11/29/2003

A Lurgey :  Imagine being told that you had an allergy to beer. Imagine being told that you shouldn't eat Weetabix. No Marmite. No bread. No milk. Imagine someone told you all these things at once, and then told you to pay them 45 quid for the privilege.

My allergies were revealed to me on Thursday. Sure, I can live without moo-juice - I mean, even school kids know that milk sucks. If it's not good enough for Schwarzenegger, it's not good enough for me. Indeed, I've long been a fan of the Arnold ethos, "...Milk is for babies... you have to drink beer," though no matter how much beer I drink, I still can't lift heavy things. But now I'm told that quitting milk is not enough. I've been told that beer is no good for me either.

So, on the one hand, I may never become a supersized anabolic athlete, as I have to switch from lager to wine, and from bitter to vodka. Arnold never mentioned wine and vodka in his bodybulding movie. But on the other hand, if I stop eating bread and other wheat based products, I may escape from the shackles of allergy, and become all that I could be. (My words, not those of the allergy tester) I could develop special powers, explode into a new epoch of well-being. To be honest, I only really went to have allergy tests out of curiousity, not because I thought I was unwell. But maybe in a year's time with no posionous foods, I will understand how well I wasn't. I can just imagine my future testimonial in capital letters and bold font face on some allergy testing ad-mercial or info-vert.

I'm not sure how I'm going to manage without mustard though. English mustard is one of my closest mealtime friends. The little yellow jar is my consort, and often gives me advice from the fridge on how to accessorize my meals. I tried to imagine a life of ascetism as I left the testing centre, imagining a life without mustard, without fishfinger sandwiches. A life, indeed, without any sandwiches. I was overcome with grief. I bought a sandwich and ate it as I tried to picture my new allergy-free life. The sandwich tasted much better than the picture.
posted by Garreth at 11:44 AM

Doing well so far :  3pm - I still haven't bought anything. According to a web site advising me not to buy anything today, "Literally, doing nothing is doing something!". In the true spirit of procrastination, I have put this on my list of things to do. I'll have a go at it later.

First, I have to be pedantic. I think the part of the website that suggests 101 things to do instead of buying stuff should replace its duplicate entry "Take up culture jamming" with "Be pedantic in public".
posted by Garreth at 9:06 AM

11/27/2003

Sweaty Old Giffers :  Being a bit daytime these days, I often find myself surrounded by retired people of the aging kind. They seem to like sitting motionless in the sauna, pretending to have passed away. The only time they move is when you are about to expire from heat exhaustion, and wish to crawl into a cold shower. That's the time that they decide to strike up a very slow moving conversation with you, trying to trap you into a steamy death. Conversation is perhaps too kind - more of a monologue of woes that they tie you up with.

A young crowd from Leicester turned up last week. Their conversation was a little different, about a phone call for a job application form.

"So it's a good starting salary. About 20K now - up about two grand."
"You're young, you got a good opportunity there."
"So they ask me if I have a criminal record. So I ask them, 'Does drink driving count?'"
"What did they say?"
"They said it's fine as long as you didn't kill anyone. But then they ask about any other criminal charges."
"Did you tell them?"
"Well I had to. They got access to your criminal record. So I told them. I asked, 'Does hitting a copper count?' And they said, 'What?' So I said, 'I punched a copper once, does that count?' So they asked me about it, and I told them, that I'd been drink-driving and had a big smash, you know, head through the windscreen. Then the police show up and one of them swears at me, and tells me to get into his fucking car. So I punched him in the face."
"What did they say to that?"
"They said they thought it would be alright, under the circumstances. They sent the application forms through, so it must be alright."

It turns out the guy was applying to be in the police.
posted by Garreth at 3:24 AM

11/23/2003

I've travelled the world and the seven seas :  Everybody's looking for something. Me, I'm looking for my cell phone. It's journeyed faithfully in my pocket to a dozen different countries. It's taken photos of many things it shouldn't have. It's a well travelled and street smart phone, that never leaves my side. Well not until the early hours of this morning. Of all of the lousy places to lose your phone, I lose it in the town I grew up in. This is how it happened.

