The most irritating person I know

It would have to be this little bloke who comes into the gym. He's about five foot tall. He has big biceps, big shoulders and a massive belly. And a big fat head.

He does the same machines every time, and hogs them for ages. In fact, when the place is quiet, he tries to hog two machines at once. He does a set of shoulder presses and then goes over to the lat pulldown machine. But if someone has a go on either of these vacant machines, he sometimes stops and says 'Hey mate I'm still using that one.'

No you aren't, f**kwit you are on the other machine now. I always just say to him 'I'm just doing a set of ten' and then take my time.

But that's not even the annoying thing. The real annoying thing is that the whole time he is exercising HE TALKS REALLY LOUDLY INTO A STUPID BLUE TOOTH HEADSET BEHIND HIS EAR. He never stops. He talks self-important crap about various business dealings he is negotiating with some unnamed person. Maybe he is some sort of drug dealer, he certainly looks like one of our local thuggish organised criminals with his stupid gold chain and ugly tattoos.

His conversations go something like this:

'Yeah, tell Billy to bring it over...no look I told him that already, it was all arranged....what....yeah but sure that was all sorted out...what....yeah of course that was all sorted out already....yeah when we were in the house last night...yeah in the kitchen.....'

Blah blah blah. Really loudly.

I suppose the reason why he has the big belly is because he only works on his arms. I sometimes wonder why he never looks in the mirror and thinks 'Christ I look ridiculous.' Because he does.

After I finish in the gym I like to go and relax in the spa & steam room. My bluetooth friend doesn't usually frequent this area, but one night I was sitting in the steam room when he walked in.

Bizarrely, he was fully dressed in his gym gear complete with jewellery. He had a newspaper with him. Bear in mind that in the steam room it's very damp and with 90% humidity his paper soon started to fall apart.

But not before he had a chat to me about the contents. To my disgust, every time he finished a sentence he spat on the floor between his feet, like some weird nervous tic.

'Look at that' spit he said 'he earns a million dollars an hour' spit

'What?' I replied.

'Advertising' spit said Mr bulky dwarf. 'a million dollars an hour. spit. I'd like to be him' spit.

I was confused now. 'Who does.'

'Mr Google' spit he said. 'He gets a million dollars an hour from advertising.'spit

Hmmm. So he thinks that there's a person called Mr Google running the whole operation. Maybe he lives next door to Mr Yahoo and Mr Facebook.

Human? Dancer

Am I human?

Or am I dancer?

So I did quit my Job

I didn't weigh in last week. I'm just not interested enough any more. I rang in sick for three days and then stopped.

I told them I had a bladder infection.

I do not see the point of it any more. I barely earn enough to save any money; and the job is so mind-numbing I waste my money on dubious weekend entertainments.

Plus it is depressing to be treated like an errant child.

So I wrote a letter to my boss and cycled over tonight and left it on her desk with my headset and locker key and pass. I apologised for not working my notice. I don't suppose they'll care.

So I will walk around our lovely countryside for the meanwhile before I consider my next step. I have enough money to keep me going.

The song above could have been written about me, minus the WW1 bits.

Dietary Habits

This week, I've been eating my porridge uncooked, with milk and raisins. Try it before you decry it. It's minimilist muesli for the recessionary era. I got this recipe from Maurice Carlin.

Only problem is, the mixture 'cooks' inside you, creating merry bloody hell with your innards. I dropped my guts five times yesterday, the first four before I'd even got out of bed.

I also bought a one kilo tub of peanut butter. When the top layer was finished, I stirred in a 240g jar of ASDA ginger preserve. It's delicious in white bread sandwiches.

Speaking of such matters, I had a prawn open salad with my mum today. It was lovely.

Her dinner table patter:

"Good prawns these aren't they? From M & S. North Atlantic ones. Not like those Asian ones. Do you know, they fertilize their fields with human faeces, and it runs into the lagoons, and that's where they get the prawns from. Come to think of it, it can't be too healthy eating the vegetables, if they harvest them in faeces. The smell from the farms must be terrible.'

