It's official! Family Values #5

Fat Bird has had her mother here for the weekend. If you've read previous posts you may recall that she is the doom and gloom merchant.
Sadly [yeah, right!] we didn't get back until almost lunch time yesterday and then slept for most of the day so we've missed most of the visit.
Anyway, as she was going back this evening Fat Bird said that she would cook sunday lunch for her. No fukin' mention of cooking any for us, greedy bastard. Well, as per useual, FB is on the diet trip. This means that after every meal she weighs herself.
So having troughed, she heads for the bathroom.
"Don't be all day in there, I need the loo." shouted Dave as she went.
After a few secs she was back and off Dave went. A few seconds more, and there was much loud cackling from the direction of the bathroom.
When she weighs herself, the fat bastard has to get the scales out from under the washbasin. This involves bending over. As she has no waist this is no mean feat. It also means that she never bothers to put them away again and they lay in wait, in the middle of the floor, for the next visitor.
Well, on this occasion, it wasn't the trap that was sprung but the scales. 20st 8lbs. She's broken the fukin things!
Now it can be told!

Got a Light Boy?

Today finds me looking at the best part of 400 Benson & Hedges brought back from the US. I don't normally smoke B&H but, apart from Marlboro, they were the only brand I recognized [and I wouldn't smoke Marlboro, they make me bark].

I'm not exactly sitting here with my conscience pricking me but I'm on the horns of a Dali Lamah and it's all the fault of my big mouth.

Part of my working day involves dealing with the little loves who attend South Camden Community School. As with most schools, if you get a bunch of kids together, chances are that a proportion of them will smoke. Well, at the end of the school day, with hundreds of kids milling around outside the school quite a few, probably thirty or so, think it's the done thing to wander around with a cig in their hand. To see fair play and keep some sort of order, several of the teaching staff also mill around outside the school [obstinately to disperse the masses]. The teachers don't though wander around with ciggies in their hands.

Because the little loves are not on school property, they are technically out of the jurisdiction of the teachers. So, the teachers going around telling the kids to "Put it out" doesn't have much effect.

One of my colleagues is a non smoker. He keeps saying to the kids that they shouldn't smoke because it's bad for their health.

I follow him around and tell them "Don't fall for all of this crap about smoking is bad for your health". Yeah, I know, it's a bit irresponsible, but I believe it. Wait until the statistics are published showing the proportion of smokers to non-smokers who are run over by busses and you will find that there is no correlation. Being a non-smoker will not save you from a road traffic accident.

Myself and this particular colleague were arguing this point one day after just such an event at SCCS. This was when reality dawned.

I've never been a foil for the keep healthy brigade. Now if there was a "keep wealthy" brigade......

This prompted me to have a stab at working out how much money I've spent on cigs over the years.

This is quite difficult because ciggies are a bit more expensive now than when I first started smoking. I think that they were about £1.10 for twenty back when I was 15. Now, of course, theyarer around the £5 mark.

So, imagine that you are 15, and just starting out on your smoking career. If you are going to smoke twenty a day for the next twenty five years and working on the assumption that cigs will not go up in price [fat fukin' chance] you will spensomethingng in the order of £45.5 thousand.

This does not take into account the fact that you will probably end up smoking more than 20 per day and that there is no way that cigs will stay at five quid a pack.

Now I remember those Health Education lessons whetheyhay warned us about dangers of smoking.don'tont remember anybody telling me it would, over the years, cost me small fortune!

So, having cleared this with the boss and the Head Teacher, colleaguegue and me are going to give them a little talk for National No Smoking Day.

National No Smoking Day is on March 8th.

His plan of attack is the "Smoking is bad for your health" one. Mine is to show them the money. This has involved me sweet-talking the manager of the local NatWest Bank into lending me [for the day only] forty five and a half grand. With any luck, when I go see her again tomorrow, she will have gotten the ok from her boss to lend me the cash without asuretyity.

To add to the effect, I also intend to burn a few £20 notes [my own, so it will only be a few!].

