Clip from the local paper....

Funny what you can and can't say nowadays....

THIS WOULD BE AN UNACCEPTABLE HEADLINE:Demoted Cop Given Truth Drug And Tells It Like It Is.

BUT THIS WOULD BE OK:Westhoughton - Gods Special Place.

At the co-op, they serve at such a slow speed that by the time you have paid, the product is out of date. One time I went in to get a quick snack, and by the time it came to money changing hands, the country had changed currency and my sixpence was useless.

The co-op mislable special offers on purpose. A few times I have picked up a "3 for 2" just before paying. There is usually some technical reason why it's not actually 3 for the price of 2. Oh no, it's only applicable for shelves 2 and 4, and you got YOUR twixs from shelf 3. No, it's only for the products on the right-hand-side of the shelf, even though everything on that shelf is the same price.

You can't call it a "cornish pasty" at the bakers. Oh no, if you ask for a CORNISH PASTY, (made in the traditional Cornish Pasty style,) they won't serve you. SERIOUSLY! They insist that you call it a LANCASHIRE PASTY before they will continue. Often, I have asked for one, and they just stand there and TELL YOU OFF! "It's a Lancashire Pasty. We're not in Cornwall." Ask for an Eccles Cake, though, and all is well, even though we're not in Eccles. Kendal Mint Cake is also an acceptable term. But CORNISH PASTY? Noooooooo!.

I jokingly asked if I could have "one of those swirly things" as I pointed to a swirly thing in a different bakery one time. "It's pronounced ORLMOND DANISH" the server snapped back. I didn't actually mis-pronounce it to start with, but ironically SHE did. Also, thanks for snapping at one of your customers when they try to have a joke with you. Westhoughton is home to the only shops I know that actively try to intimidate it's shoppers.

They consistantly used to give incorrect change at a shop called Sandwich Delight - so much so that we renamed it Sandwish Defraud.

I went into the sandwich shop and asked for a "Hot Beef And Onion Barm" which was word-for-word how it appeared on the menu. "Do you want onions on that?" she asked. "Do I want onions on my hot beef and onion barm? er.... yes, yes, I think I do."

It's the only place that I know that has a van parked up, that cooks fresh meat of unknown origin, on open air hot plates, in all weather, using trowels and various other builders tools.

I went into a charity shop for a look around, but didn't see anything that I wanted, so I walked out. As I got to the door and stepped outside, the owner shouted me back really urgently, like she thought I'd stolen something. Like "EXCUSE ME, OY, COME BACK!" I turned around and stepped back in to see her scrambling to get towards me. I went towards her, because she was obviously in a bit of a panic. "You didn't buy anything..." she said. "I know....?" I replied. "Well, you can't come in and NOT buy anything!" I was told. That was the only shop I have EVER been into where making a purchase was a pre-exit requirement.

Seriously, if calling the people of Westhoughton "backward" is an offense, I'm shocked.

You know how it's funny when you burp and speak at the same time?

Recently, when burping, I've been accidentally swearing. Not the really bad swears, or not yet at least, but bad words none-the-less.

I used to enjoy burping the word "NO!" and "BOO!", because they are short, curt words. But recently it's been "BITCH". Weird.

Not really sure why it started, but I only realise I'm doing it AS I'm doing it, if you know what I mean, and by that time it's too late to stop. I can't retract a burp. That would mean breathing it back it, which would only re-stock the gas and creating another potential burp.

If I did that, I could get stuck in a loop. I could end up in an endless loop of swearing, inhaling quickly, and reburping the same burp, inhaling, reburping, inhaling...... I could die!

I should probably stop drinking 6 litres of coke a day...

I shop at Asda, and I have done for years.

Every Sunday when I go, there is ALWAYS a plump guy at the front of house with a microphone, greeting people as they come in and announcing things over the tannoy. He always greets women of any age, and older men. But he never greets me. Maybe I look too scary. Or too young. (Or too straight.)

He announcements are always really special, in that he'll usually mispronounce a word, or get a few 'errr's in the middle of his improv. They always make me smile.

