Googling garden sheds

At half past nine last Saturday morning I was standing in a very quiet Argos. Yes, Argos. The shop for lazy people. The shop for folk who can’t be bothered going looking for something but can be bothered standing and flicking through a gargantuan catalogue, writing out a number from the big book, handing it over the till and then proceeding to a waiting area where they then go on to another desk but only after your number has been called. Surely the only shop that still operates with not only catalogues but also pencils. Short, neatly sharpened pencils.
Whatever happened to the bookie pens? They must have been too expensive. Maybe they were too old fashioned? We are now back to the lead and wood.
That Saturday morning had been dry since we awoke so I had decided, since it was the day of the grand house warming, to run up to the retail park and purchase a lawnmower and get the lawns cut, just in time for the visitors arriving at three in the afternoon.
Along with having our own staircase, we now have our own gardens. Something else that is currently a novelty.
Unfortunately we haven’t yet been gifted with good enough weather to enjoy the gardens but as the grass had needed a cut and there was a distinct lack of rain in the air for a change I zoomed straight up to the local catalogue shop after having spotted the lawnmower at a good price on one of my web meanderings during the week's lunch hours in work.
Due to the busy workload of recent weeks I've found my break times changing from day to day so have completely lost track with everyone else's tea times and have found myself eating my sandwiches at the desk, all alone. Spending my lunchbreaks googling lawnmowers is not how I'd imagined things to change after my move to the Glasgow offices.
The other day I found myself googling Garden Sheds!
Is this how it all starts? Middle age? Googling garden sheds?
Surely it's too soon for all of that... but then I do need somewhere to put a lawnmower now. The garden shed idea has been temporarily knocked on the head anyway as they seem to be far more expensive than I'd first envisioned. Even in our trusty local catalogue store.
Ka and myself had visited the same Argos the previous weekend after seeing a baby bouncer chair online for a good price. We’d went along to investigate and found the item unavailable. The helpful, slightly over enthusiastic, wee woman behind the desk that served us asked if there was any way we’d been interested in a store card. We turned the opportunity down. The Argos lady then asked if there was any particular time we could accept its delivery from another store further afield. We decided against it after finding that the bouncy chair would have to be delivered on a work day. The Argos lady wandered whether we’d consider travelling to pick the item up. We shrugged and then told her it didn’t matter that much, we would pick up another bouncy chair elsewhere.
Obviously this was the wrong thing to say. The woman asked if there was any other bouncy chair of interest to us. We said no. She asked if there was any other item of interest to us. Anything at all in the massive catalogue. Again we insisted it was fine, there was nothing else. Now with a hint of desperation in her voice, the Argos lady asked if there was anything else she could look up for us, anything else she could do.
I had no idea Argos employees were on a commission. I wonder how much she would have got for a bouncy chair.
The same lady was behind the checkout desk when I bought the lawnmower on Saturday morning. A Flymo Easimo, complete with grass trimmer.
I have no idea about lawnmowers. This one had wheels, a blade and a collection box so it looked fine to me and my Dad also confirmed it seemed like a reasonable price when he phoned me up that morning. Being the green fingered expert my Dad is the guy to ask when any gardening advice.
Thankfully the lawnmower was available to pick up, there and then so half of the wee Argos lady’s questions from the previous week were not needed making her look a little disappointed as she started the payment procedure. The lady did try and talk me into some monthly cover payments but after some quick, fraudulent, consideration from myself, involving some unconvincing humming and hawing, I was off to the pick up point in the deserted store. It was obviously too early for all the usual Argos customers so I had the pick of the plastic blue/green seats at pick up point B. Clasping my massively long receipt, for my one item, I looked up at the television screen to see at which position my number stood at.
I was second. There was literally no other customer in the store so how I was second in the queue I don't know.
Still it was only a matter of minutes until the lawnmower was delivered. One of the young employees shouted my number out, even though I, the only person standing waiting on an item, was already making my way up to the pick up point.
And it was the wrong pick up point. The girl had planted the lawnmower down blatantly under the ‘A’ sign. My receipt told me I would be picking my lawnmower up under the ‘B’ sign.
Obviously I couldn't be bothered hanging around any longer than I had to so let them off with this, grabbed the large box and ran for the car, ready to cut up some serious greenery.
After a quick unpacking of various orange and black metal pieces and a short ten minutes or so of construction, a quick cup of tea, a piece and sausage and a conversation with Dad over the phone who was now warning me of the dangers of cutting wet grass. I’d never really heard of anyone electrocuting themselves whilst mowing a wet lawn but Dad insisted it happens quite often. Surely there’d be health warning about cutting lawns then? Would lawnmowers come with safety gear or a license if they were that dangerous?
Whilst Ka prepared the food for the housewarming guests I tackled the back lawn only pausing to empty the collection box hitched on to the mower’s back and to talk to the wee neighbour whose head appeared over the hedge at one point. Betty chatted away for around five minutes, introducing herself and eventually her husband, Malcy, (not sure of the spelling there!) who ventured out into their garden when he heard his name mentioned. Ka introduced herself from the back door, still in her pyjamas and polka dot dressing gown. After the giving us the lowdown on the surrounding neighbourhood Betty and Malky disappeared back indoors and let me finish the back lawn before I headed out to the front. Dad turned up halfway through my frontal assault to either find out if I needed a hand or to make sure I wasn’t electrocuting myself.
Whilst cutting the front I met the neighbour on the other side. An smartly dressed old gent by the name of Leslie whose getting his windows replaced by the council shortly, has a son and a daughter and an alsation dog whose getting a bit long in the tooth and will have to be put down. I didn’t quite understand everything the old guy said but managed to translate most of it. Ka introduced herself from the front door, still moaning about being in her pyjamas and polka dot dressing gown.
After Leslie had gone back inside I quickly finished the front lawn, neatly strimming the edges, Dad disappeared off to get on with his various gardening jobs dotted around East Kilbride and Ka got herself ready after finishing her work in the kitchen, finally taking of her polka dot dressing gown.
Before long everybody started arriving. Cherly and Roslyn were the first to arrive, with Cherly’s two kids, Eilidh and Orla. Orla, being a small baby, was immediately dumped into my arms, for practice.
Around half an hour later the front door didn’t seem to close. Coats were taken, drinks were given out and the washing hanging out on the lines in the back garden, which included my space invader boxing shorts, quickly taken in. There were more babies and kids than predicted and soon babies were being tripped over, wiped up after, kept entertained, fed or generally watched like a hawk and all within the confines of the living room and kitchen.
Nobody went outside.
The rain was off, I kept telling everyone, it’s not rained all day, let’s go out and sit in the garden. I’d spent half the day mowing the lawns and making the gardens acceptable for guests so it was the perfect opportunity to show them off, not to mention my hard graft from behind the spinning blade.
“It’s too cold” David, the nursery teacher from Ka’s work, shook his head, to which everyone else seemed to silently agree and chat on among themselves. All the hard work had been for nothing.
Tony and Suzanne could see my plight but after Milo got his boots a little muddy from running over the grass, they decided against it.
At least Milo appreciated the freshly cut lawns.
Resigning myself to the fact that no one was going to be sitting out on the lawn anytime soon I went into the fridge and got out another beer.
Around ten or eleven hours later, and more than ten or eleven beers later, Ka and myself seen off the last of the evening guests. Chaz and Pauline sauntered out into the street to jump into their taxi and we shut the front door for the last time and got to our bed.

