... to my stomach

For the first time in a long time, I have had to take a day off sick. And when I say sick, I mean sick.
I don’t know if it’s food poisoning or just a really bad bug, but I’ve spent more time in the toilet today than I normally spend at work. 
My head is pounding like the 1812 Overture and I’m so weak I can barely move a toenail. I can’t face food, I can’t keep down water, and I feel like I’ll be confined to this sofa for a fortnight; unable to move, breathe or think without vomiting.
Oh well. At least Springwatch is on.

RC 31-5-16

Yet another problem with modern life

God I hate clairvoyants. And psychics, and crystal healers, and mediums and any other conman charlatan bastards who prey on people’s pseudo-religious beliefs to make themselves feel better and make a few quid without having to do a proper job.
I mention it because I had an encounter with someone today that took me very close to punching a woman in the face for the first time in my life. 
She came in and put £24 of petrol into her little Peugeot, and as she reached across the counter to pick up her Mastercard she brushed my hand with her fingers. She instantly did a theatrical intake of breath, rolled her eyes upward to look mysterious, and then started spouting a load of bollocks about my aura being out of alignment with my spirit guide. Honestly it was like a really bad amateur dramatics version of a fairground ‘Tell Your Fortune’ machine. 
She said I need to stop saying ‘no’ to things. She said my default answer to everything is ‘no’ and even when I say ‘yes’ with my mouth, inwardly I am saying ‘no’ at the same time, so that I am never fully committing to my ‘yeses’
She also said that seeing her in her ‘studio’ every Friday for six weeks would help unblock my aura and retrain me to step away from my defaults.
I told her I’d rather spend every Friday for six weeks buried neck deep in David Cameron’s diarrhoea and we decided to leave it there.
I’ve been thinking about it all day, and I wonder how many people might fall for this shit and end up paying her for ‘sessions.’ I’ve realised that what she said and what she claimed to do has basically a 50% chance of looking accurate. Everyone on Earth, I would guess, could be described as ‘saying NO too often’ or ‘saying YES too often.’ So all you do is pick which one you’re going to say and throw it out there and wait to see if it lands. Try it 10 times a day and you’re bound to hit on someone with low enough intelligence or high enough desperation to go “My God! You’re right! I DO do that too much!” Then you just charge them thirty quid an hour to tell them things that they really should know for themselves anyway. It might only happen once a week sometimes, but you wouldn’t need a very high success rate to start churning over some decent money.
Hmmmmm. Maybe instead of criticising her, I should be looking on her as a mentor and analysing her business plan. 
Maybe filling station management isn’t the way I should be going. Maybe I should be buying a headscarf and having some acting lessons and converting the garage into a ‘studio’
It’s worth thinking about…..

RC 30-5-16

Boring stream-of-conscience work rant

Work are trying to take away a member of staff from me.
I have to type a report justifying why I need to keep them all. 
Just another example of customer service being abandoned in favour of profit. 
Our customers will have to wait longer and our staff will be more stressed just because our supermarket chain got too big for its greedy boots and threw its money at continual expansion and is now left paying for extra space at a time when the footfall has decreased dramatically.
Suddenly I hate being a manager.

RC 27-5-16

My Life; My Thoughts; My Poem

Tumbling
Racing
Falling
Flying
Aching
Teething
Yearning
Trying
Shelving
Belching
Melting
Crying
Jumping
Fearing
Lurching
Lying 
Keeping
Seeping
Sleeping
Sighing
Breaking
Braking
Taking
Frying
Drowning
Waning
Watching
Prying
Pushing
Training
Falling
Dying

RC 26-5-16

7 months today is Xmas Day...

It passed me by without me noticing it, but I’ve now broken through 1600 blog postings. I always like to mention it when I pass a landmark number, but it doesn’t really mean anything to anybody else so I might stop doing it now. (Unless I get to 2000, in which case I intend to throw a big party)
Anyway, I’m enjoying my week of daily poetry, so here’s today’s offering:

The sand in the timer continues to fall
Sucking my life through it’s glassy guts
Like a mosquito 
Sucking blood from a child

Do my days on this world have meaning?
Have I filled my time with expression and achievement?
Or am I simply a seat filler?
As much a waste of space as a columnist for the Daily Mail?

It is a sobering thought
That I may be halfway through the span of my life
Like a half-drunk Capri-Sun
Or a half-eaten croissant

Thirty years lay discarded like trimmed hairs
Thirty more await my attention
How, then, to make Part 2 a suitable sequel; an improvement? 
How ???????????????????????????????????????????

RC 25-5-16

A Tuesday poem

The last time I watched “The Empire Strikes Back”
I was wearing pyjamas of yellow and black
And when I enjoyed Al Pacino in ‘Heat’
I was suffering badly with cramp in my feet
This weekend I sampled ‘Avengers Assemble’
And realised my fingers were starting to tremble
Last night I watched Crowe in ‘A Beautiful Mind’
After hanging a curtain and cleaning the blind

It would seem that the film titles, taken in rhyme,
Are matching an aspect of ME at that time 
So I wondered and pondered and then asked my wife:
“Am I choosing my films based on parts of my life? 
Or is it vice versa; the other way round,
and the movies are turning my lifestyle around?”
She thought for a moment then said, rather sadly,
“Honey, I need a divorce lawyer, badly.”

RC 24-5-16

A Monday poem

Legs
Painful as shingles
Stiff as a Catholic priest at Christmas
Lungs
Cloudy as Autumn
Heavy as a Braintree barmaid
Teeth
Stained with flies
Blackened by an insect onslaught
So why
Oh why oh why oh why
Did I go cycling again tonight, 48 hours after nearly crippling myself for life?
What a tit.

