1 SLEEP!

Yay! Only one single solitary sleep 'til Christmas!

More coming in the new year, I promise. I'll make a concerted effort to post regularly.

"Indie" kids

Guys who do the whole "Indie" look really annoy me. That haircut may be trendy, but you just look like an utter twat with it. As for cardigans, how fucking stupid. Skinny jeans? As above. Their attitude is so elitist, making fun of emo kids because of the stupid stereotype. You know what? I don't honest mind emo kids anymore, they are generally good people, defying the stereotype. You lot, however, are a bunch of obnoxious opinionated shites. Indie was originally about stepping back from the mainstream music industry, playing music the way you wanted, but nowadays Indie has become a byword for a market of generic crap. All these bands sound the same now, all with the crap hair and cardigans. I'm off to listen to some proper music. Rant, rant, rant.

Ack!

My thumb is bleeding and I don't know how or why! On the top between the mail and the skin. It's not sore, it's just bleeding. I doubt I'll bleed to death at work though. Five hours and a plaster later...

hmm...

It's half seven in the morning. What time is it? Random update time!

It's weird, y'know, because this morning I didn't feel nearly as tired as I usually do when I get out of bed at quarter to seven in the morning. I went to bed at about the same time, too. Transmission (the Torrent program I use for my Mac) is being annoying coz it's saying that one of the torrents is finished when it's quite clearly only 25% done. Grr. Just noticed a flyer downstairs advertising an world atlas. It says "Only £9.99 - Save £206!" Seriously, Who would pay £200 for a Atlas? But anyways, I suppose I'm just a skinflint. Going back to the subject of torrents and such, I'm currently downloading the entirety of Rolling Stone's 500 greatest albums. I doubt I'll keep them all. College this morning. At least I get to mess around with Dreamweaver and Photoshop. La de da.

Snow-tomfool-otography-vision

Oops, my bad, haven't updated here in a while. So what's been happening? Mainly college and work really, we're into block two at college, and we've started photography classes, much to the ire of the class ("just filling spaces in the timetable!" or "I didn't come gee to do photography, I came here to do web design!"). I'd been looking forward to doing this class all through block one. It was a laugh despite folks' misgivings, and once all the explaining how the cameras worked and boring up to tears with jargon had happened, most folk were eager to get out there and take photos. Me and Thomas teamed up and with Gary and Scott, we went out and messed about in the snow, taking pictures as a sort of afterthought. Safe to say that by the time we got back, I had taken most of the photos, and Thomas was soaked and covered in snow after being the target of most of my snowballs (Gary received one after a wee cheeky shot when I was trying to take a photo). Can't wait to get into the darkroom and if any of them are half decent, I'll stick them up here. Oh what a day. Hooray for a long lie tomorrow.

Being the Samaritan

Sometimes it's hard being a Christian. In fact, sometimes it's just downright hard having a conscience. As I write this, I'm on the bus home. When I got on the bus, I was elated at the fact that, due to shift patterns, I was off work from now until tuesday. Within minutes, the elation was gone. The reason is this; across the aisle from me there is a girl. She is drunk and throwing up all over the floor. The people around of just sit and stare, there was a few smirks and even a badly disguised giggle. These arrogant arseholes seen to forget that this could just as easily be someone they know, or even worse, them themselves. Her friend sitting in the row in front is stricken, all she can really do is rub the girl's back in a comforting way. I'm stricken too, as my conscience is telling of to do something, to say something, to help in some small way, but there's nothing I can do. So much for the good Samaritan.

Rebecca and Calum

It's been a while. But here I am, back again.

When I went into work today, I passed some of the MRU folk waiting to start their shift. And to my delight, there was Rebecca, or Becky. Mainly Becky, hardly ever Rebecca. Becky is Sixteen, and found out that she was Pregnant soon after splitting up with her boyfriend. What a parting gift I hear you think. And what a hell of a predicament to find one's self in. It would be a natural reaction to freak out and abort the baby, but not Becky, she took in her her stride, indeed she had made up her mind and was keeping the baby. Things like school and work didn't seem to bother her, she was at work right up until a couple of weeks before she was due. The wee guy put up a hell of a fight though, as he was, I believe a week, perhaps even two weeks late. Everyone in MRU was waiting for the big event to happen, until finally, without fanfare or ceremony, a comment appeared on the "MRU Kids" group on Bebo anouncing that she had had Calum. So it was with relief and gladness that I greeted her in work today. And she showed me pictures of whe wee man (until Joe the security firmly reminded her of no mobiles in reception). At least that's a small (no pun intended) bit of joy in the current gloom of things. Becky has someone to case for and cherish, and Calum has a mum who will love him no matter what and that will spoil him rotten. They're a very unlikely pair those two and I'm so glad the have each other. Thing is though, Becky has herself a job and a half bringing up a wee boy, coz he's gonna be a handful!

um...

life's got in the way these days, to be honest. i'll try and post again at some point when I can.

