Pig Sty Avenue

Today's the day of the baby's 'due date'. Apparently, only 4.8% of babies arrive on this projected date. I think it comes under the umbrella of Sod's Law: if you plan something elaborate, something far more elaborate will come along to bugger it up. So, the plan is to prepare a really la di da sunday lunch, with a vast selection of vegetables from the allotment prepared in several ingenious and interesting ways, an expensive (ish) roast and wine costing more than the usual £2.99. I'll need to spend several hours harvesting, shopping, chopping, mixing and cooking. Then having spent most of the weekend preparing one meal for two people, something's bound to intervene, and the hope is the intervention will come from labour pains. Hmm. We'll see. If nothing happens, at least we can enjoy a lovely meal. I flicked through the Shields Gazette tonight and Herself's horoscope predicted a hectic social life this weekend.

Groom Endears Himself to In-Laws Making Comical Noises , originally uploaded by Pig Sty Avenue . Herself's brother, Raymond, took photos at our wedding, but they've been sitting in their CD on a shelf until I came across them tonight. We've been having a right laugh tonight with this one: I have no idea what I'm doing, or why I'm getting such looks.

Factobrunt got this idea from someone else and it's beginning to look like a pyramid blog-posting thingubby, but for what it's worth you go into your archive for your 23rd post, and then find the 5th sentence therein and then post it and link to it (I have above), and you suggest others do the same. Hmm. I can't see the point, but then I was involved in a thread last night at See the Sky on the First Day of October with an eedjit who was questioning 'the point of all this'. Let's not go there, eh? The alder tree, a sapling, in the rainbow picture was snapped in half by someone. It's one of a lot of hawthorn's, willows, alders and dog roses around the edge of the garden here which I've planted with the plan of eventually growing something like a traditional English hedgerow. That alder was right opposite our kitchen window, so whichever local vandal snapped it is a cheeky bastard. God's curse on anyone who needlessly damages a tree, and t...

Gone with the Wind Cookbook , originally uploaded by Paula Wirth . It's a corker, eh? My favourite Gone With the Wind recipe is for onion bhajees washed down with Newcastle Brown Ale. Extinguish all naked flames.

I got finished early this afternoon, and thought I'd go to Jarrow, bit o' shopping, pint and do the crossword, then off to the allotment, put the chickens to bed early, and home. Hmm. Everything worked splendidly until I got to the early-bed-chickens bit: they don't do that, apparently. It's dusk or nothing. So I had to hang around the allotment for an hour and a half for twilight to come. You can't hurry nature. Same with the baby. Things happen in their own good time. Anyhow, I did some more of the crossword, and took some pics of the chickens with attitude. The striking chap in white is Foghorn.

Will the contractions never start?

Forgetting Disease , originally uploaded by Akuppa . A teaching aid, perhaps?

Yesterday the Old Man and I moved a large number of paving stones from one allotment to another. Then we went for a pint and got talking with one of his mates, Joe, about the way the flyover through Jarrow, built in the 60s, cut this town unforgivably in two. (I think Pevsner 's entry for Jarrow says something along these lines). I learned that the crossroads at Albert Road/Bede Burn Road was a significant junction, with traffic lights. It was called Carricks' Corner, we assumed because of the baker's shop there. Joe said you can still see evidence of the traffic lights, and I'll go and have a shufty. Now, it's a dead end. We got talking about this because Grieves the butcher on that corner is to close. Still no contractions.

I had my first go in the digilab today, where there's lots of fun teaching English with computers. Everything is utterly different from the haphazard provision of EFL instruction in Libya, and most of the other teaching environments I've been in. And most of my new colleagues have been there for several years, whereas ALL of my employers during the past seven or eight years, until now, seemed to struggle to hold on to staff for more than a few weeks. So that's the weekend now, properly so called - you kind of lose touch with the concept when on the dole. That other job I was going for, the one that needed shit-hot typing skills and had me down to Leeds for a test , was a job subtitling the news for the telly. More glamorous than English teaching, but I wasn't really wanting such a big career change. They invited me for an interview next week, and I emailed them to say I wouldn't be going because I'd taken up another job. For some reason, perhaps because I w...