I'm reasonably sure that if when I was 15, somebody had shown me how much I would spend over the coming years, I wouldn't have been so keen to bow to ppressuresure and continue smoking.

As to weather I'll stop smoking myself on the day, well, that remains to be seen.

The land of the free and the home of the.......

I like America. I don't always particularly believe in what they do as a nation, or ther way they go about things but on the whole, I like the place. There are though, a few things I would change. The first would be to make them all learn the highway code and take a real driving test. Not that I consider myself to be the best driver in the world, but the standard of driving in the US is absolutly fukin' apalling! For any of our former collonial cousins who read this, can you tell me this...

On a three lane highway [i.e three lanes going one way, and three going the other] is it permissable to pootle along in any lane or is it, as in the UK, the one is for pootling along, the left hand lane or in the US, the extreme right hand lane], the middle is for over-taking those who are pootling along and the [in the UK] right hand lane is for those trying to break the sound barrier.

I've driven in the US before, about 10 years ago, and I dont remember things being so bad. In saying that, it was in Orlando and full of Brits so that could explain things......[joke].

But this time..... Christ!!!! Tiny, little 150 year old women driving around in the most enormous 4x4 monsters. Not only that but not moving ay faster than about 35mph!

I dont think that it helped that the car we were driving was a heap of crap [Ford Taurus] or that it had an automatic [good] column change [rubbish].

I'm quite patriotic. Not to the extent of wraping myself in the Union Flag and crying at the first strains of Land of Hope and Glory, but I do like to see the old flag a-fluttering from time to time. Well the spams have it off to a fine art. Their jolly little number is everywhere, like shit in a field so to speak.

I may have mentioned this befor [If I haven't, oops, the cat is now out of the bag] but I have a bit of a facination for all things piss. I realy thought my luck was in when I spotted this little device attached to a urinal flush thingy. "Wow! Piss TV / web-cam. I wonder what the www address is?" My hopes were dashed [pissed on?] when I was told it's a flush sensor. Pity.

above: David and Myself in some mosquito infested swamp.

You've seen it in the red-neck movies..... well, so have I and this trip was the perfect oportunity to have a ride in an are boat. Very good and worth every penny of the $18 it cost.

above: Where's my Zantac?

I can see why some Americans grow somewhat larger than the norm. I dont recall any other time or trip when I have suffeed so much from indigestion. Abstenance is not a word I understand.

The Birthday Bash

[The photos are not in order coz I'm tired and half pissed]

The whole idea behind traipsing off to Florida for a week was to help Sera celebrate her 50th birthday. Ten of us went, six of us, Dave, Me, Sellina, Sera's sister & France, staying with Sera [and her other half, Mike] in their holiday home, Richard and Annie staying with his sister and "Dummpy" Dave and his wife Babs staying in the house that they have over there. Also atending would be Sera's other sister Sam and her husband who were coming from Los Angeles and a whole bunch of their yank friends.

above l-r: France, Dave, Me, Sellina, Sera, Mike

The birthday itself was on Monday and Sera had it all planned out as to what she wanted to do for the whole day. Starting with a heart-attack inducing breakfast, champaign on the beach, present giving and then out for diner.

above: The whole bunch of us st the trough.

above: The morning after the night before. [ie after six of us sat in the

jacuzzi until five am, drinking and steeing the world to rights]

above: Mike doing the speach and taken only seconds before

he proposed which caught everybody on the hop!

A good time was had by all and between the whole bunch of us we didn't fight once [even though Mike had to bang his head on the wall several times!].

Back To Normality, whatever that is!

Well, that was a nice little break. A week in florida for a friends 50th birthday. Pics and stroies to follow.

Cosmetic surgery

Yet again, blogger fails to upload pics.

I had quite a little surprise today. I had to go into fat-birds room to dump her laundry from the dryer when I saw, at the side of her bed, a brochure for cosmetic surgery. The page that showed the most "views" ie. the page with food spilled on it [seriously, thats not a joke] was the one giving info on liposuction.

Liposuction: medical; the act of removing excess fat via a vacuum tube.

Hipposuction: slang; a quasi medical procedure carried out on over optimistic fat women.

