Free Holiday?

Someone has offered me a free holiday. Being the cynical fucker that i am I waqs immediately sceptical about this. But I am assured - No hidden agendas, no strings attached and no money involved. It's entirely free. I'm in two minds whether to go. Usually it'd be an easy decision to make but after my last two holidays I'm now not so sure. Don't get me wrong-my last two holidays were great and I enjoyed every fun filled, booze fuelled minute of them, but therein lies the problem. I tend to enjoy holidays so very much that when i have to come home again I fall into an almost catatonic state of depression. That's the problem with holidays, they really put into perspective just how crap your life really is. And that's something i really don't need highlighting right now. You'll spend the week after you get back sitting at home on your lonesome, looking at your watch, thinking "This time last week I was sat on a gorgeous beach surrounded by beautifully tanned women with a drink in my hand and hope in my heart and now look at me!". This feeling usually lasts for a good month with me, like a 4 week hellish comedown. After a month it seems a little frivolous to still be feeling down about it, but do I want to put myself through it for the sake of a weeks debauchary? I think I do.

Hot Tramp, I Love You So!

I like tramps, or homeless people, I should say because when people refer to them as "tramps" i always get on my high horse about it. The vast majority of them are normal people, like you and me, they're just down on their luck somewhat. Sure, there's a few crack addicted ones letting the side down and I'm sure that the Kennel Club would have a few thngs to say about the dietary habits of their dogs, but most are good good people if you take the time to find out. Here's the first time I did;
I was in the Purple Turtle in Reading with a girl who wasn't my girlfriend. We were canoodling and having a few drinks and the like when my actual girlfriend, who had a deep hatred for the place and never went there (hence why i was in there), walked through the doors with her sister and saw me in the throes of public passion with this other young girl. Needless to say she went mental and ran over and pulled the girl by the hair, whilst i was kissing her, and headbutted me by smacking this poor unsuspecting girls head against mine, before launching into me with her nails out and her mouth barking. All hell was breaking loose; glasses were flying off the bar, bottles were getting knocked out of hands and poor old me was in the middle of it all. I endured a good 20 seconds of prising my young friend and my girlfriends sister apart, whilst getting my hair ripped out from behind when I decided enough was enough and made a run for it out the glass door and away into the night, leaving a trail of devastation, torn hair and screaming women behind me.
I got half way down the road when i realised that I was too strung out to go home and fancied carrying on drinking anyway. I looked at my watch. It was 1.45am. The Turtle was the only place that stayed open until 2 and my good friend Paul managed the place, so if i could hold out until everyone got kicked out I could go back for the all night lock in and make my merry way home in the morning. Opposite the Purple Turtle is a very old grave yard with lots of massive trees, with huge, twisted branches. I walked over to the biggest and, with a bit of drunken effort, climbed up onto the widest branch I could and lay back against the trunk, making myself as comfortable as possible whilst feeling like some some smug bastard Robin Hood like character as a surveyed all around me. From my vantage point I could see the Purple Turtle doors and i watched intently as hoards of people left the shitey night spot, screaming and puking as they went , but none of them were my girlfriend or my innocent battered ladybint. After about 20 minutes of keeping look out without spotting either target, I began to get a bit tired and soon drifted off to sleep safe in the bows of my crooked tree.
I opened my eyes and saw daylight poking through the leafy branches above me. I scrambled to sit upright as I tried to get a grasp on where the hours had gone and what was happening now. As i reached into my pocket to dig out my phone to check the time, I lost my balance and fell to my side and down onto the ground in a heap. Only it wasn't the ground. It was a groaning, upset tramp who had been sleeping peacefully in the balmy summers morning beneath the very branch I was laying in. "Ah! What? Fuckin hellll!" He grumbled in a deep Berkshire accent. "Oh Fuck! I'm really sorry! I didn't know you were there! I replied as a scrambled to my feet, sounding as if i always slept in a tree and jumped out at this time in the morning. We were both as strung out and confused as eachother and I spent the next couple of minutes trying to explain myself as he rubbed his bearded face and tried to come to terms with what had just fallen on him from a great height.
After we had both gotten over the shock and he had gotten his head and shattered nervous system around the fact that someone had just jumped out of a tree onto him, I took him for breakfast at a nearby burger shack as a way of apologising. We then swapped numbers, although he didn't have one so he told me where he usually slept at night when he wasn't under the tree and I promised to bring him a sleeping bag and a few other bits and pieces that he needed.
I don't like to think of myself as his sugar daddy because i rarely make him do sexy things to me, but that was 4 years ago and I still meet up for a chat and to give him things to this day. Everyone should sponser a tramp, if you ask me. My ones called Steve.

