Welcome

This is a self indulgent blog.
Poems that I have written and other general rants and comments.

Sunday 11 September 2011

Some more 'silliness that I remember from my youth

Funny how some things remind you of things in the past....stuff that you had completely forgotten about.........
I was reminded of this when I went to buy some false eye lashes to use if I lost mine during my chemo..........


It was fashionable to wear glasses that were half the size of your face! (I wear contacts now).
Well, I had such glasses.
I was invited on a date....heheheh, such fun!
I got all 'dolled up'....
False eye lashes and nails.
We went to the 'flicks'. (Cinema). 'Where Eagles Dare'.
Anyway, whilst in there, we watched the film.
We had pop corn.
Yes, you guessed.
One of my nails must have come off, because my date found it in the pop corn, he had been chewing on it, and had to spit it out.
I didn't want to admit that it was mine, so during part of the film, I was trying to get them off. Well,  they were flicking all over the audience!!!!!
I put the 'butter wouldn't melt in mouth' face on and pleaded ignorant.
When we got out of the cinema, my date kept staring at my face. He said,
"There's something on your glasses".
I took them off to look, and my eyelashes were stuck solidly to the top rim of my glasses!!!!!!!
I was so embarrassed!
Not only that, we had to leave before the film had ended because I had to be home at 10.30, and the last bus was at 10.00. The film finished at 10.45!
My date, bless him, STILL invited me on another date!!!!! Lol!
Being asked on a second date was unusual because most of my dates were eventful in similar ways!

Friday 9 September 2011

Just thought that I would 'share'.

Another truth..........
I was doing a 'sponsored walk' for Mencap.
The walk was over a distance of 21 miles in length.
A beautiful day! I made some sandwiches, filled a couple of large bottles with water,
packed up my rucksack...........
I took Tandy, my beautiful dog....Collie/Labrador cross, (Water, bowl and treats for her also packed).
We jumped in the car, (A red Volkswagon Polo).
Of we drive to the meeting point.
This was at a large park, Mencap had their premises there.

There was no parking there, so I parked on a street.
All the streets were narrow, and there were terraced houses on both sides, two up, two down. There were many streets.
Any way, I eventually found a space, parked up, and me and Tandy walked to the meeting point, with time to spare.
Tandy and the other dogs went 'bum sniffing', as they do, and we people, did our own version of the same, introducing, chatting, hugging....you know.

Ok, time for the off, by this time, every one had gather in their cliques, again, a very natural thing....and off we went.

The sun is still shining, lots of talking, laughing and stopping for little breaks, eating, drinking.....you get the picture.

O.K. 21 Miles completed!!!!!
Yay!

Back to the car!
All the good byes done, final bout of 'bum sniffing', not me, Tandy!
We headed back to the car................NOT THERE!
I walked up and down the street loads of times, definitely NOT THERE!
It has been stolen!!!!!!!
No mobiles phones then..........I went searching for a phone box 
There wasn't one on the street where I parked the car, so I went to other streets.
I am on the next Street, and see a phone box........Bummer, it is broken.
Now on another street with a phone box, that one is also buggered.
Right now I am really tired and really stressed! We stopped for a while, Tandy had a couple of treats, and some water, and I had an apple.
OK, off to the next street, I am still eating my apple.
Another phone box! AND....it is working!!!!!!
Yay!
Back then, there were phone books in phone boxes, and some numbers under glass that were useful. (There were also business cards stuck to the inside of the box offering 'various services'. Most of these cards were hand written..........that's by the by.
Any how, looked for the number of the local Police Station and dialled.......
I explained what had happened to the man that answered, he said that there was an officer in the area, and he would meet me in a moment. I had given him the name of the street, and it was agreed that I would meet him by the phone box.

I set Tandy up with water and treats while we waited, I was still chomping on my apple.

