To hell in a milk float

Phew! What a post you’ve got ahead of you!

Today was probably the most surreal, unusual, inexplicable day I’ve had in a long time. Ready to hear about it? Settle down, then.


Alright, picture this scene: A quiet common room. Those present are only those who have a somewhat lax attitude towards attending lessons. Everyone present is trying extremely hard to ignore the raucous shrieks that are my idea of “conversation”. Suddenly and for no good reason, a rather short girl comes up to me:

Girl: “You’ve got my folder.”
Me: “Yerwhat?”
Girl (without a second’s hesitation!): Slap!

I kid you not. That is the genuine series of events, from quiet common room minding it’s own business to astounded common room gleefully watching me receive a smack in the mouth. I can only guess that the girl is perhaps worshipping some sort of Folder God, perceiving me as a threat to it’s security, who must be eliminated for it’s eternal glory. Or she’s tanked up/high as a kite/being controlled by a voodoo witch doctor for reason(s) unknown. All I know for sure is that I’m bloody well keeping the hell away from any female under 5’’3’ in future.

Next to enter the spotlight is the mad bus driver. One of the drivers of the 93 bus happens to be, quite simply, a nutter. I, being unaware of his mental Imnotquiteallpresentandcorrectatthemomentness, innocently wandered up to the doors of the bus, expecting them to fly open for me as they do every day, for me to climb aboard in perfect poise, style and grace. What actually happened was that the bus driver sat in his nice, warm bus grinning at me as I walked up to the closed doors and stopped dead. I pleaded, prayed, begged and after about two agonising minutes he opened the doors. I got on, waved the magical “quid and twenty” at him, and demanded, as is my right, a ticket:

Me: One adult.
Bus driver (suddenly looking very
much like Hannibal the Cannibal) : Piss off.
Me: Err... please?
Hannibal: Get off my bus, now.

Well any other citizen, accustomed to unfailing, respectful service from London Transport would probably have retreated in fear, but not me. In a triumph of inspiration and wit I flung the lucas into his little cabin thing and fled upstairs, without ticket. Here I was filled in on the situation by a veteran of the mad middle-aged bus driver. (Apparently one of his favourite tricks is to stare firmly out of the opposite window every time someone tries to show him a bus pass!)

The end of it? I think not. After pressing the button, he took me two stops past the place where I originally began my programme of pressing the button repeatedly, standing by the doors, looking like a lemon.


Finally, there was the pikey (scally to half of you lot) who I saw in Sainsbury’s with his trousers around his ankles, but after the wild and wonderful events I’ve briefed you on already, lost Tesco’s shoppers seem a bit boring, don’t they?









Shan, what sort of a "Guy" is that then?

Trish, you know what they say about length!

Fi, Comic Relief creates mindless gimps? Didn't mention that in the Radio Times!

Elly, you should fit in with the rest of my readership, then!


Note to rest of readership: Please don't hate me! I love you really!


Matt, I never got a bendy cup! How shameful is that! I must be losing my grip!

DJ, qweasd yuighj iop[jkl;'.

Rosie, I didn't name names, now, did I? I felt that people who wouldn't want to be mentioned here have the right to not know they have been. Anyway, Rosie, at least I haven't been groped by him!

Bec, I've shortened that ever so slightly. Seeing as you repeated one verse fourteen odd times!

Sara, Let us now pause a second to think. You have asked me the question "What do you like about bushes?"
That question is more open to abuse by the male gender than any other question I've ever seen. Let's stop and think next time we ask sad little teenage boys that sort of thing in future, shall we?

University showoff day a couple of days ago. That means a coachload of other sixth formers (who are of no importance) and myself (who is vital) going off to crystal palace for what I've termed "the educational equivalent of a rock gig". If I had to review the event for the Metro, which is London's - and the world's - greatest newspaper (and it's a great pity that I don't), I would say it was a sort of cross between Mastermind and Tooting market, with every sodding university in this country and the ones both to the left of and above it having a stall at which one could sign one's name and postal address to recieve whatever it is universities send people through the post. (Or, at the Liverpool university stall, a place where one can sign one's name to provide undergraduates with a convenient place to burgle). About a hundred thousand million students were there, along with two St. John's Ambulance men, a few security staff, two or three amateur squash players and a handful of teachers.

