Gosh I’ve eaten a lot of fruit; the gift box is almost empty. The pears have just ripened and are beautifully sweet; Han and I shared one that was absolutely delicious.
Yesterday was not a lot of not very much. Slept until 2:00PM. Han was tearful at the end of school and Donna took her home. That’s about it really; Deb and I both agreed that we weren’t impressed with Stuart Maconie’s travel book “Adventures on the High Teas” that i got from the library last week. She read the first chapter but couldn’t go on and while I’m a hundred or so pages in I’m finding it very unstructured. The writer jumps from one thing to another without rhyme or reason, so much so that by chapter end I can’t recall the subject of the chapter. He’s very favourably compared to Bill Bryson, by a number of reviewers quoted on the cover, but I’m afraid I can’t see the resemblance. He writes with wonderful words but his sentences are too long and too convoluted. They remind me of computer programs filled with nested sub-programs. If you follow the Amazon link you’ll see from the customer reviews that Deb and I don’t appear to be towing the line. Mind you I did find out why you can no longer swim in the Roman Baths in Bath and it would appear that I, in 1975, was one of the last to do so.
He certainly has an eye for a pun because his other two books bear the titles
Pies and Prejudice and Cider with Roadies … Groan!!!!
Didn’t really do very much else; my hip is far more mobile by the day but the sliced nerve ends are re-joining and so the area is extremely sensitive and painful to touch. So it’s sit on my arse and do little.
If madness is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting a different result then the current inhabitants of the BB11 house are, undoubtedly, as mad as hatters. They keep being punished for it but they keep on doing it*, discussing nominations that is. They won a luxury budget, they lost a luxury budget, they had hot water and now they haven’t. They just don’t have the sense to shut up when a conversation moves into a no-go area.
*especially Shaby
Nothing happened at all on Friday other than the kids getting their school reports, both of which were pretty good (ADD PHOTOS).
The highlight of the day, other than the reports, was the eviction of that nasty backbiting gossip spreading vicious little sh*t Govan. Hooray, how we all cheered when the onerous crapulent little turd heard his name announced. I don’t normally take pleasure in other peoples misery but on this occasion I was more than happy to make an exception. Goodbye, you won’t be missed, I spit on you and anything your shadow touches. I’m not being a little OTT I hope!
Saturday, went and slept in my normal bed this morning and it was fantastic; got about five hours uninterrupted sleep and I’m feeling refreshed. Jacob’s staying over tonight with Nat so I imagine they will be joining me downstairs to watch Family Guy and South Park.
Tonight is the finale of the current series of Doctor Who and if the end of the last episode is anything to go by there won’t be another because it appeared that the Universe Multiverse had been destroyed; all those poor little galaxy’s exploding who’d have thought that the TARDIS was that powerful? At last, it’s been bothering the bejesus out of me; why does the actress who plays River Song
in the new series seem so familiar. It’s because she was the British doctor who joined the cast of ER when I still watched it, actress Alex Kingston, thank the lord for that, it was driving me insane…INSANE I TELLS YOU!!!!
Remember that earlier I said that “I didn’t normally take pleasure in other people’s misery”, well guess what; I’m taking extreme pleasure in another persons misery at this very moment. P, D’s shit of an X has lost his job - Let joy be unconfined - Sometimes Bad Things do happen to Bad People!
Just seen final episode of this series of Doctor Who, while there were a number of naughty paradoxes (travelling back in time to arranging his rescue from the pandorica) and we never found out what caused the TARDIS to explode, and it kicked butt; very very good and finally I released, all of a sudden, that I’m seeing this Doctor as The Doctor. It took awhile but now he’s the man. Looking forward to the Xmas Special.
Jacob’s staying tonight with Nat and they and Han are upstairs killing indiscriminately on the X-Box. Deb and I have just watched the Pet Shop Boys at Glastonbury on BBC3 and Deb seems like she might even be interested in going there one year…will miracles never cease?
