Fishing

Fishing, it’s said, is the number one participation sport in the world. To me that accounts for a lot of bored husbands, searching for an ongoing excuse to stay away from home for an entire day at a time. Sitting on a muddy river bank at 5am in the rain? For hours on end? Count me out thanks.

Dynamite fishing sounds fun in principal. It’s not though. The shockwave damages the environment and kills loads of animals the fisherman isn’t even interested in. When I say environment I don’t mean it’ll dislodge shopping trolleys and kick up some mud. I’m talking about nations with fragile eco-systems, supporting coral and numerous habitats under the water. This is the reason it’s banned in many places. That and the fact that it erodes the, frankly shaky, argument that fishing is a sport. I can buy into it as a hobby, but a sport? No chance. Lots of people have hobbies but I’ve never heard anyone claim that flying a kite makes them a sportsman.

Anyway, in a comparison that I refuse to believe is coincidence, fishermen have often told me that you can get drunk (in the same way as cricket fans cite it as one of the primary lures). Once again I’m forced to point out that these activities are surely designed with nothing more in mind than escaping the house and ‘the wife’. Surely getting a divorce would be easier in the long run?

Yet, because it remains so popular, a trip to the shops reveals magazine shelves which are awash with numerous fishing magazines, each adorned by some middle-aged hairy bloke, wearing far too much plastic, proudly holding aloft a fish of three feet in length. What is there to write? Once you’ve got past the opening sentence what can you really write about? “I caught this beast in a local lake, mainly because it’s too stupid to understand the concept of not eating something which is impaled by a metal hook.”

I’ve never looked, but I can guess what else is in them. People think that geeks are confined to comic books or PCs, but it’s not true. Geeks exist everywhere, they just have different chosen fields. I imagine these magazines are chock-full of the latest titanium fishing rods and next generation string (or should that be ‘line’? I don’t know). The fisherman can impress his friends with his new lightweight rod, costing (probably) hundreds of pounds because it weighs three ounces less and bends just the right amount when you’re trying to haul the kraken onto the side of the bank (next to the box of empty Budweiser bottles).

Seriously, I understand fishing less than just about any other ‘sport’ on the planet. Nothing happens, for hours. Cricket spends a lot of time without anything happening but at least there is a bloke with a big bat trying to smash a ball into orbit. With fishing, people will catch a fish, study it for a couple of minutes and often lob it straight back into the water. Aquariums would save them a lot of time in this pursuit. On one hand, I can’t say I blame them for throwing their prey back. I’d be perplexed if the fish didn’t come out ready battered with a side order of chips too. At least you’d have been rewarded for getting up so early and freezing to death. It’d certainly be more appealing than mucking about with a tin of maggots; that’s not any kind of breakfast.

Parenting, I think, has a lot to do with this. Invariably when you talk to a fishing type and the origins of their interest, their eyes glaze over as they reminisce about watching the sunrise with their dad, on the side of a bank, fishing rod in hand. These memories are flawed. The human brain likes to remember nice things. It’s why every old person in the world claims things were ‘better in their day’. There was no crime, the air was clean and they could leave their front door open. Apparently.

Rubbish. They just don’t remember the bad things. It’s the same with fishing. In the real world these people (when they were kids) were probably sat, huddled, on a muddy bank while sideways rain hit them in the face. They shivered with the cold as their father swore loudly, slipping over in the mud and dropping his beer. They had been told to stop moaning when woken at 4am to pack the gear into the car and things wouldn’t get any better for the rest of the day. The father wouldn’t concede defeat to the weather and was not about to give up his day of self indulgence to return to the wife and demands of assistance with the house work. Worse than that, the father saw the whole experience as a time to bond with his half-frozen son. And then, once in six years, there was a lovely sunrise, and all was well. That’s the memory the son retains, years later, when he drags his son out of bed before dawn and the cycle repeats itself.

On any given Sunday I reckon you’ll find thousands of fathers on the banks of our rivers regaling their disinterested sons with tales of beautiful mornings and hauls of fish that would make a Spaniard proud. Meanwhile, the son would much rather his dad just bought him Fisherman Pro 2017 (or something) for his Playstation so that he could stay in bed and choose to have the beautiful sunrise at a more sensible time, say, at around 2pm.

The Many Irritations of Flying

I like travelling except for the actual travel part. I suspect I’m not alone, but let me explain. I love heading abroad to new and exciting countries but the whole getting there part drives me insane. I’ve travelled a fair amount and I’m sure I’m well into triple figures in terms of the numbers of flights I’ve been on. I’m also sure I cannot remember the last pleasurable one.

It all starts with the airport. There isn’t a close one to me, so I invariably have to get up at some ungodly hour and drive eighty miles in the middle of the night to be allowed to check in three days before the flight’s actually due to leave. Once there you’re also presented with the privilege of paying almost as much as the cost of the flight in order to park the car a 20-minute bus ride from the actual airport. Of course, at 4am the buses only pick up every fifteen minutes too, so you’d better hope it’s not raining.

I perfectly understand why airlines want you there early because if they said “It’ll be fine if you turn up ten minutes before your flight” you would still get simpletons who thought that ten minutes was two minutes. However, don’t make me turn up three hours early and then think you can use it as a cost cutting exercise by only opening one check-in counter for five flights. If I wanted to queue for an hour I’d try and get out of Wembley after an England football match.

Here’s some advice; when asked whether you packed your bag yourself, it’s not original or funny to quip that a Muslim gentleman kindly helped while you went to the toilet. It’s also not original for the purveyor of said joke to be dragged away to have a fist shoved up his arse either, but the staff will find that part funny at least. Sensibly, you should stick to a rigid ‘yes/no’ answer formula and head through to security... where you have the pleasure of queuing again.

Since the rise in terrorist attack attempts at airports it’s fair to say that security take their job seriously. I can’t say that I blame them, although it’s always a minor irritation to be asked to remove random articles of clothing. When was the last time you heard of an AK-47 being concealed in a belt? Anyway, without fail I set off the metal detectors. I then get touched up by a bloke who, following his grope, waves a wand at me which picks up absolutely nothing. This always makes me wonder where in my body the metal is hiding and why I don’t know about it.

Onto the departure lounge and ‘duty free’; the chance to make back some of that cash you’ve been plundered for up until that point. Or not, as the case actually is. Firstly, I always wonder (after I’ve strolled into an electrical shop to marvel at things with flashing lights) who the hell buys a 42” TV on their way to Brazil? Where the hell are they going to put it? I’m damn sure it won’t fit in one of the little baskets they have to check your hand luggage size and it won’t fit in your overhead locker either. Anyway, we all know how manufacturers put RRP prices on things? That’s some fantasy price that they wished they could sell the product for and, coincidentally, is exactly the price that no-one would pay. Well, it’s when you get to ‘duty free’ that these RRP prices are plastered everywhere. Because if something has an RRP of £49.99 and ‘duty free’ are selling it for £42.99 then you’re getting a bargain. Unless, of course, it can be had for £39.99 at your local shop and a fiver cheaper still on the internet.

Eventually you’ll be ripped off for some average food and you’ll sit and watch the TV screens, waiting for your flight to be called to its gate. When it is you will witness the biggest rush of sheep imaginable. Assuming your flight isn’t with the cheapest of the cheap airlines your boarding card will have a seat number on it. That’s your seat and no-one else’s. It’s not first come, first served and as long as you don’t actually miss the flight, it’ll still be yours ten minutes after the boarding call’s gone out. I generally sit at the gate, continuing to read my book, as the rest of the flight has almost beaten each other to death in the rush to be the first in the massive queue to board. Why do it? Feel free to stand in another queue for ten minutes for all I care. When that queue diminishes to one or two people I’ll take a leisurely walk up, but even then I won’t rush. You know why? Because you hand in your boarding card, take the walk towards the plane and there’ll be another queue.

What’s this queue for? Well, that’s the queue for your seat and it’s unavoidable unless you really were the first person in the last queue. The reason? People are stupid. Space on planes is fairly limited and that means they don’t have sweeping, spacious corridors to move around in. Therefore aeroplane etiquette apparently dictates that if you’re the first person aboard you should stand in the middle of the aisle while you comically fail to put bags in overhead lockers and rummage around for your book, iPod and pack of Werthers’ Originals. Take no heed to the three hundred people that you’re stopping getting to their seats, they don’t mind. If you’re the second person in the queue, you should stand and wait impatiently, before doing exactly the same thing when you reach your seat. And so on.