One thing that has always baffled me is that he never says 'gentlemen'. He'll ALWAYS start his announcements with "Good morning Ladies and Gemma, my names Peter the in-store greeter...."

Who is Gemma? And why is SHE so special? Why does SHE get her own announcement?

Anyway, a typical announcement goes as follows....

"Good morning Ladies and Gemma, my names Peter the in-store greeter. Over in our foyer we have a range of reduced fruits. We have oranges starting from as little as 10p, and grapefruits starting from... other prices. Fank you."

Genius!

"Good morning Ladies and Gemma, my names Peter the in-store greeter. In our bakery department we have a fantastic range of reduced bread. Fank you."

Reduced bread? What, like, little loaves?

"Good morning Ladies and Gemma, my names Peter the in-store greeter. On aisle 48 we have a range of reduced items starting from...... errr..... suntan lotions and aftersun creams, and these can be found on aisle 36. Fank you."

No price given, and two different aisles named. Perfection!

When he said this, initially I was imagining loads of people all stood on aisle 48, looking for sun creams. That was until I realised they don't have 48 aisles.... He made up his own aisle! (so to speak...)

So Peter, the in-store greeter, I salute you. May your random announcements cheer me up for years to come.

When I was young, my best mate David and I were writing funny poems about death. They started out quite long, but every subsiquent poem got shorter and shorter.

They were like....

There once was a man called Dave,
Who went out and dug a big grave,
Then died.

(LOL!)

But, like I say, each new poem ended up shorter and more blunt that the previous one.....

There once was a man called Fred,
Who was alive but then was soon dead.

(LOL!)

There once was a man called Peter,
Who's dead.

(LOL!)

There once was a man who died.

(LOL!)

There once... he's dead.

(LOL!)

...Dead

(LOL!)

So, after rolling about in fits of laughter for a good two hours after trying to make up some poems about death, I finally came up with this next poem.

There once was a man called Clyde,
When somebody hurt his pride,
He wept out tears,
For years and years,
'Til he dehydrated and died.

Craig Anderson (aged 13)
(aged 13 back then, obviously.)

This might sound a bit nerdy, but for the last few days I've been reliving my spectrum memories on my Nintendo DS.

(Well, ok, one of my DSs - We got one each for oor wedding anniversary years ago, and I won one courtesy of Dr. Pepper about a year back.)

If you're interested, Click here to download the Spectrum emulator.

then....

click here to download Spectrum games.

You'll need a writable cart like an M3 Simply, or an R4DS, but it's soooooo worth it!

Just looking through my stats, and noticed how odd some of the phrases that people search for on google are. Even more disturbing is that they find here after looking for them.

If you search for David Langin, then I used to be top 'o' google, just because I once said a thanks to him on here.

Oddly, someone found here after searching for "What happens if you swallow a coin?" I hope they weren't actually in need of help. I'd feel quite bad if someone had swallowed a coin and needed urgent medical attention.

But one phrase that I used to get daily hits from, was "Mike Grech"

How very, very odd.

Even more odd is the fact that I have even had emails from people, one asking when I knew him (from an email address matching the name of the company that I used to work with him at,) and another asking why keying his name in no longer produces top 'o' google results. I guess it's because the story is no longer on the front page.

I suppose the best way to remedy that would be to add another fond memory from the many, many I have stored.

Mike used to send me down into the basement at work, to get things out of his car. (For a man with an apparent healthy living regime, he did comparitively little exercise.)

We worked on quite a high-up floor. To get in the lift and descend to the basement took about 30 seconds. If I walked down 6 flights of stairs, it took 2 minutes. I decided to walk down. It meant longer out of the office, but..... hell there WAS no down side!

On every step, I pressed Mikes alarm keyfob. There were 26 steps down each floor, so that meant 26 presses for each floor. By the time I got to the basement, his fob had been activated over 150 times.