Jack Russell terrors

That’s it. The training starts here!
On my return from work tonight, and finding no dinner waiting on the table, I decided to get my trainers on and head out for a quick 5k. I’m running a 10k in September in aid of Sands and have not been out on the streets for a run for months.
In fact, I’ve never run 10k in my life. The family used to run 5, 6 or 7ks when we were younger, in and around Strathclyde Park on the Motorola fun days, but I’ve never attempted 10k in one go. So, with this in mind, I thought I’d better start doing a bit of training. Okay, I know September is ages away but the longer you leave it, the harder it will be (in my measly opinion).
With grey clouds smothering the sky and the occasional droplet of water hitting off my nose, I started running, expecting the occasional droplet to turn into a raging downpour as that’s usually what happens on these 5k runs around Calderwood and St. Leonards.
Thankfully I ran the length of the lap with no rain but, thanks to my lack of jogging in recent months, struggled for the majority of the 35 minutes, passing the occasional walkers and growling or muttering dogs. Dogs who were sometimes held back by straining leases or allowed to run free, running up threateningly towards me and growling angrily at my audacity to be running with shorts on, keys jangling in my pocket. Thankfully none of the dogs were Jack Russell Terriers. If it had been I may have lost my shorts… or worse.
I have a history with Jack Russell terriers.
For some reason, this particular breed of dog seems to dislike me. For years every single one of them that has passed me in the street has took an instant dislike to me. These small, white and brown dogs may seem innocent looking upon first glance but don’t let them fool you.
Upon meeting them in the street, some of these little terriers, simply growl as they pass and others bark. Others have been known to stop dead in their tracks and glare at me threateningly or stop and then snarl and snap, some jumping about wildly on the spot, flashing their small, but not insignificant jaws, filled with sharp, straight teeth.

