A Bit about Christmas

And so… another year draws to an end and another Christmas is upon us.  Some of you will have been saving up for it for a long time, others not; some will have started buying your presents in January and be all smug, others will wait until Christmas Eve and will run around like headless chickens. The build-up is always long and drawn out though, with that darn Christmas music playing in the shops, and Christmas shops sprouting up around towns and cities seemingly overnight like angry pimples selling cheap wrapping paper and cards and highly inflammable tinsel and razor sharp baubles.

You might think that I am one of those people who hates Christmas then? A Scrooge of a man, maybe. Well, no not really. I like Christmas, mostly. If anything it is a bit of a whirl wind when it does arrive after such a build-up. My day: I get up, go pick the kids up and bring them to the house where they find out what Father Christmas has brought for them… my mum and dad come round, then it is a case of hurrying to my sister and her family’s for a whistle-stop visit, the returning the kids to their mother’s, then off to Christmas dinner, back to see the kids and feet up and some Dr Who. Phew. But I guess this is the case for most people. But it is a time for family and friends, yet in our quest to see as many friends and family we stress ourselves out.

But what would I want for Christmas, if I could have anything? What would my Christmas Wish be? To be happy, I guess, to have fun, to enjoy myself. But if someone were to say to me, Hey Borg, I am a Wishmaster! Actually, there is a horror film by that name, isn’t there and you can’t really trust someone who suddenly claims to be a wishmaster, no matter how genuine he, or she, might appear… Erm.. Okay, say someone said, Hey Borg, I can grant you wish for Christmas, within reason, okay? There is a recession, even givers of wishes have to count the pennies… so what would you like? I would say, a new car… not a fancy one, just a new one, as I have to travel 30-40 odd miles round trip to work everyday and this might be the current car’s last winter of travelling that distance each day. A Ford Focus would be just fine, cheers, not interested in a Merc or anything… a nice new Ford, cheers Wishmast… er wish dude…

And if I don’t see you or chat again before the big day… Happy Christmas!

A look at a Ford Focus on Dooyoo... I'll have one like this.

A Bit about Students

I will begin this first blog of November by saying that I have never been one of those people who complains about students. We were all students once, weren’t we! However something occurred recently that has forced me to get something off my chest.

Near to the office where I work there is a sixth form college. If I leave work at the wrong time and head to my car, then all streams of student are piling down the road towards me, having finished a hard day studying. They spew forth, a never-ending flow of seventeen and eighteen year olds. Do they move out of the way as you are walking towards them? Hell no. But this is not the cause of my gripe, even though that can be quite annoying.

 

I am not sure, but I have the idea that they think they are indestructible. If I get into work early I can park on the street near the college. But when I get into the car and set off, if the kids are out of college, they seem to congregate in the middle of roads, obviously unaware that a car might well ram straight into them. They are like zombies, brainless and wandering, gathering in groups. The driver, or me, is looked upon as a nuisance when trying to pass them as they stay in the road.

 

What a strange creature the student is then. Correct me if I am wrong, but those staying on to gain A-Levels and such at sixth form should be deemed as being intelligent, wouldn’t you think? But standing in the middle of the road when there is the distinct possibility of being mowed down by a car is far from clever.

This is not all students I hasten to add, but it doesn’t bode well for the future of mankind… does it!

A Bit about Spam

Let’s pause for a moment shall we and think briefly about spam. Now I don’t mean the meat here, that tinned stuff that Monty Python liked to sing about, oh no… I mean all those emails that seem infest our inboxes like, well an infestation of… well, infesting type of things. It is all so commonplace now isn’t it! And the scary thing is we are not shocked anymore, just annoyed.

Now I have never suffered from sexual problems, but I get email upon email suggesting that I might have! I also get emails from so-called lawyers whose client has passed away leaving 5 million US dollars and that I can claim for it somehow… I don’t go into the ins and outs of this as I delete them as soon as I read the first line, which usually begins with ‘On behalf of the Trustees…’ As do I delete those emails that begin, ‘It is with gladness I write you this message, to congratulate you… blah blah…’ You know this is dodgy for many reasons, the most obvious being that no one ever uses the word gladness.

You check your email and think hey, I have got mail, only to find out that the email is in fact spam. I can’t count the amount of times I have won the lottery of something or other. My most recent was when I won a lottery from Nokia. Why or why would anyone believe that Nokia would choose some random email and decide to give them millions of pounds…? And the email addresses they give you to reply to! They might as well read Iamagullibleidiot@yesitstrue.com



No... not this kinda spam...

