this has probably been done bajillions of times
17 year old blonde pushing double buggy on a public bus, ignoring both the squealing kids who have the misfortune to have been squeezed out of her overused undercarriage, ignoring so she can puff on a fag AND have a shouty conversation with someone called Darryl about how she NEVVAH! got felt up by Dean and Daz was only round her place cos she was upset and Damien was helping her fill in forms when she was on the sofa with his arms round her when he, Darryl, turned up unexpectedly.

The tirade of swearing interspersed with 'no...NO...NO!!...I NEVVAH!' and 'Anyway, you owe me that 50 quid...y'do...y'do...y'do...because Y'DO!'

The only positive thing to be said about the whole experience is that at least the grotty snot-ridden kids are advancing up the accepted evolution frame by forgoing the milk that they should be drinking up through bottles at 4am and are instead messily picking apart and smearing Gregg's scotch eggs about their face and clothes.

I would menthion the extras in the scene, her bottle blond hair, single pony tail fed through a Burberry baseball cap, the 4-month old babies with pierced ears et cetera... but youi've already got that mental image, right?
( Rotating Wobbly Hat That's not a banana. THIS is a banana., Tue 21 Oct 2008, 18:52, 1 reply)

a message from the queen
shall one tell you who really is common?



you lot are....really

lots of love lizzy
(TROLLING AWAY living under a post ironic bridge, Tue 21 Oct 2008, 18:33, 1 reply)

People that...
go to scrapyards with toasters/rakes etc... to get about 20p for it as scrap

why ?

just throw it away.
( Mr Nerdy-Speccy-FuckNuts Ouchy ouchy wa wa!, Tue 21 Oct 2008, 18:22, 4 replies)

Ok
enough about if it's dinner or tea (it's supper). and how to say scone (to rhyme with gone).

Am I alone to thinks it's common to pronounce Nougat - nugget? I pronounce it noogar.

And while we are about it Nestle is Nesslay not nessels.
( Mrs Entity is in hiding., Tue 21 Oct 2008, 18:19, 13 replies)

Jumpers over the shoulders
This absolutely makes my blood boil - I f**king hate it above everything else.

PEOPLE WHO WEAR JUMPERS OVER THEIR SHOULDERS ARE COMMON!

If its cold, wear it, if its hot leave it at home you miserable f**kers. THERE IS NO INBETWEEN!

*I feel better now*
(pard, Tue 21 Oct 2008, 17:46, 29 replies)

Caravan holidays
I'm not sure if they still do this, but in the 90's The Sun newspaper used to have an offer where you'd collect a certain amount of tokens and pay about £8 per person for a weeks stay in a caravan park off season.
My family and I did this for about seven years in a row in the October half term.

Myself, my two brothers, my Mum, my Mum's best friend, her three children and my Nan used to all pile into my parents VW van and spend what used to feel like an eternity driving to a seaside resort somewhere in Britain. Once we even visited the exotic land of leeks and sheep, the very wet but very lovely Wales.
There would be a packet of chocolate éclairs to nibble on and a chorus of "are we there yet?" We'd probably get lost at some point and someone was always car sick due to over excitement and sweets.

Our days would be spent walking through woods in our wellies, visiting outdoor adventure parks and a few times we went to farms and got pumpkins for carving. If there was a beach near by we'd always go for a walk there. I actually can't remember being on a beach in the summer until I was a teenager. They're not places I associate with sunshine!
One of my favourite memories is of me being wrapped in a big winter coat, the salt air chilling my nose as I hunted for fossils in Lyme Regis.

The evening entertainment would consist of some form of variety act. I'm sure you know the kind of thing I mean. A minor celebrity, a shit magician and singing girls wearing red coats and far too much make up. Luckily for me this wasn't my family's idea of a good night. So, instead we'd play bingo with my Nan or we'd be given a shiny pound coin to spend in the run down arcades.

There seems to have been a lot of hatred of people who can't afford the better things in life on this QOTW so what I'm trying to say is yes, caravan parks seem to be the holiday choice of the lower classes, some of the places we stayed in had definitely seen better days and a whole family wearing shell suits wasn't an uncommon site.
But, those cheap holidays gave me a chance to run around outside and actually be a child. I got to see some beautiful parts of Britain, I got to spend time with my family and I consider my self very lucky that I have some extremely happy memories of innocent fun.

If going on cheap caravan holidays makes me common, then I have no problem with that at all.
( wanderlust, Tue 21 Oct 2008, 17:45, 9 replies)

Lounge / Living Room
This argument has been ping-ponging between me and the mother-in-law for years now.

