Categories
Food

It was a slapstick morning

Whilst holding an IM conversation, I totally forgot about my toast. My toaster has a fantastic feature, whereby if you use the “defrost and toast” routine, it totally neglects to turn itself off after however long you specify. I wonder whether this was a deliberate addition to its specification.

The byproduct of this neglect can be seen in figure 1:

Burnt toast
*Fig. 1*

…and, for that matter, in figure 2:

Smoky kitchen
*Fig. 2*

After crawling around my kitchen on my hands and knees, and finally getting all the windows open and every extractor fan turned on, I resigned myself to going back to bed to read another chapter of [The Straw Men][] by Michael Marshall Smith.

[the straw men]: http://www.amazon.co.uk/exec/obidos/ASIN/0006499988/

Half an hour later the doorbell buzzed. I picked up the intercom, thinking that it was going to be some helpful and concerned neighbour telling me that there was smoke pouring out of my windows.

“Hello?”

*”Parcel.”*

“Come on up.”

I then struggled to get into my dressing gown. Well, my left arm found the sleeve normally occupied by my right arm. Hilarity ensued as I attempted to fashion a sarong out of the asymmetrically distributed fabric. I opened the door looking like David Beckham, only probably a lot less presentable (and I never thought that I would be able to say that).

I took the parcel, signed for it, and returned back into my flat.

And stubbed my toe on *everything*.

Uh, that’s it. But what more could you want?

Categories
Photos

It’s a dead 100 watt lightbulb balanced on a stack of CDs in the middle of the carpet. But is it art?

a lightbulb on a stack of CDs

Find out later today.

Categories
Food

The famous bacon sandwich affair

Short of a pizza, there was nothing viable in the flat this morning for my breakfast. So on my walk to work, I passed a little bakery, ten minutes late for work already. So I crossed the road and decided to pop in.

I investigated my wallet. Not good news. I could assume that they weren’t going to take Visa for a £2 snack, so I was going to have to turn on the charm.

“May I help you?”

“Um… I’ve got… £1.40. What can I get for £1.40?”

“Well, what would you like?”

“Just a little something for breakfast really. My cupboards are bare, and so I’m only really looking for a substitute for two slices of toast.”

“I’m feeling generous – I’ll do you a bacon roll for £1.40”

“Bless you. That’s very kind.”

“Butter?”

“Yes, please.”

“Any sauce?”

“No, thank you.”

Easy. I arrived at work ten minutes later, with my nice greasy bacon roll ready to meet its destiny in the usual way. I emptied my pockets to find another £1.40.

So in the interests of restoring the balance of things, I am going to go in at the same time tomorrow morning, and if the same girl is working behind the counter then I shall have another bacon roll, and I shall pay up the outstanding balance. I think it’s only fair.

It was a pretty good bacon roll as well.

Categories
Uncategorized

I remembered what winter is like this morning.

I remembered what winter is like this morning.

I have a tendency to get very comfortable in a season, and by the end of summer I have usually forgotten what winter feels like.

But it came to me this morning in one go. It wasn’t the fact that it was a little chilly, and it didn’t even come to me when I was staring absent-mindedly out of the kitchen window, but when I opened my bedroom curtains to see the condensation on the windows and the frozen blue sky, it all came back in one big parcel.

I remembered how many clothes you have to put on, and yet you are still cold. The temperature gradient between being in bed and being out of bed. The deathly and emotionless, yet oft-lauded appearance of a frosted lawn. The demisting of car windscreens.

But first we have the leaves turning golden and falling off of the trees to go, and it has begun already. The skeletal, yet still living, forms of the bare trees. That’s reassuring at least.

Life goes on. Give it up for DNA.

Categories
Food Photos

A little lesson

Don’t take photos of food, no matter how inviting it looks. Your brain says “Mmmm, that’s one good pizza, lovingly crafted, and though cooked a little past perfection, that is going to taste gorgeous.”

a delicious spicy pizza

But the world says “That’s what you think. In twenty seconds that plate is going to be flipped over. Though you will catch it, you will be slightly too slow to prevent three of those slices landing on your beautiful carpet, two of them face down.”

This is why you keep your carpet clean, people.

Categories
Meander

We smiled together for a while

*Craig*: made a friend today
*Pete*: Oh yes?
*Craig*: Took a book across the road to that grassy area, and a baby grass hopper came and sat on my knee
*Craig*: i smiled, he smiled
*Craig*: we sat and smiled for a while
*Pete*: You killed him
*Pete*: Didn’t you?
*Craig*: yes… but…
*Pete*: Nooo
*Craig*: after we smiled
*Craig*: for ages
*Craig*: kind of inevitable the death though, I wanted him to get off my page so I could turn it but he wouldnt…
*Pete*: Did you not give him a little shake?
*Pete*: Gentle one
*Craig*: several
*Craig*: then… thump
*Pete*: Please stop
*Craig*: sorry

Categories
Fiction Peril

Screeching

So I was awoken at 5am this morning by an almighty screeching sound. At first, my mind tried to pretend that it was all part of the dream, but slowly I was roused into consciousness.

Then I opened my eyes, and instead of being in my bedroom, my entire bed was floating on a sea of molten lava, and there were all these weird twelve foot eagles circling around with flames dancing over their feathers. And in the middle there was this huge red beast with a face like a smacked arse – it must have been standing about four stories high – bellowing in this deep rumbling tone. The whole thing was really noisy, what with the bellowing beast and the screeching eagles.