One Night Bland

I don't entirely remember how I got back to this girls house. I just seemed to come to with a can of lager in my hand and a cigarette in my mouth, sat on her sofa whilst she was messing about with something in her kitchen. I remember the sensation of shear bewilderment as I looked around the room wondering how the devil I had got there. When the answer failed to come from my frazzled mind I decided to shut it down completely and just went with the flow. She then led me upstairs and it was on that journey up that single flight that i realised just how smashed I was. So did she.
As we were laying down and kissing on her bed she turned to me and said; "Have you got any protection?" and I thought it'd be funny to act all naive/ignorant by replying, "Protection?!?! What do you mean, like a baseball bat or a hammer? No, I know this areas rough but I've left them at home!" Well that little doozie didn't go down half as well as you'd think but i managed to pul the situation back around.
Through much drunken fumbling, we both removed her clothes and I was immediately struck by how big her boobs were. I mean, they were massive! Distractingly big and fairly far from attractive; like saddle bags packed for a horseride across Death Valley. This just wouldn't do, I couldn't concerntrate and after a day of heavy drinking and all that goes with it, I was going to need the concerntration of Garry Kasparov to get me though this. I looked across the room with an open eye whilst i was kissing her and saw a Reading shirt hung on the wall as part of a mini football shrine. 'Well at least we have something in common' I thought, something I'd probably failed to check up on before I decided to make coitus with her. I stopped the kissing and said "Oh you like Reading! Me too! I fucking love Reading! Do you go to any of the games?" A converstaion about Berkshires finest ensued before I suggested "Why don't you put that shirt on? I think you'd look really sexy in it!" She dutifully obliged, God bless her, and pulled the tight top over her fun bags and took them out of the equation. The saga then continued but it was to no avail-I couldn't, for the life of me, sustain an erection and folding it in wasn't convincing anyone. I don't know whether it was the drink or the drugs or the fact that this girl was practically now dressed as a man that was the problem, Hell, it could have even been because I just didn't fancy her very much, but my mouth was writing cheques my penis couldn't cash. I was completely dead from the waist down and not even the most experienced of fluffers would have been able to do a thing about it. My phone rang, I answered it and it was my friend wondering where I was. I didn't know. "Where am I?" I turned and said to the girl. "On Thurston Court" she replied and I told my friend. "Fuck, that's only 10 minutes from my house" my mate replied. This was the extraction call I so desperately needed. I had a window of ooportunity to get the fuck out and you can be sure that I wasn't going to miss it, so I made an excuse that my friend had gotten into trouble, pulled on my clothes, kissed her goodbye, robbed some beer from her fridge and hot stepped it out of her house and into the night.