I always thought 'lounge' was the posh word for 'living room' and the mother-in-law says that 'living room' is the posh word for 'lounge'

Someone enlighten me :)
(pard, Tue 21 Oct 2008, 17:38, 8 replies)

Learn English.
"Your" does not equal "you're".

Common scum.
(therapistfinder, Tue 21 Oct 2008, 17:29, 2 replies)

Aberystwyth
Every night without fail the local Charvers drive around the one way system over and over doin nothing other than beeping their horns. The common as muck part? All of them referring to students as "pobl yr ymylon" (drop-outs).

A wquick reply of Lloegyr am Byth usually shuts them up.
(Mr Torture Oh no! Not the BEEEEEEEEEEES!, Tue 21 Oct 2008, 17:20, 8 replies)

Smoking
cigarettes is common now isnt it? I dont really like smokers anymore.
( I have run out of coke is a little sweaty, Tue 21 Oct 2008, 17:20, 2 replies)

The gobshites on Henman Hill.
A better class of commoner but certainly well worth a few kilos of semtex.

Doubly so for those bastards at Wimbledon who used to try to be the last to shout 'C'mon Tim' before the service.

(Same with the last QOTW now that I come to think of it.)
(Tugnut I got them all..., Tue 21 Oct 2008, 16:56, Reply)

'Dining' at Wetherspoon.
I'd rather eat the nappy off a baby.
(Tugnut I got them all..., Tue 21 Oct 2008, 16:47, 6 replies)

Cockney Lynn
Well, I've ranted, I've stuck a reasonable 2p's worth in here and there and now it's time for an anecdote, though you better get ready for some length. Oh, I'm back alright :)

Cockney Lynn was singularly my brother's poorest choice of girlfriend ever, which considering some of the ones he shacked up during the more-than-a-decade that he had one of modern life's more unwise habits is saying something. I've mentioned her briefly in another post (in my best-of at the time of writing this ... EDIT: holy crap, now this one is too lol) and her clueless part in nearly getting my brother pasted by a very nasty man named Johnny.

So, Cockney Lynn, so named on account of her and hers being the only cockneys on a council estate in the northwest, was relocated to the estate by local authorities closer to (her) home along with her tattooist-with-no-artistic-talent brother, Bob and revolting little 8yo shitcake of a son Rob on account of bad men taking umbrage at some unspecified action on their part and making their intention clear to stove all three of their heads in.

Lynn and Bob were of course major smackheads themselves and being such, were out for all they could get. From anyone. As for their physical description, apply the pallid and emaciated demeanour of your average hard drug addict but add poor tattoos to every inch of Bob's body including his face (unemployable? you are now, titwad) with a general tinker-ish dress sense and the charming aroma that goes with it.

Lynn was not so much tinker-ish in appearance as cut-price-whoreish, always favouring market-bargain-quality vest tops and too-fucking-short skirts on her scrawny torso which unwisely displayed tattoos on her arms, neck, ankles and inner thighs. Judging by the artistic and technical quality of these efforts, it's more than likely that her brother put them there but inner thighs?. Let me count the ick. Bob also did a line in doubtlessly disease-ridden piercing that the pair of them had taken more advantage of than they should.

The son, Rob, well, if he'd had a better start in life then he may have turned out differently but he hadn't and as it was he was a thoroughly unbearable little twat, thieving anything he could wherever he was, shockingly rude to everyone regardless of their intentions toward him and always the first to whine when his many liberties were even minorly infringed, as all misguidedly self-respecting chavs do. Whilst the boy didn't know any better, neither of the adults in this troupe of shit ever showed any regret at their situation, always blaming others and never holding a shred of remorse for the frankly baseline-low shit they pulled on people in order to get by.

All in all, a trio that was the very definition of the phrase 'waste of flesh'.

Through an unfortunate and unremarkable series of events, my brother became associated with this small collection of walking crap and even in the full effect of a hard drug addiction, my brother still seemed to do well with the ladies - well, other hard-drug addicted and in some cases psychologically damaged ones at least. It was this that led to his partaking of her rancid charms on a regular basis. He was with her for the best part of six months until they earned the displeasure of nasty men up here too and had to be packed off to somewhere else. During this time her lack of any morals, respect, propriety or courtesy as well as her pure fucking bare-faced cheek truly took our breath away. Examples include:

* Inviting psycho Johnny into the house she shared with my brother and her own for the hard liquor that he carried into the place. An episode that nearly got my brother quite badly fucked-up (see the aforementioned best-of post) if it weren't for my mum diffusing the situation.