In Manitoba Crescent, our second family home, the permed neighbour owned one. This neighbour was a quiet, airy fairy type of woman, with a large, dark permed hairdo and one of those vaguely annoying, patronising voices. The kind of voice that, coupled with her habit of tilting her head to one side when talking to you, sounded like she was constantly being sympathetic towards your situation. As if she pitied you as she spoke.
She’s now a waitress in the local Beefeater. She served our table one night when I was out for dinner with the family. We didn’t recognise her at first as her perm is now gone but she still does the mourning voice and the head tilting, sympathetic, nodding during conversation.
Anyway, she owned a Jack Russell and was one of my paper round customers when I delivered the East Kilbride News.
Every Wednesday night I’d walk to the town centre after school and pick up a huge pile of newspapers from the office’s front desk and trudge all the way home on foot, come rain or shine. Not an easy job as the East Kilbride News wasn’t the lightest of weekly local rags. Little did I realise then that I’d end up helping putting the paper together every week.
From behind the large glass window of the neighbour’s front door the wee mutt would constantly bark, growl and snap at me as I tried to safely deliver the permed neighbour’s newspaper. As soon as I prized the letterbox open to start sliding the week’s latest East Kilbride News in through the opening, the Jack Russell’s teeth would be there, snapping and snarling at me from the other side.
I don’t mind admitting that sometimes I would aim the first end of the rolled up paper directly at the dogs snapping mouth, hoping to give it a wee smack across the jaw. Usually the paper’s end would be torn and shredded within moments on the other side of the letterbox, the crazy wee mutt attacking it with a violent, psychotic hatred.
This neighbour had a baby girl as well?! Can you imagine having such an animal with this lunatic nature around a baby? Nuts.
One afternoon, after picking up my usual pile of papers, I decided to treat myself to a paperback I’d been looking forward to reading. I dropped in at WH Smith on my way and headed on out up the road to make my deliveries. Hours later, with only the permed neighbour to go, I started making my way up her Manitoba Crescent drive when I heard the weekly snapping and barking start once more from behind the large glass front door. I seen the familiar brown and white blur of ears and teeth jumping up and down as I made my way up the drive and, just as I got around two thirds of the way up the paved path, the permed neighbour appeared out of nowhere in the small porch and, to my horror, swung the front door wide open to greet me. The crazy little mutt of a dog sprinted right for me. Barking, growling, snapping.
A blur of rabid dog hatred, galloping towards my legs, spittal spinning out from it’s black dog gums, upon which the small, sharp teeth snapped. My steps faltered but I kept walking, pulling the paper from my bag, ready to deliver, striding up the path as if undeterred by the coming white and brown onslaught of noisy, yapping teeth. Then, as if on a spring board built into the permed neighbours pathway, the dog fired straight up into the air, aiming for the face. I swerved to the side, the dog missing, barking and snapping all the way, as it landed safely on it’s four paws at my side.
Almost instantaneously, it leaped up again, snapping at my arm.
This time it hit. Biting my arm briefly but thankfully letting go just as the teeth found some grip on my arm. The jacket I was wearing at the time was some kind of canvas number so the teeth did not manage to do much damage but it was enough to make me kick out at the little runt on his way back down to ground. The permed neighbour stood in her doorway, gently chastising the little git of a Jack Russell for playing, with that pathetic, quiet voice of hers and that tilting head of pity. Undeterred, the Russell paid his master’s voice no heed and once more lept up into the air spraying me with another volley of barks and yelps and snapped onto the WH Smith carrier bag in my other hand. This time the dog bit in and wouldn’t let go. My new book was in there and the little terrier had it’s grip on it with it’s vicious jaws. I shook and swept the bag through the air between myself and the permed neighbour in an effort to separate the mutt from my newly purchased book but with a dogged determination the dog held on by the teeth. The struggle lasted for at least a couple of seconds before the permed neighbour eventually took hold of her pet’s body. The mutt released the book upon the touch of his owner and continued with his barrage of verbal abuse, but this time from the safety of his owner’s hands, snapping and growling at me as I threw the paper into the doorway and retreated back down the garden path.
On getting home I pulled my new book from the slightly shredded carrier bag to find one large set of jaw prints cut into the lower half of the book. Proper, deep, tooth marks embedded through each side of the cover and buried down, gnawed into at least 100 pages on either end of the book. Throughout the following weeks, reading that book, turning those tooth marked pages, I never shook the feeling of anger and hatred towards that little b**tard of a dog.
I remember it was only a matter of weeks until I was walking up the hill to school one day and an older gent passed me, innocently walking his dog. Of course the dog was another Jack Russell Terrier and stopped in its morning ramble to fiercely yap and bark in my general direction, jumping around madly on the spot of pavement before me.
“They’re all insane!”, I remember thinking, but inadvertently half shouting at the same time, at the rather puzzled elderly owner as he clipped the end of the dog’s lead on and pulled it under control.
There have been more than a few other similar incidents over the years, all with Jack Russells.
Even a few months ago another one of these little runts destroyed my nephew’s football the day we took him, and our niece, Morgan, over to Strathclyde Park. Joshua, Morgan, Ka and myself stood and watched helplessly as the mutt ravaged the blue football to blue, plastic smithereens, growling the guttural noises of a wild animal after running across half the park, out of nowhere and descending on the ball like a bat out of hell.
Perhaps that’s why I didn’t enjoy ‘The Artist’ as much as everyone else seemed to.

Okay, Uggie did look a little friendlier than most Jack Russells but I couldn’t help but spend the majority of my time watching that movie being highly suspicious of the supposedly wonderful little co-star. I don’t care if he could rescue someone from a burning building, play dead with an imaginary bullet or walk on two hind legs, I wouldn’t trust him as far as I could throw him (or even kick him). All of those skills just make him all the more dangerous for when he starts attacking people in the street, regardless of how many awards he’s got on it!

Good day sunshine

The sky is a brilliant blue over East Kilbride today. Who would have thought that driving around the streets of EK on my first week off could be so wonderful?
With the job still up in the air, Friday was my last shift for two weeks. I’ll have to pop by the office at some point during the next two weeks to attend an interview, but I’m free from the office during all the time in between so I finished my shift on Friday with a spring in my step.
Not only that but Ka was going out on the Saturday to her pal, Louisa’s, 30th birthday night out so I was free to do what I liked.
Watch what I liked. Eat what I liked. Drink what I liked. Go where I liked.
Until I remembered it was Mum’s birthday and something had been said about dinner on the Saturday night. So I gave up my chance at the remote control (it’s overrated anyway) and went out for dinner with Mum, Dad and sis, Lynsey Ann, to the local Steak house where we enjoyed a slap up meal and a few glasses of house red. Afterwards we enjoyed a few drinks in the lively Monty across the road where we took what looked like the last empty table, which just happened to be situated next to a table occupied by Mum and Dad’s old neighbours, from their first flat in the Greenhills, who were out with their daughter. Apparently I used to go to playgroup or nursery with their son. Memories obviously long fizzled out by alcohol abuse or age, or both. I did recognise a few faces as I sat in the bar though. Faces from school, long forgotten about, mostly deliberately.
All this while Ka was out on the town for Louisa’s cocktail filled birthday for which they’d managed to book themselves a booth in Mansion House and a couple of nice rooms in a central hotel by the name of the Alexander Thomson Hotel. There was a little uncertainty regarding the location after suspicions were aroused when some local ladies of the night were spotted in and around the hotel’s vicinity, perhaps attempting some arousing of their own. Not the kind of neighbours you wanted staying in the hotel room next to you.
I clambered out from my taxi, happy with red wine, and downed a cup of tea at around one in the morning with a slice of toast not forgetting to put the clocks forward by an hour and thus eventually begin the British summertime.

