This is why I've not written anything on here for eons

It's time to apologise once again for neglecting this already threadbare weblog.

I’m truly sorry.

Someone, somewhere, pressed pause on his or her 'Fucked-Up-Small-Town-O-Vision' remote and I found myself freeze-framed, insensible and living in my childhood home with no job and too many prospects.

I regressed.

All that occupies my once overactive mind is my next hit of Diet Coke. I’ve become quite addicted.

I’m now as socially engaging as a dado rail but marginally less decorative.

I hope to write things of minimal importance on here soon.

I'm no Judith Chalmers, but at least I try

Ahoy there. I’m terribly flustered. I’ve also not written anything on here in quite some time. I apologise most profusely, but this blog isn’t really going anywhere. You know this. I know this. Brian Blessed knows this.

Aaanyway, here’s the LOWDOWN:

The rail networks have made a considerable amount of money from me.

I went to Derbyshire for a short while and sat in a cave. It was nice but my cat’s halitosis is getting out of hand. She opened her mouth and everything good in the world died.

I then spent a few days camped alongside a stretch of Welsh sand. It appears I took much of it home with me, stashed away in various orifices. I’d always wanted an exfoliated cervix.

I returned from the beach with a gammy eye and a frazzled red triangle for a nose which people no doubt attributed to a grog addiction. There was just about enough time to don my prole attire before I headed out to London to seek my fame and fortune.

London is a ridiculous place. For London folk, cufflinks are a genuine shirt accessory and not a pointless coming-of-age gift. You learn to love the protective film of filth that accumulates throughout the day. Everyone knows someone famous. You gladly pay eight pounds to enter what is essentially a pub that plays music at an increased volume. Mojitos are a real drink.

I’m now in Cardiff for the last week EVER. I’m tired of living out of rucksacks and gallivanting around here, there and nowhere. I’m a filthy nomad and leave a trail of pants, make-up and despair wherever I go. It’s time to establish some sort of base camp. For practical reasons, this’ll have to be where I grew up: the charming Derbyshire town of Ashbourne.

In Ashbourne, the only thing that punctuates the whistling of the tumbleweed blowing through the empty streets is the sound of locals sharpening their pitchforks. Perhaps I’ll go mad and end my days weaving baskets out of spaniel hair or something. I’m quite frightened that I’ll never leave.

That’s the news so far. To summarise: I’ve avoided reality for long enough and now it’s time to stop being a twat and do something worthwhile.

My life is curiously devoid of socks.

Goodbye. x

I've got a degree. Oh, so have you. And you. And you. And you.

I’ve neglected to inform this blog that I recently obtained a degree in Journalism. I’m not entirely sure of what’s going on in Darfur or what the fuck Marshall McLuhan meant by ‘hot’ and ‘cold’ media (I’ve always found it to be tepid) but still, I can conduct presentations based entirely on the ambiguous sexuality of Spongebob Squarepants and be awarded a 100% pass rate for my efforts. I can’t think of a better way to spend tens of thousands of pounds.

I could’ve celebrated in the usual manner: y’know, a spot of racketeering, blackmail, money laundering, gang warfare, pimping, extortion, bribery, kidnapping and smuggling – the same old shit.

Instead I felt massively underwhelmed and made some underwhelming flapjack and a cup of underwhelming tea and went to bed while it was still light outside and got up the next morning for another day of underwhelming telesales work and then some more underwhelming tea and possibly another piece of underwhelming flapjack.

So yes, everyone has a degree. It’s no big deal. I’ve done nothing worthwhile with my life for four years besides intermittently conforming to various student stereotypes and notching up vast reams of debt. It’s over now and that’s that. I never spent my summer holidays inoculating impoverished children in the third world. Sorry.

Graduation ceremonies are exceptionally boring. I had to walk around all preened and uncomfortable in a silly black dressing gown while my parents took lots of pictures and moaned about the things that people above the age of fifty love to hate. It was essentially a shambles. No one knew where they were supposed to be and my contemporaries and I were shepherded down long, empty corridors like the intended victims of an academic holocaust. Instead we were treated to two hours of eczema-inducing tedium, where the only respite came in the form of a beautiful, inspirational and downright dazzling speech by George Monbiot.

