AKA Summer mostly sucks

A number of things are depressing me at the moment. Some are existential, some are very worrying and some are downright heartbreaking.

We can leave the first two out on the basis that moaning will not help. The third, on the other hand, is a bit more poignant.

Babbles is unwell. I mean really unwell. I'm not going to go into details since I'm sure she doesn't want the world to know what her medical condition is but let's just say that I am more than a tad worried. If it is what the doctors have diagnosed, you might as well stick me in the loony-bin for the next few years. We may not be husband and wife but those of you that have seen us in action will know that, bar that whole Libyan thing, we might as well be.

Every summer, something goes wrong. Obviously there's an accentuation by way of the fact that the weather is always more pants than a John and Yoko documentary and there is no football [props to Waaart for the correlation]. At least winter always sucks in a manner that you expect it to and the football takes your mind off it.

Such is life. Not a happy Kenny.

I'll try to write something a little more positive tomorrow. It's been a tough week.

I am being TUPE'd in just under two weeks (Transfer of Undertakings -- Protection of Employment, for those of you who do not speak British corporate gobbledygook). I've spent over an hour this afternoon completing forms that would make your eyes bleed. Normally I regard such things as mindless tasks. This time I am not too chuffed.

Don't get me wrong; I am not railing against the man, just asking why someone needs to know so much about me. I have ex-wives who do not know the answers to some of the questions that have been asked. Anything that needs to be known is surely in my HR/Occupational Health records. It's not like I am subscribing to private health insurance. I already pay once for NHS coverage; I stand with my fellow NHS compadres.

The one that really bothers me is the medical form. I have signed a consent form before when I have been hospitalized so OH have those records. I'm not doing it again at a random snapshot in time. Additionally there is a disclosure form which is legally binding. I cannot lie, and would never dream of doing so. To give you some idea of how intrusive it is, an exemplar is \"Have you ever been diagnosed with depression? List treatments.\" Well that, right there, is an essay. If I listed all the ADs and anti-psychotics I'd taken over the last eight years, I'm sure the verdict would be something along the lines of \"do NOT, under any circumstances, let this man into an office\". The untrained eye will see the word anti-psychotic and jump to conclusions. In actual fact they are prescribed to counteract the side-effects of the ADs, not because I am liable to wield axes.

I have an appointment with El Quacko tomorrow to talk through the form and find out what I do and do not have to declare. Unfortunately my Quack of choice is on holiday. They offered me the head of practice who is a git of the first order; he and I have never seen eye to eye so I made a very vocal point of telling them I would sooner have my nads fed through a mangle than have him advise me. They got the message and I am meeting with a lass I saw last time I got out of hospital. I don't know what it is but I do not trust male doctors. It will be (and has been) my downfall in life that women tend to earn my trust much faster than men. Anyway, I am hoping that I come away with a legally and morally safe response.

The truly trying part of the paperwork was allocating the death in service percentages, should I kick the bucket. Thankfully once you complete those, they are not opened unless you roll a seven so my wishes remain secret. So for now, you are all still poor and will remain so. The tricky bit is deciphering whether your will trumps your expression of wish.

I think I just hate doctors, insurance companies and lawyers. I could have just written that and spared you the gory details.

On a positive note though, the pension deal rocks. Sorry to all you public sector employees.

I have just had an interesting interaction with some of the local yoofage. I was on my way to the local vendor of finest tabbage, for to purchase some of Silk Cut's finest silver when three teenage lads/louts lost their interest in, and awe of, the "fart in a bottle" Honda 50 that was passing and decided that I was a prime candidate for their entertainment. Idiots. Verbally assaulting me is a pastime that you really do not want to try.

One of said waste of oxygen's had the audacity to be about up to my shoulder height. The other two were serious Napoleonic complex candidates. What on earth goes on in their heads? When I was their age I would have been polite to anyone who looked older than me. They tried to intimidate. That's a bit of a waste of time with me.

The tallest (giggle) decided he was going to walk as close as possible to me, with his feet missing mine by an inch or so. I was away thinking about other things but had the silly bugger in my peripheral vision. When he made contact with my shoes, my gut reaction was to turn around and plant him one. Thankfully my higher morality kicked in and I resisted the urge to beat seven shades of proverbial out of the oik in question.

