Grinning

I started at Openreach today!

Those with sharper memories will recall I was supposed to start yesterday but Grunty is a silly billy sometimes and thought that because he’d heard nothing from either Telent or Openreach since Thursday he wouldn’t assume anything, and would instead email to make sure everything was okay. The replies eventually filtered back by lunchtime that everything was indeed okay and never mind, please could you come in tomorrow?

Why, yes,  I think I would be delighted to do so.

I’ve grinned all day today.

I grinned on the way into work, when I left the house after 8am and only walked a paltry 2.5 miles to the centre of town and not twice that distance to a cold, impersonal industrial zone. Never again!

I grinned when I was met at the door by one of my old colleagues – a lovely lovely lady named Janet – and received a really big hug by way of welcome.

I grinned when I got more hugs from the other women in the office as I arrived.

I grinned when they tried to call me “sir” in recognition of my new status, and when I replied that  oh goodness no that simply wasn’t necessary. Not this week, anyway.

I grinned when I was shown to my makeshift PC and told they didn’t have a desk or phone for me yet, and my laptop (!) hadn’t even been ordered.

I grinned when all day people kept coming up to me and saying really nice things and asking after me.

I grinned when I saw the mountain of work and responsibility looming over me, but knowing exactly how I was going to start tackling it.

And I grinned when I left the building at five, really insanely inordinately happy to be working with people I really like, for a much much better company than the one I had just left, for a salary finally worthy of the work I do.

Doldrums

Act in haste, repent in leisure.

You’d think with all the many and spectacular examples in my personal life I’d have taken this fine aphorism to heart by now. Learned to curb my spontaneity, developed more caution in my dealings with the outside world. But no, once again I have let my excitement and enthusiasm hurl me out of a place of relative comfort and into the dark void of uncertainty.

Let’s get specific. On Monday of this week I handed ADT: Fire & Security my resignation, giving them one week as per the terms of my contract. This was a direct result of the extraordinary events of the prior week, in which my old employers, Openreach, a division of British Telecom, contacted me with an offer to return to them. I leapt at the chance; I’ve had jobs I’ve hated more than ADT…but not many. For me, working in ADT had become all about survival, a bread and butter job while I awaited the chance of something better. The offer from Openreach was, in a very real sense, the answer to my most fervent prayers. Handing in my resignation was the easiest thing in the world to do at that point.

It should be remarked that at this point I had only a vague idea of what I was heading back to do, and had not even been giving a clear idea of the pay: they’d been told my conditions – match my current salary – but overall I was delighted just to be getting out of ADT.

As good as it was to being going back to an industry I knew well and people I held great affection for, Openreach’s offer got better than even I had dreamed midweek when I received a phonecall from the lady arranging my re-employment. In the space of one short, three minute message she managed to turn my world completely on its head by not only matching my current salary, but offering to double it! In fact, merely doubling it was the minimum they expected to be paying me in my new role, which she also took the opportunity to expand upon. Far from being a simple data-processing monkey, as I was previously, I was actually being asked to help manage the delivery process!

That night I went through every emotion going. It was actually hard to believe, that not only did Openreach want me back, itself more then enough cause for celebration, but they were also willing to offer me the greatest opportunity of my life to date. It was – it is – a life-changing offer.

But that’s if it even begins. You see, in contrast to the breakneck pace of last week, wind in my sails like never before, we appear to have entered the doldrums.

As I’ve stated before, BT have been through a bumpy year or two recently, forced to shed 20‘000 of their employees in a bid to weather the various global financial crises. At the beginning of this process their first act was to put a permanent, company-wide freeze on hiring new people, which appears to have not yet been recinded. So to get around this they decided they wanted to hire me through an external agency. Literally a recruitment agency in the first instance but they decided a day or two later to use one of their contractors as an intermediary instead. That phone call between them and myself did not go well, however. Openreach had provided a bare minimum of details to Telent, who seemed to think I was some kind of Company, a self-employed business entity. Making things worse was the fact that I’d barely slept thanks to all the excitement; a mind fogged by sleep deprivation is not the best tool with which to negotiate fine details. In the end I suggested they go back to BT for verification, which prompted the man to pat me on the head and reassure me that everything would be fine in time for this coming Monday, no doubt under the fairly valid impression he was dealing with some kind of babbling idiot which to be fair he probably was.