Afterwards, I felt a little teary and stared into space for a while. I believe this is commonly known as ‘reminiscing’. I should’ve worked harder. I should’ve appreciated the opportunity to expand my pitiful knowledge base. I shouldn’t have done that, that or THAT. I should’ve written, drawn and photographed more. I should’ve looked after myself better. Bah.

These feelings lasted about fourteen minutes. Not one to be entirely enveloped by an unfeasibly large jiffy bag of despondence, I went and booked myself the cheapest flights that the internet could muster. Fortunately for me, I was headed to swanky Milano*. It was hot in Milan. I got bitten by flying malaria vessels. I don’t think I’ve got malaria. I can't be bothered to write about my holiday.

And now I’ve no job or permanent abode and I’m going to have to go and live with my parents until I learn how to face up to reality. I aim to be paying council tax within the next five years.

THE END.


*And if anyone even mentions my carbon footprint I’m going to poke them in the ear with something pointy and abrasive. I’ve not left the country for two years AND I don’t drive AND I recycle everything AND I turn the lights off when I’m not in the room AND I only boil enough water for my cup of tea AND I’ve thought about putting a brick in the cistern but decided against it for fear of inducing a plumbing catastrophe. You can just piss off. We’re all fucked anyway.

Pets

Today I very nearly bought myself a pet Quail. We’d deliberated over what type of pet would be suitable for student house full of transients (me), newspapers, wires and men with large beards.

Ferrets: Far too urine-soaked and hyperactive. Animal ADHD and piss don’t make the best of bedfellows.
Chipmunks: Too unpredictable. When was the last time YOU encountered a chipmunk at close range? They look as though they’d think nothing of attaching themselves to your head like a furry woodpecker and gnawing a large hole in your face. Perhaps I’m getting them confused with beavers.
Cats: Too high-maintenance.
Dogs: As demanding as cats, only far more stupid.
Tortoises: I like the idea of watching television with a tortoise on my lap, but they’re slightly out of my price range. Also, I’m not enamoured with the thought of being tremendously outlived by one’s pet.
Various assorted small rodents (Guinea Pigs, Hamsters, rats etc.): Boring, wriggly and potentially life-threatening due to their propensity to chew through electrical cables.

I’ve no idea why I thought it’d be bad news to adopt one of the above as a pet, but a good idea to buy a quail and cherish it like a stunted, mute foster child who just so happens to lay blue eggs every day. I finally came to my senses when I considered my lack of career, permanent abode and financial prospects. I don’t want to have to take a small bird to job interviews with me; I’m just not ready for that kind of commitment.

One day I’ll have a menagerie of weird and wonderful beasts. Until then, I’m aiming to visit a Llama farm in the Forest of Dean and quite possibly sneak one home with me. We could ride through the streets of Cardiff like that naked woman did in Banbury Cross, except I’ll be very fully-clothed and riding a Llama, not a horse. We could throw sweets at children (in a non-threatening, completely unpaedophilic way) or shout messages of support to disheartened drivers as we weave through traffic jams with colourful ribbons in our hair/fur and bells on our feet/hooves. It’d be beautiful, just like a scene from Into the West, only Gabriel Byrne wouldn’t be my dad (shame) and I wouldn’t be an Irish traveller and it’d again be a Llama and not a horse I was stealing AND I wouldn’t ride it to the sea and let it drown. That’d just be mean.

I do quite want a Llama as a matter of urgency. If there's any Llama thievery in South Wales or the West Country it's got ABSOLUTELY nothing to do with me. I can assure you that this post is merely theoretical and I'm not concocting some hideously complex plan to steal any Camelids*.

*I'm going to use this word in polite conversation on a regular basis from now on:

'Janet, that woman over there looks very much like a Camelid'

-OR-

'Damn these bastarding South American ungulates. They come to our country, steal our women and eat our grass. It's really not on. And Llamas are the worst Camelid of them all. I'm almost certainly going to create a petition on the Home Office website.'

-OR-

'I'm immune to your camelidic charms, Llama-face.'

