Breakfast with Ed (Blogstalker 8)

Breakfast is a meal that doesn't always happen in the world of Ed these days.
When I was in the RN I'd have breakfast every day, due to the fact that I was up early to go to work. The repast was normally a cooked one, scrambled egg, sausage, bacon and baked beans, two rounds of toast (with Marmite) and a glass of fresh orange juice. This was a Monday to Friday deal, 07:00 doesn't exist on Saturday or Sunday as far as I know, but lunchtime does.

Now I'm a full time civy and taking a break from work, breakfast is a hit and miss affair, sometimes it happens and some times it doesn't.
Most days see me rising at a time of day that if I where to eat anything, it should be called brunch.
Today is different.
It's a Saturday and I'm up and about before 8am. (Is the bed on fire?)*
So here is what I have for breakfast nowadays...
...oatabix and a big cup of coffee.

* I remember when I was little during the general strikes back in the mid 70's, there was a series of rolling blackouts.
I wasn't fond of the dark, so one night my mum put a candle in a jar and left it on the mantelpiece in the bedroom. What she didn't realise was that the candle would melt the plastic of the jar,oops.
A little while after I had fallen asleep I awoke coughing, I got out of bed and sleepily walked down the stairs into the front room and matter of factly announced to anyone who was listening that the bed was on fire.
All hell broke out and I remember a string of pots, pans and bowls of water being rushed up stairs.
Great days...

Li'l ol' me...(Blogstalker7?)

A few years back, I scanned into the computer hundreds of family photos, I'm fairly selective about me and photographs, so only a few managed to make it out of the box and on to the hard drive.
There where no phots of me as a baby, but lots from toddler upwards. Here is one from my days in nursery, I'm the abnormally tall freak in the foreground, I loved playing in the water.


And here's one of the whole class

I was big for my age.

Chin chin.

Spot on...

You Are Bert

Extremely serious and a little eccentric, people find you loveable - even if you don't love them! You are usually feeling: Logical - you rarely let your emotions rule you You are famous for: Being smart, a total neat freak, and maybe just a little evil How you live your life: With passion, even if your odd passions (like bottle caps and pigeons) are baffling to others

The Sesame Street Personality Quiz

Wzzat, Who's there!?

The time, 06:30

My bedroom door creaks open, with a noise worthy of any good horror movie, thoughts run thru' the woolly nogin:-

• It can't be me I live alone
• BLOODY HELL I'M BEING BURGLED!!!

In a flash I'm bolt upright in bed, half a second later I'm yanking the door open (ready to kill whatever is on the other side of the door).
Nothing there.

I now go on a tour of the house, checking all the rooms, lights on, lights off, anyone going by must have thought a very small and nimble disco had broken out.
I'm home alone.

What the hell made the door do that? May as well get up seeing as I'm wide awake and upright anyway.
Just as well this didn't happen the other day, you know, Halloween an' all that.

Another wyred thing is what happens in the front room of an evening while I watch the boob tube.
There are times that I get the feeling that there's a small person watching the tv from the front room door, odd that.

Just as well I don't believe in ghosts. I'm totally with the idea of, to quote Bezzie,
"I kind of think they might be energy remnants of dead peeps."
I've got to get a multi meter and make some sort of tri-corder to see if they're real.

Randomness during an H&S exam

Hi peeps,
I'm at that Scientiam place again today, you know, to do some more "get you back to work" training.
Ha! The laughs on them, cuz I don't wanna work.

I was supposed to be in a lecture/role play about interview techniques to day, BUT, there was an opportunity to do another health and safety qualification and in order for me to be entered for the exam I had to sit and pass 2 mock exams. It's all multi guess anyway, it's not rocket science. This one is aimed at getting you the basics needed to be safe on construction sites, not that I'm going into construction that is. No it's just another nice to have certificate.
There are loads of levels and areas of engineering and construction to do the exams at but we are only getting the basic one payed for (better than a kick in the bread tray), so I did three dummy exams and got 37/40, 36/40 and 40/40, bored now.
I know I'll do one at manager level, Hmmm, oh dear, how embarrassing 26/40 (FAIL!).
Right lets see if I'm still clued up as a supervisor for my last job, hmmm, really? hmmm, OH! 38/40, yep I still got it.

So that went swimmingly.
Ah, but I haven't told you about the randomness yet.
You know those little symbols that sit at the bottom of the screen next to the clock, the Q for quick time, the volume icon, network icon and the rest, well when I turned this computer on (I'm still at the place but it's OK it's lunch time), I watched with only half an eye on what was going on, you know, as all the little icons start to appear as their programs become active and as the network connection is established, there goes the messenger icon. Ah at last it's booted up and the hour glass has dissapeared from the pointer, right lets put the CD in the drive and start these dummy tests.
I'm on about question 7 on the first test when the conversation bar starts flashing it's head off, wtf? so out of curiosity I look at it and the name is just a load of random letters and symbols, but hidden among all this mess you could just make out the words "having a baby girl" and "gobsmacked" and "lol", as I watch it dissapears back to the system tray. I think, "Some people don't so much mangle the English language, it's more like sneaking up behind it and beating the crap out of it."
Any way next question, "What colour is a 110v ac plug?", it's yellow isn't it?
Messenger box does it's nut again, but this time I click on it, well it'd be rude to ignore it a second time.

If I thought their on-screen name was an affront to the language, their conversation was worse, it was text speak! Oh gods this girl has to be under 20 (or at least mentally). She got it into her head that the last person to use this shared computer was on line, but when I tried to tell her I wasn't who she thought I was, she then decided I must be some boy called peter (I left off putting the capital P there because she did).
"No, please try to understand. I'm not jamie or peter, I'm Ed and I'm in the middle of an exam."

"wot u is teecher thn"

(silently WHAT?!)"No, I'm one of two people in this computer room sitting online exams, the young man opposite me is called Elliot, and we're both doing the same exam and we don't know the peter or jamie you speak of."

"na its u pete"

"Look I'm a 41 year old ex service man who is doing a retraining course at a place that helps the unemployed get a job."

"pis of its u jamie"

"Seriously I'm not either of those two lads, and would you happen to know the correct method of lifting a box from above head height to the floor?"

"fuck off ur at scul and ur 41? and ur nt the teecher?

"Correct, look I have to go, bye now."

And I logged out.
A little while later I decided to mess with her head and logged back on briefly, but didn't type anything, I got this response.

"fuck you jamie it is you, but if its pete miller wants to chat"

I just laughed and logged off.