Spam doesn’t just infiltrate your inbox either. You look at a football score or a news item and scroll down to look at the comments only to find out some Russian woman is dying to meet you in the middle of other comments. Or that you can win Ipad and Ipods galore.  Surely people are all wise to it by now? Surely they realise that these spam are not genuine? And if that is the case, then why do our email boxes still get bombarded by a bombardment of such idiotic emails?

Anyway, got to go now, someone from the Halifax has emailed me to say I need to send off all my bank details (along with passwords)  to him, as the Halifax have lost them… banks, hey! What can you do!

A Bit about Sales Assistants

Okay, don’t get me wrong here, I am not going to spend the next few paragraphs ‘dissing’ sales assistants. In fact, I used to be one! Sales assistants have a tough job at times and can get some really obnoxious customers. No, today’s gripe is about how some of them of them seem to spring from nowhere and ask if you want any help.

‘Can I help you?’

I don’t mind this practice in big electrical stores, or when I am after a sofa. But recently I have been getting this in shops such as Game! I enter the shop and out props a sales assistant and asks:

‘Can I help you?’ Good god! I just want to look at the prices of games and stuff… Christmas is coming… I am after a few ideas. ‘No, I am fine, thanks…’

‘Okay,’ sales the smiling sales assistant. ‘Give me a shout if you need any help.’ Yes… okay.

But is doesn’t really end there. The sales assistant remains fixed to where he is stood, that smile still on his face, watching me walk over to a stack of second hand PS3 games. This is very bad as I don’t even own a PS3. I have no intention of owning a PS3. I might one day, but I don’t yet. I walk over to the DS section. I try to act cool, but I can feel shop assistant’s eyes boring into me. Always eager, always keen. It is quite spooky really.

‘Do you need any help yet?’ No...

‘How about now?’ No...

‘Now?’ No...

‘Did I say to give me a shout if you need help? Did I? Did I say that?’

So, I leave… But the next time I go in, the same thing happens. I have got into the practice of dodging these shop assistants, by fixing a meaningful expression on my face, as if to say, ‘I am fine… I know exactly where I want to look and what I want to look at. I do not need help.’ On other occasions I enter the shop as though I am playing a game of Chess, and anticipating the sales assistants’ next move. Sometimes I will outmanoeuvre the assistant, other times I will not.

I know they are touting for business, and we are amid a big recession. But I know that come Christmas time, when these shops are really busy and I definitely do need help, I will not see a sales assistant for love or money…

A Bit of an update about Slugs

Following on from my last blog, here is a quick update…

The other night I went up to bed and read for an hour. I realised I had left something downstairs in the kitchen. When I went downstairs I saw a big massive yellow slug in the middle of the dining room. It was yellow. It was big. Okay, it wasn’t gigantic… it was big massive, that is a phrase we use here, big massive. Not big, not massive, big massive. Might I just say that Big Massive need not be really big, and can be used as an exaggeration, such as in this context. It was about three inches long. Yes, I know: big massive.

I picked it up and ate it. No… I picked it up with a tissue and chucked it out back. Since then, there have been no more slugs.

Question: How did this big massive slug get in in the first place and where had it been hiding?

New blog entry, not about slugs, to follow soon…

A Bit about Slugs

We begin Friday night’s blog, the gateway to this bank holiday weekend, with a look at slugs. I have been having problems with them, you see, and they have been giving me a lot of trouble… I don’t mean that they have been rowdy, playing their music loud and having general anti-social behaviour… Mind you, they have been anti-social in a way. No, I mean they have been getting into my house. No, not breaking in a steeling the DVD player… but getting in and leaving their gross snail trails all around my dining room. There are no signs of the actual slugs, just the slime.

I have tried putting salt on the floor and have sealed my back door better… but they still get in! I have, today, put salt at the door outside, which I have tried before but to no avail. There are no holes or big gaps in the door in my kitchen/diner so how are they able to get in? It is so annoying waking in the morning and coming down to their silver snail mucus on the floor. I quickly rub it away with the soles of my slippers, but it can’t be good for the carpet can it!

They come sometime during the night, (not every night, they have time off) when we are all asleep, silent predators, creeping and sneaking. But how do they know it is night time… and how do they know there is no one around? I can go to bed at twelve and get up at seven and their trails will be there.

