Merry Christmas and all that Jazz

I must admit I was feeling completely none festive up until literally last night at about 10pm. Now I've by far had the most fun within 24 hours that I can remember. I'll start where all good stories begin, from the bit I can remember.

The friends and myself normally go for a drink at a certain pub for new years eve drinks.
As we got to this location last night, we found out after much confusion that it was a "ticket only" event, which was a bunch of crap but, hey ho life goes on.

We decided to walk to the nearest pub to try and decide what our plans were going to consist of, considering our main plan had been thwarted. We all got our drinks, took a seat and waited for the rest of our group to arrive.

The pub we had entered was just a simple place with nothing amazing, it had a little function room on the side that was empty at the time we had all sat down, a few dozen people were already in there. I think it was safe to say that we had no intention of staying there for the full night. This plan soon got utterly cast aside.

The DJ from the function room came through and come out with a killer sell of

"if you come next door there's free curry, a disco and a karaoke till 1am "

Me being the gannet I am couldn't even hide the exciting prospect of free food, so I grabbed my stuff and moved rooms, even if no one else was interested, Id of happily stayed in that room

Everyone trickled in and got some free grub. Then we hit the bar. Hard.

The rest of the night was a blur of cider, cider, cider, karaoke, cider, convinced I was hitting on a girl and succeeding to find out she had a boyfriend and was just super nice and talkative, more cider, a lot more karaoke and a good old dance.

I am so so so happy that I decided to go out because I had possibly the best night out Ive had in 2010. All of my friends are amazing people, we laughed so hard and so much my sides have ached all day. I sang too may songs, way past the acceptable level for a tone deaf person like myself. I drank till i was merry and feeling utterly christmassy. 100% amazing times.

Woke up feeling hazy, soon realising I had sent a drunken message to a certain girl from the night before, I love that feeling of knowing you've done something wrong but cant remember what, realising and just going " Yeah, I'm such a dick FML" I would be utterly ashamed of myself but all of my shame for today has been taken up by this :

I am not proud. But I will laugh about it for a long time :D

Christmas day itself has been its usual great self, morning at my mom and night time at my dads.

Ever year at my dads we have a big family get together and play a game called Cranium. Basically you draw / act out / make from clay / spell / guess / hum / whistle clues for people to guess. 

THE stand out situation from this went like this :

My dad got a card in which he had to act out "Catwalk Model", My dad proceeded to mince around the living room, whipping his none existent hair about and looking uber glamorous (haha), my brother in law guessed it pretty fast. But following that came a line that left me unable to breath for a considerable and maybe dangerous amount of time!

My cousin ( he's openly gay ) just said "Jesus Christ Jim, if you ever decide to come out don't do it through the medium of charades will you" followed by "I nearly feel the need to tell you man up"

I utterly died. On the floor, unable to breath or move. My giggle fit soon spread through the entire room and the game took a serious ten minute pause. Just my uber gay cousin feeling out gay'd by my dad was too good!

I feel glad now that I'm at an age where i honestly don't care about presents,( even though i got some kick ass shoes [link to shoes] and a mint as hell American Only Vans hoody [link for hoody] I just really enjoy seeing everyone. And the last 24 hours have been fantastic! 

Thank you to everyone who has been part of it this year :)

Love you all with all my heart :)

Things have kind of, stopped.

This will be short.

At the minute things seem to be going utterly no where, same things, day in day out, with no real forward movement, everything has just stopped.

Still single, still working way too many hours for no appreciation and just simply existing with nothing interesting going on..

In my honest opinion 2010 = Start of the year I had everything I wanted, own house, loving girlfriend, a secure job and some amazing friends.. End of the year = single with a job I now hate and friends who don't invite me out because they know full well I will only be working. I have to believe 2011 will be a much better year for me.

Bring on the end of January and then the summer 2011

2010 is dead and I'm not sorry to see it go.

Snow'n'Shizz

Lets get this out the way early shall we..
ahem
ITS SNOOOOWWWWWINGGG.. By now this is very old news to a lot of people, but I thought I would join the billions of people typing that exact phrase throughout the course of today.

Obviously being in the gritting game at work at the minute, you'd think I'd be out in this tonight, but oh no, health and safetey has actually done me a favour and made it so that our company cant go out when its this bad. So that means a night in for me. Although its been pretty boring, all I've done is eat pasta and play call of duty, its been nice to have a bit of a relax and a night off, knowing that most people in the country are doing the same.

