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.
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?â€
“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……â€
“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.â€
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 rightâ€.
“Yeah I got to do that man, that’s a good idea you knowâ€.
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 munchiesâ€. and then:
“I often wonder whether they should ban food on the underground, but I guess no-one would take any notice anywayâ€. – 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:
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 gypâ€. 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 againâ€.
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.
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:
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.
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.
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.