I was gonna write a long post about this time of year and what's been going on but, honestly, I'm sick and I can't be bothered.

I did want to say Merry Christmas to you all though...

... Merry Christmas.

"Happy, happy Christmas, that can win us back to the delusions of our childhood days, recall to the old man the pleasures of his youth, and transport the traveler back to his own fireside and quiet home! "
Charles Dickens

Yesterday was the annual trip to the in-laws, delivering everyone's Christmas presents and catching up with the family gossip. Needless to say they were all stories of woe, pregnancy and nervous breakdowns (pretty much the same as every year). Our nephew Jordan's condition has deteriorated since we saw him last and he is now in therapy to fix his left arm which has become partially paralysed, it's getting better but he was quite down as video games are his only real passion and he can't play them too well for a while. It made me feel even worse about not being able to go on the trek in January but even more determined to raise money for his charity.

After that long day of driving around, we got home late and it was straight to bed for me. I had to be up at 5 o'clock this morning to take our friend to the airport, she was flying back to the States for Christmas and I stupidly volunteered for the airport run. After a 5 hour, traffic-filled, 240 mile drive I arrived back home to be greeted by this:



Yep, they've closed my road for re-surfacing (which I'm sure was only done a little while ago). I was told that, instead of turning into my street and driving 200 yards to my house, I'd have to turn round and drive 15 miles in the other direction to come in the the other end. As you can imagine, I wasn't happy and taught the guy doing the work a few new swear words. This is going on for 5 days. So for the next week, I have to drive this extra distance 4 times a day as everywhere I need to go is on this side of the village. Assholes! To re-surface half of the street at a time to allow access is too logical for these fucking idiots, they have to make sure that they ruin as many peoples day as they can. I even heard the guy laughing as I pulled away, I would have loved to have punched him in his fat face right then.

Anyway, sorry this hasn't been the happiest of posts but I'm tired and pissed off. I'll post a happier one soon, I promise. I'm also aware that I have a mountain of blogs to read, I will get to it today, please just let me get some sleep first?

"In sleep, you are safe from the revolting mechanics of living and being a prey to outrageous fortune."
Taylor Caldwell

Last week was one of mixed fortunes. Unfortunately we had to bite the bullet and let the organisers know that we wouldn't be able to raise the money we needed to go on the Costa Rican Rainforest Trek. Despite a year of fundraising and a lot of hard work, we were still short by a huge amount. I am disappointed but would like to thank anyone who was kind enough to make a donation (unfortunately I can't refund your money but it still goes to the charity, I hope you understand).

We will hopefully be attending one of the expeditions in the future (they try to do one each year) but, with the global money situation as it is, I think we'll wait for a while. The training and preparing for the trek has left me with a new love of the outdoors though and I think I'll be taking hiking trips and going on more adventurous vacations from now on. No more sitting around on the beach for me. I think I'll try the Lake District first:







Who wouldn't want to walk in and photograph that beautiful landscape?


The best thing to happen in the last week was that, after being shafted (screwed, for my American friends) by our previous tenants, we have new ones. I am so relieved about it as repossession was a real possibility when we had no-one in the other house and to go into Christmas with that hanging over our heads would have been awful. After the year I've had, I just wanted to make the holidays special for us and having the house situation resolved takes a huge weight of my mind. Money will still be tight this Christmas but at least now I only have the regular money worries for this time of year.

I don't think the tenants know how desperate we were to rent it when they came along; I was just about to drastically reduce the listed price when they made their offer, which would have meant us putting in more money to cover the loss.


I had the oldest Devil Child at home sick last week too. It was one of those situations where we couldn't tell if she was acting or not, she'd be fine most of the day but then at bed time she'd be crying and saying that her stomach hurt. After checking if there were any reasons she didn't want to go to school, we took her to the doctor who couldn't find anything wrong but told us there was a virus going around and to keep her home for rest.

