Category: Anything Else

General Idiocy And Other Military Ranks

There is a Bomb The Bass song called ”Winter In July,” it isn’t that late in the year, but it certainly feels like winter in April. I shouldn’t be needing to wear woolly hats and gloves in the middle of the afternoon in the latter third of April. I look around and there are people in shorts and t-shirts, and three years ago that would have been me. Instead I sit here wishing I had another couple of layers to add to the four I have on. And hand warmers. And thermals. It is majorly cold.

On a Friday afternoon when we have nipped into town to get a few bits ahead of a weekend sojourn up to Nottingham for my mum’s eightieth, we have stopped to have a coffee and to watch the world go by in my usual sun trap spot in front of la Rusta on the corner of Queens Square. As we are drinking the coffee there is a woman, who is older than us, who is on the phone trying to give her dad directions to find her, and it sounds hard work, and Helen is having a joke with her when she gets off the phone. Then when her dad turns up and they are sat down having drinks, I hear her say the phrase ‘We need a Trump over here.’ Fortunately, we had finished our drinks and were heading off before we could listen to any of the racist diatribe which was following that.

After the game on Saturday we dumped the bags in the car and set off for Nottingham. We don’t usually drive anywhere on Saturday evenings so don’t know what the travel is usually like, but weren’t expecting it to be a three-hour long audition for the new reality show, ‘Who Can Drive Like The Biggest Twat?’ It really is a surprise there are not more serious accidents.

Yes, it is something which annoys me way more than it probably should, but it does drive me around the bend. When I’m in a shop and have paid in cash and they are giving you change, it is when they put the note on your hand first and then pile the coins on top of the note. Especially when you only have the one free hand as the goods you have bought are in the other. And then they tut at you because you have to stop, put everything back down on the counter so you can slide the coins off the note to put in one pocket and put the note(s) back in the wallet. All of which could have been done with one hand if they’d put the coins in the hand first and the note(s) on top, as they should do if they are counting the change out and starting from the smallest denomination in doing the change, and not just plonking it in your hand without counting it.

Then there was the fuckwit behind the counter in Boots who put the coins change on top of the receipt which she had already placed on top of the box of cough medicine I’d just bought. Seriously woman, what the fuck did you expect to happen apart from it all falling on the floor. Of course it might have helped if you were actually looking in my direction when you are giving the change instead of over at your colleague.

There is new little food stand in the County Mall – Auntie Annie’s. Their main USP seems to be freshly made and baked pretzels. I don’t know whether it is the novelty value of it being something new in town, or if there was a hitherto unknown desire for fresh pretzels in Crawley. But at quarter past nine there is a twenty-person queue at the little stand, and thirty yards further down the mall the bloke on the Krispy Kreme donuts stand is looking on forlornly as he has a queue of exactly zero people. I suppose we will see if the queues remain and the novelty of a new food source wears off, but anything that takes custom away from overpriced, overhyped, corporate American shite which doesn’t even taste nice like Krispy Kreme can’t be bad. (Although I don’t know where Auntie Annie’s originate from.)

Actually scrub the above, I’ve had a look, and they originate from the US as well, another of the ever-expanding American chains, so they can get in the bin as well. Perhaps time to get the queue to move up the mall a bit more and to use the bloke selling his array of olives, nuts, seeds, and soft fruits, and other more healthy nibbles. But healthy and Crawley don’t really go together, do they?

It is difficult to describe how it feels to have injections in your eyes. I have got used to the process of having the numbing drops, then having the iodine drops for cleansing, having the sticky patches and the clamps to keep the eyelids open, to look down the inside of the nose so I can’t see the needle coming in from the other side of the eye. And then you can see the strange liquid or bubble creatures floating around in my eyes. But once the eyes have been unclamped it is a strange feeling closing my eyelids, it feels a bit of a struggle. It is like that feeling when you have put on a bit of weight, and you then struggle to do your clothes up as they are now very tight. That’s what it feels like, it feels as if my eyeballs have gotten fat, and my eyelids are the clothes which are too tight to fit properly. And that it takes them a while to go down and settle back to how they were.

