The M word, pt 1. Fayre's & Favours.

This year is proving to be uneventful, I have no disposable income and my stress levels have increased ten fold. All for a very good reason. A wedding.

In September I will be getting married to my long term girlfriend, mid term fiancee and life long Scottish person Emily, who I met when I lived in Bournemouth first time around when we both moved here to go to university. I thought it was time my observations from the front line of getting married where documented.

Since proposing to Emily last year, I have found a startling amount of cliches jump out at you and slap you in the face regarding getting married. Most of which demand you hand over your wallet.
These wedding cliches, cause alot of tension as they are aimed at women who have more of an opinion on finer details of a wedding day than a man. But all of them cost a huge amount, it seems weddings are big business first, a declaration of love and commitment second. A line that goes down particularly well when I'm doing stand up (mainly to an older audience ) is 'I'm getting married this year, already costing a fortune. In hindsight if I wanted to take out a life long contact that leaves you skint,.... I should have got sky'.

By far and away the worst arena for getting mugged by somebody in a suit with a clipboard has to be the wedding fayre. Rows upon rows of desperate looking cake makers, wedding dj's, and dress makers are lined up ready to convince you into buying some shite you never even wanted in the first place. As it seems looking at their table without talking to them, means you've already signed a contract.

Add to this a wedding outfit fashion show, and reems of enthused women holding several carrier bags of flyer's while dragging a board looking man in tow, and you'll have a rough idea of one I went to last year.

Don't blame men for looking board at these things, blokes get board easily and apart from the Moss Bross and wedding night lingerie stands, there is nothing at these things that can hold a mans attention for more than 5 minutes. The only enjoyment after 5 minutes is giving other men knowing looks as you walk around, non verbally saying 'yea its not just you brother'. What wedding fayres need is a creche, with a sofa and an X-box and a fridge full of Peroni where you can leave your measurements and outfit preference for the nice Moss Bross man at the door, and pick up a few lingerie catalogues ;-)

One thing I have never understood is the concept of the 'wedding favour' which is basically you saying 'to thank you for travelling 15,000 miles to come to this day, please accept this small mesh bag of sugared almonds to say thank you'. Firstly, your already giving them a free meal and bubbly, no-one gives a shit. Secondly, when do people even eat sugared almonds apart from at a wedding?

It seems I'm not alone in being baffled, and to be honest annoyed by wedding favours. A quick google search shows reems of websites offering advice on how to buy wedding favours that appeal to men. And how stressful it can be buying for men.
So if giving a pointless little gift wasn't stressful and costly enough, it seems a trend has arisen to make them gender specific on the day.
One website even suggesting 'give your male guests boxes in the shape of tuxedos, female guests boxes in the shape of wedding dresses'. A nice enough idea if you can afford it and all your guests fit into the 'norm' of wedding day atires. I'm getting married in Scotland. myself and the majority of male guests will be in a kilt, and I've invited a very dear long term lesbian friend of mine who's coming up to the tenth anniversary of when she last wore a dress.

28 Gigs later....

I’ve recently played Edge comedy club in Exeter, and it’s occurred to me that this now takes my total of gigs I’ve now played to 28, since I first did stand-up comedy in Edinburgh in August 2010. Not a round number granted, but it gives the blog title a nice film tie-in.

With something like stand-up, you never forget your first time. And continuing the sex analogy a bit further, it was all over far too soon and I was left with an urge for more. However only in my first time doing stand-up did I have Japanese tourists filming me.

For my 27th Birthday Emily got me a two day stand-up comedy course to co-inside with our annual trip to the Edinburgh festival fringe.

For as long as she’s known me, Em has had to put up with me banging on about how much I would like to give stand-up a go. How I could do better than so-and-so, how what’s-his-face isn’t that funny, and ‘if I ever did a run at the fringe, could I stay at your parents place?’ I was planning my accommodation without even writing a joke, or getting off my ass and looking if any open mic nights existed. As you may tell, I leave most of the practical stuff in life to Em.

The course I did had two days of theory, followed by a graduation show at The Meadow Bar in Edinburgh, as part of a Laughing Horse gig with other more established acts. The first day was designed to work on material and to build you up to get your ideas in shape for the second days practice. However I was not built up, I was a nervous wreck after being berated for 10 minutes by our tutor, a very straight talking Glaswegian woman, (who had been working as a stand-up for a while) for not taking the mic out of the mic stand properly, and then placing said mic stand behind me swiftly enough.

