I Am Livid

Approximately two-hundred million pounds.

That’s how much they spent redeveloping Ascot racecourse. There are 265 boxes, 42 private loges and 7 restaurants with 39 separate kitchens.

These are impressive statistics in one of the newest sporting arenas in the world. It is considered a showcase of what can be achieved with modern design and construction technology.

It is an imposing structure and quite a landmark on the Berkshire skyline when you’re in the Ascot area.

I would appreciate it though, if someone someone could explain to me, how you spend this much money, implement this many facilities, claim to do everything possible in order to make your visit as pleasurable as possible, and yet it still takes 25 minutes to get served at the bar?

It must be such a shock to them to realise that people like to drink a pint of cold beer at the races on a hot day. However, my complaints fell on deaf ears.

“Yes, sorry about the wait Sir, it’s just a bit busier than we thought it would be. There’s no queue at the champagne bar though if you’d like to try there”

Well I didn’t like to try there, as I have an aversion to buying bottles of booze for £60 when all I want is a pint. If you go to Ascot any time soon my advice is get pissed before you get there.

Enjoying your job of work is something I think we should all aspire to. If you enjoy what you do for a living then your miserable home-life is of less consequence. Also, you’ll inevitably become better at it, and your days won’t drag like the night-of-a-thousand-years, like they tend to do in my role from time to time. From an employers perspective, the more satisfaction you get from your role, the harder you work. Which is a good thing for them.

Which is why many employers are coming up with innumerable ingenious ideas for making your working surroundings more pleasant, whilst trying to create a true sense of pride in what you do. Unfortunately, this is becoming more ridiculous by the day. The latest trend seems to be giving people job titles that bear no relation the job they do, and makes them seem more important than they actually are.

I saw a lady the other day with the title “Wrap Consultant” on her name badge. Any idea what she was doing at the time? No? She was giving out free sandwich samples at Tesco’s. In doing so, she’s managed to achieve something I’d previously thought of as impossible, in that she made me think even less of consultants.

The trains are a haven for this sort of thing. I’ve heard announcements asking for a “Refuse Operative please report to the buffet car”. It’s a cleaner. We all know it’s a cleaner. Do you think the Refuse Operative thinks they are anything other than a cleaner? Or maybe they applied for the role of Refuse Operative, and are genuinely surprised at the amount of cleaning that they have to do? Perhaps at appraisal time they’ll have the courage to ask for the opportunity to operate more refuse, and do a little less cleaning.

Look, we need cleaners, otherwise stuff would be constantly dirty, so don’t think I’m picking on the Refuse Operatives. Trains also have Revenue Protection Officers. I can only assume these roles are fulfilled by people who failed the medical for the Police or Army. Or they just wanted to avoid having the word Private in their title.

Drop the word Revenue and we could be talking about a bodyguard, or some sort of MI6 secret agent. Again, are there people applying for this role who expected to be a key team member in the hunt for Osama, and are they dismayed to find out they’re checking tickets on the Bristol to London Intercity?

The daddy of all roles was recently revealed where I work. The Product Development team have recently undergone a sort of re-branding exercise, and as a result have had their name changed to…. Imagineering! I kid ye not! It’s not even a real word! There are business cards with the job title of Lead Imagineer in existence. I have seen them with my own eyes!

I long for the days when people were Sandwich Ladies, Cleaners, Ticket Collectors and Teccie Nerds.

Do you have a ridiculous job title? If not, what would it be if you could make one up for yourself?

I know what you fuckers are thinking. Angry’s gone and gotten himself a dose by shagging some bird he met whilst drunk? Well, no. That hasn’t happened. Or at least I don’t think it has. I mean, hypothetically speaking, how long would it be before the symptoms started to show, you know, if you had caught something? Hypothetically speaking of course.

Anyway…it’s not that sort of ‘clap’ that I’m pissed off about.

What I actually want to understand is why women applaud, and actively congratulate, the other team when they are scored against whilst playing Netball?

This is the most bizarre thing I have ever seen in the field of sports, and I’ve seen Kabadi played live. Team sports are there to create competition, they artificially manufacture a ‘battle’ scenario so that our most base of human instincts, the drive for victory, can be satisfied in a controlled manner. Don’t listen to that bollocks about “it’s how you played the game”. This is usually uttered from the mouth of a loser. Winning is everything.