Sat 1 - AM – Finished work for a few months and took home a big bag of clothes from Dawn’s daughter Sam for Han. She was delighted and we spent much of the morning watching the Han Show. I wanted Han to call dawn to say thank you but when I went into my mobile directory for her number I discovered that this was one more entry where the phone had kept the persons details but deleted their number so we weren’t able to ring her. I’ll have to get her number after my Op from someone (if you’re reading this Dawn text me your number) and Han can give her a call next week. Most of the rest of the day just passed quietly I tried to stay awake so that I could go to bed at night and try and break the night shift sleep cycle. As a result I was extremely tied and can’t recall anything about the day. I know that for some reason we didn’t watch Doctor Who went it was screened that evening, either Nat was at a friends or his friends were here upstairs on the X-Box. No it’s because it’s a two-parter and we hadn’t watched part one yet…Han was too scared to watch last week because the episode features the horrible angle statues who only move when you’re not looking at them
Sun 2 – Last game of the season this morning and the last time I’ll see Robin who can’t play rugby with the lads anymore; thought I’d see her one last time at the presentations next week but I’m not sure that the Vipers stairs, hip surgery and crutches is possibly a good combination. The teams were playing a match against Preston Grasshoppers who were on tour (from Preston surprisingly).
Great match both teams were very closely matched and Preston just managed a last minute try to win 15:10. of the two tries scored by Vipers, one was scored by Jacob and the other was scored by…wait for it…NAT…yahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh.
Home from game around 1PM Deb put joint in oven and we chilaxed. Sent Nat for shower and when he was done we all sat down to watch both episodes of Doctor Who back to back. Like the Doc’s future wife but I’m sure the Angles in this story don’t behave in the way in which they did in the original story in series two. Though that just might be me and my crap memory…NOT!
Later that evening I watched, and made the family watch too, Dispatches: Election Secrets what the parties aren’t telling you about the cuts to come. I didn’t learn anything I didn’t already know but I think the kids may have got an idea of how tight things are going to be over the coming years. The years when they will both be in secondary education.
Mon 3 - We spent the morning at the allotment weeding and clearing ground for our peas and beans. What with my operation enforcing me to by physically inactive re gardening for at least the next 8 weeks we are agreed that the allotment, this year, will be a very piecemeal affair, we’ll do what we can, grow what we can and cover over for next year what ground we can’t use this year.
Briefly said hello to a few people on site inc: Margaret And George (who’s no longer in charge of the site though Margaret is still secretary to the committee). Margaret told me that there was a committee meeting tomorrow night if I wanted to come along and show them the allotment website I’d built but I explained that I would probably wait until after my Op. There’s a committee meeting on the first Tuesday of every month apparently so I’ll have to put a reminder on my phone for the next one. Spent the rest of the day chilaxing again; my how my thumbs hurt after all that…on my knees weeding I had done earlier. Needed to keep an eye on my intake of alcohol because they advise you not to drink anything for 72 hours before the Op. Mind you as I’m having and epidural and not a general I’M NOTON QUITE SUCH A STRICT TIMETABLE; but its best not to turn up pissed I would imagine!
I almost forgot to mention this!!!!!
Rugby Match and Car Breakdown…Prat
Deb had been online a few days before and downloaded free tickets for the development teams game between Leicester Tigers and Harlequins for this evening. The match started at 7PM and we needed to be there before then if we were to get reasonable seats; we were going to leave the car at Deb’s works car park, which is about half a klick away so we also needed to build in time for me to walk this. We left home around 5:45 and from the outset the car didn’t sound right and the wrong sounds rapidly got worse as our journey continued. We literally just made it to the car park before the old heap went and died on us completely. There was nothing we could do, lifted bonnet and topped up water reserve because over heating light kept coming on then left it to cool down while we watched the match. We walked, I hobbled, to the new Welford Road Caterpillar Stand and managed to get seats down toward the NelsonMandelaPark end. It was a great match which was won, narrowly, by the Tigers the final score being 29:27. Christ theses guys are good and the physical contact is awesome. Two guys continued fighting even though the ball had come out of the ruck and play had moved on down field. It’s no wonder that they won’t let Robin continue playing with the boys if this is how rough it’s going to get once they hit puberty and all that testosterone gets pumping.
