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From Adele to Agniesza Radwanska; from Coldplay to Camile Giorgi; less than 12 hours after the end of Worthy Farm wonderments, the action begins in SW19. So I can keep my arse on the sofa and just switch from Glastonbury to Wimbledon. Except I have to go to work every day, so I’ll be keeping up with it online and watching the matches in the evenings. I love these intense events, but I hate it when they overlap, and that’s where we are at the moment. It’s all happening so thick and fast. (“as thick and fast as a grand prix driver” anyone?) Festivals, golf majors, tennis grand slams, multinational football tournaments. All of them a great excuse for snacking and drinking, and all of them on the telly. I just wish they could all take place in Winter, as I feel like I’m wasting the evenings stuck indoors when I could be somewhere cycling. Maybe I should record them all and watch them in November.
RC 27-6-16
I’ve immersed myself in the BBC coverage of Glastonbury this weekend. I really appreciate the musicianship of those who can perform well live, and I do feel that I don’t get out to concerts often enough, but the simple honest truth is that I’d rather sit on my arse at home with a CD on than venture out to a venue. So the opportunity to see dozens of wonderful acts FOR FREE in the comfort of my own living room is one I have grabbed with both hands. And I know there are those who would tell me ‘you have to be there to appreciate it’ and I’m sure the atmosphere is euphoric, and the camaraderie is wonderful, and the sights and sounds gain in the open-air environment, but why would I spend 250 quid to traipse around in mud and other people’s piss for three days when I could be on my own sofa, using my own toilet, and seeing it all in close-up on th e telly? There’s no amount of drugs on Earth that would persuade me that sitting on a hillside 300 yards from the Pyramid Stage is better than seeing Muse on a Widescreen Samsung with surround-sound. And I don’t have to spend two hours finding my waterlogged tent at the end of it.
So the pretentious Glastonbury veterans who would criticise me for not going this weekend can kiss my lazy arse. I’ve locked myself indoors with wine and probably seen a Hell of a lot more bands than they have.
It’s hard to pick out favourites, but the drummer with ELO was pretty bloody magnificent, and that weird group who looked like Cossacks (I think they were called DankhaBankha or something similar) blew me away on Friday. I might have an early night tonight because I’m not a big fan of Coldplay, and I think they‘ll find it hard to top Adele, even if there are 4 of them. How the Hell she performed alone in front of 75,000 people and just talked to them like it was a pub gig is beyond me, but I found it amazing, even though her songs make me want to cut my own ears off and staple them to a ferret. (Philippa wanted one of her songs at our wedding, but I put the block on that. Just another disappointment I threw her way on our Wedding Day…)
RC 26-6-16
Have I really not blogged for over a week? It’s been one way or the other in June - either 2 or 3 postings a day or nothing for 7 days or more. But doesn’t that sum this month up? It’s been all over the place in all aspects of life. Look at the weather - two days of rain followed by two days of sun followed by 12 hours of wind followed by 6 hours of rain followed by subzero nights followed by sunburning days. I’d hate to be a weather forecaster because you’d never stand a chance of getting anything right. But then, maybe that’s a reason to do it. If you can never get anything right, then you can’t really get anything wrong, so your job is never really under threat.
Hope that was worth waiting 8 days for……
RC 24-6-16
Halfway through June? Seriously?
This may upset some of you, but I really have to get something off my chest. I’ve had cats before. They’re not unpleasant and as pets go they’re pretty low maintenance. But even as a fan of cats I have to say it’s got to the point where I want to kill everyone else who likes them. I genuinely believe the worst thing about the internet is the avalanche of pointless shitty cat videos/photos/witticisms. Every time I see someone post a picture of their ‘cute little kitty-witty’ I want to print off a copy of it, find out where they live, shove it up their arse and set fire to it.
I’ve started ‘unfriending’ anyone who puts anything on facebook that contains a quote about, or picture of, a cat and I now have 4 friends left.
Everyone on Earth must be passionate about something, but they don’t all plaster photographic evidence of it everywhere. People aren’t smothering the electronic world with pictures of wool or Bovril. It only seems to happen with cat-lovers. And the saturation of sentiment is starting to turn me against them.
Enough, already.
