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Wouldn’t it be nice if I carried on writing long blog postings, even though I’m no longer limited to how often I post them? If I kept up this rate of wordage on a daily basis and became almost an obsessional writer who churns out thousands of words a day, like Enid Blyton did, but online.
It’s very unlikely, but wouldn’t it be nice?
Today I am content to be going to bed, knowing that tomorrow morning I can turn over the RSPB calendar and see a lovely picture of a robin resting on a fencepost in a snowy garden, underneath the word ‘December.’ It’s the most wonderful time of the year, even though I’m not really into it yet. I have not bought one present, nor had one thought about what the presents I haven’t bought yet might eventually be, nor compiled my usual annual CD-of-Christmas-stuff-to-listen-to-in-the-car, nor thought about new decorations, or where we might have stored the old ones, and yet somehow there is a twinkle in my minds eye that wasn’t there this morning.
We are on the cusp of Christmas, my friends. Joy to us all!
In other news, Sophie and Tamara aren’t speaking to each other. My sister has asked if she can come and spend all Christmas with us because (and this is a direct quote) “If I have to be with that selfish bitch much longer I’ll be strangling her with tinsel and shoving a mince pie up her craphole. In that order….”
There is often trouble in that particular corner of paradise, so I’m not surprised the seas of Sophieland are choppy once more. I shall offer a disinterested ear and wait until it all blows over and they lock themselves away in a hotel room somewhere to make up for all the unpleasantness. Until that day comes, I can refuse to let it upset my impending yuletide enjoyments by mostly ignoring it. Being selfish, misanthropic and with a total lack of empathy may not make me a nice person, but it makes life easier for me, and that’s the most important thing.
SEE YOU IN CHRISTMAS MONTH!!!!!!
RC 30-11-16
Time for another one of my long updates….
I have badly missed the discipline and routine of more regular blogging. I’m so glad it’s nearly the end of this month so I can go back to limitless amounts of postings. I may go mad in December and over-do it a bit and end up putting up 37 blogs in 10 days, but we’ll see. I like my little challenges, but in future I shall shy away from any that stifle my creativity as much as this one.
We had our first full rehearsal at the school today. I was looking forward to it, especially after Friday night when the band really tightened things up. We weren’t perfect, but we’d made good progress and we were ready to get things going with the cast. Then today, shortly after arriving at the school, I got called back to the garage for an ‘emergency’ which actually turned out to be a ‘minor incident’ that I wasn’t needed for, and by the time I’d got back to the classroom everyone had started without me. Not a good first impression, and I didn’t feel like I fully recovered. I hadn’t expected great things from the students, but even I was surprised by the lack of talent on display! This show needs a looooootttttttt of work and unfortunately we only have two more rehearsals with them before curtain up! Oh well - the parents in the audience will be concentrating on the kids rather than us, and as long as we’re halfway acceptable I think we’ll be ok. If the kids feck the songs up, it ain’t my fault.
I thought getting involved in the show might push me over the edge as far as yuletide festivities goes. I’ve been having it rammed down my throat in messages from Head Office since September, and I’ve been secretly longing for the first week of January, but playing the Xmas songs with the band has managed to pull my head back into the ‘fun’ aspects of December, and these lovely, cold, frosty mornings are ramping up the cosy Winter feelings as well.
36 hours til my first Advent chocolate!!!
RC 29-11-16
My occasional obsession with numbers may be sabotaging my determination to blog frequently. I’m on target to achieve something I haven’t done since 2010 - posting a different number of blogs in each calendar month of a given year. So far in 2016 I’ve totalled every number from 14 to 23 inclusive. I wasn’t confident I’d be able to hit the mid-twenties in November and December, so I decided to limit myself to 13 postings this month, so I’ve allowed myself to be a bit lazy. Even the little writings I’ve done have been barely more than a paragraph. It’s not like I haven’t got anything to write about - Christmas imminent, band rehearsals, plans to change the garage, Movember, Philippa’s ongoing one-woman crusade to reach Motherhood - I’m just choosing not to write about it, for fear of over-running the blog count and failing to achieve some silly little unimportant goal that is absolutely meaningless to everyone in the world except me. But then again - it’s my blog and it’s up to me how I run it, so maybe I should give myself a break.
