My Little Bro

A bit of a contradiction here but let me introduce you to Paul, my little brother. By little I refer to his age of 30 and mine of 32. However he is built like a brick outhouse, and works inside a tough prison somewhere in the UK. I was lucky today as he popped into work to see Mum who is 53 today. A real family affair.

Our kid lives near Boston with his missus and my gorgeous nephew Isaac (who also put in an appearance today). Up until two years ago he was scared of needles, but as you can see he got over that fairly sharpish (geddit? hilarious). Prior to being a screw he was a soldier with the Queens Royal Lancers and served in Bosnia. He's the brawn of the two, and to give him his due he isn't slow either. In terms of wit he is one of the few lads that can genuinely make me laugh., although I like to think having a satirical wit such as myself in the family has helped that.

So this morning I've been down the A1 at Colsterworth doing some more sign ups on the Train to Gain scheme. I had eight civil engineers filling out numeracy and literacy and then two lots of demanding paperwork. Three fags breaks and two hours later it was done: only for me to then sit with their boss while she signed 48 seperate documents. To say it was tiresome would be correct. However they are paying nearly £4000 for training with around £7000 funded, so all in all I've secured a lot of money for the company today. I expect I shall see no extra in my wage packet, although if I did I'd just blow it all on drink, drugs and diamonds. Well maybe drink, and one of those tent style greenhouse things. Ooooh and I'd get me a tripod.

City play Oxford tonight. I shall be spending the evening slowly losing the will to go on as eight seperate packs of paperwork managed to become one big blury mess on my living room floor. To make it worse three of the four guys are called Hibbert, as was the boss. Therefore every bit of paperwork looks the same, apart from the one filled out by Rogerson. That said the handwriting is that bad he might be a Hibbert as well.

T-Mobile and Orange now share each others signal. How nice. So now they are trying twice as hard to give me fuck all signal, absolutely no capacity to make calls and a broken text service. Cheers for that lads, a bit like offering me two broken fridges: I don't care that it's twice the capacity IT STILL WOULDN'T KEEP MY HUMUS* AND CARLSBERG COLD!!! Roll on tomorrow and a return to O2 and the 21st Century.

Today is my Mums 53rd birthday and I'm ending the journal with a little dedication to her. I blipped her on Xmas day so gave our kid the chance to shine today, but I want to say the following about my Mum:

If it wasn't for her I'd have lost my house back in October 2008. She offered to lodge for a reasonable rent allowing me to hit the mortgage. For that I am eternally thankful. Back in July this year I had a bad experience with a job, and my future looked bleak once again. She helped (not on a plate, but greased the wheels) to gt me into the role I do now in the company she's been with for ten years. I'm getting comfortable with my job now and thats entirely down to her patience and guidance. I thank her for that as well. With that job came a car: the money loaned to me by my employer. Without the job, no car and therefore I thank her for that as well. Don't get me wrong obviously in the past I've managed to live my life without help: the fact is that on these occasions she has been there for me and helped me through a really, really tough couple of years.

So Happy Birthday Mum, I love you.



*There are three reasons why this isn't true. I don't eat humus because a: I'm not middle class, b: Costcutters don't stock it anyway and c: it looks and tastes a bit like the soap you get from dispensers in prison. I've never actually been to prison myself, but I have been arrested a couple of times. Never for anything worse than being a bit mouthy or not giving people (like courts) moneys they say (correctly) that I owed them.