Depression is the Twat.

The lovely Zoe who writes My Boyfriend is a Twat has got clinical depression.
It's bad enough having ordinary depression but clinical depression sounds like it should be a lot worse.
Things happen which you don't like and the big black bloodhound decides to hang around the house. You think you're never going to get rid of him and his insatiable appetite for misery but somehow he shrinks to bichon frise size and decides at some stage to wander off in search of some other tree to pee on.
It's a hard battle though because when you're at the bottom of a vast canyon looking up, it seems a hell of a climb to the top.
But Zoe has friends. Friends she has never met. Bloggers they're called. It seems such a stupid name for a friend but it's not the name that matters.
It's knowing that people "out there" care about what happens to you and feel for you. It makes a difference - as Zoe has indicated.
At present, because Zoe is not feeling well enough to write, some blogging mates have kindly stepped in to write for her.
Anna and Mike are the first to offer their services. Well done them.
All this gives me a good feeling. Balls to suicide bombers, shit reality telly freaks, happy slappy morons and all the selfish me-me-me sods - there is still a majority of good folk in the world.
And I hope that knowing this makes Zoe feel a little bit better.
Get well soon love. XXX

Radio Gaga

I seem to have accumulated a lot of wirelesses (that's a radio for those of you under 41 and a half) (that's annoying by the way - there's no half symbol on this keyboard).
Anyway I've got a little Roberts personal wireless; a wireless with a marine and aircraft band; a windup-up wireless which incorporates a torch in case the country comes to a standstill of course; two more portable wireless; a ghetto blaster with a wireless; an old Bush plastic wireless; a little earpiece no bigger than a small snail with a wireless incorporated which was given to me by a pub landlord;a hifi with a wireless; wireless on Sky Digital and wireless on my computer.
It's bloody mad. But I'm salivating at the prospect of buying a wireless with DAB which I know will probably be useless where we live but they look cool, as the kids say these days.
I didn't consciously start to collect these wirelesses - it just happened.
I was once the proud owner of a crystal set wireless on which I used to listen to Radio Luxembourg under my bedsheets. Perhaps it started then.
I just find it magic when I'm sitting in my shed that words spoken by someone half a world away come out of a little box on a shelf.
I'm like some Amazonian tribesman looking in a mirror for the first time.
It's nice to have a simple mind.

This is what I am

I like the idea of being a Cultural Creative.
Well. It's better than being called a Plonker.

I don't normally do quizzes but I couldn't resist this one recommended by Mike's Random Muses.

You scored as Cultural Creative. Cultural Creatives are probably the newest group to enter this realm. You are a modern thinker who tends to shy away from organized religion but still feels as if there is something greater than ourselves. You are very spiritual, even if you are not religious. Life has a meaning outside of the rational. Cultural Creative 88% Existentialist 63% Postmodernist 63% Idealist 63% Fundamentalist 44% Romanticist 38% Modernist 25% Materialist 25% What is Your World View? (updated) created with QuizFarm.com

Viking

If you ever send off for something from Viking Direct mail order supplies, you will receive a catalogue every month until you die.
I have just received the June catalogue and the front page features box sealing tape; deskjet cartridges, copy paper and white business envelopes.
Every front page of the catalogue features the "Chairman Emeritus" I. Helford, a beaming well-scrubbed gent wearing what suspiciously looks like a syrup. It seems to have been the same photograph for the past 10 years or so. There's a pic on their website.
Arm extended, - always palm upwards, he bears gifts.
He entices you with: "Free for you! Get these Traditional Recipe Biscuits ABSOLUTELY FREE with your next order of any value. (Limit 1 per customer). Of course if you're diabetic, on a diet or have a wheat allergy, you are bollocksed.
But Im not. So that's it then. A lever arch file and a packet of Mr Helford's scrummiest it shall be.
I can't wait.

Pondstuff

I was clearing some duckweed out of my little pond this morning when I inadvertently trapped some tadpoles in it.
I spent a few minutes picking them out and putting them back in the pond.
It's just a little pond but the amount of life it supports is incredible.
Go on - dig a hole, stick a bit of pond liner in. You'll be amazed at what turns up.

(Don't do this if you live in a flat).

Hedge

About six years ago I decided to plant a mixed hedge down one side of my garden.
It's got hawthorn; pyracanthus; elder; holly; honeysuckle;cypress; wild rose; cotoneaster and several other shrubs.
This morning, I saw a thrush building a nest in it.
Result!

Hugely irritating

We have that Sky Plus thingy.
In the middle of very exciting football matches, I rewind it instantaneously then freeze the frame and point out someone in the crowd picking their nose.
It's a very useful thing to have.

Huge

Huge.
Hugely.

Listen to the news and see how many times these two words are being used.
You'll be hugely surprised and hugely irritated.
Or is it just me?

