I Am Livid

We have a temp in the office at the moment, and I am convinced she has some sort of mental problem. She simply cannot end a sentence without laughing as if I have just told her one of my brilliant jokes. Even when I have not told her one of my brilliant jokes.

Being in a meeting with her is like having a meeting on the set of a sitcom, except without the funny one-liners or the live studio audience. Just the laughter track. Do not be under the impression that this is something to help to lighten the mood, or that she is spreading a bit of happiness. She is not. Overly happy people make me sick. She is like the boy who cried wolf, all this fake laughing will totally dilute the effect when I eventually tell her one of my brilliant jokes.

In the kitchen this morning.

“Fucking hell, we’re out of milk again.” I said to no-one in particular.

“I know, I hate it when that happens, HAHAHAHAHAHAHA!” she cackled.

“I don’t understand, that’s not funny. Is it?”

“Not really, no, HAHAHAHAHAHAHA.”

Later, I had to pop in to ask her for some work related information. “I really need those figures as soon as possible.”

“I guess I’ll have to work through lunch then! HAHAHAHAHAHAHA.”

“Yes, you will! HAHAHAHAHAHAHA!” I guffawed. Though she didn’t seem to find it as funny when I did it.

I am compiling a list of things to say when I next see her, just to see if I can elicit a response that does not have a full-volume chuckle attached to it. My list so far:

“Someone just drove into your car.”
“I have a big bag of dead puppies under my desk, wanna see?”
“If you laugh at the end of your next sentence I will stick a fork in your neck.”

Can anyone suggest any others?

I send a text message.

“I am now going to be about this weekend. Is it still OK to come to your do?”

It was a friend’s 30th birthday, and I had previously made plans which meant I could not make his party. But those plans changed (I was not rain-checked, and anyone who says I was is… etc etc), and so I was now going to be in attendance. I then set about arranging to car share with my ex-flatmate, and whilst on the phone I asked, “There isn’t a theme or anything is there?”

“No.” he confidently answered (this is important, remember this bit).

As we pulled into the rugby club venue I noticed something awry. Just about every person we saw was dressed as if they had stepped out of the Wild West, which as everyone knows was full of cowboys, Native Americans (which were called ‘Indians’ in those days. I know!) and inflatable horses.

My first thought was that this was such a shame, that my friend should have his party gatecrashed by the local camp line-dancing troupe. Then I noticed a mutual friend dressed like a cowboy, and he is a rubbish line dancer, which could mean only one thing. He had been taking line dancing lessons! What better way to announce your exit from the closet than at a friends 30th birthday party?

Alas, it turned out that he had not, and as we walked into the bar a number of heads turned to greet us. I had that horrible feeling you get when you dream that you have turned up to school without any underpants (before you realised such an action was actually liberating and perfectly normal, no matter what anyone says).

It was clear that people thought I could not be bothered to dress up, and I hate people thinking I am a party-pooper. I am not. I definitely would have dressed up, and it would have been the best costume at the party, obviously. But I did not know about it and when I challenged my ex-flatmate, and now borderline ex-friend, his response was a half-hearted, “Meh.”

He was clearly not bothered by our plight, but it is very hard to convince impressionable young ladies to sleep with you when they are in a room full of cowboys, and you and not dressed like a cowboy. Even my explanation that “this is what cowboys dress like nowadays, I am a chronologically up-to-date cowboy” fell upon deaf ears.

Still, on the bright side, I did not feel like an utter twat when we went to a nightclub later.

So Owen Wilson has tried to commit suicide. Allegedly.

I realise that ‘You, Me and Dupree’ set a new all-time low for the cinematic genre we call ‘comedy’, but I am surprised by his actions. I thought he was made of sterner stuff. You can not spend 38 years on this earth, with a nose shaped like a human penis, without developing some sort of coping mechanism in the face of adversity. As coping mechanisms go, I will admit that have sex with Kate Hudson is a pretty good one (it is a bit better than my own favourite, Back to The Future DVD marathons and booze).