I pushed the salad away, and helped myself to a bread roll.

Work

I don't think I can do my call centre job any more.

I've been taking 100 calls a day every day for a while now as they cut staff.

I got hassled for my toilet breaks as I'm taking too many, but I'm on diuretics (piss tablets) for my blood pressure.

I went to the doctor to get her to write them a letter explaining this, but she (understandably) said it was ridiculous and the NHS shouldn't have to pay for such a letter. She said she would charge my employers £20.

I went back to my boss and asked her if my firm would pay the money. After consulting with her boss, she said no. She'll give me an extra minute or two per day.

Great. That'll barely get my arse out of the seat and to the top of the stairs.

In the meantime, I've been fighting for some extra holidays for a while now.

I was suspended without pay for a week last year, but during part of that time I was off on holday. So I lost my holidays and my pay. I want one or the other back, preferably my holiday entitlement.

We don't book or holidays through human interaction. It's all done automatically by computer.

To my surprise, when I booked another holiday at the start of February, I accidentally booked six days off during a week rather than five and the software let me do it. We're entitled to 5 days & a 2 day weekend, so why the feck does their software let you book six days off? I bet I'm not the first to do that, and some people probably haven't noticed.

So I'd lost a day & I couldn't get it back outa the computer. I told my boss. I told HR. I just want my frigging holidays back.

I think I should hand in my notice.

Here are some letters I have written. It's not too much to ask is it?

Dear Sir/Madam,

1.) Last year I was suspended without pay from 30th September until Sunday 4th October, though in reality I did not receive any pay for that week (see attached photocopy). However, I was off on holiday on the 28th and 29th September and the 2nd, 3rd and 4th of October. I have had these days taken off my leave entitlement, despite not being paid for them. At the time my team leader,*******, told me that these holidays would be added back on to my entitlement. This has not been done to date. Please could you adjust my remaining leave accruement accordingly.

2.) My holiday entitlement for year 2008/9 still shows 11.92 hours. I was in passport grad bay when I started my role in ************** in March 2009 and was not allowed to take these holidays. Please add these hours to my leave entitlement for 2009/10.

3.) I worked two bank holidays in springtime of last year. One was May day and perhaps one was at Easter. I was told that I would get a day in lieu for each of these days. These could have already been added on, but since I have never received any communication to this effect I have no way of verifying this. Please could you verify whether my entitlement has been altered.

Yours faithfully,

me

And when that didn't work:

Dear Sir/Madam,

Since my last letter (enclosed) I have had twelve hours added on to my leave entitlement. However, I haven’t received any correspondence as why this has happened. I’m guessing that it may be the 11.97 hours still showing from my 2008/9 allowance. Please could you let me know what’s going on.

In addition to the unresolved issues from my last letter, I inadvertently booked six days off during the first week of February just past. As you are aware, I’m only supposed to work five days out of seven. As I’ve only been paid for five days, please could you give me back one day’s holiday allowance.


Yours faithfully,
me

Dear editors of national newspapers

And their acolytes:

A wise friend of mine has pointed out:

The reason why you shouldn't reveal Venables name and offence is because it will prejudice a jury.

Despite your childish attempts to divide the world into good and evil, we still have a presumption of innonence in this country.

Whatever his new offence might be, you will never find twelve impartial men and women if you continue your efforts to uncover him.

You might whip up an angry mob attacking Venables, or his family, or friends, or someone with a vaguely similar name.

So shut the fuck up for a few minutes, yeah?

Oh, I didn't expect to speak to a real person!

Oh, I didn't expect to speak to a real person!


So it's eight o'clock at night and you decide to ring the passport helpline. I can hear the thudding tones of the 'Eastenders' theme in the background. You're probably having a cup of tea and a Digestive and have decided to bother me with some inane queries about passports.

