Oblong Scone

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 ...

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 ...

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 go...

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, ...

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...

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 a...

“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...

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 o...

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 but...

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

"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...

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 peo...

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 Wi...

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...

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 fo...

Being Smug on a Bus The only space left on the bus was on the back seat next to Vicky Pollard’s ugly sister who was busy on her phone to someone who obviously liked being shouted at. I went to sit down and was told “My boyfriend’s sitting there!” I looked around to see evidence of someone ugly enough, but noone looked likely so I sat down. “He’s getting on at the next stop.” she mumbled. “Oh” I said smugly and loudly, “So, My boyfriend SHALL be sitting there.” I leaned back, happy with my semantic correctional performance. And everyone looked at me laughing, clearly also enjoying my….Oh..

29 November Walkabout Southampton were playing at 12:30pm, which is far too early for pub-visiting, but what with the new 24 hour licenses, it is our responsibility as British citizens to now drink in pubs at inappropriate times, because we can. Anyway, I could have just drunk coke. Arriving at the ‘Walkabout’ pub slightly past 12:30, the game had already started. I walked in still wearing my woolie hat that I had just bought, enjoying the feeling of having hair. I don't mean my hat felt or looked like hair. It’s just that to the outside world, whilst I wear the hat, people are unable to identify me as a de-haired person, thus, I allows me to enjoy brief moments as a person of hair. I walked to the bar to order my beer or coke, I forget now. The screen above the bar was showing the football, but it meant I had to slightly arch back from the bar to see what was going on. As there was a rather competitive queue, each arch back to catch the exciting action lost me valuable 'It...

21 November Sommerfield Loving You have to love Sommerfield Supermarkets, not because there's some kind of law enforcing your love for them, just because they ignore any innovations/standards of competitors and tread their own directionless path through the murky retail jungle. Whilst the uninspired Tesco and her friends will try and place goods in some kind of logical order, allowing shoppers to get a picture in their mind of where the next object on their list might be, Sommerfield are much more artistic, randomly spreading goods into every nook and cranny with aisles that seem to have categories like "Yellow things" and "Stuff that's boring". For example, one day you may come across a jar of mustard. If you are a mustard fan, buy as many jars as will fit in your basket, because you'll probably never bump into them again unless you form some special mustard locating task-force. In fact fire a flare in the air to tell your fellow shoppers that mustard h...

13 November Kelly Clarkson Kelly Clarkson Kelly Clarkson ‘Everybody’s talking about Kelly Clarkson’ says the TV advert advertising an album by Kelly Clarkson, and I’m not actually sure who she is. But everybody’s talking about her. Look at me now, just another person on the all encompassing list of everyone talking about Kelly Clarkson. No work is being done, no papers delivered, no bread baked. Nobodies playing football or cleaning their teeth, arguing about sofas, videoing firework displays or driving Volvos. No one can eat because a mouth full of food would block the flow of Kelly Clarkson related words escaping from their gob. The two minutes Armistice Day silence, utterly ruined by constant Kelly chat. You’re not reading this now because YOU are unable to shut up about Kelly Clarkson. And because of this, there is no future for this planet or you or anybody. I hope you’re happy Kelly Clarkson.

08 November Firework Displays Fireworks exploding, children excitedly pointing to the skies open mouthed as sharp and fevered colours light up the sky. An old couple look on, smiles on their faces with the comfort of knowledge that some things don‘t need to change. Then there’s a bloke in his mid-forties, with his Sports-Action fleece, eye firmly fixed on the view finder screen of his skywards pointed Sony Cam-Corder. His wife reaches into her bum-bag and brings her Oakley Sunglasses sliding them onto her overly tanned face. Then suddenly silence. Four seconds of it as people turn their heads from the skies to each other, with a look that asks ‘Is it finished?’ It is, and everyone cheers then walk away happy with what they’ve seen. Except mid-forties guy, who replays a short excerpt of his recording, smiles, nods his head and flips the screen back into the camera. He smiles at his wife as if to say ‘A job well done’. But when, will this video ever be used? How bad would television have...