There's an old man snoring somewhere RIGHT NOW

You’ve probably heard Rihanna’s latest single so many times that you want to jab yourself in the temples with said umbrella until you render yourself thoroughly dead. I’ve not listened to the radio, been in a shop or been party to digital television viewing for some time, and am therefore completely out of touch with the chart offerings of today. It is for this reason that ‘Umbrella’ is relatively new to my unfashionable ears and my, it’s a corker. I’m a big fan of Rhianna and her ambiguous and vacant-yet-beautiful face, but she should lose the obligatory and entirely unnecessary rap intro/solo if she’s to remain in my favour. Off you pop, Jay-Zzzz. You were good, once.

Anyone who has had to share an umbrella will know that they’re about as romantic as waking up next to a man wearing verruca socks on BOTH his feet. Rhianna evidently hasn’t ever resided in South Wales. Umbrellas may be a novelty in the Caribbean, LOVEY, but they’re a necessity round these parts. One minute you’re strolling along arm-in-arm with a beau; the next minute a gust of wind attacks you and there are prongs EVERYWHERE and a film of red is obscuring your vision and there’s bits of your face on the pavement AND all you can hear is the echoic screams of passers by. Brollies are evil incarnate. There’s also the power struggle between holder and holdee. Height differences only worsen this potentially relationship-crushing activity.

Oh, I don’t like umbrellas. I wish I was a duck. Scrap that, ducks are wank. I wish I was coated in Teflon, or Clingfilm, or grout. That way I wouldn’t have to bother walking around with such preposterous contraptions on the many occasions when precipitation dilutes the perennial dullness of the Welsh skies.

Let’s assume here, that she’s referring to a figurative rain shelter as opposed to the canopy of doom that we here in (Great) Britain have to contend with on an all-too-regular basis. Would Rihanna grant you hypothetical refuge from the allegorical rain under her metaphorical umbrella?

Probably.

In the hair-frizzing, ankle-soaking, disappointly cold real world, she’d almost certainly tell you to 'FUCK OFF AND BUY YOUR OWN FUCKING UMBRELLA-ELLA-ELLA-ELLA', and you'd put your hood up and try not to let her see you sobbing furiously into the lining of the flimsy cag-in-a-bag you purchased in the Millets' sale because you knew it'd come in handy one day.

Sorry, did I ruin that song for you? I'd better not dissect Whitney Houston's 'It's not Right (But it's OK)' then. Suffice to say: she'll not eat the skin of her baked sweet potato ever again.

Ten Reasons why my Father is Brilliant:

1) He has a big beard.

2) Until I was about fifteen, he used to cut my cheese on toast into small squares and decorate it with a ketchuped smiley face. He also did my homework for me on many occasions. I don’t know how wrong all this is.

3) When I had friends round, he often procured a large bottle of pure alcohol and let us dip our hands in and set them on fire. I don’t think their parents approved.

4) He has tolerated my mother for thirty years. I’m thinking of writing to the Queen and requesting that he be rewarded on the New Year’s honours list for this mammoth undertaking. As an aside, Father tells me that Mother has taken to wearing sunglasses atop her head at ALL times. I witnessed this at the weekend; she never once wore them over her eyes. I think she may even wear them in bed.

5) Despite being the clumsiest man in the entire world, he is seemingly indestructible. Notable examples include the time when he walked into a glass door and split his nose open, and when he severed an artery with a grind saw and hid in the downstairs toilet while he tried to sew himself back together because he thought Mother would chastise him for his afore-mentioned clumsiness. He had to go to hospital after I followed the trail of blood and panicked a little.

6) He likes Kate Bush.

7) He’s a secretive old bugger, but I understand he was in the Mountain Rescue at some point. I’m glad he wasn’t in the Cave Rescue. See, he somehow thought it’d be responsible to break into a closed-off pothole using bolt-cutters and take his children down what was essentially a muddy tunnel of fear. A few months later, the same pothole was featured in an episode 999 when the shaft had collapsed and squashed some cavers. My dad IS safety.

8) He persists in wearing a bright orange fleece while shopping at the local Sainsbury’s. Friends who work there find it hilarious; I think he’s angling for a job.

9) He possesses a vast wealth of knowledge on more or less every subject imaginable, yet still forgets my name and how many children/grandchildren he has and our faces AND all of our birthdays AND where he parked his car.