The real civil servants have gone home hours ago and only simple wage-slave lackies like me are still here on our 'fully-flexible' shift patterns to aid the clueless British public.

And you have to rub it in by saying

Oh, I didn't expect to speak to a real person!


If you didn't expect to speak to a real person it begs the question; why the fuck did you ring?

Because now you're going to bother me with a dozen questions, and you're barely going to listen to the answers and you're still going to fuck up the application form, because you sound a bit thick.

q.) How much is a passport these days? How long does it take to process? Do I still have to fill in my child's father's details on section 4 of the form even though it could be any one of a dozen weasel-faced blokes? Do I need a visa to travel to Malta? Will I get the passport back in time? Do I need to send the birth certificate only I've not got one?

a) £49 for a child, £77.50 for an adult is the cheapest; three weeks; just fill in what you can or if you leave it blank explain why in section 8; No, but contact the foreign office to make sure on 0845 850 2829 as my boss's would rather you rang two separate numbers to make more money for my company; yes, probably; yes and here's the number for the registrar general.

Now, I say again, if you have all those questions and you

didn't expect to speak to a real person!

then why the fuck did you ring?

Have you heard that the passport agency have developed their own version of Hal from 2001? Or have they employed a load of Haley Joel Osmonts from Steven Spielberg's magnum opus 'AI'?

Maybe you thought you could get the answers to your questions by bashing the keypad on the phone with your many thumb-like fingers:

'Press 5 on your keypad if you want to know whether you can get an appointment at the Newport passport office between 3pm and 4.15pm on a Tuesday, and whether you'll have to bring new photographs, and whether you can pick the passport up on the same day, and whether someone can go along on your behalf to do this.'

If you thought these things, help me out. I haven't fucking heard of it. I'm still sitting in this bastard office listening to your inane shite.



Thank you for calling.

Never a frown with Gordon Brown

Brown says he never 'hit anyone.'

But he's not accused of hitting anyone.

He pushed them around a bit and roughed them up and yelled at them.

And he wrapped an aide inside a persian carpet and kicked him to death and threw his body in the Thames.

He punched a hole in a junior cabinet minister with a rawl plug, tore out his kidney, salted it and ate it.

John Prescott made a fair point about Andrew Rawnsley's lack of named sources on an excellent Newsnight on Monday, on which Paxman dropped the f-bomb.

I remember reading a piece by an Amercian journalist describing how she was schooled by her editors. 'Get names. Attribute your sources.' (As seen in the last series of 'The Wire')

She couldn't believe it when she moved to Britain and was allowed to accredit quotes and opinions to unnamed 'sources.'

Journalists here do it as a matter of course, but it is absurd when you stop to think about it.

Rawnsley is just putting words into mouths; that's been going on for thousands of years. But is he Thucydides or Herodotus? (both of whom usually named their sources, even if it was a bloke down the taverna in Herodotus' case.)

Hattersley and Steele both claimed that this story was evidence of a 'dumbing down' of politics, claiming that Abraham Lincoln* was a fiery old mongrel and no-one gave a damn. I've heard peole say the same about Churchill today.

But that doesn't wash. The world was a very different place then. In a stratified, paternalistic society aggression - or bullying - was acceptible. It's not now. If Brown thinks that it is, is it further evidence that he's out of touch with the real world?

Anyway, the next government is walking corpse already. There won't be a honeymoon.

There is no enthusiasm for this election outside of the sort of politico fanboys who read and write stuff like this on the internet.

They aren't going to be in a great state at all because while most other Western economies are climbing out of recession, Britain is stagnant & national debt is dwarfing Everest.


Bring back the corn laws.

* edited some weeks later to add: Lincoln was apparently short tempered because he took a medicine containing a high dose of mercury every day. Is this Gordon's excuse?

