I used to be a people person, but people ruined that for me.

What an arrival in the UK, I've had. Bought a house, renovated it, moved out. Nearly had a nervous breakdown. After the sale fell through 3 times, sold the house. Lost £40,000. Brilliant. Can’t find any work. So I’m now renting in the North and about to retrain as a teacher – can’t believe any of that last sentence refers to me. Nor the next ones, which are bizarre and terrifying. And perhaps amusing.

 I started internet dating - which actually involves more computer work and less dating.

I went on an internet date. After much texting and email flirting - she started it, but when I get writing and get my groove on, well, she couldnt wait for each new instalment, which I happily gave her. Long time since I've been encouraged and blinked at. Apparently every one of my responses had her pissing herself laughing. We agreed to meet in a pub mid-afternoon in a northern town I'd never visited. I'd seen one crap photo of her. She was 10 years younger than me, and from what I could work out pretty nice looking. Terrible speller though. Really, fucking abysmal. And I'm a bit of a stickler for that sort of thing. And just before she turns up, she says she always wears heels (gulp, my second favourite thing), and she hopes I'm not going to spend the entire time staring at her boobs, because she's had breast enlargement (gulp).
I was terrified driving there. Proper pre-final uni exam stomach.
And when she arrived (driven there by her elder son (aged 20, an ex-soldier undergoing anger management)), her younger son had a new shotgun, and is a boxer) she turned out to smell like rather more than a 'moderate' smoker as she'd claimed on the website. Anyway, her hands were a bit smashed up from her job in the factory, (every one has to earn money, and I got the impression she had a very strong work ethic, but it was all just a bit beyond my sphere of experience and comfort) but she was rather nice looking actually from the long black hair to the eye liner, not to mention her massive, jutting chest, but every time she mentioned another area of her life, it was all angry men and violence. I was fucking terrified. I had half a pint of beer and she had two. And she was going out drinking after she left me. So did I fancy her, yes, and would I want to be in a relationship, no way. I'd be terrified of annoying her. After our two hours together, we pecked each other on the lips to say goodbye, and as I closely followed her to the door, my hand, inadvertently and lightly brushed her jeans encased bottom - certainly not a grope. Then I dashed home (instead of going to my night-school class) to draft a 'thanks, you're lovely, it was wonderful, but I'm not right for you' letter. I sent it the next day, and she wasn't exactly chuffed. She thought it had all gone well, especially as I'd touched her bottom, and said she'd liked it, but she'd respect my wishes.  And now I live in fear, because I know she keeps checking my profile on the website (a little icon keeps telling me who's checked me out). Fucking hell.

The next 'date' was at 11 am. I shaved and bathed, and all those things which gay men do. And she turned up in wellies, jeans and a big jumper, wearing no make up whatsoever. Not that I wanted her completely slutted up, but come on, at least try to dupe me. Give it your best shot. Maybe I've been lost in adland too long, but perception is reality; make a fucking effort the first time you send the brand to market. This was really a job interview for the position of life partner. I should have known - she was an accountant; whimsyless and straight up and down. So that was an hour I could have spent swimming. 

The next and last one sounded good. Certainly wrote a witty email. Only problems were that she had a kid.........and was from Liverpool.  Two of my least favourite things. Again a lunch meeting in an un-apache area of Liverpool. 

When she arrived, she did at least resemble her photo. Blond. I'm not really into blondes, but I'm a very forgiving sort. But she was indeed a 5'10" blond goddess. Who wore makeup. 

But, and there's always a bloody BUT.  Instead of me running off at the mouth, as I normally would, and then wishing I'd shut the fuck up, I decided to let her speak and tell me about her life and how she spent her days. 
"What do you do for a living?" Not that that's how I judge people- everyone has to earn money, but it's just an interesting start point for a conversation.
"I'm a police officer."
Fuck.
"At least my sister will be pleased. She used to be a cop in Liverpool. She's a big Christian too. I thought I must have been adopted, as that's just not me at all."
"I'm a strong Christian too."
Double fuck.
And this is only 10 minutes in to the chat. This was going to be a loooooooong lunch.

The police bit didn't phase me - I don't do anything illegal anymore (well, not outside my head), but it's just that regimented, institutional mind, which follows rules, which got me. 

But then the whole God Bothering thing just killed me completely. I think she was the one running back to the car this time. I probably shouldnt have shouted after her, 'I suppose anal is out of the question then.'

 I emailed one woman, who sounded very simpatico - into art and music (she was slightly gorgeous too). She lived about half an hour's drive away.  She emailed back, saying I lived a long way away. Fuck. I emailed her saying that in Australia people drive that far for milk, not just to meet a potential life partner.  
Maybe she should be looking for a man in the same postcode - go and knock on next door, see if he's home. For fuck's sake. She didn't write back.

