People : Some Life Advice (Reading)

My grandfather was quite a serious fellow, an absolutely lovely fellow, he was a (or even "the") chief quarter master for the Royal Mail in Nottinghamshire before he retired.  However, a mere five years, after he retired he had a diagnosis of lung cancer and was dead shortly thereafter.  The first major figure in my life to pass away.

I was eighteen, had just started university, and being honest with myself it affected me deeply, both personally, mentally and spiritually.  Personally as my mother then assumed she was the helmsman of the family, never have I seen the monkey leading the organ grinder more ineffectually.  Then mentally, he was gone, the one great intellectual figure in my life was gone.

His intellectual influence was deeper on me today than perhaps I ever realised, I remember when I was around three or four he showed me how to write the figure 8.  I distinctly remember his being behind me, his affirmative arms either side of me as he intoned an 8 before me, and I copied.  There was always paper to doodle on and pens in a draw, they were the main "play thing" of a wet or dank day, of which there are many in Britain.

He taught me to pronounce things, and to this day I can slap on a lovely accented English, very polite, which he taught me; and which my wife adores when I use it within a telephone conversation.  It empowers me to escape my strong, rough, Nottingham accent whenever I wish, both are part of me, one through nature the other nurture.

I also remember his buying books, or handing me books, the first I remember were the complete Encyclopedia Britannica, a lovely red leather bound set; which must have cost a fortune in the early 1980's; I'd sit and paw over these pages for hours, years later I remember some kid at school going on about French writers, I instantly named Victor Hugo... Thanks to those hours spent with my nose in a book.  Kids today can look things up instantly with the internet, but watch out for the kid who avidly reads anything, they might just be expressing their interests early.

Another day he handed me a huge book, it was a cheat book, with every answer to most all the crossword questions of the day, he was teaching me a lesson... You could sit and think about the intricate layout of the crossword, how things meet, depart and conjoin.  However, you could also just get the bloody answer.  This has become a massive power for me, I feel enabled, even if I don't know anything about a topic, or it's currently not on my mental radar, it is but a quick read away.

I know this, I'm sure reading this, you know it too.  However, how many people out there look at someone judge them and then think they can't do the same as them?  I'd suggest a lot of them do... When really they might just need to read the right book, or take the right advice, don't close yourself off from these people, embrace them, help them, let them help you too.

When I were a lad (Mining Kid Rebuttal)

This Bernard Hare guy annoys me, not because he's speaking any untruth,  no, he's annoying me because he's the one speaking at all, he takes a very Yorkshire centric view of mining, and I don't want that to spread too far, yes mining was big in Yorkshire, but the Nottinghamshire coal field was the biggest, people should remember that.  And kids, such as myself, came to the same conclusion he does, but without the need for any dramatic life lesson.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-32961309

My father was a miner, and later Coal Preparation Plant Foreman, I saw the miners strikes, I saw the hard shifts and the wage quickly spent on mortgage, rates and bringing up two lads...

I saw it... I lived it... I grew up on an estate, which at the time was rough and ready, but at least friendly, an estate famous now for the number of shootings which occur on it, two murders having happened on the very street I grew up on, one in a garden I myself have stood in and played.

The down fall of that society was written on the walls in the late 1980's, along with the rest of this nations heavy industry of any note, Coal, Gas, Steel, Telecomms... All used to be "British", now they're only British in name, if at all...

So I had myself an education, I read, and tried to write and festered over papers and hoarded stationary as an ends to a means, as an attempt to keep myself on the upper side of those papers, rather than the darker side of a coal face, not that I had the option, as by the time I came to working age all the jobs were either low paid and menial, or they had no career progression path.

So, here I sit, it's been over twenty years since the pit my Father worked at shut, I've been working all that time, and I've had this same job I work now for twelve... I'm a computer programmer...

And I made damn sure I was, rather than end up in the social economic bracket this guy seems to have fallen out of through the angelic guidance of his father, rather than his own realisation.

This is what this tale tells me, not of his fathers lesson, but that a now educated man who can apply himself and must have some sort of empathy, even as a child needed leading by the nose, that lack of insight by that child... "Why does my Dad go off on one after he's had a few drinks"... You didn't ever think it was to unwind or even to try and relate to his own kids?  So you had something in common, even if it was his playing a silly, outrageous, game.

At ten, I was aware of the lack of money, the struggle to heat the house, the lack of food, Mum skipping a meal or two, Christmas being a single gift of utmost practical requirement (a bottle of Matey Bubble bath) and nothing more.

