A Tale of Yore

I mentioned a few posts ago the issue I have with my landlord/housemate’s toileting habits. Smearing faecal matter all over the toilet seat and bog roll just isn’t the type of thing somebody in their late 20s should be doing this side of a mental asylum’s front door. Nevertheless, I got back from my weekend in Dorset to discover that the bloke had yet again managed to pebble dash the entire toilet bowl and underside of the seat with slurry. I really don’t know how to approach this awkward issue with him – I mean, what do I say? “Excuse me mate, would you mind not leaving your shit all over the place?” See my point? Hopefully I’ll have moved out before long...but that’s another post (coming soon, maybe). 

I also mentioned in the recent past how I’m really looking forward to having my own crib, and that isn’t something that’s likely to change whilst I’m living under the same roof as poo boy. It’s not until you live in a shared flat or house that you can really appreciate just how fucking annoying other people can be, and just how inconsiderate too. Case in point – not only does Hong Kong Pooey (as he shall henceforth be referred to) do the scat thing, he also has several other endearing properties. Like, for example, doing the washing up at any time after 10:30pm every night of the week. Not the biggest sin in Christendom, you may think – until you understand that the kitchen backs onto my bedroom and so every slammed cupboard door and every clanging pan, pot, cup and plate comes echoing through the paper-thin plasterboard like a freight train passing the window. Why at such a late hour? Every night? Why not at, say, 7.30? or 8? Why is it after 10.30 that the cacophony starts up? I’ve been on the edge of storming into the kitchen and smashing every plate and cup in the fucking flat on more than one occasion. Gah! Seriously, it’s not until you’ve experienced it 5 nights on the trot that your sanity starts to seep out through your ears. 

Another treat is the guy’s penchant for slamming doors. Early AM? BOOM! Late PM? BOOM! The guy walks around in a self-consuming daze and just slams doors like Thor slams heads. I’m surprised there are any left on their hinges in the damned place with the amount of slamming that goes on. And then there’s me trying to be quiet (whilst trying to avoid touching the shit-encrusted toilet seat) if I need a piss in the middle of the night like some kind of bitch. Upon re-reading what I’ve just written, I think I’ll start laying the slam-down myself next time I need to drain the main vein at 3am. See how Hong Kong Pooey likes them shit-stained apples. 

So as you can probably tell, not only am I not overly enamoured with this pathetic excuse for a town (I refuse to call it a city), my current accommodation setup is pretty undesirable too. This isn’t the first time I’ve lived in such intolerable circumstances. When I graduated back in 2003, I moved back to my mother’s house in a bid to save some money. I found it unbearable and when a friend of a friend mentioned he was looking for some housemates to rent rooms in his newly-acquired rental property, I jumped at the chance. After about a week, I and another friend (let’s call him...erm...Frank (?!) moved in and I was all set for it to turn into a real-life episode of Friends. 

After about a month, however, I realised that living in a house with two blokes who don’t really get on was less like an episode of Friends and more like an episode of Bottom. Plus, I also discovered that the ‘landlord’ (he wasn’t, although he claimed to be because his name was on the tenancy agreement) was a complete weirdo who constantly complained about ‘cross contaminating’ the dish cloths and refused to have any dairy products near his shelf in the fridge. Also, he had the ability to drink two pints of Guinness and then projectile vomit all over the carpet. After a further couple of months, Frank had decided he’d had enough and left to live with his girlfriend. That really bummed me out because I was left living alone with ‘landlord,’ who we shall now refer to as Mr Strange. We continued as a party of two for a couple of weeks and I rarely saw the bloke unless he was in the kitchen complaining about the dish cloths or cooking up his non-dairy rice-pudding with prawns slop. And then McRae happened. McRae was a random bloke that Mr Strange had recruited from his office as a third housemate, partly (I’d wager) as a way of obtaining an ally in the house (did I mention things had gone a bit sour between us?!), and partly as a way of once again splitting the rent three ways. When I first met McRae, It was on a Sunday night after I’d got back from visiting my dad in outer Lancashire. He was sat in the living room loudly bleating some clichéd political view whilst clutching a can of lager. Mr Strange sat there nodding and laughing falsely – it was like David Brent fawning after Finchy in an episode of the Office. So in I went, introduced myself, made small talk, had a few beers with the pair of them...and left thinking that maybe the guy was alright and that I shouldn’t be so quick to make assumptions based merely on association. These impressions quickly faded after it transpired that McRae was the smelliest, scruffiest man alive. 

