Barry Newsdesk

Mum's the word

2011-04-28T11:04:00.002+01:00

Dear Barry’s friends

It’s Barry’s Mum here. Barry asked me to pass on a message. I’m not very good with computers, so you’ll have to bear with me.

When Barry told me that he was becoming a citizen journalist, I just thought it was another one of his silly projects. Like the time he declared that he was a magician and started calling me the lovely Debbie McGee instead of Mum.

Now I’ve spent some time reading his articles I have to same I am little bit amazed. He seems to have built up quite a following. I’m afraid to say though that a great deal of Barry’s musings amount to little more than a web of lies.

The truth of the matter is Barry has been a very naughty boy. Roger and I are still very happy together and living in Lincoln. It is true that Roger and Barry never really saw eye-to-eye. I found that deeply upsetting of course, for all his faults Barry was my son and I never stopped loving him.

He finally overstepped the mark when Roger and I sealed the knot. It is true that Barry was in cahoots with Roger’s son Gary, after that though Barry’s version of events differs wildly from the truth. Together they managed to swindle my mother-in-law out of her cottage in the country and then set about on a spending spree. In fairness to Barry, Gary was the brains of the operation.

When the money from the cottage ran out they started racking up monumental credit card bills and taking out substantial personal loans. The debts mounted until the cracks in their life began to widen. Gary disappeared off to Brazil leaving Barry to pick up the pieces of their folly. He was unable to pick up the pieces and was finally caught walking up the hard shoulder of southbound carriageway of the M1 in his socks and pants.

Roger and I decided not to press charges, but we did insist on some fairly strict curfew conditions. One of which was a prohibition regarding talking about the case or other matters – specifically in the public domain. I think Roger was more embarrassed about the whole sorry episode than I.

Barry has spent a good part of the last year working as a griddle cook in a Little Chef on the A52. I had confiscated his computer but it seems he somehow managed to get hold of one and concoct the ludicrous scenario placing him at the centre of an international crime organisation. He would probably have continued making up nonsense too were it not for letter I accidentally opened from Blue Nun inviting him to a meeting at their head offices. Apparently they were "really excited by the blog". It didn't take Roger long to put two and two together.

We confronted Barry and then decided that for his own good as well as our own good, he should feel the full power of the law. Barry is now serving time in Lincoln Prison I’m afraid.

He's doing very well. As part of his rehabilitation Barry asked me to “come clean” on the blog. I have promised Barry that I will pass on any messages from his followers and that I will maintain the blog with a few posts of my own.

I do hope that this news doesn’t overshadow William and Kate’s big day tomorrow.

Best regards

Mum

ps. the headline was Barry's idea. I have to say it is quite clever really. I only wish he's been able to channel his creativity into something useful.

A new start

2011-02-26T19:02:00.007Z

Hey guys - sorry about the disappearing act. Again.

I've not been up to anything massively exciting to be honest. I got a bit para about Tony the toast and so the authorities have moved us.

I was told that I shouldn't blog, but it's in my blood man. If I stopped blogging altogether, I would probably die. That said, I didn't die during the last break even though I came quite close and I didn't die all the way up to the point before I started blogging despite once contracting the mumps and chicken pox at the same time when I was 12 - thanks a bunch Steve.

But it feels like I would die. And that's probably a bit worse that dying.

Anyway, I had to start blogging again, so that I could tell you about my new venture. I've had enough of working for The Man you see. You have no autonomy when you're a slave to the system. And, besides, you never get rich working for someone else. Unless you're a footballer, or a movie star, or a banker, or maybe a CEO of a large company or indeed anyone else on the senior management team, or a pop star, or Simon Cowell or a lottery winner, or someone with rich but dead parents, or the divorced wife of any of the above.

"But Barry," I hear you cry, "you've been a freelance Citizen Journalist for some time now, surely that is the very essence of not working for The Man?"

Well, that's true. I've written some epic pieces of editorial over the past two and bit years since leaving my sales job. I've submitted shocking news items about religion on public transport, missing dogs and lecherous Sky employees all to the Metro without success. I've even failed to make it entering children's book writing competitions (that's competitions for creating a book aimed at children, rather than a competition aimed at children writing books - although children were free to enter the competition).

I've seen my blog following swell to gratifying proportions during this time. But none of it is paying off financially. It seems the work of a humble scribe is not particularly well paid readers. It is for that reason that I have decided to become a freelance PR Guru.

Apparently, a wide variety of the so-called newspapers in this country simply cut and paste sections of press releases that have been sent to them by PR companies into their pages and pass this information off as news.

I read all about this on a fab new website I found called churnalism.com. It blows the lid off the media profession. Who would have thought that newspapers resort to printing press releases? Apparently, there are now more PR people in the UK than there are journalists!

Now, it strikes me that having strived for the past two years to get something into the papers using actual Citizen Journalism was a bit naive. What I should have been doing all along was creating press releases on behalf of companies and sending those to the newsdesks of the red tops and broadsheets.

The thing is, it is difficult to know exactly where to start. I can't just start writing press releases willy nilly. I need to get a commission. I need a client. I need to identify some brands that could do with some PR and gett pitching my services. I need to single out some struggling old favs or sleeping giants. I can become like the Max Clifford of big business.

BP would be a classic wouldn't it? The once proud petroleum colossus brought to its knees thanks to engineering failure, environmental catastrophe and boardroom arrogance. Billions wiped off its market valuation. I reckon I could probably get a press release or two in the Metro on their behalf.

Or maybe I should turn my attention to something more recent. British Gas, for example, just turned in profits of £4bn after pushing up its prices last year during one of the deepest global recessions. This caused widespread media condemnation.

Maybe I could write a new press release about how when I switched from French-owned EDF to dual fuel electricity and gas bills from UK fav BG that I actually SAVED money last year. I could do a survey, maybe, and then send out a top tips advice sheet explaining how canny consumers need not be the victim, and that actually if you are the victim it's probably your own fault. I could pitch that at the Daily Mail I reckon.

Or, steering away from fossil fuels, maybe the bankers deserve my support. Barclays recently announced profits of £6bn. You would think that the media would welcome this as good news, but no! It is almost as though the pressmen want things to go badly. I could write a fun press release comparing the relative wealth of most Barclays employees and Barclays Premiership footballers. Perhaps I could encourage a few to do a job swap! Lol. Just imagine Wayne Rooney sitting behind the counter at the bank, he'd need to count out your money on his fingers! Ha! I reckon that would easy get in Hello! or Chat.

Although, actually, maybe I am starting off a bit too grand. I probably need to build up to BP, BG and Barclays.

Sticking with the letter B - how about Blue Nun? I'm drinking a glass of it right now since the offie was out of Cobra. It's not bad either, but its reputation stinks. I reckon I could come up with a brilliant campaign to get the Nun back on the wine menus of Britain.

OK readers, I reckon I need to polish of this bottle and brainstorm a few ideas!

From one BN to another!

Putting the fun into funeral

2011-01-31T21:42:00.009Z

I suppose that last cliffhanger was a bit redundant since you know I'm writing this series of blog posts from the position of someone alive and not from the position of someone cremated alive in his own Mum's coffin.

I never did get into Mum's coffin in fact, even though Roger was threatening me with a Nazi handgun.

I was tempted to fake my death over the summer, like Elvis or the recently released from prison 'canoeist' John Darwin.

I was planning to use my new found death to start a blog site written from the perspective of a ghost. Wandering the earth in purgatory getting up to all sorts of hi-jinx and undead mischief. LoL.

But then I thought, well, if I was a ghost, how could I type blog posts? My ethereal finger tips would pass eerily through the keyboard.

They wouldn't really, since I wouldn't actually be a ghost, natch, but there would be continuity errors and that would bug me. It just wouldn't be convincing for the reader.

So then I thought that maybe I should write a blog penned by a fictitious clairvoyant with guest posts written from the perspective of famous dead people - it's a cracking idea since every good Citizen Journalist knows that you can't libel the dead, so I'd be pretty much free to make up all sorts of outrageous lies at the expense of the expired.

The thing is though, making up pointless and ridiculous blog posts and passing them off as the actual experiences of a genuine person would not be true to the ethos of the blogosphere. That's why I returned to the pages of Newsdesk and decided to bring you all racing back up to speed with my life (that and the fact that Mr C sent me a Happy New Year note - and, well, it fair brought to a tear to my eye).

Anyway, I didn't climb into Mum's coffin when Roger pointed his gun at me, because it wasn't Mum's coffin!

It was, in fact, a wax-worked rendering of my Mum that Steve's dad Constable Steve Stevens and the other members of the Lincolnshire Constabulary alongside CID had put in place. Mum wasn't dead at all readers! Brilliant eh!?

At the very moment that I was about to climb into the coffin, I heard a very familiar voice booming overhead.

"No one inside make a move, you are completely surrounded. Come out with your hands up, Barry. Not with your hands up Barry. All of you, just put your hands in the air and leave the building," it was the voice of Dave the roofer.

The thing is, in the moments before Dave the roofer made his announcement Roger and Gary couldn't help crowing about my imminent demise and their international drugs smuggling and imminent Nazi terror campaign. I was a bit like like in a James Bond flick. "Ah, Barry Newsdesk, we've been expecting you and so have easily over-powered you with the use of a stereotypical Nazi handgun. Now I will reveal to you the secret location of my underground bunker and the password that will defuse the bomb I have placed right underneath the Buckingham Palace. HAHAHAHAHAH!!!!"

I've never understood why the baddies never just shoot Bond. I would. If I was in that position, I would just shoot the bugger and drive off with the Bond Girl to my secret island hide-away. Still, I'm not a movie baddie. Roger and Gary, though, most certainly were movie baddies. CID had been keeping very close tabs on the Leaches, dating right back to the moment that I told Dave the roofer about Mum's relationship with Roger.

Dave the roofer, you see, knows a few people at the Yard. He heard me making mention about Roger Leache and how I'd discovered that he was a bloody Nazi drug smuggler. This set him off, he called a few people and the wheels of justice ground into action.

The worst bit of it all was keeping Mum in the dark. I'm not a natural born liar, so not telling her the full truth about Roger was hard. In fact, I very nearly blew the whole operation out of the water when I confronted him about it all before moving into Greta's place. I needed to convince Gary to believe me and weave my life into that of the criminal underworld.

It's all been an amazingly elaborate plot you see readers. The months spent in the wilderness. The trips to Thailand. Marrying a transexual with a massive cock. Faking my own mother's death. The lot. We're all living under police protection at a secret location. I've got a job in the kitchens of a large luxury hotel complex, it's just to make ends meet until something better comes along.

Yours in blogging

Barry

Coffin dodger

2011-01-26T19:31:00.016Z

Suffice to say the flight back over was not exactly carried out in the style to which I had become accustomed and being hastily bundled into the back of one of the big white vans with the blacked out windows seemed a far cry from being orally pleasured by Mia in her brother's limo.

But I was alive. In fact, in some ways, I felt more alive than ever. That's what people say who have near death experiences. Were it not for the fact that it looked like I would be spending the majority of what remained of my adult life behind bars, I would probably have vowed there and then to take up skydiving or potholing. Or both, but not at the same time ! lol, skyholing or potdiving !!

I was being sent to Wandsworth Prison. I was quietly chuffed, I think Wandsworth is probably the classiest of the London prisons. It's the largest, for starters, and in prisons, more than anywhere else, size matters. It's cat B, so that pegged me at a menace to society but not on the same level as a sex pest. I think that's fair really. The alumni of Wandsworth Prison includes Oscar Wilde, the two Ronnies (Kray and Biggs - as oppose to Corbett and Barker (everyone knows that Barker was sent to Slade)) and more recently Julian Assange (who is not a menace to society, but he might be a sex pest in Sweden). Best of all though, Wandsworth Prison is just a short bus ride away from Clapham Junction and quite close to a really nice pub called the County Arms, so I knew that I would get plenty of well fed visitors and thus look quite popular among the other residents.

Indeed, even before the funeral had even been organised I received my first visitor, Rosemary Forsyth. She was to be my brief for the case as appointed by Gary. I could see why he'd gone for her too, she was Rose by name and a rose by nature. Literally. A classic English beauty with a thorn sharp mind. She smelled quite nice too.

When I met Rose, I knew that my time at Wandsworth would be short lived. Not because she was possessed the sharpest legal mind in the country, but because she told me that Gary would be at the funeral, and when the guards let me into view my mother's body, he would spring me out of a window into a waiting van and have me on the continent via a private jet in a matter of hours.

I practically forgot about Mum being dead after Rose came to see me. I don't know if that makes me a bad son. I didn't really go out of the way to make any friends at Wandsworth, I couldn't see the point really, they'd just be like holiday romances wouldn't they? only without the moonlit walks on the beach. I tell you what though, people don't half moan about conditions inside British prisons, but compared to the Thai clink, Wandsworth really was more like Butlins.

The day of the funeral came and I was bundled into the back of a van for the long journey up north. When I arrived and came out into the autumn sun, the first person I saw was Gary. He was there standing next to the mush from Shepherd's Bush, as was Roger bloody Leache, Greta the Nazi, and all the other Leaches. Steve was there and Steve's dad, Steve, Dave the roofer had come over Edmonton with Gill and little baby Richard Barry the roofer.

Best of all though was seeing Tia though, she looked absolutely stunning. Seeing her made me realise that I had made the right choices all along. It's funny really readers, on the face of things, not much had actually gone that right, but that first night of our honeymoon had felt so, so, right and if something feels that right, how can it be wrong?

The guards kept a close watch over me and didn't really let me say much more than a quick "hello" with my fellow mourners. But then the moment came when I was allowed into a small, dimly lit room with close family only, and in this particular instance that meant Gary and Roger bloody Leache.

I couldn't quite believe it readers. In fact, I was a little bit incredulous. After everything he'd done to ruin by life, Roger bloody Leache was just about to cock up my escape. What a wanker. I think though that Gary could see the look of consternation on my face. He winked. Then in a whisper he mouthed "it's OK. He's OK. He knows."

I looked from Gary to Roger and from Roger to Gary. I was still a little stunned, but these days I'd learned how to roll with the punches!

We stood alone in silence, just the three of us. Well, the four of us really if you counted Mum. The proverbial elephant in the room. We'd been there for at least a minute and no one had said a word. I must admit, I was starting to get a bit fidgety. I didn't really want to be the one who brought it up, but in the end I had to.

"So, when do I get out then? I mean, shall we swap clothes now?" I said to Gary.

Roger wiped away a tear, or maybe he just had an itchy eye. "How could you be so incredibly stupid Barry?" he said. I wasn't sure whether he was talking about the escape plan or about the cocaine smuggling. Or about marrying a foreign transgender pre-op whose motives were as arguably dubious as her breasts. Roger was a Nazi after all and they're not famed for being that open-minded.

Roger spoke again: "You didn't seriously expect us to help you to abscond to Europe knowing what you know about our little organisation did you Barry? Things were going so smoothly until you started meddling. You won't be swapping clothes with Gary. You'll be clothes with your mother, she'll be the one that we push out of the window and into the van - the police will be giving chase to a corpse, meanwhile you'll have gone up in smoke!"

Well, I thought that this was especially outrageous since my mother had always said that she wanted to be buried. "Gary, can you talk some sense into your bloody idiot father?"

"Sorry Barry," said Gary, "I've not been entirely honest with you. Dad's right. We can't let you escape. We can't let you live either. We thought we'd be home and dry when you got caught. They don't, generally speaking, let people off in Thailand. But then your bloody mother croaked it and they bloody well let you come home. We needed to act fast. We'll ship your mother back for a decent Christian burial in the Fatherland."

"Do it then dad," said Gary again, and with that Roger punched Gary hard in the face. I couldn't quite believe what I was seeing, none of it made sense.

"I'll do the time for you," said Roger, "I'll say that I did it for the memory of your mother, I'll say I overpowered Gary and let you escape."

"Now," continued Roger pulling out a Luger and pointing it at me, "be a good little boy and help your mother out of her coffin. She's leaving."

Mum is dead

2011-01-25T18:24:00.004Z

It was the best of times, it was the worst of times.

“Your mother is dead Barry,” he said with stony faced callousness. “The British consulate has organised for you to attend the funeral on compassionate grounds. It is unprecedented. Frankly, I am amazed. Cocaine smuggling carries the death penalty in Thailand. It seems your wife's family is very well connected. You will serve out the rest of your sentence at Her Majesty’s Pleasure. ”

Talk about bitter sweet readers, I’d just secured a one way ticket back home and out of the very jaws of death. But at what cost? She was gone. Probably the only woman that I have ever truly loved.

I’m not sure what I would have chosen if it were presented to me as a choice like in that thriller The Box starring Cameron Diaz. Push the button and you can go home, but your Mum’s life will be cut short on the streets of Lincoln.

I say short, it wouldn’t be cut short would it? She’s already had her life. A full and frankly wasted life, the latest folly of which was marrying away my inheritance to Roger bloody Leache. I would have pressed the button readers, I would. At least I am man enough to admit it. It’s only the same as those people who take their Mum to Switzerland and have them put down isn’t it? Only my life isn’t a badly made Cameron Diaz movie based on an episode of the Twighlight Zone. Even if it looks like it might be a bit.

It turns out Mum was hit by moped while she was crossing the road coming back from Aquagrans (it’s a swimming pool-based aerobics class for geriatrics), coincidentally Steve’s dad, Steve, was the only witness. She was killed instantly apparently. Although quite how Steve’s dad knows, I’ don’t know. Now I’ll never see her smiling face again. Or drink her tea. Or hear her laugh. Or taste her Cinnamon Sponge.

Oh Mum, how could you? I know we all need to go in the end, but not this way. Not a hit and run victim caught under the wheels of 125cc Cobra Scooter of all things. Not Mum. Nooooooooo!

I was oblivious to all of this walking up to the check-in desk with Tia. We’d be travelling back as man and wife. Barrington Enoch Newsdesk and Tia Maria Yodsowen Newsdesk. I realised that I might have to put up with a few jibes back home, but I knew that underneath it all Tia was twice the man than most of those idiots in the pub.

Only we didn’t get back home. We got through check in and I was fingered by security the moment I passed through the metal detector. Just like Gary suggested I’d been to see some of his friends and I had packed about a dozen Apple iPads into my suitcase. Only I didn't realise the iPads were packed with grade A toot.

I was whisked off to some shit sodden prison cell, where they stripped me naked, then poked me and prodded me. They were looking for more gear up my bum readers. Up my bloody bum. Nature's pocket. I honestly don't know how much they expected to find up there. It seems illogical, why would I go to the trouble of packing a dozen iPads shells full of charlie, then stick some up my anus for good measure.

The amount they poked me you'd think they thought I might have some sort of secret compartment. Maybe they thought I had a plastic arse like Joanna Lumley. Dave the roofer said that he knew Lumley back in the 60s when she did an awful lot of cocaine (maybe that's why she like the gurkhas so much?). As a model and actress, Jo was wary of the damage the coke would do to her nose. She therefore started doing it up the bum, like Stevie Nicks of Fleetwood Mac is rumoured to have ordered her PA to help her do. However, Ms Lumley did so much that she corroded her bottom and so has a plastic anus. Allegedly. A lesson to us all, I think you’ll agree.

I looked back over the bare table at the man in the grey suit with dead eyes. He was looking for a smile. Judging me. He was unblinking. He was reading me. Or trying to at least. When I was at uni I went to see a stage hypnotist. He couldn’t put me under. I was too strong then and I’m too strong now.

“Tell me what you know about Gary and Roger Leache,” he said offering me a cigarette.

Mona Lisa smile

2011-01-22T07:43:00.008Z

“Sex-u-al-ity, strong and warm and wild and free,” or so sang opinionated modern day minstrel Billy Bragg. He was simply saying, in his own way, that we Humans should feel free to love whomever we should feel drawn to. And I, personally, think that is a big part of the amazing part of being alive.

Sexuality is a funny thing eh readers. You know, Paul was telling me just the other day, that anatomically a man and a woman’s mouth are identical. It is not for the first time I’ve heard someone say that, but Paul should know, since he was once training to be a man of medicine. And because he has sucked off a lot of chatty bisexuals.

Bragg is straight though, straight as a die. A man’s man, in the conventional sense of the word. He makes that abundantly clear in the opening two lines of his paen to erotica, asserting his very definite heterosexuality by laying claiming to having “had relations with girls from many nations” and “ making “passes at women of all classes”. Bragg by name eh!? LOL. He sounds like a bloody sex pest to me.

Mind, he also throws the chaps in chaps a lifeline adding that “just because you're gay,” he “won't turn you away” and “If you stick around” he is sure that you’ll “find some common ground”. There we have it, I think we know what he’s talking about. Like that Labour MP Ron Davies, eh readers, he found some common ground didn’t he eh?! he, he, Clapham Common, ground. LOL! Badger spotters eh, they can’t help themselves.

Still, that all seems like a very long time ago, and my mind couldn’t have been further away from that balmy autumnal night in ’98. My flight was skidding down onto the steaming tarmac of Bangkok's Suvarnabhumi Airport. There was only one thought on my mind: Tia. Lovely Tia. Hot and brooding Tia. Sultry and sexy Tia. My wife, my lover, my muse.

The only problem was, all I had to go on was a grainy MMS that she'd sent. She looked quite hot. But only in the same way that all slightly blurred pixilated pictures of young girls on the internet look hot. I don't mean that to sound in any way too perverted. By the tone of her text messages all week, she was very definitnely an adult.

I wasn't to be disappointed though. Not one bit. She was every bit as beautiful as I had imagined and hoped. I was not going to rush it though. I've learned that lesson the hard way. Women, all women - even Thai women - get a bit worried if you're over eager. I don't care what Billy Bragg or any of the other metrosexuals out there say, women like men to be men. Apart from lesbians. Although, actually, I think that even lesbians are happy with men being men, just as long as they're not women. I mean to say, not men dressed up as women in order to hoodwink them into some sort of faux lesbian relationship.

Dave the roofer always used to joke that he thought he must be a lesbian, but in all seriousness, once they got you back to their place and out of the dungarees they'd only be disappointed - even if you only had a small cock too. Imagine that! If you had a micro-penis and you'd gone through life the butt of jokes in the locker room, and the object of pity and ridicule in the bedroom, then you managed to pull a lesbian (maybe she was bi - rather than by some other cross-dressing route) and so she wasn't even technically that bothered about cocks, then she saw your cock and it was TOO BIG! Ha!

The mind boggles, truly, but I bet it has happened. Whatever you can think of has happened. You can bet on that. It'll have happened, and someone will have filmed it and put it on the internet.

Tia had arranged for her brother to pick us up in his taxi, I say taxi, it was actually quite a swanky limo. Cool eh? I felt like James Bond or something. She was so excited about my arrival. What a welcome. She got her bro to raise the modesty blind between the driver's cab and the back seats and administered some oral pleasure. Christ on a tuk-tuk. I was literally blown away.

The plan was that we'd stay a week or so in Bangkok and then go on honeymoon. To tell you the truth, I was not at this point wholly convinced that we were married. Not in the sense that she would be able to put a claim in for half my flat or anything. That said, I was also so enraptured that I didn't really give it much thought.

Handily, her dear old Mum ran a BnB almost in the centre of town, which was great fun. She had loads of siblings too, eight sisters and three brothers, which was amazing. Her mum looked about 239 years old! As regular readers will know all too well, my Mum decided that one was enough, so I was starved of the gift of brothers and sisters. I suppose that being an only child has shaped me somewhat and I wouldn't change a single thing, even if I could. But marrying into such a huge family seemed like a dream come true. And, I'll tell you what, her sisters weren't half bloody bad too.

Most of the evenings Tia and all her sisters went out to work. They had various waitressing jobs at cafes and restaurants in town. I'd entertain myself with a few drinks on my tod in the BnB. Although, one of the brothers was always hanging around. They never said very much, but they were bloody brilliant at Fifa and seemed to know just about all of the names of the Premier League stars. Not a single one of them had heard of Brian Clough though. It's a sign of the times readers.

During the daytime in the afternoon once Tia had woken up, she would take me on tours of the temples and sights, and I'd help out on various errands on her moped! If Mum could see me she'd have flipped, she banned me from having a moped, calling them 'deathraps' - ah, dear Mum. Something'll get you in the end, you might as well go out having fun.

We always made sure we were back at the BnB in time for Tia to get dolled up for work. The one big downside of staying with her family was the fact that we had to stay in separate rooms. Even though we were married, supposedly it is customary in those parts for the married couple to sleep apart for a week before the honeymoon. I have great great respect for customs, all customs - even, and I want to make this clear to some of my more politically correct readers, even those customs that denigrate the women of Islam. I have done a lot of reading on religion and as far as I'm concerned if a religion believes something, however completely absurd, we need to completely respect that completely. We're one global village now man. Like in the HSBC adverts. Act globally, think locally, that's my motto.

Tia's brothers watched me like bloody hawks actually. But she always found a way to sneak into my room after she got back from her shift. It was so romantic. I tried to get my hand down at one point on the first night, but the bed was so squeaky and she said her brothers would cut off my penis if they found out. Well, to tell you the truth, after she said that, I wasn't even overly keen on her sneaking into my room, and so when she did, we'd just very quietly cuddle. She always made sure that we found a secluded spot in a public lavatory or behind a wall during the day for her to satisfy the fires burning deep within my loins with a quick hand-job or blowie. Mustn't grumble Barry old son.

I was very much ready for the honeymoon section of the trip though, and so when went off to the Islands, I was in seventh heaven. At last, it was just me and Tia and no distractions. The blazing sun, the crystal clear waters, the Tiger beer (which is my second fav after Cobra) and a large box of Durex - I got those ones with the bellend numbing agent for her pleasure. It was the honeymoon, after all.

We arrived and spent the day unpacking and then down at the beach soaking up the rays and the pina coladas. Tia looked amazing in her bikini top and sarong. I think she must have had some work done, really, Thai girls don't have big boobs, that's probably their one biggest weakness. But it is nothing the wonders of modern medicine cannot correct.

After a day on the beach we enjoyed a romantic dinner in the evening - which, between you and me, could well have been the source of my gut wrenching diarrhoea 24 hours later. Blimey, it felt like I was pissing scolding hot razor blades from out of my rectum. But over the candle lit table with the full moon raising over the South Pacific, those hours of agony hovering over nothing more than a hole in the ground hanging onto a mouldy length of rope were the last thing on my mind. Still, that's the benefit of hindsight isn't it? I probably wouldn't have gone for the duck if I'd known what was coming.

After dinner we walked hand in hand across the beach back to our hut and kissed the kiss of a thousands kisses. She had a piece of coriander or something on her teeth, but I didn't mind. It didn't matter. She was going to brush her teeth. I am fastidious when it comes to oral hygiene. It's stood me in good stead too, Mum always insisted on taking me to the dentists every six months when I was a lad in Lincoln. And, while it is habit I have grown out of lately, it remains a constant source of pleasure whenever I am able to proudly tell people that I have not one single cavity or filling of any type. Unlike Steve whose mouth is like a scrapyard.

I brushed and flossed and readied myself for bed. I had been planning to have what Dave the roofer calls a "tactical wank" but I thought the special johnnies I'd got would help keep me going a bit longer before the inevitable. Tia entered the bedchamber wearing just her sarong, her flowing raven hair cascading across her sculpted shoulders and motionless bosom. Actually, she did have quite broad shoulders for such a sweet young flower. I thought that maybe it was because she was a child swimming protégée like Sharon Davies or Rebecca Adlington. You have to admit it readers, they are fine athletic women and no mistake, but when they get dolled up for award ceremonies they do kind of look a bit like drag artists.

Tia let her sarong drop to the floor wearing nothing more than her enigmatic smile.

I was astounded. Stunned into silence. Gobsmacked. Coincidentally, the last time I was this taken aback I was watching the Bob Hoskins classic Mona Lisa with Steve. I had a proper stiffy then, and I had one now. Steve said he always knew. But no one knows. You can't tell. I don't care who you are.

I'm not talking about my stiffies readers, I'm talking about that bit where we find out that Simone the call girl is packing a bit of surprise. Mind you, I didn't believe the 'reveal' in Boogie Nights either. Clearly Mark Walburg does not have a penis that big, no one can have a penis that size, you'd pass out if you ever got aroused. But when I looked at Tia's portion I started thinking maybe Walburg really did have a schlong that long. Tia's bellend was halfway down her thigh! *choke* Now, I know she was much shorter than me, so maybe her old chap wasn't all that much longer than mine ;-) but proportionally speaking, it was an absolute monster.

I was a long, long, cock readers, and it would prove to be a very long, long night.

The mush from Shepherd's Bush

2011-01-20T14:00:00.005Z

I'm wasted working on potwash. I am, truly. A man like me, with my creative talents. But there is no way I want to be out in the kitchens. I have heard on the grapevine that the Toastman has already cornered the market in terms of shifting cheap pink champagne to the other inmates. There is little doubt in my mind that the mush from Shepherd's Bush has sent him after me.

I thought all that was behind me. I suppose I should never have taken Gary's generosity at face value. I remember handing over the holdall to him outside the NCP.

He was sitting in the passenger seat of one of those massive BMW X5s. I couldn't quite see the man in the driver's seat, but I could smell his cigar and I could hear he was listening to a Talk Sport piece on the chances of Chelsea retaining the title in the forthcoming season. He started laughing at one point, "ere, Gaz, not if I have anyfink to do wiv it. Fhak me. Not if I get my way! I was telling Dave the other day. Y'know, Dave? Dave the roofer? Fhak, he's only gawn an moved to Canada the dippy cahnt. Canada's no place for roofing, it's all fahkin' igloos 'n' that ..'ang on, it's Toast [he said, receiving an incoming text message] yeh, it's the real deal. Get your boy out for more of the same. Anyway, he's only gawn and .."

I couldn't make out the rest, as Gary thrust an envelope in my direction. "Happy birthday Barry old son, get yourself back out east. Don't do anything daft like going back to the Travelodge either. Get yourself out to T5 now. Remember, business class never get any problems. Don't call me eh, don't go to any trouble. I've been in touch with Tia, she'll meet you at the airport and take care of things. You're like the brother I never had Barry. A proper diamond. I just want you to be happy, y'know?"

I am not afraid to admit it readers, I cried like a baby right there on the pavement outside that NCP as that X5 drove off into the night. I opened the envelope to find that Gary had been kind enough to give me a little bit of spending money too. By my estimates, about £10,000 in used fifties.

I was heading to Bangkok once more!

On the runs

2011-01-19T12:03:00.005Z

Apologies for my lack of posting. I've been keeping a low profile. I think they might have tracked me down you see.

