Oblong Scone

Loss

2010-12-14T23:45:00.006Z

We miss you Sommerfield and all your silly shelves full of all those things, that anywhere else, would never have been able to sit next to each other. Baked beans striking up conversations with Sellotape; cheese crying on the shoulder of Cif after falling out with an obscure Sandra Bullock DVD. It's been three months, and your tears are black ice.

Co-op has replaced you and it tries its best: It wears slightly eccentric jumpers and watches films by Mike Leigh. But the flowers in its hair are from a local garage and it sells olives boringly. It will tell you about how it's put bits of blue cheese in with them, but the olives hate this imposter. They want you back Sommerfield. We all do.

We're sorry about everything we've ever said.

Merry Christmas

2010-09-26T22:09:00.012+01:00

High-five Jesus – the Gallaries shopping centre in Bristol now has a shop completely dedicated to your birthday. You can buy all sorts in there, as long as what you want to buy is sparkly and aggresively soul-destroying. You might want to accelerate your second coming Christ - get in there and change all that shiny shit into something more worthy. Something that'll make us reflect on the virgin birth and 'love' and why the sea looks so angry these days.

But I'm going to take the next exit off this lazy cynicism motorway. For one of my favourite hobbies (listed on my CV) is to listen to people become exasperated by the premature appearance of Christmas related high-jinx. A great place for this is just outside this new Christmas shop.

“Re-dic-you-lous,” says the woman with eyes lost behind Dierdre Barlow's spare pair of 'sexy time' glasses; she throws her the palm of her hand downwards in reflex disgust.

“It's just so unnecessary,” her friend replies, more measured, more calm; a sadness and sense loss of the times when the signs of Christmas were limited to the Queen's fifteen minute speech and September was a month dedicated to deciciding whether it was cold enough to turn the heating on.

The only thing that can rile the middle-classes more is Easter Eggs in February. You would have to microwave Fern Britton's gastric or band to illicit more disgust than selling Easter Eggs in February.

And so it will continue until December, when the cries of 'not yet, it's too early' will subside and solemn serious looking elderly men with confused hair and bibles, will pick up the baton with their bemoaning of the loss of the 'true meaning of Christmas'. Unforgivable when we've had since September to think about it.

Bags under the eyes

2010-09-13T21:50:00.003+01:00

I had nothing to offer the world today. These days happen about once every couple of months. However much I try to muster enthusiasm, intelligence or even just effort, it doesn't come. I sit at my desk, tapping 'page-up', 'page down' – hoping one of them will bring me back into the game, but the hours throw themselves away. Nothing is really getting done.

“Do you want a bag?” the girl in Sommerfield asked. I didn't know. I had bought a carton of orange, chicken breasts and two tubes(?) of shower gel. I could of balanced it all without a bag and done my part to save the worldy thing that we live on, on the other hand...

I realised I didn't have it within me to make a decision and that it had now been a good few seconds since she'd asked the question. My only option was to just choose one of the two words 'yes' or 'no'. I could spin a coin – but that would be so damningly odd I'd probably have to move flat and grow a beard. I get ginger facial hair so that wasn't an option. I decided to say the word that was the shortest and hope for the best.

"No," I said rather too loudly. She pulled back a bag I hadn't noticed she was preparing. Shit, I am such an ungrateful bastard.

"Yes – actually yes," I quickly improvised, "I have got two bottles of shower gel." This justification has just been confirmed as the most unnecessary since records of justifications people make in supermarkets began. She handed the bag over to me with a hesitancy and precision of a woman who was being held up by an armed bag robber. I stuffed my goods in there, looked around cautiously, and got the fuck out of there.

I'm home and safe now and there's football is on the television. I can't remember the name of the commentator – he's the one who shouts a single word very loudly every time someone has an attempt at goal. "HEADER", "JONES!" and less impressively: "OOOOOH!" Dwight Yorke is the co-commentator. I'm not sure whether he's actually seen a football match before. He might say that about me and bags.

New term.

2010-09-12T19:11:00.005+01:00

It will soon be time to start the next module on my OU course. I'm doing an English Literature degree backwards. The harder courses such as 'Twentieth Century Literature' looked more interesting than 'Approaching Literature' and thus I did the more interesting ones first. Trouble is 'Twentieth Century Literature' kind of assumed you'd done 'Approaching Literature' first and thus was a little ridiculously difficult. This is yet another disadvantage to not being what people call 'sensible'. 'Sensible' can be 'washing up as you go along' or parking your car in the garage. I don't have a garage, and washing-up as I go along makes me cry tears that were meant for standing on a cliff-edge staring into the middle-distance.

Anyway this new module is the one you're supposed to do first. 'The Arts Past and Present' is its name, or TAPAP as I confidently predict people will become irritated with me saying. It looks to involve reading lots and lots a massive text books. I guess I should get started, but to be fair to me, I have Sky Sports - so that isn't possible right now. Rupert fucking Murdoch.

Couple on the next table

2010-09-12T17:55:00.002+01:00

The woman on the next table is angry about stuff. All stuff. Everything that constitutes stuff has anger aimed at it from this woman. Her husband, also in his sixties, rests back into his chair content to tiredly utter well worn mumbles of agreement.

The subject of the day is benefits. Her running through of categories of people that 'shouldn't get a penny' quickly disqualifies anyone who's not white, middle-class and over sixty.

“They've all got tattoos of course,” she takes a second to let her whore of an observation parade itself proudly around the pub draping itself all over men with beards and hate, “how can they afford tattoos if they don't have a job?”

“We're paying for 'em,” her husband says .

“We're paying for 'em,” she says before moving onto fingers, “and they've all got nice nails.” The tone in her voice is now so incredulous, I want to record it; make it a lasting exhibit of 'incredulous'; play it back to anyone who asks me what 'incredulous' is. I don't – that would have been an 'odd' apparently. Stupid social conventions stopping me from recording people's conversations in pubs. Go away conventions, leave me alone. I want to be free of you, dig a hole in a field and live in it.

Now she moves on to immigration. “You can't blame people for voting BNP,” she concludes, her husband coughs uncomfortably. Her argument boils down to that though the BNP are 'of course abhorrent', another more mainstream party should adopt all of their policies.

But she hasn't said 'political correctness gone mad yet.' What a disappointing odious bitch she is. At least play the game woman. My bigotry bingo card is incomplete and your lazy racism is not covering all the bases it should.

'Come on, we've got to get back,' her husband says, drinking the last mouthful of beer in a way that is some how self-congratulatory. They've got stuff to do. Probably watch Britain's Got Talent or chase Asians in their people carrier.

CENSORSHIP!

2010-08-16T17:15:00.003+01:00

The television programme Question of Sport Uncensored, indicates that someone at some time was sat down watching the standard version of Question of Sport and thought to themselves, ‘this programme is censored.’ Either that or the BBC 1 controllers had half an hour of television to fill and decided the best way to fill it was to have Ally McCoist repeatedly say ‘fuck’. I sincerely hope it’s for the first reason. I love the idea, of the real naked truth of Question of Sport being exposed; the lie that Ally McCoist doesn’t say ‘fuck’ finally demolished so that we now live in a post-innocence-of-Ally McCoist’s potty-mouth-world. What a world: I want to die here and have my ashes thrown over the lush valleys of coarse innuendo aimed at Sue Barker.

Kylie Sandwich

2010-07-19T00:02:00.005+01:00

Kylie's on the television singing live. She's not miming. We know this because the first thing she does is shout out, 'Hello, how you all doing?'. If she was miming she couldn't have done this. Now she's slightly changing the words of the song to reference the host of the chat show. If she was miming she couldn't have done this. Kylie isn't miming. SHE IS NOT FUCKING MIMING!

The thing with buying takeaway sandwiches is. you're going to buy them from the place that serve the nicest ones, no matter how rude the staff are. I know that with this sandwich purchase insight, I've just changed the way you think about buying sandwiches. You don't have to thank me - in fact you can't. You're powerless; just someone reading words on a screen. How did it come to this? I mean really. This is humiliating - for God sake go out for a walk or read a book or something.

Anyway, normally the rude bloke in the sandwich shop doesn't bother me. His supercilious tone and grimace at every word I utter are just shallow pot-holes along the road to my baguette bounty. It seems to be harder for him anyway: having to lower himself, as someone who prepares and sells sandwiches, to sell sandwiches to someone who doesn't sell and prepare sandwiches. Incidentally, I've got no idea what 'supercilious' actually means. It just seemed right to use it there. I'm hoping it means something like 'superior', but if it means 'eight-legged' or 'floatation device' then I apologise. But I am doing this live - there is no miming in my writing of blogs. Incidentally, how you all doing?

Then the bloke in front of me with ALL of the 2008 tour dates for Rod Stewart's 2008 Australia/New Zealand tour on the back of his t-shirt picked up his sandwich, stepped backwards and crushed my toes with his heel. He apologised, I told him it wasn't a problem. It was a problem, it hurt my toes. Sandwich man looked at me with his, 'and what exactly are you doing here?' stare. I felt the anger that builds through pain, burning my insides. I concentrated every single available resource of my soul not to tell this man to go do something unnatural with a wholemeal baton. I composed myself.

'Can I have a crayfish baguette please?' I said, almost like a man who hadn't just been stepped on by a fat Rod Stewart fan. In fact I could almost have been one of those casual sandwich purchasers, one who would quite like a crayfish baguette, but if it didn't happen – well there'd be no big drama – just one of those things.

But sandwich man was having none of it. A little flick of his hair, then his body froze. His facial expression moved from boredom to unrestrained contempt.

'Do you mean Crayfish on a bed of rocket?' he said, unnecessarily capitalising the 'c' in 'crayfish'.

There are about twelve different baguettes available. The total number of those that have crayfish in them is one. This man's ignoring of basic set theory was without question deliberate. The man who can't let 2008 go may have crushed my toes, but this man was thumping my face with his reluctance to serve me lunch.

I'd like to tell you how I made an amusing and cutting retort, how I found out where he lived and set fire to his dog – but I didn't. I just said 'yes.' But I didn't say 'please', and I still got the baguette. That's the Weymouth in me.

A week in Derby

2010-05-28T09:54:00.007+01:00

I sit in the hotel bar drinking my pint of Stella, a beer punched in the face until it agreed to chill-out at a more moderate and conscientious 4% alcohol. My last night in the Holiday Inn Express in Pride Park, Derby. In a sense, it’s the end of a very short era; an era of four days. My era’s too small to be an era. How inadequate it is.

I do not mind my own company, but sitting in your hotel room has a loneliness that overwhelms, that empties your entire vision and replaces it with a colour that failed the audition to become beige. And that’s why I sit in the hotel lounge, with my newspaper amongst tables peppered with the tired, who are all having ‘just one more’. The television keeps us warm.

The television has dedicated itself to ITV. It’s just finished showing us a programme that had everybody guessing; trying to work it out. What was the concept? All it was (I promise you I’m not deliberately concealing nuance or deliberately deconstructing it in an attempt to piss-take), was celebrities on boats. Richard Madeley and a few others on boats against no time limit, with no challenge or danger, on boats. There weren’t even waves.

That really was it, nothing more, nothing less. I say ‘nothing less’, the only way of having something less would be to have a camera fixed on an empty boat for an hour, or maybe me on a boat. A whole programme with me on a boat; I like it. It would be called ‘Me on a Boat’ and I would do the first series for not much money, before demanding fifty-grand an episode for the second series in which I would be on a better boat. Then I’d write a book about boats. I say write, I’d get it ghost-written, for I know less about boats than I know about you.

‘Did you write the book?’

‘Well…’ I’d stutter, unsure whether to lie. A smug grin would begin to build upon Jeremy Paxman’s spongy face.

‘It was ghost-written wasn’t it?’

‘Yes! But by a fucking ghost, Paxo; a real fucking ghost.’ And I’d have proof: a picture of me stood next to some woman who was murdered in a Yorkshire bakery in the eighteenth century and Paxman would disappear from shot, shaking and crying underneath his desk. They’d cut to an advert break, even though this is BBC 2, and the first advert would be for a sequel to my book, ‘Me on a Boat’ called ‘Even More of Me on a Boat’, which would be exactly the same but with 'out-takes' consisting of wrongly spelt adjectives.

So, that’s been my week in Derby.

Timmy Mallet and the Theory of Evolution

2010-03-09T22:20:00.007Z

I am a man living in a small flat who often has to spend five minutes looking for his keys before he leaves it. The mechanics of my brain frequently fails following tasks:: a) instruct my movable arm to put my keys in the same place every time I get home, b) in case of failing ‘a’ store the location of my keys in my memory. This could be because sub-consciously I decide that such information really isn’t worth wasting limited memory on; that all that is stored there now cannot be discarded for such piffling convenience of being able to go outside.

But the principle of the brain’s memory holding the most important stuff in it whilst refusing to hold that which is less useful falls down clumsily on its arse as soon as you partake in an afternoon’s tour around it recesses and see just what a load of crap has been lying about there for years. I for example know that eighties children’s TV host Timmy Mallett has had an art exhibition in a place called Pinder Hall; and that’s not a memory by the way; I’ve never been to Pinder, I don’t have any particularly interest in art or Timmy Mallett and wasn’t waiting for this unlikely and exciting combination to change this situation. In fact I’ve no idea how I know this information, yet my brain resolutely refuses to replace this knowledge with something which could be traditionally described as ‘more useful’ - like when my M.O.T. is due or the age of my mother.

The answer to why this happens is available for y’all in the Theory of Evolution. The often random way our brain soaks up information has been sufficient – and as a species we are most likely unique in this way. In fact, back when our species was living in caves (where the fuck are all these caves?) the knowledge of Mallett's art soirée would most likely have been advantageous to the chance of having your genes reproduced.

But let us not be complacent: It may be in the future that homo-sapiens who can always find their keys do gain an evolutionary advantage; that those that can’t fill their brain-boxes with useful facts that allow an ordered and efficient lifestyle will be shunned by the opposite gender who crave the company of those that know what kind of fuel their car takes. The sorting-office of the brains of future generations of people like me might deteriorate to such an extent that whilst knowing Michael Parkinson’s favourite ice-cream and the history of the Lola-Ball, they are unable to remember what a pen does or where they put their reproductive organs. That’s why every time I waste five minutes of my life searching for and then retrieving my keys from the fridge - I’m not annoyed or frustrated - but glad that I live in a time when this can still happen.

Olly Murs' Banality Nearly Killed us All!

2009-12-29T12:20:00.012Z

For those who find the regular purchasing of Heat Magazine financially non-viable, the website 'Digital Spy' is there, free as an impact with a lampost to tickle your celebrity gossip feet. Who would of thought such an insignificant, trivia bloated, interweb cupboard would break the biggest story so far of the Anno Domini? ME! I predicted it in my unpublished book 2009 X-Factor Runner Up News Predictions(with a foreword from a now homeless Kate Thornton[she has a flat fee of a bacon baguette, a Cappuccino and a kind remark about her hair]). But I was wrong; the truth is they have done something much more exciting: For the first time ever, a news story has been written that is so inane and unimportant, it actually has less insight than no words at all.

'Uninformation' has been theoretical up to now. Einstein's calculations showed that it was a mathematical possibility but that an incident of it was incredibly unlikely to occur(roughly equivilent to the chances of Jeremy Paxman reading a news story without editorialising using the inflection of his voice). It further postured that if there was to be such an Uninformation event, it was most likely going to be a Showbiz tit-bit. Many concerned scientists have warned about the rise of publications dedicated to celebrity gossip, stating that it was not a case of 'if' an Uninformation event occurred, but 'when'. They were right.

So what is the first recorded case of recorded 'Uninformation'? Here it is stolen from HERE.

Murs: 'I fancy Katie Holmes and Fergie'

Monday, December 28 2009, 10:07 GMT

By Rebecca Davies

Olly Murs has revealed that he has a crush on Katie Holmes.

The X Factor runner-up, who is currently single, said that he was a big fan of Holmes when she played Joey Potter in teen drama Dawson's Creek.

"Katie Holmes is very attractive. And I was a massive Dawson's Creek fan, I've got every series and Katie was one of my favourites," Bang Showbiz quotes the musician as saying.

"Fergie is pretty hot. I saw her in real life and she was absolutely amazing."

Earlier this month, Murs told Heat that he fancied 22-year-old dancer Sianad Gregory, who he performed with on the reality music show.

He finished second in X-Factor which means he is both not an amusingly terrible singer and he didn't win. This immediately puts him at the kind of level of forgetableness that necessitates he show his parents his birth certificate to prove he exists every time he goes around to visit them. Secondly he's the most forgettable of all the people that have finished second in X-Factor, all of whom have been forgotten, some of which don't even exist.

The story itself seems to be that he thinks Katie Holmes is attractive. His quote is not even saying that he's about to attempt to pursue some kind of relationship with the ex-Dawson's Creek star (Holmes would anyway be most likely reluctant to give up her seat on the spaceship with Tom Cruise to shag someone who lost to someone I can't remember). It is in the mould of someone uselessly muttering 'I probably would' to themselves as someone who's more attractive than an uncooked chicken appears on their television.

What pushes this article further towards the cliff-edge of Uninformation is the dilution of the Katie comment, by him then spreading his attention blanket over the head of a second celebrity: Fergie, who he's seen “in real life”. The stability of the universe is then further compromised when 'Digital Spy' tells us that Olly earlier on this month commented that he fancied dancer Sianad Gregory - a woman who even though Olly's probably made-up - none the less means that this story isn't even the first of its type about Olly Murs.

This Uninformsation created a black-hole; a schism that could have caused incalculable damage: Channel Five would have been the first to get sucked in, followed closely by hastily considered opinions on football tactics; then rockerys would quickly disappear leaving the small slopes of all Britain's gardens barren. In fact such is the power of this Uninformation Black-Hole, all existence could have been sucked into this Hawking wank anomaly due to the existentialism invoked by Waiting for Godot.

Luckily the black-hole was closed immediately by the story being reversed into substance by it being identified as the first piece of writing ever to create a space anomaly. So we're all right then. 4-4-2!

Bridges Today

2009-08-03T23:03:00.004+01:00

Bristol Harbour festival and the footbridge on the waterfront has been temporarily designated one-way in the most serious three bouncer enforced way. The disbelief created by people who unexpectedly find they cannot cross the bridge is messily scattered and kicked around on the cobbles. The amiable bouncers take the abuse with humour,‘have a nice day sir.’
A man in his late fifties with more to the right of his bald patch than the left, remonstrates persistently with the bouncer whose head’s a pumpkin. ‘But it’s a bridge,’ the man argues hoping that in light of this new information the bouncer will relent and let him through. To this man wronged, with his most inconsistent hair, this temporary arrangement is a sick perversion equivalent to the cross-breeding a spaniel to a photograph of a spade. The long suffering target of this man’s anger opens his arms as only bouncers can and spots his favourite cloud – ‘there’s nothing I can do.’. He’s right: his only job is to stop people walking the wrong way over a bridge; to let one man through would be as unprofessional as Wogan screaming ‘Fucking tune!’ over a fading Will Young track.
Eventually the man turns away and breaths in everybody’s oxygen through a nostril he selected before the show. With his bemused mother he walks away turning occasionally to shout another obscenity, his pointing finger bent through embarassment about what its attached to. ‘It’s not worth it, it’s really not’ his mother argues patting his elbow.
As his anger fades, sadness grows. He probably remembers when times were simpler - when footbridges were bidirectional 365 days a year and the only bouncers you’d see on bridges were bouncers crossing bridges. But these are the times we live in.

'They can try'

2009-07-06T22:17:00.005+01:00

Gloucester Road and a plump, pale, middle-aged man, his shirt bleeding the hungry sweat of a late Thursday afternoon pulls over his weathered BMW sharply and parks on one of those damn yellow lines with a sign above that said you really don’t want to be parking here at this time of the day.

On my walk to the shops to get a few essentials, I passed two traffic wardens aggressively pumping tickets at any car that dared to so much as whisper. They'd quickly be upon this BMW, sloshing their foamy penalties over its dirty dirty windscreen.

To all intents and purposes the driver appeared to have the arrogance and badly worn aggression that is prevalent in those that choose BMWs. He walked up towards me; nose high in the air allowing the nostril creatures to see the smug cloudless sky. My emotions should have been swaying to satisfaction - this bluster of paunch was to have the nasty shock of a sixty pound fine waiting for him when he got back. But for some reason, just as he was about to pass, a little fountain of virtue started sprinkling raw compassion all over my insides. I decided that it should be me to reach out the olive branch; to try and bring BMW and non-BMW owners to, if not friendship, at least an understanding. To break the chains of hate with the…

‘You don’t want to park it there mate,’ I said, my voice lowering in tone, my words littered with the word ‘mate’ (two things that always happen when I am forced to have any discussion involving cars), ‘wardens just up their mate’ I added.

‘And?’ he replied, stomach wobbling in sympathy to his incredulity.

‘Well they’ll give you a parking ticket mate’ I replied, stating the obvious to the oblivious. I thought that perhaps he hadn’t realised what traffic wardens did. BMW drivers do seem to have huge gaps in their knowledge; most look upon traffic lights are some pointless roadside lightshow they're not invited to and see ‘giving way’ ss some strange religious ritual practiced by non-German cars.

‘They can try!’ he countered, as if a traffic warden’s attempt to place a parking ticket on a stationary unoccupied car had a ridiculously low percentage chance of success.

Into Somerfield I went. Into the heart of maverick convenience store eccentricity. I emerged twenty minutes later with a bag in each hand and started to walk back down the road noticing the BMW still parked. Its owner stood next to it on his mobile gesticulating, poking the parking ticket in his right hand skywards – telling whoever it might be how unfair it is that he should have received a parking ticket for parking illegally, for parking illegally.

Could I dampen the smile that is forming on my face? Could I halt its inevitable progress into bearing teeth? I tried, I really did. I looked away from him as I approached but he clocked me and said, ‘just a minute’ into his phone before covering the mouthpiece. ‘Did you do this?’ he shouted nodding towards the ticket in his sweaty stupid hand. I came to a stand still. Me, the single person in the entire fucking universe that had tried to stop this happening now stood accused. ‘Well?’ he continued, eyes widening, body rigid in flab.

There is no common ground, there can be no understanding. We’re two distinct groups, always
destined to exist separately. Me trying to bring us together is as unnatural as cross-breeding a pig with a wooden spoon. They have a BMW, we don’t; there’s no middle-ground in which we can all go for a picnic.

