Archive for 2008

364 days

December 26th, 2008

I survived.

It was touch and go at one stage, but at my age, the act of survival is a victory in itself.

It was a quiet Christmas.

Only five empty whiskey bottles, one empty Guinness keg and a partridge in a pear tree.

Dinner was lovely.  I never knew reindeer was so nice.  I don’t know which one it was.  Rudolf?  Dancer? Vixen?  Who cares.

Santa is currently on a gurney down in the local hospital.  Doubtless he’ll be there until Easter at least, knowing our health system.  He should consider himself lucky to have survived the missile attack with only two broken legs, a ruptured spleen and 90% burns.

Only 364 days until Christmas.

Where is the snow?

December 24th, 2008

Bother.

I have just realised that it’s Christmas Eve.

I have feck all done, so I suppose I had better make a start.

All I have to do today is put up the tree, have a whiskey, gather holly and ivy, have a whiskey, decorate the gaff, have a whiskey, feed the animals, have a whiskey, and do the shopping.

Maybe then I’ll relax and have a whiskey.

No blogging today – I won’t have the time.  And I won’t have time to go around all the other sites that got suckered into got involved in The Blogmas Carol and leave comments.  I feel bad about that, though I did read them all.  Good craic.

I have just taken a stroll around the estate.

The birds are singing, and there was a bee gathering nectar off a bush.  It is calm and mild.  It is very pleasant.

Where the fuck is this “ideal Christmas” that those advertising bastards keep ramming down our throats?

Why do they persist on depicting snow?  Why is it always night time?  Have these fuckers never stuck their heads outside their arses to look at the real world? 

Anyway, in case I’m not around for the next day or two….

Have a good one.

Don’t eat too much.

Drink as much as you like [and a bit more].

Try not to kill the In-Laws.

Peace be with you all.

A Blogmas Carol

December 23rd, 2008

blogmas

Continuing the epic tale of A Blogmas Carol.

If you have been reading in sequence, you will already have visited

Thriftcriminal

Rick O’Shea

Whoopsadaisy

Maxi Cane

Will Knott

Darren Byrne

Rapture Ponies

Chris P Pancake

Darragh Doyle

K8 The Gr8

Lottie

YOU ARE HERE

Someone living

Jo

H

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What am I?

Where am I?

Everything is dark, and I am surrounded by metal.  There are muffled sounds of laughter and jollity and a faint sound of music.

Suddenly my world [whatever it is] is thrown into chaos as my metal space rises into the air and I am shaken around violently.  There are loud sound of tearing and light floods into my world.

I realise that I am in the cab of a clockwork railway engine, but I am sitting on the roof, as the engine is upside down. I am still being shaken all over the place as the wrapping is removed from whatever I’m in, and I crack my head on a sharp corner.  I am getting annoyed.

I peer out the window, and there is a snotty kid looking at me with a big grin on his face.  I would take an instant dislike to him, but he looks so happy.  He carefully places me on some track, and I bang my head on the controls again.

This is more like it!

The kid sticks a big key in the side of the engine, and winds it up. 

“Come on, Kid!” I yell, “Give it loads!”

I don’t know whether he hears me or not, but he winds the clockwork to the full, and pulls the key. 

This is my moment.  I always wanted to drive a train, and here I am, on the footplate of a fully wound engine, and ahead of me the track runs off into the distance across the carpet.

I release the brake and open the regulator to its fullest.  With a roar, we head off, under a chair and out the other side.  I can hear people laughing and cheering above the roar of the wind in my ears.  This is great.

As I rattle under the dining table, I suddenly realist that the stupid little prat has put a sharp bend in the line.  It’s too late to brake so I just hope for the best.  Sure enough, the bend is too sharp and I take to the air. 

Luckily, the dog is having a quiet nap near the track, and we land squarely on his stomach.  It is a nice soft landing but the dog isn’t too pleased to have a locomotive land on him.  He retires to the kitchen in a sulk.

The little boy is laughing so much that I actually begin to worry about him.  He shouts in a high voice “This is the best Christmas present EVER!”

I forgive him his rotten engineering, especially as he places the engine back on the track and hooks on a load of carriages.

This time I’m a little more cautious, but soon we are barrelling along the track. 

Once again I feel the exhilaration of speed and revel in the click of the wheels on the track.  I knock a Christmas cracker flying that someone had left lying by the track.  The carriages behind me add to the noise and I open the throttle a bit more.

We go roaring through the doorway out into the hall.

Too late I realise the little bugger has run out of track and there is nowhere to go, except full tilt into the bottom of the stairs.

Ah well!  I always wanted to drive my own train, so as Christmas’ go, it’s a good one.

With a glorious crash, we pile into the step and carriages fly in all directions. 

I am thrown into the air.

I wonder where I’ll land?

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To be continued

Giving The Other Fella a Tablet

December 23rd, 2008

The Other Fella is in foul mood today.

I was too, but when I saw him, I cheered up.

He was up half the night playing with his computers, and I haven’t heard language like it since Herself fell into the slurry pit.

I asked him what was up, and he started swearing about hackers and viruses and things.  Apparently a couple of his sites were done yesterday.  He ain’t a happy camper.

One of the sites was the Jack and Jill Foundation.  I admit I was annoyed when I heard that, as I have a bit of a soft spot for them.  That’s why I link to them from this site.

I was thinking about Jack and Jill only yesterday as Mulley wrote about them [fair play to him].  Maybe it was Mulley who attacked the site?

Mulley is giving away all sorts of goodies in return for helping Jack and Jill.

NokiaTablet

I’d nearly fancy one of those toys.

So get your arses over to Mulley and read all about it.

Say you came from here.

I might even give The Other Fella my prize.

I might cheer the miserable sod up a bit.

I am saving the world

December 22nd, 2008

Any day now Herself is going to start nagging me about decorating the house.

This usually involves going out to the field and hacking down a few bushes and dragging them indoors.  Fun, but messy.

Then there are the lights.

Those lights have it in for me.  I hate the fucking things.

And if anyone mentions the word “Scrooge” I’ll ram a fistful of holly up their arse.

Every year I spend about three hours untangling them because they always manage to wrap themselves into knots, no matter how neatly I pack them.

Having untangled them, I string them out along the floor to test them.

Why is it that a set that was working perfectly last year always fails to work this year?

Naturally, the bastards who make the things use different bulbs for each set, so that any spares that I do have never fit.

Every year, I know I am going to have problems, so just to be on the safe side, I buy a new set.

We now have about ten sets of lights at this stage and, while I haven’t unpacked them yet, I know they won’t work.  Of course I bought a spare set just in case, so I assume that one will be OK.

Nobody mentioned if Gormless was banning Christmas lights.  It is the kind of idiotic thing he would do.  China and America can pump a zillion tons of gas into the atmosphere, but not lighting my little 12V bulbs can save the world from destruction?

Ah!

When herself starts moaning about the Christmas decorations, I’ll tell I can’t put them up.

If I light my Christmas lights, then the Maldives will vanish beneath the waves.

We can’t have that?

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