Tomato Outsource

Hmm. Didn't see that one coming.

The Fairytale Toy Shop

My cousin has just given birth to two baby boys, so congratulations are in order to Rachel and Paul. My parents, like the good doting relatives they are, duly went off to buy the newborns a selection of toys, so they will have something to bash each other with once they’re old enough to understand malice. I met my parents on the way back from said shopping trip and noticed that the only bags they were carrying were from Fortnum & Mason. Fortnum & Mason! For those of you who have never heard of this place, it’s where the Queen goes shopping when she feels like showing off. It’s the place where the window displays draw bigger crowds than Fulham’s home matches, and the shop assistants have been dressed by Cinderella’s Fairy Godmother. I accidentally stumbled in there last Christmas when the doorman mistook me for a rich person.

“How much are these crackers?” I asked the formally-attired octogenarian at the counter.
“£50 each sir.”
“£50!? What’s inside them? Bottled unicorn farts?”
“No sir, unicorn farts are on the third floor.”
“This is ridiculous - you look like you're 300 years old. Go and sit down before you fall over and break a hip.”
“Very good sir.”

How my parents have moved up in the world - when I was a toddler, I had no such luxuries. We couldn’t afford grass, so my mother would sit me outside on the dirt all day, where I would eat stones and mud and play with my friends, the worms. If I was good, I would be allowed to watch an entire washing machine cycle before going to bed. Don't get me wrong, I had some cracking toys as I grew up; specifically Zoids and Transformers (but I'll blog about that another day). I just wanted to use this opportunity to moan because I never had toys from the place where the Queen gets her bubble bath. There, I've thrown my rattle out of the pram.

Crime Doesn't Pay

When you’re a thief, the hardest question is knowing what to do with your swag. You can guarantee that when The Scream was pilfered in Oslo two years ago, the culprits didn’t just pop down to the local art dealer the next day and ask: “How Munch for that then, Guv?”

When thieves attempted the outrageous heist of the Millennium Star diamond, you can be pretty sure the chief perpetrator wasn't going to just plonk it on a ring and propose to his dearly betrothed.

So when a gang of scallywags pulled off the meticulously planned theft of £50,000,000 in used bank notes on Wednesday, it seemed like the perfect crime. Sadly not. Just two days later and we hear that three of them have been rumbled, the latest one trying to deposit £6000 of the stolen loot in a Building Society in Bromley. The cash was wrapped in tape labelled 'Tonbridge' - the name of the depot where the heist took place. You kind of hope she remembered to take off her mask and stripy jumper before she did it.

When I was at university, I was burgled. Twice. Luckily the chap who broke in both times had the mental capacity of a cucumber, as he flogged the stolen goods at our local pawn shop, leaving his own name, address and telephone number. It didn't take the police long to track him down. The next day I managed to take a look at the police report, and noticed that the thief's name was Nixon. Somehow, it didn't surprise me.

Everyone's a Winner

You’ll have to forgive me for being a little smug this morning. Arsenal’s win at the Bernabéu last night was not only against all odds, it was the first ever win by an English team on the hallowed Spanish turf (I use the word ‘English’ in the loosest sense of the word, considering the only Englishmen on the pitch were playing for Real Madrid). The best thing about it is that I lost money on the match (we had sweepstake in the office and I got the score wrong), but I’ve never been happier to part with my hard earned cash.

And I think I’ve hit on something here: if you’ve got a gambling problem or a hankering to part with your house, marriage, job and anything else you’ve ever cared about, always bet on your team to lose. So if they keep winning, you’ll be homeless and destitute, but with a big smile on your face. Logic saves the day again!

