ARRRGH!

Hello,
I've been watching a spot of TV this week. My interest was caught by the Channel Four show about the illiterate children.

Talk about fizzing mad. I was so angry I nearly hopped on a train to start a staff room massacre at the school. Firstly there was the shocking fact that roughly about 7 out of every 28 pupils in a class could barely read, which unsurprisingly causes them to become disruptive. Disruptive! -they have every right to become murderous. No jury in the land would convict them if they tore their teachers limb from limb.

Of course the teachers were full of 'oh it's a deprived area' as if that lets them of the hook. Surely that's all the more reason to try harder to teach the children to read so that they can grow up not to be deprived or at least be deprived and able to express themselves without throwing things. Honest to God if I couldn't read I would have killed someone years ago.

So it is just as well for the teachers on that show that I can read. Their attitudes stank to high heaven. There they sat as if a school full of illiterates was nothing to do with them, whining on about having police and social workers on the phone for various pupils which apparently meant there was limited time to spend on extra tuition. As if any of it couldn't be put off until out with teaching hours. A surgeon wouldn't go interrupting operations to take calls from social workers, I don't see any good reason for a child's education should be disrupted for phone calls of all things.

To be fair once the proper teacher they'd brought in started getting results they became very enthusiastic but until then the sense of priorities in the school was demented.

I seem to recall people at my school being made to repeat years if they weren't managing and in one amazing case of kiddie intellectual fraud, an utter buffoon being put forward a year for being clever. Has that stopped? If so, why? What is the point of dragging children through years of school when they haven't mastered the basics?

Many of the children in the school featured come from pretty horrible circumstances. Surely it is only humane to give them the means to escape. Sadly the 'it's a deprived area' mentality is very much in vogue. People who know better are always excusing all sorts of things with the 'poverty' and 'toddler on a pot' facial expression. I suspect that they mean to look compassionate and clever rather than punchable. I recently complained about a client calling me a cunt and a bitch for no real reason, only to be told I was working in a 'deprived area' as if that explained or excused his ill-mannered outburst.

Mind you the person that gave me the 'poverty' bit is and I am not making this up going to sleep on a church hall floor this weekend eating nothing but rice and dal to learn what life is like in a third world refugee camp. I don't understand it myself, all I can tell you is that you should not exclaim 'oh it's like Marie Antoinette pretending to be a shepherdess' if anyone you know indulges in this type of thing. It vexes them something awful. You shouldn't tell them that you adore rice and dal either, they'll only think you're taking the piss.

Cheerio

DANGER! SAVE THE HARD WORKING FAMILY!!!!

Hello,

The Labour Party have put a most distressing leaflet through my door. Apparently if the SNP win the election and Scotland becomes independent we'll all need to stump up £5000! To be honest I was thinking of remortgaging so I can probably come up with the money but what of hard working families? Are these so called Scottish Nationalists thinking of them?

As all those who know me will tell you I worry constantly about hard working families. Are they getting enough to eat? Do they have enough money to spend in IKEA? Will the children have to walk to school if fuel duty is raised?

I must say it's got me worried. It's all very well for us up in Scotland, we'll be £5000 up if we stay as we are, but what about the English, Welsh and Northern Irish hard working families?
Presumably they're all going to have to fork out another £5000 to keep us. What if they rise up and kick us out the union and blow the £5000 on new bathroom suites and school fees?

I don't mind telling you I am petrified. Quivering in my boots. As ever though, I have questions.
Why after about a million years being a Labour dominated country, not to mention ten years of Labour government, are we still such a basket case? What steps are being taken to rescue us before people are sponsoring Scottish babies by direct debit?

Then again this leaflet is a bit of a red rag to the Clairwil bull. I mean O.K we are skint but should we really be admitting it in front of the neighbours? No one likes a showing up. To save face I suggest we start a national menage for the independence fee, bump up the price of whisky and go for it.

Cheerio

Rage and Round Ups

'I'm on the Zoloft to keep me from killing y'all'- Mike Tyson

Hello,
Sorry for the lack of activity but I've been very busy trying to do my stuff wot I get paid for in an effort to return to the glory days of self-employment. Well that and I forgot to take my medication over the weekend which caused me to become a bit irritable or 'completely fucking mental' depending on where you were standing.

They used to take Mike Tyson off his medication before fights. I now understand why. How I got the shopping done without savaging someone can only be down to divine intervention -there is no other sensible explanation. Happily order has been restored in the Clairwil brain and I am to back to observing my life as if it's happening to someone else.

Anyway as I'm sure you are already aware the Britblog Round Up and the Scottish Blogging Round Up are both open for public viewing. Do drop in. This week I shall be hosting the Britblog round up so I'll be looking for lots of nominations please.

Cheerio

I Hate Red Rum And Work

Hello,
I'm back at work after a bout of 'nerves' and already the things that sent me over the edge in the first place are irritating me beyond belief.

