So that was Christmas

And I was a little bored. So bored in fact that around 4pm, amongst the horror of animated comedies for children, tiredness tapped me on the shoulder and said "Ha ha, remember those last six to eight weeks of running around? Well today we're going to smash you in the knees and you will not arise again until the new year."

Quite frankly though in my family boredom's been something of an aspiration for the last twenty odd years so there's nothing left to say except "Do you want to know what I got for Christmas?"

In case you do and don't have the power to intercept my text messages I got a fuck load of DVD's which included;

Ultimate Force, series 1-4 -

An ITV show centred around a special forces team, much like The Unit. Though unlike the unit which uses the format to preach well learned lessons about the impact that men at war have on their loved ones back at home Ultimate Force is set around the British SAS. As such the troopers led by Ross Kemp are simply heroes doing battle against the enemy who are little more then cartoon cutouts in combat jackets under the thinnest of pretexts. After a little bang bang, whoosh whoosh the good guys win while the baddies die and we all go down the pub.

House, Series 3 -

I know it was on the telly recently but I've already got series 1 and 2 so it must held in a collection so at some point in the future I can chain a loved one to the sofa and force them to watch it episode by episode in a Clockwork Orange style re-education program.

The Wire, Series 1 -

Personally I've never heard of it and neither has the person who gave it to me but it's a hbo drama based around drug dealing, murder, surveillance and counter surveillance and the packaging bears the slogan "Listen Carefully!" so it can't be all bad. If nothing else the name of the creator aptly defines the gift giving relationship.

The Long Good Friday, Pulp Fiction, Goodfellas and Deliverance -

And collection of gangster films which quite frankly I was a little embarrassed to receive because while I understand that the giver was a member of a slightly depressing organisation I think that Christmas should really be a celebration of joy and happiness rather then an oppotunity to settle old scores. They did redeem themselves though by giving me a shit hot cook-book.

A Dusty Springfield CD -

Conclusive proof if it was needed that I am in fact getting gayer by the second. A fact that can only be re-enforced by the fact that I managed to watch My Fair Lady all the way through without throwing anything at the TV no matter how many times it burst into song for no apparent reason.


The Cook Book -

It was called a bible of some sort but it will never leave my kitchen because while Jamie, Delia and Gordon will sell you 100 pages of complex signature dishes that will only earn you Michelin stars while the stomach screams this book gives you simple instructions of how to actually get things done knowing full well that you will be able to understand, improvise and improve.

A Digital Radio -

Contrary to the widely seen advert I actually think this particular item will in fact just sit on the shelf gathering dust in the hope that one day soon life will improve.

Now with that long list done and the postman still failing to deliver there is nothing left but one simple question;

"Does anyone remember that guy who had the courage to give my mate a job because he's now being forced into bankruptcy even though he had no idea what he was doing?

Today has been exercise day

Obviously exercise hasn't taken up the whole day but seeing as I'm not allowed to do anything else productive it's the only thing I can think of mention. I spend 40 minutes doing free weights and 30 minutes of cardio. It's ironic really that at the time of my life that I am at my fittest I'm also at my fattest but hey that's SSRI's for you, weight gain and a compromised immune system.

I have however figured out what the problem with my suspension from the shop was. If I'm to ever escape from the great, flabby monster of mediocrity that is the British State I am going to have to learn to work through this January and every other January but hey the British State has already seized control of every other aspect of my life so I may as well just sit back and accept my fate.

Ironically Depression has been the flavour of the news today because while the British Government failed to prevent the summer floods or indeed repair the damage that those floods did they have been able to send in a team of psychologists to work out why the people who lost their homes are depressed.

This brings me on to today's question;

"Sorry so you were expecting me to do you a favour while you ruin my life because?"

Oh dear, oh dear, oh dear.

With that post being left blank I've been set so far back I may have trouble catching up so today is going to be an especially long ramble to see if we can bring everybody back up to speed.

