The Word Cloud

Further to my blog about 'ripping off Tesco', it seems that some people are unable to empathise with the less fortunate classes. Imagine, if you can, that you're working a 60 hour week, to take home about £90. You work 7 til 7, with a half hour break for lunch. You have to queue up to punch out, and queue up to punch back in, at least 3 mins each way, so in reality you get 24 mins for your lunch break. The white-collar workers upstairs get a whole hour for lunch. They don't have to clock in and out, cos, not being working-class scum, they're seen as trustworthy. So they go to lunch at 12, and come back around 2.30-ish. They start at 9.30, and go home about 4.30. And they take home around £250 per week. Us peasants work our nuts off, with some cunt with a clipboard looking over our shoulders the whole time in case we're not working hard enough. I get sent upstairs to chase up some piece of paperwork and see that, except for one girl who seems to be typing, answering the phone and being asked to 'photocopy this when you've got a minute', everyone else is reading magazines, doing their makeup or sitting on the corner of someone's desk, chatting and drinking coffee.
    So is it really surprising that the workers nick stuff if they can? It's not so much a criminal act as a political one: a act of rebellion. Here's a case in point:

    I was working at a factory in Finchley, North London, called Vacuum Interrupters Ltd. The place was like Frankenstein's laboratory. A vacuum interrupter is a kind of circuit-breaker. If lightning strikes a powerline, it would travel down the cable and blow up the electricity substation. A vacuum interrupter prevents that from happening by breaking the circuit. It's a sort of spring-loaded switch encased in a ceramic drum, with a vacuum inside so that the lightning bolt can't create a ionised pathway. But if lightning can jump a 1000 ft gap between the base of a thundercloud and the ground, it's not too hard for it to jump across a 12" interrupter. The solution to that problem is a kind of high-tech paint which prevents lightning from arcing across it - don't ask me how! I never could figure out how a coat of paint, however high-tech, could prevent a electrical arc. The paint is a sort of sparkly green, and is worth far more than its weight in gold. My job was to zap artificial lightning through each unit, in order to test it. There were towers of metal balls, crackling with electricity, which built up electric potentials of over a million volts. It was kinda freaky.
    Each vacuum interrupter costs about £32,000 to make, and apart from the exotic copper alloy of the contacts, most of the cost is the coat of lightning-proof paint. The interrupter is about 6" in diameter, and about 12" long.
    To reiterate, the major part of the cost per unit was the lightning-proof paint. When more was needed, you had to get a senior member of management to sign it out of secure storage. One day, someone went to sign out a tin of it, and they found that the storage unit was empty. PANIC!!! The police were quickly summoned, and they got warrants to search the homes of every employee. One guy's home didn't contain any tins of paint, but his garden shed and fence was a lovely shade of sparkly green. He had painted his shed and garden fence with three quarters of a million quids-worth of lightning-proof paint!

    Any anarchist would want to buy him a pint!

We're always being told about the importance of that first sentence. So, I thought it might be interesting to challenge you guys to come up with a intriguing first sentence (for a as yet nonexistent novel) that would make people want to read on. Here's a example:

I should have stayed indoors that night, when the Sick Rain terrorised the world; now, I stare down at the Thing in the toilet and wonder how I survived its agonal birth.

    Awesome thunderstorms today: flash-boom-wahoo!, rumble rumble . . .

    It reminded me of the first time I ever drove a bus in service. It was the 1st of April (which, in retrospect, should have told me something) 2001. I was working from Northumberland Park garage, Tottenham. They put me out on a late duty (bastards!) so I was trying to follow the route in the dark.
    The route was 212, Walthamstow Central to Chingford Station. It was a wild night, the rain was coming down so hard that it seemed to be going up as much as it was coming down, such was the splashback. I've never seen such lightning; it wasn't like 'flash, pause, rumble . . .' but flashflashflashflashflash in all directions, with a continuous chorus of thunder. The windscreen was like a waterfall. I could barely see where I was going, not that it was any excuse for the way I fucked up. There were two roundabouts: I was supposed to turn left at the first, and go straight across the second. I went straight across the first one. The passengers were like "Oi! Where the fuck are you going?" Oops. I let them all off, ignoring their comments of "Fucking idiot!" and attempted a three-point turn. There was a pub, the King's Head, which had a sort of shelf thing sticking out, which I didn't see cos of the rain. I hit it, causing the front wall to crack from foundations to roof. Luckily, the pub was closed for building works, and hopefully they assumed the work had caused a shift in the foundations (or something) which had caused the crack. I don't know what I'd have written in the accident report: "The pub was on the wrong side of the road . . ."
    Providentially, there were two student-like couples passing. I co-opted them to stop the traffic while I backed out onto the road. They were thrilled! They could hardly believe someone had randomly put them in charge of the traffic. It was like this was the most exciting thing that had ever happened to them.