There is a woman in our office who annoys me to the point that I feel physical pain every time she opens her mouth and she has a vast arse of the exact size and shape of a horse's rear end. We all call her 'Red Rum' behind her back, though if I get to the end of the week without saying it to her face I'll be amazed. The arse I could live with, I find it quite amusing as it waddles past. It's the voice I can't bear. Honestly it would be less agonising if she pelted my head with bricks.

I did think I was alone in being so vexed by her but I'm not. Today I came across a colleague sobbing because she couldn't take any more of Red Rum's chat. A grown woman sobbing! That's how horrifying Red Rum's voice is.

For some unaccountable reason the management think she is wonderful. Perhaps because she's joined their 'let's see who can do the most unpaid overtime contest'. I cannot convey how much these people make me feel sick. You want to hear them vying to see who can stay on later for NO EXTRA MONEY. This is in addition to their 8am starts also FOR NO EXTRA MONEY.
If I found out they'd taken to living in the office I wouldn't bat an eyelid.

As if all that's not bad enough Red Rum's bloody children phone at least six times a day. I suppose I should really refer to them as her foals or her disgusting, rude, ill-brought up, cretinous offspring for the sake of accuracy. Any normal child would be on it's best behaviour on the phone to it's mothers work. I've got experience of mothers they go mad at the slightest whiff of a 'showing up'. Not Red Rum she claims to have brought them up to be assertive.

I've also had a trip out the office to a day long meeting about 'tackling racism'. I can offer no explanation for being invited to this gathering or what exactly it hoped to achieve. First up was a lady from an organisation which amongst other things 'challenges black stereotypes'. She then showed us a film of Africans playing bongo drums, black men rapping and some Africans dancing as evidence of her work in this area. No-one laughed.


At lunch time I was cornered by a women who claimed that the Muslim community in Govanhill hold her in the highest regard. I think they might just be being polite, unless of course they admire her ability to talk endlessly about how great she is.

The rest is a bit of a blur. To be honest it feels like I dreamt it, such was it's surreal quality. The only other incident that sticks in my mind was some fat woman writing 'NEVER ASSUME IT JUST MAKES AN ASS OUT ME AND U' on a large piece of paper (A3 I think). It was extraordinary one minute she was behaving perfectly normally the next she was parading about with this placard and being applauded by the gathering.

There are times when I feel like the victim of one never ending practical joke.

Oh Shit Britney Spears Knows How I Feel....

Hello,

It pains me to admit it but if recent reports are to be believed, Britney Spears is the only person in the world that feels the way I do. At least she's got an excuse with the old post natals. I refuse to be Bi-polar. Some of my mates down at the 'mental' are that way inclined and they do the most peculiar things.

Cheerio

Things That Worry Me

My employer suggested last week that 'work might be a bit much' for me. What is that leading up to? I'm a bit worried.


I'm worried about my mother. She announced out of the blue over lunch that 'multiculturalism is a failure'. And there were no Yorkshire Puddings with Sunday lunch.


I'm a bit worried about David Duff, he's not been at his blog much. I'm hoping his absence is theatre related and not something more sinister, Mr Teabag.

I'm a bit worried about seeing the doctor tomorrow. It's a new one I've never heard of. I require special handling.

I worry about Mr Clairwil but that's more of a hobby really.

The Demon Drink/ The Third World Strikes Back

Hello,
If Mr Clairwil hadn't taken part in this foolish alcohol experiment I'd have thought he'd finally snapped and decided to kill me. Alcohol is a cruel drug in that the hapless drinker is always the last to know they've had enough. So when Mr Clairwil produced a bottle of what he called African Rum, though I suspect it emerged from the pit of hell, I eagerly snatched it from his hands and got stuck in. Apparently it cost the equivalent of 97p in foreign money. The buyer was ripped off.

I feel certain I maybe permanently damaged. It smelt odd which should have put me off and if I wasn't so macho about alcohol it would have. All my life I've sneered at women sitting demurely in a corner with a heavily diluted spirit or a Bacardi Breezer. Oh come on, either drink or don't. That said maybe they were right, at least none of them crawled out of bed well after midday and spent the day wandering the streets reeking of moonshine and forgetting where everything was. Honestly I felt like a tourist from another planet. To be fair I always feel a bit like that anyway, more so at family gatherings.

Instead of doing all the wonderful things I planned today I've spent the day lying on the floor feeling puzzled. As for the dreams I had under the influence of that stuff, no tongue could convey their true oddness. Wandering around a hotel with no reception and stairways that lead nowhere, Tony Wilson living in my flat, my G.P sobbing, living in an abandoned factory full of pipes, being able to live underwater and taking a lion for a walk. Those were the more sensible bits.

Booze- just say no.

Please take a look at those 'very jellas bitches' over at Jodie Mush. I love them and of course don't forget to drop in on the Scottish Blog Round Up.

Cheerio