Pond

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When I was a kid and my parents used to live in our first house, they decided that to increase the house’s value, they’d get a pond. Though that wasn’t what they told us, they just lied and said it’d look good. I must have been about 6 when they first got announced it, and for me it was like the second coming of Christ. Only better, because it meant I could have some goldfish.

My parents worked on setting up the pond; digging a big hole, lining it with thick plastic, getting a filtration system fitted and the like. For me and my brother that bit just happened whilst we played ‘Sonic the Hedgehog’ on our Sega. When the pond was full we realised it was a bit lame. It was just a hole full of water. With a sprinkler in the middle. Our expectations of brilliance and majesty had been shattered, given we could just fill the bath or go and stand in a puddle if we wanted to be surrounded by water.

To make it a bit more lively, my Dad thought we should have a family outing to a gardening centre to buy some fish to put in it. This is where this pond shit got interesting. I remember being amazed by big plastic bins full of dozens of different coloured fish just swimming about and enjoying life. I ran past all of them, ignoring the prices and environments they needed and just shouting ‘I WANT THESE!’ Or things similar.

We bought a bunch of goldfish and a bunch of pond weeds to keep the water oxygenated. We got them home and introduced them to their new home, which they took to with fishy happiness. Or whatever nice emotions fish feel. That is if they feel emotions. Though this isn’t the forum to judge the emotional capacity of fish. Back to the story...

The excitement about having fish ended at about there. I named them after the characters in ‘The Magic Schoolbus’ and threw them some food. As it was a Saturday, there was no reason for my neighbours not to be at home, so I invited them all round to boast about how good my fish were to the rest of the road. Following the previous competition of who had the best computer, me having a pond made me some sort of Duke. Sonic’s life had lost meaning, as he watched from the window and sobbed.

A few weeks later my friend Leah came round, and we decided to play in the garden, making the most of the nice weather. After spending a few hours playing some bizarre game, I found two bamboo poles lying by the side of the pond. It was as if God himself had ditched his lamer-than-a-pond son and given us the perfect game to play.

We stood for a few seconds by the pond with the bamboo sticks dangling in it. We weren’t concerned about prodding the fish, we were having fun. The next half minute preceded something like this...

My Mum dragged me out of the pond and pulled all of my slimy clothes off, drew a bath and threw me in there to get the smell of algae and, probably, fish guts off my skin. Still baffled, I just sat there for a bit. I heard a doorbell go downstairs, and my Mum answer it. I recognised the voices; they were more of my friends from next door, asking if they could come round to play. Now, here is the difference between what well rounded, sensible parents and my parents would do in this situation.

I had no other choice but to sit in the bath with pond weed in my hair and be stared at like some sort of horrible swamp lizard in a zoo. My reputation of the Duke of the road had fell before me, as my own claim to fame had been the reason for me becoming a common folk. I like to tell myself that Jesus himself or Sonic pushed me into the pond. Or both of them. And that they now laugh in fictional Heaven at the memory of getting their revenge on me.

A Guide to Day Time TV Pricks

Day time TV has the potential to be wonderful. Jeremy Kyle and most of Loose Women does pretty well. However, with these several hours filled, the daytime television slots remain bare, and enduring them creates a feeling I can only compare to sticking your head in a vortex of pig shit.

So, to help, here is a guide of who to avoid if you’re ever unemployed/a single mother/ retarded/ on holiday/retired/ill/more retarded/ran out of heroin.

Carol McGiffin

Anyone who has got me on Twitter will know I loathe this woman. In fact, if I had to spend an hour either having my ballsack nibbled by ferrets and listening to Diana Vickers caterwauling like some sort of banshee in heat or spend an hour talking to her about absolutely anything, I’d take having my junk chewed by rodents. There are many things to hate about Carol McGiffin, and ticking the list makes you a better person. She’s about 60 but dresses like a 23 year old, to the point she must have some sly competition with Madonna going on, she’s shagging somebody about half her age, she’s a Tory, she’s got a voice which sounds like nails on a chalkboard and she’s a Tory, which counts as two because it’s such a vile thing to be. Loose Women is routinely destroyed by her putting in her shit opinions, whether it’s about how she’s a fag hag who’s against gay marriage or a vile cougar who drinks foetuses, believing them to be the elixir of youth. Though unlike the rest of the Loose Women cast, she has absolutely no claim to fame. Yes, she was married to Chris Evans, but his only claim to fame is being the second biggest prick on the radio (The gold going to that fat wanker Chris Moyles). Whenever you find yourself about to watch Loose Women and seeing that haggered cockney slag on it, I’d recommend an activity like seeing how much gas you can inhale from the oven before your ears begin to bleed.

