It’s Mrs Tryppe speaking

I have a wonderful understanding with my local abattoir. They know I order a huge sack of raw tripe every month and go and collect it in it’s see through dustbin bag while the contents are still warm.

I come home and cut it into 1/2lb portions which I freeze and Raki has this most days as well as a top up tin of meat as well as her human pet’s cooked vegetables. She is a very happy healthy (albeit smelly farting) doggy – she eats well and she adores tripe.

So it’s customary for me to telephone the abattoir once a month and say “Good morning, its Devonshire Dumpling here. I would like to order a 12 lb bag of raw tripe for me to collect next Saturday? Thank you so much! See you about 10.30”

So you might understand exactly how I ended up to be feeling very demoralised this morning when I telephoned my order as normal but spoke to a strange voice who answered me and then proceeded to politely ask me to 'hold the line for a few seconds', but he did not bother to cover the mouthpiece and was heard to shout “Bert – its Mrs Tripe on the phone. We got enough tripe for 'er for Saturday?”

Mrs Tripe indeed! Mrs - bloody - Tripe! I am apparently well known to this business for my custom and acknowledged for the amount of money that I spend with them BUT am I known by my own surname?oh no...to them I am known as "Mrs Tripe"

Currently I am having a very personal Hyacinth Bucket Bouquet moment.

The Monday Sunday roast lunch

My earlier post refers.

Somehow it did not taste half as good as it would have tasted yesterday.

(I am going to moan about this for weeks)

What a complete disaster of a "man"

I watched the Remembrance Day service on TV yesterday and was very disgusted to see our esteemed leader not bother to bow his head after laying his wreath.

It is an automatic gesture for me to always do so – if I am walking or driving and pass a hearse I nod my head downwards. Whether I know the person or not I do always honour and respect their passing. Many other pedestrians or motorists do the self same thing too I notice. Some genuflect but the majority of us simply briefly nod in a way of acknowledging someone’s life and their passing and wishing them well on their journey, or on the 11th hour of the 11th day of the 11th month we acknowledge the ultimate sacrifice that so many of them made far too soon and so many years ago by way of bowing our heads in thought and prayer for two minutes, wherever we are.

War has touched almost everyone’s life by way of a premature death. Be that of a grandparent, a parent, a family member, a husband or wife or a child or their sibling – be it any war from the past up until the current. Be it a boyfriend or a fiancé or even an unknown person whose empty shell passes you en route to their final destination, or even a cold marble piece of stone that epitomises thousands of faceless human beings, but their supreme sacrifice should be at least be worthy of at least a brief nod, surely?

When you govern and when you are in charge you are unfortunately always in the spotlight. I am in no way surprised that today all the media have noticed the fact that Comrade Brown could not be arsed to bow in honour of the dead's ultimate sacrifice and No 10 (trying to achieve a damage limitation exercise) are excusing the fact that he “probably forgot” Forgot? Forgot???

Whether you rule a Country or are in charge of a Government of that Country your face is shown and how you honour the dead of your Country on behalf of all those citizens who you represent is shared with millions via TV – our esteemed unelected arrogant leader could not be arsed to bow his head in acknowledgement or to honour the dead and gave them all the disrespect that no dead person ever should deserve. Especially all those who gave their lives years ago to ultimately to put him in a position of employment that he cherishes today.

The lowest form of insult to give to the dead is from a person who we never voted for, wanted, or want who acts on the behalf of the whole of the UK. Comrade Brown – at least sometime today remember how to bow your head…in shame.

Eerie sea mist this morning

No hills, hardly any trees, no rooftops – just a swirling clammy and very cold sea mist.

What should be a view like this:-










Is currently a view like this :-









And driving is at best hazardous because using car lights reflects the glare straight back into your eyes. Mind you, when this lot lifts it should be a glorious day.

The Yanks are after our chocolate!

Dairy Milk maker Cadbury will face a hostile takeover bid from US food giant Kraft tomorrow, reports the papers.

I can't stand the American's idea of chocolate which is tastless (unless you like plastic flavours) When it comes to Cadbury's chocolate it started off in Birmingham in 1824 and should forever remain British owned.

Oh, the angst

Ok Ironside, try this.........

At the bottom of Kippers posts is the date and "comments", click on comments and it will open a box with all current comments. Go to the bottom of those comments and you will see the blank comment box. So, type what you want to and then type in the ever changing word verification that you'll also see.

Now - regarding an identity, type Ironside and then your password. You already have both.

Then click on "publish your comment" - I think word verification may be confusing you. That sorts out Kippers but not Angus as I don't think he uses word verification. There again, Angus always needs sorting out!

One very clean car

The cleaning included the inside windows, windscreen, part of steering wheel and all the roof and upholstery. Gone are the dried stalactites of mud courtesy of Raki yesterday.

It was an excellent way to spend my Sunday bum up or as a contortionist cleaning inside roof of car and everything else with Raki acting as a patrolling forewoman trying to guard her mud treasures.

Raki is not amused as gone are her favourite scents of mud which comprised of rabbit, sheep and cow shit and even her car duvet has been washed and everything currently smells of lavender. In consequence she has gone off to her bed in a big sulk and she is going to make me well and truly suffer for my sins for the next few days.

I really must find a large dustbin bag to carry with me as the next time when we are both out and it rains I am going to stuff her into it and bring her home trussed and bundled up inside.

Pssst? Ironside?

I don’t think you look at the waffle box all that often but Kippers Dickie has left a message for you.

He has not advertised the link to his own blog on his message but he can be found HERE if you would like to venture your bum over and pay him a visit.

(anyone else who has not read his blog really should !)

Bird=1, Hadron Collider=0

CERN'S Large Hadron Collider has once again been shut down. No helium leak or dodgy magnets this time, either.

The culprit? A speck of bread, which officials believe was once a part of a baguette thought to have been dropped by a low flying bird.

I’m just sitting back and waiting for the jokes or one liners to start. But just think of the consequences if it had dropped a low flying turd.

Sunday lunch !

Guess who the idiot is who totally forgot to get her joint of beef out of the freezer?

I prepared the spuds, the spinach, the carrots and the parsnips last thing last night but I clean forgot all about getting the meat out of the freezer until about five minutes ago. No way will I defrost it in the microwave so I now have a slab of rock hard meat that is laughing sarcastically at me.

Nothing is going to be far nicer or more enjoyable than my current thoughts of a succulent Sunday roast lunch which is now going to comprise of ...egg and chips (with a side dressing of tomato sauce) and I think I'm going to 'pass' on the spinach, carrots and parsnips as optional extras.

The very proud old boy network

Driving back from shopping this morning I saw a small line of mobility chairs each operated by local old boys who I recognised except that today they are out full of spit and polish, with new haircuts and all freshly shaven and no part of them looked out of place or in need of attention.

Resplendent in their grey flannels, wearing different coloured berets - and blue, grey or green blazers, and all wearing polished medals that reflected on their mirror like shoes, these second world war vets were slowly and very discreetly making their way down to the Towns memorial. I am only too thankful that it is not raining for them today. Rain would not be kind to these elderly men’s health especially when today none of them are out wearing their daily winter clothes.

I know that many of them will be calling in for a pint at a very local pub on their way back home to reminisce and have a drink in memory of so many fallen comrades, and there will be a tot of rum, brandy or whisky waiting for them from an ‘anonymous local person’ because I created a tab last night and left sufficient money so that they can all have a drink.

I was so very lucky because all my family survived the war but as it is only me left, I still continue the family tradition of remembering those millions who fought and died which makes my world a far better place to live in than it probably would have been. I owe these men a drink – it’s the very least that I can do.

Remembrance Sunday

They shall grow not old, as we that are left grow old:
Age shall not weary them, nor the years condemn.
At the going down of the sun and in the morning
We will remember them.

Mud bath

I took Raki to the beach and I was enjoying watching the distant ominously dark clouds chucking down rain onto the hills. Enjoying it that is until I realised that the clouds were hurtling towards me at speed and I was in the open with no shelter and my car was half a mile away.

By the time we got back to my dogmobile we were both wet, cold, dishevelled, miserable and Raki consisted of mud on four legs. She hopped up into the boot on her side of the bars that keeps her safe from her human owner and we set off back to base camp.

But half way home she stood up and shook herself which resulted in the car interior and the back of my neck being speckled with mud. Awe, bless.

We got home and Harry greeted us with his customary "hello? hello!" then continued his repertoir with "oh dear! Dear, deary me" and I didn't know whether to laugh or cry at that point, so I laughed to spite myself.

Tomorrow I'll be crying when I have to clean the cars interior.

Automatic doors

Am I the only idiot that catches herself saying a polite thank you to them when they automatically open up for me?

Feral youths – murdering, cowardly scum

Is it not high time that this Government (and subsequent Governments) abandoned the ineffectual “human rights act” and brought back some heavyweight sentencing for the scum that rule out towns and cities? These scum have no respect for law-abiding citizens human rights but as soon as they are caught and sentenced start to wail loudly about “their” human rights.

With malice aforethought, these scum set out to maim, injure, kill, terrorise, desecrate damage and their human rights should be therefore considered exempt.

Please do not plead human rights regarding the fact that they often cannot be named and shamed. Please do not plead human rights when expecting a cushy jail sentence (if there’s one at all) and then belly aching that human rights insist they should have a rather nice accommodation and the luxuries included as well as their rights to vote……

So, sod this human rights act as it has been twisted far beyond its original aims and it is consistently being abused. Why not bring back the stocks? Let someone spend 7-14 days from dawn to dusk in stocks in the middle of a town. Let them be abused. Let their faces be shown and known. Keep them in the local nick overnight and then the next morning take them back to the stocks.

Bring back a borstal run my ex military where those serving time have a hard sharp lesson – somehow the law must be changed to reflect that crime does not pay. Right now it does. No wonder this Country has become a lawless society as there is no deterrent to committing any crime and those who commit them have the human rights act on their side.

What has brought on this rant? It’s the news of a woman in devon dying in a fire that was caused by a firework being pushed through her letterbox by kids. The woman managed to save her son but at the cost of her own life.

I am sure the kid’s aim was to frighten rather than murder but at the end of the day it was murder. To deliberately enter a property and walk up to the door with a firework and push it through the letterbox shows intent and malice – therefore when the thug is caught (as the thug will be) then please don’t tell me as a juvenile he cannot be named or shamed or punished. It would be a grave miscarriage of justice if the thug did not have the full weight of the law around his/her scrawny neck. Some law breaker has to create a precedent and I hope it starts right now.

Kill Bill Teddy

Raki is back to normal today and intent on killing her new teddy bear.








Loves to decapitate teddies, as is her want. You have not yet seen her prized collection of decapitated teddy bears.