The other thing the snow brought, which I loved, was the sense of neighbour ship and helpfulness going on with all the snow, normally I would tut at a bunch of 10 chavs walking down the street, but today, I saw a bunch of them help an old lady up a hill, then help push a car free from the snow, then help another driver who was about to crash, I had a massive smile on my face whilst thinking, really, people are pretty nice when they want to be.


Now back to business.

First point of conversation tonight. Why people cant seem to forget / let go of an argument.

Basically this came about after BBC Radio 1's facebook team, asked people about illegally downloading music. The group was split 50/50 and people were arguing their point etc etc.
I threw my argument into the equation as well, as I love a good argument, saying that humanity as a species breaks the law millions of times a day, some minor some major, surely time could be better spent chasing paedophiles and rapists, not some kids getting some songs for free. I also threw in the " If i bought a cd and lent it to a friend, then he lent it to his friend, etc etc then that would be fine, illegal downloads IMO is pretty much the same, just on a humongous international scale.

Now whether you agree with my point or not is up to you and people on the site didn't agree with me, thus started the argument, there were lots of points thrown here and there etc and I was just happily arguing to get my point across, however these people decided that wasn't the end of it and had to start getting personal and attacking ME.

It got me on to thinking about how people cant just have an argument and move past it.
disagree. argue. end of argument. carry on with life.

I don't see the need to drag things out just for the sake of it. Can people not control themselves so much that they have to type angry stuff out to strangers? very odd..

Next point.




I'm buying a Bearded Dragon.. for those that have no idea what one of those is, here :




They are ace little things! I can pick one up for about £45 from my local pet store, which i thought was pretty decent. I was only thinking of getting one before, but then I found a tank whilst I was at work the other day, some one had tipped it with a load of unwanted things, all it needed was a wash out and it was good as new.

I took this as a sign that I should most definitely get one, as tanks are normally £50 - £70 and it was the price that made me rethink my choice to purchase!

Last point of today, a bit cliche but oh well.

I got contacted by one of my oldest friends today. for this we shall call her CA ( hello btw if you are reading this :] ) We were best friends all through high school. If you are a girl and you and e get along stupidly well, you have CA to thank for it, sh is the reason I'm able to be so funny around girls. Literally just spent so much time together I got so comfortable being around girls i got really good at talking to them etc.

We were such good friends in fact that my mom thought we would get married one day and has since practically adopted her into our family, so much so that even though CA and me haven't seen each other in years, CA still goes to visit my mom every Christmas! She missed out last Xmas thought and because of that needed my moms address to come round this year.

It is strange how people come and go from your life, I'm not saying CA has gone, but just carrying on with life, but I get THE nicest feeling when I think back to all the memories we have with each other.. Its enough to perk any one up.

Big Smiles.

Not alot..

For once I don't really have much on my mind. That makes for a very weak blog but a very happy me.

I didn't sleep at all well last night, my sleeping pattern is now scrambled again, I didn't even feel tired until 12:30/1 am and when you're up at 6am, that kinda sucks.

Ive had a few more ideas for my book, nothing amazing, just a few characters and such. I really am being premature about it all, I'm not even going to think about starting to actually write the thing until I've made it through new years.

So for tonight I really have very little to talk about.

One thing I have done, is purchased my Sonisphere Festival Ticket :] The line up is actually killer, and as much although it seems lots of people are unhappy with Biffy Clyro having a headline slot, I actually really like Biffy and unless they are some major scheduling clashes, I will be watching them :)

That's about it for tonight, I am looking for people who would be up for going to the Nova Rock Festival you can apply for a free ticket if you buy a Sonisphere weekend pass. £150 to fly over to Austria, thinking of doing this instead of download, Download festival is £208. So flying over to Austria works out cheaper :)

Right, time to hit the sack, sorry this ones a bit empty tonight. I suppose I should be thankful I have nothing to rant and rave about..

Man Fear and Good Mood

My mood has changed, yet again! 

I'm now somewhat chirpy. I think it must be linked to my sleep, I had a really good heavy sleep last night, you know those ones where you end up the wrong way round with your head hanging off your bed but you are in too deep a sleep to wake up, lush.

One thing I would like to discuss, I'm fully aware this will give lots of things away but you will understand soon enough.

Buying Christmas presents. This year I am buying presents for these people; 

My niece, my little brother, my mom, my dad and Louisa Chan. Normally I don't buy friends Christmas presents, but in the leading up to this years festivities Louisa and myself have probably been the closest we have been in our entire friendship, which according to Louisa reached its 5 year mark this year, scary times.