The trip to Crystal Palace was one of my more pleasant coach trips. The reason for this is that all the other coach trips I've been on are even more shit. On this particular trip I sat next to a bisexual, camp, self-harming goth with a passion for ancient history. Despite that minor drawback I take the credit for being the first to make a paper aeroplane, being the loudest person in a game of "Bogey" (Anyone who considers themselves to be mature is missing out on many things. One of them is the delight known as "Bogey". This oh-so-sophisticated game involves shouting. The next person then has to shout louder. The next one even louder, etc. The winner is the person who can't be louder than the person before them. Seeing as the game consisted of me vs. the goth (with the goth refusing to speak after one feeble "bleeargh!"), I attained an easy vistory.)

Anyways. We then got to Crystal Palace, which the Victorians (so they tell me), once burned down. Clever chaps, those Victorians. I got off the coach to find a two-inch cut in what was once my perfectly formed, delicate and beautiful right forearm. The reason, ladies and gents, is that gothman stabbed me with a pencil when I drew a red nose on his sketch of some aincent Egyptian bint! Shocking! I blame Marilyn Manson. A bad influence, that bloke.

-- Incidentally, can anyone tell me exactly what the point is in having ancient Egyptian people who aren't mummies? The goth tried to explain it to me, but I'm far too shallow to pay attention to that sort of thing when there's a window to stare out of so closely to hand. --

In the exhibition, there were plenty of people to annoy, and I proceeded to start off at once. Some sneaky cow had set up her stall right by the entrance, clearly trying to cash in on people who have no idea where to go or what to do. That's what brought me there, anyway. I picked up a prospectus, asked "Is this free?", and she replied "Our university is..." For a university graduate, she didn't seem all that skillful at conversation. Just in case she was hearing impaired, thick as two short planks or foreign, I repeated the question, louder. She said "Yes, and if your interested we offer a series of..." but, not wishing to place too much of a strain on her apparently limited conversational skills, I'd wandered off.

Thinking back on it, a sort of recurring theme ran through all the people at the place - they only seemed interested in universities. Nothing else seemed to run through their heads at all. Would've made a lousy pub quiz team, them graduates.

Anyway, down to the real business of the day - the theft of university pens, both complimentary and not-so-complimentary. Ahh, the havoc we wreaked amongst those pens! I think Greg and I must have averaged about eighty or ninety pens between us. The majority of our loot was gained through a thorough and healthy abuse of the "please take one" system, mostly by a vigorous misinterpretation of the word "one".

The real challenge, howver, was getting away with the pens people were using to wrie with. You know the tactic - charity worker comes up to you in the street, "Can I have your bank details, sir? Two pounds a month, feed the Welsh." and all that sort of thing, you take the clipboard and pen, tell 'em you've forgotten your credit card pin/don't know your address/are a selfish arsehole, hand the clipboard back and walk away with the pen. Only they didn't seem interested in my bank number or arseholishness, so I had to improvise. The new formula, worked out on-the-fly, was a triumph of British ingenuity: "Do you send prospectussesesses via the post?" "Yes, if you'de like to put your address down there", take pen and look 'em in the eye "Err, the thing is"- slip the pen into pocket as you say this -"I've moved house yesterday, and I don't know my new address or postcode!" and walk off, complete with pen!

Why am I telling you all this? Well I won't be here forever, my children, and so I feel it is my duty to share with you the skills I've learned so that you may one day follow in my footsteps and go on, perhaps, to get your hands on a government-issue stapler, or a lightbulb from the Ritz. Or, at the pinnacle of petty sneak-thievery bordering on kleptomania, a mop from a street cleaner.

Also products of the day were a couple of radios, a handful of lollipops, as many boiled sweets I could fit into my pocket - shocking bystanders speechless - a deck of cards with "The University of Wessex" written on each picture card, a few of those little furry mascot things with the jiggly eyes and some keyrings with "Student Union" written on them in luminous letters. Achieving my eternal respect was Sussex University. They hadn't brought pens. Or sweets. Oh no. They went around stealing, begging and generally unlawfully obtaining pens, paper and chewy sweets from other universities' stalls. They seemed to be there solely to take the piss out of the system. And I applaud them for it.




