My Thoughts Exactly

I arrive back home

2010-09-29T19:31:00.001+01:00

I get followed by straw through the house, like a slug does by slime. Camping, ugh, and drinking, ugh.

I am weary.

I bet you aren’t able eat ten slices of cake in a row, The Otter had wagered, flashing a shiny fifty pee pence.

I am able.

I push away cuddles. At any moment, I warn, I might poo myself or do sick, and I’m not sure I will be able to warn you which until I see it.

I am candid.

I bat away questions about my tent. Still there. Still in the field. Still leaking.

I am done with that.

I find myself being looked at intently by Mr Crow, who flaps ungraciously onto the lawn, as he will. I reach for the Graze box, select something rather plain, and toss it his way. He croaks cheerfully, ferrying food to wherever that place is.

I am depended on.

The Polymath

2010-06-29T01:38:00.001+01:00

My friend reaches across discipline, plucking ideas, events and folklore at will to pepper his conversation. Listening is a pleasure, contributing is daunting, and I wish I could make notes so I could pass off his effortless pansophy as my own at a later date. I drink lager, which emboldens me to stop doubting myself and loosens my tongue, and I manage one or two profound observations which make him pause with delight as he approves them, or failing that I make simplistic profane proclamations, which disarm him with charm and primitive logic.

I make my excuses, and get into bed.
"It's unfair," I text. "I am at heart and head a basic man, but one cursed with the awareness to realise this. He makes me panic that I am trundling along, ignorant, coarse, phlegmatic. I am the most learned person in this bed though, so this is where I am."
[I mentioned I’d been drinking lager]

The next day, my friend heads to Oxford, to try and convince a famous Don to take him on as a protégé. I drop him off ten miles outside of Oxford on the hottest day of the year – "It's a pig of a city to drive into, and you'll have fun, walking, hitching, whatever" – and return home, with a sense that Something Must Be Done, rather than disappearing down the plughole of fatuousness without even a struggle.

I pluck books off the shelves – "this is the tragedy, the books are already here, at your fingertips" – and start to devour them in the sun.
"This is the stuff: learning! Experience, wisdom; you can only coast along with them for so long without refuelling."
I remind myself of the horrors of Gallipoli, why I prefer Gladstone to Disraeli, Kubla Khan, whether I should become a humanist or if actually I am one already, and who is who in Darfur.

Eventually though, I find I lie on my back, and watch birds and clouds. My brain slows, like an unwound clock, and I contemplate my insecurities as the moment stretches out to a half hour. Claiming a thirst for knowledge is all good and well, but suppose if it were me heading to Oxford, really I know it would be an Inkling existence that I would seek out, dillydallying in meadows and writing silly stories. I see the cat lazing in the sun, and it's not the busy ants I envy.

And that night I text "and so my occasional hanker for study is swiftly quenched and ignored once more; ultimately I am a creature of decadence, unstrenuous cogitation, of indulgent solace. And for now, I am okay with that."
[I had drunk more lager]

Snip

2010-06-01T22:29:00.002+01:00

The slow moving traffic is afforded a grandstand view from which to inspect proceedings, as Darren leans over the railings outside The Saracen's Head [my apostrophe] and vomits onto the road. I wait patiently, watching the last of the sun glint on the tower of the Abbey.

It is, I reflect, early for vomiting.

The floodlights from the Recreation Ground are already on, lighting the sky to the east, and adding to the overall disorientating trial of drinking since two.

Disillusionment and debate followed our meeting, and were invited to join us in an early boozer appointment. The meeting had been chaired by a man from Resources, there to discuss our 8% paycut. Discussion in the form of a non-negotiable announcement, you understand. No, he tells me, I do not get to go home 8% earlier. A union representative gave a meek "hey, you still have a job!" smile, to which one can’t help but respond "harrumph".

We love our jobs. Not just because they give us money, not solely because it keeps us off the streets where we’d just cluttering the place fetching old ladies out of trees and helping cats across the road and all of that, but because – and we would never say this out loud, not for fear of sounding self-important, but because we are too cool for school – we think it matters, we think we help. We don’t want a creeping worry about our bank balances to govern what we give back, we don’t want to have to give over our standards and our moral code for a wage.

"Certainly not because of some bizarre American housing bubble with a hearty dash of economies based on invisible money, caused by some smug fuckwits somewhere wearing those cocking contrast collar shirts (or some cocking deck gear from Hackett's if it's the weekend), braying about how clever they were to be born with a silver spoon in their salivating rah gobs. They let their greed do this before you know, with the South Sea Company in seventeen, seventeen something or other I think, but they hadn’t quite managed to tie up the entire population’s finance into their endless pursuit of the wealth gap and their smarter-than-thee financial showmanship. None of which, you should know, I quite understand,” I said, and downed my beer.

"I can’t believe you are still angry about global finances," Darren had said, sensibly resigned. "Come Christmas, are you going to start getting angry about the Gulf of Mexico?"

Outside, Darren straightens up and I point.
"I told you there were sultanas in that pudding," I say, indicating towards the splatter of the puddle.
"What’s your beef with sultanas? Let sultanas be," says Darren, wiping his chin.

Sticks & Stones

2010-03-22T18:19:00.004Z

"Ow," I mutter as I fiddle in the dark with the lock on my hut’s door.

I have walked back from a bar where I’ve watched No Country For Old Men, and I felt some affinity as Llewelyn Moss drags his battered body across the Mexican border whilst Chigurh stitches his various wounds in a bathroom*.

My body voices wealth of complaints, a male voice choir of nags. A third degree burn on my ankle weeps – a result of an ill-advised dalliance with a petrol soaked flaming length of rope – whilst the remaining flesh around it, by the end of a day walking on it, is inflamed and swollen. Burnt shoulders – a difficult to avoid hazard of five hours of snorkelling – have resulted in rather unpleasant sweat blisters, which gross me out, and nips from territorial Trigger Fish provoked whilst diving pepper my body, which whilst not leaving any long term damage nor being especially painful at the time certainly hurt my feelings.

Oh, and I have been bitten by lots of flies. Oh, and scratched by coral. Oh, and stung by microscopic jellyfish (I assume).

I lock my door and whimper. Tomorrow I will be strong.

*Oh, Spoiler alert! That’s what I’m supposed to say** right?

** Oh… before I say the spoiler, not down here. I get it now.

Shed

2010-03-01T19:05:00.004Z

"You are 15lbs lighter," my futuristic scales announces,* and I clasp my hands in a fist and shake them in above my head in triumph. It is the lightest I have been since I was a 21-year-old lad with no grey hair and low on cares, and Darren at work – unprompted – says I look slimmer.** It has been a pretty intense five weeks, and all the women at work now hate me. More, I mean.

"What if," mutters a part of my psyche, "What if you’re too puny now?"

*it doesn’t really do this, but this writing device, if I may term it thus, allows me to indicate my weight loss without telling you either my current or former weight, which is just one example of the typical cunning I display on a frequent basis. Watch out, basically.

** Well, actually he says “your face is looking less fat than usual”, which manages to still be an insult.

Prang

2010-02-10T20:11:00.002Z

"I just fucking crashed my fucking car into a fucking bollard," I say as I enter the changing room, slamming my kit onto a bench.
"What, those ones as you come into the car park?" Darren asks, fumbling with his draw strings. I am too wound up to even accuse him of fiddling with himself, which is pretty much compulsory Advanced Changing Room Repartee.
"Yes," I sizzle.
"The little yellow ones? The ones on the left? The ones you can barely see?"
"Yes. What, have you done that too?"
"I nearly did, but then I didn’t because I’m not a twat."

After the match, Darren and I stand in the snow examining my dented front wing. Darren squawks with laughter
"You complete twat," he says, enjoying himself, perhaps thinking back to my lack of sympathy – nay, my triumphant crowing – a few months back when he rear-ended one of the bosses’ husband.
"Well, one of the positives about me being as old as you constantly like to remind me of, is that insurance companies no longer hate me, and I won’t have to pay a penny. Not like the £250 you had to pay when you rear-ended the boss's husband the other month." I raise my voice for that last bit. Making people feel bad about themselves makes me feel good about myself.

"I bet I crash the courtesy car," I muse.

Wear & Tear

2010-01-25T00:10:00.002Z

From the top deck, we track the advance of the bus as it wobbles and weaves up Whitehall, the midsummer rising sun starting to glint on the very top of Big Ben’s spire, the sky a heady mix of bright blues and pinks. Excitedly, we recount adventures which have left us with nowhere near enough sleep for the best part of a week, our backpacks contain clothes stained with beer and suntan lotion, and we have each received texts from separate 20-year-old girls saying they are waiting up for us in their respective beds in Kentish Town. They probably won’t even make us shower. Life is good.

As the bus tip toes through the crowds of people being ejected from clubs around Leicester Square, we see people we know, and we wave as they throw chips. At Tottenham Court Road, people we know get on and we chat. In spite of six days of booze, we make plans to go out the following evening. We own this city.

Eight years later, I stir my empty mind and puff my cheeks with fatigue as the bendy bus finally reaches inhospitable Stratford, and I look out at the grey twilight of a cold midwinter’s London dawn. My animated companion tries to talk to some girls, but at 7.15am he’s going to have to come up with something extraordinary to make any progress, surely? I will him to fail, mainly because I need to get to bed, pronto. I listen in, and he has perhaps passed the point of decipherability. I think "good".

Nowadays, I have a little mantra: know when to go home. Problem is, after my sixth or seventh drink, I don’t have a lot of time for receiving my received wisdom. And so, every few months, I try to do what I would have effortlessly done twice-weekly ten years ago, and experience weary despair at how much just one night of it pains me. I will be going to bed at 9pm for a week.

“Hey, look at you, fatso!” someone who hadn’t seen me for a year had said earlier that night.

Oh, lost youth.

Solstice

2010-01-01T20:22:00.003Z

I tuck into my third pint of Staropramen, and feel all becoming right with the world and warmth returning to my aching feet. We sit in the Red Lion at Avebury, having earlier spent three hours outside waiting for the sun to set and autumn to end. The bright late-autumn sun wasn’t able to lift the frost, ice or residual snow, and nor was it strong enough to prevent the cold being nothing short of painful as I nodded politely to wiccans talking about energies and waited for the shadows to creep round the anciently elegant sundial.

At that moment though, I am warm again, and ever so slightly drunk. All is well.

A ruddy-faced man in a high-visibility jacket prowls into the bar, bristling.

“Ooze blue Nissarn is thaa in the carr park?” he barks. “The carr park done shut an aar argo, an I’m freezing my nadgers out thur weeting.”

I settle back into my seat; this doesn’t involve me.

“Shit,” mutters my companion, and driver. She signals apologetically to the angry man, and I remember actually yes, it does involve me.

“Ye needs to move tha’ roight naw. Oi couldarv had tha’ toowed,” rants the angry man, meeting each apology with another tirade, before storming back out into the night.

We gather our things, and I sink my pint in a couple of gulps, increasing my slightly-drunk status to Dizzy. A barman who witnessed our telling off and is just finishing his shift kindly offers us a lift. It’s not far to walk, but we don’t like to think what the angry man might do if we keep him waiting any longer.

The barman’s car is frozen shut, and we strain fruitlessly, trying to open the doors. Eventually I pry mine open, lie across the front seats, bend my legs, and force the driver’s door open with my feet. We all leap aboard, and barman finds that, with his car needing to reverse up a slope, it is too icy for the car to do anything but rev loudly, and slide pathetically from side to side.

“I will get out and push!” I pronounce, a tactic I know to be futile even before I begin, my boots being unable to get anything like enough grip on the ground needed to afford any leverage. I am acutely aware that this kind offer of a lift is actually turning into a huge waste of time, and as I strain against the car’s weight, I think back to a psychologist I once knew who spent his days sat in an office in Bloomsbury devising ways to test people’s tendency to bloody-mindedly continue investing in a solution even when the costs had come to equal the benefits. I ponder on the mixture of the cold air, alcohol and exertion that is probably triggering these long unthought thoughts – it’s a funny old thing, the brain – and with a final push and exclamation of “The sunk costs fallacy! Arkes and Blumer!” I decree that the car – and the kindly barman – are going nowhere.

We trot along in the dark – the waxing crescent on a cloudless night not providing much light to see by – punctured by slips and squeals. Eventually the darker mass of the car looms in front of us, but not until we nearly crash into it. There is no time to deal with the frost, and we drive off, mostly blind.

“Don’t run over the angry man,” I suggest.

We see the angry man glowering by a gate. Still a bit drunk, I wind down my window to wave. He does not look at us.

Target Practice

2009-12-03T20:24:00.003Z

I stand by the water's edge, focusing on nothing and everything. I don't quite know what that means, but it is during fishing trips that I try out my metaphysical skills for size. A promised trip to see an ex-girlfriend has loomed until it is over me and has become one of those promises which either turns into one of my lies or something I actually manage to fulfil, and so I combine the grown-up apparent necessity of cordiality with a day's fishing enroute.

Above me, F-15s from the vast nearby USAF base crackle and snarl at one another, and I watch them roll and twist with each other, like dolphins on the blue ocean of the sky. The juxtaposition of the isolation of the fens with their roars is striking, and the water seems to occasionally ripple.

After a time though, they appear to be passing directly overhead with unusual frequency, and I begin suspect I am being buzzed. The lone man stood in the middle of nowhere would, I suppose, be quite a good marker to measure the accuracy of your manoeuvres by. However, the sensation of being that man is not dissimilar to the paranoia that people are sniggering at you. I try not to duck in case they see.

Worst of all though is, combined with my lack faith in both people and machines, the idea that maybe, for practise purposes, some sort of missile lock is on me. Would it be completely impossible for someone up there to make a terrible mistake? Those chaps are awfully good at blue on blues after all.

I ponder for a while though if "Man Killed Fishing On Suffolk Fen By US Fighter Jet Attack" would be a more satisfactory way to go than the usual same old same old. It would certainly be an interesting story.

I catch a slimy bream, and decide maybe it is time to be on my way.

Megalith

2009-11-21T01:15:00.004Z

We weave into a damp Avebury, my stomach still churning slightly from beer and whisky from the night before. It is Sanhaim – Hallowe’en if you prefer – and the village is packed. Hippies, Druids, Crusties, Bikers, Hikers, Pagans, posh kids dressed as skeletons, and two fairly hungover gentleman adorn the picnic benches outside the Red Lion pub on the road that mercilessly slices through the stone circle.

I really like Avebury. It humbles me hugely. Hundreds of stones would have stood here once, in amongst towering ditches, constructed over centuries, an insanely ambitious project spanning dozens of generations of people who would have had enough on their plate with keeping warm, finding food and fending off disease, let alone working out the logistics of moving a sixty ton stone. The whole surrounding area appears to have been something of a hub of culture 4000 years ago – people have been scratching round these parts for a staggering length of time. I dare say, two chaps feeling a bit iffy after too much fermented liquid could have sat on this very spot surveying the odd assortment of people milling about thousands of times over.

Sometimes it just panics me though; the stone circle, the man made hill to the south which is as tall and steep as some of the pyramids in Egypt, the sheer organisation needed for such a project when the local population to draw upon would have been in the mere hundreds. All that effort, and it all so easily could have been lost – much of it was, and really quite quickly too. Legacies are fragile things; if people forget why the assembly of a few hundred huge sarsen stones in a field was so vitally important, what hope for your day to day existence? – and were it not for some smart science, we wouldn’t have had a clue what they’d been up to here. People are still coming here, but the link to those that were here before feels very much severed.

Many of the stones were destroyed in medieval times. Between the church wanting to undermine lingering pagan beliefs (the number of Satanic names given to features at the location is clue enough) and the pragmatic needs of locals for whom the lure of all that masonry proved too great, the days of the stones were numbered. Fires would be lit in pits dug under the stones, which would then be doused with water and, severely weakened, easily broken down. It’s maddening to think about, but, well, I’m sure future generations will despair about the rain forests.

During attempts in the 1930s to re-erect a long fallen stone, the remains of a man were unearthed, crushed beneath. Coins in his pocket revealed he must have met his fate sometime around 1320 – quite possibly in the act of trying to destroy the stone that had stubbornly sat on him for so long – and no-one at the time had been able to retrieve his squashed remains, and over time it had been forgotten that he lay there. The chap’s skeleton was duly removed and taken to London, where for a long time it was believed, with a wonderfully vengeful sense of irony, to have been promptly reduced to dust by a German bomb. Ten years ago though, he was found intact in a cupboard at the Natural History Museum. I must say I prefer the legend over the truth in this case, but either way, at least the stones put up a bit of a fight.

Back in the present day, a pagan wedding is being conducted in the stone circle, and the best man passes me a golden goblet to toast the newly weds with whilst a jolly Druid handfasts them. It is Bucks Fizz that I am drinking, and it courses through me, making me feel momentarily not-awful. My companion snacks on some mushrooms he has found growing in the circle, which I have to concede is hardly an opportunity – given our location – a fellow can turn down.

"Magical, poisonous: it’s all a spiritual adventure, isn’t it?" he summarises.

Squamate

2009-11-05T19:37:00.002Z

The goldfish in my parents' pond have slowly been disappearing.
"That heron," I say, explaining away the mystery. "It’ll be that heron."

The next day, I am casting an eye over the newspaper in my parents' living room when, out of the corner of my eye, a flash of something colourful from the outside world captures my attention. I don’t have my glasses on, but I get up to peer out of the window, and can make out a goldfish flopping its way across the lawn.

I tear to the back door in pursuit, just catching sight of the errant fish heading into a shrub. I scamper across the lawn, and stick my head into the foliage. I am on the case.

"Whmf?" says the grass snake irritably, speaking with its mouth full as it pauses to observe me.
"Oh I’m sorry," I say. "I saw the… I thought it was… I didn’t realise you were…"
"Umhmm?" says the snake.

I realise our faces are inches apart, and I flee in terror.

Whence Came Mine Boggling Mind?

2009-10-30T11:30:00.003Z

There's a gorgeous red head at work. And when I say gorgeous, I mean the sort of girl who you approach with lofty plans of being suave and witty, but from the moment she makes eye contact with you, long hidden springs of sweat burst forth whilst you simultaneously develop an acute stammer and a case of aphasia, presenting yourself as someone who generally needs meals mashed and spoon fed.

Because I am totally amazing with women though, this is okay.

“Ah, I'm sorry,” I say to her, having offered to make her a cup of tea. “We appear to be out of tea bags.”

“Oh, that's alright,” she chides, “I have a Red Bush somewhere around here.”

I walk swiftly away.

Solidarity

2009-10-25T20:17:00.004Z

I sit in my office, looking out of the window across rolling hills, to distant farms and grazing cattle.

"This is good," I think, spinning in my chair, but consciously spinning it slowly, grown up like.

I peer through the window in my door, out to where the bulk my new team who are chatting away. It looks fun out there.

I revert my attention back at the more spacious senior office, with its pretentions to echelon, hierarchy, its rank, its mark of… achievement.

I pull my torn face.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

I shuffle to my boss's desk.

"Probably," I say, sensing this could be a defining moment, "I should be out there with my team. I prefer getting stuck in."