So I feel this justifies a Christmas present. 

Now, I have found what I want to get her, LC if you are reading this, I have tried being sneaky and getting this information from elsewhere, but people are busy and more than likely ran out of time. 

But as a man I have a full on inter socially woven phobia of buying girls any kind of clothing( there's one give away) So I am going to have to half ruing your present and ask you for some sizes. Expect an email.

The rest of today will be spent down at the shops getting a few things, I decided to move a few thing about in my flat this morning at 5am, like you do, and now I need some speaker cable.

All in all I am in a better mood now. I have tonight off work which means going into work normal tomorrow, should be interesting considering my sleeping pattern adjustment.

And I think i may just write some more stuff for my book.

Goodbye Sleeping Pattern

Its nearly 7am, and I'm only just getting sleepy. Work shifting my hours around has gone full effect on me now and my sleeping pattern has changed. It's actually took longer than I thought, I normally adapt to different amounts of sleep pretty quickly.

But its done now, just in time for the warmer weather to come and put me back into normal working hours and force me into trying to change back my sleeping pattern. oh. the. joys.

Ive been having some pretty severe mood swings recently. Normally I am the annoying guy in the corner that's always got a smile on his face and genuinely believes things will just work out for the best and if they don't, whats the point in moping around and being all pissy about it? It gets you no further ahead and it takes up so much energy. But this week I have been up and down like crazy, going from really bubbly and just my normal self, to utterly crappy, paranoid and negative about nearly all situations in my life.

I really cant put my finger on whats triggered it. Maybe the lack of sleep / mixed up sleeping pattern is affecting me more than normal. I have a feeling I'm not getting enough sunlight in my day, I get in from work at about 5am, stay up until around 7 then go to bed and wake up at about 2/3 pm, so I only see about an hour of light a day :/

Trying to force it though; On a happier note, I now have a title for my book.

The Korekutā 

I means Collector, in Japanese.

I'm not exactly writing the book at the minute, I'm simply jotting down all the ideas I get, any characters I think up and how characters may link up etc. I'm aiming to start writing at the beginning of next year, only a few weeks away so I have lots to do. But I think if I start then and aim to be done by my birthday / maybe a month after. That's gives me 4/5 months to get it done.

It really is the only thing keeping me smiling at the minute.

Utterly selfishly, I feel as if I spend my time trying to cheer people up and make them smile and I never really get that returned. Maybe because I'm happy 90% of the time, people don't think I ever get down. I don't know, just really little things are seeming massive to me at the minute.

I need the new year and to forget a lot of this one.

Drunken Posting.. Not such a great idea

I've just got in from a night out. Utterly amazing night tbh, had a real laugh with my mates and just really hit the beer. Spent a little too much after the rip off taxi home, but that's always the case..

I still feel like I'm in certain peoples bad books. But if I'm honest I've stopped worrying about it. I only stay concerned long enough for the realistic part of my brain to kick in and tell myself " there is obviously a reason for the lack of talking so just quit over thinking situations and get on with stuff" Which I am now doing.

After explaining my book idea to a friend tonight, I am filled with utter excitement, he seemed to think it sounded really good and I know for a fact he'd tell me if it was weak, so that cheered me up.

Final thought of the night is one phrase. After hitting this club tonight I got home and shared a mutual thought with another friend..

"They are all so pretty" I just wish I had a scrap of the confidence needed to communicate with these girls.

Goodnight everyone.
Drunken Wiffle needs some rest :/

All over the place

There seems to be no where solid for me to put my footings at the moment. Everything is very all over the place.

My top thoughts for the weekend so far are these :

After talking to Mr Andy Bashford I'm helping with some dialogue for his story. I think Andy has a distinctly more vivid imagination than me but kind of got me thinking about writing something of my own.
So I've decided to start writing a novel, I have my main idea and am working through things pretty well.
In my head its a new year project, something to take my mind off being single, the day to day crap that is work and my none existent social life in the cold months.
I am utterly excited I think it will be a god test to see how far I can stretch my own imagination.

Second thought.

I really miss my friends. I had a lovely night last night. Simply went round to a friends house, just had a big chill out, watched some Bill Bailey, ate some serious snack food and generally had a laugh. Such a simple night but really makes me realise just how much my current working times are screwing with my social life. All in all frikin good times :D.

Third.

