Seems a long time...

...since the last blog.
Had a fortnights holiday, unable to get T-in-the-Park tickets for this year so made do with watching it on the telly - looked good, and keeping the doors and windows open to get the temperature right and drank lots of cider.

Wasn't able to get through to Ticketoffice to get tickets for next year either when they went on sale.

When I wasnt doing that, I was up at the flat trying to decorate.

Well, scraping at @ 5 layers of paper, paint and backing papers and only managing to do one wall......and a good bit of it will need replastered.

That before I even get started with the washing down the woodwork, painting and papering.
Still, at least Ive started.

This is the second week back at work and I'm cheesed off already.

Bumped into a couple of armed polis in the shop down in the concourse. They'd been getting their dinner from the canteen and were getting ginger and sweeties from the shop. The asshole behind the counter was too busy trying to get a shot of their tazer to bother to serve me - they should have given him it in the bollocks.

Havn't spoken to B & D yet, they've probably found out by now about the terrorist attack at Glasgow Airport that took place the day after they flew out to the States.

Still think it hilarious that a couple of eejits thought they could pull off a suicide bombing type of thing in Glasgow and not get their heads kicked in by the locals....even if they had set themselves on fire.

It says a lot for the guy who gave such brilliant media interviews and played down his own effort, John Smeaton, that he's "cashed" in half of the money for the "pints" pledged to him at the airport hilton, giving half the money, @ 2 Grand and giving it to Erskine Hospital for ex-servicemen and using the remainder to organise a party for everyone else who was involved in preventing those idiots from carrying out carnage at Glasgow Airport.

We could do with more John Smeatons in this world.

Just remembered, loved the story about the taxi driver who joined in the fight to subdue one of the idiots.
The taxi driver kicked the would-be bomber in the balls and pulled a tendon in his foot.
The polis had to take his trainers for Forensics - they'd soaked up some of the material the clown had doused himself with before he put a match to himself, the Taxi Driver complained about that as "They were a good pair of Trainers".

Sorry, but if they were a Good Pair of Trainer, surly he wouldn't have damaged his foot?...

... and the Traffic Wardens gave him a parking ticket for abandomning his vehicle when he was giving witness statements to the polis.

Priceless eh?

And finally...

...having a long lie a couple of weeks ago.

Eejit features was in up the stairs, could hear her thumping around.

Then she starts singing scales......for @ 15 minutes.

Then a tape of piano music starts.... and she starts singing along to it.

Badly...."Climb every mountain".

Badly sung, bum notes, voice cracking, flat tone ... total crap.

By the time she got round to the THIRD rendition, the CD player was shoved up to 11, Alice Cooper and Faithless belting out full blast with speakers as near as possible pointing towards the ceiling.


Hell fuckin' mend her.

Bloody dripping...

...noise heard a couple of weeks ago when I went home after a weekend at the van, Just thought, bugger it, must have left a tap dripping in the bog, but no - her upstairs had put in central heating over the weekend and her plumber had caused a leak - into my boiler press, fucking up my central heating and hot water, ruining all my spare bedding and towels stored in the boiler press and soaking the floor.

Took 5 hours before she was in to let her know, thought at first she wasnt going to bother her fat arse, took the second time knocking at her door and saying to her to come and see the damage - the daft cow wasnt going to do anything.
Took two hours before her plumber got there and shut off the water.

AND he managed to get a load of soggy rubble to drop all over my floor - cleaned up her mess but I was left to get on with it.

Insurance assessor was out but its a £100 excess fee - not really worth a claim but FEP were brilliant, by the time they got out to me, the electrics had dried out and it only took the guy 30mins to get the system off and running so at last I can get the place dried out.


Already started ripping the wallpaper off the living room, made out a list of decorating jobs and when the car loan is paid off, I'm moving out that bloody dump.

Heard this joke last night...

...a man walks into a pub for a drink. On the counter there's this massive big jar crammed full of £10 notes.
He asks the barman what they are collecting for, thinking its for charity.
The barman answers "It's the £10 challenge, whoever wins gets the jar and all the contents"
Its obvious there must be a couple of grand in this jar so the man says"OK, I'm up for it, whats the challenge?".
"Oh no" says the barman, "You need to put your tenner in before I tell you the challenge and you cant take the money back if you want to back out from it".
The man says "I'll just have a pint".

