Category Archives: London

Another Unpleasant Valley Sunday

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Well, I woke up Sunday morning
With no way to hold my head that didn’t hurt.
And the beer I had for breakfast wasn’t bad,
So I had one more for dessert.
Then I fumbled in my closet through my clothes
And found my cleanest dirty shirt.
Then I washed my face and combed my hair
And stumbled down the stairs to meet the day.

Kris Kristofferson (who liked a slurp)

There’s no nicer weekend than the weekend when the clocks go forward. It’s the recognised start of Spring, the end of those long, cold dark nights and those short, cold dark days. Makes a man feels good. Unless, of course you caught the BBC weather forecast that says it’s going to snow heavily on Thursday. Snow. In April. Someone’s having a laugh and, as usual, it’s not me.
Adding to my woes this fine Sunday morning was the fact I had to go to work. So let’s get this straight. I get a one-day weekend AND I lose an hour in bed because of the clocks going forward ? Spiffing! Oh, and I’ll be in my duffel coat again by mid-week. Lovely.

To most, the switch to British Summer Time means they get up at 10am on a Sunday, rather than 9. For the insomniacs among us, who have the added privilege of sleeping on a bed of nails, it means waking up at six o’clock as opposed to the usual five. Christ, I’m tired. I’m definitely gonna change that sodding mattress this month. The springs poking out of it are giving my back the pattern of a Maori’s bicep.

I trudge wearily downstairs to put the kettle on. The birds in the garden had been up for a while and were in full, happy chorus. They’d all remembered to put their clocks forward, smug bastards. Tea in hand I switch on the tv and am greeted by the build-up to the Melbourne Grand Prix. It’s raining in Melbourne. Good. I only went there once and it was pissing down when I arrived. Looked like Croydon to me, not this sunny playground the Strines carp on about all the time. So it’s sunny in London and grey and wet in Melbourne? Good. I drank my tea then I went back to bed. It was still only 7.15.

I doze fitfully for an hour-or-so, but eventually have to concede that I am indeed off to work. The bathroom takes a battering as I off-load and de-clagg. More tea, a bowl of cereal , I pause to listen to Lewis Hamilton moan about his team’s strategy. They’d made him come into the pits and change tyres, thus scuppering his chances of winning. He was sulking like a seven year old boy stopped by his mum from having a kick-about in the street. I suspect that, now that Hamilton has sacked his dad from the management team, he wasn’t expecting anyone else to tell him to stop playing and come in to change.

Oh well, off to work. With the sun trying it’s damnedest to elbow it’s way though the clouds, a fine morning greets me. The daffodils on my front lawn are up and out and, ignoring the obvious Welsh connotations, look beautiful. In fact, the patterns they make on my lawn, along with the odd bluebell and the fox and cat shit, really is a design classic. Brer Fox and Brer Cat are heading arse-first into a goolie-kicking session, if I ever catch them. The words Ebay and Spud-gun enter my head.

So, with a spring (or rather a winter) in my step, I leave Railway Cuttings and stride up the deserted street (deserted as every other fucker is in bed, sleeping through the lost hour). At the end of the road I stroll into the station car park. It’s 9.20 and the Farmer’s Market is setting up at the far end of the lot. This is one of the Blackheath success stories. I may have mentioned before that there’s little more to the village than 6 curry houses, 7 pubs (sic) 8 hairdressers and 93 estate agents. If you want to rent a flat, have your highlights done and scoff Nepalese food, you’re in luck. There is a heel bar (Cobblers to the Pope), the world’s most expensive electrical store, a video store (closing down) and some kind of weird, gothic, travel agents which I’ve never seen anyone go into or come out of. Think of the fancy dress shop from Mr Benn and you’re nearly there.

There’s a Londis or a Happy Shopper, or something along those lines at the top of the hill (and, if it indeed is a Happy Shopper, they should be closed under the Trades Descriptions Act: no happy shoppers nor shopkeepers are to be found therein), plus a couple of little not-very-convenience stores in the valley of the village. But there’s nowhere you can buy a decent joint (meat, that is, not what the sell in the pub toilets round here), fresh veg, a good selection of dairy products (blessed indeed are those cheesemakers) and suchlike.

