Haikuween

Both of us off work…
Philippa dressed as a witch…
HORNY HALLOWE’EN!!!!!!!!

RC 31-10-11

Another night to dread..

Philippa wants me to go trick-or-treating with her and her nieces. I’m about as enthusiastic about doing it as I am about getting piles again. I DO NOT like Halloween. For me, it’s just an excuse for companies to churn out yet more branded shit that kids can pester their parents for. It also normally results in our house getting egged, or fire-bombed, or painted with obscene graffiti.
Philippa says it will be fun because we can dress up as well. I’ve told her I’ll only do it if she dresses up as a randy nurse, and I get to dress as a samurai.

RC 26-10-11

One of those weeks..

Work have been pushing me hard this week, the slave-driving bastards. Some stomach bug or other ripped through the staff in the bakery, so I’ve had to do extra hours in other departments to cover for the people who have been moved into the bakery to cover for the people who are pretending to be sick. They tell me it’ll do me good to experience a day or two in each area of the store. But then ‘they’ also told me that working for them as a manager would leave me feeling “professionally and financially rewarded.” Lying bastards.
In other news, Philippa has been talking about getting her ears pinned back. They look perfect to me, but apparently she got teased about them at school and she thinks it affected her and held back her educational growth. I’m not sure how - she has four A-levels and 11 GCSEs after all. Maybe this need for things like tattooing and cosmetic surgery is some kind of weird expensive self-harming-by-proxy. I’m not sure because I’m not a psychologist and because she’s female, and therefore inherently unfathomable. I told her each and every cell in her body is gorgeous to me, and proved it by kissing every single part of both her ears. She felt better, and I got myself really turned on, which was a shame as it was during her lunch break at work.
Thank God I had time for a shower before work.

RC 23-10-11

apology accepted

I took Barbara some flowers today. I genuinely felt bad about laughing at her troubles in the canteen. When I spoke to Ted about it he suggested I man up and tell her the truth, rather than leave it and give her a bad opinion of me. He is right more often than not. I have my workplace reputation to think of, you know…
I sat with her and apologised for my giggles on Saturday and explained that it’s a defence mechanism, and my way of dealing with bad news and bad emotions. She said it was a nice gesture and thanked me for explaining, as on Saturday I had ‘come across as a bit of a bastard.’ We have decided to give each other another chance.

I spent the rest of the day dealing with comments from people who wondered why I’d presented some flowers to a woman thirty years older than me.. Some people really have nothing better to do than gossip and speculate.

Despite the childish reaction from the workforce, I feel better for having done it. I don’t like upsetting people, and for the sake of a small gesture with flowers I am now back on an even keel with Barbara, even if I’m not in her good books. Plus, I bought them from the supermarket garage using my discount card, so the bouquet only cost me three quid…

RC 17-10-11

Anusol is the answer

Cycling a lot in the recent good weather has given me piles again. I really should invest in some proper cycling shorts so I don’t have to suffer this agony on a monthly basis. I’ve been trying to think of the best way to describe the discomfort of haemorrhoids, and I’ve got it down to a choice of five. I can’t decide which is best so I’ll let you read them all and make your own conclusions:

“I feel like someone’s shoved a teepee up my arse”
“It’s like someone’s turned my arsehole inside out, attacked it with a cheese grater, then roughly tucked it back up again.”
“My arse is like a toilet roll tube full of blood-soaked tissue.”
“I feel like my spine is climbing out of my poo-hole”
“It’s like I’ve had an internal examination by a doctor wearing Freddie Kruegers gloves”

RC 16-10-11

I'm not as bad a person as this blog will make me sound..

I had yet another one of those ‘why are you telling me this?’ moments at work today. It was also one of those occasions where ‘always finding the humour in things’ is not necessarily the best policy.
I was in the canteen at lunchtime, sitting next to one of the more experienced till girls - a very nice lady in her fifties called Barbara, who decided to tell me all about her husbands ongoing battle with dementia.
“It gets worse by the day”, she explained, “Yesterday I went out to the car and found him sitting in the passenger seat in a rage. I asked him what the matter was and he said ‘some bastards moved the steering wheel’”
Now I see myself as a good listener, someone very sensitive to other people’s feelings, and quite empathic, but at this point I got an uncontrollable fit of the giggles. I couldn’t help picturing this poor confused man, whose mind is so addled by alzheimers that he can’t even remember which side of a car you get in to operate it, just sitting there in the drive getting angrier and angrier. The more I tried not to think about it, the more detail seemed to be added, and I really started to lose it. I picked up my cappucino to try to hide my mouth, but only succeeded in snorting into it and splashing the hot froth onto my lips. Now I was switching between yelps of discomfort from the scalding, and bursts of laughter caused by this image in my head. Tears of pain were mixing with tears of joy and I ended up apologising and rushing off to the toilet to compose myself.
It took a good ten minutes, and a lot of cold water from the tap, before I was able to calm myself down enough to emerge.
The rest of the day was spent in a bizarre meditation-like trance, as I desperately tried to shut the image out of my mind and just get through the day without collapsing again.