I went in for my shift last Saturday and saw what I thought was a familiar face. He was working on the toast machine, which was quite coincidental since when I was introduced to him by Gary his name was Tony 'Toastman' Linoleum.

Gary told me at the time that his nickname was Toastman due to his propensity for getting drunk and insisting on making long-winded speeches while standing on pub tables. This was a habit that invariably did not go down well with publicans, something the Toastman knew really, since it led inevitably to Tony's other favourite pastime of brawling in pubs.

Tony was sidekick to the mush from Shepherd's Bush. A gentleman I was partly introduced to in an NCP carpark near Hammersmith after spending the best part of a week holed up alone in a Travelodge.

I had made several trips out to Londis to pick up Ginsters pasties and Cobra, but as Gary was quite explicit in his demands for me to stay put, I thought I better had. To tell you the truth, the week wasn't all bad. I had been exchanging text messages with Tia and I think she was most def looking forward to a return visit from old Bazzler. I've still got it readers. I don't care what Mum says.

After almost a week, Gary turned up and seemed to be back to his cheery self. "Meet me out front Barry," he said, "just bring that suitcase that you were carrying through customs". I've gotten used to seeing Gary rock up in different motors, but my eyes just about popped out when he pulled up in a black Porsche!

They're lovely cars and there is nothing you can teach the Germans about automotive engineering, but the suitcase had to go on my lap!

This brings me back to the NCP meet up. It was short and sweet. Well, it was short at least. Gary briefed me to sit tight and when the toastman got in the car to take the holdall, leave the carpark and meet Gary and the mush from Shepherd's Bush downstairs. Gary jumped out of the car and after a few lonely minutes I was joined by a small, wiry, rat-faced man. He had a pointy nose like the child catcher in Chitti-Chitti Bang Bang and a scraggy goatee beard. He sat down and took a photo of me with a Polaroid camera, then handed me a hefty holdall and instructed me to "get the fuck out cunt".

You can well imagine my reaction when I turned up last Saturday to see the same familiar rat-faced charmer working on toast. But I've learned how to think quick and act quicker. I told Paul that I thought I had that winter vomiting bug thing so I was banished immediately from the kitchens until it cleared. I'd buy myself few days to formulate a plan.

As you can tell from the fact that I am back blogging on Paul's laptop, I am now back in the kitchens. Only I'm not cooking any more, I'm on potwash. It is almost a crime to make yours truly work on pots. But we all get paid the same in here and at least this way, I know I'm safe. For now.

Life on the inside

2011-01-14T19:45:00.005Z

It is the story that everyone has been talking about today. No, not the riots on the streets of Tunisia, the lethal stampede at a religious festival in India nor the floods in Brazil. The most 'shared' story on the BBC today was, in fact, the curious tale of a man who is going to sue a 'rodent' for biting his penis.

Only in America readers!

But, before you lol yourself into a stupor, take a few moments to reflect on what led a Vietnam vet to get into a position whereby he is able to even take this issue to court.

For starters, vets are supposed to look after poorly sick animals. This man appears to have gotten himself into a sticky situation that resulted in a small rat or mouse biting his old fella. Maybe he was administering some sort of cock-based animal therapy. But that seems a little unlikely to me.

No, far more likely is that we're dealing with a man abusing his position of trust and power in order to attempt to sexually assault a small defenceless animal. Only to find himself on the receiving end of some razor sharp justice.

No wonder the man was locked up inside a prison. He's clearly a menace to society. Well, a menace to rats and mice anyway.

And that brings up another issue. The 'victim', Peter Soloman, is claiming that he was bitten on the John Thomas because he is black. So, now, not only is the have-a-go hero, would-be rape victim rodent being sued for fighting back, she is also being accused of racism.

I say 'she', but actually I do not the sex of the poor creature at the centre of this controversy. And, indeed, neither does Soloman. The very fact that he doesn't even know whether it was a rat or a mouse seems to put the case on very sticky ground. I mean, I'm not even a vet and I can tell that the animal pictured above is clearly a rat.

The thing is readers, people do some funny things don't they? Take, for example, Pretty Woman's Richard Gere, who infamously put a gerbil up his bum. A pest exterminator from the council told me all about that story. I don't think he personally knew Richard Gere. But he certainly knew what Gere was trying to achieve. You would think that having it away with Julia Roberts would be enough for any man wouldn't you?

He also told me (the exterminator, not Richard Gere) that mice can force themselves through the end of Biro pen. I wouldn't be at all surprised to learn that Soloman, for whom not everything in his life has gone right, might well have been trying to put the rat up his penis, mistaking it for a mouse. Imagine that, the tail of the poor thing dangling from his bellend like a macabre tampon string! No wonder it bit him.

Devolution

2011-01-13T18:23:00.002Z

I was going to walk straight up to the BA counter and book another flight back to Tia, but Gary said it would have to wait.

In fact, once we got through customs, Gary’s attitude towards me definitely shifted. “Business class flights and fancy holidays to Thailand don’t come cheap Barry. I’m not running a bloody charity. You’re going to have to start earning your keep.”

I started heading off to the long stay car park, but Gary ushered us off towards the Heathrow Express. “Fucking hell Barry, I’m starting to believe you really were born yesterday.” I couldn’t believe it readers, my arms were going to drop off with all those bags! How could he be so stupid as to have the car picked up and moved? After an uncomfortably silent train journey, the next thing I know we’re checking into a Travelodge near Shepherd’s Bush of all places.

I was a little bit dumbstruck to tell you the truth. I think Gary’s mind was elsewhere, he’d had a string of text messages ping into his phone since arriving and his mood had clearly darkened. Once we got to the Travelodge he told me to “stay put” and to “not answer the fucking door to anyfuckingone”.

That’s the thing with the ill educated, they always resort to blue language when they’re under pressure. That’s what sets us apart. That’s what sets me apart from pretty much everyone here. You can tell just by looking at some people. You know what they’ll be like from the moment you clap eyes on them, then they confirm it all by opening their filthy, stinking, mouths.

I sometimes think that the human race is right at one of the points in time that mark a step change in evolution. I’ve studied Darwin and the genus Homo has gone through quite a few changes since our ancestors came down from the tress and made fire. And, at every point, the fittest Homos pull through to become the dominant Homo, eradicating and out performing the previous Homo-incumbents. You never get a situation where the two Homos live in harmony together.

I think we’re at that point readers, homo spapiens is being displaced, evolutionary forces are in place. Fittest is not necessarily ‘best’ per se either. That’s to say, the huge masses of the underclass are growing stronger in number all the time, leaving us respectable upper working and middle classes out numbered. We’re a dying breed and you only have to look around yourself to see it.

Taking the mug out of smuggling

2011-01-12T13:00:00.004Z

I suppose alarm bells should have started ringing even before we left Thailand to come back home. We’d flown out there with nothing and were flying back with very full suitcases.

Gary tipped me the wink earlier that the trip would be self-funding. He’d had a bunch of fake Armani suits knocked up as well as a batch of the latest pirated movies (and I’m not talking about Mutiny on the Bounty LOL!) as well as about two dozen Apple iPads that had fallen off the back of tuk-tuk.

I’ll admit that I was a bit worried going through check-in, especially when they asked whether I was carrying anything for anyone and whether I had packed the bags myself. But Gary said business class passengers are never really searched. I was smuggling readers, that much is true, but as Gary pointed out this represented a victimless crime. Armani, Hollywood and Steve Jobs are all more than rich enough, and they’ve been charging the man on the street too much for too long. When we got back we’d flog the gear and that’d more than pay for our trip and probably leave us a fair bit more besides!

Mind, I had no idea how we would shift the product, I certainly didn’t fancy walking from pub to pub with a box of hooky gear like you see those Chinamen doing. But Gary said he knew a mush in Shepherd’s Bush, he thought that this was hilarious. But I’ve spent time in Shepherd’s Bush and there are some unsavoury types knocking about. I worry about Gary, he seemed to know a lot people in London, but I’ve lived in the ghetto. I was going to have to stay close. I mean, thanks to my judo, I’m never really in any kind of peril.

I’d practically forgotten about the wedding ring, assuming that it was probably one of Gary’s hilarious jokes. But when we landed at Heathrow I had a text message from an unknown source: “Bazman. Where u at sexgod husband. Tia.x”

My first reaction was to delete the message. Natch. But, as regular old skool readers will know, I am a hopeless romantic and, besides, those Thai girls are AMAZING. Also, from very recent personal experience, they will pretty much do whatever you ask them to do. I think this is due to two things; first it is well documented that Thai men have tiny penises and second, it is also well documented that British men are polite and chivalrous. Also, I am a sexgod. I’m no spring chicken though and, frankly, why shouldn’t old Newsdesk have a bit of fun?

Thanks to Gary and Tia, I figured I'd be going back to Thailand sooner than I expected.

I sent her a short note explaining that I'd be away for a few days "on business" and requested a photo (for my wallet!). I'm no mug!

Sick Sikh

2011-01-11T17:20:00.002Z

Phew, I’ve managed to steal a few moments alone to log on. Wow, it’s taken me ten minutes to read and re-read Mr C’s ace comment on my previous post. I’m not afraid to admit it, but I cried like a baby. And not just because I’ve just been cutting up the onions for tomorrow’s spag bol.

I’m onto quite a cushy number in the kitchens. Like I said before, my unit supervisor lends me his laptop and turns a blind eye, and I lend him a hand every so often. He’s a funny feller. His name is Paul, although his real name is Gurjit. He is actually a Sikh. Lol. Way back when I conducted my study on religions I never did Sikhism. From what I can gather, it is basically like being the opposite of Hindu.

Hindus are vegetarians. Sikh’s are carnivores. Hindu’s believe in elephant-headed gods, Sikhs train elephants. It’s no surprise then that the British army trained Sikhs to be the main fighting force against the Hindus during our occupation. Hindus are basically hippies you see, and while the Sikhs have long hair and beards, they also carry knives and like nothing more than a few drinks and scrap. They’re like India’s Hell’s Angels.

Paul breaks the mould a bit as a Sikh, and not just because he has adopted a European name. He’s a practising homosexual you see, which if he were a Hindu would be perfectly fine – remember, those were the guys who wrote the Karma Sutra. Sadly, for Gurjit, being gay is strictly prohibited amongst the Sikhs. Like a lot of Indians he was training to be a doctor, but when he changed his name to Paul and went full on gay, he turned his back on that life. Apart from the bit about carrying a knife.

His life literally crumbled following a moment of madness. He placed an advert in his local newspaper’s lonely hearts column. This in itself would not have been a major problem, but for the fact that the gay Sikh community is quite tight knit and he was already friends with five other practising homosexual Sikhs in town and so when he placed the ad reading: “Six sick Sikhs seek six sick Sikhs for sick sex.” He was drummed out of the community. Which is not quite what he was after. From that moment on he has roamed the earth. Like David Cain in Kung Fu. Only a Sikh version in the East Midlands.

Bangkok

2011-01-10T17:30:00.001Z

I just wanted to say a quick “thanks blood” to my main hommie boy Mr London Street. Yo comments is well appreciated. Also, a passing thanks and hello to Shopgirl, Maccoall and The Jules. And a massive big up to Mr C – natch – for inspiring me to get the fuck back into blogland. BOOM! I think that I should warn you all though, that by the simple act of befriending me and adding your sublime commentary, you have put your lives into severe danger.

In a way, I do feel a bit guilty about coming back online and thus endangering all your lives. I knew that my reappearance would send shockwaves across certain elements of the Internet. I’m under very strict orders to keep my profile on the low-down, my location is a closely guarded secret. I can say no more at this stage. Other than, if you’re getting home late and it’s dark, be on your guard. I can’t be there to help sadly. If you can, I suggest joining a judo club. The streets aren’t safe man. It’s just you against the world.

I never, for once, thought things would wind up this way. It all seems a million lifetimes from marching into BA’s business lounge to the beat of Columbia’s finest with Gary, just a passport apiece, a credit card and return tickets to Bangkok. It felt like we were Noel and Liam. Definitely maybe. I think if we were, I would have been Noel. Sure, Gary had something, a certain charismatic elemental charm, but essentially I was the artistic powerhouse of the partnership.

I thought I was a man of the world. I was until I visited Bangkok. My eyes were opened. I don’t think I’ll be able to play table tennis again. Not to any level of proficiency at least. I have no idea how long we stayed up partying. Days merged into weeks. The faces blurred. The genders were immaterial. Nothing mattered. I woke up one day with a tattoo of a monkey on my back and wedding ring on the third finger of my left hand.

It was time to come home. But things would never be the same.

Stolen moments

2011-01-08T09:02:00.004Z

You're probably wondering how the heck I can find time to blog in a place like this. We're certainly not supposed to be online, it's no holiday camp I can tell you. But I have am understanding with my unit supervisor. I scratch his back, he lends me his laptop and turns a blind eye for 15 minutes.

I know that he does the same thing for a few others. In fact, it was my mate here that put me on to it. Judging by the state of the place, I'd say most of the others nip in here and spend their quarter of an hour consuming as much porn as possible. I'll admit, blogging was the last thing on my mind for a while.

If you know the right people, this place isn't all bad. After the experiences I've had over the last seven months, I've learnt to keep my head down. Avoid eye-contact. Don't speak until you're spoken to, then give as little away as possible.

I'm innocent of course, but then they all say that.

Brothers in arms

2011-01-07T10:45:00.002Z

I’ve got to be honest readers, I have no idea how I ended up in this predicament. I knew that Leache was trouble. I knew it. Like I had a sixth sense for trouble. A trouble radar. “BEEP, BEEP, WARNING!” It was going. I bloody knew it. She wouldn’t listen though. They never do.

Gary seemed different. Granted I had him marked down as bit a rough diamond. But I could tell he was generous hearted. We were living in that old Nazi Greta’s place and when Gary suggested we go down to his pal’s in London for a party to watch the World Cup final, it seemed like the ideal getaway.

A weird thing happened before we went down to London. I had a visit from my old friend Steve. He warned me about Gary. Said his dad had said a few choice things when Steve had mentioned that me and Gary had become housemates. Steve’s dad was always paranoid though, that’s coppers for you. He bloody hated me anyway. Ever since that time with the wing mirrors on the high street. Honestly, you’d think in Steve’s dad’s world that no one ever got drunk and had a bit of harmless fun.

Gary certainly had a lot of fun and a lot of friends. He seemed to know everyone in London! You can’t be all bad with that many friends. He knew a lot of girls and he was introducing me as his brother which was bloody brilliant. And considering Roger and Mum got hitched, I suppose in a way we were brothers.

Being an only child I had always wondered what it would be like to have a brother. It was a great feeling if I’m being honest. Just me and Garry. The Barry & Gary show. I couldn’t help thinking that Mum’s selfishness, depriving me of a brother, was probably behind my lack of success in life. Brothers compete and strive on, I mean, you’ve only got to look at the Nevilles.

The all seeing eye

2011-01-06T13:00:00.004Z

Life may be pointless, but it's still good to be back blogging and nothing says "I'm back" like a dead octopus...

I have a feeling though that the nature of my future posts will be fairly short for a while. I need to grab these illicit moments when I can. I'm being watched you see. All the time. Well, not all the time. Not right now for instance. Not unless there is a CCTV camera here that I'm not aware of.

So much has happened to me over the past half year, that I don't quite know where to start. So, I'll start at the end. I'm a maverick like that. Most people start at the beginning, not me.

I find myself locked in a small windowless room. It's the only place I know that I'm safe. From the accusations, from the eyes, the haunting. The depravity. Time stands still in The Room. Again, this is more of a saying that an actual. It doesn't really stand still. If it did, I think we might be onto the beginnings of an episode of The Twighlight Zone or something.

I've often thought that I would be a great sci-fi writer. I can easily imagine a future filled with escalator walkways in the sky and silver jumpsuits. Most people can. But then I have an innate ability to add a special twist. Like a room in which time stands still.

Right, fuck, I can hear footsteps, I'd better be off.

The meaningless of life

2011-01-05T15:49:00.002Z

I’ve been away for seven months readers and that is a long time in anyone’s book. A lifetime in many respects. Well, in the respects of certain octopuses it is at least. I feel sorry for Paul the octopus. Surely Planet Earth’s most famous octopus? Paul managed to successfully predict a string of World Cup match winners and is now dead. If he went to the trouble of having an accumulator bet at Ladbrokes on his predictions he would have been a very wealthy octopus indeed. Still, that wouldn’t have helped in end. Nothing helps us in the end.

Countryphile

2010-06-20T12:38:00.006+01:00

Hi there readers

First up, I feel I need to proffer up my all too usual apologies for a severe lack of regular posting recently. You wouldn't believe the last two weeks I've had. Although, if you're a long termer you might. I just don't ever seem to get the rub of the green. So far 2010 has been one of the worst yet. Which, if anyone takes the trouble to read 2009's postings, is saying something!

My misadventures with Dippy in Australia were followed by returning home jobless to find the Tories in charge. I was then unceremoniously kicked out of my own home. And if that wasn't bad enough, just when I managed to get myself back up and online, I was burglarized!

I've feel violated :-(

I thought South London was bad enough with its dog and bike thievery, not to mention its legally and positively encouraged by the powers that be Day Light Bloody Fucking Robbery. But I'd not been out in the sticks five minutes before my own domicile had been breached and evacuated of its contents.

On the night of my last post, I signed off the pages of Newsdesk and proceeded in a southerly direction to the local pub. To be totally honest I fancied a crack at the barmaid. Sadly, I didn't really make much progress. I sparked up a conversation fair enough saying that I was new to the area and wouldn't mind finding someone with local knowledge to show me around. I name-checked a few famous people I'd met as a successful writer down in London, names like Pete Andre, Bruno Brooks and Barry McGuigan, but I could tell she didn't really 'get it'.

That's the thing with these country girls, they lack sophistication, imagination and ambition. They end up working behind the bar of their local village pub, getting up the duff with the centre forward of the pub football team and then settling down to a life of domestic abuse, misery and dreams of what might have been.

In many ways that barmaid reminded me of my own poor mother. I still can't believe she's been blinded by Roger Leache. You would have thought she would have learnt her lesson when dad ran off with the lollipop lady. Some people are just born victims.

I can't really remember leaving the pub that night or indeed the long and dark stagger home. I woke up with a splitting headache and dragged myself out of bed only to discover that the front door of Greta's place was wide open and some git had been in and made it away with half my stuff. My laptop (and dongle), mobile phone, wallet, my TV (still boxed from the move), microwave which was brand spanking new - and while not technically mine, per se, was still something I was looking forward to using - my passport and the box set of The Wire!! Still at least they hadn't discovered the six pack of Cobra in the fridge. I had to have one just to settle my nerves.

Once I'd had the police around and spent about two hours going over the previous night's events and the details of the stolen contents, I had to walk all the way to Lincoln because the tealeaf had also nicked the keys to Roger's Ford Focus that he let me borrow for the move. Honestly, judging my his reaction when I got there you'd think cared more about his missing motor than the fact that I could have been murdered in my sleep.

I had to sleep on the sofa that night. IN MY OWN HOME! The indignity of it all!!!!

I did a lot of thinking that night on the sofa. I was going to have to sort my life out. I was going to have to get home. But, well, I was also pretty bloody excited about the World Cup. The thieves had at least not stolen Greta's ancient, but fully functioning telly.

Mum came up to me the following morning when Roger wasn't around and gave me a few quid. Not 'gave', as such though, because I will pay her back, natch. She's a great old girl really my Mum. Although, I think she's lost touch with reality a bit, I doubt she even knows how much a Frey Bentos pie is these days. Fortunately, I know where she keeps her spare credit card. I thought, if England get past the group stages I could be holed up in that cottage until July.

When I got back to the cottage the next day I was in for yet another unpleasant surprise. Roger's son Gary was on the sofa watching TV in his boxer shorts. He barely even diverted his eyes from the set to acknowledge my entrance. "All right Barry mate," he said, "have you got any booze?"

'Cheeky twat,' I thought as walked into the kitchen, 'there's no way I'm letting him get his hands on my Cobra.' "...only I've finished off that flat shit in the fridge and I thought you might have something decent on you.." bellowed Leache.

Even above the din of my internal rage I think I heard him scratching his balls. I went straight to my room, and I'm not afraid to admit it readers, I had myself a little cry.

Later that night Gary shouted up asking me if I wanted to go to the pub, I didn't bother answering, I thought I'd just pretend to be asleep. I heard the door slam a little later and I went down and polished off the contents of Greta's liquor cabinet while watching a documentary about sex tourists in Vietnam. Makes you sick really, hopeless, socially inept, middle aged men picking up girls young enough to be their daughters.

I woke in the night to the sound of rhythmic banging. Leache had clearly been more successful than I had down at the village boozer. Stands to reason really, he's exactly the sort of uneducated Philistine that impresses teenage barmaids. When I got downstairs the following morning both Leache and his companion were nowhere to be seen.

Gary has kept himself to himself since that first night. He turned up the day after England v USA with an XBox and a copy of FIFA 10, and he even bought me a case of Heineken to replace my Cobras. We played a few games and thanks to my management training with Zach Abrahams I didn't disappoint on the virtual pitch.

It turns out that Gary keeps quite odd hours and is sometimes away for days on end, but he seems to be amazingly successful with the ladies. I had to buy some ear plugs from the chemist just to get a full night's sleep when he's around!

Anyway, he turned up last Friday night and we sat down together to watch England/Algeria. I hate to admit it, but we had quite an entertaining night, despite the fact that he kept calling the Algerians "rag 'eds". Still, he's not really a man of the world like me, I think he's pretty much never moved away from the East Midlands and he certainly didn't go to university.

This morning he turned up at the cottage driving a black Peugeot 206. He was giving me a lift over to Mum's place for Roger's Father's Day meal.

I took a calculated risk, remembering comments that Gary had made to be about his father when we first met, and revealed to him that I knew about Roger being a nazi. It was as risky gambit as I had suspected during the England game that Gary might also being a member of the BNP. But it turns out he hates Roger even more than me. He didn't really have a decent word to say for the man. Gary's racism, it turns out, is not politically motivated, he's just a bit provincial.

Anyway, they're all downstairs as I write this post - I'm using Roger's computer which is set up in Mum's room. That's one in the eye for fascism!

I can hear the laughter and clink of glasses. I know for a fact that Gary has only really turned up to brown nose Greta. He reckons she'll be dead by Christmas and he'll have a third share in the cottage.

I'd best get myself back down there before the pigs in blankets have all gone.

Yours in News

Barry

Bachelor pad

2010-06-05T16:55:00.002+01:00

Wotcha gang. Soz for being away for a while. I've been pretty busy lately.

As readers of my last post will have gathered, I have been thrown out of my own home in favour for some crippled, nonogenarian, bathing-halfwit, nazi.

It really does beggar belief that mother has the wool pulled over her eyes so easily. I wonder sometimes whether I wasn't adopted. My mind is like a steel trap, silently poised, awaiting whatever news comes stumbling by. Mum's mind is like a pair of heavy duty incontinent knickers at an old people's home.

Still, blood is thicker than water, or so the saying goes. I have decided, for the time being at least, that I shall humour her folly. Roger's mother Greta is to stay tucked up underneath my John Robertson poster, while I'll be sleeping in what appears to be a lavender and pink frilled mausoleum.

Roger is selfishly unwilling to sell his mother's house to fund her retirement home needs, since she wants to leave it to her grandchildren. As a consequence I have taken the noble step of moving out of my family home and into Greta's room in her tiny two-bed cottage in the north Nottinghamshire countryside.

I went for a walk earlier, I felt a little bit like Robin Hood. In many ways I sometimes think of myself as a Robin Hood Citizen Journalist of the Blogosphere. Taking stories from the rich and giving them to the poor. Mind, I saw that one with Russel Crowe in the other day, I've got to say I prefer the Costner version. At least Costner had the good grace not to adopt some faux Irish accent. You knew where you were with Costner.

Needless to say, Greta's place is a little behind the times. She has a stair-lift all right and one of those baths with a side door, what she doesn't have is broadband. Welcome to the 21st Century Grandma!! WTF?

I've been trying to get hooked up to the Super Information Highway all week. There's no cable out here in the stick, so I've got one of those dongles.

lol :-))

Dongle? Ha! Genius.

Greta's place isn't so bad really. There's a nice local pub in the village and the offie even sells Cobra. The only down side to living here is the news that Roger's youngest son Gary is due to move in any time soon. The last time I met Gary, or indeed any of Roger's offspring, was almost a year ago now.

He didn't strike me as being particularly trustworthy. Still, hopefully I shouldn't be here too long. I'm looking to get myself a job back down in London at some point.

Anyhoo, apparently there's karaoke in the local and I spotted quite a fit barmaid down there the other night. People have told me I do a good croon. I might treat her to one of my Humperdincks.

l8ers

Baz of the woods

Evicted

2010-05-22T16:58:00.004+01:00

Something terrible has happened readers.

Last night, it seems, Roger's ageing mother Greta had a bit of fall getting into her bath and broke her pelvis. Apparently, she lay in the water for over three hours unable to get out. She had to keep letting water out down the plughole and refilling it from the hot tap to stave off hypothermia. Ingenious really. Mind, she looked like an old prune when she was on dry land, so (your) God only knows what she would have looked like after being submerged for that long!! lol ;-)

Get this though, once she's out of hospital, Roger wants to move her into Mum's place, my house, my bloody room! I'm being kicked out of my bloody inheritance thanks to the incompetent bathing habits of a sour-faced Nazi. Nice one.

I pointed out to Mum that Roger should sell his mother's house and use the funds to put her into a retirement home. She threw a complete eppy. WFT? It makes sense, she's had her crack of the whip, I don't see why I should suffer thanks to that Teutonic tit-willow.

I thought I was a prisoner in my home, turns out I was just the unwanted squatter.

I just stormed off into MY ROOM when I found out about Roger's plans. I've been watching the box set of The Wire this week. God it is brilliant!

After about half an hour or so, Mum came trudging sheepishly in carrying a plate of Spag Bol and a can of Cobra. She was clearly feeling guilty, and rightly so. I took the Cobra and told her I wasn't hungry. I was bloody starving too.

Then she started up: "I would have thought you'd understand Barry. You're a grown man. You should be living your own life, like you were before Christmas. You left behind a perfectly steady job and let that lovely Gill slip through your fingers. You chased off to the other side of the world after some Australian. I thought I'd lost you for good. I've moved on with my life after first your father and then you moved out, and I think you should move on too. You know Roger loves his mother dearly and only wants the best for her. He knows that his mother wants more than anything to leave the house to her grandchildren. I like to think that perhaps when I get a bit unsteady in later years that you'd look after me if anything happened," she said, talking right over a bit when Omar is finally getting his revenge over Stringer Bell.

She knows I hate it when people talk over the top of my dramas. I just picked up the remote and rewound to the beginning of the scene. "You don't need me to look after you," I pointed out, "You've got bloody Roger!"

I whacked up the volume and took a deep pull on my Cobra before pressing play. Sometimes the bitches need to learn the hard way, you feel me?

Baz

Who’s to blame for Volcanic Ash?

2010-05-18T15:33:00.001+01:00

Hey readers – I was watching the news this morning and saw some fat cat chief executive from an airline moaning on about how the government over-reacted to the threat of Volcanic Ash. The airlines, he said, have lost millions and it was the government’s fault!

Well, I hate The Man as much as the next man. But I have to question the validity of the CEO’s points. Joe Public, as well as the airlines, has also found himself out of pocket thanks to the Volcanic Ash since some insurance companies declared that they would not pay out on claims made as the Volcanic Ash cloud was an ‘act of God’.

I thought it was particularly rich of the said CEO since the comments were made on the same day that the World’s Favourite [sic] Airline, British Airways, was grounded due to the industrial action of disgruntled cabin staff! Maybe if the airlines treated their staff better and they weren’t so reliant on jet engines then we wouldn’t have had so many delays?

I know that there is something of a blame culture prevalent in Cameron’s Britain and maybe that is a bad thing. But if someone does have to take the fall, who is to blame for Volcanic Ash? God, the government, the airlines? You decide. Here’s the evidence:

God - He sometimes gets fingered for massive natural catastrophes. Although, in fairness to the omnipotent creator, it is almost always one of His earthbound flunkies that points the finger of blame. Men of the cloth are usually quick to point out that a natural disaster has come about due to God being angered by homosexuals. Maybe this time, God was angry with Stelios et al. Or based on the fact that Northern Ireland seems to have been affected worse than the rest of the UK, He’s got the hump with the peace protest. While the Catholics and Protestants were at each other’s throats we didn’t have ash clouds did we? And, as the old saying goes, there’s no smoke without fire.

The thing is, the volcano is located in Iceland – so maybe it’s not the Abrahamic God kicking up the ash. Maybe it’s a Norse god like Thor or Odin. Those Norse Gods were a bit more involved on a day-to-day basis with their believers. Volcanoes, fires, storms – its all meat and drink to the Norse Gods. If we’re going to blame the Volcanic Ash on a God, then I say we Look North. I reckon the Old Testament God is probably kicking back and considering the Middle East and the rise of arabs.

The government – like a football manager must take ultimate responsibility for his team’s performance, so too must David Cameron and his sidekick Nick Clegg take the blame for ANYTHING that goes wrong. I saw chancellor of the exchequer George Osborne on the telly yesterday slagging off Alistair Darling’s budgeting skills. It’s a classic move, natch, it’s called getting your excuses in early doors Osbourne. Tough shit though, it’s your mess now and unless you turn things around quickly you’ll be the schmuck carrying the can. That said, the government cannot really stop volcanoes exploding and if they had let the planes carryon flying and one of them had crashed, then they most definitely would have ended up looking silly.

The airlines – well, granted they were told by the government that they shouldn’t fly their aircraft and they almost certainly didn’t cause the volcanic eruptions. Unless, that is, the Gods were displeased with the working conditions of the cabin crew. Joking aside, maybe that might have something to do with it. It strikes me that a good number of people are quite scared of flying and so they probably do quite a lot of praying that their flights are safe and successful. There’s probably a damn sight more praying that happens in airports than in churches these days, it all adds up doesn’t it?

Newsdesk out

Education, education, education

2010-05-16T19:49:00.004+01:00

'Ask and ye shall receive' Matthew 7:7

First up I'd like to say a Big Newsdesk 'THANK YOU' to Mr C.

He's what I like to call a Newsdesk Long termer. I'm not quite sure exactly when he became a captive of my posts, and I don't have time to check back to see when he first joined since I'm a bit pushed for time - I need to steal moments on Roger's laptop while he's out. Honestly, Mum (whom my love for has been rekindled and remains undiminished, despite her attachment to one of Lincoln's leading fascists) has got me locked up like Paul Sheldon in Misery.

