Brief Encounter

Tomorrow I’m gonna try a new way home, see if I can knock half an hour of my daily 2-hour-each-way commute. I’ll get a bus from outside my work to Elephant, Northern line to Old Street and WAGN train to Herts North and from there the missus has promised to pick me up. Of course this can’t be a regular thing, she can’t pick me up every evening but it might pave the way for something permanent in the future, who knows, a house move or a bike ride along the river to Hertford North, might even be nice….

Anything has got to be better than my current commute, especially on the way home; my evening train is packed, stupidly I’ve been getting on the first couple of carriages lately then being squashed and squeezed to buggery by lumpy and grumpy commuters but I thought it was worth the inconvenience, but for now I think I’ll stick to the back of the train where no one can see me and I can’t see anyone, that way we’re all happy and we can go back to like it was before.

A guy walks into the council.....

I’m just after watching a DVD called the Aristocrats, which was basically about this one joke all comedians know, tell and re-tell to each other. It’s a shocking joke, disgusting and covers every taboo going, but with an incredibly weak ending. The point being, it’s the journey to the punch line that “makes” to joke so funny. The joke’s improved upon over the years, new layers added, and as it was explained in the film, it isn’t the song that’s important, it’s the signer, or the way the joke is told that gets the laugh.

It’s like at work, if I can draw an analogy for a moment and actually say something about my job for once, sometimes I sing a nice enough tune to management; I can make what I need to say sound plausible, exciting, necessary and even sexy! But other times I just leave them cold, confused and middle-aged. I don’t know what it is. The other week for example I nearly had the money in my paws to go off and buy some software that I need to like, actually do my job, the job I’ve been hired to do, yeah, because the case I’d built was so compelling but then I must have said something, something confusing or contradictory and the money was snatched away at the last moment....

Now, I’m back to the business case, the acceptance criteria stage, the endless meetings that just go on and on without end, agreement or action and I’m having to learn to sing the same old tired song in a new voice, re-invent the new improved sexed up me, tight jeans and open-to-navel billowing white shirt, cocking my microphone in an Alvin Stardust kinda way for a whole new generation of managers…oh yeah, didn’t I mention, all 3 people on my interview panel, i.e. all the people who wanted me in the first place, saw a need for me, have left the council..along with half a dozen other key people I needed to make indexing magic happen…Uhhg-hemmm…Laaaa…lahhh……uurrhhh…bollocks

Morning assembly

My son was on local radio this morning, Hert FM or something, well, ok it was his school that was on the radio; they were broadcasting his morning assembly, isn’t that sweet?

Daddy has taken the day off work just to hear him sing, right boy, I said to him this AM, I wanna hear you shout out “I love you Daddy!” During the first assembly song…No daddy, I can’t they’d tell me off…Jesus, I said, what are you anyway, where’s the rebellion in you…are you really my son at all?

Anyway, so the missus took him to school and hurried back to hear the broadcast while I stayed in bed. We had the broadcast on the PC in the bedroom. You know what would be highly inappropriate and a little bit naughty at the same time I said, and at the same time, threw the duvet off me revealing a naked me…Errr…no, not that, not during assembly for Christ sake, she said…Oh yes, during assembly, now, come over here you naughty girl for your spanking…yes, that’s right, we re-enacted school-days-grown-up while my sons head master droned on about fuck knows what. And who says role-play dosnae spice up dead and buried sex lives?

Mac the knife

I had the elder smasher at my elbow the other morning, while I was shaving, complaining about these dreams he's been having lately and how he couldn't control them.
Well, I said, that's the nature of dreams son, you just gotta go with them
But daddy, they scare me, he said, sometimes I can still see the dream while I'm awake!
Well, like what boy? Do you see yourself, for example, with a knife, standing over daddy while he sleeps?
Noooo daddy, nothing like that!
Standing over mummy? I said, hope rising in my voice
No, nothing like that, I see dinosaurs in my dreams daddy...
Oh, that sorta stuff, Hmmm ok then, good. now, daddy's gotta get ready for work, you go now.

Oh Balls!

It was the smashers birthday Sunday, three years old and I sat there, most of the day, not for the first time, pondering life and death, aging, growing up and dying and there in front of me, smiling and happy, playing with his new train set, was my clock, tick tock daddy!…crack a smile? Me?…like fuck I did…we seem to mark these passages of time often and fully in my house, birthdays, valentine days, anniversaries, mothers day, fathers day, Christmas! Jesus, it never stops…no respite, relentless sign posting the passage of time…

To help me get over all this, we hired a ball pond, well, the missus hired it off the toy library for the smasher and his wee mates but I had something special in mind I wanted to try out and I said as much to the missus Saturday morning…What you on about she said, so I told her of my vision of her, knee deep in plastic balls, naked of course, holding a pair of balls up to her chest and me with the camera capturing our cheeky adult all good fun really moment..then later, if she was good, maybe a picture of me also, holding a clutch of balls to my…well, you get the idea. Exhausted that afternoon I took myself off for my afternoon nap but when I awoke I found she’d tidied the ball pit away, bagged the whole bloody thing away!

