I am livid

My Mom was recently in a car accident. Well, she was in a car. The other driver was in charge of a bus.

She is fine though, just a bit of whiplash, a few broken ribs, some bruising etc. Nothing to explain the steep drop in the level of service I have come to expect when I recently stayed with her. I even had to make my own breakfast one morning.  Disgraceful.

Whilst discussing her accident she described how the bus had changed lane and hit her head on, knocking her back thirty feet and writing off her car.   She felt lucky to be alive.

“I tell you, God was looking out for me that day.”

Well no, He wasn’t really, was He?  If He was looking after you, then wouldn’t He have made the bus veer in the opposite direction and miss you completely?  Driving a bus into you is a pretty irresponsible way to treat one of his children.  In fact, in today’s society that type of behaviour is enough to get you a pretty uncomfortable interview with Social Services.

“Why did you make the bus drive directly into one of your children?”

“Well, errr, it’s er, my mysterious ways and that?” 

Of course, I did not say this to my Mom, as she worries enough about my eternal soul as it is.  No need to worry her any more about my rapid descent into Hell.   But really, ‘mysterious ways’ is a pretty shocking way to  explain away incompetence.  Can you imagine if it became the norm to use it as an excuse in other walks of life?

“Prime Minister, inflation is sky rocketing, unemployment is at an all time high, and record interest rates have pushed the housing market to the brink of collapse.  What do you have to say?”

“Well, New Labour moves in mysterious ways you see.”

“Oh, right.  A bit like God then?”

“Err, yes.  Exactly like that.”

“Good.  So long as you’re not fucking everything up.” 

Of course, I could be completely wrong about all of this, and the accident was merely a way of teaching the bus driver a lesson in respecting little old Irish ladies.

I have been working from home a lot recently, and as such have decided to replace my knackered old printer. Nothing fancy, just a simple printer for occasional printing. No photos, or glossy brochures. Just printing.

I did a bit of research on-line and discovered that the prices of printers have dropped dramatically in the years since I last purchased one. It is also difficult to actually buy a dot-matrix nowadays.

After visiting the Staples store in Slough I settled on the HP 4300 multifunction device. According the marketing literature it is a printer, scanner, photocopier, sex toy and fax machine.

I carried it to the cash desk and went to pay for it.

“Would you like some extra ink with that?”

“No thanks, it says here that it comes with both a black and a colour cartridge.”

“Yes, but that is generally just enough to test the machine, not enough to do any real printing.”

“Oh, that’s not what it says here. It says two cartridges included. No mention whatsoever of use only for testing.”

“They’re only about 20% full. HP machines are all the same. You’ll probably get through the test pages and then it’ll run out.”

This was disappointing in the extreme. My initial cheer at finding a suitable printer in the sale was now tempered by having to spend an extra £30 on ink. I did not want to come back straight away to buy more ink, so I relented and purchased my ink there and then, at Staples.

Later that evening I set up my new printer, and checked my ink levels. I was surprised to find that both the black, and colour cartridges were almost full.

It is clear that one of two things have happened here. Either I have been extremely lucky and the tight people at HP have accidentally given me more ink with the printer than they had intended, or the staff at Staples lied to my face in order to get me to buy more ink from them.

But which is it?

I have resolved to uncover the ugly truth, and I have begun by writing two letters to the organisations concerned. Stay tuned for the next instalment of the investigation.

Nothing ever happens where I live. Ever.

I know that a passing read of this website would give the casual observer such a magnificent impression of daily excitement and adventure that you and your fellow readers would do well to turn green with envy. But they are just the highlights. Mostly I spend my days looking out of the window waiting for something exciting to happen.

Something exciting like the sound of multiple police vehicles getting closer and closer to my flat.

And then closer still.

Then staying really loud, i.e. not disappearing into the distance like they normally do, but staying REALLY close.

I was starting to wonder what could possibly be happening when a black 4×4, driving way too fast, passed by my kitchen window and into the cul-de-sac court where I live. I wandered through to my living room to see it reappear at the other side of the block, but it did not arrive.

I walked out onto my tiny balcony and looked to the right to see that the 4×4 had mounted the grass and had been abandoned by the driver and passenger after knocking down a fencing post. To my immediate left a police car arrived and skidded to a halt. The policeman looked up at me and spoke to me with both speed and authority.

“Which way did they go?”

“I don’t know.”

“Did you see what they were wearing.”

“No.”

“Can you describe the driver or passenger?”

“They were white, I think.”

Then, without so much as a thank you, or acknowledgement of my help, he went off in pursuit of the fleeing potential criminals.

