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The kids broke up today & as July seems to be behaving itself they’ve got nothing to complain about & endless weeks in which to run free. They’ll do nothing of the sort of course & instead will find the quickest route to being bored out of their minds that they can, it’s odd but they manage this every year without fail. I can remember being bored rigid during the long Summer holidays as well but as I recall we didn’t manage this until at least a few weeks had passed & all the bikes were broken. These days it’s something of a criminal offence to not to offer the kids constant stimulation but even here there’s a problem since as soon as a chance to learn something comes up they all moan that they aren’t at school anymore? They don’t make it easy, there are things they want to do but since these things always involve quite a big outlay of cash it can be tricky doing more than one or two of them when cash is tight. You’d expect this point to be appreciated by children who live on a council estate which contains mostly poor people but in all honesty they don’t see it, they just expect it to happen. I’m not moaning about this, I’d like to just whisk us all off on a new adventure every day until they were begging me to be allowed to stay home but it’s simply not possible & what is possible isn’t up to the required standards. (continue reading…)

People get paid for working, in some cases for those lucky enough they get paid a lot, sometimes when compared to the majority it’s a hell of a lot. Normally this isn’t a problem least of all for those getting the money but now that the BBC trust has waded in the BBC is going to have to come clean about how much it’s shelling out at the top end. This does raise a few interesting points, the first being whether it’s any of our business to know & if it is just how much we need to know? Is this just an exercise in good management & transparency or a way for the struggling commercial channels to gain a few steps on the public sector? It’s certainly true that if we carry on in this way then the capacity of the BBC to deliver the current quality of programming is bound to be affected if asked to compete with those who can pay what they like. It’s also subjective as well, we all have our favored personas & those we can’t stand watching, will this be the criteria needed to judge who’s worth what? & if it is who gets to say so? At this rate the accountants may as well be booking the performers which can only mean a much steeper drop into the realm of awful TV that caters only to the lowest common denominator. (continue reading…)

It’s big business these days as more & more people get into researching the old family trees, for some it’s a gentle hobby that takes the place of more mundane hobbies for others it’s a quest to find their most famous relative. I suppose the bragging rights get a tad heated at times, it’s not a game that comes without risk though, I mean, even the dodgiest of folks have kin right? It may be a bit of a laugh finding out that a distant relation a few hundred years ago was a bit naughty but what if you find a more recent example? Families are funny things & more than a few of them have branches that are unknown to the majority of members due to ancient feuds. It may be a pastime that conjures up images of dusty documents but even the electoral rolls can throw up the odd shock if you don’t know about Aunt Marge & the milkman. (continue reading…)

It’s funny but we all make the same mistake, all of us not knowing that the rest of us have already made it or are just about to make it, it’s just one of those things that we all have to get through somehow & that some of us will spend our lives repeating. It’s lasagne of course, I’m sure you’d all mostly guessed anyway but if you didn’t don’t worry, you will, it’s impossible not to make mistakes when it comes to lasagne from the moment of discovery to the last bite you’ll ever have. None of us will ever forget lasagne & yet we’ll all have the stories that chill the blood as we remember the other times, the lasagne that just didn’t work out, even the ones that we did our best with & desperately hoped that we’d found the ultimate lasagne. In the end though it’s not just about the pasta or how well the white sauce was stirred or what kind of cheese was or wasn’t required or even what dish it was served in or what with, there are some things you can’t spoil & some that are built spoilt, that’s lasagne for you. (continue reading…)

Okay this could be a long shot but it ought to be possible at least in theory, most people aren’t all that happy, they’re not massively miserable but we’re not talking walking on air here, they could do better. Then there are the other lot, those annoying people who look & act as if they’re cheerful all the time, every day, even in their sleep, the sort of people other people daren’t strangle because they know that they’d still smile all the way through. We don’t need to go this far which is a good thing because it would probably require drugs of some kind, what we need here is a tweak. This tweak is sort of life dependent & really needs you to be not all that unhappy to start with, it’s probably going to be less effective if you’ve just suffered a bereavement or had your legs amputated by mistake on the day your new shoes arrived. If however you’re faced with nothing more daunting than the humdrum struggle to get through your day without any major upheavals it could be of some use, we’ve all heard the old equation that if you end your day 5p in front then you’re happy whilst if you end your day -5p you’re unhappy, this is clearly bunk as no-one cares about 5p so we need a new way of seeing things. (continue reading…)