It just strikes me reading it, that us Nottinghamshire coal kids, of which there were more, more pits and more kids; we had an insight into a better life we wanted sooner... Your child ambitions were set at your pavement level and never looked higher, before your Dad's dramatic psychological shoving out the groove.

My Mothers Mania

My mother… is mental… There, I said it... She's bat shit, off the trolley mental... What has caused this conclusion today?.. Well in the pantheon of strangeness she's become over the last fourteen years, she's just getting odd, and the oddness is very much of her own flavour.... 

She’s arranging a lunch for my Dad’s 65^th Birthday**… She’s asked if we can go… It’s the day after his birthday…  We've said yes... but… and this is a big set of buts…

1.       We don’t know what time it is… nor do we know where it is...

She's said Dad knows he's going to be taken out for a lunch... But he doesn't know where to... Okay, fine... I don't really speak to my Dad day to day, I see him once in a blue moon as he's "so busy", you know looking after his bat shit crazy wife... And I'm 900 & 99 point 99 less of a gossip than my mother is, so even if I knew and I saw him I would be like "RIGHT SEE YOU AT MCDONALDS!"... Would I.... No, I'm 36, not 6.*

When however, I've asked my mother "When and where"... she says... “I’m not telling you, because it’s a secret”…. She does not get that you can't invite someone somewhere and not tell them where it is... We need to fucking know so we know where we’re going retard!

This is just the normal mania she has, next we get cryptic messages…

"it's only a part time restaurant, and for parties over 8 they need the food selection a head of time, get a menu"...

Erm... erm... Where the fuck from?

“Meet at the venue, by one of the two open fires”…. 

Erm... Erm... What time?... And where are the fires again?...

This is basically now a very sad mystery novel...  We have to find a location open part time for meals, with two open fires, which will seat a party of 8 or more, which require such parties to order a head of time...

It is all such a sad joke.... And I can only see it ending in tears (again*).

* Coincidently, I'm a little pissed off that I'm not being told anything, because the last time we attempted as a Family to go out for my Fathers Birthday, we went to the Broad Oak pub at Strelley... But they didn't have any food on that day, so we went to another pub in the same chain the Horse and Groom on the B600... Already peeved we've moved venue, I go in (I'm alone at the time), and as I'm watching my Dad is just asking a chap whether a chair is in use, so he can move it to the table and make 4 chairs...

Suddenly, and dramatically my little brother explodes... "I know people here" shouting "They know me, and you're embarrassing me"... My Dad looks at him quizzically... My Brother is upset that my Dad is moving this chair...

Apparently that's an embarrassment... 

So already pissed off my Dad storms out, because my brother has made him look a fool...

My brother leaves with this then fiancée and I'm still stood there... As my mother traipses over the length of the bar crying here eyes out....

My Dad's gone home, without her... He's dumped her and stormed off home...

So I put my mother in my car and take her home...

That was the last family outing I dared go on with them all...

With a mystery venue this time, my mother is already burning my patience stick at both ends...

** For those observant amongst my audience, you might think he's retiring, he's not.  He's been retired since 1994.... So if they mention "retirement"... my plan is to kick my legs out, cross them and fold my arms and lean my head to one side, you know like a dog being shown a card trick.

From Programmer to TV Repair man

The in-laws are currently calling me... Well they're not calling me, I'm hearing second or even third hand from the wife, or my niece, or from not so subtle hints... Their TV and Cable/Internet package is playing them up.

Now, I'm not a TV repair guy, I barely know how my own TV works beyond plugging it in and turning it on, there is no compiler inside a TV, I don't know what hardware is in them and I don't have any interest, so long as they come on and go off when I want, and I can change the channel I'm pretty happy.

So, why do the in-laws call me?... Because "I'm into that stuff"... I'm not, I hate TV, I hate all the shit you watch on it, I don't really want to ever watch the TV the wife and I sit down to watch, I do it so I avoid having to pay for a divorce!

But, I've become the goto repair guy, not because I'm overly skilled, but because I have logic and common sense... "No Signal?".... Plug in the wire which gives it a signal.... "It says no viewing card?"... Have you got the card inserted all the way?....  "It just won't come on?".... Is the plug fully inserted and switched on?