Prefers to hide her treasure where her human pet can't find it and turf it out as well as my sleeping carcass as well as my mattress out of the bed at 3am when she decides to find teddy to play with.
(btw, the carpet is not that awful colour that has come out on the pic)



I have no answer to Raki. I can't reason with Raki and she won't learn that when I am rudely woken up between 2-4am by her leaping on my stomach and proceeding to feed my gasping for air open mouth with a teddy bear that will in any way endear me to loving her any more than I already do.

How bloody much??

Oh, I cannot believe a letter that I received this morning from my new dental practise. It gives me appointment dates for January for three fillings and a brillo pad clean and includes the cost of my forthcoming treatment, a mere £ 84 I have to somehow find out of my meagre unemployment benefit. If that was not bad enough the letter goes on to give me a cost of £440 for a ceramic crown or £350 for a porcelain-bonded crown and an appointment to have one or the other fitted. In consequence, I have just shit myself!

Now, try as I might I cannot find a NHS dentist here where you pay a percentage of the fee so I had no choice but to go private.

Currently I have a stub of a tooth complete with temporary filling that is already prepared for a crown to be fitted and ceramic or porcelain is going to clash something chronic with its white gold neighbour crown innit?

But back to the ridiculous cost of a crown makes me wonder if I should extract my offending molar by way of pliers or mole grips after getting suitable rat-arsed beforehand. But knowing my luck I would only pull the wrong one out.

The Dumpling is really feeling very down in the mouth today.

Google dashboard

Google launched what it calls Google Dashboard - a tool giving Google users a single view of all of the data associated with their Google accounts.

The Dashboard is being touted as a way for users to, at a glance, see information about their Web usage, email usage and more when they are logged into Google services such as Gmail, YouTube and Google Calendar. The dashboard will let users delete information as well, a move that could help to address privacy concerns that have been raised surrounding Google's collection of so much data about its users' online habits.

I had to do a search to find this and if you want to have a look to your dashboard and how to use the information the link is HERE and the idiots guide is below.

One night down, two to go

How are all the animal owning bloggers getting on with their local fireworks terrifying their pets? Raki survived the first night but there’s a couple more nights to go which might even drag out until Sunday night, depending on whether it rains or not.

Loving the photos some of you have shared on your blogs showing the weird and wonderful temporary accommodation for their pets. Who cares what it looks like providing that it works is my motto, and my choice of a weird shaped ill-fitting tablecloth seemed to do the trick.

Temporary emergency measures now in place

Happy to report that my mud hut’s dining table is currently sporting a neat little duvet/tent arrangement. It thoughtfully includes draping part of the tent over one dining chair thus creating a tunnel for easy ingress/egress for a spaniel.

The top of the table will also house a very large birdcage containing Harry (who has also been thoughtfully included by way of a blackout shroud) and both will be in operation during dusk to almost midnight for the next four – yes four nights – Harry gets his home moved and Raki has her secret pastel coloured nuclear fallout shelter to plonk her arse under.

My portable submarine crash dive alarm sounds at dusk tonight so let battle commence. I am prepared!

It's not exactly a Budweiser ad, is it?

.....but quite clever all the same. This is the new Guinness advert that will soon be shown on the TV. It makes me wonder why they went to all this trouble to create a waterfall – or did the moral get somehow lost on me?

Anyhow, I do love a Guinness. I always have and I always will and I do not care if it is draught, bottled, or canned or original as a Guinness is always a Guinness – that is unless, of course, you turn one into a depth charge.

Memories of depth charges will haunt me until my dying day as my friends and my pub landlord like to take any/every opportunity to keep me reminded of my actions after 2 pints of depth charges one fateful day ten years ago.

If I shared the secret for my long-term embarrassment here, I would never live it down with my fellow bloggers. In consequence, it is better to keep this haunting memory as a very personal thingy, you understand? (hint: its to do with a pint of guinness reduced by two mouthfulls and a schooner of port plonked in - glass and all)

But, Guinness has done well with this ad (whatever it really stands for) but they have a long way to go to achieve the quality of the Budweiser adverts. There again, Guinness is a beautiful drink and the Bud brand is simply like drinking gnats pee.

A pointless, ridiculous waste of life

The daily fail reports that 5 soldiers died today, at the hands of a rogue Afghan policeman who shot them whilst they were drinking tea in their compound.

The first British war with Afghanistan was in 1839 and we did not win it then, and neither will we win in 2009/2010/2011 etc

We have British men and women fighting out there with lack of resources and equipment armed with a great deal of bravery fighting a war that the British people did not want that warmongers Blair and Bush lied and sexed up so called "proof" to drag us into.

Fight these soldiers certainly do - and immense bravery they certainly have. But so many dead and for such a futile reason which was to fill the ego of two heads of state and to blame the Taliban for everything (including latterly proven to be false blame) and to blatantly ignore the people who took to the streets and asked “please talk first before you take us into a war”

When will any Government recognise that polls show the general public is 89% in favour of pulling out of this ridiculous unachieving war? With religion there is always a small minority that fights dirty to get itself heard, but this was not our war in the first place; it never was our war.

So, let's bring our troops back home now. It's high time that they all came back home, alive and not cruelly maimed or brought home in body bags, as 170 years later we are still getting nowhere fast.

Just to jog your memories

For those drowned out, flooded out, who are battling against gales and storms and tempests; and who are cold and wet and miserable and waddling around in thick winter clothes which limits freedom of movement and makes the wearer look decidedly fat.

A little bit of THIS is what we need!


(and no, its not a bloody lightbulb!)

Its a load of old rubbish

Those environmental officers “who collect the household rubbish” are great people and you can set your clock to their weekly collection time. Most of us find that putting bags out the previous day only results in shredded torn bags and their contents strewn all over the road because the local cats have a field day, so we tend to put our bags out on the actual day.

Sure enough, at 11am pricissimo the dustcart trundles down the road so quite why the rubbish was collected at 7am this morning I really have no idea!

It’s caught a lot of us out. As to me - I’m taking myself out on a tip trip today. Its hard to contain my excitement really because there's nothing more exciting than to drive into the country where it’s open and windswept and pouring with rain and blowing a gale just to get rid of my rubbish. Maybe I’ll take a packed lunch and a thermos and make a day of it.

The unemployed and fuel poverty

<- this or is this? ->







A fuel poor household is one which cannot afford to keep adequately warm at reasonable cost, or when a household needs to spend more than 10% of their household income on all domestic fuel use including appliances to heat their home to an adequate level of warmth.

So, is it a Sunday roast (the only day of the week where I actually afford to eat a decent meal) or is it bloody egg and chips again and freezing my tits off just to save up to pay my impending gas bill?

Answers attached to a Red Cross hamper of food to arrive no later than Saturday. Thank you.

Where have all the jobs gone?

There was once a time when you could apply and receive an application form for a job that was advertised and would probably be invited to attend an interview.  Then came the time when your completed and returned application form met with total silence and you never heard a thing. Then came the time when, despite assurances that the form would be in the post it was never received.

So you get cute and call into places, fill in application forms, and are promised that you will remain on file and be contacted when a vacancy arises. You see a vacancy a very short time later and contact them to remind them that they have your application form on file and are told “we’ve lost it” or “you need to complete a new application form” and then you are back to the first para all over again.

So, where have all the jobs gone? There are some about but seemingly impossible to get your nose into the door. I am so sick of this unemployment because I really do want to work. Finding anything is an entirely different matter.

That’s buggered up the bonfires*

* cue evil laughter.

Nice weather yesterday, wasn’t it? Gales, rain, floods, and the dumpling was out of tee shirts and into thick jumpers and sheepskin knickers and sitting huddled by the fire whilst dreaming of hot climate diseases like leprosy, cholera and jungle rot.

Its also put pay to the dear little children’s high rise bonfires on the 5^th (awe shame not) as most of them have floated away.

Chinese (sky) Lanterns

I bought a pack of sky lanterns which I purchased from HERE.

The reason is that between November and the end of January all my family have died so I have a lot of cemetery/ crematorium visits, and what a better than to remember so many of my loved ones that I can easily achieve by writing a message to many of them on a lantern, lighting it, and sending it up towards the heavens for them all to read when they have got some free time away from playing their harps.

Something bright and slowly rising up high into the sky remaining stationary over somewhere is probably going to receive many 999 panic calls from terrified inhabitants who all will be reporting a UFO or strange phenomena in the sky overhead their homes – because Devon has not woken up to Chinese lanterns yet.

Should be fun.

Of the senses

I love it when my friends come up to visit and I love them all dearly (for all their horrible faults job wise) and I love our front door hugs and cheek to cheek “mwah” kisses into thin air, but I do so wish at times that they’d leave their bloody careers at home.

Take for example just two of my best friends – a detective and a dentist

.

My detective friend is always interested (far, far too interested) in giving an ASBO to my seedlings after checking them out and enquiring from me what I think that I am actually growing. That’s after she has practiced Tae Kwon Do on me and had me eating carpet and being handcuffed with no prior warning (because she likes to keep in practise) and I am only too thankful that she never brings her stun gun up with her.

My dentist friend never eyeballs me when in conversation but always prefers instead to address my left premolar at all times. I think she is totally in love with my left premolar but is far too shy to ever admit it .I'm worried about her and the obvious hidden sexual pleasures that she derives from furtive voyeuristic tendencies concerning left premolars. She’s a Tae Kwon Do black belt so I am terrified of asking her why she only talks to my tooth instead of my face in case I end up with a broken nose, or much worse.

……and I very am reluctant to tell you what my nurse friend probably comes equipped with in her handbag, and no way am I ever ever going to invite my undertaker friends up for coffee.

Just wondering if any blogger has friends in a profession where they can't leave their chosen career at home when they socialise, or is it only me who gets arrested, cautioned, breathalised, wrapped, body searched, strapped, de-beaked, fangs checked, bedpanned and sized up for a coffin and all on a normal natural innocent social evening out with my friends.

Terrified dog time

Between now and November 5^th my brave fierceless four legged warrior Raki, becomes the personification of pure total terror reincarnated.

It seems she can hear the “whiz bang” of a firework three miles away and as soon as she hears one go off she leaps from her sleeping position at my feet intent to clamber up my body and crawl behind my neck for refuge from “that noise”

Considering that my neck is not built to accommodate a full sized spaniel it’s a bit difficult for her to achieve.

Then she tries snake like to crawl at speed along the carpet using her chest as leverage to a place of sanctuary behind where I am sitting. It’s impossible for her to achieve it as one arm of the sofa as well as the back of it is about 2” away from two walls and Raki is unfortunately not a two inch wide spaniel.

So, she takes a brave dart across my lounge and dives under my dining table where she compacts her body into a small quivering frightened cube for the duration of the “whiz bangs” and I have a snowballs hell of a chance to placate her or do anything with her short of laying under the table with her.