He slept on top of a bare mattress in a sleeping bag and lived exclusively on takeaways. But he invariably didn’t finish said fast food and just left the wrappers and food remains all over his bedroom floor or on the kitchen worktop. He never washed his clothes (at least as far as I could tell) and as with the takeaway cartons and kebab foil, just left stinking socks and underpants lying all over the place. I recall one incident when I was walking up the stairs; a gust of wind must have blown in through his open bedroom window, collected the stench from within and then forced its way through the gap under the door. It hit me full in the face as I walked up the stairs and it nearly knocked me back down them again: sweat, shit, feet, rot and decay, all combined in one demonic sucker punch to the nasal cavity.

It later transpired that he’d also run up a fucking huge phone bill talking to some toothless ‘girlfriend’ on her mobile (this was 2003 remember). The phone line was in my name so the bill came out of my account...and McRae valiantly offered to repay me £5 a month until the debt was honoured. I told him to get fucked and angrily demanded the sum of the bill...which he then suddenly happened to have. I moved out not long after, and not long after that I joined the navy. Upon which I endured a further 6 years of smelling other people’s unwashed bodies and putting up with their abhorrent ‘ways.’ After that came the ‘house of the bathroom-floor period blood,’ as described in another recent post...and now we’re bang up to date.  So it’s either been shit on the toilet seat, period blood on the bathroom floor or stinking, unwashed socks and takeaway cartons blocking the hallways. Yes, my experiences in shared accommodation have been ‘interesting’ to say the least.

This will be the last.

A Brief Social Commentary

Have a look at this:

It's a snap of a page from the Argos Catalogue mini pamphlet thing that fell out of the paper this morning. Look closely at the picture. Right there at the bottom, below the image of a wallet containing at least 20 quid and a load of credit cards, and below the price tag of £6.49, it says 'contents not included.'

Contents. Not. Included.

Argos obviously felt the need to include this helpful notice. Think about that for a moment. Quite scary, eh?

Bonjour

Well bugger me! It's been a fair auld while hasn't it?! But hold your freakin' horses...I'm back! Back again to spin you amazing dits of derring-do and heroism the likes of which have never been seen. Or something outrageously similar.

Went to France last week. It was alright if I'm honest. Bit disappointed by the complete lack of anyone wearing a beret/stripy jumper combo or riding a bike with a baguette wrapped around their neck...but you can't have it all. But yeah - Paris. It's a cool city, but there's a distinct lack of 'normal' shops, y'know, like an Off Licence or whatever, just selling odds and ends, drinks and stuff: every shop you come across is either full of plastic Eiffel towers or is a brasserie. And do you know what a brasserie is? It's a cafe. Albeit one that will sell you a cup of coffee the size of a thimble and then charge you about 8 quid for the pleasure. Also, and at the risk of offending an entire culture, what's with the fucking tips? Every place you go in, there's a waiter who comes hovering over and making you feel uncomfortable while you try to smash your food in...and then you have to give him a tip for it. Gah! Just give me my food and go away! Ho hum.

Other Paris musings: the metro (underground) is always ridiculously busy...yet you get the odd carriage with a classical violinist playing in it. The cars drive the other way, so you spend your first few days trying not to get knocked over when you cross the road. There are people selling corn on the cob in the street...that they've just cooked in a shopping trolley with a BBQ in it. Fewer people than you'd think actually speak English.

Which was a bit of a shock to an ignorant English fuck like me. I suppose the French have every right to speak their own language in their own county...but Jesus does it make things difficult. Especially when you're staying in a hotel that makes Fawlty Towers look like the Malmaison and none of the staff can speak the Queens, or apparently understand the most basic of improvised sign language. Bloody foreigners. And yes...that was a fucking JOKE before you decide to write some pathetic complaining response in the comments section. I feel I have to include these disclaimers just to make sure anyone reading this doesn't report me to the FBI or something.

Going back to the holiday though, we (myself and my better half, naturally) managed to cram a hell of a lot into the 5 days we spent in Gaul. Some of the fine attractions and museums we visited included The Louvre (where we saw the Venus de Milo and Mona Lisa), d'Orsay (where we saw some Van Gogh pictures), Le Orangerie (where some bloke called Monet had some pretty pictures of flowers hanging up), Conciergerie (a historic prison-thing), Montparnasse Tower, the Eiffel tower, a Seine river cruise, Notre Damme, Sacre Couer, Napoleon's Tomb, a museum about the army...and various other excrutiatingly cultured things. I reckon I ingested that much culture in those 5 days that I could get my own show on Radio 4 where I don't actually say anything - the culture just radiates from my inanimate body and out through the listener's speakers. Cough.