Since then it’s been blue skies all the way. Temperatures of 22 and 23 degrees. The green emerging slowly from the trees. The tops and t-shirts starting to get taken off at the first sight of the sun. Bikinis making appearances on the pavements again. The slamming on of the brakes as you turn to realise the driver infront has actually stopped.
With the car heater on ‘cold’ and the electric windows fully down to let some air circulate, it’s almost like driving around in a foreign country. The streets feel different.
Sitting in the flat with the windows open I can actually hear footsteps in the street outside.
Not rain. Not wind. Footsteps.
Neighbours walking by. The occasional conversation echoing up as they pass, their voices seeming to travel further in the warm, quiet street. Blue skies must be good for echoes too.
Bikes cycle past, their tyres whirring and ticking. The cars going up and down the road seem louder as if they’ve all souped-up their exhausts with those ridiculously stupid sized versions you see on cars roaring by with before breaking at the lights along with everyone else.
The kids are slowly emerging from the surrounding houses, out playing for the first time in months, like animals coming out of hibernation. Shouts and yelps echo around the street as they once more start to hang out, kicking balls about and hanging around the large hill of uncut grass directly opposite us which stands alongside the ruins of the old college that was demolished to make way for flats at least three years ago (needless to say the flats never turned up). This long grassed hill is particularly popular for sledging down. Not when there’s snow about though, no, that would just be silly. When the sun’s out and they slide down the grass on their hind ends, straight into the large, mangled, rusty old fence which stands at the grassy slope’s end. Hours of entertainment. Their Mum’s must have a great time with the Vanish.
The daffodils are out in force too. The front garden of our block as an abundance of green and yellow climbing up out of the usually weed filled soil.
Where did they all come from? Who planted them? It wasn’t me. Daffodils just jump up out of nowhere when spring comes around. Those pesky phantom daffodil planters must have been round again.
I’m sure the grey clouds will roll back in at some point though, casting doom and gloom over the days to come. I’d better just enjoy the sunshine while it lasts.

Who needs an alarm clock?

Woken up by the Singing Postman again at 5.50am this morning. Flushing his loo, washing his hands with noisey, squealing taps and then banging and plodding around his flat. With the amount of shuffling and banging about he was making I thought he was perhaps going about his morning business with a blindfold on, maybe some Crystal Maze like mission set by his new girlfriend. Standing over the bathroom sink, flinching under the shaving blade with his blindfold on as his girlfriend frantically directs from the doorway. Stumbling through the living room, banging into his couch, chairs or his treasured karaoke machine, making his way to the kitchen where his morning coffee sits waiting on a worktop, his girlfriend directing from behind.
Ah, the girlfriend, now does she exist? A question that has confounded Ka and myself for at least a few weeks now. Something's certainly quietened him down in the past few months, yet we still hear him talking up in his flat. We can never make out what he's saying, of course, his voice muffled and dulled down through his floorboards making him sound like an adult from the Charlie Brown cartoons. We've never seen or heard anyone else entering or leaving his flat though, and surely he can't be on a phonecall for that long? All very mysterious. Perhaps he's just sitting talking to himself? Nothing wrong with that. Everyone talks to themselves occasionally. Nothing beats giving yourself a good talking to. I don't do it so much now that I have a wife... what were we talking about again?
Anyway, hopefully Ka and myself won't be bothering, or being bothered, by upstairs neighbours for much longer as our plans for moving somewhere bigger move up a gear. We had a jolly 'Home Report' man round yesterday, walking round, knocking on walls, opening and closing doors, flushing the toilet, measuring walls and slurping coffee. Presumably all things which have to be done to assess the value of your home. I'm not sure why he had to slurp the coffee mind you. Maybe he was testing the water quality in his caffeine or something... who knows. All well worth it's £300, I'm sure...