Weekend

I woke up on Saturday to find my bed full of broken glass

I'd been out drinking the night before

What I think happened is this:

On entering my room I had banged against my bookcase. On top of the bookcase is the vase that holds my pens and coloured pencils and the empty Hellmans mayonnaise jar that holds my tin whistles

I must have sent these flying. The Hellmans mayonnaise jar collided with the rail at the end of my bed and shattered.

Rather than clean it up, I must have just got into bed and passed out.

Some of the shards of glass were quite big. I was lucky not to cut myself.

The last thing I remember from the night before is being told that the girl I had been calling Angela all night was actually called Andrea. No big deal. God knows what happened after that.

Last night I left the movie, wandered the streets drinking whiskey from a hip flask, turned down an invitiation to a soul night, met Old Roger (from Leeds) who took me to the CCC club - The Catholic C-something Club? All drinks were two pounds. There were some fruity ladies there and Donna who didn't recognise me but then when I finally penetrated her alcoholic fugg loudly and volubly told me and everyone else around 'Oh I remember you! We made love once! Why did we only do it the once?' She's living with a fella now so after some ass-tappage (which stopped when she said 'Why are you tapping my ass?') I left.

I missed the last train again so sat with some drink and drug affected buskers in Cornmarket. The bloke was from Dublin and I stupidly encouraged him to play Irish folk songs which resulted in a few close confronations with meatheads in our welcoming, multi-cultural city. He made loads of money off hot ladies though. There's some unbelievably attractive women staggering about the snow filled streets of Belfast at witching hour.

Then I walked up to Botanic via the red light district and got propostioned by two prostitutes ('looking for business, love) before getting a £25 taxi home in the snow.

Another great weekend.

Further

Further to the last post:

I turned up for my HR meeting but no-one turned up.

I advised the receptionist, then waited, and waited, and waited.

Finally, I said to her 'No-one has turned up. What should I do?'

'Well I told HR but no-one knows anything about it,' she snapped.

Presumably this was twenty minutes ago, as she had been on a personal call to someone about her shopping since then. She hadn't bothered telling me.

(She is a grumpy receptionist and not a 'people person.' Like many receptionists, in my experience.)

She asked me to see who the invitation letter I had was from. In fairness, it was signed by V, one of the head honchos in my department.

So I went upstairs but V was having a big TOPS meeting with all the other bosses. (Don't ask me what TOPS stands for. Total Operational Performance Standards or some similar nonsense, probably. They have one every day, who knows what they talk about.)

So I went back to work. Later V said she would rearrange it, but she is very busy & forgetful so maybe it won't happen. If anyone asks me about it I shall say, 'Oh don't worry about that. I sorted that out in your absence.'

An absence referral meeting in which the other parties were absent. Kafkaesque.

A twart

I talked to the biggest twart in the world today, a solicitor from Kent county council.

He'd lost his passport & was travelling next Saturday. Still plenty of time to get a new one, but he had a major hissy fit in a train station because:

a) I required him to take time off work to attend an appointment
b) I couldn't guarantee that the passport could be delivered to his workplace (for security reasons we require a residential address and he is between houses)
c) The price of the passport was £112.50 instead of ten pounds.

He was pissing, whinging and shrieking like a little girl. Any time I suggested something to help him, he'd go ballistic and say 'Well I can't POSSIBLY do that! This is effing ridiculous!' He managed to mention that he was a solicitor three times.

I'm not one for hitting kids, but he was a fella who needed a good effing shoeing as a child. Jumped up prick. I know where he works and I know his name. He's just effing lucky he's quite far away. I also know his email address, so I may set up some fake email accounts to spook him.

I may be sacked tomorrow because I've got another meeting with HR to discuss my absences. I hope they have my file handy because I can't be bothered explaining about my mental illnesses again. Ho hum. I'm sure I'll find another minimum wage job elsewhere.

I may return to the joyous world of credit control, or run away to the circus, or lie low in a kibbutz.

We got beat five one

Following on from the previous post - we got beat five one.

