Curb your Sausage Enthusiasm

I have come to two conclusions today.

1.) I eat too many sausages.

2.) I am turning into Larry David.

This morning, I had a conversation with a coffee shop attendant that turned into a bit of a slanging match, which only ended after I realised it was like a scene from Curb Your Enthusiasm.

First I'll set the scene.

Most mornings upon arrival at Feral Ashford train station, I step off my train and straight into the over-priced café on the platform, to purchase a small latte and a sausage bap.

Now, I should add that I don't always do this - sometimes I have already purchased a healthy yogurt and berry compote at St Pancras Station, if I'm feeling flush and have time. But often, I find myself arriving at 8.20am in Feral Ashford very hungry, and the only option at that time and place is the Platform Café and a dirty sausage.

Said sausage baps come in a plastic wrapper, which you hand to the server who then SHOULD (notice I emphasise 'should') place the bap in a paper bag, remove the plastic wrapper and put in the microwave for 30 seconds.

After said 30 seconds, the bap is then handed to the customer, piping hot and ready for catsup application and subsequent devouring.

HOWEVER - there is one particular server in the café who for some reason does NOT remove the plastic wrapper before inserting into the paper bag and microwave. Let's call him Roger*. This may seem a trivial matter, but it makes the bread all the more soggy and makes the experience of eating it an altogether less appealing one. These things are important at breakfast time.

Quite why Roger has decided to buck the accepted standard practice of plastic removal, I don't know. Perhaps he is ignorant to the fact that his Sausage-microwaving technique differs to his colleagues, or perhaps he is aware but is simply an ingrate deciding he wants to 'give it to the man' and buck the system.

Either way, it annoys me and if I walk into the café to see him at the till my heart sinks, knowing I'm going to get a sub-standard sausage if he takes my order.

Today, I was joyed to see one of the lovely young ladies, correctly-skilled in the art of plastic removal, at the till. As I approached bap in hand however, up pops Roger from underneath the counter, who asks me if he can help me.

Now, normally I'd be British about it and just allow him to incorrectly heat my breakfast sausage. This time though, I'd been caught off-guard having expected to be served by the girl. So I piped up "Oh no, don't worry - I think she was going to serve me."

He looked perplexed. "No, that's fine Sir, I'll do it. Just the sausage was it?"

"Umm, I'd rather she served me actually, if that's alright..." I timidly replied back, trailing off at the end.

He continued "Sir, I'm quite capable of serving you fine. Amy* is making all the hot drinks, I'm on the till."

I couldn't back down now. "No sorry, I want her to serve me, please".

I thrust the sausage in her general direction. Amy, clearly alarmed, stepped back slightly. The man raised his eyebrows in a concerned manner. Great. Now they thought I wanted to be served by her because I was some perv who wanted to try it on.

There was a moment of silence. Then Roger said "Why do you need her to serve you, exactly?" His tone was clearly one I did not expect to encounter from a representative of the service industry. I wasn't going to pull my punches now.

"I'll tell you why" I began, "Because you don't know how to heat the sausages correctly!"

"What are you on about? It's a bloody microwave! I know how to use a microwave!"

I shook my head. "No you don't. You are meant to take off the plastic wrapper. YOU don't take off the plastic wrapper. Everyone else does. Amy here does, don't you?"

Amy didn't respond. She wasn't going to help me dig my way out of this hole.

Roger was now laughing. "Are you serious? You are causing a scene all because you want me to take the wrapper off the bap?"

"Yes I am!" I almost screamed. "Because it makes the bread go all soggy! You are the only person who works here who doesn't take the wrapper off, so I asked her to serve me, because it's my money, I want a non-soggy bap and she does it right!!!"

There, I'd made my point. He must feel stupid now I thought, having not been taking the plastic wrappers off all this time! What a goon!

His reply though, was "Well, I'm sorry I didn't realise that taking the wrapper off was so important to you. Why didn't you just ask me to take the wrapper off?"

He had a point. "Well...because I thought it'd make me look a bit pathetic."

"Good point Sir. At least you have avoided that today."

And with that, Roger took off the plastic wrapper and popped the paper bag in the microwave. We stood there in silence looking at each other intently for the next 30 seconds. It seemed like 30 minutes. Amy shuffled nervously next to him.

There was a ping from the microwave. Roger handed me my sausage bap. I could have walked out and left it at that, but no. I opened up the bag and showed him how the bread wasn't as soggy as it would have been had he left the wrapper on.

"Very good Sir. I'll pass on your comments to everyone else here."

My parting shot to him was "You don't need to pass it on to anyone else - you are the only one who hasn't already realised you are meant to do it!"

I was already walking out the door when Roger retorted after me "Well I do now, thank you for educating me. Have a good day, sir."

I think we all know who won that argument.

I might give up my morning sausage bap though, for a while. At least from that café.


*Names have been changed to protect the innocent

Sweaty Betty

Muggy today.

I hate muggy weather. I'm a bit of a sweater, you see. I always have been. It's not actually related to the fact I'm a bit fat these days - I sweated just as much when I was a lithe teenager. I'll never forget the sheer hell of first hitting the brick wall of 90% humidity when stepping off the plane to spend the summer of 1997 in Hong Kong. In that insanely close weather, I was having to step into a cold shower just to dry myself off 3 or 4 times a day.

I've always considered it an arse of a condition to be honest. If you are fortunate enough to not be much of a sweater, then thank your lucky stars. For you, a hot, muggy day is probably heaven - the chance to soak up some rays, sit out in that heat and sip pina coladas. You swines.

For the Sweaty minority however, it's hellish. Waking up on a close, humid day is always depressing for me, soon realising I'm going to have a shirt saturated in my salty excreta within mins of leaving home, then having to spend the rest of the working day with sticky, clammy clothes hugging me like a second skin.

