Painting at midnight! No, not me, of course.

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Of course, there is a huge difference between me and him and between living with him and living with V.

For certain things, he has to do them NOW!

I’m more of a ‘OK that’s enough, the rest can be done later’ type of person.

He phoned me about 9.45.  He asked if I had taken the dogs out.  I hadn’t.  He had been to IKEA.  The light from the bathroom (if you’re a long-term reader of this blog you may remember the ‘incident’ from a year ago) is nearly falling off.  It needs replacing.  He had bought a new light.  He’s going to get someone to fix it properly.  Plus he got some other things.  It will all go towards making the flat ‘just perfect’ for our visitors on Boxing Day.

He said he was coming with the car and to come down and collect the stuff.  Just after 10 I took the dogs out.  I had been pretty busy all evening, clearing out the cupboard and the old fridge (destroyed by Piero) and reorganising (and a bit of cleaning) ready for the new fridge.

I didn’t put everything away again because I needed to discuss it with him.  I also needed to discuss some other things – like the money I owed him and the fact that I have invited a couple to use his flat over the Christmas period.  I mean, I know he’ll be fine about it but it’s to let him know.

He went to drop off the car at the office and then came straight to me.

He looked at the reorganised kitchen.  The wall behind where the cupboard HAD been was not painted.  He decided it must be painted.  My heart sank.  It was already 10.45 and I really did need to go to bed.  This is the point at which I would have said ‘OK well let’s see what can be seen after the new fridge comes’ – because it is much taller and, I suspect, the unpainted part of the wall will be covered by it.

But, as I know, once he has some idea about organising or cleaning or decorating, it is quite useless to try and talk him out of it.  It’s better to just let him get on with it.

I said that I was really sorry but I had to go to bed.  He understood.  Or, rather, he said he understood.  Telling me to go to bed more than once (whilst I was preparing coffee for the morning, cleaning my teeth, preparing my clothes for the morning, etc.)  He started painting and I went to bed.  I forgot to tell him to leave everything and I would put the cupboard and old, destroyed fridge back in the morning.  I decided that this was not quite the right time to talk about all the other things.

And this morning, everything was clean and tidy.  Everything was done.

Since I started writing this post, the new fridge has been delivered and cleaned by him and he has gone to work.

Tonight, before Christmas cards are started (see the new stamps below), I will put everything back.

And we have a new way of stopping TBP (That Bastard Piero) from getting to the plug and destroying the new one so, hopefully, it shouldn’t happen again.

In the meantime, I must try and remember to tell him about the friends that might come, the fact that I might not be able to get a Christmas tree and some other things like that.

 

Do you want your kids to be gay?

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David Davies, some homophobic Conservative MP (well, MP for Monmouth, actually) has suggested that

“most parents would prefer their children not to be gay”

As a result, there has been all sorts of articles and people attacking him.

Sorry, but, as a gay man, I agree.  Why would anyone WANT their child to be born to be discriminated against?  I mean to say, if they are gay is one thing but you wouldn’t actually want it – in the same way that you wouldn’t WANT your child to be blind or deaf from birth.

Of course, in reality, it’s a sad reflection on society as a whole but, unusually (and probably a first), I agree with him.  I’ve seen too many gay people who are unhappy with how they are – not because they are gay, per se, but because they have found it difficult to ‘fit into’ a world full of gay-bashers, gay-haters and a general feeling of being unwanted.

The fact that he’s said this, of course, should mean that he backs the gay marriage thing – if only to make this preference disappear (or, at least, be reduced).  Sadly, he doesn’t heed his own words and, instead of a reflection of (a bad) society he treats it as a good reason to oppose gay marriage.  MPs should be about making society better not trying to make it worse.

Oh ….. wait …. stupid me.  MPs have never really been about that, have they?

Meanwhile, the will we/won’t we debate about gay marriage rumbles on …….. and on ……

It’s worse than pulling teeth.

Transferring the site ….. and other things

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4/12

Well, it was all going rather well in day 2 of the GREAT MOVE.

