Trivial Matters

I was almost worried for a second there.

For one world-shattering instant I was worried the human race would have nothing to talk about now that Satan’s Corporal, Simon Cowell, had seen fit to banish the demon ‘Jedward’* from his great money-making con, X-Factor. But no sooner than that news had been digested by a grateful public than along comes Jordan, aka Katie Price (aka useless talentless fame-whore), quitting ‘I’m a celebrity…’. The quoted reason being that she had been picked for the horrible tasks seven times in a row, poor love, almost as if the public was sick of seeing her stupid pointless face on their screens or hearing about her so-obviously stage-managed relationship to the deeply uninteresting, also talentless and most likely gay Peter Andre. However, rumours being touted whispered by those in the know (those preening prophets of pointlessness) suggest this little rage-quit stunt might have been pre-planned all along…

Katie Price yesterday, upon leaving the "I'm a Celebrity..." jungle...

Lord, give me strength! The strength to smite these facile people from our lives and return us to a simpler time of worth and water-cooler gossiping about whether Betty from Accounts is shagging Jim the married middle-manager from Sales. At least with that it’s about people you actually know.

If there’s one thing I really cannot grasp about modern society it’s the endless fascination with the similarly eternal stream of non-stop trivia about our so-called ‘celebrities’, a term which has been diluted so much in recent times it includes anyone who has experienced a series of repeated TV appearances, regardless of the reason. Is it genetic? Is there a gene we can point to that responds to the relentless slurry of celeb gossip and pointless TV punditry like a starving dog suddenly thrown a piece of steak? If so, can we please revisit the idea of selective breeding?

The Adorable 'Jedward' twins in all their glory. Destroy! DESTROY! DESTROYYYY!!!

I do try very hard not to even become aware of such small matters, I really do. I avoid TV as much as possible; I still only have the basic four terrestrial channels – possibly in an effort to stem the tide. I avoid trivial conversations, usually with a shake of the head and much irritated tutting and/or casual swearing under my breath. I don’t buy newspapers. But these topics are so very hard to remain completely oblivious to; you almost seem to absorb facts by osmosis, without any conscious interaction or desire, particularly when everywhere you go there are people babbling on about them: on Facebook, at work, or even on your daily commute.

I had the unfortunate fate to be trapped on a bus journey home from work one night with a student twat* talking on his mobile loudly enough for the entire bus to hear. In the course of his agonisingly long conversation he regaled the surrounding space with his excitable opinions on the value of keeping ‘Jedward’ (nngn) in X-Factor for as long as possible, finishing off with the memorable line:

“It might not be great for the competition but it’s great TV!”

I had the urge, then, to rise and make him physically ingest the entire DVD run of Babylon 5 or, better yet, Battlestar Galactica in an effort to demonstrate exactly what ‘great TV’ actually is. I just don’t understand. Talented Writers, Actors and Artists come together in an incredibly rare and powerful blend of dramatic storytelling genius…but get less popular acclaim than two talentless mooks singing and dancing badly in a poxy ‘talent’ show.

Where is the justice, I ask you? Where?

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*Arrrrgh! Enough with the portmanteau abuse, already! ‘Brangelina’ was an abomination but you can kind of see why it was coined: ‘Brad and Angelina’ is rather clumsy collection of vowels and consonants to deliver repeatedly in a news item. But there’s no excuse whatsoever for the lazy grammatical plagiarism that was ‘Jedward’. How fucking difficult is it to say ‘John and Edward’, for pity’s sake? Must the media reduce EVERYTHING to the level of a single-fucking-digit I.Q??
**To clarify: Not all students are twats. Some are, in fact, very pleasant and a definite boon to society. This particular individual, however, had ‘twat’ written all over him. Or would have if I’d had access to a permanent marker pen.

Samsung N110: Wi-fi and Sound Problems Sorted!

I will fight to my dying breath to avoid being labelled as part of the Samsung netbook “community” (Lest I be grouped alongside those pony-tailed, Jobs-worshipping Mac-addicts) but there seem to be a fair few of us out there owning at least one or more of the popular and crtically-lauded Samsung product line*. This comes in very handy when a problem develops: in most cases there is at least one other person who has experienced the same thing.

Since I purchased my delightful little Samsung N110, ‘Samantha’ to her friends, she’s unfortunately been plagued by two issues that have significantly affected my ability to make use of her in the ways I’d envisioned.

1. The first concerned her sound capabilities. I don’t have any form of music playback equipment anywhere in my home other than my desktop PC which, yes, is capable of some superb sound but sometimes it’s nice to have music playing somewhere other than the small room I laughingly call a ‘Study’. If you have friends round, for example, or even just if you fancy an evening on the sofa with a good book. So my idea was to set up a pair of good, bassy speakers in the lounge and use the Netbook as a portable, programmable music centre. What little music I have (only about 14 gig so far which is nothing compared to some people’s collections) fits easily on her ample 160Gb hard-drive.

Sadly, right from the word go Samantha’s sound card has been popping and cracking whenever I attempted to play anything. So far it’s been bearable for travelling – the volume produced by the device’s own internal speaker isn’t anything to write home about. But when hooked up to good speakers and a mighty woofer…let’s just say I very nearly binned the speakers before the real cuplrit was identified.

However, while attempting to download new sound drivers for her last night directly from the Samsung website, I happened to be idly fiddling with some of her sound settings and noticed that in the Control Panel, in the Sounds and Multimedia Devices applet, the sound acceleration was set to its second setting (the fourth being fully accelerated). Curious, I moved the slider to full and then fired up one of my recent favourite tracks in the mighty Foobar.

Lo and behold, she played smoothly without any of the popping or cracking! I’ve yet to give her a thorough test so this could just have been a fluke, but I’m greatly encouraged so far.

[UPDATE] She played through my whole lunch hour without a pop – job done!