If you have any tips, then let me know.

If not, all I can think to do is one of the following.

1, Set my alarm clock for 3am, go downstairs with a large hammer and squash them all to death… or perhaps forget about the hammer and just pick them up and chuck them outside (however, they might be back).

2, Put salt all around my house. Problem is though that salt goes soggy and also people might think I am crazy.

3, Put slug pellets outside and kill all the slugs in the area? Tempting…
Perhaps I could…

4, Go back to choice one, but capture the slugs and send a message to their leader saying I will only set them free if they promise not to enter the house again. Could sign a kind of treaty, like the Treaty of Rome… call it the Treaty of Roam?? I did a similar thing with gnomes, called it the Treaty of Little People. They don’t like being called gnomes, it hurts their feelings.

But I digress. Which reminds me of another time I digressed, in the mid nineties, I was talking to a friend at work.

Anyway. Slug help needed. Slugs Out!

By the way, I have updated my settings on this blog so everyone should be able to leave a comment now without logging on…

A Bit about Bus Spotting

I will begin this blog with three words:

Bus Spotting… Why?

For those people who do not know and have not seen such a creature, they ‘spot’ buses. Yes, it is true… no, I am not lying. I know people have hobbies and I know we are all not the same, but come on… Bus Spotting? I can understand, in a way, how people like Train Spotting. But not Bus Spotting. I work next to a bus station and when I go out on lunch I see them with their cameras at the ready. They all seem to wear the same type of clothes too. Not duffle coats, but bland tops and black nylon trousers. They look in the need of a good wash too, as do their man-made leather shoes with the man-made leather uppers.

I recently saw a family of them drooling over a… well, bus. The dad was about forty, the daughter in her mid-teens and the son about eighteen. Why weren’t son and daughter out with their mates, or at the very least wasting their lives playing on their Xboxes? I did notice that there was no mother there, she had probably divorced dad years ago on the grounds that he is a complete and utter prat.

I usually see lone Bus Spotters as they snap their cameras at some double decker as though it is the Orient Express, or maybe the Hogwarts Express. I want to go up to them and yell, ‘It’s a bus, it’s a bloody bus!’ I want to shake them. ‘Snap out of it man… it’s a bloody bus!’ But I don’t, of course. But what makes a man think, Yes, I know what I will do, I will take pictures of buses for the rest of my life. I can accept people who collect stamps, or set physical challenges. Oooh, look at the wheels on that bus! Phew, what a sexy bumper that bus has!

If there are any bus spotters out there, then please let me know. I don’t want to offend you… but… why?

A bus is not exciting, it gets you from A to B. The wheels on a bus go round and round…


… all day long…

A Bit about Moaning

Tonight I want to discuss moans. Moans are all around us. There is no escaping moans, or moaners. There are good moans and there are bad moans. Moans are like things that live in the water, they can be cute little fish you want to stroke and love, or they can be floating turds you just want to get away from as quickly as possible. Where do moans come from?

People, of course.

I don’t mind people moaning or having a good moan about something if it is a good, valid moan, so don’t get me wrong here… You know what I mean about a valid moan: someone has a sick relative, has had a crap time, or other such reason… But I just cannot abide a bad, invalid moan from someone. You know the kind of person I mean I am sure. That work colleague/mate/relative/bloke in the pub who bends your ear for what seems like a lifetime going on about something so mesmerizingly … ridiculous!

When you are stood there thinking, What in the hell is this work colleague/mate/relative/bloke in the pub moaning about? And why is he or she moaning at me about it, and why in the hell are they moaning anyway?
Moans about the weather really get to me… It’s cold/warm/wet etc… Get over it won’t you! This is England! Okay, if it really is cold and you have had to scrape an inch of ice off your car windscreen that morning then have a moan… but don’t come to me a moan about it being too hot…! For 364 days of the year here in England the weather is crap, so when that one day of the year arrives when it is warm, don’t say to me, ‘Oh Borg, it’s just too warm isn’t it?’


‘No… it is not too warm… moan at someone else… leave me alone to enjoy this rare bit of warm weather.’

Some people moan about their favourite football/rugby/baseball (for all my US readers) etc teams. Why do you support them if all you want to do is moan about them? ‘Oh, they’ll get relegated this year, they’re rubbish.’ WHY DON’T YOU TRY TO BE MORE POSSITIVE, YOU, YOU… INVALID MOANER YOU!’

