So...the elephant in the room

I bought a house.

Well a townhouse as they call it here.

A 2 bedroom, single floor building, with a garage and a roof terrace across the entire property.

It's awesome. With views over the bay and the eastern suburbs, like this:

(The wires are for the trolley bus that stops directly outside)

And more importantly it's double glazed, insulated and has a heat pump. It even has a DVS. That will mean nothing to non NZ residents, because you lucky bastards all have central heating. Not so here, where I doubt even 1% of homes are double glazed. And it's fecking cold here when the wind picks up.

So yeah, I'm chuffed to bits.

But that's not what this post is about. It's about women.

Or rather how I can't talk to women. Certain women anyway.

I have many female friends, some amongst my closest, and I happily engage in many (some) witty (to me) conversations every day. Until a certain event happens - a potentially available woman I find attractive enters my life.

And then I freeze. Completely. For all it's doing to my appeal I may as well be a stalker urinating in her mailbox for no apparent reason.

(I had to recently clarify with a female friend I became very good friends with that nothing was going to happen - and was mightily relieved to hear that we both agreed it wouldn't. I don't do complication and it would've made me incapable of being in her presence.)

I've thought long and hard how, now being old and all that, how I can't do this. My conclusion is this - fear of failure. I can talk, and bore, the arse of any individual but if something important is on the line then it affects me. And someone who may just be the one will never even see me because I bail entirely.

Online I can meet people because that reaction never happens (because until you see them you don't know if there's a spark), and indeed I met my wife that way.

But this inability to pursue the women I'd like to speak to, means I easily fall prey to those that wish to take advantage of my naive and trusting nature. Can I fix it? And even if I could would it be too late?

I cannot express in words how much I miss just holding the person I love whilst we fall asleep. I cannot express in words how much the women I can say that about have destroyed me totally.

I think, perhaps, that it's a good thing I spare myself from that happening again.

Living the dream

When I first moved to New Zealand I decided I could now live my life the way I wanted to, as opposed to feeling the need to conform to something unrealistic.

Well, within reason anyway.

I still had a part of me that wanted to settle down, but after what happened before I left I knew that was going to take a while.

I wanted to travel a lot, but bills had to be paid so I needed to get a job.

So I did something I'd always wanted to do - I bought a truck. Not a lorry, but what they call a truck here would be a 4X4 in the UK. Albeit a older, rougher type.

I bought a 1988 Mitsubishi Pajero (a Shogun in the UK) with less than 200,000km on the clock, spent a not inconsiderable amount of money sorting out some fundamental issues and then went on a few trips. In the New Year I'm going on a week's trip to the South Island to do several hundred kilometers of off-road tracks and river crossings.

I could never have owned one of these in the UK, it would've been utterly pointless and very expensive. But over here it's a great thing to have as there's so much countryside to explore and distant places to visit.

I'll be hoping over time I can let a bit more of my old life go and learn to be a bit more carefree, but old habits die hard.

Arse

No matter how old I get.

No matter how wise I get.

(And I'm pretty wise nowadays)

I still get drunk and do stupid things, or say stupid things.

It's part of my charm.

But I think I'm the most harmless person on the planet.

Or maybe I'm drunk.....

Ooooh, mindfuck.

I'm flagging....

I'm totally knackered for sure - partying too much and working mentally hard on projects - but that's not what this post is about.

You may or may not have heard that NZ is having a referendum on changing it's flag. In fact that's not true, it's having referenda. Although rather than ask if they wish to change the flag and *then* have a choice it's doing it the other way round.

Which is completely mental.

However I'm now a resident so I can vote to keep the old one, just to annoy those that want a change. Woop.

They had over 10,000 submissions from the public and narrowed it down to 40 almost identical designs (which you can see here). Ferns, waves and the same colours. blah.

Sadly they didn't take my favourite design, which I like so much I've put it on the spare tyre cover on my car:

How can you not love a kiwi with laser eyes?

It's a foregone conclusion that they'll keep the old design and spend $26m finding this out. Just goes to show you can run away as far as you like and you'll still find the same old government bullshit.

The Return of the King (of nonsense posts)

Greetings, or welcome back if you ever used to follow this blog when I posted semi-regularly!

SO MUCH HAS HAPPENED since I last posted so I thought I'd do this in a Q&A format to forestall any questions people may have. I say 'people', possibly 'person who may stumble across this in a google search in three years'. But I digress....

