The Joy of Lets

Having rented flats and houses for almost ten years, I have experienced several situations that at best could be termed interesting, and at worst border-line illegal. I feel quite well equipped to identify problems with potential properties now, and know how important it is to read all small print, even if the letting agent is impatiently tutting, and making obvious glances at their watch.

Letting can have its advantages though.  For one you don’t need to worry about finding hundreds of pounds to fix a broken boiler.  You just have to wait for some else to pay for repairs, although that in itself can be a challenge.  I remember once when the toilet in our flat in Scotland suddenly decided to randomly spurt out raw sewage.  Since it was indeed random, and not just when the flush was pulled, Husband and I decided not to risk using it until it was fixed – the thought of a bidet rife with typhoid was not a pleasant one.  So we spent four days peeing in a bucket and then pouring it down the loo before the Landlord finally got someone in to fix it. 

Four days wasn’t too bad really.  In another property we spent the entire tenancy waiting for a curtain pole to be fixed back into the wall.  I would combat-crawl naked under the window to get to my clothes until the tree in the garden grew into a modesty shield.  Unfortunately, on one of the Landlord’s inspections he decided the tree was becoming too large for his ‘natural style nature garden’ (read ‘unkempt weed pit’), and had it trimmed back.  I didn’t go back to combat crawling.  The neighbours could look at my white arse and damn well be glad of the opportunity.

Another advantage is not having to worry too much about decoration and the cost of its upkeep.  The downside to this is that you have to endure someone else’s taste, which may not be congruent with your own. Although I don’t think an avocado green bathroom is compatible with anything (it’s amazing what you will put up with for low rent).  Generally, though, rental properties are a uniform magnolia.  I am so freaking sick of magnolia.

Renting gives you the opportunity to sample different areas in a city before you are ready to buy, and if you don’t like the house/area, you can move quite swiftly as you’re not tied into a mortgage.  Although this lack of security is very apparent when you don’t want to move, as you can be kicked out of your home with little notice, as I recently found out.

Some of the less savoury points of renting include the blatant rip-off fees that some letting agencies charge.  For example, we recently had to pay a compulsory ‘check-in’ fee to have an agent cast an unobservant eye over the house to check for any pre-existing damage.  It took them 5 minutes, and we later had to email them with a list of things they missed.  So, they charged us £90, and we did their job (I sometimes think I am totally in the wrong occupation). After noticing our disgruntled expressions at this cost, they tried to appease us by informing us they also charge the Landlord a ‘check-out’ fee, as though knowing they’re also ripping off our Landlord should mollify us.

The worst Landlord we had rented a property to us that turned out to be infested with bedbugs, which is another post in itself.

After almost a decade of renting Husband and I would be ecstatic to finally get on the property ladder.  So that’s the plan over the next few years.  Merely  holding the ladder is no longer satisfying - we’ve had far too many falling objects drop on our heads.
 _______

Do you have any rental horror stories?  Or even tales of a Landlord gem?

Neglect

Wow, it's been awhile.  Things have been pretty hectic between having to move and the nuisance that is full-time work.  I have several projects I want to blog about, but my desktop has decided to have a hissy fit and won't let me into my user area. So, once that is sorted I will be able to upload some images and actually blog, instead of authoring a dead blog.  I'm a ghost writer in the most literal sense, I guess.

And yes, I have shamelessly copied and pasted this post into both my blogs.  You'd think after months of neglect I could think of something original  to write in both really. You'd think.

I ain't dead

Just a quick one to apologise for the lull in posts.  A couple of major life issues erupted recently, and I'm finding it hard to see the funny side of anything just now.

I hope to be back to blogging relatively soon, but realistically not within the next month since we're being kicked out of our house.  Yep, landlord is selling up and we've been given notice to leave.  We've found somewhere to move to, so amidst the other shitty things going on just now, we're trying to get organised and move.  Sorry for the miserable tone of this post - sometimes life gives you lemons, but you have no water or sugar to make lemonade so it still sucks ass.

Fear

I have an embarrassing confession.  Despite growing up as a Tomboy, and studying Zoology at University, I am not a huge fan of spiders.  This is embarrassing because I do actually like spiders and I think they do a superb job of controlling flies etc., but they still make me uneasy.
However, this is a contextual fear, since I don't mind spiders if I know where they are.  I can happily live with them for weeks if they stay visible in a corner of a room (this probably says more about my dusting skills).  But if they appear unexpectedly (such as in my coat pocket, or emerging from a box of cereal), I react like a huge sissy girl complete with flapping hands, stamping feet and calls along the line of 'Eeeeeeeee!!!!!!'

