Grandad March 31st, 2011
I am really sick and tired of all these fucking clichés that have been spawned by the financial crisis.
They are stress-testing my patience to the limit.
Now I realise we must move forward but it is time the clichés were burned, or at least given a haircut.
I know we are in difficult times but each new tranche of clichés is bringing me closer to the edge.
Let’s stop.
OK?
Let’s draw a line in the sand.
Grandad March 30th, 2011
Last week, I mentioned that a close friend had died.
The bugger has come back to life again. I get really annoyed when that happens, as I am never sure if it is total remission, a temporary reprieve or just taking the piss. That fucker Lazarus has a lot to answer for.
Roger seems to be back to his old form – still trying to kill me whenever I drive near a precipice, and still mispronouncing places. I don’t mind his mispronouncing Irish or French names but the fecker can’t even say the word ‘road’ without hiccupping in the middle of it.
When I am out and about and far from home I rely on Roger about 90% of the time. I don’t follow his directions blindly otherwise I would be dead by now, but apart from his sadistic humour, I need him to show me the way. The question then arises as to whether I can trust him any more. I don’t want him to die the death just as I set my tyres on a foreign shore. I think an upgrade may be necessary.
I had a look for a replacement SatNav of the same type, but of course it isn’t made any more. Why the fuck can’t they design something that will be around for more than five minutes? These days, if I buy something, take it out of the shop and bring it back in again two minutes later I would be greeted with a sharp intake of breath and a greeting of ‘I’m sorry but we don’t sell that model any more’. Tossers.
I had a look at the modern alternatives and quite liked what I saw. For some strange reason they seem to have stopped producing SatNavs that talk through the car’s sound system. Everything else seems much the same. The one I have my eye on has a new feature however. It has voice recognition.
I quite fancy the idea of voice recognition. It means I can control the yoke without having to take my hands off the wheel and my eyes off the road. I have had a couple of near misses in the past through programming Roger while doing eighty on a back road.
Also the next time he tries to persuade me to drive off a cliff, it would give a warm glow of satisfaction to know that he could actually hear me tell him to go fuck himself.
Grandad March 29th, 2011
Are they putting something in the water?
Is it all the additives in the food we eat?
Whatever it is, the modern youth [or yoof, as I prefer to call ‘em] must be one of the dimmest in Earth’s history.
Can anyone explain to me how a government can rip the arse off its people like our last lot just did, yet the yoof of Ireland said or did very damn little? There were no protest marches or any kind of public unrest, yet if a new model of the iPhone was announced, they would queue overnight in their hundreds to lay their hands on it. If the new model weren’t up to expectations the Interweb would light up and there would be riots in the streets. If Facebook is inaccessible for more than five minutes you can hear the howls of anguish across the Irish Sea.
In my day, we used to grab whatever underwear brochure we could find, and have a quick flick-off behind the shed. Nowadays, they happily pump the sausage while reading the latest specifications for the newest 3G phone.
I grant you that not all yoof is like that. There are still some reasonably intelligent specimens around. There is a simple but effective yardstick by which you can tell whether or not they are of the brain dead variety – just listen to their speech and as soon as you hear the word ‘awesome’ you know you have struck gold.
Of all the irritations that abound in modern society, the word ‘awesome’ surely must be there with the chance of a medal. It is used in the most ridiculous contexts yet nobody bats an eyelid. ‘Awesome’ is an adjective which means ‘inspiring awe’. You first glimpse of the Grand Canyon could legitimately be described as awesome, but now the word is used to cover every facet of life that is marginally better than mediocre.
I notice that a new generation of Awesome Yoof has emerged where the word ‘awesome’ has nauseatingly morphed into a series of new words – ‘awesomest’ and ‘awsomely’. I was looking for a thing on the Interweb the other day and came across a device called the ‘Awesombar’ [It did exactly what I wanted but there was no way I could use something with a shite name like that, so I continued my search].
Whenever I hear the word ‘awesome’ now, I automatically switch off. I cannot read or listen any further as the writer or speaker has lost all credibility.
I blame Twitter and Facebook.
Grandad March 28th, 2011
I quite like gardening.
Unfortunately, it doesn’t like me.
The old lawn was looking a bit tattered, seeing as it hasn’t been cut since last September or so. Yesterday I thought I would take a spin around on the old ride-on mower.
It is a fair sized lawn, and usually takes around an hour to cut. It was very pleasant out yesterday so I spent the hour happily driving around in ever decreasing circles. Fortunately, when I reached the centre of my ever decreasing circles, I didn’t vanish up my own arse, as the old joke would have it.
When the job was done, and the mower stashed away for another couple of months, I decided I deserved a grand mug of tea. I filled the kettle and set it to boil. Two minutes later, I returned to the kettle to find it covered in blood. Being reasonably intelligent, I discounted the kettle as being the source of all the mess, and started looking nearer to home. Sure enough, I had cut my finger and it was pumping the red stuff all over the place.
It was a tiny cut; so small that I didn’t even feel it yet it was pumping by the gallon. I wrapped an old rag around the finger and sat down to enjoy my mug-full.
It was then I felt a slight stinging sensation in my leg. I pulled up my trouser-leg and found a six-inch cut all the way up the calf. It too was bleeding profusely.
Where do these cuts and nicks come from? I don’t remember getting caught in anything. What annoys me is that this happens every time I go into the garden. It is almost impossible to step outdoors without getting something lacerated. My arms and legs are covered in a crazy pattern of scars. I don’t know where any of them came from, except that they are the result of entering the garden.
My blood is good stuff. O Rh Negative, no less. Also it is probably around 40% proof at this stage of my life, so I don’t fancy the idea of it just leaking out after a simple stroll around the demesne.
There is nothing else for it….
Herself will have to do all the gardening from now on.
Grandad March 27th, 2011
Aw fuck!
They are messing around with my head again.
I thought this was just a fucking Earth Hour weekend that I could safely ignore, but now they have changed the clocks again.
Now I have to do my biannual traipse around the place changing all the clocks again. I don’t mind the normal clocks such as my watch or the clock on the kitchen wall. What pisses me off are all the hidden clocks inside the central heating or the microwave. And the car. I always forget to do the clock in the car.
I hear that that shower over the water in England want to put a stop to all this messing, which is fair enough, but they want to tie in with Central Europe, which is a further shift of an hour. Fucking hell! It’s bad enough having to cope with a one hour shift, but two hours? Forget it. Of course we could let them go their way while we stick to our own time which would lead to some lovely confusion on the border with Norn Iron. Heh!
The worst thing about this time shift shite is Herself. For the next God knows how many weeks I am going to have to put up with the same query time after time – ‘but what time is it really?’ Eventually she will forget to ask, and will settle into the new routine, just in time for the clocks to go back again.
I think I’ll set my watch to midnight now.
Time for bed.
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