Tizer Soze

A Passage I read and Liked

Mon, 28 Sep 2009 18:50:00 +0100

“Billy Pilgrim turned on the television. He came slightly unstuck in time, saw the late movie backwards, then forwards again. It was a movie about American bombers in the Second World War and the gallant men who flew them. Seen backwards by Billy, the story went like this:
American planes, fully of holes and wounded men and corpses took off backwards from an airfield in England. Over France, a few German fighter planes flew at them backwards, sucked bullets and shell fragments from some of the planes and crewmen. They did the same for wrecked American bombers on the ground, and those planes flew up backwards to join the formation.
The formation flew backwards over a German city that was in flames. The bombers opened their bomb bay doors, exerted a miraculous magnetism which shrunk the fires, gathered them into cylindrical steel containers, and lifted the containers into the bellies of the planes. The containers were stored neatly in racks. The Germans below had miraculous devices of their own, which were long steel tubes. They used them to suck more fragments from the crewmen and planes. But there were still a few wounded Americans, though, and some of the bombers were in bad repair. Over France, though, German fighters came up again, and made everything and everybody as good as new.
When the bombers got back to their base, the steel cylinders were taken from the racks and shipped back to the United States of America, where factories were operating night and day, dismantling the cylinders, separating the dangerous chemicals into minerals. Touchingly, it was mainly women who did this work. The minerals were then shipped to specialists in remote areas. It was their business to put them into the ground, to hide them cleverly, so they would never hurt anyone again.
The American fliers turned in their uniforms, became high school kids. And Hitler turned into a baby, Billy Pilgrim supposed. That wasn’t in the movie. Billy was extrapolating. Everybody turned into a baby, and all humanity, without exception, conspired biologically to produce two perfect people named Adam and Eve, he supposed.”

—kurt vonnegut, jr., Slaughterhouse-Five, or The Children’s Crusade: A Duty Dance with Death, 1969.

I can’t believe Hollyoaks scripts are written in the same language as this.

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Sat, 19 Sep 2009 22:18:33 +0100

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Fri, 07 Aug 2009 02:18:05 +0100

A COMIC ABOUT A FERRET PART ONE.

Mon, 22 Jun 2009 21:00:00 +0100

A COMIC ABOUT A FERRET PART ONE.

Hear My Weird Voice!

Mon, 15 Jun 2009 16:56:53 +0100

I’m the ‘special guest’ on Ian Todd’s comedy podcast ‘Untruths’ this week, I was interrogated for ten minutes about Ken Dodd, Die Hard, Cress and Aliens. You can find the podcast by finding and subscribing to ‘Ian Todd Series Two’ on iTunes, but I found it easier to just stream directly from his hosting site.

I gave it a listen ready for my skin to crawl to the tune of my mortifying unfunniness, but I think it actually came out quite well (thanks to having 10 minutes of the chat edited out). Although I have been having less doubts about my funniness recently, after David King of 1daylater told me “On paper, you’re the funniest person I know.” Or perhaps I’m having more doubts. Is that compliment? It seems like it is…

I Am A Relatively Decent Human Being

Sat, 13 Jun 2009 00:58:00 +0100

So here is my much delayed account of my second foray into the world of volunteering. This all took place in one exhausting day and I hope it provides some insight into what it is like to try and volunteer your time in England if you are still considered a ‘youth’ (in a fortnight I will be technically closer to thirty than twenty).

I started Tuesday by throwing myself out of bed into my bedroom, which accomodates a huge helicopter-friendly sky light which the blind recently fell off. This means every day for the past month I am operating on six hours sleep after being awoken by the blazing sun. I dressed and brushed my teeth and made it to the offices of a youth organisation at which i have been offered a placement as a volunteer journalist/ webmaster/ dogsbody and have an interview with the head of the service. All the while I am keeping an eye on my watch as I have to be across the river in exactly ninety minutes for a luncheon meeting/ conference with the local Youth Volunteers scheme about a planned festival. The interview goes way over time as we spend an hour chatting about the service and I get my first glimpse at the web magazine I will be contributing to, a hideous ejaculation of word art and turquoise backgrounds that looks like a geocities tribute page to an episode of Xena the Warrior Princess that was cast entirely with kids doing their Duke of Edinburgh award. This is no bad thing, as it means I have something to sink my teeth into (although when I turned up the next day to begin, the head of the service was on an emergency call, everyone forgot who I was and with much apologising I ejected myself from the building, breaking the front door lock in the process. More on how that job pans out next week I guess.)