Oh, my boyfriend/girlfriend is a right git… Get another one, dump him/her!

My cat keeps trying to eat the fish… Why get a fish and cat together anyway!


So… moan about something worth moaning about, okay? Thank you.

A Bit about Parking Fees

I went to see Iron Maiden recently and to park up near the MEN in Manchester it cost us 10 quid. I also went to the Lakes recently and it cost me £6.90 to park at Grizedale Forest, £5.50 at Tarn Howes (for 4 hours) and (if I hadn’t found road parking it would have cost me) £7.00 to park in Coniston. This all makes me ask the question, Why The Hell is Parking so damn Dear in some places? And who comes up with such ridiculous charges for parking? Is there a panel of greedy bastards who sit around a table and think up the most expensive costs that they can get away with? Let’s face it, when you park up, you are only leaving your car for up to a day on a patch of land that it about 6 foot by 10. So why is it so dear?

You know, if I pay so much for parking, I feel I ought to get something extra, like maybe a free massage or a free map or lollipop. But oh no… You just get a parking spot and maybe free use of the toilet facilities, if you are lucky. And then there are clampers waiting in the bushes, waiting for you to leave without paying… shifty looking clampers… ready to clamp. They wait until you return as well, because if you are a minute over the time you have paid for, they pounce, they clamp…

A cheap day out in the countryside is marred by a high fee for parking.

A trip to the town/city centre for shopping is ruined when you have to pay a jaw breaking parking charge.

Do these people not realise that they will price themselves out of the market one day? Are they Stupid?

I know that it is dearer in other places, and I know it is cheaper in others. I bet you have a story to tell of a high cost in parking… we all have! But why do we stand for this robbery? Because, let’s face it, robbery is what it is and they have us over a barrel. You are not going to arrive at a car park in the middle of nowhere and decide to drive all the way back because the car park cost is a Rip Off. And what stupid prices too! £6.90!!! Who has 90p in change? Might as well just make it 7.00… But no, we let the bastards in there costing panels walk all over us and we say, ‘Ah well. Never mind,’ while they shaft us…

I don’t mind paying more for more, but this is just a rip off… and I hate it when I know I have been ripped off… take buying coke in a pub for example (but that is for another blog)… I don’t like to be ripped off…

A Bit about Farting

I am off camping on Saturday for four nights, so I thought I would slip in this blog before i go, on a subject we all know about.

You know, quite a few of my blogs seem to be inspired/thought up during my walk into work from the car. This morning as I walked into work, a guy (who was on the other side of the road to me) stopped, looked in deep thought, then farted. I carried on walking, laughing to myself, as that’s the kind of thing I do, and he farted again. They weren’t accidental farts too, this guy was proud of them.

Tonight, therefore, I want to discuss farting. I really don’t think we embrace (as a nation) the art of farting enough. People who fart are mostly shunned and grimaced at, when – let’s be honest – it is something we all do.

Farts have other names, too, like ‘trumps,’ or ‘poops’ or to ‘have wind,’ or ‘let rip.’ They can be silent but deadly, denied and supplied… But why do people shun them so? Heck (or hark), even Chaucer wrote about them. Flatulence is what we do… I fart, therefore I am. Yet we can sometimes be too ashamed of our trumps, especially in public places. I have a friend who brews them up and creates the loudest and smelliest farts imaginable. But would I fart in the office at work? Not a chance. Would I fart in front of the kids? You Betcha… Would I trump in a fancy restaurant on a first date? Nope… Would I fart while out with the mates? Heck, I’d let it fester so that I managed a loud one.

We mostly leave our farts for the right occasion. Not a good idea to fart in the middle of a job interview, for example. Tell me about yourself… Well, I am a keen worker, punctual… burrrrphhh…

Is it more a ‘man’ thing? Are men more proud of their farts than women? Or is it that men talk about trumps more? I could have quite an in-depth talk about farts. I wonder if anyone has filed for divorce due to their spouse’s excessive wind. That’s it, you have farted your last fart as my wife! You will be hearing from my solicitor.

Now, no one really comments on my blogs, even though I know I do have the odd reader or two, so please feel free to leave a comment – perhaps you can let me know another name for a fart?

Remember… it’s good to fart.

A Bit about Relationships...