‘Yes’ I said, ‘It was me.’

I shopped at Waitrose

2009-07-03T13:09:00.002+01:00

Yes me, myself did so last night, just to see what it was like. I’m normally a Tesco man (or for laugh Sommerfield), so in effect I’d jumped straight over the orangey head of Sainsbury’s into the arms of this John Lewis off-shoot.

The first thing I noticed is that you had to be quite near to any of the women to tell how old they are. All alone, painfully thin, with skirts just above knee height, whispering angrily at rows of expensive canned food. In fact that seems to an unwritten rule at Waitrose – you must not under any circumstances shop with anyone else. This is solitary shopping, the quiet area in the library where the slightest beep from a mobile phone could mean someone challenging you to a duel.

This silence does not spread to those that 'work' there: Unlike staff of lesser supermarkets, employees do not appear to see it as their responsibility to actually do any work. The students with name badges, stand in groups of two, unapologetically discussing in booming spooned voices about how smashed they got last night on Pimms whilst rotating a can of pees lazily with their non-gesticulating hand. Ask them politely to move so’s you can, I don’t know, maybe get something off the shelf, and they’ll shuffle along without acknowledging your existence, and continue their work-related chatter. ‘I fucking told Rachael he’d do that.’ she enthused at her best friend’s naivety.

The girl at the checkout smiled as she rhythmically swept the goods across the bar-code reader, launching them into her own clouds dreaming of a better place to be. Maybe Asda, Tesco, Morrisons, Sommerfield, Aldi, that shop on the corner that smells funny.

More Door Hardcore

2009-07-02T23:18:00.004+01:00

I’ve already previously covered the social goat spoon of how far behind a stranger has to be before there is no need to hold a door open for them. This point was SO well made by me even Jesus took time out from being back alive to tap my head and tell me what a good little creation I was. His dad thought it was shit though – miserable bearded…

The whole door thing came back into my thoughts again today whilst following a stranger through a large office block. I was troubled as to how many times I should thank the person for briefly holding each door open for me to grab after they went through first. Every door? A selection?

Obviously the first door is a given. You have to say thank-you. This person has put himself out for 1.4 seconds, which could have been used being 2.8 metres closer to his final destination. But then the second door, a brief almost embarrassed ‘cheers’? The third, the fourth? Try not saying anything and the dead air starts to twist its bony fingers around your ungrateful neck.

I think the trick is to say something new every door:

1st Door: ‘Thank you’
2nd Door ‘Cheers’
3rd Door ‘Got it.’
4th Door ‘ahhhh’
5th Door (OK you can keep this one silent but make sure your extra proactive in grabbing that door as quickly possible)
6th Door to the car-park ‘THANK YOU’ (Give it large on this one – it’s a kind of summary thank-you, one that fills in the gaps for any slips on the previous five.)

Once you’ve been following strangers through doors for a while, you may even like to experiment with saying nothing until the final door. Yes, the door holder may be a little peeved before you come to hit your one line, but if you append your ‘Thank-you’ with a ‘very-much’ (with the ‘very much’ executed with a tone of suprise and delight normally reserved for someone buying you a bike) then they will go away possibly more satisfied than if you’ve struggled through all six separately. But don’t try this one thank-you technique until you really have had lots of experience in following people.

I know what some of you are thinking: ‘I’m not up to it Matt – it’s ok for a social God like yourself - but I just can’t face wading through this social stew. Well OK, I’d reply looking at you sympathetically/contemptibly before I chucked up my kebab of problem-solving. Try this: Get in front of the target as soon as possible. Put them on the back foot, make them face the minefield of following you. Please be aware this can end in dirty back-fire, I’ve seen two social inadequates simultaneously attempt to use this technique, thus creating a door-social-discomfort-race-condition. I’ve seen two gingers literally sprint past, hitting each other with floppy-disks in an attempt to reach the door first.

As in all cases of walking towards doors, let common sense guide you and the voices in your head tell you that it’s ok if you do THAT!

Shut-it sunshine with your big ideas and stupid shine

2009-07-01T22:16:00.003+01:00

I’m looking at the sun out of the office window. I can hear it chuckling, barbing ‘Look what I’m doing out here with ‘heat’ and ’light’ whilst you’re stuck in there typing various combinations of keys in vain attempts to produce words on your television.

‘It’s a monitor’ I argue but the sun isn’t listening anymore. It’s laughing with the kids playing football, with jumpers for goalposts and a football for football. It’s studiously serving the slaves to sunburn who lie static along sandy beaches reading novels written by Jade Goody, stuffing greasy chips up their cracks. It’s playing peak-a-boo with the pale, who hide under parasols outside cafes, sucking then end of their beer bottles, re-hydrating their indifference to the rest of the world.

I wonder outside at lunch for a walk and the sun notices me again. ‘Ah, there you are, decided to join us again have you?’

‘Just for half an hour.’

‘See that’s the problem with people like you,’ the sun says flashing angry hot claws only visible to Hubble, ‘you complain when I’m not here, and then when I put in the effort you hide away in shirts and ties doing ‘work’’.

‘I have to earn a living,’ I argue half-heartedly but the sun doesn’t buy it. He’s sceptical about everything I say because I never look him in the eye. The fear of him burning through my retinas, into the darkest recesses, means I stare downwards defeated at the ugly pavement as I walk back.

110%

2009-06-30T13:19:00.000+01:00

I’m in a spinning class ( group of people on exercise bikes following instructions of instructor whilst music popular exactly four years ago plays loudly in the background. Some times referred to as RPM or ‘why don’t you just go out for a ride on a proper bike’ ). This particular instructor, his name Dave, is very keen on announcing percentages indicating the effort level you should be putting in. ‘We’re going up a hill and I want you all at seventy percent’ he announces. I turn the resistance on the bike up and speed up my legs movement. My effort is more or less at seventy percent I believe, though I’m sure none of us know quite what that really means. I expect to be chastised at any minute for running at seventy-two. Gradually there are further calls – eighty, ninety percent, then in a voice reminiscent of Braveheart with a recently stubbed-toe, ‘ONE HUNDRED PECENT – SPRINT!’

I close my eyes summoning every bit of energy I can find. That last flake of pastry from that dodgy sausage roll, those last millilitres of orange juice from that glass that was too warm; all of it burning in the furnace of my tired body, accelerating my pale legs into a milky blur. Sweat throws it self violently off me’ there’s steam rocketing skywards towards the dirty air-conditioning units as all of us push and push and push.

Dave maintains control, cycling hard but with poise in his smug dead eyes. ‘OK – right, really go for it…FASTER’ he suddenly shouts.

I try to push it harder, to go faster, but my body refuses – in fact it informs me quite forcefully that ‘I must be having a fucking laugh.’ It’s right of course – I’m already going at one-hundred percent. This leaves me exactly zero percent available for increase. I look around and I can see that many of my fellow classmates have actually upped their level. I feel cheated – the bastards, they weren’t going at one-hundred percent. My legs are slowing. ‘Keep up the speed’ barks Dave, and I’m sure he must be referring to me.

I want to explain how I was previously one of the small sub-group of the class who were actually going at one-hundred percent. I want us to be recognised as heroes, talked about in pubs, discussed in GCSE history classes. I want to shout and scream at the dirty cheating ninety percenters scum who laughed as we gave it our all.

‘OK ease off’ Dave says finally, twisting down his resistance and we all follow suit.

‘What back down to one hundred percent’ I almost say before realising I don’t have the physical energy to say anything, or in fact even think up the line.

‘Right in the next track I want to see every one upping it by a notch’ Dave calmly announces, as the Artic Monkeys start their song. ‘Time to take it to the next level!’

Proudly Spaced Patriotism

2009-05-06T23:13:00.008+01:00

We brave misunderstood balding English, standing in battered bus stops under angry regimental downpours. This courageous underrepresented British minority desperate to reassert our identity against all that…you know…stuff. Them dragons…them dragons…THOSE WELSH ARE STEALING ALL OUR JOBS!

Anyway, let me tell you - there was no way I was going to miss out on celebrating St Georges Day like THEY want us to. Them…you know the ones with their ‘Political Correctness’, their endless bullying that tries to curb our lazy hate. And there I was on the great day itself realising well over a minute before half seven in the evening that it was actually St Georges day (I’d walked past a pub that said ‘It’s St Georges Day’ on a sign [it also said ‘Why don’t you come in and slay a dragon?’ which didn’t so much make sense as rather not make sense, but look at me mum I’m using square brackets(probably haven’t done it correctly though[I’m so out of my deapth])] ) I stopped for a minute, watching a Y-reg Nova sub-woofer its bored moulds towards me, its special blue light illuminating the under-car - its spoiler increasing its aerodynamics intangibly.’Boom, boom, boom’ it argued as it passed And I stood there entranced as the big spoon of patriotic pride forced love for my country into my smiling English mouth. It tasted like Rosemary.

That said, (what said?) I was just popping out for a little emergency convenience shopping. All my big words and xenophobic attitudes and I was unable to actualise my love for England’s ( and Aragon’s, Catalonia’s, Ethiopia’s, Georgia’s, Greece’s, Lithuania’s, Palestine’s, Portugal’s, and Russia’s, and the cities of Amersfoort’s, Beirut’s, Bteghrine’s, Cáceres’s (Spain), Ferrara’s, Freiburg’s, Genoa’s, Ljubljana’s, Gozo’s, Pomorie’s, Qormi’s, Lod’s, and Moscow’s) patron saint due to it being 7:30pm and not really having anything planned. THAT’S JUST WHAT THE NANNY STATE WANTS!

But then on my casual evening wander across England’s green and pleasant land I walked into the shopping sensation Sommerfield. And this haven of Englishnessnessness had patriotically produced a little St Georges day display so that disorganised people short of milk could enjoy a brief little reflection on how great it is to be a citizen of here.

A single table: tableclothed with polyester English flag, brown with the labour of hanging on to some disinterested Corsa during the 2006 World Cup. And on it, a display of proudly spaced objects (And if you do not believe that you can proudly place objects then you know not pride) with a handwritten sign, ‘Celebrate St. Georges day with us!’.

The objects: white sliced loaf, six pack of scones. 12 white sliced sandwich roles, Jacobs cracker selection. Two litre bottle of Blackthorn Cider, Bag of carrots. Bag of purple headed broccoli…… Remember they were proudly spaced!

Willy Wonka is a character in which Roald Dahl book?

2009-04-10T09:51:00.010+01:00

Whilst I’m more than happy to admit that I regularly watch the multi-layered epic Neighbours, I have to draw the line at GMTV. In fact, so important is it to me that I draw a line here, I am going to physically draw a line on a big piece of A4(is it possible to have a big piece of A4?) with a purple crayon.

That said, it’s Good Friday and I’m not quite ready to transfer from being awake to doing something useful with my life and I’m bored with BBC News with its narrow insistence on being exclusively dedicated to things that have happened, are happening or are about to happen – seriously BBC, innovate.

So GMTV with the weather women who only seems interested in telling us where she’s going on holiday and saying hello to her parents. The entertainments reporter from Los Angeles who looks genuinely upset about Woody Harrelson being bothered by a photographer in an airport (literally never has something happened where so little has happened). Our entertainment reporter Carla goes on to report on how Liam Neeson is returning to work just three weeks after his wife died. We’re huge fans of Liam here on GMTV comments the female presenter back in the London studio dressed in the kind of yellow that gives you an instant headache. Oh yes of course Carla quickly responds keen to dispel any negativity aimed at Neeson’s decisions; her face, which up until this point has been irritatingly serious escalates into the kind of concerned frown that can mean only one thing: she’s going to tell us something that we’re NOT allowed to disagree with.

‘With the credit crunch’, she starts. She’s not actually going to say that is she? Of course she is: Earnestly she informs us how Liam must take work where he can as he has to support his kids. Yellow woman’s clothes seem to darken slightly and the ex-tennis player sitting next to her nods sombrely. Take the job for now Liam, I’m sure you’ll get to the top of the council-house allocation list soon.

‘Pink is really in this season’ says the fashion expert who’s been beamed on to the sofa next to our main two presenters as he calls out one by one various models sporadically covered in clothes the colour pink. I’m not sure whether this is normal or whether GMTV can only afford models with a severe lack of self-esteem, but yellow women ( who is back to full UV emitting colour intensity ) bounces on the sofa and tells each of them that they ‘look great’ as they walk on organs first.

Anyway enough of all this, GMTV are giving me the opportunity to win £25,000. All I have to do is text in A, B or C to answer the following question:

Willy Wonka is a character in which Roald Dahl book?

A) Fantastic Mr Fox
B) George’s Marvellous Medicine.
C) Charlie and the Chocolate Factory

Here’s my thinking: It’s not ‘A’, because the answers not that. It’s not ‘B’, because the answer’s not that. It is ‘C’, because the answer is that.

And where do you start with GMTV’s ‘film expert’ Richard Arnold; a bloke who only talks about films starring ex-Friends actors? You don’t.

Anyway I’ve got to stop this now as Jeremy Kyle is starting and he’s already said ‘look in the mirror’ and I’m going to have punch my television just in case it somehow hurts him.

When all you've got is the walk

2009-04-08T23:23:00.011+01:00

Why should you? Why should you have to interrupt the bounce bounce bounce indie post-indie stride because some car may want to turn ‘left’ onto some road you must apparently cross. Fuck them - why should he throw it all away after all this. All this consciously conscious progress down the pavement with you not caring, the shades in the gloom, the jeans that fit in a way that only one percent of the population are interested in and half of those understand.

This is the stage, the paving, walking into the distance, out of sight with out any compromise to practicality. This is all about who you are and nothing about almost anything there...is... and you’re in the middle of the road and nothing hits you - maybe becuase 'nothing' could be bothered, but most likely because it just fucking couldn't. You laugh at the lifeless body of that Green Cross Code Man you remember from school.

Is it shallow to put everything into your walk and nothing into your destination? Would this bloke fade into the shadows when he had to just 'stand'? I can't answer...I can't answer that..when will I, will I be famous...sorry lost it there...anyway....ah yes let me clumsily link on to the word 'shallow'.

But then twice in one week (maybe this shouldn't be a new paragraph, but fuck-it I'm a software engineer), with as much seriousness as anyone can ever really be bothered getting involved with in April, someone called me that word too: shallow. So I'm going to read a 'difficult' book in a public place because shallow people don't do that. I'll have my headphones on and noone will know I'm listening to Fleet Foxes eight months too late.

2009-03-30T22:43:00.004+01:00

Looking up he commented that he’d got so much on his 'To-Do' List he didn’t know what to do. A man, not only with a to-do list, but one larger than average, doesn’t know what to do. Overwhelmed by order and identifiable tasks he now sits silently, drowning, tapping at the space-bar as his last struggle peters out. This is the pain and anguish forced upon us: the hellish imperative to consistently make sense.

Those hundreds of monkeys bashing away at typewriters for an infinite amount of time write complete works of Shakespeare because they’re under no pressure to do so.

‘How long monkey, will it take you and your friends to type out the complete works of Shakespeare?’

‘It will take forever - an infinite amount of time.’

‘I don’t know if I have forever.’

‘We can negotiate on staffing levels, but I simply must insist on this timescale.’

At the quantum level of things, the entire universe is made up of little angry cats trying to scratch each other’s eyes out, so this pursuit of order and understanding is just horribly arbitrary. There’s Robert Preston on my television, moving his hands round frantically, eyes cold and dead, words throwing themselves forward like drunken rugby players. He’s trying to make sense of something to do with money. He says he’s explaining what it all means to you. And by ‘you’ he means me: for I am that second person. I know what it means to me Robert – I am me - it’s who I’ve always been. If you’re so bloody interested in how I’m affected, what matters to my life: why don’t you do the courtesy of phoning me, so I can explain that it’s really none of your business? If you have to ‘make sense of things’, why don’t you start with your own life Robert Preston? Tell us what something (anything) means to you. When was the first time you cried? Was it all those numbers when you first saw Ceefax?

Will the tide ever come in again?

2009-02-27T12:22:00.012Z

I cannot be blamed – there was nothing I could do. An unpredictable lightning bolt from the left field in the sky. One minute it’s something you couldn’t construct as a whimsical thought from the most fantastical of notions, the next - there it is, stark and crazy. And before you accuse me of gross exaggeration and over-drama, let me reveal to you what has just happened: I experienced listening to a cover version of Something Inside So Strong sung by Michael Ball!

This event cannot be subjectively commented upon; the very parameters that mediate my entire life are at the moment spinning wheels in Michael Ball’s fucked-up fruit machine.
There’s no categorizing possible in terms of good or bad, right or wrong; all I can do is try my best to avoid the lava – the dark red, bleeding lava.

I would be more likely to fathom the origin and meaning of existence than even speculate on what drew Michael Ball to attempt to perform this song. The actual execution breaks so many rules of science that it in studying it, the scientific community may come to understand the constitution of Dark Matter.

God has always shirked responsibilities for such cataclysms by claiming that he endowed his creations with free-will - but this time I’m not sure that excuse cuts it. The almighty must, by his own conviction that he is perfect, therefore have been aware of the possibility that a ‘Michael Ball’ was a conceivable result of some specific intercourse event on his big blue globe. When Labi Siffre released this song in 1987, God must have been all too aware that there was now a window of several years where both a ‘Michael Ball’ and the song Something Inside so Strong existed simultaneously. He did nothing…..

Slumdog Millionaire Official Scone Review

2009-02-26T12:35:00.006Z

It’s not particularly insightful to point out that different people think different things are appropriate at different times. In fact, not only is this devoid of insightfulness - meaning is conspicuously absent as well. It all comes from my school days - I think as far back as primary - where it was prohibited to merely provide an answer - you had to include the question within that answer too. Starting an answer with word ‘Because’ was comparable to handing-in a dead pigeon you’d found outside the Co-op rather than your exercise book. But, my first sentence doesn’t really include a question either. I even criticised that sentence from within it self which indicates I was fully aware of it being sub-standard. I was consciously throwing perfectly good words into a pedal bin, which could have been used by those less fortunate to build fishing boats.. While that sentence could have just been read and forgotten, it now has a shed-load of other, possibly even more pointless companions, lazily leaning against lampposts in this cul-de-sac. I mean look at this sentence we’re in now; it will provide a contribution to the sum of human knowledge roughly similar to watching an elderly cast member from Emmerdale Farm say ‘fuck’ on TV’s Naughtiest Blunders.

Because in the cinema, in the adverts at the start(and I mean the ones before the trailers), some people chat through them quite comfortably. Some people are already self-censoring the volume, others are consciously increasing the volume of their voice as if the emphasise the point that a Twix advert is to be drowned out at all costs by discussions related to the impending demise of Jade Goody. But I guess three-quarters are bizarrely transfixed by these advertisements being generously spooned onto the big screen; and a strange phenomenon occurs: Adverts that appeared mildly diverting on television are now laugh-out-loud funny. The one with the slob eating pizza dipped in spicy Tabasco Sauce, who is bitten by a mosquito, which then flies off and explodes in a mid-air fireball, got the sort of laughter normally reserved for the sight of a man falling over in a muddy field. It’s hard to work out whether it’s the bigger screen or the louder sound that increases the amusement. I am however left in no doubt that Nicholas Lyndhurst’s next BBC1 vehicle should become the world’s first IMAX-only situation comedy.

The actual film started off well and carried on in a similar vain, but then the fire alarm went off. I mean literally went off (if ‘went off’ means ‘rang’ and not ‘flew to Africa to discover itself’) – I’m not using some critic metaphor here; we all had to clear out of the cinema and wait outside. There was a kind of excitement about being evacuated mid-film; it was an unexpected plot-twist; the fourth wall had had a hole cut into it and we’d climbed through into the cold Bristol city centre. Our roles in this story may have been entirely limited to swinging our arms and chatting in short sentences, but it’s never wise to run before you can walk.

Ten minutes later and the all clear was given. There had been no actual physical fire, but there’d been no actual physical street kid from the slums of Mumbai winning Who Wants to be a Millionaire either.

COMMUNICATION REVOLUTION

2009-02-07T11:29:00.005Z

One of the most important applications of ‘communication’, is for people with opposing viewpoints to have discussions, negotiate and ultimately come to some kind of resolution. The Iron Curtain falling, the reduction in nuclear weapons, Britney Spears appearing on X-Factor - all came about by phone calls, face to face talks and a collection of other mediums.

But two groups of people that have always struggled to communicate in an effective way are Christians and Atheists. I have seen debates in front of audiences; though these usually descend into one side using the example of the complexity of the eye as an argument and the other using the example of the complexity of the eye as an argument. At least though this is face to face conversation, and I’m sure there were phone calls made to set up these head to heads. It is clear though that in general, these meetings and discussions have not really resolved anything and the two sides are still deeply entrenched in their viewpoints

Recently it appears that relations between these two groups seem to have now hit an all time low, with not a single word exchanged until just recently. To be fair, it was the atheists who broke the ice.

“There is probably no God. Now stop worrying and enjoy your life,” they said.

“There definitely is a God. So join the Christian Party and enjoy your life," the Christians have since replied.

It’s nice to see these two chatting again, don’t get me wrong, and the overall tone of the conversation does appear to be friendly. I’m just a little concerned that maybe, the medium of the bus isn’t the most efficient available to them. I can only assume that face to face discussions, letters, phone-calls, emails, carrier pigeons, smoke signals and mime, all must have been dismissed as not impersonal enough by an obviously hurt group of atheists. But the sheer impracticality of using a bus for chat is hard to underestimate. You have to make sure that your message goes on enough buses so that your target is likely to see it. I would have thought it would have at least been worth each group researching where at least one member of the other waited for a bus every morning, so they could target one bus and thus cut costs.

Then again, maybe I’m just behind the times. I was quite late in getting a mobile phone. I’m sure that like mobile phones, chatting to each other using the side of buses will come down in price and become common place. The technology will improve with bus companies able to predict where the recipient of your message is likely to be. I'm sure BT are rolling out their own network of single-deckers as we speak.

As far as the atheist/Christian argument is concerned, it was quite rightly pointed out on Radio Five Live that the argument could be irrefutably settled, if rather than putting messages on buses, one of them just stood in front of one.