I love Stephen King readers. I'd love to write a horror story. But I think that there's probably too much horror in the world - I suppose that's why I try to keep my posting upbeat.

I was going to write a post about serial killers today. Only I was going to call it Cereal Killers. I was inspired to write the post when I poured out my Snap, Crackle and Pop and, having reached the end of the pack prematurely thanks to Roger helping himself to my breakfast, the Rice Krispies became drenched in dust readers. I fucking hate cereal dust. It ruins things. I felt like murdering the old goat.

Then I started wondering what Josef Fritzl used to have for breakfast. I know that when we get Cheerios there's a lot less dust at the end of the pack and consequently I'm always calmer when I run out of Cheerios than when I run out of SC&P.

Then I thought maybe if Fritzl had the option of Cheerios maybe he wouldn't have been so damn moody.

Dave the roofer once told me that Cheerios were classified as a drug in America due to the various health claims made my the manufacturer's marketing department. It wouldn't surprise me one bit, Americans can't half be a bit dim.

Anyway, I logged on and Mr C had asked me what my "slant" on education might be, and to be fair and totally honest, I thought that would make a far more compelling post subject that my musing on breakfast and homicide.

They say that everyone remembers their first teacher.

Of course, they also say that those that can't do, teach.

Mind, loads of people have said stuff about teachers. They used to say that Mr Salt was a kiddy fiddler. I don't think he was, still that's the price you pay for being unnecessarily tactile. Paedophillia wasn't as popular when I was growing up as it is today. These days, if you believe everything you read in the Daily Mail, no one is beyond suspicion.

Well, not no one in my view, because there is no fucking way Mr C is a paedo and if anyone out there says he is, I'll come down on their ass with some judo shit. Man, that sort of thing drives me nutso.

If there was one teacher I wouldn't have minded being a paedo it was my maths teacher Miss Cuff. We called her Kiss Muff.

Thinking back now, it's hardly a surprise that I failed my O'level, I was a young man, full of raging hormones and sexual awakening. She was a woman of the world with an excellent head for figures. Turns out she was knocking off the the art teacher, which was amazing to me back then, since everyone assumed he was a gay thanks to his purple and pink shoes. Just goes to show, you can't just a book by its cover.

Which is exactly what my old English teacher used to say, and she had MASSIVE tits. Really, really big they were - well, they probably still are, I doubt she's dead she was pretty young. Unless she was murdered or killed in an accident. Or maybe contracted a terminal illness. Still, humongous bazookas. Good God, how I would have loved a piece of that action.

You can't judge a book by its cover, unless its got a pair of massive tits on it, then it's probably going to be a bit saucy. Or indeed, unless the cover has the words 'the bible' on, then it's probably going to be quite religious.

American Psycho is also a book that you can judge by its cover. Not the artwork, natch, just the words, they kinda give it away a bit. lol

I failed English O'level too. Amazing really, when you consider the quality of my writing nowadays. Still, if I knew then what I know now, things would have turned out a bit bloody different.

Perhaps if I'd worked a bit harder at school I wouldn't have ended up at Trent Poly. I might have made it to a proper university, I might have made it as a proper journalist!

Still I can't do, so maybe I should go into teaching. It can't be bad being a teacher. Knocking off at 3:30 and having all those holidays to boot. Lovely jubbly.

o-oh, I think I can hear some keys rattling in the door, I'd best be off before Mum comes in and hobbles me.

byee

Baz
x

Fairweather friends

2010-05-13T08:42:00.004+01:00

It might surprise my new readers and followers to discover that I was not the most popular child in the playground.

I know, it’s quite staggering really. I wish they could see me now! An international jet-setting, eco-warrior, Citizen Journalist, blogospheric sensation.

I remember the day Steve joined our school. His family had moved up from London and his dad was a policeman. To say that he was not instantly popular with the other kids would be an understatement. He was bullied readers, bullied remorselessly. Steve Pigson the Cockney Copper Cock they called him.

For a while, much to my eternal shame, I relished the fact that the spotlight of juvenile torment had swivelled away from yours truly. However, even at that early age, I was a boy of compassion and high moral standing. I knew that I could not leave Steve to the face the taunts and tribulations alone. I stepped in and offered the hand of friendship, eventually.

For a time we were close. We even formed a special Crime Investigation Club. We had a Code of Practice, secret handshakes and special rules that we did not tell non-members. No one else wanted to join, in fact if the truth be told, the bullies used to take the piss out of our club. But it didn’t matter to us. We had each other and we had the club. We stuck together through thick and thin that term. It didn’t really stop the bullying. In fact I think if anything it might well have helped redouble the efforts of our tormentors.

Still, we made it to the summer holidays and hung out every day until Steve and his family came went to Ibiza to visit Steve’s dad’s sister and her Balearic husband. It was a long fortnight. When it was over, Steve came around to see me and he had the stupidest look on his face. He was practically bursting with excitement it seems. I thought that maybe he'd managed to get lucky with a girl or something.

Steve waited until Mum had left the house to go to her book club and then he went rummaging in his bag and pulled out a video tape. Steve had stolen the tape from his uncle’s den. He didn't say what it was, he just drew the curtains and popped it in the player. A grainy image appeared and so Steve twiddled with the tracking. Then in full focus was a large backside moving jerkily back and forth. The sound was low, but it sounded like someone was in trouble. Lots of shouting and grunting. Then I realised what it was!

It was hardcore German porn readers! I had never seen anything quite like it. Massive they were. Really, really massive cocks. I'd never seen a circumsized penis. I didn't think they were real! Sure, like any young boy I had seen a few interesting magazines in my time, but nothing like this. This was high grade filth. The kind of high grade smut that people would pay good money to see. And when I say ‘people’ what I really mean is ‘school boys’.

The Crime Investigation Club quickly morphed into The Jazz Film Club. A plan was hatched. We knew that Jeremy Clarke’s mum and dad had two video recorders because he’d recently tried to hawk pirated copies of Porkies from the Patel’s corner shop video hire. We knew this because he’d been under the close surveillance of the Crime Investigation Club! We knew this because we’d tried to buy a copy and he said that we “weren’t the right type of clientele”. Clarke was using his pirated Porkies to win friends and influence people, just not us... We decided to use the porn video to befriend Clarke, with the aim of using his copying facilities, meanwhile Steve and I would market and sell the German porn at a premium rate.

The plan ran surprisingly smoothly at first. Both Steve and I had wracked up a significant number of prospects in the new business pipeline and we soon become quite amazingly popular. All of a sudden the taunts had turned to jovial banter – our playground streetcred had gone through the roof. As each day passed by our stock rose.

Clarke’s recording services, however, were proving a sticking point. He insisted that he needed to borrow the movie and could only record the film over night while his parents were asleep. Steve and I might well have been stupid, but we weren’t idiots! We insisted that we needed to be present for all the recordings in case Clarke decided to cut us out of the loop and make his own sub-master tape. We hit an impasse. A seemingly impassable impasse, or so it seemed, until I came up with the brainwave of jumping on a bus to Nottingham to pick up some copying cables and blank cassettes. I would travel down at the weekend. Mum was due to be away visiting friends at the weekend, so Steve would sneak his parents’ video recorder around to my house and we’d stay up all night making copies of the porn.

Early on Saturday morning I jumped on the bus to Nottingham. In those days a trip to Nottingham from Lincoln was a major bloody deal for me. I’d been there before to see Notts Forest of course, but that was on specially organised coach trips. This time I was travelling solo to the big city. I’ll cut to the chase. After a day of hunting around the Broadmarsh and Victoria Centres, I finally found a specialist video outlet hidden away in the Lace Market that had the cables I needed.

I finally made it back home for early evening and called Steve. Steve didn’t answer the phone. I gave it a while, then called again. Again no answer. I sat in the front room surrounded by empty video cassettes and cables. I’d even got in a bottle of cider from a shop in Nottingham where they didn’t need ID. I called Steve again, although now it was getting late. There was no answer. By now, I’d had ¾ of a bottle of Olde English and I was feeling a little bit miffed, our plans were looking shaky. I got on my bike and I went around to Steve’s place to see where he was and what was happening.

The curtains were drawn as I approached, but I could see the flickering light from the television set. I knock on the door, I knocked again. I knock a third time with all my might and eventually a flustered Jeremy Clarke came to the door. I barged past him and into Steve’s front room, and there he was surrounded by video tapes with a guilty look on his face.

Unbeknownst to me Steve had done a deal with Jeremy. Jeremy had the video recording facilities, but more than that, thanks to his trade in Porkies videos, he could offer Steve new business channels into the local Scouts and the school just up the road. And with it, not just financial wealth but also the adulation that Steve craved so much. I had been cut out of the loop by greed.

And that readers, is pretty much how I felt when Nick Clegg sided with David fucking Cameron.

It was almost as sickening as watching Blackpool beat Notts Forest at the City Ground.

Still, Steve and Jeremy’s video empire came crashing down almost as soon as it started. Somehow Steve’s father found out about the taping business. Someone told him. I have no idea who it was. ;-)

Steve’s fair-weather fanclub slipped away faster than it had grown since Steve had taken some payments in advance for the video in order to buy the blank cassettes and the bullies wanted their money back plus interest!

Eventually, I offered the hand of friendship back to Steve. Even though he had the cheek to call me a snitch! I suspect Nick Clegg’s wounded liberals might one day forgive him. But not before the whole sorry mess comes crashing down.

Yours in politics

Newsdesk

Electile dysfunction

2010-05-09T21:09:00.004+01:00

Hello readers. I do hope you’ve all been OK while I was away?

It’s funny really, but you know when you go on holiday and come back and you’re expecting everything to be different. Then it turns out that actually not much has happened?

Well, walk a mile in my shoes readers and you’ll appreciate that practically my entire world has turn upside down in my absence.

While I was away, it seems as though the country was gripped tight by the televised three-way mass debates of Clegg, Brown and Cameron. Now we find ourselves staring into the barrels of a well hung parliament. It's not the sort of return I was expecting to life back in the blogosphere.

I've been saving the duck-billed platypuses in Wollumbin Park. Literally a million miles from the corridors of power in Whitehall. Well, I was for a few weeks anyway, then if the truth be told, it all started going a bit mental on my ass!!!

Things between Dippy and myself took a bit of nosedive not long after my last post in late February. I always knew she was a free spirit, I suppose that was always part of the attraction. I’ve never been one to tie myself down and be content with humdrum existence.

Unfortunately, Dippy attracts the wrong type of person. Some people are only really out for themselves and she’s such a giving carer that she can easily get carried away. She got carried away behind my back several times at the camp with the self-appointed chief of our tribe – Shane Taylor.

I’m afraid I lost it a bit readers, I went a little bit mad.

I went into the jungle alone. Have you ever been at one with Mother Nature? I have.

I remember getting a stiffy after seeing Melanie Tate’s erect nipples through her swimsuit while we were on the beach on a school trip to Skegness. I needed to hide the evidence before Steve or anyone else noticed – I suppose in retrospect it might have stopped all the taunts about Brian Jacks, but I was too young to know any better. I hit the deck hard. I could still see Melanie of course, I couldn’t really stop myself. I dry-humped the beach readers. I felt like Mother Nature’s rapist. It was animal instinct.

But out in the jungles of Australia things were far more serious. I’d rather not dwell too long on events. Like everyone else in the camp I was taking massive amounts of psychotropic hallucinogens. It was like the Blair Witch Project meets Predator meets First Blood.

Apparently, they found me lying unconscious, dehydrated and half-starved on the outskirts of Lismore. I had fashioned what appeared to be a crude attempt at what my rescuers described as ‘a platypus superhero outfit’.

I was carted off to a hospital at after my rescue/discovery and stayed put for another week or two before finally Dippy and Shane came to visit. They identified me to the authorities and fingered me for what they claimed were some severe and frightening terror attacks on the camp.

No one could prove anything though and I genuinely didn’t really know what happened back in the jungle. In the end, the British embassy stepped in and I was given a one way ticket back to blighty. The irony of an Englishman being deported from Australia! lol ;-)

I’ve been convalescing up at Mum’s in Lincoln for the past week. So I suppose that even though things didn’t quite work out with Dippy, at least I have managed to patch things up with Mum.

Sadly, I didn’t get to vote in the elections since I’d been out of the country and missed registering. Still, the vote that I would have given to the Lib Dem’s Reg Shore would have been a complete waste of time, since the bloody Tories snagged the seat back off Labour by well over 1000 votes anyway.

At least Roger was in a pretty foul mood since his BNP candidate only managed just over 1,300 votes – a laughable sum that even Reg Shore managed to beat by a country mile. Still 1,300 fascists in Lincoln is still 1,300 too many!

Not sure quite how long I’ll be in Lincoln readers. I called Dan up and he said that unfortunately he’d not been able to keep my job open. So I guess I’m back on the old rock ‘n’ roll for a while.

It hasn’t been all bad news though. Dan’s partner has moved in and so my mortgage is being covered. Which is great. Apparently, Dan's falla is a former Muslim. It’s like that pair of gay guys on Eastenders isn’t it? Living in my flat! You should have seen the look on Roger’s face when I told him. Hilarious.

Also, upon my return to reality and life online I discovered a rather exciting email from Eddie Bluelights offering yours truly the opportunity of being given a good roasting on his blog. I want to send out a special shout of thanks to Mr London Street for bigging me up. Cheers MLS, you're a star.

Gotta go now, I'm using Roger's laptop to send this post. Ha! Another one in the eye for nazi goat. But he'll be back soon enough from visiting him own mother at the rest home so I'd best get back in front of the gogglebox. Dad's Army is on later - and I know for a fact that Mum loves that show, much to Roger's chargrin.

L8ers brethren!
x

A postcard from Australia

2010-02-23T08:31:00.004Z

G'day readers and fair dinkum to you all. First up, I need to apologise for my lack of posting over the previous week. The thing is, I'm outback and upcountry helping Dippy save the duck-billed platypusses of the Oxley River north of Wollumbin Park.

It's kind of ironical that in my last post I complained that if my broadband access went down, I would't suddenly find an army of do-gooder platypusses campaigning for better living conditions for the Newsdesk. And now here I am under a baking southern sun, saving the the little freaks of nature without even the most basic of internet connections. I guess the platypus just doesn't really care about the web.

I've found myself in a fairly isolated part of the world. I feel a bit like Leonardo di Caprio in the Beach. Dippy and myself made the long drive to Lismore yesterday to pick up some much needed reserves. I've parked myself in an Internet cafe while she's off seeing a man about some mushrooms.

I checked out some of the news from back home and was tickled to see that Dave the roofer was absolutely spot on with his inside knowledge of Cheryl Cole upping and leaving her love rat footballer husband Ashley.

Speaking of Dave. I got an email from my Edmonton-based roofing friend that Gill finally gave birth to a bouncing baby boy. I wasn't really sure how I'd feel about the day when it finally arrived.

For those of you not familiar with the backstory, this time last year Gill Nelson and I were a serious long-term item. But things didn't really work out, for one reason or another. Then Gill found herself preggers after we'd spent a steamy weekend at Centre Parcs, but then Gill revealed that actually the baby was a result of a sordid one nighter with my friend and friend of the stars Dave the roofer.

The thing is, as anyone who reads this blog will testify, I am a forgiving man. Like George Harrison to Dave the roofer's Eric Clapton, I handed over my Pattie Boyd without so much as a fight. Which considering my mastery of Judo is bloody good news for Dave. I don't think Harrison had the advantage of being martially arted. I think he was probably just scared of Clapton, who was quite tasty with his fists after a night on the sauce.

Anyway, Gill gave birth last week. It was on Valentine's Day as a matter of fact, while I was making my reacquaintances with Dippy. I didn't know about this sweetness of ironic fate, as the email would sit unread for a week until I got to Lismore.

It's swings and roundabouts in the playground of l'amour. And no doubt it's sometimes slides. And climbing frames. Well, it was this once at Butlins in Skegness, I met a girl called Jane from Doncaster, she was as big as a house. I'd always been told that the fat ones are more appreciative. Jane wasn't though, she just laughed at my old feller. How was I supposed to perform in the face of ridicule. It wasn't my finest hour (it wasn't even my finest five minutes).

But when I read Dave's email and saw the picture, my heart melted. Childbirth is a grizzly business, I should imagine, but once they clean the little blighter up it probably seems a lot nicer. Apparently, women release some sort of hormone during birth that blocks their memory from the pain enabling them to go through the ordeal time after time. It must be the same hormone that makes them forget the times you've carried the shopping home after day-long marathon session down Oxford Street, yet remember the time (and always bring it up at dinner parties when you reach for the second bottle), that you once peed in the wardrobe after a session of different kind! lol ;-) only kidding ladies!!

Naturally, Dave wanted to name the boy after his own father, Dave, but Gill put her foot down and insisted that they name him after her father Richard. As a compromise Dave insisted that the boy's middle moniker be that of his long-standing, long-lost friend. That's right, yours truly.

Richard Barry, Dave the roofer's son, weighed in at 7llb 8oz and is fighting fit. I think I'm going to cry readers. Oh no, here comes Dippy with the drugs, I'd best be off. I'll try and log on again soon, but you might have to wait a few weeks....

Soz

Barry

ps. love you all

Going down (under)

2010-02-12T14:47:00.003Z

I've been cast adrift for a while readers, well ever since just before Xmas anyway when my gorgeous Aussie princess Dippy left these shores to help save a colony of duck-billed platypusses.

She was due back to blighty around mid-Feb, but this morning I got an SMS from her explaining that thinks are bleak for the endangered marsupials.

Now, I'm all for animal welfare, but seriously, what about Newsdesk Welfare? I love animals as much as the next man. Apart from wasps, natch. But really, it is a bit confusing when people start putting animals ahead of their fellow man.

What's the point of being at the top of the food chain? I mean, do you seriously think that if the duck-billed platypus was in our position that they'd give a flying fuck about our homes. I lost broadband the other week, my life's been hell, I didn't see hordes of duck-billed platypusses camped outside the front door petitioning for my rights.

Thing is though, Dippy said she wasn't sure when exactly she would be coming back, if at all. She thinks that the animals of Australia are worth fighting for, even though most of them are highly venomous. And that includes the bloody duck-billed platypus.

Trouble is my heart often rules my head, I've bought a ticket to Oz readers. Call me reckless, call me what you will. I'm flying out tomorrow and I'm not sure when I'll be back. I've told Dan that he can have a month rent free in the flat if he covers for me at work.

Wish me well

Newsdesk

ps. Thanks to all the amazing comments I've had lately, I love you all

They think it’s all over

2010-02-11T12:51:00.004Z

After my brief (and very successful) foray into the world of tabloid journalism. I was really looking forward to Zach Abrahams’ management training today. In fact, of all the classes in the programme, today’s was the one I was looking forward to most. The subject was Leadership and Building a Successful Team. Regular readers will know that I am a born leader, although a maverick one not unlike Clint Eastwood’s ‘Dirty’ Harry Callahan, so I knew from the outset that I would excel in the class.

Also, Zach had given me the heads-up during our private tutorial coaching class this weekend. This weekend’s class was a very specific case study and involved watching and dissecting in real-time the Chelsea/Arsenal game from a management perspective.

I’d arrived at Zach’s and he was looking very casual, almost as though he wasn’t even expecting me. But that’s just his style. He’s a trained psychoanalyst and sometimes he likes to play mind games with his students.

At £300 per hour Zach’s classes represent great value. It was almost as though we were just watching and chatting about John Terry, Vanessa Paroncell, Cheryl Cole dumping Ashley Cole and football, but that’s the genius of the man. He utilizes his in-depth knowledge of the mind to take everyday scenarios and expand on deeply theoretical and seemingly intangible management philosophies.

As a life-long Notts Forest supporter I was schooled in the finer points of one Brian Clough. I think Zach was really impressed with my football management know-how. So much so that he tagged on a few games of Fifa 10 on his PS3 at only 50 per cent extra on his hourly rate.

Clough’s genius lay in his ability to take a group of players that other managers had pretty much written off as mediocre and turn them into world beaters. How did he do this? Well, first up he had a great number two in Peter Taylor. For many, Taylor was the talent spotter, while Clough was the motivator. Cough was never as successful without Taylor and on his own he made some shocking acquisitions. But in fairness Clough was the leader even back in the early days, he surrounded himself with a core group of loyal hard-working players, to this team he mixed in a couple of real gems. Peter Shilton was one of Clough’s first signings at Forest and broke the British transfer record for a goalkeeper, while Trevor Francis (whose autograph I still have!!) was football’s first £1 million pound player. I only wish the autograph I get at ASDA was worth a million quid lol ;-)) !!!!

The other part of Clough’s genius was that he achieved what he did over a 20 year period in an alcoholic haze. I’m not condoning an over-reliance on booze, but I’m quite partial to the odd Cobra myself and, well, my Pro Evo track record speaks for itself.

Though he never disgraced himself like John Terry did by Shagging husband of Cheryl Cole , Ashley Cole's cast-off Vanessa Paroncell, Clough’s world eventually came tumbling down of course, his last season at the helm of the Reds saw them get relegated and he resigned a broken and severely damaged man. I suppose that’s the thing with great leaders, they can’t lead forever and then people only really ever remember what they were like at the end. Adolf Hitler was a pretty popular chap when he was elected, things headed south after a while of course. He over-stepped the mark, so fair enough.

It’s funny really, when you think about leaders throughout history, the immediate ones that spring to mind all seem to have ended their stint at the top with an almighty fall, or at least to have gone down in the pages of the history books with certain aspects of their personality called into question.

Genghis Khan, Napoleon Bonaparte, Mao Zedong, Joseph Stalin, Benito Mussolini, they’re all names that just roll off the tongue aren’t they? They’re iconic leaders one and all, but you probably wouldn’t want them in charge of your local Cub Scout Pack. That said, the Akela of our local Pack, Terry Street, had certain qualities that you would not associate with the ideal shaping of small minds. I didn’t last long in the Cub Scouts, it was far too military for me, all that marching up and down pledging allegiance to the Queen.

Baden Powell was famously a little right of centre in his views. I doubt whether someone taking it upon themselves today to organise a nationwide network of little boys dressed in uniform would go down too well.

The thing with heroic leaders, of course, is that the history books are written by the victors, so here in the UK we’ve got Wellington, Churchill and Thatcher all lined up on the righteous side of the fence and they weren’t exactly covered in glory were they? One of them is famous for inventing the rubber boot, one an alcoholic whose most famous incarnation is a wobbly-headed dog that promotes cheap insurance and the other one is, well, the least said about her the better.

Making judgement calls on whether leaders are heroes or villains is a fairly subjective business. It got me thinking, I wonder who would win in an international football match between the heroic British hero first 11 and an all star line up of foreign villains?

Well, before we can consider who would win, there is the selection headache to consider. I mean initially I thought I couldn’t include Maggie Thatcher in the British heroes team since under FIFA regulations she wouldn’t be able to compete against men. Although, people have often called into question the issue of Thatcher’s gender. But I think that’s largely a sexistism standpoint. Chelsea Berlin, for instance, is not a fancy restaurant in the German capital, (s)he is the great hope of British women’s international football at the moment, and she used to me a man!!! So why not the other way around?

I’ve seen Gregory’s Girl, there’s no real reason why women should not be allowed to compete against men. If that were the case Team GB would almost certainly have Queens Boudica and Victoria in the starting eleven, not to mention Elizabeths I and II – I imagine they’d form a Charltonsesque pairing. I’d keep Florence Nightingale in the dugout armed with a magic sponge, because once the cheating foreigners got stuck into the Brits, there’d almost be some unsavoury off-the-ball antics.

Churchill would be my team captain, I’d have Wellington in attack along with Horatio Nelson. I’d probably have Oliver Cromwell marshalling events from the centre of the park, and I’d put Henry VIII in goal to keep him away from the women.

My opposite number would be spoilt for choice in terms of foreign villains, but that’s always going to be the case, they’re got real strength in depth. Here are the first eleven names that spring to mind – maybe you’ve got some other suggestions?

1. 1.Khan,

2. 2.Bonaparte

3. 3. Zedong

4. 4.Stalin

5. 5. Mussolini

6. 6. Hitler

7. 7.Bin Laden

8. 8.Khomeini

9. 9Jong-il

10. Franco

11. Milosevic

They look like a pretty tasty outfit, but I’m pretty confident that Team GB would come out on top. I know that might sound like the usual patriotic nonsense, after all the foreigner have got some real fire power. The thing is they’d probably all want to play in attack and that’d leave some gaping holes at the back. With the possible exception of Bin Laden, who having been selected for some exhibition stuff away from home early in his career, would probably go missing for large periods of the actual game, making the occasional showy move and then disappearing once again. Granted he’d be quite a distraction for the defence, but ultimately he’s probably not even worth marking.

Rule Britannia?

Barry Clough

Are Cheryl Cole and Victoria Beckham lesbians?

2010-02-09T18:59:00.008Z

Is this really is just a shameless attempt to get my hit rate up or is it a cutting satire on the state of the British tabloid press?

....no. No. It really is just an attempt to get people to look at the blog having taken the time to type in the above pointless question.

They will too. Never mind my previous, previous, previous post about the problems with society. I think I've just located some far more unpleasant problems with society.

I've got a Blogpatrol widget that keeps tabs on who logs on to the pages of Newsdesk, and you should see some of the Google searches that bring people here....it makes the mind boggle, it truly does.

During the last week, Google had the good grace to bring 99 people to the pages of Newsdesk. According to Blogpatrol, here are the last 20 Google searches (Blogpatrol only shows the last 20):

where is vanessa paroncel from? (Google)
vanessa paroncell (Google)
cheryl cole dumps (Google)
vanessa paroncel (Google)
modelling the way (Google)
vanessa paroncel (Google)
cheryl and ashley 2010 (Google)
http://barrynewsdesk.blogspot.com/2010/02/cheryl-cole-dumps-ashley.html (Google)
ashley cole vanessa perroncel (Google)
john terry and vanessa Parancell (Google)
john terry vanessa paroncelle (Google)
ashley and cheryl 2010 (Google)
vannessa paroncel (Google)
cheryl cole dumps ashley cole (Google)
"mathroom snooker" (Google)
cheryl cole and ashley cole 2010 (Google)
cheryl cole dumps ashley (Google)
cheryl cole dumps ahsley (Google)
who said "nice to meet you to meet you nice" (Google)
cheryl cole

It makes for quite depressing reading really. Maybe it's satire after all....yeah Baz, it's satire. There, y'see I feel better already.

Yours in Cheryl Cole

Baz

Eidur down after Paroncell push

2010-02-08T18:25:00.005Z

After last Friday's shock revelations, here on the pages of Newsdesk of the World, that stunning Cheryl Cole will dump her love-rat diminutive full-back parter Ashley Cole due to an indiscretion with the girl at the centre of Terrygate - none other than Vanessa Paroncell - it has come to light that John Terry wasn't the only Blue that she bumped uglies with during the course of a glitteringly seedy career.

I got a call from my source who now lives in Canada, let's call him Dave, that Paroncell (although Dave called her Duracell "cos she keeps going all night!" Lol!!!!) worked her way through half the squad.

Anyone who's familiar with the ins and outs of Vanessa Paroncell, knows about her fling with Eidur Gudjohnson. But few know the real secret behind the reason why Eidur was forced to leave Chelsea for the far flung fields of Catalonia.

Avram Grant.

That's right, once again, Barry NewsoftheworldDesk can reveal a footballing scoop that will shake Stamford Bridge to its very foundations. Paroncell's passion for all things Blue (and that includes Lee Ryan by the way) extended all the way up the manager's office.

Roman Abromavich was allegedly besotted with Paroncell, Dave reckons, and he would do anything for her. Including, sacking Jose Mourino and instating the object of Paroncell's desires: Avram Grant.

So when Paroncell put her own personal management order into Roman, Jose was on his bike. Of course, knowing that Avram was about to take over was the real reason Gudjohnson was forced to leave. Avram, though, as we all now know, cannot keep his cock in his pants and, GET THIS, news on the street of shame, according to Dave, is that Avram made a move on Cheryl Cole at the Christmas party after her and Ashley had an argument over, you guessed it, Vanessa Parancell.

Later that same night, Avram was spotted taking Cole up a back passage. A Cole hole. As it were......

Ashley told Roman and Grant was booted out in favour of the sexually repulsive Luiz Filipe 'just call me Gene Hackman' Scolari. That's when Paroncell decided to move back into the players lounge and get jiggly with Bridge and Terry.

There are some dirty things afoot in SW10.

Yours in sleaze

Barry

Cheryl Cole dumps Ashley

2010-02-05T17:31:00.004Z

It was a matter of time really wasn't it readers? We all know that Cheryl's very public decision to stand by her man, the first time he played away from home, was probably more Hilary Clinton and Posh Spice than Tammy Wynette. That's to say, her public profile stood to benefit more from playing the part of the wronged yet understanding spouse of a famously good looking, yet notorious swordsman.

You know how the saying goes though, once bitten, twice shy. Everyone's fav X-Factor judge, the ludicrously lush Cheryl Cole has been wronged again, and this time it was a (former Miss) Bridge too far!! lol

That's right readers. You read it here first on the pages of Barry NewsoftheworldDesk.

Cheryl Cole is walking out on her treacherous beau Ashley after it emerged that it wasn't just disgraced FORMER England captain John Terry that was knocking off former team mate Wayne Bridge's former squeeze Vanessa Perroncel.

Like all good journalists, I will protect my source. Let's just say he bumped into Perroncel himself one late night at Crazy Larry's. The pair got talking, she needed some work doing to her roof, and he was up to the task.

It's news that will almost certainly hearten the spirits of my long lost French friend Mess. Where art thou? Or rather ou est tu?

The news itself will soon be splashed across the pages of the Sun. But you've read it here first!

Newsdesk out

Order in the courtroom

2010-02-04T18:10:00.002Z

After my last post regarding the problems with society, I thought I would expand upon the time I did jury service.

Jury service, readers, is one of the great civic responsibilities that we have in this country. More than a responsibility, it’s actually a privilege. Because not in every country are the citizens actively encouraged to sit in judgement on their fellow man and condemn him to punishment. Not everyone’s so lucky.

Obviously in some countries the citizenry are given more operational freedom than us Brits, and they stone transgressors to death in public arenas. Personally I prefer the gravitas and civility of a courtroom, but far be it from me to naysay the cultural quirks of people from other lands. After all, it’s these little differences that make the world such a fascinating place, isn’t it?