April Assorted Anecdotes

The sun brings them all out. Fortunate weather for a school holiday. The café’s tables usually sparsely occupied are all filled. People stopping for refreshment, to sit and bask in the sun. the fountains gurgle away happily, the sound of their upwardly expelled water crashing back down onto the concrete slabs is accompanied by the little squeals of joy or excitement from the small children playing among the jets. Short sleeves on the whole are the order of the day and eager men, women, and children take the opportunity to get their legs out on display. Baggy three quarter length, tailored just above the knee, or short short and tight tight hot pants, the whole gamut is here. The sun’s rays are reflected off the chrome and glass of the modern buildings surrounding the square. And there are smaller glints, flashing motion, rebounding off the plethora of sunglasses worn. The pace seems slower, the quick head down scurry of the winter months has gone. It is more a casual stroll, head up as if to enjoy the sun, or for them to pose and show themselves off now they no longer have umpteen layers to protect themselves from the cold and rain. And there are smiles on faces as if the warmth has caused the edges of mouths to curl up instead of pointing down. There is chat, there is energy, but it is relaxed. It is a surprise how little of the masses of flesh on display is milk bottle white. The tanning salons of the town must have been busy over the shorter days and longer nights.

No watching the world go by as I had breakfast on Saturday morning before going away. I wasn’t in any rush and was happy to let a couple of undecided people go in front of me at Maccy D’s, and all the window seats were free. Big mistake, those I let in front of me took all of those window seats. Although the watching isn’t as interesting now that the market stalls have moved from their spots in front of Maccy D’s to their new home of Queensway. Though having walked past their new location since the move a couple of times, they do look better over there.

Inside Maccy D’s none of the usual Saturday morning crew were on, which means it’s the usual piss poor attention to detail. The first words on any order ticket are ‘eat in’ or ‘take out.’ I always select eat in, the sticker attached to the order says eat in, but they dump it all in a bag for take-out, and when I said I ordered it as eat in all I get is a gormless expression of a teenage zombie. It is always the same when there isn’t at least one of the two regular full timers working there.

And they are making a pigs ear of the Just Eats / Deliveroo / Uber Eats collections as well, but as I’m sure I’ve mentioned lots of times before, anyone who uses those companies to get Maccy D’s breakfast deserve all they get. Cold congealed food.

I’m having a coffee with breakfast and as always, I wonder why (apart from misplaced snobbery) anyone would pay two quid more to get a coffee from Costa (especially one of their random convenience store machines where it’s not even being made by a barista) or Starbucks.

Speaking of the latter, now that Amazon Prime foists adverts on us, we have seen the terrible Starbucks start of day advert more times than any sane person would ever need to. The advert is of course made far worse by the fact that AC/DC have lost their collective minds and licensed their music for the soulless corporate coffee smucks to use. If only Starbucks could be thunderstruck, lightning struck, earthquake struck, tornado struck, flood struck, any kind really just as long as they are struck off (the rhyming implication is deliberate).

On Good Friday I’d gone to Birmingham to watch the football. It’s well known that I’m not a fan of the city, the routes there and back were strange because its Easter weekend and there are engineering works going on all over the shop. On the way there I went via Leicester (no time to have a wander around there though), and into New Street. Which is one of the reasons I have a deep-seated hatred of the city, down at platform level it is the place where the seals between worlds will break, and the demons will pour out from platform nine. Fortunately, I arrived at platform ten. Upstairs they have improved it massively. On the way home the train was from Moor Street to Marylebone. What a difference. Only five platforms, but the whole station is above ground and looks like it belongs to a bygone area and wouldn’t be out of place on a heritage railway. I know that New Street is where all the through lines go, but when terminating in Birmingham why can’t they all terminate at Moor Street. I’m sure that if that had been the case when I was younger then the city wouldn’t seem so horrific to go to now.