Since then, however…nothing.

I’m a touch concerned, and with good reason. Openreach work 9-5 Monday to Friday. This is Saturday. I’m due to start work on Monday. When exactly are they going to confirm that everything is ok for me to return? Are they not confirming because they haven’t worked out the details yet? Is this going to be more of a problem for them than either of us thought? God, I hope not because as of 4pm Thurday (or rather 4:32 pm Monday, the exact minute I revealed my intention to leave ADT) I am unemployed. I’ve not signed anything yet. If the deal were to fall through…well, let’s just hope it doesn’t come to that, eh? I just have to have a little faith. My old employers know my position: I doubt they’d agree to take me then let me down.

But the fact that faith is even necessary has tempered my exuberance somewhat, allowing all sorts of nasty little doubts to surface, and cute, angst-inducing aphorisms like the one above. I am not quite at the stage of panic yet but come Monday if I haven’t heard anything more I may have to throw myself into the job market with a vengeance.

C’mon, Openreach, pull your flamin’ finger out!

Backwards To Go Forwards

As heavy snow falls across Scotland for the second time in 2010 I find myself  contemplating a sudden change in my personal fortunes, the first major sign that the warmly welcomed twenty-ten is becoming everything I hoped it would be. It is no secret that my current employment has been, in many ways, a test of endurance, character and willpower. I think this was to be expected; square pegs into round holes do not often fit, not without damaging the peg…or the hole.

I’m an odd person, by most standards. Possibly insane, but we’ll come to that in a moment. Over the years I have been alive, many of them spent wrestling with the grand mysteries the cosmos presents us with, I have come to see life, the universe and everything as being intimately connected to each and every one of us. I’m a great believer in quantum theory, a realm of creation so strange that measurements cannot be truly relied upon because the very act of observation tends to alter what is being observed. Put more simply, the presence of human beings has been demonstrably proven to alter the very foundation of creation itself. Schroedinger’s super-power, if you will. And so it is with we Humans living our oh so ordinary lives. Focused Will imprints upon the matter of the universe and shapes what we perceive,  the very patterns of our lives, every tide, ebb and flow.

With this in mind, should I be surprised, then, that after many months of heartfelt longing for exactly this outcome, my old employers, blessed Openreach, a shining paragon of holy light by comparison to my present employers, should suddenly be in a position to offer me further employement? Or have I imprinted myself upon a universe which has bent and flowed in obeyance to my inner-most desires?

Bit of a mind-fuck, isn’t it? Am I insane to think this? Possibly.

A point to consider: Openreach terminated my employment with them due to a pressing economic need to shed 20′000 jobs. Twenty thousand jobs had to go. Being employed through an agency I somehow managed to avoid the first sweep of the broom, I think partly due to the critical nature of the work being carried out in our office, but was unfortunate enough to get swept out by the second giant broom: Honey, I’ve lost my job. Point two: even while I was working there BT Group as a whole had 10% of it’s workforce on ‘gardening leave’ – i.e. sitting around at home thanks to their jobs disappearing out from under them, while still being paid thanks to the binding nature of their pre-privatisation contracts. When the recent global economic situation suddenly exploded into being BT was faced with a double-whammy, pressures from within and now from without (BT Global losing shitloads of money that year didn’t help, either, the mooks).  In response, one of its very first acts was a complete freeze on all new hires into the business. New jobs, if any arose, were to be filled internally.

So when I was finally shown the door, the likelihood of my returning was as remote as an England football captain being able to stay faithful to his wife.

Now, suddenly, the opportunity has arisen. I’d thank serendipity but in my heart I’m not sure she even exists. We create our own fortune in this life, so the saying goes, but I doubt it meant it literally.

It all came about rather rapidly. I was responding to an email hailing from one of my old colleagues and had come to the usual question re: my current line of work. “How’s it all going?”. But for once I elected not to simply grin and nod for the sake of appearances but instead delivered the whole and honest truth. I hate my job. I hate this company. My colleagues all hate this company too; most of them are seeking ways to escape it. Apart from that, I’m peachy. How about you?

