I’ve always properly despised those selfish fools who fail to understand my medicinal need for coffee grants me non negotiable rights over their wishy wash request for a frothy beverage.

Out of my way, caffeine addict coming through¦..” I am want to shout on straightlining the sea of bodies between me and my morning fix. On difficult days, I desperately request an instant infusion directly from the Barista, so ignoring the more traditional cup and saucer convention.

It hasn’t always been this way; growing up in Yorkshire, coffee was the much maligned tipple of those reaching above themselves embodied by hostess trolley and inside toilets. But having migrated south for what feels like the remainder of my life, tea is served pointlessly weak with the bag having been merely wafted over the cup in some kind of bizarre London ritual. Is the spoon sanding up in the cup yet? No? Then put the sodding bag back in then you bloody metrosexual” was a fairly representative dialogue for the first couple of years.

They never did though, and after one exchange in which I was offered nine types of tea but not one of them being Tetley”, I gave up. And just as a rantable aside, what the fuck is breakfast tea? 240 bags in a big box covers all the major tea drinking events for about a month, surely? I’ll tell you what it is, it’s bloody niche marketing and global stupidity for which scorpion pits await.

So coffee it is then. On the plus side, the firm offers up two variants; the first costs a couple of quid but served frothy and hot from a proper machine. The second is a freebie concoction of hot water rafishly mixed with rat poison. The reason it is served up as a no cost option is not due to the magnanimousness of the firm, rather that you’d have to be a screaming mentalist to pay for it.

Therefore, a frisson of excitement shimmied through the entire floor when four straining blokes, in matching shirts and sweat, heaved a freezer sized replacement into place. It was delivered with a small boy whose sole responsibility was to explain the complex operation of the machine to a hundred IT veterans, most with decent degrees. Which of course would not include anything with studies in the title; media, modern, frog-baiting whatever. These are barely night school courses and I’ll be coming back to this very subject at some point.

Continue reading “I could kill for a cup of coffee.” →

But not as much as the properly important suit barging closed doors open and scowling significantly. He barrelled into these vertical stairs barking loudly on his mobile phone, whilst thrusting his expense account gut forward in a parody of an Alpha-Male.

Tell Riley to stop fucking about, close the sodding deal and get back to me with the numbers pronto; I’m breakfasting with Fothrington-Smythe but the Blackberry is on” he shouts casting a sideways glance in my direction to see if I’m properly in awe of his corporate power.

Unfortunately for his ego, I’m giving him like I give a fuckity fuck�” – having just trounced a uber-roadie on a three mile elbows out sprint, and further offering a facial clue that should he out Satan’s communicator, he’ll be in the centre of a practical experiment involving the wireless feasibility of a prostrate inserted mobile device.

I’m not sure he got all that as he repeatedly stabs the G” button which is clearly already illuminated since I’m pressed it just the once. Which is honestly is all it needs. But this billing monster refuses to accept that a binary electronic matrix lacks the electronic brain to comprehend his importance.

FAT FINGERD STAB Come on, COME ON’ VIGOUROUS PRESS “What is WRONG with this bloody thing” Punch, breathy sigh. Since I’m assuming it’s not me who’s the unwilling recipient of this angst, I keep stum and quietly enjoy this lift stoppage with a tired slump against the mirror. A mirror in which he’s preening himself, executively straightening his tie and gut sucking a heroic pose.

I can keep quiet no longer but after nearly a year of corporate erosion, no longer do I believe that honesty is the best policy. The last person to say that has clearly never tried it. So instead of hanging him from his Jermyn street silk tie whilst screaming look you fat dickhead, no one even lightly bolted to reality fucking cares. NO ONE“, I offer up a somewhat watered down Lifts eh? Rubbish, you should ask for a new one that recognises who’s important“

He gives me that look” “ you know the one, reserved for unnamed underlings who fetch his coffee and practise the 5^th floor art of terrified flattery. As you probably know by now, I’m not well regarded for my ability to give a shit when provoked, so responded with a gentle crotch rub and a rather magnificent flatulent outburst.

I honestly thought he was going to take my name. It was properly funny and more so when the lift finally offered up the ground floor. I briskly stepped forward, bracing myself against the lift doors, and gave him both barrels of the armpits of doom as a morning aphrodisiac.

Sometimes I just can’t help myself regardless of possible instant redundancy. Stepping out at a pace of a man with time on his hands, I turned with a winning smile and presented this snippet of advice Stairs over there to the right, they also work for important people like you” before exiting rapidly stage right into the sweaty changing rooms. I know he’s not going to soil himself following me in there.

So thought for today never miss the opportunity to puncture the shallow ego of a windy bag of self importance” Think of it as a selfless act of public service. I felt GREAT for the rest of the morning.

This is what I love about working class backgrounds “ allows you to be perfectly balanced with a chip on both shoulders.

I’m clearly in some kind of Golf-Hating frenzy completely at odds with a rigid daily schedule ensuring the highlights represent the most important part of my day. But that’s because of some kind of skewed partiotism, rather than an enjoyment or respect for the actual game.

Golf is for the aged. Whether those participating can be defined by physical frailty or trousers fastened just under the breastbone is largely irrelevant. It is no more an athletic sport that crown green bowling or tiddlywinks. To charactorise it, think of crochet decked out with designer polo shirts, mobile phones and self-aggrandisement. It is as artificial and contrived as football is spontaneous and accessible.

