I am livid

“Je voudrais le Filet de beouf Rossini s’il vous plait” I requested in the best GCSE Grade ‘C’ French that the English comprehensive school system can offer.

“And ‘ow would you like that cooked?” replied the waiter, who had brilliantly determined where I was from, despite my excellent pronunciation. He must have had a good ear.

“Oh, right, err, medium plea…er s’il vous plait”

This was my only chance to order dinner in French as we were staying in a catered chalet and this was the only night off for the English staff who were cooking for us each evening. I could also have asked him where the swimming pool was, or told him that my sister is fourteen and likes horses, but that would not have been very helpful and he would probably have though I meant eating them not riding them.

About twenty minutes later the waiter returned with a lump of fillet beef that had, I assume, spent the day on the surface of the sun. The French are notorious for having their meat rare, so ordering a medium steak should have led to possibly receiving a very bloody steak. If you order a rare steak in France you should be torn between eating it and calling a decent vet.

However, this restaurant had made the assumption that as an Englishman I did not understand food, so actually wanted my beef well done. Very very well done.

“Excuse moi, this steak is well done. I wanted medium, there is no pink in there at all.”

“Oh, Je suis désolé, I weel just get it replaced.”

A further 10 minutes went by, and when he returned a second time I had two thin steaks stacked on top of each other, where previously I’d had one thick steak. Once again it was well done. The restaurant was killing animals needlessly! The bastards. I could almost feel the stare of a doe-eyed cow staring at me pleading, “Don’t refuse this one, I don’t want to die as well”. Fortunately, I got over it, and called the waiter over.

“Right, I don’t want this. Take it away, and I don’t want another one, I’ll eat the leftovers from my friends.”

They didn’t charge me for either of the steaks, or two of the bottles of red wine that had been ordered, which went some of the way to make up for me having to eat part of a leftover pizza, some spaghetti bolognese and the remaining bits of a green salad.

This is just another reason why I remain convinced that the French are conspiring against me.

Red Face Paul is a friend of mine who I have not mentioned before. I do not know why, as he is the centre of many funny stories, mostly unintentionally, and usually involving the fact he has a red face.

On his first ever skiing trip he decided to skip the ski-school option that most newbies go for, and after watching numerous episodes of Ski Sunday as a child, he thought to himself, “How difficult could it be?”.

As a result he and his friend Sharpey decided to hire skis and boots, and then made their way to the main chair lifts. Noticing one was significantly busier than the other, they both made their way slowly, very slowly indeed, to the quieter lift.

Having never been on a ski lift before, they sat back and started to enjoy the ride. For approximately fifteen seconds. Because that was when they began to realise how dangerous these lifts were, as they could simply slip off the chair at any moment. They were completely oblivious to the lift attendant shouting after them, “Pull the safety bar down!!!”

When the chair had travelled several hundred feet into the air, they both decided the safest approach would be to hug the side of the chair and close their eyes tightly, much like a drunk using a lampost to stop himself falling into the gutter (except the gutter is a couple of thousand feet of French Alp) whilst whimpering like a frightened child. So that is what they did.

The second surprise appeared about two minutes later, when they realised why the lift they were on was so quiet. The apparent top of the lift was in fact a false horizon, and the lift they were now on would take them a further thousand feet to the top of the mountain. With the only route back down being via Red and Black runs. For those that haven’t been on skiing holidays, ski runs are graded on difficulty using a colour coding system, going from Green (the easiest), through Blue (for intermediates), to Red (for experienced skiers), to Blacks for expert skiers only. Generally speaking, a harder run equals a steeper run.

Red Face Paul and Sharpey had gone to the top of the mountain, and directly onto an experienced skiers route, during their first ever morning of skiing, without ever having set foot on a nursery slope. After getting off the lifts at the top, they then had the option of choosing a Red or a Black. Deciding that “Red equals danger” they decided to go for the black.

This was an excellent decision. For people like me anyway.

Having never actually skied before, and now faced with one of the most difficult runs on the mountain, they did what any normal person would do. They pointed their skis downwards and went for it. Sharpey made it 30 yards before veering off left into the trees where he hit a snow drift and crashed. Red Face Paul made it slightly less distance than that before falling over and sliding several hundred yards on his arse.

