Creeping Insanity and Lower Back Pain...

...are just two of the things that my favourite month of the year has brought me so far. The first I'm used to, as the usual suspects bring me their Tescos carrier bags full of scruffy receipts accompanied by the delightful aroma of either fag smoke or curry, proclaiming in all seriousness that I have "plenty of time" to get their accounts done before the 31st January deadline. They seem oblivious to my warnings that they are in a queue and if there is not enough time to get their Tax Return in on time, tough, and had they brought their tat in when I asked for it back in October they would not now be in this mess. And that's all before I inform them of their tax bill due by next Tuesday, which doubtless they haven't saved for despite my advisings. I remind myself that the customer is always right, with the caveat that my bill will make his eyes water, as compensation for the stress caused. Hell, I'm knackered!

Said stress usually finds its way our of my decrepit body in one charming way or another fairly soon after the looooonnnnggg sigh of relief that is the 1st of February, but this year the blighter has decided not to wait, my lower back seizing up last Friday. Several handfuls of Ibuprofen later it is at least manageable.
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Right, that's my health whinge out of the way. In the news today is that ghastly bastion of self-righteous middle class holier-than-thou website mumsnet, who had a typical example of their constituency bleating on this morning's BBC Breakfast about how mums should be allowed to take their wailing babies and the accompanying nose-curdling smells of their uncontrolled bodily functions (the babies, not the mums, although one wonders...) to the Olympics, gratis. Here's what I had to say on Breakfast's FB page:

The Ollyimpics is allegedly an entertainment, just as the theatre and cinema are. Only the most selfish of mothers would take a baby into a theatre or a cinema, and the same should apply to an Olympic event.

If those sanctimonious middle class women who run mumsnet think the rest of us should have to put up with being sat next to a wailing baby while watching Usain Bolt get disqualified for a false start, they are seriously mistaken.

Anybody who can afford to go the Olympics can also afford to pay for a babysitter for the day. It's not like the kid is going to remember it anyway. You wouldn't take a baby to a football or a rugby game would you?
 
You are of course entitled to disagree, but you are of course wrong.
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Tying in neatly with that is this, which is in incredibly bad taste and not so much near the mark as rubbing the mark out altogether while grinning manically. Not for the faint-hearted, which is why it's here and not shared on FB, but bloody funny in my twisted opinion! You have been warned.
 
http://www.thedailymash.co.uk/news/health/women-offered-chance-to-give-birth-anally-201201254812/
 
The Daily Mash's FB page includes this smart and hilarious reply from a reader:
 
I was going to opt for an anal birth for my third child, but my husband objected on the grounds that I've already ruined my front bottom with the first two brats and if I was planning on destroying "his last refuge" with my insane maternal cravings, he'd take away my credit cards and my vibrator so we'd both be as miserable as each other.
 
Marvellous!
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I went to see a pop band last night, I kid you not. Read more here.
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With the news that all Facebook users will soon be forced to use that ghastly Timeline thingy, like it or not (and most don't), I have to admit that were it not for the myraid connections I've made recently through my musical scribblings, I would delete my account tomorrow and move over to Google+. Which leads me on to Google Maps. There was a time when you could print off any map you happened to be looking at, but now it just seems impossible. If you type in a route from A to B and try to print just the map without the directions, you can't, other than in useless postage stamp sized bites to go with each change of direction instruction. Why do these social network site owners have to make their products so bloody unwieldy that they become more like hard work than fun to use?

Answers on a postcard to Mark "King Nerd" Zuckerberg, CC Google Maps.
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Bill Gates was on the box this morning urging us to continue with overseas aid despite the current hardships at home. Firstly I would remind him that the UK currently contributes a far higher percentage of its shrinking GDP to overseas development than his homeland, and for that matter more than most if not all of the other Western nations. Secondly, it's alright for him, with his zillions, so much that he finds it near impossible to give away, try as he might. Gates actually comes across as a decent sort and I suppose it is difficult to connect with the ordinary citizen when you are as loaded as he is. Can I have a $1,000,000 please Bill? No reason, and I don't deserve it, but if you don't ask you don't get!
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Karen Gillan as sexy proto super model Jean Shrimpton...there's a thought that will leave us blokes with a smile on our ugly fizzogs. Can't wait!
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Until next time...

Twenty minutes...

...is the average length of one side of those old fashioned LP thingys, or it is the time it takes to get dressed, or it is the length of time of your average knee-trembler, or it is the time it takes to fry some bacon and make a bacon sarnie, amongst a host of other things.

It is also the journey time saved, if, as looks likely the new high speed rail link between London and Birmingham gets the nod next week. At a cost of £17,000,000,000 that works out at £850,000,000 per minute or £14,166,667 per second of time saved for the few thousand who make the journey between the two cities every year. Or, to put it another way, £170,000,000 a mile, or £96,591 per yard to build. Even footballers don't get paid that much per yard!

That's not to mention the horrendous environmental cost as the proposed route carves its way through many currently quiet and naturally beautiful parts of the countryside, nor does it account for the human cost making currently valuable country des res' in The Chilterns unsellable. OK maybe that last bit won't have you shedding tears, but you get the point. It also renders Shoesville even more redundant than it is now as the main rail link bypasses our town yet again. I have seen no evidence of our perennially useless council lobbying for the route to go through our town, which may have tempered my rantings, but their apparent lack of action does not surprise me in the slightest.

The Government would be well advised to spend the money improving the existing network and by plugging the financial holes in an NHS hospital or ten. I strongly suspect that there are more than a few MPs and local councillors who are on the boards of companies set to make a killing from this dreadful white elephant. It could be the cue for the middle class uprising that brings down Cameroon. We can only hope.