Happiness is a warm pussy!

Cats!
Not the Andrew Lloyd Webber musical, but the real thing. Cats are a mans best friend. Mind you, you are either a cat person or a dog person....you can have both, but you always prefer one.
It's the same with rugby or football, red or white wine.....you do both....but you always choose the same one first.

We have Hamish the dog. He is good for two things.

Disappearing for thirty seconds and leaving you a message ..... and smelling. Neither of those are talents that have much use in life....maybe the second is useful for keeping foxes away but only outside....inside not so hot. Sheena, my wife is now threatening him with a variety of outcomes....it gives me a vision of what I have to look forward to. I am 21 months older than my wife (doesn't she just remind me of it!!!) if in a few years you see an old man feathered to a dog kennel on a chain outside then don't be surprised.
Cats are much better. They are working animals in our house, killing machines in fact. I have had to put some additional protection round the hole in the outhouse wall where we have had a family of tits every year since we have been here.

Wednesday, (Le chat noir), spends her outdoors, sitting outside the outhouse with the stare of a psychopath, waiting, waiting, like an Irishman for a Guinness.
Don't get me wrong, I do love the little presents that I am frequently left by the back door but the tits are almost part of the family by default.
Dogs are stupid, bundles of energy....well they are when they are young, whereas cats give you just the right amount of affection. "I will sit on your lap and once I have marked my territory with my lethal claws, I expect you to give me just the right amount of stroking until I have had enough, then I shall turn upon you and savage you for failing to realise when I have been sated."
For those who have not seen them....check out the sad cat and dog diaries on you tube

Sad cat diary -Click here http://m.youtube.com/watch?v=PKffm2uI4dk

Sad dog diary -Click here http://m.youtube.com/watch?v=Xw1C5T-fH2Y

Fine them? I'd rather have them shot!

The UK government has decided that it wishes to give on the spot fines for the plonkers who ruin driving for the rest of us on motorways by sticking to the middle lane.
Why do these idiots think that when they are alone on a motorway, that they need to stick to the middle lane? Is the motorway not wide enough that they believe that they will be sucked off the side and thrown into the fiery pits of hell? How do they ever manage on a country road in  Scotland I will never know.
As a calm responsible person, I have tried to educate some of these charming people in the past. Coming at them from the left lane and indicating to pull out behind and then overtake, I would then indicate left and pull gracefully back into the left hand lane and slow down waiting for them to overtake again and understand that the left hand lane is a place of safety......but no! They overtake in the middle lane and keep on going and not heeding my advice....so I repeat the procedure but then move off into the distance, in the correct lane, sad to think that they have not acted upon my example.

They also want to fine tailgaters. Magic. These idiots might as well be sitting in your back seat as you can almost smell their cheap cologne. They continue with their actions because they have never had an accident......they have probably caused thousands as drivers spend their time fearing what is happening behind and fail to see what is happening in front.
I don't think that the government has gone far enough.

People who continually use their horns should be locked in a dark room with them blaring for 48 hours. Boy racers honk at each other as a greeting whilst the rest of us panic taking it as a warning that something is about to hit us.

People who don't indicate because they work on the natural assumption that everyone else knows exactly what they mean to do or because they can't be bothered as hey are too busy texting at the time.
I would like to see those rotating guns from the millennium falcon placed at the middle of roundabouts so that abusers can be blown up and their mangled wreckage left at the roadside as a warning to others.

People who choose the wrong lane at roundabouts and decide to weave in and out cos they can't be bothered to read the three road signs before the roundabout. They should be sent to Los Angeles and left in the middle of a seven lane highway on foot.

People in traffic jams who think that because one lane is moving half a mile an hour quicker that they  simply MUST move into it only to find that they simply MUST move back in fifty feet to the previous lane. They can't be British, surely! We all love a good queue as it gives us something to moan about. Even if the world is about to end, queues have protocol.

I think that if the police are going to fine these people....I INSIST that they use a compulsory taser on them first. I think that would be a much greater deterrent than a fine.
"Come out of the car please sir."............this will only take a moment.......ZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZT!

"HERE'S ......JOSE!"

The worlds worst kept secret has finally come true. Jose has come home.

Older and wiser with more silverware in his back pocket.
 Is he calmer? We will have to wait and see.
The one thing that we can guarantee is that the Special One will have a trail of media in his wake, hanging on his every word and comparing his new performances with his old ones.
Will he invest Romans money or will he just get an extra 10% from the players who are there?
How many new players will come in?
Will he extend John Terry's contract.
Will Fernando Torres move on?
Will there be a marquee signing up front?

.....just need to. Renew my Stamford Bridge membership.
.....already looking forward to the pre season tours of the Far East and America.

