MEDICINE MAN

i’m supposed to take eight tablets a day but i don’t. i take six.
this is because some are supposed to be taken with food and although i am advised to eat three times a day i don’t. i eat once.
i also have to inject two squirts of insulin a day. it should be more, but it’s not, because i only eat once a day.

apparently there are other diabetics who are even more irresponsible but i seem to be ‘getting away with it’ (consultant’s opinion) for the time being. if i had cancer, like my poor mum has, then i daresay that i would go to be microwaved and biopsied and chemotherapped. but i haven’t. i just have diabetes.

insulin-dependant diabetes mellitus goes on for ever until the day that you die. it goes on and on and on, ad nauseaum, and then you die and that it how it works. so you lose interest after a while and just try to be a bit normal because it is a ‘manageable condition’. it’s not a crisis condition like cancer (although it can have its moments like when i nearly chewed my tongue off last year having a fit in brighton) it just never goes away. all the while, the real crises are looming though.

and what a variety to look forward to: heart failure, renal failure, diabetic retinopathy and blindness, impotence, the amputation of my lower limbs, hypoglycaemic conk-outs and fits, hyperglycaemic coma and death. and the mood swings! all because of how much syrup there is running around in my veins at any particular time.

but i still want to live the way i want to live and hope i continue to get away with it for a while longer. at the end of the day it is really horrible to HAVE to eat a mars bar when you really, really don’t want to.

tonight’s sounds: bonzos, van der graaf generator (again) and elvis costello.
tonight’s grub: undyed kippers, bread and butter, proper tea.
today’s word: ‘encraty’ (something i appear to lack).
today’s weather: really, really rubbish ’snow’.
swig stats: about 3 litres of cider (resolves to try harder)

h.

MISSION POSSIBLE

i got up comparatively early today because of a mission that i had resolved to undertake. the first part of my mission was the most potentially deadly. but i got up anyway.

then i girded my loins to face ‘trial by south west trains’. this needs a bit of swiggerisation because south west trains and i do not get on. there are many reasons for this, but the main one is the well-known-true-fact-that-everybody-knows and that is the thing about the timetable. instead of printing these things with random digits all over they should print them with “well we don’t know, why don’t you just guess?” on them. but i never get bogged down with stock and hackneyed moans. oh no, i like to keep mine exotic.

we went to brookwood cemetery which is near woking. it is the biggest cemetery in europe and home to a quarter of a million stiffs who do nothing all day except lying around and turning into compost (the thought of which made me think not of my own mortallity but rather about ‘that’s what i do and i’m not even dead yet’). we had to change at woking; a place that often makes me wish that i WAS dead though.

we went to brookwood to go geocaching. the whole thing was really well plotted with ten sets of co-ords and lots of walking about. i won’t go on about it because for people who don’t go geocaching it might be boring and for people who do it might be a spoiler. but it’s a really interesting place and the war graves really bring it on home to you. all the aligned stones; and we were walking along looking at the ages in the British section. 22, 24, 32, 19, 22, 28, 20, 24…

there were a few things that i saw in the cemetery today that made the stinging lump climb in my throat and my eyes water. perhaps that was the cold weather; it did snow a little bit. but i’m a sentimental old chump, even though i pretend not to be.

our geocaching was a success. we returned to the station. thank god the bogs were open but we still had a 20 minute wait for our train to woking (i wonder if anyone can guess which way this blog is going?).
we went to woking (i like to use my GPS to see how fast the train is going) where we had to change platforms to get my train home. at woking station all the platforms are side-by-side except for one platform, number 3, which is half a mile away from the main station bit (i wonder if anyone can guess which platform number 3 i have to catch my train from?).

i actually ran for that train. there were four people all doing the half-mile dash for it and when we had just got there the train nazi waved it goodbye and off it went without us. i felt a tad underwhelmed and felt that i had to have a word with train-nazi-in-a-stupid-little-orange-vest-thing. i shouldn’t really call him that but i couldn’t read his job-title badge properly because i was trying to get my breath. my eyes were watering but i think it said something like ’stupid fu (’scuse me, doorbell) -hole’. in response to my stern inquisition he announced that south west trains have a shock new policy; trains will depart on time and that the next one would be in 30 minutes. if i had only had my atomic powered nerve-gun with me he would have been a heap of smouldering ash and jelly. but i hadn’t.

