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”.
Leave a commentI 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.
2 CommentsBaited my visage,
My square eyes await
A message from afar,
Sent hither adress’d with care.
A page –
A note
Sealed with a kiss it wends its way
By Fairy, Pixie, Goblin, Wisp
And o’er many a furlong and many a day.
I wake at once on its fanfared arrival
And rush so expectantly to the metal box
In anticipation of a sumptuously rewarding perusal.
Yegads! Hallelujah! Fruit of my patience I reapeth!
Hotmail has loaded. Quicker than usual.
As I stood watching a load of poxy fireworks last night, I couldn’t help wondering what life would be like had old Fawkesy and his crew not been thwarted. Also, given the state of our morally and intellectually bankrupt political system, I further mused over whether or not we should really be celebrating it.
1 CommentI was out walking today in the autumn sunshine – the most beautiful, clear, brilliant white variety that intricately defines every feature, enhancing everything you see and creating a beauty in many things that that seems only to exist in these conditions, or rather revealing one hitherto latent. Colours that in summer give out a saturated glow and radiance now take on a new intensity; intense yet pale, pale but without the harsher steeliness of winter. Leaves without their absorbent chlorophyll now seem to be returning unwanted light, flashing pure gold, while what green pigment remaining appears to want to engage in synchronicity, lending to a strobe-like rhythmically oscillating bifrequency kaleidoscope effect above one’s head whilst walking. There just seems to be so much light – to look within several degrees of its source will cause pain, yet just one fleeting glance in that direction reveals a newborn view of what lies there: a haze, but not one that would seek to obscure, rather to render everything in a blue-white soft-focus, with every feature visible but taking on an ethereality indefinable, as below, in the Thames water nuclear Roman candles are swirling on the riverbed, periodically sending showers of sparks up through the surface to dance and collide in retina-burning flashes that spin your countenance back to the pale, intense, golden shafts that you now know are an evolution of it all. And with every shaft of light comes shadow: longer, darker, more defined, maybe perceptibly more nefarious than in previous months; nevertheless providing borders, frames for light’s dynamic chromatic canvases: its purpose never ancillary to light’s eye-fucking floorshow but crucial, for without the contrast they provided me and they richness they lent to my visual world, then much of what struck me today would not have done so so poetically as to move me to write.
Leave a commentAnd so we drank to absent friends.
The air was alive with endless possibilities again on Friday evening, just as it had always been for that magical period that ended so cruelly 6 years ago. It had been like the horror of being born, being wrenched away from the safety and warmth of a place that felt like it was the only place to be, cast out into the cold world and forced to take on an ever increasing degree of independence and responsibility – only this time we had been completely conscious and able to remember it forever.
But for 1 weekend only, 4 of us were reunited. Able to share tales of our newfound solo adventures and to reminisce about our collective adventures of yesteryear.
The Groover had arrived the previous day to meet up with my proxy father-in-law to discuss the doubtlessly interesting intricacies of website design. The evening that followed was an unmistakeable reflection of our ever developing maturity as we got down to some high class nosh and fine wine. And, although undeniably ratted, our behaviour was almost impeccable. I have to say ‘almost’, because as an elderly citizen passed our table she heard me remarking rather too loudly that the Groover may have left speckles of his white manseed ingrained in the vaginal wall of some young lady he once used to romp with, and that her next conquest may well have unavoidably scraped it out with his warty lovestick. Admittedly the old dear should not have been quite so keen to listen in to our conversation, but I still felt a twinge of guilt that she had looked so shocked by what she had just heard that it may well have cut her remaining lifespan in half.
The following day was largely a write-off for me as I had planned to get a substantial amount of work done at home. The slight exertions of the night before had left me unable to clamber from my pit in good time and when I did finally sit down in front of the PC the most productive thing I could manage was to sort out my fantasy league team for the weekend. I told myself I’d finish that important report on Sunday afternoon after everyone had gone home, taking good care not to listen to the voice in my head telling me I was going to regret it.
As the evening rolled around the anticipation of having 4 of us in the same room for the 1st time since before 9/11 began to grow. There were numerous progress reports by phone, especially from Ramslegs as he was coming from a fair distance away and clearly drives as though possessed by the spirit of a dead snail.
And then Mossop arrived.
He was immediately furnished with beer & pizza, before being given a substantially more polished tour of Nag Towers than the Groover had received only a year earlier.
And then Ramslegs arrived.
He was immediately furnished with beer, but had unfortunately missed the pizza through his own inability to drive like a man. C’est la vie. His tour of Rancho El Naggio was on course to be far more lively and interesting than that given to Mossop just an hour previous, but by this time the beer & the weed had taken hold, and it degenerated into a rambling monologue of why Mein Kampf should be taught in schools.