I didn’t do a blog last week and this was mainly due to the ex, my daughter and living arrangements… I won’t go into great detail, but suffice to say that I was obviously to blame for it all, and more, and it was my entire fault etc…

But let's not go into all that, this blog is for fun, light-hearted stuff and hopefully) to make you smile a bit after a hard week… But as I was walking to work this morning, I did start to think of relationships and how they evolve… or should that be ‘transform,’ like a caterpillar to a butterfly, or maybe a mild-mannered person to a werewolf on full moon nights, or a cute little puppy into a raging, foam-mouth beast having caught rabies…

Not that having a relationship is akin to having rabies of course… not much anyway…
I saw a couple walking ahead of me… in fact I heard them first (her actually) giving him grief. They were only in their late teens as well. I thought: I bet they didn’t think their relationship would become like that when they first met that night at the disco… or wherever groovy young cats meet these days. And the same can be said about a lot of us. That dashing young bloke with the full head of hair, boyish looks, souped up Ford… how and when did he become that fat slob on the sofa drinking lager and wearing that white vest with dubious stains on the front?

That slim, cute brunette, with those sparkling eyes and great arse. Had aliens replaced her with that saggy old bag whose only purpose in life seemed to be to nag anything and everything she came into contact with?

I guess there will be more bits about relationships over the course of this blog as it is such a big subject, but I wanted to share this with you for now. I know we all don’t change like that, but it is not what we ‘signed up for’ is it. Perhaps that is why people get divorced. Is divorce not, then, another way of taking back your spouse to the shop and getting a full refund? ‘Sorry, my spouse isn’t working as well as he/she did when I acquired him… some of the parts don’t work, she is stuck in ‘nag mode…’ I want a full refund.’

Hmmm…

Those getting married soon, probably wise to keep a receipt… you know, just in case…

A bit about losing things...

Isn’t it annoying when you lose something? I mean losing something in the house, like your wedding ring or your phone. You search high and low, but to no avail… you retrace your steps, wrack your brains, ask yourself: where the heck did I leave it? I sometimes think it is gremlins, you know. That or mischievous ghosts, because the thing that went missing usually turns up out in the open in a spot you have looked over 100 times in your search for missing item.

Recently I had such an experience, but I am pretty sure it wasn’t gremlins or ghosts, and was probably just me being a bit of a plonker. I lost my watch. I looked around the house, wondering where it could be. I had been off work, and was planning a trip to Morries therefore wanted to find my watch before I set off. I thought, when do I usually take my watch off? When doing the washing up (I can’t afford a dishwasher). I checked in the kitchen.. nope, not there. When I am sat watching a DVD in the evening, chilling, might take it off and leave it one the chair… no, not there either. When I was going to bed… not there, not in my bedroom. It was not in the toilet, under the sofa, on the kitchen table, in the bin?

Then I had a thought. I took some washing upstairs the night before. I put some socks in my sock drawer… I went to my bedroom, and there it was in the sock drawer. I must have put the watch on my bed, and when I scooped my socks up to put them in the drawer had scooped the watch up as well. Either that or the gremlins and ghosts did it and wanted me to think I had done it.

So, the moral of this story is, if you lose something, then check the sock drawer… it might be there. This does not really apply if you lose a car in the car park… chances are that you parked it somewhere else. Or someone nicked it. You won’t find it in your sock drawer. But things like keys, phones, missile launchers, and of course watches might well be!

A bit about the Walk into Work

Does anyone like their walk into work? I was thinking that today as I, well, walked into work. I decided that the walk into work can have a bearing on how you will be when you get to work itself, be that arriving on the ward, at the office, on the scaffold… whatever.

Work is a means to an end, and you work to live, not live to work, but each day at work for most of us requires a walk into work. Work is a chore we have to do, so the said walk into work should be as stress-free and incident-free as possible.

Five nice things to see on the way into work:

1. A pretty lady.
2. A nice warm sun in a cloudless sky.
3. A pretty lady who smiles at you.
4. A squirrel on a rooftop.
5. A squirrel who smiles at you.

These can obviously be changed into a man, all depending on which way you are inclined. Perhaps you don’t like squirrels? You can change that too. But such sights could make you feel uplifted and once you get to your place of work they can still be with you. In some cases your colleagues might think, Hey, Borg is in a good mood! Look at that gleam on his little face! Hey, I feel happy just looking at that happy fellow’s (chiselled and handsome) features…

Five things you DON’T want to see on the way into work.