March Mutterings

I may be getting sensitive due to having all the eye injections over the last six months, but I do find myself wondering more and more whether my eye and brain connect the same way as they used to, and as they should. On the train I glanced up at one of the posters in the clipboards on the train and automatically thought it said, “A little blindness goes a long way”. Which is a very strange thing to be advertising. I immediately thought, are they trying to take the piss? Are they trying to say that blind people end up travelling further because they can’t see when the train is at the station they need to get off at? Only for it to click on about the fourth or fifth glance up at the poster that it didn’t say ‘blindness’, but the word was actually ‘kindness’, which makes a lot more sense. But I’m still left with the quandary of, is it my eyes or is it my brain that is fucking with me now? Spookily, I wrote that in my notebook on Saturday afternoon. I started to type it up on Monday, and I had only completed as far as saying eye injections when my phone rang. It was East Surrey hospital, saying that looking at the scans from last month they want to arrange further, urgent, eye injections for my right eye, and could they book me in for later in the week. It would therefore appear to be my eyes which probably have the issue.

Anyway, up in London on Saturday and we have arranged to meet in a pub called the Earl of Essex, which we followed up by going in one a hundred yards along the road called the Duke of Cambridge, as if we were doing a tour of East Anglian lorded gentry before heading for dinner in the Tamil Crown. And all on a day when we had been to the football playing against a side nicknamed ‘the Royals’. So of course, after having eaten the post food pub would be called the Island Queen. But only one of the group was heading on home via King’s Cross.

I did an author talk on Sunday. Even writing that still doesn’t feel right. It is difficult to label myself as an author, even if I do have three books published. I had been asked to do a talk on life writing and self-publishing. For a change I had done some preparation. I had put a slide pack together and written up extensive notes a long time before the day. The problem is, between writing them and the event I hadn’t really looked at them, and was then internally flapping about how I would cope with getting the words out and making it sound as if I knew what I was doing. Lots of dread and nerves. But it was fine. Nobody left during the session. People laughed. In the right places. And there were relevant questions. I even sold a couple of books. And the time flew past. Whether I’d do another one is debatable. We’ll see.

After more than four months having camera club meetings via Zoom, we are back in the huts in Tilgate Park, which to me is a blessed relief. I don’t care if it is cold, or if there is rain. It is a good twenty minute walk each way, well twenty there and about nineteen back. it may seem strange for someone who doesn’t do social activity very well, but I fucking hate Zoom, as who wants to be on conference calls in the evening when I’ve spent most of the day on calls at work. People are sat in the huts in their coats, some hats, some gloves, but it is real life and not a little screen. And as it is prints competition night, there is a need to have the physical items there in person. (Came in the middle of the entrants, three of my four photos were middle shelf, so reasonably happy with that.)

Then it was another night, something else to do. It has been one of those fortnights, Previous Monday was camera club on Zoom, Tuesday Mother Tongue, Wednesday camera club in the huts, Thursday, a writing group, Friday, wilding talk at Ifield Barn, Saturday was a writing group, football, then up to London for Helen’s birthday meal, Sunday I was presenting a session on life writing and self-publishing, Monday fantasy author’s panel, Tuesday football, Wednesday camera club, Thursday crime writers panel, Friday book club / romance authors panel. So roll on Saturday and a break.

Well, I say that. I’m well known for DIY standing for destroy it yourself. As a child my nickname (from my parents) was Clouseau. But there was a success on Saturday. The old blinds in the living room have been up there longer than I’ve lived in the house. There has been a new set of venetian blinds sat in the storage cupboard at the front of the house for at least three years waiting to be put up. Mainly because I’m scared of making my usual monumental mess, this time of the walls around the window and / or the new blinds. Taking the old blinds off was interesting, they hadn’t been screwed into the walls or the lintel above the window space, no, they had been screwed into the pvc frame of the double-glazed windows themselves (and I thought I was a fuckwit at DIY). But we managed to get them down, drill holes into the walls for twelve plasplugs and they all worked, a wooden block was added to mean the blinds would fit snugly and then installed the blinds. More than twenty-four hours later they are still in place, and working as expected, which means they are doing a hell of a sight better than the fold down desk I attempted to put into the spare room which fell off the wall on its first use.

