» Terrible food

Tinned chicken curry
It didn't seem such a bad idea at the time. Chicken curry. In a tin? Bob's your uncle! "Pah to your microwave curries!" I chortled as I ran to the checkout with the tin and a carton of Ribena, "I laugh in your face, Mr Vesta, for I have the subcontinental goodness in a handy cylindrical container... and what's more, judging by the gorgeously tempting photo on the label, it's going to be something to really savour!"

I think it was once the tin was opened that I realised I'd made a terrible error. It smelt like I imagine it smells in that bit in the abbatoir where they rip the shit out of the dangling animals' guts.

But I was young, hungry and impoverished; I'd spunked the rest of my money on fizzy lager and cigarettes, so it was tinned chicken curry or nothing. I slopped the humming brown mass into a saucepan and began to stir. And besides, how bad could it be? After all, I grew up on Uncle Ben's curries made by my mum that had carrots and sultanas in them.

(Think about that for a minute. You young folk have probably never had to endure the late 1970s-early 1980s concept of curry that oldies like me did. Yes, "curry" that bore about as much resemblance to South Asian cookery as Spud-u-like does to The Fat Duck. With *carrots* in it. And *sultanas*. Presumably so you'd have something to recognise when it came steaming out of your hoop the next day at the speed of light. All mixed up with shitloads of "Ignorant White Bastard Bloody Hot Curry Powder". It tasted like white spirit, but without the subtlety.)

Nothing could be worse than that. Could it?

About 20 minutes' stirring, in a desperate bid to find chicken meat among the bits of brain stem and pancreas, it was just about burnt enough that I'd have a go at it. Two mouthfuls in, there was a gurgle of protest from down below. "Damn you to hell!" I told my stomach, "This baby's coming down, and you're going to like it!" I forced a dozen or so mouthfuls of half-chewed chicken rectum and eyeball down before I couldn't bear it any more.

I spent the night in the bathroom, vomiting into the bath and over my legs, while spluttering gangrenous turds into an overflowing bowl, wishing I could rip myself a new hole so it would come out quicker and spare me the misery. I must have lost about three stone.

I haven't eaten tinned chicken curry since.
(Mon 21st May 2007, 20:24, More)

» Family Holidays

Fucking terrible caravan holidays
Imagine being a randy teenager in a tiny caravan with the object of your desires. Sounds all right, doesn't it? Oh no. Not if you were me and you were forced to go on the succession of evil caravanning holidays with my barmy ex-girlfriend, her parents and three smelly dogs.

To ensure that no fruitiness took place (as if we would, literally two feet away from her parents - I mean that would have been kind of weird, and besides, every single movement in a caravan is amplified a million times so that the slightest cough shakes the cutlery and sends plates crashing down out of the cupboards) I was forced to sleep next to her father, a chronic snorer and a pipe-smoker with a cruel streak for minorities, while she stayed up the other end with her mother.

The three ill-trained mongrels - invariably sweaty, smelly and covered in mud, rain and their own crap - used to jump on my head and settle there for most of the night, gently wheezing dog-breath into my delicate teenage nostrils. Either that or lick my face or stick their grubby shitty claws into my eyeballs.

"Aww, he's playing, he likes you!" they'd say.

And what I was thinking, from the safety of my ill-fitting sleeping bag, was: "Get this fucking dirty dog off my face; when you're not looking I'm going to kick it in the balls. I'm only here because I want to fuck your daughter."

Being 16-17, it was constant blue-nuts territory of course; the slightest brush against her fragrant body caused every pint of blood in my body to gush into the bits you enjoy washing most. Helpful in usual circumstances - oh, what I wouldn't give for that priapic propensity in my mid-30s, by the way - but not when the sexiest thing you do all day is take a turd in a chemical toilet in full knowledge that everyone in the caravan, and in the windswept field in the middle of nowhere beyond, can hear your strains, it's no use having a stonking great chubby all day.

I used to count down the minutes from the moment we set off on the motorway. Oh, I could steal seconds of sanity, by wandering off in the shops or going to sleep on the beach, or nipping off for a crafty tug in a public toilet whenever my adolescent urges got the better of me. But on the whole it was the most dreadful, horrible, unpleasant world of pain and misery that I've ever experienced.

