What made Brian angry today?

So I live in a flat, a flat that’s in lovely Londontown, as such it’s got this wonderful new thing plumbed in. The awe inspiring amazement that is electricity!

It’s a great thing, you can do all sorts of things with the stuff. Play games, process food, run disco lights, freeze the corpses of call centre workers and so on. All very handy things I can assure you.

Sadly its so wonderful that you have to actually pay for the flaming stuff, an outrage I’m sure you’ll agree. For reasons I don’t quite understand my glorious flat comes with a key meter and an associated key for charging said meter. It’s a pretty crap thing to have as it involves interacting with the post office once a month which is an infuriating experience.

For 2 years however it’s worked a charm, alas on Friday it decided it was time to throw an A5 error! An A5, the cheek of it!

I phone the nice people at Southern Electric and the lovely person at the other end of the phone promised to wing a new key out to me forth with, which they did. Great!

I pop it into the meter, fuck me what’s this an A7 Error! Fiddlesticks!!

I phone back:

“Ah yes sir that an A7 error, you just need to pop some credit on the key and it’ll be fine”

“Trouble is not sure I have time as you know, it’s Christmas and I’m not sure there are any chavy shops open right now and I’m going away”

“Well there’s not much we can do so just give it a try”

“Fine…”

I pop out into the icy wasteland that London had become and find a shop, I pop a pound on the key and it seems to work, woo!

I return to the flat, gently slide the key into the perfectly formed slot, A-motherfucking-7, you’re bloody kidding me…

Back on the phone we go!

Quick explanation later…

“Well I’ll get another key sent out to you”

“Erm trouble is you might have noticed, it’s Christmas and I’m going away so I doubt the key will get to me in time”

“Well there’s nothing I can so”

“What, you can’t get a key to me any other way?”

“You can run your meter to less than a pound, then we can send out an engineer to get it fixed”

“Pardon?”

“Run the meter down”

“err how”

“Just turn things on”

“No, I don’t have enough things to use that much in a day, and what if I run it down to £1.01 and you still refuse to come, and anyway it’s your fault for sending me a broken key, can’t you just fix it”

“Well if you will rely on a fragile technology. Can’t you just leave things on”

“No, I just told you I don’t have that many things to use that much, it’s not like I have a brace of lathes lying about or anything. What do you mean fragile?”

“Well there’s nothing we can do, if I send an engineer out and they find it above a pound they’ll just take the key and leave”

“Ok can I speak to a supervisor please?”

“You can but they’ll tell you the same thing, you need to run it down”

“That’s as maybe but I’d like to hear it from them”

Hold music ensues and I begin to wonder if this is some hilarious festive prank, also why are they using bits of crap they know don’t work then blaming me for it?

The music ends and quelle fucking surprise, the same hag comes back on the phone having spoken to her supervisor (allegedly) and informs me they CAN actually send someone out, who would have thought it she was lying right to my face. Shockingly though there is a caveat, it’s an all bloody day appointment meaning I have to sit in all day waiting, ever waiting.

“Yeah I guess I don’t have a choice, one thing though, I don’t have a doorbell, can they phone me when they get here otherwise it’ll be a wasted trip and we’ll be in the same problem”

“I can’t garuntee that”

“OK, i’ll just sit outside all day in the snow”

“Can’t you look out the window sir?”

“No the configuration of the flat… Oh whatever I’ll just have to hope they have a phone…”

“Right we’ll book that in tomorrow”

“What, can’t you do that today?”

“No they shut that department at 8”

“Fine, I’ll await a call… Cheers and have a nice Christmas”

*Click*

I strongly suspect they won’t call and I’ll be buggered and my freezer will melt all its lovely content. Happy chilly Christmas, bastards.

Sometime last week I awoke from a pleasant Sunday slumber with a bout of minor back arghhh. A twinge of pain, a spasm of ache, but nothing too bad, I ignored it and hopped onto the bike and popped to work for a day of exciting graft. Later that day after 7 hours of fun filled keyboard tapping I made my way home. I rustled up a tasty dinner and sat down to watch some guff on the TV or play some game or other. Life was good, well briefly occupied with some pointless activity at least; I decided to celebrate with a yoghurt! I got up and skipped to the fridge, only I didn’t, I ended up hobbling like an old man, bent double with back knack. Ow ow ow! Bollocks, I’ve finally broken myself, so this is the future is it.

I ponder if there might be hope of a recovery and to facilitate this decide that cycling might not be the best idea under the circumstances for a while  As a result I have, since then, been a constant user of the wonderful public transport network of London town.

