Generally taking the time to get away from the evil screen for a couple of days, spending a bit more of my life bopping about in the bank holiday blighted world of the replacement bus and the underground, to rant about UK hiphop to comparative strangers in the Eastern suburbs. Always a fine selection of beverages to be found on a bank holiday, and nice to swirl a bit of whiskey around the tumbler with a few old friends. A tasty selection of takeaways and a few films on the big screen while home and sofa bound with the omnipresent reassurance of a bit of Playstation time filling to see us through to work again. Yes not too bad a bank holiday at all.

2008 is so far turning out to be a year of lucky breaks for me. Round of about the closing days of December of every year I run around telling everyone I meet and ringing up my long suffering mates to say that the next year is going to be the best yet. That the platform is finally there for the good ship Bolo (and by association the Groover) to reap the dividends of years of late nights, furious thinking, growing hard work and sadness and loss for the ones we left behind.

Of course, things never quite pan out quite that way, as the weeks and months fly by and you settle into old patterns, shelve plans for movie scripts and get on with scheming about Friday nights down the pub, late night donner kebabs, and keeping out of argument with your work colleagues on a day to basis.

But this year I was doubly determined and so far, whisper it mind, I can confirm that things are going smoothly. As an example, (and the only one that seems fair to talk about here) my prognostications of doom about the house buying have turned out to be untrue. After a brief spate of viewing unsuitable shanty town properties and shirking my property searching responsibilities I let upon a fine flat in the distant shire of Ealing which seems perfectly adequate for my needs. Following a couple of days of offer making and general estate agent rinsery I find myself with an offer accepted and the thought of imminent financial ruin offset by the delight in a good deal, done quickly allowing decent living and (perhaps most importantly) preventing any sort of return to the parental mansion.

Those of you who are familiar with the crazed world of English property buying will be quick to point out, that an offer accepted is by no means a done deal. That now I must be wary lest I get gazumped (which twat invented that word?) by some plumbait or be fearful of a poor survey result or the chances of the process dragging on for months and months. However, for the moment I am content to ignore these concerns, and to revel in the possibilities of progress, an escape from the suburban dark ages (well semi-escape), the prospect of choosing life, a wide screen television and a well stocked fridge full of fine delicatessen delicacies and strange and obscure liquors.

It’s funny because years ago, when I was younger (inevitably), more foolish and sometimes more perceptive, I realised the link between the system (the man) and the property-ladder and the dangers it posed to the best intentions of the individual. To illustrate: As a generally socialist and free-thinking individual I am not down on the asylum seeker or the junkie seeking therapy. I feel for the kids on corners hanging around with nothing to do rather than put their hoods up and shit up old ladies with their mobile phone tunes. I am free to do as I please, to leave the country, to stop work for months at a time or to spend my wages on loud music and trainers.

As a home owner, I have to start worrying if someone builds something down the street that affects the value of my property. I have to keep an eye on mundane percentage figures and the economy. The bank will own my soul and in times of trouble can finally turn the tables and seize my worldly assets if I get unctious or refuse to pay my offensive debts. Oh yes debt. Debt to the hilt and beyond, the kind of staggering figure which is so large in terms of comprehension of salary, overdraft and that jar you keep with your bits of change and carpet fluff, that it is a figure without meaning, an immense pound sign that owns your soul, hangs a noose over your children and threatens to shut down your brain if the web work stops coming and the coffers dry up.

Home ownership takes away a little of your freedom to do as you please and forces you to stay within the confines of society. It keeps you pushing towards the big bucks and putting your feet on the faces of the proletariat. Ah Marx, you never saw London house prices coming.

Still, I wanted to do it. Partly peer pressure I guess. Didn’t want to be the last person in my group to own a small bit of space, four walls and a three piece suite. But also something deeper. Maybe something in the classic adage about an Englishman and his castle. After all these years of flat sharing and seeing the washing up pile up while the walls get covered in the dirt from scuffles, exploding bottles and office chair rides down the stairs, the urge to claim a place of my own. A safe sanctuary where no fucker, be they landlord, drunken pal, or wandering gate crasher can rain on my parade. A place to plot future plans of world domination, to escape from these petty provincial despots and to create great things in peace and safety.

Jesus, that sounds like a distant dream. Like an advert for a car, or maybe Playstation 3. A perfect hermitage in a digital landscape, but I’m not sure. I think there is some resonance here. I think this could be the right way to go, that this place of tranquility could exist for real. Perhaps most importantly that it could be the right time to set up headquarters, that it probably is about time that I get some space, convene my best generals and plan the next (ideally mortgage clearing) epic campaign.

Ah well, who knows. The deal is done now and tomorrow the estate agent will be ringing to advance the process. I could duck his call, plead insanity or a lack of clean underwear, but I am pretty certain this will not be the case. I will answer the phone with a gag ready for him to laugh at (he’s paid well to laugh at my jokes), and the great wheel, despite my best efforts, will keep turning.

Big up your respected chests boloists. Just trying to get something down too – I know what you mean Coybag. Today has been the sort of day that makes you extremely envious of anyone lucky enough to have a dog to spike with Coca-Cola. It began extremely early – up at 6, awake at 5, ringpiece contracting in anticipation of driving test number 2. Get there 25 minutes early, having managed to munch down just half a bit of toast with my useless, saliva free mouth. Forced to chat football with the cunt that runs the driving school – his other conversational mode revolves around teenage birds, so I suppose that was a blessing in disguise really.

