Tuesday 17 November 2009

Roll on Christmas

Why is it that people are so annoying?  On Sunday morning I went in to work early, mostly to tidy up from a very busy Saturday.  After being there for nearly four hours it became almost time for the customers to be let in.  Over the course of the 4 hours many people had tried the doors.  What toyshops are open at 8.15 am on a weekday, never mind a Sunday?  Really, who would expect a shop at 9.20am  on a Sunday, containing me in my scruffiest day off  clothes and wearing my headphones, to be open?  So eventually we got to 10 minutes before opening time, the staff arrived.  We went to open the door to let them in and people started doing the pushing thing trying to come in.  We pointed out that we were just letting the staff in, and we would be open soon.

When we actually did open one annoying woman in particular tried to push into the shop before the doors were even open.  Maybe I'm old fashioned, but I tend to wait until the staff have actually opened the doors before I enter!  Even worse, the same woman then took a gentle stroll at the slowest amble I have ever seen, and I walk everywhere slowly!  It's just fucking rude!

Over the past week we have also had a woman buy stuff and then return it 4 minutes later, which I think might be a new record!

Roll on Christmas…



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Saturday 19 September 2009

Pete, where are you Pete?

It is so frustrating. You know when you meet someone and get on straight away? I met a guy in Glasgow like that; he managed my local video shop. After living there for about 2 years we got chatting one day and I realised we had a lot to talk about. I feel a little like I stalked him for a while there. It was during a period of what you might call boredom. I could probably call it depression and get 6 months off work but that is what whiny bitches do! We hung out in the shop a couple times a week for a couple hours at a time, shooting the shit about all sorts of things. I really liked Pete, except that now sadly I think we have lost contact, even in this day and age of Facebook, myspace and Twitter. You see, the problem is, his name is not Pete. It is Patrick, and I have spent so long thinking of him as just Pete, and being back in York for 3 years now, I am ashamed to admit I have forgotten his surname! I know it was Mc-something (cliché I know!) but I don’t have any way of finding him. The video shop closed down before I left and he was about to move house and job as I left. So now what? I have tried searching through Facebook, but what am I supposed to do? Look for everyone called Pete in Glasgow? I suspect that might be a long search!
I was thinking about him today, seems a shame to lose track of someone I really liked. Maybe I will carry on my search…maybe I will accept that that friendship might be over; maybe my life will be just a little sadder.
I realise that none of my friends here ever met Pete, but in a way he was a really close friend, and I miss spending all those hours just mooching and fighting about films with him.

Tuesday 25 August 2009

Slowly writing...

Some of you reading this will have suffered from the same thing. I don’t like using the term ‘Writer’s Block’. Mostly because I’m not blocked, I’m just a bit lazy. I sit down every so often to write, only to find a thousand other things to do instead. Many people cleverer than me have told their versions of procrastinating, checking emails, updating your facebook status, tidying your desk, deleting stuff from the hard drive, all that stuff.
I’m not suffering from any kind of brain freeze, it is just that some of the things I want to write about don’t work quite so well on paper as they do out loud. I started a post for this blog telling an old story, but about ¾ of the way through it I realised it just doesn’t have the same impact on paper. So I stopped.
I have a couple of great ideas circulating, but that is all they are doing at the moment. I’m struggling to motivate myself. I’m even struggling with my novel, which I have never struggled with. I went back to re-edit it, and I realised there is quite a lot I don’t like. Which sucks.
So next up on my writing slate are, in no particular order:

Nunja’s
Untitled Queen’s Fantasy Script
Captain Hellbeard’s World Of Wonder
More blogging
Untitled family drama in the ‘hood/ghetto
A Certain Little Smile (my novel)

So, if anyone feels the urge to help, or prod me in the right direction, pick a project and feel free.
In the meantime, I’ll go back to watching the Wire, which is my procrastination of choice at the moment. Expect some influence to show, certainly in my slowly formulating family drama. It may feature an Omar or a Bubbles, but either way it will be dark and gritty! Go me…

Until next time….

