Hallo Weener

Apparently we were going to a party but the wanker who organised it (or didn't) was either 1. Lying to look good in front of me- trying to impress me with talk of all his "new friends", 2. Got so stoned that he forgot what day of the week Halloween was actually on, or 3. Got a better offer and forgot to inform all the people that had been invited. Anyway, ultimately, it's a good job we didn't just turn up at his house because the truth of the matter is that he still lives at home with his mum (at the grand age of 30) who had come back a day early from her holiday and I suspect that was the real reason for the lack of party. I wouldn't normally mind that much about plans changing at short notice, although I am finding my patience being increasingly tested when dealing with flimsy schedules as I'm getting older, but this time I'd put in hours of work preparing a costume. Psycho nurse, that was the brief I gave myself. I ignored all the warnings of the photos of me in "uniform" being put on facebook (where i knew they would end up) which is silly of me really but the risk in my life has significantly decreased now I'm an old biddy who doesn't go CRAZY anymore!! So I thought I'd live "life on the edge" or something... uhem.

Not being put of by the lack of Partyness, my friend and I got dressed up regardless only to find ourselves sitting in a room with my boyfriend and his mate acting like usual "cup of tea?" "yeah, got any biscuits?" *Says the blood and shit smeared sou sucking zombie Sister Goulden.

What a fucking anti-climax. I should have known the evening would be a failure after going on a 2 hour search around every local shop to find a pumpkin. We ended up carving out 2 varieties of melon, plus 2 peppers and then later a dried out satsuma that we'd found down the side of the cooker (which worked suprisingly well)

We did go out but to an empty bar. Some bloke looked me in the face and said "Eurrggh"- twat. Plus I didn't win the prize for best outfit, even though I was the only one with face paint on, but I guess thats the sort of wanker behaviour I've come to expect from this let-down of a town. Can't wait till next Halloween.

Some strangely laid out pictures!

Here are the pictures that match my previous blog. For some reason unknown to me or B.T, my wireless only works if I'm above the "hub" thing sitting on my own upstairs. So publishing on here sometimes gets hard andyou just had to click an hope for the best, but you'll be glad to see this is a veiny leg...

Czech Please

I thought I would actually sit down and type something in my blog because I haven’t done for a long time. I kept making the excuse to people that I hadn’t done anything interesting enough to write about for ages but I’m boring even myself now with that reason, plus I have actually done lots of stuff, it’s just laziness and TV preventing me from writing! So I’m going to have a bit of hardcore Intense Mint Lindt chocolate and tell you about my visit to Prague…

SO, Dobrey-Den!- that mean’s Hello in Prague-ish. I have been back a week now from a trip to Prague with my Aunty under the guise of reckying possible locations for her business clients to do conferences. I don’t think she has any intention, or reason, to use Prague for this, but by having a brief tour around a 5* Spa Hotel and convincing the manager that it was definitely a place “we’d” (cos I was OBVIOULSY a business partner duh) seriously consider, we got to stay in spa luxury for 5 days for FREE.