So, yeh,I'm over all that now. If I get bored, to lighten the atmosphere, I might just jam my cock in the bedroom door.

What are the chances.

I lived in Braddon in Australia.  Then I moved to Bardon.  A few house moves later, I moved into a house in England. As I was moving in, at the front gate, I discovered this pen. Odd.

Nowt queerer than folk.

I bought two new pair of glasses today. I sat opposite the assistant at a table in the shop, and he got me to try on the frames, whilst he worked out what needed adjusting on the specs to fit my head and ears.  He was a big bloke, but seeing as we weren’t in a ‘who can block out the sun’ competition, his bulk wasn’t important.

I tried on one pair, and looked over the assistant’s shoulder into the distance; it was amazing to be able to see things clearly. I shook my head about to see if the glasses would fall off.  The customer, a lady, at the next table stared back at me.  To me, she looked possibly in her fifties, and definitely mauled and spat out by life.  

She commented that my glasses made my look ‘foxy’. Embarrassed, I shrugged off the compliment. I tried on the second pair of glasses and could see the edges of objects and read distant words, which was quite a novelty.  The assistant attending to me busied himself with finessing my glasses. This time the lady said I was handsome. 

I thanked her for her kind words, and felt a bit guilty that if she had been an ultra goddess, then I might have been more pleased with the compliment. But coming from such a chewed toffee, it didn’t hold much value or import to me.

The assistant went off to make the adjustments to my specs. 

The lady said she was originally Rhodesian and her dad had left her 3000 acres of land, which would have been nice, had Robert Mugabe not taken them off her. 

I said Mugabe was a proper mentalist.

“England was fab until all the foreigners came over.” Said the Rhodesian.  Which was a wonderfully impregnable point of view for a Rhodesian to enjoy.

Apparently, she had 6 pairs of glasses.

So why was she getting another pair?

She kept smashing them when she had one of her seizures.  And it meant she couldn’t drive any more, or work, and was on benefits. She was an epileptic and wearing glasses was expensive and dangerous, but she didn’t want to get her eyes lasered, as that would mean adding to the considerable list of ologists looking after her. She had an oncologist for her lung cancer, someone for her fits, someone for her skin condition, and a gynaecologist (I hoped the fact that she wasn’t yet wearing her new glasses might mean she wouldn’t be able to see me visibly shuddering at that information).  She had obviously had a tough time. And I was beginning to empathise and sympathise with her. And feel even more guilty for my previous, uncharitable thoughts.

The assistant helping me returned and sat down opposite me with his back to Mrs Mugabehater.

“Wow,” she exclaimed to my helper. “You’re pretty rotund, aren’t you.”

He ignored her.

“Do you live at home with your mum?”

He turned around to look at her. “No. Why?”

“Just thought you might like her cooking. “

He looked back at me. Neither of us could believe that she was actually saying it.

“Oh come on fatso, you need to lay off the pies and cake for a while.”

We both shook our heads and ignored her.  I concluded my business and thanked him for his help. But as I left the shop, it did occur to me that Mugabehater’s seizures might have been brought on by her head hitting the floor in response to her giving someone one of her unsolicited personal improvement insights.

What next? And yes it does deserve a question mark, because it's far from being a rhetorical question. Answers on a postcard please. In 25 words or less, to How to Get a Life competition. Gulp Lane Bewilderville GR8 UR0

This entry is about nothing in particular happening to me, but rather everything I've done as a result of things happening. And now, having just handed the keys of my house over to the new owners,  I've completely shed my life. The feeling is somewhere between terrifying and liberating - it changes by the minute. I suppose, the way my life has gone thus far, the situation I find myself in now is probably a culmination of effects and influences.  But whilst most people my age have some benchmarks or solid reference points in their lives - even if it's a job they detest, or kids who hate them - I now have no wife, no job, no house, no car, no dog and no idea what I'm going to do next. (wife divorced, dog dead, house renovated and sold, car sold, furniture given away) I do however have a plane ticket, some money, some books written, some canvasses painted, an idea for a business, and an open mind.  And I have my health, which many people say glibly, but without that, in my experience, the rest means substantially less. So we shall see what we'll see. Freaky.

Worlds in collision.

There's no photo with this entry, simply because any image would be, at best, irrelevant and just added because the other blog entries are accompanied by images. And any image here would be, at worst, utterly insensitive.

I was on the London Underground, on a Wednesday, going home after a night out. I was a bit squiffy, but certainly not about to break into a slurred song or soil myself.


