One last time, before 2009

Post-Christmas Haiku

In the last few days
I’ve eaten so much blue cheese
my skin is flaking

My sister and I
drank enough cheap wine and beer
to drown a walrus

we’ve over-eaten..
So what was our Christmas like?
IT WAS CHUFFING GREAT

Seriously though, I’ve eaten so much cheese I think I’ve gone blind. My heart is aching, my liver is swollen and my sides are sore from the laughter and smiles. I’ve put on about 3 stone to my already over-strained frame, my skin is like a hookers flaps and I woke up last night with the sweats, the shakes and the chest pains. But you know what? I DON’T CARE!!
We had a great time, and with our behemoth of a mother out of the way and pickling herself rotten up North somewhere, we had no-one to crash around and f**k things up for us. We woke up still pissed, opened presents with a bottle of red wine, and then cooked ourselves a mammoth feast of a fry-up for Christmas lunch. Slept it off watching Wallace and Gromit, then Beryl and Ted did us proud in the evening.. They’d saved us both a plate of turkey and trimmings, and the wine and game-playing flowed like water.

I now have to detox before my birthday on the 20th. Or I could keep going flat out indulging and start my life afresh in February… Surely it’s better to keep your levels topped up, rather than strain your body with a two-week binge, two-week diet kind of existence? Yes – you’ve convinced me. I’m off for a pint and a curry.

Happy New Year

RC 31-12-08
2210 GMT

there's good and bad everywhere..

Hannah and I are foregoing presents for each other in favour of a Nintendo Wii for the living room… Honest Gerald from the Butchers Arms can get us one on Boxing Day for a round hundred. I guess the beaming smile on a child’s face this Christmas will be disappearing pretty sharpish. My horrors at the dishonesty of a man who would break into houses on Christmas night to steal presents is off-set by my delight at a brand-new, dirt-cheap games console. He say he’ll throw in the Wii Fit programme for a tenner..
Next we’d better buy shock absorbers for the carpet.

We’ve decided to spend Christmas Day hungover. It’s a bit of a family tradition, but this year it’ll be on our terms, and without the heaving hulk of our mother on the kitchen floor. Some of Hannah’s workmates have hired a mini-bus for Christmas Eve and have invited us both along. It’s the Midnight Melee at Garfields in the City, so we’re gonna get champagned up and party like its 1999 (as the song says). Then Beryl and Ted – the people opposite who have about seven grown-up children – have asked us over Xmas evening for drinks and games and nibbles. “We couldn’t bear to see you two alone with your mum gone and all,” said a tearful Beryl yesterday, “It may be a houseful, but I’m sure we’ll squeeze you in somewhere.”
As another song once said somewhere - “Christmas will be magic again”

Have a great one

RC

Will wonders never cease?

We’ve had contact from my older sister Sophie!
She was hesitant in replying in case the letter was a trick from our mother, which I can’t blame her for. She’s working at Edinburgh Hospital all over Christmas (she volunteered to work all shifts as she has no family…) but she’s gonna come and see us when she has a week off in January!! What a fantastic result. Hannah was in tears when she told me, and I must admit there was a large lump somewhere near my Adam’s Apple as I sat down and thought about it later. It’s hard to believe my poisonous mother managed to drive one of her own daughters away, but that is her lasting liver-destroying legacy I’m afraid. Thank the Good Lord Above that we’re all finally emerging from her festering sores of destruction and re-establishing ourselves as a family. Hannah and I have even spoken tentatively about moving next year, to get the Hell away from this houseful of her memories, and her stains. That’s for another day, though, when we’re both earning more money, or the housing agency take pity and re-locate us to a mansion.

I’ve ordered myself a little Christmas present – the DVD box-set of ‘The Morecambe and Wise Show’ from Amazon. I’m also intending to take full advantage of the imminent collapse of Woolworths to get myself a whole new shelf full of music and movies.. probably for the price of a book of first-class stamps. I love this recession already…

RC 19-12-08
1920 GMT

Status update

My working contract at the supermarket has been extended. I’m now working the Mon, Tues & Wed night next week, and the same the week after to help with the rush between Xmas and New Year. Just as well really, as I’ve missed half the days I should have worked due to foot injury or sickness. Dave, my line manager, tells me he has been greatly impressed by my attitude and aptitude and that I’ll be first in the line if any permanent jobs become available. It’s not hard to impress them to be honest. If you can string three words together into a coherent sentence, or open a box of mince pies without cutting yourself, you’re doing better than most of the people on my shift.

