Grump, Grumpy and Grumpier

My grumpiness has been particularly active for the last couple of weeks due to several factors.
I had to attend an interview at the Job Centre because after 11 weeks out of work I havn’t found a job. Clearly the real world hasn’t caught up with these folks yet, they obviously havn’t noticed that unemployment is rising and the Job Centre have had to open up another two signing points to cope with the increase locally. Anyway the guy I saw was rather more in touch and a fairly realistic interview followed, up until the point that is that he asked me if I had thought of using some thing called a Work Trial. The way this works is that if you see a job you fancy you apply for it and enclosed one of the cards they give you for the prospective employer. You then get to work at a job for two weeks to see if you like the job and the employer likes you, great, smashing, super you might think, well yes but the only snag is that you don’t get paid any wages !!! So to summarise an employer gets two weeks free labour, says you are not suited, please send me someone else. Shades of the discredited YTS Scheme methinks.

‘Er Indoors has been hassling me to try and repair the leak in the pond for some time now so I decided to make the effort, now its not that hard to find a leak is it ? fill pond up, watch edges for bubbles coming in through leak in liner, drain some water from pond, repair leak, refill pond. After several hours on my hands and knees crawling round the edge of the pond I couldn’t find any evidence of a leak despite the fact that the water was going down. To cut a long story short and after trying several coats of pond paint to no avail The Domestic Authorities decided that a new pond was the solution. Apparently ‘we’ wouldn’t have much of a problem doing it!!
So I got dragged round various pond selling places to choose a new preformed liner that was roughly the size and shape of our existing pond, we eventually found one that was near enough and got it home. It was at this point it became obvious that the one we had bought was considerably deeper than our existing pond. So not a problem….’we’ could dig it out. < bigger sigh> so in the interests of marital harmony I set to work with my shovel, due to the necessity of moving the pond around to accommodate the shape I had to dig out some of the existing rockery that bordered the old pond. This in turn now looked ‘funny’, back to work with my shovel to completely dig out the rockery, this of course now leads us to something to replace it,,,result is that we have a big bag of pea shingle delivered 900kg worth that has to be carried from the front of the house to the back and spread out. It was then decided that as we have several bamboo bushes along the fence we should have a sort of Chinese Feng Shui garden shape, this means that we now have to buy some bamboo rolls similar to log rolls to create a border around the shingle. Nearly two weeks later what started out as a simple job for a couple of hours is finally finished. It is Sods Law that these things always take on complications and take a lot longer than originally planned.

I also got dragged around the supermarket the other day and was surprised to see on sale breakfast bacon, breakfast orange, breakfast eggs, breakfast tea and something called salad leaves, what ever happened to bacon, eggs, tea, orange juice and lettuce? Is this yet another example of the creeping Americanisation of our society.

TV Chefs have also been taxing my patience lately, they all seem to have taken to messing around with classic regional dishes and ‘improving’ them, the Spikey Haired one who apparently went to Broadstairs College has taken some Caribbean dishes and 'improved' them, the dozy Canadian has been messing with classic Italian food and others have been busy interfering with various foods that have stood the test of time. In my opinion these people are no better than the arty farty pretentious types who tell us that the Turner Centre will improve our intellect and social outlook as well as curing all Thanets problems at a stroke.

On a brighter note I managed to escape for a weekends fishing with a couple of friends of mine at a place near Ashford, the weather was really decent and we caught fish as well. The positive side of this is that these guys have no interest in politics at all and we spend most of the weekend talking about anything and everything except politics, they are also merciless in taking the mickey out of me if the occasion demands it.

As you will have read elsewhere Richard Nicholson has stood down as Labour Group Leader after ten years of service to the Labour Group. I count Richard among my closest friends, indeed he was best man at my wedding and he shared with me in confidence his intention to stand down several months ago. So any talk of a coup is misplaced, misdirected and should be discounted. Ten years is a long time to carry the responsibility of leadership and Richard can now take a well earned rest and spend more time in his garden that he loves so much.