She was fine all weekend but then on Sunday night started complaining that she felt sick again, we're making her go to school but it's hard to know what to do. On one hand she could be acting up and we don't her to get away with it but, especially with her medical condition, you don't want to be too hard on her in case she is actually sick. We have an appointment with the doctor on Friday so, hopefully, we'll find out then.

Having her home all week really threw everything out of sync, I had to arrange to work from home so that I could look after her but it was hard to get any real work done.


I'll leave you with another item from Top Gear:

"Whenever the pressure of our complex city life thins my blood and numbs my brain, I seek relief in the trail; and when I hear the coyote wailing to the yellow dawn, my cares fall from me - I am happy. "
Hamlin Garland

This past week has been a strange one for me. A string of family arguments has led to my Dad walking out of the pub he owns with my brother and ignoring all of us. He hasn't spoken to me, my Mum or my brother since last Sunday when he and I had a huge row... and our lives couldn't be more peaceful.

My Dad is a hard man to deal with, he has minimal people skills and is used to getting things his own way. His Mum died when he was 16 and his Dad was never around, as such he is very closed off emotionally. He has had his own business since the age of 18 and has been in charge of people since then. Unfortunately, he has no idea of how to talk to people properly.

I worked for him for many years, making furniture and our relationship suffered a great deal during this time. I am too stubborn and argumentative to let him talk to me in the same shitty way he does with everyone else and we used to argue all the time. Realizing that I couldn't be bullied anymore, he usually resorted to being an ass to my Mum and brothers and this hasn't changed. To this day, if I stand up to him, my Mum's life becomes really difficult as he sulks like a child for ages afterwards. When you're a kid and you see your friends parents splitting up, you worry that it might happen to your Mum & Dad. Now though, I wonder how she put up with him for so long.

Until last week he was working with my brother in the pub they own and this relationshipwas suffering in the same way as ours did, even the staff were dreading going to work because of the way he treated them. This is something which really gets to me as we all HAVE to work and this should be as happy an environment as possible. Unfortunately, my Dad doesn't feel the same. Couple this with the fact that he's a bully and you have a recipe for a bad workplace.

Things blew up last weekend when I got pissed off at the way he was talking to Kirstie (she works there too), he followed this with an argument with my brother and then went about treating everyone else like shit. We're all pretty used to this and it would have blown over but he followed this by walking out and leaving my Mum to work the bar all day and night, alone. He didn't even come back to help her lock up at 2am and, her being a Mum, she didn't want to ring and get one of us out that late. When my brother and I found out the next morning, we were pissed.

So, none of us have spoken to him in over a week and we've all been pulling together and trying to keep the place running. I've been running around trying to help out as much as I can and the place is running better than ever, everyone is enjoying going to work now and they're all just worried that he might decide to come back.

Now a question. If you discover that your Father (or any other family member) is the type of person you would never have around if you weren't related: is it your duty to tough it out and try to make it work, no matter how little effort the other person makes?

This may sound like a teenage-type 'I hate my parents' rant but it's not, I just wanted to explain why I haven't been around. I just hope some of you noticed.

Also this week is approaching the time when, last year, my marriage hit a rocky patch. Many of you know the story so I won't go over it again. I've been feeling really low about it recently, on top of remembering how bad it felt back then, I've been confused and worried that it still bothers me so much. I feel like maybe I should be over it more than I am.

I can't wait to get back into the swing of things here and catch up with some of you.

"Family quarrels are bitter things. They don't go according to any rules. They're not like aches or wounds; they're more like splits in the skin that won't heal because there's not enough material."
F Scott Fitzgerald

I have always bounced from job to job, not really knowing what I wanted to do with my life. I've been an estate agent, a door to door salesman (for a company who use those scare tactics you see on the documentary shows about unethical salesmen) and made furniture. I've also been a handyman and worked with heavy machinery.