Change part 1: Out of the frying pan.

That's what it felt like today. At approximately 15.50 hours GMT this afternoon, my job was as a market researcher for Tesco Research, which I had been doing for about a year, and was likely to remain so for the forseeable future probably for the next year. To be perfectly honest, I hated it, but it have me a wage, and the shifts were flexible, and there wasn't much else available to me, which was why I stuck there. At about 16.00 hours GMT, I learned that this was all to change when I was offered shifts on calls teams by the company that employee me. I was sworn to secrecy, so as not to upset other members of the MRU team who had asked for calls team shifts, but had been refused. I nearly blew it by going and telling my mate Dave who is another MRU person, but had to stop myself as a certain person was close by, and I would rather not have her rant at me. At 16.45 hours GMT, after being told to finish early, it was with a certain amount of satisfaction and euphoria that I logged out my phone for the last time working at MRU. At 17.00 hours GMT, I waited with anticipation for training to begin.

Music

This post was meant to go up several days ago, but Meh, I'm lazy/I've got alot on at the moment. So here for your reading pleasure, I give you, Music:

Music is a huge force in my life. Calming, rousing, thought provoking, in-your-face. From Black Sabbath to Bob Marley. I listen to it everyday, going to college, on my way home as I write these blog, really has become an inseperable part of me. From the beginning, listening to the Ramones, to more recently listening to Alestorm and Metallica, it has affected me not just in what clothes I wear, but my very way of thinking and how I portray myself.

Punk is for saying "this is who I am, all my imperfections and warts. Metal means "I an angry! Leave me alone.". Tracks like How to Save a Life, Drops of Jupiter and Bittersweet Symphony are for stepping back and looking at my current position, and thinking of where I go from there. Easy Listening (Lou Reed, Norah Jones, Robert
Johnson) are for relaxing and dispensing of my cares. Other artists, Credence Clearzates Revival, Guns 'n' Roses, Paul McCartney, are for general feel good listening. Led Zepplin are just awesome to listen to at any time! These are just what purpose they serve at the time of writing, they may, and indeed most probably will change. Who's to say what I will be listening to tomorrow, next week, in six months? Well, here's then.

BRB... Need inspiration

*tumbleweed*

Art and Rain

Rain. The kind that soaks into your skin and turns Dundee into Venice. It was the kind of rain that sends people scurrying for the warmth and shelter of shops. I'd joked just hours earlier to Fiona, our course tutor that rain was your friend, not your enemy and that she should hug the rain, but it was hard to be a rain lover whilst trudging back down the Perth road (or should that be wading down Perth road?) In torrential downpours. I'd just come from Duncan of Jordanstone (an art school attached to Dundee Uni) where Fiona thought that it would be a good idea to look at the D of J masters degree degree show, for reasons of, and I quote, "Seeing what stage you'll be at in five years time!". We were not impressed, I can tell you. It was, and I mean absolute no offense to any of the artists, arty farty. There was, however, one installation I liked, which was entitled "Off the wall" which was a video in which a guy spray painted a drawing of a huge hulking humanoid figure on a wall, and the figure came alive and started chasing the guy. It was an excellent mash of live action and animation which was so familiar to me, after having done the animation course last year. The artist was there, faithfully manning his installation, and you could order t-shirts and mini models of the Graffiti guy, so I ordered a t-shirt. And, after all that, art still confuses me!