On the tube, the seats are arranged either facing perpendicular to the direction of travel, much like normal train seating. Or the seats are arranged in long benchseats running along the sides of the compartment with the windows behind them. I was sitting on one of these benchseats. The rest of the carriage was empty; a rarity in its self.

The train stopped and a vision-impaired man got on. He tapped his way along the wooden floor and eventually sat on the benchseat opposite me. Well, I imagine he was vision-impaired; either that or he was one of the only sighted people I’ve ever come across with a white cane, and who liked wearing sunglasses underground, at night.

The train’s doors closed and we took off into another tunnel. At the next stop, the door opened and, oddly, another man with a white cane and black sunglasses got on and sat on the same benchseat as I.
As the train doors closed, and we headed into the next tunnel, we all sat in silence. I was wondering if these guys’ hearing and smell had compensated for their lack of sight and whether they knew that there were indeed other people in the carriage. I wondered if they could smell what must surely have been my beery breath and the smell of cigarettes lingering on my clothes from the pub I’d been in.
In seconds the train was coming out of the tunnel and slowing as the light poured in and the platform rushed by. The first blind guy tapped his stick out and found the leg of the man sitting opposite him. The stick tapped his leg.

“Excuse me, could you tell me which station this is please?” said the first blind man.

“No, sorry. I’m blind.” said the other man.

“What? I’m blind. Can you tell me which station this is please?”

“No. I cant tell you. I told you, I am blind.”

“Mate, are you taking the piss?” he said, taking a firm hold of his stick and waving it more like a sword. “Because if you are, I might be blind, but I know exactly where you are.”

“Fuck off. I’m blind. What? You’re going to attack a blind man in front of all these security cameras?”

“So you can see.”

“No, but I know they’re there alright. A bit like you, you wanker. Now leave me alone.”

Now they were both wielding their sticks like light sabres.

I thought I better do something before the bloke missed his stop or someone got whacked.

“Excuse me guys, you are both blind. And this stop is Victoria.”

“No way.” said the first one.

“Bollocks.” said the second disbeliever, smiling.

“Honestly.”

They didn’t even need me to guide their hands to eachother to shake hands, whilst I kept the door open for one of them to get off. We left the one on the tube smiling to himself. And the other one, I left on the escalator, both of us smiling.

You couldnt write it.

So, two weeks ago, I’m at the trivia night in a pub/restaurant with my ex-secretary, her husband, and their 2 little boys. We've just had dinner and a couple of beers. The trivia is going to start soon, and to ensure that a full bladder and the associated behaviours don’t compromise my ability to trawl my mind for trivia answers, I adjourn to the toilets.
In the Gents, the trough/urinal is packed shoulder to shoulder with men (not literally – though I have been to a club in London, where ‘trough man’ resided – very specific tastes and pecadillos some folk) feeling better by the second , so I make haste to one of the traps and close the door.
On the wall, there’s scrawled in what looks like penknife ‘LIVERPOOL FC’. I couldn’t believe it – not only is this the other side of the planet from the UK, but they’re still true to form and writing it not in pen but in knife blade. And underneath the scrawl, in a different knife blade is written ARE SHIT. Very amusing. It rememinded me of the scrawl I once saw outside a church beneath the phrase, Jesus Saves, but Keegan gets it on the rebound. And the other classic I saw was for a man, George Sands, who had been incarcerated for a crime, which his supporters believed he hadn't committed. Their grafitti demanded Free George Sands, but underneath some wag had written with every gallon of petrol.  But tonight, in the pub, this scrawl, if only for its displaced geography ( doing fine ambassdorial work spreading the word of what to expect from the brand that is Liverpool) is too good to miss. Behind me, the door has banged closed a lot, and all the men have left, and I’m left musing in silence in a well-lit convenience.

Hey, I know, I’ve got a new phone with a camera, and it’s in my pocket, cool. I can take a photo for ridiculous posterity. I get the phone out, being careful not to drop it into the toilet bowl, and finally, after a bit of faffing, I get it onto camera mode and point it at the scrawl – can’t wait to send this back to Blighty. My cousin will laugh.
I take a photo, but apparently, the Gents isn’t bright enough, so the camera chooses flash mode. But before it can take the photo, it has to send out this little sequence of focusing flickers to get the focal length in the murk or reduce red eye or something, before it flashes.