In most areas of our life, of course, we are taught that it is wrong to judge others. That’s one of the problems I’ve got with the Police. I often wonder how many police officers have exceeded the 70mph speed limit on motorways while in their private vehicles. I would argue there isn’t a one who hasn’t done it. And from a purely philosophical point of view any that had done so ought not be able to arrest anyone else. If something’s a crime, it’s a crime. It shouldn’t matter whether it’s the sort of petty shoplifting that gives Richard Madeley his kicks, or the sustained and invasive sexual molestation of a nun. You’re either guilty or innocent. At least, this is a point of view espoused by Dave the Roofer, one he formed while living in the North West where he founded the region’s leading philosophical group, the Bolton Wonderers.

So I just don’t understand people who try and wriggle out of Jury Service. I mean, who wouldn’t want two weeks off work sitting in a courtroom, effectively in control of the life of somebody they’ve never met and will probably never meet again (especially if they go to prison and, let’s face it, they wouldn’t be there in the first place if they hadn’t done something wrong somewhere along the line)? It’s a bit like playing Sims, but for real. What a thrill!

But when I did jury service, at London’s wonderful Old Bailey, there were actually some people who were trying to get out of it. One Rasta bloke said to the judge that he couldn’t do it because he had to sign on for his benefits every few days, so he was turned loose. And two of the women on my jury whinged constantly about having to be there instead of sat at home with their feet up watching bloody Trisha!

Me? I actually let out a whoop when the letter came through. A fortnight’s holiday, effectively, with something interesting to do while you’re off work. What’s more, the boss has to swallow it – it’s the law. So I counted myself lucky.

I counted myself even luckier when I saw that the case was a gruesome attempted murder! An absolute corker! I mean obviously it would have been better if it was an actual murder, rather than just an attempted one, because then we’d have been dealing with a killer. But attempted murder has to be the next best thing. I guess in this day and age you might think child abuse would be more exciting for the juror (obviously it would be absolutely sickening as well, that goes without saying. An absolute disgrace and something that no right thinking person could ever truly understand. But the more grievous the crime, the more exciting the judging process; I think that’s pretty much a given), but I wasn’t about to complain. Just think, it could have been some pikey who’d swiped a pair of knock-off Evisu from a market stall in Deptford.

I can tell you this now, readers, although I wouldn’t have told you at the time: I knew as soon as I saw the guy that I was going with a guilty verdict. There was just something about him. I’ve always had great instincts with people and, as the trial wore on over the next two weeks (they let us out at 3pm most days, and that was a glorious summer), these instincts were vindicated by everything that we learned about him.

So here’s the low-down: The accused was a man in his late 50s, his victim a former girlfriend twenty years his junior. A keen athlete – a competitor at (senior) national level – she returned home one evening and was shot in cold blood, from behind, while she unlocked her front door.

She lay on the path of her front garden, her cheek bone hard against the rain-slick tiles. Her ears were ringing, but she made out the sound of footsteps moving at pace away up the street. After a pause she heard a car door slam, an engine cough into life, and a vehicle speed away. All was quiet. Had there been a bomb, she thought? She watched the raindrops come down at her, blinking them out of her eyes, and wondered if she was going to die – if she was going to die here, on a winter’s evening, alone, as the hard rain nailed the cold night to the city.

Neighbours appeared, having heard the shotgun thunder take her legs from under her. “Don’t worry, love,” said a kindly voice. “There’s an ambulance on its way.” The last thing she heard before she lost consciousness was the sound of the siren. Then, all was black.”

Now, obviously she didn’t say all this during the trial and I’ve used a certain amount of licence in the description. It’s a new thing; I’m thinking of becoming a writer of hard-boiled, chilling fiction. People love thrillers and I reckon I’ve got the kind of imagination that could give them the thrill they’re seeking. I’ll be honest, though, I did steal that line about the hard rain from genre master Dean Koontz. There’s nothing wrong with standing on the shoulders of giants, though. I’m the Noel Gallagher to Dean’s John Lennon.

There was a real cast of characters in the courtroom, readers, and it felt like I was in a TV drama, or a film. The thing is, I’ve never watched any British courtroom dramas, so I couldn’t be one hundred per cent sure.

The clerk of the court was a nervous, shaky little man whom we on the jury nicknamed Mr Actually. This is because he said the word ’actually’ once for every other five or six words that he spoke. Roger Hargreaves could probably have written a book about him. Here’s an example:

“Ok ladies and gentlemen of the Jury, I’m actually the clerk of the court and that actually means that I explain how everything actually works. Actually what will happen is that in a minute I’ll actually ask you to stand up, actually, and I’ll say ‘all rise’ and the Judge will actually come in. Actually.”

Poor Mr Actually, he was to become a figure of fun for us over the next couple of weeks as we’d keep tallies of his ‘actuallies’ on the pads where we were supposed to be taking notes pertinent to the case. As I’ve said, though, the bloke was clearly guilty, so there wasn’t actually any need.

My killer instincts for people were proven once again as it became clear that the accused could offer no alibi for the time of the shooting, a car seen speeding from the scene was the same make and colour as one he owned and he had a shotgun. They actually dry fired it in the courtroom. The hairs on my arms stood up. Furthermore, he’d beaten her during their relationship, stalked her after she ended it, smashed up her bicycle, emptied her bins over her front garden and earned himself a restraining order forbidding him from coming within 100 yards of her (something that was quite clearly overlooked during the trial, although I didn’t say anything).

When we retired to reach our verdict one of my fellow jurors pointed out that the evidence was all circumstantial. But I was having none of that old nonsense and I soon got everyone else on my side (including the girls, who just wanted to go home and therefore favoured a nice quick wrap-up). So there he was, guilty as charged. He got seven years, because the judge said we couldn’t prove intent to kill. So he actually went down for GBH and possession of a firearm with intent to commit harm. Personally I figured that if you’re going to point a shotgun at someone and pull the trigger – and a shotgun is a spread weapon, don’t forget – then you stand a fairly good chance of killing them. Still, the judge was the man in charge and we did as we were told. He was probably pleased to get a nice swift resolution so he could go and get spanked by some dominatrix. That’s what they like, judges. It’s a transfer of power thing, it helps them unwind.

Peace

Baz

The problems with society

2010-02-01T17:34:00.003Z

I received a letter at the weekend from the Criminal Justice System and it made me cry readers. I’m not afraid to admit it.

The name of the organisation looks like some sort of Orwellian doublespeak doesn’t it? ‘Criminal justice’. Surely criminals should be ‘punished’ not given ‘justice’. I dunno, maybe I’m missing the point or something.

When I was a kid in Lincoln, the worst that would happen was that you’d get caught scrumping apples and Steve’s dad would give you a clip around the ear and that’d be that. Well, actually, worse things than that could happen and frequently did. Especially where the glue sniffers were involved. But by and large we had respect. Fast forward 30 years and things have scaled up somewhat!

As regular readers will know, I’m a liberally minded chap, although I’m not going to go all politically correct (yet another poignant oxymoron lol!). But despite my views I’m starting to feel that law and order have gone soft. Mum always used to say that we should bring back hanging and I’d always dismiss her as a reactionary. “Times have changed,” I’d say; “we’re not barbarians any more”.

But time has also opened my eyes to the reality of the world readers. I've wrestled with the issue of capital punishment before of course, some people are just scum and, in many cases, hanging literally is too good for them. People talk about chemical castration for rapists; what’s wrong with a couple of bricks and a game of cymbals?

Anyway, going back to the letter that lies before me on the dining room table. It is with regards to a certain piece of Newsdesk-based sleuth work that I undertook last year. I’m not talking about the case of Raffles the missing dog, oh no. What I’m talking about is a stone cold eye witness account of theft, assault, menacing behaviour and knife crime.

I didn’t write about it at the time, in case things went to the Old Bailey. I’ve done jury service before readers, so I know how the law courts work. If you go blabbing to the papers about the case, you can jeopardise the outcome.

The incident that I witnessed was quite literally daylight robbery. I was walking back from the station in downtown South London and suddenly I saw someone come darting out of an alleyway beside a house. He was pushing a bike readers. But there was something odd about proceedings. The back wheel of the bike was rubbing against the floor rather than rolling.

I could sense almost instinctively that I was seeing Crime. The bike’s back wheel was rubbing because it was locked to the frame! Then from nowhere, well from the house next to the alleyway actually, a middle-aged white male, of medium build, came running. He shouted “Oi” at the hoodie-wearing youth who was making good his escape up the road. I tell you what, readers, he was going at quite a pace, even though he was pushing a locked mountain bike up a hill.

I shouted over to the middle-aged white male of medium build “Is that your bike?” “Yes,” he shouted. It was at this point that I remembered the words of my old Judo master, ‘don’t go looking for trouble, trouble always finds you’.

I took up pursuit, but thought it wise that I should not be first to the scene. I’m a trained killer and sadly vigilantes can get into all sorts of trouble. I mean, look at that chap in High Wycombe who interrupted a burglar in his own home (not the burglar’s home, obviously. Burglar’s shouldn’t be allowed homes, anyway.) and then meted out some baseball bat retribution. He’s only just been let out of clink and his brother’s still there.

I reckon if someone breaks into your home, the rulebook goes out of the window (especially if they steal it. Lol.). Personally, I’d advocate capturing them and tying them up and then having a think about it. Revenge is a dish best served cold, as they say. The great thing about holding the burglar prisoner is that nobody will know that you’ve got him. After all, burglars probably don’t tell anyone that they’re off to do some burglarising and they’ll be back later. And if they do, they probably don’t say: “And if you need me, love, I’ll be turning over 124 Scanlon Gardens. I’ll probably have me mobile on silent, though, so I might not hear it if you ring. Alright then, take care. I’ll be home around half five in the morning.”

So you’ve got the bloke bound and gagged and now it’s time to start giving him a taste of fear. I reckon the best thing you could do would be to get all of your tools and line them up on the work surface. Chummy’s lashed to a kitchen chair; maybe you’ve sellotaped his eyes open so he has to look at what you’re doing. Once you’ve laid out the tools – and, if you’ve got one, one of those fancy posh corkscrews with the big levers – why not make a pretend phone call along the following lines (make sure he can hear you):

“Hello Dave, yeah, it’s me. Listen, have you got anything on tonight? No? Good, I’m calling in that favour. Yeah, that’s right. No, no. Nothing like that. I’m not in the Brotherhood any more. You wouldn’t believe it mate. I’ve only caught some twat trying to rob me gaff…. (long pause). Yeah, yeah. That’s exactly what I was thinking. No, nobody’ll know. You still got the van? Nice one, son. See you around ten tonight then. Oh, Dave… Yeah, I nearly forgot. Bring that new Stanley Jetcut and a couple of dust sheets, will ya? Ta.” You’re gambling here that the burglar knows how sharp a Stanley Jetcut is. Especially when its new.

Then you might want to go back to your selection of tools and idly drag your finger along the work surface, looking like you’re trying to choose between them. Perhaps you linger over a G clamp and a caulk gun (he might think you’re going to break his thumbs and pipe some caulk up his nose). Or maybe you pick up a big claw hammer (obvious, but it’s a classic) and heft its weight in your palm. You run a thumb over your lower lip, as if in contemplation of impending deeds of violence.

Of course, you might have a couple of power tools, the kind that come in their own case. You get out the sander. But you find to your frustration that it’s got the fluffy buffing disc on it from when you were polishing up that wardrobe. You hide this with your body while you put on the coarsest sandpaper disc that you have in the box before turning around and giving it a couple of revs. It would be better if you had a chainsaw but a) most people don’t have chainsaws in the house and b) they make a lot more noise than an electric sander. Then I suppose there’s c) which is that you might not have an electric sander in the first place, especially if you’re of the old school that suggests there’s no better way of preparing woodwork for painting than a couple of sheets of wet and dry and a cork sanding block. I guess the point is, just go with what you’ve got.

Maybe you’ve got an electric drill; one of the ones that doubles as a screwdriver. If you’ve got one of the cordless ones and you haven’t used it for a while then the battery pack will be flat. But don’t be put off by this, turn it to your advantage. Plug it in where the burglar can see it. Then say to him:

“See this battery pack, my fine tethered friend? That little red light will go green in about…” pause and look at your watch “…oh, I’d say four and a half hours. And then we’re going to do see what goes on inside the heads of people like you…” It’s one of the most frustrating things about cordless drills that the battery pack is always flat when you get it out and want to use it, meaning that you can’t do the little bit of DIY you’ve mustered the enthusiasm for. By the time it’s charged you can’t be arsed and then it sits in the living room for a couple of weeks until you can be bothered to put it away again. In this instance, however, it’s nothing short of a bonus.

Alternatively you pull out the little wooden thing with the spike on it. You say to the burglar: “Do you know what this is my old son? No? Well, apparently it’s called a bradawl. My old granddad said I’d find a use for it one day, and it looks like he was right.”

You might have some pliers; they’re associated with the removal of fingernails and teeth, of course. Needlenosed pliers aren’t so intimidating, though, so bear that in mind. If you’ve got tinsnips, well that’s brilliant. Anything that can cut through metal is bound to unnerve the burglar. Stanley knives and chisels; there’s no need for me to go into detail there. If, like me, you’ve got a small garden, then you may well have a pair of secateurs. They are bloody terrifying.

With all the sharp stuff, it goes without saying, be careful not to cut yourself. Not only will it hurt, but it will detract from the sense of menace that you are trying to create. If you do cut yourself, don’t hop up and down, suck the cut finger or squeeze your eyes shut. Instead, smile and lick the blood off yourself as if it’s a delicious gravy. Then he’ll think you’re a proper psycho.

Finally, instead of picking a tool, select the corkscrew. Hold the point right up to his eyeball as if you’re going to use it to pop the thing out. But instead, open a nice bottle of wine. Tell him you like to have a glass while you’re working, like the late, great Keith Floyd. But really you’re just buying time because, one way or another, you’ve going to have to let this bloke go at some stage and probably, like me, you’ve never really thought about this kind of thing very much.

Anyway, back to my story…With two people on his tail, the youth soon decided that pushing a locked mountain bike up a hill was going to be a bit of a drag on his pace, so he dropped his booty and continued running. The middle-aged white male of medium build was in very hot pursuit, though, and by the time I’d caught up he had already gotten hold of the thief.

Now I could finally see the thief’s face, he was gaunt and spotty and, despite being extremely white, was speaking in that faux Yardie South London patois. “I dint fink it was yours bruv, izzit” he said. But the bike’s owner wasn’t having any of this, and grappled with the youth. The pair then span around and went head first over a privet hedge and down into a garden below.

The owner landed on his head and in the kerfuffle the hoodie escaped, running up the garden path and down the street. By this point a crowd had gathered. I’m a born leader, though, and I took the initiative. I instructed a nearby teenager sitting on a bike to follow the thief, while maintaining a safe distance. Meanwhile, I made sure the old chap was OK.

After a while the teenager on the bike came back and pointed to a nearby road saying that the thief had cottoned on to the fact he was being followed and had come after him with a knife!!!

It was like I was living in an episode of The Bill. I was like PC Tony Stamp, and the teenager on the bike was like my informant, who may have been in Grange Hill, and would go on to have a role in Eastenders. I called 999 for back-up and, while waiting for the cavalry to arrive, decided to investigate the road where my CI had told me the thief was hiding.

I proceeded with caution in a northerly direction up the road and then I saw the thief. He was hanging about by a tree, keeping an eye on the road. He was checking to see if he was being tailed. I quickly ducked behind a tree of my own. As a martial arts expert I understand how to make use of my environment. I kept a visual. I know that visuals are vital in cases like this, if you lose track of the suspect, your status as a witness can be called into question by the slag’s brief.

After a while the thief came to the erroneous conclusion that he was in the clear and made his way towards a nearby park. I maintained a visual from some two hundred yards. To be totally honest, I wasn’t sure what to do really. I was pretty sure, judging by the direction he was walking, that he was heading to the tower blocks on the other side of the park. I quickened the pace a touch and then he stopped and stood stock still in the centre of a football pitch in the park and whistled.

Then from over by the other side of the park, quite near the tower blocks, one of those nasty little fighting dogs appeared and ran at great speed towards him. Except they’re not really aggressive dogs at all, Staffies. They’ve got a lovely temperament and they’re good with children. They just look ferocious, which is why the street youths have taken to dragging them around everywhere. It’s a sad fact that there are more Staffies in Battersea dogs home than any other breed, especially the labradoodle, which is exclusively owned by the posh.

Right behind the dog another be-hooded youth appeared and the two made their way towards one another, meeting, greeting and eventually sitting down over by the touchline of the pitch!

A good half hour had now passed since I’d first spotted the thief. He was chatting with his mate now, the Staffie bouncing back and forth between them both. Here’s my chance, I thought, calling directory enquiries to get put through to the local police station for more back up. A patrol car was on its way they said and so I waited. And waited. And waited.

It was now starting to get dark, and I spotted a white IC-one female citizen making her way across the park pushing a bike. Quick as a flash, the thief got to his feet. Bikes were clearly this man’s thing. The park was deserted, and the thief was now walking with intent towards the girl.

I started to walk out into the clearing of the park from my secluded spot. The thief had stopped the girl now and he was asking for something, she had stopped and was now rooting around in her handbag.

Then, out of the corner of my eye, I spotted a patrol car at the perimeter of the park. I changed directions and waved it over. As the car approached me, the thief disengaged from the girl and started walking in the opposite direction; his pal and the dog having disappeared. I introduced myself to the policeman and pointed out the suspect, saying I had been the one to call in the bike theft and had now witnessed what I presumed was an attempted mugging.

The police told me to stay put while they went over to the thief. They chatted for a while and he was made to empty his pockets. After a while a meat wagon appeared and he was unceremoniously bundled into the back. The police came back and I gave a full account. It took ages too, but I didn’t mind. I’d done my civic duty, I went home and cracked into a few Cobras.

Fast forward to this weekend and I get a letter form the CJS telling me that thanks to my evidence and sleuth work, the criminal had been charged in court last December and had pleaded guilty. The sentence passed was: A community order to take part in the Think First Programme.

Think First! Fuck me, it sounds like something Johnny Ball would have presented on the telly when I was a nipper. Presumably Think First is a class led by some social worker type who tells criminals that they are naughty and that nicking bikes, threatening people with knives and mugging (or at least trying to) girls in parks is a ‘bad thing’.

I tell you what readers, it’s not very PC of me, but I think public flogging might be the sort of thing that might help people like this ‘think first’. The next time I see someone running off down the road with someone else’s bike I’m going to have to put my Judo into action. The streets of London are mean readers, dirty and mean, there’s only one language these people understand! We’ve got to stand up and be counted, we’ve got to fight fire with fire!!!!

Makes me sick readers, sick to pit of my stomach. I’m still owed over £400 from the clamping company that towed my car because I hadn’t displayed the updated permit that they hadn’t sent me. I get fined a small fortune, and people like that bike thief get to wander the streets with little more than an instruction to attend a Think First class.

It is dia-fucking-bolical, that’s what it is.

Yours in distress at the state of society

Barry

Much ‘to do’ about somethings

2010-01-28T09:29:00.003Z

As every schoolboy physicist knows, time is an abstract concept. I’ve tried explaining this abstract concept to various girlfriends, but what seems like half an hour to some, seems like 30 seconds to others. Yesterday, for example, my lifestyle coach and guru Zach Abrahams came into the office to give a lecture on time management, and for me the five hours literally flew past. He was on-fire.

It was totally awesome readers. Zach’s class was due to start at 9:00, just like work normally is. I made good and sure I was in early, I suppose that my extra session at the weekend had already started to make me a better time manager. But Dan, as per usual, rolled up to work with his Starbucks skinny latte, a good ten minutes late.

As regular readers will know, when my boss Dan split up with his missus he moved into my place and became my flatmate. No one at work knows that we cohabit, because Dan said he didn’t want to have any conflicts of interest. Anyway, ever since he moved in, he’s started buying Starbucks skinny lattes and rocking up at ten past. I wouldn’t mind, but he makes me hang around after 5:30 so that he can leave the office first.

It’s totally selfish readers, of course; I know it is. But I’m too generously minded to kick up a stink. Mi casa su casa. Only today, when Dan turned up, Zach had already started the class. Punctuality, according to Zach, is sacrosanct. He spent almost the entirety of the day picking on Dan. Which was totally hilarious, as you can imagine lol ;-)

I must say sadly Zach seems to be copping some slack from my idiot colleagues. I overheard Suzi and Mark Baker laughing about his platform shoes and stumpy fingers. Old ‘keep your head down’ Barry would have sat down and ignored the jibes, or if I’m being honest, he might even have joined in succumbing to peer group pressure and the urge to win favour. But New Career-Minded Barry ‘modelled the way’.I went over and told them that they were clearly jealous of Zach’s confidence and ability, and that he did not suffer from a Napoleon complex. Then they started called me gay, but then amazingly Dan stepped in and defended me! Honestly readers, I can see that modelling the way is already helping me move up the career ladder. Come the next review, I’m going up against Suzi and Baker and there’s only going to be one winner. And it’s not because I let my boss stay at the flat for a very reasonable £300 a month either.

The class was a real eye-opener. Now, I know that I’ve been a bit slack of late when it comes to posting on the blog, but Zach taught me a totally amazing trick of time management. It’s something the pros use all the time. Bill Gates, Richard Branson, Warren Buffet, Tony Blair, they all use this technique for managing their time. Zach says he learnt the technique from a management guru in LA – so pay attention and you might just get your life back on track like me.

It’s something called a ‘to do’ list. Here’s the thing, you know how during the day you’ve got loads of stuff on your plate, so much so that sometimes it feels like you’re spinning plates! Well, if you write all the stuff down in a list and then make a note of which ones are important and need your attention, then you can make sure that you do those things. The really great thing is that if you write down all the stuff you need to do, then if your boss comes over and asks you to do something you can just hold up the piece of paper with your jobs on and point out that you’ve got quite enough to keep you busy thanks very much, so find some other mug to help out.

Another amazing part of the ‘to do’ list, is the way that is helps you palm off your work to other people. This is something called ‘delegation’. Apparently most people find delegation quite difficult because 50 per cent of the time they feel as though they can do a better job and the other 50 per cent of the time they feeling guilty about giving other people work. So if you accept that other people can do a better job, and even if they can’t who cares, then delegation suddenly becomes second nature. I think I’ll be a natural.

I’ve already delegated posting last night’s Love Film film back to Dan, he didn’t even realise I was ‘delegating’, I just asked him if he could do it for once and he said, ‘OK Barry, bloody hell, don’t forget who’s the boss’ – but he did it anyway, and that’s the key!

By creating the ‘to do’ list managers can prioritise workstreams efficiently and effectively, Zach says, and by adding in how long it will take to do the tasks on the ‘to do’ list the successful manager is able to palm off the stuff he (and let’s face it, women get pregnant and so the manager usually is a he), doesn’t really like or can’t be bothered to do.

It’s absolutely bloody brilliant and has already revolutionised my life. As soon as I got home, I wrote a ‘to do’ list:

Turn oven on to warm up
Crack open a can of Cobra
Check in and see if Dan is watching his soaps
Ask Dan if he’s seen that copy of Brokeback Mountain that needs posting back to Love Film
Go to room and log on to the Internet
Check emails and see if Mr London Street has been in touch
Check Facebook to see if anyone else has bothered to join the Friends of Barry Newsdesk group
Check Twitter
Go back downstairs and put Fray Bentos into oven
Crack open second can of Cobra
Google ‘Maria Whitaker+nude pictures’
Pleasure myself as part of on-going Project Onan
Go downstairs and plate up the Fray Bentos
Crack open another Cobra
Log on to the blog and write about today’s experiences

And there you go readers, that’s Time Management in action. The sense of enormous self-worth that you get by creating the ‘to do’ list then ‘doing’ the things you need to ‘do’ is wonderful.

I think I’ll just crack open another can of Cobra and get myself to bed. A rested mind is an active mind!

Barrington

Modelling the way

2010-01-25T15:03:00.002Z

Today is the first day of New Career-Minded Barry. For too long now Fun-Loving Old Barry has been floundering along by the side of the Super Career Highway. I’m my own worst enemy in some respects, but the cause of my stagnating life lies in my roots and foundations. That Philip Larkin had some funny opinions, but when it came to the role of the parent, he was spot on, they really do Fuck You Up.

When Dad left, Mum (who despite her recent betrayal, I will always love) brought me up as the Man of the House. I was her Little Prince Charming who turned into her Handsome Young Man. I felt loved readers, and that’s all a child really needs. Except the world is a cruel playing field. The rules of engagement change according to circumstances that in the main seem out of your control, and while I was prepared to plough my own furrow, I have realised now that maybe getting a seat next to the farmer up on the tractor would have saved me a whole lot of muddy feet, cow shit and woe.

Up until now I’ve been happy to stand flipping burgers in the Transport Café of Life. Every so often I look up at the Super Career Highway, and I think to myself, ‘no way Baz old boy, the road’s a dangerous place, you’re better off here where you know your way, you know the burgers are good and plentiful, not for you a place on the starting grid of the Rat Race of commercialism.’

The thing is, while sitting flipping burgers in the Transport Café of Life is comfortable and easy, easy is not what life is about. At least that’s what Zach Abrahams my new life coach told me this weekend.

That’s right readers, I’ve got myself a life coach!!! I was always a little wary of coaching, I just thought that maybe it was the naughties equivalent of seeing a shrink. But Zach came in and took a management training course last week, and it’s no exaggeration to say that he has almost single-handedly put my life on track again.

As regular readers will know, I’m a man who is comfortable in his own sexuality. I’m straight up and down no nonsense, but I actually think that I might be falling for Zach a little. He has a magnetism that simply cannot be ignored. Which I found odd, because when I first saw him I thought he was ever so slightly physically repulsive. He has the look of a dwarf about him. Not like Gimli from LOTR, with long hair and a beard and an axe, but like a dwarf dwarf. Like in Time Bandits.”

But when Zach speaks, you have to listen. He has an aura, an aura that I know leads to great success in business and great success with some extremely desirable women, he says, which considering his physical disabilities is no mean feat.

Zach’s entire philosophy is based on something he has dubbed ‘Modelling the Way’. He is a guru and I am a convert. It’s all to do with balancing your IQ with your EQ. IQ is your smarts, and EQ is your hearts! That’s a little rhyme Zach made up that helps. It’s all about control, like a graphic equalizer on a hi-fi, too much bass and your career will be dulled, to little bass and the career will sound tinny.

Zach says it’s all about how the brain works. Basically, the lefthand side of your brain is what controls your memory, it’s the ‘logic centre’ and the righthand side is your creativity. It’s no good just being all logical like Mr Spock (he’s a mister, not a doctor – which makes him a surgeon – interestingly Zach says surgeons are able to close off their EQ and so when they’re cutting up the bodies of their patients, they feel nothing, no emotion, not unlike clinically insane serial killers who chop up their victims and dispose of the parts. In many ways, surgeons and serial killers are two sides of the same coin). Likewise, it’s no good being all creative, because then you just ending up seeing things and going mad.

During the class we did some psychometric testing. We had to answer a whole bunch of questions. They were either a ‘yes’ or ‘no’ response according to whether your agreed or disagreed with a statement. Then the scores were totted up and that basically told us our personality. According to Zach, personalities can be split into four types. Activists, Reflectors, Theorists and Protagonists.

It won’t surprise you to know that I scored extremely highly in ‘activism’. Higher than anyone else in the room. Hilariously Dan turned out to be a reflective theorist. These people are the boring dullards, like college professors, who sit around pontificating all and achieving nothing. It turned out that Zach and I have almost identical personalities!

I’m a winners readers, all this time I’ve known I was special, but I had wrongly assumed that being special would be enough. Success, says Zach, is 99 per cent perspiration, one per cent inspiration. To be successful, you need the full package and Zach has offered to unlock my full package.

My trouble is that I have a natural problem with assumed authority. Don’t get me wrong, if someone has earned my respect, then I have no problem with authority, but for me authority has to be questioned. Zach says it is this trait in my personality that has been holding me back from becoming as successful as him, but with his help I can ‘model the way’ and assume authority.

Authority, Zach says, is a state of mind. I had my first coaching lesson at the weekend in Zach’s place in Orpington. He’s got a great pad readers, all cream leather couches and the most space-age fridge I’ve ever seen, everything is remote control, and his lights can actually be turned down to ‘chill mode’ by sending a text message. I really did feel as though he was Captain Kirk to my Mr Spock. Or maybe he was Bones, although he’s not a doctor. Zach I mean, Bones was the doctor.

The lessons are a bit pricey, I will admit, but as Zach pointed out, they’re an investment in a future me. It’s like I’m basically lending my future self a few grand, in return for a lifetime of wealth and a limitless supply of beautiful women.

KK readers, I’ve got some homework to be getting on with, Zach has asked me to write an acceptance speech for the Nobel Peace Prize. Amazing really, the guy is an absolute visionary.

Live long and posper.

Baz

Street life

2010-01-20T13:08:00.006Z

My new follower the Fearless Threader doesn't like people on the street asking for money, and neither do I.

I don't mind the homeless, don't get me wrong. Sometimes it's not their fault that they've fallen on hard times and I always used to give a few quid out around Christmas. Although it's an increasingly cashless society, isn't it, so it's getting more difficult to do that. In fact last year I didn't really give anything.

What's an acceptable denomination to give, anyway? This is another problem. Used to be you could sling a few coppers in the pot and walk away feeling like the Good Samaritan. It was a win-win homed-to-homeless transaction. These days if you try offloading your shrapnel, the homeless will probably give you a sharp retort. You can hardly get away with less than a pound, truth be told. And in these straitened times that's not really feasible.

After all, how are you supposed to choose which homeless gets your charity? You give the pound out to the guy under the Sainsbury's cashpoint and, before you've got to the end of the street you see the girl under the Tesco's cashpoint. And she's not half bad. A bit scrawny, but that's to be expected. But that's not how you choose, of course, it mustn't be how you choose. Still, it's a conversation starter, isn't it. Although if it went well, the 'your place or mine' would be more or less redundant.

No, it's wrong, totally wrong. But you've given your pound to the bloke down the road and all it's got you is a look of disdain from a homeless hottie which could have been a smile that lifted your day. Your feel good factor's through the floor. If she ever gets back on her feet and scrubs up she'll remember your lack of charity and she'll never go near you. If you'd helped her out, maybe she'd seek you out when her huge inheritance came through and you'd live happily every after.