I even went as far as to say I missed Openreach and would return in a heartbeat, but weakly joked about “the grass being greener…ho ho”, possibly not for their benefit but to convince myself that no matter how much I hoped, how many sacrifices I made on however many altars, in all likelihood it would ever actually come true.

The next day an email arrived, from another member of my old team. “Did you mean what you said in your last email? Only there’s some agency work coming up. Would you like to be kept informed?”

My heart leapt so hard I think it cracked a rib.

I responded in the affirmative, managing to keep cool enough to maintain a level-head (and deftly avoid arousing the suspicions of my colleagues!)  If the job is only going to be for a month or two it wouldn’t be worth my while to leave this one. There was also the issue of permanence. To all intents and purposes my current job is ‘permanent’ in the sense they won’t be firing me anytime soon. So it may appear to the outsider that I am faced with a choice of giving up permanent work for temp work through an agency. BUT…I haven’t actually signed a permanent contract yet and when my boss suddenly realised this a few days ago she told me I’d probably be on my current one until it ended in April (originally signed as maternity cover) then kept on a ‘rolling’ monthly contract. “Oh yes-”, she said when my eyebrows raised inquiringly at her, “-that’s just what they do here”. Oh really? Motherf*ckers.

The day after that I received a phone call. In the space of ten short minutes my ex-colleague informed me he had shown my email to the lady in charge of the finance for the new positions, a lady I used to work for and who still clearly recalled the good work I had done for the company and had said “If he wants the job, tell him it’s his (subject to some negotiation re: terms and conditions).” When my friend finally hung up I was trembling inside and out, scarcely able to believe what had just happened. Had I really just been offered a way out of the hell I had found myself in, back into the bosom of a group people – friends more than colleagues – whom I sorely missed*? Apparently so, although it took a fair few pinches, and some colourful bruising, to convince me I wasn’t in some horrible, ephemeral dream-bubble that might ‘pop’ out of existence at any moment.

This, then, is the position I find myself on this cold, crisp and snowy Sunday afternoon. I have been instructed to sign up with another agency in town in order for the employment to occur and now merely face the somewhat daunting prospect of informing my current employers of my intentions. My boss, although a lovely lady at heart, probably isn’t going to respond terribly well as she will be the one who has to find my replacement, bless her uber-stressing little cotton socks. But if she is who I think she is she personally won’t mind too much, particularly as she’s been looking for another job since the beginning of the year.

It’s an exciting time. God, even just the thought of halving my commuting time, meaning I could leave the house at eight a.m. instead of seven, feels like finding water in the desert. Salvation. An end to the dark times.

More news as when it happens.

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*It’s true. My walk to work each day takes me past the BT building and all too often I find myself glancing longingly at the office windows on the first floor, anxious to catch a glimpse of someone…perhaps give a jaunty wave…sigh.

The Enemy of Idiocy

The internet is…remarkable. In terms of social benefit alone this cluster of globally networked servers might possibly be the highest and clearest representation of human potential ever manifested on this crazy little speck of dirt we 7 billion evolved apes call home. I believe this: truly, deeply, fundamentally…so when people mess with it, well, it annoys me like practically nothing else can.

Case in point – Chain emails.

You’ve seen them; everyone has. Nasty, pointless little bits of text clogging the web like germs coating sewer walls. “Quick, send me to everyone in your contact list – explain the manufactured and completely untrue  danger!!!”. But what really gets my goat about these is the way they spread. People just don’t think but blindly forward them, fooled into thinking they’re being useful by helping their friends.

One arrived at work today. I couldn’t resist the impulse to pen this and fire it back at everyone in the rather long list of suckers:-

http://www.hoax-slayer.com/simon25-hacker-hoax.shtml < – This link is one of many to be found online that explains how false this silly email is.

Everyone who has passed this on without so much as even a cursory attempt to verify it should be made aware that these emails are simply a 21st century form of the old chain letters that used to plague the post in bygone days. Their ONLY purpose is to amuse their creators and clog our email servers and inboxes. They rely on simple ignorance to propagate, which in itself isn’t necessarily a bad thing, but the additional lack of common sense in employees of what seem to be some very large companies is rather disturbing.

