That's your lot.

I'm done.

(I was trying to think of something witty and elegant to end with, but I can't so... *drifts off into the ether*)

Valentine's Day is (nearly) Over

(and less truculently, this effort from Mr Stephen William Bragg esquire, sung in typically painful fashion, and yet no less meaningful for it...& no, it isn't the same song as the title of the post. So there.)

Whatever you are doing, Happy VD... Or not, who am I to tell you how to feel?

What's black and white...

... and red all over?

A penguin with sunburn of course. (My Tom Smith's Christmas Cracker of 1978 told me so, so it must be true....)

Not that these fellas have sunburn. Oh, no (even though they do live in California...) - they are far too delightfully penguin-tastic for that...

Oh - and having watched EastEnders may I just say that having Pat do to Patrick what Frank did to her (you know the full frontal flasher thing as a precursor to illicit decrepit shagging *shudder*) is appallingly lazy writing: they should put that one back in the plot cupboard sharpish and not take it out until, oh... ever. *feels queasy at the thought of ever seeing that hoary old device again... and the flashing too*

[Look, I can't do relentless gloom. A fair bit of seemingly endless gloom, I'll admit - but relentless? *Makes strange "thrpppfft" noise* Now that would be a bit much.]

Waiting....

Sometimes it's just like this. *shrug*
I am my own worst enemy.

What is it Billy Bragg says?
"I have all the self-loathing of a wolf in sheep's clothing."
Yeah. Pretty much sums it up.

-Good weekend?
What the fuck do you reckon?


EDIT: It can't rain all the time...
(It's an MP3... possibly. And it might disappear at any moment.*shrug* Jane Siberry, if you were wondering....)

Making up takes time and work. It isn't over yet, I guess. Work and time, not just wishing things better and hoping.
Talking things over and snot certainly go together it would seem, so if you have shares in Kleenex, rub your hands together for a bumper dividend...
I still feel lower than a snake's socks - and full of self-recrimination: I know my faults -you read this, so you know them too- and I really, really need to work on reducing them (removing might be a bit of a tall order).

Doing it for myself is one thing- I've been putting that off for years - but doing it because I love someone worth changing for (and who knows my faults and loves me still) is a mighty incentive. And I do, I truly do.
-So I must.

Coming out (again)

Well, I finally did it.
I came out -

-as a blogger.

*exhales*

Can't honestly say it was a stress free event.
Can honestly say I see Mrs Gripes' point of view. (Yes, I really should have told her a long time ago. I know. I know...)
Can't blame her for being pissed off with me. Very.*

So, Mrs Gripes now knows I blog and has read much of it - while I have been sat next to her, turning a subtle shade of puce and literally biting my lip.

(Is it OK if I'm a little at a loss for words right now?









Thanks...)
I think I would like a drink now, please.

* Very. Although we are definitely making up. Oh yes. Yes, indeedy do...

Better...Now keep it up.

Mrs Gripes has flu now. Poor, poorly poppet is suffering hellishly (and I am a crap nurse: although I could probably administer a fair bedbath, given half the chance....) and I feel very guilty about having to leave her and go to work. Surely employers should allow people to take "ministering to the sick" days?

But, to focus on the positive, the sun actually is shining. Not just peeking out from behind the clouds and wondering if it should make an appearance, but beaming like a three year old who has just discoved the word "bum"...

And for which I am truly thankful.

In Between Days

February is full of them - days of nothing precise, nothing clear-cut, nothing that can clearly define one thing from another.

From my window at work I can see the great grey expanse of the Firth of Forth, Fife is a smudged mist in the distance, Berwick Law stands like an erect nipple on a cold day. The landscape looks wintered out, exhausted - and all blurs into one greyly indistinct whole.

Pathetic fallacy being what it is, I too feel as though I have had my fill of winter. I crave some sun to soften my winter-roughened edges, something green to lighten my outlook, something budding, fresh and new to make me look hopefully on the world.