So you decide to go double or quits. You lean down, smile and put a pound in. She doesn't even look up. You cough. She doesn't look up. You say in a calm voice (not sounding angry, but firm): "I just gave you a pound. How much more do I have to give you before you act a little more gratefully?" She looks up and says: "Fuck off!" You think to yourself: hang on a minute Baz, she's an ungrateful little cow. So you say: "Only, it was meant to be 50p. You reach in, take out your pound, put back 50p, just to save your face, and she laughs a hollow laugh and you walk off down the street while she screams abuse at you. You're trying to hide your face from the other people on the street who are wondering what you've done to the homeless girl to make her shout at you. And then she screams: "He offered me money for sex the fuckin' pervert". Which you absolutely did not do; that's not what you meant at all. But you decide to run anyway, just because you hate people looking at you like that.

It's this kind of situation, which could happen to anyone, that makes it difficult to give money out on the street. In the end it's best to give nothing to anyone; at least it's fair.

I used to buy the big issue but I stopped because it's a shit read. I fully endorse the organisation's attempts to get people into paid employment but if you're going to try and involve me in commerce to help the homeless, as opposed to charity, then you need to create a product that I want to buy. Especially now we have the Metro, Shortlist, Sport and all those other wonderful freesheets. Come to think of it, I probably stopped buying the Big Issue right around the time the Metro first graced our transport network.

So, what do people want to buy that the homeless could sell? The only thing I can think of is booze, and that's just a recipe for disaster.

Anyway, all this is by the by. The kind of people I was referring to at the top of the post are chuggers; students paid commission to get your details so other students can phone you and try and give you the guilts about not helping the charity they're working for. They always seem to be really tasty girls who smile at you and then don't want to chat once you've signed up.

This is an old trick and predates the chugger. Back when people on the street used to simply want to ask you questions, they were often attractive girls as well. The most unusual one I ever stopped for was doing some market research into how people feel about being asked questions on the street by people doing market research, no word of a lie.

Here's how it went:

Her: Hi there, would you mind just answering a few questions?

Me: Well, I'm kind of in a hurry...

Her: It won't take very long, I promise. And you could be helping to save a life... Please?

Me: Oh, alright then.

Her: Oh great, thanks. That's so great. Right. First, can I ask you: How often do you stop for these sorts of surveys?

Me: I don't know, really.

Her: ...Don't.. know. Question two: When you do stop, how many questions do you tend to answer?

Me: It depends on how much time I've got.

Her: And how much time have you got?

Me: Well, how long will it take?

Her: I can only accept answers, I'm afraid, not questions.

Me: Oh. Sorry

Her: That's ok. Now, would you say that, in general, these surveys are 'a' under-rated, 'b' over-rated, or 'c' you'd rather not say.

Me: Erm, 'c'. I'd rather not say.

Her: Lovely, thanks. Nearly finished! Now, when you do answer questions, do you prefer 'a' multiple choice questions...?

Me: ...or?

Her: That's the question.

Me: Eh?

Her: I'm going to have to hurry you, I'm afraid, sir.

Me: Er... yes, I suppose I prefer multiple choice questions.

Her: Great! And when answering multiple choice questions, do you prefer 'a' one option, 'b' two options, 'c' three options, 'd' four options, 'e' five options or... 'n', 14 options?

Me: Er... 'c', three options? I suppose it depends on the question.

Her: Ok, nearly done now. If you feel that surveys are dragging on for longer than you had originally anticipated, and indeed that you've been misled by the canvasser, would you 'a' let them know, 'b' indicate your impatience some other way, say by looking at your watch, or 'c' pretend that you didn't mind?

Me: 'c' - I'd pretend that I didn't mind.

Her: And how long would you be prepared to go on pretending that you didn't mind? Would it be 'a' a short while, 'b' a long while, or 'c' other?

Me: 'c' again, I think.

Her: Right, that's it! Thanks very much for your time!

At this point, readers, I tried to move in for a bit of a chat up. I'd been there fifteen minutes and I was late for work. But she moved straight onto this other bloke, and he had it all figured out. Their exchange was over in seconds. It went like this:

Her: Thanks for stopping. Can I ask you: How often do you stop for these sorts of surveys?

Him: Almost never

Her: Next question: When you do stop, how many questions do you tend to answer?

Him: Only two.

Her: Ok, thanks very much indeed. Have a nice day.

Him: Look, here's my number. Give me a call if you want to go for a drink.

Her: Ok, I will.

I was gutted readers, totally gutted. And I never did find out what she meant about saving a life.

Project Onan's turning into Project Onerous, btw. I'm really losing interest and I'm only a fifth of the way through.

L8erz

BN

The country's most hated?

2010-01-18T17:18:00.004Z

Hey readers, apologies about the lack of posts recently. My computer had a virus, it’s not the first time it’s happened either, you think I’d be more careful.

Google’s Chrome is so quick that I’ve been surfing much more easily, and I guess, well one thing led to another and I clicked on something I shouldn’t have and bingo – caput. It’s almost as though the God’s of the Computer world were looking down on my last post and had decided that my editorial integrity was being called into question.

I actually got an email to my private Barry.Newsdesk@googlemail.com account from one of my followers accusing me of doing something called ‘astro-turf’ PR on behalf of Google. For my American readers and non-sporting types out there, astro-turf is not some specially manufactured grass that only grows in space, it’s actually a name for fake turf. So, someone was accusing me of fake PR. Which if you think about it is like accusing someone of being a dishonest estate agent.

Having been inspired by Nick Horby’s hilarious High Fidelity, I was ruminating over my top five list of hated professionals the other day. Here’s my list:

1. Estate agents
2. Politicians
3. Lawyers
4. Journalists
5. PR people

What do you reckon? Have I missed anyone off? Have I got the order wrong? Do you have a particular beef with traffic wardens or teachers, or lollipop ladies? If so, I’d love to hear from you.

Yours in lists

1. Barry
2. Newsdesk

Chrome dome

2010-01-14T17:34:00.004Z

I remember when I first heard the expression "why don't you just Google it?", as someone who studied English literature to O'level standard (and I don't care what they say, the GCSEs are clearly a lot easier than O'levels - so by today's standards, I've probably got an A'level), the verbing of nouns always raises the hackles. But you've got to see the funny side, Googling stuff does sound like the sort of quip Julian Clary or Graham Norton might come up with in reference no doubt to some sort of kinky bumsex.

But Googling has entered the national lexicon, and fair go, Google has single handedly revolutionised the Internet. And no more so than in the art of grumbleology. I remember the early days of the 'Net were a little bit hit and miss, I didn't have a computer back then, I had to use Internet cafes and searching for smut seemed to take an age, then the computer would crash or be blocked or something but then along can Google and all of a sudden looking up filth was like being able to use Stephen Fry and Albert Einstein as your friends to phone on Millionaire. Ask Jeeves never truly recovered did it?

The thing I struggled to get my head around was how the people at Google ever planned to make any money by simply giving something away that enabled people to discover porn. Well, I suppose that's why scratching a living selling advertising on a human resources magazine, and not a multi-billionaire with a permanent spot on Millionaire and Messrs Einstein and Fry on speed dial.

The thing is, Google is continuing to give stuff away and it's continuing to get rich. That's the crazy world of capitalism for you, and one that I suppose I'll never truly understand. I've been giving away Newsdesk posts for one year now and I haven't made a fucking penny. And it's not for want of trying.

The latest thing Google has given away is Chrome. Not the metallic element, that's already been invented by the Dmitri Mendeleev. No, Google's Chrome is something called a browser. That's the piece of software (which is the code that makes computers work) that lets you and me use the Internet. Again, I couldn't really see the point much in this invention, there are loads of these so-called 'browsers' on the Internet and they all seem to do the same thing.

Well, not so apparently, I was handed a copy of London freesheet Shortlist recently, I'm usually a Metro man as you know, but it was during the snow and so the trains were heavily delayed in London, so I started reading Shortlist (which I usually call Shitlist, because it's not really a patch on the Metro), anyhoo, it was advertising the Google browser Chrome, so I thought, in for a penny in for a pound. I have to say that the boffins at Google Towers have come up trumps yet again. Chrome is extremely quick, and I can have loads of different tabs open at the same time and if one of the tabs crashes, the rest all stay open.

Chrome is a clear market leader I would say, and that's Citizen Journalism. Chrome is without doubt the optimum browser on the market for looking at porn and for that Google should be applauded.

If you've not tried it, go and get yourself a Chrome and Google yourself into a frenzy!

Yours in technology

Barry

Bloody Des Walker

2010-01-13T19:19:00.004Z

The research into fantasy that is part of my Project Onan is yielding some fascinating insights, readers. Initially I just had it down as a cheap and enjoyable way to have a project of any description but I guess my innate curiosity and empathetic nature get people to tell me stuff.

I thought I knew a fair bit about fantasy from reading the work of the Contessa Alexia von Lichtenstein, aka Dave the Roofer, as regular readers might remember from this post. And then I thought I knew a bit more when I started reading Ellie's blog, but then she told me it was all true! And that made me feel a bit like Kenneth Connor. No the reality of it is, as I suspect it is with most things, that you generally don't know the half of it.

Take Mark Baker, one of my sales colleagues at work. He's a normal looking guy and the thing he seems to feel most passionate about is sport. He loves his football, his golf, his cricket, his rugby, the lot. But it turns out he loves them to a greater extent than most people. We were having a conversation about fantasy in the pub on Monday when he confessed that his most frequent fantasies while engaged in matters pre-ejaculatory were sports based. And not, as I initially assumed, like David Mellor, who liked odd looking women to put on football shirts while he nobbed them.

No, Mark actually fantasises about being a high achieving sportsman while he's on the job, be he alone or coupled to his long-term girlfriend, whose name I can't tell you because she's actually rather famous. I would tell you, but I assume even she doesn't know that Mark's pretending to be an 18-year old Michael Owen in the '98 World Cup, scoring that wonder goal against Argentina while they're doing the nasty. To be honest, I imagine she'd be pretty upset, although she might take solace in the knowledge that there are plenty of blokes out there who probably pretend that they're Mark Baker while they're at it, because she's a noted beauty. Odd, really, because Mark's not really a mover and a shaker. Apparently she's just very loyal. Plus Mark's in charge of the drugs.

So I thought I'd give it a go; try and fantasise about sporting achievement. I didn't do it Monday, because I watched the One Show and concocted a delicious little vinaigrette about being interviewed by that Irish girl whose name I can't ever remember about Judo and then us going out after the show and me showing her some holds, if you know what I mean. Maybe I'm weird but the best part of it was the next morning when Adrian Chiles found out and got really moody. (That was part of the fantasy, he didn't find out I'd been fantasising about her and then get really moody. Although he probably would; apparently he's in love with her. That's what Susie at work said, anyway.)

Nope, I saved this up for Tuesday.

Being a Notts Forest supporter, I had to trawl back a little way. There's not been much to shout about of late. I settled on a very satisfying goal from the FA Cup final of 1991. In a glittering career (that was ending in an alcoholic fug) Brian Clough had never won the FA Cup. Forest were up against a much fancied Spurs team, that contained one Paul Gascoigne (arguably the best player in the country at the time). Gazza was so ‘up for it’ that he threw himself into a wild challenge on Gary Charles some 10 - 15 yards outside the edge of the box. The challenge was probably worthy of a red card but Gazza stayed down on the turf, having ruptured his cruciate ligaments (the very injury that had effectively put an end to Clough’s playing career years before).

Gazza would never properly recover from that injury, and like Clough, would end his career a booze-addled wreck. It's a sad tale, but an all too familiar one, I'm afraid.

Anyway, back on the Wembley turf, one Stuart 'Psychic' Pearce stepped up to strike an impeccable, unstoppable, pile-driver of a freekick into the net (something I don't doubt he had predicted the previous day). Forest were one-nil up and Spurs had lost their best player.(By this stage readers, I was absolutely flying. I felt like I was on the pitch and I started to see exactly what Mark Baker was on about. God, it felt amazing! I actually had to hold off because I was enjoying it so much. I had to do that thing which is like the male version of pelvic floor muscles, like you do when you're trying to stop weeing! This was my big mistake. In my sexo-sporting ecstasy, I'd forgotten the outcome...)

Spurs rallied, continuing to dominate, Lineker had a goal disallowed (he's a swordsman, so they say), then had a penalty saved by Mark Crossley (only two keepers had saved penalties in Cup Finals, Crossley and Dave Beasant – who himself would later play for Forest. Good for a pub quiz that one). Eventually, in the second half Paul Stewart equalised and the game went into extra time.

(By now I was losing momentum. Even worse, I was getting unaccountably angry. Even worse, it was impotent rage!)

Spurs continued to apply pressure and won a free kick deep in Forest territory. The ball was whipped across the box and Forest’s England international defender Des Walker, 264 appearances during his first stint with the Reds and one goal to his name, turned the ball into his own net. Des Bloody Walker!!!

I shouted a string of swearwords and the neighbours banged on the wall. It was nearly midnight, to be fair.

So there I was almost out of time, close to missing my first Project Onan deadline and soft as a kitten!

I had to be quick. Ironically enough, I just thought about Mark Baker's girlfriend and I made it across the line with a couple of minutes to spare.

"You'll never beat Des Walker," they used to sing back in the Trent End. How true, how very, very true.

ND out.

Thirsty work

2010-01-11T20:36:00.003Z

Hello everyone,

first order of the day is to say hello to my lovely new readers, who have joined me on the recommendation of Mr London Street, who is rapidly becoming the Paul McCartney to my Cilla Black.

Speaking of Cilla Black, I remember hearing once that she had her handbag stolen and when the coppers got hold of it they called her up to come down to the station to identify and claim it, she did so. But there was a problem for Cilla, in that the handbag in question contained a large motorised dildo. Cilla was too ashamed to admit it was hers and so didn't get her handbag back.

Can anyone veryify this?

Anyway, I'd like to point out to my new readers that I don't only write about matters masturbatory, it just happens to be a little project of mine that suits my current financial and social circumstances. It's a journey of exploration, that's all, and one that I will leave behind when the 100 days is up. And I'm not only going to write about this stuff, I'll deal with other issues along the way too. I guess what I'm saying is that there's more to me than wanking. Take a little look back through the archive if you don't believe me, you'll find all sorts of stuff.

Anyway, there's not an awful lot of detail to share about the weekend's entries into the diary of Project Onan. Apart from the fact that, if necessary, you don't need much time (so long as you've got the back story plotted beforehand, natch). Saturday I sorted myself out early doors; it was all quite practical really. There was a bit of an interruption when the radio came on automatically and I was put off by John Humphrys interviewing Nick Clegg. Humphrys can really kill a vibe. Anyway, I switched the radio off and got back to a time when I was getting the tube a lot and this woman kept rubbing herself up against me every day. She was really attractive and I was really excited. I couldn't bloody believe it. I didn't dare to think she was using me for a cheap thrill until it had happened on two separate occasions. After that, I started making sure I got on the tube at the same time each day, and always managed to stand next to her, in the same place. Not once did she make eye contact, and that made it all the more erotic.

I can only use the first bit of that memory because I found out later that she had a prosthetic leg, and hadn't even noticed that we were touching. If that person's bottle of champagne hadn't accidentally smashed against her leg, god knows how far I'd have let it go. In the event it looked for all the world as if the limb was bring christened like a ship.

Am I the only person ever to get a stiffy because of a prosthetic leg rubbing up against me on the Northern Line? I seriously doubt it.

Sunday was a bit of a marathon. I got cramp.

Anyway, all this is by the by, because I was reminded of something that happened to me when I was about 14. Being an only child I had my own bedroom; it was just me and mum. I had a Philips midi-system that was my pride and joy, with a twin tape deck and a turntable and tuner. One of the things I realised as I lay in my room listening to my Bruce Springsteen tapes was that at a certain volume I could hear Mum approaching down the hall, but she couldn't hear what was happening in my bedroom.

For a 14 year old boy, this piece of information serves only one purpose. There was no lock on the door and I needed to know when I could use my private time wisely. More than once I was almost at the point of no return when I heard the familiar creak of the hall flooboards and I had just enough time to whip up my slacks and adopt a posture that suggested I was just listening to music.

Anyway, one time I cranked up the stereo, set the trousers and pants at half mast, lay back and embarked on a typical adolescent journey. It was absolutely magical, no two ways about it, and I was transported completely. However, when I opened my eyes, the first thing I saw was a pint of orange squash and a pile of freshly laundered clothes on top of my chest of drawers. They hadn't been there when I started, and that could mean only one thing.

In my haste I had misjudged the stereo volume and not heard Mum's approach. And, Mum being Mum, had not run away in horror but had realised that what I would be most in need of when I was finished was a drink and some clean pants.

I was bloody mortified, though. I couldn't look her in the eye for two weeks and I didn't touch it during daylight hours for a month. We've never spoken about it and I sometimes wonder if we ever will.

If we do manage to rebuild our relationship, perhaps I'll tell her how much I respect the practical way she dealt with it.

Peace

ND

Tired but happy

2010-01-08T21:58:00.002Z

Just a quick one tonight readers, in more ways than one! Yesterday’s instalment in the Onan Diaries was easy, what with Glynis Barber making a shock reappearance on our screens as Roxy’s mum in Eastenders. It reminded me instantly of classic cop show Dempsey and Makepeace. Seminal stuff.

And as for tonight, well… I was putting it off until bedtime but then, as I made one of my frequent trips to Mr London Street’s exemplary blog, I saw that he had nominated me as one of his seven blogs to watch during 2010!!! How about that? This guy’s got more than 900 followers. He’s got a photo that looks like a proper author’s shot. This is the big time.

I was so excited that, well, I went all improvisational. I didn’t even really need to think of anything at all. I was just buzzing. Thanks MLS, I wonder if this is the first time your blog’s had such an impact on one of your readers?

Pretty sleepy now.

BN

Your thoughts betray you

2010-01-07T09:58:00.003Z

I came up against my first obstacle in Project Onan yesterday, readers (don't worry I haven't been self congratulating while thinking about Darth Vader; it's for the purposes of illustrating the title, all of which becomes clear at the end). Here’s how it came about:

I found some of Gill’s old women’s magazines, you know the sort of thing. And, like I always used to, I went straight for the problem pages. They’ve always been the best bit for me, they stop me feeling so alone. None of them, unfortunately, were as good as the one that I see my follower Cathy has posted on her twitter feed, about a 32-year old woman who breastfeeds her dog.

I dunno about you, but there’s something darkly salacious about the way she writes of her dog’s pink tongue. There’s also something very amusing about the way she gives the full names of the two boyfriends who feature in the story. What goes on, eh?

Anyway, there I was perusing the problem pages – not, I should add, in a Project Onan kind of way – when I found a bit about sexual fantasies. This woman was saying how she always fantasises about someone else while she’s making love with her husband. Should she feel bad? Not so, according to the agony aunt; apparently this is all quite normal. The response contained the information that men most often call to mind actual memories of other sexual experiences when looking for a bit of a leg up, while women tend to fantasise about things that have never (and, let’s face it, probably will never) happen to them.

I have to say, there’s something in that. I can’t speak for anyone else but I’ve often raided the memory banks in the past and, the older I get, the more I will be forced to, I should imagine. Perhaps it’s the innate practicality of the male sex. Your memories, as Jim Bowen might have said were he some kind of darts-based sex counsellor, are safe. They can’t be taken away from you, unless you get the galloping dementia (see a few posts back). Safe is good. Safe is reliable, because you know the outcome.

Personally, even when fantasising about something fictitious, I’ve always felt the need to include a cast iron back story in the plot. If I don’t do that I tend to get distracted. Let me give you an example: Say I’m fantasising about, oh, I don’t know, getting it on with a couple of lingerie models in the back of a limo driving round the streets of Talin. There has to be a good reason why I’m there, otherwise why would I be there? I wouldn’t just go there for that reason, it’s just not me. That would nag at me while I was trying to get on with the meat of the plot. So, before I’ve even started, I’m backtracking. Turns out I’ve been sent over on a work trip. I should only be in town for a couple of nights. Talin’s supposed to be a fun place, I’ve been told by a colleague, who went on a stag do there a few years ago. The party of ten lads on this stag were picked up at the airport in a limo and there were two strippers in there who gave them a little show on the way to the hotel.

But I’m not the kind of guy that goes whoring, although in this fantasy I’ve decided to give it a whirl. Why is that? Perhaps it’s because the girl I was in love with has recently died and I’m not ready for another emotional commitment But I do need some sex. Finding myself on a trip to a strange town where beautiful women are available on a commercial basis, no guilt involved, I’ve decided to test the water. Ok, so that’s that. How do I go about asking my colleague where to sort out a pair of sexy ladies in the back of the limo, though? I tell him I’ve got a stag do to plan and could he get me the details. Bosh.

What time does the flight land, though. If it’s a morning arrival, I’ve probably got a meeting during the day that I have to go to before I check into the hotel. I’m not going to be getting jiggly with two lovelies ahead of a meeting, getting my suit all crumpled and my hair all messed up. Possibly turning up with one or more of the liquids of love besmirching my apparel. No, I’ve gone straight from work in the afternoon, caught the early evening flight and it’s about 9pm when I get into the limo with the two girls.

Now, you wouldn’t get into a limo and not have a glass of champagne, would you? Well, I wouldn’t, anyway. The pop of the cork, the foamy bubbles spilling over my hands. No, over the girl’s hands; a nice little piece of foreshadowing imagery that I’ve chucked into the tableau. But how much am I going to have? Not too much, I don’t want to take away the performance, now do I. So maybe I’ll just have a couple of glasses. Mind you, will that make for an elongated period of awkwardness. I’m guessing Estonian hookers aren’t that great at speaking English, and I don’t even know what’s Estonian for ‘beer’. Maybe it should just be the one glass. Ok, so that’s that sorted.

I’m just about to get down to the nasty and I find myself wondering: Who the fuck is driving this car, where’s he going and is he watching us here in the back or is he keeping his eyes on the road? The last thing I want is to end up in a car crash while in the middle of some saucy behaviour. Because then the police get involved, possibly the medical services and then, inevitably, I’ve got some guy from the Consulate to deal with. And then I’d be all over the Metro in a few days. Plus I wouldn’t make my meeting, and I’d be in trouble with the boss and probably sacked for using a legitimate work trip as cover for a visit from a couple of high class call girls. In the best case scenario I get to keep my job because of my recent bereavement but I become a laughing stock in the office. But how do I find out if the driver’s doing his job properly? If I don’t know the Estonian for beer, you can bet I don’t know how to ask the girls if the screen between the front of the limo and the main bit at the back is two way glass or not. But I don’t want to bang on the partition and spoil the moment. So I’ll just have to swallow that one, I suppose. Either way, it’s bound to put me off my rhythm a bit, you don’t want a wondering mind in these situations, do you.

Back in the real world, of course, I’ve been on the go for five minutes. I’ve sorted out a reason for going, my flight itinerary and my drinks menu. I’ve had a mild panic attack about an accident that may not happen in a fantasy that I’m having trouble getting started, I’ve lost a girlfriend about whom I presumably cared deeply and I’m nowhere near the good stuff. Take a step back and you realise that I’m masturbating while thinking about personal tragedy and logistics. And that kind of thing would probably give sex counsellor Bowen something to write a bloody thesis on.

No, these fantasies are much overrated, which is why, I suppose, men tend to stick to good old memories. And here’s the problem I came up against. For my go last night I was flicking through the filing cabinet of love when I came across a cherished moment in my sexual history; the first time I was brought to the point of no return by somebody else. An awakening, if you will. I won’t tell you what her name was; suffice it to say it wasn’t Jane Jarvis or Fat Alice. I was 13, she was 14 and it took place under a slide in the park. It was a head-bending moment; I felt some things I’d never felt before. I went under that slide one person, and I came out another person. The world looked different, everything seemed sharper.

So here’s the thing: If you’re sexually recollecting something that actually happened to you that retains an intense emotional resonance, perhaps because it was the day that your life changed forever, are you having the kind of thoughts that get you on the sex offender’s register and the front of the Daily Mail because the girl you’re thinking about is under age? It’s a tricky question, that one. If it’s a memory, it’s legitimate, right? You’re not thinking about you now and the girl then, you’re thinking about you then and the girl then. But it’s still the now you that’s thinking about the then girl. And there are some, I’m sure, that would count that as justification enough for chemical castration.

It was upon reaching this point in my internal monologue that I realised I had lost the momentum. All of a sudden I was struck by self doubt. Was I a deviant for thinking these things? Is there something furtive and unnatural about my desires? Was I afraid to take the questioning any further? Are my eyes too close together? Surely, I thought, it won’t be long before they can record our thoughts and we get betrayed by our own memories. The subconscious could become like one of those neighbourhood watch schemes you get in totalitarian states where kids report their parents for deviating from the party line. Jesus Christ, I’m going to have to start hiding my thoughts from myself, I thought. And then I wished I hadn’t thought it, because if I had thought it, my subconscious would know about my plans.

It took me a little while to calm down, readers. I don’t know, maybe the twelve drugs of Christmas have messed with my head a little bit. After an hour and a couple of cans of cobra, though, I was relaxed and even able to chuckle at my own silliness. I remembered that I still had to get back to the task in hand. I couldn’t give up on day six, after all. Mind you, I kept it all very normal, believe me.

Peace

Baz.

One hundred days of solitude

2010-01-05T18:26:00.004Z

A new year, a new decade, a new start. I've decided that 2010 will be my year readers. It will be the year that I make a difference. Strike out and put my marker on the world.

It's nearly one year since I started out on my quest to become a Citizen Journalist. I have decided to avoid the easy post of doing a 'Best of', so popular with a number of my peers. I'm not going to go over the same ground. I'm going to forge new territories and push back the boundaries. There are leaders and followers, but I am a lone wolf. Albeit a lone wolf who currently has 44 great followers - each of whom I adore more than I can possibly describe.

I was thinking about what project I could next sink my teeth into. It needed to be something that didn't totally consume all of my time and money. I'm back at work now, which is bad enough in itself, but it also sucks up a lot of my creativity.

Unfortunately, my muse Dippy is still out of the country, saving Platypusses. In fact, she won't be back in blighty until mid-February at the earliest. I suppose it's for the best, I found the 12 Drugs of Christmas project quite challenging. It's not that I didn't enjoy taking drugs and being part of something positive like climate change, but it wasn't mine. I didn't have ownership of the art and art is a very personal persuit.

My new campaign is an extremely personal persuit. I have decided to take it upon myself to make sure I do one thing in particular just once per day, for the first 100 days of the year, then not make a particular point of NOT doing it for the next hundred.

For the first 100 days of 2010 I will be worshipping at the alter of the Nordic God Onan.

Just once per day, I will see to it that I carry out the self-sacrifice of self pleasure. Having a wank is something we all take for granted, although not Cliff Richard, if you believe the PR. I reckon he does though, probably while thinking about Tim Henman. I personally doubt that I'd be able to raise things with the image of Tim pumping his fist in celebration. But it takes all sorts, I suppose that's the great thing about being a human being. That and opposable thumbs. Which come in very handy whilst wanking.

Anyway, I've got to say the first five days of the year have been a walk in the park, what with coming off the drugs and Dippy being out of the country, I've barely had to even bother with porn. I did seek inspiration from my excellent follower Ellie's blog and yesterday I had a look at some fake topless shots of Kelly Brook on the internet, but nothing too anotomically revealing.

Apparently men find boobs attractive because it reminds us, on an animalistic level, of an arse. Bear with me readers, I'm not making this up! When our forebears started to walk around on two feet, mankind's take on rumpypumping changed, we started facing our mates, but the females with the bigger chests got more mates because our cavemen ancestors were still drawn to the cleavage. Which begs the question, why aren't there more homosexuals? In fact, if we likes arses so much, wouldn't that be counterintuitive in terms of breeding and hence evolution?

I dunno, but all this talk of boobs and bums has started the fires burning!

I'm off for a quick one off the wrist readers.

Happy New Year!

Baz
x

Wolfgang in sheep's clothing: Part Two

2009-12-31T17:14:00.002Z

Ok, so:

The drive back to Mum's was pretty quiet. Every time I tried to start a conversation with her she ended up bringing it round to Roger. How Roger and her are getting quite serious now. How they're thinking of taking it to 'the next stage', whatever that meant. I found it hard to believe that she could be talking about the physical side of their relationship. I doubt my mother would give me notice that she was planning to reawaken the slumbering beast of her carnality. And, frankly, I would not want to know about it if that was her intention. So I supposed that she could only mean marriage.

"Your Dad's been gone a long time, Barry," she said. "And Roger's a far better man than he was."

I couldn't really argue with her on this one. My Dad was a first class shit, as regular readers will know. I count myself lucky every day that I don't take after him in the least. Not that the comparison makes Roger a good man, of course. I'm pretty sure Pol Pot would edge it over my Dad. I bet he never ran off with a lollipop lady. Although Pol Pot's Lollipop would make for a good tune, I suppose.

Anyway, the last thing I wanted to hear about was Mum banging on about hitching her cart to Roger's wagon, so when she said: "I had hoped you might be pleased for me..." I just put my ipod on. I needed to focus, and I'm afraid Mum just had to be a casualty of war at that point.

Back at the house Roger was there to greet us, wearing a smug expression that seems to be a permanent fixture. He has the most slap-able chops I've ever seen on a man. Take Nicky Campbell, multiply his slapability by that of Piers Morgan, add the corresponding value for Michael McIntyre and, well, you're not even close.

We went inside and he insisted that the first thing I did was to introduce myself to his mother.

"And here we are, Barry," he said, "just as I promised. Two fine men sharing Christmas with their mothers. I'd like to introduce to my dear, dear mother, Greta. Mother, this is Barry."

She said:

"He looks like a skinhead. Is he a skinhead?"

Roger said:

"No, no mother. It's quite the fashion these days for men who are losing their hair to shave what's left off altogether."

"Like on Eastenders?" she said.

"That's right, Mother dear. Like on Eastenders."

I nearly hit him. I don't think I've ever seen an older looking woman in my life. I'd say she looked old for 96, really. Anyway, I shook her hand, which felt like paper, and went upstairs to my room. At least they hadn't taken down my Forest posters. But my old room made me feel claustrophobic. Like I'd never left, except here was me, the bad side of 35, lying on a child's bed in a room decorated with pictures of Forest's 1980 European Cup winning side. It felt a bit like dwelling on past glories, if you know what I mean.

