MY EYES!!!!

There are times when I wish my head was detachable and I could reach inside and clean thoughts and memories off the surface of my brain with a Cif wipe. Sometimes I want nothing more than to permanently purge horrible thoughts and imaginings from my psyche forever…

I work in an office with a group of what are loosely termed ‘ladies’. Luckily I manage this office, allowing me the luxury of closing my door and avoiding their inane and often grossly incorrect discussions. I try to distance myself and refrain from correcting their grammar, facts, arguing against their bigoted points of view and attempting to enlighten them from their jaw-dropping lack of social awareness. However, sometimes I am at such a loss with their conversations it is impossible to do anything other than listen. And then regret it.

To describe the girls I work with as slim and attractive would be an understatement. To describe ‘understatement’ as ‘lie’ would also be an understatement. I think. They are, in a nutshell, bigger in girth and ugliness than they are in brain capacity. So when, earlier today, they described to me the items they bought form an Ann Summers party, I literally fetched a can opener and attempted a full leucotomy (Google it). Together with the altogether stultifying and brain-crippling purchase of crotchless underwear (a horrid idea, even on the prettiest of axe wounds), they also purchased a cheerleader outfit (in size 22), Pina Colada lubricant (for a size 18), nipple tassles (for a pregnant size 20), chocolate body paint (I’m sure at least one of them could eat a human, so this is surely just a garnish) and a spray to delay the male orgasm. That last one has to be taking the piss; personally I couldn’t manage an orgasm with any one of them if they had pictures of Rachel Weisz tattooed on their faces and I was drinking liquid speedballs from a pint glass.

The idea of fugly sex with, between or featuring any of them is alien to me; and I’m guessing that seeing one of them in chocolate body paint and un-gusseted panties would be the very personification of a polished turd.

I made attempts to etch-a-sketch erase my brain, but the violent shaking just made my head ache and I felt sick – as if I didn’t already. Having spent the week listening to frightening reports of illegal torture techniques used on terrorist suspects, I feel sure that it is only a matter of time before fundamentalists (guilty or otherwise) are howling in agony and pleading for their lives in a secret CIA camp, their eyes bleeding and their brains melting with the sight of these girls, loaded on WKD and Cheeky Vimto, erotica catalogue in pudgy hand, dancing to Dizzee Rascal; wobbling and gyrating in ill-fitting lycra sex-wear, edible and titillating items adorning them, spilling fat and grotesque gobs of unhealth like great big deep fried human Mars Bars. With tits.

See? I bet you want me to pass the Cif wipes now, while you attempt to unscrew your ears and flip open your cortex. Grim, isn’t it?

Plot thickening

I'm bored with kids' TV, so my warped mind has been in overdrive coming up with alternatives that would stimulate my brain. So here are some alternative plot lines for In The Night Garden...

1. The Ninky Nonk becomes a version of Murder On The Orient Express and every time it disappears through the bush, it goes dark inside. When it emerges, one character has been brutally slain and their gored bodies left bleeding on the carpet. A clue to the identity of the killer would be smeared in blood and grey matter on the window.

2. The Tombliboos are infiltrated by islamic fundamentalists and one of them (probably Tombliboo Oo, as he's a bastard anyway) appears sporting a beard and Qur'an. Instead of Tombliboo music, the perpetrator wails out a call to prayer at 5am. Systematically he brainwashes the other two and together they lay seige to the bridge, which they identify as of military importance. Only the intervention of a Special Forces unit led by Iggle Piggle can defeat them, and IP-007 (as he will be code named) eventually dispatches them all with a silenced Glock and Bowie knife.

3. Upsy Daisy gets done by all male members of ITNG, the episode ending with her being bent over her bed by Iggle Piggle, while licking spuff off Makka Pakka's sponge. With Mr Pontipine sticking out of her arsehole.

4. The Pontipines, disenchanted with the state allocation of property - they do live in a poxy little house, after all - hijack the Pinky Ponk and load it with explosives and Hydrogen. Whilst dropping propaganda leaflets manufactured by Mister Maker, they fly the massively flammable airship into one of the Ha-Hoos, igniting a huge fireball visible from Balamory.

5. Makka Pakka loses his mind, and instead of using soap on his sponge he loads it with Hydrochloric Acid and washes the faces off the Tombliboos.

6. In an episode reminiscent of 24, Upsy Daisy (played by her out of Lost) has to go round the whole garden searchng for a bomb planted by unnamed terrorists as the episode clock ticks down - a big comedy clock, with the contorted faces of frightened Numberjacks on it. Eventually, having explored all the areas, she is eventually hoisted by her own petard as her bed (which has been following her round) is found to be carrying a Die Hard size atomic weapon. She shits herself, her hair stands up and there is a blast so large it makes a new star in the end credits.

