Simplicity is good

Being concise is fantastic. From the title of this post, you can instantly see that being straightforward is something I admire. This largely originates from people (mainly marketers) favouring elaborate descriptions over saying it as it is.

I have 2 examples:

1. Menus:

Take any gastro pub and you’ll find ‘pan-fried’ something or other and some kind of extravagant fillet of a never-before-heard breed of cow. This is over-complication at its worst. It's just poncy people trying to justify charging a premium. How else do you want your chicken fried if not in a pan? I can’t remember the last time the chef cooked it in the palm of his hand, or put it on the hot tap and hoped it cooked. Just call it fried chicken. The fancy beef is just fillet steak. Simple. I like fillet steak.

Chicken. Frying. In a pan (unsurprisingly)

2. Shampoo

This is something that frustrates me immensely. All of the brands do it. There is always some new ‘nourishing eco-complex multi-regenerational liquid moisturising’ agent that has been added. What’s more it has been given an approval rating by 78% of women. Or has it? Take a look at the small print and they asked 87 women. I’m not statistician but I’m sure that’s not a representative survey.

I’m sure someone at L’Oreal, P&G or wherever has worked bloody hard to make the new ingredient, but at the end of the day IT’S SHAMPOO!!!! It’s going to be pretty similar to the other shampoos that people have been using for the last 25 years,  it just might smell a bit different.

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Children should be barred

People and alcohol is a sacrosanct relationship. It helps us through bad times (ignore those councillors who say it’s bad) and makes the good times even better. At the end of a stressful day, my nice friend Miss Stella Artois and her colleague John Smith are there to calm the nerves, put the world in perspective and make everything better.

To improve things further, we make it a social occasion and meet up with friends. The world can be held to account, we can berate idiots and unite in drunken revelry.

Happy Drunk

Now I’ve documented before how Thai Food can ruin  things, there’s another one to add to the list. CHILDREN.

Who/what/why and when did it become acceptable for children to be around adults in bars? I’m all for sociable family restaurants, but I draw the line at bars. They’re adult places. We (I) want to talk about tits, football, work, tits, politics, beer etc... without the ear-drum piecing squeal of a hyper-active child cutting through the atmosphere. Hotel bars are worst. Parents think that they can get away with having their kids in bars because they’re on holiday and they can keep their kids up longer. Well, you can’t. I want to be able to swear, shout and spill beer without the fear of teaching about gynaecology and using words they shouldn't hear for another 10 years. It’s an adult place, your child should be in bed you mindless, inconsiderate fool.

Annoying Child

What makes it worse is that they then have the audacity to tell you to be quiet, give you evil looks or insist on staying in the bar out of principle. You people should take a step back for a second, look at where you are and then realise you’re wrong. The bar is for people like me. Not you. And certainly not that mis-behaving, crying little shit that just spilled coke on my shoe.

London's drowning in clutter

What an anti-climax London must be to tourists. A supposedly beautiful city is covered in tat, caked in lurid colours and nobody does a thing about it.

I’ll explain what I mean. Paris is a magnificent place. This was encapsulated for me when I visited there when I was 16. I went for school trip, and being a teenage Northerner, I was drawn to a cultural hotspot. Not the Eiffel Tower, Arc de Triomphe or Sacre Coeur.  No, the place me and my cohorts visited was McDonald on the Champs Elysees. Now I don’t know if this fact was made up, or if it has been enforced anywhere else since, but I was told this particular franchise was the only McDonalds in the world to have a gold ‘M’ on it. In fact, all of the signs on the front were gold.  Spending much of my youth in Hull, I was shocked that anywhere would take pride in the appearance of their buildings to the extent they’d make a massive company change their signs.

