I really do seem to have slacked off here lately, don't I? I have no particular excuse. Work is annoying as always, I still work with a collection of psychopaths and lazy fuckers. Still, nothing will change short term so I continue to mutter darkly under my breath and plot their demise using the power of thought alone. I'll let you know how it goes.
I was thinking the other day about my old school. I had a great time at school, not so much at my second secondary (tricky, that) school but all the others were great.
I remember watching a TV programme once where a man had been held hostage for a prolonged period. He said he used to pass the time by retracing the route he used to take when walking to school as a boy. I've never forgotten this and from time to time I find myself picking one of my schools (I went to five in total) and walking there in my mind.
The least interesting of these trips is the one to my favourite primary school which basically involved leaving home, turning left and walking past three other dwellings before walking through the school gates. That one was particularly handy.
I suppose the longest one was to my first secondary school. The walk took just over 40 minutes at a brisk pace and slightly longer in winter due to the snow. I doubt todays schoolchildren would be able to accomplish such a feat without stopping for Coke and a Mars Bar at least twice along the way or calling their mothers on their fancy mobile 'phones and whining that their legs ached. Alas, a lift in a warm car was not an option for me and so after a bowl of Ready Brek I would set off, hoping that my face would not freeze and fall off before reaching my destination.
I can remember every step of that walk. Sometimes I lay in bed at night and walk to school in my mind. I pass the houses, cross the main road, pass a corner shop, walk down the 'cut' till I get to the Rec ground and walk over an unispiring field before reaching another main road. I plod down the main road before turning into a smaller street and see the school gates in front of me.
I went to the anal retentive lengths of digging out my A-Z and looking at my school route. It can't cover more than a mile. And yet surprisingly after all these years I was pretty spot on with a path that I only followed for just under a year over 30 years ago.
I don't 'walk to school' very often but when I do it always makes me feel melancholy. Sometimes I wish I didn't live so far away.
11 May, 2009
04 May, 2009
Intermission
I know, I know. I'm a slack tart.
I do have an idea for a post but I don't have the concentration span at present. Here's a joke instead. You need to read it out loud.
Ready?
A chicken goes into a library and approaches the librarian.
"Book book?" he asks.
The librarian gives the chicken two books. The chicken leaves.
An hour later the chicken comes back into the library and puts the two books on the desk.
"Book book? Book book?" he asks.
The librarian gives the chicken four books. The chicken leaves.
An hour later the chicken comes back and puts the four books on the desk.
"Book book? Book book? Book book? he asks.
The librarian gives the chicken six books. The chicken leaves.
The librarian is understandingly curious about how the chicken is managing to read the books so quickly so he decides to follow the chicken and see what he's up to. He follows the chicken across the road - oh yes, I went there - and further along the road until the chicken reaches a pond. The librarian watches as the chicken places the books in front of a frog. The frog looks at each book and says,
"Read it. Read it."
Did you like it? You did, didn't you? You liked it. I knew you would.
I do have an idea for a post but I don't have the concentration span at present. Here's a joke instead. You need to read it out loud.
Ready?
A chicken goes into a library and approaches the librarian.
"Book book?" he asks.
The librarian gives the chicken two books. The chicken leaves.
An hour later the chicken comes back into the library and puts the two books on the desk.
"Book book? Book book?" he asks.
The librarian gives the chicken four books. The chicken leaves.
An hour later the chicken comes back and puts the four books on the desk.
"Book book? Book book? Book book? he asks.
The librarian gives the chicken six books. The chicken leaves.
The librarian is understandingly curious about how the chicken is managing to read the books so quickly so he decides to follow the chicken and see what he's up to. He follows the chicken across the road - oh yes, I went there - and further along the road until the chicken reaches a pond. The librarian watches as the chicken places the books in front of a frog. The frog looks at each book and says,
"Read it. Read it."
Did you like it? You did, didn't you? You liked it. I knew you would.
15 April, 2009
Not happy
I'm not happy, readers. Not one little bit.