Get to the test centre, legs shaking nervously like a kid with ADD and a belly full of mentos and coke. I’m ready to pop. You just know it’s going to go tits up, but why is it so important and nerve-racking? I think it may be raw harshness of being in a position where some hard-faced bint with confused genitalia has the RIGHT, nay the absolute NEED to JUDGE you. I mean, obviously it couldn’t be any other way, given that they are effectively putting youths in front of highly powered combustion engine driven machines, but some part of me just HATES THAT SHIT. Not that I didn’t deserve to fail – I drove like RAb C Nesbit on a Smack come down. Very very jerky and Oh so off the right trajectory. Gear changes that would knock the spliff out of your hands every time. 40 km/h in a 30 zone, in second – the engine whining like a weasel being ripped to shreds by two wild boars – have it.

Still, decided to try and vent some of the negative energy on the way home from work by calling on an old trusted friend – the pool hall, and his cousin, strong belgian lager. Things are slightly more rosy now, but the need to burst this stress crammed whitehead of a mood lingers on, so I’m giving bolo a semi-eloquent, smut filled bashing.

Had an interesting chat with the owner of the pool hall though. I’d picked him as some kind failed cue sports pro, but it turns out he is an ex-managing director of Ford France. Never judge a book by its cover, this geezer sits there pretending to read the racing form, but he’s actually learning Russian, the mentalist. He also confirmed a commonly held view about the local Bordeaux folk (the “Bordelais”)….but that’s another story.

In a last desperate effort to find something that might stir my foul-smelling foamy intra-cranial slop into bolo action I decided that science might prove to be the safe fall back that it has often proved when it comes to trying to make oneself look intelligent (ah, I recall the heady days of arseing around in BSc Environmental science [emphasis on the BS] at university, whilst out of lectures holding court with the sociologists and media studies goons – aka proto estate agents, explaining over a watered down plastic-wrapped Foster’s the wonders of a cumulonimbus or the life-cycle and dining etiquette of a house sparrow [Passer domesticus don't you know, you ignorant FOOLS], basically reciting all I had learnt from various Ladybird and Usborne books, with the crucial credibility-sealing smattering of premium breezology in order to send their slack jaws pouring onto the fag-burnt carpet…and to stop anyone finding a gap in time to point out my goatee beard and centre parting). I thus planned to devise a series of experiments that will stretch the boundaries of human repulsion to anything I do or represent, the results of which will be revealed periodically on this fine site, to the accompaniement of gasps, sighs, and incredulous murmurings from the public, and creaking noises from my bottom. Teeheehee. No seriously, they’re there, don’t know what causes them, but they often seem a very appropriate reaction to whatever I happen to be doing when they make themselves heard.

Unfortunately I only got as far as feeding my dog coca-cola, which was so hilarious I decided that the the tongue-stiffening, lip-curling, violently sneezing and hyperactively tail-chasing reaction was the only possible expansion of knowledge that anyone could ever want (on a Sunday anyway)…and I didn’t care that by the time I’d stopped laughing I was shaking violently and wondering whether I was a bit of a psychopath..and I didn’t care that I lunged at bolo with an idea infinitely more tenuous than any of the ones I’ve cursed and consigned to cyber-oblivion, I just had to get something down y’see? And that is that for now,pending a comment from my bottom…

Calling all boloists, for an as yet unclear reason….

Well it’s been a long time since I picked up my heavy hands and let them dance their booze infested dance on the keyboard, so now seems as good as time as any. I’ve formulated many plans to write short stories, amusing episodes and generally awe-inspiring, wit-infused prose on this site in the past, but fear, laziness and booze always seem to stand in my midst. Not tonight though, nooooooo, tonight I am Enid Blyton on crack. Tonight Mathew, I dance the fandango with an eyelid full of cocaine.

So, Bolo is 2 years of age, eh? An achievement in itself I’d say, if you consider how many of us have heard tell of this or that website, designed to hone the genius which we all would like to believe resides within the realms of our own social spheres. Perhaps it might be an idea to celebrate this fact in person? Given that the many of the contributors have never met, it could be a worthwhile bash. Strangers I’ve met before, but not those who have revealed parts of their worlds in blog form…

As for me, nothing much to report really. Just the usual French action over here. Much outrage, little action and plenty of fromage, strikes and the heady mix of celebrity and politiks (Sarkozy vs. Carla Bruni’s hind crease, part 12, the greasy discriminator).

Well, I’d like to write more, but it’s not fun to spend as much time correcting the work of drunken fingers as it is trying to hit the goddam plumbait keys in the first place. Bed beckons, followed by work in a den of menopausal hell, topped off by a driving lesson with a man creepy enough to be tagged as a paedo, yet entrusted with the job of teaching hapless fiends how to control a ton of solid steel (and tacky Renault plastic).

I’ll leave you with a film tip – A Danish trilogy called The Pusher. The first one is a must see if you get the option. If bolo would accept it, perhaps we could set up a pier to pier file share facility?

Thanks for reading, big up to the 2 year old bolo!

Spent a couple of hours this evening sipping strong filter coffee and nibbling at a rock cake, contemplating a series of expensive houses on t’internet and thinking – jesus, this is the calm before the storm.

At the moment I am invisible to the estate agents, but tomorrow I must stop putting off the inevitable. To ignore it any longer is to invite getting my current residence sold out from under me and find myself deposited back in the unwilling arms of the parentals. That is not good ju-ju, not by any means, so yes, the only answer is to pick up the phone and start baiting these clowns. Get real visible as a potential chain-free client with a bag of website money burning a hole in my pocket. It’s going to be open season.

