The blessing of homonymity

Well good day to you all and welcome to an installment of the wonderfully bloggy account of my life.
Many have come to expect this place to be just a general bitching ground where I rail against a world that, I feel, is designed pretty much entirely to piss me off. However, I do occasionally come across genuinely interesting nuggets of information that, just for a while, distract my attentions from things that irritate me, but not for long. Towards this end of this blog I have prepared a short piece about the Norse god “Tyr” who I am going to guess no-one has really heard of, even though we all use his name at least once a week and we certainly will see it written down at least once a day, but Tyr brings me very conveniently to the subject of todays rant because he was also known in old English as Tiw (as many Norse gods were such as Odin/Wotan, Freya/Frygg (the schoolboys favourite), etc – and that’s the last hint to Tyr’s identity you’re getting!) and homonyms are something I do particularly enjoy. Now I have come to realise over the years that my somewhat puritanical attitude towards spelling, and more particularly towards grammar and punctuation are not something that everyone shares. In fact I’d probably go as far as to say that in linguistic terms I’m probably bordering on the autistic, or certainly aspergers at any rate. Anyway I love language I think English is a stunning language and anyone who mangles it deserves to be stabbed with a set square.
As I stated earlier I love homonyms (or words that are spelled the same and have different meanings) a well placed homonym can often bring the bookish language lover a genuine smile on a dreary day, I’m reminded of the wonderful Sandi Toksvig anecdote where she tells about smiling at a sign saying “Enjoy Reading” and wondering why a sign declaring the joys of the county town of Berkshire would be at a fair in Suffolk when actually the sign was instructing the studious among us to actually “Enjoy reading” though in fairness as she claims the huge tent of second hand books behind it ought to have been a hint. Now for the pedants among you I know that’s technically a heteronym rather than a homonym but if you picked up on that to be honest you should close this blog down and book yourself into the local remand centre for the safety of the rest of us! Anyway what I am trying to get to in my roundabout way is something linked to a homonym that greatly angers me, I call it an “Idionym” myself. For example if someone came to me in work and asked to “Borrow your compass” I would look at them with a look of mock incredulity before casually informing them that sadly I have left my crampons, ice axe and other mountaineering equipment at home. If however they would like to draw a circle perhaps my “pair of compasses” could be of some use? Equally if for example I was playing a nice game of “Trivial pursuits” (well it is the season) and granny asked to borrow the dice I would take the singular of that item and insert it viciously up her nostril until she realised that “dice” is plural, what she would like, I believe, is “The die”, it’s not hard people! To be honest I think I just have anger issues, I’m not certain what would happen were I ever on a date in a seafood restaurant and my date asked to “Borrow a piece of scampi”, to be honest I’d probably stave her head in with a lobster hammer! Firstly how can you borrow food????? Secondly NO! You may take SOME scampi or A scampo, scampi is the plural for gods sake, but you know I’m a bit on the cranky side also possibly making threats against my dining companions with various pieces of speciality cutlery for not knowing the plural and singular of their dish is perhaps one of the main reasons I am still spectacularly single!

Now I’m fully certain you’ll all be sat there sniggering at my rage and thinking it’s unimportant but to me it’s vital. Now you probably don’t care what I think, and all power to you, but be aware if you do come to me and ask for the dice or a compass obviously I wouldn’t really react angrily, I would just give you the pair of compasses or the die and end up venting my spleen via a blog, but I will also judge you. Now if you can live with a 5.5ft man with a dodgy beard judging your grammar then go for it, god help us all should there ever come a time when some other arbiter of intellect is chosen such as wrestling a bison to the ground or some kind of physical exercise, should that happen to be honest I’d be screwed (more than likely by the bison!), but until that day comes embrace our beautiful language and use it properly!

Now as we end just a word about the wonderful Tyr who I mentioned earlier. Now I’m almost certain you all worked out that he is the god who gave us the fine day of “Tuesday” but relatively little is known about this god who is so important that we use his name on a daily basis. We don’t even know if he was Odin’s father, Odin’s son or indeed just Odin’s right-hand man. All that is known of him is that he is the god of battles, heroism and swords, deeply ironic given that he only had one hand, to be honest you’d think that they’d at least have chosen someone to be god of battles that wasn’t forced to fight southpaw. What’s even stranger is the manner in which poor Tyr lost his hand. Loki, the all-round bad egg of Norse mythology, had a son called Fenrir who took the incarnation of a wolf and he must have been quite a thick wolf to be honest because he kept letting himself be chained up by the other gods before breaking his shackles and going on a killing rampage. Obviously the gods were slightly concerned by this feral wolf wandering around and so they commissioned some helpful local dwarves to create them a ribbon made of some of the rarest things in nature such as fishes breath, bird spittle, mountain roots and (most bizarrely) a womans beard (clearly the Scandinavians like a gal with a bit of bristle!). Anyway the ribbon was created and the gods went to tie up Fenrir who in a fit of bizarre piquancy agreed to be tied up but only if one of the gods would place their hand in his mouth as a gesture of good faith that he would be released. Only Tyr was brave (or in my opinion stupid) enough to place his hand in the wolfs jaws and when Fenrir was secured by this “Gleiphnir” ribbon they all just laughed at which the angry Fenrir bit down hard on Tyr’s hand severing it, which, by all accounts, the gods found even funnier, clearly a slightly masochistic bunch! Fenrir of course would have the last laugh finally escaping his chains to join the final battle of Ragnarok (Armageddon) on the side of the giants against the gods and would ultimately kill Odin before being killed himself by Odin’s son Vidar (keeping up?). As for poor Tyr who has now been cruelly cast into history, he and his stumpy right hand were there at the final battle where he is killed by Garm (a dog not incomparable to Cerberus in Greek mythology, some versions say he is the brother of Fenrir interestingly enough). Along with Odin, Thor and Freya he has been given his own day so next Tuesday just give a little thought to brave stumpy armed Tyr the only god stupid enough to put his hand into a feral wolfs mouth and sadly consigned to history.

This week Matt:

• Struggled with the demands of his man-flu and drank a small lake's worth of Lemsip.
• Every time he had cough mixture felt the need to bellow "Covoooooooonia!" at the bottle, which really isn't advisable if you have a sore throat.
• Had an argument with a chemist, perhaps I'll make that the first blog of the new year.....

going off track

• Well hello my friends and welcome back to the bitching record of life, now I know what you’re thinking; you haven’t had two updates so close together in quite a while, however something happened this morning that irritated me so much I couldn’t believe I was yet to record a blog about it, I am going to talk today about Railway Station (and to a lesser degree Bus Station) etiquette.
  