You know, the basics... I admit once, just once, in all the call outs, it was something I could fix, the father-in-law had been to look at porn, yes, porn, and he'd done this by googling porn and clicking away merrily, until the machine was dead... Yes he blue screen, FBI warning wiped it.  So I recovered their files and reinstalled windows fresh.  That was the only time I've been able to see what they did, and then I couldn't help but giggle to myself.

But as if as punishment, ever since I've had this tirade of requests for repair.

The latest one, well the latest one, I could throttle someone over, they went away on holiday and left a decorator painting their house, I know my father-in-law gives this guy a hard time, he basically picks on the fellow and they make demands of him like... "put our dustbin out on Wednesday"... The guy doesn't need this shit, so when it came to moving their tele forward and painting behind he, he clearly got his revenge by simply wrenching the wires out the back and dragging it... these wires were screw capped coaxial, so they sheered straight off.

Ever since, if you so much as breath on these two wires, the tele has no signal... The difficulty is my father-in-law is about as gentle with things as using cement for make-up foundation, he just stuffs and pushes and thinks the more pressure he applies the better.  He's also incredibly long sighted, so can't see the things in front of his nose.

All in all, this leaves me with near weekly call outs...

Story Time - French Souvenirs

Souvenirs... When I was a kid I used to go places, I can't afford to go places any more, but when I was a kid I went to places... And everywhere I went I bought the family little gifts back, to remind them how much they like me, kind of like emotional bribes, so I could gauge how much they did or didn't miss me and suck up to them and retake my place in the pecking order of bullshit... No, no in reality it was just something we did... we got little gifts, little souvenirs.

Now, I understand you buy yourself a little souvenir, so you remember your trip... like from Egypt I have really nice bed covers, and they're over 14 years old now and I still remember being asleep in Egypt everytime I go to sleep in England...

But when I was a kid I brought gifts back to others... France, Twycross Zoo, the Royal Concert Hall Nottingham, Wollaton Hall Nottingham... Nottingham Castle!... All these little places made a little bit of cash off of me and I remember to this day that no-one really kept these little things.

Except one person, my Nan... She still has a painted rock I bought her from France, it was just a washed rock from the beach, someone had painted a scene of a harbour on it... Only now odes it strike me as strange, because we neither visited, nor saw, a harbour.  The shop I got it from was around the corner from the hotel we stayed in, and the hotel was just on a road in the middle of a Pas-De-Calais town, very dusty, a little smelly and I remember getting told off for throwing Marmite sandwiches from a window... when a) I didn't have any Marmite sandwiches and b) don't like Marmite!

The Hotel had dubious plumbing, the escape ladders were made of copper pipes and looked so unsafe as to make you wish you could just throw yourself out the window.  One of the toilets would not flush.  And the food was so bad that I think of the whole 5 days of meals they served we only ate one and that was the one with chips (fries)... They served raw fish, horrid paté and just guck.

When we ran into a local we either made friends or hated them, very much like the aforementioned Marmite in that respect.

But this was the 1990's, still before everyone spoke English, so it was a struggle to actually communicate, not least because most of us were pre GCSE, we were year 3 as was, not year 4/5 and only got on the trip to make up numbers.

However, I do remember my first application of French, we were dumped on the outside of a town by the bus.  Totally alone... this would never happen today, and I think only happened because the three French teachers wanted to go to a bar and get more drunk, however, dumped on the outskirts of this town we were told in the middle was a market and we had to make our way there and ask at least three people directions....

This turned into me walking a head of a group of kids my age, because I was confident - with a then brown belt in Karate I was pretty happy I could fight off an attacker, be they French or otherwise.  So we marched through this town like the Germans in 1940 had.

Two French kids kept staring and shouting something at us, so I gave them a Nazi salute... Literally the finger under the nose and arm out... they ran off in shock... Only later did I find out this was illegal...

We turned this corner and were basically in a dusty looking, very hot summers day, street lost... There was a man in his garden so I went to him...

"Excusey moi missuurrrr"  I still speak French like this, so must sound like a retard to them, but that's a whole other story...

"oooooo eweeeeey lay marrrrrr-shhheyyy ssssiiiii vvvvooooo play"

Meaning, I thought "Excuse me sir, where is the market please?"... He looked at me, and snored, turned his back and went into his house... I fucking tried al-right France, I tried, and you were so rude to me... If you come here and falteringly ask in English "Where's the market please", I'll tell you, and even help you along so I understand you... I won't just snort and walk inside my house.