In a bid to combat these odious emails here are some very simple Rules of Thumb should you receive another one:

• For those with internet access, type “simon”, “hacker” and “email” into Google, or whichever search engine you use, then note the number of results that come back on the first page with the word “hoax” in them. Click on one or two and have a very quick scan. You can check just about everything this way, honest. Simply pick out the key words and Google ‘em. Works every time. (And probably takes precisely the same amount of time to do as clicking ‘forward’ then adding everyone in your contact list).
• For those without Internet access, use your common sense. If Microsoft and Norton have verified the attacks, where’s the proof? Where are the links to the official notifications? Better than that, why are you hearing this through your mates? Why is this not coming from the IT department of the company whose computer systems you are using? Isn’t it their job to keep on top of hackers and other forms of IT security? If there was a problem, they would make you aware. As would the service providers running your internet at home.
• Further, read the whole email! Having now done so, did you by any chance notice those red-highlighted lines from an email scanner suggesting that this email might be fraudulent? Ok, so it’s not actually related to the hoax itself but it should be enough to make you suspicious enough to CHECK IT OUT.
• Finally – the subject line. Nothing truly serious would describe itself as ‘NOT A JOKE’. It’s like those films that describe themselves as “Hilarious! (four stars)” and only actually provide a weak chuckle or two. Marketing. Salesmanship. A LIE.

Use your brains, folks. Blindly complying with this rubbish suggests you may actually be dumb enough to fall for the REAL threats out there…in which case you’ll shortly be receiving an email from myself confirming you have won millions in the Scottish National Council Lottery, and all you need to claim it is to pay a small administration fee. Please send me your bank account details and a payment of £2000 (a drop in the ocean compared to what you’re winning!!!!) at your earliest convenience…

You don’t have to be an IT genius to keep safe online or even understand the first thing about computers. Just don’t be an idiot. Use the tools at your disposal, starting with the one between your ears.

Feel free to pass this on to anyone you feel may need a similar education.

Best Regards,

The Enemy of Idiocy

PS: If you are one of the people responsible for creating these hoax emails – I hope your tiny tiny sex organs drop off.

Yeah…annoyed. I’m hoping this goes viral. If you see a copy of it floating around, spare me a thought. Spare a thought for this  poor, lone champion of our technological heritage slowly sinking beneath the weight of his many and varied neuroses.

Phlegm Sandwiches

Hey Grunty,

Phlegm Sandwiches. Imagine that for a moment, if you will. Biting into the firm white bread then reaching the gooey, slimy wet texture in the middle, thick stringy globs of it glooping out the sides, coating your teeth, your lips, spreading across all the taste centres of your tongue…bitter and sour and wretchedly organic in all the ways that taste so horribly foul when you cough some up during a heavy chest cold.

Imagine that, if you will. Really focus on getting the sensation just right.

Now imagine that’s your staple diet. You’ve got no option but to eat them, day after day, for every meal. No-one’s making you do this. No, sadly you’ve simply left yourself no other option.

That’s what working for your present employer is like. What it feels like, inside. Being forced to eat Phlegm Sandwiches because you’ve left yourself very little option to eat anything else.

Time to make some changes, then, hmm? I wholeheartedly agree.

When you left school you didn’t have a clue what you wanted to be, what your career choice would be. You was were was good at English and good at Art so got shoved into a Fine Arts course in college for a year or two until your famous boredom set in. Your first job was working for Burton Menswear. That lasted six months until you simply had to flee the horror of folding jeans several times a day. Not different jeans, the same jeans. Then, after another mis-step or two you fell into Bar work. That kept us going – speaking in a purely financial sense – through the next ten years: part time, full time, barman, supervisor, etc until health concerns (lungs, feet, soul) forced you to eject from that line of work before you completely destroyed us both. What to do instead? “Ooh, I like computers…so let’s do some Admin!” Top thinking there, my man (Sigh). Five years later here we sit, happier than in the bar years, admittedly, but still in the wrong flamin’ place. You get no joy or satisfaction from what you do other than in the smallest, most trivial ways. And that’s not how we want to continue. No more, please. Enough is enough.