Apparently they split up recently, and I imagine that if I could not have sex with Kate Hudson (it is only a matter of time people) ever again, and had a nose like a human penis, then I too, would feel a little blue. But if I wanted to kill myself, I am sure I could do it properly, with none of this ‘failed attempt’ and ‘cry for help’ rubbish.

A gun in the mouth, a poorly timed walk along the train tracks, or wearing an “I prefer East 17″ sandwich board at a Take That reunion concert are all ways to guarantee your death.

Of course, maybe he was not actually trying to shuffle off this mortal coil at all, and in reality he is just looking for a sympathy shag from Ms Hudson? If this is true, then I suppose it is possible he is actually a sexually-deviant evil genius. In which case I take my hat off to old penis nose.

I can assure you that if this leads to some form of reconciliation between him and Kate Hudson (i.e. he gets a shag out of it) you can expect to see the headline in the Windsor & Maidenhead Advertiser, “Top Blogger in death bid!”

Only really fit and morally questionable well-wishers will be welcome at the hospital though, just to be clear.

I was told as a child that cheats and liars do not prosper.

If you manipulate the truth, then you go to Hell (this is what comes of a Catholic upbringing). I want to know which bit of hell is being reserved for Max Clifford?

He has made a career out of twisting the truth, and manufacturing situations for the benefit of his clients. Worst of all, he is FAMOUS FOR DOING IT. Yet still, time after time, he manages to pull the wool over our eyes.

I simply do not understand it.

If you went to buy a car, and were greeted by a man who said his job was to twist the facts so the car got the best price possible, would you trust him? Would you buy the car?

Are any of you professional liars? If not, what is the best lie you have ever told for personal benefit? I may choose to share mine, but I will wait to see what everyone else confesses first. It is my blog and I can do what I like.

Kanye West is currently at the top of the Hit Parade singing about the fact that “what doesn’t kill me makes me stronger”.

These are clearly the words of a man who has never spent any time with recovering stroke victims. Well Kanye, I have, and I can tell you now, I have never won so many arm wrestles in my life. Even with my bad arm. Stronger my arse. I almost felt guilty taking the money off them, but a bet is a bet. I would have paid them if they had won.

After listening to this song, the following track was by Gym Class Heroes and has taken the Jermaine Stewart song that goes, “We don’t have to take our clothes off, to have a good time.” and changed the lyrics to, “We have to take our clothes of to have a good time.”

Do you see what they did there?

Perhaps it is a sign of the times we live in, and final confirmation that fully-clothed fun is a thing of the past. Or maybe they are just utterly desperate for a shag and think that singing about going nude will offer them a better chance of getting off with a woman. They are probably right thinking about. Honesty is the best policy after all (unless you have done something really really bad, in which case, get an alibi, quick), so asking for, and subsequently getting, a woman naked is normally a pretty good sign that you are going to have the sex.

Anyway, this song has got me thinking. Which classic songs should we change the lyrics to, given the chance, so that they better reflect the society we live in today?

Marvin Gaye’s - I heard it on Facebook?
Hot Chocolate’s - It started with a Poke?
Culture Club’s - Do you really wanna (MSN) block me?
Duran Duran’s - Girls on memory-card?

(continued from (the day before) yesterday)

Yes, yes, I know I promised you the conclusion to this story yesterday, but I had to make a quick work trip abroad with work. Unfortunately, the country I went to does not appear to have any Internets that you can use. It is a very nice place to look at, but the language is pretty much indecipherable. Fortunately, most of the locals have a passable grasp of English, despite a quite ridiculous accent when attempting our language. If you fancy taking a trip there yourself, take a look here.

Anyway, the story. I have never slept in a train station. It is not a life experience I was particularly looking forward to, but this was the reality of the situation. I was a bit drunk, and I did not want to get robbed or bummed to death in my sleep, so I did what any normal person would do and put my wallet, phone, and change into my underpants. Then I did my belt up as tight as it would go, and tried to get some sleep.

I could not sleep though, due to the morbid fear of someone managing to get into my pants and thinking that the loose change was some sort of payment for services not yet rendered.

