stuffed

Went to the world's best stadium on Saturday ( and it will still be the world's best stadium even when the wendyball palace in London eventually gets finished. The only problem was that the world's best rugby team were playing in it, and that team was not Wales. Oh yes, the Kiwis stuffed us, in some fashion. Still, beer was drunk and songs were sung. It could be worse, at least I'm not English.

You want to be scared

Cracked me up !

Put on your red shoes and dance the blues

Is there any point to Girls Aloud ? What a talentless bunch of munters. Their latest offering is bollocks of the highest order, 'something kind of ooh, jumping on my tutu'. Genius, bet the folks at Ivor Novello are poised with the engraving needle.

Talking of munters, got to feel sorry for Macca. Never took to him, but I do think it sad that some gold digging bunny boiler is going to take him to the cleaners. Supose he can afford to lose a few quid, but I'm not sure thats the point.

Need a bloody hoilday. If the two projects I'm working on come off before christmas, Thailand beckons. Hussah !

Sprog one played a blinder in his first proper match scoring a spanking try from the half way line. My jumper split as my heart burst with pride.

Hmmmm....

Not been that arsed to blog lately.

Been all over the country working, could do with another holiday, soon.

Boy No 1 has started U7's rugby and loves it, so I'm chuffed to bloody bits, first proper game next Sunday. No 2 continues his vastly successful career as a one boy wrecking mission, the bathroom now being his most popular target for wanton destruction. Hooligan.

Summers truly gone, which irks me. I don't like dark mornings and dark afternoons, makes me feel like a sodding mushroom.

Have come to the conclusion that Dim Dave is almost as big a twat as Honest Tone, and just as keen on soundbite politics. Can't we have Bonker Boris as leader of the Tories and Bagdhad George back to lead Labour purely for entertainment value. That fucktard Hazel Blears was on QT again last night, possibly the worst advert for being interested in politics around at present.

So the Pope is the latest in the long line of those to have pissed off Muslims.

Is it me or are they just a tad touchy ?

Quite amusing how one spouter of meaningless fairy tales can rattle the cage of the same. Lock a few of them up together and let them have a theological row. 'My god is the greatest, No, my god is the greatest'. Ah, I just love a tolerant religion

Scales of justice ?

'Prince' Naseem Hamed serves 16 weeks after nearly killing a man as a direct result of dangerous driving, he'd previously been banned from driving on two occasions.

Some bloke gets flashed by a gatso, and scared he'll lose his job if he's prosecuted, goes and blows it up. Shouldn't have been speeding, but I've been done by one of those bastard machines, and although a bit dim, good work fella. His sentence ? Four months.

Nice to see a sense of perspective.

Bizzare things

Going to your Dad's wedding at the age of 38. Well, wedding party, they got married in bali a few weeks ago. A seriously good night, catching up with loads of people, dancing like a dervish and generally misbehaving before finally giving up at six in the morning. Fairly monster hangover but well worth it.

Sad about Steve Irwin, seems to be a mixed bag of opinion about him, but I thought he was a cracking bloke, loved his huge enthusiasm for life, and his obvious love of wildlife

Off they go again......

Our troops our being killed in Afghanistan and Iraq. Hospitals are closing wards and making redundancies to avoid deficits. We live under a seemingly continual 'terror' threat, so what are the governments' new initiatives to do something about all this and to address these important situation?

Appoint a new minister with a responsibility for fitness. You couldn't fucking well make it up.Apparently were all going to be quite fat in a few years, and we need a minister to tell us how not to be quite as fat. Now I know there are a lot of extraordinarily thick people in this country, but I'm sure that most of them realise that if they swapped their diet of lard and lager for juice and salad, and spent less time with x boxes and sky and went for the odd walk instead that they might shed a few pounds. But no, the all seeing Labour government thinks they have to gently massage the message to the fatarsed masses. The new minister is a rarity in that she's one of the few politicians who would be worth giving a portion of pork sword to.

And then they wheel out the shining personality that is Ruth Kelly to help us with integration. I'm sorry, last time I checked I was British, living in Great Britain, I've been fairly well integrated for a while thanks. If others choose to live here, they can integrate or cock off back to where they came from. Also, I'm not going to take lessons in equality from a woman who's a member of a dodgy Catholic group who has never attended any vote concerning gay rights

Pimp my Saab

My six year old has developed a strange fascination with Pimp my Ride, (6.30 weekdays C5, if you're interested). It's led to some strange language entering the Gumpher household. I walk in from work,

'Hi chum'

'Hey dawg'

Hmmm

'Good day ?'

'Yeah, went swimming. Dad, can we pimp the Saab ?'