Sometimes you’re not sure how things are going to be for any given weekend. But it is harder and harder to just wing it and go to away games of football. Despite following a League One side which never sells out its allocation of tickets, a lot of clubs refuse to sell to the away fans on the day at the ground, which means you have to plan ahead by at least one day, if not two because you have to go to the club to get a ticket, and the cut off is usually 3pm on the Friday, sometimes the Thursday, which takes the last minute decision making off the table. Add the ridiculous on the day train fares, and it could be expensive. I was looking out of idle interest at what it would be to get to Huddersfield and for just me a return was £166, reduced to £119 via ticket splitter, but would have been another forty quid less if booked a week before. It is a lot for an impulse decision to go. It turned out it was probably a blessing not going as it ended up being a 5-1 walloping, which would have definitely put a damper on the day out.

I Wonder Why

I wonder why.

About many things really.

Following on from my previous witterings, why, after a few days of not much activity with the digging up of the pavement, was there suddenly a flurry of activity on a Sunday afternoon to work on filling it in? Is it just the cynic in me thinking that the only likely reason would be because it is a Sunday, the people doing the work would be able to claim double time overtime for it instead of the standard wage for doing it during the week?

Am I as bad at not being self-aware as some other people are? I don’t think my work at anything is brilliant, but at the same time I don’t think it is shockingly awful, but some people make me cringe as they struggle through what I think is really poor stuff, yet they are under the impression Shakespeare has nothing on them.

Why does the cat automatically gravitate to the most awkward or inappropriate place to settle down and pretend to be comfortable. Surely wrapping itself up in amongst all the leads from the computer can’t be comfortable.

Do companies do it on purpose? Do they wait until you are at the point where you are going to give up on them, on their services, on their website, on their app, in their queue, and at the point you are turning round, logging off, hanging up, they are suddenly working, and up in your face, effectively shouting, look at us, we are here, how can we help? Just as the writing group are getting ready to leave Lloyds Bank due to them introducing charges for their community account, they have finally given me a working online log on for them. Only twenty-one months after the account was opened and it was requested from them.

Why is it that the moment you are not around is the exact moment people turn up to do what it is you have been waiting for them to do. It doesn’t matter if you have been waiting minutes, hours, days, or weeks. The moment you let your guard down and go off to do something else will be the time they will be there to do it and they will be moaning because you’ve had the audacity to go and do something else because you got sick of waiting for them.

Was I always this irascible? Or have I used up what my lifetime quota of patience was. Is it natural for everyone and everything to annoy me? Should it be such a struggle for me not to want to scream at people to shut the fuck up or for them to stop being so deliberately stupid. I’m sure life in general used to be more fun than this. Finally, was work always such a crock of shit. On my way back to work (after a less than wonderful writing group session), I found myself desperately disappointed that in the couple of hours I was away that, I hadn’t come into a sudden fortune which would mean never working again, or that the world hadn’t ended. The most worrying thing being that where work is concerned, I don’t appear to be overly bothered which end of the spectrum it is, as long as it means no more work.

