chuckle brother accident










I was sent a link to this page which tells the story of Paul Elliot's motorcycle crash. For people unfamiliar with the body of work he and his brother, Barry, have produced performing as the Chuckle Brothers, they are a comedy duo who have been entertaining British children with their slapstick comedy show and saying "to me. to you" as their catch phrase for the last 20 years. They are pantomime stalwarts (I imagine) and have recently released their first DVD of their live stage show, Pirates of the River Rother. As you can see, it looks hilarious. They have somewhat of a cult following in the UK and it was a worry to hear one of their faces has been smashed up, as it will probably push back the filming of their 19th straight series. Pirates of the river rother 2 may never come out...

Also, I was amused to see the "show us your pics! You could win £250 off your motorcycle insurance!" part of the bike website. That is exactly the sort of seedy thing I want from the people supplying my insurance.

turning japanese

I'm going to Japan later in the Summer. The flights are on hold and I will be forking out my hard earned cash for them in the next couple of days. I would like to visit Japan more than any where else on Earth. I am excited. One of my friends is teaching English in Tokyo at the moment and everything he has told me just whets my appetite more. sushi. karaoke. weird bars. pachinko. panties in vending machines. sumo. geishas. ridiculous electronics. saying mushi mushi for hello. samurai stuff. It all sounds amazing. I can't wait. Bring on August...

Swaying

I went to a friend's birthday on Friday at the Tiroler Hut. If you like sausages, steins of beer and swaying along to accordian and cow bell music, it is the place to be. I like all of the above and had an awesome time.

Ouch

If you are unable to remove your freshly washed clothes from the washing machine until the morning after you washed them, but have no other clean clothes to wear, then I would recommend ironing the wet clothes before you put them on. Warm, wet clothes are much nicer to put on than cold, wet clothes. Be careful though. If you iron your underpants, make sure you allow them to cool sufficiently before bringing them in to contact with your nether regions. If you don't you might be going to work with scalded testicles. I am glad nothing like that happened to me today...

Comedy?

I went to a comedy show in aid of orangaid last night (a charity to help orangutans in sumatra. I do not know what they do or how your money helps the orangutans as the person they got on stage to tell you a bit about them, told us nothing about what they actually do). I had been persuaded to go by the fact that Stuart Lee was down to perform. I knew there were other comedians on the bill, and if any of them were any good it would be a bonus as I knew I would enjoy Stewart Lee. They must have had a late change and they replaced Stuart Lee with some geordie fellow. So the line up was fat fucking Phil Jupitus, Simon Amstell, Kevin Eldon, Sean Lock, the geordie fellow and Bill Bailey to finish things off. I was distinctly underwhelmed. I like Simon Amstell on Never Mind the Buzzcocks and was looking forward to seeing him and he did do a fairly amusing few minutes talking about the tsunami. Kevin Eldon and Sean Lock also had their moments. FF phil Jupitus has apparently decided him doing poetry about the famous people he hangs around with is funny. He is wrong and fucking fat. And he wears stupid hats. Fat fucking stupid hat bastard. Geordie fellow was likeable but not very funny. Bill Bailey finished things off with his wacky brand of comedy and music. He got easily the loudest applause of the night when he came on and apparently was the big name most people were there to see. I don't understand his appeal. He is clearly very talented with his whole music thing going on. The wacky comedy just isn't very funny though.

All in all, a waste of £23.50... I don't think it is socially acceptable to demand your money back from a charity night though, is it?

Simian

Bus drivers in London tend to be a little surly. I always greet the bus driver when boarding, but rarely get any acknowledgement back. To be fair, if I was driving the general public around all day, I would probably struggle to be cheery. Surely the moments when passengers are friendly to you would be worthy of at least acknowlegement. Their usual surliness made the comment I got from a bus driver the other night all the more unusual. As the bus approached in the distance I held my arm out to flag it down. As I swiped my Oyster card, the bus driver grinned slightly maniacally and said "I could see your long arm from a mile away." I politely chuckled and went to sit down. That was the first time in 29 years that my apparently freakish arm length has been commented on... All those arm stretching excercises are paying off.