    I drove back to the garage, thinking that this would probly be the shortest job I'd ever had. Luckily for me, the controller on duty at the time was John Darling. He was totally the ugliest man I've ever seen, kinda like a cross between the Sea Devils from the 70s Doctor Who and Giant Haystacks, the wrestler. He had the deepest, most gravelly voice I've ever heard. He was also as gay as a flock of pink larks! That's why they called him John 'Darling', cos he was in the habit of addressing the drivers as 'Darling', 'Sweetheart' etc.
    I told him how I'd fucked up, and how much I'd damaged the bus. He was like "Awww, never mind, sweetheart. Just park the bus by the engineers, darling. I'll sort it out."
    He was as good as his word. I never heard anything about it, and lived to drive another day.

Was chatting with some humans in the pub tonight, and one of them was a vegetarian. Not the sort who simply don't eat meat, but the evangelical sort who want to stop everyone else from eating meat too. I pretty much laid my cards on the table right from the off:

Me: "I totally object to vegetarianism, for a whole lot of reasons."

Veg (gagging for a argument): "Oh yeah? Name one."

Me: "Okay, let me tell you a story. When I was a teenager, me and my mates used to go on pub expeditions. Not mere pub crawls, mind you - anyone can do that. We used to start from the home of any one of us who lived on the edge of town, or just outside. The host would pick a obscure pub out in the boonies, and we'd go there by the most direct route. Not by road, or anything sensible like that, but cross-country, what the military call 'yomping' (taking a line on your objective and ignoring paths etc, climbing over hedges and splashing through streams) to get to the pub in question. The fun part was trying to find your way back in the dark, while pants-shittingly drunk . . .
Anyway, one time we were cutting across a field, and what would you know, but wasn't the field full of . . . er . . . young male cows?"

Human, helpfully: "Bullocks."

Me: "No, it's true! They came stampeding towards us, and of course we all ran like fuck, cos no-one wants to get caught by the bullocks.
So, we eventually made it to the pub, where we all ordered steak dinners. All the other people in the pub must have thought we were deranged, cos we were shouting at our meals:
'See you coo! Ye're nae mooin' the noo, ye lumpit, muckit beastie that ye are!' (The steaks were Aberdeen Angus).
So, the point is, no-one ever got chased out of a field by a turnip - unless they'd been eating some highly suspect mushrooms. But yer bull will gore you, and trample you, and generally kill you to death soon as look at you. So why should I feel bad about eating the motherfucker?"

Veg: "It's not just about sentimentality! Don't you know that red meat is bad for your health?"

Me: "No, it's green meat that's bad for your health!"

Veg: "Have you got any sensible reasons to be against vegetarianism?"

Me: "Yeah, loads! F'rinstance, vegetarianism is racist. 'If you cut us, do we not bleed?' Okay, plants bleed sap rather than blood, but just cos it's green, does that give them less right to be alive? And look at what happens to them: if they don't get eaten alive, they get peeled and boiled while they're still living. Just cos they can't scream, does that make it okay?"

Veg: "Oh, don't be ridiculous. Plants aren't aware like animals. People can have emotional relationships with pets, such as cats and dogs. You can't have an emotional relationship with a plant!"

Me: "That is so not true. Some of my best friends are vegetables!"

Veg: "(sigh) I can believe that . . ."

Me: "Anyway, I'd rather be a wolf than a sheep. Wolves are cool, intelligent and awesome-looking. Sheep are stupid, ugly, shitty-arsed, and they get raped a lot by Welsh farmers. If you'd rather be a sheep, that's your lameness!"

Veg: "Oh, fuck off."