So with 10 minutes until my train was due (so therefore 17 minutes before it actually did) I afford myself a stroll around the now-familiar market stalls. Most were either setting up, or had done so and were waiting for the 10 o’clock start bell. There’s a fella who does a mean line in bacon butties and many of his fellow stallholders were chomping on his wares. The smell was torture. My previously-devoured bowl of Special K was having a hard time justifying itself as a proper breakfast. Top of the shop, nearest the station, is the vegetable stall. It’s one of three veg stalls in the market but is always the most popular, with the longest queues. The reason escapes me. Perhaps it’s cheaper than the others? though everything is relative, of course.

Nothing in this market is cheap. Keeps out the riff-raff, love. It’s selection of carrots and turnips, many of which have grown into rude and amusing shapes, will set you back a few quid more than the Tesco/Sainsburg “Washed-and-Scrubbed Winter Veg Selection (only 89p)” yet there’s always a long line of new-age yuppies, blue-rinse tories and the Barbour Brigade willing to through their hard-inherited sovereigns at these puveyors of fine-and-still-muddy produce. If you don’t believe queuing for a cauliflower could start Class War, come along with me next Sunday. You’ll be amazed by what and who winds me up.

Nextdoor we see a table, and a cash-till atop next to a pile of pears and a mound of apples. Now I know you’re imagining Cocker-ney yelps of “Ooo want’s yer Apples ‘n’ Pears-ah?” eminating from behind the table. No such luck, I’m afraid. This stall is selling organic apple cordial and organic pear squash. No, I never have! And judging by the lack of customers, nor has anyone else, since you’re asking.

One bloke I do hand over the Helen Reddies to is the Crazy Cheese Guy. Now I don’t know from where this aimiable, smiley man comes from , but I bet it ain’t South London. South Minsk would be a closer guess. Our conversation follows the same pattern each week:

“Wuld you like sum chiz, sur?” he asks
“Yuz pliz” I reply
“Crizy chiz?” he offers
“Crizy Chiz pliz” I confirm. Well, it keeps me happy for a few minutes.

Where the aforementioned Crazy Cheese is made, and from what I know not. But my little East European friend may as well leave all his other stock behind in the cow, sheep or goat from whence it came. It really is superb stuff. If you like the roof of your mouth being ripped off when you bite into a crusty cheese sandwich, then Crazy Cheese is the cheese for you. Go buy some. Pliz.

There are fishermen from Essex (“luvverly bit a Dover Sole, my sahn”); the milk and yoghurt woman, who sells lovely milk, but which keeps fesh for about three hours, then turns into yoghurt; and the roly-poly butcher with the complexion of one of his un-cooked cumberland sausage. At first meet, he seems a jolly enough chap (as us fatties tend to seem, at first meet), but after a while I’ve gotten the feeling that he actually thinks he’s doing me a favour by selling me 6 lamb n mint bangers and a leg of pork for 28 quid. No wonder he’s jolly. Fat cnt.

Finally there’s the bread guy: The Pointy Guy. Now he may-or-not be related to Mr Crizy Chiz, but it’s a fair bet that when he was growing up he was expecting for be fighting Chechen rebels before he got too much older. But whatever his upbringing in the Motherland, his bill of fare is sensational. Rosemary bread; walnut and raisin bread; olive bread; soda bread; bread bread; ciabatta; focaccia (which I believe is the BNP’s battle cry); baguettes and croissants. All of this, of course, is news to the Pointy Guy. He doesn’t know what he’s got.
You might go and say “A small ciabatta and a rosemary bread, my fine fellow”. He will give you a blank stare, then point to any loaf at random, raising both eyebrows and ask “Thiz wun?”
“That wun. And that wun” you reply (I can’t help myself).

I put it to you that, Farmers Market or not, the last time our Pointy Guy was on a farm he was wielding a shovel on the Russian Steppes rather than swinging a scythe in the Weald of Kent. And as for being a baker? Do me a favour. I reckon you might find him and his mate, 7 am every Sunday morning, on a street corner in Orpington waiting for a lift from a bloke called Dave (who makes bread and cheese in his garage). Dave drops these two blokes off in Blackheath, unloads the van of produce, leaving our two heroes to sell this stuff, completely unaware of what they’re purveying. Dave then buggers off home to have a bit of Sunday morning humpty with his (or someone else’s) missus. Hope she put her clock forward this morning. He might come too early.

