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I’m sorry if my lack of Hallowe’en enthusiasm has affected you in any way. I don’t mean to spoil anyone else’s fun, I just don’t get the hype and I think it’s over-Americanised and an annoyance to people who just want to have a quiet night in at home at the end of October. I respect your freedom to buy into it if you please, and I hope you respect my freedom to moan about it on my blogspace. I would also like to say that if you HAVE been affected by what I’ve written, then I think you probably have deeper problems that you need to look at, because if an insignificant blog written by an underpaid manager in Suffolk is getting to you, you might have issues that need addressing.
See you in November!
RC 31-10-17
I know I’m not the most enthusiastic person in the world when it comes to Hallowe’en, but at least I’m not as bad as one of our customers. Two of the mums in the queue were discussing what treats to buy for little trick-or-treaters, and Phil the postman popped up with “don’t ask me - I’m the guy who puts laxatives in chocolates so the little sods have the shits next day at school.” I’m not sure whether to report him to the police or tell him he’s my hero.
RC 30-10-17
I haven’t had a headache for months, but today I have a monster. Typical, isn’t it? The only day in 12 I’m not working and I feel like someone’s filled my brain with nails. I took some paracetamol early, but it’s barely touched the temples. I think I need to look stronger, but I don’t like strong painkillers and I’m pretty sure the 24-hour pharmacist isn’t going to throw me some codeine for a headache, so I might try something different. It’s hard for me to see straight, but I’ve looked online for some ancient and/or alternative remedies to help relieve head pain. To be honest, none of them look attractive. Short of getting Philippa to drill a hole in my head (to let the evil spirits out) or set fire to my hair (nice idea, Arateus of Cappadocia) the only option seems to be something called a Coffee Enema. I don’t know what that is, but I recognise both words and I don’t like the idea of putting them together. I think I’d rather suffer a crippling migraine for three days than even look up what a Coffee Enema involves.
RC 29-10-17
How have I ended up working another Saturday morning? It’s bad enough being here during the week; it’s extra painful when I’m sitting here knowing that Philippa is curled up at home with her lovely warm body in a lovely warm bed.
Oh well - this time next week I’ll have Hallowe’en behind me and will be looking forward to two fireworks displays in two days. Yeah - you heard me - TWO of them. One is a big display at a Suffolk racecourse, one is an intimate bonfire-and-bangers party at a neighbouring village. Both will be wonderful, I am sure. The first week of November for me is like the week before Christmas for little children. Exciting, full of anticipation, full of promise. But it’s better for me, coz I’m not reliant on other people buying me presents to make it all worthwhile, and I get to drink alcohol while enjoying it. Take that, kiddiwinks.
RC 28-10-17
Something that crossed my mind this morning, as I was putting through an order for Christmas selection boxes. People always wonder about Father Christmas in the following ways -
“How does he know who’s been naughty or nice?”
“How does he fit down the chimney?”
“How does he get to every child around the world in just one night?”
Why doesn’t anyone ever ask this one:
“How does a man who is obviously morbidly obese survive a 24-hour period of intense stress and physical exercise without dying of a massive coronary somewhere over the Atlantic?”
RC 27-10-17
I’ve been a bit moany again in the past few days, so here’s a joke to lighten the mood of this blog:
When do piglets go trick-or-treating?
Halloweeeeeeeeeeeeeeen!!!
RC 26-10-17
We are heading into a strange paradoxical time for me. A week of weird conflicts. We are approaching one of my most hated dates of the year, hotly followed by one of my favourites. Hallowe’en is nigh, with Bonfire Night hot on its heels. I love fireworks and hot soup outside; I hate trick-or-treating and apple bobbing. So for every moment I have a rush of excitement about bonfires, I get a rush of dread about ghost costumes. I don’t like the fact that I have a great event to look forward to, but a huge stumbling block to scramble over first. It’s a bit like having an operation scheduled two weeks before Christmas.
So maybe, I am wondering, we should separate these two events and place them at different times of the year? I know, yes, technically speaking, Hallowe’en has to be on October 31st, and Guy Fawkes night has to be November 5th, but I say Screw History and let’s put one in November and one in March. We celebrate Christmas on December 25th, despite almost everyone of any knowledge saying Jesus was born in September, so why can’t other holidays be moved too? Do I need to cite Easter as an example? Do I? I hope not, because it’s messed up beyond comment when you think about it.