Eventually I’ll reach my seat and it will be a window seat. You know why? There are a couple of reasons, and none of them are the “I like to see the sky!” one you might be expecting. Firstly, I’m not a girl and consequently I don’t have a thimble sized bladder which requires me to visit the toilet every six minutes. Get seated between one of those people and the aisle and you’ll know what I mean. You just get settled, about to nod off to sleep, and BAM! “Sorry, can I just squeeze past again please?” I once did a round the world trip, stopping in twelve countries and taking a huge number international and domestic flights. In the whole time I went to the toilet once on a plane (and it was on a twelve hour flight). I have self control (unless there's beer involved).

The next reason for blagging the window seat is simple dynamics; it literally halves the number of elbows you’re likely to be clobbered with. We’ve established that planes aren’t big. The more seats the airline crams onboard, the more money they make. So, sit in the middle of two people and you’ll come out the other side with bruised ribs. Or, worse still, you’ll double your chances of being next to a person that cannot physically sit still. Once again, just as you’re nodding off to sleep his arm will whack yours as he attempts to re-arrange his blanket for the thirteenth time, drops his book or decides he needs to read his broadsheet newspaper at full width.

“Aha”, I hear you say, what if you grab the aisle seat? Wrong again. Do that and you can look forward to a flight where you get continually smacked in the arm or shoulder (or both) by stewardesses and their trolleys. And fat people.

The one thing you likely won’t get away from (in economy class at least), is the fool seated behind you. After having shoved your seat back and forth so he can get to the glossy mags stuffed down the back he will then use your seat to pull himself to his feet on his constant trips to the toilet (or to ‘stretch his legs’… on a two hour flight for God’s sake). The seat is bolted to the floor, you’d hope, but that doesn’t stop it rocking back several inches every time someone pulls ninety kilos to their feet because their legs have inexplicably stopped working. For the same ‘non-functioning leg’ reason they will, upon returning to their seat, not lower themselves down as any normal person would. They’ll simply assume the position and collapse. When the person in front of you does this you can look forward to your dinner bouncing off its tray and into your lap.

Oh, I nearly forgot; children. Under no circumstances should kids be allowed on planes until they can prove they can sit still for the duration of the flight without crying, shouting, screaming or throwing things around. If I wanted to see kids do that I wouldn’t be jetting off to another country, I’d be at home.

What’s the issue with simple instructions, by the way? ‘Turn off your phone as it might interfere with the plane’s navigation and communication equipment’ surely isn’t that hard to comprehend? I’m not saying that I buy into the reasoning for a second, in the same way that, despite being told, I don’t turn off my mobile phone at petrol stations because I’ve yet to see any proof that an incoming text message will cause the nearest petrol pump to explode. However, I’m fairly sure that my network provider’s coverage does not extend to 37,000 feet over the Atlantic and to that end it makes no difference to me if it’s turned off; no-one’s going to be able to call me. And yet, your flight will come in to land (you know the crucial bit where, if it’s going to go wrong that’s where it’ll happen) and you’ll hear the familiar ‘bleep, bleep’ of incoming text messages from a couple of imbeciles who need to have their message delivered one minute faster and to hell with the (alleged) risk of ending up in a fiery grave in the middle of the runway.

Having written all this has anyone considered that the 9/11 terrorists weren’t actually terrorists but normal travellers who had been pushed beyond the brink of rational behaviour and decided to end it for them all?

Anyway, the flight lands and, in another display proving that people cannot think more than two minutes into the future, everyone jumps to their feet, grabbing for their bags… so they can stand in the aisle for ten minutes. I'm yet to witness a plane screeching to a halt and with the doors instantaneously flying open. Once again, I’ll stay seated (and undisturbed because I’m at the window seat) until people are actually getting off the plane but there is still no need to rush. When was the last time you reached baggage claim and your bags were there waiting? No, it’s never happened to me either. In fact, when has the conveyor belt even been turned on? Why people expect that the baggage throwers handlers can get the bags to the terminal faster than the passengers can run is beyond me.

Here’s one thing about airports which only seems to count if you’re British. When you land in a foreign country the country in question has the good manners to funnel its own nationals through passport control as fast as possible. It’s a perk, right? After all it’s your own country and you’re the one paying taxes. I’ve seen it countless time when I’ve landed in a foreign country to a huge queue at passport control while the local nationals breeze through. That is not a complaint, since I would expect it. I would expect it at home, except I’m British and it seems we’re far too polite (or stupid) to save our own citizens some time. No, a British national lands at a British airport and can look forward to huge queues while the foreigners sprint through some kind of express passport control.

Back to instructions and not being able to follow them. In a museum (I’m told that’s where they keep old stuff), if you slap a sign on something saying “do not touch”, people will whack their mucky paws all over it. There are many similar examples but the one that irritates me most is baggage claims. The concept is really simple. You stand behind the yellow line and when your bag comes round you step forward and take it from the belt. It really is not that hard.

What happens in reality? Everyone pushes forward to the edge of the conveyor belt, so close that their feet are wedged underneath it. This means that the people behind, who understood the concept of not being impatient morons, can’t see anything. The muppet who is front of you, never straying more than half an inch from the belt for fear of his bag being lost forever, then proceeds to pick up (and inspect) virtually every suitcase that passes him. It’s made all the more absurd by the fact that he eventually selects his distinctive blue holdall, after having scrutinised every green or black case that passed him – just to make sure. Those pesky baggage throwers may have swapped his case, just for a laugh.

All this means, of course, that not only do others struggle to see their bags but they also have to push past a dozen people to get to them – none of whom want to move and lose ‘their spot’.

On my last trip through Gatwick airport I developed a solution to this particular annoyance. You place a number of guards on each belt... armed with cattle prods. Once you cross that yellow line you have ten seconds to retrieve your bag otherwise you get a stab of electricity to the base of your skull. Sure, the rest of us might have to clamber over a few bodies to eventually collect our bags, but at least we'd be able to see when they were coming.

Clothes Shopping With Women

This one’s not an unusual complaint, I know that much. Who on Earth likes being dragged around multiple shops while your girlfriend or wife individually checks out (what seems to be) every item of clothing for sale in the city?

Blokes, in my experience, are much easier to please in the shopping department. If I need trousers, point me at a decent shop which sells jeans and I’ll come out with a pair. I don’t feel the urge to compare them with every other shop in the county which might sell similar or slightly better jeans. If I like them, I get those ones. Better still, give me a computer and internet connection and I'll order them at home while I'm having a beer.

Women? A woman goes into a shop, finds a top she likes, changes her mind about whether to buy it half a dozen times and then leaves. She’ll then proceed to visit every shop in town, contrasting and comparing. Finally, four hours after she started, she’ll head back to that first shop and buy the very first one she was looking at. If you're really unlucky you’ll have been dragged along for the trip and it’s a journey of despair.

My wife’s not as bad as most but, to my consternation, she catches me out every now and again. Women are devious:

“Fancy popping into town, maybe get that film we were looking at?”

That’ll catch out most men, but I really ought to know better by now. We drive into town, park up and within fifty feet of the car park she’ll “just want nip in this shop for a minute.” That ‘minute’, in reality, is five. And ‘this shop’ actually means ‘all the shops of this type within a forty minute hike’.

I’ve even tried, in desperation, going down the 'being the annoying and embarrassing husband’ route. I loudly point out inappropriate clothing, suggest which items she’d look slutty in, make disparaging comments about styles and prices etc. For a while I started trying things on. It began with hats but, admittedly, I stopped short of lacy underwear. None of it worked. She’d roll her eyes in a way which all her fellows shoppers knew and understood. They don't fall for the same crap from their boyfriends or husbands either.

I guess the obvious solution would be to do the same to her – drag her around a million shops because that’ll give her some empathy with what I’m going through, right? Not a chance. She’d diligently follow me around being genuinely helpful and making useful suggestions. I’d get bored long before she did.

I think it’s partially because she gets an honest opinion. You must know what I’m talking about. Your lady tries on a piece of clothing and she loves it, she’s thrilled it fits and it’s just what she’s been looking for. Naturally she asks your opinion… and you hate it. Me? I’ll give it to her straight and tell her it makes her look like a malnourished zebra. Now, I’ve been accused of being insensitive around this subject by others but what do girls want? A ‘yes man’? Maybe. They’d better not ask me then because they’ll just get my opinion, warts and all. But this is not a bad thing. When I tell my wife she looks great in something she knows I really do think that. Surely that’s better than wondering why I say everything is ‘nice’? Of course it is.

Anyway, what is my course of action to escape shopping trips? The easiest one – I refuse to go on anywhere near a shopping centre without clear definitions on which shops are being visited. I know, I know, it sounds very draconian and devoid of any spontaneity but I’ve had all of that sucked out of me by repeated trips around places which all stock exactly the same apparel. It could be worse for her, I could mutiny on one of her trips and head to the nearest pub. That’d very quickly stop her inviting me along.