X Factor

I'm trying not to drink at the moment because I always land myself in trouble when I do. This has meant that I've watched more saturday night telly in the last two weeks then I have done in years. In the main, i think it's better TV than friday nights programming but I have a gripe with one particular programme and that programme is X Factor. Now don't get me wrong- it's quite entertaining watching people having their dreams smashed into smithereens before my very eyes and it does throw up the odd good singer or two. And any programme that features Cheryl from Girls Aloud and her delectable dimples would ordinarily be alright by me, but any entertainment programme that sets people up to knock them down when they clearly suffer from mental problems is one step too far in my book. This isn't a joke about how people who go on the show are mad-I've worked with mentally disabled people in the past, but even if I hadn't it would be easy to notice that the show happily offers up people who suffer from mental illness or are mentally disabled for the judges and the publics amusement. And, by golly, don't the we all just lap it up? Otherwise this piss poor excuse for entertainment wouldn't be in it's 4th series. Quite how there hasn't been a public outrage at the shows "Lets get a Spacco an make him sing and dance for our own amusement" tactics are shocking! Simon Cowell looks uncomfortable with it some times but the rest of them don't seem to be able to comprehend that they might be laughing at someone who might not all be there. Anyone who saw tonights episode with the 40 year old Pizza delivery man and his Michael Jackson routine would be left with no doubt that the poor fella was a few screws short of a picnic table. It's the equivalent of laughing at the disabled kid at school getting a football kicked into his nuts. OK, I did laugh then but I was only 13 and I've since seen the error of my ways. Lets look at the facts-15,000 people audtioned in London alone. 1 in 110 suffer from mental disability. A much higher percentage suffer from mental illness. So whereas it might not suprise you that a few of these people might slip through the net, what should suprise you is that these people are picked out by TV producers and thrown up onstage for us to laugh and point at. But it probably won't, such is the extent to which television has fallen of late with these modern versions of the old fashioned freak show sevred up as entertainment. So, other than Cheryls dimples, I wish a slow and painful death on everyone involved with X Factor

I should have probably written this to Points Of View.

Shockbuster Video

I made a porno once. I'd love to tell you it was tastefully shot and ended up looking like a piece of erotic art, but I cannot and that is mainly because it was recorded on one of these things: http://tiny.cc/tTRMj
If you haven't seen one of these before, it's a cheapo karaoke toy which plugs into your video recorder and then sits on top of your TV. You then press a few buttons and, hey presto, before you know it your mug is being hazily relayed back to you on the box as you belt along to your favourite pop tunes done in a casio keyboard stylee. And because it's all plugged through your video recorder you get to tape the whole lot on VHS. What a great idea and what a fantastic kids toy to facilitate an innocent nights evening of karaoke it is. Only a complete monster would watch a family happily playing with it on Christmas Day after a few drinks and immediately think how it could be put to use to serve ones seedy sexual desires but, regrettably, that monster is me.