Now I say wonderful but I mean infuriating of course, all last week I was reminded why I prefer to cycle whenever I get the chance, annoying hags here, screeching children there (at least one of which I’m convinced would have a serious ADD problem if I believed in such nonsense medical conditions*), purulent teenagers gabbling into their idiot boxes everywhere.

All very annoying, but today a new week brought a new nadir, a low so low I felt ill. On the tube home as I was wishing I was listening to some fine filthy minimal tech house tunage but actually rueing leaving headphones at home whilst staring into space when suddenly I hear a “snick snick”.

What the hell is that?

“snick snick”

I look around in confusion.

“snick snick”

Fellow commuters look a little perturbed, what can they see that I can’t.

“snick snick”

I wheel round and spy the source of the offending noise.

“snick snick”

Some filthy bastard is clipping their mother fucking nails on the god damn tube! It’s one thing, albeit quite an annoying thing, to perform personal grooming, such as applying makeup or a quick brush of the hair on the tube. For these things don’t usually result in ex-body parts being fired across a crowded carriage at potential eye removing speed.

“snick snick”

Nail clipping however is quite another matter, he’s not even being that careful about where his detritus is shoting. Anyone could eb rendered blind at any moment, or at least visiably sickened.

“snick snick”

I glare at the vile dunderhead but it’s no use, he’s focusing too much on his pudgy fingers.

“snick snick”

I begin to wish that the train will, at any moment, jolt violently and cause him to cut his fingers off. It doesn’t, for shame. Rather the train pulls, annoyingly smoothly, into the station and he bounds off like nothing has happened leaving behind enough DNA to be fitted up for a brace of bogus police bungles without a care in the world.

Putrid swine!

*It’s might be real, I’ve not looked into it but it sounds made based on reading no evidence at all. Which is good enough for me.

So I was in delightful Bristoltown at the weekend to take in a boat trip, spy some balloon and imbibe some local booze in the form of cider.

A good night was had by all and rest was forth coming after a slightly unfortunate walk home during which I realised that “things have changed, this used to be all shops, but now it’s a festering cesspool of drunken louts, how distasteful” - I fear old age might be approaching.

Anyway, the next day a light brunch was in order, so my kindly host and I wandered to a nearby café for some light refreshments, I swiped a lovely bottle of overpriced orange juice from the refrigerator and joined the queue in order to pay. Queues are generally quite boring and so a conversation ensued with sisterly companion about nothing in particular. When suddenly from nowhere an outrage occurred, my very being was verbally questioned and assaulted by a vile hag of a woman…

Vile Hag - “Excuse me, are you from Australia?”
Shocked and hurt Me - “Err, what, no, Bristol actually”
Stupid Hag - “OH! Me too!! In Stoke Bishop, just down the way!!!”

Wow, you’re from Bristol? No! Surely not!! What are the chances of two people, both from Bristol, meeting in Bristol. That’s got to be a long shot surely? 1000’s to one no doubt.

Persistent Hag - “It’s just you have an Australian accent”
Confused me - “Hmm no I don’t, that’s a deeply offensive thing to say”

I add, somewhat jokingly whilst wondering if her ears are in some way defective.

Apologetic hag - “Oh no I didn’t mean to be rude”

She replied quite seriously making me wonder if she’s a crackpot.

Crackpot Hag - “Just the tone of your voice is quite Australian. I’ve an aunt who lives in Australia”

At this point I should have just rammed the glass bottle of orange juice into her stupid face in a vain attempt to end this hellish conversation once and for all. Alas I was feeling thirsty and needed the fruity contents to quench the, probably, booze relate, hankering for refreshment I was experiencing. I didn’t though; I did something much, much more stupid; I continued to engage in chit chat…

Stupid me  -”Err that’s nice, where exactly…”
Chatty Hag - “Sydney, near the opera house.  She’s 76, but she moves about much quicker than me mind”

I’m not surprised, you look like you don’t move much at all. If I didn’t know better I would assume you had some nasty debilitating illness that you would not dream of talking about to complete strangers…

Ill hag - “but that’s hardly surprising, I was diagnosed with MS recently.”
Slightly confused as to what to say me - “Hmm oh dear sorry to hear that”
Too much detail hag - “They stuck a huge needle into my spine the other week, it still hurts quite a lot”

At this point there are furtive glances shooting back and forth betwixt sister and I wondering if it might be just easier to leave and die of thirst outside in the sun than listen to more of these inane ramblings. Luckily the gods were looking kindly upon us and the chap behind the counter distracted her with a coffee order long enough to allow me to pay and scamper out before any more details of her ailments were forth coming.