This probably repulses you, and frankly you'd be right to be repulsed, as it is pretty repulsive. It's also a damn inconvenience to me. By the time I get home from work I just want to rip off my clothes, stand in an ice-cold shower at last feeling free of my clingy, sopping shirt and trousers with a decidedly musty gusset - flinging said items haphazardly around the flat as I prance around naked for the rest of the evening.

This always brings consternation from MrsOx, especially if her parents have popped over for dinner.

There is an answer of course - Air Conditioning. Despite almost drying up from lost salts in the humid climates of Asia, pretty much any indoor environment in the developed Far-East caters to the sweaties by blowing cool, clean air onto the streets to entice you inside. None of that here in the UK. I know it's often only Two weeks of the year we have to worry about it, but frankly that Two weeks is enough to drive a sweaty crazy with humidity-induced mania.

The UK isn't even set up to provide easy access to foods and drinks that might alleviate the nuisance of the heat a little. In Japan, you are never 2 feet away from a vending machine serving Ice-Tea, Ice-Lattes and all manner of Icey-Ice Iced loveliness. In America, a dash into any 7-11 will bring you the chance to make your own personalised frozen slushee, nom nom nom.

Japan: Vending Heaven

This morning though in rubbish old Britain, parched and desperate for something cool, icy and refreshing on arrival at the train station, I found the over-priced cafe there could provide me with luke-warm colas and hot, stodgy sausage rolls only.

Disappointing.

Anyway, I seem to have gone off on a tangent from my sweaty news to a 'What's Wrong with Broken Britain' feature. I didn't mean to do that.

Nailin' Palin

I met a legend last night - a genuine national treasure.

Now, I'm sure many of you probably think "Oh for Christ's sake, that phrase is bandied about all too frequently these days to describe every other endearing, charming old codger who had some populist success decades ago."

Maybe so - but if you were to take a look under the dictionary definition of 'National Treasure', you'll surely see a picture of this particular man.

"Oh BUGGER OFF!" you now scream, "That fucking cliche is even worse than the first! 'look in the dictionary blah-de-fucking-blah!' ".

Well, fair enough.

But this guy surely is one about whom few will have any bad words to say. Surely Sheffield's most famous son...OK, you don't like that one either? Jeez! 

Well, the fellow I'm referring to is Mr Michael Edward Palin CBE FRGS (I'm not sure what the collection of letters are at the end of his name either - perhaps he just likes amphibians or something).

I was at a literary dinner in a posh restaurant at St Pancras station in order to meet the man himself. This was really just a rather expensive way of re-launching the paperback edition of Michael's latest diaries. Expensive for me and MrsOx at least, as poncy fish dinners don't come cheap when you are dining with Comedy Royalty.

However, I can actually say I was at dinner with Michael Palin last night, rather than at a book-launch. Which I of course did on Facebook and Twitter like the saddo I am. OK, so he was eating at the other end of the room. But he was eating the same thing in the same room at the same time. So I think it's acceptable to say I had dinner with him. I don't care if you don't think so.

I also managed to say something ball-achingly sycophantic to the man himself when getting my copy of his book signed after we'd finished our chocolate fondant puddings. Something along the lines of "Can I just thank you for changing my life?" Then trying to explain away this ridiculous and unnecessary outburst in relation to my passion for travel being enlightened after watching his Around the World in 80 Days series as a 10 year old.

Mr Palin was quite good about it, remaining jovially upbeat and indeed appearing outwardly pleased his work had made such an impression on me, whilst also managing not to look too worried as I lent across to try and shake his hand as well. Although he could have been hovering his other hand over the panic button for all I was aware, so in awe was I of being in the presence of one of my childhood heroes.

Despite getting a bit over-excited at the end though, It was indeed a pleasure to meet the man, hear some of his ripping yarns and share an expensive dinner in his (distant) company. I'm just glad his wife Sarah wasn't there*.



*That last one was actually MrsOx's joke, so please don't blame me for it.

Have a Break, Have a Shit Chat.

Look at this.

This is a copy of 'Chat' Magazine I noticed on the shelves of my newsagent this morning.

Now where do you start really? I'm not actually sure I need to say very much, so ghastly is this oh-so-alluring cover spread.

With Chat's promises within of the holy trinity of "Life! Death! Prizes!", I'm sure many of it's catchment audience would already have been half-way to the cash register before they even realised they also had a wonderful upbeat leader about a girl murdered by a paedophile.

Yet the Paedo that lured her to her death was no normal paedo, going about his paedo-business as you might expect. "Good morning, young man!" "Come sit on my lap, sweet girl!" "Would you like a sweetie, m'dear?" 

No, none of the normal paedo-charm for this fucker - this one is a KILLER PAEDO! Christ alive! Lock your doors!

If that worry wasn't bad enough for the Chat reader, it seems that some other poor girl has gone and got knocked up by a rapist. Oh no, I'm sorry, I mean a RAPIST. Not to worry though, as those cute little rapist's babies are such little gigglers! Phew, thanks for lightening that mood, Chat. It's not all about killer paedos & rapists, you know.

Sadly, we can't stay in the cutsie world of giggling babies for long though - as sooner or later, you have to realise that your body may let you down. If it's not your fat arse breaking the toilet as you shit out the constant fecality that Chat has given you to digest, it's your tits rotting away. And if you still don't believe it - there are some "Yucky Photos!" within.

As it says on the cover - it is "Packed full of Puzzles!" The biggest puzzle for me though, is why does anyone actually read this shit?


