'Puter sez no

I've not got a great deal of time for civil servants. There are an awful lot of them and its not exactly a challenging way to make your way through life. I used to do a lot of business with the DWP, and as you went through the offices, it was a struggle to see anyone doing anything which I would describe as work. If you happen to be a civil servant and take offence, tough shit. I have a particular loathing of HM's Customs & Excise. I have been unfortunate enough to deal with these fucking tools for the past fifteen years or so, and I have yet to speak to anyone in this department who isn't a total unmitigated class one grade A cunt.

The fucking bitch I spoke to this morning totally rewrote the book on condescending rudeness. I paid my corporation tax on time. I pay an accountant to ensure that I do, its not complicated. So why have I been fined for late payment?( which incidentally accrues interest daily, nice little earner).

I then receive an amended penalty determination with a payslip attached for me to pay the newly calculated fine of, £0.00p, but the evil cow I spoke to still insists that a fine is due, the interest will continue to increase, and I will eventually be taken to court if I don't pay it. She's got two fucking hopes of me paying a tax fine, Bob and fuck all. Like everyone, I pay tax on what I pay myself, I also pay tax on the profits I make. I'm a nice chap, I contribute to the economy, not take from it. Which is why I get so angry when some fucktard doing a job my 4 year old could do gets all chippy down the phone line, virtually accusing me of not paying what is owed and not paying it on time.

They're a bunch of fucking cunts and I will not be bullied by cunts. Absolutely no apologies for the tone or the language. A cunt is a cunt and civil servants are cunts.

Little darlings

Emmak, who pretends to have headaches, has just blogged about the joys of parenthood. She did not go far enough. For anyone considering sprogging, answer the questions below, and consider once more

FOLLOW THESE 14 SIMPLE TESTS BEFORE YOU DECIDE TO HAVE CHILDREN:

Test 1
Women: to prepare for maternity, put on a dressing gown and stick a beanbag down the front.
Leave it there for 9 months.
After 9 months remove 5% of the beans.

Men: to prepare for paternity, go to a local chemist,
tip the contents of your wallet onto the counter and tell the pharmacist to help himself.
Then go to the supermarket. Arrange to have your salary paid directly to their head office.
Go home. Pick up the newspaper and read it for the last time.

Test 2
Find a couple who are already parents and berate them about their methods of discipline,
lack of patience, appallingly low tolerance levels and how they have allowed their children to run wild.
Suggest ways in which they might improve their child's sleeping habits, toilet training, table manners and over all behaviour.
Enjoy it.
It will be the last time in your life that you will have all the answers.

Test 3
To discover how the nights will feel:
1. Walk around the living room from 5pm to 10pm carrying a wet bag
weighing approximately 4 - 6kg, with a radio turned to static
(or some other obnoxious sound) playing loudly.
2. At 10pm, put the bag down, set the alarm for midnight and go to sleep.
3. Get up at 12pm and walk the bag around the living room until 1am.
4.Set the alarm for 3am.
5. As you can't get back to sleep, get up at 2am and make a cup of tea.
6.Go to bed at 2.45am.
7. Get up again at 3am when the alarm goes off.
8. Sing songs in the dark until 4am.
9. Put the alarm on for 5am. Get up when it goes off.
10. Make breakfast. Keep this up for 5 years.
LOOK CHEERFUL.

Test 4
Dressing small children is not as easy as it seems:
1. Buy a live octopus and a string bag.
2. Attempt to put the octopus into the string bag so that no arms hang out.
3. Time allowed for this: 5 minutes.

Test 5
Forget the BMW and buy a practical 5 door wagon.
And don't think that you can leave it out on the driveway spotless and shining.
Family cars don't look like that.
1. Buy a chocolate ice cream cone and put it in the glove compartment.
2. Leave it there.
3. Get a coin. Insert it into the cd player.
4. Take a box of chocolate biscuits; mash them into the back seat.
5. Run a garden rake along both sides of the car.

Test 6
Get ready to go out
1. Wait
2. Go out the front door
3. Come back in again
4. Go out
5. Come back in again
6. Go out again
7. Walk down the front path
8. Walk back up it
9. Walk down it again
10. Walk very slowly down the road for five minutes.
11. Stop, inspect minutely and ask at least 6 questions about every
piece of used chewing gum, dirty tissue and dead insect along the way.
12. Retrace your ste ps
13. Scream that you have had as much as you can stand until the neighbours come out and stare at you.
14. Give up and go back into the house.
15. You are now just about ready to try taking a small child for a walk.

