Bruised Anal Glands

Firstly, let me thank Thistle for giving me a superior scribbler award (see that beautiful award in my *cough cough* overcrowded trophy cabinet to the right hand side). The lovely Thistle speculated that being a Spartan, I might not display the award.

Give a dog a bone.

Spartan? I'm certainly not an ancient Greek (contrary to public opinion), neither am I particularly self-disciplined or have a predilection for brevity of speech (yup, I consulted the online dictionary on that one).

Maybe it's because I like to run races naked.

I think I'm supposed to award this to five other bloggers, but as I'm not a Spartan, I really can't be bothered...tell you what, I'll have a think about it and pick out the other five in a few days time. I have far more important things to write about.

Ladies and gentlemen, train services are subject to severe delays and cancellations due to the adverse weather conditions. Rail staff are working very hard to restore the normal service...please be patient during this difficult time.

The automated station announcement read something like that, although with a stunted flow and no punctuation. Not that I'd be one to complain, as my own grammar sounds like the plaintive wail of a gerbil that has bruised his anal glands in a freak yachting accident.

If "normal" meant trains running on time, a reliable, punctual service that didn't charge criminal fares then yeah, that would be great. At the best of times travelling on our trains is like being charged a tenner for a pint of Guinness and then knocking it over. I feel like I've knocked over a ten pound pint every day.

But they are right, it has been a "difficult time". A couple of flakes of snow and the entire country grinds to a halt. One half works from home, the other half has a snowball fight. I worked from home and then had a snowball fight, hitting a mate cleanly on the ear. I suppose that made up for it all.

My wireless card committed suicide just when I needed it most, so I had to run a 15m Ethernet cable across the flat just so I could continue remoting. And coding over a remote connection is excruciatingly painful, as frustrating as repeatedly dropping one of those teeny weeny flat pack screws under the sofa.

If it wasn't bad enough, I also busted my back, played the worst game of football in my life - enough to make me want to throw in the towel - and got stuck behind some popinjay doing 20 in a 40 zone.

Fortunately one thing did make me smile. There was a bloke on the train with his shirt buttoned so low it made Simon Cowell look like a priest. A priest with a ridiculous hair cut and monstrous ego.