If I were playing football, and during the game someone from the opposing team finally gave in to their overwhelming need to applaud me, I would think they were taking the piss, and it would probably end up in a violent confrontation.

If the idea is to win, why praise the opposition? Surely that just helps them? If I were a netball coach (we can all have our little dreams can’t we?) I’d go fucking ballistic at that sort of behaviour. It’s just not natural. I want to see and hear quality trash-talking, some off-the-ball incidents that involve hair pulling and face scratching. And above all, if nothing else, when the opposition score I want to hear you scream, “You jammy fucking bitch!”.

When my team scores I want to see each player in their opponents faces, screaming “You’re shit! This is tooooo fucking easy!!”. My netball team would kick-ass.

So, I’m thinking of holding of holding open trials, any of our female readers interested in applying?

“Eye spy with my little eye”, began fat Jim as we watched the buildings pass by on our way into London, “..something beginning with….”G”..”

“Girls?” I replied wishing the game was over already.

“No” came the answer of an excited child.

“Ginger biscuits?”

“No”

“Gravity?”

“No, and don’t think I didn’t see what you did there you smart arse, you have to actually SEE it, not it’s effect”

“So I can’t have ‘Geriatric Sex’ as my guess from looking at you?”

“Nope”

“Garden?”

“Nope”

“Gesture?” I say whilst giving Fat Jim the bird.

“No”

“I suppose I can’t have my guess by saying this is beginning to feel like a weekend break in Gomorrah?”

“Nope”

“OK, I give up”

“Ha! General Custer!”

“Where?”

“Where what?”

“Where is General Custer? Where the FUCK is General Custer? This is the 7:19 to London Paddington. There are no Injuns on board, and there definitely isn’t a General fucking Custer anywhere to be seen!”

“He was in a documentary on TV last night”

Is there a point at which an adult, who doesn’t understand the rules to a game played by five year-olds, can be viciously beaten without consequence? Who on Gods earth doesn’t know how to play eye-spy?

Despite the appearance of this site, I am a very kind and considerate person at heart. Unless I take a dislike to you, in which case you’re, err fucked, basically.

My generosity of spirit sees me undertake regular good deeds, a common one being my willingness to give up my seat on the tube or train to someone more in need than I. Pregnant women, old people, gingers. I do not discriminate when it comes to the needy. It is important that we think about those people who are not as fortunate as ourselves either through age, disability or hair colour.

Some trains even provide helpful signs to remind the people who are not as considerate as me, that the seats they are occupying are designated for those with a greater need.

The other day an elderly chap got onto my train home during rush hour. He was old and shriveled and had the bandiest legs I’d ever seen. At first I thought someone had dressed up a monkey in old mans clothes and released it onto the train. He stood by the door, looked around at the packed carriage and then directly at the young guy in one of the designated priority seats, who completely ignored him whilst engrossed in his book.

He then continued to ignore the old monkey-man despite my glare burning an imagined hole in the top of his head. James Patterson’s ‘London Bridges’ must a fucking riveting read.

From a few seats further down, I stood up and offered him my place, which he took gratefully with a “Thanks Sonny”. This is, I believe, the first time that sentence has been used since Cher’s ex-husband skied into that tree.

So, after getting up I went and stood next to the Priority seat. Not that I expected him to move for me of course, as I am neither old, disabled or ginger, and I was not walking like a monkey in a suit.

In fact, he probably recognised me as the virile athletic individual that I am, and decided that ignoring me was probably the best way to convey that he was aware of this fact, whilst also avoiding an embarrassing scene. He was right.

Golf balls do not have ears.

They never have had. In fact, in the entire history of the game of golf, I don’t believe that any golf ball has ever changed it’s direction as a result of a verbal command from either a spectator, or the person who hit it with a club.

Not that this fact stops me when I’m playing of course. I often shout at my golf balls on the golf course. My favourite shout is, “You caaaaaaaaaant!”. I probably use this five or six times a round. Not once, however, has the ball decided to behave itself as a result of me shouting at it.

The Open at Royal Liverpool Hoylake came to a conclusion yesterday, with Tiger Woods winning another major. I quite like Tiger Woods, he comes across as a nice guy, and is a good example to the kids. He is living the dream of a million budding golfers around the world, in that he pulled a gorgeous Swedish babysitter. He’s also a very good golfer.

