Anne Dickens | The Day After Yesterday

Happy birthday to me
Happy birthday to meee
Happy birthday dear mee-ee
Happy birthday to meeeeee

Bloody hell, who originally wrote that song? And how the hell did it catch on? It's hardly Byronesque. Did someone in the Medieval times hear it being sung by the village idiot, and thought 'that's a keeper'?

Anyway, if you hadn't already guessed, today is my birthday and I am 41 (but still uncertain about whether a lady should reveal her age).

How the hell did I end up being this old? One minute I was bombing around on roller-skates, pretending to be Hannibal from the 'A Team' (not because I was transgender or anything - I just liked being in charge), and the next I was a grown-up and saddled with responsibilities.

Nowadays, I buy slippers, watch the news, and think to myself; 'I had better not wear that cardigan indoors, I won't feel the benefit if I go outside'. Shit, at this rate, it won't be long before I am sitting bolt upright in a geriatric chair, dribbling gob from the side of my mouth, and listening to Saga FM. And wearing Tena Ladies, or whatever they call adult nappies these days.

Nooooo! I am going to go down fighting ........ so don't worry ....... you won't be seeing a Zimmer Frame in these parts any time soon.















And did we find it? You bet your bippy that we did, and all in all, it was a fab day out.

Tomorrow, I have an 8 mile hike to complete ......I am so excited.

But thanks for your birthday wishes - it is much appreciated dahlink.

P.S. Are you doing anything special now a brief period of sunshine is coming in?

It's rock and roll around here I can tell you. Although I haven't thrown a TV out the window or driven a Bentley into a swimming pool, I have got a new pair of slippers. Call me Ziggy and serve me lager for breakfast!

The bloody things cost me £35.00 ($54.00) because they were made by a company called Skechers, who supposedly produce funky footwear. You might also remember that it was Skechers who designed footwear that toned up your butt cheeks whilst you walked. I wouldn't mind a comparable bra.

Anyway I digress. I ordered my slippers online and they arrived today. I took one look at the packaging and immediately decided to complain to the company I bought them from. Product presentation obviously wasn't high on their agenda.



Ring ring, ring ring ......."Hello this is Debenhams, how may I help you?" said a voice at the end of the line.


"I've just received a pair of slippers that I bought online, and I am not entirely happy with them," I said.


"I am sorry to hear that," the representative replied, "what exactly is the problem?"

"It looks like someone found them down the back of a sofa and sent them to me because they didn't know what else to do with them," I answered, "they were held together with a rubber band and stuffed into a dirty knotted bag."

"I'm sorry to hear that," she said, sounding genuinely sorry, "is there anything we can do to remedy the situation?"

"A 15% discount will probably go some way to alleviating my distress," I stated, staring sideways in a shifty manner at the slippers.

"I shall get that organised straight away," the lady said before adding her pleasantries and saying goodbye.

Result! Yep, as you may have guessed, I am a vocal customer - be it about good or bad service. It comes from running my own businesses and being totally anal about customer service. Jeez Skechers, if you are going to sell a premium product, at least sell it in premium packaging.

But enough of that milarky, Debenhams dealt with it very well ....... and I was very happy with my new slippers. They made me feel like a sex kitten. Actually scrub that, because animals and sex do not go. 


On a different note, I found some more photographs on my camera whilst I was downloading the pictures of my slippers, and even though they aren't vaguely related, I thought I would chuck 'em into the melting pot.

First up, I found some random pictures that Izzy had taken of Naughty George. She had nicked my camera whilst I wasn't looking.




Then I found a random picture of my back garden that I took at dusk. I was trying to be a bit arty, but still couldn't quite can't pull it off. That's why I am an engineer and not a photographer.


So dahlink, that it for me. But tell me, are you the type of person to complain about bad service or products?

There I was, minding my own business, trying to get the Barbie balldress off Action Man, when I heard the ping of an email arriving in my inbox. 

'Who the blazes is that?' I thought to myself as I wondered over to the computer to have a look. It quickly became apparent that it was from Kara, who writes the excellently funny blog, Scattered Joy (opens in new window).