January Witterings

There is an everlasting lack of coordination when it comes to digging up roads and pavements. Or so it would seem. I make an almost daily trek up from my house to the parade of shops nearby. It isn’t very far to go, but if working at home it does mean an outside venture at least once a day. The row of shops is much in demand and the parking spaces there are often full (especially bearing in mind it is also the parking for the flats above the shops). And people are more impatient now, and often don’t give a shit where they park their enormous beasts of cars. Quite often the open space on the corner of Wakehurst Drive and Southgate Drive will have at least one gigantic SUV abandoned there. Normally some tosser in the typically arrogant collection of high-end German cars. You know the types, BMW, Audi, Mercedes Benz. If you are in a wheelchair or having to steer a pushchair or pram around, they make it difficult. And it would appear all this abandonment adds up to damage the paving slabs there. Just before Christmas someone had been round inspecting the slabs and had spraypainted marks on a number that needed replacing / relaying. On Monday they were all replaced with fresh black tarmac. Two days later I go to the shops at lunchtime, and that new tarmac, and quite an area around it was all dug up and piled up as UKPN conducted planned work. Note. Planned works. So if they were planned, what the fuck were the council doing putting in fresh tarmac in the area being dug up just two days before it was dug up? And they moan about budget constraints. I think it would benefit us all if they spent a bit of the budget on learning how to read. And plan. Or how to read plans even. It really can’t be that difficult, can it?

From there it was off to hospital again, and the journey gave lots of examples of where some of that – now wasted – tarmac could have been put to better use. There are some potholes on the way to East Surrey hospital which would put the Grand Canyon to shame.

It’s strange that at quarter past four, they are only running five minutes late on appointments. Seeing (pun intended) as when I went in December and was the first scheduled appointment in the morning, they were running fifty minutes late. Both eyeballs injected again. The right one feels it more, and the pools of liquid moving around in the eyes is a weird sensation for hours afterwards. I was glad I’m not allowed to drive afterwards, as the journey back was during the heaviest of the local snow flurries. It did make our minds up about the possibility of going into the office on Thursday. Not happening.

With the now on roofs from overnight, and a heavy frost earlier in the week, the seat at the kitchen table when working at home gives a view out over the backs of houses on Malthouse Road. I can see the backs of three pairs of semi-detached houses. And on all three pairs it is easy to see that the one to the left as I look at them is well insulated, and the ones to the right aren’t. The snow and ice stays on he left hand ones well into the afternoon, but is gone by nine in the morning on the right-hand ones. If you were selling insulation, these kinds of days would be great for trying to suss out new business.

Just before Christmas one of the many, many, many food purchases was a box of dates. On the top of the box it says Dates From Jordan. And every time I pass the box, I have the same insanity running through my mind. That it should read Dates With Jordan, and be the ultimate in car crash (quite often literally) reality TV shows.

More November Musings

Lloyds Bank are muppets. As it would appear most banks are. I’m the treasurer of the Crawley Writers Circle. We took ages to get a bank account opened, and even when we did, they took ages to get a card to me for me to be able to use the online account facilities. I only got one about four weeks ago. Only for less than a fortnight later then to send a letter to say that from the 15th of January next year, they will no longer be allowing clubs and societies accounts free banking. No, just for holding an account they are going to charge £4.25 per month, and then charge 0.8% fees on any incoming or outgoing transaction. Before the ins and outs that is fifty-one quid a year. For an account that at the end of the CWC’s last accounted year had less than one hundred quid in it, so they want half of the account just for fees. Needless to say we will be looking elsewhere, although the options aren’t massive. Two banks who are open to all, and three who allow clubs and societies accounts, as long as one of the signatories already bank with them. That’s all who don’t charge. That number will probably shrink, so changing accounts may become an annual event.

I had an interesting chat with the doctor at my eye appointment las Friday. It would seem the injections I have been having into my right eyeball are working and the condition in the back of them is improving. All of the eye drops, scans, photos, and general prodding show my right eye is getting better. My left eye meanwhile has got slightly worse. The reasoning behind why that may be the case is surprising. The fact that my blood sugar has been reducing a lot during the year can cause the macular oedema to worsen as the blood vessels adjust to the lower blood sugar before they calm down again. There was a fair bit of fence sitting by the doctor when pressed on whether I should start having injections in my left eye to help that one along. Yes, it would help, but we can’t advise as there are the potential side effects. Yeah, the same ones I’ve already agreed to for the right eye. It took a lot of pointed questions before they would even give a yes or no answer into whether injections would help the left eye. When they finally relented and said it would then I’ve agreed to have the course of injections for the left eye as well. It would appear it would be easier to get blood out of a stone rather than to get a straight answer about helping the blood vessels in the back of my eyes to calm the fuck down.

