The Quizmaster

"The Quizmaster"

So - the dust has settled after the shenanigans at Derby. The missing suit Jacket has made it's way back to Derby, and I no longer walk like John Wayne after riding the bronco.

It has come to light that my lovely wife kissed someone at the party. Normally, that would be cause for concern, but - it was a girl, so that makes it ace.

Before coming into work tonight, I assisted the moving of a fish tank from the building that my lovely wife works in. The tank is approx 6ft x2ft x18inches, and weighs in the region of a tonne. Well, not quite, but sweet Jesus there was some weight in it. It took 6 men (I included myself in that category) to lift it, and each of us was struggling as we did. It took about 3 hours to move it 5 mins down the road. It only just fitted in the back of our Zafira, and I had to drive veeery slowly.

I have decided that I am going to make the investment in a DAB radio with iPod control for the Zafira this week. I might even give the car a wash and a valet and all that, so it feels shiny and new. I love it to bits when it's shiny and new, so that combined with digital radio and iPod-ness is sure to make me happy.

Luke is like a sponge at the moment. He hears every word that is said, and more often than not repeats it. It amuses us both very much when he does this, and our happiness is reflected in him dancing and spinning with happiness. I love him so much.

My other 4 children stayed with us for a week last Saturday to Saturday. I can honestly say it didn't seem like they were with us for a week. There have been times when the week has dragged and dragged, but this didn't seem to. They have moved to Liverpool-on-sea now, and as I drove away from dropping them off in Skem on Saturday, I had to stop for a minute to compose myself before coming home. The thought of them being so far away is horrible. I kept telling each of them to be careful, and to look out for the others. I do so hope that they will be safe there.

The CSA are a bunch of inept cretins. They rang me with the right arse claiming that I hadn't paid them an amount of money (which I had done - by standing order). When I told them I'd paid it 2 weeks earlier, they asked me to prove it by faxing a bank statement to them. My lovely wife offered to do this from her work place. When I contacted them two days later, they claimed not to have received the fax (despite me having the receipt confirming that it had been received), and asked me to send it again. I refused and expressed my sincere displeasure at their inability to manage the money that they are responsible for. After putting me on hold for a few moments,
the money mysteriously turned up and I was offered the sincere and heartfelt apology "sorry about that".

My lovely wife and I are attending her final work's do (before it closes) on Friday night in Horwich. These events have become legendary and I've never yet attended one that I haven't enjoyed. This one is going to be different because I have volunteered to host the quiz. I am going to be "The Quizmaster". I am REALLY looking forward to doing it, and if I'm honest, I want to do the disco, too! The lack of disco equipment prevents me from doing that, though. Bugger. I shall dress all smart and that on the Friday night, so I'll look ace. Hopefully photo's to follow!

Oh yeah - my latest general annoyance is to do with driving. Why don't people indicate? It gets right on my moobs and It's dangerous. Grrrrr
Until our path's cross once more....

Listen Up Kids...

Lesson One

Be Honest. Life does not reward someone who is deceitful. If something has gone wrong, confess. It doesn't always pay to try and cover it up and hide it.

The party we went to in Derby was quite fantastic. From the moment we arrived, I knew it was going to be special. My lovely wife looked at least 7 times more lovely than is usual, and I looked "alright". I did have to get help from several people in putting my clothing together, however.

My lovely wife assisted by securing the loan of a dinner suit from my brother in law, and she then went and bought me the dickie bow and dress shirt from M&S. Then when we arrived at Derby, the male host of the party helped me tie the dickie bow. I had spent about an hour studying
various help guides on youtube to assist me, but it was all to no avail.

So - here we are!

But then - then, the girls appeared. The girls with the bottomless bottles of champagne. Then they offered an assortment of amazing canapes. Then we were encouraged to visit the cocktail bar that had been set up in the house, and that - that is where things started getting a bit hazy.

I think I tried at least one of every cocktail on the menu, and I settled on one (who's name escapes me), which was particularly splendid. It is fair to say I drank it to excess. I have hazy memories of my lovely wife exposing her knickers, and me touching a lady's bottom (with
permission from her husband). Only the next day did the stories of my real escapades come out.

I am struggling to recall the majority of the 5 hour period from 11pm to approximately 4am. I was told that I had exposed myself. One of the other guests told the female party host that she had seen me walking about with the little fella hanging out. How classy is that? I am fairly confident that I can explain how it happened.

My lovely wife and I had befriended another couple, Dawn and Glen, and (somehow) the topic of underwear came about. Deb mentioned how I didn't have any on and someone said I don't believe you. So I dropped my trousers. Now then - I can only assume that I didn't zip myself back up properly, and that - is how the little fella came to be exposed.

I also managed to lose "my" dinner jacket, which later turned up at Glen's house, so at least it was located and is now on it's way back to Lisa and James'. So - yeah - an "entertaining" night!

