I'm Leaving You All In Charge...........

No posts for the next week or so, I'm off to Holland on holiday. The archives are there to be marvelled at or politely ignored and of course you're welcome to post up what you bally well like in the comments and let me figure out what you're all banging on about when I come back.

ChingChing!

Tired & Emotional

Brother over for Christmas = Computer arsed about and nothing works like it should. I have other suspicions but I'm just going to blame him anyway, he won't mind. Christmas dinner sat like lead in my stomach, as it always does, so I went for a quick sleepy and woke up feeling even worse. I'm fine now though..........

Ok, must go and make peace with the old man. I think he's in a bit of a snit because I refused(rather rudely) to free up some funds to buy an external hard drive. It's the least I can do I suppose since he's getting a new monitor and I seem to take up most room on the PC with my photos.

Have Yourselves A Painless Christmas And A Solipsistic New Year

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Hello! A fine festive season to all who pop in here and make this blog worthwhile. I love you all! Ok, so that's the brandy talking a bit but hell, if you can't tell your readership how you feel about them then what can you do?

To be honest, I can't really remember what happened this year as far as the outside world goes. Is that a good thing? I certainly think so. Pretend it didn't happen I say.

This years achievements include climbing Berwick Law, becoming a MySpace nonentity, starting a photo blog and finally getting on the mailing list of my local MP. Ok, the last one is nothing to be proud of but she did consult me on the subject of the ninety day detention period proposals so I do have some clout...............I think.

For those amused by this

That guy from Saved By The Bell Oh how the mighty have fallen.

"Show me your Titty"

"But I don't Even Know You"

"You Grew Up With Me Baby..............."

I've got to use that line someday.....

Can't Stop Yawning.....

Too tired to blog. I'll have something up tomorrow though..................

Nightnight!

The Nativity & The Nedivity

Yay! Finally packed it in for the next ten days or so. Whilst most of you no doubt got out the door at a fairly sensible time (12.30? 1pm?), I was tethered to my desk until three. Not that I'd done much all day anyway but it seemed especially pointless to keep us in until 3pm, give us a half hour lunch and ship in some Pizza (provide yer own fizzy pop, no alcohol....)

It seems we can't be trusted not to get totally fleein' on a few bottles of wine amongst the entire office. Bunch of twats.

Off to the pub after work. Well, pub isn't the word I'd use. It's one of those 'style bars' at the Charing Cross end of Sauchiehall St. Over priced fucking dives that they are.....

Theres something wrong with most of these pubs, I tell thee. All the flashy furniture and design can't hide the fact that they're just places for mouth breathing office scum, flashy neds and slow witted posers to go and get shit faced of an evening. I did suggest the cosy confines of The Bon Accord next door to the office for a few drinkies, but the young 'uns in the office wanted to go to Bar Buddha. The bastards............ I don't mind getting skinned for drink if I have some choice available to me, but I refuse to believe that a pint of Kronnenbourg, a pint of Joe Mangle's Fetid Piss* and a bottle of Budweiser can cost about nine quid. The staff were run off their arses (all three of them) and I've never felt the urge to tip at the bar as much as I did tonight.

So what's the alternative? The Ill Man's idea of festive cheer is going to an old man pub in which one can smell the piss from the toilets and where getting to the bar involves a set of crampons and the possible deployment of a search party..................

Sounds like heaven to me.................

* Joe Mangle's Fetid Piss=Fosters

You Shall Go To The Ball Cinderella.................

Could I get a pair of size twelve boots today? Could I bollocks! What is it with shoe stores? Why do they have those rather lovely looking shoes in everything but my size? Are they mocking my enormous feet? As if to add insult to injury, they seem to be positively swimming in size elevens. Almost smug about the fact.

"Here sir, we have them in an eleven"

I try them on out of politeness mainly because they've been away for about five minutes no doubt rummaging about looking in vain for what I requested. Eventually I found what I wanted in Debenhams, lying forlornly in the reduced shoes rack which looked like it had been hit by a tornado. In a line up against the shoes I'd lusted over for the past two hours, they would barely have merited a mention, but they did come in a twelve and to be honest I was past caring, I just wanted a stylish yet robust boot for swanking about Amsterdam in the new year. So there.

Along the way I almost bought a pair of reduced Paul Smith zip up boots but of course they only had them in a.....................

You fill in the gap.

I also popped into House Of Fraser only to almost pass out at their prices. The cheapest pair was about £80. Schuh on the other hand made me very happy. They have some decent brothel creepers in again.

Anyway, more tales of woe from the Heart of Darkness that is Glasgow city centre at Christmas time tomorrow..................

Cheers!

