Pool and poorly.
Hello.
Which of the following statements, plucked from Sunday newspapers last week (not this), refers to Heather Mills McCartney?
1) She could drink tea from a teacup and looked good for an ape.
2) She has a very unusual erogenous zone - her stump. I used to massage one particular sensitive area of it and give her an orgasm!
Answers later on. Betcha can’t wait, huh?
Firstly thanks for all the advice and comments on my last post. We’re going to peruse some advice-type websites and I’m going to research a new bank account, although having done so before I haven’t been with my current bank long enough to be accepted and prior to them I didn’t have a bank account of my own for 5 years and so can’t provide the relevant information. First Direct is an attractive prospect but I don’t bring home even their minimum acceptable amount for them to consider me, so they’re out of the picture.
Domestically we’ve embarked on a month-long experiment of turning off and completely unplugging everything we’re not using, using different lights and most of the time instead of having the nightstore heater on in the front room we’ve just been giving the room a 2 or 3 minute blast of the very effective fan heater Drew bought at Christmas time… and wearing more clothes about the place, too (although over the past very cold day or so the heater is back on.) This could have some good results. Hope so. More environmentally friendly, too.
To other matters, then. Since last I wrote we’ve been quite busy with one thing or another, hence the lack of writing even though I fully intended to keep more up-to-date (as usual.) The very last thing I wrote was that we were off to a friend’s stag do. I have to admit that I was a tad anxious about this because aside from the stag, a friend from my work and a lad that Drew used to work with before he was ill we knew no one who would be there. I don’t feel comfortable in all-male groups as a rule, not even all-gay all-male groups, you see, and not only that but we were due to play pool at one of the last vestiges of the way the docks used to be before it began to transform into the “marina” it is now, though I preferred this option to the original intention which had been to go bowling, something we weren’t able to do because the bowling alley wouldn’t let the group book any lanes without children under 14 being present. Not surprisingly, there were none. The last time I had been in a pool club was in the bar for a wedding reception rather than the pool part, so I’d never experienced the full-on pool effect and as their dodgy reputations are well-known (yes, I’m horribly middle class) I was a little nervous. Anyway, we met up with everyone at Isaac’s, the pub on the quayside and once everyone was assembled and had enjoyed a pint, or preferred equivalent, we trudged the short distance to the pool place.
I expect that it has its moments, as does anywhere with alcohol on sale, but I have to say that from the moment we walked into the bar of the pool place I relaxed. You couldn’t call it smart, but it was quite homely in its own way. The television was showing some rugby match or other, and other than our gang of about 16 there was barely anyone else there which I put down to the fact that Ipswich Town were playing at home, but even after the match it didn’t fill up much. The last time I had played pool must have been back in the early 9os, so I was quite surprised to be able to pot a few balls. However this success was short-lived as I followed my usual pattern of being rather stiff and nervous at first, becoming relaxed as the first couple of pints kicked in and consequently playing okay before further alcohol and complacency leads to rubbishness. But it was thoroughly enjoyable, that’s the main thing. I didn’t drink too much there because a) we had very little money between us and b) there was only lager and to me, after years of choosing real ale, it’s like drinking flavourless, over-fizzy pop. At least I was able to have a couple of decent (if expensive) beers when we returned to Isaac’s. We spent a little more time there before our money ran out, and left just as a stripper was being arranged…
(She didn’t turn up in the end, as it happens.)
In other news: last week I was mainly feeling ill; quite nastily ill in fact. I was fine over the weekend but woke up on Monday morning with that ‘hungover-for-no-reason’ feeling which immediately I dismissed as the symptoms of de-hydration. We went about our business as usual and in the afternoon, it being my day off and us being low on provisions, we set off to go shopping at Asda and Aldi. Asda was incredibly busy; perhaps everyone in the area had exhausted their larders over the weekend and needed to stock up and with it being the half-term holiday a high percentage of those shoppers had their children with them and the aisles were virtually jammed as people and their trolleys circled each other like so many mutated, geriatric Daleks milling around their metallic city on Skaro. It was while we were nudging our way around Asda like this that I remarked to Drew that I was experiencing sharp, stabbing pains in my gut, but that I put this down to being hungry more than anything. I winced every now and then, not that anyone would have noticed, and got on with the shopping. From Asda we drove to the Aldi store at that end of town (we usually go to the other one) for a few more things, and where we witnessed a living advert for why women with fat, very flabby and mottled arms shouldn’t wear sleeveless t-shirts and fake-fur gilets, and then returned home. By the time we got into the house I was ready for the loo.
Then 20 minutes later I was ready again…
Repeat regularly for many, many hours.