I spent the evening of Chrismas 1999 with my girlfriend at the time and her family. Her younger sister had got one of these gadgets and it seemed quite technologically advanced for a home karaoke machine back in those dark, pre-millenium days but, in truth, the picture was grainy and shit and the music, despite playing many of the hot pop numbers of the time, sounded like it was being played out by a flid on his My First keyboard. As her family got drunker and more raucous whilst singing along and laughing hystericaly at their own played back musical ineptitude, I sat quietly, sipping a snowball in the corner, plotting how i would sieze control of the toy and put it to good use to film my sexy movie. And two days later I got my chance.
Her family had gone out for the day to visit some relatives before the New Year. I saw my window of opportunity and I took it. My ex-girlfriend, God Rest Her Soul, was always up for trying new ideas as long as no one (her) got hurt. When i pitched the idea for my movie to her, like a seasoned Hollywood producer, she was at first disgusted by the suggestion to use her younger sisters Christmas present as a means of recording our lovemaking, but after a few hours or so of gently, but solidly, grinding her down she reluctantly agreed. So i immediately got to work before she could renege on the deal by setting up the machine in her bedroom and concerntrated on getting the lighting conditions just right. The quality of the recording on this thing was as grainy as a chickens lunchbox, so if the light wasn't right the picture would be impossible to make out and my movie would be ruined. This was not helped by the fact that the only video i could lay my hands on looked about ten years old and had 'KEIRONS MUSIC VIDEO: DO NOT RECORD OVER' writen on it over the tattered label. "Ah well!" I thought, "Needs must!" before pushing it into the video recorder and turning down the telly so as not to be distracted by the annoying karaoke music that would blare out. I was ready, practically, so I shouted to my girlfriend and she dutifully came in wearing something slinky. Action! Knowing I was in front of the camera (no matter how crap it was) made me pull out all my best moves and tricks. All was going swimmingly until something put me off my stride. I looked over to the camera and could see the songs words being flashed across the bottom of the screen. They were the words of a classic Back Street Boys song which seemed overly apt at the time. I looked at the picture and saw how ridiculous we both looked shagging along as the lyrics scrolled along the bottom and was struck with a near uncontrollable urge to burst out laughing. Not wanting to spoil the mood or the film, i did my best to stifle these giggles and continued rutting away in my best porno manner. And then a Christina Aguilera song popped on and I could contain myself no more. I burst out laughing and my girlfriend immediately pushed me off her and made for the door. I hastily explained why I was laughing and she eventually saw the funny side and we continued with the shoot.
With both us and the film finished and with all the desired shots in the can, I switched the machine off, though not before rewinding the tape and having a little giggle at our own expense as our pastey, entwined bodies seemed to move in time with the very cheesiest of lyrics, and then took the tape from the video and placed it in her underwear drawer and forgot about it.
That was right up until her little brother Keiron came looking for his music video tape, turned the whole house upside down trying to find it, eventually located it in his sisters drawer, before sitting down to watch it thinking it was his favourite MTV videos, only to see me riding his sister soundtracked by the beautifully fitting Bosa Nova tones of Aguileras Come On Over and Backstreet Boys, I Want It That Way.
Next time, if i can trick anyone into a sequal, I think I'll invest in a camcorder.

