Maybe

Friday, September 10, 2010 ~ Comments Off

There might be news tomorrow. Good news that is.

I am NOT counting any chickens though.

I am NOT crossing everything that can be crossed.

I am NOT praying to a deity I don’t believe in.

I am NOT going to follow the viewers round (on their ‘final look before deciding’) muttering “please, please, please, please, please, please, please”.

So.

Yeah.

There might be news tomorrow.

Weekender

Monday, September 6, 2010 ~ 2 comments so far

Finding it really hard to write these days. My other blog languishes from week to week, and I won’t even mention the other place as it’s bereft of passion, ideas and any form of desire to be creative.

I’m blaming that entirely on the fact that I’m pretty damn busy these days, but in a very good way.

For example, Saturday was spent wandering shops after appealing for ideas of what to get my Mum for her birthday (thanks to those on Twitter and Facebook who made suggestions, they are all duly noted for future reference as well).

Sunday was spent with said Mother, lunch with the family at Inverbeg, and then in the evening after some Tapas it was off to the Glasgow Film Theatre to watch Some Like It Hot. Brilliant!

Was a great experience, being in an old cinema with other movie fans who were there to WATCH and ENJOY the movie, who laughed along and applauded with genuine warmth at the end. A far remove from the multiplex cacklers, munchers and yakkers I’m used to.

I will be back at the Glasgow Film Theatre for sure (Stephen Fry is ‘live broadcast’ there soon, and I spotted Metropolis on the bill as well!).

Still no movement on the house sale, still stalled. But, aside from that, life is good and I’m just embracing all the fun and happiness I can. It’s a nice way to be.

Hoping for Mental

Monday, August 23, 2010 ~ 1 comment so far

Ahhh yes, it makes perfect sense now I’ve realised what is going to happen. There is nothing I can do to stop it, so, as I have before, I’ll just go with the flow whilst the madness unfurls around me.

If you can keep your head when all around you are losing theirs…

We are waiting to hear if the people who viewed our house a couple of weeks ago are going to make an offer. They are waiting on an offer being made on their property and are expecting it this week.

Which, if we are lucky, will mean that by this time next week we will be agreeing moving dates and so on. All good.

That is until I realised that September is already a very busy month for me. I’m speaking at a conference in the middle of September, have several things going on at work that I can’t drop out of at this point, not to mention a few birthdays to remember (my parents both have birthdays in September). I may also be needing to find somewhere to live, pack the house into boxes, get a van and a man service to help us move, deal with the cancelling of accounts, paying off of debts and everything else that goes along with selling a house and splitting up.

Of course, it might not go that way. It might fall through. I’m trying my best not to get my hopes up.

But.

I’m fairly optimistic. Particularly given previous experiences when life has conspired to bring several things together into a mad mental stramash. But I’ve gotten through those times OK, so I’m sure this will be just the same.

So, if it does all happen, it’s fair to say that September is gonna be just a LITTLE BIT MENTAL! You have been warned.

I was in Edinburghertown

Tuesday, August 17, 2010 ~ 1 comment so far

I’m alive!

Speaking of which, who sings that song? The one in the Five Alive advert with the Dodo? Anyone? CBATG…

Having been and went and done Edinburgh on Sunday, I had planned to write up some blog posts but, alas, I’m old now and an entire day drinking takes an undue toll and leaves me moulded to the sofa with only enough energy to make toast and coffee every couple of hours.

That said, it was fun, as it usually is, spending a day in the mania that is Edinburgh at festival time and, amongst several pubs, many beers and a rather delicious burger in Holyrood 9A, we even managed to catch a short comedy show, Ronna and Beverly which included Mike McShane as one of their guests and even he seemed a delightfully bemused by the two bickering Jewish Matriarchs. Thankfully, despite pointing out the “Three young gentlemen” at the start of their show, they didn’t pick on us. They did, however, mention a sexual practice called “Dog in the bathtub”, which was new to me.

Yeah, I wouldn’t google for that at work though.

Also don’t google “one man and a jar”. EVER. I’m serious. Just hearing about it… ohhh no I can’t even think about it again… *barf*

I’m serious, I know you are all thinking… ohh it can’t be that bad, I’ll have seen worse. Trust me. Don’t do it. And yes, I should probably not even mention it here but part of me is interested to see which of you perverted sickos will go and look at it (apparently a couple of people I follow on Twitter made that mistake. To them I apologise, but I DID WARN YOU!!).

