Right 'orrible

It's been a miserable weekend, hasnt it, bloggardes? Yes, it has, as you are all no doubt aware. Pity the poor fools at Glastonbury (for many reasons), but pity more to us who've been stuck indoors all weekend because of the rain. Well, almost.

Bike came through it's MOT with little trouble, at least as far as I was concerned. It's kinda a closed door process, and I was all happy till I came home and saw the advisory notice, which kindly told me that there were 3 things that either need attention or were just passable. Something to worry about in a year's time, maybe I'll have to swap the bike in before then and get myself a new toy.....though it's unlikely that I'll have saved any money by then, and I need to cut down my overdraft now....council tax owing soon....money worries as always worries!

So Friday was fine, P came up to spend a long weekend with me (since I had the day off) and it's been great, just lounging about and doing nothing in particular. Well, we did go out and see a shit film in Bracknell....and hereby begins a tale.....

I had wanted to go to Guildford for purposes of seeing said film, mainly because I've not yet been there and wanted a snoop, plus I've reason to believe the shops are better there. Also, it being Royal Ascot this week, avoiding there would have been a good idea, but we still went through anyway. Crammed full of people all off to the races dressed up posh; and for some reason, when people don slightly quality clothes, they turn into the most obnoxious cretins you can imagine. No, scratch that, they are more obnoxious even than that, odious gits. You are politely asked to let people off the train before you cram your pendulous behinds onto same, so there is no point crowding out the door before it's even open. And then dont get pissed off when, to allow my own passage through your mob, I have to stick out my elbows. Twattage, absolute twattage.

Some small consolement for all this was made by the announcer, apologising on behalf of south west trains for the weather. I hope this was facetiousness, in which case (:-) otherwise, oh-my-god there is no hope.

On the way home we did manage to get a seat on the train full of staggering drunks and half-cuts, all of whom seemed to be incapable of locking the train toiler door. I'm actually not surprised by that, as regular readers will already know of my bugbear with the electronic locking systems - is it locked or isnt it? - but so many of them consistenly failed to do it, and then had the door opened on them mid-piss by someone else.....you'd have thought that there'd be a way to freeze the door in such an eventuality, but no, it has to slide gracefully open to the extent of 1.5m wide (since they are all disabled access loos), and then all the way back again. Nice.

Well, it didnt go down too well with the hideous crones (read: dressed-up tarts from royal ascot) sat opposite us. Once again I have to raise the question of women and their silly shoes. If they are so uncomfortable that you have to take them off, then it's not very clever to be wearing them, is it? Break your shackles of gender conditioning! And dont give me no squat about looking good, most men wont give a second glance at your feet, unless they are some kind of podophile, and then they'd be slavering all over them and you wouldnt want that, huh?

Back to the story; these hideous crones had obviously shucked off their shoes a long time back, since the soles of their feet were the most disgusting shade of black, and their delightful (bright red) corns were clearly on display, along with the (hideously painted) toenails and chippings and mankiness. Bad enough, huh? Till P decided to point out that, in fact, one of these ladies' pair of shoes had the words 'your feet are gorgeous' printed on the insole in delightfully calligraphed letters. Perfect irony. Let this be a lesson to all you female types; feet crushed into silly shoes end up looking minging.

After a bloated evening with much gas - noice - sunday has been spent in quiet blah blah, with a little bit of foreign film and a little bit of warcraft and a big piece of gammon, cooked in coca-cola. This is a fantastic trick that I can recommend to anyone, for any occasion (maybe not your next bar mitzvah). Very nice turn out, and I have it now to eat up for the rest of the week, with the remains of the pot-roast pork and the potatoes.....I always spend loads of money on food around P!

Nearly time for bed, and work again tomorrow.....looking forward to it immensely.....

Flagging

Feeling really tired just now; been a bit droopy all afternoon. I think I'm coming down with something, let's hope it's nothing too bad! I have too much to do tomorrow to be having with being ill.......