What sort of person is drawn in by the promise of life, death & prizes exactly? More to the point, what does that actually mean?
Do you like an exclamation mark at the end of every sentence?! Do you?!!!
And who is the random woman with the nice hair-cut & perfect smile? Is that meant to represent you, the reader?
Are you meant to feel an affinity with this attractive, well-rounded & fun-loving go-getter, whilst also feeling superior to the unfortunates of the world stuck with rape-babies, decaying tits and lardy arses?
 
"Thank heavens my womb hasn't split in two like this fucker in Chat! Now where are my prizes?"

Cultural Holocaust?

Interesting report on the BBC Website today about ethnic minority numbers on the rise in the UK.

Ask many people who bemoan the amount of 'foreigners' in the UK the percentage of ethnic minorities in our country, and you'll probably get an answer anything from ⅓ to over 50%. Such is the ignorance.

As this report shows, it's currently 8%. This is so ruddy low it's almost funny people make such a deal about it.

This 8% figure is everyone who does not consider themselves 'white', which according to organisations like the BNP & EDL are the very people that are over-running our country and swamping our culture.

I remember a few years back having a similar discussion with someone who was adamant that the Mujahideen were camped in his privet hedge. I asked him to take a guess as to what percentage of the UK was non-white. After clarifying if I was including ALL non-whites ("you mean all of them? The yellows as well as the darkies and curry-munchers?"), he said it must easily be near 60% now. He simply didn't believe me when I said the figure was well below 10%.

People like him who see danger in ethnic migration, see colour everywhere. They swear blind that you can't walk down the street without bumping into a dreadlocked rasta off his face on pot or a Muslim wife who's been forced into her hijab.

The fact is, that street will more than likely contain 7-10 white people for every 1 Asian, African or Oriental person you see. Try it yourself - spend 20 minutes counting how many people walk past you and how many are of each ethnicity. Obviously your results will vary on where you are - In many parts of London or larger cities you'd obviously expect it to be a higher ethnic count, but I'd wager that except in certain obvious areas, you'll still find the ratios very much in the white majority. Southall may indeed see this ratio volte-face - but Bourton-on-The-Water* will be a decidedly pasty place.

Although the point of this BBC article is showing that the report estimates the figure is expect to rise greatly over the next 40 years, I think you can also look at it as a way of showing that this country is not actually 'swamped' with people of different ethnicity who are going to destroy our very British way of life.

How can a 92% majority consider itself swamped? How, even if the non-white population does rise to 20% by 2051, can 4/5 of the country actually feel threatened by this, even if we accept the extremely ridiculous notion that all of the estimated 20% will go out of their way not only to avoid assimilating a single aspect of existing British culture and customs, but to actively try and destroy it?

Not everyone likes what the UK stands for and wishes to preserve it's finer aspects. But the likes of these chaps below don't look in any rush to me to settle in Saffron Walden over the next few years.

Perhaps, if our culture is going to be removed by such a small minority of perceived outsiders, it's actually for the better as clearly such a cultural holocaust could only take place if such a whopping majority didn't actually care about their current circumstances enough to preserve the good aspects of it?

Or perhaps more likely, that 92% white majority aren't being swamped at all, as equally won't the 80% in 2051. Despite what the Daily Mail & Express and their readership would have you believe.

Cultural Holocaust? Nah, we'll still have some wankers just as racist and unpleasant to those of different backgrounds, with or without an extra ethnic influx.

Similarly, the good things about this fair land will also remain - chief among these, thank god, will be wide-spread tolerance and acceptance of minorities.

As the French say - vive la différence!

Mind you, I'd have a different slant on all this if it was mostly French people coming in, with their smelly cheeses, their hairy armpits & their surrender-monkeying.



*I grew up near there in the extraordinarily-white Cotswolds. At my school of around 800 children, there was 1 Chinese girl, 1 Indian girl and 2 black boys during the time I was there. The rest was ethnically Caucasian.

"Moaty, It's Gazza..."

Am I the only one gutted that Raoul Moat shot himself before he got the chance to realise his mate Gazza had turned up with some chicken and a fishing rod?

This has to be the most bizarre twist in what turned out to be a bit of a damp squib after promising to be an epic stand-off that might have rivalled the end of Butch Cassidy & The Sundance Kid.

Had Gazza been allowed to talk to Moat - it would have been an image to savour, and most probably would have saved Moat's life, with Gazza turned ultimate siege negotiator.

For those who haven't heard the story - it's here. Apparently Gazza had heard his pal 'Moaty' was by a river, and took along his fishing rod so they could sit down together for a man-to-man chat and a little bit of fishing on the riverbank. Might have been difficult to get that manly-bonding experience going with the entire North East constabulary 20 feet away with tasars & assault rifles aimed at old Moaty's head, but you know, it might have worked.

If you have time, I'd recommend listening to Gazza's Radio Interview here (My favourite bit is his response to the police not allowing him to see Moaty for fears he'd be shot - ""I've just been in a car crash at 90mph. If I can survive that I can survive a bullet").
Poor old Gazza. Truth is, I still love the man despite the fact he's clearly loopy and hard on the booze again. He also allegedly beat his ex-wife up in the past of course, but because the nation views him as such a loveable yet tragic hero, the media tend to write off those sort of incidents merely as evidence of his fall from grace.

Aside from the wife-beating stories, he is the epitome of a great hero fallen from grace though. During the recent World Cup, there was a documentary about Italia '90 where Gazza's tears were the resounding memory of the tournament for every Englishman. The interview with Gazza showed that re-living the evening still affects him now, welling up as he remembers what he didn't realise at the time would be the pinnacle of his all-too short career.

Since those days, when he was still the golden boy of English football, he has become a joke figure. This latest drunk radio interview about his mate Moaty is just the latest in a line of moves that has done nothing but embarrass him and lead him closer to the loony bin. I always find it such a great tragedy when a man of his stature within hearts of the people doesn't have the gravitas he deserves to have. He should be pontificating on Match of The Day, opening hospitals and a figurehead of our World Cup bid. Instead he turns up pissed to a man-hunt with some chicken and a dressing gown.