Also, the seats in Paddington are not conducive to a restful nights sleep. Which is understandable, if you are trying to stop vagrants from setting up home, as I suppose Paddington is. But I am not a vagrant, I am just a spectacularly stupid man who wanted to sleep for a few hours.

As I sat there with my head bowed, trying for all the world to get just a few moments sleep, someone sat next to me.

I smelt him long before I saw him, and as he sat he mumbled something in what I assumed to be Arabic. He would get up every few minutes, go for a walk in his tramp suit, then come back and mumble again. Imagine your most annoying fidgety ex-girlfriend and then make her smelly and homeless. It was just like that, but without the spooning.

About halfway through my stint in the chair, I was awoken by the mumbling tramp.

“Hey, HEY, where my stuff?”

“You got my stuff? Where my stuff?!”

“I do not have your stuff.” I answered, assuming he was referring to the plastic bag he had been carrying earlier.

“WHERE MY STUFF!”

“Look, I do NOT have your fucking stuff, so fucking stop asking me the where the fuck your fucking stuff is, I do not fucking know!” I wittily retorted, as I do not do well with a lack of sleep.

With that, he wandered off again, I assumed to look for his stuff.

A few minutes later I was again woken, but this time by someone altogether more pleasant.

“Excuse me Sir, sorry to bother you, but this gentleman claims that you have his stuff?”

“Officer, I assure you I do not have his stuff.” I responded to the two policemen now stood in front of me, “Trust me, if I was going to steal something it would be something good, like jewellery or a phone, not a tramps carrier bag.”

“Where my stuff!” added the tramp.

“Sorry Sir, we’ll leave you to it.” concluded the policeman.

With that he an his policeman colleague took the tramp in a suit away, and out of the station.

The remaining hour or so was uneventful and I bought a coffee and boarded my train home. Everything seemed to finally sorting itself out, right up until the point where I got fined for having a now out-of-date train ticket.

I went to west London on Saturday after an aborted picnic was relocated to the basement of a pub. As you do. Much fun was had and I met some funny, nice and actually-quite-fit people. And some other bloggers (ha, I am funny).

As midnight approached I left a group who were heading for a curry as I needed to make my way back to Paddington to get my last train home. It was probably no more than a twenty minute walk, but I was a bit drunk so decided to get the tube. I headed to the platform as I fiddled with my new phone, and continued to do so in the near empty carriage.

The train reached its first stop, which I had expected to be Bayswater, but to my surprise, I was definitely looking at a sign that read High Street Kensington. This was either the most elaborately planned practical joke anyone has ever played on the tube, or, like an utter twat, I had gone the wrong way.

If only this were to be the only time I would call myself a twat in the next few hours.

The tube trains had now stopped in the other direction, so I headed towards the surface aware that I now had forty-five minutes to complete a probable thirty minute walk to Paddington. At this point in the story it is probably worth pointing out that I do not have a very good sense of direction. Before the advent of Satellite navigation I would regularly get lost on simple journeys, so my decision to head off on a brisk walk in the ‘general direction’ of Paddington was, in hindsight, not my best.

As the rain came down, and not a single sign-post mentioned Paddington, I started looking out for a cab, but none were forthcoming. I tried to look at a map on my phone, but it would not load. I continued to walk, now slightly concerned about missing my train. After what felt like a few days I reached a place called Princess Gate on Hyde Park, and finally had success in loading the map on my phone. I let out a slight whimper when I realised I was absolutely fucking miles from where I thought I was.

I figured I had about two miles to cover in the five minutes before my last train left the station. For some reason I began to run, but then I worked out that all this would mean is that I’d arrive sweaty, and still miss my train. So I walked instead.

An hour later, when I was still walking round in the rain, with a dead phone battery and no idea of my location, I finally admitted defeat and asked for directions. It was a humbling moment, and a pretty unpleasant one when it became clear I still had a good half-hour of walking to do, most of it back in the direction I had just come from.

