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We had a barbecue tonight as a sort of belated house-warming. Sophie and Tamara came over and I stole lots of meat from work to cook for them. I have, quite frankly, made a complete pig of myself, and I thoroughly deserve the indigestion that will undoubtedly be coming my way shortly.
But isn’t that the point of barbecues?
Quite frankly if you don’t end up lying awake at 1am parched with thirst and feeling like someone’s pumped cement into your stomach, then you just haven’t done the barbecue properly.
I shall drag myself to bed now, and assuming my bowel doesn’t rupture overnight, I shall see you again in August.
xxxx
RC 31-7-14
Sitting in a managers meeting in a stuffy boardroom with a hangover is not the most enjoyable experience one can have.
Actually - being in a managers meeting at all is an unenjoyable experience, so maybe the added dimension of a hangover helps a little as it gives you something to think about beyond the painful boredom inflicted by Ginger Graham’s droning insistence on ‘enhanced profitability’
The only thing I can remember from the whole meeting is this:
GRAHAM: “Any other business before we close?”
ME: “Yes - any news yet on my request for a transfer to Suffolk?”
GRAHAM: “No, not yet. We’re waiting on Head Office”
ME: “Yeah, but we’ve been waiting a long time. I floated the idea about two months ago”
GRAHAM: “Ok, Well, we’ll leave it there now. Thanks everyone. Meeting closed”
If I don’t get satisfaction soon I’m going to do a big dump in the fish counter.
RC 30-7-14
I made a very bad decision tonight.
I’d been drinking sweet wine all day and thought “It’s getting late and I’m peckish, and I fancy a Bounty, but I don’t want to eat sweet stuff on top of all that other sweet stuff that I‘ve drunk. I know - I’ll have something salty! The salt will offset the sugar nicely and I can go to bed settled.”
Next thing I knew I’d demolished half a Party Size bag of KP salted cashews.
So I threw up in the garden, and now I’m off to bed…
RC 29-7-14
Life is good.
If I wasn’t having to spend 90 minutes in the car five days a week travelling to a job I dislike in a supermarket in a different County, life would be perfect.
I’m still waiting to hear about the possibility of transferring to a store in Suffolk.
How long can this take? Our HR department seems to be moving with the speed of an Icelandic glacier. Too much administration, and too many decisions resting in the hands of centralised offices manned by blinkered drones, that’s the trouble with the modern world.
They should put me in charge, and then everything would be fine, obviously.
I decided to go topless in the garden today to show off my lovely modified tattoo. It’s the first time in two years my shoulders have been exposed to the public air, so obviously I ended up sunburnt.
RC 25-7-14
Bloody Hell it’s hot
We’ve had 3 months of Summer
and it’s still July
Tattoo is okay
New house is just a delight
I’m Happy Rory!
Rory McIlroy
won the Open on Sunday
And won Ted some cash!
I should have bet too
…seeing as we share a name.
Oh well - too late now.
Combine harvester
Noise-spewing machinery
that eats Summer crops
RC 23-7-14
I cooked Philippa a meal tonight and did ‘the big reveal’ of the shoulder work! She didn’t even notice the difference at first, but then said “Oh my God! That looks fantastic! I can’t believe you went back and got it fixed - you cried like a 2-year-old when we first had them done!”
Even allowing for that ego-shatter it was still a lovely reaction. I think, deep down, she was as disappointed and hurt as I was when the original design went wrong, but she hid the feelings from me because she knew I was devastated and she thought, like I did, there was nothing we could do about it.
She spent the rest of this evening staring at it and saying how proud she felt, and what a hero I was for having it done properly, and how much she loved me, and it all got very romantic and lovely and led to things that I’d rather not share in this blog posting.
Suffice to say, I am very happy, very pleased with myself, and very sleepy.
Goodnight.
RC 22-7-14
It is time for an update on my tattoo…
You’ll remember I had booked into ’Ink Incorporated’ for an adjustment to be made to my shoulder art? Well, I postponed it. There was just too much going on… we were moving house, we were stressed, we were over-worked… and I was scared. I admit it. Scared of the pain, scared of them messing it up even more, scared of Philippa’s reaction.
Anyway, I finally got it done today. IT LOOKS GREAT!! Even allowing for the shock of being charged twenty-five quid extra for the late cancellation of the appointment I’m delighted. Suddenly I am proud of my shoulder again! I’m now going to find any and every excuse possible for getting my top off over the Summer. Watch out, beach….
RC 21-7-14
Sorry about the anger and bad language yesterday. I flared up without thinking and then found it hard to calm down without spitting my ire online. Good old Rory… Like most things in life, it doesn’t seem so bad the day after, so in a way I wish I hadn’t posted a blog last night but there we are, what’s done is done. ‘The moving finger writes, and having writ..’ etc etc.