Addendum: You couldn’t make it up. I originally wrote the above moan on a Friday evening (rock and roll lifestyle all the way for me) and guess what happened the very next day? That’s right, I was tricked into clothes shopping. Again. I’m such a sucker.

We had some vouchers that were given to us as gifts and the nearest store was a couple of towns away so we (eventually) decided we should head over there. It just so happened that her favourite clothes shop in the whole world happened to be opposite. You can fill in the blanks yourself. It’s made worse by the fact that I had to entertain the two month old baby (in the pushchair which doesn’t fit down any bloody aisle) as she strolled about seemingly grabbing items at random. This is all true, I promise you. She walked to the changing rooms (eventually) where they normally provide you with a numbered token which matches how many articles you’re trying on. This means that if you have two items you’ll get a number two token and you can’t get away with stuffing a blouse down your pants in the changing room and claiming you only ever had one item. The highest number they had was a token with ‘four’ on it and my wife had ten items of clothing. Ten. There’s no help for me and, according to our wedding vows, I have a lifetime of this. I’ve read the small print too and there’s no get out clause for excessive shopping.

Children

I'm going to surprise no-one by ranting a bit here but, no, this is not a pop at children per se (no matter how irritating the ones which belong to lawless chavs seem to be). This is my observation as it revolves around the human species in general: a human baby is born and, to all intents and purposes, it is useless. Very useless. And it is useless for years.

You can pick any other creature in the animal kingdom and compare the two. There are loads of examples of animals being born, stumbling through their early minutes of life and then jumping to their feet and wandering off to look for food. This happens all in the space of about half an hour. Human baby? Not so good. It requires constant attention and doesn’t even get off its backside or bother learning how to communicate properly for years. Even when they do they’re incapable of caring or providing for themselves for many, many years after that. Granted, our civilisation’s a touch more complicated than that of a horse but it makes you wonder how children got by at the dawn of mankind.

Now, I know that many species have a much shorter life span than homo sapiens (the Mayfly is lucky to reach a day so it has to learn pretty quickly), but there are plenty of animals with a similar lifespan which don’t need their hands (paws? Hoofs?) holding for years before they get to grips with the elementary basics.

In the UK the legal age for being able to have a paper round is 12. Now I can understand that children are not necessarily equipped to deal with the dangers of odd men in raincoats with bags of gummy bears but it’s not the only reason. It seems they can’t be trusted to cross the road without decorating the front of a truck. Well, again, this proves the hopelessness of human young. No-one helps out the newborn rabbit by allowing it a couple of years to get a grip on its surroundings and suss out which animals are likely to rip its throat out. Added to which, those predators will purposely do that, whereas the tabloid-reading, arse-flashing truck driver would probably prefer you didn’t clog his wheels with bits of your intestine.

Anyway, 12 also appears to be the age at which children can be left alone in the house. There’s less chance of them being approached by Gary Glitter in your front room and, unless you’re really unlucky, they’re unlikely to be in danger from an eighteen wheeled Scania. Apparently though, if they’re any younger, they will spend their time jamming forks into electrical sockets, testing the toaster’s ability to float and creating a helter-skelter on the stairs from step ladders and garden forks. It’s hopeless. Survival of the fittest I say; leave them to it and let Darwin decide... except for my young children. They're wrapped in cotton wool and are not leaving the house until they're at least twenty.

Cinema

I love the cinema, I really do (with the possible exception of 3D). There’s nothing better than the excitement of sitting and watching a new movie you’ve been looking forward to on the big screen. Unfortunately, as a generalisation, I dislike people and I’ve yet to purchase my own private cinema. This creates a big issue for me.

When I watch a film I want to be engrossed in it. I mean completely caught up and immersed, and that involves absolute silence outside of the sound of the film itself and no distractions. If the director had wanted me to hear someone rustling popcorn, he’d have added it to the soundtrack. When I watch a new film at home the lights get turned off, the dog gets kicked out and the volume goes through the roof. There will be no external noise until the end credits. Luckily (for both of us) my wife is on-board with this. Sadly, none of the cinema going public is.

Why do people spend the money to go to the cinema only to chat through a movie? It’s a genuine question as I really can’t work it out. Go to the bloody pub; it’s a place designed especially for socialising and the money you spent on the cinema ticket will pay for your drinks! If you don’t like that idea then stay at home. You can talk as loudly as you like and it won’t cost you a penny. Idiots.

I have, in my time, asked many people in cinemas to stop talking. In fact I went through a stage where it happened more often than not. I was particularly impressed when my wife did it on three consecutive visits. I once went to see The Thin Red Line with an ex-girlfriend. Anyone who’s seen it will probably have been impressed with the choreography and beautiful sweeping shots which, for a war film, might be considered unusual. (It was nominated for the Best Cinematography Oscar.) I think the pensioners in front of me thought they’d come to watch something different, but that didn’t stop them “ooohhh”ing and “ahhh”ing every five minutes. It didn’t take long for me to ask (politely) if they could refrain from talking. And they did. My girlfriend? Furious. Apparently they had paid money and should be allowed to enjoy the film however they like. If I didn’t like then I should have moved. She was obviously unaware that purchasing a ticket doesn’t give carte blanche rights to ruin everyone else’s experience. Anyway, I think she’d have changed her tune if I’d flopped my tackle out and starting rubbing myself off the next time Kate Beckinsale appeared in a film, but the principle’s the same.

When the new Star Wars film came out I heard about a guy in America who purchased all the tickets to one showing. He had the entire cinema to himself. He was ridiculed online and people were making comments about how the atmosphere is the best thing. Yes, it is, but I want the FILM's atmosphere, not a bunch of imbeciles whooping and hollering at the screen and ruining the movie's ambiance. If I'd had the cash, I'd have done exactly the same thing.

Another ex-girlfriend went with me to watch The Usual Suspects, a truly brilliant movie. I was captivated and she was bored. Not only was she bored but she didn’t have a watch. This meant she grabbed my wrist every five minutes to check the time. I still believe to this day I’d have been well within my rights to punch her in the face.

Having the back of your chair kicked constantly is never much fun and I’m sure most of you will agree with me there. I know there’s not much legroom but do you really want someone’s sized eleven, muddy, Doc Martins tapping away an inch from your shoulder? No, me neither.

Tall people can’t help being tall but that’s no excuse for an eight foot basketball player to study an empty cinema before deciding the seat he wants is right in front of me. If it happens again I might take some scissors and start cutting his hair so I can see around him. I went to a great screen, many years ago, in Slough (I knew the place must have had at least one thing going for it). It was so steeply raked that a giraffe sitting in front of a midget wouldn’t have blocked his view. Honestly though, it was so steep that after a long film I got up too quickly and nearly pitched forwards. I’d have ended up five rows closer to the screen with a broken collarbone and a tub of popcorn on my head.

I briefly mentioned the eaters but I didn’t do it justice. To be honest I’d be happy if they banned eating in the cinema. It’s not going to happen, obviously, as that’s where cinemas make the most of their money. I’d be happy with a compromise though (i.e. only allowing the sale of items which it’s impossible to make a distracting noise with). People with popcorn seem incapable of picking pieces up and eating them, they need to rustle around continually, seemingly searching for the perfectly formed corn. They’re not as bad as the people who chose the individually wrapped sweets from the foyer shop though. Excellent. Not only do they rustle the bag around (“Eww. I don’t like the yellow ones!”) they also make a racket while they’re unwrapping each bloody sweet. A woman at a recent showing did this and then proceeded to continue folding the empty sweet wrappers in the dark, like some origami Jedi. I almost stabbed her in the eye with the straw from my drink. Yes, much of this links back to my misophonia but I'm not taking the blame for people interrupting me while I'm consciously trying to listen to something that I've paid for.

Finally, yes, you guessed it; children. Film studios have cottoned on to the fact that if they keep the certificate rating low more people will see it, because it’s open to a wider audience. Gone are the days of the 80s when all action films were 18-rated. Now they all seem to be 15 or, worse, 12A. This means you have to go at midnight (and contend with possible drunks) or else risk the wrath of a gazillion noisy kids. I went to see Casino Royale at the cinema, Daniel Craig’s excellent first outing as Bond. The film was rated 12A. Sat next to us with a bloke (who was obviously too tight to fork out for a baby-sitter) and two bored kids. The film’s almost two and a half hours long and they spent most of it getting up, sitting down, talking and rolling around on the floor under the screen. The benefit of dealing with small children is that after I asked them to pack it in and shot them a stern gaze they didn’t make a sound. Give it a couple of years and they'd probably have knifed me. Meanwhile, their dad was unaware, the ignoramus.

