This is just a place where I will come to sometimes tell you a story or share something with you.

Tuesday 8 December 2009

I Steal Babies

I do not steal babies. You know that (I hope) and I know that. Unfortunately, there is now a carriage full of people that think that I do in fact steal babies. All because I was being helpful.

I was on the train home today. I've waxed lyrical many times on how I hate the rush hour so I'm not going to go into any detail here about it but imagine this: Every seat taken. Almost all standing space gone. Not too much to hear above the odd mp3 player spitting out tinny baselines, newspapers being rustled and the monotonous clackety-clack of the rolling stock ferrying us all home.

My stop arrives and I stand up from my seat and wait for various sets of legs to make enough space for me to first emerge from the little set of seats I have been sitting in and then for the standing commuters to give me enough space to get to the doors. As I struggle through my supremely uninterested and dour looking peers I get to the doors and see a middle aged lady struggling to get off with her pram. It looked like one of these only bigger. Seriously, a few pieces of drywall and plasterboard and you could plumb the fucking thing into the mains and live quite happily. I noticed the doors were about to close and she was still no nearer to getting off. I was fucked if I was going to miss my stop so I did what any self respecting gentleman would have done. I grabbed her pram which had a multitude of shopping bags dangling from it and lifted the whole thing off the train and onto the platform just as the doors closed. The middle aged mother turned to me with a look of utter horror on her face and I quickly smiled at her to allay any fear she may have had about me and said jokingly "Don't worry, I'm not going to steal your baby". Still looking horrified she said to me "No, but I think you might have just stolen someone else's. That's not my pram, my jacket was just caught on the handle and I was trying to free myself!"

Oh shit. I had just stolen a fucking baby.

I looked into the carriage as it began to slowly pull away and didn't see any commotion at all. I slammed hard on the window and mouthed for someone to pull the emergency cord. I got a few weird glances but no one seemed to understand what I was on about and turned away from the nutty man slamming train windows and turned back to their respective newspapers and mp3 players. Now it was too late and the train had pulled out of the station and I definitely had stolen a fucking baby!

It was only then that I actually looked inside the pram to have a look at my new baby that I realised that there wasn't a baby in there at all. All I had actually stolen was a massive four wheeled and seemingly fuel injected pram dripping with various shopping bags and baby accoutrements.

Middle aged woman was looking at me now with a look of almost cartoon-like relief. Fuck this I thought to myself, your problem. I walked off as quick as I could leaving her asking after me what I expected her to do with a stolen pram. I paid no attention at all and quantified that if she hadn't been flapping about like a drunken mackerel, I wouldn't have stolen the pram in the first place.

Some poor mother is going to get off the train and realise she has been royally fucked over.

Trains. Again

Fucking trains, they'll be the death of me. When my time eventually comes I know I'll either be on a train or hit by one. They don't like me and I'm not too fond of them. Shit always happens to me on trains.

I must deviate to give you some back story.

Of all the people I have met in the media industry, I have known only a very few that have become friends. One guy I got to know quite well works in the marketing department of an American film distribution firm over here. We used to meet every now and then and I would take him and his team out for drinks on a Friday. At first it was lunchtime drinks and after a while we somehow made our midday meetings stretch a few hours longer. Eventually it became the norm to meet up at about 2pm and drink expensive alcohol until we would both stumble home in the early hours. He and his team are a decent bunch and I have became quite close with them over the last 3 years.

A few weeks back, this guy split up with his girlfriend and as is often the case, it turned rather messy. This guy suddenly needed somewhere to stay and I gladly offered my sofa until he sorted himself out. Two days ago I had come home after work and rolled a joint and made myself a cup of tea. After my refreshment I decided I wanted to go for a run and knowing that he might come back here while I was out I decided to leave him a note on the door. "Gone for a run" was no good as I live in a dodgy part of town and letting everyone know your house is empty isn't the smartest move. "Call me" sounded way too gay so I added a simple "Fuck you" and thought that got my point across nicely. I couldn't find anything else to write on apart from a cigarette paper. Still, write on one side and lick the other to stick to the door and this was turning out to be the perfect solution.