And the other topic I wanted to brush on today was wiping. I have had conversations previously about styles - do you stand up or sit down to wipe? It seems to be a fairly devisive subject. For me, it has to be sitting. I don't believe you can get a good clean without it... But it is not the sitting/standing debate I want to break wide open... As well as my freakishly long arms I am seemingly a freak in the bathroom. I don't remember how the conversation came up (I had been drinking, which probably explains a lot), but we got on to the number of wipes used. Unless it is a very good day, I am at least 10, probably with an average wipe of about 13 or 14. The person I started the conversation with was a 3 or a 4 wipe man. This seemed impossibly low to me. How could it possibly be clean after that? So I threw the conversation open to a wider audience and the consensus amongst the other people there also seemed to be that a low number of wipes was the norm... What is so different about my technique? Am I doing it wrong? Does everyone else just have very pooey bottoms? Are my arms too long to be used effectively? I want answers...

The beautiful game

Wemberley was a disappointment. It was an exciting clash between 2 of the giants of non league football. But unfortunately, after going in at half time 2-0 and having dominated the first half, Kidderminster decided 45 minutes of football was all they were good for and were turned over 3-2. The winning goal was scored in the 88th minute. And Kiddy had a chance to equalise in stoppage time they should have taken. It was quite literally a game of 2 halves...

I took it harder than I thought I would. Football support is a mystery to me. Why I care what a bunch of tasteless, overpaid idiots who care more about money than whatever club they happen to be playing for is beyond me. (I am talking about the premiership now. The non league players I have considerably more respect for. They are only tasteless idiots.) And some of the teams full of human detritus I irrationally like and some I irrationally dislike. If the teams I like do well, I am happy and if the teams I don't like do well I am sad. And then after 'your' team wins something you get to boast about their achievements just because you happened to choose them as the team you support... Why do I care?

Wembley was less impressive than I was expecting it to be. The outside is uninspiring. The arch looks good from a distance but up close does not impress as I imagine it was intended to. And the rest of the outside is souless. The new Emirates stadium looks far better. Inside it does get better and it looks like you would get a good view from any seat in the house. There were only 53,000 people in there on Saturday and the atmosphere was good. When it is full it will be something worth experiencing.

eggs

Que sera sera. Whatever will be will be. We're going to Wemberley. Que sera sera.

Wise words and particularly apt when you are going to Wembley tomorrow. I am quite excited. My Dad is down to stay tonight ready for the big day. I should have tidied ready for his arrival but instead played Wow one night and got drunk and had a shit curry in brick lane the next. My new plan is to go for food and drinks first and get my Dad a little liquored up so the shock of my flat is softened. And it will be dark. Which will help hide stuff. And then tidy while he sleeps so he can wake up to a spiffingly tidy flat and won't think his son is a total waster. And I will cook him breakfast. I may even do my special eggs.

Wembley

I spent my formative years living in the suprisingly shit town of Droitwich Spa. It has a fine history dating back to Roman times, but there is very little of interest to see or do. If you would like to learn more about this vibrant midlands town check out their website. You can learn more about the town super hero - Spa Man. He is very strong, but friendly and uses salt as his secret weapon only when necessary. I think the website represents the town perfectly.

Anyway, the reason I bring that up is it means one of my local football teams is Kidderminster Harriers. (being the glory chaser I am, I support Aston Villa - who were very good when I was a child. Now they define mediocrity and their failure to excite along with the Premiership getting more and more boring has sucked my interest in football to an all time low. Salary caps are what is needed. Bring on the NFL season and the excitement of any team from 12 winning it all rather than any team from 2.) The Harriers have played their way through to the FA Carlsberg Trophy final at Wembley this weekend. They face the mighty Stevenage in the final. My Dad and I will be jumping on the bandwagon and attending the game on Saturday, mainly to see the new Wembley, but also to support the Harriers. I have been to a couple of family boxing day football matches at Aggborough and it would warm the heart to see them winning something. Fingers crossed.

Crickey

I was going to use cricket as the title of this entry but due to a happy slip of the finger I was left with crickey. Looking at it though, it looks a little odd. Crikey looks more correct to me. And after a quick internet search I was happy to learn either spelling brings up Steve Irwin, although crikey brings him up sooner.

Anyway, I played cricket over the bank holiday weekend. Not a proper game of cricket mind, we just hired a net for 2 hours - £3.50 an hour - very reasonable for an hours entertainment between a few people. It was very enjoyable, if sweaty work. A leisurely pub crawl followed and a good time was had by all. As the evening progressed I stiffened up until i was hobbling around like an old man by the end of the day. Yesterday the stiffness reached its peak and I was forced to remain as still as possible to try and avoid any pain inducing sudden movements.

And I watched Jackass Number Two. I enjoyed it very much.