I hate all these complaints, with a passion, and yet it’s not (quite) enough to keep me away.

The Trophy Hunting of Rare and Exotic Animals

Whilst I'm far from being a signed up member of PETA, a Greenpeace flag-waving environmentalist or a tree hugging, vegan hippy some things come across as conspicuously and morally wrong to me. One of these things is the hunting of rare and endangered animals for "sport".

I've made my views on fox hunting clear before now and some of the themes cross over. It’s a subject that’s irked me for some time but some Twitter posts from comedian Ricky Gervais this week pushed it back into my consciousness and prompted me to write this.

Let me start by saying that, yes, I do understand the difference between illegal poaching and licenced hunting. It doesn’t mean that I agree with either and the “it’s legal, get over it” argument holds little sway over me. It’s also legal for you to down a bottle of vodka in thirty seconds, but I wouldn’t recommend it.

Sure, hunting as a form of population control is vastly more commendable than tracking down one of those few remaining rhinos in order to desecrate its corpse in the pursuit of money borne off the back of a ridiculous notion that rhino horn will cure cancer and enable time travel. Just this week a story broke that the one remaining male northern white rhino in the world is now under 24-hour armed guard, from fear of poachers. I’m left incredulous.

Once again, I realise that this situation hasn’t been effected by hunters, but by poachers. However, at least they take a certain amount of responsibility for their actions and are very clear in their motives. I’d genuinely have (a tiny bit) more respect for some of these hunters if they just said “it gave me a massive rush to kill a dangerous animal which 95% of the population will never even see”, rather than the painfully transparent “I did it as an act of conservation”.

Take Rebecca Francis, who was pictured gleefully lying next to a slain giraffe. Apparently the animal was “inevitably going to die soon” after being expelled from its herd. Who made you the grim reaper? I’m fairly certain society would have issues with me applying the same principal if a widowed pensioner stepped out in front of my car…

Anyway, the picture was apparently to “honour” her prey. Yeah, I’m sure the animal felt extremely honoured as the round tore through its rib cage and heart; “thanks for choosing me!” Maybe it’s the way that she posed with the dead body like a trophy whilst sporting a huge grin that it should be grateful for?

She was then pictured with a dead lion and bear. No word yet on how they’ve been honoured by a self-important and overly privileged American with a sexism complex and too much time of her hands.

Francis is not alone though and, admittedly, probably gains more attention because she is female. It matters little to me as her actions would be equally deplorable from a man, but another woman produced in the same vein is Kendall Jones. She’s a young cheerleader from Texas with a penchant for murdering exotic and rare animals for no reason too.

No wait, I’m clearly wrong. She’s obviously “doing her part in conservation to make a difference”. Yes, you might think I made that up but that’s what she said in her defence. “Hunters are the biggest conservationists there are” apparently. Clearly the education system can only teach you so much and Texas Tech University shouldn’t feel too bad because you just can’t teach common sense, humility or morality.

These women (and many more hunters I suspect) have been subjected to all manner of threats and abuse. It’s more than a little paradoxical to decry the lack of humanity in killing animals by wishing death upon the perpetrators. I’ve previously written about the irony of the public issuing death threats to people involved in releasing music advocating murder. It’s largely pointless, but one can’t help but imagine a situation where the hunter and prey meet in more natural circumstances.

On a lighter note, I had to laugh at the story (from 2011) of a hunter that tried to finish off a fox with the butt of his rifle only to have the fox hit the trigger and shoot the man in the leg. Karma’s a bitch. Now I await the story of a rare predator which stalks one of these hunters and turns the tables.

TV Talent Shows

Television shows have received a fairly stern assessment from me thus far and things don’t improve much here either. Talent shows are cheap television at its very zenith. I’m referring to the likes of X Factor and Britain’s Got Talent whereby the television company simply hires a stage and invites members of the public to come along and be ridiculed for your entertainment. Average season viewing figures once topped 14 million for X Factor so clearly there are a lot of people who are very easily entertained and it's a great return on investment.

Of course Simon Cowell has forged a very successful career in ad-libbing scathing assessments of peoples’ talent (or lack of), helped in no small way by his creation of X Factor. The real talent on show here is the ability to earn millions off the back of deluded individuals who, while singing in the shower, believe they are the next Madonna with such conviction that they become apoplectic when told otherwise. This is the real entertainment on show; would-be superstars up on stage, in front of millions on television, warbling like a drowning cat. The comical reactions of their doused aspirations often raises a chuckle, but that’s where it ends as far as I’m concerned. You see, in case you didn’t notice, I like to berate things and I like to pick up on the negative (although I see it as more of a skill than a disposition). So when all the misled wannabes are weeded out I see little entertainment. I don’t want to see a bunch of nobodies doing karaoke impressions of Spice Girls songs that were dire even in their original format.

Having said that, I do find it amusing that people have tried to sue for ‘hurt feelings’. Seriously, do they not watch the show before signing up? If your other half invited you to appear on Jerry Springer your first thought should not be “Wow, I’ll be on TV”, it should be “Who are you sleeping with behind my back?” It reminds me of the idiots who sued McDonald’s for burning themselves on coffee. These people should not be allowed to interact with others. Or breed.

Britain’s Got Talent extends the format, I guess, so you can watch people equally bereft of aptitude for anything useful juggling blow torches and doing moonwalks across the stage. I mean, where do these people think it will lead? Being able to spin a glass on your forehead while playing a trumpet might be funny at a party but it’s not much of a career is it? Take that show on the road and you’ll run out of material pretty quickly.

There are many of these Talent franchises around the world, including one in Lithuania (Lietuvos Talentai, if you’re interested), a country which has a population of three million people. Sure, you really ought to be able to find some talented people in there but it’s a bit like Birmingham’s Got Talent. I can imagine after two series the winner will be someone who can eat twelve eggs in ten seconds.

I don’t deliberately watch any of it, but it's occasionally on in the house which means I can't completely avoid it. Clearly, if you have Cheryl Cole and Danni Minogue onboard then it's going to be more tolerable but I still only see it when passing through a room where it's playing. As with many other TV shows it’s hard to avoid in the rest of your life. Women (generally) will want to discuss that “lovely tubby girl from Newcastle with the beautiful voice” for an hour in the office with their friends the next day and don’t dare log into any social networking website the night it’s on TV.

The bombardment of status updates from people outraged that their favourite star-to-be was dumped from the show is suffocating. I suspect, on one particular night after a deluge of them, I didn’t win any extra friends by posting something akin to “Has there been a major international crisis, or did some C-list celebrity just make a decision about a person no-one's ever heard of which, in turn, has absolutely zero relevance on anything important in the real world?”

Oh well, c’est la vie.

Misophonia And My Noise Hatred

It’s true that I’m occasionally irritable and intolerant. Anything which squeaks, rattles or makes repetitive noises is likely to drive me beyond the realms of sanity very quickly. It was my sister who pointed out that I’m not the only crazy person on the planet and that there’s actually a term for it:

"Misophonia, literally 'hatred of sound', is a neurological disorder in which negative experiences (anger, flight, hatred, disgust) are triggered by specific sounds. People who have misophonia are most commonly angered by specific sounds, such as slurping, throat-clearing, people clipping their nails, brushing their teeth, chewing crushed ice, eating, drinking, breathing, sniffing, talking, sneezing, yawning, walking, chewing gum, laughing, snoring, typing on a keyboard, coughing, humming, whistling, singing; saying certain consonants; or repetitive sounds".

Now, I’m not a complete lunatic although I can agree with many of the above examples. In defence of my mental state I'd like to point to the following:

"A Dutch study published in 2013 of a sample of 42 patients with misophonia found a low incidence of psychiatric disorders, with the exception of Obsessive-Compulsive Personality Disorder (52.4%)".

I’m well aware of my mild OCD but, hey, maybe it means I have no serious psychiatric disorders. You decide. Here are some real world examples of my irritations:

Work colleagues who constantly hum, sing or whistle have almost felt what having a biro jammed into their ear feels like. Likewise the ones who cannot type without punching the keyboard or are incapable of walking without stamping like they’re on an audition for Riverdance. If you can’t eat your baguette without closing your mouth (and not sharing its contents with me), I’m likely to want to jam the whole thing in your oesophagus. Sideways.

For a period of time I carried a clothes peg in my car. For some reason the car that I used to own would encourage my keys to jingle while driving along, hanging from the ignition. This was infuriating. Chink chink chink chink. That was simply no good, but a well placed peg would hold them together. Problem solved (although I did get some strange looks from passengers on occasion).