It's Not Big And It's Not Clever!

I swore at a midget today. I'm not proud of it, but he just wouldn't leave me alone and I was very busy. I'm not exactly sure of the correct terminology, but he was definitely more midget than dwarf. He didn't have the oversized head and stumpy body of a dwarf. Instead he was all in proportion, just much much smaller; definitely under 4ft, I'd say. I guess he was about 30 and I think he must have been a little tapped. It happened like this, I was in a town centre this morning, at about 7.30am, overseeing the installation of some Christmas lights in a load of the trees on the main shopping street. I was having a fag and the first coffee of the morning whilst talking to the boss of the installation team about what needed to be done when this little midget wearing a blue shellsuit pops up from behind the van and stands next to us, with his back arched and his neck craned as far as it would go to enable him to see up into the tree.
"It's a bit early to be putting up Christmas lights, innit?" He said with a deeper voice than I would have given him credit for. Now I get that question from people with nothing to better to do all the time.
"No, we're just putting them in now so they'll be ready for Christmas."
"Oh right. So you're not going to be leaving them on now then?"
"No. As soon as they're in we'll turn them off. We just have to have them on so we can see where to put them and if they are working."
"But they're quite nice and pretty. I think you should leave them on."
"I'm afraid we can't. People would complain."
"Well i wouldn't. I think they look magical".
By this time I had sussed that he wasn't all there. He was either one of Santas Elves with an unhealthy fascination with all things Christmassy or he was just a little bit touched in the brain. I was doing my best to be patient with him but I was tired and had things to do. He continued.
"Can I have a go in your crane? I'd like to go up into the tree."
"I'm afraid not, mate. It's against health and safety and I'd get in trouble if you fell out." He probably would have fallen out too because the rail on the bucket would have come up past his head. If this guy was at Disneyland, he'd struggle to get on the Flying Elephants, such was his diminutive size.
"Oh go on! There's no one around and I won't tell a soul."
"I'm sure you won't, but I can't take the risk. Sorry mate!"
"Aw go onnnn!"
The installer i was with, a big northern blokes bloke, walked away at this point, saying "I'll leave this one to you, Paul".
"Oh go on, mate! Just a quick go. Just up and down quickly." The midget continued.
Part of me wanted to let him have a go. The poor little blighter obviously wasn't used to heights and on the scale of things this would have been like him looking down from the Eiffel Tower, but i couldn't as the installers would never agree to it anyway.
"I really can't, mate. I'm sorry. I've got stuff to be getting on with so take it easy."
And with that i walked away and pretended to be getting on with something in the hope that he'd disappear as quickly as he had arrived. But he didn't. The little bugger followed me and asked again.
"Oh please mate! Pretty please!"
"Look I really can't, so there's no point in you asking".
Not only did this guy look like a child but he then started to act like one; "I don't care. I'll just stay around here until you give in." the feisty little bugger said.
"Do what you want, mate, but I can't let you up in there." I replied wearily in the hope that he'd take the hint. He didn't and he continued his line of questioning and shadowed me around for a good 5 minutes. I tried walking away and I tried ignoring him but he just found new ways to get in the way, either by playing with the christmas lights on the floor or just pluging away with his quest. Parts of it was funny but by the end of it I was well and truly hacked off and I'm sure he noticed.
"Can I have a go on the crane now?"
"Look mate, I've got work to do. Why don't you just fuck off!" I said in more exasperation than anger.
"I'll fuck off if you let me have a go in the crane."
I turned to the installer who was laughing his head off with one of his workers; "Gary! Can you please give this fella a go in the bucket? He's driving me mad!"
Gary looked around to see if there was anyone about. There wasn't, except a few delivery vans at the other end of the street; "Hmmm, alright then" he replied in his thick Northern brogue as he lowered the cherry picker down to street level.
"YESS!!!" exclaimed the little guy as he fisted the air in delight.
My heart sank for him then and I felt terrible for telling him to fuck off. He ran over to the bucket as the other installer clamboured out to make room. He hauled himself into it, barely having to duck under the safety rail and stood proudly with his head just poking out the top of the bucket, with his hands tightly grasping the metal rail. Gary asked him if he was ready and he simply replied with a hearty "Yep!" before the metal neck of the machine began to rise. It rose up steadily into the tree tops and from my position leant against my car I could see the massive smile on his tiny face. It was a bigger smile than I've ever managed and he looked like the happiest person thats ever lived. Happier than I could ever be. I envied him.
When he got to the top he made a few excitable "WOW!" like comments about the view and the lights in the tree. It was a touching moment. Gary then told him that we had work to be getting on with and other than voicing a faux "Oohhh!" of disappointment, he was as good as gold. He thanked Gary and shook hands with him as he jumped out of the bucket and then came over to me with his little arm outstretched;
"Cheers mate. That was great!" he said with that huge smile still imprinted on his face.
"Glad you enjoyed it!" I replied, whilst shaking his tiny palm. It looked like he had completely forgotten me telling him to "Fuck Off!" but I hadn't. "Sorry about before. I didn't mean to be rude. I'm always grumpy in the morning."
"No problem, mate. No problem. That's made me day". By the looks of it, it had made his whole year.
"Here do you want some keyrings?" I said. I've got a boot full of promotional shite and it's so crap that I never bother giving it to anyone.
"Yes please!" he replied politely but excitedly.
I reached into the boot and gave him a handful of light up pens and these little crappy light projecting keyrings. His face lit up again like a child on Christmas morning when I showed them how they worked. "Thanks, mate!" he exclaimed. Then he waved good bye to the lads back up in the tree and said goodbye to me and was on his merry way again. I watched him walk down the high street for a bit and I'm not sure if he had a gammy leg or not, but I could swear he was skipping. Actually, it was probably a limp, but I'd like to think he was skipping.

If You Don't Want Me To Annoy You....

