Stray Dog Strut

Hectic Thursday over. Too many broken promises. Five O’Clock on the dot. Leaving first. Eyes on the clock. Arriving first. Clive Owen the brilliant psycho. Chips and chat is a great combination. Sleepily roused, thank you dad. Have a nice trip. Read the paper, stare moodily at the grim weather. Make someone happy. Make someone angry. More broken promises. More work. Deadlines missed. Another upheaval. A change of scenery. Busy little bee. The work is piling on. Quiet lunch. Mind detached. Hectic afternoon. Too many promises. Time marches on. “Your playing with people’s lives”. Phone glued to earlobe. More mocking customers. Five O’Clock arrives too soon. Leave the clutter. You missed the deadline. LET IT GO. Silent traveller. Face of stone. A child and a mother to cheer you up. The sad tale of the toeless squirrel. Blog of the day. A classic Western. An evening with mum. Ice-cream.

I watched a couple of CB episodes last night: “My Funny Valentine” and “Speak Like A Child” – both episodes that explore Faye’s history a little – Beneath that hard exterior is a really fragile woman; it’s always both funny and sad with Faye.

It was great seeing them again, especially “Speak Like A Child” as Spike and Jet’s crazy search for a Beta VCR is hilarious – It’s funny just seeing the puzzled looks on their faces when they’re given the Beta cassette and they have no idea what it is. Also, Spike kicking the VCR is priceless: “My ship works better when I kick it”.

There have been plenty other websites that disect these episodes – check out Jazzmess on the right for both the synosis and ‘theory’ about Jet and Faye – but i’d just be retreading old ground and besides, i’m not eloquent enough, so i’ll just keep my mouth shut! I might watch “Wild Horses” and “Black Dog Serenade” later=)

Public servants etc are on strike today to stop the government changing the laws about their pensions (If your length of service and age add up to atleast 85 years you can retire at 60 or something). Needless to say this meant the major bus company here was on strike too. Luckily dad offered me a lift to work but getting home was a pain as I had to walk to the nearby train station and get a train into town before finding a bus going out of town. Thankfully the bus driver was really helpful and stopped at any stop you wanted on his route rather than the few and far between stops on his timetable. It’s nice to be reminded some of us aren’t all bad.

BattleStar Galactica is on in half an hour so I’m looking forward to seeing that – last week’s was a tense double episode. I’d missed a couple so I had to pick it up on the fly but the Galactica has met up with another BattleStar and Commander Adama and the Admiral of the other ship were having alot of friction. At one point they were on the brink of open war and the opposing Vipers were dancing around each other in space just waiting for the go ahead to open fire – it didn’t materialize but Adama’s crew would still have kicked ass=) I’ll try not to let slip any more spoilers – but it all came to a head, though not in the way everyone expected!

I haven’t got much else to say really, the students had left by the time I got back from York: apparently they fell asleep on the couch (sofa/settee) together after their trip up the Highlands. Dad’s going to Ireland with a couple of friends this weekend. Oh and today the infantry regiments of Scotland got amalgamated into one super-regiment: The Royal Regiment of Scotland.

This means merging the following:

The Royal Scots and and the King’s Own Scottish Borderer’s (1st Battalion)
The Royal Highland Fusiliers (2nd Battalion)
The Black Watch (3rd Battalion)
The Highlanders (4th Battalion)
The Argyll & Sutherland Highlanders (5th Battalion)

This reduces six battalions to five and does away with the history and identity of the original six battalions. The soldiers were shown on the news today stripping off their crests/symbols and replacing them/appending them with the new one, I believe it’s the Lion Rampant. Needless to say alot of people, including ex-soldiers and current ones, aren’t happy with the change. I don’t like it much although I did read somewhere that they would get to keep their individual regiment names but I can’t see how, as in the case of the Royal Scots and the King’s Own Scottish Borderer’s, they could if they were merged? I reckon it will also mean barracks closures. They say it’s to make the regiments stronger but it’s also cost-cutting.

Maybe people in my town don’t identify with their regiment so much, we have the Royal Scots here, but certainly in other towns they do – the Black Watch is very popular so people are pretty upset about them losing their identity.

So much for all the protests to stop it … same with the War in Iraq (although personally i agree with it for certain reasons): All the demonstrations, petitions and marches prevented nothing – Democracy is great!

Just an update to let you all know I’m off to York again tomorrow after work so there’ll be a lack of posts ’til monday night *collective sigh*

It’s Mother’s Day on sunday so I gave mum her presents tonight: 3 Clint Eastwood films (A Fistful of Dollars, For a Few Dollars More and The Good, The Bad & The Ugly) and Gladiator special editon 3 disc set. I got them in the HMV sales so it wasn’t too bad. Mum’s a big Clint fan – I previously got her the Dirty Harry boxset.

Got my bonus today – or rather the bonus I would have got was used to buy shares in the Bank on my behalf – I don’t know how many I got, about £545 worth. Annoyingly the Student Loan Company seem to think I got the money (It shows on my payslip and I got taxed on it) so they took another deduction towards my £3000 loan. I don’t have to pay it back until I earn more than £12k a year but everytime I do overtime/creep just over £1k a month they take another payment.

Falling and I have managed to save about £800 towards our holiday so far so I’m starting to get excited. We reckon we’ll need about £1200 to book the flights and hotel. We might do some more research this weekend though. We’re hoping to go to Nice in France – but let’s not count our chickens just yet…

I had to stop this post midway to type up a legal document for mum and pack my bag so it’s now almost half one in the morning, lol. I’m gonna call it a day as I need to leave the house earlier than usual to drop my bag off at the station and the students are getting up at 6am for a trip to the Highlands, lucky devils.

Later.