Phone Rage

Yet another night in work. Yet another night of people confirming my suspicions that Neanderthals have not in fact died out. I wrote about this in one of my very first posts on this blog, and I'm doing it again because I'm still so irate with this happening. A bit of background information first. I work in a Market Research job for Tesco, and we do telephone surveys, some of which we essentially cold call. The responses, as you can probably imagine, are not exactly friendly. They range from having the phone slammed down in my ear, to be told to f*** off/kill myself, etc, and imperatives to that effect. We just smile and put up with it because we get that shtick all the time. It's all very well that we are disturbing you, and we appreciate that, but that is absolutely no excuse for abusing us. They seem to forget that there is, in fact, a real live human being on the other end of the phone. How do they think I feel when they slam down the phone or swear at me? I can tell you that I feel pretty damned angry, often I want to reach down the phone and punch the person on the other end of the phone. There is, of course, a very simple solution to this situation, and the solution is something that seems to dying out these days: Etiquette. A simple, but firm No would suffice. And please and thank you wouldn't go amiss either and don't get angry either, it's our job to do this. Is that too much to ask?

The evil of no evil

I was reading Emzie's Blog, and she was writing about how she watched a T.V. Programme about Auschwitz. This reminded of me something that I had been thinking about earlier in the week. Throughout history wars have been fought to defeat evil, but there is a worse kind of war; the line of war where there is an enemy, but that enemy is not an evil to overcome for the sake of freedom, peace and such like, rather the enemy is like your friends or perhaps even your own family. It's for these reasons amongst others that make World War One such a devastating conflict.

FAIL!

So I was in work the other night there, bored to tears, and my mate Dave started saying "Fail! whenever someone hung up on him or he got an answering machine (taken from funny macroed images with "Fail" on them, often found on the internet. If you don't know what I'm on about, then google Fail.). So we've been doing this for the last couple of nights, and tonight, we were über bored, so I changed log out button on my phone to say Fail. It's one of those phones that you can change the labels on the buttons. Safe to say that it kept us amused for the rest of the night and will probably amuse up for days, maybe weeks. Ok, I'm a geek, so what?

Font faces are sexy, by the way. Seriously though, they are infinitely interesting, I must admit. We had a typography class today in college, and we even got to design a font. You know how in primary one, when you are learning to write, you use the lines for writing your letters, like the tall bit of the b and t have to go above the line and the rest of the letter stays below that line? We had to use those lines, it was awesome, kinda like primary one writing lessons meets caligraphy.

Off college 'til monday, ridiculously long weekend. Get In!

Recommencement

Here we are. The end of the summer. It's gone so fast, too! Where's the summer gone? Gimme back my summer! Anyways, I digress. Last time I posted was before Glen, so that's about a months worth of ground to cover! So here goes:

Glen. I knew it was that time of year when I was living on euphoria and tea (milk, no sugar) for the week before. After several months of anticipation, Glen came, and it most definitely did not disappoint. The atmosphere at the camps was amazing, as usual, and it was great to see some of the oldest housegroup in their last year as delegates, two of whom I have known since their first year at the camp five years ago, and the rest I have met at the camp and at various events. I did, of course, extend the hand of hospitality, with a couple of folk promising to come to Dundee.

Next came the college shennanigans, trying to find a place for this year, and, to cut a long story short, I'm now doing Visual Communication at good ole Graham Street (Web Design, Graphic Design, etc), which I started yesterday. Speaking of G.S., I was a tad concerned when I arrived back at the Ole Brick hut yesterday. As it houses (amongst others) the art and fashion students, it is safe to say that Graham Street Campus has more than it's fair share of fine young things. But Alas! Alack! On monday, there wasn't a single one of them to be seen! Oh Noes! There I was, mourning the state of society, when this morning, there they were. Sketchpads? Check. Arty Clothing? Check. Masses and masses of them? Check! Yay! I breathed a sigh of relief. The balance was restored, all was well with the world. More info on class members will arrive next week when I've done a full week with them. It's a small class, so it's looking good.

Heartbeats

At the moment I'm listening to the hauntingly beautiful "Heartbeats" by Jose Gonzales. With the melodic guitar picking, and melancholy voices, it's not hard to love this track. The combination of the guitar and voices gives the song a haunting wistfulness. It makes of think of summer days in fields of flowers and dark winter nights sitting by the fire, and (unsurprisingly) the advert with the balls. Who was it for? Panasonic? Nevermind, I digress. Some of the analogies that are used in the song are also appropriate for the mood of the song ("One night to push and scream, and then relief" - referring, I think, to the lover to whom the protagonist addresses the song giving birth to a baby). I've listened to it about five times I got on the bus. What a song!