Tuesday 4 August 2009

Stories

There are stories you can tell, and stories you can’t. I have stories that I love to tell, but I can only tell them to certain people. There will be stories which are never told to my girlfriend for example, and some stories never told to my mum. There is some crossover in these stories as you might expect! They are the stories that will one day be stag night stories, or tall tales told in the pub among old men.
There are stories it is safe to tell most people, like the time we went to see Kid Rock and slept in the station managers office at King’s Cross. I love telling that story. Or the time Kerry and I broke the rock bench and almost died laughing at breakfast. Stories it is safe to tell most people.
There are stories you can only tell to the people in them, because they make fuck all sense to anyone else. You could ask maybe 3 people about Julian’s loafers and socks and have them understand. But those 3 people will always smile at the memory.
I share some great memories with a couple of people who probably take as much delight in sharing them as I do. Tales of driving across America in a van with one gear, freewheeling down hills to cool off the engine. Tales of lifting fridges, of staying up all night to stop the kids sneaking out, tales of random underwear runs onto sleeping peoples beds. These are some of my favourite memories; maybe sometime they will be shared.
There are stories you can tell work colleagues, and stories you can tell a certain group of friends. Some of the best stories will remain untold until they are forgotten, or finally find an audience. For me most of that audience may never exist, relegated to people who read the odd story I write, or those who read this blog.
I will hopefully filter these stories into versions suitable for reading; those that I think may be of interest to more than the people in them, or that work generally as anecdotes.
Like many people I have some great memories which are destined to stay memories and never be told to anyone, for whatever reason…

Sunday 2 August 2009

Here's To The Night..


After a request from one of my readers, more tales from camp.
This one comes from the summer of 2002. For those following at home, that is the second year I went out to Philly.

Picture the scene, had a great time the first summer at JK, decided to come back for a second. This time bringing my closest friend from Uni with me, Alix. So we sent all our papers off to the embassy, just waiting for the return of our passports, newly printed with J-1 visas. This is slap in the middle of the World Cup. I’m up at 7am to watch England vs. Nigeria from Japan I think, the postman comes pretty early, game still going on, brings me my passport. Game on! I call Alix, we buy plane tickets, last minute so not cheap but fuck it, let’s just get there? So we get flights for the next morning, I recall maybe 11am, or somewhere around there from Gatwick. Now, I’m in Selby as usual, a fair way from Gatwick, and I’m online checking for buses and trains to get me to Gatwick. It is either going to be ridiculously expensive or I’m going to get a bus at 11pm and arrive at Gatwick at around 9am, after changing buses 3 times.


So I give in a call my dad. Long story regarding the background there so I’ll leave it, but we have not been particularly close at this point. I need to be at Gatwick for maybe 8am the next morning and a lift would be great. He is working the night shift that night. So I say no worries, I’ll just get the bus, long public transport journeys don’t bother me. He calls me back 20 minutes later and has the night shift covered, can take me but we will need to be leaving around 11pm because he needs to get there and back by first thing. Again, not a problem. So we drive to Gatwick, arriving some time around 3 if memory serves me correctly. I’ve arranged to meet Alix there at 8am, her coming up from Portsmouth and all. So I go to sleep at Gatwick, big rucksack under my seat, feet rested on it so no one can steal it, hugging my hand luggage! I know, attractive huh?
I’ll jump forward a bit but by the time we get on the plane I have been awake for 28 hours roughly. I decide to watch Lord Of The Rings on the little screen in front of me. Big mistake, phenomenally dull and quite hard to stay awake to; after all, it’s just a load of walking. Alix is not well, so she is whining most of the way there. I don’t really get ill so I’m not a sympathetic care giver.
Anyway, we finally land at Philadelphia Airport, to find they have lost Alix’s bag. Great. We spent ages sorting that out, I call camp and see if anyone is around to come pick us up. They tell me someone will be there soon. So we loiter.
A little white car pulls up, and a fucking humungous grin cracks my face, when Alyssa and Heather get out of the car. I love these two people and I was in a pretty cranky mood by this point. Cheered me up no end!
We drive back to Haverford, me spotting loads of beloved landmarks on the way, the Barnes & Noble, the dirty fleapit cinema I used on my days off, things like that.
So the hours count is up around 35 hours awake at this point, pretty much demented and delirious by the time we hit those dorms. A quick hug for the familiar and much loved faces, followed by a massive intro to loads of people with names I remember now, but then, no chance. I do distinctly remember seeing Mark, and getting a big hug, told I have a big room to myself then a big blur of faces. All I wanted was a shower and a kip! The other thing that does stick in my memory is meeting BJ. I know that sounds wrong, but I had heard stories of this really cool guy the year before, named BJ. I met him and he told me to go to bed and say hi properly in the morning.
I took a quick shower and then of course, could not get to sleep, so spent the night helping Mark and Wiaan make up room allocations. Back up 6 hours later…welcome back to Enrichment!