* Bringing her appalling spawn to meet my mum whilst hanging off my brother's arm during one time he visited and saying to him 'go and ask your Nan for 50p for some sweets', right in front of my mum and me. That was one of many steps too far and I piped up with 'Just so you both know, my mum is not his Nan and never will be so let's kick that into touch straight away, shall we?'. Rob wailed and Lynn glowered but fuck them both. Besides, his mayfly-esque attention span and her next fix erased any memory they had of it, it seemed.

* Put her child benefit book in hock with my mum in return for a loan and then sent the Police around for it when the appointed time came to cash it and she of course hadn't paid my mum back. Lynn and her pack weren't allowed on the doorstep after that.

* Regularly palmed the boy off onto my brother, his mates or literally anyone who offered to keep an eye on him for however long they could stand the little shit. If he hasn't been molested at some point in his life by now, no-one would be more surprised than me.

* Chucked my brother out every couple of weeks and then sent notes to him via my mum (and getting the spawn to deliver them at that) that would have looked more at-home written in crayon declaring her 'pashunit luv' (I shit you not) for him and how badly she wanted him back. These little essays sometimes got very graphic and I say again, she sent them TO MY MUM to give to him. Not even in an envelope.

* Was observed by a number of my brother's mates on a number of occasions in the house treating my brother like shit and telling him to 'fack off around to your fackin mother's and get me some fackin money'.

* Of course, fucked anything that moved and/or didn’t resist whether my brother was around or not. She even tried it on with me once - fuck's sake, I was 14. Suffice to say I told her to get the fuck off me. Ugh. Still makes me shudder now.

As stated, this pack of pondlife didn't take very long to piss off far less forbearing people than me and my mum and were carted off to torment some other group of unfortunates somewhere else, apparently setting fire to the house before they left. With hindsight though, that could have been a move by the townsfolk to make sure those fuckers went rather than deciding to squat or something.

Most of those familiar with my posts know I have no regard at all for chavs and their ilk but I still just about recognise them as human. These three however were the lowest, most despicable creatures I had or have since ever encountered. Now I think of it, common doesn't come close to covering it - they had no courtesy, no respect, no humility, no dignity, no anything that I could call a positive human quality. They were vermin.
(thatblokeoverthere not quite as much an arsehole as I thought, Tue 21 Oct 2008, 16:39, 12 replies)

Toilet terrorists
I recently went to use the lavatories at Sheffield Midland train station. As I walked in, a gentleman walked into the adjacent cubicle at the same time. I shut the door behind me, hung my bag up, and attempted to separate the seat from the lid - both were up, and I needed the seat so that I could do my wee jobbies into the toilet.

However, as I pulled the seat, I heard a soft squelch that will live with me forever, and saw that someone had done a dirt ONTO the seat, and then pushed the seat up so that the faecus acted as a kind of rudimentary glue holding the two together.

The man in the next cubicle may have thought I was common, as all he would have heard was a soft squelch, me saying 'oh, for fucks' sake', and then me leaving the cubicle, almost as though I'd pappered my trolleys. In fact, the dirty bastard who'd prepared this little trap was the common one here. What's wrong with writing crude graffiti on the walls? Is that not extreme enough anymore?

I still haven't told my girlfriend about it.
( CaptainCrackerjack live trout, slow motion, Tue 21 Oct 2008, 16:16, 13 replies)

Playboy.
Reading some replies below reminds me:
There was a local news story (to me, in the North East anyway) recently about a teenage girl that was run down and killed by a speeding police car. All pretty grim really. The copper has been charged with death by dangerous driving.

Forgive me for speaking ill of the dead, but this girl was a shining beacon of 'common'. I'll try to condense this into the basic facts;
She was in a locality frequented nightly by charvers.

The accident occurred at around 11pm

The 'promising student' was due to sit her English GCSE the following morning. (WTF was she doing hanging around the streets at 11pm then?)

Her mates began stoning police patrol cars in the area.

The after the incident, police appealed for 'calm' because they were expecting full-on rioting.

There were vast numbers of 'novelty' shaped flower wreaths - carried to the crematorium on a flat-bed 'pikey' wagon.

She had a pink coffin emblazoned with 'her favourite' playboy trademark.




(None of this excuses the fact that she was unlawfully killed by a police officer who was exceeding the designated speed limit without due cause and not using the cars sirens / lights. It does, however show her to be common as f... muck)
(Greencloud Wanted to go fishing on, Tue 21 Oct 2008, 16:15, 2 replies)

Edinburgh Uni Students
There are two classes of Edinburgh Uni students who are so fucking posh they become common because there's so many of them, and they all look the same. In fact they overlap from last week's question.