Umm

After two brilliant posts, I've run out of steam!

I'm looking to the future, yet at the same time, back in time. All the people who I haven't spoken to in a while seem to coming back, I'm really getting a feel of where I'm going with the folk I know; who are the ones to hold on to, and who are the ones to let go. A line from Bad Religion's Shattered Faith comes to mind; "The roads you take, the friends you make, and those you throw away.". It certainly seems to have come to that for me. I don't know why, but I got the impression that now is make or break time with regards to the people I know. Who am I going to go forward with, and who am I going leave behind? It seems that in some cases, the decision has been made for me, and in one particular instance, the decision upsets me, as this was one of the people I wanted to note forward with. It's just occurred to me that in the aforementioned case, I may have to sacrifice this one friendship in order to strengthen others, as I may do if college turns out the way I want it to. Tears, yet at the same time, Joy. And by the grace of God, I can ride this storm and emerge on the other side as a better person.

Before I begin, let it be said that I'm not one for bitching, but this particular subject, or rather person is one of my pet hates.

So there's this girl I know, I shan't name her, but shall refer to her with the abbreviation that my mum christened her with: The FLC.

Elitism. You're guilty as charged, madam. Sitting there whining with your friends not giving a damn about anyone who you deem to be beneath you. Ploughing Gung ho into something, then whining when it backfires on you. You're so possessive too, grabbing something and clinging onto it for dear life, until it suffocates. I'm really glad that he got out, that The Don and Manny open his eyes to you. Go on, fuck yourself up, see if I care. Just don't complain in 20 years when your liver has packed in, because you brought it on yourself. Stupid Bitch.

Into The Vault

I suppose saturday started earlier in the week last week when I made my opticians appointment. That may seen like a really weird thing to say, but it becomes perfectly normal when I tell you that I travelled almost 1000 years back in time. Ok, I'm starting to jump ahead of myself here. Back to the start.

On Tuesday, I went to the opticians, saturday was first appointment I could get, so I took it, wanting to get rid of my glasses asap. Fast forward to saturday, and after a frustrating session with especially fiddly contact lenses, I headed, Cathedral bound, to pick up mum's drawing from the exhibition. At the Cathedral, I met Marc, who showed me pictures that he had been taking (rather spooky pictures they were too), and in particular, several that he had taken when he went into The Vault. The Vault was a slum area of Dundee, which was flattened at the turn of the century in order to build the Caird Hall, although if you know where to look, it's still there. I asked Marc if he could take of down there before he was whisked off in his chauffeur driven chariot (he was getting a lift home from Catherine), and he agreed. After a quick mutter in Catherine's direction, we headed down into the deep dark murky depths of Dundee's past.

At first glance, it just looks like a normal alley, the kind that would lead to the flats on the upper floors of a building. In through the gate, and down through a pend (this lane was known as Castle Court) and down the cobbled lane into the cobbled lane that runs parallel with Castle street, the remains of Tindell's Wynd. As drab and dirty as it looks now, this area has no doubt seen poverty, disease and hunger ten times over that of what is there today. It has also seen blood aplenty, as in 1908, a shot broke out in Tindell's Wynd, with a nearby gun shop being looted. The riot was so bad that Robert Peel's finest couldn't quell it, so the Black Watch was called in to put a stop to the proceedings.

The bloody history is in juxtaposition with an even older piece of history sitting right in the middle of this. Sitting on the corner of Castle Court and Tindell's Wynd is what remains of St Clement's church, the original city church. It's windows have been bricked up, and only half of the original church remains, it still stands. It saw the bloody events of that riot 100 years ago, and though the traces of that event and the buildings which harboured the rioters are gone, St Clement's still witnesses the goings on of that small corner of Dundee. But for how much longer? Will it be here in a hundred years? Only time will tell.

wow.

Where's the last half hour gone?

Seriously.

I'll shove up the new post (that i've been working on for the last 3 days but was meant to put up on saturday) when I'm on the bus.

Honestly, I will!

Fear and Loathing on the other end of the phone

Just finished a long day at work; 8 hours of that place! I really don't see how some people can do 9-5 in that place. The first shift wasn't too bad though, four and a half hours of stuffing letters into envelopes may seen boring but Tesco has enough customers with silly names to have kept us amused. I didn't, however, see the funny side of three hours of new store surveys. The responses are predictable, see-sawing between zealous and Loathing.