So where have you been?

Initially at home, then in a pretty deep well of depression, then decided to fuck everything into a cocked hat and sold my house and quit my job, then moved to New Zealand one year ago this week.

What made you do all of that?

After my wife died I discovered the rather unpleasant truth (or some of it at least) about her. I'll detail some of that later, but suffice to say it crushed me completely. I'd hated my job for a while and only stayed there so that we could get the visa for her to move to the UK - 18 months later of still being in the same boring job she committed suicide two days before it was due to be submitted.

So I was going to quit my job anyway, and change house to avoid the constant reminders. I could've stayed in Bristol but I reasoned I could just start again anywhere. I headed (via Singapore) to New Zealand to see a friend, liked Wellington and stayed. Took me two weeks to find a job and get sponsored and now I'm a resident!

Isn't it cold all the time in Wellington?

And England isn't?

I mean why New Zealand?

In simple terms - long way from people, not many people (I have my introvert moments still), stunning countryside but mainly because I've been made to feel welcome by some of the loveliest people in the world (I have my extrovert moments too).

But what about your cats?

Well Floyd died in 2013 and after I'd decided to move Pink suddenly reappeared 10 miles outside of Bristol after 8 years away. She moved straight back in and settled like she'd not been away. Of course plans were in place to go and so I took her with me which is UNBELIEVABLY EXPENSIVE.

She loved it here, cuddled everything and everybody. Then died of a sudden heart attack on the bed I was sleeping in after three months.

I was a little bit upset at the time.

More upset than your wife dying?

Harsh but fair question. At the respective moments, no - the person I loved enough to get married to and pretty much dedicate my existence to for six years......well....that was incredibly upsetting, confusing with the circumstances of her death, and left a huge hole in my heart.

On the other hand, I shared more companionship over a longer period with Pink. And she never argued with me when I talked to her (yes I talked to my cat all the time. So what?) And she never hurt me like my wife did on numerous occasions.

I think I feel a greater sense of loss over Pink, but my wife hurts more.

Circumstances of her death?

Yes, well you may recall she had an incurable and untreatable brain tumour. It steadily got worse over her final year and she was sectioned for self-harming four times. The last time I flew out to look after her and when I visited her in the hospital she was curled into a corner colouring pictures with crayons. She was smarter than me and she'd been reduced to this.

She always reacted to me being around and after two weeks she was released and was functioning almost normally. I returned to England to finalise the visa and had been back for less than 24 hours before she vanished in San Francisco, told someone she'd taken all her meds and died on a beach overlooking her favourite place - the ocean.

You said the truth was unpleasant?

I'm not going into all the detail yet, that'll come out over time. Let's just say she tried to erase all the evidence but left enough behind that I know about the four long-term concurrent boyfriends she had during our relationship, I know about the (at least) ten other people she fucked on a regular basis during our relationship, I know she worked as a prostitute via CraigsList for the first year after we started going out, I know the rape she suffered was actually a regular sex game where she offered herself to men for free via the internet and it went wrong, I know about her conviction for heroin smuggling when she was 18, I know about her addiction to heroin for many years (they weren't scars from a house fire), I know about her real age (9 years away from what she told everyone), I know about her real name, I know about the three (at least) previous lives across the US with the aliases and invented backgrounds, I know.....lots....

Wow, that's a lot to process!

Tell me about it. And that's not the worst thing I know (which wasn't even to me).

What was that? Or do I not want to know?

When pretending to be Jewish in New York she worked as an au pair (two years before we met). She got pregnant by the father and returned to California to have the baby.

She aborted the pregnancy, but didn't tell the father or any of her New York friends.

A friend in California was pregnant at the time so she faked her belly in photos and even posed in a hospital gown in a hospital bed with the new born. She sent all of these to the father and blackmailed him for eight years into paying for a child that never existed.

When she died the first thing her New York friends asked about was how the child was. I had to break it to them gently, which wasn't how I was feeling at the time.

Okay, that's cold. How did you deal with all of this?

I drank lots. I did a lot of 'paying to talk to someone who nods' therapy. I wrote everything that happened in a book. I cried a fair amount too.

Are you okay now?

No, of course not, but I am better. I still need to talk to people, to feel some empathy with someone, which is a strain on people who didn't even know you a year ago. I've probably annoyed most of them, but not enough that they're not my friends.