The remainder of the evening panned out well, consisting of more beer, pizza and weed punctuated by animated discussions about British politics and topped with a couple of episodes of the Boosh. For me the highpoint came when I was able to accuse Ramslegs of being the father of his sister’s unborn child – thus proving that the old ones are always the best.
The next day was spent as almost every Saturday in Lancaster had, with Ramslegs up and about at the crack of dawn and heading off into the wilderness to play with his bike. The rest of us sat around for a few hours, boxing the shit out of each other on the Wii, before finally resolving ourselves to taking the dog for his walk, which he and everyone else seemed to thoroughly enjoy. There followed a couple of hours of comfortable silence as we individually readied ourselves for the impending horror that is Swansea on a Saturday evening.
After spending an hour or so in a tasty Indonesian (and finding time to grab some food), we headed off into the night. We went straight for the belly of the beast – no point messing around I thought, we were inevitably destined for it at some point so why fuck around? We were buried in a cocophony of Welsh mating cries before ducking into ‘Revolution’, which is ironically named as that’s probably the last thing you’d find in there amongst the cliched simpleton shirt boys and on-the-verge-of-pregnancy slappers. Chilli vodkas a-go-go, but the queueing at the bar had clearly not been worth it so we headed off to another ironically named establishment, the No Sign Bar.
Our age was clearly getting the better of us, as this place had a more mature clientele and allowed us the luxury of listening to each other talk.
And so we drank to absent friends.
Back into the melee we went, probably only avoiding trouble through luck as opposed to judgement. It was a short hop to Monkey, where we would spend the remainder of our evening, a safe haven for like minded funk, hip-hop and drum & bass junkies. Or so you’d think.
First myself, and then the Groover, became entangled in a handbags situation with a bunch of muppets who clearly thought they were the bollocks. We were forced to retreat to the terrace for cigarettes, where we had to remind the Groover of his own wise words before leaving the house in order to stop him embarking on a beer bottle toting rampage across the dance floor – “Remember lads, we’re not hard and we’re not fighters. Let’s not get ourselves involved in anything.”
The time flew, and I spent most of the remainder of the evening bombarding Ramslegs with my newly formed pub psychology thesis on life and love, and how it would improve his situation if he would only listen to me.
The lads were treated to the sight of Welsh international rugby starlet James Hook standing behind us in the taxi queue, which wasn’t really such a treat given that he’s so damned ugly and none of them had even heard of him. The taxi driver we got was a kindly man who seemed sympathetic to our cause, and agreed to let us stop for a kebab on the way home. It is important to mention at this point that we were all very fucked, and I’m not really sure what happened next.
I was standing next to Mossop, keeping one eye on the greasy foreign bastard behind the counter and trying to remember how to speak, to avoid the embarrassment of having to grunt and point for a prolonged period of time. The Groover had been served before me and when handed his kebab moved to walk out, at which point the greasy bastard barked savagely at him, demanding payment. The Groover clearly believed he’d already paid and the foreigner clearly believed he hadn’t. It was a tense stand-off. Eventually, realising that possession is nine tenths and all that, the fat grease-fest behind the counter gave way. He was clearly riled but admirably more alive to the fact that a fight in his shop over 3 quid would be worse for business than letting this one go. We were understandably chastised by the Groover for not backing him immediately, but my view at the time, which I still hold, is that if the rest of us had started ranting it could all have kicked off.
We didn’t last long when we got back to the house. The next morning was spent in far less energetic pursuit of Wii glory, and the perparation of a magnificent fry up. After a poignant photoshoot at the front of the house we said our goodbyes and resolved to doing it all again in the near future.
When they were gone I was left on my own to sit down and finish the report I should have done on Friday, with an annoying voice in my head singing the ‘I told you so’ song to the beat of my brain throbbing. What a shitter.
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We were the Bolos of Swansea.
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A touch taxed today after a high speed run down the drisly M4 coping with a hangover and the urge to pass out at the wheel, to go careering between lanes before going into some kind of death spin. The trip to Swansea had been an undoubted success, but one too many beverages the night before and the prospect of a Sunday traffic four hour journey had somewhat dented my enthusiasm. In the end, the most dangerous moment on the trip inevitably came right near the end, where desperate to drain the weasel and trapped behind a 15mph learner, I executed a high-risk overtaking maneuvre, getting back to the correct side of the road just in time to avoid the Tesco’s truck.
Ah well, these perils are small prices to pay for the usual onslaught of amusement to be caught by catching up with old friends. Swansea is becoming synonymous in my mind with rest and recreation, neatly balancing ‘heart of darkness’ town life spew in the gutter night life with nearby open beaches that stretch off a mile into the ocean at low tide. High points include Mr Unholy’s comments about Bobey’s family news, while low points include being accused of stealing a kebab. Small knocks indeed and I have returned feeling ready to re-engage with the animal frenzy of work, manic eyed and loose-limbed.