1. A naked fat bloke (and again you can choose woman instead here) riding past on a bike.
2. A splash of dark orange sick on the pavement, which obviously arrived there the night before from the insides of someone who had too much to drink and decided to eat a pizza as well (there is an empty pizza box nearby).
3. A Doberman… on its own…
4. Grey sky, drizzle, chill…
5. A weirdo who you think is following you and wants to mug you. How do you know he is a weirdo? Because he is giggling to himself and keeps repeating the word ‘Butchery’ all the time.

How are you going to look when you arrive at work having seen any of those sights? Not very happy, and your colleagues will notice that too. Hey, Borg is a right sour puss today. Look at that glumness on his (chiselled and handsome) features!

So, when your colleague arrive at the office one day, just bear in mind that he or she might have had to walk past sick, devils dogs, madmen, drizzle, or naked fat people on bikes…

A bit about Swearing

Today, I wish to talk about swearing. You might think swearing is good, you might think it is bad, or maybe you don’t give a shit… (sorry, that was just too predictable wasn’t it), what I mean is, perhaps you are kind of in the middle and think swearing is fine when required and not so fine when it is not.

I am not a prude by any means, and I can swear as well as the next man, but I think there is a time and place for swearing. Used for comic effect, a good old swear word is perfectly acceptable (no shit!). To relieve a moment of stress a swear word is good too (Oh cock it!), or when you are annoyed (Piss!) or if you can’t be bothered with something, or someone (Fu@k it/’em!). I have censored that bit in case my children read this one day…

So to recap, swearing is okay in both moderation and at the right time. What I can’t abide is when a person’s every other word is the ‘F’ word. This just shows a severe lack of intelligence to me. A person who cannot find the right word, because his, or her, vocabulary won’t allow this, due to the fact that said vocabulary is limited. ‘Can I have an effing can of effing coke, Mr effing newsagent bloke, ta, effing great to obtain such an effing purchase from you!’

Swearing in front of a child is not good at all. I hardly swear in front of mine, and it really irks me when I overhear some idiot swearing when they are with their children. A mild ‘bloody’ is okay, but not that ‘F’ word, or the T and C words… A bit of ‘arse’ is okay, or a little ‘crap.’ But the serious words are said so casually aren’t they. Come one, what are they going to grow up like, idiot? Yes, they are going to swear, are you proud of that fact? And when they swear within earshot of my children, well I just want to grab hold of them beat the crap out of them.

I don’t obviously do that – if I want to teach my kids that swearing isn’t cool (dude) I certainly don’t want to show them that violence solves stuff. No, at best I will give them a dirty look. To hear a child swear is quite sad too. It is a bit like hearing an angel fart, so out of place and just… wrong. No one should ever have to hear an angel fart or a child swear. But I guess they think it’s big, it makes them look all hard and mean – the kids not the angels that is…!

A Bit about Queuing

I know it’s been said – many times, many ways, as the song goes – us British love to queue, don’t we! Don’t we? Well, no, actually as a British person I don’t like queuing at all. In fact I hate it. I would rather eat raw sewage than queue up (well, perhaps not, but you get the gist). I am pretty sure most people think the same way as I do. Love queuing? Love wasting time stood in a long line of people waiting to pay some sales assistant some cash? Nope!

I hate queuing and I hate the fact I have to queue! You know, I reckon whoever came up with the notion that us British love to queue was probably drunk at the time, or one drugs. I have never, ever in my life seen a British person in a queue who was happy. I have seen them try to jump a queue and face the wrath of the other queue-ees. I am talking serious tutting here and intense moaning. Hell hath no fury as a queue-ee scorned…

Most of us want to get served and out of the damn shop as soon as possible. But isn’t it always the case that whichever queue you go to is always the slowest? I feel like I have been cursed by the god of slow till operators. Take last night… I went to the supermarket, was in a bit of a rush, surveyed the tills and opted for the till with least people at. (I like to call this the till of least resistance). The lady behind the till did not stop talking to the woman who was before me and then as the woman was paying she questioned whether the tuna she had bought should have been on a buy one get one free offer. Till lady rang for assistance whilst looking at me with an ironic smile and a ‘sorry about this, love,’ and a fat co-worker came to help. It took him five minutes to check out the tuna situation. They should have, indeed, been BOGOF, here’s a refund. Why can’t you go to customer services for your refund! I almost cried at the woman. I want to buy my food and get home… I have had a busy day at work! Eventually I escaped the supermarket and off home I went. God I hate queuing almost as much as I hate shopping (but that is another story).