I have just attempted to assassinate a wasp. Where I work we get a lorra lorra wazzies coming in at this time of year, and they are little frickers. They want nothing more than to sting us for no reason whatsoever. I saw one flying nearby so took a rather good swipe at it with an A5 notepad. However, I flicked it onto Alan's food. I was just trying to protect us from the evil that is the Skem wasp.

So yeah - having secrets or being dishonest is rubbish. It just makes you well stressed because you're constantly having to cover your tracks and remembering who you've told (because you will - you will confide in people just to ease the burden of guilt), and remembering who you haven't told.

Just don't do it, kids. Life life - love it, and be nice.


I want an ice cream.

Parrots, Parks, and Penises

Well what a day. It's been a busy old one, that's for sure.

This morning, I dropped my eldest daughter off at high school and found myself with 10 minutes to spare before my other 3 children were due at primary school. So, I took them on a trip to see where I used to live when I was their age.

As I pulled in to the cul-de-sac, a bloke who lives over the road from where I used to live appeared, so I had a brief chat with him. I converse with him on Twitter, but it was good to see him and his wife in person after a great many years! He had a box of baby parrots too, that was nice.

Took the children to school only to find that their large playground is being transformed with all sorts of brilliant things. A table tennis table has been planted, as well as a huge wooden adventure course thing and men with proper digging stuff are still digging and planting new and exciting things. Can't wait to see it when it's finished.

Went to Argos and bought a new car seat for Luke, and a charging station thingy for me Wii. I love it. It lights up blue.

My lovely wife woke up, and we went up to Bolton and bought a new leather suite! Almost £1900 lighter, we made our way home and baked bread. I say baked, they were part baked, and we finished them off. Still, I'm happy to take the glory for "baking".

My eldest son was taking place in a chess tournament today at a different school to his own. I was aware of this, but was assured he'd be back at school for the normal finish time. It just didn't happen. Typical as I had my lovely wife in the car, and she had an appointment in Wigan which meant there was little time for hanging round. I went into his own school to make sure he wasn't there and bumped into the girl who was my best friend at high school. Totally unexpected and it was a really nice surprise! I went to the other school and found my son who won his league in the tournament! Well done Rob!!

Got my lovely wife to her appointment on time, and went to Mesnes Park with all 5 children. I've never been there before and I'm gutted that I haven't. It's really nice. I bumped into my cousin whom I haven't seen for over a year and that was a nice surprise. The park is such a lovely, well kept open space, with a smashing childrens play area and lots of happy people using it! I shall return, of that I'm sure.

Bumping into Martin (my cousin) further enforced feelings that I'd had earlier in the day when I spoke to the man with the parrots. I really really struggle to make conversation with people. I think this is something that's happened over the last few years. I don't remember it being this bad, but my word it is bad. It's painful. If you ever see me - smile at me, acknowledge me, but please don't expect a conversation. I'm not being rude, I just don't know what to say.

Skipping back 24 hours, we watched a documentary on Virgin1 called "The Naked Office". It was properly ace. If ever it's repeated I can heartily recommend it. Well done all them people who were brave enough to strip completely naked in their office and spend a day that way.

I'd like to think I could do that. I actually think I could. It's like a nudist beach thing for me - if everyone else is doing it, I'd have no problem.

Right - I'm hungry, time for food!!

Can't wait for tomorrow night in Derby. Getting excited now.


See y'z.

A Strange One

I'm not really sure how to start this, or what to put in it.

I am full of mixed feelings at the moment, and I want to write about them.

Monday saw the funeral of my father-in-law. It was a roller-coaster day of emotions, as is to be expected. There were many tributes paid to him throughout the day, none more so than that of his friend, Alan. Very funny and tremendously touching too.

Luke spent another day with his Childminder, Helen yesterday. He was, to say the least, very distressed at the mere thought of me leaving him. He's been varying degree's of fine every other time I've taken him, but yesterday as soon as I parked the car outside her house, he broke down. Poor little man. Helen gave me a tip about not following him into the house, but instead to just say goodbye at the door. I shall adopt that in the future. My lovely wife said she might be taking him this morning. It'll be her first time of dropping him off and I just hope that she is ok with it. I found it very difficult walking away from him crying this morning. It has to be done, though.

It doesn't feel like I've spent much time at home at all over the last 2 weeks. My garden is like a jungle and needs a good few hours spent on it, just to bring it close to being under control. Bloody thing. Surely there must be a refugee somewhere who'd be willing to do it for a loaf, or a piece of haddock?

The new North West England MEP, Nick Griffin has done what he does best, and outraged just about everyone - again. In a BBC interview, he has said that the EU should sink boats carrying illegal immigrants to prevent them entering Europe. He does make me laugh. He seems to take a fledgling idea, then blows it up to be something completely ridiculous. Brilliant.