With every year she becomes more frightened so this year I’ll drape a spare duvet cover over my table which will reach down to the carpet so she’ll have a tent with a table roof to be under. But it’s no fun for me knowing I have a terrified and frightened dog that I cannot comfort and know its more sensible to leave her be and to ignore her.

This year I’ll leave my garage door open again as last year I found out that local cats had taken to stopping under my car for the evening and I hope to God that the idiots don’t go to the Burrows like they did last year solely intent to terrify the sheep and frighten the trusting horses that graze and live there.

Then I worry about the stray cats and the stray dogs as well as the birds so yes I do think that fireworks should be banned and only available to be used in very open public places that are situated well away from peoples homes.

Happy Halloween – pffft

For those who do celebrate it, have a great evening.

Its one day when I can go out “au naturelle” until this evening when I don my ghoulish mask and wait in eager anticipation for some horrible kiddywinky to have the audacity to dare knock on my front door.

My local Asda staff really have gone to town with what I assume can only be hired outfits. There are some wonderfully dressed witches that are all worthy of praise for their dress sense as well as their wonderful bent hats and stick on warts or crooked noses who are manning the checkouts. I was served by the Bride of Dracula earlier today. She was in a wedding dress complete with veil and had the most wonderful green complexion as well as dark eye sockets. She had nice fangs too.

Like Angus, I have my boiling oil simmering but while he prefers to close his drawbridge I much rather leave mine open because I want to frighten the darling little sweethearts to death tonight.

...............Besides, its cost me a small bloody fortune to fill my moat with piranha.

The Dumpling's waffle box

I don’t know whether it’s escaped your notice but there’s a waffle box now available that you’ll find on the right of my blog.

This probably means that I am going to get trolls intent at grabbing any opportunity for their free kak advertising.

Mind you, as soon as any troll does this I’ll remove the waffle box, but right now and purely for the benefit of all legitimate bloggers, they can now leave a message or simply chat to each other.

You want to see Doctor when?

There have been a few articles recently concerning a sick-on-their-last-legs patient trying desperately to get an appointment with their doctor whilst they are still barely alive and hopefully before they snuff it.

Now, this brings me on to the old honest joke about having to discuss your symptoms with a receptionist and you have to firstly overcome that dreaded receptionist barrier who automatically treats you as public enemy number one intent to 'waste doctors time' simply in order to get an appointment (provided you have first proved yourself to be eligible with her secret “legitimately sick” checklist test) but at my surgery these miserable receptionists have all been pensioned off. And so have their neat little black uniforms together with their skull and crossbones hats that they all used to prefer to wear.

They are a friendly bunch and all wave to me when I call in even if they are on the phones making appointments for the sick people in my hamlet. It’s probably all down to the fact that they remember I call in with Easter eggs for them or a few bottles of wine at Christmas or I have achieved notoriety in ways I am yet to be told about regarding their little silly jokes about me at my expense.

I called in this morning to the surgery in my dumplings ‘creeping mode’ armed with a packet of chocolate biscuits for their tea break and intent to simply make an appointment to see my quack for a quarterly MOT and was asked if I would like to see my doctor today. I replied that I was not ill, but just was making an appointment for time within the next fortnight.

My appointment is tonight ….at 7.10pm!

I’m really worried at this point. It will be very very dark by then. The dumpling should be fast asleep in her cot and instead she’s going to be playing at being a grown up and staying up ever so late tonight just to see her nice lady doctor (who is always running bloody late) probably at about 7.40pm this evening.

Friendly smiling head receptionist is on duty and I’ve already been asked to arrive with a bacon sarnie for her. You couldn’t make this up could you? A largish town and a very late appointment and to see your doctor you are required to take in a bacon sarnie for the receptionist on duty who happened to draw the short straw to have to work late tonight. She was being serious so a bacon sarnie she is going to get.

Especially for Ironside!

Who finally plucked up the courage to go to the dentist today.






<-----------One very large sticky toffee apple!

Monday blues?

Oh its no good, its simply no good at all.

I achieved under 2 hours sleep. I woke up an hour early. I went to the dentist and came home knowing that I had some £500+ quid to find for dentist bills. I took the dog out and at a point of no return (with no shelter at all) the rain chucked down without any warning.

Swam back to my car. Dog shook herself all over me and deposited her mud all over the car interior on our journey back to her kennel.

Two hours sleep last night (if that) so right now I don't really know whether my stomach wants another late breakfast, or an early lunch or maybe even a dinner let alone a supper and I've got toothache and a sore jaw that I never had prior to my dentist visit. So I resign myself to admitting that I have the six monthly Monday morning all day blues, exacerbated only by the fact that the sodding clocks have gone back an hour and my body time clock was not forewarned or paid in advance to keep stoomph and not moan. I knew about it - but my body and my mind as well as my soul did not.

Is anyone else having a bad day today?

I have no choice but to head back to my crib and kick my rattle and 'thkweem and thkweem until I am thickk'

The early, early, early morning wake up call

I tend to wake up at 4.55am – sometimes I don’t even go to bed before 4.55am but the rare times when I go to bed any earlier I’ll always wake up at 4.55am, precisely.

I woke up this morning at 3.55am. Go figure!

I toddled to the bathroom, then I toddled downstairs. I let Raki out, then thought to myself “I’m hungry” which was really a bit silly seeing I wasn’t at all hungry but right from a kid I remembered that if I ate something I’d always be able to go back to sleep. So Raki and I had marmite on toast at 4am but the biggy biggy problem was that I didn’t feel at all sleepy so I stayed up and yes, it’s a bloody long day today especially when I consider that I went to bed at 1.25am so I didn’t even manage a measly 3 hours sleep last night.

There’s something to be said about this silly GMT habit of "springing forward and falling back" as regards an individuals human body clock's timekeeping. My body clock takes months to adjust itself and then, just when I am finally getting used to it, they who make this daft rule goes and changes it all back again.

How bloody much??

I’m so thrilled with my new dentist, I really am! It seems that I am about to pay for his 2010 world cruise so its very hard for me to contain my delight over his forthcoming holiday, I really is.

Apparently, I need a crown (a tiara simply will not do) and the only choice left for me now really is a crown. But the teeny weenie little problem is that a crown is going to cost about £300 and as I am on job seekers benefit then it would take umpteen months to save up for this cost– providing that the water, gas and electricity companies all don’t increase their prices and petrol stays the same –hahahaha.

I also surprisingly need 4 fillings as well as the brillo pad clean that I had asked for. I do so wish that there was a NHS dentist in the area or one who took on more patients.

Give the guy his due, he actually removed the remainder of my broken tooth and “plugged” the remaining shell of a tooth so I currently now have a ¼” above the gum (instead of a tooth sized tooth/filling) which now consists of the purest of the most brilliant of whites 'temporary filling' and it makes the rest of my teeth, as well as the whites of my eyes, look distinctly horribly dingy grey, and yes – my temporary filling is very very visible!

He drilled down and removed old pins and he bravely did it all without anaesthetic, bless (I subsequently think that screaming gives him a hard on) and I am home feeling as if I have done eight rounds with the current world heavyweight boxing champion. In more ways than one I am feeling down in the mouth so to speak.

Did I mention that I also need four fillings too? I think he has caused three of them because he used that barbaric prongy thingy to scrape away perfectly good fillings (or cause cavities with his prongy thingy where none had existed beforehand) so there’s the cost for some fillings as well as a crown.

oh joy! oh rapture!

A dog can't tell the time

Well, her stomach and bladder certainly can't.

Raki is pacing up and down eying her front right leg watch and throwing me scowls as if to say "I should have had a walk an hour ago, you useless human pet" which means she'll be weeks doing this and every night she'll wear the carpet out pacing up and down expecting dinner before her new normal time.

It takes me months to get her adjusted and just when I have achieved it then the bloody clocks decide to change again.

Soggy dumplings

It is not often that reading an excerpt of a book moves me to tears, but this one did this morning.

I knew QA (Queen Elizabeth Hospital) from many years ago when I lived in Gosport and visited family or attended treatment there when it was a large growing but still a friendly local hospital, which still retained the cottage hospital feel about it.

I saw the building extensions but with every cemented brick brought about a cold impersonal place which meant that you were treated as a patient, a number, a statistic with some robot treating you who was working to a specific short time limit – rather than remaining a recognised face who you received friendly banter from who nursed you for as long as you needed and without warning you suddenly became a statistic rather then a human being.

So I can understand why the author of the book moved her Mother away from the QA hospital. I’m so glad for her Mother that she did.

As an unemployed carer in a nursing profession, I am very aware that the majority of establishments caring for the sick and dying are very cold and impersonal places. The love and attention that staff gives is automatic but their available time in which to give it is infrequent because of their increasing demanding heavy workload.

Occasionally there are magic places whereby the staff consider and also care and automatically include the needs of an ill persons relatives and have the time in which to do so– Petersfield clearly has done this. It makes the pain of a loss easier to bear knowing that the loved one received love and attention throughout their stay which was also automatically extended to the family, and this act of love and kindness really does help those who are left behind because their memories of the final few months of visiting a dying loved one excludes anger or frustration at the neglect of disinterested impersonal nursing staff. A nurse or carer worth their salt treats any patient as if they were a personal friend and family member of theirs, and automatically this is extended to include that own patients family.

I am so glad that Tasmin and her brother Daniel are now able to look back and are mindful that they both, but most importantly that their Mother were all loved and given thoughtful attention and all of them were all nursed and considered and cared for with so much love and kindness. It makes their private personal grief so much easier to deal with. Importantly, it made a dying woman’s final few months easier for her and to a lesser extent for her family.

But, back to nursing staff or care assistants or carers. Yes, we do break rules when we can. Yes, we do really care. Yes, we do get emotionally involved. It’s very hard for us too because when we lose a patient we lose our own adopted personal family member or our friend, and when working in an impersonal hospital environment we do twist the rules to put a dying person within our care and his/her family first, and we do consider that a dying person is far more important than our job spec and therefore above the rules and regulations that demand we all have to work to.

When we break the rules by laying along side them or sitting chatting to them and mopping their brow, wiping their eyes, holding them in our arms for their last few hours while their head rests on our shoulders while we quietly talk to them until we become sadly aware that their breathing has ceased. We need time to do this because its beyond being a part of our job and its become something we want/need to do for our newly found dying friend, and we are honoured to be available to give it to them. We don't need to pay an ultimate price being reminded by a matron that our absence has left two colleagues remaining to fill three nursing positions for a very short duration which can (and did for me) result in being sacked for gross misconduct because I neglected to complete my full workload of allotted tasks that I was required to do over a 12 hour shift – as happened to me.

My choice was to not take bedding down to a laundry, and to not answer a call for a bedpan as I knew my colleagues could do so. My choice was to hold a dying person in my arms and I am privaledged that they chose me to hold them even if my act resulted in my dismissal a day later and yes - I'd do it all over again if I could turn the clock back.