The woman on the ‘Ramdens’ advert

Okay, technically this isn’t daytime TV, but in all honesty I never witness these adverts after 5pm. This is probably because the type of people who watch daytime TV go out after 5 to drink ‘White Lightning’ and menace old people, leaving their 2 year old children under the care of darling Mr. Hot Iron. The woman I’m talking about isn’t the one who talks to the camera about selling your gold for some more money for crack for the child, no, it’s the one who stands behind the counter and looks down the camera with a horrendously awkward look. Why would something this trivial wind me up? It just does. I’m ‘sorry’, but if you are going to do it, do it properly. Don’t get some woman to stand at the back, failing in their attempts to look nonchalant and actually look as if the camera is some sort of sword with a built in bee cannon.

Ben Shephard

Have you ever heard one of those songs where you finish listening to it and feel as if you’ve blanked out for a few minutes and have no idea what you just heard? Or seen a TV show and wondered where you’ve been for the last half an hour? It all relates to something called ‘highway hypnosis’, in which you encounter something so dull, unimpressionable and mundane that you don’t even register it. This, ladies and gents, is the television presenting of Ben Shepherd. GMTV hired Ben Shepherd in the idea that women waking up and watching morning television wanted something mildly attractive to look at, because therefore it meant the rest of their day will be sexually charged and they might get to third base with Brian from the photocopying room. Or something. It was also to counterbalance Andrew Castle, who appropriately looks like a crumbling grey wall. Though with his barely interesting looks and his mind numbingly lame presenting skill, Ben Shepherd makes morning news as bland as eating white bread in a beige room whilst listening to Coldplay.

People on Jeremy Kyle

With Jeremy Kyle being the cornerstone of daytime TV, with his morning show on at some time in the 9^th hour and two repeats after lunch, Kyle reigns supreme as the Lord Sith of daytime television. Though Kyle himself is a wonderful human being, it’s fair to say that about 80% of the people on his show are not as good. I’m hoping you know the format of Jeremy Kyle, and if you do then you can probably feel safe enough to skip forward a couple of sentences. Basically, he gets people on who have problems in their life, they give their respective sides of the story and he proceeds to either shout at people for being general pricks or congratulate them for being decent people in the face of adversity. With many people criticising the show, it poses as an interesting insight into the lives of people in modern society, sort of like a real life TV series. The people on the show are utter twats, it’s fair to say. The types of people who come on after impregnating six different women and refusing to get off benefits to pay for his children, or women who have been shagging anonymous men behind the Working Men’s Club and pretend to play the victim. Though ‘The Jeremy Kyle Show’ is certainly watchable, the people are certainly unbearable.

Anyone on a bingo advert

Again, people on adverts. It can happen at any time, but I don’t see these after 5. There are quite a few reasons to hate bingo; it requires absolutely no skill, it’s dull, it’s not worth the minimal effort and most of the players are hefty, 40-something year old grandmothers who sit in council flats on disability benefits because their cankles are causing them bother. It’s not entirely the people who play it who wind me up (though they do, don’t get me wrong) but it’s mostly those really shit adverts. Between ten minute segments of selling houses on fire/antiques orgy/chat with a seahorse, you get at least 3 separate adverts for online bingo. On their own they can be judged as quite quirky and amusing; there is some degree of cheeky feminism and a little bit of generic advertising wit. However, after you see some woman leave her husband watching football to play bingo under the guise ‘Footiewidow’ followed by some big nosed tart being cheered along by a ‘Diana Ross and the Supremes’ tribute act from a Skegness holiday camp to Vic Reeves shamefully donning drag and proceeding to play bingo is beyond tedious. During advert breaks I instead turn off my Sky box and stab myself in the foreskin with a hot needle. It certainly beats fucking bingo adverts.

The fat woman from ‘Dickinson’s Real Deal’

Have you ever wondered what would happen if Jabba the Hutt from ‘Star Wars’ put on that wig which John Travolta puts on when he does his Ke$ha act and started judging the price of antiques? Tune into ‘Dickinson’s Real Deal’ and be amazed. (Warning, you cannot unsee).

