:: Hum-drum, Pedigree Chum... ::

One thing off my mind, I suppose. Pet Foods is, to all intents and purposes finished. Good riddance to it - I don't anticipate being at this company long enough to enjoy the delights of dog treats in Bulgaria next year. What with Hyp and Taxloss currently relaxing on the sofa watching Des & Mel freelancing/looking for work, I'm inclined to consider my options on the work front. As my job has drifted from being mildly diverting to mind-numbingly dull, and my boss has refused to address the issues raised in my appraisal 9 months ago ("lack of challenge", "no variation", "boredom"), I think it's probably time for me to move on too. The only problem is the easy visibility of my computer screen - I'd rather not let the boss see I was scanning the Grauniad job pages for gainful employment when I should be researching some obscure brand of Moroccan processed cheese.

The weekend was something of a non-thriller. Having been out on Thursday with Tigger and La Gribouilleuse, I opted for quiet relaxation and garden clearance. A slight frisson of annoyance hit on Saturday afternoon when I arrived back (from feeding La Grib's cats) to discover a letter sellotaped to my bedroom door. It was from the landlord relating of his "painful disappointment" after the visit of an estate agent the previous week. Without the statutory 24 hours notice, the landlord asked for an agent's inspection to take place on that day. I muttered that neither of my housemates was at home but that if - as he claimed - this was purely to inspect the kitchen (finished almost a year ago), this was fine. In the letter, the landlord claimed that the house was reportedly "filthy, inside and out and not fit for normal living". Whilst I would readily concede that the front "garden" was very messy (I sorted the situation out immediately), the fact that the agent had appeared at half an hour's notice was ludicrous. Of course the house was not fit for viewing (to prospective buyers). The bedrooms were all messy (clean washing on bed and CDs on floor in my case). The kind of wheedling sentiment expressed in the otherwise offhand and impersonal letter was outrageous. This was coming from the man who was too cheap to replace the grubby lino when the kitchen floor was concreted last year - the ill-fitting old one has several recalcitrant stains which bleach will not remove. Rather than retreating behind some mealy mouthed excuse, why didn't he simply call up a week before and say he's thinking of putting the house on the market - could we make the house presentable?

The net result of the situation is that Gawain J and I are thoroughly pissed off with the management of the property - why in three weeks has the broken freezer not been repaired/replaced? We've now had to throw away at least £50 worth of food. As any fool who gets duped into watching a house-buying programme knows, presentation is very important when potential buyers come round. Other than our general messiness, the drab dark blue carpets in the hall and the ghastly dingy brown lounge suite hardly present an attractive proposition. These furnishings are entirely the responsibility of the cheap-arsed landlord... So, we might be moving too, but not too far away. The main problem would be how to move that fuck-off grand piano out of the front room.

No apologies for the paucity of pix. I can't be bothered with b3ta today and must have used up my internet quota on making sure that we'd won the cricket.

I leave you with a delightful insight into Jude Law's early morning motions from my current Link Of The Day - "Sometimes I think I’m the luckiest man alive. Then Sadie gets up, and I remember."

Toodle-pip!