Anyways, enough of that. I've waffled on for far too long. For anyone who's bothered to read the entire thing, I apologise sincerely for wasting your time. You hereby have permission to hack my hands into bleeding stumps should you so wish.



DJ, anyone who is competent enough to steal from the BBC definitely deserves a badge.

Shan, it makes me a coward! I'm so ashamed! Please - protect me from those scary horsies!


Fi, how about "Johnny the Junk Engine"? No Good? Ah well!

And as regards discount hair styling apparatus, you go, girl!


Sara, If only! I'm currently only at the "Should I let it grow?" stage. One day, however, I aim to look like a small shrub.

Betty, "Grrrrrr"? I could post an astoundingly witty riposte if only I knew what in hell that's supposed to mean!


Shan (Again! And they say lightning never strikes twice!), Y'know, If ever I compose a personal ad, I may just use your critique of me: "Likes animals, but only when eaten. Grossly horny." What woman could resist?

And are you referring to the legs (which I like), or the "Brass Monkey" sign (which is ever-so-slightly confusing)?

Hair. Or more accurately - my hair. I've been letting my hair grow now for quite a while, and I'm fast reaching the point of no return. Anyone who's ever had rock'n'roll hair will know what I'm on about - that specific length at which one must make the choice. Either:

A) have a haircut, or
B) end up like Dougal from the magic roundabout.

One the one hand, long hair is interesting, individual, nonconformist and comfy. On the other hand, it makes me look like a dick.

I think, on the whole, I'm going to keep my hair, partly because the removal of so much hair (I must have at least a kilogram of the stuff by now!) seems like a waste, somehow. If anyone says "Oi, pothead - whyja let that bloody shrub grow out of your nut?" to me (which I shall of course interpret as "Excuse me, John, but I believe you've made a questionable fasion statement", naturally) I shall explain that I don't wish to conform to society's prejudices, or that my looking like a twonk says something about the shallowness of our culture, or that I suddenly want to pull Siberian women.

Anything, in fact, to get around the simple truth - I like it because it keeps my ears warm.






Bec, well, being male hampers any attempt at childbirth I may make. You're not a biology student, are you?
Thought not.

Sara, go ahead - help yourself!

Shan, no - real men won't admit they're scared, ever! Admitting you're scared is the emotional equivalent of asking for directions!

Elly, the connection kind of went - Kitchen kinves > Slipknot > Christian rock. Come to think of it, it doesn't make an awful lot of sense. Ah well.

Fi, I'm not a great fan of the Beatles, but he sure was the best voice-over Thomas the Tank-Engine ever had!

Ginger, Blue Peter badges must be earned to be worth anything. Just like sumonses.

Drastic action required!

Y'know, I've never taken any drastic action in my life. I've never, say, dived in front of a car to save a small child, or jumped out of a second-story window to escape a fire. True, I've jumped off a second-story balcony to prove it can be done, but that's not so much drastic action as premeditated stupidity. What I really want is for some emergency situation to occur simply to provide me with an opportunity to take drastic action of some sort. Even being the first to open a window after a rather large fart would be enough.

Because a while ago I was sitting in school, innocently as a baby angel looking after a tiny puppy while being serenaded by Sir Cliff Richard, when suddenly and for no good reason the thought floated into my head "If the school was to suddenly burst into flames, I could leap from the window and be the only one to survive and sell my story to the BBC for twenty grand and sue the school authorities for barbecuing my mates etc etc". But on consideration, having every other person in the school cooked merely to enable me to make some money didn't seem very fair, so I disissed the thought.

But I still want to be able to take drastic and sudden and daring and heroic action. Not now, obviously - I've settled down for the night in. Sometime when I'm bored -yet extremely alert- and there's nothing good on TV. Even the chance to rugby-tackle a pickpocket would do.

No. It wouldn't. If I'm going to have to work it out and put it down in writing, what I ideally want is for a lorryfull of terrorists to pull up outside my house and take it over, so I can hide in the airing cupboard and survive of scraps of denim and water from the boiler, living in the shadows like that little girl from Aliens II.

And get a Blue Peter badge for it.





Bec, at least I can't get pregnant!

Shan, I'll thank you not to ridicule my romantic habits! (And if you know any lonely pensioners, do us a favour, will you?)

Elly, that's right - you're just making things worse for yourself when the Christian Rock movement gets ahold of you.