We can’t switch off. We may be on auto pilot but privately we mourn and we grieve too – but we need hospitals that allow their staff time for each individual within their care and when a family member finds comfort from it and writes about it then yes, it moves us to tears because our actions meant something to someone that was beyond our training and achieved far more than we expected. Those now left have better memories that they can cope with and it is often such a neglected factor.

Because, you see, it is a sad part of our nursing that we do have to deal with BUT when we can extend our care and love and consideration (and a form of nursing) to the family of a dying person then just look how they remember a sad part of their lives and subsequently write about it! We are not martyrs or saints and our rewards come from nursing and loving a dying person and knowing that that a persons loved ones have inadvertently had their own process of grief eased because of our actions. We prefer to help the sick get better but we need time to achieve that too.

Medical staff must be allowed to achieve actually nursing without being rushed so the more Petersfield hospitals that are built then the better the UK would become.

We need a Petersfield hospital throughout the whole of the UK. We need that type of hospital available for every citizen and it needs the be filled to capacity with same quality of caring staff to fill these hospitals who all have time to give to any patient or their family who requires it.

We need that calibre of medical staff and we need to be reminded what nursing care and time and attention and love is all about.

Keeping your pies hot

At times I really have to admire my local hamlet's ambulance service, I really do.

When you next see flashing lights in your rear view mirror or an ambulance's flashing lights hurtling towards you it is not always due to the fact that they are travelling to save a life or someone is in their vehicle and under their tender nursing care while they are gasping their last and hitching a free lift towards a designated hospital.

The reason could be far more serious.Far, far more serious......So let's take yesterday morning for example:-

I was standing patiently waiting to be served in my local pie shop intent to purchase a beef and stilton pie which consists of a hand made succulent 5" deep 4" wide individual 90% steak and 5% stilton pie, which includes 5% of thick rich tasty gravy that binds the whole lot together, and a paramedic was standing behind me waiting to order the self same variety of pie for him as well as his colleagues that were also on duty for this mornings shift.

...........Well that's apart from one silly paramedic who apparently demanded a baked bread fajita type of late breakfast affair (which consists of an egg sandwiched between layers bacon with optional mushrooms and/or onions all wrapped up in flaky pastry) but the rest of the sensible colleagues that he was shopping for all wanted a beef and stilton pie.But to say more as I would be digressing from my intended post.....

Anyhow ( getting back to the point) I mentioned that by the time he got back to his base camp his pie would probably be stone bloody cold. “Just watch me” he said.

Anyhow, I got back to my car armed with my beef and stilton pie only to find that his emergency vehicle was double parked alongside mine so I had no alternative but to sit and impatiently wait until he got served and returned to his ambulance to drive off.

He returned to his emergency vehicle within a minute or so and he waved to me somewhat apologetically for causing me to wait for him to move his ambulance to enable me to move my car together with a "watch this space" type of grin, and he drove off without any warning whilst accelerating his ambulance up a 70% slope to warp factor nine within two seconds flat! Immediately his flashing lights went on – and so did his siren and he probably totally cleared the whole bally road on his epic two mile journey back from the local pie shop to his base camp, so yes - he probably DID keep all his pies hot!

Scientists at the Royal Society of Chemistry ….

.......Deserve to be shot!

I don’t know how many time wasting hours and how much of the taxpayers money they took to finally come up with the idea that beef juice and cabbage water make perfect gravy!

What makes their findings a whole lot worse is the fact that in all seriousness they tell you to plonk your meat on top of vegetables, cook the lot, remove the lot (leaving the meaty juicy remains in the bottom of the dish)….then add flour and cabbage water to the remains and – wait for it – a dollop of soy sauce.

Oh, such joy! Such rapture! Mrs. Beeton will be turning cartwheels in her grave as anybody who can cook knows darn well that they cook meat on top of vegetables and then add cabbage water and flour and 'something' - or as my Mother did, a little Marmite or Bovril or Bisto or a tablespoon of red wine or sherry - as did my Grandmother, her Mother and her Mother and so on way back to time immemorial.

Soy sauce was not available to be purchased all that easily before the 80’s so gravy was made to total perfection using alternatives. Always, but always, the fluid added was cabbage water and here we are almost at the end of 2009 now reading how scientists have finally found out how to make “perfect gravy” and are so thrilled with their findings that they are sharing it with us.

For free entertainment please do read the very serious Express report about it.

Laptop/Netbook cooling pad

I bought one of these little babies for £2.94 from Cloud Computing which is a Company based in China.

It’s a beautiful little thing. The fans are quiet and it’s in use with my netbook. It took just a week to arrive, was beautifully packaged and came with a very nice “thank you for your order” little message on a compliments slip. The Chinese do have such nice manners and how on earth they can make such a clever bit of sturdy kit so cheaply I have no idea.

It fits my netbook perfectly and at a push I can certainly balance my laptop on it without so much as a wobble, and this double cooling fan is an item that cannot be purchased anywhere in the UK without exorbitant cost.

If you are looking for a silent cooling fan that is reliable and actually achieves what it is supposed to do, then this is the business to purchase one from. Your email address remains safe and you won’t get spammed to death by them either. They do have a few other bits for the more technical minded and the link to them is HERE.

An hours lie in on Sunday morning

Remember, the clocks go back by one hour at 1am on Sunday 25th October 2009 in the UK so we all need to play silly sods changing our clocks tonight or Sunday morning.

Angus can be so bloody minded at times

He wrote yesterday on his blog that he felt that he had caught his insomnia from me!

I was NOT guilty because I like to keep my insomnia all to myself. If I didn’t then what would I have to moan about on my blog – eh? eh?

However, he caught my insomnia bug last night because he moaned about it while I slept like a log and he was still awake before sunrise (excuse my unsympathetic chortles of mirth at his expense) but the bugger has passed it straight back to me without any warning at all because here I am still wide awake and ready to party.

It’s not very funny, Angus. Not funny at all. I’m not at all impressed with you right now. Could you not have kept it all to yourself for a few days at least?

An update on an earlier post - Ironside, you were right!

I recently wrote a post "when human rights go badly wrong" (link here) and I critisised the fact that the cretins face was blanked out.

Ironside commented that her face would probably be all over the internet. Not far wrong as her face is all over the tabloids today together with the whole sordid truth of what she subjected her son to needlessly suffer has also come to light. A truly terrible story and a total cretin of a mother. The link is the Mail's report is here.

Slap Nick Griffin !

There's a Slap Nick Griffin link that's surfaced today on the internet whereby you can use a hand to slap his face.

Its naughty but nice and it did not take someone long to come up with a topical joke that really beats hurling a shoe at ex president Bush. This is much more fun to play (it also reminds me that I really should get a life)

The problem is that you can slap his face as many times as you feel the need to do so but he still talks on and on and on.

But if you want to find an outlet to your angst and frustrations with life in general then slap Nick's face and possibly you'll feel better- the link is here. He's received over a million slaps in under 24 hours - I bet his face is a bit pink.

I nearly started a trend

I went down to my local Chinese takeaway this evening to get a special chow mein as its easy to chuck down my throat and requires no chewing (mindful of my broken tooth) and greeted the chinaman who was behind the counter in Chinese. I like to go into my Dumplings extra creepy 'creeping mode' at takeaway places because I get remembered, get served first and get extra tasty bits in my meals.

Creeping mode means greeting someone in either Cantonese or Punjabi (or Swahili or even Greek if I intend confusing the hell out of the Chinese or Indian restaurants when my evil sick sense of humour takes over)

This time I asked the guy who took my order to compliment the chef on his wonderful curry that I ate last week because it really was a huge gorgeous curry and the chef really did deserve praise. He beamed and went into the kitchen and much to my surprise he returned with the chef!

The chef was a young Chinese who was well over six feet tall which is an exceptional height for an oriental. My message of compliments was relayed to him in Cantonese and the chef beamed at me and bowed. So I bowed back. So he bowed back. So I ......

.......thought “no dumpling, let’s stop this bowing lark right now” as I could forsee that we’d both end up spending the evening bowing to each other, no cooking would get done, and I’d still be raging bloody hungry come the morning.

He was probably having a laugh at my expense but I could write a comedy act about it, I really could. All I would need added would be the canned laughter. But the moral is – greet a Chinese waiter in Chinese because you'll score points, but only ever bow just once to their chef.

Bugga

I busted a tooth an hour ago (and it’s inconveniently on my preferred chewing side) so I have made an appointment with a local dentist and see him on Monday.

Not so long to wait but it means a weekend on soup or slops and I have lots of delicious ‘needs to be chewed food’ all ready defrosted to cook and pig out on. I'm not a happy bunny having to postpone eating it all, but at least I don't have raging toothache..... Yet.

The problem with a local private practise is that it’s going to cost me a small bloody fortune, but it’s still cheaper than spending a day travelling to see one of my best friends at her own dental surgery, especially with the cost of petrol to consider these days.

I’ll moan about the cost of my measly filling sometime during Monday afternoon.

Halloween is coming *groan*

Last year I donned a mask at Halloween to scare the nasty little brats the dear little darlings the very nice kiddywinkies who had the audacity to knock my front door offering me a trick or treat. The treat was a half chewed sweet and the trick was half a dozen eggs lobbed at your windows or front door and a year on their blacklist subjected to footballs/ tennis balls/ stones hitting my downstairs windows - how hysterically funny!

I was happy to brag report that I scared the living daylights out of them in 2008. Only a few brave baskets dared make my life hell for months afterwards because I had not given in to their financial demands or needed to pay them weekly money for them to protect me from rival gangs of charming endearing children.

I can't be a witch two years running 'cause the ultimate scare factor would be lost and I won't be able to know that they all had nightmares every night for seven days but considering that the street lights are now turned off early and the road is semi lit by just the occupants house lights, I thought I could do a neat little number in answering the door wearing a new mask (pictured right)

On hindsight I probably could have saved myself a lot of money. If I had decided to answer the door in my "au naturelle" face I probably would frighten them far more.

I'm being spammed to death

Gosh, it makes a change from receiving the daily influx consisting of spam concerning viagra, cheap meds or college degrees because for the last few days I have received tons of emails from Companies I probably have ordered goods from only once advising me that they are opting to alternative delivery services, rather than the Royal Mail.

Some even offer me a 15% discount if I would like to order goods within the 24 hours or at a push within the next seven days but all seem to be taking advantage of the current Royal mail strike which is going to drag on at this rate until early in the New Year.

I have a feeling that these businesses will profit to their and their customers advantage. However, I don’t need to be spammed to death from Companies that I made a distance purchase from a few years ago who now remember me and have obviously sold my details to other Companies who now all decide to contact me with their strange websites which I can click on to remove my email address……heh, I am NOT that daft as to confirm my email address with strange twats who I have never used.