Nat disappeared just before half time and finally return just before the second half started clasping a Tigers Pie in his greedy mitt; that boy and food!!!!! The match finished at around 8:40 Pm and we made our way out of the ground and walked back to the car. The car started but lacked any power, Deb managed to nurse it along and got it restarted when it cut out until finally , as we drove onto the grass in front of our drive it gave up the ghost for good and died completely; Nat Han and I pushed it onto the drive. Once inside Deb called out the RAC, we have home start, and an hour later their chap turned up. Great news…the head gasket completely gone and will need to be replaced and we’re looking at a bill of One Thousand Pounds approximately to have this work done. The Guy got the car started and Deb followed him to a garage he recommended and there they left it on the forecourt until morning. The nice RAC guy dropped Deb back at home.
So, I’ve got to get to hospital by 7:15 AM on Wednesday, it’s now Monday night and we have a broken car that’s going to take at least 3 days to fix…anyone else see a problem here?
Tues 4 – Happy Stars Wars Day – May the Fourth was it with you… well was it? Note to self remember to register religion as Jedi next year during census or else start a campaign to get everyone one to register as Flying Spaghetti Monster. Kept waiting for the Fourth to be with me but no apparent luck “strong the fourth is not in this one” as the little Fozzie Bear sound alike would say.
We’ve sorted out the car situation, Deb is going to borrow Donna’s car and so spent much of the evening at Donna’s online getting herself put on Donna’s insurance as an additional authorized driver; at least that’s one less problem to worry about. I passed the day mainly doing little or nothing checking that I had everything that I would need the next day and packing separately those items that Deb would bring in after my Op. I’m taking the bare minimum, Dressing Gown, PJ’s, Slippers, couple of books, MP3 player (in case my phone batteries die) and N82 mobile for pods and twittering (see separate entry above for - A Tweeting View of a Day in the General).
We received the May issue of the Braunstone Life (the Community Newspaper of Braunstone Town) this afternoon and there was a special two page spread entitled “Millfield Mercury” featuring items from Han’s (and formally Nat’s) primary school. There, slap bang in the very fist column, was the Millfield marathon badge that Han had designed for the marathon run they were going to do at school to support their teacher Mrs. bates who was running in the Brighton marathon to raise money for guide dogs for the blind (Mrs. B completed it successfully).
Wed 5 - Hope yesterday that everyone had a happy Star Wars day and that the Fourth was with You!
Anyway it's currently 01:41 on the 5 May and today's the day of my operation. Why am I up so late? well I've got to be at the General by 07:15 this AM and I figure, if last time was typical, that'll I'll be waiting round for a few more hours before going under the knife. Now after that's over then the last thing I want to be is wide awake so if I'm tied already hopefully I'll sleep through the worst of the post-op pain. Anyway that's my plan. In sixteen minutes time I pass the point of ingesting anything other than water, I've a cup of coffee here that I'll finish before then after that it's nothing but water up until 06:00 and after that nothing at all. I'm going to bed at 02:00 then getting up at 05:00 because despite the fact that I can't have breakfast I have got to have another shower with the "special" cleaner in order to try and avoid infections. Anyway, since the kids and Deb went to bed I've been able to check that I've got everything I need to take with me and everything Deb needs to fetch over later...thank God for Donna we've got her car as ours went tits up on Monday (see previous entry for weekend and Bank Holiday) night, we barely made it home, , head gaskets gone and we're looking at approximately a Grand in repairs and no car for three or even four days, talk about great timing!!! I'm taking my phone, creative MP3 player (charging cables) and a couple of books. Hopefully Deb will fetch over surge protection multipoint extension cable, net-book and portable hard drive (with their charging cables) and, finally, some additional books.