Yesterday I had my haircut and then started writing up the days posting. When i was about halfway through there was a knock on the door and low and behold it was thieving Linda spinning some sob story about how her life is really difficult because a lot of people who've made her company want to kick the shit out of her. I have to admit I did kind of stop listening half way through because the whole state of affairs does just underline the importance of Option A.

As I was closing the door I noticed a hand delivered envelope addressed to me. I opened it up and it was a letter from my line manager informing me that I'd been suspended for "Intimidating another team member."

Obviously I quickly phoned him up pointed out that taking such drastic action without speaking to me was very bad management practice and bordered on the anti-social especially as to do it he'd actually taken all the time to visit my home address in person but some how lacked the courage to knock on the door. After finding himself unable to explain exactly what element of my behaviour was "intimidating" other then this other team member said so he agreed to allow me to come in this morning to discuss it and he'd give me the same chance he's given the shit.

Happy with that I then finished up the blog (you really should try reading it, it's amazing), sat down to read the paper and then in slightly longer then it takes to read a blog the phone rang. It was my line manager to tell me that he'd spoken to his line manager and there was no way on earth he could lift my suspension and I would be unable to enter the premises until it had been lifted.

I then obviously spoke to his line manager who told me a very different story because the decision is all in my line managers hands and he can lift my suspension anytime he likes.

Interestingly the "intimidating behaviour" I directed at my fellow team member was to write a letter to no-one in particular which was simply the rantings of a mad man with lots of references to the security services, paranoia and phrases such as "festive suicide pact". Along with that letter I enclosed a card telling the team member to pass the letter over to the community mental health team.

To me that's either intimidation or an acid test to determine her competence to work in a mental health project because with the £20,000 we're paying her we could have a properly trained and qualified mental health nurse. I can see the interview question now;

"A service user is quite clearly using the plot. During this process they hand you what appears to be a suicide note and asks you to pass it over to the mental health team. Do you?

A. Contact the community mental health team and ensure the service user is properly cared for.

or

B. Have the service user suspended and cast them away from anyone who may be able to assist with their worsening condition.

I have to admit though that I'm hardly gutted about being suspended at this time of year because I wasn't being paid to work there and my suspension will not appear on my employment record so all I've really lost is the opportunity to drag myself out of bed in the middle of January to have certain elements scheme on me.

Excuse me while the littlest tear in the world falls.

After that I made dinner and went to have a drink with my mum, apparently I've torn the ligaments in my foot.

This brings me neatly onto today where I got up at lunchtime, had breakfast and started doing this. Later I might go watch a dvd but there's so much news flying about I might just sit around watching that.

The big news story of the day is that prosecutors in England and Wales have been instructed to jail for two years certain people who are caught using their mobile phone while driving.

I have to say this hasn't come soon enough because there's nothing more annoying then when you're driving along at a legal speed with a full awareness of the the hazards up ahead and in full control of the vehicle when all of a sudden someone from the slow lane cuts across the front of you flipping your car into a ditch.

Except possibly when the only explanation they can offer is "But you might of had an accident somewhere in the future."

Obviously today's post has taken up so much time I can't tell the stories I promised yesterday because they're both long and complicated but it doesn't matter there's only a very small group of people who think they're still secrets anyway.

I will however pose another question today;

"What language do you need to speak to convince your line manager that he has made a mistake so horrible it threatens to undermine the future of his company and the only way he can solve it is through an embarrassing U turn?"

Oh dear, oh dear, oh dear.

Another day, another visit from the postman

and still nothing for me (except of course a letter informing me that the Tamworth road mental health team are in fact located at Tamworth road?!?!).

Obviously what I'm still despreatley waiting for is any news on my book-keeping course. You know the one where the money has been paid out and the work has been done yet we're still sitting here waiting to see a result but I suppose if you're looking for an allegory for the British State it doesn't get much clearer then that.