What has really pissed me off though is that somewhere out there today, is some complete arsehole claiming a small part of Tigers victory for himself for telling the ball to “Get in the hole” every time Tiger hit the ball. From tee to green, from 3 iron to putter, every single shot was accompanied by the ubiquitous, “Get in the hole”. I assume by the same bloke.

We could give him the benefit of the doubt, and assume that he was shouting “Get in the hole!” at a badly behaved mole of some description. But in reality I just think he was a twat.

To my complete surprise, the TV companies continue to play the audio of these shouts. Surely it’s only a matter of time before the advertisers spot this gap in the market? How long till each shot from Tiger Woods is accompanied by the instant cry of, “Buy Budweiser!” or “Two Big Macs for the price of one all this week!”

Or, what if you’d had money on Ernie Els to win? Could you follow Tiger round the course and greet each shot with, “Miss by a fucking mile!” and “Get in the bunker!”?

Golf balls do not have ears.

They never have had. In fact, in the entire history of the game of golf, I don’t believe that any golf ball has ever changed it’s direction as a result of a verbal command from either a spectator, or the person who hit it with a club.

Not that this fact stops me when I’m playing of course. I often shout at my golf balls on the golf course. My favourite shout is, “You caaaaaaaaaant!”. I probably use this five or six times a round. Not once, however, has the ball decided to behave itself as a result of me shouting at it.

The Open at Royal Liverpool Hoylake came to a conclusion yesterday, with Tiger Woods winning another major. I quite like Tiger Woods, he comes across as a nice guy, and is a good example to the kids. He is living the dream of a million budding golfers around the world, in that he pulled a gorgeous Swedish babysitter. He’s also a very good golfer.

What has really pissed me off though is that somewhere out there today, is some complete arsehole claiming a small part of Tigers victory for himself for telling the ball to “Get in the hole” every time Tiger hit the ball. From tee to green, from 3 iron to putter, every single shot was accompanied by the ubiquitous, “Get in the hole”. I assume by the same bloke.

We could give him the benefit of the doubt, and assume that he was shouting “Get in the hole!” at a badly behaved mole of some description. But in reality I just think he was a twat.

To my complete surprise, the TV companies continue to play the audio of these shouts. Surely it’s only a matter of time before the advertisers spot this gap in the market? How long till each shot from Tiger Woods is accompanied by the instant cry of, “Buy Budweiser!” or “Two Big Macs for the price of one all this week!”

Or, what if you’d had money on Ernie Els to win? Could you follow Tiger round the course and greet each shot with, “Miss by a fucking mile!” and “Get in the bunker!”?

“Ffffffft fffffft ffffft”

There are noises in this world that make you want to harm your fellow man. There are noises so evil that they make you want to harm yourself. Badly. And there are noises, those from the very bowels of hell, that make you want to instantly crucify the person making them.

Noises like fingernails being scratched down a blackboard, or a screaming baby.

But none of these has the bone-chilling stress-inducing effect of a woman filing her nails.

The very thought of it sends shivers down my spine, the relentless “ffffft ffffft ffffft” as Satan herself (if God could be a ’she’, why can’t the Devil? You don’t get the womens libbers going on about that do you?) drags that file over the end of her fingers. It goes through me like a cheesewire through a testicle.

No girlfriend of mine has ever been able to file her nails in my presence for fear of bodily harm or seeing a grown man cry. But not being a dater of old ladies the woman on the train had not had a relationship with me and so she didn’t know my aversion to the filing. As she began to file, I started to bleed from the ears so I turned up my iPod to drown out the sound, but I could still see her and in my head The Kooks were being drowned out by a relentless, yet imaginary, “fffft ffffft ffffft”.

I began to sweat.

“I’m sorry, but would you mind not doing that?“, I asked politely. I find it hard to be rude to old people, they are my nemesis’s, or nemisii.

“Is it bothering you dear?“, she replied clearly not noticing the gibbering wreck I was turning into.

“Yes, quite a lot I’m afraid”

“Well, the good news is I’m nearly finished!” she concluded, smiling her fake old person teeth at my whitening face.

She then continued to grind away at her decaying human matter, turning it into a fine dust that drifted across the train carriage. At least I think that’s what she did, as I had my eyes closed and had assumed the fetal position whilst desperately trying to find a “Happy Place”.