  The thing this morning that annoyed me so much was when I got to the station for my usual commute to work. And those of us that work (Looking at you with jealous eyes students and unemployed people!) know how traumatic this time of the morning can be, it takes all your wits just to avoid getting mowed down on the zebra or toucan crossing (New word I’ve learned by the way, a toucan crossing is one where bikes and people cross simultaneously “two-can” you see, isn’t that clever!) and you’re not entirely certain you’ve managed to get that last crescent of toothpaste off the corner off your mouth so you’re trying to surrepticiously lick the corner of your mouth but anxiously avoiding eye-contact with the hot girl lest she think you’re making lustful advances towards her (which in fairness you are but you’ve seen her boyfriend and he’s built like the proverbial outhouse!). Anyway it’s that kind of time of the morning and all you want to do is buy a ticket and get on the train out of the cold but no there’s somebody at the front of the queue arsing about with something. People trying to buy on card who haven’t read the sign saying Maestro and Electron not accepted, or is paying off a fine and grumbling loudly about it, or they’re not sure where they want to go and are planning their route and you just find yourself thinking “WHAT ARE YOU DOING HERE AT THIS TIME OF THE MORNING! THERE ARE PEOPLE HERE WITH JOBS TO GET TO AND YOU’RE HOLDING THEM UP!” And then begins that most wonderfully middle class language, the communal tut, it’s a beautiful thing, when the whole line just thinks as one “what a ****”.
  
  Other train station related things that annoy me include people coming off (or down to) platforms where one of the escalators is broken and you can tell which one it is because the other one works and shows which way it’s going so by simple deduction you know which side is broken, and yet some people still think “Well if it’s stopped surely anyone can use it” and when you come sprinting down/up it and inadvertently maim their toddler/spouse/pet camel or whatever it may be that this cretinous person has in tow they look accusingly at you as if its your fault, no you absolute pillock it’s your fault for going up/down the wrong escalator, maybe if both were out of order I could forgive you but yours is working fine so don’t use mine!
  
  The final real irritant to me comes from these new electronic barriers they seem ever so keen on installing at stations these days, you can guarantee you will always end up stuck behind someone whose ticket isn’t registering and the desire to take that latest Dan Brown book that they’re obviously reading (this type of idiot always reads Dan Brown!) and beat them senseless with it is overwhelming. You just have the desire to say “For gods sake you’re either senile, an idiot or a criminal, whichever it is I don’t care but your ticket doesn’t work and mine does so would you please move yourself and your filthy tracksuit (too snobby?) out of my way so I can get on to actually do some work and depress myself just to earn more taxes and keep you in white lightning so you can keep on not buying tickets for trains and acting surprised when that ticket you picked up off the floor of the carriage isn’t valid!”
  
  This week Matt:

• Had a wonderful time watching the Alan Bennett Season on BBC 4, he has such a lovely soothing voice!
• Got very annoyed with incompetant staff at the Greek Taverna who insisted I didn't have the money on my credit card to cover the transaction..... what a suprise it was because he was trying to charge me £16,000 for my £160.00 bill, put a decimal point between the dots you cretin!
• Lost his favourite set of cufflinks, if anyone sees them please let me know, they're silver set with faux-diamonds.

The slow walk of death

Well hello to you all my friends (and casual acquaintances who just want to know what I’m complaining about today!) and welcome back to my, recently lapsed blog. Now you may be forgiven for thinking my lack of updates of late were to do with a lack of things to be angry about, oh how wrong you ate! Anyone who knows me knows that every day brings fresh things for me to complain about (like adverts for lawyers during daytime TV, that’s a whole rant right there, but not for today.

What I thought I’d talk about today is something of great personal anger to me, slow walkers! Now if, like me, you are a lover of walking there is nothing more irritating than being stuck behind a slow walker, or even worse a group of slow walkers! I think the main irritant about it is that there’s a certain etiquette to the subtle passing manoeuvre that must be performed to pass these people who have not got a clue about the speed a normal person walks.

The first situation, and probably the most common, that you may find yourself in is trying to walk somewhere and seeing in the middle distance a person of, shall we say, a certain age that you know before long you are going to have to try and pass and you are now left with an internal dilemma. Do you slow your own pace to a ridiculously slow pace and hope the old dear takes a side road leaving you free to continue your journey at the correct pace unobstructed. The problem with this idea however is that if the old dear does not divert her path however slowly you are walking you are going to end up catching up with her because even your slow walk is faster than her. And so we find ourselves approaching her and she is not going to be diverted from the same course as you and you know you are now going to have to perform a tricky pass because do you suddenly walk at top speed and just rush past her knowing that you will have to maintain that pace until you are out of her sight? Alternatively you can subtly increase your pace so it looks like you are just naturally faster, a perfectly reasonable assumption given her age, however there’s going to be a time when you’re walking side by side which is always an awkward situation. Another option is to cross over the road and walk on the other side but you’re then on the wrong side for what you want and you know full well that you will have to cross again at some point and what happens if there’s traffic and you then rejoin the correct side still behind the old lady the whole idea has been pointless!

Another situation could be getting trapped behind a group of slow walkers, if there’s a group, particularly one which expands across the whole pavement, you can’t use the time honoured tactic of simply speeding up and passing them subtly to one side (for some reason acceptable with younger people but not older people). Therefore quite often you’ll get stuck behind the group zig-zagging back and forth waiting for them to notice you are walking faster than them and want to pass. The only other alternative is to walk in the gutter to go past them, but perhaps this is a sign of the times in which we live I always feel very unsafe doing this almost as if at the first opportunity the group are going to push me in front of a passing motor-vehicle just for having the temerity to walk past them! Even worse if you do get past them at a faster a pace and then come to a pelican crossing (incidentally why are they called that anyone know? No? I’ll wiki it!) you find yourself being absorbed by them, and uncomfortable position because you suddenly look for any gap in traffic to try and get across the road to relieve yourself of the socially awkward situation!
My personal advice to anyone like me who likes to walk but finds themselves personally irritated by slow walkers is to walk at all times in a cycle path if available because no-one slow goes in them and if the cyclists complain (well my hatred of cyclists is well known already) blame the old dears and the slow walkers and tell them if they want you out of their cycle lane they should petition the council for fast and slow walkers lanes, the only possible solution to this socially awkward situation!

