What made Brian angry today?

Resigned to my fate of 8 hours on a plane for a trip to the USo’A I packed my bags and casually made my way to the aerodrome, with what I assumed was plenty of time, for I do so hate to be late. On arrival I was greeted with a scene more akin to, what I imagine, a Morrisons supermarket might look like on cheap gin Wednesday. People everywhere, most of them looking confused and irate whilst trying desperately to work out which queue to join.  One hapless drunk/traveller even had the temerity to screech at an overly made up employee who happened to be passing:

“Why is this queue moving so much slower than the others?”
“I’m not sure” came the blindingly obvious answer.

Anyway I managed to check in without causing a stir or being tased by customs and made my way to the lounge to await the arrival of my fellow traveller, who it should be noted was running late at this point. So late in fact that check in is almost missed. The boarding for the plane is called and still no sign, oh well I think I’ll just wander to the plane and hope for the best.

Finally just as I am about to board said plane he turns up, at which point it became apparent that Virgin Atlantic has a fantastic punishment for being late to check in, a bloody upgraded to premium economy class (not sure what this means, other than free champers on seating). AN UPGRATE! I’m outraged, why not give those who get there on time the benefits. Yes I realise they are trying to make more money by waiting as long as possible to try and dupe people into paying the £150 they were asking for this benefit, but that’s not the point…

Still at least I’m happy in the knowledge that i have a nice aisle seat and a good book to read, seat 40E, wait E? How can that be an aisle seat? Unless they have a unique seating arrangement something is horribly wrong. I make my way to my home for the next 8 hours to discover it’s not a nice aisle seat at all but one in the middle of a row. Curses!

Not only is did I not get an upgrade, not only did I not get the seat I booked but the seat I did get is next to an enormous galoot from Georgia on one side, and an Azerbaijani on the other (and to complete the communist  trio, a Bulgarian on the far end). Azerbaijani was fine, nice and small and quiet. Hurray! The Georgian on the other hand was not, through no fault of his own admittedly, he was cursed with limbs about 1.8 times longer than they needed to be, this resulted in 8 hours of knees and elbows being jabbed and poked  into my legs, arms and ribs.

The moment he went for the chicken over the stew was particularly bad, all that knife action to cut the stuff up could have easily resulted in a cracked rib had I not been agile enough to dodge the pointy blows.

He did not even seem to care, not a single apology was forthcoming for the bruise educing invasions of my personal space, not even a flicker of guilt at using half my foot well to store his left knee for the whole flight. Bloody communists!

Several days ago I received a lovely letter from Mr Gas man, he politely informed me that:

“We have not heard from you despite leaving a number of cards urging you to make an appointment with us”

The problem was they had in fact left a total of no cards at all. The accusation that I was ignoring them was somewhat irksome and I informed the nice person on the phone that I did not really appreciate this accusatory tone to the letter.

“Oh don’t worry sir lots of people have not had any cards, just ignore that part.”

Ignore the fact that you are accusing me of ignoring you? Classy.

Anyway down to the arranging the appointment, apparently there are slots from 8-12, 12-5 and 5 to 8. Clearly I use gas so I have a job to pay for it, somewhat ruling out the first two straight off. The last slot is still somewhat problematic, like most people I have a normal job, that does not let me get home by 5.

I inform the phone monkey of this little factoid and we come to an agreement that she’ll add a note to come after 6 so I stand a chance of being in. Also, I politely inform her that I don’t have a door bell (I like to have as little contact with the random outside world as possible) so if they want to stand a chance at getting in to see the meter they will have to call me when they get here.

Wing forward to the day of the visit and I leave work at 5:02 to ensure that I am home in time. I cycle hard, I don’t even slow down to hurl abuse at moron road users obstructing my path. This takes a lot of effort but needs must and all that. I get to my (primary) door at 5:39, leaving a full 21 minutes to make it through my 3 front doors to be home at the appointed hour, easily early enough time. Result!

Wait… What’s this, a note! Oh now sweet, maybe it’s a belated Valentines card, perhaps an amusing missive from some religious group or other. No it’s not these things, it’s a bloody note from the gas man telling me that:

“Urgent gas safety inspection - Called after 5 as arranged. Time of call 17:05″

Only that’s not what we arranged is it. No no, we arranged for you to come after 6. Well at least there will be a missed call on my phone to tell me he’s here and it’ll have been my own stupid fault I did not hear the phone… Only there isn’t. So in fact none of the instructions were followed.