My lovely wife and I (sans Luke) are off to Derby this coming Saturday night to celebrate the 5th wedding anniversary of some good friends of ours. It's a red carpet, dinner jacket-y kind of affair! I'm very very excited about it. My wife has the most amazing dress to wear, and I know she is going to look double lovely with it on. I think it will do her good to let her hair down a little. I hope she enjoys it as much as I hope to.

I'm becoming more confident doing blog posts in work now.

I've started following quite a few blogs using Google Reader of late. I like Reader a lot. It's good and useful and all Google-y. I like Google. I want to use Google Wave, and I want a pc running the new Google Chrome OS.

I'm tired now, so I shall sign off.

So long as I'm saved - we shall speak again sometime.

Why?

Well, what a week.

The last 7 days have been some of the most difficult and challenging I should ever wish to endure. My truly excellent father-in-law passed away on Wednesday, after losing his battle against the evil that is cancer.

7 days ago (almost to the minute), my lovely wife and I were sat at some really good friends of ours in Wigan, enjoying a pizza and a beer. My wife then received a phone call from her mum saying that she had been unable to wake her dad and an ambulance was on it's way. We'd both had a drink (which was an entirely reasonable thing to do as we'd walked the 15 minute journey to our friends), so neither could drive the 37 miles to my parents-in-law.

My wife's friend, whom we were visiting, hadn't drank, so very kindly offered to drive my wife there. I rode shotgun so I could navigate her back to Wigan. I followed the next morning.

My wife, mother-in-law, and sister-in-law spent every minute between that Saturday night, and late Wednesday morning when he sadly passed away, with him.

He was a very special man. Not only for being responsible for two beautiful daughters, but because of his integrity, honesty and sense of fair play. People like him don't come along every day, and I am proud to not only have known him, but to be known as his son-in-law.

As well as that devastating news, something else occurred this week that would have made Keith very proud. My son spent his first couple of days with his childminder. My lovely wife and I thought it was very important to make sure that Luke attended as arranged, and that his routine should be disrupted as little as possible.

Luke did his grandad proud. On his first day (in a cruel twist of fate, it was Wednesday), Helen (his childminder) opened the door, and in he trotted without even looking back. I bid my farewells, and left him there for 4 1/2 hours. He was absolutely fine when I picked him up. Day two, I thought, would be more of a challenge. But no, in he trotted without looking back again. Excellent! Well done, son!

My mother in law has received dozens and dozens of cards. I think I'm right in saying that it is easily over 100. Every day that comes, brings another knock on the door by the postman, with a handful of cards. He's given up posting them because it is taking too long!

The funeral is one week on Monday and that is going to be a very emotional day for all involved. I hope and pray that his wife, daughters and all of us who cared about him have the strength to let the day pass in a way that would make him happy.

You asked me to look after Debbie and Luke, and Keith, rest assured mate, I will. Take it easy up there, make sure you get yourself into the quiz leagues. Oh, I hope you enjoy meeting my mum and sharing a pint and a chat with my Dad.

I'll miss you.

The One About The Tramp And The Bush

Hello reader

Life is a funny thing. It kicks you - you find your feet, and set on your way again, and it kicks you harder. Why does it do it? Nobody knows, but sure as day follows night - it does it. It's cruel. Cruel and unfair, and that is the side of life that, fortunately, hopefully, we don't see too often.

This is another blog from work, so I'm scared.

Last night in work, I noticed a tramp loitering outside our building. Before I go any further, if tramp isn't the "pc" term for... a tramp, then I apologise to all tramps for any offence caused. Although I don't suppose many tramps have internet access. Anyway, I saw this bloke loitering, then he went behind a bush and fetched a bottle of cider that he had, apparently, stashed there, and begin to neck it. This was at about 4:30 am. I then noticed about 6 empty bottles of the same stuff he'd just had (white lightening no less) that he'd thrown in our manicured bush! (I never thought I'd ever refer to a manicured bush and not mean a well maintained pubic area). The girl who was in on nights said that she'd seen him on her way into work at about 2:45. Sad? Funny? (Marcus Bentley voice coming on)... You decide!

I'm finding it difficult to blog at the moment. I feel raw, you see.

I spent ages working on my website earlier on. I had decided that I wanted 4 feeds from the motorway cctv camera's on the front page. So, I designed the pages, inserted the image links and viewed the page. Bliss! It worked a treat. Then, one by one, they went off. I was greeted by 4 images telling me I was not allowed to view them. Bastards. Why on earth not? Ridiculous.

I spent more ages working on my half yearly appraisal earlier. It's on Monday. I've got a swanky folder and printed loads of stuff off to fool my boss into thinking I'm good. It looks impressive, what I've done. I hope my ploy works, and I receive a decent rise next year.

