Our family dog, Barney, is 12 years old and he had been losing a lot of weight. He also had a large lump growing on his side and we weren't convinced that it was a fat pad like the vet had said so we had it biopsied. As we suspected the dog has terminal cancer. As part of the biopsy the dog had to have his side shaved and so now he is a long haired collie cross on one side and as bald as an egg on the other and it means he gets cold on walks. A week of taking him out after dark with a scarf around his midriff and then playing scissors. paper, stone to see who got to remove the pee soaked garment on our return convinced us that he needed a dog coat. So off I go onto the internet to find a plain,black dog coat that wouldn't make the poor creature look like a complete arse. You'd think it would be easy wouldn't you? You would be wrong. There are coats aplenty but not many simple black ones and I ended up with my jaw resting on the desk at the sheer tastelessness of what is out there. Eventually I found what I needed on Ebay but I feel that I have to bring the cultural phenomenon that is 'doggy attire' to the attention of anyone who may happen across this diary, so here, for your delight and quite possibly horror, are a few of the items that I found:
Are you the kind of girl that thinks carrying a small dog in a handbag is a good idea? Do you have 'Playboy' emblazoned down the side of your powder pink Ford Ka? Then the chances are that you have this appalling piece of spotty shite. Your dog may be small but don't think that given the chance it wouldn't take you out with a Exocet missile while you slept for inflicting this twee monstrosity on it. Incidentally - those little stick things on the bottom of your dog, those are legs. You'll find that if you put the dog down on the floor it'll balance on these 'legs' and move itself about. They are designed to negate the need for carrying it everywhere. The phrase 'walking the dog' was actually coined to mean both you AND the dog walk, rather than you walk with the dog under your arm wearing a truly ridiculous coat. This might explain why other people in the park have been laughing at you as you go past.
Are you kind of ironic and post modern? Nope, you're a tit. Your dog came with its own furry jumper, rendering a hoodie with a stupid politico message on it pointless. Take it off and burn it.
It's PVC. It makes your dog look a little bit S&M and therefore more than a little bit wrong. I do appreciate the practicality of wipe clean fabrics but you'd look less pervy if you'd cut leg holes out of a Tesco carrier bag and put the dog in that.
Go on, admit it. You've shortened your name to 'Daz' or 'Spaz' or something. You drive a Fiat Punto but you've lowered the suspension, removed all the badges and added an exhaust system that sounds like an elephant after 15 pints and an extra hot vindaloo. You spend your weekends downing 2 litre bottles of cider in the park with your girlfriend Kaylee-Louise and your dog is called "Killer' or 'Homicide' or something equally mindlessly violent. It's probably a staffie or pit bull cross and if it had any functioning brain cells it would remove your arm for coming within 20 yards of it with this appallingly chav piece of tat. Nicking car stereos and wheel trims is one thing but you should burn in eternal shame for inflicting camouflage dogwear on society.
I've got one word - CRUEL. I hope the RSPCA track you through your credit card payment and prosecute. You should be paraded around the streets of your hometown dressed as a giant bumblebee, complete with stupid hat and then left in the stocks for a week so that dogs can pee up your leg and laugh at you and how silly you look. Dressing your dog up to look ridiculous is not big and it's not clever. If you aren't careful karma will catch up with you and you'll come back in the next life as a dung beetle, destined to spend your entire life pushing balls of elephant turd around the African Plains. And it'll bloody well serve you right. I suggest you go and sit in the naughty corner, on your own, and think about what you've done.
If I hadn't found it all on the internet I wouldn't have believed it.
I have a stinking cold courtesy of the office Fridge Witch who has been coughing all over people for a week. Get thee hence plague carrier. I was going to write about my trip down South to visit my brother and the Exeter site but unfortunately the only painkillers anyone had in the office were Ibuprofen and so I took a couple. I'm allergic to them and am now pleasantly stoned. Like my brain is wearing a little furry coat which is stopping the ideas from coming out. I keep giggling at silly things and now my boss thinks I'm mad. Which is nice. I've just laughed at a man form the Red Cross who rang to tell me a NE bloke didn't turn up for his course this morning but it's ok because I did remember to say have a nice christmas and new year. And I'm thinking of emailing my sister in law to tell her she needs therapy because she's as mad as a sack of angry badgers. Cass says this is not a good idea because once hte ibuprofen wears off I may regret it and and might have to apologise which could be embarassing.
