The Adventures of Flossie

2009-12-05T22:20:00.007Z

(I was planning to write some sort of post linking to favourite bits of the page, only it seemed like a lot of effort; my inner narcissist allowed me to put a load of old blog entries back up on the internet but it doesn't go quite as far as allowing me to go through it all again to pick out the bits that I actually liked. And then I found this, which I'd written to mark the page's 600th entry and never got round to putting up. I'm not sure what the final tally of posts was, although it wouldn't have been much more than 600. In this version there are 513 posts, plus this one. Most of the others were either a) addressing such a particular point that to re-post them would have been meaningless (as it the rest of it is deeply important and significant) or b) rubbish.)

The Adventures of Flossie Sketchbook

with Rob Curling!

Hello, I'm Rob Curling. You know, when I became the host of The Adventures of Flossie archive page, people thought it was a terrible comedown for the respected host of daytime quiz shows and the South-East news sport slot. But now, with this being the undoubted success story of the internet age, it's safe to say that this has been every bit as fulfilling and lucrative as taking over from Michael Wale.

And now, to celebrate the full and complete apart from the missing bits of the "page-o-thing" being in the internet, it's time for me, Rob Curling, to present my very own pick of the very best bits!

2002

Apart from a bit where Matt had a bit of a strop for reasons too dull to go into, 2002 was undoubtedly a triumph for The Adventures of Flossie. Beginning as it meant to go on with a story about acting feebly around a woman and stories about Tesco, the page went from strength to strength, with the first of the page's in-depth looks at the human condition, the first slagging off of the Evening Standard and the search engine-confusing story of the Hollyoaks Babes calendar. And who could forget the epic ruminations on toilet attendants, vitamins, 33 packets of hot dogs and the mighty combination of political satire and fireworks?

We caught up with Matt as he was trying to clean his bedroom in the unlikely event that a woman should ever drop by, and asked him what he thought, looking back at the first nine months of the page.

MATT: Goodness, but it was dull.

2003

2003 started with a bang - quite literally! - as a train Matt was riding smacked into a wall. This led to an awful lot of tedious rambling about trains for the rest of the year. 2003 was also a year in which TAoF reflected the nation's obsessions with religion and high-jumping, the never-referred-to-again Excuse-o-meter was invented, the epic tale of the Plasterer enthralled the nation and some it's-ironic-honestly French stereotypes, and the year culminated in the attack of the lucky heather snatch squad. But what do you think of it now, Mr Writer?

MATT: Was that a reference to the Stereofuckingphonics?
ROB: Er, no. No it wasn't.
MATT: Good. Anyway, I'd always thought that the page had been really good in the past. It turns out that this was just a lot of tedious nostalgia, and the page really has never been that good after all.
ROB: Have you ever actually kissed a girl? I mean, properly, with tongues and all?
MATT: Yes.

2004

Beginning with the inexplicable phrase "this is ball quite frankly" ("it was a reference to Zoe Ball's failing career, or maybe Alan Ball was in the news or something") and topical comment on the now-forgotten Shattered ("I thought it was going to be a new Big Brother-type sensation, and my thoughts on it should be recorded for posterity"), The Adventures of Flossie's third year was one of consolidation after the excitement of 2003. The page's educational remit was fulfilled with the explanation of what an ellipsis might be, the blame for Dagenham losing 9-0 was shifted in a manner that even the spinniest of spin doctors would approve of, the phrase "pram tantrum" was introduced into everyday life and there was much tedious obsessing about red boots.

It was a year of mighty subject-combination, with entries somehow incorporating Phil Collins and women's bottoms and Joss Stone and a man shaving his tits. It was a year in which popular conceptions about people on tube trains, Britney Spears and Romford were dismissed with a flourish. Excellent phrases in otherwise dull posts included: "what can you do with a mouse in a bucket"; "nectarine of evil"; and "not 'Dustbun'", and the nation was enthralled as Matt decided whether or not to jack his job in. (He did.)

ROB: And you found someone else who was willing to give you a job?
MATT: Yes.
ROB: Blimey.

2005

If there was one event that people still talk about in hushed tones, it was the Battle Of The Ikea Car Park. But it wasn't all doom and gloom in Essex's murder capital; The Adventures of Flossie showed that old Dunkirk spirit, making jokes about rancid milk to keep people's spirits up. This was also the year in which Matt spent much of his time "working from home". But surely, if you're "working from home", you aren't actually doing any work at all?

MATT: Yes I was, I was doing heaps of work.
ROB: Ha ha ha ha! But presumably being at home all day would have given you more time to write amusing entries to entertain people with?
MATT: No.

2005 also featured another epic rumination on the human condition, one that seemed oddly similar to the one in 2002.

MATT: Well, y'see, the idea was that in 2008 there'd be one that says "No, really; girls, eh". If I'd remembered I would have kept the page going.

Oops!

2006

And so, after nearly four years and 600 posts, the page came to a glorious climax, leaving a trail of disappointed readers weeping into their cornflakes with the horror that such an important part of their lives would be missing.

ROB: So, Matt, why on earth would you put all of this stuff back up on the internet?
MATT: Well, Rob, I-
ROB: You lying bastard, you did it because you seem to think that one day hundreds of people are going to read it and someone's going to give you money to write amusing tales about looking at girls on trains for them, and in the meantime maintain an air of smug superiority over blogs that have more readers because they're far better than yours. (Hits MATT firmly on the nose.)
MATT: It's a fair cop.
ROB: I'm a journalist, you know.

2006-03-09T21:37:00.001Z

I have now wasted one day's holiday and inconvenienced myself hugely by spending a day working from home in the name of getting my washing machine fixed.

My washing machine still doesn't work.

Moral: Indesit? In-the-shit, more like. Actually, that's not really a moral, is it? It doesn't even make sense. It's just an excuse to incorporate the name of a manufacturer of washing machines and a swearword to indicate how annoyed I am. The saga has now claimed my ability to use words. Thank goodness I don't work for a publishi... oh, drat.

This, combined with the prospect of having to haul 300 sheets of A3 paper through the rush hour tomorrow morning, has left me in such a mood that the entry I've been planning for myself, which I'm pleased with already and haven't even started on yet (which almost certainly means it's going to be an anti-climax and remain unposted forever, like that Airhead one I occasionally mentioned in the early days of the page-o-thing and was reminded of when I was compiling Rob Curling's Best of The Adventures of Flossie, and Rob Curling's Best of The Adventures of Flossie) will have to remain unwritten for a few days yet. At least.

2006-03-03T14:55:00.001Z

My first day off since returning to the world of Proper Employment. I should like to tell you that there is an exciting reason for this, but there isn't; it's because, after spending Wednesday evening splashing around the kitchen, this was the only day that anyone would come to fix my washing machine this side of April (approx.). Or, rather, look at my washing machine and work out how many parts would be needed to make it work again.

In the meantime, my mum has volunteered use of her washing machine to save me from having to visit a launderette for the first time since, oooh, about 1995 or so. And while this is a good thing - I could have got away with a week without a washing machine if I was still working from home, but hygiene is much more of an issue in a badly air-conditioned office with people you still don't know particularly well - there is one problem in having my mum handle my dirty laundry. I am, after all, a single gentleman who lives on his own. And - how do I put this? - there are certain things that single gentlemen who live on their own do, particularly in the springtime when the single gentleman's thoughts turn to... well, you know.

(Fans of the mid-90s and irony will be delighted to learn that one of the discs in the pile of CD singles I've been entertaining myself with is Tiny Meat by Ruby, which I haven't heard for ages and which I'm alarmed to note came out in 1995. I probably listened to it while I was sat around in the launderette. I knew how to live when I was a student.)

So I've had to carefully sift the washing to ensure that anything too embarrassingly sullied doesn't make it into the bag that I'll be sending over to her. The sheets I took off the bed last weekend certainly aren't going in. Most of the pairs of sturdy boxer shorts that I wear are in dark colours, which is potentially bad, but the good thing about going to work is that you're otherwise occupied all day and too busy being tired and having things to do when you get home, so the situation isn't nearly as bad as it could have been; the sift-and-sniff I've just undertaken reveals only two pairs that I wouldn't want someone else handling, and even then that's more of a precautionary measure than because of certain humiliation. Phew.

2006-02-26T23:44:00.001Z

Today, readers, is a red letter day. For today is the day when the number of people who found the page looking for "Flossie" finally outstripped the number of people who found it looking for ("Johnny Noakes" - Ed). It seems unlikely that they were actually looking for me, as the page's readership remains stubbornly at "maybe 12", but I feel quite gratified anyway. Even if it has taken about two years.

By coincidence, this is also the page-o-thing's 600th post. I was going to mark this with some extended self-indulgent nonsense, but having spent ages working on it and then reading it back I'm not sure that the tone of mockery that I'd intended has really come out, and that it might have become the page that celebrates only itself. I shall pause and rethink the matter, and see if I can come up with some jokes, and you can insert your own punchline to that one.

2006-02-25T00:02:00.001Z

My train into work ground to a halt midway between stations. The driver told us that he didn't know why the train was being held up, and as he did you could hear his radio ringing in the background. I wasn't bothered; I've spent so much time this week either sitting on trains or standing on trains or sitting on trains and then standing up to let someone have my seat or standing on platforms waiting for trains to turn up that I've become quite relaxed about the whole business. At least this time the driver was telling us what was going on; usually they're only too keen to tell us where the train is stopping, where the safety notices are, thanking us for traveling with them (as if we had much of an option), only to clam up when something goes wrong.

Besides, it was going to allow me to get through all of McIntyre, Treadmore and Davitt. I even began to plan which bits of the HMHB catalogue I was going to follow it up with.

It transpired that a train in front had failed, and that we were to be diverted around it. The train in question was parked a matter of yards away from the platform at Maryland, and it looked busy. I suspected that left any longer it would turn into that The Day Today sketch, and fully expected it to still be there when I returned in the evening. Unfortunately I'd completely forgotten about it by then, and besides was on the opposite side of the train and so wouldn't have been able to see it, and anyway a woman who smelt fantastic had sat next to me and I was too busy being preoccupied about that to notice. I reckon they probably moved it though. It would have been on the news and that.

2006-02-21T21:27:00.001Z

As we've discussed before (and, let's be honest, after 597 entries there are very few topics that we haven't discussed before, the maybe 12 of you and I, whether they were worth discussing or not), I find the leaving card to be a particularly novel form of torture. How to condense your relationship with someone you've worked with for however long into a pithy aside? Particularly if you actually like them? It's a nightmare in tacky cardboard-y paper form.

However, trying to write a message on a leaving card for someone who has given you a job only to announce that they're leaving within less than a month of you starting that job is a new form of awkwardness beyond anything I have previously experienced. Ordinarily writing a leaving card for someone you've only worked with for a few weeks would be, comparatively speaking, a doddle - just a quick "best wishes for the future"-type message that you can tailor according to the circumstances of their departure. But when they've actually given you the job, it feels like you're supposed to write more. Are you still supposed to be grateful for them employing you in the first place? Will a wry aside about how long you've been working for them be taken the wrong way? Particularly when you're one of the first to sign, and you know practically everyone else within the department will get to read it, and that it's bad enough that they're going to see your awful handwriting as well.

(It should be pointed out that since I've joined the company, two of the three people who interviewed me have announced their departures. I've tried not to take this personally - the key word is tried - but I can't help feeling like a rat boarding a sinking ship. Moral: don't ever get a job.)

2006-02-19T21:40:00.001Z

My nephew asked me what I want to be when I grow up. (He wants to be a racing driver. Unfortunately his version of what driving racing cars involves has been affected by computer games, and involves the use of brightly coloured shells, speed-up mushrooms and your opponents being a toadstool, an ape and a giant fire-breathing monster. Note to Bernie Ecclestone: this would improve things no end.) I decided that when I grow up I'm going to be a failure. Aim high, that's my motto.

Apparently, the downside to being a racing driver is that "the girls all wiggle their butts at you". Publishing is very similar. The girls do wiggle their butts at you. In a way. Sort of. All right, the girls walk down the corridor and if you're walking along behind them you can look at their bottom if nobody's coming the other way who might see you doing it. Practically no difference, really.

More worryingly, my sister has been looking at my Friends Reunited profile, which I'd updated a few months ago on my biannual visit to the aforementioned site and completely forgotten about on the grounds that, well, nobody looks at these things. Oddly, she picked up on the bit about meeting someone I went to school with outside Tesco rather than the bit about talking to girls 10 years younger than me at Sleater-Kinney gigs, which is the sort of detail you'd expect your sister to be more interested in. I'm going to have to be a lot more careful about this sort of thing in future.

2006-02-16T23:40:00.001Z

As I stood, squeezed into the corner of the train, surrounded by a half-term family who found the whole situation amusing, possibly because they hadn't been delayed en route because the tube in front of their's had had problems with its doors and then deprived of a seat at Stratford because some weasel of a man had taken advantage of their kindly letting of the fellow with the fold-up bike to take the first free seat to dive past and sit in the remaining seat, I had a moment of horrible realisation.

I've only gone and become a commuter. Not even four weeks and I've become everything I despise. Fucking hell.

(Well, all right, maybe not everything. I haven't become the sort of person who dives under the arm of a 5ft 7-and-a-half man to get to a seat while he generously lets the fellow with the fold-up bike through. The way he dived under me, I suspect that if I'd had my legs open a little wider he would have crawled through them to get to the seat. Granted, I wanted to sit down, but I wasn't that desperate.)

(Nor have I become the sort of person who stops at the foot of the stairs on the way out of the station to light a cigarette, thus holding up a lot of disgruntled commuters who really want to go home, and then blows back smoke at them all of the way up the stairs and out of the station. That's the good thing about smokers: you begin to have a moment's sympathy for them, and then suddenly something makes you remember how incredibly selfish they all are. Even the ones who try to be sympathetic, who tell you that they do their best not to blow their smoke on people if they can help it - they don't seem to realise that they can avoid blowing smoke at people by not fucking well doing it in the first place. And if I hear one more of them whinging about their civil liberties, I'm going to fucking well boot them in the genitals and then when they whinge about it I'm going to point out that they're depriving me of the fun of going around booting people in the genitals, which I like doing and helps me relax.)

(On the other hand, I have now posted a vaguely topical rant about a subject of the day, containing almost certainly ill-thought opinions, on my "blog". So I really have become most of the things I despise, then. This very probably is nearly the end, isn't it? Hey ho.)

2006-02-12T20:20:00.002Z

With the page-o-thing being nearly four years old, nearly every major sporting event has passed through its orbit at one time or another. There's been a World Cup, a European Championships, a Commonwealth Games, an Olympics, even a World Athletics Championships and the odd darts tournament.

However, this is the page-o-thing's first Winter Olympics, and as such I feel the need to comment.

Now, as should be clear, my enthusiasm for these sorts of things is fairly boundless. However, the traditional British position towards the Winter Olympics is a sceptical one. If you tracked down, say, him out of Hard-Fi, he'd probably say "why is there all this coverage of people from Finland on skis and that? There should be more television programmes about how tough life is for the kids on the streets, because they spend all of their money too quickly and their girlfriends are all pregnant because they couldn't be arsed to buy condoms and they appear not to have heard of the morning after pill and everything instead of all this snowy nonsense" and "isn't this a little bit gratuitous?", to which the answer would be "yes", obviously.

If he knows what gratuitous means, obviously.

Now, naturally, I give this traditional view the scorn that it deserves; the Winter Olympics is at least fairly great. I do have issues though, as for while there are good events - short-track speed skating, say, or bobsleigh - and while there are dull events that Britain are sometimes good at - curling, say, or figure skating - the Winter Olympics is also the domain of sports that should be great, but just aren't.

Take, for example, ski jumping. Ski jumping should be great; it's people chucking themselves off of a mountain, and that sounds brilliant. But then, as you watch it, it fails to be exciting. There's no obvious reason why one jumper should reach 105 metres and the other should only reach 95 metres, and until the little caption comes up you can't really see how far anyone has jumped. And there's no tension as the distance is measured, like there is in something like the long jump where there's the mark in the sand and you have the moment of tension while the blazer-wearing fellow with the stick and the athlete looking pensive until the distance comes up. It's all a bit of a let down, really.

And snowboarding. I watched some snowboarding this afternoon. Snowboarding sounds good, but is rubbish. It's dominated by annoying American teenagers who say things like "dude" and "gnarly" a lot, I'd imagine. The only redeeming feature to snowboarding is that the British competitor appeared to be wearing a proper old-fashioned parka (except without the fluffy hood) as his kit. Never has there been such a distance between the entertainment value from a sport in real life and in computer games as there is with snowboarding. Except perhaps from ice hockey.

But, erm, overall the Winter Olympics is good, and I've decided that I like it, and any event where you hear commentators utter phrases like "he's the wild man of the luge" can't be all bad, and anyone being cynical about it is wrong. Yes.