Anyway this abscence of progress does give me the oppotunity to give you an update on the thieving Linda situation;

Firstly there was much screaming and shouting at my dad to finally encourage him to get off his arse and take steps to try to improve his existence ( a step which derailed a much more effective plan which would have led to him not having to be encouraged) we were rewarded with a Police Community Support Officer.

This poor fellow sat in our kitchen in much of a panic because his radio was far too complicated for him to work and he had to meet two collegues in the park later and you can't have PCSO's walking around after dark on their own.

When I was a traffic warden we used to solve problems like this by picking a time, picking a place and getting ourseleves there unfazed by the complicated process known as "walking" but then we didn't have to carry the extra weight of those stab vests and all that taxpayers money in our pockets.

Once we'd re-assured this PCSO that if he couldn't phone his friends we'd walk him to the park and hold his hand until they turned up we finally got round to a conversation of what to do (admittedly this was just me telling him what to do and him failing to understand, but they couldn't possibly be expecting complinace could they?). This left us with four options;

Option A: Quick, effective and so cheap it might actually turn a profit.

Option B: Long, complicated and expensive but ultimately effective.

Option C: Long, complicated and expensive but ultimately ineffective.

Option D: The governments brand new initiative that still needs testing in the field but I can tell you now for free that it won't work.

After much fiddling my dad decided that options A, B and C would best not be undertaken because the government has already paid out thousands to get option D written up and passed through parliment. Then they've then paid out another couple of thousand to make the PCSO's aware of the new plan so we may as well pay out another couple of thousand finding out that it simply won't work but hey it gives my dad the oppotunity to sit at his computer fiddling while his mothers world just get worse.

I have to say fucking hell because I'm used to hearing that grasses will sell their own mothers down the river but you never expect to see it in your own home and to think he's got the nerve to walk into rooms and introduce himself as her "carer".

So sorry world this is what I'm being asked to aspire to and if I dare to improve on the design I can expect to be crushed into the ground.

So todays question is;

"What story would you like me to tell tommorrow. The tale of the Beslen Massacre or J18 story?"

I woke up this morning

and a courier knocked on my door, but he had nothing for me.

Then the postman came and he had nothing for me.

Then I made some phonecalls but still they had nothing for me.

So today's post has been left blank














Save for the question;

"If the British Establishment can't get it's finger out of it's arse in a time of crisis does it deserve to be anything other then America's 51st state?"

Watch out thieving Linda's about

And this time she's got a police escort.

I should explain thieving Linda is one of Thornton Heaths most infamous resisdents. She lives in a very nice council house and makes her money signing on the social. Problem is this money ain't good enough for Linda so every so often she goes round and robs me gran. Obviously we've reported to the police time and time again but the police being thick can't do anything about it and can only send a CSO round to say sorry for your loss. Obviously I walk past Linda's front door one day and suddenly it's two coppers guarding the door and a police helicopter up in the sky.

Today of all days she's been sniffing around again and a 10pm she brings two coppers in a van to ask permission to nip over my fence leaving me to get the stench of pig shit out of the carpets.

Now obviously I'm not saying anything but if you do happen to see Linda knocking around watch your wallet and watch your mouth especially what with Christmas coming up.

So we have todays question;

"Can the police actually do their job or are they just here to protect the state?"

Alright then I'll admit it I enjoyed that.

Went into work to day and as usual on a Monday it was stock rotation day. To do this we take a certain degree of our stock off the rails, mark it down to £1 and put it on the cunningly named £1 rail. To make room on the £1 pound rail we take the old stuff off there and throw it in the recycling bins. Normally this is a bit difficult because we have to sort of juggle stuff about to make sure we have ample stock at any point.

Today however because it was christmas we got to do two weeks stock in one go giving ample oppotunity for fashion facism with lots of "size 30? Put in the bin, fat people shouldn't be allowed to wear clothes" "Lumious green nylon jumper? If you're going to wear that I don't you on my planet let alone in my shop" Although the fact we haven't been able to sell it for a quid suggest our customers quite good taste anyway.