Oh, and after all that, I missed my train to work. Arse.

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24 Hours from Ulcer

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The train standing at platform 4 is shite

Word has it that the next series of 24 will be filmed in London. Apparently it opens with Jack Bauer boarding a DLR train at Lewisham, heading for the Olympic Stadium. 24 hours later he’s still on it. Jack get’s into a heated argument with a Train Captain (ticket collector, to you and me) over which Zone Stratford is in, and has a difference of opinion with a fat bird who wants the window open. In episode 4 he gets a tad miffed with the bloke sitting next to him who’s iPod is blaring our through his earphones. Ok, it may not be most exciting of series of the popular show, but it’ll be the most realistic. I spent a week on the DLR last Tuesday, at least that’s what it felt like. It has to be the most useless mode of transport, even by London standards. How the fuck they expect to ferry the poor sods who turn up to the 2012 Olympics is beyond me. The sight of Jack Bauer whizzing along at 2 miles an hour, his plans going awry cos there’s no lift service at Pudding Mill Lane is unlikely to give a boost to the ratings.

I say all this, but I’ve never seen a single episode of 24. Neither, come to think of it, have I ever watched Lost or Prison Break, or MadMen, or Heroes or CSI…oh I could go on.Twin Peaks, Hill Street Blues, or Spooks or Thirty Something or Curb Your Enthusiasm. I have tended not to tie myself into any of these long series as I’ve never been confident I’ll be sitting in front of the TV at the same time every week to watch the next episode. There are places which serve beer which tend to be open when these shows are aired and they tend to jump out on me on the way home from work.

I have resisted the temptation to tape them as I’ve never enjoyed the pressure that puts you under. Falling behind for a one or two episodes then trying to watch them the night before the next one is shown on TV is stressful, and all the time your colleagues in the office have water cooler chats about the fantastic ending to last night’s show. Trying to go a whole day or two without hearing what happened in the episode(s) you’ve missed: Now that’s real pressure. (Anyone remember The Likely Lads “England F… ” episode?)

Don't nod off, Stanley, CSI is on in a minute

Pre-digi days there’d be piles of VHS videos under the telly with stuff I’d recorded but never gotten round to watching. Piles of 4-hour tapes (8 hours worth of longplay, if you like the quality of playback to simulate watching tv through a sock) with badly scribbled then crossed out labels, reading LIVE AID, DO NOT ERASE (that one was stolen from out of my car in a pub car park), or HOW THE WEST WAS WON (LP) . Or unlikely combinations of viewing as you filled up any blank tape space you had: ZULU/ENGLAND vrs FRANCE W.CUP SEMI F/O.G.WHITSLE TEST/TUC CONF. 1989. There they’d sit, with their tatty white stickers, clogging up the tv cabinet or the bookshelves, never likely to be removed from the shelf until I needed to tape over them again (always remembering to put some sellotape over that clip in the corner I’d broken off to protect them.)

Not much has changed now that I’ve gone all hi-tech and TiVo-fied. I’ve got 30 hours of stuff to watch stored on my TV’s hard drive, plus the whole of the last series of In The Thick of It, (which is the exception that proves my rule as I did make it home to watch all of those.). 30 hours worth! That’s 14 movies. I’ll never get round to watching them, cos every day something else is released so I go onto Amazon and buy that, then something else is shown on TV one night which I’ll record , never watch that either and the backlog just gets longer and longer.

Did I remember to Videoplus the snooker?

But having said all that I find myself believing, and saying “I have nothing to watch”. How come? Well, a couple of years ago the Incumbent, bless her, bought me (us) the box set of The West Wing. We devoured it, were obsessed. We lived The West Wing, we breathed The West Wing, we ate West Wing sandwiches. We quite liked it. What’s more, we could watch it at our own pace. One a week. One a month. Eight in a day. As many we wanted to watch WHENEVER we wanted to watch them. Being a good few years since the show ended on TV, there were no colleagues in the office discussing last night’s episode. It was sensational telly and we didn’t want it to end. Then it did. Bugger.