2. I love the idea of Wi-fi. Being able to surf the web from any point in or around your home – who can resist that! But try as I might I could not get Samantha to connect to my wireless router in any way but over a completely unsecured connection, meaning anyone within range could hop on and start using/abusing my precious bandwidth. To me, it was like leaving the front door of my house wide open all day – an open invitation for nefarious types to come on in and do whatever they wanted. I managed, but for peace of mind had to keep switching the wireless capability itself off and on through my desktop PC. Hardly an ideal situation, and one I resolved to sort as soon as possible.

Google wasn’t being particularly helpful though, finding many people suffering from identical issues with similar equipment but providing sweet French Apples in the way of definitive solutions. Some hardy souls had even gone as far as complete reinstalls but I could not bring myself to even consider following their example.

[DIVERSION AHEAD]

I strongly believe that if you have a problem that needs a complete reinstall then a) you shouldn’t be using computers and b) you REALLY shouldn’t be involved in tech support. Advocating a reinstall is like me telling you to solve your problems with home draft exclusion by burning down and rebuilding your house. Granted, reinstalling an operating system can be accomplished in far less time but can often be as damaging to you, via your precious data and settings, as any house fire. There’s an art to solving PC issues (and I mean primarily Windows-based PCs), one that only really requires a little time, patience, some skills with a search engine and the occasional ability to piece together data from different sources into a workable solution. Having some understanding of how Windows and your PCs components operate doesn’t hurt, either. I have most of these, which makes it incredibly maddening when jobbing premium-rate tech support teams all over the world use the burn-your-house-down approach as as blanket response to most issues, including those that may only need a simple patch or registry tweak. A pox on them all, I say!

[END OF DIVERSION]

Back to my Wi-fi issues, some forum-ites had reported success using a simple driver update, and had posted a link to the driver in question. Swapping out drivers is usually the best place to start for hardware issues (if you’ve exhausted fiddling with the available software settings) so I decided to give it a go, despite some other forum-ites saying it did nothing for them.

The Atheros wifi driver setup opened and gave me an option to consider – did I want the driver-only install, or something callled driverACU? Google told me the ACU part was most likely the Atheros Client Utility and suggested it had something to do with greater control over the connections, making it the better choice in this instance. What big-G didn’t tell me was that the ACU would take-over control from Windows: I thought they’d work in tandem. Having just got used to the slightly fudgy way Windows managed the connections I now had to spend a few minutes investigating this new software. But hey, I’m a geek: stuff like this is my bread and butter, baby!

Happily, the ACU seemed fairly easy to understand while also lending itself to more easily handle more complex wifi setups than the one I was trying to use. And within a few moments of me typing in my new WPA passkey for the most secure connection my router could handle, the software had smartly established a solid wireless connection to the internet! Hurrah!

Finally, home entertainment in the Grunt Cave enters the 21st century!

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*Just leave the money in the usual account, thanks, Samsung.

Love is Terrible

Love is a terrible thing.

Beautiful, wonderful and magical, certainly…but also terrible. It wreaks havoc on the ol’ grey matter; a bright, burning flame devouring all ability to concentrate or focus on anything for long…anything, that is, except the shining glorious radiance that is my beloved,

Thus emerges the reason for Grunt’s most recent dry spell, thankfully curtailed at only a week. To spare you all the sight of a grown man reduced to a hormonal, poetry-spouting, obsessive teenager, my internal editor (Hello! – Ed) and I agreed that we’d keep as much romantic gushing out of these fair pages as was possible, having come to the not-unreasonable conclusion that the only people who enjoy all that gooey lovey-dovey-ness are the two people involved, everyone else being tempted to evacuate the contents of their stomachs and flee the area (not necessarily in that order).

We’ve tried to maintain some semblance of blogging activity, we really have, but not with much success so far; all the posts I’ve tried to write recently have died pitiful, whimpering deaths due to lack of focus and/or willpower, besieged on all sides by the joys of textual intercourse and blissful, soft-focus reveries.

[happy sigh].

I’ve got it bad. Real bad. Oh so bad. Every waking moment right now is lived in the larger context of my new lady love. Shopping for food? Oo – Michelle and I shopped for food when we were in Coldstream together! [happy sigh] Plodding away at work? Oo – I’ve booked time off so when Michelle comes to visit I can spend more time with her! [happy giggle] Lying in bed at night? OoooOOoOooo…Michelle! [Happy, er, happiness]

You get the idea. [Sounds of a reader being violently sick] Sorry, Mum.

Therefore as of now, in a desperate effort to at least keep one foot anchored to the real world, we (Hello again! -Ed) here at The Grunt Cave solemnly promise to try and remain rational and writerly long enough in each day to keep posting Grunty posts – human noise, presented unapologetically – in the possibly vain hope of staying as close to business as usual as my rampant romantic addiction will allow.

Here’s hoping, anyway.

Falling Headlong

• How do you describe the most wonderful weekend of 2009 to date?
• How do you avoid the numerous stale clichés abound in the story of two people falling headlong for each other, stories that have been written a million times before in a million different ways?
• How can simple words encapsulate the joy, the affection, the laughter, the simple pleasure of two fully-clothed bodies embracing, the pure happiness of being completely appreciated in every conceivable way?
• How can one bend language to fully express every bliss-filled nuance of indescribable carnal pleasure?
• How can these simple groupings of roman-alphabetical characters, arranged according to semi-fluid grammatical rules, possibly hope to capture the feeling of finding something you didn’t consciously realise you’ve been waiting your entire life for?

My god, how??

Detailing the journey was easy. Linear chronology always is. The same approach applied to a romantic relationship, however? No, no that won’t work at all. I could talk about every event, every detail…but in the context of the whole none of it really matters.

All that matters is me…and her.

Us.