I dunno, all these years later I remember him doing that, maybe I turned him on, maybe he went straight in and started furiously masturbating.  Whatever he actually did all I remember is "he's a French wanker"... So, well done him for casting all the stereo types about French people listening to others attempt to speak French.

Around the next corner however our saviour appeared, a man in the street, walking a long, he was smoking, wearing a leather jacket and a black polo neck - on this hot day - he looked the typical French guy... I hit him with my now famous line... and he looked at me puzzled, then in a broad Leeds accent said... "Just round that corner mate".

Pseudologia Fantastica (Pathological liar)

I've been doing a little reading on a couple of areas of Psychology.  I'm no psychologist, but I'd love one of my readers to be one, because I'm interested in describing a character to them; a member of my wife's family in fact; and seeing what they think about their character traits.

The reason being that this person has been unable to function in society for the last few months, so I along with my wife's family have been supporting them.  However, they're finally coming to the situation where they'll be returning to society.

It's therefore time to hand their affairs back to them, and systematically the important items this person is ignoring.  They're not in the midst of a break down, they're not mentally deficient, they're simply refusing to see reality and normal standards of living, they want to life and do things their way, and to hell with the consequences.

They're full able to comprehend the situation and the items on the itinerary, but they are wilfully and systematically ignoring everything which needs sorting, and then making up diatribes trying to make things true from their perspective.

True... An interesting word, important for us programmers, and psychologists a like... Because it contains a flip side, its binary opposite, false...

And this boolean logic, this simple state of black or white, on or off, right or wrong is pretty much a dance this person is running themselves through, they sit like the needle of a record player whirling around on the turn table of life, and they play the same old platitudes, they say the same old things, but they're lying.

I've found out this person has been a liar since childhood, since before the age of five in fact.

I've found they were not really pulled up on the act of lying, it was pointed out to them, but never punished, never nipped in the bud, and so as their life has unfolded they've always got on, but always been ready to lie.

Either to save their own skin, or to get out of tricky situations, but mostly to always turn a situation around so as they looked more favourable, so that they could play on your heart strings and pretty much so they looked a victim.

I'm from a very rough part of Nottingham, much rougher than were this person grew up, and much rougher even than we'd like to admit... But it hardened me to liars, spotting them and pointing them out for what they are.  Not that I jumped to adversely judge this person.

But with carolling their spiralling personal affairs, with chasing around dozens (yes dozens) of different points of paper work for them - DVLA, HMRC, Banks, Insurance, Advertising, Business, Rent, Electricity Bills, Gas Bills, Telephone contracts and a myriad of other official documents - it was obvious something was not right.

So with their returning to society soon they need to know the state of play, they need to know all these balls are being juggled and they need to leap in and take over, this is how you run your life... Their reaction...

"You're a drama queen, fill your boots, you're only making things worse"

Never in my life as a more thorough insult, a more thorough brushing over of the dozens of issues I've handled for someone, the tens of hours spent sorting things for them been more thoroughly and abjectly thrown out and ignored.

This wilful self destruction beggared the question of "Why", why put yourself through the stress of everything going wrong?  Why put yourself out there for the fall?  Why not just run your day to day affairs?

And it dawned on me, this person doesn't run anything, they don't try to run their own life, they don't bother, they life in a little pocket of reality where they do their own thing... Except they don't, they have to pay taxes, and pay rent, pay the bills and exist like the rest of us, they choose to have a car, they choose to live in a house, so they have to pay...

But they fantasise that none of this affects them, that it'll all be all right... And they lie to themselves and everyone around them that "it'll be all right", and this is where they find themselves, so I'd love to speak to a psychologist about them.  I mean, I'm not dumb, but I don't profess to know about mental health all that much - though my wife has some mental health nurse experience & training - and I can read between the lines of their behaviour and that of expected, decent, society and I see a person suffering from "Pseudologia Fantastica"; however, since I've been so thoroughly relegated in their minds eye as a fool, they can frankly go fuck themselves.

Annoying Family

Some things in life are bad,

They can really make you mad,

Other things just make you swear and curse,

When you chewing on life's gristle,

Don't grumble give a whistle,

And this'll Help things turn out for the best....

Sage and wise words there, but I'm sat in the office and after a whole morning of base code frustrations causing me to be mad, I've just been on the phone to my Mother.