Dead squirrel bodies

After a fantastic weekend of blistering heat the sun is holding out over Scotland. Last years summer lasted the whole of two weeks at the most. Could this be our short summer? Fast and fleeting like the life of the little squirrel I passed over on my way to work today. Slightly adjusting the path of the car, making sure either of it's tyres did not disturb the small furry motionless body I wondered where the squirrel had been heading at his time of death. Yes, I know, I should have stopped and tried to somehow move the body to the pavement or at least the side of the road but like so many others that had presumably done so before me, I drove on. I had more important things to do, like get to work on time.
Some of these animals have a death wish anyway. We were heading home in a taxi at the weekend after a BBQ in Chapelton, speeding along, when all of a sudden the driver swerved us into the middle of the road. As the approaching headlights lit up our faces through the windscreen and our lives flashed before our eyes the driver muttered something about narrowly avoiding a passing hedgehog.
Foxes are experts are getting run over too, especially on the expressway. Most of them ending up as flattened piles of mush on the tarmac. Dogs are different though. You run over a dog and they're more than likely to get up and dart away, perhaps with half a leg missing. Not unlike Bullet from 'The Scheme'.
I had been in quite a good mood last night until Ka and myself sat and watched this horrendous programme. A documentary series following a small number of families in a Kilmarnock housing scheme. Possibly the worst advert for life in Scotland ever. Hopefully it was not being transmitted outside Scotland as anyone watching it with little knowledge of our beloved country, it's districts and its people would most probably be horrified in a way that Rab C. Nesbitt could have only hinted at. Zombie like girls hooking each other in the street, stoned, indecipherable young guys slobbering their thoughts in between getting their neighbours daughters pregnant, police visits, court visits, families going on holiday and leaving children to fend for themselves, couples knocking each other about and pet dogs (the aforementioned Bullet) getting run over and left to suffer in the streets (gawd, that squirrel is going to haunt me now!). For the past week now, since the first episode of the series went out I've been listening to folk in the work laughing about it, and the people it follows, so I started watching it under the impression I would get some sort of laugh out of it. Unfortunately I was utterly depressed by the end of it and felt like immediately emigrating. No wonder so many Scots end up leaving. To get away from the people arguing around blind relatives smashing bottles over each others heads? As the credits rolled on this programme a BBC voiceover informed us that future episodes of the series had now been cancelled due to ongoing police investigations... In other words they've all been arrested.
Saying that, my Dad calls our area a 'scheme'. He might be right. There's a neighbour who sings Take That over and over upstairs on drunken nights in with mates, a neighbour living downstairs who likes to walk around the street naked, a bunch of wheelie bin thieves who burn the plastic for the fumes, a couple of six year olds who constantly cycle up and down our lawn while their Mum sits and drinks wine at her front door, a woman who parks her car by hitting it off others and a recently discovered transvestite living further down the street. There's also a bloke who noses at all of this and drives by dead squirrel bodies. Maybe I should put a call in to BBC Scotland?

The notorious Mrs. Fox and Question Time

Last night I sat and watched a whole hour of Question Time for the first time in my life. With the unignorable election now in sight I must have been in a political mood and found myself unexpectedly interested in what David Dimbleby, and his panel of guest speakers, had to say about the televised debate that had just taken place between the three main party leaders. The guest speakers on the Question Time panel were Ed Balls, fighting desperately for Labour, Vince Cable doddering for the Liberals, Alex Salmond puffing shaking his jowls about huffily and a rather downtrodden looking Liam Fox for the Tories. This Liam Fox, who is the current Shadow Self Defence Secretary, recently involved in the expenses scandal by claiming over £22,000 to redecorate his house, is the son of the notorious 'Mrs Fox'.
Mrs Fox was a small woman with a temper of pure fire who lived up our street when we were kids. Mrs. Fox used to run down the street when we'd play football in the large 'Balls Games Prohibited' patch of grass directly outside the front of our house and rant at us with pointed finger. Looking back, she was probably quite right to chase us off that grass considering balls games were indeed prohibited, but it was the fact that she lived a good few blocks away and up the street and would always know when we were out kicking the ball about. She either had some king of supersonic fox sense or spies at various posts in the street looking out for us. If she did have spies or any supporters we certainly never encountered or heard of any. On the day of Kenny's Frist Communion we had the whole family round and Mrs Fox even chased all the Uncles off the grass, much to the disapproval of the female relations who started booing loudly from behind the large living room window, the booing largely led by Aunt Mina. Anyway, because of this, I always remember Mrs Fox and her rants when I see Liam Fox squirming on television.
Ed Balls, one of Labour's top Commanders and Secretary of State for Schools, was doing a fair amount of squirming at the questions from the Question Time audience too whilst Vince Cable just seemed to shrug his way through the questions in a nonchalant 'Vote for us, or don't vote for us' fashion. Cable, the Danny Glover to Clegg's Mel Gibson, inwardly sighing, "I'm too old for this sh*t". All the while Alex Salmond raged about not having been invited to take part in the televised debates like a child who hadn't been asked to someone's birthday party and went out of his way to agree with everything the audience were saying. Janet Street Porter simply seemed to moan and groan, her most common gripe being about the fact that the current leaders were all men.
The whole programme may not have helped you decide upon who your voting for but it certainly helped in getting to sleep.