It seems she was quite strict about mic technique without me even saying a word down the bloody thing! I had several goes at it, but she gave up and just sighed with all the distain of Professor Mcgonagall who was lumbered with a difficult student in ‘comedy potions class’ even
suggesting I just leaving the mic in the stand as I clearly wasn’t grasping her high standards of microphone logistics.

‘Jesus’ I thought ‘she’s gonna be really pissed off when she realises I’ve got nothing
written yet’.

Emily met me when I left the practice room, pale and more nervous than when I was when I walked into my GCSE’s. ‘If it’s making you this nervous, why don’t you just cancel?’ Em suggested. I refused as I wanted to plough on even though the nerves where killing me. This brings me to the conclusion that to have the will to do stand up, be it as a newbie or a seasoned performer; you have to be into sadomasochism to a small degree.

It took several drinks and two tickets for Jimmy Carr at the EICC to calm me down. However combining a holiday with something as stressful as writing and performing your first stand-up set wasn’t proving such a good idea, we were out seeing shows we had booked for months and I still hadn’t got anything written. So for day two of the course I bought out an old chestnut I used to use for when I hadn’t done my homework. Arrive early and blitz it before lessons start.

I decided just to tell a few stories of random stuff that had happened in real life that sempt to get a laugh when telling them to friends.
These included the tramp in Bournemouth who called me fat, and the club promoter in Prague who was trying to sell the fact to us that Sunday Night, is midget prostitute night. (One for Weatherspoon’s to bear in mind, may be a bigger draw than Curry night)

The second day we presented the material like we were at the gig, and I couldn’t help but feel a bit smug that overnight I seemed to have grasped the fine art of mic stand removal, much to the tutors delight. After much furious re-writing and practice from all of us, the time had come, our collective first time doing stand-up.

Our tutor gave us directions, reminded us again that we strictly had five minutes and that the compare was an up and coming stand-up who had just recorded Micheal McIntyre’s comedy roadshow, called Imran Yusef. ‘One more thing’ She added, ‘I won’t be there as it clashes with my show, but have fun. Byeeeee’

We arrived later that night at The Meadow Bar, as we walked in to the pokey upstairs room where we would be performing, I remember ‘Lose yourself’ by Eminem was playing, adding to the tension. We were given our running order by Imran, ‘If you start to go over five minutes I’ll appear at the doorway, that’s your que to get off. We cannot overrun. That happened last
night and Kunt & the Gang were NOT happy! Nowhere else but the fringe would that be uttered, I ruddy love the festival. Likewise nowhere else but Edinburgh would Jack Whitehall's show poster be defaced in quite a way as this......

A couple of my fellow students where on before me, one getting so nervous he then got his set out of his pocket on stage and read it for five seconds proclaiming ‘Can ye no tell I’m from tha fuckin’ comedy course’ which having gone on second, got the biggest laugh of the night so far.

Imran, who was doing a bang-on job of working a small crowd, many of which didn’t even speak English as there first language got talking to a difficult man in the front row who revealed that he lived in Prague for five years.

Bingo! I thought. I’ve got a bit on Prague, he’s gonna be my go to man. ‘Ladies and Gentlemen, please welcome your next act, Alex Leam……

I can’t actually remember doing any of it, only thing I can remember was thinking ‘why did you say “people who like their comedy sideways?”‘ A tough crowd for my first time out, but I knew I could do better and 28 gigs later I’m pleased to say, so far so good.

I’ve had gigs where I’ve stormed it. I’ve had gigs where I’ve died worse than my first time out.

I’ve put down hecklers so well the whole crowd cheered. Likewise I’ve had one’s I could do nothing with. (Including one that wouldn’t shut up unless I sang Rick Astley, which unfortunately I did)

but also it's the other stand-up’s I’ve met and befriended so far have made traveling stupid distances for no money as worthwhile as the feeling you get when a night
goes well.

It’s like your part of an exclusive club, and it’s much cheaper than therapy.

Here’s to the next 28.