So in thirty minutes I have to make it from the Swallow Hotel in Gateshead to Cafe Neon, a Greek restaurant in the Bigg Market. I hot foot it across the High Level bridge make it with about thirty seconds to spare, and my original plan, to sneak off to the Gate centre for a bowel movement is scuppered as I bump into other volunteers in the street. So with sweaty, cramping intestines I go into the restaurant expecting a the half dozen people I have already met, and am confronted by at least a dozen complete strangers, with another dozen arriving soon after. With no food and only a couple of recognisable faces I sit in the centre of the table pretending over and over again to admire the cutlery and wall fixtures. I attempt to get involved with a couple of conversations, but it soon becomes clear that I am amongst a tight knit group of friends who stare dumbfounded at me whenever I interject. So I clam up, then excuse myself to the toilet where I take my sweet time. By the time I come out the buffet has begun and an array of meat blobs and Greek salads lay on an huge table (at which I only pick at the potato wedges and tomatoes). While in the queue I get a proper look at my fellow volunteers and realise I am embroiled in levels of multiculturalism that can’t possibly go well for me. I am stood inbetween a gaggle of Asian girls in headscarfs, a girl with Downs Syndrome, a guy with Palsy, some flamboyant homosexual boys and some butch lesbians. I am also the oldest person in the group, bar the volunteer co-ordinators and I immediately begin thinking about faking my own death.

While we eat I dip in and out of the conversation with the volunteers from my ‘chapter’ about the Star trek movie. We finish and there is that awkward languishing period while the bill is settled and everyone has run out of drinks. The girl with Downs Syndrome wanders over to our table and takes a seat. She introduces herself as Rachel and begins to ask us our names. She has chosen the end of the table where mainly new volunteers are sitting and so we are mainly unaccustomed to the politics of dealing with people who are differently able. Are you supposed to be forward, patronising, straight? How are we supposed to conduct ourselves in a way that is sensitive and fair in this situation? None of us have a clue and stare at our empty plates and an awkward silence descends. Rachel asks the girl beside me her name and she says it is Hannah. Rachel’s face lights up. ‘Hannah Montana!’ she exclaims, then raising her two hands formed as a ‘W’ symbol she says ‘What WHAAAT!’ like she is in NWA. I am delighted by this, and laugh out loud. I am alone in this action and am met with accusing stares form fellow diners. Rachel and I exchange grins and I am fairly confident I have just met the coolest person in the room. After asking everyone else their name and where they go to school, she finally gets to me. I tell her my name and when she asks where I go to school I tell her I don’t go to school, because I am old. I am self conciously eating bits of skewered lettuce with a toothpick. I tell her I graduated from university last year and she asks which one. I tell her Northumbria. She announces proudly that she has been there. I reply ‘Oh really?’. She confirms that she has and then announces ‘two times! To get my hair cut!’ Then in a voice that mimics Wyclef Jean: ‘Two Times!’ Again I laugh out loud, again some glances are cast sideways at me from the other volunteers. I don’t mind, even if my brain had just compensated with this notion to put me at ease: I have just chatted to a Downs Syndrome kind who likes to throw hip hop references into conversation and I am happy.

After the luncheon we are to all march to the new Newcastle library and occupy one of their conference rooms to brainstorm ideas for the mini festival. On the walk there I sidle alongside the co-ordinator for my chapter and chat to him. He is preoccupied with getting the whole group there in one piece and as lovely a guy as he is, It just increases how bummed out I am getting by my lack of ability to charm anyone that day. Usually I am okay when thrown in a room with strangers. I find if you ask a lot of questions and laugh at a lot of jokes you can endear yourself to most people, but it is a skill that is fading as I get older. I must be getting outwardly creepier.

