» Family codes and rituals

Plain silliness
I know I must have lots of family codes and rituals as we're a lunatic bunch, but the only ones that spring to mind right now are these:

My father and my husband are both fairly technically minded. At least, my husband is, my dad tries to be. So inevitably a family visit will wind up up with the two of them talking wireless routers, visual basic, and how many megs of ram they've got or some such. As soon as they get into sentences that are complete gibberish, conversation is struck up between me, my mother and my sisters along the lines of:
'So you took the purple one?'
'Yeah, I've found purple is so much better than pink with yellow stripes. You get more squiggles per floop for it.'
'Have you tried one of the latest banana flanges?'
and so forth. The trick is to keep a straight face and keep the utter nonsense going until it distracts dad & Mr Trellis and they lose the track of their conversation. Record I think has been 20 minutes.

The second is down to a love of Blackadder. A favourite episode is 'Beer' featuring Miriam Margolyes as Lady Whiteadder. At one point she utters the glorious line 'I will suffer comfort this once. We shall just have to stick forks in our legs between courses.' One day while on holiday we were having the usual argument on what to do that day. A suggestion was made that was met with little enthusiasm, so I said 'or we could just stick forks in our legs'. Cue my mother nearly dying of laughter (she's easy to please my mum) and the birth of a catchphrase: ANYTHING that is a crap idea is now met with the fork alternative.

The last is down to my mother's musical tastes. The radio is invariably tuned to Classic FM and from time to time a bit of opera will come on. We CANNOT listen to it without providing our own translation. For example: Puccini's O Mio Babbino Caro from Gianni Schicchi roughly translates as 'Oh my beloved carrot, I'm going to the port for a lemon competition'. La Donna e Mobile from Verdi's Rigoletto runs along the lines of 'My puma has wind, he has a funny accent and a pension. Sometimes he's an ambulance that needs a visa, then a piano, then some rice that's menstruating.' That's Italians for you.
(Wed 26th Nov 2008, 16:11, More)

» I don't understand the attraction

Gervais also
Smug arsehole who hasn't done anything funny since.... nope, never done anything funny.

Russell Brand. Don't get it. At all. Comb your hair and put on some trousers that fit.

Low slung trousers. Do I want to see your matalan-branded boxers? Or worse, your BHS thong? No, I do not. Pull your trousers up and get a better belt.

Chelsea Tractors round where I live. I'm sorry, you have absolutely no need to be driving something that huge when you live in Milton Keynes. Poor 4x4 has never SEEN a field, and has never been further off road than your driveway. Plus there's only you in it. Get a micra or something, eejit.

Smart Cars. Contradicting what I said above perhaps, these are the most ridiculous little pieces of rubbish, and seeing them going round roundabouts here makes me worry they're going to tip over. And why are they always driven by the morbidly obese? Someone who takes up every square millimeter of the internal space and has to ease themselves free with a crowbar? (This is a personal observation, if you are the one slim person in the UK who bought one, I apologise)

Dyslexia. It seems to be the 'in thing' to say this affects you. I KNOW it affects me because I had a proper evaluation and I have a certificate to prove it. Saying you're dyslexic to excuse your poor spelling and grammar when you've never even heard the phrase 'educational psychologist' is just not on. You may have noticed, my spelling and grammar is generally ok because that's not how it affects me or many other people who have it. So to say you have it when you're just not that good at getting your 'its' and 'it's' the right way round or whatever shows a lack of knowledge and understanding and really gets on my tits. (Again, I apologise if you really do have it, however you got your diagnosis. But it's like saying you have swine flu when you've got a slight cough.)
(Mon 19th Oct 2009, 14:16, More)

» Bastard Colleagues

Where do I start?
Furthest back first I think:
The team manager who did me down at every turn, everything I did was wrong. And then she found out she was pregnant (we never did work out how, she was always moaning about how she never saw her husband). Cue six months of 'oh woe is me, I'm pregnant' and 'but I think it must be a boy this time, as when I was pregnant with my daughter I had no sex drive, this time I'm having sex ALL the time!' (again, how?)

The lawyer who, while lovely in every other respect, had breath as potent as Baldrick's pants.

The HR manager who complained I hadn't rung in sick - when I was in hospital, and had told her in writing three weeks previously that I would be.

The consultant surgeon who found a new system and DEMANDED that it be bought for him or he'd walk, costing the hospital THOUSANDS of pounds, only to discover (once he had it) that it wasn't suitable for use by the hospital without replacing a whole load of other medical equipment, at a cost of a further HUNDRED THOUSAND: and cancelled lists.

The consultant surgeon who was so anal he put up wanted posters with pictures of his theatre clogs on when someone else 'stole' them (turned out they'd just been taken away to be cleaned: like he'd asked for....)

All of the Phillipino staff (of whom there were many) who would always be anti-social and talk in their own language - if you were the only english speaker on the team that day, you got used to talking to yourself

The postroom clerk who loved telling new bods all about the operation she had to stretch her urethra and how many days she was pissing blood for afterwards

The boss who was half German and made sure everyone knew it, as if it mattered, even though I could speak more than he could. He used to drop broken units off to a particular company to get fixed, as they happened to be on his way home. We found out later he'd been claiming his journey home every day back on expenses.