Anyway, I punched them all in the face for waking me up and went back to bed, but I couldn’t get back to sleep.

I feel really rough this morning as a result.

Categories
Meander

About a haircut

Well, that was probably the second most notable haircut of my life, the most notable one being when I was attended to by a horny hairdresser who didn’t break bodily contact with me for the entire duration of half an hour, and drew my attention to this fact. That was great.

But no, just now.

I took an instant dislike to this guy. I don’t know whether it was his snug lime green t-shirt, his surly demeanour, or the fact that instead of inviting me into the chair from the waiting area he just looked at me with disdain in his eyes and waited for me to do the necessary deduction required to come to the conclusion that he was going to be cutting my hair.

So I sat down, and it was then his turn to take a dislike to me. I told him roughly how I wanted to look, but to feel free to express his artistic tendenciesI didn’t use those words. He looked at me like I had just slapped his mother, and demanded numbers. Uh, I suppose a 6 on top and a 2 on the back and sides?

He was partially satiated. “Oh gosh,” I thought, “this may have been a bad move.”

Then he assaulted me with the clippers. I wasn’t sure whether I needed to clarify that the hairs that I wanted cutting were not actually on the inside of my head, and he didn’t have to bash my skull through to get to them.

“He’s one of them,” I thought, “he’s going to attack me for five minutes and then take my money. He’s not a hairdresser.”

I looked around to check the faces of the other hairdressers in the shop, just to confirm that they had acknowledged his presence and had recognised him as actually working there. I seriously thought that he may have just walked in off the street.

His contempt for me grew with every light-hearted sentence that I attempted to offer. I soon learnt.

I also have a tiny mole on the back of my neck – I swear that he was running the clippers over it repeatedly just to try and dig it out.

And then it all went strange. As time went on, he became more and more meticulous, pulling out all sorts of strange contraptions. He pored over the back of my neck for quite a while, targeting specific stray hairs, and refining the shape of my sideburns. Could I have been wrong? It was looking increasingly like he was one of those hairdressers who is so damn good that they give the impression of being haphazard when in fact their skills are, as the prophet says, mad.

He finished up, battered my face in with those big fluffy brushes, and then ran a little electric shaver thing over my ears, which I nearly gave him a smack for. I think he may have been taking the piss with that one.

I paid my money and left. I daren’t look in the mirror. I don’t want to know.

Categories
Displeasure Meander

Fish

Our Sales and Marketing department have fish. Four fish. Not the most beautiful fish in the world, but every fish is a fish. Two are black, two are gold, and they have huge beady eyes which intimidate me.

Well, they used to have four fish. One day last week, there was a population drop of one. That’s the nature of things, I thought. Fish come, and fish go. I remember when I was really young my family had a fish. Really really young. Its name was “Fish”. Clever, that.

I remember when Fish died, no-one noticed. Feeding it was a chore, and nobody noticed that the amount of uneaten food in the filthy water was rising. It finally came to light about a week later, by which time Fish was fossilised into the walls of the tank. None of my family seemed to care, so that was that.

Back to the present – so here I was, tussling with Nature and all the big Questions, and how Golden Fish #1 had gone off to a better place when I was informed that there is actually a perfectly unnatural reason why Golden Fish #1 is now in 5 Second Heaven. A trained eye would probably have noticed the absence of fish food anywhere in the office.

At this point I excused myself and went to the supermarket, silently cursing the laziness of my peers, and how they would work a 13 hour day if it meant more money, but picking up some fish food while they were getting two pints of milk for the coffees was just too much thought.

Why don’t people notice when a job needs doing, and do it?

Categories
Meander

The evening that culminated in an airborne plant

So the night started with my guitarist and myself compiling a cassette of our current demos for an old friend, which got us listening to some of our old material and musing over how good the old times were.

Then, at five minutes to 10pm we decided that our bag of Doritos needed accompaniment, in the guise of a tub of dip. Our arrival at the supermarket at one minute to closing was dramatic, as I parked the car diagonally across two mother-and-child car parking spaces and we rushed in. We pleaded with the security guard, who succumbed to my immense charm and duly allowed us through, but some woman was being a bitch.

*”We’re closed!”*

“Just one tub of dip, please!”

*”We’re closed!”*

“We’ll be really quick!”

*”Closed!”*

Fuck you. I’m done being polite. Stop being so selfish. Twenty seconds will make no difference to you, but that tub of dip matters to us. And while we are having this discussionwhich, incidentally, was only actually occurring inside my head I could have bought the dip anyway.

plantSo we went to the crisps aisle and grabbed the dip anyway, banking on the knowledge that we could just harry one of of the checkout girls. And we did. We put it down on the conveyor insistently. Had the stroppy woman come over and made a fuss, I would have laughed in her face at her ability to waste everyone’s time including her own, but I didn’t get the opportunity.

It was the perfect plan.

So five and a half hours later it was, of course, time to start moving furniture. And to perform the required transition would necessitate the disposal of an old, dying pot plant (pictured in the half-light).

We put the plant in the car and drove two miles south, until we were out of town and the streetlights were but a memory on the back-facing horizon.

And threw the tainted thing over a gate.

And came home and went to bed.