So the camera is on its second of four little flickers before the proper flash goes off, and the door to the Gents toilet bursts open with a procession of heavy-bladdered men. They’re in jocular conversation, enjoying their evening out, and I hear them line up at the urinal, unzip and assume the position. Meanwhile, my camera gives off the last of its four little flickers and then BOOF, the big flash goes off and lights up the whole of the Gents toilet.
The men stop talking.
Bollocks.
I could wait in silence, which just seems a bit too weird. So I elect to flush the loo and go out into the larger area of the Gents and act is if nothing untoward has happened. Maybe they'll just think it was lightening or something. As I wash my hands, I can tell the men are trying to identify me without actually making eye contact and are wondering what I was taking flash photography of alone in a men’s toilet stall.I dont think this is the place to explain that I have a sense of humour and am fascinated by social anthropolgy.Nor am I going to mention the word 'branding', as that word needs some contextualising. I avoid their gaze and leave the toilets to back to my table shared with a man, woman and two little boys. I get funny looks all night.

But we came second in the trivia competition– I’d signed up for double points on the science and nature section. And I’m sure the men from the Gents wouldn’t have been at all surprised, that I scored highly.
some days I feel like Frank Spencer on acid.







JX

Why is it never easy.

A sick friend asked me if I minded taking the dog to the vet. Of course, I didn’t mind. I was a bit busy, but I’d be happy to; I know how important the dog is to my friend. The last time my friend was indisposed, about a year ago, I used to take the dog to the local vet quite regularly; even then it was getting on a bit and needed a bit more maintenance than when it was more sprightly. This time the dog needed an injection for arthritis. It had already had one a week earlier to get the stuff, cartrophen (for those, who are into vetty things), into its system. It would be a quick in, injection and out. Easy. I ask for the appointment to be early afternoon so as to avoid getting caught in the Easter traffic, as everyone gets off work early and flees the city. The appointment was made. All I had to do was go to my friend’s, grab the dog, drive over to the vet’s, hand the dog over, pick up a slightly more pissed off version of the dog and drive back. Half hour job, and it would really help out a friend.

I got to the vet’s – on time for the 2.30 appointment- the receptionist looked at the computer monitor and started pulling faces. No appointment made apparently.

Pardon? Impossible. I explained it was for a follow up with the vet called Jo.

Receptionist gets Jo on the phone. Jo has no recollection of this dog being in for an injection a week ago.

On my rapidly dying mobile, I phone the dog’s owner, who is annoyed. The owner spoke to Jo on the phone. Jo asked for a urine sample and handed out some prescription drugs. Jo must have some recollection.

I wait.

Nope, no recollection.

Well, even in spite of Jo’s short term memory problems, can’t the vet just give the dog the second injection and then I can take it home.

Apparently not. Not without a record of the first one.

Which you should have in your computer after your vet gave the injection and dispensed the drugs, which are now on my friend’s dining room table. I think that’s what’s known as physical evidence.

No.

Do what do I do now? I’m just a taxi driver basically. Do I just take the dog home or wait for you to find the unrecorded consultation from a week ago? The money was accepted and recorded on electronic transfer though.

I call the owner to find out if there was a receipt for the consultation, so we can find it on the system.

The owner starts looking for the receipt and says it will be faxed pronto.

I wait. It’s now 3pm. 5 other appointments behind mine have come and gone.

Another customer comes in with a sick dog. Trying to swallow my growing fury at the utter incompetence of it all, and endeavouring to speak through gritted teeth, I explain to the customer to make sure they get a receipt, as this vet, Jo, has no recollection of a consultation a week ago, speaking to the owner on the phone or handing out prescription drugs, and now wants to charge me for another consultation because their system can’t find my last visit and subsequent payment. It’s a fabulous way of making money for the vet – so don’t fall for it. More people are now within earshot of this explanation and interested.

The receptionist comes back from the fax machine. By now, from my body language and expressions, which aren’t happy ones, I’m sure she’ll be glad when I finally leave her alone and go into a consulting room. But she doesn’t have a fax. Instead, she hands me the landline. Apparently, it’s the owner as my phone has run out o charge and is now just weighing my trousers down.

The owner is distraught. And apologetic.

Apparently, the owner had forgotten to mention that, in the year since I last took the dog to the vet, the owner has been taking the vet to a different vet, who, coincidentally, is also called Jo. Jo’s been waiting for me for nearly 50 minutes.

I take a deep breath. And apologise to the receptionist my accusations and unfounded disgruntlement. behaviour. I drive through the rapidly growing Easter traffic to the other vet practice to wait for a late consult after missing my appointment. The injection and consultation do indeed take about 4 minutes. I drive the dog back to the owner through even bigger traffic, and 2 hours after originally picking it up. The owner is too upset at having unwittingly given the runaround for me to be angry. I end up comforting the owner. 

Nice work, Sherlock.