Then I moved on to do the same thing with the books and found a very old volume entitled Treason by Rebecca West which was so good I'm happy to decide it was just a very elaborate forgery.

Then the shite, who is still there by the way, rolled up carrying a large picture that had broken so I said "Oh have you got the big picture from the back room?" to which she replied no it's from the basement"

At which point I decided fuck it if they're not going to listen it doesn't matter what language you talk to them in because they're too stupid to understand. So I decided to write it down slowly with lots of pictures. The decison to down tools and fuck off upstairs in the middle of the day led to a little bit of a confrontation with the shite and the phrase,

"Look can you at least pretend you're not a fucking idiot for five fucking minutes" may or may not have been used. She responded to this by doing the poor little rich girl pout and going

"I think you're insane, you're very dangerous and I'm feeling very threatend" despite the fact I was calmly sitting down at the time so the only obvious response was,

"You're getting paid £20,000 a year to work in a mental health project why don't you do your fucking job".

Then I left early and went to the pub before seeing my doctor who rather unsuprisingly disagreed with shite's assessment on my mental health.

To be honest I'm still too busy laughing still to pose a question but Basra hey, that's going to go well.

The Liverpool Nativity.

I've just been watching this strange little production that's just been shown in the shadow of the valley of death that is BB3.

Put simply it is the re-telling of the nativity story brought bang up to date against the backdrop of modern day Liverpool. Joesph was a black asylum seeker, Mary was a poor little white girl waitress and Herod was a pastiche of a non-specific New Labour minister who was always cursing the "terrorists within".

Obviously this was a very provocative piece which raised many questions but mainly promoted the twin themes that all you should ever aspire to is getting married and having babies and that the Labour government is terrible.

As the program was shown on BBC3 a lot of those watching it will now leap on to their broadband connections to the discuss the issues raised while the state secretly takes notes.

The problem is that as taxpayers these same people have already paid a group of unelected civil servants to prevent Britain being threatened by by terrorists and flooded by asylum seekers.

These civil servants who are exclusively Conservatives have failed miserably to do the job they have been paid for. This is why there are still questions to be asked.

Well thats public transport up the tits then.

I woke up this morning and the London Underground Central Line was closed east bound due to over-running engineering works meaning an arsehole of a day for my mum and her missus (god if my dad ever got remarried this would really get complicated!) And the Victoria line between Brixton and Victoria was closed for exactly the same reason.

This evening when I tried to get the bus home it appeared a few before had been cancelled meaning that my bus was late, packed and the traffic was terrible but hey it's winter so you have to expect that sort of thing don't you?

Needless to say it's been yet another annoying day what with difficult journeys and the shit still being on the floor claiming £6000 a year more then a nurse who would be asked to do a tougher job with fewer resources. But as she was the only applicant for the vacancy she's got to stay there to prevent us having the "Why are we forced to pay over the odds for fourth rate staff?" conversation.

You will excuse me of course then if I all but fail in bringing a clever punchline into this delusional rant but I am forced to ask the question;

"Is the British state at war with the British People because for some reason it is finding it more and more difficult to win battles on foreign fields?"

Bastard fucking book keeping course

Now while it would be nice to pretend we live in a world where money is no more and nobody needs to work or that one day a university would swoop down and offer me a full scholarship that reflects my age, rank and length of service (20+years btw) sadly this is looking unrealistic so I decided to arm myself for the world of work by enrolling on a course and picking up a few skills.

When I first did this there was outrage because obviously the British state is all seeing and all powerful (don't laugh foreigners) so there were tantrums, shouting and arguments right up until the point I attempted to subtly knudged certain people along the learning curve. Then another company offered me the chance to give them a large sum of money in return for a book I already had a copy of and the chance to have a number of assignments marked and a qualification issued in the highly unlikely event that the assignments would be correctly completed.

The problem is way, way back in June I submitted my final assignment and nothing happened. After months of waiting and praying I discovered that my assignment had not been marked because it had gone missing in the post. Dutifully I redid the assignment and sent it off six weeks ago. Since then I've heard nothing. All day I've been phoning the company concerned, leaving messages left right and centre but still nothing has happened.

