Gingerism

I visited JJ's blog and was greeted by this little snippet. I am immensely offended by that! I'm sick of society being ginger racist. If you can't say n****r word or p**i then i don't see why you should be able to say copperknob or ginger nut and the like. Ginger nut is not so bad, and indeed I don't mind being called ginge if it is said affectionately, but I do take offence to certain nicknames and the fact that it is still socially acceptable to use them.

When I was at school I used to get teased for having red hair. I used to get asked what colour my pubes were. Some boys used to lick their fingers, pretend to touch my hair and make a hissing noise as if it was hot. I was asked why I didn't dye it. Conversely, little old ladies and all my hairdressers have always said what a lovey colour it is. I have recently enhanced it using Lush henna dye.

I remember seeing Catherine Tate on Jonathan Ross last year. She was trying to get a kitten from Battersea and the first one they offered her had a problem. How bad? she asked. When it does a crap you'll have to push it's arse back in as it has a prolapse. We'll pass thanks.

A few weeks later she gets a call from the home. We've got another kitten for you but this one has a problem too. It's ginger. THE HATRED OF MY PEOPLE GOES DOWN TO CAT KIND she exploded. I gave her a round of applause.

Cumbrian Menagerie

Getting a train on the west Cumbrian coast railway has its ups and downs. The trains are all old and could do with being retired, there are usually several mad people you wouldn't want to sit next to and the carriages inexplicably smell of a mixture between manure and marijuana. However the views along the journey are fantastic and there is always plenty of wildlife to see.

I travelled between Whitehaven (a bit of the harbour can be seen above) and Carlisle on New Year's day. It was a fantastic journey. The first good fortune I had was that it was a brilliantly clear day so the views would be amazing; the second was that I was the only person on the train so had two carriages to myself. It stayed this way until Workington when one other person got on but he sat in the other carriage so it was still blissfully quiet and chav free. My third bit of luck was that the conductor's ticket machine was broken so I had a free journey!

The terrain changes from coast to fells as the train goes slightly more inland so there is plenty of opportunity to see a variety of wildlife. I think this journey is the best one for the amount of fauna I spotted as I speeded through the countryside. Oyster catchers, gulls, several herons, blackbirds, fieldfares, jackdaws, sheep, cows, a couple of ponies, a large rook or a raven and even a Vietnamese pot bellied pig!

Strictly Scandalous

It has been revealed that John Sargeant is pulling out of Strictly because everyone thinks he's rubbish. Whilst I agree that he is entertaining I am a bit annoyed that people keep voting him in because it means that people that can dance better than him have left the competition. He said even he was scared to be in the final as that would be "a joke too far".

I will be slightly sad to see him go as nobody dances as badly as he does, so we won't get so many disparaging comments from Arlene Bitchface, Len Old-man, Charles Breville-Sandwich Press and Bruno Tortelloni.

Bad weather!

Photo by Chris Sellick from BBC Cumbria site.

On Saturday I braved the weather to visit my friend Amanda in Seaton. She picked me up from Workington train station and we went to Tesco to get some supplies. "Get whatever we need now because I don't want to leave the house again!" I said.

We were really bored so we did some art work. Then we watched Merlin and some DVDs, stuffed our faces full of pizza, Doritos, popcorn and Galaxy chocolate. We were occasionally disturbed by her cat Ash jumping on us straight after he'd been outside and was soaking wet and covered in mud!

On Sunday morning we decided to go down to the river Derwent to see how high it had risen. We were very pleased to see that it had swollen and burst its banks (see photo above). Sadly neither of us had cameras with us but Amanda did take some footage on her mobile phone. We got a bit muddy and fairly cold as there was a strong wind but at least we didn't get wet. We even saw a young cormorant sat on the bank.

Down turn

Having a bad spell at the moment and struggling with chain of thought. No blogs for a while, and probably won't be reading anyone else's due to lack of motivation.

News that made me smile today

Long time followers of my blog will know that I have had a bit of a love-hate relationship with the NHS with regards how they have treated me during my employment with them through an agency.

Last year I applied for my job permanently and was told that I couldn't have an interview because I didn't have the correct typing qualifications. The person that did get the job started in December and left in March - she thought she was moving to Cyprus but she didn't in the end. If they'd employed me they wouldn't have had this trouble and I still would have been here.

So after the secretary that took over from me and left in March, I returned as a temp in April. It has taken them until the end of September to advertise the position. I joined the NHS admin bank so that I could apply for the job internally. The closing date was last Friday. I was told by the senior secretary today that my application was accepted by the HR department and that I was in fact the only applicant.

This means that I have the job but I think they will still have to go through all the bollocks of interviewing me for equal opps. Then to get me "free" from the agency they have to give them four weeks notice. So it will probably be November before I get onto the NHS payroll but in these troubled financial times I am happy just to know I will be in permanent employment.

Apology

Last weekend I slagged off Katy Perry and called her a vapid pop act. Well she was on Jools Holland on Friday. OK I'm not going to go out and buy her album on the strength of her performance but she did impress me. She rocked!