Golf has no spontaneous moments “ no sudden stretching of sinews or head first lunges into potential bone crunching tackles. It is a self conscious process with technique taught by muscle memory instead of natural movement. Short of falling from a tall story told at the 19th hole, it is hard to imagine how anything other than vanity could be injured during the previous 18.

And that’s my problem with Golf. It’s not that it’s pointless “ many, if not all, sports are. It’s not that to improve, one must replace natural instincts with torturous process. It’s not even the ridiculous class-ridden rules and penchants for baseball caps. My problem is that to play, you must be old in the mind and terribly serious to boot. A ball and a stick “ hitting the former with the latter is hardly an endeavour on the scale of say World Peace. But that is how it is treated with simple club selection bringing a frown-ridden countenance to the search for the appropriate stick from the quiver of technology at the golfers disposal. I want to scream GO ON, TAKE A CHANCE, pick any old stick and just hit the bloody thing?

Age slows you down. It blunts the extremes of personality. It replaces impulsiveness with process. To play golf you need all of these things and none of their opposites. Whether you are 11 or 111, once golf appears a sensible pastime, your youth is over.

That’s why I hate golf.

A chestnut so hoary that it’s shacked up in a hourly rented hotel room offering sexual services to young impressionable conkers. But nevertheless, it deserves a further proding after the alarming tubbiness of Europe’s twelve greatest golfers. Yes, for this week only Britain has subsumed its’ proud sovereign history to vanquish the rather trimmer ex-colonials from the United States of we’ll bomb anywhere. Interesting slice of hypocrisy this; for 51 weeks of the year, the slur of being amalgamated into a European superstate invites jingoistic spittle from Daily Mail readers everywhere. And yet come the Ryder cup, we’re all friends across the channel with an outstanding team spirit and acting as one country, well as long as that country speaks English. Last time round, we were even led by a German, doesn’t anyone read history anymore?

But great as they are at twatting a ball with a big stick, one could not, with any degree of anatomical accuracy, consider these lardy fairway perambulators as athletes. Take “Big” Colin for starters (and he’s clearly had a few, deep fried and double portioned), with his wobbly jowels and working mans club gut. Clearly still close to the top of his game at 43, but technically speaking, a bloater.

Darren Clarke is another; can smack the spheric miles and miles but has never missed a meal; the site of him chomping a Cuban cigar washed down with a pint of black gold at the end of play did jar somewhat with proper athletes re-hydrating and refusing marital sex because it may affect their playing performance.

Imagine wheeling Thierry Henry for the Arsenal on at 43 “Remember Alan Shearer in his last season at Newcastle. Still had two legs, but one was for standing on and the other for shooting, if the strip had been all white, he’d have easily passed as a goal post. Golf is almost a game for life; you can play until all sense of physical ability has been worn away by age. That doesn’t feel like sport.

It got me thinking though; there’s a few more out there even after we’ve lumped in Darts and Snooker. The first takes place in a bar, the second played with the participants dressed like Victorian butlers. It’s the slow paced asymmetric dynamic that riles; “Oh I’ve hard my turn, go on, you have a go while I have a little sit down” You wouldn’t get a boxer trying that or a footballer handing over the ball because his allotted time has expired. Sport should be about beating what’s in front of you not taking turns to best a fairway or a snooker table, or, for pity’s sake, a bloody dartboard.

So into this bucket of non sport, let’s add Cricket (the only game in the history of competition that stops for lunch) and Bowls (entry age 65, sounds like a prostrate issue). In fact anything that turtles along at walking pace or below and encourages competitors to sit and have a think. Sport should be fast, instinctive and harking back to a time when the field of play contained roaring armies and all manner of edged weapons.

Fastest. Longest. Highest. A simple principle laid down to police the boundaries of sport. Except if we’re beating the Americans or, especially, the Australians. In that case, let me be the first to idolise the athletic prowess of our Synchronised Tiddlywinks team. All bets are off when we’re beating other countries, although it doesn’t happen often enough for the rules of proper sport to apply.

Well you can, but it’s properly silly. None of the local taxi firms were interested in a cash deal in exchange for some transport to the airport. Apparently their entire fleets have been firebombed or carjacked as per the macro-traffic conditions we operate under in Aylesbury. The firm stepped in and rather than a cut’n’shut minicab of dubious mechanical history, a brand new Merc whispered up the drive.

The taxi had come from London, the driver from Poland. I’ve never really understood the etiquette of taxi journey speak so offered up a non threatening opening gambit praising his rather funky SatNav. No sooner had the words left my mouth was he abandoning any semblance of road watching instead thumbing buttons and scrolling pages like a man discovering Free Britney Spears Lesbian Mud Wrestling Pictures” on the internet.

I live here” he jabbed the screen depicting some tiny Polish street brought to life by the power of technology Warsaw, lovely city, pretty girls, many many English people very happy here“. The navigation system offered a direct route via a non existent sea tunnel but lasting only 9 hours. I was on the verge of saying It’s 400 miles, we’ve got half a packet of Werthers’ originals and we’re wearing sunglasses, let’s go!”

Continue reading “You can’t get there from here.” →