Life Lessons

Road hog

If I’ve almost killed one student, I’ve almost killed athousand of the ignorant fuckers. Living near a university campus means a daybarely passes when I don’t find myself bearing down on some undergrad or otherbefore pulling over onto the side of the road to sick up into my own lap withterror. This, though, has sod all to do with the state of my driving. It’s allabout the inability of said Pot Noodle enthusiasts to tear themselves away fromtheir mobile phones before leaping from the kerb.

Tell you what, for what should be the most intelligent groupof people in the country it isn’t half heavily populated with idiots. Or thesuicidal. I haven’t yet decided which. Either way, they step, lemming like,into the road with such frequency that I’m wondering whether the local bywaysshould  be populated with emergencytelephones like the Golden Gate Bridge.

What the fuck is wrong with these individuals? Exactly howhard can it be to check the road before stepping onto it? And what in the fuckis happening on their phones that’s so much more important than protectingthemselves from the bus that’s hurtling towards them? They must be in receiptof some stunning information, if it’s enough to blind them to a steaming river ofvans and lorries.

I dunno, perhaps they’re furiously texting state secrets orreceiving incoming messages about the development of their terminal cancer.Surely, these emergency missives wouldn’t contain anything as unimportant aspictures of kittens wearing moustaches or offers at Bargain Booze.

Seriously, driving a car around here is like a test ofendurance. And being aware of the idiocy of the local undergrads I’ve developeda road awareness of Olympic proportions. Yet, astoundingly, it’s still notenough. Exactly how many times have I reversed in a car park, after severalchecks of my mirrors and blindspots, only to suddenly find my rearview window filledwith the whites of a student’s eyes? Too fucking many. That’s because it doesn’tmatter how careful you are. A lecture-bunker could leap out at any givenmoment, like demented flashers, from the bushes.

It’s hard to believe that these festering gimps will one dayrun the country, lead our government or develop our cities. If their foresightis anything to go by we’re fucked. Armies of fascists could be scrambling theirway over Dover cliffs and they wouldn’t notice.

Of course, all this is based on the premise that thesepeople are still alive 20 years from now. At this rate, that’s laughingly unlikely.So rather than braking, perhaps I should be revving. Something tells me I’d bedoing the nation one fuck of a favour.

Art Attack

I just like blue, innit

Youknow what makes me ever so slightly nuts about modern art? Not the art itself,no. In fact the art itself I love.What makes me wantto run through a gallery with a flame thrower, though, is the little explanationsthat accompany said pieces of art. Jesus, what stunning displays of completeand utter bilge.

In fact, I reckon that these little plaques which have beenadorned with 200 words of festering bollocks are works of art in themselves.How else could you explain the levels of creativity employed to make a canvasof splodges appear to be the work of the giddying extremes of humanity?

This is partly down to the fact that I have my own mind.Look, if a lawn mower strewn with condoms and bunting is your contribution tothe world of art, fine. Just don’t tell me what to fucking think about it, OK?

Yet my loathing is more down to the irrepressible poncinessof said descriptions. No one ever accompanies their work with a plaque thatsimply says “I just like pink, that’s all” or “It’s something I knocked upwhile I was watching Corrie.” Oh fuck, no. I get the feeling that anything lessthan three paragraphs of indecipherable toss and a reference to an abusive pastgets you chucked out of the club.

In fact, one way to pass the time while surrounded by modernart, however much you love the stuff, is to play bullshit bingo. Just look outfor the following words:

• Juxtaposed
• Vagina
• Reference
• Idealised
• Coherence
• Juxtaposed
• Dialogue
• Penis
• Organic
• Femininity
• Encapsulation
• Juxtaposed

And that lot is just to accompany the building works thatare currently going on in the reception area.

I once had to be removed from the Geffen Contemporary at MOCA in LA after reading 500 words about one tiny pencil mark on ablank wall. Then there was that moment in Madrid when a white canvas was saidto represent my very own ovaries. And in the Glasgow Museum of Modern Art,after learning how a pile of bricks and drainpipes represented the journey offeminism, I filled an entire page of its guestbook with my own lengthyexplanations. I do believe that had my fellow visitors been playing bullshitbingo they would have then spotted the words:

• Cobblers
• Ponce-buckets
• Conceited
• Stool-water
• Spleen
• Bastards
• Don’t
• Sausages

So spare me the convoluted imaginings of exactly why a onedollar note has been pinned to the wall, will you? And don’t bother with thedeep and meaningfuls over an empty milkbottle that’s been balanced on ashoe. You’ll get more admiration from meif you put your wittering to one side and just admit that you think it lookskinda cool. Oh go on. It’s called showing originality, isn’t it?