London’s Earl’s Court is a rabbit warren of very narrow streets packed with towering, multi-level, Georgian terraced houses, long since divided into flats or hotels. I lived in one such edifice. One morning, as I left the building for work, my entire visual field was filled with a gleaming wall of white metal. A huge, 52 seat tourist coach was parked outside the hotel opposite. It was like seeing an ocean liner berthed in some tiny canal. I looked up to see the rows of tourists, who, judging by their sagging expressions, had been sitting there for quite a while, waiting for the stragglers to board.
I was kitted out for autumn London traffic; black helmet, full black leathers, steel-plated motorbike boots, long hair, unshaven, sun glasses, earrings, the full-on, urban Mad Max nightmare. Was I a motorcycle courier or a patch wearer? Nope, I was a desk-bound advertising copywriter. With a head full of deadlines, and, I hoped, a more than equal amount of appropriate ideas, I hooked my helmet over the handlebar of my big, shiny new motorbike and nodded my head forward to grab my hair to ponytail it, but I saw something, which stopped me dead. Oil was pooling on the road around my gleaming front wheel.
Now, I’m no motorbike mechanic. Not even slightly. I once bled my brakes to improve their stopping power and roared off down the road, impatiently trying to get past a Range Rover. The Rangyy hit the brakes. And I hit mine, but nothing happened, and my front tyre hit the back of the Rangy. I catapulted up the seat and ‘gumphed’ to a halt, using my testicles as little airbags between me and my petrol tank. The Range Rover drove off and left me bent over the petrol tank, sweating, and breathing like an asthmatic hamster. I rode home and spent the night, periodically sighing, in front of the TV with a bag of frozen peas down my pants. So that’s me and simple mechanics.
And today, oil coming from the bike’s front brake – that was bad. On a motorbike, your life depends on the front brake. With the eyes of the tourists boring into the top of my head, I crouched down to fathom where the oil was coming from. The bike was new, so the oil was unsoiled and clear. I dipped my fingers in the oil sliding down the tyre’s spokes, and it was cold, but not particularly viscous. I sniffed it. And it didn’t smell of much – not that I knew how it should or shouldn’t smell. The seal at the gaiter looked dry, and there was no obvious origin or well-spot for the drippage. So, as so often in life, I asked myself, ‘what would someone, who knew what they were doing, do now’?
Still on my knees and still wondering, something in my peripheral vision jolted me out of my investigation. I turned my head, to be greeted by the blackness; the big black nose of a big, apparently happy, dog, who was sniffing at me. It took a second for me to get it, but one look up at the tourists’ now smiling faces explained everything; they’d seen everything. Apparently, it was this very dog’s freshly deposited wee, which I was erroneously investigating as spilled oil. Mr Cool has left the building. What a twat.

Give me strength.

I’ve just been to enter a painting in a competition hosted by the local library. The prize is thousands of dollars, but, more importantly, it would be a good inclusion on my art CV.

A few days ago, my neighbour, who pays his mortgage by selling his paintings, showed me the correct method of fixing brass hangers to the back of the piece, so they work with the uniform hanging system, which all galleries use. So I was ready to go; all very professional.

But I've got flu or Ebola, or some hideousness, so just to get myself out of bed by late afternoon to enter the painting before the deadline, I needed to give myself a serious talking to. By the time I was in the car, my internal dialogue had descended into a slanging match.

I arrived at the art show with the entry fee and painting. And I stood in line, red-eyed, shivering and sweating; trying to stop my eyes rolling back in my head, and half-expecting someone to tap me on the shoulder and direct me to the local injecting gallery.

My turn. I paid the entry fee and left the painting with some little, old lady. Time for bed via the pharmacy. But just as I was leaving, the lady looked at the back of the painting and asked where the wire for hanging the painting was.
“There isn’t any.” I said, confidently. “There never is. The rings are there for the hanging system. It’s the same for all galleries.”
“Well,” she croaked, with far too much relish for my liking, “this isn’t an art gallery; it’s a library. You need to get some wire from somewhere. I’ll leave the painting on the side until you get back.”
I imagine, it would have been frowned upon to punch her head clean off her shoulders, so, dutifully, I dragged my fevered corpse on a wire hunt to the nearest hardware shop - in the next suburb – where I’d just come from. I just wanted to go back to bed.

Half an hour later, I wobbled back into the library. I got down on the floor with my painting and was cursing my inability to either breathe properly, or to focus my glassy eyes on the tiny wire loops, when an authorititive sounding lady somewhere above me asked,
“What are you doing?”

I looked up, and she frowned at me over her halfmoon glasses.
“What the fuck does it look like?” I said inside my head and looked around for the old hag to point my shaking finger at. But she was probably out the back somewhere stirring a cauldron. So I calmly explained I was attaching the wire just as I'd been instructed.
“Well, we have a hanging system. We don’t need any of that, but you may as well finish now.”
I did finish it. Then I took a deep mouth-breath, gathered my dignity off the floor, smiled and left.
That’s how massacres start.