My boss examines me, and shrugs.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

I place my box of things on my new desk, and beam at my team. My team do not clap and whoop as I had half expecty-hoped. Rather, they look deeply unimpressed, quite possibly thinking I am both condescending and a fool.

I try stop my things falling off the small desk, and wistfully look over at the doorway to my briefly acquired office.

Terminus

2009-06-28T15:50:00.003+01:00

I rather think I've had enough of this story. It's been very good - I've met some great people, made some excellent friends, and been privy to some great tales from you - but for the time being I want to withdraw my chatter. And five and a half years is a pretty good innings, eh?

I may well be back - here or elsewhere - and I will still be amiable to emails, Facebooking, Twittering, and so forth. And I will still be poking my nose into your business...

(briefly)

2009-06-21T20:14:00.000+01:00

There is something about leaving work a little before midnight, driving for an hour, and the whole time being able to detect the slightest hint of the set sun that makes me feel indefinably euphoric.

Juvenescence

2009-06-14T00:30:00.001+01:00

"Team talk," I say. "Gather round."

It’s been a good eight years since we’ve challenged some local youths of north London to a game of football. I glance across the tarmac football pitch of Highbury Fields at the motley assortment of urchins, heads down listening to the music on their mobiles until the last possible moment.

"We’ve got to be firm but fair. Hit them hard enough so they know they can’t push us around, but not so hard that they, um, you know, stab us."

"They already look so angry," one of our number mutters. "If they lose, do you think they’ll rob us?"

"Look, just remember that with our easy going manner and cheerful elocution, we seem just as alien as they do to us. They’ll probably just bicker amongst themselves and steer clear of talking to us. Now, don’t get dragged out of position and we’ll see how organised they are."

I glance at each of our team in turn. We should be alright. Okay, most of us don’t play football regularly anymore, but so far age has been fairly kind: none of us are bald and, give or take the odd 15 pounds (well, just give really), none of us are too obviously out of shape.

We move the ball fluidly – some nice triangle passing allowing us to bypass their midfield – and when things start to get a bit tasty we politely pile into them, ensuring the early scuffed knees and palms are amongst their numbers but that hands are shaken good naturedly afterwards. As predicted, they begin to bicker about who should play in which position, and after fifteen minutes we are 4-1 up.

After those initial fifteen minutes though, one thing becomes clear: organisation and communication alone aren’t much of a match for youthful stamina. They come at us in waves and waves, and soon enough we have wordlessly abandoned the idea of passing to each other, instead wellying it as far down their end as we can in order to get a breather. Soon enough our communication pretty much ceases too as we don’t have the breath to spare.

An hour or so later, we hobble away. None of us are sure if we were defeated in the end, but our legs hurt, our backs are sore, blisters are letting themselves be known, and the pub is a much more pressing concern than scorelines.

The tykes shout after us.

"Come next week, yeah? Come next week!"

Pensthorpe

2009-06-09T22:00:00.000+01:00

I visit Pensthorpe, home of the BBC’s Springwatch. I see Chris Packham, I get pecked by numerous fowl, I buy some extremely mature Norfolk cheese, I see some of the celebrity birds, and I continue to be a bit disappointed with my handling of my new camera, only getting a couple of photos I’m particularly pleased with.

I recommend it.

We go for a walk in the woods

2009-06-02T00:10:00.002+01:00

The car park is quite unpleasant, set just off a busy dual carriage way, and littered with burnt out mopeds and dumped fridges, all overlooked by derelict public toilets.

We push across the field though – through the aromas from the groups of rule-flouting Iranians’ hookhahs and barbeques – and underneath the canopy, and leave the rather insalubrious initial area behind.

It’s lovely in the woods, and offers some respite to the touch of sunburn I have. We see a treecreeper shimmying up an oak, we watch a resigned buzzard being mobbed by crows, and I discover a copse with dozens and dozens of pairs of Starlings nesting within it.

The sun begins to sink, and we head back to the car. The car park is surprisingly full, and as we approach my car we notice a chap, parked nearby, keenly observing us. He looks - and it’s a word I would always hesitate to use - retarded, and it’s a trifle odd for someone to be sat in a car in this heat with all the windows wound up. I try to outstare him, but he outlandishly stares back and I feel uncomfortable.

As we pull out of the carpark, I notice there are lots of people in the parked cars. Just sat there, in the heat.
“Hmmm, I wonder...” I wonder to myself as we leave.

"Oh...", I say later that evening, doing some internet research. "Ooooh."

The Beautiful Game

2009-05-27T21:35:00.003+01:00

"God, football is so boring."

Everyone pretends not to listen to the football-hater's whining.

"I don’t know why everyone gets so excited about it. It’s boring."

No-one responds, lest they encourage the nagger’s nagging, but a couple of people shift uncomfortably in their seats.

"It’s just so boring!" the Wet Blanket insightfully points out.
Lips are pursed, but the bore is oblivious.

"We get it! You don’t understand the game. You think you’re more insightful than the rest of us. But if you’re so independently-minded, why don’t you get out of this room and go somewhere else? Why are you so desperate to cling to our company, to linger around where everyone else is, like a life-sapping parasite? What is it about you and your misguided sense of superiority that makes you think you can so be so patronising as to openly belittle our interests? You seem to think we should apologise to you, but for what? That you are ignorant to a whole facet of culture, history and excitement? That you feel a need to dimiss that which you aren't part of? Do you know how childish you seem, repeatedly chipping in with your negativity? Why don’t you, to put it simply, just fuck off?"

No-one says this.

But if you’ve ever been that person, that is what EVERYONE is thinking.

See you next season.

Brief Encounters

2009-05-20T12:23:00.002+01:00

"Goodbye, pants," I say wistfully, putting them in the bin.

Saying goodbye to a faithful pair of pants is always a sad occasion, but part of growing up is accepting that sometimes you have to face up to the reality of binning them, instead of shoving them to the back of the drawer in denial. With most of the undercarriage in ruins and long-limp elastic increasing the hazard of wedgies, there’s nothing glamorous about the now-tatty pants. Some people choose to recycle them – giving them one last outing in a new incarnation as a duster or somesuch. Whilst I suppose it would be nice to be reunited occasionally with a trustworthy pair of pants – to reminisce over the good times as you polish your shoes – I don’t think I could thrust the ignobility onto a favourite pair. It would be a bit like when football legends prolong their careers for payday after payday after payday, until eventually they are waddling around the pitch like some doomed wounded animal. No, not for me and my pants.

With heavy heart, I go to buy some new pants.

Revidēre

2009-05-12T00:26:00.002+01:00

This is by far my favourite time of year. The temperature and hours of daylight seemingly rocket in April and May, and the landscape flourishes in greens, yellows and pinks. Possibly though, I feel as though I am enjoying it more this year than I have for well over a decade.

You see, the shrill of blackbirds panicking in the garden during the drawn-out dusk, The World Snooker championship being played out on the telly, oilseed rape washing over the countryside like huge yellow lakes: these are all things which are indelibly linked to one thing in my mind. Revising for exams.

It’s now been five years since I sat my last ever exam, and yet I have still experienced a pang of anxiety as this time of year rolls around in subsequent years. Watching the snooker feels as though it should be accompanied by some nagging guilt: one more frame, and then I’ll finally sink into those soporific books

I was an awful reviser; many subjects were touched upon for the first time in the days before the exam – and in one case the day itself – with humiliation only being escaped via a near photographic memory rather than any noteworthy intellectual flair on my part. To make matters worse, my course wasn’t something I was especially passionate about – rather, like many, I was studying for the sake of having a degree – and so I often couldn’t lose myself in studying purely for the sake of it.

Early on Saturday afternoon, I was sat in a pub garden with my friend Eddie, hemmed in at the bottom of a lush little green valley which sheltered us from the wind and let the sun beat down on the picnic bench we sat at. We commented on how much we didn’t miss studying, a number of times. Not that studying ever stopped us sitting in pub gardens early on Saturday afternoons, but at least now there is no clear priority being ignored. I am actually forbidden from taking any work out of the office nowadays; how great is that?

I went to a University where we didn’t really have a third term – straight after Easter we were back for exams – so in all likelihood at this time of year I would have been finishing any exams this week or the next, with a ridiculously long summer stretching out ahead of me. But I’d have lost these past six weeks or so to anxious procrastination, and these last six weeks – to my mind – are always the best of the year.

If you are revising, or grafting over essays, you have my sympathy.

Plimsolls

2009-04-24T15:00:00.000+01:00

I try and tune out from the thumping R'n'B and focus on the task in hand. A wall of trainers faces me, so it should be easy, but it's not really. I have had to push my way through rails of Kappa Polo shirts to make it this far, and haven't seen so much as a tennis ball yet in this so-called Sports Shop. Ahead of me now are hundreds of right-foot trainers, but they all look a bit... well, silly. Garish colours, crazy prices, and footwear designed for nothing more strenuous than loitering outside newsagents, it would seem. One trainer, adorned with graffiti, is actually sporting some sort of gold necklace. I note that it is retailing for just shy of £200.

Soon though I move out of the Urban Area, and I find the very small Sports Section of the Sports Shoe area in the Sports Shop. Now, I think to myself as my eyes wander, these seem a bit better, but I am not too sure about the colour schemes. After a few minutes, it dawns on me that I am looking at the Ladies section, and I sidestep discreetly.

My running shoes desperately need replacing, as for the last week it has sounded like I am running in flip-flops, such is the extend of their decay. My philosophy, when buying running shoes, is to just get something cheap. Something I won't mind to see fall apart, or start to pong. Some people gasp when I say this, worrying for the state of my knees, but really the best way to save your knees is to cycle or swim, not buy expensive trainers with twin-injected air-conditioned massage soles.

I see one which seem to fit the bill, and pick it up, and try to catch one of the Sports Shop urchins' eyes so as to try on its twin. I immediately seem to lock eyes with one, but he breezes past. Another one approaches me, looks at me, looks at the cheap trainer, and appears to suck his teeth at me before heading elsewhere. And it dawns on me: I am being ignored. I feel a bit like Pretty Woman. This continues for some 10 minutes, until, enraged, I place the trainer at a jaunty angle on the head of a mannequin and leave. They clearly messed with the wrong shopper, I reassure myself.

Two days later, I am in Norwich, and decide I can resume my trainer quest. Simultaneously eccentric and sensible, it's a city I feel I can do business with. I march into a Sports Shop, and within minutes am paying at the checkout. And, I note, there does not seem to be a single necklace-wearing trainer to be had in Norwich.

You will turn into your Father

2009-04-07T10:30:00.003+01:00

We drive across the Cambridgeshire plains, with the glow of the set sun still lighting up the west. Gemma turns in her seat to give the fading view her full attention, which makes me jealous as I am driving and can't really look, so I make comments on the standards of other people's driving to try and distract her.

My mind is quite busy though, and her being captivated allows me to cogitate on something she'd said earlier. I'd been being my usual amazing self, you see, when she said "You are like a dad. You know lots of things, and make really, really bad jokes." Is it wrong, I think to myself, that I took that as a compliment?

"Did you like that dinner?" I casually ask.
"Yes, it was really nice," she murmurs, still not looking round.
"It's just as well we ate when we did though," I say, "because I’m not at all hungry any more."

In my peripheral vision I see her face slowly drop into her hands.

"Ha!" I shout, triumphantly beeping my horn at a rather confused looking cow. "Ha!"

Hear Ye

2009-03-17T13:56:00.000Z

I take down the copies of magazines sellotaped over the far too effective air vent in my bedroom, I remove the large coat from the boot of my car stashed there should I come a cropper in the wilderness which prowls Paradise City’s outskirts, I sweep the patio clear of various detritus, and declare winter OVER.

Deprived

2009-03-09T23:40:00.002Z

"How’re you doing mate? Feeling a bit better today?" my boss tenderly asks down the phone.
"A bit worse actually. Making the most of my day off to do sod all."
"Fair play. Having some soup and watching Loose Women?"
"Erm, of sorts," I say, guiltily closing my laptop.
"Anyway, I need you in tomorrow. I’ll pay you double time."
"Well. I’m not sure. I might be feeling worse still, so maybe I should just take my day…"
"Look diddums," my boss snarls. "I need you here. Lemsip, embalmed tissues, Vics fucking Vapour rub. This is what those sorts of things were made for."
"Er, I think you mean balsam."
"Yeah yeah, University boy. Some of use were working whilst you were getting stoned, eating noodles, and reading dictionaries. I’ve got to get this job done, and I’m doing you a favour by offering you the work. It’ll be great. You can wear jeans, no need to iron a shirt, go to the pub afterwards."
"It sounds a little like I’m doing you the favour," I point out. "And I can do all those things on my day off anyway."
"Right, you’re kind of pissing me off to be honest with you. Really pissing me off. Look, I can be at Head Office in twenty minutes. I’ll meet you in the Dojo and we can sort this out there."
"No, no, it’s okay," I say. "You’re hardly the Techno Viking, but I’m in no mood to go into battle with you. I’ll be there."
"Great. 7am start," he says, hanging up before I can protest.

"Fucking hell mate, what’s wrong with you?" My boss asks, waltzing in.
"The problem," I mutter. "With spending the day in bed, is it’s then awfully hard to get to sleep at night. I was laying there for hours last night. I think I got three hours in the end."
"Three hours sleep? But what time did you get up yesterday?"
"Um, about ten."
"Well, it’s eight now, so less than twenty four hours ago you were in bed, and you’ve slept since. You need to toughen up. What happens when something big kicks off here? How will you cope with a thirty hour day?"
"I dare say with hallucinations and catastrophic errors," I concede, loading everyone’s mugs onto the tea tray. "I’ve only ever once stayed up all night and then powered all the way through to bedtime the next night. And that ended with me striking a friend across the temple with a giant Jenga brick in a pub and then sleeping with someone, both of which I had to be told about the next day."
"God," says my boss, rubbing his hands together. "I hope we get a thirty hour day soon."

Arranging horizontal lines of twenty-six phonetic symbols, ten numbers, and eight or so punctuation marks

2009-03-05T23:00:00.001Z

"How is your book going?"

My friend asked me once if I was going to write a book, and I said maybe I would, and she said I should. I said when I finally did, I would do a little dedication to her at the front. It would read "Look at what I did!"

"I'm still researching it," I answer.

"The problem is," I continue, after a sizeable pause. "I'm not sure what it's about, so the research is quite wide-ranging. The story arc is more of a vista stretching in all directions, ceasing only when the curvature of the Earth makes it so. I can't write my Victorian/ Edwardian communist detective novel yet, as I will need to research that extensively, which I will need an advance for in order to dedicate the time to. So that needs to be one of my later books, once I have cemented my reputation."

I look out of the window, adopting what I hope is a wistful look, and try to get inspired.

The passing postman looks alarmed.

Snob

2009-02-19T17:18:00.002Z

"This is a piss-take! Where the fuck are you?" hollers my boss down the phone at me.
"I’m in the newsagent, buying my lunch," I say, stood in the queue of my down at heal local shop.
"What the fuck?! What the FUCK!?" my boss enquires.
"Look, chillax," I say soothingly. "I’m sorry I’m running late, but this place is rammed full of common people buying tobacco and lottery tickets."

An uncomfortable silence falls over the shop. A woman with flaky skin squints disapprovingly at me.

The good me feels disgusted at myself. The defiant me wants to shout "it’s true!".

Magyars

2009-02-12T01:25:00.004Z

The Bear and I sit in silence in the kitchen of our apartment in Budapest as we breakfast, shovelling down slices of bread coated in cheeses, meats and jam between thirstily slurping down cups of tea. Our reasons for not speaking are, perhaps, twofold. First and foremost, there is a stale smell of beer and spirits in the air, the source being the pores of our skin which are being employed in a desperate attempt to remove the poison from within. We had hit the bar Fwengebola had recommended to us fairly wholeheartedly, and then, just as we were leaving, thought “what the hell” and hit it again for a further few hours. The second potential reason is that, for the previous two days, I have been constantly subjecting The Bear to my Russian-accented commentary on all that occurs, and perhaps he is wisely not giving me any encouragement.

"Is good pig meat," I mumble to him, or myself.

I am just glad that it wasn’t my turn to undergo the travails of a trip to Spar with a hangover and a grasp of the language that would probably see me marched to the nearest police station even if I merely tried pointing at things. They didn’t give me any bags at the checkout the previous morning. I hadn’t ever had reason previously to think how hard it is to mime needing a bag when you already have your hands full.

In bright sunshine, still mostly silent, we cross the Erzsébet Bridge, and head to the Rudas Bath. The neo-baroque Széchenyi baths are a delight, and the splendour of the baths at the Gellert Hotel are breathtaking, but the atmosphere at the Rudas – the echoes, the constant sound of dripping water, the darkness – marks it out as by far my favourite.

"It’s like hell," I say, as I encounter The Bear floating past in the main octagonal pool. "Except with the fire turned off."

I sleep in one of the pools for a while, and feel my hangover drifting up and away to the dome above. By the time we slink out, I feel great.

We hire bikes, and, after a mere cursory glance, adventurously decide to cycle to Memento Park, where many of Budapest’s communist statues have found themselves moved to, out of sight. Budapest swiftly becomes less beautiful as we head south, the housing much less Parisian and much more Soviet. Soon though, it makes way to fields, and we leave the city, and find ourselves in Hungary-proper.

It dawns on us that perhaps we have been a touch foolish, expecting to magically find our way to Memento Park. It also dawns on us that Memento Park might just be the exact sort of place that wouldn’t be sign-posted. As we cycle along, we notice a elderly man sat on a deck chair by some sort of gate.
"He’s bound to know," I say.

"He didn’t know," I say, as we cycle off on our way again.
"No, he seemed thoroughly confused," agrees The Bear. "Foreign people appearing and making incomprehensible demands probably doesn’t happen too often to him out here."
"He probably hates Lenin," I muse. "Lenin probably terrorised his parents."
"He probably didn’t appreciate us arriving on bikes and repeatedly shouting ‘Lenin’ at him," supposes The Bear.

We ride for a few more miles, before getting thoroughly cross about the whole situation, and the fact it is getting progressively more hilly. We head back towards the distant Soviet housing blocks. Stupid Lenin.

Enigma

2009-02-05T22:35:00.002Z

The phone goes, and I feel daring so I answer it.

On the other end of the lines comes the smoothly dulcet Franco-American tones of my landlord's boyfriend's voice.

"He's on the loo at the moment," I say. "And I don't know how long he'll be."
"Ah, an M.P.," comes the reply.
"An M.P.?" I query.
"A Mega Poo! No matter; I shall call back."

Ten minutes later, he does just that, and my landlord answers.
"Sorry about that. W.C.M.P.S.A...."

I let out a guffaw, and, having been met with a curious glance, pretend to cough.

Codebreaker!

Don't Really Get What Everyone's Complaining About

2009-02-02T15:23:00.001Z

I rather like the snow

Paradise City, 02/02/2009

07.05

2009-01-28T22:41:00.003Z

"Eh, what’s this?" asks my boss, tapping his watch and pointing at the clock simultaneously.