2 years ago, I was working a bad job in a beautiful place. My Dad's friend has a stud farm where they breed and train racehorses and, to this day, it is one of my favourite places in the world. Walking among the stables and paddocks with the horses running around, the doves they keep on site flying overhead and rabbits playing in the fields. It's a truly magical place. The job wasn't too bad; I was one of a team who kept things running smoothly. We were responsible for repairs, maintenance and general building work. The type of work I do has never really mattered to me, I'm not one of those people who think that there are jobs I'm too good for, if I'm getting paid then a job is worthwhile. That's where the problems were though, they were having money problems so we were rarely paid on time and, with a mortgage and family, this wasn't an ideal situation.

Then I was offered my current job. I had no experience but my boss knew of me and knew that I could turn my hand to pretty much anything. My job is fairly unique. The actual job title is pretty standard and quite boring, I'm a finance broker, but the day-to-day workings of my role are very different.

I'm in an office all day, on my own. This may sound lonely to some people but I like it, I have no-one watching over my shoulder, I come and go as I please and I wear what I want.

The other part of my job which is unique is that I do NO work. The original plan was that I come to work here and my boss trains me up, then (after I'm fully trained) we expand the office and bring someone else in who I help train. Obviously, as well as training me, my boss has to make enough money to keep the business going and that's where the problem lies. He hasn't had enough time to do both, he is so busy actually being a finance broker that he doesn't have time to train one. He's out on the road all the time and we talk every week about when we'll get enough time to start training me up so I can help him but these conversations have become more of a routine thing than a planning thing.

Initially I was tasked with setting the office up, sorting out furniture and computer systems etc. Once that was done though, nothing. So I sit here, waiting in the office in case something comes up that I can help with.

At first, getting paid good money to do nothing was great, who wouldn't love to be in that situation? Now though, I'm bored. I feel like my brain is actually melting. Don't get me wrong, I don't sit here all day staring at blank walls, I'm putting myself through accountancy classes and I read a lot of books while I'm at work. Sometimes I lock the doors and crawl onto the sofa (we bought for clients to wait on) and have a sleep, but overall sitting in this office seems to have affected my motivation. For now though, it's a good place to come and do my school work. After that? We'll see how the situation is and decide from there. Once I'm a qualified accountant (with letters after my name and a qualification which is recognised worldwide) I'll be in a better position to judge whether it's worth sticking this out or if I'm better off moving on.

I know that I've just made an entry which say's absolutely nothing of substance but please forgive me, my brain is melting after all.

"If you must have motivation, think of your paycheck on Friday."
Noel Coward

I've been so busy this past week. Out every day delivering flyers to advertise our fund-raising fair, confirming that everyone who had said that they were attending still was. I'm not sure how many miles I've covered while walking the streets posting leaflets but my legs were hurting for days afterwards. Why do people insist on having such long driveways? Ok, they limit the noise from traffic and give you some privacy but does anyone spare a thought for the poor mailman, or the unpaid charity fund-raiser? Don't even get me started on the selfish people who have letterboxes at the bottom of their doors so that you have to bend your tired, achy legs just to post something.

Entering into the planning of this fun day, I underestimated just how much work would be required to pull it off. The past two months have been totally devoted to this one day, trying to arrange demonstrations by local clubs/ groups, organising stalls and games, dealing with the burger van mafia and trying to find ways around ridiculous health and safety laws which mean you can't even fart without fear of someone suing you for attempted nasal poisoning.
When something takes up this much time in your life and involves this much work, it kind of becomes a personal thing more than just an event you're trying to organise. You start to take every small problem as a personal insult and begin to worry that no-one will turn up on the day or that it will all go horribly wrong.
Then, after months of trying to keep control of the situation, Saturday came and the outcome was in the hands of the Gods.