It's given me a sense of perspective I didn't have before. Not to the same level anyway. I help people more now for sure.

Have you found someone else?

Ha ha ha. No, but I don't half miss cuddling.

Having said that - this last year has helped me heal a lot. Am I ready to risk being hurt again? I don't know but I'm not adverse to giving it a try. And I couldn't say that two months ago.

Are you going to start doing this properly again?

Well this post is enough for a month's worth normally. It's been good to write this down though, it all helps a little. I think I may just be inspired to keep this up.

At the end of the day we never know what the future may bring, and that's a super-positive outcome.

We got married.

She got iller and iller.

She committed suicide in November 2013.

She turned out to be a lying, cheating whore (literally). Great.

We move on.

Ding dong the witch is dead!

Or some other song about bells. Whatever.

Anyway, I got engaged to Mrs RS. Who will become officially Mrs RS. Just to clear up any confusion.

She's a huge fan of the game Bioshock and works for the company that made it. I don't do normal so went behind her back and contacted her boss about six months before this. Together we planned an event and I had a special ring made in the same theme.

Keeping this a secret was hard and getting everything in place without her guessing was the challenge of a lifetime. So we 'unexpectedly' found ourselves in a hotel in london for no particular reason, and I 'knew' a restaurant we could go to where a couple of hollywood types had been flown in specially to perform and record. Having this filmed was the quid pro quo for this entire fantastic event.

So with little further ado, and apologies for those that don't actually know what I look like. You may wish to look away now.....

Most awkward moment of my life

What can I say, I'm a natural in front of the camera :(

Plus, try eating a meal in a normal fashion (when you could throw up at any moment) without attracting suspicion.

This went mildly viral for a bit. The internet isn't very nice :(

Hello

I'm sorry I've been away. I very nearly gave up on this entirely.

That's not true. I did give up.

I got tired of people at work ratting me out. I got tired of people I respect but slightly fear (Stalker girl is now a famous artist apparently, which is nice) still reading something that in part I felt personal. Though of course it wasn't personal because it was in the public domain and I placed it there. Mea Culpa all the way down to the gutter.

I love life. I hate life. I live with a terminal patient. Only I don't, because we're 8,000 mile apart. Again.

I create. I destroy. I have direction. I get lost.

I'm very lost now.

Quest

I know I've been away, lord I know (in an amazingly atheistic use of 'lord' obviously).

But I'd like to share with you a couple of things. One of which is this frankly disturbing study. The bit that scares me the most - 14% of americans think that evolution is definitely true. 14%.

14%

Fourteen mother fucking percent. I'd be ashamed to considered English if that was the case over here.

I did particularly like that 'with about one in five adults still undecided or unaware of the issue', Unaware of the issue. Not even I could make that up.

Anyway - creationist bashing aside - I was involved in a discussion today about the office rottweiler. An extremely objectionable 'consultant' (i.e. mate of the director desperate for cash) that has few redeeming features.

A colleague recounted how he'd gone to make a cup of coffee and been cornered in the kitchen by said rottweiler who had tried his best to appear personable.

Or as I put it, in a moment of derogatory genius, 'he gave you the full wattage of his charm lamp'.

Now that, ladies and gentleman, is a great phrase. And surprisingly enough I seem to have made that up entirely as I can't find a match on google.

So your mission, should you choose to accept it, is to find a way of using this phrase in normal conversation. Let's get it out there because it deserves to be in normal use.

Let's make the internet rule :)

Boo!

Things that no human should endure before they're 40. Part 1.

White nasal hair.

Hi

A small amount of time has passed since I last posted.

I suppose I should feel bad, but to be honest I'm not sure how much I feel of anything anymore. Let's get the facts out of the way:

a) Mrs RS is currently in remission
b) Mrs RS still has an unhealed leg wound from last year that will 'most likely never heal'. She undergoes extremely major surgery the week after next. This will either finally sort it or cripple her for life.
c) Mrs RS is still in the US and I am not.

I'd love to say that I have a shite life or that woe is indeed me, but that's bollocks. Countless people have worse lives than me. Countless.

But in contempory circles? Well, then the last 18 months has been possibly the most fraught and stressful of my life - and that's a poor refelction of what Mrs RS has had/has to go through. I am however her rock, her anchor to a place and life that isn't trying to kill her, and therefore I bear the brunt of a lot of it. My life is centred around supporting her because she is a part of me, and I will not let that change. This has left little of me over to engage with the rest of life. It has not just been this place that has lacked my attention.