I know exactly when this fear of arachnid ninja skills began.  I was 14, and had just stepped out of the shower.  I grabbed my towel from the rail and a massive spider fell out of the fabric folds onto my foot.  I emitted a shrill death-shriek of a scream, which immediately summoned my mum who must have thought I'd slipped and cracked my head open on the sink.

The combination of unexpected spider coupled with the vulnerability of being naked fixed the experience firmly in my psyche. So, although a bit wussy, at least it makes sense!

A spider, should anyone need to know what one looks like.

I do, however, have a fear that I would even go so far as to say is a border-line phobia.  Maggots.  Even typing the words has made my mouth dry.  I have no idea where this stems from.  Although I do recall several memories quite vividly...

I can remember catching the bust to school once, and there was a dead cat - probably hit by a car - lying broken in the bushes.  Several days later, I noticed the carcass had become a writhing ripple of tiny, white waves.  It had become the birthplace of the next generation of flies.  That was it; for the next 6 months I walked half a mile to a different bus stop.

A further encounter with maggots was shortly after I moved to Bristol.  I was emptying the food waste bin into another recycling point in our garden, when I thought I saw some old rice move.  It didn't take long to realise that the rice were actually maggots.  Once I had recovered from my petrified state, and could use my legs again, I swiftly retreated to the other end of the garden, knocking the bin over as I went.  Husband came out to see why I had scurried away like a disturbed cockroach, and noticing the abandoned bin, realised what had happened.

I refused to go back in through the door as some of the maggots had spilled out across the floor by the door, so Husband went back indoors and opened the kitchen window.  I climbed through and crawled over the sink, dropping head first onto the floor.  Husband then made me a cup of hot, sweet tea (normally I can't stand sweet tea!) as I had gone completely pale and faint.  Actually, thinking about it, I'm starting to think this could be a proper phobia. 

 A maggot.  Well, I tried to draw one, but I

couldn't bring myself to do it.

I always understood the nature of fear to be purely functional.  Fearing potentially poisonous spiders etc. makes logical sense from an evolutionary standpoint, but a phobia seems to be a survival instinct gone wrong.  Maggots are not dangerous, they are not poisonous.  In fact, they are full of protein and probably a healthy snack.  Empirically I understand this, but I still freak out disproportionately when I encounter them.

Does anyone else have any fears that don't make rational sense they would like to share?

Um, what?

Must be blue moonstone...

Click to bigify the bum!

Conan the Carbarian

I suffer from severe PMT, or parking manoeuvre trauma.  I am an OK driver, I wouldn't say I was great, but I've not had any serious incidents.  I do fine when I'm actually driving, and negotiating around other drivers and moving objects. However, when it comes to maneuvering around stationary objects and parking, well, things are not so great.  Somehow things become far more complicated in my head when my point of reference is perfectly still. It makes no sense!  I can happyily compensate for the disconcerting swerving of an inebriated driver and avoid them, but a perfectly still bollard? Now that's complicated!

My most recent dent personalisation to the car occurred a couple of weekends ago on a trip to Plymouth. I drove the two and a half hours from Bristol without issue, but once I arrived at the shopping centre car park, that all changed. I was aware I was running late, so was desperately searching for a parking space. As I was nearing the top of the car park, I espied an empty space. It was placed horizontally against the outer wall of the car park, and had a lime green support pillar running down the middle of the outside of the space (this is a rubbish explanation, so a rubbish diagram to accompany it is below).  For some reason known only to Plymouth City Council, the two spaces further along the wall had no pillar, but had painted 'no parking' markings over them.

I swung the car into the space and attempted to straighten up. Husband tentatively told me that I was going to hit the car against the pillar; I gave a cursory glance at the side mirror, and noting the mirror itself was clear continued anyway. The rather upsetting scruncheeezeee sound of metal against concrete alerted me to quite how close the pillar was. I was then faced with a horrible realisation that I was going to have to do more damage to get the car off the pillar. All in all, it did not end well.

Click to enlarge the damage, and mock Negative Voice's

poor grammar -touche!