Australian indeed, the fucking cheek of it. If I’d had my didgeridoo with me at the time I would have given her a sound thrashing for that suggestion.

Nothing is more likely to send someone into a rage as change. Not just any kind of change mind you. Some change is great, a change of bed sheets is ace, a change of salary, in the upward direction, is always welcome, a change in job can herald a wonderful change in life.

Yes, some change is good, but there is change that is unwelcome, or rather, the means of getting that change. The kind of change we are discussing here is the handfuls of shrapnel change that you have thrust into your outstretched hand by a bored, uncaring, retail till operatives.

You might wonder how I can get annoyed by getting change give back to me. You’re probably thinking that not getting the change that I am due would be more rage inducing and you’re probably right. It’s the manner in which they dispense this coiny goodness that infuriates me.

You pop into the local Happy Shopper to buy some Happy Shopper Value Arsenic to continue your campaign of terror against your arch enemies. The teller jabs their pudgy fingers at the till ringing up the 0.23p that it costs these days to do away with unsavory elements of life. You take a crisp clean ten pound note from your wallet and hand it over. Several minutes later once they have managed to obtained the correct change from the till you hold out your hand into which they thrust a receipt (that you clearly neither want nor need), a tatty torn five pound note, then finally they dump a handful of change on top of the paper portion.

You glare at them like they are the devil spawn then leave in disgust as they fail to fall prostrate to their knees and apologise for this outrage.

What outrage has occurred  you might wonder? Well the problem here, people, is the order in which the change is returned. It’s an inherent truth that the coins go into the hand first, any right thinking person can see this makes more sense. If you put the coins on top it makes it impossible to pop the notes into your wallet without showering the shop floor with the coin element of your change. If you try to pop the coins into your pocket, you end up ramming the note element into pocket too and as it’s already on the brink of total destruction this last exertion renders it asunder into two worthless parts.

Sure, if I turned up with a huge sack of swag and just grabbed handfuls from it to pay for stuff, it would be OK to assume that I might just lob all the change back into the sack without separating it. However I clearly just withdrew that nice clean ten pound note from a thin, changeless wallet, meaning I will want to separate the two change elements to store them. Separation is only achieved properly if you can grip both elements of the change independently at the same time. This is only possible if the damn coins go first.

Sort it out retails, this has infuriated me for years.

In my state of continued mild addledness I thought it better to get the nice warm bus to work again today. What a woeful error, for the more you use the chav wagon, the more chance there is to be infuriated by one of the morons that use them. Today my luck failed me again and I was forced to deal with a crazy old woman, you know the type, gets on the bus, mutters to themselves for the whole journey, blunders about like they own the thing always gets a seat in the end as people shuffle to the other side of the bus just to avoid a conversation.

She started in good form barging onto the over crowded bendy bus and insisting that we all get out the way, because:

“You have to touch in you know, I just need to touch in please, can you move, I need to touch in cause I have to pay”
“Alright already we get it you want to pay, well done, very public spirited of you, even if a little fucking annoying! Thing is, I’d love to move but there is not much room. Tell you what let me just pop this pram out the window, probably shattering the child it contains, so there is room for me to move into, how’s that for you?”

After dispatching the child to it’s death/contorting my body out the way, she touches her clearly invalid oyster card on the reader and pays nothing at all. All that bloody fuss for nothing, Hag.

Having shifted myself out the way I rather expected her to now go back to where she came from so I don’t end up with a twisted spine at the journeys end. How wrong I was, for it seemed she assumed I was making room for her to store her capacious posterior in the space I was bloody standing in not two second previous.

This won’t do, this wont do at all. A mild shove in the lower back gets her to move just enough so I can at least stand up again and see just enough of my book to carry on reading about the sorry tale of Mademoiselle De La Vallière. Only I can’t, as, not content with causing me physical discomfort, now I have to suffer listening to her inane jibber jabber as she mutters to anyone who dares made eye contact, apparently:

“Time looks after it’s self”

Does it now, that’s an interesting idea, a non sentient temporal thing is able to cognitively care for it’s non-being, or something? Is that what you really mean, because if true this could be ground breaking news! Oh no it seems not:

“I used to wear a watch, but I don’t bother now”

Fascinating stuff indeed, no really, here was I thinking we maybe had a new branch of chronological study but in fact you were just letting the poor woman who had the displeasure of standing next to you that you don’t wear a watch.

Dear god is this the most interesting thing you have to mutter about, the fact you don’t wear a watch? You are clearly insane so you needn’t be bound by the usual constraints of public transport chit chat, i.e. it’s verboten at all time, can’t you at least give us something interesting to be forced to listen to? Maybe something about the impending arrival of end of the world and events of Ragnarök that will soon envelope us all, or maybe some tale of how the real rulers of the world are small beavers dressed as children who control bankers and politicians using the power of hypnotism.