I actually have a night off again tonight, well, half a night off. Because my work seem to think that its up to me to find cover for myself when I've booked time off, I'm having to work half a shift and 3 other lads are taking the other half of my gritting sites between them. It seriously annoyed me that management seem to think its not their responsibility to organise cover for their staff, Im not self employed ffs, do your job and sort stuff out!
Ah, I digress. I have tonight off and that means one thing, return of drunken wiffle! This will more than likely be my only saturday night off until january so I'm going to seriously hit it tonight. Bring on the looking at hot women I haven't got the guts to talk to, the bad scene kid music and the cheap cheap drinks :/

I am very off track with my blog, this is only really because all my days are starting to blur into one, I can never really remember what day I'm on after working through the night, so I end up forgetting to blog. must must must try harder.

Thanks to everyone thats visiting, I seem to be getting a lot more traffic on Blogspot than on blog.com.. good stuff..

The Locks Are Against Me

I have just got in from another good night out on the gritting. As much as I have moaned about it over the last few weeks, it's starting to become pretty decent now, my sites have all been shuffled into such a way that I can do more in the same amount of time, even a little bit faster!

So now i get around £130 a night on a weekday and £105 on a weekend ( basically on a weekend I do about 5 sites less so only takes me about 6 hours ) for about 9 hours work, I can fully cope with that :D

I have noticed a growing trend with a situation at work now though. Obviously most of these places are locked up, so we get given keys etc. Only two of my sites need keys. So I have two keys to get into two sites, they are the same size and make of key, literally look identical!

Every single night I have been at work this week, I've walked up to the gates and picked a key at random to open the lock and every. single. bloody. time its been the other key I've needed. This sounds so pathetic, even to me as I'm typing, but seriously, I even played a little game with it tonight, I picked a key, then just before putting in the lock I quickly swapped and it worked, meaning my first decision would of been wrong.

Is this life's way of telling me to do exactly the opposite of whatever I think is right?
Was I a lock in a former life and made multiple keys life's living hell?
Or am I really going crazy from the serious lack of sleep over the past week?

Thought on a postcard please.

The other thing I wanted to talk about today was this :

Do you ever find yourself in a situation, where you think you have really pissed some one off but the only sign that you have is they are a bit quieter than usual with you?

I get into this horrible frame of mind where I think,

I'm pretty sure they are pissed off with me, If i txt them to talk about it or just to say hello, I may piss them off further, but what if I haven't pissed them off and then I don't txt them and they think I am being funny with them?

It sounds stupid to type it. I suppose I should really just man up and ask. But I really am not the confrontational type, and avoid them if I can.

I have gone a bit slack with writing this blog. I will try harder to blog at least once a day. If I can keep up this fast gritting time it gives me about an hour when I get in to jot some things down.

Hope you are good who ever you are :)

Slightly better mood..

Today I am in a much better mood than yesterday, literally can not describe the immense difference in my mood.
I find it amazing that when I'm in such a vile mood, I actually struggle to write anything even remotely worthy of reading. I much prefer being my normal, sarcastic, smiley self and writing blogs people will actually want to read.


So what to talk about today. mmm

I have finally got round to fixing my IPhone. I accidentally trod on it when it was in my pocket and cracked the front glass, to say I was annoyed would be a great understatement. I had an amazingly funny conversation with the guy from o2, think it actually made my claim go smoother just because he was laughing the whole way through. It went something like this :

After explaining what I wanted he asked me

o2 man : " so, time for the tale of how you broke it"

me : " ah, I bet you here some right good stories when it comes to this, I feel i should apologise because my story is THE most boring you are going to here, I trod on it in my pocket "

o2 man : " oh, you were right, that's pretty weak, i wanted something juicy or something that was a blatant lie"

me : " oh well in that case, I was sky diving and I thought to myself *I could film this using my phone* I then dropped it from 1000 feet up, luckily it landed on a small child who broke its fall, so it only cracked the glass "

o2 man =  couldn't speak for the immense giggles he now had

These conversations in life make your day, I was in such a good mood afterwards, it really was utterly hilarious.

Safe to say a brand new shiny IPhone is on its way to me now and will be with me by tomorrow. God knows how I'm going to actually receive it, o2 said it would be arriving "between 8am and 5pm* which would be fine, except I'm working tonight and will be getting in at 5am and sleeping till at least 12, I just hope I hear the door.