From tomorrow, I will be afraid to pick up the phone, lest it be some scraggly yoot from Foxtons looking to pick my pockets, but for tonight I still have some peace. So I’m sitting here drinking this coffee and listening to the wind bash the windows, watching my phone blink silently and not feeling all that bad. Any fast movement could provoke danger, but maybe if I keep real still, things will be alright for a while.

Hey you, no peeking! You know who you are….

To the rest of you, you will no doubt, be amazed/aghast/ashamed/delighted (delete as appropriate) to know that Bolo is now 2 years old. This means that while it is perfectly acceptable for bolo to run around shrieking, drink from a beaker and watch tellytubbies, the rest of you are old enough to know better. Here’s to another year of strange tales and happy accidents.

I have never felt threatened by immigration and I have often delighted in arguing with various people over the years over the value of bringing new people in to shake things up and change the social environment. As a result, I was pretty chuffed when I was asked by a friend of a friend to help them out in getting a site up and running which would help people to come to England without suffering from conmen, plumbaits or robbers, and putting them on the path to contributing to the legal economy. The site is now in final testing phase (bit rough around the edges, but coming along) and I invite anyone who wants or needs to to check it out at work-in-england.co.uk.

For all you boloists out there who are either enslaved by other halves on a completely corporation-abused day or those that are thinking of killing themselves as yet another day passes to commemorate another year of loneliness, Charlie Brooker has written eloquently on the proposal for an anti-v day… http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2008/feb/11/charliebrooker.relationships

I find caffeine in both hot beverages and coca cola a major aid to staying up late pulling websites from my sleeves. However, there is only so long you can go after a few days of seeing how long you can go. That time has passed and it is now imperative that I switch off the evil machine, have a last cup of tea and a conflab and then hit the road. The trip is short and hopefully incident free and before I know it I will be home, taking off my jacket, planning a sandwich a small dosage of tv and then the blessed arms of deep and restful sleep. Hooray for cheese and pickle blessed night terrors and the ominous chance of Estate Agents leading crazies into my room if I once again oversleep.

Being a suburban dweller, I probably spend more time on the London Underground bopping about the place than most people. Probably more than is healthy in fact. It’s either that, or restrict myself to the insular world of North West London life and I’m sensible enough to know that that way leads only to madness, potential smack addiction and severe lack of women.

So, in the interests of keeping sane and healthy I like to jump on the train a few times a week, heading to Shoreditch for a few brews, the West End for a spot of Chinese food or Waterloo for a touch of culture followed by a bit of Waterloo sunset promenading along with the tourists, the buskers and the endless stream of loved up couples, crossing the bridge with little care of anything else in the world. Sometimes I go further afield, like last night ending up in the high-rise, high crime nexus of Canning Town, but that’s another story and best kept for another time.

Like all Londoner’s (even those like myself tenuously hanging onto that tag with a greater London postcode), I have a fair bit to complain about on the tube, but all that has been said a thousand times before and actually I wanted to talk a little bit about the things that amuse me on the tube rather than the crumbling infrastructure itself.

Like yesterday, trying to catch a few moments of sleep on the way into Baker Street and these two Asian kids sitting on the aisle opposite are shouting out their conversation for all to hear. It was the age old conversation between two guys where one of them is going.

“Yeah, I been seeing this girl for a month man, she works for Harrods as an Assistant Manager blad, she’s got her head locked on man, you know she’s cool.

and his slightly more cocky mate, who thinks he’s seen a few things is going.

“Yeah, but have you banged her man?”

“Nah, man I haven’t, you know she’s not like that. Like, she ain’t like other girls you know, she’s, ah, you know, I dunno……”

“Blad, a month – I wouldn’t be waiting two hours, blad. Seriously, my girl , I’m going to see her now, man. When I get there she got dinner ready for me and everything. And when I finish that, you know she’s going to be rolling me up a spliff and then you know we’re going to be heading to the bedroom.”

Mr slightly less cocky, has got his eyes wide open now, like he’s hearing of the promised land or something, but he’s telling his friend:

“yeah, but what can I do man, you know these things take time, you got to pick the right moment, yeah.” Fortunately, asian lothario man has got a plan. I was a little cynical about it, but I’m going to pass it on in case it works for anyone else.

“I tell you man, this is what you gotta do. Just go over there now, right and then say you’re like tired right and like go to sleep in her bed, and you know she’s going to go to sleep with you and then you know you can get cuddling and that and you know take a few clothes off. Before you know it blad, everything going to come right”.

“Yeah I got to do that man, that’s a good idea you know”.

Hmm, so much for romance, but good crack for the idle ipod listening Groovernort, slightly more aware of other conversations on this day because his headphones are breaking so he has to twist the wire to get stereo sound.

It’s not always that way of course. Sometimes people just want to fuck with you. Like two days ago when I’m travelling back from Moorgate in the day and a couple of work colleagues get on and sit down in the aisle opposite. Now, I’ve been working like a bastard all morning and I know when I get back to the office I’ve got to work like a bastard again, so I’m doing a little time management by eating my beautiful Pret all-day-breakfast sandwich on the way back. I know that the smell of food can bother some people, so I have purposefully picked an empty carriage, but these two new ingrates insist on getting on and sitting close to me, presumably so that one of them can cast harsh gazes at me a few times before muttering loudly to her colleague:

“Someone’s got the munchies”. and then:

“I often wonder whether they should ban food on the underground, but I guess no-one would take any notice anyway”. – cue withering glance in my direction

To address these comments in turn, I’m sitting there thinking ‘the munchies’, no I do not have the munchies thanks, it’s lunchtime and I am hungry. I am engaging in that strange and not uncommon human tradition known as lunch. I am eating to survive. I am not stoned, I am not eating bacon bits with icecream and a mars bar. I am eating a sandwich because I need to live. I need to work.