The Devil has been using my handbag for his own defaecation lately and it's about time it stopped. I've had three episodes of bad luck recently and I'm hoping I've seen the end of it.
Episode one involved a rather nasty infection which saw me ending up spending 20 hours in hospital attached to a drip and being pumped full of antibiotics. I got no sleep, the food was atrocious (not that I had an appetite) and I was well and truly out of my comfort zone. All better now, though.
Episode two centres around a bizarre pain in my left foot. Don't expect to see me appearing in my own autobiographical film any time soon. It's been so painful that I've had to have time off work as I can't fully weight bear without swearing like a navvy. A scan result showed peroneal tendonosis (chronic degeneration) as well as a ganglion. I'm having an injection under Xray next week.
Episode three is the most painful. Without going into too much detail I have been successfully sued by a previous tenant of my spacious abode in sunny Leytonstone. It's all to do with damage caused, a deposit not refunded and some new law which means that the slack tart who caused the damage got not only her deposit returned but over £2000 to go with it. Yes, that's three zeros. The agent managed to fit himself out in a Teflon suit and got off Scott free. Needless to say I'm in the process of changing agents as I type.
A more minor irritation happened when I inadvertently wiped a couple of ring tones from my mobile. These included my TARDIS and 'exterminate' tones. I am not happy. Not.
Anyhoo. Let's end on a high. I leave you with Bizkit, the sleeping dog. He makes me happy.
The Devil has been using my handbag for his own defaecation lately and it's about time it stopped. I've had three episodes of bad luck recently and I'm hoping I've seen the end of it.
Episode one involved a rather nasty infection which saw me ending up spending 20 hours in hospital attached to a drip and being pumped full of antibiotics. I got no sleep, the food was atrocious (not that I had an appetite) and I was well and truly out of my comfort zone. All better now, though.
Episode two centres around a bizarre pain in my left foot. Don't expect to see me appearing in my own autobiographical film any time soon. It's been so painful that I've had to have time off work as I can't fully weight bear without swearing like a navvy. A scan result showed peroneal tendonosis (chronic degeneration) as well as a ganglion. I'm having an injection under Xray next week.
Episode three is the most painful. Without going into too much detail I have been successfully sued by a previous tenant of my spacious abode in sunny Leytonstone. It's all to do with damage caused, a deposit not refunded and some new law which means that the slack tart who caused the damage got not only her deposit returned but over £2000 to go with it. Yes, that's three zeros. The agent managed to fit himself out in a Teflon suit and got off Scott free. Needless to say I'm in the process of changing agents as I type.
A more minor irritation happened when I inadvertently wiped a couple of ring tones from my mobile. These included my TARDIS and 'exterminate' tones. I am not happy. Not.
Anyhoo. Let's end on a high. I leave you with Bizkit, the sleeping dog. He makes me happy.
03 April, 2009
"So, what have you been up to?"
I received a message on Facebook the other day from 'Beth'. It asked if I was the SSS who'd worked at a particular hospital in the 80s and asked me to email her.
Beth and I were friends during our nurse training. She was the year behind me and lived in the same corridor in the nurses home. We talked about the usual things; crappy shifts, evil ward sisters, politics, the NHS and unreliable boyfriends. We drank hot chocolate and ate biscuits. Beth was a great friend during difficult times.
I met 'David' at a section house party on the Lea Bridge Road one alcohol fuelled evening in the late eighties. I had the hots for David's friend and he had the hots for one of my friends. Both relationships lasted all of five minutes and David and I continued to see each other as friends. It was a very easy friendship and nothing more.
One evening David came to see me but told me that he wasn't stopping, he was actually visiting someone else in the nurses home. It turned out that David and Beth had met at a party and hit it off. The relationship went well and finally they married. We kept in touch for a several years, they moved to Norfolk and I visited them there a few times. They moved house again, I didn't get a forwarding address, I made a couple of attempts at contact but failed. That was that.
