Tag Archives: interaction

Tiggy

I’ve never regretted not having kids. It strikes me as a tad perverse to claim you’re doing your bit for the future of the species when that future involves the next generation waking up with their hair on fire in the 50 degree heat of Christmas 2050 knowing that it’s just hit £50 a pint.

When it comes up in conversation, and it does, I just say I can’t see why I’d give up a life of little responsibility, frolics unencumbered and full nights of unconsciousness in favour of ‘kids eat free’ Saturdays in the local and grimly suggesting you move nearer the in-laws just for the cheap babysitting.

But don’t worry, you parents out there, because I’m now one of you. Now, I have a cat.

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A few Poirots

The wailing, oh Jesus the wailing. 

Something grim has happened to somebody in a nearby cell. She’s trying to broadcast its full misery, but the walls are too thick to render her harrowing “It’s spread to my aaaaarrrrrrse!” as anything clearer than the terminal howl of a bombed Palestinian.

Still it’s less annoying than the arsehole who seems to spend most of the day scraping chairs across the floor above, or whoever fills many hours with the sounds of glass being squeegeed, despite the fact the windows don’t open so I can’t push them out.

As you know I aim to provide a public service with the screeching bullshit I write. So here I’d like to tell you about my experience as an NHS inpatient, so you know what to expect when you eventually take your first tentative step on the road to the hospice. So far I’ve been incarcerated in HMP UCLH for 21 days with no imminent prospect of parole. You get less for, oh, something to do with Barnard Castle. What do you want from me, topical?

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Monsoon season

Poor old Australia. Currently on fire due to what their hilariously holidaying Prime Minister probably blames on a Swedish schoolgirl, it’s hot as Hades and people can’t see each other for smoke. A couple more weeks of this and they’ll have to use their famed ‘points-based system’ to decide who gets to hop about in the last flip-flop not yet ablaze.

The average Aussie would give their right leg shackle for a downpour. Meanwhile on this side of the planet it’s winter and therefore rainy season, since snow was banned under whatever arrangement Boris Johnson has made with Satan. At this most wonderful time of the year, people look fearfully to the skies as though the AFD have found a few leftover V-2s.

I personally love unhappy weather. A grey day makes my heart sing as though the darkness at my core has been allowed out on day release. Rain is Mother Earth crying at the constant beatings she takes from her children, and we deserve every tear. So needless to say I fucking hate umbrellas.

Continue reading Monsoon season

Chatter and rabbit

It happened when I was cleaning my teeth.

Wandering about the flat, toothpaste dribbling down my chin and a very real threat in the air of my tripping on a carpet rail and headfirsting into the bath. My face was raised you see, to keep the toothpaste in, because I needed to have my mouth open a bit wider than necessary for just a toothbrush.

Because I was walking around talking to myself. This is when it happened. I realised I’m absolutely fucking mental.

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Do you know Iain Hunneybell?

Do you know Iain Hunneybell?

What’s he like? I picture a middle-aged white man, vaguely competent at project management, easily able to slot into a grand-a-day role conjured out of nowhere by an HR department told to squeeze funds like pips from a lemon. When a project needs managing, Iain’s the man to do it, not least because of his proven track record of forcing through that completely unnecessary second I.

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The bend

I recently learnt to drive. I’m 28, I should have learnt sooner, but I didn’t, deal with it.

I have now been driving for two months. Plenty of time to establish just how many bellends there are on the road. In those two months, I’ve encountered countless fucking idiots who deserve a Darwin Award for their incredible driving ability.

Let’s start with the cunt that nearly hit me twice in the same car park on the same day.

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A B&B in Baku

As a man with nothing to save for and no offspring to syphon it away, money serves three purposes for me.

First, it buys toilet paper. On the one hand, bog roll symbolises mundane bills and unavoidable life expenses, but while clutched in the other it serves to hurriedly wipe away the terrifying results of money’s second purpose, dipsomania.

The third is foreign travel. Much as I love Britain’s glorious combination of comforting bigotry, polite sadism and fields, so many fields, seeing other parts of the world is now my principal route to joy. As I write, I’m in the 40th country I’ve visited, before my fourth decade is up, and I’m proud of that.

And as I write I can see two things. One is a jungle, right next to this hotel, from where a troupe of capuchin monkeys emerged yesterday to steal a fat man’s plantain.

The other is tourists.

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And then I woke up

I’m running through this field, right? Chased by something, I don’t know what it is. Desperate for a piss. There’s this cow then suddenly I’m in my old bedroom at home, Mum’s talking about my diary, I can’t believe she read it, I don’t even have a diary.

Then you, yeah I know, you turned up and want me to go out in the car but there’s no petrol and I’m desperate for a piss, so I go to the toilet but it just won’t come out and you’re on about this car. We get into town and you go off with John and I’m going down this alleyway and there’s a girl, she’s off Silent Witness, pigtails, about 11 probably, looks a bit like Michael Barrymore. She’s got this knife and she’s trying to stab me and I do this roundhouse.

And then I woke up. Mad, no idea what that was about.

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Hallmark of Hell

A newborn baby is a gift from God Himself as we all know, thanks to the cascade of simpering halfwits, otherwise known as ‘parents’, repeatedly hammering the fact into our skulls via media of all types. There has been one such arrival in my own sphere of influence in the past few days and all power to the little sod’s elbow, though I won’t be paying it much mind until that elbow is weathered enough to legally raise a pint glass to its accompanying face.

My friends have had a baby and I am happy for them. I find it unlikely, though, that given we’ll be seeing this new child in the coming days, and its parents, there’s any need to send it a card. And not just any card – adorned with the words ‘It’s a boy!’ no less.

It was long ago decreed that the world’s a safer place without my progeny, but I’ve learned enough about the emergence of new people to know a tiny cock and balls diagnoses a fresh sufferer of the male condition without parents having to be informed by mail.

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The wounded antelope

You’ve probably already read the statement by the woman who was sexually assaulted by former Stanford University swimmer Brock Turner, who last week was given six fucking months for the crime. If you haven’t, you know where to find Google. Go and read it. I’ll be right here, waiting.

Back? Good. Six fucking months. He could have got up to 14 years. Prosecutors asked for six years. The judge gave him six fucking months in county jail and probation because, quote, “a prison sentence would have a severe impact on him”.

That’s why I told you to go and read the statement by the woman he assaulted, to realise the “severe impact” it had on her. When she woke up in hospital after a booze blackout, she gradually found out she been left half naked behind a dumpster after Turner had fingered her so severely she had internal abrasions. Oh yeah, and this shining beacon of humanity ran off after two guys spotted what was going on and intervened.

One thing – among many horrific things – in that statement stood out for me.

Continue reading The wounded antelope