Leave a commentThe latest twist in this heart-wrenching saga is that the man as depicted in the latest artist’s impression of Maddie’s ‘abductor’ has been found at last: apparently working as a mannequin in the shop window of Debenhams in Lisbon. Unfortunately he could not give any details of the girl’s whereabouts as he was lacking a mouth. A trained police artist tried drawing one on but this apparently didn’t help. More developments, no matter the banality, will follow, courtesy of BBC News Twenty-bore and the advert placards for the Evening Standard…
1 CommentI found an article today that filled me with hope. Yes, if it all gets too much, I’m off to Gliese 581C.
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Working from home throws up a range of semi-uninteresting differences. One of these is that I catch a bit more daytime television than I used to. Probably a bit more than I really need to see, truth be told.
My current favourites are:
Doctors – an improbable disease accompanied by bad acting accompanied by a bit of light-hearted oh life’s not too bad really comedy action is brilliant late lunch fodder.
Loose Women – Nothing is better for relieving stress than hurling some abuse at a bunch of jaded harpies ranting on about rice cakes.
Neighbours – An old favourite, but still worth a mention. Current most excellent storyline is the guy in the wheelchair who is slowly regaining the use of his legs. Seeing his little toes flicking about and the resulting gush of emotion from his buxom cast members is enough entertainment to keep me chuckling all the way until the next tea break.
Anyway, today I discovered a new one. A game show format lifted from family fortunes – just remove the family and score higher points for getting the answer that’s a) on the board AND b) was said by the least people (cunning eh?). There’s an inevitable array of pitfalls on offer for the slack-jawed contestants to negotiate and the winner emerges from their half hour of bemusement and ‘comedy’ responses with about 50p. I think I was lucky to catch it today because one of the questions was ‘which part of your body would you be prepared to sell for a million pounds?’ After a couple of easy ‘little toe’ ‘hair’ responses, things took a turn for the weird.
One contestant suggested ‘lungs’, clearly forgetting he needed these to breathe. One contestant (presumably a non-drinker) was keen to offer up their ‘liver’. I was just recovering that when the final guy suggested ‘all of me fingers’.
‘All of your fingers?’ Brian Connelly cried (for yes, I am ashamed to say, it was he), ‘then you’d look like this’ (holds hands up and proceeds to do an amusing, but extremely inappropriate mime action of having no fingers involving a fair bit of fist wiggling).
‘Yes’ the contestant replies ‘it wouldn’t really bother me’ and so saying he holds up his as yet unseen hand to reveal nothing but stumps on the fingers of one hand. Brian Connelly looks abashed, like someone’s just crapped on his grandmother. Nothing like this has happened since 1986 when Jeremy Beadle tried to shake his hand at the Royal Variety Show. He has nailed himself to his own cross.
I fall off my chair. Then I figure I better get back to doing some work.
Leave a commentI don’t follow rugby. I don’t like rugby. But today I was glad we beat Australia because there have been a lot of smug, arrogant funkwits clutching inflatable kangaroos mincing around Bordeaux lately, and it will be good to think they that on this occasion their sporting arrogance has not paid dividends. Haha, fuckers, we propelled the backsides of our burly lard sacks with more power than you did yours – may your flights be non-refundable and the weather shit for the rest of your stay. (sorry about that, but it seems that every conversation I’ve had with an Aussie lately has taken a turn for the sport against my will, with the same cocky, head-tilting air of condescension pushing my normally dormant national pride button every time).
I was hoping the French would get theirs tonight too, but unfortunately they won. Which, among other things, means that at the moment half of them are driving around honking their horns like a bunch of toddlers with real cars. It is quite alarming. They do this at weddings too, but we warned them off at ours (“no, no, you must understand that this is England, and if you beep your horn repetitively for a few minutes people will either assume that you are in a) dire need of assistance or b) dire need of a kicking” they understood).
This French victory also means I’ll have to put with a week of Brit baiting at work, which I’ll have to painfully react to until after the England V France match. please let us win that one, which would at least cut down the madness by a week and also take that annoying spring out of old Frenchy’s step (he is not the most graceful winner, our Mr Frenchy).
Anyway, enough nagging from me. I’m off to dream a dark sleep and plan the undoing of a certain bike mechanic with expensive taste in brake discs. This list just keeps getting longer – perhaps I need a holiday….but there is travel on the horizon – The Wirral and the dirty great Mancunian mass await. Come on smokeless pubs that smell of piss (this is a new one on me), fat girls with their bacon belts hanging out, vodka redbulls served in fish bowls. These things I understand. Partly.