....ah heaven.

Back in the US, back in the USSR........

Just a quick note to all of those of you out there who are logging on to my little blog.

As a wrinkly middle aged teacher with a love of chickens and gardening, I am always pleased to see that my little rants and personal tales are being read across the world. I do appear to be quite popular in Russia.
Whilst I can understand my wife, children and other odds and sods within my family and social circle having a quick squint at my blog......well it is better than two minutes of pure ranting face to face which normally happens across the dinner table or after a dinner party usually after copious amounts of wine.

Please feel free to drop me a comment. Let me know if I have changed your life in even the smallest of ways.
Have I made you smile?
Have I struck a chord with a fellow grump somewhere?
Are you a happy blog reader somewhere in the middle of the Russian countryside who can appreciate the joy that a baby chick brings to your life or are you President Vladimi Putin, reading my westernised blog and thinking that I, Bobby Birss, am personally responsible for the fall of communism and the destruction of the Berlin Wall due to my grumpy nature and inability to make students understand mathematics.
Should I be worried that a secret group of KGB assassins are currently hiding in my garage to plot my ultimate downfall.....not knowing that three broody bantams are willing to peck them to death thinking that they may be about to harm PINGU and GRUMPY, my two baby chicks?

Please, please leave me a little comment, even if it is just a smiley face to know that somewhere out in his big wide world, I may have made someone smile.
Keep on blogging.

Why Eric Whitacre must die by my hand!

"Dear reader I married him......but if Eric Whitacre had been available then I wouldn't have looked twice at him," are words that are written somewhere in a journal that my wife keeps or would have if she still kept one like she did when she was at school. A little red one with a lock and a key (that you could probably open using a hair pin.)

I've never met the man but the desire to have him "taken out" in a slow and painful way has now come to a head.

Who is he, I hear you ask?

He is an American composer/conductor....apparently.He ran a course for choral singers last year to which Sheena attended and it's been downhill ever since.

"Oh he's very good looking." ........ "Oh....Really!"

You can tell that your marriage is in trouble when she pulls up images of him on her ipad to show dinner guests just exactly HOW good looking he is.
The kids refer to him as "new dad"
Now, the last straw. There, in her car is the album with his glossy blonde hair. Not hidden away but on display.

Please keep an eye on the obituaries column as he should be here shortly......"Conductor killed in baton related incident!"

Baby chick diary 3.

What do you mean it's black?

I went down to start cleaning up in the chicken shack and was surprised to hear a little cheep coming from underneath the three heads of Cerberus.....otherwise known as Jinny, Cheryl and Adele my three broody bantams who have shared the role of hatching my 5 eggs.

I started to peel away the feathers and wings to see if I could find the source of the noise and out popped......well ......PINGU. A baby chick that looked like an escapee from Happy Feet.

Small, cute and suitably shy for it's first public showing, I waved Sheena to come down and have a look. ......much "awe - ing" ensued.

Later I took the new addition to the family up to Bear's bedroom hoping that the cheeps would stir her from under her covers....it took a while.

I moved the small chicken run into the garage to keep the new chick and its three mums safe from foxes and to keep them cleaner than the outside chicken run would have done.

Now hopefully we will have more arrivals tomorrow as that is the 21 day incubation period completed.

The Lord giveth and the Lord taketh away. We were sad to lose Dolly this week of natural causes. She would always be bustling about and complaining loudly with her big bug eyes.

More screwing around for me then!

My wife has just come back from IKEA again!

Yet another pile of boxes loaded into the car in such a way that she just HAD to have the top down as she drove home.
So far I have made her two cupboards in the new "pantry" just so she now has space for her entertaining crockery and glasses. We have crockery and glasses for use everyday. We also have the unit for the "wedding" china and another unit for the crystal glasses.....
Two CD/DVD racks for storing clear glass jars in the pantry and DVD's in the conservatory.
AND a wardrobe in the new spare bedroom.

It's all the little things that go with it, such as the pingers that means you just press the door and it pings out so you don't need unsightly door knobs.
What did we ever do before IKEA? Oh yes, there was MFI. "He was so drunk that he swayed like an MFI wardrobe," a joke that has been cracked so often that it is still funny even after MFI have closed down.
Remember when Habitat started and that was the "IN" place to go for home furnishings...as long as you wanted it red, white or black.
IKEA, is it here to stay? I hope so. Sweden has given us some wonderful things over the years.

ABBA, well Agnetha in particular.

Volvo. Not always sexy but I know which car I will pray I WOULD have been driving should I ever hit something.

The Swedish Chef. Comic genius.

...but there was also Sven Goran Eriksen........well, no country is perfect.