Michael the grouch

It's not in my nature to be grouchy. So Ka has just text me. She is being sarcastic. I'm especially grouchy in the mornings. Yesterday I text her to apologise for being a grouch just, to be polite, as I was perhaps guilty of being vaguely grouchy with tiredness in the morning. She responded with a 'that's okay - I'll let you off' toned message. At first a little taken aback, I then realised she obviously did not understand. She was supposed to say something along the lines of: "You were not grouchy at all, I don't know what your talking about!".
Unfortunately I'm not much of a morning person. I'm fine once I leave the house and am even better by the time I've sat in the car, walked down the street, or jumped on the bus and am in the office wishing everyone a pleasant good morning. As soon as I wake though, I'm a grouch. I'm so grouchy I deserve to sleep in a dustbin on a suburban american street. One day I suspect Ka may just put me out in a dust bin so that I awaken, and grouch, a good distance away. This would enable her to watch her GMTV uninterupted by my moaning about the ridiculously bright eyed and bushy tailed, smiley presenters with their giant jug of orange juice that nobody ever seems to drink (if i was ever a guest I would make sure I got a good pint of the stuff). And Mr Motivator is back? Whose big idea was that? The sight of a guy in a skin tight, luminous leotard shouting and jumping about the screen only motivates me to turn the channel. He also only performs 'exercises' that seem to be simply walking on the spot with a big smile on your face. How can some people jump up out of bed and head out for a jog or the gym before work? Getting to work on time is my number one priority. If I was to confuse it by including a trip to the gym or a half comatose run round the block I'd be in trouble. I'm not sure I could operate the gym equipment half asleep. I'd probably fall asleep on the swiss ball. If jogging, I'd probably slow down into a lulled walk before collapsing back into a dream somewhere around Branchumhall.
Not sure why I'm so tired today though. Perhaps it is the shadow of invitation making hanging over me. For the wedding I've decided to create my own invitations thinking along the lines of "I'm a graphic artist, I'll do them!". Easy... Or is it? Quite like the design I'm finalising but am concerned about the printing. Either way, I'll need to get a move on with it. Ka has also been dealing with the last minute organisation her hen doo. There's just over two months to go till the actual Wedding and options do not seem to be as readily available now as they had been when she'd orignally wanted it organised. So she has been running up a good phone bill. I'll have to remember to grouch about that later. Meanwhile Kenny is currently investigating the hotels and accommodation in Brussels for the lads stag weekend. Us blokes would probably be happy enough to just take our sleeping bags or maybe find one of those aforementioned dust bins. I'll be happy as long as we don't wake up next to some big bird.

The Milkybars are on me!

My throat feels like sandpaper. I reckon I've got some kind of throat infection and it's really buggin' me. Might take a wee Jack Daniels to get me to sleep tonight. Lemon, honey, whisky and hot water is supposed to be the ideal solution for these kind of ailments are they not? The hot toddy. Not sure if I could use Jack Daniels though as it's a bourbon. It may not have the desired effect. It's got to be worth a try though eh?
The binging battle through the Easter eggs continues. Tonight it was Ka's brother, Colin's gift. A Shaker Milkybar Egg. Called Shaker because it was filled, as I discovered, with small white chocolate round pieces. After unwrapping the egg I found it sealed up as tight as a duck's arse so proceeded to press gently around the outer edge to try and seperate it into two perfect halves. With great care, and a lot of muttering to myself, I gently pushed on the line running around the egg. It did not work. With a horrible crack, what seemed like a hundred small, chocolate pods explode over the living room (one smacking me straight in the eye) and shards of egg spun over the couch, some getting lost under the cushions and crevices of the sofa. Thankfully Ka was not in the room to see this and I quickly salvaged the debris in a frantic milkybar clean up operation that could not have been bettered by the Milkybar kid himself.
Now that my excitement for the night is over I'll go back to concocting some medicinal drinks.
Unfortunately I've just discovered I have no honey, or lemon... I have hot water and Jack Daniels though so that'll have to do... I'll maybe throw some sugar in? Maybe a second measure for good luck.

