» Stuff You've Overheard

overheard on a bus...
One woman to another.. 'You still got that disease? y'knoe that one that gives ya an itchy vag?'
other woman 'Naw, the cream i got from the doctor cleared it all up, and he never knew I got it from his brother'.
(Wed 9th Jun 2004, 23:52, More)

» Kids

Not mine....
At the moment I live in a child free world, although my l'il bro's girlfriend is now carrying, and will be unleashing the next generation on the world in september, when I will get to be the 'cool' Uncle, and teach it lots of bad things which my l'il bro will have to explain to it.I can't wait.


Anyway back to the point, my mate has two little girls and whilst he's no longer with their Mother, he is a brill dad to both of them, looking after them better than their mother does.
Shortly after they split up he took the eldest girl Beth, who was about 5 or 6 at the time round the Deep at Hull, where they saw sharks, and other sorts of fishy type things, and had a great afternoon of Father/Daughter quality time, they'd been taken round the exhibition by a young tour guide, and at the end she asked all the parents and kids if they had any questions, unsurprisingly Beth being an inquisitive little devil put her hand up.
'Yes?' the nice tour lady asked,
'Why don't my Mummy and Daddy love each other any more and why doesn't my Daddy live with us any more?'
apparently the poor girl didn't know where to look.
(Thu 17th Apr 2008, 21:22, More)

» Your first cigarette

Like Burton & Taylor or Anthony & Cleopatra
myself and Lady Nicotine have had a turbulent, tempestous on/off relationship over the past 16 years or so.

My first seduction by Lady Nicotine was slow, and sly, I was a mere youth of 14, bright eyed, bushy tailed and heavily into my 60's music (Beatles/Floyd/hendrix etc) and my friends would have parties at a mates house, and these rolled up things that looked like cigarettes but smelt sweeter would be passed round, ah the herb, the sweet sweet herb, with just a smidgen of nicotine hidden in there to lull the unsuspecting cosmic traveller.

So i continues my dual existance paperboy by day, toker by night, sneaking out in the evening on a bike ride to the local picnic area near here(which is probably also used by doggers)and me and my pals would listen to music and smoke away those lazy. hazy summer evenings which never seem to end when your 14 and stoned.

The Lady was teasing me, but she hadn't got my heart not yet. As time when by and days grew shorter, I ended up working in a supermarket where everyone smoked, you opened the door to the canteen and were hit by a wall of smoke, and did I give in? did she have me in her grasp? No.

It wasn't until I was in my second term of my first year at Uni that I became a proper smoker, the first term was lost to me in a haze of dope smoke, alcohol and unsuitable and unmemorable women as one party flowed into another party until they all became just one giant cosmic party that never stopped. We had exams, we needed to pass so we didn't end up back at home reliquinshing the new found freedom we'd fought so hard to aquire, and so as brothers we all swore off the dreaded weed.

And the Lady pounced, she had teased me, seduced me slowly with her presence, and now at the end of the party and in the taxi home her lips and mine entwinned and she gave me her smoky kiss and made me hers.

In the end I left this lair of bacchanalian excess at the end of the first year, no longer a boy, but now a man, a man who needed two marlborough lights and a cup of strong coffee before he could face the day.

And so back home, my excesses curbed due to a combination of lack of income, and parental guidance I hid my cigs and invested in mints, my furtive smokes done on the back of buses between here and Sheffield where I had returned, back when smoking on the back of buses was big and hard and still allowed!

I was also working at a Motorway service station where not only was smoking encouraged, it was compulsory. So I waited, and cleaned and studied and smoked, the lady keeping me company and rewarding my loyalty with her smoky kisses, the yellow of my fingers atestament to her touch, the cough in the morning a sign of our love affair.

Suddenly tho' I got bored with the cigs, they looked so common, so cheap, my beautiful lady had gone from being exotic, mysterious, seductive, to being nothing more than a common whore, with a wiggle, a pout and a cheap come on. So we parted, my tastes seduced by a more exotic cousin.

So instead of cigs it was cigars, the slim little cubans in their metal tin made having a smoke an event, a ritual, not just something to do with the mouth whilst waiting for dinner.

