Sunshine, Lollipops and a Westlife!

This week has been full of shit.  Pardon my French, but this statement is true in more than one way.

There comes a time when you get past annoyance, self-pity and a persecution complex and just resign yourself to being on the wrong end of life’s stick with brown stuff on it.  Of course, my trials and tribulations are just normal day-to-day ones, and as ever I doff my virtual cap to those folk facing real problems in life.

So the week started with bad news on the house move front, which to cut a long story short simply cost us a load of money we were not expecting.  Whilst a body blow, I suppose you always have to expect these things, and it will make life tougher for a while.  I entered into an enormous sulk at this point as this is clearly what sensible mature chaps of my age should do in these circumstances.

As punishment that very evening I was stricken with an illness of a magnitude to match my immaturity.  At around 4am on Wednesday morning I was awoken by a rebellion in my body.  I then spent the next several hours doing my best to evacuate said rebellion from all and any orifice through which liquids could pass.

My body’s ability to surprise me in this regard is endless.  Even in the strongest of wretches or strains at some level I was impressed with my body’s ability to expel something that it didn’t want in it.

Wednesday was therefore a complete write off.  I should have been in Newcastle that day and the next, but I was just as likely to make it to the moon in the state I was in.  Louise was concerned enough to phone the doctor, and I was even more concerned to hear that he would be coming out to see me, which immediately made me think my condition was a lot worse than even I thought!

He prodded a bit, from a distance, whilst telling me he’d seen an outbreak of these cases recently, and that I should live through it.  With a couple of prescriptions left behind he made his exit and I continued to be a passenger to my body’s own exit strategy.

I spent Thursday at home too, having stopped ejecting stuff, but still unable to take anything more than water in either.

The days following have been interesting.  I have mainly eaten toast, fearful of incurring the wrath of my innards again, and maybe this has led to a complete reversal of fortune in the bodily functions department.  That issue persists, and although I have lost a pound or two, I suspect when that event comes to pass I may set a new Weightwatchers record for weight loss in one week.  The need to “evacuate” is getting to a worrying point, and I am in desperate need of a Westlife, maybe even a Westlife and a half.   If you don’t know what a Westlife is, well, all I will say is “four stools”.

Hmm, that was a much more detailed a description of this week than I had anticipated.

So back at work on Friday still not feeling terrific, Louise called me with the great news that I had a speeding ticket, from my last visit to Newcastle.  Great, another £60 down the swanny.  However, the Gods diddled on my chips a little more when I got home to read that in fact I had two fines…four minutes apart.  Having taken a wrong turn, I had obviously been zapped going the wrong way, and then again four minutes later going back the right way!  Both times I was eight miles an hour over the limit.  How the plods must have chuckled.

At this point the only choice was to accept my fate, and resign myself to a spiritual shafting.  This isn’t like me at all.  I have a highly polished persecution complex, but I think it was just the fact that I could not comprehend all this crap at once, and have this weekend, been relatively sanguine about things.  The alternative was that at some point over the weekend I’d be stepping over dead bodies loading a fresh clip.  The fact that I have no idea how to load a clip was probably instrumental then!

Louise may tell you that I have had my moments though.  Since selling the house, we have all been holding our collective breath that the house would stop breaking, and that it would remain standing until we complete.  Don’t get me wrong, it is structurally fine, but the little things inside it seem to be on a mission to self destruct.  We have had wooden trim come loose in the hall, and the upstairs shower came close to blowing up earlier today.  Just a few more weeks house, that’s all I ask!

I do claim a small victory in one event this weekend.  Randomly my key fob for the car stopped working for no reason this week.  To get a dealer to fix that, and empty my empty ashtrays was looking like the wrong side of £100.  However, armed with a new £1 battery, and google, I have successfully reprogrammed the bugger, and my jump in the air with full fist punch on the drive may have raised an eyebrow or two in the neighbourhood.  I take my wins where I can.

To redress that balance, Emily is trying to print off her Photography coursework at the moment, and the printer and computer, who are obviously friends with the upstairs shower are playing up like you wouldn’t believe.  I dislike computers a lot.

To distract myself from these horrors, I spent a little bit of Friday evening on some holiday planning.  It may not surprise you to know that the focus was on eating.  It dawned on me that we always eat at the same places, and whilst we still will do our favourites, I felt it was time to look for fresh fields.  A bit of Dibbage with a sprinkle of Google led me to a couple of places that we will try.

Mannys seems to be a popular choice of lots of folk, so that is on “the planner” and having salivated all over my laptop at their menu, the Orlando Ale House is another that I have decreed that we shall try.  The amount of pleasure taken from this planning activity is abnormally high, but there you go.

As Louise often tells me, I just need to “deal with stuff” so that is what I am doing.  Hopefully, if there are swings and roundabouts the coming weeks will bring a few ups, and I don’t mean the contents of my stomach.  Until then I am googling how to load that fresh clip.

Till the next time…..