Angela Griffin.

Did you watch the Sky Oscar’s ceremony where they gave some fuckwit from Manchester a microphone and let her blab incessantly at confused movie stars? She has a talk show on Sky1. I know, amongst all of the evils Rupert Murdoch has conducted, I’m pretty sure this comes pretty high on the list. The format of ‘Angela and Friends’ isn’t too bad; instead of the usual ‘We will talk about what we’re told to’ they talk about what the audience ask them to talk about by submitting questions. Angela’s ‘Friends’ are the usual boy band/soap opera/reality TV dickwads who you would expect to see on here, keeping their fingers tightly on the pause button before their 15 minutes of fame are up. Though the format is sound on paper, in practice it turns into what I can only compare to an hour of watching a collection of horses have cholera induced diarrhoea. Instead of the audience sending in intellectual, challenging and controversial subjects for people to talk about, such as the death penalty, stem cell research, abortion and same-sex marriage, the categorically spastic audience instead ask questions such as ‘Which are cooler; leggings, jeggings or treggings?’, ‘Who do you think should win this series of ‘I’m a Celebrity’?’ or ‘If I swallow will my husband stop sleeping with our Eastern European maid?’. The possibly interesting format quickly spins into the downwards spiral of the general stupidity that happens with many things in the UK (Big Brother, religion, the media, freedom of speech, the right to live etc.)

How to win at life

Life’s tough, really tough. You spend your school years wishing you were in college, then your college years wishing you were at university, then your university years wishing you were in full time employment, then your time in employment wishing you were retired and your retired years wishing you were dead. Depressing, isn’t it? Well, here are a few brilliant tips I can offer you to cut out all of that sadness and make your life brilliant.

1) Kill your parents

Your parents have lots of money. They just don’t tell you. Remember that Christmas when you wanted a Nintendo Wii and got a bag full of orange skins? Well, that paid for them to have a sneaky weekend away to Venice when they retire. They have plenty of cash to go around; they just don’t want you to have it. So, all you have to do is kill them. Be sure to do it where the police won’t find out, I’d suggest a bathroom where you can quickly clean up any spills, and if you’re near the bath you can dissolve the hacked up limbs with Domestos and lime juice without risking spilling any on the carpet. Stuff those orange peels in their mouth and stab them until they look like a fleshy piece of Swiss cheese. To make sure you get the most from their inheritance, be sure to count any siblings into this equation.



2) Have as many children with Asian men as possible.

Asia is getting pretty rich nowadays. The Far East is getting rich and there’s a lot of development in the Middle East. What does that mean? Asians are universally getting richer. What does this mean to you women? Bed the Asians and have their children. If it doesn’t work out then you will have a child still, and the child support you’ll get will keep you running. Have more and more, the children won’t cost much and you’ll be raking it in. If you do get one whose dad is an oil baron in Dubai? Well, you exploit your child and get him to send as much money as possible.



3) Become a pimp.

It’s natural for women types to want to feel good about themselves, and what makes them feel better about themselves than people paying to spend time with them? I know I’d want that. So, to everyone out there, it’s your duty to Queen and country to whore those girl out and take 25% of the money earned. Prostitution isn’t as bad as people seem to say; the customers are weird and courteous, and so long as the women do what they’re told to do they won’t get stabbed in the gullet. You’ll become a well-respected member of any society, winning the admiration of the community and the bitches you rent.



4) Mutter offensive things near inner city gangs

Those gangs in the cities get hard press, don’t they? It’s always ‘murder’ this and ‘drive by shooting’ that, and the amount of times I’ve heard about repetitive knifings is just appalling. Shame on the media. Given they’re not as bad as everyone thinks, you should go and join in with them. Anyone who’s gotten themselves into gangland crime is genius and picking up irony, so all I can advise is to confront those groups and say how brilliant you think their enemies are. They’ll take you into their ilk and treat you like a God.



5) Smoke lots and lots of crack.

You may think it’s expensive, but in the long run it’s really cheap in comparison to buying a house or pet giraffe. So, with crack going for cheap it’s a brilliant idea to get yourself hooked. Why? Well, you can have a cheap kick from it, make some good friends with interesting stories about how MI5 stole their memories, and when you get bored you can go into rehab. Free food, shelter and lots of attention. However you play it, you win.