Sharpey took off his skis and decided to walk down the mountain, Red Face Paul slid down most of the way on his arse at the side of the piste. After two and half hours they returned to the point their adventure had begun and decided, wisely, to sack it off and go to the pub.

Their day got a lot better after that.

“Which room do you want?” asked my friend Amy.

We had arrived in the resort of Courchevel and had dragged our bags into the chalet that would be home to us for the next seven days.

“I don’t mind”, I replied confirming my status as the most considerate person on the holiday.

I was pointed down the stairs to the last remaining room, in the basement. This caused a small red flag to appear in my mind. Basements are not generally nice places. They are where rats live, they flood, and they are where sociopathic killers keep people when they kidnap and torture them.

No happy story ever started with, “Well, I was in the basement and then….”

When I opened the room I was confronted with a room the size of an average family saloon. With no windows, and a pine bunk bed against the wall. I was contemplating the possibility that some horrible mistake had been made when I heard, “Bagsy the bottom bunk!” from my flatmate, who was just behind me.

Brilliant.

I dumped my bag, and headed back upstairs in order to get drunk on the complimentary booze. This free wine was a major contributing factor to my decision to go on the holiday, and now that I was sleeping on the top bunk, in a basement box room, I planned to drink my own body weight in vin rouge each and every day.

Finally the time came for everyone to go to bed, and I made my way gingerly down the stairs and into the basement room. Whilst climbing into the top bunk I noticed that the bunk bed had actually been constructed from balsa wood. Climbing the ladder almost pulled it down on me, even though I am built like a sportsman (not a darts player). I finally managed get on the top bunk and was greeted by the noise of scrunching plastic.

They had given me a fucking rubber coated mattress!!

I do not wet the bed. Not for a long long time anyway. But clearly the chalet owners are used to basement bed wetters, so I drifted off to a drunken sleep safe in the knowledge that any accidents would leave the mattress undamaged.

A lesson for you all, when a holiday deal appears to be too good to be true, check the fine print for mention of rubber mattresses and confined spaces.

I am not famous, so it is highly unlikely I will ever get asked to write an autobiography, despite how frankly brilliant it would be. As non-famous lives go, mine has been pretty interesting. For this reason I have decided to start telling a few stories of things that happened to me in the past, focussing on those things that have made me the person I am today.

I think I am going to start in the summer of 1995, at the end of my second year at University I returned home and signed up with the local staff agency in the hope of securing some potentially lucrative temporary work. I was still working at the local cinema and bingo hall (more of that another time), but this was poorly paid evening work. I needed full-time employment that would keep in me in Books, pot noodles and cheap lager for the next 8 months (OK, one of those I didn’t buy).

Within hours I had my first call.

“Angry, I’ve got a job for you. Do you have your own safety boots?”

“Err, yes” I lied.

“Excellent, report to the refuse depot at 4:30am tomorrow morning”

And this is how I became a bin-man. Or refuse engineer if you want to be all politically correct. I prefer bin-man. I borrowed a pair of my Dads safety boots that were one size too big and got a lift from my Mum at 4:30am. The foreman took one look at me, and said, “Fucking hell, do you even know why you’re here?”. I admit that tracksuit bottoms and a Pop Will Eat Itself t-shirt wasn’t the best attire for emptying bins, but I had not done it before, so how was I supposed to know?

I was introduced to the rest of my ‘crew’ who between them managed a couple of barely audible grunts in my direction. Though I did clearly hear, “Fucking students” at one point. If only he’d known how little fucking there had been in my second year the joke would have been on him.

As I was given a fluorescent vest, and told to get in the cab, the heavens opened. And I mean really opened. This was the height of summer, yet it was pissing down like it was mid-November. As my crew passed round hot tea from a flask, (”Sorry student, no more cups”), they took turns to remind me how wet I was going to get. I did not understand how it would be just me, as surely we would all be out in the rain?

Wrong again Angry. My first day was a Wednesday, and little did I know that Wednesday was the Village Run. This meant that we left the town where I lived and instead we collected the rubbish from several villages close by. To fully understand what this actually meant, I must describe the villages. We are not talking about a hundred homes, congregated around a village green like in the Vicar of Dibley. We are talking about a couple of dozen homes, all about 200 yards apart. Each one with a single bin. A single bin meaning a single bin-man, and I think you can imagine who that single bin-man was.

