Safety Lights Are For Dudes

Item: I'm currently taking a tw'oliday from twitter - there's so much horrific news at the moment, and it's hurting and affecting people I know and love, and it hurts being bombarded by it several times a day, so I'm taking a break. It won't be forever, probably just a couple of weeks. Just to build up my resilience.

Item: I have been incredibly impressed by hp-for-business customer support the last couple of days. Not only did the lady sort out the recalcitrant printer that had proved resistant to both mine and Alisdair's best efforts, but she rang me back today to check that things were still OK and it was still working (it was).

Item: I've taken to instagram like a duck to water. I'm pretty active (user name is jennierigg) and I'm mostly posting pictures of my doggies. The accounts I am following fall into four categories: 1, People I actually know; 2, accounts which post pictures of cute doggies; 3, accounts which post pictures of hot guys with beards; and 4, artists I admire - mostly tattoo and comicbook, but not exclusively. Oh, and there's also the amazing collision of 2 and 3 that is Hot Dudes With Dogs.
If you want to be bombarded with pictures of my doggies, occasional gym updates and photos of food, and comments on your photos do feel free to follow me there.

Item: Mental health has been... Not bad but not great. I have been quite low through the end of January, and the nightmares have been about 3 times a week. However, touch wood, things seem to be picking up. I'm slightly anxious about getting a Case Of The Februaries, but also hoping that the Februaries just came early and I got them out of the way in January. I did write up the nightmare I had the other day, and writing it out helped. I then gave it a cheesy happy ending. If there's demand I might post it.
A thing that's helping mental health a LOT is that I'm getting in a reasonable amount of reading time recently. Current OMG WOW SHE'S AMAZING author is Tananarive Due. Thoroughly recced to all of you.

Item: Physical health is pretty good. I'm not doing much cycling because the canal path is still buggered after the floods in late December - although matgb is on about taking me road cycling soon, despite my nerves - but I'm doing really well at the gym and in the pool, and getting some decent walks in every so often. I've got pretty impressive muscles at the mo.

Item: A week today I am going to go for the first appointment for my next tattoo. I has the excite! This has been ages in gestation; Matt has been sending me rough sketches by email, and it's going to be amazing. He's a genuinely awesome artist too. Really exciting. So that's probably going to go on Instagram; it'll also affect my swimming a little bit, because I'll have to not swim for a week after having it done. Boo. Shall have to do treadmill or something equally dreadful for cardio. :(
Hmm. Maybe rowing machine? Rowing machine is not that dreadful...

Item: Daughter continues fabulous. She's really settled in at the old Alma Mater, and has chosen her GCSE options this month
*pauses to pass smelling salts to those who remember her being born and are now feeling faint with age*
Doggies are also great, and very snuggly. And I'm coping OK with having all my boys under one roof, even if it is a bit crowded and a bit rubbish not having my own room any more.

Item: Job continues pretty good - I honestly think if I'd have still been in my old job I would have had a total breakdown two or three times in the last few months. So yeah, I'm really glad of Job. The work itself is fun, the pay is better than any job I have ever had before, and I'm not overburdened. It's pretty cool. I'm still getting used to not having to scrimp for every penny, and trying not to splurge every payday, which is harder than it looks. But I'm getting there...

Item: LibDemmery... I'm not even going there. Everything is hanging on York at the moment. We'll see.

So, yeah, that got longer than I expected. Um. Sorry. But you're all now updated on everything. I think...

Let me know if you'd like to see my nightmare.

So I put my default spotify playlist on. For your edification, here is a list of tracks I have had to hurriedly press skip on:

Fuck Her Gently - Tenacious D
Last Resort - Papa Roach
Fuck You - Lily Allen
Big Dumb Sex - Soundgarden

Of course, I'm paying for it now. Douglas's choice this afternoon. Pick of the Pops on Radio 2...

* makes the sign of the evil eye at Tony Blackburn *

This was posted as a comment on somebody else's blog, but I figured it deserved a broader airing, since it's me explaining (again) how the government's actions are not neutral on pubs even when they try to appear so:

Prices for everything will go up if there's a minimum price, not because of some nefarious plot by big business (or even the Tories), but because of simple economics. If a bottle of White Lightning costs #5, no self-respecting wine manufacturer is going to want their bottle of wine to cost less; all alcohol will rise in price because market position is more important than anything else, so the lowest priced product going up will have a knock on effect right up the chain.

Meanwhile, prices in our pub will go up because we get most of our spirits from Sainsburys - because they are cheaper than any of the industry suppliers who are used to supplying people who are tied to them - so when Sainsbury's put their prices up, ours will have to rise too. This is not pubs whining, this is a simple fact.

Have been off work sick yesterday and today. This is not good.

Saw the consultant yesterday; Gideon is a fibroid. He needs to be taken out, and I've been booked in for February (three months away FFS!), with the proviso that I can go in earlier if the surgeon gets a cancellation. My GP has given me some super extra strength painkillers to keep me going. I feel very down about the whole boiling.

Podcast is all recorded, but there have been some hiccups with the editing. I may put up a rough cut, just to get episode one out there.