The nice thing about these little tablets is that this morning I was really grumpy but now I am nice and mellow. I don't care if site managers ring me up and shout at me about bog all, I don't care that I just knocked a stack of papers off the back of the desk adn I don't care that I forgot my purse and have about half a litre of fuel in the car to get home through Friday traffic. I don't give a bugger because it's nearly christmas and my feet have gone slightly numb.Happy Christmas people!!!
I'm going to go now because i think I might not be making much sense anymore. Perhaps I'll find somewhere to go to sleep for a while.
Oooh. Someone just gave me a calendar. Pretty.
One of the dogs has a tumour. Well we think it's a tumour, given that it's large, very firmly attached and is getting progressively larger as the dog gets progressively smaller. He's going for a biopsy tomorrow. It's funny how attached you can get to a dog in 11 years, even though he doesn't speak English and he tries to mount your other dog whenever he gets a chance. In fact once he tried to mount my friend's toddler who was crawling round the floor. Fortunately Lou has a well developed sense of humour and didn't take offence. Some people would have been very put out at Barney trying to work out children via the medium of buggery. Fortuntely he didn't get beyond the 'standing on the child' stage before being unceremoniously removed to the garden to think about what he'd done.
Poor old dog. I'm going to go out on my lunch break and buy him some cheese.
I hereby nominate today as 'National Thump An Accountant Day'. I will be thumping the sanctimonius, pedantic, smug little twerp from our accounts department downstairs who has just come up to give me a lecture on how the safety department is not a money making department and needs to cut back on training costs for site staff but you can choose any accountant you like. If there's a weedy little bean-counting, pen-pushing pedant out there who has made your life more difficult then go on, cut loose, thump them.
I take no responsibility for any resulting legal action.
And I apologise to any accountant out there who is not a complete arse.
Well, it's now the middle of the week, only 3 and a half days til the weekend. Which is mighty good as it's gone mental at work at the moment. I am currently doing the work of 2 people, myself and our NE advisor who is frankly, not worth the airspace that he takes up. Nice chap, completely bloody hopeless. This means that while I am covering the arse of a bloke who is on 5k a year more than me my own work is falling behind and I am in danger of drowing in a sea comprised entirely of bits of paper, training requests and invoices. I was moaning that my job was boring and there was nothing to do last month, be careful what you wish for........
On the bright side, I don't work for the customs and revenue department so it could be worse. I love the fact that they said it was 'regrettable' that they had lost the personal details of 25 million individuals. How is it 'earth-shatteringly, daily-fine-emptying-your -bank-accountingly, calamatously appalling' to the revenue folks if you hand in your tax return a month late but only 'regrettable' to lose the names, addresses, dates of birth and bank account details of half the population? Methinks they need to assess their priorities. Though perhaps it'll wait till they've assessed how the YTS lad was allowed to copy massive amounts of confidential data then lose it. And this is the collection of incompetants who want me to give them my biometric data along with everything else so they can issue me with a stupid card? I don't think so. Bet Alistair Darling was REALLY looking forward to work this morning, he's a shoe-in for the office 'Wanker of the Week' trophy.
Micah and I are off for drinks with my friend Lou and her husband this Saturday. After last time we went out for drinks with them I'm slightly nervous. Last time I woke in the morning fully clothed. There was Vimto up the wall, which was an intriguing mystery, not only because I don't have any recollection of how it got there but also because we don't buy Vimto and didn't have any in the house. Another mystery was the 2 laptop batteries next to the bed. I've no memory of how they got there either and I don't own a laptop. I can only assume that in a state of extreme drunkenness I broke into someone's house, stole their laptop batteries and made myself a glass of Vimto for the journey home. It's entirely possible because getting home is another chunk of the evening that didn't make its mark on my memory. I am a disgrace. In the morning I got up and felt ok. It took a while for me to realise that this was because I was still pissed. When I sobered up I felt very very far from ok. Hangover from hell. Very nasty. This time I am determined, I will not end up a hideously drunken mess who has to be poured out of a taxi complete with the random items she has acquired throughout the night. I can do it!!
I think.
Today is such a crap day that I have resorted to the emergency Cadbury's Crunchie that lives (or more to the point 'lived') in the glove compartment of my car. Sometimes needs must.......
This year's bonfire night was spent on my own in a hotel in County Durham, waiting for a 4 hour conference on 'Site Waste Management' that I was going to the next morning. Can you imagine my excitement and joy? I'm sure you can. Sitting in a restaurant on my tod like a complete loser was a joyous experience, made even more enjoyable by the drunken advances of a group of pissed up sales reps who were also staying in the hotel. Roll on next bonfire night.
