The Bells Have Made Me Deaf

It’s times like these that I wish I had more than a phone cam…

I have driven past this nature reserve on many an occasion, opting instead to let the dog go mad on the beach. The tide was in this morning so I stopped off to see what was on offer. The ponds are what was once old clay pits for Glastry brick works which ceased to be in the late 19th century. The paths were a bit overgrown and after the rain of the last few days, soggy underfoot. I persevered until my feet were soaked. Wrong shoes for the job and with the swan and signets afloat on the pond, I couldn’t let the dog off lead for fear he’d want to swim. Swan was hissing at us as it was. I’ll go back for a better look on a dry day although I think the path is less than a mile long, it’s quite a pleasant spot for a dander.

No doubt there’ll be a few people groaning tonight as they glow in the dark. I’d almost be content if the weather was this good for at least half of the year. So nice it was, I thought I’d take myself and the doag for a bit of a drive around the bottom end of the peninsula this evening in the vain hope of finding an empty beach from which to admire the North Channel looking like a mill pond. I even took the detour round to Kearney Village and Quentin Bay but every stretch of sand or shingle had someone already in residence with their portable barbeque belching out the foul stench of pork dripping. What is it about a bit of decent weather that makes people want to char their food outdoors and force everybody else to put up with the stink. The smoking ban should be extended to cover the stomach churning fumes from barbequed pork. It makes me ill. Not only were all the usually empty beaches swarming with lardy white bodies, but that smell was inescapable for the entire circuit. I had to console myself in Kircubbin with an almond Magnum and a nice bottle of wine for dinner.

With busted machinery there is little I can do other than visit potential customers and do a spot of book keeping. I did the potential customers who were at home yesterday so today is book keeping day. I general write everything into a rough ledger as it happens but last night I downloaded “Turbo Cash” a free accounting software package to give it a try. It’s been a few years since I used one of these things, my last one having had the millennium bug and became redundant in the dreaded year the world was going to end… 2000. I’m a little rusty or perhaps this is designed more for accountants who like to spend their entire day learning how to make the software work and clicking annoying buttons which are there ‘just to be sure’. I intended to have the years figures all done in the space of one evening, as should have been the case. It’s not like I deal with more than 6 or 8 customers per month. I took the whole evening to figure out how to do a receipt and that was only in theory. It’s going to be a long day of middle aged slow learning.

Maybe I should read the instructions.

There’s nothing quite like a scorching sunny day to make you get the bleach out and scrub the soot off the window ledges and then sit and fry in the garden admiring the fruits of your labour, supping the essential can of pilsner complete with snorting straw for that added je ne sais quoi.

I should be working today but one of my machines has had to be rushed to hospital for major surgery. A transplant no less and meantime it sits desolate in a box leaking oil while waiting for it’s new guts to arrive from some recycled parts vendor in Italia. Without it I am at a loss to further achieve anything at all. Get well soon lil Rimoldi…

Last night I had just turned the tv on when the phone rang. It was one of those ‘how do I install my modem?’ calls, so I knew I was going to be there for a while and stuck the kettle on. Tea all brewed and something sweet from the cupboard to make it less wet, I settled down to do the step by step guide for elderly parents. After several attempts I deduced that in fact the wrong disk was being employed and was listening to some very intense rummaging going on at the other end to find the proper CD, when I noticed Big Brother starting on tv. At this point I generally switch off and this time would have been no different but for the fact that the correct CD was found and so I decided to find the remote later and endure the first few viewing minutes of pretending to be a fly on a wall in the kingdom of inane drivel. Correct CD makes all the difference when it comes to getting things to work. From that point on it was plain sailing and I was soon to be released from the conversation to find the remote and zap Ch 4’s screeching giggling girlie party with what I can only assume to be twins in matching pink polka dots, bouncing off the furniture and a lot of affected screaming going on. Yes I’d rather watch paint drying. I never did get it, why people want to spend their time watching the most mundane crap with even more uninteresting commentary in what seems to be a wannabe Geordie accent. I fear for the nation’s sanity.

make them like this any more…