Cord almighty

I got one of those cordless keyboards yesterday.
There was a bloody big cord you have to use to attach the base station to the computer.
That's ironic isn't it?

Funny dream

I dreamt a joke last night. At about 3am, I woke up and wrote it down.

This is the joke.

The whale that swallowed Jonah turned to his mate and said:
"I wish I hadn't eaten that sailor."
"I wish I hadn't eaten that sailor"

The other whale said: "Fair enough. But why are you telling me twice?"

And the whale said:
"He keeps repeating on me."

That's not bad is it?

Spot the connection?

FROM TODAY'S SUNDAY TIMES:

The owner of a wind farm company which stands to make millions from Labour’s push for alternative energy will this week emerge as one of the party’s biggest donors during the general election campaign.Nigel Doughty, a venture capitalist, gave Labour £250,000 after a dinner with Tony Blair held for potential donors earlier this year. His investment company owns LM Glasfiber, the world’s biggest wind turbine manufacturer, which is likely to profit from the huge expansion of wind power under Labour. It has already won many major contracts in Britain.

FROM TODAY'S OBSERVER:
2,000 more wind turbines in countryside.
Minister pledges numbers will double to generate 10pc of UK energy within five years.
A massive expansion of wind power involving thousands of new turbines will go ahead despite increasingly bitter wrangling over claims that they are despoiling Britain's countryside.
In his first speech since becoming energy minister, Malcolm Wicks, will offer unequivocal backing to the green lobby by insisting it is 'vital' the government rides out vocal opposition to windfarms and sticks with wind energy.

Sunk

ADMIRAL NELSON saw off the mighty Franco-Spanish fleet at the battle of Trafalgar but 200 years on, he has been sunk by a wave of political correctness.
Organisers of a re-enactment to mark the bicentenary of the battle next month have decided it should be between “a Red Fleet and a Blue Fleet” not British and French/Spanish forces.
Otherwise they fear visiting dignitaries, particularly the French, would be embarrassed at seeing their side routed.
Even the official literature has been toned down. It describes the re-enactment not as the battle of Trafalgar but simply as “an early 19th-century sea battle”.The battle will be staged in the evening of the international fleet review on June 28. The Queen and senior royals will attend the day’s events and government leaders from 73 countries have been invited..

I'm not making this shit up, I promise you.
It's called denying history and is something that totalitarian regimes are particularly good at.
Do you think that if the Frogs had won they would give un toss about embarrassing us? Would they fook!
Don't mention the war. Even if it was 200 years ago.
I hope whoever is commanding the Red Fleet turns his fire on the showers of idiotic twats watching from the shore so one of our greatest heroes can rest easy in his grave.

Thickos rule

UNIVERSITY graduates may be barred from receiving a state pension until they are 70 under proposals from Tony Blair’s pensions supremo to solve the looming crisis.
Adair Turner, head of the government’s Pensions Commission, says lower-paid workers could, however, still retire on a full pension at 65 to reflect their lower life expectancy.

This is typical of the set of wankers who purport to be governing us these days.
Study hard and try to better yourself and not only will you be saddled with tens of thousands of pounds of debt when you leave university, you will also be denied tens of thousands of pounds of pension money when you try to retire. Oh, you will be expected to pay taxes and national insurance but your money will be going to people who couldn't be arsed bettering themselves.

Great message to send out to our young.

Fuck learning - and while you're at it, put another bun in the oven Chantelle - some other idiot will pay for it.

Not him!

The missis said: "A Morecambe glazier came to the house across the road this afternoon."
I misheard and said: "Bloody hell - is he putting in a takeover bid for it?"

Three Stooges

The Three Stooges may have led several generations of schookids into inflicting physical damage on one another but it's nice to know that their leader Moe was really a considerate guy as I discovered on this website.

Sub zero tolerance

The bloke next to me at the bar thought he was the biggest right-winger in the pub.
Commenting on the plan (now probably diluted given the present "Government's" track record) to put offenders in orange garb, he said that it didn't go far enough.

"I would hang them from the top of the parish church until their bodies rotted as an example to other would-be yobs" he opined.
"No" said the bloke on the other side of me. "That's too lenient. I would strip them bollock naked and lash them with razor wire. Then I'd pull all their teeth and fingernails out and saw off their noses with a tenon saw, starting at that tender bit just underneath the septum. Then I'd shove a redhot poker through one ear and out the other. That'd teach 'em a lesson."
Well" said the first feller. "What about getting a big coloured bloke with a stonking great dick to give them a savage arse-fucking until they screamed for mercy?"
"No" replied the second. "Not a big coloured bloke. A Pig..."
We were then treated to the judicial benefits of a return to hanging, drawing and quartering and something about forcing them to eat live snails which would, apparently, lay eggs inside the miscreants forcing their insides to explode.
I am thinking about passing on the suggestions to the present home secretary but let's face it: if they think sticking yobs in orange outfits is too severe, they probably won't implement these somewhat more stringent measures recommended by the boys at the bar.
I think I'll try and sell it to Channel Four instead.