'Uh , no, I don't think it would go down that well if I turned up to meetings in a pimped Saab'

'What about Mum's ?'

' Chap, how do you go about pimping an Astra estate ?'

Thanks a bunch Westwood. Can't wait to get a call from school to find out he's called his god fearing teacher a badass ho.

Dumbing down ?

A level results yet again see an increase in A grades and pass rates

A girl pictured on the front of The Times today acheived 10 A grades. TEN ?! How the hell can you take ten A levels ? I took three back in '86. History, English Lit and Economics, and it was bloody hard work. I didn't get brilliant results as I decided that playing rugby and chasing skirt was far more enjoyable than studying, but still had a full week. Thirty five periods in a week. Take out six for games and three for 'study' periods, about eight a week per subject. So in this girls case, around three a week. How on earth can you learn enough about a subject to be examined two years later by only studying it for a couple of hours each week ?

I am sick to the back teeth of Muslims/Islam. I'm not racist, I'm certainly religionist (?) especially when it involves mass murder and bigotry in the name of your God. I don't support our involvement in Afghanistan or Iraq for reasons previously stated, which are very different reasons than those of Muslims. What I really don't get is their view of their own importance as a minority, and why there views need to be addressed. The adverts recently published in national newspapers were a shocker. I don't agree with our current foreign policy, but in a country of some 65 million inhabitants, a minority of 1.5 million suggesting or demanding that our democratically elected government changes its foreign policy is just plain daft. The view that they are being vicitimised is also wrong. The recent atrocities, and if we are to believe the current position, planned atrocities are the work of young Asian muslims, and the security services are damned right to concentrate their investigations on this group of people. For fuck's sake, were not worried by the radicalised faction of the Welsh Baptist shoe bombers chapter are we ? And as for intigration, don't even get me started. if you visit an Arab muslim country the respect of their religion is demanded, not expected. If these people want to come and live in this country, and have families in this country, its about time they bloody well integrated. Islam is not the religion of Great Britain, and Sharia Law is not the law of the land, how about a big portion of wake the fuck up, because the only people causing any kind of racial divide in our country our the Muslims themselves.

Not very well put across, but I've now got to the point of being a tad cheesed off. Just come out and say that what is happening is not acceptable, and as leaders within our community we are going to help the authorities in every way we can, with no strings attached. Otherwise we are fully aware we can live in Iran, Saudi, Afghanistan or Syria, (probably not Iraq, because we're a bit scared of that, we're allowed to do just as we please here )
And next time we get these illegal demonstrations threatening and glorifying death in the name of their prophit, will the police kindly break it up like they did with the miners, who only wanted a job.

Are they bored ?

They must be if the leaked report of the new transport plans are to be believed. I am not a ranting pro car nerd a la Clarkson ( although he does make me giggle ) but I do need a car for work. It needs to be half decent, to portray a certain image to clients, but not flash, portraying the wrong image. It needs to be big enough to carry the boys and the associated crap that goes with it, and I like a reasonable turn of speed. Like everyone else (apart from the peasant under class who don't give a toss) I pay insurance, road tax and fuel duty, a fairly tidy sum to the treasury each year. So why the fuck are they considering a plan to charge by the mile on all roads. To get people on public transport ? Bollocks, it won't work. I can't use trains, what's the point, I'd always have to use a car at either end of the journey, they're bloody expensive and they're usually broken. I generally have meetings with my main client once a week which is a 102 mile round trip, takes about an hour each way. If the figure of £1.34 per mile is accurate this trip will cost me £136.68 a week, or six and a half grand a year allowing for holidays. Six and a half grand a year to visit one company with fuel on top. It doesn't take a genius to figure out just how retarded this is. And the real stupidity is that they know people will continue to use their cars, and will sit in them cursing the new charges, but knowing that they have to use the car. Total lunacy and another cunty way to squeeze yet more tax out of us.

Retard boy

Fab few days in Italy, in the mountains above Lake Como. I love the lakes, stunning scenery, although you need to ring the bank for a mortgage top up to go out to dinner. Great times catching up with my best buddie from school days who now lives in hong Kong. His two boys are a few years older than ours, but they all got on famously. We camped in the garden of his folks house, and their hospitality was superb. They were completely unfazed by the invasion of four loud little boys and two blokes who should know better getting two years worth of drinking crammed into four nights. It really was great to see him, we've known each other since we were ten, shared dorms, studies and then a flat after leaving school, and although we don't see each other for a few years at a time nothing changes.

I excelled myself on the way back and got the flight times wrong. Oops. A hundred euro taxi trip to brescia airport, two hundred and forty to rearrange the flights, and one very stroppy wife who eventually spoke to me as we drove into the village. Actually she did call me a twat at the check in desk, but that was her final word for ten hours. There's an upside to everything then.