Her having liposuction is akin to the size of job that that guy did on Mount Rushmore. It's eating a hole in me [liposuction again!] to mention this to her but it's just toooooooooooo good an opportunity to waste without having an audience. I can wait........

1000 Yard Stare

This space is reserved for the two pics that blogger couldn't upload because it's shite!

Going to see Brokeback Mountain tomorrow. Not because it's a "gay" film but because of the cute Jake Gyllenhaal. Much as I wouldn't kick him out of bed, I do wish that his acting style was slightly different.

What I'm referring to is his 1000 yard stare. If you watch him he rarely looks anybody straight in the eye. You would think he was autistic.

Not that it's a major problem, it's just one of those niggling little things that once you notice it, it becomes obvious. It's also one of the reasons I could never watch Casualty [the other reason was that it was complete shite]. One of the main characters, Charlie Fairhead was the same. I was never quite convinced that he wasn't reading the words from an "idiot board" held at the side of the camera, as Phil Silvers did, apparently.

On Your Marks, Get Set...............

This stuff doesn't work!

I would have been better off jamming

the box up my arse!

Today has been most unpleasant. For most of the time I didn't know which way up to sit on the loo! God only knows what I've eaten. Needless to say, I didn't go to work. I hate being ill but what I hate more is being of work. If it wasn't for the fact that I daren't be more than ten feet away from a toilet I would have gone to work. Dave says it must be something I ate at work because he's fine but after some of the things he's had in his mouth over the years, nothing would make him ill!

More Enigmatic Crap

An add-on to the previous post. Added to the list of shite that came out of the same mould as Lost, Morse etc, should be Invasion, the new old trash on 4.

We saw a few episodes of this while on holiday. It's akin to that Californian Wine in a box, in that it's crap in its homeland and sure don't travel well.

Lost

As I've said before, I'm not much of a telly watcher. There are occasions when I feel I may have missed something, not the cultural event like a coronation or something of that order but I do get the feeling that I've missed out when everybody you talk to is transfixed by something on the TV and I've not seen it.

"Lost" was one such occasion. Not any more! One of our New Year guests was in a hell of a rush to get home to set the video to tape the whole of the first series which was being shown on E4 or MORE 4 or some such. Having ascertained that I'd not seen any of it he was at some pains to emphasize that I should blow the whole day watching it. Well, he's just called in and left me a copy of the whole series which he's burned to DVD.

I must admit that I did sit down to watch it on New Years Day. I must have watched all of five minutes and turned it off. What a load of old crap. I hate these mega-series which have no plot, crap acting and are enigmatic only because if they told the story straight-up, it could be distilled down to a not too bad half hour show. Inspector Morse and Twin Peaks being the same type of guff.

Knowing how big an impact Lost has had on his viewing enjoyment I haven't the heart to tell Fabs that I have no intention of watching it, I'll con David into watching it and will have to "mug-up" on the salient points later.

Survey

Oh God, somebody, who must remain nameless, has e-mailed me one of these "100 things about me" type things to put on my blog.

I'm tempted to fill it in but doubt that I could find a hundred things to say about myself. I may make it to twenty, maybe even thirty, but a hundred........ It's the sort of thing you pass around your friends. I think that that way you would get far truer answers.

Watch this space.

Living On Borrowed Time. [or, Buy British!]

On, the search is on, again. I got in from work today to find Dave with his nose in a brochure. Now I wouldn't mind if it was a holiday brochure but this is for a car. Well, a sort of a car, a Mini.
I'm not that interested in cars but I know what I like and what I don't. Currently we have a Range Rover [known as Ralph, don't ask] and I love it / him. It's like driving an armchair. Dave, whose car it is [I have no need for a car, and rarely drive it, so I only finance the bloody things] would rather have something smaller, which is any other car really! This is because he can't park the bloody thing!
Ralph was my choice. The last car we had was David's choice. We only had it four weeks and gave it back.
It was a BMW Z3 and within a quarter of an hour of picking it up from the dealership something had gone wrong with it.
On average, something went wrong / fell off etc, etc, every other day. The end result of this was that we went back to the dealers and caused a bit of a commotion by throwing the keys on the desk, asking for the money back and threatening them with Trading Standards et al.
they offered us a different car but we didn't want one. So, we got the money back and went and got Ralph.
We didn't have the BMW long enough to give it a name other than "the car" or, more often, "that fukin' car".
Now he's looking at what is, effectively, another BMW.
I can see that I have my work cut out disuading him!