The second comment does it though. By then I feel like this silly bitch is trying to bully me. Trying to make me feel bad about eating my lunch so I start staring at her. I’m considering living up to her expectations of loutish youth by opening my mouth so she can see my partially chewed food, by throwing the remains of my food at her frustrated pinched face, seeing the bits of egg and bacon dripping down off her cheekbones and straggly hair, obscuring her nostrils and staining her trouser suit.

This seems, a step too far, and I remind myself that my whole aim to start with had been to not offend anyone. To keep my bacon out of the eyesight of muslims and jews alike. So, instead, I just start smiling, I shift in my seat to directly face my assailant, I peel my banana and I sit there grinning, then I get my shopping bag out of my rucksack and crack open a few more items I had been meaning to save for later. A can of shandy, a pack of celery, some cheese slices, a babybel, a yoghurt, a bottle of vegetable juice, some crackers, an apple, a pack of ham. A whole healthy picnic wielded by a grinning man, eating slowly and rustling the packaging. By Wembley Park, the lady looks pretty green, sickened by the mound of rubbish that I make a point of putting back into my bag for efficient and legal disposal later, and I feel full.

My word, what a strange tangent that was to go off on. Ah well, writing that out was quite cathartic and lets face it, I think I may have succeeded in demonstrating that the tube is a strange and amusing place, peopled by lunatics, some of which may possibly include me. Vive next week fellow bolos, it’s only getting worse, but lets face it, we’re getting better.

The new year has kicked off without the politeness to stop and allow me to catch breath. A solid dose of work as suddenly all who have been promised websites or graphical works of great wonder are suddenly determined to collect by the end of the month. Fortunately, this plan fits right in with me, pinwheeling through the days in a blaze of confused bureaucratic phonecalls followed by week nights of strange coding insights and shouts of weird syntax.

Finding time in between that to hit the winter streets and prop up bars, ranting nonsense to strangers, discussing the merits of a fine port with a learned barman and accomplishing brandy endorsed missions with old work pals. Avoiding kebab based chicanery to jump onto the last train as the doors close behind me. Whack the ipod on, pass out, head out into suburbia for the obligatory chat about Nigerian politics with the taxi driver and the promise of cheese and lucid dreams to follow.

In fact, just the right start for a man on a faltering new year’s mission, hat at a jaunty angle and spring firmly in step.

Ah, as ever, so much to write about and so little time to do it in. I must berate myself anew and get on with telling some godamn stories. In the meantime, I just want to encourage all members of bolo to stick it to the man wherever possible and to not take any guff from these swine. This fellow has the right idea:

www.youtube.com/watch?v=rm9dzLxLvxc

A few months ago, I started getting paranoid about the number of pictures featuring me going up on Facebook for the world’s consumption. Suddenly it was possible to meet me on a Saturday and by Monday be perusing pictures of myself aged 6, 18, or 21. A potted history of the Groover all contributed by unreliable witnesses, snapping off shaky digital camera shots and publishing them with little thought of whether I thought it appropriate to be pictured maroot in hand or with my arm draped around some hapless girlfriend, long since ashamed to have known me.

When the number of such photos reached 48, I decided to take definitive action, locking down my profile to a Fort Knox degree, so that it is now pretty much impossible to view anything more than my name and my profile photo. You can’t write on my wall, and I certainly won’t be joining any efforts to kill vampires, cowboys, gangsters, or super poking you.

Then I tuned out of Facebook completely. It had become infested with people I hardly knew insisting that I was their friend. It felt rude to refuse them, but I began to realise that I was collecting up faces for my virtual book, without ever emailing them. A sort of human Pokemon where the playing cards were all people who I had talked to once at sixth form and never ever thought about again. Some of my real friends (primarily those in doss jobs or unemployment) are still in their element with it, firing off wall posts and collecting items for their aquariums, but mostly they fall into the easily distracted category, just killing time, or poking about with other human relations because the boss is out for the afternoon.

I’m being a bit cynical, because I do see that there is fun to be had with this social networking thing. I do still check it every couple of weeks for salient communications from people who I do actually know, but whose email addresses I’ve lost. I’m just saying I’ve stopped counting how many friends I don’t really have.

An old man once told me that the only truth in this world was in the behaviours of animals. However, having spent the last few months working in a house full of cats, I beg to differ. Duplicitous little fuckers, they feign affection on the off-chance of some scraps of food and then when you don’t give them any, they wait until you are looking the other way before sticking needle type claws into your legs.

Actually, I am getting to like cats, because they look nice, they are quite soft and you have to admire the cheek of them really. Still, I vastly prefer dogs, which though pretty much imbecilic by nature are dependent are enough on you that it makes you feel like you are needed. Popped over to the parentals’ house the other day to be greeted as ever like a long lost celebrity by my dog. Despite his advanced years, the little bugger insisted on raising his heart/breathing rate by tearing around the house with a number of soft and squeaky toys, urging me to wrestle him for them before throwing them into another room, to cue a mad scramble towards recapturing them again.