So, after a night with little sleep and so long spent in the bathroom that I contemplated sitting on the toilet and leaning on the towel rail just so I could doze, I didn’t go to work on either Tuesday or Wednesday. Not surprisingly I ate virtually nothing for 48 hours, until Drew made me two boiled eggs with toasty soldiers on Wednesday evening. By the time I went to work on Thursday morning I’d lost a quarter of a stone. The weight loss is quite nice, but I would rather have found another way of achieving it.
Even now, several days later, I can’t stomach (ha!) the thought of a great deal of food at once. If I’ve learnt to eat less, and I know I eat too much in one sitting, then that’s no bad thing. When my appetite returns properly, I must keep it under control.
I don’t read enough these days. There, I’ve admitted in print. There was a time when I would devour books, sometimes several a week, all subjects considered. Then I developed a social life and then, some years later, I got the internet. Reading real, on paper and in your hands stuff, dwindled away to little more than newspapers, Heat and the occasional history or factual book. I can’t have read more than 6 novels in 10 years, partly because I find that I can predict very early on exactly how the plot is going to develop and just how the book will end (I do check this, by the way) - the very same thing that stops me watching certain television series or films. Perhaps that’s why I prefer science-fiction as a genre, because it tends to stay away from the limited permutations that the “modern” novel has to offer. Similarly I have enjoyed classic novels such as “Northanger Abbey,” one of the funniest books I’ve ever read. A brilliant exception to the “modern novel” rule is “Something Might Happen” by Julie Myerson, the praises of which I have sung before. Myerson’s plot is not at all predictable although there was a stinging realisation of horror towards the very end of it when I guessed something tragic was going to happen, but this was at the end and not in the first chapter or two and that makes all the difference.
I’m currently re-reading Judith Flander’s “The Victorian House” in which she explores every aspect of life in every permutation of the household during that period. It’s a fascinating read; crammed with information but not in such a way as to make you feel you can’t absorb it all. The Victorian house builders, more than any other perhaps, have left an indelible mark on this country. Incredible amounts of people live, still, in Victorian houses thanks to the massive building plans of the 19th and early 20th century authorities. If you’re interested in such things then I highly recommend this book.
Drew recently answered the phone to a cold-caller who, although he beat around the bush before he got to his point, was selling subscriptions to the Daily Telegraph. It never occurred to me that newspapers employed this sort of tactic to boost sales, but there you go. Drew explained that we read it if we were at my parents (my Dad gets it daily, as well as the Sunday Telegraph) but that we read most of our newspapers online. I approach it like this: I have bookmarked The Guardian, The Independent, The Telegraph, The Daily Mail and (cue horror-film type music) The Sun (and their various Sunday versions, including The Observer which is basically The Sunday Guardian in everything but name.) I visit these every day, along with the BBC News website and on seeing a story I want to read further click on the link to open in a new “tab.” So I’ll read anything from concerns about the Pakistan election to Britney Spears having left a shop without paying for a top, as I have done today. Often I read the various papers’ take on the same story, which can be interesting as they’re all politically biased in one or another (even the Independent) no matter how subtly that might be. The tabloids can be a bit like being shouted at in a small room by some moron who thinks you’re an idiot but, hey, it can make a change from the sometimes sanctimonious broadsheets. Quite often I venture onto the website of Melbourne Age, partly to get the Australian slant on things and partly because I like to know what’s going on where my sister lives, and less frequently to the New York Times where I usually read their reports about things European/British because it’s interesting to get a distant point of view. Australian coverage of European and British news is much familiar, probably because of the massive ex-pat population - it’s clear from the articles that the author assumes the reader is already au fait with his or her subject, whereas the New York Times has often to define what it being referred to by “translating” it into something more familiar with an American reader.
I left our local paper, The Evening Star, off my list. I visit the website daily, to glance over the headlines and click on the occasional story and to look at the vacancies, but I find it very weak indeed. Also there’s quite an unpleasant right-wing slant to it at times, which probably says more about its readership than anything else. It’s won several awards in the last 10 years, which doesn’t say much for the standards of other local papers I fear. Still, it serves it purpose. I’m just a snob, I suppose.
I’m nothing if not a creature of habit. So as I said I read the papers in the morning before I go to work, then, when I get home of an evening, I warm up the computer and go first to Perez Hilton, then to Go Fug Yourself, then all the blogs I read or contribute to, before popping over to the aforementioned Evening Star. After that it’s eBay, the Radio Times listings to see what’s on and from there on in anything goes. Lovely.
So I do still read quite a lot, just not so often from the printed page.
Well, I’m knackered so it’s time for the end of the Doctor Who story “Brain of Morbious” on flickery long-play, a cup of tea and then bed.
More soon. Ish.
Oh, P.S. - Heather MM was quote two, under the very “charming” headline, “Rumpy Stumpy.” Nice.