So what to watch now ? I had this collection of films I’d taped and had never watched, but I couldn’t be arsed to see them now. There was this show which everyone was talking about called The Wire. “Oh I can’t believe you don’t watch it, Mike” they would say. “You’d really like it Mike”.
“Listen” said I, ” I’ll tell YOU what I like and what I don’t, thankyouverymuch”. I dug my heels in, I refused to join their gang. Two months after the last episode of the last series finished, we bought the box set of the whole 5 seasons.

I'll tell you something, bro, I haven't understood a fucking thing you've said in 3 seasons

Fuck me. What a show. It was and is the best thing ever to be made for telly. Sensational. All-day-long sessions watching Avon Barksdale, Stringer Bell, Omar Little and the rest were completely compelling. I just wanted there to be another 5 seasons. But there wasn’t. So, after that had finished I conned Mrs B into watching Band of Brothers with me (I’d seen it before, but I could watch in on a loop), telling her it wasn’t about war but about people. To my surprise she now thinks THAT’S the best show ever made. I’ll never work em out. Finally, this January we started on the Sopranos box set. That’s a bloody good watch too, and another that no-one can believe I’d never seen before. Oh well, I have now, alright? so shuddup!

Now there’s a vacuum, a void in my viewing schedule. The Pacific (Band of Brothers with palm trees) is launched on Sky Movies soon. I won’t be watching, for all the reason’s stated above (and I don’t have Sky Movies). I shall pre-order the whole set from Amazon and try to survive til then. But I will need something to get my teeth into while I wait. It’ll probably be MadMen, it won’t be Lost. Maybe Kiefer Sutherland armed only with an Oystercard, stuck on a train at Deptford Bridge is my only option. Unless I watch The Wire again. Or Phoenix Nights. Or World at War, or…

Return to Stratford, please

What’s My Motivation for This?

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It’s the little things in life that really get up my nose.

People who step onto a train (or into a lift) before you are able to get off. Wouldn’t it be easier for me to get out first, thus creating room on the train? Never mind common courtesy! Then there are those others who, when you’re waiting for a lift having pressed the button and made it light up, come along in front of you and press that button very same button again- as if you hadn’t thought of doing that. “IT’S ALREADY LIT YOU CABBAGE !! I ALREADY PRESSED IT!!”

They are right up there with people who, while you’re stood holding a door open for them, say nothing and just saunter through. Not a thank you, kiss-your-arse, NOTHING. Or worse, they walk through the open door not even bothering to take their hands out of their pockets to take the door from you. Bastards.

Short people using umbrellas in public places. They are a danger to my eyesight. I’ll go blind soon enough, thank you very much, and don’t need any help from you attacking my retinas with your steely spikey spokey pokey brolly. Then again, I really despise those who take something from you, whether a cup of tea, a pencil or whatever and who not only don’t say thank you, they don’t even look at you by way of acknowledgment. Grrrrr…

While none of these annoyances, taken individually, would force you to unleash the forces of hell, imagine how you would feel if all of the above happened to you in the space of one morning?

Well , welcome to my world.

My bad morning had started early, (as early as last night, in fact) as I’d lost my glasses. This was the first time it’d happened to me in the six weeks since I’d been viewing the world in glorious HD. I was worried, and it irked me. I’d either left them at work, or in the pub, or on the train, or somewhere. Bugger. Still, I was so knackered last night, couldn’t be arsed to worry about them, so I decided to sleep on it.

I woke up this morning and immediately started to worry about them. Bugger. And Charlton had lost again.

With my spare pair of specs (£9.99 Foster Grants from Sainsburys) in my top pocket, I set off for work by my usual train. I don’t like my spare pair. Ok, so they’re approximately £337.21 cheaper than my lost pair, but they do look every bit of that. Ill-fitting, cheap-looking plastic frames and, in all honesty, I can’t see out of them. Dunno why I bothered really.

Having squinted my way through the morning’s reading matter, the train started to pull in to my stop. I made myself ready by the door, the train came to a halt and I pushed the button to open the door. I hadn’t even time to put my worst foot forward across the threshold when a 50-something, short, fat woman pushed her way through the doorway ARSE FIRST, while she closed and shook her umbrella dry. As she try to push her way in, I gave her the gentlest of knees in the sphincter. She stood bolt upright. “Oops, sorry!” I lied, as I squeezed through the rather small gap between her and the doorframe. I didn’t bother looking around to see the look on her face, I have a decent enough imagination on me. I stomped off to work.