This week Matt

• Re-discovered the wonders of Ian Fleming's James Bond novels, I do like a bit of inappropriate racism!
• Had a mild heart attack at his credit card bill
• Found out that a a pelican crossing is so called because it is a contraction of the phrase "Pedestrian Light Controlled (PELICON) Crossing", isn't that fascinating, god love Wiki!

Weekends in the fens and spinneys

Well hello my friends and welcome once again to the blog of my life, apologies for the lack of updates of late but anyone who’s seen my angry status will have realised I’ve been having a few broadband issues, thankfully solved via Calcutta it seems *crosses fingers*, the other major reason for my lack of an update was due to my weekend away this weekend and rather than tell everyone how it went individually I thought I’d use my blog to present a (hopefully) humerous take on the events of the weekend.

However before we got to the actual events it’s important to fill in a little of the background regarding what went before. The night before I had a “Gig” to attend, I use the word gig in its loosest sense given that I was going to see Beautiful South but I think we all know that my taste in music is eclectic to say the least. The problem I encountered was that I was attending this gig alone, but rather than appear alone I devised a cunning plan whereby I would buy two drinks at a time and have my phone in hand as much as possible so it looked like I was simply waiting for someone who was indisposed in the lavatory – though one girl kept looking over at me and I’m fairly certain she thought my companion for the evening must have some kind of bowel disorder given the inordinate amount of time holding the glassware but that’s by the by. Anyway long story short the gig was brilliant but alas drinking two drinks at once (and you can’t drink them one at a time lest you be left holding just one drink and looking like a loner) left me a few miles south of sober, something that wasn’t helped by going to the pub for a drink after the gig as well!

As a result I woke up the next morning not feeling at my brightest and leaving a 10am for a six hour train journey to Norwich wasn’t exactly top of my list of things to do. I did somehow manage to drag my corpse-like body to the station expecting to pay a mild £50ish fare, until the station man told me it would be £68 with a railcard! I nearly had a heart attack, but that was nothing compared to how my travelling companions reacted when they found out that without railcards they would be forking out £101 for their returns. So hungover and with our wallets considerably lightened we boarded the train for the long trek to Norfolk myself half asleep and sustaining on little more than tea and my companions little better we thankfully found ourselves a table at least (being sure to keep a covert bag on the empty to seat at all times to deter those who would attempt to ingratiate themselves with us. A mere five and a half hours later we found ourselves standing bedraggled on Norwich station and searching for a black cab. Our driver was a lovely chap, seeing we were obviously tourists he decided to take us to our hotel via several of Norwich’s lovely roundabouts and getting us stuck in a traffic jam at each one just so we got a real sense of what gridlock in Norfolk is like, oh and he only charged us £12 for the privelige! Well eventually we located our hotel and after a brief chat with the slowest concierge in Norfolk who couldn’t quite fathom the idea that there were three of us in a four person room we were allowed up to our room. Now I had stayed in a Ramada before and it had a stunning view across Manchester, well our room at the Norwich ramada had an equally amazing view….. of the opposite room.
Well following our disappointing view it was decided that we should head out for a spot of dinner in a local restaurant, we decided to ask if our cabbie (one who had obviously realised we’d already seen the roundabouts so was considerably faster and half the price!) could suggest somewhere, he suggested a place called “Tombland”. Now to be honest if you want to know terror get into a cab in an unknown city and have your cabbie offer to take you to Tombland! Anyway as it turned out Tombland was not as terrifying as it sounded and actually we had a lovely dinner – well except when a vagrant staggered into the restaurant and used the disabled lavatory and did something in there that so horrified the waitress that she had to run and get the maitre’d at once! Our meal was followed by a drink in a pub the size of the average living room that seemed to be filled exclusively with men of a certain persuasion, then another lovely pub with an open log fire (you wouldn’t get that back home!) with some very friendly locals who took a shine to our Tim and even produced us a map of good bars – we’ll ignore the fact the “Good bar” turned out to be a cinema. Our final destination of the evening was another bar this time was two old gay men in vests dancing in a pulpit, “weird” didn’t even begin to describe it!

Our Saturday started with a minor hangover but surely that’s always the mark of a good first night in a strange city (And Norwich is a VERY strange city!). We had to make it into Norwich in time for Graham to get to the football stadium so we decided to walk into town past a bewildering array of peculiarly named shops including “Bob Basted’s” used car showroom and the “George Bush” funeral home, what are Norfolk shopkeepers thinking? Having finally got into Norwich and found the scarily concealed 25,000 seater stadium we decided maybe a nice film would be the order of the day in the evening (although a peculiar man was standing behind us muttering to himself making us generally concerned that he may invite himself to join us hence we had to quickly make our escape). After Graham had left us to go to his game Tim and I decided to go and explore the castle and the cathedral, the castle was a bitter disappointment (general entry doesn’t get you into the battlements or the dungeons, they’re the best bits!) Although they did have a very angry looking stuffed otter that was rather entertaining as well as the worst ever Egyptian exhibit – literally a corridor with a mummy in it! The cathedral was a lot better – except when we first arrived Tim asked if there was someone in the doorway and I assured him it was just some bags….. in fact it was the same vagrant who had committed unspeakable acts in the disabled toilet of the restaurant the previous night! Needless to say we fled into the cathedral as swiftly as possible.
Following our Cathedral tour and Graham’s game we met up for some quite frankly lurid cocktails, having to ask an unknown barmaid for “perfect sex” and a “screaming orgasm” is really not advisable! Following a film and dinner we decided to return back to the hotel so we would be fresh for our 6 hour journey back the next day, though not before another frankly terrifying cabbie who was threatening to murder other road users!

All in all though it was a wonderful trip filled with enough random people to entertain me for the rest of my days!



This week Matt:

• Had a row with a lady in Calcutta who had no idea what I was yelling at her.
• Enjoying "Listening day" on Classic FM, what else would you do with a radio exactly?
• Watched several hours of darts a day, oh how working class!
  

the watering-hole

Well good day to all you and welcome to another weekly installment of the history of my life told via the medium of ranting. I'm actually in a strangely good mood today, though sadly that's not exactly condusive to ranting but I will try my hardest for you.



I thought I would make todays b log all about what you pub or bar of choice says about you and the psychological effects of this. This whole thought came about when a good friend suggested that I like dark pubs which at first I thought was nonsense but actually all the pubs I frequent most often do tend to be of the dark and dingy variety so perhaps there is something in this!