Still, the day out was enlivened by:

a) A really crap picture of the Queen, in ermine robes and that, in the Crues social club.
b) A tiny, tiny, wooden shed, about six foot high and two foot wide, in the stand.
c) A Hulk Hogan figurine, and some other wrastler figurine, sitting proudly atop the first aid shed
d) £2.10 for a 35ml whiskey! (I fell off the wagon)
e) The crues being a jolly nice bunch

Our goalie is useless to the power of grayskull, though. Just terrible. He fair breaks my heart.

An anecdote about how Lou Macari towels himself, and the Irish Cup

An anecdote about how Lou Macari towels himself



It's the fifth round of the Irish Cup tomorrow in the fitba (est 1881; 4th oldest cup comp in the world, cup fans.) It's the equivalent of the third round of the FA Cup, when the small fry play the big boys.

1st Division Bangor have been drawn away to Crusaders, top of the premier league ahead of Glentoran and Linfield. Gulp.


Crusaders are managed by Stephen 'Stanley' Baxter, who I think was part of the cabal of born-again Christian players who used to pray in the dressing room before kick off, then go out and put the fear of God into their opponents with bone-crunching tackles back when the Crues won two titles in the mid-1990s.

So a trip to Seaview it is.

I asked the big ranga team leader out of work if he was going to the match.

'If it goes ahead' he replied

'Why, I thought the Crues had a plastic pitch,' I countered.

'Not that,' he says 'I'm off to a shareholders meeting to see if we can put a team out.'

I didn't know things were that bad.

At least we aren't in the position of Lisburn Distillery, managed by ex-Forest stopper Tommy Wright. They are in £250,000 of debt. They were paying their players a total of £20,000 a month! May not seem much, but that's Utaka-like madness in the cash-strapped local game.

Anyway, back to the game tomorrow.

Thanks to an utterly bizarre game in which half the Crues team decided to act like Vinnie Jones crossed with Cantona crossed with Mad Max they'll have four players suspended tomorrow(all the nutty action in the video comes in the second half). Which is nice.



For some reason it's at 2.30pm.

Carrick are playing at 2.00pm because someone set fire to their club rooms.

Passport calls the day

Today was the day for the strange folk of Britain to ring the passport line.

First there was the man who repeated many things I said in loud, robotic phonetics like an alien air-traffic controller. 'That's PAPA - ALPHA - SIERRA - SIERRA'

Then we had the very posh, fruity young lady from Kensington who had her child's passport due for delivery. However, she was currently staying at her country (!) residence in Cheltenham.

(who doesn't move to their country residence at this time of year? Me, I'm off to mine at Balmoral for the weekend.)

'No problem' I said 'I'll just put you through to the Peterborough office. First could you give your child's name and date of birth so I can check the details?'

'It's Ozymandias,' she replied.

Stifling a gasping laugh, I said, 'Oh yes, like the poem by Shelley.'

'Oh!,' she says ' 'Yes! Not many people get that!.'

'It's one of my favourites,' I tells her. And I began to declaim in my rich, sonorous bass tones:

'I met a traveller from an antique land
Who said: Two vast and trunkless legs of stone
Stand in the desert. Near them, on the sand,
Half sunk, a shattered visage lies, whose frown
And wrinkled lip, and sneer of cold command
Tell that its sculptor well those passions read
Which yet survive, stamped on these lifeless things,
The hand that mocked them and the heart that fed.
And on the pedestal these words appear:
"My name is Ozymandias, king of kings:
Look on my works, ye Mighty, and despair!"
Nothing beside remains. Round the decay
Of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare
The lone and level sands stretch far away.'

But I only got the first bit out before she interrupted me.

'We called him that because of the 'King of Kings.'

King of Kings

Not much to live up to then.

His middle name was something like Matheousus too.

--------------------------------------------------------


Next I had a woman on trying to get a passport for her boyfriend's kids.