7. Tag Team wrestling between ITNG and the Tweenies, ending with Iggle Piggle clubbing Jake to death with a metal folding chair (a la WWE) and Upsy Daisy gouging out Fizz's eyes.

8. The Pontipines are found to be gypsies, and the bailiffs are sent in to evict them. Their house is found to have excrement smeared up the walls and a stash of scrap metal round the back.

9. Makka Pakka discovers all the flowers are in fact Opiates, and the whole cast lay about shooting up and dying of massive overdoses. Makka Pakka sets up a fortified drug den in his cave, with the Wottingers as lookouts, and deals Opium to the Teletubbies, cut with ground up stones and rabbit bones. A pale and not breathing Po is found slumped over the Noo Noo, a needle stuck in the triangle thing on his head.

10. A pitched battle following an invasion of the Garden by disenfranchised CBeebies characters, during which the Tombliboos take to the trees and drop stones on the invaders. Charlie and Lola are hung and beaten like Pinatas by Iggle Piggle, Roly Mo gets beasted and cooked over a spit by the Wottingers and Pontipines (combined forces) and Tommy Zoom has his torso separated from hi slegs by a speeding Ninky Nonk. The denouement is a Wicker Man - style scene in which Mr Tumble, beaten and tortured to the point of death, is eaten by a Ha Hoo and shat out as a large clown-flavoured pellet with a red nose.

11. In The Reich Garden: Makka Pakka is Josef Mengeler, his cave (which nobody ever goes in) is the scene of unutterable atrocity and horror. The Pontipines and Wottingers are housed in a Jewish ghetto, awaiting removal by the Ninky Nonk to Auschwitz. The Graf Ponk hovers overhead spying on the remaining inhabitants, and the Tombliboos - members of a fervent Hitler Youth - are tasked with guarding the maximum security house and bridgehead. Eva Braun (Upsy Daisy) and yer actual Adolf (Iggle Piggle) formulate a plan to annexe Chuggington for the transport links, and eventually across the African plains, where they aim to enslave Mama Mirabelle and her band of animal resistance front.

It's a scary place, my head...

Imperial-isms

It never fails to raise a smile on my face when I consider the contradictions that we both enjoy and endure; as a nation, we love to make things difficult for ourselves. An example:

We fill our cars up with petrol priced in litres, only to quote miles per gallon figures. Then, we fill our tyres up with pounds per square inch (tyres which have their width in mm and their diameter in inches) and set off in our heavy cars (measured in kg) to our destinations (measured in miles) guided by signs in yards and miles. We drink our beer in pints, our wine from metric bottles, our spirits in imperial gills and our soft drink from litre bottles. We know our height in feet and inches and our weight in pounds, and yet we are all uber-conscious about the grams of fat in our food. When born, our children will draw blank looks if their weight is quoted in kg or grams, but we all smile and nod sagely when parents proudly announce the length of their offspring. In mm. The grander among us measure our gardens in acres – and measure our lawn feed from a metric bag. Our houses are measured in square feet and yet they are built with metric bricks, imperial doors, metric pipe work and imperial timber. We know our nails and screws are metric, because it says it on the boxes, but we still feel more comfortable referring to them in inches.

Our temperatures are in Celsius, our rainfall in inches, our wind speed in mph and our snowfall in cm. When it gets cold, we press a metric-width switch to send a metric unit of electricity to turn on our imperial boilers, and send heated water (measured in metric) down metric pipes to radiators rated in imperial – all so we can keep comfortably warm, metrically. The angle of our hills is measured in degrees (imperial) but rolling down them causes us to speed up due to gravity (which we know in metric). We burn calories, not Joules, understand horsepower, not Watts, pound-feet not Newton-metres.

So we’re an imperial nation? Err, not quite. Be honest; do you know how hot it is in Fahrenheit, the capacity of your car engine in cubic inches, how many grams there are in an ounce or the difference between a ton and a tonne? Thought not. We’re a hybrid nation, a bastard cross of convenience and empirical stubbornness. We hate change, but we hate having to think even more. Take the time of 9,192,631,770 periods of radiation corresponding to the transition between the 2 hyperfine levels of the ground state of the Caesium 133 atom at 0 K to think about that. Or a second, whichever is longer.

I've become a Daily Mail reader...