Anyway, the ‘we’ in question was myself and my best mates Stuart and Keith, unfortunately the other two usual suspects, Ian and Bill, couldn’t make it. Bill lives in Holland now (yes, I know, I WILL VISIT SOON!) and Ian was working in Ireland. So, being the type of good friends we are we shared some of the joy of drinking beer outside in the sunshine by emailing pics of said beer to Ian. He really, really did appreciate it. Honest.

The advantage of having friends you’ve known for a long time is that some things never change. We’ve many good shared memories, despite the fact we all tend to forget things, like each other’s birthdays, the fact my Dad had a heart attack several years ago (“Your Dad had a heart attack? When?” “Ehhh like 6 years ago” “ohhhh, ohhh yeah…”) amongst others. And one advantage of having a mate who works at the festival every year is that he knows all the little pubs that sell good beer and are never that busy. Hic.

Always good to spend time with my friends, just chilling out and talking bollocks. As friends are wont to do. It’s also good to revisit many of the old jokes and, as usual, make drunken promises of holidays and visits knowing fine well it’ll likely be Christmas before we are all together again. Yes, yes indeed, a good time was had.

Rose tinted

Friday, June 18, 2010 ~ Comments Off

It’s funny, I always considered myself a pessimist, and whilst I certainly employ large doses of cynic it seems that I have a far more romantic view of the world than I realised.

Maybe romantic isn’t the right word, let me put it another way. I day dream. A lot.

I think that’s one part of being a human that I enjoy the most, aside from custard creams and other things I can’t mention here because my mother reads this and her head would spin, and to be honest so would yours. Well not YOU, obviously, but the rest of you would probably be quite shocked. Hmmm this is sounding worse than it should. Ok ok, so I also enjoy eating bourbons. There. I said it. Phew. Feels good to say it out loud to be honest, and at least I wasn’t admitting to anything too deviant like, purely for example, my shoe fetish…

Where the hell was I?

Oh yes, it’s good to be a human being because, as well as enjoy the styling and drama a 4″ stiletto brings to the party, I can spend time imagining how things may be in the future. Lazy Sundays with a good book in hand, holidays spent in exotic  lands, an entire weekend only watching Hitchcock movies, a day spent relearning how to canoe. That kind of thing.

And the REALLY good bit about being a human being is that it doesn’t need to be just a daydream. I can make it happen, hell I can make anything happen if I put my mind to it.

Now, if you’ll excuse me, I need to imagine up an ice cream van….

Please Read This

Sunday, May 16, 2010 ~ 8 comments so far

Well, not this… this: The Best Thing I’ve Read All Year.

X marks the spot

Thursday, May 6, 2010 ~ 2 comments so far

Outside there is the most eerie golden glow as the sun sets. Half the sky is light, half the sky is dark as the rain falls from a thick dark cloud.

The weather, it seems, is undecided which, funnily enough was my state of mind a couple of hours ago.

There I stood, pencil in hand, ready to put a cross in a box but… which one?

Sometime in the next few months I’ll be leaving this constituency, so that wasn’t a huge consideration for me and, like many others I’m sure, I know that I didn’t want to vote for the Conservatives.

There is, of course, an odd slant in my ‘online’ life where most of the people I follow have a similar mindset to mine and I’d take a fair guess at many of them voting Lib Dem, some voting Labour and others voting Green. I’m sure one or two of them voted Conservative just as I’m sure one or two of them won’t have voted at all.

All of this didn’t really help me though, looking at names I barely knew, and trying not to associate the leader with the party politics. We don’t elect a Prime Minister, we elect a party so quite why there is such a large fuss about the personalities of the party leaders still puzzles me. Yes, of course one of them will be Prime Minister in the morning but it would’ve been good if the newspapers had focussed on policy rather than the fact that, for example, Gordon Brown called a bigoted old woman a bigot.

I will probably watch a bit of the coverage on TV then retire to bed, knowing that, come what may, someone will be in charge of running the company and I won’t agree with all of their decisions and policies. I will take care of my own affairs as I always have and deal with the consequences.

Others will rant and rave, moan and complain but, ultimately, there will always be politicians and as the type of person who is usually attracted to being a politician typically ends up more interested in power and money than the people they are supposed to be representing (exceptions to every rule granted) it’s safe to say that in a few years time I’ll find myself, once again, standing ready to cast my vote without ever being completely sure if anything really ever changes.