The sun does not set in London.....it just gets Dark (26-12-2009)

I had always had a thing about living in London when I was a teenager, in the 90's the 'Cool-Britannia' and 'Brit-pop' era seemed to me to focus the capital as its base, If you wanted to be cool then that was where you had to be!
However, all the ariel shots of Canary Wharf, The Mayors office and Tower Bridge, you see on TV shows like The Apprentice I found to be very mis-leading when in 2008 I got the chance to move there.

After finishing university, a lot of my former course mates moved to the capital, this being the media centre of the UK, I fiqured that I would stand a good chance of getting somewhere in my dream career if I went as well.

Likewise my girlfriend had simular thoughts, and as we were now living apart (me in Derby and her in Edinburgh) after moving out of Halls, we figured that moving to London would be like bringing on back the good times! Emily was the first to get a job at place in Wimbledon, at first Wimbledon seemed like a very nice leafy suburb in the south west with good transport links, but it soon turned into the arse-end of nowhere if you where trying to get back from a night out anywhere north of the river.

With Emily already down there, this gave me the kick up the back-side to get a job and get down there as well, this was made a bit easier by the landlord who Em was renting a room from, a manc bloke called Terry (not hs real name, I changed it just in case he ever reads this).

At first Terry seemed quite nice, didnt mind me stopping there at least once a week, took me to the local and payed for my drinks all night as in his words 'I know what its like when you're starting out and looking for work' things seemed to be on the up when a month later I got a job and Tony even offered the room as a double for me and Em, to save us the trouble of looking elsewhere (for a big hike in the rent price, but what the hell he was giving us a break!)

All this kindness shown towards us binded me to the many signed around his house that underneath he was a bitter and twisted nut job.

One of the first signs was the sheer number of pictures he had around the house of him as a kid, roughly 50 plus framed photos hanging up around the house of him as a child, possibly most disturbing was the fact that he had a one of his old school reports framed and hung in the toilet, in a place that you couldnt help but notice when sitting on the Lav, (genrally he was rubbish at every subject and his headmaster said he lacked disapline)

Another tell-tale sign he had a few issues was his fridge magnet (see right) which said 'How old would you be if you didnt know how old you are?' A statement that one would only make if you spent a lot of your doing stuff you regret, and now you realise your sad, old, alone, and desperatly trying to re-capture your lost youth.

The day after I annouced that I'd finally got a job and was taking him up on his kind offer of moving in, his true colours showed. he called me into the kitchen for a chat, and basically told me that I couldnt move in i would upset Pete the other house mate, who had lived with him for almost 2 years.

Pete was was in his mid-thirties, and worked as some kind of I.T manager, and if you could imagine what one of the Bee Gee's would look like if they were ginger then you would get the general idea of what he looked like. He rented the bigger room in Tony's place and spent his money mainly on buying EVERY games console there was to buy, one day while he was at work I had a sneaky peak in his room and it looked like he's ram-raided game station (Ps3, Ps2, Xbox 360, Wii, Ds lite etc....) where all plugged in waiting for there ginger master to return. And although he had congratulated me to my face on getting a job, he's immediatly gone to Terry and told him he didnt want me there.

'You see Alex, the thing is that Pete and I have very stressful jobs and having a couple around the house would be too much'. Feeling very patronised and angry after hearing this, I now faced the prospect of having a sales job in Paddington with no home to go to.

Looking back I can see Terry and Pete might have been a little bit jelious of having a happy couple around, as I found out that Terry had been divorced, his wife had left him after one day of living together and all the photos of himself as a kid had been photos of man and wife, and Pete wasn't what you would call a casanova either.

He had a girlfriend who he saw only at weekends and the only activity they'd do together is go out to trade the games he completed. The only time you'd hear Paul screaming YES.....YES.....YESSSSSSSS from his bedroom is if he'd unlocked a new level on Grand Theft Auto.

After we'd made it very clear to Terry that we wernt happy on how we'd been treated he blanked us and only spoke to Emily via email, one of which saying 'I want re-paying for all the beers I bought Alex' and 'He can stay one week, but after that I want you both out of this house'

So my London experience wasnt off to a great start, but ever the optimist I soldiered on, I temporaly rented a room owned by two Turkish blokes, and as far as I could understand they were both called Murrat, I was there for two weeks while Emily saw out ther time at Terry's before we both got somewhere else.