After a several pints, OK a bucket-load sitting looking at this jar stuffed with tenners, obviously a good couple of grand in it, the man goes up to the bar, slaps a tenner down and says "OK, I'm in - whats the £10 Challenge".

The barman says"OK, Challenge no. 1 - you drink a pint of my special chilli/woucester sauce/olive oil mixture, in a wanner, no boaking or dry or otherwise and no even complaining about breaking into a sweat.
Challenge no. 2 - out in the back, theres a pit-bull dog with severe toothache, had it for a fortnight after he bit the postie. He's got a wooden leg so it didn't do the dog much good and he's in agony. You have to pull out the broken tooth with your bare fingers.
Challenge no. 3 - upstairs from the pub, lives an 80 year old granny, nae teeth, nae bladder control and a colostomy bag. She's also never had an orgasm so you have to give her one - and we have to be able to hear it down here in the bar".

"Right" says the man, "Bring it on". So, he downs a pint of the special chilli mixture, fighting hard to keep the dry boak down, doesn't even mention the sweat he breaks out in - feeling like a river running down the sheuch of his arse. "OK, now for no. 2".
So he goes out to the back of the pub, the regulars hear all sorts of growls, snarls yelps, screams and cries, finally dwindling to a whimper.

The man staggers back into the bar, covered in bite marks, scatches and dripping with blood, clothes ripped to buggery.

"OK" he gasps, "Where's the old granny wi' the toothache...?".

Christ on a crutch...

...round about the hooses to get back onto this site again to post some more meandering shite.

Coming into night shift on Friday night, thought I was seeing things, one of the RAF'S S&R SEA Kings was circling round the Gorbals.
In fact anyone sitting at the window in the top couple of stories of the multi's would have been waving across at the pilot, when it turned to go round the flat, it banked right over, half expected it to come down!

Turns out some numpty had either slipped (or jumped) into the Clyde and two guys had jumped in after her to help keep her afloat.

Stupiod cow could have killed them.

I'd seen a group of folk on the bridge having some sort of scuffle and some guy being held down on the pavement, probably to stop him diving in as well.

Christ, hate to think whatt they'd pick up in the water, its boggin' there.

Last night...

...5th night shift.
Feeling better than I was last night, still woke up feeling sick but not wanting to be sick if you know what I mean.

And we sent out for a curry tonight.

And it was just magic.


Found a web site about the place I grew up in, even recognised some references to things that happened when I was at Primary - The Mummies that were after the primary ones, Mollies the paper shop, The Record Rendevous and Steptoe who chased you when us weans tormented him, and even Farmer Kelly's got a mention. Some Farm. A wee shed with 2 pigs in it and a couple of hens scratching around - but to us weans from tenements and multi-storey flats it was a real farm.

And the smell of shite from the pigs would have choked a horse.


Theres a big match at Hampden tonight. Was thinking about going straight to the van this morning to sleep and come back in @ midnight to pick up the cats but I was told that its 2 Edinburgh teams that are playing, that the match is being shown live on BBC1, that the tickets havnt been selling that great so I'll chance getting a kip and getting up @ dinnertime in the hope that the polis wont have lifted the motor.

Hopefully it also means I'll miss out on smelling the polis horses shite as well. Sometimes the bloody street is hummin' with the stench.

Feel bloody awful...

... Felt great up until 10 minutes ago. 4rth night out of a run of 5.
Almost at the end of the 3.00 tea break, even eating healthy too - OK, 2 apples and a can of diet coke, no exctly high calorie but just suddenly felt too warm, light heided and desparate for a bloody good boke.
Tried the fingers down the throat routine, only rifted. Couldny even manage a decent spew.
But theres something in there that I feel will get out, probably when I least expect it.

As long as I get to a lavvy in time.

At least I'm no pregnant.

A man is driving...

...a nippy wee sports car.

He is only eighteen inches away from a sudden drop.

He sees a double decker bus right in front of him.

He sees a horse galloping right alongside him.

He becomes aware of a Fire Engine right behind him with the blues and two's flashing and sounding off - and there is nowhere for him to go.


So - what do you do?



Get aff the fuckin' Merry-go-round, yer pished!

Cos its quiet...

...I'm just sitting here rambling away a load of pish.

Cant think of any jokes right now.

Fucking bored.

Night shift...