Tuesday 23 June 2009

Home...

So, I’m back from New York. Dammit I love that city. Never really been able to put into words why I do, but I do. Maybe it is my now familiarity with it? Maybe it is the fact that all my favourite TV shows and movies are set there? Maybe it is that it not as unpleasant as London? Or maybe it is just my spiritual home? I’m comfortable there, I still haven’t seen everything I want to see but I’m working on it.
I really wish I had studied at NYU, I love it around the campus. Such a chilled out environment, beautiful setting, right in the heart of Manhattan.
Maybe it is the abundance of cinemas, or the amount of filming going on there, or maybe it is none of those things!
What I love is that I can go, put on my headphones and just wander about looking at cool little things and finding interesting stuff to do without resorting to a guidebook and that is a strange thing indeed. I can’t imagine going to London and doing that.
Anyway, for anyone who wants to get a flavour of the New York that I love, seek out a book called Kissing In Manhattan by David Shickler. A collection of short stories all linked around a building, I think the randomness and variety is what appeals to me the most. Peace out…

Saturday 30 May 2009

Boredom

Ever been so bored you lost the will to live? Well I have. Constantly. I don’t mean actually suicidal, just so bored you can’t see the point. I know we have been hanging around waiting for months for everything to be sorted, and it very nearly is. But now I’m bored of waiting. And pretty much everything else. How sad is that?
Guess who needs a holiday?

Saturday 23 May 2009

Things....

Sorry, been a while since I have written here, had a few things going on. In the last two weeks I have: Seen Twelfth Night at the theatre, seen Russell Howard, seen Ross Noble, turned 30, gone to the pub with my boss, got a promotion, been offered an interview for another position. Oh, and worked too hard and not slept enough.
So, where to start? Finally got the job, frustration over with. Woo hoo!
Russell Howard was really funny, and I got to heckle some York Uni students...good times indeed! Ross Noble was his usual insanely funny self. Homeless Disco Ninja indeed.
As for turning 30? Well, I'm still getting my head around it. Feeling old, but quite touched by some of the nice things people did for my birthday. Thanks peeps. Means a lot.
So now I just have to get through 2 more weeks then I get 3 weeks off and a trip to New York! Yeah baby!
Maybe my next blog will be more insightful....maybe!

Saturday 2 May 2009

Getting the red mist...