Honestly crazy people these days are not what they use to be.

That’s it people, the internet is no longer useful, we might as just stop the whole thing now and shut it down. We can use the soon to be empty internet tubes to pipe maple syrup into everyone’s home to facilitate tastier pancakes for all.

The reasoning behind this decision is simple, the internet has been written by blistering imbeciles, and yes I know I write bits of it, but like all useless systems there are a few nuggets of marvel to be had. Sadly not enough to make up for the crap.

In an ongoing tale of woe with my new Barclaycard I tried to sign up to their online website thingie so I could do all the things I did on the old website, quite why I needed to sign up again I’m not sure, surely they could just transfer my data from old site to new? Oh no wait it would seem that their log-in detail requirements are so stupid that it would not be possible at all unless the previous site had also been designed by an undereducated technophobic screech owl.

Firstly they don’t let you choose your username but assign you a random collections of numbers meaning I’ll probably have to write that down to stand any chance of remembering it. Secondly they limit my password to 6 characters, that must be numbers. Why? If I want a 23 character mixed case, mixed character password, surely, you should let me, I will be the one to decide how secure to make things. By all means have some kind of minimum requirements to prevent the simpering idiots out there having a password of ‘password’ or ‘gandalf’. But 6 numbers, that does not strike me as very secure at all.

Next we get to the memorable word, oh that should be easy there are lots of nice words I can remember, pericombobulation, sesquipedalian and angioplasty are some. Alas these are no good, no, for they are not secure. Apparently only words 6-8 characters long are secure enough to prevent Derick and Akin, the only surviving children of late Mr. Mrs Rasheed, a highly reputable business magnet (a cocoa merchant) who
operate during his days in Nigeria, from getting into my account.

Sadly there are really quite lot of 6-8 character words, how will I remember which one I picked?!?!? JOY, RAPTURE, ECSTASY there is a memorable word reminder field which should be a “phrase or question that will remind only you of your memorable word in case you forget it”!

Great, this’ll be easy, I’ll just craft a sentence that will help me out when the mind finally succumbs to the onslaught of port and loses it’s way… Wait what’s this, I can only use 21 characters, what kind of fucking reminder can I fit into that… I’m just thankful I don’t speak welsh at this point.

I finally do manage to register, but the combination of random username, password and meaningless memorable words means that I will have to write this down somewhere, I’m not getting any younger and senility might hit at any moment.

The more cynical part of my mind (all of it) might wonder if they are doing this on purpose so they can deny any compensation claim for stolen funds, if you write down your details and they are “stolen” I’m pretty sure they would claim you lose the right to getting your money back.

I made the mistake of visiting Tescos today whilst shopping in Ealingtown. Well, you might say two mistakes, firstly entered the vile place, secondly I selected some non-alcoholic booze from the shelf, but I have a good reason for the second error… honest…

Anyhoo, I take said bottles to the till section and join the shortest queue, I wait until it’s my turn to pay whilst idly gazing about at other shoppers items, wondering what they might be creating with their soon to be purchased treats.

Nice looking till girl: Hello.
Happy shopper: Hi.
*beep*, *beep*, *tap tap tap*
Nice looking till girl: That will be £2.38 please.
Confused shopper: Err, no it won’t, that will be £1.90, they are 95p each.
Slightly brusque till girl: No, they are £1.19.
Quite annoyed shopper: Well it says 95p on the shelf.
Accusatorial till girl: No it doesn’t.
Astounded shopper: Umm, yes it does.
Flat out rude till girl: Are you lying?
Speechless shopper: …
Deathwish till girl: I’ll have to check, DAVE, man says these are 95p, can you check.

And let me know that he’s a thieving liar, she might as well have added. Some what flabbergasted I stood there waiting for Dave to do his thing, slightly annoyed at holding up the poor people behind but I did not have the loose change to pay the shocking new price and did not want to use a card for such a paltry sum of money. Even if I did, I hate to be ripped off by lying price stickers. Dave wanders back and, shock flaming horror, confirmed that I was indeed not a filthy lying thieving swine but indeed telling the truth. Who would have thought it.