Which of the following statements, plucked from Sunday newspapers last week (not this), refers to Heather Mills McCartney?
1) She could drink tea from a teacup and looked good for an ape.
2) She has a very unusual erogenous zone - her stump. I used to massage one particular sensitive area of it and give her an orgasm!
Answers later on. Betcha can’t wait, huh?
Firstly thanks for all the advice and comments on my last post. We’re going to peruse some advice-type websites and I’m going to research a new bank account, although having done so before I haven’t been with my current bank long enough to be accepted and prior to them I didn’t have a bank account of my own for 5 years and so can’t provide the relevant information. First Direct is an attractive prospect but I don’t bring home even their minimum acceptable amount for them to consider me, so they’re out of the picture.
Domestically we’ve embarked on a month-long experiment of turning off and completely unplugging everything we’re not using, using different lights and most of the time instead of having the nightstore heater on in the front room we’ve just been giving the room a 2 or 3 minute blast of the very effective fan heater Drew bought at Christmas time… and wearing more clothes about the place, too (although over the past very cold day or so the heater is back on.) This could have some good results. Hope so. More environmentally friendly, too.
To other matters, then. Since last I wrote we’ve been quite busy with one thing or another, hence the lack of writing even though I fully intended to keep more up-to-date (as usual.) The very last thing I wrote was that we were off to a friend’s stag do. I have to admit that I was a tad anxious about this because aside from the stag, a friend from my work and a lad that Drew used to work with before he was ill we knew no one who would be there. I don’t feel comfortable in all-male groups as a rule, not even all-gay all-male groups, you see, and not only that but we were due to play pool at one of the last vestiges of the way the docks used to be before it began to transform into the “marina” it is now, though I preferred this option to the original intention which had been to go bowling, something we weren’t able to do because the bowling alley wouldn’t let the group book any lanes without children under 14 being present. Not surprisingly, there were none. The last time I had been in a pool club was in the bar for a wedding reception rather than the pool part, so I’d never experienced the full-on pool effect and as their dodgy reputations are well-known (yes, I’m horribly middle class) I was a little nervous. Anyway, we met up with everyone at Isaac’s, the pub on the quayside and once everyone was assembled and had enjoyed a pint, or preferred equivalent, we trudged the short distance to the pool place.
I expect that it has its moments, as does anywhere with alcohol on sale, but I have to say that from the moment we walked into the bar of the pool place I relaxed. You couldn’t call it smart, but it was quite homely in its own way. The television was showing some rugby match or other, and other than our gang of about 16 there was barely anyone else there which I put down to the fact that Ipswich Town were playing at home, but even after the match it didn’t fill up much. The last time I had played pool must have been back in the early 9os, so I was quite surprised to be able to pot a few balls. However this success was short-lived as I followed my usual pattern of being rather stiff and nervous at first, becoming relaxed as the first couple of pints kicked in and consequently playing okay before further alcohol and complacency leads to rubbishness. But it was thoroughly enjoyable, that’s the main thing. I didn’t drink too much there because a) we had very little money between us and b) there was only lager and to me, after years of choosing real ale, it’s like drinking flavourless, over-fizzy pop. At least I was able to have a couple of decent (if expensive) beers when we returned to Isaac’s. We spent a little more time there before our money ran out, and left just as a stripper was being arranged…
(She didn’t turn up in the end, as it happens.)
In other news: last week I was mainly feeling ill; quite nastily ill in fact. I was fine over the weekend but woke up on Monday morning with that ‘hungover-for-no-reason’ feeling which immediately I dismissed as the symptoms of de-hydration. We went about our business as usual and in the afternoon, it being my day off and us being low on provisions, we set off to go shopping at Asda and Aldi. Asda was incredibly busy; perhaps everyone in the area had exhausted their larders over the weekend and needed to stock up and with it being the half-term holiday a high percentage of those shoppers had their children with them and the aisles were virtually jammed as people and their trolleys circled each other like so many mutated, geriatric Daleks milling around their metallic city on Skaro. It was while we were nudging our way around Asda like this that I remarked to Drew that I was experiencing sharp, stabbing pains in my gut, but that I put this down to being hungry more than anything. I winced every now and then, not that anyone would have noticed, and got on with the shopping. From Asda we drove to the Aldi store at that end of town (we usually go to the other one) for a few more things, and where we witnessed a living advert for why women with fat, very flabby and mottled arms shouldn’t wear sleeveless t-shirts and fake-fur gilets, and then returned home. By the time we got into the house I was ready for the loo.
Then 20 minutes later I was ready again…
Repeat regularly for many, many hours.