I could talk about her dog, Bracken, and how he went from cowering, barking sentinel to my personal best friend in the space of five minutes, shocking Michelle in the process…I could talk about the fabulously chilled and cosy home-cooked meal on the Saturday night, where I learned the stupendously simple recipe behind one of my favourite Italian meals, the Carbonara…I could talk about walking together to visit the graveside of my deceased adopted gran and the simple, emotionally-charged picnic we shared there…I could talk about the incredibly easy rapport we shared, seemingly started across the internet but obviously originating from a place far deeper and more fundamental…I could even mention the comments from clients Michelle received once they laid eyes on her happy glow…

…the wine…the music…the sex…the castle…Top Gear…the sex…Elephants…Nun’s Walk…farts disguised as mobile phones…the sex…(I cannot tell a lie, there was some rather amazing sex)

…but in the end, all of it is merely wrapping. Window dressing on the simple, delightful fact of two souls coming together in shared harmony to create a musical blend all their own.

Far from being too early, the horrible mis-step we feared it might be, our weekend together was a vindication of every undeniable instinct screaming at us to release the brakes and flow with the warm, raging waters. Rationality be damned! This is the language of the heart, of the soul, where time, fear, separation and even individual identity are merely illusions designed to keep us from experiencing our true Self.

Ok, I’m getting a touch melodramatic now, but I think – I hope – you all understand where the impulse is coming from. Don’t worry, I think I’m done gushing for the moment.

But before I go…a piece of fabulous news.

She’s coming up to see me for four days in December -  squeeeeeeee!

Meeting Michelle – The Journey Down

(NB: The following monster post was written over three days, so if my tenses seem confused that’s the reason. Enjoy!)

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So here it is. The big day (nearly).

As soon as I finish work at 5pm that’s me officially on my way down to meet with Michelle. My train was booked for 18:16, but thanks to the floods causing a landslide between here and Montrose we unlucky travellers now have to bus that part of the journey. Unfortunately this adds 30 minutes to my journey down to Edinburgh, which completely overshoots my connection: the last train of the day down to Berwick-upon-Tweed.

Thankfully I foresaw this little eventuality and planned accordingly. Hurrah!

My brother lives in Edinburgh, not far from Waverley train station, so I’ve asked to camp on his floor for the night. I’ve also booked one of the first trains down from Edinburgh to Berwick where Michelle’s primed to pick me up and take me into Coldstream. Missing that train means I’m basically losing a night at her house. But considering we haven’t yet met as adults I doubt I’d have been missing anything too spectacular.

At least that’s what I have to keep telling myself, anyway. Sigh.

At work today quite literally all I can think about is our upcoming meeting. I have a gamut of daily tasks to run through that today are taking three to fours times as long, my concentration having packed it’s own bags and left for destinations unknown. Adding to the sense of anticipation, of something momentous approaching upon the horizon, our bosses are away at a meeting in Dundee so as well as the usual Friday feeling (TFI…) we feel like kids without grown-ups too. There’s been a pronounced up-swing in crazy banter and horseplay, a testament to suddenly being free of the cloud of authority and responsibility our [glorious] Team Leader casts about her. Two of my colleagues felt so liberated they even disappeared for an hour at lunch to a local public house although they are adhering mightily to their stories of non-alcoholism and protestations of faintly-injured innocence.

The hour fast approaches (and I’m running out of time to continue typing) so I’d best be off. Only 3 hours of work to survive until I can start travelling in earnest. Only 2 hours 59 minutes to go until I can start travelling in earnest. Only 2 hours 58 minutes and thirty seconds to go…

PART TWO: Run, Forrest! RUN!

Holy SHIT! That was so CLOSE!

I’m finally on the train I need to be on but MY GOD it was a close run thing getting there. ‘By the skin of my teeth’ as the saying goes.

And I owe it to my friend, Suzanne. She texted me shortly before 4 o clock saying she’d managed to get a train from Aberdeen to Glasgow which hugely confused me – how could trains be running to Glasgow?? Wouldn’t they have to go past the bits on train that seem to require buses for Edinburgh?? What was going on here?

So I phoned the rail serviceline directly. They told me that because of the disruption, and them basically cancelling my old train to make a new emergency timetable, my ticket was valid on ANY train down to Edinburgh that day.  And if I caught one heading down to Glagsow at 17:21 and changed at Dundee I could reunite with my original train on the Dundee to Edinburgh portion of the journey! This was enormously exciting news; I could make my connection and be in the Borders tonight instead of tomorrow!

I left work half an hour early, after begging/horse-trading with my absentee boss via email for the privilege. This gave me just under an hour to travel 2.5 miles to the rail station. All I needed was a handy service bus, the number 3 being the perfect candidate…

Of course, Aberdeen on a Friday night during the expanded rush hour is a hellish time to catch a bus, everyone trying to head home early to avoid the crush but only creating an earlier one instead. I waited at a bus stop. And waited. And waited…until thankfully a bus came trundling down the road and stopped. This wasn’t the number 3, however, but a 117 run by another bus company from the one I was looking for. Sensing an opportunity I quickly jumped on to quiz the driver: was he heading to the station? He replied in the affirmative so I gratefully took my seat.

Only to feel my heart climb into my mouth as he turned off the most direct route to the station and start meandering along another path, heading east through the city. To make it worse, the route took us smack-bang into the worst of the traffic. We sat there for ten whole excrutiating minutes, moving only a few feet at a time, and I could see my chances of getting the correct train diminishing with every agonising second.

The bus finally started heading on a parallel course to the one I was supposed to be on, but looking ahead I could see he was going to head in completely the wrong direction. I had to get off. So get off I did at the very next opportunity.

It was pouring with rain when I got off. I had about a mile and a half to travel to reach the station, and only 25 minutes left in which to do it. All I could do was run and hope my deeply unfit body didn’t collapse dead from the strain,

Running isn’t a natural state of being for me. It stresses me horribly. I love the idea of it but my poor old body has never been up to the task, even when I was young. But to see me running my heart out, splashing my way through piles of leaves and huge dark puddles that I was through before I’d even realised were there, coughing and wheezing like a steam engine gone wrong…well, you’d probably have cheered. Or laughed. Depends on who you are, really. The point is I was giving it everything I had in me to give.