...was just backache. After ten weeks on the old king cole, working the last two days has me bewitched, buggered and bewildered. Mental overload with all the new faces, names, procedures, ideas and God knows what else. I was given a desk today. It was all covered with someone's stuff, photos of ugly bairns and what have you. A woman came up to me and said 'I am going to clear my stuff, but haven't had time'. Hmm. She went away. And then my manager came over and said, with a touch of asperity: 'Just bin anything on and in the desk. It belongs to someone who's got a job somewhere else.' Then she went away. Was this some kind of initiation wind up, or am I a pawn in a long-standing office war? It'll all be right, eventually.

...First day at work was fine. That's me, I'm sorted. Herself complaining of persistent backache when I got home. Watch this space...

i love you , originally uploaded by suscipia . I stumbled across this person's photos tonight and think they're great. "Luca Brasi sleeps with the fishes."

I read that joke I posted last night and must say it doesn't benefit from being written down and read back sober. If memory serves, I was first told it in The Robin Adair pub, Wallsend, around 1980 - perhaps it should have stayed there: maybe I’m getting older or more prudish or posher but it seems a bit vulgar now. Most of today's been spent getting to grips with studying. It's remarkable how motivated I’ve become: I’ve started studying for an MA in TESOL and tomorrow I’m starting a new job in TESOL and I’m like a pig in straw. Herself was at the midwife’s today and the baby’s head is engaged. So that means a Very Big Event at almost any time. There will be hilarious scenes balancing a new baby, a new job and starting postgraduate studies as autumn develops. I bought three hyacinth bulbs yesterday, potted and watered them then put them away in the fridge. This means they should burst into life when I take them out and put them on the windowsill in December, and th...

I've tried to resist it, but the spam comments were becoming irksome.

This joke has been my party piece for years.  I was a teenager when I learned it and  it’s a teenager’s joke.  Usually I tell it at the end of an evening, when most people have had a few, knowing they’ll not be able to remember it the next day.  Thereby I’ve kept it to myself.  Well, we don’t spend whole evenings out very often now, and trying to keep a joke to yourself is daft, so here you are: Two young lads are having a pint, and one asks the other: “How are things with this new girlfriend, then?” “Well, not too good,” said his pal.  “She’s always on at me about culture and poetry and stuff, and how thick I am…  I’m getting nowhere.” “Ah man, recite poetry to her!  That’ll persuade her knickers off!” “Come off it – I don’t know any poetry, do I?” “Well, I know a poem, I’ll teach it to you, you recite it to her tonight, and Bob’s your uncle!  It goes like this: There was a young fellow called Ski...

rainbow at dusk over hedworth with alder tree , originally uploaded by Pig Sty Avenue . ...All my own work! I took it this evening from the back garden.

Great Great Great Grandma Emma Norfolk [Nee Eve] , originally uploaded by Pig Sty Avenue . She was born in Essex, of all places. I thought I might get some interesting pics as the Great North Run passed through Jarrow today. But as it happened I couldn't be bothered with that, and cooked another proper Sunday Dinner instead: pork this time, with spuds, parsnips, green beans and cabbage - all from the allotment. Emma would have recognised such food, and been entirely flummoxed by the sight of thousands of people running from Newcastle to Shields.

I heard a good one today. There's an allotment near ours whose occupants have collected an absurd amount of allotment-produced beer and wine. It's become a rather sordid drinking club for middle aged men. For only a £2 entrance fee, you can go there and sit on an old box in a shed and drink yourself past the point of stupidity, in the charming company of your contemporaries. I queried whether there must be some point when you're told to leave. Yes, indeed. One elderly Irishman, resident in Hebburn for many years, was thrown out after singing the same song three times in a row.

Straight Up , originally uploaded by locicero99 . Honesty, generally, is the best policy. Apparently this photo was taken in Tenderloin, San Francisco , which sounds like my kind of scene. Well, WAS my kind of scene. No more 6AM shenanigans in this Avenue, now that I've a proper job and a heavily pregnant wifey. What, what, what?

This afternoon I was reading about the history, not to say the rise and fall, of the communicative approach to English teaching.  The old attention span was shrinking somewhat so I made industrial strength coffee and plundered Herself’s supply of ice cream to give me a sugar boost.   The phone rang.  Can I start work next week?  I was a bit stunned because nothing was expected in this line before Monday, and I’m trying to be all clever and professional and the fucking ice-cream’s melting all over A Context Approach to Language Learning .  Yes.  I can. It’s beginning to sink in now (the idea of getting a job, not the ice cream).  A proper job!   It’s the very bottom rung of the ladder, so far as teaching English to Speakers of Other Languages goes, but it’s a huge breakthrough.  Those of us who have been teaching English abroad have a reputation back home in Blighty, not entirely undeserved, for dru...