SO…. just for me, if no-one else…. let’s move Hallowe’en to March 5th. It’ll still be dark enough at night for little scamps to go out dressed up, and it’ll break up this over-populated part of the year nicely. Post-Christmas, you could have my birthday to look ahead to, then Valentines Day, then straight into preparations for Hallowe’en. Wouldn’t that be better for everyone?
Especially me. I wouldn’t have to spend half of October hiding Christmas stock somewhere while bringing out stupid novelty ‘spook’ treats, and then every March I could have a nice Spring holiday abroad and avoid the fricking thing entirely.
RC 25-10-17
Our minds are the greatest gift we have and people seem to be using them less and less. I mention this because one of the girls at work has asked if she can carve a few pumpkins to put on the counter. She’s an arts student and wants to do it as a little project and a chance to show off her skills. If people like them and want to reward her, they can drop some money in a Hallowe’en bucket and we’ll donate it to a local charity. I think it’s a great idea, but when I asked her what sort of designs she had in mind, she didn’t bring out a sketch pad, she got her phone out to show me some stuff on Pinterest. Everything she wanted to do would be a copy of something done by someone else and posted online. I asked her if she fancied doing something original for us. I asked her ‘if I gave you free rein to do whatever the Hell you wanted, what would you come up with?’ and she couldn’t answer me. She literally has no ideas of her own.
And call me a boring old fart, a technophobe, a Luddite, a grumpy git or any other phrase of your choosing, but I think this is symbolic of a wider modern world problem. We’re wasting our most valuable assets by lazily turning to the internet for inspiration.
We’ve become obsessed with seeing what other people are doing instead of concentrating on finding our own path. We’re too busy watching other peoples lives instead of learning to live our own. It’s getting worse, and it’s getting more widespread, and it’s affecting more and more people without them realising it.
So, please, don’t go onto Pinterest to find ideas for how to decorate a pumpkin. That’s what God gave us imaginations for.
RC 24-10-17
Our entire computer system went down at work today. We lost everything. Tills, cameras, desktops. Even the pumps were affected as they’re run by software that links them to the mainframe in the garage. (Do I sound like I know what I’m talking about? Because I don’t…) Monday morning is always very busy for us early on as we get loads of people wanting to ‘fill up for the week’ on their way to work, so the forecourt rapidly descended into chaos. This wouldn’t have happened a couple of years ago, but since our big refit for the overnight shift inclusion everything is reliant on everything else and so if one cog somewhere goes kaputski the whole system goes to shit. And there’s nothing we can do about it. It doesn’t matter how loudly you shout at me, Mr. Almeira Driver With The Silly Hat, I can’t bypass anything or ‘take cash and write it up later’ because if it isn’t done on the touch screens in the filling station it’ll register as a non-payment and automatically send your details to the police.
Although it wouldn’t have this morning, as the security stuff is all run by, guess what?, the same computer that sorts everything else.
As the world becomes more automated and mechanised the more it is prone to a meltdown.
So after several confrontations with customers, several attempted phone calls to senior management who refuse to start work before 9am on a Monday, and several begging messages sent to the technical support people, we were finally sorted by lunchtime and up and running normally all afternoon. My blood pressure was probably 230 over 100, my pulse rate was probably 200 beats a minute, and I’ve probably shaved five years off my life, but we made it through somehow and the only damage is the loss of a few thousand pounds in revenue, which will look bad in my monthly figures but doesn’t really affect me personally. It’s not as if they’ll dock my wages to cover the shortfall. They’ll just have some shitty pointless internal investigation that will come to some shatteringly impressive conclusion like “Computers sometimes go bad” and write yet another new policy procedure for what we should do if it happens again.
Which it probably will, let’s be honest.
RC 23-10-17
Sunday lunch in a nice warm pub
A glass of wine and fulsome grub
A nice clean glass, a comfy chair
Companions all with news to share
Waiting staff who smile and serve
Who get the tips they all deserve
A happy scene, a welcome place
A friendly smile on every face
Friday night; a different scene
Rowdy yobs and jokes obscene
Insulted as you wander in
Casual racism, tattooed skin
“Immigrants man, they should all be throttled”
Punches are thrown, a waiter gets bottled
A dirty scene, a sordid place
A drunken scowl on every face
RC 22-10-17
I still write haiku
But never on a Friday
Funny how things change
Wintry weather falls
Dampness creeps into our world
And life is blacker
I am not sure why
But I seem to be straddled
With insomnia
North Korean War
Was unstoppable, they said
Newscasting bollocks
Time is deceptive
October is whizzing by
Quicker than August
Uninterested
Or is the correct usage
Disinterested?