I made it to the station, soaked through, breathing dangerously hard and sweating rivers of my own inside my fleece jacket…with roughly ten minutes to spare.

The guys at the bus stop were clueless, but helpfully suggested I go to the main terminal to inquire at the information centre. The information centre was – as you might expect – also hellishly busy, with a long, slow-moving queue, being held up by people at the desks who apparently needed to aske every question imaginable before they were satisfied. I waited for a precious, nerve-wracking minute or two before I heard a fairly loud ‘bugger this’ (possibly from my own lips, but I can’t be sure) and I ran out electing to try the guys at the security barrier. The man at the train barrier saved my bacon. The 17:21 train was right there in front of me and in the last stages of boarding – this being 17:20 -  and he kindly let me through the barrier JUST in time for me to squeeze myself  into one of the standing-room only carriages before it departed.

Dear LORD, that was close!

PART THREE: Edinburgh-Bound

It’s amazing the people you meet while travelling.

The Glasgow-bound train looked packed from the outside, an  impression soon confirmed when I reached the doors. I had to fight through a throng of people clustered between carriages like so many sheep in a pen. There were no seats available but it seemed obvious to me that instead of sardining ourselves here by the doors (to fit any newcomers in we were going to have to start stacking vertically) one or more of us could spread up into the relative freedom of the carriageway. I elected to lead the way, my canny Scots cunning promising me the additional bonus of being first in line for any vacated seats. It’s that kind of thinking that elevates me above the common herd. Baaaaaaaa.

Still, even at the edge of that intimate little space I was keenly aware of how amazingly hot and sweaty I was from all the running; There was no way around it that I could see but to start engaging people in conversation in the of-vanity hope of distracting them from the gleaming rivulets cascading down from my temples. Thankfully the disruption had provoked a little of that plucky blitz spirit we British are so reknowned for (second only to having a good moan). There’s nothing like a little shared adversity to loosen tongues.

My immediate neighbour was an older woman who possesed what sounded very much like a County Durham accent. Think Newcastle/Geordie, but softer and more melodic. It brought a little lump to my throat as this is what my adopted granny who had just passed away had sounded like, making her the natural choice for a conversation. As the train moved out of Aberdeen we began sharing our stories: me fighting my way south for a romantic encounter, she heading to Edinburgh for a champagne weekend with a large group of old college friends. Her name was Anne, and she very quickly became the tonic I needed to soothe my anxious nerves on such a fraught trip. Passing Stonehaven within quarter of an hour, we secured seats (woohoo!) and in no time at all reached Dundee, where we were to change on to the train for Edinburgh.

Here’s where we give Scotrail a kicking. In times of emergency the one thing people crave is information. The things we don’t need are: to get off a train to find no signs or people waiting for us: to look at the laregly confusing travel board to find our supposed connection missing or to query the only member of staff available to find him completely clueless about station operations apart fromone horrifying fact – the train we were looking for hadn’t been cancelled! One smart blonde lady, of professional appearance and a somewhat frosty manner, quickly became our de facto leader when she demanded to know where the Supervisor’s office was, then, having been told, crisply turned on her heels and headed in that direction for a showdown. During the conversation with the underling she had mentioned needing to connect to the York train, the very same train I needed so desperately, so for that few minutes I was at her back, her faithful and, if needs be, menacing right hand. Go blonde lady, go!

It turns out the underling, and us in turn, had fallen victim to digital gremlins. The board itself had simply decided to remove the entry for our train, on something of a whim, apparently, the Supervisor jovially informed us, and had only just been rectified. Our train was running and, more importantly, was bang on time to collect us. All very well and good, I thought, but why did we have to come and confront you to find this out?!? Simply placing an official looking man on the platform, possibly with a clipboard and whistle, with all the relevant information for anyone to query would have made all the difference, and would avoid angering professional blonde ladies or their devoted right hand men. Rage against the dying of the light of common sense, people!

It was here that Anne invited me to the tiny station bar for a drink, where we shamelessly jumped the queue, ordered Jack Daniels and a Becks, despaired at the poor stock situation (Anne had wanted a Gin and Tonic but was forced to settle for the bottled beer) and then spent an agreeable half hour putting the United Kingdom in its place somewhere near the bottom of the global league table of nations, comparing particularly unfavourably to our forward-thinking, humanist European neighbours.

Our connecting train soon arrived. Anne and I had no problems finding seats on this one, taking a table opposite a man who I swear was the turkish equivalent of Dom Jolly, but we forgave him this as he possessed a razor thin – and therefore incredibly beautiful – laptop. I decided to whip out my own incredibly beautiful netbook, the adorable Samantha, and passed the next hour or so showing off Michelle, my trip to France for the wedding, and conversing with Anne on all manner of topics. Amusingly, I think the lone Becks had gone to her head: she seemed far chattier than when we’d been in the bar! We reached Edinburgh far too soon but, as my suddenly jangling nerves attested, only just in time to make the connection to Berwick. I said my goodbyes as warmly as I could given the sudden uptick in tension but even so started running again as soon as the train stopped and my feet hit the concrete of Edinburgh Waverley.

Praise the heavens, the York train hadn’t arrived yet! A large crowd milled around on the platform as I screeched to a halt, relief and excitement coming off me in paplable waves (I narrowly missed knocking over a small child were it not for some nimble footwork – I’ll try harder next time). The train duly arrived, showing all the urgeny of a dead sloth and again I sprinted, weaving in and out of the assembled throng like Trinity on her motorcycle from that amazing highway scene in Matrix Reloaded; not a word of a lie, I could feel time and the universe slowing to allow me passage.

