Oblong Scone

I’m on my internet banking site. You have been pre-approved for a loan of £24,000. Click here to accept. Really? Have I? I don't remember ever asking for a loan of £24,000. Then I stopped talking out loud at my computer as it seemed uninterested in responding. If it had chosen to respond it may have pointed out that you don't have to ask for something to get it pre-approved. But it didn't answer so it didn't make that response so leave me alone you..you…anyway… 'So what is the problem with this?' you might well ask, or you might not if ignorance is the road you're driving your soul down. The problem is the most dangerous combination of things since fire and flatulence; the internet and alcohol. It starts off innocently enough. With small-fry drunken use. You've had a sack-full of Stella and in through your front door you walk singing the last song you heard, and it may be Steps. Just maybe. Look I’m not saying it will be but it maybe. You slap the PC whi...

Sort of got the BAFTAs on in the background on the television for it is a program that can only ever be on in the background. Foreground watching it is not. If there’s one thing actors are always desperate to do, is to make it clear that they are not actually anything like the characters they play. David Tennant (Doctor Who), proves he is not really a time-traveller, pissing about the universe in a Police Box by sporting a rather embarrassing beard. He’s probably getting back to the theatre (which he really loves) appearing in a play written by a cat from Hull who has turned its life of fish-eating, bird-killing and looking peeved around into a successful playwright. Worst of all is Martin Fowler from Eastenders who has decided to wear thick-framed glasses. Every shot of him, he’s there beaming away as if to say “Don’t be stupid, I’m not really Martin Fowler and here I prove it by wearing these glasses. Glasses that actors wear, not people from the East-End.” And on the subject of awar...

"They just decided they didn’t want them and dumped them there.” the mid-forties checkout-girl who must have been called Sue replied to the Security Guard in a voice so exasperated it made me want to take out a notebook and rewrite the definition of the word exasperated. The subject of this lady’s distress? Three big bottles of Ribena sitting just in front of the conveyer belt of her checkout. The bizarre parallel universe that is the Sommerfield Convenience store near my flat continues. The security guard who was quite rightly named Steve, himself unbelieving of the scene of, I repeat three bottles of Ribeena cordial sitting on the end of a shop check-out slowly shook his head. “I don‘t understand why someone would do that.” he solemly enparted as if he was looking at the body of a kitten that had been set alight by teenangers. There then followed a long pause. Steve and Sue stared at the bottles unsure what their next move should be. They hadn’t signed up for this, this is not ...