I got to the Grechmobile, unlocked it by pressing the fob, took out his wallet, and returned to get back in the lift for the return journey. I pressed the fob a few times for good measure in the lift.

I gave him his wallet and returned his keys, so all was well. He probably called Gareth over to help him open his wallet later on, but I had stopped caring by then.

The day after, I had the same request - go and get Mikes wallet.

So another 150+ presses on the way down, and a good 50+ on the way back up. Then as I stepped out of the lift, another long hard 10 second press.

This happened every time I was sent to get Mikes things. I must have pressed his fob 3000+ times. (Thats not a euphemism)

Mike asked me after a few weeks if I ever had trouble getting into his car. Apparently, over these few weeks, his battery had gone 3 times. He'd been locked out of his car at night after everyone had gone home, and had to get his wife to pick him up.

The RSI was worth it.

While I'm in the mood, sharing my Grechian memories, Jamie, one of the lads at work, once saw me flicking chewing gum onto Mikes windscreen as we exited the building. I thought I had done it quite descretely, but he caught me fair and square.

"Did you just flick chewing gum at Mikes car?"

"Er.... yeah"

"Thats outstanding!" he replied, and for the rest of the day he seemed happier than usual.

There was a sale at NEXT. Womens bottoms from £2.

'From' £2, meaning a few are cheap, but the others are all a bit dearer.

You can bet that if you go and ask for a £2 bottom, they'll say "oh, they must have all sold out. We still have the £5 bottoms in stock though"

A similar thing happened to my dad a few years ago, but he was trying to buy a camera bag, not a ladies bottom.

I was in the queue to see the Doctor Who exhibition in Manchester a good few months ago. It attracted people from all around the country.

In front of me was a cockney family.

Little Jimmy Cockney adopted a pondering look, and asked,

"Dad. What's a plorer?"

Dad looked puzzled and said, in true Cockney fashion, "Caw blimey me old san, what you tawking abart nar?"

"What a plorer?"

Dad just stood there and looked puzzled.

Little Jimmy Cockney continued, "Well they have EX-plorers, so they must have plorers...."

*sigh*

I hoped the cybermen and daleks were real.

It's only songs about how hard a job women have, that get to number 1.

Leonna Lewis was at number one for ages with her song, called something like "Oh, look at me, I'm bleeding. Get us a plaster."

Then Rhianna got to number one with something like "Oh, look at me, I've got an umbrella, but it isn't very big."

Duffy - "Oh, I'm begging you for Mercy, and to prove it I'm singing in a stupid voice."

Nelly Furtado "Oh, look at me, I get that hungry I could eat a full man. Me shopping bill costs me loads."

There are just too many songs by women, about what hard lives women have.

It occured to me recently that there are a few things that I really dislike. No, it's true...

That fffflippin' advert on TV where a load of housewives tell you all about the benefits of Shreddied Wheat is one of them.

One of the women reads the ingredients on the box, and recites "100% whole grain wheat. That's, that's ALL thats in it," as if she is telling you something. At the same time as telling us, she shakes her head, as if even SHE can't believe it. But hang on a minute, SHE only found out about 3 seconds ago. She ISN'T QUALIFIED to tell other people how good that cereal is for them - SHE DIDN'T KNOW HERSELF UNTIL JUST NOW.

Another woman on the same advert informs us that it can help us lead a healthy lifestyle. But again, SHE is just reading the box! She has no proof. She has had no training. She's just READING.

Then we get a close up of one woman nibbling one, as if to demonstrate how to eat. Oh, THATS where I've been going wrong! They go in your MOUTH!!!

Then at the end, one woman attempts to walk off STEALING THE FULL PACKET!

They are not qualified to talk about what they are talking about, they keep shaking their heads because THEY can't believe what they're saying, they're not sales people, they think we're so simple that they have to demonstrate how to eat to us and, to top it all, one of them is an out and out thief.

How can one 30 second ad outrage me so much?

People who come into offices who sit near windows, but who turn light on. GRRRRRRRRRR!