Christmas By The Nolly

Never mind that this shot was taken in March............


This time last year I was posting up winter scenes to divert my few readers from the all too obvious fact that I had run out of things to write about. This year is no different, except I'm using my own efforts instead of stuff culled from the internet. Oh, and I've got a few more readers to disappoint. The more things change the more they stay the same I suppose.

Can anyone tell me about really cheap travel insurance? I mean policies for a fiver, three quid even. I took one out with the Post Office for £20, yet the chap across from me at work reckons I'd be mad to pay any more than a tenner.................I'm assuming one gets what one pays for, in which case a three quid policy wouldn't be worth the paper it's written on and you'd be making yr way home by horse and cart in the event of missing the return flight........

One last thought. Can anyone possibly concieve of a situation in which one might freeze a plate of sandwiches? I've been meaning to ask my mother about it but I'm afraid of the answer she might give me.................

Cheers!

I'm Sure I've Met This One Before.......

Have to admit, I'm counting down Christmas like a clock watching office drone on a Friday afternoon. No, not a huge fan of the festive season, but I'm off on holiday until the 4th of January and this week is gonna crawl in something chronic. The seasonal merry-go-round started on Friday night with our department night out. The meal was a joke(Driftwood, you're a bunch of fucking thieving cowboys!). Honestly, if I'd known I was going to be served up two slabs of re-constituted "turkey meat"(40% water), two chipolatas, a few roast potatoes and some non-descript veg for my twelve quid I'd have given it a by. Consoled myself by getting really quite drunk and promising myself it would be the last time I had a Christmas meal anywhere other than at home.

Saturday at the footie................Jesus! What is it with people? The club have a new system for entering the ground. Buy a ticket at a portacabin, go to the turnstile and enter the stand. Simple enough right? No more queues for late comers, season ticket holders walk straight in, as do those who buy tickets in the morning before they go to the pub.................It's a godsend. At least I thought it was but I must be a mental or something, because every week there's droves of torn faced old arseholes whingeing about how they don't see the point of it. Oh the agony of it all, they have to walk a few extra yards to get their ticket. Are they at a football match or are they doing a time and motion study? Cunts!

Went into town today and spent my Christmas bonus (£25 in M&S vouchers Woohoo!). I took a little detour through Kelvingrove park and was somewhat disturbed to see a huge plume of smoke drifting across the city. As I made my way towards Charing Cross it looked like it was the Mitchell Library on fire. Close, but not quite, it was in fact another Glasgow landmark, Cafe India. It looked completely destroyed, little bits of it still smouldering and about half a dozen fire engines in attendance. The place was also crawling with people with cameras. Pro's by the looks of the rather fancy kit they had on display. I had mine with me but decided not to bother, I'll get a shot of the gutted shell tomorrow on the way to work.............

Sad. I had my first curry in there you know......................

Oh Bugger!

Well, i've tried twice to write something tonight and both have been rejected by my good self as being ill informed and pointless toss. Think yourselves lucky.

In other news, a mention for Buster Bloodvessel. Why? Cos Knudsen brought him up, but also cos I like him. He lives on a houseboat you know...........

I would also like to state that anyone having problems leaving comments on my blog should enter themselves as a non blogger for the time being. at least until Blogger Get Their Fucking Heads Out Of Their Arseholes. Cheers!

Ok, nighty night folks

Tea With The Captain

It would appear that Captain Sensible has his own political party. Good Lord! Any more old punks out there ready to step into the political limelight? Jimmy Pursey? Glen Matlock? Bruce Foxton..........................(Sweet Jesus No!!!)

Frankly I reckon a John Lydon fronted political party would be most amusing, but I doubt the old fart would be willing to give up his cushy LA lifestyle to go on a Hunter S Thompson/Kinky Friedman style campaign trail. Can't say I'd blame him................

So, what's the old Cap'n saying? Not a lot to be honest. It would seem to be a rolling manifesto, shaped by the contributions of the general public. So, ill informed, contradictory and more than a little random. Brilliant, I love it already....................=D

............Anyway, tea..................I've always been a bit ambivelent about the stuff. Prefer coffee to be honest. Thing is, I found some Earl Grey the other morning and decided to give it a go. As a child I'd drunk it, I'm sure, and found it to be a peculiar drink which I wasn't quite sure if I liked or not. After many years of drinking the common-or-garden stuff I have now fallen for the delights of something genuinely refreshing and not laden with bloody tannin or caffeine. Anyone else got some good tea tips? Anything I should be trying? (not herbal, I'm bored of them)

Anyway, that's all just now. Cheers!

I Saw The Strangest Thing On The Way To Work This Morning................