The best bit really though, was going to see a show at the world famous Moulin Rouge. It's true - the birds have their tits out the whole time...and there was some cool dancing too. In short, it was ace - and a special mention must go to the incredible juggler who was throwing about 20 clubs about at one point...whilst he walked around on his fecking knees! Awesome. And even more awesome was the way we were only meant to have a small bottle of champagne between us...but the staff fucked up and gave us a full-size one instead! Hehe!

Summat else in Paris that made me happy was this:

Yep, it's a white chocolate Twix. Why has this never been done before?! It's so beautifully simple, yet I've never seen one in a shop in dear old Blighty. And yes - it was simply divine.

Speaking of food, I spotted something in ASDA this week that registered on the opposite end of the edibility scale to the white chocolate Twix: The Crispwich. I took a pic of it on my trusty Palm Pre but I have no way of getting said snap onto the net at the moment so I'll just have to describe the horror to you: It's essentially two monstrously thick slices of buttered bread, entombed in a cardboard sandwich box along with a little bag of crisps. You build it yourself. You eat it. You feel dirty.

Other news: Proton. It's quite well known to those who...er...know me that I drive a Proton Impian, and if you check back through the archives of this very blog, you'll eventually come across a post where I go on about my experiences with said vehicle. I think it's a quality machine and have had no problems with it, other than people taking the piss. Last week though, I discovered that Proton actually had a team in the 2003 British Touring Car Championship. Here's a pic of their vehicle:




Yes! It's an Impian! And according to the little blurb I found on Wikipedia about the team, the vehicle was only a slightly modified version of the one I've got! So in your face, all you twats who take the piss out of my car!

Right, that's enough crap for one day. Only a few weeks left of this fucking horrendous job...and then I'm free! Woohoo!

Update: I've just washed my beloved Proton...and some cunt has traded some blue paint with it. Grrrr...

Rotten Apples

So my iPod has finally died. Well, semi-died. And I have to admit I'm slightly annoyed. It's an iPod Nano 5G - the one with the camera on it - and up until about two weeks ago it worked perfectly and I pretty much took it everywhere with me. It provided tunes in the car (via my slightly antiquated tape-deck adapter) and it provided the motivation I need when I go running. Alas, a few weeks ago it started playing up. Namely, the 'wheel' stopped registering commands and only worked intermittently when I tried to lower or raise the volume and then last week it just died on me altogether. It works fine when attached to the (expensive) dock/speaker thing I bought a few months back, but once it's disconnected it just shuts down and dies. I had a quick look around the iPod forums online and discovered that I'm clearly not the only person who has suffered from this rather infuriating iPod 'death' and it seems that the only way to remedy the problem is to send the thing off to Apple who will attempt to repair or replace the thing for an extortionate amount of money. And they can fuck right off. I've already spent £120 on the thing - I'm not paying to have it fixed when the fault is their...erm...fault! Apparently it's some kind of battery malfunction that stops the iPod from holding a charge, thus rendering it useless unless it is connected to a power source. Grrr. This is, infact, the third iPod I have owned and had go tits up on me. The first two were iPod Shuffles - a first (long and white) and a second (with a clip) generation. They both stopped working due to charging issues. Now this one, my third and most expensive one has also stopped working as it should due to charging issues. I'm seeing a developing trend here.

Here's another developing trend: I will never buy another Apple product for as long as I live. They've had enough of my cash for their products just to fuck up after a few months of moderate use. And to think that my first 'proper' job after I left University was working for an Apple-authorised dealer! Yes, I was a sales monkey at a Apple dealer in Manchester and my days usually consisted of demonstrating the (then) new Power Mac G5 to potential customers and trying to show people why they should go for an iMac instead of an eMac even though at home I had a PC and wouldn't have had anyMac (see what I did there?) even if they gave me one for free. Sure - they look nice...but what, exactly, can you do on them that you can't do on a PC for less money and with more support?! Pfft. Indeed, one of the managers was trying to persuade me to purchase a teeny weeny Powerbook through the staff finance system and as such let me borrow a brand new one for a few days. I got it home and unboxed it, marvelled at the tinyness of it with my housemates...and then it just sat there in my room until I took it back to work because all it had on it was the OS. Great fun.

We also had a load of those old skool iPods with the black and white screen and an actual 'wheel' that span round on the front instead of the fuck-up prone 'touch wheel' that the newer ones have. I bet those fuckers are still working now...unlike my Nano. It makes me want to fucking scream. As a result of Apple's crappiness, I'm having to use my Palm Pre in the gym or when I go running and even though it's pretty small as far as phones go, it's still like having a pebble in your pocket when you're out pounding pavement.

