Thoughts on spring

Grandad March 15th, 2010

My whole world collapsed over the weekend.

It was absolutely devastating, but these thing happen, and you just have to roll with them.

I have a favourite armchair.  I have had it for years, and it is extremely comfy.  It has nicely moulded itself to my contours and over the years, we have exchanged molecules so that I am part chair and it is part me.

I was sitting there minding my own business, when there as a bang, and I descended.

Yes.  I went down in the world.  The fucking chair had broken.

I spent a day in my lower position, pondering my lower perspective of the world and I felt rather nervous.  If one whatever-it-was can break, then so can the others.  Was it just a matter of time before I ended on the floor?

In the end, I upended the chair and cut the bottom off to take a look inside.  There was quite a lot in there.  There was a lot of dust and fluff, a dead mouse, two slices of pizza [I don’t know how they got there as I do not like pizza], several paper clips, €3.27 in small change and a broken spring.  Yup – the steel spring had snapped.

I haven’t the vaguest idea where you can buy those springs, so I decided that rather than drive myself demented trying to buy a new one, that I would repair the old one.  That is not quite as easy as you may think, as I don’t happen to have a welding torch, and anyway that just would have burned my chair to a crisp.

Any man worth his salt will tell you that one of the most vital things to have around the house is a Vice Grip and a few old wire coat hangers.

I set to work.

chair fix

I’m quite proud of my efforts.

My binding tried to thwart me by slipping off, so I had to add some bits to stop any sideways movement, but as feats of engineering go, I think it’s up there with the Forth Bridge and the Hoover Dam?

I’m sitting back in my chair now.  I have gone back up in the world.

Spring may not have arrived yet, but it is fixed.

Anyone for a free holiday?

Grandad March 14th, 2010

I have nothing against Paddy’s Day itself.  It’s one day of the year when I don’t have to think up a reason to have a few pints.

They have lost the run of themselves again though, in typical Irish fashion.

No longer content with a few blokes wandering down O’Connell Street following a couple of geezers wheezing on some bagpipes, we now have to have a fucking festival.

Again, I have nothing against festivals, and am quite prepared to watch a few very scantily clad women develop frostbite for my delectation, but let’s not lose the run of ourselves?  All these damned American ‘pipe bands’ and Rio de Janeiro type floats are just going too far.  There is nothing Paddy’s Day about them?

The Paddy’s Day Festival kicked off with a grand fireworks display down in Limerick.  I suppose that had to find some way of disposing of all the explosives they had found down there, and it makes a change from murdering each other, but has no one notice the incongruity of the title?  Paddy’s Day festival?  Paddy’s Day isn’t until Wednesday, for fuck’s sake, and they start it on a Saturday?

Once again, I have nothing whatsoever against people enjoying themselves, and if that were the extent of it, then let people get pissed and beat each other up in the streets – that’s part of modern society – but what really pisses me off are the crowd who haul in on the back of all this frivolity.

The main criminals are our Glorious Government.  This is their annual holiday at the taxpayers’ expense.  They see this as a glorious excuse to jet off the the far flung corners of the earth on the pretext of drumming up trade.  Has one single job ever been created by these jaunts?  Are foreign companies so fucking gullible that they will set up in Ireland because some fucking minister bought them a pint on Paddy’s Day.  Fuck off!!

I notice that these ‘trade missions’ are very nicely located.  Auckland?  Sydney?  New York?  Tokyo?  Very nice, at this time of year.  Most are heading off for a week or so, but of course Harney has to have 15 fucking days in New Zealand with her husband.  And these little jollies are all paid for by the taxpayer, who was recently told that there is no money left, and that we all have to pay extra to solve the financial crisis.

A small thing that irritates me about this time of year is the insistence of barmen at scribing a shamrock on the head of a pint of Guinness.  What the fuck is that all about?  Do they think we are all fucking tourists who are going to melt at the Irishness of it all?  They’ll be giving away fluffy leprechauns and floppy green hats next.  It is fucking embarrassing.  Wankers.

At this time of year, our local barman Pullit always draws a neat penis on the heads of the pints he pulls.

Now, he has the right idea.

Apologising

Grandad March 13th, 2010

When people cock up, why can’t they admit it?

Our Glorious Government categorically refuse to admit that they fucked up our economy with their tax breaks for builders, and their turning a blind eye to the bank’s activities.  Oh no.  It was the downturn in the global economy that caused our crash and they are all squeaky clean.