Now, those of you whom don't know my Mother let me paint a picture, she's broadly the same character as Hyacinth Bucket from the TV Show Keeping Up Appearances  she talks incessantly AT you, not to you, not with you, AT you.  She's highly opinionated to a fault - worse than me - she taught me how to hold an opinion to the point of fault and be stubborn, but she's far worse.  And true story, we once went on Holiday and when we came home British Telecom had sent a letter to query whether the rented phone we had was out of service, because there had been unusual activity on our line.  The unusual activity was there not being any calls made... So there's the scene, a talker, right, she's a talker.

So it was with amazement that today - just a few minutes ago - I get a text "Call home now"... I call... and I'm informed that my Nan has been rushed to A&E - not very well at all she's not... Okay, right... News, information on the fly.

"Oh, and I'm having a major operation tomorrow"... First I'd heard of it, first mention... "I was going to tell you when you last came around".... The last time I went to their house was two months ago... two months, sixty days... Sixty days where there could have been a text, sixty days where there could have been a phone call, no, sixty days of silence.

From Britain's most talkative person!  Silence.

This is all part of the games my mother plays, she plays Chinese whispers back and forth, she plays about with people, she'll say one thing to one person and then withhold it from another and see when she has that whisper come back to her, she does it to pull the strings and ride the grape vine, and she does it because she's basically retired from work and loves to talk, but always wants to feel the epicentre of life.  When really she's just one person, with one person's story, and she's a minor footnote on very few peoples radar.

And so, to withhold this information from me, her eldest son - appears my younger brother knew all along - was part of her shenanigans and games of whispers.  As Robert Jordon describes it in Wheel of Time - She's playing "the Grand Game"; but instead of their being a crown, fortune of kingdom on the line there's just a few poultry facts which needed to be passed out to include other people.

I find this so frustrating, annoying and I wish I could sit and chew on it, but I'm so tired of this bullshit approach, so tired of the whispers and deceit, because that's what it is, its like she withholds things to taut back to you "you didn't know I've been shopping"... I don't care you've been shopping, and you didn't even tell me... its so trivial.. but "I'm having an operation, and you didn't know I'm having an operation"... Erm... I'd have liked to have known, and liked to have been told...

I know for a fact that her inner circle of supplicants knew all about this situation, its only me, the only person who out strips her in the family (for intellect) whom has been kept in the dark.  Because I'm very pragmatic... "oh you're ill, can they fix it?  Good, go get it fixed"... That's my style, and this whole thing is silly its about a problem she had 20 years ago, and never tackled... 20 years is well enough time!  Not least because she can't claim "the kids stopped me"... we left home over 18 years ago... I've now been gone from home longer than I lived there by a fair few years, but she still wants to pull the strings, and this whole episode is here trying it.

Also about my Nan being in A&E... I work right next to the A&E unit, I can see it out the office window... My mother will be in an operation tomorrow... But she's put herself down as primary contact... she'll be miles away in an operation in another hospital... I'm 500 yards away from Nan and available... but Oh no, I can't take that call, I can't sort that out... because that would be my mother ceding control and she can't bare to think of not ruling the roost

Annoying, annoying, annoying fuckers my family are.

Laptop From Ebay - Maternal Strife

Aside from running all over the shop this weekend, I had a laptop zonked on me by my father, to have a look at sorting it out for him, this laptop cost £60 off of ebay, and it was as old as the hills... A single core (core 1) with 2gb of RAM and an ATI graphics card.... Its dirt slow.

Best thing I could do was not bother to open windows, in fact, I opened windows on it and noted six different pieces of user monitoring software running in the open; clearly the seller wanted to phish for personal information from this machine.

So, I wiped the machine with a blank copy of windows XP (its licensed OS) and low and behold I booted up and the malware was back...

So I got out my trusty Linux boot CD and fired up into a version of Linux Mint to take a look around.  Dead sneakily whomever had sold this laptop had a hidden partition on the hard drive, it was booting into that to restore whatever malware onto the disk on the main partition and then letting the OS Boot.  It did this with a custom copy of Grub, with the text turned black and a zero time out... Very very sneaky.

I cleaned this all off, installed Mint onto the machine and it was a decent little box, I could imagine a developer (who doesn't mind the slow clock speed) enjoying the machine, it has a very tall screen (over twice the height of the screen on which I now write this mail to you guys in fact)... Crispy tall screen, I was almost tempted to have the machine off of him for my Pascal efforts, but I resisted...

But what a palava... what a lot of work that laptop seller must have gone to in order to set up that machine as a honey trap.