I would prefer being spammed to death with viagra, cheap meds or college degrees as that spam is less than the last few days’ unknown businesses that all suddenly are flooding my inbox with their crap. Even the Nigerian widow who emails me and wants to give me a few million dollars would be more entertaining to receive right now. Nevertheless, I have admire their business acumen in taking full advantage of the current strike and I bless gmail with its bloody good spam filtering system.

I'm such a slut!

I'm not dressed yet! For the first time in a year I am still in my nightclothes.




In my minds eye I look like this----------------------->















But in truth , I probably look far more like this----------------->





The 23rd Of October is my annual slut day. A day where I know no friends will visit and thanks to the latest post strike I won't have to answer the door to a soul. Besides, I am already ready for bed at least 14 hours early.

But very unfortunately Raki is pacing up and down wanting her walk and I tend to think that if I went out wearing only the bottom part of my Chinese silk PJ's I might get arrested en route, so I guess that just before noon I had better get my carcass into a shower and get myself washed and dressed.

But it honestly has been so nice to be a slut for an additional seven hours as to my normal get up shower and get dressed daily routine.

I blame all my favourite bloggers whose blogs have kept me well and truly entertained since 8am that has caused the reason for the Dumpling's sluttish behavior.

the BNP on Question Time

Tom Paine, the author of The last Ditch, is one of the many bloggers who posted about last nights debacle regarding Question Time’s attendance of Nick Griffin hosted by a biased Dimbleby and consisting of biased colleagues who made no contempt of their disgust towards Griffin together with a carefully hand picked biased audience consisting of individuals with the same feelings of disgust and biasedness.

Tom made a very interesting point: - The mainstream parties are to blame for the rise of the BNP. They know how many voters feel about current levels of immigration, but they ignore it. They have created a political climate in which merely to seek to discuss it is to be denounced as "racist" and ostracized.

I have no time for the BNP excepting their desire to curb immigration or certainly to boot out from this Country those immigrants who come here and demand/expect to be clothed, housed, fed and watered who can burn our flag, demand a change in our laws (to the likes of a sharia one) riot or bomb and demand that their families – no matter how vast or distant relationship – also have the automatic right that they can live here too, simply because one of their family already does and one have employment to come here to do or ever have desire to get any employment.

The UKIP tries to achieve the same curb in immigration as the English inhabitants beg for together with the aim to give the people here a chance to vote whether or not to remain in the EU (our membership endorsed by the labour, Tories and Lib Dems) but the UKIP go about their business quietly and with none of the racial hatred or extremism that the BNP stands for.

I see the media this morning have all joined in en bloc to damn Griffin’s attendance. But at the end of the day will this man’s party get more votes? He well might because he conducted himself far better in an uncomfortable out of his depth cringing to watch way than the audience or his fellow panel members did - who all made no secret of their contempt – and the English do love an underdog, don’t they? The may well choose to overlook some of Griffin’s views and go for the few that concerns them the most – immigration and membership of the EU.

No, I don’t like or do I agree with most/nearly all of his views. No, I would not vote for him or his party – but it was interesting to see a televised debate where a person was judged guilty before they opened their mouth and the media had already printed the guilty verdict in their early morning editions coming off print before or during the time that the actual TV program was being aired!

Surprisingly, on line polls asking whether last nights debacle was a victory or disaster for the BNP are showing a higher percentage as a Victory. Seemingly he achieved what he set out to do courtesy of the Beeb and the media coverage.

There’s only one aspect that I admire about this repugnant horrible little man. He did at least have the balls to appear on a live debate whereas our esteemed unelected PM Comrade Brown refuses to ever answer any direct questions and is still reluctant to appear on live TV together with his Tory and Lib counterparts with/without a carefully selected audience. As to Auntie Beeb – the most biased television company on this planet which boasts “fairness and unbiasdness” they carefully picked their audience as to their extreme views and I dare say will shortly boast how it achieved more viewers this month than its opponents. They did Griffin a favour according to the polls today.

As Tom rightly pointed out, the mainstream parties are to blame for the rise of the BNP. The three main parties really should heed caution and hear alarm bells ringing right now and actually listen to the concerns of their voters just for once who we did elect to represent us and our concerns, because if they don’t begin to listen or represent their electorate then a party like the BNP or the UKIP will have a majority of seats in the House of Commons after the next election....And that is a very very frightening thought.

Use less – pay more

I received the dreaded electricity bill yesterday and can see how my cost cutting measures are working-

This quarter last year was 5.75; last quarter was 5.86 and this latest quarter was 5.36 ....My irritation is that despite using less juice my electricity bill that I owe for this quarter is actually costing me more.

Its probably all down to the fact that I sit in the dark and utilise the street lights (excepting they are now all inconsiderately being turned off at midnight) and I grew up learning to switch one light off as I put another one on, which plunges my rare visitors into darkness when I leave the lounge to go to the kitchen or bathroom!

Its no good, I’ll simply have to get a man.

They do have their uses – like spider catching, washing up, making gallons of tea and more importantly being something that I can warm my cold feet on in bed. I can economise even further by not using the electric blanket. I can be “entertained” in bed which saves watching the bedroom TV and I can even unplug my teasmade.

So if all the eligible men would please queue to the left of my mud hut as I’ll be conducting interviews this weekend.

Small world

I have a blogger who visits my blog from time to time who has an address of Gosport.

Hello Gosport! I lived there for 24 years and the last time I visited the place I found it consisted of new bloody roundabouts so I felt like a stranger in a town where I still knew all the back doubles to drive up. Very disconcerting.

Walpole park makes way for a huge supermarket. The Tregantle isn't (I lived in Gordon Road) Joe & Lin's "Tasty House" is shut. Stoke Road is a ghost road. The White hart pub needs a revamp. Military Road is devoid of its navy establishments......yet I still can drive via back doubles. Nice to smell seaweed which I miss so much but grateful I'm not on the Gosport ferry these days.

Still read the Journal (I used to work for them) so next time you visit my blog please stop to say hello.

My inbox is bloody busy today

It's busy receiving emails from previous businesses that I have purchased from suddenly all ending me emails advising me:-

In advance of the Royal Mail industrial action that is due to commence on 22 October 2009, I want to inform you that we are now using courier services to deliver all eSpares orders. This will continue whilst industrial action takes place.

Items are now being sent by DHL or Interlink but we may use other courier companies to make sure you get the parts you need without delay.

Another business who doesn’t wax quite so lyrical advises me:-

We're very sorry but due to the Royal Mail Postal strike

our deliveries maybe slightly delayed!

But not to worry.....

We are offering all our customers 15% OFF everything to compensate!

These businesses are not touting for trade by taking the opportunity to point my nose to their special offers. They are simply telling me in advance that they have already arranged for alternative methods of delivery should I decide to purchase anything from them in the next few weeks.

I think the Royal Mail have shot themselves in the foot as it seems that so many businesses can get past the strike with little or no effect to their customers and may well opt to use their alternative delivery method in future for dispatching their orders.

Why can't more people be like "X"??

I had to go to the job centre this morning to sign for my fortnightly pittance and was delighted to find that my favorite employee there had opted to give me his sole undivided attention. Choosing to see me must mean he had a death wish today or needed some form of cheap entertainment.

The only problem with X is the fact that he has a huge selection of really really nice biros - none of which I can steal to add to my collection of stolen ones. He's actually very anal retentive with his biros because he always wants them back. I think he takes them to bed with him every night but try as I might I can't steal one of them. Worrying about my thwarted attempts to steal a measly one is probably the cause of my insomnia. I think he has me privately tabbed as a biro thief.

I'll call him X but I do like to see him out of choice simply because he has a wonderful sense of humour as well as being helpful more than his job requirements probably demand of him and tends to write little notes for me to read as he knows I don't hear spoken words well.

Besides all that, he wears colourful jumpers that match the whites of his eyes and no... he is not gay…..just colourful!

I don't get little asides from him like I do from some of the staff who advise me that my ‘benefits are shortly to cease’ and I don't sit opposite a job centre employee who opens and shuts their mouth leaving me wondering what on earth they are yakking on about. Anyhow, he really does try to find me links to available jobs that I can pursue. I like him as a person and importantly if anyone can find me a job then X will. He appreciates my disability and does not demand I apply for jobs that we both know that I can no longer do.

If only the entire Job centre workforce had the same helpful attitude as he shows then it would not be half as hard for the likes of us disabled dole scroungers to try and get back into work. I just wish that I could steal some of his very nice biros!

Pssst, God? I didn’t clean my windows today - honest

I took Raki for a walk this afternoon in the warm sunshine. We had just got to the most open part of the playing fields when a dark cloud shot overhead and the rain bucketed down.

Raki was not happy as the rain obviously was smearing her mascara and I sheltered under a tree (seeing I could not hear or see impending lightening) and after five minutes we came back home both thoroughly soaked, cold, wet and miserable.

I dried Raki off and then gave myself a shake to dry off and made myself a drink. It always rains without warning when I have cleaned my windows but this time I was not guilty.

Armed with a mug of coffee I looked outside and guess what? No rain. No clouds. Bright warm sunshine and a blue sky once more.

Go figure.

The Ministry of silly walks

I’ve purchased a tens machine to try and help my back pain but it’s not something to go out wearing when you walk the dog.

The reason is its tapping and kneading which is ok but when it starts its maniac buzzing I am finding that my legs suddenly shoot way ahead of my torso as if a sneaky flea has bitten my bum.

It’s not a pretty sight I can tell you.

But as to the actual piece of kit – it’s much less painful than acupuncture and it certainly does bring relief and alleviates pain, even if you look like – and feel like – a total prat mincing about while wearing it.

Road improvements …..hahahaha!

I live near one of the main roads in and out of my little hamlet. One mile away from my home is the local Asda. Unfortunately, roadworks are currently being undertaken which means that driving up the main road a motorist is faced with a huge wire netting fence and signs saying “detour” and this means that to drive one mile I am currently faced with an ambling detour of 3 miles.

The new ulterior route consists of roads that have parked cars on one side and umpteen bends whereby vehicles meet others coming in the opposite direction head on and neither will give way to the other. That’s before the busses or ambulances decide to meet you in a part of the road where you have the right of way but can’t give way, go forward or reverse.

The road repair is to replace a small length of sewer pipe. The actual distance involved is one tenth of a mile. Half a mile has been blocked off. The warning sign of the road closure advises that the road is going to be closed to all traffic for a period of four weeks.

Four weeks for one pissy tenth of a mile?

I am actually wondering just how much of their daily repair time consists solely for tea breaks and how many workman are involved in this “colossal” repair work and what their daily working hours actually are.

New blogger template?

Oh I’m so sorry but I hate the new template that some bloggers have opted to use.