2006-02-12T01:18:00.001Z

A few days ago - I'm not quite sure what day it was, and really it's of absolutely no consequence whatsoever what day it was, so we'll call it Wednesday even though it might have been Tuesday, which I realise is the sort of vague approach to facts that make blogs the unreliable sources of information that we know and love - I was slightly worried to see several policeman stood about the place as I entered the tube. Particularly as they were blocking the route to the platform opposite to the one I was headed for, leading me to assume that my platform would also be blocked off and that I'd have to scramble around finding an alternative route, and thus raising the possibility of getting thumped by a bucket by an attractive medical student again.

Fortunately the platform I was headed for was open. As I made my way down to it, it was clear that the opposite platform was indeed closed off, as instead of hoards of commuters there was but a solitary policeman. There was also a tantalising indicator of what might have been amiss, as the machine from which overpriced chocolate can be purchased was taped off with blue and white "Police! Do Not Cross!"-type tape. What sort of calamity could have occurred? I scanned the news services for information in vain.

And I didn't really think about this business again until yesterday, when I noticed that all of the chocolate machines on the platforms of the stations I pass through all had bits of paper attached to them to indicate that they were out of order. And then today, taking an alternative route across the city on account of engineering works, I noted that all of the chocolate machines on the platforms on those stations were also out of order. And this strikes me as rather peculiar. Are the chocolate machines striking back after years of mistreatment? Or is there some sort of dispute between the train company and whoever it is who runs the Underground chocolate racket, and this is some sort of first strike on somebody's part? I feel there is a story here, and only wish that somebody with more time on their hands would go and find out what it is.

2006-02-06T23:36:00.001Z

The tone of the day was set as I scampered down to Moorgate in search of a train line that was actually working and was clouted by a bucket wielded by a (really very cute indeed) girl out collecting for rag week. If she hadn't have whacked me I may have even chucked some cash in her bucket, but in the circumstances it wouldn't have been right somehow. And then on the way home the train carriage played host to not one but two fellows asking for some spare change, one of whom appeared to be asking for money to buy alcohol with, which is commendably honest if nothing else.

However, the undoubted King of Asking For Money was the fellow who accosted me in the park, who was undoubtedly London's Most Middle-Class Beggar. There he was, sat on his bench rolling his cigarette, and as I passed him he asked "could you spare me a pound please?" in his nice home counties accent.

I briefly regarded him, with his nice clean coat and his nice clean-shaven face and his nearly-full packet of tobacco and his demeanour more akin to a student preparing to go backpacking on his gap year rather than roughing it on the mean city streets, and I said "no". Not "no, sorry", suggesting that I can't spare the cash but I really feel guilty about it; just "no".

"It'd really help me out."

Now, I'll happily admit to be being close to a pound, but there are occasions when I'll go into my pocket. The fellow the other week who asked me for 8p to call his mother, for example; of course he's going to use it to buy meths or something, but it's only 10p (I didn't have the heart to check my change to see if I had the 8p he was asking for), and when you're on a one-way trip to liver sclerosis any little pleasure you might get along the way is probably a boon. But a pound... I know it's not going to buy you *much*, but it still seems rather a lot for someone (particularly someone who has clearly just purchased his smoking materials) to be asking strangers for.

"No."

And off I went. It's been a strange day all round, really.

2006-02-06T20:20:00.000Z

Ode to Ian Holloway

Farewell then, Olly
You did far more good than bad
Unlike the various jokers who were in charge before you
Although to be honest
You had lost it a bit by the end
(Not that I trust those bastards running the club
"QPR has not sacked Ian"
Yes, all right then
Also, I don't have a nasty bloody, pus-sy scar on my chest
And Hard-Fi are an excellent band
Who write lyrics of rare distinction
And Jim Smith can fuck off as well
Everyone else might have forgotten the Milk Cup final
But I still carry the psychological scars thanks to that bastard
And he's mates with Harry Redknapp too)
The football this season's been awful
And some of the signings were pretty ropey
I mean, Ian Evatt? I'm quicker than him
And not just in a "ha ha, I'm quicker than you Evatt, ha ha" sort of a way
But in a "actually, looking at it, I think I probably am quicker than him"
(And have just as much positional sense)
And I'm fat and have bad knees
And that

It's strange, it scanned really well when I was thinking it up as well.

2006-02-01T22:03:00.002Z

Quiet, everyone, this one's almost going to be educational.

The first crap thing about keloid scarring is that "keloid" is an absolute bugger to spell. It's pronounced "kee-loid", you see, or at least it is by my doctor, so when you want to find out more than he's been able to tell you in a brief diagnostic session and you fancy yourself when it comes to tricky spellings, you try all sorts of variations - cheloid, quayloid, keyloid - and fail miserably, only eventually coming across it when you were looking something else up as part of an occasionally gruesome book that you happened to be dealing with.

Blasted medical profession.

The other crap thing about keloid scarring - well, apart from it being really unpleasant to look at and the likely reaction of your young ladyfriend if she rips your top off in the throes of passion (which, admittedly, doesn't happen to me... well, ever, and even if it did I'd have to work out whether she was being taken aback by the hideous red blotches or the hairy stomach) - is that it gets inflamed. Well, mine does anyway. Usually in my case it swells up magnificently before popping a day or two later, but this most recent instance has taken about five days to get rid of, and it's been unpleasantly sore to boot. I ended up getting worried and making a trip to the doctor in the end, and I hate going to the doctor when there isn't something obviously wrong with me. There may be a visit to a specialist in the offing. I'm not looking forward to this at all.

Mind you, when it did finally implode, it did feel pleasantly warm and sticky. Unfortunately I was at a bus stop in New Oxford Street when I realised it'd popped - the burst had happened somewhere between leaving work, making my way around various shops and then back along Oxford Street - and I couldn't really pull my t-shirt up and have a good look at the lovely mix of blood and pus that always emerges.

You can make your own joke about him out of Hard-Fi at this point, if you like.

As I'd made my way down Oxford Street, for the first time in absolutely ages, I was delighted to come across the Hare Krishna's going down the pavement on the other side of the road. I always feel disappointed when... well, most of the time in fact, but anything to alleviate the unpleasantness of a walk down that particular thoroughfare has to be a good thing.

2006-01-29T17:32:00.001Z

Strike 1 against having a proper job: having to go shopping on Sunday.

Well, all right, not *having to*, I suppose - I could have gone on Saturday, but then that would have been even worse, and I suppose once my sleep settles down and I stop waking at 5.38 and not getting back to sleep again then I might have the energy to go after work, but my cupboards were getting distressingly empty and so I really needed to go. I'd popped down last Sunday for a few emergency rations but I'd managed to scamper round quickly and exit through the 10 items or less queue, and so really wasn't prepared for the full horror of the Sunday supermarket.

The number of people. That's the first thing I'd forgotten. Wander round on a Tuesday afternoon and there might be the odd moment where you have to hang around waiting for someone who's inconsiderately left their trolley parked in front of the tomatoes or something, but you don't have ridiculous trolley jams down practically every aisle. And there's none of the tedious waiting at the checkout. (Well, there's some waiting around, but not the stupid queues all the way back into the aisles so that not only are you stuck in a queue, but you manage to get in other people's way as well.) And the nice one on the customer service desk wasn't working. And then there's the erratic Sunday train timetable to deal with, coupled with the trains coming in on the other platform that's unused for the rest of the week and so having to negotiate a stairway that stinks of piss and an open platform that's still icy and slippery, not something you really want to deal with when you're carrying six bags.

And I'd got into the habit of lazy Sunday mornings as well, getting up in my own time and then maybe taking a leisurely stroll around the park, before perhaps doing something useful and constructive in the afternoon instead of sitting around and feeling a bit tired and a bit guilty for not doing any cleaning.

On the plus side, my fridge is now fuller than it's been at any stage since I bought it, and there is something reassuring about having lots of stuff in your fridge. I wonder if Hard-Fi have a song about how having a fridge that's quite full is a bad thing. If not, I might write and suggest it for their next album or something. I like to help out where I can.

2006-01-27T22:15:00.000Z

I should have just got a job on the bins
The pay's better and I'd know some hard blokes
And I wouldn't have to pretend
That I know what pedagogical means.

Mind you, it would involve lots of carrying stuff around, and I did enough of that this afternoon.

Unfortunately, the rest of this entry has had to be cancelled while I attempt to find out the names of the Channel 4 employees responsible for moving the only one of their programmes that I actually like watching forward by an hour, thus causing me to only see the last three minutes or so, to better accommodate Inane Celebrity Twat-Fest Series 19 or whatever it's called without bothering to tell everyone so that I can track them down and firebomb their doubtless richly-appointed houses.

2006-01-23T20:17:00.000Z

I was going to comment on the Evening Standard's London's Whale 4-page souvenir special (which I realise is real fish-in-barrels stuff, but I wanted to share my theory about the whale - that the whale, being a particularly stupid whale, was seeking out the company of other stupid mammals and decided that the centre of London was therefore the ideal place for it to go) but I've just heard the phrase "fastest-selling indie rock debut album since records began" used in all seriousness, and I've decided that my time would be better spent trying to find a niche that the page-o-thing might fit in so that I can proclaim that it's the most popular page on the internet that's about editing and tube trains and football and badly targeted spam and being rubbish with girls. Say.

Also: I'm knackered.

2006-01-22T19:01:00.003Z

I didn't learn to cook.

I didn't develop a crippling addiction to biscuits.

I didn't win Paintbox Jury.

I didn't stay up all night on a Thursday to watch those curious foreign football matches that Five show and that are assiduously listed in Armchair Football.

I didn't say "oh, sod it" while hunched over a pile of proofs and take a trip to the seaside instead of working. (I did spend a day at the seaside, but it was planned in advance.)

I didn't indulge in a drunken binge and stay out all night on a weeknight, even when the government made it compulsory.

I didn't watch Father Dowling Investigates, even if it does feature an investigative nun. Admittedly they never showed Father Dowling Investigates, but I wouldn't have watched it even if they had.

I didn't get around to going to ~~Butter~~ Bitterscene. (*)

I didn't even attempt to flirt with the girl who used to work in the bakers.

I didn't learn how to do clever things with my computer to make the page look good.

I didn't listen to The Aislers Set nearly enough. Not that that was something that has particularly troubled me until about a minute or ago, but I feel the point should be made.

I didn't get around to my critique of Cash Machine either, although I still feel that someone with an ISA isn't really qualified to deal with such matters.

I'm sure that there were lots of other things that I was going to do over the last few months but never got round to as well, but this is what happens when you don't write things down. I suppose I never will now. Moral of the story: write things down. And don't work for a living, it's crap.

(*) I'd hilariously typoed this in a now lost comment. Richard Evil Eye was the first to make a Last Tango In Paris joke, for which we now, as then, salute him.

2006-01-17T23:39:00.001Z

I found myself stood in what appeared to be the unofficial queue for single men in Tesco today. The chap in front of me, with his small jar of pasta sauce and his sweatshirt that appeared to be identical to the sweatshirt that he was wearing, certainly appeared to be single. The chap who came and stood behind me, with his ready meals and his bag of salad, surely must have been single. (Initially a couple had come along and put their items on the conveyer belt after my intended purchases, but then gathered them up and went elsewhere; I suspect that this was because they'd realised that they could use the 10 items or less checkout, where there was no queue, and not because of the overwhelming stink of despair and failure from those in front of them, but I can't be certain about this.)

And there was me in the middle with my... actually, I had quite a responsible shopping trip today, with my lightbulbs and fabric conditioner and healthy breakfast cereal. Oh, all right, I got Frosties. I discovered today that you can get reduced sugar Frosties, which seems to be completely missing the point of Frosties. Surely reduced sugar Frosties are, essentially, cornflakes?

In addition to his ready meals and salad, the fellow behind me was buying 11 tins of pilchards. I counted them and everything. Naturally I would prefer to assume that there is some sort of tragic backstory to the purchase of 11 tins of pilchards, but, try as I might, I haven't come up with one. Until I do we'll have to assume that he just really likes pilchards. I don't recall ever eating them, so similarly we'll have to assume that liking pilchards is a perfectly reasonable thing to do. Darn.

2006-01-15T23:26:00.001Z

Today's entry - well, most of today's entry; there was going to be an aside wondering why you don't hear the word "smarmy" very often these days, and if it might become more commonly used if Simon Hughes wins the Lib Dem leadership election - was going to be one of the page-o-thing's rare asides into wondering about pop music, as there's been something troubling me for the last couple of days and I thought it might be better to get it off my chest. But then I thought about it again and decided that if I went ahead with it there was a chance of looking like an idiot, and of being made to look like an idiot by a particularly feeble and wretched band, and my ever-troublesome self-easteem probably couldn't have handled that, particularly at this important and difficult time.

In an entirely unrelated note; is the central character in Cash Machine by Hard-Fi supposed to be in any way sympathetic, or is it a realistic portrayal of life on the "streets" for "the kids", or is he just a pitiful arsehead?

2006-01-11T00:12:00.000Z

The Adventures of Flossie official Brits nomination post

Oh, I don't know. I couldn't honestly name you anyone who won one since that time Belle and Sebastian won and Pete Waterman claimed it was a fix, and I can't even remember when that was. Damn, this pretending to be a music blog really isn't working out.

I was going to do a proper post explaining exactly what it was that was troubling me over the weekend, as it was quite important (well, important to me anyway; in the wider scheme of things it was about as important as anything you've ever read on a blog is likely to be, ie not in the slightest), but I'm tired and it'll probably take a while anyway. Tomorrow, maybe.

2006-01-10T22:28:00.000Z

More proof that I'm turning into a sentimental old fool; looking at the referrers I note that someone found the page while looking for adventures for kids under 3 in Essex, and, instead of smiling wryly and moving swiftly on, I find myself thinking "awww, that sounds like fun. I'd love to be under 3 and going on an adventure, even if it is in Essex", and feeling a bit guilty that someone looking for something so charming was subjected to my rubbish. It's really not healthy.

I think this is my parents' fault for telling me that my nephew reminds them of me at that age. He's such a good kid, and I hate the idea that he might end up like me; it's no fate for anyone.

2006-01-10T00:00:00.001Z

"Dont miss World Cage Fighting Championships!" screams the subject line of the spam-o-mail. I suppose that if they're in a cage it's going to make it rather easier to hit them, although in this case it might be better to take out random members of the audience instead.

I'm sure there's someone in the offices of the Masters of Ticketing who keep sending me these things with a sharp suit and a Powerpoint presentation that proves that these things are expertly targeted to get the maximum results while causing the minimum amount of disgruntlement to people who're fed up with this sort of thing. I can't recall exactly what tickets I bought from them which caused me to wind up on their mailing lists, but I'm sure it didn't bear any relation to a gurning buffoon, a reformed boy band that I never liked first time around ("no, but actually Back For Good is a great song" people told me. "No it isn't" I snapped, "it's as bad as everything else they did, for goodness sakes get a grip, will you"), and now, and I don't profess to be an expert on cage fighting so I'm guessing here, a lot of musclebound oafs pounding seven bells out of each other in a cage. Moreover, a cage in Manchester, which makes it seem even more unlikely seeing as I'm sure I've not bought tickets for anything further north than Kentish Town.

I'd see if I could find a way to opt out, but I'm almost fascinated to find out what they're going to fling at me next. I'm sure Westlife and the stars of X-Factor will feature sooner or later, and I'd happily go to Manchester to see them being beaten to a pulp in a cage, but given this later development it could be anything.

2006-01-07T13:27:00.001Z

I've often thought that you can tell what an area is like by the headline from the local newspaper that appears on the boards outside newsagents to promote it. The Evening Standard is a fairly good representation of what London is like - miserable, unpleasant, full of people you really don't want to know - while the time I visited Colchester and the local newspaper headline was "MAN FALLS DOWN MANHOLE IN TOWN" remains with me as the high spot of the day.
However, this does not explain for a minute why the Ilford Recorder is currently promoting itself with the story "MY DAUGHTER'S 'HUSBAND' IS A DOLPHIN".

A little research leads to the remarkable claim that the story made headlines around the world. I realise that the Christmas/New Year period can be a quiet time for news, but I can't believe for a moment that this made headlines anywhere except the more desperate tabloids. It seems hugely unfair: on the one hand you have Laura off of Newsround, who comes back from her Christmas hols to discover that she has to compile a two-minute report explaining who Ariel Sharon is, the history of the Israeli/Palestinian situation, what a stroke is and what the outcome is likely to be for an audience of uninterested 11 year olds (*); on the other hand you get some chancer claiming that a woman pretending to marry a dolphin is what everyone is talking about, and presumably getting paid for it.

(*) Obviously I only saw this by accident, in the same way that I also a bit of Celebrity Big Brother the other night. It featured someone entering the house - possibly the bloke out of The Ordinary Boys that the 6 Music music news was getting itself so excited about yesterday (**) - and greeting Michael Barrymore by saying "Awwight". Cut to Davina Macoll absolutely pissing herself laughing. The next time someone looks at me askance for not being interested in this programme, I have a handy explanation why.