I struggle with the early shift at work. When I used to get a train, there was no question of being late – not out of the house by a certain time and you’d missed your only means of getting to work for forty minutes – but since I started to drive, the temptation to get ready that bit slower, too leave the house that minute later, is, well, tempting. We have recently moved room, so I claim I am a touch forgetful, and have been sat at my old desk in confusion for the last five minutes. It's a lame joke, but I don’t do funnies at five past seven. It’s still dark outside.

“And you didn’t shave. You’re a way off optimum performance at this time of day, aren’t you?”
He’s mainly joking, but it’s enough to draw the attention of all the eager early rising weirdos of the office, who have a chuckle at my untucked shirt and bed hair.

My computer illiterate boss heads off to a meeting and leaves his computer unlocked. I pounce, changing his screen’s background to a My Little Pony, and his screensaver to The Get Along Gang.

I am a formidable enemy.

Epiglottis

2009-01-25T13:11:00.001Z

As I peer out of the taxi at the Christmas lights at Newington Green,* I hiccup. Studying the menu at Stoke Newington’s Bagel House half an hour later, I am still hiccupping. I haven’t hiccupped since I was a child, and it’s a rather alien and uncomfortable sensation. I keep worrying I’m going to be sick.

Sat in my friend’s living room, polishing off my herring bagel and moving onto my cheese and onion pasty, the shriek-like hiccups bring back a vivid memory of the last time I had them. I’d been to the local shop with my mum, and was eating a square of Terry’s Chocolate Cream sat in the back seat of the car. I was opening a packet of stickers for my Panini Football '87 album, and out slipped a QPR crest shiny. I remember being quite captivated by it; quite possibly it was one of those childhood moments where, on a whim, you decide who you are going to support for the rest of your life. Perhaps my chain of thought was interrupted by an errant hiccup though, as it didn’t turn out that way. This of course may be completely inaccurate – memory’s like that – but it springs to mind intensely. Years later, I would burn my mouth on the molten contents of a curry pasty during my first time at Loftus Road, sitting through a 0-0 draw with a hangover. A long way from the seeming glamour of that sticker.

I try to recount all of this to my friend, but fair’s fair; I’m drunk and, mixed in with the hiccupped interruptions, come across as very garbled.

*Obviously, all my adventures are recounted retrospectively, otherwise, well… it just wouldn’t work the other way.

Around The Houses

2009-01-14T21:33:00.003Z

I pull onto the driveway.

"Oh look, there’s your car," I say.
"Yes, this is where I’m living at the moment. Mostly."
We get out of the car, and walk up to the small Barrett home with a tidy lawn. I expect him to ring the bell, but he produces a key and we walk in. Children’s toys litter the hall.
"Yours?" I ask, incredulously, thinking things are about to get really interesting.
"No, she had two already," he grins. "Hello?"
"In here."

We sit in the kitchen and drink tea with his girlfriend, me not being able to think of anything to say. She has heard of me, which is a strange feeling. I suppose ultimately I have the upper hand though. It’s clearly his house: he knows where everything is, there are traces of him in the kitchen and the living room and the two of them are clearly very comfortable. We finish our tea, and make to leave.
"Are you working nearby today then?" She asks.
"Can’t really say. I’m sorry," he shrugs apologetically. "I’ll be back tonight, but I’m not sure what time."

"How long have you been together," I ask, starting up the car and reversing off the drive.
"Six months, moved in about six weeks ago. Ready for the next one?"

We get on the motorway and head for a town 30 miles or so to the east.
"Just… just… how?" I ask, feeling it to be as suitable as anything else to ask.
"It’s not rocket science, nothing that would surprise you," he says, stretching out in his seat. "Three mobiles, obviously. Sometimes you feel you need more than three, but that’s just not manageable. Two are work related as far as each woman knows, and calls have to be taken in private. Delete incriminating text messages immediately (sentimentality is best avoided), use ambiguous names in the phonebook, wipe your call records now and again, but don’t delete too often and too thoroughly as that looks suspicious. Have a hobby that takes you out of town: rock climbing, sailing. Just make sure it’s something you do actually have an interest in though; you don’t want to be introduced to a friend of theirs with the same interest, and it looks weird if you don’t have any equipment or that sort of thing. Numerous email accounts. Obviously, don’t use Facebook or anything like that. Memorise any lies you have to tell. Don’t try and involve friends in covering for you: it’s your web, and only you should try and manage it."
"What else?"
"Three women is best, never go for more than five."
I laugh at this constraint. "How do you manage your numbers though?"
"Well, some of it’s just the natural process. Some of them I tire of, some of them tire of me, especially after a few months of not seeing as much of me as they’d like. And, of course, sometimes you get busted."
"What’s happened then?"
"As you’d expect: a lot of grief. But you go into damage limitation mode. I’ve never been fully caught; just two have found about each other, so you’re not left with nothing. And then you can’t target that town for a year at least."
"That town?"
"Right, okay. Rule one. Spread out. Unless the city you live in is huge, the small amount of steps that separate us all will soon surprise you, catch up with you. Never the same town at once, a minimum of 20 miles between each partner. Rule two. When you first meet them, ask lots of questions about their friends, their family. Fulfils two functions: firstly you can soon suss out amazingly quickly who they know, who they’re related to, what parts of the world they have contacts to, and all the while you come across as having a genuine interest in what they’re saying – which you in fact do – which everyone likes. If there’s a risk, accept that you have to step away. Someone else will present themselves, so long as you know how to find them."
"And how do you manage to meet enough women to manage to constantly have all these numerous partners?"
"It’s easy enough if you have no shame," he laughs. "But seriously, it’s just a matter of having the front to talk to them first of all, and then knowing what to say. Most people crave attention, and it’s just a matter of knowing what sort of attention to pay in order for things to take the direction you want. You were a psychologist, right? So you know all about how evolution has shaped group dynamics, status, those things? It’s a matter of employing them. Paying a woman a lot of attention, but at the same time asserting your dominance – without being a cock – so as to make them feel she should be glad you’ve come to talk to her, rather than finding you creepy."
"I know what you’re talking about. Throwing in a few veiled insults and disguised compliments, so she can’t quite get a fix on you and isn’t sure what you want."
"You’ve got it. And then soon enough they get to thinking “well, he’s come over to talk to me, but if he doesn’t want me, maybe it’s me that should want him?”. And then, later on when you’re together, when you disappear for a week it’s the same sort of principle; instead of being annoyed you always go away, they’re pleased you keep coming back. It’s sad to say, but a lot of it is mind games, knowing what people want, and being quite brutal in using that for your own gain. Forget ladies who tell you they want someone who’s funny, tall, in shape, all of that. You just need to know what boxes to tick to gain superiority, and for most people those boxes are one and the same. I sound like a cunt I know, but I only say it because experience shows me it’s what works. Turn off here."

We enter a flat, again with a key. She seems surprised and pleased to see us, or him rather.
"Surprise visit!" he says. "I managed to get away for a bit."
"Great!" She says, wrapping herself around him. She turns to me. "Nice to meet you. Cup of tea?"
"No thanks," I say. "We’ve not long had one."
"Oh really, where have you two been?"
I flounder, wide-eyed. He steps in, expertly.
"We stopped at the motorway service on our way. I’ll have another though."
As she steps into the kitchen, he smiles indulgently at me.
"In this game," he says quietly, "you’ve always got to be hungry, thirsty, and horny, and if not you need to have a reason ready why."
I watch them together, still wondering if I’m being had on. But no, they are definitely together. The mantlepiece actually hosts a few photos of them, one at the pyramids.

"How long?" I ask, as we leave.
"Two years."
"Two years!"

"It’s not adultery, it’s… it’s…"
"Furtive polygamy?" I suggest. He glances at me, looking defensive.
"I’m not cheating on them, because they’re all my girlfriends. I love them. I have meaningful relationships with all of them, and they each get to spend equal amounts of time with me. That’s part of the problem for me though, it’s what will make it harder."
"What do you mean?
"The fact I’m not doing it for sex or thrills. I genuinely like having numerous relationships. But I’m forty this year. I’m getting broody, and I want to have somewhere to really call home. But not to the extent I’ll stop and settle for one person I don’t think. I might find that I try and keep it going. And that’s when it will become too hard. Two, three families? And all the while whilst trying to meet more women at the same time, because, you know, I will. Too much."
"Yeah, and there’s the one big obvious problem there."
"You mean the fact I’ll get arrested for bigamy?"
"No, I mean, who will you invite to all those different weddings?"
"Good point."

Deuteronomy 17:17

2009-01-10T01:30:00.001Z

There's a guy I work with who has always been a bit reticent about himself. Very lively and affable, but a bit standoffish at the same time. He’s ex-army, and I suspect former special forces, and his current job is a bit secretive, so I've always just thought "fair enough".

One day, we are driving and chatting, so I feel I can try and get to know him a bit better.
"So whereabouts do you live?" I ask. "I’ve never been able to get a fix on you."
"Here and there, really," he says, sounding a bit shifty,
"What could that even mean?" I ask, crinkling my brow.
He sighs, and sits silent for a while.
"Okay," he says. "Right, okay. But you have to keep this secret. Not because I'm ashamed, but if it's not kept quiet, the whole thing falls down surprisingly quickly. The thing you need to know about me, is I'm addicted to women."
"Right."
"I really am though. I don’t mean that as a joke, and I don’t mean sex. Well, not just sex. I'm addicted to having girlfriends."
"Sure, okay," I say, not really knowing what he means.
"So I always have about four girlfriends. And I’m always looking for another."
"Four girlfriends?" I laugh.
"Yes, secretly. And I live with them. At different times."
"What?" I say, getting exasperated"
"Right, I’ll explain it slowly and simply. I currently have four girlfriends, none of whom know about the other. I live with two of them, and am less seriously involved with the other two but stay with them whenever I can. I have a horrid bed sit somewhere for bills and occasional sanctuary. A version of it started in the army; always making sure that wherever you were in the world, you always had comfort and sex available. It was a necessity then, but it became more of a lifestyle once I was a civvie again. I’ve not been single for fifteen years, and never gone for more than a couple of months with just the one partner."
There is a silence for a minute or so.
"How…" I start, but struggle to know where exactly it is I want to start. "How do you have the time?"
"It's this job, isn't it? I live with one for one week, and then say I have to go off somewhere for a week – can't say where and all that – and then move in with the other. And then repeat, with nights away here and there to see the other two."
"Christ."
"And the best thing? When they get a week with me, they really appreciate it and think they should be grateful."
He looks at me.
"You don't believe me, do you?"
I shrug, shaking my head.
"Want to meet them?"

To be continued

http://www.news.com.au/story/0,23599,23414957-2,00.html

2009-01-04T12:22:00.002Z

One feature of Christmas and the New Year was a scattering of mystery Merry Textmas and New Year messages which would bleep onto my phone over the course of the week. There are only a few people who text me with any regularity whose numbers I don’t keep on my phone – work colleagues, non-immediate family members, and beautiful women mainly, the sort of people I want to protect myself from thinking it would be a really good idea to text at four in the morning when I am drunk – but I was able to sleuth that it wasn’t any of them. My phonebook – like my Facebook friend list – is prone to a cull every few months, as part of my philosophy that I don’t really ever need more than about forty people’s numbers, and if someone is the sort of person I’m not likely to contact for a year or more, chances are they’ll have changed their number by then, anyway.

Looking at these texts, they’re always very non-specific and wit-free, making me think someone somewhere - some long-forgotten casual acquiantence - has pressed the “send to all” function on their phone (the text round robin equivalent). In each case, my response was to send of a reply which dripped with something which, depending which angle you tilted your head at, was either sarcasm or sincerity (so good to hear from you again. May 2009 be matched only by your wildest dreams). Not a single one was responded to, making me think that the someone somewhere was thinking “Jesus, why did he bother to reply?”

Resolve

2009-01-01T21:33:00.001Z

-Drink more
-Change job
-Find someone who loves The Wire and is up for watching all 5 seasons in as quick succession as we can manage
-Get exceedingly drunk for a few days at the Edinburgh Festival
-Tidy room more. Or, indeed, just tidy room
-Draw up a list of anyone who has wronged me in 2008, and get revenge. REVENGE!

Check back in a year.

Of Korsakoff

2008-12-28T19:22:00.003Z

The morning after the work Christmas party, my alarm clock disturbs me. I monitor my systems for guilt: an underlying tremor, but that's just a constant thing I like to maintain so I don't become too cavalier. I move onto my memory banks: patchy. An argument, but one I largely kept on the sidelines of, flaming Drambuies and Sambucas, acceptable levels of piss taking of people usually too important to take the piss out of. Nothing bad; excellent result. I move onto my physical state - a tolerable headache, no mysterious bruising, all in order. Colleagues can be faced.

I laze in the bath, lounge as I replenish myself with cereal and a pint of tea, and ease into my clothes. I'm pretty pleased with myself.

I step outside and pace up and down in front of the house. I look around the corner.
"Where the hell is my car?" I begin to muse, before cutting myself off. "Cab. I got a cab home."

I arrive at work an hour late, and everyone laughs at me.

Condolence

2008-12-21T00:53:00.002Z

"Where’ve you been?" I ask the slightly bats lady from work who I haven’t seen for a couple of days, as she walks in.
"Two days of compassionate leave."
"Oh gosh, right,” I say. “I hadn’t… I didn’t know. Right."
"It’s knocked the wind out of my sails. It was so sudden. He was only fifty. They think it may have been a virus."
"Oh God, I’m so sorry. Obviously, if there’s anything I can do."
"Oh, it was just the shock really. Poor Albert. I thought we’d be together until we were in our hundreds."
I don’t know what I can possibly say to this, so stare intently at my computer screen, wide-eyed at the intensity of the situation.
"That’s why I feel so cheated. They’re supposed to live well past one hundred, aren’t they, tortoises?"
My eyes widen more so.
"Gave him a nice plot by the rhubarb."

Where most beef meant for roast beef seems to grow

2008-11-19T05:00:00.000Z

I’d rather expected I wouldn’t be in North America ever again for years. My last two trips had been underwhelming at best, and, let’s face it, it’s a rather bland continent to fly a long way to. I mean, I’ve never been to Rio! I’ve never strolled around Havana with a stinking rum-hangover, or drank a bucket and then had to flee into the jungle from the police at a full moon party at Koh Phangan. Why, with the constant tick-tocking of life an ever-present background muzak accompaniment, would I keep forsaking such adventures?

“Stop saying these things,” my forthcoming host would say. “It’s too much pressure.”

It started well though. My destination airport was small, and felt both deeply 1970s and – compared to the bland uniformity of international airports – thoroughly American. I failed to suppress a laugh at a policeman approaching me on a Segway, proudly embossed with his department’s logo.
“You’re on a Segway!” I told him, causing him to look a little hurt and confused as he ever so slowly glided past.

A week later, as my connecting flight lifted out of Toronto, I inspected the twinkling city below – Lake Ontario causing it to seemingly suddenly drop away into a vast blackness to the south – and decided all was forgiven, and North America and I could be friends again.

Nought to Sixty and Back Again

2008-11-07T06:30:00.001Z

As we walk in the direction of the train station, I casually mention that she’s welcome to stay at mine.
"The tubes will have stopped running by the time you get back to London, and a bus could take ages to get you across town."
"No, I don’t think so, I’m not sure that’d be a good idea."
The penny drops and I cringe inwardly. And probably a bit outwardly too.
"I didn’t mean… you know. There’s a spare room, I’d give you a lift in the morning. I’m just thinking, you know, of sparing you the early hours mentalist-bus run."
"No, I can’t. Stuff will happen."
"It won’t. I’ll be good. Different rooms, straight to sleep, the lot."
"No, stuff will happen."
"Seriously I promise, best behaviour and all of that."
"No, I don’t think you understand. If I stay at yours, I’m saying we will have sex. It’s maybe not got as much to do with you as you think it does. If you stay in a separate room, I’ll just come and seek you out."
"Oh," I say, the penny dropping a second time, this time in super slow motion.
"And then we’d be different," she continued. "I like the way we are; we meet occasionally and you ask about who I’m going out with, and mercilessly dissect and criticise all that they are based on the smallest bits of information I provide, and then a few months later when I’ve split up with them I see you again, and can rely on you entirely to voice total astonishment and outrage at how I claim to have been treated. I like that."
"You know, before you go on with that chain of thought," I say, cutting in and talking fast. "May I just flag up I’m not actually that big a fan of this whole dynamic you describe. I think it’s hugely overrated as a conceptual framework for our relationship."
We’d arrived at the station by now, and she smiled and shook her head.
"In all honesty," I say. "On reflection, this whole friendship? Totally. Willing. To sacrifice it. Sell that badboy down the river in a flash."
"I really, really want to," she groans, leaning her head on my shoulder. "But I think it would change things."
"Things! You value things too much," I scoff. "And I’m not too crazy on this thinking you do either."
Her train pulls into the station and she gets on, and sits down. Any minute now, I think to myself, she’ll change her mind and get off. Any minute. Now. NOW. She’ll get off. Any. Minute…
The doors beep and shut, and the train inches away.
She smiles and waves. I shake my fist and call her a rude word.

You ever drunk Baileys from a shoe?

2008-11-01T22:59:00.001Z

My train arrives at Paradise City at 01.30, and I stir myself from my slumber. The Otter has sent me on my drunken way from London, and I have slept with my Ipod turned up unnecessarily loud to ensure I can’t nod off too deeply. Cheers Ozomatli.

The Mighty Boosh have done a stage show in London, and as I step onto the platform I see a girl dressed as Vince, dressed as a Panda, also exiting, for want of a better word, the train. She is clearly paralytic, and the Hitcher is hoisting her along by her arms, whilst Rudi has her by the ankles.

Splendidly surreal.

Climatic Deviance

2008-10-28T22:43:00.003Z

I'd been at my parents, and was due to drive back to mine that afternoon. My dad was fretting about a winter storm later in the day, but I was feeling a bit lazy, and it is only October after all.

The first half of the drive was a little tricky - heavy rain and people in BMWs driving somewhat suicidally regardless - but as I joined the M25 by Heathrow the traffic slowed to about 20mph. The raindrops got progressively larger and more solid, and as I approached Watford I fancied I could see some snowflakes. And then... I couldn't see anything but snowflakes. My wipers were set to 'frantic' and soon enough staying in lane was mere guesswork.

Finally my car slalomed into Paradise City and I avoided some trees which, still yet to shed leaves and therefore surprised by the excess weight, had fallen across the road.
"It's bloody October!" I thought.

My front garden. An awful picture, but trippy enough that I liked it

The grape vine and apple tree in my backgarden, straining under the weight of the snow.

Acute coryza (why thank you, says the coryza)

2008-10-26T00:58:00.003+01:00

I start waking up at about five, call work at eight, and finally rise myself out of bed at eleven. I hack and snort into a tissue and examine the mess.
“Blood,” my brain mutters.

An odd thing about working weekends is when you have to call in sick. It just doesn’t feel the same as to when it’s a weekday. The TV is different, the amount of people strolling past the house are greater – and younger and smaller and louder – and it feels like a waste.