So we took full advantage of the spa facilities and I have never felt so pampered before. After having a treatment on some part of body DAILY, I feel somewhat neglected in the week I’ve been back. Rubbing on some Boots own exfoliater in a small luke-warm bath under the glare of an energy saving bulb just doesn’t feel quite the same.
My aunt and I had a dual body exfoliation at the spa, which meant we were being scrubbed at the same time in a shared room. There was massive giggle potential, especially after being presented with some awfully large paper thongs to wear during the treatment, but we managed to keep it together. I had a very charming young man who could not speak a single word of English but had very nicely manicured toe-nails (I spent a LOT of time looking at his feet through the hole in the massage bed) and VERY large strong hands- God, I sound like a horny old lady, he was very u-hem good at his trade, talking as a professional myself errr…
So after being scrubbed, all the grit was wiped off with warm towels and then this honey stuff was smoothed on all over (I spent a lot of time subtly manoeuvring myself to stop the paper(probably now translucent)thong from exposing my pubes) We were then wrapped in cling film and left to bake for 20 minutes gas mark 4.
I didn’t favour the cling film effect personally, not being too much of a fan of enclosed spaces at the best of times. It was made worse, I think, by being convinced that it was a “treat” and that I should be the most relaxed I’d ever felt… It was just a little warm and greasy for my liking. Anyway, after being unable to scratch my face for 20 minutes because my arms were pinned to my side, the strong- hands boy told us to shower all the honey stuff off and then have an all over body massage for another hour ughghg luxury this is making me sick writing this now… Boo Hoo for being back in shitty old Seaford.
Just to rub the sickness in I also had a facial and a pedicure, plus at least twice daily usage of the sauna, steam room, Jacuzzi and swimming pool. One day I got a little carried away and stayed in the sauna sweating out for so long that all the veins in my knees dilated and came to the surface, obviously fucking desperate to lose some heat! I was genuinely scared for a while that I had permanently scarred my legs with a red web of old lady veins. I have a picture but it was taken a while after the initial fright so most of the redness has worn off…
We had Italian on the first day in the newer part of the town. I nearly had my bag stolen by some guy pretending to do up his shoe lace, but really scoping out the contents of my hand bag which was blatantly open. I’m not very good at the city thing. In my local pub you can leave anything anywhere- bags of shopping, fags, sunglasses, money on the table and nothing ever happens to it. I wouldn’t say I was naïve; it just takes me a while to adjust to more edgy city surroundings nowadays.
There are sausages everywhere in Prague, literally I’d say there is one sausage outlet every ten minutes along a street. You never need be without a sausage in your hand. I wonder if you did the tourist trail eating a sausage at every stand and shop, how many sausages it would take to see the sights of Prague… just a thought. We purchased a top-class cured and peppered sausage from a local deli as a present for my step dad. Regrettably, when we left we forgot it was wrapped up in a paper bag and stuffed into the top of the mini-bar in the hotel room. By the time we came back to pick our bags up and go to the airport, the whole thing had got out of proportion and I just couldn’t bring myself to ask them at reception if they had found my sausage!
We went to see a few modern art galleries but I have to say that just walking around Prague is better than any gallery. I did seem to be looking UP for most of the time. The hotel and shop fronts are so beautiful and individual, plus there are spires and domed ornate structures EVERYWHERE. The sky line, especially from the castle, is just pure fairy-tale. I sound like an excerpt from the Timeout guide to Prague, but it is actually true- I’m really looking forward to visiting again and taking my friends there, I know they would all just love it. Anyway, the Timeout guide did prove useful on the last night when we were in desperate need of a curry. Apparently there’s only one curry house in the whole of Prague, which I found hard to believe, but could have explained how this shit-hole we went to managed to stay open! It was called “Himalaya” and was in the hippyish bit of the city. We were alone on the lower level of the restaurant, joined by two very loud inane American girls upstairs. I think they were literally sitting ON TOP of us and there was some weird balcony arrangement going on which meant we were practically IN their conversation. There wasn’t much to hear, although I was mildly amused when after about half an hour of deliberation and discussion over the intricacies of the various delights on the menu, they finally settled on “2 chicken currys”. Bland.
Anyway, I had to show the waitress what tonic water was from the fridge, but it wasn’t her fault as the Indian, English and Czech language mix was pretty fucked up and I was getting confused trying to communicate myself. We had a starter and were then presented with a solo poppadum as the next course. It was all a bit strange and the poppadum has been microwaved for too long or something, but we went along with it. Next was the ridiculously large oval plate of chicken biriani (which was just for me but could have fed 4 people) and my Aunts dahl and orange microwaved rice and the BLANDEST vegetable curry known to man. Nursing home special, it wasn’t a Dansak that’s for sure YA YA. Anyway, we ate it and it didn’t really make the cold go away and I swear I got the shits from it, but I guess that’s what you get for being so fucking western and DEMANDING food from exotic continents at least once a week…
The good thing about going away with my aunt and not my friends or Luke was that I got nicely pressured into doing things I probably wouldn’t have done otherwise. We spent a really long day hiking around parks, crossing bridges and walking round the entire castle-which is enormous. We were walking back to the hotel feeling ratty and tired, and came across a concern of Mozart’s Requiem performed by the Prague national choir (or something equally impressive?!) in St Nicholas’s church. My aunt apparently loves this piece of music so we just paid and went it. It was a bit of a sudden culture attack, as I have never really been to anything classical or serious like that and wasn’t sure how to behave. I’ve always thought that sort of classical thing is quite sombre and I’m in constant fear of needing to make a loud noise or laugh or do something disruptive. The church was massively impressive- Baroque design- so really garish, very gold, cherubs everywhere, very extreme but good. I’ll put in a picture. It was fantastic anyway, it sounds cheesy but the hair on my neck was standing up at times. It so good I couldn’t quite get my head around the fact that the choir were ACTUALLY singing it… I guess I’m just not used to hearing that kind of stuff live, it was a brilliant experience.
I got a really bad cold on the last day so spent the time before the airport feeling like my head was stuffed with foliage and just wanting to sit down and stare a lot. I have been to the doctors since I came back and have been given steroids to give me strength to hack up the shit sitting on my chest, so it turns out I was actually REALLY ill. I felt a bit bad about making it shit for my aunt, but I don’t think she minded. We had a 3 hour long lunch on the last day at the Kampa Modern Art museum restaurant which is on a balcony overlooking the river. It was a lovely day and we had creative modern art salads which were delicious. We had Mojitos and good pudding and espresso and sat on a soft settee- it was a really nice time.
Anyway, I feel like I could drivel on for ages about my time but I have been writing for so long now that I feel like I can’t differentiate between what actually might be of interest to anyone else and what’s just a stream of stoned consciousness- which this may well all be anyway! What about if I just say this… Other main highlight’s included having a Pork Escalope topped with a perfectly square bit of ham, buying a hand carved Marionette puppet, a boat ride down the river at night and a weird midnight feast in our room involving Saucrout (?) and cheese triangles. It was a good time-it made me happy and inspired.
I’m going to spend the rest of this evening sitting and not thinking of food, as I’m on a diet and I am determined to make temptation my bitch. I’m all about sensations it seems and The Lindt intense mint just wasn’t enough.

