I Am Livid

It is my last full day in South Africa, and I have the shits!

And the pukes!

This is very disappointing. It is coming out of both ends with alarming regularity.

No one has ever suffered like I am suffering.

I only hope that I am bunged back up again before my eleven-hour flight tomorrow evening. If not, then the person sitting next to me has my deepest sympathy. It is going to be a very unpleasant journey indeed.

I have some good stories to tell you all starting next week, but right now I am going to the toilet, where I will have to decide if I am going to sit on it, or kneel before it. Because bitter experience, and a recently mopped floor, have taught me you can not do both.

Todays blog entry is from guest blogger Andy Tilley. If you like what he has written, there is a link at the end to his new book (which I have not read, nor am I being paid to ‘advertise’ it. He simply offered a guest blog entry, which was not rubbish, so I am happy to post it. This applies to anyone who wants to send me to stuff to post. Unless it is really, REALLY good, in which case I will steal it and pass it off as my own).

Where I work there’s isn’t much to do in the evening. The Algerian Sahara is spectacular to look at but you can only say ‘oooh, look at that sand dune’ so many times before it starts to get on your tits. Entertainment wise it’s about as gripping as a Steve McClaren press conference. So more often than not I fill the time just before my night’s kip, lying down and unwinding with a film on the box. That was until last night, when I was forced out of my bed time after time to bugger about with the volume setting and try to find a sound level that would allow me to hear what Nick Nolte was saying. In the end it was too much so I turned the saggy faced grunter off completely and lay in the dark seething. How the hell does someone whose job is supposedly to articulate a script for the benefit of the viewer, maintain a career with a gob full of gravel? Cough for Christ’s sake man! He must be the most Heimlich manoeuvred man on the planet, total strangers grabbing him round the sternum and jerking him up and down every time he says hello. And he isn’t the only one. That Lucy Loo or however you spell it, absolutely trashed Lucky Number Slevin for me. Great film, absolutely no idea what she said in it.

Now I fully understand that directors want to create a piece of work that’s convincing and that it wouldn’t be credible if alcoholic private eyes pronounced perfect English with impeccable grammar, but it is possible for a character to be believable without having to resort to ridiculous accents or them husky tones that require subtitles isn’t it?. I mean, look at Tarantino’s Pulp Fiction. The dialogue between Jules and Vince is staggering but only because we can hear every word of it. But the fact that the actors talk crisply and clearly doesn’t make you doubt for a moment that if you jumped the queue at MacD’s then they’d pop a cap in your ass.

If you’re writing a book, the issue of how to handle gritty, regional dialogue is even more of a challenge, mainly because you don’t have the luxury of any supporting action to carry the dialogue through. I’ve tried to read books where the author has stayed true to strong regional accents (Scottish for example) and find it difficult to keep the momentum in a scene building because trying to decipher the speech takes too bloody long. For example, if I was to try write and express, as best as I could, the sound of an excited young Liverpool lad seeking confirmation from his mum that firemen actually do put out fires, then I would have to write something like,

‘but dee doo doo dat don’t dee doh, mam.’ Tommy said from inside his hood.

What’s the bleedin’ point in that? Or suppose there’s a scene where someone from the Caribbean is ordering bacon at the Tesco’s meat counter. If the strict tone of the dialect is to be maintained he should ask for some ‘beer can’ shouldn’t he? I think that to write this would be wrong. You don’t want your reader having to stop and think about why the hell the bloke is ordering a six pack of Stella when his missus specifically sent him out for a pack of Danish, now do you? By the way, try saying ‘beer can’ without sounding like a Jamaican asking for bacon. You can’t.

Personally, I think trying to strive for too much realism in the passages of dialogue that connect action (and so enable it to flow) can really damage a scene. Pretty much all the stories I tell are set in Manchester and I must admit it is tempting to pad out the exchanges between characters, fill them with ‘mad ferrets’ and ‘blue noses’ but to do that would be wrong. After all, saying something that only you and Liam Gallagher can understand isn’t the best way to communicate an idea is it? Juno wot a meeeen arr kid?