Three old school friends decide to hold a mini reunion in Loughborough. We met and decided that we would sooner gnaw off our own limbs than end up at the end of the evening in Echos - the sticky-floored nightclub where we misspent the weekends of our youths, and set about drinking and reminiscing. The texture of the night out started to change at about 9:30pm, when we decided that lager was too bloating to present a long term drinking option.

"I got us a jug of nasty blue cocktail. And I slapped in a quintuple vodka," said R, thoughtfully. Good attention to detail. When it came to my turn to get a round in, I realised that I had never asked for a quintuple before. I didn't feel up to the task, and resolved to order a jug of "nasty" with two extra double rums as I swayed at the bar.

A student came up to me and asked me for my autograph. This was a first for me, but I tried to play cool and not slur too much.

"You are him aren't you?"
"Yes. Of course." I nodded and tried to look modest.
"Why did you quit?"
"It was time." I realised that I had absolutely no idea who this student thought that I was. He probably didn't want to know why I quit my job as a pub gardener when I was 15, but thought I might be able to get a drink out of whoever he thought I was.
"Can I have your autograph?" he asked.
"Sorry, I don't do autographs." Especially when I don't know what name I am supposed to be signing.
"Look, it's Alexi Lalas!" he pointed me out to some of his friends.

My friends explained that Alexi Lalas was an accomplished US footballer, and paid me some sort of weird compliment by saying that Alexi Lalas looked like General Custer too. People asking for autographs, and looking like Alexi Lalas and General Custer was all too much for one evening. I celebrated with some more Cuba Libres - the unblue cocktail of choice.

It wasn't just the texture of the evening that was changing by this point. R didn't so much fall off his chair as fall through it as it spontaneously fell apart under him. He had a lumpy moment in the car park as he regurgitated some Cuba Libre. Shortly afterwards we predictably found ourselves in Echos - the floor was still sticky. Having conveniently forgotten our vows never to return, we showed off our still-attached limbs, teaching the mix of students and townies the art of disco-dancing.

Several people approached me as I was busting moves. The word had spread that Alexi Lalas was in town. Lots of nodding and winking and thumbs up. It was all a bit strange. I'm used to being praised for my unorthodox dance techniques, but not for my imaginary football skills. The fame must have gone to my head. By 3:30am I realised that I was without phone. My lovely phone. I had a chicken shish to commiserate, before we took a taxi away from the fans and my lost phone.


posted by Garreth at 5:40 PM

11/21/2003

What planet are you from? :  I am living in a slow paced part of middle England at the moment. Such an unhurried environment affords me the opportunity to reflect more. While I stroll, while I listen to the radio as I leisurely drive down foggy country lanes. Today, I noticed a subliminal terrorist message being broadcast on a local radio station.

If you are lucky enough to hear the delightful Miss Stevens chart-middling hit "Sweet Dreams (My L.A.X)" on the radio, or perhaps in a local discotheque, listen very carefully to the words. The lyrics clearly taunt Mr Bush, and represent a message from Saddam Himself. If you're considering a flight to Los Angeles, turn on your radio, and get down to the disco. Listen to Miss Steven's song, and think about cancelling your trip.
posted by Garreth at 8:45 AM

11/19/2003

A bullet in the hand is worth two in the Bush :  The (other) most powerful man in the world is visiting Britain. He is being hosted by Tony B. Liar, but is a guest of the head of the United Queendom, the star of stamps and banknotes, King Lizzy Windsor. Mr Bush is staying round her gaff in London.

Over 100,000 protestors are expected to give a lukewarm if not downright chilly reception to Mr Bush tomorrow, according to the Stop The War coalition. One grandmother chained herself to Lizzy Windsor's front gate to protest yesterday. Today is national naughtiness day, and some pro-hunting supporters are chasing Mr Bush. There are scenes of police and protesters running around London as I type. The additional cost of paying money to policemen to run up and down chasing protesters is 5 million pounds. Many people see Mr Bush's visit as a bad thing.