We arrived at the field early after rushing through our work on Saturday morning. We had around 20 family members and friends who had volunteered to help and we began to set up. A local photographic club I'd been speaking to set up a display and we had a used book stall, a cake stall (cakes made by my best friends wife, my Grandmother and the Devil Children), a second-hand junk stall (toys and such) and various little games. The Police attended and set up a stall where they would fingerprint the kids and give them the prints to take home and then show them the inside of the cars where they lock the criminals. We had a local Tae Kwon-Do team doing a demonstration (which turned out to be amazing with slates being broken and sparring) and a tug of war competition.
The burger van mafia arrived and set up their two food vans and brought a few rides with them, by the time we had finished setting up - it looked like a really good place to come and spend an hour or so.

The gates were opened and we waited... and waited... and waited... and no-one came. "It'll be ok" everyone kept telling me, "No-one comes along for the first hour of anything". I wasn't so sure though. By the time the event finished we'd had around 30 visitors and made about £100 profit, unfortunately, this profit came from the volunteers playing games or buying books and cakes while they were waiting for people to arrive. It was a disaster. The people who did come had a great time, there just weren't enough of them. We had fun though, I took on all the kids in a tug of war and won, then they cheated and got my brother-in-law and my nieces boyfriend on their team and nearly pulled my damn arms off.

We'd arranged to go back to my brothers pub after the fun day to hold a disco, pool contest and fund-raising auction. Now, all our hopes rested on this.

The place was packed when we arrived and we kicked it all of with a hog roast (which I'd never had before and it was delicious) and the people came running. Who knew that spit-roasted pig would go down so well in a room full of intoxicated farmers? One guy even came back for 2nd's and 3rd's.
The pig was donated to us by my brother's friend so all the money we raised from selling the roast was profit and by the time everyone had eaten, I was feeling a bit better about the amount we'd raised. We'd been promised some amazing lots for the auction and we still had some food left too, we were starting to get back on track.

Then, the guy who was supposed to be bringing the auction lots failed to show. I'd arranged for a few small things but not enough to hold an auction and this guy had some really amazing prizes for us, so we decided to re-schedule the auction for another time. Hopefully he got delayed because he'll have a lot of pissed off people after him if he let us down. We don't expect anyone's help in raising this money for charity but don't promise things if you can't deliver.

I know that I'm whining about it here but the day wasn't completely wasted. Everyone who came had a wonderful time and we managed to raise £500 but when you factor in how hard I worked to make this happens, it's really disheartening.

In more bad news, our tenants knocked the other night and gave us 30 days notice that they were moving out. We rent our old house to a US military family and they have (to my surprise) been looking for a house on one of the bases near us. I'm not annoyed that they want to move, that's their right, as is only giving us 30 days notice (something about a military clause). What pisses me off is that, after asking me to extend our initial lease from 6 months to 1 year and telling us that they were staying in England for the next 5 years and would love to live in our house for the duration, they give no indication that they are even staying on a housing list. Recently my friend and his wife asked me about that house as they had to move and, being a higher rank, would have paid us more than our current tenants. I told them I couldn't do anything though because I'd already got someone in there. They are under no obligation to mention that they are looking for somewhere else to live or to tell us that they were on a housing waiting list but I would have though that out of common fucking decency they would inform us. Obviously, I was wrong.
Now we have around 6 weeks to find a new tenant or sell the house before we face the real possibility of repossession.

I honestly didn't want to write a blog full of doom and gloom but things lately seem to be alternating between mundane and shit. I never thought I would wish for the boring times as much as I do lately.

2008 has truly been the worst year of my life and I wish it would just fuck off and let 2009 come along.

I leave you with a joke that I heard on the radio today.

A butcher says to one of his customers "I'll bet you £100 that you can't reach those cuts of beef on the top shelf over there".
The customer looks, thinks for a moment and then replies "There's no way I'm taking that bet, the steaks are too high".



Today's quote is a bit of advice for myself.

"When times get tough, at some point, people instinctively know they need to lighten up in order to get through it."
Allen Klein