I want to just sleep for the whole day, or days, until it is all over, to switch myself off for a while until I magically fix myself like a computer does, but typically that is the last thing I am able to do and I know I am destined to spend a long day doing nothing but feel rotten, and then not be tired at the end of it because all I’ve done is sit around on my arse feeling rotten. Somewhat ironically – or not, if you prefer to prescribe to the actual meaning of irony – on weekends when I am well and want to get out and enjoy making the most of a couple of days of freedom, they are invariably lost to needless naps, lacklustre self love and unstimulating video games, none of which appeal now I am perfectly entitled to indulge.

I flick on the TV and plod through the channels.

Gilmour Girls ° Gossip Girl ° Girls Aloud

“Girls,” my brain observes.

I pause on Cheryl Cole, and briefly reconsider whether I need to limit all of my aforementioned activities, but the Ginger one is getting a lot of screen time too, and my inability to fathom how anyone could enjoy Ashley Cole’s company means mine and Cheryl’s relationship is often a tempestuous one.

(As an aside, I was in the pub the other week watch England play Kazakhstan, and shortly after Cole gave away the goal a chap ambled up to me and announced “I fucking hate Ashley Cole. I wish he’d fuck off and die, and then I could bone his wife.” A simplistic plan, but a plan all the same, and I suppose grief does funny things)

I try to look on the brightside.

After a while I give up.

Messing About

2008-09-30T15:20:00.003+01:00

Have you ever been punting? I hadn't. I stood on King's College Bridge for a time, watching people passing underneath me, and a lot of them seemed to be struggling. I watched long enough to satisfy myself that although a lot of people were making little progress and/or were crashing a lot, not a lot of capsizing was going on. It would be okay, I resolved. Or, I added, I would be the first person of the day that everyone laughed at.

I’d never been to Cambridge, and neither had Monica, and with her flight home booked for a week’s time… well, why ever not? We’d strolled around a choice selection of colleges and we’d eaten in The Eagle – where Francis Crick announced he and Watson had had an idea about the structure of some macromolecule or other – which really only left the River Cam.

“You’ve punted before,” the old hippy hiring out the punts said to me, more of a statement than a question.
“No, no I haven’t,” I conceded.
He gave me a brief yet seemingly intricate guide on how to steer which I claimed to understand, and handed me my pole.

The pole was both longer and heavier than I’d expected. Now, I struggle carrying pints of beer. Any more than two pints, and I’m not going to run the risk of looking foolish and potentially loosing all of them just to save me a bit of time. The thought of stepping onto a bobbing punt, making my way to the opposite end, and carrying such a thing… well, that was just a bit worrying.

Nonetheless, I managed it, and we set off. It was soon revealed to the watching hippy that I hadn’t really understood his instructions, as we began to make a lazy S down the river, nudging into each bank in turn, along with a few other punts and the overhanging branches of some willows.

“Shit, sorry,” I said.
“Sorry about that too,” I said, a moment later.

We made slow progress along The Backs, and soon enough I was fairly confident I wouldn’t be tipping the punt over. I still had to sternly concentrate stood there on the stern though, and as a result can now remember little of anything we passed. Other punts sailed past, but I also took heart that there were a couple of other people out on the river who were even worse than me.

Even once I felt slightly competent, and could roughly guess which direction my punting and ruddering would take us next, I sadly concluded that I would have to add punting to my ever-expanding list of things-I’m-not-very-good-at. I dedicate more moments’ thought than I might, thinking of the nomadic Khassonké gentleman, eking out a living somewhere in Kayes, oblivious to the fact that he actually possesses the ability to be one of the world’s most talented and celebrated skiers, or the Yupik lady who will never know she has a natural knack for day trading. Every time I try something new, a small part of my brain thinks “This could be it! This is what we were built for!”. It’s a thought that often crosses my mind after a few pints whenever I see a pool table or a darts board, despite the fact that I have had numerous prior opportunities to realise neither are my calling. And so I inwardly sighed, and accepted that I would have to wait another day to finally uncover whatever talent it is that is hidden somewhere inside me.

Progress remained slow, and soon became exhausting. By the time we docked, some half an hour late, my hands were raw, my calves twitching, and I was more than a little thirsty.

“Good job,” Monica said.

The part of my brain that generally oversees interactions had apparently reallocated much of its resources to the parts of my brain governing balance and vital functions, so I think all I was left able to muster was perhaps a confused frown.

Jolt

2008-09-09T22:20:00.005+01:00

I surface from my slightly drunk sleep, and scrutinize the darkness, unsure where I am. The bed seems rather small, so I initially think maybe I am visiting my parents, but I detect the smell of stale smoke, and it seems a bit odd that I am wearing a tie, and then I remember I am sleeping on my friend’s sofa after some post-work drinking.

I grope around on the floor, realising it is the sound of my phone buzzing in my shoe that has woken me.
“03:40 +1 Message” glows my phone.

I jab at the little buttons a few times to get to the message, feeling myself falling back asleep. Former-Housemate Eddie is messaging me, telling me that he is out with our miscreant of a friend Chaz Jensen, who is in the process of rioting somewhere in east London. Jensenating, I prefer to call it. My eyelids droop, and I am oddly comforted to think that as I lie there, someone somewhere is witnessing the horror of the Jensenator going Turbo. In my dream, I punch the guy from work that I hate right in the face.

Home Is Where The Herts Is

2008-08-31T23:34:00.000+01:00

Paradise City, my new home, is not actually a city, and I have been regaling anyone who will listen with this fact (about five people then. You are number six, internet) ever since I discovered it, which wasn’t really until just before I arrived. It seems that when the town was being built – really quite recently – rather than provide the amenities which are commonly considered part of the criteria of city status (say, an airport, a university, or even a highstreet), this whole irksome set of criteria could be circumnavigated by just putting “City” in the town’s name, thus misleading the likes of me. It is, I suppose, akin to christening your son Sir Daniel from the get go, hence removing any pressure to strive for greatness.

I have heard it said that when the Paradise City’s designer set out his town, he decreed that each house should have its own apple tree. I don’t know if that’s true or not, but my garden certainly has one, and it is currently weighed down by a score of near ripe fruit. And not measly crab apples or something. No, these are large tennis ball-sized – or, if you prefer, apple-sized – apples. If I liked apples, it would be brilliant.

As I type, the purr of Cub the cat rumbles behind me. Cub is old, very calm and a little infirm, and since I had to feed him for a week while his family were away we are pretty good mates. It’s raining tonight, and a tired looking Cub asked to come in. He refused the use of my bed though, instead preferring to curl up in a suitcase.

And so, here I am. I have my house; I finally have a car again after years of going without; something resembling the start of a career; a garden full of apples; and my room resonates with the deeply pleasing acoustics of a cat’s purr.

And yet…

Of things lost, and silly mementos

2008-08-16T19:48:00.002+01:00

I open the door to my Granny’s bungalow, having been told I can go and seek out a keepsake before it is cleared ahead of it being rented out. I step inside and feel an impulse to call out “it’s me!” as I always would have done.

I know what I’m looking for. It’s something that belonged to my Granddad though – who passed away when I was fifteen – rather than my Granny: an old brass artillery shell that he used as a doorstop. No-one alive remembers where it came from now – Granddad was an engineer of some repute, so stayed on the British Isles for World War II, so I imagine he picked it up near a battery somewhere in the hills of south Wales – but it was always something I would be drawn to when I visited his old house in Aberdare. I remember being slightly frightened of it. Not because of it’s original intention, but how heavy and hard it was; I would be terrified that I might drop it – crushing my foot, smashing a floorboard, or just being told off for making a loud noise – but nonetheless always would pick it up and turn it round in my hands.

I can’t find it, and begin to fume. There is already a nagging suspicion that my Granny’s cleaner visited her in the nursing home, and is responsible for the disappearance of her not inexpensive watch. I checked the visitor’s book: she happened to sign in the afternoon it went missing, and hadn’t visited before and didn’t again afterwards. Basic detective work means she’s at least worth questioning. My father though forbade me to go round when I asked him what her address is; I dare say he’d rather just not know, which I accepted and probably agree with.

I’m incredulous anyone would steal – of anything – a brass artillery shell though, and I doubt most people would realise what it is on first glance. I search high and low, and eventually uncover it in a bucket behind the kitchen door. I always remembered it as being in the living room in this bungalow, but in hindsight maybe it had been consigned to this location ever since he died. I’m surprised how much smaller and lighter it is – much less heavy than, say, a shot-put, and yet all my memories of it involve me having to heave it from the floor with both hands. I take it with me, ignoring other items of more obvious value or aesthetic worth.

I find myself becoming surrounded by the oddest reminders of people; things which would appear insignificant, pointless or almost ridiculous to anyone else – indeed, maybe to the very people themselves – and yet I couldn’t part with them. It’s funny what can make you feel sentimental, what you will always remember, the things that, on the grand scheme of things, are really quite irrelevant to the nature of the person you want to remember, and yet – for no explainable reason – fill you with a sort of anguish when you think about losing, be they memories or silly mementos.

I’ve just been through simultaneously the best and the hardest week (or fortnight, or month, or longer? It’s hard to see a distinctive beginning now) I’ve known for a long time. I’ve reached the end now though, and am emotionally fatigued. Of the residue, for now the harder side is probably winning.

Bicicleta

2008-08-08T00:52:00.005+01:00

Having woken up, later that day I meet a Mexican girl from Albuquerque, who is quite annoying but her Spanish is handy, so I reason manipulating the situation is worth the headache, at least until after the tapas menu has been deciphered.

Evening starts to draw in, but the city continues to radiate the heat that has been beating down on it during the day. The Netherlands are playing in the European Championships, and I make an attempt to watch it in a bar, but have to step outside every quarter of an hour to escape the baking interior. An Australian is doing the same, and soon we are discussing the matches that have gone by in the previous weeks, and whether the Spanish could manage to beat the Italians. Our conversation ranges, and soon I ask him where he’s from.
“It’s a little town, called Colac. I always say I’m from Melbourne, but really it’s a good a hundred and fifty ks from there.”
“I know of Colac,” I nonchalantly mention.
“You’ve heard of Colac!? How come?”
“Yeah. The Timmons. You know, Neighbours.”
“The Timmons! Alright! I’ve been on the road for 5 months, and not a single person has known Colac.”
And so, we chat into the night and stay out drinking beer and eating crisps and bread until dawn. That’s when good Neighbours knowledge makes good friends.

The next morning, I meet Alex – for that is the Victorian’s name – over some breakfast, and we discuss what our respective days potentially involve. I mention I’d fancied that I might hire a bike, which he seems keen on too, so we decide to double up.

An hour later, we are winding our way through Granada’s streets, on a couple of bikes with baskets on the front. Slightly girlish you may think, but handy for a litre bottle of water. We weave our way up to the Alhambra, as Alex hasn’t seen it yet and just wants a quick peak, and then we launch our bikes down Cuesta de los Chinos, the steep rocky pathway that runs down alongside the fortress walls to the river and town below. Our bikes aren’t really built for this sort of thing, and they clank loudly in protest as the mud guards nearly rattle off. It is rather satisfying to this sort of thing on a bike with a basket though, I decide.

We then climb up through the winding streets of Albaicín, pausing more often now that the sun is getting hotter, beating down relentlessly.
“42°C!” exclaims one signpost I pass. I begin to wonder whose bright idea all of this was. We then sail back down into the city, enjoying the breeze as we pick up speed.

We’re thirsty by now, and have both easily chugged down our respective litres of water, and plaintively complain to one another about our dehydration. At that point we notice we are riding down an avenue which is lined by trees sporting bulging oranges. A plan hatches.

A few moments later, I am heaving Alex up into a tree, from which he can pluck us a hopefully juicy orange. He drops to the floor and tears in to the fruit, and we each bite into a sizeable segment. The orange is indeed juicy, and sends juice splashing down my shirt as I bite into it. But something isn’t quite right.
“Gross!” Alex retches, tossing the remaining orange to the ground and spitting the contents from his mouth. We hadn’t realised these were Seville Oranges, only good for making marmalade with. I really am thirsty though, so suck away on my piece regardless of how acidic and bitter it is.

We give up on going back to nature, and park up at a café and order lunch. They add 5 euros onto your bill if you choose to sit outside on the terrace, rather than in the air-conditioned interior, which seems a bit of a no brainer. Inside, Leona Lewis sings of her ongoing menstruation problems and I eat anchovies to get my salt levels back up.

We mull where to next, and find ourselves glancing eastwards.
“Mountains,” we agree.

We buy extra water, and wobble our way through the traffic and out of town. It doesn’t take long before the inclines begin, and people stop and stare, open-mouthed, as we pass by in the heat of the day on our bikes with baskets on the front. One man leans out of his car window as it overtakes, and cheers “King of the Mountains! King of the Mountains!”. In his excitement, he fails to negotiate a bend, and plunges off the road and down the side mountain, but he doesn’t really.

A few hours later, we drop the bikes off, and, somewhat unsteady on our feet, agree we should retire to our respective beds:

Spain

are playing tonight, so we will need to recover some energy. My scalp is feeling funny, and, as I drift of to sleep, I wonder – correctly as it turns out – whether I have managed to burn it.

Güiza is denied, but so is Di Natale, and then Fàbregas tucks away the final penalty, and the city goes ever so slightly crazy for the next six hours or so. As the sun sets, car horns blare, Chris Columbus is scaled, and flags are everywhere.

We meet some girls from Houston, who insist we have to see a bar they are going to, where ladies get given free drinks for dancing on the bar.
“The sluttier your dancing, the larger the shot!” they excitedly tell us, and we are bemused by their unconcealed willingness to be part of such exploitation. I mean, how expensive is a shot? The bar is predictably horrific, and the girls glory in the unwholesome attention they are getting. As we watch them gyrate, Alex ventures that it is probably best, for their welfare, that we stay and look after them, as soon enough they will be extremely drunk and won’t know what they are doing, or with whom. He says something along those lines, anyway.

First 12 Hours

2008-07-22T00:09:00.007+01:00

"Granada likes its ice-cream," I note, arriving a little after midnight. The main hubbub at that time in the evening isn’t around a bar, but in and around the ice-cream parlour on Calle Gran Via de Colón. My initial approach to the city had been greeted with a firework display, and I have to conclude that arrivals don’t get much better than pyrotechnics and frozen dessert. I potter round for a couple of hours, getting my bearings and exploring backstreets and enjoying the pleasing contrast to the rather seedy Malaga, before deciding to find my hostel in order to crash out.

En-route, I meet a lady who, having seen my rucksack, asks me where I have arrived from. We chat a bit and she, apparently, has just been to Britain and knows the place I’m staying at, and offers to walk me there. This all seems rather agreeable to me – an evening stroll through a foreign city with a friendly and attractive native – so I consent. Soon, however, we are climbing up dank and deserted backstreets, and I begin to suspect a dastardly trap is being laid. I check I have my fake wallet to hand – a £3 wallet bought from a market, stuffed with a couple of 5 Euro notes and assorted foreign currency which is of little uses to me anymore (including 10,000 South Korean Won), alongside an expired young person’s railcard and a number of those fake credit cards you get sent in the post in an attempt at temptation, all of which I have found provides a level of satisfaction in handing over that far outweighs any sense of moral self-righteousness that putting up a fuss and having your face sliced open for your valiant efforts can offer – and I decide to check her back story.
"Where in Britain did you visit?" I tentatively enquire.
"Staffordshire," she replies, matter-of-factly.
I am satisfied. No-one, I conclude, would make up that they went to Staffordshire.

At about 5am, a sound wakes me, and I make my way to my balcony overlooking the city and discover the source of the sound.
“Swifts like Granada,” I muse, as I watch thousands of birds wheeling and screaming in the glow of dawn.

I stand and watch colour seep across the city as the sun climbs above the snow capped Sierra Nevada to the east and bathes everything with new-found energy.

Wide-eyed by all before me, I know I can’t return to bed, so I shower and dress and head out. Fresh out of bed, out on the street I encounter people still on their way home from their night out, and I feel like a bit of a loser. Soon afterwards, I see a cat, and this cheers me up: cats always cheer me up. I soon see many more, and realise that they are stray and ill-kept, and this makes me a bit glum again.

I walk aimlessly for a while, before deciding I might as well head up to the Alhambra, it still being early enough to beat any queues. The Alhambra (or Azkaban, as one Australian I later meet accidentally calls it), should you not know, is a pink fortress, citadel, and palace that perches on a hill overlooking Granada, a sprawling complex of intricate design built by the Moors during their occupation of the Iberian peninsula. Catholic monarchs united to eventually drive the Muslims out of Spain at the end of the 1400s during the conclusion of the Reconquista, with those Jews and Moors who remained being forced in the coming years to convert to Christianity, only to then face the Inquisition. By and large, the Alhambra was spared though, unlike the city’s mosque, which took some 500 years to replace, or indeed the contents of the palace’s library, from which tens of thousands of books were burnt.

Originating from arid lands, the Moors insured their masterpiece incorporated water and shade to make the palace as luxurious as they could. I welcome this as the sun starts to rise in the sky as I arrive, and I’m also starting to feel the effects of only a couple of hours sleep. I duck a few swifts that tumble through the courtyards, and slowly amble round, dipping my hands in the fountains but steering clear of the ponds, which look a little murky.

A stream, running down a bannister. Genius!

By midday, I’ve already had a long day and the heat has become surprisingly overwhelming. I trudge back down to the city: siesta time.

Overdue

2008-07-08T00:30:00.009+01:00

Dear me, almost a month already? There is a post in progress, and it sits saved on the desktop, but it’s running at 600 words and 5 photos already, and who can be bothered with that, be it me to write it or you to read it?

I’ll get it sorted soon enough, but between watching multiple boxsets at once (The Wire, The Shield, Six Feet Under, Yes Minister, and Battlestar Galactica all require processing, and as soon as I finish one there is another one demanding attention), being exhausted; trying to move house, First fucking Capital Connect, and putting together a CD for someone (decent ones take time) I’m all out of hours most days.

But whilst I try to get my act together, be thankful someone else has.

The lovely Annie is back, and, after her criminally ignored last album, seems to have got herself a new publicist to make sure it doesn’t happen again. It's growing on me, but I have to wonder about the originality of yet another "Your Girlfriend Gives Me Right Dirty Looks" title. Anyhow, here's the rather less sleek viral version of the video, evidently filmed in and around Primrose Hill.

Chillax

2008-06-09T21:42:00.001+01:00

“Heh, I’m doing excellent time off,” I think to myself, curling my browning toes into the sand and gazing across the channel.

I’d stopped off to see Granny on the way. As Granny shuffled along through the day room on her fancy zimmer frame, a fellow resident caught my eye.
“It’s amazing what they can do for AIDS now, isn’t it?”
“I’m sorry?” I asked, slightly startled.
“AIDS,” she repeated loudly. “It’s much better than it used to be.”
“Well… I would have to say…” I mumbled, thinking to myself “Is it?”.
“Yes, they are so much lighter and easier to use now,” she continued, gesturing towards Granny.
“WALKING AIDES!” I shouted, unable to hide my relief. “Yes! Yes, it is!”

From there, I headed to Dorset and, despite one hairy moment where I had to contend with the lady on my Sat Nav sending me right whilst on the radio Beyonce urged me “to the left, to the left”, in no time at all I find myself on the beach and it’s not yet midday.