we went into the slum that is woking and i went to the cashpoint. three scummers took the piss out of my beard. i began to feel so depressed that i didn’t even want to go messrs wetherspoons for exceedingly cheap nourishment. i went to the offy, bought cider and fags and we went back to the station.

did our train go in half an hour? no. it didn’t. but i did have the golden opportunity to get my own back on that fu (someone at the door again) nt. i was hanging out of the door waving my GPS at the sky when he came past (what a coincidence, us meeting again like that).

me: this train’s really late, isn’t it?
he: (still trying to be cocky) yes.
me: well you’d better wave your little flag and blow your little whistle and get it moving then, hadn’t you?

i then resumed my seat with a smug smile of self-satisfaction all across my bewhiskered chops.

tonight’s sounds: was bbc7 streamed comedy and now the soothing sounds of ‘van der graaf generator’
swig stats: disappointingly slack. drinking out of a bottle of cider in a cemetery reminds me of older, more worsery times.

good night, dear readers,
h.

the miracle that is tesco - part II

i have to go to tesco every day.
tesco sell the stuff that i like to swig, at a price that’s right, and they also sell a few other things as well.
i didn’t think that i would be able to play the tesco game for two nights running but as it turns out, i didn’t really have to.
you see, i visit the cider department and then i go to the cheap shelf where the discounted, sell-by-date stuff is dumped. usually the mark-down price is not all that generous but every now and then there are some bargains, true and real bargains, to be had. so i make a meal out of whatever is on cheap and it’s always a nice surprise not to know what is on the menu until you see it.

tonight i clapped eyes on a pizzalike thing called an ‘italiano, marinated tomato and mascarpone pizzadella’. it was about the size of a pillowcase. it was marked down from £3.99 to 40 pees so in the trolley it went.
i did have to laugh when i thought that simong’s pizza cost him £15 and that mine was so huge that i had to cut it in half to get it in the oven.
while i was at the cheap-shelf the cheap-shelf manager was there loading up some cheap stuff.
boxes of chicken drumsticks, 10 in a box. that’s right, count them. 10 chicken drumsticks for………….
guess how much………
(drum roll and cymbal splash)
10 pees.
so i got 20 chicken legs for 20 pees and they are now in the freezer. if only i had a bigger freezer.
cheap-shelf manager bloke pointed them out and made sure i got the cheap stuff. i love tesco.

then i discovered a variant of the tesco game.
i have a tesco clubcard and trouty gave me some old tesco receipts to log onto my clubcard at the customer service desk. the customer service desk lady was really nice and when she had finished loading up my clubcard with loads of points i asked her about the tesco game and whether i was a good player.
she declared me to be ’small-fry’ at the tesco game (which they all know about) and then went on to tell me about serious players who have been banned from the shop.
i thanked her profusely and asked her to pass on my compliments to the management.
the variant of the tesco game then struck me.
if i find a tesco receipt in the carpark or in the bin outside and a clubcard hasn’t been used on it, i can take it in to customer service desk and have all them lovely points credited to my account.

hoorah! for tesco. i love ‘em.

tonight’s success: £8.57 worth of grub for 60 pees.
tonight’s sounds: the worst broadcaster in the world, mr clive dull of LBC
swig stats: i have some catching up to do. i’m simply not swigging hard enough. i resolve to try harder tomorrow.

have a groovy weekend, dear readers

you wouldn’t think that lying in bed all day would produce blogtastic results, would you?
but you would be wrong - because i got up and, all of a sudden, blogness abounded.