The next boss, who was a total opinionated bigot, and who spent most of his time mouthing off about Thatcher. I mean, I know she's not popular, but this was a daily thing and the woman stepped down in 1990 for chrissakes!

But they all pale into insignificance against the NEXT boss, whom I had to teach how to send emails. And use Excel. And Access. And Word. And SAP, our main processing programme. And remind about all the things he'd promised to do and not done. Repeatedly. And put up with his constant sexist remarks about every blonde that walked into the office. And his farting, and the stupid little snorty thing he did to clear his sinuses. Add all this to the fact that he gave my job to someone else within two weeks of finding out I was pregnant saying I 'wasn't experienced enough' (despite being in the job 3 years), and you might just start to guess that I don't like him too much.

Rant over, and bollocks to the length. There's more, but I fear my venom may break the pc....
(Thu 24th Jan 2008, 16:51, More)

» Pet Peeves

Oh god, so much
- Misuse of apostrophes - a common peeve I see!
- Cold callers who come to the door while I'm eating and don't get the hint that I want them to leave, even though I'm holding the snarling dog back by no more than my little finger...
- Cold callers on the phone who ignore the fact I'm registered with TPS. Especially the one that called the other night (at half past nine) and said they were exempt from TPS because they were a charity - newsflash morons, you're not.
- Anybody who calls me and then hangs up as soon as I answer the phone
- People who walk their dogs without a lead. Fine when the dog is well trained, but when it comes over and attacks my dogs and you just stand there saying 'oh he's really friendly, he won't hurt them', I'm vaguely tempted to let yours kill mine just so I can sue your arse off.
- TINY women driving MASSIVE behemoth 4x4s in the city centre who take 75 goes to get their STUPID car into a standard parking space, thus grinding the whole car park to a halt
- Not-disabled people parking in disabled spots
- Disgusting teenage boys who wear their trouser waistline somewhere south of their ankles showing off their grubby boxers
- Boy racers

And the big one:
- PNS Syndrome (Yes, it's called that on purpose). For those who don't know, this is 'Pin Number Syndrome (Syndrome)' - also referred to as RAS Syndrome (Redundant Acronym Syndrome Syndrome). It is NOT a PIN Number, it is a PIN, or (almost acceptably) a PIN code. PIN stands for Personal Identification Number, so saying NUMBER after it means you're being tautological. Other examples:
--On Robot Wars the other night - SRIMECH mechanism
--AIDS Syndrome
--HIV Virus
--ATM Machine
--ISBN Number
--Please RSVP
--DVD disc
--CSS style sheets
--RAC Club
--LCD Display
--LED light
--VDU unit

JUST STOP IT - I will start killing people

*breathes*
(Sat 3rd May 2008, 10:20, More)

» Rubbish Towns

St Olaves
Sleepy little town on the Norfolk Broads. We were on a boating holiday and this was our stopping place for the night. The boat also needed the loos pumping out - vile job, but some bugger's got to do it, and there were some of said buggers in this town. Moored up for the night outside the pub, had good grub and drink and returned to the boat to sleep. Or try to. St Olaves is on part of the waterway where the north and south Broads meet, and is very tidal. The boat spent all night sloshing from side to side and hammering into the mooring. At 5.30am (the worst kind of 5.30), having finally got to sleep around 4, I was awoken by a tapping and odd croaking noise. I pulled the curtain aside to be faced with: a duck. Bastard Mallard staring in through the window wondering why we hadn't woken up and fed him yet. Go to the back of the boat to be mobbed by every duck in Norfolk, and all their swan buddies, before trying to get aforementioned pumping done.

Well, the buggers don't take card (and in fact gave us the look of 'arrr, what be that shiny thing. Plastic? What be that then?', only in a Norfolk accent). Cash point? What be that? Ok, we think, let's find a shop and see if we can get cashback. Two hours later, having wandered past a shop that put Black Books to shame (not just wasps in the window, but bees, flies, cockroaches, deathwatch beetle and a few insects that have been extinct in the UK for at least a century) we finally come across what vaguely passed for a petrol station, run by a woman older than time itself. 'Do you do cashback?' was met by a look of terror, followed by 'Err, yes, but you'll have to spend over five pounds.' Fine, we need biscuits. We grabbed biscuits and jam to a total of £5.70, and watched her ring up £10 on the till and give me £4.30 change....

'Screw this' we thought, 'We'll get to the next pumping stop. If we need to crap before that, we'll do it over the side....' On our way back at the end of our holiday, we broke the 'no motoring after dark' rule to get on to the next pub up river, and St Olaves is now not said in this house without being followed with a shudder.

Length? The Broads have at least 120 navigable miles of waterway. And I just discovered St Olaves is a village. Oh well, it's still a grot-hole.
(Thu 29th Oct 2009, 15:45, More)