I feel this will be a negative entry in the chapters of this blog. I have been compiling a list. It is a list of people, nay, groups of people who I have found I despise. And I’m not talking about a slight distaste, I mean people who make me go all Roy Keane/red mist.
What follows is not a comprehensive list, and some of you may find yourselves falling into one or many of the categories. If this is the case then I am afraid we can no longer be friends.
1. Students at York University. This equally applies to the students of other universities, such as Durham, or any of the uni’s populated by middle class kids there on daddies money. Get a job, stop loafing around my shop touching and playing with everything, then announcing in a big braying voice ‘Come on guys, this is all crap anyway, let’s go.’ And then coming back without your friends to buy a giant rubber duck.
2. Men who wear flip flops. This rule is negated if you are a) On your way to the beach. B) on your way back from the beach. C) Actually at the beach.
If not, then why the fuck are you wearing a bit of foam held to your foot with a bit of string instead of shoes?
3. People who shop at Jack Wills. Paying £65 for a sweatshirt which is identical to the ones your friends have does not make you cool, it makes you a twat.
4. People who wear those black and white scarves with the tassles, like the Palestinians wear. Are you Palestinian? Are you a pirate? No? Then why the hell are you wearing a stupid scarf identical to every other generic prick in the world?
5. Teenage boys in too tight jeans, and those giant winklepicker/clown shoes. Also, letting your fringe flop in front of your eyes doesn’t make you mysterious and sensitive. It means you can’t see, and will develop neck problems from flicking it all the time to try and attract attention from equally lame teenage girls!
6. People who wear knitted shoes. You fuckwits, socks go on the inside of your shoes, they don’t replace them!
That will do for now I think. I believe we have now found the reason I only have a very small group of friends. I hate everyone else.
There were many more groups I haven’t yet felt the need to rant about, I will get to them. But they include, people who like Keane and/or Coldplay. Bono, not people who like Bono (although that works), but actually Bono. Stop telling me to give money to help the starving Africans and then spend thousands of pounds flying your cowboy hat across the world. Instead why not give that money to a village in Malawi and stop them selling their children to Madonna?
Okay, on that note....peace out.

Thursday 16 April 2009

Friends...

I was talking to a friend the other day, about friendships. Now, I consider myself to be a man (barely) with a very small handful of friends. I always joke that I have 4 friends. Not too far from the truth. Facebook alleges I have 218 friends. That obviously includes all the people I apprently went to primary school with, attended the same High School as, or worked at the same place as. I don't want to disparage any of my Facebook friends but if I were in need of help, there are maybe 10 names on there I would even consider calling. And it is only that many because my mum, sisters and girlfriend are on that list.
I have friends I have not seen in 5 years but who I know would give me the shirt off their back if I needed it, they know who they are, and the main reason I haven't seen them is the fact that they live on opposite sides of the world. They are on my small list of true friends. There are some friends I see sporadically and keep in touch with equally as sporadically, but I know they would come through for me. And I have friends I see on a regular basis who would run a mile if something happened, but I am okay with that. I like to think the right people know they could count on me if they needed me. I don't want to have to list those people, so I won't.
It is a strange thing to be almost 30 and realising that the majority of the friends I have now are likely to be the friends who attend my wedding, birth of my children (one day) and outlive me. I have had friends who I worked with and at the time they were my closest friends, then one of us moved on to employment pastures new and the friendship went with it. Again, I am okay with that, I expect a certain amount of transitory friendships.
I'm not really sure what the point of this blog was tonight, but I hope it made sense? Basically I value the true friends I have, and I hope that whether I see them on a regular basis, whether I haven't seen them since we left America, whether we spent a solid couple of years working together and now bump into each other once in a while or whether I was best man at their wedding, that they know that I value them, and that they can rely on me, like I hope I can rely on them.
Peace out....

Thursday 19 March 2009

Bloggles

A collection of rants this week…
Why is moving such a pain in the arse? Why is all my good stuff really damn heavy?
Why does everyone in the world decide they are Irish on St. Patrick’s Day?
Why is our cricket team so bad? How stupid are some people?
Why must Drew Carey insert himself into the games on Whose Line Is It Anyway?
Why is Wayne Brady not a massive star?
Who is the woman who becomes the mother in How I Met Your Mother? I want it to be Victoria the cake shop girl!
Why doesn’t someone start a business doing the entire moving process for people? Packing, moving, cleaning up afterwards, phoning round to change the address and stuff on all the bills. I’d pay them!
Why are Apple such bastards? My ipod died on me, and I have now lost all 11000 songs that were on there. Unimpressed! Will be cheaper to buy a new one than have this one repaired. Only had it less than 18 months.
On the other hand, why is the guy who founded apple such a lovely man? I have been watching Dancing With the Stars and he makes me laugh!
Why can’t we make good comedy? Everything I watch is American these days.
Will someone please buy the rights to Ed from Channel 4 and show it! Or at least release it on DVD? I had to download a shoddy version, still genius though!
My next blog may have a theme…suggestions on a postcard.