You’ve been stupid, lazy, frightened, complacent. You still are all these things, to varying degrees, but I think twenty-ten is time this all changed for the better. What do you think?

No time like the present.

So, the plan. No, not one of your half-assed appeasements, of which there have been several hundred over the years. A REAL plan, carefully considered and worked out. You’ve got the brain for it, you just don’t apply it. We need things like: “How do I get from here to where I want to be, considering my woeful lack of qualifications?” Ehh…get more qualifications? Okay, so you‘re not brilliant at academia but at least consider it. In the meantime, let’s ditch the current job; it’s not making you happy. Let’s ditch Aberdeen, too, if possible, because that sure ain’t making you happy either.

Get started, my man. Now. Today. It ain’t gonna be easy, getting from square one to the place you see in your head. It means hard work, dedication, a fair amount of luck…some of that handy single-mindedness we keep reading about mightn’t go amiss, either. Yeah, I know it rubs against your grain (I said ‘grain’ – get that goofy grin off your face, hand out of your crotch, and bloody well open those cauliflowers you call ears!) but flitting around like a demented butterfly hasn’t really got you anywhere so far, has it?

HAS it?

This is it, pal, the end of our little chat. But just before I relinquish command of your body and return your consciousness the driver’s seat (Sorry, I think I’ve just used up your entire lunch hour) I’ve got one last thing to say, just to hammer the point well and truly home. I’m tired – well and truly sick and tired -  of speaking to you and you not listening, year after year after agonising year, when you bloody well know where you want to be and know what you want to be doing. You’re just too stupid, too lazy, too afraid to do the necessary to get there. I’m just here to say: it won’t kill you, and it may just answer all of your prayers. DO SOMETHING…for both our sakes.

Enjoy the read, and be warned: I’ll be watching for any unathorised editing.

Ever yours,

Your Ever-lovin’ Blue-eyed Soul type thing.

That Woz that Week that Woz

Things that pleased Grunt this week:

• Spending another great weekend with Michelle (Who loves ya, baby?).
• Michelle and my parents not only getting on but genuinely liking each other!
• My parents being fun, fabulous and on top form. They should tour.
• Getting my mother’s PC to connect to the Internet again. Her tech support people (snort) spent four hours on the phone with her, trying things and remotely connecting to her machine until they gave up and sent her a replacement router, their last-ditch attempt before instigating a…waitforit…”complete reinstall! It took me 5 minutes to diagnose the real issue and another 20 minutes to find a fix online and test that everything was working. I rule.
• Randomly winning an RBS-Digital prize draw I hadn’t realised I’d entered – £100 in M&S vouchers! Go, me!
• The Flakmonkey returning from sunnier climes and splashing her sunshine all over Facebook.
• The diligent Fleet Operations Mod-authors releasing a swift patch (v3.1.1) to fix some of the show-stopper bugs in the otherwise excellent v3.1.0 release.
• Opera 10.5 pre-alpha being generally awesome.
• Sneakily installing Avant Browser on the medieval work PC. Tabbed browsing FTW!
• Sending away for a shiny metal Badger Brewery bottle-opener. I get one if I’m one of the first 5000 to apply – fingers crossed!
• The bomb-threat hoax in Aberdeen. Excitement – wheeee!
• A colleague in Inverness helping me out with a job I was supposed to be trained in before Christmas but wasn’t, and was panicking about.
• Anthea’s new hair: Liza Minelli crossed with Johnny Rotten. Well wicked.
• A friend of mine not seeing himself in an old class photograph and another friend of both of us calling him a ‘blind git’.
• Learning more about VBA scripts and macros in MS Excel. No, I mean it. This really did please me as it helped me to automate some terribly dull and repetitive tasks. Now all I do is click a button!
• Having more fantastic ideas for Grunt articles and reviews I could write.