I went to Prague, which I will write about at a later date. I brought back some Czech speciality cured sausages to give as presents. Unfortunately there is now only one pack left as Luke and I got too tempted (also, being the only thing in the fridge apart from off milk and wilted celery) and just ate a whole one. It als0 had this logo on the pack which pleased me greatly.

Procrastination

Yes,well here we are again, another titillating excerpt from the wonderful world of Luci!.... I have been so so busy recently, what with going back to university and struggling to re-engage with the academic part of my brain to bash out a 3000 word essay... it's tiring stuff you know, so I haven't had time for the blog thing. (Much to every one's disappointment I should think!)

Anyway, I am currently feeling:

Enlightened

Inspired

Frenzied

Passionate

Intelligent

Creative

Alive

Human

..which are all good things.

I just wish I could actually SIT down and write this damn essay though. I whinged about my concentration 'problem' to a friend, who passed on some advice they had received from a psychotherapist- She suggested it was probably my inner child making it hard to focus,wanting to PLAY, and therefore hindering my concentration. The method for dealing with this blasted inner child was supposedly to get a spare chair, place it next to yours, physically place the 'child' on the chair, give it a packet of maltesers and every time that child piped up and demanded attention (for example... "oooh, i'll just have a little check on facebook, ya never know-someone might have messaged me back in the last 5 minutes...I'll juuust...") you tell it that you know it's there and it will get some attention later on, but right now the ADULT (that's me!) has something to do. Then I guess you, uh I mean the child, gets to have a malteser. Its a great theory... I tried it out- I went to get some chocolate, sat down, couldn't concentrate and realised that I'd left the child in the sweetie isle of the Co-Op....

Here's some things I've done instead of doing my essay:

Hoovered in between every single floor board in the bedrooms.

Brought 2 diaries and spent hours meticulously filling in the "details" part
Facebook- lots, this one goes without saying.