Whilst in Horsham hospital waiting in the disorganised queue for my appointment, I was looking around and looked at my shoulder bag. Tie fighter are the words in largest print on the bag. And I was thinking it seems a strange thing to have a fight with. What did the tie do to offend you in the first place? Was it the wrong king of knot? Did the bow not bow to your will? Seriously, who fights with inanimate objects? It’s just stupid.

The night before I was at my Horsham writing group (a lot of Horsham visits this month). There was an exercise run getting people to write about Christmas. Which is not a subject I am happy to write about. It would appear that any kind of Christmas spirit I may have had relied on me having copious amounts of spirits at Christmas. Seriously, being drunk was the only way to be able to deal with all the faux jollity. They say it’s a time to spend with your family. Why? You can see those fuckers any time of the year. Don’t let them come over and interrupt a few days of work when you can spend the time relaxing instead of having to put up with all the family bullshit. Being teetotal nowadays I can’t even mainline rum and port to block this shit out. And don’t get me started on the food. What’s the big deal about turkey? It’s like a chicken on steroids only not very tasty and dry as fuck. And I’m not a fan of roasts anyway. Curry for Christmas dinner was one of the high spots of living in Manchester. No need for seventeen different types of vegetable. No sugar anymore means the nice stuff is off the menu for me. No mince pies, no Christmas pudding, so what is the point? Roll on Boxing Day when all the fuckers piss off back to whence they came, and we can go to the football and watch even more stuffing balls.

It would appear there is no such thing as a quick nip into town. Leaving the house just after ten in the morning, and it nearly being five at night when we get back. But on the plus side a lot of the Christmas shopping is done.

Speaking of shopping, does Poundland actually sell anything for a pound anymore? There’s a bloke with a random trolley/table down near Queens Square selling perfume off it. I’m sure there is no possibility that they are knock off perfumes, or that they have been knocked off the back of a lorry.

Whilst out I think a goldfish would do better than me on the memory front. I have little snippets of what I think are great (and often funny) ideas for things to write flash into my head, only for it to disappear into the ether in the couple of minutes before I get to sit down somewhere and whip the notepad out. Perhaps I should go full Alan Partridge and start carrying around a Dictaphone.

Taking the cat to the vets for his monthly arthritis jab, I saw a poster on the wall which said that 1.2 million cats visit a shelter every year. Why do I think that 1.199 million of that number are just nosy little bastards having a quick look around to see if there is anything to eat, or something interesting to sniff?

It’s A Coffee Table Now

There must be something about Malthouse Road. Something which causes Malthouse Road to be a dog shit magnet. I walk around most places when in Crawley, and so pound a lot of pavements and paths through parks and green spaces. And in doing so I very rarely see any traces of dog shit left on the ground by lazy owners. But for some reason the west side of Malthouse Road is full of it.

From the junction with Brewer Road north to where Malthouse Road stops at East Park I had to avoid five separate little doggy offerings on the pavement. And they were just the whole ones. There were another two which previous unfortunate pedestrians had managed to put their big (and not so big) feet in and smear across a few slabs as well as the soles of their shoes.

Is it a no poo bag zone? Is it passersby giving their own version of social commentary on what they think of Malthouse Road? Or is it that those living on Malthouse Road are just a bunch of lazy bastards who can’t be arsed to clean up after their dogs? It makes it a bit of a shit walk though.

Some may be asking what the title has to do with what has been written above. Those people must have never seen Eddie Murphy’s “Delirious.” And the father’s rant I the cookout scene about the kids not cleaning up the dog shit.