10) He can make anything out of anything, from industrial-sized refrigerators (from scratch) to silver rings.

He’s never going to see this belated Father’s Day tribute, but my dad really is better than your dad.

So THERE.

There's no Jolly Hostess

Nothing beats the enjoyment of a cup of peppermint tea on a tar-meltingly hot afternoon. Nothing. The sheen wears off somewhat if you have to buy a cup of regular tea from the drinks machine because it fails to serve hot water and you need the plastic cup as a receptacle for the hot water you’re ‘stealing’ from the staff kitchen as you’re too lowly to be able to use ceramic beverage vessels and might get a right ticking off if you’re caught with a prohibited mug. I lead a dangerous life. So dangerous, in fact, that I’ve written about my work’s drinks machine several times on this blog.

At the weekend, I spent fourteen hours travelling. My vast experience of cross-country travel has enabled me to identify three key stereotypical figures always present during a coach trip:

Firstly, we have The Smelly Man. No matter where I’m destined or where I position myself on the bus, there will always be an assault to my olfactory organs seated directly in front of me. I’m evidently a magnet for pungent males. This particular gentleman was so very offensive to my nose that I made an attempt to breathe through my mouth for a considerable amount of time, only to stop when I realised that the aroma was so strong that I could actually TASTE the sweat. Later, he reclined his chair so that his waxy hair was less that forty centimetres away from my face. I promptly whipped out my Olbas Oil and sniffed it with as much gusto as a fifteen-year old experimenting with poppers. It didn’t help.

This leads me to my other observation. I was sniffing away at my smelling salts when I suddenly became aware that a teenage girl was eyeballing me like a crime scene. It wasn’t just a case of my overdeveloped paranoia; there will ALWAYS be someone who stares at you for the whole journey. They’re usually sat on the seat opposite, and seem to find your every breath inexplicably engrossing. Granted, I regularly contort my rather odd face into all manner of strange configurations, but it’s disturbing to discover that during a moment of deep self-evaluation, someone has been watching the way your eyebrows do That Thing. Read a magazine or look out the window, just DON’T look at me. I’m not going to be doing anything more interesting than accidentally squirting myself in the face with Satsuma juice or attempting to sleep by resting my head on my knee.

The third and final coach passenger of note is The Lovebird. This individual is either travelling across the country to be reunited with their paramour or leaving them in a sticky puddle of longing. At Sheffield bus station, I watched this journey’s deserter prise himself away from his pigtailed fancywoman with considerable difficulty. She wasn’t keen on letting go. And as he walked up the aisle to find his seat, she was making all sorts of wild hand gestures, presumably by way of saying goodbye. And then there were tears as he mouthed sweet nothings through the glass. If I was anything other than an emotional leper, this might’ve moved me. Instead, I noted that her shoes were scuffed and unattractive and her handbag had ‘The End of the World is Now’ emblazoned on the side. Perhaps that’s why they were so desperate not to be parted. Perhaps.

I prefer train travel.

This is it.

Do you want to know something really great?

I’m going to tell you anyway: I’ve almost completed my degree. I’ve done so in a slapdash and shabby and laissez-faire manner, but completed it nonetheless. I’m beyond caring.

Anyway, I was wonderfully squiffy last night. My spleen was drunk. My face was drunk. The inexplicable freckle on the palm of my left hand was drunk. Even my little toe was slurring its words. I also may have sat on a car for a while.

Upon awakening, I was blissfully unaware for about forty seconds. I really didn’t know a thing. I was alive, but that was about all. People attempt to achieve this level of inner peace by spending all their savings on trips to stay with Buddhist monks in Nepal where they have to sleep on stone slabs and purge themselves three times a day.

Save yourself a tenner or two and just drink a socially unacceptable amount of vodka once in a while. I still feel delightfully numb.

I think that thinking is overrated.

The most horrific aspect of the morning was discovering evidence suggesting that I may have eaten half a Swiss roll in the same way that one would eat a chocolate bar. I don’t even know where it came from. Oh god, it’s truly awful. I’m just going to pretend it never happened. And now I’m drinking Sanguine Orange-favoured Orangina and wishing that I’d just gone for the regular variety because this one is quite reminiscent of acetone and feels as though it’s damaging me in at least three different ways. I did actually drink nail varnish remover once, but that’s an altogether separate story. Perhaps I’ll write about it here sometime.