Next matter to attack. Police and funny stuff

Now I'm working nights, 24 hour shops have become my best friends, Tesco 24 hour has never seen me in its walls so frequently. So This morning I stumbled in to my local shop, covered in salt and looking very sleepy. Picked up some tasty treats and got myself to the checkout in record time. Now whilst walking around the shop, I had my head phones in with my shouty music on keeping me awake, but then all of a sudden a new song came on, just as I hit the checkout on comes " Cypress Hill - Dr Green Thumb " a song about the smoking and growing of marijuana. Literally as I looked up at the self service till, I was surrounded by 4 police officers, all getting their food for their break. There was me looking utterly out of it from the sleepyness buying a load of snack food at 2am in the morning whilst listening to a song about weed. For any one looking at this situation it must of seemed hilarious.
They watched me get in my truck and drive off. No flashing lights or sirens chasing after me must of meant that their sandwich was of greater importance.

So thats it from me today. I need to get up and clean my flat ( obviously I mean play some xbox )

Next post tomorrow at roughly the same time :)

Utterly Lost

I have no idea what day it is.
I keep looking at the calender to remind me and try and orientate myself a little bit.

So I've just woken up, well I woke up at 4pm but you get my point, I got in from work at 7am after a very very long night out making the roads safe to drive on.

This work really is getting to me now. And I need to take some serious action into getting myself out of the situation. I say that, but, well the work is ok, not the worst thing I could be doing, but its ruining my sleeping pattern and life like it was nothing.

I have however taken a step towards doing something I've always wanted.
For years and years I've wanted to travel to Japan, obviously me being a little bit obsessed with the orient, that seems obvious. Well yesterday ( i think ) I decided to just try my luck, and applied for a 3 year working placement at Barakura English Gardens in Japan. They only do 3 year work placements, so it would be a very long time away from home, but I figure I may as well be brave now cause it will only get harder and harder to try in the future.

There really has been very little else happening for me. I feel completely disconnected from everyone, I get about 4 hours a day private time and within that I will have to eat and shower etc etc so more than likely only really get about 3 hours of time to do anything.

I am finding it hard to keep this blog updated with anything that is of use to any one, everything is rant rant or grit this, work that.

I pinky promise that my mood will pick up, and the sarcastic James that normally writes semi comical blogs will be back in full swing.

I really do miss certain people a lot. This last few months I have really begun to want to see people more than I am able to. I think I will just be using it as motivation to make sure next year when the weather is good, I will make sure I am out every weekend seeing as many people as possible, crashing on as many sofa's as I can and making up for my utter negligence as a friend through out this winter..

Every one better be ready for drunken Wiffle when the summer hits :)

Half Rant / Half Normal Blog

So its Monday, I think, Its around 3:30pm ish, by the time I finish writing this it will be any way.
I have just woken up after another night out on the gritting.
This line of work is seriously starting to get to me now, 12 hour shifts 7 days a week? I really don't think my body is going to be able to cope with an entire winter of this pattern.

I feel my social life is literally being ripped from me.

I was in such a good mood yesterday, just really enjoying things and my frame of mind was set to "its crappy work but its a bit of extra money so just deal with it" and I was fine with it.

Now today I'm being told that I need to use my old van, because the land rover needs to be ready for  new contract, this I have no problem with, but my old van uses a gritter that is so so so small and at the minute keeps clogging up because the grit we are using is crap.. But work just say "I'm just gonna have to stick with the smaller gritter and do as best you can" meaning I will be spending all of tonight standing in the cold shaking and kicking my little baby gritter to try and make it work! Fun times :/

Its time like this that I wish i had more guts and just tried my hardest to apply for a gardening job in Japan..

 I really need something to take my mind of all of this.

it seems i am literally working then coming home falling asleep and going back to work again.
I have enough time to get some dinner if I'm lucky..

I have noticed when I'm ranting my blogs are a let less structured, sorry about this, I think I'm just trying to get everything negative out of me as fast as I can.

If i had enough time I would take my moms advice and write a book. Maybe its something to consider..

Any way

Time to go sort out work again, then eat, then maybe nap, then off to work for another grueling 12 hours :(

Moving to blogspot

It seems my blog over at http://wiffle.blog.com is under attack from poor security. so for the time being / maybe permanently, I am moving my blog to Blogspot, really only liked the blog.com one because it was a very short url, easy for people to type and remember.
I am in two minds as to whether i should transfer all my posts from that blog onto here..

There are some very good posts and I know people like to re read things..
I will see how i feel by the end of the day..

For the time being

Hello
if you don't know me Im wiffle

and I tend to blog a lot :D