The good thing is that I did not entirely miss out on fireworks as bonfire night is not so much bonfire night as bonfire fortnight now. So the fireworks started a week or so ago and are still going on now. Sunday night was especially loud and the dog was so upset that we had to tranquilise him for the first time. Because it was the first time I wasn't entirely sure of the dosage so gave him 1 tablet. It would appear that he only requires half a tablet. The dog was as stoned as a weasel, he was cross eyed, he kept falling over things that were on the floor, he was weaving from side to side and I would swear he was grinning. Eventually he ate a large bowl of food before conking out on his bed and not even twitching till morning. Ah memories, we've all been there......My parent's dog was even more entertaining as whenever he walked anywhere he'd pick up each paw very carefully and slowly and deliberately put it down. He kept lifting up his front paw and gawping at it like he'd never seen it before, then snorting to himself and putting it down, all the while never taking his eyes off it. Lord knows what was going on in his head but it must have been odd.
It seems that the chavs next door have been raiding Navy ships this year. Either that or they've bought a cannon. Every night since Thursday the house has been rocked by a series of huge explosions from their garden, the kind that make the windows rattle, the ornaments fall off the mantlepiece and the dog dive for shelter under the dining room table. My mum assures me that they are not in fact launching an airstrike on Prestwich, they have 'acquired' a collection of commercial fireworks but I'm not convinced. If you see an area of North Manchester on the news, having been reduced to nothing more than a smoking crater you'll know I was right. I'm wondering if they are also responsible for the fact that our entire estate is covered, and I do mean covered, in little bits of shredded and singed bits of red paper. It's all very odd.
The local news has just been on the radio, there've been the usual spate of ludicrous bonfire night injuries but to mentioned I thought were particularly worthy of a Darwin award for Stupidity:
1 - The lad who is now in the burns unit after attempting to leapfrog the large burning heap of wood, without a great deal of success.
2- The Salford chav who found a firework on his way to school and decided to see what happened if he warmed it up with his cigarette lighter. Suprisingly enough, warming it up with a lighter ignited it and he is now also in hospital.
I sometimes wonder how people this stupid ever manage to reach their teens.
M Is for Motorways
While god was creating the world and everything in it he was very very busy and this left Satan bored, with no one to talk to. So, he decided that he'd invent something of his own and he sat down to have a think. Estate agents? Nope, already got them up and running and selling fundamentally unstable heaps of shit to unsuspecting first time buyers. Call centres that ring you at 7pm to ask you if you're the mortgage holder every night for 6 months? Already done. Those annoying perverts that ring you up to enquire what sort of underwear you're wearing and don't even seem to be discouraged when you tell them you're wearing an enormous pair of gray flannel bloomers? Out there already. So he scratched his head for a bit longer, had a gin and tonic and suddenly inspiration hit him. "I know what I'll create" he thought, "A road that you need to use to get from A to B but I'll design it so that at all the times people might need to be on it it jams up entirely turning it into a 10 mile stretch of carpark". And lo, the motorway was born.
On paper the motorway is a wonderful idea. It's a bit long road with several lanes that takes you directly from A to B. In practice things are not quite that simple. Want to go from A to B in order to get to work? Forget it my friend, so does everyone else and the motorway will be nose to tail for the duration of your journey. Want to go from A to B because it's a bank holiday weekend and you've booked a lovely cottage in Northumberland? Hope you like the interior of your car because it's pretty much all you're going to see since some pillock has overturned a caravan in the middle lane and the whole motorway is now shut ten miles ahead of you. Every time you want (or, more accurately, need) to use the damn thing it is blocked solid. If it rains, snows, is too bright, is too dark, has a wind blowing from a westerly direction, has the moon in the 3rd lunar cycle the motorway blocks solid and the situation isn't made any better by lorry drivers. Lorry drivers are the only group on the road who believe that the law about not using mobile phones while driving doesn't apply to them and who believe that the wing mirror on the left hand side is only there to make the lorry symetrical. Who hasn't almost been wiped off the motorway by a lorry randomly swinging out? No one who's used the cursed thing more than 3 times, that's for sure.
So how do you avoid the hellhole that is the motorway? Well you have several options: you could buy a farm in the country and never leave it, you could buy a bicycle and cycle along the city roads although this option does come with a very real risk of ending up as roadkill or you could become a hippy, give up driving and spend your life living in an ashram in Epping Forest and taking large quantites of mind altering drugs. For the rest of us the only option is to keep queing and hope that you win the lottery so you can take early retirement. Happy motoring folks!!