I’m confused; I am encountering a feeling entirely new to me and it is causing massive discord in my internal workings. Indulge me:

I like to think that I am a reasonably well-balanced, well-read(ish) individual who knows right from wrong and good from bad. I detest the knee-jerk, mob-inciting sensationalist journalism that pervades our daily lives, and I refuse to consider the option of castrating rapists or deporting every single immigrant just because they have the chagrin to be ill in our country. Daily Mail journalists, meanwhile, should be hung and flogged simply for having the credentials (ingrained racism and misplaced patriotic fervour) to work for that rag. And that’s the problem; I’m starting to become one of those types, and there’s nothing I can do about it…

I saw the news reports on the child in Dundee that died at the hands of an uncaring mother and her violent psychopath of a boyfriend. I read the detail, considered my thoughts and decided roundly that the perpetrators should be executed. Similarly, the parents of young Peter, the baby that died horribly at the hands of violent pathetic imbeciles should be removed from the gene pool. Preferably flogged with razor wire, rolled in sand and vinegar and impaled to become weeping lollipops in a pit of pre-menstrual bears. At the time of writing this, my own son is twenty-one moths old, and despite his foibles he is absolutely guaranteed to raise a smile when I think about him. All babies, and especially toddlers, are loud and difficult; it happens. What doesn’t excuse the anger and frustration we all feel as new(ish) parents is punching said toddler in the mouth, stubbing a fag out on them, or allowing your equally disturbed and pea-brained Rottweiler to bite them.

What is utterly inexcusable in my mind is the concept of applying force to a child of such magnitude that it physically breaks them into small pieces. Consider scaling that force up to adults – what piece of machinery would you have to employ in order to deliver such a blow to a grown-up stomach? Mind you, given the parents, it could be fun finding out. A big, steam-powered punching machine with a glove made from roofing felt and angle-iron, weighted with bags of decomposing family pets and shark shit maybe. When I read such reports I get a physically hollow feeling in my chest, and the idea of inflicting such misery on my own children is so incomprehensible that I simply become angry and confused, like a Sun reader attempting to understand the idea of balanced debate. Or Jeremy Clarkson trying to grasp the concept of subtle irony.

I actively distance myself from those elements of the news now, much as I don’t like having to hide behind a cushion and avoid current affairs. I think my own problem is that I simply cannot fathom such violence against any child, annoying or otherwise, as they are wholly and completely innocent and trusting. Take your petty anguish and despair out on someone your own size, you unhinged abusive shit-for-brains bed-wetting torturer. Just don’t hurt babies, because my brain can’t handle the exasperation.

Things I do like...

In the interests of providing a balanced opinion, some things I do like:

The sound of my son laughing, the idea of having a son, celery, Private Eye, the ability to win people over by being reasonable and fair, Spaniels, water, cheesy Wotsits, Die Hard, Mahler, the smell of Castrol R, grass, smiling, clean windows, turkey, magnesium, ice, naturally pretty girls, hope, dishwashers, please and thank you, woodshavings, the voice of the woman on Vodafone voicemail, sarcasm, Cornetto, John Williams, square edges, trumpets, castles, trial and error, woodpigeons, lasagne, autumn, white paint, rockets and green eyes. That should do it.

NOT

I like to be warm, not hot; dry, not perspiring; awake, not conscious; quiet, not silent. I want to be taught, not patronised; entertained, not marketed to; persuaded, not targeted. I see colours as subjective; religion as intractable; attraction as elation. I dislike religion, not belief; defamation, not sarcasm; dissection, not examination. I aim for somethings, not everything; fact, not rhetoric; understanding, not acceptance. I've been rejected but not defeated; found out but not caught; labelled but not branded. I'm working for mine, not me; a career, not a job; life, not a lottery win. My cup still has some in it; my butter side is up; i look up to think, never down. I'm nothing special, not a special nothing. I'm given to faults, but not giving in to having them. I'm me, not you.

Wittering #2

There are some groups of people with which I have no sympathy. Some which I can't stomach for one reason and one reason only: their earnings. The justification for paying some people more in a year than I'll turn over in my working lifetime is just plain wrong. Footballers, for example... Now it is said that a room full of Chimpanzees with typewriters would eventually type Shakespeare; now if the freakishly talented ones managed a sentence, they would be equivalent to top football players and could be rewarded with obscene amounts of money, access to the most hideous cars and tricked by News of the World prostitutes. But, and here's the thing, they would still be Chimps, they would still pick fleas off each other and throw their excrement at you, and more than likely masturbate freely while being interviewed by Lorraine Kelly. Well, who wouldn't? So that's my view- pay footballers with bananas and old tyres on rope, and televise monkeys wanking over word processors. Sky would show it, without a doubt...