(**) I do find myself wondering exactly how he explained to the other contestants what his band was like. "Well, you know The Specials? Well, if you imagine a third-rate Specials tribute band who decide to write their own songs, we're a bit like that." "Oh, so you're in The Dead 60s then." "Er..." (***)

(***) The page-o-thing, possibly by some sort of accident, now seems to listed on No Rock & Roll Fun under 'Other music blogs'. And this gives me something of a dilemma, as while No Rock is one of the few pages that justifies those articles the Guardian media pages prints every week about how blogging is the most exciting things in the history of all things, the page-o-thing couldn't really be said to be a music blog, as I usually shy away from these things on the grounds that around 83.33% of the not quite 13 readers aren't likely to be interested. So at the moment the plan is to put in the occasional reference in a footnote and hope I don't get found out.

(*****) This entry is desperately lacking in focus, isn't it? I'm sorry. There is a reason, which will become clear in due course.

2006-01-03T23:56:00.000Z

Something I deleted and forget to put back in while I was, er, attempting to improve the post about being a sentimental old foole: for the first time ever I was invited to contribute to a top 10 albums of the year poll. This was particularly amusing, as due to my prudential financial management over the last year I bought the least number of albums since my days as a mangy student type, and so compiling my top 10 was like those Channel 4 polls for your Top 100 Comedy Films As Long As You Don't Like Anything Made Before 1978 (or something) where you're directed to a website with 102 films to choose from, and so everything after Number 6 was a bit of a struggle. I was pleased to see Art Brut finishing so high up in the final poll, at any rate.

2006-01-03T22:45:00.000Z

How to tell you're an irretrievable publishing spod No. 143: your enjoyment of the first ten minutes of The Thick Of It is spoiled by an unconvincing newspaper front page, with the wrong fonts and the paper looking more like those copies of papers that they sometimes hold up on Newsnight.

I don't have any work at the moment, although I have rather contrived this situation for myself what with one thing and another. It's not a good thing, even if I was spared getting up early this morning.

2006-01-03T00:24:00.003Z

I was going to write a nice sweet entry about Christmas and how sentimental I'm getting about things, and pondering whether this is a good thing and if it means anything (and then throwing in a bit of rank nudity in case anyone thought I was going soft) but I've just seen David O'Leary whinging on the television for about the third time in a week and I'm too annoyed for such niceness. Tell you what, David O'Leary, why don't you play all your team's games at some time when nobody wants to come and see them, three o'clock on Thursday mornings say, and then when you complain that nobody comes to watch them any more the interviewer can say "serves you right, you tedious whinger". (*)

Tosser.

Anyway, the point I would have been making in that first paragraph was that there have been a few occasions over the last week and a bit where I've felt terribly sentimental about silly things - my niece still leaving out mince pies for Father Christmas, say, or turning on the outside lights at my parents' yesterday so that I could see them as I made my way home. It happened again today as I was getting off the train at Shepherd's Bush. There was what we'll assume to be a father and son who were also disembarking; the kid was about five or six, and he'd been getting excited ever since he'd first seen someone else in a QPR shirt boarding the train. As he jumped down on to the platform, he shouted "come on you Rs!", and it occurred to me that there was a time when I got that excited about going to football, and I felt quite sad that it very rarely happens these days and that sooner or later the poor little sod was going to have all of that crushed out of him. (Maybe David O'Leary could go around to his house and talk to him, that would do the trick.)

Later on, I saw the most astonishing save I've ever seen, and there would be a mad five minutes where Rangers seemed certain to concede, only for them to somehow contrive a frankly ridiculous equaliser out of nothing in time added on for timewasting. And when I'd stopped laughing and gabbling at the fellow who sits next to me, I felt glad that I could still get that excited. And then I went to the toilet.

With the game eventually petering out, we were treated to the sight of two gentleman running onto the pitch, gradually shedding their clothes so that they were naked but for their socks. I do wonder why they didn't get around to removing the socks; I'd like to think that they decided that they didn't want to get their feet dirty. As the orange-jacketed stewards converged on them like snails around a particularly lively lettuce leaf (I realise this metaphor lacks something, but aside from snails and lettuce leaves there's nothing else that converges on something slowly, and it's too late at night for me to come up with something myself) I was hoping to see some suitable violence taken against the nudey-men, but aside from a kick to bring them down there was nothing. Which seems like a missed opportunity - it's not as if they didn't deserve it - but I suppose the situation would have been difficult enough to explain to an excitable six year old as it was, so it was probably just as well.

I'm very sorry that the first entry of the year is mostly about football, incidentally. Fortunately for everyone, if I do another entry about football David O'Leary will probably call me up and explain that there's too many entries about football, so I won't do it again for a while just in case.

(*) I believe David O'Leary had been complaining particularly forcefully about how many games are played over Christmas, and had compounded this by suggesting ridiculous kick-off times - I'm sure he suggested Christmas Eve as one particular instance of an ideal time to stage a match. David O'Leary is currently unemployed.

2005-12-30T12:10:00.001Z

As I walked into the station, I found myself looking at the promotional board for the Evening Standard. The main story of the day was, apparently, "SCANDAL OF TUBE CHEIF'S PARTIES".
There are times when you feel everything you've ever done in your life has been in vain, and this was one of them.

At Liverpool Street the stalls vending the foul rag had been updated to display a story that was presumably far more important and for which there were no screamingly obvious spelling errors in giant bold type. It was about some people who'd won pots of cash on the Lottery. Presumably yesterday it was a heartwarming story of ordinary people triumphing over ludicrous odds; I suspect the first stories about the couple involved's dubious pasts will be dredged up/invented tomorrow.

On my way home I shared a tube carriage with someone who used to be in Eastenders. This was clearly hugely exciting, and it was only that I was developing a really quite nasty headache that stopped me from being deliriously happy at this brush with celebrity. Unfortunately, because I only ever see the programme when I'm round at the parents', and because he'd presumably left before the episode I saw a bit of on Christmas Day, I have no idea who he was or who he played. Truth be told, I only have the word of the two excitable women in the set of seats next to mine that he was in the programme at all (one of them said "it's definitely him" without ever elaborating on what his name was, which I realise probably wouldn't be enough evidence if he was accused of committing some sort of terrible crime or other, but for the purposes of being seen on a tube train by someone writing a fairly feeble internet page it will suffice). Still, as tube related celebrity anecdotes from Xmas 2005 go, it's probably better than "I think I once sat next to the bloke out of Art Brut; well, it certainly sounded like him anyway".

2005-12-24T16:28:00.001Z

The final door on the Batman Advent Calendar has been opened (cheapo jelly rather than cheapo chocolate, but I'm not complaining as it was an excellent gift from a splendid chum which I was delighted to receive, something which I doubt anyone who gets the Bromwell High 2006 Calendar will be able to say), the presents are all wrapped, and now I'm just waiting until I can be sure that I'll miss the Strictly Come Dancing Xmas special before I head off home. There is little more to report, although those interested in this sort of thing may be interested to learn that this year the women in the hairdressers seemed to be wearing ball gowns rather than fancy dress. Which is a pity, as "write desperately amusing page-o-thing entry" was down on my list of things to do, timetabled for between 4 and 4.30. Hey ho.

2005-12-21T20:50:00.000Z

I think I've worked out why I've been feeling distinctly un-festive over the last couple of weeks, when I should be entirely in thrall to the joys of the season. It's because I haven't unexpectedly come across a brass band of some description playing carols.

Because usually at this time of year you can't move for brass bands lurking around corners, ready to blast Hark The Herald Angels Sing at you when you give them as much as a sideways glance. Usually at some point in the run up to Christmas there'd be one at Seven Kings to serenade returning commuters and shake a tin in their direction, but on my occasional visits into the metropolis I've not come across them. I'm sure I recall seeing one at Liverpool Street on occasion as well, although I suppose these days they'd be too much of a security risk. I would have thought that I should have run into one in one of my various trips into the town centres of south-west Essex, but no.

And it's left a bit of a gap. It's been a bit of an odd Christmas build-up anyway. For the first time, I've actually missed having a proper job - December was always a time of catching up on admin, laughing at the crap Xmas decorations and being disparaging about anyone caught making an effort with theirs, having lots of days off because I've not taken enough holiday, and generally not doing an awful lot of work. This year I've actually been working, although this has now ground to a halt and left me wondering quite how to fill the days. I need something familiar, something to tell me everything is all right. And where are people wielding tubas playing Once In Royal David's City when I need them? Nowhere, that's where.

2005-12-20T22:40:00.000Z

I'm spotting a curious pattern when it comes to me and interviews. When I think they've gone well, the next I hear is when the rejection letter comes through the post. When I think they've gone badly, they call me back to arrange a further interview.

People, eh?

Still, a better day all round, not least because I managed to get some free peanuts. I hadn't intended to get free peanuts, and it was a bit of a rum business all round, but I'm not complaining. I do feel slightly guilty about it, even though it's not exactly going to make a dent into the mega-global corporation who gifted them to me's profits, and it's not as if I did anything wrong. I did attempt to turn this into an amusing vignette and failed miserably, but the main ingredients were:

- a malfunctioning till:

- a slightly scatterbrained shop assistant (I do find scattiness to be quite an appealing quality - probably because of my usual desire to put things in order; somewhere in my head something's telling me it's dirty and bad and wrong - but it's really not something you look for in someone serving you at a supermarket, even if it did work to my benefit in the end);

- the really lovely girl at the customer services counter. Actually she didn't have much to do with it at all, apart from apologise for how long it was taking, but that was quite enough.

I suppose it was clutching at straws to think it could make for an amusing tale, really.

2005-12-19T23:41:00.000Z

Top marks to the QPR Reward Programme for their timing in sending out an email at 8.30 this evening. "You've forgotten, haven't you?" winks the subject line. My email program has decided it's spam and so I can't see what I'm supposed to have forgotten, but if it's 'what it's like to see QPR play halfway decently', it would be absolutely correct.

I was hoping to do some cheery festive entries this week. Oh well. And I fouled up an interview today as well.

2005-12-16T11:23:00.000Z

"DON'T MISS TAKE THAT!" screams the subject line of the spam-o-mail. I find myself getting a horrible feeling of deja vu. I suppose with Take That you'd at least have a better chance of hitting one of them, but I'm not sure you'd really want to. "Member of aging boy band shot by internet weirdo; some people mildly upset." It's really not worth going to Broadmoor over.

Yes, this post is primarily to see if I can get some more misplaced comment spam.

2005-12-15T23:42:00.000Z

Wednesday: go on one of my suddenly frequent forays into the Nation's Proud Capital (three in the last week, and none of them for a football match - this may explain why I've been tired and a bit grumpy all week) to meet up with various ex-workmates for the first time in almost 9 months for Xmas drinks. And have an enjoyable evening of it.

Thursday: wake up at a ridiculously early hour of the type that I'd forgotten that there were 2 of in the day, ideal for if I had to get up and drag myself into the city for work but not for an idle (well, idle-ish - I may have got away with being idle if the chap I'm working for at the moment hadn't also been at the drinks, which is almost certainly a good thing) freelancer.

COINCIDENCE or NOT?

Well, no it's not. I invariably wake up early when I've been drinking the night before. I don't usually feel this rough, mind, although I think that has rather more to do with the huge amount of Chinese food I shoved down my hole before I went to bed. I've forgotten how to do this, really I have. I'm still not in any sort of Christmas-sy mood either.

2005-12-11T11:12:00.003Z

Breaking news

JOHN ANCHORMAN: There's been a big explosion at some sort of oil refinery or something like that. Over to Sarah Reporter, who's with a local family.

SARAH REPORTER: I'm with a local family, the Dogsbreaths, Elspeth Dogsbreath, tell us what happened?

ELSPETH DOGSBREATH: Well, there was a huge explosion and the room shook, and then we went over to the window and we saw the flames shooting high into the air.

SARAH REPORTER: Back to John in the studio.

JOHN ANCHORMAN: Police have said that there are 36 people injured, 4 of them seriously. At the moment it's being treated at an accident, even though it's clearly terrorists and you should not treat this as a reason not to stay at home watching our news channel and speculating idly for the rest of the day. Over to Gavin Reporter, who's with a local family.

GAVIN REPORTER: I'm with a local family, the Louis'. Louise Louis, tell us what happened?

LOUISE LOUIS: Well, there was a huge explosion and the room shook, and then we went over to the window and we saw the flames shooting high into the air.

GAVIN REPORTER: Thank you, Louise Louis. Well, there are lots of windows broken, so there's going to be a huge insurance bill, almost certainly meaning misery for lots of ordinary people and a fall in house prices. Back to John in the studio.

JOHN ANCHORMAN: If you have any pictures of the explosion, please send them to the number on your screen, particularly if they involve people who've been badly injured or traumatised. Even if they're particularly blurry and you can't possibly make anything out, we'll show them and claim that they're very dramatic. We are all citizen journalists now, haven't you heard? And yet you fuckers there spend most of the time just hoovering it up while we do all of the work. And don't send them to the other news channels because they're wankers, the lot of them. Now, over to Josh Reporter, who's with a local family.

JOSH REPORTER: I'm with a local family, the God Television News Is Shit Isn't Its. Mary God Television News Is Shit Isn't It, tell us what happened?

MARY GOD TELEVISION NEWS IS SHIT ISN'T IT: Well, there was a huge explosion and the room shook, and then we went over to the window and we saw the flames shooting high into the air.

JOSH REPORTER: Thank you. Well, many families have been evacuated to this large branch of Burger King, and at this stage nobody knows how long it'll be for, although I'm guessing that they'll probably spend the week here and there'll be all sorts of rapes and murders, like in New Orleans and that. Back to John in the studio.

JOHN ANCHORMAN: Just to recap, there's been an explosion at some oil refinery or something. 36 people are seriously injured, with 4 particularly seriously injured. For the love of Christ, please send us some photos. We'll bring you more details as they emerge.

2005-12-09T00:07:00.001Z

It may not be readily apparent, but I do try to carefully work out the entries on the page-o-thing. Whenever the lightbulb above my head lights up, I remove my fingers from whichever socket I've been sticking them in, reach for my pen and my notepad and scribble away, chuckling at my own cleverness and thinking "ho ho! This is what all those chumps in the Guardian media pages have in mind whenever they write 'Blogging - It's the future!'-type articles every sodding week". And then, when it comes to typing it all up later, I discover that actually it wasn't such a good idea after all and either leave out some of the more feeble bits or forget about the post altogether and go and look in the cupboard for something to eat instead. I'm a tortured artist, really. I still haven't bought any biscuits, incidentally, although I do have some lettuce.

This last week and a bit, however, I have been devoid of any ideas for the page whatsoever, hence two very tiny entries on sandwich fillings and unfortunately named police spokesmen and nothing else. I realise that this is feeble and not what you pay for your money for, and I can only apologise.

(Well, all right, there was one entry on my landlord's reaction to my getting a new fridge, which I was going to type up in amusing script form, except it was taking absolutely forever to do and it occurred to me that it wasn't actually that amusing in the first place. To summarise: after various bits of astounding rudeness on their parts - not returning my calls, not listening to what I was telling them, using the phrase "I have more important things to worry about than your fridge" - I was told that I should pay to have the old, broken fridge that belonged to them taken away out of "courtesy". The script would have ended with me writing on the floor having suffered an almost certainly fatal attack of irony. As I said, it seemed amusing at the time. The bit about the Susie Dent Dictionary Corner Fan Club Repertory Theatre Company was good, anyway.)

2005-12-05T15:09:00.000Z

Note to the police

If you don't want to completely undermine a story about knives and that, it's probably not a good idea to put forward a spokesman called Alf Hitchcock. Because nobody's going to remember what the message you're trying to get across is. I've forgotten already.

2005-11-30T14:53:00.000Z

Sandwich fillings you create in an attempt to use up the few non-frozen things in your fridge before you turn it off that you think are going to be delicious, but turn out to be a bit disappointing - Number 1 in a new and exciting series

Egg mayonnaise and pepperoni.

2005-11-26T11:34:00.001Z

Lettuce update

My lettuce is now little more than a ball of green ice. I suppose it could still be classed as "soporific", if only because if you hurl it at someone you could render them unconscious.

I really should have bought the beer instead.

My fridge, incidentally, is currently on the clearly far-too-high setting of "0". I was thinking about taking out a magic pen and writing "-1" and turning the dial around to that, but then I remembered that I don't have a magic pen, and that this is the real world where such things don't happen, and that I should probably buy a new fridge. (The fridge, incidentally, was provided by my landlord. I could wait for them to supply a new one, but I would like to use it some time before March.) I had been thinking about buying a DS, but no. Nothing resembling fun for me, dear me no.