When I finally reached Paddington, I checked the timetable and learned that it would be four hours before the next train left. I hailed a cab and was told it would be about sixty pounds to take me home. I am not made of money, so I resigned myself to a four hour wait at Paddington.

It was not very cold, and the station was quiet, so nothing else could go wrong, surely?

(Continued tomorrow)

A quick poll.

I have a colleague who, from time to time, will take his cup of coffee to the toilet with him. I assume to drink it, but it is also quite possible that there is some sort of sexual perversion out there that requires a cup full of hot liquid. I just do not know about it, yet (unfortunately, as I really hate to think people are having some sort of fun that I do not yet know about).

He doesn’t come out looking particularly disheveled or post-coital, but if I had just had a cheeky tug in the toilets I would make an effort to look normal when I came out as well.

I said IF!

So, my question to you is this. Does this strike you as the behaviour of a complete freak? Or is this completely normal, and I am the strange one for insisting on drinking my coffee at my desk and saving the cheeky tugs for the privacy of my own home or in the supermarket car park?

The motorway services on the M6 toll road are probably the newest in the country. The facilities are deemed to be the most leading edge in the industries related to helping people avoid Birmingham.

I walked in having finished half of my journey north, and in dire need of a coffee. Helpfully, Costa coffee have set up two stores, one for people who want to ’sit in’ and one for take-away. As I wanted to take away my coffee the choice was simple. Plus the server on the ’sit in’ till was particularly unattractive, clearly an oversight on the part of management. If you want people stay in the venue and spend more money, make the women servers in the ’sit in’ bit very, very fit.

As I took my take-away coffee I asked for a cup holder.

“I’m sorry?” queried the somewhat confused server.

“A holder. For the cup. You know, the cardboard ones, so I do not spill it?”

“Sorry.”

This was an unsatisfactory end to our conversation, but I could not sit in the services with a take-away coffee, that would be sadder than an Osmonds reunion TV special. So I left, and headed for my car taking my coffee with me.

After trying to find a secure place in which to put my hot coffee, I found the only way I could secure it was to put the passenger seat-belt across it in the seat, as if it was a really small person like Tom Cruise. But with no arms or legs. Or a head.

So that is what I did, and to be fair, I managed to travel approximately four hundred yards before it fell over and started pouring hot coffee all over the passenger seat.

My car now fucking stinks. Of coffee (that other smell has now gone away thankfully).

I am sat in the coffee shop reading a paper, listening to two women talking at the next table. This is not my purpose for being there, obviously. I am not a weirdo. If I wanted to listen to women talking I would just hide in a cubicle in the ladies toilets like any normal person.

“So Josh made the football team, I’m sure he’s going to be a footballer, he’s so good for an eight year old”

“Oh that’s great, but Harry has made it to the country trials.”

“I’m sure Josh will too, probably before he’s ten, like Harry is.”

This “my kid is better than your kid” one-upwomanship continued off and on for about ten minutes, and yet these women gave the impression they were friends. Not particularly good friends, clearly, but friends nonetheless. This is another good reason for not having kids. It will inevitably lead to strange conversations in coffee shops overheard by the last sane person in the town.

I began to wonder what the conversation would have been like if they were not friends.

“Christ your kid is ugly. He looks like the mongoloid love child of Jade Goody and James Blunt!”

“Yes you can, and imagine how stupid that kid would be.”

At that point I shook myself awake from my daytime nightmare and left them to it. The irony? I bet neither Josh or Harry are even nearly as good at football as me. But you don’t hear me bragging about it.

My phone rings.

I am sat at a table outside a bar by the Thames with some people off of the Internet. It appears, so far, that none of them have been grooming me, so I am quite relaxed. I know that it is sometimes considered rude to answer your phone when you are out with people, but I honestly believe this is only true when it is other people’s phones.

“Hello Amy.” I say, as I had noticed it was my friend Amy ringing me.

“Hi Angry, err, I’ve got a bit of a problem, this ambulance man won’t let me go until he knows there is someone to meet me at home.”

“Ambulance man? What the hell happened?”

