Brennig Jones (and friends)

Yesterday we:

* left the house at 05.30

* arrived at my place of work at 06.45

* left the workplace at 18.50

* arrived home at 21.30

Today I feel brilliant!

Something wrong here methinks…

B.

An email flutters in from the University of Open.

It asks if I fancy a November weekend in Rome studying things Roman and erm stuff?

Of course, I have to pay for my own there and back and accommodation in between but I get thrown in…

* A visit to the Colosseum (which just happens to be the focus of TMA03)

* A visit to a major Rothko exhibition (who just happens to be the focus of TMA06)

Hmmm…

Soph’s not working on that Saturday and I seem not to be competing that weekend…

I sense the germ of an idea!

Right, I’m off to visit Easyjet and my travel company website.

B.

You come downstairs to make a cup of tea, you fill the kettle and…

… put the kettle in the microwave.

Danger Will Robinson, danger!

B.

I’m thinking of revamping my ‘proper’ website (as opposed to this very improper place, ) because it looks a little… tired.

Does anyone know any dependable people who aren’t going to charge me an arm and three legs for their services?

B.

p.s. I know what I want – if that helps!

A pair of them (natch).

In the garden, hopping about on top of the garden shed.

Aren’t they supposed to be in Africa or somewhere warmer than the UK by now?

Daft buggers.

I.

Am.

Bored.

I have just finished TMA02 (for the third time) and I’m trying hard to stay away from TMA03.

I have a submission strategy (no, not that kind of submission!).

I’m going to submit work in a gradually increasing qualitative arc.

I’ve figured that if I put too much effort in to early assignments there will be too little room for improvement – i.e. my grades will remain static.

But, I reason, if I were to put ‘just enough’ effort in to the earlier assignments and pull out all the stops for the ones that follow afterwards, my grading curve will be sure to show a massive improvement.

And that way everyone looks good.

Go on.

Tell me I’m barking mad.

I can take it.

Woof!

B.

Go on – say ‘thank you’ nicely.

You owe me a massive debt of gratitude.

I have saved you from death by a combination of factors.

Death by boredom. Death by introspection. Death by… feeling sorry for myself.

Oh yes.

You’ve got off lightly, my friend. Very lightly.

Not even the Sensational Alex Harvey Band’s brilliant comedic rendition of Delilah could make me smile last night.

Face it, when SAHB can’t get one smiling things are in a terrible state!

Where was I?

Oh yes, saving you from death by misery.

On the way home last night I dictated the world’s most miserable blog. It made the entire Smith’s back catalogue seem cheery.

This morning I’ve had it transcribed, briefly scanned it and pressed the delete key because Oh My God It Was Absolutely Fcuking Awful!

So instead of that rubbish, here’s some random bits of informative, erm, information.

1. It was this time last year that the lovely s took me to see Muse at the NEC – and the first song on my iPod this morning was ‘Together We’re Invincible’ by Muse!

2. This morning I passed an articulated tanker lorry that had a label on the back that stated ‘non-hazardous load’.

Well excuse me for thinking otherwise but I consider 25,000 litres of fluid travelling at 56mph is pretty hazardous!

The thought of 25,000 litres of fluid hitting a car or a pedestrian at 56mph seems pretty hazardous to me!

3. A little while later I passed a fully laden articulated car transporter; it was stacked with brand new, unregistered Audis.

Did you know that occasionally – but not often – car transporters sometimes lose a car off their load?

And did you know that if you find one – in a field, at the side of the road or wherever – you are entitled to keep it, regardless of the make, model, expense or condition that it’s in with no need to make any form of payment?

This dates back to our centuries-old salvage laws – I know someone who got a brand new unregistered Porsche 4×4 like that, it only needed a minor paint touch-up because it had landed on all four wheels.

True!

Honest!

B.

Heroes: just in case you’ve avoided the programme thus far and don’t know the plot…

The story attempts to revolve around the regenerative powers of the world’s most unconvincing cheerleader (seriously, she looks like she’s 29 years old, not like the High School student the producers are trying to kid us that she really is!), her slightly menacing (in a two-dimensionally acted manner) step-father and a bunch of – as yet unrelated – dysfunctional but similarly superhero-endowed misfits.

The star of the pack is brilliantly portrayed by Christopher Ecclestone who manages to project just the right combination of paranoia and invulnerability with a convincingly hard-edged, streetwise, take-what-I-want-and-move-on style.

I don’t particularly like it.

Yet why do I want to watch it?

I think it’s eating away at my subconscious in a subliminally-messaged kind of way…

‘Watch Heroes on Wednesday evening; you know it makes sense. See the world’s oldest teenager show the full range of her acting abilities from A to B.  See Christopher Ecclestone act as though he really doesn’t want to be there… is he acting? See the stupid ex-policeman and his equally stupid wife in stupid ways.’

Actually, I think I’m waiting for someone to step on Mr Muggles, the irritatingly-carried-everywhere show-dog that belongs to the mother of the World’s Oldest Teenager.

Want to know what I’ll be doing next Wednesday evening?

Yep.

Watching Heroes.

Just don’t ask me why.

B.

There is a garden centre (aha, gotcha! You didn’t see this one coming did you?) on the outskirts of Droitwich that tells everyone – via an enormous banner – that it is the Garden Centre of the Year 2008.