The real tragedy of this whole side-story to the Raoul Moat manhunt is that actually, if there was any scenario available that might have led to Moaty giving up his gun and taking the prison time, it would have been for Gazza to turn up and have a bit of a fish with him.

He is still a hero for anyone who remembers Italia '90, especially if they happen to be from Newcastle, as Moaty was. Regardless of whether he did actually know him personally or not, even a deranged steroid-crazed killer wouldn't harm 'Daft as a Brush' Paul Gascoigne.

I can't therefore understand why the police didn't take the same view Gazza did and realise Moaty wouldn't have shot him.

Perhaps though, Moaty had simply overstepped the line in being given the benefit of the doubt on this. As Gazza says - "He has killed someone, which isn't very nice really."

Quite true, you daft but loveable man.

RSS-pect

OK, so I'm pretty slow on the uptake with recent spurts in technology. But I should really know my way around the web and it's functionality better than I apparently do.

Like many of my 30-something generation, I can't be expected to be quite so tech-savvy as those in their teens and very early 20's of course, who have had access to modern PCs and the Internet since a young age. The web only really started to be widely available when I was at University, after all.

I remember well my first forays into the Internet & email back in 1997 - The black & green DOS screen for typing out emails, and the little red postbox you had to click on to retrieve your post, such that there was any.. It was a revelation at the time, but of course would seem as clunky and un-user friendly now as loading a game by cassette on a Spectrum 16k would seem to a spotty teen now used to killing heavily-pixeled orcs online in World of Warcraft. Good analogy, that.

Today, I found out what an 'RSS Feed' was for the first time. I'd heard people talk about it quite often. I'd seen the lovely little orange box with the white lines in it on my browser. But I honestly hadn't known what it was for, so I just ignored it and assumed it was some pointless thing only programmers would find useful. But it's actually quite useful.

So if you are similarly ignorant, I can tell you that it stands for Really Simple Syndication and if you click on the orange thingummy on either a web page or on your web browser, it lets you know the next time content has been updated on that website. Of course that's great news for those who wanted to know the next time my blog was updated but got bored returning for 4 months with no new posts. Now, all 8 of you can just wait to be told i've updated it via your RSS Feed update. WOW, CUTTING EDGE!

I'm sure some of you are guffawing that I'm finding such excitement in something so simple and of which there is already widespread knowledge. Well, don't be so quick to get on your high-horse, boffins! We all have areas we are stronger in than others, knowledge-wise. Do you know what the capital of Montenegro is, for example?

Oh, you do. Fair enough. You probably googled it, you techno-geek. Or had it come through on your RSS Feed when they seceded from Serbia. Get you.

My techno-ignorance is all a far cry from being an inquisitive child of the 80's, when computer technology first encroached upon the home. In between mastering Yie Ar Kung Fu* on my Amstrad, I would often dis-assemble VHS players just to see how it all worked, before putting it back together before my Dad found out what I was up to. Technology was a lot more simple back then- you can't do the same with DVD players nowadays. I've tried it - when you take the cover off there is a great big red sign there saying you'll get cancer from radiation if you open up the player any further. Have a look if you don't believe me. Go on.

*I loved the way these old games would just return back to the first level once you'd completed the game. I think on this particular game, I ended up 'lapping' the same levels 6 or 7 times until I got bored.

Let the Good Times Raoul!

For some strange reason, I dropped the blog updates in Mid-February.

I was warned by seasoned blogger Mjohnson that this would probably happen. That I'd be very enthusiastic for a couple of months then drop off the face of the silicon blogway altogether. I laughed in his face -metaphorically at least. I wasn't actually in the same room as him at the time, had I been I would have LITERALLY laughed in his face. As it was just an email conversation, i merely snorted to myself in disgust and replied to his email with something along the lines of "oh no, I'll keep this one up don't you worry."

Well, I should have known better than to tangle with such a webbing sage as he.

As it is, I've disappointed many of my readers with four months of silence. For this, I can only apologise. I'm sure the absence of my blog in this time has left you all more alarmed than a Tyneside policeman hearing the unexpected creaking of footsteps on the other side of a farmhouse wall.

Which brings me back to my favourite ever tweet, discovered yesterday by @LukeHoosTawking in relation to the hunt for mentalist & peculiarly-named North-East cop-killer Raoul Moat:

"Police have just discovered Raoul Moat's camp...I could have told you that, his haircut is pretty gay, tad Jimmy Sommerville/Erasure."

Priceless. What a big old gay he is!!

If you are reading this Raoul - come and have a go if you think you are hard enough*.

Anyway. Here is a blog entry. It's not big and it's not clever. But it's here.

I hope those 8 readers that were reading it in February haven't all gone away. Come back. It's nice. More soon, I promise. xxx



*I know he isn't reading this, you see. He's sleeping under a gooseberry bush somewhere stalking the police. I'm not stupid in actually asking him out for a scrap - the guy is a fucking lunatic. With a gun. And a gay haircut.

An interesting post? Of Gorse It Isn't!

In late December whilst holidaying in Cornwall, I managed to fall over on the coast path and into a gorse patch. It could have been a lot worse, but I did get many thorns from the nasty little plant in my hand.

Yesterday the last one finally worked it's way out of my palm. Amazing that I've spent the best part of two months with foreign, unwelcome bodies in me. I feel like a Bangkok whore.

I found this on an online forum- "My son stood on a sea urchin in Croatia last Summer and only last week did I manage to get the last one out. They were savage needles!!! He also gets alot of gorse thorns in his legs from mountain-biking and I spend many an unpleasant evening removing them from him."

I just thought that was funny at the time.