I don't get annoyed. Not all that much and never to the point where I'll physiclly act on it. Actually, sometimes i do but, as i said, not all that much. Most of the time I don't even register the annoyance until much later on. When the incident happens I'll barely notice it, but then i'll be laying in bed at night with nothing but my own thoughts for company and it'll hit me; "You dirty mother fucker!" With this in mind here are the people who have annoyed me this week; No.1. Nigerian Business Man: Now this wasn't one of those laying in bed and then getting angry moments. This was blind rage from the off but it was all within the confines of a legitimate business meeting so I had to quell my urge to reach over the dinner table in the plush surrounds of the Holiday Inn Brent Cross restaurant and smash his laptop over his head. God only knows what he was writing on that laptop but my annoyed mind pictures him constructing an email to HQ back in Lagos, saying; "We gone got ourselves another one, John Paul! Bank details to follow". My office told me not to meet him. My Boss told me not to meet him. Everyone I spoke to told me not to meet him, but I like to give people the benefit of the doubt until they give me a reason not to, so like a mug I went to meet him and wasted my time and his. Actually, it wasn't an entire waste because I got to look right into the eyes of someone telling the most bare faced cock and bull story with a straight face, which would have been rather amusing if I had been able to pull him up on it to the proper degree and call him a lying cunt. Anyway, you paid for dinner, you fucking amateur, so I win! Nigeria -£11.95 and no Christmas lights for the kids. England 1. Yes!!!! No.2. The restaurant at Holiday Inn Brent Cross. Food comes on plates, not wooden fucking blocks. Why do some places think they need to fuck around things like this? Plates have served us perfecly well for centuries, yet some smart arses think it'll be cool and edgy to serve up their food on the back of a sea turtle. Actually, that would be quite cool. I'd happily eat their overpriced food off the back of a sea turtle if only to take my mind of the taste and I'd also be happy to ignore this level of pretentiousness if their nosh didn't make me want to vomit on the journey home. Your smoke and mirrors haven't worked on. me, Holiday Inn Brent Cross. I'm on to you, you fucking charlatans! No.3. People being extra specially miserable on the anniversary of the death of a loved one. Now this might sound callous, but hear me out. I've never lost anyone close to me but Im sure that time will one day come. And when it does you can bet your arse that 9 years down the line I won't be miserable as fuck on the anniversary of that persons death. Why is it that some people think they should.....no, need to be extra fucking solemn, tearful and miserable on the day that their loved one died? I'm not talking one year on or two years or even three, but I work with a girl whose father passed away 9 years ago and she was literally wailing away in the office and if the fucker had passed over yesterday. This may sound harsh but why do these people do it to themselves? Why do they feel that they need to be extra specially fucking sad on that particular day? Why not deal with the grief on a day to day basis? You'd be perfectly entitled to think about your lost loved one every single day and gradually deal with the grief that way rather than save it all up for one fucking day of the year when I come in to get some vital work done. The cynic in me says it was for purposes of garnering attention. And it worked! Not on me but there were quite a few ladies rushing around with tissues and cups of the sugariest of tea whilst the more rationally thinking men in the office sat back, shook their heads in disbelief and tried to get on with their fucking work. Why do it to me and why do it to yourself? Why not expend that energy doing a Fun Run for cancer research. Across the fucking M25! I'll even sponsor you. No.4. Petrol Station workers who ask you if you have any petrol. The scene, one day, will go like this: I park your car away from the pumps. There are no other cars on the forecourt. I walk in pick up a sandwich, a paper and a drink and go to the counter to pay for them; "Good morning, JUST these please." "Any petrol?" "AAAAAHHHHHHHH!!!!! If I fucking had petrol I'd tell you, you slackjawed fuck. You ask me this every fucking day! If i have petrol I'll tell you the pump number and if this was the one day I decided to steal a whole tank of the stuff, your ingenius Columbo style of questioning isn't going to trip me up. Now just ring up my egg sandwich and fuck right off!" Though I guess it wouldn't matter if I did go berserker in there one day. They'd only ask again the next time. The wankers! These sort of lists should always come in 3's or 5's, or even 10's if you've had a particularly bad week, but i'm struggling to think of a 5th gripe, so i'll leave it there. Though i guess the week isn't over yet.