I run a short fuse nowadays, which for those that have known me for a long time is unprecedented. I even managed to be formally warned for 'shrugging in an offensive manner' at work. No, that isn't a joke either. Work has slowly transformed from a farce to the early stages of the Fourth Reich and the main reason I stick around is not just the money, it's also the money.

I have friends at the coalface who keep me going, assisted for the last couple of months by beer (which tends to stop me stabbing people), but basically this entirely depressing update is to say:

1) I'm not dead
2) Mrs RS is not dead

Beyond that, the world is our oyster.

So this horse walks into a bar...

The title of this post is just about as close to a joke as you're going to get in here, so if you're expecting a good laugh then you'd probably be best to skip this entirely.

You may wonder why I stopped writing this blog and where I went for much of the last six months (or you may not, but seeing as you're reading this I'm guessing you do) and the simple answer is that there is no simple answer. My personal and professional lives walked off a cliff last summer and until now I've not been able to write about it.

Due to the fact that several of my colleagues have found my blog (due to idiocy on my part by leaving an unedited name in a post by accident and despite it being removed it showed up on google searches), I still can't talk about my situation there. Suffice to say that I still work at the same place and continue in 'gainful' employment, which is better than it could be. This will not be a permanent state of affairs however - and not through my choice.

With regards to my personal life I've equally been unable to write about it until now, as the details are/were not mine to share.

Around April and May last year Mrs RS had an infection in an old leg wound that progressed as far as cellulitis. After one of her blood tests as to why the anti-biotics weren't working, the particular doctor on duty informed her that she had a much higher white blood cell count than would be expected if she was just fighting the infection in her leg. He recommended a MRI scan, but seeing as she's not covered by the NHS for anything (we'd already run up almost £2000 in medical bills by this point) and they quoted us £3000 to perform one, we decided to wait until she was back home in California where she had medical insurance.

Roll on the beginning of August and Mrs RS had her MRI scan. I was immersed in work problems at the time so the wait before the results were known flew by for me, but I imagine they must have been torture for her. Finally we got the results at the end of August.

She has a brain tumour. Not just any old brain tumour either, a Primary Central Nervous System Lymphoma (or PCNS Lymphoma. Details here is you want to be ever so slightly scared). It's located just behind the frontal lobes on the left side of the brain, so as it got bigger it pressed on the frontal lobes causing dizziness and vertigo alongside uncontrollable mood swings and memory problems. At the same time her leg (which had never healed fully) was causing problems so the doctors decided to operate on it as well and cut out all the old scar tissue to replace it with one single scar.

August was not a good month. My days were divided into three portions; work, talking on skype and sleep. Ever tried to emotionally support someone with a terminal disease over the internet? My advice is thus - don't.

Before any decision could be taken about the treatment for the tumour, they first had to determine exactly what it was. If you haven't already figured this bit out, there is only one way to do this. It involves a drill and a small straw. Oh, and a pair of hair clippers.

Biopsy complete it was time to turn attention to the leg. Knowing that the likely outcome of the biopsy was going to be chemo and/or surgery to try and remove the tumour, her doctor decided to remove all the old scar tissue - almost down to the bone on her thigh - and staple it all together to let it heal quickly so that it would be done before any other treatment would commence. Surgery was booked for October, which was why I was over there to take Mrs RS for a holiday at the beginning of that month. Not long afterwards I started to crack around the edges and I stopped posting here. I have a great set of friends but even then I only told a handful what was going on out of a (not atypical for me) desire not to just offload all my problems onto someone else. Those I did tell were great and have helped me immensely. It wasn't easy to talk about though.

By this time they had her on steroids to 'slow the growth' and the results of the biopsy were as feared. It was going to have to be chemo to start with, once her leg surgery was complete. On the day of the surgery her doctor was held up in one of the other operating theatres for an emergency so a specialist surgeon came in, either didn't bother to read or deliberately ignored her doctor's recommendations, and hacked away with abandon before stitching (rather than stapling) the whole thing up.