At this point I received a glance or two from the others at the table. When people mention ambulances or hospitals this tends to happen. A lot.

“Well, I fell over walking out of a wine bar, and apparently I briefly knocked myself out cold, and now they won’t let me go home on my own.”

“OK, put the ambulance man on.”

I then received a potted history of the medical professionals involvement in my drunken friends evening. He said she should not be left alone for at least twelve hours because of potential ‘complications’. I did not enquire what they are in case he starts talking about disgusting womens problems. Eurgh.

“OK, call me when you need me to meet you.”

As I retold the story to the others around the table it dawned on me just how much like an ‘emergency’ call this sounded. I have never been on the receiving end of such a call, obviously, but I have heard tales of plumbing emergencies, pet deaths and car accidents that have called people away from meetings with new people at very short notice.

Although this was not a ‘date’, it was clear to me that my fellow drinkers were thinking I had faked an emergency call in order to escape, but in all honesty, I had calculated my chances of being Rohypnoled at less than 4-1 so I had cancelled my own emergency call just minutes earlier. Which is why I turned off my phone.

I have not heard from Amy for a while, but I am sure she is OK. She has a thick skull.

I do not understand bands who try to hide tracks on their albums. What is the point? If the song is so utterly rubbish that they are ashamed of it, why not just remove it all together.

It is not like finding a hidden track is like breaking the Da Vinci code, is it? My first experience with this phenomenon was on the Stone Roses’ Second Coming album at University. I fell asleep listening to it due to booze-induced narcolepsy, but awoke when the hidden track began. At first I thought my stereo was giving me a secret coded message to go out and kill women, but then I realised that it would be too much of an amazing coincidence for it to be giving me the exact same message as the incessant voices in my head. Which was a relief.

I was quite pleased that I had found this secret track, until the following day when all of my housemates said they had all heard it as well. It was clearly the worst-kept secret in the world ever, and this was in the year of George Michael’s “I am really straight me, definitely!” interviews.

There are now literally hundreds of albums with so-called hidden tracks. Most of them are completely shit. There is no curiosity on my part to find them, and anyone telling you that it is a little present for the fans is entirely deluded. Everybody knows that presents are things like clothes, booze or blow-job vouchers, not easy to find studio out-takes.

Music is much better experienced live, I have always believed this, but I have yet to see a band willing replicate a hidden track at a live gig. It can draw some funny looks if you wait till the end when everyone else has gone home just to see if there is another song to be performed, and the security stewards tend not to like it. They come at you with their “I’ve got to go home” this, and “We’re about to lock up” that.

It would be just my luck for the extra track to be performed just as I left, so I assert my rights and I wait, and so should you. And do not let those people breaking up the stage fool you.

I finish playing 5 a-side and notice that I have three missed calls on my mobile, all from my old flatmate. This can mean one of two things, either he has some sort accountancy based emergency, or he has the phone in his pocket and is calling me by accident. There is no voicemail message from him which sounds like the inside of a pocket, so I call back.

“Hi Angry, I need a favour, can you pick me up from the Audi garage?”

“Hmph. OK, I’ll be there in ten minutes.”

I drive to pick him up, and he sits in the front seat forlornly. This is surprising, as today was the day he picked up his new car.

“So” I ask “What happened.”

“Well, I picked up my new car, and very nice it is too, and on the way home I stopped to fill up with petrol, and splashed out on that good unleaded stuff, as a little treat for my new baby. I paid, and then I pulled out onto the dual carriageway and the car grinded to a halt.”

“And that’s when I realised I had bought a diesel.”

He has owned a diesel for five years. Actually, he has owned a diesel for 5 years and twenty minutes if you include his new one. He was surprisingly chipper about it for someone about to spend a few hundred pounds fixing a mistake that, generally speaking, only retards make. This is one of the significant differences between us. He is not normally a retard, except on one or two previous occasions.

I dropped him at home and got out my phone to begin texting everyone we know.

“Hello [Angry's home town] police station.”

“Jesus. Jesus Christ.”