» Stuff I've found

I don't have a thing about bra's, OK?
This has absolutely nothing to do with my wife or stepdaughter, in fact it happened years before I met them.

I have two daughters with an ex partner, at the time I'm talking about they'd been living with me for a few weeks but had just gone back to their mum.
Because I'd had to leave work to look after them I was very very lucky to be given my job back when a friend mentioned that I was now available, but it was going to be about a month before I was getting paid, and (of course) the DSS stopped giving me money when the kids went back.
So I was literally down to loose change with a week to go until payday. I knew I was going to have to have at least a couple of days without food, and would be walking the two miles each way to work each day.
Then, I was going home that night and kicked a carrier bag. It felt like there was something in it, so I checked and there's a brand new bra (38F if its of any interest) and a M&S receipt, for cash, for almost £40.
Too late to go in the big Manchester branch that day, I rang the next morning, said my sister had bought it for my mum but she didn't like it, could I return it and get the money back?
"Yes, of course Sir"
I could eat and buy a weekly bus pass until payday.
So, unfettered big breasted lady in 1999 in Manchester, sorry but thank you.
(Thu 6th Nov 2008, 18:59, More)

» Tales of the Unexplained

Walking up the hill to Mums house.
Like somebody else has said, or will say according to which way you read these, there's a few stories i could tell, but for the time being here's just the one.

Back in the year 2000 I was living in Manchester, renting a house just around the corner from my ex and our kids, having a few problems with her, and not long having "recovered" from bad depression.

My brother rang me to ask me to visit our parents, my mum had been in bed for a couple of days supposedly with a wonky hip that she should have been getting fixed earlier in the year. (Being in love with my dad, who'd had a couple of heart attacks, she refused to leave him while she even got examined properly.)
Since he was half a mile from them, and me twenty miles (and don't drive) I said I'd go the next day.
He insisted I visit, even saying he'd pick me up. I'd just finished work, was knackered but something made me say ok.
I had time to get home and get changed before he arrived, and we picked up chips on the way there.
As soon as I saw my mum I told him to phone for an ambulance. The best way to describe her? My mum was a bbw, think an older version of Dawn French, and her belly as she lay there looked like a deflating water bomb.
The ambulance arrived, they got her in and I went with them. As soon as we got to hospital they whisked her off for tests.
My brother turned up with Dad a while later, it had taken Dad about an hour to get his clothes changed.
Then a surgeon appeared and took me and my brother to one side.
The problem with her hip, that both her usual doctor and a locum had said was her age and weight, was actually a blockage in her bowel that had swelled with everything she ate and was currently football size. They wanted to operate immediatly, but warned that it may not be good as her bowel lining was stretched so thin it could rip at any moment.
Whats the choice?
They operated, but it ripped.
She was immediatly put on high doses of antibiotics to try to prevent the fecal matter causing infections.
She never regained consciousness, and four days later died.

The last time I cried was ringing my ex in the rain in the hospital car park.

I left my job, I moved out of my rented house, and I moved in to look after my dad.
Together with my brother we planned her funeral, and dealt with life going on.

Or at least my brother and I did.

My dad basically gave up.

Five weeks later I call the doctor for him. He's got all the signs of pneumonia, and the ambulance comes for him.

SEVEN FUCKING HOURS WE SAT IN CASUALTY!!!

My dads getting weaker by the moment, we'd been promised by the doctor we were an emergency, and when someone does bother to check us (because I've told him my Dads about to collapse) he says "Why did nobody tell us earlier?" and he's off into a real bed in a ward. It's 11 pm when my brother and I leave him.

At 2 am my brother rings, Dads had another heart attack but they've managed to revive him. He'll pick me up on the way to the hospital.

In the car, for no obviously apparent reason, its 02:30 so not much traffic, my brother cuts through a road that we used to walk up to visit my gran (my mums mum) and my dad is walking up the hill ahead of us. Not the almost skeletal bloke we'd left at the hospital, but the fit rugby playing guy who'd woo'ed and won our mum.
"You might as well slow down, our kid. Dad's gone."
"WTF?"
"I've just seen him walking to West Street."
Now there's no-one there.

Doesn't slow down much, but when we get to the hospital we are too late.
He'd had yet another heart attack, and this time he'd managed to go.