Fifteen Minutes of Fish

I would have to say that in terms of sheer enjoyment, watching Reality TV fits in somewhere between eating sawdust and licking Abu Hamza's stump. Last year I bought a Freeview box in Dixons from a man who looked like a weeble.
"What's the difference between the £50 box and the £100 box?" I asked.
"The £100 box has got a red light on it," he replied.
The information retention of these people is nothing short of incredible. As I smugly walked out of the shop with my box, sans red light, I thought about all the hours of quality TV I was about to be subjected to - channels and channels of highbrow entertainment and groundbreaking documentaries. Sadly, this wasn't the case.
"What gives?" I cried, returning to Mr Weeble the next day. "All they show is repeats of Big Brother! Then the highlights of the repeats of Big Brother! Then the analysis of the highlights of the repeats of Big Brother!"
"Ah," said Mr Weeble. "You need a special card to pick up any of the decent channels."
"Ok," I said, "And where is the slot into which I can insert this card?"
"You bought the £50 box," he said, "So you don't have one."
I tried to push him over, but he just wobbled around for a bit, before returning to his upright position.

So it is, that I am currently flicking from channel to channel, seeing nothing but desperate wannabes and has-been D-list "celebrities" demeaning themselves in various manners all in the name of fame. Those crazy Dutch have pushed the bar even lower this week, with news of Pimp My Life, a show in which they give a tramp all the pickings of a millionaire’s lifestyle, then take them away again and say "do it on your own now, fuckchops." Rather unsurprisingly, they are finding it difficult to find any contestants with the psychological stability to be put through such turmoil. If you think about the character-assasinations that some of the theoretically 'stable' Reality contestants have had to go through in the past, imagine having to go and live on the street through it all as well!

I've got an idea for a Reality show. All the production team swim to the bottom of the Atlantic, then film each other as their lungs give out - the winner is the last corpse to float to the surface. They could call it "A Fish Out of Water" (the irony works on so many levels...)

Time to toughen up

Last week a 6-year-old girl was told she couldn’t wear her new Barbie watch to school, as teachers at the Waterside Primary School, Hampshire, feared the metal winder could injure someone when she raised her hand in class. They obviously hadn’t considered that anyone in the proximity of said watch at the time of the hand being raised was more likely to be injured by the hard, pointy finger jutting into the air, and in any case, anyone hovering over a 6-year-old for too long probably deserves to have their eye poked out.

I recall a ban on knives at school when a small kid stabbed himself with the school bully’s switchblade. This included those in the canteen (we instead had to smash our food up with hammers). Guns soon followed, putting an end to the annual 1st Year hunt, and then landmines, which made games of football against opposing schools far less entertaining.

Kids these days aren’t quite as tough as we were in our youth; Tippex, chewing gum and earrings have all hit the contraband list at most schools but banning watches is going a little too far. Following this train of thought, there will soon be a ban on: shoes (offensive foot-laden kicking instruments); ties (handy suicide props); pencils (lead-based stabbing devices) and learning (because too much knowledge in the wrong hands is a dangerous thing).

Children will instead be encouraged to sit in feather-filled sacks in white padded rooms while teachers read them Harry Potter through specially muffled speakers, in order to preserve their delicate ears. With all this protection, children will emerge from school 12 years later as 6-year-olds in slightly bigger clothes. And we'll give them their Barbie watches back and say "There you go, you're responsible enough to own these now." But because they haven't learnt to tell the time, they won't know what to do with them, so they'll just put them on, raise their hands and poke our eyes out instead.

Where did all the thin kids go?

Here's a kid who has my respect. Look at the size of that lunchbox. I used to take my own packed lunch to school, which my mother would pack with wholesome snacks such as raisins or celery or turnip juice. I would cast envious glances across the dinner table as the other kids tucked into their Mars Bars and Jammy Dodgers, all the time wondering why my mother was putting my health before my street-cred.

I'd love to tell you that I had the last laugh - emerging as one of the UK's finest athletes, while all my gluttonous friends ended up fat-arsed, couch-ridden spud sacks. I'd love to tell you that I'm not typing this with the top button of my trousers undone, for fear of reversing my digestive process and pooing out of my mouth. I'd love to tell you I don't have a job that involves sitting on my arse for 12 hours a day, exercising little more than a corpse with a bad back.