...and its the third night out of five.
Only seem to be getting about 3 to 4 hours of sleep before I wake up, if I'm lucky I'll get a wee doze but usually, just lie there worried I'll be too tired and miss something really obvious.

Its quiet too which dosn't help. Still means the babies are having an OK night - wont say good as its early in the shift yet with plenty of scope for it to go pear shaped.

Realised when I looked up the Hampden website that theres a big match on Tuesday night with the kick-off at 19.45. This means that from noon onwards, the cops will be lifting everything parked in the street - which means I wont be able to park outside the flat.

The day after I come off a night shift is usually the one day I cant bloody wake up.


Bugger.

Bloody sick time...

...How come I never seem to get a GP who writes sickies at the drop of a hat?
...despite times when I've been wheezing like anything and gasping for breath 'cos the asthma's been triggered.
...despite at times having back pain thats left me hardly able to move.
...Colds that have left my nose red-raw and snottering all over the place.

and some lucky sods get GP's who'll give them a sickie for no bloody reason at all.


Guess I'm "lucky" to get GP'S who actually know what they are doing.



Still sucks though.

Some nutter...

...in America decided to take some guns and kill 32 of his fellow students and tutors at a University in America.
Like that bastard Tommy Hamilton he decided that it was the fault of the people he was going to kill that they needed to be killed in the first place and like Tommy Hamilton he sent a load of bile to the press - in his case a news network.
Unlike the British press who have never published the crap that Hamilton posted to them, the American network decided to put on the TV all the pictures, video clips etc that the murdering bastard sent to them.

Bet his victims families just loved to see all that.


And the numpty gun fans will still refuse to do away with their right-to-bear-arms.

You'd think they were still battling for the Wild West, not living in a so-called World Power.

Acupuncture...

...was at the physio a couple of days ago for the tennis elbow problem thats not going away despite wearing a tendon band for the last few weeks. (If one more cunt asks me who the black armband is for, I swear I wont be responsible for my actions).

Offered acupuncture to try and alleviate the pain a bit. Treatment itself wasnt a problem, quite relaxing really but later that night and the next day, the pain was even worse and I could hardly move the arm. Apparantly thats a good sign. She did warn me that the treatment can make you drowsy either while the needles were in situ or not long after they came out. Felt OK, Hell even drove out to the old dear's and took her messages and drove all the way from Denny to Prestwick. Finally got to bed about 01.00am.

Best fuckin' nights sleep I've had in years.

Finally...

...went yesterday to a glaziers 2 minutes away from the flat and ordered a piece of glass for the window the gas-man smashed.

Nothing big, only 440X490cms. Not exactly giant economy sized.

Only cost £5.90. Still to get the putty mind.

Heard a joke this morning...

...A wee seal flops into a bar.

The Barman asks it what it wants to drink.

The seal says..."Anything at all as long as its not a Canadian Club!".



Thats what I used to drink - 'cos it was Canadian, I didnt regard it as a proper whiskey.

F'king bored...

...cos we're really quiet.

Never known it to be like this for so long too.

When it busies up, we probably wont be able to cope we've got so used to sitting on our arses.

Bad when some wee sod's got to be ill and parents are going through hell so our boredome gets relieved.

Suppose thats why we're all a sick bunch of bastards - and why I've got Occupational Tourette's.

Scrub that, I've always had that.

Here we go again...

...another year at the caravan. Never mind the problems at the flat trying to get a glazier, I need a plumber at the van. I'd rather get John who works at the site to do the work on the fly - then he'd get paid for the work he does directly rather than it coming in his wage - cos the boss would try and screw him out of it. Then, thats why he's a buisinessman and no a charity.
Still havnt started cleaning. Weather's been too nice - any excuse. Of course the tennis elbow's been playing up - still think that term belittles the condition given the amount of pain it causes. Got the physio on Monday. Bloody waste of a day off.

Hope she knows her stuff.

Fucking blog...

...I put something on this last week and it hasnt taken.
Tw@.
Basically it was just a rant about the (the) ongoing problem with the Gas people getting a Glazier (otherwise now known as tw@bag) to fix the window over the lavvy door thast the gas people broke.
Basically, I'm now going to get one of the 3 - 4 glass people who operate within 5 minutes walking distance of where I live and do the fucking job myself.

If a useless tw@ like tw@bags can do it how hard can it be?