I grab the nearest phone and jab away at the keypad to hammer in the number on the card and get through to someone who sounds so stupid I just know this will go badly. After explaining the situation he tells me, in his tedious droning voice, that he can’t actually help and I should phone another number which deals with appointments.

Me - If there is another number, why not just put that on the card rather than this one?
Moron - Well some of the cards are out of date sir, we outsourced appointments some time ago.
Me - Maybe you should stop handing them out the wrong cards then…
Moron – Well it’s not us that hands them out sir, it’s another company.

Yes, I know what outsources means you blistering idiot, I was just venting a general annoyance at your stupid system not imparting sensible business advice – I thought quietly to myself.

Me - Fine, whatever I’ll call this other number and shout at them then

*slam*

*jab jab jab*

I politely explain the problem again (contrary to popular belief, I try and be nice to call center staff for an long as possible, often not very long I admit) to the infinitely more pleasant sounding appointment facilitator:

Phone girl - Oh, we’ve no notes on that, I can make another appointment for you if you like
Customer - No, I want him to come back today as previously arranged, it’s still not 6 so it’s not even after the agreed time
Phone girl - I can’t get him to come back today as he called as arranged and you weren’t there
Miffed customer - No… he… didn’t… As I just told you, I arranged for them to call after 6, and to phone me when he got here. He failed on both counts
Phone girl - Well it doesn’t say anything about that here
Incredulous customer - I don’t care what it does or doesn’t say ‘there’, its not my fault the person I spoke to before took down the wrong details is it?
Phone girl - I can try and call him if you like and see if he’s still in the area

Anyway the long and short of it is she tries to call the meter reader but he’s ignoring call, no doubt aware he’s upset Karma and thus avoiding any retribution. So we have to go through this whole tedious process again. Only, just to wind myself up even more I decide to wait till tomorrow to re-book, forcing myself to explain this whole tedious affair again, just in case they get through to him and he comes later. I’m an idiot, an furious idiot.

It’ll be just my luck if I’m blown to smithereens in a tragic gas meter fight accident later on.

It will come as no surprise to learn that using the public highways, in all their glorious forms, gives rise to an incredible amount of potential rage. Almost all the users of said roads are clearly out to cause as much outrage as is humanly possible during their pointless journeys. This is especially true of the ones that are on trips to drop their darling little Tarquins and Tabithas off at their local prep schools in cars so big I’m surprised they can even see whether the kid is sat in it or not such is the distance from window to seat.

Why, this very mornings I encountered just such a person, sat high up in her stupid chav tractor sneering at the world below whilst sweeping to her little darling through the scum filled streets as fast as possible. Whilst passing though a junction an outrage occurred to her life, there was some traffic impeding her path, what to do, what to do! I imagine a look of horror and disgust sweeping over her face as she realised that a bunch of plebs were holding her up for a few seconds. She could have waited of course, like everyone else, at the right place. Alternatively she could assume that she’s better than the rest of the world and just park in the middle of the bloody junction, despite the glaring yellow boxes indicating that this is not permissible, so as not to be further held up the pesky traffic lights.

Often I wouldn’t really give a flying hoot about such selfish behaviour, only on this day, at this time, I was trying to go through said junction in the perpendicular direction to her. Was I able to? Was I buggery, she’d blocked the whole fucking junction off with her stupidly enormous car/lorry hybrid causing me to almost fall off my bike. Now like all good rage filled individuals I attempted to attract her attention so I could mouth obscenities at her as she sat there flagrantly breaking the law, but what’s this, she refuses to look up. Glaring ever forward, no doubt aware that she’s in the wrong and avoiding any possible confrontation. It’s not hard to obey simple road instructions, big yellow boxes, don’t bloody stop on them.

I imagine when the hopefully inevitable fine wings it’s way to her, probably stone clad, abode she’ll be outraged at this “stealth tax” being imposed on her by the draconian motoring overlords. Good I say, don’t want to pay “stealth taxes” don’t bloody get in my way by blocking junctions. Next she’ll be moaning about not being allowed in a bus lane.