But then, the kicker. Sheer bloody-minded irony hefting a boot into my groin with all the subtelty of Johnny Vegas in a pie shop. As we took our seats – mine next to a startingly attractive young brunette student from Aberdeen with alarmingly bad breath – the train driver informed us…(waitforit)…that due to the disruptions…(this is going to be good, I assure you)…the train I had nearly ruptured myself trying to reach….(oh god, you’e not going to belive this)…was now going to spend 45 MINUTES SITTING IN WAVERLY WHILE IT WAITED FOR…(yep, you’ve guessed it)….CONNECTIONS FROM ABER-FECKING-DEEN. Meaning, for those blind readers who’ve not yet put 2 and 2 together, that I could have caught the later train, not left work early, not run 1.5 miles in the rain after getting the wrong bus, not stressed my box waiting in Dundee, and still have arrived in Edinburgh in time to make the damned York train to Berwick-upon-Tweed to meet Michelle!

THIS is why Network rail deserve the biggest kicking imaginable. Knowing this simple little fact would have made all the difference and saved me the hassle of priming my brother for floor-space for the night and buying another ticket to Berwick for the Saturday morning. Not to mention the panicked heroics trying to get the damned train in the first place!

PART FOUR: Michelle

Berwick-upon-Tweed was bitterly cold. The temperature had dropped several degress while in transit upon the train I can barely recall due to an enormous, overwhelming anticipation eclisping every thought in my head. The cold, however, cut through this mental fog as it penetrated right into my bones while I stood awaiting Michelle outside the train station.

She had wanted to be there to meet me but the delay to the train and O2‘s lackadaisical approach to SMS messaging meant she didn’t realise I was going to reach Berwick until I was only 20 minutes away. She was having a quick cuppa with a neighbour to steady her nerves when my reply to her message finally arrived. I’m told she screeched and practically ran out of the house in her panic.

So I waited.

But not for long. Soon a silver estate car pulled up in the pick-up bay, the passenger-side window wound down and a dimly-lit blonde grinned in my direction. My response, which will surely take its place among the hallowed pantheon of all-time smoothest greetings, was a playful “‘ullo, dar-lin’. Come ‘ere often?”(in its original cockney accent, naturally). Feeling my own face grinning entirely of its own accord, I climbed into the car with nothing but romance in mind and a surge of joy in my heart warm enough to heat the entire solar system.

…and I’ll tell you all how THAT went down in the very next post! See ya next time!

R.I.P Jean

A very sombre post today. Someone important to my life has passed away,

Growing up in Coldstream, in our big house on the main street, our neighbours across the road, an elderley couple in their late 70s, early 80s, soon formed a strong friendship with my mother, she being the only adult in the house for long periods of time while my father was away at sea. Sadly, Jean’s husband, Bill, died shortly after our arrival (but not before teaching my mother how to drive) leaving only Jean to rattle around in their similarly huge old house. After that, Jean practically became family: our adopted grandmother.

Our family didn’t have the best luck when it came to our blood relatives. My maternal grandmother had died under mysterious circumstances when my own mother was only three years old. My grandad was a terrifyingly creepy paranoid-schizophrenic (never officially diagnosed, and therefore never treated, but undisputable to those who knew him best), the bane of his five long-suffering children. On my father’s side my grandmother had throughly disapproved of his marriage to my mother and wasted no opportunities expressing bile and venom throughout the long years until her death, up to and including some shocking racism: she sent a toy monkey to the birth of my younger brother after she’d heard about the pinch of Indian blood flowing through our family. The implication was not lost on anyone. Her husband, not my father’s actual father but everyone treated him like one, including my Dad, was the friendliest of the bunch by a country mile but suffered from acute bouts of alcoholism making him somewhat unnapproachable, bouts that only intensified after gran Isobel died.

All of them have passed now, in most cases a blessed relief to those left behind. (NB: You should only speak well of those dead who deserved that honour in life – superstition be damned.)

Knowing this, you’ll perhaps understand why we took Jean to our hearts so very quickly. The kindly, sweet old lady who would baby-sit us four boisterous boys, bake us treats, and always had time to listen to our stories. She was something of a salve for my poor mother, too; handy adult company during the long months of my father’s absence.

Jean lived to a grand old age, reaching 100 as of April this year, but passed sometime earlier this week. The funeral was yesterday but we only found out about her death this morning. Sadly, when we’d moved out of Coldstream back in 1989, the intervening years had seen communications dwindle down to a cursory card every christmas, although my mother would pen the occasional letter. If not for Michelle texting me this morning, we may never have found out until it was far too late.

She was the life and soul of Coldstream for many a year, active with the church and supremely reliable in her posiiton as cornerstone of the town’s gossip network. So very full of life and love, and a talented pianist, she could often be found playing tunes “for the old folks”, as she called them, in the local retirement home, the joke here being she herself was often ten to twenty years older than many of the residents!

She also adored cats. Not in the scary old lady way but with a real passion: over the years my mother must have showered her with all sorts of cat-themed trinkets, each and every one gratefully received and given pride of place around her home. Her big ginger tom was a collosal monster of a thing, larger than many dogs, but was loved like no cat before or since.

God bless you, Jean, for bringing such joy and love and light into the brief, pain-filled little lives of everyone around you.

You will be sorely missed.

Romantic Interlude

The miracle of the Internet is that it connects people. Thanks to social networks and other websites, such as Friendsreunited, people who may have been out of touch for many years, for whatever reason, now have a way to defy their geographical confinement. Thanks to Facebook I now have several friends from my old home town in the Scottish borders that I would never have located any other way, let alone been able to converse with them. This is where I found, quite unexpectedly, my prospective new lady…

Michelle and I went to the same Primary school, although with her being two years below me any interaction between us at that point would have been minimal, if at all. A passing hello in the playground, if that. Her brother, Lee, was in my year though: Lee and I share a unique fact in that we both started out at a different primary school from the one we eventually ended up in: our very first school year was shared in a tiny little school five miles down the road from where I lived (a mere 30 pupils covering primaries 1 to 7). When we met again in primary 7, at the tender age of 11, I might have been dimly aware at the time that he had a sister. I had no idea they had a younger brother. So what happened when Michelle and I started chatting on Facebook was probably understandable, if not entirely excusable.

