Head Rambles

Grandad October 31st, 2008

On the whole, I quite like children.

Provided they are quiet, polite, aren’t the spawn of Skobies or tourists and generally keep out of my way, I get on very well with them.

Tonight is, of course, their night.

Usually I just lock the gates and electrify the door knocker [for those who are rude enough to climb over the gates] but tonight I thought it was time for a treat.

Earlier this morning, I called down to the chemist.  Out the back of the shop, there is a skip where they fling all the disused drugs, and I had a grand old root around in it.  I found some very interesting stuff.  I brought some samples home, and have been grinding them up.  I’m not sure exactly what they are, as most of them weren’t labelled, but there are loads of tablets and a few bottles of interesting liquids that I used to make a solution out of the resulting powder.

I shall spend the afternoon injecting the results into various bits of fruit.

I think the local children should be grateful.  They certainly will be happy.  A few of the boys might develop breasts which will give them endless amusement in the cold winter nights.  Doubtless, I will cure a lot of sniffles and coughs that they may have, and if they don’t, they’ll be immune for the rest of the winter.

Life should be interesting in the neighbourhood tomorrow as all the various side effects kick in.

I can’t wait.

• Around the house
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Grandad October 30th, 2008

It’s a miserable day outside today.

It isn’t even November yet, but yesterday it snowed, and today it is cold, grey, wet and windy.

I have the central heating on.  To top it up, I have the portable gas fire running too.  Despite the double glazing and the insulation, I still have a chill in my feet.  I suppose it’s old age again…

We last got a fill of oil in Spring, but the light on the gauge is flashing, which means we are down to the last bit, and it’s nearly time to order again.

One of the great imponderables for a retiree is the future cost of heating oil.  Is it going to get so expensive that it becomes a luxury rather than a necessity? 

But now I’m starting to wonder just how much a necessity it is?  If we had to do without it, life would be damned uncomfortable, but would it be fatal?

Fifty years ago when I was growing up, central heating was something you would find in school, or some other institution.  It usually consisted of massive four inch iron pipes running around the skirting to huge radiators.  Out the back, you’d find the boiler house, which was coal fired.  Domestic central heating was unheard of.

Our house was a fairly ordinary house.  It had fireplaces in each room, but the upstairs ones were never lit.  Heating consisted of a coal fire in the sitting room and a small cast iron range in the kitchen.  For spot heating we had an old portable paraffin stove that was dragged out if someone was confined to bed, or whatever, and a couple of electric heaters whose elements were always burning out.

Winter night times were the worst.  The bedrooms would be colder than a politician’s heart, and we would wear our socks to bed.  There were plenty of hot water bottles and if the worst came to the worst, I used to rob my father’s overcoat to throw over the bed.  Frequently in the mornings, ice would have formed inside the windows.  Double glazing was another invention of the future.  We put up with it and made sure all doors were closed at all times.

It was uncomfortable all right, but as there was no alternative, we didn’t complain.  We were also a hell of a lot tougher and healthier.

I often wonder what would happen if the modern generations had to put up with the life we had? 

Doubtless there would be endless complaints.  They would cry that they can’t possibly live under those primitive conditions.

Wimps.   

• Times past
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Grandad October 29th, 2008

Things are beginning to move, and we are not talking laxatives here.

They talk about films having working titles, but The Book has a working cover.  It may stay like this or it may change.

It will be hitting the shelves in January, but in the meantime, it has appeared on Amazon. You heard it here first.

There is a prolific writer in Amazon with the same name.  He’s a shrink, so if I accidentally get a few of his nutcases followers buying the book then I may go into the psychiatry business.  Who knows?

There are a couple of things that annoy me about the cover.  One is that I have a fine head of hair for my age.  The other is that they insisted on putting Yer Man’s name on it.  He that does my typing for me.  I have forgiven them though as my name is in bigger letters than his.

As for its contents? 

I don’t know.

I haven’t read it yet.

• The Book
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Grandad October 28th, 2008

Maybe it’s my age, but I just cannot understand this obsession with mobile phones.

I carry one with me because I do find it convenient sometimes.  There are times when I call around to someone and I forget where they live so I ring them and they tell me.  Then there is the odd occasion when I am in the chemist and I forget whether Herself is on the 600mg or the 800mg of Valium, so I ring her and she tells me.  It’s also quite handy if I’m up the mountains, and the car breaks down so I can call Spanner to come and give me a tow back home.

There is an advertisement on the television for one of these new fangled phones, and one of the features they shout about is that you can “order those tickets wherever you are”.  I have been trying unsuccessfully to come up with some scenario where I am wandering around somewhere and I suddenly think “Shit!  I must order those tickets immediately.  It can’t wait until I get home.”  And when would I conceivably want to browse the Interweb as a matter of urgency?

