Spill communication

Friday had gone so well until that point. It had to happen.

Day off work; impromptu lunch with an old friend; weekend away in a place that I used to live to look forward to. Yep, everything had been going too well.

I left to catch the bus. Journey to Victoria uneventful. But it all went wrong the second I sat down at the coach station.

I’d arrived early to avoid any problems. Arriving so early was the reason I got one.

I had time for a sit down. As I put down my bag and took a pew on an empty bench – thirty-five minutes before the bus was due to leave – I knocked over a cup of coffee that was left under the seat by a passenger who had just got on another coach.

It’s probably empty, I optimistically hoped.

I looked down. Wasn’t empty.

No. Not empty at all. Completely full, apparently.

I covertly put the cup upright; a vain attempt to limit the damage. I looked around. An old lady was looking, scornfully, in my direction.

Then it happened: a slight meandering stream of coffee-coloured liquid emerged from underneath my seat, travelled out from between my legs and into the middle of the waiting area.

That’s probably coffee, I thought.

More people were noticing now. More scornful looks.

I tried to look concerned and helpful. I spent a few seconds looking around for a member of staff, some old newspaper. Nothing, no one to hand. I had to sit there. With that nosey old woman knowing that I’d done it.

It got worse. The trickle of coffee was feeding into a rapidly expanding puddle of latte that was growing to an increasingly worrying size. Slap bang in front of the biggest, toughest-looking, most shaven-headed man I’ve ever seen in my life.

He didn’t see me do it, I’m safe, I thought. But hang on, the old woman. I looked at her. She looked at the puddle, looked at the tough guy, then looked back at me.

She’s going to fucking tell him.

She didn’t. She looked back down at her paper. Result. Might avoid getting my face smashed in.

I looked back at the puddle. Bigger now. How could there possibly be that much coffee? Puddle growing at an exponential rate, tentatively lapping at the hench bloke’s new-looking Timberland boot.

He looked down to his feet. I was scared now. I looked away.

“EXCUSE ME!” he shouted.

When I’d finished shitting myself, I looked over.

He wasn’t yelling at me. HE WASN’T YELLING AT ME! He was in fact beckoning at a guy in a high-vis jacket, drawing his attention to what I’d done.

I looked at the old woman again. She was loving this. What a bitch. And she still looked as if she might tell him.

I got out a magazine. If I look busy, it won’t look like it was me, I thought.

Some time passed. I read a few pages. Then I looked back at the massive man. He was looking outside, gazing wistfully through the glass at the bit where the coaches pull in outside.

I looked down. The puddle was massive. And BOTH HIS FEET WERE IN IT.

He looked at me. I looked at the old woman. She looked at the man. Somehow, there was an understanding. We all knew it was my fault.

He looked at his soggy boots. Looked back at me. Then, just when I thought I was going to die, the coach arrived.

I waited for the skinhead to get on so I could sit as far away as possible for the duration of the three-hour journey from the man whose shoes I’d just soaked.

And the back-stabbing old woman? SHE DIDN’T EVEN GET ON THE FUCKING COACH.

The Cubicle Situation

I work in an office. Over three floors, about 150 other people work in this office, too. So, roughly, that’s about 80 blokes.

Between us, there are four toilet cubicles. Four. Three normal ones, and one absolutely cavernous disabled-access one. (Seriously, it’s astonishingly huge – it’s like taking a dump in the middle of an abandoned aircraft hangar. What wheelchairs do they think are rolling in there? Even a tank could successfully execute a three-point turn in that bad boy.) Two of the cubicles are on the ground floor, and the other two on the second. They’ve also installed a shower in an old cleaning cupboard, too, but I guess that’s a different issue.

Credit where credit’s due, though, they do clean the toilets. In fact, they fucking love cleaning them. They do it, like, three or four times a day. They’re so proud of how much cleaning they do in them, they write it down on a little chart that they’ve Blu-Tacked to the wall.

The problem with this situation is, if you time it badly, ‘having a brown sit down’ can be impossible in this building. Because there are only four cubicles, and most of the cleaners are women, they have to close the bathroom they’re working on while they’re doing so. Which leaves two out of action.

I work on the first floor. So let’s say I choose to go down two flights of stairs to the cubicles on the ground floor and find they’re closed for cleaning. I then have to go back up those two flights of stairs and then climb an extra two flights to get to the second floor, to the only two cubicles now available.

But hang on, there’s those 80 other blokes in the building, too. So it’s unavoidable, really, that there are going to be at least two other guys who’ve had the same idea at the same time. There always is. Yep, in the instance that the ground floor toilets are closed for cleaning, the second floor cubicles are ALWAYS occupied.