I have now christened our car Conan the Carbarian, as it is adorned with many dents and war wounds. I like to think of it as rugged (like Russel Crow in Gladiator, not Robin Williams in the Fisher King) rather than a mangled tin bucket held together by t-cut and wax. I think it makes a formidable presence on the road, and people certainly move out of the way of it. Although this may be more to do with doubts over the driver's ability than the aesthetics of the car itself.

Over-reaction

I've had to temporarily remove the instant reactions tool at the bottom of my posts. For some reason, since it had been there people couldn't leave comments. I've checked my settings, and can't see any reason why they can't co-exist. I guess not all Blogspot tools are created equally.

So, despite thinking the reactions tool was pretty cool, they're gone for now. If I can't have both, I'd much rather have a dialogue with people than just some impersonal tick boxes. If anyone has any tips/ideas as to what I may have done wrong, please leave a comment (you can now!)

Introducing Negative Voice

I'm sure most people have a Negative Voice whispering things to them when their confidence is shot. I know I do. Mine strikes at any time though, even when I am feeling confident. Negative Voice keeps me in check, and makes sure I don't get carried away with dreams. Re-reading this, I've totally made myself sound mental, and a bit creepy. I'm not mad. Just a bit, well, socially retarded.

Negative Voice is the opinion you hear when you doubt yourself, it's the awkward social faux pas, the words you stumble on when you talk to people. It's also the pain-in-the-ass reason I'm still in an entry level job. I'm not bitter about it though. Really.

Click to enlarge

The missing lynx

Click to enlarge

Marriage

Marriage is more a state of mind than a legal status. Husband and I were together for 7 years before we got married, so married life didn't make a huge difference to our relationship. Apart from the financial black-hole that follows a price tag with anything bridal, and leaving me slightly confused in doctor's waiting rooms when addressed by my new surname.

If you're not sure whether you can classify yourself as married (whether you own a marriage certificate or not) check out the guide below.

1. Your sexy lingerie and comfy pants are now the same thing

2. Your dates have become a trip to the big Tesco Extra with the cafe and big clothing and electronics departments
3. Farting in front of each other is no longer embarrassing, but has become a competitive sport
4. Making an effort with your appearance now just involves an extra spray of deodorant, and locating your cleanest jeans with the least holes
5. You no longer finish each others' sentences. Instead, you blatantly talk over one another

6. You're no longer asked how your day is; the bath is already run and the wine poured because they know without asking

Friday

I am very tired, so here is a crappy little drawing in amazing monochrome. Now, if you will excuse me I am off to catch up with Insomnia, my guest for the last two weeks. I will probably read this again at some point and realise it makes no sense. Hey-ho, that's the nature of sleep deprivation.

Public bathroom etiquette

A guide for the less initiated...

1. Where possible, leave at least one empty cubicle between you and the next person. It's seriously creepy to have a pee-stalker right next to you.

2. Don't talk. No one needs to hear about the bargain shoes you bought when they're trying to go to the toilet. It's off-putting. There are very few times when conversation is necessary.

3. Resist the urge to yell "it wasn't me!" when leaving a particularly stinky cubicle. If they didn't think it was you before, they do now.

4. If it was you, for God's sake at least spray some deodorant.

5. Be prepared for some pretty horrific public bathrooms (they are common). You may need your own hand sanitizer or even loo roll. Try not to get carried away.

6. Wash your hands. Really? You need an explanation for this one?

The mime poo game

I'm sure Tangent is a wannabe starlet. On a walk he quite often scampers (I've never had a dog that scampered before) off to find somewhere suitable to poo. Now, Tangent and I have different opinions of what this actually means. To me, it's most convenient if he poops on open ground, preferably on short grass. Tangent, however, approaches the process from an entirely different viewpoint. He seems to have a penchant for pooing on brambles, thorns or anything else that will pierce a poo bag. (If you're not familiar with poo bags, these are basically nappy sacks that are so thin only will power alone holds the molecules of plastic together).

Other favourite places for him include anywhere involving height. He will reverse backwards towards his desired object, with his bottom in the air ready to make his deposit. This can be quite funny, except when you realise he's pooped in your plant pots containing your herbs and vegetables.

He even once swam across a river and pooed on the far-side bank. I had to wade across the river to clean up after him.

All this is irritating enough, but he also plays an infuriating game with me whereby he will pretend to poo. He is very convincing and really throws himself into the role of defecating dog. When I go to pick up after him I can't find anything. As he only does this in crowded public places, I find myself thoroughly scrutinising the ground before quickly grabbing a handful of grass, leaves or small pebbles and depositing them in the poo bins. I'm sure I've met the shifty eye of a fellow fake-faeces thrower on more than one occasion.