How serious is it if you kill an old person in cold blood?

A little white lie never hurt anyone.

Well, I say they’ve never hurt anyone, they have of course sent a few people to prison, but they’ve rarely caused actual physical harm to anyone. So in general they are OK to use on an alarmingly frequent basis.

However, there are some fucking massive great whopping lies that get told on a regular basis without care or consideration for the consequences. They are, without exception, bollocks.

“The cheque is in the post” - Oh not it fucking isn’t you pikey fuck. Pay up!

“Of course I’ll respect you in the morning” - Get your kit off. Now. And what’s your name again?

“I’m really sorry about this, but…” - No you’re not. In fact, you’re probably taking some sort of perverse pleasure in giving me this imminent piece of bad news you sociopathic wank-rag.

“I don’t mean to be rude, but….” - Don’t fucking say it then. The words don’t seem to be slipping out, there’s definite intention there, so keep them to yourselves if you don’t want a fucking slap.

“There are weapons of Mass Destruction in Iraq” - Yup, they were right at the end of that Rainbow weren’t they?

“I’ll be five minutes” - Fuck. Right. Off. What you mean is, I have no concept of time, it is all irrelevant to me and I’ll be ready when my circadian rhythm tells me I’m ready.

And the motherfucking daddy of them all?

“Your call is important to us. We are doing everything we can to answer your call as quickly as we possibly can.”

What’s the worst (best?) lie you’ve ever told, and do people now know it was a lie?

Todays sports equipment market must be worth an absolute fortune. Running shoes, dri-fit sports vests, sweatbands etc. are all helping to free us of our disposable income.

That’s not even considering the requirements for a technical sport like cycling. The bikes they use can sell for hundreds, if not thousands of pounds, add to that tight fitting clothing and an aerodynamically designed helmet and you’ve got a sizeable dent in your wallet, and in your self-esteem of course.

But what difference does an aerodynamically designed helmet make to an average rider? Little or none I would imagine. And what if the rider is fat? I mean truly morbidly obese, like the complete twat I saw on Saturday?

I understand Le Tour is on TV at the moment, and like Wimbledon - before we were rubbish again - this ensures that people are tempted to go out and give the sport a go in case you happen to be the next Tiger Tim, or Moody Murray. Or in this case the next Lance Armstrong (and who wouldn’t want a go on Sheryl Crow?)

But at what point did that fat man look at that particular helmet and think, “You know what? That could take a tenth of a second off my time, I’ll take it!“. Clearly he shopped in the only sports store in Greater London without a mirror.

You know what else would take a bit of time off your laps pal? Less eating of pies, that’s what. Try consuming a few salads for a couple of weeks and I bet you could cycle quicker in a suit of armour than you do now in all that expensively assembled gear.

I admire his attempts to lose a few pounds, I really do. But dressing up like Weeble in a Yellow jersey is not the way to go about it. Surely the salesman in the shop where he bought it all must’ve seen what he was doing to him?

“Oh yes Sir, with this new graphite-composite aerodynamically-designed helmet you will knock all important seconds off your time. They’re tested in the same wind tunnels that Ferrari use you know. Here, let me fasten that under your chin, er, chins.”

Fat people. Please exercise indoors from now on, there’s a love.

I’ve had a few issues with my bank recently, mainly with them calling me and asking me who I am. But this has been resolved and we are now both confident of my identity.

Things have therefore proceeded as planned and I’ve had a sizeable deposit in my account (through my re-mortgage) which I was about to spread far and wide, mainly paying off debts and assisting the Nigerian Clergy. First of all, I paid off the credit card from the same bank that supplied the re-mortgage, which also handles my current account.

Alas, once the payment was completed, I could do no more.

I couldn’t make a payment to anyone else, I couldn’t even buy cinema tickets to Superman Returns. When I went to the ATM I couldn’t get any money out. I wandered to my local HSBC branch after work on Friday and tried their machine. Again, no cash was forth coming.

I was getting nervous as I had precisely £1.20 in cash on me, and I needed at least £3 to get my car out of the car-park to get home. What can you do in a pinstripe suit to make £1.80 on a Friday night?

I called HSBC from the red hot-line (not red-hot line) in the branch, as everyone had gone home. First of all, I asked them to identify themselves, and when I was satisfied they were indeed who they claimed to be, they went off to look into it.

