Ahhh...

Working from home when it's upwards of three million degrees is aces. Well, not completely aces, but better than walking in excess of three miles up hill and down dale to and from work. I've still managed to get as sweaty as a haggis, mind, and that just from doing some music for work (orchestral instruments and everything! Oboes! Clarinets! Erm... banjos!) and walking round the corner to Sainsbury's to buy some stuff for lunch. Also some blancmange. An assortment - vanilla, chocolate, raspberry and strawberry. I'm so excited it's untrue. So I guess you could say I'm in a good mood today. Now I just need to get a bicycle and I'll be practically orgasmic.

Daily Rant

If one more fucking child decides to listen to their shit R&B music at maximum fucking volume on public transport, I will shove their fucking cheap phone right up their fucking arseholes and see if their fucking ribcage acts as some kind of amplification device.

This post has been brought to you by the letters X, P and T, the number 7, and the fact that giving up smoking has given me the temper of a hungry bear.

Good grief - whatever next?

In the pub which I frequent most often, due to its lax application of licensing laws and close proximity to my house, the toilets have vending machines in. Now, I realise that this is a normal state of affairs, and indeed, there's nothing amiss about the machines in the men's toilets. One sells your standard three-packs of rubber johnnies, and the other sells breath freshener spray or something similar. However, the ladies toilets are something else entirely.

There's a poster in the men's toilets about smoking causing impotence, which contains the headline "Bad news - these posters are in the Ladies' too". I was often intrigued as to whether this was the case, but could find no valid pretext to enter the girl's bogs to check for myself. However, one night, providence dealt me a good hand; I was in there with Mrs Hetter and she had become ill (ostensibly through eating peanuts; apparently it had nothing to do with the copious amounts of wine she'd been drinking previously) and had to go to the toilets to vomit. As this was after hours, and there was only a select group of people in there, I knew I could go in to check on her after a few minutes without fear of admonition by any other ladies who might have happened to be in there. That night I learned two things: one, that the posters were NOT actually up in there, so the impotence people were just trying to scare me into not smoking (as if that would work! The main function of my erections these days is for pissing over high walls), and two, that the vending machines in the girls toilets didn't sell such mundane items as prophylactic sheathes and breath-freshening spray. No.

What was sold in there was far more interesting. Better even than the vibrators which used to be sold in the mens toilets at Casbah. These machines sold:

1. Knickers. Useful I suppose if you piss yourself in the pub, or worse, shit yourself. Or if you pull some hapless bloke and want a clean pair of shreddies for doing the walk of shame in the morning.

2. Pregnancy test kits. Seriously. You can't get rubbers from there, but hey! At least you'll know if you're pregnant after having unprotected, drunken intercourse with some random man you've just picked up after drinking too much Diamond White.

I was staggered, I really was. Shocked and appalled. But also quite amused. The only downside was I then had to help my near-comatose ladyfriend home, and get a bowl for her to vomit into even more.

A-hem

I was promised a thunder-storm. Where is my thunder-storm? Where?


Where?

Hopefully it will arrive soon and my head will stop feeling like it's in a fucking vice.

Bastard weather.

A snippet from my experimental novel...

So, yeah. This novel-writing can't be that hard; Dan Brown managed to write a bestseller and he's functionally retarded, and JK Rowling seems to make a decent living out of it and she's a girl (as I live and breathe!), so given that I'm hilarious and also a genius of some sort, I thought I'd try my hand at it.

Mind you, I don't want to read one of these novels where someone else does all the stuff. You know, 'Clive walked into the room and sat next to the table, where he looked through his mail for the day'; 'At about this time, Ethan would contemplate going to the shops'; 'Alice quivered in fear as the gigantic beaver began scaling the wall'. No, no, and no. That's boring. I don't want to hear what other people have done. I want to be the main person in the novel.

And so, as I think I've spotted a niche in the market, I'm writing it in the second person. That's right, none of this bollocks first-or-third person jive. As you read the book, it's all about you. This way you get all the excitement and you become the star. It's like being in a film, except more dreary, and probably with a poorer soundtrack and less beautiful cast. But if you're blind, at least you can listen to the audiobook, or read it in brail, or something - Christ, stop whining, you sightless prick.

Anyway. The novel is about a prostitute (they're very popular these days) who has - get this - a talking dog. How cool is that? It's the ultimate buddy scenario, a bit like Turner and Hooch, but the dog actually talks and you are a prostitute instead of Tom Hanks. I think it's got legs, anyway. A talking dog! Just imagine.

So, here's the excerpt anyway. Enjoy, and remember that I've got a gun that fires AIDS at people, so steal it at your own risk.

You walked into your flat, still sore from the vicious, near-rape sex which the ambassador forced upon you before throwing a handful of £50 notes nonchalantly at you as you fought back the tears. Your entire body ached; the throb in your sex seemed like an epicentre with shockwaves of pain and revulsion pulsing through your body, the skin of which was covered in a thin sheen of cold sweat, and, or so it felt, dirt. You slipped off your shoes at the door, staggered through to the lounge, and sank into the sofa, not even able to complete your usual ritual of showering before touching the brushed suede of the throw. A noise at the door to the kitchen announced that Rover was home, and you felt a glimmer of happiness through the clouds of self-loathing and sadness that threatened to engulf your very spirit. The door opened slowly, Rover nudging it as he came through, and you heard his familiar canter across the laminate flooring as he came to give you the support you so sorely needed.

"Oh, Rover," you sighed. "I've had the worst time... The ambassador..." You broke into tears, incapable of speech.

"For fuck's sake, you stupid tart, shut it. Whilst you've been whoring around with plump old men, I've shat all over the kitchen, and I'm not fucking cleaning it up. Now get in there and sort it out. And then feed me."