The Shooter salute for this week goes to Ryan Stiles, for amusing me no end!

Monday 23 February 2009

Oscars

So, the Oscars have been and gone for another year. This blog is really to share my thoughts on the happenings at he 81st Academy Awards. I’ll start with two of the only three categories I really cared about this year. Best Actor in a leading role, somewhat predictably has gone to Sean Penn. Now, I don’t massively have anything against Sean Penn, except his self righteous nature, and a propensity to ham it up. I don’t think he deserved and Oscar for Mystic River, and I will own up to having a soft spot for Mickey Rourke winning this year. Yes, I am a wrestling fan and therefore maybe am a little predisposed toward Aronofsky’s film, however I honestly believe Mickey Rourke gave a career redefining performance as Randy ‘The Ram’ Robinson. Mickey Rourke may have scuppered his own chances by agreeing to be involved in Wrestlemania, but he also isn’t one of the favourites of the Academy. Rourke, by his own admission, has fucked his life up something rotten, and I just think it would have been the right thing to do to reward such a brave choice, pulled off with such aplomb.
Never mind. I, and many others, appreciate you Mickey Rourke!
The second category I cared about was Best Supporting Actor. In this category, the Academy at least got it right. Many thousands of words have been written to praise Ledger’s performance, and I don’t want to dwell. In a film filled with stars, and giant explosions, and in a genre very rarely recognised, Heath Ledger pulled off one of the great performances of our times. His Joker was unnerving, vulnerable, memorable and a true sociopath. It is hard to create a character who is so overtly close to the edge, without actually going over it. It is a fitting tribute to a cracking actor.
The final category I cared about is the one I always care about, Best original Screenplay. I do feel in this category that the best script doesn’t always win. For my money ‘In Bruges’ was the best script I have heard in a long time, Foul, funny, and full of heart. It was a script I would love to have written, full of memorable characters, great lines and a genuinely moving ending. It was a very un-Hollywood film. Where else but a Colin Farrell film could you hear lines such as ‘Two manky hookers and a racist dwarf’? For that line alone it should have won. But still, it got my vote!
These are the regular injustices that happen at the Oscars. But yet every year I get my hopes up that they will pick the right films, performances and scripts. At least this year they got one of them right. Roll on next years award season.

For Mickey Rourke, Heath Ledger and ‘In Bruges’, I offer a new feature of the blog…the Shooter Salute.

Friday 20 February 2009

Stupidity...

Okay, so I’m fairly certain I’m not the first person write about how stupid customers are, but I have my own twopence worth of rant to have!
Now, I run a shop, selling toys, gifts, games and random things. In the window are such items as Sticklebricks, Etch-A-Sketch and Emu puppets. However, this still leads people to come in and ask us for things. We are keeping a running tally…currently the list includes but is not limited to:
Wills
Lightbulbs
Paper Tablecloths
Doilies
There are many others but these struck me as the most ridiculous. Seriously, who sees a giant poster in the window saying ‘Retro’ in big dayglo multicolours, and thinks ‘I wonder if they will arrange my last living wishes’? What bit of your brain is misfiring? Seriously, I can’t think of any place less likely to deal with grieving relatives than us. What the hell is wrong with you people? For a will, go to a lawyer! For lightbulbs go to a hardware shop. For toys and random things, come and see me!

Tuesday 17 February 2009

Blast from the past....