Aye Eye I

I have been known to use the phrase ‘I would rather stick knitting needles in my eyes than…’ where the … hasn’t just been watching or reading something. A lot. A hell of a lot.

However, I feel I may need to stop using that, or at least cut back on using that phrase. Having been diagnosed with diabetic macular oedema my right eye needs treatment, or a course of treatments, which involve injecting something into my eyeball.

At which point I found my eyeballs are quite sensitive. They don’t even like drops being put in them. Even the numbing ones, let alone the antiseptic ones. And they don’t like the air blown into them to test the pressure.

Eyeball pressure. Is that a thing? Blood pressure, tyre pressure, yes, I know them, but eye pressure is a new one on me.

The eye is then clamped open, and a mask put over the rest of the face. I was told where to look (which is harder than it sounds, I seem to struggle to focus on one point unless it is straight on) and whilst concentrating on looking down and to the left they sneak in and stick the needle it the right side of the eyeball away from my peripheral vision.

It doesn’t hurt, the numbing drops make sure of that, but it does feel weird (maybe that is psychosomatic as I’m not sure I’m feeling anything). And then there are bubbles of stuff (I don’t actually know what it is) floating around inside the eye. When the numbing drops wear off the eye is a bit sore, but I thank fuck that’s over.

Only to remember there are four more injections to come at one a month. Trust me, after that, there is no chance of any fucking knitting needles going anywhere near my eyes thank you very much. Let’s just hope the treatment works and five is all I need and that they don’t decide the left one needs doing as well.

It did inspire me (or terrify me enough) to write a poem about it, called Eyes (Not) Right

Don’t worry they say

You won’t feel a thing

Even the local anaesthetic

May cause your eyes to sting

They may be cold

As more drops hit the eye

It is only iodine

For cleaning, not to make you cry

Some tape and a drape

To cover part of your face

And a small metal clamp

To keep your eyelids in place

Please look down and left

And keep your eye fixed there

Don’t move it at all

Of this you must take great care

And as you inspect

The side of your nose

You are not able to

See where the needle goes

Then they are done

The injection is complete

And the clamp is removed

Your eyelids can again meet

The needle is put away

The drugs have been inserted

Little bubbles float inside

You feel somewhat disconcerted

The procedure is done

And off home you can go

Until next month comes around

And you have to repeat the show

Random Scatterings

Sizing

I have been steadily losing weight all year, and there is a general shrinking going on, and because of it I need ever smaller sizes in clothes. Charity Shops are doing a booming trade in my old (and now baggy) cast offs. I have to say it is quite a buzz to be wandering into shops and being able to pick up clothes anywhere. On the whole I am currently in Large. And for the first time since I was a teenager, I’ve just bought a pair of trousers with a thirty-six-inch waist (and they haven’t cut circulation off to the legs). But there is such a disparity in sizes. The Errea kit and leisurewear which they make for Crawley Town is cut notoriously small, so I still need XL from them. Kappa seem to cut their stuff huge, and the Medium t-shirt I have from them is big on me. And then there is the three-quarter zip jumper I got from Trespass. The Large looked huge, and they didn’t have a Medium, but the Small still looked a reasonable size, so I tried that on, and it fitted. Me. In a Small. Fucking unthinkable even a year ago. Although it may say that on the label it doesn’t mean it is true though. And there is the nub of the problem. There is no consistency in how different companies label their sizing. So I end up with tops which all fit pretty much the same on me, but are four assorted sizes according to their labels. How is anyone supposed to deal with that kind of discrepancy? Going in the shops and trying stuff on is fine, but with the proliferation of online shopping, the only winners are the postal services.