I went for a run and came back to find he hadn't arrived so took the paper from the door and let myself in. Skip forward to this morning when I'm about to leave the house on my way to work and I find I need a page marker for my book. I look around and see this same scribbled on cigarette paper and insert it into my book and head to work. The train was rammed, as usual, and I made my way down the carriage. We were so packed on that I eventually found myself standing almost on top of a lady who had happened to bag herself the last available seat. I open my book, remove my page marker and as I insert it between the first and second pages of the book it slowly flutters from my grasp. Now I would have loved to have caught it but my arms were jammed together due to the close proximity of everyone else so I just watched in vain as it twisted and turned slowly down towards this lady and landed face up in her lap.

"Fuck you, call me" scrawled on a fucking cigarette paper and me smiling at her as she looked up.

I didn't bother to explain myself as the other hundred or so people on the carriage would hear and that was just too much information. I did find it funny though and giggled to myself for the next 25 minutes. Unlike her who markedly stared everywhere else other than at me for the entire journey.

Brilliant.

My Underpants

I haven't spoken about my underpants for some time now and realise that in some circles this amounts to serious neglect. This had been playing on my mind for several weeks and I really didn't know what to do about it. Luckily for all of you, The God Of Underpant Mishaps had evidently been alerted to my plight, looked down on his checklist and noticed that I was more than overdue for some of his undergarment related shenanigans and gave me his personal attention.

Friday night found me falling asleep in front of the tv. I woke up in the early hours with a stiff neck and headed straight for my bed. I threw my clothes in a heap on the floor and got under the covers. My alarm went off at 8:30 Saturday morning as I had to get my suit to the dry cleaners at 9am. I jumped out of bed and put on my jeans from where I had left them on the floor the previous night and grabbed a t shirt. Brushed my teeth and out of the door with one dirty suit.

I'm walking to the dry cleaners and there is some small bustle on the parade of shops I'm walking down. There is a young mother and her two squawking children approaching me. She looks less interested in them than I am and that's saying something. It is at this point that I feel something strange nestled against the back of my knee and I look down just in time to see last nights boxers fall from the right trouser leg. "That's weird" I think to myself, "they look just like mine". I still had sleep in my eyes and the whole thing seemed rather bizarre. It wasn't until after one of the young children asked his mother in a loud and clear voice "Mum, why have that man's pants just fallen out of his trousers" that I realised that they must have been carefully nestled in my jeans when I took them off together last night. I guess they were somewhere in the leg when I pulled my jeans on in such a hurry not 10 minutes before.

I picked them up and stuffed them in my pocket as If I was taking a trophy of a night with myself. To exacerbate the effect, I masturbated with them as soon as I got home.

The Moth.

Now first off, let me make a distinction here. When I refer to a moth from here on I don't refer to those beautiful moths you see pictures of that live in the jungle. None of us live there so I'm not talking about those moths (those ones aren't actually moths anyway, they are part bird). I'm referring to the kind of moths that live in our houses. Those singularly useless creatures that are attracted to bright lights, are always a dull brown colour and act like retarded butterflies.

They have no purpose. At all. I am sure there will be several learned stumblers that could point out some interesting fact or other regarding the humble moth yet I would respectfully call them all liars. I appreciate your "knowledge" in this field is greatly advanced when compared to mine but in this instance I shall not pander to "fact". Moths are deserving of fuck all. In fact, less than fuck all. They flap away at a wall for hours on end only after tiring of my head. Previously finding it the most interesting place in the entire world, ever. This will maybe go on for a day or two at most until they eventually die and fall onto my book shelf and get crispy.

When moths go to the cinema and watch a hero movie, the star of the show is always a pigeon. Moths aspire to the heady heights of pigeonhood as they intrinsically recognise the only creature on the planet to hold a higher status in the category of "World's Biggest Cunt".

When moths grow up they want to hang around in parks and cities eating shit from the floor while cooing and having gangrenous legs that spread disease. Instead of flapping around uncontrollably with natures second worst navigation system (after Daddy Long Legs), having no mouth and generally making a fucking nuisance of themselves.

Not much of a jump to be honest.