We get to the meeting hall and all sit around a huge arrangement of tables in a circle. My intial belief I had been invited to this meeting in my capacity as a responsible and well educated adult to help arrange a charity event faded away and I realised I had actually willingly walked into a meeting of a well meaning but ultimately benign glorified three hour youth club meeting. This concern began when it was announced that rather then begin appointing a minute taker and treasurer, we would be playing an icebreaker game. We were to go around the group of two dozen of us, introducing ourselves with our first name then an alphabetically corresponding animals name as a surname. I was Michael the Mongoose. However, the catch was before you announced yourself you had to recap everyone who came before you. As you can imagine in my placement as twentieth in line, it was a convuluted 45 minutes before my turn came around, and when it did I had my head in my hands and had to be prompted to sit up and speak. The only upside of the game was the contribution by Rachel, which went something like this:

John - This is Laura the Llama, Johnny the jellyfish and I am John the Jekyl

Anna - This is Laura the llama, Johnny the jellyfish, John the Jekyl and I am Anna the Antelope

Rachel - I’M A SNAKE!

Volunteer co-ordinator - No, Rachel, the animal has to begin with the same letter as your name… do you want to be Rachel the Rabbit?

Rachel - NO! I’M RACHEL THE SNAKE!

Volunteer co-ordinator - No, you can be Rachel the Rabbit

Rachel - WHAT? Awwww.

Don’t let them push you around forever, Rachel, I thought, you will always be a snake in my eyes. The game took about an hour to conclude and by the end everyone was pissed off and ill prepared to begin discussions. Nevertheless, six categories for brainstorming were defined (safety, food, entertainments etc) and were were separated into groups. I was dropped into a group with two 16 year old girls and we were assigned safety as our first brainstorming topic. The girls suggested things such as having crowd marshalls, water and sunblock reserves, barriers around the stage. Testing the waters, I piped in and suggested we hire Robocop. Met with blank stares, I sank back into sulk-mode and stayed quiet for the rest of proceedings.

After we had done three topics a tea break was announced and while the other volunteers bounced about excitedly with their volunteer pals, I sat down and pretended to check messages on my phone. One of the asian girls wandered over and sat down next to me. In the alphabet name game I was fairly sure she had introduced herself as Mariam the Monkey, but I had been so concerned with the girls’s headscarves that I couldn’t be sure which girl was which so I hazarded a guess before she introduced herself personally. However I did this by raising a finger, pointing it in her face and proclaiming ‘monkey?’ A millisecond went by in which I realised that I had just pointed at a girl of ethnic origin and called her a monkey. Panic set in and my brain began to tell me that this was in fact Zara the Zebra or Salit the Stallion and I was about to be hoisted up onto BBC news as being Nick Griffin’s best mate, infiltrating youth volunteer schemes as some sort of 1970s racist saboteur. Luckily it was Mariam the Monkey and we began to chat but I was still in crisis mode. ‘Don’t mention Islam, don’t mention the headscarf, we don’t know the protocols here, Michael, don’t tell her she looks like the girl from Persepolis!’

Her opening gambit was ‘Hello, do you like Nine Inch Nails?’ and the conversation continued into a discussion about Apocalypse Now, 80s hardcore punk and Spike Jonze. This was probably the most remarkable part of the day for me, as it sort of affirmed what I’d sort of hoped when I decided to volunteer… maybe I will have my pre-conceptions about some social group busted like people do in films. Now I’d met a hip-hop disabled girl and a punk rock muslim teenager, the day wasted listening to uninformed children drone on about health and safety permits felt oddly worth it.

The last opening of my eyes came when we were discussing a celebrity guest for the festival. The camp boys were suggesting Girls Aloud over and over again, in a manner that only became funnier every fucking time they did it. I suggested Tim Healy, the geordie comedian from Auf Weidersehn Pet, a local reknowned for his charity work. Noone knew who he was and the frustration of two hours of being looked at like I was an idiot came to the fore a little as I blustered my way through an explanation of who he was. The only person who did know who I talking about was the guy with palsy, who in my terror I had avoided all afternoon. He leaned towards me and said ‘Yes. Oh, also, how about Simon Donald’. The gaggle of Jonas Brother loving teens around us, again, had no idea what we were talking about and swiftly moved on to shouting ‘Cheryl Cole’ again. I began to feel awful as I had, in my inexperience, written off the guy with the odd speech and movement in the group as some sort of second class citizen, and he had turned out to be the person in the room I would most likely have gotten along with, the only other person in the room who knew who Simon Donald was.