There's no funny side to the fact that I'm having to get up early tomorrow to find out about course choices at college either. Huh.

I picked up a copy of Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, which I co reading through at the mo. I recommend it.

I'll dispatch from...well, somewhere tomorrow.

Ehhh...

I'm finally getting round to posting after a really busy week. I spent most of the week finishing off work in college. Absolute Nightmare, I tell you. It took me about 3 or 4 extensions to get my work done (No Joke!). I'm never going to procrastinate ever again!

My phoned died, so I had to borrow Dad's for a couple of days, until he and mum left for Ireland.That's also another reason why I haven't been able to anymore posts, because normally I do them on WAP (Thank the Lord for Opera Mini!) but now I've got a new (temporary) phone although I won't be able to post on this blog with it as its just one of those wee cheap phones.

Roy invited me for a drive, now that he has passed his test, so I duly obliged.


Roy (on the phone before he picked me up): Are you Ready to be Scared?

An Hour Later...

Me: Is this as fast as you can go?

After doing the Grand Tour of Arboath Harvbour (not to mention Victoria Park), we headed north to Letham Grange, and then west to Friockheim, where we stopped at The Railway Inn for a pint (Just one, mind, neither of us wanted to die) with Roy talking a little too audibly for my liking about the country-bumpkinness of the the pub and the village in General. It was a bit expensive, though at £5.30 for a pint of Stella and a pint of strongbow. (Yes, Roy made me pay because he claimed that he was skint!)and then we tootled back down the road and passed by Hospitalfield in Arbroath so that Roy could show me his old house there.

New theme as well. look, look! I was googling when I came across a page with blogger templates so, I grabbed this one (Kubrick, it's called) and bunged it in. Jazzy huh?

i'll try and post tomorrow, if i remeber, but if not, then 'til the next time. Night, Night.

Look, a new post!

I've cleaned up the mess I made of the first (and only) leader's weekend post. I was going to post more over that weekend, but I was having too much fun, to be honest. Anyways, sorry for the lack of posts over the part month or so, college work has majorly overwhelmed me. But, the end is in sight, as Friday is the last day of college for the summer. Yay! I'm also using predictive text to type out my posts, which means it'll take me half the time that it used to. At the moment I'm sitting on the steps of St Paul's Dundee (the one next to KFC) and waiting for the cathedral to open up to return some liturgical Tea Towels. Oh how Holy!

Leader's Weekend Dispatch 1

Dispatch from the car: we are heading north from Perth after first stopping off at a petrol station just outside Dundeee for batteries for Bryony's iPod stereo and some Jelly Babies, (essentials of life, y'know) where we encountered a bus of rioting kids. We then stopped at All Saints Glencarre to retrieve the fabled Brechin Cross, where we met Max of the world famous Dog Blog (TM), a rather enthusiastic chap who smelled of (and according to his Human had recently been experiencing the joys of) stagnant water, so enthusiastic, in fact, that he scratched me as he greeted me. Are nearing Pitlochry and will update later, probably from the pub.

Security Blanket

So I was in Waterstones the other day, and I started reading the first book of The Complete Peanuts Collection, and one of the first things that struck me is how much Charles Schulz's drawing style changed and developed from the first strips in 1950 'til he settled on the recognisable style six or seven years later. The early strips lack the facial and bodily detail that later defined Schulz's work. Another thing that I noticed, something which amused me no end, is seeing Linus as a toddler. Although he is a toddler, the foundations of later character development is there, with several philisophical inclinations in amongst all the thoughts and feelings. It wouldn't be for almost another twenty years that there would be another Van Pelt, in the shape of Rerun Van Pelt, Lucy and Linus' youngest brother. It's fun to see that even in the early days, that Schroeder and Charlie had to ward off Lucy's amorous advances. Schroeder is, as ever, married to his music and Devoted to Beethoven.

It's begginning to look like this is going to be a topical blog. More tomorrow.

Teh Manga, lulz!!

Another of my speeches copied and pasted from a forum.

Eidderf: See that's how anime started, someone drew a little goku and everyone else created variations and then it became style of drawing for people who can't draw.