Mornings have been getting progressively earlier, though this is unsurprising. It being the solstice yesterday, or today, or whenever it actually is, means that days will become shorter and I will no longer be wakened by the flippin' dawn chorus and the light pouring into my face at half four of a morning. Not that I'm complaining unduly; I do like the longer days, just this is the first time that my sleep has been really badly disturbed by the early sun.....clearly my curtains in previous houses have been of much greater quality.

Mildly interested by the many and varied bikes that keep being parked up just outside. A couple of weeks ago there was a very tasty looking VFR, sunday night there was the beemer and the honda, the beemer of which had already paid a visit, and now there's a trailie parked outside. I'm deeply curious to know where the riders are! Purely for purposes of being nosey, you understand.

Tomorrow is finally the day of the great clean-and-MOT. Keep your fingers crossed for me, people....cant be doing with the stress if I dont pass! It'll take another trip to the garage otherwise, and that WOULD be a pain in the arse, what with the lonnnnnng walk to work, and the slighty less lonnng walk to the station. On that note though, I do need to start exercising again; meditation too - a long forgotten moment of peace that I need back again! So much for eliminating craving thereby, huh? Clearly went at it with the wrong attitude (:-)

Eyes >> stomach

Says it all, really. Poison of choice today; curry. Illness approaches. State of toilet tomorrow suspect. Especially since I dont think I've actually had a poo today......

Enough of my bowels. But I have no other news from today, just a mental note for Friday to remember all the stuff I need to get done!

Blogentry

Hmmmm.

It appears that I've been very lax in updating my blog recently. In theory I should have plenty to blog about, new city, new life, blah blah blah....but I guess that shows how fundamentally difficult it is to actually effect change in your life! But really, I dont have much to blog about that doesnt seem trivial and mundane.....not that this has been a barrier in the past, hehn?

Today has been a nice day, weather wise, though by the time I left the building (ah! air con, delight) it appeared to be very close. Luckily I managed to get home and the bike covered over before the heavens opened, and how did they open! Big thunderstorm, no messing, really clouded over and black....bit scary....but it is now two hours later and it's lighter than before! Nice!

I'm running out of food this week, every so often I get a little panicky over money. In theory I shouldn't, and should plan out my money at least down to the last twenty quid or something, but it's not something I've ever been good at. So I'm living off my store-cupboard *hollow laughter* till P gets here for the weekend. Well, since I'm taking Friday off work for the purposes of MOT, I may as well get the shopping too; though of course I'll be paying my road tax.....and the bank are just about to cut my interest-free overdraft....alas, alas! AND there's the whack of credit card still to pay off.....in fact, I'm going to check my balance once I've finished writing this.

Well, that was cheery, huh? I'll try and update a bit more often from now.....I sense that I it might fall by the wayside a bit!

Farce

Arf. Sometimes people and procedures just obstruct! This morning, BBC breakfast news has a small feature on the rising prevalance of eczema, especially among children. Now those of you that know me, know how personal this subject is, since it's something I have and deal with constantly. I'm very lucky really, that I can do the work I do with little side-effects, and that my condition is so much less worse than it used to be.

So, the feature is commenting on the increased use of strong detergents, perfumed products and skin exfoliants, damaging to the skin, yes. Far better to use mild soaps and not scrub, rather than removing layers and layers of the skin (as I discovered to my intense cost with the dead sea slat scrub, ta missus hard-sell). And this is the net result of the article. Some mother with a young son was wheeled out to discuss his condition, with the immortal lines of 'so, without mentioning any products, you did use.....products, didn't you?'

Hmmmm.

Ropey

Not feeling so good at this precise moment; it is a combination of factors that is causing it, I think. I've got caffeine withdrawl (how did I get into this position again?), not pleasant, but it's been exacerbated by a solid 6hr stint playing WoW, with the screen-induced headache. No-one to blame but myself, of course, but there you are.