Oi, I said, what about our little bit of fun?..Oh, she said, I forgot all about that, sorry..and seeing I was miffed, went straight into attack mode…Well, she said, if you really want to go through with all of that, then YOU can set it all up again!…knowing full well that I wouldn’t be bothered, even if I had the first clue how to…it’s a test see, a cold war of attrition, oh they end up letting you down in the end, I know that, but sometimes you just have to keep trying, keep asking and I’ll go on asking too

It's Freds birthday, so we got him some balls to play with - wait! think I can feel something amusing to write...what was it now...damn it, no its gone... 

My Tino, it's a family car with va-va-voom! 

Life

Ever since the New Year we’ve promised one another that we’d cut down on our spending, right enough I’ve really made an effort with the booze, I’ve cut it right down to the bare minimum, now I hardly touch the stuff.

The other day though I noticed, when going through the bank account, that the missus had been regularly spending, oh, I dunno, £20 odd quid a month on make-up! I confronted her last night with this and she said that Oh, but I buy the make-up for you, to make myself like pretty for you love and I said, well, what do you think the booze was for?

Hahah…the old ones are the old ones alright…

I’m staring at myself in the mirror and I don’t like what I see anymore, oh it’s not just the grey hair and beer gut, although they sure do age me, no…I don’t like what I am inside, twisted, angry, frustrated…morbid. Today is Saturday and we’re planning to do something but are stumped with the usual, walk into town, library, park, bakers…it isn’t enough anymore, I want more..

Lessons Learned Report

Day four of the prince2 course sees me as top dog of the class score with a massive 57 out of 75!...well, I only need 38 so I'm pleased enough. It's been a tough few days what with my cold and everything...and the drinking saturday didnae help much. I wasn't sure what was worse on sunday morning, the after effects of the drink or the symptons of the cold...both seemed to merge into one horrible feeling of dehydration, headachy, sickie pain....

Which sort leads me to signing off the project, not that I can sign it off as the project manager you understand...still, all objectives were met, more or less, acceptance reached anyway and it only leaves me to do the lessons learned report...
Lemme see here in the lessons learnt log...
Oh yeah, number one - Never invite Nick again, just not worth it...no offence nick mate, but you are one worthless piece of waste of time.
Lesson two - Try drinking something less like Kroni all bloody day to avoid massive injury to brain next day. Yeah...right!
Lesson Three - If you gonna invite yir mates round for cheese on toast, get full fat cheese, as half fat just dunt fookn' melt. yeah?!
Lesson four - Really, if the missus calls to pick you up, let her, saves trouble all round...saves money too..
Lesson five - Don;t use The Barn again as a venue, it sucked. especially when they began clearing away all the tables and chairs around us after lunch, leaving our table perched in the middle of an empty barn like space...talk about no atmospher! sheesh.

Think that's it. good day though.

I embarrassed the missus by making her stand over the road and take a picture of me in the motor, problem was, the first picture was crap so I had to make she do it again. nice car though eh?...it's got SatNav, oh yeah...got the lot 

Prince of sickie

Taking my first sickie today; feel guilty of course, not like me to skive off but actually, I really do feel rough, have done all week and everyone else in the office seems unburdened by guilt and takes days, sometimes weeks off, so why not me, for one day like?

I’ve been doing my Prince2 course this week; very interesting it is too, but too much of it, crammed in before the exam next Tuesday, not enough time! Too ill to concentrate!!……

What else..oh yeah, well, still not taken delivery of the car, Nissan took a chunk out of the front bumper while jet washing it for us the other day, so they’re replacing the whole thing for us, which takes time so in the meantime we’re driving around in a courtesy car, a Nissan Primera! Sat Nave, electric windows and camera in the back for precision parking I tell ya, I love it so will be sorry to see it go back to the showroom Saturday, when, fingers crossed, we pick up the new Nissan Tino…now all we have to worry about is paying off the huge bloody loan we’ve taken out to pay for the fucker.

Meeting the boys this Saturday, supposedly, although I know a certain someone we’ll just call Nick for now, won’t bloody show up again but still, ought to be fun, catching up, taking crass about women, sharing our insecurities, updating each other on where the weirdest place they’ve found hair growing, comparing who has the most sex, least amount of sex, who wanks the most and so on – this way we build up a matrix of who is top dog and who’s a cant, it’s always a shifting goalpost, some times I’m top dog, well, most times actually…sometimes Nige might be…depends how you cut it, what’s included in the criteria but without a little one-upmanship what else is there?

OK, back to bed, swotting up on some Prince2.