About two years ago I received a friend request from David. He was still married to Beth and they still lived in Norfolk. I asked him about Beth and he said he'd tell her to contact me. She never did. He set his profile to private after about six months and he only reappeared a few months ago. And then last week I got the message from Beth.
What do you say? What can you possibly say when someone asks you to condense almost 20 years in an email?
'Well, I moved to Australia as you can see. I still work as a nurse. No husband, no kids. Forget what they say about those hunky Aussie males, nudge nudge, wink wink! I come back to the UK occasionally but not often. I'm still in contact with Anna but I no longer see Jane/Sarah/Natalie/Donna. Do you?
How are the kids? They must be so grown up now. Are you still nursing? What about David? Is he still with the police? Write soon and tell me all your news.'
Quite frankly, readers, I'd rather eat brussel sprouts with a cinammon topping than send that email. The very thought of it depresses me beyond words. And yet what do I do?
Naturally I'm curious about what she's been up to, how her life has changed, whether or not she's the same Beth who I used to walk round to the chip shop with after a late shift and discuss how much we hated our training. But where do we go after that first email? It'll just peter out and we'll be out of each others lives again.
I'll answer the email, of course. It'll go very much along the lines of the reply I outlined. I'll try to make it funny and interesting but that won't stop it from boiling down to 'still nursing, live in Australia, no not married and no kids.'
Beth and I were friends during our nurse training. She was the year behind me and lived in the same corridor in the nurses home. We talked about the usual things; crappy shifts, evil ward sisters, politics, the NHS and unreliable boyfriends. We drank hot chocolate and ate biscuits. Beth was a great friend during difficult times.
I met 'David' at a section house party on the Lea Bridge Road one alcohol fuelled evening in the late eighties. I had the hots for David's friend and he had the hots for one of my friends. Both relationships lasted all of five minutes and David and I continued to see each other as friends. It was a very easy friendship and nothing more.
One evening David came to see me but told me that he wasn't stopping, he was actually visiting someone else in the nurses home. It turned out that David and Beth had met at a party and hit it off. The relationship went well and finally they married. We kept in touch for a several years, they moved to Norfolk and I visited them there a few times. They moved house again, I didn't get a forwarding address, I made a couple of attempts at contact but failed. That was that.
About two years ago I received a friend request from David. He was still married to Beth and they still lived in Norfolk. I asked him about Beth and he said he'd tell her to contact me. She never did. He set his profile to private after about six months and he only reappeared a few months ago. And then last week I got the message from Beth.
What do you say? What can you possibly say when someone asks you to condense almost 20 years in an email?
'Well, I moved to Australia as you can see. I still work as a nurse. No husband, no kids. Forget what they say about those hunky Aussie males, nudge nudge, wink wink! I come back to the UK occasionally but not often. I'm still in contact with Anna but I no longer see Jane/Sarah/Natalie/Donna. Do you?
How are the kids? They must be so grown up now. Are you still nursing? What about David? Is he still with the police? Write soon and tell me all your news.'
Quite frankly, readers, I'd rather eat brussel sprouts with a cinammon topping than send that email. The very thought of it depresses me beyond words. And yet what do I do?
Naturally I'm curious about what she's been up to, how her life has changed, whether or not she's the same Beth who I used to walk round to the chip shop with after a late shift and discuss how much we hated our training. But where do we go after that first email? It'll just peter out and we'll be out of each others lives again.
I'll answer the email, of course. It'll go very much along the lines of the reply I outlined. I'll try to make it funny and interesting but that won't stop it from boiling down to 'still nursing, live in Australia, no not married and no kids.'
19 March, 2009
The children of Dunblane and the Express
I'm spitting about this one, really spitting. The British press have always been a shower of shitheads but they've sunk to an all time low.
Dunblane is a small town in Scotland. It has four primary schools and one secondary school. Most people had never heard of Dunblane until the morning of 13th of March 1996. That was the day that Thomas Hamilton, a 43 year old local man, walked into Dunblane Primary School and shot 16 children and their teacher dead before turning the gun on himself. The children were in the gymnasium. Some of them tried to run away. Some were injured. They were aged between 5 and 6 years old.