Things that did not please Grunt this week:

• Michelle going home again. [Sob!]
• Freezing my arse off for over an hour in the bitterly cold Macduff winds waiting for two buses to Aberdeen that never came. Arrg,
• Not winning Northsound Radio’s ‘Thousand Pound Thursday’ despite paying my £1 entry fee for the text (plus standard network charge) and praying really hard.
• Work. I can’t remember the last time I worked in a place where morale wasn’t just low it was non-existent. I don’t think even a sunny yellow stress ball could help here.
• Related to the above – my boss. She constantly tells anyone who listens how stressed the is, swears like a trooper and keeps threatening to quit but she never seems to find a way to manage her work better or even delegate the things she could easily do without. This is not entirely her fault but if she gets to moan I should either get to bloody well moan or be provided earplugs. Headphones for preference.
• The bomb threat being a hoax. I wanted ‘splosions.
• Grunt’s general low mood, possibly related to a lack of proximity to Michelle.
• Finally being asked what training I wanted (at work, obviously), eagerly accepting, but then being told it was only going to be very basic ABC’s. Fuck.
• Having more fantastic ideas for Grunt articles and reviews I’ll probably never get around to writing.

Have a great weekend, folks! Mazel tov!

Evil vs Good: Musical Warfare

EVIL

GOOD

Mum and Dad and Michelle Make…

I’m taking the girlfriend to meet my parents on Saturday. Call it retaliation: I met hers during my festive visit to the borders.

Michelle and I live 180 miles away from each other, and in the not-quite-three months we’ve been together have survived the punishing distance through a diet of daily text messages, Instant messaging and the occasional telepathic tickle fight. Being apart is hard. Painful, in an odd way. Like you’ve left a bit of yourself behind, a detached limb that you can feel itching after it’s gone. Phantom Heart Syndrome. But what really keeps us sane is managing to travel to where the other lives, thanks largely to Thetrainline.com and the fabled Megabus. This will be Michelle’s second visit to Aberdeen and is as eagerly anticipated as the first time I met her (Awww). This time, however, I’m taking her out of the Shitty City to the wilds of coastal North Aberdeenshire! Gasp!

People – close people – let’s call them ‘friends’ – get awfully excited about the fact of you introducing your beloved to the people that birthed you. Very excited indeed. As if it means something…portentous. Ooh, can wedding bells be far behind? Ehhhh…no. Take a chill pill, people. I simply want both parties to meet each other.

I survived Michelle’s parents. In fact, more than mere ’survived’; apparently I came out of the whole experience with flying colours…a certificate, a basket of soaps, and a shiny velveteen rosette in royal blue. I am the legendary golden shining boyfriend OF LEGEND. Here are some choice words from their after-visit reports (which I’ve not yet managed to steal full copies of): “Very genuine”. “The same lovely young boy who used to live here” “Aye, he’s better than a knitting-needle in the ovaries so don’t screw it up, right?”

Oh, er, I think that last one was a quote from South Park. Don’t know how that got in there….

My charm must be a formidable thing for the unprepared. Shock and AWEsome! Behold my glories: Michelle loves me so much she’s “living her fairytale” (her actual words). Her boys like me so much they’d rather visit me than their Dad this weekend*. The dog now thinks he belongs to me. Her parents cook me fabulous Christmas dinners and ply me with red wine (as do mine but I’ve had decades to work on them). I’ve even won the approval of three of Michelle’s closest friends – one of whom I haven’t even met in person.

Big headed? Me? We Kings of the Universe are immune to such things.

I imagine my parents will like Michelle. My wholehearted acceptance of her should help alleviate their fears of another temporary relationship or, indeed, another in a long line of poor choices. Upon presentation of the first picture I had of Michelle my Mother offered the following: “Hmm, well at least this one looks like a girl”. Ouch. Seems my last choice didn’t go over so well in Camp Parent. Poor old Debbie. Heh. I firmly believe Michelle will find better favour, so long as she avoids any ill-advised attempts to hug my  father who, bless him, was born in the 1700’s – an era when physical contact with women and their emotional lunacies was stiffly regimented.