It is public snubs like this that ensure we civilians feel like we have no rapport with the modern police force. How hard would it have been for him to ask how my day was going? Or whether I was coping all right and dealing with the stress of witnessing a brief moment in a live police chase.  This is how people develop Post Traumatic Stress Disorder.

Later I learned that there had been a robbery at a jewellery store in the town, and despite my assistance they have not yet detained the suspects.

Is it any wonder the youth of today do not feel like helping the police?

I have been spending a few days back home with my family. This includes my sister and my two young nephews, with whom I ‘enjoyed’ a few hours of quality time a couple of evenings ago.

“Poo poo!” said one year-old nephew number two to everyone in the room.

The words were utterly redundant. It was pretty obvious to anyone with a nasal cavity that he had in fact done a poo-poo of epic proportion. It is disappointing that he can barely say mama or dadda, yet he is perfectly eloquent when telling the world he has soiled himself. This does not bode well for his academic career.

Despite my vociferous protests, my sister decided to change him in the lounge, in full view of both myself and my mother.

“Oh dear, it seems like he’s got the runs.” commented my mother as the nappy was removed.

“Woo! He does hum a bit, but I’ll have him clean enough to eat your dinner off him in a minute.” replied my sister. I felt like pointing out that there is not enough bacterial wash in the world to make me consider eating off something capable of making that smell, but I decided not to raise my head from my hands for fear of seeing something I really did not want to see. Plus the fact that speaking would mean taking another breath.

“Oh dear, does that make you feel a little nauseous?” asked my Mom.

“Yes, it does actually. I think I might need to get some air.” I replied honestly.

“I was talking to your sister.”

Unfortunately, it is way too late for me to change my family. They have all my contact details (including my super-secret email address and mobile phone number) so they would probably find me again pretty quickly and then claim me as one of their own. Which would be embarrassing in front of my super cool new family that I would buy on eBay.

Later, as the carrier bag containing the soiled nappy went flying passed my head, I cursed my luck in the genetic lottery and gave thanks for my sisters poor aim.

…Is Greg Rusedski a mental?

I mean a proper window-licking mental, not just a bit ‘wacky’. I only ask after recently watching Dancing on Ice, or whatever it is called, whilst visiting my folks.

As he stumbled across the ice in his lycra one-piece, he looked about as comfortable as Abu Hamza during a piano lesson.

All the while grinning like a complete and utter spaz.

Apparently the contestants were asked to do a ‘jump’ this week, and our Greg delivered by leaping across the rink with all the grace of a man in a chicken suit. Then he fell on his arse, on live TV, and got up grinning like an idiot.

Now, I understand it is difficult not to grin when you have a set of teeth and lower jaw like he does, but come on man, have some fucking shame.

Any normal person would be racked with embarrassment, but not our Greg. He positively revelled in his dismal failure. Clearly being an adoptive Brit, our celebration of glorious losers has rubbed off on him a bit more than perhaps he had hoped it would. Perhaps he should spend some time back in Canada to remember what it should feel like when you lose.

Oh, and he should learn to skate while he is there.

“Have you noticed how there are more fat people in the gym recently?”

My mate asked the question over a pint in the local. Yes, I had noticed actually, but I had put it down to the fact that the new years resolutionists were hanging around longer than expected, or making much slower progress than they had hoped.

“Well, it’s because the Doctors have started prescribing gym memberships to the clinically obese.”

I am stunned.

Being the completely normal, middle-of-the-road, non-member of any minorities that I am, I have never felt discriminated against.

Until now.

I am truly shocked that the fat people are getting free membership, whilst I have to pay full price. Without wishing to regress to my fourteen year-old self, this is just so unfair!

If getting fit is considered an NHS priority, then let us see everyone given complimentary memberships to the nearest gym, regardless of physical conditioning. Surely this granting of freebies to the overweight is just a case of closing the door after the horse has bolted?

I know this policy is designed to help fat people get thin, and reduce the burden on an already at-breaking-point NHS, but where do we draw the line? Free Mr Kipling’s to the painfully thin? Jongleurs tickets for the clinically depressed? Free Rohypnol to the frighteningly ugly?

It is utter madness I tell you. That said, Fat Jim made his appointment with the Doctor first thing this morning.

As I have mentioned, the reason I have listed so many things on eBay is to empty a flat I am about to sell. The alternative was to pay someone to take the items away, or give them away on something like Freecycle.

This way, I at least get to make some money whilst getting rid of items that have to be disposed of in the next few weeks anyway.