Also for the love of all that’s decent in the world, you do not have a bloody princess on board, you’re not the worlds best mum and you’re not driving “mummy’s taxi”, unless you are charging little Jasmica for these trips to school, which kind of invalidates the best mum claim… Sticking little notices in the window alluding to such dubious assertions is neither clever nor witty. The only reason I can think you might have one is to tell people not to crash into you as you have a child somewhere on the car. Only that, a) assumes that people make a choice of who to hit before they slam into another vehicle, and b) would actively encourage me to run you off the road for being stupid.

I bet if I could have been bothered to check you would have had some stupid personalised number plates too. Witch.

After a fine hour or two perusing the fine fare on the aisle of my local supermarket I took my trolley, laden with goodies (and non alcoholic beer), towards the checkout in an endeavour to pay.

There are some basic rules to picking the correct checkout at the supermarket, they are pretty obvious:

• Never go for one that’s got a queue of people all with fully laden trolleys.
• Never go for the one that’s got the old chap, he’s friendly but terribly slow.
• Never go for the ones where the checkout urchin looks under 18, when you are buying 20 litres of fistfight cooking cider the last thing you want to do is wait for an ageing supervisor to slink over and jab the keypad to authorise your dubious life choices.
• Never go for the queue that looks empty because there’s only one person on it, it’s a trap, always a trap.

Clearly I was still suffering from the prior evenings drain cleaner binge, for I broke this last, but most golden, rule. I sidled up to the checkout, there was hardly anything on the belt, the basket of the only person in the queue was mostly empty, this was a sure fire quick exit!

The problem was thus, the basket was attached, not to the arm of the person, but to the front of a flaming mobility scooter. Now, I know, I know, have some patience for the elderly, fine, I will cut this seemingly pleasant old lady some slack and refrain from bludgeoning her to death with a tin of Brasso.

I stand there and watch as she very slowly, one by one, transfers things from basket to belt. Once it’s all loaded she gives the till chap a mysterious bit of paper which seems to take up several minutes of his attention, this does not look good, but wait, he’s put it to one side.

Excellent I think, we’re on the move now, might take her a while to pack but this still looks like a good choice of queue.

Wrong.

Not only is the customer suffering from a touch of infirmity and thus slowness, but the bloody teller was a complete moron. I could have trained a stoat to pack things into bags faster than this goitre was managing. I’ll be here all bloody afternoon at this rate I think.

Whilst becoming increasingly infuriated at the dunderhead’s speed or lack there of, I failed to notice something terrible happening. The old woman had started a conversation with a passing friend, this would be fine if they were on a park bench and I was not being held up, but frankly, less chat more cash please!

The packing was finally done, the total was rung, time to pay… Umm hello… pay please… Or sit there having an inane conversation maybe?

Older OAP: Oh yes, it’s wonderful, they deliver it right to your house.
Younger OAP: Really Doris your such an inspiration to us all doing this for yourself!
Teller: Err that’ll be £29:08
Older Hag: Oh it’s easy they do all the carrying really.
Younger Hag: That’s good, it leaves you free to get a pint on the way home ha ha ha
Day dreaming rageaholic: Just pay for you crap and piss off please, I have some sherry that needs drinking.

Finally she pays, after a few more minutes reminising about when this was all fields, the bags are taken away, hopefully to be filled with poison before being delivered to the home, but does she wheel her self out the bloody way, does she buggery. She just sits there in the comfort of her chair carrying on her stupid conversation with this other hag. Honestly there should be rules against this, they should insist that old people go to old man till, at least that way they would be sperareted off at their own speed.

“Mummy, do you have some paper”
“Mummy can you draw me a butterfly”
“Mummy where are we”
“Mummy so you have any paper”
“Mummy”
“Mummy why is the bus not moving”

Dear god shut the blazes up, can’t you see I‘m trying to read here urchin, what ever happened to the wonderful Victorian ethos of children being seen but not heard? Of course I would rather than are nether seen nor heard but I realise this wish is going to be quite hard to make reality. It might not have been quite so bad had, the trout faced, so called, mother she was with, tried to respond to the child to keep it entertained and thus quieter. Alas clearly the mother hated the child as much as the rest of the bus did for, rather than respond to a single question, she just sat there staring into space with a look on her face that said:

“I wonder if I could just hop off the bus and leave her here. No one would even know, I could run away, maybe to Kathmandu to live as a monk perhaps, just think, no more infuriating questions, there’s a thought…”

It was a very wistful look I assure you, unlike the look of pure rage that was visible on my face.