RC 16-6-16
I broke three of my own rules yesterday. Naughty Rory. First, I wrote and posted a blog post while still at work. Using the work computer. Second, I allowed myself to get interested in a football match. The Republic of Ireland made their first appearance at this years Euro2016 tournament, and I do have them - twice! - in sweepstakes. But even so, it left me feeling dirty and soiled. Third, I played the drums beyond the time that I would consider to be sociable. Philippa had narked me off you see, and nothing dispels marital discomfort like a thwack or two on the old skins. I completely ignored the clock on the garage wall and trilled away ‘tiI I was sated and sweaty.
So if any of my neighbours are reading this and I disturbed you last night, I apologise.
RC 14-6-16
Mondays never used to bother me when I worked shifts. Every day was just a mixture of sleep, work, thinking about work, trying not to think about work, and alcohol. Then I went back to working (mostly) Monday to Friday and a strange thing happened. Over a couple of months I went back to being a schoolboy, and getting that Sunday afternoon ‘oh God we’re back tomorrow’ feeling… So I’ve offset that now by making Monday mornings as simple, busy and as much fun as possible. So I do all my rotas, I do all my stock checks, and I do any little staff appraisals or meetings that I need to catch up on. Because I now know that I’ll have a relatively relaxed time in my office all morning on a Monday, I actually look forward to getting there. It’s all psychological trickery, and I know that, but who cares as long as it helps?
Now all I have to do is sort out Tuesday to Friday….
RC 13-6-16
I am not a big fan of football, but I have invested money in two different sweepstakes involving the tournament ‘Euro2016.’ It’s funny how the British public seem to have these little at-work gambles on major sporting events. We don’t do it with other things do we? No-one is walking around the office with a big board with “EU REFERENDUM SWEEPSTAKE” on it, asking you to pay £5 and guess the percentage of voters who will say ‘YES’ next Thursday (with the person who gets the number right winning all the money.)
Actually, that sounds like a good idea. I may get to work on that and see if I can get any takers in the supermarket canteen tomorrow…
Anyway - back to Euro2016. I have two £2 entries in two separate competitions. One is run by Lee the Warehouse Manager at work; the other by Ted and Beryls’ son Alan. There are 24 teams in the tournament, my fortunes are attached to 2 of those teams, and they only have to reach the semi-finals for me to get my money back. So I figure I have a 3-to-1 chance of at least a small amount of success. (Don’t ask me how I arrived at those odds because it’s complicated and I was drunk when I did it.) I’m not a big gambler, but those odds sound okay to me, so I went for it.
Then I got Republic of Ireland in BOTH sweepstakes, so the odds have changed already. I looked up some details and it seems very unlikely that Republic of Ireland will get anywhere near the semi-finals, so my hopes are now allied to Croatia and the Czech Republic. Unless one of those teams puts a good run together I’ve effectively spunked £8 on a crap raffle.
RC 12-6-16
1730 BST
It dawned on me on Monday that I was in a rare position of having posted more blogs in June than there had been days. I got all excited thinking I could smash my record for postings in a month, and could end up with 50 entries posted in a 30-day month.
Then I got so lost in the facts and figures that I forgot to actually write anything. So before I knew it I’d gone from ‘8 blogs in 6 days’ to ‘8 blogs in 12 days’ and the whole idea became impossible.
So this is me resetting myself, and trying to get back into the swing of things, and trying to keep targets reachable rather than ridiculous. And now I sound like a manager again, so I’m going to leave it there for now.
RC 12-6-16
It seems to me
That I am only able to express myself freely
In poetic form.
Being openly me
Or writing an honest blog post daily
Leaves me barely warm.
But I need to change that, so the rest of todays blog will be written in my usual prose.
I had a lovely cycle this evening. Still feel a bit weak and lacking in energy (after last weeks toilet-based unpleasantness) but it was great to be out in the glorious sunshine.
I love Spring. Love it. And getting to enjoy it in this beautiful Suffolk countryside makes it all the more wonderful. And knowing we could be staying here now, with no need to consider moving, makes it more wonderful still.
God, life feels so good right now I’m going dizzy. Seriously, I think I need a lie-down.
RC 6-6-16
Don’t take this the wrong way, but I’m quite glad Philippa was under the weather today. Normally she’d spend her Sunday wanting to drag me off somewhere sporty, or forcing me to do something that tidies the house in some way. But because she felt a bit shitty, we just lazed around enjoying the Sun, and each others company. We (by which I mean, the Bannermans) have a big thermometer in the back garden, attached to a bird feeder. On Friday morning, it was 9 Celsius. Today, it said 24!!! Will it continue? I doubt it, but it was lovely to see it.