I hate it because I can’t read the full article without the need to click on “more” and then when I want to read other articles am faced with having to click on refresh or the go back arrow. If I wanted to read a précis I would do so but why some bloggers have opted for a three column display of simply snippets which you have to click “more” to read their whole post leaves me impatient and can’t be bothered to even bother.

There is something wholesome and totally satisfying about clicking on a headline and reading a complete post. There is nothing satisfying about seeing a tabloid that simply shows a few sentences which I have to click on “more” to read the whole bally lot.

If bloggers are going to choose this new format then – sorry – I won’t be reading their blogs in future. It seems that my friends all feel the same too so I know it's not just me who finds this new format totally frustrating.

James? Joanna? Are you noting my comments?

Mothballs have now been removed from my waxed jacket

I’ve got the snorkel out for my cars exhaust and I've bought a new pair of flippers (size 4) but currently debating (after days of monsoon type rain with a lot more forecast ) that I should really spend a bit of free time doing a wattle and daub repair job of my mud hut before winter really sets in.

My waxed jacket has been rewaxed and is ready for use and Raki simply can’t wait to go out in her matching one because it will compliment her human pet’s jacket and she knows she’ll stay dry on her foraging in open fields/disused cemeteries or running the full long length of Instow beach.

She now has a Timberwolf extreme waxed jacket that was purchased from Muddy Paws. It fits her beautifully and she likes to model it at every opportunity together with an accessory of her cut down college scarf and she undoubtably thinks that she’ll be the talk of my Devonshire hamlet and a magnet for all the male dogs within a 5 mile radius.

The company is a pleasure to deal with and as far as their jackets go the prices are very good. Raki was so impressed that she even spent her bone money in purchasing jackets for her human Aunties dogs as Christmas presents.

Next time she wears it I’ll take a photo of her. It won’t beat Simi (Welshcakes dog) or Simi’s choice of wardrobe. But least I’ll have less wet towels and muddy splodges on the walls to clean up and Raki will stay dry and I won't get that horrible wet dog smell or find that she has dried herself off on my duvet.

.

Royal Mail's strike breakers hired

(Reports the Mail today)

The photo is not one of immigrants waiting at Calais to come to the UK, it’s a line of temporary workers hired to sort/deliver the post while the posties are goofing off on strike. Earlier media reports showed some of the faces close up and, believe me, I would not like to see some of them wandering up my garden path for any reason, let alone to deliver my mail.

Unfortunately, half of them are probably illegal immigrants and there is growing concern in the newspapers reader’s comments regarding actually receiving their mail or whether they will be pilfered or magically lost en route to their destination.

It is a sad sign of the times that over 85,000 people have applied for these temporary jobs which will earn them just the basic minimum wage.trust me, nobody can live on a basic minimum wage but that is the sign of total desperation that unemployed people now opt for. It seems that the Royal Mail is hiring thousands of 'strike-breakers' who have not had their references checked or been vetted for criminal records!

Meddlesome Mandy is interfering as usual and making the situation worse as he is apt to do with any situation. Perhaps the only interference that would do any good would be to clip the wings of the grossly overpaid Union bosses?

I saw my normal postman yesterday. He is dreading strike action as he cannot afford to have compulsory unpaid leave. I’m unemployed with very little cash to spare but I did give him a miniature bottle of whisky because I appreciate him and the job that he does but I do not back strike action.

I can live without mail but I am concerned with items currently coming from overseas that are valuable and as to whether or not I’ll ever receive them seeing my mail is soon to be entrusted to untrained unchecked temporary staff who have not had their references checked or been vetted for criminal records. I'm wondering just how many application forms for jobs that I have requested I'll ever receive, or whether my neighbour will end up with my Bank Statements (which I guarantee will never be hand delivered to me) and whether awaited goods in padded envelopes will ever turn up.

Its insomnia time of the year again

I would love to sleep for 8 hours but if I’m lucky I sleep for just 4 and surprisingly nothing is happening in my sleepy hamlet at 3-4am apart from darkness and barely visible local rooftops which all emit multicoloured zzzz’s.

I’ve been online and read the papers long before Angus stirs with his daily news bulletin or other bloggers discuss the day’s events. All bloggers/human beings are all very sensibly still asleep and I already have read their posts of the previous day..... at least twice.

It’s dark at 4am and today is windy and wet and very cold. What is a blogger to do at 4am apart from cooking a fried breakfast and watching crap repeats on a few TV channels? I’ve found that phoning friends just to give them a “friendly early morning phone call” does not cement long lasting friendships (but at least I learnt some new very rude words) I’ve found that taking Raki to the beach in her “rakmobile” means making new friends with the local constabulary – who I never ever see in the hours of daylight - but who all decide to stop my car and want to breathalyse me before dawn.

I’ve learned to never have a hairdressers appointment first thing when you sit and wait for her to finally arrive all yawning and bleary eyed who will give you a lop sided haircut done with pinking shears and charge you a small fortune for it..

I’ve learned not to look at web cams unless I really want an eyeball view a web cam of a web cams eyeball.

What does an insomniac blogger do with themselves? - apart from laying in bed worrying all night about their insomnia until it 'finally dawns' on them?

The Pastoral Symphony

The other morning I nipped in to visit my local undertakers (whom I all know well) with some jam donuts for their tea break.

While sitting on the sofa and drinking a mug of coffee one of the local clergy called in for his tea break so it ended up as four of us drinking coffee and eating jam donuts (plenty of sugar and jam around our mouths) and swapping some very risqué jokes.

Then a member of the public entered who had obviously come to arrange a funeral and you have no idea how quickly our composure changed to solemn and how swiftly the “evidence” was hidden from sight.

Seeing I had cadged a mug of coffee I stood up and said solemnly “thank you for your kindness” and the clergyman said “ thank YOU my child” and one of the undertakers said, " It was pleasure to have seen you this morning ” - meanwhile their new prospective customer stood politely waiting for me to leave had no clue that the dumpling, who they probably had assumed had just arranged a funeral, was actually being thanked for donuts and a ton of new jokes to swap with their colleagues and I was thanking them for coffee.

I just hope that they remembered to wipe the sugar and jam from around their mouths.

Royal mail modernisation improvements !

Millions of households will not get their post delivered until 4pm from the new year under Royal Mail's cost-cutting plans, according to the Communication Workers Union.

Currently most people get their single daily delivery between about 10am and lunchtime, but Royal Mail is understood to be planning to delay deliveries by hours.

Under the plans people living in urban areas would get their post as late as 3pm from January, while those in rural areas would get it at 4pm. It follows the scrapping of the second delivery two years ago and the end to Sunday collections.

The changes would coincide with the installation of hundreds of automatic mail sorting machines at local depots from next year. Royal Mail declined to comment on the specifics of its modernisation programme.

The CWU said the changes would make the service to customers worse. "Modernisation sounds like it's something that should improve the industry," it said. "None of this sounds like improvements to the service."

(Guardian)

Webcam view

Makes a change from panoramic views of wonderful scenery and beaches I suppose!

Royal Mail strike – I’ve lost sympathy

Royal Mail is heading for a bitter confrontation with postal workers after announcing plans to recruit an army of 30,000 temporary staff in an attempt to crush the national strike that starts this week. On Thursday CWU workers at mail distribution centres across the country will come out on strike.

Royal Mail insists there will still be collections and deliveries. On Friday, however, those who actually collect letters and parcels from postboxes and deliver them will strike, meaning there were will be no service to households and businesses across much of the country. Royal Mail is also suspending its "next-day delivery" guarantee, under which customers pay extra to ensure letters and parcels arrive before 1pm on the next working day. Reports the Guardian.

Royal Mail’s union and their frequent strike action will result in their downfall and the fault lies solely with the union bosses and the union members themselves. Billy Hayes, head of the Communication Workers' Union (CWU) claims he is “bigger than scargill” – a Liverpudlian born in 1953 who became a postman in 1974 and who now earns a reported annual salary in 2009 of £97,647 deserves to be shot at dawn. So easy for a greedy overpaid fat cat to make impossible demands and his demands will be the death sentence of the Royal mail.

Will the public notice any difference in their daily deliveries? I doubt it very much. A first class letter that should arrive the following day can take up to a week to arrive; second class can take any old time to appear on your doormat. Postal rates increase and the service continues to get worse and so people opt for alternative delivery services that are run by private firms. People have also opted to the internet to send mail or do online banking and larger businesses such as EBay and Amazon send orders via any business other than the GPO.

In the town where I live I know my local postmen and I have taken time to understand their problems. It seems that redundancies have caused the existing workforce to effectively do two peoples jobs for a single salary. Not only do they deliver post but they first sort it into their area, deliver it, return to the sorting office to sort more post. They are not all members of a union but have no choice but to strike because if they don’t they are blacked for life by their union colleagues. Strike action means unpaid days and they cannot afford unpaid holidays. I sympathize BUT it has got to the stage that where the fat cat over paid union bosses call strikes and still receive a wage where their members do not that the public are sick and bloody tired of these frequent strike actions. Especially when the nation has nearly 3 million unemployed who would happily do a postman’s job for a minimum wage if given the opportunity.

Thank heavens for the internet where my friends and I can all email each other or send a letter via word doc for the recipient to print and read. The ability of online internet banking and the printing of statements and the alternative Companies who deliver mail. Besides, I can live without the junk mail that is delivered as easily as I can conduct all my business courtesy of the internet and packages/parcels arrive via an alternative carrier.

When human rights go badly wrong

There is a report in the Daily Mail today under the headline "Evil mother made infant son have needless surgery to claim £130,000 in benefits" which pictures the evil mother with her face blanked out!

The article continues :- An 'evil and cruel' mother caused her young son to undergo needless surgery and treatment at three hospitals during a six-year charade that he was seriously ill. The woman conned the Royal Family and celebrities as she claimed £130,000 in benefits to spend on holidays and home improvements, a court heard.

Her son, who is now eight, was confined to a wheelchair in public and eventually hooked up to a drip. The mother, who posed as a qualified nurse, arranged for her son to meet Camilla Parker Bowles because of his 'illness', while Simon Cowell was so moved by a letter outlining his plight he sent them tickets to the X Factor.

The mother claimed the boy had cerebral palsy, cystic fibrosis, the throat disorder dysphagia, was allergic to wheat and gluten-based foods and even faked blood samples to convince medics her son was diabetic. He appeared on national television and in magazines, while his school spent thousands of pounds adapting the building for his wheelchair.

Police said his bedroom was like 'a scene out of the TV show Casualty' with a specialist bed, medical equipment and boxes of liquid food. But out of the public gaze, the boy, who is now being cared for, was allowed to run free and eat hamburgers, chips, Yorkshire puddings and other foods he was 'allergic' to. Officers said when the family's home in Devon was searched, they found a video of him running on a beach ' without a tube in sight'.