So back downstairs it is, and, because you don’t want to have a wasted trip and return to your desk still carrying the load only to have to leave again a few minutes later to attempt to do it all over again, it crosses your mind that the cleaners might have finished on the ground floor. So you try it. You risk going down four flights of stairs to check it out.

Are they still cleaning in there? Of course they are.

So now there’s a choice: traipse back up two flights of stairs to sit uncomfortably at your desk, or stumble up the full four, once again, to hope someone’s finished their business on the second floor so you can finally sit on a – now freshly warmed – seat and get rid of what you’re packing.

Oh, and I haven’t yet mentioned all the doors. There are doors ABSOLUTELY FUCKING EVERYWHERE. Some push open, some require a firm twist of a knob and some won’t let you through unless you have your staff pass to swipe on the scanner-thingy.

If it’s just you, it’s bad enough, but all of this madness is exacerbated when more than one person is attempting to find a cubicle at the same time. You cross each other on the stairs; you swipe each other through doors; you exchange panicked glances under the pressure. You feel their pain and yet you’re in direct competition with them for a place on the first throne that becomes available.

Yep, trying to have a poo at my work is like being a contestant on the fucking Crystal Maze – a frantic race against time that involves the opening and going through of endless amounts of doors. In fact, the only difference between trying to have a poo at my work and the Crystal Maze is that if you were successful on the Crystal Maze, you’d get rewarded with a pile of shit prizes to go home with. You’re not even guaranteed a pile of shit at the end of this game.

The bird is the word

With literally everyone in the world carping on with interminable incredulity about how a pair of cockatiel-lookalikes are still managing to peddle their prancing karaoke on X-Factor week in, week out, I decided it was time for me to stick my oar in.

Luckily, though, when I was double-checking the correct spelling of the word cockatiel on the internet, I stumbled across a website that jolted me out of my banality-induced stupor and reminded me there’s a vast universe stuffed with more interesting things to write about than a couple of wannabe twats trying to impress a giant erection on a TV talent show.

The website was called The Definitive Guide to Cockatiels. I was immediately reassured that any world where a person as fantastically loopy as its author, Jessica Harrison (The Cockatiel Girl), can exist is indeed a truly wonderful place.

I clicked through to the site and, wow, what an absolute, stark-raving bonkers joy it is.

“Learn amazing cockatiel secrets you can’t find anywhere else on the internet,” the homepage coos. The site is ostensibly an advert for Harrison’s cockatiel-flavoured e-book, ‘The Definitive Guide to Cockatiels and other Cockatoos: A Comprehensive Guide to Cockatiels and other Cockatoos’.

It goes into quite some detail.

By far the best section is the ridiculously detailed breakdown of what you can learn if you buy the book, the snappily titled ‘Here Is A Summary of all the Gold Nuggets You Will Discover in ‘Definitive Guide to Cockatiels’ (but be Warned… Your Friends Might Start Calling You the ‘Cockatiel BUFF’, Just Like Me’).

There’s so much undiluted madness here that you really need to see it for yourself, but as we’re all pushed for time between sounding off on Facebook and frantically scribbling tear-stained complaints to ITV about the continuing success of X-Factor’s bloody Grimes twins (which, by the way, is quite patently a ratings-boosting stunt), I’ve hand-picked a few gleaming gems of cockatiel advice from the list for your delectation and annotated them with a small selection of my own incisive musings. Here we go:

1. How to Understand What Your Cockatiel Wants, Needs, or What its Funky Behaviour Means.
Funky behaviour. I’m not sure what this could be, but I’m presuming it’s caused when the bird gets jacked up on cocaine while listening to too much Jamiroquai. Don’t worry, though: the next chapter appears to contain advice on how to get your little feathery addict back on the straight and narrow…

2. How to Keep Your Cockatiel Clean and Powder-free
And if you don’t succeed in getting the bird to go cold turkey, at the very least try to make sure it doesn’t fall victim to any of these nasty afflictions…

3. Find out the Causes of Scaly Leg and Face Mite in Cockatiels.
Face mite – nice. Next…

4. How to Stop a Cockatiel from Screaming.
Er, how to do what now? Apparently, this is something of a prevailing issue for cockatiel owners, as the topic is also covered in the similarly monikered sections: ‘Find Out if You Can Teach Your Bird Not to Scream’; ‘Discover Why a Cockatiel Screams’; and ‘See How Long You Can Let Your Bird Scream Every Day’. Crikey.