Holly is having The Hobbit for her bedtime story and I got so into it that I was reading to her for three quarters of an hour tonight. She's loving it. She managed to wangle herself onto a school trip that we had no idea was happening today too, the little so and so...

Blogging mojo is all out of kilter.

All the above, though? None of that is why I am not going to help out in Old and Sad. If we lose the by election, the party will be wounded. The media will whap us with it. But if we win, with that candidate? I can only see damage resulting from that too. So I'm hiding under the duvet as far as Old and Sad is concerned. For more information, Andrew Hickey has written a post which is full of the conflict I feel.

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The fact that one of the Milliblands has got headlines for jumping on the Save Our Pubs bandwagon that Greg Mullholland and other Lib Dems have been successfully piloting for years, or the fact that Mike Smithson, famed sage of politicalbetting.com thinks that my livelihood and the lifeblood of many communities (not just rural ones) is trivial and laughable.

OK, so Millibland's "bold" plans are nothing more than to appoint a minister for pubs, and not to do anything about the beer tie, or the stupid over-regularion of the market, or the ridiculously complicated duty regime (here's an idea: differential taxation on cask and bottle/can), or any of the other issues that plague my industry. But that does not mean that the issue is not a serious one, affecting not just the lives of barmaids, but the fabric of our communities.

To dismiss this as so much sausages is, I venture to suggest, slightly short-sighted of the seer.

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• Am on my third day off sick from work, and it's getting old now. My abdominal pain is less than it was, but still definitely there. I can't walk very far without making it massively worse - indeed, I haven't left the house since getting back from the doctor's on Friday, aside from a brief trip to my mum's to pick up my mother's day card from amazing_holly, who is at her dad's for the weekend.


• I really, really REALLY wish I could have gone to conference. There are so many people I would have loved to see. Ah well. It'll have to wait till Liverpool.


• I'm doing really well at sending conversation-killing text messages today.


• I wish someone would magically tidy my house and do all the DIY that needs doing. It's ironic that being off work gives me the time to do it, but I can't physically manage it. And when I'm better, I shall have to go back to work, and then I won't have the time...


• Biggest referrer to my blog this week outside of direct links and search traffic was Liberal Vision. I guess this means I ought to start reading them on a more regular basis (i.e. not just Sara's posts)... ;)


• Trying to avoiding reading about/hearing about The Egregious Tory Tosser is getting more difficult. I turned off the House of Comments podcast less than half way through because I was sick of hearing his name. You know, I know he's the biggest blogger, but he's ONLY the biggest blogger because so many people link to him and talk about him and quote his inane dribblings. If we ignore him, he'll go away. And then perhaps someone who has some talent other than self-promotion might get to be the big daddy. Just a thought.

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My March sponsor is Mark Reckons, and I suspect he'll have something to say about that last bullet.

Work was great tonight. Had fun working with Nicki, and yeah, there were a couple of tossers in, but that didn't really matter. Had a couple of bevvies with some of the regulars and Liz and Mark after knocking off and it was good, even though my back is still dicky.

For those of you who are wondering why I stay a barmaid when the pay isn't that marvellous and I have two degrees: this is it. I have never had a job before where I actively enjoy working. I love my job. It's that simple.

Have finished off the Weapons Grade Salsa upon arrival home, and it was even better having had a day to mature. Om nom nom. Now for a couple of episodes of BSG before sleep. We're into series 3 now, and I think the next one is the one with Helo and that guy who was the melty senator in X Men...

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Work has been fun this weekend. Vinyl night was a scream last night - someone brought in the It Ain't Half Hot Mum album and we played Whispering Grass and everything! - and people have been generally good-natured and happy. I am knackered, though. Conference takes it out of you, and then not even having a full day to myself between that and three long shifts at work, and my foot still not being 100%... Looking forward to day off tomorrow, that's fer damn sure.

However, I have achieved some stuff. Mostly in the planning of other stuff, but still...

djm4, I have booked a late start for work on that Saturday, so we can go to support opposing teams at the football. My brother is also coming up for that match, and he has a friend supporting Leyton (Wilf, apparently) so maybe some joint transporty thing might be a plan? I know you'll have small people with you, but still, greenery and all.

And... I just read that preceding paragraph back to myself and realised how much I am failing in the eloquence department this evening.

I am off to get rascally drunk. More blogging tomorrow, and exorcising of the plot bunnies that are bouncing about it my head thanks to your prompts :D

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I like the new logged-in homepage. It's one of the things I am clinging to about today which hasn't been really awful and depressing.

The other thing was being out in the garden with amazing_holly planting sweetpea seeds earlier. Yeah, I know, I'm a bit early for late planting and a bit late for regular planting. But she wanted to do it, and it was fun grubbing about in the compost with her.

I'm trying not to think about anything else that happened today. Work was particularly awful; this is made worse by the fact that I've had a good long stretch of really enjoying it, and today was a big jolt. Also Mat was really stressed (for mostly good reasons) so neither of us were in a fit state to be the support to each other we usually are.

Instead, I'm going to run myself a bath, and sink into it, and think about how cool it was to be planting stuff with Hol, and what a little angel she's been today, even though I have been grumpy as all hell.

I am a very lucky mummy.

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