There's a Little Black Spot on the Sun Today...
Up betimes (thanks Sam) and off to the local hospital, a place I fear I've seen just a little too much of lately. A blood test pour moi this time. A test for "liver function". A test that obviously has me fearing the worst. But then again....I'm gonna live forever.Aren't I?
And then off to work. That place where, at present, there is little work to be actually done. Not because there ain't none, but because the company we were outsourced and sub-contracted to has sub-contracted the work we did to a company that does it cheaper than we do. Suddenly we are being observed by
The truly ironic thing about the 'success' of this transition, is that the sub-contractors to the sub-contractors have not, as yet, in over four months of winning the contract, actually completed a single task without one of us having to finish it for them. Guess that's why they're so cheap eh? On paper though, it looks like they're friggin' great and we're sat around doing sweet FA.
Today it came to head and my boss and I had a slanging match because I had the temerity to call it like I saw it. He said I was out of order. I said I'll be fucked if I'll sit here mute while some incompetent twat steals my livelyhood and, moreover, my pension. He said I shouldn't have said that in front of the customer who, once again, had come to ask us to finish the job. Decorum? My arse.
I've applied for my redundancy. In the meantime, I'll turn up and play the game. I've had enough. I'm only fifty, I'm sure I can keep body and soul together somewhere for the next fifteen or twenty years.
Always assuming my liver's OK that is.
In the middle of all this, I get a phone call from my Mam. The local social services have arranged for a few handles, bath chairs and such to be installed in their flat to help my rapidly decaying Dad to perform his ablutions with a modicum of dignity.
A merry duo turned up today to fit said artifacts and promptly drilled through a water pipe. They then had to call a plumber. It put me in mind of that Flanders and Swan song "The Gasman Cometh". Naturally my Mam was at the end of her tether. It never rains but it pours.
A little verbal molly-coddling and she's OK. I phoned later, the plumber had been and all was sorted. Still, it shouldn't happen should it?
So, all-in-all a shit day from dawn 'till dusk. After our evening meal I retired from the hurly burly of Eastenders and Holby City and whatever and retired to my eyrie to play some blues on Bella - my Fylde Acoustic and put some more pressure on my liver.
After a while I fire up iTunes and search for the masters: Robert Johnson first, Peter Green closely follows before the floodgates open and those flattened sevenths reverberate and the sorrows of the world are expressed before the inevitable resolution as we return to the root. *Aaaaahhhhhhh!!!!!*
Music, any music, always helps - even Rap. At least I can concentrate on the bass. Benny XVI disagrees with me however. In this month's Word magazine, the playful pontiff is quoted thus: "Rock music is the vehicle of anti-religion".
Well, all I can say is: "You obviously haven't acquainted yourself with the world of blogging yet then, have you holy fadder?"
Music is a fact of life. A fact of nature. Music exists everywhere. From the mewling infant to the death rattle of the toothless crone. It's all around. The traffic in the street, the call of market traders, the wind in the wires, the cry of the curlew as well as the thumping bass of a thrash metal band. It's just as valid in "Honky Tonk Women", "Mistletoe and Wine" or something by the Wu Tang Clan as "To Be a Pilgrim", Gregorian Chant or something by Harry Secombe. And, get this, it's all the work of human beings. Not God. Not the fuckin' Devil. And it's certainly not an Earthly expression of the battle between the two.
Essentially it all about how we deal with this veil of tears. Life and death, love and hate, beginnings and endings - it's all there. And it's got fuck all to do with old, celibate (*sniggers*) men telling us what is and what should never be.
A Genesis and Revelation of our own without a grown man (*sniggers again, but more loudly*) in a dress interfering.
Still, all my woes pale to insignificance after reading Mike Da Hat's weblog.
Chin up Mike.
6 comments:
Stay positive Steve. Regarding being undercut - I've been there. We lost a staff magazine account for a bank that rhymes with 'Forkshire'.... A geezer in Belfast got it instead - he put it together in his bedroom - in his spare time, it wasn't even his main job for God's sake. Since then, design has gone completely crap - we're having to go into other stuff - just to keep going... Someone is always ready to undercut. Some git in Bury wanted us to do some DVD work. We did the job and got 1,000 discs done for the initial order. The guy re-ordered and said he wanted the next 1k cheaper. We told him to f**k off.... It's happened a lot lately. (I wouldn't mind but this guy drove a big, f**k off Ferarri).......
Hmmm, Interesting news about Glazer though......
The Glazer stuff is the death knell of football as we have known it since the inception of the Premiership. Part of me rejoices in the fuckin' up of the Reds, but the other half knows that the break up of TV rights - allied with totally different European laws - will result in a lot of 'big' clubs going to the wall.
I agree over the Glazer stuff. Doug Ellis, David Gold at the bluenoses, and even bloody Abramovitch have at least expressed a love of the game and the team they run (even though they're all grubby money men). Steve... when you're in this mood it's like listening to The Smiths, you moaning northern git!
Keep your chin up. Things can only get better...or worse...or stay pretty much the same.
Alan
GX40
It takes something to make a great post out of some less than (and potentially less than) good news. Blogs are about life, well, good blogs are about life, just like this one!
Nice one Steve!
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