I'm sure he'd have some wise words on universal interconnectedness. If only I understood Khmer.

So it's 1990 in London. I'm at work and a supplier, about the same age as me, takes me and my work partner for a beer. Lubricated, the supplier, who's from London, originally from Bayswater, tells us about his mum, who was murdered when he was a child. Apparently, his mum was thrown or pushed out of, or at any rate involuntarily exited, a high window and was impaled on the steel railings below. Heavy stuff over a lunch time drink. I was expecting beer, crisps and politically incorrect jokes.

Fast forward twenty years.

So I'm talking to my 65 year old next-door neighbour in Sydney, Australia (as opposed to Sydney, Canada). Anyway, my neighbour's talking about when he was a travelling hippy, living in London in the 60's. And he tells me about the day when the lady next door, in Bayswater, was murdered by falling from a high building onto the railings below. Now, either that's a weird coincidence, or Bayswater in the 60s was a dangerous place to be out in the streets in anything less substantial than a car.

Maybe I'm just the kind of person,who brings out morbid, gory subjects in people - though he did tell me a good joke too.
Paddy goes for a job as a blacksmith.

Blacksmith: "So Paddy, do you have any experience shoeing horses?"
Paddy:"No, but I told a donkey to fuck off, once."

If it were in a novel, it would seem far fetched.

I found out today where socks go. Sometimes even in pairs. It was raining, so, for my walk up the road to the local café, I grabbed my waterproof coat. With its flaps and toggles, and Velcro to cover the whole front zip with a waterproof baffle, this thing would be overkill on Everest. I opened the door and was about to put my arm in the coat sleeve, but it was absolutely pouring down and my super-absorbent suede shoes weren't going to cut it. But I was on a coffee mission- that was non-negotiable; I needed to get my target heart rate for the day. So, another day older, and hopefully another day wiser, I went back to the bedroom to change my shoes. I chucked the coat on the bed, sat down and set about the whole unlacing and lacing palaver. Done. Coat on. Take two.

Head bowed against the rain, I walked up the road, and, just as I turned the corner to the shops, I patted my pockets to make sure I had a pen and paper. And something caught my eye. My heart missed a beat. It must have happened, when I threw the coat on the bed. From the very bottom of my jacket's Velcro zip-flap, a new, grey sock with a big, bright red toe section was dangling vertically, and very unsubtly, at crotch height, right between my legs. I ripped the sock off and stuffed it in my pocket. And looked around. No one had seen. Phew.

I had my coffee. And on the way home, I retraced my steps. And outside my next door neighbour’s there was the other sock. So that’s what happens to them.

An elephant about to drench me, which is exactly what this story isn't about.

Not that I don't get pissed off with other road abusers (you've never got a .45 and a shovel when you need one), but I'm truly glad to have escaped all those years spent cycling into hailstones, waiting for buses on windswept rainy nights, being sardined into London Underground tubes against people, who really needed to know the truth about short falls in their hygiene regimen, and hitch hiking at night in the middle of nowhere (and being arrested for suspected terrorism as a result, but that's a different story). My wife and I fully realise how very fortunate we are to have a car each with our ipods linked to the stereos; it's disgusting really. But then, as Sonny Barger said (the guy credited with starting the Hell's Angels) 'if it's got tits or wheels, you're going to have trouble with it'.

Just before Christmas, both cars were running a as rough as a badger’s arse, and needed a good servicing. So I put one in, just for a minor service; the diagnosis was that it also needed a new catalytic converter, which may have explained why shop windows rattled as I drove by and birds were falling choking from the trees in my wake. And it was going to be costly, because it was a foreign car. “Okay” I said, “you must do what you must do.” But I wasn’t carless; if I gave my wife a lift to and from work, I could have her car, a zippy VW Golf, to drive around in. Excellent. I’d just been talking to a friend about cars – and the fact that I’d been in 6 car and motorbike crashes (none of which were my fault - only two of which big ones, and one of which physically rearranged me) And that I'd been in 6 cars when the clutch had gone. No one I know, other than drag racers, have this record. You see, is it just me or what. I left my friend and drove home.

Yep, you’re way ahead of me; I put the clutch in and nearly put my foot through the bulkhead, as something under the bonnet went bang. I was in second gear, so I accelerated, barely passing the road works with the walkie talkie traffic man flipping the handheld ‘slow’ sign to ‘stop’. I came to the roundabout at the bottom of my hill and, thankfully, with no cars to wait for, I just drove up the hill, parked with a bit of a lurching chug outside my house and stepped out into the afternoon sunshine. Fortunately, it happened to me where it did when it did. It could just as easily happened to my wife in rush hour traffic in the pouring rain in the middle of the city. And the last time I had car bother, it was the accelerator cable in a different car, which snapped outside my house at the top of a ridiculously steep hill, in a different city. So the gods must be smiling on me; even though they do seem to have a rather sarcastic sense of humour. So does this stuff happen to other people, or is it just me?

