Reading Books

While Vicus is away on his holidays perhaps this is an opportunity for me to step up to the plate (yes, the latest fucking jargon speak finally reaches Dartmoor) and offer visitors to my blog the opportunity to stretch their minds and offer their views on something a little more challenging than the topics that generally occupy my mind. Obviously I am normally more than happy to leave the serious stuff to Vicus thereby freeing me up to focus on such lesser issues as Big Brother or the World Cup.

I don't really do films and books, or music or anything arty farty or intellectual at all really - all areas of strength for my dear friend. Plucking information from the vast vortex that is his huge mind is an easy task for him. I did read a James Bond book when I was about thirteen, which I blame for causing the preference in my mind for woman like Ursula Andress and the like. Of course if I met a bird like that in real life I'd obviously shit myself. Apart from my missus of course (just in case she reads this post), I have always found it a bit of a problem communicating with what I guess you would call 'beautiful women'. I think it is because I know that they know that I am thinking ' I'd like to shag that', which after all is a perfectly natural male reaction, but also not the greatest basis for a normal 21st century western civilisation human to human communication. For some reason I always feel like I have to make a bit more effort to pretend that I'm not actually thinking that thought when it's perfectly fucking obvious that I am.

So there I am trying to behave as if they are just another person when in reality they are really hot. They must know that and they must know that every man they meet has roughly the same thoughts about them too. And then I start to think things like, maybe it's nice for them talking to me because at least I'm not just gunning for them and fawning around them just because they're beautiful. Dream on!

And before the WLF gets in the act, I do know this is all bollocks - apologies to them for the mind of the man.

Feeling slightly grumpy this morning

I have to write a new post for my blog. I have nothing to say, so no change there. Maybe I could write a list of ten things beginning with B that I enjoy shoving up my arse. God, where shall I start!

The house sans Grace

Catch the bilingual there, yeah.
I just love the twists and turns in the BB house. I have to say I was absolutely delighted when Gracie chucked that water over Saint fucking Suzie. God I'm really naffed off with all those frightfully sensible oldies headed up by the ever reasonable Richard and his new side kick middle class Mrs Suzie bloody balanced view.
I was warming to Grace before she left, and I think she did really well in her interview with the pregnant one. Now I'm with the delinquents all the way. I'm kind of hoping that things will start to fall apart a bit for the reasonables otherwise in a couple of weeks time we'll be left with the most boring bunch of prats you could ever wish to meet.
Mikey did a great job standing up to Nicky who is so weird it's hard to believe she manages to survive in the outside world. I'm just wondering just which division she is hoping to attract her footballer from - maybe the South Essex league would be a good place for her to start her search.
And my highlight of the weekend has got to be Imogen's diary room rant about the borings. Yep, I'm with you all the way baby.
Pete still looks like an out and out certainty to win. Glyn is in there though, and I think Imagon is playing quite a cool long term game.

Well, we got lucky there didn't we!

For a minute there I had visions of us not even making it through to the knock out stages. What is it about England when we play in these tournaments. It drives me crazy because we seem to be so cautious and we always look so lame out there.

Thank God at last Sven brought on Rooney and Lennon. Everything changed straight away. Suddenly we seemed to have a couple of players on the pitch who wanted to get something going. I just hate it when we sort of amble around like we've got all day. There's no way on earth we can win the world cup playing with that kind of approach. All that kind of 'I'm a well established international footballer' kind of attitude is just crap - we need to get those youngsters in there who will try their hearts out, give us something exciting to watch, and maybe surprise us all.

I'd keep StevieG in there of course I would, but I'd play him in the right position where he can scare the shit out of the opponents. John Terry is good too - I'd make him captain and that would free up the Beckster to play with a bit less responsibility. Mind you if I was married to Victoria I probably wouldn't be feeling that good about myself either. Is that why Peter Crouch is so bloody good at the moment, because of his hot little bird. Yes, it's true, yet again this post is descending into the gutter - I blame it on the readership, sensitive as I am I can't help but write for my audience.

