Laughing at Children

On Saturday I went out to a weatherspoons in the metro centre with my mum and one of my aunties. While we were eating an alarm went off...a very high pitched alarm. I have no idea what it was for but it did bring security running into the place and a few mothers took their kids out to protect their ears. This went on for about 5 minutes, during that time I was watching a baby who was about 10 months old sitting in the corner with her mother and another woman. Whenever the alarm was going off, the mother would put her hands over that little girls ears but she was utterly unfazed by the noise, everytime her mum put her hands over her ears she would push her hands away. At one point her mother put her hands over the girls ears and she jerked forward to get the hands off her ears, she jerked forward so much she whacked her head off the table, it wasn't funny, really, a little baby had just walloped her head off a wooden table and was subsequently in tears and I didn't laugh, really, not even a little bit.

Well, maybe a little bit

Tons of Emails

I've always considered myself very lucky, I've never been one to get spam on top of spam on top of spam.
In recent weeks though, I have been getting roughly 25 to 30 emails a day, the vast majority telling me that the email I tried to send to someone has not been delivered for various reasons. The thing is, I haven't sent any of these emails, they all appear to be sent from my email address but with random letters before the @.
I have queried this on a couple of message boards and been told it seems like my email address had been cloned (or stolen, I forget exactly what I was told) but the main upshot of it is there's is nothing I can do about it.

Bastards

"What is a Gimp?"

My office at work is joined with members of the CPS, there's a bit of resentment money wise (we get paid so much less than them because they're recognised civil servants while we're just police staff) but they are nice people. One of them is having a birthday on Saturday and she's been nattering non stop about it, I have no idea how old she's going to be but she's having a big party and by all acounts is looking forward to it.
Today she recieved an email from her bother in Sweden, he mentioned that as her birthday present he was sending her a gimp through the post which lead to her saying "What is a gimp?". I started giggling, one of her colleages said "oh I don't know" another said "I'll get a dictionary" I started giggling more. My colleage said to me "What have they done now? Why are you laughing?" So I explained that they don't know what a gimp is which got the reply "what is one?". So I explained to a woman my mothers age what a gimp was and then wandered over to the CPS to tell them what one was. I could feel myself turning red while I was talking to them. I'm alright talking to someone on a one to one basis but when everyone was giving me their undivided attention I could feel myself turning redder especially considering the fact that I was talking about S&M, I was just greatful that no-one asked me how I know because I have no idea how I would have answered that...I mean, how do I know what a gimp is?

Racial Abuse...Again

Well another Sunday and another case of my mum being racially abused. This time it wasn't as funny, it was the same lad as last time but today his mates got involved and it was a bit more threatening. So much so that the police are taking it seriously which means that when the little bastard gets arrested I will have to send a letter, to my own mother, on behalf of the Police saying how sorry we are that she was a victim of crime. That's got to be comforting for her! I bet the lad will probably not see it as racial abuse, from what I have gathered about the statistics we record for racial crime, this won't be recorded as one. Apparently if you only record crimes where black people are abused by white people you can say that the amount of racial crimes are reducing...call me cynical if you wish :)

I actually should look in to it and find out if they have a policy about sending official correspondance to a member of your own family, even if they are the victim.

The Joy of Dentistry

A few years back, in the month that the clocks went back, I attempted to change the time on my wrist watch. I had just cut my nails and couldn't get hold of the little widgetey thing so, in my infinate wisdom, I decided to bite it. This lead to a little chunk of one of my front teeth breaking off "Oh no! All those years of wearing a brace to get straight teeth wasted".
I made an appointment with my dentist who told me it was unfixable and all he could do was file it down so it was even, unfortunately this meant that one top front tooth was shorter than the other top front tooth, I was less than pleased.
Today I had my 6 monthly dentist check up, I'm not scared of the dentist but I'm not the kind of person who will ask questions I just let her look at my teeth, a quick polish and then I'm on my way. Today I had a little questionnaire to fill in, the first question was
Are you happy with your smile?
I circled "No", I then went into the dentists room and handed her the questionnaire and I got myself comfortable in the seat while she read it
"So you're not happy with your smile?" said Mrs Dentist
"It's just that front tooth" said I
20 minutes later my tooth has been fixed! My smile looks pretty! I am very very happy although it does feel quite wierd and will take some getting used to but yay for my dentist!

Racial Abuse And A Big Baby

My mum was racially abused on Sunday. She works in a care home for children, some with learning difficulties, others with parents who don't care and the rest are just little bastards. Anyway, there were a group of kids hanging around, one of them she described as "someone I could cheerfully punch all day long", so she went outside to ask them to move on and away from the home. The lad she would like to punch swaggered towards her, all knuckles dragging and hoodie pulled tight around his face "How come I am from Sunderland and you think you have the right to tell me to move on?" cue my mum trying not to laugh in his face "Just move away from the home" so they swaggered off up the street. 5 to 10 minutes later they were back outside the home smoking pot or a lung or some such nonsense, so my mum and her boss went out to tell them to move on again. Little mister charming again showed his eloquence
"You can't fucking tell me what to do, I was fucking born in this city, I was fucking born in this country, you fuck off back where you came from"
Mum: "Just move away from the home or I'll call the police"
Charmer:"You can call the fucking police all you want, I'll tell them you fucking hit me"
Mum: "I wouldn't dare touch you, I wouldn't know what I'd catch"
Charmer: "Just fuck off where you came from"
at this point my mums boss decided it would be a good idea to go back into the house, especially since the kids were moving off anyway. Since it was classed as racial abuse it had to be reported to the police who, by all accounts, found it as funny as my mum and her boss did. The country my mum comes from? Northern Ireland.

In very nice news a friend of the family had a baby at just before 10pm last night, he was 2 weeks overdue because the midwife made a mix up with her dates, he weighed in at 10lbs 1oz and measured 23inches! That's nearly 2 feet tall! Blimey, congratulations Lisa and welcome to the world big baby Ethan

Some People Make Me Sad

As part of my job with the police I send letters out to victims of crime to let them know that someone has been arrested and that they've been given a caution, Fixed Penalty Notice, bailed for further enquiries etc. A couple of weeks ago I sent a letter to a girl who had been raped by her ex partner, I hate sending these letters to victims of sexual assaults because they're so blunt
"Dear XXX, we're sorry you were the victim of rape on such and such a date"
it just doesn't seem the sort of thing you'd want to recieve when you've been through something like that.
The day after I sent the letter I got a phone call from the woman saying she wanted to drop all charges, she had so much on her mind and just couldn't bring herself to go through with it, as I'm not a copper there's nothing I can do when someone wants to drop all charges because a retraction statement has to be taken, so I gave her to information of the officer in charge and told her I'd get him to call her. She sounded so distraught I felt so sorry for her and because I wasn't expecting that sort of phone call at 10am I know I was taken by surprise and didn't handle the call properly.
Anyway, last week I was checking through my arrest logs looking for new victims to traumatise with a letter when I noticed the name of the rape victim, she was given a simple caution for making false allegations. Turns out a week or so before she made the allegation of rape she had been bombarding her ex with texts and he decided to let the poilce know that she had told him she'd tell them that he raped her, he didn't want to press charges but was just giving advance warning. When the copper went round to get her retraction statement she admitted it was all lies. He faced the stigma of being labelled a rapist as well as a probable prison sentence because she wanted to get back at him for leaving her and she only got a simple caution, it just doesn't seem fair to me.

The First

Well why the hell not have a blog? Anything to stop people I live with having to listen to my half thought through rantings :)