Sadly things were only going to get worse, for when child and mother waddled off the bus they were replaced by a much more malevolent force – yammering youth with phone. Doing the classic thing of speaking very loudly in a mixture of foreign and English. This is infuriating as not only can they speak more languages than me they also draw you into listing to how so and so’s a bitch because she… We’ve no idea cause you suddenly swap to foreign mid sentence. This is immeasurably selfish if you ask me.

“Yeah I’m gonna kill the bitch right yeah cause they garble garble garble. Yeah everyone knows me as garble garble yeah, like in Southall, Ealing, all of west London yeah, they all call me that yeah…”

Do they, do they really? I live in west London and I don’t recall calling you anything, other than annoying loud mouthed yute hag, but I’m pretty sure that’s not a name you would be proud of. I’m fairly sure the other people on the bus glaring at your massively annoying face also don’t know you by this gangsta street nom de plume you lay claim to. I’m pretty sure, in fact, that no one calls you anything cool at all. I’d go as far as saying that I’m quietly confident that it’s all in you head, I would say in you mind, but I’m not sure you have a brain in which to store a mind frankly.

The whole sorry affair was bad enough, but having got to Ealing town I realised that I forgot my wallet and thus my oyster card, so I had to take two more bus trips, risking thrice the amound of annoyance than normal which could have been a disaster, luckily a crisis was averted by the busses being devoid of plebs for the return trips… Rapture!

I wended my way to Westfield again in a vain effort to keep the ailing economy on it’s feet, such a financial hero that I am. I decided that lunch was the order of the day and so descended upon Pho, a pseudo Vietnamese noodle bar establishment.

As with all of these eating places at lunch time there was a queue, apparently no one phoned ahead to inform them of my impending arrival, how rude. Of course, I should have burnt the place down just for that, alas I had left the office without my incendiary kit so I decided to wait. Sadly, as it the wont of such places, the ordering process is miserably designed, people taking drink orders at one end, food orders at the other, a stream of irate people in the middle not quite sure what’s going on. In the queue to the front of us there was a hag so old and senile the very ordering process confused her poor deluded mind, behind there was a Dutch woman. On the other side of the counter was some nice chap, who did not speak the finest English, trying valiantly to marshal the orders correctly and smoothly.

Of course I handled this perfectly well, I waited calmly, read the menu, decided on what to have, prepared for my turn. A smooth transaction was had, tranquillity was rife in the world. The plebe behind however should have been chop sticked to death at once by a hidden Vovinam assassin.

As we know, the Dutch are an odd bunch at the best of times, but normally they seem pretty well educated, fluent in several languages as a rule (I remember the wonderful day when a homeless looking mugger in Amsterdam outsmarted a friend and I with fluent German and English, if only I knew Welsh maybe we could have foxed him… I digress) . I wondered then why she was totally unable to read the rather plain and straightforward menu, a menu that has been designed for stressed shoppers for ease of use and speedy comprehension.

Pancake smoking Dutchie - “Yesh hello, Do you have any Dutcsh beersh?”
Serving chap - “Sorry?”
Pancake smoking Dutchie - “Heineken?”
Serving chap - “err”
Pancake smoking Dutchie - “Do yoush have any Heineken? Beer, yesh?”
Serving chap - “We have Halida… it’s is popular…”
Pancake smoking Dutchie - “…”
Pancake smoking Dutchie’s friend/care worker - “I think we’ll have two of the popular ones thanks…”

The look on the face of the pancake smoking freak was one of shear disgust, like that of someone who’s just been subjected to a bout of projectile vomiting by a gang of unemployed begging estate agents. How dare they not have a nice Dutch beer in a Vietnamese noodle bar! The outrage of it! I’m writing to my MP at once, we must put a stop to this discrimination…

I note a couple of things about this interaction:

1. If you want Dutch beer, fuck off to a fucking Dutch eatery you stupid fucking women, there’s one in Ealingtown, one in Leicester square, hell there’s bound to be more, I’m sure they’d all be more than happy to accommodate you and you stupid needs.
2. Heineken? Are you serious, you actively choose to drink that awful crap as a first option? It’s not even the best beer to come out of the brewery let alone the Netherlands. Do you hate your taste buds or something?
3. Counter staff should be allowed bludgeon to death one person a day without fear of legal repercussions, it’s the only way we can stamp out these imbeciles from the gene pool once and for all.