If I had my way, all future generations of both moths and pigeons would view me as their own Personal Hitler

Dave

My cousin Dave is, and always has been, a constant source of amusement to me. He is 5 years younger than me and, unfortunately for him, the perfect age to have been terrorised by myself as we grew up. You all know how this one works right? If you have an older brother or sister you know that they will have at times fucked your life up just cos they are either bored or malicious. That's just the way life works and all kids learn to cope with it. Puts hairs on your chest and all that. Well, my sister is four years older than me and regularly used to fuck me up when I was too young and far too trusting to do anything about it. She used to do bad shit and blame me so my poor stressed mother would walk into the room, see a mess, slap me and then walk out. Poor woman, I was a handful. Anyway, all this caused me to need an outlet for my frustration. This is where Dave steps into the story. He got it from me bad. I terrorised him so badly when we were kids that the pattern of constant ribbing and hardship on his behalf has never really stopped. It's comfortable now for me (and him) to walk into a room, see him, give him a slap either actual or verbal and walk out. That shit is recurring. He has just turned 30 and still to this day nothing gives me greater pleasure than to see him fall over or fuck up somehow. As I said earlier, he is a constant source for me. Always will be. There has been one blot on this copybook for me though. Dave went out one night about 5 or 6 years ago with some pals. A big group of them went out one night and what was seemingly an innocuous evening in a pub swiftly escalated into fucking carnage. One of those nights where people end up dancing on tables and shots are the only thing being drunk and in great abundance. Well, maybe 90 minutes into the evening Dave realises he is in a bit of trouble and reckons he is about to puke and dashes into the toilet. He really wants to stay out and knows if he throws up it is game over and he is gonna need to be in a cab home. While he walks into the toilet of this rather dingy little pub he sees a guy selling drugs by the line. Bingo! Dave isn't really a drug taker but knows well enough that a couple of fat lines of coke and he is gonna be like the Duracell Bunny. He hands over a tenner to the dodgy dealer, sniffs up his charlie and heads back out to the bar. Not 3 steps into the main room and he crashes to the floor like he has been shot. Right into the middle of some random peoples table, knocking their drinks everywhere. He is out cold and for no apparent reason. Turns out mr dodgy dealer has sold him two fat lines of kettamine instead of coke although he only realised this the next morning. Daves mates pick him up and an ambulance is called. He is dragged out with various "fucking lightweight"'s drifting in his wake. Everyone laughing at him. I am still gutted I missed seeing this and it has grown into our folklore. Imagine my utter fucking joy when I found out a few days back that there was actually a sneaky mobile phone picture of him in the ambulance that has only just surfaced after 5 years! Put a massive smile on my face that did. I'm going to get miles and miles out of this one.

Cooking tips for twats

An explosive mixture of boredom and gluttony (bluttony) got me thinking the other day. When you've got a hangover, there really is no substitute, at all, to a Full English. The only problem you have here really is the fact that when waking with a hangover, the last thing you want to do is fuck around with the annoying task of actually cooking it.

Here is where the humble greasy spoon comes into its own. I fucking love those places. As a rule you can multiply the amount of minutes you spend in there by 3 and that is the exact number of days chalked from the end of your life. The food is that bad for you.

So what happens if you wake up with a hangover so bad that you find yourself praying to God, despite the fact that you don't actually believe in him, to take the pain from inside your head. There is no way that in this state that you could traverse the disgusting route of getting clothes on and getting to your necessary Valhalla. Would there be some way to make the Breakfast of Champions the night before?

I think I might have cracked it my friends. I gladly present to you this masterpiece:

The Full English Pie



A layer of fried scalloped potatoes, some fried mushrooms, five well cooked sausages, 8 slices of the crispiest bacon and then finally 4 beaten eggs poured into the cracks and left to settle and then topped up again. 30 minutes at 180 celsius and you shall reach salvation.

Poker: The new cunt magnet

I had the intense displeasure to meet a professional poker player last night. What a massive cunt.

I can't remember meeting anyone so impressed with his own shadow in quite some time. He looked genuinely surprised when I told him what I thought about pro gamblers and I've known a few. His main argument in his defence hinged almost completely on the fact that he could afford the finer things in life and was only 23 years old. I found it rather funny when he asked his girlfriend if he could borrow £20 for a cab home and let him know that in no uncertain terms.

