And I must point out that  I’m talking about the business type here as opposed to the heavy duty tattooing that some people favour… I’ve always been secretly (I don’t know why??) fascinated by people’s loyalty to certain brands and what that actually tells you about those people. It’s probably just my urge to be really nosey!!! Either way, I for one am hopelessly blinkered and loyal when it comes to branding… So for example, this…

tells you that I love all things sexy and shiny, regardless of their many faults and flaws am an out and out snob when it comes to food shopping, am hopelessly addicted to the best shoes on the planet (I’ve lost count of the amount of pairs I own!!!), even if they are truly shite in the winter drink far too much of the black stuff, would love to own another Alfa regardless of their many faults and flaws I would also love to finally understand how to properly use the wonderful WordPress,  I again love all things sexy and shiny, regardless of their many faults and flaws am stupidly loyal to my Epson printers, despite the fact that mine is currently broken!!! and I will only ever buy the Guardian & the Observer… I’ve no idea why I do this, but I always do??? And I’m sure, deep down, this says a lot about me

I could easily compile a list of brands that I won’t touch even if you paid me, regardless of their many assets and plus points (I’m just not a Nokia kinda person, sorry!!!).

Again, the pure nosey side of me would love to see other people’s list of brands, but that could easily turn into one of those awful meme’s, which I hate, so I’ll leave it with mine for now… But I reckon I could already allocate a few brands to a few of my readers

After a rather dodgy weekend and an emergency call from the nursery on Monday, I’ve found myself in charge of a poorly little boy today He’s been up and down for days; Saturday he was throwing up, Monday his temperature was touching on 40°c Tuesday he was causing mayhem at home with a very stressed and tired mother and Wednesday his temperature had hit the roof again, so spent a very enjoyable 2 hours at the doctors with his bored father… The upshot being, my little monster has a chest infection. We left the surgery armed with a bottle of luminous yellow liquid that my son hates with a passion!!!

Today, I arranged to take the day off work, which in my self employed/teaching line of work is always far from easy… And my poorly little monster spent most of the day doing this…

I should be very grateful that he’s made such a remarkable recovery I guess… Needless to say, he’ll be back at nursery tomorrow!!!

Went to see an old friend last week…

But before I do, I need to explain something a little weird…

For as long as I can remember, I’ve always visualised the year as a certain shape, well a wavy line to be more precise, which looks a little bit like this…

Try as I might, I can’t get this shape out of my confused little head whenever I think about the year. I believe it’s a kind of Synesthesia…

So basically, my year begins with a downhill plummet (which is bad ) until we reach April (about the 5th usually) when things start to level out (which is better ).  At some point during May (about the 10th usually) I begin the climb to July & August (which is superb ) and then things level off again during September. The time between October, November and December is basically a downhill depressing repeat of the beginning of the year . And as if that isn’t complicated enough my bizarre visualisation of the year always ends about January 5th; hence the little bit of January at the end of my ‘S’ shape

So with all that in mind, you can perhaps appreciate my general mood at this time of the year and my eagerness to look on the bright side…

Well first off, all of my teaching has been canceled today, which enabled me and the dog to have huge childish fun in the snow on the park this morning . Last night Derby knocked Nottingham Forest out of the F.A. Cup, which for the non football folk out their, is massive for anyone in Derby . The new season of Lost is now well under way, which for anyone who knows me or this blog is clearly an obvious joy to me . A new U2 album is out in a few weeks time, which for a sad anorak fan like me is very exciting indeed . And finally we’ve just booked tickets to see Eddie Izzard but not until October when I’ll be on that sad downhill wintery bit of my year

I did say it was a little weird…

Thankfully I’m now in a much calmer mood than I was nine hours ago. I’ve also spent the evening in the pub and that will probably save this blog post from being completely full of fruity expletives I know that on these web pages I do quite often have a good rant & rage about pretty much anything, but in the flesh I’m actually a jolly nice, calm, laid back person… Nine hours ago I was as close as I’ve ever been to punching someone very hard in the face

Nine and a half hours ago I drove into a predictably hectic Derby to collect our eldest sons’ Xmas present; a glass topped computer desk. The shop we’d bought it from had no car-park, so after four laps of the busy city streets I finally found a vacant space on the road outside the shop. I eagerly dived into said space, whacked my hazards on and sprinted into the shop to grab the desk we’d had put on one side for us. After a brief confusion over whether the desk had been paid for or not, the guy in the shop said he’d give me a hand out with the desk… It was glass and was predictably very heavy!!!

‘Are you parked outside?‘ the guyed asked.

‘Yep, just outside.‘

So our desk was wheeled (as it was too heavy to carry) out of the shop and to my car… Just in time to see a Traffic Warden slap a parking ticket on my windscreen

‘WOAH, I’m collecting this desk, I’ve only been here a few minutes.’

‘You’re parked in a bus-stop.‘ And yes to be fair I was, but with all the other cars that were parked in it when I arrived there was actually no indication that it was a bus-stop.

‘But how the hell am I surposed to get this desk out of the shop and into my car? You can’t even carry the fucking thing it’s so heavy.‘

‘I’m sorry love (she was female) I can’t remove the ticket now and anyway how am I supposed to know you’re collecting a desk? You can always appeal.‘

‘But how else am I supposed to get the fucking thing if I can’t park outside the shop?‘

It was at about this point that the Traffic Warden decided it was probably best if she wandered off. There was now quite a crowd gathering and I’m confinced they were all baying for blood. I’m really not sure what I’d have done if she’d hung around any longer, I was in such a foul mood. So I simply threw her a ‘merry fucking Christmas to you too’, leapt into my car and screached off in true Dukes of Hazzard style…

I will appeal, but I may need to tone down my letter a little, because everytime I write or talk about this I just get soooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo angry

And that’s not good

Firstly… I hardly ever get ill

Secondly… I have very little sympathy with other people who are ill

Thirdly… I am the world’s worst person to be around whenever I do get ill

Fourthly… I do, of course, expect huge amounts of sympathy when I’m ill

For the past two weeks our household has been fending off all sorts of bugs & germs, that our lovely little Sawyer has been bringing home from nursery (Becky be warned!!!). It was mainly just a dose of the sniffles, which I can usually cope with without too many tears. But last week it took a rather strange and far from pleasant twist… Last Tuesday, with my head full to bursting with mucus I took my pathetic self to bed and whether it was due to the way I slept I’ll never know, but when I woke (at about 4 in the morning!!!) the snotty contents of my head had condensed itself entirely into my left ear… Which was stunningly painful Thinking it would clear its’ self up pretty quickly, I spent the next day mainly chewing, blowing my nose, yawning and generally pulling ridiculous faces in an attempt to get my blocked ear to pop!!! It did, briefly, but soon filled up again, which as you can imagine thrilled me no end…

Now due to many childhood problems and a few far from pleasant airplane landings I do know a wee bit about ears. And my problem, which I still annoyingly have almost a week later, lies in the Eustachian tubes…

And thanks to the joys of the internet, I’ve now found out that this annoying and fairly common problem could take weeks to clear I’ve gone seven days so far and I’m seriously peed off with it, so God only knows how pleasant I’ll be in a few weeks time!!! Needless to say, my novel writing has ground to a halt

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