Greetings Dahlink! It is Sunday evening and I am listening to the retro-sounds of Radio 2, whilst Naughty George heartily slurps at his gonads.

I have just spent an entertaining 30 minutes reading your responses to Friday's gadget challenge - you know - the one where I showed you a picture of a gadget, and you had to guess what it was.

But I have to admit that I was slightly perturbed about the number of people who thought it some type of sex toy. It made me wonder what kind of vibes I'm putting out there.


Anyway, now is the time to put you out of your misery and reveal what the gadget actually does ......... dah duh daaaaaaaahhhhhhhh [that was a drum roll, just in case you thought it was Naughty George honking up mouldy cheese again] ..............


Yes, it's a bloody egg topper! How cool is that? It cleanly cuts open your soft boiled eggs so there is no more need for picking out broken bits of shell.

But the fact that it cracks open your eggs is a bit boring compared to the physics behind it's mechanism: The 70g stainless steel ball takes 0.181 seconds to fall down the 16cm shaft, attaining a velocity of 1.77 meters per second, and thus exerting a force on the stainless steel bell-shaped part of 0.6867 Newtons .... which is just the right amount of force to cut a perfect ring. Bloody marvellous it is.

So were there any spods out there who guessed what my new gadget did?

Shockingly, yes...... and now it's time to reveal the winner ....................... dah duh daaaaaaaahhhhhhhh ......

I have got a challenge for you, something to stretch the grey matter on a Friday afternoon.

Now as you have probably guessed, I am a total sucker for gadgets. And today I received the latest in a long line of stuff that I can play with. I was so excited that I nearly vomited because this one's a beauty. 

But can you guess what my latest gadget does?




So, dahlink, please comment below with your suggestions (I think that I'm gonna definitely win this one).

If you do guess what this gadget does, I will feature you on my blog!

Man alive, this blogging milarky opens up some interesting and unexpected encounters with other people. Take today for example. There I was, minding my own business, trying to catch a mosquito with a pair of chopsticks, when I heard the 'ping' of an email arriving in my inbox.

The bloody mosquito made a sharp exit as soon as it spotted my lapse in concentration, so I sighed and made my way over to the laptop to see what was going on.

And what I found was really bloody interesting. It was an email from a young chap who wanted to discuss a blog post that I wrote, what ....... two years ago?

So, below is my original post, and then below that, is the email that I received ................. it's all very weird .... nay, spooky. 
_________________________________________

[This is the original post] Halloween Edition: My spooky encounter

It's a little bit late given that Halloween was last weekend, but here is my ghoulish offering.......

Here's an interesting fact about Halloween. Did you know that it is only celebrated in Canada, US, Ireland and UK? That means that the rest of the world is probably wondering why we all dress up like prats on 31st October.

And luckily for me this year, I spent Halloween night at my cousin's house in Loughborough, which meant that I got to avoid the gangs of marauding trick-or-treating youths knocking on my front door and demanding cash in return for not pushing dog plop through my letterbox.

So I got thinking about Halloween and the ghosts and ghouls that characterise it, and then I thought that I would tell you about a true story that happened to me.

Many years ago when I was 16 or so, I lived with my parents in an old house in an ancient village called Barrowford, situated at the base of a large hill called Pendle Hill. And, although it is not directly relevant to this story, Pendle Hill was famous for it witches and witch trials, and every Halloween night the hill would be swarmed with ghost hunters.

The house that we lived in had been built in the 19th Century and as such had quite a history to it. In particular, right from the time we moved in, we all noticed that one of the bedrooms had a rather peculiar 'atmosphere', in that if you were in there alone, it felt uncomfortable, almost as though you weren't actually alone. So, despite the fact that it was one of the largest bedrooms in the house, and boasted a balcony overlooking the garden, no one wanted it, so it ended up being my room because I don't really believe in that stuff. *Note: I DID regret having that room, because it had a REALLY weird atmosphere. It is the only bedroom that I ever slept in with the light on*.


We had been living in the house for a number of years, when one evening, myself and the rest of the family were in the downstairs lounge watching TV. Suddenly, at about 10pm we heard the most god almighty CRASH coming from upstairs.

