“It’s Philip NOT Phil dot com…”

Espresso
Why do people start off emails, voice mails and indeed letters with “it’s been ages since heard from you”? Could it be because I either forgot you existed, couldn’t be arsed contacting you, or I have no interest in anything you have to say?  Or most likely all of the above.  If you were that bothered about me, my well being or really interested you would have contacted me sooner, but I’m guessing you’re now bored, have nothing better to do, are scraping the bottom of the barrel and as a last ditch effort contact me to avoid having to make the effort to committing suicide which would probably take up too much effort.
My mother is a great one for doing this.  As a somewhat and occasional dutiful son I phone my mother regularly i.e. at least once a week and did so for a few years.  One day I decided that I’d let her call me, she has all my phone numbers, work, home, mobile, she has my postal address and email address, so just how long would it take her to contact me?  A week? Nope.  A fortnight?  Nope.  A month? Nope, you’re not even close yet.  It took her 4 months to get around to contacting me and then it was only because she wanted something.  Guess how she started off the conversation.. Yup, “it’s been ages since heard from you”
I took the time to explain to her that communication is a two way street, and she can pick up the phone to me any time she likes and it doesn’t just have to be when she wants something fetching/carrying/moving/taking to the tip.  She can phone and say hello when ever she wants, as long as it’s not before 10am over a weekend and never after 9pm on any day.  I’ve also invoked the 3 strikes rule.  I phone her on 3 occasions, after that it’s up to her to call me.  It can still go a month or so before she picks the phone up and then it’s usually to bleat on about something like her husband’s died or she needs a light bulb replacing.

We live about 60 miles from my mother, she has been to stay with us once or twice for the weekend, as she doesn’t drive she gets the train to Preston and M picks her up from the station on Friday afternoon and drops her off there on Monday morning.  At first I thought it it was quite nice that my mother wanted to come and stay with us for a weekend, it gave us the opportunity to entertain her and M’s family and for her to get to know M’s family a bit better.  I thought that maybe her main reason for wanting to come and see us was curiosity about where we lived, what the house looked liked and how it was decorated, you know, all of those womanly reasons for wanting to visit.  When she arrived on Friday the spare room was ready, spotlessly clean and tidy, fresh bed linen, flowers on the dresser, coat hangers and hanging space in the wardrobe sorted, we killed the proverbial fatted calf and had a lovely meal and generally made her feel very welcome.  After dinner we sat down to have a chat and a proper catch up and it was then we found out her real motive for wanting to come and see us.  “What time is the car-boot sale on in the morning?  That’s what I’ve really come down here for”
For those of you who don’t know what a car-boot sale is, it’s a massive yard sale where everyone parks up in a field, sets up tables and try to sell their tat, old junk and anything else they don’t want.  The one just down the road from us is huge, very huge and pretty much every Saturday over summer – weather permitting – you’ll find hundreds of cars in there with people trying to get rid of their crap whilst buying other people’s crap.  My mother loves these things and just about wets her pants just talking about bloody car-boot sales.  She knew about the big one near us because we had mentioned it, but I honestly never thought she would make that her main motive to come and stay with us.

She was told that:-

A: The car-boot starts around 7ish, at least that’s when people arrive and start setting up

B: If you go leave quietly, take the spare key and don’t come back before 10am

C: If you go there do not bring back arms full of other people’s crap to untidy our home

D: Do not bring us anything back; we do not want other people’s crap.

E: No really do not bring back arms full of other people’s crap to untidy our home

F: Seriously, DO NOT bring us anything back; we do not want other people’s crap.

To be continued………

Cherie - what a dreadful mouth - Blair has got herself embroiled in leftie pinko socialist mess by letting a Muslim guy off a prison sentence for punching another man in the face during a row in a queue inside a bank.  Miah - who had just been to a mosque - punched Mr Furcan inside the bank, and again outside the building.  Punching him once could be seen as a knee jerk reaction, but punching him again a while later is just plain wrong and even more inexcusable than punching him the first time.
Blair told Miah that violence had to be taken seriously, but said she would suspend his prison sentence because he was a religious person and had not been in trouble before.  She added: “You are a religious man and you know this is not acceptable behaviour.”
This really does give out all the wrong signals, people need to know that first they live by the law of the land, and secondly by the law of your religion.

What’s with the crying politicians at the moment? Serial ditherer Gordon Brown had a highly staged cry during a televised interview with Penis Morgan the other day over the death of his daughter in 2002.  Whilst it is tragic when ever anyone dies especially a child, expressing ones grief 8 years later is not for general consumption and should be kept private.  Unfortunately for some it was a vote winning performance and that is indeed unfortunate.  Alistair Campbell then proceeded to try to cry on the Andrew Marr show on Sunday morning when pressed about Tony Blair’s involvement with the invasion of Iraq.  Again it looked staged, insincere and about as convincing as a vegetarian fox.  Maybe Alistair was just sucking up to that idiot Gordon Brown.  By the way, did you know that the meaning of Campbell is “crooked mouth”  forked-tongue would be more accurate.

Gordon Brown has also decided to defend his 3 party members who are waiting to be prosecuted for their expenses claims; they are hiding behind an old bit of legislation of Parliamentary Privilege which makes them immune from prosecution for anything they say while in Parliament.  What Brown ought to be doing is to tell them to take it on the chin and not try to hide behind anything at all, but no, they have his backing and again we see Gordon’s incompetence coming into play and just how crooked Labour in general has become.  Considering they are the people’s party and socialists etc. they have done a very good job of lining their own nests in spectacular fashion.

A article in one of the papers was headlined “Andy Bell is going to be performing at European Gay Ski Week in March”. Well, that’s very nice for Andy Bell and for everyone concerned, but there something I’m either missing or do not understand.  Why is there specifically a European Gay Ski Week?  There is a European Ski Week where everyone is welcome whether they be gay or heterosexual, it’s not called the European Heterosexual Ski Week and no one is excluded, but by calling this one the European Gay Ski Week there’s an impression that heterosexuals are not particularly welcome.  Isn’t that discriminatory?  There’s the same thing with the Police Association in which all police are welcome to join no matter when their ethnic back ground, but there is also the Black Police Association which implies that it’s for blacks only, is that not discriminatory on the grounds of skin colour?  There’s also the Black Labour party, and so it carries on.  So many minority groups of people strive for acceptance and to be treated with the same decency and respect as everyone else as they absolutely ought to be, so why do they have to have groups which exclude others and treat others as they themselves do not want to be treated?