Quick joke...

...a man having a quiet drink in a pub happens to see the new husband of his ex-wife in having a pint.
Being bitter over the way he got screwed by the divorce, he walked over to the new huband and asked "Well, how does it feel having someone elses seconds"
The new husband thought for a bit and replied "Well, after you get past the first 3 inches, its all brand new."

I'll bugger off now.

Lazy useless work-...

...shy cunt of a glazier.
Well, started off with the gas board wanting to replace the pipes from the mains supply to my flat.
Except they forgot to tell me, they were halfway through the work on the rest of the flats in the tenement when I found out.
Meant I had to go from the thursday to the monday with no gas supply.
This meant I had no hot water or central heating - bastards.
They did the job in 2 hours, after telling me it woult take all day.(so I had to cancel the appt I had at the Asthma clinic till the next day) and managed to break the glass above the toilet door.
Thats when my problems really started. After being told the gas people would liase with me when the glazier would call (remember, they didnt kiase with me about the work in the first place) the guy turned up when I was at work. Left a note through the door with a mobile no. Was barely coherent when I phoned it.. Thought it better to wait for the gas people to phone me. They didnt.

Final;ly got a date for the guy to come. He didnt.
Got another date for him to come. He didnt bother his arse. Phoned me twice though, once to say he'd be there within the hour, then again @ hour later to say he'd be there at 16.30
I phoned via call return @ 17.30, same guy answered but made out he was the boss and "the guy" was catching up on his jobs after being delayed. Said he'd call me back in 10 mins. I phoned him again in 40 mins and got a load of old flannel.
Tried again at 19.30 and the phone was switched off.

How did I know it was the same guy as the one who phoned in the morning?

Easy, I used Dial-Return which means I talked to the same phone that had phoned me earlier.
The same phone that useless,workshy cunt* of a glazier had phoned me with that morning.


* thank you Scaryduck, it looks like I've got your useless workshy cunt of a builder's cousin.

Fuckin' tennis elbow...

...has been aching for the last 5 weeks now. Just woke up one morning and it was killing me.
Dot got the blame for triggering it off as she had been sleeping over my arm but it could easily have been too many preacher curls with the dumbells.
Finally got round to going to the drop-in Physio's at work. They were brilliant with me last year when I had a back problem.
Straight away, she diagnosed Tennis elbow. Suggested a special strapping with a pressure pad that goes over the muscle, unfortunatly, she said the person in their dept. who does all the ordering hadnt a clue about what they needed or how to go about it properly (sounds familiar) so wrote down for me what to ask at Boot's for.

Still, it was nice to get a diagnosis and as its affecting my movement and infringing on my work they've moved me up the waiting list for more attention.

Got the strapping from Boot's - £18.89 for a dod of velcro with a wee pressure pad.

Thank fuck for Boot's store cards with enough points saved up to cover the cost of the thing.
The dull ache part of it is still there but the sharp pains just arn't quite so bad.

Not been here for a while...

...although I have managed to finally get a hold of a phone no. for Orange so I'm technically back with them - they just cant connect me up to the old Wanadoo modem so I have to wait for them to send me another one.

Bloody Gas people.
Some new guy up the close wanted to change his gas provider. They insisted that the gas pipes to all 8 flats up the close got changed from copper to stainless steel.
Guess whose address was the only one who didnt get a letter informing them og the upgrade?

First I knew about it a workman stopped me in the close, asked me which flat I was in and then said Friday OK?. He was an ugly bastard so hopiong it wasnt an offer of a date I asked him what he was going on about - finally found out what he was meaning. Unfortunately, I was working on all the dates he suggested, plus the flat was a fucking tip, so it meant that I was going to be without heating from the Thursday to the Monday when they could finally change my pipes and re-connect me.
Took them 2 hours to do the work.
And they managed to break the window over the lavvy door.
Said they had to fill in a green form and the Gas people would contact me when a glazier would come and fix it.
That was 10 days ago.

Last night I got home from work to find a wee page out a notebook shoved through the letter box to the effect that a joiner had called but I wasnt in to give them access. The phone no. was a mobile. When I phoned it, the guy answering didnt say who he was, still dont know the name of the glaziers who are supposed to be dealing with it and he was really non-commital as to when he would actually do the work. On mentioning it at work - the girls were appalled at the cavallier attitude of the gas people given that I'm a "lone female" and have been on at me to contact the gas folk to give them a row- again.