Cycling proficiency

I have ridden to work a few times in the last couple of weeks but still didn't really feel like a proper cyclist. Wednesday, however, saw me earning my cycling commuter stripes.

This Wednesday, feeling a bit cocky after almost halving the time it takes me to get to work in a couple of weeks, I pushed my bike out of the underground car park at work and swung my leg over the bike like a pro. Unfortunately, I'm not a pro, and I continued the sideways momentum to the floor and managed to graze both knees causing one knee (my bad one, typically) to swell horribly, graze my palm, pull my trapezius and bruise my arse. All this from toppling off a stationary bike. It was not one of my prouder moments.

I'm not really sure how I managed to cause such damage from a minor topple, but I have analysed the black-box of my memory and I think I have established how I probably made things worse. Below follows my thought process during the split-second event:

Me: "Am cyclist; see me gracefully champion the mounting of a bike."

Swings leg over bike, and begins to lose balance.

Me: "Ah. I did not foresee this. Do I recall seeing anyone else about? No. Good. Gosh, the hard-looking concrete ground appears to be meeting me at haste."

Puts hand out to avoid meeting ground with face. Grazes palm and one knee and bounces bottom off ground (which turns out not to be as padded as once thought).

Me: "Ah. That somewhat stings. Oh. This is a new bike!"

Attempts to throw self under the bike to break the bike's fall. Fails miserably, but manages to entangle other leg in the bike resulting in a horrible impact to knee, which immediately registers its indignation at being used as cannon fodder by swelling impressively.

Me: "I don't want to commute anymore."

Crawl pathetically away from bike like a drunk raccoon. Stand bike up and tentatively attempt to remount bike. Survives this technical manoeuvre and slowly rides away, leaving my pride and bits of skin in tatters.

On arriving home, I instantly demanded sympathy from Husband, who was sensible enough not to mock me at this point. I then spent the evening wondering if I'd chipped my patella as I couldn't bend my knee (turns out it isn't chipped, I'm just a wuss).
I still went to dog club that night, but Husband drove. Tangent seemed to be overly fond of banging into my knees during the session, leaving me wondering if he hadn't quite forgot the time when I accidentally poked him in the eye with my toe.

Taken after getting home from fall

Taken three days after what has become known

as 'the incident'

 This hasn't put me off riding to work, but I sure have a lot more respect for skilled cyclists. And concrete floors, definitely more respect for concrete floors.

Careering off a cliff

Since graduating three years ago, I've been struggling to find a job that pays the average £24k per year that you can expect as a graduate. Instead, grateful as I am to be in employment, I'm on pretty much the same money I was on before I even went to university. I have looked, but everyone seems to want some mythical graduate with a First Class Honours (platinum coated, preferably) and 20 years experience in the same role they're applying for. Oh, and to attain all this before reaching 25. And have a Nobel Peace Prize. And maybe rescue orphaned baby penguins.

It's made me wonder why I am so keen to get my career moving. There are so many people in high pressure jobs with work-related stress illnesses, complaining that they never see loved ones, never have any time for themselves, and have too many expectations of themselves. Who really needs that? Especially when you could easily be replaced, fired or promoted into even more stress.

So, until I do find something that won't dissolve my brain from boredom, I'm going to try and enjoy the stress-free time I do have. Who really wants to career off a cliff anyway?

Self-storage

I live quite close to one of those 'self-storage' units that let you store your belongings. I've often wondered if anyone has taken the self-storage wording too literally though. Could the companies be libel for trade description if they turned people away who wanted to store themselves? Probably not, but it would be funny to see anyway.

The above cartoon was inspired partly by self-storage units, but also by the basic human urge to climb into any cardboard box that will accommodate you. If you've never done this before, well, I don't believe you.

I was 18 here. There's no excuse for the

hair-cut though.

My daily nemesis

It takes me about 45 minutes to walk to work, and about 35 of those minutes is spent trudging up Feeder Road. This unassuming path has become a daily torture to me that I've decided I simply must address. Every step I take on Feeder Road is a step closer to insanity. I kid you not; Feeder Road is making me a little crazy.

It may seem a little extreme hating an inanimate object as much as I do, but that's the problem. Feeder Road is just too inanimate. It's so dull! One long, straight path stretching 1.5 miles. The only thing that could make it worse would be if it was a hill, with an upward incline on the way home. Or maybe if it was a Travellator and I was trying to walk in the opposite direction. No, wait, it already feels like that.