My phone can connect to the Interweb.  I tried it once, and it worked for about five minutes before it cleaned out my account.  The sites I visited were fiddly and virtually unusable, and I certainly didn’t learn anything that made the exercise worthwhile.  I haven’t used it for that since.  I cannot envisage any scenario where I will have to use it in the future.

Then there is Twitter.

Twitter is so far outside my realms of understanding that I have to ignore it, else I’d go insane.

I signed up for Twitter, because everyone is going on about it, and I wanted to see what it was about.  As far as I can gather, I am supposed to send text messages from my phone saying things like “I am just having a dump” or “This pint is nice and creamy”.  Who gives a flying fuck what I’m doing?  Why would I feel the need to broadcast it anyway?  Am I so dissatisfied with my own company that I feel the urge to share every moment with everyone?  If I want to tell someone something, then all I have to do is phone them, or at least send them a text message.  Why do I need to know that someone is “Fiddling with my blog post” or “Waiting to board for me flight to nyc”?

headrambles @everyone Get a fucking life.

• Rants
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Grandad October 27th, 2008

A month ago, I wrote about the wild guinea pig in the garden.

Life has moved on a bit since then.

He was captured, and became a she.  This was not one of your operations that we don’t discuss publicly; it was more a case of discovery.

The problem then arose as to what we were to call this little turd on legs.  The honour fell on Sixty who suggested ‘Minnie Pig’.  This was rather appropriate, as Puppychild calls them mini-pigs as a generic term.

The general idea was that Minnie was to go and live with our K8’s pair [of guinea pigs – no smart comments, please].  This however didn’t work out.  The vet says that K8’s pair should eventually make a reasonable physical recovery, but he can’t answer for the aftermath of the trauma.  So Minnie is now living with us.

Apparently guinea pigs are social animals and like company.  We had notions of getting a companion, but I just couldn’t bother my arse driving around looking for a petshop.  She’s only a fucking animal after all.  So she now lives in splendid isolation in our kitchen, so that she is nice and handy should we run out of meat.

Things have developed since then, however.

We got into the habit of letting her out for a couple of hours for a bit of a run around.  This would be fine, but Minnie seems to have taken a bit of an aversion to Herself.  There is no violence involved, but frequently my evening nap is interrupted by a shriek of “Jesus! The little fucker has pissed on me again”.  Minnie is quite subtle about displaying her feelings apparently.

What about Sandy, you ask. 

Here is where the new development comes in.

There was a bit of curiosity when the two first met, and I had the tranquiliser gun at the ready.  I didn’t need it however as Minnie came to a decision.  Having already gone through a gender reassignment, she went through a species reassignment.  She has now decided she is a Minnie Puppy.  She has adopted Sandy as her mother.  Fortunately, Sandy has adopted Minnie as her long lost daughter, so the two now spend the evenings in mutual admiration.

There is a ritual now.  Sandy will curl up on the couch, and Minnie will run over.  Sandy then proceeds to wash Minnie, until she is wringing wet and all her hair is standing on end and glistening with slobber.  Minnie then runs over for a quick piss on Herself and then returns for another wash.  A very cosy scene.

I’m very fond of Sandy, so all this has disrupted our gastronomic plans.

I could never eat Sandy’s daughter.

Not yet, anyway.

• The Family
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Grandad October 26th, 2008

Here we go again.

Twice a year they manage to screw up my body clock so I don’t know what time it is.  It also leads to the same conversation every time -

“What time is it?” says Herself.

“Six.”

“It feels later than that?”

“That’s because it’s seven.”

“But you said it was six?”

“This time yesterday it was seven, but now it’s six.”

“So what time is it really?”

And so on…

In times past, changing the clocks was a relatively simple affair.  You twiddled a knob, or you moved the hands.  Now everything is fucking digital.  And there are ten times as many clocks around the house.

When I was a kid, we had two clocks in the house, and my parents had wristwatches,  That was it.

Now I have to change my watch, my mobile phone, the VCR, the oven, the microwave, the tin opener, the clock in the car, the timer on the heating and a load of others that I always forget.  And the bastards who make digital stuff never copped onto the idea of going backwards, so every clock has to be set forward by 23 hours.

I think it was back in the 70s, someone had the brave idea of dropping all this crap and leaving the clocks as the were.  It was great.  No clocks to be changed and no jetlag in the morning.  But the farmers complained.  Like death and taxes, the one immutable fact of life is that the farmers will complain about anything.  I think they moaned because they had to get up in the dark to milk the cows.   I never knew that cows ran on Greenwich Mean Time?  I always thought they followed a more natural rhythm.

Anyway, we are back to the farce.  We are back to the dark and dismal evenings, because all the valuable daylight hours have been shoved forward to be wasted in the morning when I’m still asleep.

There is a very simple solution to all of this messing around.

Everyone knows that the sun rises in the east, and that countries to the east of us are already enjoying daylight, while the sky here is only beginning to glow.

If you want brighter mornings, then all you have to do is move east.

Fuck off to Iraq.

• Rambles
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