hurry hurry

Nice word dash. Cut a dash. Mercy dash. Must dash. Dot dot dash and so on. Anyway, it’s a word which comes to mind often on the tube of an evening when otherwise slow-moving, sedentary ladies (and I’m sorry ladies but it is usually ladies) board the train and spot, several seats along, an empty space in which they could sit.
Suddenly Mary from accounts becomes Mary Peters in her medal winning prime and breaks into a sprint along the carriage, oblivious to the feet she treads on, the shopping she squashes, the grannies she grounds, to get to THE EMPTY SEAT. But it’s all OK: she gets to sit down ALL THE WAY HOME, and bugger what anyone thinks. Pregnant? Tough, should’ve run faster, or used more elbow. Old, then use a walking stick. Blind? Hello, yes, you, in the dark glasses, out of my way!
There are hundreds of them out there, the Fatima Whitbreads of the London Underground, dashing (got there in the end) the length of the carriage lest, shock horror, they spend 20 minutes STANDING UP. Were we all miners or cotton pickers I could understand such a pressing urge to relax but we send the whole day sitting on our arxes!
Next rant: How some people regularly mistake the tube carriage for the make up counter at Debenhams....

happy talk

My mum recently read ‘in my Best’ (why is it that older people always refer to the magazines they buy as ‘my magazine', my nan does it about 'my woman's own', which, for bizarrely she has actually started referring to as 'my book', but that's a different story) that an easy way to have a more positive, upbeat outlook is to smile and say hello to strangers (can you see where this is going?).
So, game old thing that she is, Mum decides to try this out on her walk to work.
She said the first person who she tried it on was an middle aged lady who ‘looked at me like I was a lunatic’ (and your point is?). The second recipient of Mum’s morning greeting was a navvy type geezer who asked ‘sorry, do I know you, love’ before going off on his merry way.
Best of all though was number three, a ‘sweet looking old granny’ according to Mum. Her response to my mother’s 'good morning'?
A good, old fashioned, no nonsense ‘Fxck off!’.
Mum said it made her really chuckle and she did indeed arrive at work feeling much chirpier than when she left the house.
Good old Best!

someone fetch a first aid kit

so, out with school friends for dinner last night. i am 41 years old yet still have to stop myself from calling them by their surname. within 40 seconds we had all reverted to type, reassuring that essentially we are all the same at 41 as we were at 14 (though I am obviously slimmer, sexier, funnier and my mum doesn't buy my shoes for me anymore!).
one of my mates told a hilarious story about how he rescued a man from a burning car. which is weird, because he's a scientist, while one of the other mates is actually a fireman. crazy huh!
anyway, Sam was driving his family to the park one day when he noticed a commotion at the end of his road. it soon became apparent that a car had driven through a wall that separates the road from the local river. a car had indeed crashed through the wall and rolled down onto the bank.
quick thinking Sam jumped down the 6 ft drop to attempt to rescue the passengers in the car (he said that he later wondered what the hell he was doing). as he got near the car he says he saw a woman wandering around in a daze. he soon realised she was the passenger and that the driver was stuck in the car.
by this time a paramedic had arrived but was apparently just standing by the road looking down.
so, Sam and another good samaritan go to the car but cannot open the driver's door.
they both know you shouldn't move accident victims so Sam goes round and gets in the passenger seat to see how the guy is doing.
he's awake but slurring a bit bloody, but worst of all, Sam says he notices that one of his feet is at a really weird angle under one of the pedals.
Sam begins chatting to the guy to try and reassure him that it's all going to be ok when he realises that OH MY GOD, SMOKE IS COMING OUT OF THE AIR VENTS, AND THE CAR IS ON FIRE, WE'RE ALL GOING TO DIE etc etc, so he and the other guy have no choice but to drag the guy out of the car.
says Sam: 'all i can think of is how much his foot is going to hurt as we pull him out'.
but pull him out they do and walk him toward the road.
by this point an ambulance and the fire brigade have arrived - prompting the lazy paramedic on the road to start dragging the passenger around, for fear of everyone realising he'd been doing bxgger all all this time.
the firemen then proceed to give Sam and the other guy a right old bollocking for not checking the rest of the car for other passengers. the car by this point is indeed on fire.
cue one young fireman to go over and 'blast the shit' out of the car with a fire extinguisher, which apparently caused a huge white, choking fog to envelope everyone in the vacinity.
eventually, someone comes with a stretcher to relieve Sam and the other guy of the accident victim, who they have been holding off the ground for fear of causing him further pain in his foot. 'He was a big guy!' apparently.
it wasn't until he was in the ambulance and vaguely coherent that he (the driver) informed Sam that the reason his foot looked so mangled was that he lost it in another accident a few years previously! he was wearing a false foot that had come up in the accident.
well, it made me laugh.