Edit - I didn't actually just write this. I wrote this back in February but didn't post it, as I thought it was pretty weak material. Well, I now don't have as much material, hence why it's now published.

The Dumbing Down Effect

Not wishing to sound like a moaning old sod but I'll tell you what fucks me off these days....

Consumers being treated like we are all fucking stupid with the dumbing-down of almost every purchase/experience we encounter.

In fairness, a lot of consumers are fucking stupid, hence I suppose the reasoning behind the child-friendly warnings and disclaimers that vendors and public bodies seem to have to put up and the consumer has to sit through, often bending the truth in our answers just to get to the end of the escapade sooner.

This morning, I encountered such mind-numbing stupidity in the form of a grilling from some spotty Trainee Dispenser at a chemist over my purchase of cold & flu tablets. The verbal equivalent of the childproof cap was in the first instance in the form of a question:

"Are these for you or somebody else?"

Well, they were for me as it happens and the coughing, spluttering bunged up person I had just presented them with should have made that clear anyway. Yet had they not been for me, most people, me included would probably have said they were lest we be subject to further questioning for fear we were attempting a Harold Shipman-esque escapade.

Next question was "Have you taken these before?"

Now here I made the grave mistake of not just saying yes. "YES! I have taken these beauties before and I love them and they love me. These tablets are fucking brilliant and I've managed to not kill myself yet Miss Dispenser, so please fucking sell them to me before I die here on your shop floor."

This is what I should have said. What I actually said was "No, but I have taken the other brand which I can see is exactly the same." 

Oh dear. This now unleashed a whole new world of futher questioning designed to see if I was in fact one of the Fucking Stupids or not. Apparently, just in case I was a Fucking Stupid, I was not qualified to read the packet for myself and decide these were the tablets I needed based on the rather thoughtful notes the manufacturers had already put on the packet.

A more senior Dispenser (this one had a different coloured jacket from the rest of the staff) was all of a sudden on the scene and proceeded to ensure I was buying these for the right reasons and was not going to stuff them up my arse or feed them to a Labrador or something.

"Is your cough a dry one?"
"Yes - listen" I coughed dryly in her direction.

"You know you should not exceed the stated dose?"
"Yes, I will use the instructions on the packet to take the recommended dose as I want these tablets to make me better. This is why I'm buying the tablets - to make me better. I'm not buying them to make me die, and if I was I wouldn't tell you anyway."

"Don't take with any other tablets"
"The chance would be a fine thing. I'm having trouble as it is purchasing these fuckers!"

"These are Night & Day Tablets - Make sure to take the Day tablets during the day and...."
"The Night tablets at Breakfast-time?" I finished the sentence for her. Needless to say she corrected me that actually, the Night tablets should be taken at night.

By the time I'd left the shop the cold had got bored and fucked off already.

In fairness, a lot of consumers are fucking stupid. Which is why they feel they have to do this, as it only takes one Fucking Stupid to ruin it for all of us by trying to sue a chemist for a lacerated throat having swallowed the entire blister pack in error.

Am I therefore wrong in thinking that these Fucking Stupids should be left to their own devices to fall off cliffs/overdose/boil themselves alive? Therefore removing themselves from the gene pool and sparing us non-Fucking Stupids the agony of being made to waste our own time?

I don't think so either.


Too impatient to wait for the next Instalment? Well fear not, Get a more regular, more succinct dose of FMO by following my Twitter feed! www.twitter.com/FantasticMrOx

Return of the King!

...Not sure for how long though.

I've been inundated with literally ones of requests to re-start blogging again, so here we are.

Shame-faced am I that my bolshy predictions of being able to write an entry for every weekday have proved to be pie in the sky with diamonds on.

Following advice from a seasoned blogger and regular comment contributor to this blog, perhaps once a week is a more realistic target. If I feel like it.

Truth is, I've simply not had anything inspiring to talk about these past two weeks - certainly nothing that would be worthy of the hard-pressed time of the 6 people who might, at some point or other, stumble across this blog.

However, having this week been watching the BBC's excellent Virtual Revolution documentaries about the history and impact of the Web over the last 20 years, I've become enamoured anew at what this wonderful Web has to offer and as a result I'm blogging again. As you can see. This is the product of that. What you are reading now. This Blog.

I'm also back on Twitter - check me out, homies.

Before yesterday, I'd only managed 6 tweets since early December. Again, the ficklety FMO displays towards the online world had struck again. Within the last 24hrs though, armed with a new smartphone which has made mobile social networking exciting again, I have racked up an arse-numbing 41 tweets.

I'm not saying many are worth reading, I'm just saying they are there and I'm over-excited again about it.

Tonight, I am going to Abergavenny. Why there, you wonder? Well, it's all a very dull business trip I'd much rather not be making - but I'm sure I'll find something interesting to write about via either Twitter or Blog.

I bet you can't fucking wait.

Loo-Town

Being a football fan is a difficult thing to explain to those who have no interest in the game or sport in general.

What makes a man (or woman - it is open even to the fairer sex these days) travel up and down the country spending hundreds & hundreds of pounds a year just to watch a group of men (or women - it is even open to the fairer sex these days) kick a ball around?

Last night, I was begging the question of myself after a miserable trip to the arsehole of the home counties - Luton. Not only did I watch my team concede two goals in injury time to lose 2-1, I also had to walk back to the train station and almost get a kicking from the local ferality.

Upon my safe return home to the calm and peaceful streets of Bloomsbury borders later that evening, Fantastic Mrs Ox-to-be listened intently as I recounted the woeful bloodcurdling tale of near-terror that was my walk back to Luton station after the game.

I could see the confusion in her eyes. Why was her betrothed putting himself in these dangerous and invidious situations when he could have been at home watching TV with her instead? Why indeed. Wanting to spend your evening like this is a pretty irrational thing to want to do with hindsight after a disappointing, cold and miserable night.