That pretty much sums up my second day in the world of volunteering. Being cast into the ‘youth’ bracket is pretty infuriating, as is having the time I have donated to help the less fortunate being used to pad out a social event for an entrenched group of teenage Christians. However the chance to meet and interact with people I would never normally come across, and then to be so pleasantly surprised by them has ensured I will definately stay involved in the project. Even when I am working in my placement as a journalist I will still be attending meetings of the youth group, just to see what happens…

I really need to start contributing to whencatsarealone more...

Fri, 12 Jun 2009 22:39:49 +0100

I really need to start contributing to whencatsarealone more often…

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Fri, 12 Jun 2009 20:07:35 +0100

An Open Letter to the Police Helicopter Pilot Buzzing Around My Area Right Now

Fri, 12 Jun 2009 01:49:00 +0100

Dear Mr Pilot,

I just wanted to thank you for the interest in which you have expressed in me, especially in a period of unemployment which has made me feel anonymous and alienated. I am referring, of course, to you shining that searchlight into my attic a few moments ago, and leaving it to linger for a good five or six seconds. Although I applaud your vigilance, I am afraid it is very unlikely that the gang of joyriders you are pursuing is parked on the third storey of my house. I can assure you we don’t even have garage facilites at ground level.

Now that we have become acquainted, I feel I owe you an explanation as to how I am occupying myself, privately, at 1AM in my own home. Perhaps you were momentarily diverted by what I was watching on television, with my bedroom mirror angled at it is so that it can provide a view of the screen from a high vantage point through my skylight. I am watching Raging Bull, the 1980s Scorcese film, I recently purchased the two disc special edition from ebay (I’m sure you saw the open box on the desk). If you had not seen it yourself and were wondering what it was like, I would have to say it is well produced but I am not enjoying it personally. Perhaps, with your passion for boxing, you were thinking that you would enjoy it more than I. In that case, I would be happy to ‘give you a lend’. Fly by at the same time tomorrow night, drop your rope ladder and I will attach it to the bottom.

If your attention was instead drawn to the glass in my hand, I confrim it was half full of Dr Pepper. I considered the possibility that you were thirsty and thus lusting after it and under normal, less invasive circumstances, I would have happily offered you a tumbler full. I’m afraid I was a little lapse as a host when I didn’t try and get the drink up to you, but I hesitated with fear that lobbing the two litre bottle, sealed, at the helicopter could have resulted in clogging the rotors or spilling sticky beverage all over your flight controls. At worst, in todays’ climate, it could have been perceived as a terrorist act. Perhaps tomorrow night we could rig up some sort of system with a jug and some fishing line.

Perhaps your interest in what I was doing, at one o’clock in the morning, alone, was sparked by a reading on your heat vision camera. Sadly that dull flame your equipment registered was not a means of cooking up smack or the sizzling fuse of a bomb, but an incense stick (Wilkinson’s brand ‘White Musk’, but I’m sure you noticed the packet on my bedside table). I don’t use these sticks to cover the odour of illicit drug use, rather, I use them to create a warmer and more pleasant atmosphere, that I am sorry you could not share from you position, 100 feet away, shining a light in my face. I find the aroma is especially pleasing during the summer months, as the heat neccessitates that I open my window a little and thus the exciting but unwarranted smells of the street drift in. These smells include the overpowering wild garlic of Saltwell Park, The warm tar and concrete dust of the road and the stench of jet fuel as it is consumed, burned and emitted by light aircraft hovering insultingly close to my personal space.

Thank you for you time and interest, but I am afraid I must now go to bed. I hold every hope that you are successful in your pursuit and that I will see you soon for another brief meeting.

Thanks again,

Miguel Vennie

P.S I am aware that I am not wearing anything from the waist down, in my defence, I did not expect a chance encounter with a law enforcement professional at this hour and at this altitude.

Your P46 is Dooooooommedd

Thu, 11 Jun 2009 15:57:00 +0100

On several occassions this year I’ve had to phone the inland revenue. What is wrong with those people? I have spoken to people there before who were super friendly and helpful, but then they had some sort of recruitment drive for disgruntled graduates, angry menopausal women and men who sound like Private Fraser from Dad’s Army.

Me: Oh hi, I apologise in advance if I’m talking to the wrong department, I’m trying to sort out a tax code issue, I’ve been owed a £330 rebate for a while now…

Them: Fuck you. May I take your national insurance number?