Talk Talk

Connolly's not here yet?

Oh Jesus. By all accounts Michael Parkinson – professionalYorkshire-born gruffbag  – is coming outof retirement to host his own talk show again. Just what telly needs, yetanother outlet for celebs to have themselves tickled under the chin.

Now, Parkinson would quibble at that description, I have nodoubt. It’s clear from his quotes about his latest televisual skirmish that hethinks he offers viewers something new. He grumbles: “If you look at Graham(Norton), Jonathan (Ross) and that chatty person (Alan Carr), the host is asimportant as the guest. That’s fine but there isn’t the kind of show that Iused to do...We’re kind of stuck in this area where it’s all about humour. It’scertainly not about interviewing.”

Well, fuck me. Call Billy Connolly. And David Beckham. Oh,and Billy Connolly again, because every time they’ve appeared on his show inthe past (they’re on some 3-week rota or other) they sure as shit don’t get thebusiness end of Jeremy Paxman, do they? No, they get to breeze their way thougha few carefully chosen anecdotes at the growly nudging of best mate Parky whowould rather renounce flat caps than offend them. It’s celeb chin-tickling atits fawning best so it beats me why Parkinson has the bulging hump over thelikes of Norton and Ross.

And, yeah, Parkinson may be remembered for his must-watchinterviews but they are now dust-bunnies under the futon of modern telly.Muhammad Ali? His last interview with Parkinson was in 1981, thirty one yearsago. And Rod Hull and Emu? That was in 1976, thirty six years ago.

Problem is, the world, telly and the juggernaut of celebrityhas changed since then. If Parky thinks he can take his pick of A-listers andgrill them until they sweat spinal fluid then I fear he is deluded. Their PRs would be all over him like syphilis and the show producers would live in fearof pissing off the screen meat. His no-nonsense recipe for a show would soon bediluted and before you know it he’d be interviewing Billy fucking Connolly forthe fifteenth time.

All of which means that Parkinson needs to wake the frig up.Unless he really is going to make a new interviewing mark and to fuck with themodern etiquette of celeb-loving, that is. Otherwise we’d better gird ourselvesfor yet another foray into Connolly’s well trodden past. Oh, and another andanother...

Beauty Myth

Shut it, Hurles

Liz Hurley. Isn’t she just vile? I’ve just had one of herquotes pointed out to me, a jumble of words that have made me search for acorner in which to vomit. And while this quote was uttered many years ago, byall accounts, it’s still worthy of my rage, as are most things that I come acrossthese days.  Here you go, here’s the Hurleygem: “I’d kill myself if I was as fat as Marilyn Monroe”.

Oh. My. God. There are so many things wrong with this vapidfucking statement that I’ve had to invent numbers to count them all. It’s just11 words but they carry such a burgeoning amount of snobbery that it’s amazingthat the sentence hasn’t collapsed in on itself, creating undiluted evil.

For a start there’s the suicide reference, a boggling reactionto the piffling issue of putting on a few pounds. Not for Hurley, the prospectof suicide as a reaction to the death of her entire family or the loss of allof her lower limbs in a bomb attack. Christ no. Instead she keeps a stash ofparacetamol and razor blades next to her weighing scales in case her entirelife is inverted by the appearance of an extra ounce.

Then there’s the laughable comparison of herself with MarilynMonroe only for her to conclude, by her remark, that she is thinner andtherefore better than the bombshell of blondeness.  Fuckety-fuckety-fuck. First, the only way youcould put Hurley and Monroe in the same category is by identifying them both asfemale. That Hurley thinks she is up there with one of the most beautiful womenin the world displays a giddying lack of self awareness, a bit like David Cameronbelieving that he’s actually improving the NHS.

Worse, Hurley has then studied Monroe’s curves and definedthem as fat and therefore as ugly. Oh fucking hell, Hurley, spare me, will you?Not only was Monroe the definition of womanliness,  so it’s no surprise that Hurley doesn’trecognise it, but she was hardly trapped in her bed under 40 stone of suppuratingflesh either. Monroe? Fat?  Then pass methe Mars Bars because I’d prefer that to looking like the lettuce-suckingHurley.