Either way, there’s a week left in November and I’ve only got 3 remaining postings to play with, so I may as well make this one worthwhile and run on a bit and let you catch up with the things I’ve been failing to tell you:
I’ve been calling Philippa ‘Pippa’ and it turns out she doesn’t like it very much. I don’t know how I got into the habit, I just used it once and it felt nice and it felt personal, so I’ve been using it on-and-off since. But, like most things connected with my wife at the moment, it turns out I was doing something wrong. I got the hint when she said “If you keep calling me Pippa I’m going to start calling you Ches.”
We had a band rehearsal for the Christmas do last weekend. If I had to sum it up in three words those words would be ‘clumsy’, ‘disjointed’ and ‘embarrassing.’ But they’re all nice people and we’re all enthusiastic, and we’re all as bad as each other, so hopefully I won’t stand out as being particularly untalented. Plus, not being nasty but let’s be honest, it’s a school production so it’s not as if the acting on-stage is going to be mind-blowingly good, so we should fit right in. We’re getting together again tomorrow night, then we have an after-school rehearsal with the kiddiewinks next Tuesday. That’ll be nerve-wracking and chaotic, but gives me a nice excuse for an afternoon off. Head Office are very keen on the idea of fostering links between the supermarket and the local community, so they’re letting me work a half-day without it counting as taking holiday. Good stuff. If I work this right and expand this ‘drumming in schools’ malarkey maybe I can end up spending three days a week in local schools, while being paid a managers wage by the supermarket….
I think that’ll do for now. I’ve just written over 500 words for Christ’s sake, what the Hell do you want from me????
RC 24-11-16
There was a programme on last night about the life of Freddie Mercury, the lead singer of Queen. About five minutes into it Philippa shifted her gaze from the screen to my face, then back to the television again, then back to my face. Then she said “I knew your moustache reminded me of someone” and started singing “Oh, how I want to break freeeeeee…”
God, I hate her.
Three weeks into Movember, and here’s the complete list (as far as I can remember) of names that people have called me:
Fuzzface
Ferret-kisser
Ned Flanders
Freddie Mercury
Generic 70s porn star
Saddam Hussein
Fanny-face
C**t-lips
Arkwright from Open All Hours
Mingemouth
RC 21-11-16
I’ve been spending most of this evening watching Andy Murray win the World Tennis thing, while drinking. Then I immediately switched over to watch “Planet Earth II” which is simply miles clear at the top of the table when it comes to the category ‘TV programme of the year.’
Two more points before I drift off to the fridge for another can of Guinness. 1 - isn’t it nice of Andy to finish his match just in time for the start of Planet Earth? And 2 - How, how, how can anyone, anywhere, ever moan about the BBC when it serves up stuff like it has done today?
I’m back from the fridge now. Two points I’d like to make for anyone who, like me, has discovered in their thirties just how great a drink stout is, but who might be considering Movember next year. The two things do not mix well. The frothy head just clings to your moustache, which acts like a weird kind of strainer, and the whole experience is weird and distracts you from the pleasantness of the drink.
I desperately want to go and visit the Guinness factory in Dublin, but I’d have to do it after shaving, so I’m trying to persuade Philippa to let me book us a weekend in Ireland before Christmas. So far she’s not agreeing……
RC 20-11-16
I asked Philippa for a kiss tonight and she said “You’ll get a snog when you get a shave.” I pointed out I was doing this for charity and to raise awareness of men’s health issues and maybe that should be celebrated and she said “I agree. It’s great, and I fully support you. But I signed up to kiss Rory, not Ned Flanders. Come and see me in December.”
RC 17-11-16
Philippa hasn’t kissed me since Friday. She blames the ‘cookie duster’ but I think that’s just an excuse. She’s been cooling towards me for a while now and this is just the latest stage in a gradual ceasing of physical activities. I was warned before our wedding that agreeing to a marriage was a sure-fire way to attain celibacy and I laughed, but maybe there was some truth in it. So many people that I know lost the spark in their sex life when they became Mr and Mrs. There must be some deep psychological change that is instigated within a woman’s body when you place a band of gold upon her finger, or maybe women just give it up to you until they’ve snared you, and then they give it up. Who knows? All I know for sure is, I’m getting hairier and hornier by the day.