Cracked

"I miss the crack in the dressing room. It was brilliant that." - Paul Gascoine in today's NOTW.

You shouldn't really laugh, should you?

I am the stamp man

JOHN Lennon was a secret stamp collector, it was revealed yesterday.The legendary Beatle got into the hobby as a Liverpool schoolboy.Now his hoard of 565 stamps in their original hardback album is up for sale at £29,950.

This like finding out Stalin did embroidery or Hitler was a secret tapdancer.
Stamp-collecting - the most bourgeois and nerdish of hobbies. Mind you, I always thought Lennon was a bit of a phoney. Imagine no possessions? What about all those furs and jewels in your luxury apartment? The White Roller? The lookalikey wifey?
Singing about revolution and sticking penny blacks in an album.
What a tit.

Man U

I am no big fan of Man U - being a Bolton supporter - but I am sad to see them in the hands of Glazer.
For a Lancashire club with a great heritage and tradition to be taken over by some remote acquisitive American billionaire with no interest in football must be truly sickening for the real fans.I really wish them well but fear the worst.
He might think it's all over...but I have a feeling it isn't. I don't think you'll be seeing him strolling down Deansgate.
Sir Matt must be turning in his grave.
Time for a resurrected Newton Heath LYR (Lancashire and Yorkshire Railway)?

Birdstuff

Our bluetits have given birth!
I thought that they had fallen victim to the sparrowhawk which marauds the hedgerows nearby but yesterday, I heard chirping sounds from inside the luxury nesting box I put up in the Sycamore at the end of the garden.Then I saw one of the parents going inside with food.
And yesterday, our tame blackbird who visits our windowsill feeder along with his missis introduced us to his son and heir.
His bonny baby blackbird boy came up and the windowsill with him and allowed dad to feed him some sunflower hearts.
It's amazing to watch them from a couple of feet away.
Just up the road, the remaining ducks which had been depleted by some unknown predator have given birth to ducklings which all the little children are clamouring to see.
It's a lovely sunny day. My garden is burgeoning. The birds are singing. New life. New hope.

And whoever wakes in England
Sees, some morning, unaware,
That the lowest boughs and the brushwood sheaf
Round the elm-tree bole are in tiny leaf,
While the chaffinch sings on the orchard bough...
In England—now!

Blue murder

Have you seen the price of blueberries since the powers-that-be said they were good for us?
I saw a small packet on sale at a greengrocers in Ambleside yesterday at £3-49p.
They're about £2-99 in most supermarkets now.
It's a scandal.
I'll stick to single malt, thanks.

Water water

It was such a lovely day yesterday that we went to the Lake District for a ride.
If you haven't been there, you must go - it is stunning.
We saw lots - the insides of shoes shops; clothes shops; Zefirelli's restaurant;Hayes Garden World and inspected all the useful knick-knackery of Lakeland Limited.
Like I say, the Lake District is a stunning place at this (or any) time of the year...
So I believe.

Keep going you fool

I think I mentioned it before but I have had palpitations for a few weeks.
It is not the nicest of feelings. The best way I can describe it is like your heart stops momentarily then feels like turns over in your chest. Sometimes it has been so bad that I have felt the beat in my throat. The worst part is waiting for it to happen.
I have not been to see a doctor. I know that perhaps I should but I have seen too many people develop other ailments from the side effects of medication.
In today's paper, there was an article claiming that 15,000 people a year die suddenly through side effects of various drugs including antibiotics. Not what was intended by the medical practitioner but these things happen.
I had a feeling that the condition was brought on by a virus. I might be right or I may be wrong. For the past week or so, on waking up, I have been drinking a pint of hot water with fresh lemon and lime juice and a large spoonful of Manuka honey. All these ingredients have anti-viral and anti-bacterial properties.
For the first time in almost two months, the palpitations seem to have stopped. I am very very relieved.
I don't know whether they have simply run their course or whether the juice drink helped. Whatever it is, I hope it stays that way.
Two days ago, a neighbour the same age as me dropped dead of a heart attack. I collected money for flowers for him yesterday evening. He leaves a wife and six children.

Dog fox

PRINCESS Michael of Kent, the loose cannon of the Royal Family, has fired another embarrassing salvo, this time claiming that she may leave Britain and that life is too boring now foxhunting is banned.

Oh please our Lords and Masters bring back foxhunting so that this lovely lady might stay in our midst and delight us with her regal presence.
On second thoughts, just throw the snobby spongeing bitch to the slavering hounds and have done with it.

