fullscaleman

I’ve never understood that line from ‘Jaws’. I always assumed there was a sexal connotation as it is Quint who delivers it but I struggled to make sense of it.

Today we took Matthew swimming again, at the local leisure centre. It’s been closed for some time for a major revamp. It now looks stunning. Unfortuantely, the customer service was not upgraded at the same time.

I pay for us to swim and we humpf our swimming bag, Matthew’s bag, a grumbling Matthew himself and an inflated rubber ring to the entry barriers. Seeing as the receptionist is paying us no attention I assume we can walk through - they are subway style turnstyles - but when I try they refuse to turn. I back up, with some difficulty, laden as I am and then the receptionist shouts over; “You need to be buzzed in!”

We look at her, at each other, then back to her. “Gonnae dae it then?!” I shout back.

It was more her manner than the message that annoyed me, as if I was SUPPOSED to know that she hadn’t buzzed me in yet.

Anyway, we swam for ages and forgot about all that. Matthew is a confident “swimmer”, always wanting to roll onto his belly and kick his legs. When he dunks his face in the water, it shocks him but he is not fazed by it, shaking off the water, catching his breath and trying again. He’s only wee though so after a while his lips start to turn blue and we have tp take him out. Getting him dry and ready in the changing rooms is an adventure.

We decide to have lunch in the centre and again, the customer service is shocking. J’s young cousin came with us, as he’s training to take a lifeguard assessment and he joined us for lunch. After giving us our teas and coffees and J’s sandwhich, D and I sit waiting on our bacon sandwhiches for close to fifteeen minutes. When I go to check on them the (new) staff member seems more concerned on whether or not I had paid for them. I assure her that “Yes, I have paid for the sandwhiches that I have not got” and she goes to make them. We sit and grumble and determine that we won’t be coming back here for food.

Then the bacon sandwhices come. OMG. I AM SO COMING BACK HERE FOR FOOD. You see, the bacon was DELI BACON. All CRISPY and CRUMBLY and OOZING in FAT and TASTE. I inhale it and so does D. The Lagoon’s sins are forgiven. J is still not too impressed but then, she didn’t try the bacon.

And then in the evening I posted the week’s worth of blog posts that I had written but not actually got around to posting. Sorry guys. I’ll try and do better.

Saturdaythe 2nd of March. Today we visited our friends, E & K, the couple who managed to buy, move and decorate a house in secret. Located only ten minutes from the city centre but somehow managing to be totally private and suburban, it is a dream home. It’s funny for me to look back now to 2007 - 2008, when K was starting to chase E. They are the first people I knew as individuals who met, fell in love and got married (my sis and brother in law aside but they don’t count, not now) and it’s a little strange seeing them in a house of their own. We spend the afternoon chatting, catching up and trying to keep Matthew’s dirty hands off of their new couch. We are not successful.

Anyways, aw the best E & K. A lovely home, a lovely couple, a lovely future, I’m sure.

Friday the 1st of March. Date night is off. No babysitters, no hope. Still on the wagon. Changed my mind again and decided to stick this out for a bit longer. Getting some perverse pleasure at how annoyed this is making me and wanting to see if I can keep it going. Visiting friends, K & E tomorrow at their new house which they managed to buy and move into without telling anyone - this only a few months after getting married as well. Very impressed with that. It took J and I 18 months to save up a deposit for our house!

Thursday the 28th February 2013. Nothing of great note happened today except I decided to stop this silly, no drinking thing. Who the fuck am I kidding? Being teetotal sucks. I know I’m just feeling a bit low because work is tough at the moment, college is very tough at the moment and I constantly feel that I’m a flight of stairs away from dying  but in an attempt to shake me out the funk I’m in I texted J and arranged a “date” with her for Friday night.
 
We’re going to go out and get DRUNK. I’m going to go straight from work (A STRAIGHTFAE) and she’ll get ready and come up and meet me. Even after seventeen years (JESUS!) together, I love the idea of going out like this, like strangers. Plus, it means that I don’t need to traipse home and wait on her getting ready which is a process GUARANTEED to kill any enthusiasm I have for a night out. By the time she would get ready I would just want to stay home. This isn’t a dig or comment on how long it takes her to get ready btw, it’s just a statement of fact that once I’m IN I can’t imagine going OUT. Best just to stay out in the first place.
 
I don’t know where we’re gonna go, right now I fancy somewhere like Oran Mor in Glasgow’s West End because we had our wedding reception there and we’ve not been in a while but if we end up going to the Horseshoe Bar instead then that is just as fine with me.
 
Still, two months off the booze is alright, eh? You up for this, Liver? I mean, are you READY, son?
 
I will probably be sick as a dog on Saturday and be off the booze again straight away, knowing me. We’ll see.