Foot Felony

I have also been looking for some new footwear, I need new formal boots, and wanted some high-top trainers after my Reebok 49ers boots just fell to pieces with brittle plastic syndrome. There is a fairly new trainer shop in County Mall called Foot Felony. I went in to have a look and found out how they got their name. I thought it was strange that all of the display trainers are in a hard plastic shrink wrap. Then I turned a couple of them over and looked at the price on the sole. None of the ones I picked up were less than two hundred quid. And the one I liked the look of the most was a mind boggling nine hundred and forty-eight quid. It didn’t appear heavy enough to be made of gold though. I was the only person in the shop. I’m not surprised. I’d be more surprised if they get the volume of sales to justify it being open with three staff, seven days a week.

You can plan a pretty picnic, but you can’t predict the weather.

Went the lyrics in Outkast’s “Ms Jackson”, and of course it is well known that if you fire up the barbeque it is just going to summon the rain gods. So planning a barbeque more than a week in advance is just asking for trouble, isn’t it? Did it rain? Technically yes. Not that the downpour could be described as mere rainfall. I nipped to the local shops to get some soft drinks to take next door to the barbeque, and it is about two hundred yards there. In less than quarter of a mile, of quite rapidly paced walking, I was soaking wet to the extent I had to change my clothes and shoes before going to the barbeque. There were roads out there somewhere, but they were under newly created rivers. It was a surprise not to see an old bloke with a long white beard come past me in a huge wooden boat with a load of animals on it.

You brought what to work now?

I suppose by now I should be used to the completely random stuff people bring into work. The office now has a ‘dog of the day’ where people can bring their dog to work to fuck up the working day of those allergic to, or afraid of, dogs. Having moved buildings last week I’m now on an open plan floor, and in one corner of it there is a pool table, after the old one was removed from the other building months ago. They have cues to use, but that obviously isn’t good enough for some people, as some bloke came in this morning with his own cue in a case, and proceeded to take it out and go and play a game of pool a couple of times during the day. Having passed him a couple of times whilst he was playing, all I can say is, I would stick with the random cues supplied, at least that way the terrible play could be blamed on them, instead of showing yourself up with your own posh cue. And I thought I brought some random shit to work with me.

Something To Pass The Time

People are strange sometimes. I was walking into town along Malthouse Road. On the other side of the road a man was walking in the same direction as me. He turned out of Brewer Road and all the way along until we got to East Park we were going at the same pace. But when I turned into East Park to then go over the railway, as I was on the side of Malthouse Road that was closer to the bridge, I was ahead of him. Cue him speeding up to almost a jog to get in front of me and then taking the stairs two at a time to keep ahead as if it was a race.

The level of service in Maccy D’s really does seem to depend on the staff in there. They pretty much force you to use the self-service kiosks. I have gotten used to that by now. But then when the order comes to be done, depending on who is working, they act as if they can’t read. I always eat in. A chance to watch the world go by, and possibly see little vignettes to write about. Therefore on the machine I select the eat in option, and I always go and collect it from the counter. When the usual Saturday crew is on, it comes on a tray, they give you some serviettes, and everyone is happy after I clear my own tray and rubbish away once I’ve finished eating. It was a replacement crew this week. When I did get my collection, it was in a takeaway paper bag, slung in my general direct and no serviettes. I checked the sticker on the bag which had the details on it, and at the top in large bold print were the words EAT IN. it’s not fucking rocket science now is it?

Speaking of which, some of the Deliveroo / Just Eat / Uber Eats delivery bods aren’t on this planet either. You do see the occasional one with the proper large bags with the different sections in for hot and cold items to keep them separate. Then you see the muppet collection two large orders this morning. He appeared to have a large, padded bag for life. Which wasn’t big enough for the larger of the two orders he was collecting, let alone both of them. And he was cramming hot food and cold drinks in next to each other and on top of each other, with bits sticking out the top of his bag. Which is exactly the reason why no one in their right mind should ever order via these shitty delivery companies. The drivers don’t give a fuck, and the food will be cold when it arrives. And no one wants to have to microwave low quality fast food. It is only just about okay when ‘fresh’ off the conveyor belt.