2008-12-21T22:40:00.005Z

I was driving up a one way street– self-limiting myself to one way; my car hemmed in by parked cars on either side just like how it was in the Bible. About a hundred metres ahead a figure was walking towards me down the middle of the road. I was unbothered, I’ve seen people walking before and I was sure he would move onto the pavement when I got closer. This assumption was not worth the paper it was not worth writing such an assumption on; for my closing proximity brought no adjustment to the figure’s walking down the middle of the road.. In fact, the closer I get, the more confident his stride, the more aggressive his posture. I slowed down gradually still believing he would step aside when the realisation that I was in a car and he wasn’t, hit him like a car. The boney young figure, facial hair under various tidal systems, adjusted his NY cap and folded his arms in defiance as he came to a stop in front of me.

Who was this sack of nicotine, standing there in rubbish trainers, staring at me, letting the sun dry further his blown bulb eyes?. He unsquashed his orange arms, releasing them; pushing them slowly outwards like an animatronics Liam Gallagher. He focused, like a chav yoga instucter into the complete representation of the overly aggressive man stance.

The stand-off began. He started to jig a little, mouthing something repeatedly. I lowered my window to allow this mouthing to form into words, which then uncomfortably rearranged themselves into an almost non-existent question. ‘You gettin’ out the fucking way mate?’ He chanted it, swaying in front of me, his young but shrivelled beetroot of a head bopping forward and back like that of a bearded pigeon.

Gettin’ out the road would have meant reversing for 200 metres and back out onto one of the busiest roads in Bristol; it was an unreasonable request – we both knew that. I am assuming quite a lot in this story; but let's not forget how necessery it is to determine facts with out adequate evidence in this busy, five episodes of Neighbours a week lifestyle I live in.

He edged closer and closer and started slapping his hand on the bonnet of my car. Intoxicated, angry, both? Professor Yaffle had flown away a long time ago.

Finally the tapping stopped and he looked away for a second, lent back against a parked Corsa, no longer bothering with anything at all.

SOUP SPARRING

2008-11-17T00:21:00.005Z

I was in Weymouth and I was walking. I am a man who can do these two things simultaneously. And even with my concentration focused on juggling this unlikely pairing, a poster in the window of the Spar convenience store caught my attention. ‘Why not come in and ask our staff about our hot soup.’ it said, and just like a man with the emptiest afternoon on record, I felt I was unable not to.

I asked as to the temperature of the soup. The girl who I will call Karen (which did annoy her when she insisted her name was Clare) looked at me sympathetically and assured me that it is hot. I already knew this - it’s written on the poster. I was after additional temperature information, not the words of this admittedly striking poster regurgitated to me with a textured broth like murmur. Considering the A4 sheet had pushed me to interrogate on the subject of ‘hot soup’, I don’t think it was unfair that I then pushed Karen for a Celsius figure. 'It's hot', she repeated.

Struggling to retain my calm and sophisticated persona, I changed tact - enquiring as to where the vegetables in it were grown. A rather tired and irritated sigh from Karen quickly indicated that this was going to get me nowhere. Someone in the expanding queue behind me piped up with ‘It’s Soup!’.

‘I know it’s soup,’ I replied, ‘Your statment gave me less than that sorry piece of A4 in the window dammit - and all you're queuing for is a Kit-Kat.’

‘It’s nice soup,’ Karen offered.

There finally – the word ‘nice’! This wasn’t on the poster and thus I was at least provided with something new.

I wanted this to be enough, but how could this offered level of insight warrant the displaying of a poster asking people to come in and drag it reluctantly out of a disinterested Karen? The poster was only approximately seventy percent covered in words and the word ‘nice’ before ‘soup’ could have easily been added. The only positive experience of this whole ‘ask our staff about our hot soup’ was because of the inherent inadequacy of this noe largely discredited poster.

If you don’t want somebody coming into your shop asking about your soup then don’t prominently display a poster asking people to do just that. In fact, if your staff are going to look so positively affronted by such a line of questioning, then maybe you should be looking to create posters dissuading soup related enquiries.

‘Staff will not expand on the already presented information on nice hot soup.’

2008-10-30T17:11:00.005Z

"I was so sickened last week by a radio programme I didn’t know existed, hosted by two so-called ‘funny fuckers’, that I projectile vomited over a JVC Surround system in my local Currys.digital. Are you going to come and mop-up the regurgitated vegetable soup from their sub-woofer Russell Brand? Or will you let one of those poor employees who pay your wages handle your disgusting orange coloured sick?

So further outraged was I by hearing details of these so-called ‘messages’ from my so-called friend Judie when she so-called called me, that I ran-over a neighbour’s kitten in my Range Rover. Is Jonathan Ross going to scrape little Charlie’s remains off the cold concrete and explain to his elderly owners how it happened? I won’t be holding my breath!!!

How can Manwell’s granddaughter: a much loved member of ‘The Satanic Sluts’, reputation be allowed to be debased in such a lewd, crude, rude, shoed, mood, dude, poohed manner? Will the BBC take any action? Will they launch targeted patriot missile attacks against the tax-funded houses of Brand and Woss? The state Britain is in today - I find it extremely unlikely. More probable is that namby-pamby-hefty-shefty-crefty-lefty Auntie will be sucking the erect penises of these murderous louts and buying them mountain bikes.

I would recommend that these two be beaten to the point of total if not complete death with a stale bun - see how they like being killed - but this would only give these suicide bombers the publicity they so salaciously crave.

I note with interest their so-called apologies lacked any mention of Jesus, Britain going to the dogs or Post Office closures."

My Issue

2008-07-25T13:01:00.003+01:00

She’s always there. The pain in her voice elongating her unsteady words. ‘Biggggg Issueeeeee’ she’ll suggest to each person as the first push of fresh-air excitedly licks them in the face on exiting the Galleries Shopping Centre. Occasionally someone might stop and buy a magazine, hand over some change, or gift a cigarette. But mostly it’s eyes down and apologetic grunting; maybe a slight extra push on the heels to help the guilt melt away that little bit quicker.

Except with me it’s different: when I walk past not a word – stony lost silence. It’s not that she’s taken offense to anything I’ve said or done. I’ve never reacted to her or had a reaction from her. Her eyes always look so far through me: a stare that may just circumnavigate the entire Earth. I should be grateful than I don’t have to posture an embarrassed refusal to her sales request, but I feel singled-out - soulless in the centre of Bristol.

And it’s not just once. I’ve actually done a circuit - gone back into the centre through a different entrance and back out again. Still nothing, not even the most distant pathetic flicker.

It wasn’t long after that I was in Argos; inevitable you might think, for someone needing to buy something from Argos. You’d be right with that ‘think’, and you would be patting yourself on the back like a mental person testing they have one. Whilst you did that you might have seen me typing my item number into the electronic touch-screen till. It was in stock, the hair clippers, and my card was in, transaction accepted – how happy I was to have something respond to me.

I clasped my numbered ticket in much the same way as anyone else would (except Kate Bush who would swing her hips rhythmically, holding the piece of the paper in the air, wailing painlessly). I waited for ‘154’ to appear on the screen so I could collect my purchase. I waited for five minutes, ten minutes. I went to the desk to complain. They said there was no such order in the system, I said how come I’d got a ticket then. They looked at me like a man who carries round numbered Argos tickets as a matter of course. I got angry. They said to try and order again, I said that you should only ever need one attempt at buying hair clippers and that if that one attempt doesn’t work out, then there’s no reason why a subsequent one would.

I left empty handed knowing that things were getting grave. I had to do something before the ground stopped accepting my footsteps and I fell into the burning core at the centre of the Earth. My only chance was with the Big Issue women.

The next day I exited Galleries again and saw her with her pile of magazines. I wandered slowly past giving her ample opportunity to offer me magazine commerce. Nothing! I did another lap and tried again - this time with massively exaggerated hand-movements, singing loudly to myself the music of KLF, ‘Ancients of Moo Moo’, but still my efforts were as pointless as February. I was feeling faint - the last splash of wax that constitutes my soul was silently burning into nothing.

I was going to wazz this situation right up (just like how Jamie Oliver would handle strawberries, a hand full of gravel and food-processor). Change the course of the universe and rebel against determinism. I walked up to her purposefully, masking the trembling with deliberate movement.

‘Big issue please’ I asked and she smiled and said thank you and I walked away renewed.

I’m back, and it doesn’t matter that the next time I walked past her she ignored me again. I can feel my pulse again.

2008-07-03T14:07:00.003+01:00

I don’t like pushing in the petrol pump trigger anymore – it makes me feel slightly ill. The dizzying spinning of the cost indicator racing ahead of faded former champion ‘number of litres'. Then the anger: An anger born from the creeping sense of throwing away money, amplified by annoyance at the girl behind the counter who still smiles even though she's taking money off me she doesn't deserve. I want an apologetic stance from her; a downbeat glum acceptance of the times we live in. She could wear black to mourn the passing of affordable travel, raising her veil as I approach. She'll look into my eyes and tell me how sorry she is that things have worked out this way.

Back in the car, and my post fuel purchase driving is affected by my bad mood. I believe such a sharp upturn in the cost of driving should be compensated by an enhanced experience: Emptier roads; traffic lights who’s green hue stalks me. I want people standing on the pavement clapping and cheering, unfurling banners with slogans like, ‘Keep the pedal down for us Matt!’ They'll appreciate that however much the bastards rob me, my heart will still pump golden diesel through my veins. There will be a battered blue Peugeot rolling along the empty streets when the sun stops burning.

The radio interrupts, it tells me that I am not forgotten; that Gordon Brown has sensed my pain. He’s going to help: He’s not going to put a further 2p on the price of a litre of fuel that he was apparently going to. Is this not the equivalent of helping an old lady who’s fallen over by not kicking her hard in the stomach as she lies on the pavement? My foot pushes down harder on the accelerator and the music’s up dark and loud.

The local radio DJ starts a sentence with, ‘isn’t it just typical...’ and goes on to bemoan something ‘that’s just typical’. I tell him out loud to cheer up. I’m a man in a car talking into thin air, and they put that song on where that girl chants ‘it’s not my name’. I like that song.

The Mechanics of Thought

2008-06-27T14:35:00.005+01:00

The human brain is an amazing thing it really is.Boffins are still struggling to get to grips with its mechanics and the best they can do at the moment appears to be making a computer diagram of the squelchy thing glow in different locations depending on whether a test-subject is looking at a picture of Beyonce washing a car or Noel Edmonds playing Boggle.

Where would the diagram be glowing if a brain probe was connected to the stocky, badly dressed, unshaven, middle-aged Mondeo driver I witnessed pulling over on the side of Zetland Road last night?

Out of the car he springs aggressively, a bin-liner clasped into his no-nonsense hands. It would be wrong to say there was rage on his face, but there’s a definite determined aggressiveness. This man wants to dump the bin-liner - for some reason, and I don’t know what it is (he’s not verbalising his internal thoughts the crafty beggar). What ever it is, this man is in no mood to share his battered Ford with this bag any longer.

But then he feels it for the first time - he’s outside his protective metallic shell, unwrapped from the blanket of soft-rock. He can feel the conspicuousness of the fresh air pawing at him like an excited puppy. All eyes are on him – waiting for his next move.

There’s an area cordoned off to his left with tempory six-foot metal barriers in what looks like preparation for some kind of digging. For now nothing lies within this area, its only property is its inaccesabilty.

This is where the wonder of brain mechanics takes over. This is where some series of electrical signals started firing around in this man. The wonder of evolution created his next action, an action born by some kind of thought and judgment, maybe predetermined by the movement that could theoretically be traced back to the Big Bang: He launches the bin liner into the air and into the cordoned off area.

Somehow for him this works. It’s not dumping waster on a public highway, it’s neatly filing it away in where it’s supposed to go. Back into the car he goes - the grey matter now resting.

2008-06-09T23:27:00.006+01:00

There’s nothing like sitting back in the old deck chair and listening to a good car alarm. Feeling that carefully crafted tune whistle pleasantly in your ear as the sun gently caresses the scratched horizon.

It’s quite clear I’m being sarcastic - especially now I’ve said, ‘It’s quite clear I’m being sarcastic,’ but sarcasm is sooo good I want buy it chocolates; lie on a beach with it; whisper in its ear about the glorious life we‘re going to have together and yes the chocolates probably would melt into a sticky mess in the sunlight.. Bringing chocolates onto a beach would probably have been sarcasm's idea - That‘s SUCH a good idea sarcasm.

I don’t particularly enjoy the sound of car alarms and like most people I want to throw a fat tabby cat* at any vehicle whose alarm goes off. An alarm that's usually been activated by the wind from a butterfly fluttering its wings in an obscure village in Belgium where they distress winged insects as part of a fertility ritual.

They’re totally ignored as well (I'm back to car-alarms). People would take a book written by Jade Goody on String Theory more seriously than a car alarm going off on a Ford Mondeo. It’s just a horrid scream that makes people hate not the car thief, but the car owner who's disturbed their mid-morning suckle of Costa Coffee from the city-centre teat, by parking their car!

But some people rather than being embarrassed about having their car spunk its two-toned travesty, want even more. They want a verbal warning for anybody who unreasonably decides to stand on the same continent as their 5-Series.

’Stand back from the car,’ it will warn if you encroach into the vicinity of this overly loved lump of metallic shit. Now I understand there are those that lead and those that follow; but even the most subservient soul should have to be hypnotised by Paul McKenna before taking orders from a BMW.

And that's why everybody that has ever lived ever, should, on being asked by a car alarm to move away: stand there until they force the car into the surrender of resorting back to the high pitched whine of a lower-class Vauxhall Corsa. This is not a pointless defiance; we should do this because if we were to ‘stand back from the car’, what do you think would happen next? Give ‘em and inch, they’d take a mile( and probably burn fifty pounds worth of fuel to do so ).

Today it’s ‘stand back’, tomorrow this alloyed wheel diva would be asking us to lend it a fiver, criticise our dress sense, steal our jobs and our women. Next year's Big Brother could very well be won by a cross-dressing Smart Car.

If car alarms have to talk, their words should be aimed at dissuading a would-be criminal, not asking him to do half a Hokey-Cokey. Instead of this pointless 'stand back' bullshit, what about tickling a moment's self-reflection from the young gentlemen-thief with the simple, ‘Is this really what you want do with your life?’

*The cat would already be dead and the owner would approve of its use as a missile against noise pollution.

2008-04-08T23:48:00.005+01:00

What happens if you label automatic sliding doors of a supermarket ‘Entry’ on the outside and ‘Exit’ on the inside? Tesco is obviously keen to find out, and thus have done exactly this at their Tesco Extra in Eastville, Bristol.

‘Yes but if they’ve only got one set of sliding-doors then they don’t have much choice do they?’ you might argue. Well don’t argue that; a) because you’ve probably never been there, b) because I can’t hear your argument, you’re essentially attempting verbal discourse with a disinterested computer monitor, c) I really believe putting the word ‘Entrance’ on sliding doors should imply its primary purpose is for people to enter. Wouldn’t not saying anything at all at least prepare someone for the possibility that it may have a dual role? d) There are two sets of sliding doors very close to each other that could easily be assigned a directional flow each.

Inexperienced Eastville Tescoers often give me a death stare and a whispered complaint as I squeeze my exiting trolley past their entering one. They believe I’m some dirty sliding door shortcut opportunist. Someone who couldn’t be bothered to walk the tiny distance to the correct set of doors and thus push through their’s; soaking their bed sheets of polite and ordered society with my urine of borderline hooligan behaviour.

Sometimes when this happens I’m tempted to hang around until they come back out. I want to see the look of surprise on their faces when they realise the cheeky double flow rules of these sliders. And then the guilt on their faces when they see me and remember their misguided scowl. And then the return of the surprised look as they ponder why I’ve been hanging around the entrance/exit to a supermarket for over an hour.

It’s because I make the time!

2008-03-14T23:22:00.007Z

If there’s two lanes, and you want to go straight on at a roundabout, you should be in the left lane. Those are the rules, or rule as probably a singular one of them is called.

Like with most roundabout approaches, the roundabout I'm going to talk about today( in what may very well be the first in a series of roundabout anecdotes that may later turn into a book and possibly a feature film starring Cher ) never has a queue in the right-hand lane. I don’t have the first idea as to what you'll see or experience if you take the right hand turn at the roundabout. What I do know is that it isn’t attracting the kind of crowds that straight on is.

So in effect every work day, I like most others, am dismissing the ever present opportunity of turning right. Like a sheep, my only priority on my journeys to work is heading towards the office I work in. I say ‘like a sheep’, I’m of course referring to a sheep that can drive and hold down a job at an engineering firm; and to be fair I don’t know that an actual sheep with these attributes would behave in this way. Maybe there’s something to the right that would be of particular interest to sheep and thus if they could drive, they’d be abandoning nine to five drudgery in search of the good shit on the right-side.

Day after day, stuck in that queue on the left, waiting for my turn to do the straight on thing at the roundabout. And there’s nothing more annoying than seeing some twat-faced twat-head drive their BMW down the right hand lane, hitting the roundabout laneage and then cutting in so’s to go straight on. Everyday these people ( and possibly the more career centred of the sheep ) save themselves ninety seconds with their rule-breaking roundabout devience.

And what do these people do with those extra ninety seconds? Do they draw money out of a cash machine and give it to a homeless person called George? Do they write a poem about the Second World War? Do they take an extra moment out of their day, stick on the Princess Diana version of ’Candle in the Wind’ and think about whether they’re living their life in the way in which Queen of Hearts would of wanted? No, of course they don’t; they spend their extra ninety seconds composing an email addressed to ‘everyone_ever’ entitled ’Unacceptable’.

Well at least I can sleep at night. That’s nothing to do with what I’ve just said above. I’m just trying not to take falling asleep for granted.

Petrol-Eggs

2008-03-04T21:40:00.003Z

I was left with no choice but to purchase fuel from a motorway service station on the M25. And thus, being on a motorway, the price of fuel is considerably higher. Probably due to the difficulty of transporting petrol to places along a motorway, compared to say, obscure villages in Cornwall.

I pull into BP and am rather horrified to see that Diesel is going to set me back 114.9p per litre. This is over seven pence more per litre than I have even spent on fuel. This is, without doubt, a complete fucking con.

Those of you thinking that BP hadn’t predicted their customer’s annoyance to outrageously priced fuel would be wrong. One of the world’s most profitable companies are all too aware of the hardship their prices are putting on the average Lionel in the street and thus as a sign of goodwill, are willing to practically throw free money at their customers.

So when I pick up the nozzle, my eyes are drawn to their big promotion, their giving back proudly plastered all over the fuel pumps. And if you’re standing up at the minute reading this, I suggest you sit yourself down and maybe fashion a rudimentary rope out of some old clothing and tie yourself to the chair, because at the bare minimum BP’s generosity is going to make you feel slightly faint. It will most likely make you come:

‘Three Cadburys Cream Eggs for £1’.

Because the fuel prices are so ridiculous at this place, I can only presume there are just two groups of people who would come to this garage. Those, like me, who through their own disorganisation are nearly out of fuel and those who are after big savings on Chocolate full of white sticky stuff. Maybe BP are genuinely targeting confectionary fans with Chocolate Egg loss-leaders, hoping that whilst they’re there they’ll impulse buy exorbitantly priced fuel.

But on entering the BP Shop/payment area, I am drawn towards the Cadbury’s eggs. My earlier dismissing of this offer is beginning to feel premature. These eggs retail at 47p each, and if I were to get three of them for a quid, I’d be saving my self 41p. This may not seem much, but after spending such an obscene amount on Diesel, my soul demands whatever cleansing it can get. If this must come in the form of a misguided purchase of chocolate eggs then so be it

I get back into my car and place the three eggs on the passenger seat. I drive in the direction of home as the chocolate silently melts in the unseasonal sunshine.

Anyone can fall in love...

2008-02-28T16:45:00.004Z

They know when the line is to be delivered, and demand a subservient silence from the waiting throng. If there’s a raised platform nearby they will quickly scramble to it, demanding any available lighting be concentrated on their primed and dignified face; a face ready to the deliver the line they are certain will elevate their social status to someone who could call the Queen their bitch.

And then it comes: ‘I don’t watch soap operas’ they announce, back straight, eyes into a distant, better horizon. Usually they’ll further punctuate this by appending words such as ‘they’re all a load of rubbish anyway.’

It isn’t the fact that someone doesn’t like soap operas that annoys/amuses me. That is a perfectly sane and valid opinion to hold. It’s the insistence of some individuals to use their dislike of this genre of television as a boast and calling card. As if on hearing this startling insight, the recipients are suddenly going to reassess their opinion of this person; realise they’re dealing with someone capable of winning the final of Mastermind with the specialist subject of ‘The hardest questions you can think of Hawkins’. As if A-Levels and Degrees should be abandoned in favour of having a group of people with clipboards accessing people’s disgust when forced to watch Coronation Street. That maybe job adverts should stipulate that an applicant ‘Must have a full clean driving license and hate at least five “continuing dramas” including Emmerdale.’

And always the people that have ‘I don’t watch soaps’ in the Skills section of their CV, will at some point, unprompted, announce, ‘It’s ridiculous, anyone can be a celebrity these days.’ Well maybe not all of them would say this precisely, but the podgy middle aged bloke with Bristol’s most unnecessary moustache chatting away to his mates ( some ginger ) in the Bishops Tavern, was making this very point.

But I’m not a celebrity, the bad-tash man wasn’t and if he’d have looked around he’d have probably realised the most famous person in the room was the barmaid; and her fleeting brush with celebrity was with the occupants of the pub. Her claim to fame: ‘she serves us beer’.

If ‘anyone can be a celebrity’, it seemed a massive coincidence that all the fifty or so people in this pub had shunned the dirty lure of fame and casual sex to work in open-plan offices or mobile phone retailers. Or maybe I had unwittingly entered a bar that only allows in people who haven’t had the inadequacies of their body detailed by Heat magazine.

We were the clever ones. We’d realised that jumping into the swimming pool of minor celebrity could have you treading water in the urine of daytime television. The risk of turning up to a cocktail party attended by Paul Burrell would be unacceptably high. I still firmly believe that the phrase ‘Diana’s rock’ was a reference to an improvised weapon the Queen of Hearts was planning on bringing into fierce contact with her butler’s head.