The stitches split within a fortnight, leaving a four inch long wound that was three inches deep and now wide open. The surgery also left her with (possibly) permanent nerve damage from her back to her calf. On her next hospital visit the surgeon said 'yeah, I probably shouldn't have done that.' Of course, this is America so once you've signed the consent forms then you've no comeback at all. Charming.

The wound stubbornly refused to heal, so she was booked in to receive a Wound Vac as a last resort. While waiting for that she started three weeks of massive doses of chemo to 'soften it up should we need to remove it'. The chemo was supposed to shrink the tumour. Hopefully it would shrink it enough that surgery wouldn't be required, but it was an outside bet. Chemotherapy is a horribly blunt process (if better than it used to be) and it went as expected - lots of vomiting, aching and feeling terrible, followed by hair falling out.

No wait, I'm getting ahead of myself here. The Wound Vac was fitted around the start of the first chemo dose, but before it could be fitted they still had to deal with the infection after trying a number of anti-biotics with no great success. The last one they tried was in the week or so before chemo started (so, um, late November unless I'm getting confused). The day after starting the course she had one of her mood swings and wiped her tears to find that her hands were covered in blood. Looking in the mirror she could see that blood was running from her eyes and nose. Panicking (understandably!) that she was having a brain hemorrhage she frantically called her doctor. Apparently one of the side-effects of the anti-biotics is that it turns all your bodily secretions orange or red. Relief, but here's a tip doc - try fucking telling that to patients BEFORE they find this out themselves, especially with patients for whom staying calm is of utmost importance.

The anti-biotics did however work enough to allow them to fit the Wound Vac. I've seen the process now and it's disgusting (I am squeamish though), although probably less so than the canister attached to it holding two days worth of drainage from the wound.

Sorry, hope you weren't eating just then.

Chemo finished the week before Christmas with the final MRI on Christmas Eve. Christmas was, as usual, crap and depressing. At least I had a good reason to feel like that this time. I spent it on my own feeding turkey to the cat.

We got the MRI results the day after Boxing Day and for once it was some good news - the chemo had shrunk the tumour enough that the risks of surgery outweighed any potential benefits. The tumour is still there, but she's in remission for at least six months. If six months is all we get then so be it, but at least we'll try and make it a worthwhile time.

Right now I'm in California looking after Mrs RS for three weeks. The wound is slowly closing but it might take a couple more months to fully close. Once that is done then the plan is for her to come back to the UK for a while to complete here recovery - memory problems are still there, as are the uncontrollable emotion swings, and the nerve damage is the most debilitating thing right now. It's very frustrating for someone with an IQ over 160 to be struggling to multiply 5 by 6 anymore. She knows the answer, it just won't crystallise in her brain. These functions are supposed to come back in time and her memory is starting to work again in dribs and drabs. I can't do anything other than try and calm her down when she gets frustrated and upset.

Things will be better. I believe that. There'll be regular MRI scans to give us warning if it's growing again and, well, if it is then we've done it once so we'll do it again. I will not let this take her life and ruin mine, not without a fight.

And if it does, then I'll reverse my long-standing atheism, prove there is a divine being and then kick it firmly in the bollocks.

Twice.

Sad

I'm home now after 3,800 miles of driving around the pacific northwest over two weeks. At times it was a fantastic holiday and some great photos will likely appear when I can get them.

However something, as always. overshadows this. I can't talk about it explictly as it's not my choice to. Either way my life is continuing behind a facade that is slowly crumbling. I try, I really try to care about things but I can't anymore.

I just can't.

Life shouldn't be about fucking memories, it should be about hope, excitement, joy - anything other than blind obedience to the party line that we all 'had a good innings'. It shouldn't be about what we did, what we lived through, who we once saw, who we saw do what. It should be about who we are. What we're going to do. Where we're going to go.

It should be but it isn't.

I have to be strong. I have to avoid the reality of the situation and be strong. I'm a thousand tonnes of rock supported by the sheer willpower of a thousand matchsticks. I cannot break, or rather I cannot break externally. I cannot allow it.

I may never return here, for which I apologise. Know only that I would not do this lightly.

On the other hand, I might be back next week. Keep 'em guessing and all that.

Evening...

I'm currently in the states visiting Mrs RS, so I'll update as and when I can get near a computer (we're road tripping from California to Seattle).

I'll stop being cynical when the world stops being shit.

I have somewhat of a reputation at work for being cynical. So much in fact, that it was proposed that a 'Cynical Jar' was introduced so that anyone being cynical had to put a pound in it.