I mistook her for someone else! [gasp!]

There was another Michelle, from my year, who I was keen to reconnect with. Sadly, my time-ravaged memory couldn’t remember her surname with any definite clarity. I had a vague notion of what it was, but when a Michelle popped up on someone’s friends list looking faintly familiar and with a different surname I simply assumed she’d married (and…er…dyed her ginger hair. Yeah, ok, I’m an idiot), something that seems to have befallen most of the girls I knew from back then. Being a friendly sort I chatted away quite amiably to this Michelle whenever we happened to find ourselves online. It took me a whole two weeks to discover my mistake (I think Michelle herself mentioned I might have got my wires crossed, bless her) but it turns out I may have picked the right one after all; when I finally got in touch with the other Michelle, the one I’d originally been looking for, we conversed once or twice, then, not finding much in common, lapsed into an awkward, uncertain silence that has lasted to this day.

Meanwhile, Michelle (the first) and I were finding all sorts of things in common.

That’s actually understating the situation by a large degree. Michelle and I seem to have been created from almost exactly the same mould (apart from the obvious physical gender differences). The similarities are so uncanny they’ve spooked us both many times. For instance, I am a proud Introvert. Discovering that about myself two or three years ago was a watershed moment in my life, a genuine epiphany: the difference between thinking I was a broken, malfunctioning example of humanity to understanding I was simply a rarer type of personality. Michelle is the same, she tells me, and has gained a similar strength from knowing there is at least one other person out there who is just like her. We’re eerily alike in lots of other ways, too, leading to certain suspicions regarding the fidelity of our parents and/or clandestine cloning procedures.

By now it was starting to become obvious that there was more going on between us than simple mutual appreciation. Michelle admitted she’d had a wee crush on me back in Primary. She even admitted to stealing one of my erasers – Lee had borrowed it from me during the school day and had inadvertently gone home with it, where Michelle then pounced (how she knew it was mine I have no idea). I can only imagine my 11-year old self asking him for it back the next day, being given a mystified half-apology (It wasn’t Lee’s fault after all), and my subsequent irritation!

Shortly after this Michelle went further, rather bravely (but I suspect she knew inside that the tiny risk was going to be more than worth it) and admitted to still holding an attraction towards me. It was the work of a moment’s thought to admit that I held similar feelings towards her. The reality of that admission was inescapable: I surprised myself by being able to clearly feel the pull, the special gravity whirling in my chest for her. Could it be that after all these years of mixed messages, fevered analysis and internal struggle, my ‘broken’ heart was finally coming alive again? Or hadn’t been broken after all but simply awaiting the correct moment to speak up?

I’ve yet to receive an answer to this but the signs are…good.

In the weeks that followed Michelle and I became very good at sharing ourselves over the internet, strengthening our connection. During my horrendously stressful trip to France for my mate’s wedding I was able to still keep in touch using the hotel’s free WI-fi (pronounced ‘whiffy’ over there, lol) and was incredibly grateful to have Michelle’s support and encouragement throughout, in addition to that given by the  friends there with me in France. Her contribution to my enjoyment of that week cannot be overstated. In fact I was enjoying her companionship so much that when we returned to the idea of meeting up I actually booked train tickets while still on my way home from France! The HUMONGOUS first meeting of our adult selves is scheduled for this coming Friday, assuming of course that Monday’s flood damage to the rail line is fixed in time to restore normal service.

I’m looking forward to it tremendously. When I say I “can’t wait” I mean it almost literally, for in my chest as I write these very words is an insistent pull towards her that knows it is being made to wait, and cannot bear the distance in the meantime. Every reader out there presumably has reached a conclusion as to what is happening to us both but, as crazy as this is going to sound, I am reluctant to start pinning labels on these incredibly vibrant and chromatic feelings just yet. The danger of getting hurt looms large, and the distance problem is not one that will be solved in the near future, so a certain caution is not only understandable but also highly recommended from a rational perspective. But oh how I long to stop being so bloody rational!

Assuming all goes well I’ll report my experiences here next week. Wish me/us luck!

Remember Remember what rhymes with November

Monday the second of November opened with no less than two flooding related events hitting the Breakfast news. The first concerned the launch of SMOS (Soil Moisture and Ocean Salinity), a weather satellite dedicated to scouring our planet for signs of flooding – a three year trial that if successful could lead to a small cluster of such satellites providing early warning for us all, particularly in our scary, globally-warmed future. Very cool.

The second was much closer to home. Parts of Aberdeenshire succumbed to yesterday’s deluge of rain and high winds with several rivers and flood-plains bursting into flood, including the nearby town of Stonehaven and the further away town of Huntly, up north on the Elgin/Inverness road. I know some people in Stonehaven and can only hope they live in the higher areas. Well, most of them. I hope at least one of them is swimming to work this morning.

Don’t look at me like that. I’m allowed to be uncharitable when the person in question has been uncharitable to me first.

Traffic and transport links have also been affected. Several roads in the Stonehaven area have been closed. As have the rail links between Aberdeen and Edinburgh. As I passed the station this morning they had been forced to break out bus services as a replacement for their unfortunate travellers. Here’s hoping the chaos has cleared in time for my own trip down to the Borders on Friday.

While the city of Aberdeen  itself seems to have escaped any serious consequences I can sensationally confirm several of our sewerage systems have blocked leading to some admirably large puddles along our kerbs, and the River Dee has swollen to a raging, rushing, muddy tea-coloured thing, threatening to bring down any bridges it encounters. I shouted a stern warning to it this morning not to bring down the charming footbridge I use to get home. My only reply was glaring, gurgling silence.