Oh, and I found out this evening that I'm going to start getting paid monthly. That is wubbish. Getting paid 4 weekly means 13 pay days every year. The monetary difference between 4 weeks pay and a months isn't going to be much at all, so it's going to seem like I'm missing a whole 4 weeks worth of pay. Boooo employer, booo.

On the plus side, I also found out (can you tell i've spent a fair bit of time on the works intranet site?) that I am entitled to "up to 3 occasions of 5 days paid leave" for IVF treatment. Cheers for that.

I'm getting Virgin's V+HD installed at the end of this month. I am excited at the thought of it. I need to buy a new 5m HDMI lead before the time, though.

Struggling to think and stay awake now, so I'll say goodbye and apologise for how brief this is.

Yours drinking Dr Pepper.
What's the worst that could happen?
-

To BNP Or Not To BNP

a fair old bit has happened since I last spoke at you.

I've been for an appointment at a private hospital in Manchester to discuss the potential of our trying another cycle of IVF. Following that, we buggered off to Scarborough for a 4 night break. Came home and watched England beat the Kazak's 4-0, and now the BNP have won two European Parliamentary Seats.

The visit to the hospital was interesting. I had to produce a "sample" (wank in a pot, basically). I was escorted into a small room, which had several prints on the wall of things like the Eiffel tower, the twin towers, and other such phallic imagery. To help me along, they had a plentiful supply of soft porn. The stuff of 15 year old boys dreams. Readers Wives, Escort and Fiesta. How these publications make money in these modern internet days is beyond me, but still. Having done this before, I was prepared this time. I downloaded and converted loads of porn for viewing on my iPod. Job done. I had 3 sperms in my sample. None of them moving, but hey - god bless them for trying.

We then drove, for what seems like an eternity, over to Scarborough. We arrived at the caravan site where we were staying only to find that the security people had no keys for us. After waiting for 40 minutes, someone with a clue turned up and found the keys. Hmph. The holiday itself was really nice, though. We stayed at Cayton Bay, which is equidistant between Scarborough and Filey. We visited both places and had a lovely time. Luke tripped over my feet and banged his head on the ground. His head is grazed, and my lovely wife is telling everyone I assaulted him.

We were going to visit Flamingo Land on the last day of the holiday before driving home that evening. Sky News told us the night before that the weather on the Friday was going to be shocking, so we decided to drive home early Friday instead. The weather turned out to be lovely. Bloody Sky News weather. Uber-fit presenters, but rubbish forecasting.

On Saturday we had friends round to watch England vs Kazakhstan. It was a lovely afternoon / evening that we spent together. Their two daughters seemed to poo almost constantly, so that was amusing (and slightly smelly). Oh yeah - I rang Morrisons to complain about a pizza we'd bought. It had ingredients missing off it. I've never rung one of those phone lines before now but I was enraged that not only did it have ingredients missing, but those that were present were sparse. I am waiting on a call back from William Morrison plc today.

Sunday saw me officially become middle aged. I've been middle aged in my head for as long as I can remember, but given I am now 35, and I have no optimism that I will live beyond 70, I am middle aged. Initially, I greeted middle age with despair, but I'm kind of getting used to it now. My slightly large middle can be put down to "middle aged spread". Brilliant! I am looking forward to other "middle aged" things happening soon. We travelled down to my sister-in-laws on Sunday afternoon where we were all treated to a birthday curry from The Viceroy. Very very nice it was too!!

Sunday evening saw the count of the European Elections. There has been a furore (one of my top 5 words) over the BNP securing two seats. I've had a mooch round the news websites this morning, and I have learned that just over 14 Million people voted, and the BNP secured just over 900,000 votes. The response to this on Twitter has been interesting. Just about everyone (except some Aussie bloke who's pissed off with the rioting Indians in Melbourne) is of the opinion that it's a sad day in politics, all the Brit's have become racists and how could this happen in our green a pleasant land.

I believe that rather than being upset with the BNP, who have, to be fair to them, performed very well given their minority support, we need to question why over 900,000 voted for them. The BNP has the image of being a party of racists, but what they did in the run up to this election was campaigned in towns and villages who might be, say, more tolerant of them, at grass roots level. Problems with wheely bins, and litter, and the state of parks and gardens, etc. They promised to tackle simple things like that. That sort of campaigning won people over. When it came to the time to visit the poll booths, all the media reports of MP's expenses are still at the forefront of people's minds, and they trust nobody. And then they remember the "nice" man from the BNP who promised to sort out the wheely bin collections, and they place an X in a box.

I doubt very much indeed that the BNP will hold on to either of their two European seats in the next election. They should act as a huge kick up the arse of the mainstream parties, conveying the message that the UK populus is running out of political options.

I'm off for a haircut.