If you are a celebrity with no discernable talent that would traditionally class as you as such, then you’re just a picture in the Daily Star; a naive volunteer; your life picked apart like a drunk negotiating a KFC Bargain Bucket. And then when you realise that no one’s taking you seriously; that all you really want now is credibility. You look in the locker to see what you’ve got:

You give up watching Hollyoaks.

2008-02-02T12:08:00.000Z

There I was sat at my desk looking in the second drawer down, trying to cope with the realisation that I had run out of apples. One of which I would normally consume for a mid-morning snack. I think it was either Jesus or Father Christmas who said, ‘Apples are great’, and who am I to argue with such pithy truth from magical people.

As another hour passed, I learned to live as a man without apples. By eleven, it was fair to say I had adjusted, was making the best of things. I even felt strong enough to make a humorous and unnecessary remark about Devon.

I took a walk down to the canteen to purchase a cup of tea. Standing, ready to pay, I took an unscheduled glance towards the exit and noticed a bowl of fruit by the door, a bowl which contained a number of apples. With 35p racked up on the till, I asked that the price of an apple be added on so I could pick one up on the way out. This was done bringing the total up to 75p.

My walk to the canteen exit was swift and untroubled. I approached the bowl and placed my hand on top of a reasonable looking Granny Smith and span it around in my hand to check its suitability as an edible piece of fruit. Satisfied, I extracted it out of the bowl and placed my other hand around the door handle in preparation to pull it open. My eyes caught sight of a new employee I was unfamiliar with; his stare was straight at me and noticeably hostile. My baffled returned ‘what?’-stare dissipated quickly as it dawned on me that this man would have been unaware I’d already completed the financial transaction in respect to this item of fruit.

What could I do? I could have returned to the till with the apple, but, a) this would be an admittance of guilt; the motivation of my action a consequence of being caught in the act of fresh produce thievery; and b) what would I do when I got there considering she was aware that I’d already paid? Hold it up and say ‘What do you think of my apple?’

I could have tried to nip the misunderstanding in the pip by addressing my perceived accuser, but my confidence that I had correctly read his previous facial expression as one of someone looking at an apple thief, had slightly waned. I envisaged his reaction to a comment such as ‘I have already paid for this apple’ to be one of bemusement. It would undoubtedly eliminate the risk of being considered a fruit-snatcher, but may instead label me as a man who arbitrarily presents information on insignificant instances of his life. If this got around, people may consider me to be having some kind of breakdown. My job of sitting in front of a computer, typing stuff, might be considered too high-pressured for me to handle. I could be demoted, shown the door, forced into sitting in front of woman in a tweed jacket to talk about my ‘feelings’. I’d have to fabricate a childhood trauma to explain the whole dirty mess. So I kept quiet and exited quickly and uncomfortably, probably amplifying any slight suspicions this man had of impropriety.

I hoped that the man would report the ‘crime’ to the girl at the checkout. This would allow her to clear my name. Allow her to wash the stain on my character away with the Daz Automatic of British justice. I suspect though, that this didn’t happen; that apple crime, for him, fell into the low-level category. I was just another hoody type spraying graffiti over the crumbling foundations of this once great country. He would see himself as a powerless bystander drowning under a swelling tide of immorality.

The apple cost me 40p. That’s usually enough to buy three of them. Society in a very real sense owes me two Granny Smiths, yet I am seen as the wrongdoer. Be sure of this though:

I will rise again.

Don't Leffe me this way...

2008-01-28T21:19:00.000Z

There's a concerned, faintly embarrassed look on the barmans face as he comes back holding a still seeled bottle of lager and a half pint glass.

'I'm aftaid we don't have a Leffe glass is that OK?' he says, holding an identical unbranded glass up to the artificial light.

His customer looks momentarily disorientated by the news, struggling to understand the implications of this announcement; slowly the awful reality dawns: This brave man, who's probably been slaving all day in the office; shaking people's hands, pressing 'Page up' on his keyboard; maybe even 'Page down'; faces the prospect of sitting drinking Belgian beer from a glass that does not advertise its contents.

His right shoulder drops for a second as he analyses thoughtfully the substitute glass. He looks momentarily as if he's going to start negotiating a discount. Afterall, someone might later ask what he was drinking, causing him the indignity, not to mention waste of valuable effort, of answering a question that should have been adequately taken care of by his drinking vessel

'Yeahhh...ok' he finally says, in a tone not disimilar to someone reluctantly agreeing to adopt their dead brothers ASBO laiden son. It seems even this white shirted cock-knocker of an estate agent ( probably ) wasn't ready to ask the question 'So what bottled drinks do you have that I can have a glass with its name on it?'

The drink is poured into the glass and payment made. The man walks off with the expression of someone who's had his cat stolen. His night's not ruined...but irrefutably compromised.

Man in the Launderette

2008-01-27T12:14:00.000Z

Shabby clothes hide dirty skin
His eyes wont focus on anything.
He holds the keys.
Supervising nothing.
Spouting advice.
No one acknowledges him.

He explains disapprovingly.
That from the beginning of next week.
A single lousy cycle.
Will cost an extra thirty P.

With his stained expression.
He demonstrates piety.
To the church of dissatisfaction.
Of British society.

And when we've all gone.
Left him mumbling alone.
He'll spring into action - lock the door.
Never get home.

2007-12-13T22:03:00.000Z

It’s quite quiet here. Tucked away in a little tree-lined street near the centre of the city. Two minutes away from every pub there’s ever been. Five minutes from a man who thinks he’s Jesus.

He’s not Jesus, he’s not even called Jesus. Parents don’t tend to be that cruel if your mum’s not a virgin.

‘I’m Steve…I’m fucking Steve’ he’ll shout and noone has any reason to doubt his sincerity. But when they ignore him, when noone can even muster the tiniest flicker of polite interest; then he’s Jesus. When he addresses the traffic; when he wanders out into the middle of the road, arms outstretched, eyes skywards. When he talks to Vauxhall Novas, his disloyal metallic flock with alloy wheels and unrepentant beeping. When they take him away.

And that’s what makes it quiet. When Steve’s gone and the streets are refilled with mortgages and semi-skimmed milk, motionless bus-stop standers and an unenthusiastic three-point-turn.

2007-11-09T17:24:00.000Z

‘Snob!’ That was the accusation ejaculated at me. Me Matt, man of the people, defender of the working man. And why was this nasty remark so viciously lobbed at my fantastic face?

A couple of times a week, one of the women from the office canteen will wheel around a trolley full of different snack based opportunities to purchase at your desk. I fancied a cup of tea so bought one. That’s the kind of snap decision people like me feel entirely comfortable with making.

Two minutes later, a colleague who I rarely talk too, wandered past my desk with a face so incredulous, I took a picture of it and wrote the word incredulous on the back of it.

‘You paid money for that tea?’ he asked looking directly at the tea I paid money for

‘Yeah’ I said answering his question with the word ‘yeah’.

‘You can get tea free from the machine!’

‘I don’t like the tea from the machine.’

‘Snob!’ he said disgustedly walking off like a pocket-sized Liam Gallagher.

That’s right I’m so fucking upper-class, I live in a fantasy existence where people drink tea made by the method of having boiling water poured into a cup containing a tea bag. That’s my lifestyle. It’s all like that, and don’t think it ends there.

I wear shoes, even though the office floor is carpeted. I wear pants even though I put trousers over the top of them. I urinate in a urinal even though I’ve got an empty drinks bottle sitting on my desk. I’m so over-paid, that twice a week I buy a cup of tea from the woman with a trolley for 35p. That’s 70 pence a week I blow on my hedonistic lifestyle.

Not that his snob comment bothered me at all or anything, then again, what did I see my angry socialist colleague drinking the other day? Fucking mineral water, that’s what.

‘Snob!’ I commented as I walked past.

‘Water’s different to tea isn’t it. Don’t try and pretend they’re the same’ he replied.

I wasn’t trying to pretend water was the same as tea though it’s pretty fucking similar if you boil it and lob a tea bag in it.

I walked away thinking I’d won the argument, he stood there thinking he’d won it. That’s the great thing about arguments. Usually both people win and the other person loses.

2007-09-20T21:43:00.001+01:00

"Ding-dong” The PA system comes alive, “Can Kate from the Mobile Phones department please go to the Mobile Phones department.”

This is Monday night at ASDA, and Bristol is throwing lumps of everything into trolleys packed with lumps of everything .

A short angry looking near-pensioner lady in a green jump-suit pushes past me quickly with her trolley, ushering her partner along with frantic head-movements. “Whatever happens I really need to get some butter!” she announces as if something's about to happen to cause this task to become an epic challenge.

“Well get some butter then”, comes the disinterested but startlingly logical reply from a disinterested but startlingly logical looking husband.

“You’re the one who spreads it on your toast,” she responds in a tone that indicates she believes spreading butter on toasted bread is the deviant act of a sex offender.

“Not all of it I don’t!” comes an overly-hostile and rather disconcerting reply.

And off they go, the trolley trusted forward, a woman with unnecessary purpose. A women with butter safely wedged into her trolley. “Shall we get two loafs of bread or one?”.

“Two”

“Don‘t be stupid Brian!”

My turn. I’m staring at thousands of types of spread trying to remember which one I got last time, and if I liked it better than the one I bought the time before that, which I don’t remember the brand of either. I decide on Flora. But do I want ‘Flora’, ‘Low-Fat Flora’, ‘Low Saturates Flora’, ‘Low Height Flora’ or ‘I Can’t Believe it’s not Fucking Flora Flora”? I close my eyes and grab the first thing my hand touches: A rather portly lady in her mid-forties. I apologise.

Next aisle. A girl in her late teens stood next to her trolley, a toddler screaming in the seat. “You can’t have those” mum insists whilst an outraged young girl strains at a tin of Transformers shaped spaghetti.

“But I want them” comes the well thought out argument.

“YOU CAN’T HAVE THEM!”

“BUT I WANT THEM”

I admire the mother; a lesser woman would extinguish this screaming cycle by pushing the trolley away from the object of her daughter’s attention. A lesser woman would have decided that this was an unwinnable argument. Not this lady. If it’s going to take a thousand “YOU CAN’T HAVE THEM”s to emotionally crush this two year old big-shot, then I am in no doubt this lady’s in for the long-haul.

There’s another announcement over the PA. Kate’s still not made it back to Mobile Phones.

Kate’s not coming back.

Kate’s found there’s more.

2007-09-13T22:16:00.001+01:00

Popped to the toilet whilst in a bar on a Saturday night and it’s time to wash your hands: Got to turn the tap on…YOURSELF. Actually use energy from your own body to dispense water...the indignity! Then you have to summon the strength to push your hand against the dispenser to release that clean gooey fresh smelling soap gooey goo. If you're still able to stand you can again activate the tap, this time to swill your hands. Sounds hard work so far? Hold onto your desk, cause this next bit might just blow your bollocks off: An energy sapping four second walk to a hand-dryer!!!

Yes this whole process does not cost you anything financially, but with only 190 calories in each of the four pints of lager you've had so far, this has surely been a reckless expulsion of valuable energy.

At least this is what someone thought. Sometime, I don’t know when and I don’t know where, somebody saw this as a gap in a market. And that’s why, sprinkled throughout bars whose names begin with the word “Bar”, toilet attendants stand poised at their sink, ready to make the whole arduous process of achieving clean hands an effortless yet financially burdened process.

But the rather damning truth is that I’ve never, in my whole life met anyone who has been glad that they are in a bar that has a toilet attendant. Never been in a pub where someone’s come back after going for a piss in an attendentless convenience looking completely knackered, complaining that washing their own hands has completely wiped them out and that they’re going to have to go home early to have a lie down.

Going...

You’re a target the minute you enter their lair. “Hello” he says mouth smiling, eyes fixed like an eagle on a rabbit. As the only ‘customer’ in the room at that moment, I abandon any thought of using a urinal. I’m not up to the challenge of going with someone staring at me intensely, manically tapping on a squeezy bottle of soap singing “Freshen up, freshen up, you really gotta freshen up.”

I hide myself safely away in the furthest cubical, knowing I have to stay in there for an amount of time that would justify its use over a urinal. I weigh up my options. I can’t just walk straight out. I may just of got away with that if I’d used just a urinal, but coming out of a cubical; well that’s doubly wrong. I have to wash my hands.

Why should I not wash my own hands? Why should I put up with being forced into the service of this person; compelled to place a pound coin on his stupid angry saucer for fifteen unwanted seconds of his mis-placed labour. I wont. I'll sanitise to my own rules. I shall produce the cleanest pair of hands in England with my own sweat and toil.

I throw open the cubical door, stride confidently towards the unoccupied basin. “Freshen up?”, I ignore his plea. My naivety means I think that I’ve beaten him. Soon I realise I haven’t. A flash of movement and he pulls out his final card. His finger primed on the trigger of the cheapest fragrance in England. The nuzzle aimed directly at my face. “I’m not afraid to use this thing,” he informs me his smile sharpening, “we either do this the easy way or the Slazenger Sport way.”

2007-08-22T00:04:00.000+01:00

Good evening this is the ITN news at half-ten. Get ready for the ride.

“One hundred and sixty five mile winds in Mexico” the newsreader announces. I make that five miles an hour more exciting than dull old one-sixty BBC.

Now reporter Neil Connery’s reporting from Cacon, Mexico. He’s out in the storm with arms waving erratically, screaming at the camera as the water pounds down on his half-bald head. “Water falling from the sky“ he explains to all those unfamiliar with the mechanics of rain. “It’s bad, but it’s not as bad as was feared.” he concludes, the disappointment in his voice barely disguised. Bored of this now. Let’s switch to BBC 1.

It’s Piers Morgan interviewing Abi Titmuss on ‘You Can’t Fire Me I’m Famous‘. She’s learnt so much through her experiences her hair’s now brunette. Venessa Feltz pops up to make a comment to the camera that doesn’t particularly make any sense and Piers tells Abi that shes makes the same excuses as a prostitute. Abi explains how all the people watching her private sex-video on the internet makes her feel violated and degraded. “It makes me cry every time I talk about it” she adds wiping a celebrity tear from her celebrity raddled face. “The DVDs been watched than Paris Hilton’s and Pamela Anderson’s put together” she adds, apparently not realising that this boast may lead some viewers to question her earlier distress.

Back to ITV and it’s ’Bouncers’. A documentary following a night on the door of Blackpool’s top nightclub.

Bouncers premise seems to be three distinct sections repeated over and over again throughout the show. First section is drunks shouting drunkenly at the camera, “Middlesboroughhhhhhhhhhh!” Next is various members of door-staff explaining to camera how drunk the people that come to the club are. “It’s not a family atmosphere anymore” laments one older bouncer harping back to the days when apparently Mum and Dad would bring their precious younguns along to “The Syndicate” for a couple of Vodka and Redbulls.

Finally we see the customer/bouncer interaction. People being refused entry, swaggering wildly and making intelligent pithy put-downs at those that block their way. “You’re plastic!”

Bouncers standing calmly; carefully reminding the drunk that they’re drunk by telling them “Look mate, you’re drunk.”

And the television can’t take it anymore.

2007-08-10T23:10:00.001+01:00

There’s no other shop like Debenhams. Well actually there is. And while you could now argue that the first sentence, while short and, in an almost drunken way, beautiful, has lost a great deal of its initial integrity, it sort of still says what I want it to. Debenhams has its own smell, its own wit, and a big enough selection of men’s clothing so as to make visiting any other clothes shop ever, totally unnecessary and, in actual fact, rude!

What makes Debenhams different in my opinion (recently voted the seventh most important opinion ever by readers in the March 2007 edition of Opinion magazine ( a magazine for people with opinions.) ), is its ingenious staffing policy. Whilst there are the normal positions that every department store offers, Debenhams has a couple of tricks up their sleeves to ensure you purchase:

Take trying on clothes for example. You’ve just tried out an item. You’ve done the five minutes of staring in the mirror arching your body around like an inebriated aerobics instructor and you’ve finally made your decision. They don’t fit properly, too baggy…maybe bright ‘yellow’ jeans are just never going to be ‘me’. But then on exiting the changing room you come face to face with a transformed changing room attendant. Gone is the welcoming smile and baffled acceptance of your need to try on a garment first. Now, a fixed intimidating stare, a person in a purple blouse looking into your soul. “Are they OK?” they say, an enforced lightness in the tone totally failing to hide the underlying menace.

Already you’re too uncomfortable for a straight pithy utterance of “No”. For me it’s the memories of last time I used such a response; the garment angrily grabbed, removed from the coat-hanger and then re-hung in a long tortuous ceremony know as ‘properly’. An assembled crowd watched tutting to the rhythm of a rain sodden Saturday afternoon. For those moments, those long hate filled moments, I was the humiliated scourge of high-street fashion; the one who wasted everyone’s time.

‘I ummm….they don’t really…fit me’ I manage, my eyes looking so far down I can see that Earth has stopped rotating.

These days I always say I love whatever I‘ve tried on, even wiping away a fake tear of happiness as I quickly make my exit. I walk back to the place where I originally picked up the beige waistcoat and stealthily re-hang the garment in its original position. And I know I’m not the only one. You only have to look around the great store at the amount of clothing that’s been forced clumsily onto hangers to realise that many before and after myself, have been permanently broken by the eyes of a retail devil.

The more innocent side of Debenham’s staffing inventiveness are the ‘clothes-starers’. About five members of staff per-floor who’s job, it appears, is to gaze lovingly at various garments. Pupils fixed, they run their hands down the arms of shirts and blouses, eyes then closing slowly to savour the moment. Sometimes a line of clothing will be struggling to sell and the starers are quickly redeployed to do their magic. The seeming sincerity they display is breath-taking. People fight to get their hands on the golden pot of clothes at the end of this purple rainbow.

I’ve simply scratched the surface of the Debenhams, but that’s all I could ever hope to do. It’s probably not actually real.

2007-07-18T22:40:00.000+01:00

I’m going to Hell apparently, so I’ve been told. Told directly, not by someone shouting or screaming at me, but by someone who actually doesn’t want me to go there. So I’m headed there, not because I’m a bad person, but because I don’t believe. I don’t believe that Jesus is the son of God, and also part of God, along with the Holy-spirit, who is also part of God, as of course is the Father. Three of them, all distinct and at the same time all one God. You can see how difficult it’s going to be for me qualify for Heaven.

And I know I sound like I’m taking the piss, but I really don’t know how to start believing, which I sort of want to do if it means I have the opportunity to avoid being thrown into an eternal fire. I do try, and I think I sort of did believe a bit until I bothered to look a little closer at the whole religion thing. Then I found that I really couldn’t, which is sort of the opposite of what’s supposed to happen isn’t it?

God created the universe and the planet Earth, I can sort of handle that, maybe even consider attempting to believe it if it wasn’t for the following: He created human-beings, and now sits up there reading our thoughts, deciding upon whether we go to Heaven on Hell based on whether the brains He is wholly responsible for, decide that He and Jesus exist or not. This is totally fucking unfair!!!

The people who’s brain chemicals are capable of flying about and deciding that in fact, yes, it is indeed possible that Jesus was(or is?) the Messiah, have an incredible advantage over the unlucky ones like me, who, however I think about it, decide that it’s probably a load of old cock.

So I find myself in the position of not believing in God, being pissed off with God I don’t believe in, and facing the prospect of spending eternity burning in Hell. Fucking Wednesdays!

2007-07-15T17:46:00.000+01:00

I open the door and take a quick glance behind. Now this glance is only to check that there is no one directly behind me. It’s not some grand commitment to hold the door open for whoever might next come along. But whatever the intention of the glance, it can bring with it clumsy etiquette baggage.

The problem occurs when there is someone walking towards the door behind you at what is called middle-distance. That is they are stuck between two categories, these being, A) close enough so that it’s clear that I should hold the door open until they get there and B) being far enough away that I can move on and let the door close behind me without having committed any kind of social spunk.

Trouble is, it’s not always immediately obvious as to which category the person may be in. Often the second taken to ascertain this may have moved them from category B to the dirty cusp of category A. Uncertainty means I often just have to stand there and bare it. Now you may be asking ‘Why is it a problem to lose seven seconds of your life holding a door open?’ although your probably asking ‘What the fuck you going on about Matt?’, either way let me tell you. This assumes the person the door is being held open for is unknown to me, or at the very most a distant acquaintance. In this situation, holding open a door for someone for over five seconds puts undue social pressure on both parties.

One of the worst case scenarios is that I, as the holder of the door put unwelcome pressure on the person, who never asked for a door to be held open for them, to arrive quickly. The person may affect a clumsy mini-jog, as they feel it is only good manners to limit the time I am standing there. But this mini-jog will trigger a resentment in them, an angry flash in the eyes at me, the person who forced them to move quicker than they would want to. This makes me then feel worse than if I had slammed the door in their face or murdered their cat.

One option I call “Don’t Look Back”. I called it that because I‘m sad enough to have named options available to people when they open doors. Here you just stare resolutely forwards, your mission is to get through the door, all other considerations are brushed aside. This is military, this is focus. Open the door, don’t look back, go through the door. Yes you can hold out your arm behind you as you walk on giving the door an extra second of open if you sense that someone is very close behind you, but chances are that door may have closed in someone’s face. It doesn’t matter, you didn’t see that happen, and if you didn’t see it, it might as well not have happened.

The only real solution is to avoid walking through doors altogether. I know this sounds drastic and impractical but sometimes it seems in life there’s every need to be drastic and impractical. So until somebody comes up with a better idea, I’m not stepping out of bed.

Life in a box of chocolates

2007-07-11T21:40:00.000+01:00

Forrest Gump said "Life is like a box of chocolates; you never know what you gonna get." Why do I mention this now? Don't expect me to answer that, I have no idea. I can barely remember my name or what my name is. Anyway, I've never understood what it meant. I'd never really spent any amount of time pondering it, although I'd always meant to set a side a week for intensive contemplation on the subject. And that week has just come and gone.

I’m pretty sure that Gump was wrong. Things were different in 1994, but the way people handle boxes of chocolates remains unchanged. With a variety box, people are all too aware of what they're "gonna get". Hours of staring at the chocolate key sheet ensures the only surprise they experience while chewing on the selection they arrived at after hours of careful deliberation, is that an "Almond Surprise" delivers no specific 'Surprise'. Maybe the surprise was intended to be the presence of the almond, and the makers assumed that people would still be following Gump’s just pick out a random one philosophy. How wrong they were.