I still remember where I was when I heard the news. I cried that day for those children, their teacher, their friends and family. Thinking about it now brings tears to my eyes. I can't begin to articulate how I felt and still do. Anniversaries have been and gone and I've wondered about the parents of the murdered children. I've also wondered about those who survived, hoping they've been able to get on with their lives after such unspeakable trauma.
Seems I'm not the only one who wondered. There's a shitstorm brewing over a venomous - and pointless - article which was published in the Sunday Express. The front page story alleged that survivors of the massacre had "shamed" the memory of their dead friends by boasting about drunken nights out on social networking websites.
Paula Murray, the Express hack in question, used the headline "Anniversary shame of Dunblane: internet boasts of sex, drink and violence as youngsters hit 18". The article was published on the 8th of March, one week before the anniversary. Its premise was that some of those who witnessed the massacre first-hand had "posted shocking blogs and photographs of themselves on the internet, 13 years after being sheltered from public view in the aftermath of the atrocity".
The main crime committed by these private citizens who had one suffered the trauma of being shot at whilst in their PE kit seemed to be that one of them - who had been injured in the massacre - making posts on a networking site, which it claimed showed them making "rude gestures" in pictures and boasting of "drunken nights out".
Well, fuck me. Teenagers acting like teenagers. Who'd have thought it? What did Paula Murray think they were going to do? Don sackcloth and ashes? Spend the rest of their lives in quiet contemplation? Stay home and cry every day?
The Express has since quietly withdrawn the story from its website but the cat is out of the bag and it's screaming its head off. Here's a link to an excellent piece by Graham Linehan, including a PDF of the original front page. Here's another cracking piece where a Blogger examines the personal life of the author of the pile of shit. There's also a Facebook group with over 3000 members.
Quite why someone thought it would be a good idea to publish a story about a group of eighteen year olds drinking alcohol, having sex and generally behaving like teenagers is beyond me. I would imagine that both Paula Murray and the editor of the Express will have plenty of time to reflect on whether it was worth invading the privacy of young people who had once feared for their lives at an age where the rest of us were worrying about whether or not our mothers had remembered to pick up our favourite comic from the newsagents.
Dunblane is a small town in Scotland. It has four primary schools and one secondary school. Most people had never heard of Dunblane until the morning of 13th of March 1996. That was the day that Thomas Hamilton, a 43 year old local man, walked into Dunblane Primary School and shot 16 children and their teacher dead before turning the gun on himself. The children were in the gymnasium. Some of them tried to run away. Some were injured. They were aged between 5 and 6 years old.
I still remember where I was when I heard the news. I cried that day for those children, their teacher, their friends and family. Thinking about it now brings tears to my eyes. I can't begin to articulate how I felt and still do. Anniversaries have been and gone and I've wondered about the parents of the murdered children. I've also wondered about those who survived, hoping they've been able to get on with their lives after such unspeakable trauma.
Seems I'm not the only one who wondered. There's a shitstorm brewing over a venomous - and pointless - article which was published in the Sunday Express. The front page story alleged that survivors of the massacre had "shamed" the memory of their dead friends by boasting about drunken nights out on social networking websites.
Paula Murray, the Express hack in question, used the headline "Anniversary shame of Dunblane: internet boasts of sex, drink and violence as youngsters hit 18". The article was published on the 8th of March, one week before the anniversary. Its premise was that some of those who witnessed the massacre first-hand had "posted shocking blogs and photographs of themselves on the internet, 13 years after being sheltered from public view in the aftermath of the atrocity".
The main crime committed by these private citizens who had one suffered the trauma of being shot at whilst in their PE kit seemed to be that one of them - who had been injured in the massacre - making posts on a networking site, which it claimed showed them making "rude gestures" in pictures and boasting of "drunken nights out".
Well, fuck me. Teenagers acting like teenagers. Who'd have thought it? What did Paula Murray think they were going to do? Don sackcloth and ashes? Spend the rest of their lives in quiet contemplation? Stay home and cry every day?