Isn’t it also frustrating when shops don’t have enough staff at the tills? You stand there with your goods in hand waiting while a pimple-faced teenager has to deal with the barrage of shoppers singlehandedly. This pisses me off. Why give them your custom for such poor service? In fact I have been known to leave the goods and go, make for the exits and fresh air outside.

Post Offices are bad too, and whose bright idea was it for staff to take their lunch hours at, well, lunch time? This is the only time I go to the post office, as I am at work during the day. It is also the time when most people go to the post office. Once there I see a huge queue and four people at the tills. I stand and wait with baited breath for the mechanical voice to say ‘Cashier number three…’
Ways to combat queuing:

1. Rush towards a queue holding a pass (can be any pass, library card will do) shouting, ‘I am on urgent police business, let me through to the till!’ Pros: you will get served quickly. Cons: you might be arrested for impersonating a policeman, or if someone actually believes you are a policeman, they might start asking you police related questions, such ‘where is the nearest place I can put on a Lottery ticket?’

2. Shout, ‘Wow, Katie Price is outside!’ The queue-ees (well, some of them), will immediately hurry outside and you will be able to get served straight away. Pros: you are served quickly, you get the satisfaction of watching a load of sad gits run outside only to be disappointed. Cons: they might come back, and some of them might be big…

3. Pretend there is a bomb threat?

4. Pretend you are a chicken. Pros: Many a shopper will want to get away from you as quickly as possible. Cons: you might like being a chicken and stay that way, strait jacket awaits…


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Bits about Cars and Bikes...

Cars…

Since our office at work closed and we all moved to the Preston office I have tried various ways of getting too and from the city. Well, two actually… by the train (see my other blog thing) and by car. Today I am going to discuss cars. I can now say I know the M55 like the back of my hand, and I could travel along it with my eyes closed, which I sometimes do if I am tired (just kidding).

But by travelling along a busy motorway each day one gets to know various motorists and their little ways. Not the actual people themselves… I don’t wave to them and say, ‘Hi, how are you this morning. Bit chilly/warm/wet (please delete as applicable) today, isn’t it!’ What I do mean is that I can tell various types of driver.

Middle lane huggers… why? There are no vehicles whatsoever on the inside lane for miles and miles (in fact there is tumble weed)… why are you in the middle lane? Move over! Yet they don’t do they. They stay there defiant, like Gandalf: ‘The dark fire will not avail you, Flame of Udun! Go back to the shadow. You shall not pass!!’

Bully boys… I have decided to do what everyone should do with bullies, and that is ignore them. I am overtaking in the outside lane, I am going over seventy… Just because you come right up my arse flashing your lights in a bid to make yourself look like a cock, doesn’t mean I am going to move over. I will do, but when I am good a ready.

Those people who overtake you and cut in in front of you. ARE YOU TRYING TO CAUSE AN ACCIDENT, PRICK? No, seriously, do they actually realise what they are doing?

But the fun doesn’t end on the motorway…

When I come off the motorway and head along Garstang Road (this is the road that leads into Preston), I find that someone is usually behind me trying to pass me. I don’t mind BMWs or Audis at it (these people are rich and stupid, they cannot help it), but when you find a car such as a Citroen C4 badgering you, you have to ask yourself… why? Perhaps the driver is a beamer man trapped in a Citroen’s body? Maybe his ‘other car is an A4?’ Or is there something more sinister at work? It is a little known fact that if you rearrange the letters to Citroen C4, they spell out ‘Child of Satan.’ Oh, actually they don’t do they… anyway… If you record the sound of a Citroen C4 and play it backwards, you hear chants of ‘I like demons…’

Seriously though, there are some very good and courteous drivers, and I don’t think all Citroen C4 drivers are like that…

…or do I?


So… Bikes…

In the background I have a typical biker song on: ‘For Those About to Rock’ by AC/DC, so the mood is set. I guess I could have chose ‘Born to be Wild,’ or ‘Ride like the Wind,’ but I don’t have those songs in my CD collection.