I feel as though I am crammed with sighs today and they can't help but leak out. Stuffed full of half-hopes, half-doubts, half-hearted in all things, today is a trudging drudge.

Just as the days are getting longer, I know things will get better, but a little sunlight shouldn't be too much to ask.

Advice for gloomy days

If you're feeling mildly shite,
get yourself a pocket kite.

(good slogan, eh?)

I got a teensy weensy pocket kite from my sister at Christmas. (She knows I've had no bloody luck getting a "proper" kite to fly. Ever. In my entire life.
- There are pictures littering several photo albums of me scowling at tangled kites, kites crashed to the ground, kites that have beheaded passers by etc, etc...
She reckoned the pocket kite would be "fool proof."

It is! I am that fool and it even flies for me! Even in the faintest breath of wind, it eats sky!

(-and that "I can fly a kite, I can! Look! Look!" feeling- that garners the admiration of dogs, small children and old people, is unbeatable. *sigh*)

I realise that this isn't universal advice - and should you live near to overhead powerlines, I really don't think it's for you - but I feel better for it.

Funny Anniversary

Today is the 17th anniversary of the first time I got dumped (well, by a woman who I had actually snogged more than once, anyway.)

She dumped me outside the Co-op on St Stephen's Street in Norwich at 3:42 in the afternoon. It was cold and grey. I'm fairly sure it was a Thursday. I wasn't really paying attention to what she was saying - but I knew I was dumped. She kept saying sorry and not meaning it.

I was broken-hearted for at least a month. Then I started to seriously fancy her ex-girlfriend, skive school and screw-up my A-levels.
(-But that's another story entirely...)

In retrospect, it actually is a happy anniversary: I started to learn a great deal that day. 

*grits teeth*

[OK. OK. So I know I'm a muppet. I still haven't a clue where the previous 2 posts have gone, though...

Right.

Where was I?

Oh yes...]

This morning I was devilish excited to see my signed copy of Sarah Waters' The Night Watch plop through my door.

On opening the package I was less thrilled.
"It's bloody scuffed" I moaned, "Someone hasn't wrapped it properly, it's all scratched... Bloody customer service... Bloody rip-off, slack-alice Britain.. Bloody [insert rant here]-"

At which point Mrs Gripes looked at the copy held in my white-knuckled grip and paused a moment.
"You know, " she said, without so much as a hint of a smirk, "I think it's supposed to look like that."

I looked again at my much-anticipated copy.

It is. It is designed to look scuffed.

Bloody wanker bastard graphic designers. I mean, who designs a book to look knackered? I mean, really?...

Stinkin'Thinkin'

The Top 10 Types of "Stinkin' Thinkin'"

I'm feeling particularly sensitive and wafty today. I've been brooding for much of the day (in between coughing jags and cups of fennel tea, that is...) I was considering feeling baneful, and maybe trying my hand at some lamenting and rueing too - but, to be honest, I haven't got the energy.

Anyhow.

I read the linky-linked thing above (hoping it would be some Happy Mondays druggy groove "thang".. er... man) and clapped my hands with glee to see that it was internet self-help bollocks. Oh joy! Oh rapture!

Skimming through the list, I am (generally) guilty of all ten. Quite possibly more besides, but they only listed ten...

Just curious, like. But I was wondering if I was indeed the most negative-thinking, self-destructive belly-button analyser in blogdom, or if maybe there might be someone else if not worse, then certainly no better?

Well. Am I?

(Oh, I always am, aren't I... *checks* yep, that's at number 2, I do believe)

Replacing brushes with breasts: when "This Morning with Fern and Phil" gets surreal

Replacing brushes with breasts
(Safe for work, oddly enough)

Er... I thought I was just having another one of those fevered hallucinatory mornings -snoozing comfortably in my duvet-nest, tripping-out on the Sunset Yellow in the Lucozade- when I heard Fern Britton suggesting she might try setting her embonpoint at it this weekend....

*thinks*

Cor...