RC 23-5-16

Lawns and Laziness

I couldn’t move much today, but when I did I pottered about the garden pulling weeds up and stuff. It was strange to stand there, surveying the extent of our borders, and to think that it will soon be officially OURS rather than just a garden we are taking care of for someone else. That made me feel both wonderful and worried; both magnificent and malcontent. Because it means we can do whatever we like with it, but that whatever needs to be done HAS to be done by US. I put those words in capitals for emphasis, because this is now our truth. It’s great, but it’s galling. It means responsibility and action. We can’t simply dream about our ideal place and hope it magically materialises, we now have to face the reality of putting in the work ourselves or never seeing the garden we envisage.
Real life is a bugger, isn’t it?

RC 22-5-16

Proud of the pain

Today was very windy. It was also quite cool and dull, but rather than moan about it being un-Summery I decided to see the positives and call it Perfect Cycling Weather! So I had a big bowl of porridge for breakfast, packed up a big bottle of water and some fruit, and took myself off on my bike for my annual Day Of Over-Exercising.
To be frank, my legs feel so painful right now that I could cry, scream, collapse, explode, retire, sleep and vomit all at the same time. You might be thinking ‘he does this every Spring, why doesn’t he learn from the past?’ but the truth is there’s a little part of me that enjoys it. It’s become such a tradition that I almost look forward to it and revel in the subsequent agony. I mean, isn’t there a regularly-repeated chapter in The Book Of My Life headed “Rory Gets Excited About Spring Weather In May And Cycles To The Point Of Exhaustion?” It’s right there in the index, between chapter titles like “Rory Pisses His Wife Off And Doesn’t Know How He’s Done It” and “Rory Gets Down And Grumpy About Work And Moans About It Online”
If I made it through to Summer without obliterating my thighs with lactic acid at least once, it just wouldn’t feel like a proper year.
Now I’m off for a hot, soothing bath.
If I can actually get through to the bathroom.

RC 21-5-16

Silly mare

We don’t have a separate staff car park at work, we have to dump our vehicles on the public supermarket car park and then hope they’re not reversed into or rammed by trolleys. When I finished work today I sat in my car with the engine running while I sent Philippa a text, when suddenly a large woman in her fifties climbed into the passenger seat with a carrier bag of shopping. She started moaning about the queues and about a man with a trolley being at the baskets-only till, and then as she plugged in her seatbelt she finally looked up and spotted me. A look of confused terror spread across her face and her voice dropped low as she said “You’re not my husband, are you?”
I smiled and said “Not as far as I remember, no.”
She said “This isn’t our car then, is it?”
I said “Not our car, no. It’s my car, but I’m pretty sure it’s not your car.”
She was so embarrassed she could hardly speak, and nearly fell flat on her face in her hurry to get out of the door. I thought it was pretty funny, but she seemed absolutely mortified. Why a state of mistaken vehicular identity should have rendered her so distraught I don’t know, but there we are. I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: 
Women are strange, and unfathomable.

RC 18-5-16

Bad explanation; good game

I have a new game to help wile away the hours at work. It involves locking myself in the office, opening several bags of crisps (each of different flavours) and then trying all possible combinations together and seeing which make nice new flavours and which make you want to puke.
I have a notepad in which I’ve written one-word descriptions of each combination. They are as follows:
Smoky Bacon and Prawn Cocktail - ‘unpleasant’
Cheese and Onion and Beef and Onion - ‘oniony’
Ready salted and Prawn Cocktail - ‘bleeuurggh!’
Worcester Sauce and anything - ‘rank’
Salt and Vinegar and Cheese and Onion - ‘triumph!’

RC 17-5-16

Gluttony, and obsession

After a boozy Sunday lunch yesterday we ended up back at Philippa’s chums for an evening barbecue. Despite having over-eaten at lunchtime, I ate so much barbecue fare that I now really can’t face the thought of ever putting meat in my mouth again. So I’ve suggested to Philippa that we go vegetarian for a month or so. She’s delighted because she says it’ll make us healthier, and it’ll increase our chances of conceiving. One way or another, it ALWAYS comes back to bloody babies.

RC 16-5-16

Philosophical potpourri

A few random things I wrote down during my recent absence, which I then intended to elaborate on in blog postings, which I then never did (but would still like to do, in the coming days…)

It always annoys me when people who are far less busy than me moan about how busy they are…

House is sorted - the Bannermans have to pay a one-off £1000 ‘release fee’ or some such shit, then we can all do as we please.
It’s a great weight off our minds. Well it’s a great weight off MY mind - Philippa seems determined to cling onto the fret ‘just in case something goes wrong’

Obviously we don’t have sex so much now we’re married.

Having worked in them, or near them, for years, I try and avoid supermarkets as much as I can. But a weird thing happens if I don’t venture inside one at least once a week. We seem to run out of food….

If God had meant me to have tidy lawns he would have put blades on my slippers.

RC 15-5-16
2155 BST

Back again

Is this the longest break I’ve ever taken between posts? Even allowing for holidays and illnesses and things? I haven’t been away; I haven’t been hurt; I just haven’t been keeping you up to date. 
They do say that absence makes the heart grow fonder, so hopefully my bout of blogging silence has led you to miss me somewhat, and you will now appreciate my ponderings and postings all the more! Or maybe you’ll just moan about me being lazy, or maybe you’ll have forgotten me by now already, who knows for sure?
Anyway, I’m back now.
And I have lots to share with you.
I’m just not going to do it now, because Philippa and I are meeting some friends for lunch and she’s nagging me to iron a shirt so I don’t look completely untidy.

RC 15-5-16

?

Today I have been bothered by this question:

“Given the advances in technology, and the rate of inflation, how much would ‘The Six Million Dollar Man’ cost today?”

RC 3-5-16