I guess she is using her prerogative under the human rights act to ensure that her face is not clearly shown. This is so wrong! So very bloody totally completely wrong!

What about the pain of needless surgery that she put her son through to claim so much financial benefit for herself? She clearly has Munchhausens syndrome BUT in an occupation as a nurse who also would have cared for the sick and dying her face SHOULD be shown.

And as to her son who was rescued from further surgery at this very late stage I wonder whether he's been physically and mentally damaged for the rest of his life, and whether - when he's older - if he'll still find any love in his heart for his Mother?

Do make up your mind, David

“Today, I will give this cast-iron guarantee: If I become PM, a Conservative government will hold a referendum on any EU treaty that emerges from these negotiations.”

David Cameron 26 September 2007
The Sun



"I have said repeatedly that I want us to have a referendum. If the Treaty is not ratified in all Member States and not in force when the election is held, and if we are elected, then we will hold a referendum on it, we will name the date of the referendum in the election campaign, we will lead the campaign for a 'No' vote. If the Treaty is ratified and in force in all Member States, we have repeatedly said we would not let matters rest there. But we have one policy at a time, and we will set out how we would proceed in those circumstances if, and only if, they happen."

David Cameron 9 September 2009
Open Europe

Posh Totty and Bob the Builder

Posh Totty wrote on her blog:-

"Bob the builder and his dippy looking mate have arrived to start the much needed repairs on our home. Unfortunately our broadband and landline phones are plumbed in right where they are going to be working, so we are have to be disconnect from the world.
On a good note, the next time I blog it will be to show off my spangly new ceilings and probably to moan about the huge great mess they have left behind for me to clean up.
Anyway, until that day arrives ... I bid you farewell."


Ha!Lets all run amok on her blog while she is offline. I fact I'll invite you all to MY party at Posh's house tonight......tell all your facebook friends!...bring food, booze, paint and cleaning materials.

Lets all do a Sistine Chapel Mark Two of her new ceilings in garish colours! Posh does have a wonderful sense of humour so she'll more than appreciate the surprise 60 minute makeover that we can do for her brand new ceilings as well as my surprise party that I'm having at her home.

(when she's back online and reads this I am dead - so dead - I can tell you)

Return of the blackout

Its been reported recently that thousands of street lights are being switched off at midnight which is being imposed by councils to cut energy bills and meet climate change targets.

They've sneakily started on my road it seems. This morning I was up bright and breezy before dawn and normally can go to the bathroom and come downstairs and into the kitchen using only the street lights as dim illumination. At 4am this morning this was my street view.


It means I've got to switch my bloody lights on now - how totally thoughtless of the Council!

A grandmother who snores at 111 decibels

Grandmother-of-four Jenny Chapman has been diagnosed with one of Britain's loudest snores and is noisier than a jet plane.

Mrs Chapman, 60, snores every night at a window-rattling 111.6 decibels - eight decibels louder than the roar of a low-flying jet - much to the dismay of her long-suffering husband Colin, 62.

At 111.6 decibels Mrs Chapman is:

61dB louder than an average snorer (50dB)
33dB louder than a washing machine (78dB)
27dB louder than a diesel truck (84dB)
13dB louder than a tractor (98dB)
11dB louder than train (100dB)
8dB louder than a low-flying jet (103dB)

(Daily Mail)



I think Raki has set herself up in competition

Suppressed, gagged and silenced

There is a lot to be said for freedom of speech and also freedom of the press whereby an individual has the right to their own opinions, provided it is not done in such a way as to deliberately cause libel or to wantonly damage another person through sheer vindictiveness.

However, I am becoming more and more of the opinion that those individuals or Companies who seek injunctions and banning and effectively gagging discussions, websites, books and the media may have something to hide that they prefer to keep well hidden and away from public scrutiny?

It is every individual’s right to have all information available whereby they can read and form their own opinions. It is an entirely different matter when only “one side” is allowed to be published and the other side gagged. Thus the people are not allowed to read anything other than biased one sided media coverage of very important events and those people who attempt to publish facts if they are considered adverse (although in the public interest) they are gagged, sued, faced with injunctions and discredited.

I could give an example of two Doctors, a police inspector and a UK lawyer and one sided journalism, banned books, banned leaflets as well as websites being forced to close.

But I am particularly interested in the Government asking pertinent questions concerning the “illness” of many inhabitants of the Ivory Coast that has arisen following the leak of a confidential report concerning toxic dumping and the swift moves of a firm of UK lawyers to suppress the questions being asked and the fact that the lawyers are still fighting to stop the questions being asked or reported about. If successful it will overturn privileges guaranteeing free speech first established under the 1688 Bill of Rights.

Why gag investigative journalism or the public or Government questions when obviously the 'innocent' people or Companies concerned who bring these costly legal actions are all totally blameless, have absolutely nothing to hide and therefore have no reason whatsoever to suppress reporting ?

A warning

Those idiots who decide to eat welsh rarebit drizzled in Lea & Perrins at 11pm deserve to still be awake at 4am.

I have no sympathy with myself at all right now.

I should have had a party tonight

Tonight is hours and hours of idiot box viewing comprising of grown men kicking a ball on a field and the prospects of them being labelled "heroes" in tomorrows papers.

Why do decent TV programs grind to the halt for the sake of flipping football? Mind you, if it was rugby that would be an entirely different matter.

Just remembered

It's my 32nd wedding anniversary today!

I much prefer remembering my Divorce anniversary every 18th May which I always faithfully celebrate with much gusto.

Who says romance is dead, eh?

It's probably Bubonic plague

Last week I went down with a heavy head cold. It then migrated to my chest and I had a few days of feeling pretty foul. Then it vanished a bit too quickly which means catarrh BUT this is a new horrid germ doing the rounds that causes sudden violent coughing spasms.

Suddenly your throat goes as dry as a bone and the coughing starts. Violent, nasty, and makes you heave with the uncontrollable coughing spasms, together with excess saliva and a runny nose that lasts a few minutes and leaves you exhausted and breathless. It’s worse at night and it’s more than embarrassing when it happens in the middle of a shop.

Come the weekend I gave up and really have not done much (reason for fewer posts) because apart from the headache these coughing fits give I am in no mood to do much at all. Apart from catching up on my sleep.

You can’t sip water to stop the coughing unless you want to drown. You can do nothing apart from cough and cough and gag and cough and it’s little comfort to me to know that whatever this bug is that is “doing the rounds” other people have got it and suffering too. I'm left with the cough and my sinus' completely blocked and have no sense of smell or taste. Meals are pleasurable if you like to savour cardboard but at least I can fart something other than "devonshire violets" and not have to leave the room and blame the dog.

It’s working its way out my system as the coughing bouts are less but I’m probably still waking up my neighbour through the night. I hope none of you bloggers catch this because it’s a really nasty piece of work.

Let there soon be….unblurred vision

I’ve recently noticed that I see better to read or to use the computer without wearing my reading glasses. In fact, I am apt to plonk them on top of my head when doing close work and forget where they are only to then spend hours looking for them when I need them to watch TV.

The trouble is that I am now squinting through them to watch TV so I thought I had better have my eyesight checked (seeing my glasses are 15 years old and scratched to buggery) so last week I had an eye test.

It seems that I need 2.3 glasses! Now, just how crazy is that? What is a third of a pair of glasses – and I am not thinking about alcohol in small measures either.

I don’t fancy carting round two pairs of glasses and constantly changing from one to the other, and I don’t fancy “foe-bicles” so I’ve opted for varifocal which I pick up next Monday. I think that they are going to take some getting used to as the instructions advise:-

“If you look out the corner of your eyes you may notice some distorted vision. Look straight ahead. Your vision should be clear. To focus on an object close to you, point your nose where you want to look and raise or lower your head slightly until it is in sharp focus. Use the point with your nose technique to look around or up and down”

Pinocchio would have had a hell of a problem wearing them wouldn’t he?

Nice packaging idea

New shopping bags from Greenpeace. Good gimmick- provided that you are not a bloke with very hairy arms.

Power Bills set to soar to £2000 a year

The UK faces a nightmare scenario of power blackouts and household energy bills rocketing to £2,000 a year due to a crisis over supplies.

The bleakest forecast from energy regulator Ofgem, predicts a crippling 60 per cent leap in fuel bills by 2016 because of global energy shortages and soaring prices.

That would see the average home’s annual fuel bill leap by £760 from the current £1,239.

Ofgem confirmed yesterday there is no chance of bills falling despite price cuts in the wholesale energy market.

Even Ofgem’s most optimistic scenario still sees household bills surging 14 per cent by 2020, equal to an extra £173 a year for every home. Customers are already paying 36 per cent more for household gas and electricity than at the start of 2008.

(reported in all the national papers today. The above article is from the Express)

....and to rub our noses well and truly in it, we'll read printed reports from the energy companies showing how they and their shareholders have enjoyed a HUGE profit for the previous quarter!

This begs the question - coal fires and oil lamps and candles, anyone?

Which causes me arrive at the conclusion that coal or chopped wood, lamp oil or candles are suddenly all going to magically cost a great deal more, together with an additional "special" VAT surcharge of 25% per purchase (any purchase can only be made using a "special" I.D card which costs a mere £500 which is renewable annually) and there will be No discount for anyone, irrespective of their age or circumstances....

Come to think about it, what the hell are all these wind farms for? They scar the landscape but they are there to reduce our bills. Nobody is yet to state that "Power Bills would soar to £5000 a year but because of windfarms it's going to be £3000 cheaper" have they?

Obama is awarded the Nobel Peace Prize!

Barack Obama (of the big ego) has been awarded the Nobel Peace Prize as reports the Daily Fail!

He became U.S. president less than two weeks before the February 1st nomination deadline and he is stated as "feeling very humble" in accepting his peace prize award.

He could of course had been feeling a bloody LOT more humble and refused it stating "there are other people far more deserving than I seeing I had not been in office 14 days before I was nominated and therefore had, at that time achieved nothing"....but he prefers to feel very humble in accepting the Nobel peace prize which he earned for himself in a record period of time and with nothing to show for his achievements.

But rather than actually be humble and modest and honest by turning the award down and suggesting that it was awarded to someone who has devoted their whole life to a worthwhile cause which the whole world has recognised for many years and were by far the more worthy recipient, he accepts it!

An ego thing coupled with a great degree of dishonesty perhaps because he knows full well that he did bugger all to bring peace to the world within his first 2 weeks of presidency. He is dishonest enough to take away this annual award from someone who has tirelessly worked all their lives for the good of mankind and expected no prize or recognition in return but were finally named as a worthwhile and suitable candidate for a Nobel peace prize and who probably are or were far more deserving as a nominee or prize winner than a newly elected president.