We ship out for lunch tomorrow and return before dinner on Sunday…unless it goes really well, my Mother gets clingy again and starts guilt-tripping me/us to stay longer. She does that from time to time, but I try not to mind; what Mother doesn’t love having her offspring come to visit? Apart from the Mothers of murders, rapists and paedophiles, obviously. Although…having said that…you do get those mothers capable of forgiving anything their little treasure does. You see them in the news all the time, don’t you? Their child has brutally filleted a bus load of nuns and the mother tells the TV cameras, straight-faced, defiant against all evidence to the contrary, that their child-cum-monster was always such a good boy who never harmed a fly.

Wait…what was I talking about, again? Who am I? Where when you? Gbggllq?

Some wishes of favourable fortune from my beloved readership would be greatly appreciated. I’ll see you anon. [tugs greasy forelock]

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* That amuses me SO much. “So the boys want to go to Disneyland but have to settle for Alton Towers?’” – my tongue-in-cheek response to the news.

The Awesome Power of Snow!

It seems some congratulations are in order! WordPress admin informs me that today has seen the highest ever number of visitors to my humble, egomaniacal cave-site, presumably generated by my latest post! (21 visits yesterday, which is also quite a lot.) Either that or my Mum has browsed here 117 separate times which isn’t beyond the realms of possibility – dottled old thing that she is – but I’m leaning towards the former explanation purely on the grounds of my insufferable ego.

More snow in today’s post, frozen-water fans. We got sent home from work today due to the snow, of which there was actually very little. There was a brief spell of rather heavy flakes that turned the roads white again but it didn’t last long enough to be called an apocalypse (Sadly [Sigh]). I think someone somewhere heard a rumour from a brother’s flatmate’s wife’s pet goldfish that several inches had fallen within twenty miles of our office and OHMYGOD CLOSE THE OFFICE BEFORE WE ALL DIE!!!

Ahem.

Is it me, or is the headless-chicken flapping about a few inches of persistent snow getting ever so slightly ridiculous?  Why, in MY day (he says, COMPLETELY oblivious to his sudden transformation into his Father) we used to see several feet of snow on the ground and still managed to function as a decent, law-abiding society. And we only had the one unicycle between fourteen of us. And we had to make our own shoes each morning before school. And breakfasts consisted of grit softened overnight in last night’s gravy mixed with sweat from our father’s brow…

Ahem (revisited).

And so to the reason for this charming post before we decided to indulge my galloping senilty…I have a series of pictures I’d like to share, just for a spot of fun. Watch, gentle viewer, as THE AWESOME POWER OF THE WEATHER STEADILY BURIES A GARDEN SLIDE!!!

BEHOLD!!!

I know, I know. Only faintly more incredible than watching a man stick peanuts to his face in a bid to emulate leprosy but I enjoyed them and that’s the main thing around these parts, hence the lack of thanks for the high visitor numbers in favour of me funky-dancing in my own gleaming aura of awesomeness. If it helps to set the mood, set this running before you view them again:

Awesome now? No? Oh well, I tried.

I’d just like to say for the record that these pics were not ‘assisted by human touch’ in any way shape, form or manner. Yes, the spade is absent from the last pic but I believe the snow to have eaten it when no-one was looking. Orrrr…it may have been removed to facilitate hefty clearing operations on the other side of the house. Whatever’s easiest for you to believe, dear readers.

Happy Again in 2010!

So…first post of twenty-ten then? Righto.

We begin, as always, by looking back at where I’ve been. The festive holidays have sadly come to a close, normal service has resumed across the land and our lives have settled once more into the well-worn patterns they were in before all this festive tish, bosh and piffle first encroached upon our shops, bank accounts and busy consciousnesses(es). Hopefully after all that time, effort and considerable expense we’ve all had A Jolly Good Time. Well, I certainly did.

After spending a delightful Christmas and Boxing day in the warm bosom of my parent’s home, eating their food and drinking a little too much of their drink (ahem), I journeyed to the Scottish Borders, once again braving the weather as it played havoc with Scotland’s fragile rail network; the train to Berwick-upon-Tweed was not only delayed by a points failure near Blair Atholl but developed engine trouble upon reaching Edinburgh Waverley. Thankfully the train company had one waiting at the opposite end of the station allowing me to continue my journey relatively uninterrupted.