Time moves on, its about 2 yrs later. and I'm camping at a pagan camp with my now wife and the people she's been going to camp with for years.
There's a man showing us Tibetan singing bowls, and then he and his 'group' start to use them, and some subtle drums, to play a really relaxing piece of music.
I just sit back and relax.
I realise I'm watching doors opening and I'm going through them, one after the other, and then suddenly one opens in the top corner of my grans living room and I'm watching her and my parents talking in front of her old fashioned range.
My mother looks up into the corner, links arms with my dad, they both smile really wide relaxed smiles, and as I want to move towards them I'm moving back through all these doors until I'm back on the cushions of the dome and the bowls are finishing chiming.

I suppose I should have felt cheated, that I should have been able to interact with them, but I was just ecstatic at what I saw as the message that wherever they are they are happy together.

(Before anyone suggests that the use of artificial stimulants was involved, if you check previous posts you'll find that they don't work for me so I don't take them.)

Even now, six or so yrs on, if I'm feeling particularly down, the memory of those smiles can restore my mood.
(Thu 3rd Jul 2008, 16:36, More)

» Cringe!

Uncle Comrade reminded me...
When I lived in Blackpool my ex and I went to see Jim Davidson in concert at the end of the North Pier, and really enjoyed most of it.
At the end we were walking along the pier when we heard a high pitched wailing behind us.
"Sounds like Davidson's bloody singing again" I said laughing, and turning to see the source of the noise.
CRINGE ONE; It was a handicapped girl in a wheelchair.
CRINGE TWO; being pushed by Jim Davidson.
(Sun 30th Nov 2008, 18:22, More)

» Guilty Pleasures, part 2

Evel Keneval....
Since I was a little boy, whenever I'm on a train journey I look out of the window and imagine a motorcyclist trying to drive alongside the train, using ramps to leap roads, and maybe its about time he crashed in a blazing heap and I bought myself an MP4 player.
(Sun 16th Mar 2008, 13:45, More)

» Job Interview Disasters

"Well, that's me fucked!"
When Mr. Branson took over the West Coast rail line in the late 90's, I was made redundant from my job at telephone enquiries in Preston.
In tandem with this I was also coming to the end of a 10 yr relationship with my first LTR, and we were only still together as neither of us could afford to move on.
So getting both a job interview in Manchester, and the offer of somewhere to live there with a girl I'd lusted after for 15 years, I went for it.
Got to the office, secretary let me in, gave me a quick tour of the premises, and in the main office I see Dave.
That is his real name, but there are millions of Dave's so I reckon he's safe enough.
He looks up, see's me, say's "oh shit" and goes back to work.
I get introduced to the manager, have the interview (in which I mention I've worked with Dave before), and go on my way.
An hour later I get a call from the interviewer, telling me I've got the job, but wanting to know what had gone on between me and Dave. Apparently as soon as I'd gone into the managers office Dave had stood up, said "Well, that's me fucked", and walked out. He'd been phoned and said he wasn't coming back.
So I felt free to tell him the truth.
Dave had started work at the rail call centre in Preston, and for a few days all was well. Then we started to get calls where the customers said one of our staff was being rude, telling them rubbish, or just putting the phone down on them. The staff that had been there a while got together and it came down to possibly 3 people, so they were moved closer to the supervisors.
Within a day we realised it was Dave. We heard him saying he was the office manager and couldn't pass them to anyone higher, we saw him answer several calls in a row and then just cut them off, and other things. So the boss called him in for a quiet word.
Well his quiet word was responded to with "You're a fucking cretin, I could do your job with my hands behind my back" at which point he was sent home.
The next day he phoned and apologised, and was told to resume the next day.
He came in, didn't even log in before he launched into a tirade of abuse at full volume in the middle of the office, and called the boss several things(mostly with the word 'fucking' as a descriptive noun) before being instantly dismissed.
Of course he never mentioned this when he went for the Manchester job, and his references were never followed up on, but when he saw me going into the office he thought the game was up and jumped ship.
The thing he didn't know? As a person I quite liked him, he was funny and clever, and if he'd done his job properly in Manchester I'd never have had cause to tell the truth on why he'd left his previous job.
(Wed 27th Nov 2013, 14:02, More)