2005-11-25T18:14:00.000Z

I waited until 5, in the end. I'm a fool to myself really - the chances of it turning up after about 2-ish were remote, let alone 5, but I stayed here just in case, like an idiot. This meant that my dash down to Tesco for supplies, largely to replace the items that had been frozen to inedibility by my fridge, coincided with a huge number of people descending on the place. With judicious editing I managed to get my shopping list down until I only had 10 items to purchase, a fact I felt particularly pleased about when the person in front of me clearly had at least 19 items in their basket.

I appeared to be the only person in the entire store not buying some sort of alcohol. I did think of discarding my lettuce and buying some in the name of conformity and to make sure that I don't fall foul of the new 24-hour compulsory binge drinking laws (note: check this before you publish the post), but it would have meant discarding my lettuce.

2005-11-25T16:10:00.000Z

The Adventures of Flossie presents... Advice Corner

If you're sending someone a package by courier, select one of the options for which time for it to be delivered by, otherwise there's a good chance that the poor sod you're having it delivered to to will spend the afternoon sitting around waiting for the thing to turn up. For pity's sake.

2005-11-23T23:44:00.001Z

I had a post worked out for tonight. It was going to be about talcum powder. It was going to be great. And, possibly, everything.

You see, after I've had a shower, bath or particularly thorough wash, I like to apply talcum powder to, er, a certain part of the body. A dark, sweaty, generally unpleasant part of the body. You can probably guess which one. It stops me from getting sore, you see, and no doubt makes being in my presence more tolerable for other people.

I usually buy my talcum powder from, um, a well-known retailer who deal in that sort of thing with the same name as a particularly sturdy type of footwear. However, when I popped into their Ilford branch the other week, and once I'd found the tiny section containing the toiletries for men, I found no talc. And this was rather distressing, particularly as they seemed to have at least 27 types of fancy tubes of soap of the type that I shun on the grounds that ~~it's going to take more than some expensive soap to make any significant improvement to my ghastly fizzog~~ my face is fine as it is, thank you. Fortunately I managed to find some in another well-known retailer dealing in that sort of thing, the one named after a particularly good drug. It had "tlc" printed on the label, which did make me wonder if it was official Primal Scream-brand talcum powder - you can do your own Kate Moss joke here, if you like - but other than that, all seemed in order.

Until the other day, when I had reason to use the talc for the first time. For, as I tipped it onto my palms, I noticed that it had a particularly sweet, sickly smell that wasn't particularly pleasant. It all seemed most un-manly, despite the bottle's insistence that the talc was intended for man-use, and I felt decidedly self-conscious as I applied it to my knac... um, my sweatier regions. Moreover, the bathroom still had a rather sickly stink some time later.

Anyway. All the elements were in place. And so it was that I wandered into Boots today and, having got a couple of other bits and pieces, decided to take a look at the men's toiletries to locate some of the more useless bits of tat being passed off as essential products for the modern man about town. And the second thing I noticed (the first were the adverts for free chlamydia testing kits for 18-24 year olds - I was tempted to see if I could pass myself as being 23 to get one, not because I'm worried that I might have it (the chances are somewhere between "remote" and "someone saying something useful or interesting on a football-related messageboard", which experts have suggested is as close to zero as it's possible to get) but because I thought it might be funny) were plentiful supplies of talcum powder.

So that's that sketch knackered then.

2005-11-18T00:26:00.000Z

I thought I should check my email in case I'd been sent anything to work on first thing in the morning. It turns out that I have been sent something to work on first thing in the morning. MORAL: never check your email to see whether you have anything to work on first thing in the morning.

I rather foolishly left my top window open when I went out; bad for security reasons, obv, but also because whoeever it is over the back who has fires has been having rather a lot of them recently. Fortunately I didn't come back to find the flat stinking of smoke, but there is an odd, stale alcohol sort of a smell about the place. I'm not quite sure how it could have drifted in. I'm fairly sure that it isn't me.

2005-11-17T22:40:00.000Z

"DON'T MISS ROBBIE WILLIAMS" screams the subject line of the spam-o-mail. I consider a hilarious joke at this point, but given that when I had a go at one of those Zeke's Cavern-style light gun shooting things, I only managed to hit one target out of 20 shots (and even then not the one that I was aiming for), I doubt the weapon has been invented for me to succeed in this mission. The best I could hope for it to take out enough of the backing band to temporarily halt proceedings.

I shouldn't be working at 10.37. And I've still got to do the washing up.

2005-11-15T23:21:00.000Z

After Lie Week, this week is Having Diarrhoea (spelt correctly despite my spell check's insistence otherwise) and the Heating's Not Working... well, not week, hopefully, although I'm not putting any money on it. If any entries seem particularly incomprehensible (or more particularly incomprehensible than normal), it's because I'm typing with gloves on.

Not that life is all bad, mind. Today, for example, while I was browsing the DVD shelves of a well-known chain store (probably wondering why their special DVD offer involved getting money off copies of well-known Christmas staple The Nightmare Before Christmas, well-known Christmas staple Miracle On 34th Street and, er, Beetlejuice), I was fortunate enough to overhear part of a conversation that included the immortal line "do you mean Devo or Il Divo?" Later I managed to overhear two women at the calendar stall having an in-depth discussion of Freddie Ljungberg's sexuality (their conclusions were, um, probably actionable, and so we shall not go into them any further). So, y'know, things could be worse.

2005-11-14T00:03:00.001Z

So, nearly at the end of Lie Week then.

I think that when archaeologists come to excavate the internet, many thousands of years from now, they'll read someone else's "blog" entry about the time they had a week's holiday in Minehead when they were 11 and then draw a big diagram of a Roman villa and say that the internet looked like that. But, more relevantly, when they come to Lie Week they'll probably reach the following conclusions:

1. There weren't enough entries, and the ones that did appear were short and unsatisfying.

2. There weren't enough lies in them.

This all goes to prove that if I have an idea when I'm in the shower after watching Arrested Development, I should write it down and think it through properly before actually going ahead and doing it. Not that's it's necessarily a bad idea, and I may return to themed weeks of entries to prop the page up next time I'm likely to be spending a week in front of the computer, just that it needs a bit more planning next time.

(Incidentally, how great was this week's Arrested Development? I mean, it's always good, but this week's... ah, you've missed it now anyway, what's the point? And it's just been cancelled, of course, which all goes to show. I shall hold back my idea for Everyone In The World Except Me Is A Total Idiot Week for now, though.(*))

Anyway. I did manage to slip a few fibs into Lie Week, and if anyone can spot them all there may be a special prize. (Er, I'm not lying about the special prize. I know what you're thinking, "he's saying that there's a prize and there isn't really a prize", but I wouldn't be that obvious. There really is a prize.)

(*) First entry: writing to the government pretending to be a police, claiming that it's absolutely essential for the nation's security that any local television news presenter including in their report a selection of vox pops from the idiot public be immediately placed in a big mincing machine, and being minced. And then their minced remains being fed to slavering pigs, just in case. I'm not even lying.

2005-11-13T22:04:00.000Z

As Lie Week reaches a glorious climax, I'm delighted to report that Blogger appears to have eaten my post about my Nintendo 64 and seeing Peter Andre turn on the Christmas lights in Romford. There's very possibly a good reason for this, but as I've spent most of the weekend sat here working on appendices (for the same book as was causing me all sorts of amusement the other day - no, there was nothing odd in any of them; no, I'm not being paid by the hour; yes, I am an idiot) I feel strangely apathetic as to what it might be.

Oh, I'll come back to it some other time. There weren't too many lies in it anyway.

2005-11-13T15:13:00.001Z

Biscuit update

I tried to buy a jar to put biscuits in, but I couldn't find one. I have decided not to let this put me off buying biscuits, but I am quite disappointed nonetheless.

I might ask my mum to get me one for Christmas. She would know where to buy biscuit jars, and it'd be better than having her go into shops asking if they have a CD by Bored Of Canada or something and having shop assistants trying not to smirk at her. Unless it's the really nice girl who I saw in, er, a well-known chain store in Romford the other week. I bet she'd be really nice and say "I think you mean Boards Of Canada", and my mum would say "yes, that's right" and then the girl would say "it's just over here, follow me" and my mum would say "thanks" and the girl would say "so is this for someone for Christmas?" and my mum would say "yes, it's for my son" and she'd say "he sounds great, has he got a girlfriend?" and my mum would say "well, he's quite elusive about these things, but I don't think so" and the girl would say "this might sound a bit weird, but could I have his phone number?" and my mum would...

Anyway.

Thanks to Carol and Wombat and Rob for their biscuit-related suggestions, which have been noted (*). Although I won't be getting any digestives - I suspect it was their regular presence in the biscuit jar at home that put me off the whole biscuit oeuvre - and I suspect that my masculinity isn't so secure that I can approach the checkout at Tesco clutching a packet of lemon puffs.

(*) These suggestions were in the comments in the earlier post on the subject of biscuits, obviously.

2005-11-13T01:32:00.001Z

At the moment the only device I can play music through in my bedroom/office is the computer. And this is all well and good most of the time, but not when what you want is accompaniment for some late night wistfulness. I don't know if it's because I've spent much of the last six days sat in front of it, or if it's just the glow of the screen that detracts from the atmosphere, but either way it just isn't right. My wist has been disrupted. I feel like some kind of terrible luddite now.

2005-11-10T20:19:00.000Z

It would be unfair for me to copy across the section of the book I'm working on at the moment; unfair to my employers, unfair to the author, shoddy, unprofessional, downright wrong. However, here are some short phrases to give you a flavour:

"teat parting from the body of the condom"

"this was a radical fracture"

"the teat was never recovered"

"clinicians are not slow to examine stools"

"stand up to reasonable use without fracturing"

Now, granted, it's not all like that - some of the book is wince-inducingly unpleasant, and so I'm claiming that the fit of giggles that has left me helpless for the last half-hour or so is a reaction to that rather than just me being particularly juvenile - but even so, I can't help but wonder exactly how my life has come to take this particular turn.

2005-11-10T00:27:00.000Z

Biscuit news

Earlier this evening I really fancied some biscuits. Proper biscuits. Except I don't have any biscuits; in fact, I don't think I've ever bought any biscuits for myself ever. (I'm not counting things like Kit Kats or Jaffa Cakes in this definition, by the way.) However, next time I go shopping, I'm definitely buying biscuits. And possibly a jar to put them in as well.

2005-11-10T00:16:00.001Z

Trying to write page entries that contain no elements of truth whatsoever to disguise the fact that I'm having a very dull week (the week to date: SIT in front of computer editing book dealing with death, mayhem, disaster and medical unpleasantness; EAT my lunch; GO for a walk: SIT in front of the computer again) is more difficult than even those who've read the comments box of the previous entry might imagine. (Actually that should probably be "writing page entries that etc etc is jolly simple, and I've written heaps of them already!" Except that would be slightly feeble.)

Even when I do something that subjects me to, y'know, the outside world and that, there's still nothing to inspire any inventive falsehoods. Tonight, for example, I went to the cinema. Most of my trips to the cinema are hugely uneventful: the queue is short, the auditorium is neither overly crowded or (usually) disturbingly empty, I watch the film without interruption, I go home. And yet tonight everything I might have thought to lie about actually happened: the queue was huge, the gentleman stood behind me in the queue stood disturbingly close to me, someone across the aisle spent much of the film eating nosily, the film was occasionally punctuated by idiots making shrieking noises, and around ten minutes from the end some bloke wandered in and sat down in the back row, pulled out his mobile phone and began talking.

This last disturbed me. He did, at least, have the grace to speak very softly, so much so that from my position a few rows in front all I could make out was mumbling, and only then because the film was temporarily silent. But why talk quietly on the phone while sat in an auditorium with a film blaring nosily in the background? Why not, say, do it out in the foyer, or the toilet, or the street outside? I can only assume that some sort of criminal activity was involved, but even so, wouldn't there have been the potential for all sorts of misunderstandings trying to arrange things with Wallace & Gromit blaring away in the background? You're safe from Johnny Lawman, maybe, but if you charge into the wrong building society the next day you're going to look a bit of a fool.

I could lie about the film, I suppose. Wallace & Gromit isn't a sweet little film at all, and nowhere near as good as good films like Hitchhikers Guide To The Galaxy and Sideways, which is certainly worth seeing even if you aren't a middle-aged man. I can't think of a good reason why I hadn't been to the cinema for months, dear me no. Also, I'm not annoyed that Mark Radcliffe has just cut off the end of Inbetweenies.

See? Feeble.

As I left the cinema I just missed a bus, and was left to stand in the cold for quarter of an hour waiting for the next one. (Everything I might have thought to lie about etc etc. When I eventually boarded one, there was even a muttering weirdo on there.) The bus stop is opposite a dubious looking bar/eatery/something like that anyway, the name of which is so memorable that I can't remember what it is. I think it used to be a Chicago Rock Cafe. We went in one of those once when I was a student and I can't recall why - free drinks? A dare? Could be anything really - nor anything at all about the experience. I was almost tempted to visit this place that had succeeded it - maybe it was the inflatable guitar in the window, maybe it was for being the first place I've seen to have a Christmas tree on display that doesn't actually sell them, maybe it was the girl in the red leather jacket who went in there while I was shivering on the other side of the road. Who can say?

But, erm, I didn't. I could lie and pretend that I did, but I'm sure my description of it would be quite unconvincing, and that's no use to anyone. I really should have planned lie week out in advance.

2005-11-07T00:21:00.001Z

Important notices

1. It's really not been a good week. (Note careful wording to avoid confusion with crap Radio 2 comedy series.) To go into the reasons why would be particularly dull, so here's an analogy: imagine a week where you get rejected for the first job that you've really wanted since you gave up your old one several months ago and are left wondering whether you're actually no good at the one thing you'd always thought you'd always thought you could do; where no amount of soul searching can come up with an alternative career that you might want to do instead; where you embark upon one of your occasional attempts to talk to an actual woman (or man, if that's what floats your particular boat) and it results in the usual predictable embarrassment; and where both of the two football teams you follow narrowly lose big games. If that happened, it'd be a bit like my week. I think it's an analogy, anyway. It may be a simile. Not a metaphor, though. Or is it? I'm so confused.

2. My work schedule for the week, which suggests that I'm going to be editing a particularly annoyingly written book for the next seven days, would indicate that things are going to get worse before they get better.

3. This doesn't leave me an awful lot to write about, unless I make up a lot of rubbish. This, it occurs to me, is actually quite a good idea, and so if I do manage any posts in the forthcoming week, rest assured that they will not contain even the slightest grain of truth.

2005-11-01T00:30:00.002Z

I was going to write something about going to see Erin McKeown in Camden last week, but then I decided that it wasn't terribly interesting beyond the point where I had to check my step to avoid someone wearing extravagant make-up at the tube station, and then I decided that I'd write it up anyway because Rob had a similar tale (*) and I wanted to share mine, ostensibly to sympathise but really, because my tale had a happier ending, out of male posturing although we all end up alone in the end and anyway he seems to have found a happy ending of his own, but suddenly my mind is elsewhere and I can't. Because I've suddenly been distracted by Halloween.

Not that I have any particular interest in Halloween, but something said on Radcliffe tonight suddenly reminded me of being a student at this time of year. Because Halloween was actually quite good back then. It was quite early in the year, at just the sort of time where you'd begun to accumulate new friends and re-established your relationships with old (because those things always change over the summer - there was always a subtle shift in the dynamics, and it'd take a while to sort out exactly where everyone stood) but where there was still all sorts of potential for New Stuff To Happen.

I seem to recall that Halloween in the second year was particularly excellent. To go into all of the reasons why would be even duller than the tale of me standing around at the back of Dingwalls hoping the girls on the table in front of me would invite me to join them that I was going to tell, but to summarise: on the way home I hugged a tree as part of a running joke I'd pinched from the Amiga Power letters page (my AP fanboyism was so intense at that stage that I would drop even the most obscure bit into day to day conversation) and my flatmate reassured the rest of the group that tree hugging is very theraputic, but does give the tree Atkinson's Mild Root Dystopia without missing a beat. Which may not sound much, but being a clumsy sort of fellow pulling a joke off so beautifully just doesn't happen all that often, and when it happens at 2am on a November morning when everyone involved is at least slightly drunk (well, save for my flatmate, a rather straight-laced fellow who was pining for a girl who was attending a vampire wedding), it's about the best feeling in the world. And that still wasn't even the best bit.

And it occurs to me that this was exactly ten years ago, and I'm not sure whether my being able to remember it means that it was just one of those occasional nights out you have that are so absolutely perfect that they stay with you and resurface as a happy memory once in a while, or that I haven't been out enough in the intervening years. Hey ho.

(*) Now lost in a flurry of missing pages. S'not just me, you know.

2005-10-31T20:07:00.000Z

I know too much salt is bad for you and everything, but my word it's more-ish. I spilt some while I was refilling the container I keep it in for sprinkling over appropriate foodstuffs, and instead of just cleaning it up I dipped my finger in it and had a taste, in traditional cop show "yep, it's coke" style, and now I seem to have consumed all of it. I'm probably going to die, unless the bird flu or the new ice age get me first.