“I should come to the beach on weekdays more often,” I decide, casting my eye around my surroundings, deserted save for some sexy students ‘revising’.

I watch a tennis court-sized sandbank emerge 20 feet or so out to sea, thinking that if I repositioned my deck chair there I could quite possibly be the coolest man in Dorset.

Respite

2008-05-13T22:48:00.001+01:00

I visit my Granny, ensconced in a rest home whilst my parents get some respite from caring for her, heading for Majorca. I see her as I park, sat looking out of her window. I give her a hearty wave, but I’m a bit too far away for her to see clearly, so she frowns severely at me.

“Mike! What are you doing here?” Granny exclaims, as I arrive in her room having been escorted by a sexy caregiver.
Mike is her nephew, one of a number of guises I often seem to inadvertently adopt with Granny. I suppose our hair is a bit similar, but Mike is 60 and 6 foot tall, and I am neither.

I remind Granny as to my true identity, but she appears unconvinced, and fails to hide her confusion whenever I refer to my parents, what would be her long dead brother and sister-in-law. I resolutely refuse to pretend to be Mike, but at the same time I don’t want to embarrass her by excessively pointing out her error, so we continue in a perplexed circle for some time.

I decide to get Granny to explore her new environment a bit, and we slowly head to some of the day rooms.

We encounter a tall matron-like woman of senior years, who haughtily wishes us good morning. I wonder how my Granny will respond to such an old-fashioned care-giver, not liking to be bossed about, but then the woman promptly settles into a comfy chair and puts her feet up and starts reading a copy of Top Santé. This is the thing about it being a rest home rather than a care home: a lot of the residents are quite mobile and seem quite healthy, which can be a little confusing at times.

We indulge in half an hour of confused chit chat, before I guide her back on the long-forgotten route back to her room.

“Bye Mike,” says the sexy caregiver as I leave.

“I can be Mike”, I think, as I open the car door.

Comprende?

2008-04-29T17:27:00.000+01:00

I get shoulder barged as I browse some clothes in H&M. It’s a sneaky shoulder barge though, approached from behind: the coward’s shoulder barge.

“Motherfu…” I mutter, as I look up at the person’s retreating back, and just from that glance at their hair and clothes I can tell they are a grade-A twat. The sort of tosser who is too self-important to say excuse me, or to try and just squeeze past.

A moment later, I glimpse the profile of my attacker, and it is confirmed it is a grade-A twat.

I text a few friends later, and tell them my tale. I am shocked by the outrage and ferocity contained in their responses, many of them baying for violent retribution. Six years, it seems, is not long enough to forgive or forget a preening, public school, grade-A twat.

Triage

2008-04-20T00:05:00.001+01:00

It’s nearly midnight when I arrive at A&E at the Royal Free. It is mercifully empty, but somewhere a baby is endlessly screaming. I approach the glassed off receptionist as my dad sits uncomfortably on the bent grills that double for chairs.
“Excuse me,” I begin once, after a good five minutes, she acknowledges me. “I was wondering if I could see a nurse as…”
“What is your surname?” she interrupts me testily.

We run through the whole gamut of personal information, my irritation over the whole process being far outweighed by hers towards my entire existence, a situation my prior experience with ladies prepares me for. Matters are not helped when I accidentally and surprisingly give the last three digits of Tufnell Park Towers’ postcode instead of my current address’s, causing her to angrily flash eye-contact for the first time and for a moment I think she might go into meltdown. I made a note of the time when I first arrived, and despite there being no other prospective patients it has taken twenty minutes by the time she has finished with me. She cannot see me below the chest, and I could conceivably be stood in a sizeable pool of my own blood by the time she actually asks what is wrong with me.

I sit and study the vending machine as I wait: bars of chocolate and packets of crisps for a pound a go are the healthy offerings at this hospital. A Polish couple fluster in, and I switch my attention to them, the pregnant woman wincing as she leans against the rows of seats and the panicky large man fruitlessly trying to speed things up by rapping on the receptionist’s glass fortress.

Five minutes in, he explodes.
“Why are you asking me these stupid questions?” he frantically screeches. “My wife is pregnant! Who is caring what my mobile phone number is?”
“You tell her, big man!” I cheer. Telepathically.

Later, Dad and I depart. As we near the door, my dad commences on a monumental powerslide through a large puddle of carroty vomit. The feat of balance he displays to stay vertical is phenomenal. In the car I cruelly don’t stop laughing for some ten minutes and try to sing the Hawaii Five-O tune inbetween guffaws describing, had his stability not been so good, an imaginary scenario sort of reminiscent of the beginning a Pepé Le Pew cartoon.

Harp

2008-04-12T19:57:00.006+01:00

It is said that, a thousand years ago or so, there was once a man called Wemba who farmed and lived on a small area of Middleseaxan. He’d probably be a bit perplexed by the structure that sits on the site of his farm nowadays, and as Portsmouth and West Bromwich Albion trudged through their semi-final, I took a walk around the Brent Reservoir to the east of the stadium.

The damming of two brooks and flooding of hay meadows created the reservoir in the mid-1830s, so as to feed the stretch of the Grand Union Canal at Paddington. The decline in the demand for a canal system saw the reservoir shrink to a third of its peak size, but the reservoir remains as a conservation site.

Snow is threatening as I trudge along the sodden pathways, and I try to keep to the wooded areas as much as possible to shield myself from the biting northern wind. My creeping around seems to arouse suspicion amongst the water fowl, who honk their disapproval.

Great Crested Grebes.

The Victorians loved the reservoir, flocking to it in such thousands during fine weather that a railway station was specially constructed. It offered an escape from the city, and William Warner, the landlord of the local Inn The Welsh Harp, saw his chance to capitalise on this fact, tailoring his property to cater to these day trippers rather than those travelling to and from London on the Edgware Road. Extending his premises to include tea rooms and a banqueting hall, Warner also worked to make the area a popular fishing resort, ran horse races, and was responsible for making the area the unlikely location for Britain’s first ever greyhound race using a mechanical lure. Chaos reigned one day in 1871 when a bear escaped from the small zoo Warner had established, running amok in the nearby village of Hendon.

Looking south to Dollis Hill

Urbanisation saw to it though that the reservoir, like Wemba’s farm, became swallowed by the expanding metropolis to the south, and the area became less of an attraction once it was no longer seen as being part of the countryside. The train station closed, and the surrounding area became an industrial estate including, during the First World War, a tank factory which tested its aquatic models in the reservoir. The Welsh Harp Inn was eventually demolished in 1971 to make way for one of the ugly flyovers at Staples Corner, but its name lives on as many people continue to call the stretch of water the Welsh Harp.

Attrition

2008-04-03T21:31:00.000+01:00

One evening I arrive home from work to find the front yard full of bagged up rubbish and sacks of shredded papers. On entering the house, the hallway is full of gaffer-taped boxes, and there is the sound of hasty packing coming from the room of my nemesis.

It was almost as if she had got wind that the immigration authorities had been informed she was in the country beyond the allowance of her visa but, well, I can't begin to imagine who might have done that.

Over the previous few months I had decided to make a stand against the nutter, meeting her campaign to bully any new housemate head on, taking them under my wing and instructing them to refer her to me the moment she tried any nonsense with them. To give her her due, she was formidably mad, and after the umpteenth time of having her in my face chattering like a furious monkey I realised I might not be able to face her off head on, and would have to look at ways to box clever.

A day after the commencement of her move, the last of her stuff had been packed, and I saw her dragging the last of it out of the door and out to the road. Rushing to the door, I called her name as if she’d forgotten something. As she turned, I triumphantly raised my middle finger, slamming the door with my foot.

Victory, but the time has come for me to be on my way too. Such timing has happened to me before.

I’ve been poisoned!

2008-03-24T11:50:00.003Z

By food!

“This jerk chicken wrap is very disappointing,” I’d unwittingly understated to my friend, not realising the jerk perhaps referred to the convulsing it would have me doing a bit later. “It’s cold, it’s tasteless, but I will eat it all anyway.”

That was on Thursday night. By Sunday night, I had been able to eat no more than a couple of slices of pizza and three Weetabix. Hence, I had to forego Easter eggs and the Easter roast.

Within a couple of hours of having eaten, the vomiting had begun. I’d managed to make it home with only a couple of street vomits, and so began a long night of trying to lie as still as possible – the slightest shift in my position brought forth more of the yellow stuff. Between you and me, not all of it managed to make its way to the toilet in time.

"Do you think you might have had your drink spiked?" asks my Dad, ever the conspiracy theorist. "Lot's of ne'er-do-wells in that London."
"I wasn't even in London," I reply. "I was in a well-to-do Cathedral City."
"The English!" hisses my father.

When it came to venture home to my parents for Easter, I was not happy. A temperature of 102° and every muscle in my chest and stomach strained made me miserable enough as it was as the wind drove the marble-sized chunks of hail under the covering of Kilburn station and into my fed-up face.

Share a good vomit story with me.

Spurned!

2008-03-06T17:59:00.002Z

A few hundred of us clustered into the hall of a converted convent, having been summoned for the annual reciting of the company’s mission statement, and so we can be alerted to which bits our rivals do better at. I sat near the back, as part of my continuing quest to be cool, which meant that, thanks to someone with a big head and a faulty microphone, for four hours I can’t see or hear much of the proceedings, so I had little choice but to think about lunch.

Prior to being dismissed to eat, it is the awards section of the day. Various people go up for doing various things, and then one of my direct superiors gets onto the stage.
“Right, this next award relates to Project X,” he says, causing a few heads of colleagues to swivel round and gawp at me. I had identified the need for Project X, pretty much solely designed it, and watched as it went onto deliver the desired result immediately.
“This next individual,” my superior continued, “identified the need for Project X, pretty much solely designed it, and it went onto deliver the desired result immediately.”

A few more heads turned round to look at me, and I could feel myself blushing slightly. I had had no idea I would be getting an award, and any second now I’d have to get up in front of hundreds of people. I sent a quick message to my feet that they were under no circumstances to let me fall over in the next few minutes.

“And so,” the man on stage continued, “could I be joined on stage by… Dave!”

All the initial heads turned round to look at me again, with quizzical looks on their faces. My manager’s jaw dropped, and she reached and squeezed my knee. I didn’t quite know what to do, so I mindlessly clapped like everyone else. Dave, whose contribution didn’t amount to much more than reading a few emails I sent him (although maybe that was quite an effort for him) grinned as he accepted the award.

“Politicking,” a colleague whispered darkly to me as the applause died down. No doubt, I thought, but I didn’t realise I’d put myself forward for a smearing.

Afterwards, my manager tried to placate me, but just riled me further by telling me she’d nominated me for the award, but it had been turned down. I tried to sneer, and announced that “some of us are here to do a job, not collect poxy certificates.”
Then I flounced off to the bus stop.

Outside, I encountered a senior member of staff having a smoke.
“Get used to it,” she shrugged at me. “In this job, doing something good is like pissing at the pictures: you get a nice warm feeling, but no-one else knows about it.”

Sensitive

2008-02-25T11:07:00.003Z

On the train to work, I've noticed a few adverts for the film Jumper placed in the carriages.

They read something like:

"If you were a Jumper, you wouldn't have to use this train!"

To the best of my knowledge, the last 'jumper' to use this trainline ended up with his head a good mile away from his feet.

I can't decide if they are being very dimwitted, or trying to be devilishly clever.

Monsoon Moon

2008-02-21T20:22:00.003Z

As I was falling asleep last night, a trailer for a new Will Ferrall film flashed up on the screen.

From what I gleaned, it featured a man with the surname Moon who, despite lacking any technique, has to fight a dangerous animal in a boxing ring.

"Wow," I wondered to myself as I drifted off to nod land. "Where do those creative geniuses of the 'shout things' school of comedy get their ideas from?"

Dead Air

2008-02-18T00:07:00.000Z

I find myself stranded without my phone's charger, and a phone which is already beeping with hunger.

Eventually my phones ceases to protest, and three long days pass as it sits motionless and grey.

On the third day though, I encounter someone with a spare phone.
"Just pop your sim card in," they say. "There's plently of battery and I don't ever use it."

"Oh boy!" I think. "Three whole days of having my phone off. I'll be bombarded with messages and missed calls!"

Two days later, I get a text.

"Bollocks," I think.

On reflection

2008-02-13T15:27:00.002Z

Hypocritically, as I was writing that last post I was enjoying Life In Cold Blood which was on the telly in the background. I do love a good bit of BBC wildlife programming, even if all of their presenters aside from Attenborough seem to be being allowed to let more and more anthromorphism slip into their work: Bill Oddie even does Johnny Morris-style voices.

That said, some responses to life's predicaments probably are universal.

TV Times

2008-02-11T22:30:00.000Z

On the night of my birthday, I came to be chatting with my friend and chose to tease her – as is my wont – about her employer, the BBC. I was at that stage though where my wit is half a lap behind my mouth, and I probably just sounded a bit obnoxious. I was quipping that I was glad I didn’t pay my license fee – a deceptive assertion in itself: rather, my landlady pays it for me – because I find the output on BBC1 too dismal to watch, and I was saying this mainly to get a rise out of her because, in short, the scurrilous elixir had well and truly been supped and I was being what scientists call 'a knob'.

It worked, and I was met with a well-rehearsed spiel about the amount of new programming broadcast in 2007, exciting projects across all mediums due for the new year, and so forth. I’d hit a nerve, and this was fair enough. She is after all one of the people who has to cast her eye over all the complaints the BBC receive from nutters far and wide. Stephen Fry once wrote that the people who contact the BBC to complain are the very people whose opinions the BBC should resolutely endeavour to ignore: it must be a vexatious task.

As events took a less jovial and slightly more defensive turn than I had intended, I had to quickly backtrack, reassuring her that I am really a BBC fan, but also a rather annoying wind-up merchant. Channel-wise, I confirmed, Two and Four certainly get my vote, and I stick Radio Four on the wireless most days and, so long as it’s after 9pm, a bit of Radio One can get thrown in too. I meekly stuck to my guns over BBC1 though: I can't help but be struck by how bogged down with slow-paced, badly acted dramas it is, and I will go ever so slightly more mental if another theatre-trained white middle-class actor arrives to play one of Walford’s hard men. The young Hertfordshire town Eastenders is filmed in is more ethnically diverse than the bizarre Turk-Somali-Chinese-Etcetera free corner of E20 in which it is set.

Maybe, just maybe though, Saturday night entertainment has moved on a little. I’m no fan of constant talent shows (Lloyd-Webber is a seriously rich toadman: why is the general public funding his auditions for him?) and BBC1 hasn’t mustered a decent sitcom yet this decade, but I suppose – National Lottery coverage aside – it’s no worse than it’s ever been, and in some ways it’s a lot better.

In 1983, long before the likes of Jackass or Davina McCall’s Don’t Try This At Home, Noel Edmonds’ Late Late Breakfast show included a segment where members of the public were tasked with performing outrageous stunts. To say these were done on the cheap might be something of an understatement. The events in the below clip shows an incident in which one lucky viewer was left with a broken pelvis and spinal injuries (and very nearly saw John Peel get squashed flat).

Three years later the spectacular feats continued, until one viewer died whilst rehearsing a bungee stunt.

Shit telly, but not much in the way of real life mutilation and fatalities. A happy medium, perhaps then?

You Can't!

2008-02-03T22:36:00.000Z

It was amusing to hear Naveen Andrews, on Friday Night with Jonathan Ross, tell of his and Dominic Monaghan’s habit of exchanging Partridgisms between shoots, much to their co-stars’ bemusement.

I too work with a guy with whom in Partridge we have a common currency in comparison to the rest of our colleagues, due to age range rather than nationality. There’s something oddly satisfying in the confused looks the rest of the office shoot us when we complain that a cup of tea “is hotter than the sun”, good work is greeted with exclamations of “Spiceworld!” or we are just casually enquiring “smell my cheese?”

Shaggy Dog Story

2008-01-29T21:00:00.000Z

def: A lengthy, improbable and ultimately pointless story, often told in an attempt at humour.

After a weekend of wayward boozing, starting in Primrose Hill and sliding downwards to Brixton, I wake up early in deepest south London, at the point where it is so south I consider it to no longer really count as London. I shuffle to the bathroom, on the precipice between still being drunk and the beginnings of a hangover, incapable of preventing myself bumping into things despite my sluggish pace.

As I relieve myself I stand looking out of the window; the fact that the glass is clear in a ground floor bathroom being just one more thing to add to my list of strange things about south London.
“There’s a dog in the garden,” I note to myself, watching a lively young Staffordshire Terrier bound about outside. Hazily, I head back to bed.

“There’s a dog in the garden,” my host observes some hours later as I eat breakfast, causing an almost forgotten memory to stir.
“I know,” I reply eventually, scratching my head. “I saw it when I got up earlier. Thinking about it, that was ages ago. It’s still there?”
“Yes,” she says. “It’s running up and down with an old can of coke in its mouth.”
“Wow, that’s about three hours of excited charging about. How odd.”

We watch the juvenile canine through the window for a while, speculating how it got there. We decide maybe someone has dumped it over the fence to get rid of it, so I go and get dressed so I can go outside and investigate.

A few minutes later I step outside into the sort of morning that fools you into thinking spring is nearly here, forgetting that February is still around the corner to kick slush into your stupid optimistic face, and BAM, I get a wallop of not-so-young-and-actually-very-strong dog full in the chest, covering my top and my jeans in mud. We tango away from the door, so he can’t get inside.

Once out onto the lawn, the dog firmly clamps my wrist in its jaws.
“Don’t do that,” I wearily say. I am fairly confident that I can fight this young dog to the death if needs be – and I start to cast around for a blunt implement whilst things are still relatively calm – but it wouldn’t really be an ideal start to a Sunday morning. Remembering reading somewhere about how soldiers are trained to dispatch guard dogs, I reach around with my free hand and grab a hind leg, tugging and flipping the dog over onto its back, surprising it enough to release my wrist. It seems to enjoy this game, and leaps up, further covering me with mud. I bear-hug this relentless force, and firmly whisper into its ear until it calms down, feeling a bit like Mic Martin from Dog Borstal.
“How’s it going?” comes the call from the bathroom window.
“Great!” I frown through clenched teeth, wondering if I dare release my grip.

“The mud in your garden is really smelly, even for mud,” I say, a little while later, having managed to escape back indoors.
“Yes,” she sniffs.
“I think the puddles out there might be a bit stagnant,” I observe, tugging my damp jumper away from my skin.
“Yes,” she sniffs again. “Look, I actually have to go to work now. Can I leave you here to sort the dog out?”
“Sure, leave it with me. In fact, if I can’t find out where it came from, maybe I’ll keep it. I like a challenge.”
“Huw,” she says. “Your flatmates don’t even like you having guests.”
“Ah, yes,” I agree. “Had overlooked that.”

Soon I am left alone, and I look out of the window at the dog who is up on his haunches and looking back at me through the window, whimpering. I see my Sunday stretching out ahead of me with a trip to Battersea Dogs’ Home, and plenty of more wrestling, hangover and all. Still, I consider, at least he hasn’t showed any interest in humping me.