So in the end, I bolted. I went downstairs, told Mum I was heading out and went to the pub. It was full of kids. But I found a table in the corner and waited it out. By the time I got back the place was dark and quiet. At least until I tripped over Roger's mum's walking stick. It wasn't the most dignified of entrances, I guess. When you're lying on the floor in your Mum's house, a little over refreshed, at my age, looking up the stairs at your Mum, her new bloke (the tip of whose cock you think you can just about see under his short dressing gown) and your Mum's new bloke's mum (fortunately in a long dressing gown) well you could look at it as a new low, couldn't you. Unfortunately, before Christmas Day was out, I was to look back on this moment as a golden memory of happier times.

I didn't get up until after one, by which stage the others were already on the sherry. There was no option for me but to take the proffered glass from Roger, I needed to steel myself.

"So Barry, did you have a good night last night?" he said, with a smirk. "I trust you slept well. We've been waiting for you. We were hoping to be able to open some presents but I'm afraid the wonderful turkey your mother's been preparing is now ready to be consumed. So we will have presents, ahem, presently." My mum actually laughed at this.

Dinner was wasted on me, if I'm honest, despite it containing all my favourite constituent parts. Roger even had the ability to spoil my food. As I sat pushing sticky toffee pudding round my plate I noticed from the wall clock that it was ten to three. I had a brainwave.

"Come on then," I said. "Let's go and watch the Queen's Speech."

"The Queen's Speech?" said Mum. "You hate the Queen's Speech."

"Not any more," I said. "It's important, isn't it Roger."

"If you say so, Barry," said Roger.

I insisted that they all move through to the living room and we switched on the telly. I fucking hate the Queen's Speech, Mum was right. But this gave me the opportunity to talk serious nationalism. And I have to say, the Queen did not let me down. It was all about the Commonwealth this year, which looked like nothing so much as a desperate, last ditch attempt to keep people focused on something other than all of the shit that's currently going on right here at home. I think we all know that the days when Britain was a serious international power in it's own right are long gone. I bet the Chinese ambassador was just quaking when she got called in to be told that her country shouldn't have executed that bloke this week. Not that we're doing anything about it, of course, just registering our disapproval. Speaking as someone who went on the stop the war march, I'd have thought that the Government would know that registering disapproval is pretty much pointless.

So, as the national anthem came on I stood up and put my fist to my chest. The rest of them looked at me like I was completely mad.

"Come on Roger, stand up!" I said. "Don't you believe we should respect our nation? She's everything to us!"

"I don't feel the need to stand up, Barry," he said.

So there I was standing up in my Mum's living room, fist to chest, singing the National Anthem all on my own. I was starting to feel it all slipping away a bit. The last thing I am is a monarchist. I can't stand the Royal Family. But I'd got so far into this that I couldn't get out. I made one last attempt after the speech was over.

"Well Barry, what did you think of that?" said Roger.

"It was a bit... ethnic, wasn't it?" I said. "I mean, they had a bloody steel band. That's not British, is it. That's now what we're about, is it Roger?"

"Actually, I adore the sound of the steel band," said Roger. "I used to play in one."

"What the bloody hell for?" I said. "You're white!"

"Oh for crying out loud just shut up!" shouted Mum, and then burst into tears. "I don't know what's going wrong with you, Barry. You turn up here looking like a bloody football hooligan. Your face is all gaunt, your eyes are dark. You could be on drugs for all I know. And you've developed the most... odious outlook. It sickens me, Barry. How could you be so prejudiced."

"It's not me, Mum," I said, "It's Roger. He's a facist! I'm just trying to show you!"

"HE IS NOT A FACIST, HE'S A VERY NICE MAN INDEED." Mum screamed. "Now, get out, I've had enough. I'm ashamed to call you my son. I don't want anything more to do with you," At this point, she ran from the room, sobbing. I'll be honest, it wasn't my finest hour.

I turned to Roger, who was smiling. He walked over to me and put a hand on my shoulder.

"Barry, Barry, Barry," he said. "When are you going to learn. Your mother can't stand those views. She can't stand them. You're going about it all the wrong way, let me tell you. In some ways, I admire your vigour, your verve. We need more like you. But if there's one thing we've learned it's that you have to change, you have to modernise, you have to become like the people you want to appeal to. How do you think we got a Labour government? All this..." here he waved a hand at my haircut, and my 18-hole, cherry red DMs, "all this is yesterday's news. We can't be like this any more."

"Eh?" I said.

"We're politicians now. We want to get elected. You see? We can't be seen as thugs, it just won't do. It won't help us."

"But..."

"Look, I'm with you, I really am. For me, Hitler was the greatest statesman the world has ever known. He had a plan. A vision."

At this point, my head was spinning. And then Greta piped up:

"Ah, the dear, dear Fuhrer. You know for five months in 1943 I had the great, great honour of being one of his secretaries. Deutschland über alles mein Sohn."

"Deutschland über alles meine Mutter," said Roger. Then she stood up and the pair of them started singing O Tannenbaum! I couldn't fucking believe it.

I made a run for it, stopping only to grab my bag and a present with my name on it from under the Tannenbaum. As I left the house I suddenly remembered my voice recorder! In the middle of all that I'd completely forgotten to switch it on! Right then and there I had what I was looking for, and it had slipped straight through my fingers. My Mum, the woman I loved most in the world, hated me and had told me she never wanted to see me again. Meanwhile, she was shacked up with a neo Nazi and his mother; a woman who could probably be tried as a fucking war criminal! That's not what Christmas is supposed to be about.

I checked into a cheap hotel and, once in the room, opened my present. It was from Mum. The label said: "Dear Barry, I know how much you want to be a writer, so I thought this would come in useful. Lots of love, your Mum. xxx"

It was a thesaurus.

My feelings of loss and guilt were Brobdingnagian.

Happy new year, everyone

Barry

Wolfgang in sheep's clothing: Part One

2009-12-30T12:30:00.002Z

I don’t know about you, readers, but I had a shit Christmas. In fact, it would be no exaggeration to describe the whole experience as a complete disaster. The bottom line for anyone who can’t be bothered to read on is that my mother has disowned me.

Looking back on it I suppose it was a bit of a bad mix. Coming off the twelve drugs of Christmas was probably not the best time to be making my last, big push to out Roger to Mum as a fascist. But I thought, in my addled state, that it would be my best chance, all of us under one roof at Christmas. It’s a difficult few days at the best of times, so I was hoping to capitalise on the season’s traditional tensions.

As you know, the idea is that I persuade Roger that I, like him, am a neo Nazi and, once I have his confidence, make a secret tape of his evil ranting on my little voice recorder, play it to Mum and send him packing once and for all.

In preparation for the whole thing, to finally get behind Roger’s veneer of respectability, I shaved my head. I tell you what; it really does make you look more intimidating. I noticed as I was walking down the street that people were giving me strange looks. You can imagine how this was making me feel having spent the previous twelve days taking the hardest drugs known to man.

By the time I reached the station on Christmas Eve I was almost shitting myself with fear. And then I actually did shit myself, just a little bit. The drugs have played havoc with my insides. So I ran to the toilet and when I came out of the toilet I got a nosebleed. People were properly moving out of my way. One woman grabbed her kids and ran. It was horrible. And this on Christmas Eve, of all days. Season of goodwill! When we’re supposed to be looking after our fellow men, people saw me in distress and legged it.

I didn’t have time to worry too much, though, as I had Roger’s destruction on my mind.

I got on the train and managed to get a seat, which was great. After a couple of cans of Cobra (I’d brought them with me. One of the great barbarisms of our national rail network is the onboard lager selection) I was feeling a little bit calmer. I stuck my ipod on and settled down for the journey.

Mum met me at the other end. She said:

“Are you alright, love? You look terrible. And what in God’s name have you done with your hair? I know it was thinning a bit on top, but you didn’t have to go and shave it all off. You look like one of those football hooligans from the eighties.”

My hair is NOT thinning on top, readers. It’s a fact that my Mum is five foot three and I’m only a shade under six foot. She hasn’t seen the top of my head since I was eleven. I don’t know what the bloody hell she was talking about.

“Roger couldn’t come with me to pick you up,” she said. “His Mum doesn’t like being left alone. She’s remarkable, really. She’s 96, you know.”

I should point out here that I don’t much like old ladies. I had a very nasty experience with one once. And not like that, if any of you are thinking mucky thoughts. I’m not Wayne bloody Rooney.

No, I was visiting my Gran in hospital. I loved my Gran, and I’m not afraid to say it. Unfortunately she was well on the way to losing her marbles at this stage and, in many ways, had reverted to a kind of childhood. Certainly a lot of words were coming out of her mouth that I had never heard her say. I guess that generation was never really able to shake off the prejudices of their upbringing. It’s sad.

It’s like my Great Aunty Em. When I was about eleven, just as Mum was bidding farewell to the top of my head forever, I went round to see Great Aunty Em. It was the fashion at the time for boys at my school to wear St Christopher’s medals round our necks. Great Aunty Em opened the door and instead of giving me a mint humbug and a wet kiss she narrowed her eyes, pointed at my necklace and said: “That’s not one of them Stars of David, is it? Cos you’re not coming in if it is.” How’s that for open mindedness. Looking back now I realise she must have been pretty stupid. Not many kids up and convert to Judaism at the age of eleven, after all. There was only one who did at my school. Poor old Aashif. His parents didn’t speak to him for a month. He had to go and live with Mr Cohen, our guitar teacher. And that sparked a few rumours.

Anyway, Aunty Em didn’t have it easy looking after her husband, Terry. He went soft in the head and started rolling his shit into little balls and putting them into an empty Maltesers box, which he’d offer to visitors. Disgusting, really. He was bloody good at table tennis, though. County champion, or something. That’s how he’d want to be remembered, I think, not as some mephitic old goat playing in his own filth.

Anyway, I was visiting my Gran in hospital and she was sharing a room with an old lady called Elsie. Every time the nurse came in, she’d shout at Elsie (in a nice way, because Elsie was deaf as a brick):

“HOW ARE YOU TODAY ELSIE? ARE YOU OK?”

And then she’d turn to me and shout:

“SHE’S A HUNDRED AND SEVEN, YOU KNOW.”

And I’d say:

“You don’t need to shout at me, Nurse, my hearing’s fine, thanks.”

And then my Nan would whisper to me:

“There are lots of darkies in here, aren’t there.”

And the Nurse would say:

“My hearing’s very good as well, you know, Mrs Deakins,” and then she’d tut and walk out.

And that’s kind of how it went, round and round and round. Anyway, one day, I was visiting Gran and Elsie, who had been asleep when I arrived, started to moan. She said:

“Help…. Help me.”

Naturally I pretended that I couldn’t hear her, it was a very quite moan, so I was within my rights. I don’t need to be administering first aid to an old lady. Even though I did go on a course when I was in the scouts. But she kept it up:

“Help me… Help me….”

It was a pathetic sound really, and she was trying to reach for the panic button. After a few minutes I got up and went over to Elsie’s bed. I shouted:

“ARE YOU OK, ELSIE? DO YOU WANT ME TO CALL THE DOCTOR?”

And she said:

“Help me…” and carried on trying to press the button.

So I said:

“DO YOU WANT ME TO PRESS THE BUTTON AND CALL THE DOCTOR ELSIE?”

And she said:

“Help me…”

So I pressed the button. As soon as I’d done that, she sat bolt upright, laughing and said:

“He he he he, now you’re in trouble.”

And I bloody was, too. I didn’t get to see Gran again until she was put in the home. And by then she’d gone completely. It wasn’t much fun in there. I tell you what, if I lose my marbles, give me the pillow and don’t let up ‘til my feet stop twitching.

Anyway, I’ve gone right off piste, haven’t I. I was supposed to be telling you about what happened up in Lincoln with my final big push to out Roger. Unfortunately I’ve got to go see a man about a dog, so I’m going to have to give you the low down tomorrow.

Hope you had a better one than I did.

Love

BN

A very unholy trinity

2009-12-21T19:32:00.004Z

I am scared readers, it's not just a drug-induced paranoid psychosis either. Dippy has revealed the final three drugs of Christmas. She's gone just a touch mental I think. They are seriously hardcore.

We had magic mushroom tea last night and, well, things didn't quite go to plan I don't think. In short, nothing really happened. Dippy got a bunch of candles out and put on some Gregorian chant and we stared into the flames. We were naked readers, I don't mind telling you that, there's nothing wrong with the naked body, but having the two Larsons grinning over at me was quite off-putting. And, well, Dippy is off-setting her Carbon footprint, so the heating wasn't on and so it was quite cold, that's all I'm saying.

We sat around in a circle for about an hour, no one said anything, and nothing happened. The flames of the candles kept flickering and the Gregorian chant kept chanting. Dippy's nipples went like battleship rivets, and she was covered in goose bumps. But nothing really happened, no out of body or mind experiences, no doors opening into a whole new perception reality. Just the occasional fart befunking the atmosphere.

Eventually we were faced with the very uncomfortable truth that, like it says in the song, the drugs didn't work. (I know it says in the song "don't work" but some of them do, but not this one.)

Anyone who's anyone that's dabbled in Dr Uggs will know the feeling that you've been had by a dealer. It comes with the territory. Who among us hasn't bought a bag of potpourri from a traveller's urchin when the fair comes to town?

But Dippy went absolutely balistic, totally going off on one about how the dealer had 'fucked up Christmas', 'ruined everything'. I tried to calm her down by pointing out the inherent irony that the arts project, which was set up to demonstrate that religion is a drug which mankind can break, was broken by a false narcotic itself. That she had put her faith in a Camden-based shaman who had peddled nothing but hollow promises. "Fuck off, Barry," she said, "sometimes I get the impression you're only here to look at me tits."

'Fair cop, ' I thought as I looked at her tits. Mesmerized for a second I was, but the spell was broken when one of the Larsons got up and announced he'd get on the phone to his dealer and get in some supplies.

Well, Dippy jumped into life at this point and announced that the final three drugs of Christmas would have to be pretty fucking mental.

I'm totally crapping it readers, all the drugs so far have been fairly manageable, but over the next three days I get the feeling we're in for quite the ride.

Very shortly, Dippy will be doing what MLS warned against just the other day, she'll be opening up the advent calendar and finding a deeply suspicious looking crack behind the door. Jesus, like millions of you out there, I saw Whitney Houston on the X-Factor. If crack can do that to Houston, I don't stand a chance.

Then tomorrow Dippy has lined crystal meth. FUCK. I've got no idea what it does, but in the words of Super Hands out of Peep Show, it's quite moorish apparently.

Then on Christmas Eve itself, when supposedly the Arch Angel Gabriel Batistuta came down from Heaven and told the shepherds about the baby Jesus, we'll be doing our own version of the nativity with PCP - that's Angel Dust to you and me.

I thought that we had Angel Dust at school, it was a kind of super sweet candy that crackled on your tongue, but I've been put right, I think I was possibly mixing it with Angel Delight and Star Dust. Maybe that's what PCP is?? I dunno, but apparently Angel Dust makes you feel invincible, much like having about 12 cans of Cobra, the only difference is, it doesn't knock you out. Far from it.

I don't think that I'll be any kind of fit state to post over the next three days. But if you see a story on the news about a middle-aged, yet youthful looking, Citizen Journalist jumping off the Millennium Eye - it'll probably be me.

But know this readers, I did it out of love, and not just because Dippy's tits are to die for.

Yours in love

Barrington E Newsdesk
x

An apology

2009-12-20T14:43:00.004Z

OYG readers, I've just finished reading Dave the roofer's rant. I feel I need to humbly apologise to the blogosphere for the lowering of tone caused by his foul-mouthed tirade.

I know you're reading this Dave. You've sunk to new depths, you really have. As if sleeping with my ex wasn't bad enough, you then you knocked her up, now you've insulted my craft.

Insulting the blogosphere is beyond acceptance. I've changed the log-in details so hopefully there'll be no more unwanted visits or posts from the roofing fraternity.

Thing is Dave, I wish you'd ranted before I'd ordered C.N. Mindham's Roof Conversion and Loft Conversion (paperback) on Amazon.ca.

I hope you're enjoying the minus 45C Edmonton winter by the way!!!!!

I also feel I should offer a particularly heartfelt apology to Mr UberGrumpy. Not just for Dave the roofer's attack, but also because I wrote something that made you follow me, only to write something that made you unfollow me and publicly let the world know. I think I know how Jesus must have felt the night Judas fingered him to the Romans.

If you've not seen Uber's blog, I suggest you check it out, he might not be following me, but I still support him. Uber has a host of blogger awards to his name and has generated (at the time of blogging) a followership of 60! His blog isn't a patch on Mr London Street's, however, he does feature a soft porn picture of an attractive lady on his blog posts, so it's still worth having a look.

I would have blogged sooner, but I've only just come around from my opiate-induced comaette. After the speed-based activities of Friday evening, Dippy and I slowed things down on Saturday with some laudanum. It's quite an old fashioned drug readers, and like strict discipline, sexual repression and ingenius feats of engineering, it tends to be associated with the Victorians. These days you can usually find some in old people's homes - along with strict discipline, sexual repression and ingenius feats of engineering.

I can't say I particulalrly enjoyed the laudanum, but at least I got some sleep. I'd give Phyllosan a crack, as it seems to be doing MrC the power of good, but Dippy is in the driving seat drugwise. I've got the feeling she's building up to something quite major as she's insisted we take it quite easy with today's drug of Christmas.

We're going to have a few cups of tea tonight readers, sounds quite civilised doesn't it? Tea made Britain great ater all. Although, Dippy did go out to pick up the 'shrooms from a bloke she knows in Camden, so (your)God only knows what'll happen.

The last time I had the mushies, I spent eight solid hours talking to Steve's cat, Phillip. Phillip was unusual for a couple of reasons, first he was a she. I'm not talking about a transexual cat, although that would be quite intriguing. No, it was just a girl cat that Steve had called Phillip, although the reason was unclear and Steve did get a bit defensive whenever questioned on the matter. Second Phillip was odd because she had six toes. As you can probably well imagine, a six-toed trans-gender feline was quite the oddity in Lincoln, even more so after imbibing hallucinogens.

Anyhoo, peace out blogosphere and, once again, please accept my apologies for Dave's rant.

Love

Bazzler
x

A word from Dave. And, no, there's no fucking picture

2009-12-19T22:15:00.003Z

Right, I’m not one to fuck about, as I understand Baz has let you know in his previous posts. And I’m here to have a virtual word with Mr Ubergrumpy, a man who can’t even be bothered to locate the keystroke necessary to stick a fucking umlaut up top of his ‘U’.

The umlaut on the word ‘über’ is like the roof on a fucking house. That’s to say – or ‘ie’ as ‘ubergrumpy’ would probably rather have it – it is FUCKING NECESSARY. Alright? You do not want to be a roofless person. It does not make for peace and fucking harmony. And it goes without saying that, as a roofer, I take exception to some cunt coming along and leaving the roof off a fucking house.

It’s not like I ain’t seen it before. You only need to go to Kefalonia and you’ll see it all over the fucking shop. But there’s a reason for that, and that reason is that they stuck a fucking roof tax on all new buildings years back, which meant that every twat building a house out there pretended to put an extra floor on and left it without a roof. In all my fucking life I have never been anywhere so fucking tragic as Kefafuckinglonia. I went out there looking for work and what did I find? A land where roofs are fucking taxed! What a bunch of cunts.

Anyway, I suppose I’d better explain what I’m doing here, apart from what I’ve already said about wanting to have a virtual fucking pop at Mr Ubergrumpy. I’m Baz’s best mate, which you lot know already. Anyway, I keep up with his blog to make sure he’s ok. I care, that’s the fucking truth. And just because me and Gill are together these days don’t mean that I’d leave him hanging. And before you ask, yes, I follow him under a pseudonym. Not Ellie, either. Christ, does that sound like me?

Now, I’m not a blogging man. Truth be told blogging makes me fucking sick. Blogosphere? Cuntosphere, more like. Take me, right? I’m a roofer. I am, without wanting to blow my own trumpet, which I don’t need to do on account of Gill, who is more than happy to blow my trumpet every tea break (she stays in the van), no without wanting to ‘big myself up’ as the urchins are saying these days, I am the fucking Michelangelo of roofs. And before you start in with your fucking comments, Michelangelo did ceilings, not roofs. It’s a little known fact that, before he started off painting fat kids with wings, Michelangelo was an apprentice to one of his nation’s leading roofers. He didn’t last long, because he was a fucking cunt. Not because he was gay. Contrary to what a lot of people thing, roofers don’t hate gays, and there are some gay roofers who I would trust with any job I had. No he couldn’t fucking concentrate, that was his problem. Anyway, his gaffer told him: ‘I think you’d be better of with ceilings, Mickey. And that, as they say, was that.

So maybe you’d be right to say that I’m not the Michelangelo of roofs, because that would make me a shit roofer. But I’m just trying to put it in a way that the cuntosphere can understand. Truth is, I’m the Dave the Roofer of roofers.

Anyway, my point is that, as a roofer, and as the best of the fucking roofers, the fucking Gandalf of roofers, I do not take kindly to shitty-arsed untrained interlopers. Would you, for example, get some cunt who knew jack shit about roofing to do you a roof? I should hope fucking not. And if you did, you’d fucking deserve it when that shit came crashing down on you when you were bang on the job with your missus on that one night in a thousand when she gives you carte blanche (or one night in one, for me).

So my point, as I was saying, is that people do what they’re good at. Or they used to, until the fucking internet came along. Jesus Christ, that Tim Berners-Lee’s got a fuck of a lot to answer for. Bloggers? They seem to think that, just because they have the capability to publish something, that the something they publish is worth fucking reading. That’s fucking internet democracy in fucking action. What a lot of catshit.

And I count Baz in this, I really do. I mean I can’t fucking believe that people are interested in the floppy shit that sad little monkey spunks up all over his computer. I really can’t. I’m staggered, to be honest with you. But that’s the way of things in the cuntosphere, I suppose. I mean, we’ve got writers, see? People who are good at writing are pro fucking writers. Like me and the roofs.

But at least Baz doesn’t do things like Mr Ubergrumpy. You see, it strikes me that, if you’re going to stop following one of these blogs, you might as well just stop following it. Disappear into the night like some fucking spirit of the silent darkness. But not Ubergrumpy. No, you see Mr Ubergrumpy fancies himself not just as a writer, but as a critic as well.

You see Mr Ubergrumpy decided to make his feelings known. He said the following:

‘Hmmm. Bye’.

And this from someone who breaks Fitzgerald’s cardinal rule, probably without even knowing what Fitzgerald’s cardinal rule even is. If Mr Ubergrumpy wants to be a writer, he should avail himself of Fitzgerald’s cardinal rule. FSF said you should never use an exclamation mark because it’s like laughing at your own jokes. And what does Ubergrumpy do? He points out his jokes and demands a laugh for them, like the worst fucking chick lit book I’ve ever read, and I did a stint reviewing chick lit books for the Daily Telegraph under a pseudonym, so I should fucking know.

Here’s one example:

“a good marriage is built on solid foundations (snigger) and moreover there's a festive tradition to be upheld here.”

Right, well, do we really need you to indicate that there was a joke there Mr U? I do not fucking think so. I think you know that, Mr U. I think you know that your readers are able to spot the double meaning in there. What I actually think happened here is that you realised your gag was a balding thatch so you decided to reinforce it with a request for approval. And what, after all, is a blog if it’s not a request for approval? Daddy not love you? I mean, have you read Barry? Jesus, if his old fella had stuck around he wouldn’t be such a cockless fuckup!

Here’s another:

“P.S. The very lovely Vodka Logic has posted my 'New Santa's Hit' (watch that punctuation) at her sumptuous blog. Complete with tasteful illustrations!”

Jesus fucking Christ, is Mr U so concerned that his joke’s too clever for his readers that he needs to tell them to read it again? Are his readers that stupid? I should hope fucking not.

It comes to something when you’ve got to beg for sycophancy, doesn’t it? Fuck me.

Oh, and Barry’ll be well pissed off when he finds out about this, but fuck it. Gill had his login details. She was reading this from the off. Why do you think she dropped her kecks for me?

He needs to be told, and so do the rest of you.

Dave the Roofer.

speed makes your dick shrink but you don't really care but you do care but you don't until it's too late then you care but then it's too late

2009-12-18T21:02:00.006Z

I worked in Butlins when I was a student, just in the summer break it was, Skegness. I was a waiter, not in a cocktail bar, I was struggling for work that summer, but needed to get away from Mum, I needed to get away from Lincoln too and Trent poly (your) God I only wish I'd met Mr C back then. Seven days a week we worked, seven, no rest for the wicked. Up at six, off to do a morning shift, you start off with like one or two tables of six to eight and you slowly work your way up to a station of ten, ten tables of six to eight, that's a lot of fucking grub to serve up and you've got two hours to serve up to 80 breakfasts too, 80, eight, zero, and you don't just rock up and dish out the Cornflakes, I mean you do, you do dish out Cornflakes, but they have the option, the campers, the diners, they get to say what they want, but you already know what they want becasue they choose what they want the night before, Cornflakes, Sugar Puffs, Snap Crackle and Pop, porridge, I can't remember all the options, but they get a choice, then you take them tea or coffee, tea or coffee or orange or all three and water, tea and coffee and orange and water and toast, plenty of toast. You got your toast from the toastman. I. AM. TELLING. YOU. The toastman was without doubt the man of power at Butlins. Not only could he fuck you up, fuck you backwards and sideways and all ways by not giving you the toast on time, honestly, you could have a perfect shift, a perfect shift of delivering the breakfasts and then the toastman woulnd't deliver. That was it, that was your tip gone. And the tips were what we lived on, wages were like £2 per hour, and we did two three hour shifts per day, for seven days a week, but the waiters earned the big bucks at Butlins, more than the red coats, because the waiters got the tips, with a station of ten tables of eight, and a tenner per table, which was by no means uncommon, that was you sorted with an extra £100 on a Friday night, and that's when you needed to know the toastman. After you'd finished your dinner shift, after you'd been asleep all day after breakfast and you'd been to slop out the mush that was passing itself off as food, starters, mains and puddings, teas and coffees, you'd get your tips. Then after you wished the campers well and thanked them all for a wonderful week, a wonderful week of laughing at their jokes and of telling them about your life, and how you're a student and need the money to help pay your rent, you get back to the chalet, you get your glad rags on and you get yourself out to the Enchanted Castle. Before 8pm, the Enchanted Castle is a great big warehouse of a venue full of kids playing video game machine and going nuts on Coke and lemonade, after 8pm the Butlins staff make an orderly queue to see the toastman, it's not the first time they've been in his company that day, but this time you don't want toast, you want something all together more uplifting, something that is going to get you through the hours of mindless Europop while you try in vain to get yourself laid with that girl from Scunthorpe and so you get yourself a couple of wraps of pink champagne, a glucose-enriched amphetamine. It's speed Jim but not as you know it, it's the kind that keeps you drinking the £1 bottles of turbo cider until the early hours, until you pass out from exhaustion, then wake up and six am and do it all again. Morning campers, Hi-di-fucking-hiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiii

Journey to the centre of the K hole

2009-12-17T19:36:00.002Z

Hey readers, I tell you what, please ignore all that stuff I wrote about wanting you to take acid. I had the worst stomach ache of my life for five hours and I was a right old mess. I re-read what I’d written and, wtf? What a load of old bollocks! I’m embarrassed, to be honest with you.

Hello to my new follower Kate, btw. Nice to see you but, take my advice, steer clear of Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds!

The thing is, this arts project is getting a bit out of hand. But when it comes to Dippy, I’m just a guy who can’t say “no” and the sixth drug of Christmas was quite something else. I’m not sure exactly what though. Jesus drugs are quite dangerous, dangerous but quite the experience.

And I have just had quite the experience, I can tell you that for the price of nothing. I am just back from what is known in the parlance of those who know as the ‘K-hole’. I did intend to blog about my first experience of ketamine, otherwise known as K, as it happened, but I was too fucked to type. Actually, out of my face doesn’t even come close – I spent 20 minutes thinking I was nothing but a little white box with the letter P on it. WTF?!

Madonna was wrong by the way – K is no way better than ecstasy. Then again, she is about 70 or something and has probably done the 12 drugs of Christmas more than once, especially since she used to go out with gangsters like Ice T.

Anyway, I digress, I was going to tell you about my experience in the K-hole. It was actually pretty scary from start to finish. Dippy reckons she’s done K loads, so I followed her lead. Apparently K is quite hard to get hold of on the street these days, but Dippy said we’d be able to get some at this squat party. It was one of those ones where you have to phone a mobile number an hour before it starts to get the address, which was some disused warehouse on the A406, near the big Staples.

It was like that party where I met Dips, it was like a drugs sweet shop. Everyone was fucked out of their minds. There were tramps with dogs on string smoking crack out of beer tins, prossies touting their wares and little kids of about 14 running around selling acid, I’m not touching that again in a hurry. There was even a stall set up in the corner, just selling drugs openly. It was brilliant, just a great big two finger salute to The Man, like we were all saying, “you can’t keep us down, because we’re free thinkers! You can’t keep us boxed up, because in here, we are no longer in your world and we can access the truth!” So we bought three grams of K from the shop and Dippy was all like “let’s just do it now,” but I didn’t want to taint my first experience in such a weird vibed environment, so I said we should go home.

Lucky we did too – the pigs were outside waiting for the party to die down enough to charge in and beat everyone up probably. I thought they might shake us down, but I outsmarted them. I hid the wraps of K in an open packet of smoky bacon crisps I had. They didn’t stop us but it would have been ironical if they had – smoky bacon – pigs. Lol!!

So back at home Dippy racked up two fat lines of K. Apparently you can’t die or overdose on K. It’s actually a horse tranquiliser, and they used it as a field anaesthetic in ‘Nam, for that very reason. That you can’t OD on it, not that it’s a horse tranquiliser. They didn’t have horses in ‘Nam. Probably because they were all eaten by the Viet Cong.