2005-10-30T11:04:00.000Z

Hair update

Further examination by a team of experts looking straight at them rather than squinting in a mirror suggests that my differently-coloured hairs are blond rather than grey. I'm not sure quite how this works, particularly as the rest of my hair is a not-entirely pleasant darkish shade of brown, but there y'go.

2005-10-29T00:30:00.001+01:00

I was in the kitchen preparing my dinner while performing some sort of complicated dance to Humanoid Boogie when the phone went. It turned out to be some bloke asking if I was interested in receiving details on writing a will. I politely turned him down, and went back to my cooking (if you can call putting different sauces and pasta into a dish "cooking", which I appreciate is stretching the point a bit but it's as close as I get).

And yet I've been thinking about this quite a bit of late. I've been editing articles about bereavement over the last few weeks - nothing makes a rainy autumn day swing by than reading useful advice on what to do when someone dies - and it's got me thinking that maybe I should. Not that I'm particularly morbid or anything, but, as the articles say, you never know what's around the corner. And I've always been suspicious that what is around the corner is a clueless cretin, incapable of using their indicators or slowing down to go around corners and with a mobile phone clamped to their ear whose front bumper has my name on it.

It's not that I have a great legacy that I need to make provisions for or anything, but there are a couple of things I want to do. Firstly, I want to invent some people to arrange to send little keepsakes to - mostly female, but maybe the odd bloke or two thrown in - with the intention of making my family think that I've had a much more interesting and varied sex life than is the case.

Secondly, while I love my family dearly and I know that they mean well, I do not want bloody One Step Beyond played at my funeral. I love it to the very marrow of my bones, but... not there. I've been giving it some thought, and after going through the Buzzcocks and Floreat Inertia by HMHB and a few others that would have been either too gloomy or too confusing, I'm currently settled on Reasons To Be Cheerful Pt 3, if only because the bit where the saxophone comes in makes me feel that all is right with the world.

In other news: I've found what appears to be a clump of grey hairs. Just above my right ear. This hasn't affected my thinking in any way at all. I think.

2005-10-27T18:28:00.000+01:00

Question of the day corner

Has anyone ever had chicken from the hot deli counter of the supermarket? (Any supermarket will do.) And if so, does it taste nice? Because I was stood behind someone purchasing some in Tesco and it smelt absolutely vile, and it was only the efficiency of the woman behind the checkout in getting it and its purchasers out of the way that stopped me from retching.

2005-10-27T15:46:00.000+01:00

Advice corner

So desperate to set fireworks off that you've decided to do it in the middle of the afternoon, despite the weather being unseasonably clement and bright? For a more pleasing effect, why not try shoving the fireworks up your arse and then setting light to them? That way, everyone can enjoy them.

2005-10-25T23:32:00.001+01:00

As a lardy job-hunter (well, when I'm not stupidly busy because I've taken on too much work and it's all piling up around me, anyway) I think I'm supposed to be mortally offended that overweight job hunters find it more difficult to get jobs, and yet I'm not. It makes sense; if you're choosing between two people and they're fairly similar in every other regard, you're going to choose the one who's going to look nicest about the place, and if one of them's a bit tubby the chances are that it's not going to be them. (I could complain about society's narrow preconceptions of what counts at attractive at this point, but as someone who'd be still be an ugly, socially-inadequate shortarse even if he managed to lose the spare tyre, it'd ring rather hollow.)

No, what offends me are the feeble excuses they offer to try and explain it away. If they said "we prefer pretty people to fat people; they look nicer about the place and there's not nearly so much chance of their BO stinking out the place in the summer" I'd have some respect for them, but the way they attempt to weasel out of it is feeble. "They lack self-discipline" they say, as if their crappy office jobs are like the Army or something and they aren't abusing their internet connection as soon as the boss' back is turned. "Their productivity might be affected" they say. How? They're going to be too busy stuffing their faces to do any work? Their incessant jolly laughter is going to distract honest skinny people going about their business?

On the other hand, I managed to buy a bag of doughnuts today when I meant to buy a bag of sausage rolls. I could try to blame the (not fat) woman behind the counter who told me three times that she didn't have any change for distracting me even thought I told her that I had the right money the first time, and they were right next to each other, and they were those long finger ones that don't have any jam in which, in a certain light, could look a bit like sausage rolls, but I suspect I'm just proving the bastards right.

2005-10-19T21:34:00.000+01:00

I was going to do an entry tonight - four drawn-out paragraphs to ask whether there's a good reason why women's trousers have flies - but after finally getting around to watching some stuff I'd taped, I've decided to write a funny sketch show about relationships instead. I was planning on having an early night anyway, so I wouldn't want to get involved in anything that might take up much time.

2005-10-18T12:54:00.001+01:00

No sooner than I mention not seeing Christmas stuff in Tesco yet than the Christmas stuff begins to appear in Tesco. Not in an obvious, aisle-blocking way - presumably they're saving that for next month - but in a sneaky and insidious way, on the top shelves of inappropriate aisles in place of tins of beans or breakfast cereal or whatever it is that should be there instead. Boxes of the sort of thing you only buy at Christmas - giant tubs of Celebrations, boxes of assorted biscuits, Twiglets, that sort of thing.

Now, unless you're rather taller than me (and given my short-arsedness, there's every possibility that you are), there's no way you can actually get any of these down to put in your trolley, but I suspect that that's not why they're there. However, they do have the effect of making the shop feel rather claustrophobic, which is a bit of a tricky thing to pull off in a ruddy great supermarket, but there y'go.

Also; it seems that chocolate flavour Ready Brek is either a thing of my imagination or a thing of the past. And I really do need to buy a camera or a phone with a camera in it, because there's no way that you're going to believe that there's a shop along the High Road dealing in fireworks which proclaims, in giant letters, that ALL MAJOR CREDIT CARDS ARE EXCEPTED unless I provide photographic evidence.

2005-10-14T00:26:00.003+01:00

I realise that you probably imagine that I spend all of my time sitting around at home, alternating between editing the hell out of things and having wonderfully profound thoughts about everything, and to a certain extent you'd be right. Only today I had a tremendously interesting moment where I wondered whether they still did chocolate-flavour Ready Brek, and indeed whether such a thing had ever existed anywhere except outside of my imagination, before reading some thrilling chapters about estate tax.

(Well, all right, you probably imagine having special kisses with your special friends, or what it might be like to have special kisses with your special friends, or what it might be like to have friends, rather than spend your precious hours thinking about what I get up to. Which is probably for the best.)

But I occasionally leave the house, and today as I made my way down the high road I spotted my first Christmas decoration. It was a tinsel-clad tree, in the window of one of those shops that sell a wide range of cheap stuff that you'd call a pound shop if only they had the decency to charge no more than a pound for everything. This confused me, as I'm sure these things are supposed to start appearing in shops in September at the very latest; possibly I've not been looking closely enough in Tesco, or don't spend enough time in hideous shopping centres.

Wandering back home it occurred to me that a lot of the shops on the high road survive despite never seeming to have any customers. The bridal shop, for instance; I usually sneak a look as I pass, in case I spot any cute bridesmaids or catch someone part way through getting changed in a state of undress (not that this has ever happened, but it might one day, and some of us have to take our thrills where we can), but I can't recall the last time I saw, well, anyone in there, not even on a Saturday. And the hairdressers next door - it seems to exist as somewhere for people to sit around a television rather than getting their hair done, There's a nail bar just opened along the way, and fans of TV Burp will be pleased to learn that no-one but a bored-looking lass in a white coat ever seems to be in there.

The, um, king of empty shops is the chip shop. There's one chip shop that does quite well for itself - queues snaking around the shop on a Friday evening and everything - but the chip shop further down the road always seems to be empty. I can't recall seeing one person in there buying chips, even in the evenings or at the weekends when you'd expect high chip demand. There's a miserable looking bloke either stood behind the counter optimistically poking at the saveloys or sat at one of the otherwise-unused tables reading a paper, but customers are noticeable only by their absence. I suspect that it's some sort of front for an elaborate tax dodge or something, as they can't be earning enough to buy those huge bags of chips you see being poured into the fryer from takings alone, and it's not as if they can take their few customers for as much cash as possible in the way the bridal shop can - "it's the happiest takeaway of your life" just isn't going to cut it.

I heard my first firework of the year tonight as well. So that's a month of not being able to hear the television ahead, then.

2005-10-08T00:14:00.001+01:00

Ilford smelt of pickled onions today. I am absolutely full of phlegm, and Ilford still smelt of pickled onions. How could this be? It can't just have been one jar of pickled onions that had smashed and caused the pickly vapours to escape. It must have been a van load, at the very least.

Strange.

Walking back from getting some much needed cold medicine, I noted the hoarding advertising a live and exclusive appearance from 80s pop sensation Junior, of Mama Used To Say and unfortunate nephew fame. (You may recall this from the post the other week, where no matter how hard I tried, the entry simply couldn't live up to the list of bullet points I'd scribbled down.) At the time I'd been puzzled by the word "exclusive". How far did this exclusivity extend to, then? Presumably that wasn't the only appearance that Junior would be making anywhere in the world ever or anything, unless the people were paying him an awful lot of cash. And it seemed unlikely that there would be so much demand to see Junior that they needed to emphasise that he wouldn't be performing elsewhere. Presumably nobody else in the Ilford area would be hiring Junior to perform any time soon anyway, because there's only a limited number of times you can see someone sing Mama Used To Say and maybe tell a few anecdotes about having a crap nephew before everyone gets bored. Although it occurs to me that I did see Bis about 16 times in 5 years, so I'm not really one to talk. (Not that they ever sang Mama Used To Say or told us about their nephews, mind.)

What puzzled me about the Junior advert today was that it was still there. What puzzled me even more was that, upon closer inspection, it turned out that Junior's appearance wasn't for another couple of weeks, so that by the time Junior actually performs the hoarding will have been there for a month. And this seems rather excessive to me. I'm all for planning in advance, but are people really going to say "ooh, look, Junior, I'm going to have to go to that, I'll make a note in my diary. Only a month to go before we see Junior!"? It just seems wrong, somehow.

2005-10-05T00:25:00.002+01:00

I get one day a year where all the worries about the page evaporate, and I can skip gaily down the street with nary a care in the world (well, apart from the ones about not having a proper job and not being able to get off with anyone and that, but you see the point). One day a year where I have no need to scrabble around trying to think of something to amuse the nearly 12 of you. One day where the page practically writes itself.

That day is the day that I first spot the ("Johnny Noakes" - Ed) calendar on sale. It's like the page's very own first cuckoo of spring, or something, and today was that day. Usually a glorious day indeed, when I can include all those jokes about masturbation that I'd usually shy away from and still feel smugly superior, and where I can drag out the phrase "anorexic vampires" yet again, even though I'm increasingly unsure as to whether I came up with it or I've just copied it off of someone. Happy days indeed.

And yet. There is a Problem, a problem that I was in a grump about even before my fateful trip to Ilford, and which my sighting of the nefarious bikini-clad attempted actresses only made worse.

(Incidentally, I've just realised that the page now seems to be entirely about the page. I was being asked about the page at the weekend, which is something I'm never entirely comfortable with, and I can't recall now if they asked what I write about, but if they did I suspect that I avoided the question. But now, the more I think about it, it seems to me that the page is now more or less entirely about the page. It celebrates only itself. I should probably be more ashamed of this than I am.)

The grump started yesterday evening, on the way home from football. Now, little lightbulbs are probably going off already at this point, and yes, they did lose, but goodness knows I'm used to that, and it's not as if it was the sort of game I'd go into a week-long grump about - we always lose to Crystal Palace, and it's not as if we were unlucky or robbed or anything, as we invariably are against that lot. But even though we were rubbish, it wasn't that that got my goat.

In the absence of anything much else to do on the train home, I was reading my programme, and having got through the important bits - reserve team news, new star striker telling us how Thomas Gravesen told him QPR were the team for him, ticket details for away games I'm not going to - I found myself looking at the commercial page, and came across the following important information:

"The club shop has taken delivery of the 'Girls of QPR' Calendar 2006 featuring some of our female supporters who volunteered to pose for the camera."

Oh.

Now, to be fair, they do at least all seem to be wearing shirts. And, and this is probably something you could do without knowing, that does kind of work for me. However, wearing just a football shirt and pants is clearly wrong. You aren't going to go to the match dressed like that - for a start, seats at football grounds are often uncomfortable enough for a lardarse like myself, let alone someone wearing only their pants. I suppose it wouldn't be so bad if you were standing up, but even then you'd almost certainly catch your death. I'd be much more excited if they were wearing some nice trousers, to be honest.

Even so, the whole calendar-based jokes seem bad and wrong now. I've been in a mood about this all day, which really isn't advisable if you're spending most of the day by yourself.

2005-10-02T01:26:00.002+01:00

There are certain places in the world where I feel comfortable and where I fit in. Football matches, say, and, er, at home, and probably some others as well. London's Busy Oxford Street is not one of them, though. It's somewhere that I'd rather not be at any time, and if I'm there at all, it usually means that I'm buying necessities, like records, and, er, actually just records then. Moreover, London's Busy Oxford Street on a Saturday lunchtime is an even more hellish prospect, and yet there I was. I'd bought a Travelcard, see, and if I buy a Travelcard I feel that I have to make more than a simple return trip with it. Hence my decision to go and buy records before making my way to Holborn.

A phone call led to a change in destination, and I decided that I may as well walk down to Bond Street rather than faff around changing trains en route. Crossing Regents Street, I was pleased to note that the road had been blocked off to traffic, which I would thought aid my progress no end. Unfortunately, immediately behind the blockade was a man on stilts handing out flyers, and the crowd gathered around him impeded my progress. Further down the road were more fellows on stilts, this time playing toy musical instruments and wearing oversized Stop Making Sense-type suits, again surrounded by a crowd of people that reduced my usual brisk pace to a crawl.

In fact, practically all of the way down to Bond Street my progress was obstructed by crowds of people gathered around performers on stilts in brightly coloured costumes, which, and you'll understand my reasoning here I'm sure, led me to think that this was all being done in aid of gay stilt-walkers. The stage with idiot local radio DJs whipping the crowd up into a frenzy in anticipation of an, um, performance by Rachel Stevens did make me wonder if I might have got the wrong end of the stick, but as I ploughed past yet more fellows stood high over the throng, I decided that gay stiltwalkers must just be a very popular cause who really did need their profile raising.

Unfortunately, browsing Ceefax some hours later, I realised that in fact I'd inadvertently attended an, um, party to aid poor, downtrodden West End shops. I'm curious about the use of the word "party"; possibly I'm being picky, but I don't recall any party I've attended (not that I go to many, mind) that's been so heavily biased in favour of stilts. Although I suppose you could be the sort of person who classes any event where people desperately attempt to have fun in the face of innumerable odds as fun as a party, and there aren't any greater obstacles to having fun than local radio DJs.

(Readers intrigued by the suggestion that "the West End is the greatest shopping place on earth" may be interested to note that in the branch of HMV I wandered around I spotted various items in their sale that were expensive than they are in the sale in their Ilford branch, and that even the cheaper prices are invariably more than you'd pay on Play or Amazon or somesuch. Not that I'm suggesting that because one store does this sort of thing all of them do, and the people running West End stores would sell their families into slavery if it'd improve their profits by the tiniest iota, and that if they really wanted to "bring more people back into the West End" they could start by, say, not treating people like a lot of gullible fucking morons who'll come to their wretched shops provided that they have Charlotte Church waving her arse around every now and then, but... well...)

2005-09-30T00:26:00.002+01:00

Much has been said about the internet's famous Simon Tyers. Some recall his witty comments on the Kenickie mailing list of yore, while others enjoy his various internet-based amusements. Television presenter JS of Hartlepool writes "the envelopes full of cash I bung his way every month have aided my career no end!", while truck driver AT of No Fixed Abode reportedly bursts into tears whenever his name is mentioned. For all that, young Simon is undoubtedly a perceptive fellow, or perhaps simply extremely good at blundering upon things, for his recent comment did seem to pinpoint the reason why recent entries have been rather lacklustre.
Not. Enough. Trains.

Now, obviously there have been all sorts of exciting stuff that's happened to me on trains over the last few years, but there's more to it than that. It's that 30-40 minutes each morning and evening I used to spend traveling to and from work, with nothing but my headphones and hundreds of other people traveling to and from the city for company and with nothing to do but look at some increasingly familiar scenery and see if I could spot anyone who looked, y'know, nice. It was like a gestation period of page-o-thing entries, as with nothing else to do with other than think of what you could do to impress someone who looks, y'know, nice, there wasn't a lot else to think about.

(I've never really been able to read on trains. Because of my innate clumsiness reading newspapers or magazines or such has always been impossible on crowded commuter trains, while reading a book hasn't been an option because I've always found that I can't take the information in, and so have to re-read everything later on to make sure that I've understood it. I used to work in publishing, y'know.)