Thing was, like, the kids mum, like, had the passports and she wasn't giving them up. She kept on saying they were lost.

'Does the father have parental responsibility?' I asked. (If the parents never married the government only gives official parental responsibility to the mother, pre 2003, in a startlingly sexist piece of legislation that has since been fixed but isn't retrospective.)

'No, like we've never had need for it, like. Can't we just send you our tax credits slip?'

'Er...no,' I said 'The mother will have to re-apply for the passports if she applied for them in the first place.'

'But she won't talk to us!' she grumbles.

'Well then you'll have to go to a solicitor,' I advised, 'and get a parental responsibility order.'

'But we've never had need for one!'

'Well you do now' I told her grumpily.

*click*


I get this a LOT. Father rings up, complaining that he wants to take the kids on holiday but the mother won't give up the passport or claims they are lost. And then the father rings me up and says 'Surely we can do something about this? There must be a way around it.'

Yes mate, talk to your ex missus. And get her to talk to you. I can't sort this shit out. Admittedly I've been guilty of some naughty similar behaviour in the past, but not to the extent that children have been denied holidays.

-----------------------------------------

My last call was most interesting. An eighty-one year old woman rang me looking to trace her father's passport. She was adopted and had managed to track down her birth father. He was a Belgian immigrant who had changed his name, had possibly committed suicide or been murdered, and was buried in Streatham. She had found his death certificate and his grave but had never met him. He went on to have a big family of many other kids and she had tracked some of them down but they wanted nothing to do with her. He spoke nine languages.

I had a lovely chat to her for twenty minutes. Fascinating story, and very sad. She was looking for something no-one could give her.I have no idea where the passport archives are. I had a look at our website and at the National Archives sites. She had contacted them but no-one was friendly. I was more than happy to listen. I wish I could have helped her more.


----------------------------------

Oh, and yesterday I booked five emergency passports for five kids for an Irish traveller in the Coventry region. He'd had them seized at Dover because they were all out of date when he came back from Eurodisney last week. He wanted to take them to Holland this week. Poor bloke was illterate so I suppose he didn't realise.

He couldn't remember all his childrens names or dates of birth so he had to line them up one by one and ask them while he was on the phone. It was quite sweet. It sounded like there was a big party going on in his home, at 11.00am at the morning. Voices cutting in everywhere. His kids all had good old-fashioned names that no-one calls their kids any more, like Felix and Anne and Barbara.

Happy New Year's Eve!

This time 10 years ago I was swimming naked and dancing on the beach at Byron Bay with me chap out.

Cop 1: 'Can you put some clothes on?'
Me: 'I'm not offending anyone!'
Cop 2: 'You're offending me!'

Ah mad weekend. Pulled that gorgeous girl from Inverness and then lost her after the 2nd bottle of whiskey. I must have done something terrible because when she turned up in Melbourne my name was mud. But then she got scabies, that'll learn her!

And I lost my shoes, and got dehydrated, and fell asleep on the nudist beach, and then lay moaning and dyhdrated on a mud path while everyone walked over me until a lovely Dutch couple rescued me. I've a lot of time for the Dutch.

Only time I have ever drunk two 700ml bottles of Jameson's one after the other.

I bought one for myself and this girl from Reading bought me another (whatever happened to her?)

I didn't really mean to start on the second one but I met this wabhead Aussie who started lecturing me on the Northern Ireland troubles with the conviction & arrogance someone who's only experienced the conflict at a distance of 8,000 miles through books & TV can manage...

He was fe&king me off so much I started taking big swigs from the Jameson's to calm me down. Always a good idea.

That's when I blacked out (but presumably finished the whiskey) and must have suggested something terrible to the girl...

Lord she was hawt. If I could hold her in my arms today.....

This year, to save me from tears, I'm going to get a dose of sexy and pull a cracker in Donegan's beer garden. Get her down the lough at midnight to hear the container ships toot their tooters at the stroke of 12. It'll be so romantic I'm bound to get my fingers & tops.