Officially we should be pleased, compared to a lot of other teams that headed to South Africa with high hopes we’re looking pretty good, okay so we can’t seem to score & our last match is now vital but we haven’t lost yet. The Germans were looking sleekly prepared but it all went wrong for them, Spain came here as much feared but went down to the Swiss & who’d want to be France? It doesn’t matter though does it? We’ve been sold the dream again & only a commanding performance will do if the dream is to continue, it’s looking a tad wobbly though & the knives are being sharpened as I type. Of course we could just watch & enjoy the football & claim that it’s the taking part that counts but who wants to do that? Massive upsets are all very well but only if the other teams suffer them, we want no truck with plucky defences, we either want arrogant performances or last minute heartbreak, mediocre was not called for. We can push the USA result under a carpet, bad luck happens & football’s a daft game at times but Algeria? Oh dear me no, I wasn’t expecting an exhibition game but I was expecting at least two goals & a sight more confidence. It was sweet how often we seemed to pass to the other side but it’s not meant to be a sharing experience, I may have only thought we’d get to the semis but I did think we’d at least win our group. (continue reading…)

Assuming that the worst is yet to come & that we’ve all got difficult decisions to make this year how do you decide on what treats to keep? Given that many of us are already living a reduced lifestyle in order to cut down our personal debts many of our costlier activities have already been abandoned, finding more to cut could be tricky. I mean we certainly could all live on beans on toast & rediscover the joys of powdered milk but you’d have to be a masochist to endure that for weeks on end, I already loathe toast. I suppose that some clever people will have invested in the latest energy efficient appliances but even though they’ll save in the long run they’ve still had to shell out now, for those of us without the money switching things off is the only option. One of the main problems we’re up against is that we don’t just need to pay down our debts, we also somehow need to save up as well in order to avoid getting back into debt later on, the ridiculous interest rates are killing this since we may as well spend the little we’ve got until it goes up. This leaves us with a second cull of the little things in life that make life a little bit better, hardly good news unless you’re really extravagant. (continue reading…)

It’s been a tough week one way or the other & although this was expected it was somewhat underestimated. There’s always so much more to do & only so many hours in a day, still, we’re in & the house is vaguely functioning which is the main thing. Give me another few days & I can get back to slating politicians & getting my stories on track. I am going to dispute the notion though that the Internet is a basic human right, I wasn’t allowed to move in unless the gas, water & electric was on but at no point was the net mentioned. (continue reading…)

People will tell you that moving home is a stressful process & a logistical nightmare & they’re not completely wrong, however mostly they mean both the organization of the move as well as the physically moving. Here on the estate things are different, here we pretty much pack everything up that we can, round up as many friends & family as we can to help & then we set a date & hope it all works out. Their way is probably better but our way does sort of work, at least we’ve progressed as far as motorized transport anyway, I’ve moved plenty of people with just a shopping trolley in years gone by

I suppose it could be worse

& I don’t recommend it as an alternative. Then again no-one’s exactly sure of what vehicles are showing up tomorrow so maybe I shouldn’t be counting my chickens & all that. I can’t say that I’m wild about the move, it’s just something that’s got to be done so it’s getting done, perhaps once the farce of moving itself is behind me I’ll feel better about it all but at the moment it’s just a headache with a ton of decorating to follow. It’s not that inspiring to discover that I seem to own a massive amount of stuff as well, I like owning stuff don’t get me wrong but you do start to question it once you’ve got to pick it all up. Not only that but I’ve got another list of all the stuff that I don’t actually possess but do actually need, something to sit on would be nice I suppose & at some point a washing machine will have to turn up, right now though it’s having no cooker that’s the worry. (continue reading…)

Life’s a funny bugger at times & even now with all the thrills of living in a country that apparently has no leadership some things turn out to be slightly more important on a personal basis. I was getting a little worried that this year would involve a small portion of time without anywhere to actually live in due to a set of circumstances that defy belief on a regular schedule, happily this is not to be the case. No matter that there’s a major housing shortage across the country there are still a few council houses left & I’m bloody lucky to have been offered one at all. Okay so it’s not in the most salubrious of areas but given that it’s only five minutes away from my current address I can’t see me complaining much. I’ve yet to see any of the neighbours yet & they could well be terrible but I’m not planning on living with them & there’s just as big a chance that they’re fine, people generally are even here. You would think that this was all if not a cause to celebrate then at the least a weight off my mind & in some ways it is, in other ways however it would appear that the council having helped me have also hung me out to dry. (continue reading…)