Tuesday 22nd August – It’s been a slow news day thus far for this erratic middle-aged fella.
To press my ponderous’ to do list’ including the completion of ironing, a laundry load washed, making a grated cheese butty, me watching a TV documentary on the hunt for killer Raoul Moat and clipping my previously unkempt toenails.
With only a shower and cooking of a spag bol left on today’s itinerary, the jejune nature of today’s plotline is unlikely to increase brio wise. I suppose writing this may perk up verve levels. However, it would have to be a whizzbang of a piece to stop me filing today in the ‘Deadening Days’ folder.
It may come as a surprise to learn the ironing was not the most turgid of today’s tasks. Like a paracetamol eases an unwelcome migraine, an accompanying audiobook eased the usual spiritual pain consequential of pressing laundered clobber.
This voice-read tome titled Landslide. Prose written by American author Michael Wolff telling of the final days of Donald Trump’s presidency. A fascinating insight into the mendacious piece of crap’s attempts to overthrow his nations democracy; enabled by spinless Republican colleagues and his shitkicker base.
It goes without saying, however, I wanted to clarify that when penning ‘the mendacious piece of crap’ I am of course referring to Trump, not Wolff. The latter’s book on Trump’s initial months as the least presidential person to ever undertake the role of America’s Commander-in-Chief, ‘Fire & Fury’, an equally fascinating insight into the orange one’s sociopathic psyche.
As the Raoul Moat documentary commenced in the County Durham town where my estranged wife was raised, views of Birtley, where Moat shot dead his ex-girlfriend’s new partner, evoked a few memories.
Ah Birtley, the town where I got married in 1988. With few aesthetically pleasing sights in the borough, I recall locating a scenic location for the wedding photos was a real problem for our photographer. With the graveyard being closed, we settled for a shortlist of Bimbi’s chip shop on Durham Road, the Komatsu crane factory or Birtley swimming baths.
In the end, after the drawing of straws, we chose the crane factory to capture our photogenic clan montage.
My brother Ian, Best Man for the clambake, and me subjects in one particularly daring shot, hanging upside down from a crane bucket attached by bungee rope… A bugger of a pose to pull off when the photographer wanted to shoot it with us wearing top hats. Millinery which unsurprisingly, due to gravitational force, constantly slipped groundward from our heads.
Perhaps I am being a little unfair about the town where I tied the knot. That’s getting married incidentally, not I tied a knot in the crane’s bungee rope… Our kid did that to fill time in between photos.
As a man of reasonable vocabulary, I’m sure if I think hard, I must be able to think of something eloquent and endearing to relay about Birtley… Errrrrrr… Hmmmm…Ermmmm… No, that challenge has completely beaten me.
My estranged wife once told me that her hometown had a very favourable Domesday Book mention at the end of the 11th century. I don’t know about that, but I got bloody doomed on the day I got hitched there.
Anyhow, as mentioned earlier, I am now in possession of newly groomed toenails. This self-applied pedicure ensuring my plates of meat look a little less leprechaun like. For the record, my adult son Jonny providing me with the aforementioned nickname hinting of similarities between my unkempt toenails and those of diminutive fellas from Irish folklore.
Mercifully, I completed the pedicure without collateral damage to eyesight or ornamental furnishings from flying nail fragments… Oh, hold on a sec; is that part of my liberated big toenail lodged into the TV screen?!… Oh, for f***s sake!!