As voted for by the elderly residents of Droitwich, probably.

Anyway, this garden centre.

They’ve got their Christmas lights up.

Yeah, honest!

And…

They have a 50x larger-than-life wickerwork reindeer standing just behind their boundary fence.

Hmm…

Let me just check the calendar a minute.

goes off to look for a calendar before remembering he could always use Groupwise

Yep, I was right.

It’s the twenty-melon-farming-fifth of chicken-sucking October.

Or in other words.

It isn’t even November yet.

The God of Mammon must be thrilled to bits to see the cash tills at the temple of Avarice ringing away to the cheesy background of The Pogues’ Fairty Tale of New York so early in the year.

I am going to hold a one-man protest at this blatant attempt to consumerise our lives to even further depths.

I am not going to patronise this garden centre with my hard-earned dosh.

Oh no.

Not one penny shall I spend there, in honour of their bad taste attempt to bring Christmas ever-forward in to the larger part of the year.

B.

Right now being one of those times.

There are two sides to every story and here’s my side.

If you divided this evening up in to two conversational columns it would be fair and true to say that my input would be in the smaller of the two.

I love hearing my wife talk.

She tells me how her day has been, what kind of a day her colleagues have had, how she’s going to organise things (meetings, aspects of future work), how her public have been.

And she usually delivers it all with such feeling (sometimes good, sometimes not good, sometimes enthusiasm, sometimes devoid of enthusiasm) that it’s…

Compelling.

She does talk, my wife; she rattles on, hopping from event to event or from topic to topic like a conversational grasshopper might, from blade of conversational grass to blade of conversational grass – pausing long enough to sway briefly in the breeze before skittering skywards to the next theme.

It’s a joy to listen to her; in a way it’s a kind of extension to the way I love her. Don’t ask me to explain, it just is. I suppose I kind of bask in her day – or the output to her day.

But late this evening I cut her off; raised my voice harshly to end a conversation.

You see, a day or so ago she sent an email to our landlord; instead of asking for urgent work to be carried out, it firmly implied that we would do the work.

This evening The Lovely S asked me to read the response (which says – paraphrasing – ‘Yep, you guys go ahead and do the work’).

Which is obviously not the position that we wanted to be in; let’s face it, the landlord should get someone round here to fix the problem right now.

I pointed out that our original message to the landlord was flawed.

And I got blamed for it.

I suppose if my day had been less sh1t I may have just rolled with it.

But I didn’t.

I raised my voice, said loudly ‘Don’t blame me for this’ with heavy emphasis on the word ‘Don’t’.

That’s when I was told not to use that tone of voice again and was then put on the receiving end of a helping of cold shoulder as The Lovely S literally and metaphorically closed the door on me and went up to bed.

So because there’s no-one else around and it’s late and I’m feeling absolutely carp can I tell you just a little about my day?

The vet came to see the horses early this evening.

Vinnie needed his annual flu/tet jab. Except an examination of the paperwork revealed that his annual jab is out of date so we have to start the flu/tet course of treatment from scratch – three visits, three injections and each visit/injection fully chargeable.

Oh well.

Then she looked at Beech.

I wanted her there to give me an honest, professional appraisal of him, his condition and his prospects.

The examination was detailed, thorough and lasted over an hour.

On the positive side of things she doesn’t think he’s in any pain.

On the negative side though, her diagnosis is that he’s got a neurological disorder which is robbing him of the ability to judge his personal space and the position and use of his body in that area of space.

Her opinion is that it’s untreatable.

And likely to worsen – in that he might start falling over and be unable to get to his feet soon.

Sue, the yard manager, is convinced that his condition has improved in the last fortnight.

I don’t see it.

But in the face of her optimism I can’t make the decision – that decision – just yet.

So he’s got another few weeks, my lovely, lovely boy – as he isn’t in any pain – to try to prove Sue’s judgement.

All the vet could say was how unfair it all is, that he’s been so unlucky in life.

And he has.

Though I can’t help feeling that an unlucky horse must in some way be the butt end of a neglectful owner; that all of Beech’s ills are attributable to my culpable shortcomings.

I hope, I really hope that I’m not prolonging the inevitable.

In giving him more time I really want to be doing the right thing for him.

Which is ironic, really.

Because that’s all I’ve ever wanted to do.

The right thing.

Yet this evening I’ve done the wrong thing, said the wrong thing and said it in the wrong way.

Which all goes to make me not much of a human being really.

I know I should be sitting here feeling sorry for myself but I’m not.

I feel sorry for my wife who has to put up with my shortcomings.

I feel sorry for Beech who has to put up with a neglectful owner.

Because you know what Winston Churchill said about things re-occurring?

‘The first time it’s circumstance. The second time it’s happenstance. The third time it’s enemy action’.

And this is Beech’s third serious incident since he came to live with me.

Perhaps I should find Vin a good home before I break him too.

I just hope I don’t break my marriage too.

B.

Sitting here discussing lyrics with The Lovely S and a corrupted set of words to Terry Jacks’ Seasons in the Sun (a song I hate with a passion) somehow fell from my lips.

The Lovely S turned to me and said “I don’t think those were the real words.”

I say “What? We had joy, we had bum, we had seasons in the sun? Not the right words?”

I am aghast.

B.