In reception, the queue for the coffee bar was too long to worry about so I headed straight for the lift. One of the three lifts had been out of action for weeks so the wait for one of the other two can be irritatingly long. I pressed the button. Nothing happened for a while. Then it did. A youngish bloke holding a grande latte walked in front of me and pushed the button again. I assume he must have been able to hear me snorting behind him. Then he pressed it again, and then taptap…taptaptap, like he was sending morse code. Amazingly, after only seventeen presses of the button, the lift arrived. I said nothing, I just ticked.

Up to the second floor and as the doors opened a girl from the features desk made a feint to get in before I got out. I can only assume the black look on my face, resplendently framed in cheap plastic glasses, put her off. Only a nutcase would wear them, surely. She made a tactical retreat. “Thank you” I barked, forcing a smile.

Down the corridor I huffed, to the door at the end. I could hear footsteps behind me and as I reached for the door and I turned to see a young, suited bloke about ten yards away coming towards me. I pushed the door open, went though and then waited, holding the door for him to take. He walked straight through the gap, saying nothing, leeaving me holding the door as he walked past, like I was his sodding doorman.
“My pleasure” I called after him. He looked over his shoulder and smirked.
“Pig” I added.

I can’t tell you.

The next twelve minutes went relatively well. My mood was much improved by the discovery of my glasses, in their case on the desk where I had indeed left them the night before. Hurrah! All was again well in the world, so I went to buy a round of coffees. Returning to the office, I passed them around to the chaps, and all but one thanked me and offered me the cash. The last bloke, never took his eyes off his pc, just held out his hand for me to give him his cup. Having grabbed it from me, he slurped it and set it down on the desk, eyes still focussing on the screen.
“Oh, don’t mention it, Phil” I squarked.

He didn’t.

I walked over to my desk and booted the waste bin 8ft across the room. Another colleague sniggered, sensing my well-disguised exasperation.
“Well, Mike, if you didn’t wanna work with clowns, you shouldn’t have joined the circus”

And it was still only 10.30.

KimAd.

That Sand Gets Everywhere

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I wonder what happens when one finally snuffs it? Where do you go? Upwards to meet Robert Powell ? Downstairs to shake hands with the fella with the fork? Neither? Maybe you just lay there to eventually become a future layer of sedimentary rock, or to ‘ave worms eat thee up’ and end up in some yet-to be packaged growbag at Homebase? To be honest I don’t think about it too much, merely hoping that when my time comes I shall be wearing clean underwear and be monumentally in debt to Nat West Bank (one scenario far more likely than the other.)

I’ll wager young King Tut would have had a pretty strong opinion of his fate in the afterlife. Even at the tender age of 19, Tutankhamun would have been convinced in his own mind that he, all his worldly belongings buried with him, (including 130 walking sticks), and any other poor sod unfortunate enough to locked in the tomb when they No-More-Nailed the doors shut would be off to a better place. A place where the water was cool, the wine rich, the women all beautiful, bi-curious virgins, and the lbw laws were in favour of the bowler. (It’s a little known fact that Tut bowled useful medium left arm in-duckers.)

Sadly for the young man, a peaceful everafter lasted only up until 1922 when his tomb was found and his body exhumed for modern scientists, historians and the like to gawp at and poke about. For nearly ninety years, the world has shared a fascination with Tutankhamun and his life story. Egytologymania became a word I just made up. When the exhibition of the treasures found in his tomb came to London in the early 1970s, we commemorated the event at school by painting and drawing pictures of the famous death mask. I vividly remember my painting looking like Liberace- more fairy than Pharaoh. This awkward memory returned to me today when I saw the photo of the reconstruction of Tut’s face, based on scientific scans of the boy king’s mummy. I didn’t even know they showed the Catherine Tate Show in Egypt.

Tate and Tut. How very dare you !

So anyway, I read that rigorous tests on his skellington (correct) and DNA have revealed that Tut was the product of a relationship between his dad and his auntie. From this inter-family naughtiness he inherited several genetic disorders, he had a club foot (hence the walking sticks) often suffered crippling illness, and was probably killed by a virutlent strain of malaria, and his nickname around the Giza was ‘The Lucky King’. Ok, I made that last bit up too. But what an undignified way to go for a once, presumably, proud and powerful man? I suppose it could have been worse for the poor sod: they could have discovered he was Welsh.