For your viewing pleasure, I've added a crude rendition of Feeder Road below. I could have coloured it in, and applied perspective and depth. But no, Feeder Road, you don't deserve that.

I think my absolute hate of this road stems from my complete lack of patience with anything. That and my constant need to be amused and entertained. Feeder Road aggravates both.

My first attempt at combating Feeder Road Fatigue was to run to and from work. This was awesome for a few weeks; more than halving my time spent commuting. Then Feeder Road gave me tendonitis, so I had to stop running for a while. Score 1 to the road. I briefly contemplated driving to and from work, but the thought of braving commuter traffic made me baulk. That and the £18 a day it would cost to park somewhere.

So, I have now invested in a bike and I'm going to attempt to cycle to and from work. This isn't as straight-forward as it sounds for several reasons. Firstly, I haven't ridden a bike since I was 12 years old, and that was with stabilisers and some kind of preternatural power keeping me upright (can the sheer force of childhood imagination alone halt the laws of physics?). Secondly, although Bristol is described as a cycle city, what this actually means is that drivers spend an inordinate amount of time picking spokes, shards of disc brakes and human bone out of their tyres.

Feeder Road; you will not win

Things I have dropped in my keyboard so far...

1. Bread crumbs
2. Half a packet of crisps
3. Sushi rice
4. Seeds
5. An embroidery needle
6. Nail clippings
7. Pencil lead

 I figure I've almost got enough stuff in there now to serve as a pretty comprehensive survivial kit.

Some sketches

Well, I got too used to having a stock of posts, and ran out. Then I got tired for reasons I won't bore you with here.

In the interim between me getting around to posting either a finished cartoon or prose, I thought I'd share some recent sketches. I cannot draw decent people (I don't mean benevolent people, just people in general) as I spent the majority of my childhood drawing animals, so I decided to address this weakness and start practising. I was actually quite happy with the Gothic-Girl; I usually wimp out when drawing lips and scribble a vague line instead of anything with any depth. I had to add shorts to the Cave-Dude. The length of his tunic was just obscene without shorts.

You are what you eat

I sometimes think that if we thought more about where our food actually comes from, most of us would starve. From chicken ova, cow booby secretions, ox tongue (I object to eating something that has more taste buds than me),  to the harmless marshmallow (which is made with rendered pig's fat), food is pretty gross when you give too much thought to it.

Pregnancy or too much cake?

I seem to be at the point in life when everyone I know is either pregnant or planning to be pregnant. I appreciate that this is supposed to be a joyous time, when happiness bounces off the walls like an out of hand squash game, but to me it's a social minefield.

What do you do when someone waddles up to you with a slightly pronounced belly?  Do you say something like "When are you due?" and receive an evil, cold stare and realise you have just called them fat? Or do you say nothing (usually after several interactions like the one just described) and disappoint the proud pregnantee who has been trying to push out their modest bump to entice someone into a conversation about morning sickness, heartburn and swollen ankles brought on by their little parasites?

If only someone had produced a guide to the differences between pregnancy and too much cake...

Click image to enlarge

Drug Mule

Respect your cephalopods

Click to bigify

A lesson in trigonometry

After a year of living in our current house, Husband and I decided to swap a couple of the rooms around. We had all our gym and exercise equipment in the upstairs spare room, and the office with the desktop in what was probably intended to be used as a dining room (we've never had a dining room that we've actually used for dining. Probably because we've never owned a dining table or chairs. We've spent almost ten years eating meals off our laps like perpetual students. Or squatters).

Last weekend was designated our 'do nothing' weekend (i.e. we just potter about, do hobbies and ignore the bacteria-ridden dishes teetering dangerously on the kitchen side), so, logically, I decided to start switching the rooms about. The first thing Husband knew about this, the computer had been disconnected and my beloved computer desk had been dismantled ready to shift upstairs. Moving the computer and it's desk upstairs was the easy part.

In the gym room, we have a 30kg workout station that was constructed in the room it presently occupied. I looked at the handlebars, then the width of the door and suggested we dismantle the top half. By this point, Husband had dragged it toward the door saying that we could manoeuvre it out. I looked at the handlebars, then the door again. I repeated that maybe we should dismantle it. Husband was now tilting the station and trying to drag it diagonally through the door. Foreseeing that we would reach a point where we would have to dismantle it anyway, I sighed and took the other end of the station to help Husband take a few more chunks out of the walls.