Made sure all the bracelets, earrings and necklaces are all in Separate containers.

Enlarged a picture of a rasta on a photocopier to A1 size purely for my own amusement.

Cleaned all door handles

Organised the contents of my wardrobe- all skirts one side etc etc

grown my nails

Chewed off my nails

Got very drunk.

Written this blog.... and on that note ********

Newhaven

Newhaven... place of beauty...

Quit and Burn

Today I quit my job. There isn't really too much to say about it, except for the enormous feeling of liberation i'm experiencing.

It was a silly idea really because I still need money, but I just could not bring myself to get on that bus AGAIN and sit in that stinking office (orifice) AGAIN and spend MORE hours from my life talking to wankers about bull-shit that neither I or they give a fuck about. God, I just want some WORTH back in my life, that surely isn't too much to ask is it?! I decided, maybe just to justify my extremely rash actions, that working at that place is the last bit left of the disaster my life became over the last year.

That was all actually written last week, but I've been so damn busy having a nice time and spending money i dont have on things i don't need, i haven't had time to finish it off. I also mad a cake for the first time for years. It was a bit of a disaster to be honest. I didn't have a whisk and thought I could use a food blender thing, but it all just jammed up in the blade and flour flew out of the bowl all over the place. So i did it with a spoon. It was lumpy. AND I didn't have proper cake tins, they were too shallow, so as the sponge rose it kind of flopped out and made a cake 'brim'. It was all a bit crooked and I couldn't afford icing sugar so it was very plain, just THIN SCRAGGY SPONGE LAYER-CHEAP SUGAR BASED JAM LAYER-THIN BURNT SCRAGGY SPONE LAYER- oh yeah, because on of the sponges got burnt as well. There's a picture- As you can tell I am very proud of my efforts!

I started a new job today at a retreat on the South Downs. What an experience! Get up at 6, there for 7, make mega health orientated breakfast for 20 people padding around in socks, clean up their mess, clean their loo's, put out their fart vegetarian lunch. It's all very nice though really. There are some people there at the moment who are all emotonal wrecks and have come away to build some survival life coursey type skills. I found it bit harsh as there were a lot of people sitting around crying. I got told not to interact with thm as it might make it worse- fair enough I suppose...

Any way, I'm much happier now. Well, except for it being Saturday night and having to go to bed early seeing as I have to be there at 7am again tomorrow.. social life? hello? Nevermind...

POVA=OVER

I would just to make it known how fucking relieved I am. I got a letter this morning from the Department of Health, Secretary of state to be precise, informing me that i would NOT be included on the (abusers) PoVA and PoCA list. I've spent almost a year tryin to justify my integrity as a worthwhile person, and finally its over..., so I guess I must be a worth while person! Yay for me.

I went for a walk on the beach with my friends to celebrate. It was all peaceful and various "nature" was abundant. For the first time in a long while I felt as if i could exhale and allow myself to be happy.

I should be going back to uni very soon and have already arranged to see my tutor tomorrow to arrange it- things seem to be moving a million miles an hour right now but it's brilliant, it's all i've wanted.

I had so many lovely supportive texts from everyone who i told the good news to and my friends met me for drinks to celebrate. It made me realise how many people really care and that felt really special.

POVA=OVER. FINALLY.

I have framed the letter already, just so if I ever think i'm having a hard time I can look at it and remember that if I managed to get through this bullshit, I can get through most other things!!

Please refrain from smoking, smelly foods, alcohol and opinions on parenting techniques

On the bus this morning i witnessed an amusing scenario. When I got on there were 2 middle-aged people eating ham sandwiches. I didn't think much of it, as I witness freaks and hobo's on the bus everyday. The only thing that made an impression was how very dull their conversation was:

-Do you want a mint?
-Ooo Yes
-I've got another packet at home for when these run out... I forgot to bring them out though
-Oh

About 10 minutes into the gruelling journey to Brighton (It takes 45 Minutes on a 'good' day, whatever that means. Yesterday I was sat on a bus and a lady came and squashed in next to me. She asked how long it took to get to Brighton and not being particularly joyous about heading to my shit job, I replied "FOREVER" She looked a bit taken a-back, but obviously i didn't put her off enough as she insisted on sitting very close to me the whole way even when several seats in front became vacant.

