After commenting via twitter about not forgetting to take  the film Big Lebowski on holiday with me. I received a quote from the film, from lad in Florida. Technology is pretty cool. Hands across the ocean and all that. I can commune with all of the earth and not have to meet anyone. 
Facebook keeps me in touch with my back catalogue of friends of varying closeness. It's all come a long way. Another ten years and where will things be?.

With wifi not available at home again until august 11th, I have been steadily becoming anxious at not keeping up with this blog through the weekends. I seem to put too much importance in trivial things that I subconsciously know will cause me problems. I'm going to try give an example.
I lose no sleep over money worries or problems at work and yet I need to put all the brown table mats in the left drawer and White ones in the right. I get stressed when buying food from the school type tray counters in food halls. I have this fish out of water feeling.  I didn't go to greggs ever because I didn't know how you went about it. So now if I'm behind on this blog it plays on my mind and it becomes a priority even above doing something at work. God it's not like I write anything important, why have I started doing this anyway??
It's the same with my diaries, it's something I have to do, like a compulsion that needs to be quietened or an itch that needs to be scratched. I guess it's all about leaving a Mark that I was alive, a smudge to represent my existance.

I've recently been worried about getting a terrible illness such as cancer or dementia. It doesn't help that I was right about my marriage and having a son which I somehow always new. 
One thing always troubled me and that was I felt that because I'm not really ever I'll as such, that it would be karma for me to get one big terrible final illness. 
I've thought of using the knowledge to live life to the full ( if that includes drinking yourself to death), and going out on my own terms if I got the bad news. Other wise I'll just saunter through my days perhaps not realising that my brain is deteriorating until I find my self in my dressing gown writing on the Walls in my own shit.

This is the second day of headaches. I just do not get headaches as I rule. I have been up through the night the past few nights to give my boy his inhaler and that is not good on top of my recent lack of sleep.
The past two days have made me witness something I never have before. When I bend down or move my head quickly I feel the pressure in my skull throb.
Ok I'm just very tired and my eyes must have been having so much REM that my eye sockets are bruised and hurt when I move my eyes, but I only really mention it incase it turns out to be a tumour.

I admit that I have not really changed much since I was a teenager and I still sit out of social situations etc
But while I for one should totally understand TEENAGERS and their mock lack- of- enthusiasm, I can't take it. 
I used to answer with grunts which also held an undercurrent of 'god you're so stupid mum'. I too would be told to move a dirty cup of mine and then spend the rest of the day in my bedroom out of the way chuntering " I thought they abolished slavery"
All the teenager crap that I did and to some extent still do, has not armed me for being on the receiving end of 'rollin' eyes' or 'tutting'.
I imagined that when this day came I would prescribe to them such things as a baggy black jumper and some Smiths records and say "enjoy it"
But no, the teen in me sees these new teens and moans "god, I didn't ask to be born and now I've got you're moody face to contend with."
Meanwhile the adults gather around the campfire swapping stories of kids not putting their washing in the basket and cups not moved and general uncleanliness and they come to realise and take comfort from the fact that all teenagers are little bastards, it's just that most do grow out of it. 

It's 11:15 pm on the childrens ward in the hospital and I'm finally having a coffee. These places are pretty heartbreaking. My boy is wheezing etc and so really not in a bad way like lots of other child patients. It brings the birth all flooding back. Jacob poked me in one eye leaving it bloodshot and now I've not slept well for days/weeks my eyes are a mess. The reception seemed to view me as totally inebriated but hopefully my speaking to them to ask something corrected that. 

Nobody tells you anything for hours at a time in hospitals and  even I struggle to zone out for that long. I can sit for hours under boring conditions but hospitals push that to the limit. 
The doctors who you wait for are with kids who are worse off so you really should be thankful for the long wait. God only knows what time I will leave. Been here four hours with less than ten mins of attention. 
I guess it's the same for all.

July 19  09:30 am
 My boy is still in hospital.

We left AOL broadband to join Talk Talk and the change over went according to plan until we would try and fail to get on the Internet. We all would comment on it being crap and then went through instructions with technical team to resolve the issue. Still we struggled, so the call to terminate for free within thirty days was made.  
Customer services refused to let us cancel as requested, asking us to speak to other people in tech help etc. My wife was being very insistent on cancelling and was told about the fees we would incur if we did cancel. 
Eventually the customer service man HUNG UP!
 We rang back to complain and someone else hung up on us when we said we were angry.
If you want to talk talk that's fine but complain complain is not it would seem.