Now the first type of pub to be discussed will inevitably the type I spend most of my time in the self styled "Dark pubs", these are typically conversions of old buildings or houses, usually with oak beams, rustic wooden tables and all variety of crap adorning the walls. These pubs also tend to have a high volume of "regulars" who bizarrely all seem to sit on the same stool each day with their flat cap and the same drink and drink away their day - or perhaps I'm generalising unfairly. Usually this sort of establishment has tinted or stained glass windows to restrict the light coming in as most of the "dark pub" drinkers tend to enjoy the dark. The psychological profile of people who frequent this kind of establishment are generally those trying to escape the world, by having tinted windows you lose all sense of time as it could be any time during the day and so the escapism can continue. For example those who dislike their jobs or their lives will tend to head towards these kinds of establishment, at least in the darkness one can pretend that the life outside of the pub walls does not exist. Also I have found many a single person tends towards these pubs as well, after all if you're unlucky in love the last thing you want to be is under bright lighting, no myself and my fellow forest trolls are far happier lurking in the shadows midly delusionally convinced that the hotn girl from the train will one day just happen to stop in and start a conversation, even though she probably has a boyfriend..... oh and doesn't live in the same town.

The second kind of pub is the "Semi-bar" and these are places I loathe. They usually have some of the accoutrements of the "dark pub" such as mahogany counter-tops and barstools but are completely devoid of atmosphere. These places are generally dominated by a television screen the approximate proportions of the state of Liechtenstein and usually have muzac on by the latest bands that I get to feel embarassed about as I have not got a clue who's singing! The psychological profile of the users of these pubs is slightly different, no tweed or flat caps to be seen in these establishments and anyone with a pipe would be positively vilified (well they would if this bloody smoking ban wasn't in force anyway). No usually in this place you find manual labourers and students who haven't worked out what a pub is for yet, also these places tend to be a hive for underage drinkers which is why violence is so common within them and why I tend to avoid them like the plague unless there's a very good reason to enter such as a quiz or a sporting event that I desire to see - after all my usual "dark pub" would tend to have one small dusty portable TV in the corner with a lot of old men setting aside their copies of the Telegraph to try and crane their necks to see it.

The third section is the actual bar, while the semi-bar has pretensions towards the pub but lacks the ambience the actual bar has shed all desire for an atmosphere as it is there for those people who are "cool". These establishments tend to have fittings that are all chrome and brushed steel and solid tiled floors with subtle lighting and plenty of natural light flooding in. These are not places that could ever become a "Local" and neither should they be, the point of the actual bar is to act as a meeting place for people who have important meetings and want to show off. As a result the clientele of the bar are more of the blue and white collar proffessions who will usually turn up in suits for a drink after work to show how successful they are to the rest of the world, and as you may have gathered I'm not a particular fan of these places either.

The final variety of watering-hole is the carbuncle on the face of this planet that is the club. Now my hatred of clubs is well known and I know that I am seen as very much old fashioned in my hatred of clubs but I just don't see the point in them. I recall the last dreadful time I actually went to a full club it was vile, several floors of people all crushed together buying overpriced drinks and listening to music that was so loud it was practically making the floors bleed. Even more suprisingly the staff have to wear ear-plugs because of the noise, does no-one else get a little worried by this? If you went to a pub and the landlord was standing in the doorway in a hard-hat would you not think twice about entering his establishment? And yet not only do we enter clubs but we actually pay for the privelige! Personally I would be happy never to go to such a place again, everyone is there to be drunk and to try and sleep with something, call me old fashioned but I'd far rather have a drink somewhere quiet and have a good debate, hmmmm that may well be why I'm still single.

Anyway each of these four main classes of drinking establishment has their own fans and we can all flit between them but I'm convinced I will always prefer the warming darkness of my local dark-pub where I can just go, have a pint and melt into the darkness and lurk there until the girl of my dreams just happens to stop by...........

This week Matt:

• Cooked duck for the first time in his life, it was great.
• Was miffed by the poor quality of this years fireworks display.
• Got into the festive mood by buying a mulled wine scented air-freshener.

Helloween

good evening all and welcome to this evening's installment of my blog, first of all an apology for a lack of updates this week I have had a very full week and haven't had the time to sit down and spend an hour or so working out a rant.

Anyway as you may have guessed from the hilarious pun in my title bar tonights words are to do with Halloween, my most hated day of the year. Now I know I may be accused of being a bit grinchy because I know I have a lot of friends who absolutely love halloween but for me it's just a dreadful evening, now next Thursday is bonfire night, for me that's a much better evening and (As you may know) my second favourite night of the year. Anyway for those who, like me, despise the evening which includes little more than glorified begging here is my list of Do's and Don'ts for getting through this evening.

Do
Show your participation in the evening by placing a Jack-O-Lantern on your doorstep, I'm afraid I learned long ago that you can't escape participating in this evening but at least if you have the pumpkin there when you refuse to give the screff children any sweets they will at least savage the pumpkin rather than your garden.

Don't
Turn the lights off and hide in the front room behind the armchair. I know it can be tempting but you'll end up hating the night even more. If like me you dislike the evening go out somewhere so you don't have to be involved.

Do
Get plenty of candy in, the rule usually is you'll end up either too much or too little but at least if you have too much you can pig out yourself!

Don't
Give out fruit, pencils, etc it's going to breed resentment. Also don't do what my father did last year and give out Glow-In-The-Dark "Jesus loves you" badges, to be honest I think most of the kids who got those ended up crying!

Do
Get involved with the whole thing, as vile as the whole pratice is if you try and ignore what's going on you'll end up having a miserable time, just relkuctantly get involved!

Don't
Get too involved, there's nothing worse than decking yourself out in a full costume to scare trick-or-treaters and inadvertantly giving a couple of Jehovas Witnesses a heart attack.

Do
Set core times for your trick-or-treaters say half seven to half nine and after that just don't answer the door, it'll only be the older kids out for what they can get after that.

Don't
suggest that 19 is too old to be trick-or-treating or that wearing a cap isn't really a costume, you'll just end up getting a beating or having your wainscoting trashed.

Do
Console yourself that you may be giving kids sweets but at least your contributing to these delightful poppets dental caries!

Don't
put all your sweets in a bowl at the start of the night, the kids will snatch them, you'll end up running out of candy far too early and word of your incredible generosity will get around so you'll end up with even more dreadful children at your door!

Well I hope these tips help you survive your halloween night and just think it's more than likely nobody will turn up so you can end up spending your Saturday nigth eating reduced price Haribo with a movie, result!