That's hindsight though, had we won 3-0 and not encountered a near beating from some feral youths, I'd not be writing this post now. So would I go again? Yes. Would I take the train? Probably not.



I probably made it sound more like South Central Los Angeles than the slightly skanky commuter town in Bedfordshire that it actually is. Truth be told though it was a rather unpleasant experience. Coming also after the abject dejection of a last minute loss in the game itself, it really was quite a fuck of an evening.

A more light-hearted entry next time peeps. :o)

Unclaimed Bloggage

Maybe I'll start doing these every other day.

In truth I think it may have been a bit ambitious trying to do an entry 5 times a week. Truth is sometimes I have actual work to do, so until this starts paying for itself I'll have to at times put it on the back-burner.

Plus of course, sometimes I really don't have anything interesting to say. Today the only thing interesting I've got in the locker is that I left my bag on the train this morning.

"That's not interesting either, FMO" I hear you say.

Well, you may think that now but you have yet to hear the full story - it might actually be quite an interesting tale! So away we go...

Upon arrival at #FeralAshford International at approximately 8.21am this morning, I proceeded as normal off the train and down the platform stairs. Arriving at the bottom of said stairs, I realised I'd foolishly left my bag on my seat. This was a £40 satchel that contained some thermal gloves and a lunchtime apple snack - so it would clearly be a substantial loss to me if I did not retrace my steps and retrieve the bag.

I bounded back up the stairs and was in luck, the train was still there - so I jumped onboard and went back to the seat I'd just been sat in. No bag. Fuck. I hurriedly looked around closer still. No bag. Fuck Fuck. The train door started beeping to say it was about to lock. Fuck Fuck Fuck! I just managed to get the open button pressed in time to return to the platform, where I remained in a harried and dishevelled state as I saw the train doors unlocked sign go out.

Then - a hearty knock on the window from within the train from a young lady. Her male companion was stood in the aisle holding my bag up and I faintly heard them shouting "Is this your bag?"

"YES!" I cried in return - only to see the bag start moving down the platform along with the train that still contained it. As I watched my bag disappear down the tracks, I now knew exactly how the children in the His Dark Materials universe felt when they were separated from their Dæmons.

All is not lost I thought - that sprightly young fellow will surely hand in my bag to the train guard, explain the situation to him and at the next station the train guard will hand it to a platform guard, explain the situation to him, who in turn will hand it to the next train guard returning to #FeralAshford, explain the situation to him, who will in turn hand it to a platform guard when he arrives, explain the situation to him, who will in turn deposit the bag with lost property in #FeralAshford, explain it to the lost property attendant, who will in turn store the bag there for me until my return this evening to collect it.

You'd think it would be that simple anyway. But no, not with Southeastern Bastard Trains.

When I returned later I was told nothing had been handed in anywhere down the line. Also, they were not able to get a message out to the train guard who might then put a message across in the train asking for it to be handed to him. Apparently they would have done this had it been medication, but because it was only an apple and some gloves they weren't going to do this. Cunts! I have cold hands and I'm fucking hungry!

If I now get frostbite and scurvy because of this I will sue the arse out of you, Southeastern Trains.

I will let you know what happens (As I know you are all on tenterhooks to see the conclusion of this thriller), but for now I am Sad Sack Sans Sac. :o(

Sonic The HedgeBlog

Did you miss me yesterday? I know you did. Don't pretend you didn't keep pressing refresh all day waiting for my daily blog entry.

For this, I apologise - I hate to disappoint you so.

Today I'm going to be talking about my gaming addiction, or my fear of being consumed by it.

First of all, I should highlight that I am not actually a 'gamer' or whatever it is these people like to call themselves. Sorry but I don't get excited about the prospect of turning myself into an elf in World of Warcraft and fighting white tigers with enchanted nunchucks. In actual fact I have no idea what the fuck it's all about.

Similarly, I've never owned a Playstation, or an X-Box, or a Wee-Wee or whatever they are called.

I haven't for a reason - I would become addicted way too easily.

As a child I did have an Amstrad 64K, on which I played Treasure Island Dizzy to reasonable excessiveness when I was about 11 years old. And I briefly had a Sega Megadrive as a 14 year old on which I played Sonic The Hedgehog until I got bored and gave the console away (Mum & Dad wouldn't buy me any other games & I was more interested in spending my pocket money on Panini sticker albums at the time).

But since these innocent times, my interaction with computer games has always been brief but scarily intense to the point where I've had to go cold turkey to get away from it.

Three Instances brought me to the realisation that I'm a freakish addict when allowed unlimited access to computer games:

1.) In my 1st year at University, bored at the lack of actual study to do (or made to do at least) I played Donkey Kong Country on my flatmate's NES for the first 4 weeks of term. After he took the NES away from me, I spent the remaining 6 weeks of the term playing Sim City 2000 on my PC. Even now I am often reminded by one ex-flatmate that whenever he walked past my room he only ever heard gorilla noises or the sound of bulldozers raising virtual schoolhouses to the ground.

2.) Shortly after University, I borrowed a Playstation from someone whilst they were on holiday for a week. I played a Football Management game for about 18hours in one sitting until I realised I needed to stop.

3.) A Few years later I wondered what all the fuss over The Sims was about, so bought a copy and played it at home after work. In a similar case to the previous incident, I one night looked down at my watch to see it was 5am, I hadn't eaten since lunch and I had to be up for work in 2 hours. I destroyed the CD with a hammer.

Since these worrying dalliances with the dark world of gaming I have actually spent the last decade of my life pretty much free of this pursuit.

