All Quiet On The Western Front

Yup, very quiet!

Not having seen a decent one since Clint’s Unforgiven and that was back in 1992, that is 16 years ago! Man, does that make you sit up and blink or what?

Oh tell a lie! I recently watched a HD version of “The 3:10 to Yuma” not a bad movie at all. Russell Crowe does a good job of being a badass. For some reason or other I find people either love or hate this guy, no in-betweens. I am nuetral on the issue but he can definitely act he has played in some great films over the past few years.

The football season is finished in the UK and the only thing left to us this summer, is the Euro Championships, in which England rather spectacularly managed to fail to qualify. So I will probably be calling the cable company Monday and cancelling my sports package until the start of the next football season later in the year.

There is no way I am spending my summer sitting indoors watching some German diving asshole con a referee into yet another penalty or some spitting Italian cheat goad a player into getting booked.

Sure if we (England) were there I could handle the indignation, but like I care if Hans Bakflip dives over the flying drool of Gissepe Flob and causes the referee’s head to implode in the resulting conundrum of who gets booked.

Actually the referee’s head imploding would be worth a YouTube watch.

Maybe this summer I’ll think about digging out the fishing gear from the attic and get my arse out to the river or lake and catch me some rays. Yeah I don’t mean the fish when I say ‘rays’ I mean the ultraviolet kinda rays. Except I won’t of course, as I have not done so for the last few years…

Hooking a fish and dragging it up out of the water to watch it gasp for breath as I weigh and photograph its discomfort has kinda lost its appeal.

I don’t know what happened but sometime over the last year or two I have gone soft. I mean, I have no problem with catching a fish and eating it (cooked of course, sushi eeeew) that to me is a natural thing to do. But hmm it feels sort of wrong to just hook it through the lip and let it struggle half to death before lifting it out of its natural environment and then subject it to some friendly suffocation.

I read somewhere; “If a fish could scream, would you still fish for fun?”. Ouch… Can you imagine hooking a fish and having to listen to its squeals and screams of pain as you ‘played’ it on your rod and line, only then have to listen to it gasp and cough and splutter almost dying of no breath as you held it up for your buddy to photograph?

Ok that was a bit surreal, but you know where I am coming from. Right?

See I told you I was going soft.

What really appeals to me more, is to go hunting with my camera. I’d still catch the rays, see the wildlife and get my arse out of the house and away from the computer keyboard.

……Eek! It’s Saturday
It is 4:20pm and it is exactly a week to the hour before Anne Marie (Gotmewrong) arrives from Denmark and I still haven’t started tidying or cleaning the house.

Hmm well it does feel a little bit late to start now, so maybe I’ll start tomorrow instead. That sounds like my kind of plan, yup. I expect this will continue until about …

Thursday by then I should be starting to panic a little about starting the cleaning and tidying, and hopefully panicking enough to actually do some. Yeah fat chance, next it’ll be..

Friday and I’ll be scanning the telephone directory for cleaning agencies that can immediately send around an army of dwarf Filipino women.

Saturday arrives..

So… having managed to put off the cleaning and tidying every day until it was too late to do and after a screaming argument with the cleaning agency over the price per hour of a dwarf Filipino cleaner (my argument was they are so small I should get a 2 for 1 deal) and just as I rather cleverly pointed out that shorter arms means less coverage by the duster and cleaning cloths.. the agency receptionist put the phone down on me.. I find I am left gripping the steering wheel a little tighter than normal as I drive to the airport to pick up Anne Marie..

My eyes are on the road and for all intents and purposes i am concentrating on my driving but inside my head… “sorry about the mess but..” and “I was right in the middle of sorting that out when..” .. “Nope those are not my socks have no idea how they got there..” … “Maybe the cat dragged it in? It isn’t mine!“.. (I don’t have a cat by the way)

Then of course during the period of the ‘visit‘ the constant monitoring of where she is allowed to wander and peek, lest she find my hurriedly pushed pile of of junk lurking, or maybe that pile of trash that got kicked under the couch out of sight, or worse ever.. the spiderman underpants stuffed under the cushion, etc.

Oh man, it would be easier to just tidy and clean up now, whilst I have still got a week to go?

Except.. I am hungry now, perhaps I will eat first then start cleaning after the meal? Yes that works, I’ll do that, I’ll clean and tidy later, or maybe tomorrow because by the time I have eaten and then had a cup of tea and……