Careful your dogma doesn’t get run over by your karma.

This is from a friend’s classic car collection. He’s also got a Triumph, around which this story revolves, but, well, this is prettier, and I haven't got a photo of the Triumph.

The friend, my flatmate’s brother, came to lose some IQ points with us for New Year’s Eve. And we did him proud. By lunch time on New Year’s Day, the three of us had pooled enough decision-making ability to decide to go for a drive. We’d take our guest’s Triumph, which he’d mistakenly parked, in someone else’s designated car space underneath our apartment block.

As we were pulling out of the car space, our guest remarked that his car felt a bit odd. He was a seasoned truck driver and pretty switched on about mechanical things, but we still mocked him for his oversensitivity and it was probably just last night’s celebrations causing his shakes; so shut up and drive.

Not two minutes later, out on the highway, we had a real Keystone Cops moment. Fingers pointing, laughing, we all stared out of the passenger side window as our car was overtaken, or rather undertaken, by a lone, high-speed car wheel. We looked around for the car, to which the rogue wheel belonged, as it might be heading for us. But we needn’t have worried; there weren’t any other cars around. The trusty Triumph, however, promptly tilted, slammed us back into our seats, and, sparks flying, veered sharply towards the pavement. ‘Oh dear’, we didn’t say.

The wheel had been our rear, passenger-side wheel. And it wasn’t an accident. It appeared that every nut on every wheel had been loosened. Happy Frigging New Year. Now, I would have thought the first line of communication from the car space owner would’ve been a polite notice on the windscreen requesting the visitor not park in that car space. Call me picky, but for a ‘first offence’, trying to kill the offender, and any passengers, seems a tad over-reactive.

We consulted the cops. And they said, and don’t ask me on which page of the police manual you’ll find this, “we tend to find, what goes around comes around.” Which is certainly open to interpretation.

And our mechanically minded friend did indeed interpret the officer’s sage advice; revenge was served not only cold, but with a complimentary side-salad, dessert, cheese, biscuits, coffee and a mint. He opted for a solution, which was both inventive and educational; it seems atomized brake fluid and car paint don’t make happy bedfellows. But the owner didn’t bloody die of it. He did, however, leave the apartments the next day. So, does this happen to other people, or is it just me?

I certainly hope I never come across the bullet with my name on.

Yes, that's a tree, and it's growing through a Cambodian temple; 'Ta Prohm', if you care, (where they shot Tomb Raider). It's far more interesting than, and yet, strangely in about the same state as, a lot of the houses I looked at in Sydney. I’d just lost my job, so I thought ‘let’s buy a house’ - logic never was my strong suit. I spent weekend after weekend, walking through tiny hovels, pulling my face, appalled. But the kicker was, the Sydney property market is a bun fight, and I could barely afford these dumps anyway. After finally finding something potentially livable, I went to a few auctions. But the bidding was already beyond my pocket, before I got my hand out of the pocket and into the air.

Meanwhile, I was making a short film, and I needed a particular prop; a cardboard pet box for taking rabbits etc home from the pet store in. But as soon as I started looking for one, apparently, stocks worldwide dried up. There wasn’t one to be had anywhere. Bollocks.

Another Saturday came, and off I went, with herds of taxpayers, traipsing around tiny, inner city shitholes. I saw one particularly offensive house – instead of air freshener or even incense, these gimps had elected to use oil of cloves. It was a good house, but it needed two things to be attended to; all the vertical surfaces and all the horizontal ones. Anyway, I held my breath and got out into the back yard, which was its own special nightmare. I turned to have a look at the guttering (such a rich and spontaneous life I lead). And there, on a shelf, was a pet box exactly like the one I’d been looking for. I picked it up to show my girlfriend. And her eyes widened. There, on the pet box, clearly written in big, black letters was my surname. And it’s not a common name. Weird. We laughed, but we didn’t go to the auction. Instead, we’d already arranged to hire a motorbike and go away for the weekend, so we asked friends, who lived in the same road as the house, if they’d bid on our behalf. We arrived at our destination, and the mobile phone rang. We’d got the house. And for the exact money we could afford. Now there were just some picky details to attend to - like getting a job. So, does this happen to other people? Or is it just me?

“Well, it might be nice if you, at least, asked.”