I am not going to slag motorbikes and moterbikers off here (not much anyway), as I used to own my own little Honda CG125 as a young lad. Also, bikers on the whole are quite big and mean and wear lots of studs, have names like ‘Smoke,’ or ‘The Kid.’ They drink gallons of beer and have long beards. You don’t want to upset a man (or woman for that matter) who has a beard. History has shown us that a person with a beard should not be angered. Look at Genghis Khan! And let us not forget Father Christmas – we all know that if we are bad he won’t bring us any presents on Christmas Day…

Oh, how I loved my little bike, though: the feel of the wind upon my face and all that, but I had to get rid of it so I could start driving lessons and begin my life as a motorist. In those days, though, there wasn’t as much traffic as there is nowadays and you are dicing with death as a bike rider these days. It’s not so much the bikers, it is all the careless motorists there are in existence, plus the ones high on drugs and drink. Driving without due care… excess alcohol.... Heck, if any of my two children decide to get a motorbike when they are older I think I might arrange for it to be stolen, or let the tyres down so they can’t use it!

I respect those bikers with the big Harley Davidsons as they roar past me on the motorway (not only because a lot of them have beards). I guess I am quite envious of the freedom they have, yet I am a little bit concerned too. If their beards get too long, the hair might get tangled in the spokes and cause an accident. Sometimes, though, I do feel they are going just too bloody fast. I live on a main road and hear them thundering past at speed sometimes. There is a speed camera not far off and usually one of two things enter my mind as they zoom past: 1. They might end up losing their licence, 2. They might end up in hospital/the morgue/the back of a lorry* *delete as applicable.

So… on the whole I don’t mind motor bikers… I said on the whole.

The kind of bikers I really abhor are the ones on the small 50cc mopeds that sound like pissed off bees trapped in a jar. You know the kind I mean don’t you! (These are driven by teenagers who don’t have beards). They weave in and out as though they are made of jelly, they go fast, then they go slow, they latch onto the back of your car and don’t appear to be looking where they are going… ever! They seem to have the attention span of a goldfish and they usually travel in packs of three as well, taking turns at leading (still without looking where they are going). It’s hard to shake them off as they are like small creatures attached to a whale… Best to let them pass and latch on to some other bugger…

A bit about Trains...

I sometimes get the train to work – I have done this since the Blackpool office closed and we all moved in with the lovely people at Preston. Before Christmas, during all the snow and freezing ice I got the train more often, but now I just get it occasionally. Why, you ask? Why not get it every day, save petrol, save wear and tear, keep away from the hustle and bustle of traffic, along with it’s road rage and arsehole drivers. Why? Because trains are, on the whole… crap!

There is one train that runs once an hour from Blackpool South to Preston, and there have been occasions when it has not even bothered to get as far at Blackpool South, but stopped at St Annes, leaving all the pissed off commuters standing at the platform to get even more pissed off.

The other day (or t’other day, as we say up North), I got the train from Squires Gate. It is a small station, but there is CCTV and a tannoy thing that tends to work only occasionally. As I arrived at the stop, the tannoy went off and a rather posh sounding lady informed all commuters that ‘Violence and vandalism would not be accepted at that station.’ I was pretty miffed as I was just considering what kind of violence and vandalism I might try that morning. Instead I pulled my Ipod out of my pocket and began to unravel the headphones. It was, though, a pretty ludicrous thing to tell the commuters. As if an announcement such as that would deter any would-be Violence and vandalisers? Would they quickly put their spray cans away or fold up their flick knives with a, ‘Oh, well, guess I won’t be doing any of that today – the posh lady said so!’ I don’t thing so.

That lady has spoke before, and she likes to inform us that the next train to arrive at platform two is the 7.45 to blah blah. This is quite strange, as there is actually no platform one. Not unless this platform is in another dimension, or another reality, like Platform 9 ¾… Perhaps this platform (one) is the train to hell. And only the dead can board it. I fear that day when I hear her say, ‘The next train to arrive at Platform 1…’

Other than inform commuters not to smoke or that there is CCTV in operation, the lady does not speak much. One day I would like her to say something like, ‘Wassap!’ Or to play a few little songs and have a chat with us, like Chris Evans on Radio 2.

Trains are okay really, when they arrive. They are far too expensive though. In a world in which the government want us all to be a bit more greener, they should not be charging £6.90 for a return to Preston from Blackpool. And they should be laying them on more often! Might as well go to work in my gas guzzling, pollution-creating car…