On a more personal vein I have finally started tackling the mess I created before I left for France on the 21st. Since coming home I’ve just been so very tired I’ve had no energy or will to deal with even the most basic tasks beyond feeding myself. I had plans – oh so many plans – to use the weekend to sort things out but when it came to it I subconsciously settled into a two day sloth-like period of intense hermitage instead.

Saturday evening passed without incident by way of spoiled children mooching chocolate and other treats. I used to suffer visitations in the past but in recent years have been trying hard to become the miserable old git of the street. You know, the one who hates children simply for having been born, barks at religious callers (often literally) and launches Betabuy catalogues right back at the unfortunates who attempt to deliver them. The garden’s current state of unkempt wilderness, which most days makes me sob heavy man tears, no doubt served to reinforce this impression, as did the poorly paint-stripped front door. At one point I heard a troop of beggar-lings chattering up the middle stairs to bother my upstairs neighbours (Hah, take that!) but I was left in peace, glorious peace. Mr Badger would have been proud*.

I surprised myself by sleeping for nearly ten solid hours on the Saturday night, straight through instead of my usual wake-up(s) in the early hours: definitely a sign of need. But this morning I threw myself into cleaning the lounge and emptying the bulky travel bag thing of all my clothes, tools and lingering odours. This made me feel lots better. As a general rule, as long as at least one of the habitable areas in my home is clean and tidy* I feel good about being home.

This evening I’ll do some laundry and tidy the kitchen. Baby steps…

Looking ahead, November looks to be quite a busy month already. I’ve a trip to the borders this weekend to visit someone who might possibly become my new special lady. That’s what the trip is about, in fact; seeing if our online connection has any real basis or indeed future in person. If it goes well there’s a good chance she may repay the favour and visit me here in Aberdeen  within the next month. There’s a big post coming about all this before Friday so stay posted.

Next weekend has a birthday party in the god-forsaken town of Montrose* that promises to tax our endurance and alcoholic stamina to their limits…and beyond. This happens to coincide with the birthday of my geek-sister, the honeymonkey, so goodness knows what frivolity will be forthcoming for that event.

The weekend after that sees honeymonkey’s sister celebrating her own birth (February must be a good time for those parents)….and to top it all off, there’s that seasonal holiday to rule them all looming upon the far horizon but closing in at a frightening rate. Yes, Christmas is coming, geese are growing dangerously obese, and the fat bearded man is preparing to visit children’s bedrooms hoping to give them something nice from his old, leathery sack. For me, it’s now time to start planning and buying presents and arranging a squadron of festive notifications for friends and family. Buying in some Christmas fare might be a good idea, too, until I decide whether or not I’m spending the big day blissfully alone at home or will choose to suffer another family do up at my parent’s.

Lastly, before I finish this and get back to some actual work (heh) I want to say that I’m still not enjoying my new job, even after 7 weeks or so in it. A gruesome combination of me being in the wrong place, with the wrong people, in the wrong line of work, I’m afraid. I’m currently hoping to survive it until after Christmas but am not enjoying the cold sullen reluctance I feel in the pit of my stomach every morning. There’s a security screening deadline coming up that, if uncompleted, may see me ejected from my position without so much as a handshake; this morning I was considering letting that happen. But in the current climate I’d best have something to replace it with. Perhaps amongst all the other things happening this month I’ll find time to scout out something better…

Keep hearty, folks. ‘Til next time, this is Grunt heading back to his cave for a snooze.

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*I played Badger in a school production of Wind in the Willows. Not to blow my own trumpet but the character (and by extension, myself) was very well received. I was still being recognised years later after I moved to Aberdeen  – my 15 minutes of fame!

*My Bathroom is usually very clean, particularly after the redecoration, but is not what I class as habitable, apart from those lovely long relaxing bath times and any extended bowel movements that call for a plentiful supply of reading material.

*(Seen on recent tourist information listings) “Montrose: there’s nothing to do here but shag, drink and go insane.”

Frogs Dont Grunt (Unless you step on ‘em)

HoooAH! Grunt make big return! Grunt go to Land-of-Frogs! Grunt have good time! Grunt Eat! Grunt Drink! Grunt Eat and Drink again, and more times! Grunt see Land-of-frog things and pretty caves! Grunt come home! Grunt tired, but go back to daily toil! Grunt panic at hundreds of paintings and think-records he need to post!! HooAH!

[ahem]

Hello, everyone! It’s me, back from France! You’re probably wondering where all the juicy snapshots are and where the inspired, flowing prose is. Well…er…

I did try to write a daily record of my trip to France, honest. That’s what I bought the funcy* Netbook for, after all*. Oh, silly silly me. I only got halfway through day two before I realised I’d actually need to stop writing and enjoy myself if I was going to have anything to write about. Then events started moving so quickly that opportunities to write swiftly got lost in the blur. And now here I am. Maintenant, je suis ici*. Home, back on my beloved Natalie, with a head full of memories, 4Gb of photos on my USB stick (harvested from several different cameras via the magic of digital technology) and no energy to even start dealing with it all!

To make matters more complicated I have another…distraction…in the form of a relationship that has crept up on me so swiftly but has made such a profound impact in such a short space of time that it actually has me worried. Ok, not worried exactly. Concerned. Cautious. But, my god, more alive than I have felt in such a long time! She’s become something of a time-sink, hours can go by with me just gazing at her Facebook pictures…yeah, ok, maybe not hours, but we’re communicating regularly by Facebook chat (my chat experience greatly enhanced by the amazingly cute Pidgin, plug plug facebook-plugin plug) and sending blizzards of texts each day.

We’re even going to meet up in eight days time to see if these strong, insistent feelings we both share have any real weight to them. So far this shared attraction has been like clinging to the back of a charging white horse…one that’s somehow started moving at lightspeed.