Until about 3 months ago that is, when i discovered Farmville via Facebook. Now, I don't know what it is about this particular game, but at the moment I'm obsessively visiting my virtual farm to harvest crops and milk cows on a daily basis. There are 44 crops which you have to plow, plant and harvest to gain 'mastery' of the crop. Depending on the crop, you may have to do this 500 times or even 26,000 for each crop to gain this 'mastery'.

I've mastered 17 already and I don't know how the hell I'm gonna stop before I've done all 44.

As you also interact with other players to gain and grant gifts and extra levels of play sometimes you have to post things on your Facebook wall in order to get access to them. So strong is my addiction to this game that I don't even care about looking silly by posting these messages. Indeed, just an hour ago all my facebook contacts were informed about the perfect Morning Glory I'd grown this morning.

My name is Fantastic Mr Ox, and I am a Computer game addict.

What a REALLY Good Idea...

Dear Readers! Have any of you heard about the Sarc Mark? Oh, have you not? It's really great.

Basically, some chap has decided that people are fucking stupid enough to not realise something may be written sarcastically and they need a further item of punctuation in their lives to avoid this. But of course, he's copywrited his 'SarcMark' and you need to pay him to download the software for this really, really good invention.

My favourite bit of his website is the FAQ's - featuring these classics I reproduce here for your delectation:

Q: Why use the SarcMark? I don't like sarcasm.
A: The Merriam Webster dictionary defines sarcasm as a mode of satirical wit and states that a similar word for sarcasm is the word "wit". Wit is defined as "The natural ability to perceive and understand; intelligence". Therefore, when you use it, you are intelligent.

What he's basically saying here is "You are a bit of a dick if you don't like Sarcasm. Try and be a bit more sarcastic unless you want people to think you are a bit thick." Shit, I better start using it then. I really had.

The FAQ section soon descends into a tirade against alternatives to the SarcMark.

Q: Can't I use a smiley face?
A: Do you really like those things as they dance, talk and jiggle across your screen? They look like a cross between a gremlin, zombie, and some smiling pervert

What I think he is saying here is "Are you a fucking paedophile? You are if you use those smiley faces instead of my SarcMark you fucked-up freak!" Next up:

Q: Can't I use a tilde?
A: That's the character that looks like ~. It means "approximately" in math, "not" in logic, the "user's home directory" in programming and when placed over a character, it denotes a palatal nasal sound. Oh yeah, let's now use it for sarcasm

Now this is the FAQ I really don't understand. He is saying that the tilde is already used for many things - and as such I'd have thought he'd go on to suggest surely that we have exhausted the tilde's possible uses and that it would be silly to also use this for sarcasm. But then in his last sentence, he seems to contradict his point by saying "let's now use it for sarcasm". I don't understand where he's coming from. I mean he can't be being sarcastic, can he? There is no SarcMark there at the end after all...

Either way, this is clearly a really good idea. I can't wait to pay my $1.99 to get the SarcMark Software. Oh yeah, I'm really quite erotically excited about it.

Did you notice the sarcasm? Hopefully you did, unless you are backward. Notice I didn't need to use the SarcMark? How Ironic!

Speaking of which - how about a symbol for when you use Irony in a written statement? I'll call it the "Ironica"®.

I've done a rough mock-up of what the Ironica® will look like - here it is on the right.

But here's the funny thing... I don't even care about punctuation! How Ironic.

Bugger off Winter

Winter makes me miserable.

I'm not exactly a sun-seeker - if anything I'm inclined to be more uncomfortable if I'm unable to escape from the heat in mid-summer. Yet this long, cold winter has gone on too long for my liking.

I think I may actually suffer mildly from that SAD syndrome - but then I think everyone feels slightly more miserable in the winter of course.

I went along to a local football game last night, to stand in a cold, windy field for Two hours. It also meant a 3½-mile walk each way along pavement-less roads in drizzly rain to get there. Lord knows why I did it to be honest but sometimes I fancy the idea.

I don't think I'll fancy the idea again having nearly contracted frostbite & influenza in the process.

I wouldn't mind so much if it were a REAL winter. Like what they get in America when it's -20°C and snowdrifts are deep enough to bury a man in (and are frequently used for this purpose). Then you can wrap up in serious heavy-duty gear, get your 4x4 out and follow the snow-plow into work. I certainly wouldn't have been convinced walking 7 miles last night in that sort of weather was a good idea.

Here in Britain though, we have a small percentage of a normal continental snowfall and everything is fucked, plus personally we don't ever seem to have the right clothes ready for anything approaching freezing temperatures. You know it'll get cold, but it's never THAT cold - so we are always unprepared for it.

Britain just seems to do all the seasons a little half-heartedly. Winter for me is a constant worry about whether I need to be carrying scarf, gloves & hat around with me, then either freezing when I do not take them or sweating like a beast when I do.

Then there are added hassles like using the tube in winter. Ye gods, if that's not a misery in rush hour if you are wearing seven layers and your winter woollies. By the time I get to my destination, there is enough sweat streaming down my back to drown a Shetland pony.

At least it's not raining too much. No, that's Springtime's little treat. Then it's a whole new thing to be annoyed about.

I don't have anything funny to say today. I just want it to warm up.

Dead Good Place To Visit...

On Sunday I took two of my blog readers on a trip to Highgate Cemetery to thank them for their readership.

Now, for those who know nothing of Highgate Cemetery, you should take a look here. It really is a fascinating and enchanting place.

We arrived late in the afternoon and managed to convince the old lady locking the gates that they should lay on one last tour just for the three of us of the West Cemetery (this part of the cemetery is actually only open to those willing to part with £7 each for a guided tour). I had myself been on this tour just a few years ago but was very happy to do it again whilst taking a couple of friends along - it remains one of the best tourist things to do in London for my money.