One item I listed was a collapsible dining table. Like everything else, I listed it with no reserve just to get rid of it. Unlike all my other items, there was no last minute bidding frenzy to get me off.

In the end, the item was won by the one and only bidder.

For 99p.

Do not get me wrong. I had planned to either give it away, or pay someone to take it away, so in reality receiving a pound is actually quite good. But still. I feel a little bit cheated that someone has got it so cheaply.

After arranging a mutually acceptable pick up time, I drove to my old flat (using about a pounds worth of petrol on the way) to meet the buyer.

He was pleasant enough, and after exchanging pleasantries we made our way to the lounge so he could collect the table.

“Hmmm. It is a slightly different colour to the photo online.” he commented.

“Is it? It is the same table I assure you, this is not some complex hoax where I have hidden the real table and replaced it with one a slightly different shade of mahogany. That would be a rubbish practical joke. There are no hidden cameras, I promise.”

“It also needs a good clean.”

“Well, the flat has been empty for a few months, it’s a bit of dust that’s all.”

“I’ll have to give it a good clean when I get home, which I hadn’t planned to.”

“Riiight.” I said, anticipating what was coming next.

“Would you take a bit less for it then?”

I was clearly in the presence an A-grade pikey, the sort of person I fortunately have little experience in dealing with. In my career I have negotiated multi-million dollar contracts with some of the largest banks in the world, and yet here I was playing hard ball with an eBay nutter over a mere ninety-nine fucking pence.

I briefly considered bartering with him like you do in those north African markets where the traders try and sell you all manner of useless tat for your tourist dollar, and then get offended if you do not at least try and negotiate the price or offer your girlfriend in part exchange. Then I thought better of it. I was not in the mood.

“No. No I will not take a bit less for it. You are already getting it for LESS THAN A POUND. If you don’t want to pay a pound for it, fine. I would rather give it away than let you have it for less than a pound.”

“Fair enough, you can’t blame a guy for trying.”

Well no, you can actually. You can blame him for being an almighty miser who has shown himself to be tighter than a spandex clad Vanessa Feltz.

I might be over a hundred pounds up over all, but I am having serious doubts as to whether selling my flat contents via eBay was really worth the hassle.

The thing about selling stuff on the Internet, with payment on collection, is that you have to meet the sort of people who buy things on the Internet.

And they appear to be, without exception, utter fucking loons.

I eventually sold my old washing machine for seventy five pounds, and the successful bidder arranged to pick it up one evening via an email written with such broken English that I could not decide if they were an immigrant or a product of the comprehensive school system.

The morning of the collection they phoned to confirm my address. It was only because I have seen that documentary Cultural Learnings of America for make Benefit Glorious Nation of Kazakhstan that I recognised his accent. It took every ounce of restraint not to end the call with a rousing, “Yegshemash!”

He arrived a little earlier than expected that evening and I opened the front door of my first floor flat to a beaming five foot nothing, seven stone Borat. On his own. To collect a washing machine.

I showed him to the kitchen and briefly explained how to fit the washing machine (just about the only skill I picked up after being raised by a professional plumber).

“So. It’s all yours then.” I concluded, tapping the top of the machine.

He looked at me, and back at the machine, then back at me.

This was not going to end well, I could tell.

“Could you….help me please?”

I did not yet have my cash, so I had little choice but to help the dwarf Kazakhstani carry a washing machine down a flight of stairs. Well, I say help, but that would imply an element of lifting on his part. Washing machines are heavy. Particularly when you are bearing the weight pretty much alone.

We finally reached his ten year old Ford Escort and it became clear he had not emptied the car or made space for the washing machine. I have no idea how big he thought it would be, but it seemed the only uncluttered space was inside his glove box.

After a further ten minutes of to-ing and fro-ing and chuckle brother-esque manoeuvring we finally loaded the machine into his car and he pulled out his wallet to pay me.

Which he did in full.

With FIVE POUND NOTES.

Now, I understand that back in Kazakhstan each of those notes would probably buy a family home, but that is no excuse. Unfortunately I had no choice but to accept this form of payment.

From this point forward, all my subsequent eBay auctions will explicitly dictate a maximum of one single five pound note. And a buyer able to fight their way out of a wet paper bag.

I am not a big user of eBay.

In fact, until last week I had never sold a single item using the second most famous auction expert behind Dave Dickinson. However, as I am currently emptying out a flat that is to be sold imminently, it was a case of paying someone to take away all the old furniture, or see if someone out there was willing to give me a few pounds for it. I saw it as a low risk option.