I decide door to door enquiries might be the best bet. I try nextdoor, and a garbled intercom message asks who it is. I try to explain, but if I sound as garbled as they do it’s quite pointless. I wait at the door and finally it creaks open, the ancient occupier having seemingly raised themselves from a coffin to open up, their paper-thin skin yellowed by a combination of jaundice and a forty-a-day habit.
“I’ve just come from nextdoor because…”
“No you haven’t,” the old woman coughs suspiciously. “You don’t live nextdoor.”
“Well, no, I don’t, but I am…”
“Then why did you say you did?”
We continue this way for sometime, with me being interrupted each time I try and string more than seven words together. It takes a good fifteen minutes to establish whether she owns a dog or not (“Why would I have a dog?”)

I try the other side, and watch the curtains warily twitch. It’s a quirk of big-city life that never happened where I grew up, that people have to check out who is knocking on the door before answering. It’s not a safety thing as far as I can see though: people open the door regardless of what they see. They just want to know first.

A couple decked out in full Manchester United gear tentatively open the door, straightforwardly enquiring what I want in broad south London accents. The archetypal stereotype of their appearance given the location amuses me. Crystal Palace’s stadium is less than two miles away. Well, perhaps that’s explanation enough actually.

I explain about the dog, which interests them greatly, but they know nothing about it. The conversation dries up, but none of us seem able to end it. It is almost as if, once the suspicion of the stranger at the door has lifted, all parties are enjoying the novelty.
“So, getting ready for the game?” I ask.
“Yes, but our telly is playing up a bit.”
“Right, right. Starting soon is it?”
“Mmm. About half an hour I think. Mmm.”
A lull is in danger of setting in.
“I’m covered in mud!” I announce, gesturing to myself.
“Oh yes, yes you are.”
“From the dog. Umm. The dog. It jumped all over me.”
“Oh right, I see. Yes.”

We finally break loose of this awkward conversational whirlpool, and I head back indoors wondering what I can find to fashion a lead with. However, an inspection of the garden reveals the dog has disappeared.

I hear some shouts somewhere in the distance, and feel an SEP field surround the now out of sight hound.

Can't See The Wood...

2008-01-21T18:54:00.000Z

A historian might say that no news is truly new. Everything has its precedent if you look hard enough.

With that in mind, and the astonishing images of the south coast's timber-stricken beaches following the sinking of a ship off the Dorset coast being all over the news, here's a picture from the 1998 Have I Got News For You annual.

12 Die In 30 Minutes As Bombers Target Shite Area

2007-12-31T20:00:00.000Z

In the spirit of the splendid The Electric Goose, here are some of my favourite news-type gaffes or oddities from 2007.

"Ungrateful cow snubs rescuers" Hastings and St. Leonards Observer

"Police shoot dead woman in car park" London Metro

"Arranging the death of a loved one isn’t easy" Advert in the Western Mail

"Man Who Killed Best Friend Warned to Behave" Stranraer and Wigtownshire Gazette

""Houses damaged as parts of UK struck by volcanoes" The Swindon Advertiser, confusing their volcanoes and tornadoes

"Killer Skunk Floods London" London Evening Standard billboard

"Cancer Patient Refused Treatment Because He’s Welsh" South Wales Echo billboard

"Woman shot dead by husband blames airport bosses for her death" The Argus, Sussex

Meanwhile, some lazy Copy and Pasting in the East Midlands led to this advert appearing.

And from beyond the UK:

"When Redding, a longtime scout for Playboy, discovered Smith, the model could barely right a sentence" The Houston Chronicle

"Hamlet shaken by murder then suicide" The Sydney Morning Herald

Going Postal

2007-12-26T17:33:00.000Z

The families of The Garfather and myself have something of a Christmas tradition. It is one of delivering a Christmas Card as close to Christmas as possible, with whoever holds out longest being the de facto winner.

This custom harks back to the day when a card being exchanged between the respective families wasn't a given, and the decision to send a card might be made on a whimsy, and this would always happen with good time before Christmas, thus giving the latter family plenty of time to reciprocate.

All good and well. Now, one year The Garfather and his mother went away on holiday, leaving The Garfather's dad to fend for himself over the festive period. No card had been received, and as the majority of the family were away we didn't think to send one. Then, on Christmas Eve at about nine o'clock in the evening, we heard a sound from the direction of the letterbox. A card had been slipt through from The Garfathers with mere hours until the first day of Christmas. Goodwill and peace were swiftly abandoned as a reply was transcribed, and I was dispatched into the cold of the night to deliver it.

The next year, we responded in kind, and prompted a similar panic in the respective household. In the years afterwards, similar tit for tat card delivering occured, until the ritual has become so well established that no-one is ever caught out, but it is just a matter of who can hold out as close to midnight as possible (or, indeed, Christmas morning: there was a time when I would take the card to the pub with me, to guarantee an early hours delivery).

This year, The Garfather and I happened to be on messenger during the afternoon of Christmas Eve. In my house, the card had long since been written, but was just waiting for night fall before dispatch could be considered. As we chatted, I sensed a movement outside the house so crept to the window. I returned to the computer.

"Odd," I typed, not actually mystified. "I've just seen a small American woman scuttling up my driveway, and now there is a card of some description on my doormat."
"A daylight delivery?!" The Garfather exclaimed. "That is most aberrant."
"You guys just lost your nerve this time, I suppose. The beauty of this duel is that there's always next year."

Tinsel Town

2007-12-21T19:40:00.000Z

Work often takes me to a town on the outskirts of London where they film a bafflingly popular soap, as well as a remarkably dull hospital drama and other such productions. On the train some mornings, I’ll find myself seated next to someone who is clearly a member of the production crew, who will be pouring over a script, or the outline for a stunt. I will read these scripts because I am a nosey person and because their keepers are often careless. I imagine if I actually cared to watch the soap then I would find this very exciting indeed.

Perhaps more interesting though is that on the train home I sometimes find myself sat amongst all the extras. They chatter excitedly and, in the way only thespians can, loudly about their various careers which are currently on hold (hence the extras work), and complain about how hard it is sat in a café for six hours pretending to drink tea.

-------------

Anyway, this is good.

Neighbourhood Watch

2007-11-21T22:24:00.000Z

The famous footballer who has been seen at the nearby village pub has now moved just round the corner from my parents. This was first realised when my dad felt a shadow fall across him in the queue at the local Tesco. My dad has remained astonished by the identity of his new neighbour, and seems to be collecting sightings amongst his friends at the tennis club.

After the result against Croatia, I wonder if the hero-worship amongst the locals will diminish.

All Hallow's Eve

2007-11-13T20:22:00.000Z

Part of the attraction of visiting the United States at this time of year was to experience Hallowe’en in a culture which makes a big deal of it. Much as certain American expressions and phrases capture a snapshot of Britain as it once was, Hallowe’en offers a link to various pre-Christian Celtic and Gaelic autumn festivals, bought over in some form by the Irish and those of Celtic-origin, but which have been largely forgotten on the British Isles. So, in a sense, America offered me the chance to experience remnants of festivals such as Samhain and Nos Galen Gaef which, in their homeland, have been pushed to the peripheral by the likes of the English Reformation and Guy Fawkes.

I used to have a friend at school whose father was something of a Ned Flanders character, and so his poor son was always forbidden from attending any parties with a Hallowe’en type slant.
“It’s a pagan festival! PAGAN!” I would imagine the father’s anguished cries, as he looked fearfully and apologetically heaven-wards, quaking.
It bothered me that he seemed so judgemental of our cultural heritage, so eager for it to be forgotten and condemed as worthless. Didn’t he ever wonder what a happy coincidence it was that Jesus was born slap bang in the middle of various European winter festivals, on exactly the same day gods in the Ishtar and Mithra religions were also celebrating their birthdays? That wasn’t it fortunate that the coming of the messiah could be celebrated right when everyone had traditionally already been having their biggest celebrations anyway, be it in the form of the Roman Empire’s Sol Invictus festival, or the offerings made to Thor in northern Europe as part of Yule? Were, I wondered, Easter Eggs and the Easter Bunny banned from the family home, being such poorly disguised hangovers from pagan celebrations of the coming of spring?

My roundabout point being that all festivals generally hark back to something that preceded it, borrowing and swallowing various aspects and adopting them as their own (a more recent example, relatively speaking, being bonfires at Guy Fawkes, which were carried over from the bone-fires of the autumn festivals). It’s why, as a non-Christian, I can celebrate Christmas without feeling at all hypocritical, safe in the knowledge that people have been doing so for hundreds of years under the guises of various of religions, with Christianity being the latest in the line. And that’s why I wanted to see Hallowe’en in America – because it’s a snapshot of how things once were, albeit in a disguised (pun acknowledged) form.

My day started off with an event which genuinely can be classed as a new addition to the day’s events. At the local park, the dog park was hosting a “Howloween” costume party. Yes, for the dogs. Issac the Beagle, who I was staying with, donned his Cockerel suit, and we set off. Enroute, I speculated that perhaps this actually was a remnant of European autumn festivals, which often incorporated cattle, but I couldn’t really convince myself.

Any fears Issac had that he would be the only one dressed up were allayed on our arrival, where we were greeted by the sight of some forty to fifty dogs, decked out in all manner of costumes, charging round the enclosure. He immediately sprinted off to find someone to chase him, occasionally baying with his excitement.

Hugh Hefner keeps an eye on proceedings

The Cockerel suit was soon comprehensively caked with mud, and the above fellow reminded me it was time to head out of the city to acquire a couple of items for another autumn custom, which has been tacked onto Hallowe’en.

Carved pumpkins – or, as it once was, turnips and swedes – to make Jack-o’lanterns are now such an integral part of Hallowe’en that the original tale of Stingy Jack’s trip to Hell is long forgotten, but it’s a perfect illustration of how festivals are very flexible in customs and practices they adopt.

We arrived at a country farm, and pumpkins stretched out in every direction. The abundance just made choosing all the harder. A pumpkin, I had previously thought, was much like any other pumpkin, give or take its size. But here I found myself confronted with various shapes and colours, and lost myself to this array for some time.

Later that evening walking home from a trip into town, I was surprised to see children going from shop to shop to trick or treat, and each shop – regardless of its trade – seemed to be prepared with huge buckets of sweets and chocolate. In a big city though, I reasoned, where no-one’s front door is onto the street, there’s not much alternative. I bought a drink, and managed to get a Butterfinger thrown in too. The kids had started appearing early in the day, out in their costumes being escorted by parents as early as midday. In some neighbourhoods, preparations were under way for block-parties. Everyone seemed very cheerful, even for New York.

Arriving home I set to carving my pumpkin, inbetween occasional calls from children who lived inside the building. I’d only carved a pumpkin once before, and still found the sludge and smell an alien and not entirely pleasant experience. Afterwards though, much like a trip to the gym, the sense of achievement made it seem worthwhile.

A trip to Greenwich Village that night was something of an eye-opener. The parade was just finishing, and the streets were packed with thousands of people, all decked out in elaborate costumes. I would recommend that anyone who doesn’t mind a crowd tries to experience it at least once.

I later found myself at a party being held by Harvard graduates who were equal to me in years and yet already in possession of exclusive Manhattan property. Vodka though, I find, is a great leveller, so after a number of large measures I let the whys-and-wherefores slip from my mind, and reflected that Hallowe’en, done right, is a great and sorely missed day.

Arrival

2007-11-01T21:27:00.000Z

I tug my suitcase towards the final line of immigration, trying to casually scrutinise the officials ahead to try and identify the one with the least bellicose manner. This is, though, somewhat akin to mulling over whether you’d prefer a punch to the face or a knee to the knackers.

I gear myself up not to take any of it personally; these guys are, after all, trained to be simultaneously unforthcoming and accusatory, and – aside from whatever personal kick it’s giving them – they just want to see how you react. "Love it or leave it" is the rebuke to any criticism in this part of the world, and I have no plans to make a return flight just yet. Just give him the facts, no pleasantries, no conversation, and certainly no questions.

"Whatcha here fwar?" the official asks, seemingly incredulous to have encountered a non-US citizen at an international airport.
"A holiday." Crap, I should have said vacation. Too late now: I’ll sound unsure and nervous if I correct myself.
"Whatcha gonna dwo?"
"Site seeing."
"Shy at searing? What’s dat?"
Double crap, I think. I was sure site seeing wasn’t an exclusively British English expression. Well, I’d better answer.
"Ummm, the visiting of areas and buildings of interest, particularly to tourists."
A flicker of recognition flitters across the official's eyes, but it isn’t a particularly humbled one.
"Go," he says, no longer looking at me and jabbing his thumb over his shoulder.

All is grey and damp on the New Jersey turnpike, the slow moving traffic still managing to throw up spray as the evening draws in. Chimneys pump steam and smoke into the darkening sky, with its back drop of scattered pylons and skeletal bridges. After the sterile atmosphere of the airport, these surroundings, however unglamorous, serve to awaken the holiday mood as the environment finally feels foreign and different. I do however begin to appreciate why site seeing is such an alien term to a New Jersey resident.

The late rush-hour traffic is relentless and it is soon nighttime, but mercifully I reach Weehawken and leave the turnpike. A few twists and turns through some backstreets, and I discover I am at the top of a hill. The Hudson sits below me, and across it lurks Manhattan, my first glimpse of it hidden by the rain and cloud, but I can still feel a colossal presence.

Pigeonholing

2007-10-23T15:57:00.000+01:00

Cricklewood more than makes up for the lack of character in my house, the streets offering a whole array of personalities to amuse, entertain or mildly terrify on occasion.

I sit drinking green tea with the Iraqi owner of the nearby corner shop, exchanging news about the more extravagant characters who amble up and down the ancient Watling Street outside.

“I thought in the Middle East you guys were all about your really thick black coffee. I thought green tea was more of a Chinese thing” I say, the big fat stupid racist that I am.
“No,” Salim says, shrugging a little. “China, Pakistan, Iraq, North Africa. It is popular in lots of places.”
“Great,” I think, “a whole set of stereotypes and associations to unplug and rewire.”

An Irishman in a grubby suit arrives and demands scotch, SCOTCH!!

I feel order is restored in my simple mind.

Getting A Move On

2007-10-16T19:37:00.000+01:00

I decide it is time to leave the Care In The Community housing I seem to have inadvertently moved in to, and begin to househunt, albeit in a fairly lackadaisical way. I’m not desperate, so I don’t need to try and see flats constantly, or consider moving into a hovel, and nor can I really be bothered to travel miles and miles across town after a day at work.

One night, I see an advert for a room which sounds to be just around the corner. I get in touch and arrange the viewing, and the address I get given seems strikingly familiar. A short stroll, and my suspicions are confirmed: I find myself standing in a street, looking at a house I had previously seen when searching for somewhere to live in May. And not just visited, but really liked, only to be told they’d already shaken hands with the previous visitor. Secret househunting is clandestine enough, but going to see a house you really quite fancied you’d moved into previously is a bit akin to secretly meeting up with an old flame behind your loved one’s back.

I’m ushered into the house, and soon realise it is one of the unattractive box rooms which is on offer, not the room I saw before. I make my excuses and trudge home, still feeling a twinge of guilt at my duplicity. I enter the kitchen and encounter a housemate, who quickly scuttles away without responding to my greeting.

“Actually,” I resolve, “Fuck ‘em.”

Missing Permethrin

2007-09-27T18:24:00.000+01:00

The tail-end of the summer brings one final push by the ranks of winged insects to pair up and ensure their Cretaaceous legacy is continued next year. This adds a little flavour to playing football in one of London’s parks, meaning you are the buffet on the sidelines of this writhing swarm, leaving you with pebble dashed calves which have to be furiously rubbed at under the desk the next day at work. You look a little odd.

I sometimes wonder if, with playing next to the zoo, we get subjected to some sort of midge much more beefy than its common counterparts, having adapted locally to biting through the hides of animals from the savannahs of Africa and beyond. As dusk approaches, they lazily rise in a fluttering mist from the grass and set upon any exposed leg flesh with a leisurely but relentless resolve, until the frequent nips become a background constant.

On the last week where there is enough daylight to play on an evening, we find ourselves truly exposed as our one line of defence is removed: one of our number, who seems to have made a hobby of exploring central American jungles and resultantly brings a spray with him of such strength that you seem to see the skin of your legs draw itself taut upon contact, doesn’t turn up. Hence the look of panic in the eyes of some I see upon arrival, as they flinch at the sensation of being gnawed alive.

“Huw,” one desperately asks, simultaneously rubbing his arms and legs as I set down my bag, “do you have any repellent with you?”
“Plenty,” I say, straightening up. “It’s called natural charisma.”

The cloud descends around us.

Of The Broadway And Beyond

2007-09-18T20:25:00.000+01:00

‘Tween the five hills of Shoot-up, Childs, Hendon, Dollis and Dudden sits a valley through which the streams have long since ceased to flow, a section of a relentless Roman Road running in their place. A settlement of some description has existed along this stretch of the road, next to where the Crooked Wood once stood, for some 900 years, referred to in print for the first time as 'Le Crickeldwode' by the Normans.

Modern day Cricklewood is squashed not just by the five hills surrounding it, but sits in the armpit of the triumvirate of the London Boroughs of Brent, Camden and Barnet. When I wake up in the morning I am in Barnet, but turning left or right at the end of my street I immediately find myself in another part of London: do I want a curry from Camden or a burger in Brent?

The house I live in, and those around it, are a testament to Cricklewood’s eventual establishment as an urbanised area: in the fields which used to host bare-knuckle prize fights to the rear of the lonely coaching inn The Crown – offering respite from the mud and highwaymen to those travelling to and from London and the towns of Hertfordshire to the north, and (albeit rebuilt) still something of a focal point – streets and houses were swiftly thrown up in order to house workers when, in 1867, The Midland Railway build expansive railway sidings in Cricklewood, moving from the site in Kentish Town. There may not have been a venue for prize fights anymore, but it was in the huddles of garages behind the Crown that Smith’s Crisps were first made in 1912.

The rail workers have long gone, but this relatively young area of London has continued to be a place which attracts those arriving in the capital seeking work. For much of the 1900s it was the Irish, be they from Ireland or down the road in Kilburn, who fed the demographic, and more recently it is the Polish whose presence can be keenly felt. As perhaps no one group feels it is established enough to make a sole claim to the area, everyone seems to mix in with one another amicably. Perhaps all the comings and goings is what can give the area a relaxed, and occasionally bawdy, holiday camp feel.

“Cheap and cheerful,” is how I described the area to my grandmother when she asked whether Cricklewood is a nice place. It is nice, but perhaps only in comparison to places which aren’t nice, if that makes any sense. It’s not going to win any prizes on its own steam, but as you pick your way round the elderly Irishmen in suits who slump on the Broadway stinking of cider by midday or, on a moderately windy day, get pelted by the abundant litter that seems to coat every surface going, you still can’t help but feel life could be a whole lot worse. And even though there’s no sign of the streams anymore, all it takes is a smattering of rain to flood the bottom of Cricklewood Lane, giving you cause to sprint through the tunnel lest you should be drenched by the aquaplaning 189 bus to Brent Cross.