Andy Tilley

Author: Recycling Jimmy

Publisher: Kunati Inc. (September 1, 2007)
ISBN-10: 1601640137

Todays blog entry is from guest blogger Andy Tilley. If you like what he has written, there is a link at the end to his new book (which I have not read, nor am I being paid to ‘advertise’ it. He simply offered a guest blog entry, which was not rubbish, so I am happy to post it. This applies to anyone who wants to send me to stuff to post. Unless it is really, REALLY good, in which case I will steal it and pass it off as my own).

Where I work there’s isn’t much to do in the evening. The Algerian Sahara is spectacular to look at but you can only say ‘oooh, look at that sand dune’ so many times before it starts to get on your tits. Entertainment wise it’s about as gripping as a Steve McClaren press conference. So more often than not I fill the time just before my night’s kip, lying down and unwinding with a film on the box. That was until last night, when I was forced out of my bed time after time to bugger about with the volume setting and try to find a sound level that would allow me to hear what Nick Nolte was saying. In the end it was too much so I turned the saggy faced grunter off completely and lay in the dark seething. How the hell does someone whose job is supposedly to articulate a script for the benefit of the viewer, maintain a career with a gob full of gravel? Cough for Christ’s sake man! He must be the most Heimlich manoeuvred man on the planet, total strangers grabbing him round the sternum and jerking him up and down every time he says hello. And he isn’t the only one. That Lucy Loo or however you spell it, absolutely trashed Lucky Number Slevin for me. Great film, absolutely no idea what she said in it.

Now I fully understand that directors want to create a piece of work that’s convincing and that it wouldn’t be credible if alcoholic private eyes pronounced perfect English with impeccable grammar, but it is possible for a character to be believable without having to resort to ridiculous accents or them husky tones that require subtitles isn’t it?. I mean, look at Tarantino’s Pulp Fiction. The dialogue between Jules and Vince is staggering but only because we can hear every word of it. But the fact that the actors talk crisply and clearly doesn’t make you doubt for a moment that if you jumped the queue at MacD’s then they’d pop a cap in your ass.

If you’re writing a book, the issue of how to handle gritty, regional dialogue is even more of a challenge, mainly because you don’t have the luxury of any supporting action to carry the dialogue through. I’ve tried to read books where the author has stayed true to strong regional accents (Scottish for example) and find it difficult to keep the momentum in a scene building because trying to decipher the speech takes too bloody long. For example, if I was to try write and express, as best as I could, the sound of an excited young Liverpool lad seeking confirmation from his mum that firemen actually do put out fires, then I would have to write something like,

‘but dee doo doo dat don’t dee doh, mam.’ Tommy said from inside his hood.

What’s the bleedin’ point in that? Or suppose there’s a scene where someone from the Caribbean is ordering bacon at the Tesco’s meat counter. If the strict tone of the dialect is to be maintained he should ask for some ‘beer can’ shouldn’t he? I think that to write this would be wrong. You don’t want your reader having to stop and think about why the hell the bloke is ordering a six pack of Stella when his missus specifically sent him out for a pack of Danish, now do you? By the way, try saying ‘beer can’ without sounding like a Jamaican asking for bacon. You can’t.

Personally, I think trying to strive for too much realism in the passages of dialogue that connect action (and so enable it to flow) can really damage a scene. Pretty much all the stories I tell are set in Manchester and I must admit it is tempting to pad out the exchanges between characters, fill them with ‘mad ferrets’ and ‘blue noses’ but to do that would be wrong. After all, saying something that only you and Liam Gallagher can understand isn’t the best way to communicate an idea is it? Juno wot a meeeen arr kid?

Andy Tilley

Author: Recycling Jimmy

Publisher: Kunati Inc. (September 1, 2007)
ISBN-10: 1601640137

Thank you for your visit.