Anyway, K is a dissasociative, which means it makes your mind feel as though it’s outside of your body. Far out man! But [your]God that stuff is awful! It hits you pretty much instantaneously and you just lose control of your motor functions. It’s like you’re a passenger in your own head, watching your body move around like a Thunderbirds puppet. It’s a really disorientating experience and it makes you feel sick. I had to crawl on my hands and knees to the lav so I could worship the porcelain altar, because I swear to [your] God I thought I was sitting on the ceiling. Dippy didn’t even make it that far, she puked down the side of the sofa. It was like the room was spinning so I just had to ride out the rest of the trip laying on the bathroom floor. I don’t even know how long it lasted ‘cos time just seemed to loop in on itself, like it was infinite or something. And just as I was coming round again Dippy said we should do another line, and then she said that having sex on K is a really weird experience. So I saw my chance here readers, I said we should try it then, you know, for the sake of research ;-) afterwards we could always say it was the drugs talking. Dippy was up for it which was brilliant because I’ve been wanking like a trooper lately and I really needed a chance to properly clean out the pipes. But as soon as we got our kit off (Dippy has amazingly pert knockers BTW!) it all went wrong… Now I’m not talking brewer’s droop, everyone knows that happens often after a night on the sauce and it’s nothing to worry about, but this was different. Suddenly I felt as though I was in the centre of a Roman amphitheatre, about to do the deed with thousands of people watching from the stalls. And the crazy thing is that I could see myself from the crowd’s eye point of view, and there at the front of the crowd was Dan, looking at me all accusingly. I know none of this was really happening but it was like I was a passenger in my own nightmare, while myself was acting of its own accord. It gave me stage fright, my knob shrunk to an acorn, Dippy got the hump and the moment was ruined. I needed a couple of Cobras to get myself back together but it’s a bit awkward with Dippy still.

I’m never doing that again.

The Truth

2009-12-16T16:36:00.003Z

Hello readers. I thought I’d take this opportunity to come and speak to you. Dippy’s not really with me at the moment. I mean, she’s here, in the room. Her body’s here in the room, but she’s somewhere else. Her self, you know? She’s been wiggling her hands for two hours and giggling. Wiggling and giggling. Before that she sat and stared at the table without moving for an hour. And that’s her thing. And that’s beautiful. Fucking beautiful. We really need people like Dippy, she’s so… alive to the moment. She’s a smile, a real smile.

I can’t help it, though, my mind just goes and goes and, well I guess I’m just an explorer, you know? Right now, though, I’m not exploring so much as evolving. I’m not the person I was. Literally, my mind has expanded to the size of the universe and that’s because I’ve found The Knowledge.

No wonder governments close the door to The Knowledge with their laws. If everyone found it there’d be a fucking revolution. Not a violent one, that’s not the answer at all. But a spiritual revolution, a revolution of thought. I mean, if a policeman came in now and said to me: “you’re under arrest” I’d just say: “Only in your world.” And that would be the truth. Because where I am now, they can’t touch me. They can only touch my body.

I’m not the person that I used to be. Lennon fucking knew it, I tell you. That man could see – really see, with his mind, not just his eyes. You know that song Tomorrow Never Knows? That’s it!

It’s like this: if you draw a stick man on a bit of paper, that stick man can move sideways, and he can move up and down. That’s his world, right? That’s what he understands. For the stick man there’s nothing but up and down and side to side. Up and down and side to side. Up and down and side to side. Up and down and side to side. Up and down and side to side. He can’t move off the paper, he’s stuck on a bit of A4 for his whole life. The paper’s his prison.

He has no concept of actually moving out of the paper. He’s got no in and out, only up and down and side to side. But if you showed that stick man how to move out of the paper, if you showed him that there was in and out as well as up and down and side to side, well you’d blow his fucking mind. Yes, my friends, indeed you would blow that little stick man’s paper brain wide open.

And that’s what we all are, we’re stick men and women and the world, and our life – they’re the paper prisons we’re stuck in. We only see the dimensions they let us see, because they want to keep us down. Keep us working, keep the truth from us. But I’m the stick man who’s come off the paper, you see? I’m out and I’m never going back. There’s a hole in the paper world where Barry used to be but Barry’s gone. Barry found his way out.

It’s so funny, I can remember Barry the person that existed before The Knowledge. But it’s not like it’s me, it’s like an ancestor, a distant thing, a sense of a thing, like where instincts come from. That person was defined by his limitations, his strictures. But I’ve become part of the infinity now. The mind is infinite, and it’s inside you! That’s the whole thing about perception: You think that you’re finite, because of the dimensions you understand. But actually, within the physical finite bounds of the body there is something infinite. You can only get out by first going in. Get it?

We used to know. As a species, I mean, we used to know. The Knowledge wants us to find it because only by different beings finding The Knowledge can The Knowledge grow and find more beings. That’s why it puts its doorways all over the world, and the Shaman, the spiritual leaders (not the band), they knew where to find them (maybe the band did too). The mushrooms, the herb, the cacti, the doorways are plants! What could be more natural than that? Believe me, The Knowledge wants to be found and when you find it, you become it.

But we’ve forgotten the truth. The people in charge, they don’t want us to find The Knowledge, they want to keep it for themselves. So they’ve made the plants illegal. How can you make a plant illegal? When you stop and think about it, you have to realise it’s the most ridiculous thing imaginable. A plant just is. You can’t allow or disallow something that just is. There it is growing out of the ground – it’s fucking life in its purest form. It comes out of the ground, out of a seed, it’s FUCKING BEAUTIFUL. You kill it, but it grows again. They want to make LIFE illegal!!

But they’re wrong, and if you want to eat that plant and find infinity that’s as it should be. I mean, this isn’t a drug I’ve taken. I thought it was a drug when Dippy gave it to me. But that’s what they want you to think. DRUGS ARE BAD that’s what they tell you. But this isn’t a drug, that’s my point, this is the fucking TRUTH!!!

They call it Acid, right? And that sounds like it’s bad. But it’s not bad. You know what though, it is a trip, like they used to call it in the 60s. It’s a trip, a one-way ticket to the reality of things. They say that people get damaged by it, that it fucks with their minds. Well, hello? Of course it does. Imagine if you were blind your whole life and then suddenly you could see. That would fuck with your mind, too. All that information going into your brain that wasn’t going in before would cause a few problems. So don’t go on to me about acid casualties, because the sad truth is that not everyone’s brain is robust enough to cope with The Knowledge right away. That’s all it is, readers. They’re not damaged – they’re just taking things in.

Hang on a minute, Dippy’s calling me.

Blimey, my sense of time has been really altered. I’ve just spent 90 minutes watching words move round on yesterday’s Metro. That’s some funny shit!

Anyway, where was I… Yeah, the truth. The Knowledge has always been and will always be, that’s how it is. There was nothing before The Knowledge, which isn’t to say that there was an absence of something before The Knowledge, more that there was no ‘before The Knowledge’ because The Knowledge has always been. See? And The Knowledge is a giant, speeding accumulation of experiences from the whole of time and infinity. You go through the doorway and you find the truth. All it asks in return is that you offer the sum of your experiences to it so that it can grow. And now it has Newsdesk in it and it’s a tiny bit bigger, a tiny bit brighter. But it is time and infinity and the universe and all the things we have these words for.

I guess if I was trying to explain it to someone who hadn’t come through the doorway, I’d say it’s a bit like Wikipedia. Like a sort of cosmic Wikipedia. Except while it’s an accumulation, I’m not sure if it’s actually a reference of accessible facts. Knowing The Knowledge is The Knowledge, if you see what I mean. I don’t know if you can just go up to it and say: “what’s it like to be a rabbit?” and then immediately experience what it’s like to be a rabbit. It’s still pretty new to me. That would be cool, though.

But, thinking about it, I guess the Web is a bit like The Knowledge. We’ve made the Web in its image. Accidental? I don’t know.

What it most definitely is not is God, or Allah, or whoever the fuck the religions try and make us think it is. It doesn’t care about stuff like that. It’s not a person, it’s not something you can understand unless you really embrace it. The religions, they give you just enough of the truth to make the lie credible. FUCK!!!

And here’s the funny thing, right? All the religions go on about when you die you find eternity and all that bollocks. Wrong! If you die without finding The Knowledge, you’re fucked. I’ve found it and it’s taken me with it on its journey through forever in every direction. So when I die, when my body dies, I’m still part of The Knowledge. So you find eternity through life, not in death.

I haven’t figured out yet if I need to keep going through the doorway, taking acid, to keep the connection going. Or if that’s it now, I’ll just constantly update. Like iTunes. I’m guessing this is it, I’ve changed. But I’m just going to take another one, just in case, to keep the door open a bit longer. I’ve got a lot to learn.

By the way, the whole time I’ve been typing this, I’ve been wearing a top hat.

You’re my readers and I love you so let me tell you this: If you only do one thing in the rest of your lives let that one thing be coming through the doorway. Whatever way you can, come through and find The Knowledge. Get some acid, whatever, just do it. I want you to live in The Knowledge, like I do. I want you guys to come with me. The Knowledge wants Mr Coleman’s gags, Mr London Street’s wry observations, Mess’s lovely French thoughts, Ellie’s dirty stories, all of it. It wants to be all of us and for all of us to be it, too. Come with me.

I want Mum to come with me too. Not Roger, though. I’m not sure I could ever persuade her to do what you have to do to come through the doorway, so I’m thinking I might just slip a tab in her dinner one night. I can’t bear the idea of her dying without becoming part of the The Knowledge.

Right, I’ve got to go now. We’re going to listen to some Jefferson Airplane.

Peace, really everyone. All the peace in the world to you and yours.

Get some acid, please.

Love

ND

Get back on the Horse

2009-12-15T17:08:00.002Z

I didn’t get much sleep last night readers. Dippy and I broke one of the rules of the 12 drugs of Christmas arts project, we kept on taking the third day’s drug well into the fourth day. That’s the thing with coke though, you really can never quite have enough, unless you’re The Who bassist John Entwhistle.

Dippy and I stayed up all night playing Guitar Hero with Larson, snorting lines of Charlie from the back sleeve of a copy of Pink Floyd’s Dark Side of the Moon. It feels like my body has returned to Earth, but my mind stayed on the dark side.

I’m grim readers, grim, fidgety and full of self-loathing. The exact opposite of how I felt about 24 hours ago, when I was ready to Rage Against The Simon Cowell. Part of the cause of my funk is the fact that Larson pointed out Rage Against The Machine are signed up to Sony BMG which owns Syco, which is Simon Cowell’s company that owns the rights to the X-Factor. So me and Dippy have inadvertently indirectly added to Cowell’s wealth.

Oh what I’d give for a night off, a nice Fray Bentos and maybe a couple of Cobra, but I can’t have a night off readers, Dippy won’t let me, she is committed to the 12 drugs of Christmas project, adding to the doubt and turmoil is the knowledge that the fourth drug of Christmas is brown readers, golden brown, H, horse, scag, I'm going dancing with Mr Brownstone, I’m talking about HEROIN!

I’ve never done heroin before, not after what it did to Zammo McGuire, I just said “no”. But now I can’t say “no”, not to Dippy.

Dippy is my heroin.

Dippy is my heroine.

Dave the roofer once told me that he chased the dragon and it was like returning to the womb. He said he felt so secure, so safe and protected, so uplifted too as though the world’s troubles had slipped away and he was in heaven itself. Sounds flippin’ great readers, a bit too great, like curry flavoured Frey Bentos.

I’ve seen Trainspotting though and I can tell you for what, even though Dave the roofer thoroughly enjoyed his time as a smackhead, I am not looking forward to the experience. I thought I had better write up today’s blog post as close as possible to the moment when Dippy sticks me in the arm.

She’s cooking up as I write these words readers, a dessert spoon bent over a lighter. I’ve got Larson’s belt around my bicep pulled tight, it’s quite tricky typing with just one hand, but I’m determined to keep on blogging right up to the point the needle goessssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssss

She don't lie, she don't lie, she don't lie

2009-12-14T18:06:00.009Z

Word up dudes, foe max-ee-mum eeeeffect with this post, I strongly suggest you click this link and then read it and weep blood.

FUCK YEAH! I am well pumped readers, I tell you for why. Because I'm fully up with the Bruno Brookes, and I'm sticking it to he Man!

How? Yeah, well, I knew you were going to ask me that. You know the X-Factor? It's, well, I hate everything about it. Yep, I know I signed up the office sweep stake, but I've never really liked it, not since that Will Young beat the poor lad with the speech defect. I can't remember his name, oh hang on, Gareth Gates wasn't it? Yeah, I wonder what happened to Gareth? Well, I seem to recall he lost his stutter actually, almost immediately upon coming second, the whole country was conned by the jumped up gimp, then he ended up boffing glamour babe Jordan before disappearing into obscurity. You've got to admire my good friend Pete Andre, he didn't disappear into obscurity after boffing Jordon. He disappeared into absurdity, maybe, but not obscurity.

Anyway, sorry, I got a bit side-tracked there. Dippy and I have spent all day today downloading Rage Against The Machine's Killing In The Name Of. Someone started a Facebook group encouraging people to rail against X-Factor winner geordie Joe McElderry by buying the RATM classic in an attempt to stick it to the corporate scumbag Simon Cowell by pipping his new pipsqueak popstar to the number one spot this Christmas.

It's literally all over the blogosphere and the Twittersphere, and it's probably all over the MySpacesphere, only I'm not on MySpace, because that seems to be for boys who want to be rock stars and girls who want to be porn stars. I'm not sure about the Bebosphere as I'm also not on Bebo, as Dave the roofer told me that the police scan Bebo looking for people who aren't quite what they seem, as Bebo is mainly for kids, and people on there pretending to be someone they're not are almost certainly kiddy fiddlers and the police take a fairly dim view of that sort of thing, so even if you're on there for all the right reasons you still might get a visit form the Paedofinder General.

The RATM idea a great campaign isn't readers? It's people power embracing social media to make a difference. I was a bit miffed when Brookes took issue with me in the Yorkshire Grey, but so what, someone's got to stand up and Rage Against The Simon Cowell Money Making Machine. FUCK YEAH.

Anyway, I've gotta go readers, Dippy's just racked up a couple more white lines.

On the third day of Christmas my true love gave to me some Colombian Marching Powder! Sing it, YEAH.

COME ON!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

The 12 drugs of Chritsmas

2009-12-13T16:04:00.004Z

I'm writing this blog post from Dippy's sofa and the vibe is totally mellow. It's day two of my new soulmate's festive arts projects: the 12 Drugs of Christmas.

I know that traditionally the 12 days of Christmas follow the 25th, but this art man, and besides, Dippy is going back to Oz until the New Year - she's taking part in this really worthy eco-project to help protect the environment of perhaps the most charismatic of all of God's creatures, I use the expression loosely as we all know that the earth's creatures were created via Charles Darwin, although if ever there was a creature to question the validity of Mr Darwin's selection process, it would be the duck-billed platypus.

These harmless freaks of nature are being hemmed in on all sides by Mother Nature's rapist, Mr Mankind. Dippy is using her 12 drugs of Christmas art project to off-set her carbon footprint, as we plan to spend the entire 12 days without electricity in the flat and we'll share bath water, although we do have a small generator in the garden to power the stereo.

Yesterday afternoon I got back from Dubai, I was pretty shattered, but really excited to be seeing Dippy and to be finding out about the project. The 12 drugs os Christmas is piece of satire readers, it likens Man's need for religions as an addiction, but the point of the 12 drugs of Christmas is that we will take a different drug, one each day, in the 12 days running up to Christmas, at the end of which we will go cold turkey on Christmas day (a direct reflection and reaction, juxtoposed against the hot turkey that the majority of so-called Christians will be eating on Christmas day itself), thus breaking the cycle of addiction and religion.

In a paraody of symbolism of the messiah the first drug of Christmas was ecstacy. This drug was first introduced to the world clinically as Adam, so it seemed a particularly appropriate starting point.

We had a selection of pills and even some powdered MDMA. For the purity of the project we have decided that only the day's chosen drug may be used, reflecting the inabililty for the religions of the world to unite and combine. Although, admittedly, I did have a Cobra or two before the effects of the pills made the alcohol taste like crap.

I've had my time on the Gary Abletts readers, so I was ready for the drug's effects. But something about taking it with Dippy was quite magical. I felt euphoric rushes and tingles across my scalp, down my arms and into my finger tips. We were as one in Dippy's room listening to Orbital and Banco de Gaia, I tell you what, I think we broke down a few social boundaries, but in all honesty I can't really remember what they were. Possibly because at midnight Dippy introduced the second drug of Christmas.

The second drug of Christmas was marijuana. It's not my fav drug as all it really tends to do is make me either fall asleep or throw up, I'll tell you that now, but Dippy has plotted this pilgrimage of narcotics carefully, and after the intense highs of ecstacy, we needed the physical depressant effects of the holy smoke itself.

After a while I was sick, then I feel asleep. Woke up this morning with a raging thirst, I really fancied a Cobra, but I've been committed to the cause and so Dippy and smoked a wee bifta or two, then went for a walk in Battersea park. We spent a while meditating underneath the Peace Pagoda overlooking the river. It was well romantic, apart from when some kids on BMXes started pelting us with stones.

I was about to go and sort them out with some judo, but I was too zen, besides, I've heard that sometimes some bigger more serious youths use the kids as provocateurs to a muggery. They get the younger kids to find a likely looking target out in the open, then provoke them into a chase, then when the target runs after them, they lead them a merry dance through the park and right into a trap, where upon the victim is set upon.

I'm many things reader, but I'm no fool. We went to PizzaExpress and I had an Etna - it was a poor move on reflection Dippy's a vegetarian (natch) so went for the Fiorentina. Still, it's early days and she's still keen.

I have no idea what tomorrow's drug is going to be, Dippy is keeping it a secret. But as today has been so ultra mellow, I'm expecting fireworks.

Got to go now, Dippy's run me a bath with scented oils. Can't bloody wait, I'm not counting my chickens, but I'm pretty sure the oily bath is my starter for ten of the main course of rare aromatic Aussie bird and a side order of best stuffing ;-)

Merry (12 drugs of) Christmas everybody!
xxx

Fox in a box

2009-12-11T16:10:00.002Z

It’s been a while since I did any current affairs stuff, what with how crazy my life’s been recently, but my head was turned this week by the outcome of the Meredith Kercher trial in Italy. Does anyone else wish we’d had John Fashanu reporting on this case? Imagine how much more light hearted the whole thing could have been every time he said ‘Perugia’.

My, but it’s a tough one, isn’t it, readers. On the one hand, and I don’t want to perpetuate any tired national stereotypes here, but the Italians are bent as a nine bob note, aren’t they? You only need to look at their football team to know that! All that diving and praying to the referee for leniency, with their Alice bands and their long, shiny hair. They do have the best kit, though, according to Dan. He likes the three-quarter length sleeves, because it shows off their forearms.

I read a book about an Italian detective once and he had grappa for breakfast every day and had to bribe someone to get pretty much anything done, even to get a telephone line installed. It’s just how they operate out there. Whaddayagonnado?

On the other hand, the Americans are just so bloody sanctimonious. Foxy Knoxy’s parents are clearly in denial and they attribute her pre-interrogation cartwheels to youthful exuberance and energy. Now I’m not so old that I don’t remember having youthful exuberance and I tell you what: if I’d been about to be interrogated by Italian coppers who’d been on the grappa all day over the brutal murder of my flatmate, I’d have been bloody shitting it; innocent or not. In fact I’d probably have been shitting it worse if I was innocent, what with their reputation for corruption. You wouldn’t want to go down for something you didn’t do, right?

Not Knoxy, though. Cool as you like, upon learning that her flatmate’s throat had been slit in a macabre sex game, she throws a few shapes. Not exactly broken up about it, was she. How about a little respect, eh?

So her folks have described the judgement as shameful for the whole of Italy, which is a bit strong. Do they include the Pope in that? Or the Pizza? Silvio Berlusconi? (He’s been pretty quiet about the whole thing. He was probably the one spinning the bottle back at the flat!! Lol!!!) No, they’re way out of line. In fact, Knox’s parents are forgetting rule one of crime investigation: There’s no smoke without fire.

Fuck it, she’s guilty as sin; you can see it just by looking at her. It’s the eyes. But you wait and see: the Yanks are going to call in the big guns and, before too long, she’ll be free as a bird and signing a book deal about her ‘ordeal’ in a ‘backward European Jail’. She’ll probably get her own chat show, a fact that makes me sick. After all, old Teddy Kennedy, who passed away this year, was universally loved. Back in the day, though, he got pissed, drowned a young woman and then went home and didn’t tell anyone until the next day. Did he get chokey? Did he bollocks. They love posh killers out there.

The US is full of nice people but they don’t half throw their weight around on the international stage. And then we go and send them Gary McKinnon, the disabled hacker. Now, I don’t think he’s actually disabled, I just heard the newsreader on BBC radio describe him that way. I think he might have the Aspergers Syndrome, which is where you moan and hug strangers but you’re really good at counting, like Dustin Hoffman in Rain Man (fine, maybe he deserved the Oscar. For my money, though Tootsie was a much better film). Apparently Aspergers also makes your wee smell funny; the human body is a weird and wonderful thing, readers.

Or, in McKinnon’s case, rather than being good at counting, you’re good at sitting around in your pants all day smoking weed and playing on your computer. Harmless enough, of course, but Uncle Sam wants to throw the book at him, because Uncle Sam likes throwing books at people because no-motherfucker-fucks-with-the-goddam-USofA-don’t-you-eyeball-me-now-boy-are-you-eyeballing-me-mayo?-Mayonaaaaaaiiiise-sir-yes-sir-objection-your-honour-move-to-strike-objection-overrulled-you-want-the-truth?-you-can’t-handle-the-truth-oh-oh-say-can-you-see-by-the-dawn’s-early-light-watching-every-motion-in-this-foolish-lover’s-game-haunted-by-the-notion- somewhere-there's-a-love-in-flames-plead-the-fifth-from-my-cold-dead-hands-the-world’s-greatest-democracy-almost-forty-percent-of-Americans-are-clinically-obese-and-most-of-the-rest-are-plain-old-overweight-shoulder-to-shoulder-we-stand-you-guys-would-all-be-German-now-if-we-hadn’t-saved-your-limey-asses.

Thank God I had Super Mario Kart, that’s all I can say, otherwise maybe I’d be off to get water-boarded as well.

That’s the problem with the Septics. It’s one rule for us and another one for them. So I’m with the Blackshirts on this one (and you won’t hear me say that very often). They’ve got Knox bang to rights and she’s lucky she is in Italy and not back home in the US of A, otherwise she’d probably be on death row, waiting for her last taste of cherry pie like mom used to make.

‘Mom’, Jesus. ‘Mum’ is a perfectly good word. What do they need ‘Mom’ for?
Did you know that the tune for the American National Anthem was actually written by a church organist from Norwich? A nice, British tune, that.

Peace

ND

Arab strap

2009-12-10T17:44:00.003Z

OYG readers, Dubai is AWESOME and AWFUL both at the same time. A bit like Cheryl Cole. (Only kidding Mess, lol.)

Today, I visited the world’s largest mall, then I went to see the world’s tallest man-made structure, then I went skiing on the longest indoor ski slope (which looms up from the back end of one of Dubai’s several gigantic shopping centres, gleaming in the blistering Arabian sun), then I went to see one out of two of the only seven star hotels in the world and then went to look at the world’s largest indoor aquarium, built in hotel, built on an artificial sand-bank shaped like a giant palm stretching out into the Gulf that supposedly you can see from space, then I had a Sex on the Beach with Dan!

Not the same type of coastal-based rumpo that saw Michelle Palmer and Vince Acors hauled before the local beak, not siree, as Dubai is an emirate in a Muslim state, so shagging out of wedlock is strictly condemned, especially if it’s al fresco nookie (even if it is in the dark and no one is around, and the only way people can see it is if they’re looking specifically for it using special night-vision cameras).

Thankfully, the people in charge of Dubai have waived the usual Muslim laws against booze, hence Dan I were able to indulge in the cocktails. Christ only knows what the authorities would make of two men having an actual sex on the beach ! lol.

We’re going to see the real Dubai tomorrow, so that means going off to the gold and diamond souks, Dan says he’s going totally bling! It’s well cool, we hired a Humvee on the corporate card, honestly I think with the impending merger, Dan doesn’t really give a fig anymore.

After visiting the souks, Dan reckons we can spend the afternoon dune-buggying, and then maybe put in a round of golf on the perfectly manicured and luscious links – it doesn’t matter if the dune buggying over runs, Dan says, as the entire 18 holes are floodlit. A floodlit golf course, mental, I don’t even like golf!

I can’t help but think there must be something a bit wrong with Dubai. I dunno, all this excess can’t be good can it? It’s like that film the Black Button, where the protagonist is offered $10m if he presses a black button, but he also knows that pressing the black button will kill a stranger. It’s a proper dilemma isn’t it? I mean, the guy isn’t told who will die, will it be someone old who’s nearly dead, will it be someone who’s only just been born, maybe it’d be someone famous, funny, evil, boring?

We were driving home last night and saw bus upon bus of Asian men all off to do night shifts working on the skyscrapers. I saw a documentary about Dubai a while back, apparently all these workers come over from India and Sri Lanka and they have to pay their own way, and end up in debt to the construction companies, who keep hold of their passports so they can’t leave, so they’re kept like slaves.

It’s not unlike how the Egyptians knocked up the Pyramids really. Maybe it’s all that sun and sand that encourages excessive construction projects and slavery. It reminds me of the infamous Family Fortunes incident: name a dangerous race? The arabs.

Maybe in thousands of years archaeologists will uncover and discover the lost treasures of Dubai. They won’t find the mummies of the pharaohs though, they’ll probably dig up diamond encrusted Bentleys and massive water parks.

One thing they won’t find is Barry Newsdesk. I’m off back to blighty flying through the night on Friday to see Dippy on Sats and get cracking on the arts project she’s got lined up. She won’t tell me what it is though, I can’t wait, I’ve booked the rest of December off to participate.

Sleep easy

Barrington

Deeply Dippy

2009-12-07T19:37:00.003Z

Ella, alla, wau and peace be with you my friends.

First up, soz for the lack of posts. I've been discovering myself, or rather re-discovering my true inner self.

Last week was a proper mind scraper readers. I've become a slave to the corporate machine of late. It's Christmas party season and I was (I thought) cutting lose and getting festive. Last Thursday I went to get my hair done at Mr Toppers - £6. You get one chance to ask for a style, the hairdresser usually pretends to listen, then gets the clippers out and gives you a short back and sides.

But last Wednesday, I really connected with my stylist. She was a gorgeous, passionate, Australian environmentalist, taking a year out traveling the world. She as working in Mr Toppers to save up for EasyJet trips throughout Europe. She really listened to what I was saying when I described what hair cut I wanted, I said I didn't want clippers, so she gave me something she called a "feather cut" she said she was taught it by a First Nations she'd met in Praha. Wtf?

I tell you what though, she didn't use the clippers, just danced her way around my head, with the scissors flicking at ten to the dozen. She leaned right over me to do the fringe, I was glad to be wearing the gown, because Little Barry put in a surprise appearance - I had to think about Mrs Bradley to make him go away.

I gave her a tenner and told her to take for eight. I decided there and then that I wouldn't be waiting the customary ten weeks between cuts until the next time I'd pop in to Mr Toppers.

Later on that day I went out with everyone from work for the Xmas booze up. Some shitty West End wine bar, with a set meal of dry roast turkey and rock hard stuffing. The only upside to the whole depressing affair was the fact that the bar served Cobra.

Well, you know me readers, I don't need asking twice. I got stuck right in. There was little I could do to lighten my mood though, I couldn't stop thinking about the girl in Mr Toppers. I made a half-pissed, half-arsed attempt to chat up Suzi, but she wasn't really into me, I think she might have a thing going on with Dan. She must have something, because she hasn't sold an ad for seven months. She seems unsackable.

At one point my sales nemesis Mark Baker decided that he'd latch on, I couldn't shake him, he was a bit maudlin readers, I think he's been a long time without the love of a good woman. He didn't half go on about his Mum. Now, I think it's great that he loves his Mum like that, but really, it's a bit weird when the only point of reference for womankind that a middle aged man keeps making is his own mother. Weird readers, and a bit sad. The straw that broke the party's back though, was when Baker told me about the time he'd been to Vietnam and shot a buffalo with a rocket launcher.

"I'm not proud of what I did Barry," he said, "But I'd split up with my missus and I just wanted to know how it felt."

I told him I was off to the loo, but I just walked out vowing to jack it all in on Monday. I was making my way to the station and heard a familiar voice shouting my name from the other side of the street. It was Larson, a Kiwi temp from our place that I told you about a few weeks ago. I asked him if he'd been the work party and he told me that as a temp, HR had told him he couldn't go. I said that it was a bit rubbish, but then he said that technically he wasn't really a temp anyway, that he'd actually been sacked, but was doing shifts for his pal, also (confusingly but conveniently) called Larson, so he hadn't really wanted to argue the toss with HR.

We struck up quite a lively conversation about work, seems Larsen's been around the office a few times, he had an interesting tale to tell about Suzi. We nipped into a boozer for a pint or two, then he invited me a house party he was going to in Stoke Newington. It was the complete opposite direction to the one I was heading, but I thought what the hell. You're only young once.

(Your) God readers, when I walked in it took me right back to a squat party I'd been to with Dave the roofer back in 1999. The music was banging. Here I was ten years later, it was really invigorating to know that I was still able to move with comfort in the subculture. I can't be pinned down readers. Try it. See, you can't.

Check out this link of Larson's pal Barusha69, he is AWESOME. He was DJing at the party. Pretty soon I was immersed in the vibe, I did feel a bit out of place in my suit, but Larson knew everyone, and I mean EVERYONE. He handed me some monkey bullets. I think he did a treble drop readers. A treble drop!

I did a double and I was flying, I don't mind telling you. (Your)God the people at party were so much more welcoming than the wankers at my office, Dan, Suzi, Mark, they're so fake, so plastic, so bought into the bloody rat race.

I got dancing with with really gorgeous girl, long brown hair and luminous face paint, it wasn't sexual though readers, not like a boozey West End nitespot. We had a trust. Not sexual, but we connected, in harmony we were, like crazy dancing moths to the techno flame.

Then it dawned on me, I knew this girl, I knew I knew her, I said "I know you," but she just kept smiling, smiling and dancing. Arms in the air, hair flying everywhere. I was transfixed. It was the girl from Mr Toppers, "you gave me this," I shouted pointed at my hair "the feather cut. You gave me a stiffy," I shouted, but she couldn't hear. She just leant and and shouted, "Ah, mate, it's you isn't it?" "Yeah," I said, "it's me."

Well, to quote the one of the greats, we danced all night under electric candlelights. Although, the Mr Toppers girls wasn't a transvestite. I'd seen down her top at Mr Toppers, she had the kind of breasts that don't really need a bra. You know, small ones.

As the light started making its way into the Hackney skies, the party died down. I'd taken the precaution, like a good number of my colleagues, to book Friday off to sleep off my hangover, not that I felt like sleeping now. I was buzzing.

We all piled into a cab and went back to Larson's place in Shepherd's Bush. The cab ride over was like gliding on a flying carpet, a claret Ford Focus with a man from Lagos at the controls. London minicab drivers always play Magic FM and their gear changing is the stuff of majesty. If you could bottle their gear shifting skills, you could use it lubricate shifting tectonic plates. Fuck me, readers, no more earthquakes. Think about it.