P.S. I’m plucking up the courage to go next door and ask them if I could possibly collect my stool from their garden. I imagine that they’ll have a bemused face.

About two weeks ago when the weather was real and not just a bad headache, I was on the roof of my kitchen and sitting on a silly little white plastic stool. Unfortunately I forgot about all about it and the wind, or possibly a cheeky sparrow, has transported it to the back yard of my next-door neighbour. I hope they think it’s been raining seating or that it’s a sacred gift from the heavens.

I’m never going to get it back.


P.P.S. I’ve just written a great deal about my drunkenness. Please don’t think that I’m a hellraiser. I actively repel hell.

Laundering

Please note: After writing this post I realise that I sound a bit like I’m on some form of narcotic. I can assure you that I’m not. The most potent substance I’ve taken today is salad cream.

Washing clothes is an intensely cathartic process. There’s something wonderful lurking amid the whirr of the tumble dryers, the smell of warm fabric softener and the uniformly bland décor.

It’s quite possible that these visits to the launderette are the only time that I ever really think about anything of any importance. My normal life is cluttered. Profound thoughts occasionally pass through my brain, but they do so in a fleeting manner as they try and dodge the timetables, bank statements and other boring life-detritus.

Tonight I sat for five minutes and stared intently at the graze on my thumb; the result of an unfortunate incident with a cheese grater. It’s not going to be there for very long. There won’t even be a scar. In a month, I won’t even remember its existence. In fifteen years’ time, I won’t be able to recall anything about this week. Nothing marks this period of seven days as any different from the (hopefully) hundreds that will ensue. Everything about youth is so transient and fickle. Most of my waking day is shaped by the feeling that there’s a gaping hole my life. It follows me around and looms over me when I’m trying my hardest to have a good time. I’m not a fan of this gaping hole. Halfway through the spin cycle, it occurred to me that what’s missing is The Future. I’m craving something that doesn’t even exist yet. I’m aimless. I’m feckless. And after June, I have no plans. This frightens me intensely. I, like the millions of others in exactly the same boat, need to find a purpose. It’s easier said than done.

If I manage to remember these worries when I’m old and grey, I’ll laugh my head off.

The philosophical magic of the launderette only extends to a four-metre radius. I’m now back home and safe in the company of menial, mind-numbing tasks and a laptop.

I might put a plaster on my thumb.

'I'm Not That Kind of Girl'

Me neither, Anastasia, but that doesn’t mean that I want to hear your transatlantic Janet Street Porter-esque warbling in three shops AND one gymnasium in the space of four hours. It’s just not acceptable.

I’m going to a posh ‘event’ next weekend. For the next seven days I’m going to be entirely preoccupied with finding the PERFECT dress/hair/face/skin/shoes. This means that I’ll have to spend a great deal of time hauling myself round the shops/leisure centres/hairdressers/beauticians like a floundering seal. I hate everything about trying to look good. These establishments pump out motivational music like there’s no tomorrow. Just because you’re playing ‘No Scrubs’ by TLC doesn’t mean that I’m going to purchase some rhinestone-encrusted brown crocheted hotpants or wax my eyebrows off. It’s never going to happen. Besides, I’ve already ingested enough empowering rhythm and blues for one week, thanks.

I think I’ve become immune to the lure of marketing strategies. I don’t give a fuck if Kate Moss or Derek Jacobi or Beverley Craven have ‘designed’ a collection of clothing. This could be why I’m still sans frock. I just don’t like ANYTHING in the shops. I might make one myself out cereal packets and twine. It’s probably already been done.

And I haven’t the foggiest how to go about transforming myself into a ‘real’ girl, even if it’s for one night only. I’ve been told that real girls actually have a skincare routine and don’t just half-heartedly smear a baby-wipe across their faces once in while. Real girls brush their hair before they go to bed. Real girls get pedicures.

Well, they can all cock off. I might get a spray tan though.

On a separate note: why don’t I ever see people sheltering under newspapers when it rains? Is it that less people read newspapers or that umbrellas have become an affordable commodity? Should I even be worried by this?