These are pretty simple pleasures really, but I admire my dog’s refusal to acknowledge that he is anything other than a puppy. Despite rheumatism, greying coat, confused mind etc he seems unfazed and very much determined to go on generally acting the goat, biting postmen and sleeping in the one patch of sunlight that hits the lounge carpet in the mornings. I have been preparing myself for the inevitable for some time, but I truly think that when he goes it will be a pretty dark day and may lead to much whisky drinking, crying into my sleeve and smashing up of Estate Agents cars.

A mature reaction to grief has never seemed right to me, as despite the inevitability of all things coming to an end, it still seems deeply unfair. A good friend of mine, recently lost a close relative far too early and all I could think was “what a gyp”. What a colossal rinseout of everything right and decent. I started to envisage God as some semi-illiterate pikey, stealing lives from their rightful owners so that he could trade them in for a wide screen television for his caravan. I haven’t thought of a better vision than this, so I’m prepared to stand by it. Truth, beauty, epiphany, these are all noble words and powerful sensations, but then so is taking ecstasy and that can kill you as well, along with sex, going out, drinking beer and smoking cigarettes. Spending time with your pets seems pretty wholesome on that basis (unless of course you are some kind of animal fiddler), so maybe the old man was right after all.

I semi-swore to myself that I wouldn’t do a bah humbug it’s Christmas post this year, but seriously how likely was that to happen? Yes, bah humbug it is indeed Christmas.

The streets of my village metropolis are teeming with people rushing around carrying a number of bags, the look of desperation in their eyes as they go hunting for the perfect economic transaction to make the day of their nearest and dearest. Jostling for space in the cold meat section of M&S, poking trolleys into gaps that are too small for wheeled cages, and harrumphing mightily when you grab the last jar of branston pickle before their slow hand can dart in.

You know it’s a strange time of year, when you slow down the car to let a couple of PCSOs cross the road only to have one of them jump into the road and do a little dance, strangely misconstruing your act of kindness for an attempt to run them over. Caffe Nero is full of old-aged pensioners sheltering from the cold and young girls with too much make up and giant moon boots.

I for one am making a decent effort to avoid most of this excitement through the twin tactic of a) working so hard that the weeks spin by and Christmas creeps up on you without you noticing any of the preamble and b) not doing any Christmas shopping. My plan is to swoop somewhere towards the middle of next week and buy up all that I need to avoid family exile. This should work fine, but I must confess that the sight all around of other people making more timely preparations is giving me the fear to some degree.

Ah well, this is the season to be jolly, so perhaps it’s somewhat inevitable than in my usual cantankerous fashion I seem to be nestling around the edges of depression. Seems like the time has come for the buck to stop here or something like that, but lacking most of the energy to do it. Everything seems a little bit tawdry and washed out and I have the feeling the only solution is for some more big decisions, the resolve of a lunatic and just the right amount of magic. The lazy, low-self-esteem apart of me is bricking it about this to a substantial degree while another more optimistic part looks on with excitement, willing for new opportunities and new joke to be caught. A veritable powerhouse of demonic energy, smashed glass and mouth wide open laughter. Yes, it is long overdue to repeat the words of the good doctor: “well, here we go again”.

Never underestimate the power of a beautiful woman to impair your judgement.

Striking, as you well know, is a recognised institution in France. So much so that students do it, as with the “CPE” business last year, where French students pretty much closed down the university system for four months protesting about changes in the terms of the employment contract they could expect to receive for their first job (can you imagine British students having this foresight? I think the only thing that could have roused me into action during my student years would have been something horrific like an alcohol ban or a 9 to 5 week). In any case, they succeeded and the government backed down, only to slip the legislation through on the quiet a few months later, during the obscuring smugness of victory. But that’s another tale.

They are at it again now, against a reform of the university system on the whole. Ironically, although this one affects them in the here and now, there is much less united support for this ‘blocage’ movement (literally, this is where students move into the university buildings and refuse to leave/let anyone in). Although the current reform does not claim to do this, what they are ultimately afraid of is the introduction of selection at university level (that’s right, as it stands anyone can go to Uni here with the basic minimum “pass” from high school (the bac)). For the idealist, the lack of selection means that those of us who failed to get their proverbial sh1t together at school are given a clean sheet at Uni. For the realist, this means a potentially infinite number of free, retaken first year’s, a total disregard for study really, and, for the lucky ones who can afford it, plenty of booze, drugs and fromage…

Anyway, the students at Celine’s Uni in favour of the ‘blocage’ were aggrieved at the lack of media coverage their numerous demonstrations and the likes had gained, so they took further action. What did they do? You’d never, ever guess. They dressed themselves up as ghosts to represent their invisibility to the media and posed in front of the mairie. The doss c.unts. Then, get this, they dug a grave and ceremoniously buried the university constitution…Aaaaaaaaaaaaaaarghhhhhhhh! Monkey face!!!!!!!

In the noble intention of providing an island of banality in the intellectual maelstrom that bolo has recently been wound into, and as a way of slowing the juggernaut of creativity careering towards the little terraced house at the corner of sanity terrace, Middle Wallop I would like to point out that, if you bite the end off of a Mars bar and leave it in the fridge for a minmum of 24 hours (ideally 36), the exposed edge turns into Double Decker. Try it when your brain’s hurting.

