Have a Good Time, All the Time

Good evening folks, it's Christmas day and as you can probably imagine I have been drinking for quite some time.

I am currently in my parent's home in a picturesque village, and am listening to the 'delightful' percussion solo as performed by Ted: White Rabbit - Pain in the Arse. Ted has been in the family for a few years now and is usually in Bristol being waited on hand and foot by my sister and (in)significant other; however over the festive season he has been given a holiday while his parents are up in Aberdeen being Scottish at one-another. Probably wearing kilts and saying 'och eye the noo' all day. As Scottish people are want to do. I've read about them you know; in books.
Thankfully, to help me write this post my mother's cat Missy has helpfully decided to sit directly in front of the monitor and therefore I cannot see what it is I am typing. As such I will try and type what I can and put up whatever I think is the reiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiii

To recap, the cat decided my arm and face area were special mountaineering and claw sharpening outposts; as such she has now been 'removed from play' due to my screams, which were not unlike a young whale being eaten by ants whilst being dragged into a combine harvester. Anyway.

My Christmas was a quiet affair, and that's great. Forgoing turkey this year we went with fillet steak (which could replace any food item in my opinion) and I have eaten more than seven people could comfortably eat in the space of a few hours. Still, as I don't plan on moving much for the next week I am okay with this, as I will lay still and digest my food in a similar manner to a Boa Constrictor: massive distended belly and antlers sticking two feet from my grotesque snout. Though saying this, the Boa won't be lying on a cider bottle-strewn carpet, so that's one up on the animal kingdom.

Anyway, time to check some emails and go to bed. Merry Christmas all.

Oh.

The rabbit is still stamping. Why he does this is a mystery; do my key presses sound, in his mind, like the distant panicked foot thumps of his brethren? Or has his brain simply broken, leaving behind the sole and all encompassing desire to annoy the shit out of me? Rest assured, the latter is proving to be more likely. And more and more likely, Ted is soon to become quiet.

Dead quiet. Ho. Ho. Ho.

Lazy man Repost - So What? (first posted 18/12/2011)

I have been fly-on-the-wall to all those arguments that to a man with no kids seem utterly ridiculous; I tut-tut and shake my head in disbelief at it all. The wrong type of mince in spaghetti. Going to bed earlier than eleven PM.

I then remember that I was exactly the same. Probably worse.

As a pre-teen and up to the age of about sixteen I carried with me a bone deep certainty that I was specially singled out for some great deed or heroic destiny, and as such I conducted myself with an arrogance and whiny spitefulness that makes me cringe to think back on. I was by no means a bully, but I was a little bugger and an uppity brat to everyone I thought I could get away with it with. I tried to shroud myself in an aura of mystery, and fancied myself as some hero-by-night that no one could truly understand.

I was unique, just like everyone else.

The arguments with my parents were stupid; my sense of entitlement gave me the gall to tell my mother and father that I didn’t like what they were cooking or that what they bought me for Christmas was not good enough. The self-pity I felt when I was asked to tidy my room or pick my coat up or feed the cats. The despairing unfairness of it all that caused my blood to boil. I spent 6 WHOLE hours at school, mother, and NOW you ask me to put the oven on? HOW DARE YOU. You can’t possibly understand what I’m going through right now. None of you can.

Hmm.

The high-pitched whine pierces the door to my room again like a hail of crossbow fire. My first thought is to sally forth and throttle the little bugger, but then, wasn't I just the same as him? Wasn't I the one pouting at the request to put the cat out? Wasn't I the one that spent my teenage years thinking why does this only happen to me? So I don’t. It’s not my place, and it’s not my business. And so I smile, take a swig of Cider and hold the gift that I found a couple of years ago that has made my life a hundred times better than anyone else’s.

I Just Don’t Care.

I spent most of my life, as a lot of other people have and still do, caring so much about what other people thought of me that I had no real identity. I bounced from one persona to the other, trying desperately to impress people I didn't really know and in many cases I didn't even like. I felt, wrongly, that the amount of people who liked me was a direct measure of my self worth, and it nearly killed me.

A lot of people feel like, after a period of great stress or grief that a ‘great weight’ lifts from their shoulders, like the throwing off a lead coat. This feeling is real. Simply realising the big so what is sat in mile-high letters on the horizon is as wonderful as drinking unicorn giggles. It lowers your inhibitions and gives you a huge amount of confidence. Now I can write stupid and narrow-minded blog posts that may come across as crass, dumb and unfeeling. So what? I get to be loud and stupid and say what I think at work. So what?

Trust me: wheel out the old so what at least once a day.

You’ll be glad you did!

Midnight on the Murder Mile

It has been several weeks since my last post, and as all of mankind has been clamouring for another (or, more accurately, no one at all) I will do one now. I am currently in Bellshill, sat at a friend's computer with a Jacques in one hand and a Jacques in the other, after a harrowing night. The time, 11pm; the place, London Victoria Coach Station. The temperature, about 2 degrees above freezing. The coach station is packed, I'm sitting, trying not to freeze to death and simultaneously trying not to soil myself whilst sweating like a plague victim, as a stomach bug thought it would be a perfect time to just go nuts, creating a sensation not unlike firing ninja stars from a shotgun every 20 minutes. A millimeter beneath the surface of my skin I was a furnace so I shone with fever sweat, however anything above and below that was an iceberg. The minutes crawled by. The world ended, a blinding flash of brilliant white a million years in the future reduces all consciousness to nothing. The Big Bang happens, and planets are formed; a floating mass of superheated rock finds an orbit with a huge ball of fire and the earth heaves with the effort of creation. Single cells form, the basis for all life and they lay, inert for millennia. These life forms begin to shape, and as ages slip by a slimy amphibian heaves it's way gasping into the acrid air of young earth. Over generations, it changes shape, and becomes bipedal. Society forms, we learn about tools, and fire, and wheel. The concept of religion is conceived and we move into a civilised age. First our feet, then carts, then the motor vehicle were born, followed swiftly by the coach. Neon lights and LCD plasma screens all thrown into a huge glass horse-shoe of a building with no heating and no closed doors is placed in the busiest part of London. And I appear there again, sweating and praying to a merciful Lord that my colon has what it takes as 23:30 clonks into place. The coach appears and everyone rushes to the gate, despite not being able to board for another quarter of an hour. One of my fellow passengers had a thought process which ran a little like this: "Right, I need to get to Glasgow from London. I also need to bring my two children, who are 6 months and 1 year and 10 months old. The best thing for all of us is to keep them awake all damn night waiting whilst they become increasingly disgruntled. So what will be best for them, myself and my fellow passengers is to place said tired, hungry, griping kids into a over-hot and overcrowded metal tube on my lap for eight hours. I mean, sure it's the middle of the night and everyone needs to sleep at some point, but I'm sure they won't mind if my eldest emits a keening, high-pitched wail every 15 minutes or so for the whole journey, jerking them awake, just as sleep would finally start to take them. No siree. And when he does, I'll just do nothing to sooth my distressed child." Lookin' at you, guy sat two rows behind me. At 8am the next morning we pulled into Glasgow, and I managed to escape the damn coach with my neck feeling like a broken accordion, and a walk not dissimilar to that of the people from the 'Around the World' by Daft Punk music video. I sit here now delirious with fatigue. I add the above man's name to my Book of Grudges. On the plus side, I have two days of being on holiday in Scotland, with a trip to the Edinburgh Christmas Market tomorrow and a visit to the Kelvingrove Museum the next day. Smashing.