Safely in Coldstream once again, my new lady love welcomed me into her warm bosom, introduced me to her two remarkable children, and generally set the scene for a very relaxed week away from home.

Or should I say ‘away from Aberdeen’…

Yes, Ladies and Gentle-beings, as strange as it may sound coming from one of the World’s Most Vocal Introverts, a man whose proclivities towards solitude and self-sufficiency have surely by now passed into legend, I no longer consider Aberdeen to be my home. Actually I’ve long hated the city itself but now not even my cosy little sanctum in the suburbs is enough sustenance to provide that all-important feeling of belonging. Home is where the heart is and my heart now firmly belongs in a small semi-detached wooden house in the charming village so intimately connected to my childhood, replete with a small, pre-baked family of adoring girlfriend, boisterous young boys and loyal pooch. The road they all stay on is even called ‘Home Place’; if that’s not a sign then I really don’t know what is!

If that shock wasn’t enough you may want to brace yourself for this next one: I even miss her two boys! That’s right, the Ultimate Loner actually misses the constant hustle and bustle of being woken several times a night by little boys having had nightmares and seeking cuddles from mummy, feels weird without the constant fighting and/or demands for attention/juice/food etc, and had to return home on Sunday past to a life that now feels very strange, very cold, very…lonely.

With this in mind, how do you think I felt coming back this morning to the job I enjoy as much as I enjoy kidney infections?* That confirmed, once-and-for-all, that I’m currently riding round my own special circle of Hell. I hate what I’m doing, where I’m living and now how I’m living (i.e, alone). Woohoo!

Hehe, it wouldn’t be a Grunt without a moan, would it? Hehehehe.

Looking on the bright side, however, the snow is still here and still doing it’s best to bump life out of the ordinary and toward something much more vital, fun and just plain interesting. During my stay in the borders it fell in delightfully massive quantities (photographic evidence of which should be all throughout this post) and even this morning it managed an hour or so of reasonably heavy fall, dusting the Shitty City’s roads and pavements with a fresh coat of gleaming white loveliness. I prayed it would fall badly enough to curtail my return to work but sadly it cleared during my walk through town. However, there is talk of much heavier stuff on the way…

In terms of Grunt it should be business as usual from now on. I don’t feel the need to change anything right now. You can still look forward to hearing all about my insignificant little life, my opinions, my interests and anything else I think might be worth mind-stapling to this digital record of my life. I can’t promise it will be any more frequent but then I’m not asking you to promise to be here to read it so I guess I’m happy enough with that.

Lastly, I’ve been asked about any resolutions I’ve made for the brand new year, itself the start of a brand new decade. I’d love to respond ‘1440×900’, a gaming/PC screen-resolution joke of some small wit that nonetheless still manages to amuse my wee brain, but in truth there are so many things I’d like to do in 2010 that making a resolution to cover each and every one of them would be rather time-consuming and would likely prove difficult to keep track of. On the other hand, 2009 was really rather terrible, so I was reluctant to miss the opportunity to celebrate and felt I should give due reverence to the fact that a new year of shiny possibilities is stretched languorously in front of me (Dirty tart that it is. Who loves you, 2010? That’s right: Daddy loves you. Come to Daddy…) Thus I have decided, after literal nanoseconds of deep, furrowed thought, to encompass everything I want to achieve in one catchy, catch-all catchphrase:

Happy Again in Twenty-Ten!

Works for me! I really hope it works for you too, dearest reader. Happy New Year!

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*My first kidney infection occurred a week before Christmas and incurred a week-long hospital stay meaning I only barely made it home on the night of Christmas Eve, back when I was much younger and Christmases were far more exciting things than they are nowadays. It also taught me the true meaning of agony when I woke up one night literally screaming from the pain, tears streaming down my face like rain. I’ve never known pain like it apart from my second kidney infection some years later. I’m not saying I live in fear, exactly, but if one of the little blighters so much as twinges you’ve never seen a man run to a Doctor so fast!

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Hello! If you’ve made it down this far, well done! As a reward for your eye-testinal fortitude (ho ho) please enjoy the contents of my camera regurgitated straight onto this page as a fabulous gallery of love and joy! Click on the pics to see them full size!