Me: Not entirely, but something along those lines. At college we had folk from both Dundee and Abertay Unis who came in to talk to us about their respective animation courses, and both said the same thing about manga; "If you aren't from Japan or China, and you didn't grow up in that sort of culture, don't put manga in your portfolio" They have a point. Too many kids are adopting Manga as their art style, and their actual, often undiscovered, art style is sacrificed as a result. You don't see hordes of folk drawing like Matt Groening or Charles Schulz after reading their comics or watching their TV shows?

Love with a U in the middle

Copied and pasted from a post I made on a forum:

"Love is weird guys. Or should I say, a lack of it. I haven't been in a relationship for over a year, and I think I'm ready for another one. I really hope I'm better at a relationship this time than last time, because last time the relationship broke down coz we just stopped talking. I don't think I was ready for one, plus we started going out just days after we met. Now I'm ready and I like a girl, and I'm almost certain she likes me (though I shall undertake further research to confirm this), plus I promise I'll keep talking to her! Fingers crossed guys, here I go!"

I'll restart blogging tomorrow, I've been lazy and not been doing it.

Penny Lane is in My Ears and in My Eyes...

In Penny Lane there is a Barber showing Photographs/Of every Head he's had the pleasure to have known/And all the people that come and go/Stop to say Hello.

So goes the first verse of a Beatles classic. The reason I mention it is that I've had it stuck in my head since yesterday morning, because I was watching a daytime TV property programme (that's my parents' fault, that is!) and the programme featured a property in the Mosley Hill area of Liverpool, which is where John Lennon and George Harrison grew up, and the house was on a street near the famous Penny Lane. It would be good to go there and walk along Penny Lane. I've got 3 days of posts to cover in this entry. So much for 2 posts per day! So, what's been happening lately? On Tuesday,
I went round to Pete's (a guy from college) flat, played Star Wars Batlefront, before heading to work. Nothing much happened yesterday or today, to be honest, so I'll talk about Pete. Tuesday was the first time that I got to properly talk to him, and he's a genuinely nice guy. In my mind, what I especially like about him is that he accepts you for who you are, he doesn't expect you to be anything greater than, or different to who or what you are. It makes a big change from last year in the NQ, when they tried to turn you into a clone of themselves. Life seems to have taken an unexpected turn recently, and a line from a church service blessing sticks in my mind:

From what we know, To what we don't know, God is calling us on

That has become my motto over the last few weeks, and I'm going to adapt my frame of mind thus so that I can look towards the next couple of months with hope, expectancy, and most of all, Courage.

Whoops, My Bad!

Ok, so I kinda neglected to post yesterday. I was staying over at Gordon's from Saturday night 'til this morning (Monday morning). On the subject of this blog, I was procrastinating again. On Sunday evening, we went out for Libations after Evening Prayer,with Kristin and Bryony, which was fun ("Someone stole my Gyroscope!"). We found out that Kristin is leaving us at the end of May to go home to Germany, and, Shock Horror, Bryony is leaving us too. Bryony is moving down to Edinburgh to a Post-Grad down there. Gordon assures me, however, that Chris Simmons is coming to Dundee to do "Psychology, or something like that", so hopefully, we'll persuade him to Libate. In other news, I'm looking forward to the summer, it looks like we'll heading back to the usual resort for our holibags, which suits me fine, as we know the place so well. Zack's Shack, here I come. Plus, this time, I'll be able to order alcohol when I'm there. On the band front, I think I've found amount and combination of people to mobilise this band: James Mitchell on Vocals, Charlie Anderson on Guitar, Gordon on Bass and Me on Drums. Now all I have to do is to get Charlie and Gordon to actually sign up for this thing! At least James agreed...

ONE SHALL STAND AND ONE SHALL FALL

Last night I watched the new Transformers film. (I say new, even though it was released last year because it is new compared to the original animated film.) I had very high expectations of the film, but I was completely unprepared as to how much it would blow me away. I don't think it's too much of an overstatement to say it was EPIC. There was the obligatory detail change, but I thhnk they added to the film, rather than taking away from it. For example, updating Bumblebee to a Chevrolet, I thought was a nice touch, and also replacing Primus with the Cube meant that half the movie wasn't wasted by telling the origins backstory. When I posted about it on forum I frequent, one of the members pointed out faults of the film, but to be honest, it was a minor detail.

All in all, I'd rate it 5 stars.