The machine is now sorted, however, all this is immaterial, what really bugged me was how much I had to say "No you can't play games on this machine"... to my mother... She had this plan that they'd get me to fix this laptop up and she'd sell it onto a member of the family so they could "browse the net, do homework and play some games".

Well, they can do all those things on it, but not play the games I think they thought they were going to play... First of all, the machine was very very low spec... I tried to explain this to my mother... "My gaming machine has eight processor cores and £470 worth of graphics cards inside... this laptop is ten years old and cost £60, its not going to run games".... But she insisted it would do...

No, it won't....

Yes, it will.....

Now, I'm no expert on my mothers education, but since it ended in the early 70's I'm going to pretty much assure you all right now that it contains absolutely no IT or computer related knowledge.  In fact, apart from her typing a few letters on our Atari ST as kids, and her briefly using e-mail in the modern era, I don't remember my mother using computers all that much; she's an SMS expert but a computer numpty.

I however, have been gaming longer than I care to recall, have a degree in Software Engineering, am lucky enough to be a computer programmer for a living and I live and breath this industry as it is my life blood...  Yet, sat in my own room, on my own turf, she was willing to argue with me about this, to basically try to play off the "I'm your mother, I know best" card on a topic about which she knows nothing.

Now, some of you out there may know my Mum, so when I say "She ended up pulling a face like she thinks you can't see her" you'll know what I mean.  But, for the rest of you, she pulled a face like a turtle straining to take a shit and not blow itself out its own shell.

And, this made me very angry, not least because this is my area of expertise, don't put me down.  My brother and sister-in-law are hairdressers, would I argue with them about dandruff?... No... Would my mother?... No... So why does my Mother and pretty much every fucker who's ever typed an e-mail (and little else) on a PC think they can argue with me on the topic?...

I've blogged about this before, but not from direct close family, that was extended family; whom may not beware I did a degree in this stuff... And not aware I've ALWAYS - for thirteen years - worked in this industry; and not aware I live and breath this both mentally and physically.  My mother however should be more than well aware of my experience and bow to my judgement, not argue with me.

If I had cancer, and my son was a doctor, I'd defer to his knowledge and experience on the old diagnosis front.  So why can't people back down and accept someone might know more than them about the IT trade and the piece of shit laptop they just bought off of ebay?

Maybe they have to defend what they just bought?... Maybe they're embarrassed this heap of shit ain't going to play Crysis...?  Whatever the reason, they have to suck it down, because I'm getting right fucking tired of being back chatted to on the topic.

The other angst which came up was also related computers, you see, every weekend I had to do an online shop for my Nan.  Its not a big deal, but lately I've been getting back chat to about what I've ordered; I have only ordered what Nan asked for; but my Mother thinks she can talk to me like I'm a fucking idiot that forgot to order disinfectant... if the old gal don't ask, she don't get, if I just bought things there'd be hell to pay.  If the old gal has forgot to ask, fair enough, but don't talk to me like shit because of it.

But anyway, this old saga of doing this order has gone on for YEARS, I have hundreds - no shit - of receipts for all the orders I've done, and we have the pattern of what to order down easy, but this weekend I've had family visits, I've had to travel to Leeds, I've been pretty fucking busy - even before I mention my wife being extremely ill last night and this morning... Above that we have a weekend away planned soon, so in anticipation of problems I printed out a dead easy to follow cheat sheet for my Dad to follow to do the shop.

I gave him this, and said "we're going away, so you'll need to do the shop that weekend"... nothing more, nothing less... The action in the sheets involve typing in the web page, a username and a password and then basically using the mouse to click the list of favourites that site holds for my Nan... its about 21 key strokes total.... Remember this list of instructions has just been handed to a man you've witnessed is happily using ebay, is using paypal and whom plays computer games all the time...

And you should see the comedy text reply my mother has sent me... here's the first:

From Me:  "How's Dad got on with the shopping list?"

Reply:  "Do u mean the How 2do an online order?  If so he's lookf n gonna try.  Friday he helped me with a brief e-mail as i can no longer see letters n numbers.  It took 3hrs.  He's limited when using his fingers as he has 2keep them in creans n cover them with plastic dressings.  There4 it'l b hard using his fingers n hands as their so sore.  We've been 2nan, collected her order n explained the change.  She got very upset as she was happy with u.  Was really hard telling her."