# In, Out, Shake it all about [a sad story]

This is quite a sad story but it made me chuckle.
Today I had to attend the first case conference for a 15 year old kid who came to our attention because we thought he was selling his arse.
He came to our notice about a year ago because he was hanging around with the Evening Standard sellers around king's Cross, St Pancras And KX Thameslink stations. Although prostitution does still go on around there it's not as bad as it was, say, four or five years ago.
Anyway, this kid had come to our attention. He hit the big time, so to speak, when one of our guys saw him doing what he thought was "attempting to attract attention of others [males] for the purposes of soliciting himself for the further purposes of prostitution".
This "information" was passed onto the Op Merlin team who passed it onto the local authority. So, after four weeks, wheels have ground etc, etc and the first case conference happened today.
Well, knowing what I know now.....
Mick [not, of course, his real name] has Asperger's Syndrome [read the in's & out's of it, it will take far to long to explain here], is being bullied in school, doesn't make friends easily, finds it easier to interact with those who are older than himself, doesn't necessarily see that things / situations are dangerous or wrong.
So, the case conference had myself, a social worker to whom the case had been assigned, an Out-reach Worker from Bernardo's, and his head of year from his school plus and impartial chairman. The school rep and us were the ones with all of the info so we lead the show.
His head of year form school must have been plucked straight from the 1950's. Nice woman but, fuckin' hell, not with the program.
Having established that, no, he doesn't suddenly arrive at school with loads of unaccountable money / material goods, he doesn't seem to have any interest in drugs / cigarettes / drink etc, we came to the question of sex.
"Do you think he is sexual active / "aware""? asked the guy from Bernado's.
"Well, he's like all boys of that age..... he jiggles about...." and she did the sort of thing that guys do when they're "shuffling the dominoes" [rummaging around with their balls].
I didn't laugh but it took some stifling.
What more can you say! There is more to the story but it's nor worth persuing at the moment. I'll keep you updated.

Buggins' Turn

Buggins' Turn refers to the way that "honors" are distributed in the Queens Birthday honors list and the New Years honors List. What it means is that at some point, everybody will get something. What it also means is that it seems to be the most unsuitable buggers who get them.
One of my colleagues got an OBE in the NY list. "For services to brown-nosing and drinking tea" is what the citation should have said.
I can only think of one thoroughly deserved award in recent years; Fred Dibnah. Sadly, Mr Dibnah died in November 2004 so he didn't get long to brag about it. Not that he would have bragged. Probably he'd have been more interested in how it was made! Good old Fred. [ok, so this is the second time I've tried to upload a pic today and it still doesn't work]

Sniff, sniff

Talking to one of my colleagues who wanders around with the "sniffer" dog today, I asked him, in the light of the latest wave of terrorist bombings, how do Muslims deal with a copper aiming a dog towards them?
Not that I particularly care about their sensibilities, I just thought it would make the officer more suspicious of the person.
"Un-bloody lucky" was the answer "the dog's got a job to do".

Oi, Philip Larkin!

I was prompted to post this because of a comment made by GawBlimeyGuv!. He was concerned that Alan Bennett may be a bit "poncey" to read.

Poncey, PONCEY! it could be called dull or even domestically dull, because he only ever writes about his home / family life etc, but poncey it isn't.

Here is an extract from "Untold Stories"

When we bought the clock, it was bought not for its aesthetics, it's a plain 1950's thing, but for its chime. Full "Westminster" chimes every quarter, half and the hour. But, of late, the clock has been losing time so, I've arranged for it to be looked at.
Placing it on the back seat of the car, it begins to behave like the dog that knows it's being taken to the vets, chiming and clanging constantly, much as the dog would bark.
Arriving at the jewellers, we find it closed and so come home again.The clock sits quiet, sulking almost, with only an occasional plaintive "Ting" of relief.