Barbara and I were on the same afternoon tea break as well. For some reason she chose not to sit with me.

RC 15-10-11

Too long now?

This is my six hundredth blog!

To celebrate, I’m going to try to smash my record for ‘longest blog entry’ by writing more than 600 words. I can’t guarantee it will be inspired or even interesting, but writing six hundred words feels like a nice way to celebrate writing six hundred blogs, so please stay with me.
Ready? Here we go….

Philippa wants us to have a ‘vegetarian day’ once a week. Increasingly, aspects of my life seem to be preceded by the phrase ‘Philippa wants us to..‘
I love her, but I don’t want to become one of ‘those men’ who simper in the background of life while their wives stroll around making all the decisions and speaking on his behalf by starting everything with “WE like this..“ or “WE don’t do that..“
I’d rather be lonely and bitter than dominated and passive.

I think I might have haemorrhoids again. I did a shit this morning that felt like it was made of barbed wire.

I’ve been looking at lots of clips of drummers on YouTube, to try and pick up some tips. It strikes me that drummers fall into one of two categories - they’re either insane drug addicts in their twenties, or long-haired drunks in their fifties. And whichever category they fall into, they are always very sweaty.

I’m already sick of TV adverts that mention Christmas. We haven’t even had Hallowe’en yet and already they’re trying to induce panic-buying. I’ve decided that, in protest, I will no longer purchase any products from any company that uses the ‘C-word’ in its advertising during October. So Argos, B&Q, Toys-R-Us, Disney Home Entertainment and Tesco - you can all go **** yourselves; I’m shopping elsewhere.

That MUST be 600 words, mustn’t it?
Give me a few seconds to check….
No, it isn’t.
On we go….

Beryl is trying to persuade Ted to re-new their wedding vows. She says they’re both getting on in years and they don’t know how long it will be before one of them suffers ill health, and it would be nice to have one more romantic day to celebrate their love before a stroke or dementia means they can’t even recognise each other any more. I think that’s how she put it. She’d been at the cooking sherry while baking in a hot kitchen so she was red-faced and slurring quite a bit. Ted replied with his usual verbosity and told her he’d rather ‘face the boche again than go through that effing marriage twaddle’
It’s a nice idea but I can’t see it happening.

What else can I tell you? October has been behaving like Spring. I’m still walking round in a short-sleeved shirt. Back in August I was wearing jumpers. Who says our climate is ridiculous?

The LoveMachine is running like a gem.
It eats petrol like a woman eats chocolate, but apart from that it’s perfect. Even Philippa has warmed to it a little (especially when she‘s too pissed to drive home and asks me for a lift.) She thinks it would look better with some sunflower stickers stuck to the bumpers, but she is very much mistaken. She tells me that ‘accessorising your car makes it more personal and much more fun to drive.’ When I disagree, she says I should try it before I discard the idea out-of-hand. I assure you this is one occasion where my love for her and my determination to please her is going to lose out to common sense.

And no celebratory blog of mine would be complete without a celebratory haiku:

Six hundred blogs done
I’ve changed, and will change again,
but the blog goes on..

I don’t care if that’s 600 words or not. I’m bored now, and I’m going for a drink.

RC 14-10-11

Taste of her own medicine?

Hannah has been walking around the house all evening doing singing exercises. Her end-of-term performance in December is songs from ‘My Fair Lady’ so she’s donning a mockney accent and doing her scales. She’s also signed up to be in a local amateur panto after Christmas. I’m glad it’s all going well for her, but if she doesn’t stop warbling in the kitchen soon I’ll have to hit her. She says her vocal cords are now a vital part of her anatomy and she has to exercise them daily or they’ll lose their resonance. I said if she keeps it up, I’m gonna buy myself a drum kit and practise at home.

RC 11-10-11

Tight skin

I had my first drumming lesson today.
It didn't go well. I seem to have the balance and co-ordination of a centipede with arthritis.
The first time I tried to hit a cymbal I fell off the stool.
My tutor says it was probably nerves, and it will probably take me a good six to eight lessons before I ‘feel like I'm getting it‘. But then, at thirty quid a lesson they would say that, wouldn't they?

I continue to be astounded by people letting me over-hear their conversations while they’re out shopping. This exchange took place today, between a couple in their fifties. Both of them, by the way, sporting facial hair.
HER: Shall we get some wine in for tonight?
HIM: Why would we do that?
HER: Well it IS our anniversary.
Pause
HER: You don’t want to celebrate our anniversary do you?
HIM: Not really, no.
HER: May I ask why not?
HIM: Because every second I spend with you makes me want to cut my own throat.