Shortly after, the police officer arrived. I told him the whole story, gave him the make and model of my car, and the registration number. I told him where I had parked it. He dutifully wrote down all of the details, and then a really weird look came to his face. He squinted, and briskly walked a few paces passed me in the direction that he was facing......................
I was turning around to see where he had gone, I thought that he had 'flipped!' Lol!
As I was turning, he called me. He was now standing still, about 50 yards away.
I started to walk towards him........................................
Oh, my goodness!
What an idiot!
He was standing right next to my car! Clearly, I had been looking on the wrong street! That was exactly where I had left it.
The police officer was NOT amused!
He was clearly annoyed. He gave me a jolly good telling off! I felt terrible!
Ooooops!
Sadly, I didn't learn from this experience, I have 'lost' my car so many times.......................(But, I have not called the police)!



True story, but silly!

Just though that I would like to share some 'incidents' that have occurred at different points through out my life....here is just one....

In the 70's, I was training to be a psychiatric nurse in Leicester...........................
Loving it!
Any way, my Aunt's partner sadly passed, and Mum and I went to London for the funeral. We went by coach.
On the way back, we were at the coach station waiting for the coach home.

A man came up to my Mum, and asked if she had any cheese. He had a very strong Scottish twang, and I believe that he had had a tipple..........................................
I said to Mum,
'Don't worry, I'll deal with this, I am in training for this sort of thing'.
Mum stepped aside, and I started to interact with him.

I opened my bag so that he could see in, I smiled and said,
'I am so sorry, but neither of us have any cheese, but I will happily buy you a cheese sandwich'.

The man looked a little confused for a fleeting moment, then looked sympathetic.
He looked at My Mum and said,
'You need to take this woman home, she f*cking crazy.....have you got any change?'

Complete confirmation that I am a complete dipstick!

Tuesday 16 August 2011

Looters

Follow the link below and you can see some photo shopped photo's of the looters.
Some of them are very funny.


http://photoshoplooter.tumblr.com/.


Monday 15 August 2011

15th August 2011


This was emailed to me by a friend, and I think that it is worth sharing.

Very thought provoking.



Your mobile phone is in your pocket.
He clutches the cross hanging on his chain next to his dog tags.
He knows he may not see some of his buddies again.

You walk down the beach, staring
at all the pretty girls.
He patrols the streets, searching
for insurgents and terrorists.
He's told he will be held over an
extra 2 months.

You call your girlfriend and set a
date for tonight.
He waits for the mail to see if there
is a letter from home.

You hug and kiss your girlfriend,
like you do every day.
He holds his letter close and smells
his love's perfume.

You roll your eyes as a baby cries.
He gets a letter with pictures of his
new child, and wonders if they'll ever meet.

You criticize your government, and
say that war never solves anything.
He sees the innocent tortured and
killed by their own people and
remembers why he is fighting.

You hear the jokes about the war, and make fun of men like him.
He hears the gunfire, bombs and
screams of the wounded.

You see only what the media wants
you to see.
He sees the broken bodies lying
around him.

You are asked to do something by
your parents. You don't.
He does exactly what he is told even
if it puts his life in danger.

You stay at home and watch TV.
He takes whatever time he is given
to call, write home, sleep, and eat.

You crawl into your soft bed, with
down pillows, and get comfortable.
He tries to sleep but gets woken by mortars and helicopters all night long.

If you support your troops, send this on.
 

REMEMBER our Troops, and do not
forget them - Lest we forget -








 .


15th August 2011

A great follow up piece from Carole...
caroleandcancer.blogspot.com

Un...bloody...believable.............!

Following on from my post last night about the riots....

This government.... who right now should be listening to our Police, showing them respect and actually talking about other ways to fund the cuts instead of via our Police service.... this government has today appointed an 'advisor' to give them tips on how to handle the riots on our streets and how to take a zero tolerance approach.

So, you're thinking - "what's wrong with that?" Nothing except that he's appointed a 63 yr old American called Bill Bratton to tell him how to sort out this mess.