Today Matt:

• Made a pumpkin pie that worked really well!
• Made a Jack-O-Lantern for the first time in his life.
• Got to thinking about the new air tax rules, you're going to pay less tax to fly to California than to fly to Jamaica, madness!

I've lived in a house, a very cramped house at Uni.

Evening all, just thought I'd jot down a few pre-pre pub quiz thoughts for the evening, and nice to see this thing is still being read by you all, honestly I am very touched at the number of people who actually give a shit what I have to say!

I was going to spend todays blog having a bit of a dissection of all the reasons I hate halloween given that the dreadful night is drawing agonisingly closer but as I was trying to pull these thoughts together something else struck me and it was a thought all about housemates and house-shares

Now I don't know about anyone else but there are certain times when I am absolutely plagued by past housemates. It all started in University I think, and anyone who's been in a combined accomodation hall (Especially those of you who shared mine) will know absolutely what I speak about. The problem with a hall like that which accommodates a lot of students is that nobody has the same waking hours. Obviously your first group of residents is your science students who are basically designed to get very drunk in a very short space of time, essentially as a scientist you spend many hours a day in the lab and so you have to get drunk in the evening but not so drunk as you're going to labs the next day hungover and tired (We wouldn't want you blowing us all up a purple mushroom cloud simply because you were up to all hours drinking tequila off the rim of a lavatory or some such). However for the arts students it's very different they have relatively few lectures and as a result spend their time drinking slowly and progressively throughout the day before desperately trying to sober up enough to do essays during the night, or in my case trying to do the essays whilst still drunk - or even on that one dreadful day doing an exam while drunk, not my finest hour I'll admit!
And within these two broad classes of student you get a massive range, some students will be out until the wee small hours at the pubs and clubs and stagger back about 6 in the morning, others (And I certainly fell into this clique) would drink until pub closing time then find someone who had an empty room and a few bottles of cheap wine and spend the night "Debating", "Playing Risk" and knocking out the greatest hits of Oasis with a some bongos and a stolen guitar. Others were of the academic persuasion and spent hours hermetically sealed within their rooms like some Himalayan sage, or others who (shock horror) didn't drink at all but would sing lustfully on the way to the bathroom at silly o'clock in the morning (Or, as is more likely, a perfectly sane time of the morning just you're too hungover to make your brain make the little sticks on the clock make any sense)
Anyway, back to my initial point, with all these different people sharing one communal living space you had to get used to operating on at best sporadic sleep, if you were lucky you could get a back seat in a lecture and prop yourself up behind a copy of the text you were supposedly studying and take "shifts" at sleeping with your friends jabbing you awake if you snored too loudly or started having a night-terror. However, more often than not you were in a constant state of not having had enough sleep but simply unable to fathom the idea of going to bed rather than the pub.

I was hoping that after I left communal halls things would improve and I'd actually start to get a regular sleep pattern, after all I'd blamed lack of sleep for my poor performance in my first year "Oh no I'd clearly have got an first but someone was staggering about singing My Way at a deafening yolume at 3am...... what do you mean that was me?" that kind of thing. Unfortunately by reducing the size of a household you actually concentrate the niggles so at first you struggle to sleep because there isn't some banging on your door in the middle of the night asking if you'd like to buy a traffic cone or some such nonsense then you get used to that but because you all have your own routine everyone overlaps and gets on each others nerves. I make no denials I was probably more drunk than sober in my second year at University and certainly I was at the pub until closing most days and I'm fairly certain this bothered my then housemates, however I am equally sure they would talk loudly when off to lectures at the wee small hours of the morning just to teach me a lesson for having staggered in at midnight and had a very long and very loud debate about the 18th century peasantry with the vacuum cleaner.
And of course one major problem was that my second year houseshare was shared with a couple. Now if I was to ever give anyone advice (And apparently it's in my job description) it would always be never to share a house with a couple because you will constantly in the way. Couples who get a flat always want to play house and the last thing they want is someone else there ruining it, particularly if that somebody else is spending their life in a sort of drunken haze. Plus there's nothing worse than hearing a couple arguing upstairs then a little later "Making up" in the room above you, particularly if you're single and all you have to share your bed with is toast crumbs!

Things only really improved in the third year when I got to share a house with other people who kept similar hours and so we were always out getting drunk together and pretending to have forgotten lectures at roughly the same times. I know I complain a lot about certain things that happened during that year but in terms of where I lived it was where I was pretty much at my happiest. The house was big enough to have your own space without having to seal yourself in your room but cozy enough for three historians to spend the evening over a few cans of beer debating about anything and everything. Yes it was filthy and yes towards the end of the year we'd all started to grate a bit on each other but it was homely and it was fun. More to the point it showed me that I could never do another house-share because over those three years I must have had about 30 housemates and they just drive you insane, the surest way to wreck a friendship it seems to me is to move in with someone. There are some exceptions, and they know who they are, but for me I only now want to live alone (Or with the nice girl from the train), and to be honest I think that's pretty much what my liver is desperate for as well!

Today Matt:

• Spent the day sneakily trying to organise a festive meal using a government computer.
• Found out Ocean Colour Scene are coming to Liverpool, Retro!
• Wondered why the government want to teach children how to sleep - just give them junior calpol!

It's manners, pure manners

Well good evening to you all and welcome to this evening's entry of my bloggy life, apologies for no weekend posts but I was out being my usual unsociable self (Saturday: drink alone at the opera Sunday: Drink alone while watching the football), some might say I have a problem, I prefer to think of it as others having the problem, of not drinking nearly enough.





This blog actually came to life on Saturday afternoon while at my desk in work (Well there was precious all else to do) and I warn you in advance it's likely to get a bit ranty so for anyone who doesn't particularly enjoy me in full rant mode you might want to close this window now and maybe go and get yourself a nice chocolate hobnob.



As the title suggests this blog is a few random musings on etiquette and manners in modern society. Now those of you who know me well know I can be a wee bit old fashioned and to be honest this doesn't come across much more in my desire for good manners, however I do think we may have gone a bit far. For example my main gripe concerning this came on Saturday afternnon when I came back to work from my lunch break a bit late and a chap held open the door for me. Once we got into the lobby he actually turned to me with a look of disgust and said "Well you could have said thank you!". Now of course I stuttered and apology and went bright red and he wandered off but it was only later on while mulling this over (And thinking of all the violent things I would have done to the guy had he been firmly tied up) I actually began to think is the whole thanks thing a bit outdated? I mean really why do we want thanks for holding open a door? Now I refer not to things like if, for example, you see someone with a hot tray of drinks and you hold a door open for them, to be honest in that situation "Thank you for not making me scald myself horribly with a combination of tea and ovaltine" is probably a fair reaction and one we would expect. But to hold open a door to a building? What's the alternative for everyone to firmly close doors behind them and leave in single file? No quite simply he held open the door for me because it was a lot simpler than trying to close the door and crush me in it (Though seeing his face after I failed to thank him I rather think this thought had crossed his mind!) why do we feel we have to be thanked all the time?