I found that, on the new hosting company, I can work on it without it being ‘live’ – meaning the existing one can remain in place.

Except ……..

It seems that the SQL database I am using is, in fact, the existing SQL database!

WTF?

But, it seems a slightly bastardised version of the existing SQL database.

Time for a break whilst work takes over.  And then we shall see.

Update 1:  The support team at the new hosting company assure me that I have must have restored it/transferred the data otherwise, what I am experiencing “is not possible”.

However, I think it may have something to do with the fact that I created an alias in order to set up the blog before cutting the old one.

But, and this is where the really worrying bit comes, am I looking at the old database or the new one?  If the new one, how can the data have come across when I haven’t, as yet, tried to restore it?  If the old database, then how am I able to look at it if they are held on different servers?  And, what will happen when I cut off the old one?  Will the old database and the new database disappear?

And, even more worrying is: How safe is the data if it can “suddenly” appear in the “new” database without me having done anything?

Bugger.

Update 2 – 10/12:

We’re almost a week on from the above.  Nothing has changed.  My blog is still being hosted on the other servers.  However, today I found something that said it would be easy, so I updated the nameservers (pointing the blog to the correct, new servers), killed the database, restored the database from a backup and checked it was OK and, finally, transferred all the WP files from the backup I created.

Perfect.

Except, of course, not quite.

Not quite as in it didn’t work.  I checked all the passwords, made small adjustments where I found errors and ……..

Still problems.

Then, I suddenly remembered that, the reason I was going to do this at home, last weekend, was that home was where the full file download was.  Here, the copying of files kept timing out – at home, it was fine (except for 3 files).

So, now I can do nothing, until I get home.

So, given the fact that it was a long weekend you may ask why I didn’t do it.  Well, Friday, I did other things, including booking the meat for Christmas and Boxing Day and wandering around looking for presents.  Actually, having wandered around, I found some things but, in the end, I didn’t want to buy them because, for me, now, Christmas Eve is the time for these things and I really wanted to come back on Christmas Eve and do it.  Nowadays this is part of what makes Christmas great.

I did pop into Euronics to see if they had a turntable (the main present for F) as I couldn’t wait for Christmas Eve for this.  They didn’t but, whilst I was there, I looked at televisions (F wants to get me one for Christmas) and fridges (as mine is very old and, sooner or later, will die.)

Saturday, during the day, was mostly spent searching for, researching about and phoning around for the said turntable.  The one I wanted which was supposed to be ‘arriving soon’ at a very local shop, was, in fact, not arriving, they told me.  It was not arriving because it hadn’t been ordered.  However, I could have a different one for only a couple of hundred Euro extra.  I told them I’d think about it.

Then, on another site, I found one.  Not the one I had been looking for exactly but, whilst researching, it seemed that Technics was the make to go for and this was a Techincs.  I phoned them.  They had 2.  And, yes, they would be open on Sunday.

Sunday morning came and, after breakfast, I went to get it.  Perfect.  Whilst waiting for the bus back to town, I saw that someone had posted some crap post about me being 40% happy and thought, “You know nothing”.

And then I got home.

I had forgotten to put the chair against the power lead to the fridge.

Piero had part-chewed through the wire and, somehow, managed to short it without killing himself.  So, now I had no fridge.  I told F and we ended up at Euronics where, for Christmas he bought me a new fridge (to be delivered on Wednesday) and we (together) bought a new telly, which we took home straight away.

But, obviously, to put it up, we had to clean behind where the telly is.  And, so, in the end, I didn’t sit down at the computer until about 5.30 – which was too late to do the move.

So Sunday, was, in the end, a mixed day – although I would say that I was still more than 40% happy, maybe I wasn’t quite 100%.

So you still have to wait to read this.  I hope that, by tomorrow, all will be, more or less, back to normal.

Update 11/12

So, now it’s back up and running and almost done.

Of course, it didn’t quite go as planned.  I got home and uploaded the files.