So much to talk about, so little time. Time to get myself that clone I’m always joking about! I‘m hoping this coming Sunday will give me time enough to do a huge “Vive La France!” post-wedding post, but my garden is also screaming for attention so if this bizarre October heatwave continues I may take advantage before winter’s cruel teeth arrive to thwart me. I would also like to make proper introductions to my embryonic possible-romance at some point, too, so watch out for that. It’ll be easy to spot: just look for the simpering purple prose and teen angst dressed as mature contemplation.

Be there or be Rhombicuboctahedron.

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*A portmanteu of the words ‘Fancy’ and ‘Fun’. My own creation. Copyright pending.

*Did I even tell you about Samantha,  the newest addition to my digital family? Oh god, I’m losing the plot altogether…!

*Yeah, I’m still translating English into French in my head. Can’t seem to switch it off. It really spooked me when I started hearing English words AS French, though that seems to have stopped now, thank les cieux…..aaaaaaaaaaaah!

Wedding a la Francais

Weddings.‭ ‬They’re happy things,‭ ‬aren’t they‭? ‬And I just happen to have one in mind‭; ‬the upcoming wedding of Samwise Gamgee to the beautiful Rosie*!

Samwise,‭ ‬one of my best mates,‭ ‬a bloke from the wrong side of the border who lived with me for a time back in the dim and distant past,‭ ‬expatriated himself to the wonders of Paris,‭ France, ‬ooh,‭ ‬about fouryears ago now, unable to cope with my leaving dirty dishes everywhere.‭ ‬We were all glowing bright viridian with envy but didn’t begrudge him his decision one iota.‭ ‬If anyone deserved to escape AberMordor,‭ ‬it was him,‭ ‬for even despite the unfortunate,‭ ‬inescapable affliction of his nationality‭ (‬hint:‭ ‬he likes cricket and copious cups of tea‭) ‬we loved every cell and bone in his unique,‭ ‬gazelle-like body.‭ ‬And do still.

My friend Samwise. He once knocked a pub light-fitting off a wall WITH HIS ASS. GODLIKE!

He arrived in‭ ‬Paris not knowing a word of the language beyond some terribly-accented Monty Python quotes featuring elderberries.‭ ‬He struggled along for six months using his native tongue before his employers‭ ‬-‭ ‬possibly in a fit of Gallic pride‭ ‬-‭ ‬decided to provide a language tutor to scrub the heathen vowels from his tongue.‭ ‬Little did they know that this fateful decision was to provide benefits beyond those initially contracted.

Nooooooo! Don't do it, Rosie! Don't marry him! He's a FOOL!

After two months of his tutor’s gentle ministrations he plucked up the courage to ask her out‭ “‬to coffee‭”‬,‭ ‬linguistic errors – of course -‭ ‬being utterly charming in the early stages of a romance;‭ ‬Rosie agreed‭ to the date (‬it is told she can spot an idiot when she sees one,‭ ‬but she chose Sam anyway‭)‬,‭ ‬and it was only the blink of an eye before they made their own cosy little nest in the heart of Hobbiton.‭ ‬Paris.‭ ‬I meant‭ ‬Paris.‭ (Methinks the LOTR metaphor has gone far enough…)‬ They even got themselves a cat,‭ ‬the beautiful white Moon,‭ ‬which was taken as nothing less than an omen by all their friends who,‭ ‬in gleeful exchanges of knowing winks and suggestive leers,‭ ‬believed this relationship one of the lucky ones that had further blooming yet to do.‭

After nimbly foiling all our best guesses as to the likely date of engagement,‭ ‬Samwise‭ (‬or‭ ‘‬Samoise‭’‬,‭ ‬as I like to call him nowadays‭*) ‬and Rosie duly announced their wedding earlier this year,‭ ‬prompting much rejoicing from their friends still trapped in the UK:‭ “‬Holiday in France‭ – ‬woohoo‭!”

However, none of us realised how much of a holiday this was going to be.‭ ‬For a start the wedding won’t be in‭ ‬Paris itself,‭ ‬where they live,‭ ‬but further south in a small town called‭ ‬Angers‭ (‬on-jay‭)‬.‭ ‬In a move that is pure Samwise he’s decided not to rush off straight after the wedding for a hot and sweaty honeymoon in‭ ‬Bali,‭ ‬but to hang around and spend time with the legions of family and friends who will be in attendance for another few days.‭ ‬To this end he’s booked nearly all of‭ ‬Angers for the event.

To say my friends and I are looking forward to the event is understatement TIMES INFINITY. My two female geek partners-in-crime are going, along with my younger brother. We have a week in a beautiful French town, itself located in a prime wine-growing region – muahahahaha – with Sam and Rosie to keep us company. It’s going to be BLISS.

I, as your trusty internet journalist, will be taking along my new Netbook and digital camera so you can expect plenty of photgraphs, possibly on a daily basis if the hotel I’m booked into has Wifi. Or maybe I’ll wait until the end of the week as I’ll be having so much fun.

I fly out on Oct 21st. The countdown begins now…

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1. Ah, but not the Tolkein characters of LOTR legend,‭ ‬friends.‭ ‬No,‭ ‬that would be daft.‭ ‬Thanks to some LOTR tomfoolery around the time of the first film the person in question inherited a nickname very similar to Samwise,‭ ‬along with the accompanying surname.‭ ‬For reasons of privacy I won’t name my friends online so the charming romance and marriage between Tolkien’s fictional characters,‭ ‬depicted so sweetly at the end of Peter Jackson’s Return of the King,‭ ‬serves as a most apt disguise.

2. Ref: ‘Shitty City’

3. Ho Ho! He’s in‭ ‬France.‭ ‘‬Samoise’ sounds more French,‭ ‬non‭? ‬Oh,‭ ‬please yourselves‭…