On the news this morning they were discussing a new system of labelling food, so we all know exactly how much sugar, salt, cyanide etc. each item contains. That way we can make a conscious decision to choose a healthy diet and watch the weight come tumbling off. The manufacturers want to put on labels detailing the percentage of our daily intake each item provides. The Food Standards Agency wants to use a 'traffic light' system of red, amber and green, because we're all too thick to understand percentages and the pretty colours will make us feel happy.

I think they've got it all wrong. Having a diet of breadsticks and runner beans isn't going to keep you skinny if you're sat on your arse all day. I was fit and healthy at school on my Olympic diet, but so were all of my chocolate-gobbling friend because we spent all day outside, running around and rolling in the mud. Since starting my office job, my waistline has expanded at an exponential rate and I'm now approximately the same size as the moon. If the Government want to use traffic light warning signs, it should be job applications.

Green = Beergut unlikely
Amber = Beergut a possibility
Red = Beergut a certainty, girlfriend a distant memory

That's the kind of advice that I would take notice of.

Delusions of Lyrical Grandeur

Three days into my blog and I’ve so far been called pretentious (by Marilisa), homosexual (by Anthony) and I’ve had a visitor! From Illinois! Big up, Illinois, if you’re listening. This has had my brain ticking over a number of things, not least the fact that I’ve got an audience (and a global one, at that).

Blogs are pretentious – I can’t deny that. Why would anyone in their right mind want to listen to what I have to say? I’m not the Pope; I’m not an actor with dubious political opinions. And yet someone has visited my page. Having said that, it was most likely a kindly old lady searching for a recipe for Cookie Crumble, who I have now corrupted and debased with my outrageous irreverence and outspoken opinions on the galactic relocation of Bracknell.

That’s another thing I hadn’t considered – anyone outside the UK’s borders it unlikely to have heard of Bracknell or know of its elevated status as our principal concrete hellhole. If you’re interested, I recommend you visit trousers.co.uk - it sums the place up perfectly.

I had originally started this blog to exercise my brain but I’m going to have to buck my ideas up, just in case my visitor comes back. I can now count amongst my peers the bastions of ostentatious prose - Anne Robinson, Richard Littlejohn and the other countless newspaper columnists whose pointless opinions matter enough for at least one person to find them worth reading.

A Load of Old Balls

I’ve done many things in my life against my better judgement. I kicked a police car once. I bought a shiny orange shirt from Topman. I had tramlines shaved into my head by my mother’s hairdresser, because a black kid had them at school and everyone said they looked cool (but not in my case, apparently).

It was along these same ill-advised lines that I agreed to take up golf the other day. Now before anyone jumps up and starts defending golf to the hilt, declaring how it gives purpose to the lives of the overpaid, let me give you some insight into my own sporting prowess. For a period of my formative years, I was convinced that I would one day be goalkeeper for Arsenal. I even had a miniature goal in my garden. As I grew older, the goal made way for a basketball net and my footy boots for Nike Air Jordans. Being 12’ tall, I was a sure-fire candidate for the ranks of the Chicago Bulls. The trouble was, I never quite managed to break into the school team for either of my chosen sports – in fact, I rarely broke out of the garden save for looking for lost balls on other people's property. Despite my enthusiasm and hours of dedication, I was a bona fide cack-handed fuckwit when it came to catching the ball, and that’s the crux of the matter – hand to eye coordination. Or lack of it.

Golf doesn’t involve catching balls (unless you’ve got a very good eye, and absolutely no concept of the rules), but the same principles apply. Standing in the driving range for the first time with a club in my hand, I felt terrified. My eyes were looking at the ball, and telling my brain to hit it. My brain was telling my hands not to let go of the golf club. I pulled the club back and took an almighty swipe, missing the ball entirely. Instead, what I could see flying into the distance was a lump of skin from my left hand, which I had managed to part with by gripping the club so hard. I despondently walked to the club shop and bought a solitary white glove, only confirming further in my mind that was a sport for the mentally unbalanced.