We attepted to stay the night but my bedroom was next to the bathroom and the murrats' had only put up half a curtain, so anytime someone went to the toliet and swithed the light on the whole room was illumiated, and what made matters worse the water systern was in my room so we where treated to the sound of the of pipes knocking and banging for an hour after someone flushed.

We where made very welcome at the Murrats place, but it was impossible to sleep there if you had to be up at 6am for a one hours tube ride to work, so we worked out a system of eating there, then walking to Tonys and Emily had to smuggle me in to her room just so we could get a good nights Kip.

Time marches on quicker when you're woking full time as compared to when your a student, and as time marched on I found London to be over hyped,(I think it was down hill for me when I learnt the tubes dont run 24 hours a day) Also un-neccaseraly over stressful, over populated and over poluted, aparently during the Bejing olympics of 2008 there was a report that London's air quality was worse that smoggy Bejing and they dont meet the Olymic committes standards, and had a lot of hard work to do before 2012.

Anyone who's ever used the district line to get to work will tell you that transport for London has a worse Human rights record that Bejing as well.

We thought things would pick up for us when we moved to our new place. From what we saw our new pad had friendly house mates, two Aussie girls and a pale Irish bloke who wore a kaftan and the leaseholder, who worked in law so as before, Im going to name her just in case she ever reads this and decides to sue my ass off. Almost immediatly after moving in, we were told

that under no circumstances will there ever be any hot water! Kaftan man was down as the water bill payer, and even though we split all the bills, he was very quick to dish out a big dose of catholic shame on anyone who was suspected of wanting to take a hot bath. Downstars in the conservatory was the a power shower that didnt require central heating, and our only 21st centuary means of keeping clean.

As it was getting onto summer we assumed that this no hot water rule was just becuase the warm weather was on the horizon, but as we found out when Emily tried to take a hot bath when she was off work with a dose of flu, there were no exeptions!

The lack of warmth didnt end with the hot water tank, Irish kaftan man and Irish Law woman's inital warmth wore off in a matter of weeks. After the bizarre time in the first house the second was going the same way, and we were beggining to think that it was us who had the problem.
Irish Law woman was particualy up herself, I sence once she was a nice person, but working as a city Lawer sucked all the Irish charm out of her and frankly she was a cold hard bitch to live with.

This approach even extened to her boyfriend, who me an Em gave the name 'Lurch' as he only ever grunted whenever we spoke to him, and we only saw him late at night when Irish Law woman gave him a booty call. We knew that one of these booty call's where going to happen as she would lock herself in the bathroom for two hours to apply fake tan, even after which she still looked pale and cold.

It was a case of out of the frying pan and into the fire with regards living with people who didnt make us feel welcome. The one and only redeaming feature of living there was Irish Law womans pet cat called Scamp (see right)

who she bought when she moved into the house two years earlier, anoher clue that once upon a time she was a bit more on the 'fluffy' side of life.