I think I can safely say that he was the first Swedish person that I have ever met who I didn't warm to. Swiftly followed by his girlfriend who told me several times that she was the best poker dealer in London. At the tender age of 22.

This was perhaps the first time in my life that I had a little bit of hindsight as to how I must have seemed to others at her age. I wasn't that much of a cunt was I? Surely not...

I did mention that old croupier joke to this "best poker dealer in London" girl that asks the difference between a card dealer and a gynaecologist? A gynaecologist only has to deal with one cunt at a time. I had to explain it to her three times. They do say that the key to all humour is timing and having to backtrack and explain an off the cuff joke like that killed the momentum somewhat. She mentioned how she found the word cunt distasteful and didn't like how frequently I used it which I found slightly amusing as it was her innate cunty demeanour that demanded I explain a simple joke again and again. How many other four letter and one syllable words could perfectly encapsulate a cunt other than cunt? She then drew out the age old and completely spurious argument that those who swore to excess were just exposing their own lack of vocabulary. To prove her wrong in the fullest sense I spoke in hugely belligerent multi syllabic terms for the next 5 minutes with the odd cunt thrown in for good measure. I always find that to be a most satisfying way to communicate. Juxtaposition being everything.

Subtitles at Midnight

At what point did television execs sit down and decide that people wanted to hear about pension deficits and government party manifestos on a Sunday morning at 8:30? As a child, Sunday had the capacity to be the very best or the very worst of days for me. There is so much around that could put an instant dampener on a Sunday for a child. The long months of grey skies and cold winter rain meant you were more than likely locked indoors over weekends and then you were faced with political and religious programming liberally scattered across the then 4 television channels. Neither the kind of thing that any normal child would look forward to.

As a choice it was Thatcher or Archbishop of Canterbury who forever seemed to be presiding over some ridiculously boring Harvest Festival which owed less to religious observance and more to do with your mum and dad getting rid of the old unwanted tinned food that had sat in the cupboard since the last time you were told by your primary school teacher to pester them for their handouts. Sunday have always been a shitty day for me.

Next week: Why are signed programmes for deaf people only on at 2am in the morning? Are deaf people really all vampiric in nature? Does that explain why they sound so daft when they try to speak?

Pitch me and I'll fuck you back.

Mondays. They really are shit aren't they. I've never been a fan and am usually a grumpy twat until at least 4pm.

A guy just turned up at my office and said he had a meeting with me at 9:30am. First I'd heard of it. Rather than sit there and go through my diary and question him as to when this meeting was pencilled in, I grabbed my tea and we both headed into our meeting room and let him get to it. He sat down, took a presentation from his bag and started pitching me for all manner of stupid ideas that I had absolutely no interest in following up in any way. Fuck it I thought to myself, I'll give him his ten minutes and by the time I finish my cup of tea I shall boot him out and get to the real work of the day.

Pages are being turned in his intensely cheap looking presentation and he is giving me facts and figures I am paying no attention to. Suddenly we get to a page with a picture of a dog in a jumper. He looked slightly confused at this and I smelled the fact that maybe he had been tucked up and jumped on it mercilessly.

Me - "What's this with dogs in jumpers? We're really not the type of company to waste time with this kind of shit, especially not on a Monday morning"

Him - "Er, I really apologise for that, that shot must have got mixed up in the presentation somehow..."

Me - "Hmmm"

So, slightly flustered he turns the page while I fix him with the steeliest of glares and then it happened. The funniest and best thing ever to occur on a Monday morning. The next page was a semi naked picture of him lying on a bed holding a bottle of beer in one hand and giving the thumbs up with the other hand. That was my composure gone and I just started laughing as loudly as I could. In between laughing so hard that I couldn't breathe properly I shouted for all of my colleagues to come in here right away and take a look at this. The poor fucker looked unbelievably horrified and he got up and left in such a hurry that he forgot the copy of the presentation (big mistake) and left me laughing so hard that I was now crying.

Oh the joy. I'm guessing right now that someone is about to get sacked in a big fat hurry.

Oh well, back to work