As I was saying, 10 minutes into the journey a large, 'large' family got on- Grandma, Young Mum, child 1 and a child 2- a very excited small girl . They sat on the seats behind the Sandwich Couple at the front. The little girl was noisy, but it was understandable as I over-heard that she'd never been on the top deck of a bus before- Prick up those ears Goulden!

She was saying Hello to everything HELLO BIRD HELLO BUS HELLO SUN HELLO ROAD HELL CARS HELLO MUM HELLO BOAT HELLO SEA HELLO... over and over. Her mum asked "are you going to carry on like that all the way to Brighton?", and so it started, as the man in front piped up "I BLOODY WELL HOPE NOT" His wife Sshh'ed him and gave him an embarrassed nudge.

As the journey went on, the child did continue to 'carry on like that', speaking quite loudly and letting out the occasional especially loud shriek when something particularly exciting caught her eye from the bus window. One of these 'shrieks' caused the man in front to shoot forward suddenly holding his ears in pain, as she was sat right behind his ears. After sitting back up and shaking his head he announced proudly:

- That child should have a muffler fitted.

With a disapproving sneer,the young mother replied:

-Ever tried to fit muffler to a 2 year old?

As if it was written into his destiny to make this situation worse for his-self, he continued by suggesting that a bandage wrapped around the child's head could prove quite effective. I genuinely believe he was trying to make light of the situation, but it only led to his hole dug deeper as the Grandmother exclaimed:

- Well, I've never heard anything So AWFUL. Some people forget very quickly what it's like to have children.

The Sandwich Lady of the couple took this as her cue to turn in her seat to face the family and shout:

- Well, we taught our children to speak respectfully... and at a sensible volume.

Grandmother and Young mother at once:

-What, a 2 year old?!?

Sandwich couple lady:

-Welll, you have to teach them at a young age you know...

The grandmother sort of shot up like a meercat- totally alarmed and disgusted at this intrusion into her family life and exclaimed forcefully:

- I THINK THIS IS NEITHER THE TIME OORRRR THE PLACE FOR A PARENTING LESSON, DO YOU?

Well, that shut them up. Not the child however, who continued to chirrup with glee just as loudly as before- oblivious to the tension her innocence had created.

I noticed the couple had linked hands, which I thought was quite sweet- united by bus grief.

I thought I was going to be late to start my shift at work due to traffic and many fancy dress adorned passengers twatting around on their way to Brighton Festival Children's Parade.

My work place has this anal rule- If you are more than 5 minutes late for your shift you have to go home and aren't "allowed" to work, fuck knows why. I was kind of hoping this would happen today as I could have done with a day of sunny carnival frolics, plus it would have provided a semi-genuine excuse which would ease Sciever's Guilt.

Unfortunately I arrived at the office with a WHOLE MINUTE to spare, so I'm currently sitting at my desk listening to the tribal drums of the parade RIGHT outside the office window. It's making it quite hard to hear the morons on the phone, but quite jolly at the same time....