There I was battling the horizontal rain and general misery of the Scottish winter and pretty much resigning myself to getting very wet when I saw something that I still have difficulty believing. On a patch of grass on Woodlands Road, just next to the Methodist Church, I saw out of the corner of my eye what I thought was a rather large looking pigeon. I stopped and stared for a bit and noticed it was absolutely motionless. On closer inspection It looked for all the world like some sort of bird of prey. The light was certainly poor, so I moved towards it to make 100% sure. As I got within about six feet of it, whatever it was launched into the air. What took me completely by surprise though was the pigeon that had obviously been trapped under this big beasties talons, scrambling skywards in a desperate attempt to escape. All that was left was a pile of pigeon feathers and me standing looking astonished, glancing towards passing pedestrians as if to say "Fuck!, Did you see that?"

Did I save a pigeons life?..............More likely I denied some hungry bird of prey a bit of breakfast, though I would imagine the pigeon wouldn't have got very far after the mauling it seemed to have taken. What astonished me was seeing such a thing in an urban area, though this particular spot looks to be a rather fertile hunting area, full of fat, lazy pigeons feasting on leftover bread left on the grass by well meaning locals.

Does anyone know their birds of prey? Can they hazard a guess at what it was and why it was hunting in the city? Is this normal?

It was bigger than a pigeon obviously, but not huge. It was a brown/black colour as far as I could make out.

Anyone?

You're So Sheer, You're So Chic, Teenage Rebel Of The Week...........

Shite! I've just seen the Aquafresh family on tv and for a brief moment I was nine years old and sitting in front of the tv between ad breaks in the Benny Hill Show. Where did they dig the fuckers up from? There they were, smiling inanely, swaying to some ludicrous barbershop jive in their terry towel bathrobes in some sort of synchronised tooth brushing frenzy. The bastards. Ah yes, dental health. I will openly admit I squandered a mouthfull of fairly strong teeth in my early adolescence by drinking vast amounts of Coca Cola and Pepsi, eating choccy bars for lunch and yes, not brushing my teef. Ever. I think it was when I became marginally self aware (about sixteen, a good two years later than most boys) that I finally learned that a bit of tooth scrubbing might be a good idea, if only to maintain a modicum of breath freshness in front of a lass I might have liked at the time. Same goes for bathing................ I now have at least one tooth with a pretty large cavity, another that seems to have started to crumble and a bit of the old receding gumline. I'd rather lose me hair to be honest. I should go and get it all seen to but the last experience left me a tad traumatised. I took all the wrenching and grinding and gum ripping in good humour, but i'm terrified dear reader. I feel like I'll need a local just to survive the prodding and poking of a checkup. What I do know is that I need to find a mouth quack in the new year or i'll be heading head first towards abcess city, and i'd rather go under the drill than do that again.

So, how are ye? Good? Hope so, no excuse for being glum on a friday night. Unless yr working tomorrow, in which case bad luck............Know how it feels, I spent eight years (man and boy) doing that shite in various pub kitchens. In my case I got into a love-hate thing with the job I was doing (KP, lowest of the low), especially the Bank Restaurant in Queen Street. It seems a million miles off now, but I seriously miss certain things about it now. The back sink full of pots, usually with soup burnt indelibly to the bottom of them. Nah, not that......Fat Barry, Mad Maisie, Rhonda the head chef's burd who could scratch eyes out for Scotland. Errr, well..........Ok, so the tips were good! Ah, no, they weren't. Kitchen staff usually got shafted on them. I remember the pitched battles, the foul mouthed abuse, the huffy strops...........Two hours later we'd all be sitting at the bar getting quite joyfully pished. I think that's the abiding memory of it all I suppose, the lack of bullshit amongst most of us. We all had our rammy's and whatnot, but the idea of a clique was an absolute anathema. Offices? The work is fine, but fuck me if they aren't populated by some of the most socially retarded toss bags you'll ever meet. Anyway Saturdays at The Bank were a riot, a ritual, a brutal reminder that the world didn't just stop at 5pm on a friday and for 8-10 hours you would be in the heart of this machine (well oiled and not-so-well oiled, depending on who was on) and at the end of it all, all you had the energy to do was get wasted..................Grim days? Grand days? They were just days.........

A Plug For A Worthy Cause

No post as such tonight. I've got a new blog and it's called 'Seven Days'. Basically the deal is this, I take a shot a day and post it up, the idea being that in twelve months time I should have a pictorial record of the past year. Or something. I also hear theres a new meme going about. Basically it involves divulging everything you've learned from the opposite sex. Me? Forget it. I don't make these distinctions when it comes to learning things from people. What i've learned from women could just as easily have been learned from men and vice-versa. Maybe this says a little too much about my lack of 'serious relationships'..................... Nah, women have taught me many things. Too many to mention in a mere blog post and most of it on a subconscious level. In all honesty................? Pass?