Even more ridiculous are the overthankers, now we all know who these types of people are, for example if you are dashing for a train and get into the lift and start jabbing manically at the down arrow before that weird looking man in the flasher mac gets into the lift as well and the doors thankfully close and you breathe a sigh of relief and then suddenly the doors open again and in walks the dodgy man in the mac so again you hammer the down arrow to try and seal the bloody lift but no that very attractive girl on the train with the lovely perfume suddenly opens the doors and you're trying desperately to remain clam and suave around her but inwardly you're seething because with every person who won't just wait in the lobby for the next lift your train gets closer and closer and you still can't get the lift to go. And with each person who enters the lift they say "Oh thank you thank you", don't thank me! I was jabbing the down button so we wouldn't have to take you with us! Was my look uof disgust and to pointedly look at my watch not enough to imply to you that I didn't want you in this lift. Then suddenly the door opens again and in walks the obligatory man with a bike in skintight cycling shorts so suddenly your all wedged between a sharp metal frame or this gentlemans "Protuberance" which I assure you is not what you want in a lift (Though if you're lucky it does mean you're pressed conveniently close to the attractibe girl). And even worse at this point the man in the flasher mac you were avoiding to begin with is also tutting. Don't you tut sir! It's your fault he's here! If you'd just waited a few seconds I'd be on the platform doing the G2 crossword by now rather than stuck in a lift with you all!



My final category of etiquette problem is the actually bloody rude types. Now there are times when lack of manners can be accepted. Like when the person with the hot drinks inadvertanly decants hot ovaltine over your hand while getting through the door you rationalise it with yourself by saying "Oh I'm sure she apologised I just didn't hear" or some such nonsense, but some people are just rude. For example at the opera on Saturday there was a definite queue formed to get into the auditorium (Oh how we Brits love a queue) and it was the usual middle-class affair with lots of subtle tutting going on when someone decided the queue was clearly only there for certain people, not him, and so started marching up alongside the queue which was at this point snaking down the stairs. Now obviously this gentleman was not conscious of the workings of a wide staircase because suddenly the upstairs screen emptied and down the other side of the stairs in the opposite direction came the contents of that screen, there has been nothing so satisfying in my life as seeing that man suddenly staring up at a whole cinema full of people trying to get past him on the stairs but then (and this is the rude part) he just barged into the middle of our queue to let them pass and didn't even apologise. Even worse he was sitting on my row and I decided to hold a sort of silent protest by not standing to allow him in which backfired horribly when he clambered over my legs and decanted half a glass of red wine over me, for which again he didn't apologise. And as I sat there in the dark smelling faintly of Merlot I reflected back on the man at the office earlier and wondered why he'd had the nerve to tell me off for not thanking him for holdin a door open while I'd just allowed a man to pour half a glass of wine over me without apologising and I came up with a few basic rules of etiquette:

1. Over a lifetime the number of times you open a door for someone will more than likely balance out with the number of times someone will hold a door open for you so you should stick to either being a "Thanker" or a "Non-thanker" and leave it at that.
2. If someone has not done something on your behalf don't thank them for it, thanking me because you pushed the lift button is rather like me thanking you for sitting at my desk and leaving crumbs all over it. I didn't allow it and if I had my way it wouldn't have happened!
3. Don't wear a white shirt to the theatre just in case someone "Accidentally" spills red wine over you.

Today Matt

• Got his very own work name badge with the CSA insignia, it feels rather like walking around town in a T-Shirt saying "Stab me"
• Decided this year for halloween he will just hide in the loft to avoid the trick-or-treaters.
• Bought sparklers for bonfire night and got childishly excited by the idea of writing dirty words in the air with them.

The weirdness of beards

Afternoon to all from this latest installment of my blog, I'm enjoying my day off so I thought why not blog a bit before starting on tea.

I actually went for a haircut today (A harrowing experience for any man I can tell you) and it was while in the barbers chair that they offered to "Blend in" my sideburns to link to my "Beard". Now I have never consciously striven to grow a beard, well there was one period in University, my ill-advised "Tuft" era which came to a thankful end when I inadvertantly shaved off half my beard while hungover, so let that be a lesson to all men, don't try operating a razor while hungover, you may destroy weeks of hard work! Anywho that aside I've never really gone in for the whole beard thing, I usually tend to have a light-heavy stubble but that's generally a combination of laziness, refusal to pay the extortionate price of razor blades and a knowledge that every time I do get shaved I look about 12 and get asked for ID constantly which brings me neatly to my first beardy point.
Now I'm not certain if it is just me but as I said when I get a shave I do look like I'm in my early teens and if I neglect to do my hair as well I look mid-way between Toad from Mario and a skinny Elton John, to be honest I'm not suprised the off-licences won't serve me, I'm suprised they aren't ringing the local police to take me away somewhere for my own safety! And yet when I do have my beard there is never any question, apart from in ASDA and their policy is just mad anyway (You now apparently have to look over 27 to buy booze, so you now have to carry ID around with you for almost a decade after you're legally allowed to drink, what madness is this?). Is it just that the beard makes me look that bit older or is it that people with beards look somewhat more trustable? I can't see why they would the majority of the great dictators of history (Lenin, Stalin, Hitler, Hussein, Mugabe, Castro, Et al) all seem to have some form of facial hair, if anything it should be banned, maybe that's why Hitler was so cranky because he couldn't reach that little bit of moustache, could the whole second world war maybe have been averted by Eva Braun just giving Adolf a Gillette Mach 3 for christmas one year? Then again though these gangs of hooded youths that hang around street corners of an evening with the express intention of killing me (Or so the Daily Mail informs me anyway) never have facial hair so maybe that's the clincher, if you're old enough to have grown a beard and wear it in public then you're old enough to drink, see who needs ID?