Gingery, you can't leave a puppy out in the cold at Christmas! That's shocking! Do you know how much they'd sell for on Ebay during the Crimbo holidays?

Dave, I'm sorry - I had no idea you were interested! Tell you what - next time we're in town, I'll take you to a "Help the Aged" rally.

Rosie, you're a bit full of yourself, aren't you? Most girls would have thought something along the lines of "After going out with me, even pensioners seem attractive"!

Laura, that's right. One year older. Now if you were fifty years older...

Matt, that's enough of that, that is! I don't have a fetish for old bird's legs!

...

I just think they're cute.

Aged ladies.

I'm not a pervert. Really I'm not. But what has come to pass today may not bear witness to that.

'Twas on one of the council's fine busses this evening, if I may set the scene. I'm sitting at the back, listening to "Teenage Dirtbag", by Wheatus. (That song is utterly devoid of any talent or skill whatsoever, but is far too bloody catchy!) Onto the bus gets what, to dogs and midgets at least, can only be described as a stunner (you'll see why later). She had something like a cross between a skirt and a tea-towel wrapped around her waist, and some sort of string-vest-stockings thing on her legs. Jesus Christ she had legs! If she sat on a fly, at least it'd die happy.

Now, I'm not a raving horny sex maniac (pipe down, Rosie!), and I hate people who act like this, but I could not take my eyes off those legs! I must have spent, what, ten minutes solid not moving my head, not blinking and looking pretty much like Michael Jackson in a primary school.

Eventually, for some reason I looked up. (Dunno why - perhaps a bomb went off outside or something) But I caught sight of this bint's face.

She was about sixty.


What's wrong with me? Please! I need to know!



I've been thinking about it and the only conclusion I can come to is that she lost both legs in an underground knife-fight, kidnapped a supermodel and had her legs transplanted on. Either that or some sort of suburbian Frankenstein walks the streets.





Rosie, Either you've got an extremely short memory, or you're going for the world record in deep-vein thrombosis.

DJ, It's Cravendale. I think their slogan is "Milk for Toffs".

Sara, nice to see a loving, caring, not-at-all-pyromaniacal family you're part of!

Gingery, yes - sad days, these. I've dropped from three hundred visits a day to about fifty. The site's going down like the Sainsbury's share price. I feel like a tiny puppy, yappaing away madly, left out in the snow. To die. Painfully. In tears. At Christmas.

Dave! That's right - no measly comma for you! A whole !-mark! No, three now! Four! Five! How is this poss-- oh. Bugger. It would have taken quite a while to finish, that. You're returning to blogging? Good for you! We need some new blood. Even if most of yours is outside your body!

Elly, you wouldn't! That's shocking, that is! It's people like you that sell kitchen knives to Slipknot fans.



Mummy, are they still doing that mad, mad shit!? That's brilliant! I thought it all fizzled out in 2004!

And you're one year older than me! ONE! That does not, repeat not, give you the right to become a mother figure to me! I may adopt you as an aunt. If you're lucky.



Shan, so've I. And that's a few times too many!

And are you looking for writing tips, or are you just trying to psychoanalyse me, eh?

All me.


Being the poor, pathetic people you are, I'm sure you're all dying for news of my activities. I havent made a boring, self-indulgent, self-centred post in quite a while, so brace yourselves, mentally settle into "Listen to the annoying, talkative git as politely as we can feign and then get out as quickly as possible" mode and read on:


Snow, as those of you who have the good fortune to live in London may have realised, has been falling. Just like in the movies. And I, mature, civilised and dead-inside, didn't have a single snowball fight. I had one free period on Friday, and homework to do under pain of death. After school, there was organised a huge snowball fight on a nearby common, nobody having realised the ract that snow, being snow, melts. By the time I got out of school, armed with beanie hat and tall Scotch person, the upper sixth and the less civilised parts of the lower sixth had all gone home. Typical.

I went deep into this kingdom's oh-so-grand capital that evening, in order to astound the natives with my magnificent presence. The first suprise was meeting Will at the station complete with school blazer and blue raincoat. After getting over the shock, deciding that it would be unkimd to make him wear a sheet over himself and purchasing tickets and the like, we got onto what the more generous members of the government may consider to be a train. I don't. The rattling noises coming out of this particular specimen of the London Underground (suprisingly, a tube network as opposed to a music/club scene!) were nothing short of alarming. (And only very little short of the point where one feels the need to leap from the carriage!)