My second shot was a marked improvement – this time hitting the ball (albeit in a vertical fashion); my third was a triumph, actually connecting with the ball and hitting it with a wicked slice over the fence to the right, into a crowd of boys playing football. It felt fantastic.

60 balls later, and I had managed to hit about half of them, one of them actually going backwards and nearly decapitating a pro who was standing behind me. "It takes talent, that," he said. And I knew it. My golf buddy, Anthony, thinks we should go out at try a 9-hole course in a few weeks and I don't see why not. After all, the bulk of the game seems to involve looking for lost balls in other people's property and I'm rather good at that.

Bracknelites, Meteorites and the advent of Chavdom

I recently had the pleasure of visiting Canterbury - a city, I noted, that has almost unparalleled views from every vantage point of at least five baseball caps; if you’re lucky – in Burberry check. (Apparently there’s a cathedral there too; it had, as far as I could tell, been turned into a giant Starbucks.) This little jaunt gave me the chance to indulge in my new favourite pastime, Chav-Spotting, which has become something of a national sport. It may sound easy, and for all intensive purposes it is – all you need to do is listen out for the distinctive clatter of sovereign ring against forehead – but the challenge has come with the advent of websites such as chavscum.co.uk, which invite you to send in photos of said tossbags. You need to be discrete in this to say the least, unless you have a particular desire to be happy-slapped with your own phone.

Chav ‘culture’, I’m led to believe, was born in Chatham; if this is true then it was most likely nurtured in the womb of Bracknell (and, at a guess, is currently suckling on the teat of the dry slope at the John Nike Leisure Centre). There are so many pregnant 14 year olds in Bracknell that they’re actually skewing the national age average, and are currently the only reason we’ve not tipped into a full-scale pensions crisis. Fortunately there’s little to stop this phenomenon – Bracknell has so many roundabouts that any healthcare workers trying to deliver birth control have been deflected into the nearby forest, where they have reportedly turned into a feral tribe; attacking passing ramblers with packets of Mates.

I actually grew up near Bracknell and had the inconvenience of having to add it to my address, leading to cheerful remarks like “I was mugged there once!” or “I’ve heard that’s where my father lives!” every time I opened a bank account or the like. The fact that I actually lived closer to the centre of Ascot seemed to be lost on the Council’s planners, and they had even situated a sewage works between my house and the posh twats in their racing best, as if to say “we feel closer to our shit than we do to you”.

Luckily I have long since left the realms of Bracknell, and I’m not sure I could find my way back in even if I wanted too. You see, that’s the problem – it’s very easy to get out of, but very hard to get back in; something of a reverse black hole. So on it goes, spawning Chav babies and firing them out of cannons into neighbouring towns, where they grow up in Biffa bins before setting fire to them and crawling to the benefits office. It’s my opinion that Bracknell should be launched into space, as a deterrent for aspiring intergalactic invaders. Then if a meteor strikes, it would be deflected off one of the roundabouts, or become spiked on the 3M tower, thus saving the entire human race. But by that time, the earth will have become so infiltrated with Chavs and Chavettes that it wouldn’t be worth saving anyway. So sod it.

Technorati Tags: Bracknell, chav, meteorite

The Inconsequential Birth of Something Irrelevant

They say it's not good to spend lunch-breaks sat at your desk. They have a point. Having read the entire Internet, I found myself looking for things to do - the choices were quickly narrowed down to setting fire to my feet or starting a Blog. I didn't have any matches. Whether this develops into something of any worth or merely subsides to the back of my mind (while taking up vauable webspace that could be used for swingers classifieds or fascist propaganda), depends entirely on me exerecising my right to remain at said desk during my lunch breaks. Or until They tell me otherwise. Or until I find some matches.