McDonalds on the Champs Elysees

Fast forward to London in 2010 and what do we have? With a typical glance down a London street you’ll see, at least, the following clutter:

• For sale signs
• Sold signs
• To Let signs
• Let signs
• Congestion charge cameras
• Congestion charge road markings
• Traffic lights
• Bus lanes
• Speed cameras
• Speed camera signs
• Parking meters
• Double yellow lines
• Red lines

Ah... Glorious London

The list could easily go on but I won’t labour the point. Most of the above are pretty standard signs and they arguably deserve to be erected, but the first 4 should be removed as soon as possible and the others could be better positioned. There seems to be no authority to take control and make a stand. London is a damn expensive place to live and it’s made all the more intolerable by the lack of concern about this kind of matter. I’m sure I sound like a town councillor in training, but maybe that’s not a bad thing. People should care. People should have some civic pride. Not forget to remove old signs, or not give a damn about an increasing amount of clutter that gradually drags an area down.

It’s not just signs. As the list above shows, there are a multitude of colours that adorn our roads. Leaving aside the fact that most of them have gaping holes in them, they now have black tarmac, white lines, red bus lanes, yellow lines, red routes and now some roads have terrible blue cycle lanes. I’m a big fan of cycle lanes, but adding a thin line of blue to the road does not constitute a safe, durable bike line. It’s a cheap halfway house and is yet another attack on our eyes and on our city.

Let’s end this lack of interest and care. London should be a great city, at the moment it’s a cluttered mess.

Honey I shrunk the jumper

Hand wash only. 3 little words that spark 4 letter outbursts.

I don’t like shopping much. I get in and get out, dodging teenagers trying on hats and asking my myself  why the shop  hasn’t got round to either installing air con for the summer, or turning down the furnace-like heaters in winter.

So, it makes it all the more irritating when I’ve battled through the pain, have worn the new item and then decided to wash it. I toss it in the machine, add powder and press start. Simple. Then when the cycle has ended, to my instant annoyance, I realise that my brand new jumper/shirt/anything has shrunk down to a small child’s size. I kid myself for a couple of seconds... “I can stretch it out” I say, “it’ll be ok”. I hang it next to a trusted old shirt that will accompany the new garment. They’re clearly never going to fit together. Cue a four letter outburst and much irritation.

Quite clearly, the thing that has riled me the most is that this is totally 100% my mistake. The label clearly says ‘Hand wash only’ and it has happened to me many times before. There’s one thing I hate more than incompetence, and that’s my incompetence.  So I ignore it and swear heartedly at the machine for not treating the garment with more care, at the manufacturers for making an item unsuitable for the modern world and finally at the shop for selling it to a clearly incompetent man.  I tell you what though, If I ever have a 10 year old son, he will be the best dressed kid at school. 

Very annoying post

I make no apologies, this is a very, very small problem and one that probably won’t elicit any kind of empathy, but I don’t have a key to my mailbox at my flat. Phew, it feels good to get that off my chest.

 I get hardly any post, even the bank emails statements now, so in total the flat receives no more than 3 letters per week. But it’s really irritating. Because I rent and our landlord has no interest in the flat, I can’t easily open the mailbox to get my post (or break it and get a new one). It seems such a small problem and one that would have an easy solution. But it doesn’t. We can’t get the key.

I can imagine you all (3 of you) reading this post thinking “so how do you get your post?”. Well, I’m pleased you’ve asked.

Whereas some of you will have you post on the door mat when you come in and others will slip a little key into a box and open it, I have developed a new method involving a chair and 2 spatulas. Here’s how I get my post: (see diagram)

1. Peer into the top of the box through the “post in” slot and see post
2. Try to put hand through “annoyingly small gap”
3. Get irritated that my hand is too large for the annoying small gap (as it is every time)
4. Stare angrily at the “redundant lock”
5. Trudge upstairs, annoyed
6. Come back down stairs with a chair and 2 spatulas
7. Stand on chair
8. Poke spatulas into the “post in” slot and try to press them together around the post and lever it upwards. Basically, it’s like trying to use chopsticks to lift a steak up in a bean can. Don’t ask why a steak would be in bean can, I don’t have an answer for that.
9. Ignore the stares from curious onlookers and dab sweat from brow
10. Repeat steps 8 and 9 several times, sweating more and turning a worrying shade of red
11. Prize post out of mailbox, feel hugely heroic until salty sweat trickles onto eyeball, reverting me back to a state of anger

So there you have it. That’s how I get my post. Please don’t send me anything.