Except, some were missing and I had no idea until I uploaded them.

So then I had to bugger about this morning – uploading new WordPress files, uploading the ones from work that I had deleted and then resetting the config again.

I did think it was going to be a real pain but, in fact, once I’d done that, all was OK.  Now to fix the picture at the top and we’re done.

Thank goodness.  And, just in time for Christmas too.

I’ll be along to view your blogs and catch up as soon as I can.

Ciao

Nearly there, I think …….I hope.

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Of course, it’s not really finished at all. But we’re getting there. Saturday was the lounge. Now, all that MUST be done before Christmas is the bathroom, which is not an easy room to do.

Still, bless him, even if it’s for him really.

The pictures were put back up – but in an order he likes – all neat. It does look better, of course, and it is the kind of thing he does for a living, so it’s easier for him.

But it was the whole day on Saturday. I shall be quite glad when it’s all finished and I can have Saturday’s to myself again.

It would be the main drawback about living together. No real time to myself. And I never thought I’d ever think like that.

But, from something that happened last week, I’m now pretty sure that he has taken to ‘living’ with me and using his place as more of a ‘private studio’. So, if we did move in together, we would have to have at least one or two more rooms.

He doesn’t want to get the tree until about the middle of December. Although he loves the tree and decorations, he doesn’t really like the ‘mess’ that goes with it.

I’m going to cook chicken this Christmas because he’ll eat that (or, at least, he’ll eat the breast). And, assuming that P&A will come on Boxing Day, I’ll do Roast Beef with all the trimmings.

I have to be honest, I am really looking forward to Christmas.

Killing children cannot be justified.

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Imagine, if you will, that I am walking along the road when a child throws a very large firework at me.

It misses but explodes nearby.

Would it be right to go over to that child and punch him so hard that he falls to the road, banging his head and dying as a result?

If you would answer ‘yes’, then read no further.

So, imagine this, then.

A man, pushing his child in a pushchair, throws a rock in the air. It comes crashing onto the windscreen of my car as I’m driving, narrowly missing me but making me swerve and smash the car into a wall. The car is a write-off but, apart from some bruises, I am OK.

I get out of the car.

Should I, at this point, take out the iron bar from my car and walk over to the man and hit him on the head several times until he is dead?

As a consequence of this, by the way, the bar accidently falls on the child in the pushchair, caving in his/her head and killing him/her instantly.

Am I right to do this? Again, if you answered “yes”, please don’t bother to read any further.

If, however, you answered “no”, then you may understand my feeling when an Israeli man, who has proven to be an arrogant misogynist, sent an email to a female I know, saying that they should think themselves lucky because “on the bright side – no one is firing rockets on you – now you see how life are pretty good”.

I so wanted to be able to reply that, unfortunately, there were children in Gaza where the rockets were killing them. I wanted to say that, as far as I am aware, no one has died in Israel in the last few days – but a number of children have been killed in Gaza.

It makes my blood boil.

I’m sorry but I don’t believe you can EVER justify any act where a child is killed – especially when the act that killed them was, in any way, an act of revenge.

Piero is nearly as big as Dino!

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Piero has grown.

In fact, everyone who hasn’t seen him for more than about a week comments on how fast he has grown.

And he has. His shoulders are now just a few inches below Dino’s. He hasn’t got Dino’s bulk (not that Dino is fat, jut muscled) nor power but he’s working on it. The games of ‘tug’ that they have every night prove this.

Piero is still very ‘cute’ though, even if he is nearly the same size.

And it got me to thinking about whether Dino was this big when he was seven months old. I thought I might have commented on it in the blog so went back a way to see if I could find out. I didn’t find it. Instead, what I found was the end of V and I (Dino was just about 10 months old at the time). I should go back, from time to time, to see what was happening then.

For example, I found the post where I had been to see the flat that I am now living in.