oh aunty...

Have you watched TV lately? There’s an irritating new filming trend going on.
Imagine a world in which the BBC (or whoever, though it does seem prevelant on the Beeb) is unable to afford a camera that is big enough to film someone’s entire face, or, if you're a fan of sci-fi, a world where cameras big enough to film an entire face haven't yet been invented, or, if you're a fan of sci-fi-mutation, a world where people's faces are so huge that no single camera is big enough to catch them in their entirety, anyway, what you get in these worlds, and, more and more on our TVs are silly shots of someone’s ear and cheek while they give you their opinions on fashion (yes, you Ozwald Boatang, love your squared off collars btw), or close ups of people's mouth and teeth or some such. Obviously, on Crimewatch this is understandable but on documentaries can we not just have normal shots of people’s faces while they share their knowledge?
Someone please forward this to Points of View.
My publisher has just bought Boys II Men greatest hit. Bought! Imagine....

London has just experienced its coldest day in a decade and all the plants in our garden have drooped. so much for hardy perennials!
i am currently sitting in the freezing cold kitchen with a glass of mead. I know! Mead. I've tried it before and quite liked it but the glass i am drinking actually tastes pretty rank - imaginge washing a Locket down with some washing up water. And I've got a whole bottle of it, which i think even i will have to pour down the sink.
regular readers will know how much that will hurt.
i am, as i sip, watching a new TV show which may knock YBF from my FTVS (that's You've Been Framed from my Favourite TV Spot). the show in question actually isn't actually a million miles away from my beloved YBF, as it offers participants plenty of opporunities for injuring themselves. it's a bit like Extreme It's a Knockout. 'Players' have to run round an assault course (weird compound noun, if you think about it) which has things like 'the balls', which is a roll of huge red balls on columns that contestants have to leap across. There are five of them. So far, no one has made it beyond the second one. Another challenge involves crossing a wall, which they have to kind of straddle and inch their way across. Did i mention that the wall has holes in it and fists coming through throwing punches?
My favourite round so far, though, has been the one where the players are whizzed round on roundabout before being bunged off to do another series of trials.
It's hilarious. Fortunately (for them) the contestants are well wrapped up in padded vests and helmets and all of the equipment is wrapped in padding. but i'm sure somewhere there's an extreme version using the same course but without the padding. but that's probably pay per view.

A mate of mine keeps sending me links to porn sites. these links invariably feature people doing very unseemly things to each other, and, in particularly erm, interesting examples, to themselves. i shan't go into details but isn't it funny how when the more porn you watch, the more bizarre sex seems and the less appealing it is? i say forget castration for the sexual deviants - put them in front of youporn for a couple of hours and they'd soon be begging for an episode of Corrie.
or is that just me.
now, there's no way to link that story to the next one so let's pretend you've clicked through to a whole new story.
i was once wandering the streets of Barcelona, round by the picasso museum, when i suddenly found myself being accosted by a female beggar asking me for money.
first of all she asked me for a coin (to translate literally) while i was outside the bank waiting for my sister. i politely declined her request.
next, she got me while i was sitting on a terrace having a glass of wine. once more, i refused.
finally, as i came out of the shop of the textile museum she came up to me AGAIN and asked me for some money.
me: 'No'.
her: 'Why not?'
which i must say, totally flummoxed me. I genuinely couldn't think of any reason why i, who had plenty of cash, shouldn't give any to this (it has to be said, pushy) woman who had none.
which just goes to prove. if at first you don't succeed, pester, pester and pester again.