LaRoux at 90

It feels like ages since I've written anything on this here blog. It's been over a week at least. The night after the last entry the neighbour upstairs was once more up all night long singing Sinead O'Conner and Chris De Burgh. No Lionel Ritchie. Ka and myself only got around three hours sleep. Ka has since discovered he is a postman and I encountered him in the close during the week and gruffly asked him if there would be any karaoke in the near future. He chuckled embarrassed and mumbled something about 'not for some time' to which I grunted in reply trying to look as unimpressed as I could possibly be. An impression of Simon Cowell, in a very bad mood, I had been practising for some time, only I was too chicken to tell the neighbour how f***ing awful his singing voice actually is.
Talking of unimpressed, Ka and myself took a trip to the flicks last week to see 'The Lovely Bones' the rather depressing tale of a depressed family dealing with the rape and murder of their child. The depressed murdered girl herself acts as narrator from a Daliesque inbetween world as she stubbornly refuses to move on to heaven and from here watches her family from afar. Though I suppose if she had agreed to mosey on up to heaven to hang out with the angels that wouldn't have made as interesting or as visual a movie. Peter Jackson really comes up trumps with the visual 'inbetween' world with some fantastic effects and landscapes and along with the brilliant performances from all the actors involved made the movie more than watchable. Like i said though, I left the movie depressed, musing over death and dying, and drove home to snowy East Kilbride, through the dark in the rain.
It was this night in question we were kept up, wishing death upon our drunken, singing neighbour upstairs and the rest of his Sinead O'Conner fan club. When Ka and myself eventually gave up at around 7am and crawled out of bed to start the rest of the decorating in the bedroom, him and his drunken mates were still at it. So, being the imbecile that I am, I turned on my stereo and cranked it up real loud. LaRoux at 90 decibels. Battle did commence with every break in the LaRoux album being interupted by the bawling voices upstairs trying to sing over my stereos bass beats. Once we finished the painting Ka and myself escaped to the gym and upon our return I smiled seeing the blinds down upstairs. They must have collapsed of exhaustion while we had been out. Silence had finally fallen. So I immediately took the opportunity and turned my stereo on and up. Needless to say on the Saturday evening the mates retreated to the relative quiet of their own houses and as I prepared to settle down to a night infront of the tv, while Ka was out at Sara's birthday party, Chaz phoned up requesting my presence at the Byre. So it was a few beers down the pub which eventually enabled me to fall into an unconscious state on the couch upon Ka's return home from her party. A party at which all the girls were seemingly crying at one point or another, taking their turns throughout the whole night to have 'a moment'. What a wonderfully depressing party that must have been. I'm glad I went to the Byre with Chaz, even though he was slightly depressed about his current work situation. We met up with Jim and David (Jim's pal... at least I think his name was David... he was a bit depressed too) and drank a few Budvar ending the night with an escape before Chaz headed off to Downtown, EK's most popular den for nightlife.
Woke up the next morning with a headache, caused, of course, by the stench of drying paint around me. The bedroom looked beautiful though and the neighbour upstairs was obviously still dead to the world after his 50 hour karaoke session. Things were looking up.

At it again

He's at it again! Ka and myself opened our eyes this morning only to hear the monotone groaning of our Sing Star Neighbour's voice yelling along to music again with some mates. What is it with this guy?!
Ka said that she'd heard him come home with friends at around 2am and they had been singing on and off ever since. Don't get me wrong. I don't mean to sound like a miserable old git who doesn't enjoy the occasional sing-a-long but this guy and his mates seem to make a worrying hobby of it. They're not even good singers. If I was waking up to Andrea Bocelli shaking the walls with his voice every morning I wouldn't mind so much as at least he can sing. We don't even recognise what the neighbour is singing now it's that bad. I'm amazed I had not woken up through the night. It must have been the paint fumes that knocked me out.
Yesterday I spent the day painting the bedroom walls and ceiling, freshening the place in time for springtime. Which is supposedly on it's way but by the looks of this weather it looks a bit far off yet.
Snow again? Jeez. I actually swore with dread on Tuesday morning when Ka opened the curtains to a newly restored white world. Once again I was faced with the winter battles of climbing the snow covered street in our rather stubborn car.
As I left on Wednesday morning our neighbour Kay was leaving her flat, in the next block up, with her two wee girls. Kay is a rather nice neighbour whose always full of smiles when you meet her, even though I have inadvertantly ignored her and her happy, waving kids on many occasions whilst being out and about. Though I'm not sure whether they'll be quite as friendly anymore.
Kay and her two sprogs were in the car before me as we made our way up the hill to leave the street. After a few moments of driving Kay's car slid and stuck and I sighed internally as I realized I'd be next. The Toyota kept going though (thankfully under my control and not some missing part) and I could barely believe I was still moving. Steering the car around Kay, who was waving from her front seat, I realised that if I slowed, or even stopped now it could be disasterous for my chances of getting up the hill. Assuming Kay's waving was as a greeting or a 'overtake me' wave I smiled and made sure I waved back as the car kept on climbing through the snow. It was only then it occured to me. Maybe Kay had been waving me down? Maybe she'd been wanting a shove? I knew my own car would go into it's usual sleety wheelspin if I was to stop on the hill, so after a few moments of weighing things up in my head, I kept going, leaving the neighbours in their small car behind me. I hope Kay didn't swear in front of her kiddies.

Take That hell

Okay, she's Swedish!! I had written in yesterday's blog entry that Tiger Wood's wife was Swiss when in fact she's Swedish. Fortunately Kenny was reading and was not slow in pointing this out to me on facebook so I quickly corrected my writing error, just in case Mrs Woods is reading. You never know she may come after me with a golf club, the mood she's in at the moment.
That's the one and only time Kenny has let on that he pays the slightest bit of attention to this blog. I'll have to make more mistakes in future! He did make a mysterious wheelie bin comment a few months back but I dismissed this as a slagging for writing about plastic disposal units. It wasn't until later that I thought, could Kenny have had something to do with it? He did seem to clam up immediately after mentioning it... almost as if he'd said too much. The wheelie bin troubles have long since passed, however, and the block has thankfully been able to dispose of it's rubbish with little difficulty.
Someone who has been making noticeable contributions to the wheelie bin usage is the new bloke that has moved into the block. We now have a overflowing bottle bin and two recycling bins full of empty lager cans. He is the new lodger in the flat directly above us and has most definately made his presence felt in the past few weeks but not in a good way. Last Sunday, for instance, Take That's 'Greatest Day' reverberated round the block from the interior of his flat, played at full volume at least twenty times throughout the day. He had folk round on the Saturday night, which is all fine, but, for some reason, they all decided to leave their party till the Sunday, during the day, hosting what seemed like a drunken Sing A Long A Take That day coupled with the Black eyed Peas' 'Tonight's Gonna Be a Good Night', playing over and over again. I used to quite like the tune but after Sunday, I'm not so sure. Of course, it did not help that Ka and myself were suffering a slight headache, after effects from Roslyn's birthday party the night before. If it had just been the music it may not have been so bad but the fact that the lodger and all his, audibly male, mates sang every lyric continuously and repeatedly throughout the day pretty much made it hell on earth. I could not help but feel bemused and confounded as to why a bunch of blokes would spend a whole Sunday belting out Take That at full volume over and over and over again.
On Monday the girls in Ka's work suggested that it could have been the new Sing Star game for the Playstation. This still, to my mind, does not explain why they would sing Take That all day. Whatever happened to blowing prostitutes' heads off in Grand Theft Auto?! At least that would have been quieter and far less offensive!