It's Monday morning, it's dark, I'm tired and it's time to rant, so here, in an attempt to stop me from spontaneously combusting sue to an excess of annoyance, is 'F is for Friend's Psycho Girlfriend / Wife'. If it's full of spelling mistakes then I apologise, I'm venting.
You know how it is, we've all seen it. You're friends with someone of the opposite sex, you have been for years. Sure, it may have started out as something more romantic, might have been that way for a while but that was years ago, now you're just great mates and all is good. Or at least it is until your friends hooks up with PsychoTrollop. PyschoTrollop is a girl with issues, she's got more baggage that British Airways and she keeps The Samaritans on speed dial. She's been out with a succession of losers and now that she's found someone who doesn't gamble with the mortgage money / smoke opium / sell illegally imported wild animals / drink 9 litres of cider per day she's determined to keep them and if that means eradicating all his friends that aren't on her 'approved' list from his life then so be it. In her head you're a girl and you're friends with her man so at some point this means you're going to turn up in the front garden wearing nothing but a pair of Manolos and declaring your undying love for him. Her method will follow a tried and tested route:
1) The tantrum - always the first port of call. If you ring then she'll kick off with him the minute you are off the phone, meaning he can only call you or receive your call if she isn't there. In some cases this is enough to convinced the man that his life will be quieter if he just gives up and drops you from his life but for the more tenacious chap, he now faces:
2) The silence - if he calls you, speaks to you, mentions your name, frosty silence will ensue. This will last for some time. Most will crack at this point but if he does manage to outmanouvre Madam Frostyknickers she will finish him off by bringing out the big guns:
3) The emotional blackmail - in other words tears. Yep, the one weapon no mere man can withstand, the tears. In most cases accompanied by the ever effective "If you really loved me you wouldn't be putting me through this". Rather than replying with the logical " Well if you loved me you wouldn't be thinking that I was going to do the horizontal tango with my friend and you would accept my mates for what they are", your friend will more than likely crumble in the face of PyschoTrollop's oscar winning emotional breakdown and you will be consigned to the scrapheap, along with any of his other mates that she didn't like. On the bright side there'll be a few of you so you can all get together for a pint and a character assasination. Perhaps if one of you is a bit artistic you could make a little voodoo doll.
Now don't get me wrong, not all women are like this, very few in fact but the Pyscho Girlfriend / wife is a creature to be feared and reviled, a bit like lepers were in the Middle Ages. Because if one of them gets their hooks into your friend he's finished, done for, consigned to a life of tears, tantrums and giving in. If he ditches you dont be angry with him, give him your sympathy and wish him luck - lord knows he's going to need it.
Spider count since last post - 5. Although 2 of them may possibly have been the same spider that had moved, it's difficult to tell.
Getting up in the dark is bad. Getting up in the dark when your husband gets to stay in bed where it's warm and nice and cosy really stinks. It's so tempting to just switch on all the lights and put the radio on, on the grounds that if I'm awake and up everyone else should be too but so far I have resisted the urge. What was especially grim about getting up this morning is that I got up, in the dark, to sit in the rush hour traffic in order to get to work for our monthly safety meeting, an event that promises to test the limit of human endurance by boring you until you're willing your body to shut down just for something interesting to do. Grim. And this one looks like it's going to be a long one. Still, we once had a 6 hour one and it can't be as long as that one, at least it won't be for me anyway because if it gets to 4 hours I'm leaving and I don't give a toss if I get fired.
Latest Facebook news is that I'm wondering if Facebook might not be bad for someone as nosy as me. It's the online equivilent of peering through someone's netcurtains and rummaging in their bin. It's also very addictive and I waste far too much time fiddling about on it. I am concerned that I don't have 200 friends and other people I know do. Am I a hermit? Or some variety of social leper? I also think I need to stop looking up ex boyfriends to see if they got fat or got a better looking girlfriend than me. I need to stop this because:
a) I am a 28 year old married woman and should be more of a grown up. I should be above delighting in the fact that the little weasel that cheated on me at university still appears to be a loser, now has three chins and is going out with a complete pig-dog.
b) I didn't like most of the people I went out with when I went out with them so why on earth am I now looking them up?
c) When I discover things like the fact that one of my ex's (who I lived with for a couple of years and was best friends with for a long time) has had a baby with the vicious tramp that banned him from communicating with me in any way 3 years ago it pisses me off. I have no right to be pissed off but yet I am and this makes me even grumpier than normal. Which is stupid.
Perhaps I shouold do something more practical with my time. Like the work that I'm actually being paid to do. Or perhaps not, never mind, at least it's Friday.
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