As I loaded each wheelie bin, and pressed the button on the truck to take the bin and empty it, I could hear the banter from the cab. It was still pissing down and my PWEI t-shirt had become like another skin. Apparently 200 yards was to short a distance to keep stopping for me to get back into the cab, so by the time I had returned the empty bin to its place, the truck was already halfway to the next home, with me jogging behind, piss-wet through and in oversized safety boots. Everything I was wearing began to chafe, and after about two hours I begged for some gloves, “Don’t be fucking stupid, they’d get ruined in this weather” was the response from the foreman.

I asked for a break at about 7:30 and was told that, “It’s job and finish, not clocking on and off, if we skip the break we finish earlier”, and I resisted the temptation to point out we could finish even earlier if they got out of the cab every now and again.

After about 5 and a half hours of chasing a refuse truck round the Northamptonshire countryside we finally returned to the depot. No-one seemed to notice that everyone was bone dry apart from me, and one of the other team members said to the foreman, “I wonder how long this little arrangement is going to last then?” despite the fact that I was stood right beside them and had clearly cracked their little code. “That depends how many village runs we’ve got left” I replied, wearily. “Just tomorrow and Friday” was the answer.

My mind was made up, I had blisters on my feet and hands and was developing crotch-rot through running in wet tracksuit bottoms, I was already composing the call to the staff agency in my head.

I eventually got home and my Mum couldn’t stop laughing at the state of me, and after showering, three times, I called the agency. “You could not pay me enough to go back there.”

I spent the next two weeks in a warehouse putting “Made in England” stickers over the “Made in Albania” writing on lightbulb boxes. Much more my cup of tea.

I woke up to the sound of my Nokia mobile phone alarm and made my way to the bathroom. I showered with Radox shower gel, and shaved with a Gillette razor and King of Shaves shaving gel. Once back in my bedroom I took out a bespoke suit and Charles Tyrwhitt shirt and tie combination. The Paul Smith cuff links complete the outfit and with a splash of Vera Wang for Men I am ready to face the day.

After enjoying a breakfast of Kellog’s Crunchy Nut Cornflakes and a glass of Innocents Strawberry and Banana smoothy, I made my way to my BMW 3 series Coupe and drove to work listening to the latest release from the Kooks.

Are any of you still reading this drivel*?

I am fucking boring myself writing this shite, and it’s my life, so god knows if any of you lot have got this far. I know you don’t come here to see which products I use, and which mobile phone is endorsed by Mr Angry. You could care less. So could I frankly. You come here for entertainment (rare though it is), and I was the same when I went to watch Casino Royale recently.

I have never seen so much product placement in one film. I almost expected to see James Bond turn to the camera when paying for a hotel and say, “American Express, I never leave Blighty without it”.

Apparently product placement in films is big business nowadays. Daniel Craig was quoted in one interview saying the film couldn’t have been what it was without the product placement, as it paid for so many of the effects. Surely film makers should be more open about this advertising? We all know how much Tom Cruise is paid per movie, well I want to know how much Siemens paid for their phones to used in Casino Royale. I didn’t pay eight quid to watch an advert. I paid my money to watch Bond shag birds and fight with terrorists and use cool one-liners and drive fast cars and escape explosions.

I did not pay to see Bond in an airport hire car. James Bond does not drive a Ford Focus, I do not care if the script writers carefully bundled in a hire-car scenario to please the sponsors. It adds nothing to the story. Where does it end? In the next instalment perhaps he will stop off for a Subway Sub of the Day on his way to prevent the detonation of a nuclear weapon? Maybe he will pop into Tesco for his weekly shop before his all important debrief with M? “Every little helps, Moneypenny”, or perhaps he will get on the phone to Direct Line after blowing up his next car? “Hi, yes, you know how you quoted me happy?…”

When this film eventually makes it to terrestrial television (Christmas Day 2009 is my guess), will Aunty Beeb cut all of the product placement scenes? I know it is frowned upon within the confines of Television Centre, so I would expect them to uphold those standards which they harp on about so often. They will, won’t they?