Unfortunately (for you), I will be out of the country and in the other half of the world for the next two weeks. I will mostly be playing golf, and finally settling that bet on whether you can win a fight with a Lion if you have the element of surprise on your side.

If your need for entertainment is urgent, please find the emergency exits on your right. Otherwise, I will return with tales of Sith Afrika on 1st October. Assuming I win my bet about the Lions.

I will not be responding to, or moderating comments during this time, which means you can get away with pretty much anything you like (you know, down there). Consider it the last day of school when the teacher let you bring in all your toys and games. Except none of you will wet yourselves in excitement.

Be good.

(PS - There is going to be just one guest while I am away, and he is here on Monday, make the most of it.)

Parcel Force are fucking shite.

Fortunately, I have little cause to use them, but in this case I had no choice. I had won a bid on eBay for a super secret item in the US of A, and once in the UK (and after being briefly impounded by HM Revenue & Customs), it was up to Parcel Force to deliver it.

I had paid the VAT and clearance fee, and was informed online that deliver would take place on Monday.

At 3pm on Monday it had still not arrived so I decided to call the Parcel Force Depot. First, you have to navigate the voice recognition menu, which provides no option whatsoever to speak to a real person. Having spent a few minutes reading out my tracking number again and again, I was eventually offered the chance to speak to a human being.

“Hello, how can I help?”

“Hello, I was expecting a delivery this morning, and it has not arrived, can you tell me where it is.”

Despite reading it out loud three times already, I gave him the tracking number and he tippety-tapped it into his computer.

“Ah. It appears the driver attempted delivery this morning.”

“It appears so.”

We confirmed they had the correct address, which they did, and he said he would try and get the driver to deliver it that afternoon. I left my mobile number with them, in case he could not find it again, and went back about my business.

At 5pm no delivery had taken place.

I called again, and once more had to navigate the voice command menu for several minutes before working my way to a real person. She then told me that they had no record of my earlier conversation and that my parcel was on its way back to the depot. They would however deliver it tomorrow. I took her name and left it at that.

The following day I decided to call mid-morning, to check that my delivery was indeed to take place. I selected the “Other services” option from the telephone menu, thinking, somewhat foolishly, that it would be a shortcut to a real person. It was not. Instead, I listened for three minutes to adverts for various international delivery services, without a single selection option, before hanging up and starting again.

After seven minutes, I was finally given the option of selecting a real person. I pressed the button, only to be informed by the computer lady that I was now in a queue. As the minutes dragged by I totted up that I had so far spent approximately twenty minutes on the phone to these incompetent shysters.

Eventually, a nice lady who identified herself as Natasha answered the phone. I explained my previous two calls to her colleagues.

“There appears to be no record of that conversation, apart from an attempted delivery yesterday. But your parcel is out for delivery with the courier today.”

“As it was yesterday, Natasha. I believe you. What I do not have any confidence in however, is the drivers ability to locate a big office block in the middle of a town. He has the address, he has my phone number, I have given you landmarks, yet despite all this, I still did not receive my parcel yesterday. Do you understand my dilemma here?”

“Yes, but it is a different driver. And I have messaged your details to him, but they don’t have company phones so sometimes they don’t call the recipients.”

“OK, give me your number and I will call you this afternoon to confirm delivery or let you know if there is a problem.”

I went back to work with my fingers crossed that my super secret item would arrive in time.

I was sat in a sales meeting, much like any other I have been in over the years. I was bored and hungover, which was not a state conducive to producing articulate contributions to the group discussions. One colleague in particular was describing a potential sale, in teeth-achingly minute detail. He began to focus on one prospective client in particular, and who was causing him issues.

“He’s a right nigger in the woodpile…”

I looked up from my doodle of an exploding head and watched him as he looked around the table, in the way that people do when they are looking for reassurance, or confirmation that what they just said was funny.

“You know what I mean.” he continued.