Wednesday the 27th February 2013. Today, being a bright and dry day, I decided to walk Matthew down to the shops and pick up some essentials that we were running low on. Usually, I walk into town and use the Co-op in the town centre, a journey of a mile and a half. I’ve also walked to the large Asda store near us before, which is a mile and a half in the other direction. However, as the day was more cold than cool I decided, for Matthew’s sake,  that I’d go instead to the other store near us, one I’d not used before. Today, I went to ALDI.
 
I’ve heard a lot about ALDI from people over the years; that it is incredibly cheap, that it reminds you of using the supermarkets abroad, that you’ll find things there that you just WOULD NOT GET IN A TESCO. I can report that two of those three are true. While there were bargains to be had on some items I don’t think that it was THAT cheap. As it’s a smaller chain, it also can’t afford to take losses on big selling items like the Big Supermarkets do, so it actually appeared to be MORE EXPENSIVE when it came to name brands such as Coca Cola or Cadburys.
 
It did remind me of being on holiday and buying provisions for the 24 inch fridge in your apartment though, mainly because the layout of the store, it’s pricing and the majority of it’s products was bewildering. For a start, NOTHING was where it should be in a traditional supermarket. The only point of comparison was that it had it’s fridges and freezers to the rear of the store. The rest? MADNESS.
 
Traditionally, supermarkets put everyday items such as Bread and Milk towards the rear of the store, to force you to walk their aisles and be more likely to pick up more things. FRONT AND CENTRE IN ALDI. This immediately causes a problem as I could barely get in the door for the jam of pensioners, each one desperate to squeeze every loaf they can, to hum and haw over it before rejecting it and moving on to the next. The fact I was pushing a buggy with a slightly irritated child in it mattered not one jot. I eventually had to raise my voice to get through, after my repeated requests of “Excuse me please.” were ignored.
 
So I made it past the Bread. What do I find? Fruit and Veg you’d think, right? WRONG. TINS OF HOTDOGS AND BRAKE FLUID. Whit? What’s going on? Where am I? I walk on. NAAN BREAD. Why is this here? RUBBER BOOTS. Excuse me do you work here, what’s happening?! LED LIGHTS AND GUINNESS FLAVOUR CASHEW NUTS. Oh, screw this I’m out of here.
 
I’m only half exaggerating btw, there is no rhyme nor reason to the shop layout, its signs (try and pick up something and know what price it is without having to take five minutes to decode the price “labelling” - I’ve had easier times doing Pythagorean theorems than this) or the actual stock. There is also a heavy reliance on “foreign” items. I don’t mean that in an EDL-LITTLE ENGLANDER- WHAT’S THIS MUCK-way. I mean in a sense that all the writing on the tins or jars or packets will be in a language other than English. Absolutely fine when you are buying bananas. Not so fine when you are buying a tin with a picture of a FIELD on it and nothing else. Am I buying a tin of field? Of grass? Of soil? Whit is this?!*
 
I somehow manage to salvage a shop and head home. Matthew was by this point getting fed up of being pushed around and was grumbling so I hustled a bit, sweating and huffing to get him home. As I turned into my avenue - remember, this is a mile and a bit away - I notice that Matthew is not wearing his hat. This is a new hat. It is colourful and fun. I check he is not sitting on it or that it has not fallen into his hood. It has not. I sigh and turn around and retrace my steps, looking for the hat that he has thrown away when I was not looking. I find it, three-quarters of the way to ALDI.
 
By the time I get us home I am exhausted (the little man is getting not so little and not so light) and Matthew is PISSED. To speed things up I head around the back of the house, to go in via the conservatory rather than the front door as the stairs are shallower and easier to negotiate with a buggy. I unlock the door and  - not paying proper attention as I’m also trying to give Matthew as biscuit to quiet him - I pull the doors open. Or at least, I try to.
 
You see, in my haste, I had unlocked the wrong door. Our back doors are secure PVC doors, ones that “bolt” into one another as well as the top and bottom of the door frames. To open both doors you need to open one first as the other door “nests” in it’s frame for extra security. As I pull the doors towards me, the unlocked door moves out then jams against the still locked door. I see my mistake and try to rectify it. The doors don’t budge. In fact, the handles don’t move up nor down. I can see the bolts of the open door, engaged and sticking against the door frame. In short, I’ve fucked it.
 
Nearly crying with rage and despair I get Matthew inside, via the front door and when J comes home an hour later I’m slumped on the couch, having Googled the problem. It seems I need to unpin the door at the hinges and lift it clear then remount it; a considerable job. I tell her this, explaining that I was waiting till she was home so she could watch Matthew and head out with my toolbox. Before I start, J takes a look at the door and  - somehow, dunno, must be magic - with a touch, she gets the doors to open. I look a right plum.
 
The rest of the night I was so exhausted I didn’t even move off the couch. I can’t even remeber if I watched anything, I just vegetated. Anyway, that was Wednesday.
 
*It turns out it was a tin of Beef Stew because cows stand in fields. I mean, OF COURSE!