* Of course, anyone from Nokia, Radox, Gillette, Charles Tyrwhitt, Paul Smith, Kellogs, Innocent, Vera Wang or BMW who wants to send me free samples or cash, go right ahead.

“Yesssss!!!”

I do not mind a bit of celebration. There is nothing wrong with reacting positively to a perceived success. Except this was in Bangor at a student pub quiz and the quiz master had just confirmed that in golf an ‘Eagle’ is in fact the same as ‘two under par’. If you are celebrating this, then you have clearly set your expectations at the low end of the spectrum.

Just moments before I had corrected the quiz master by explaining that it was Rodney King, not Rowan, who was beaten on camera by the LA police. He was genuinely surprised, and blamed his wife’s handwriting. I do not know if the guy who celebrated his Eagle answer knew the answer to this question or not.

I sat at the bar reading Peter Kaye’s autobiography, killing time until it was time to go to bed, as the quiz continued around me.

“In what year was Shergar kidnapped? 1983, 1985 or 1987?” asked the quiz master in the numbers round.

Yes, strictly speaking the answer is a number, but I would suggest this was more History or even Sport. The girl next to me at the bar said, “How am I supposed to know that, I was even born in 1987″.

I have never felt more old in my entire life. We had exchanged smiles just seconds before, and now I felt like a dirty old man. A dirty old man that knew the answer was 1983, but a dirty old man nonetheless.

As more and more questions were asked, I could not help but notice that the dumbing down of University education that I have read so much about appeared to have spread to pub-based entertainment. “Water contains two hydrogen atoms, and one atom of what?”, and “Who is the current Chancellor of the Exchequer” were just two examples of the questions that led me to believe that the scores were going to be very high indeed.

Eventually the results were announced.

“And so to the scores, firstly in third place, and winning 6 cans of lager, is the Rude Girls with 34 points!”. I had counted 8 rounds, most with 10 questions, so conservatively I thought there had been 60 quesions. And 34 had earned a place on the podium. Unbelievable.

“In second place, with 38 points, and winning 8 cans of lager are the Norfolk Enchants!”

“And the winners, with a commendable total of 40, are Kate’s Bush, who win a £10 bar voucher and a bottle of wine!”

I honestly feel I could have won that quiz on my own, and probably would have done if it hadn’t been for Peter Kaye.

My job has taken me to some exotic and interesting places. Prague, Rome, Boston, Manchester, New York. All excellent places to spend a few days with work. Unfortunately I won’t be adding Bangor in North Wales to the list.

“Hi, This is Mr Angry in room 5, can you tell me how to get onto your wireless internet service?”

“Oh, I’m afraid it’s down at the moment, we’re waiting for someone to fix it.”

This is not good news, I had explicitly told our hotel booker at work to book a place with Internet access as I had work to do and needed to be on line with access to our systems to do it.

“You could try the pizzeria across the way, they have wireless I believe.”

And that is what I did.

“Hello, I was told you had wireless internet access here?”

“Yes, well, normally, but it’s down at the moment.”

“Right. OK, is there anywhere in this town that I can get on-line at this time of night?”

“The University, are you a student?”

I have never been more insulted. I do not look like a student. Even when I was a student I didn’t look like a student, apart from briefly in the second year during my pony-tail and goatee phase.

“No. I am not a student!”

“Right, you won’t be able to use that then. I don’t think there is anywhere else in Bangor where you can get online at 8 O’clock in the evening I’m afraid.”

This is the first time in recent memory that I have been unable to get onto the Internet. It is an isolating feeling. I can now empathise with those people who live in huts in the desert or jungle etc.

Next time someone tells you we are in the middle of an Internet revolution, and that the world is now fully online, tell the fuckers to get their arses to North Wales, so that they can see how the indigenous armish people live.

Dear Sir Richard (or do you prefer Mr Branson?),

Firstly let me congratulate you on an excellent choice of name for your business. Short of calling your company “Big Breasted Nympho”, I do not see how you could have chosen a better name. Kudos to you, Sir.

I wanted to start with a compliment so you do not dismiss this as just another letter of complaint, Which I suppose, in the strictest sense of the word, it is.