...busy studying.

marble monochrome sky , originally uploaded by Pig Sty Avenue . This was the sky under which I was feeding the chickens earlier this evening. It'll rain tomorrow.

I did consider tootling along to the Jarrow fuel protest with my camera. And then I thought, "fuck 'em". Open the lid on the fuel protestors and you can smell some very low life forms ; AND they're protesting against the bloody government, with the police in the middle. So "fuck the lot of 'em". The local and national news showed only fourteen 'protestors' had turned up. Daft twats. You could get more people to protest against the imposition of tax on, say, graph paper . Which reminds me, rather obscurely, of this story about the Duchess of Northumberland growing dope and magic mushrooms . And papaver somniferum, which grows as a rather la di da weed throughout Jarrow .

...As I'm looking for work and trying to become more responsible, I'd better change the sidebar image. As Herself keeps saying, the hubbly-bubbly pipe one "makes you look like a [deleted] old hippy". Indeed. Sometimes, I'll forget to snip the Pig Sty address from serious emails, so I'd better smarten up the Avenue's image a touch. So here's a passport photo, not quite 100% serious. The story is, I went for an interview a couple of years back for a teaching job with the Royal Air Force of Oman. I'd been asked to take two passport photos, but to be on the safe side I took four, because, in my experience, some overseas employers have an obsession about getting an absurd number of passport photos of potential employees. At the end of the interview in a London hotel the Omani interviewer asked me if I had the photos. "Yes," I said, thinking I'd pulled a fast one on the blighter. "Actually, I've got four." He looked a...

... at this article by George Monbiot . Yahoo's grassed up a Chinese Journalist, Shi Tao, and now he's doing ten years. "Yahoo must ensure that its local country sites must operate within the [local] laws, regulations, and customs." Yahoo's big cheese, Jerry Yang said: "we give them things that satisfy local laws." If you do any news search on this you'll find that MSN and the sainted Google (who "do no evil", remember) don't come out of this too well, either, so far as China's concerned. Multinationals, though, can glide over borders; so anybody, anywhere, curious about, say, a certain dodgy herb, had better go easy. The relationship your search engine or ISP enjoys with your government is clearly far more important than friendly relations with you. It probably won't work out as horribly as it did for poor bloody Shi Tao, but you might still get an early morning knock at the door. Serious bit over. Regarding this week...

Removal van , originally uploaded by rikj .

berliner cropped , originally uploaded by Pig Sty Avenue . Perhaps I'm not so grumpy and middle-aged after all because I quite like the new format. Mind you, it's a lot like La Vanguardia, the Barcelona paper, which as I recall had almost the same masthead, and was produced in Spanish and Catalan editions. Indeed. I had another job interview today. It seemed to go ok. Should know if I got the job by next week. More details if I do get it... On the Metro coming home, in a suit, I was thinking how it would be really good - for a while anyway, - to just be an ordinary fella, with an ordinary job, doing an ordinary commute like all these other people. Oh yeah, and the new size Guardian was easily read whilst standing in the crowded metro coach. Yesterday's lunch was delicious, and the inexplicable huff blew away. Still no contractions, however.

Catpee has a first hand account of travelling across Belfast during last night's riot . I was a trifle shocked to learn yesterday that the Guardian , Britain's last broadsheet, is to be reformatted. I'd been feeling rather smug as a Guardian reader since the Times became a tabloid, because I felt that's what the Times deserved to be: twenty-odd years ago, when I was a law student, I read the Times because of the Law Reports. Then Wapping came along and of course I stopped reading it and settled down with the dear old Grauniad . I'd occassionally read the Times when they gave it away free on planes or trains, and noticed that it's declined shamefully as a newspaper under Murdoch's loving care. And so it wasn't much of a suprise when it followed the Independent in turning tabloid (and as for the Independent, incidentally, it's very worthy and a great cure for insomnia). And now the Guardian is to become not quite a tabloid, but a "Berline...

downtown dawson city july 1961 , originally uploaded by aroid . Here's a new thing to do: pictures that really appeal, I've set as wallpaper for a few days or maybe a week or two. Well, Aroid, God bless him, has supplied my wallpaper more than once. What I'll do is, every time I change the wallpaper, I'll blog it so. Cheers, A., you're a star.