I went ahead and listed my old two and three seater sofas with no reserve price. I took some photos, described them in detail and waited for the generous bids to come in.

Three days later, while I was still waiting for an opening bid of 99p, I began to doubt the effectiveness of this particular sales channel. I would check eBay every few hours in the hope of a new bid, much like a new blogger checking to see if someone has read and commented the drivel they had put up on the Internet.

By the fifth day I was looking at recouping the total sum of five English pounds of the eight hundred I had spent of the sofas five years earlier, not to mention the time and effort I had expended in putting the item up for sale in the first place.  That is depreciation for you in Gordon Brown’s Britain.

On Sunday evening, as the bid drew to a close I was at a friends for dinner. As something of an eBay aficionado he suggested watching the bid ‘live’ in its closing minutes, as apparently it gets a bit exciting. I am not used to intently watching the internet unless there are some jiggling boobs involved, but I relented and we began to watch the ten minute countdown.

As the bid reached the ‘three minutes remaining’ notice, it began to happen. The bid price leapt by twenty pounds in almost the blink of an eye. Then, as the final few seconds drew closer it began leaping by five pound increments on almost every refresh of the screen.  I have not sat on a computer pressing a button so frequently and repeatedly since Daley Thompson’s Decathlon was launched for the Spectrum 48.

It felt a bit like winning on a slot machine in Vegas, except you didn’t have to put any cash in, and every time you pressed refresh you were guaranteed to win some more. I am ashamed to admit there was some whoopin’ and a hollerin’.

Now, don’t get me wrong, I am grateful to get sixty pounds for something I had planned to throw away, but can someone tell me what is the point of the previous six and three-quarter days? Why can’t we just skip to the frantic bidding bit that is actually exciting? The current method is a bit like spending the week on boring old foreplay whilst waiting for a three minute roll in the hay on Sunday night. No matter how good the three minutes are, you really should be looking for ways to cut down on the foreplay.

That said, I have spent an hour in the loft this morning looking for random shit to sell. I think I may be developing something of a problem.

Last summer there was an evening in which a large number of lights were turned off in the city in an attempt to save energy, and therefore, through a multitude of closely linked yet loosely proven theories, the planet.

Do not get me wrong, I am all for saving the planet. I will continue to be pro-planet, right up until the point that scientists build a spaceship that I can board to one of those planets like in Star Trek where the alien women are really fit and immediately look to get off with the first human man they see. Then the planet can go to hell for all I care.  I am all for the sweet alien ass.

So, in the interests of saving us in the short/medium term, I think turning the lights off is a good idea.

Which is why I do not understand why night-vision goggles are not more readily available? I have seen enough military movies to realise that the technology is now sufficiently advanced to make it practical. You can also get a decent second hand pair on eBay for about a hundred quid, and that would allow you to throw away every earth-destroying bulb in your house.  Probably saving some rare animal in some place somewhere in the process.

If people wore them when out and about we could also do away with street lamps, which would probably save some fish or something.

It is ignoring opportunities like this that makes people think Al Gore is just a publicity hungry moron, and not really interested in saving the planet. Otherwise he would give his lectures in the dark, whilst drawing on a blackboard, to a room full of goggle-wearing sycophants.

Peach of the nice arse is leading a community project to write a book on behalf of War Child.  Now, I do not read as many newspapers as perhaps I should, but I was under the impression that there were more than enough children involved in warfare around the world.

Clearly I was wrong.

You should go to her site her and read about it, and if you feel strongly enough, then submit a piece.  I am thinking about doing so.

If the blogging world unites, then together we can ensure that every army around the world has its fair share of pre-pubescant front-liners. 

I went for dinner with a friend recently.

The meal was pleasant enough, we were chatting away and I was being my normal hugely entertaining self. The evening was much like any other, but then, only was as we began our main course, I first noticed her.

There was lady at the next table dining alone, and she kept looking at me. This is not unusual. It is a cross that I have learned to bear with little complaint. If looking at me helps women get through the day, then so be it. It is nice to know I can do my bit for the happiness of the world just by looking pretty.

After a few minutes it became clear that she was looking about a foot above my head. At first I blamed it on poor quality NHS glasses, and felt sorry that she could not freely gaze upon me whilst dining. Then she tutted and looked away.

Now, nobody tuts at me. Ever.

I looked over my shoulder, and there in the window, looking directly in at the diners, was a somewhat inebriated tramp. He was just leaning on the window looking in. It was almost enough to put me off my deliciously filling meal that I was struggling to finish.  He did not even bother doing any of that entertaining tramp routine stuff that most of them do. There was no dancing, swearing, or flashing of genitalia. It was a pretty poor effort all round on his part.