When I came out of the shop, tooled up with cigs, all three of them were sat on the wall, waiting to restart the pathetic highlight of their day. After the first homophobic comment, I made a quick step in their direction -- you have never seen anyone move so quickly. They disappeared like rats into drainpipes.

Yoofs, if you really want to intimidate me, try carrying a rat. Otherwise I am quite happy to kick your arses into the next dimension.

Here endeth the lesson.

PS -- You should be proud of me. I haven't mentioned food.

All wish the Waaart a happy birthday, please.

He's been a tower of brilliance for 25 years to me. Forgive him his utter crapness at English -- he is way more literate than he sounds.

Have a great day McWaaart. I'm with you if only in spirit.

Oh, and Kat, calling me Heathcliffe is probably not your best move. I get it, Kathy. :)

Mackerel stuffed with dill, mustard mash, veg followed by strawberries, cream and chocolate. Spangles comes up trumps again.

I swear I will have gained at least 50lbs within a month. But do you hear me complaining? Nope. Spangles should have her own cooking show or restaurant. I have never been so spoiled and none of you have ever seen me eat so much. We're both skint as plugs at the moment so we're on cheap food. When we're not as skint God only knows what gastric phenomena Spangles will produce. Roll on payday.

I promise I will write something more interesting than my diet tomorrow although thinking about what I am thinking about, one might question the inappropriate use of the word "interesting".

I arrived home to chilli and home-made bread last night. Now I am normally highly sceptical of chilli so I was very nervous as I took my first mouthful. I should not have feared. It was sublime. For dessert, it was Yemen Honey Pie and ice-cream. I should have taken a picture (again) but they had been eaten before I even thought about it. I cannot find a picture on google -- plenty of recipes but no pictures.

I am loving this real food kick. I may try to talk about something other than food later.

Spangles is currently cooking dinner and cleaning the kitchen. She's broken my heart by throwing out my vintage salad dressing which apparently was past its sell-by date in November 2010. My dehydrated lemon experiment has become a victim too.

The beef is in and all systems are go. Cooking is not so bad when you have someone who knows what they are doing doing it with you.

I may take pictures.

After leaving work yesterday, I had to call at Kat's with some photos I had printed out. We had a quick chat and then I proceeded to Spangles' current abode to pick her and her stuff up. It ended up being most of Spangles' stuff, herself, Sophisticate and Anthony. The 5 mile drive was cramped for everyone except me.

It was a late one. Very late. Not because of the quantity of stuff, just that we ended up doing what we normally do; talk each others' legs off until it was nearly light.

Today all four of us went to see Mater's dog and pick up God's own chippy lunch. Spangles and Anthony did one into Wigan while Sophie and I sat and howled with laughter at Rhod Gilbert for hours. It is a genuinely good thing that I could zone today because I have been tired beyond belief all day.

Tomorrow Spangles is cooking. I think that merits a "GET IN!". I've said it before and I will no doubt say it again, that girl can cook. The butcher's that we bought the beef from threw in some proper beef fat to cook it in too, so the gravy will be heavenly. I am salivating just thinking about the prospect.

I am going to have to seriously inflict some self-discipline now Spangles is here. We can talk for England. One minute it's 20:00 and the next you're sat wondering where the last six hours have gone. We have the Kat coming one night next week too...I am going to demand that one of them bash me over the head at around 23:30 that night.

Has anything happened in the news? All I have picked up on is that the Birthday Honours list has been published and that numerous people I have never heard of have been given gongs. The one that I have heard of is Bruce bloody Forsythe. Rob, vanquishing list++;.

Right, I'm off to catch up with Injustice and hit the hay. You can all retire in envy of the dinner I am expecting tomorrow.

You might get something more coherent later. Rest beckons.

Those of you who read my Facebook status will know of Otto the spider, named because of the symmetry. He has been happily living in my kitchen for a while. Unfortunately he has to go. I have a new house-mate moving in over the weekend. Granted, she doesn't have eight legs but the two she has are much more functional than mine so I guess all is well. For the sake of her anonymity, I will christen her Spangles (due to her attire).

Spangles is someone I met quite a while ago now. She's young, smart and very, very good company. You can stick us in a room and we will talk for days. She arrived on my doorstep late last night, just for a brew. By the time she went to bed, we had a plan to move her stuff at the weekend.