My disdain for flip flops is already documented.

My last PC managed to develop a kind of rattle which was a combination of the moving parts and metal casings which didn’t sit together particularly snugly. After stripping it down, tightening everything and, even employing the use of Blu-tac, it continued unabated. Banging it lightly would sometimes provide respite as it evidently moved whatever was making the noise. However it was only a matter of time before things escalated. During one of its more vocal rattling bouts I punched a hole through the Perspex side of the casing. That didn’t stop it rattling so I got a new PC; it seemed the only viable solution.

I once did some touring around New Zealand, which is a stunning country saddled with a speed limit surely designed to protect the native possum population. I hired a car on the north island, dropped it off at Wellington before taking the ferry to the south island and picking up a different car there. I had several hundred miles of travelling on lovely, deserted roads before I reached my final destination (in Queenstown). The driving should have been fun, except the hire car had some kind of bell behind the dash which rang constantly if you broke the pitiful 60mph speed limit. The bell sounded like one you might have above a shop doorway, so imagine that going continually. I couldn’t work out which would send me insane first; travelling slower than one of the glaciers I was going to visit or that bell, accusing me of driving recklessly. It was a strident ringing too, so turning up the stereo made no difference. I could have had Iron Maiden playing live, two feet from the car, and you’d still have been able to hear the bloody bell. Tempting as it was to drive the car off the side of a mountain I just about retained my control (which was remarkable because my anger only succeeded in starting another annoying noise: my girlfriend).

I am better prepared to tolerate noises which are expected, but not ones which shouldn’t be there. The Xbox 360 sounded like a 747 on full thrust when the drive started spinning but I could live with that – it always did it and they all do it. Squeaks and rattles which are not supposed to exist send me apoplectic though. Cars are the very worst place for them to occur and, in the past, I’ve had people hunting around the car while I’ve been driving, searching for the cause of the intermittent rattle which had been digging at me like Chinese water torture.

A few years ago I came close to buying a pair of Sidi motorbike boots until I realised that every person I had seen wearing them squeaked when they walked. The boots squeaked (not the person, obviously) and I didn’t care how good they were after that. I wanted nothing to do with them until Sidi had worked out which bits of plastic were rubbing and sorted it. I’d have taken smashed ankles over sounding like a family of mice at a cheese fair.

The one room in the whole house which has squeaky floorboards is the one which is an ideal size and shape for my office. How can that be? There are six rooms upstairs and the only one with squeaky floorboards is the one I’m sitting in, writing this. And it's not one floorboard either, every bloody floorboard in the room squeaks.

My daughter also squeaks, which can sometimes be annoying although she doesn’t rattle. Well, I don’t think so. I haven’t tried as I’m told it’s bad. Once again though, it’s to be expected so how can I complain? Obviously I do, but with less vehemence than if she was an immaculately constructed £450 bed which squeaks every time you move half an inch. I’m not punching that though, because solid wood is stronger than 2mm of Perspex and I don’t want to sleep on the floor any more than I fancy breaking my hand.

Moving House

This the second part in my 'two of the most stressful things you can do in your life' list (the first being getting married). As I previously mentioned, I did both in a year which provides a huge incentive to go on mad rampage with an automatic weapon. Apparently I'm a masochist though as we chose the third year to have a baby. Fun times.

Weddings are fun and so is moving house in a similarly "my-bank-account-will-never-be-in-credit-again" way. Moving in/out of rented accommodation doesn't count, that's child's play. You need to be selling and buying to get hit with the full force of needless hassle and unexpected expense. My personal favourite (aside from £1,700 for a solicitor to fire out a couple of letters), is the Stamp Duty. Now, we all know it's a pointless tax. It's the Government saying the equivalent of "Oh, buying a house are you, moneybags? We'll have some of that action".

I'm not even going to get into the fact that the money you spend on this tax has, itself, already been taxed half a dozen times. At least in 'olden' days you actually got a physical bloody stamp. What did I get? A bill for more than eight grand and it may as well have included a patronising "thanks" and a pat on the head. Actually, thinking about it, any thanks at all would have been nice...

The actual move involves all the organisational hell you think it will, including the packing of all your things. I swear I’d walk into one medium sized room with some empty boxes, survey the task ahead and conclude that one hour was plenty of time to clear it out. Two hours later I would have half a dozen full boxes and the room would look as though I hadn’t shifted a thing. I lived in a Tardis.

Of course the issue with the actual move is timing. When you’re selling one house and buying another you need the money from the first sale to go towards the purchase of the second (unless you’re considerably richer than me). This means your old house’s sale goes through and the money is released to purchase your new house. This sort of happens at the same time (well, within minutes). It also means that the house all your furniture is in now belongs to someone else and they’d like you to move it all. Preferably within the following ten minutes. That’s fun too, especially when you need about five trips in a fair sized van to do it with a half hour round trip.

Anyway, I’ve been in my detached house for several years now and the neighbours haven't been round to complain during the noisy sections in The Dark Knight. Seriously Chris Nolan, sort your volume levels out. It's not helpful having your actors sound like they're whispering half a second before letting off more explosions than a Michael Bay wet dream. Sitting there with the remote control shifting the volume up and down constantly kind of took away from the ambiance. Yes, that did actually happen.

Anyway, the diminished chances of annoying people with noise is a good thing. I like noise. I can now bellow at the dog when she drags her arse across the carpet without fear of giving someone a heart attack next door. Still, I’m never satisfied (you’re shocked, I can tell) so once the pain has subsided from memory and I’ve spent the time considering how to avoid as many costs as possible, I’ll doubtless look at doing it all again. After all, this house doesn't have a swimming pool or a shooting range.

Getting Married

Apparently two of the most stressful things you can do in life are to get married and to move house. I did both in the space of a year, and I've addressed moving house here (because the joy should be spread around equally).

I can vouch that the organisation side of a wedding is not the most pleasurable experience. And by “not pleasurable” I mean “I’d rather perform surgery on myself with a rusty spoon and a junior hacksaw”. Of course the whole process would be less intrusive if you didn’t need to lube yourself up with a family sized tub of Vaseline and bend over ready for penetration before embarking on the adventure.

What do I mean exactly? Well, buying anything for a wedding is amusing, in a masochistic "are-you-sodding-joking?" type way. Conversations go along these lines:

Me: "Hello. I'd like to arrange some invitations to a party, for probably around a hundred people."
Shop assistant: "No problem, prices are £45."
Me: "Excellent. On the website they look they'll match the wedding colours."
Shop assistant: "Oh, it's for a WEDDING? Sorry, WEDDING invitations are £500."

And so on.

I was quoted £1,650 for four hours use of a Rolls Royce. That’s over £400 an hour. I dropped the phone in shock so I’m unsure whether they were providing Lewis Hamilton to drive us to church too. Luckily I managed to find someone who had a Bentley which wasn’t made of solid gold, otherwise it might have been a Ford Fiesta (and I imagine that a flowing wedding dress creates a few problems getting in one of those).

Nothing for a wedding costs less than £500. It’s a well known fact, and the list of things you need is endless. You apparently need to buy things that I’ve never heard of (and I’m pretty sure I still didn’t see on the day itself either). Then, of course, you must feed people that you’ve never met before and relatives who you don’t like. And I don’t mean pop down to the chippie and grab fifty large portions of chips and some mushy peas either; they expect decent food. I’m pretty sure the hotel where we held the reception wouldn’t have allowed a ‘bring your own’ takeaway food option either. They’d have missed out on the eleventy billion pounds per head it cost. It’s more than I’d spend on a meal for myself, let alone a bunch of freeloaders who all thought it was funny to give us the same cheap toaster from Argos as wedding gifts.

I made the mistake of getting involved and trying to appear committed during the build up, the worst example being me accompanying my soon-to-be wife to a florists to talk about ideas for the big day. After ten minutes if it had been possible to commit suicide with a daffodil I’d have taken the option. It probably didn’t help that I was hungover but I had absolutely no idea what they were talking about. I’m unsure when, or where, they both suddenly learned Arabic, but it sounded like the preferred communication protocol. The two of them talked through ideas (I think) for what seemed like a week and I didn’t have a clue whether the words they were using were flowers or placements or procedures or arrangements... Anyway, it’s irrelevant what the words meant, I understand numbers and they added up to more than £500.