I've decided that as soon as I've got the cash, I'm going to just buy a normal MP3 player again. Sure, it won't be able to utilise the admittedly brilliant iTunes-based music transfer interface I know and love...but Apple - you've lost a customer here. I'll Probably just go down to Argos and pick up a mid-range Phillips or Creative player (or maybe another Sansa Clip, if they still make them), and hopefully it'll last longer than a few months. Gah...

Termination

Went for a run yesterday. It wasn't a proper 'outdoors' run, mind. No, I went on a treadmill. It was the first time I'd actually stepped on one for about 8 months and to be honest it felt a little strange. As I've documented here numerous times over the last few weeks, I've been suffering from a knee injury that was brought about by excessive road running (70 miles a week on average), but yesterday's return to the treader has had no repercussions whatsoever. So hopefully, I'm fixed! Like the 6 Million Dollar Man, but on a budget of 28 pence. I'll still exercises some restraint with my...er...excercise over the next few weeks so I don't encourage my knee to go tits up (?) again, but hopefully I'll be back out pounding pavement like the good old days soon. Possibly won't be trying to crack 20 milers like I was doing...but we'll see how it goes.

That's about as exciting events in my life have been since my last post to be honest. Well, the events I'm willing to write about on here, anyway. Sorry. Er...I'll be getting my tax disc tomorrow. Heart racing bloggage, right there. Oh, fuck it. I don't even know why I'm bothering to write this arse. No cunt reads it anyway. Bye.

Mind Slurry

Urgh. Checked my bank balance last night. More overdrawn than I thought. Fuck sake. How the FUCK do I manage to spend so much money and have so little to show for it? It's not like I live in an episode of MTV Cribs or owt. So yeah, I'm horrendously overdrawn and my next wage will be swallowed up by the Black Hole of Barclays. Next month's gonna have to be excruciatingly lean if I'm to claw my way out of this bog. And by 'lean,' I mean 'fucking boring.' Because that's what it all boils down to really ain't it? We all (well, some of us) work, in an effort to earn money in order to live...but when it all boils down, modern life in a 'developed' country is all about the pursuit of entertainment...stimulation of the mind. And that's it.

It makes sense when you think about it - if you flout the rules of society and commit a crime, your punishment is the removal of all forms of stimuli, ie prison. Well, that's the theory, anyway - but most of the tabloids would have us all believe that 'lags' all live in fur-lined cells with four poster beds, solid gold Xboxes and enough cake and sweets to enable them to become disturbingly plump. No, what I'm getting at is that without money, it is hard to entertain oneself and ultimately the main goal in most people's lives is to find entertainment. So by overspending last month, next month will essentially be a form of prison for me...a massive, Butcher Bay-esque prison of long, quiet days and drawn out, mind-numbing evenings. Urgh, urgh, and thrice urgh. Spot the oxford comma, win cock all.

Apart from being eternally broke, there is another thing that really, really annoys me and I feel I must write about it here. It's blokes...talking about football. Now, I love football. Can't get enough of it. I love playing it, love watching it, love playing it on the computer...but talk about it?! I can't think of anything worse. As I write this, I can hear people talking about football. And it's sapping my will to breathe. It's just cliche after fucking cliche. A pale imitation of the kind of horse manure that tumbles from the lips of Garth Crookes or Alan Hansen during any edition of Match of the Day, only without the action replays. It really fucking winds me up, even more so when I'm roped into the conversation. I don't give a fuck about West Ham's game with Wolves. I don't give a fuck about Tevez. I don't give a fuck about fucking Liver-fucking-pool! AAAARGH! I'll happily sit there and watch a match...but please, don't try to talk to me about inane footy-related subjects...because I'm likely to slap you. Or fall asleep.

Got hold of the third book in the Takeshi Kovacs series a few weeks ago. It's called Woken Furies, but I've not started reading it yet because I can't be arsed. I think I only bought it because I've read the first two and the completest in me forced me to purchase it in order to silence some little part of my soul that would boil and burn in anguish forever if I didn't. Like one of those weird kids at school who had to have all of the Teeny Terrapins out of Kinder Eggs. Fucking Kinder Eggs. What a load of arse those things are. The suspense...the awe...the horrible 'foreign' chocolate followed by the life-altering depression that came crashing against your sense of self like a tsunami when you opened up the little plastic capsule to discover...a plastic molded hippo wearing a tutu and holding a harp (especially when all you wanted was one of those little cars with a flywheel inside). That, my friends, is the stuff of nightmares. Forget Tim Burton and his (well intentioned, but often poorly executed) bullshit - the Kinder Egg is pure, unrefined horror...that can be matched only by having to listen to blokes talk about football.