But how to resolve the situation? (Apart from getting a job, obviously.) I did think that maybe I should spend more time on buses as a budget alternative, but it doesn't seem to work somehow - the journeys just don't last long enough, and what with the pedestrians and the crap drivers and the suicidal cyclists to watch there's far too much scenery. Maybe I need to get a hobby of some kind, that might do it.

2005-09-26T23:40:00.000+01:00

I feel awful. I don't know where it came from, but I suddenly feel awful. And this is annoying, as I had a huge entry that I'd worked out, only I got part way through it and it didn't make any sense whatsoever. Maybe I'll have another go at it later, or you could work it out for yourselves. They key elements were:

branch of music-based chain store opening in Ilford
hoodie-clad teenagers (well, school uniform-clad teenagers) trying to get a glimpse of pop sensations Gordon Hill
girl in Futureheads t-shirt
Thomas The Tank Engine wrapping paper
live and exclusive appearance by 80s pop sensation Junior, of Mama Used To Say fame.

It's probably better this way. I'm off to bed.

2005-09-25T00:20:00.000+01:00

I know football is officially crap these days, or something, but if it wasn't for the existence of linesmen where else would you ever get to use the words "pettifogging" and "wanker" within close proximity?

I was going to ramble a bit here - I don't know, at the moment Saturday nights leave me in the mood to harangue people; hopefully this is just a phase - but I seem to have a bit of a headache, which I suspect is my fault for not cleaning out the grillpan and thus causing a ridiculous amount of smoke when preparing myself a snack.

2005-09-23T00:26:00.000+01:00

It's not that I'm dissatisfied with things at the moment, but there are days when I feel as if the world might be passing me by.

Take this afternoon. I dragged myself away from Diagnosis Murder (*) to go to the post office, and at the station was alarmed to see a dozen high-visibility coat-clad police looking over a couple of cars that were parked outside the station. And this seemed rather odd, because there was no sign of anything bad or wrong having happened - the cars didn't appear to be damaged in any way, the shops next to the station seemed to be open as normal, people were coming and going from the station entrance as usual. And yet there were an awful lot of police about the place, as if something.. well, not major, exactly, but something important enough for them to have come mob handed had happened anyway.

And I couldn't help but feel that I'd missed out on something, and if only I hadn't been faffing around indoors and then watching five minutes of rubbish imported medical/detective dramas, I might have had a more interesting entry to write.

Hey ho.

(*) Which is more difficult than it sounds, because there is something horribly compulsive about Diagnosis Murder. And I lack the critical faculties to adequately explain what it might be, which is annoying because if I could explain why then I might be able to shake myself out of it. I know it's not good, and that to spend my time watching this when I have all sorts of other entertainments that I could be indulging in is feeble, and that I'm one step away from being the sort of person who insists that actually soap operas and Ant and Dec are good and isn't Footballer's Wives gloriously trashy?, and frankly that if I had any self respect I'd hurl myself under the nearest train. I'm sorry.

2005-09-18T18:38:00.000+01:00

Anti-climactic interjections in news bulletins - Part 1 in a series of 1

"We've just heard that..."

(Stops typing and listens to radio properly; usually this means something important has happened)

"..Baroness Thatcher..."

(Holds breath)

"...'s son Mark and his wife..."

(Releases some breath)

"... are to divorce."

(Deflates rapidly.)

2005-09-18T01:21:00.002+01:00

A Matt's Quite Dull Page About Football presentation

I stopped buying QPR replica shirts a few years ago. I used to get one every couple of years, whenever the old one was looking a bit tatty, but then for some reason I stopped doing it. (In fact, I've just dug out the last one I bought and it really isn't tatty, so there was no reason to buy one at all.) I suppose I decided that it looked a bit undignified or something (*), or maybe I finally conceded that hoops don't suit the portlier gentleman, although putting the old one on now I look excellent so that's no good reason either.

I do have a couple of old-style away shirts - one white and red halved, one in the Dennis The Menace-style red and black hoops that's been re-adopted this season and subsequently copied by TV's famous Franz Ferdinand. However, I never wear them to matches, because I don't like marking myself out while I'm traveling around. Not because I'm ashamed of my allegiances or anything, or out of worry that the scary away supporters might duff me up. By and large I like talking to away supporters, although there are a couple of clubs whose supporters are such that I'd prefer not to let it be known which team I favour in their general vicinity. No, it's to avoid another type of football supporter altogether.

And I can't think of a name for him. "Football bore" is inadequate. I'm a football bore. You're probably bored by this entry already. No, this sort of fellow is the football bore who can bore a football bore. And it's late and I can't be bothered to give it too much thought, so we'll call him the ultra-bore.

I ran into one once on the way home from a midweek game. This was a few years ago, during QPR's last relegation season, and so I was almost certainly tired, in a bad mood and really not wanting to talk about it. But he spotted the flash of blue and white, and then he was away.

He was a West Ham supporter, but he liked to watch all of the London clubs. This is always a bad sign. Nobody who supports a London club likes to watch the others. Apart from my one, the only others I'd go to watch would be the one my dad supports and the one my brother-in-law supports, and if it weren't for them I suspect I'd feel the same way about their clubs as well. My feelings towards other London clubs range from wanting them to fail miserably to total indifference. Liking to watch all of the London clubs is only one step down from the real dread, the person who likes football but doesn't support a club. (All people who say this are automatically ultra-bores, but we'll leave them for another time.)

Anyway, this West Ham supporter, the ultra-bore. I had to listen to him most of the way home, telling me about all of the games he'd been to and his thoughts on football, which were, naturally, completely wrong about everything. I started off trying to talk to him, put my point of view across, but after a while I realised it was futile and tried to switch off, just grunting and nodding and letting him go on without taking any of it in. But the constant noise was there, and because I'm me I was far too polite to tell him to piss off or pull my headphones out and listen to something else instead.

I seem to recall that he left the train at Ilford. I vowed there and then never to wear anything that marked me out as a QPR supporter on my way to matches in case I found myself lumbered with him or any more of his kind ever again.

I was reminded of this today while standing at Stratford, trying to plot a route across London through the engineering works and line closures that didn't involve spending too long on the Central Line. Three gentlemen were looking at the map as well, when a youth in a Chelsea shirt bounded up. I don't know if any of the gents were wearing anything to mark them out as West Ham supporters, or if the youth had just assumed that three blokes stood on a train platform early on a Saturday afternoon were on the way to a football match (always a fairly safe bet). "See this?" said the youth. "Closest you'll get to the champions, hur hur."

Now, let's be fair: the kid was - how do I put this gently? Not all there? Special in the Special Olympics sense of the word? He was certainly lacking something, as you don't take the piss out three blokes who are all bigger than you if all your faculties are present and correct. Anyway, he wasn't really an ultra-bore, just a stupid kid incapable of things like tact and self-preservation, but I'm glad I didn't have to deal with him. I doubt I'd have humoured him before going back to looking at the map, as the West Ham supporters did, and this was before my post-match sulk which ended up with me staying in and ordering too much from the takeaway instead of going out and having fun.

2005-09-15T23:20:00.001+01:00

I do nothing at all and let my legs go fizzy

I know what you think. "Self-employed? Employed to do what, sit around watching DVDs and local news bulletins all day?" you scoff. "Editor! He can't even spell properly!" you snort. "I bet he lives off of benefit fraud and/or the immoral earnings of loose women" you say, looking up the number for the government home-snooper hotline.

I know what you think.

So if I tell you that this week has been a horrible reminder of the days when I had a proper job, and would come home in the evening with the germ of an idea for an entry in the back of my mind, only to be so sick of staring aimlessly at a screen all day that I couldn't so much as face switching the computer on, you'll nod and maybe offer an insincere smile, all the time muttering to yourself. And yet, despite your scorn, I am here because I am puzzled by something and, despite the mockery I've been sensing ever since I sat down, I find the nearly 12 readers come into their own when explaining those facets of the modern world that are beyond my understanding.

Late this afternoon (note: late this afternoon; I was flogging myself in the name of publishing for most of the day, far longer than I had anticipated, and thus my trip to the shops had to be put off, by which time I was already quite tired. Although on the plus side it had stopped raining by then) I was walking through Ilford when my attention was caught by the poster in the window of Argos. They have a new slogan: "From the ordinary to the extra-ordinary", or something like that (there was probably an exclamation mark or two in there as well). And this is fair enough really; they do, after all, stock quite a lot of stuff, some of which will be mundane and some of which... well, 'extra-ordinary' may be pushing it, but you might be surprised when you realise that they sell it.

No, what confused me was that the two items that they'd chosen to illustrate this claim were a remote controlled car and a electric guitar.

Eh?

From the way the pictures are arranged, it seems to be indicating that the remote-controlled car is ordinary, and the guitar is extra-ordinary. And yet, try as I might, I don't think either of them really fit their roles. I'm sure many boys (and grown men who are big enough to know better) own remote controlled cars, but hardly enough for it to be called "ordinary". You don't walk into someone's house and immediately notice their remote-controlled car, at least, not the house of anyone you'd want to visit anyway. It's not a dull, everyday, sort of an item, unworthy of its ordinary rating.

And by the same token, the guitar is hardly extra-ordinary. Granted, apart from professional musicians (who, you suspect, probably aren't going to buy their guitars at Argos), guitar ownership is largely concentrated among adolescent boys, slightly older than adolescent boys who can't bear to be parted from their instruments quite yet, and middle-aged men who still wish that they were adolescent boys, but that doesn't mean that they're exactly extra-ordinary. They aren't a time machine that actually works or the Pope's DNA or Norman Whiteside of Manchester United and Northern Ireland; it's a guitar. There's a shop that sells hundreds of the things just down the road from here.

Or maybe I'm wrong, and remote-controlled cars fall from the sky whenever my back is turned, while the electric guitar shortage has been troubling the nation. I'm too tired to understand any more.

2005-09-11T21:55:00.000+01:00

My nephew has a joke. The joke is this:

"Knock knock"

"Who's there?"

"Stinky Matt poo poo!"

(Instead of "Matt" you can have, well, anything. Variations include "stinky Mummy poo poo", "stinky table poo poo" and "stinky chicken nugget poo poo", which could be read as a deep satire of the intensive farming industry as well as an opportunity to mention stinky poo poo. I shall be so disappointed if this turns out to be off of some TV programe of which I am not aware.)

2005-09-09T00:04:00.001+01:00

Still haven't finished the application form. Well, not to any satisfactory degree, anyway.
I was hunched over it when the phone rang. I usually speak to my mum on a Thursday evening, but instead of her reassuring tones it was some bloke, possibly northern, possibly Scottish.

"Is that ("Gloomy Suburb Lane" - Ed)? he asked.

"I'm sorry?"

"Is that ("Gloomy Suburb Lane" - Ed) in ("Sussex" - Ed)? I'm trying to get in touch with the people at number ("97" - Ed) and I was wondering if you knew them?"

"Well... er... well, it's the right road but I don't know anyone at number ("97" - Ed)."

"Oh, right. Bye then."

I suspect that there's some sort of elaborate scam going on here. I am annoyed that I can't work out what it might be.

2005-09-07T18:44:00.001+01:00

On the other hand, if another company can tell me about a job that I might just be perfect for that their job description calls "exciting" despite it appearing to be at least 95% administration and general dogsbodying and for which the terms and conditions are not exactly generous, I can probably put what the hell I like on any bloody application form and feel absolutely no remorse afterwards.

Mind you, at least it would get me out of the house and away from local news stories of quite staggering inanity, where I start out thinking "oh, that's slightly unfortunate" and end up thinking "everyone in the entire world is a blithering idiot". Best of all was this quote, from an actual policeman, which I can confirm actually happened because I saw it and everything:
"If they ["youths"] saw this they would think that it was cool to carry a gun and shoot people".

See, I can take this sort of thing from members of the public who've been waylaid, because you'd expect them to be thick. But... from the police? These are the sort of deep thinkers who are keeping the streets safe? What next, "If they see these pictures of the streets of New Orleans being underwater they would think that it was cool and leave the taps running"?

2005-09-07T00:41:00.001+01:00

"Please describe briefly how you have developed your career to date."

I have an application form to fill in. In a way this is easier than the usual CV/cover letter malarky (my spellchecker recognises the word 'malarky', which is quite pleasing, although it doesn't recognise 'recognises'. Or 'recognise'. British English, there) as it doesn't really leave me with the dilemma over what things I've done that might be important, or whether or not to include the terrifying 'interests' section on which I am, to put it mildly, absolutely buggered. (It recognises 'buggered' as well, incidentally.) "I like writing inane prattle on the internet, swearing at referees and listening to unpopular music at high volume while drinking overpriced lager." Actually, that's probably not such a bad approach, depending on where the job is. (You don't pay your money to have someone rehash crap gags about the spellcheck function at you, do you? I'm sorry. I'll do the rest of the entry in something devoid of red wavy lines under anything it doesn't recognize.)

But then it throws in a question like "please describe briefly how you have developed your career to date", and I'm stumped. I don't have a career. I'm not sure I've ever had anything approaching a career. I certainly haven't developed my career, unless you call managing not to get fired for being completely crap at something, eventually getting the hang of it and then finally being quite good at it "developing a career". On the other hand, they might be impressed that I can exploit the language to such a degree. Hmmmm.

I think I'm probably a bit suspicious of people who have careers, and I shouldn't be, just because they're organised and have ambitions that extend beyond having a nice pile of text to edit. It just doesn't really suit me, somehow. This is getting a bit depressing now. Probably best to put the form aside until tomorrow, when I might have eaten more than a hugely greasy sausage roll for tea and generally feel better about things.

2005-09-04T21:27:00.001+01:00

What they say: "Please note that due to an early curfew Sleater-Kinney will be onstage at 8:30pm."

What they mean: "We want you out of the way as early as possible so that we can rope in as many mugs who're willing to pay over three quid a time for a can of lager, and no matter how cute the girl behind the bar might be and how sweetly she smiles at you when you thank her for giving you your change it still isn't going to taste any better, for something called Club NME. Club NME! For pity's sakes."

On the other hand, at least this galvanised me into turning up early which meant I got to see most of The Research even though they came on about two minutes after the doors opened. Which was a good thing, as they were really rather lovely (albeit with an impossible name if you want to look them up. And when I did track them down their site didn't like my computer much, for some reason). And the Kinney were aces too, which I'm not sure I was expecting. I'm not that fond of the latest album, and I've seen them so many times that I shouldn't really be surprised by them any more (I worked out that the girls who were stood in front of me had been 11 or 12 when I first saw the Kinney, which makes you step back and pause for a moment's thought. And then apologise to whoever was behind you for trampling all over them) and yet... it was great. So great that I left feeling slightly giddy and continued to do so for some time afterwards, and which definitely wasn't anything to do with the alcohol as I didn't consume most of that until later.

2005-08-31T23:25:00.002+01:00

"We've signed who?" Transfer Deadline Day Commemorative post

Have I missed something important, or has him out of The Streets come out? Or have I completely misunderstood a major advertising campaign again? (*)

Also, who are the auto(ha!)biographies of Lee Sharpe and Robbie Fowler being prominently displayed in a bookshop in Ilford? Or is it Commemorative Waste Of Talent Then Space Footballer Day as well?

(*) This was a reference to this ad campaign; I was obviously being heavily influenced by Danny Baker playing Danny La Rue's version of "I Am What I Am". I believe it was in the comments to this post that the phrase 'Bus Shelters of Ilford' raised it's head.

2005-08-25T22:17:00.000+01:00

I've been thinking about my doorbell. When you gonna ring it? When you gonna ring it? What do you mean, when you put the cover and the bell push back on?

Oh.

Perhaps it was the wind that blew it off. That seems possible. Or maybe someone closed the front door behind them quite hard, and the vibrations caused the cover to fall off. Yes, all very plausible and likely. This is much better than thinking that the other flats might be inhabited by people who manage to break your doorbell and then don't as much as knock on your door to let you know. Only a bad, unpleasant sort of fellow would do that.

If it happens again, mind, I'd going to be pretty bloody annoyed.

2005-08-20T00:38:00.002+01:00

I'd been meaning to write something about the 10 Years Of Britpop (sort of) business when I first heard it mentioned at the start of the week, partly because it's the sort of entirely pointless event that the page-o-thing thrives on, and also because I didn't have anything else to write about. And then I didn't get around to it until now, which is all part of the fine old TAoF tradition.

It does feel odd that something I remember quite clearly turns out to have happened ten years ago. I recall wandering into Our Price in Ilford (later to become V-Shop, later to become Virgin Megastores Express, later to become part of an extra-large branch of Clinton Cards - I know Our Price wasn't the greatest chain in the world but that's no fate for any record shop, let alone one where I bought Marvin The Album and Emperor Tomato Ketchup and Get In) that week and seeing the shelves teetering under piles of Blur and Oasis singles, neither of which I wanted. I can even hazard a guess at the record I went in to buy, although I shan't mention it in case I'm proved wrong and people point and laugh at me in the street (well, comment box, but it's the same difference really).