I just said that someone would probably just run off and steal the money before it could be used for anything useful, so what was the point?

The idea didn't get raised again. Which just goes to show that cynicism conquers all.

Or so I thought, because my place of work has managed to defeat by massive cynical streak by simply being worse than I could have possibly imagined.

How can you be cynical about something that couldn't actually be any worse? I find myself de-cynicalised, a feeling probably akin to waking up to find yourself strangely missing a hand.

And so, in a mild turn-up for the books, I've gone from acid-drippingly cutting for a couple of months to actually quite happy today. How can I not be happy? I was right. They really were doing that. They really are going to do that thing that even a lobotomised goat-fucker would think twice about. I have no power so I can't stop them doing these bollock-numbingly stupid things, so I may as well go with the flow and enjoy the ride.

If I was on the Titanic I'd be popping open the champagne right now. After all, when there's no tomorrow, who picks up the bill?

Squirrel Wisdom

What doesn't kill you only makes you stronger, apparently.


Lies.

Goddamn it...

I was pretty much going to post this last night but got 'sidetracked', and then I woke up to find that the Daily Mash had done it in a probably funnier way anyway.

So, imagine I wrote this and then come back and tell me how great I am.

Cheers.

If you ask me no questions...

Having been a very bad blogger this year (although in my defence I have some justification for not being online as much), I'm starting to catch up a bit. Only 276 of your blog posts still to read. Piece of cake.

Hmmm.....cake....

Talking of which, a department of the NHS (or Commie Pinko Conspiracy To Leave You Destitute to you Americans) has recently been offering quite large sums of money to anyone who can think of a way to reduce hospital admissions by 30% over two years.

Now that seems quite a drastic reduction in a mere 24 months, until you think about the actual requirement here, which is to reduce admissions by 30%.

Therefore my solution is thus;

Narrower doors.

Bear with me here. You see about 30% of the population are dangerously overweight/obese, and that causes health problems both in the short-term and the long-term. So by simply shrinking the size of all the entrances, no fat person would be able to get in - and if they can't get in then they can't get admitted.

Obviously it's not that simple. For a start, simply changing all the doors wouldn't remotely eat up the huge budget allowed for this, and I'm all about reducing waste. So the next step would be bars on all the ground floor windows to stop an enthusiastic fatty rolling himself through one. I don't think we need to worry about any of the other floors because obese people don't use ladders.

Then we'd change the signs. Doors would now be known as 'Fatty Portals', and to use up the last bit of free cash we'd put up a few inspirational posters like these:



It couldn't possibly fail....


Obviously I jest, but it does highlight the problem with not setting the requirements of a project properly. I have to suffer this on a daily basis as someone who actually does 'the work' on a project. Too often we get ill defined requirements from a customer, deliver exactly that, and then spend the next six months changing it to be what they could've had to start with if only they'd told us what they effing wanted in the first place.

As an example, I have in my inbox a requirement for which I have to provide an estimate of the effort required to complete it. The requirement in its entirety is:

Show statistics on the web

Now that could take ten minutes or ten years depending on how you define 'show', 'statistics' and 'web'. In fact, knowing this particular client, the definitions of 'on' and 'the' are probably up for interpretation too. Whatever estimate I come up with, however, will not be allowed to change and I will be crucified for over-shooting it, yet a realistic (and therefore large) estimate will mean the work goes elsewhere. Joy.

So all of the above is really a roundabout way of saying that I'm off on a Requirements Gathering course next week so won't be around (not that anyone would particularly notice at the moment!). I shall be educated in asking the right questions at the start of a project to make sure the usual problems are not faced. I presume the questions are:

'You want what?'
'You want it when?'
'Are you fucking insane or what?'

Have a nice week y'all.

Is the Pope catholic?

Well, yes he is - and he's a freeloading old bastard as well - but as rhetorical questions go that's probably one of the better examples.

The best example however, is definitely today's Daily Mail frontpage. Regular readers will know of the general disdain I hold for all staff, journalists or readers of that hideous rag, but today is a new highlight.

So without further ado, here it is (with helpful zooming in for those hard of squinting):



Now, let me think about it for a second......

A question.

In your lifetime you've probably - many times - heard (especially if you're English) someone say "There's always someone worse off!"

Have you ever wondered if you're the person they're talking about?