The vicar only had the cheek to come round and meet us when Liverpool were playing Chelsea in the Champions’ League. It might have seemed rude to her, for me not to turn down the TV, but I think I pulled it off by looking over her shoulder and just randomly grunting in agreement every now and again. Actually I didn’t pull it off at all because she mentioned it in the service, which was actually kind of a blessing because it momentarily distracted me from the screaming kid I was fantasising about stringing up next to Jesus on the cross.

But of course, as everyone says, the day flies by. Regardless of how much free alcohol is pushed in your direction, it’s impossible to get drunk because you’re pulled from pillar to post until the point where everyone else is drunk and you’re expected to dance romantically. Really? What are these people doing at my wedding if they don’t know me better than that?

Before you know it, it’s all over and you’re simply left with a scrap of paper to confirm your partnership, a bill for your soul and a wife suggesting that maybe a baby should be next on the list.

The Nope Badger

Not much of a rant, or even a post, but I can't resist posting this simply because my childish mind finds it hilarious.

London Airports

I’ve entitled this ‘London Airports’, but that’s really going against my point (stick with me, there is one). Most airports near London have included the capital city in their name when, in reality, it’s a tenuous claim at best. Take London Luton Airport, for example. Well, to anyone from the UK that just doesn’t make any sense. Luton is a town in its own right and it’s a town which is not in London. Sure, if you look on an Atlas then they’re only about a centimetre apart but by that logic Bangkok’s only just down the road too.

People from outside the area consider London to be the chunk of land inside the M25 ring road (even though its not, it’s further in – Watford’s inside the M25 and that’s not London either). Luton airport is fifteen miles outside the M25 and, really, twenty miles from the outskirts of London. You’d be pissed off if you arrived in the centre of London, thirty five miles from Luton airport, expecting to find it around the corner.

Luton’s not the only culprit though. Gatwick is as bad, especially when its website proclaims it to be “Your London airport”. Cheeky bastards, my geography’s not that bad. If it were my airport I’d have put it in the right place, or at least given it a name that made sense. You know, something like “The 20 Mile South of London, Gatwick Airport”. I’m not sure it’s a very catchy name but at least it won’t confuse the foreigners who step off the plane expecting to be able to see Big Ben only to learn they’ve got a ninety minute bus ride before that’s possible. They must end up thinking that London’s the same size as Scotland.

Thankfully they’re not all at it (well, not as blatantly anyway). Stanstead Airport is only slightly further out than Luton and it doesn’t feel the need to plonk the word ‘London’ in front of its name all the time. It does seem like it's optional for them so maybe they just can’t decide. This is curious because it claims to be the third busiest airport in the country so surely it’d benefit from the prestige of having London in its name. After all, Stanstead’s only a small place – a lot smaller than Luton and no-one would know where it is if it wasn’t for the airport.

Even the small Oxford airport claims to be London Oxford Airport which is really taking the piss. It’s fifty miles from London for god’s sake! I hope the people who name these airports are not pilots, otherwise you’re likely to get on a flight to Paris and end up in New York.

You wouldn’t have Liverpool Manchester Airport would you, so why London Luton or London Gatwick? After all Liverpool and Manchester are close to one another. The reason, I believe, is simple: status. It’s almost a subconscious thing. If you live in the south and you’re looking to book a flight then you kind of expect these facilities to be centred around the capital. You might expect to have to travel to London, but not bloody Luton (who wants to go there?) or Crawley (where Gatwick really is). Stick ‘London’ in front of the airport name and all of a sudden it’s what you expected in the first place. It works even more for foreigners (or people from Wales on their first trip over the Severn Bridge). It’s still a bloody con though because they’re not in London, or even very close.

Vegetables

I hate vegetables.

Okay, I don't hate all of them, just a large proportion of them. This really is a non-subject for me but lots of people seem obsessed by it, like I’m going to keel over and die at any minute because I haven’t consumed a lump of broccoli in twenty five years.

Anyone who meets me goes through these questioning stages:

1. "You don't like any vegetables?"
2. "OK, what do you eat?"
3. "I’ve given you extra meat because your plate looked bare".

The latter stage is obviously the most important. You see, vegetables are a cheap filler which, incidentally, taste crap. No-one can honestly convince me that they enjoy the taste of peas. They taste of nothing and the squishy texture of them is horrible. When you eat out somewhere and your chosen steak is served with ‘potatoes or chips and peas’, do what I do and order the meal without peas. It might sound petty because peas can easily be avoided (it’s not like they’re mashed into the steak) but it’s not petty at all. Firstly, why choose to waste? Secondly, when they leave the peas off your serving in the kitchen your plate will look half empty. Like I mentioned before, they’re a filler. A pile of peas is cheap (cheaper than steak) and it takes up a fair amount of space on your plate. You've specifically asked them not to put any on your plate and now it looks empty. They can’t serve you a half empty plate so what do they do? Make up the difference with extra chips. Aha! You don’t think I’m picky now, do you?

Loads of foods get served with sprinklings of cress of them. It’s not there for any other purpose than providing decoration. You’re not supposed to eat it. You take it off and place it on the side of your plate. You don’t eat the little ribbon and plastic snowman atop a Christmas pudding do you?

I do like some vegetables, but the list is pretty small. For example, beetroot is great with cheese in a sandwich, garlic belongs on bread and potatoes are excellent just about everywhere but I really start to struggle much beyond that. It’s not my fault though, I blame my parents. Although I do have a physical reaction to eating many vegetables I’m willing to concede that it’s a psychological issue. I suspect I’m not alone in having being force fed vegetables when I was young. Your parents tell you they're good for you and that your head would fall off if you don't eat them. Being slightly more intelligent than that I figured I’d call their bluff. My head never fell off but the quantities of vegetables increased together with appearance of an ultimatum dictating I wasn’t allowed to leave the table until I’d eaten them all.

At this stage peas are the least of one’s concerns. Like I said, they don’t really taste of anything and the texture can be camouflaged with tomato ketchup. Lots of tomato ketchup. No, there are much worse relatives which can be served up in the place of peas. One of my all-time biggest hatreds when I was growing up was reserved for Brussels Sprouts. Who the hell likes these things? They’re presented with little tiny leaves on them; it’s disgusting. I wouldn’t ask someone else to sit in the garden munching on plants for dinner so why ask me? You can coat peas in tomato sauce and swallow them whole but you can’t do the same with sprouts, can you? Oh yes you can. I don’t recommend it but it’s the only way I got through them. I wasn’t going to chew them.

Yes, I could have choked with a blocked oesophagus and it would have all been the fault of my parents. Instead of treating me like an adult and helping me decide which vegetables I liked, I had them forced at me until I rebelled. Fast forward a couple of decades and here I am, psychologically damaged and still in utter and complete stubborn refusal.

As I mentioned at the top, it really causes me little concern. My biggest headache is with food companies who don’t feel it’s relevant to mention vegetables in their ingredients. I’ve bought a sandwich before only to discover that ‘ham and cheese’ actually means ‘ham and cheese with some hidden bits of lettuce you can’t see in the packing window and we won’t mention in the description’. Bastards. Also, every catering company on the planet seems to believe that buffet sandwiches are incomplete with more greenery than an Amazonian rainforest.

Lots of animals get by without eating ludicrous amounts of mud coated leaves so don’t, for one second, think I’m going to be any worse off in the long run. Humans are omnivores by nature, consuming meat, plants etc. but there are plenty of carnivores which survive on nothing more than a good steak. Your dog might be dopey enough to eat left over vegetables but your cat won’t. No, your cat wants meat. I am not a cat (this much is certain) and I don’t share the same digestive system and nutrient requirements but that is not going to convince me that the route to happiness and long life resides in a stick of celery.

Public Transport

Apparently the world is going to implode sooner or later and it’s all the fault of people who drive cars. Mentalists point out anyone who doesn’t drive a hybrid and blame them for everything which can even vaguely be associated with global warming. The Government jumped on the bandwagon and seized the opportunity to levy additional taxes on anyone who drives anything more powerful than a lawnmower. They were particularly happy because they can tell Greenpeace they’re saving the planet while simultaneously ordering a swimming pool for their second homes with the extra cash. Officially, at least, the Government would rather we all left our cars at home and took public transport.

I won’t mince my words here; I hate public transport. It’s never ready when you are and it’s slow, expensive, dirty and full of other people. The only thing public transport has going for it is the fact that it takes no effort on your part once aboard. But even then it never seems to take you where you want to go. How often have you caught a bus or a train and it’s dropped you exactly at your destination? Never is the answer. Unless your final destination was the train station (and if it was you need help, and probably a girlfriend too). So, you then need to find another way to complete your journey.