I'd still stick up for the music I liked then - I'd happily argue that, say (to choose an invariably maligned example) Sleeper made a few decent singles, which you could at least tell apart, unlike certain critically acclaimed bands of the The current day who you initially think are going to be good Magic until you realise that their songs Numbers are so similar that if you saw one of them mugging an old lady and were then asked to attend an identity parade to pick out the offender you wouldn't be able to tell it apart from the others and would blether "but they all look the same, officer!" before being chucked in a cell for wasting valuable police time.

But beyond that I don't really have a lot to add. I was there, sort of. I listened to the music, I bought some of the records, I went to the indie discos and actually enjoyed them much more than I had before because they would play more songs that I liked and I wouldn't just skulk in a corner trying to work out if this was Soundgarden or Alice In Chains and whether there were any discernible differences between the two, while vainly hoping that they might play something good in a minute. Goodness, sometimes I even got drunk enough to dance, although this was usually unfortunate for everyone concerned. And it was fun, and probably would have been more fun if I hadn't been so full of hang-ups that I couldn't throw myself into it properly.

And then the next year I heard Bis and then Kenickie, which was when everything (for me, anyway) changed. (Now, the tenth anniversary of Kandy Pop on Top Of The Pops, that's something I could write about. Except I never saw it, but that's not really that important.) But then without one I might never have heard the other, so I suppose it was quite important to me in a way. That's the clever conclusion I had worked out blown, then.

2005-08-18T23:58:00.002+01:00

I was getting ready to go out at about 1.30-ish, and decided that while I located the various bits I had to take with me I'd put the telly on in the vague hope that they might show the England goals from last night. (I hadn't seen them, and it all sounded really quite amusing. This is what I like about the England football team - if they're doing well I can enjoy it, but outside of major championships I feel detached enough to be able to find it funny when they mess things up in a way that I can't when it's QPR or D&R.) As it turned out, even if they had shown them I would have been too late, as I was just in time for the weather forecast and the local news.

The lead item on the local news was about the Olympics, and was so fatuous that I can't find mention of it anywhere to provide an explanatory link. It began with the hopefully-alarming claim that some of the shooting events would be technically illegal under post-Dunblane laws, eventually mentioning that actually they could relax the rules and that they'd done it for the Commonwealth Games so in fact there was no earthly reason why anyone should care about it in the slightest. This was followed by an interview with the head of the British National Shooting Centre or something like that, generally bemoaning these terrible laws, and making the following comparison:

"It's like if they banned football, you wouldn't be able to pick a British team"

Now, there are two distinct problems with this.

Firstly, there is no British football team. It's a perennial debating point, of course - whether they could cobble together two decent goalkeepers between them, for a start - but it's fairly well known how the home nations are broken down, which makes the comparison seem rather poorly thought-out.

Secondly, and perhaps more fundamentally, it seems extremely unlikely that football would be banned in the same way that certain types of guns are. There are all sorts of ways that you can injure yourself and other people with a football, but by and large they do tend to be less lethal than guns. As far as I know the headline "12 DIE IN HIGH SCHOOL FOOTBALL RAMPAGE", with tales of survivors running screaming from the cafeteria with footballs being booted at them at high velocity, has yet to appear.

I think the problem with their predicament is that it's very difficult to feel any sympathy for people taking part in something that isn't really a spectator sport. There are some Olympic events that you can start watching and get caught up in, but I can't imagine shooting as one of them. Huge levels of skill involved, yes, but essentially it's someone aiming a gun at a tiny little target. There's not really a lot that you can do that's going to make it exciting. I've been thinking about how to go about it all day, and all I can come up with is basing it around one of those arcade light-gun shooting games called Uncle Zeke's Cabin or something where you shoot a target on a moose and its antlers twirl, but somehow I can't imagine that the IOC would go for it. Even if you did tell them about the door that opens and you get water fired at you and how you could use to put your opponent off.

2005-08-16T17:54:00.000+01:00

Regular readers will have probably gathered that I'm a fairly rational, sensible sort of a fellow. I tend to look at problems in a fairly logical way, rather than simply jumping to a conclusion that suits me and ranting and raving about it, and by and large think that the world would be a much nicer place if only people would try to get along instead of automatically thinking the worst of people, like everything is some stupid soap opera or something.

However, this calmness and goodwill does not apply to whoever the fuck it was who let their dog shit on the path leading up to the house. If I ever find out which fucker was responsible for this unbelievably inconsiderate act, I will fucking well find them and kill them. I'm not kidding.

2005-08-13T00:30:00.002+01:00

To Ilford, for the first time since the school holidays started. You can tell that they're well underway because of the groups of kids obstructing you by gathering around the top of the escalators and generally getting in the way and looking surly. As opposed to a usual weekday afternoon in Ilford, when... no, wait a minute...

After performing a couple of necessary but dull duties, and after a week largely spent in front of the computer, I decided to put the proof-reading off until the weekend and have a bit of a mooch around. I found myself looking around a clothes shop; I haven't bought any clothes for months, and most of my t-shirts are looking really rather tatty. Yesterday I'd spent ages going through the pile looking for one that looked halfway-decent before going off to meet chums in town, and in the end had to put a shirt on over the top as the best one still looked rather grubby.

Anyway, I'm browsing a rack of t-shirts. The ones with some sort of prominent logo I ignored immediately; I never feel comfortable wearing anything that can be easily identified as coming from somewhere. I should probably pretend this is some sort of anti-branding stance, but really it's because I might be wearing the wrong thing and people can sneer at me behind my back.

I spotted one that had no obvious emblems and looked rather nice from the side, but pulling it from the rack revealed that it had a large number on the front. Er, in the sense of it being large on the t-shirt, not that it was a large number. It was quite a small number; I think it was 37. Although I suppose it depends on what you have 37 of, really. 37 (looks around bedroom for an example) paper clips wouldn't really be a lot, whereas 37 (looks around again) aircraft carriers would be. I wondered why someone would take a perfectly nice t-shirt with a perfectly pleasing design, and then stick a sodding great number over the front of it. What does it mean? What significance can be attached to the number? 37 what, exactly? My head began to hurt after a while, and I returned the t-shirt to the rack.

I stopped off in Smiths to purchase a couple more dull-but-necessary items. The tills were devoid of customers and the two assistants on duty were chatting. One was on my side of the counter; I stood next to her as I handed my purchases over. She clearly didn't register my presence at first, or she was so enjoying her theme that nothing was going to distract her from it.

"The thing with blokes, right, is that they expect you to call all the time. You tell him, right, you tell him that you can't use up all your credit calling him, he's got to call you, right, 'cos otherwise they expect you to do everything. Oh, no offence meant."

I assured her that no offence had been taken.

"Y'know, we have to talk."

I said that I quite understood.

"He's got to chase you a bit as well. If he isn't going to make the effort and chase you a bit then he's not worth bothering about."

And at that stage another customer came along, and she moved off to her side of the counter.
The assistant that was serving me handed me the bag containing my goods and my change, and apologised. I said that it was all right; I considered suggesting that her friend was right and that if the fellow had any sense about him he would be doing some chasing, but that he might be worried about looking a bit needy and desperate. And then I remembered who I was, and thought about how my attempts at sounding wise and knowledgeable were likely to sound, and wandered off to see if there was anything good in the Woolworths 3 DVDs for £20 offer instead.

2005-08-09T17:23:00.001+01:00

I've got the World Athletics Championships on in the other corner of the room. (I've decided that I can watch Athletics while I'm working - it's quite bitty, so you can turn around to watch a bit, then turn back and carry on without the disruption caused by something like cricket.) The commentators are commenting that a storm is due. The first heat of the hurdles passes without problems, but then the rain comes and the track is drenched. For some reason they allow the competitors in the second heat to get as far as going to their blocks before they call them off the track.

Cue some amusing filling from the commentary team - favourite rain delays, arguments about whether it was good conditions for distance running, that sort of thing - but then the picture cuts out and a continuity announcer comes in and apologises, before fading up some library music. Fantastic! It's just like watching television in the past!

Eventually the link to Finland is restored, but before long it cuts out again. This time, however, they manage to restore the pictures but not the sound. So for two minutes we get pictures of storm clouds over an athletics stadium and the Helsinki skyline, accompanied only by the sound of rain lashing against, well, everything (although whether these were live or being played in by the continuity announcer, who sounded like he was enjoying himself by this point, I don't know.) This was one of the strangest, eeriest things I've ever seen. I'm watching it in my nice, well-lit bedroom/office on a sunny afternoon and suddenly I felt really rather unsettled. Most odd.

After a while this was pulled, and is currently being replaced by an episode of Ready Steady Cook with Ainsley Harriott. Which is also unsettling, but in a slightly different way.

2005-08-08T23:34:00.000+01:00

This, apparently, is how freelancing works:

- two weeks of sitting around on your arse, picking fluff out of your navel, checking your email every couple of minutes and eagerly reading even the crappiest spam, watching England get stuffed in the test match and generally feeling hugely miserable about everything, followed by;

- two weeks of being really stupidly busy, having to turn work down because you've already taken too much on, not checking your email because the amount you're receiving is becoming distracting and wondering if you're going to be able to leave the house at all despite your mum getting worried about you not going out enough. England will win the test match, but you will miss most of it because you're busy working and it's becoming too distracting, and then when you do have time to watch things start going badly and so you turn the telly over because you're sure that it's your fault that it's going badly.

This is like having a job but being unemployed at the same time or something. I'm entirely bemused.

2005-08-08T00:13:00.000+01:00

I always start getting a bit worried when it's coming up to a week without a post. I'm never quite sure whether it means that:

a) I've been really busy and haven't had time

b) I'm so devoid of interesting thought that I have nothing to add

c) I've done absolutely nothing that could have been of the slightest interest to anyone.

You could pick any one of the above for the last week, but it's probably telling that my mum told me that I needed to get out more. That I'm only occasionally employed and current world events seem to have rather passed her by.

2005-08-01T18:28:00.001+01:00

I couldn't get the banoffee pie. I could, however, get the banana flavour Angel Delight.

I managed to avoid suspicion at the checkout firstly by being uncharacteristically useless at packing my bags, and then by generously donating my Clubcard points to the fellow behind me in the queue. (Although, I must admit, I am now rather worried that by some feat of reverse engineering or something that he'll be able to ascertain my card number somehow. See, that identity fraud paranoia did work after all.) I used to have a Clubcard, but gave up when, after six months of remembering to take the damn thing with me every time I shopped, I received the grand total of £1.50 in money off vouchers.

(For the record, the fellow I donated the points to's basket contained the following items:

6 bottles of Tesco own-brand cola
1 bottle of Dr Pepper
1 tube of toothpaste

Nothing like being prepared, I suppose.)

The problem is that the only bowl I have large enough to make the Angel Delight is currently in the freezer with a portion of lasagne firmly frozen to it. However, I can confirm that banana doesn't feature anywhere in the list of ingredients, of which the first item in the list is sugar. I bought toothpaste as well, though, so I have nothing to fear from this culinary treat, although if the packet is anything to go by I do run the risk of growing a gigantic yellow moustache. I shall keep both toothbrush and razor to hand when the time comes.

2005-07-28T22:45:00.000+01:00

Mark Radcliffe is currently playing Glenn Campbell's Wichita Lineman. I'm fairly sure that the last time I heard this was at 93 Feet East a couple of years back, at a free gig organised by the BBC's beard division, and that it was being played by the people who went on to be pop's famous The Go! Team. Which all goes to show, really. It definitely sounds more appropriate on late(ish) night radio.

I'm busy. And I want some bannoffee pie. I can't spell "Bannoffee", but I want some anyway. Or some banana flavoured Angel Delight, which is the budget equivalent. I hope this wears off by tomorrow so that I don't go and do something stupid and humiliate myself in Tesco. Again.

2005-07-25T23:35:00.002+01:00

It occurred to me the other day that what I should have done, back when the page was new, was to classify entries where I actually did things (as opposed to entries where I sat around moaning about girls and tube trains and generally feeling sorry for myself) as "Adventure No. 1" and so on, or "The Adventures of The Adventures of Flossie" perhaps, to do something to justify the stupid title. It's far too late to start now, though, and I'm buggered if I'm going back through three years worth of this rubbish to retitle everything.

(NOTE TO NEW READERS: Hello! That stuff about three years of rubbish was typical self-mockery, and in fact the preceding entries are all great, and there are loads of other readers, and not maybe 11 at all, which is another joke, and I never have severe doubts as to what the purpose of all this is, not at all.)

Anyway, on Saturday I went to a family party. Think of it as Adventure of Flossie No. 88 (or so): The Family Party, if you like.

The party was for a cousin reaching a Birthday. The cousin decided that he was going to wear his pimp suit, which he would have got away with if only he hadn't donned his pimp hat, set at a suitably jaunty angle. Moreover, because this was a family gathering, most people failed to recognise his pimp-y intentions and asked him what the umpire's hat was for. My spotting what he was trying to achieve was my birthday gift to him, because I hadn't bought him a gift. Or a card. I really didn't think it through in advance.

Family parties are always difficult for me; social awkwardness, obviously, but also because everyone else has grown up, whereas I sit around here rehashing feeble old masturbation gags on the internet, and so I always feel somewhat inadequate by comparison. Also, most of them have had children (all but Pimp Boy, in fact) and because I don't see the children very often I can never remember what they're called. This makes trying to sort out the arguments that tend to arise when you have a bunch of half a dozen or so under 10s running around rather difficult, not least because you know someone will end up complaining about you to your mother if they catch you referring to their offspring as "oi, you!"

I also had the awkward task of explaining my curious not-quite-employed, not-quite-unemployed (although I am at the moment) status to anyone who asked how work was going, difficult enough at the best of times but even moreso when you're trying to keep it brief because you're sure that it isn't terribly interesting and you're competing with the Crazy Frog booming away in the background. Fortunately I was so vague and so dull that I rapidly brought most conversations to a crashing halt, which at least saved me from having to admit that I couldn't remember what anyone's children were called.

The DJ adhered to the usual rules of occasion. This always has the effect of making me think about the dustier reaches of my record collection; I had the Badly Drawn Boy song off of that UNKLE album that DJ Shadow did going around in my head for most of the night. I'd like to pretend that I heard some arcane connection between Have You Seen The Light by Saloon and Oops Upside Your Head as if to justify my humming one while the other was playing, but there isn't; I'm just a snob.

If there is one thing I have learned from the family party (apart from the ill-advisedness of pimpwear) it's that there will always be heaps of food left over at the end ("it's better to have too much than not enough", my mum always says when she's preparing the food; at the end of the night she always complains about how much is left. Next time I'm going to go around and make her watch that episode of the Simpsons where there's a news item on the great new trend of wasting food just to see if it helps) and that I really should remember to take a food bag or two along with me. I could have had enough sausage rolls and mini pizzas and chicken nuggets to last me a week.

2005-07-25T00:24:00.000+01:00

Strange thing; I'm listening to Modest Mouse, volume not particularly loud (at this time of night I'm aware that just because I don't have to get up early in the morning doesn't mean that my neighbours don't have to) and yet, when the bloke complains about someone "fuck fuck fucking around" I suddenly turn the volume down. It was like a reflex or something, I'd done it before I even realised what I was doing. This is the sort of thing I would do back when I lived at home - my mum isn't keen on that sort of thing, and besides there'd invariably be various small children about the place, and I don't feel comfortable with kids and swearing - but I left home years ago. I wonder if I've been doing it ever since and just hadn't noticed.

I think the page has been a bit sweary of late as well. Fortunately the close season is coming to an end (the pre-season friendlies have started, but swearing at pre-season friendlies seems a bit excessive) and soon I'll be able to work out all my excess sweariness at the people who deserve it the most, ie referees. Phew.

2005-07-22T21:11:00.002+01:00

To mark the advent of the new BBC2 Thursday night comedy line-up, the following entry contains no jokes, amusing observations, or anything that can be construed as "funny" in any way. Readers who suggest that this makes the entry exactly the same as all the others probably have a point.

It's been a really shitty week.

(People don't say shitty these days, do they? I seem to remember that we used to use it a lot, and then it got overtaken by the all-consuming "shite". Admittedly it does sound rather childish, but I still think there's room for "shitty" in the lexicon.)

And yet, despite the not getting a second interview and the not having any work and the England batting collapse and the curious bombs-not-exploding business and the crap TV coverage thereof (slightly paraphrased sample: EYEWITNESS: Most people got calmly got off the train, but there were a few people who were panicking and screaming. PRESENTER: An eyewitness there, describing scenes of panic and terror on the... I mean, what? Not that I'd suggest for a moment that these people would have preferred it if there'd been large-scale carnage, people wandering around covered in blood, days of grieving relatives to fill their news bulletins with but... actually no, fuck it, that's exactly what I'm suggesting) and the new BBC2 Thursday night comedy schedule and the notion that anyone in the world wanted another series of Absolute Power and Scrubs starting a few minutes late and thus being unexpectedly subjected to at least three minutes of Dermot O'Leary and the relatives of Big Brother contestants, the thing that's depressed me most is that I've started trying to be Profound.