Test 7
Repeat everything you say at least 5 times.

Test 8
Go to the local supermarket.
Take with you the nearest thing you can find to a pre-school child.
A full-grown goat is excellent.
If you intend to have more than one child, take more than one goat.
Buy your weeks groceries without letting the goat(s) out of your sight.
Pay for everything the goat eats or destroys.
Until you can easily accomplish this, do not even contemplate having children.

Test 9
1. Hollow out a melon
2. Make a small hole in the side
3. Suspend the melon from the ceiling and swing it side to side
4. Now get a bowl of soggy cornflakes and attempt to spoon
them into the swaying melon while pretending to be an aeroplane.
5. Continue until half the cornflakes are gone.
6. Tip the rest into your lap, making sure that a lot of it falls on the floor.
7. You are now ready to feed a 12-month old child.

Test 10
Learn the names of every character from the Wiggles, Barney, Teletubbies and Disney.
Watch nothing else on television for at least 5 years.

Test 11
Can you stand the mess children make? To find out:
1. Smear peanut butter onto the sofa and jam onto the curtains
2. Hide a fish behind the stereo and leave it there all summer.
3. Stick your fingers in the flower beds and then rub them on clean walls.
4. Cover the stains with crayon.
5. How does that look?

Test 12
Make a recording of someone shouting "Mummy" repeatedly.
Important: no more than a 4 second delay between each Mummy -
occasional crescendo to the level of a supersonic jet if required.
Play this tape in your car, everywhere you go for the next 4 years.
You are now ready to take a long trip with a toddler.

Test 13
Start talking to an adult of your choice.
Have someone else continually tug on your shirt hem or shirt
sleeve while playing the Mummy tape listed above.
You are now ready to have a conversation with an adult while there's a child in the room.

Test 14
Put on your finest work attire.
Pick a day on which you have an important meeting. Now:
1. Take a cup of cream and put 1 cup of lemon juice in it
2. Stir
3. Dump half of it on your nice silk shirt
4. Saturate a towel with the other half of the mixture
5. Attempt to clean your shirt with the same saturated towel
6. Do not change, you have no time.
7. Go directly to work.

You are now ready to have kids.

I woke up this morning knowing that I had a days work of working on my accounts to look forward to, which made getting out of bed hard work. Until I opened the curtain. A slight frost was on the car windscreen, but the sky was clear and blue. I'm now crunching numbers, and thankfully I am making money, whilst looking enviously at the people on the golf course outside my office window.

Crazy things on e bay. World cup final tickets, 10 grand each. There must be some very rich and very stupid people out there. 10 grand to watch a game of rugby ? I love the game, but that's plain daft.