Fraudulence

So. I am two-and-twenty years of age. It is massively underwhelming. I still employ idiocy in every crevice of my life. I still engage in debates about what type of fish I’d prefer* to be raped by. I continue to be absurd. I no longer throw digestive biscuits at people at parties. I’m forty-seven per cent more disillusioned than when I was twenty-one. By the time I’m twenty-five I’ll be so disillusioned that I’ll lose control over my bladder and have to use a commode.

It’s the London Marathon today. Unfortunately I couldn’t make it this year, so instead ran to the shop to get some bread. It was ALMOST as gruelling. Almost.

The man in the shop was surveying me with pitying eyes. I suppose I looked a trifle jaded. I avoided the ‘With Added Omega 3’ variety and instead opted for something a little less wholesome and a little more processed. I took (right) said bread to the till…

ME: Can I purchase this bread please?
SHOP MAN: But is it bread? You’re telling me that it’s bread…
ME: It’s actually a live chicken. Can you not tell?
SHOP MAN: No, there’s a million pounds in there.
ME: I’m a bit hungover. I don’t think I could deal with the disappointment of opening this bag and there not being money in there.
SHOP MAN: There’s definitely money in it.
ME: If I take this home and it turns out to be a loaf of sliced bread and NOT money, I’ll come back and demand a refund. I’m a citizen. I have rights.
SHOP MAN: That’ll be one pound fourteen pence please.
ME (Handing over correct change): There you go. I’ll be back.
SHOP MAN: Bye
ME: Bye

The contents of the bag were gluten and disappointment.

What a wanker.

P.S. This conversation ACTUALLY happened.
*Perhaps ‘prefer’ is the wrong word. I’m not a sicko.

Brian on the Brain

Click here!

It's a Nice Day for a White Wedding (Apparently)

Despite attempting to set the record straight, several of my colleagues are under the impression that I am not eternally single as they may have previously assumed and am in fact MARRIED to a realio, trulio man.


This is only a little bit true…

The ‘priest’ was ordained by a Californian chapel via the internet and the ‘marriage’ venue was a beer garden. My good husband and I have only hugged each other about three times EVER, so the chances of the marriage being consummated are about as likely as Prince Harry joining Mensa. Even after explaining this about five times to my astounded contemporaries, they continued to quiz me on the state of my ill-fated union:

GIRL #1: Are you going to get divorced?

ME: No, because I was never ACTUALLY married.

GIRL #2: If you meet a really nice man and you want to get married, will you tell him about your divorce?

ME: No, because it was a bit of spirited tomfoolery between some buddies and NOT, at any point, a real marriage.

GIRL #1: Don’t you think you were a bit young?

ME: Gah!

GIRL #1: What did you wear on your wedding day? Was it in a church?

ME: I sported a rather fetching towel.

GIRL#1: Really?

It is evident that no amount of reasoning will get the message across. The girl who sits next to me at work is marginally deranged and nothing I say or do will change this. I now have to accept the fact that in the eyes of my lovely place of employment, I am a MARRIED PERSON and should be approached with caution. I can see the undiluted fear in their eyes already - they’re terrified that I might bring up the subject of babies, erectile dysfunction or dinner parties. These, as we all know, are the three main phases of a healthy marriage.

I’ve quite enjoyed my years of wedlock. It’s an open relationship and I don’t actually have to talk to or see the other party. If more marriages were like this then perhaps there wouldn’t be such a high divorce rate in this country.

The Peculiar Case of the Vanishing Money (And Other Woeful Tales)

So it transpires that NatWest are indeed fuckfaces and have completely raped my finances without a second thought. There’s a reason why ‘banker’ rhymes with ‘wanker’.

Now I have no money to go and visit the famille de Ville this Easter. Instead I shall be left rotting in a call centre where the lift smells like bad sandwiches and the drinks machine serves tea with granules of coffee floating on the top. Delectable!

While we’re on the subject of tea, I URGE you to go out AT ONCE and purchase yourself the biggest big box of Whittard’s Spice Imperial tea you can find. It is quite possibly the most lovely cinnamony, orangey, vanillary, clovey beverage that will ever pass your lips. I only have four teabags of this stuff left and this makes me very sad. And afraid.