Everyone leapt to their feet, simultaneously shouting "Sacre Bleu!"

"What the blazes was that?" asked Father suspiciously.

"Dunno," I replied, "everyone's downstairs in this room."

"I'm going to investigate," said Father.

"We're coming!" we shouted after him. Bloody hell, we were like the Famous Five solving a mystery. All we needed to complete the scene was lashings of Ginger Beer and a dog called Timmy.

We turned on the light and ventured upstairs. Silently we walked down the corridor, listening for signs of movement, but heard nothing. The tension was palpable.

As we crept up outside the door of the bedroom with the odd atmosphere, the source of the noise became immediately apparent.

Father sighed in relief, "it's only a picture that has fallen off the wall." To be factual, it wasn't actually a picture, it was an old sepia photograph of a Victorian woman that had always hung on the wall next to the door.

We didn't know who she was, or even where we had got the picture (and I don't have any photographs of it, because digital cameras weren't invented then. Even mobile phones didn't exist, let alone ones with cameras in them. Shit how old am I?).

We surveyed the scene. 

"There is something really weird about this," I said, staring at the broken picture.

"What?" asked Father.

"The picture is face-up. Surely if it had fallen off the wall, it would have fallen face down?" I said, "And that's not all. Not a single shard of glass is outside of the frame. Given the enormous crashing noise it made when it fell, don't you consider that odd?"

"Ummm, it is a bit strange," mused Father, "and I wonder how it fell down in the first place given that the wall hook is still in situ."

"The string on the back of the frame has probably broken," I said, gently lifting up the picture to check the string.

"Jeez, this is properly weird, " I said, "the string isn't broken."

We looked at one another in a perplexed manner (which means raising the top corner of your eyebrows and cocking your head slightly).

"There has got to be a logical explanation," said Father. He was a medical Doctor and believed everything could be explained scientifically. Even though I wasn't yet an Aerospace Engineer, I wholeheartedly agreed with him.

"So what is the logical explanation?" I asked in anticipation.

"Let me work on it," he said, and to this day neither of us could come up with a logical explanation for what happened.

And in case you were wondering if this is a true story..... it is. DAH DUH DAAAAAHHH (that was a drum roll in case you thought I'd lost the plot). So, have you got any spooky stories to rival mine?

So, it's all pretty weirdy to date .......  but now read the email that I received today ........

Hi

I'm 15 and i have just read the story about your old house in Barrowford. As a matter of fact i live next door. We have been at your old house a few times as we were friends with the owners. My friend, who is 11, had the bedroom you spoke about, and from what i can remember (they have now left), is that he always spoke about weird happenings in his room too. 

The strange things also happened in the room at the end of the hall to the left, and the one straight ahead. 

I live in the house next door, you may remember it and i wondered if you knew anything about that house. Anyway i would like to hear back from you and hear if you have some other stories about what happened.

From, Aneurin

AAAH! How freaky is that? His friend experienced the same weird stuff in my old bedroom. But even more convincing was that he also mentioned another room (the one at the end of the hall to the left)which had a 'strange atmosphere' - which was totally true but wasn't included in my original blog post.

I am just going to run around the kitchen in a panicked fashion, stopping only momentarily for a sip of wine.

So dahlink, what are your thoughts on supernatural milarkies?

There have been evil forces at work in cyberspace today. Imagine a pixely Fu Manchu and his sidekick, a megabytey Blofeld, running amok on the interweb and terrorising innocent victims. Like me and some other people I know.

It all started this morning, when I got a Twitter message from my chum Jayne Martin which said: 'This made me laugh so hard when I saw this about you lol'. Next to the message was a link.

My first thought was 'damn and blast! Not another compromising photograph to surface on the internet.'

I clicked on the link, logged into a FAKE Twitter page (I didn't realise at the time) and imagine my surprise and relief when my web browser (Firefox) threw up a warning that the website was a 'scam or phishing' site. Blimey, it appeared as though Jayne's Twitter account had been hacked, and I was a recipient of a dodgy message.

