still have in my life today.  I also met some complete wankers, but life is nothing without filtering.  In those weeks, as the leaves fell from the trees and the temperatures dipped (Leeds is so much colder than Manchester), I learned how to study, I learned that physical chemistry was a necessary evil and that if I ever met Raymond Chang (author of Physical Chemistry with applications to Biological Systems) I’d need to have words.  I learned that in the rest of country “pants” meant “knickers”, not “trousers”.

So now, as the new students come to the university where I work, I really should curb my impatience and remember just how scary it can be for those youngsters who are adjust to many new things… like learning how to use a revolving door.  I’m sure even I could operate a revolving door when I was that age.

Hair bare

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It’s no secret that I consider my hair to be one of those things that just happens.  I don’t deal with hairdressers anymore; my sister does a perfectly good job of hacking away the excess growth in a manner similar to somebody trimming a hedge.  The curls just spring back into place and eventually it all grows back, well it sort of grows outwards, until it reaches a state that is best described as “ridiculous”.  At this point, I wait for an opportunity when she’s in not too bad a mood and I approach her, like a lion tamer with chair and whip, and gently broach the subject of her setting about me with the rat brain scissors.

Anyway.  ANYWAY! I last had my hair cut two months ago and I swear it’s not grown at all since.  All that’s happened in the interim period is the appearance of some very curly grey hairs and the rest of it seems to have got curlier.  Weird.  It looks kind of cool, but if I don’t balance my styling product, it turns into a mimsy bubble perm within two hours of it being dried.  In conjunction with my official middle-aged status, excess weight and terrible dress sense, I’m sure some who only encounter me by sight must perceive me as a meek secretarial type who lives alone with five cats and who flicks herself off to Great British Bake Off on tape… that’s until I let rip a demonic tirade of foul-mouthed abuse at them for not setting off the millisecond the traffic lights change from red to red/amber.

I do have terrible anger issues when I’m behind the wheel of a car.  But then again, so many motorists, pedestrians and cyclists are utter fucktards.  I’m a firm believer that the UK’s National Health Service, welfare system and compensation culture have had a negative impact on natural selection in our species.  Bad Tina! What I mean by that is that people who are perfectly capable seem to be less inclined to take responsibility for themselves: they know that somebody else will look after them or their kids; that somebody will patch them up or give them healthcare if they don’t look after themselves; that they’ll be able to sue somebody if they get knocked over while wandering down the middle of the road, gawping at their phones and listening to music with their backs to the traffic.

Anyway!

I don’t know

You know that thing when somebody asks you a question that you don’t know the answer to and you reply by saying “I don’t know”?  Why does this then turn into an inquisition?  Surely, if you don’t know, you don’t know. In certain circumstances, you can add “… but I can find out for you (if can be arsed)”, or “let me think about it”, but generally, if I don’t know, I’ll say so instead of coming out with a load of crap or speculating.

Bin the bin

One thing that I do know is that I was right when I predicted that the University’s “bin the bin” policy would result in a health hazard.  As part of its commitment to be an ecologcally-minded and responsible organisation, all office bins were removed about three years ago and, instead, bins and recycling points were located central areas.  The cleaners would no longer be coming into offices to remove waste and rubbish and recycling would only be removed from the designated sites.  This coincided with the annual “catch it, bin it, kill it” campaign that aims to prevent the spread of colds and other nasties by promoting general good hygiene.  So people were forced to “catch it” in a tissue, then accumulate snotty tissues on their desks or in carrier bags placed beneath their desks until such a time as convenient to transport the refuse to the bin in the kitchen.  Of course, office workers aren’t inclined to get up from their desks and wander to the kitchen bin every time they finish a yoghurt or piece of fruit and these tend to be at the desk-side until a natural break point occurs, or until the end of the day.

We had a rather nasty and irritating fly infestation in our office suite the other week after the rubbish bin in the kitchen hadn’t been collected for a few days.  After a bit of a whinge and eventual removal of the offending litter, the flies still persisted, becoming more concentrated in our particular office.  Fly spray was having no effect and work was interrupted by regular outbursts of “fucking flies!” as another colleague came under attack from the buzzing menaces.  And then, there was a collective realisation: one of our colleagues has been off sick for a few weeks.  “Is there any fruit in his drawers or anything? Have a look around his desk”.  And there, under his desk was a carrier bag that was the epicentre of the fly infestation.  Phil the Brave picked up the offending item and carried it out of the office at arms’ length, followed Pig Pen-like by the cloud of flies.

For fuck’s sake.  Nobody can blame the organisation’s anti-bin policy on this incident, not directly; food waste shouldn’t be kept in the office for more than an hour or two and certainly not overnight.  However, if we did have office bins that people chucked the odd apple core or yoghurt pot into, and these were emptied each morning, then, you know, a festering massive of gore wouldn’t have been allowed to grow under a sick colleague’s desk.

Of course, I’d been hoping for a more gruesome discovery in the floor space – body parts, that sort of thing, so I was sorely disappointed when the cause of the plague wasn’t related to the fact that our building is sited on an ancient burial ground .  Not that it is or anything.  Still, the episode has given me lots to think about should I ever leave my job under a cloud.

