shiny blogging nonsense

The following things have, in no particular order, not happened to me this year: Two weddings One funeral Two boys One girl A brain tumour An engagement A cancer diagnosis A first birthday  A car crash  Two new jobs One new relationship

Inspired by 13 scary things that always happened at school I started thinking of the grown up, work, equivalent.  I thought of three before I started to get paranoid , a bit bored and realised I sho uld actually be doing some work. 1. Turning up to work in your walking-to-work runners and realising you've forgotten your work shoes , and you've a meeting. 2. Calling your colleague, or worse still your manager, your boyfriend / girlfriend / husband / wife / child / dog's name. 3. Sleeping in and waking up with precisely enough time to get to work, if you don't have a shower , never mind get a co ffee.   

On Sunday as I reached the beginning of the pier again, I checked my phone and saw a notification that said 'Alan Mechanic has joined Viber' and sighed.  Don't get me wrong I'm not a technophobe, I love my phone and its apps and I've been an avid user of the internet since 1998. My first internet profile was the name of a Beanie baby, followed by an underscore, my favourite number, another underscore, my second favourite number, yet another underscore and the year. As I said it was 1998. You know when login into your PC in work, and you're asked to change your password? It's 9:01am, you haven't drained your coffee yet, words and thoughts can't form and so you end up changing it to stapler1? It was kind of like that.  Though of course, in reality, you have to include an uppercase letter, a lowercase letter, a 7-digit number, a hieroglyphic and your mother's shoe size, and it can't be any word you've spoken out loud or in your head

Last week... Someone in the office: Is it this weekend the hour changes? K: Yeah, the clocks go forward. S: So we lose an hour? Me: Ah, I'm confused. P: Just remember 'Spring forward, Fall back'... Me: Oh, I know that, I just thought it was October. Today...  N: They're putting our rent up.. Me: When your lease is up in April? N: Yeah, so we're looking around. Me: Sure at least it's summer and you've time to look with the school holidays... Later today... Me: They haven't given you much notice then? N: Not really, they only told us today. Me: When  do you pay your rent? N: The 29th of the month. Me: So they've given you two weeks?! Is it any wonder I haven't written anything here since October...!!

Last Thursday evening I left work about ten or fifteen minutes later than my usual shiny-shaped hole in the door at 17:01. As I was walking close to home, I saw a little old lady walking towards me.  I have a thing about smiling, nodding or saying hello to older people. They come from a better time when that’s what people did, and I always remember when I was in school hearing a story about a woman who would get the bus every day and sit on a bench in the shopping centre in the hope that someone would talk to her. So I smiled and she looked up at me, then stopped me to ask directions. We were further along the road than she was looking for, but when I pointed the way nothing registered on her face. I quickly realised. She said she’d been walking for a long time, maybe for four miles, she liked to walk.  I asked if she knew her address, and like it was a test she shot out the right answer. I told her I would look it up, and thanked technology for smart phones.

Buffalo mozzarella is made from buffalo milk, and is not just big mozzarella. Buffaloes come in male and female. The plural of buffalo is buffaloes. Nuns are not entitled to free travel, unless they are over 66, which they often are. On a similar theme, Junior Minister doesn't necessarily mean young. When your pregnant friend texts you from her hospital appointment saying 'head down, bum in the air' she means the baby.