'Twas The Whatsit Before Thingumy...

Many thanks to all who answered the call last week and overwhelmed my mailbox clutching sweaty, hand-typed submissions for this website, eyebrows raised eagerly to the ceiling hoping they’d be picked first for the football team and not left twiddling thumbs and staring down at their black, elasticated gym shoes, stained with sherbet dip from the lucky bag they got for their birthday from their granny. (Christ, I need a cigarette; 7 weeks now.)

Obviously, we’ve now moved into Phase 2 – “Clean & Correction” – of the ten phase selection process where submissions will be made presentable for the panel of esteemed judges; those of you think a semi-colon is some kind of wanton punctuation-floozie which can be tarted around liberally without a moral thought for relevance or appropriateness need to have a long hard look at yourself. Mind you, I will just give a quick “wink” to the submittee who relayed a fascinating and descriptive account of a 4am – 5am encounter pinpointing it a “highlight of the year”. I concur and so I think it’s safe to say you’re a shoe-in… ;)

Elsewhere… well, it’s 3:30pm on Christmas Eve and I’m still working, albeit from home. This is the first time I’ve had all the proper “connectivity” to work “properly” from home and it’s fantastic – you just get so much more done at your own pace. So far today, I’ve done a wee bit of ironing, been for a “jog”, watched last night’s Christmas episode of “Lead Balloon” and eaten some left over pizza. And working from home means I can wander round the place half-naked, scratching my balls whenever I want without fear of disdain and reprimand from my work colleagues, like what I usually endure when I carry out those activities in the office.

As usual, I left all my Christmas shopping to the last minute but thankfully our family have a wonderful Secret Santa arrangement which means we don’t spend stupid amounts of money on things we don’t need and concentrate instead on getting gifts for the young children (allowing me to spend many enjoyable hours in the Early Learning Centre) and arranging one main gift for whichever “adult” we get in the Secret Santa draw. This year, I’ve even crafted part of the gift myself and without giving too much away, I’m sure my sister will love the hand-made ironing board I created out of old lightsabers and MDF. (Girls like ironing, right?)

Anyway, I think this will be the last submission here for 2008 so I hope you all have a very happy *insert politically-correct holiday descriptor here* and come back and visit in 2009 when I’ll have some news for you.

Part Time Seasonal Vacancies

I have stuff I’ve been meaning to tell you but I’ve honestly had no time to scratch my arse in the last two weeks, never mind write something and then check it forty-eight times for spelling, grammar and punctuation. (48’s the law, right?) So, in the spirit of seasonal somethingorother, how would you like to create something for this site? Be a guest writer/columnist? It can be about anything you want, be any length you want, include pictures or photos if you want and get this… it doesn’t even have to have anything about me in it, although obviously any which describe me as an expert sibling / co-worker / eater / singer / athlete / lover may receive special attention together with some kind of coupon arrangement… for an hour of “Neil-love” perhaps. I know you’re probably very busy too but if you have something to submit, you can find my email address through the ‘View My Complete Profile’ link on the right hand side of this page. And hurry, I’m obviously too busy to create fresh paragraphs and therefore in dire need of assistance.

Happy (40th) Birthday Rona & Keith

Today is the 40th birthday of my wee sister and Rona and my wee brother Keith. They’re twins. Cute huh? At least I think they’re 40. Could be my Whatshisnames Disease is taking a turn for the worst because the last time I saw Rona’s little son Tommy during the summer he very firmly but politely informed me that his mummy is only 29 years old.

Today, Keith is celebrating across the ocean in Dallas Texas, far away from the clumsy reach of the UK postal service so fingers crossed that the brand new set of expensive golf clubs I bought for him manage to find their way there in one piece. Rona is home in Scotland for a few days and was out in Edinburgh last night so I’m just about to go through there and scrape her off Princes Street before taking her to visit her parents in darkest Fife. I really hope she like the Barbie Diamond Castle and Flying Horse I got her.

If you’d like to read about my first joyous and emotional encounter with The Twinnies, you can click on all these red words that are underlined and jump back a few blog years for the full story.

On a related matter, I’m sure like me you often spend many a long winter’s evening pondering exactly what kind of algorithm Facebook use to constantly refresh and display six of your ‘friends’ down the left hand side of your home page. For instance, why oh why do some people seem to be there all the time whilst others never make an appearance at all?

There’s a particular sequence of ‘friends’ for which I’m always on the lookout and will only speak about if it ever occurs (maybe) but until then, here’s what I saw earlier today when I logged on to spread some birthday cheer… all three of my siblings together in the one collection! What are the odds of that happening today of all days? It’s not like I have so much time on my hands that I constantly sit at home and hit the ‘refresh’ button for hours on end... honest.

Something For The Weekend 46

Dave,

How’s it going mate? Was good to see you and catch up last week at the football although to be frank, I really didn’t get the opportunity to do much of either, what with you having to chase me round the place and eat my dust as I powered through the evening utilising bionic body parts I never knew I had… lungs, I think they’re called.

I had lots of things of a cultural nature to point your unfeasibly tiny head towards this weekend. For example, how f#cking good is the BBC’s ‘History of Scotland’ at the moment? Lots of lovely eye-candy for the ladies and your good self in the shape of hunky archaeologist presenter Neil Oliver and a Planet-Earth-meets-Lord-of-The-Rings-style narrative experience which makes our country look absolutely awesome. Worth every penny of the licence fee alone.

But to be honest mate, you’ve caught me at a bad time and I’m just way too angry and aggressive at the moment to articulate the arts and sciences to you in a fashion that both educates and illuminates and makes you ever-so-slightly pee your panties in excitement. It’s a bit like that time we were in Myrtle Beach and you started throwing your golf clubs around in a hissy fit because the beer girl was, quote “not fit or tanned enough to be riding round in a cart selling alcohol to the likes of me” which climaxed with you thrashing about on the green in a toddlers tantrum, big red face bursting with tears and snot when you didn’t get your way. Disgraceful.

Apart from working some long hours just now, my main reason for wanting to punch the face of the first person every morning who says to me in some shrill, chirpy, high-pitched f#cking voice, “So how’s the non-smoking going then, Neily boy?” is the fact that the much anticipated, triumphant homecoming, 25th anniversary, Christmas gig by Falkirk rock legends The Signals is not now going ahead on Sunday December 21st. I realise that for many people out there this renders Christmas completely pointless but – as many a Project Manager likes to say to explain away the fact that something has seriously f#cked up – “we are where we are” so let’s keep warm by huddling round the fatuous ‘reality’ f#cking television and make the best of it.

Talking of keeping warm, how about those geniuses at the Institute for Weather & Guaranteed Lottery Number Prediction who issued the ‘severe weather warning’ for central Scotland on Wednesday? I obviously neglected to read the small print where it no doubt stated something like “going to be severely f#cking mild for this time of year”. Nice one professors.

Anyway Dave, I know you’ll have a relaxing weekend since your Christmas shopping is now complete after I sold you the things we’ll never talk about in public. Ever. Me? I might go out and buy a cat so I have something to kick when I get in from work each night next week… either that or I’ll buy the double issue special edition of the Radio Times on Saturday, let my hair down and party like crazy with a set of highlighter pens arranged neatly in rainbow spectrum-order and a long cool glass of milk. Rock ‘n roll eh?

Cheers, Edge