Head Rambles

Grandad November 26th, 2007

I woke early this morning.

That happens quite often.  It comes with age.  And it meant I could get some work done.

So I fired up my trusty Remington and waited for the usual clatter of spam arriving in my in-tray. 

Nothing happened.

I went to visit my favourite porn news site.

Nothing happened.

My Interweb connection is deceased.  It is no more.  It is an extinct link.

I rang my broadband company.  I went through the usual – press 1 for this and 2 for that, several times.

Eventually, I got a recorded voice saying that my area was suffering from a ‘slight degradation in service’.  What?  A degradation is a degrading,  a lowering in standard, not quite up to par.  Saying my service is slightly degraded is like saying that the Titanic is floating a little low in the water, or that the sun is a little less bright at midnight.

My connection is suffering from a ‘slight degradation in service for three four five six seven eight hours now.  So much for getting my work done.  I managed to get some work done here, but it’s funny how cut off I feel.

If the service doesn’t come back soon, I’m going to have to put this in an envelope and post it to the website. 

And then I’ll go and slightly degrade all the windows in their office.

…..

Oh!  It’s back!!

Guess what the first thing is to arrive in my in-tray?

Yup!

An Invoice from my broadband supplier.

So that’s why they fixed it so promptly…

• Internet
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Grandad November 25th, 2007

I went down to the village yesterday.

I bought my week’s supply of tobacco from a very nice young lady in the tobacconist.

Of course she was foreign, and her English was good, except that her pronunciation of numbers wasn’t that hot.  But that didn’t matter as long as I wasn’t overcharged.

I gave her my ubiquitous piece of plastic, which she passed to another girl who was nearer the card reader.

The other girl was also foreign.

She asked the first girl how much to charge.  She didn’t understand the reply.  Things started to get worrying when they started communicating in sign language, frantically waving fingers at each other.  There again, they may just have been telling each other to f*ck off?

Anyway, in the end the first girl had to print off a receipt to hand to the second girl, just so she could know how much to charge.

I paid the correct amount and left.

It’s no wonder the world’s financial markets are in such a mess……

• Around the village
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Grandad November 24th, 2007

I have a good friend called Jonathan.

I have known him for some years now.

On February 29th 1996 he and his wife had a baby son called Jack.  A Leap Year Baby.

Sadly, Jack had severe problems almost from birth.

I quote from their website…

The senior pediatrician in the hospital was brutal but most honest. Asked for a route map of care for Jack once he left their intensive care unit, he made it clear that there were simply no services in Ireland available to a baby like Jack. Indeed he cautioned that inadvertently Jack’s needs would threaten the marriage and certainly damage the childhood of his healthy brothers and sister. To escape this trap he advised the only way out was to take him home, then get him admitted to one of the children’s hospitals, pack his little bag and take him to the hospital knowing that they were going to abandon him. Then and only then would the State have to take responsibility for him.

Jonathan and his wife Mary Ann, couldn’t just abandon Jack to the state, so they brought him home.

They had a terrible time with lack of sleep, and no help whatsoever.  The state refused to grant any kind of aid.  So they were left to cope by themselves.

Jack died after 22 months.

Most people would grieve and move on.  But not Jonathan.  He was determined that no other parents of severely disabled children should suffer like he and Mary Ann suffered.  So he set up the Jack and Jill Foundation to provide respite care for other parents.

Since then, he has worked tirelessly.  He always keeps a low profile, so few know his name. But the Jack and Jill Foundation goes from strength to strength, as sadly, its services are much in demand.

I have witnessed first-hand the work they do, and they are literally a lifeline for parents.  They do fantastic work.

But unfortunately that work costs a lot, and they depend almost entirely on voluntary contributions and fundraising.

I do what I can for them, but I am asking you to do something for me….

• Go and ask your parents for your inheritance now.
• Go rob a bank.
• Go mug a granny [but not a grandad].
• ‘Borrow’ someone’s credit card.
• Be inventive

Make a donation.

Every little helps

• Uncategorized
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Grandad November 23rd, 2007

Last night I mixed the grain and the grape, which is something they say you should never do.

They’re right. Whoever ‘they’ are.

I have a slight hangover.

Yesterday was a little cause for celebration. And for those of you who think I’ve gone all American and am talking about Thanksgiving, I’m not.

-oOo-

I got an email recently.

Its subject line was “Would you be interested in writing a book?”

Very f*cking funny! TAT is in the habit of making hoax phone calls and sending e-mails, and this looked just like one of his. I binned it.

Later, I went back to it, just out of curiosity. I did some checking. It didn’t come from TAT’s mail. So I replied to it and asked what they really wanted.

They wrote back and said they wanted a book. They seemed to be sane. They seemed to be serious. They even had a website, and I had heard of them.