Scamp was both cute, and mental. She would sleep for most of the day and then have a mad three hours in the middle of the night, her favorite trick was to hide in the bath at night waiting for someone to go to the toliet, and when they were 'mid-flow' she would pop her head over the side of the bath and frighten the life out of them, more than usually followed by her then jumping on there laps in they were sat down, or she would stay in the bath and wait for you to turn the taps on a little so she could play with the gradual small flow of water that would run up the bath. But above all scamp wanted fuss and a lap to go to sleep on after a long day playing in the garden, and she was a much needed warm welcoming life line in an otherwise cold harsh house.
After a couple of months the Aussie girls moved out to go traveling (as is the law if your an aussie) and there replacemenst moved in, a white south african brother and sister who were young, got rich parents, and far too good looking for there own good. The Brother was a landscape gardener, who was tanned, toned, and had a six pack that Peter Andre would kill for, and when he would walk from the shower in the box room fitted in the conservatory all he would have to wak through the house in was a towel the size of a flannel, which made a man like me with flabby white man boobs feel very inadiquate indeed!
His sister, if Im being polite was an absoulte nightmare, she worked in south africa as a model and she was looking for work in London, and she had the attitude problem of Naomi Campbell when its her 'time of the month' She expected to be waited on by everyone else in the house and would let out a sulky 'Isnt life so hard' sigh that had the desired effect of Iraish Kaftan man who would run to her aid, likewise Irish Law woman would more more than freindly to Johnny six-pack whenever he wanted it. I think that was the most irritateing thing, after months of trying to be accepted by cold Irish duo, these two newbies swan in and they're instantly best friends.
It may sound a little whiney, but when you in a job you dont like, commuting for hours a day on a packed sweaty tube in mid-summer, you need to feel that the place your going home to is an escape from the hard day, not just another set of problems.
It wasnt the fact that Emily and I are the type of couple who never make friends and shut the rest of the world out, we are very welcoming warm and friendly people, but from what we saw, a lot of people who had spent a long time in London became very small minded, or as the phrase goes 'Londoncentric'. This even goes as far as being predjudice to what side of the river you where on, North London looks down on South London, South London looks down on North London, and all of London looks down on Croyden.
Our situation wasnt great, and we had to move agian when Irish Law woman told us she was giving up the lease to move to clapham junction, we found a new place but just as the credit crunch was starting to take hold late summer 2008, I lost my sales job and was now on the hunt agian for work 'Wont take me too long' I thought, 'Im in London, all the jobs are here for a graduate like me! and now I've got Five months experience under my belt! What I didnt see coming was endless registrations with endless recruiters being told that they would be in touch when something came in, and then never did.
We moved into what would be our last place, roughly half a mile down the road, a loft conversion with an en-suite. What sold it to Emily was the sloping celieng in the bedroom, which if you stuck your head out of the skylight you could see the bathroom skylight (so you could have a chat with someone who was in the bathroom if they stuck there head out of the window)
Our new housemates where all south african, and very friednly, but after meeting so many people during the year who had turned out to be anything but, Emily and I were wary about getting friendly with anyone, a trait we dont have usually, but our experience of londonsentrics had seemed to have knocked all the trust out of us.

To begin with I didn't tell our new housemates I was out of work, as I was convinced it would only take a few weeks to get back on my feet. My upbeat feeling that this was a fresh start was soon starting to fade when I went to register at Wandsworth Job centre.You know when life's on a downturn if you are now reguarly having to go to a town thats only famous for it's prison. The building itself (along with the rest of Wandsworth) sucked the life force out of me, the whole feel of the town was a hasty eighties rebuild during the Thatcher years, and nobody had bothered with it since. After six weeks of going,and what seemed like an endless and fruitless job hunt they finally decided I wasn't entitled to any benifits but I still had to keep going every two weeks. The woman who informed me then handed me a piece of paper.

'Here's a letter Mr Leam, you've got to attend a seminar on getting an interview next tuesday at 10am'
'I can't make it' I told her
'Why not?' She replied
''Because I've got an interview next tuesday, at 10 o clock' I told her, now impossible to hide my frustrations.
'Oh' she said, now looking really let down 'Well, none attendance will effect any benifits your recieveing'.
'You've just told me' I said, now through gritted teeth 'That I'm not entitled to any benifits because I live with my partner who's in work'.
'Ok, I guess we'l have to rebook it for another date then' she replied now aware of her own stupidity.
This great level of service was typical of the staff at Wandsworth job centre plus. I'm no scrounger, I'm definatly not dole scum either, and I would have given my left bollock to be in a job, but mid late october things were getting more than a bit desperate, and these pillocks were not helping. I didn't go to the re-booked meeting on how to get an interview, as I was too busy getting interviews, calling them was an impossablity, and I centainly wasn't going to waste any precious Oyster card credit going there so I just stopped caring. The day after the 'getting an interview' meeting which I didn't go to, I got a voicemail from the same doapy woman from the job centre. As it turns out she didn't have any telephone skills either.
'Mr Leam......(big pause)....its Wandsworth Job Centre, I was....I'm just calling regarding the decision you did last tuesday....(longer pause, then she hung up.)
To this day I still hadn't got a bloody clue what she was on about.
The only thing at ths time I was looking forward to was going back to Bournemouth for my graduation, (see previous blog 'Nostagia for the homeless' written at the time) A bit of time off from this jobless hell I was going through, which after time makes you feel very useless, and you lose all self respect. For the first time life was really starting to feel like a constant kick in the nuts, there was no good news on the horizon, and it seemed that the world at the time had a simular feel to it, all the banks were collapsing, the world was in financial meltdown, and John Seargent was making a tit out of himself on Strictly Come Dancing.
Finally things were starting to look up, a little beaker of light came when I had a job offer, and they wanted to me to start the following week. My recruiter (one of many) who told me the good news, informed me that she'll call back in a couple of hours to let me know whaen they want me to start.
I was over the moon, so much so I went straight away to Wandsworth Job Centre Plus to tell them to get stuffed. just as I got off the bus my recruiter called me back 'you've got two training days, very important you go to these! They're next thursday and friday!' There was a silence my end, 'Errm, slight problem with that', I said my voice now starting to quiver slightly 'There my graduation days,I'd already told you I can't miss them!'
She said she'd call back to see if they could be moved, but when she did she told me they'd already refilled the position, before I bloody started it!