He now ranks in the extensive list of some past Nobel prize winners who I list as I consider so well deserving to have won this award:-

Kofi Annan
Medicins Sans Frontiers
Yasser Arafat
Nelson Mandela
Dalai Lama
Mother Teresa
Desmond Tutu
Lech Walesa

Rather makes a total mockery of the whole concept - what the Nobel peace prize stands for and how hard people worked or suffered quietly and with dignity and were finally recognised, nominated and awarded this ultimate final recognition of an individuals lifetime spent in helping others doesn't it?

As he was nominated within a fortnight of becoming President would someone please explain to me what on earth Obama did in in such a record short period of time to be awarded the Nobel Peace Prize?

Noclue’s Greek Taverna

<----------a scratch and sniff your computer screen photo

Oh God! This house has been full of the aroma of Greek foodylode since 11am this morning as I am cooking Beef Stifado which is a pretty cheap gastronomic orgy of delight rather nice meal to make. Cheap if you keep a cupboard full of dried herbs and have some remains of a bottle of red wine (or those 25cl bottles that you can buy in supermarkets)…..and you like to cook something ‘slow and easy’ because it is not a meal to be hurriedly cooked if you want to experience the full flavour.

I have some “mini” French sticks of bread to mop up the gravy and while my Stifado is in the oven cooking oh so very slowly I thought I’d share the recipe with you and you can view and download the recipe for yourselves HERE if you fancy giving it a go.

Sprinkles!

I've just noticed my local weather report (on the right of this blog) advises me that today I'll have sprinkles.

Sprinkles?..... s-p-r-i-n-k-l-e-s??

Is that a medical ailment or a type of cake decoration that you shake all over the icing, or has the space station been chucking the astronauts urine down onto the planet again?

The Royal Mail Strike

Ongoing strike action by some members of the Communications Workers Union is affecting deliveries of magazines and letters (as well as expected parckets and parcels) Delays of more than a week are possible. This is due to the backlog of undelivered mail resulting from constant localised strike action in the UK since August. This affects overseas mail too - and the bastards are going to put the cost of stamps up as well!!!

Further strike action by the CWU is planned but it is not yet known the areas whose mail will be affected. For updates on future delays please visit Royal Mail's website link is HERE.

No expenses spared

Expenses claims made by MPs were leaked because of anger over the Government’s failure to equip the Armed Forces properly while politicians lavished taxpayers’ money on themselves, The Daily Telegraph can disclose.

Workers who processed the MPs’ claims included serving soldiers, who were moonlighting between tours of duty in Iraq and Afghanistan to earn extra cash for body armour and other vital equipment. The soldiers were furious when they saw what MPs, including the Prime Minister, were claiming for and their anger convinced one of their civilian colleagues that taxpayers had a right to know how their money was being spent.

The mole who leaked the data has told his story for the first time, in the hope that it will shame the Government into finally supplying the right equipment for the thousands of soldiers risking their lives in Afghanistan. His account appears in No Expenses Spared, a book which is published today and discloses the full story of what Gordon Brown described as “the biggest Parliamentary scandal for two centuries”. Five months after The Daily Telegraph broke the story of MPs’ expenses, the mole angrily denounced politicians who “still don’t get it” and were still preoccupied with their own financial situation rather than the plight of troops.

No Expenses Spared, written by two members of the Telegraph’s investigation team, describes how employees at The Stationery Office, where the expense files were sent for censorship before their intended publication by Parliament, reacted when they first saw the claims for second homes, furniture and luxury goods.

The workers, who included Parliamentary staff on secondment, became so agitated that they had to be told to calm down by managers.

One of the expenses that particularly enraged staff was Gordon Brown’s claim for a Sky TV sports package, which cost £36 per month.

But it was the position of the soldiers, who had used their annual leave to find temporary work as security guards, that caused the most outrage. “As the days progressed the soldiers joined in the conversations and became as angry as those doing the editing,” the mole said. “When they’re out in Afghanistan they’re out there for Queen and country, earning £16,000 or £17,000 a year, knowing they’re going to take losses, while the MPs are sitting in Parliament on £65,000, with massive expenses, and meanwhile you’ve got bodies coming home.”

No Expenses Spared discloses that the mole was employed to censor MPs’ expenses paperwork in 2008 before it was published this year. Around 20 people at a time worked on blacking out parts of the files. The soldiers were among the security guards who were there to prevent any of the information being leaked.

One of the soldiers had taken on the temporary work, in contravention of Army regulations, to earn enough money to buy a lightweight Kevlar ballistic vest similar to those issued to US troops. Many British soldiers have complained that the standard issue body armour was so heavy and bulky that it was more of a hindrance than a help in a firefight. Another soldier was there to earn money to buy desert boots, gloves and sunglasses, while other servicemen were earning to buy Christmas presents for their families.

full article in the Telegraph HERE

Book available from Amazon HERE

Addendum: My book arrived today (orderered yesterday) looks like 360 pages of explosive reading - judging by the first few chapters)

£6 broadband tax for everyone with a phone to be introduced before next election

(reports the Mail)

A £6-a-year 'broadband tax' on every family with a telephone line could be introduced before the general election.

Stephen Timms, the Minister for Digital Britain, yesterday said he was aiming to bring in the levy in a forthcoming finance bill.

It means a tax of 50p a month on all land lines to fund 'superfast broadband' could be made law by the end of the year. The Government announced the plans to fund quicker broadband services as part of its Digital Britain report in June.

Mr Timms yesterday told a debate hosted by The British Computer Society: 'We want to make high-speed networks nationally available.'The next generation fund will help that and we plan to legislate for it this side of a General Election.'

The tax will subsidise the cost of installing next generation broadband networks in areas where they would not otherwise be economically viable. But the Tories said that rather than introducing more taxes the Government should find another way of funding it.

Tory culture spokesman Jeremy Hunt said: 'Rather than taxing Britain's hard-pressed families further, we should be seeking to stimulate investment in broadband through the regulatory structure. 'Slapping on a broadband tax is an old economy solution to a new economy problem. Labour has run out of ideas and the taxpayer is being forced to pay the price.'

The Government wants to give 'at least 90 per cent' of the country access to superfast broadband - which is up to ten times faster than current broadband services - by 2017. Instead of phone lines, like traditional broadband, superfast broadband requires fibre-optic cables. Private companies will meet £5billion of the cost of installing these in the ground. But they are refusing to lay the cables in the third of the country where there are not enough customers to make it profitable.

Taxpayers will have to subsidise these areas - to the tune of £150million to £175million a year.

......I wrote about this in JUNE and I think this is despicable. We already pay for our phone line, rental and usage. We already pay for broadband. Why should we pay for other areas to receive broadband in areas where it is considered too costly for BT to install telephone cables? Why should we pay when BT should be spending their massive profits to instal this system throughout the UK?
Why should we pay for someone somewhere who we don't know and never will meet for them to receive broadband? Why are BT not paying out themselves to extend their crappy service to every region? Why expect phone users to pay for someone else's service? Why should the elderly who simply own a telephone have to pay for a broadband connection for some persons computer when the elderly people don't own or know how to use a computer - why should they be paying for technology that they will never use themselves? Why should we foot the bill for some other person when we already are paying for the priviledge for our own broadband?

and why do I think it's another one of that bloody unelected Comrade Brown's stealth taxes?

To Simi, Rocky and George....with love from Raki

TO: GOD / FROM: THE DOG

Dear God: Why do humans smell the flowers, but seldom, if ever, smell one another?

Dear God: When we get to heaven, can we sit on your couch? Or is it still the same old story?

Dear God: Why are there cars named after the jaguar, the cougar, the mustang, the colt, the stingray, and the rabbit, but not ONE named for a dog? How often do you see a cougar riding around? We do love a nice ride! Would it be so hard to rename the "Chrysler Eagle" the " Chrysler Beagle"or start to build the "Mini Spaniel" or the "Rolls Royce Retriever"or the new "Lamborghini Rocky" model or even the infamous "Vauxhall Sicilian Terrier"????

Dear God: If a dog barks his head off in the forest and no human hears him, is he still a bad dog?

Dear God: We dogs can understand human verbal instructions, hand signals, whistles, horns, clickers, beepers, scent ID's, electromagnetic energy fields, Frisbee flight paths and the sound of a human biscuit barrel opening at 1000 paces. What do humans understand?

Dear God: More meatballs, less spaghetti, please. More meat less vegetables please.....oh just more meat preferably and on a bone, ok God?

Dear God: Are there postmen in Heaven? If there are, will I have to apologize?

Dear God: Let me give you a list of just some of the things I must remember to be a good dog.

1. I will not eat the cats' food before they eat it or after they throw it up.

2. I will not roll on dead seagulls, fish, crabs, cow pats or lamb shit just because I like the way they smell.

3. I will not munch on "leftovers" in the kitty litter box, or the bird seed shucks although they are very tasty.

4. A dustbin is not a cookie jar.

5. The sofa is not a 'face towel'. Neither are Mom and Dad's laps.

6. The dustman is not stealing our stuff.....only my cookies.

7. My head does not belong in the refrigerator or down my owners toilet.

8. I will not bring down Mum or Dad's dirty underwear to give to their visitors.

9. I will not play tug-of-war with Dad or Mum's underwear when he's on the toilet or run off with the toilet roll.

10. Sticking my nose into someone's crotch is an unacceptable way of saying "Hello" (so are humping strange legs to make friends)

11. I don't need to suddenly stand straight up when I'm under the coffee table.

12. I must shake the rainwater out of my fur before entering the house - not after, and certainly not attempt to dry myself on the humans bed.

13. I will not throw up in the car

14. I will not come in from outside and immediately drag my butt all over the carpet.

15. I will not sit in the middle of the living room and lick my crotch when we have company.

16. The cat is not a 'squeaky toy' so when I play with him and he makes that noise, it's usually not a good thing.

And, finally, my last two questions . .

Dear God: Why do humans only have 10 Commandments and dogs have 16?

P.S. Dear God: When I get to Heaven may I have my testicles back?

Oh not again!

The weather has been dry for a few weeks so yesterday I put my car through a car wash and wax. Came home and re-waxed it and polished it up to gleaming perfection. Did the chome, put on back to black on the tyres and bumpers and side panels, cleaned the windows inside and out and vacuumed the interior.

What happened today? Drizzle! The drizzle that causes mud and muck and my car is now filthy. I am not a happy bunny.

I know that if I clean the house windows it is the equivalent to doing a rain dance, but cleaning the car windows and causing rain is a bit too much, let alone waxing and polishing the car. Sorry bloggers, I think it’s my fault that you may have rain today. I’ll remember to issue alerts before I clean the house windows and also warn about my car washing in future.

Poor old Batman

And to think that we in the UK thought that we are currently suffering badly.

It seems that Gotham City is having far bigger problems right now.