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And so April is consigned to the history books, and like most of the months in my recent past, it seems to have gone by in a heartbeat.
It’s a Bank Holiday weekend of course, not that that means anything to me - I’ll be going into work on Monday.
I’ve spent most of today watching the World Snooker semi-finals. Every year I make jokes about this never-ending tournament, and berate Ted for his habit of watching every frame possible, and every year I find myself drawn into it by the end of the second week.
I’ve tried to invent a drinking game based around the break-building that’s gone on this evening. Every colour they pot, you have to put a similarly-coloured shot into a cocktail shaker, and then you drink the whole lot when the break ends. I gave up when I couldn’t think of anything nice that would be used to represent the brown. Unless I use gravy, which I don’t think would go too well with the crème de menthe and the Guinness….
RC 30-4-16
The damn Arctic wind
Holding Winter above us
And making me glum
RC 28-4-16
One good side effect of the uncertainty about our housing arrangements is that Philippa has put ‘the family’ on ‘the back-burner.’ For the first time in about three years, we’ve got at least a fortnight without any mention of babies. The downside is that the sex has dried up, but then we are married now so I suppose that’s the way it should be.
RC 28-4-16
The wind finally dropped tonight and it was nice enough to sit outside with a glass of wine after work! That bloody wind this morning was Arctic, but with it dying down throughout the afternoon it ended up almost feeling like late April at last! The sun still had some warmth and it was a very pleasant hour or so. Amazing how my mood improves when I experience even a tiny little bit of Spring. This morning we had a hailstorm at work and I nearly threw a printer through the window. I was already in a bad mood and the wintry shower hitting the roof just pushed me over the edge and I wanted to hurt something. The printer looked a likely candidate, even though I knew in my heart that tackling it would probably put my back out. I managed to calm myself down and just smashed a packet of biscuits with a stapler instead. ‘Small steps,’ as they say in therapy.
RC 27-4-16
‘Batman v Superman’ is a self-indulgent, overblown, long, slow pile of cinepoop.
If you haven’t seen it and you’re thinking of buying a ticket, my advice is to spend the money on bleach instead and gargle with it. You’ll probably enjoy that more than watching the film.
Thanks, I feel better now.
RC 26-4-16
Does anyone ever wear cycling clips nowadays? And whether they do or don’t, wouldn’t you agree that they are one of the best inventions of all time? Giving men the ability to travel under their own power, while wearing a smart pair of trousers. Strong enough to prevent oily chain rubbage, but soft enough not to leave a crease. Marvellous.
SOME FOODS THAT DON’T GO VERY WELL TOGETHER:
Grapes and mayo
Olives and gravy
Oranges and peppermints
RC 25-4-16
The next time someone utters the phrase “I don’t live to work - I work to live” I swear I’m going to peel their face off and slap them across the arse with it. Or possibly peel their arse off and slap them across the face with it; I’ll see how I feel at the time.
RC 23-4-16
I actually think Tuesday’s blog may have been the longest one I’ve ever written. There have been nearly 1600 of them though, and I can’t be bothered to check through them all and count the words in each. But if you’d like to do it yourself please go ahead and then let me know the results.
It may have been cumbersome to read but I have to say that typing it all out like that made me feel much better about it all. I have a clearer head, and much more optimism, which are both things I dearly need.
RC 21-4-16
After yesterday’s epic, I promise this blog posting will be less than 50 words…
I’d just like to say I’m sorry for posting a blog entry that must have been like reading through a complicated question on an examination paper for law students.
That’ll do….
RC 20-4-16
So, the developments with the house… (by which I mean situational developments, not structural developments - we’re not looking to renovate the place, just live in it)
For a start, it absolutely flattens me to think that we’ve been here nearly two years. Can you believe that? I’ve always heard it said that years fly by quicker as you get older and I’ve always laughed it off as clichéd nonsense, but I’m slowly beginning to accept it as truth. Maybe spending a whole year entombed in plans for a wedding skews your perception of time somewhat.
Anyways, I digress……
If you remember, we originally signed an agreement to house-sit here for two years, as that was the time the Bannermans (the actual owners of our current abode) wanted to spend in Australia before finally deciding whether to stay out there permanently. Over the course of the past 18 months both they and we have realised that the Housesitting Agency are as useful as a steel tampon, and so we’ve started communicating more directly. The state of play is that they have no plans to return just yet, but they’re still reluctant to close the lid on their Suffolk life completely. So they asked if we would be interested in staying on longer, but as tenants of THEM rather than as employees of the Agency. Well after a few bits of to-ing and fro-ing and several hours on Skype, we all reached an agreement. (Most of which I won’t bore you with here!)
The bottom lines are - we stay here, and pay them £500 a month basic rent; we take on the payment of all the bills; they will make a final decision on this house within two years of 1st July 2016; we still get first refusal if they decide to sell; if they do go ahead and sell, the total amount we have payed them in rent will be deducted from the final price of the house; and here’s my favourite bit of all - we have already agreed what that ‘final price’ will be!! It’s basically the valuation of the house as of today, or the valuation of the house when they decide to sell MINUS £10,000, whichever amount is higher. In the meantime, we get to keep most of the furniture that hasn’t already been shipped Down Under, and it’s now entirely up to us what we do with the place as far as decorating and improvements go! It’s taken a while to sort it all out, and has been pricey on the ’legal advice’ front, but it’s all now being put in writing and everyone involved seems very, very happy.