It was like your birthday and christmas rolled into one, you could pause for dramatic effect, take the cigar out of the box, tap it. Smell it, ahhh nothing beats the smell of a good cigar, if you were drinking at the time (Port or Brandy..always port or brandy) you could swill the glass, then light the cigar with your zippo, and relax as you savoured the smoky taste, swilling it round your mouth like the finest of wines, before slowly exhaling.

The difference between the joint, the cigarette and the cigar like those between the street corner crack whores, the escorts in the back of a newspaper, and the finest courtesans.

Once you have tasted champagne would you ever return to meths?

But then C came along, she was real, she was cute, she was sexy, she was mine, and she disliked smoking, so without ceremony, without a decree absolute and without a pause for thought I stopped. I finished, i quit, all for the love of a woman who I ended up treating badly and who I never deserved.

She suspected me of cheating, and yes I was and not just with Lady Nicotine who had returned to my life, or had I returned to her like the moth to the flame?

I stopped, I started, I quit sober, and would wake up after drunken nights with no memory or what happened, occasionally a strange girl in my bed, a pack of cigs on the side.

The days of recovery take longer, the throat hurts more, the smoking ban ironically made me smoke more initially as it was either stay inside on your own whilst people smoked, or join the crowd or cold smokers in the temple of worship to our Lady Nicotine.
Cigarettes cost more, so I buy packs of ten and pretend I don't smoke anymore.

And like the girl in the pub who you won't sleep with when sober, but you take home when its getting past midnight, you're on your own and going back to a cold house fills you full of fear, and the lonliness becomes too much to bear, you know it'll happen again and again.

And now, as I write this I have no cigs in the house, I may open a nice bottle of wine, and know that whilst I say I have finished with Lady Nicotine I am sure that she hasn't finished with me.....
(Fri 21st Mar 2008, 21:23, More)

» Bastard Colleagues

people who work in call centres
Having moved from a dodgy publishers to a semi-respectable contact centre for a national institution, you'd think the hiring practices would improve wouldn't you?
But no.
Over the years I've been there I worked with a girl called S, who was permanently late, was part time, and if there was anything happen that she disagreed with it it was because you were being prejudiced against her cos she was part time, did I mention at the time I was looking after the team she was on? Because according to her she wouldn't talk to me about anything because I wasn't a 'proper manager'. Then stories started coming out about how on a night out once she pushed a guy off a bar stool. Then on a team meal she was knocking back the wine, despite the fact she'd driven there and was driving back, then said 'I really shouldn't drink whilst I'm on these valium', and then picked up a steak knife and started stabbing a plate with it. Another night out she threw a full pint glass at a a wall narrowly missing one of the girls we were out with. She then just went AWOL, and got managed out of the building.
Another character is D, a middle aged Gentleman who wears a really,really badly fitting wig, and big thick glasses that make him look like a Bo Selecta character, his lunch consists of 5 jam doughnuts, he never washes his hands after using the toilets, he hates women, and he takes his TV/video remote controls to work with him every day because his reasoning is that if a theif breaks into his house they won't steal his TV/Video because he has the remote controls with him.
There are several more scary characters there who I'm convinced are going to go postal one day.
(Sun 27th Jan 2008, 18:18, More)

» My most treasured possession

hmmm.......
This is a tricksy one isn't it?
Would it be my autographed Tom baker autobiography? or maybe my complete collection of Q mags from '93, Mojo's from 95, & DWM's from '96?

Would it be my CD collection? My DVD's? Blue (my anchient blue teddy bear whose as old as me)

would it be my clothes? my home insurance policy?

would it be my car keys?

or would I let the fire burn all the possesions that have taken over my life, taken over my space, and no longer define who I am but who stop me from being someone else?

in the end i would take one little photo, a picture taken by a kind tourist outside Sheffield city hall in November 1998, the day I graduated, it is the only picture I have of me, My Mum & dad (before they divorced) My Grandma and Grandad (before my Nan died) and my legendary ex girlfriend, it reminds me of happier times when everything was all about looking forward to the good times, and not sitting here 10 years later counting all the ways I fucked it all up.
(Thu 8th May 2008, 21:36, More)