We HAVE people here that can tell Cameron how to sort out this bloody mess, but it comes at a price......
  • We need our Police service to be left alone financially and cancel the 20% cut backs,
  • We need our Police to be issued with proper riot gear,
  • We need our Police service to be fully supported by this government not ignored and bypassed.
  • We need our Police to know that if they need to 'robustly' deal with someone we will not be asking on the news the next day 'Were the Police too heavy handed last night' ....they need to know that they will not face disciplinary action for robustly dealing with rioters - or even idle spectators who really shouldn't be there in the first place anyway.
  • We don't need Robocop from the US to deal with our kids - we just need OUR Police to be given the resources and back up to take action with full support, from both superior officers and the government.

After all the plans to slash their pensions, freeze their salaries and put a stop to overtime payments they are now ignoring people who have worked our streets for years and bringing in someone from outside the UK.
I'm seriously shocked by this decision - mind you, it's not the first crap decision that Cameron has made (just think 'News of the World ex editor')...

Bill Bratton has already made a short statement so far he's commented that we need 'more minority officers' and we must 'focus on calming racial tensions'........Piss off mate, this isn't about racial tensions, it's not a race war...and anyway, with the current 20% cuts in place we don't have the MONEY for MORE Police officers, black, white or flippin purple ones.

Police high up in the service are understood to be really really insulted by this decision and I totally understand why.

Their officers stood there for hours over recent days whilst youths threw bottles, stones, fences, metal bars and hours of insults at them....they've retained their dignity whilst the government threw a different type of crap at them and made changes to their salaries, overtime and pensions....and now they are being ignored and sidelined when we should be saying to them 'What do you actually need to ensure the streets are kept safe, how do we regain proper control in the long term?'...


How much more can we really expect them to take before we see mass resignations.....

Sigh...


This was not written by me.


Saturday 13 August 2011

13th August


This is a piece that was written by a friend of mine, and she posted it on her blog.

caroleandcancer.blogspot.com
She writes well, and explained the recent riots very well.
I feel that it is a fantastic piece.

I would like to emphasise that this was NOT written by me.




Friday, 12 August 2011

What the hell happened in London?....


That was the question that many of you who emailed me asked.....What the hell is going on in London....what's the cause.....how did this happen.....etc.

For those of you outside the UK the background was as follows....Thursday, 4th August the Police shot a guy in North London. He died at the scene...
They were working with 'Operation Trident' which is a specialist group which was set up by the Met Police in London to deal solely with 'black on black crime'...in other words, they deal with black people (mainly young men) who either kill or want to kill other black (mainly young men) people.

After the shooting it was handed over for investigation to the IPCC (these are the people who independently investigate ANY shooting by the Police - not only by Operation Trident)...
Once it has been referred to the IPCC the Police are no longer able to comment for legal reasons.

The IPCC released a statement saying that the Police had shot this man after they had been fired upon and that they were investigating the incident and would report answers once their investigation had taken place.

The family of the man who was shot by police marched (with 100 of their family/friends) on the Saturday following the shooting to the Police station to demand 'answers'...
The police did not come out to give them those answers - so the friends and family staged a noisy but peaceful protest outside for a number of hours.

This protest was then hi-jacked by other young people who arrived after dark and then they took the protest to another level.
A bus was set on fire, buildings were set alight, shops were damaged and then looted. It took until the early hours to bring things under control.

Over the course of the following few evenings other areas in London then experienced large groups of several hundreds (mainly) youths rioting on the streets, burning and looting, various different areas at the same time.... Most of them who were asked by the media did not mention the death of the man during the shooting as a reason, most commented that they wanted 'stuff' from the shops 'free stuff' and they were there intending on taking it.
Others wanted to hurl abuse and items at Police officers citing their reasons as 'Police harassment' 'been stopped and searched too many times' - others wanted to 'teach the rich a lesson' - so they burnt down people's homes and small businesses that had taken years to build up and NONE of these people were 'rich'.
They were ordinary people who lost stuff whilst others just helped themselves to 'free stuff'. Of course, bigger businesses also lost stuff, large department stores had their windows smashed in and people helped themselves, large electrical chains also lost many many thousands of pounds worth of goods, a large SONY distribution centre was burnt to ashes after the looters helped themselves to what they wanted, a furniture business that had been there for almost 150 years was burnt to the ground. Sports shops and mobile phone shops were completely cleaned out of goods....