Fuckin' hate workmen coming into the flat.

A jelly baby...

...is walking along the road and he meets up with a smartie.
The smartie asks him if he fancies going up to a new club thats just opnened up in the Town for a night out.
"Oh no" says the jelly baby,"I'm just a soft centre and I'll end up getting my head kicked in"
"Oh no you wont" says the smartie "I'm a hard-case and I'll look after you"
So away they go on a night out.
After a few hour drinking, dancing and having fun, three lockets walk in, the smartie spots them and hides under a teable, they see the jelly baby, start kicking him in his little jelly head, jumping on his big jelly belly until they get fed up and go away laughing.
The smartie crawls out from under the table.
The jelly baby, crying and wiping the jelly blood from his face cies " Where did you go to, you were supposed to help me"
The smartie said "What - me against those three lockets? theyre pure fuckin' menthol them".

Keep forgetting...

...to contact some company or other to get back on the web. OK, I keep putting it off on account I hate using the bastard phone as I'm on it so often at work.

Get round to it someday.

Maybe.

Night shift again tonight, last night and tomorrow night too. Fairly settled but with the potential to go pear shaped. Hopefully not on my shift.

One of the girls is getting married today. Someone who was on yesterday mentioned to her man that it was going to be a white wedding.
He asked her if that meant she was a virgin!
Bless.

See these posts...

...when I publish them, before when I went straight onto View, there they were - bad spelling, crap typo's and shite grammer.
Now its as if they go somewhere to be vetted cos it seems to take a while before they crop up.


Bugger.

Bloody eyes...

...have been deteriorating for some time.
Noticed a few years ago if I was doing some close work then tried to focus on something in the distance, it took a while to see it properly.
So being me I ignored it. Great beleiver in if you ignore it , it goes away.
But after Hogmanay, felt that even things like dates printed on ampoules were getting not so much difficult as bloody impossible to see - so - went and got my eyes checked.
Went to an established Opticians, not one of these get-your-specs-in-an-hour type jobs. Wanted somewhere where you are treated like a patient not a commodity.
Didnt do the puff-of-air-in-the-eye bit which I'd always been warned about but couldnt get onto the Field machine on the initial testing. She did that with me when I went to pick the specs up. When I'd picked them , I thought the frames had cost £59. Turned out they'd been £89, with the lenses and plastic coating them for scratch resistance - the lot came to £150.

Make a hell of a difference though.

Saturday...

...was Carol's funeral.
She was piped in by the piper who was supposed to play when she renewed her Wedding vows in May.
Doug managed to read an address, Christ knows how he coped, the DJ'S husband said a piece, DJ said a bit, there was a track played by Eva Cassidy too at one point then DJ and her man pressed the button that lowered the coffin.
Then the piper played us out again.

We went to the Hotel for a tea, there was a folder with some photo's of her from when she was seventeen right up till a couple of months ago.

She looked bloody fantastic. I always said she was one of these people who could wear a bin bag and make it look designer.
Even with a debilitating, wasting cancer, she looked like an auburn haired Audrey Hepburn - nothing could make her look bad, always perfectly groomed and elegant.

Rosie, on behalf of the Unit, has got a rose named in her honour - Little Red Carol - and presented Doug with some seeds and the instructions for growing them. Quite a few of us were interested in getting the details of the seeds for ourselves - thinking stick one in up at the Carron Dam maybe.

Bastard spelling mistakes...

... thats cremated not cremasted. The quicker I get the specs the better ... save that for anothe blog.

Free at last...

...Carol finally died after 6 years of operation, checks treatments pain and worries after two different types of Cancer on the 6th Jan.

Doug brought her home from Chicago last week, the funeral's this Saturday.

We had a wee wake the the Oran Mhor last night, about 14 of us in total, including Doug and his sister Nancy. She found a real gem when she met him.
Had a wee greet, lots of reminiscences and stories, Doug finds it helps to talk about what they had been through and we were a willing audience, I think it helped him having new stories to hear too.
His Mum and Dad are over too, they've been spending their time going to all the places in Glasgow Carol used to go to, maybe the in-laws will understand her a wee bit better now.
She be cremasted at the Linn wearing the dress she got married in and with a pair of ballet shoes.

Life's a right bugger sometimes.