In the pub tonight, I was chatting with one of my biker mates. The conversation turned to the subject of excessive amounts of alcohol (as it so often does). So I told him about the Harlesden Lager Mountain.
    I'd scored a van, which was utterly fucked. It had a broken track rod end, so there was 180 degrees play in the steering, plus it would only do second gear.  I turned up at John the Dog's site in Harlesden, pouring with sweat and grateful to still be alive. The van was a disaster, almost impossible to drive, and with body panels hanging off; I named her 'Gloria', cos she was a sick transit.
    Anyway, John the Dog was the Rom Baro (literally, the 'Big Man'), so when I broke a new site, he tried to take over. I was like "Fuck off, I don't accept any boss or landlord, otherwise what's the point?" It got a bit nasty. John the Dog (aka John the Bastard) had a excellent dog called Max. He would tell it "Tenshun!" and it would go on alert. He'd say "On guard!" and it would growl like a scary motherfucker. It was the biggest Doberman I've ever seen, like a cross between a Doberman and a horse. John would say "Max: go on patrol," and it would go round the perimeter of the site, looking out between any gaps in the fence, and come back. John would say "Report!" and Max would give a single bark, then John would say "At ease!" and Max would lie down. Awesome dog or wot?
    So, John tried to boss me around, and I wasn't having it. He said he'd set Max on me, and I was like "That would be a shame, cos Max is a excellent dog, and I'd hate to have to kill him." So John said he was gonna get his mates to come and deal with me, and I was like "Okay, totally do that. Do it right now, I'll be waiting." Of course, John was full of shit, and he stayed away for several days until there was no-one else around, then he came and said "I understand what you're about, and I respect that. If you want to take over, I'm okay with that." I was like "I'm not interested in being the Rom Baro, I just won't take any shit from anyone who wants to try to push me around." So John moved back onto the site, but I found that when the council Site Security Services, or the Gaffers (plod) etc turned up, the other travlas expected me to deal with them, so I was the Rom Baro whether I liked it or not!
    Well, one time John had a scam going. Him and two of his mates went to the Continent and scored loads of 70cl bottles of lager for about 10p each, with the intention of selling them at Glastonbury for £1 a bottle. When the time came, John's mates had got fucked up on acid and had forgot all about the beer, so John had to try to haul it to Glasto on his own. The pile of beer was about the size of three garden sheds, and John could only get a third of it into his Audi 100CD and his catering trailer. He told me to guard the rest of it while he was away. I was like "Where's the machine gun?" He was like "Uh?" I told him, if he expects me to keep the ravening hordes off of the beer, I'm gonna need some serious firepower. He was like "Okay, fuck it then."
    John set off, with the car's suspension groaning, and didn't get far before the trailer's tyres blew out. He pulled up on the side of the motorway, and was soon joined by some cops who had seen him on the CCTV. They threatened to nick him, until he suggested that there might be a policeman's social function which could benefit from a large amount of free beer. The plod adopted the trailer, and allowed John to continue on his way with the beers he had stuffed in the car, which were hardly enough for him to break even at Glasto.
    Meanwhile, back at the site, we had a non-stop party. Everyone in the travla crew got sick of the beers, clutching their stomachs and groaning. When the gaffers came to evict us, they couldn't believe what they saw: the site was rife with snowdrifts of little green bottles. "Fuckin hell, we know you guys like a beer, but . . . fuck!" They'd never seen anything like it.
    One of the plod, a old guy with a Sherlock Holmes-style pipe, came up to my van. "Apparently, you've got an impressive dope plant?"
    There had been a police helicopter hovering over our site, and I'd tried to hide my dope plant. The plant was like a fuckin christmas tree, cos I'd used all my cultivation skills on it. I'd set it up next to a white wall, and put foil round the base of the pot, to amplify the sunlight. I'd also dosed it with pink wood ash (if you burn wood in a oil drum, so it doesn't get completely oxidised, you get pink ash instead of white, which contains phosphorus, which is like steroids for plants) and also I'd been dosing it with red builder's sand. Cannabis plants manufacture the active ingredient, THC, from acidic compounds in the soil. If you grow dope in alkaline (eg, chalky) soil, you might as well be growing nettles. But by acidifying the soil (red builder's sand is very acidic), you boost THC production. My plant was sweating black blobs of oil from its leaves. When I dried it, the leaves turned black, and anyone who smoked it had to go and lie down for a couple of hours.
    So, this cop asked me if he could have a few leaves for his pipe. I'd pushed the plant over in the back of the van and thrown a blanket over it. I hadn't realised the plod had photos of me running across the site with the plant in my arms, to hide it under the bushes. Another cop overheard, and said "That would be an offence." and Officer Sherlock-pipe was like "Er . . . ahem, just joking!" Shame, really. If he'd smoked the pure leaf in his pipe, he'd have been chucking a whitey, evacuating from both ends, hahaha!