We spent the next fifteen minutes rocking the station in a hopeless attempt to convince it to bend around the door frame. Husband was giving directions to help co-ordinate our efforts. This would probably have expedited things beautifully if he had given the directions and then waited for me to move, rather than move the station whilst giving directions. After having my toes crushed, ribs bruised and fingers jammed in the door, we somehow managed to get it out of the room and into the hallway. Looking at the handlebars and our spiralling stairs, I once again suggested we dismantle it. Husband was resolved that it was unnecessary.

 We tried a variety of approaches in getting it down the stairs, and after a while of us supporting the station's weight in between decisions, I was beginning to vote that we just throw it over the banister and go from there. We compromised and let it slide down the first flight of stairs like a pair of deformed, demented skis.

Luckily, we live in a bit of an odd house with the bathroom situated in between flights of stairs, so I managed to pull the station part-way in the bathroom so Husband could slide through and attempt to negotiate it down the last set of stairs. Unfortunately, we couldn't get the station to go down the stairs as the top set of steps was blocking the handle bars. At this point, Husband was supporting the vast majority of the station's weight. I waited. Husband then suggested we remove the handle bars.

Returning with tools, and leaving Husband to hold the entire station as it overhung the steps, I set to the task of unscrewing the handlebars. This was proving difficult as somehow during the move the station had ended up upside down. I slowly fiddled about trying to secure one end of the first screw with a monkey wrench, whilst turning the screw thread-by-thread with a screwdriver. Being the meticulous person I am, I continued with my sedate approach DIY on the second screw, despite Husband starting to flag a little under the weight of the station. Eventually, with an exasperated (and slightly pained) vociferation of "You don't need to unscrew every bloody thread!" Husband brought his foot up and booted the handlebar to knock out the loose screws.
 
Now that the handlebars were no longer a limiting factor, the rest of the move went very smoothly with minimal wall damage. The workout station now sits quite happily in the downstairs room. I think moving it was probably the most intense work out either of us have had from it. At present, the handlebars remain separated from the station just in case it needs to be moved again.

Modern applications of martial arts

I hear the term 'modern applications of martial arts' quite frequently (being married to a Ninja that's not really unexpected), but never really understood the term until recently. I had visions of metro-sensei types tweeting instructions on how to poke nerve points via Facebook; I was quite disappointed to discover this wasn't the case. My understanding now is that it basically means you can beat some-one up in a nightclub as well as the more traditional zen garden setting.

When I studied Kung Fu for a couple of years, I discovered the most practical modern application of martial arts was to beat up on a vending machine when it didn't hold up its end of the deal. A fortuitous discovery indeed!

The cartoon below took a lot of redrawing and colouring, and I still don't think it looks right. The original sketch had so much more character, but it seems to have got lost in translation. Among the other issues, I think the arms are wrong; they are basically just a padded stick figure's arm! Guess I need to keep studying anatomy. Oh well. I may go back to it someday and re-work it, but I suspect I'm probably too lazy to ever get around to it.

Behold the dead, emotionless face of today's martial artist...

...versus the colourless yet more expressive prototype.

Taste in men

I'm sure the 'ole 'too many cooks...' sketches have been done to death, reincarnated and killed again. Even so, here's my version:

Click the image to enlarge

Criticism

I do not handle criticism well. I'm the kind of person who after being gently told that perhaps yellow is not my colour, will dramatically don a black bag for the rest of the week yelling "fine, I shall just forgo clothes completely then" and rustle off in a mood.

This attitude was not very helpful when I was at art college. I tended toward (and still do) a rather low self-esteem, so it was nothing to do with thinking my work was perfect - criticism, regardless of how constructive, confirmed in my mind that I was indeed quite crap.

At art college, I was perfectly happy to be left alone to sit in a corner and draw cartoons. Unfortunately, no formal educational institution I ever attended were great advocates of cartoons being actual art, and I was not left alone to draw cartoons.
I remember it once being suggested that I try adding more colour to my work, and perhaps make my work a little larger at the same time. My response to this perfectly reasonable suggestion was to produce this travesty:

This has to be the ugliest thing I have ever produced (and I've eaten some pretty rotten curries). This monstrosity is 2ft high, painted on an uneven bit of plywood and flaunted a deliberate misuse of colour. My intention was to dispel my tutor's belief that colour is beautiful by making something so damn hideous it would make you break into a cold sweat as you fought against the need flee. And I drew it BIG. I guess the figure frantically shaking their head represented my reluctance to move away from my drab, tiny drawings.