The police received 43,000 calls on Monday night and had 6,000 officers on duty. People have said 'Where were the Police?' but it doesn't take the brain of Britain to work out that they can't possibly be all over the place at the same time!
Looting attacks were organised by Blackberry messenger and twitter making it impossible for the Police to stay on top of a constantly changing situation....

So, put as simply as I can - that's what happened in London.

During this period, people lost their businesses, homes and possessions. Five people lost their lives during the unrest...one person was shot in a car in the Croydon area, three young men were killed in a hit and run incident whilst they were protecting their local community, one elderly man of 68 yrs was attacked and left with severe head injuries after attempting to put out a fire that rioters had started...he died yesterday after being on a life support machine for the past few days.

Police in London have spent the last few days knocking in people's doors and carting off those who thought they may have got away with it on the night....cctv has provided the Police with hours of useful footage and they have been busy publishing photo's and asking for the help of the public in identifying the people who took part. Some parents recognised their own children on the TV and duly handed them over to the Police....

The recent scenes of devastation were shocking to all decent people, very upsetting and disturbing.

Photo's of events in London during the riots....

















After two nights of rioting in London, other areas in the UK also kicked off - namely Manchester, Liverpool, Nottingham, Wolverhampton to name just a few. These are all large cities in England and all had one thing in common, the youth wanted and the youth helped themselves....
However, I have to point out that they weren't ALL teenagers/youths, some were older and had jobs (responsible jobs too)

So when people say it's because the young have been left with no jobs, no future and no hope in some cases that could well be true - we do have young people who feel forgotten about, young people who have seen the bankers rewarding themselves after bringing our country and other countries to their knees recently, MP's who have robbed us and simply apologised for their 'mistakes in accounting', young people who have heard the MP's say they can no longer get their EMA - which has meant they fall out of the education system...(EMA is a small grant paid to young people from low income families to assist with the financial side of attending college) but during the looting other types of people also took part for example a 31 yr old teaching assistant, a trainee nurse, an athlete who was supposed to be a role model for young people for the 2012 Olympics, a model....these are not 'people who have no hope' they are people who simply took advantage of the opportunity to get something for free.
I believe the main reason for the riots and looting was, put simply...... 'because we could'..........

The MP's have said all the looters are simply criminals who took part in mindless violence and will 'face the full force of the law'......I seriously doubt that we have enough prison places for them all to 'face the full force of the law' and if we also locked up the corrupt MP's and Bankers as well then there definitely wouldn't be enough space in prisons.......

Meanwhile the Police had to deal with all this mess...111 officers sustained injuries, some serious. 5 police dogs were injured during the riots too.
The MP's who robbed us during the 'expenses scandals' a while back are now planning serious financial cut-backs to the Police service. They have agreed changes to salaries, pensions and overtime for Police officers meanwhile making sure they (the MP's) will still be well looked after and receive their huge pensions/salaries and no doubt expenses for whatever they can (legally?) claim for...

So the long and short of this is, some of our inner city youth are seriously pissed off because some of them feel forgotten about - they see corruption being rewarded at high levels and even they know this is wrong...
Our Police are (patronisingly) told they are 'brilliant, brave and effective' by the same MP's who have agreed severe cuts to their salaries/pensions and overtime.
They don't have the right to strike (it's illegal for a Police officer to take strike action) so they have to just accept their lot and continue to willingly face up to the angry youth who are pissed off with everyone and everything.
Meanwhile MP's sit and talk crap, listen to no-one, and go back to their huge family homes and eat caviar and drink champagne and will no doubt give themselves a round of applause for coming home early from their (way too long) summer break and 'sorting out the mess'.....

Just as long as they realise it's not over - nothing is solved - and they better hope the Police DO continue to willingly deal with this crap - or what then?