6) Set fire to your workplace.

This is by far the most genius way of winning. You’ve seen those adverts when you’re watching Jeremy Kyle and some person says they had a trip in the workplace and got money? Well, that fat woman with a bad fringe has nothing on being in a building fire. The method is to set fire to an electricity socket, starting an electrical fire. Make sure you’ve previously coated the emergency exit handles with peanut butter so nobody can get out, and cover the stairs in poisonous snakes so nobody can get down them. You might get A FEW third degree burns, but on the plus side you’ll get about 50k and some time off work. When the skin grows back you can do it all over again. Crafty? Yes.



What are you still doing here? Get out there and make something of yourselves, you arsonist, pimping, breeding, parent murdering, slurring crack addicts!

Country Pubs

People seem to like the country, don’t they? Can’t understand why. Honestly, I really can’t.

Let me take this back to a point where you’re probably not confused. This story starts off when my parents were going to drop my brother off at his girlfriend’s house for the night. She lives out in the country and it’s a decent twenty five minute drive out from Middlesbrough (Where I’m from, if you didn’t know. Nice place.). So, given it was so far away my parents decided we’d drop him off and then we’ll go out for a nice meal somewhere in one of those 3 building hamlets which are two minutes apart.

So, we dropped him off at his girlfriend’s and went to a nearby village called Swainby. If you don’t know where it is, then allow me to explain. It’s basically three houses, a pub, a shop selling Gollywogs and lots of people in flat caps walking greyhounds.

Anywho, we came up to the generic country pub and went in. My parents said they have been here quite a few times, so I thought “You know, what’s the worst that could happen?” You can leave feeling as disoriented as a farm animal in a rave is what.

We were greeted first of all with two of the most bizarre toilet signs I’ve ever seen. I don’t really keep a significant track of them, so it could well be that they, in fact, were the most bizarre toilet signs I’ve ever seen. The women’s one displayed a woman squatting about a foot over the toilet seat squeezing a turd out of her, whilst the men’s one displayed a man about a foot of away from the toilet bowl dangling his phallus in it like some sort of fleshy fishing rod.

So, we came in and took a seat at a table by the window. Much to my alarm, I found myself sat next to the most bizarre creation I believe I have ever been near. It was a lamp created out of different parts of other animals which the creator had previously hunted down, making it some sort of woodland Frankenstein. But a lamp. It was made of a rabbit’s head, with chicken’s legs and duck’s wings instead of arms. Behind it was the tail of a fox and there was a single stag antler sticking out of the top. I wasn’t sure exactly what sort of mythical beast it was meant to be, but it was certainly better than a fucking unicorn.

The weirdness of this place didn’t stop at the decor. The two other people in the pub were a couple several tables along from us. I knew they were a couple, they were kissing. What’s weird about that? They weren’t kissing on the mouth, oh no, their fucking stomachs were kissing. Both of them wore unfeasibly small t-shirts for their girthing abdomens, and their fat spewed out and connected in a disgusting-yet-sweet moment. Though it was sweet, it has certainly put me off soufflés made of meat products.

So, there I was faced with a couple whose bare stomachs were getting to second base whilst they sat and talked about whatever it was they were on about. I couldn’t hear because as my Mum sat down she began her usual Alan Bennett performance of being able to complain about almost absolutely anything related to the restaurant.

She was right about all of them, mind. Especially the waiter looking like the new person in the village who stabbed Hazel from the pie shop in the face. The problem with my mum is that when she thinks “I’ll make lots of loud complaints about the restaurant and out of their decency and need to satisfy customers they’ll come and sort them all out!”

In a desperate bid to ignore her complaining and thus not to get my bowl of noodles farted on by a convict I decided my best option was to play a quick round of ‘Angry Birds’ on my iPhone (If you have and iPhone or iPod Touch, don’t get it. You will destroy your self esteem by failing repeatedly.) I intentionally turned off the volume so the annoying sound effects wouldn’t annoy everyone else in the restaurant. Fortunately for me, my mum insisted in making her own in the occasional break from complaining.

Luckily, the rest of the meal and the drive home went uneventful.

PS, if my parents do end up reading this, then don’t worry. There will be further examples of me being more neurotic than you on this blog.