The Express has since quietly withdrawn the story from its website but the cat is out of the bag and it's screaming its head off. Here's a link to an excellent piece by Graham Linehan, including a PDF of the original front page. Here's another cracking piece where a Blogger examines the personal life of the author of the pile of shit. There's also a Facebook group with over 3000 members.
Quite why someone thought it would be a good idea to publish a story about a group of eighteen year olds drinking alcohol, having sex and generally behaving like teenagers is beyond me. I would imagine that both Paula Murray and the editor of the Express will have plenty of time to reflect on whether it was worth invading the privacy of young people who had once feared for their lives at an age where the rest of us were worrying about whether or not our mothers had remembered to pick up our favourite comic from the newsagents.
17 March, 2009
Oh Happy Day
I have loved these women for years. Years and years. Female comedians in a mans industry and not only that but really, really funny female comedians. From their early work on The Comic Strip Presents to Girls on Top and then to their own series French and Saunders I watched with pride as they became high profile comedians up on the same level - if not higher - with some of the boys at the time. They were my favourites on Comic Relief. I remember watching the original sketch which was the inspiration for Absolutely Fabulous. I loved the Vicar of Dibley. I loved it all.
Now they've announced the end of their touring days and predictable tickets are rarer than hens teeth. I spent fruitless hours on the internet yesterday trying to get through but to no avail. Today I thought I'd give it one last go.
Guess who's got two tickets to see French and Saunders on the 1st of July at 8pm then?
12 March, 2009
Chocolate is an everyday food. Discuss.
A report of a most alarming nature caught my eye today. I don't mind telling you, dear readers, that I'm quite distraught. If Dr David Walker gets his way we're all doomed.
David Walker? Who's he? He's a Scottish GP who wants to bring misery to millions by taxing chocolate.
Oh yes, your eyes are not deceiving you. This white coated wowser wants to make us pay more for what is essentially an entire good group.
'Dr Walker, who is also a trained food scientist and nutritionist, told the BBC news website: "Obesity is a mushrooming problem. We are heading the same way as the United States.
"There is an explosion of obesity and the related medical conditions, like type 2 diabetes. I see chocolate as a major player in this, and I think a tax on products containing chocolate could make a real difference." '
Difference to the tax coffers, yes. Does he really think anyone is going to think twice before buying that bag of Revels or that delicious Twix?
Not surprisingly the idea has ready met with some resistance.
'Julian Hunt, of the Food and Drink Federation, said: "Introducing regressive taxes on the foods that consumers love would result only in lighter wallets, not smaller waists - particularly as we already have to pay VAT on all our chocolate purchases. '
But don't panic. Dr Walker will be taking his proposal to a British Medical Assocation meeting in Scotland where it will be discussed then pushed to one side. I can't really see it going anywhere.
You might want to stock up at the weekend, though. Just in case.
David Walker? Who's he? He's a Scottish GP who wants to bring misery to millions by taxing chocolate.
Oh yes, your eyes are not deceiving you. This white coated wowser wants to make us pay more for what is essentially an entire good group.
'Dr Walker, who is also a trained food scientist and nutritionist, told the BBC news website: "Obesity is a mushrooming problem. We are heading the same way as the United States.
"There is an explosion of obesity and the related medical conditions, like type 2 diabetes. I see chocolate as a major player in this, and I think a tax on products containing chocolate could make a real difference." '
Difference to the tax coffers, yes. Does he really think anyone is going to think twice before buying that bag of Revels or that delicious Twix?
Not surprisingly the idea has ready met with some resistance.
'Julian Hunt, of the Food and Drink Federation, said: "Introducing regressive taxes on the foods that consumers love would result only in lighter wallets, not smaller waists - particularly as we already have to pay VAT on all our chocolate purchases. '
But don't panic. Dr Walker will be taking his proposal to a British Medical Assocation meeting in Scotland where it will be discussed then pushed to one side. I can't really see it going anywhere.
You might want to stock up at the weekend, though. Just in case.
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