'Of course, this is sadly just the first of the Resource Wars'
Trueman White
(Aspie, age 12)
(Aspie, age 12)
19 April 2007
Thought For The Day?
Out of the blue, all matter of fact, whilst eating breakfast with half an eye on the TV news.
16 April 2007
13 April 2007
Wonderful!
The BBC are running a series of documentaries next month, called 'Power to the People' and the final one will be about the way that OAPs are ignored or neglected in our society.
Bored already?
Tough, because Alfie Carretta, 90 (front man) and Britain's oldest working man Buster Martin, 100 (he gets the final word) are obviously having a ton of fun, below.
This is going to be SO big. The single comes out on May 21 and all profits go to Age Concern.
More info here.
Bored already?
Tough, because Alfie Carretta, 90 (front man) and Britain's oldest working man Buster Martin, 100 (he gets the final word) are obviously having a ton of fun, below.
This is going to be SO big. The single comes out on May 21 and all profits go to Age Concern.
More info here.
12 April 2007
Vacant Expression
Don't mind my vacant expression, it is simply self preservation, disassociation, and normal service will be resumed as soon as some bastard somewhere decides what normal actually is.
Nine or ten weeks ago I was invaded by Council workmen.
With the short list of works they had to do, the aggravation they expressed at the thought of any delay and the grumblings they made about keeping anything in storage at all, a person would reasonably have expected them to move in en mass, cause total chaos for a week or so and move back out. Pah. They are STILL HERE. Or they would be. If the painter hadn't been sent somewhere else yesterday and called in sick today, and if the electrician wasn't still 'en route'.
They were instructed to change the kitchen and bathroom units, lay new lino in same, replace exterior doors and windows (this is only a bungalow) and paint the rooms. Actually the word they first used was 'redecorate' but then they changed that to just 'paint'.
Not only do I not get replacement for my own hard-purchased wallpaper, but I am to believe I am the luckiest little girl since Red Riding Hood because they've let me choose a few colours. Oh it had to be all pastels from the Dulux whites range, all the homogeneously bland and interchangeable shades that scream 'insipid' as they assault your eyes in a way that suggests Town Hall corridors and sundry creativity vacuums.
You know the type of place. Places to sit quietly with nothing but an old copy of Country Lady magazine or National Geographic, and enough stomach butterflies to repopulate the Amazon. Places where your soul is 'taken for you' as swiftly as your coat with a near imperceptible 'thwrupp' as it is sucked away.
Still I am, they say, blessed. They would have me believe that redecoration almost-under* the Decent Homes scheme not only involves painting everything and discarding the old concept of like for like, but that it usually means covering absolutely every surface in Magnolia. They have also demonstrated that they will paint over every unwashable wallpaper and where possible will peel only the top layer from vinyl ones. They have shown how they plaster over holes in a wall only if it is a bare wall, but if they can get away with leaving the thinnest sheet of old lining paper up then they only have to paint it, irrespective of dips, chunks, lumps and bumps. This hasn't stopped the decoration of a nine-roomed bungalow from taking a month and counting.
How can I put this, without removals, with us living here and the boys painting at most two rooms at a time, there seems to be a lot of 'waiting for the first coat to dry'.
We spent our Easter weekend preparing for the magic-disappearing painters to turn up yesterday, i.e. not taking the kids to the park or other such normal family activities, but stuck indoors, stripping wallpaper. More specifically HE stripped wallpaper all over ever more jumbled piles of whatever happened to be in his way, through one day off, two Bank Holidays and Easter Sunday itself. We took brief respite on the Saturday, I believe, for little joys like shopping. I resorted to writing poetry about how our relationship was beyond repair and used the new shared identity 'Anonymous' over at GOB to publish unnoticed**.
(No, it was one of our far more balanced souls who penned the cathartic confessions of life with a screwdriver, that same weekend. I just stuck to total emotional regression to the age of thirteen - aka expression of angst as bad poetry.)