The cheese salad roll and the resurrection

An enjoyable Easter weekend with more birthdays. Ka celebrating on Thursday followed by my own on Sunday. So not only was there plenty of Easter eggs but there was plenty of cake to go round. Certainly not good for the diets.
On Saturday night Ka treated me to dinner in Toni's, a small, cosy little Italian restaurant on Renfield Street that generally serves great food with cheery service. We first went there for dinner around three years ago and have been meanings to revisit it ever since. The birthdays seemed like the perfect opportunity. Although the italian gent serving us was slightly loud and brash, throwing parmesan and pepper around rather haphazardly, he was friendly and efficient up until the third and final course. On the menu this course simply consisted of tea, coffee, chocolates and biscuits. We got our tea. We got our coffee. We did not get our chocolates or biscuits. Although disappointed, we let it go though considering we had had so much cake to eat over the weekend. The waiter then neglected to give us our change, presumably assuming it to be a tip or service charge, leaving us sitting, twiddling our thumbs at the empty table. We had intended to leave more than the meagre amount left over from the bill and eventually managed to get our change back in order to leave a more substantial tip. Anyway, niggles aside, it was a nice meal, and as we dusted the parmesan from our hair we proceeded on to Amber, underneath St. Vincent Street's Bar Buddha. Another small and cosy place with a late bar playing great music which had a special on of £2 a drink. Not too bad in these credit crunching times. As a result we both ended up quite merry and headed off for a bus home. For a change the bus journey was pretty pain free with no unpleasant, slobbering drunkards onboard, except from me.
On Sunday I entered my early thirties and rose from the dead, hungover, and still feeling more than a little zombie like. After making myself feel vaguely human again we left for Uddingston. Ka was driving and succeeded in being very patient with my moaning and mumbling from the passenger seat. After a quick visit to the McGarva household we then headed up to the Leckie household to visit Angela, Steven and Morgan who gifted us with special personalised Thorntons Easter eggs complete with our names in icing across their front. In this instance my name being 'Uncle Michael'. For them, we had a bunch of tulips and a couple of creme eggs. Maybe not a completely fair transaction but they did forget my birthday so I considered that to be fair enough. We sat and watched Morgan paint her boiled eggs, the kitchen table, and the majority of her hands while Steven cut dresses and shirts from sheets of felt and inserted arms into each of the small, card, toilet roll holders which were acting as the eggs' bodies. We suspect Steven was enjoying this egg painting more than Morgan was. While all this was going on, Angela created, possibly, the greatest cheese salad roll I have ever tasted. After eating I was back on the trampoline in the Leckie's back garden thanks to Morgan's persistence. Strangely enough, the trampoline coupled with that amazing salad roll made me feel a hell of a lot better - not the results you would expect with a hangover.
After a quick visit from the globetrotting Tricia and Tommy, who are just back from a Caribbean cruise and were now on their way to see Dougie MacLean in Dunkeld, we headed up to Chapelton for dinner with the family. Kenny picking Gran, Ka and myself up from EK. Mum had made another feast including smoked salmon for starters, a sunday stew for mains and a lemon meringue for dessert. Gran drank a giant Brandy, Dad fed me with a fair amount of his Jack Daniels, Kenny sat and watched the golf on the big screen and we reminisced, chatted and gossiped before heading home after nine to collapse and fall asleep on the couch watching Damages.
Back in work today, missing all the Bank Holiday Monday movies. Maybe a good thing. Looking forward to going home tonight and relaxing, there's a choclate egg with my name on it.

Fantastic fruititious delights

After a weird Cylon influenced dream I awoke this morning with a hangover. Particularly strange as I had not had one drop of alcohol last night. It was Ka's birthday and we had been in her Mum and Dad's house till half past eleven shouting at one another, throwing shoddily wrapped presents around the living room and eating small pieces of cake.
Before this we had been out for a McGarva family meal in the local restaurant/pub, Angels, in Uddingston, for which Ka and myself had arrived late, rushing up from Hamilton after seeing 'The Boat That Rocked' at the cinema. Another Richard Curtis movie, with his usual blend of comedy, slight drama, over the top characters and cheesiness. Easy going, fun, viewing. The music was great too. Perfect for a birthday flick.
At the house afterwards, our niece, Morgan was very much in control as always. Ka, Ka's Mum, Grace, and Colin, her brother, had prepared around ten presents for numerous games of pass the parcel, initially for the amusement of Morgan. However, as always with these things the, supposed, adults ended up getting rather involved in it all too. Angela, Ka's sister and Jillian, Colin's poor girlfriend, were all playing too. (When I say poor I am, of course, talking of her lack of experience in handling these McGarva family parties, nothing to do with her financial situation). After a particularly tough round which ended up with Ka's Dad, Dougie, and myself back to back in the middle of the living room floor, I walked away with a stunning plastic guitar thermometer. No expense spared for this game. Apparently the pound shop they got these gifts from had some great deals. Since Ka is staying off the cake and chocolate at the moment, Grace presented her with the biggest basket of fruit I've ever seen. Never before had I seen such a veritable feast of fantastic fruititious delights! A large basket wrapped up in paper and ribbons filled with strawberries, oranges, pears, melon, pineapple, plums and bananas to mention but a few. There were even fruits in it that I had previously suspected only to exist in science fiction tv. The Man from Delmonte himself may have even stepped back in amazement if he'd seen this particular birthday basket of colourful roughage. What was not accepted so well was my cutting and sharing out of the clown birthday cake. My slices were too small according to the McGarvas who mumbled complaints as I toiled in the kitchen. Dougie claimed it was just so I could take a bigger portion home. Not true, of course, as I may even have my own birthday cake once Sunday is upon us.