Actually, as for that juggernaut – I stand as much chance of slowing it as a half-asleep possum could Christopher Biggins in stampede. But why would I want to anyway? Brain’s hurting, I guess – having to be used in many unfamiliar ways of late (thankfully not work-related), which I will divulge only once bolo’s current capacity for boredom has been increased somewhat. That’s too much from me already – my Gawd, was that an I’m a Dick Emery, get me out of my own arse reference?!!!! Wonder if the Mars bar thing works in reverse….

The day starts slowly in the Outzone as the light from a distant star is reflected across the galaxy by a series of giant mirrors, rotating in minor increments to simulate the beginnings of light round about 3am on the place I call home. The old sun was moved for tax reasons a long time ago, its warm glow a distant memory, depleted by the early millennium attempts to brand it. The first giant coke logo went quite well, merely creating a dark zone in Africa where the kids grew up with no resistance to sun, an almost preternatural ability to see in the dark and an intense hatred of caffeine based products. The second mission from Nike went rather less well as halfway through drawing the ‘Swoosh’, a part of the sun blew off taking out the colonies at Rigel 3 and making the decision inevitable to move it to somewhere where its supernova brightness wouldn’t ruin the experience for tourists quite so much.

So now the light bearing down on the lonely figure comes from further away – Alpha Centauri and beyond, moving out in light tunnels ten thousand miles wide, bouncing off of the reflectors at the light hub constellations, increasingly known for their lawless behaviour and the threat of someone putting the light out, before hitting the filtering station at Saturn, which removes some of it radioactive properties, colours it according to the telephone vote of the previous day and sends it onward, warming people lying by the pool and enabling people going about their business to see. Branding is much easier these days because you can apply your logo directly at the filtering stage, removing much of the risk of destruction and merely causing waving of fists in the areas of the planet that end up shaded for up to a month by the ligature points of a logo, before the advert changes to something else.

Of course, none of this light stuff means all that much to the figure because he is totally blind and anyway, doesn’t really give a fuck about sunlight. An early convert to the virtual brainsets of 2042, photorealistic head pods that plugged directly into your brain to stimulate every experience of a game or televisual experience as though it were real life. Why go outside and meet people when you can load up fourth life and walk around wearing better clothes, meeting attractive women/men (delete as appropriate) who hang on your every word. Why not go out on a three day coke session when it doesn’t hurt your nose? Why get a job when in the world of the screen, you rule a mighty army, you’re hanging about like the rat pack, throwing out epithets like confetti, an endless hullabaloo.

Inevitably, there’s a catch because all the while you are hooked up to the mainframe, talking to the digital recreation of Lindsay Lohan, having custody battles with Britney Spears and scheming on caving in Pete Docherty’s face, somewhere back in your flat, your body is sitting in a heap, sweating and voiding itself, your eyes peeled back and your eyes slowly drying out from lack of blinking, your brain dying from lack of thinking about anything other than what colour tie goes best with a cerise Ralph Armani suit.

It was common around about that time to see the decaying bodies of the half alive slumped in the vid kiosks, their only hope that their phone credit would run out and some half scrupulous character at the banking corporations would pull their overdraft before they went past the point of no return. This rarely happened because the workers in the banks were on commission and anyway since the buyout by Starbucks had to divide their time between paying in cheques, giving unsuitable mortgages, not answering the phone, with making lattes and playing awful middle of the road jazz albums.

Patrick was lucky in some respects, 30 days into his epic voyage, 30,000 miles under your consciousness, a carrier of the B3 disease, saw him for a soft touch and attempted to pick his pockets on breaking into his apartment looking for a place to crash and shoot some mendephol. However, having no hands he fucked up the extraction process, pressing the wrong button on his hover cane, pumping a few 100 volts of electricity into Patrick’s piss stained tracksuit bottoms instead of magnetizing out his wallet. The result for Patrick was that his fucking of Shannon Docherty was interrupted as his headset rebooted, confused by the introduction of too much power. For a fleeting second Patrick knew who he was again, knew where he had been and knew that he was in trouble (at the same time he was regretting that it had all been a dream).

The B3 carrier sensed his target’s vulnerability was fast fading, dived in with both stumps, managing to put one in Patrick’s throat and one in the squishy part near the kidney’s. Patrick took umbrage from this, tore the headset off his face before bringing it down in a clattering fashion on his assailant’s head. After 30 days he was intensely weak, but he was lucky, B3 sufferers have soft heads from a chronic deficiency of iron and the erosive effects of the disease. The head in question popped like a grape and Patrick was left lying in his own filth, covered in stinking brains and rapidly starting to realise he couldn’t see shit. His headset was blinking out an unseen ‘Game Over’ message, his bank account was empty and that meant the enforcers from Claims Direct were already on their way.

I was feeling just about as low as I cared to feel on a Sunday. Old time urges to get the monkey off my back and retrospective thoughts about other paths I could have taken, other people I could have been. I was at a point in time where it felt like I knew too much, but had so little ability to act on what I knew. I was like a clown without a clown suit, left trying to make mime jokes without an audience, without hands and without an appreciation of mime. Fuck mime, I hate it.

Suddenly seems a much more exciting thing to be a part of now I have read this article. All I can really say is “good work Frenchies”.