Spreadable Is It?

My arse it is! Spreadable butter it said on the packaging. The pieces of bread with great big fucking holes in them and wedges of unspread butter stuck to the sides say otherwise. It's just plain bloody butter. I wonder what they mean by spreadable? You can spread it on concrete slabs? It doesn't even spread on toast.................Gah! Most 'spreadable' butter is actually just fancy marg, hence the ease with which one can smear ones scones and cucumber sandwiches for afternoon tea with ones mother/vicar/drug dealer.............Butter on the other hand needs to be left out for about an hour before it gets close to being ready to be applied to anything less consistent than cardboard. Bunch of pricks! Talking of which..........(see what I did there? Clever eh?) The company I work for, as you may already have read in this journal are a right nosey bunch of buggers. They monitor your emails, they stop you accessing t'internets outside of lunchtime and in a final mad attempt to stop us all looking at anything remotely interesting they now seem to have rigged up a system whereby porn and violence are filtered and sites containing such things become out of bounds. Fine, i'm not fucking thick enough to go looking at porno-tube at work and i'm not really too fussed at missing out on 'WorldsWorstFatalRoadAccidents.com' Thing is, at least two sites on my blogroll have come up with a 'No Access' screen, the reason given being 'pornographic content'. Who are these filth mongers in our midst? Who are these amateur scud fiends? Step forward Binty McShae and Fat Sparrow. I shit ye not! Now, i'm sure theres a perfectly logical explanation to all this, but i'm fucked if i'm going to try and figure it out. That would be boring Far easier to conclude that somewhere in the back pages of these two unassuming blogs lie banks of filthy pictures and screeds of dirty stories. Thank fuck I haven't clicked on Old Knudsen at work......................

The Ill Man Learns The True Meaning Of Inner Peace

Evenin' all. Another trying day at the footie. Thistle were pretty poor it has to be said, but it's the people who surround me at the games that are starting to disappoint me more than a mere football team ever could. Home games at Firhill are a nightmare. Sullen, bad tempered fans sit in silence and wait to be entertained, wait for the goals to rain in. When they don't the barracking starts and purple faced men start bellowing like wounded oxen. The opposition support, small as it is are making a hellish racket and they only up the ante when they smell blood and a home team that don't look like they fancy their chances. I blame the layout of our ground to a degree, but I also blame the bitter old bastards that turn out every week and spend the game grumbling into their bovril and abusing players, the sort of thunder faced retards that stare in disgust at anyone trying to get a bit of noise going, anyone who dares applaud the centre forward they've been screaming at for the last twenty minutes. I also blame the team for not being very good sometimes, but it's the way of the world in lower division football. Teams have crap days and don't deliver the goods, get over it. Of course, the rage of the wounded footie fan is nothing compared to that of a motorist with a grievance. On the way home from work on friday I witnessed my first road rage incident. I didn't actually see what led up to the confrontation, but needless to say it was two blokes screaming blue murder at each other and generally make a right arse of themselves. What struck me was the fact that at a busy and badly laid out interchange one ought to expect people to be in the wrong place at the wrong time or to make moves that aren't exactly sanctioned by the highway code. Simply put, theres nothing to get worked up about................ I turned back and found a vantage point from which to observe the proceedings. I have to say, I did get a bit of a kick out of it all and even left a little disappointed that they didn't start kicking the crap out of each other. I really ought to be ashamed of that I suppose............... Anyway, a woman got out of one of the cars and sort of defused things, either that the bloke she was with had raged himself to a standstill and she was just on hand to guide him back to the car. Poor sod, all that willy waving and it got him where exactly? Chaperoned back to his car by his bemused passenger in front of equally bemused onlookers. I hope she spent the rest of the journey home thinking of ways to ditch the hopeless wazzock. Me? I reserve my rage for real evil like blogger outages, Simon Cowell and the Daily Mail. As such find that I lead a most serene and peaceful existance...............

Fucking Rats Cocks!!!

I was going to bring you the fourth and final part of The Dentist, but just as I was adding the finishing touches, just as I was about to publish it, I seem to have hit some magic button on my keyboard that makes my PC shut down. ..............and no, I hadn't saved it. Quite frankly i'm distraught. It may be some time before I go back to it, though I have it all pretty much memorised. I so dearly want to go on a rampage, smash the shit out of something and scream like a banshee, but I don't think it would go down well with my folks or the neighbours...................If i'm arrested tomorrow for throttling any of the prattling nerds that sit next to me at work I hope you'll understand.