Jimmy Page’s Trousers

Popped away for the weekend.  Quiet time of it as I was a complete crock of a man.  I’d somehow managed to pull a muscle in my neck which meant that anything other than staring straight ahead and slightly downwards caused complete agony.  This is not really what you want on a weekend away with your wife.  To add to this neck discomfort, because I had to hold my head in this position all the time, those muscles in my neck and shoulders that were not pulled began to ache and complain at the lack of movement.

I’d also contracted a head cold that bunged up the old sinuses and had me, more than once, wake up from dreaming that I was suffocating.  Waking with a start when you’ve a pulled muscle in your neck is not to be advised.

A number of other ailments, too personal to go into, means that my weekend away might better have been spent in a wicker bath-chair, my legs covered with a blanket, being followed by an orchestra playing a Mahler adagietto.

Still, it’s a break, isn’t it?

P.S.  It wasn’t anything as exotic as Venice.  I was in Wexford.

My daughter, Baby Trousers (who may have to be renamed soon as she’s nearly three) has been a little uneasy at night of late. She’s normally a pretty good sleepy person but for the last month she’s been a bit troublesome getting settled and shouts for us in the night if she wakes up.

The other night, Mrs. Jimmy Page’s Trousers was putting her down. Baby Trousers was not keen on settling down and when quizzed as to why, she said “I will have sad dreams”. Dear God, if I’d been there I’d have climbed into the bed and hugged her until dawn but Mrs Jimmy Page’s Trousers is made of sterner stuff.

“No you won’t”, she said, “You will have happy dreams. You can dream that you’re on the beach with mammy and daddy and we’re throwing stones into the sea”.

With an extraordinary ability to see the cloudy side of any silver lining, my daughter replied in a sad voice, “But then the stones will be lost”.

I’m so proud.

I’ve been confused about something for the last couple of weeks. You see, the clever computer trickery that tells me how many people are visiting my site and, more relevantly, from whence they came has been rife with searches for one Emma Watson. All seem to be originating from MSN-type search domains and they’re along the lines of this:

http://search.live.com/images/results.aspx?q=Emma%20Watson%20hot&FORM=QBIR

This has been confusing as I had no idea who Emma Watson even was and, for this reason, I was pretty sure that I had never mentioned her. I did a search of my site to make completely certain and, sure enough, no Emma Watson. So what’s going on then?

After some slight detective work, I figured it out. It’s all a bit weird.

If you’re interested, you can paste the search URL into a new window and have a visual representation to follow. Be aware though, it does show pictures of girls. No really rudie bits or anything, but some readers might want to be careful anyway.

So, somewhere in the midst of this MSN image search for Emma Watson there is, for reasons unknown, a picture of The Lovely, Lovely Alyson Hannigan. Why this is there, I don’t know. I also don’t know why this picture of The Lovely, Lovely Alyson Hannigan might link to my blog either. Granted, I did make mention of The Lovely, Lovely Alyson Hannigan in this entry and I did include a link to an image of her. It was however, only a link. It wasn’t the image itself so I remain confused as to why the MSN image search thing is pointing people at a blog entry rather than at the actual image.

Anyway, in a selfless attempt to help all of the people (and there were a lot) searching for pictures of Emma Watson, I have tried changing my link to The Lovely, Lovely Alyson Hannigan’s photo to a different one. I’m hoping that the MSN thing figures it out eventually.

To be fair, this isn’t a completely selfless act. I noticed that my link wasn’t actually working properly. Also, I’m not entirely convinced that some of the people searching for images of young Ms. Watson are necessarily the type of visitors I’m after.

By the way, Emma Watson plays Hermione in the Harry Potter films. I’d probably have know that if I’d ever watched one.

Were I to believe in a god or supreme being of some kind, the sort of deity that watches over us and controls all around us (except, I understand, for our free will), I would be justified in thinking that said god was taking the piss.

It’s July for Christ’s sake (and yes, I recognise the irony of invoking the name of Christ given my opening paragraph but it’s more of a swearing thing than a religious one). What’s with the weather? I’ve been on my career break for over two months now and the last time I saw the sun for any length of time was out of the window in work. It’s rained for pretty much every day of the last two months. I had dreams of breakfast on my deck. Of expeditions to peculiar places. Of doing some work in the garden. Instead, I sit inside every day, looking at the rain dash off the window-pane, growing paler and paler until, some time in the near future, I’m sure I will resemble one of those weird white animals that live deep in caves and never see daylight. It’s not on.

I understand that even the Tennis has been vastly delayed by the rains. I’m guessing that it’s also been held up as the players sit, crying in their dressing rooms and discussing their Seasonal Affective Disorder with highly-paid sports psychotherapists.

Just a few minutes ago, as it seemed like there might actually be a few hours without rain, I dispensed with some of my house-husbandry duties. Out with the washing. Mmmmmm. Nice line-dried clothes, I thought. I ventured out, blinking nervously, to actual sunlight. Started popping the clothes on the line and, literally, before I was finished it started to rain. I didn’t even get them all on the line before the rain started. If that’s not taking the piss, I don’t know what is.

Give me a break, will you?

.

* I hate Mundy

Last week, I popped around to meet some of the crew from work (well, from when I was working and not career-breaking). Met for lunch and it was very nice to see them again. Despite my hating work and the company for which I do it, these particular few are a good lot.

Anyway, during the course of the lunch, I was told that they thought I was dead. Literally.

It seems that Dolphin-Skin, our manager broke the bad news to one of my colleagues in a meeting with her a couple of weeks ago. “I have to tell you that Jimmy Page’s Trousers is dead”, he said. “Apparently he died suddenly yesterday”. Needless to say she was a little surprised. She passed the news on to some other colleagues and they hugged and then sat in quiet reflection (I’m guessing) for a couple of hours until Dolphin-Skin came back and said he’d been misinformed.

There is (was), you see, another person working in Perdition Inc. with the same name as me. I know this as I sometimes got his emails by mistake. It seems that he was the one that died suddenly and not me. Dolphin-Skin’s manager had told him it was me and he told the others. Oddly, he apparently lived in the same suburb as me, further confusing people.  Weird, huh?

On the plus side, no more misaddressed emails.