Where there's a will

On Saturday afternoon my Dad started reading us his will. He had went hunting for my baptismal certificate, which I apparently need for some sort of pre Wedding religious check up, and had come across his final wishes. Ka and myself had popped up for a visit to show my Mum the honeymoon destination and the intrinsic cuppa and after mentioning the baptismal certificate my Dad had disappeared upstairs. Moments later he had reappeared with his black filing box. One of these plastic extendable filing boxes not unlike some sort of felxible plastic accordian. He settled down in his chair and started rummaging through it, producing report cards from school, old newspaper clippings, souvenir booklets and the aforementioned certificates. He then started reading through his will which we did not particularly want to hear - not that we ever will want to hear it. I'm sure there will be one occasion, hopefully in the far and distant future, when it will be read out to us by some rusty old mumbling solicitor in a big office with oak furniture but not not on a Saturday night as we show off our honeymoon destination.
Talking of our honeymoon destination it is shocking to see the pictures of the effects of the earthquakes to have hit central Italy. The death toll has risen to 250 people. Depressing. It's also depressingly typical of us to have booked our honeymoon where the latest catastrophic disasters are occuring (be them natural)! Creamy Chicken John left for an Easter holiday in Rome at the beginning of the week. Hopefully the devastating effects will not affect his break in the Capital.
John is off to Rome, Andrea is still off, and is due to leave for maternity leave in two weeks time, DVD Andy is on holiday, (probably off walking a hill somewhere or hanging around Tesco for strangers' discarded receipts) and the office is quiet without the bosses around, who have all seemed to have mysteriously disappeared. As a result, we have been quite busy in the office covering for all the absentees and holiday makers. The weather is getting better though and it definately seems that summer, in some form, may be on its way.
Sheesh, I'm feeling optimistic now, considering I've spent the past ten minutes writing about disasters and wills. Maybe it's also something to do with the fact that it's Ka's birthday tomorrow and I'm surprisingly organised and prepared.

Falls of Clyde

On Friday Ka and myself arose to a gloriously, wonderful, sunny day. Who would have thought?! Scotland in early April with such a lovely day? Weather like this in Scotland is immediately suspicious. You usually expect the clouds to close in within a few hours but yesterday, thankfully they did not. After a quick trip to the gym, Ka and myself headed off to Lanark for a walk around the Falls of Clyde, down around the small conservation village of New Lanark. Upon arrival Ka and myself settled down for a picnic at the top of the hill alongside the mill water wheel. The village was extremely quiet with only a few elderly couples murmuring to each other on the wooden benches around us and one bearded gentleman, maybe not quite as old, sprawled on an adjacent bench obviously recovering from a jog or cycle as he wore skin tight sports gear. When I say sprawled, I mean he was lying back taking up the whole bench with one foot propped up on the bench's back support and one foot hanging limply down over the ground. Unfortunately for Ka who was sitting closest, the man had a large tear in the groinal area of his joggers and either had not noticed this or was simply unembarrassed by it. Fortunately we had the rather brilliant view of the surrounding forests and passing Clyde waters before us to deter us from this rather unsettling, alternative view.
After finishing our picnic we headed out into the forest and up the River Clyde, pausing at the beautiful waterfalls and viewpoints along the way. After passing, and greeting, the third bunch of fellow walkers heading back, Ka questioned my particular cheery disposition with these walkers. She had no idea of the hikers code. The code that states you should always make an effort to greet or nod fellow walkers upon every passing. I'm not sure who made this code or if it is written somewhere but it somehow goes with the territory. On our way up to the most northerly waterfall, the Bonnington Linn, we also chatted to the park warden who let us look through his binoculars at the nesting Peregrine Falcons in the reserve. Ka nodding describing the white feathers which I was slightly puzzled by as the bird I had seen was grey. We then realised Ka was in fact looking at a rock.

Everything that happens live

We were in Glasgow's Royal Concert Hall last night for a brilliant night watching Mr David Byrne and his excellent band. When I say excellent, of course, I mean excellent, as Byrne played the majority of his latest album and Eno collaboration 'Everything That Happens Will Happen Today' proving that all the tracks lose nothing, if not sound better, live and onstage. There were also a select number of tracks from the Talking heads days including the brilliant, and one of my own personal favourites, Heaven. Byrne rebelled against the usual few folk shouting for Psycho Killer and played more than a few more obscure and brilliant Heads songs including I Zimbra, Born Under Punches and Houses in Motion. All the while Byrne was accompanied by his great band and, the majority of the time, by three professional ballet dancers who spun, shimmied and acted around him as he sang, the male dancer at one point jumping over the lead singer, leaping Byrne's full height like it was a walk in the park. Life During Wartime, Once in a Lifetime and Burning Down the House were the big Heads hits sung on the lead up to the finally which was the slow but beautiful title track to the latest album. On entering, at the beginning of the gig, Byrne received a standing ovation to which he smiled 'that's what we came for, may as well go home now', the trouble was, even after the lights came back up 2 hours later, nobody did want to go home.