Oblong Scone

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, m...

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 ...

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...

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, starin...

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 ...