This is my dog. She’s a big, old an Alaskan Malamute; like a Husky on steroids. They're beautiful animals, just not big on taking orders. They understand alright, they just have their own opinions. If a Malamute doesn’t want to do something, and males can be up to 90kg (14 stone or 200 pounds), then it’s probably not going to happen. Before you try training a Malamute, perhaps practice with something easy, like parting a body of water.

I got my dog after she’d been used for breeding. Now she gets cuddles aplenty (except when she’s out in public on duty, because it embarrasses her) and we go to the park every day, where there are all of types of dogs, and owners; everything from Pugs to Great Danes, and from barristers to baristas; everyone is equally muddy-paw marked and dog-globbed.

On walks, my job is to bag and bin whatever she produces, which, from her expressions, sends her some mixed messages about who’s the dominant one. And I carry Her Hairyness’ lead, while she unenthusiastically lopes along like a bear, head down, sniffing posts and signing the ‘dog book’. If I ever threw a ball for her, she’d just throw me a look, as if to say, “Very clever, Mr Opposable Thumb. Your ball’s over there now.“ I’m only lucky she can’t ‘tut’.

But the other day, we were entering the park, and, in the distance, I saw the dog group. So, in an avuncular, motivational gesture, and still focused on the group, I swung my left arm back to give her a chivvy along, with a little ‘go and see your pals’ pat on the furry backside. Well, apparently, mere nanoseconds after me, she too saw the group, and she picked up her pace, head and, alas, her big, fluffy tail. My open hand swung forward, but she was now a step ahead with her tail curled proudly over her back. And on the upward swing, my middle finger disappeared straight up her sphincter. Momentarily, she took off, bunny-hopping away, but then the tail dropped like a trap-door, and she stopped. Ears pricked, she turned and glared at me. Of course, I was shocked and horrified at my inexplicable accuracy; Lee Harvey Oswald couldn’t have hit that one. But judging by the dog’s expression, apparently I didn’t look shocked enough. She’s pretty adept at the withering stare, and she didn’t even need to be able to say, “What the…? Either I’m going mad in my old age, or you just crossed a very wide line in the relationship there, sunshine.”
We’ve never mentioned it since, though she does seem to walk behind me more often now. So, does this happen to other people? Or is it just me?

Isn’t acupuncture supposed to relieve stress.

A few years ago, I broke my leg on, or rather off, a motorbike. And after 4 operations, my leg has grown back, longer. Apparently, this just never happens. Welcome to my world. So now the ‘normal’ leg is shorter, and my back is dodgier. As a 6’ 1” blokewith shoe lifts – people must think I have some serious issues. Well, I do. With my pelvis. Over the years I’ve spent a fortune on physios, chiros, osteos, Bowen therapists, Reiki healers, chinese herbalists, podiatrists and acupuncturists. The only one I haven’t been to is a vet. Anyway, recently I heard about a laser acupuncturist, and I’m up for anything that will relieve the pain (people seem to frown, or avoid eye contact if I carry a bottle of red wine in my pocket). But the acupunturist decided traditional needle therapy would be better for me. Fine. She pricked me full from head to toe with 30 needles and left me face down in my undies for 20 minutes, for the voodoo magic to work. Half an hour later, I was getting a bit bored. After another half an hour of breathing warm pillow, I was trying my best to relax into it, but, a bit miffed, I did start timing the session. And after another thirty minutes, that’s an hour and a half, I was monumentally pissed off with it all. But try as I may, I couldn’t get anyone’s attention, and thanks to the frigging needles from my neck to my feet, I couldn’t get anyone's attention, move, knock on the wall, or get to my phone. Bollocks. Now what do I do? I couldn't just lie there all day. So I started by pulling out the needles. From my hands first. That went well, so, rather gingerly, I went for my neck. No gushing blood, so I brailled down my shoulders, back, bum, legs and feet, and, one by one, I pulled them all out. Dressed, I took my needlework collection in a kidney dish into reception.
“What’s wrong with this picture?”
“We thought you’d gone ages ago.”
“No, I’ve been lying next door like a catatonic, balding porcupine, waiting for my birthday.”
I wish I'd said that, but I just shook my head, which was pleasantly loose on my neck actually.
The receptionist called the doctor, who was most apologetic and gave me the 20 minute session (or rather all four and half of them) for half price. Good job they weren’t taking blood – though I don’t do that anymore since they royally cocked it up and made an egg-sized purple bulge, I never thought possible, in two of my blood vessels. So, on the positive side, the longer the needles are in, the more effective they are supposed to be – for one's physical well-being if not for one's emotional health. And no, I’m not going back. Not until the doctor prescribes herself something to improve her bleeding memory. So does this happen to other people? Or is it just me?