The return of rugby & oyster

We both collapsed onto the roundabout somehow managing to avoid the prickles. Laughing our nads off at our truly fubared position. After some time lurching around the road we found the keys, and out of the darkness car lights approached. A proper taxi ! The driver wasn't Algerian ! He had a map !
10 minutes later we wandering to our pad after being dropped at the bottom of the road. As we approached a vomit covered apparition rose from the steps. 'Four hours I've been here, four fucking hours you pair of cunts'. So BIL had his homing instincts switched on. Turns out he'd watched the game and then grabbed a cab, assuming we'd do likewise. When it was clear we hadn't he wandered down to the bar at the bottom of the street, the one we swore blind that no matter how bladdered we were, we wouldn't venture in. Turns out they took pity on him, they all had a few beers and they even gave him a couple of fat biftas, hence the spew. Weed and beer are not happy bedfellows.
By now it was 5.30, which seemed a good time to crash as we had to do it all over again later in the day. we rose at 10 , all looking very special, a quick shower, a few gallons of water and OJ and off to catch the bus. We followed the main docks road into the edge of the centre, and then got the metro to the old port. As I said earlier, dog rough in parts.
The walk from the station to the port is pretty. The station sits on top of a hill and we strolled down tree line boulevards taking in the views. We found an amazing confectioners staffed by the most stunning women, bloody well made me want to buy biscuits. I got the boys some rather jazzy lollipops and we continued our stroll munching on themostfuckingincrdiblefreshlymadethatmorningmeltin yourmouthbutterbiscuits, yum.
We opted for brunch. BIL went for pasta, he was doing the Cardiff half marathon the following weekend and last nights debauchery had totally fecked his training schedule, and as more was planned for this day, pasta was a his token effort. Bokke and I had bloody gorgeous steaks with a heavily reduced red wine and red onion sauce swilled down with a few bottles of rather refreshing rose. Breakfast of champions. more strolling aided digestion before we decided to join French cafe society and watch the Boks play Fiji sat comfortably outside a bar with a big screen. I think this was where I went a bit wrong with my drinks choice. More wine, a few beers, and a few pastis. The game was wonderful. Played at a hell of a pace with the score going one way then the next, before the filthy Saffas pulled away at the end. Bokke was happy, but mighty relieved. He'd taken loads with very good humour all through the game as he was the only Boer in the bar, and everyone was backing Fiji. It was from this point that my memories become hazy. It was only around 7pm, and the next game was 9. We meandered some more and found ourselves in the bar we had finished up in the previous night. Mine host was pleased to see us, and greeted us with a free shot of Tequila. ( We most have blown a few quid in there the previous evening ) it then got messy. More tequila, sambuca, oysters, whatever that orange licker is, more oysters, lobster, and finally, kick off and the sensibilty of a cold pint. Somewhere during the second half is the point at which my weekend ended in disgrace. I pulled a massive hurl, damn near turning myself inside out in the process and rather sensibly informed my companions that I wished to be collected from my sleeping position on the church steps opposite when it was time to go. Iwas told later that Argentina won. I may be daft enough to do it, but I'm now wise enough to know when I've had enough.
The journey back was relaxing. I've always hated air travel after a weekend on the lash, but the train was great. We had time for a spot of lunch in Paris. Bokke had more steak. Boers and meat. My body being totally protein overloaded cried out for, and got a green salad with a few litres of diet coke. The drive from London back to the shire was the only harsh part of the journey as I had to drive. Bokke and BIL both drive stupid trucks, Bokke as he hankers after the veld, and BIL as he lives halfway up a mountain in the arse end of nowhere. We went back to Gumphers as Mrs G was looking after Bokkes kids for a few hours. We were delighted to be told that we all looked and smelt like tramps, a proper badge of honour. She was pleased to see me really. The boys liked their funky shirts and lollipops, and A professed to be chuffed with the Foie Gras.
All in all a fucking splendid weekend. I hadn't had a rugby trip for a few years. As the boys are getting older the weekends get fuller and fuller, but it was the world cup dammit. Good company, fine wine, beer, and food, and thrilling rugby. I cancelled two games of squash that week and eventually came right on the Friday. I am old and I smell of wee.

Rugby & Oysters

Forget planes, trains are the way to travel. Particularly if they're French, don't stink of old lady's wee and go at 200mph. Leave London 0534, arrive Marseilles 1329. Genius. No shitty airports, no queues and a big comfy seat.
Sometimes I'm like Paddington Bear, as in , things happen to me. All we wanted was a cab from station to apartment, a quick change into shorts, dump bags and leggit back to the Vieux Port for the first game. Thanks to that twat Remy, we were now staying at the very north of the city in a crappy flat in a very dodgy area near the docks, but hey, we didn't plan to be there much, it was just a bed. Anyway, we grab a cab, we're nearly at our pad, and another car dings the back of our cab in the narrow street and drives off. Our driver turns into a full on mentalist and gives chase. Its only when we're doing 95 on the wrong side of the road that we realise there are no seatbelts in the car. Enough,not wishing to be a French motoring statistic, we demand he stops. He does and invites us to piss off out of his cab. There's three of us and one of him so we tell him to take us to our fucking pad and then he can piss off. Fair enough, but then we have no drive back to town. Our French is woeful, so a neighbour kindly calls us a cab, and we make it back just as the anthems are being sung.