have you ever played the tesco game?
these are the rules:
you go round tesco and find something that you will be charged for at the check-out at a different price to the one on the edge of the shelf.
it’s that simple.
when you find it, you pay for it, and then go to the customer service desk and get your money back. and you get to keep whatever it is.
it’s a tense, nervous, nail-biting waiting game. when it goes through the scanner, will it come up with the wrong price?
tonight was my third direct hit. my first was a tin of lentils at tesco in saffron walden. my second was two bottles of white lightning cider from the brooklands branch. but tonight’s hit was really sweet because i explained to trouty the rules of the game and i don’t think she really believed me. until it actually worked.
‘what’s this? two chunky lemon sole fillets in breadcrumb for £2.79? but on the pack it says “£3.25″ and that is different’.
so, in the basket it went. it was such a shame that there was only one pack left because i KNEW i was going to get them for free.
next i went to get my supplies of cider for the night (tesco own label. strong and dry. 6 litres. 5.3%vol)
then, to the checkout. now, i didn’t want to pay £2.79 for two chunky lemon sole fillets in breadcrumb. would i have to?
because i have written this badly you already know the outcome. up it came… £3.25 and i nearly did a little dance.
the nice man at the customer service desk knew exactly what i was up to. i’m not the only person that plays the tesco game and i certainly didn’t invent it. he had to scan my lemon sole fillets and then we had to do the ritual ‘walk to the shelf’ and have a look at the price tag. then he gave me my money back.
it’s like a clever kind of legal shoplifting and you never know what you are going to get.
but it’s a great game, believe me.
as he handed my money back he told me that he had spent nearly all day doing refunds on ‘2 for the price of 1′ chicken kievs. nice bloke, nice shop, nice money back policy. i love tesco. i really do.

then we went to the pub and saw vodka mick.
i’m not joking, this is really true. the last two times i have seen vodka mick in the pub he has had a gun in a bag. come to that, the last time i saw the landlord he was carrying a shotgun (this is all true).
anyway. i said to trouty that vodka mick likes to buy things (most recent purchases were a ‘holland and holland’ side-by-side shotgun and a set of northumbrian bagpipes)
and that once he had seen my GPS (thank you again, donor who must remain anonymous) he would go and get one.
i expect the coffers of garmin to be topped up by the weekend.

tonight’s sounds: the weeping of trouty who is fed up with me.
swig stats: cider and red wine before i went out. 4 pints in the pub with vodka mick. thirst-quenching ongoing with aforementioned tesco cider.
tonight’s most impressive thing: vodka mick had put £45 in the charity box in the pub. tonight the lovely sophie (bar staff) tried to give it back to him. he said ‘oh well’ and put £15 in the charity box and bought me a drink.
i really have never seen anything like this in my life.

take care, dear readers,
h.

this evening i have chosen to express my feelings.
i have expressed them in the direction of the world’s most dreadful broadcaster, mr clive dull.
it would be awful if anyone reading this took it into their heads to send e-mails to LBC radio and say things like i said to the world’s worst broadcaster, mr clive dull.

i merely pointed out that mr dull is a very lazy broadcaster and that all he does is come on air and say something really stupid. then he just sits back and waits for all the half-wits to phone in and fill his programme for him. i wonder how much the world’s worst broadcaster, mr clive dull, gets paid for being the worst broadcaster in the world?

anyway, my first e-mail must have stung him right in the heart. he did not read it out; how could he? it was offensive and true.

how do i know that my bolt of silver truth had got him right in the aorta? well, i DO, because at the end of my first offensive message i told him that he should ‘hang his head in shame’. next thing is that dull is telling one of his empty-headed callers that he should ‘hold his head in shame’.
sorry, dull. you really are so rubbish. i really hope you get to see this and face up to the fact that you are the worst broadcaster in the world. when you misquote your critics it’s time to retire.

which brings me on to my word of the day, which is ’scolex’

i was wondering what to do with this lovely word until the lovely trouty suggested that i should use it as yet another offensive term which isn’t really offensive. although it is.

so, get stuffed, dull, you scolex. pick the sweetcorn out of that.

la la la. i had a lovely day. we went geocaching and trouty reminded me that i hadn’t had a bad day for about four days. which might well be true.

we found two caches in guildford and saw the most amazing views and clambered around and everything. i left three saxomastraws and am making some more tonight so that i can spread more mischief in the world.

i really love mischief.

today’s word: ’scolex’
tonight’s sounds: that rubbish tosser, dull. soon to be replaced by ’sons of leon’
swig stats: quite a lot of cider and now i’m on the red wine. it’s a recipe for disaster if you ask me.
tonight’s craft: making saxomastraws with labels for geocaches
today’s success: two caches found
today’s grub: sossidge risplotto wiv spinidge

so there you go.
h.