I think Mr Bush's visit is great, here's why:

• Nobody takes our gracious Queen all that seriously any more, apart from the tourists. I'm sure she's a reasonable enough woman. In fact I even had lunch with her once (didn't notice any mini-gun toting helicopters hovering above the heads of me, her, or the other two hundred attendees though). In the last few decades, her family has been getting bad press for being just like millions of other people. Fallible, weak, adulterous, bigotted, and overpaid. I think it's nice that she's trying to make new friends, and inviting people over for scones. And it distracts the press from all the other murky goings-on in her family.
• If the police are busy guarding Mr Bush, it gives many other crooks a perfect opportunity to go around stealing cars and breaking into houses. Which indirectly stimulates the economy. Think of all the burglar alarms that might be sold during the aftermath of the crime wave.
• Around 50% of people in the UK don't think Mr Bush is the second coming of Beelzebub according to recent polls (although we all know that such poll results are made up after questioning six bored students in Loughborough town centre on a rainy afternoon) and his alliance with Mr Blair. It would be hard to get 100,000 people out on the streets of Britain to support Mr Bush, so getting him over here to open a few supermarkets and start some protests in London is a great way to perk up the capital in that boring period between summer and Christmas.
• A million people took to the streets of Britain to stop Britain's entry into the war earlier in the year. It was a good day out for the family, with free sticks and placards. The best bit was that the rozzers didn't stop you burning the placards to keep warm when it was going home time. With the music and costumes, it was like Glastonbury with a Tube. It's not often that you feel part of something approaching a community in London. So marches are good. Pity Mr Bush didn't come in the summer though. The parks are so much nicer in summer.
• Many British people have always been fascinated by the phrase "Bush Administration", and would like to see the US approach to topiary in action in London

The most powerful man in the world :  Try searching for him - you don't find G. Bush, you find the "Black Pope", and some tosh about Tony Blair.
posted by Garreth at 12:23 PM

All opinion starts in Lufbra :  It's true. All opinions stem from research gathered in Loughborough. All of those Gallup opinion polls are generated by asking questions of the fair citizens of this beautiful Midland town. I crossed the recently pedestrianized town centre on a hunt for cat equipment, and saw two competing groups of question askers. I ducked past one set of bib-wearing surveymakers, I spontaneously reached for my cell phone to skirt the second. I hadn't seen the third set, lurking behind a curious statue of a man with his foot sticking out.

"Do you drink Bitter?"
"What?"
"Do you drink Bitter? Bitter beer out of cans?"
"No. Hang on, are you giving it away?"
"No, I'm afraid not."

The secret is to keep moving as you shake your head. By this time, I had paced backwards about four metres, and turned to continue. I could not. My escape was blocked by someone from the University of Newcastle who wanted to know my feelings about modern shoes. She was slightly more amusing, and being a man of leisure, I spared her the time to answer at length absurd questions like,

"Are there any styles of shoes you wouldn't wear?"
"Clown shoes. Halibut loafers with a lemon sole. Platform stilts. Human leather winkle-pickers with Grolsch bottle stoppers for laces. Porcelain clogs. Granite Doc Martens...."

I mean really. The best part was that she had to write them all down in her little answer boxes on her clipboard. I hope I feature in someone's thesis. Immortalised in shoe history as a statistical anamoly. Just like everyone who made Jedi an official religion in the UK.
posted by Garreth at 10:13 AM

11/13/2003

Bill Bryson a fake stalwart :  What a con. I read, and under duress, enjoyed a Bill Bryson book a few months ago. Imagine my surprise when on the new fancy digital television channel I saw the darned fellow.

Dis-a-pissing-pointment doesn't have enough syllables to convey how let down I felt when I saw the author on the screen. Not chubby enough. Not like Michael Moore. You can trust him and his beard. He has a reliable girth. Moore is substantial, bespectacled, steadfast, and his whiny voice is filled with character.