I tried to keep it in, but I can feel it bursting bile-like out of the pores of my very skin. A clammy urgency. It’s got to be purged, lest I rush in there tomorrow morning and start cussing like a black pimp from Jerry Springer and handing out vicious, back-handed slaps. (“Get my paper, skank-ho, get my money”)
Those bastards. Or, to be precise, those bitches.
I am the only bloke in a team of 6 and as a consequence I have largely and luckily avoided the terrible back-stabbing that goes on in teams of women. This may be construed as a misogynistic comment, but, if the mighty bolo is indeed surveyed by any lady lurkers, I ask you to think hard about the truth of this statement in terms of your own experience before judging me as such. Not that men are above bitching, god knows I’ve definitely caught myself doing it often enough, especially in the current office climate which has established itself, cancer-like, in the heart of our team ethos. Our company values proclaim that “Only when we work together as a team can 2 + 2 = 5″, but it would be more accurate to say “Only when we work together as a team can we find a scapegoat among our number worthy of a proper coating”. It might go down better than the mathematically dubious real value, given that I work for an IFA….
Anyway, due to a lot of drama that belongs nowhere here, work has been very far down my list of priorities of late. My immediate boss is a good friend of mine, and she was the only one to consider that maybe I had things on mind which had nothing to do with the office (god forbid). But the rest of the bitches, I have just learnt, have begun to use my admittedly slightly slack time keeping as their group gripe. I am the latest scapegoat that binds their idiot minds together. They are a beast, and they believe me to be their next easy meal. That I may be sacrificed, silently put to the sword by the coffee machine so that they may better overcome their differences and bond in a common purpose. Think again, you wily old skeets. The tables are about to turn, and I will expose your individual psychoses before you even come close to mine….Ha Ha, skeezers, get ready for Daddy.
Ah, but wouldn’t I just be falling into their trap to react like that? Shouldn’t I just be cool, keep my head down and wait until their evil eye moves on to another target? No, what I really, really should do, is create a “back-stabbing box” and leave it somewhere in plain sight. Every time they start slagging off somebody who isn’t there, I should pick up the box, saunter over to their desk and demand payment (“Cough up sugar, Daddy needs his paper”).
Work is a chore for me. I do not particularly enjoy it. I dream of making a brave, lone break to a land where I control my own destiny, but for the moment I have not cracked my escape plan. But, in the meantime, I will damn well defend my right to not work in a team of two-faced, insecure, menstrually-synchronized, rabid bitches. There are none for that.
Suggestions on a postcard to the usual address, but nothing from “Nippy” Dave please. I’d get more sense from Ronald MacDonald or Pete Doherty.

Way back when, long before the internet had really kicked off and people were forced to venture out into the wild once in a while to catch up with old friends and drink themselves into inebriation, I worked for the big M, flipping burgers for small change. I was young, but I had big dreams of Friday nights spent downing pints and staring at cleavage and that required some sort of fundage.

The money McDonald’s paid was pretty poor – I think I was on about £3.40 an hour at the time, but it was either that or Sainsbury’s and that was well known as being even more oppressive and dull. McD’s was partially alright in that while it was a) full of plumbait management that lacked any form of ability or power of communication and b) full of rude customers that believed entirely mistakenly that they were better than the 17 year olds manning the tills and c) a land of constant peril, where the repetitive tasks could lull you into a false sense of security causing you to hideously burn your hand on a grill or slice a wrist on a tomato slicer; it was redeemed by a good quantity of the staff. From A-level students (the vast majority), crazy economic migrants, reformed criminals, drug dealers, to young strumpets, miserable school leavers and black power supremacists, you were always guaranteed a laugh during the few hours you spent greasing up your hair and skin over the grill plattens.

I was consigned to the kitchen along with many of my closest acquaintances (we all pretty much joined up at the end of one summer in classic late adolescent sheep tactics), due to my inability to be polite to ingrates at the till and my saving grace of being able to simultaneously cook up to five types of burger at one time without breaking a sweat. Commonly teamed with Lurcho, Crimp or Steedo (on till for his greater skills of diplomacy) we would spend all day shouting abuse at each other, eating cheese and lecturing the constant stream of new recruits on the fine art of burger dressing, indie music and management baiting.

Sometimes I would work late, cleaning up equipment before clearing out the doughnut cabinet, while other times I would rock in at 7:00 on a Saturday, reeling from drunkenness rolled over from the night before. The trick on those occasions was to quickly fire everything up, get some food in the stager and then lie on the cool tiled floor, watching the ceiling spin until you felt a little better. Bloody hell, that was a long time ago. Before I had to pretend to be able to blag my way through decisions. Before the freedom and excess of university. A time of hideous A-levels you didn’t want to be taking, precariously balanced with a growing appreciation of the attractions of fucking about.

Anyway, it wasn’t all good, but it’s done now and in fact McD’s in Pinner closed a good year or so ago now. The franchisee wasn’t making the returns he had been used to now that the nation had suddenly gone health conscious and anyway, the groups of hoodies frequenting the place in the evenings were making the whole thing more trouble than it was worth.

It closed its doors and stood empty for a while until rumours took hold that it was to become a Wetherspoon’s. This wasn’t entirely unwelcome as though this portended the prospect of a town full of a old and unpleasant alcoholics at all times of day, in the last year, many of the pubs had closed down. The powers that be have decided that Pinner is to become one of those places full of restaurants that inextricably attract enough customers to make money while avoiding alcohol related disorder, noise and everything else that offends rotarians, spinsters and people who think that a Heath Robinson museum is a good use of a few million pounds of public money. The result of there being no pubs, meant nowhere for the upwardly mobile youngsters to go, which had detracted from the area, forcing me to near enough entirely avoid it in my weekend hours, keeping my money firmly in the illegal economy and out of the hands of faux Italian restaurantiers that charge high prices for poor food presented nicely, while people sit there going “lovely, lovely”, because they don’t know any better and it all feels like something slightly mundane, but no-one dares call it.