it has come to my attention that someone has been putting it about on the intermaweb that i spent today lying in bed.
well really! these remarks are scurrilously true, but not wholly true because i was, in fact, very busy (none of those remarks from the rabble at the back, thank you).
i had to be very busy whilst lying in bed because there was far too much rainification for me to go geocaching in guildford; which had been my firm intention until i stayed awake all night swigging and being stupid and then forgot to wake up.
but then i did wake up and i immediately got very busy (those remarks are neither big nor clever and they are rather hurtful, so be quiet at the back please).
i was busy listening to radio4.
staying indoors all day listening to the radio is a fine thing. i did open the front door for fifteen seconds but i didn’t go out. i just listened to the radio.
the afternoon play was very good and i listened to ‘little britain’ while i cooked dinner (skate wings, splot and new potatoes).
i find ‘little britain’ very funny but i won’t go on about it in the hope that you, dear reader, might ‘listen again’ to it off the radio4 website.
then i switched to bbc7 and streamed some vintage comedy in a technermological way right into my compluter.
‘hancock’s half hour’ was fantastic. tonight’s episode was first broadcast in 1956, that’s nearly fifty years ago, but it was still as fresh as a daisy and very funny indeed.
then we had steptoe and son - another golden classic.
i see that at 03:00 i can listen to something called ‘uncle mort’s celtic fringe’. that’s odd. i didn’t know that mort was an uncle (come to that, i didn’t know until recently that simonG was an aunt). i didn’t know that she had a celtic fringe either. is a celtic fringe a modern hair-do for the younger generation?

all day sounds: glorious talking radio
grub: mmmmm, lemony
swig stats: extensive swiggery

now i really must stop swigging and being stupid and go to bed. i hope it’s not still raining tomorrow or these guildford caches will never get geo’d. well, not by me at any rate.

today we went geocaching.
i had a couple of swigs for breakfast and off we went to weybridge; a very pleasant walk up the towpath.
we met my mum there. my mum has cancer and had just come back from being microwaved and was feeling a bit knackered but she walked about with us for a bit while we did the first few clues for this multi-cache. it was freezing cold so she went home and we went to the pub for a swig and a coffee.
we left two saxomastraws in the box and got back home in darkness, well worn out. we had walked miles.
tomorrow we are off to guildford to do another cache - weather permitting.
and then the late news came in from merman. death is just so awful that i really can’t think about it for very long.
tonight’s sounds: LBC featuring a dreadful broadcaster, probably one of the worst in the world. his name is clive dull.

a bit of a shame that i rather wasted the day.
having intended to go geocaching in weybridge what i actually did was lie around and listen to the radio. oh come on, it WAS raining.
radio is fantastic. i can quite easily not watch telly because it is so rubbish but i just can’t do without radio.
the radio by my bed is on all night, tuned to radio4. radio4 turns into the world service at night and then back to radio4 in the morning again. it’s all rather magical.
using the awesome technermological power of my compluter i listen to streamed radio, mostly from the fab bbc website. you can ‘listen again’ to all sorts of shows off of radio4, just when YOU want to. because i’m on dial-up it does sometimes go a bit wonky but i don’t really mind because it really is so good.
this evening i have been listening to LBC (i only listen to talk radio, not music stations) while i tap-tappity-tap at the keyboard. drifting my concentration between the radio and compluter activities is very satisfying.
another project for today has been the manufacture of saxomastraws to leave in geocaches. they have sticky labels giving directions to the saxomastraw thread on simonG.org. a cheap and cheerful pressie but it may bring the joy of tootling to a whole new audience and also the joy of simon’s site to them.
so HOORAH!
i will do the weybridge cache tomorrow. i will. no, i really will (unless it’s raining again). i also see that there is a cache in guildford so i will have to whittle more saxomastraws.
tonight’s sounds? LBC of course. i already told you that. keep up.

