Bignjuicy

It’s that time if year again when we think of those less fortunate than ourselves. The little ones in need of our help. Yes it’s the Childrens Awareness Voluntary Appeal. We all know of a young person in need of assistance. It may be that they are socially challenged; unable to pass a stranger in the street without requesting financial assistance. Or perhaps they are multi lingual with a natural bent towards a charming patois la rue. How we delight when we hear, ‘Oi geezer give us yer phone you slag or I’ll slice ya you mingin minge’. Many are the spirited youths who sneer in the face of authority. For it is a dry, dusty master and in need of Stephen Fry to give it an ironic modern twist.

So, dear reader, we appeal once again to your generosity. Think of all those youths in need of your wonga. Picture, if you will, a one eyed pussy staring pitifully into middle distance. Hold that image as we now present a heartwrenching interweb presentation experience designed to showcase a thematic charitable donation opportunity. Clicky

[ Please make all cheques payable to 'drD CAVA fund' ].
Other charities are available.

1. Buy vast quantities of cheap cava from Tesco.
2. Drink vast quantities of cheap cava whilst doing your ironing.
3. Carry your ironing upstairs.
4. Fall over and drop your ironing on the floor.
5. Pick up your ironing and return to the ground floor.
6. Redo your ironing.
7. Repeat step 3 and hang up your ironing.
8. Drink more cava.
9. Watch open university programmes.
10. Fall asleep on the couch, dribble and get a stiff neck.
11. Go to bed. Go directly to bed. Do not pass water, do not collect your teddy from the shelf.
12. Wake up. Feel sick and turn over. Reach for absent teddy and fret.
13. Go to PC and check for reply to catmail.
14. Drink water and go back to bed.
15. Fall asleep and dream about former colleague with enormous hairy bottom who now miaows.
16. Wake up in morning with cat lying on your head.
17. Worry that cat took took advantage of you whilst you slept.

Catmail
Cutecat sent his first email today.
I was working and he decided to dance on the keyboard whilst poking me in the eye with his tail. His catlike agility and nimble footwork activated the email program.
It was a work of spontaneous expression. Cat and machine in perfect harmony.
I couldn’t interrupt as I was occupied with getting cat hairs out of my eye.
After the email had gone I retrieved it for you. Here it is.

From: drD
To: enquiries@bt.com
Subject:dfgdfgggggggggggggggl’
Message: cvzzzzzzzzzzzzresta\wel|ew//////df///dfsdf///fdf/////========fsdefre=43r55rrerrffffffffdsf\df’dfdfdffffff fffffffffffffffffffff

If there are an any bilingual cats reading – please translate this in the comments box for me. I’m worried that cutecat may have issued controversial instructions that may compromise my status as a “valued BT customer”. [ I've got a sticker you know ].

Crackdowns on truancy, crackdowns on binge drinking [ Posters featuring artful vomiting - check it out ], crackdowns on shoplifting, crackdowns on bullying, crackdowns on illegal signs, crackdowns on illegal drugs, crackdowns on illegal cars, crackdowns on illegal phones, crackdowns on illegal taxis.
Sigh
What’s a boy to do in his spare time?
Knitting anyone?

Pap idols
Stock Aitken and Waterman are coming back. I saw Rick Astley the other day too. This is looking bad.

Froth
Tesco are selling sparkly sparkly cheap as chips cava for £2.96 a bottle. It’s really rather good. Better than some ‘champagnes’ I’ve tasted. Offer ends 29/11. Tell em I sent ya. Hic.

Wart News
My first ever wart fell off this morning during a busy meeting. You’ll be glad to know it was a painless end for the little fella. He was cryogenically zapped a couple of weeks ago and has been slowly curling up and dying ever since. I always thought I was too nice to get warts. Your body has interesting ways of reminding you that you’re quite ordinary. My doctor has even more interesting ways of freezing my flesh. I think he quite enjoyed doing it. Bloody hurt like hell.