The reason for writing to you is that I used your train service last week for the first time in a few years. I am normally a significant contributor to global warming, but the lack of snow this past Christmas led to my plan to use public transport more often in 2007, in the hope of snowmen in 2008 and beyond. This is why I chose to get the train to North Wales from London Euston instead of driving.

In purely commercial terms the £71 charge was not overly unreasonable. It would have cost me £50 in petrol anyway, and I got to do a small amount of laptop work, read the papers and peruse a book I got for my birthday a couple of weeks ago. These are all good things.

The bad things started when I wanted to use the loo. I was pointed in the direction of the nearest toilet by the lady selling sandwiches. This was a disabled toilet, but I was assured by the sandwich lady that anyone could use it. Except it did not open. I have never been more pleased not to be wheelchair-bound. The only thing worse than desperately needing a wee, is being in a wheelchair and desperately needing a wee, I would imagine.

After questioning the sandwich lady again, who was surprised by the out of order status of the loo, I was pointed in the direction of another loo, three carriages in the opposite direction. So off I set. For the second time in two minutes I was thankful for working legs.

After a brief walk and attracting the looks that only a man in a pinstriped suit rushing for the toilet can attract, I reached the next loo. To my great relief it was free, and I locked myself in and completed the required number one (it was only a number one, I have a thing about not being able to do number two’s in public places, unless I am drunk, which I wasn’t). Then, as I was taught as a youngster, I went to wash my hands. You have thoughtfully put in place automatic dispensers for soap, water, and warm air, allowing travellers to complete the hand-washing process without pressing any buttons or twisting any knobs. Again, these are good things.

I am very conscious of the billions of germs that are spread every day through people not washing their hands, so my first step was to apply a generous amount of liquid soap to my hands and then to work it into a lather. Once lathered, I proceeded to the water dispenser in order to rinse and dry.

But nothing.

No matter how much soapy-handed waving I undertook, no water was dispensed. I do not know if you have ever tried to wipe off liquid soap from your hands with nothing but cheap toilet roll (you probably have people that do this for you), but it is not an easy process. I genuinely fear for the person who followed me, needing a number 2 only to find no toilet roll, but also no water with which to wash their hands. I am also aware of people will only give a cursory splash of water over their hands when visiting the loo, so I would imagine there were many people on that train who had not washed their hands at all. Imagine that!

I am writing as I understand sometimes these things cannot be helped. I have worked in the service industry and I recognise that circumstances conspire against us, no matter how good our best laid plans. I would just appreciate some form of warning on things that do not work as described, especially before working myself into a liquid soap hell.

Some chicken based sandwiches wouldn’t go amiss either.

yours sincerely.

Mr. Angry

Just for a little while. You need not read anything into it, I am not going to prison, or coming back as Mrs. Angry. I am going on holiday!

In the early hours of Sunday morning I am flying off to France to spend a week in Courchevel where I will strap a plank of wood to my feet and throw myself down a few mountains. I am really looking forward to it.

Do not worry though, I have been busy these last few hours and I have written something for every day this week. Mostly about my trip to Wales last week. Which was shit. The magic of Wordpress will ensure it magically appears each day, so you don’t have to do anything! Except come here and read it, obviously.

So if you want to read my letter to Sir Richard Branson, or my adventures trying to get on the Internet in Bangor, or witnessing a thoroughly dumbed-down student pub quiz, keep coming back.

If the Internet has reached France I will pop in from time to time to say Hello, but I may not be able to respond to everyone in a timely manner, but you probably couldn’t care less anyway.

See you in a week.

“Sniff!” “Tappety tappety tap”

“Sniff!” “Tappety tappety tap”

The sound of someone sniffing is one of those irritating background noises that becomes immediately annoying the moment you notice it. Especially when it is interspersed with rapid laptop typing. She had probably been sniffing since she first sat down in the cafe, but only now had my brain allowed the noise in, and suddenly it was eye-gougingly infuriating.

There is a reason the nostrils are at the bottom of our noses, and not on the top. It is to let the snot out, and to ensure we do not drown when it rains. Gravity ensures a snot-free nose. So sniffing the snot back into your head is both rude and against the laws of nature. It is behaviour like this that stops us evolving.