The policeman's haircut

Following the naked neighbour arguing with his female friend on Monday night things really kicked off when he locked her out the flat. Ka and myself were just settling down for the night when we heard the ned screeching from the front step. The close has a keypad code to enable us residents entrance, the number she obviosly did not know. Davey, the naked neighbour, had locked her out following with her rattling the close door for around half an hour at around midnight. She then moved over the lawn to his front windows and started banging on them yelling and screaming abuse through the glass and threatening him with the police, shouting in her best, most threatening female ned voice. Around ten minutes later a police van turned up and a police man and woman walked up to the front close to try and get some sense out the girl. Unsurprisingly she did not give them any. Davey then appeared at the door, telling the police that he had just wanted the girl to leave him alone. This obviously switched something in the female ned's brain and she went mental, hurling abuse at, not only Davey, but the two attending police officers. The policeman calmly stood and listened to the barrage of insults until, in her fit of outrage, poiting wildly, the girl yelled:
"I'll take y'ees all f***in' on! You an yer stupid haircut!". She'd done it now. With the mention of the haircut the girl had crossed the line. Suddenly the policeman moved. Diving forward he grabbed the girl around the shoulders and spun her up off the step and through the air, planting her face down on the front lawn. As the girl struggled wildly, the accompaning female officer then dug her knee into the girls back as the policeman got his cuffs out. All the while the girl continued the hurl her abuse but, luckily for her, refraining to mention the policeman's haircut again. As this was happening another police car was pulling up outside with another two officers and as the ned was thrown in the back of the van. The two new arrivals got a very brief update from the two arresting officers which probably went along the lines of:
"Slagged the haircut"
A nod between them.
Davey was taken in and, presumably, questioned after which things finally calmed down. I wonder if you can get done for insulting a police officer's haircut? I certainly hope so. The stupid lassie should get done for breach of the peace at least. There's nothing I hate more than this ned culture that infects our society. Why would you even let someone like that in your house in the first place? Boggles the mind.

The naked neighbour's doors and ironing boards

There's some action in the block tonight as raised voices echo throughout the close outside. The guy downstairs, or the naked neighbour, as he was described in a previous post, has had many a female 'visitor' over the years. Many of them generally not giving much away except the noise of their heels echoing in the stone close. Tonight, however, one of them is going mental downstairs. Shouting and cursing at a male, presumably the naked neighbour himself, her ned like voice screeching and squawking. Ka and myself are, of course, up against the front door listening in as she yells at the foot of the stairs outside. Not that we revel in the goings on of our neighbours' lives. We were merely a little intrigued by the loud commotion... (nothing is on the telly). A few moments ago, however, he asked her to lower her voice which, of course, it being a woman and all, had the opposite effect and made her screech even louder. She was then, from what we could hear, deliberately muffled and pulled back into his flat, where the argument goes on as I write. These things are so much more interesting when it's somebody else.
We're just back from Uddingston, where we welcomed the future In-laws, Dougie and Grace, home with one of Ka's beautiful lasagnes. Unfortunately, on Saturday night, Grace fell in their hotel in Salou and fractured her foot which ended up with the pair of them having to make a visit to the local hospital. Fortunately they were able to get a good, temporary covering over it until an operation back home, which will hopefully happen in the next few days. So now Grace is hopping around on one foot, the left foot being in giant bandage form, with Colin and Dougie acting as crutches for navigating the house. Not a great thing to happen nine weeks before her daughter's wedding.
Other exciting news is that we got a new ironing board yesterday (yes, this is, as good as it gets!). We lost our ironing board around two weeks ago in a tragic ironing board guitar playing incident and had to say a fond farewell (I think it was 'Crosstown Traffic' I had been playing). Anyway, on taking our ironing board down to the bins I discovered another, sad looking, neglected board covered in cobwebs propped up against a wall, behind one of the wheelie bins. Feeling sorry for it I decided to give it a new home and brought it upstairs as a replacement to our dilapidated old one (which I set fire to later as a sacrifice to the ironing board playing god whilst high on old Easter chocolate and Jack Daniels). Unfortunately, however, after using this old board for a few days I discovered it was growing lumps and after a few irons felt like I was ironing shirts on a cobbled path. It was no good and also had to be disposed of. I suspect it was probably the naked neighbour downstairs' board. He also has other things lying about the close outside and around his front door and the wheelie bin shed. An old lamp stand sits outside his door together with an old, golf bag, ripped and torn and an old front door lying on it's side. All cloaked in a thick layer of dust. The old front door lying on it's side outside the naked neighbour's flat was most probably from his last war from one of his other former girlfriends. Maybe he'd wanted to go golfing and asked her to iron her shirt to which she threw a lamp at him and stormed out the flat slamming the front door behind her, which came away from it's hinges and collapsed to the ground in a cloud of dust. Sometimes I'm not sure why the naked neighbour bothered to get a new front door as he often goes out during the day leaving it wide open. Before heading to the shops yesterday for our shop, and a new ironing board, I took some rubbish downstairs and was surprised to see the naked neighbour's entire hallway, lying open before me. Clothes horse, hoover and drying washing all perfectly visible complete with a semi new looking ironing board propped up against his wall. How easy it would have been to nick. Being too honest for that kind of behaviour (or boring) I carried on, in my way to the bins and then on to the shops, for my food and the new ironing board.