Well, if you had scaly leg or face mites you’d be screaming, too, but the necessity of this chapter’s presence in the book becomes even more apparent when you move on to…

5. See Whether You Should Punish Your Bird if it Doesn’t Obey You.
Hmmm. Probably not – IT’S A FUCKING BIRD! And what the hell are cockatiel fans trying to make them do apart from sit in a cage and chirp anyway? Oh hang on, I get it…

6. See if Cockatiels Enjoy Dancing, Roller-skating, Climbing etc.
And if they don’t, you know how to punish them because you’ve bought this barking mad book. And presumably, if that doesn’t work and you’re getting a bit bored of the little bird, the next chapter will offer advice on what to do next…

7. Learn Whether it is Okay to Keep Them in a Cage All of the Time.
In a cage. ALL of the time. Once you’ve got it where you want it, move on to the next chapter. But be warned, things get a bit salacious, a bit wrong, from here on…

8. Discover How to Tell When a Female Cockatiel is Sexually Mature and Find Out Whether Two Males Can Be Together.
Erm, okay. It goes on…

9. 1 Male 1 Female?
Interesting, but my personal favourite is…

10. 2 Males 1 Female.
Or One Filthy Chick Takes Two Giant Cock(atiel)s.

Now, you might think I’m twisting this a little bit. Of course I am, it’s all innocent, above-board advice for the loving, caring fans of cockatiels and other cockatoos. But I’ll leave the final word to the Cockatiel Girl herself, Jessica Harrison:

“If our very special report on cockatiels doesn’t help you have a truly ecstatic experience with your very own cockatiel – I’ll give you your money back, no questions asked.”

Brilliant. Just brilliant.

FarmVille

I went on Facebook today. It said this sentence to me.

“Howdy friend! How’d you like to be neighbours? Come join me in FarmVille, where you can grow delicious fruits and vegetables on your very own farm!”

I sort of, a little bit, wanted to cry.

Thanks, but I don’t want to be ‘neighbours’. I don’t want to work on a farm in real life, it sounds fucking horrible. All cold and muddy and that. And I’m not three years old, either. So why would I want to ‘play farm’ online?

In any case, from what I can make out, everyone on FarmVille is really shit at farming anyway.

“Will could really use some help fertilizing their crops in FarmVille!”; “Jane found a sad Ugly Duckling on their farm. Oh no!”

Oh no indeed.

Asinine? Yes. Mundane? Yes. Missed opportunity? Definitely.

I mean, if it’s going to be possible to fuck up the farming on a made-up farming game that grown-ups are going to play, why not let it be possible to REALLY fuck up?

Some suggestions:

Karl’s arm was up to the elbow in a cow’s arse today. His Rolex is still up there. Oh no!

Jenny walked a trembling calf into a little booth and fired a metal bolt through its brain so we can all eat it for lunch on Sundays. Yum!

Matthew was visited by a pretentious, double-barrelled TV chef after leaving a shed full of daylight-starved, featherless chickens to peck out each others’ redundant eyes.

Emma accidentally burst a goose while making foie gras. Bang!

Kevin successfully contained an outbreak of foot-and-mouth by shooting all his livestock one by one then burning them in a big pile.

Mark could really use some help getting the fleeces off his 200-strong flock of sheep because he’s lost his shearing equipment and is having to do it with a Gillette Mach3 instead.

Feel free to add more. It’s got to be more fun than Facebook, surely?

Dick, I beg your pardon, Nick, Griffin

Nick Griffin’s been in the news again. You may have heard.

I had a whole rant to post here, but I’ve kind of said it all before.

So instead, here’s Cassetteboy with a remixed Question Time clip that kind of says it all, really.

Don’t be a twat, Pat

Postmen. They’re never fucking satisfied, are they?

Don’t get me wrong, we need them, but mooching around slotting a few bits of folded-up paper through holes in pieces of wood for a couple of hours a day then knocking off at three o’clock isn’t the most mind-boggling day job on the planet, is it? I mean, it’s not rocket surgery or anything.

But some of them still manage to balls it up. I get other people’s letters all the time. I even got someone’s contact lenses once – bet they didn’t see that coming (!). Which must mean important pieces of communication with my name on are languishing on someone else’s kitchen table gathering dust, too. Seriously, how is it possible that delivering a simple portion of mail can be that difficult to get right? If it says 587a on it, you sling it through the gap with 587a written above it and, bingo, everyone’s happy.

Yet, despite being so consistently bad at performing such a straightforward task, those don’t-know-how-good-they’ve-got-it posties are getting all shouty and demanding a whole lot more of the queen’s finest green sheets and that. In a recession, when countless private-sector workers are either scouring the recruitment pages for a job or lucky to have one.