This table was designed by Eileen Gray around 1927. It’s known as the E1027 table. It’s quite famous and appears a lot on TV, usually with a glass of water on it for the presenter and maybe a microphone. It’s a very clever table because its chromed tubular steel and glass so ‘disappears’ within an interior but also maintains an elegant visual presence. The circular forms are non-threatening, there are no sharp corners to jag you as you walk past. The height is adjustable by means of simple peg and socket system. The table can be set high so that it can be used over a bed; the cantilever design is another clever aspect of the design. The table can also be set low to be used as a side table. So, you see, the design of this table is very carefully considered indeed. Eileen Gray was a very careful designer. She was also a very modest designer and it’s by virtue of her modesty that she’s only really become famous in the last twenty years or so. I’ve been finding out a lot about Eileen Gray recently and I’ll be writing a bit more soon. I do like the E1027 table, so much so that I bought one, thus fulfilling a long held ambition.

I don’t believe it
I missed the Jonathan Miller series, a brief history of disbelief, which finished tonight on BBC2. Only saw the last fifteen minutes or so and it looked really thought provoking. Wonder if there’s a book coming?
Atheism quiz.
My result: “Terrible, just terrible!”

Frosty
Quite a hard frost this morning – the first major one of the year sigh. At least the sun was shining. I love the golden light and long shadows at this time of year. I really must try to haul my ass out of bed early one morning so I can take some photies before all the leaves fall.

Blogger off
Interesting that Blogger is flagging a two hour ’scheduled outage’ today.
I think this is the first time I’ve ever seen advance warning of the Blogger system being unavailable. Usually it just goes offline. I have to say that I’m pretty surprised that with all the resources of Google behind it, Blogger is still so flaky. I’ve never known Google to go offline for two hours. I wonder why the Blogger infrastructure isn’t more resilient? It has to boil down to cash – so why are Google not spending more on it? Are they finding that there isn’t as much revenue in it as they’d orginally envisaged?

Is it the waning of the year? The general drop in daylight levels? The change in temperature? The worsening weather? Perhaps it’s all of those things or perhaps it’s just me, the time of life that I’m in, the circumstances of recent years or whatever. I’m feeling like I’m moving into a new phase of my life. Like something is beginning. One of the good things about bignjuicy is that I get to look back at what I’ve written. It’s like a sketch map of my life. Whilst not every detail is recorded, there are enough triggers, enough allusions to events, to prompt a good recall of happenings and feelings. It’s a bit like looking through old photos or meeting an old friend. Things you’d forgotten come flooding back. Doing this little blog each day, bit by bit, has built something very valuable to me. There’s another lesson there for me too – ‘little and often’.

I had a read through some archives the other day and it was very helpful to pick my way through all the stuff that’s gone on these last two years. It’s just over a year since I chucked in my ‘career’. The ripples of that decision are still visible to me. Not least in my impatience to put something in it’s place. However, I keep coming back to the realisation that my life is now my career, not some job that utilises only a few of the things I can do. I’ve realised I’m still a bit like a child that’s been put in control of the world – not knowing quite where to start. I’m a bit conscious of time ticking away and the need to get on with it. Yet, my other big realisation is that the process of getting there is also to be enjoyed. Years of doing jobs that only brought patches of enjoyment has conditioned me to expect that work is not much fun – I can count on the fingers of one hand the number of really good laughs I had in my last employment. Now I’m slowly unlearning that grim ‘truth’. I’ve come a long way in a year and, if I feel a little anxious about the future, that’s only to be expected. It took me twenty years to get to my previous ’success’ so it’s early days yet with this new lark. I realised a while ago that I allowed employment to anaesthetise me. It’s a well evolved system which removes individuality under the illusion of ‘teamwork’ when ultimately it’s all about money. Only most employers and employees are either unaware or not honest enough to face that. I wonder what would happen if they did?

Miaow
You’ll see from today’s picture that cutecat is back in the house. He did a super cat appeal on the windowsill and I couldn’t resist. I’m a sucker when it comes to furry creatures being appealing. I’ve evolved a system to stop him from getting under the floor [ lock the door ]. I’ve a feeling that he’ll be visiting quite often as the weather gets colder.