I’ve been feeling under the weather for a couple of days, racked with a terrible ague, struck down with a horrifying case of the pox, cursed with a vile bout of plague! Oh OK, I was feeling a bit ill, probably a slight  cold or something, maybe the dreaded man flu… who knows.

Alas I was struck down with this ailment on Sunday and I was unsure if the local apothecary was open to sell me a trepanning kit to relieve the pressure that my brain was suffering under. Casting aside the idea of physical intervention, I thought I might at least crawl down to my local supermarket and buy something healthy to boost my fruit intake in an effort to help the poor ailing body out.

Ignoring the actual fruit section, far too tired to chew, I sallied forth to the juice section. I’m presented by the usual enraging selection of stupid fruit juices. There is the normal orange, apple and grapefruit type drinks which are all fine and tasty. Then there is the smoothie selection, mango and passion fruit, strawberry and banana and so on, again pretty tasty, but getting to a cost level that makes them somewhat preposterous. Then we get to the section that truly invokes a rage, the superfruit drinks!

Drink that are so super, so wonderful, so amazing and so expensive that sipping no more than a cap full will surely imbibe you with an ever lasting youth. Ram packed with antioxidants, omega 3s, vitamins, minerals, fibers and all manner of other things, making these super juices akin to a modern day ambrosia. Hurray for super fruits, hurray for Açaís, hurray for Mangosteens, hurray for Wolfberries, hurray for Pomegranates!!

Only they’re not really that super at all, they are no better than most of the other juices in the section. They just have stupid names and people have never heard of them so they think they are better and thus will willingly to pay several bushels of gold just the pleasure of obtaining a small bottle of this crap.

That’s all quite annoying but I’ve gotten used to looking at this expensive cartons with disgust as I grab some good old orange juice (just as good for you, but too common to be cool it seems) so it barely raises more than a minor ire these days.

However in the Waitrose where I like to obtain my weekly nutrients, they do an odd thing, right next to the fruit juice section they have shoved the chilled wine section, and next to that is the free wine tasting section. In my state I would normally have sidled past on the way to get some fizzy water to go with the juice to stave off death a while longer, however something attracted my attention.

The woman looking after the stand asked me if I wanted to taste some superfruit wine!!! Yes you can now buy bloody pomegranate wine, apparently it’s very good for you, packed with antioxidants and full of nutrients. Now I thought we, as a nation, were in the grip of booze based destruction but no, the answer is this stuff apparently. It’s better for you than almost everything on earth and will turn us into a nation of super workers, or something like that.

At this point I had stopped paying attention to the health tips she was imparting, and was paying a more immediate attention to the vile taste that was encompassing my mouth. I realise desert wines (which this was supposed to be an example of) are sweet and a bit different from normal wine, but they can be lovely. However this stuff was disgusting, repugnant and truly abhorrent. I would rather have been eating a vat of elephant spleens lightly pan fried in battery acid than drink a bottle of this stuff. I don’t care if it’s good for me, it’s fucking horrible.

I looked about for the spittoon but sadly one was not present, I briefly pondered spitting the mouthful of satanic flavouring into her face as a lesson not to trick the sick with her evil elixirs in the future, but in the end I thought better of it.

The ultimate insult of course was the £14.99 they wanted for half a litre of this offensive substance. Super fruit my arse…

In an effort to keep the ailing Westfield open during this credit crisis I have committed to spending as much time and money there as possible. With this in mind I hotfooted it there again yesterday to throw away some hard earned pennies on an evening of tasty Mexican food and tastier Mexican beer at Wahaca with an old friend. It was quite a pleasant venue, for about 12 seconds, until a rage was induced by the serving staff. Firstly they did that infuriating, I presume American, thing of telling me their name and job title.