I discovered a nifty new addition to Blogger today. Functionality has been added that allows you to change your Favicon. If you don't know what a Favicon is, it is the little icon that appears next to your website name in a browser. And the good news is, it's ridiculously easy to do .... just follow the steps below. [The instructions are underneath each image].

I am really bloody annoyed today. And quite frankly, this is a bit of a rant. I love a good rant, I do.

It all started a few weeks ago when I noticed that a big black cat had started frequenting my garden. No problem there, it gave Naughty George the dog something to chase, which in turn kept him in tip-top condition.

But today, whilst I was tidying up my garden in readiness for winter, I discovered that the aforementioned furtive feline had been in my garden because it was using it as a toilet. How minging is that?

As if cleaning someone else's cat scat out your garden wasn't bad enough (I gagged), the cat had targeted the loose soil outside of Izzy's playhouse. And there was spade-loads of the rancid-smelling stuff, so it had obviously been doing it for a while.


So basically, my daughter has to skid her way through someone else's cat poop to get into her playhouse. It's totally gross.

In the absence of a surface-to-cat missile, I decided to see if I could stop the cat crapping in my garden using other methods. So I searched the internet for 'how do I stop someone else's cat crapping in my garden?'.

And man alive, was it a feisty subject!

There was a surprisingly large contingent of people out there who were fuming about the same thing - other people's cats using their gardens as a toilet. And quite rightly so. Why should a non-cat-owning homeowner have to pay out of their own pocket for cat deterrents, or go to great lengths cat-proofing their garden? And how would the cat owners feel if they had to pick up someone else's dog crap from their garden each morning?

But because cat-owners don't have to pick up someone else's pet crap, they instead justify their cat's feral behaviour by insisting that it is a 'free spirit' or 'roaming animal'. This apparently makes it ok for the cat to run amok and crap everywhere, even in children's play areas and vegetable patches (just some of the places I read about). In other words, it's a feeble attempt at justifying anti-social behaviour.  

I absolutely refuse to subscribe to the 'cats are free spirits' rubbish. The reason being is that I have got friends with cats, and have seen first-hand what can be done. Firstly, they trained their cats to use a cat-litter tray. Secondly they kept their cats mainly indoors. Then, when the cat did go out, it was either in a supervised fashion or in a cat-run. Hell, one friend even made a 'toilet area' in his own garden so the cat wouldn't deposit it's business in other people's.

After reading a multitude of forums on the subject, I also noticed that many cat owners objected to the suggestion of keeping the animal indoors. But WHY? I keep my dog indoors most of the time ...... he goes out twice a day for his walks. Hardly animal cruelty.

Not only do I think this a more sociable way of keeping a cat, it also vastly reduces the risk of the animal being injured or killed by a car, or encountering other harmful situations. In other words, I think people with cats should take the same responsibility for them as dog owners do.


At the moment, I feel like letting Naughty George plop on the front lawn of the person who owns the cat and when they complain, I will say that he is a 'free spirit'. 

So what are your feelings on the situation? Are you a cat lover with a different take on the situation? Or someone who has been affected by someone else's cat doo-doo?

And finally, how do I stop other people's cats from crapping in my garden?

Rant over and out.


Update: I have put pepper on the spot that the cat uses. I shall let you know how I get on. I also wanted to spray it with water, but when I saw it just now, it was way too quick.

 Blimey, I had a bit of a worrying moment today. Let me explain .........

I use 'Blogger' software to write my blog. And as you probably already know, Blogger automatically compiles handy statistics about your blog; things like the number of visitors per day, which country they came from, and how long they stayed. [They should also include whether the visitors are male/female and single/married, but that's another post - woof]

NOW ....... there is also another statistic that you can view, and it is called 'Recent Keyword Activity'. Basically it means that you can view the keywords that readers type into their internet search engine, which result in them being directed to your blog.

This afternoon, after managing to reclaim my laptop from Izzy (I nearly had to wrestle her to the ground because she is addicted to a bloody online game called 'Club Penguin'), I decided to check my blog statistics.

I don't check my statistics much, so I decided to review my 'Recent Keyword Activity' to see where people came from.