They eventually persuaded me they were serious. They really do want me to write a book. I told them they were mad.

I told them I knew nothing about writing books. They said that it was easy, and that they had read Head Rambles and I could do it. So I told them that that was like saying that I could climb Killiney Hill, therefore I could climb Everest. They told me not to be daft. I threw a hissy fit because everyone one knows that authors are allowed to be temperamental.

So the e-mails started flying backwards and forwards. I began to hear about New Title Meetings and stuff like that. It was all rather surreal.

Then they sent me a contract. It was full of stuff about copyright and circulation rights and film rights. The last bit worried me in case they decided to cast Tom Cruise in the part of Grandad. I couldn’t have that. I hate the little w*nk*r. So I had to insist on a ‘No Tom Cruise’ clause.

Yesterday, I signed the contract.

This means a lot of changes in my life.

I have to start drinking heavily. I have to start calling people ‘Daarling’. I have to adopt an air of mysterious indifference in company. I have to learn to spell. I might even persuade Herself to let me buy a new laptop as this one is getting stroppy.

Of course, the ultimate would be an invite onto the Late Late, where I would insist on calling Kenny ‘Plank’ all the time. But I can’t see that happening.

It’s all a bit weird and mind blowing.

I only have one problem now…….

What the f*ck am I going to write about?

-oOo-

Last night, I went to the Golden Spiders thingy, with K8 the GR8.

First they poured the wine into us, but I’m not really a wine person so I went onto the Guinness [that turned out to be a mistake].

Then K8 and I went out for a smoke and got chatting to a bloke. I told him I knew I’d seen his face somewhere before and asked him who he was. He didn’t seem too pleased with this as he was the host for the night – Jason Byrne. I told him who I was and he then realised he was in the presence of one of The Greats, so all was well.

We found we were sharing a table with Cully of Cully and Sully fame. I had already met Sully, so it was nice to complete the set. And he had brought a bevy of beautiful women, and I had the beautiful K8 with me so we were already attracting a bit of attention.

After dinner, Jason Byrne and Glenda Gilsen came on and they presented the awards.

When they called out Head Rambles for best blog, I must admit I was very surprised, but delighted because I fancied a chance to grope Glenda Gilsen.

So I hopped up on the stage, made an improper suggestion to Glenda and got her phone number. That’s why she is looking so pleased.

Then Cully and Sully won their category, and then they won the Grand Prix.

So our table ended up with three spiders. An arachnophobe’s nightmare.

Our table was mobbed with well wishers and groupies, and Cully bought loads of champagne. People kept asking to see my pipe [?] and everyone wanted to be photographed with three spiders. They tried to interview me for television, but when they asked my opinion of the Golden Spider Awards, I got a fit of the giggles and told them about the Golden Crab Awards. I don’t think they’ll televise that.

Then the ‘entertainment’ came on.

Jayzus!!!!!!

I have heard Concorde take off. The ‘group’ were three times as loud and not as melodic. I was deafened, and all conversation ceased. K8 and I resorted to passing notes.

We went home then, and I had a large whiskey to calm the nerves.

I have to decide today what to do with my spider. Herself doesn’t like spiders, and she won’t have it in the house.

I might plant it in the garden to frighten off stray cats.

• Cully & Sully , Rambles , The Book
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Grandad November 22nd, 2007

I have been following a series over on Manuel’s site at Well Done Fillet.

It has been giving me nightmares.

He has been running a wee series on the Christmas Office Party – that most horrendous of events in the business year.

It always seemed to start around July, when someone would pipe up "What are we doing about the Christmas Party this year".  There would be howls of protest ["Aw,Jayzus - it's f*cking July, for f*ck's sake"], but the machinery would be set in motion.  The fights would start.  The younger crowd would want to go drinking and dancing, and the older crowd would just want to get drunk.  So there would be pitched battles as to the type of venue.

Then there was the location.  There were always pitched battles over that too, as staff came from all over the eastern half of the country.  And everyone wanted it in their own patch.

The party itself was sheer hell.  We all had only one thing in common – work.  So what did we talk about? Yes.  Work.

Office parties always brought out the worst in people.  The bossy ones became bossier and the shy ones usually ended up in tears in the jax [toilet].

There was always some pervert who used to go around groping the secretaries behind the filing cabinets, but then I had to do something to pass the time.  Didn’t I?

The one good thing about the party that I used to enjoy was going around telling everyone [especially the boss] what utter w*nk*rs they were.  If they remembered the next day [which was unlikely], I would deny it and say it was someone else.  I started some great post-party fights that way.

One other nice side effect was that for about four weeks after the party, no one would talk to anyone else, so we used to have peace in the office.

• work
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