It’s good to have the computer back. Part of my prolonged absence from the World Of Blogs this month has been the returning malady of my hard drive. I tried to start it up last week, only to be greeted by a green screen, a high-pitched whistle and a blown fuse. I know nowt about PCs so had to place my trust and my equipment in the hands of Spotty Garth from ‘The Computer Clinic.’ Garth looks the way Stephen Merchant would look if he was three inches taller and two stone heavier. He also giggles a lot, and has a ten-foot high poster of Gollum on the wall behind the counter. He’s extraordinarily weird, but he repaired my computer in a week and took fifty quid cash for his trouble, so as far as I’m concerned he can marry my sister.

Ciao

RC 18-12-08
1345 GMT

I'm back!

Hello again. Remember me???????
One of the mentally lazy student f***wits I work with went to visit his grandfather in hospital and came out with the vomiting bug. I spent three days last week singing down the toilet while watching my stomach lining disappear round the U-bend, and feeling like my arsehole was being pulled up inside me to my chest. It is NOT a nice bug…. If you haven’t had it yet my advice is don’t bother – get yourself a nice jumper or a DVD instead..

As part of the ‘store winter infections quarantine policy’ I wasn’t allowed back to work until I’d been free of vomit for three days, so I’ve just done my first shift for nearly two weeks. The Christmas rush thing is starting to bite – we had a midnight fight last night when two middle-aged women both reached for the last Special Offer kettle on the Bargains shelf.. Talk about Xmas spirit, this was more like all-out warfare. Den the Security Scouser ended up with a nose bleed, while Duty Manager Dave (who looks about 14) was called a ‘Bum-kissing ****ing ****-dangler’ which is a new one on me, I must be honest.

Welsh cousin Gethin has sent us a Christmas card from Thailand. It turns out his Internet Girlfriend wasn’t quite what he expected her to be. I’d like to say I didn’t see that one coming, but I refer you to my earlier blogs this year and quietly say ‘I told you so….’

RC 17-12-08
1022 GMT

bad day?

As I was leaving the supermarket at the end of my shift, I walked into the manager of the dole office on his way in for breakfast… I had to hide behind the tobacco stand, but I’m pretty sure he saw me. You’d hope he wouldn’t recognise me from all the unemployed faces he sees in a week, but I have been in his office twice this year to complain, so he may well have clocked me as a claimant..
I also have to have a meeting with HR this week. The rumour is that they carry out routine checks online for information about their employees, and that someone may have found this blog.. Have I written anything that might lead to me being fired? I guess I’ll find out tomorrow morning..

We still haven’t heard back from Sophie yet. It’s possible we don’t have the right address for her, so we can’t be too hopeful. Hannah wants to contact telly companies and get them to re-unite us for a Christmas special, but I’m worried about press intrusions into my private life if we become famous. I have a few fat, ugly skeletons in the cupboard I’d rather not see emerge in a Kiss And Tell story..
Actually, I’m more worried that the producers will dig out mum from under whichever drunk she’s crawled under and re-unite us with her instead.

My advent calendar today had a picture of a Christmas clown, and the treat was a Fun Size Milky Bar, so the day wasn’t all bad..

RC 4-12-08
0830 GMT

It's Christmas month!!

Pinch and a punch, and all that.. I hope this month of festive cheer brings you love and warmth and joy, despite the impending global meltdown of all things apparently important.

I opened door 1 on my advent calendar to find a picture of a train and a chocolate button. It may seem odd to you that a man approaching his 25th birthday is this excited, but please remember that this is the first year I have ever chosen my own advent calendar. Throughout our childhood, mum would make us all get a ‘Luxury Liqueur’ one with 24 booze-filled miniatures in. Then she’d break into them on December 1st and have them all. I swear that woman would lick the spit off the gums of a dead man if it was the only way she had to taste some alcohol.
So this year I have a rather expensive ‘Chocoholics Delight’ one that cost more than mum used to spend on my presents.. Technically speaking, it didn’t actually cost me anything.. I was putting them on display at work when one fell on the floor and I accidentally ran over the packaging with a trolley… then on my way to the ‘Damaged Goods’ skip I accidentally dropped it into my locker, which had accidentally fallen open when I put the key in the lock.. Funny how these things can happen.

By the way - it just took me seven attempts to get the spelling of ‘liqueur’ right..

Have a good December

RC 2-12-08
0951 GMT