Me: Sure it’s xxxxxxxxx

Them: That is the N.I number of a very ugly person. What can I do for you?

Me: Well I sent a letter about four months ago, I was hoping for an update.

Them: I used that letter as a tampon then mailed it to the primeminister c/o you. Is there anything else?

Me: Can I speak to the Revenue Manager, Susan, who left me a voicemail this morning?

Them: I have no fingers or face and can’t transfer the call.

Me: Oh. I guess I’ll send her another letter then?

Them: Drown in piss. Is there anything else I can do for you?

Me: no that’s fine thank…

Them: [to everyone in HMR office] Hey guys! Come and listen to this bloke say ‘thank you’, I bet he’ll sound super gay when he does it!

Me: …you

Them: [gales of laughter]

Obviously this is an exagerration, but it is stunning how cold and unhelpful the Inland Revenue has become recently. Should anyone who works on their phone lines come across this… I am ringing you because YOU owe ME a substantial amount of money. When you refuse to transfer me to the people who know who I am and ask me lots of questions about taxcodes that I can’t answer, please don’t audibly sigh. The reason I can’t tell you if I am a paywork express BR18 applicant or claiming for Advance TR74 EU Melon Insurance isn’t because I am an idiot. It is because, unlike you, I DON’T WORK FOR THE FUCKING INLAND REVENUE.

The only time I, or anyone I know ever take a vague interest in tax issues in when some daft twat doesn’t input something and a large sum of money is stolen from us. Until you add the ‘…or press 4 if you’d like to confront us for the eight time about the money we stole off you and used to buy a stargate SG1 box set for the office’ option to the phone system, you are going to have legions of tired, bewildered twentysomethings calling every one of your departments, desperate for some help.

I might become some sort of consultant. I would recommend Tom Waits mans each and every phone in the entire organisation, whilst pissed.

Common Sense Geezers

Wed, 10 Jun 2009 01:10:00 +0100

Just popped over to the BNP live TV stream to check out Nick Griffin’s chubby reaction to today’s egging. I’ve never really looked into the BNP much, I have always maintained I vote just to keep the BNP out, but I really didn’t know much about them apart from what I’ve seen in comedy shows or chatting to the ocassional thick retail co-worker. For me, the BNP has alway been somewhat like the band Biffy Clyro. I knew they were shit and was always happy to have them floating about somewhere in the backwaters of indie music. Every once in a while they would release another flop of an album to luke warm reception and I’d drop by just to quickly laugh at the cover art and think ‘bless them… they think they’re a proper band’. Then all of a sudden they have a breakthrough hit and they’re everywhere. Stunned by the horrid blandness of it all, I can’t help but feel the surprise is somehow my fault. I have had the power and time to face this onslaught of shite a long time ago, acclimatise myself to it and prepare by taping my windows and hiding in the cellar.

Now, being the BNP, their live stream failed and they resorted to a broadcast of an old Griffin speech from somewhere in the midlands (the sign behind him proclaims them to be in ‘black country’) in a room that looks like a hastily assembled birthday party in the Rovers Return. I have my first proper taste of the gobbledigook that I have long had an inkling fell out of his mouth like a piss rainbow. His speech is based firmly in an old form of socio-economic research pioneered at the ‘University of Something Dave’s Mate from Down the Social Told Me at the Weekend, Love’, painting a picture of easily digestible controversies and half baked injustices to the good working people of Britain. For instance, Polish people don’t have to pay taxes if they leave the country within a year, and so leave and come back under a different identity every 11.5 months. I’d wager money on this being a baseless accusation. Fairly harmless thick-people rabble rousing at first glance but in ten minutes of listening he made the following two assertions, as asides, apropos of almost nothing:

1) Global warming is the direct result of ‘third worlders’ letting their goats eat all the trees.

2) Chinese students in this country are actually here as corporate spies to steal our secrets.

Nick Griffin reminds me a little of ‘The Plague’ in the movie Hackers. He is smug and self assured, like he knows something we don’t know, and these little facts he throws us are favours. He also has a glint in his eye that lets you know that should the European Parliament not bend to his will he’ll smash Jonny Lee Miller’s stereo with a baseball bat (in this analogy, Jonny Lee Miller’s stereo is Romania and the baseball bat is the slightly bewildered RAF). The glint in his other eye lets you know he is up to something and has an endgame involving him walking away with serious wealth. Also he rides a bitchin’ skateboard throught the streets at night.