She told me her name, Serendipity, "but people call me Dippy," she said with a smile. I was in love, I don't mind telling you. LOVE. When we got back to Larson's, a three bed flat above a pub he shares with a nine other antipodeans, he popped a pill into my mouth. I didn't want more, But I've done my time on the disco biscuits so not much phases me.

The pill was a slow burner, but pretty soon my head was spinning, Larson was insisted on playing Guitar Hero with the sound down and some crazy jungle music in the background. Fairly soon I was totally unable to move my fingers, and my vision was coming in and out of focus. Dippy knocked over a bottle of chocolate Yop, "don't cry over spilt milk," I said. "But it's a yogurt drink," she said.

So I lay on the floor with my face next to the edge of the Yop puddle and lapped it up out of the side of my mouth. Dippy put on Macy Gray's I Try on rotation. I think we must have listened to it a dozen or more sides, just sound of Macy and my tongue lapping up the fluids.

Larson had disappeared, where I didn't know, me and Dippy found a space on the sofa, and well, British reserve stops me from saying exactly what happened next time. Although, thanks to what I suspect were strong quantities of speed in the pills, Little Barry was living up to his name a little bit too much when I went to the loo for a piss, so I kept my pants on and fingered her instead.

The rest of Friday and Saturday were spent drinking it up a bit. Smoking a few doobies with yet more Aussies, Kiwis and South Africans. Nothing hardcore. Then on Sunday me, Dippy and her pals went and did the Blue Wave march against Climate Change , which was really empowering. I felt alive readers, more alive than I've felt for years.

Sometimes you've got to stand up (and march somewhere) for what you believe in. I hadn't actually gone on the Stop the War march, but then when the war went ahead, I thought to myself, maybe if I'd gone on the march and maybe if thousands like me had gone on it, then the needless wars in Iraq and Afghanistan might never have happened. I certainly like to think if the governments of the world see the footage of me and Dippy marching on Whitehall dressed as Smurfs, then maybe they'll try all that bit harder to put a halt to environmental meltdown.

It wouldn't take much effort. Maybe cycle to work, make sure you recycle your empty cans of Cobra, turn the telly off instead of leaving it on stand-by, all that sort of thing. The sorts of simple things that everyone can do really easily, that all added together can make a big difference. We're borrowing the Earth from our children!

Unfortunately, I had to go to work today, mind you they're sending me to a conference in Dubai the day after tomorrow. Fuckin A! Should get myself a bit of winter sun. Sadly, Dippy can't come with me, as she's got to put in some extra shifts at Mr Toppers for special festive art project that she's invited yours truly to be part of! COOL eh?!

Anyway, gotta fly readers, I promised myself an early night. Got some serious zeds to catch up with.

Bazzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz
x

Bad date

2009-12-01T17:00:00.000Z

Dammit, readers, I’ve had quite a day. It started with a huge surprise; a letter from Roger! I’ve typed it in below, see what you make of it:

Dear Barry,

Your behaviour recently has been quite… well, I suppose you’d call it ‘interesting’. I have to admit, though, that I’m a bit confused. From what your dear, dear mother has told me you have always been, what’s the phrase… ‘right on’. Something of a hippy, I suppose. But, after our last few meetings, I’m beginning to wonder if your political views don’t in fact lie a little to the right. A little to the right of Genghis Kahn! (Forgive my little joke.)

Do you know what I say, Barry? I say: each to his own. That’s my motto; each to his own in every way.

But it has become quite clear to me that your behaviour has been upsetting your darling mother, a woman for whom – it must be clear to you – I care a great deal. I simply will not have her upset in this way, Barry, do I make myself clear? She has cosseted you your whole life, Barry. She still feels that she is somehow to blame for your father’s departure, and that is why she continues to coddle you so, despite your age.

Now, I understand that you are coming to visit at Christmas. This is as it should be; after all, Christmas is a time for families. My own dear children, alas, will not be able to join us. But my mother will be, like you, a guest in the house. There we shall be; two fine lads and our dear mothers. I expect you to respect the occasion, Barry, and not to behave in such a way as to give your mother cause for sadness.

She finds your views disturbing, so I ask you to keep them from surfacing in her presence. And I feel duty bound to point out, if you haven’t already noticed, that your tattoo is somewhat inaccurate.

Yours

Roger

Well, there you go, readers. It’s pretty clear to me that what Roger is saying is that he sympathises with my (pretend) views (ie, he’s a Nazi) but that I should, like him, keep them from Mum. ‘Each to his own’? That can only be Roger coming out in favour of forced repatriation, can’t it? What a monster!

Anyway, I took this as evidence that I’m breaking him down. I’m getting through.

There was one problem, though: The tattoo. I’m not sure how this happened, well I’ve got a good idea, but – anyway – my new tattoo, the one I selflessly burned into my own skin for the sake of exposing a facist bully, like when Donal Macintyre went after the football hooligans, contains a glaring error.

As you’ll remember, the tattoo is a rendering of the three lions of England’s football shirt with a significant historical date underneath. 1514, the Battle of Agincourt. Except, as I just found out through Wikipedia, the Battle of Agincourt was in 1415, not 1514. What a nightmare!

Here’s how I think it happened:

To get my tattoo last week, I went to the local tattooists, which is called Inky Pete’s, and asked him for something a bit racist. We had the following conversation:

IP: What do you mean you want something a ‘bit racist’?
BN: I want something a bit racist, but not a lot racist. Can you do that?
IP: Are you a copper?
BN: No, but I am under cover.
IP: I want a lawyer.
BN: What for?
IP: I’m not saying anything without a lawyer.
BN: I just want a tattoo of something a bit racist.
IP: Listen, pal. You’re not much good at this, are you. You’ve just told me you’re under cover.
BN: Yeah, but not now. Now I’m just me.
IP: So you’re just you and you want a racist tattoo?
BN: Yeah, except I’m not racist, not at all. My mum’s going out with this bloke and he’s racist but he’s pretending that he’s not racist and I’m trying to gain his confidence so that he comes out and admits it and then my mum will dump him. That’s why I need the tattoo.
IP: So you’re a non-racist pretending to be a racist in an attempt to out a racist who’s pretending to be a non-racist, right?
BN: Right
IP: It’s like that bloody Scorsese film. And that’s why you want a tattoo?
BN: Exactly, that’s exactly right. So, what can you do?
IP: Have you escaped from somewhere, pal? ‘Cause you’re too fucking stupid to be a copper, and that’s saying something.
BN: Look, I’ve explained what I want, just give it to me, will you?

At this point Inky Pete looked at me for a long time, before asking me if I had any money on me. I showed him the wad of tenners in my pocket. He stood up, produced the biggest spliff I’ve ever seen and sparked it up.

IP: Right, I’ll get me special book.

Pete went out the back of the shop for five minutes before coming back with a book of tattoo designs. Remarkably, the whole spliff had nearly gone. He sat down on his stool, and opened it up.

IP: Right, before you look at these, I’m just a tattooist, right? That’s all I do. I’m not a political man, I’ll tattoo you whatever colour you are in whatever colour you want. They’re just pictures to me, ok? I take a professional pride in the detail, but I don’t want to know who you are, or what you do, I just want the cash and a quiet life. I don’t need no-one coming round here shoving their nose in, ok? Because I have another little concern, that’s not strictly above board. I’ll tell you because you look like you’re harmless enough: I do shift a few mind altering substances here and there, if you’re ever in the market. I’m not a pusher, though, I’m a dealer. It’s like the song says, mate.
BN: Right.
IP: Now, how about this for a start?
BN: How’s a swastika a ‘bit racist’? A swastika’s very racist.
IP: This?
BN: Is that a flaming cross? What’s this, Deep South London?!
IP: This one?
BN: Hmmm, I like the Union Flag. But I’m not sure about the words “I’m all white, Jack”.
IP: Well these are my racist tattoos, mate. I don’t have a lot of designs in this category, to be honest. I’ve got a few nationalist ones, if you’d prefer?
BN: Alright, let’s have a look at those.
IP: How about this one?
BN: Oh now, that’s perfect. The three lions – it’s like football. And what’s this number? 1415? What’s that all about?
IP: That, my friend, is the date of the Battle of Agincourt. We stuffed the French.
BN: Oh, I’ve got a French friend, though. Why were we fighting?
IP: I don’t fucking know, pal, it was nearly 600 years ago. Look, I think this is your best bet. It’s definitely nationalist, because it’s got the three lions, and it’s definitely a little bit racist, because it’s about a war with the French. But it’s not that bad because the war was 600 years ago, and because having a pop at the French is like the acceptable face of racism, isn’t it. It’s very much your entry-level racist tattoo. It’s perfect. And, I’ll tell you what, I’ll let you smoke some of this weed I’ve got to help with the pain. And how’s about a little bit of Mr Daniels’ finest to go along with it?”

The rest of the afternoon’s a complete haze. I remember Inky Pete had to stop quite often because he was laughing so much. I woke up the next day feeling like shite. We must have had an entire bottle of JD. And that weed was fucking nuclear. Clearly Pete lost the plot a bit and got the four and the five round the wrong way! A professional interest in the detail my arse! Never let a drunk man give you a tattoo, that’s my advice.

It gets worse, readers. After I read Roger’s letter I went onto Wikipedia to find out if anything interesting happened in 1514. Oh, the irony! In July 1514, according to the online information source: “Peace is declared between England and France”! I’m not kidding.

I’ve got a tattoo that celebrates the beginning of a phase of cordial relations between the English and the French. So Roger thinks I’m either stupid, or a Gallic sympathiser. I can’t have him thinking the latter so, as if it’s not hard enough pretending to be racist, I’ve now got to pretend to be stupid as well.

This is really going to test my acting skills.

Peace (and I mean it; I’ve got the fucking tattoo!)

BN

Sorry, must dash

2009-11-30T21:14:00.006Z

It's the 30th of November today, not ordinarily a particularly auspicious date. But for me it marks the end of a journey.

In many ways it was not unlike taking the A46 from Lincoln to Cleethropes. It started out in very familiar territory, the early stages were not uncommon either, but quite soon the landscape changed, there were twists and turns, and unexpected (usually unpleasant) surprises along the way. Ultimately, it arrived at a destination that, while I knew roughly what I'd be getting at the outset, was nevertheless something of a disappointment.

I've been growing a moustache readers. Not because I've turned homosexual. No. I've been growing a moustache for Movember!

Movember is a charity event. I believe its roots are down under. I'm talking about Australia readers where men are men and the sheep are scared. The whole idea is that men grow a moustache during the month of November in order to raise money for and awareness of prostate cancer. That, in a nutshell, is bum cancer to you and me.

Bum cancer is the biggest unnecessary killer of men over 50. It's not that difficult to treat if caught early on, but it doesn't tend to get caught early on because men are almost always too embarrassed by the symptoms which generally seem to revolve around cock malfunctional issues and detection involves what in the trade is known as a digital rectal inspection - that's a finger up nature's pocket to you and me!

Apart from the 10 per cent of us who are gay, the other 90 per cent of us categorically do not like dabbling with the chocolate starfish. As such the vast majority to men who get prostate cancer are not practitioners of uphill gardening. So, it's highly appropriate that the emblem of this terrible affliction is the moustache.

I suppose it tells us all, not just the lucky 10 per centers, but the slightly perturbed and analophobic 90 per centers, that having a good old root around the sheriff's rusty badge is nothing to be ashamed of. In fact, it is actually something to be proud of.

That said, you might to make sure the bathroom door is locked if you're examining yourself and your gay flatmate walks in on you naked wanting to take a shower. It could lead to an uncomfortable silence over the cornflakes. And that, perhaps unbelievably, is not a euphemism.

I'm glad that I grew the moustache readers, even if it does make me look like a pervert. Not that there is anything perverse about buggery between two consenting adults. But there's something about a moustache these days that looks all wrong.

I don't know when the 'tache passed from being perfectly acceptable manly face furniture to being the preserve of the completely weird. I think it might have been the mid-80s. Probably around about the same time that the entire world woke up and realised that Freddie Mercury (your God RIP) was not just in Queen, but he was the Queen. I certainly remember the moustache being popular with Scousers for a lot longer than the rest of us, much in the same way that it is still very popular with Turks.

Glad I may be that I took part in this campaign, but I shall be gladder still tomorrow when the whiskers are removed. Mum wasn't particularly impressed with the moustache, I suggested to her that it made me look like Clark Gable, but she said it made me look like Dad. Although, Roger's got a little grey moustache too, and he doesn't look anything like Dad. Actually, on reflection, he does look a bit like Clark Gable.

I would have told you about the moustache earlier in the month, so that you could sponsor me. But as no one bothered sponsoring the 150 mile charity bike ride I did not to long ago, I didn't see the point, especially as growing a moustache is a lot easier than cycling 150 miles.

Right, well, I'm off to spend just one more night with a furry upper lip.

Yours, no longer in pursuit of the hirsute,

Barry 'I am the walrus' Newsdesk
x

Lest we forget

2009-11-28T16:07:00.004Z

The next phase of Operation Sword of Truth (OST) kicked into gear last night when I met up with Mum and Roger, before they went to see Cat on a Hot Tin Roof featuring Darth Vader's James Earl Jones. Roger had got us a theatre meal deal at Cafe des Amis in Hanover Square.

I tell you what readers, they might not wash much and have a penchant for inter-marital liasons, but they can't half cook. My mouth was running faster than Usain Bolt on a promise. The smells and the sounds of Cuisine du Francais c'est magnifique.

Ha! I bet you didn't know I could speak French did you? I've got an O'level. Of course when I was at school we did O'levels, not like these GCSEs, where apparently you just need to turn up and tie your own shoe laces to get an A star. An A star, I mean, seriously whatever next? Kids today have got it so easy. There were no Pro Evo back in Lincoln when I was growing up. I used to have to use my imagination! I'd pretend that I was Luke Skywalker flying his X-Wing, running around Mum's garden re-enacting Star Wars, while Steve spoke into an empty pint glass imitating James Earl Jones! "I have you now!" he'd say, then he'd shoot at me with a spud gun. If I made it twice around the rotary clothes line without getting a piece of spud in my face or falling over I won and we'd swap over.

We didn't have A stars readers, we had Death Stars!

That's the power of imagination. I guess that's why I'm such an amazing writer. It's not as though I went to Citizen Journalism school. Back in my day there was no such thing, I went to the School of Hard Knocks and graduated from the University of Life. And Trent Poly. When it was a bloody Poly too and not some jumped up pretend University.

I took Gill to France back in the early days. I'm an old romantic like that. Curiously I also went through a period of being a New Romantic too. I had a proper Flock of Seagulls fringe and a big frilly fronted shirt. It was one of Mum's old blouses. I didn't really have the money to buy a proper one.

I remember the first time Gill let me take her up the Eiffal Tower. Happy days. She didn't know I had the French O'level either, until I showed her my French letters, I could tell she was impressed with my cunning linguistics, she let me lick her front bum. I'm many things readers, but I'm no braggart. I think language just comes naturally, much like Gill did, in the end.

Back in the Cafe des Amis, I ordered chicken and chips. I said chips too, not frites. "Don't slaver them in garlic either monsieur," I told the waiter nice and loud. I was trying like mad to maintain my right wing facade. When the food came, I looked on in envy as bloody Roger was tucking into his moules mariniers.

Apologies for this Mess, but I had to keep our relationship a secret. I really want Mum to be proud of me, if she knew that I wrote this blog and had made friends from all around the world, and Reading, I reckon she might lend me the money to get it published as a book for her at Christmas. But I have to keep it from her. It's for her own good.

We didn't really have much time to talk to be honest, they needed to get to the theatre, so we just mumbled through the usual pleasantries and platitudes. Did they have a nice trip down? Yes. Was I still enjoying my new job? Yes (I lied, it's fucking shit readers, and I can't tell Mum about the take-over - she'd only worry herself sick, chalk up another white lie to Barry!). Was I seeing anyone new? (Fucking Roger asked this the spiteful bastard.) I told him that I was playing the field, I'm a young buck who needs to sow his wild oats - the cheeky twat actually laughed "you're not so young any more my lad" he said "MY fucking LAD" - I told him that I wasn't "his lad" and that I was "Mum's lad and always would be," then Mum said she wished I'd been able to patch it up with Gill, then Roger said she was probably better of in Canada anyway!!!

A weaker man might have crumbled or lashed out, but I saw this as an opening, I said, "well Canada's all right, they've got Her Majesty's face on the money. If they kicked out the frogs, it'd been even better!" Roger then informed me and the surrounding tables that he had a great deal of sympathy for the Québécois. I said they were no better than the bloody IRA. Then I pulled up my jumper's sleeves and revealed my trump card.

Mum's face was aghast. "Barry, what have you done?" she implored. "I'm just patriotic Mum, there's nothing wrong with being patriotic if you're from Quebec or Ireland, and there's nothing wrong with being proud to be English! - isn't that right Roger?" I asked. I had him, he couldn't back out of that one. "Actually Barry, I was born in Edinburgh, my mother was from County Tyrone and my father was Bargoed in the Valleys of South Wales. He was minor and contracted bronchitis so had moved to Scotland for the cleaner air. Technically, I'm a Celt. You're right though, there's nothing wrong with patriotism, I'm just not so sure about the way you're choosing to demonstrate it."

"Celt?" I said "I think you're a couple of letters out." It was a moment of weakness readers, I couldn't help myself. Luckily for me, I don't think he heard it.

I looked down at my new tattoo, it's three lions in a crest, with the date October 25th 1514 inscribed below. "Lest we forget," I said patting my arm, "Agincourt." I had to fight back a tear, I think it looked like I was welling up with patriotic pride, actually it was the tattoo, which stung like absolute fuck.

Mum was shaking her head and Roger had started to smile. 'I've got him,' I thought 'hook, line and stinker.' Roger and I split the bill down the middle, which I thought was a bit bloody rich, but I figured the gold digging old Nazi was in the palm of my hand, I was about to quibble of a few quid.

Before we went our separate ways, Roger took me to one side, 'here we go, Baz you fucking genius,' I flicked on the recording switch of my trusty dictaphone, "I think you might need to do a bit more research," he said. And that was it. How cryptic?

It's a start though isn't it? I went home and got stuck into a few celebratory cans of Cobra. Which, granted, was a bit of a mistake, 'cos I overslept and missed the chance to meet up with Mum and Roger this afternoon. They're off to see Othello tonight. I thought I'd get some culture in myself, rather than veging in front of the X-Factor, I've downloaded a copy of Kenneth Branagh's Henry V - thought I'd get doing that research that Roger was on about!

It takes a thief to catch a thief! (Although, surely if that were the case, we should start hiring ex-cons into the Force?)

Use the force!!!!!!!!!!!

Barry Skywalker

Hang the DJ

2009-11-27T16:46:00.006Z

When I was a nipper growing up in Lincoln, Mum took me to get Trevor Francis’s autograph. He was doing a Gillette Razor promo in ASDA. I thought I was king of the first years when I got into school.

It didn’t last, of course; Steve told everyone it was a fake that I’d done at home. He said the proof was the fact that the autograph was signed: “love, Trevor” and that Trevor would never have signed an autograph that way. But Trevor Francis was a nice guy and he just did what I asked, although he checked with Mum first.

I tried to explain to all the kids at school that it was real and that I’d asked him to write “love, Trevor” but that just made things worse. Everyone called me Trevorlover for the whole next term, even Fat Alice. I didn’t really mind though; getting the same signature that adorned the contract of football’s first million pound player was the nearest I got to living the high life and maybe it was that simple autograph which spurred me on to seek out the world of the glitterrati down here in London.

It seems like living the celebrity lifestyle is an almost daily occurrence for yours truly. I dunno, maybe it’s me or something. Maybe it’s simply the fact that I’m a Citizen Journalist, which means I’m more tuned into The News, but I’ve done more star spotting this year than Patrick Moore.

Like the time I bumped into Barry McGuigan acting suspiciously in the gents of The Imperial, or the time former Mr Jordan, Pete Andre, and myself chewed the fat about his latest fragrance while in Vegas.

This latest meeting was totally out of the blue and totally rock ‘n’ roll. The other night I’d agreed to meet up with Dan after another one of his mammoth gym sessions. He said he wanted to “talk strategy” following the merger announcement, and that “the cream always rises to the top.” He said he needed “someone close, someone he could trust”.

We’d planned to meet in the Yorkshire Grey, a pub quite near the BBC at Portland Place which is a famed hangout of some of the UK’s top-line celebrities. I think that’s why Dan likes it so much. He claims he once saw Anna Wing, Eastenders’ Lou Beale, in there. He thought it was a ghost and got a racing heart, apparently, but it turns out she was still up and about. Also, he says he saw none other than Les Dennis and Phil Jupitus arguing over a burger order during one lunch hour!

My money would be on Jupitus coming out on top, unless it was when Dennis was going through that rough patch. For a while there he was a man on the edge!

For me, Les Dennis never really recovered after the unfortunate passing of his comic soulmate Dustin Gee. That was when Russ Abott lost his mojo, as well. Everyone remembers “See you Jimmy”, but no one remembers anything after. It was, in many respects, both Dennis and Abott’s ‘Jumping the shark’ moment. Perhaps Gee was the glue that held it all together? I guess we’ll never know.

You know how they say that everyone who was old enough remembers where they were when they heard that President Kennedy had died? I don’t know if it’s true, but I know this: I remember where I was when I heard that Dustin Gee had died, no word of a lie. I was in a hardware store in Lincoln, buying some string for Mum. Clear as a bell, I can see it now. There I was in the store, and the radio was playing… “The actor and comedian Dustin Gee has died of a heart attack…”

…I’d already lost two grandparents by this stage, in 1986, but I think Gee’s passing was the first time I really contemplated the reality of mortality. When Gee went I knew that, one day, long into the future, I’d have to go too. It was quite a lot to take in.

Dustin Gee, I think anyone would agree, was the Barker to Dennis’s Corbett. He was the real comic talent; his Vera Duckworth was faultless, whereas Dennis’s Mavis Riley was just a catchphrase. Sure, that always got the biggest laugh, but that’s testament to Gee’s class as a performer, his generosity.

It’s sad, isn’t it, that we often lose first the more treasured one of any celebrity pair. There’s Gee and Dennis, Morecambe and Wise, Barker and Corbett, Lennon and McCartney, Charles and Diana, Rod Hull and Emu (actually, I’m not sure about that last one) – this list goes on and on.

Wikipedia offers scant insight into Gee’s personal life, although it makes no mention of him leaving behind a wife and kids. It does say that a lifelong heart condition was fatally aggravated by his use of poppers, though. Now, far be it from me to start drawing any conclusions from that but it does need to be borne in mind that poppers are used by the gay community to help in their lovemaking.

If you were the Daily Mail’s Jan Moir, you might want to draw some comparisons between Gee’s untimely departure as a result of his irregular habits and the passing of Boyzone singer Stephen Gately in a Bulgarian three-way. She’s a nasty piece of work, that woman.

Anyway, there I was sitting by the faux log fire in the Yorkshire Grey, supping my pint of Man-in-a-Box when there was a sudden commotion at the door. Looking up I saw a couple of chaps in pin-stripped suits and, wait for it, legendary former Radio One disc jockey Bruno Brookes!

He still had star quality, I could see that, even though he was carrying a fair bit of surplus timber. Bruno was always the cool kid on the BBC Radio One block. So much cooler than David ‘the kid’ Jensen, and on a different planet altogether from the furry cornflake. When I was a kid, I used to think Kid Jensen had never actually been a kid himself. I think he was born middle aged, wasn’t he? Maybe they called him ‘the kid’ as an ironic joke, like Curly Watts in Coronation Street or Little John in Sherwood Forest. Apparently he was Canadian, not American. Hoe aboat that?

I remember Dad taking us to the Radio 1 Road Show at Cleethorpes in the 80s to see Bruno Brookes. Little did I know then that they had a caravan there together. Not Bruno and Dad, JESUS! Although, maybe that would have been better, I probably would have got backstage passes and stuff. But then, in those days, Radio 1 DJs weren’t gay. And neither, I suppose, was Dad.

Back in the boozer, Bruno and his mates were talking in a manner that suggested they’d spent a good portion of the afternoon sampling a substantial wine menu. He was well and truly refreshed when he walked into the pub, readers; pissed up good and proper.

I always wondered what happened to Bruno Brookes, he’d been a hero when he played Killing in the Name of, even though some people said he’d never even heard of Rage Against The Machine and had no idea the song had those words in it. I preferred to think he knew just what he was doing, and that he was sticking it to the authorities. Here was s man, much like myself, who wouldn’t kowtow to the men in grey!!!

He was sacked, of course, and then pretty much disappeared into obscurity. But now here he was, in the Yorkshire Grey, fucked out of his mind. He came over and sat in the snug nearby, joined by one of his cronies, while the other stood at the bar. He started shouting “…and if I see Powell again, I’ll fucking kill him.” Bruno was in a rage. He wasn’t raging against the machine though, from what I could make out he was raging about fellow former BBC Radio 1 Jock Peter Powell and his ex, Anthea Turner.

“We had something, me and Anthea. Something special! Something most people can only ever dream about. She was my everything; my world boys, my fucking world. The mountains and the oceans. My whole fucking universe, infinite and expanding!!! Her earlobes were beautiful fucking galaxies. You looked in to her eyes and it was like gas giants going super-fucking-nova!! Supernova, I’m not kidding, boys. Her thighs went forever, like the milky fucking way!!! Her arse was like the twin moons of planet fucking ecstasy!! Her cunt… Her cunt was like dark fucking matter, shit… It just sucked you in!! It could absorb time, I’m telling you, boys. It could bend you out of shape and back again. It wasn’t a part of her body, it was a journey, a lifetime. Her tits!! She had these really, really nice tits. So squeezy. I just used to fucking squeeze them and squeeze them, you know? Squeezy, squeezy, squeezy, hour after hour. Squeezy, squeezy, squeezy. Jesus!! When we were at it, it was like I was in another dimension, everywhere and nowhere. When I spunked up in Anthea, it was like the dawn of fucking TIME!! I’ve seen God, let me tell you boys, I’ve seen God and it’s in Anthea’s fucking knickers!!”

I’d never had him down as a poet. It was very beautiful in its way. “Fucking Powell. I’ll fucking kill him,” he said.

At this point, the third member of their party staggered over spilling beer from the three pints he was holding together. “Mind out, mind how she goes,” shouted Brookes, “Here mate, sorry about all this,” he said again, addressing none other than yours truly. It took a while to sink in but Bruno Brookes was apologizing to me, for interrupting my early evening drink. “No worries,” I said, “not at all.” I was unfazed. Cool as a cucumber. Don’t forget, I’ve met Trevor Francis.

Then he came over (Bruno, not Trevor – Trevor wasn’t there) and sat down next to me, putting his arm around my shoulders, he stank like an Irish navvy. “Can you keep a secret?” he asked. I nodded solemnly, and then he stood bolt upright and whipped down his trousers, pointing to a chubby thigh.

It took me a moment to deal with it all but I soon made out the unmistakable shape of a pirate tattoo. “Matching tattoos,” he slurred, “only she’s got a lady pirate on the opposite leg, so when we were,” and here he put his hands on his hips and started thrusting his crotch in my face, “at it,” he said “they were at it too!”

Then all three of them started capering about doing pirate impressions shouting “shiver me timbers,” and “arrrrgh Jim lad”. I looked up just in time to see the back of Dan’s head leaving the pub. I stood up to follow him but Brookes planted his hand on my shoulder and said: “We got ‘em together while we were doing the Road Show down in Plymouth,” he said. “Me and Anth. Oh Anth, why did you do it to me? WHY. WHYYYYYYY?”

He sobbed for a moment or two, then stood motionless for a second. He didn’t say anything else, just kind of stood there staring at me, his eyes filling up with tears. He snorted loudly, wiping his sleeve across his face, bent down to pull up his trousers and fell into the table, wiping out the assembled drinks. “Oh, fuck mate, really fucking sorry about that,” he said. “Let me get you a replacement. One for the Pope and his assistant,” he shouted at the barmaid.

He sent his mate to the bar and sat me down. I introduced myself and then he started telling me about his latest business venture. It turns out that Bruno is getting back into radio readers! There you go, a scoop. You heard it hear first, on the pages of Newsdesk. Spread the word: It won’t be BBC, and it won’t be Capital, Virgin or even Magic. Because the rebel without a job has gone corporate!!!!!

Bruno’s latest venture is in-bank radio. I have to say it’s a bold move. I congratulated him on his nerve: “Most businesses are working hard to strategically improve their customer experience and determine a strong differentiator in the market place,” I said. “I think you might be onto something.”

“Cheers Barry old son,” he said “The thing is, the internet has fucked things up for everyone; the high street’s dying on its arse. As a consequence any business with a presence on the high street needs to pull its fucking finger out to win customers and drive sales away from the web.”

Bruno’s got a point readers; think about it: Banks aren’t exactly a destination of choice; people visit them out of pure necessity. Consumers are naturally feeling wary as a result of the economic turmoil, and therefore need guidance and reassurance about financial products and services currently on offer, and what’s best for them.

Unfortunately, my inquisitive nature got the better of me. “But Bruno,” I said, “Surely these days everyone does their banking on the internet too. Having in-bank radio won’t make people want to come into the banks. Except possibly the homeless.”

He didn’t like this line of questioning, he didn’t like it one bit. The first swing narrowly missed my chin, the second caught me square on the nose, sending me flying back into my chair. Thankfully, my judo training kicked in and I was able to fall like a cat, unharmed, except for the bloodied nose.

I tell you what, it’s a bloody good job Brookes’ mates scuttled him out of the boozer, quick sharp. I was ready to mete out some retribution Newsdesk stylee. Instead I ran to the door and shouted: “No wonder she fucking left you, Brookes, you fat prick.” I shouldn’t have done it, but my blood was up.

Woe betide Bruno Brookes if our paths ever cross again.

Anyway, the next day I had a go at Dan for leaving me there. I thought I’d gone a bit far, but I was angry and my nose hurt. To my surprise, instead of bollocking me, he welled up and briefly fought back some tears. He put his hand on my arm and said:

“I’m sorry Barry, I just couldn’t face talking to Bruno. It was such a shock to see him... It's been so long, I didn't think he went there any more. And, when he’s like that, he’s just… well, he scares me. He hurts the people that care the most.” And then he scarpered to the toilets.

Wtf?

Peace (except for Bruno Brookes)

Baz