Accidental The Prince Handy , originally uploaded by Pig Sty Avenue .

I've just written a longish post about a burglary at the allotment, the perversity of chickens, and a pleasant evening with Alexander. And I tried to put in a link and the fucker crashed, and it's fucking gone for good. So I'll give up for tonight. Fucking Win-fucking-dows.

autumnal dahlias , originally uploaded by Pig Sty Avenue . Dad loves dahlias. And the best bit is, there are no hidden motives or sub-texts, because he doesn't bore people by going on about them, and he doesn't put them in shows. He just grows them. He's been doing so for 30 odd years. They're not my thing, because you can't eat them. But I like the ones in this picture I took at the allotment yesterday because they carry the first signs of decay, the first indications that summer's over and that we should get ready for winter and plant the spring cabbages.

Jay posted, minimally, on cajunomics a few days ago, which presumably means Katrina didn't get him. It's a bit spooky to see that he posted about a gig he did in Bourbon St just three weeks ago.

alex3 , originally uploaded by Pig Sty Avenue . Alexander's started his own blog, The Circle View . Amongst other things, he's posted about how circles are made up of straight lines. And there's another picture of the handsome brute there; (I suspect he doesn't much like this one).

... first thing I'm going to do, I'm going to buy "Bang Bang, Rock 'n' Roll" by Art Brut . To understand what I mean listen to Pete Radio 18 (the whole podcast is a good one, the Art Brut track is the third one in, "Good Weekend"). It's one of those songs that makes me rejoice to be human and alive.

To Leeds yesterday. I was suprised and a wee bit gratified to learn that there'd been 200 applicants for the jobs. There were ten of us being tested for 5 jobs. Results before the week's out, and then a formal interview, if I get that far. The job isn't IN Leeds, thank God, but the testing was. AND this morning I had a phone call inviting me to an interview for a different job. That's next week. Thanks to Dano , Andrea and Factobrunt for wishing me luck. I really must get a job soon because the credit cards don't understand unemployment, and leap out of my pocket if I see a CD or we can't be bothered cooking and go to the pub to eat... It would be nice to say something positive about Leeds. It has a depressing feel to it. That's despite the friendliness of the people. I was a bit too preoccupied to get many photo opportunities, but I liked this on Kirkstall Road. Big changes at the allotments: I'm going to give up mine at the end of this year...

I've not been posting much but other people's (well, iambigred 's) pictures. The reason for this near absenteeism is that I've applied for a job which needs very good typing skills, and I've got to sit a test for the job tomorrow. I realised that my copy-typing was actually rather rusty. So I've been hammering away at the keyboard for several days now, using a number of different learn-to-type programs. Now I'm at nearly 35 WPM, and that's probably as good as I'm going to get. I'll post more about this tomorrow. Meanwhile, some family history. Here's Mr Pig Sty with his daughter, Clare, at her wedding to Martin in 2003. Lovely isn't she? It was a great day. Well, here's Clare as a baby, 20 years earlier in 1983. It's a remarkable photo because the lady on the right is Mary, my maternal Great-Grandma, and therefore Clare's Great-Great-Grandma. (Coincidentally, and to add to the continuity, the spotty lad in the picture...

jumping , originally uploaded by iambigred . Wo!

Hardly the highlight is it? , originally uploaded by iambigred . Obliquely, this photo sums-up many's the thing... Proper post soon, still busy.

Deadly stuff... , originally uploaded by iambigred . This photo reminded me of Prague. I was working there in the late 90s, and at weekends frequented "The Sporting Bar", in a lane just off Wenceslas Square. One time, a big gang of Welsh lads were there, a whole rugby team, on a remarkable weekend long bachelor party in the city. They got into the absinthe on the second day, and the men's lavvies that evening were a scene from hell: vomiting lads, groans, shit on the floor... In Prague, stick to the beer.

Everything's well, but I'm working to a deadline on something. All will be revealed. Meanwhile, here's a verse: "Tomatoes, tomatoes," said my uncle Jim, When somebody threw a tomato at him. "Tomatoes don't hurt," said Jim, with a grin, "But that fucker did 'cos it came in a tin."