My last use of public transport was the train (into London). I had to drive to the train station, which is about 15 miles, and pay a fortune for the privilege of leaving my car there before I even got on the bloody thing. Once I arrived at Paddington Station I needed to get off the train and get on an underground one. When that finally reached its destination I had to disembark and catch a bloody taxi because it was about two miles from my meeting location and I was late. What a massive pain in the backside.

I like to get in the car (at a time of my choosing) and head off where ever I’m going under my own pace without any external constraints. I don’t want to plan my day around specific, timed departures and I don’t wish to spend an hour surfing the net trying to work out timings for several different methods of transport which, combined, will cost more than it would have done to drive.

A return trip from Oxford to Manchester is around 300 miles by car. In my car that’s over half a tank of fuel – about £45 worth. Cost on the train? About £10 to park the car and £70 for the train fare. I realise my fuel costs don’t include car running costs but still, the train is almost twice as much. A couple of years ago I was looking for the best way to get to Scotland and it was cheaper to fly than it was to get the train. Ludicrous.

Of course it doesn’t end there. Once you’re on the train you have to try and find somewhere to actually sit down. Ah yes, let me mention First Class train tickets. I’m guaranteed a seat then aren’t I? Probably, and the aforementioned ticket to Manchester rises in cost to £180 (which is four times more expensive now). So I had to stand up for about half of the last trip I took on a train. If you’re going anywhere near an underground train in London at rush hour then forget it. If it’s a hot, summer’s day then you’re really screwed. You can look forward to having a couple of sweaty armpits aimed in your general direction as you continually get bumped into by the bloke who (evidently) consumed the world’s strongest curry the night before.

Buses are often worse and, depending on the time of day, are more likely to be utilising by drunks or screaming kids. I’m all for the use of an iPod, for example, to drown out the noise but not when you sit within earshot of me. My hypocrisy knows no bounds, sure, but I don’t want to listen to the metallic tsk-tsk-tsk-tsk baseline coming from your headphones.

I’ve covered the fact that none of these public services will take you anywhere close to your actual destination but I’ve yet to mention an additional point; the weather. Nothing says ‘professional’ better than turning up to your important meeting looking like a drowned poodle. No, I refuse to carry an umbrella with me everywhere on the off chance that it might rain. Similarly, I don’t carry a gun just in case we’re invaded or a Swiss Army knife for when I bump into a horse with a stone in its hoof. Call me unprepared if you like, but my car has a roof, and that stops me getting wet.

I’m also guaranteed a seat (which won’t have discarded chewing gum on it) and I’ll be free of interruptions from random members of the public. No-one smelling of urine will come and sit next to me and no sweaty person will attempt to suffocate me with their armpit. I won’t be able to hear kids screaming at each other any more than I’ll be subjected to hanging around in the cold while the public transport of choice is late.

Sure I’ll have to put up with traffic in the car, but buses don’t get around that problem either (that’s what motorbikes are for). Trains are obviously pretty good for avoiding congestion, as mentioned, they’re extortionate and I have to somehow travel 15 miles before I can even catch one.

So the Government would have us use public transport but won’t invest in it until we all do. Catch 22 eh? Not really. Don’t ask me to do something and then promise you’ll improve the service after I’ve done it. That’s a leap of faith I can’t make, especially when it’s a bunch of politicians making the promise. The US Government didn’t ask NASA to put some people in space and, after they’ve done so, then provide the resources for the actual rocket. On that basis I’d like to start a nice new glossy magazine. If lots of big companies could plough money into advertising up front I’ll make some vague promises about filling it with articles and millions of people will buy it. It’s not much of a business plan is it? Are you listening Mr Cameron?

Supermarkets

I have something of a ‘love / hate’ relationship with supermarkets. Well, ‘love’ is a bit strong so maybe more of an ‘appreciate / hate’ relationship. I appreciate them insofar as they stock a wide variety of food and household related products in one place which is easily accessible. Having said that, so does the internet and that has the added advantage of porn too.

I hate supermarkets for pretty much the same reasons I appreciate them. I detest the thought of driving five miles to the supermarket and spending an hour trudging up and down the aisles mentally calculating which size tin of beans offers best value for money. So I don’t; the wife does it.

That sounds bad, so let me explain. At best, supermarkets are frequented by people like me (no, not miserable bastards, although I’m sure they need to eat too). I mean that when I go to the supermarket (under duress) the trolley does not stop moving until I reach the tills to pay. It does not stop while I ponder endlessly over which brand of cereal I might desire a week on Tuesday and it doesn’t stop by the bloody beans either. I go into the supermarket and, because I use the same one, I can go at a decent walking pace down each aisle, knocking the required items off the shelf and into the trolley as I go. I don’t look at new products and I don’t buy anything different. That would require pause.

This actually raises another point. You know what puts paid to this time efficient shopping technique? When the supermarket manager thinks it’s hilarious to completely change the layout of the store for no reason whatsoever. Why do they do it? The bread’s been in the same place for two years but all of a sudden someone thinks it’d do better where the DVDs used to be, alongside the eggs which used to be near the tinned products. So, you end up lost. Shopping takes twice as long because you can’t find anything and when you get home you realise you didn’t actually get any cereal at all, because you don’t remember seeing any.

And it’s all bollocks anyway. Anyone who knows me will tell you that I verge on being a fussy eater. Well, not fussy exactly but I don’t like vegetables and I’m genuinely not that interested in eating. I probably wouldn’t do it except I’ll apparently collapse and die otherwise. So hopefully you can begin to see why supermarket shopping is such a chore to me. And that’s before I refer to the other type of people who shop there.

Now I’ve mentioned already that people irritate me in supermarkets. I guess I don’t notice the efficient shoppers because, well, they’re efficient and they’re not cocking around and getting in people’s way. I’m not being picky here, some shoppers will irritate even the most patient of people (which is not me, in case you were wondering). Let’s start with the morons who push their trolley into the middle of the aisle and then wander off somewhere. On any given trip you’ll experience at least half a dozen (seemingly) abandoned trolleys parked sideways so that nobody can get by. For a while I took them as targets and crashed into them with my trolley, sending them spinning into shelving. Anyway, this is not as satisfying as you might think if the trolley’s owner is not around to witness it. Half the time they’ve wandered off to a different section, oblivious to the fact that they’re inconsiderate twats. My new plan is two fold. First, move their trolley into the next aisle. That’ll make them think they’re going insane when they return. Next, remove some of the more important items and put them back on the shelves. It’s not stealing because they haven’t been paid for. Don’t remove so many that they’ll notice but imagine how annoyed they’ll be when they get home (after finally tracking down the trolley) to find they’ve got no bread or milk.

What next? Children. You’d think I hate kids and it’s not true. I love mine, I just hate everyone else’s. I’m not going to come up with anything original here. They scream, they make a noise and some of them are so completely unaware of their environment that you’d think they wanted to be run down by a trolley-wielding lunatic. Indulge them. It’s all part of the learning process. The upshot is that I don’t want to hear a snot-ridden brat screaming and wailing at its mother because she won’t buy it a king sized Mars bar.

Then you have the people who I like to refer to as ‘rolling roadblocks’. You get these everywhere, they’re not confined to supermarkets. It’s all about the stunning ability to make yourself as wide as an entire aisle (or pavement) and then walk with all the speed and urgently of an arthritic snail. Often they’re old and deaf which means “excuse me” (see? I can be polite) has no effect on them. You’re stuck, weaving left and right while weighing up the pros and cons of shoving them into the display of discount biscuits.

The final ones which bother me are the chatters. These are the people who seem to go to the supermarket with the sole purpose and regaling everyone they meet with their plans for the week. What makes these people bad is they, like those mentioned before, abandon their trolleys when they spot a friend. You are, therefore, left with two trolleys and a couple of bored husbands to navigate your way past before continuing your crusade for bulk lager.

What’s the solution? Once again it’s the internet, and you don’t have to purchase your groceries from a dodgy Croatian website either – you can buy it from exactly the same place as you would in person! This way’s much better because no-one can park a trolley in your way and the only thing that can go wrong is having Internet Explorer crash (and if that happens it should serve as a lesson in why you ought to use a decent browser). Even better than all this is the fact they’ll deliver it to your door, meaning fat people don’t have to expend precious calories going to get cream cakes. Sure, they’ll likely charge a delivery fee but you haven’t had to drive to the supermarket and my time is worth more than £5 for the hour it would have taken, so it’s all good.

So, my wife does the shopping online and I pay. Sounds fair? I’ve got to the point where I’m so disinterested in shopping that I can’t be bothered to look through what she’s ordered before handing over my credit card. She’s cottoned on to this. It’s only a matter of time before a bulk delivery of mail-order Eastern European male models arrives.