Male: Jack Wills tracksuit bottoms, lifesaver jacket, boating shoes, BIG hair, and called Jake, Jack, Charlie, or Henry. Henry FFS!

Females: Jack Wills tracksuit bottoms, lifesaver jacket and or pashmena, BIG hair, Ugg boots, called Kimmy, Izzy or 'Becks'.

FUCK OFF all of you.

Incidentally, not all Edinburgh Uni students are like this - some are Chinese.
(Zutroy started without you, Tue 21 Oct 2008, 16:03, 45 replies)

The Joy of Haven
I've been lurking around these parts for a while. I’m well overdue to take the plunge so here goes!

My partner's brother has down’s and enjoys caravan holidays and bingo (amongst other things), to combine the two we decided to take him to Haven. That's common right there you may think and you'd be right!

However amongst the general commonness of the camp itself and its patron’s one family stood out.

We were enjoying a refreshing beverage in the outside section of one of the bars when they appeared. It was the mother I noticed first as she was displaying a most impressive muffin top which sported a strangely hypnotic array of stretch marks. Now I can understand that this is possibly one of the things that can happen as a result of having a child, but why would you feel the need to display them to the world?

A short while later her child decided it needed to go to the loo and the mother directed the child to go behind the glass door into the bar! (which itself was all glass fronted)

What really got me, and we didn’t know till later, was the fact that the child’s father was just inside the bar door and not more than 30 feet away from the toilets.

The poor child seemed a bit distraught at the whole procedure as he came up to his gran crying and said “I weeed on myself.” She brushed the wee off his tracky bottoms with her hand and went back to drinking/smoking.

Classy!
(KipperMinge has been watching out for the penguins since, Tue 21 Oct 2008, 15:52, Reply)

Edith Bowman
and her common usage of the word 'amazing'.
(oneinthepink is at your cervix m'lady, Tue 21 Oct 2008, 15:52, 2 replies)

aks
'acsian' and 'axian' were Old English words meaning 'ask'. So there.
(apeloverage committed the vile act of onanism on, Tue 21 Oct 2008, 15:52, 3 replies)

I found out recently that the big chicken's at Toby Carvery.....
....are actually turkeys!

I was there recently with some friends and waiting the queue for the meats to be plated when I exclaimed to my bitchy gay friend Luke `Wow! What a massive chicken!!'
His reply was `it's a fucking turkey you common cow!'


p.s. I think I'm more dopey than common.
( DUMBLONDE is a rubber lover girl, Tue 21 Oct 2008, 15:41, 3 replies)

Dirty animals
Sadly, the lack of decorum bemoaned of by most posters this week has also spread to the animal kingdom.

Only last week outside my flat I witnessed three pigeons fighting with a rat over a burger! Have they no standards? It was one-nil to the rat after an impressive series of dive bombings by the pigeons.

I was still mulling this over last night when I witnessed a hedgehog so engrossed in eating a small mound of sick that it didn't even apologise for blocking the pavement as I squeezed past.

I despair, I really do.
( rofl harris, Tue 21 Oct 2008, 15:34, 3 replies)

The overt sexualisation of kids has become too common.
As Dad to a little girl, I've learned to despise child size mini-skirts, boob tubes and lurid message tee-shirts, those awful "Bratz" dolls, girl/teen bands, the parents of pageant kids, and the common message they represent.

The worst I've personally encountered was at a popular concentration, sorry, "holiday" camp. Gigging at some popular chains, used to provide regular seasonal money. The work routine was to arrive early in the day, to set up equipment and stage, soundcheck . At the smaller venues the room and bar would sometimes remain open, in which case you'd be setting up with an audience, and kids running around.

One such occasion, three generations of a family, were sat near the stage, the ladies dressed in gaudy matching miniskirt and boob tube. The youngest of them couldn't have been long out of nappies. Mum and Nan then goaded the child into running to the front of the stage, with delighted cackles of "Go on, sing the Spice Girls!". They were then overjoyed as the child innocently bumbled through the song, loudly singing out the bit she really remembered....

"Need some love like I never needed love before, wanna make love to ya babyyyyyyy!"

Unfortunately, grooming your own child for paedophiles is common practice parenting these days. :(((((((
( masakatsu best of all the burger meats, Tue 21 Oct 2008, 15:21, 18 replies)

Reading this weeks QOTW has dredged up two examples (I wish I could forget..)
1. I was standing in line at a checkout a few days ago and my eyes had the misfortune of idly passing over the cover of one of those cheap and nasty magazines designed to make the poor and stupid feel marginally better about their tedious lives.