We looked at all our stuff today and it turns out most of the force of whatever fell on it was absorbed by the boxes it was stored in. Thank God I work at a big supermarket and had the good sense to steal some good storage crates last Autumn…
One of Philippa’s photo frames got clobbered, and I’ve had to throw away an ornament that I hadn’t even remembered I had, and apart from that everything is fine.
We called Tom to tell him and he was very relieved. I said we should have let him stew a bit longer, but Philippa insisted. Well I suppose she has to work with him on Monday. And she is related to him. And he did give us the storage space for free for more than 9 months. Even so, might have been fun to let him think we were still narked at him.
(Sometimes I can be so spiteful!)
There was something funny that happened yesterday that I didn’t mention among the vitriolic spittle I was writing last night. Tom and his wife were both there to meet us at the warehouse. We had an hour-long update on what each of the six children are doing, and then Tom was telling me about his latest obsession - the engineering and business mind of Brunel. Apparently he’s read 15 books about him in the past month, and I think he recited most of them to us over a cup of coffee, when all we really wanted to do was pick our stuff up. He ended by saying “If we ever have another boy, I’d like to call him Isambard Kingdom Scott.” His wife then stared at him with a look that said she’d rather kill herself and the six children she already has than face another pregnancy.
Judging by the change in the atmosphere, I don’t think they’ll be adding to their brood anytime soon.
RC 20-7-14
Bloody Hell, shitfire and bumholes.
Our boxes of stuff that have been in ‘safe storage’ courtesy of Tom ‘crazier than a park bench drunk’ Scott have been damaged.
At some point this year they’ve had what would appear from the aftermath to be a very large roll of wallpaper or a pallet full of bowling balls dropped on them. God, I’m angry. But I’m being typically British about it and holding the anger inside where it can cause me to have a stroke, or coagulate into a tumour.
“Leave it in my warehouse” he told us, “Don’t pay some extortionate price for a lock-up - I’ll make a space for you to put it all in”
It was supposed to be locked away in a spare part of the building, not left in a corner for rats to piss on and for clumsy fork-lift drivers to drop stock onto.
Jesus, Mary, Joseph and an assortment of other fictional characters.
I seem to remember Tom has a member of staff who asked Philippa out a few years ago and she turned him down, so I’m rather assuming it was him and he did it deliberately.
Tom’s offered to pay for any damage and to replace anything that’s irreparable but what about the sentimental losses? What about the betrayal of the trust we placed in him? What about the psychological side-effects?
If Philippa didn’t work for him I’d probably try and sue him.
RC 19-7-14
And suddenly, several years and many changes after setting this ship a-sail, I have reached blog number 1200.
Does that mean it’s midday?
We’re off to collect some of our belongings from Tom’s warehouse today, where he has kindly been storing them for the past few months. The good news about that is we’ll finally be reunited with our stuff and can start making this place our own; the bad news is we’ll feel obliged to stay for lunch and have a chat with them….
RC 19-7-14
I haven’t done any lists for a while, so….
SEASONS IN ORDER OF PREFERENCE
Spring
Autumn
Summer
Winter
WEATHER TYPES IN ORDER OF PREFERENCE
Mild and dry
Thunderstorm
Light rain
Snow
Heatwave
OUR LAST 5 HOUSES IN ORDER OF PREFERENCE
(not including this one - we haven’t been in long enough to evaluate)
THE WILLOWS
RIVERSIDE HOLIDAY HOME
DAVID AND BECKY’S HOUSE
HOLIDAY CHALET
SPARE ROOM AT SALLY’S PLACE
TOP 3 REASONS A SUMMER BEARD IS A BAD IDEA:
You get insects stuck in it when you’re cycling
When you shave, you’ll have a tan-line halfway up your face
You look like a pervert
RC 16-7-14
I can’t believe we’ve been here two weeks! By recent experience, this is normally the point where we’re having to think about our next move, but thankfully that’s not the case anymore!
Philippa has joined the local sports club. She’s still keen on playing with her old badminton chums every Friday, but she’d also like to meet some new people and get into the local scene. Good on her - she’s more interactive than I am. My main concern has been finding someone else to mow the lawn for us, preferably free of charge.
It might work out quite well. I can arrange to meet up with Hannah for a few drinks on a Friday or pop and see Ted and Beryl and then Philippa can drive me home after her sportness!
This is great - we really are starting to get into the swing of things, and back into life!
Next weekend we’re going to Tom’s warehouse to pick up the stuff he’s been storing for us. It’s been so long I can’t actually remember what’s in there so it’ll be like getting new things!
RC 15-7-14
I asked Ginger Graham about my transfer request today. He looked at me blankly before mumbling something about ‘Regional Head Office delays.’ His mouth was moving convincingly but his eyes betrayed the truth of forgetfulness. I told him it was likely that if I couldn’t move to a store in Suffolk I’d leave the company completely as the journey is getting to me already, especially when I’m on a late finish. I’m not sure he was too bothered, maybe because I’ve threatened to leave so many times in the past couple of years that even I glaze over when I talk about it.