There is just one small snag:
Both the Bannermans, and Philippa and I, have contracts with the infernal Housesitting Agency. They are useless, but they do have the capacity to make things difficult for us all, should they choose to. As we’re employees of the agency, we have to see out the length of our agreed sit, and then resign from them. If we don’t do it that way they can turf us out whenever they like and send us somewhere else.
According to the Bannermans contract with the agency, and indeed ours, we are not supposed to enter into any kind of agreement that bypasses the agency (that put us in contact in the first place) for at least six months after we have left them. So in theory, as things stand, we might have to vacate the premises on 30th June and find somewhere else to live until the end of the year. This all sounds ludicrous to me, but is apparently ‘a definite possibility‘, so the Bannermans have a legal representative currently looking into it to try and find a resolution that sees us simply staying here, without any other kind of palaver that sees us move out, only to move back in again later.
It’s all got very confusing, so I’m retreating to my drumming zone in the garage as much as possible and hoping that Philippa will sort it all out in my absence.
RC 19-4-16
After a couple of weeks of Spring we seem to have taken a massive detour off the road, gone back round the roundabout, and turned back onto the slip-road marked ‘Winter.’
That wind today was FREEEZING. Yes, I know I just spelt ‘freezing’ with three ‘E’s instead of two, and it was a complete accident, but now I’ve done it I’m going to leave it because it seems so apt.
It’s been sooooooooo coooooooolllldd.
I keep reminding myself that we had lovely Autumn weather right up until Christmas, and that this is just another sign of the changing seasons and the fact that our Winter now seems to occupy February to May, but it still PISSES ME OFF.
Anyway, in other news, we are approaching ‘crunch time’ in our residency of this house and whether it will continue beyond July. If you remember, our initial agreement was for a two-year stay while the Bannermans decided whether or not they’d be returning from Australia. Well the clock is ticking, and there are developments developing rapidly. I’m tired and hungry now, though, so I’ll tell you all about those developments tomorrow..…
And I believe that is what the entertainment industry calls ‘a tease.’
RC 18-4-16
Forgot to tell you this before, but this is a genuine conversational exchange I overheard between two customers just before Easter:
MAN 1: “Jesus died at Easter so we give each other choccies? What’s the connection? Was Jesus born in an egg?”
MAN 2: “No, a stable I think.”
MAN 1: “A stable? Man, someone needs to work on this guys branding.”
RC 17-4-16
Painful infection
Brought to it’s knees by using
Antibiotics
My thoughts on ‘rhi’ words…
Rhinoceros is good but
Rhinitis is bad
I can breathe again
Thank you Doctor Winterton
And your Shop Of Drugs
RC 16-4-16
Just to clear something up, you uncaring bastards - RHINITIS is NOT just a fancy word for hay fever.
So there…..
RC 15-4-16
There’s never an excuse for not blogging for a while, but I will at least make an effort to explain my recent absence:
I woke up last weekend with what I thought was a bad cold. Then by last Monday it had got worse and I thought it was bad hay fever. By the Wednesday my face felt like it was being punched from inside, and my nose was so painful I couldn’t bare to breathe through it. Turns out I had something called rhinitis which had then turned into an upper respiratory infection. I had a rare day off work sick, but then had to go back to sort out things like rotas and long-term holiday entitlements. It wasn’t too bad, I guess, I just ended up dripping ‘nasal discharge’ all over the office. Lots of tissues and Max Strength Anadin Extra and I managed to battle through bravely. But I was just too damn under-the-weather to be able to motivate myself to blog. Shame really, as you might have given me a lot more sympathy than I got from my wife or my employers.
I’ve looked up lots of stuff about ‘rhinitis’ and some of it is quite interesting, but my favourite fact is that it only uses one vowel. Words like that fascinate me. BEEKEEPER, for example, that’s a winner. Contains 5 vowels and they’re all E’s. Beekeeper is also a position that I would like to hold at some point in the future.
You’ll have to forgive my ramblings - I’m blaming the antibiotics, steroid sprays and antihistamine tablets.
RC 14-4-16
If you have sex the morning after a one-night stand, does it still count as a ‘one-night stand’?
RC 13-4-16
I had to work yesterday morning and some twat in a Volvo Estate was still trying to pull an April Fools joke. “Honestly mate I just put diesel in my petrol engine - quick, call someone to help!”
I just smiled a tired smile and said “I’ve got a screen in front of me that shows your Volvo parked at Pump 7, where £57 worth of petrol has just been pumped. Maybe you should have tried this trick back in April 1970, when they didn’t have CCTV or computers.”
He may have called me a c**t under his breath…
RC 3-4-16
This one works better if you read it out loud:
Did you know that if you look up the word ‘GULLIBLE’ in the dictionary it says ‘a male cow that looks a bit like a seagull?’
RC 2-4-16