RC 16-11-16
My moustache is growing quicker than anyone elses… Evidently I am, quite frankly, the manliest man in the garage. Maybe my previous attempts at beard growth have instilled an understanding in my face of what is needed to keep hair sprouting quickly. Or maybe I’m just a REAL MAN…
RC 15-11-16
It may be disrespectful even typing this, but I want to share with you the most bizarre comment I heard over Remembrance weekend:
“Giving a random soldier a blow job is not the same as wearing a poppy”
Ten days into Movember and my moustache is starting to itch. Every time I kiss Philippa now she pulls back with a repulsed look on her face. That’s got nothing to do with Movember, by the way, it’s just the state of our marriage.
I suppose I should mention the US election. It is, after all, the big news story of the week. Possibly the biggest news story of the year. Depends on what other strange turns of events we’re yet to face in this weirdest, most unpredictable of all years. I did sit up on Tuesday night and watch a bit of the election coverage. I was hoping that Hillary would sweep the first few states and I could go to bed happy, but no. When I turned in most of the results were pending, meaning it was closer than anticipated, so I quickly wrote this as a possible blog post for Weds morning:
“Sadly, the election is too close to call, so here we go with months of legal bollocks and bitchiness til we finally find out who won sometime in the New Year, and in the meantime we’ll be bored to death by yet more wrangling and accusations. I think they should just put them in a locked room together and the last one standing is the winner. I’m confident she could kick his arse. (Sorry, we’re talking about Americans - I mean she could kick his ASS.)”
I was hoping to wake up and hear about a Donald Trump landslide. By which I mean - that he’d been buried underneath one.
But as the Rolling Stones once said “You can’t always get what you want.”
Now let’s never speak of it again.
Let’s ignore it, and pretend it never happened.
RC 10-11-16
And so we reach the night of another US election.
We have a regular customer at the garage called Brad (could he have a more American name?) He’s originally from Wisconsin and I asked him today how he wanted the vote to go. He said “Put it this way - I’ll be sitting up tonight with a pot of coffee and a kitchen knife and if Donald Trump wins I’m going to kill myself.”
Couldn’t have put it better myself.
RC 8-11-16
Despite it being just above freezing I decided to bike to work today. Not entirely sure why. Maybe it was the weekends alcohol still coursing through my system and making me feel braver and more able than I am. We’re all adults, right? I’m sure you’re familiar with that strange effect on your confidence (and misunderstanding of your own abilities) that comes about when you’ve sucked a few sherbets. Women who would normally seem out of your reach suddenly seem approachable; men who would normally scare you to death become people you’re prepared to stand up to. It’s all a
lie, and it’s dangerous, but I guess it accounts for about 80% of the decisions that are made on Friday and Saturday nights in the UK.
So I biked to work. And it was fine. But then the alcohol slowly left my system, and it got dark, and it got cold, and I had to bike home. And at that point I remembered I don’t have lights on my bike. So there were two choices – go to the cycling section of the supermarket and blow twenty quid on something I’d only be using for ten minutes, or take my life in my hands and head home without them and hope for the best.
I’m not proud of what I did, but I’m posting this now so I guess I got away with it. And I can only apologise to the drivers that were disturbed by my decision, and forced to swerve to avoid my barely-noticeable velociped as it careered up the dark roads of Suffolk…..
RC 7-11-16
Is there anything better than a weekend of overindulgence?
In the past three days we have been to THREE different fireworks events. One was a big, public, town centre, council organised event that we had to pay to attend; one was a small village gathering with hot soup and hot dogs and some simple entertainment, and one was a private party held in someone’s garden. All, in their own way, were wonderful. Guy Fawkes Night may well be my favourite occasion of the year now. Philippa enjoyed the events, but not my enthusiastic intake of ‘warming whiskey.’ My attitude these day is “What is a bonfire without a hip flask?” but she seems to not agree. Her parting sentence to me as she retired to bed tonight was “You’ll never get me pregnant if you keep drowning your sperm in alcohol.”
RC 6-11-16