Number 2s at number 10
“Occasionally I was summoned into the prime ministerial bathroom, where, as I spoke, he would discharge some ablution.”
Life inside John Major’s no 10 – fascinating. Be sure to read the insider decoding of Bill Clinton’s handshakes at the end of the piece.

Nice one
“So thank you Richard, for a life that merits a place where you’ll find only friendly ferrets.”

As last lines go, that has to be one of the best.

The name’s d. drD
I’ve never quite given up my dream of being suave, debonair and devastatingly attractive. I do like the odd gadget and fiendish plots are fun. The nearest I’ve come to a megalomaniac psycho bent on world domination is a former half boss who was vertically challenged, balding and would never shut the f**k up when you spoke with him. A fluffy pussy on his lap would probably have lacerated his gonads just to stop him rabbiting about how wonderful he was. Anyway, all this by way of revealing to you, dear reader, the truth that I am actually James Bond. Yes I know this because this interweb quiz told me. And Anna done it too and she’s William Wallace. So we can all be heroes, just for one day.

I’ve got about a thousand floppy disks full of stuff I’ve collected over the years. Documents I’ve saved – ‘just in case’. Loads of back ups from way back when before CDs allowed me to store the Library of Alexandria on a coffee mat. Freebie programs from when being given a free floppy disk still felt like something quite special.

I really need to get rid of these disks because they’re just taking up space – both physical and mental, I’ll probably never use them again. The fact that I’ve not used them for several years gives me confidence that they could exit my life real soon with no ill effects. The only problem is that I don’t really know what is stored on many of them. It could be my innermost musings on my life plans when I was contemplating retraining as a Yak warden. More worrying those photos I vowed would never see the light of day may be lurking somewhere in the pile.

You see disk labelling was never my strong point. I had my own filing systems which were based on colours, position in storage box and mental maps of where everything is. Unfortunately, a while back all of the disks ended up in a big pile on the floor. I was ‘reorganising’ – only I got interrupted for about three weeks and then I had to watch Neighbours, a cat was under my floor and – well you know.

So now I don’t have a clue what is on these disks and I really can’t be arsed to sit here for about 4 days going through them all. I need to get one of those large electromagnets that Oddjob used in Goldfinger to pick up James Bond’s crushed car and drop it in the back of his pick up before returning to Goldfinger’s evil ranch. [ Can a ranch be evil ? ]. Such a powerful magnet would instantly scramble the contents of the disks and render them suitable for donation to that company that recycles them into Hugo Boss shoes and Prada thongs, then sells them to unwitting celebrities on Santa Monica Boulevard in Canvey Island.

All those incisive memos and planning sheets I spent hours of my life agonising over would be zapped into ferric oblivion and I would be free. Please someone out there – send me Oddjob’s phone number.

Qqqqqquite interesting
How ‘I Claudius’ got made.
Must remember to watch this later.

Drink
Have you got a problem?
Do the quiz.
Apparently I’m one of the 73% classified as ‘normal’.
God help the ‘abnormal’ that’s all I can say.

Poor Sindi, after pushing Toadie down the stairs, Stu gently helped her face the truth. She admitted that she had been responsible for all the “accidents” and was carted off to a maximum security ozbunker for nutjobs care institution. Watch out Sindi, you may get shipped off to Brizzi if this carries on.
[ Note to self: stop watching Neighbours and get a life ]

Dearest DVLA
Your telephone answering system is truly truly truly [ did I say truly? ] crapola.
In a wholly pile of of shite stylee. So excremental is it that I would rather ‘listen again’, on endless repeat, to Rod Stewart being tortured with a heated egg whisk [ and simultaneously have my gonads constricted with an industrial strength bulldog clip ] than attempt to ‘navigate’ through the 200 plus options and submenus of your ’system’.
Please consider employing more cheerful ladies and gentlemen to pick up the phone within three rings and deal mercilessly well with each and all enquiries.
Love.
drD

Come the revolution
…all will be beautiful. And Canadian. Linkage has been bestowed, honoured am I. Ta muchly Andre.
[Purrs with pleasure]