As the restaurant manager finally saw him away, I realised that I would make an excellent tramp. I know lots of exotic swear words, I am happy to berate the public for little or no reason, and I used to do a spot of break dancing in my youth, so I would be nothing if not entertaining. I am also not averse to public displays of nudity, especially when drunk.

In fact, if I think about it, I am just a few missed mortgage payments away from making this dream a stunning reality.

“So it wakes you, just like that, with no noise at all?” I ask, incredulously.

“Exactly, no noise at all, just daylight.”

My mate Stan is trying to convince me that his alarm clock, which is basically just a big light on a timer, wakes him up better than his old traditional alarm clock. This is obviously complete and utter bollocks.

Everybody knows that the best way to get up in the morning is to set your alarm on your mobile phone as loud as possible and then throw it to the other side of the room. Then, when the incessant bleeping begins, you start hunting around in the dark, and by the time you find it, you want to kill to death the CEO of Nokia, so the last thing on your mind is getting back into bed.

“Apparently it’s something to do with our natural bio-rhythms. Our bodies are designed to be woken by light, not alarm clocks.”

Now he was talking complete shit. It is common knowledge that humans need at least six hours sleep, you only have to look at that complex sleep deprivation experiment they did with Margaret Thatcher to see what a lack of sleep can do to a person and a country.

If what he says is true then Scandinavian cave men would have been getting up at 3am every day in the summer (what a pain in the arse that would be, after all, there is only so much time you can spend drawing spears and buffalos on cave walls) and conversely, they would be up just in time for Football Focus in the winter.

Evolution has granted us the ability to design tools which can rip us so violently from our dreams, with noises so annoying, that you want to rip off your own ears. So we should obviously make full use of them.

I am just about old enough to remember Simon Bates’ Our Tune on Radio 1. For the children reading this, Our Tune was a segment of his radio show where he would read a letter from a listener detailing some sort of emotional turmoil they had undergone, and how one song in particular had helped them through the hard times. They would then play that song, which would normally be some sort of ballad, love song or something else from this musical genre.

I was listening to Radio 1 the other day when I realised that Jo Whiley has brought back this popular formula, for an entirely new generation, and has renamed it Changing Tracks. I decided to pay attention to the tale from one listener.

He told a story of a one-night stand he’d had, and how he immediately regretted it and confessed it to his girlfriend (mistake number one). She was upset, but one night he went round and played this particular song and all was forgiven.

Wow. That must be one fucking brilliant song. I listened more intently, and then they played the song.

As the pounding base began at 220 bpm I assumed they had put the wrong song on. About a minute in and I had not heard a lyric. It was a song with all the emotional depth of the Estate Agents Association AGM. I could only assume he had been forgiven as the tune had put his girlfriend into a malleable hypnotic state.

Is this what Our Tune had become?

I undertook a quick Google search and found the submissions page right here. Well, there is only one thing I could do, isn’t there?

Name: Mr Angry

Email: My Mister.angry one.

Daytime Tel: Supplied

Where you’re from: London baby

Tell us the song: Adele’s current chart hit “Chasing Payments”

Tell us your story: I came from an underprivileged background. I learned to survive on the harsh streets of Northamptonshire. It was dog eat dog for most of my childhood (though I never actually ate a dog, no matter what Fat Jim says). Coming up the hard way, career opportunities were few and far between for someone like me. One thing I seemed to have a talent for though, was extorting money. My physical presence and general demeanour seemed to make people want to pay up sooner rather than later. As you can imagine, this skill set was very much in demand, and before long I rose to the top of this particular career ladder.

Soon though, I began to question my lifestyle choice. Was I really put in this world for putting the frighteners on people and making welshers pay up, or something more? I had always wanted to paint, you know, pictures and that, but maybe it was too late for this particular leopard to change its spots. Then, one day on my way to a particularly bad payer, I heard this Adele song on Radio 1 and it was like she was actually speaking directly to me. Not like a mental though, just through the song.

“Should I give up, or should I just keep chasing payments. Even if it leads nowhere.” It was the philosophical question I had been asking myself for months and months and months.

Then it struck me. It was like one of those epiphany things from off of the movies. THIS is what I’m GOOD at. How many of us in this life get to do something they are genuinely good at? It made me think about all the characters who would lose money if it were not for me, and I finally accepted my fate, to live my life as the best possible debt collector/enforcer that I can be.

And I owe it all to Adele.

I look forward to hearing the broadcast of this particular roller-coaster of emotion any day now…