Now talking in the preious section about the Mach 3 actually brings me onto another bizarre section of the shaving ritual, just how fiercely loyal men are to their razors. Firstly if after a drunken night out you end up staying over at someone elses house (It needn't be a filthy one-night stand I shan't judge you all by my patheic lowly standards, you may simply be at a friends house and end up too drunk to walk in a straight line, especially if you friends house happens to be near a police station as one of mine is) in the morning you invariably wake up with the dishevlled stubble look and your mouth feeling like someone's taken out your teeth and carefully covered them all in a light felt before replacing them. You'll feel a bit strange about it but you will always ask to borrow the hosts toothbrush being sure ypou thoroughly disinfect it before and after and yet would any man ever ask to borrow a razor? I know I certainly wouldn't because a razor is not just a few bits of metal it's a friend a good razor will last for years and years and lending it to someone else would be like if they asked to borrow your wife, it's just a social taboo. And when a long and well loved razor is finally replaced it is like a bit of a death, I remember at University somewhere along the line I lost my Gilette Mach 3 turbo, my favourite ever razor, as I made that long trek to superdrug I knew there and then even though it was a brilliant razor I would never again be a Mach 3 turbo because it would be like a widower getting a new wife who looked identical to his old wife, wrong and little bit creepy every time you went to use it. In the end I chose the razor that I still have 3 years on, the Gilette Fusion Power, it has six blades (Though it's really 5, no man ever uses the little one on the back) and it gives me a lovely close shave but it's just not the same as my old one even though according to the Gilette corporation it's better than my old one (Which, I assume, is why a pack of blades costs the annual British budget defecit). I even had brief dalliance with Wilkinson Sword but any man who claims they're better than Gilette needs shooting, that's like trying to compare Captain Kirk and Captain Picard (Except in that comparison the British product is the superior) the only one's who would possibly choose Kirk are the ones who've missed the entire idea of functionality.

Before I finish I do think we require a quick word about Aftershave as well. What sick bastard invented that stuff? "you've just finished pulling a device across your face that's sharper than cheesewire and has left your face raw and bleeding? What you need now is to splash some scented alcohol over that!" Ironically we all use aftershave but almost no-one actually uses it after a shave, it's why they rename it Cologne and put it infancy bottles. I'd personally just keep the name and put on a warning "Aftershave: Not to be used directly after shaving unless you're the kind of sick person who loves needly pain all over your face" plus that would have the added advantage of if, after a night of passion with a man, he shaves in the morning and you hear him screaming from the bathroom you know he's either slow, illiterate or into light sado-masichism, either way you can get the hell out of there!


Today Matt:

• Finished off his third bottle of imported wine, and I still have three weeks until the next order arrives!
• Realised he has to work on Saturday but doesn't have a clean shirt to wear.
• Started reading a book about pirates and has been talking like a pirate all day, much to the anoyance of anyone who's encountered him.

tempest in a teapot

Evenin' all and welcome to this latest installment of my blog although some of you have expressed concerns that I may have anger issues, I think you could well be on to something there!

Take today for example I was all set for a nice blog (That one on facial hair will get written at some point I promise you) until I get home and switch on the news and what do I see? A break in at the BBC in protest at Nick Griffin appearing on Question Time. Now I am no BNP fan, far from it, but perhaps someone could explain to me the logic of this protest? I mean what are the BBC playing at inviting an elected official on a political debating show. If the same number of people who were protesting today had actually got off their backsides and gone to vote in the Euro elections then this whole point would be moot.
The ones that I really failed to comprehend most though were those prtesting against the BNP outside Radio Merseyside what the hell? That's akin to me protesting against the Iraq war at the UK consul in Tajikistan, a legitimate protest certainly but what do you expect them to do about it? Send Geoff from accounts running down the M1 to broadcasting house to stop the recording maybe?
As I have said I am no fan of the BNP and their abhorrent views but they have been elected, they have 2 MEP's, what are we supposed to say? "You are legitimate enough to go on a ballot paper but not to be seen on television"? Ironically this debate could be the thing to show the world just what is wrong with the BNP. We should invite them on more debate shows, as many as is physically possible get Griffin on Gardeners Question time, hell get him on Chess Grandmasters Question Time if we can, take every opportunity possible to quiz this party on their actual policies because that's the way of destroying them, you start behaving like a savage and break into the BBC all you do is legitimise this party and avoid making them answer the key questions of policy. We know what the BNP want but how about actually asking them how they plan to achieve it? They want to physically repatriate anyone who doesn't speak English but what about those who were born here where do they intend to repatriate them to? And how are they going to afford all the extra admin staff to do the paperwork? This is the kind of thing we should be doing, not just spew at him, no matter how repellant he is.
What I would love this evening is just to see no-one mention race or fascism at all (Although having seen the clips on news 24 it loks very much like it will all be about Nick Griffin) and actually try and engage the BNP in a proper debate because Griffin is all set to act the martyr and endure all the slings and arrows, an actual debate may just disarm him and let the veil slip and show the apathetic British public exactly what happens when you don't exercise your right to vote.

Today Matt:

• Was actually relieved he wasn't able to witness Everton "Play" this evening.
• Got very annoyed by a colleague saying "I know" over and over again.
• Started re-reading Messiah, when you're not in the best mood you can't beat a nice religious themed, blood-filled, psychological thriller.

Train Rage

guten abend mein lieblingsblogees and welcome to tonight's installment of the potted history of my life, I'm actually worried about just how many of you are reading this thing, who knew my random musings and gripes about the world would be so popular, ah well enjoy tonight's words.

I was actually working on a blog about facial hair this evening and the controversies regarding it, however during todays comute back from work I had a lot of time to think about commuting and trains and it struck me that actually there are a number of issues regarding the trains and my commute that anger me more than almost anything else in the world.

What began my rant today was the fact that the trains were all cancelled or delayed this evening so my usual 15 commute took upwards of two hours to complete. Now I don't know what caused the trains to all be cancelled whether it was failed trains, the wrong kind of wind or caribou on the line I'm not sure and to be honest I don't much care, it simply meant that I was going to be delayed. But actually delays don't bother me all that much (Unlike one gentleman who I though was going to have an aneurism he was getting so stressed) what did get me a bit angry was when two cyclists turned up on the crowded platform with their bikes and started tutting. WHAT??? You have your own transport why do you need to hijack ours? turning up on a crowded platform of commuters with a bike in hand would be like me going to a Jewish orphanage with a huge chicken but saying "Oh this? No no I can't eat this it's not kosher, I'll just have some of your watered down gruel!" And then, and this really did get my goat, when the heaving train finally pulled into the station they got on with their bikes! Now I am all for exercise and a healthy commute but come on! That's rather like me driving a car with a bike strapped to the roof down a cycle path, it's just taking the piss!