Bryson - what a sham. Too thin. True, he has facial hair, but his voice is dull. Too wanky. Boo. I would find it very hard to read another of his books, though no doubt full of hysterical observations, without hearing that wanky voice in my head, and picturing the unsubstantial frame of the bloke, mincing about and mewling in a sickly way.
posted by Garreth at 7:10 PM

Otter, otter and ire - diced carrots and candyfloss :  "For those of you who haven't been to a Pilates session before, I'll tell you a few things. It will help your posture, and work core muscles in the abdomen. You will use up to 350 calories in an hour without breaking sweat. Pilates is good for avoiding lower back pain, and will leave you with a general sense of well-being."

I felt particularly like I was "being well" when I went to help a physiotherapist with her research today after my second bout of Pilates. How nice and helpful I am, I thought, to volunteer my time to provide data for this worthwhile research. What an asset to society such selfless individuals as my well-being self are, I mused as I was encouraged to pretend I really need to pee while squeezing odd muscles as an old man counted to ten.

Since Pilates, I haven't wanted to indulge in any meaningless roadrage. I am like the ant in heavy traffic. Rather than act unpredictably and carve other road users up in the jams brought about by a local fair, I patiently move forward - the humble ant thinking of the common good rather than my own progress. I didn't curse the pikies who had set up the stinking fair responsible for the traffic snarl up. I'm serenely out of character.

While I was volunteering and being noble, my fellow Pilateer was meanwhile in a pub drinking Stella (such was the level of his wellbeing). Strangely jealous, I have resolved to catch up tonight. "Pilates and lager". Could be the new "beer and fags". A natural synergy between pretending you want to pee in Pilates, and lager, which brings fulfillment to the having to pee urge.
posted by Garreth at 1:44 PM

11/12/2003

Home Alone XII :  A good sweaty chunk of the spam I receive informs me that there are bored house-wives waiting to meet me. Having been a house-wife (house-spinster) for some weeks, I personally can't see that a house-wife could ever be unfulfilled. Yesterday I spent about two and a half hours (between chores and doing a friend's university coursework for him) popping in and out of a sauna, where lively debate held court. A broad range of subjects was discussed, including whether or not Christina Aguilera is dirty, filthy, or scrofulous. I think we settled on disheveled, or having the appearance of someone who unexpectedly awakens on an uncomfortable bench of a public park in the early hours with a rat gnawing at their toes.

Today I cooked and dirtied, all the better to clean again afterwards. My first ever session of Pilates followed, in which I tried to observe the instructor while keeping my hips neutral and my stomach and chin tucked in. Then I went to get a set top box so that I could watch 'up to 30' free digital television channels. If you're going to be a house-spinster, get lots of entertainment set up, I say. And eat a meal every 90 minutes to keep that blood sugar up. And then I ordered broadband so that I really will have no problem frittering away many hours of winter in the Midlands. I always knew that spam was nonsense.
posted by Garreth at 4:00 PM

Hubble Bubble Gin and Trouble :  People search the internet for stuff. They mistakenly arrive at your site. The search terms people use to arrive at your site are of absolutely no interest to anyone else but you. But if you have a site, they are a constant source of hilarity and cheap thrills. "girls on the toilet with a tummy aches" is one of today's favourites for my site. There's a whole site dedicated to disturbing search requests. It seems that there are other people like me out there - not just people who think that search requests are funnier than they are, but also people who search for the meaning of life at google. Come on, don't tell me you've never been sitting in front of a computer late at night and asked google, "did buddha play bingo?", "what is the point? its all gravy" or "is Buckfast Tonic Wine medicinal?" No? Oh well. At least looking at search requests brought me the idea of making fizzy Buckfast this morning.
posted by Garreth at 5:23 AM

11/10/2003

A voyage to Leicestershire :  It has been five months since I last retired from gainful employment. When I left London I was heading for Honduras, but despite crossing fourteen borders I have yet to escape Europe. I almost managed last week, I had a real ticket from London to Austin, Texas departing seven days ago. It was a real ticket in that it cost me money, but I never got to see it. Not just because it was a paperless ticket either. Circumstance has left me house-sitting in Leicestershire instead. Cat-sitting too, though they wail and hare out of the way if you actually try to sit on them.