The kids dad has broken the news  that for a few years he will be moving into a  renovated horsebox. The reasons for this are just as baffling. 
The much sought after place which this modernisation is situated in,is a gypsy encampment in Sheffield. The kids will be camping there one night a fortnight and it's a concern that they will be taking part in the gypolympics that take place all year round. The Gypolympics games contain such activies as 200 yard driveways tarmacing, nicking lead off the church roof race and caravan burn. I pointed out that with the dad living in a horsebox, I imagine that somewhere there's a horse living in a really nice semi detached.


I imagine this horse does have 'a great collection of legs' ( see early blog)

36 years old now and my present was an external hardrive for music and photos. All my other gifts were iTunes vouchers so I could re buy albums from 90's to enjoy properly. 
With Jacob I am spending lots of time in play areas and they are not as safe as I remember.

This is the last day of my thirty fifth year. I maybe halfway through my life but I think I've done all the main bulletpoints which I set as my goals. Married with kids, big tv and family car. I still write a diaryfilm, watch films, read and play games consoles. 
Nothing has changed from when I was a teen. 
As long as when someone mentions my age they never proceed it with the phrase "today he would have been.." then I'm happy, as someone once said "being my age is better that the alternative"

My friend text me today saying "can you follow Raoul Moat on twitter and see how he's going on?" 
I thought this must be a celebrity that I didn't know or something. So I text him , "who's that?"
I did what was asked of me and searched for this name and nothing came up. So when my mate replied " it's the bloke on the run in Northumberland"
I felt stupid then cos I'd actually fallen for this joke by looking on twitter for a criminal on the run to see if his whereabouts  were given away. This would really help police these days if the could search Facebook status' to see what Slasher Jack has written. 
'Just hidin' round my mums in the shed, bit bored actually. Probably shunt of done that killin'. LOL xx'
 

I went delivering to Damart in Bingley with eleven boxes of non printed scrap pads. I know from experience not to unload the boxes and then have to move them to somewhere else.
I walked into reception and she looked at me in my scruffy work clothes and for that briefest of moments seemed to think I was in the wrong place.
"hiya, I've got 11 boxes from cougar for you" 
"who are they for?"
"caraline"
"do you know a last name?"
"I'm sorry I don't"
"do you normally bring them in here?" 
"yes but I once had to leave them at the loading bay further on"
"ok well I think you should do that and I'll find out who wants them"

All was going fair enough since I had ignored her initial judgemental gaze since I knew I did have business here.

"oh could you sign my delivery note please"
"yes ok" she started to say more " although I dont know that they ARE in good condition as I haven't seen them"
I politely laughed as I thought she was just messing. 
But her face and slightly knowing grin told me that she thought that my not bringing them in was suspicious and I may have battered the pads in transit and maybe I was then standing smug thinking that I had conned her when she was thinking that she was onto me. 
In these few seconds I felt accused of trying to smuggle battered paper past this witch and she wanted to insinuate that I had not been successful. 
(come lift them out of the van with me- I thought, but said)
"come and have a look then if you want"
" no no no it's alright" which meant I couldn't prove her wrong. I left to drive to the delivery bay and was slightly annoyed. Why would I deliver something inferior which would only be rejected by someone who ordered it whether it was signed for or not. I mean she signed under the words 'received in good condition' but that stood for nothing really if the goods were in poor condition.
So her words echoed in my ears but I new she really meant
"ah yes you have made me sign my name to say that this delivery is in good condition but don't think That i don't know it's likely to have been mauled by kicked over the floor and smeared with excrement but I've caught you out, ah yes I've got you little man"
 And when I said "thank you, see you next time" what I infact  meant was "F- off"

I was at Cliffe castle yesterday for a while outside and we decided to go in the museum to look at the stuffed animals and the beehive that have been there since before I was born. This time there were no bees, just a laminated piece of paper which read "unfortunately our bees did not survive this past winter, we are sorry if this has spoiled the  enjoyment of your visit to Cliffe castle"
I pictured families decending the main stairs back to reception looking crestfallen and maybe wiping a tear off their cheeks with their cuffs.
It's fair to say that the stuffed animals had not moved in anyway and had intact not survived many of the previous winters either. They haven't aged in all my thirty some years of visiting. I would like to leave my body to Cliffe castle when I die. There just after the stuffed animals will be a large glass box where I stand for an eternity waving a permanent welcome/farewell with a stupid fixed grin on my face.  Children will pass for generations to come. 
A small boy comments "he looks like he was a jolly person when he was alive"
A parent will lean in and say "I believe he was a self absorbed and self centred man as you might expect from a man who puts himself on show in a glass presentation case.
The child will then turn to the parent and respond "oh...what a nob"

Now I have a son I have found myself not very self conscious in his company. I play with him whilst doing a robot voice when playing with robots and doing slightly differing voices with different animals and I don't notice the people who are in the room. I would never have thought it possible that I would so much as hum in front of others, but I can't help it. You notice that everyone else who has kids does the same so you feel like you are in a gang, albeit a gang of tired, skint and cranky adults. 
Went out for a drink and saw this occurring as I spoke to Jacob about using crayons on a napkin. My voice had a playful tone and maybe sounded excited at the prospect of my napkin having some colourful scribbles on it. 
Back when my sister was young I spoke to her like she was twenty, I thought talking to them any other way would hold back their speech as noone speaks in gobbledegook unless ofcourse they are welsh. 