They don't check whether the lights need to be on before turning them on. They come in, flick the light on, and THEN go to their desk. I could understand if they got to their desk first, thought 'hang on, this is a bit dark,' and went back and turned the light on after seeing that it was needed. THAT I could understand. But no, they come in, click the switch and THEN go deskward.

Sometimes, for a laugh, I switch the light on in the morning, just so when they arrive and instinctively press the switch, they end up turning the light OFF. Obviously they instantly turn it back on again, but it's funny seeing them do it wrong. lol!

One of my kids (Child 2) said that when he was older, he was going to make a film.

"At the end of it," he said, "it's going to say 'no animals were harmed in the making of this film."

"Whats your film going to be about?" I asked.

"It's going to be called 'Harming Animals.'"

Beautiful.

Don't drink and drive - you might kill someone. If you're driving anywhere, make sure you don't have a drink when you get there, or getting back may be a problem. Driving AND drinking is a bad combo.

This is a very well known fact.

So why do winning racing drivers celebrate by drinking champagne? As soon as they win - pop and gulp. They drink straight out of the bottle, like they can't wait! What are they, alcohol dependant? Thats a bad choice of person to get into a really fast car, someone who can't wait to jump out and down as much champagne as possible in 10 seconds. Within 30 seconds, that massive bottle is empty.

Don't they know how high the alcohol percent is in that?!? Stupids.

This lady started working where I work in July 07. She was one of those people who always had a worse story than everyone else. If you had a sore knee, she'd have had a knee replacement. If you had a headache, she had a history of migrane that she would tell you about. Plus, she'd always turn every story around so that it was about her. When the Diana tribute was on TV over lunch time, they played a song that she hated. She hated it because at HER dads funeral they played it too. If you were upset because your child was ill, she'd ask how they were before saying that she'd had the same thing recently.

Within her first week, EVERYONE on our floor knew that she had been "clutched from the jaws of death twice" (her words) been in a bad car accident weeks before starting work, couldn't have kids due to her hysterectomy, had a history of rashes, was registered disabled, had 4 'fake' teeth and was on morphine. She'd just blurt out how bad her life was for no reason.

"Hi I'm ***. I'm new!"
"Hi ***, I'm Craig. How are you finding it?"
"It's ok. I was in a bad car accident 5 weeks ago..........."

It became a personal challenge to mention, in passing, illnesses that she would be unable to better. I used to sit within earshot of her, and talk about times that I was ill, naming various made-up illnesses and exaggerating previous real ones. I once told my boss quite loudly that when I was young, I had to have me adenoids removed after they swelled up to the same size as "some dice". I openly mentioned that I once got 3 papercuts within 5 minutes of each other, 2 from paper and one from some cardboard. At one point I claimed that my stigmata was acting up. She could better none of them. Maybe she didn't hear my boasts. Her ears might have been bad at the time.

Oddly, she looked very much like 2 people that I know. She looked very much like my Aunty, AND my Uncle.

In my experience, whingers don't tend to stay in a new job for more than 6 months. I had a bet with my colleague that she would have left by Feb 4th, which would have been around the 6 month mark. She ended up leaving on March 12th, so I was out by over a month. NOOOOOOOO!

I forgot to bring a tie to work today. Normally I put one on as a matter of course, so I usually leave the house wearing one.

But today I arrived tieless.

It was only as I was going upstairs at work that I realised I had forgotten to put one on. I glanced down and noticed that I was particularly un-tied. Home was a good 20 minutes away, so I couldn't just nip back to get one. I did a slight panic, but nothing too bad.

THEN, I remembered - in the car, I have a 'reserve' tie. A tie for the rare occasions that I forget to put one on. So I nipped out, opened the glove box, and pulled out the 'reserve tie'.

It's been in there for around 3 years, and no longer matches any of my shirts or suits. In fact, it couldn't un-match more if it tried. Its selling point could be "guaranteed not to match anything that you own." Red and Greenish.

I put it on, and went back into work.

Later, one of my colleagues quite tactfully said "That tie... It's very........ 90s."