‘The Girl On The Train’
A novel about murder?
Or a travel guide?
In the world of odes
Some haiku is meaningful
But mine is just trite
I will always post
An odd number of haiku
It’s just a habit
RC 21-10-17
I had to attend a course this morning. It was just a little refresher thing that only lasted two hours and it made a nice break from the usual morning routine at work, but not everyone in attendance seemed to enjoy themselves as much as I did. It took place at a nice countryside location in purpose-built training rooms that are run by an external company, but even so… one woman in particular didn’t seem to be in the mood for it.
We had to register at a nice desk on the way in, and she launched straight into an onslaught about the lack of parking spaces and the fact that she was supposed to park her Mini on a grass verge. “They shouldn’t book me on a course if they can’t provide me a parking space,” she stated firmly to the kindly old lady behind the desk. Talk about a sense of entitlement. “I’ve already had to drive for 90 minutes just to get here,” she went on. What was she expecting them to have done? Schedule a course with county-wide participation close to her house just so it was convenient to her? I wanted to say “It’s a free course and it’s taking place in work time so you’re getting paid to be here, what the **** is your problem?“ but thankfully I’m too lazy to say stuff like that. The receptionist lady dealt with her very calmly and professionally, and in the end she had to admit defeat and go and move her car away from the space outside the front door that she’d dumped it in.
Then we got into the training room itself and she started moaning about the fact that she was expected to sit beside someone at a table instead of having her own dedicated desk, and that the FREE teas and coffees were in another room (which, by the way, was down a short corridor.) I guess she’d rather have a china cup and a solid silver teaspoon delivered into her hand by a bowing virgin, who would then stop to fan her while she got on with the coursework. I’m so glad I wasn’t sitting next to her as I think I would have lasted less than ten minutes before getting the urge to disconnect her vocal cords with a paperclip.
It was a two-hour course and she was still moaning about parking on the way out.
I wouldn’t say she got to me, but I’m now going into the garage to bash the hell out of my drums, and I’ll be imagining her face on the skins every time I bring down a drumstick.
RC 20-10-17
I’ve mentioned before that I like clouds, right? And sunsets? And odd meteorological phenomenon?
Wasn’t this evening the weirdest bloody thing we’ve seen in ages? For those of you that didn’t venture outside or lift your eyes from a screen long enough to notice what was happening, the sky turned a strange mix of pink, orange and yellow, there was hazy sunshine breaking through low-level cloud, and an eerie atmosphere like the tension you get before a really big storm. It got pretty dark pretty quickly and there was a general air of something being completely out-of-place. It reminded me of the way things were when we had that partial solar eclipse. Birds were confused and it was as if the air around you was oppressing you. But it wasn't scary, it was intriguing. I sat in the garden soaking up the oddness and when Philippa came home her car was covered in a weird fine russet dust. Her first words to me were “Before I get out of the car, just check an atomic bomb hasn’t gone off somewhere close. If this is nuclear fallout I’m staying in the car.”
We looked it up, and as you probably know by now, it was a result of a storm in North Africa that sucked sand up from the Sahara, then an unusual wind that brought it all the way up to Britain, and on the way it picked up some ash and shit from forest fires in southern Spain and Portugal. There also may or may not have been something in the Azores that contributed too, but it depends who you speak to.
Whatever it was, I loved it, and coming on the back of a glorious weekend of late Summer weather and a Monday with temperatures in the 20s, this has made it one of the best mid-October 48-hour spells I’ve had it my life.
RC 16-10-17
Surrounded by people with silly ways of behaving on this particular date, I have decided to make up a few myths and superstitions of my own. Please note these are MADE UP and therefore nothing to worry about, but I’d love to think that in two or three hundred years there’ll be a group of people around who believe them…
If you dance naked at midday on Friday the 13th your soul will be condemned to spend eternity living in Hammersmith.
Any child born on a Friday the 13th will have a birth mark in the shape of a walrus.