Inspired by the sunshine I sat in a chair and wrote poetry (some of which I shared with you earlier.) Philippa dozed, then filled a notepad with decorating ideas. We only have four more weeks as employees of the Housesitting Agency, then we officially become rent-paying tenants, with an option to buy, so she’s gearing up for an onslaught of painting, etc. Wouldn’t be my idea of time well spent, but she seemed to get a kick out of it, so good luck to her. As long as I don’t have to help hang wallpaper I’m happy for her to make whatever plans she likes.
I’m just rambling now, so I’m going to sign off and go and watch ’Wallander.’ It’s not as good as the original Swedish series, but in these days of reality shite and imported courtroom blarney it’s by far the best thing BBC1 has served up in years, so I don’t want to miss it.
RC 5-6-16
2030 BST
Burning bright
In the sky
Welcome
After a month of cold wetness
I love you
But I have to ask
Where the f**k have you been
All Spring?
You lazy yellow bastard
RC 5-6-16
1212 BST
I came in last night to find Philippa well on the mend. She wasn’t up and running around the garden but at least she’d stopped vomming everywhere.
When I had the bug I was in and out of the loo for 24 hours and took 2 days to get over it; Philippa was getting better within 10 hours. How is that fair?
I think the title of todays blog may be one of my best ever, by the way….
RC 5-6-16
Philippa has succumbed to the bug.
I want to be sympathetic and care for her and stay by her side while she’s poorly, but I won’t, because a) when I was ill earlier this week she just buggered off to work, and b) the smell of someone else’s excrement is infinitely worse than the smell of your own. Every time she goes to the bathroom (which is often) it’s like a cloud of toxic ditch gas has been pumped into the house through a sewer pipe.
So I’m off to work for the day, and I may volunteer to stay on late and do overtime. It’ll show I’m willing to make up for the lost time earlier this week, which will keep things sweet with those above me, and it’ll help me avoid the house while my beloved is in the throes of her misfortune. Nothing says ‘married life’ like keeping out of your spouses way while they’re heaving.
RC 4-6-16
Projectile vomit
brought up two weeks worth of food
and both my kidneys
RC 3-6-16
I’m much better today, thank you. My arse feels like I’ve been wiping it with a cheese-grater, but apart from that my body is slowly getting back to normal. Bugs are awful aren’t they? I’m sure they were never this bad when I was younger. I can remember having two days off school with the rancid shitdribbles and then being able to run around the village within hours of my last expulsion. Now I’m in my thirties I seem to take a lot longer to recover. Days after being ill I’ll still be feeling like someone’s taken a baseball bat to my joints and I’ll crawl into bed before dusk.
Thankfully the supermarket policy on staff quarantining is quite strict, so I wasn’t allowed back to work today as I’m still within that “48-hour Danger Period.”
So apart from a couple of reports they kindly e-mailled to home for me to write up properly, it’s been a day of Wii action and DVD enjoyment. That, and trying to get the awful smell of illness out of the bedroom. I tried to persuade Philippa to do it for me, saying I was far too weak to be indulging in housework, but she kindly said ‘no’ and if I hadn’t done it by the time she got in from work she’d divorce me.
RC 2-6-16
Another day of depressing confinement, but at least I’ve stopped vomiting my stomach lining up through my nose. I am feeling slightly better this evening and I’m able to nibble bits of toast without my guts cramping up like a sprinters thigh. I hate being sick. I hate being unwell in any way, if I’m honest, but nothing is worse than this awful sickness/diarrhoea combo where your body seems determined to expel everything, including it’s own organs. I have a pounding headache from the dehydration and I’m convinced I’ve lost six stone in weight.
It wouldn’t be so bad if I wasn’t a manager. When you’re just a member of a workforce you just take time off and let them all get on with it without you. When you’re a manager you have to arrange your own cover and then deal with three or four phone calls a day because no-one else has access to the safe or knows the security code for the ordering system.
It also wouldn’t be so bad if the weather was slightly better. It’s the 1st of June today, for Christ’s sake, why are we locked under grey skies and showers like it’s the 23rd of February in the Arctic? God, I hate our climate. It’s bad enough being on my knees in the bathroom, trying to aim my bile into the bowl while simultaneously trying not to shit burning arse-dribbles into my underwear, without having to look up and see torrential rain being hammered into the frosted window by a force 9 gale.
Anyway, like I said, I’m feeling slightly better now. As I’m sure you can tell from my buoyant mood………..
RC 1-6-15