the day began with a trip down memory lane.
we went into the bear in esher, surrey. this was the first time i had been back for many a year. the first person i saw was a bloke called dave. i hadn’t seen him for decades.
i took over dave’s evening paper-round in 1973 and i had not set eyes on him for nearly 30 years. but i recognised him and bought him a drink for old time’s sake.
poor dave; he has few teeth left and life has not treated him kindly. he was brought up by nuns in the orphanage down the road from where i lived my smug middle-class existence. plus, he is a chelsea fan and chelsea were getting smacked by arsenal on the pub telly.
we talked to the entirely australian bar staff about the geocaching we were going to do (they had clocked my fab GPS, you see) and then we set off.
the first cache that we wanted was ‘leviathan’ but i had not set the lovely GPS right so we wandered in the direction of ‘black pond’. i used to live in esher for a time (when marmite, the cat, used to steal crab-shells from the back of the chinese restaurant), so i knew where i was going - all the way down memory lane.
we found the ‘black pond’ cache, easy peasy and i celebrated by swigging cider from waitrose and losing my lighter. i might have put it in the cache box in my excitement.
next, after some heavy-duty swearing i reset the eTrex to the ‘leviathan’ cache. we headed cross-country but i knew where i was going as i used to fish there when i was a lad.
then we came to the escarpment.
now an escarpment is all very well when you are fifteen and want to go fishing but when you are verging on elderly and have forgotten about the escarpment it is a very different kettle of fish altogether.
anyway, we abseiled down and found cache number two of the day and very satisfying it was too.
then we went back to the bear. we saw dave in the street. he looked a trifle glum.
after a couple of pints we went back to the station and thanks to the lateness of south west trains were just in time to catch one home.
tomorrow we will go to weybridge to do a 6-bit triv one. as we will have to walk up the towpath i expect i will get a bit thirsty and might have to stop at the pelican on the way (actually on the WEY to be precise).
in the meantime i have LOADS of waitrose cider (6%, tastes like muck) to keep me company and a full packet of fags. the SKIDMARK printer has spat out the details of the quest for tomorrow. we had lemon sole for tea (45pees off of the cheap shelf at tesco) and strangely, for once, everything seems to be right with the world.
tonight’s sounds? etta james. what else?

this is great isn’t it?
you do a blog - it doesn’t work
you do another bit - it doesn’t work
you do yet another bit and make yourself look like a tosser - it doesn’t work.
why does nothing ever work?
why do i get these screaming rages and want to kill, kill, kill?
why can’t i do a single thing in 45 years? why is life a shoddy misery that stinks?
why is everything always so fu
TRANSMISSION INTERRUPTED. WE WILL TRY TO RECONNECT YOU. BUT DON’T HOLD YOUR BREATH. NOTHING EVER WORKS.

i hate it so much when things don’t work.
it makes me sweat and my stomach hurts.
i hate it.
and now my blog doesn’t work. i’m not surprised. i just feel really sick in the pit of my stomach.
what is the point?

a mixture of themes tonight. some happiness and some sadness too.
bear with me, dear reader, and read on - dot dot dot

i have just been making roll-ups out of fag butts (apologies to amerikaland readers, i refer, of course, to cigarette ends). this is because my memory is bad for some unknown reason and when i was at the shop i thought that i had some fags left at home so i only bought 10. which was a mistake because i hadn’t got any really and now i only have one proper fag left what i am saving for a treat and i have to smoke the grot in the meantime.
anyway. i used to do this when i was homeless but had a job. now i am jobless but have a home (of sorts) and i’m still doing it. making roll-ups out of fag-ends i mean. keep up will you.
i went to buy a printer today. i need one to print out geocaching stuff, so i went to curry’s. they all cost a million pounds each in there. then i went to argos. there i found one for 39 quids. that seemed good so i bought one. it was called a lexmark.
then i went to tesco to buy some cider and too few fags and what did i see? you guessed it… the very same printer for 29 quids. so back i went to argos and got my money back (i can never bring myself to quite believe it when they say they will credit your switch card; can you?)
back i went to tesco and got another lexmark for a tenner less and spent the tenner on cider and fags. i was quids in.
back home i went (using my GPS, thoughtfully donated by anonymous donor. i know the way but i wanted to play with the thing), and before i started drinking i thought i should set up the lexmark. i got it all plugged in and wired up. (you can see where this is heading, can’t you?).
at this point i should tell new readers that i am untechnermological.
LEXMARK? - might as well be called SKIDMARK in my opinion. it didn’t work. the refreshing new haw air turned a lovely shade of blue and i had a tantrum. i called upon my catchphrase: ‘why does nothing ever, ever, ever, ever work (polite version)’ and cursed god, the world and everything. trouty hid in the kitchen and ate biscuits.
eventually i got it to spit out the details for two geocaches what we might do tomorrow but i shall have to uninstall SKIDMARK and then reinstall it.
why does nothing ever work?
it’s no wonder i drink.
anyway, bottoms up and check out ‘the soul sessions’ by joss stone. at least she works.
cheers!