I have become a hideous distortion of a housewife, but without the gin and valium that I always imagined made the day more glamorous. And I don't have an abusive husband who comes home late for his dinner, smeared with lipstick and smelling of pub carpets. So that makes me a house-spinster. Today's achievements are shopping, cleaning, cooking, and eating. I was going to add that I managed to use the breadmaker, but a beeping just alerted me to the fact that I have succeeded in baking a loaf of flour with a kneading handle stuck in the base.

In the last week I have been taking my house-spinster duties very seriously. I met a chum in town, and discussed diets:

chum: Yes I'm doing a de-tox at the moment.
me: Just water?
chum: No, I'm on fruit juice at the moment. I'm cutting down to just water tomorrow. It's helping me give up smoking.
me: Just water. That's pretty dangerous. So you can only have fruit at the moment?
chum: Yes, three juices a day.
me: Pint of Stella?
chum: Go on then.

I have talked about food at great length. I have talked about the weather at great length. I haven't described it in an exciting or particularly inspiring way, discussing hues of sky, and swirling shapes of cloud. More of a, "Warm isn't it?" fashion. I hear the abbreviated news many times a day on tedious radio stations. I go to the gym during off-peak hours, when a creche is provided in which other house-fraus deposit their infants. Do house spinsters ever go and kill everyone in their office with machine guns? No, of course not. They don't have offices. But I'm pretty sure they would if they did.
posted by Garreth at 4:20 PM

11/07/2003

Achievement this week :  Far from achieving a new life in Texas, I have achieved the following: I won a game of chess played against a computer. This was the first time I have ever done this. Even though all the (two) programs I ever played against had the computer playing at toddler level.

I basked in triumph at my momentous victory. I did a lap of the room with my t-shirt over my head. I got up off the floor after falling over a table, and hurled abuse at the computer, it's mother, and all of its deluded supporters. I hoisted aloft an imaginary trophy and waved to the fans. Well, to some cats who were nearby.

My celebration was shortlived. I realised that the real achievement was in downloading a chess game that allowed you to handicap it to the point of imbecility. The score line stands at two - nil now. The imbecile is going down. Give your ego a boost with ChessPartner 5.2.
posted by Garreth at 2:39 PM

11/04/2003

The Radcliffe Camera :  In the fair city of Oxford, the Radcliffe Camera cannot be used to take pictures, or be put in the average pocket. My camera can on both accounts. It went to Oxford with me a month ago, and here are the results.
posted by Garreth at 5:30 PM

11/03/2003

Quote of the Month October :  Lady on bus after getting into fight with schoolboys, defending her character after being called a crack-whore: "I don't use crack, actually. I'm not a crack addict. I use heroin. Not crack."
posted by Garreth at 3:03 PM

11/02/2003

Cat person :  Someone tried to blow up parliament in England a few hundred years ago. Someone in China invented semtex a few thousand years ago. Because of this, English people hand over large amounts of cash at about this time of year to seasonal fireworks traders. They then proceed to blow the living bejesus out of themselves by returning to the blue paper of unexploded fireworks when they should still be retiring. Both hospital burns units and domestic animals don't seem to appreciate explosions and colourful chemicals drifting through the night sky, and across people's skins.

I don't think it's because I'm not a cat person. I think it's because I'm not a shit person, that I don't like looking after incarcerated felines. Especially during firework season when they become indoor feral shit-monsters. They race around the house digging their claws in the wallpaper to increase their cornering speed as they charge towards their allocated defaecation area of the house - the litter tray. Also called the shit and gravel tray. Also called the lucky dip. My task as cat tender is to go to the lucky dip and see what I can pull out from time to time. I place my prizes in a dustbin outside. The cats' bowels seem particularly generous in firework season. I'm a big winner at the lucky dip tonight.
posted by Garreth at 10:00 AM

A long time ago :  R. and I went to Punta. I finally got round to putting up some pictures of the experience and the fish involved.
posted by Garreth at 9:40 AM