Every time I see a caravan overturned on the motorway I do an impression of Marco Tardelli and cheer to the rafters. They deserved to be smashed to pieces, obliterated from the world, crushed and burnt. Do the world a favour and destroy a caravan today - you may just save a young boy's teenage years from being so shit.
(Fri 3rd Aug 2007, 0:25, More)

» Being told off as an adult

Polite road rage
There's something about the phlegmatic Englishman that turns into a bullying cunt when he's behind the wheel of a motor vehicle. As someone who spends an inordinately long time trying to avoid getting killed by witless twats driving silver Ford Mondeos on the M4, I fear this type of cuntery is on the increase.

Now, I hate middle-lane-hogging fucktards as much as the next man. They're a shower of cunts. They pootle along at 71mph not overtaking anyone. And yes, they're a pain in the arse.

BUT... Just because you're in an Audi and you have a spectacularly tiny penis, don't fucking well flash your full beams at me for overtaking a lorry and then not swinging back into the first lane if there's another lorry 2 yards further along the road that I have to overtake as well. What the fuck gives you the right to tell me off for that? Less lane-changing, fewer accidents. It's not fucking rocket science, you Phil-Collins-listening cockwife.

Another classic telling-off bastard, who will have a throbbing haemorrhoid of their very own on Satan's anal ring when they get to hell, is when someone sees you pulling out of a side-road / walking out to cross the road and SPEEDS UP just so they can PRETEND they nearly crashed into you, hammering on the brakes, flashing their lights and headbutting the horn. What the fucking hell is your major malfunction? You don't like someone else being on the same cunting road on you, so you've got to try and warn them off by revving your company Vauxhall Astra like it's a fucking AK47. You big babies!

I'm pleased to report, though, that there's a much more polite form of telling-off in the motor vehicle. After a decidedly pisspoor escapade at a mini-roundabout the other week, where I nearly crashed into an old gent in a Nissan Micra, he pulled up alongside me and wound down the window. I was expecting the usual volley of abuse and threats of violence with a tyre-iron, but no.

"You should focus a little bit more on the road ahead," he said, and drove off with a cheery wave.

That's more like it, isn't it?
(Sun 23rd Sep 2007, 22:40, More)

» Council Cunts

Rubbish cunts
Anyone else remember when putting rubbish away was like this?

1. Bins out on a Sunday night.
2. Big stuff down the dump.

Now it's like this.

1. No bins allowed, only bin-bags, so it's easier for foxes and rats to have a nibble and spill the contents of your cat's litter tray over the front garden. So much more hygienic.
2. Bin-bags must be exactly 13.75 inches from kerb, or binmen will not take them, stinking out your street for an entire week, leaving a sarcastic note written in crayon.
3. Bin-bags must not be put out more than 3 seconds before the dustmen turn up at 5 in the afternoon. This is a good way of stinking your entire house out, especially during those long summer months.
4. If you do dare put your bin-bags out before the dustmen have actually left, some friendless cunt with a clipboard will come round and rip through your maggoty old leftovers to try and find something with your address on it (tip: shred everything, or leave something with the council's address on it) so they can fine you half your week's wages.
5. At the dump, some stinking twat in a hi-vis jacket will sniff round everything you're throwing away to make sure you're not throwing the "wrong things" away.
6. If you dare visit the dump twice in a day, you'll be told never to come back.

How the fuck did it become so difficult to throw stuff away? No penalties for the scum who put half a ton of packaging on everything you buy, obviously; it's not their fault. It's clearly everyone else's fault for not being some yoghurt-weaving wanker from the Observer Magazine who lives in a woollen teepee and has the time to turn all known waste into petrol.
(Tue 31st Jul 2007, 19:49, More)

» Mad Stuff You've Done To Get Someone To Sleep With You

So many things, it's shameful
* Laughed at crap jokes
* Pretended to care about stories involving ex-boyfriends who 'didn't care'
* Nodded and feigned sympathy to show sensitive side while hearing about recently-dead dog for the 45th time in the past hour, secretly thinking "I wonder what she'd look like with no clothes on"
* Said: "I don't mind, I'll pay"
* Showed interest in Billy Joel album
* Sat through all of 'Beaches' without killing self
* Said: "Oh yes, low-fat foods, they're just as nice aren't they?"
* Ignored moustache
* Went on horrendous 2-week caravan holiday in Devon, involving sleeping next to disgusting pipe-smoking father, a notorious light sleeper with a cruel streak for minorities
* Held in farts
* Said: "Oh, I don't like to drink that much, you know, it's not really 'me'"

And most of it worked rather well.
(Mon 16th Apr 2007, 16:32, More)