Anyway, tell me who is more fun to be with, who is moreappealing? A gorgeously curvy woman who knows exactly how to treat a chocolate éclairor a hatchet-faced stick insect on alert for rogue calories? Quite.

Which is why Hurley’s statement blows holes in the beautymyth that she’s surrounded herself with. It’s brimming with ugliness,bitterness and self-obsession, none of which makes Hurley the beauty that shethinks she is. Shrivelled. That’s the word that springs to mind. Inside andout.

Dog Days

I blame Dastardly

Shit on a shovel. Literally. Orshould I say shit in a sack. Again, literally. 

I've noticed a bleak trend on my daily constitutional along apopular walking trail near my cave. Dog shit, strung along fences and treebranches like festive turds. Steaming mounds of poop festoon trees like baubles andfence posts like finials, thinly disguised in red, yellow and green plastic.

Course, you know what this is allabout don’t you? Arse-brained dog owners who have the scant capacity to cleanup after their squatting hounds but clearly not enough left to then dispose ofsaid outpourings in a way that doesn’t make you want to put your own eyes inthe bin.

Tell me, boggled reader, just who doesthis? Who puts their dog’s shit in a poop-a-scoop bag and then hangs it on atree or fence? At what point does that constitute cleaning up after your pooch,exactly? Yes, the offending turd has been picked up off the ground and that fulfilsthe first portion of the cleaning up process. However, it has then been drapedon the adjacent flora, thus, as far as I’m concerned, obliterating the firstact so completely that it’s like the Hiroshima of dog walking.

What a stunning fucking disconnect inthe minds of these idiot dog owners. It’s as if their brains short circuitmid-cleanse and they suddenly wake up to find themselves clinging onto a bag ofshit before casting it into a tree in a blind, amnesiac panic.

It’s also so astoundingly selfish thatmy own brain short circuits at what this means for fellow path users. And youknow what it does mean? That some poor fucking council worker, who gets paidsod all to roam the area with his litter picker, has to collect up these arselygifts like a cat burglar with a fetish. It also means that the rest of us havetheir glorious spring walks regularly punctuated by the sight of trees thatactually look as if they’re growing their own tag nuts.

Worse, the area in question actually hasbins for the disposal of dog shit. Yes, bins. In which bags of turds are placed.A stunning invention, I’m sure, but one that has passed by these dog ownerscompletely.

So perhaps I should start stalkingthese fat-handed twats, collecting up their stinking decorations and strewingthem about their own gardens in the dead of night. I mean, who needs petuniaswhen poo will do? Bastards.

Flight of Fancy

I feel your pain

No, no, no, no, no, no, no. No, KLM, abso-fucking-lutely no. It has been brought to my attention that the airline KLM has launched Meet & Seat, a service that allows fellow passengers to view your Facebook and LinkedIn profiles and then find out where you are sitting on the flight you are sharing. You know, just in case they fancy passing the time by indulging in a little light harassment.
Oh my giddy God, what in the fuck is KLM thinking? That it just doesn't carry enough stalkers on its flights? Or that not enough passengers end up sitting next to people they hate? Ok, so you have to sign up to this service to allow fellow passengers to see photos of you snogging at last year's Christmas party on Facebook but why the fuck would anyone do that? Even in the name of networking and good business practice are you really going to leave yourself open to the wiles of any old crotch grabber who happens to share the flight with you?
Worse, the service is currently only available on flights from Amsterdam to New York, San Francisco and Sao Paulo. You know what that means, don't you? That you won't be lumbered with some business obsessed bell-end for just an hour. No, no, no. You'll be forced to make small talk over your poxy in-flight catering for anything up to eleven hours. Eleven fucking hours!
Christ, I feel the need of a scalding shower just thinking about it. Imagine settling in for a long flight with a good book and pressure socks only to have some nutbag with a comb-over give you the hard sell on some new breed of semiconductor all the way to San Francisco? Sod the added security. I'd chew my way into the cockpit and plunge the plane into a nosedive with my own bloody hands.
And what's with this need to make every second of every day profitable or valuable or useful? What in the frig is wrong with just watching a film, listening to music or reading a book? Christ, do we even have to be networking at 3am somewhere over the Atlantic?
Oh, spare me KLM, spare me. If I wanted to spend the best part of 12 hours with a loon I'd catch a bus to Broadmoor. I sure as fuck wouldn't pay your inflated prices to do it. No. I'd use that money to buy a seat with a security guard instead.