_____________________________________________________________________________________________

A short interlude for the benefit of those who may, through some twist of fate, be interested in discussing problems with the public transport system:

About one in ten tube trains are like that, now. Probably even more - the worst of them being dangerous to a point that your mind shuts down upon boarding, and revives only when the bloody thing eventually takes pity on you and stops. Upon the particular bone-shaker we got into, there was a small army of white South Africans. One of them, in trying to operate a lighter (I think he might have been trying to light a fag - the tube is non-smoking, but I'd prefer to believe he was making a lousy attempt to smoke rather than a suprisingly good attempt at committing suicide) set it on fire. He threw it away, not looking in what direction he was throwing it (again, it's nicer to believe that he wasn't looking, rather than the possibility that he was actually trying to set his girlfriend alight). It landed on the flame-resistand tube floor, burning itself out and tickling Charlie's innate desire to be Fireman Sam. He, while the South Africans watched in awe, stamped on the thing until the flames subsided. The point of all this is that not only do the trains lack a smoke-detection system, but they gave the idiot with the lighter a train ticket!

Thankyou for your time.
_____________________________________________________________________________________________



Anyways, back to my self-gratifying discussion. ("Discussion", that is, in the sense of the word meaning "I type things, and you scroll down past them, leave an abusive comment then leave"): Once in London, we set about finding a pub to start things off in. (I, as it happens, know not the etiquette of inner-city bars. Apparently, if you spill someone's drink, you don't buy them another - you apologise profusely and talk about the weather.)

NO! I can't do it! I was going to give a detailed and thoroughly uninteresting account of the evening's activities, but I sense your patience is growing thin. Since this post is getting far too long already, suffice to say that the highlight of the evening was failing to get into the Mean Fiddler. (That'll give you an idea of just how interesting the evening was!)




Mike, out of the 250 megs/month bandwidth they allocate, I'm on 440 megs/month. By rights they should have frozen my account long ago. As regards disk space, I'm in the clear, having used only 300-odd kilowhatevers.

Biscuit, It won't just dissappear, the proof being that mine hasn't. But if so, what do thay do to us?

Your Royal Higness, I'll have you know, Sainsbury's is not a "piece of shit supermarket", it is a feeder of the homeless and the hungry - I gave some London tramp or other a couple of quid to go and shop there yesterday.

And would you like your Roast Dingo supper now, or after your meeting with the Minister of Agriculture, Crocodile Dundee?

"The average teenager knows the price of an iPod mini but not the price a pint of milk." Not me. Oh no. I haven't the vaguest idea what people are prepared to pay for an iPod, but I do know that milk costs £1.10 from Sainsbury's.



That's by-the-by, however. What I ought to be talking about is, of course, the Blogspirit commercialisation crises. People who don't have a blog won't have recieved this email. Well, I have been happily exceeding my bandwidth limit by about 50% for the last two months or so. So I'm faced with a choice - move to a free blogging service or cough up four Euros ($4.20 or £2.40). I'm perfectly happy to give 'em four Euros, my entire music collection, a matchbox filled with weed and two nights' loan of my little sister in order to keep my blog, but I'm not one to make any sort of stand alone (if I'd been in charge, world war two would have lasted about twenty minutes), so I want to know what you lot are going to do - are you within the measly, puny 10 meg bandwidth limit and therefore happy to stay put having to cough up precisely squat, are you going to move to eBlogger or ModBlog or whatever, or are you going to brass up the bread?



UPDATE:

In view of riteous protest from Matt and DJ, I've noticed what would, in all other circumstances, be a normal, forgivable error. But, since it deals with Sainsbury's, I feel obliged to correct the mistake.


The sentence should, of course, have run:

"The average teenager knows the price of an iPod mini but not the price of a bottle (two litres) of milk."





Rosie, central heating, it seems, hasn't yet reached Morden!

Matt, isn't nature wonderful, eh?

Janelle, what! And you're prepared to put it in writing?

Biscuit, if the entire post is too long, don't read all of it!

Gingery, I hate those sodding boots! Apres Ski boots, as the name implies, are for skiers!