And now, to add one more cheeky insult to what is already quite a stomach-churning injury, the world’s best postman, the ‘alpha mail’, the curly-haired, blue-uniformed, cat-fancying post machine we all thought we could always rely on, has decided he’s fed up, too.

Yep, in a new movie, planned for 2010, Postman Pat turns his back on the post-hungry residents of Greendale and their inexplicably sized noses and heads off in search of stardom to appear under the bright lights of a “Britain’s Got Talent-style TV talent contest”.

Now, I’ve got a question: why? What kind of message is that sending to young, impressionable stop-motion animation fans? That everyone, no matter how modest and hard-working, really just wants to pack the real world and elbow grease in and take an in-front-of-camera shortcut to money and fame.

If we’re not careful, we can forget about having anyone to do things like deliver the mail in the future; fuck having an infrastructure – we’re bringing up a generation of nappy-fillers to believe they can only be validated as a successful person, only lead a happy, fulfilling life if some ludicrously haircutted erection like Simon Cowell says they’re a bit handy at churning out a tune and possess the cocking X-factor.

What Royal Mail staff, and especially Postman Pat, need to realise is that, in the long run, you’re not going to get rewarded for anything that you haven’t put the hours into. Just deliver the post and stop whining now, please.

Mayonnaise is 20p

More takeaway-related entertainment. This has been around a while now, but it’s hilarious.

Saturday night takeaway

So you’ve been in the pub all day, you’ve been forced to miss the last match of England’s World Cup qualifying campaign because you’re normal and didn’t want to pay £11.99 for the privilege of watching it on a nasty, pixelated stream on a shitty laptop.

Obviously you’re feeling a bit peckish so you leave to get a bite to eat. But what to buy? Kebab, onion rings, chicken? Tough choice, right?

Well, in Scotland you wouldn’t have to choose, because they’ve got this: the Munchy Box. Amazing.

Image in original context here.

Bad joke

TENSIONS were running high today in a north Yorkshire town after a bitter row broke out surrounding the name of a popular public house, often frequented by many ex-RAF and commercial pilots who have for some reason retired in the area.

Drinkers were last night “interrupted” from supping their pints when a troupe of effeminate men, described by locals as flamboyantly dressed and “not from round here”, stumbled across the pub and thought “it might be their kind of thing”.

The establishment, named The Cockpit, opened last year. Regular patrons initially welcomed the aviation-themed moniker, but have started to petition for the renaming of the establishment after a spate of similar occurrences in recent weeks.

The argument continues.

Tarrant rant

Gawping down from the side of a bus with an expression slapped across his face that wouldn’t look out of place on an over-the-hill Labrador with learning difficulties, there he was, the fork-chucking other-woman-toucher himself, Chris Tarrant.

Well, you know, not himself, but a picture of him. A massive, annoying picture of him, which, parked in front of my nose and blocking my escape, I had no choice but to allow into my day.

He was up there to promote his new show, Tarrant Lets The Kids Loose. The tagline explained that it’s a show where children are forced to do grown-up jobs. Well it didn’t actually say forced, but, as it stars three- to six-year-olds, it’s basically forced.

Kids doing adult jobs. That’ll be funny, won’t it?

Why wouldn’t you get a load of really small people who should be smearing soggy bread across the walls and mashing Play-Doh into the Blu-ray player to, as the channel’s website explains, “fulfil their greatest ambitions in the adult world and run a photographic studio, a radio station or an ice-cream van”?

What I want to know is how much of the day-to-day minutiae of actually running a business will these little ankle-munchers be getting down to?

Will they simply be spooning the ice-cream into the cones? Driving the van? Dealing with customer complaints? Will they be commissioning photographers or getting busy in the edit suite with some manipulation software? Perhaps they’ll be undertaking a full-scale cost analysis of the business and making any necessary cutbacks, including redundancies?

Tarrant has made a TV career out of shows that ritually humiliate an unlucky few while making smug sofa-dwelling audiences feel better about themselves. But isn’t laughing at our children for being a bit shit at things they shouldn’t even be doing for another 20 years taking things a tad too far?

And who the fuck are we to laugh anyway? I mean, we’ve got into a bit of a pickle running things ourselves in recent times, haven’t we?

Most of all you, Chris. What gives you the right? Even toddlers, if they really try, can consume a simple meal of curry without flinging their cutlery across the room into someone else’s face. A bunch of kids would probably manage to do a better job of keeping The Colour Of Money on the air for more than seven episodes, too.

We’ve tried getting kiddies to do adult jobs before; chimney sweeps or pickpockets, anyone? That’s all a bit frowned upon now, so why should Tarrant be allowed to get away with it?