Teenage ticks

When I was sixteen I met a girl who, inevitably, I fell for. Let's call her Sarah- for no other reason than that is her real name. She was perfect; long straight black hair, stunning complexion and a cutesy mole on her top lip, ideally placed as a full stop to her beauty. We were close, visiting each other and conversing by letter (a much missed and forgotten format), and we talked as much as possible. Like the inept, emotionally unpropagated turd seed that I was I never told her what I thought of her, never tried to kiss her, never did anything other than let it sit in my brain like a sticky goo that refused to be coughed up in words. She, also inevitably, ended up getting off with the slimiest twat in school and broke my spotty heart. I hid it well; only around 95 percent of people noticed and I managed to keep it off the news. Just. I wonder about her sometimes- her name is too common to search for so I'm left wondering, probably eternally. I hope she's fat and unhappy though, just because I'm not. Bint.

Wittering #1

Some things that cross my mind regularly, or even occasionally...

I wonder what people think of me? How many people have I met in my life, and is it a lot or a little? Is there a parallel life that plays out the decisions you didn't take? Is there someone exactly the same as me in the world? I doubt there isn't. Where would I be if I hadn't met my wife? Is it possible to be a good person without being good? How old is water? Aren't trees beautiful? Why is pop music so very very crap now? Why do fat women wear unflattering clothes? Does everybody have a guilty secret? Why am I prejudiced against stupid people? I hate losing. Will I ever grow up? Is that Jane Horrocks sitting next to me on the tube? What music will be played at my funeral? How much would be enough for a lottery win? I dislike religion. I dislike iPods. How much is enough? Has anyone read this, and if not, am I bothered? etc etc ad nauseam...

Fretting and nail-biting

I often have a frustration that there is some sort of creativity inside me that remains unexplored; not that I am even sure where to begin finding it. I worry about what I write on here, perversely, because someone might see it- which is irrational as it is anonymous and I can say what i like. I think I need to write what I want and see what that does over time, after all I never began this for anyone else. Sometimes I wonder if some writer, somewhere, began in such a manner; writing down what they were thinking in lieu of any great profound outpouring. I don't know. Perhaps this is just the inane rambling of an idiot. All I have learned is that I don't need to be clever or funny sometimes to be satisfied with what I say...

There is no substitute for being honest and not trying to hard.

English Summer

The fields are burned; balding and scarred, their margins hiding in shadow for relief from exposure.

The trees are wilted, their heads hung in tired resignation, melting and bowing toward the earth.

The sky is darkened and buckled, blued and annealed from the heat, stainless lustre bruised.

Poisoned yellow grass prickles in the breeze, dried spines scratching at each other and the boiled soil.

Buildings shift uncomfortably, creaking and ticking as they compress, windows hung open and roofs breathing back the temperature. Roads soften, rails grow, paths and alleys radiate.

Only the river offers respite, glinting and whispering in cool defiance, solace from the heat.

It must rain soon.

Things I hate, part 1

A random list of things I detest, in no particular order: Stupid people, Crocs, cat poo in my garden, The Sun, Blackberrys, Jeremy Clarkson, charity collectors, middle age, deliberately loud conversations, text speak, LOL, whisky, mould, fake tan, fat people, golf, christmas parties, management speak, Oxford Street, the overuse of 'like' in conversation, carp, badly spelled and badly thought out children's names, tampon adverts, spiders, body odour, poor grammar, inaccurate memories, the intrusion of cctv into daily life, mopeds, minicab drivers, reality tv, conniving government officials, graffiti, joggers, tattoos in gothic fonts, rats, vandalism, Asda, leather trousers, jet skis, Anne Robinson, cruelty to animals, pop music, queueing, Radio 1, Radio 2, speech impediments, 'wacky' people, gravel, Marmite and all religion.
That feels better...

About me...

Hello. I'm Jamie, and this is my blog. For no other reason than I can and I want to, I'm going to write down various bits and sentences about my life.

I'm 35 and I live in sunny south east England with my lovely partner, Claire, and a kamikaze toddler called Evan, who is my absolute favourite thing in the world (other than Claire). He is eighteen months old, cute, funny, stubborn and silly. Right now he likes nothing better than to jump on me, pull my eyelids and hit me with toys. All with a smile on his face.

In addition to our son, number two is on her way, due early September. We live in the delusion that this will be our last, whether we believe and stick to that is another question. We also have a lovely black and white Spaniel called Flame, who is part cat/ part dog/ part human/ part pure evil. Together we live in a squalid dump which was infested from new by an old man, and I am slowly putting right with the aid of paint, screws and wood glue.