First off, as far as I'm concerned, Ice is snow is ice. Even in cocktails. Both are frozen water, both are cold and both descend from the heavens like pottery at a clay pigeon shoot. Got that straight? Good.


Why, then, do people always decline the offer of an ice-cube fight? And why do ice sculptures sell for several hundred quid, but snowmen get left around to melt like a bacon ice-cream at a vegan commune? And am I likely to get anything other than a smack in the chops if I persue this line of enquiry with members of vegan communes?
But most importantly, where can I get a bacon-flavoured ice-cream?








As the more astute of you have guessed, it has been snowing. May I take this opportunity to tell you that, to me, snow is magical. People tell me this and that about snow staying in the air for various "scientific" reasons, and falling down under certain conditions. It's alot simpler to believe that snow floats in the sky because it's magic. It falls down when tribal rain dances go wrong. Fact.

--Therefore, the best way to prevent snow is to stop people trying to mosh to rain dances.--




It started snowing about midday today, during a physics lesson. The class' attention was brought to the fact when some idiot (without thinking ahead the two seconds it would take to realise this wasn't a good plan) interrupted the teacher in mid-flow, leapt to his feet, pointed at the window and screamed "Oh look everybody! Snow!"

No prizes for guessing which noodle happens to be guilty.



Finally, polar bears. You can't have snow without either polar bears, Santa, Pingu or the Eskimos. And since Santa's currently incarcerated in Guantanamo Bay (long story, maybe later), the Eskimos find snowmobiles don't work in London and Pingu is illiterate, it'll have to be polar bears.

Polar bears, so they say, are the most dangerous carnivores on the planet. Not so. Vinnie Jones is the most dangerous carnivore on the planet. (Actually, it's the giant man-eating hedgehog - Jones is an omnivore (which means he eats Brussels sprouts without complaining too much.) And there are giant man-eating hedgehogs - how else can you explain the extinction of the dinosaurs?) Anyway, polar bears. They're white all over, kill on sight, eat raw meat and couldn't play pool if their lives depended on it. Unlike patrons of the Royal Surrey Snooker Hall, who're all white, kill on sight, eat raw meat and couldn't play snooker if their lives depended on it.


But before I leave you to your lives of snow-free pleasure, where gambolling through sunlit woodlands are always on the cards and people can rain-dance without some idiot putting Nickelback on the jukebox , I must first beg for forgiveness - I own a Robbie Williams record. Sad, and yet very true. It's "Let Me Entertain You", which isn't so bad, is it? Given that I don't also listen to Kylie Minogue or wear skin-hugging trousers, I'm forgiven. Aren't I? Well who asked you anyway, Busted fans!








Biscuit Esquire, either Surrey County Cricket Team or Surrey University will have a partnership/sponsorship deal with Nokia. Bitch.

Sara, alas, I'm not popular enough worldwide to be able to create a fasion item from scratch. (I did, however, have some success wearing a fishing hat last summer!)


Shan, you don't plan to do lessons, do you? If so I'll be in the front row with an apple in one hand and a modem in the other.

And a USB cable between my teeth.


Rosie, If I pluck up my thimbleful of courage and appear before the oh-so-critical eye of the general public with a gentleman's stick, you can be assurred it won't be used to show-off. Merely to poke you with.

Rosie Gingery, You dream about me? Oh, how I'm touched!

Tweed, that's quite a compliment - but then Americans find Sex in the City amusing, don't they? The driving ages in the UK are sixteen for a moped or three-wheeler, seventeen for a car.

Ooohhh, how I love this part of the holidays! Currently everyone I know is frantically dashing about trying to take care of a backlog of homework assingments, essays, assasination contracts and whatever else it is contientious students do. I, meanwhile (having set myself resoloutely against any form of homework at the beginning of the half-term holiday, ensuring I stick to this by feeding my school books to a horde of mad sheep), remain aloof and superior to the situation. Naturally enough, I'm going to be for it when people who weild the mysterious powers of the Ministry of Education demand to see my work, but that's too far in the future for me to worry about right now. I'll just pray, or soften their hearts with photos of tiny puppies, or something. No problem.