The final word should perhaps go to fellow resident and writer/poet Tobias Hill though, who captures it all better than I could hope to.

“...North of Kilburn (which has always been wilder), and West of Hampstead (which has always been richer)…walk down the Broadway on a Saturday evening, and you’ll see what Cricklewood is about. Here Kurdish butchers sit cow’s-cheek-by-carp’s-jowl beside Russian fishmongers, the Somali street-vendors sell Rolex Oysters outside the bagel bakery, and sallow-faced girls peddle freshly stolen hocks of ham at the bus stop by the Turkish pizzeria. This is not a picture Monet would ever have chosen to paint: but Hogarth would have, and Turner might have if he had ever been lost enough. It is essentially Londonish, metropolitan to the core, dirty and fabulous…”

Nothing Has Been Happening!

2007-09-09T21:18:00.000+01:00

And wow, before you know it well over a month has passed and not a word written. August, I suppose, flew past in a blur of commuting and working, with a splash of big nights out thrown in, but not a lot else. This at least meant I scarcely noticed the lack of decent weather. My housemates remain… challenging, but my apathy towards them shields me from their peculiar ways (they did, however, manage to drive the new housemate out with what I found to be astonishing speed). After a period of effort, I have now managed to cultivate a ‘do not disturb’ aura around myself, making it clear I am not to be drawn into any bathroom or lavatory political issues, assimilating myself with the indifferent atmosphere I failed to detect when I first looked round. Were they only more annoying and less listless I could share more, but an indifferent housing situation is perhaps better for the mind than it is for the blog. I can do better than one post every six weeks though, and I will.

Any questions?

Dark Thoughts In Gunwharf Quays

2007-08-01T21:24:00.001+01:00

The last time I was in Portsmouth was some five years ago to catch a 7am ferry to France. Portsmouth has always had that very functional feel to me: it’s a dock. An island city which admittedly sounds kind of exciting, but little more. And yet now I found myself going to see Portsmouth in its own right because, in those intervening five years, Portsmouth has gained a new addition, dominating its formally modest skyline. I’d noticed this new addition some weeks earlier, as I stood on the verge of the New Forest: it didn’t seem much from there, but then I was practically in another county.

At 170m tall (558-feet, non-metric lovers), the Spinnaker Tower may be very much Burj al-Arab in Dubai’s kid brother, but it still has a striking effect in a town who’s architecture has never really recovered from being flattened 60 or so years ago. So up I go.

There is a glass plate floor in the Spinnaker, allowing one to step across the clearest of glass, beneath which the dirty water of the docks splashes against the quayside some 360-feet below. I have mixed feelings looking at this glass plate. A significant part of me has no interest in such things, but an equal part of me feels I am letting the side down – and rendering the whole visit to such places pointless – if I don’t get stuck in, regardless of how little I enjoy it. I slip my shoes off and step out into the centre, forcing myself to look down as I take each step, rather than cheating my brain by staring off into the middle distance. I surprise myself at how little fuss my amygdala is making: I’m not relaxed, I’m not entirely comfortable, but I am not in terror. Another thing I am not is keen; keen on the children buffeting me that is, making my already exaggerated sense of imbalance that bit worse as they tear across the glass, do rolly pollys, and skid across it on their knees. A couple of them gather in one point and begin to stamp, eagerly chirping to each other “let’s try and smash it!” as they jump up and down. Now, that sort of thing just makes me nervous.

I reach the end of the walkway, and urge it to shatter the moment my foot leaves it: right at that moment, there is nothing more that I’d like to see than their three little bodies tumbling through the air into the sea below, with its hidden spikes of jagged metal just below the oil stained surface. When I was going up the Eifel Tower last summer, I remember one particular irritating person (even by tourist standards) remarking to his companions “What would happen if, like, the lift cable, like, snapped right now?” “What the buggery fuck do you think’ll happen, Einstein incarnate?” is what I want to say to such people in such situations. I don’t say these things though. I just allow my already frazzled nerves to jangle a little more, and then fruitlessly remember these idiots for years afterwards, wasting valuable brain space.

Take Note

2007-07-26T22:53:00.000+01:00

I’m flabbergasted. I moved into a new house a while ago, and I remember in the first few weeks I found it totally perplexing at how unforthcoming my new housemates were. No introductions, no cups of tea, no nothing. In time I got used to it, but for that first initial period I couldn’t help but take it a little personally and suffer from a touch of paranoia. Now though I’m used to a situation where essentially I’m living by myself, only with the toilet roll being used up at a faster rate than it otherwise might.

So when a new housemate moved in last week, I felt a bit sorry for them, appreciating that they might not get the first month of being in a new house they were expecting. As it happens, paths have yet to cross, so if anything I’m just perpetuating the frosty welcome, but I certainly intend to be unnaturally chirpy when we first meet before sinking into eventual antipathy or even dislike, as is the housemate custom.

My pity for her – I assume it’s a her for reasons we will get to soon enough – was today swapped for the aforementioned flabbergasted state. I was walking past their/her room today, and noticed a note had been attached to the door.
“Ah,” I thought, “a note of welcome. How uncharacteristically nice of someone.”
I had a magoo at it as I am a nosey person, and got a bit of a surprise. It was a note complaining in no uncertain terms about the amount of hair that had been left in the bath that morning. Miaow!

I’d seen the hair myself, and sure there was a fair bit but, well, I’ve lived with girls before, and have even been fortunate to find one or two willing to fraternize with me for a time, and so I appreciate that they are a species with malting tendencies. But, to me, even that’s not the point. A note to a brand new member of the household, and written by someone I wouldn’t be surprised to learn hasn’t met them either, is so… glacial. There are two types of notes you can rightly write: ones to people you’ve known for ages, and ones to people who you despise so much you therefore don’t care if you come across as sounding arsey. Writing them to strangers after a first offence though…?

So, I went downstairs and mulled on the matter. It was unpleasant, it was unfriendly, but it was also something to do with girls and bathrooms, and those two issues combined are far too fractious for the likes of me to get involved with. I would stick my head in the sand for now, but resolved to turn the chirpiness up to 8.5 at a later to try and compensate for it.

And then I walked past the note again and saw something I’d missed the first time, and that’s when my gast truly became all flabbery.

The note’s author had sellotaped some of the offending hair to the note. Hair. Stuck to the note. Just incase there could be any mistaking what was being referred to.
“No bleeding way,” I thought. “That’s the note equivalent of a shove to the chest, surely?”
I mulled further. Aside from the voicing of your own displeasure, notes are, in a way, an act of public shaming if other people might see them. It’s not a quiet word; it’s a public dressing down. To go as far to stick hair to the note (I still can’t quite believe I’m typing that) is just so humiliating. It is essentially saying “see how grotesque and sickening you are? Aren’t you ashamed? Aren’t you, clumpy icky hair girl?”. Really, really not cool in any situation, and in no way okay to do to a brand new housemate.
“I’ve got to act,” I decided, “I can’t let this happen. I can’t let this person be degraded like this. They may turn out to be my mortal enemy with time, but for now they are a fellow citizen. I shall have to have a word!”

I soon wimped out of having a word. It’s just so awkward to broach the subject: “hey, you know how you’re being totally out of order? Well, I was just thinking….”. No, not a conversation I can be doing with.

I crept back to the note, and began peeling the clump of hair from it. My heart was pounding: I didn’t want to be caught by the author, nor did I really want to the new housemate to come home and find me halfway through this act either. Not the best first meeting I could envisage, whatever my intentions. Mercifully it came away quickly, and I scarpered to my room and sealed myself in. The worst of the note crisis has been averted.

Reflecting on that sellotaped hair, I decided I am just glad no-one took issue with my skid marks.

Capsicum Mountain

2007-07-22T19:22:00.000+01:00

My cayenne chilli pepper crop is looking set to give me a bumper harvest. A worryingly large one really. When I sowed my seeds back in the spring, I was just thinking “it’d be nice to have a couple of fresh chilli peppers on hand to use now and again”. But every single seed seems to have taken hold and I’ve failed to kill any of the resulting twenty plants, four of which I’ve now given away to friends. That still leaves a fair few plants though, each of which is burgeoning with peppers.

I’m also unsure how hot these bad boys are going to be. I’ve asked a wise friend, who reckons cayennes weigh in somewhere between 30,000 to 90,000 on the Scoville Scale, and this not insignificantly wide range can vary not just from plant to plant, but pepper to pepper. I enjoy a bit of zing in my food, but I’m no masochist and if they do turn out all to be really hot, that’s a lot of spicy eating I’m going to have to do. For months and months.

So, I’m stocking up on Louisiana-style hot sauce recipies and the like so I don’t have a rotting crop on my hands. It is slightly more rock’n’roll than making jam I suppose. If you have any creative ideas (i.e. not merely just drying them out) what I can do with approximately 300 chilli peppers, let me know.

Still Here. Sort of.

2007-07-05T16:54:00.000+01:00

I haven't stopped, I've just been pretty much without the internet for the past three weeks, and it looks to continue for a while. I will return though. In the meantime, tell each other jokes. I'll start.

Why did the mushroom always get invited to all the parties?

Because he was a fungi.

Signs of Senescence #23

2007-06-19T20:35:00.000+01:00

I went to a Homebase today and actually enjoyed myself (enjoyed is perhaps too strong a word, but for now it’ll have to suffice because I am lazy). No longer funny smelling warehouses of aisle after staid aisle of boring things where you annoyed your parents by running around and knocking things over, now these are places where you can get loads of cool stuff for your place.

On a related note, bloody hell! Have you seen how much carbon monoxide detectors cost!?

This Is Not A [Olympic] Logo

2007-06-04T23:06:00.001+01:00

This? THIS!??!

My first impression was that it looks a bit like a Daniel Libeskind building – lots of shapes and angles, but hardly much to look at – and I don’t think there’s too much shame in admitting I didn’t actually realise what it’s supposed to be until I was told (everyone can see what it’s supposed to be, right? They’re numbers!).

I’ve been enjoying listening to some of the frustrating fanfare though. ‘Minister for the Olymics’ Tessa Jowell has tubthumped that the logo “is an iconic brand that sums up what London 2012 is all about!!!!”. What’s that then? Pink, cluttered and a bit messy? In the immediate aftermath, most of the media reports were all fairly full of wank speak too; no doubt lazy journalists with nothing to refer to but a gushing press release and a deadline to meet being responsible for the rather impartiality-free reports employing words like “bold” and “dynamic”. The verbal coup de grâce of today’s episode was perhaps delivered by former Olympic gold medallist Denise Lewis though, who, standing in front of the large logo, gestured to the large logo and gravely informed us that “this is not a logo”. “What is it? What is it?” the country clamoured collectively. “It is a state of mind, an attitude”. René Magritte would have been proud.

What really struck me though was the cost of thing. Apparently £400,000 has been lavished to get to this stage. That’s the equivalent to the GDP of India. Now, I’ve been doing some calculations, and here are my entirely speculative workings on how much this sort of thing should cost:

2 months wages for four creative consultants from some wanky agency - £20000
16 packets of Crayola Crayons for the four creative consultants from some wanky agency - £40
Sandwiches from Pret for numerous brainstorming sessions for the four creative consultants from some wanky agency - £180
Getting members of the public to attend focus groups at the wanky agency - £900
Lacklusture promo film - £8000
Printing costs and that sort of thing - £19000
Hiring a conference hall for this morning's unveiling of the logo - £10000

Total - £58120

Now that’s quite a deficit. They should have asked me really. I’ve not been too busy recently, and I would have gone to Greggs rather than Pret for my sandwiches and everything. Here’s my initial pitch

My alternative tagline would be “Giving the Australians yet another thing to gloat about”.

Ikonwear

2007-05-19T20:19:00.000+01:00

I have to go and buy a suit. To make it a bit easier to assess how well the suit suits, I wear smart shoes and a shirt to the shop. Coupled with my smartish jeans, I catch a glimpse of myself in a mirror, and realise I’m the spit of someone heading out to drink WKD at a nightclub playing R’n’B ahead of getting into a fight at the taxi rank of a provincial high street. I despise that look, and am loathe to think anyone would suppose it was one I was sporting purposefully. After another embarrassed check though, I realise my hair is a touch too long and too lacking in product for me to look truly authentic, and nor am I doused in Joop aftershave.

Black Hole

2007-05-11T13:33:00.001+01:00

Like the proverbial baddie at the end of a formulaic teen slasher film, the cat is just refusing to die, despite having had a fair bit thrown at it. That said, things are perhaps not at quite a terminal stage as I had thought.

To backtrack, a bit over a week ago I’d taken the cat to the vet – before she fell properly ill – as I’d noticed some swelling in her throat. The cat had been diagnosed with hyperthyroidism a couple of years ago, so I assumed maybe this was all linked to that. I’ve always felt the vet, an Irishman who bears a noteworthy resemblance to Peter Griffin, is not really a cat person. He just doesn’t seem to get them, and would much rather just briefly observe from a short distance rather than get his hands dirty. I remember him once, quite out of the blue, declaring my cat was blind, because she was showing no response to him clicking his fingers in various locations above her head. He just looked at me quizzically when I suggested perhaps she just had absolutely no interest in his finger clicking and was more interested in looking to see where the door was. Anyway, he waltzed in, and with the most perfunctory squeezes of her throat, declared that the cat’s thyroid is indeed on its last legs, but it’s just a wait and see situation for the time being.

A few days later, and the cat started to, well, just slump, constantly. The swelling around the throat increased, and she stopped eating, sitting with her mouth open and growling quietly whenever touched. The next day I started to catch a tangy whiff from her, and I realised that her throat had become infected. In amongst the swelling was a huge abscess – enough, once I had pulled some fur away and could see, to turn her skin green – which seemed to be growing by the hour, making her look a little bit like a black furry frog. This confused me slightly; I’d read up on hyperthyroidism, and hadn’t seen a single mention of such a symptom, but I shrugged to myself, attributing this discrepancy to the ‘anything can happen’ throes of dying.

The next morning I got up early and headed downstairs, half praying I’d find a corpse waiting for me. But no, I was greeted with a rumbling growl and so we headed to the vet for the first appointment going, me fully expecting to have her dispatched. The door to the waiting room opened, and I looked up to see a different vet, one who sometimes moonlights there, gesturing us in. I didn’t suppose it really mattered too much who the cat’s executioner was, but there was something reassuring about it being the vet who is so gentle and caring that, in a cliché fiction would skirt around, he’s actually the official vet for the Andrex puppy adverts. The vet though didn’t think an abscess could be related to her thyroid either, and diagnosed an infected tooth, the infection from which had spread significantly. Quite treatable, he assured me.

Anyway, the reason I mention all this, aside from giving an update on the last post, is because of the huge gaping hole the cat has been left with in her throat. If you think of an equivalent hole from the tip of your chin to your Adam’s apple, you’ll get the right sort of idea. It’s as big as two two-pound coins, and I think I could easily slip my mobile phone quite snugly inside. Now I have to go and clean it. Puts me in mind of Steve Buscemi in Fargo…

Schrödinger never had to worry about this bit

2007-05-07T23:58:00.000+01:00

It seems a lifetime ago I took one of my cats to the vet and he ominously said he could feel a lump. He gave her about three weeks, and that was last July. Although the tumour has now swollen up so as to perch on her hip like a golf ball, I can’t say I’ve noticed a great deal of change in her: the decline is so gradual so as to make me forget she was ever anything but a hobbling bag of bones. To an outsider, it might seem very cruel to still have her around, but her increasing frailty never advances in stages extreme enough to make me feel I need to take decisive action, and to be honest as far as I can see she still seems to be having a whale of a time. It’s perhaps due to this almost imperceptible deterioration why I have been so caught off guard when her sister suddenly, in the course of a day, went from being fine to being on death’s door. I’ve become so used to being told my cat doesn't have long left that I’ve come to view her and her sister as a decrepit pair destined to shuffle around the house complaining indefinitely. But there can be no doubt now: even I can see one of my cats is quite clearly dying.

It’s typical of a cat that they fall desperately ill on the Saturday evening of a bank holiday weekend, meaning there is not a thing you can do for them until the vet opens his door on the Tuesday morning. I have found myself gradually shifting my behaviour these past two days in a way which means I spend less time in the same room as her, and I can’t help but wonder if this is slightly deliberate, albeit subconsciously: watching her slumped in the corner makes me feel both guilty and frustrated at how powerless I am to help, and quite frankly the smell of death is pretty rife and unpleasant. When men were men, I suppose this was one of the times when the garden shovel was put to use and the suffering, both hers and mine, could be put to a swift end, but not in these days of manbags, pink ties and hydrating face scrubs for him, where all that is left is for me to fanny about feeling guilty. My underdeveloped twenty-first century clubbing muscles would probably only cock it up anyway.

Dish of the Day

2007-05-03T01:00:00.000+01:00

I’d always thought the huge 25-metre dish five miles north of my parents house was a telescope, which was a fair enough assumption I suppose, considering it is known locally as the Observatory. A couple of weeks ago though, I was trekking along the remnants of the Iron Age trade route that once ran the 130 miles or so from the tip of the Solent to the River Avon in Warwickshire, and found myself in the vicinity of the site during a rare open day, and I found out its actually an Advanced Meteorological Radar and, I was proudly told, the largest steerable meteorological radar in the world. After listening a bit longer, I worked out this means it’s used to look at rain and clouds.

Much of what I heard went over my head, but I managed to grasp the main premise: having sent out polarised beams, the boffins manning the dish measure how many of these beams are reflected back to the dish having bounced off rain or snow, and in doing so can work out just how much rain or snow is, or isn’t, up there. After establishing this much, I pretty much zoned in and out, briefly mentally resurfacing to ask, if these beams can be reflected by rain, whether my mobile phone will also work less effectively in the rain (brief answer: no, unless it’s a 3G phone, but your satellite telly might play up a bit more), but this just prompted a lecture on frequencies, multiplexing and bandwidth, so my mind soon wandered.

I went with it, and stepped back outside into the heat. It was outside that I actually did encounter a telescope (albeit not on as great a scale as the radar by any means), trained on the sun. I was pretty sure you’re not supposed to look at the sun through telescopes – or, indeed, at all – but I was assured that there were many filters in place to protect my eyeballs from being fried. Through the telescope, the sun was just a blurry orange taking up all that I could see. I failed to hide how unimpressed I was.
“Should I be looking for anything in particular?” I ask.
“We look out for sun spots or solar flares,” I am told.
“Many of them to be seen?” I query.
“Well, we’re just at the start of a solar cycle,” I am told matter-of-factly.
“And that means…?”
“There won’t be much happening until about 2012.”
I nod and walk away in disgust. Time wasters.