This one was called "Chat!", the byline being "Life! Death! Prizes!!". The predominant cover story was a miserable looking hag glaring out from underneath the headline "Forced to Eat My Poo", a smaller headline over a picture of a man with half his face covered; "A Monkey Chewed My Nose, AND THEN HE ATE MY NUTS!!".

My brain still hasn't forgiven my eyeballs for that indelibly imprinted mental pollution.

2. I was waitressing a few years back and heaved a huge sigh of relief when the smoking in restaurants ban came in. People who light up while their dinner companions are still eating deserve to have their heads set on fire, and as for the utter obnoxiousness of those who choose to use their uncleared plates as an ashtray... AAAAAAAARRRRRRRGGHHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!

Years later it still raises my blood pressure.
(AmiBambini, Tue 21 Oct 2008, 14:23, 10 replies)

Mobile phone DJs.
I'm sure I covered this in my rant about bus twunts a while ago, but for me, it has to be people who play music (or worse, a list of ringtones) from their phones in public.

Especially when they are by themselves. Put your fucking headphones on!
( Sylia Stingray is pilfering the biscuits on, Tue 21 Oct 2008, 14:23, 1 reply)

Not that common, but I had to write it.
Yesterday was a very windy day in Stenungsund (near Gothenburg). I was cycling back to the office and suddenly I saw a small stork "wobbling" in the air.

It was going straight to some telephone cables. It hit one of the middle ones and was thrown back against another, trying desperately to fly free.

Finally, it fell in the floor, wings and head first. Shook its head, got up and stayed there, in the middle of the road, looking each side with a look of completely lost.

I regret now I didn't go and help it. A big truck went down the road a bit after, and I don't know what happened.

Sorry, it has nothing to do with the QOTW, but I was so shocked I had to tell you.
(Aberracion Life's getting very complicated, but a lot of fun., Tue 21 Oct 2008, 14:21, 3 replies)

Which is which
I have lived all my life in the Mighty North of the UK although I have migrated from the eastern side to the Western and wherever I've lived I have happened upon a great debate taking place, which I shall thake this opportunity to canvas your opinions on/start a fight.

Scone.

Is is posh to say scone (rhymes with gone) or scone (rhymes with cone)? Everyone I know Oop North wants to avoid being posh.

I've found no definitive answer to this in any place I've lived.

The most conclusive I've heard is, "They say 'scone' (rhymes with cone) down South, so 'scone' (rhymes with gone) must be correct."
(beer, Tue 21 Oct 2008, 14:18, 13 replies)

Buliiiindah Datah is for common scum
Wasn't allowed to watch ITV because it was for common people.

And it wasn't like i was living in a 10 bedroom mansion with valets to wipe my pre adolescent bum clean of posh poo.

No, i was living in a nice, ordinary Bovis house in an estate. Admittedly all the streets were names after poets, so that's quite highbrow. Does you street name rub off on you? Don't think so. I don't think Marketing twats rate you according to the semantics of your address i.e. white collar but lives in 'High Street' therefore chav.

Anyway. I missed out on blind date, the A team, Airwolf, the Equalizer, Starsky and Hutch and that other one with a car and two men and a woman with breasts. It was shit. I lived on finger mouse, play school and that weird Box of Delights programme that i secretely loved (and still do - it gives me shivers)

So yeah - all of you who watched ITV as kids - you're all scum according to my mum. Weirdly my mate Nic at Uni wasn't allowed to either. Needless to say the glut of BBC programming enriched our blood with a bluer hue than you common bastards.
( Animanga, Tue 21 Oct 2008, 14:12, 11 replies)

Is it just me...
Or does it strike anyone else, as increasingly common that people are posting stories that should go in the 'pet peeves' qotw, rather than the 'common' qotw?

Also, I actually think using text speak is common, especially when translated to people's actual speaking. I have taken to reading people's status updates on Facebook, and commenting on them with the grammatical and spelling errors.
(The Kwyjibo A big, dumb, balding North American ape., Tue 21 Oct 2008, 14:03, Reply)

The delightful parlance of the Scottish lower classes
This was reported in the (Glasgow) Herald Diary a few years back.

There was a falconry exhibition being held in a city park at the weekend and by way of an advert one of the handlers was in a local shopping mall with a beautiful falcon perched on his leather gauntlet.

A member of a passing crew of shell suits was heard to say,

"Haw, check oot the pure mad craw hing."
( Cheeses of Nazareth Where's Captain Kirk? www.whereiskirk.com, Tue 21 Oct 2008, 13:50, 11 replies)