December hit and Em was also made redundant, and so we had nothing keeping us there. But fresh in our minds was how happy we both were in Bournemouth. We'd got some history there, it was where we met and we never stopped missing it. Derby is my home, Edinburgh is Emily's home, but Bournemouth is our home.
We've been back in Bournemouth over a year, and instead of a tube station at the end of our street we have the sea. I still Love London, its not the city's fault I had a relentless run of bad luck, but its no good wondering what something may be like, you gotta go there to find out.
(Just before Christmas, I got a phone call from a recruiter I registered with 18 months previous and this was this first time they'd called. 'Are you still looking for work in the London area?' they asked.
I just hung up.

Nostagia for the homeless. (23-10-2008)

On more than one occasion over the past year, I have found myself reminising about my old student days, particually my time in Halls when I was at bournemouth university. More so recently, because a) thanks to the credit crunch I am now jobless agian, so why not fill my head with sugar coated nostagia to paste over the bleak reality of the frankly depressing state of the job market? and less depressing b) my graduation is coming up in November, the thought of going back to the coast and seeing everyone agian certainly brings back the memories.

I was more than a bit suprised to find out that not everyone who was there when I was, is looking forward to going back (if at all) as much as I am, for some it was an alienating and long-winded frustration, to me it was brilliant! utterly relentlessly brilliant!

Ok, there were some times when it sucked, but thats life! Im talking about the rock & roll element of living in halls and having little to no responceablity, If you wernt going out on the lash 7 nights a week, then you stayed in on the lash at someones houseparty, It was a case of sex, drugs, and occasionly studying. Who wouldnt fancy a bit of that now?

For my first degree I lived at home, at the time I thought I was saving loads of cash, but I came to realise I was missing out on an essentail rights of passage in life, I wanted the full on 'Halls' experience, and the chance came up when I decided to do an MA, In Sepember 2006 I moved into Cranbourne House.

The location was great, Two minutes from the beach, the train station, and the boozer! but somebody had the bright idea of building a halls of residence within spitting distance of a homeless shelter (or visa versa, depending on which one came first) but either way one set of jobless unwashed was living parallel to each other, only difference being that we were paying a hefty sum in tuition fee’s for the privilege. An open air car park was the only thing that separated our two buildings, a modern day urban ‘no mans land’ which we had to cross if we wanted to go to the local Asda.



One more than one occasion throughout the year, the mixture drunken homeless with drunken students proved explosive, one night while I was on the computer in my room, inventing all kinds of distractions from the essay I was supposed to be typing, I heard raised voices from the car park, I heard a woman shouting ‘Go Fuck ya self ya fucking prick’ Vocally quite an achievement, considering I heard this above the sound of my TV and double glazed UPVC windows. I sat bolt upright, 'sod the essay' I thought, this sounded juicy!



A man shouted back ‘the lot of you should get sterilised, do the world a fucking favour! By now I was looking down from my fourth floor window to the car park to see the drama unfold. All I could see was one of the regular female tenants from chez homeless across the road shouting up into fresh air. ‘Go and have a bath you fucking slag’ thundered from one of the windows.
I couldn’t see it, but one of the undergraduate from the centre tower had took it upon himself to wage a brave war of words on one of the passing homeless, bravely from his kitchen window on the sixth floor of a secure cctv monitored building. ‘Come down here and say that I’ll rip your bastard head off!’ by now she was convulsing with rage.
'Go get fucking sterilised ya smelly bitch’ I rolled my eyes ‘already used that one mate, dried up already?’ I whispered to myself ‘come down here and say that’ went up ‘fuck off!’ hurled back, then forward and so on for the next ten minutes, I was craning my neck from left to right so much this was beginning to feel like a foul mouthed version of a game of tennis.

