Dazed and Confused

Ticking away, the moments that make up a dull day
you fritter and waste the hours in an off hand way
Kicking around on a piece of ground in your home town
waiting for someone or something to show you the way.
Tired of lying in the sunshine, staying home to watch the rain
You are young and life is long and there is time to kill today.
And then one day you find ten years have got behind you.
No one told you when to run, you missed the starting gun.

So you run and you run to catch up with the sun but it's sinking
Racing around to come up behind you again.
The sun is the same in a relative way but you're older,
Shorter of breath and one day closer to death.

Every year is getting shorter never seem to find the time.
Plans that either come to nought or half a page of scribbled lines
Hanging on in quiet desperation is the English way
The time is gone, the song is over,
Thought I'd something more to say..

Never start drinking vodka past 11pm when you've got work the next day. You won't extend the dark hours by anymore, the sun will still rise on time...you won't!

NEVER and I repeat NEVER..have people back at your flat, that fall asleep and then piss themselves all over your sofa. Even if it is their birthday.

I absolutely bloody love not having to go to work. It's great. Working for The Education, i'm not the best paid person in the world but shit..am I rich when it comes to holidays! I'm sitting here with my lovely friend at 3.50am because I can. So there. We're drunk and we're happy. God I miss those golden DSS days.. well sometimes, at 7am usually.

'Wednesday 8th March, 6pm'. The day my nan finally slipped away from us, the day she died. She was 96 years old.
I went to see her two days before in Fazackerley Hospital. I took my son with me as I knew it would probably be the last time we ever saw her. I'm glad I did but don't think i'll ever forget that vision of her.
Imagine the oldest thing you've ever seen?, ever held?. Time had given her so much. It's safe hands had guided her through two world wars, the loss of parents and siblings and led her down the aisle into the arms of a man who would love her forever. Now they had taken her away.
Some of us never experience the things she had in her life that were good and exciting and loving and kind, she was one of the lucky ones-with no regrets. Goodnight and God bless x

So. Valentines day. I feel sorry for all those people who have been booked into restaraunts tonight for their 'romantic valentines meal' (complete with special menu). Even sorrier for those that will sit at window tables-their only salvation being the paper heart arrangements that are crudely stuck to the glass. Everyone trying to look 'more in love' than the diners next to them. There's probably more people feeling like shit today than anything else and despite the way i'm talking, I won't be one of them. Reason being that before christmas I split up with my partner of 14 years, the father of my child. Tonight I will celebrate and rejoice in my new found freedom. The romance can wait..

My Nan 'Mary Norah Brady' was born in Liverpool on 31st July 1910, making her a little under 96yrs of age. My great-grandparents came over from Ireland before the children were born and owned a Chandlers shop on Scotland Road in Bootle, this is where my nan met my grandad. He was a delivery boy and worked for them on a Saturday. He pedalled his bike all over, struggling uphill with the huge front-basket full of goods. He once told me he would have 'carried the bike on his back to get back and see Norah'. In time he proposed and they had three children; Jean (who died sadly 13 years ago), Alan (my wonderful father) and Maureen (mother to my cousin Gillian and grandmother to her two children).
My grandad Tommy, died eight years ago and Norah was devastated. They epitamised love. While Tommy was away at war he wrote the most amazing letters and cards (which she still keeps close at hand)and their faith in God kept them strong. They celebrated their 65th wedding anniversary in a club packed out with family and friends and danced the night away. I can honestly say that i've never seen two people more besotted with each other in my life, so much so that I cry as I write.
The reason why I feel compelled to put this down is quite simple. I don't think Norah has long left to live. She was admitted into hospital yesterday after a series of hallucinations took her to wander around the streets looking for Tommy. One minute he was sitting on the sofa, she made him a cup of tea and then he was gone. A group of orphan children also sat on her sofa, huddled together, singing. She opened her purse to get some money to give them and they too dissapeared. Last week it was the rosary being said very loudly, she could hear it through the walls and although she has always been a devout catholic, it frightened her.
At the hospital, the doctor asked her what year she was born, she replied '1910, asked who the reigning queen is she said 'Anne' what year are we in now? '1958'..

There are so many questions I feel I should have asked while she still knew the answers. I wish i'd have been closer to her. The only thing I do know for sure is that she's been away from Tommy for far too long, her heart aches. She has had enough of this world and I wish her every happiness in the next.

I am the frayed cuffs
Of the men who climb
And of the men who fall also-
Of those I am the frayed cuffs.

I am the sleeve of the the killer
The bearer of clues.

I am the worn elbows of the meek and the lowly
And of the high and mighty also-
Of those I am the worn elbows.

I am the sleeve of the lover
On which hearts are hung.

I am the rags and tatters
Of the defeated armies of the earth
And of the victors also-
Of those I am the tatters and the rags.

I am the sleeve of the soldier
Witness this round hole.

Someone or something somewhere has stolen the last 2 hours away from me. Now, in order for me to do everything i need to today, I need them back. Pronto.
I will remind myself of this 'thief' next time I scour the village looking for 'The perfect bacon butty'(that just isn't).

I work in the Art Dept. of a secondary school and have done for the past 17 months. I like my job and feel very lucky to be able to say that. I've had a good morning apart from having a hot cup of coffee spilt all over me by a rather small boy, desperate to get to the canteen before the 'sour-faced mare' behind it sold the last sausage on toast.
We still have a smoking room in work, for how much longer we don't know, living on borrowed time, in more ways than one. So there i was, enjoying my half-cup of coffee and my cigarette when in came another member of staff in floods of tears. This show of emotion is an everyday occurance and usually involves a kid with serious behavioural problems but this was nothing to do with another persons child, it was her own daughter causing her pain.
Her daughter has been mentally and physically abusing her for years. Last night she made a stand and called the police. By the time they got there her daughter had fled with her 27 yr old boyfriend (she's 15). She wrecks the house, her mother is covered in bruises and my stomach is sick at the thought of what that predicament must be like for her. She loves her daughter as i love my son and could never imagine having to choose between him and my sanity. Fortunately for me, at the moment they are one and the same.