I think that in a fair democracy it was a little out of order egging him up when he was trying to give a speech (about how Botswana is actually a 600 square kilometer wolf having a lie down with towns on his back or something), but shouldn’t a pre-requisite to being allowed into the political system be at least a vague attempt to cloak your lying? Then they could be a proper respected party and release an album like ‘Puzzle’.

P.S I haven’t decided to try and be Charlie Brooker, I just felt like typing something and I haven’t properly formed my stories of today’s volunteer meeting in my head yet… maybe tomorrow.

I Am A Wonderful Human Being

Sat, 06 Jun 2009 03:31:00 +0100

Being out of work for the past 5 months there is a void opening on my C.V, and a wear mark on my bedroom carpet where I pace up and down all day wishing I had something to do. So I decided this week to do volunteer work. I am a selfless, gorgeous, caring young man, and you are welcome to me, England. I applied for a few positions on do-it.org and got a call from a nice guy over at Gateshead Volunteer services telling me that since I am under 26 my ‘case’ will be handled by him and the Youth team. This is fair enough and I go and meet him and we chat for a while and we part ways with him agreeing to find me jobs based in admin, journalism or advocacy. However he also invites me to become active in the Youth Action Team, a sort of scheme designed to encourage young people to volunteer their time to bolster their chances with UCAS and job applications. They are holding a picnic in Saltwell park on Friday, there’ll be lots of volunteer organisations I can chat to and I can help out passing leaflets around and chatting to potential volunteers. Fine Fine.

So I wake up this morning and it is pissing down, torrential rain and I have to be at Saltwell park in 20 minutes. Every bone in my body screams ‘fuck the needy’ and demands I go back to sleep but I force myself out of bed and into clothes and up the hill to the park gates. I get there and there are only a few people waiting around, standing under umbrellas watching some men from the coucil slip about on the grass trying to erect a gazebo. I am introduced to a few young girls from the volunteer service and they chat with the guy from the volunteer service while I stand and smile aimlessly, desperately trying to remember the names of these people I was introduced to only three minutes ago. So the difficulty erecting the gazebos in the downpour has forced the event to be moved to the little community centre for the bowls players further down the park, which is all fine and dandy, but now we have this one solitary gazebo in the middle of a field and we’re cowering under it. The guy from the youth service announces he needs to head down to the centre and get things ready for the visitors arriving at 12 and asks us to wait and direct anyone down that way, as many of the people coming to set up stalls dont know the event has moved. This leaves me stood under a tiny gazebo in the middle of a field with three seventeen year old girls that I have never met.

There follows an excrutiating twenty minutes where the girls neither speak to nor make contact with me as they chat amongst themselves and I busy myself pretending to check my phone and rolling a few cigarettes. The fact I was there with the young girls was creepy enough to begin with, but as the minutes flew by I began to feel creepier and creepier and started to realise it had been a long while since I’d spoken. I started trying to find an ‘in’ into the conversation, something that would reinstate me into proceedings, verify me as safe or sensible, and at best make me seem slightly cool or funny. I was just toying with the idea of taking a friend-of-your-parents-like interest in their A Level courses when one of the girls brought up David Carradine (‘that actor that hung himself’) and the other girl piped up asking how ‘hanging yourself could be sexual’.

Brilliant, I thought, finally a way into the converstion. having not spoken for such a long time made my voice crack as I butted in with ‘auto erotic asphixiation’. They looked at me for a moment and I started talking about how it works. As my mouth rambled on I retreated into my head and heard myself saying ‘inject a tangerine with amyl nitrate’ and began screaming at myself internally ‘SHUT UP! WHAT ARE YOU DOING?’ but before I knew it the girls were staring at me dumbfounded and I was worried I might end up on some sort of register.

