Suspect Paki

• Why do we pay rent a month in advance, but get our salaries a month in arrears? Why do we tolerate this? Why is the monetary system rigged against honest people? (Ignore the fact that I currently don’t have a salary)
• Why do we get parking tickets for being a minute past the expiry time of a pay-and-display or parking meter, but we don’t get the money back from parking time we haven’t used? Why can’t we issue tickets to the council? The council we pay a thousand pounds a year to already?
• Why do banks charge us £35 for going overdrawn a solitary penny? It’s not like we send them letters reminding them that they owe us a hundred quid and charget them the appropriate interest for it, never mind the £35 they charge us for a penny, not including the per-day overdraft fee and the loan-shark interest rate applicable for that period.

Wires. Lots of obstinate, obdurate, scrambled, tangled wires.

It seems that no matter what steps you take, given two wires in close proximity, they will end up as one, apparently inseparable, inclined to the intertwine.

I’ve just been through a box of them. Hell for me? A room full of leads, wires and power supplies of arbitrary length, thickness and entanglement to unravel.

It’s even worse when power supplies with thin leads enter the fray. They take special delight in multicoiling around thicker wires, as if some intelligent controller in the PSU was trying to become an electric motor through sheer force of ill will.

Well bollocks to all that, I’ve come up with an answer. I used to use masking tape to keep wires coiled, but I’ve found that if you leave them alone for a while, the tape leaves a mucky residue which tends to smear down the length of the lead. So what I did tonight was wrap a small piece of masking tape inside out around the cable, so that the sticky side was facing out, not touching any part of the cable. Then tearing another piece of masking tape off, I’d cover the sticky bit. Voila! Instant, removable cable-tie.

The best solution I’ve had to longer cables was to hammer a load of nails into the wall and then coil the longer cables around the nails. I found that I could get two or sometimes three jack leads on a nail without them getting knotted. It doesn’t look particularly pleasing to the eye though.

For now, my cables are comfortably coiled.

I thought my ex was being civil, but it was a smoke-screen for what I had feared, that she is making it impossible, through lies, chicanery and subterfuge, for my daughters to stay overnight with me.

They are supposed to stay over Friday nights and spend Saturday with me. I called today to confirm this arrangement, as last week, she had unilaterally decided I wasn’t going to see them on Saturday because she wanted to take them to a fair. I volunteered to take them, but this was unacceptable. So I didn’t see them last weekend. I didn’t see them on Father’s Day because although the kids wanted to see me, their mother has quite wilfully sabotaged every father’s day and every one of my birthdays for the last umpteen or so years. I didn’t want to put the kids through that stress and pain again, so I didn’t bite, I didn’t fall into the trap.

She started an argument. I remained calm. I asked if she would drop them off Friday evening.

“I’ve got something planned with them” she replied.
“But you know they’re supposed to be with me on Friday evenings”
“Oh, but you didn’t say anything” she continued
“I don’t have to say anything! It’s my time with the girls and it’s their time with me, as agreed! We have to give them some consistency!” I countered
“You haven’t been seeing them recently at the usual time”
“Yeah, that’s because I was homeless, and then when I got a place, you stopped them coming over!”
“I’ve never stopped them seeing you!” she lied, unbelievably
“I beg your pardon? Can you repeat that?” I was incredulous
“I’ve never stopped them seeing you. You’ve had them this week, I didn’t have to let them see you!”
“I’m their father, why should you have any reason to stop them seeing me?”
Silence. So I continued “As for not letting them see me, what about holidays. Are you denying that you have stopped them seeing me, despite what it says on the statement of arrangements for children?”
“No I’m not denying it. I have never stopped them seeing you”

Now I was very confused. Her tactics have always been to lie, to obfuscate, to throw sand in the eyes. Truth is a scalpel, but she has this enormous fucking muffling pillow of shit that protects her from the truth at all costs.

The conversation continued with her insulting me and lying endlessly. She agan said things in front of the children that she shouldn’t have, that no parent should. She had planned things for Friday night, Saturday night and Sunday morning, making it impossible for me to see my daughters for any length of time. She says that I don’t want to see them, whilst making it impossible for me to actually see them. She says that I don’t want to see them, that I walked out on them (true, but why make out that she was blameless?) and when I say I’d be happy to have the kids on a permanent basis to rebut her ridiculous notion that I don’t want to see them, she answers “why should I let you have them? You’re the one that walked out on us”

She won’t heal, won’t move on. Fine. but why keep making the kids pay? They deserve better. Just when I thought she was beginning to behave herself a little, she confirms her archetype.

I don’t want to be upset today, but I am. I finished the conversation by informing her that I would get mediation involved because clearly we couldn’t communicate. I told her to expect to hear from them next week. She will call my bluff. She called my bluff on walking out. She called my bluff on divorce. One day, she will call my bluff in seeking a residence order on the girls who deserve better than the lousy parents they got. I messed up, but I could have done a hell of a lot worse.

I went to a “restaurant” near the Olympia today. I wish I could remember what it was called so that I could be libellous. I ordered a lamb and mushroom stir-fry with rice. The stiry-fry was hot. But then so is shit, fresh from a dog’s arse. And this concoction tasted little better.

Now I don’t waste food. I tend to finish what’s on my plate. Call me old-school, call me fat, I just eat what’s there. Not today. For the first time in living memory, I left over half a plate worth of, ermm, I hesitate to call it ‘food’. What the “restaurant” described as “lamb” tasted more like what I imagine rat or donkey to taste like. Gristle and fat content were disgracefully high, and left at the edge of the plate. Fuck the other diners, I wanted them to see that I was spitting out half the meat. (Matron!)

Tomorrow, I’ll name and shame them. Disgraceful. Avoid! And in case you’re interested, the aroma was shit.

There’s a clock tower in Baker Street which I used to hear chiming all the time. I grew up around the corner. I went there with my daughters yesterday and noticed it suspended mid-air. I’m very impressed with modern engineering. They managed to knock the building out from underneath it, and yet still keep it suspended in the air. How the hell do they do that? It looks great though, I recommend you go down there and check it out. It’s at the Regents Park end of Baker Street if you don’t already know.