    So, that's the story of the Harlesden Lager Mountain. The End.

Warning: NOT NICE

The second worst thing I ever tasted was when I was walking up a grassy hill on a windy early Autumn day, just as all the craneflies were hatching. Orrible bleeders, yer craneflies; like flying spiders (shudder). Completely unnecessary fuckers. As I was toiling up the hill, mouth open, breathing heavily, the wind blew a cranefly straight into my gob. As the legs twitched and tickled inside my mouth I reflexively bit down, and the damn thing's long, fat abdomen burst, flooding my tongue with insect ubermank. I could still taste the grimness a fortnight later, despite buying up all the mouthwash in Southeast England.

So, what was the first worst thing I ever tasted, I hear you ask? (It must be you asking, cos all the Voices ever do is complain).

It was new year's eve, after the very much pub. I stopped for a Chinese take-it-away, but instead of ordering the usual chicken chow mein, I thought "I'll try shomeshing a bit dirrefent! What'sh (hic) the mosht exotictic thing on the nemu?"

After several attempts, I picked up both menus in both my right hands. They were printed upside-down, so I bent myself over until my head was upside-down too.

"Aha! Shtir-fried octopush wiv shpringing onions and root gingerer. That shounds pretty etoxic."

As soon as I got home, I tried a mouthful. It was truly vile, even worse than cranefly gunge. But for some reason (in fact, over a dozen reasons, of the sort that come in pint glasses) I ate the whole culinary abortion anyway.

In the morning, I woke up feeling like a toxic waste spill with eyeballs, but I managed to drag myself into work (no way am I losing my bank holiday bonus, dammit).

I was OK for the first three rounders, but just before the fourth and final rounder, while I was sitting at the bus stand, I felt a mega fart coming on. I lifted one butt cheek and let rip.

"Hmm," I thought, "surely farts shouldn't be sludgy?"

Yep, I'd shat myself. The octopus aftermath smelled even worse than it had tasted. Oh fuck, what do I do now? There's no way I'm gonna call control and say: "Control: Papa Bravo three zero. I need to return to garage cos I've shat meself." I'd never hear the last of it.

So I opened the cab window and put the passenger saloon blowers on full blast, to create a pressure differential, and set off on my last rounder. Amazingly, no-one noticed a thing! I guess the assault screen works both ways. Even more amazing was what happened on the return leg.

It's every bus driver's dream, under normal circumstances: a gorgeous, sexy girl came and stood by the cab and started blatantly chatting me up  -  and I was in no position to do anything about it! All I could think was:

"You wouldn't even be talking to me if you knew what I'm sitting in." 

I was chatting to some of my human friends in the pub tonight, and the subject turned to table-manners. The humans were talking about people eating left- or right-handed. I was like "Eh? Surely you just shovel the grub into your gob any old way?"

I told them about the first time I was invited by a 'citizen' girlfriend to have dinner with her parents. It was a roast dinner, the best part of which (surely we all agree) is the gravy. I was brought up to waste nothing; so, after I'd cleared my plate, I picked it up and started to lick it clean. I looked up to see horrified looks from the citizens. "Wot? Did I do something wrong?"

Which reminded me of the time I met my brother's mad Moroccan friend, Moustafa. Mad Mous has a bizarrely caved-in face, quite grotesque to look at. Of course, none of the citizens would be crass enough to ask him what the hell happened to his fizzog. Well, you know me, I'm nothing if not insensitive, so I asked him about it.

Apparently, in Morocco, young men don't get to have girlfriends without a promise of marriage, dowry etc. So, the young lads would go to the edge of town, where there was a donkey tethered in a field. They would relieve their frustrations on this animal, who apparently seemed not to mind. But Mous did something she wasn't expecting: he used his tongue on her! Outraged by this, or possibly merely disconcerted, she expressed her disapproval by hoofing him in the face, hence his gruesome appearance.

