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.
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.
Baited 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.
I 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.
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.
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.
The 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…
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.
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.
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.
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.