Still very angry about Afghanistan, and have a sense of 'what the fuck ?' about Lebanon. Its odd how Isreal can do what the fuck it likes without any international condemnation. Okay, they had two soldiers kidnapped, but talk about a sledgehammer to crack a walnut. What if the IRA kidnapped two British soldiers in the 70's and we bombed the crap out of Dublin as a response ? Madness.

What the fuck our we doing in Afghanistan ? I think we're up to six British troops killed in the last few weeks. Its pointless. We got rid of the Taliban a few years ago, but they apparently didn't go very far, and now they want power back, and we're hardly likely to stop them with half a company of paras and a few helicopters, so why be there at all. If the Afghan people don't want to be under Taliban rule, its down to them to do something about it. Yes, it was oppresive when they had power, but did it affect us ? Is it worth yong British men losing their lives. ? No bloody way. The argument that soldiers know what they signed up for doesn't stack up here, we're not at war with Afghanistan. So what does our government do ? Commit more troops. Fucking morons. Look how may troops the Russians sent in, and it ended up being their Vietnam. More troops = more bodybags coming home for a cause that no one in this country gives two shits about. Iraq, Afhanistan, if they want civil war let them get on with it, its something that ultimatley we have no realistic chance of solving. Is it the job the West to impose the rule that we want ?

Buggered off for a week of sun, pool and beach. Back now.
A good holiday. A few 'firsts' for C. Bodyboarding in the surf, sea fishing including catching an octupus, eating his catch on the barbie that evening, going down the scary slides at the water park. J had a great week pottering in rock pools catching crabs, and jumping over waves.
A and I loved it.
Two weeks of work and then off to Italy, and then lots of work to pay for it all...

Splash

Butter wouldn't melt in his mouth - my arse. If he actually did as he was told once in a while he wouldn't have had me fishing him out of the River Avon yesterday evening.

'Stop at the next gate won't you '

'Yeah' - scampers off, instead of stopping, follows the dog through the dog gate. Dog decides to go for a dip, he gets too close, splash. Gumpher shows a suprising turn of speed, nearly made me think of getting my boots out for next season.

One very frightened three year old returned to the riverbank in one piece and our peaceful evening stroll continues.

Next week, Portugal, hussah !

Wonder what he'll break there. (Make mental note to check 'damage to villa' section in travel insurance policy)

How to start the day badly

Take number two offspring to nursery, stopping, as usual to collect his chum who goes to the same place. Have said chum open the front door and greet you by smacking you square in the nuts, and then same child having a spastic mentalist fit as his mother tries to put him in my car. Fit continues all the way to nursery where he has to be dragged kicking and screaming through the door. All the while number two offspring looks on with an air of mild bemusement, as if butter wouldn't melt.

Deep breaths, deep breaths..........

So his Royal highness, lord of all he surveys, defender of the faith and all round good egg Tony blair has finally got the aircraft he has hankered after for some time. Not one, but two of the fuckers. One for Tony and one for Tony's ego and Fat Bollox Prescott too share.
I'm sure this is all vital to the running of our country, but what about ' education, aducation, education' or is that soooooooooo last year ?
My son attends a village primary school which is chock full of all of the latest computers and whizz bang projectors, items Blair told us that schools were being filled with at a rate of knots. Oh yes, we've got them, and who paid for them, we fucking did, every last one of them through parent fundraising and donations. Yesterday the boy's spelling book was finally filled, so he was sent home with a scrap of some parents' company letterhead with his spellings on. We sent him back with his own notebook. Once a term every parent sends the kids in with a bog roll, a bloody bog roll, they've not even got a budget for wiping their arses. Each term we get a list of items that have no budget available, and the items beggar belief. Each term they also estimate a shortfall and ask each family for a voluntary contribution. All of which we do, everyone does, but there is an increasing feeling that if we wanted to pay for an education on top of the tax that we pay towards education then perhaps we'd consider private schools.

But, hey, Tony's got a new jet. Fine and fucking dandy

The one child wrecking machine that is my youngest son has really excelled himself this time. After weeks of effort, he has finally managed to block all of the drains. He has been sneaking into the toilet to flush all manner of bizarre things down the pan. Why ? I have no idea, and he's a clever little bugger and rarely gets caught, so fuck knows whats gone down it altogether. Various threats have done little to suppress his quest, and last night as A ran the bath out, the patio finally gave in and looked like the swimming pool in a dodgy Spanish hotel.

This morning I tackled it. Up came the patio, up came the drain cover, back in the house ran Gumpher to ring a drain company. Sixty five quid an hour. Wait 'til he gets back from nursery, little sod.