Saturday snippets

It’s not been a good week for Partner. Apart from the aforementioned summons, he’s not done too well on the shopping run.

Who can forget my rant about the shelves being depleted of vegetarian, low salt, organic stock cubes?

Well, luckily Partner breezed in with three packs of vegetarian organic stock cubes. But were they the low salt version? Oh no. They were the Improved Recipe version which, to me, always spells a Bad Thing.

Containing glucose syrup, raw cane sugar (I really don’t give a shit if it is raw or not it is still sugar), and caramelised sugar. That’s just what I want in my savoury food. It might as well be a fucking dessert. WHO puts sugar in stock cubes? And WHO didn’t read the ingredients? He had bought the WRONG stock cubes.

There were significant sulks in the roughseas ship when I mentioned this one. Something on the lines of ‘Why don’t you go to the shops yourself then?’ may even have been mentioned.

He calmed down when I struggled over to the library, carrying four books, a mere two minutes walk away. Although I was a long time, wandering around a couple of art exhibitions, (may post on roughseas if I remember to take pix), and receiving careers counselling from a librarian (?!!), before I finally staggered back with the haul which included two Andy McNab books.

McNab is one of these shoot-the-shit guys, former SAS, and churns out novels like some of us churn out blog posts. Except he gets paid.

I like these sort of books. They are an easy read. I got through 500+ pages yesterday. They don’t involve disgusting and sadistic descriptions of mutilated bodies, rapes, raving psychopaths, child abuse, violence against women etc etc. His books are about a character (not unlike himself) who signed up to go kill people so that’s his living. All the ethics around that, deniable operations, and intelligence services, are a different matter.

However, in terms of an easy read, a good night’s sleep, compared with the freaky books that I seem to receive from the unofficial book club, his are a whole lot better. Apart from anything else, the ‘hero’ always seems to stuff it up, which I suppose is a good way to build empathy with the readership.

I devour books. My partner does not, but even he can manage a McNab book in two days.

Back to the shopping. Coming back on the bus the other day, it was busy, he put his bags in one of the baggage areas at the front of the bus, next to the side-on dicky seat. A small child was sitting in it. Lots of old people got on and the child remained glued in place. My partner stood next to the shopping, because like me, he doesn’t want to sit at the back of the bus and discover his shopping has gone missing, even though Gib is a very nice place.

Eventually, the mother pulled the child onto her lap so someone else could sit down. But the people getting on walked down the bus, so Partner said, with his usual tact:

‘Do you want this seat back, son, or can I have it?’ And he sat down. Why does an 8-year-old boy have a right to a seat before a 56-year-old man? (with two heavy shopping bags).

I mention this because Jean raised the issue (on more supershopping, link above) about intervention, particularly with regard to children. None of us do intervene or question behaviour. I find it grossly annoying that as a 50+ year-old woman with two or three heavy bags of shopping, that I have to struggle to the back of the bus because people are so ignorant that they hog the front seats. I would probably fall down in a faint heap before I asked someone to move their spoilt brat from a seat they didn’t need. And yes, I do still get up to offer my seat to someone older, or disabled, or whatever.

Today, he went to buy razor blades. He’s already forgotten them twice this week. I don’t write them on the list because I don’t need them. Mach 3? he says. Quattro Four I replied.

He came back with a new razor. They didn’t have any Mach 3 Quattro 3s. So he had to buy Quattro Four and the accompanying razor.

Um. You already have two of those dear. Those are the blades you should have been buying anyway. Not Mach 3 or Quattro 3 or whatever else 3 you could think of. Quattro 4. Dear me. Why does a man not know what blades he uses?

There was another comment about who does the shopping. And he buried his head in Andy McNab. I bet Andy McNab doesn’t buy the wrong blades. I bet he uses a Swiss Army Knife or a Leatherman if he ever shaves.

To finish with, (doesn’t merit its own post), a few blogging wordpress comments having read some more inspirational advice from the Daily Post telling me what I already know.

Choose a catchy title. In fact, choose the perfect blogname. The two perfect examples quoted were Where’s My Toothbrush? and Raising the Rainbow.

My response to the first one, would be – in the bathroom. Although in fact ours are in the kitchen cupboard which is more protected from hoards of marauding cockroaches. The second one is a child blog. Ah. Thought it might have been environmental or inspiring. No, just another kiddy blog.

There is no perfect title. The truth is, a blog title will stay with you if you like the content. I can think of very few titles I remember off the top of my head, and won’t write down the ones that I do for fear of offending the ones that I don’t remember. Anyway, I read too many to remember you all. Or maybe I just remember the ones who comment on mine? 🙂

As for Where’s My Toothbrush? The theme is a travel blog and the author leaves her toothbrushes behind (I think). I’ve only ever done that once (in Mérida, Spain, before you all ask) and I was extremely annoyed as it was a battery-operated one, and we must have left it on charge. But in all my years of backpacking I never lost a single toothbrush. So I think it is a silly title.

Another post was about a featured blogger. We received endless helpful tips from this blogger. Write nice comments on someone else’s blog. Make sure you read the post before you write the comment. Be genuine. Topics not to write about – politics. Or anything controversial. Well, that’s me shot in the arse isn’t it?

What a load of banal sugar-coated trite drivel.

Anyway, my one top tip, for those of you who haven’t listened or haven’t read it before is:

I don’t care who you are, or however good your content might be, I just wish the whole world would write short paragraphs.

A sentence can be a paragraph.

So there you go. Easy.