“Hi, how are you? Is there any danger of you blowing your nose?” I said, deciding to keep small talk to a minimum.

The look on her face suggested I had added the words, “you fucking dribbly-nosed bitch” to the end of the sentence (for clarity, I had not, I don’t think - sometimes these things sneak out).

She huffily got up and went to the loo, I assume to blow her nose. Though I suppose it is possible she actually needed a poo as well, but she had a big coat on so it was hard to tell.

She returned a few moments later with a handful of tissue paper which she showed to me in a way that asked, “Happy now?!”. I suppose the tissue paper waving could have been a confirmation of some recent poo action. I do not know if the toilet paper had been taken whilst she was having a poo, and I am not sure if there is even a test for this (anyone?). I did not want to ask her if she had a good poo, because I am not Borat, but I really wanted to know if she had gone to the loo at my request, or my request had just coincided with a visit she needed to make anyway, because of a poo.

This would be the difference between her being a considerate sniffer-stopper, and a begrudging one. Had she been a man I could have asked her which cubicle to avoid, or if I should light a candle on the way in, but that is probably a bit inappropriate, what with me not being a woman.

Anyway, I decided to give her the benefit of the doubt and assume that the poo was coincidental, and that she went to blow her nose at my request. I think much better of her that way.

I finished my coffee and left, happy.

Steve Jobs is a smug cunt isn’t he? Every eighteen months or so, Apple launch a new product that will ‘revolutionise’ the face of whatever it is that this new thing does. The iPhone is obviously the latest attempt, and the one that everyone is talking about, but they have been doing it for years.

They don’t even take the trouble to actually invent anything any more. They just take an existing invention, take some the buttons away, erganomicise it (yes it is a word), make it white, add a 400% mark up and launch it on the unsuspecting public.

This is enough to ensure that general public and his army of sheep will keep the demand sky high, and with it, Apples profits. If you think I’m being over-critical, then just look at the history of the products they have launched.

Take one Walkman, take away the buttons, make it white, make it a bit ’rounded’, and there you go. The iPod.

Take one modern mobile phone, take away the buttons, make it white, make it a bit rounded, and there you go. The iPhone.

And yet technologists the world over are creaming themselves over their ‘inventions’. I have this theory that you could sell anything on eBay if you put the little ‘i’ in front of it.

iChair - the white sofa for all your nerdy needs, iDress - a plain wedding dresses for the fashion minimalist, or even iBike - Yes, I know it looks like a white scooter, but really it is a bike that has been through the Apple improvement process.

If you are going to buy an iPhone, then please feel free to defend yourself below.

I have resolved (not in a new years way, that is for those of you with low motivation), to stop saying ‘excuse me’ to people I do not hear or understand.

I have realised that pretty much without fail, any lack of comprehension on my part is due entirely to the communicator. It is them, not me.

Their errors can be numerous, whether they be mumbling, whispering, talking to fast, or simply not paying me enough attention. Yet, when this happens, our first reaction is to say, “Excuse me?” in a “I’m sorry but I have useless ears, what was that again” way. When in reality, what you are actually saying is, “OK numbnuts, let’s try this again, except this time I want eye-contact, volume and a decent attempt at enunciation, OK?”

Honesty is a valued personal trait in society, apparently, so why do we insist on these false apologies? I want to see some harsh truth out there on the streets.

It is the same when someone bumps into you in the street, before you know it you are looking at them apologetically, and saying, “Excuse me”. And not in a cool sarcastic way. I mean in an “Oh my god, I can’t believe I got in your way there, what a twat I am” way.

This apologising for things that are not your fault is a debilitating English disease that I have now resolved to leave in my past forever. It has been removed from my genetic make-up. If we look at yesterday alone, then where there would previously have been at least four “Excuse me”’s, instead I used two “speak ups”, one “Christ, stop mumbling!” and one, “Look where you’re going wideload!”.

And do you know what? Without fail they all said, “Excuse me”.

I feel better for it. I suggest you do the same.

I don’t like questionnaires. They are usually accompanied by a clipboard and someone with less interest in your answers than you have in giving them. Then I got tagged with a ‘meme’ by Clarissa, and I thought, you know what, I’ll have a look at what these ‘meme’ things are. So I did.