It’s also true to say that most people don't like coffee flavoured Quality Street. To be honest you can't blame them, they taste of Mondays. So what is the point in them? Why do Nestle still nestle them into their distinctive cardboard box of lovelies?

The almost unanimous consensus on the nastiness of the coffee flavoured Quality Street has created a small sub-group consisting of the people that made the use of the word 'almost' earlier in this sentence necessary. These people have never stood out and rarely had much to say that anyone’s wanted to listen too. They’ve lived in the shadows of others who have hobbies and a nice kitchen. They may never have had anyone giving them the briefest glance of impressed amazement in there long beiged-up life. And they see their chance. An opportunity to be served up a thin slice of attention pie. Maybe even have a surprised exclamation of "Do you?" directed at them from those that usually look through them and into the sky. So after the general sigh that accompanies a chocolate information bulletin stating that all that there's left are 'the coffee ones'; these people stand tall, open their body language to a never before seen glory, and say, "Actually…I quite like them!" It would be a cruel company to take this opportunity away from someone, and even Nestle aren’t that evil.

To be fair to Forrest Gump, he may be a little simple and not actually exist, but at least he'd just stick his hand in a box of Thorntons and shove in his mouth the first one he pulled out. Maybe his comment about life was based around his understanding that contemplating which chocolate to eat next, for extended periods of time, brought little more enjoyment than a random shove-the-hand-in selection. He wouldn't know that what he had in his grasp had an almond in it until he shoved it in his mouth and tasted almond. At which point he could quite rightly exclaim, "Fuck me - Almonds!"

Aquafresh Vessel

2007-06-27T21:20:00.000+01:00

I know when I need to buy a new toothbrush: When bristles are a distant memory and the minster for Pearly-Whites drops around because "he’s concerned about me". People have always told me I don’t talk about toothbrushes enough. I do find it a deeply personal area, but I shall somewhat attempt to redress the balance now. I can’t help but be baffled by toothbrushes. I do actively try to avoid bafflement, but bafflement comes so naturally to me, I always seem to be swimming against its tide. Drown.

I’m not even talking about electric toothbrushes, I’m talking about the calorie-burning manual variety. I shiver at the thought of getting involved with the electric ones. All that shaking and holding thick handles, it‘s not right. We should fear them.

And there I stand in Tesco Extra, a rack full teeth cleaning technology towering above me, asking me to give them a new home. I can only be confused, in fact sad, that things aren’t just a little bit simpler. Do I want to ’cross -stroke’, am I interested in ‘gum massaging’ (I’m not and I visited gummassage.com by accident and in fact I thought the pictures were quite tasteful), or do I want ‘ultra clean teeth that only come from Ultra technology’.

I look around desperately, and spot a shop-assistant; a young ginger with a superfluous Berol. “Can you talk me through some of these toothbrushes” I ask her, my hand raising slowly to my chin in eager anticipation of toothbrush sales-patter. She smiles nervously and carries on reorganising angry cans of deodorant into gangs.

A man in his fifties comes along and grabs at a brush, almost recklessly throwing it into a trolley full vegetables that almost certainly don’t exist. Such confidence, I presume, can only come with age and experience. Maybe in twenty years that’ll be me. I’ll coolly push my trolley full of organic cock along the toiletry aisle, wink at a passing Tescobabe before, with hardly even a passing-glance, scooping up a bad boy and looping that teeth-cleaner over my back into my trolley, letting it rest neatly next to an oberjober.

For now that’s just a pipe-dream, it’s a twenty-four hour supermarket, but I’ve been there so long they want to close because the twenty-four hours are up. I grab at a yellow one and slip it carefully under a bag of carrots. I look for the check-out person who appears never to have cleaned their teeth. I’ve done it.

Blair V Bowen

2007-06-07T22:58:00.000+01:00

Lionel Blair's appearence on the 1980's best gameshow Bullseye. A legendary piece of footage by any standards. Obviously this is an early television outing for Lionel and he's a little unsure of exactly how the whole thing works. He has seemingly seen Jim before the start of the show and asked where the audience will be sitting, to which Jim has replied, "Don't worry I'll point them out to you as soon as you get on stage." As Lionel enters his fears immediately dissapate as he easily locates the audience and acknowledges them. Just as well, as Jim nearly, but doesn't, forget his promise. Audience located, it's time for business. The business of comedy:

Lionel Blair is determined to crack Bowen. And a lesser man than Bowen would have cracked under the barrage of sharp wit from Britain's favourite celebrity dancer.

Jim has held out though, and there's only twelve seconds of the clip left. Blair knows he still has one comedy gem hidden inside his odd looking head. But the line involves a pointing action, and with nervousness at a maximum after facing poker-faced Bowen, he is unable to hold his arm up to give one strong confident action. Looking at Jim for any sign that the great man is ready to subside into raptures of laughter, he nervously fires off two quick fire pointing actions at his comedy target. Has Lionel blown it with his unsure delivery, or is the joke of such high quaility it will nail comedy genius Jim Bowen against the wall of hilarity anyway?

On a side note doesn't the darts challenge seem just a little impossible. Lionel's obviously never seen a darts board before. And let's remember he is simultaneously providing comedy. I would imagine the meeting at Central Tv production went something like this.

"Shall we make ourselves look good by doing a charity round?"

"Fuck yeah, but let's not actually give away any money. How about setting a challenge where a celebrity who can barely hold the weight of a dart has to score 241 with nine darts?"

"Brilliant, they'd need nearly 30 points per throw, they'll never do it....No, just a minute let's really take the piss. Let's say 301 with nine-darts, but give them a 60 point head start 'Cause we know you don't do it for living'."

"Super, Smashing...'

"

All is gone..........

2007-05-23T22:47:00.000+01:00

Sometimes I feel tired. Really knackered, not because I’ve done anything particularly strenuous or stressful just because because. And on these days I have no thoughts. I mean I can walk (lethargically) and mumble “Hello”. I can even just about scrape together a bit of what is called work. But there are no thoughts, the lights are not on and the bulbs have been removed.

It’s a curious feeling. I can see things happening, but can make no judgement on what they mean. Often I’ll wander into shops and buy things like toothpaste, get home and realise that I can’t push my flat door open as it’s already over-packed with Aquafresh 3. I’ll be unable to follow the plot of an episode of Neighbours, I’ll get confused by celery.

But I can lie back and enjoy it, as the actor might say to the…stare at the ceiling, feel all these little start-thoughts being born, bursting within a thousandth of a second in a hostile, sand-stormed brain. Simply nothing there, just a small crack in the ceiling…then it’s gone.

BLING BLING!

2007-05-17T21:25:00.000+01:00

I’ve decided to become a tabloid entertainment reporter. That is the decision I have made. My finger is on the celebrity pulse more than anyone I know. I'm always hanging out with Hawkes and Thornton. I am so damn perfect for this job. So here’s my first column. I call it BLING BLING, cause the kids get it right?

GIRLS ALOUD ARGUE OVER BUOY

The five members of pop sensation Girls Aloud have been arguing over a buoy located just off the Blackpool coast.

“I saw it first”, mentioned the dirty looking ginger one, “There it was bobbin on top of them little wave things. I wanted one straight away.”

Girls Aloud are not the only ones to have been seduced by the latest celebrity craze; Tom Cruise and Katie Holmes have a buoy just off Southsea and Carol Vorderman was seen cosying up to one in Poole harbour.

POSH SPICE IS THIN

Posh Spice is most definitely thin my sources have been telling me. She’s not fat.

SPOTTED Kate Bush stroking a dead cat in Leicester Woolworths.

SPOTTED Michael Parkinson hitting a southerner with a stick in Halfords.

-----------------------------
On a slightly different note. Here's something for all those fond of moaning about political correctneess:

"Fuck Off! I'll tell you when I've had a fucking 'nough when I've had a fucking 'nough..."

2007-05-08T22:34:00.000+01:00

Bank Holiday and Weymouth: There’s can be only one outcome. A whole town wading through a fermented Saturday. Every person, all ages and circumstances, joined together as a community bladdered, and it’s only just gone six.

This is wasted Weymouth. We’re all at it, they’re all at it, and the dirty sun casts shadows through the windows of the fat grockles walking past.

“This is my table “, says Ted pointing to a sign on the table saying ‘Reserved for Ted'. “They reserve it for me…for the football. Love the football...it's God's sport aint it? Some people reckon it's cricket, but I know, I can feel it. It's football I love....One hundred and twenty grand a week he gets paid…” Ted shakes his head, his bending yellow finger pointing accusingly at Sky Sports, “…for kicking a football around. I didn’t get that in my day”

“Did you used to play football?”

“Worked on the Shop-floor mate, all my life…never any good at football. ”

And then the voice of the short bloke lost amongst his bouncing, posturing mates. “He walked past and I fucking swear to you...I fucking...I fucking swear to you he called me a wanker. So I said ’Oy you wanker did you just call me a wanker?’…fucking wanker said nothing didn’t he…wanker…so I said ’Oy you wanker did you just call me a wanker?…and he said nothing didn’t he…so I said ’Next time you call me wanker say it to my fucking face you fucking wanker’…and he said nothing didn’t he?….fucking knew he would...fucking wanker.’

They all laugh at him. He’s the funny one.

Three women past forty…(is that old anymore?)…stride into the pub…not used to their consumption…not used to a bank holiday. “Oh nooooooo….not fucking football!”

“Let’s go…come on Claire…let’s go…’ate football..” Proper women, hating football. And off the three wobble, out the exit in a confused huddle, unintentionally splitting into three directions as they leave before ten seconds later realising they’ve unintentionally split into three directions. Their briefly confused faces subside and they turn back to meet each other at the pub entrance, before triumphantly re-entering the same pub.

"Who's playing Claire?"

“Fucking Smirnoff Ice innit Shirley.”

Rovers Kung-Foo Fighting

2007-04-28T15:23:00.000+01:00

Always nice to see a bit of fighting. And there was a bit of fighting . The Rovers are playing Swindon at FOOTBALL ( a sport ) and there is a lot of random chanting and traffic stopping posturing. That’s there Saturday and even if I had just spelt ‘their’ properly, I still wouldn’t quite understand the logic of smashing windows in your own city to show how much you love its football team. That’s because I’m missing the deep under-current of football allegiance that only Bristol Rovers fans understand.

Anyway, my team, the mighty SAINTS, maybe being bought by Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen. Will it happen? Maybe. Am I excited The answer to that question has so little consequence to the planet Earth I can’t answer it. That the big bang all those billions of years ago has created a moment of such insignificance is startling.

You might have realised I’ve not really made any point. That’s not why I’m here.

On a completely different kind of thing, I was just looking at the BBC News website and found the most British thing I have ever seen in my life. The Kent Earthquake 'In Pictures' had this Gem:

I could ask why two people have sat themselves down on plastic chairs facing downwards on a one-way street. I could ask why a girl has joined them holding a cuddly toy with rediculously long and out of proportion legs. I could also question how the BBC think this conveys any sense of an earthquake. I could ask these questions, but there's noone really to ask them too.

Speechless

2007-04-23T22:53:00.000+01:00

'Obviously, the mental image of me, sat in the back of a Merc looking smug as I’m carted off to film in Soho annoys even me.'

http://www.dailystar.co.uk/blog/

Every town has someone lying in the middle of the road

2007-04-17T22:08:00.000+01:00

Sometimes two people decide they want to fight on the traffic island of Gloucester road. I don’t know how often these skirmishes occur as I’ve only witnessed one at this location. I’m thirty years old. So probably once every thirty years then.

It really wasn’t much of a scrap to be honest. There was sporadic shouting at first. Then seconds of crappy silence with the swagger of each limited by the space available between the two dark funnels of uncaring traffic. There was a lack of focus, two lost figures in the middle of a road with anger but nothing to say to each other. Must be time for violence.

Except there wasn’t really going to be a fight as such. I know I said there was but I didn’t think you’d read this far. Isn’t there something more constructive you could be doing with your time like painting a fence or letting yourself down?

It was a push. A simple fluid movement of the arms from the stronger man as his temper folded up his face into a dirty far-right leaflet. The other man had no answer, his balance lost, his face gave away his hopeless position before his shadow met his the rest of his body. A blue Corsa was going to be where the fallen man was and quickly had to change its plans with a swerve and an unnecessary blow of the horn.

“Fuck you George” said the standing man. If I was to give a mark out of ten to the competence with which George scrambled to his feet it would be a low four, but he was upright. Unsteady, but upright. He tried to say something back. Anything to diffuse his own anger, frustration and humiliation. His confused first sound was cut short by his opponent who made it clear that any hostility, whether physical or verbal, would be met with an uncompromising response.

My walking reached level with the confrontation just as George accepted his position. He turned away and walked on the pavement in front of me, his every step a stamp on the face of the Earth. He put his hand in his pocket and pulled out a Toffee Crisp wrapper and at that moment his whole body decided that it was now or never. That however pathetic it was, he needed to lash out. And if George was in no position or state to assert physical dominance over a human-being; if all he had to focus his rage on was an orange coloured chocolate wrapper, than that was the compromise that he had to accept.

George screwed up the paper, his eyes turned upwards. “Wanker!” he shouted and he threw that paper down as hard as he could.

The breeze caught the wrapper long before it got near the pavement. George watched silently, as it blew upwards into the sky.

Stars and Bollocks

2007-04-14T02:16:00.000+01:00

I’m not one for witchcraft and magic. I mean, I’ll read Harry Potter if I’m drunk enough but I wont go around casting spells on my mortal enemies – I just haven’t got the energy.

I can understand why people believe in God, Jesus and Princess Diana but I’ve never really understood why anyone gives even a second of their time to Astrology. I know it’s a well worn path slagging this stuff off and I should be turning my attention to more obscure and difficult things to criticise like biros or toothpaste, but frankly I’m lazy and know very little about pens or mouth-hygiene.

One of the most irritating aspects of the whole Astrology thing is the way certain people lump you into categories based on your star-sign. ‘Oh you’re a Cancer, that explains it.’ Yes because I was born sometime between June 20th and July 21st, I happen to have just acted in that exact way. I complained about being short-changed in Woolworths or shouted at a cat. That’s because I’m Cancer. If I’d have been born in February I would have been happy to lose a tenner to a failing shopping-chain or would have tried to reason with a pussy.

Let’s say for a moment that there is some distant truth in the whole Astrology concept. Let’s say the position of distant stars in relation to our own earth does have some affect on whether I’m going to be lucky in love this weekend. Well in that case, why don’t the people who read their horoscopes look to see if they were written by an eminent scientist, a mathematician or at least someone with a big fucking telescope. Why do believers in Astrology trust their life-plans to a page near the back of the Daily Mail or Mystic Meg.

If planet earth was going to be hit by an Asteroid Armourgeddon style, would we get Russell Grant to design and build a space rocket to go and intercept it Or would we maybe turn to NASA? Actually strike that. I think I would put Russell Grant in a rocket and fire it at an asteroid.

Meetings

2007-04-05T20:02:00.000+01:00

There’s nothing like a meeting at work. Not of course the high-powered, full energy ones that people on the television go to, but the slow meandering blame-games, with the same points repeated until we die. Everybody disagrees, noone changes their argument, yet still a plan of action is agreed. One which is forgotten as soon as the chair is pushed back and the attendants raise to their feet.

The middle of the meeting. Slap bang in that difficult baldly structured middle-act. Everyone’s made their points. And before they make exactly the same ones again, there’s a moment of tired silence punctuated with exploding sighs and beard stroking. That’s when my mind will leave. When it takes its twenty minute holiday in a place called Somewhere Else.

Who would win a fight between Jane Seymour and Phillip Schofield? Why is that newspaper called The Mirror. Is it because reflections are some how socialist? Maybe they're just less fascist than that giant ball of fire we orbit. Could there be any other reason for a chicken to want to cross a road other than to get to the other side. How aware would a chicken be that it was actually crossing something identifiable as a road.

That leaf on that tree. Has anybody in the entire universe ever stared specifically at that leaf. Am I first and only person to do so. Nobody would miss that leaf if it wasn’t there. But then again nobody would miss any of the other leaves if they weren’t there. But then if a considerable amount of the leaves weren’t there, they would ruin the look of the tree. So I guess that leaf should hold steady, make a stand.

“Look” I say, and everyone turns to me waiting for me to repeat what I said at the beginning of the meeting. But I can’t remember exactly what it was. I’m pretty sure Jane Seymour could take Schofield.

SIX!!!

2007-03-31T18:48:00.000+01:00

‘Nice isn’t it’ said the man in Curry’s Digital as I stared at a television in Curry’s Digital. Those are the televisions you look at when you are in Curry’s Digital. Ones that are in there. It’s a limitation of Curry’s Digital. I might position a television outside the Curry’s Digital window so, for a nice change, I could stare at a television not in Curry’s Digital whilst being in Curry’s Digital. I probably wont though. I’d most likely have to use a power-source from Curry’s Digital to plug the television into. That would cheapen the exercise.

‘It is’ I replied with my voice.

‘Course it’s high-definition ready’ he continued with the obvious intention to banish any disgusting thoughts I might be harbouring that it wasn’t. There before me was a television that was high definition ready. It was prepared for high definition; bored of not being so; waiting for someone to let it be what it always wanted to be.

‘Digital to’ he said in a voice that missed off the second ‘o’ in 'too'. It was clear that this man was most comfortable speaking in a language of purely electrical equipment features.

‘I’m just looking.’ I said to ensure he was aware of which one of the five senses I was currently focussing on.

“Just give me a shout if you need any help” he replied. I doubted whether I needed assistance in watching something. Granted, my use of the phrase “just looking” was overly dismissive of the wonderful gift of sight.

And finally it came on. We were winning six-nill, away from home. Six!!!!

Will the public drinking ban work?

2007-03-29T21:14:00.000+01:00

England is preparing itself for when the ban on public drinking comes into affect on July 1st. Scenes of cold patrons huddled outside doorways, quickly sipping dirty pints, is set to become common place as it has done in Scotland.

Many English publicans point to the problems experienced in Scotland, where the public drinking ban has been in affect for some time now. Many have reported having to shed staff and facial hair in the wake of the ban on selling alcoholic beverages.

The suggestion is that many people visit the pub simply to consume alcohol, is a charge that Health Minister Patricia Hewitt refutes. "It's certainly an old-fashioned position to suggest that people go to pubs and bars simply to drink. In fact I believe most people welcome our stance on public drinking. From a personal view point, I think it will be nice for me to return from a night out at the local with my clothes not covered in my own vomit."

Hewitt also believes it will have a positive effect on the health of staff working in bars and clubs. "I've always thought it unfair that bar-staff should have to accept the effects of second-hand drinking. We're not saying that people can't drink alcohol in the privacy of their own house or whilst out driving in their own car."

When pressed as to what exactly second-hand drinking was, Hewitt reportedly ran away screaming that everyone's out to get her.

In the state of Los Angeles in the US, a public drinking ban has been in affect for three years. Most think it has been positive effect. State Governor The Terminator commented, "I was sent back by John O'Connor in 2029 to terminate Public Drinking in Los Angeles. See you at the party Victor. I'll be back! I'll be back!"

Still Dying

2006-12-13T23:23:00.000Z

Apparently Princess Diana is dead again. She first died in 1997 and to this day is continuing to die on an almost weekly basis. Tonight she died in a tunnel in Paris and ITN News at Ten are on the story with Tom Bradbury who seems very upset about the whole thing. More upset, you could argue, than a reporter should be. I mean when she originally died, he had every right to shed a few tears even as a supposedly hardened journalist. But this must be the seven thousandth time she’s died and he really should be getting used to it by now. It’s always in the same place in the same city and it’s always everybody’s fault. Mine because I’ve watched television and read newspapers, yours because you were breathing on the same planet as the people’s princess. We've all got her blood on our hands.

Reporter Bradbury talks to camera in a solemn Captain Kirk manner. “The last thing she would have seen, would have been the flashes of the many cameras.” He looks for all the world like he’s trying to say something deeper and more profound than his clumsy words allow him. Only his mum understands. Then he talks as every member of the press does without irony, about how the excessive press-attention upsets “the princes”.

I remember when she died for the first time, everyone was told to be upset because it was Britain’s turn for a big out-pouring of emotion. Tony Blair looked serious and said something serious about the whole thing as did William Hague because he was looking serious as well. Radio 1 stopped playing rock and pop, replacing it with classical music. But that could only relieve the pain so much.

Princess Diana’s dead - all the time dead. Never to be alive again; like all those who fell before and Saturday morning kid’s television. Dribbling over her bloody dead body doesn't seem to make her breath again. The ghosts in the Paris tunnel are bored. They're hoping we may have finally realised.

A Christmas Carol Smillie - Part 1

2006-12-12T22:10:00.000Z

Carol stared at her, concious she should not blink, “I wont turn out like you…”.

‘I thought I could do what ever TV show I liked and it would be OK….’ Anthea ran her hands slowly through her tired drunken hair, ‘now look at me… Stuck talking to you on Christmas Eve wearing yellow shorts.'

‘You‘re ok…you’re fine.’, Carol's eyes could no longer maintain an honest contact, they dropped blurring the vision of the washed up celebrity who stood before her.

‘It’s too late for me,' Anthea replied, she looked over to the empty marble fire place, 'Killing a colleague’s cat when I worked for GMTV because I had a hole in my coat and it was the right colour. It was wrong, I can see that now. Wrong fucking colour and the fat Irish twat loved that thing. I wish I hadn’t done it, I really do…and now…I don’t even remember the name of the TV show I work on Carol…It’s…it’s…something about me…It’s not important; only my mum watches it anyway and she doesn’t even realise I‘m in it. It’s got my name in the fucking title Carol, etched onto the BBC 3 Schedule; words on a digital tomb-stone.’

Carol stood up and walked towards her porcelain goat collection and gently stroked Handy Andy, ‘I’m not like that...I’m not…Those people asked for their houses to be decorated. I didn't use them, I didn't.’ Anthea rose steadily to her feet and smiled. She pulled her hair and twisted it tightly above her head.

‘Three ghosts you’ll be visited by tonight Smillie at the midnight hour.’

‘Eh?’

‘You’ll be visited by three ghosts at midnight. I’ll be honest it might all be a bit ambiguous and seem like a dream the next day, but go with it.’

‘But I don’t like…’, Carol turned to face Anthea but she was gone.