Now, lets parse this over folks... My Dad has a hard time with cream on his fingers... yes he does... but he manages on ebay and paypal - activities which take more typing than this online shop for Nan... And comparing ebay, paypal or the online shop to typing an actual e-mail is just retarded... Not least because my Dad ain't the most literate bloke on the planet, indeed he only seems to know where the ASWD keys are because of playing shooters all the time... So, stupid comparison from a stupid woman as far as I can tell...

As for his fingers hurting him, I've counted 21 characters need to be typed to do this shop... all the rest is clicking pre-existing items on a list...

I might suggest he get one of these though, since he's on ebay, I'm sure he'll find one...

Next thing to parse out of this mail... She's been to Nan, a vulnerable, confused old woman and told her god knows what story about my not wanting to help any more... Scaring her, upsetting her... When... These instructions were only for a rainy day (and its rained this weekend) or for the weekend we go away (soon) and possibly for covering whilst we go on our delayed honeymoon... Never was it mentioned I'd not do it any more...

But my mother is an over dramatic theocratic obtuse pain in the rear end, so she's decided to make a drama out of this.

This has me incensed to actually stop doing the shop altogether, firstly because I consider my mothers actions ridiculous and I think my father should have shown some back bone and gone "whoowhooowhoaaa there, stop and think about this, these instructions are only to cover, or in case he gets hit by a bus"... instead... off they trot to rain on Nan's parade...

But also to receive these stupid messages as text... It incenses me to be angry, to "FIT RAGE QUIT" because they've been... well they've been fucking arseholes...

AND THEN....

To really annoy me, more lies are crawling out the wood work... I have the text saying they've just got the shopping list right... its timed 19:13...

I have an e-mail timed 20:32 saying the shop has been done... 

So it took about 1 hour 30 minutes to drive home from Nan's, settle in, get the machine on, digest my instructions and type in the whole shopping list... right... That's an hour and thirty minutes.... When I'm on the phone with Nan trying to get sense out of her, that's about the same amount of time I waste... Not doing bad is he, for a guy unable to use his hands...

But then... at 21:13... So, two hours after the first text... (TWO HOURS)..... I have this text arrive....

"Dad just done nan's shop - Took him 3hrs from list. x"

No, no it did not, it took him at most an hour and a half, and you took only two hours to reply... Where does she get three hours from?... I have irrefutable proof of 1 hour 30 minutes, assuming she sent the text about getting the shop in the car (which I admit I assume I do - but its the most likely scenario).

1. Go Nans & scare her, take written list.

2. Drive home - whilst driving send guilt riddled text to fuck with mind and set my resolve NOT to shop again.

3. Get home - fuck about - get on machine do shop

4. Confirmation of Shop being done arrives at my inbox.

My mother in unaware I had a live mail tell me about the confirmation, she has no idea that I know this discrepancy exists... But she's quite willing to lie to me about the time taken...

Its not the first lie she's been caught out with... There's a few others out there in the ether that she'd rather gloss over... But, I'm getting tired of this attitude from her.

Tired of this, I'm holier than thou, I know more, I am bending over backwards for you... She has this air...

I spoke to my wife about this earlier, my wife lived at home with her parents well into her 20's... I was gone out the family home at 19... to Uni... My younger brother left at 16 to live with his girlfriend... My parents have had years together as a couple to live their own lives before they were married and now long after, they've had more time living their own lives as a married couple doing their own thing, than having kids at home... But they go on like they've been tied down to us kids for ever... They've not...

They've travelled, they've been all over and have a rich social life... And if they (specifically my mother) wants to come to my home and argue with me about my specialist topic, and argue with me about life and then weave this web of guilt and bullshit about this whole shopping insignificance, to be frank I can do without visits from her, until she can buck her ideas up and stop arguing...

Other arguments with my Mother in the last 30 days:

> "You've never lived in St Anns"...

< "We lived on St Anns Wells Road for two years odd, and I lived on Abbortsford Drive, St Anns, for a year whilst at University"...

> "You never lived in St Anns"...

Even my Dad looked at her sideways on this one, because we've always said we lived in St Anns, its always been a fact and a simple, proud one...

> "You written your game yet?"

< "What?"

>"You were writing a game on the computer?"

< "You mean my project at work, the system software I was writing?... yes I checked it in last week after months of work".

> "But its a game?"

< "No, is a software system"

> "But you play games on the computer"

< "Not at work"

This was about my work... Nice to know my professional conduct is considered playing.