You know, when you meet someone, and you just know you will not get on? Well, this is a tale which goes back a few years now.
I met the woman, whose name shall remain hidden, I will call her BB, when I went to teach at a High School in East Kilbride. For my transatlantic viewers that is a small town just outside Glasgow. Which is in Scotland.
So, as a new teacher, I needed help and support from the head of my department. Did I get that? Did I fuck! From the moment I met her she was nothing but hostile towards me, even going so far as to tell me that no new male teacher had ever done well in that school. What the fuck am I supposed to say to that? So, when, after a few months, I decided to leave the profession, it was with a happy feeling in my belly that I will never need to see BB again.
Until yesterday. Standing in my shop during half term, I look out of the window to see her shapeless form shuffling down the street. I ran to the window, thinking, was it her? No, surely not. What are the odds of her turning up in York and walking past my shop, almost exactly 4 years after I turned my back on helping children and focused on entertaining them instead? She had passed by the time I got to the window and I couldn’t be sure it was her. So I thought nothing of it.
Then today, as I popped out to the post office, there she was standing at the end of my street. Definitely her, 100%. How much did I have to stop my self from hurling things at her? Well, I will admit I struggled.
But anyway, there goes my rant….I hate that woman. And I don’t say that lightly. Most of the teachers in my department were really welcoming and friendly, helpful when I needed it, just not her. The male teachers put a little more effort in, one or two in particular were very good to me and I would like to thank them, even though they will never read this. But anyway, thanks Kenny and Alan.
Okay, maybe my rage has passed a little now…
Peace out!

Wednesday 11 February 2009

Camp Part 1

So I figure this blog is to be a flashback one. I had a big rant yesterday, today I feel like writing something a little more positive.

In the summer of 2001 I, along with an old schoolfriend, went to Camp. We flew to New York from Manchester, spent the weekend in New York and then took the Greyhound to Philadelphia. At the bus station we were to be collected by a representative of the camp. Well, Bobby and I stood at the entrance to that bus station for a good 3 or 4 hours. It was about 100 degrees in the midday sun, so we tried to spend as little time in it as possible. We spotted a group of girls who all had big bags like ours, also hanging around the entrance. They however were not avoiding the ridiculous temperatures. As we were to discover, they were Scottish, and there is one thing I know about Scottish women, they like a tan!
We got chatting to them a little, they were also waiting to be picked up, just like us. I forget all of their names but I remember Lucy and Katie were there, who I was to spend the summer with.
Eventually, a car and a van turned up, bearing the logo of our camp Julian Krinsky Summer Camps. The logo, as I recall thinking, looked like a bastardised version of the AIDS awareness ribbon.
So, into the van we get, having met Tim and Trish, the head counsellors. And so began our summer…

More stories from camp will come, but needless to say, this was the start of both the most exhausting, and also the most enjoyable of summers.I made some great friends there, many of whom I am still in contact with, at least one of whom will be reading this.

Tuesday 10 February 2009

Parenthood In Todays Society

Now, I don’t want to come off all Richard Littlejohn here, but really. As a non parent myself, some of you will argue that I have no right to comment on the parenting skills of others, but I have never held any strong religious beliefs either but that doesn’t stop me from knowing that priests playing with little boys is not right!
Living in a city like York, which is a nice city, with beautiful settings and some lovely people, I can’t help but be dismayed by the appalling parental skills shown by some of its residents. Take for example, this demonstration of parental concern witnessed by me 2 days ago on a bus:

Father (sitting at front of bus to child of 3 or 4 at back of bus): Paris, sit down Paris. She is going to hurt herself. Paris sit down.
Mother: non committal grunt.

Now call me old fashioned, but when I was a child, I would have had to sit with my mum for that whole journey. Not once did the Father of said girl make his way up the bus to either retrieve his child or to sit with her. I can’t help but wonder whether Russell Howard is right, that ‘you should not be allowed to use your fanny until you can control what plops out of it’.
This example is just one of many I could highlight, but I am sure you will all have your own horror stories to share with the world. Now, having spent a lot of time working in the customer service industry it would be easy to argue I have become jaded to the world, especially to things like controlling your children. Working in a cinema, you see the best and worst of people, managing a toy shop you also see both. I will very briefly head back to the young family of the bus to touch upon the subject of naming your child. I hate to be snobbish but is that 3 year old going to thank her parents for naming her after Paris Hilton? I can’t think that she has been named after the city, because both parents gave the impression they had never been further away from home than a day trip to Flamingo land, except for 2 weeks in Torremolinos spent eating chips and drinking John Smiths. Or will little Paris grow up to be just as ignorant and forgive me, stupid as her parents. One can’t help but fear for her future.