Word Up

Yup, I'm talking to you

Far be it from me to get arsy about anything. You should know by now that I'm a seeping heap of serenity and calm. Except when it comes to the misuse of apostrophies, a practice so spleen-explodingly evil that I harbour fantasies of thrashing literary miscreants with a copy of The Oxford Guide to English Useage.
Jesus, not a day goes by when I don't see such reprehensible sights as 'Vegetable's for sale' or  'Terrys Bike Shop' or 'Its time for tea'. For fuck's sake, you have to wonder what the point is of English teachers, when so many people leave school with the glaring inability to stick a punctuation mark in the right place.
Worse, though - much worse - is that signwriters, the very people who use the English language for a living, are just as incapable. What the frig is with that? Imagine if a brickie didn't know how to use a trowel or a nurse was bewildered at the sight of a syringe? You'd me more likely to employ Harold bloody Shipman on your ward than someone so incapable of the basics of the trade.
Yet there are signwriters who rape the English language every day of their lives but, miraculously, stay in business. How can you not know where to use an apostrophe when it is your fucking job to use apostrophies? Eh? Go on, signwriters, explain that one.
And, Ok, Joe Bloggs the butcher may have asked for a sign that reads 'Quality meat's inside!" but surely it is then the signwriter's job to take to one side the purveyor of said produce and point out the error of his ways. Well, you'd frigging think so, wouldn't you? If, as a journalist, I was asked to write sentences backwards I'd make it known that the request was a bag of bollocks. Why signwriters are incapable of doing that is bloody well beyond me. 
Which means that until said profession bucks the fuck up I'll have to keep on correcting their mistakes with a fat red pen. Someone's got to teach them how it's done. Well at least while thrashing people with a copy of the The Oxford Guide to English Useage remains illegal. Shame.

Dog Days

Here, boy!

Pit bulls:
Q. Bity little bastards or misunderstood pupsicles? 
A. Bity little bastards, you dimwit.


Just sayin'.

Talking Balls

I know the feeling

Apparently we are part-way through the Six Nations. I know, I could have lived without that particular nugget of information too, but there you go. Thing is I have more interest in the toilet habits of our binmen than I do in rugby. So it may surprise you that I used to work for the Welsh Rugby Union before I cleaned up my act and went into journalism.
In fact, until I worked at the WRU I was an enormous rugby fan, but therein lies the problem. Working for the WRU didn't cement my love of rugby - it shat all over it. Shat all over it with a capital splashback.
Looking back at my years at the WRU is like shoving my hand into a basket of vipers. And, fuck me, was that place one big sack of snakes. In all my life I have never met such a bunch of bitter, recalcitrant, childish, sexist and backward-looking individuals. It's no fucking wonder that Welsh rugby remains a mystery because even after working there I still have no idea how the place even clawed together enough nous to unlock the doors of a morning. 
In fact, it was an education in how to cold-shoulder good management practice. As a woman I wasn't allowed into committee meetings even though I was meant to report on them - only the minute-taking female secretary was granted access - and several committee men even refused to deal with me. One nameless 18th Century grumbleshit would come into my office, ask to speak to a man and, if none was available, would walk out again. And perhaps the less said about very senior members of the WRU, the better. Suffice it to say that in my years there, one very big management name only ever addressed me via my tits and was known for his casual and daily harassment of other female members of staff. Yup, an all round Great Guy.
The Admin department was equally as incompetent. The dept's manager would hoard information as if it was his own lifeblood being pissed against a wall. Problem was that my dept had to manage press enquiries which, of course, meant having information. Well, fuckadoodledo, if that wasn't in the admin manager's plans. Seriously, we sat two desks away from the guy and we'd have to phone journalists to find out what he was up to. It was like working at the fucking Kremlin except it was colder, greyer and even more miserable. 
Course, the guys on the General Committee were the biggest nightmare. You knew when the new kit had arrived at the WRU because there'd be committee men climbing out of the woodwork just to fill their own car boots with the stuff. It's was like sales day at Harrods but with more girly grasping, which was impressive for a herd of fifty-somethings from the arse end of Bynea. The same scrambling went on for tickets too. Seriously, I reckon these guys had enlarged pockets sewn into their blazers for the sole purpose of stuffing them with stubs.
You can see how, by the time I left, my enjoyment of rugby looked as if it had been fed through a scrum. And yeah, there were a few great people there but over time they were equally worn down too. I even recall the head of one department - a guy who had the intelligence, business nous and enough charisma to run a small country - sitting at a desk with his head in his hands because the ineptitude of the ruling idiots had dragged him to the brink.
So, no, I shan't be watching the Six Nations. I'm working hard to blank that part of my culture from my memory. And I've got a funny feeling that thanks to the WRU as I knew it, I'm probably not the only one.