Didn't have a single thought yesterday. Tiredness was to blame from a Friday night staying up till nearly one am. discussing the fact that I am a writer but I'm trapped in the body of someone  who cant write, someone who failed English and thinks everyone else he knows  speaks more eloquently. I would go so far as to say my friends would do better jobs of blogging or whatever but just aren't interested in doing it. It's like, if I were a better artist than someone else and that person wanted to be a proper artist proffesionally, then it would be annoying to them cos the talent is wasted on me. Truth is I  also failed art so they would have to be 'shit' to be worse than me. 
But I will continue to write because it's therapeutic and relaxing for me. My wife is much better at choosing the right words or giving a definition of a word, but she says that she is a 'reader' and has no interest for the writing part. I've written a diary since I was 11 , that's near enough 25 years of diary writing as well as the other books I keep adding to over time. So for someone who isn't great at writing, does that show commitment to the cause, or inability to admit that it's not well written. 
What will happen to all this writing when I die. 
I'm told it will be burnt... Yet I still must do it, for some reason I have to do it. 

Having watched three episodes of 'flight of the conchords' I decided that I would like to give My wife the chance to enjoy it with me. When I watch a funny programme of hear music I like I run it through my head to think if my wife would also enjoy it. It's much better to enjoy something together and so I would take the chance.
I say take the chance because if she doesn't like what I present then I take it very personally. To a normal person this is called a difference of opinion, but not to me. If she turns her nose up at something I like it's as if she's saying "you loser this is crap and therefore you are crap and so are all your other opinions.
Here's an example, I watched 'Drag me to he'll at the cinema and I loved it. A silly comedy horror gross out bit of fun just as evil dead 2 was. It was promoted as a carnival ghost train movie. So when my bluray arrived I pushed for my wife to watch it. It was a Friday night event with the lights off and twenty mins had passed and I was enjoying it once more and sharing it was better until she turned to me and said
"Is it this shit all the way through?"
Now that comment was a two hander, firstly that meant to me, I had subjected her to twenty mins of film watching that she could now not get back watching something that she considered 'shit'. Secondly, the thought of having to endure another seventy minutes at the same level of 'shit' had made her cry out for rescue.
I couldn't allow another minute to pass her eyes. I had soiled her retinas with 'shit' that I loved. As I turned it off she added "No you carry on watching it"
There was no way I could now enjoy it since she looked down on my stupidity and my easily entertained brain cell. This is the reaction to her disagreement , but I think it's because I value her opinion the most. It's like dancing in front of her, believe it or not I like to dance but the thought of her saying "you call that dancing" or even "is your dance going to be this 'shit' all the way through?" makes me crumble.
So I tentatively put this programme on and she laughed a lot and it felt great. Phew!!

So I finally reached for the printed sheets the doctor had told me to read through after arranging to have a vasectomy. Three weeks had passed since I was given them and it was about time I checked there was nothing too objectional to deal with. The first sheet was a bulletpoint sheet of things to bear in mind and then in went into THE PROCEDURE. I read it as briefly as possible looking for keywords and noticed' dissolvable stitches ' and 'incision' were there as expected but what I didn't expect was the words ' take these two tubes and tie a knot in them'. Is this still the best medical science could offer me, to do me up like a cheap shoelace. My usual sniggering was absent as I read 'penis' and 'testicles' as the colur had also left my cheeks.
The last sheet was a full A4 diagram of said Genitals and it still took me by surprise. This seems to be the one and only cross section drawing of the male undercarraige that gets reused in biology lessons etc but it's a view I never recognise as relating to me, it always looks unfamiliar( this is not the same as the diagram which adorns many a school boys bag/blazer/book. On closer inspection I still couldn't see the tubes tied in a pretty bow and in the end it seemed more like looking at plans of construction on a house. I thought this would be a great episode of Grand Designs when the couple said "well Kevin we want a long slightly curved hallwall and kitchen through room with two oval rooms next to each at one end. And as the finished house gets the helicopter flyby shot Levine face is in close up as a large set of concrete genetalia covers the landscape.