So our guide began our wonderful personal tour. He was an enthusiastic fellow in his early 40s who works merely as a volunteer for the Friends of Highgate that now run the cemetery- and he clearly relished the opportunity to show us more than taking a large group of infirm and incontinent oldies would normally allow him to do.

It's not really a cemetery you visit just to see famous people's grave markers though - there are actually few very famous people*- most laid to rest here were just the wealthy of the Victorian age rather than the uniquely famous - although obviously there were many who were certainly 'famous in their own time' even if history has not been so kind as to remember them.

There are some great stories attached to some of the graves in this respect - such as that of bare-knuckle fighter Thomas Sayers, about whom our enthusiastic guide waxed lyrical over for quite an extended period, treating us to a near blow-by-blow account of his 42 round fight with the American champion John Heenan which took place (illegally) in a field near Farnborough in 1860. Plucky old Sayers fought much of the match with a broken arm and was still probably favourite to win were the bout not broken up by police.

Then there is the grave of the eccentric Managerist George Wombwell, who took a punt on purchasing a couple of boa constrictors that turned up at London Docks and soon made his money back showing them off in all the pubs and alehouses of London. George then built up an amazing menagerie of wild and wonderful animals that he toured around the country with - animals like elephants, lions, kangaroos, rhinos, giraffes - the like of which most people in early-19th Century Britain could surely have only ever dreamed of seeing. Upon Wombwell's grave is a marvellous marble carving of his docile lion - Nero.

We also saw a grave of a poor girl who "Died of the effects of fire after her dress accidentally caught alight ten days previously". Fantastic Mrs Ox-to-be wondered aloud why no one had helped the poor girl put the fire out as she wondered around with her frock ablaze for 10 days.

We were also taken 'off the beaten track' - something our guide was not meant to do for health and safety reasons he told us (It's PC gone mad - Back off Brussels!!!), where we were shown an unmarked pauper's grave.

This was no ordinary pauper though (had it been I may have been annoyed that the guide had risked our health and safety to show us); he was actually a survivor of the Battle of Rorke's Drift in 1879. He'd been taken from Isandlwana to the hospital at Rorke's drift, having had his legs crushed in an accident the day before the Zulu massacred the British forces at Isandlwana. The fellow might have thought he'd got lucky until 5,000 Zulu's showed up at Rorke's Drift and attacked the 139 British soldiers stationed there too. He did survive however only to return home and end up in a pauper's grave after all that. Poor bugger.

Highgate is also still a working graveyard today - if you have the money to take your place alongside the great and the good of yesteryear.

The grave of Alexander Litvinenko is also in the Western Cemetery - an eerie photograph of the poisoned ex-Spy atop his path-side grave, adorned with glowing, growling & mutated flowers.

We also found out that George Michael's mother is buried here - although our guide also told us he wasn't meant to tell us that. Presumably to stop Andrew Ridgeley desecrating it.

All in all then, a cracking afternoon out and well worth a visit. Next time you are in North London with time on your hands - I heartily recommend a stroll around Highgate Cemetery.

Just avoid the public toilets near the entrance - in case George is visiting his Mum.









*With the notable exception of Karl Marx of course - but his grave is in the less-atmospheric East Cemetery, which does not require a guided tour to visit.

Patchy Service

Some of these blog entries are weaker than others, I accept that.

But try not to get disheartened. There are some good ones in the old bonce just waiting to come out, so keep coming back. I'll try not to put two crap ones on consecutive days though, so if you see a crap one, prepare for a cracker the following day.

Try and remember that I am trying to get something down every weekday, so there will be times when I'm simply not able to think of anything decent.

Like today.

Barking Mad

'Can Nick Griffin become an MP in the battle for Barking?' this Video from the BBC website asks.

The answer is No. No he can't.

Here is why.

At the 2005 General election, Labour had a 8,883 (or 30%) majority in Barking, with 48% of the actual vote compared to the BNP's 17%.

Granted they were a mere 27 votes behind Conservative in 2nd place, but give than the Conservative vote is expected to strengthen further in places like Barking, I can't see the BNP making any headway at their expense either.

Put simply, he's not going to overhaul that margin, even if he had got his melty face on the secrets of the Ark of the Covenant to help him.

SuBollocks

Now, I know it's been a while since this Susan Boyle phenomenon first took off. I'll be honest I almost missed it first time round last year actually, as I was travelling at the time everyone went mental over her.

I just came across this article on the BBC website this week about how she is being snubbed by the Brit Awards this year.

Now, I'm not really surprised by this, for a number of reasons.

Firstly - there is the argument that she's not actually that talented. Yeah, she can sing very well. But have you heard Barry from Eastenders? He can sing as well in real life too - really well as it happens, and he's never been nominated for a Brit award.

OK, so she's had the commercial success that Barry from Eastenders has not. But this is clearly just piggybacking on the back of the success of the Britain's Got Talent TV show, rather than any actual breakthrough achievement of her own.

Plus she doesn't write her own songs either, nor is her album worthy of note for any original work- As I understand it 11 of the 12 songs on her album are covers with only one original composition, which she didn't write anyway.

So although as I say she can sing and has sold records, so can other people who actually have original songs and have generated success based on their music alone rather than the publicity generated by a very popular TV show.

Yet I know the real reason she's being snubbed. This real reason she's being snubbed is so transparent that I can't believe no-one has noticed it yet.

I mean it's so patently clear - the reason she's not going to win any awards, the reason why she'll never truly be a real star, the reason she's being snubbed.

So ball-shatteringly undeniable is this real reason for her being snubbed, that I cannot believe it's not been picked up on yet by the media these past 6 months.

Once I've told you, you will actually kick yourselves for not realising sooner the real reason she's being snubbed, because it really is so obvious...



The fact is - SHE'S REALLY UGLY.