My companions for this trip are my English brother in law (BIL) and my South African chum (Bokke). So I'm the only one along for the jolly, Wales being shite and all that. The big screens were slap in the middle of the old port, which is very impressive, a large fort guarding the entrance, and a stunningly pretty church perched on a hilltop looking down on the cluster of boats and eager rugby fans. The rest of Marseilles, much like many port cities was a fucking shit hole. We watch England beat the convicts in the sweltering sunshine helped by many cooling pressions. BIL is chuffed to arseholes and is one of many dazed Englishmen around us. Bokke and I are amazed. How can a team that dull and shite be in a world cup semi final (little were we to know that it would get worse the following week) We had a mooch around the old port, sampling various French lagers and the odd Pastis on the way whilst choosing a restaurant for an early evening meal .KT Tunstall was playing later on by the harbour, and we wanted to watch a bit of that before baggsin our spots for the next game. We opted for a fabbo fruits de mer washed down with a couple of bottles of Chablis. I say fabbo, everything bar the sea snails, which were fucking minging, but it was a matter of manly pride to finish the lot.
This is the bit where the evening went slightly tits up. We lost BIL. his phone kept going ansaphone, which was more than irritating. (later we found out he dropped it and it was fucked). Realising that we would never find him in such a massive crowd, Bokke and I decided that we would enjoy the rest of the night, and find him when the crowd dispersed. So, we had a few more beers. One, in a bar which we thought was paricularly friendly and only had men in it, stepped outside and noticed the multicoloured flag, oh yes, the poofs like their rugby too. Caught a bit of KT and then watched the French do the Kiwis up the wrong 'un. What a night, we sang, we danced, we hugged smelly Frenchmen. It was bloody 'triffic. We found a cool little bar on the front for more Pastis and singing and did the odd recce for the BIL with no avail. At 2 ish, we thought we should make a move. Slight problem, we had no idea of the address of where we were stayin, BIL had written it down, but he was nowhere to be seen. We knew roughly where it was, but our French was so appalling and we were so drunk, there was no way we could communicate the info. There was an upside, although not so good for BIL, Bokke had the keys in his pocket. A word of advice, never ever try to get a cab in Marseille after midnight as they don't exist. A dodgy looking geezer in a shagged out Renault accosted us, and by a mixture of sign language and yelling we figured out that he wasn't a taxi, but if we bunged him a few euros, he would take us home. It started well on the main road north, but after twenty minutes of aimless meandering around some of Marseilles less salubrious suburbs, and for the second time in fifteen hours, we were once again hoyed out of a French car. We wandered around the roundabout where we had been ejected. We both noted some interesting cactii, and we both concurred that we were a little bit fucked. Bokke wanted to take the high road, I disagreed, we were by the sea, we should take the low road. I was accused of being a prick and some house keys were flung in my general direction along with some mutterred Afrikaner insults, and then some Afrikaner horror when Bokke realised that he had just had a fissy fit, he had just thrown the keys at me, and they were nowhere to be fucking seen. Like I said, just like Paddington Bear. tbc..............................

Ruined

I must get around to writing about our truly memorable weekend in Marseille. It was the trip of legends, but I broke myself, badly, and I have shit loads of work to do. Soon.

Cheese eating surrender monkey

After a pleasant evening alone watching reruns of various rugby matches the phone rang at 10.30. I thought it would be A saying she would be late home as she was out with the girlies. Nope it was Remy, the dodgy French bloke whose apartment I had booked some two weeks previously. Now, my French is cack, as was his English, but the general gist was 'I ave a probleem, is no possible you 'ave my place' . Vast tantrum, to no effect, ees still no possible. Once again the word cunt became a tad overused, and nicogum is furiously chewed.
We leave at half 5 on Saturday morning to go to a city with no room at any inn. Today I have accomplished sweet fa workwise. My presence was requested by both boys at church for the harvest festival. They both had lines ! A big leap forward from their no speaking roles in every nativity thus far. Number one had a good stab at explaining the foot and mouth restrictions and number two simply had to announce 'cauliflower' and stick it on the altar which he did with great aplomb. Not with the gusto of one his little chums who screamed COURGETTE ! whilst waving a rather impressive specimin around his head like Zorro on drugs. I'm a weddings and funerals chap where god bothering's concerned, but I thoroughly enjoyed the service, banging out a few tunes in my monotone yowl.
Anyway, after about twenty odd phone calls to various bemused Frenchies (tomorrow, are you zeerius ?) I finally managed to secure a pad. Not central, but beggars etc. So, off we jolly well go. Its going to get messy, hurrah.

Red wine and snails

I'm off to Marseille to watch rugby at the weekend. South Africa, Fiji, Australia and England. Spot the deliberate mistake ? Distinct lack of Wales. Useless fucking cunts the lot of them. Thats all I have to say.