My head wasn’t in the mood for science I supposed, so I found a quiet place to sit in the sun and take in the absorbing sight of the British countryside in spring. There’s a lot of history to that patch of land, aside from all the drovers who, for thousands of years until the invention of the locomotive, would have driven livestock through the surrounding fields to settlements and towns miles and miles beyond. World War II saw the hasty construction of an airfield on the spot where the observatory now sits, and the RAF Hurricanes and a vengeful Polish Spitfire squadron which were stationed there played a significant role in the Battle of Britain as the skies above the area bore the brunt of the Luftwaffe’s quest for air supremacy over the country in the late summer of 1940. In November 1942, the airfield was handed over for the use of the USAF – the Hurricanes and Spitfires were replaced with Thunderbolts and Mustangs – and it was from here that scores of parachute regiments set off to be dropped behind enemy lines in France ahead of D-Day and in the Netherlands for Operation Market Garden (depicted in the book and film A Bridge Too Far). For hundreds of young men, thousands of miles from home, the fields surrounding me were the last they ever saw of Britain as they headed to battles they were never to return from. I watched the lapwings tumbling across the fields and meadows for a while, and then headed home on the prehistoric highway.

Pheidippides

2007-04-25T21:38:00.000+01:00

I knew four people running the London Marathon last Sunday so, as I was in the area, it seemed like I should really go and watch. Four people out of thirty-six thousand meant I’d have to keep my eyes peeled though. Unfortunately a very late night meant I’d overslept, and despite starting my day in Lewisham by the time I had emerged the fastest of the fast would have been on the home straight. Having to then journey across town with not only the Sunday bus service but also numerous road closures to contend with, I too found myself having to race to the finish line.

As I plodded along Embankment towards the 25-mile mark, I had to concede London was having one of those days that puts me in mind of seeing that really plain girl you know from work or school in a bar, except this night she is looking stunning and is attracting lots of attention, and you get a dawning realisation that perhaps having spent the last two years of your life pretty much ignoring her wasn’t the best thing you’d ever done. The sun was shining down, Big Ben looked majestic up ahead, and across the shimmering Thames the Eye gleamed in a very self-satisfied manner. Not just that, but everyone was cheering and smiling making for a jovial atmosphere. It was enough to seduce me into thinking that maybe one day, with enough training of course, I would like to be part of this experience and run the London marathon myself.

About three minutes later I saw a runner being urged not to give up as he bent over and vomited in a gutter, and I rehashed my plan to maybe involve just running the final two miles or so where there’s all the nice scenery. Three at a push.

The crowds were dense, and I’d managed to position myself on the wrong side of the course as far as getting to the finish line in time was concerned, so I situated myself on Birdcage Walk in St. James’s Park near Buckingham Palace and decided to watch people pushing on through the last half mile or so from there, shouting encouragement at the ones who looked to be on their last legs (or who just had really fantastic legs). After a quarter of an hour I noticed the Flora advertising boards across the road from me were seemingly warping back and forth; something seemed wrong with my eyesight. I hadn’t eaten anything yet that day so I supposed maybe I was feeling a little faint. Sunstroke even? But no, I felt fine. And then I realised the steady flow of hundreds of runners passing me meant that when I tried to focus on the static background beyond them, I was experiencing an intense and perfect Waterfall Effect. Soon after, remarkably I noticed one of my friends trundling past and I emitted a bellow of encouragement so loud so as to leave her looking quite perplexed and startled as she scanned the crowd for me. And with that, my work was done.

Spare a thought for this guy.

Take Cover

2007-04-17T16:29:00.000+01:00

(Um yeah, you’ll probably want sound for today’s post. Sorry if you’re at work)

Hit and miss it may be, but I’m really loving Mark Ronson’s new album of covers, with it’s mostly successful approach of roping in the likes of Amy Winehouse, Lily Allen and relative unknowns The Daptone Horns and injecting life into tracks by mainstays such as the Zutons, the Kaiser Chiefs and Coldplay which I’d previously dismissed as fairly staid. I think everyone loves a good cover version, especially if it takes such a divergent approach so as to leave you completely frustrated in the first 30 seconds before the lyrics kick in as you try to place what song it is.

One or two of the tracks on the album may well be vying for a place amongst some of my favourite covers ever, alongside Paul Anka’s Soundgarden cover, Señor Coconut’s various Kraftwerk covers, and – probably my most adored ever – Polyphonic Spree’s take on Nirvana’s Lithium.

In contrast to the above songs, taking things down a notch can work pretty well too. Pretty much anything by the fantastic Nouvelle Vague fits the bill, Nina Gordon’s NWA cover did the rounds everywhere a couple of years ago, and I still remember being massively impressed by Tarvis’s reworking of a recent pop classic at Glastonbury 2000. José González is also building a bit of a reputation for himself as an acoustic cover master, Kylie’s Hand On Your Heart or Massive Attack’s Teardrop probably being the stand outs for me.

Another couple of songs which lend a completely different aspect to the originals (but for vastly different reasons) are Johnny Cash’s haunting rendition of Nine Inch Nails’s Hurt, and Elbow’s take on Independent Women (enhanced by Joel Veitch’s video).

One last ‘cover’ of sorts worth mentioning is, of course, the reworking of Radiohead’s back catalogue by the University of Arizona’s marching band. If you haven’t seen it, (i) where have you been?!, and (ii) lookit (if you’re pushed for time, the highlight is probably from 3.00 to 4.10) (they also do a Led Zeppelin routine if that’s more your bag, kicking off with a great rendition of Good Times, Bad Times).

So, what are your favourite covers? Let me know in the comments, preferably with a link. Maybe we could make an almighty mix-tape.

(I love a good mashup as much as the next man – Soulwax’s Intergalactic remix will forever be associated with beer drenched nights at The Garage, whereas there’s something indescribably amusing about something as unashamedly forced and silly as 99 Luftproblems – so I’ll allow those too because I’m lax like that)

Bugged

2007-04-11T21:39:00.000+01:00

I’d been enjoying the fact spring had sprung these past few weeks, but lying in bed this morning I was reminded of one of the downsides: queen wasps, on the hunt for somewhere to call home for the summer.

At about 6am, I was awoken by the sound of a large wasp buzzing at the window near my head, trapped between the drawn curtains and the glass. I could hear the sound of its head bumping against the window over and over again, the volume of its buzzing increasing with confusion and irritation. What made it worse was that I knew the window was wide open, if it could just manage to find its way back out. But no, fat chance of that, and I was far too tired and optimistic to get up and help it. So it continued to buzz. And buzz.

“Vespula vulgaris!” I cursed, burying my head under my pillow. “So loud! So early!”

8am, and my alarm sounded, and the wasp was still there. I got out of bed and opened my curtains, determined to usher this troublesome waspish gadfly onwards and outwards. No sooner were my curtains open, and the wasp nonchalantly flew out of the window of its own accord.

Twice As Clean

2007-04-04T01:32:00.000+01:00

“I’ve come to do the windows,” says the Window Cleaner, stood at the door of my parents’ house. I don’t really know how I’m supposed to respond to this, so I shrug a “Very well” at him. It seems to do.

I head back upstairs and get back to work on the computer. I say work, but I mostly mean having the relevant window open, whilst using the internet to let me arse around and wonder about things like is there really any need for a sequel to 28 Days Later? Soon enough I hear the ladder being placed against the house and the “clunk clunk” of an approaching Window Cleaner. I feel distracted enough without having someone watch me, so I head downstairs for a biscuit.

I get downstairs and pass a window, and the Window Cleaner is there, cleaning that one too.
“That was bloody fast,” I muse. “A moment ago he was just soaping up upstairs, and then he beat me down here.”
I return upstairs, but am perplexed: he’s still at that first window.
“What the hell is going on?” I wonder.

My parents have identical twin Window Cleaners!!

I cannot help but rejoice at this discovery; I find it strangely excellent. Any hope of work is out the window (as it were), as I then have to spent the rest of the time they are there trying to think of some advertising tagline they could have to promote their rather unique selling point. I fail pretty miserably though, but think to myself it is the sort of thing Will would probably be very good at.

In A Twist

2007-03-22T21:49:00.001Z

“You should pop in and see my shop,” my friend says.
“I don’t know,” I say, squirming. “I get embarrassed easily. It’s just… a bit… embarrassing. You know. Why can’t you sell tea, or stationary? Or mend shoes?”
“Look Huw,” she says, “You don’t have to buy anything. I just want you to see the shop I own. It would mean a lot.”
“But why does it have to be a lingerie shop?” I ask. “You know that scene from Father Ted? Well, when I go to big department stores, that’s what happens to me: I inadvertently orbit the ladies underwear section like some sort of perverted moon. I can’t go into Marks and Spencer for a sandwich at lunch nowadays because I just find myself gawping at all the huge pictures of Claude Makélélé’s wife in her smalls.”
“I don’t know who Claude Makélélé is, but you won’t get lost; it’s only a boutique.”
“Well, that makes it even harder to pretend I am only there by accident. But,” I concede, detecting a raising level of frustration in my friend's voice, “I suppose I could nip in.”

Later on, I buy a newspaper and position myself in a vantage point which will let me see when the street of my friend’s shop is as empty as can be hoped for. I see a window of opportunity and make a dash for it, entering the shop at speed and colliding with mannequin attired in some sort of saucy negligee. The two of us waltz for a moment, but I stop it from crashing to the ground because I am smooth like that.

Delirium

2007-03-13T00:58:00.000Z

Contending with a 100-plus temperature for seven consecutive days is quite consuming. One morning, I am typically jolted awake from sweaty and nightmare-filled slumber a little before sun up, and I shuffle from my room to get some of the Elixir of Lemsip Max I have in the kitchen. I am shivering and dizzy and it is still pretty dark, but as I pass the front door I make out the orange of Trevor’s ears through the frosted glass as he sits on the doorstep. Trevor looks slightly surprised to see the door open for him a good couple of hours earlier than he’s used to, and as I wait for him to go through his routine of various stretches I myself am surprised to see a strange car parked on our neighbours’ drive with its parking lights on. I check my watch in the gloom. 5.50. That is odd.

As I close the door after Trevor, a man’s shape suddenly looms on the other side of the glass and begins pressing against the centre of the door. My stomach lurches in fear and surprise, and I throw my weight against the door, scraping the skin off my knuckles in the process. In my panic, I can’t quite work out whether the door is on it's catch and properly shut now or if I really do need to keep my weight up against it. I don’t particularly want to trust my instinct that it is closed and take a step back, only to have the madman who is running around outside at 6am push the door open and deftly stab me. He is still clearly there, in his bloody baseball cap, fumbling against my door as I lean hard against, trying to calculate how much longer I can continue with this physical exertion before I collapse.

Just then, a newspaper squeezes through the letterbox by my waist, and the paperman goes on his way.

Coordinates for an Airstrike

2007-02-28T15:54:00.000Z

I find myself on Farnborough High Street, where Hampshire and Surrey merge in a series of depressing and forgotten army towns. I am hungry, but it is that funny time of a quarter to eleven and my options are less than they might otherwise have been. And even so, looking around it wouldn’t have been that varied at any time of day.

I know I have moaned about the uniformity and lack of imagination in many UK highstreets (most noticeably Cornmarket in Oxford), but there’s something unnerving about a highstreet which McDonalds, a Costa or even a WH Smiths won’t touch, almost as if they are scared that the decay might be contagious. I trudge down the concrete wind tunnel, reminiscent of some sort of Soviet shopping block at the height of perestroika, having spotted a couple of cafés.

I poke my head round the door of the first, and am hit by a stratocumulus of cigarette smoke emitted from the grey and sticky interior. My shrivelled nose and swift retreat prompts that contumacious glare of the public smoker in numbers. I receive a defiant affirmative from the proprietor, positioning a board outside the second café, when I enquire about his business’s smoking policy, and so trudge back to that temple of last resorts and shitty highstreets, Wimpy.

Wimpy in fact allows smoking too, but I can see through the windows that the clientele feeding their offspring a combination of fried foodstuffs and second-hand smoke have so far all amassed on one side of the establishment. I sit down and look out of the window, watching obese people weighed down by snot coloured jewellery stagger past the modern-art sculpture, the fake marble cladding of which has long fallen off to reveal the concrete underneath.

He's Just Big Boned

2007-02-26T12:22:00.000Z

I read the news today, oh boy.

"When Connor won't eat anything else, I've got to give him the foods he likes. I can't starve him."

Yes you can! You can starve that portly little sack of lard whilst chasing him with a cheese-grater on a stick from now until late April and he will be absolutely fine.

Maybe she's the reason I can hardly ever find any Roysters.

Americans: 14 stone is just shy of 200lbs

Remember Salt and Vinegar Monster Munch?

2007-02-19T14:25:00.000Z

I have found somewhere near work which sells Roysters crisps.

I’m not sure I need to say much more.

What crisps do you miss?

Revelation

2007-02-12T12:07:00.000Z

Trevor smirks in the face of my wordlessness. He purrs, blinking at me smugly, and headbutts my knee. The surprise has worn off now, but I am still trying to reconcile the reality with what I thought I knew. It is quite a shock, let me tell you, to find your neutered cat of eleven years rampantly shagging another cat on your drive. I’d just assumed since the snip he just didn’t want to do those things anymore, let alone actually do them. Subsequent research suggests I’d assumed wrong, what with him having enjoyed a couple of years of sexual maturity before his visit to the vet. I feel like we have been living a lie all these years, and I can’t help but wonder about all those nights where I thought he was just out chilling in the garden. I have a new item now to add to his list of interests of eating, stealing and fighting: Trevor, casual sex enthusiast. I suppose I don’t begrudge it him, and in some ways I am a little happy for him.

The randy lady cat shouts at the back door, and Trevor asks to be let out.

Swindle

2007-02-07T08:35:00.000Z

My father phones, sounding a bit shifty. He tells me how last night the SkyBox stopped working, reporting a viewer card error. He didn’t need all his scientist know-how to know to promptly switch it off and then on again, as everyone knows this is how 99% of things get fixed. Sure enough it was working again, and then some.

See, as I have mentioned before, my parents only got Sky to pick up S4C – Big Brother and endless Friends repeats perhaps not being their thing – and as a result got the most basic of packages. As far as I can tell, S4C aside, the most basic Sky package is basically Freeview, with a couple of the more average channels replaced with scores of phone-in quiz show channels, channels showing soap operas from Nairobi, and the remarkably unfrightening Zone Horror.

Now though, following last night’s viewer card error, they seem to have the most deluxe package going. All the sports and movies channels, all those dubiously named ‘entertainment’ channels, and some twenty extra music channels. And yes, probably all the porn too.

My father is a deeply moral and law abiding person. I remember him dropping me off to see Batman Returns at the cinema under the old BBFC certificate rulings, and just as I was entering the screening theatre seeing my Dad rushing over to the usher to confess that actually I was only eleven, but it was my twelfth birthday the next day so would it okay for me to see the film and if it wasn’t that was perfectly understandable and I could go and see Beethoven instead. Around about the same age I also remember late one night coming off the ferry from France, and my dad driving to the red gate of Something To Declare, to explain that he was carrying one bottle of wine over the allowed amount (again, under old import laws) as he had planned on drinking it the previous night but had forgotten so would it be okay to keep it and if it wasn’t that was perfectly understandable and he could hand it over or pour it into the sea. On both occasions his taken aback audience were disarmed by such honesty, and just shrugged “yeah, okay”.

Nonetheless my father is also Valley stock, and won’t easily forget Murdoch’s cozying up to Thatcher. I detect the resolute tone of a man without remorse, albeit an excited one: it’s time for payback.

“Just don’t phone up any of the box office channels and order some brand new movies in,” I warn him, “that’ll probably give the game away.”

Outraged Of Tunbridge Wells

2007-02-05T16:30:00.000Z

Further to last week’s post, Becca correctly identified that those who use mobile phones to play their music out loud often have a tendency to spit. Without wanting to generalise, this is the absolute truth! They do spit! Constantly! You can see when they’ve been waiting at the bus stop before you by the sticky puddle they leave behind. And not good, honest, salt of the earth spitting, but this rather pathetic dribbley spitting, like that of a baby vomiting (I’ve written about this form of spitting before, but can’t be bothered to find it to link to). Some of them actually spit on the bus* and I have had to take to watching where I put my feet; there can be fewer prospects as unappealing as treading louts’ saliva over your own carpet when you get home. So, in light of this, I think a campaign is needed, and that campaign is the reintroduction of spittoons in public places. They used to be all over the place, you know, when people used to chew tobacco, but have disappeared following the habit’s decline in the face of chewing gum and cigarette smoking. Back in those days of course, spitting was a fairly respectful past time – witness these two establishment types at the turn of the last century in close proximity to a spittoon – and I can’t help but wonder if maybe the targeted individuals would spit less if spittoons were provided, the act of rather plaintive rebellion they perhaps feel they are expressing being undermined by official endorsement.

Actually, scrap that. Spittoons are disgusting unhygienic things. We should just sew these people's lips together.

*Had a couple of stressful weeks not prompted my blepharospasm to return, I suspect seeing this happening would cause me to twitch.

I Hate People

2007-01-30T14:48:00.000Z

One of the things that I have truly come to hate is the proliferation in the last year or so of mobile phones which allow their users to play music without using headphones. Well, actually my phone does that, so, to be more specific, I hate the discourteous defectives who use them on public transport. I’d love to know which rocket scientist thought it would be nice to make such technology available to the generally-moronic public. We would have words. And these spotty pricks who use them (they are nearly always spotty. Or at least greasy) are never playing any of the sort of music I wouldn’t mind being unwittingly bombarded with after a day at work; no Carole King, no Tchaikovsky, no Lemonjelly, not even any Mike Oldfield. How they can bring themselves to advertise their liking for the frankly abysmal music they do favour I don’t know; I would keep that sort of thing secret. Alas, there’s nothing to be done: people who think little of disturbing and disrespecting their fellow human beings in such a way are often the one and same people who think little of stamping on people’s heads until brain matter oozes from their victims’ ears. And they often seem to be in packs. Sometimes I think about reading my book out loud to them, but I am not brave enough.

Sometimes though, the nature of their pack mentality means they outstupid themselves. A group with multiple phones are often too vain and self-important to bring themselves to elect a sole phone to provide their dubious entertainment, and will all simultaneously brandish their shitty-music playing toys, resulting in an obsolete cacophony of noise being emitted is even more indistinct and unlistenable than usual, even for them.

I was reminded of this last Friday. I had stayed at work late, and was waiting for my bus having got back to Croydon. A rabble of Stella-swilling fifteen-year-olds shared the bus shelter with me, breaking off from the mini-concert they were treating me to make multiple phone calls to clarify where they were supposedly headed.
“Somewhere, a houseparty is happening,” I sleuthed to myself.
The normally deserted 20.30 bus was absolutely packed with spotty teenagers (or at least greasy teenagers. The girls’ grease and spots were covered with a good half inch of foundation, but I could tell it was there. The windows were fogged with condensed sebum), all clearly on the way to this party, forcing me to stand by the door next to the driver. There must have been about fifty kids, and perhaps as many as twenty mobile phones all competing to provide the musical accompaniment to this shrieking collective. There was however an indignant and frustrated feeling in the air, because it wasn’t just me who stood at the front of the bus. Two police officers had also boarded, and stood with a smug air which said “we might not know where you are going, but we are happy to just follow you”.
“The Police are fucking wankers, the police are fucking wankers, la la la la, oi! La la la la, oi!” chanted some of the braver boys, but the song died on their lips whenever the officers looked in their direction, bravado being outweighed by the thought of the police telling your mum you’d been using swear words I suppose.