Jo Cole is good too - I'd keep him in. We need players with flare and we need tryers. God, the times I've stood and watched Argyle playing like a bunch of wankers who don't give a damn. No, it just won't do and I'm not going to do it. That's why a bunch of lower league players put together as a national side can make us look poor - because we're sticking with a bunch of overpaid superstars who have lost their way.

Still we're through, and as everyone keeps saying, we'll struggle to play worse.

Gabe and Eggy Palmer

We drove across the border into Cornwall yesterday to visit my eldest daughter Frances and her two week old baby Gabe. Frances and her partner Wazza were completely exhausted already as Gabe has settled in to his nocturnal pattern of sleep all day and scream all night. Now, I've had a few babies in my time and I can just about remember those torturous nights, but I couldn't really come up with any easy solutions.

The midwife has told Frances that it is very important to wind the baby during the day because it is that wind that gets into the intestine and keeps Gabe awake at night. I got to thinking about that though - it doesn't make sense does it. Why doesn't the wind in the night get to his intestine the next day. Anyway I spent a lovely couple of hours carrying Gabe around. He really likes to just be next to someone, feeling their warmth and the movement of their body. I started to think about where he had just come from, nice and warm and soft, with no rough materials rubbing his skin, and how now, he's come out into this world and he has to get used to different temperatures and different textures, and being separate and on his own. There can't be any hurry for all that to happen can there. My daughter laughed at me when I told her to keep him in a nice warm little nest so he felt nice and snug. Give him a few months and he'll start to get used to how it feels to be in a little human body.

Hey, but what a palaver!

And then my mare Splodge goes and has her foal Eggy Palmer, and I find him in the field about two hours old, just standing by his Mum with not a care in the world. Three metres away there was an absolutely huge and perfect afterbirth - I lifted it into a bucket and put it in the hedge for the foxes to eat. Two days later Eggy is cantering around his Mum and looking pretty special.

Of Horses and Humans

What a weekend! We did a two day horse clinic up in Hampshire and one of the horses was a fierce biting horse. As usual he wasn't small either. He towered over me and to say I wasn't a little apprehensive would be a complete and utter lie.

I have this approach to horsework where I've kind of worked out that the last thing you want to add to a horse with a problem are more problems, so I always go in with the aim of showing the horse I am there to make things better, not worse. Anyway, this guy spent the first half hour trying to chew me up but every time he gave it a break I just stood there quietly to see if I could get him to decide he preferreed doing that to all the hassle of biting. Amazingly he eventually started to come through with a bit of peace which we managed to build on over the two days. He wasn't cured but we were starting to get a bit of work done by Sunday afternoon. Everybody could see that he might be ok which was really what the owner needed to know.

Sometimes it is easy to start thinking that the problems are there forever, so it is quite an important part of the whole deal when you can start to see some improvement. I think the owner went away feeling a bit more hopeful.

As much fun as the clinic was we were a bit sore to miss seeing Sezer getting chucked out of the BB house on Friday evening. Boy did that guy play it all wrong there. He so didn't need to say and do all that stuff that ended up getting him 91.6% of the vote , the most hated housemate of all time. Actually I didn't think he was by any means the worst of the bunch - I just think he didn't know that sometimes even though you can see things aren't right, often the best thing is just to shut the old gob up and walk away. I'm not sure all this 'let's get it out in the open' stuff is always the best way to go really. It's surprising how things will disappear if you just leave them alone instead of feeding them with even more crap. See the link with the horses here - I didn't mean it to happen but it's the same thing isn't it. Sometimes we just don't seem to know when to pull out of the deal and shut up shop.

Anyway, I caught last night's episode on repeat this morning and even more fascinating relationships are developing. The Scottish tranny is really stirring things up by walking in on the girls in the loo. She's quite a tragic figure really, saying how she dreams of being pregnant and really would like to have a baby. Then in comes Nicki who doesn't seem to quite know where trannies fit into things at all and starts to go on about how she will only ever be able to have a gay partner. I'm still trying to work out how she's working that out.

Then we had the champagne dinner party with the beatiful Imogen and the really tricky Richard. He's not quite clever enough to outwit her, but he may be right about her being boring. I reckon her sweet smile will compensate for that though. Ah, the intrigue of it all, roll on tonight for the next update.