Any child conceived on a Friday the 13th will be born backwards, smelling of gin.
If you arrive at work late on Friday the 13th, for every minute you are late you will spend an hour of the following day with cramp.
It’s bad luck to walk under an Irishman.
If you step on a crack in the pavement at 11.15 on a Friday, one of your parents will get a kidney stone. (Your dad if it was your left foot, your mum if it was your right)
If you’re the first person awake in your house on Friday the 13th you’ll be the first in the household to die.
RC 13-10-17
I know I have some weird little foibles and things, but I think it’s good that I’m self-aware enough to recognise them and be able to point them out when they’re happening and hopefully then address them. I also know (as part of that same thing) that I tend to fall back on the same old topics over and over again and write the same things about them without ever really reaching a conclusion or finding a way to deal with them.
For a few examples: SAD, work, Philippa, parenthood, modern TV.
And, of course, the passing of time.
As I’ve got older I’ve noticed more and more often how quickly time seems to rocket by, and become more obsessed with it. So what this big introduction has been about, and what it’s building up to, is me yet again writing about how fast the weeks go by nowadays (if that’s not an oxymoron of some kind)
You’ve been warned it’s coming, so here it is:
CAN YOU BELIEVE IT’S THE 12th OF OCTOBER ALREADY?????
We’re under three weeks away from Hallowe’en, less than a month away from Bonfire Night, seven weeks from Advent, ten weeks from the shortest day, eleven weeks from Christmas, twelve weeks from 2018, and nearly three-quarters of the way back round to my birthday.
Next thing you know I’ll be dead.
RC 12-10-17
Have you noticed that when I’m really excited about something and indulging in a bit of manic behaviour I start making up words in blog postings, writing really long sentences and not paying attention to things like grammar, punctuation and sense?
RC 10-10-17
Never being one to let an impulsive idea pass by unengaged I have spent a good portion of today ordering books on Amazon. Most of them will be read once and then discarded but most of them are second hand and in bad condition and less than two quid each so I don’t have to feel like I’m wasting money. Philippa might not see it that way, but I get home from work earlier than her every night so hopefully I can be the one to find all the parcels and she need never know about my spreeing. I would try and explain to her the importance of this latest challenge but she’ll just see it as yet another short-term fix for my faddish compulsions and complexities and roll her eyes and ‘tut’ a lot. She won’t understand that doing this will make me more fulfilled and more human and more relevant and that this can only be achieved through a bit of online splurging. She just won’t. So why bother her with it at all? She’ll find out soon enough, when I’m ignoring her attempts at conversation because I’m trying to finish Great Expectations within a week, or sitting up all night with the light on ploughing through a Margaret Thatcher biography because it HAS to be finished by Friday so I can move on to a Barbara Cartland book about a shipwreck.
SO MUCH to look forward to!!!!!
RC 9-10-17
Philippa is feeling a bit poorly this morning so I’ve gone into full on panic mode in case she’s pregnant.
RC 8-10-17
Todays blog title
Has exactly two hyphens
That’s two too many
I have an idea
Let’s all ban fidget-spinners
For non-autistics
I like to play drums
Smacking something really hard
Makes me feel better
Two hours to download?
I think I need a new laptop
At my place of work
Football supporters
Enjoyed Englands latest win
I - as always - ‘meh’
RC 7-10-17
I’ve been thinking more about my ‘book reading’ comments of two days ago. I think I might be onto something. I really don’t enjoy modern television, and it’s rare for me to get ultra-excited about any films that come out, and even if I do, I resent paying ten quid a ticket to sit in a sweaty darkened room surrounded by giggling teenagers and middle-aged perverts and a multitude of multimedia cellphones. So maybe spending my time at home expanding my intelligence with research books and drifting away with a novel or two might be a good choice of lifestyle. Obviously, being me, there’ll have to be some kind of challenge involved so I might plan to start trawling through a book every week. And they have to be from different parts of a library. So if I read a biography one week, I then have to hit science fiction next and then pick a title from romance, etc, etc, etc. I could cover everything from classics to warfare to cooking to weasels to calligraphy to Westerns to comedy to Women‘s erotica; learn a few things along the way and avoid the modern world at the same time.
Sounds like a winning plan to me.