‘Fucking rug’, Anthea scrambled on the floor, pushing her feet down to try and regain an upright position. Carol tried to help her, but Anthea snatched her hand away, ‘I don’t need your help yer washed up Scottish... Remember Smillie, three ghooooooooooosts’, she held that word unconvincingly coughing as she ran out of air. Slowly she limped towards the thick oak front door and struggled to pull it open. 'You need a new door for fucks sake.'

'It's fine it's a..'

'Ghooooooooooooooosts'. And with that Anthea was gone into another night.

Carol looked down at her half finished cereal. ’It’s the Special K, that must be it. It’s the low fat content, delicious taste and my reliance on it for three of my three meals a day. It's making me see things.’ She sat back in her dark red arm-chair, her Scottish eyes softened and the day left her.

Carol woke with a start, she kept her head still, her eyes searching the room as best as they could. A still silhouette figure stood in the doorway. Her shaking body rattled her heavy brass bracelet. She had to slowly put the words in order in her mind before she could speak, “Are you the ghost of Christmas past?”

‘No I’m your husband Carol. Anthea’s been around again hasn’t she? You’re pissed.’

‘No…’

‘I can see clumps of her hair on the carpet. Where’s the cat? Is the cat ok?’

‘You’re not my husband…’

‘Don‘t be stupid….’

‘I’m not married.’

‘But it says in Wikipedia you’ve been married for sixteen years.’

‘I wrote that.'

'Why?'

'It’s what I believe sometimes.’

‘But not now?’

‘No…not now’

'Come with me...'

Weeks and Trees

2006-12-06T23:06:00.001Z

National days and weeks are very much the things or thing of the moment. Last week we missed National Tree week. I say we missed, maybe you didn’t, maybe last week was totally jam packed with tree related activities for you, and if it was, I hope they were both rewarding and spongy. National Tree Week did of course include Tree Dressing Day( December 3rd) where we were encouraged to “Decorate and celebrate a living tree in your street”…”show how much you value it.” I haven’t seen one living tree decorated, and I certainly have not witnessed anyone celebrating a living tree. People were throwing down beer at Birthdays, making vaguely witty comments in leaving cards and submerging babies heads in water at christenings; but I saw no body sharing a bottle of cheap red wine with a Birch.

National Non-Smoking day is one of my favourites. I’m sure the creator of this day had the best of intentions. But they didn’t really think it through in my opinion. And though my opinion isn’t important, like oxygen and eggs are, it is none the less here and available right now, and you can’t say that about oxygen or eggs. You can about oxygen and many people have eggs in the fridge, but are these people really that into eggs, or do they just buy them because the purchase of something with “free range” written on it eases the guilt of driving 400 000 miles a year in a 90 litre people carrier with built in machine guns.

The problem with Non-smoking day is that the only people who don’t smoke on it are non-smokers. And call me Shane Ritchie if you want, but I don’t think we (yes I’m an annoying, ‘you got no right to smoke in this pub while I drink my Stella’ non-smoker) were the intended targets of this event. Most smokers I know make it their mission to smoke more on National No Smoking day, like somehow by doing this they’re urinating over the fridge of the anti-smoking activists. But they’re not, they’re just smoking more.

There‘s “Real Nappy Week”, “Obesity awareness week”, “Hearing Dog Week”, “World Ocean Day”, “National Badger Day”, “International Turn of Television Week” and “Compost Awareness Week” to name but a few. So if you fancy abandoning those imaginary nappies, being aware of how fat you are, shunning deaf dogs, switching off you’re telly in an international manner or simply being aware that compost exists, there’s days and weeks available for you. And that’s lovely…

This is QACA

2006-11-30T23:28:00.000Z

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/education/6159857.stm

Are A-Levels getting easier? That’s been the question that literally everybody in the entire world has been asking. Just to put a picture in your mind of the widespreadnessness of people asking that question; A seven year old boy from Brazil, in the middle of a conversation with his mum regarding Comfort Cooling, suddenly and spontaneously directly asked “Mum, Are A-Levels getting easier? Mum? Are they? Mum? Mum? Mum? Are they?“

Well the answer to this question has been given by the QCA (Qualifications and Curriculm Authority), another organisation that feels that the word “and” isn’t important enough for their acronym. I would sincerely like these anti-conjunction-recogniser snobs to survive without this word. “Can I have Fish Chips please?” What you want chips made out of fish? Get out of my Fish And Chips Shop (FACS) you food mutating perverts! Anyway they’ve been working on the problem of A-levels, which are now officially recognised in their level of being easier as “Than when I was a child and we used to have to amuse ourselves”. Their solution is simple, they are going to make the questions more “stretching”!

More important than stretching questions, which I assume means either doubling the amount of words in the question, or maybe just using a wider font; they are going to smack the bare arse of the problem that too many people get A-Grades. And to my great relief they’ve chosen the classic nonsensical national method of rectifying the 'too-easiness' of qualifications: They're creating a new higher grade by adding a "*" to the end of the current highest one.

It’s Spinal Tap at the QCA. I assume the fictional character Nigel Tufnel must already be working there, swapping his amp that went up to eleven with deciding how to stretch A-Levels. So if Marty DiBergi did his documentary on the QCA and not a fictional rock band, the classic conversation would have gone like this:

Nigel Tufnel: The A-levels all go to A*. Look, right across the board, A*, A*, A* and..
Marty DiBergi: Oh, I see. And the old A-Levels went up to A?
Nigel Tufnel: Exactly.
Marty DiBergi: Does that mean it's a higher grade? Is it any better?
Nigel Tufnel: Well, it's one better, isn't it? It's not A. You see, most blokes, you know, will be getting an A. You're on A* here, all the way up, all the way up, all the way up, you're on A* on your A-Level. Where can you go from there? Where?
Marty DiBergi: I don't know.
Nigel Tufnel: Nowhere. Exactly. What we do is, if they get that extra push over the cliff, you know what we do?
Marty DiBergi: Give them an A*?
Nigel Tufnel: A*. Exactly. One better.
Marty DiBergi: Why don't you just make A better and make A be the top mark and make that a little harder?
Nigel Tufnel: [pause] These go to A*.

The Doors

2006-11-29T22:11:00.000Z

'I'll close the door then', the bloke working on the platform said as I didn't close the door behind me whilst getting onto a train, because I don't work there. Don't get me wrong, I have no real objection to closing train doors and would happily do it just for the pure orgasmic enjoyment only closing train doors can bring a person. The trouble is the last time I closed the door behind me after thinking I was last on, I got the guard ripping the door open with a 'that's my job' look in his eye and an old woman who smelt of goat wobbled on moaning about the 21st century like it was nothing to do with her.I've had 30 years of influence on the world, she had probably had about 70. Statistically all the problems in society are more likely to be her fault than mine. She’s had longer to stir her wooden spoon of contempt in the dirty fat cake of earthly affairs. I hadn’t closed the door in her dumb-folded face deliberately, but I remember that look of pure dirty vindaloo strength disapproval with out a cooling naan and I didn’t want it again and that is why I didn’t close the door and upset the Mr “Not part of my job”.

I can’t pretend it didn’t spoil the journey. I knew I could have been the one to close that door. To seal the carriage from the outside world. But I didn’t because of one look from an old women all those years ago. That's why they invented the automatic sliding doors, so there was no blame, no hate. The richness of human community could be unspoilt by convention to complicated for most of us. Next time I meet the old fashioned doors, I’m going to have to stand outside the carriage until just before the train is ready to leave, then jump on quickly and close the door as it starts moving. Neither side can attack me for that. I will be without guilt, set free. I can watch the broken buildings and empty fields fly pass as we slide along the tracks.

The Ashes are ours Australia

2006-11-22T22:51:00.000Z

We’re gonna six you all over the place you Rolf loving sun stealers. Anyway I reckon Rolf wants England to win cause we let him make Animal Hospital? Did you heh? All those animals and did you give the bearded hummer a tele-program where he could unsquash cats? No…you’re too busy tying kangaroos down onto your barbeques and squashing full cans of Fosters with your bare dirty hands, spilling that shit everywhere so your whole country stinks of dull tasting lager. We’re gonna whack yer twenty nil you Ramsey Street peepers! Then you’ll come back to us crying, asking if you can use our queen again. Well you can’t - Lizzy don't like your accent and Phillip reckons your eyes look funny.

COME ON ENGLAND!

Middle-Aged Men

2006-11-20T22:35:00.000Z

A middle-aged colleague paying 10p to get a drink out of the vending machine that isn’t standard tea or coffee. Standard tea and coffee is free. His selection is made but the drink fails to fire into the cup properly. He pulls out the plastic cup, a look of disgust on his face as he surveys the brown sludge lodged to the bottom. He strolls with indignity around the whole office showing all he encounters the inside of the cup. “And I paid 10p” he says repeatedly. “Not on.” some reply. “Go get the money back off the bastards” says the one who has never smiled. And with that, a man who got nothing for his 10p storms off to find “the bastards“. And we may never see him again.

The middle aged man who put petrol in his Diesel Car. A sudden letting go of the pump trigger and he stares down, eyes pushing as hard as they can out of inadequate sockets. “Shit!” And then two desperate looks around: The first to see if there’s anything he can do to rectify this terrible mistake. The second when he realises there isn’t, to locate anything around that he can immediately lay the blame on and kick. There isn’t, all he can do is sit on the step and thump his fat legs.

A middle aged man sitting against Tesco Metro eyes on the cracks in the pavement. Asks me for change as I walk past. I look away and mutter something to ease my guilt whilst not parting with a penny. ‘Anything’ he calls after me, ‘10p?’

TOM!!

2006-11-20T20:41:00.000Z

Tom Cruise has married Katie Holmes. It was somewhere in Italy, which is a European country. Tom and Katie wrote their own vows as is probably not required in Scientology. Here’s a transcript…

Tom Cruise: I Tom Cruise from Top Gun, Mission Impossible and in a more emotionally complex performance “Born on the Fourth of July”, in the name of Sam from Quantum Leap, Spock and Mr Spoon, wanna say how enthusiastic I am about my love for you, the Seventh lesbian satellite of Kron - Katie Holmes and you were in that thing on Channel 4. Normal people can only express love. I as Tom Cruise wish to express something more than love. Love is not a strong enough emotion for me, as I am Tom Cruise. My love for you is a gushing spurting tide of pure thick and sticky devotion, that in physical form would resemble a come covered hamster. I cry when I look in the mirror and realise how many years Tom Cruise has been denied such a deep and spongy vibrant emotion. Come to me…

Katie Holmes: I love you Tom Cruise from Top Gun.

Tom Cruise: And?

Katie Holmes: …and I think “Born on the Fourth of July” showed you to be an extremely versatile actor.

Tom Cruise: Yeah.

5th Space Funky Juice Minister: Do you Katie Holmes take Tom Cruise to be your lawful wedded Galactic Spunk horse?

Katie Holmes: I do.

5th Space Funky Juice Minister: Do you Tom Cruise from Top Gun and in a masterclass of disabled war-veteran empathy,“Born on the Fourth of July”, take Katie Holmes to be your lawful wedded Dazed and bewildered wife?

Tom Cruise:

(20 Second pause whilst Tom Cruise bends down and punches the floor shaking his head due to
the overwhelming emotion of being Tom Cruise in such a situation.)

You bet I do.

5th Space Funky Juice Minister: You may now high-five the bride

Tom Cruise: YEAH!

The Day After

2006-11-19T22:28:00.000Z

There’s a creeping sense of foreboding in the road outside my flat. A road hidden in the heart of Bristol - remote from chatter and coffee . There’s rain - a superficial cliché of the sinister.

The ice-cream van came past as usual. But the strong dull wind skewed it’s tune into a painful chiming scream. It didn’t stop - Ice cream today would be crass and unnecessary.

The cars are parked further onto the pavement than normal. Whatever’s coming shall be encouraged to pass through as quickly as possible.

Now all we can do is turn off the lights and wait. Close the widest of eyes and push our faces hard into the mattress. Hope that when a tired and useless sleep expires, the hangover’s gone for good.

Sleepy and Hollow

2006-11-06T22:18:00.000Z

Today was a day when it was foggy. I wasn’t sure what it was at first, the funny foggy stuff that was obscuring my view. But then as I reached the motorway, and the electronic matrix signs started flashing the word “fog“. It all became clear.

The man who owns the paper-shop never looks at the headlines. The woman in the Post Office who never sends anything through the post. They might play cards together on a Wednesday afternoon, glance out a dirty window, and try and wake up the day with a dirty smile. But they already realise that it’s never going to change.

Up come the motorway road-works. I realise they’re road-works because a sign tells me I’m only allowed to go at 50mph and there’s a couple of cones on the side of the road…but that’s it. Motorway road-works never have works on road. Who’d want to hold a Stop/Go sign on the hard-shoulder of the M4 unless they were tanked up on Stella and their name had one-syllable.

‘You have to keep the floors clean in this job…’ says the man in the off-license chewing the end of a biro he’s no reason to ever use, ‘…you look in the eyes of everyone who walks through that door and they always fall down.”

I can see a speed camera on the left. These don’t have film, they’ve got satellites. Pictures of BMWs being spunked out into the heavens. Slowdown speedup and then slowdown again. Accelerate hard away when you’re out of the camera’s range. A smug smile at beating the system; even though it’s in a chronically sad and irrelevant way.

Answer your phone...

2006-10-13T18:39:00.000+01:00

When your phone rings in the middle of the office answer it. Don’t stare at it grinning nodding your head in what you hope is shared amusement at what we can’t see. Flip it open, look slightly embarrassed by your ringtone of someone shouting “Answer the phone! Answer the phone!”. And if next time you don’t answer it quickly, I’m gonna shove it up your ass and continually ring it; watch your hopeless face as your insides muffle those dumb fucking words, with you having no hope of fulfilling this quest.

Everyday

2006-10-04T21:28:00.000+01:00

“The future everyday“, the corporate slogan says. ‘Wireless, all wireless‘, he says, pointing upwards to something wireless. I nod and slowly look around. There I was wondering around a Transport technology exhibition in Berlin, because that‘s the kind of life YOU are envious of. Loads of companies each covered in disgusting corporate spunk. The half-smiles, empty eyes, rehearsed tightening of the ties, and shirts uncreased beyond the achievement of conventional ironing hardware.

‘So……..they’re………all…………..wireless?’ I ask.

‘All wireless,’ he nods, ‘everyone, even that one with the wires; completely wireless. That‘s the key you see, the lack of wires.’

I said something about wirelessness and then threatened to kill him if he didn’t leave me alone right that second. And he went over to talk to someone else, about wirelessness.

That’s what “The Future Everyday” is like you see, and I don’t want it yet. I don’t know how this company tangibly experiences the future everyday, I’m even slightly suspicious that they don’t and it’s just some completely bollocks, badly thought out, twat of a statement. But I’m cynical you see, and there’s nothing more fashionable than being tangled up in those wires if it‘s the right now everyday.

Hello

2006-10-02T19:34:00.000+01:00

When I turn on my DVD player, the digital display says “HELLO”. I rarely reply, there’s no sense in it. Talking to DVD players brings little reward and if there are others in the room it pisses them off that you would rather engage in conversation with Japanese electronics with a two word vocabulary (It also says “GOODBYE”) than talk to them about cars or angels.

Bad Weather

2006-09-04T20:18:00.000+01:00

It's the end of summer again. And people are already worried about its classification. Was it a good one, an OK one, or a bad one? If you can't really immediately judge it, does it really matter?

An old couple walking down the pavement in early September. Their every step heavy, weighed down by the worry of the day's weather. They ambled on neither hot or cold and definitely not wet. There was no sun in the sky, yet the clouds were not grey and the breeze was light and friendly.

"I bet you'll it'll rain any minute", he said looking upwards shaking his head.

"Typical" came a reply half smothered by a loud tut.

Yes it's typical; its England, and it isn't some kid breaking your wing-mirror. It's the weather, controlled by whatever controls the weather (probably a magic elf). It's not Tony Blair and Gordon Bran-flakes deciding that they should subject us to rain. The local council isn'tmeeting to discuss the possibility of raising council tax to give us a bit more sun. So stop moaning you sullen couple of scone lovers, be more content and have a conversation like this :

"I'm very much enjoying our walk along this street. The ambient temperature is pleasant, and the lack of an extreme high or low temperature allows my progress to be comfortable."

"I agree. Though the possibility of rain is of course always present, based on both the location of the island of Great Britain and past experience of the other seventy years I have been alive, this is to be expected."

"I agree dear. Shall we do some robotic dancing?"

"BOOM! - Them moves is so fresh baby!!!"

The Hat

2006-08-15T21:22:00.000+01:00

“Why the hell are you wearing that hat Matt?” is not a question I was asked today as I was not wearing a hat. Also the fact that ‘hat’ and ‘Matt’ rhyme could make this sentence sound clumsy if the annunciation was not of a high standard. Tuesdays are rarely a day when people are really putting out their best work aurally, so none of the people I encountered today were willing to go near such a sentence. Even if they were feeling confident enough to say the words ‘hat’ and ‘Matt’ conjoined, the fact that I wasn’t wearing one would have catastrophically diminished any kudos gained from their competent use of verbal emphasis. It‘s also worth noting that if I was wearing a hat, it would have been of an adequate quality and worn in a suitable context, so as not to have attracted an enquiry punctuated with ’Why the hell’.

So nobody said that to me.

Rubbish

2006-07-31T22:13:00.000+01:00

Bristol is not meeting any of its recycling targets, so has put into action a new rubbish collecting plan.

What’s the brown bin for?
That’s for left over food.

And the green one?
That’s for garden waste.

What’s that one for?
That’s for cardboard and only carboard, nothing but cardboard. Do no place anything in it it……except cardboard. If you’re not sure it’s cardboard take it to our new ‘Is it Cardboard? Office’ in the main council building. They can tell you if the piece of cardboard you’re holding is suitable to be recycled as cardboard. They may decide it’s not cardboardy enough, in which case you need to take a long hard look at what you are doing to the environment of Bristol, in fact the United Kingdom. The whole world could very well be completely fucked because of your lack of care in discerning cardboard from very thick, cardboardy paper.

What about the black bucket?
For recyclable goods that aren’t cardboard. You put cardboard in there and we will kill you. Not a euphemism , you will face death.

And the Black Bins?
That’s for rubbish. And will be collected every seven years. I don’t think I need to explain what will happen if we find you’ve been putting cardboard in there? You will of course have your penis ripped off by an evil west-country goat. This penis must be disposed off in the yellow penis bin. (Please do not put cardboard in this bin.)

DNA

2006-07-30T14:40:00.000+01:00

I had a day off this week to catch up on some stuff. I may have accidentally switched on the television mid-morning and it may have been on ITV. And who was on the television?(Who am I asking this question too?) It was Jeremy Kyle, the Trisha replacement, talk-show host, goat-loving (unsubstantiated, in fact made up) over-opinionated, person I’d most like to punch.
Everybody always used to laugh and look down on people on American Talk-shows. But, I think they should be laughing at us. Laughing at people who’s lives are so fucked up they’ve decided to embarrass themselves, by washing their shit-stained laundry on television.

The episode I saw, I mean glimpsed at, I mean barely noticed, featured a man who was unsure about whether the child he had been raising was his. Actually…I think this was on the Jerry Springer in the UK show, not Jeremy Kyle. But is accuracy really necessary in the world today? How faithful was the film Lord of the Rings : The Two Towers to the events that really occurred in Bristol all those hundreds of years ago?( Apparently these questions are rhetorical, although as I‘m going to make no attempt to answer them, they are also something called ‘irrelevant‘. ) Where was I? (Bollocks!)

Yeah, this bloke thought maybe this kid was not his, so on comes the mother. When people make entrances to these type of shows they always, by convention I guess, have to spew out a ranting monologue to the person who’s been slagging them off. I think there must be a rule that under no circumstances must they pre-prepare these before entering, as it could inadvertently make them appear like they once went to school. On they come stand by the person sitting down and start shouting “YOU JUST NEED TO SHUT UP!”, “YOU AIN’T ALL THAT!”, “YOU’RE JUST JEALOUS!”, “WHAT YOU DOING WITH THAT GOAT KYLE?”
In this instance a genuinely fantastic exchange takes place. The mother is pissed-off. Annoyed and hurt by this hurtful ( hurt and hurtful in the same sentence can it be done? (Just accept it) ) accusation.

“I’ve only slept with you. What makes you think that she’s not your child anyway?” she says arms waving around like only someone that ugly can. Good question I think. She’s backed him into a corner. He’s now going to have to make a case, and we the public will judge if it’s good enough. And if it’s not, he will surely be killed by a pack of hunting dogs, who will be extra-specially hungry as they don‘t get no fox action these days.

“You told me it might not be my baby” came the reply. Ah..oh dear…So…..ehhh…. Well he might be lying because he’s on television? The outrage on the girl’s face certainly betrays the fact that she does not agree with his recollection of what she said. It’s still game-on. And then the girl, who I can’t remember the name of, but for the purposes of this story we’ll call her ’fucking stupid’ comes up with her argument to this supposed recollection. She delivers it in a tone and manner which displays such disgust at what the bloke, let’s call him ‘Fucking Stupid-To-Go-Anywhere-Near-Her’, has said that her whole body wobbles. With an accusing finger outstretched, she raises her ass from her chair, and shouts the immortal words.

“I ONLY EVER SAID THAT ONCE!!!”

I don’t know what this bloke’s problem is! How can he doubt it’s his baby if she only ever said he wasn’t the father once? Of course it’s his baby. If it hadn’t been, she would have told him there were doubts over the parentage the minimum three times, as required by British law.

Anyway I can’t remember what the DNA test said. It was definitely either not his child or his child. I’m off to get a pasty!

Noisy Streets

2006-07-14T01:20:00.000+01:00

“I don’t fucking care anymore.” he shouted to noone in particular, dazed in a smart business suit in the midday sun. His zig-zag walk down the pavement of Gloucester Road in Bristol was slow and hampered by his substance intake. His head was pushed out in front of the rest of his body, so he had to stop himself from tipping over every ten seconds by stopping. “You don’t care about me, and I don’t care about you.” he continued.

Everyone carried on walking, lifting their heads up the minimum amount so they could observe him but not gain his attention. An old man with a bright orange coat and scruffy blue trousers walked past and offered “Just calm it down eh mate?”

