Come back in three months

Head Rambles Posted on by

I went to browse the news websites this morning as is my wont.

The headline hit me between the eyes and made me want to throw up.

Christmas shoppers advised to buy early this year with supply bottlenecks likely to linger.

Would yiz ever go and fuck off! Come back to me in December and I might be slightly interested, but this is fucking September and the first two weeks of September at that. In past years I would be over in France at this time of year half way through enjoying a summer break.

Reading between the lines [I won’t bother my arse linking to the article itself as it’s boring] the main problems seem to lie with Ikea, car parts and laptops. So that’s the three piece suite I was going to buy Granddaughter the Younger up the Swanee, and Daughter can forget that rack and pinion gearing replacement she wanted so much.

The reasons behind this future crisis are many and varied. Naturally the pandemic gets the blame but there are some other somewhat strange ones. Poor old “Ever Given” gets some blame of course. It blocked the Suez Canal for a few days and apparently this is causing problems months later. Right! Then there’s an “ice storm” in Texas last February which is somehow affecting the planet ever since? Fucking what?

They even blame us, the consumers. Apparently [and I quote] “We are ordering more and more goods, in turn, putting more and more pressure on creaking supply chains.” Right. So the answer is to implore us to start our Christmas panic early thereby exacerbating things?

They can go and fuck right off. I’ll think about Christmas at the right time of year which is maybe mid-December. Until then the C word is banned, and would be met with a host of expletives and suggestions of contortionist acts which are possibly physically difficult.

It nauseates me to even write about it now.

 

Relief at last

Head Rambles Posted on by

It’s four weeks now.

I actually thought it was three weeks, though it felt like ten so it shows how my perception of time has gone arseways.

Anyway, it’s four weeks since I was officially diagnosed with Shingles.

If any of you have had a dose of this wondrous ailment then you have my sympathies. If you haven’t then I hope you never have the pleasure. It’s a bugger and that’s putting it very mildly.

It’s easing off now. I am no longer driving myself mad with the scratching and am managing to go the day without swallowing fistfuls of pain killers [which didn’t have any effect anyway]. I still have the odd itch on the back of my neck but scratching it doesn’t feel like I have set that whole area on fire.

The lurgy basically has three parts – the itching, the pain and the fatigue.

The itching is a pain because scratching an itch is instinctive, but scratching a small tickle will set the whole area off and make things ten times worse. They tell you not to scratch but that is nigh on impossible so you spend your time scratching and then cursing yourself for doing it. Night-time is is bad because I would scratch in my sleep and would wake up with the bed looking like I had been munching crisps all night. Not a pleasant sight.

The pain is a pain because it’s not normal. Usually it feels like your veins are suddenly filled with molten lead so the whole area feels like it’s on fire. Other times it just feels like a massive throbbing hangover, but only on one side. It’s not normal because pain killers don’t work. I know because I tried in vast quantities. I was prescribed a special one which works well and it removed the pain but did fuck all for the itch.

The fatigue is a pain because you just feel like all the energy has been drained out of a tap on your big toe. Talk about being knackered!

It’s nearly all gone now. As I type, I have a bit of a pain [in the neck] but little itching. The fatigue is still there in abundance but there’s little I can do about that. It’s a good excuse for not doing stuff though.

So starting today I am going to attempt to return my life to some semblance of normality.

I think I’ll start by going down to the village for coffee.

 

Gimme a job

Head Rambles Posted on by

There’s a bit of fun going on here in Ireland at the moment.

For anyone outside these shores, the story may be a little confusing so I will try to explain.

It all started at the last election. Kat, who had been a Senator and a TD and even a Minister lost her job. She found herself at a loose end so she fucked off back to America which is where she came from in the first place [we’re not fussy where we get our politicians from].

Earlier this year she found she was getting bored or something. Maybe her Senator’s pension and her TD’s pension and her Ministers pension still left her a bit short but anyway she decided to ask her old friend Paschal for a job. I imagine she wasn’t fussy and asked if he needed his lawn mowed or his clothes washed or anything just so long as it was a job.

Paschal is a sitting representative and being a politician he did what all politicians do – he passed the buck to his pal Simon, who is a Minister.

Now Simon is in a very senior position in the gubmint and therefore wants to please everyone with empty promises so he sent a text to Kat saying that he’d see what he could do. After all, she had been a Senator and a Minister so she was a member of The Club. Maybe he could invent a job as a Special Envoy in the United Nations if that would keep her quiet?

This would have been fine, but for one thing: Kat took this as an actual job offer and began dreaming up all the things she could do in this new post.

The months passed and Kat heard nothing. At this stage she had written out her own job specification for her new job as “Special Envoy on Freedom of Opinion and Expression” and had even ordered curtains and carpet for her new office, but still no word from Simon. She fired off correspondence to Simon and Pascal and a few others including the United Nations wanting to know where the fuck her new job was and when would she start? This of course caused massive confusion, particularly in the United Nations as it was the first anyone had heard about this new invented job.

The shit hit the fan.

Of course we are getting the usual calls for resignations [when did a politician ever resign after a massive cock-up?] and enquiries and endless waffle in the meeja. Paschal is saying it’s nothing to do with him. Simon is saying he never offered a job in the first place [and has swiftly deleted all his messages to Kat]. Kat has been told in no uncertain terms that there’s no job in the United Nations and has she tried applying for a job in McDonalds or Walmart?

When the dust settles nothing will have changed.

Is it any wonder I have no time for politicians?

 

Breaking wind online

Head Rambles Posted on by

I got a rap on the knuckles yesterday*.

Within minutes of my typing efforts going public, I got a comment from Ed P – “When there are column inches to fill, any old nonsense will do!” and sadly he [or she, or it; one never knows these days, but I’ll stick with the male assumption for now] is absolutely right [but see the bottom of this post! GD]. In my somewhat pathetic defence I will make two points:

The first point is that I generally refer to my outpourings as brainfarts. Now there is a remarkable similarity between a brainfart and the other sort. If you have one of the latter pending it can be difficult to restrain it, even if you’re in a crowded lift or at a funeral at the part where they ask for a minutes silence to reflect on the deceased. If you have to let rip it can be difficult to restrain and inevitably you let go, giving those in your vicinity the full benefit.

Also like its rearmost cousin, one never knows in advance what the content of a brainfart will be. It could be the equivalent of an SBD [the best kind in a crowded lift] or it could be a full blown drawn out blast in three part harmony [which is the worst kind at that silent bit of a funeral] . One tries to restrain oneself but one frequently fails and a bad one slips out. For some reason [my age?] I find urges for both sorts far more common these days, sometimes to the amusement of my readers or sometimes to the amusement of the Grandkids and the annoyance of my neighbours [depending on type].

The second point is a simple one. I refer to the title of this site. In retrospect it’s a damned good title as it gives me free reign to ramble and meander just about anywhere. It might be a short little stroll or it might be a full blown mountain hike. The ramble can just be whatever crosses my mind at the time, and the older I get, the stranger the ramble. Sometimes it’s an idle thought or something that has caught my eye or sometimes it can be an experience or something that annoys me.

I have said before that I have no idea where the name Head Rambles came from. I didn’t copy the idea from anywhere nor did anyone else suggest it.

It just rambled into my head which is somewhat appropriate?

* Erratum: It has been pointed out that I was [possibly] wrong [a rare event] and that Ed P was in fact referring to the article in the Times and not this. My humblest apologies Ed P. In my defence I will say that I haven’t shaken off that damned virus yet and the brain is somewhat scrambled.