And I'm really crap at being Profound. I very rarely intentionally try to be Profound, and when I do I usually end up deleting the result, or leave it lying around on the grounds that I might come back to it later once I've worked out what I was trying to say. In fact, if I can spell Profundity it's only because I'm quite good at spelling, and nothing to do with being good at being Profound.
I'm not sure what I'm trying to say now. I think I need to do something amusingly crap so that it gives me something to prattle on about. I'm sorry.

2005-07-20T20:58:00.002+01:00

I've had no work this week. I've been waiting for a call from last week's interview, which I suspect isn't going to come now even though it was by far the best of the interviews I've done since leaving my job. So I've had time. Lots of time. Which, by and large, I've wasted by sleeping or watching films or thinking about absolute guff.

Like, for example, the Fantastic Four.

I never really read comics when I was younger, you see - I seem to recall a brief phase of reading them, then the newsagent where we got them changed hands or something and they stopped having them in and I soon moved on to Enid Blyton or something. And as such I have no reference points when it comes to the Fantastic Four. If you'd asked me who they were I may have remembered that they were off the comics with the one made out of rocks and that, but it's just as likely that I would have told you that they were Pip, Daisy, Frederick and Jane who solved crimes with the help of their dog Snifter before getting back to Aunt June and Uncle Wilberforce's cottage in time for cake and ginger beer.

I do rather regret this lack of comics knowledge. Partly because I'm sure they would have been exactly the sort of thing that would have appealed to my always-odd childhood imagination, partly because it rather limits my understanding of Ian and Kieron's blogs, but also because now, as I wander the streets in search of a purpose to my life, I see lots of posters for the forthcoming film of the Fantastic Four. Now, clearly I'm not going to see this adaptation - I watched X-Men once, I've learned my lesson - but the Four themselves do intrigue me rather.

Burning Bloke

Like Burning Bloke, for instance. What sort of skill does he brings to the team? He can set fire to things, he can... er.... Surely villainy would get wise to this ability quite quickly? Once he's foiled one devious plot with his fire-raising abilities, surely all of the other villains will just wear fire-retardant clothing, thus rendering him useless?

I suppose he could be useful when it was dark, but even then he's limited in what he can do. He could light the way in a darkened forest, for example, but he'd also set fire to trees and cause huge damage to local wildlife. He'd be no use down sewers, because clearly they'd have to test for gas beforehand to make sure he didn't end up blowing everyone up, so they'd have to have a Fantastic Gas Testing Kit or some Fantastic Canaries and by the time they fiddled around with those villainy would have made good its escape. Burning Bloke is rubbish.

Girl

Clearly, because this is a film, and there's only one of them that's a girl, the Girl One is going to get off with one of the others. Which is it going to be? The burning one? The one made of rocks? Or the normal looking one? Goodness, what a puzzle. I suppose the burning one isn't going to mind - presumably being on fire is as much of a burden to getting off with girls as being an ugly, charisma-free social retard - but I bet the bloke made of rocks one sulks about it. And presumably setting fire to things or being made of rocks is terribly inconvenient when it comes to the sort of late-night masturbation sessions that those who can't persuade anyone to get off with them inevitably engage in.

Bloke Made Of Rocks

I can't think of the Bloke Made Of Rocks without thinking of that episode of Look Around You. And that's why, apart from the fact that it's likely to be terrible and even if people say it's good like they did with X-Men (and the reviews I've seen suggest not, but never mind) it still means that actually it's terrible but just not as bad as Batman And Robin or something, I couldn't go to see this film; I would be forced to keep shouting out "he's got cobbles!" and "why doesn't he just fly away?", then someone would punch my chiseled and handsome face in until it resembles a tomato.

Normal Bloke

Why does there have to be a normal bloke? You could have had some other strange mutant creature like the other three, but no; they had to have a normal bloke. Normal Bloke is rubbish. And of course Normal Bloke is going to be in charge, because you can't have a weird-looking bloke or a girl being in charge. If it turned out that the bloke made of rocks or the girl was much cleverer and a better strategic thinker than the Normal Bloke, and in fact the Normal Bloke was so thick that he'd failed GCSE maths because he couldn't even manage to do trigonometry on his calculator, the Fantastic Four would be absolutely fucked from the off.

So, all told, I don't think I'm missing out by not knowing anything about the Fantastic Four. Also, does anyone have any proof-reading they need doing?

2005-07-15T08:21:00.002+01:00

"This is a special announcement."

I'm at the station patiently listening to the electronic voice telling us that the train has been delayed; at the moment it was about to tell us how long it would be until the train arrived a real, human voice cut in, telling us that this was a special announcement and then failing to announce anything. Perhaps he was distracted by some new train information, or maybe this is a complex joke that I don't understand.

Anyway, while we're waiting for him to announce something, I have some important news. The little counter on the Blogger dashboard was stuck on 433 for months, and then the other day it mysteriously updated itself to reveal that the number of posts was now 508. Which puts us on the verge of an important milestone in the page-o-thing's history, and makes this the...

Offical TAoF 509th Post Spectacular!

... because who could possibly have predicted all those months and posts ago that I'd still be be coming up with new and interesting things to write about on the internet for an audience of maybe 11 people, and you can insert your own punchline to that one.

Problem is that I have no idea what to put into a 509th post spectacular. The life of a freelance/jobhunting editor is relentlessly lacking in spectacle. I did receive a fairly spectacular phone call yesterday, I suppose, but good grace keeps me from repeating the details, and there is this curious semicircle of insect bites that's appeared on my left arm (well, I assume it's insect bites - it's that or the early symptoms of the plague, anyway) except that it occurs to me that I don't get these until I go to see D&R play Hull tonight, which is just another flaw in this rather foolish device that I've chosen for the next couple of entries on the basis of thinking that "509th post spectacular!" looked better than "510th post spectacular!", as if anyone was going to go back and count the posts just to check that I wasn't telling fibs or something.

He's really taking his time with this announcement.

I suppose that this should be a time for reflection, looking back at the page and how it's changed the world. Except that it hasn't, obviously. All it does is keep me in front of a computer for even longer than I used to be before the page existed, and it detains maybe 11 people in front of their computers for longer than they otherwise would be, but that's about all. I could reflect on my favourite entries - say, the Battle Of The Ikea Car Park one, or the Not Talking To People On Tube Trains one, or the The Human Condition Accurately Summed Up In An Entire Post one, but that would be too self-indulgent, and besides I always feel slightly embarrassed looking through the archive anyway.

Still no announcement. Maybe this is a conceptual art prank, that by telling us that there's going to be a special announcement and then not making an announcement that we have to look at the inner announcement, the announcement that lives inside all of us. Or maybe the PA is broken. That would explain it.

So this, then, is the end of the 509th Post Spectacular. Join us in three years and three months or so's time for the undoubtedly magnificent 1018th Post Spectacular. Astoundingly, as I type somebody over the back is setting off some fireworks (no, really, they are. If I had something to record the noise on I'd do it just to prove it) although that does rather give the game away that I'm not writing this as I stand in the ticket hall waiting for an announcement and am in fact hammering this out the following evening having just watched Mallrats for the first time in ages (and realised why I hadn't watched Mallrats for ages), but, well, that's crap literary devices for you.

2005-07-12T22:00:00.001+01:00

In my first year as a student I lived in halls, in a then-new building befitting the university's then-new status. You can see the building as you go past on the train; on the rare occasions that I go by, I always look over and see if I can work out which window was mine, and wonder whether the current inhabitant is making a better fist of their first year as a student than I did. (If I'm sat on the other side of the train I look out for the gym whose red neon letters I could see lit up late into the night.)

Between the railway line and the halls was a car park. One night, either when I'd been out or couldn't sleep (and if you need an indicator of how badly I messed up my first year of being a student, it was probably the latter) I watched a couple tarrying a little too long by the ticket machine; I made some assumptions about what they were up to, but I was young and stupid and now that I'm old and stupid I suspect that this was based more on what I wanted to see than what I actually saw. The other thing I recall about the car park was a bluey-green car that always seemed to be parked by my window. It was driven by a woman, short dark hair, glasses, always quite smartly-but-sensibly dressed. Should I have been skulking around in my room early in the evenings I would look out of the window hoping to see her, feeling disappointed if the car went while I wasn't looking.

It's been over ten years since I moved out (which suddenly makes me feel old) and I doubt I've given any of this much thought since then. I wouldn't have thought about it today had I not seen someone standing outside the car park on the news. I wonder if she still parks her car there?

2005-07-08T11:03:00.001+01:00

Back when I had my minor incident on the Underground (and before anyone starts tutting, compared to what happened yesterday it was incredibly minor - the only similarity was the presence of the sooty muck that I spent about a fortnight blowing out of my nose) I couldn't write about what had actually happened during the incident itself. I wrote something for myself so that I could try to make sense of it, but I couldn't have stuck it on the page. It felt wrong. Plus, what I'd written was incredibly boring.

For this reason, I am even more awestruck by this than I might have been. Which would still have been pretty awestruck.

(Link pinched from Gillen's blog, although I suspect that any bits of the internet that don't take offence at the word 'cunt' are probably linking to it as well.)

2005-07-07T23:38:00.000+01:00

Seven Kings-Liverpool Street: Liverpool Street-Farringdon

The radio edit of this Rilo Kiley single is rubbish, isn't it? "And your writer's block don't mean sh(subtle pause)t"? We all know what she's saying, we're all adults (well, I assume people who listen to 6 Music during the day are adults anyway), let her say it. Tcha.

Sorry. Been meaning to mention that for a while, so may as well get it in now while I remember it. Anyway.

There was a point, early in the afternoon, where there was no news.

I'd had replies to my emails. A couple of people had asked me to keep in touch and let them know what was happening, stuck as they were in offices with no TV and internets bursting under the strain. And I tried but... well, there was nothing for me to add. The news was that there was no more news, unless you count someone pointing to parked-up ambulances and telling us that people in the hospital were being treated, which seems to be pushing the definition somewhat.

Eventually they stopped emailing. Whether this was because their email systems had given up, or they'd sensibly decided to go to the pub for the afternoon, or if they were just disgusted by my feeble updating I don't know. I continued to watch people valiantly pointing at ambulances, interspersed with a few clips of people crossing a road, some policemen waving their arms expressively and a blurry photo of what might have been some people in a tunnel on a continual loop.

After about an hour of this I decided that the feeling in my stomach was as much hunger as it was anxiety and went out to buy some rolls. As I approached the station I saw a woman walking towards me, and realised that it was her who I used to not-entirely-subtly eye up at the station in the mornings. She used to walk past me on the platform and again at Liverpool Street. I gave her a wan smile, but my nerve gave out before I could ask if she was all right. She wasn't covered in soot so I assumed she'd missed the trouble. Still, bit of an unexpected bonus; an additional name (well, not strictly a name) both added to the list and ticked off in one fell swoop.

In fact, I think I've accounted for everyone except for the comments people. I know some of them are out there and not watching Queens Of The Stone Age, but feel free to say hello if the urge so takes you.

2005-07-06T22:08:00.001+01:00

One of the many benefits of my new freelance lifestyle (aprt from being able to turn my alarm off because I was out late last night, going back to sleep and not getting up until half past 10) is that I can now go to Tesco at any time I choose. Monday morning, Tuesday morning, Wednesday morning, Friday afternoon - I've done them all, and possibly some others as well, I forget now. Although I do tend to go in the morning (you may have guessed this) if only because my usual motivation is that I've run out of things to have for lunch.

However, I've never been at 4.30 on a Tuesday afternoon before. I'm not sure why; it seems an odd time of the day to be going shopping, particularly if I'm working as I tend to be quite productive in the late afternoon. There's also the suspicion that at that time of the day the shelves will be comparatively bare, although I have no idea why I should think this in the days of 24-hour opening. I hadn't intended to go at 4.30 yesterday afternoon either; I'd intended to go earlier in the day, but I had work that I was eager to get off my desk and by the time it was complete much of the day had passed. I could have left it until today, but I'd already bought a Travelcard as I was off into town for the evening, and it seemed a bit pointless to pay bus or train fare for my journey home with the shopping the next day when I already had the Travelcard now. Yeah, so I'm cheap, I know. This is what self-employment does to you.

(Diligent readers may be wondering how come, with only one stop between me and Tesco, I pay the train fare at all. "After all, it's not as if you're likely to get caught" you are surmising. Which is what I thought the first time I tried it, and only missed being caught out by the length of a carriage. The following week I bought a ticket, which I was required to show to an inspector at Seven Kings. And anyway, I shouldn't skip train fares. It's the start of a slippery slope. When I'm holed up, out of ammo, man with loudhailer urging me to give myself up while hundreds of armed police aim at the door that I'm about to burst through, I'll be thinking "if only I hadn't started fare dodging, things would have worked out differently". You may think this is unlikely, but then they said that about the Pope.)

My fears about the lack of goods were not realised. I purchased every item on my list except for talcum powder, and I couldn't get that the last time I needed any either; I suspect that they don't stock it anymore. The checkout assistants were different from those that I usually encounter and so I didn't know which ones to avoid, but the one I chose was perfectly proficient. (I resisted choosing the really quite cute one I'd followed down the ramp from the High Road, who looked a bit like a girl I'd spent my final year at university fruitlessly persuing, but only because she was dealing with a particularly hefty trolleyload.)

However, there was one problem with shopping at this time. As I went back to get some milk, I passed the aisle dealing in ready meals. I paused. A lightbulb went off, a very bad, wrong, sick lightbulb that urgently needs replacing.

I had fallen for The Cursed Temptation of the Ready Meal.

What harm could there be, I thought. I can just stick it in the oven and go and have a wash, sort out the email, do all that other stuff I'd be rushing to do if I cooked myself something properly, it'll be great. They were on special offer and everything. I bought two.

The gravy was quite nice. The front room still smelt of it about six hours later when I came home, but at the time it was nice and went a long way to disguising the lack of flavour of the rest of it. I like a nice sausage now and again, but while these sausages no doubt contained all the entrails, genitals and bits of brain that your common or garden sausage contains, they lacked whatever it is makes normal sausages taste so good.

I've still got the other one to eat as well. I am such a clot sometimes that I amaze even myself.

2005-07-06T13:01:00.000+01:00

Blimey.

I hope the Stratford Station lift is declared a world heritage site or something. I noticed it was still reassuring people trapped in the lift as I passed through last night.

2005-07-04T22:40:00.000+01:00

Crap observational comedy moment No.327

The problem with peanut butter is that it isn't terribly versatile. I have half a jar in my larder (super smooth variety - I'm too old and sensible to even try to attempt to spread crunchy peanut butter on anything these days) and this evening, while looking for something to nibble on, I found myself irresistibly attracted to it. The problem is that I don't have any bread, and without bread the peanut butter is rather redundant. I looked around for some other method of eating the peanut butter and failed miserably. What else can you do with peanut butter? You can put it on bread, you can put it on toast, you can... er...

It doesn't taste very nice if you just shove a knife in it and lick the peanut butter off either. At least with salad dressing you can dribble some onto your hand.

2005-07-03T21:10:00.000+01:00

I admit; since I stopped going to work my personal hygiene hasn't been all that it could be. Working in a poorly air-conditioned office really helps to focus the mind on what's happening under your armpits, and I quickly worked out that daily showering was the very least that was required. Now, however, with nobody else about to whisper conspiratorially about how much I might stink, I just don't have the need and so unless I'm feeling particularly clammy or if I'm going somewhere the next day, some evenings I just wipe over the sweatiest bits and make a note to clean myself properly the next day. I am a disgusting individual.

However, I haven't gone four days without a shower or bath for a very long time, probably not since I lived in a student house with an inadequate water heater. I wouldn't have done it this week except that the tap was broken and my landlord is so shriekingly hopeless that it took them that long to get it fixed. And I think it affected my mood; I've been miserable all week. Hence the lack of entries. Well, that and having nothing much to write about, I suppose.

(Although this hasn't stopped the page from getting the most visitors since the last time I mentioned ("Johnny Noakes" - Ed) calendars. I'd like to pretend that this is due to my finally being recognised as the voice of a generation; in fact it seemed to involve hits from lots of pages mentioning pills of varying types. I suspect some sort of unpleasantness is involved and that I should probably do something about it.)

My misery has been compounded by having Men in to do things with the electrics. I always feel inadequate around Men who can do useful, practical things. "We've fused down the switches" explains the electrician patiently; I nod and hope that he can't tell that I haven't the faintest idea what he's on about, knowing full well that I'm fooling nobody. Still, the new lights do look nice, so I shouldn't really complain.