It just goes to show, table-manners are more important than you might think.

It's not particularly clever, but it is funny.

The best 'your mum' I ever heard of was when a cricketer was being barracked by another player, who said "How did you get so fat?" He replied "Every time I fuck your mum, she gives me a biscuit."

###

There's a guy at work who never learns. He thinks he's a comedian, and persists in telling mouldy old jokes which weren't even funny when they were fresh.

Him: "What's big and hairy and goes up and down?"

Me: "Your mum."

(The punchline is supposed to be 'A gorilla in a lift', in case you've been living in a cave.)

###

One day, a bunch of us were gathered in the pub after work, and the lame-o decided to inflict a 'joke' on us. It was a particularly tasteless one about a women's Olympic team who'd drowned after their ferry sank. (I don't mind bad taste jokes as long as they're funny, but this one sucked ass.) I've forgot some of the exact details, colours and numbers, but it doesn't really matter, so I'll just fill in with any old thing.

Lame-o: "I've got a good one!"

My mate Steve (in Sid James voice): "Aren't you lucky."

Lame-o: "No, listen. What's red and purple . . . no, what's orange and purple . . . er, purple and orange . . . I'll start again. What's orange and purple, and has got fourteen tits . . . no, twenty-eight tits . . . I mean, fourteen pairs of-"

Everyone: "Start again!"

Lame-o: "Okay, I've got it this time. What's purple and orange, has got fourteen pairs of tits, and floats in w- . . . no, I mean, doesn't float in-"

Steve: "I'm losing the will to live."

Lame-o: "No, shut up, this is a good one. I'll get it right this time." Assumes a look of intense concentration. "What's orange and purple, has fourteen pairs of tits, and doesn't float in water?"

Me: "Your mum."

General hilarity ensued.

###

The best 'your mum' I ever perpetrated was in Cornwall. There was one particular school down there whose pupils every driver dreaded picking up. Their particular thing was witty put-downs. Some of our drivers just couldn't take it; Pete would beg us to swap duties when he was due to pick them up. Swervin' Mervin (so called cos he once turned left instead of right out of the service entrance of the Eden Project, and had to drive for miles and miles and miles before he found a place where he could turn his bus around) got a good dose of it. He thought he always got on well with kids, but even he couldn't get on with these little horrors. They were having their O-levels or whatever, and as they got off the bus, he called out "Good luck with your exams!"
One of them turned round and replied "Oh, don't worry, if we don't get any O-levels, we can always become bus drivers."

Anyway, you know how there's always one kid who can't do it, but that doesn't stop him continually trying, and every time his one-liners fall flat, he tries to cover it up by just keeping on talking? There's one in every school. Well, the kids were getting on my bus in the morning, and as I opened the doors, the mouthy kid was saying "Ah, yes, but you weren't doing the electric boogaloo all night."

The other kids said "The electric boogaloo?!?!?! What is wrong with you?"

Without pausing for a single beat, he continued "Or you may have some other way of spending your Saturday night, I don't know." He turned to me. "And what were you doing Saturday night?"

"Fucking your mum," I deadpanned.

The other kids howled with laughter. He just stood there with his mouth open, until another kid grabbed his arm and dragged him away. Those kids never gave me any cheek after that.

My then girlfriend said "They probably don't want to spoil it; it will be a playground legend. That poor kid will never hear the end of it. For years to come, whenever anyone mentions anything to do with buses, they'll be like: 'Do you remember when the bus driver your mummed you?' "

It's not clever, but it is funny.

I totally want to go to the pub, but I've got this humungous caldera of a zit right in the middle of my forehead. I don't know why I bothered to shave and brush my teeth; anyone who looks at me will see nothing but a huge, pus-drenched malignancy.

I'm not usually self-conscious, but the last time I went to the pub with a zit like this, the first thing anyone said to me was "That's a nasty spot you've got there!"

I was like "Yeah, thanks for pointing that out. Hey everybody, look at my tumour!"

It's one of those ones that doesn't quite come to a head, so trying to squeeze it just makes it worse. I've tried gouging it with the auger blade on my Swiss army knife, but that doesn't seem to have helped. It's now so swollen, if it stuck out any further I'd look like a dalek.

I could put a plaster over it, and pretend I've been in a fight, I suppose.