a very early blog today, but with good reason.
now then, the thing about this thread is the swigging of booze. let me reassure you that i am indeed doing that very thing. i have a lovely bottle of tesco value cider right with me (4.2%vol. taste, not too foul) and i’m doing my best on your behalf.
you see, dear reader, the beauty of this blog is that i actually do the hard work for you. it’s my liver that gets destroyed and not yours.
i have been to the doctor and been quite honest with him. he did the blood thingummies and we waited for the results. well, apparently i’m still alive and my liver is only a bit broken. i have big red blood cells or something. i scored about a hundred on the busted liver count but the doctor says that he has seen scores of 3000 so i just can’t be trying hard enough. regardless of my rank amateur status i will continue to blog on this thread though.
anyway, why am i blogging so early i hear you ask. well while you scratch your heads in bafflement i will tell you.
thanks to the excellent technermological skills of MERMAN i now have a comments thing and a linkification thing. this fine development means that you can be rude to me direct and probably you can tip some of those miniatures that you brought back from holiday (but never fancied trying) into your a: drives and send them to me technermologically. i’ll swig them for you.
hoorah for technermology, hoorah for merman, hoorah for omally and his saxomastraw and hoorah for booze.
today’s musical tip: ‘give booze a chance’ by the bonzo dog band. i imagine that lennon might have been underwhelmed when he heard it. but it’s very funny.

what a fantastic day!
the postie delivered a GPS that was sent by the ‘donor who wishes to remain anonymous’
so that was good.
then i had some cider. which was also good and sent my mind racing.
now then, if you are going to follow this you will have to take a trip to simonG.org
not much of a link, i know, but i am not technermological.
anyway. have a look at the favourite thing what is called the saxomastraw. i can hardly claim to have invented it but i did post it and i think it may catch on.
omally made one and played one and recorded the whole affair. very good it was too and made me feel ever so happy.
almost as happy as when i opened the parcel from the ‘donor with no name’ (thanks again, you know who you are and so, i suspect, do other people. but i never let on)
another thing what i invented was misquoted today on simonG.org’s limerick page.
i refer, of course, to ’shrieking witch’ white cider.
white cider is a funny old drink. you can actually feel it killing you while you drink it. being drunk is lovely (that’s why people do it) but white cider is a different matter. the general effect of alcomerhol is of warmth and a pleasant befuddlement.
not so with shrieking witch (my generic term for white cider) which makes you feel like you have just quaffed weedkiller.
i wonder if this, my second proper post, will work.
technermology and me, we just don’t seem to get on.
ho hum.

good grief, this (after a lot of swearing) seems to work.
this is a surprise considering that my catchphrase is ‘why does nothing ever, ever, ever f*****g work?’
today (well, yesterday really) i had to go to the dss office to hand in a sick-note.
have you ever been in one? they are horrid. we saw an awful set of kids and there was just disaster written all over their grubby, snot-marked, beaten little faces.
come on bliar, call yourself a socialist?
anyway, then we went to wetherspoons (i’ll do links when i get all technermological) and had lunch (fish and chips for trouty - as ever; chilli for me) and i had two pints of weston’s.
now, let’s get this clear, my blog is about being a bit thirsty so anyone who doesn’t like a bit of a swig might just as well clear off.
weston’s is rather flat and about 7.3% but it does the job.
then we walked back towards the station where i overheard a spanish gentleman asking where the national insurance number office was. so i put him right.
that made me feel so good that i went to the offy and bought two bottles of cider for a fiver.
and some fags.
hoorah for being a thirsty blogger.
this is day 1