Man alive, I kid you not ............ here are some of the keywords that people (in the last two weeks) have typed into the internet that resulted in them arriving at my blog (or photos on my blog) ................. crikey, I've been invaded by nutjobs ...........

rotten meat worms on my carpet
camping sheeps head
dog dragging bottom 
if god wanted me to be quiet he would've never showed me what he does
passing another aircraft while flying 
why would someone be addicted to taxidermy
dog that looks like a towel
really fat kids in uk 
pringles supermarket shelf
washing watches
a dirty laboratory
dimension double layby for lorry
robbie williams feet
tit tattoos 
coulthard's Lesbian Love Boat'
broken nose while wearing glasses
dogging
luton airport baggage reclaim
there are no pictures of dead meerkats
cooking kittens 
cows taking a shit
"girl guides" gang bang
funny gimp mask
old ass cell phone
brown spots around knees caused by hockey equipment
do you want to be my friend squirrel

What the blazes is going on there?

Apparently, I rank number 6 on Google for 'cooking kittens', which has made me rather proud. And if you search for 'the day after skill', I am ranked number 1. Excrement! I am a powerhouse when it comes to Search Engine Optimisation.

Enough of that milarky, I suddenly realised that I didn't have any photographs to make my post more interesting. So I took three random photographs of things that were within three feet of my laptop as I wrote this post.



So dahlink, I am dying to know ......... what keywords are driving visitors to YOUR blog?

Don't you just love it when you unexpectedly stumble across things which remind you of your childhood? You know; the halcyon days where the summer vacation seemed to last forever, the sun always shone, and your hours were whiled away playing in fields, and skipping around the white dog poo that heavily punctuated the pavements (that was in the olden days, before dog owners realised that other people might object to skidding through a rancid turd on their way to work). 

White dog poo! How retro is that? The last time I saw a white dog turd, I must have been aged ten. So imagine my utter, unabated excitement when I found one in my garden today.

The minute I clapped eyes on it, I gasped, put my hands to my mouth, and was instantly transported back to my childhood. It was a moment filled with nostalgia and rue.





So dahlink, what retro things remind you of your childhood? And what member of the 'A' Team were you?

Oh, I nearly forgot; last weekend I went to visit an old University chum, Andy 'Poops' Cooper, and his two-year-old son.

Now Poops has got quite an interesting life story going on at the moment. Not only has he been re-building his new house since last November (you may remember I went to help him work on it), but six months ago his girlfriend announced that their family was about to expand. Oh yes .......... she was expecting ........ twins. Due at the end of November.

I clearly remember Poops' blind panic when he called to tell me.

"I am going to be responsible for a family of FIVE!" he yelled down the phone. And Poops is not a 'yelly' person. In fact, I normally struggle to make him talk at all.

I pondered the situation carefully, "shit mate, your life is over."

"I know!" he wailed, "my new house has only got two bedrooms ...... my car is too small ....... and I'll never sleep ever again."

I tried to console him, "just remember - what doesn't kill you, makes you stronger," I said nodding my head wisely and tapping my nose in a knowing fashion ...... even though he couldn't see me because we were on the phone.  

So that's why I visited Poops last weekend: To try and do some fun stuff before the conveyor belt of nappies, sick, and sleepless nights kicked in.


I was due to arrive at Poops' house at mid-morning on Saturday, but I got a bit side-tracked at home and ended up being an hour and a half late.

"You're late," he said after answering my knock on his front door.

"Are you going to give me piercing stares and keep alluding to it in general conversation?" I asked.

"Yes, I had planned on doing that," he replied.

"Cool, at least we both know where we are," I said, giving him slight hug. But not too much of one because that would be weird.

Then, after saying a quick hello to his gorgeous two-year-old son, I asked Poops what the plan was for the weekend.

"We are going to the Drayton village street fair," he announced.

"Bloody hell, that's not very rock-and-roll," I replied. "Do you remember the olden days when we used to spend our weekends bombing around on motorbikes?"

"Yehhh," sighed Poops ruefully.

"That's kids for you ......." we both said simultaneously.

And so dahlink, here are some pictures of our weekend in Somerset ....... enjoy.
















So ........ can you help solve the problem? Are they milking teets or good old fashioned gonads?