Anyway, that’s a bad tangent to go off on. The point is really that Wetherspoon’s did not move in the space left by the Golden Arches. Instead they were outbid by the zenith of evil as we know it. The prepubescent boys of Foxtons Estate Agents have descended and now we are all doomed. Their sign lights up the dark street (primarily featuring signs fitted in the 1970s) changing colour as if to say I have no knob, but I shine very brightly, their scribbled on mini-coopers fill the carparks and pull out of intersections driven by scrotes that can barely see over the wheel. These same scrotes then turn up putting leaflets through my letterbox once a week telling us that we could sell the house with them for five billion euros and if you let them in, lecture you about Sport, the state of the market and their inability to give anything, but the best service. Knock-kneed greed merchants playing on the size of their organisation to practice unfair competition (they have launched with a no-fees for six months offer) on an already saturated market of independent providers, loss-leaders that can guarantee with a voracious approach to sales motivated by a policy of publicly humiliating low-performers on a regular basis, the right amount of shoeshine and enough Amy Winehouse powder on the nostril, that success is just around the corner. Ah, I have so much to say about this, but first I have go to go and plan a new strategy. The battle of Pinner has just begun and there is nowhere to get a cheap slab of meat wrapped in ketchup, plastic cheese and bread, to keep our sustenance levels up.

Big up, fellow boloists and any regular, non-spam gunning lurkers. Just a few words to blow the dust off the keyboard before another week in paradise begins. Been a bit absent of late, but have been reading and appreciating the bolo wisdom on a regular. Just one of those times where you keep checking the site, selfishly devouring any new content, then not bothering to do the right thing and chip in a paragraph or two to the bolo cause. Imagine if all humanity were destroyed, apart from this website. What kind of an impression would the aliens have of us? Which is why it is important that I step to the table with my level-headed, xenophobic, rational, reactionary and often misguided rants. Yes, yes, motherf0ckers. That’s why I took the liberty of informing myself with a healthy dose of Sky News before coming out to play on the finer parts of the web tonight; I was thinking of the possibility of alien life and the bigger picture…

There were 3 main stories on this particular vein of knowledge impoverished sludge tonight :

1. “No New Finds Yet in Murder Suspect Home Search”
Brooksideesque body discovery in the chalk infested lands of my youth. Police to spend eons digging through concrete floors in the hopes of solving every missing person case since 1986. I saw the suspect and I’m fairly sure he didn’t have access to heavy mining equipment. Then again, you never really know with these sick, soulless wretches so I suppose that’s fair enough. What is not fair enough is Sky’s pedestrian “find some old dears who say they don’t expect this to happen on their doorstep” journalism. I mean, if you’re going to spend 10 minutes on a story, it should have at least some CONTENT, not give you the impression that you’ve walked past an incredibly long newsstand with 2500 copies of the same issue of the Daily Mail on display.

2. “Cyclone Sidr: Hundreds still Missing”
This headline is succinct at best – the hurricane has killed an estimated 15 000 people. But, don’t worry, never fear – us Brits have stepped up to the plate and delivered the good news on the aid front; £2.5million! That’s the equivalent of say, one of Simon Cowell’s London properties. My heart is swelling with national pride right now. Still, I suppose it’s only fair that we look after those less fortunate than us, especially when we are probably helping to nail their economy and national debt to the floor by setting up umpteen sweatshops to keep our fat, misguided idiot nation in size 38″ waist Carharrt combat trousers. I am being slightly unfair as this aid offer was made when the death toll was only estimated at 2 500, but you get the point.

3. “Madeleine’s alive and we’re closing in on Her”
I was intending to add this one in jest (given the recent, fairly heated toings and froings on this site a few months ago), but having checked their website it seems my dubious sense of humour pre-empted the fact. Now, I’m not going to launch into the whole thing again, but I would just like to say that I am convinced that half of the time and resources spent on finding one little English girl would belittle our meager aid efforts to Bangladesh, to name just one possible cause. I understand that people need to relate to events to become involved in them, but we are badly in need of the iron fist of perspective up our proverbial pipes if you ask me.

There was also the small matter of the Japanese restarting commercial whaling under the guise of “scientific research vital to the future of Japan”. It just so happens that this research must ultimately result in the killing and eating of 50 hump backed whales. Quelle coincidence, you knicker-sniffing psychopaths.

Looking forward to a novel start to the day tomorrow – a driving test to kick the week off. Been trying to keep busy today, which did result in all too infrequent trip to the cinema to see American Gangster (well worth a watch for those not afraid of very convincing acts of violence and Russel Crowe’s “balls in a separate bag” Americano accent), but it hasn’t kept the demons away entirely. What’s bothering me is more the fact that the guy who owns the driving school will be in the car during the exam. He is not my regular instructor, and although I have only had 1 lesson with him I can tell you he is simply one of the worst people I have ever met. A squat, arrogant little shit who believes he is France’s answer to Tom Cruise, with a way of talking about teenage girls (including this rank horse like “clop-clop” noise he makes) that makes me feel guilty for having a penis and not being gay. The bloke is a total James Blunt with the ability to sap all positivity out of you with his mere existence.

Anyway, if I remember my left from my right through the judgmental mists of acrid, pedarastic fug I may just crack it, so wish me luck.