Nevertheless, it’s doubtless not how he envisaged eternity as he lay amid the secluded dunes, during one of those rather long Cairo summers (made worse with all those German tourists in town). There he would lay, a teenage boy, dreaming of all that fun just waiting for him with those lovely virgins, before he would hurriedly have to wipe himself off with a sheet of papyrus and button himself up, as he heard Auntie’s flip-flops coming round the corner.

Sadly for our man Tut, like anyone who has had to catch a train to Manchester, he’d have to wait for his fun on a virgin. In his life-after-death he would have to be content having pieces nicked off him and holes bored into him in the name of science, and suffer his dynasty being mimicked by 21st century comediennes and London-based Egyptian nutters. And The Bangles, of course.

What will the scientist of the future discover about my life if my body is dug up 2,000 years from now? That I was descended from a long line of scaffolders’ knee-wrenchers? That my Guinness count contained traces of blood? That my eyes failed me at an early age due to a life of looking at photos and chronic self-abuse (hence the 130 boxes of kleenex buried with me)? Will they be able to tell that I could never get the hang of badminton, or that my highest score in any form of cricket was 48? A cursary glance at my teeth and vital organs should reveal my love of a wee dram and a bacon buttie (there will still be traces between my teeth, no doubt), and the simplest rectal probe will demonstrate just how many curries 45 year-old men used to eat every week in the early years of the 21st century.

Will the British Museum stage an exhibition of the treasures discovered buried with me? My pith helmets? My fascinating collection of lime pickle jars? All the ointments? The Status Quo OBE Albums? I doubt it. And to be honest I hope they don’t. Leave me be, up there with the virgins and the vino and, like King Tut, a Sphinx’s inscrutable smile.


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Fatty Owls

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The Null Stern- bring your own pyjamas

News reaches me of the world’s first zero star hotel. The Null Stern Hotel (slogan: ‘The Only Star is You’) in Switzerland is a converted nuclear bunker where, for for six quid (about 1 Euro at present) you get a military-style bunkbed for the night, hot water bottles rather than central heating, and earplugs to blockout the din of the ventilation system. Who gets a hot shower in the morning and who’s shower is cold is determined by drawing lots.

All very shocking, I’m sure, but does it really deserve no stars? And if it does, I’d like to nominate a few more which deserve that honour. One that immediately springs to mind is the lovely en-suite double I once stayed at in Morecambe. En-suite, it technically was, but the bathroom was of Fawlty Towers proportions. I literally had to open the door to lean forward to wipe my bum. Lovely. Especially for my partner.

Then there was the establishment in Blackpool where a turd was discovered in the cleaner’s bucket (though that may have been left there by one of the guests), not forgetting the B&B above The Swan in Bath with 1 room, five beds and a sink, which one night trebled-up as a wash basin, urinal and bidet.

Closer to home there’s Blackheath’s very own Clarendon Hotel, which stands above the village as a beacon of overpriced misery, a monument to peeling paint, a seven-star shabby shit-pit, spewing out streams of swindled Spaniards, irate Italians and dejected Gerries onto the surrounding streets and environs as they spend a gruesome night there as part of their coach trip round Britain. They’re easy to spot wandering around the bars and eateries of the village, all with that same bemused look on their faces as they struggle to come to terms with where their tour company has billeted them for the night.

At one newspaper I worked at, district men and foreign correspondents were put up in the Clarendon for the night if they were called to the London office. They threatened to strike until the company eventually found a proper hotel.

I stayed there once, during my divorce malarky. I stayed in a single room of such drabness, smallness and all-round lessness that, even in my misery of a break-up, I pitied the poor French or Japanese sods who have to put up with ‘traditional quaint British hospitality’, and fork-out a fortune for the privilege. I can’t remember exactly what they charged my for that room, but it in the neighbourhood of a hundred quid. What must the visitors think of us?

On the other hand, sometimes the guests are actually worse than the hotel: On a rugby club tour one year, and after a particularly long and boysterous first night in our hotel, an ashen-faced hotelier staggered into the breakfast room the following morning to address us.