After the ten minutes, the war or words stalemate was broken when the woman tuned on her heal to ‘go and fetch the boys’ as she put it. As she turned she spotted me looking down open mouthed with amazement, understandably she wasn’t too fond of students by now, and she wasnt to backward about letting me know this.
she pointed up to me ‘you can Fuck off an’ all! She shrieked, as she did I hit the floor quicker than a bank que during an armed robbery, my head only narrowly missing the skirting board.
After closing my curtains whist still being on the floor to reduce the risk of her seeing me, I abandoned my plans of going asda for a four pack, just to be on the safe side!

Thankfully, our paths never crossed agian, My second run in with an 'asbo' (as they were dubbed due to them hanging around the subway that led to asda, and them not beling to sociable) came a few days before I had to move out.

I'd gone to Asda to collect some boxes to pack my stuff into, and on the way back one of the Asbo's had passed out in the entrence of the subway, still with a bottle of strawberry wine in one hand, and to add to this attractive picture he'd took his shirt off to bask in the late summer sun, exposing his leathery un-washed sagging skin to the world, off-set nicely by his urine stained combat trousers.

Just as I was passing him, he opened one eye and greeted me by shouting 'Hello Fat boy!' I was slightly taken aback, that a man who'd pissed himself would be so critical of my body image
''Your friendly arnt you?' I responded, not the sharpest of comebacks with hindsight but I didnt care, I just wanted to get home. As I sped-up through the subway he wanted to carry on the conversation 'What do you do at uni then?' Echo'd down the pathway. 'Moving out' I responded, 'Now sod-off!'

The Homeless & The students wernt the only thing Im feeling nostalgic about, It was just an entertaining element, and if Im honest I'm slightly green with Envy that there still there!

Cheers Asbo's, see you agian soon.

Blog off! (24-5-2008)

I had very good intensions for this blog in January when I first started putting this 'ere web site together. I had visions of an insightful daily ray of Blog-light that would be read more than Belle-de-jour. But then agian I was un-empolyed back then and had A LOT of time on my hands. Its funny how un-important a blog becomes when you get in from work completly shattered, but yet I somehow feel guilty for negelting it!

This must be a modern day thing, feeling guilty about something techy and abstract like this, Its not like this page is going to die or anything if I don't feed it, or the blog neglect team of social servies are coming to arrest me if I dont write a few lines about stuff that only I'm that intrested in, but I still get the occasional 'I MUST DO A BLOG' feeling.

Bizzare I know, but surley I must not be alone in feeling inexplicable guilt for techy-neglect. In the 90's loads of people didnt feed there Furbys or tamogotchi's and felt bad for weeks. Even today Nitendog's on the DS is responseable for many a person (not me you understand!) switching on there DS's before bed, just to check in there virtual puppy's thirsty.

So I might start a self help group, Tech-neglect-anonymous. Once a week in a village hall somewhere, we can meet up and stand in front of a group of people and share storys on what gadget or computer game we havent been devoting enough time to, and walk away feeling purged!

Any takers?

The de-studentisation process (31-1-2008)

I was told by my mum roughly five years ago to 'put off the real world for as long as possible'. And that’s what I did, by going to Uni for four years! And as that was coming to an end and the real world beckoned I thought to myself 'screw this I’m going to do an MA' (I must point out that wasn’t my conclusive reasoning for extending my Uni life, but this is a blog not my life story)

My student years were fun, (in many ways that I won’t go into now!) But the result of being in higher education for so long is that you become institutionalized, and there comes a point when you can’t put the real world off any longer.

I moved home about five months ago, and to be honest (up until recently) I was shell-shocked. By that I mean I was living like a student for so long that I was heavily in denial that it was all over, I continued with the same music, attitude and bad diet! I can see now why so many go for un-necessary third or fourth runs at higher education, Civvy Street is just too much.

Recently I snapped out of all this and now have come to terms with the real world, although I've never served in the military I would imagine the shock of going into civvy street is similar to that of a 'career student' like me finally coming to the end of his run.
Goodbye endless beer and pizza, hello sobriety and taxes! Let the de-studentization process begin!