I probably thought I was being really clever. Turns out I was a bit of a tit as a teenager. Still, my tutor never asked me to be more colourful or large and I was finally left alone to draw cartoons.

Note I am a little disturbed that I've given the impression that I all can draw is cartoons. Or worse, that the above drawing represented that I spent my time at art college pissing off tutors. To prove otherwise, I've added a couple of drawings I did at the roughly the same time as the poop one above. This might be taken as me being a bit showy or needy. I never said I wasn't still a tit.

I am a good dog owner

Owning dogs is a rewarding experience. For relatively little effort they remain loyal, loving and endlessly amusing. Food, water, training, play and a couple of walks a day is not much to give for this adoration.

Until winter arrives. Then the routine morning dog walk becomes a kind of daily torture. The alarm goes off at some ungodly hour and I grope blindly in the dark to turn it off. I then spend ten minutes sat on the edge of the bed almost in tears brought on by tiredness, before trying to find the dog walking clothes that I threw haphazardly about the bedroom the day before.
Once these have been found, I half-walk half-fall down the stairs before realising I've put two legs through one leg of my trousers. Hopping into the front room, I can finally put a light on without risking waking Husband up. Doing so, I'm met with the unimpressed, squinting eyes of Tangent, and the back of Willow who has turned around in her bed to better ignore me.

Eventually, after much chaos and confusion that involves falling over the dogs, trying without success to put gloves on my head and somehow clipping a dog lead onto the fish tank, we make it out of the door and to the park. A slight pang of depression hits when I notice the moon is still out because it's so damn early, and there are no footprints aside from mine in the snow because everyone else is  much smarter than me and still asleep lazy.

This pattern repeats itself until Spring, when the weather begins to improve and the fair weather dog walkers come out of hibernation and join me in the early morning dog walks. Much to my chagrin as over winter (short of laying a urinary claim) the park had become my territory.

And I do all this because I am a good dog owner, and I love my dogs. At least this is the mantra I tell myself when I am out in the snow, rain or frogs. Well, maybe not frogs. But it can rain frogs, I know this because it was on Wikipedia.

Team Building

A few weeks back I had my work's team building day. I know that these days are supposed to encourage a good working rapport and be all teamy and jolly, but they invariably leave you feeling degraded and a bit depressed about your life
The sort of activities that you do on team building days would probably be quite fun, if you were doing them with actual friends and not having to do them to prove you can actually converse with another human being without imploding. And yes, implode rather than explode. Exploding would be far too extrovert for a sociopath.

 This team building day in particular was especially arduous. Coinciding with an intense PMT week, the last thing I wanted to do was laser quest and ice skate (fortunately it wasn't laser quest on ice skates).
Laser quest wasn't actually too bad, and was made more amusing by the illiterate attendant. I'm not sure how you achieve such a disregard for the natural order of vowels and consonants, but the attendant was certainly dedicated to this end.

So, we trundled into the gaming area (which would not have looked out of place on the set of Red Dwarf), with our unpronounceable names and spent a merry few minutes shooting the crap out of each other. The novelty soon wore off when I realised that I could just stay hidden in a corner and shoot the occasional passing colleague, and in the meantime just dream about chocolate.

By the time we reached the ice rink I had descended into a morose state with a touch of murderous intent. The prospect of being handed a set of shoes with razor sharp blades on the bottom was actually quite appealing. I did, however, sit this one out as I have a fear of ice-skating since I once slipped on ice and my knee went out to the side in an impressive, and bio-mechanically wrong, 90o angle. It was not comfortable.

From a business point of view, I think team building days are actually quite successful - you scurry back to your desk and work your productive little heart out to discourage managers from sending you on further team building days. You send unnecessary emails, make pointless calls to members of your team in an effort to prove that you are indeed a team player, and in no way require the perceived benefits of further team building events.

******Apologies for the long delay between posts. Due to being away and a family crisis, blogging took a back-burner******

How to tell if your dog is really a Zombie-Dog

1. You realise that the fetch toy you've been throwing is actually one of your dog's limbs

2. Little or no bowel control

3. Poor reaction to stimulus

4. Poor social skills

5. No one comes to your dog's birthday party

Thesis hand-in