Oh, Baby

Pasties all round

Blimey. I watched Jeremy Kyle over my porridge this morning and I almost choked on the boy Quaker. What's with these women who tell their partners that their offspring may not be theirs before quibbling that the terminally bewildered men aren't doing their bit in the childrearing stakes? Girls, are you for fucking real? Or are you just hard of thinking?

Firstly, it seems - from this and my other skirmishes with the ringmaster Kyle - that these idiot women fall into two categories. There are those who genuinely don't know who the dad is and those who holler the killer blow during an argument just because they've run out of expletives to lob. Either way, the blokes end up nursing mammoth amounts of doubt that invariably lead them to breakfast time soul bearing on national television.

Thing is, so many of the women who find themselves at the heart of this procreative chaos then proceed to rip the shit out of their stupefied partners because they haven't "stepped up the plate" or "been a man" when it comes to plunging their hands into shit-stuffed nappies.

Girls, what in the fuck do you expect? No, really, exactly what is it that you want these pasty faced blokes to do? Ignore the fact that you claimed to have got knocked up by someone else before taking on the life-changing responsibility of raising another man's child? Christ, that's one fuck of a leap of faith, don't you think? I mean, if your bloke came home with a baby that he'd sired during an affair and asked you to raise it as your own, would you? No, darlin', quite.

Worse, so often these girls seem to accept a stunningly paltry amount of responsibility for their actions. They drop these baby bombs, raising their heavily plucked eyebrows and shrugging "What? What're you blaming me for?" before banging on about plate stepping again.

Problem with saying this stuff out loud is that it automatically turns you into a Daily Mail columnist. It's looks like just one other thing to bash women with. This time, though, the women who do this are genuinely misguided. Cowering behind dated ideals that men are always in the wrong and can be blamed even for their girls shagging about is so deeply irresponsible that makes my brain sweat. 

And yeah, there are plenty of men out there who don't do their bit, knocking up women before washing their hands of them. But two wrongs don't make a right and, anyway, that's another sweary blog post entirely.

So girls, put your brains in will you? If you don't want to spend your prime yelling at a bloke for not doing what you told him was not his responsibility, keep your mouth shut. Oh, and your knickers up. 

Bap Attack

Classy girl, her

Could someone do me a favour and remove Loose Women’s DeniseWelch from the public eye? Because if she flashes her tits one more time I’mgoing to have to remove my own eyes, decontaminate them, encase them inconcrete and bury them a mile below the surface of the earth for the next onehundred years.
What the fuck is wrong with the woman that she has to keepflashing her saggy funbags at photographers? Christ, it wouldn’t be so bad ifthey were a magnificent paean to the wonders of the female form but, let’s befair, they’re not. They swing in thewind and are encased in flesh coloured bras. I know this. I have seen them overand over again, as has the rest of the poor, sobbing nation.

Anyway, that’s besides the point. The real conundrum is whatmakes a fifty-something successful woman whip out her knockers at any givenopportunity? It reeks so badly of desperation, insecurity and some wild cravingfor the front pages that it’s actually distressing to watch. And no, it’s notabout women reclaiming their bodies, grasping equality from men and beingballsy and life-loving. There are ways of doing that which don’t involveforcing your dignity through a cheese grater, which is what Welch seems to doevery time she leaves the house.

Look, I’m not a fanof Welch anyway, mainly because I’m not a fan of the show Loose Women.  It’s like a lunchtime parade of screeching fishwivesthat makes me wonder how much more damage womens’ rights can take before menattempt to lock us back up in our kitchens.

This bap parading,though, is doing the equivalent of taking womens’ hard-won equality and rubbingits face in the dirt. Girls, you want to be accepted in the boardrooms of thenation? You want to reach the giddy heights of senior management? You want toclaim the Cabinet for your own? Well, whatever you do, don’t ask Welch for hersupport. She’d forsake intellectual argument and negotiation for dragging her oft-seennips across the shag pile of the boardroom floor. Classy, Welch, classy.