Friday Night Horribleness

Maybe I'm actually getting old. It's quite scary but I've suspected that its been happening for a long time!
I found myself out for a birthday booze up last Friday, joining a crowd of mis-matched 'friends' after working all evening talking to General Public Wankers via a headset. I wasn't keen on the idea of drinking as I was stil feeling a little under-the-weather from the previous nights intake of one-whole-HALF a bottle of wine- (getting old, as I say... )
I managed to force down a pint of cider and smoke a few fags out of shear boredom, but wasn't really enjoying myself. I don't know if its just the shitty small town I live in, or if its a more global, or possibly pyschiatric condition on my part, but I couldnt fucking bare being in the presence of the people in the pub...
My friends are ok, I guess- well, most of them... Its hard to split your conversations between a death metal fan who lives in a tent and a young-at-heart bloke in complete denial about his impending marriage- put it like that. It's the others- the people 'out' for the night, having a 'great' time, shmooozing, clutching small bags under their arms and giving white-shirted matcho nudges to one another. yuk. Me and my friend Dave used to call them The Extras, especially in that pub. They never seem to be seen anywhere else except there of a weekend.
If that wasn't bad enough, we left there and went to an aweful late-licence regulars orientated dive, which had a "Disco". The first thing I saw when we got in was a middle aged woman punching the air really giving it some to some cheesy frog-voiced techno song. She'd obviously hot footed it over the road after her shift as she was still wearing a Morrisons uniform- check shirt-tucked in, blue polyester slacks, and a little dickie- bow type thing round her neck. It was beautiful. And hideous.
The music was really loud and the 'light show' was far too powerful for a room that size. The effect it created was quite depressing cos there was just a huge void with crazy lights, where people should have been having the time of their lives, but instead there was just a redundant cloud from the smoke machine.
My friend started to dance to take the piss, but to be honest even that embarressed me a bit. My ex-boyfriends ex-wife was there too, which is always a pleasure. I split half a pint and pushed it down the back of a speaker chest with a beer matt (maybe subconsciously hoping it would fuck the music up) THEN a... let say.. large lady with a tyre of pimply flesh framed by a G string lolling over her trousers attacked my friend, grabbing his face to kiss him, he looked like he was going to strangle her- really- and pushed her away. She wouldn't give up and kind of launched herself gracefully onto a table full of drinks to get to my other mate Mark who was sitting on the other side- in the process knocking about twelve pints of warm lager on everyone everywhere. She stood up, looked at it and performed a theatrical shrug complete with 'sad' face!
I went outside for a cigarette and some quiet. Unfortunately, the lady followed. She said to my friend "You're step-dad's the sexiest man in Seaford..." -Thank you- then five minutes later "Can I snog your husband?" to the same guy. Fuck knows.
I left after having a surreal conversation with a small man about him wanting some real dusty tool-belt and boot wearing arse-fun with our mutual friend. I THINK he was joking.
I got home and my boyfriend was asleep on the settee, the telly was on and our resident mate was lying on the other sofa smoking a joint. A good film had just started, so I made us a cup of tea and had a little rant about the events of the evening...
When I went to bed a bit later that evening the thought came to me that I would give up all that 'partying', pubbing horrible bull-shit bollocks just to come home to my nice house, my belongings and the people I let into my lives everyday.
Maybe its me getting old, I think my priorities in life could be changing. Its strange what having a shitty time in you life does to you.. OR it could be the fact I just smoked some really good weed for the first time in ages...

Duke of Earl

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Ifs and Butts

Hey, I have a Blogger account. Maybe this will keep me from hours of trawling through Facebook snooping on seemingly younger, fresher faced, more socially engaged people. I swear the Mighty "Book" just breeds jealousy and contempt. Thing is, If I find myself having a sneeky glance at an ex's or 'enemies' page, other people must do the same. This makes me think maybe I should just create some fake fantastically exciting life for myself to show off. I could even start photoshopping all my pictures- "a little thinner here", "few less spots here", "just paste a few beautiful people into the background here and extend my arm out to make it look like im in their gang....". Yeah. Its certainly winning idea, I'll get right onto that when I've got a bit of time...

I live in a flat which has a set of old stairs going up to the front door. Although my boyfriend and I have only lived in this house for 5 monthes, I'm beginning to become suspicious about this stair-way. When we first began living here we had our own tramp who was obviously here long before us and had made the bottom of our stairs his daily hang out. Wind, rain, snow, day in, day out he was there with his trusty can of larger and grubby white puffer jacket, resembelling a down and out Mitchelin Man.
We named him The Bum and developed a bizarre affection for him.

During late night visits to the toilet I would often glance out of the back window and still see him sitting there at 3 or 4am, his white puffer highlighted by the street lights.