Rage against the Machine have reached number one. A nation rejoices.

It's good to see that in these commercialised times, people are remembering the true spirit of Christmas. There's something truly humbling & holy about 600,000 peole downloading a song they don't really like just to piss off a man they don't like. It's what the baby Jesus would have done.

Though I downloaded it too! Eff me I just did what they told me!
Part of me admires this tenacious, backs-to-the-wall, Blitz spirit effort to get RATM to number one. It was a triumph of good over evil, for sure. And I'm glad to have played my small part.

But wouldn't it be great if we could all club together to do something that wasn't totally fecking pointless? Shelter, the homeless charity, have made about £50,000 out of 600,000 downloads. If everyone had simply donated 29p to Shelter the world would be a better place today.

And I wouldn't have to hear that bloody song again, which was definitely NOT in my list of Great Songs of 1992. It brought a lot of long-haired moshers onto the dancefloor at the Limelite Club back then, and if the feckers didn't knock my pint over, they'd minesweep it as soon as my back was turned.

It's the Xmas musical equivalent of paying £70 to go to a premier league football match to shout abuse at the players, knowing that a fair whack of your £70 goes into their wageslip at the end of the week. And then in turn that gets spent on Bolivian ladyboys and useless racehorses. Dunno what Cowell spends his money on. He's probably going to buy his own Carribean nation, like St Lucia.

As far as Christmas songs go, I would like all DJs to play 'Rainy Night in Soho' by The Pogues instead of 'Fairytale of New York' and see how many people notice.

I'm astonished that it takes 600,000 sales to get the Xmas number one. I suppose that 29p downloads and one-click ordering make it such a painless process. I certainly wouldn't have gone traipsing down to Our Price to buy a 7" single of RATM at £1.99, pushing through a horde of whey-faced troglodytes to do so.

Thought for the day

Did anyone hear thought for the day on radio 4 today?

Some youthful sounding Muslamic bloke was telling us about how a scruffy beggar with a dog asked him for some spare change.

He looked down at him and began some internal hmmm-ing and ahhh-ing.

Would this bloke spend the money on alcohol?

Would he spend it on drugs?

Am I doing the right thing?

Without bothering to consult brer beggar, he reached into his wallet. He was about to draw out a low-denomination banknote when he remembered what Moh - blessedbehisname - ammed did.

Mohammed was confronted by a beggar, but instead of giving him money he took his hand and led him to the local hardware store. 'Here's an axe' said Mohammed. 'Take this ask and go into the woods and cut down the trees. Sell the firewood and you'll be set for life.'

And he was. Don't know what the contemprary prophet Georgis Al-Monbiot made of it, but when Mohammed strolled by a few weeks later our boy was choppin' and heavin' wood like the divil himself and keeping his family in chipolatas.

So back to the present. What did our thoughtful preacher do?
Did he give him the cash? Did he buy him an axe?

Er....

At this point he said a little prayer.
Something along the lines of 'Dear God, help the beggars and help everyone else at this time of year'



And that's it.

So everyone, before you make up, or even put on your wake up, say a little prayer for beggars, yeah?

Movember

If anyone is still reading this most irregular of blogs, please note that I have been growing a moustache for the month of 'Movember' in aid of prostate cancer research. You may have noticed the Aussie and New Zealand rugby teams have been doing the same. I've managed to raise over £140 so far, out of over £13,000,000 worldwide.

After going back to the old handlebar moustache, I'm now sporting a trimmed model, as seen above. I'm starting to get attached to it. Hmm. It'll have to go on the 30th of November, though.

Feel free to donate here:

http://uk.movember.com/mospace/102367/

Credit cards, debit cards, Paypal, all accepted. Cheers in advance.

Smoove and Turrell Beggarman

I'm posting here for no other reason than I really, really love it.