Luckily they forgave this misjudgement and allowed me into the Youth Action gang and we chatted merrily until 12 and headed down to the centre for the festivities. When we got there it was more of a shed but everyone was in high spirits. I set about talking to the orgainisations I wanted to work for and collecting leaflets while the girls conducted questionaires. Then we all had free non-alcoholic cocktails and cakes and I went to get my picnic out of my satchel but had accidentally skewered a pear onto the end of my umbrella. I was very sad about this, and desperate for any topic to spark a conversation, proceeded to show a bruised pear to everyone who came near me. A little later on i was given my own Youth Action Team hoodie, a big red thing with a logo on the back which is the snuggliest thing I’ve ever worn.

Around this point the event was winding down, the community project samba band for the elderly, ‘silver Samba’, was packing up its drums, a few of the stalls were leaving and I decided I fancied grabbing a cigarette. I had thrown my satchel under the table with disgust after the pear incident and so had to weave through the crowded room to get to it, then duck down to grab it. On my way up I accidentally elbowed a man in the small of the back, pushing him into the two women he was talking to, in turn pushing them into their display table making a little screechy noise. I quickly mumbled an apology and the man turned around. It was the fucking Mayor of Gateshead. He looked me up and down with bemusement, a bit like the sassiest cheerleader in ‘Bring It On’ would do, smiled and said it was okay. But I could tell he hated me. His ceremonial necklace thing is amazing though if you’ve never seen it.

I escape, roll my cigarette and try and find an out of the way spot. Being part of a youth project, I’m guessing, means setting somewhat of a decent example so I thought it best to smoke away from everybody. I go around the corner and hide behind one of the big hedges that surround the bowls green and light up. Some people begin to leave the centre and I realise I was not as hidden as I thought I was. I take a step back, trip a little and end up sort of inside the hedge, Not quite entangled, but no real exit strategy either. The group of people walk within a foot of me and all see me. I don’t bother trying to make an excuse, I just smile and nod at the team of volunteers from Mencap, the mental health charity, from inside a bush in the pouring rain. Luckily I hadnt spoken to them about volunteering because I’d stated that I wasn’t interested in any ‘roles that involved care work’. This was my round about way of admitting that people with learning difficulties unnerve me ever since a girl with Downs Syndrome spat on me.

Having said that, the organisation I am most interested in working with is a group that are ‘advocates’ for people with disabilities or who have trouble communicating their needs or requirements. Kind of like a trainee social worker. The other organisation I am applying to is to become a volunteer journalist for a Youth services newsletter thing, and I have an interview about that next week, along with a lunch meeting with all of the Youth Action Team to discuss a mini festival. All in all a good day, and everyone I met was really nice, but today made me realise that I’m lucky to have any friends at all, I have a knack for making the worst first impression. I will probably start blogging more if I can keep up this ratio of makingacockofmyself to socialevents ratio.

http://is.gd/sbR3 how the hell is this legal?

Fri, 08 May 2009 00:58:23 +0100

http://is.gd/sbR3 how the hell is this legal?

Watching Bones. They are in England this episode.. There is a man called Cyril who eats jellied eels...

Sun, 03 May 2009 18:53:57 +0100

Watching Bones. They are in England this episode.. There is a man called Cyril who eats jellied eels and drives a mini. ffs.

Anyone watching Primeval? They are being beseiged by killer ostriches. Sigh.

Sat, 02 May 2009 20:52:58 +0100

Anyone watching Primeval? They are being beseiged by killer ostriches. Sigh.

RT @stickycomics: Woo, front page of digg again today … thanks buddies! :) http://is.gd/wayG

Sat, 02 May 2009 20:52:58 +0100

RT @stickycomics: Woo, front page of digg again today … thanks buddies! :) http://is.gd/wayG

new slogan for ITV to use on Primeval ads… ‘Primeval, give it a break, it’s...

Sat, 02 May 2009 20:52:57 +0100

new slogan for ITV to use on Primeval ads… ‘Primeval, give it a break, it’s British.’

Thinking about watching Pride and Glory tonight.

Sat, 02 May 2009 19:52:58 +0100

Thinking about watching Pride and Glory tonight.

If I ever need to walk in front of a tank in protest, I will certainly put my shopping down first....

Sat, 02 May 2009 19:52:57 +0100

If I ever need to walk in front of a tank in protest, I will certainly put my shopping down first. For more dramatic impact.

I predict a) Jon Voight turns out to be the bad guy and b) it’ll be shit

Sat, 02 May 2009 19:52:57 +0100

I predict a) Jon Voight turns out to be the bad guy and b) it’ll be shit