I must say at this point I am very disappointed as all I want is my money back because they have now twice failed to meet their obligations under the contract and as with the student loans there was a viable plan on the pitch long before the had to get involved.

Aside from all the nuisance I have noticed a news report stating that people across the UK are now struggling to meet their mortgage payments which causes me to affect an air of sarcasm and ask the question;

"Why should I care. It wasn't my fault you overestimated your earnings and got yourself into debt?"

Do you ever get the feeling you're slightly out of the loop

Busy, busy day mainly becuase I've been to work. At work I learnt two things. Firstly I learnt the shit is still on the floor but trying to walk in my footprints while stealing my coffee, forcing me to drink some Nestle shite. (Note this does not demonstrate a high degree of workmanship.)

Secondly I learnt that there had been a stabbing on my road on saturday night meaning that for most of saturday and sunday my road was taped off with police and scene of crime officers crawling about.

I'm not sure whether I'm more worried that there was a stabbing so close to home or the fact that I needed to travel three miles to hear about it. It's not even that longer road.

So a question:

Who on earth signed my mobile phone up to the "redhot sex service" because the bombarding with unwanted texts is proving very annoying not elast because my phone doesn't do pictures.

Another resounding success from the Community Mental Health Team.

Today I had an appointment with my psychiatrist at the Westways Community Rehabilitation Centre, I can't believe four months have passed so soon. Obviously this appointment didn't occur on the date or time that I arranged at my last appointment instead it was spat out by a random number generator similar to the national lottery dream number machine.

After a five minute chat with the psychiatrist he turned around and said that he found me to be distracted, unfocused, apathetic, aggressive and nihilistic - in short displaying the textbook symptoms of depression which is no great surprise seeing as that why I was there in the first place.

Being faced with a patient who was presenting with worsening symptoms my psychiatrist was forced to make a clinical decision. He could have ordered me back into hospital, he could have increased my medication or he could have referred me to a social worker or mental health nurse for closer monitoring and support.

Obviously he opted to discharge me from his waiting list.

I can't say that I'm that bothered because in the 18 months I've been under the care of "the team" all they've done is move me from one waiting list to another. Any improvement to my condition that has been achieved in that time has been purely the result of my own efforts and the the support of my family. But in summary, I tried to go to rehab and it said non, no , no(!)

After going to work and discovering that the above is in fact standing operating procedure for mental health services in the UK I pissed about with a the window display and generally avoided work. During that time, whilst reading the paper ( it was research boss, honest) I became mildly obsessed with the story of John Darwin.

For those of you who don't know John Darwin was a canoeist who was lost at sea five years ago. He was declared dead a year later and since collecting the life insurance payout his wife has sold the family home and moved to Panama. The problem is that on Saturday Mr Darwin handed himself in, alive, to a London police station claiming to be suffering from amnesia. Needless to say he has since been arrested for fraud and the police, with an admirable level of understatement, are currently researching the details of Britain's extradition agreement with Panama.

All this brings me neatly on to today's question which is simply;

"Are the British government seriously trying to run the 'He was off the radar for five years' defence?"

Now There a waste of a carbon footprint if there ever was one.

I spoke to a mate of mine yesterday and apparently them and their girlfriend are going to Amsterdam this weekend so obviously I said;

"Drink, drugs and prostitutes?"

To which they replied;

"No, narrow boats."

Anyway on to the daily question which may or may not be asked on a day to day basis;

"What was the name of that teacher who reported Gillian Gibbons to the Sudanese authorities just days after negotitation between the UN and the Sudanese government broke down?"

What's up with my internet connection?

I haven't posted for a couple of days, it's certainly not been for a lack of things to say because my explanation of why exactly I was phoning up the army this afternoon was especially amusing, but my internet connection suddenly started to stutter, skip and generally be annoying.

I wonder what could possibly be the matter?