So, for the Philip Larkin of London Bridge [he was a librarian as well as a poet] this one is for you!

Family Values #5

I love going to bed late. I love getting up early. It makes me feel as though I have won the day. This is as opposed to losing the day by laying festering in my pit making love to myself.

What I hate is having this short reverie disturbed.

Last night I went to bed about midnight, having to be up for duty at 08.00 this involves falling out of my bet at around 07.30. At about 01.30 the phone rang. And rang, and rang!

Now, David has the phone at his side of the bed. This situation came about because he got sick of me picking it up and saying "What?". Anyway, after digging him in the ribs a few times he answered the damn thing.

It was his brother, Eamon.

The charming Eamon, his consumptive wife, [potentially orange boiler suited] son and svelte daughter, our very own Fat Bird, are currently on holiday in the good old U S of A [where they blend in perfectly].

Eamon wanted to know when we were going over there. Dave told him. Then Eamon embarked on his "I need a Favour" speech.

The gist of it was he's bought something and he wants us to bring it back because for some spurious reason or other, he can't.

[A bit of background history] Before they moved back over to the UK, every time we went to the States we would end up taking something or bringing something back for him.

When they came back to [Northern] Ireland, each time went went "home", same thing, we would end up taking or bringing something.

By this time I was well awake and doing my yelling in the background stunt. "Tell him this time he's blown it, we're not going anywhere near the". [They have a house in Orlando [Kissimee] and we're going to Naples, which is not exactly next-door].

"Don't worry about that, I'll sort that out, just give me the address".

Cheeky cunt.

Anyway, after this bit of social chit-chat, the next bomb shell was "Is Chris going to be up early this morning?"

"Chris is already up early this morning, you twat!"

"Roseanne [aka Fat Bird] may need a hand up the stairs with her suitcases".

Now, Fat Bird has two Nigerian family sized suitcases, and she'd taken them both with her. All the better to fill with clothes in sizes that it is only possible to buy in the US.

Needless to say I was up and out of the house damn early today!

Later......

I'm sitting here toying with my blog, Sidney is playing with his Spacehopper [don't ask]. Nothing much disturbs him when he's doing this. All of a sudden he starts leaping around and doing his impression of a bark [bulldogs don't really bark, it's a sort of quiet "Hufff"].

Out of the kitchen comes Fat Bird. She has hair that the maid from Tom & Jerry would have had under that red spotted turban thing. Well the hair looked as though she'd had her fingers in the electric socket! The dog was fukin terrified! It didn't last long though because he saw that she had food [nothing out of the ordinary there, then].

Entitled "One fat bastard feeding the other"

above: the three round things are (clockwise) Fat Bird, Sidney, Sidney's spacehopper and in the background, Dave, peering to the centre of the earth vie the chasm of Fat Bird's arse crack.

# "In The Bleak Mid-winter......"

I hate this time of year. It's a dull, lost in a fug of nothingness, time of grinding dull-ness. The only light spot being Easter.

It must be soon.

I know this because, schlepping down Euston Rd the other day I walked past a bus shelter decked out in the full issue Cadbury Cream Egg guise.

Diy you know that an anagram of "Cadbury's Cream Egg" is...

A Cad's Cry: Bugger Me!

A Belated Christmas Present

I love Alan Bennett. Or, to be precise, I love what he writes. His latest chunk of northern gloom "Untold Stories" are the dark bits that fill in some of the gaps from his other tales.

I bought this on the day of publication [yep, I'm that kind of sad sod!] and had read it within a couple of days.

Today we had the descending on us of friends. They're Dave's friends, not mine. I wouldn't have them in the house if I had the option.

As a sign of the "Season of goodwill to all men and Chris too" they'd bought me a prezzie, Untold Stories.