Anyway, after my third time of hassling him he acquiesced and said he’d call and chase it up.
RC 14-7-14
We had a lovely plan to spend the morning in bed and then visit a local inn for a big Sunday lunch.
Then at 6.45am I got a phone call asking me to rush into work due to the Head of Produce being poorly.
I said “I live an hours drive away now, it’s not so easy for me to pop in to cover someone.”
The bland voice on the other end of the line said “Yeah, but you’re still the manager on call”
Bastards.
So now I’m fuming and thinking it’s time for a change in career.
Maybe I’ll fall in with our biggest neighbour here in Suffolk and become a farmer.
Mind you, if I did, knowing my luck I’d end up selling to my present employer, so I’d still be getting screwed by the supermarket.
RC 13-7-14
Last night’s plan took a bit of a strange twist. I was just getting started on my Indian takeaway and Danish lager when there was an unexpected knock at the door..
It was two of our new neighbours!
They had promised the Bannermans they would pop in to see us and let us know about local life. I instantly got suspicious and thought we were being checked up on, but actually I think this was perfectly genuine. They really were nice people, and they came armed with a decent bottle of wine, which helped. Coupled with the alcohol I’d brought home from work it made for quite a nice haul of alcohol (even though it was shared between three rather than the anticipated one)
By the time we’d finished yapping, Philippa was back from her sports club.
I checked the Bannermans ‘hand-over’ letter this morning and the Chatham’s were mentioned and praised highly. Quote - “If you need anything, be it a cup of sugar or a shoulder to cry on, they should be your first port of call”
This new adventure is rapidly getting better..
So I’m not as hungover as I’d planned to be, but at least I’ve made some new friends.
RC 12-7-14
We finally seem to be getting into the swing of this Suffolk thing.
It helps that we’ve both remembered that we can go and get some of our personal things out of storage for the first time in months, so we can start filling this place with our stuff and feeling a bit more at home.
Philippa is driving back to her old sports club tonight to play badminton with her mates, so she’ll have a bit of her regular routine in place, and I can get nicely loaded while she’s gone. I think you don’t really settle into a place until you’ve been drunk in it, so today is designated Christening Friday. I’m going to leave work armed with at least eight cans of lager and at least two bottles of wine (one likes to have a choice) and some serious Vitamin C tablets to aid recovery tomorrow and I’m going for it.
Is it worrying that a man in his thirties is excited by the prospect of drinking alone in an empty house? Maybe, but sod it. I can’t wait….
RC 11-7-14
You would think that a couple who have spent the last six months being up-ended from one location to another might feel glad to be settled in one place, but it hasn’t worked out that way. We’re both a bit uneasy and uncertain. I’m sure it’ll be fine soon. I hope so, anyway, otherwise this could turn out to be a very unpleasant couple of years!
The house is fine. A bit modern and functional for our tastes, especially after a place like The Willows, but we’re certainly not lacking for room or for furnishings. There’s a nice little bit of garden out the back - big enough to be fun and challenging; small enough to be manageable.
It’s a stand-alone detached house enclosed by trees and hedges, with only five other houses in the road as we’re right on the edge of a farm. I think some of our neighbours are people who work on the farm itself, but I’m not sure. The Bannermans have kindly left us some information about the area and the people but I haven’t bothered reading through it yet as I’ve had enough to deal with, what with moving to another county and all that…
My first priority (after setting up my games consoles and finding somewhere to put a drum kit) must be to sort out my employment situation. I’m still waiting to hear about the possibility of a transfer to a Suffolk store, and in the meantime it’s taking me over an hour each way just to get to work. So I’m basically giving them the equivalent of an extra day every week, unpaid, driving.
I wish I hadn’t worked that out because it’s pissing me off.
RC 9-7-14
Back to work today
Feeling a bit more settled
But still not quite right
RC 7-7-14
Philippa and I have both taken the rest of the week off. We’ve both had a strange sort of relief-induced system crash after finally getting into the house in Suffolk and finally feeling a bit settled. I can’t imagine anyone else would move house without taking time off, but this is the FIFTH different place we’ve lived in this year so we thought we’d just be able to wing our way in with no disruptions or dilemmas.
How wrong we were.
My chronic shits returned and Philippa, whom I think has had a grand total of two headaches in all the time I’ve known her, went down with a headache so bad that she couldn’t see properly and had to go to bed with a blindfold on.
So we’ve both contacted work and said we won’t be back until Monday.
Her boss has said ‘take as long as you need, we fully understand’
Mine said ‘Well you’ll have to get a doctors note, and ring us every day with an update’
Pack of bastards.
RC 2-7-14