And you know what? It is like a questionnaire, except without the beginning and end bit. Just the bit in the middle where it says, “Tell me 5 things no-one knows about you”.

I have checked, and Clarissa is not part of some sort of undercover honey trap and so I am not being lured into confessing to something I might did not do. But I am still not going to do it, because I do not conform. That is the sort of person I am.

This is a shame for you of course, because now you won’t get to hear some things you don’t know about me, like the fact that Esther Rantzen once muttered “you fucking imbecile” at me under her breath. At least that is what it sounded like. I was 16. I felt like calling childline.

Or how I don’t like heights, so once jumped out of a plane to confront my fears (it was planned, and I had a parachute on, I am not mental). It worked as well, right up until the bit where I landed back on the runway (instead of 4 square miles of nice soft field) and damaged my knee ligaments.

Or the fact that I learned to play the guitar at University, not out of some desire for musical or artistic expression, but purely to impress girls. It worked. Brilliantly (compared to say, not learning the guitar).

Or that I am allergic to cats and dogs. The evil devil-serving allergen-carrying hairy fuckers.

Or that I was once arrested in Rome, and as a result I am quite possibly still a fugitive from justice in that country. Probably.

So you see, you have all missed out because I don’t do Memes. Never have, and never will.

Being signed off sick from work is an unusual experience for me. In my working life I’ve probably had a total of about three weeks off ’sick’, and that time has been made up primarily from a broken wrist, torn ankle ligaments, dislocated shoulder and a torn hip flexor. All of them injuries caused by weekend sporting endeavours. Not on the same weekend though. That would have been careless in the extreme.

So, being confined to a proper genuine sick bed, with little to do except sit and think, was a bit like a holiday. Except with lots of hacking coughs and phlegm. I found myself thinking about a lot of things that I have never been able to devote proper intellectual capacity towards, and so I made a few notes in order to share these thoughts, and how long I considered them, with you.

So here they are:

1. Is twenty-twelve too old to realise my dreams of rock’n'roll stardom? (37 minutes).

Absolutely not. The music world is clearly crying out for mediocre rhythm guitarists with a penchant for madchester classics. My time will come.

2. Would it be worth getting really fat, safe in the knowledge you would have a pair of boobs at your beck and call 24×7? (15 minutes)

Almost certainly, but I would need to wax my chest first. They never mention this added benefit on all those health programs. Perhaps they realise just how valuable this hidden bonus is?

3. When you have lost your appetite, are ALL calories, regardless of source, worth consuming? (25 seconds)

Absolutely, the cheesecake didn’t stand a chance.

4. How many berrocas would you need to drink in order to make your piss completely opaque? (30 minutes)

In exclusive tests I can reveal that three simply makes it really really orange, but still see-through, sort of.

5. Which would make the hotter girlfriend, a dancer, a nurse or a masseuse? (one and a half days)

As yet unresolved. More thinking time required, thankfully.  Perhaps with some extensive DVD based research thrown in for good measure.

6. Which superpower would I most want to have for a day? (2 hours)

Super-strength. Then I would spend the day getting attractive women to check out my guns. Obviously.

7. A lot of people believe in telekinesis. Is it actually possible? (a very intense 45 minutes)

Nope. Though perhaps I should have started on something smaller than the sofa I was lying on.

8. Will global warming eventually result in humans evolving sun umbrellas out of the top of their heads? (20 minutes)

In all likelihood yes, but Darwin’s ‘Origin of Species’ is surprisingly silent on the subject. He should do more research.

9. Do animals tell jokes? (30 minutes)

I would imagine they probably do, but they have limited intelligence so it is probably all ‘Knock Knock’ this, or ‘Doctor Doctor’ that. A bit like the northern club circuit. I suppose they might throw in the odd ‘Why did the chicken cross the road’ joke, the animals would appreciate those I’m sure. Except for the chickens. Who probably just make jokes about the Cornish hens that cross the road, but then the Cornish hens would probably just make jokes about the White Laced Red Cornish Hens that crossed the road. There are comedy stereotypes even in the animal world you see. Even if they are too stupid to make a decent pun.

10. Can cats be allergic to cats? (an hour)

I really fucking hope so.