Charity

I volunteered to help at a charity ball last night. (I don't like to talk about all the work I do for charity, but it was an interesting evening and it was for charity.) So anyway, I was at this charity event, which I had volunteered for - just doing my bit. Giving something back. When it comes to charity I like to get stuck in with hands on involvment, rather than just donating to quiet my conscience like so many other people less charitable than me seem to do. The charity dinner section of the evening was set in the main hall at the Natural History Museum, with the tables all arranged around the enormous diplodocus skeleton. It really was a very impressive place for a ball. The stage where the celebrities did their bits from was at the staircase end of the entry hall. The richer, more influential people got to sit closer to the stage. The usual sliding scale of attractive women, also seen at sporting events, was in evidence. The closer to the stage, the more attractive the women sitting at the tables got. And it was a fairly high standard starting from the back. I am sure some of the women there were rich and successful and attractive off their own back but I was sceptical that was the case for all of the women there, particularly the younger ladies with the older men. I wonder what makes these fat, old, rich men so attractive to these young attractive women? Perhaps they delight in tales of successful business deals? Anyway, it was an impressively run affair- the amount of organisation required to get it all together must be enormous. It all went off pretty well and they made plenty of money. (Breast Cancer Haven is the charity. Check them out. I understand they do good work.) I got to play with a glow stick, letch at attractive women in ball gowns, and got a free feed out of it and I get to talk about the work I do for charity now. Everyone's a winner...

useless

I chose option 3. I tried calling the French place and the course was full and the sculpture was too far away and i was hungover.

And then at the weekend i was supposed to be playing cricket on the Sunday and going to the park for a nice day out. I ended up staying up late on Saturday and drinking and ended up sleeping til 5. So another wasted opportunity. It was nice doing nothing though.

Right that's taken me to the end of the working day. woooo.

Advanced pick up techniques

As I was walking to the gym yesterday (because I regularly go to the gym. It is not a waste of money at all. I am definitely not one of those people who go quite a lot when they first join the gym and then find it easier and easier to make excuses not to go... today i have not gone because i am hungover, which is a perfectly good excuse) I was waiting to cross a road. An attractive woman was walking up to the crossing and was noticed by the occupants of a van that was driving by. In order to let the attractive lady know their thoughts on her beauty, they beeped their horn repeatedly and the passenger stuck his head out of the window and made kissing movements with his lips. As you can imagine, the woman was very impressed by this romantic display. Love was in the air and if only they hadn't driven off in to the distance it might have been the start of a beautiful relationship.

I have 3 options for this evening. 1. start a sculpture course 2. start a French course or 3. Go home and play world of warcraft. Obviously option 3 is the most attractive but I think I might regret not doing something useful. hmmmm.

Daily Grind in the Great Wen

My journey to work this morning was improved by two things. Firstly, the surprising April sunshine making the whole process all together more enjoyable. It is perfect at the moment. Not hot enough that I sweat unpleasantly but just warm enough to comfortably go with a short sleeve shirt. And secondly, the sight of a short man walking towards me receiving a text message. It must have been a very pleasing text judging by the huge grin that broke out on his face along with a big chuckle. It is nice to see people so obviously happy.

And I had never heard of London being called the great Wen before reading the e-mail my Dad sent to me today. A brief interweb search brought up that William Cobbett famously called London "the great Wen," but my half assed searching has not explained why. And I can't be arsed to find out at the moment. Maybe later.

P.S I did finally work out why it is the great wen. A wen is a harmless cyst, especially on the scalp or face, containing the fatty secretion of a sebaceous gland. I get the impression that William Cobbett didn't like London.

Blackpool - Centre of the Universe?

I was down in Woolacombe for the weekend, enjoying the sunshine and, whilst having a couple of beers in a pub to finish off the evening, sat at the table of a tattooed Scottish coach driver from Blackpool. He was driving a group of old people down to Woolacombe for the weekend. He was having a miserable time and he found the lovely sea side town of Woolacombe to be horrible. Particularly when compared to his town of choice - the mighty Blackpool.

I have never been to Blackpool so I can not say for certain that I disagree with the man. Blackpool could be an absolutely amazing place and I could have been seriously missing out for the first 28 years of my life by not visiting. I have seen Blackpool on television and read about the town though and I am fairly sure that I would not be that impressed by the home of the biggest mirror ball in the world. What thought process went on behind the building of that? "It's going to be great. We've got this great big new club (I assume that is where the mirror ball is housed), but we're missing something. The middle of the room feels a bit empty. I know a huge great mirror ball will finish things off nicely. Yeah I like it." Did they initially plan to make the world's largest mirror ball or was it a stroke of genius when they saw the costs on mirror balls and realised the world's biggest was an affordable option?