So, after a night with little sleep and so long spent in the bathroom that I contemplated sitting on the toilet and leaning on the towel rail just so I could doze, I didn’t go to work on either Tuesday or Wednesday. Not surprisingly I ate virtually nothing for 48 hours, until Drew made me two boiled eggs with toasty soldiers on Wednesday evening. By the time I went to work on Thursday morning I’d lost a quarter of a stone. The weight loss is quite nice, but I would rather have found another way of achieving it.
Even now, several days later, I can’t stomach (ha!) the thought of a great deal of food at once. If I’ve learnt to eat less, and I know I eat too much in one sitting, then that’s no bad thing. When my appetite returns properly, I must keep it under control.
I don’t read enough these days. There, I’ve admitted in print. There was a time when I would devour books, sometimes several a week, all subjects considered. Then I developed a social life and then, some years later, I got the internet. Reading real, on paper and in your hands stuff, dwindled away to little more than newspapers, Heat and the occasional history or factual book. I can’t have read more than 6 novels in 10 years, partly because I find that I can predict very early on exactly how the plot is going to develop and just how the book will end (I do check this, by the way) - the very same thing that stops me watching certain television series or films. Perhaps that’s why I prefer science-fiction as a genre, because it tends to stay away from the limited permutations that the “modern” novel has to offer. Similarly I have enjoyed classic novels such as “Northanger Abbey,” one of the funniest books I’ve ever read. A brilliant exception to the “modern novel” rule is “Something Might Happen” by Julie Myerson, the praises of which I have sung before. Myerson’s plot is not at all predictable although there was a stinging realisation of horror towards the very end of it when I guessed something tragic was going to happen, but this was at the end and not in the first chapter or two and that makes all the difference.
I’m currently re-reading Judith Flander’s “The Victorian House” in which she explores every aspect of life in every permutation of the household during that period. It’s a fascinating read; crammed with information but not in such a way as to make you feel you can’t absorb it all. The Victorian house builders, more than any other perhaps, have left an indelible mark on this country. Incredible amounts of people live, still, in Victorian houses thanks to the massive building plans of the 19th and early 20th century authorities. If you’re interested in such things then I highly recommend this book.
Drew recently answered the phone to a cold-caller who, although he beat around the bush before he got to his point, was selling subscriptions to the Daily Telegraph. It never occurred to me that newspapers employed this sort of tactic to boost sales, but there you go. Drew explained that we read it if we were at my parents (my Dad gets it daily, as well as the Sunday Telegraph) but that we read most of our newspapers online. I approach it like this: I have bookmarked The Guardian, The Independent, The Telegraph, The Daily Mail and (cue horror-film type music) The Sun (and their various Sunday versions, including The Observer which is basically The Sunday Guardian in everything but name.) I visit these every day, along with the BBC News website and on seeing a story I want to read further click on the link to open in a new “tab.” So I’ll read anything from concerns about the Pakistan election to Britney Spears having left a shop without paying for a top, as I have done today. Often I read the various papers’ take on the same story, which can be interesting as they’re all politically biased in one or another (even the Independent) no matter how subtly that might be. The tabloids can be a bit like being shouted at in a small room by some moron who thinks you’re an idiot but, hey, it can make a change from the sometimes sanctimonious broadsheets. Quite often I venture onto the website of Melbourne Age, partly to get the Australian slant on things and partly because I like to know what’s going on where my sister lives, and less frequently to the New York Times where I usually read their reports about things European/British because it’s interesting to get a distant point of view. Australian coverage of European and British news is much familiar, probably because of the massive ex-pat population - it’s clear from the articles that the author assumes the reader is already au fait with his or her subject, whereas the New York Times has often to define what it being referred to by “translating” it into something more familiar with an American reader.
I left our local paper, The Evening Star, off my list. I visit the website daily, to glance over the headlines and click on the occasional story and to look at the vacancies, but I find it very weak indeed. Also there’s quite an unpleasant right-wing slant to it at times, which probably says more about its readership than anything else. It’s won several awards in the last 10 years, which doesn’t say much for the standards of other local papers I fear. Still, it serves it purpose. I’m just a snob, I suppose.
I’m nothing if not a creature of habit. So as I said I read the papers in the morning before I go to work, then, when I get home of an evening, I warm up the computer and go first to Perez Hilton, then to Go Fug Yourself, then all the blogs I read or contribute to, before popping over to the aforementioned Evening Star. After that it’s eBay, the Radio Times listings to see what’s on and from there on in anything goes. Lovely.
So I do still read quite a lot, just not so often from the printed page.
Well, I’m knackered so it’s time for the end of the Doctor Who story “Brain of Morbious” on flickery long-play, a cup of tea and then bed.
More soon. Ish.
Oh, P.S. - Heather MM was quote two, under the very “charming” headline, “Rumpy Stumpy.” Nice.