The naked neighbour

Friday night was Comic Relief night and Ka and myself were once more in the McGarva household for dinner with Colin, Ka's bro, and Morgan, our neice. We burst into the McGarva household, Ka sporting a rather fetching curly red wig and all her clothes inside out. My dressing up involved merely wearing a red nose. The red noses this year were the best designs yet, though you still had slight difficulty in actually breathing, but as Morgan discovered, they also bounced, an added bonus. The whole red nose thing was obviously new to Morgan, however, as she kept insisting on shouting 'Happy Halloween'. The charity managed to raise over £57 million, the best year yet, considering the deadly credit crunch hanging over us all.
As if things were not expensive enough, at the moment, the Government is now talking about upping the price of alcohol to a minimum of 50p per unit in order to tackle the country's alcohol abuse. What about those of us that do not abuse it and merely enjoy the odd pint now and again, an occasional bottle of wine at the weekend and the odd occasional night out? Why should we pay more for our booze just because the town centres are full of neds and buckie drinkers?
Talking of neds and buckie drinkers, our downstairs neighbour had a few friends round to watch the football yesterday. Following Celtic's victory over Rangers, a small commotion in the downstairs porch area of our block echoed up the stairs. Ka and myself were awaiting the arrival of my Mum and Dad for dinner and I was on the look out for them arriving. At the bedroom window I looked down to see if there was any sign of the loud commotion at the front porch as Mum and Dad arrived, pulling up in the Citroen. Just as I raised my hand to wave a welcome hello to my Mum our neighbour from the downstairs flat strode out on to the pavement, completely naked, except from a sock, (which unfortunately was in the usual foot area). Striding out into the street our neighbour did not realise the car directly before him had just pulled up, giving my parents the best possible view of the goings on. On noticing the two gawping people sitting in the Citroen the guy turned and immediately scrambled back for the door retreating back into his flat with his jolly crowd. My parents politely gave them some time to escape before eventually appearing at our door, a little taken aback by their welcoming committee. We came to the conclusion that it must have all been some kind of bet resulting from the football score. Why he couldn't just eat his hat like any other normal person I don't know. Dad mumbled something about Calderwood riff raff. Still, at least it makes a change from the usual beatings and riots that go on following these football games, though i can't see it catching on. Byres Road full of naked football fans, wandering around following an old firm game. Maybe we're better off with the riots and beatings? In both cases it boils down to one thing, alcohol intake. Maybe there is logic behind the hike in the price of alcohol after all.

With scarf and spade

Winter is most definately here with ice covering the roads and the outside temperature near dangerous without a pair of gloves. My hands felt red raw with cold after scraping the frost from my windscreen this morning. It was a struggle to even get out the street both today, and yesterday, as we live on a uphill climb and the gritter lorries don't seem to ever pass down our way. People sat in their cars yesterday morning, halfway up our street, uselessly spinning their tyres on the spot to try and get up the road. I had a plan though. Armed with scarf and spade I strode out yesterday morning and made good use of the salt bin across the road, spreading the grit over the majority of the street managing to avoid an embarrassing fall on the ice. It's always more embarrassing when you fall on the ice rather than a regular trip on pavement. Regular trips or falls you can usually deal with. But ice falls are far worse. Before you actually hit the ground your body will assuredly twist, swivel, spin, strain in an uncomfortable upright position and then, with one final skid for effect, collapse to the cold, solid street. To make matters worse someone will undoubtedly always see or be watching you and may even be working perfectly normally on the other side of the street. After spreading the salt I set off for the car, parked further down the street, managed to turn it and started up the hill, only to get stuck further down the hillside. After a few moments i turned into one of the neighbours I had been tutting at not half an hour before, spinning the tyres uselessly in sheer desperation of movement. Yet more gritting was called for. For some reason with these conditions the Council has neglected their usual winter road attacks and left us all to suffer with the ice. Last week I passed a salt spreader lorry when they wasn't a single snowflake to be seen so where have they all gone this week in our moment of need? If I was grumpier I would phone the council up and complain... but instead I'll just complain on this journal. I've found this journal quite good for venting some spleen or as fellow blogger Miriam calls it, ranting. Nothing wrong with a bit of ranting as long as it's the truth.
It was Lost Ian's last day in the office today and we all bid him 'fare thee well'. Till Saturday anyway as it's the work's Christmas lunch. It's okay to mention Christmas now as it is officially December. Christmas should only be in December, not October or even November. It still seems very early to be having a Christmas night out but I suppose it's only 3 weeks away now. Another year almost over. Better get those baubles out again.