Along with my bike anger goes over-friendly commuters, anyone who has a regular commuting journey like I do and gets the same train each morning and evening will soon realise that the same group of people tend to get the same train every day and after a few months a sort of embarassed "I sort of know you, though I have no idea of your name or what you do" smile, but don't start talking to me like we're friends! If I wanted to socialise with you I'd ask you, no we just happen to work in the same part of town and start at roughly the same time of day, it's doesn't mean I want to know you...... well unless you happen to be an attracive twentysomething woman with a passion for the arts, maybe then I'd like to know you.

My final anger (And I'm certain I'm not alone in this) is reserved especially for those people who play music on trains. Now I'm not taling about those who wear headphones and you can hear a bit of bass line, that's fine, I refer to those who are using a mobile, without headphones and at a volume that is making the seats bleed! I don't want to listen to your music and even if I did I would download it and play it in the privacy of my own home not inflict it upon innocent commuters who are either very sleepy (first thing in the morning) or very exhausted (in the evening). I think maybe when I next see one of these oiks playing whatever the hell the crap they play is called I might just get out my own MP3 machine and turn it to max and blast them with a bit of Bach's Brandenburg Concertos, that'd fix their wagon....... or, which is more likely, get me beaten horribly and make the very attractive girl on my commute a bit more scared of me!

Today Matt:

• Got his tickets to the Grand National in the post, whoop booze and gambling!
• Listened to extracts from the new "Steeleye Span" album, folk rock oh how middle of the road!
• Spent over an hour trying to remember the dream he had last night.... and failed.

The Mens Curse

Good evening friends, and welcome again to my blog, as the late great Humphrey Lyttleton would say "I can see from the look of puzzlement on your faces you're wondering what the devil this could all be about" well a blog is best described with an aphorism towads the wonderful childrens show "Playdays" with me as the all knowing Why Bird and you as that strange cat that was obsessed with sardine sandwiches!

Well my friends I write to you this evening with a heavy heart from my deathbed, wheezing and snuffling with more used kleenex around my bed than a 13 year old boy who's just discovered the Electra box set! Yes sadly I have been struck down in my prime with that most hideous of afflictions the male cold. Now there are many scholars (Mainly women it has to be said) who will claim the male cold is simply a myth and that men just want attention, well I say this is patently wrong! When a man is afflicted with such a disease it takes all his energy just to sip lemsip and reach feebly for the DVD remote (And apparently also write entries in a whimsical blog it seems!) whereas women when supposedly suffering from "The same afflication" can work, clean, care for children and probably invade a small Middle Eastern country should they feel the need. So I say to you women of the world do you really feel this is the same disease? Look at what your partner has been reduced to with his watery eyes and snot encrusted nostrils and tell me he is honestly suffering the same ailment which you so easily take in your stride.
Thankfully I am still in the early stages of the male-cold, it's a bit like one of those terrible B Movies where a disease threatens to wipe out the planet and someone in the quarantine bunkers suddenly sneezes, that kind of thing. At present I just have an annoyingly blocked up nose and a bit of a headache and so am planning an evening curled up in bed with hot lemon watching Frasier on DVD, however if my health continues in this downward spiral be fully prepared for, by Friday, me to be coughing, spluttering and generally infecting everyone in the surrounding area with my germs.
I think perhaps therein lies the crux of this whole male-female cold debate, the reason female colds are less severe is that women (and I am making a massive generalisation here for which I offer no apology) do so like to complain and I find and the fastest way for them to complain is around the office water cooler, which means they are in work so the germs go elsewhere and they recover far faster. For a man, however, he sees the start of his male cold as a reason to have a little time off work to get on with all those things that he doesn't have time for during his busy weekend (such as DVDs and computer games and the like) and as such he goes to bed with a sniffle and the germs build up but have nowhere to diffuse to and so they return to the body and the male cold grows and grows and grows and that is why the male cold is so much more damaging than the female one. Besides which girls if you had a cold and stayed home you'd have to let us men do the housework and look after you and we're patently not designed for such things, no the womans immune system is geared towards getting better as soon as possible so she can get up and clear up the mess of things her man is making downstairs, whereas mens immune systems work to try and keep them bound to their beds for as long as possible so as to avoid going downstairs and being roped into said domestic chores that he will invariably do wrong. It's just how we're built.

Today Matt

• Read an hilarious article in The Times about a woman in a towerblock who got an ASBO for reciting the Lords Prayer loudly on her neighbours doorsteps.
• Discovered the joys of cool strepsils.
• Tried to understand the logic of the C.E.R.N. hadron collider destroying itself from the future but got a sore brain.

Beginners blog

Well to be honest I'm probably just talking to myself here but heck nothing wrong with setting out a new blog of my life, the ups, the downs, the wobbly bits in the middle. For anyone used to my old blog I always said it was to be seen sort of like that wonderful old show Oakie Doke, with myself cast in the role of Oakie and yourselves as that mad frog who kept yelling "My hat" in a peculiar scouse accent that in 23 years of living in Liverpool I've yet to hear anyone else use!

Anyway as this is my first blog I thought I might just pick up on a few things I've noticed in the news recently. First of all today's major news story seems to have been focussed on young Jenson Button who has become F1 drivers champion triumphing over adversity, or alternatively who has just gone to prove that actually F1 is no more a sport than extreme toenail clipping or the celery dicing world championships. Just take a moment if you will to reflect on his "Achievement" this is a man who last won a race (Incidentally his only win prior to this season) two seasons ago and has essentially for many years been a national laughing stock. And yet this season has been given a new car that is better than anyone elses and he won six of the first eight races, now are we really supposed to be suprised at this? It's sort of the equivalent of Manchester United playing against Scunthorpe away, except United have to play in those huge old fashioned clodhopper style boots, and carry their luggage about with them on the field...... oh and the goalie has to wear one of those slumber masks they give you on the fancier airlines. And then we're being told to act suprised when Scunthorpe win. No Jenson, you won simply because you had the best car which makes it, in my opinion, not a sport simply a contest to see who happens to have the best engineering students and to be honest we have those strange warhammer contests that take place in secluded comic book shops to make engineering students compete - though incidentally that would be a damn sight more interesting than watching the F1 and I speak as someone who has sat through the unutterable hell of both of those pasttimes!

Today Matt: Applied for another job he isn't going to get.
Watched University Challenge with a glass of wine and felt smug for about two
second of it.
Read Charlie Brooker's new book and chose to begin blogging again!