It is an unfortunate symptom of our times that younger people do not get any breaks in life anymore, whether that be because of government policy or, hmm, government policy. I mean that as the system's inability to provide suitable training for bright young things and its inability to run an economy that creates jobs for people who deserve them and who would move heaven and earth to get one. That is not to say that Spangles is a victim at all. She would fight you vehemently if she thought you thought that. And she has a job, albeit not what most of us would call one.

I'm very happy with the deal. Unlike my last roomy, she is guaranteed not to prang my car or half-inch stuff. The only downside is that she is a terminal cleaner of her environment -- I will feel guilty using the bathroom. One serious upside is that she is a phenomenal cook -- there has never been a meal she has cooked here that I have not absolutely obliterated.

Now I need to feed myself, slob for a few hours, get an early night and then stick my motor in for its MOT tomorrow. Please say a prayer that it passes without any work -- any extra expense at the moment means I will be relegated from beans on toast to Ramen noodles. Thank you David Cameron. As well as screwing the youth of today, you are doing a good job of screwing everyone else. Don't even get me started on taxes and insurance...

Toodles.

I have had a very productive day. In fact, I have astounded myself. With the sweet taste of pride in my mouth, I am now going to indulge in a rant. You know you love it.

My first gripe du jour is one that has just crossed my radar. I have the news on and they are reporting on the first degree course in comic books. I think it will be available in some Scottish university (I was too busy screaming expletives at the TV to listen any further than the headline). WTF? So you're going to hock yourself up to £30k's worth of debt to get a degree in utter nonsense? Well you do it -- just don't come crying to me when your dole money doesn't cover your rent. I am sure that anyone who has a degree in anything (even social work -- ooh dangerous eh?) will be sat spitting bile at the news. This country is doomed.

If you are not convinced we are doomed, check your newspaper tomorrow. All the ships/yachts/liners or whatever are required for \"sailing\" competitions in the Olympics next year have descended upon Britain's shorelines for reasons that escape me. Look at the vast array of seriously expensive vessels, together with their facile owners/competitors. Who has enough money to own a boat that size? And where did they get it? When virtually every developed economy is in schtuk and every developing economy needs investment, how on earth can anyone countenance flouting such wealth for such a lame-assed goal. It appears money helps you sleep at night; I guess the corollary to that is now I know why I don't sleep. At least with horse-racing you stand a chance of winning your investment back.

Staying on the subject of the Olympics, I have said it before and I will say it again. No country *ever* has ever made any money on hosting the Olympics, yet here sits Blighty smiling politely while we spend billions on developing infrastructure (funded by our taxes and the total idiots who play the lottery -- something I like to call the feckwit tax), knowing full well that at the end of it, we will be in the red to the tune of billions. Moronic is not the word.

If you're now feeling as irate as I am, let me point you in the direction of Switzerland and our beloved Large Hadron Collider. The press coverage of it is horrendous. Even Al Beeb have managed to issue a least-common-denominator report on the subject. The explanation of matter/anti-matter interaction was explained using a normal image of the reporter and a thermal image of the reporter with the commentary that should the two combine, there would be nothing. What a God awful metaphor. They'd have been better off having (1+(-1))=0 but I guess we're all too dumb to get that. Nothing annoys me more than science being dumbed down to a level that my mother's dog would understand.

Some days I despise being on form because all it does is up my blood pressure -- it is why, when I throw myself at work, I stay there until I am dropping. Taking a step back with your mind racing just illuminates the utter incompetence that surrounds you.

Some might say I'm a tad bipolar. I am either thoroughly involved in work, in which case my personal life suffers, or I am thoroughly disinterested in work, in which case my personal life is peachy. At the moment, I'm in work mode so my personal life is a mess (ref yesterday's fretting) and I am enraged by daftness on any level, particularly my own (no pun intended on the particularly bit -- Oy vey -- Ed).

In the meantime, might I remind the world that good manners are free from tax.

Here endeth the rant.

Is there any other kind chez-Kenny?

I have spent Sunday relaxing, fixing Windows machines and fretting in equal degree.

I went to the parental units' for lunch on the basis that the grub is always top notch, abundant and I get away without cooking anything or going buying food that I will stick in the fridge and look at lovingly until it goes off. After lunch the maternal unit wanted me to have a look at some pictures they had had transferred from slides to digital media -- I vaguely remember slide viewers but no more. They were photos of me and our kid from about 1976. Yikes. I don't remember having hair or it being blonde. Believe it or not, I was even more of a string-bean back then. I look positively emaciated. There are some alarming shots of me posing in strange mincing positions with my legs dangling at angles that legs are not meant to dangle at -- that, the Schlater's disease and subsequent breakage of my knees may well explain why my legs are so monumentally buggered now.