Totally unapologetic till girl: Oh, how do I change it then.
Dave: *tap tap tap* right, rescan…
*beep*, *beep*
Soon to be killed till girl: That’s £1.90 then.
Apoplectic shopper: I told you they were 95p… might be nice if you apologised for calling me a liar… No, fine, here have your money you vile faced hag,

Now I realise that they are not just going to take my word for it that there are different prices on the shelves than the computer claims, but to ask if I’m lying… really… no… Even if I was lying what kind of imbecile criminal would I be if I just caved at the point of being asked “are you lying?”, “oh yes shucks you got me, I was trying to pull the wool over your eyes to save myself a massive 48p, I’ll take myself down the cop shop, no need to get up”.

To not even apologise at being so rude when it turns out your computer is not right, shocking, this is why I should stick to Waitrose, even when you clearly in the wrong and have misread the offer they profusely grovel to you for your own stupidity. Easily worth the extra 80% you pay…

Dogs are universally recognised by all right thinking people as being terrible animals. That’s a given, but like all things, within each group there are still levels of disdain with which things should be treated, some should be shot on sight, others maybe poisoned slowly over some months resulting in a more painless death.

Whilst wandering about past the lawn outside work I spied one such creature off his leash squatting in the corner. Imagine my surprise when he deposited a massive turd on the grass, stood up and trotted his stupid stumpy body over to his twuntish owner, who rather than doing the decent thing and removing the filth his filthy creature had so disgustingly left, he wandered off down the road strutting like his vile stumpy canine companion.

Clearly in this situation there should be police marksmen on every roof top who should immediately kill the dog, to reduce the numbers of these despotic beasts roaming the streets of course, and shoot the owner in the leg to remind him in future should he get another dog to look after it properly.

The fact that is was the kind of dog you only own because it looks like it could, and would, maul a child to death for a laugh, so therefore you look ‘ard too like, made it an even more infuriating episode. The only people who should be able to own such creatures (if they must exist) are small frail female O.A.P’s who look a lot like Joan Hickson. Any posing Yute who wants a dog should only be allowed a Chihuahua or a King Charles Spaniel, with a preeminently attached diamante studded leatherette leash (preferably spelling out the word ‘wanker’ in faux sparkle).

There are several things you don’t want to experience whilst staggering about Ealingtown catastrophically hung over from the previous night’s Gin bender. One of those is being asked to spare 5 minutes for charity, luckily this was not a problem today. Another thing you don’t want it a flaming racket being blared into both ears, especially when each ear is recieveing it’s own different din.

To the left we have bloody Hare Krishnas playing some god awful drum thing, tapping finger cymbals and wailing as they traipse though town, for what purpose I don’t know. They are quite annoying but you can imagine that if they ever got out of hand and induced an incandescent rage they could easily be dealt with by just beating them to death with the banner they like to carry about. Alone this would not have been too much of a rage issue.

Alas in addition to this, the right ear was being assaulted by another audio atrocity, Socialist Worker Man! As a rule he’s an annoying breed at the best of time, yelling on and on about stuff you just can’t quite care about whilst you throw you life away buying crap you probably don’t really need, but today things were far, far, worse. On and on he droned about some theft or other, rich stealing from the poor, banks crushing your soul and so on, all loudly. Very loudly, as it seems he’d saved up and bought himself a bloody electronic speaking-trumpet, where he got the money from I’m not sure, a) money is theft and b) the rich man has stolen it all, apparently.

My head throbs further.

Alright, probably, he’s got a point to some degree, The Man is a bit of a fucker at times, but the problem is how he went about letting everyone know. His actions were so enraging that they actively encouraged me, as i meandered towards the station, to dream of a police state being set up, where this sort of protest would result in an immediate arrest and a swift trip down a flight of metal stairs at the local nick. In this dream state there would be no more headache exacerbating rackets on Saturday mornings, just the happy sound of baton on protester, muffled behind a station wall to a pleasant manageable volume level, joy.

One, youth, learn to damn well speak or at least if you must talk before gaining the basic skills in communication at least don’t speak loudly on buses into your stupid mobile phones about absolute crap. Also punctuation does not need to be spoken aloud and “yeah” is not a bloody punctuation mark even if, whilst I slept in today, the rules of spoken punctuation have suddenly changed. Also sitting on a bus talking about the best way to “do” a girl is somewhat less than ideal.

“So yeah, if you want to get at a girl yeah best to go for the face yeah makes them remember yeah forever yeah like these girls yeah had shanks yeah like long ones yeah they cut her up yeah like they were norf London yeah…” blah blah blah. DEAR GOD GIRL SHUT THE HELL UP or at least learn to bloody well articulate a little bit.

Two, Croc shoes on grown adults are clearly wrong, that’s plain for all right thinking folk to see. Crocs with socks, no no and triple no. Stop it, it’s fashion trends gone crazy I tells you. Infuriating!