Notes on the devastation of loss

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Loss of a loved one, somebody who you absolutely adore, is one of the most unbearable experiences a person can encounter. Be it through the end of a life, or the untimely or unexpected end of a relationship, the feelings of bereavement rip through your entire being, leaving you hopeless, alone, empty, numb, distraught, disbelieving.

Sad times are upon us and I am at a loss as to what help I can offer. My sister has been abandoned by the love of her life and she is currently battling those horrendous emotions that all of us have been battered by ourselves.

The worst in my own experience was going to bed and never wanting to wake up. Because when you do wake up, in that confused state of half-sleep, your mind tricks you into thinking that things are fine. And then reality hits you. They’re not beside you, or the wake up text doesn’t come and you have to face another day as a soulless shell, just going through the motions until you can hit the bottle again, reach a glorious oblivion and return to bed. And so the cycle continues.

I recall one occasion, during the worst of times, I drank without consideration of it being a work night, but without intention for self harm – I just wanted to forget. There was wine, rum, a sleeping tablet. It was the only time when the little dog’s half hour tantrum at the window cleaner didn’t wake me. I was out cold. Eventually coming round mid-afternoon, the reality of my situation hit me again, as it would do every day for many months.

But nothing anybody else could do or say helped, it couldn’t help. All I wanted was my life back, my dreams returned to me, but the life I had known had been taken from me and my dreams were shattered. So with my sister, all I can do is that awful thing that people who claim to have emotional intelligence always go on about, but rarely have the ability to: empathise. This, for good or bad, involves me reassuring her that things are going to feel utterly desperate and dreadful for an awful long time, that there’s nothing anybody can do or say that will make things better, and that the only thing that works is time. Even time won’t heal all the scars, I still have many wounds that are, at best, itchy scabs that need picking, and at worst, open sores that run through my very core and affect me and my ability to form any attachment to another. I’m still certain that I will only fully recover if a) Nigella comes calling, or b) I get my revenge on those that hurt me. I’d prefer a Nigella-based recovery and maybe I’m mellowing a little bit and will be happy for Karma to do its business on my behalf.

Failing at life
Or maybe I should just look after myself and then everything else will fall into place.

I have realised, particularly this year, that I am hopeless at life. Certain circumstances have taken their toll and just put me on that terrible road of giving up. It’s nothing major in isolation, but a cumulative effect of the general state of pffft that I find myself in. Like today, I came to change my bed and realised that I didn’t have enough clean pillowcases to accompany the duvet cover and (fucking bastard) fitted sheet. Why? Because I hadn’t washed the previous bedding when I should have done, last week when I took it off. Or the set from the previous week for that matter.

Ironing – given up on that completely.
Dusting – urgh
Vacumming, housework in general. I get myself into such a funk because I feel that I leave these things a bit too late and when this happens, I hate myself. But it doesn’t take too much to fix. Just a couple of hours and it’s all done… with an undercurrent of self-loathing of course. And the inevitability of having to do it again, in a couple of days, which I won’t, because I’m a loser.

It’s very difficult to find purpose when there is none. Maybe the purpose that I need is to make some positive changes and start being a normal person. It’s not even that bloody difficult!

I shall start tomorrow by NOT buying more pillowcases, but by ensuring that I have enough clean and dry bedding to last me two changes. Tick!

Instead of lamenting the kitchen and its floor, I’ll just clean the bloody thing.

Rather than driving into my parking space and sighing at the weeds, how about I pull the fucking things up? Same goes for the persistent buggers that sprout up in the front “bit” (it’s not big enough to call a yard) of my house.

And instead of looking up and fretting at the absence of pointing on my chimney breast, maybe I’ll just get a couple of quotes for the work and get it sorted.

Like a normal person would.

iThinkit’stoobig

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So, in techno news, Apple today launched a few new devices during the autumn address that we’ve all become accustomed to.  I haven’t really taken the time to read up on the launch event, but scanning the photos in the BBC website news report, one thing really struck me:

The iPhone 6 and iPhone 6 Plus are huge.  Now, I know I’ve always taken the piss out of the size of Samsung’s handsets, particularly the Samsung Galaxy Note, but these new iPhones are ridiculous.

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Just look at them!  

Today’s event also heralded the launch of the much-anticipated Apple Watch.  I do admit to having very small wrists, but come on, this is just silly.

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Steve Jobbies will be rolling in his grave.

Apple’s divergence from Jobs’ insistence that the iPhone should be navigable with one hand sounds the death knell of my love affair with this particular shiny thing that made it all better. I struggle enough with the 5s, there’s no way I want to be one of those spazzes who has to hold their phone in one hand while prodding the screen with the stabby index finger of the other, assisted in their obvious concentration by having their tongues sticking out.  With their specs propped on their foreheads. No.  Just no.

But what’s the alternative? What happened to the days when the tech companies worked on compact designs that fitted on the pocket?  Samsung happened, they fucking ruined everything.  Morons.

 

Super moon

It’s the harvest full moon tonight.  I do love this; only a crazy person wouldn’t.IMG_1624