Coupled with this is the fact that I've now amazingly overeaten, not being able to turn down a juicy bit of meat, so I'm suffering.

Bleargh.

Harumph

Why are amateur theatre groups stuck in the 1960s? It's as if the whole development of modern theatre has passed them by.......fixed set in safe, sofa&2 locations can get very, very tedious....and nothing wrong with using a larger-canvassed piece and having fun! Makes it more interesting for the stories, epic stories (and not epic theatre, if you're worried), not just 'what happened to x/y/z on a sunday afternoon. And they seem to be positively frightened of 'wordy plays'. Erm....plays are supposed to be about dialogue and monologue, so ones without words would be a tad dull. And if you do it right, it isnt just about people standing around and talking, you act it completely. The best stuff is when the words are enthralling, even if the physical action is not. Shakespeare gets away with very little in actual events. In Beckett, nothing happens - twice. In Pinter, it really is all talking, and all these are great plays. Take a punt! If your actors are good, then it all falls into place......some of us want to do more than safe stuff.

'Nuff said. I'll be doing whatever comes my way at the moment.

A nice surprise

Today has been a mellow day. I've enjoyed it. And there may yet be more to happen before it's over; I'm off to my theatre group lot tonight for jollies, let's see what plays are being slung into the pit tonight.

Had a bit of a bad sleep last night, like quite a few nights this week, dunno what's going on there, and had to use my inhaler for the first time in ages, but it was wonderful to just woof and drop right back to land of nod. I've been waking up shockingly early, since dawn chorus kicks in at about half four in the morning, waking me up since I've been having the windows open. And since my blinds are paper thin (I think they are, in fact, made of paper), no light is cut out at all, which is lovely for the weekend but not midweek. Oh for my dingy old attic room! Nah, not really, it's much nicer in this flat.

So when I did get up properly, I stuck my nose out the window to be quite startled at the sight of an enormous rabbit. In sleepy haze, I didnt' quite recognise it, and assumed it was the local cat that haunts about here, till I realised, no, cats do not have such enormous ears. It was a bit of a heffalump, not sleek and hare-shaped, definitely a domestic and quite porky. I let it go hopping away, didn't know what else to do; don't know if anyone around here has rabbits, was not about to go knocking on doors at 7am and what's more, rabbits have a tendency to scarper when you try and get near them. It seemed content enough.

Day at work commenced with the monthly jobber of the group-meeting-type
thingy with the questions and the feeling totally inadequate in a chemistry sense. Being around these nuts who've been working at this game far longer than I have is a very easy way to make myself feel like I know nothing, but nothing about chemistry. Have to remedy that by just pretending to be thick, then I might learn summat. But not too harsh, it must be said, and then a nice easy day of just getting on with things. I think I'm settled
in a chemistry sense, have all that I need and a very rapid turnaround on analysis, so it feels beautiful and streamlined. Need to sit and have ideas all of my very own, mind. But enough time for that when we get to it, huh?

Home to an enormous pot of pasta, heavy on the carbohydrate today, but I've been feeling hungry a lot recently; as P so delightfully puts it, I've got worms. So I've kinda overeaten now, which was not clever. Sitting watching the TV, there was a badly dubbed advert for Fruitella sweets (the poor man's Opal Fruit?) consisting of a child holding a rather chunky microphone, that in my usual haze of concentration I mistook for one of these jobbers. Made me laugh. It may even have been one of those jobbers. Life is often bizarre like that, huh?

And now I'm blogging and then will play WoW for an hour or so. A nice mellow day. I'm quite content (:-)

Chronic hiccups

I appear to have acquired them in the night. This is not pleasant. They are the body-shaking type, and I'm rather annoyed by it now....

Did you know?

Jon Shepherd --
[noun]:

A person with a sixth sense for detecting the presence of goblins


...apparently. Cheers for the link, Matt! For the rest of you, it is here.