Essentially what I am saying is that it is quite clear that I am right and he is wrong and Blackpool is shit and Woolacombe is great.

End of the World

I had an unusual chat with a checkout girl last night. It was snowing outside and she found it odd that I was buying ice-lollies (no cornettos though- the new cheaper price had promted a rush on them. Or it could have been the post Hot Fuzz surge in sales, which presumably also occurred after Sean of the Dead.) and commented on the fact ("Somebody likes ice-lollies"). The conversation moved on to the odd state of the weather and then global warming. She threw in the suggestion that we need to end all the wars before worrying about global warming and finally that everything that was going on in the world was the start of the end of the world. An odd thing to hear at the supermarket, but much better than the surly behaviour normally served up by checkout staff.

Changes

Since my last entry, I have moved on from the stone cutting place to the cut throat world of librarian recruitment. The initial onset of hatred for my last job came on sooner than normal and I was forced to look for something else. Well, more asked one of my friends, who was leaving her job, whether they could swing it for me to replace her. She could and here I am now.

My colleague is off today and so after exhausting the few websites I find worth looking at, and in the bit of time before the cricket over by over coverage starts, I decided to get this back up and running.

In the meantime (apart from the new job, a particularly entertaining stone cutting Christmas party - a colleague was arrested and subsequently deported during it for urinating in public and I got to have a scary chat with a murderer, losing my glasses again while drunk and being a bit shambolic about making it back home to visit my family) I have been playing a worrying amount of World Of Warcraft.

Unpleasant Waking Up

I have had 2 unpleasant experiences whilst waking up this week.

Firstly, as I stumbled up from my bed I knocked over the still wet pants and socks I had left to dry on the edge of my laundry basket the night before. Not so bad, but it was compounded by the fact I had shaved my head a couple of days before, but had neglected to tidy the cut hair. I have had to contend with hairy pants since then.

And this morning I woke up with chewing gum on my clothes. I was too lazy to brush my teeth before bed last night, but did chew some sugar free gum. Not as good as brushing your teeth, but better than nothing I figured. In my less than sober state, I fell asleep before taking out the gum. On the plus side I didn't choke to death, but the downside involved me spitting out the gum and rolling about in it as I slept.

Belly Burn

Today I sat out in the sun and burnt my belly, had pizza with pistachio nuts on (which were suprisingly good), and went to Halfords to get the necessary parts to change my car's oil, oil filter, air filter and coolant. As I had never done any work on any cars before I was pleased with how cheap and easy (apart from loosening the rusted, neglected oil sump nut off the car and a mix up in buying the wrong air filter) it was. And I even gave my car a cursory wash. The first I had given it in my off and on use of it over the last 10 years. I did forget the sun roof was open for the initial burst of water sprayed at the car but in this weather I'm sure it will dry quickly. Oh yes and I'm off to check out the job on Monday.

And I realised my earlier poo weighing was very unscientific. I was forgetting about the wee. If I want to really do this properly I will have to wee first, weigh myself (maybe even before and I can see how much I can wee as well. Although it is generally less wee when you are pooing than a dedicated no. 1. So probably not worthwhile then and 3 weighings is probably a bit much. Although I am unemployed...) and then poo thus hopefully eliminating any wee from the equation.

Job and Steampunk

For a man as lazy as myself finding a job when you are unemployed is hard. There are so many better things to be doing with my time than sitting down and working on my cv and applying for jobs I am almost certainly going to hate. As a result, I have not yet applied for work since I quit my last job. This appears to be the perfect way to get a job as one of my friend's texted me today offering me a job working for a stone company (supplying worktops for kitchens and probably other stone related projects as well). I will call him in a bit to find out more. All very exciting stuff i'm sure. Before I find out more, I am not keen on the idea. I probably will dislike it and they will probably expect me to be in the job for a reasonable amount of time, which I certainly won't be able to guarantee. And if a friend gets me a job he will look bad if I do leave or screw up. So I guess I'll find out more and make a decision.

I spent most of the morning reading Perdido Street Station by the bizarrely named China Mieville (with an accent on the first e of his last name but I am too clueless to be able to correctly write that on a computer.) It is a steampunk book, apparently, which wikipedia reliably informs me is a subgenre of speculative fiction concerning works set in the past, or a world resembling the past, in which modern technological paradigms occurred earlier in history, but were accomplished via the science already present in that time period. Steam powered computers and the like in this case. I have enjoyed it so far. A little silly but generally good fun. Certainly better than sorting my life out which was my goal at the start of the week. Maybe tomorrow...