“Hello I’m Philomena and I’ll be your waitress for the evening”
“That’s fascinating Phil, good for you on remembering your name and job title by the way, for a moment I thought you might be the head chef. I’m Brian and I’ll be the grumpy awkward customer who’s food you’ll be spitting in this evening”

Is not how the exchange went.

Anyway Philomena (clearly not her real name, you don’t think I actually paid attention do you?) then moved on to infuriating restaurant habit two, explaining how restaurants work.

“Have you been to a Wahaca before”
“Um no”-  but I did once buy a pita gyros from a Greek bloke in Athens so I think I can remember how a menu works thanks, I didn’t add
“Well let me just run through the menu, here we have starters, here is some street food, order 3 or 4 of them each and share, and these are the main dishes for the greedy and those who hate sharing!”

Which was really, really handy cause I totally missed the bloody great headings that sectioned the menu up into starters, street food and mains. Thanks Phil, had if not been for your vital intervention I might have just ordered tub of coleslaw and been left sadly wanting (although as it happened the coleslaw was very nice, just tiny).

Get out of my face damn it.

So we pondered what we might want to order and chatted for a while until Phil wafted back in to commit my super pet hate amongst modern restaurateurs. In a bout of kindness she decided to offer us some suggestions, why don’t we go for some guacamole as a light snack whilst we ponder?

“It’s delicious and homemade”
“Homemade? You mean it’s not made here?”
“Oh yes, it’s made here”
“So someone lives here? This is someone’s home is it?”
“Well it feels like I live here with the amount of time I spend here he he, I’m thinking of having a bed put in the corner, ha ha”
…
“but there’s no bed so you don’t live here now, I mean it’s not your home yet?” is what I felt like adding but decided I was already teetering on the boundary between spit in food and rat poison in food so left it there.

So, first things first, it’s not home made if you don’t make it at home, there’s a bloody clue in the words you are using. I can just about cope with slightly rubbish country pubs coming out with this crap, as there is a chance that even if it’s not homemade in the real sense, at least it looks like it is. However, a professional kitchen, in a brand new chain restaurant, housed in a brand new massive shopping centre, no no and triple no.

It’s not homemade in any shape or form, this is a flagrant abuse of the English language and it must be stopped at once. What wrong with saying “lovingly created guacamole”, “an epicurean delight of guacamole”, “an exquisitely handcrafted guacamole” or any manner of other vaguely possibly factual descriptors. Homemade, to me, makes it sound frankly horrible, lest we forget that most people these days seem to be useless cooks if J. Olivers exploits are anything to go by. Christ, someone out there didn’t even know what boiling water looked like (thankfully they do now, although if I were Oliver I would have learnt them about it by hurling a pan of the stuff into their face, this might be why I am not on TV)

Anyway food was ordered, Negra Modelo was sipped, good times were had. Until that is, Phil returned to once more infuriate me with her vile presence to see if we wanted desert, we did, they were unfeasibly delicious, so delicious that they made me cross as to how tasty yet lethal the chocolate sauce was. Damn you Wahaca!

The tube has been causing much angst in the last two days. Firstly, yesterday I had to suffer the audio atrocity that was a busker at Notting Hill station. Now, as you might imagine, I’m not a fan of buskers at the best of times, they all fall in to two camps, the awful and the very awful. OK, that’s a lie, some of them do have a talent, it’s just a talent I never want to hear whilst whisking myself about Londontown on public transport. This is a fact that will remain true until the day I catch some underground minimal tech house Djing action, a day I never expect to see.

There is a base level of annoyance at any busker, so imagine my shock and horror when I alighted the carriage I was occupying to be confronted by a noise so awful, so displeasing, that I’m immediately tempted to shatter my eardrums with a rolled up London Lite. Yes you guessed it, some bastard was playing the bloody bagpipes. This is an instrument designed to strike fear into the hearts of a foe on the battle field, an instrument so ghaustly that no one on earth can find pleasing to listen to. So why, you might wonder, was he not turfed out of the station by some burly guards for disturbing the peace forthwith and possible given a shoeing for good measure?