I guess we didn't mind his presence, but sometimes his presence proved embarressing, more for him and his obvious lack of social skills. If you were approaching the stairs, usually laden with shopping bags, obviously wanting to get past, he would make no effort to move unless you specifically voiced the order to him. He would usually reply with a grant (he wasnt a talkin man) and would attempt to shuffle to one side of the stairs with no sense of shame, allowing you enough space to just squeeze by.

I remember one particuarly funny occassion where my boyfriend's brother had come round to visit with his 3 year old son, who was too scared to come up the stairs because of The Bum "guarding"the way -"Daddy, i don't like the man.."

The possibilty of The Bum having some sort of twisted loyalty towards us often crossed my mind. Maybe he had been a bodyguard in his previous life. Before it all went wrong... and he was banished to the back streets and park benches of Seaford....

Regardless of all his, I havent seen The Bum for monthes now, at least not sitting on our steps. We occassionally see him grunting his way around town looking confused in his NHS horn-rimmed glasses, but he is certainly not the permenant feature he used to be.

Anyway, It must have been About a month ago, I came home and noticed something had been Smeared on the bannister of our stairs. Being the inquisitive fool i am, I sniffed it and sure enough it was shit.. not sure what kind, but shit all the same. Ths disturbed me deeply, so much so that the remnants are still there as I couldnt bring myself to wash it off. People leaving he house are often accompanied by me shouting -"Dont use the right hand bannister... its shitty" Sometimes I "forget" to mention it.

Writing this has lead me to think that maybe its The Bums revenge or something along those lines? It may just be my over suspicious mind, but he looks a dirty bastard so I wouldnt put it past him. I was reminiscing over the last time I saw him, and remember coming home from a particularly large shopping trip- so large that i had 'stolen' the trolley from Morrisons, and pushed it from one side of town to the other as means of transport for the huge quanitity of food. Upon reaching the stairs, only to be greeted by Bum, like so many times previously, I had to ask him to move. I seem to remember my boyfriend coming to my rescue and politely, but firmly telling Bum that he was to sit somewhere else from now on. I think this was the last time I saw him on the stairs and feel a lump of cold emotion raising in my throat..... no, not really.

If the shit smearing was his method of revenge, I feel sad that he felt it necessary to 'punish' us. For what? If only he'd hear us considering giving him a microwaved Christmas Dinner for One when we noticed him shivering on the stairs in december. If only he had been aware of our plans to furnish him with a paper chistmas hat and a shot of sherry on Christmas day. If only he knew we had our own pet name for him, and that through the undertones of mockery and morbid fascination, we were actually strangely attached to this character....

There are also, as we noticed yesterday, an extrememly large amount of fag butts at the bottom of our stairs. I assume they are sourced from the back doors of the shops in broad street where the staff pop out for a smoke. I think the main offender is Chris Hatchitt Plumbing. We're not keen on them in there, they all seem to be thick, just out of school chavs. My boyfriend and I refer to them as Chris CatShit.

Things like this dont normally bother me, and i hadn't honestly noticed the extent of the fagage before but there were literally hundreds, just thrown on the floor. The irony was that they had been mainly discarded right under an allocated outside ashtray stuck to the wall.

My boyfriend started sweeping them up, probably to stop me whinging, but also because a random broom had been left leaning against the offending door. As it was a sunday,we didn't expect aybody to be in the shop, so we're joking around loudly abot Chris CatShit and what filthy bastards they employ. After accumulating a disgustingly large pile of butts and dust, my boyfriend started hitting the door with the broom, over emphasising the gesture for my amusement, shouting -"Oi You Dirty Fuckers!.."
As we were walking away a stern young girl poked her head out quite viciously

-"what do you want?"

Boyfriend- "Put your butts in the ashtray, thats what its there for. Look how many there are!"

The door just closed and we went inside, but when I went back out later I noticed all the fags had been cleared up. It was a joyous day and I was filled with a overwhelming sense of duty and pride for my surroundings...

Piece by piece we seem to be erradictating the dirt from this town, stoned super heros with a warped sense of justice- sortin' the garbage, takin' out the trash of this neighbourhood!

I find that fantasy quite appealing anyway...