Anyway, it's time to sign off now; hopefully I'll be back to tell you what my time in hospital was like...fingers crossed everyone, please : )
Home this A.M. in time to see the kids search the garden for the eggs left by the Easter Bunny (there’s something seriously amiss in Deb’s head) in addition to the ones it left in the house (definitely seriously amiss). No photos, unfortunately, as I was in the process of updating the Nokia OVI Store client just as they decided to descent the stairs. After they’d done their locus impressions they returned inside to stuff their faces full of chocolate, I wondered why it was that neither of them wanted breakfast? Deb, Nat and Han were off to see Deb’s parents in Redditch today whilst I was going to try to get some sleep in bed. My knee, in particular, is acutely painful when I lie down and because of this, when I’m off work, I’ve been trying to get to sleep perched semi-upright on the settee rather than in bed. I stayed up until about 11:45 until my eyelids were drooping and I could hardly stay awake; then armed with a very hot hot-water bottle I went to bed. I had mixed success; I certainly kept dropping off, evidenced by the fact that I never heard a podcast to its end, but kept waking up whenever I turned over. At one point exhaustion must have got the better of me because I slept and had the weirdest of dreams; can’t remember the details other than it involve going to a very mad party with people I haven’t seen in years. Deb and the kids returned at some point late in the afternoon, this semi woke me from the aforementioned dream (which I then couldn’t get back into) but I don’t know exactly when. Nat came into the bedroom around 5:45 and told me it was time to get up. Had 3 BLT bagels for tea, they’d eaten at Alf and Doreens earlier, watched Click (BBC News channel) which I’d taped earlier and then tried to set up Deb’s Dad’s “old” PC which he’d given to us. Not sure what was going on with the PC, set everything up and windows XP loaded but each time it did immediately thereafter the monitor announced that it was going to sleep. Struggled with the problem, applying all my sophisticated PC knowhow,
until about 8:30 then dashed upstairs to get washed and dressed for work. Deb made my flask of coffee but failed to wait for the froth to dissipated so when I opened it at work it was only ¾ full!!!!!
Got to work for 8:00, we had a team brief 9:30 - 10:30 and I took over on EA at 10:31. Quite night, lots of help from Ash during first slightly manic hour but after that only had a few emergency jobs to issue. I'm presently typing this so I suppose I should change the tense but as I do this already, frequently and unintentionally I think I'll leave well alone unless that is, once more, I've already done so.
Well, I’ve still got a little over five hundred words to write if I want to hit the thousand tonight so what to write, what indeed? Lets have a look at what’s in the news, other than the iPad that is (yah… you got another mention Apple baby!).
Well first the good news, the new series of Doctor Who has got off to a flying start with an average viewing figure of 8 million which represents a 36.9% audience share. The new series looks as if it’s going to be a stonker if the preview at the end of episode one is to believed! His new assistant is a stunner, even if she is another ginger chum, and the new Tardis (Dildo shaped going up and downy bit and all – look closely, right at the end of the episode) is fantastic also.
And for even more good news:
Well, well, well, it couldn’t happen to a nicer neo-fascist racist; white supremacist Eugene Terreblanche, god bless his little cotton socks, was murdered today by two of his black workers in a dispute over wages. An advocate of white supremacy since 1973 and, himself, a former failed murder (having been convicted of attempting to murder a black farm worker in 2001) there seems to be a delicious irony to the way in which his eventual demise came about. If he's just kept talking then evenually he might have "Boered" them to death...Boom Boom!! Of course, on the downside, there is the chance that this incident could inflame racial tension in South Africa, a tension that already simmers beneath the surface of S.A. society, once more and lead to further and escalating violence. It wouldn’t take too much to put S.A. on a course toward eventual Zimbabwefication, after all, President Jacob Zuma is not a man known for his good judgement and he could easily turn out to be another Robert Mugabe, albeit a not so clever one! Apparently 3000 white farmers have been murdered since the end of apartheid in 1994. This is definitely one too watch; especially with the Football World Cup being held there this summer!