Now in the ordinary course of events, such a situation would result in "oooh, thankyou, just what I wanted" but, because of who was giving it, I couldn't manage much more than "thanks, now I'll be able to take it on holiday and not have to worry about bringing it home". The look on Dave's face told me that I'm gonna be spending another romantic evening with myself but I don't care. Never has a present been so unwanted.

Coming to America

Now that the silly season is over I can start counting down to my next holiday [even though I'm only just back from one!]. Its now twenty three days away.

We're going to Florida for a week. Sarah one of our friends [a colleague of Davids and an ex-colleague of mine] has a house in Naples and, as it's her 50th birthday, a whole load of us are going to go and cause a bit of mayhem in the Land of the Free. In the party there's Davis & Myself, Sarah and her hubby, Mike [also a Copper], France, Sarahs sister and her husband [who are also publicans] whom I've met several times but I've always been pissed and can't remember their names, and another couple who I don't know but also run a pub. It promises to be a boozy do.

The bit I'm not looking forward to is the flight. I'm not frightened of flying, I just hate dealing with the cunts who work for airlines. This time we're flying with Virgin. We've flown with them before [the last time we went to Florida] and they're shite. I don't get all this crap that as soon as you mention flying with Virgin that people say "Ooooh, Virgin, they're brilliant". Why? Just because you get a pair of paper socks and a toothbrush doled out by some fifteen year old whore in bright orange lipstick, it makes them superb? I think not

If they were as all-singing-all-dancing as the tattoo / sovereign ring brigade say, then the trolley dolly's wouldn't get into such a fukin strop when they see you getting your Embassy No1 out!

Also, as we're going to Florida, chances are the plane is gonna be full of half dead kids all having chemotherapy instead of the inflight meal, shedding their hair everywhere and coughing cancer laden blood and sputum all over the seatback screens.

Crap Food

While I was typing the entry below about the mags & holidays we got on to talking about other crap things and food came up. Dave, when doing the Christmas shopping bought a box of After 8 Irish Cream "flavored" chocs. I tasted on and nearly threw up [for once, I didn't swallow but spat]. Even Sidney wouldn't eat them!
Then, France mentioned Quorn. I'm frightened of this stuff. Follow this link for other peoples bed experiences with Quorn
Fat Bird buys this shite by the skip load. She's not a veggie but it's fat free-ish so she thinks it will help her lose weight. What she doesn't realize is that it's not the amount of fat she eats that's the problem, its the amount she fukin eats! Anyway, back to the Quorn.
France made the classic mistake of saying that it's made from mushrooms. Is it hell. It says on the label that it is a "microprotien" which is fungus derived. Sure, all mushrooms are fungus but not all fungus is mushrooms! It is actualy a mould. Moreover it is type of mold that grows on the roots of wheat.
Ok, so you've gotten over the fact that you're eating something which, if you found it growing on your cheese, you would cut off / throw away or, if you found it growing on your knob well, don't do either of the aforementioned. Why if you are a veggie, do you want to eat something that looks like part of a dead animal? I thought that that was the whole idea of being a veggie.

It's That Time Of The [New] Year

Apart from the calander, there is another infalible way of telling that it's Christmas / New Year / Silly Season.
The first is the plethora of crap adverts for crap holidays.

Haven Holidays. Come and live

in a field for two weeks.

BOOK EARLY!

As seen on GMTV

The other one is the 30 million part-work magazine, first issue only 99p with free binder- which your local newsagent will stop getting after issue 5.
My joint fave at the moment is "Mind, Body, Spirit" I must rush out and buy this little cracker with its free bottle of oil [cooking, probably] and three bits of coloured glass [just the thing to block up the hoover].
The way the advert pitches the "all you need to know about guardian angels, pixies, hobbits and other old cack" makes me howl. And the music...... I'm sure I have a porno in my collection with that music on it.

Sadly, I couldnt find a pic of the other mag which is "Build a Radio Controled BMW somthing or other car" The first issue has one wheel and a door handle as the parts to begin making this piece of tat [Sovereign Rings not included]. I guess at that rate, there will be millions of tower blocks, littered with badly glued together bits of plastic.