Inspirational

Kate Walsh - The other night

I went to see lovely Sussex-via-Essex songstress Kate Walsh at Auntie Annie's on a typically wet Belfast evening last night, a fortnight ago. I've been quite a fan of Kate for at least a year. She's an acoustic singer-songwriter with a marvellous multi-octave voice that makes me go 'ahhhh!'

She was supported by a local called John D'Arcy who looks about 15 and also looks like Mr Tumnus. He sings semi-comic songs about characters in a local accent which I don't much care for; and then he stuck the guitar in an open tuning and sung some pleasant serious songs in a standard accent. A woman I assume was his mum was flogging his CDs at the back.

Then Kate came on. She introduced a song about fireworks called, er 'Fireworks' by saying that down the road from where she lives in Brighton, they have a huge fireworks display in a town called Lewes. And they take it very seriously, 'and even burn an effigy of the Pope!' That brought a few semi-serious hisses. I wonder what the reaction will be if she says that in Dublin tonight. It might bring on a few cheers.

At this point I must mention the GIG TALKERS. My companion RJG and I are always on the early lookout for talkers. Some Belfastians like to claim they are 'great audiences,' as if there was some worldwide competition to be the world's best listeners. Well, they aren't; or at least they are always let down by a small minority of GIG TALKERS. Sometimes, these are drunk, lairy young people who drink beforehand and act moronically throughout. In these case they were two women d'un certain âge who really should have known better. One looked like Celia Imrie and the other looked like a plasticine Pinnochio. They didn't shut up for the entire show. I suppose we should grow some balls and just order them a cool pint of Shut the Feck Up. But it's difficult to tell off adults when one is as gentile & middle-class as I.

I'm no Victor Meldrew but the rotting corpses of Gig Talkers should be manacled in chains outside the venue.

Anyway, back to the gig.

I was really looking forward to hearing 'Light and Dark,' Kate's song about leaving a good unsexy man who treats her well for a bad sexy man who treats her badly. Bit like me :) That description doesn't really do the composition justice. It is the best song of 2009. Ok, joint best with 'Little Lion Man' by Mumford and Sons. It's a wonderful goosebumply spinetingly sort of tune.

But it is a testament to the excellence of the show that it wasn't the standout. Shamefully, I can't tell what they were as I have only bought Kate's long players since the show.

I was most taken with 'Tonight,' the tune you can hear if you click the YouTube embed at the top of this post. Kate introduced it by saying that a woman had come up to her the night before and told her that she'd had the song played at her wedding. She didn't have the heart to tell her that it was actually about one night stands. RRRRRRRaunchy! I'll never be able to listen to it in the same way again.

I also recognized the ever-lovely 'Your Song' and an excellent wistful piano-based version of Erasure's 'Respect.' Kate played the piano herself on this one. I didn't realise she played the piano but then she's a graduate from a college of music so I suppose they teach you how to play more than one instrument there. It might even be a Binding Condition of Entry. She's probably a dab hand at the marimba and glockenspiel too.

On most of the songs she was accompanied by a bloke on keyboard and a girl on cello. There should be more cello at gigs.

Anyway, I got to meet Kate at the end of the gig. I bought a copy of her new album 'Light and Dark' and got her to sign it for me. She is tiny and sparkly and I like her new haircut. I didn't talk to her for too long in case I became gushing. She is much smaller in real life than on the stage, but not as small as John D'Arcy. I should have bought a copy of her first album 'Tim's House' too but I have since purchased it from the internet. I have been listening to both albums over and over. Great stuff.

In a final insult, Plasticine Pinnochio-faced woman came up and bought a CD from Kate and had a jolly chat to her. What a nerve! She didn't shut her long gob to pause for air throughout the whole night. I felt like taking the CD offa her and smashing it into her elbows.

RJG wanted to ask Kate where she comes from in Essex because his wife comes from Essex and he knows Essex but he hung back. Shyness is nice, but shyness can stop you from doing all the things in life you'd like to. Oh-ho.