Anyway, what's important right now is not the amount of work other people are doing, but the amount of work I am doing. "Did we hear you correctly, John?" I hear you all clamour from your places on the fluffy old rug at the foot of the armchair I nestle in as I digress wildly. Well, my darlings, you did. I am working my lean, manly arse off. (Nice change of image there!) The reason is that I have a driving theory test ere midday on the morrow, which I am confidently going to fail. With bells on. My work consists not of revision, which would merely at this stage enable me to fail less badly, but of taking numerous practise tests on the cheap "Driving Test Success" CD I've bought, the few questions I get right boosting my confidence enough to keep me from phoning up and cancelling the appointment for just about long enough to take a another practise test.






I'd blather on a bit more but the Driving Test Success CD roms of this world do not like to be kept waithing.

Au Revoir!










Shan, another tonsilitis sufferer! Wow! Just think - on the one hand, you go through all that pain, all that suffering, all those funny-shaped antibiotics, but on the other hand, you're medically on the same plaane as yours truly! Carry your germs with pride!

Trishey, England and Wales, being clearly superior to all you horrible Celts, use different bamknotes to those used by the Scots and the N. Irish.

Sorcha, Ooh.. I.. Argh! How dare you say such a thing! I maintain that this weblog bears no relationship whatsoever to A**A or any other supermarket chain other than my true love (whatever you people say!), Sainsbury's. Green Day, Green Giant sweetcorn and the Green Mile all involve this colour scheme, but are any of them of any inferior quality because of thier colour? I think not, you racist!

Elly, Eastenders fan, are you? You are easily amused!


Tweed, the gentleman's walking stick makes a man look sexy provided he also meets two conditions:

1) He is also sexy without the stick, and
2) He isn't a goth.


Bec, while we're on the subject, what do Aussies mean by "Shazza" and "Spozza", however they're supposed to be spelt? (Assuming the Australians have got round to developiing both definitions and spellings for the terms!)

Shan, (again!) do you actually want to say anything useful, or is that merely a way to let everyone know you're back in business?

Rosie, I was expecting him to get mauled to death, but there you go.

That isn't a pun, really. It's more of a meaningless phrase which contains a vague reference to what I planned to talk about and has you all currently wondering what in god's name I'm on about.





Nevermind! On to more important things! Sticks! Having just watched "Jeeves and Wooster", I feel a violent urge to go out and buy a Gentleman's Stick. You know the things I'm on about - a sort of Victorian cane-meets-OAP walking stick type thing. The sort of thing the bloke on the left has here.

I really wish it was socially acceptable for me to carry one of those things!




Anyhow; stick or no stick, I'm violently, terribly, painfully ill. I've gone and got myself a blasted cold, bugger it. I've already had one about a month ago, as well. It's not bloody fair! Either this is a penance for some evil, terrible thing I've done to someone (without realising, damnit!), or someone's put a voodoo curse on me. Either way, I'm currently fighting the little germ thingies (spoken like a true Biologist!) with a combination of Benylin, Lemsip and Strepsils, and am considering putting Neurofen, cod liver oil, Horlicks and boiled sweets into the mix as well. (I have no idea what any of these things do, but I'm pretty sure they're all medical in some way or other. They'll give the germs a bit of a suprise, at any rate!)




Last item on the agenda is (would you believe it!) supermarkets. I start eating non-Sainsburian products at the precise time I contract this disease of mine. Coincidence? I. Think. Not. But that's not really sufficient grounds to torch someone's shop, is it? Shame, that.





Rosie, developments on the Mason/Futureheads Front:

1) Heard Oxygen. Not a brilliant song. (Catchy though, damnit!)
2) Seen Hounds of Love video. Brilliant song.


Charlie, I think your duty is clear. Burn down each and every Asda in Britain. I'm counting on you, man.

Elly, Aha! You must be talking about the set of plastic-based five-pound notes that were released in N. Ireland for the millennium. How, woman, did you expect me to know about that, seeing as I'm not in N. Ireland! (Seems that small fact escaped Trishey's notice too. You two aren't by any chance in the same geography class, are you?)

Dan, there is a Tesco Metro shop within several hundred yards of my house, but naturally enough I never talk about that.

Matt, I'll have you know that I'm every bit as capable as Steve McQueen! Just bring it, bitch!

Betty, you shock and dissappoint me. How could you say such things! What do you want me to do - start up a fucking fan club?

Laura, emphasis is most definitely on the "cheap"!