“Err, no, I am afraid I do not.” I interjected. “Firstly, I am not sure you can use the term nigger in polite company, unless you are a rapper, in which case it is actively encouraged. And second of all, I am not sure what a person of Afro-Caribbean descent, hiding behind a load of wood, has to do with anything. Fo shizzle.”

“It’s just a saying.”

“Is it? Is it really? Explain it to me because I have never heard it before.”

Asking someone to explain a metaphor is fun, especially if they don’t really know what they are talking about. After a while he came to the conclusion that it was a metaphor for someone who was trying to spoil things for you, but he could not, despite minutes of trying, tell me why a nigger would want to spoil a woodpile.

“Is this woodpile owned by his slave master?”

“Is the woodpile being used by Clansmen to burn more niggers?”

There were no more racial slurs after that, and he focussed on explaining the sales situations at prospective clients by mocking Gypos and The Gays.

As I sat there, I could hear her sniffling like a flu-ridden coke addict. I knew what was happening at the other end of the sofa, even before I looked across.

I finally glanced over as she wiped away a tear and tried to hide her face. I looked back at the TV.

“It’s emotional!” she explained.

“I am not crying, am I?” I retorted.

“That’s because you are dead inside.”

So, apparently I am dead inside, emotionally speaking. Physically speaking, my heart rate is a little fast and I have slightly high blood pressure, but apart from that, I am fine. But I am dead inside because I did not cry.

At Saturday’s episode of the X Factor.

I am in touch with my feelings. Anyone who reads the drivel on this website would know that, but I fail to see why anyone, ever, would cry at a reality television show. Especially one where inept singers embarrass themselves in front of the nation.

Can someone enlighten me?

I had been driving for a few hours, so I decided to take a break at the next motorway services.

These places are grim at the best of times, but when it is dark and quiet they are more miserable looking than Pavorotti’s skinny pallbearer.

I stretched my arms as I made my way to the toilet for a onesy, on route to which I noticed the amusement arcade. The brightest, flashiest and noisiest machine available was a two-man driving simulator.

I can not be certain, but surely putting a driving simulator in a place where people are taking break from driving is akin to selling drugs outside The Priory. There was no-one playing it, unsurprisingly.

After I had finished my onesy and was walking back to my car I was bemused to see a grown man, in a suit, playing the machine. I watched for a few seconds as he weaved his way through the traffic with a level of reckless abandonment rarely seen by people not driving a 20 year-old XR2. That is when it struck me.

It is actually a GENIUS idea to put these machines in service stations.

You spend hours driving along at 75 mile an hour, frustrated by the morons around you, so what better way to release that frustration than driving like an utter twat in a virtual world for ten minutes? It could quite possible help save your driving licence.

This got me thinking, and I believe it would be a good idea to put up virtual reality machines on major high streets so you could take a break from the shopping to go into a booth and slaughter innocent people with assorted weaponry for ten minutes. Virtually. I am not advocating sniper booths.

In fact, playing in games booths like this would almost make it worth suffering the Saturday shopping hordes. Almost.

We are in the pub for Wednesday Night Lads Night. No women allowed. This is because we talk about birds and sex and stuff about football, politics, the weather and absolutely positively not about ‘birds’ and girlfriends and sex*.

The One Who Talks A Lot, is talking a lot, and describing in great detail the problems he is having in the bum area after eating something ‘dodgy’. He leaves and goes to the toilet, while the rest of us finally get to speak and catch up amongst ourselves, like normal people do, with vocal chords. We make the most of these precious moments, as we will obviously be forced into mutedness when TOWTAL returns.

My phone rings. The called ID shows that it is TOWTAL calling me.

“Hello TOWTAL.” I answer, slightly bemused as to why he is phoning me having been sat with me sixty seconds earlier.

“Hello, I err, need some help.”

“Of course!” I answer, whilst standing up with the largest grin I can muster.

“EXCUSE ME!” I announce to the pub. “My friend, TWOTAL, has gone for a number two, and has discovered, too late, that there is no toilet roll in the cubicle. Does anyone have any he can borrow? Or keep, you know, if you don’t want it back afterwards?”