About ten minutes later I get a call on my mobile.

“Hello Mr Angry, this is Charlotte from the Premier Account team.” the voice said, clearly knowing who I was, unlike her Indian based colleague of a few weeks ago.

“Hello Charlotte, do you have some good news?”

“Yes, your account has been reactivated, it was disabled as an anti-fraud measure due to some unusual activity.” (more…)

I’ve had a few issues with my bank recently, mainly with them calling me and asking me who I am. But this has been resolved and we are now both confident of my identity.

Things have therefore proceeded as planned and I’ve had a sizeable deposit in my account (through my re-mortgage) which I was about to spread far and wide, mainly paying off debts and assisting the Nigerian Clergy. First of all, I paid off the credit card from the same bank that supplied the re-mortgage, which also handles my current account.

Alas, once the payment was completed, I could do no more.

I couldn’t make a payment to anyone else, I couldn’t even buy cinema tickets to Superman Returns. When I went to the ATM I couldn’t get any money out. I wandered to my local HSBC branch after work on Friday and tried their machine. Again, no cash was forth coming.

I was getting nervous as I had precisely £1.20 in cash on me, and I needed at least £3 to get my car out of the car-park to get home. What can you do in a pinstripe suit to make £1.80 on a Friday night?

I called HSBC from the red hot-line (not red-hot line) in the branch, as everyone had gone home. First of all, I asked them to identify themselves, and when I was satisfied they were indeed who they claimed to be, they went off to look into it.

About ten minutes later I get a call on my mobile.

“Hello Mr Angry, this is Charlotte from the Premier Account team.” the voice said, clearly knowing who I was, unlike her Indian based colleague of a few weeks ago.

“Hello Charlotte, do you have some good news?”

“Yes, your account has been reactivated, it was disabled as an anti-fraud measure due to some unusual activity.” (more…)

Doctors are great. Generally speaking.

They save lives, and are allowed prescribe drugs and stuff. All this without any discernible super powers. Only a very small percentage of them have beards and are old-people killers so I think, that on the whole, they are a very good thing.

I even read sites written by a couple of them, Doctor Jest, and Dr Crippen which offer a great insight into the world of occasional life-savers.

These life-saving skills are why we revere Doctors. The word ‘Doctor’ has certain connotations that instantly convey a level of authority and expertise that ensures we all respect them.

However, at the pub on Friday night, I discovered another type of Doctor.

“Gill is actually a Doctor now.” said a female friend talking about a friend of a friend.

“Really?” I enquired, having met the friend of a friend of my friend a couple of times and vaguely remembering she had an office job.

“Yes, she finished her studies and now she is a Doctor of Social Marketing.”

I nearly choked on my Pringles. (more…)

We human beings are resilient creatures, and as they say, what doesn’t kill us makes stronger. We live. We learn. When we make mistakes of catastrophic proportions, we tend not to make them again.

Unless of course we are Sir Clive Sinclair.

The inventor of the Sinclair C5 has done it again. And by again, I mean he has invented an extremely ugly, user-unfriendly, impractical mode of transport for commuters. It is called the A-bike. I assume he called it this so it will appear early in the Yellow pages. The inventors of the B-bike must be absolutely furious.

From what I can tell by looking at the pictures, it utilises two wheels from a rollerskate along with the folding frame of a cheapo Argos exercise bike, with all the aesthetic beauty of a Jade Goody bikini parade.

He clearly feels that introducing a folding bike is what the commuters need. Obviously because all of the other folding bikes out there don’t cut the mustard. That’s what I like about Sir Clive, he takes a bad idea and makes it terrible.

What I find staggering is that he hasn’t learned his lesson. The C5 was a disaster, it sold 17,000 in a country of 50 million, and the ZX81 was the computer of ridicule when I was at school, powered as it was by its 1k of memory and crappy rubber buttons. He pioneered flat-screen CRT portable TV’s just as Casio were perfecting the LCD display. If he invented a new cryogenic coffin I swear people would stop dying.

He probably comes up with all these ideas whilst at home watching his Betamax video recorder.

Would you be seen dead riding one of these (assuming he hasn’t completed his cryogenic coffin of course)?

Can someone please tell me why he still gets funding for these ideas when they are clearly doomed to failure?