annanotbob2's Diaryland Diary
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Still
Yesterday I cooked a big roast lunch for all the kids and also for Nurse Marcus (he's not really a Nurse and his name's not Marcus), as I forgot that I'd arranged to see him and he was happy to come along. I've known him forever - he used to babysit the kids when Son was still in nappies - and he remains a dear friend and a fucking annoying pisshead, simultaneously. Bless him.
One of the annoying things he does is bring me elephants. Years ago one of my pals, an African woman who did collect elephants, was moving to Spain and had to leave a load of stuff behind. She asked me to care for about four wooden elephants, which I did, bunging them on a shelf somewhere, in front of the books. Gradually I realised that people thought I collected them, as I was being given them for Christmas, and I moaned about this on the occasion of being given a massive, very nice, elephant from Egypt - a gift which occasioned the buying of an extra bag and paying excess baggage because the person knew how much I'd love it. I mean, it was nice and I do still have it, but I'm not a collector of anything specific and that whole thing kind of tires me, and I told bloody Nurse Marcus who thought it was hilarious and has been bring me elephants ever since. I hadn't seen him for almost a year and they'd been piling up:
Eight. Eight more bloody elephants. Thanks.
I fucked up the dinner a bit. I did Greek roast lamb, where you cut slits in it and poke garlic and rosemary in, then rub lemon juice and olive oil over it all and cook it for ages, till the meat all falls off the bone. Delish. With roast potatoes, roast parsnips, baked carrots (in the oven, with a tiny scrap of butter, thyme, salt and loads of pepper, tightly covered with foil), pointy cabbage, mint sauce and gravy. I thought I'd made masses but there was barely enough to go round. YD was meant to be coming but she went down with a migraine - if she'd been there as well I might have had a riot - as it was I just got some old-fashioned looks from Son and Grandson, who are both Good Eaters (aka greedy fuckers who have no right being so thin). I can't explain it, other than it being due to my general malaise - I've cooked for up to ten or twelve often over the years and always had just enough for seconds. I was last to sit down and found myself scraping the last out of every dish. Boo.
So to cheer myself up I've been stirring it up on facebook. Not trolling as such, just being bloody-minded in a way that encourages other people to be more frank than they might have been. This evening there was some berk on the local page (not here, we only get mug shots on the page for right here, but the little town one along, where I used to live, where all my kids were born, that place) - some berk going on about his neighbours having played loud music the night before and how he was going to contact the landlady and let her know the 'misery' her tenants were causing decent people. By the time I saw the post questions had already established that it was the first time they'd done this, and they had stopped before midnight, but people were still chipping in with oh you poor thing, did you call the police and that kind of crap which makes me LIVID, for fuck's sake. I mean fair enough if they do it all the time until the early hours, but by what right do these fuckers who like quiet think they get to rule all the bloody time? I like loud music - not always and not all music and I don't play it in the house because I haven't got a fucking stereo set up, but I do in my car, I turn it right up to eleven and I'm there in your ears and in your face with my Patti Smith or whatever but then I'm gone and you survived, you tight arsed git, didn't you? (Not you, gentle reader, obvs) So I said that on this thread, that I thought the guy was selfish for expecting to get his own way all the time and if this was what he thought of as misery, a few hours of loud music on a Saturday night, he was a lucky bastard and quite clearly really decent at all. Ha ha - then they all started piping up, loads of likes - ach, now I've written it down I can see how pathetic it was, to let myself behave like this - I'm tempted to delete it, but I won't I'll just change the subject.
I went out today and took ED out for a walk in town, knackered I am now and it's gone 1.30am - I got distracted by a row on twitter about transgender women, or about those who say they aren't real women.
That makes me cross as well - I haven't read all the original articles but both G. Greer and J. Murray were entirely lacking in the trans hatred of which they are accused and were merely pointing out that if you live the first few decades of your life as a man in a patriarchal society, no matter how unwillingly, your life experience is substantially different to those who have always been women. Murray was a victim of click-bait headline writers who used sentiments she never went near expressing. I think there's room for accepting trans people while acknowledging that this is an experience most of us know little about.
Laters, peeps. I am grateful for: being well enough to walk; going out on the beach later in the wild wind; Son leaving his Easter eggs behind; big smiles from ED every time I popped my head round the chair to see how she was (the rear-view mirror I set up was not so good as half the time it reflects the sun into her eyes); Line of Duty - most enjoyable.
xxx
1:31 a.m. - 17.04.17
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