There is nothing more to say, really. The electrician has arrived and is just politely explaining why half of the jobs are nothing to do with him. This would be because:
* Ealing Council has a huge schedule of works under the Decent Homes scheme. The Decent Homes scheme has rules and regulations, and standards, and clear points of communication. It is protected. These out-of-County works are listed on their website as being part of the Decent Homes Scheme, but I am told by the Complaints Department that they are a special case; i.e. NOT under the scheme, and therefore nobody, not even, it seems, a single soul at Ealing Council itself knows what the bloody rules are or who is supposed to be the buck stop for what. Lovely.
** If you occasionally need to be 'Anonymous', let me know and if I know you well enough I'll give you his/her log-in details.
Nine or ten weeks ago I was invaded by Council workmen.
With the short list of works they had to do, the aggravation they expressed at the thought of any delay and the grumblings they made about keeping anything in storage at all, a person would reasonably have expected them to move in en mass, cause total chaos for a week or so and move back out. Pah. They are STILL HERE. Or they would be. If the painter hadn't been sent somewhere else yesterday and called in sick today, and if the electrician wasn't still 'en route'.
They were instructed to change the kitchen and bathroom units, lay new lino in same, replace exterior doors and windows (this is only a bungalow) and paint the rooms. Actually the word they first used was 'redecorate' but then they changed that to just 'paint'.
Not only do I not get replacement for my own hard-purchased wallpaper, but I am to believe I am the luckiest little girl since Red Riding Hood because they've let me choose a few colours. Oh it had to be all pastels from the Dulux whites range, all the homogeneously bland and interchangeable shades that scream 'insipid' as they assault your eyes in a way that suggests Town Hall corridors and sundry creativity vacuums.
You know the type of place. Places to sit quietly with nothing but an old copy of Country Lady magazine or National Geographic, and enough stomach butterflies to repopulate the Amazon. Places where your soul is 'taken for you' as swiftly as your coat with a near imperceptible 'thwrupp' as it is sucked away.
Still I am, they say, blessed. They would have me believe that redecoration almost-under* the Decent Homes scheme not only involves painting everything and discarding the old concept of like for like, but that it usually means covering absolutely every surface in Magnolia. They have also demonstrated that they will paint over every unwashable wallpaper and where possible will peel only the top layer from vinyl ones. They have shown how they plaster over holes in a wall only if it is a bare wall, but if they can get away with leaving the thinnest sheet of old lining paper up then they only have to paint it, irrespective of dips, chunks, lumps and bumps. This hasn't stopped the decoration of a nine-roomed bungalow from taking a month and counting.
How can I put this, without removals, with us living here and the boys painting at most two rooms at a time, there seems to be a lot of 'waiting for the first coat to dry'.
We spent our Easter weekend preparing for the magic-disappearing painters to turn up yesterday, i.e. not taking the kids to the park or other such normal family activities, but stuck indoors, stripping wallpaper. More specifically HE stripped wallpaper all over ever more jumbled piles of whatever happened to be in his way, through one day off, two Bank Holidays and Easter Sunday itself. We took brief respite on the Saturday, I believe, for little joys like shopping. I resorted to writing poetry about how our relationship was beyond repair and used the new shared identity 'Anonymous' over at GOB to publish unnoticed**.
(No, it was one of our far more balanced souls who penned the cathartic confessions of life with a screwdriver, that same weekend. I just stuck to total emotional regression to the age of thirteen - aka expression of angst as bad poetry.)
There is nothing more to say, really. The electrician has arrived and is just politely explaining why half of the jobs are nothing to do with him. This would be because:
- the Council said 'do the electrics' and
- his boss came round and decided what electrics needed doing, but
- he missed bits with the defence 'Well if nobody tells you...'
- so he hasn't put in a work docket to get paid for those bits
- so now I have to go back to Ealing Council and reapply for the repair for another decade.
* Ealing Council has a huge schedule of works under the Decent Homes scheme. The Decent Homes scheme has rules and regulations, and standards, and clear points of communication. It is protected. These out-of-County works are listed on their website as being part of the Decent Homes Scheme, but I am told by the Complaints Department that they are a special case; i.e. NOT under the scheme, and therefore nobody, not even, it seems, a single soul at Ealing Council itself knows what the bloody rules are or who is supposed to be the buck stop for what. Lovely.