RC 10-10-11

(sic)

You can tell I was drunk Friday night. The title of the blog should have been “Why I hate physics (a drunken rant)” rather than the rather more baffling “(a drunken rate)” that I put when I posted it. I was thinking of changing it this morning, but I make a point of never going back and editing my blog entries, and it does look quite funny, so I’ll leave it as it is.
I’ve been drinking more because my Philippa is away for the weekend and I feel lost and lonely. The sports centre where she plays badminton have an annual ‘friendly fixture’ against a similar place in Suffolk. They play volleyball, five-a-side football, bowls, darts, snooker and a few other things that I’ve forgotten, and through some complicated, convoluted scoring system they end up deciding which is the best sports club. (This is the fifth year they‘ve done it, they tell me, and the Suffolk lot have won it three times.) So Philippa and about forty others have piled down to Diss in a big coach on Friday and they won’t be back until tonight.
She asked me to go along, but I’m working all day today and I’m on shop floor management duties so I couldn’t really wriggle out of it. I lack my darling’s competitive nature anyway so I wouldn’t have been bothered whether they won or lost, which wouldn’t really make me a good supporter, would it?
So instead of sitting on the sidelines watching sweaty men hit balls to each other while waiting for my sweetheart to hit a shuttlecock, I’ve been drinking lots of red wine, eating lots of French bread and watching lots of black-and-white sci-fi.
I must be missing Philippa though - “The 50-foot woman” looks incredibly sexy, even though I know she’s been dead for ten years.

RC 9-10-11

Why I hate physics (a drunken rate)

They just make it up as they go along, don’t they?
Dark matter… dark energy… dark flow… quarks… charms… higgs-bosons…
They invent infinitely more elaborate nonsense to explain things that are beyond understanding, and when they’re proved wrong they say ‘oh, that was the old theory, now we have a new theory that we’d like to try another, different experiment on. Please give us some more money.’
We’ve just spent BILLIONS on a Large Collider, supposedly to find a specific particle that the people running it are now telling us may not be something they will find anyway. They do say, though, that they may or may not now have discovered a different particle that may travel faster than the speed of light. If this is true, it completely disproves all the things that physicists have been telling us for CENTURIES, and yet these same physicists want us to give them more money to see if they’re right or wrong now, which will then prove whether they were right or wrong in the first place. And either way, THEIR MONEY’S IN THE BANK….

I have a theory of my own I’d like to explore. I think I know why leaves are falling off trees at this time of year and landing in my garden. I think there may be an invisible irritating blackbird living in my oak tree, which is flying around and pecking off the leaves and throwing them down to the ground. I’d like a billion-dollar grant to build a combination telescope and camera to photograph every single inch of the tree under different lighting conditions and with different lenses to see if I can catch a picture of this immature flying bastard to prove I’m right. In ten years time, if I haven’t been proved right, I’ll invent an equally illusive but slightly smaller bird hiding in a neighbouring tree which I’ll say is somehow masking the blackbird by oscillating its wings at a certain speed to cause interference, and I’ll ask for another billion-dollar grant (adjusted for inflation) so I can build a different, bigger, rounder, pinker telescope/camera so that I can prove I’m right in believing there is something that is causing me to be wrong about the original blackbird, which I may not have been right about in the first place.

It’s the worlds most expensive folly.
Physics is just fiction.

RC 7-10-11

Kitchen rage (again)

Philippa is showing off some new ‘Jamie At Home’ products. I don’t know what they’re called but they look like little plastic hairclips. I said ‘what are these for then?’
She said “You use them to keep food packets closed once you’ve opened them, so the food inside stays fresh.”
I said “Oh. We already had something in the house that could do that job. IT’S CALLED A PEG”
Well done, Jamie. You’ve put your name on something completely unnecessary, that will only sell because it’s got your name on it…
Kitchen genius? MY ARSE.
Money-grabbing bastard, more like.

RC 6-10-11

Words failed me..

You know those occasions when you’re having a conversation and you suddenly realise you’re dealing with one of life’s ****ing idiots?
In the canteen today, one of my fellow employees kept playing with his ear. Being a curious soul, and worried that he might be about to flick a ball of earwax into my salad, I asked what was wrong.
He said “the honey is drying up and it’s really starting to itch.”
I said “forgive me for prying, but why have you got honey in your ear?”
He said “I thought it would get rid of the wax. Turns out though that I should have used olive oil instead of honey. I got confused coz they look similar.”
I said “But why on earth would you think that honey would help with earwax?”
He looked at me with a stunned expression and said “Well, Winnie the Pooh ain’t deaf is he?”

By the way, I caught a bit of EastEnders this week for the first time in ages. When did Phil Mitchell become a bad Phil Collins lookalike act?

RC 5-10-11

death drives a daihatsu

I had some terrible news this morning. One of the truck drivers that used to bring stuff to the old supermarket I worked at has died, after a terrible accident.
He was driving on a dual carriageway at the weekend and got stuck in traffic. He leant right out of the window to see what was causing the hold-up, and some twat in a van trying to roar past everyone caved the back of his head in with his wing mirror.
I’ve spent most of today considering my own mortality, and thinking how fleeting and futile life is, and generally feeling awful and depressed.

However, just to prove there can be creative inspiration in even the most unpleasant circumstances:

R.I.P. driver.
You used to deliver stock;
now you are headless.

RC 4-9-11