Convertible Cars Are Pointless

Cabriolets, soft tops, convertibles... whatever you call them. Why? Just, why? I live in England, not California so why would I want a convertible car? It rains on more than one day in three and the year’s average temperature is likely to be around ten degrees Celsius. Yes, we can experience temperatures into the thirties but buying a car just for those five days a year seems a bit much.

But cabriolets do have a roof, don’t they? Of course, but they’re made from nylon (probably) and offer the same shelter from the wind as sticking your head in a plastic bag does before stepping into a wind tunnel. I know there are now metal roofs and I’m sure they’re great. The fact is that the convertible version of the car weighs about six tonnes more than the standard version due to all the extra crap it needs. That big, fat folding metal roof is heavy you know and it has to be stowed somewhere, so forget about being able to put anything in the boot. Or the back seat.

They also bolt loads of bars and struts under the car too to stiffen it (since chopping something in half normally affects its ability to not go all wobbly at the first provocation). Your car now weighs six times more than the model which has a roof. So it’s more expensive, noisier and slower. Oh, and that means it’ll drink more fuel too (but you’ll look good in it for five days a year).

Let me reaffirm that last statement; you’ll look good in it for five days a year. To be fair you might not look good in it ever, but the people who drive around when it is two degrees above freezing with the roof down do not look cool. Obviously they look freezing (almost literally), but that’s not what I mean. It smacks of people trying to justify buying a cabriolet in the first place. If it’s two degrees you do not need the roof down. You don’t want it down either. I wouldn’t have my window down at that temperature and yet these guys will go around trying to convince you that they’re getting some use from their soft top car. I’d let it slide if they were Eskimos and thought two degrees was hot, but they aren’t. It’s given away by the fact that they invariably have the windows wound up and the heating on full blast. Sometimes they wear a hat too. Stop it people, it looks absurd.

Do you know what sounds absurd? Diesel engines. They sound like tractors and I’m yet to meet anyone who defends the clattering, ear assaulting din that they make. With me on that? Fine. You know what does sound great? A petrol V8, and that’s a fact. With those points in mind I’m willing to concede that a convertible V8 would be great with the roof down, but still only when it’s warm enough. Do you know what would never be great with the roof down? Yes, that’s right, a diesel. Not only do you get cold but also get reminded that you’re driving something which sounds like a Massey Ferguson (which, with all that extra weight and the diesel inspired loss of power, is probably about as fast as one too).

Seriously, unless you own a dozen cars and can choose when it comes out to play you need to move about five hundred miles south of England before I’ll accept that a convertible is worthwhile.

Getting Old

At thirty-odd years old it would be a touch harsh to say that I’m old. I don’t wear my trousers around my chest and I don’t own any slippers or pyjamas just yet. Having said that, my body keeps reminding me that I’m getting older.

Actually my body’s been doing it for years, the bastard. My first grey hairs appeared at age seventeen. Yes, seventeen. I was at school with bloody grey hair. I’m sure some of the kids thought I was really thirty and was having to repeat a lot of years. Ever since then I’ve been plagued with people thinking they’re being genuinely helpful in pointing it out (just in case I don’t own a mirror). To make matters worse (or better, depending on your viewpoint when it comes to grey hair), my hair then started falling out. It was growing old and dying right in front of me (well, on top of me actually). Upon seeing some photos of me which displayed my growing monk’s bald patch I headed straight for a barber’s and had the lot shaved off. I don’t understand these guys who try and deny it; holding out for as long as they can with a receding hairline (or massive forehand, if you will) and a dodgy comb-over. No-one’s fooled by it. Ironically, because I shave mine as short as possible a couple of people who met me after I shed my locks commented that I must do it through choice “because you’re not bald, are you?” Anyway, I’m now told that (when combined with my round head) I look like Ricky Gervais’s sidekick, Karl Pilkington. I watch little TV so I’m unsure if it’s a kind comparison or not.

For years at school I never understood why sportsmen were always getting injured and taking months to return. I was like Captain Scarlet. Now? Not so much. Doing any kind of regular running ends up producing shin splints. If you don’t know what this is, it’s effectively muscle trauma and/or multiple (small) stress factures of the shin caused by repeated impact. I’ve tried everything to stop it but it flares up if I run more than a couple of times a week (I don’t mean to the bar when they call last orders). It is incredibly painful and takes weeks to properly subside again. To people who haven’t experienced it, I describe it as having dozens of tiny women in sharp, pointy shoes kick you in the shins repeatedly. I’m aware that some people find this thought appealing, however, I’m confident there will be a site (or a million sites) on the internet catering for the person of that particular disposition. It has no place here though, you weirdo.

What else? Well some years ago I involuntarily jumped over the front of my motorbike at about seventy miles per hour. I’ve no idea if it hurt at the time because I was rewarded with concussion and amnesia. As well as the minor injuries which cleared up fairly quickly I also hurt my shoulder and ankle. I’ve no idea what I did but I guess at some kind of ligament damage. I say “guess” because the hospital would have genuinely struggled to show less interest. The upshot was that I couldn’t go to the gym for almost three years because any sustained exercise would leave my shoulder useless for the week after. Thankfully that’s healed now. It was over seven years ago and my right ankle’s still not perfect though. It never feels as strong, sometimes it aches and it is much more susceptible to injury than the left.

It makes you wonder what older life must be like for people who routinely smash themselves up. Stuntmen probably can’t get out of bed when they reach forty. Anyone who regularly competes on a BMX or skateboard is probably composed of so many metal pins and rods that they get rugby tackled by airport security.

Even though I try to avoid flying through and air and landing on things which are hard, I hate to think what I’m going to be like in later life. The male life expectancy in the UK is seventy seven years old. I’m not even halfway there and sometimes I feel like I’ve had the crap kicked out me already. That doesn’t bode well, especially if my recovery powers continue to go downhill faster than a fat kid on a sledge at Christmas.

I really don’t want to be one of those doddery old people who takes an age to move out of the way (and craves attention when you push past them and they break a hip). I reckon I will be though. That’ll be my intolerance coming back and biting me in the arse in the best way possible (and will merely serve to compound my bitterness). I’ll be the one huffing and puffing as I attempt to climb a couple of steps on the way into Boots for some incontinence pads. The kids behind me when inform me I smell of “wee” and I’ll probably fall over while trying to whack one of them with my walking stick. And break my hip.

Captain Scarlet my arse.

Flip Flops

The heat wave which has swept the country has been very welcome after the last couple of forgettable summers. However, being too hot can be very uncomfortable and its effects are demonstrated by the change of clothing worn by the general populace. One thing that puzzles me though is the infatuation with flips flops. I perfectly understand their place if you're unfortunate enough to live in an impoverished third world country and you're below the bread line. If you have to trek five miles carrying a bucket with five holes in it just to fetch your daily water supply then the chances are you're not doing it in the latest Nike Air Jordans. Why, though, do women who own a dozen other pairs of real shoes choose to wear a couple of bits of foam held together with cheap plastic?

The weather’s warm, yes I get it, but that's not enough I’m afraid. Shoes are generally supposed to offer comfort and support to your feet. You could also argue they're supposed to look good. Flip flops do none of these things. Do your feet really get that sweaty? You really ought to see a doctor or something about that. Put it like this, I work in an air-conditioned office and the bastard things were everywhere. It may be thirty two degrees outside but inside it's no warmer than a mid-October afternoon and, roughly, the same temperature as the rest of the year at your desk. You don't feel the urge to wear flip flops in January, do you?

Why does this concern me? Well they look ridiculous but that on its own is not enough to be bothered about. If it was then my next rant would be picking on teenagers who reckon they look awesome by hanging their trousers down below their arses and waddling like penguins when they walk. No, it's the infernal 'flap, flap, flap' sound as they walk past which makes me want to tear the offending items from their feet and force feed them to the owner. If you want to show off your scabby feet and half painted toe nails then, by all means, go ahead. Please have some consideration for those of us whose hearing is functional though.

I’m not known for keeping my feelings under wraps and, after one of my several verbal rants on the subject, a ‘dress code policy’ was distributed around the office (not that I’m claiming any influence over its creation). Amusingly, there was a ‘no flip flops’ entry. Several of us chuckled at the indignation shown by more than a few apoplectic girls because, you know, they have it really tough. Being able to wear flowery dresses and flip flops is only fair because, after all, the men have to wear suits and ties which are much more comfortable in the height of summer. Anyway, staggeringly, after launching a protest the ‘ban’ was diluted to the point of worthlessness when it was decided that smart flip flops weren’t actually flip flops at all and so they were fine.

This is why democracy is a bad thing.