Saturday 27 December 2008

Trials & Tribulations: Happy 2009

I just hope It"s a better year than 2008. Personally it"s been a horrible year. My oldest friend whom I"ve known for nearly 28 years died back in June so I"m going to pay a little tribute to him here:
I was actually ill in bed with a virus, when I got a phone call from his dad saying that he had a fall, banged his head on the pavement & later died in hospital from the injury he sustained. He"d hurt his head only a few weeks earlier. I immediately realised that he"d had a seizure. [he suffered from epilepsy] I just couldn"t take it in. Luckily, I was better by the time of the funeral & met all these people that I"d never seen before from his home town of Chesterfield. I could talk to them straightaway which shows human beings are brought together when they"ve suffered the same loss.
He was one of the most warm hearted people I"ve ever known so will be greatly missed by me and many other people, especially his mum, dad and his many relations from Chesterfield.

Saturday 13 December 2008

Trials & Tribulations - Walking the dog

I don"t think I"ve mentioned the dog in the picture. You"re maybe wondering who he is. Well he"s not actually my pet. He belongs to the next-door neighbour & his name is PJ although I call him boysy. I take him out regularly because the elderly neighbour can"t manage him herself.
Trouble is, he likes to gallop like a raging bull even when he"s on the lead. When he"s just walking he walks too fast, pulling me along aswell if he can get away with it. There is a field that I go to so I can let him off. but he sees other dogs & runs up to them to try to make friends. He never fights them as he"s very placid but other dogs can get nasty. The owners have been great so far [touch wood] but I know some can be funny.
I once took him in the pub but he won"t settle & starts misbehaving yelping & jumping about. He always wants to keep on the move even when I stop to talk to someone but I still love taking him out - that"s why I called this blog "Mans Best Friend"

For more on PJ & dog handling in general click here:
By T.R.Dunn @copywright 2008

Friday 5 December 2008

Trials & Tribulations - The Dating Game

I know this is quite a tricky subject, but I like to try to be very open about things which happen in mine and I"m sure in some of your lives aswell.
Just recently, I had a message from one of those social networking sites from a woman [won"t mention her name] looking for a serious relationship & gave me her yahoo mail address.. I nearly didn"t reply but as I was getting on a bit [I, always the oppotnistic type] replied and we exchanged a few mails. It turned out that she had a South African mother & a Turkish father. I got a sob story that her mum had died in 2001 so she came over here to study bio chemistry at Guilford University in Surrey. Her dad had gone back to Turkey.
Trouble was, she said that she wasn"t in the country at the time. She had gone to see her grandma in Nigeria. I being the sympathitic sort lent a "distant" sholder to cry on. She was saying that after reading my profile page she hoped that I would be her kinda man & she also sent me photos, which were very nice "seriously" Anyway, her mails grew increasingly intense [almost like extracts from a Mills & Boon novel] which basicly said that I was the man whom she wanted to spend the reast of her life with. Of course I was by this point flattered - & replied that no-one had ever said things to me like that before - arrrhh!
Anyway, the second from last mail said that she was due to catch a plane to the UK but realised that she had mislaid her pastport on the way to the airport. She then returned home & amasingly, it was there. She them found out that she"d missed the plane and would need a new ticket - here"s the catch, she needed £450 for a new ticket & to revalidate her passport and asked if I could help out. I replied saying that the ticket could be used to catch another plane & could I have her number so we could speak. The last mail that I got said that she didn"t have a contact number. Immediately, I smelt a rat. How could anyone be on the internet without a phone line? [If I"m wrong, feel free to email me] In any case how could I send money to someone whom I"d never met. I grew suspicious & emailed the website where we first met. They replied saying that her profile was due to be [or already had been] suspended. So that usually means that she must have "spammed" loads of users. I then cottoned on that he or she must"ve been copied & pasted the same email to lots of people with just their names altered. This is apparently easy to do. I mention "he" because for all I know, she could have been a sad short fat baulding man with no friends trying to pull a scam. I"ll never know the real truth and I obviously never fell for it. I think the moral of the story is: "Don"t get sucked into a relationship online".