I found some posts that were quite well written. But then, a tortured mind seems to a requisite for good writing. Perhaps I should randomly go back and have a look at some posts I wrote? It’s interesting to see the change from a different year. After all, this blog has been going for nearly 7 years now and a lot of things have changed in those seven years.

Anyway, back to Piero.

He is cute, he is much bigger, he is more affectionate, he is very, very playful and he is a right little bastard.

But wonderful too.

However, Dino is still the best dog ever.

But I love them both, just the same. And, as my friend C, from London, wrote recently, F REALLY loves the dogs. So all is well.

Two dreams

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I had two quite strange dreams last night.

The first involved a famous footballer. Not a specific famous footballer, you understand and, yet, I suppose he could have been David Beckham.

Don’t get me wrong, David is quite good looking but not really my type. And it wasn’t really David as this guy had some hair on his chest. How do I know this, well, because he was naked and lying/sitting on the bed, propped up on the pillows.

But this vision was, in fact, a flashback, whilst I was telling someone about it and insisting that ‘nothing happened’ because I really wasn’t interested which, if you’ve heard David speak, you may understand. His manly frame is not upheld with his, frankly, pansy voice.

Even more weirdly, his wife or girlfriend was also there – lying over the corner of the bed (but clothed, obviously)!

The second dream was, indeed, more weird and just a little horrific and I think it was this one that made me wake up.

I would suggest that if you’re a little bit squeamish or don’t eat meat, you stop reading here.

No, honestly, this is going to be terrible for you.

In fact, this will be quite terrible for anyone.

So, stop reading.

Please?

You won’t like it.

Really you won’t.

I didn’t and it was MY dream!

Well, if you’re still reading it then either you’re mad or you don’t care and can watch the most horrible of horrible of movies.

And so,

It starts with me sitting with an animal (like a baby calf or a baby pig) lying with it’s head resting on my lap.

Continue reading →

A no-painting Saturday

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There was no painting because, until Saturday evening, there was no F, being as he was in Germany.

I went to pick him up from the airport, with the dogs. Piero was sick on the way back. It was unexpected because, after the first couple of times, he was fine going to and from Carrara. Ah well, poor thing, I shall have to remember that he’s still a little bit dodgy when it comes to car travel.

However, they were very pleased to see him, as was I.

And, although nothing particular got done over the weekend, I quite enjoyed it and felt quite happy this morning.

Work soon changed that, even if I was busy this morning.

This weekend, apparently, will be the lounge.

Christmas is coming …..

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Further to my post about Amazon and my desire NOT to use them, I have to tell you that it’s actually quite difficult. I found a website – The Book Depository – who were independent – until being swallowed by Amazon. I ordered from them anyway. I found Powell’s – but it’s an American site.

It seems that Amazon have got the market pretty well stitched up. I’m still working on it.

But, back to Christmas presents. One thing was bought months ago. Unfortunately, he saw one of them in a shop abroad and said they were not that good. Oh well, it’s bought now.

Then there’s the turntable. This is proving more difficult. I have delved around the Internet and found a couple that are good contenders – but trying to find a shop (any shop) in Milan that might stock anything like them, is proving difficult. I may have found some but I’ll have to go and look. Luckily, they’re quite near my flat.

Then there is the problem of other things. In past years, buying DVDs or books means a trawl through the Amazon site but as I said above, I am making a concerted effort NOT to use them.

Then I shall buy him an Italian version of the movie “Up” – if I can find it. He liked the version I played to him – but it was in English and it would be better for him in Italian.

Other things must be thought of. But it’s difficult when every Saturday is the dreaded painting.

Last Saturday, it was the hall. But, I must admit, it’s looking a lot better. We reorganised the furniture so now it looks (and is) much larger.

He has been saying to people that he is looking forward to Christmas and having a tree and cooking (which he generally doesn’t like) and being with the dogs. Me too. I will buy the tree but, of course, he will decorate :-)

And the flat will be newly painted and very clean, of course.

But, for now, the getting of the presents is the most important thing.

And finding an alternative to Amazon would be good, if anyone has any bright ideas.