“I am calm” he replied with massively exaggerated arm movements; movements of someone who wasn’t calm. Movements of someone who didn’t fucking care anymore, but might of just hours ago. Who might have cared more than anyone about something or someone, but was drowning under the glare of those that lived around him. People who he usually ignored, who usually ignored him, his neighbours. They watched him now, and he courted their attention.

An empty can of Carlsberg rested in the middle of the pavement. He quickened his approach and swung his right leg towards it. He stopped, everyone stopped; they watched the squashed green can, they watched it move through the air and bounce off the leg of a ten year old girl. The girl started crying, the mother comforted her, then walked towards the man with fire and long nails. The man pushed his hand into his face. “I’m sorry!” he shouted, but she continued her approach. He rested against the wall, the mother reached him.

“What the fuck do you think you’re doing?” she shouted. He didn’t answer. She didn’t stop asking. He shook the more she shouted, scraping his head along the wall so it drew the sight of blood. She moved back, pulling her daughter who slipped to the pavement tears spilling, her hand covered her open mouth. The blood covered man pushed his hands hard against the wall, projecting himself backwards towards the road. The taxi was coming at pace as the man reached the curb. The taxi’s brakes were on full, the man continued backwards, his body convulsing as his panic took hold. The taxi skidded through and the man disappeared.

“I’m sorry." He sat on a traffic island, bouncing the back of his head against the blue circle with its white arrow.

The police came and slowly and somewhat ceremoniously walked the man to their car. As they did so a lowered Corsa drove by with its windows open, with two tiny, badly bearded 17 year olds sat in it and a song that looped the single word “Fuck” to a fast Garage drum-beat booming proudly from the stereo. The two police-man smiled, the bloodied taxi-dodger smiled, everyone smiled. A community finally, laughing at wankers in a purple car.

The police car drove off slowly, and as it moved from sight, the sound of busses and car-horns and motorbikes. Silence again.

Summer

2006-07-05T21:33:00.000+01:00

What was it with this sun that’s suddenly been doing its heat thing over the last few days. Has it warmed for a reason. To burn the St George’s Crosses from the sides of all the cars in England.

We’re all surprised again about how late it stays light in the evening. As if it’s never been this long before. Are we right to be suspicious? Is it the government bringing in longer nights and a hotter sun. A not so prudent chancellor raising the temperature by 2 degrees in his weather budget, putting 10% on the evening illumination.

Then today nothing but rain. Nothing but people in soaked summer clothing screwing up their eyes, running through supermarket car-parks with trolleys full of salads and ice-cream.

“It’s good for the garden” they nod, and close the door.

News for the Girls

2006-06-29T20:44:00.000+01:00

Though I can honestly say, I don't buy women's magazines.(Honestly, Reveal magazine was an accident. I thought it was a retrospective on Teletext)I do enjoy having a quick glance at the headlines as I walk past them in a newsagent. "I slept with my daughter's boyfriend ","My husband found out the baby wasn't his when he came out Welsh' and 'My partner stole my ankles' all being typical headlines.

The "I slept with my daughter's boyfriend' is a very popular headline. Such a story appeared in a Sunday tabloid's magazine a couple of weeks ago. The article ended with the woman, who was telling her story in this article, saying that 'I deeply regret what I've done, and hope that one day my daughter will forgive me.' This wasn't an anonymous telling of the story. The woman telling the story, proudly displayed herself looking sorrowful; a quote from the story "Don't make the same mistake as me" rested beside her.

I do slightly worry about the level of moral strength of the people these magazines are targeted at, if their genuine piece of advice to its readers is don't sleep with your daughter's boyfriend. But I hope the message does get through to other people before it's too late, as this mother only seemed to realise after the event that it may have been an unwise activity to take part in. "My daughter's reaction was not good. She was very upset when she found out". Really? She didn't take you shagging the love-of-her-life with the good grace you expected? It must have been so hard for you when she kicked up a fuss.

As for her explaining that she deeply regretted what she had done and Hoped that her daughter would forgive her; I'm not sure telling the story of how she banged the brains out of her bloke, using phrases like, 'the sex was amazing', in a magazine read by millions of people is going to help the forgiveness process. The poor daughter, who, as well as being upset, may have been slightly embarrassed by the whole thing and decided not to tell friends and work-colleagues the exact details of what happened, may have veered even further away from giving the gift of forgiveness after finding that her mother had obviously supplied the magazine with pictures of both her, herself and her ex-boyfriend to go with the article. Further suspicions on exactly how sorry the mother is, may be aroused by the fact that whilst her picture was taken with her wearing attractive clothing And make-up in a nicely lit studio, her daughter's photo; which was presumably supplied by the mother from the family photo album, had her slightly overweight in baggy pink shorts and sunburn with a smile that displayed more teeth than a pissed-off shark.

And then there's the other girls' favourite, Heat magazine: It has a picture of Jane Goody in a car holding a mobile phone with the headline 'Jade Goody pictured texting, driving at 50mph'. Obviously the journalists at Heat magazine have seen Top Gear, and wanted to make their own Version of 'Star in a reasonably priced car.' And I'm all for harmless fun, but running a competition in which celebrities are invited to see how fast they can drive whilst operating their mobile phones does seem a tiny bit irresponsible. That said, I am looking forward to finding out the celebrity, make of car and model of phone of the eventual winner. Catherine Zeta-Jones in a Nissan Sunny with a Samsung E500, has got to be worth a bet.

Football Brain

2006-06-28T22:44:00.000+01:00

"I think Sven is going to go 4-1-4-1", I mentioned to a work colleague of England's upcoming game against Ecuador. "He'll play Rooney up front and Hargreaves just behind the midfield."

He nodded his head solemnly."I think that's definitely what's going to happen" he replied, "What else can he do?"

Football gives you the opportunity to talk about something we know nothing about with a perceived legitmate confidence. There's no tone of irony in conversations in which bankers and bin-men discuss how a football manager with 30 years experience has no idea what he's doing, and here's how to make it all better. I, like I'm sure most others, am not actually even aware that I don't know what I'm talking about when I'm engaged in soccer chat.

The brain of the football-loving man has an extra section that modifies football related memories. It wont touch the normal brain functions such as that which deals with eating, drinking, shagging, working, complaining about Easter eggs being sold too early in supermarkets, dreaming, talking about feelings and of course punching walls. It will just mess about with the football stuff, which allows you to enter over-confidentially into soccer tactics discussions.

When Radio Five Live informed me England will probably be playing 4-1-4-1, with Rooney up front on his own and Hargreeves playing just behind the four-man midfield, my main brain would have processed this information normally. But a few seconds after, the Football Memory Modifier neural pathways would fire-up and do their work. This is how it would handle the knowledge I gleaned from the radio:

It would change my memory: "Radio 5 Live reckons Hargreaves will start. He'll play just behind the middle-four as the primary ball-winner." To "I, after analysing the position England have found themselves in, and based onall available facts, reckon that England need to play a ball-winner. Now I know Hargreaves has had more stick than No-More-Nails, but he would be perfect for this role, so that's what I have decided Sven should do. Me!"

And it would change my memory: "Radio 5 Live told me that England would probably play with the formation 4-1-4-1 against Ecuador; a formation which previously I had never heard of. I'm not even really sure what it means" to" I, after analysing the position England have found themselves in, and based on all available facts, have decided the old 4-1-4-1 formation (one which I have always advocated), is how Sven is going to get England to playing the next game. I have decided this on my own. Me! I know all about football yeah!"

Nobody really knows anything about football.

The Importance of Cutting Out

2006-06-27T21:08:00.000+01:00

I’ve always hated using scissors. I’ve also always liked using the excuse that I’m left-handed; although not in an American ‘I’m a persecuted member of society’ kind of way. Just that, whilst I don’t think it’s ruined my life, having to use right-handed scissors always gave me some kind of excuse at school for my badly cut out paper-cat-shapes.

To this day I think there was an over-concentration on cutting-out at my primary school and of course neat hand-writing. The children that could write neatly and then accurately cut out farm animals and stick them around their writing always got the A++s (Yes there were ++’s --’s and all sorts.) My highest mark was a story about a man called Jack who went to Mars in a spaceship and died because he didn’t pack enough lunch. This captivating tale earned me a B--, which in a funny kind of way looked more depressing than my usual C++. A happy ’C’ must be better than a depressed ’B’. I would of got a straight B if I hadn’t cut off Jack’s head before sticking him to the side of my story. But when I look back now, I think I was making a point about Man’s inability to accept their heads.

I often wonder how cutting-out skills have shaped the paths of various people in this country( This is a lie, I mean, who would really wonder this unless they were in jail or watching Ukraine V Switzerland, but how else would you introduce a paragraph, which, and here‘s a preview, is largely, if not complete nonsense.) Would Tony Blair have made it to Prime-Minister if he hadn’t made such a cracking job of cutting out a tank to stick on his ’When I grow up I’m going to war with Iraq’ essay? On the other hand, Jade Goody would probably just be some forgotten brain surgeon, if she hadn’t, as a seven year old, made such a hash with her scissors, of extracting a picture of Starlin to stick on her ’Is Starlin’s legacy relevant to the on-going struggle for equality for females in the work place?’ essay. Because of this bad moment of cutting-out Jade gave up on education and thus makes lots of money from thinking East Anglia is a foreign country. (Which apparently it isn’t. Sounds like it should be to me. Then again, I’m shit at cutting out.)

Computers of the Future VS Shane Ritchie

2006-06-19T20:35:00.000+01:00

The best thing about pubs is the licence to engage in conversations that may seem a little out of place in the office, at a football match or in Devon. One such conversation a couple of nights ago brought up the concept of computer Artificial Intelligence.

Because of computer power doubling every two-years, it was speculated that in ten years they would be able to think like human-beings, even maybe surpass them.

I can’t buy this. I mean what makes us human? What makes us more than just micro-chips, RAM, and running around killing monsters with a laser cannon in a badly lit cave complex? For example, could a computer ten years in the future be better than Shane Ritchie?

I’m the first to admit that a PC of 2016 would be able to forge out a career as a light-entertainer, presenting shows similar to ‘Run the Risk’ and ‘The Shane Ritchie Experience’. It may need to be fitted with a dedicated ‘Cheeky Chappy’ processor card to handle the intense unrelenting glint in the eye, but with this admittedly expensive additional hardware, I am confident an effective Shane Ritchie like personality could be modelled. What I am less confident about is what it would do if its career took a sudden and shocking nose-dive.

Shane Ritchie took time off, relaxed, ate some fruit and decided to act in the hit BBC 1 soap-opera Eastenders. This was a good decision for Ritchie, who is now firmly one of the 10,000 most popular celebrities in the United Kingdom. His character Alfie Moon was taken into the hearts of many a horny-housewife and his romance with the character Kat Slater was personally the most convincing thing I have ever seen.

But I cannot conceive the processing power necessary for a Cheeky, fun, bouncy, slightly overweight, reasonably amusing PC to work out that appearing in a soap, where suicide is used to lighten the mood, could possibly be a good idea. Even if all the computers in the world in 2016 were networked together into a super computer named something like IAN, it would still probably decide that appearing in Pantomimes in Weymouth was the only way forward. So Shane Ritchie wins, there’s no doubt in my mind.

As for Elton John: I don’t think a computer in even 10,000 years time would have anywhere near the raw power needed to be able to change the words to ’Candle in the Wind’ to pay tribute to a dead Queen of Hearts. “Goodbye England’s rose.” are not the words of bits and bytes, but of pure and beautiful; unsynthesisable human over-sentimentality.

Do you want England to win Scotland?

2006-06-14T20:50:00.000+01:00

“So will you be supporting England during the world cup?” asks yet another reporter to another uninterested Scottish person as if the answer would yield some great politically vital question.

“No” comes the answer. Occasionally, some Welsh or Scottish person might answer, “Yes I hope they do well.”, especially if they don’t like football and are a celebrity promoting an album or a film.

I presume all these reporters and interviewers are asking Scots and Welsh whether they will be supporting England in the World Cup for some reason, but I am at a complete loss to know what it is. Maybe I’m the only English person that doesn’t care what Charlotte Church thinks about England’s chances against Sweden. Maybe I’m the only one who doesn’t care what Rod Stewart thinks about Wayne’s Rooney stupid broken foot..

I love living in Bristol, but being a Saints fan I really don’t care if Bristol City or Bristol Rovers win or lose. So please various media people, stop asking uninterested people uninteresting questions. England doesn’t care whether the Scots or Welsh want England to win; just as Scotland wouldn’t care what England thought if Scotland were in the World Cup and England weren’t.

Which will never happen……….hopefully.

www.drunkpurchases.com

2006-05-23T20:49:00.000+01:00

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 while you re-warm your Kebab up in the washing machine(non-colourfast cycle) and start browsing the Belgium version of Amazon. "Tragedy, when the feeling‘s gone and you‘ve can‘t and go on Tragedy. Because it's lovely like the sun. What’s this? Steps Greatest Hits for £7.99 La la la hey Jude. La la. Click Click. I have bought it now. I have bought that album what I've just bought called Steps. Yes now. I want my foooooooood. Oh it’s soapy….but it has retained its colour "

And so I end up with a Steps album, which, to be honest, wouldn’t have happened if beer hadn’t done stuff. But to be fair it doesn't bankrupt me, just made me slightly less of a person.

But imagine if this happened: "Tragedy, when the feeling‘s gone and you‘ve can‘t and go on Tragedy. Because it's lovely like the sun. What’s this? Steps Greatest Hits for £7.99! Just a second…What's that? Claire and H from Steps will come and play in my back garden for £20,000? Pre-approved loan of £24,000! I could buy a second-hand speed boat too!. Click Click. "

This is why responsible internet businesses should be providing sobriety tests for anyone wishing to purchase or agree to anything on-line. You should have to do some kind of obstacle course with a mouse pointer or complete Doom 2 on ‘I’ve got the biggest in the world’ level. Or maybe a Web-cam should verify that you can stand on one leg.

Last year 14,000 people bought Steps CDs while drunk. 345 people hired Claire and H for private musical performances under the influence and ITV commissioned Celebrity Wrestling.

Next time you decide you want a drink, leave the mouse in its house.

Beards and Bins at the BAFTAs

2006-05-08T22:31:00.000+01:00

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 award ceremonies, please stop nominating Catherine Tate if you’re never gonna let her win. It’s like they’re picking on her, winding her up. Next year they’ll invent an award called “Outstanding Contribution to Entertainment by Someone Named Catherine Tate”, and award it to Jonathon Ross.

Ross will afterwards comment that Tate was unlucky not to win.

The Remains of Ribena

2006-05-02T22:11:00.000+01:00

"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 why they had joined the Sommerfield family. And because they never envisaged something like this would happen, they were ill-prepared to handle it when it did.

Finally Steve decided the only thing he could do was to take action. “I’ll take them back and put them on the shelf.” he said.

Sue shook her head once more, “You shouldn’t have to.” Her eyes rose up from the bottles and met Steve’s. Before Steve was just someone who threw out drunks or chased people that stole cheese. Now he was a more than that, he was a man that dealt with the horror of Ribena abandoning, and that made Steve a man Sue respected.

“When you’ve put them back Steve”, she whispered, provocatively playing with her dusty sticky hair, "...maybe we could get married, start a family. We could be happy, you and me Steve. Happy like other people are.”

Steve reached out his arms slowly but confidently and picked up two of the Ribena bastards. He winked at Sue and off he went to find the bottles home.

But because this was Sommerfield, Steve never could find where the Ribena belonged. Noone can ever find anything in a shop so randomly organised as to put yoghurts next to James Blunt Cds. Because of his dedication to Sue, he never stopped looking. His unwavering resolve to finish his mission of returning those boys home, ended in the only way it could.

Steve’s body was found in the Socks, Cat Food and fruits of a light green colour isle with a jar of Colmon’s mustard lying beside him. Steve had finally succumbed to starvation on day forty-two of his mission. How he had starved in a food-store noone knows, especially me who hadn’t thought of that till now, but fuck it. With his last lonely breaths, he had pushed his finger into the mustard and smeared the simple, although not quite simple enough to be believable “I’ll take your love with me Sue” in the peppy yellow sauce on the cold blue floor.

Sue continues to work hard, serving the people of Bristol with kind words and a cheery smile. But the bottle Steve never picked up still stands at the end of her checkout and when she catches sight of it as she swipes yet another tin of karma-sutra spaghetti shapes over the bar-code reader, a lonely tear falls onto the conveyer belt; and it sparkles in the artificial light until it disappears at the end of the line.

Hello

2006-04-24T22:36:00.000+01:00

I was sitting in the launderette watching my pants dancing inappropriately with my socks in the washer. Out of the corner of my eye I spotted a discarded copy of Hello magazine, the classic launderette better life aspiring read. The cover had a picture of Charles and Camilla, with the headline “Charles and Camilla : What you really think about their marriage“.

And I don’t know what kind of witch-craft those Hello magazine journalists using to find out this information, but the underlining of the word ’you’ left me in no doubt that they had been rifling through my sub-conscious with a fine-tooth comb.

At first I felt violated, but then slightly excited. Finally I would have a my random thoughts on the future monarch and his thoroughbred woman thing put into coherent sentences. I read on.

Apparently I felt that Camilla could never replace Diana, and that I would never accept her as the queen. I tried to look into my thoughts, to see if I could verify the words on the page, but it’s all a little cloudy in there.

I decided I should just accept that what it said was the truth. After all loads of people read Hello. And the magazine comes out every week. This means by this time next year I could have collected fifty-two different subjects of which I will know what I really think about them( I’ve given up making this sentence make any sense) . Granted it will be things about Jordan’s breasts and the Duchess Of Kent’s Lavender Jacket but that’s OK. I don’t think I really want to know what I think about anything important; I don't want any nasty suprises.

Death of a Queue Jumper

2006-04-06T00:34:00.000+01:00

This queue, my queue( I‘d taken responsibility cause I was at the front. ), had a certain level of complexity in that it was a single feeder queue for two basket checkouts. And as it was in We-really-couldn’t-be-arsed-to-put-any-thought-into-the-shop-layout-Sommerfield the pressure to hold order was palpable ( No idea what palpable means!)

But then, a figure not unlike Ob-wan Kenobi, stumbled to the second basket checkout, ignoring ‘The Queue’ and muttering something about ‘the force’. This incredibly rude and unexpected turn-taking violating movement, meant, by my approximation, a further 40 second wait in the queue, for me and each of my bitches (members of the queue)

Should I say something? I mean, would I really miss those forty seconds anyway? There's nothing I could really do with them.

I admit that well within a forty second time limit Michael Johnson has run 400m to win an Olympic gold-medal, Isaac Newton has conceived the notion of Gravity after seeing an apple fall form a tree and Boris Becker has impregnated some dodgy burd he'd just met, in a cupboard in a London Restaurant (with 37 seconds to spare).

But would any of them have achieved these things if they were standing in a checkout queue in Sommerfield holding a basket full of vegetables, scones and Muller Lite Yoghurts?

Newton might have realised the existence of gravity watching the hung-over ginger student dropping a four-pack of Stella on his toe and Boris Becker would still have found somewhere to let his German juices fly. But Micheal Johnson would have struggled to have run 400m around the cramped, inconsistently stocked aisles in under forty seconds. Even if he did, he would probably have lost a couple of Sommerfield Suitable for Baking Potatoes from his basket. And them potatoes is mighty fine.

Anyway, to justify not challenging the queue indifferent Jedi Knight, I decided I would, after going to bed, delay my going to sleep by a minute, thus not only ensuring this man had not made any negative impact on my waking day, but also taking the piss by extending it by 20 party-like seconds.

But then I heard disgruntled murmurings from behind. Those in the queue…my queue…who had followed and trusted me over cold and hard years, were not so forgiving as me of this new development. They had admired my queuing, I think some of them may have even started to fall in love with me. But now like most Gods, I had let them down; undermined their faith. And so, I was motivated to act.

"Excuse me", I called out, "There is a queue."

Though saying 'There is a queue' is not technically telling someone to join the back of it, more informing them that such a thing exists; the expected behaviour of the recipient of these words is to turn around, see the line of people, then look embarrassed and quickly walk away mumbling something sounding like "untseeitorry".

But this man was not playing by the rules. He turned around darted his eyes sideways then turned back in clear defiance of convenience store etiquette.

So we killed him. It wasn't excessively violent, more of an execution. He looked over sixty, so he probably wasn't contributing anything to society anyway.

Where we're going we don't need roads...

2006-03-25T21:22:00.000Z

We're going forward an hour this weekend. That means it's lighter in the mornings, or darker, or something. Anyway it will definitely mean there's a change in light at some point in your brand new reorganised Sunday.

What the Lionel Ritchie are they going to do with my hour anyway? Store it in some huge warehouse in Kent? Logistically it must be quite a tough operation thieving sixty minutes from each one of us ’victims’ around the country.

They justify it by reminding us that they give it back in October, deliver it at some stupid time in the morning. But they don’t always get the right hour back to the right person. October 2004, I got given the hour of a middle-aged lady from Staffordshire who was obsessed with Shane Ritchie. Even though I slept through the hour, I really shouldn't have had to have those Ritchie thoughts in my head affecting what would otherwise have been a dream about that dark haired girl from Watchdog.

Anyway, to solve this problem, I'm not going to let the bastards take my hour tomorrow. I'm going to hide it under my bed next to my self-respect. Of course I will not be letting onto anyone that I have done this, as technically it's time theft. This in Science-Fiction terms will most probably rip a whole in the fabric of space that can only be mended by me renouncing my stolen hour, whilst concurrently firing some miscellaneous white beam into the rift from my spaceship.

I don’t have a spaceship, it’s impractical for someone living in a small flat without a launch-pad. But I don’t think it’ll be much of problem being just the one hour behind everyone. They’ve go TV channels to cater for people in my position like E4 + 1 and More 4 + 1.

If the heat gets too much I’ll make use of the inevitable, soon to be announced ‘Hour Amnesty', where everyone can hand their stolen hours into their local police station anonymously. An HTV report will feature an interview with Bristol's Chief Superintendant stood next to a big table covered with people's handed-in hours neatly laid out in rows. He'll comment on what a big success it's been and how the streets of Bristol are safer with more people than ever living in the correct time-zone. A moderately interested reporter will nod his head and hand it back to the studio where they'll talk wheelie bins and non-league football until they're out of time again.

Moving Music

2006-03-16T20:59:00.000Z

I thought it would be easy. Wearing an MP3 player. Thought I could still be a normal member of society, fit in like everyone else does.