Fuck it, I'm going to the pub anyway. After nine pints of lager, I won't care if the damn thing crawls onto the top of my head and starts jumping up and down, waving at people.

Back from the pub. Amazingly, although people stared at my megazit, no-one said anything, even when steam started coming out of it. Apparently, VolcanoWatch raised their Alert Status to "Condition Red, with bells on". When it does finally erupt, it may affect global climate patterns. Anyone within a 500 km radius is advised to stock up on canned food and bottled water . . .

Genitalia: a small country in the southern hemisphere, noted for its peculiar geography . . .

The poets wax lyrical about the act of love, despite the fact that the equipment involved looks like roadkill . . .

There's an old joke:
Q: Why do dogs lick their genitals?
A: Because they can.

If men could do that, they'd never get out of bed in the morning.

Have you ever had that dream where you can suck your own cock? If you woke up with backache and a strange taste in your mouth, maybe it wasn't a dream . . . Even worse, is the dog giving you funny looks, and being much more affectionate than usual?

Considering their function, the most beautiful thing in life, why are genitals so ugly? And, as for the foreskin; what was Mother Nature thinking? Which brings to mind:

I was in the pub, during the Swine Flu panic.

Me: "I woke up this morning, and turned on the breakfast news: Swine Flu! We're all doomed . . . Then I bought my morning paper: Swine flu! We're all doomed . . . Buying a coffee in the canteen. On the radio: Swine flu! We're all doomed . . .

It used to be geographical: Egyptian flu, Spanish flu . . . Then I guess they ran out of countries, so it's animals now: Bird flu, swine flu . . . What next? Crayfish flu, wasp flu . . . and when they run out of animals: Geranium flu . . .

"Anyway, I've got it sussed: I'm gonna convert to Jewishness, so's the swine flu can't get me . . ."

Jewish dude, sitting at the end of the bar with a couple of friends: "You're going to convert to Jewishness? I think you mean Judaism."

Me, doing Jewish accent and gestures: "Jew dey is, Jew dey isn', who can tell?"

Jewish dude: "Oy veh . . . So, you think converting to (sigh) Jewishness will protect you from swine flu?"

Me: "Well, Jewish folks can't have anything to do with pigs, right? It's gotta be worth a go. It can't hurt, can it?"

Jewish dude: "It could hurt: You'd have to be circumcised . . ."

Me: " Well, you know what they say about circumcision?"

Jewish dude: "I'm going to regret this, but, OK, vhat do they say about circumcision?"

Me: "It's no skin off my nose."

Jewish dude: "A goyische Jackie Mason, yet . . ."

Me: "Hey, you do a pretty convincing Jewish accent yourself!"

Landlady: "That's because he is Jewish, you idiot."

Jewish dude (pointing at his impressive schnozzer): "Vhat? You can't see the nose?"

Me: "See it? I could pick it for you, I'm nearer to it than you are."

Landlady: "Ien!" Turns to Jewish dude: "I'm sorry about him . . ."

Anyway, you know how if you lie on your back and watch your bollocks, after a while, the right one will haul itself upwards? Then, a while later, it will lower itself back down. Nothing will happen for a while, then the left one will haul itself up . . .

It occurred to me that you could film this, speed it up, and set it to music!

When I were a nipper, I caught my helmet in my zip. The worst thing was, I had to go to my mum for help. We were poor, and my mum couldn't afford to ruin a perfectly good pair of school trousers (I guess she could have cut out the zip, and sewed a new zip in, but she couldn't be arsed) so she gripped the zip, and yanked it down . . . If you listen carefully, you can still hear the echo of my screams. These days, I favour button flies.

And why do yer genitals sweat so much? Working as a bus driver, I'm sitting in the driving seat nine hours a day. In the summer, the smell in the cab would make your sinuses implode. You know you've done a day's work when yer knackers are welded to yer undercrackers.

Depictions of sex on TV:

Apparently, all American women have sex with their bra on. It's all beautifully choreographed. Genitals don't seem to be involved at any stage. Also, there's no grimacing, grunting or squelching; I must be doing something wrong.

The worst sexual experience I ever had was after a party in Dartford. A girl was giving me a blowjob; she got overambitious, gagged, and vomited all over my nadgers.

Despite all this, I'm rather fond of my genitals . . . even if they do look like the Muppet from Hell . . .