I'm a fool for yooouuu

Yes, yes. It is April fool’s Day. I neglected to forge a grand scheme of trickery, and instead had to settle for a few prank phone calls in the wee hours of this morning. Most of the recipients were either too chicken to answer a withheld number or were just asleep. And besides, I am rubbish at both concealing my ‘distinctive’ (read: nasal) voice and getting through a sentence without giggling profusely. If you got an answerphone message from South Wales police last night then chances are it was from me. Yes, I am both big AND clever.

I’m hoping that NatWest are playing an elaborate and cruel April fool’s trick on me. Mr cashpoint and I had a minor altercation earlier when he refused to ejaculate into my hand. When I pressed him further, he revealed that I was one hundred pounds overdrawn, despite the fact that I’ve just been paid AND I haven’t spent any money AND I’ve cancelled all my standing orders. In the words of the red simpleton himself: Money’s too tight to mention. Every time I think I’m regaining a miniscule amount of control over the untamed money monster, it bites my face off. When this happens, my credit rating slides a little lower. It’s now sunk lower than the earth’s crust and is currently residing somewhere deep in the lower mantle. I’m never going to get a mortgage.

I’m going to ring the fuckers up RIGHT NOW. Fucking fuckfaces.

There's no smoke without smoke

Yay! New blog = fun times and inane twaddle.

Tonight I am wanting very much to go to Twisted by Design. It is a bi-monthly club night in Cardiff that I used to go to sometimes, but now, not so much.

It just so happens that on Monday, the smoking ban will come into force in Wales. This means that tonight will be the last time EVER that people will be able to smoke in Twisted. I’m a full supporter of the ban, but this particular event will be exceptionally strange without its trademark haze of smoke. What the fuck will people do with themselves if they can’t smoke? It’s the kind of place where people sit and smoke and chat and sometimes dance. Occasionally they wear tutus too:



That’s me in the window. I have absolutely no idea what I was doing.

I shouldn't really go out tonight as I drank a bottle of red wine last night and ended up puking rather violently. Does red wine turn everyone's sick black or is there something drastically wrong with me? I'm not sure if I want that question answered...

THE BEGINNING

Let me tell you a story:

There was once a little girl who enjoyed nothing more than spending her hundred English pennies of pocket money on Kiwi fruit and bananas at the tiny greengrocers across the street. During her visits to this olde worlde emporium, she was often accompanied by the Bagpuss, the family cat. Bagpuss loved the child dearly, despite the fact that she picked her up by her neck. Bagpuss started vomiting blood and died of leukaemia. Let’s not talk about Bagpuss.

The girl had a mum and a dad and a sister and a brother and a half brother and another half brother. One of the half-brothers was always getting into trouble, but the child didn’t know much about it because whenever this happened there would be whispering and she would be told to play outside. In the summer the garden was overgrown and overpoweringly aromatic. The lemon balm plant was her favourite. She used to pluck a leaf from the shrub whenever she passed. It was always rather threadbare and looked pathetic next to the rosemary, which was thriving. She didn’t like the smell of rosemary.

Sometimes the soil would reveal exciting things for the girl to store away in her box of treasures. By the time she was six, she had collected forty-seven fragments of clay pipe, eighteen shards of glass, fifty-five bits of blue-and-white porcelain and four old glass medicine bottles. She wondered if her garden had been a rubbish tip in the olden days.

Once a year the girl and her family would stuff themselves into a little panda and drive to north Wales. The panda had a name (Gilbert) even though it was actually a car and not a panda at all. During the journey, the girl’s father would recount the tale of how, while in a field on the Welsh border, he had once caught a meteorite in his bare hands. She didn’t believe this story.

The family holiday was always based in a hut hidden away in the mountains of Snowdonia. It was only accessible by a single-track road littered with follies and waterfalls. The hut was basic in the purest sense of the word. The sleeping quarters were reached by climbing up a metal ladder and opening a heavy wooden trapdoor. They consisted of a few mattresses and a single lightbulb hanging forlornly from a beam. The little girl didn’t care much for the shower room; it was full of spiders and smelled like dead people.

TO BE CONTINUED...