In other news, it’s just come over the headline printer on the BBC website, that there’s been a 7.2 magnitude earthquake on the Mexican peninsula of Baja California, this morning, which has killed at least one person and that has caused tremors which were felt as far away as Nevada. I would imagine, this coming morning, that there will be a lot of Californians’ holding their collective breaths! Scientist have been saying for awhile that the San Andreas Fault is overdue for a big seismic shift and this quake could be the harbinger of that very shift; on the other hand, I suppose, it’s equally likely that this could be just what was needed to relieve the tension…who knows? There’s one thing, if the BIG one does happen, it’ll put the Californian deficit into perspective and the rest of us into what would probably be the biggest recession the World has ever known. In the words of the immoral Bard (Chubby Brown) " we'd be up Shititty Creek without a Frickitty Paddle"*. People forget that the World’s Fifth Biggest Economy in built on top of one of the World’s most unstable fault lines. It’s a disaster waiting to happen is what it is I tells you!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Deb says I'm over reacting to be concerned that Nat is spending so much time either on his X-Box or PC gaming; I think it's worth considering the following story before concurring with her conclusion - A South Korean couple have gone on trial charged with allowing their baby daughter to starve to death while they played an online computer game. My concern is that video games are addictive; only a year or so ago a young man in Korea died after indulging in a virtually non-stop 50+ hour gaming binge. If given the opportunity Nat would go online the moment he woke and stay on line until he went to bed, if he went to bed! One of the reasons I don't try the X-Box myself is that I could easily see myself doing the same thing. It's many the time that I've sat down at the PC only to get up a few minutes later to discover that hours have passed; you lose, absolutely, any sense that time is passing!
Poor old Ash is suffering dreadfully tonight from a bad stomach, the poor guy's just gone out for a walk to see if that will relieve the discomfort... fingers crossed. He's heading home early at 6:15 which means I'll finish up his work alongside my own which is no great problem. It'll fill the remaining time before the end of the shift.
News just in, Microsoft Rebrands Windows Phone 7 Series, thank the lord for that, as a name it was too much of a mouthful for even the late legendry Linda Lovelace to swallow; hence forth Windows Phone 7 Series will simply be known as Windows Phone &, actually it’ll be known as Windows Phone 7, Windows Phone & was a typo. All this talk reminds me, apparently Apple have launched something called the "iPad"? How quickly we forget!
* So far as I'm aware Roy "Chubby" Brown has never said any such thing. I just made it up cos I felt like it.
What a pain another sixteen words and I would have made it to thirteen hundred in total.
Whoops, it appears that I just did!
Deb and I finally managed to visit the allotment this morning for the first time this year. The weathers been so shitty these last few months that whenever we've had the opportunity to go there the weathers prevented it. We dug up the remaining parsnips and leaks and Deb planted some shallots. I had the fun job of washing the mud off the veg in the water tank; my hands are beginning to experience a partial return of sensation as I attempt to type this! Because of the weather there's an awful lot of work that needs to be done; the plots overgrown and we're going to have to clear it, again, before we can start serious planting. Hopefully, I'll be able to go up there over the next few weekends, before my operation renders me immobile for two months, and help Deb get some of the donkey work done. I think that this year, like last, we'll do what we can and next year, by which time hopefully I'll be fully mobile, we can try and bring the whole plot under cultivation. By then, again hopefully, Nat will be big enough and old enough to make a real contribution toward helping with this work.
Just as we arrived home Nat was getting into Sam's parents car and departing for, yet another day at, the Games Workshop, unbelievably Han was up and out of bed and watching Futurama when we got in ... it was only 10:30 and she was UP!!!!! She and Deb are off to the Garden Centre shortly and I'm for bed as I'm back at work this evening. It seems as if it's going to be a nice day today so hopefully we'll have a quite night, after the hassles of the two previous weekends it'll be nice if it is. Please God let it be that IT have finished with their badly planned updates!
I finally watched the last two episodes of Doctor Who with David Tenant as The Doctor this morning in anticipation of the new series that starts tonight. I know it sounds ridiculous but I'll miss him as the Doctor. Anyway, it's time to give the new chap a chance; the few previews that the BBC have shown look pretty good.
