Day 164: I Am Busy (Again)

This does not often happen! I was last Definitely Busy on 21st November. But now I am Busy again, exactly one month later! I must therefore revert to Speed-O-Blog, introduced on 21st November and still, it seems, very useful.

The France

I am going there tomorrow on the aeroplane via the Pink Elephant Long Stay Carpark at Stansted. In France I will mainly be eating brussels sprouts and cake, sleeping and doing my new hobby, which is called "Crap Running".

Crap Running

Weeks and weeks of endless exercise and bread avoidance but NOTHING. Then suddenly - since my return from the Canada - sudden weight loss. Endlessly puzzling, and can only be ascribed to Crap Running, which works like this.

You go somewhere where you can run (outdoors or on a treadmill, as you wish), and run as much as you can until you can't run anymore. (At the beginning it will be about 30 seconds.) Then you walk. You keep doing it for a long time, over weeks and that. Then the running bits get longer and the walking bits get shorter. Then they join up and you are running for entire joined-up minutes, but are not dead. It is Incredible.

Everyone else has always known about running being brilliant but I as usual 'discover' it for myself and am in paroxysms of Joy, as if I have just invented Electricity. This is either stupidity or childlike wonder. Either way, it is irritating.

Wedding Speeches

Waking hours that are not filled with useless conversations with bitter civil servants are spent writing a speech in my head. I have got as far as "humility, dignity and restraint" which were the words we were supposed to live our lives by. We ended up doing the opposite, of course. Now she's marrying a man who pulls stray hairs out of her chin.

Visitors from the Colonies

I intend to show my Speshiul Visiter the Best of London Life. So far, my plans include the EastEnders omnibus, being just outside Brixton tube at 6pm, lunch at Halal Fried Chicken, a cinema in Leicester Square, a Wetherspoons Pub and Oxford Street at 3pm on the first day of the sales. We will travel everywhere by bendy bus and Underground.

If anyone's got any other ideas, do send them in.

Cretins

Surrounded by them this week. But the ones at the Job Centre make me wonder if another Government Initiative to get the unemployment figures down is to employ the unemployable at Job Centres.

Work

In the New Year, I will be paid to write about internet dating. Regular readers will know that I have done this thing before. It may be a little bit like rain on your wedding day or a black fly in your Chardonnay; on the other hand, it could actually be ironic.

Other new work

Amsterdam? For three months? Oh, go on then. If I must.

Christmas

"A small glass of sloe gin, darling?", MM will say. Five days later, I will find myself on a plane back to Blighty.

New Year

With one person I know I like, in a tiny house in the country, playing Scrabble and eating crisps. Infinitely better than pretending to have fun and dashing about the place wearing a cardboard cone hat with sparkly strips poking out of the top, loosely attached under your chin with a piece of elastic. Or indeed blowing into one of those things made of paper that rolls out and goes 'toot'. Or party poppers. They're very sillly.

I do love sparklers though. And fireworks.

Tassimo

No, but really - what is a "hot beverage system"?

Tagged

I have been. What is this thing? I am scared.

Day 164: I Am Spooked

First of all I am in Penge, which is spooky enough. But then I walk across a bridge and look left and see this weirdness. It is London, in the fog. It is very odd.






















Then the people at the garage phone. For some weeks now the brakes have hissed. It is the ABS, which is Malfunctioning. Or so they told me the other week. And now they call to say that they have taken the car out and there is no sound. There is nothing wrong.

I walk along the road a bit and look up as I tend to do these days obsessed, as I am, with the tops of trees and where they meet the sky. And I see this. It is like Donnie Darko but in South London! I am Terrified! I dare not leave the house!

Day 164: I Live Beneath A Cretin

Regular readers will be aware of the work of TwatBoy, my cretinous near-millionaire 27-year-old upstairs neighbour. He looks like Bod (except not as good looking) and cannot understand the simple "you make noise, I kill you" dynamic that is at the heart of our relationship.

I was woken by the door slamming at 2.30am, followed by pounding feet. I fell back into a fitful slumber. Then the Music started. I put my head under the duvet. I dozed off. Then A TEXT MESSAGE came that woke me up properly, with a start; a text message that went like this:

"Hey NWM! I'm drunk. If I'm making too much noise, let me know! xTwatBoyx"

Like I say. Cretin.

Day 163: I Question The Existence Of God In Sainsbury's Local

I have a common face. That, or I look simple. Only this can explain why I am asked for directions wherever I go (Montreal, Vienna, New York, Cognac, Amsterdam, London - it doesn't matter; I just look like the kind of twat who knows where roads are), and why I come across lunatics in places where most people would merely exchange 34p for a pint of milk.

I went to Sainsbury's Local earlier. Nowhere else to go, as it happens, and I'm not taking my cash into the corner shop that smells of wee. I bought some smoked salmon, a paper, some fabric conditioner, some normal salmon that was not smoked and some green beans. I was called to Till Number 3.

Her: Happy Christmas in advance!
Me: Yes, you too!
Her: How will you be celebrating Christmas this year?
Me: Eating cake and watching Christmas Specials, mainly.
Her: You do not Believe?
Me: What in? God? No, not really.
Her: You do not believe that there can be Existence without a God?
Me: No, sadly. I wish I did.
Her: You cannot celebrate Christmas then!
Me: True. But I can eat cake and drink wine.
Her: This is hypocritical! You truly do not believe in the Lord?
Me: No. But I bet you do, don't you?
Her: Yes!
Me: Yes.
Her: It is not too late to seek salvation!
Me: Yes.
Her: You must trust in the one true saviour, the Lord Jesus Christ!
Me: I'm sure I must. Now, how much do I owe you?
Her: But Jesus LOVES you! £14.55.
Me: Thank you. Goodbye.
Her: Remember: Jesus Died For You.

For Christmas, I would like for the weird people to leave me alone.


As an aside: what's with this new Blogger stuff? You still can't do shortcut commands if you're on Mac and as for the 'tags' - I shall put 'beaver' in every one. Oh yes.

Day 162: I Have Been Trying On My New Hat In The Dead Of Night

I have benign insomnia, like a small child the night before its birthday! There is too much excitement (of which more over the coming days). As I am not able to sleep, I have been trying on my new hat (originally bought for my ungrateful brother, Runningmonkey, who rejected it with a sneer), which I bought in the Canada and was photographed wearing by a pathologist (who cuts his own hair) in the entrance hall of large Pharmacy.

Sadly, however, that photograph is Privit and for close family and friends only. Here instead is the frankly alarming window display that first attracted me to Monkey Hat. Imagine yourself in it, if you like. And if you ever come to my house (unlikely, as I rarely entertain at home, what with the fleas), you will be photographed in it too.






















Not long until Christmas, The Arrival of The Most Special Of Visitors (not Father Christmas, he'll have been already), the delivery of a dress made of navy blue, my Best Friend's Wedding (at which I must make a speech!), a short jaunt to the country, New Year's Eve and finally, some Unusual Exercise on The Strand.

Only the Monkey Hat can calm me! I shall have to sleep in it.