It is broken and we should fix it... Just do it faster

2025. A long way in the future. If we’re to believe Hollywood (and who am I to doubt them?!), we’ll have run out of oil, live in caves/old caravans/in forest/under water, use hover-boards and there could well be aliens among us, if they aren’t already that is.

So, I think you’ll agree, a lot will happen in that time. Well, I’m sorry to tell you Mr Spielberg, but here in the UK things take a lot longer to change than you imagine. The thing causing me most annoyance today is the amount of time it takes to build anything over here. The biggest example of this I can think of right now is the redevelopment of Elephant and Castle (E&C) in South London 

E&C is a shithole. It’s horrible. There are many examples of the post war concrete monstrosities across the UK and Europe but E&C stands out to me. Here a whole area is characterised by crowded roads, concrete skyscrapers, a hideous shopping centre and underground tunnels that are piss stained and beggar-filled. Basically it needs changing, which thankfully is happening. A big step has been taken to transform a sink-estate into a progressive, modern, safe and aspirational community.

Why am I grumpy then? Well because by latest reckoning it won’t be finished until 2025. That’s 15 years away. By then, a whole new generation will have passed through this festering pit of filth and squalor. Many more dreams and hopes will have been reduced to disappointment and under-achievement. Why? This has been discussed for the past decade, and while it needs to be carefully considered to ensure that it won’t fall victim of the same past problems, a further 15 years is too long.  If we’re going to get out of this economic mess we’re in, we need to act well and act decisively, not spend 15 years re-building, otherwise we'll never be able to afford those hover-boards

A grumpy life part 2

I arrive at work sweating a little and with a mild feeling of anger. Nothing out of the ordinary there. I get to my desk, notice that the cleaners haven’t swept the dust off my desk again. I move an old pack of post it notes and see underneath what colour the desk used to be. I put them back again and go to make a coffee. Idle chit chat passes the time as the early morning coffee round queue dwindles. Looks like everyone is “OK thanks” or, “yeah OK, X days until the weekend”. I offer no alternative but wonder to myself what kind of comment I could slip in under the radar and get away with it.

Work progresses nicely as the email inbox fills up with requests for stats, info, insights and costs. People come and go, the occasional call is answered and lunch arrives. What to get today? A boring choice of local sandwich shops that are either too expensive, don’t give enough fillings or put you in danger of spending a week on the toilet. The pub shines out like a beautiful beacon of hope and joy but at £3.70 a pint won’t be as much fun as you’d hope. Plus they’ve probably decided to sell Thai food now. Settle for sandwich, get disappointed, even adding salt and vinegar crisps doesn’t jazz it up. Check my personal email. Nothing there. Not even spam.

Continue with work. All passes successfully and head home, this time by bus to avoid a face-in-armpit situation. 5 mins down the road it starts to rain. Umbrella is at my desk and I decide I’m too close to the bus stop to turn around. Crowd into the bus shelter and huddle with fellow commuters either smoking, shouting on the phone or listening to music on loudspeaker.  The bus arrives, and quickly departs. It’s ‘too full’,  but I’m certain I saw a space in between the tourist, their suitcase and the baby’s pushchair complete with screaming child. Everyone agrees the driver’s an idiot and we shouldn’t have to pay for service like this.

Make it home, realise the evening is running through my fingers so I get changed and decide I’ll do something different tonight. Life’s too short and the clock is ticking. I put on the telly while I think of what to do. Les Dennis is offering to give the contestant the money himself. The answer’s not there. Les’s cheque book is safe this time! I see what’s on next, Bullseye!  Oh well, life’s not so bad after all, I’ll do something new tomorrow.