The Departure of a Legend

So, there we were, doing the weekly pillage of Tesco, Mum and Dad down one the aisles and me standing with the trolley at the top of said aisle, day dreaming, when I spotted a face that I hadn't seen in about 2 years. It was Mrs Hill, my 5th year Higher English teacher. I said hello to her and asked how she was doing and she told me that she was going to take early retirement at the end of the year. It was surprising to hear this, but she deserves it. She's done her time, and put up with the school (and especially some of the pupils) for long enough. In English with her, we did Shakespeare's Othello, and it was this which founded my love for the play, and particularly the character Iago.

So, I say: All the best in your retirement, Mrs Hill, you deserve it.

2 blogs posts a day help you work rest and play.

Same day, another blog post. I'm heading home now, it's been a mixed sort of day, work wasn't too bad, there was some good banter. I've got mixed feelings about the summer, there's so many things I want to do, so many people I want to see, I'm not sure if I'll get them all done, to be honest. I'm beginning to think that Remmie will gouge one of my eyeballs out with a spoon, should I not go and see her during the summer. I Jest. Elsewhere in the life of Neil, it's increasingly likely that I'll have to head up to Loons Road and drag Roy out of bed in order to get him to come and see Son Of Rambow with me. Grrrr! I'm going to try and post 2 blog posts per day. I probably won't achieve it, but I can but try. Thinking of what I have titled this post, I see Mars have dusted off and once more wheeled out the old slogan, and with considerable style, too. Talking of old adverts, I see the Wine Gums "Scotch" advert has been redone/brought back! (To be honest, I can't tell if it's a re-edited version of the old advert or a new one made with the same premise.) What goes around, comes around.

How's your Father?

Aren't euphemisms great? It's especially hilarious when you use them when speaking to someone who hasn't a clue what you're talking about!Anyways, on to today's topic of musing. (Is that correct grammar? I don't particularly care to be honest.) Drip drip drop, little April showers, the song goes. Well, not so much April Showers as April Monsoon! I swear it's washed the colour out of my hair, because my hair isn't as Ginger as it was yesterday! And, of course, in true Scottish fasion, as I wrote that very sentence, the sun came out.On a slightly different note, it's coming up for 2 years since I left school. I've changed so much since then, yet I feel like I haven't changed at all. Church update: the HB has been at St Paul's for almost 2 months now. Time flies when you're having fun! I got him to do the Strip The Willow with me at the Ceilidh in hte evning after his consecration. It's safe to say that the man dances like a beast!

Neglected? Just a bit!

I haven't posted here since February. February?? It's now April, and thanks to Doug introducing me to the wonders of Opera Mini, I can actually see webpages as they are supposed to be, therefore I will be posting alot more often!
So, down to business. First week back after the holi-bags and so we're wel and truely into block 3. Alasdair's gone off in a huff with me, which reveals how much of a git he is.
It's moments like this which make me marvel at modern technology. Here I am, making a diary or log on something that is essentially one step up the scale from 2 plastic cups and a piece of string!

Is anybody out there?

I'm beginning to wonder if anyone is reading my blog...

Oh well, never mind.

So this Saturday is the installation of the new Provost and Rector. If anyone is reading this, then I'll get some pictures of it on the day and stick 'em up here.

I'm trying to keep my photography going at the moment.

The picture over there is a picture that I took a couple of weeks ago during the heavy rain.

Meanwhile, back at the ranch...

The Lamentable Loss of Etiquette

The thing that REALLY Annoys me is that people just aren't polite anymore. I work in market research (it at least give me some money) and the most common example of rudeness that happens is thus:

Me: Can I speak to Mr Blah please?

PersonOnTheOtherEnd: No

*sound of phone being slammed down*

I mean seriously, they could at least do me the courtesy of telling me WHY i can't speak to the aforementioned!

Another such example is this:

Me: We're currently carrying out a survey to understand shopping habits.

P.O.T.O.E: F**** Off!

Is there any need?

Ka-Thunk.

That's the sound of the New Year arriving. Well, in reality it sounded more like an Old Firm game had suddenly appeared in the living room of number 19 Springfield.

But anyway, we hear that the new holy boiler is coming to be installed on the 27th of February. Things weill really hot up about then, what with church politics and all.

I've just realised that I've forgotten my clothes for work. Shite.

Oh well, Life goes on.