On a similar note, I had a family in my shop just a couple of weeks ago, I had to laugh. Now, again, I am in no real place to judge, but it is my humble opinion that couples who are both over the age of 45 should not really be reproducing. Certainly not couples who both dress entirely in tweed and would be more comfortable herding sheep. At that age, you run the risk of your children getting to be 20 and having their parents have to move in with them, what sort of life is it for a young boy to want to kick a football around with his dad, only to not be able to in case his dad’s hips go? Coupled with these factors, they have a tendency to name their children things like Angus and Millicent. People so ill suited to parenthood that they insist a child not spend his pocket money in a toyshop, or Waterstone’s because, and I quote, ‘You can buy it online when we get home for less money’. Yes, you can, but that is the kids pocket money, in five years time he will be spending it on 20/20 and Blue Nun. Take advantage of the fact that he wants to buy a book at all, not making him wait till Amazon deliver it in a weeks time. Let him read it today and expand his horizons. Let the kid have fun, life is shitty enough as a grown up that he doesn’t need to have his natural enthusiasm for life stifled out of him at 8!

Monday 9 February 2009

Mobile Phones: The Saviour of the Shopped Out Boyfriend

How many of us have stood kicking our heels in Miss Selfridges on a Saturday afternoon while the girlfriend looks at yet another pink thong or pair of boots? We have all been there. But now, thanks to technology, the phenomenon of the bored boyfriend is on the wane.
Now if you were to look around any high street retailer on a Saturday afternoon you will find the usual throng of women shoppers, but also men leaning on a clothing rack, mobile phone in hand. Whether he is sending a text message or just pretending to, he is no longer trying not to be embarrassed by the underwear section of Top Shop. With the advent of ever improving mobile phone technology, today’s man is more likely to be surfing the internet on his phone or downloading the latest hits than trying to look at other women without his girlfriend noticing.
This I feel is a shame, just another case of technology removing a part of what makes us who we are. Now that the text message allows us to avoid the awkward stance and sly glances at the underwear, where are we supposed to bond? Remember seeing the episode of Father Ted where the priests get lost in the underwear section? That applies not just to priests, but to every other man, that fear of being left alone, with all those pants, women looking at you like some kind of pervert! These days the male of the species could probably use his phone to find a map of the shop on the net to help him out.
I recall, when younger, being dragged along to the shops with a girlfriend, only to spend my afternoon, hands in pockets occasionally nodding and murmuring appreciative comments. I bonded with other boyfriends, wordlessly, just catching the look in the eyes of the other guy made us feel like part of the same club. The occasional nod, a raise of the eyebrows, and the over exaggerated grimace are all common features of the man in a clothes shop.
Without these shopping trips, how are we to learn to relate to women, or even to other men? Without the training ground of the shops, how are boys supposed to learn that the correct answer to all questions posed by women is that they look great? And, how else are today’s young men supposed to gain the influence needed to enable them to then spend an hour wandering the dvd section of HMV without first spending time being the dutiful boyfriend?
The mobile phone serves to both entertain us during the shopping trip but also to distance us from our women. It makes it look like shopping is not an effort, like our patience is not something to be rewarded.
So while the new generation of mobile phones means that this generation of young men don’t have to stand around bored, it also deprives them of the ability to entertain themselves, or even of having to think for too long.

Popping that cherry!

So, this is my blog...whether anyone will ever read it I don't know. I intend to use this blog to have a bit of a rant, express some feeling, maybe just comment on something that me smile. I don't know yet. I wasn't going to do this, however, quite a few people seem to want to read my blog, so I thought I had better write one.
There will be occasional themes, it may end up just being a random selection of thoughts. Bear with me!
Anywa, I gotta go to work now, so I will have a think and come up with something oh so witty and readable for me to write tonight.
Until then, peace out!
Steve