Our wonderful rail crowd refuse to admit that they fucked up an inspection of a railway bridge on the main Dublin to Belfast line [which subsequently collapsed].  Oh no.  It was fucking Global Warming!!!!

Our Catholic Church cannot understand why we are annoyed with them for covering up their decades of child abuse, buggery and rape.  It’s the fault of the media, or the work of the devil himself.  It’s nothing to do with them though.  Squeaky clean.

Every daily fiasco in this banana republic is blamed on someone else.  They spend more time trying to find who to blame than they do trying to find the root cause of the problem.

Why?

What is so fucking difficult about admitting you were wrong?

I got a comment on a piece I scribbled last week.  I thought it was spam because of the name of the user – The South of France Guide, and I sent a rather rude reply.  It transpired that they were a genuine commenter, and they wrote to me and said they were not best pleased.  I can’t say I blame them.  I wrote back and apologised, and I hope they accept that apology, though I can’t blame them if they don’t.

I hold my hand up and admit I made a mistake.  I was dog tired on the day, and that is a bad time to make hasty decisions.  I fucked up.

Or there again….

it could have been Global Warming?

Faces I could never tire of kicking – 2

Grandad March 12th, 2010

I suppose it was inevitable that this one would come up.

Normally I would include people in this hall of fame because of an irrational desire just to have a good kicking.

This week’s candidate is more than that.  I have a rational desire to smack her one with the back of a shovel, but she still fits the bill, because she’s an ugly cow.

Minister for Obesity

From the irrational point of view, I just hate her sulky scowl.  She rarely smiles, and has one of those voices that drones on on a monotone that is a guaranteed cure for insomnia, if it weren’t for the fact that she talks such bullshit.  This is a face that definitely requires a drastic piece of reshaping, preferably by non-surgical methods.

On the rational side, she is a fucking menace to the public.

Once again, there is another scandal in the health service.  One of the nation’s major hospitals has admitted that 57,000 x-rays were never reviewed by a consultant.  This has resulted in at least one death.  On top of that, they never bothered even opening 3,500 letters of referral from GPs.  This is a mess that is just another in a long litany of cock-ups, foul-ups and disasters in our health service, which all started when our Minister for Obesity Health decided to ‘reform’ the health service.  All she has succeeded in doing is to dismantle a system that worked reasonably well, and replace it with a bureaucratic nightmare that doesn’t function at all, but costs the state a staggering fortune per year.

The worst part about it is that she refuses to see what a monumental bollix she has made of the system.  She just keeps digging us deeper and deeper into this appalling mess.

And where is she now during this latest revelation about the x-rays?

She is swanning around New fucking Zealand with her husband at our expense. We are paying for her to have a nice little holiday on the pretext of ‘an official visit’ for Paddy’s Day which isn’t until next week.  God give me fucking strength.

This cow is a menace to society.

She is a corpuscle on the face of mankind.

Pass me my hob-nails.

Can you pee standing up?

Grandad March 11th, 2010

The other day was International Women’s Day.

I let it pass, as I let a lot of things pass [like No Smoking Day in the UK] because, well, I didn’t have much to say about it.  I just ignored it.

Yesterday I read a post by Sabrina Dent in which she comments on being mentioned as a “Top Female Web Designer” and takes umbrage, as well she might.

I do not understand the compulsion to gather us together and stick us in a special little ghetto. I don’t want to be praised for my gender; I want to be respected for my work on its own merits.

Now this did get me thinking, coming on top of Women’s Day as it nearly did.

What the fuck is this thing about segregating women?  I just don’t get it.

Women are different from men.  We know that.  They have soft bumpy bits, and they lack dangly bits, and they can’t park a car if their life depended on it, but apart from that they aren’t much different.  I grant you they can have babies where men can’t, but they’re welcome to that little trick.

Now Sabrina is a top class web designer, but why should she be celebrated just because she can’t park a car?  Why should there be a special day set aside for women just because they lack dangly bits and can’t read a fucking map?  Why should women have their own days and groups just because they can’t pee standing up?  I’m baffled.

There is no International Men’s Day, and that doesn’t bother me.  I don’t know what I would do with it anyway.  Would I have to walk around all day with no trousers on to show my pride in being a man?  International Women’s Day doesn’t seem to do much for women either.  It’s just a load of [lack of] bollox, if you ask me – which you didn’t. They waffle about it and it gets a mention in the papers [at the bottom left hand corner of page 16] but that is about the limit of it.  I don’t know why they bother with it at all.  It’s just an irritation.  It’s not as if women walked around all day with no clothes on to show their pride in being a woman?

Now there’s a thought…….

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