Equality for the English

For an English Parliament - and a rejection of Gordon Brown.

When articles like this start appearing in major newspapers, you know that something is stirring in the cause of English independence.
Well said Mr. Rees-Mogg.

Holey Moly!

I've never seen anything like it.
United Utilities came this week to locate a stopcock near our house.
A bloke with a metal detector came and found it.
He decided it needed a new metal cover, so a couple of days later, a gang of workmen came to dig out the hole which was roughly 2 feet square.
They put a new little cover on it but said they weren't allowed to fill it in so they left it for 3 days with road signs and barriers round it - blocking the highway.
Yesterday, a gang came round to tarmac it. But as it hadn't been filled in, they went away again.
This morning, a bloke came to fill it it. He came in a big waggon with a huge crane on top which scooped up the extracted soil and dropped filling material into the hole. A bloke with a small wheelbarrow could have done the same job.
Next came the tester. He shoved a stick in the newly-filled in hole and made sure - well, I'm not sure what he made sure.
The tarmac gang have just been back and tarmacked all 4 square feet of it.
We're waiting now for the next gang to come and remove the road signs and the three big barriers surrounding the "dig".
What a palaver.Talk about jobs for the boys. No wonder the water rates are frigging extortionate.

Tony got a tonking

The interesting thing about the election is we will see how hardfaced Blair really is.
Will he hang on in office despite the reduced majority. Or will fat Gordy - the slack-jawed Scottish stealth tax thief - take his place?
I trust him less than I trust Blair and yet he is being touted as some sort of Messiah.
The way he was paraded round the country as part of the cornet-licking, handholding, smily-wily smarmy double act made me heave.
What a prospect.
I suspect Tony will soon be "spending more time with the family" and fat Gordy's planning the next big round of sly taxes even as we butter our morning toast.

Birdbrains

Is there a Specsavers for Swallows?
I ask because they keep thudding into our upstairs windows. I hate it when that happens but thankfully, none have been harmed up to now. I always go outside to make sure.
The worst bird-smash was a few years ago when I heard a very loud bang and went outside to find a sparrowhawk out of it on the floor.
I didn't know what to do. After a couple of minutes, I decided to get a thick garden glove to pick it up with, when it opened one eye, regarded me suspiciously and shot off like an arrow to the top of a large sycamore tree.

Braveheart

A neighbour of mine has to go into hospital today after suffering pains in his leg which turned out to be a blockage.
He has been told there is a 1 in 20 chance that he might lose his leg.
When I commiserated with him about it last night, he merely replied: "Well, I could always get a job in a panto as Long John Silver".
And to think that I moan if I have to go for a dental inspection.

Go Alfie Go!

Alfie stands for Parliament.

Towards an English Parliament?

The Tories have gone further, and have written the concept of English nationalism into their manifesto.They have committed the party to constitutional change on voting at Westminster, so that Scots MPs would in future be barred from voting on English issues.

About bloody time.

But on the other hand...

It can be seen that solutions like the one proposed by the Conservative Party, known as 'English votes on English laws', will neither redress the unfair treatment of the people of England nor help produce a coherent constitutional settlement

Egypt

I was in Cairo in November very close to where the tourist-targeted bomb went off near the Cairo museum.
We got there on a tourist coach from Port Said accompanied by armed police and soldiers in jeeps bristling with guns.
They closed off all the side roads on the 2 hour journey.
As we drove along the desert road, a car pulled alongside us and both I and a fellow-passenger noticed three men struggling for control of a gun on the back seat of a car. They seemed to be laughing. It was very un-nerving. Yesterday, two militant women shot at a tourist bus in Cairo.
The last attack near the Egyptian Museum was in 1997, when two gunmen fired automatic rifles at a tour bus, killing nine Germans. In the same year militants killed 58 foreign tourists and four Egyptians in Luxor, in the south of the country.
This was at the back of my mind and I remembered how vulnerable I felt as we were preparing to return from Cairo, because the coach we were on had to wait for an hour by the roadside in the middle of the city as the rest of the 20 strong coach convoy filled up. There was an undercover policeman by the side of our coach given away by the large pistol in a holster by his side.
I was quite frankly relieved when we left Port Said. Now it seems that the militants are again targetting tourists in an attempt to wreck Egypt's biggest industry - tourism - and thus destabilise the country.
The Government there will be panicking that this doesn't happen. When I read the news yesterday, there was a feeling of "it could have been me". As indeed on a different day, it could.
It's the luck of the draw.

Eggs

I can't stand the white bit on a fried egg so my wife very kindly performs a surgical operation on the egg by carefully cutting round the yolk and throwing the white of the fried egg in the bin:
thus saving the rest of the meal from going cold if I had to do it.
It's just a food foible I have.
I bet I'm not the only one.