Well it seems that not only was he there by permission as an official busker, but I also happen to know, like all of the tube’s buskers, he’d passed an audition to get a licence to be there. Someone actually heard that racket and decided that it would be fun to inflict it on everyone else? I can only imagine that the rowdy piper got his license by threatening to stove in the head of the people conducting the audition with his fascist, jackboot clad, feet if they turned him down. It’s the only explanation…

The next moment of irritation came after a wonderfully ecstatic trip to Westfield, Europe’s largest inner-city shopping centre, a trip where nothing at all annoyed me. The masses of people blundering about getting in my way, the stupid layout of shops, having items in display that you couldn’t actually buy was all brushed aside, such was the warmth of the capitalist glow that was enveloping me.

However, on leaving this Mecca of commercialism I wended my way to Sheppards Bush station, a station that was rebuilt not more than 2 months ago, what was I confronted by? I was confronted by 3 in ticket gates, 5 out ones, a mass brawl of people trying to get in, and NO ONE AT ALL trying to get out. Quite why the tube chap who stood there bellowing like a dullard for people not to push didn’t just engage his bloody brain for a second and swap a few of the out barriers to in ones I don’t know.

More to the point, why did the flaming antipodean galahs that built the bloody thing not think that perhaps the new station might be a bit more popular than it used to be, what with a fucking huge shopping centre they stuck next door, and thus might need slightly more ticket gates.

The whole sorry situation was only made more infuriating by the morons ahead of me in the queue getting an oyster FAIL notice and rather than seeing assistance as advice (although I realise from experience this can be very tiresome), decided to repeatedly jab their ticket on the reader holding me up for even longer. Bastards.

My body, my brain and I have been at loggerheads of late, I try to mediate between the two but there is no joy it seems. They are determined to stitch each other up at every available opportunity.

All week they have been squabbling over what time to sleep, the brain wants to stay up Monday night to watch election fever reaching a head, the body wants to collapse into a slumber after a long day at the coal face. Tuesday evening both were quite adamant that after getting home very late from work snoozing might be a good idea, hurray agreement.

But what’s this, 4:50 am that sneaky fucker body decides now would be the perfect time to play a trick on the brain and wake us all up, why I don’t know. We lie there for a minute or two pondering whether the world’s ended with the election of Palin (I always assumed that if McCain won he would die of a heart attack from celebrating too much/been shot by Palin in a terrible hunting “accident”). So we get a moments agreement between mind and body allowing the arm to flip the radio on.

This happens just in time to hear Obama’s rather good acceptance speech thingy in Chicago. Maybe the body is not so spiteful after all, maybe it felt a disturbance in the force and thought the brain might like to hear this, it was after all very good to hear.

It’s over, great we can get back to sleep for another 2 hours, wake up and get to work pretty refreshed to make the site I’ve been slaving over live. Only no, now the mind is pissing about thinking about work. What the fuck am I to do here, can’t we just work together, we’re on the same team people, sleep damn it. No fine, in that case we’re getting up, HA take that mind, take that body, I’ve called your bluff!!

So we get to work at 7:30, pretty quickly however we all realise that this petty squabble has gone horribly wrong, we’ve turned into a jibbering wreck, luckily though a swiftly purchased bacon roll helps us hold it together long enough to get the changes done in time. Yay. we can leave early to get some sleep.

However what’s this, the brain has other ideas, it decides that going to bed at 7 and getting a nice 13 hours sleep is not the ticket, no, it hatches a plan to trick the body into visiting the local tavern and imbibing a few pints of fermented apple juice.

At this stage the body is very wary, it knows the past, it knows what’s happened before, it remembers the long nights of abuse it’s endured at the hands of the brain in the company of various reprobates and vagabonds. Sadly it’s powerless to resist, after getting up so early it has expending all it’s defensive energy some hours previously. As you can imagine it all goes horribly wrong and there is another night with about 90% too little sleep. I even had the forethought to turn off the alarm to try and get the extra kippage needed.

Pointless.

Body wakes us up as usual at the normal hour in a further escalation of this timeless battle, another day of feeling exhausted and angry ensues.

One day I will get a peace accord between the two and we can all get along nicely, no more lying awake filled with rabid anger at not sleeping, no more rage inducing hangovers. Till then drunken insomniatic apoplexy will continue I fear.