You shouldn’t listen to the Ricky Gervais podcast in Tesco’s. Because it’s funny, and funny can bring on laughter. Seemingly spontaneous bouts of laughter in the frozen goods isle, brings on confused looks and derision by those that hang around such places. I just needed frozen chips for those moments when only frozen chips will do. And with them in my hands, Gervais springs a funny in my ears and I fall into laughter. People stare at a man seemingly laughing at a packet of frozen chips, so I drop them and shake my head. I pick up another packet of chips, and look around with a solemn face that tells people that unlike the previous packet, this one holds little or no comedic value. They seem to understand.

But it’s music that’s the real danger. It has far too much say in how you walk and generally move. That’s ok when music’s coming from big speakers, out in the open. Then we can all be affected by the same rhythm together. No, it’s when you’re the only one with it in your ears. One lapse of concentration…you forget the rest of the world isn’t listening to ‘Smells Like Teen Spirit’, and you’re the only one Boots banging your head up and down.

Or the slow sad reflective ballad. Where every body movement is slowed down. Taking a tin of beans off a shelf in Tesco’s becomes an unusually profound experience. The memories start to flow, “I once fell in love with a can of baked beans, and it left me for a Pot Noodle. And this same-branded tin reminds me so much of the can I loved, with its beautiful blue labelling and equivalency to a single portion of the five recommended fruit and vegetables portions per-day .”

For me though, it has to be jogging where music through headphones becomes most unhelpful. I find it impossible not to be infected by the rhythm in the song. For example, there’s a run that would normally take about forty minutes around the Downs. If I’m listening to Pink Floyd at the time, it can take me up to six days. This leads to malnutrition and the feeling of being isolated from society, like I'm behind some metaphorical wall. Then there’s the Prodigy. With this on the jog will only take twenty seconds, though unfortunately it‘s a twenty second sprint that only gets me to the first tree before I collapse vowing to smack my bitch up.

The only way to listen to music and jog at a suitable speed is to get some, not too angry, not too relaxing, not to fast, not too slow, not too anything music. Thankyou for dedicating your entire career to making people run at a manageable tempo Phil Collins.

Twelve Quid Mate!

2006-03-06T21:49:00.000Z

Taxis you either hate them or you're odd. When you're not a passenger they'll weave and swerve with psychotic purpose, when you are a passenger they'll give-way to a dead slug in a bucket.

A well known taxi driver hobbie involves driving to a mini-roundabout and performing a seemingly pointless U-turn. Taxi drivers record every mini-roundabout they’ve U-turned in a little notebook, detailing the location of the roundabout and how close someone came to crashing into them whilst they performed the manoeuvre. Champion George (53) from Bedford has U-turned on 2156 mini-roundabouts and has no friends.

Driving up a road with cars parked either side so there's only room for one car, you may notice a taxi parked slap bang in the middle blocking you way. So you flash your lights. No response. So you beep your horn, and finally they take action. On come the hazard-lights. In the taxi drivers mind, they are now blocking England with legitimacy.

The hazard-lights are a special Highway Code exemption scheme only available to taxi drivers. With this they are allowed to do what ever the hell they want to do. And your anger at their actions when the hazard lights are on, is just your pathetic ignorance of Taxi Law. With the hazards flashing, a taxi driver can go the wrong way up a one way street, park on your lawn, reverse over your dog, urinate out of his window into your Soda-Stream, shoot at milk-floats and even listen to 70's Progressive Rock on a medium-wave radio station. And there’s nothing you can do about it.

The Cat on the Bonnet

2006-02-28T22:09:00.000Z

It was cold this morning leaving my flat, probably any other flat would have been the same. And the cat was sat on my car bonnet, keen not to be disturbed.

I said hello, and he/she said nothing. He/she/it is a cat, but still they could have made the effort. “You’re gonna have to move, I need to go to work.” I stated shrugging apologetically.

Maybe the cat didn’t understand me, maybe because it’s a cat, but that excuse was wearing thin. A push of the button on my key and the locks unlocked and finally the cat stirred, stretching like a cat does. A slow rotation of its head, and the cat’s eyes made the welcome effort of catching mine. With a confused and irritated cat like look, it asked me what I thought I was doing.

“Get off my car, I have to drive to work.”

The unimpressed cat looked unimpressed and told me how unimpressed it was. “I’m unimpressed” it said.

“Why are you unimpressed?”, I said talking to a cat.

Carefully, with the speed of a sleepy cat, the sleepy cat rose to its feet and sat down upright on the cold bonnet surveying the countless parked cars parked on the street in which it mainly slept. “Why do you have to use this one, there’s all those other ones I’m not resting on.”

“You wouldn’t understand, you’re a cat.”, and I sat down in the drivers seat and started the engine.

The cat stood and looked at me through the windscreen. “I will leave this car now. Not because I want to, and not because you want me to, but because I have a dignity as a cat that you as not a cat will never understand or enjoy.”

“Get the f*** off my car!”, I shouted beeping the horn; and slowly the cat dismounted and wandered off to find a Vauxhall.

At Least with Tennis You Use a Racquet

2006-02-20T22:35:00.000Z

“Football’s just eleven men running around a field chasing a white sphere, what‘s interesting about that?”, she said reading an article about Posh Spice’s breasts.

“It’s not eleven men, it’s twenty two men as there‘s two teams. Then of course there’s the referee, who doesn’t specifically chase the ball but has to remain in its approximate vicinity.” I replied boring even myself.

“It’s not as if there’s any real point to it.”, she continued flicking the page over to an article on coloured contact lenses. “I mean at least with tennis you use a racquet.” I ignored this comment, partly because I was sure I saw the point in football, and partly because I didn’t understand the relevance of the racquet.

And a couple of days later I settled down in the pub to watch the not so mighty Southampton take on a team, though not as mighty as a mighty team, considerably higher up the ladder of mightiness than Southampton; who‘s position on the mighty ladder is at the bottom holding it while every other team climbs up. The whistle blew, and the game started.

Southampton attacked, and I quickly got caught up in the excitement. Matt Oakley (Southampton midfielder) held onto the ball for what I felt was too long. “Pass it!”, I screamed at the television assuming it was fitted with a microphone that would relay my message to the relevant party. Oakley was easily tackled and my suspicions that no direct method of communication existed between me in a pub in Bristol and players on a pitch in Southampton was given more credence.

I sat back down, jiggling my feet, ready to shout again. Then I moved the pint glass to my lips, drank a little, and flicked my eyes back up to the screen and I saw it for the first time. Football really is just twenty-two men chasing a white sphere around a field. I glanced around the room; a hundred people sitting in smoke, inhibiting their higher brain functions with fermented chemical shite.

I put down my beer. I saw the Emperor’s New Clothes fade away leaving an ugly fat spotty truth. There’s a billion billion planets in the universe and the only one I can see is just a small spot of light in the night sky.

Then Southampton got the ball. Dyer had it on the edge of the area, he paused. “Shoot” I shouted, “Hit it!”. He was soon tackled and I held my head in my hands, picked up my pint and thought about what could have been.

The Blood-Mobile comes to Work

2006-02-08T21:28:00.000Z

There's always a moment of pride. The Iron content test. Before you go into the main session they take you aside into a little room prick your finger and extract a drop of blood in a little transparent straw-like thing. This drop of blood is then dropped into the test-tube, and the nurse times the amount of time it takes to reach the bottom of the test tube.

My drops of blood throughout my doning career have always performed incredibly well, thrashing the specified time-limit.. The various nurses have always exclaimed or faked a slightly surprised compliment as it bangs into the bottom of the tube such as "Well there's definitely no problem there" or "That was very quick.". I always try to look like I'm not bothered by their praise, not surprised by this further indication of me possibly being a close relation of God or Daley Thompson. But a little self-satisfied grin is always bubbling just under the surface.

All was going as normal, and a single drop of my championship blood was dropped into the test-tube by a nurse I'd never seen before. Down it went, with speed and with grace. I looked on proudly, then up to the nurse, who quickly glanced at the test-tube then back to her notes. "Just hold that over your finger while I get a plaster" she said and then with the plaster on, "If you'd like to come with me Mr Gracie."

"What?" I said unable to hide my outrage at her apathy to my Premier League blood drop performance.

"You can come through now." She said slightly raising her eyebrows.

"But?"

"Is there a problem Mr...ehhhh?" she said walking out into the main doning area so all my work colleagues could hear, then she looked at me with a ’It’s ok to be scared of the needle, you don’t have to go through with it look’

“No, I’m definitely not scared of the needle, I was just disappointed with your reaction to my excellent Iron test result” is what I, thank god, stopped myself from staying instead I went, a little too enthusiastically, with “No I’m fine.”

An elder colleague was on the bed opposite, “It’s ok”, he nodded, “it doesn’t really hurt.”
“I know,” I replied ,”This is my fifteenth time.”

“Well this is my forty second time, but who’s counting” replied, a man who was clearly counting, but was annoyed at my overly short and sharp answer.

“I didn’t mean that was anything special, I just…..” and a new nurse arrived before I could dig myself further in yet another hole. I was relieved she hadn’t brought me over the cuddly blood toy.

“Hi, I’ve never inserted the needle before, do you mind if I…?”

I looked around, caught the eye of 42-times-Bob, who smiled at me in a ‘you aren’t scared are you manner?’

“Not a problem”, I nod and as she calls over another nurse to supervise. I can’t watch, I stare out of the window, and watch a bird peck at Vauxhall Corsa while they take the blood away

Asking the Question

2006-01-25T22:50:00.000Z

I was in a hotel, I was tired and I wanted to make a phone-call. I was passing reception which was completely empty except for the receptionist. "Do you have to dial a '9' to get an outside line from my room?" I asked.

And with that question the grey mid-forties man, name-tagged 'Lloyd' slowly tapped his favourite chin and decided on giving me an answer more useless than saying "I have no idea"; more rude than saying "Why don't you just F*** off"; and more irritating than Carol Vorderman crying over Richard Whitely dying.
"Let me answer your question, with a question?"

Why? I thought to myself, have I jumped too far ahead in the whole concept of telecommunications? Do we need to discuss something else more fundamental first before getting on to the fun bits? But from the smug grin on this man's face, it was apparent that some cutting and unnecessary remark was about to pop its ugly head out of his ugly head.

"What button would you normally press to get an external-line in a hotel?"

I can only identify the following as possible reasons for him asking this question:

a) He didn't know how to access an outside line.

b) He was genuinely interested in the different ways people access outside lines in hotels around
the world and was researching for his website he had set-up for the subject.

c) He had misheard my question, "Do I have to dial a '9' to get an outside line from my room?" as "Can you ask me a pub-quiz style question on Hotel facilities?"

d) He was a being a sarcastic cock.
After no thought on the subject, I found myself drawn to option 'd'.

"Nine" I said, almost apologetically.

"Correct" he replied and turned away happy that he'd taught me the valuable lesson that it is unreasonable to ask questions at hotel receptions.

I slowly started to amble off, a beaten and tired person. But with one last ounce of energy I turned and faced the receptionist again, staring straight into his cold self-satisfied eyes.

"So do I have to dial a '9' to get an outside line my hotel room?"

2006-01-18T21:15:00.000Z

Hello, The scone has moved. Here of all places. Below are my previous postings from the other place. Cold there.

2006-01-18T21:14:00.000Z

"Well you only live once." was the final argument put to me. But what does it really have to do with buying an overpriced car? I had all but claimed victory in an argument with someone about a car they bought that they really couldn't afford. My argument incidentally was that they really couldn't afford it and just as I had beaten them into submission they threw this last five word punch. My brain told me that this was indeed a valid statement and as such I felt I had lost the argument.
But by this logic it would only be a problem buying something out of your financial means if you believed in reincarnation, that you had multiple lives. And of course you couldn’t buy an overpriced car if you were a cat, who would have been stuck with the financial burden throughout all of its nine lives. How many other arguments have I lost by someone throwing in "you only live once", which with further analysis I would have realised was irrelevant to the argument?
There's plenty of other irrelevant clichés people throw into arguments like the slightly shorter "might as well." Not quite as strong as "Well you only live once", but it can be used for those easier to win arguments that you just want to kill off or to soften your opponent before bringing out the big guns.
There was poor old George W, dead against the war. Then Rumsfeld comes along with his lethal word combinations.
George W : Do you really think we should be invading countries?
Rumsfeld : Might as well.
George W: Yeah, but, it's really gonna stir up shit. I don't know if I can be bothered.
Rumsfeld : I know, but, at the end of the day, when it comes down to it, you only live once.
George W: f*** it, let's have Ireland.
Rumsfeld : Iraq Mr President Iraq.
George W : Yes Iraq. (PICKS UP PHONE) Hey Tony, do you British folks wanna come along with us and invade Poland?
Rumsfeld : Iraq!
George W : Iraq.
Tony B : Nahhhhh, they wont like it.
George W: Come on…
Tony B : I don’t know…it could be trouble.
Rumsfeld : Say to him “You know yer wanna.”
George W : Mr Prime minister Tony. You know yer wanna.
Tony B : Go on then…

2006-01-18T21:09:00.001Z

05 January
Listening to Movie Stars
“It’s so much bigger than all of us” said some actor off some film on , talking about this some film on the radio on my way home from work. The some film was called “Brokeback Mountain” and it’s about Gay Cowboys. Which is ground-breaking apparently, as there’s never been a film about Gay Cowboys before. But there’s probably never been a film about gay toothpaste factory operatives or gay goat murderers, but noones crying into their Cornflakes.
I shouldn’t really joke about it. I mean obviously Movie-stars are the most intelligent people in the known universe. Who else can make millions of dollars out of pretending to be angry.
In fact thank god this actor made that statement about the film, or my brain would have just been constantly running over the possibilities of exactly how big the film was. “I wonder if this film is smaller than me or bigger than me,” it would have been contemplating, ” or it might actually be bigger than a large amount of people, even all of the people in the world? In fact maybe it is of such a size it could be described as being sooooo much bigger than all of us?" I would never have known.
Movie Stars are here to guide us. Not all listen though. Last year, the silly and I would say irresponsible Brooke Shields was taking anti-depressants and receiving therapy because of her post-natal depression. How stupid was she? Did her doctor ask Tom Cruise if this was a good idea before he/she decided to prescribe this course of action? No obviously they didn’t, because Tom, who was speaking well within his area of competency quite rightly took his opportunity in an interview about the film 'War of the Worlds'( which was all most definitely also “bigger than all of us”) to discuss Brooke Shields condition, stating “I know that-- psychiatry is-- is a pseudo science.” and on anti-depressants “it masks the problem. That's what it does. That's all it does. // There is no such thing as a chemical imbalance.”
There’s some arrogant fully trained Doctor running rough-shot over medical advice of Tom ‘Top-Gun’ Cruise.
I only hope Brooke heard Tom’s warning before it was too late, and that medical professionals in this country do a little less studying medicine and a little more listening to Movie Stars.

2006-01-18T21:09:00.000Z

22 December
"I've got some very exciting projects in the pipeline... hopefully, please!"
The newspapers, and those people that read them nodding their head( often named Geoff ), are always saying that there are too many celebrities around today (and that they get headaches when they read). Apparently Former Big Brother contestants will go along to the opening of an envelope. Not even interesting envelopes, just boring normal brown envelopes that contain bank statements or letters written in blood.

In the old days, it was easy to tell who a Celebrity was, they appeared on Wogan. Wogan grinned at them entranced as they wheeled off tedious details of their latest film ( normally filmed on location but set in LA) or a book about their life (which they‘d written themselves with a tiny bit of help from someone who bothered to learn reading and writing skills and wasn‘t addicted to pain killers), with a few shite anecdotes tagged on about when they tripped over a cat at Bruce Willis’s house.
But today? Well, I have come to the conclusion that even I am a celebrity. Not for any particular tangible reason, but looking at those in 'I'm a Celebrity, Get me out of Here', I think by those standards I must qualify. I did once appear in Dixons.
So I am going to the premiere of tonight’s episode of ITV’s' The Bill' . Yes it'll be held in my house, and no I don't have a red carpet. But I’ve found an orange rug and gone to the trouble of decorating the flat with 'Police Incident' tape I nicked from some kind of ‘Serious Incident’ along Gloucester Road.
I’ve got to go and face the press now. They’ll probably ask me if I’d go to the opening of an envelope. I probably will while I‘ve got the chance. I know how quickly fame can fade away.

Happy Christmas!

2006-01-18T21:08:00.002Z

20 December
Christmas Classical Music Shopping
Walk into Virgin Megastore and it's just crammed with DVD Boxsets of Doctor Who and Desperate Housewives. Oasis are snarling loudly from invisible speakers, and the place is full of middle-aged men that shop only once a year. One of them goes to walk out, his plastic Virgin bag swinging back and forth with very over-confident stride. But as he passes the detectors, the sort of high pitched, sort of low-pitched alarm decides it needs to express itself. Teri Hatcher and Billie Piper look up from there respective Box Sets tutting. The man stops and returns their stares. A thick irritated grin punctuates his smug face as he waits for some kid in a 'Virgin Megastore' T-Shirt to give him the wave of ‘I don’t think you’re a thief’.
I make my way over towards the far corner of the store, in search of some 'Classical Music' for Christmas present buying purposes. It has its own separate room. I open the door and enter, letting it slowly close behind me.
Silence. Eddie Izzard sits behind the till and nods at me as he strokes his long newly grown white beard. He looks back down at his turkey, poking it with his index finger. I pick up a candle and begin my search for 'The Best of Classical Music 2006' CD, whose title, to me, sounds just a little premature.
I cross hard stony ground for a good couple of hours. Tiring I stop to catch my breath and look around to get my bearings. "Me and Pincess Di used to come here a lot" says a voice from behind me. I turn and see a short man in his fifties wearing a big pink bola hat. He slowly lifts off his sunglasses. "You be careful here. It's not safe here." He continues, unnecessarily using the word 'here' twice in just two sentences.
"Do you know where I can find 'The Best of Classical Music 2006?" I ask hopefully.
"You don't need to know who I am." He repiles.
"I didn't ask who you.."
"I'm Elton John." And with that a single violin can be heard, slowly crying the tune of 'Candle in the Wind' round the echoey damp cavern. Elton slides his sunglasses back on. "Ahh there you are Trevor."
"Finally" comes a deeper voice, and Sir Trevor McDonald walks around wearing a Green bola to stand next to Elton. "Well that's about it for now". Elton nods then gestures me away and starts singing as I leave, Trevor shouts at Elton furiously trying to make him stop but to no avail.
"The candle burned out long ago", the last words I hear as they go out of earshot, and my tired source of light and warmth flickers for the final time. The ’Virgin Classical Music Department’ sky is totally black and I’m left in a sinister darkness. A faint white light appears on the horizon and wearily I head in its direction. Getting closer I can see it's an old Victorian looking building, a public house, Its sign blows around violently, even though I can feel only a breeze. 'The End Inn'.
I open the heavy oak door and walk in. The lighting all comes from little yellow candles and it’s so bright I have to squint to see where I going. I stumble clumsily towards the bar and manage to slide onto a stool. The music is loud; a harsh mixture of Violins and shotguns, crashing symbols and piercing strings. My eyes adjust gradually and I see that the pub is packed with solemn faces all wearing orange bolas. Playing with beer glasses full of what looks like milk, none of them speak, but sway gently to the thunderous score.
A barman sees me and walks over "Can I help you?"
"I don't know."
"Are you sure your meant to be here? I don‘t think you‘re supposed to be here yet."
"I was looking for 'The Best of Classical Music 2006'?"
I'm handed a CD. “Go quickly.”
"This says 'The Best of Classical Music 2012'??."
"Give it here." He scrambles for another CD, "There, now go. "
I turn to walk out. But patrons block my way. I turn around looking for another way out but notice everyone is now standing up, all of them holding the candles above their heads. "I told you" the barman covers his eyes as he speaks. "I can't do anything for you now".
The figure in front of me, who looks exactly like Tim Henman's Tennis career, screams "Time at the bar!" and with that they pick up their pints of milk and pour them over the candles. The room quickly fades to black and I'm left with the sound of cows milk dripping on the slate floor.
"What about the extended Licensing laws?" I shout, but a fist makes contact with my skull and I fall helplessly to the floor.
"This is a residential area" comes a voice that sounds very much like the future career of Shane Ritchie when he leaves Eastenders. "It's time for you to join us."
I hear new music, "I predict a Riot" by Kaisers invading the classical roar. I see a oblong of light as the pub door is opened. Billie Piper and Teri Hatcher are waving at me, “Quick over here!“, shouts Billie, I look up and see Donna Air holding a Vauxhall Corsa above my head. I just manage to roll out of the way as she brings it tumbling down. I push myself to my feet and run towards the light. I don't look round, just keep my eyes fixed on freedom. I make it to the doorway and trip crashing straight into World Music. The door closes loudly behind me.
I stand up, holding 'The Best of Classical Music 2006' above my head. "You might want to pay for it in there”, says an assistant pointing back behind me, “there’s a huge queue out here'
“I don't mind queuing." I reply glancing over my shoulder. That‘s classical music shopping over for another year.

2006-01-18T21:08:00.001Z

05 December
Sorry
That’s the trouble with catching trains in this country. ‘What is?’ you might ask, irritated by the fact I started off this entry as if I had already told you. Well the fact they’re fucking useless, is at the very least mildly irritating.
And when whichever one you’re waiting for is inevitably late (because if it was on time it would only confuse people), you get a nice women saying “I’m sorry, but the 18:22 to London Paddington is delayed by seventeen minutes.” Except the nice women is a recording controlled by a computer.
In fact she always seems slightly amused by the whole situation. Maybe someone had told her a knob joke just before the recording, and much as she knew her voice would become a symbol of commuter misery, was unable to hide her amusement and indifference.
They could have recorded it again, given it one last shot at conveying a single ounce of regret. But they didn’t have enough time as she had to record her “I’m very sorry” version of the message for those trains over twenty minutes late and the “I am personally devastated” version for those cancelled at birth.
But she pays for it now. Every statement she makes is believed insincere. “I’ve heard it all before.”, they would say to her. “They’re just empty words, you don’t mean it.”
And so she sits alone, in an empty, dirty flat, with only a bottle for company, wishing that on that day in the recording studio, she’d cared just a little bit more.