There can’t be a soul on the planet who doesn’t witness Welch’santics with a giant, internal ‘ouch’. It’s cheap and nasty and whether it’s asymptom of her personal turmoil or not she has to show mercy and stop.

Den, love, just take a breath, have a think about whetherthis is how you want to be remembered and tuck the tits away. I’m sure there’sa clever, engaging, intelligent woman in there somewhere. You just have to openyour mind to find her, not your top.  

Head's Up

Noggin lovin', brain toastin'

Well, bugger me backwards and spit out the bits. What's this madness I've witnessed in the last two days where tiny babies have been outside without hats on? It's been - pardon the jargon - fucking freezing but these teeny tiny creatures, with the same capacity to regulate their temperatures as a bag of sand, are out in the equivalent of the Everest death zone as bald as Britney.
Please tell me what the frig is going on. Why, in the depths of winter, would anyone take a baby out without a hat on? Are they trying to create genetic popsicles? Jesus, you'd have to bath the kids in anti-freeze just to thaw them out.
And, as sure as shit, it gets worse because the people who were carrying these nippers were wearing bobble hats. I know, I know, I wish I were making that up too but alas, no, such spam-faced idiots really do exist.
I mean, if it's cold enough for an adult to dig out a woolly hat surely it's cold enough to stick a titfer on a baby. What the frig makes parents think that their offspring is somehow immune to the blasting, sub-zero wind from the Urals? Or that they have a blossoming Torvill and Dean-like obsession with ice? 
Christ, the moment KJ splattered forth from my screeching, prostrate form the midwife stuck a hat on her to keep her snug. She hasn't been titfer-free since then either - it's woolly in the winter and wide-brimmed in the summer. For fuck's sake, I couldn't even tell you what colour her hair really is. It's like living with a three foot high Dolly Parton.
Perhaps I should start staging infant interventions, lobbing baby beenies at gimply parents until they defrost their brains enough to form a sensible thought. God alone knows how many beenies it would take though. Fuck knows if there's even that much wool in the world. For some bleak reason, I doubt it.

Knocked Up

My kind of baby bump

You'll be thrilled to hear that this weekend I read something that made my head explode. It was an agony aunt-type column about a woman who was suffering depression after giving birth to the child she thought she'd never have. And all I can say is hallel-fucking-ujah.
You know, I actually, really and truly thought that I was on the only person who had gone through this. After a thousand years of a health problem that had caused infertility, somehow I managed to get knocked up. Problem was that when the rest of the world was rejoycing about my miracle baby and how I'd managed to kick the odds up the arse I was plunging into the mental health equivalent of a nuclear meltdown over the sudden destruction of my identity.
Within 60 seconds of wizzing on a pregnancy testing kit I'd gone from being a 36 year-old, happily infertile woman to a 36 year-old mother-to-be. And this, after twenty years of being told that it would be easier for me to climb the Eiffel Tower with my tongue than have kids. 
Jesus, no wonder I went on to have a breakdown. Thing is, while my body was playing host to the burgeoning form of Kraken Junior, my brain was playing keepy-uppy with the pre-pregnancy, career-chasing, travel-loving Kraken. Talk about the perfect fucking storm. It's no wonder that the first time I felt KJ kick my hand through my belly I screamed with horror. 
Worse, everyone was so deranged with joy at my news that my mental carnage went unnoticed. I was told a million times that I must be thrilled, that my baby was here for a reason or that I was unbelievably lucky. All of which, while heartfelt and natural reactions, made things even worse. Not only was I not coping with the fact that I had gone to sleep one person and woken up another but now I was the mam-to-be of some Christ-like figure who was here for some mysterious and wonderful reason. How the fuck the Virgin Mary never lost the plot is beyond me. I'd have kicked the donkey to death and told the three wise men to go fuck themselves.
Problem is, no one ever thinks to ask how you are feeling at times like this. It's assumed that you are with child and therefore must be chuffed to fuck. It's not that black n white though is it? Pregnancy tests don't come complete with party poppers. I was about as far from chuffed to fuck as I could get without being on Death Row. It's just that no one knew it. Anyway, how do you tell people who are actually, physically skipping about at the news that they need to take it down a peg or two? Well, don't ask me. I still haven't got a bloody clue.
Course, now that KJ is here, running amok and asking 'why?' like she has exclusive rights to the frigging word, I can see that she is the best thing in the world. But before you sit back in your chair to give me a satisfying I-told-you-so I've paid a heavy price for it. I've had nine months of panic, four years of depression, two career collapses, several thousand milligrams of anti-depressants and anti-psychotics, ten months of therapy and one breakdown that's wiped out the person I used to be forever. 
But yeah, KJ did come here for a reason. And if that reason was to ask me daily why cups are round or what makes yellow not red, then I've seen the light. It just blinds me sometimes, that's all.