** If you occasionally need to be 'Anonymous', let me know and if I know you well enough I'll give you his/her log-in details.
11 April 2007
A stream of consciousness, or just a trickle?
So I'm watching this short video
For about the twentieth time,
consecutively.
And I'm thinking;
"That second time, it makes fourteen twists.
Fourteen folds!
And the first four are double thickness!
That wad is nineteen sheets thick!
You have to know this is some jerk fresh out of his teens,
a college student,
a spotty sponger,
because he sure as hell has never paid for his own loo roll;
Not at the rate HE uses it, anyway."
Oh fuck.
I'm turning into my father.
For about the twentieth time,
consecutively.
And I'm thinking;
"That second time, it makes fourteen twists.
Fourteen folds!
And the first four are double thickness!
That wad is nineteen sheets thick!
You have to know this is some jerk fresh out of his teens,
a college student,
a spotty sponger,
because he sure as hell has never paid for his own loo roll;
Not at the rate HE uses it, anyway."
Oh fuck.
I'm turning into my father.
10 April 2007
Just because
Just because my in-laws live out past Romford. Its all the excuse I need.
An Essex girl walks into the local dry cleaners.
She places a garment on the counter.
"I'll be back tomorrow afternoon to pick up my dress" she says.
"Come again?" says the clerk, cupping his ear.
"No" she replies. "This time it's mayonnaise."
09 April 2007
Christian Stuff.
Yeah well, its Easter. Suck it up. *hee-hee*
I ended up visiting a Christian friend by accident, yesterday and any who know God will chuckle because the phrases 'Christian' and 'by accident' just don't go in the same sentence.
If you are surrounded by happy clappy types who are faking it til they 'make' it - fixed grins and squeaky choruses with a whole lot of arm waving, whilst simultaneously (and some might say, miraculously) ramming chunks of bible down your throat, then you may not know what I mean at all. Being under bombardment can make observation difficult as well as thoroughly unattractive.
Still, the more ordinary, quiet, grubby and obviously imperfect Christian tends to live life on, ooh, do you know tarot? We live it stuck on the five of pentacles. Yup I was going to insert a picture but you know how to Google.
See, I resent many interpretations of that card that lay it on with a trowel about how poor, disabled and sickly the recipients are, because that's not the point at all, they are simply hoi polloi, the working class, the ordinary, of the masses. They are just in the shit same as the rest of us, really.
To get back on track, its lovely when God or whatever you call his instruments (guardian angel, guide, memory, subconscious etc etc etc) *ahem* its lovely when He drops a thought or a line of a tune into your mental lap. It always casts new light on a current issue or simply resolves it; so you know that when He arranges an unplanned meeting with others in the same boat, that one of you is going to get something out of it, whether for yourself or to pass along.
See, we're not all boastful and full of it and always on self-made pedestals shouting how much God could do for you "if only...", the inference there being that 'he's doing it for me mate, so I'm better than you'. Most of us are so far up to our necks in the crap of daily life that we KNOW god holds the thin thread from heaven that's keeping our mouths above the waterline. None of us feel the urge to stare at him in the hopes that we will be hoisted higher. Most of us cast him grateful glances whilst using the extra support to get on with ploughing through the crud.
I swear.
Fuck, fuckety fuck, fuck. Had you noticed? I love it, its very therapeutic. I also support people no matter whether God gave their heart and their crotch matching genders. Lasciviousness comes in all shapes and sizes and I don't mean that. I mean the underdogs. Don't you dare tell me I am disqualified from Heaven for that; don't you go playing Pharisee on me.
Back to tea with my Christian friend. We hadn't gone to Church, I'd had a blazing row with the other half who was methodically stripping wallpaper even though the room looked like a bombsite before he started and I upped and promised the kids a trip to the beach.
The temperature just had to go and drop three or four degrees in the fifteen minutes we took to walk almost all the way to the sea.
Whose house were we nearest? Who did my son ask to visit?
Yup.
I asked her if she knew the Ship Of Fools, a wonderfully funny Christian site with a 'Signs and Blunders' section and links to lots of really awful stuff you can buy like the bobble headed Jesus and other joyful atrocities. I was going to say that the site is all jest and no edification but now I look again, I have fallen in love with their patron saint, St Simeon, who was in to farting on Holy days, streaking and jigging around with the dancing girls. My kinda guy.