There are giggles. TOWTAL is on the end of the phone, and for once, he is not talking a lot.

“Here, I’ll get you a roll.” offers the not-as-cute-as-the-other-one barmaid.

With that, she hands me an industrial wheel of toilet paper and I take it into the gents, where I knock on the door and shout the secret codewords, “I have got you some TOILET ROLL so you can wipe your BUM HOLE!”

He opens the door, standing there with his pants round his ankles, which is a little disconcerting, and hungrily takes the toilet roll from my grasp.

Several minutes later he reappears, to the continuing chuckles of the pub. He tries to divert attention by telling everyone that, “There is a bloke in the toilet with no paper, poor bugger!” but no-one is believing it. Everybody knows he has been wiping his bum hole.

He sits down and begins talking, whilst the rest of us remain silent for the next 106 minutes until closing time.

* edited at request of TOWTAL.

No no no. Don’t go leaping to the comments box with beautifully crafted messages of good tidings and best wishes. It is not my birthday. It was someone at work, someone rather senior.

Like every office throughout the land, he went through the “I’ve put some shit cakes in the kitchen for everyone” charade, and everyone signed his card pretending to like him as it was passed around between the employees. I thought long and hard about what to write, and then put the following.

Congrats, hope you end
up partying like you’re
nearer to 21 than 40! Try not
to get into too much trouble!

I took special care to emphasise the first letter of each line, and I will admit if felt extremely good to call him a cunt, even if it was hidden away in unbreakable code in his birthday card. It is these little victories which will ensure I win the war.

He then went out for lunch with the female office manager, and quite cute she is too. Anyway, I needed to see him after lunch so I checked his diary, and the smug bastard had only written in “BJ” over two hours for lunch.

Talk about rubbing your fucking face in it.

I like watching sport on TV, and genuinely believe it is why God invented Plasma TV’s.

This year, the monopoly that Sky previously held on Premier League football has been broken and a new kid on the block has appeared. They are called Setenta Sports. You may have seen the adverts? Des Lynam in a burger van trying to convince someone it has nothing to do with Sultanas? Advertising at its very best.

Anyway, this ‘extra choice’ for us consumers means that I now have to subscribe to not one, but two sports channels if I want to watch when my team plays on the television. The really good news however is that Setanta Sports do not require an annual contract. According to their increasingly irritating advertising materials, you just pay £9.99 a month, with no annual contract as you have with Sky. Bargain eh? So I called up to discuss a subscription.

“Hello Setanta Sports.”

“Yes.”

[Click]

This is one consumer choice I shall be choosing not to take advantage of.

I receive an email from one of my blond friends.

“I have just been to M&S to get my lunch.” it began. Clearly this was not an urgent request for help, or in fact likely to be very interesting.

“I was queuing up to pay for my sandwiches when I spotted some chocolate by the till. I am a sucker for point of sale promotions.” it continued, showing little sign of reaching a point.

It is not unusual for me to receive such emails, it is almost as if she is documenting her life by email. I have no idea why she thinks I would be interested, but there is usually some nugget in there that makes reading it worthwhile, so I continued onwards.

“I was at my desk in the afternoon and decided I would like to eat my chocolates. So I opened the packet and realised there were no chocolates in there. Just batteries.”

Right. Batteries.

“When did M&S start packaging their batteries like chocolates? I feel cheated!”

I have never bought batteries from M&S so I can not comment with any authority, but I would assume that the writing on the side saying, “Batteries” would have given the game away. Or perhaps the lack of the word “Chocolate”. Clearly not. Perhaps there is someone out there right now enjoying some nice milk chocolate, but with a non-working remote control.

Overall, this email was nearly as good as the time she emailed to ask at which point the Space Shuttle had turned from a space rocket into a plane, as she thought it was going to land back on earth like the rocket on Button Moon.