Queue Goblins II

Back for more

I know, I know, I've banged on about these beasts before but, Jesus, they don't know when to stop, do they? No, literally, they don't. I'm talking about the idiot shoppers who walk through the doors of a shop before stopping dead to gaze about the place as if it were the Sistine Chapel. Sod the poor bastards who have slammed into the back of them and are now piling up like motorway slush. Same goes for escalators. These goblins have all of 20 seconds to get carried from one floor to t'other - so it's safe to assume they know they are on a moving stairs in a shop - before stumbling off and coming to a dead halt at the top. Behind them there's carnage on the conveyor belt of humans, hair snagging, limbs tangling and infants disappearing into the greasy workings below.
Please, someone tell me what it is like to be so utterly bewildered that, even when you're entering a shop so rammed that you need to breathe in, you actually forget that you are in the company of other human beans? That welding yourself to the spot in the very doorway of the store makes a stunning amount of sense? Don't these people fret about the amount of snot that's being smeared on their coats by the poor bastards behind them?
And it's not that I'm an advocate of rushing about the place like a Broadmoor escapee. It's just that neither am I a fan of having intimate lurchings with whoever the frig has ground to a halt in front of me either. Look, if I want to find the hot cross fucking buns in Asda I'll make an educated bet that they're in the bread aisle and keep walking towards it. I won't set up camp in the foyer and rummage in my bag for my bloody radar equipment. 
Shopping is enough of a pain in the arse as it is. This idiocy really isn't helping is it, my little store-struck friends. Just put your brain in before you get your purse out and, to revert to the technical jargon, shift your frigging arse. 
I've said it once and I'll say it again. Goblins. 

Candy Floss

Almost but not quite

Pink, pink, pink and more fucking pink. This, I'm afraid to say, is life with a four year old female of the species. Pink everywhere. No, really, every-frigging-where. Until she was born our laundry piles were divided into whites and darks. Now it's whites, darks and fucking pinks. 
It would be easier to avoid the grim reaper that it would be to avoid your daughter becoming mesmerised by the colour pink. I reckon Kraken Junior is less child and more black hole, slowly sucking into her all that's pink in the world. Seriously, she's got an event horizon that would put cosmological phenomena to shame. I'm even avoiding redecorating her -currently lime green - bedroom because there's a vile inevitability in her wanting to turn it pink. Jesus, it'd be like creating a giant, walk-in cervix. Stick her in the right clothes and she'd so match her environment that we'd need heat-seeking equipment to find her.
That's why I've started buying her boys' clothes, because unless she starts wearing blues, yellows, greens and reds she'll turn some strange strain of colour blind. You know how pit ponies stop being used to the light? Kraken Junior will stop being used to anything that doesn't resemble a crushed fucking raspberry.
I blame social stereotypes. If you should want to dress, feed or entertain your child first you have to chose between pinks and blues. Seriously, you want to buy a set of pyjamas, prepare to be funnelled into one or t'other. Or perhaps you want to buy a bike? Then make your choice. Jesus Christ, Kraken Junior even has a trampoline that's pink.
And yeah, this pinky overkill is partly down to myself and Conjugal Kraken buying the stuff but, for fuck's sake, sometimes you get sick of fighting your way upstream and just give in. Ok, Ok, it's weak willed but you try tussling with ethical dilemmas when you've had five hours sleep and are arguing the toss with a toddler in the middle of a heaving Asda. You'll give into fucking anything, just to get out alive. She could ask me for a chainsaw and I'd shove one in the trolley just to snag four (that many?) seconds of peace.
So pink has one frig of a lot to answer for. It's turning my kid into a walking strawberry sundae. Stick a Flake in her gob and Mr Whippy could flog her from a van. Well, at least the music would be Greensleeves.