RC 6-10-17
I’ve got into the habit of eating Weetabix late in the evening. Cereal before bed is not a new phenomenon for me, but the choice (and enjoyment) of Weetabix has surprised me somewhat. They’ve never been my favourite for three reasons - they soak up the milk too quick, I always seem to end up with toothache after eating them
and the residue is a bastard to clean out of the bowl. If you don’t rinse them out immediately it sets like concrete and not even a turbo-charged irradiated brillo pad can remove it. So I’ve always been a bit reluctant. But then I tried the lovely coconut and raisin variety and they fell back into favour, especially once I’d stopped buying the expensive ones and made my own home-grown alternative (cheap store-brand ‘wheat bics’ with value raisins and some desiccated coconut.) Now I seem to find myself munching on them every night after dark. A real treat after a hard days whatever it is I do with my time, and accentuated by the act of pouring currants on them. To be fair - anything tastes better after you’ve covered it in currants. They’re my go-to unexpected ingredient of choice.
Anyway I’d started this blog posting with the intention of asking whether it’s bad for my health to eat a bowl of breakfast cereal at bedtime every night and I’ve ended up just making myself hungry.
Kitchen, here I come….
RC 5-10-17
We went to see “Kingsman: The Golden Circle” tonight. What a pile of shit. It should be called “Kingsman: The Brown Dollop”
It annoys me that in these times of ultra-realistic CGI and an abundance of worldwide cinematic talent to pool from, we’re still being subjected to turgid bumfodder instead of seeing an exponential growth in the quality of movies.
It’s enough to make you give up on the cinema and start watching reality TV.
Except it isn’t, because that’s even worse.
Oh, how I long for a return to the heady days of 19th Century England, when people created their own entertainment using music, their imagination, and servants, for we didn’t have such things as televisions, tablets and TOWIE.
Sod it, I’m going back to reading books.
RC 4-10-17
I got a ‘gentle reminder’ letter from the opticians reminding me that I‘m overdue for an eye test. Can you believe its now two years since I got my glasses? Jeez, time flies when you’re having fun/getting married/buying a house, etc.
I don’t actually wear them that often, which is a bit naughty I guess considering I’m probably not safe to drive without them. It’s not a pride thing or a fashion thing, I just forget to put them on. Then I wonder why I end the day with a headache after driving and staring at a computer.
I’m not looking forward to the appointment. They do that horrible thing where they shoot a puff of air into your eye to check the pressure, and then they ask you to sit still while they do exactly the same thing to exactly the same eye. Your body reacts defensively and starts trying to tip your head backwards so the jet is directed at your cheek, and your eyelids try to weld themselves shut to protect you while the friendly young lady sitting opposite you is saying things like “nice and wide now….”
It’s worse than the dentist. But thankfully doesn’t last as long. And you don’t get a foreign gentleman sticking his fingers inside part of your face like you do when you’re getting your teeth checked. So in that way it’s not comparable at all and maybe I should stop moaning and just get on with it.
But still……..
RC 3-10-17
Another week begins and here we are ensconced in the merry month of October. For fans of statistics, by the end of September I had posted exactly the same number of blogs in the first nine months of 2017 as I did in the first nine months of 2016. So I may not be consistent, but I’m predictable.
I’m thinking of changing the barbers that I use. It’s close to work and convenient, and also cheap, and Kelly is a very nice young lady, but I do wish she’d cease her incessant talking and concentrate on cutting my hair. Surely the real skill that hairdressers need to master is being able to talk without stopping what you’re doing, and she seems to have missed that part of the training course completely. 45 minutes for a ‘light trim’? She’d make a few snips and then think of something she wanted to say, so pause the work so she could wave her hands about expressively. If she had a particular point she wanted to emphasise, she’d stare into my eyes via the mirror as she said it and thrust the scissors towards me, as if she was threatening to stab me in the spine with them. The more I tried to disengage the more she tried to fill the gaps with drivel, and the more she talked the less she cut.
If you can’t multitask, love, try and keep your mouth shut.
It obviously bothered me, as I had the trim on Friday night and I’m typing about it this morning. It didn’t ruin my weekend or anything, but I did find it annoying enough to fill a blog posting with it more than 48 hours later…..
and speaking of weekends, the one Philippa and I had away feels like a lifetime ago now. I shall tell you more about it tomorrow.
RC 2-10-17
