29 January 2008

More stuff from the Manchester Evening News

24.01.08
I decided long ago, never to walk in anyone's shadows. If I fail, if I succeed, at least I lived as I believe... No matter what they take from me, they can't take away my dignity, because the greatest love of all... Is happening to me...

You know the rest. I'm no George Benson - perhaps not that startling an admission, I'll accept, but still.

All my life, the relationship I have with myself has been a mutually respectable one. Despite not always being the perfect type of soul, I'd always comforted myself with the fact that I was one of life's good guys.

It's only recently I have realised that I'm not. I've become a different person. I didn't see it coming and now I fear it's too late. I've come to the conclusion I'm a real old grumpbag, a boring, reactionary, sullen dullard.

I've realised that I've turned into someone I've always hated. It's that bad, I'm thinking of going the whole hog and wearing beige slacks and reading the Daily Mail.

The events of last weekend were a crystalization of this metamorphosis. Far from being the tolerant, understanding and balanced fellow I'd always imagined myself being, I realised that I'm a Middle Englander, a Nuevo Meldrew, one of them.

In my defence, the events of the day, and perhaps my environment, were to blame. I found myself in the Trafford Centre, late on Sunday afternoon.

What is it with shopping centres, and it seems airports and the motorway, that drives rational, normal-behaving people to become proper twits?


These gawps wander silently around, agog at the wonder that is shopping. I don't actually see many of them ever buying anything. They just seem to be there, like retail plankton.

Occasionally, they'll break off from their catatonic wandering and force their children to look at fountains. "Look, Kylie - moving water - it's amazing isn't it?", then ramming an overpriced and oversized biscuit into their expectant mouths before they have the chance to reply: "It's a fountain, mum. It's running water, like a tap. We have them at home. There was no need to drive me from some distant Lancashire milltown - we could have gone to the bathroom."

We've all seen these people in (in)action. They stop suddenly in the street, half-turn one way, then the other, before proceeding slightly more slowly than before.

They're the shopping centre equivalent of caravanners who clog up the highways.

Don't get me started on these people, by the way. Honestly, I'm not ridiculing them just for fun, but how can they be enjoying themselves? They must spend more time on the road than they do at their destination.

At least they're not holding things up at airports, I suppose. No, serial airport delayers are a special kind of stupid.

Their passports are so well packed it takes an hour for them to find at check-in. They move as a pack through the terminals, resplendent in nylon and new, cheap trainers.

Is it me?

Or has anyone else seen these people at an airport and thought: "How did they afford the bus fare here - never mind a holiday?"

17.01.08

DID you have a mate who is that stupid it's sometimes a joy to spend time with them, just to see what garbage comes out of their mouth?

I had a mate who confused the concept of libel laws with the word liable, and would often remark how someone had been done for "liable". Despite continued efforts on my part to convince him he was wrong, he would become puce-faced with rage and roar "they are liable to prosecution you idiot".

My mother-in-law, in a moment of bizarre mind-blanking delusion, rang her husband back at work after slowly and silently counting to three, when he had told her he couldn't talk and to call after three - meaning he'd be less busy mid-afternoon.

My unnamed friend and colleague I was having a drink with at the weekend was mortified to be reminded the next day of her ridiculous faux pas on chatting up a boy she fancied.

The chat had gone past the chit chat stage and they were deeply engrossed in conversation. She told him where she lived, he told her where he was staying. She asked him if he was single, he responded positively and was happy to know she was, too.

It was only after he walked away after she asked him what he did for a living that she realised what a dork she'd been.

She thought that when he said he did "tai chi" for a living she thought it may be appropriate to do exaggerated kung fu style moves in front of him.

He looked at her quite blankly before repeating "I said IT, not tai chi", then walked out of her life for ever.

Nothing though, compares to the Stupidest Of The Stupid.

The annual Darwin Awards have been announced this week. The awards are given out every year to the person or persons who have died in the most stupid of circumstances.

To quote their website "Named in honour of Charles Darwin, the father of evolution, the Darwin Awards commemorate those who improve our gene pool by removing themselves from it."

Some people may say this sort of thing is incredibly poor in taste, not to say ghoulish, and perhaps a touch weird. Not me. I think why not let the world know that some people have paid the ultimate price for their own stupidity - it's a bit like hardcore ROSPA. Death to idiots.

Nominees this year included an alcoholic who died after giving himself a two bottle sherry enema. Why? Because he had a painful throat ailment and, according to his wife, "he was addicted to enemas."

Coming close to winning was a group of thieves from Czechoslovakia who on stealing girders from a factory didn't realise the girders they were glibly cutting through were actually supporting the roof that eventually fell and killed them

Among the runners-up this year was an unfortunate couple found naked and in the middle of a South Carolina road.

A passing cabbie found the 21-year-old couple naked and injured in the road an hour before sunrise. The two people died in hospital without regaining consciousness. Authorities were at a loss to explain what had happened. There were no witnesses, no trace of clothing, and no wrecked cars or motorcycles.

Investigators eventually found a clue high on the roof of a nearby building: two sets of neatly folded clothes. Safe sex takes on a whole new meaning when you are perched on the edge of a pyramid-shaped metal roof.

"It appears as if [they] accidentally fell off the roof," said police sergeant Florence McCants.

What makes the story even better for me is that one of the deceased was called "Tumbleston".

Brilliant. Stay safe.