Before you ask, no, I do not have copies and they will not appear anywhere on t'interweb.

While I was browsing these throw-backs to yesteryear I got increasingly irritated by Mater's laptop performance and made some comment to Pater about how pants it was. \"Oh -- Glad you noticed Kenny. I meant to ask you to have a look at it.\" Doh.

After having a poke around the innards of Windows 7, I managed to get it to a point where it is usable. To give you some idea as to how bad it was, if you ran msconfig it would take about a minute to produce the dialogue. After I had finished pruning all sorts of random nonsense, it took about a second. Applications actually responded within a second rather than the 40-60 they were doing previously. Naturally the grandparental units were in awe of my mad skillz. I was more impressed with how I stifled the language I would normally use when dealing with an OS that lets you stack up startup processes to the point that, as soon as they have all started, the bloody thing has to swap to start an actual application. I get it MS developers -- you think pre-loading parts of your app will make it load faster but it kind of defeats the object of the exercise if you've flooded your RAM with stuff you rarely use.

The one good point is that Pater is one step closer to buying a Macbook. He continually asks why I never have problems with mine. I continually explain why.

I'm not going into the fretting part of the day. It is too stressful.

In other news, while my sore throat has nearly gone, I'm still a bit achy. To add to my joy, I now have toothache.

Hope you've all had a good weekend and avoided bean-sprouts. Just to be a told-you-so, I have always been wary of bean-sprouts and now I have been vindicated. Remember kiddies: Kenny's gut instinct is usually right. Chant that as your mantra.

Just a brief note to myself to say that I had forgotten how good Sting's voice is. I have just happened upon his concert in Berlin that is on ITV3. It is amazing. The girl Jo somebody has a voice like nothing on earth. Talk about goose-flesh?

The last time I listened to Sting was in Davenport with Nski and Sam, where Sam broke the camera. Guess I'm on the mp3panda.com as soon as this is finished.

The only problem with this is that I am so tempted to try to sing along. That would not be the best thing given the state of my throat.

My throat is slightly better than yesterday however I am now aching. Thanks for asking. And daytime TV is pants. Not a single Mariska sighting to be had.

<worry>I did not have the energy to check Facebook this morning so it is only within the last hour that I checked it to find that Kat was admitted to hospital last night. I should have known something was up when I spotted a missed call at silly o'clock this morning. Frustratingly she is not answering texts and I am loathe to call for fear of having to speak. If she is still in I'm a bit buggered because I am sure they will not want me in there breathing all over fragile people. I don't even know which hospital she is in or what is wrong with her so cannot call. You'd have thought that the hospital would have called me seeing I am her next of kin.</worry>

While I have been sat on my backside feeling miserable, I have developed a random, completely irrational hatred of certain trees. Specifically maples and their derivatives. I did the same with rhododendrons years ago when I noticed they were most prevalent in grave yards. Maples seem to crop up at moments I am not enjoying so they are being added to The List.

Final word of advice -- if you have never seen the made-for-TV movie Witness to Murder, count your blessings. I have wasted 40 minutes now and am trying to balance cutting my losses with the desire to see how much worse it can become. Dismal.

I have had to call in sick today, which was an ordeal seeing my throat feels like someone has sliced my tonsils open with a blunt, rusty pen-knife. This is a double blow because I had two calls that I was due to make today; they almost certainly will not happen. I have uttered maybe a total of 30 words today and do not intend using my voice again as it sounds like a cross between Rod Stewart on 60 Bensons a day and Bonnie Tyler on 80 JPS. Were it not for the pain, I could probably land myself a record deal.

I told Waaarty about my ailment by email, and explained that I had to write down what I wanted from the shop so I didn't have to speak. This is his response:

Viz Top Tips: Hey kids why not record a few handy MP3s for the next time you get tonsillitis? You can take them down the shop on your iPod and hey presto, 1/2 bottle of whisky, 40 tabs and a lighter!

Along similar lines, might I put forth the following words of wisdom:

Viz Top Tips: MANUFACTURERS of bluetooth mouses. Extend the battery life of your product by not making them flash a light manically when the batteries are low.

As you were. I'm going to watch some crap TV under my blanket.