She wasn't aware of the site at all, but countered with high praise for one called Porpoise Diving - so much that I wrote the name on my hand to make sure I didn't forget. Possibly my enthusiasm for a bit of solid enlightenment was what made me feel so crushed when I eventually found the place, because its not what I was looking for.
Here it is.
It might be for you. It is more likely to be for you if you live in America, permanently browbeaten by the Hallelujah - high five - have a great day brigade, if some idiot with a loudspeaker has convinced you that you might be a Christian, but you ain't Christian enough.
Enjoy.
I ended up visiting a Christian friend by accident, yesterday and any who know God will chuckle because the phrases 'Christian' and 'by accident' just don't go in the same sentence.
If you are surrounded by happy clappy types who are faking it til they 'make' it - fixed grins and squeaky choruses with a whole lot of arm waving, whilst simultaneously (and some might say, miraculously) ramming chunks of bible down your throat, then you may not know what I mean at all. Being under bombardment can make observation difficult as well as thoroughly unattractive.
Still, the more ordinary, quiet, grubby and obviously imperfect Christian tends to live life on, ooh, do you know tarot? We live it stuck on the five of pentacles. Yup I was going to insert a picture but you know how to Google.
See, I resent many interpretations of that card that lay it on with a trowel about how poor, disabled and sickly the recipients are, because that's not the point at all, they are simply hoi polloi, the working class, the ordinary, of the masses. They are just in the shit same as the rest of us, really.
To get back on track, its lovely when God or whatever you call his instruments (guardian angel, guide, memory, subconscious etc etc etc) *ahem* its lovely when He drops a thought or a line of a tune into your mental lap. It always casts new light on a current issue or simply resolves it; so you know that when He arranges an unplanned meeting with others in the same boat, that one of you is going to get something out of it, whether for yourself or to pass along.
See, we're not all boastful and full of it and always on self-made pedestals shouting how much God could do for you "if only...", the inference there being that 'he's doing it for me mate, so I'm better than you'. Most of us are so far up to our necks in the crap of daily life that we KNOW god holds the thin thread from heaven that's keeping our mouths above the waterline. None of us feel the urge to stare at him in the hopes that we will be hoisted higher. Most of us cast him grateful glances whilst using the extra support to get on with ploughing through the crud.
I swear.
Fuck, fuckety fuck, fuck. Had you noticed? I love it, its very therapeutic. I also support people no matter whether God gave their heart and their crotch matching genders. Lasciviousness comes in all shapes and sizes and I don't mean that. I mean the underdogs. Don't you dare tell me I am disqualified from Heaven for that; don't you go playing Pharisee on me.
Back to tea with my Christian friend. We hadn't gone to Church, I'd had a blazing row with the other half who was methodically stripping wallpaper even though the room looked like a bombsite before he started and I upped and promised the kids a trip to the beach.
The temperature just had to go and drop three or four degrees in the fifteen minutes we took to walk almost all the way to the sea.
Whose house were we nearest? Who did my son ask to visit?
Yup.
I asked her if she knew the Ship Of Fools, a wonderfully funny Christian site with a 'Signs and Blunders' section and links to lots of really awful stuff you can buy like the bobble headed Jesus and other joyful atrocities. I was going to say that the site is all jest and no edification but now I look again, I have fallen in love with their patron saint, St Simeon, who was in to farting on Holy days, streaking and jigging around with the dancing girls. My kinda guy.
She wasn't aware of the site at all, but countered with high praise for one called Porpoise Diving - so much that I wrote the name on my hand to make sure I didn't forget. Possibly my enthusiasm for a bit of solid enlightenment was what made me feel so crushed when I eventually found the place, because its not what I was looking for.
Here it is.
It might be for you. It is more likely to be for you if you live in America, permanently browbeaten by the Hallelujah - high five - have a great day brigade, if some idiot with a loudspeaker has convinced you that you might be a Christian, but you ain't Christian enough.
Enjoy.
08 April 2007
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