“I’ve been in the hotel trade for 35 years and that was the the worst behaviour I’ve ever seen” he whimpered.

“Stick around!” came a voice from the back.

It makes an abandoned nuclear bunker in Switzerland seem quite appealing.

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The Battle of Waterloo Sunset

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One evening a while back, I was walking across London’s Waterloo Bridge when I heard the all-too familiar sound of footsteps running up behind me.
“Oh bollocks!” thought I “here we go.”
Fist clenched, I swiveled around to confront my would-be assailants. To my relief, and not a little surprise, I came face-to-face with two elderly couples. The biggest came closest to me. I estimated him to be about 65, and he was dressed in generic old bloke going-out garb: Flat cap, checked shirt, v-neck jumper, windcheater, corduroys strides, shoes with nice soft comfy soles. He and his wife and a couple of friends were painting the town grey, or at least urine yellow. “I could take him” I reckoned.

He spoke to me in a Sandhurst accent.
“Where’s the London Eye?” he asked, sharply.
“Pardon?” I replied.
He tried to explain:
“The Eyyyeeee” He was making a big circle shape with his hands, smiling and nodding as the British do when speaking to a stupid foreigner who not sprechen ze Englisch. He continued, and still with the sign language.
“The Eyyyeeee??? The big wheeeeel ??? People go up in it??? Where? where, hmmm ?”
I’d had enough:
“I know you’re talking about, mate, I was just waiting for you to say ‘please’, you rude bastard!”
He leapt out of his Hushpuppies. It had clearly dawned on him that I was a fellow Brit. He’d taken my earlier ‘pardon?’ to be an attempt at Pidgin English, and not a guttural splutter from a member of the underclasses
“Haha!” he laughed, patting me firmly on my shoulder. “Where are you from?”
“London” , I lied, not seeing the funny side, “where are are you from?” I barked.
“Ha! Ascot” he said, still holding on to my shoulder as if we were suddenly friends.
“Well don’t they teach you manners down there?”
Then I pointed to the big 400ft tall wheeeeeel standing about a hundred yards to my right. “It’s over there. It’s the big wheely-looking thing, sorry if it’s confusing.”
The four wrinklies scuttled off, without so much as a “thank you guvnor”. I turned on a tenpence and continued my journey home.

And I had the raving hump.

Rude fucker.

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Nanoo Nanoo

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I have a confession to make: I have a second home, and I’ve never declared it. It’s 400 yards from my place of work and , according to Google Maps (I’ll show you the photos, if you’d like), is only 5.6 miles from my first home. I SAY I’ve never declared it though many people know it’s my second home— I just haven’t declared OFFICIALLY that it’s my second home. I’m worried I’m going to get in trouble.
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No-one TOLD me I couldn’t have a second home when I signed up for this job, I’ve always had one wherever I’ve worked, so I naturally assumed… AND it’s got Toxic Assets (well, the Lager’s particularly rank most nights). I’ve gone all Tony McNulty about it: Indignant, apologetic, pig-headed and red-faced, all at the same time. It’s a good trick if you can do it. I’d like it on record, though, that I haven’t been in there since Friday evening. So that’s ok then, isn’t it? Unlike McNulty, who appears to make money out of his second house, all I seem to do is spend tons of cash in mine. 3 pound 20 for a pint of Guinness! How the hell can you make a profit on that? At least I use mine regularly, which is more than you can say for him.

I may (probably not) stop going in there altogether, once I take delivery of my new Nano. No, not an mp3 player, it’s the world’s cheapest car, launched today out of India. For around 1,400 of your English Pounds you can drive away your very own Nano, which bears a marked resemblance to a motorized bread-bin, and is about as quick (0-60 in 23 seconds). The manufacturer , Tata (which is what you can say to your street-cred once you get in one) says it’ll do 47 miles-per-gallon. WHO CARES???? I’d rather get on the back of one of those cycle-rickshaws driven by some git in a santa hat and who pedals in 1st gear all the way. At least I’d have some Vitamin G in me to numb me on my way home.TATAMOTORS/NANO

I’m off now to shout foul, racist abuse at ethnic minorities in front of a CCTV camera. Hopefully I’ll get a contract with Max Clifford, make a fitness video and, when I finally snuff-it, will be loved and mourned by millions the world over.

Tata.