If I had the power…


Today, whilst being chauffeured about in an ambulance by my ‘driver’ I took in the sights as we drove through my local town centre. Some of the highlights included:

  • A queue of people waiting outside the job centre, not looking for a job, but collecting their dole money.
  • A queue of people (well, more of a disordered rabble really. Well, actually they looked more like swaying zombies to be truthful) waiting outside a premises to get their methadone fix.

Does this look fun to you?

  • Several groups of eastern Europeans dancing in the street, chugging on bottles of cider and whiskey. Note: this observation is not specific to eastern Europeans. The English are just as bad, only they tend to only come out at night or else they stay behind closed doors and drink themselves stupid.

A typical ‘Benefit’ party.

Now, I may be about to get controversial and so let me state that these are only observations of a few people, and do not reflect my views on entire cultures, ethnic groups, race etc. That is to say, I am not intending to tar a group of people with a large brush, only a minority who for all intents are shit bags.

So, I got to thinking about how I ‘if I had the POWER’, would deal with these problems. This is what I would do:

  • I would make every single person claiming dole, benefits, job seekers allowance… whatever, provide a urine sample on the premises. If you’re drunk, or under the influence of drugs, you can bugger off until your clean. There are people who work certain kinds of jobs (on oil rigs for example) who cannot work and therefore cannot get paid and thereby pay taxes unless they provide a clean sample of urine. If they have to be clean to earn it, so should every other fucker be.
  • Ah, the heroin addicts. What to do with them? I say, let them have their drugs. But… add a little something to it. Something that will give them, I don’t know, a severe groin itch that lasts a week. They take these drugs because of the hit it gives them. Trying to block drugs entering the country won’t work. A real addict will only turn to crime or seek his drugs from dubious sources. In my view, the only way to combat this is to make the drugs undesirable, and I think an itchy groin will make a few think twice.

  • Also, cigarettes… I’d add something that makes their head glow fluorescent green. (Oh, I used to be a smoker, but now I am cured. I’ve seen the light.) I think many would give up immediately if they had go round looking like a Martian for the day. Thinking about it, I’d add this head glow thing to all drugs. I know drug addicts are fairly easy to spot anyway but I say shame them. Make them glow. Make doing drugs so un-cool that its cooler to avoid them altogether.

Well, I think we can all agree that none of these things will ever happen. There’s probably some mad law that would mean this sort of thing violates Human Rights or something. Almost as mad as say, paying these people benefits and handouts so that they can go out and buy more drugs.

What a crazy world.

M J

This is not an amused face…


;

Okay… slightly miffed as this is the second time I have written this post but…. count to ten….

Okay. Feel better now. Where was I?

Today, is actually a pretty good day. I have just submitted a short story to a publishing house and feel really quite chuffed with myself right now. I am sorely tempted to crack open the wine and have a mini celebration all on my own but I’ll have to try to resist. My wife took her motorbike into work today and I happen to know that she was running low on fuel when she left the house. She’s at that nervous stage in her biking life whereby she knows the bike needs fuel but she’s never filled a bike up before. I went with her the first time but today she is all on her own. I got a text message a few hours ago that said she hadn’t stopped on the way and so she’s hoping she can make it to the fuel station on the way back.

*Sigh*

No wine for me just yet. I wonder if I’ll have to go and rescue her? Running through the options, it would seem the most likely scenario will see my driving to the fuel station and buying one of those annoying little containers. Then I’ll have to stand in a cue of cars like a lemon until I can fill the thing up. Drive off, fill up her tank and then drive off in disgust. Okay, maybe not disgust… but that won’t be a joyful face.

I’m off work today, and have been praying all week for a nice sunny day today. Behold! It is sunny! I was insanely pleased about this when I got up this morning as I’ve been itching to get out on my own bike all week. Alas, look at what I found in my tire…

Arghhhhhhhhhh! I don’t believe it!

It should be noted that this is an image dragged off the net but, yeah, this is the same thing I found this morning. A fucking nail!

I rang my local garage and asked if I could pop in on the off-chance and have them just change it over quickly. I could almost hear the bitch sniggering down the phone, and I swore I heard her mouthing to a colleague ‘Oi, Daphne…. this bloke’s asking if he can just pop in on the off chance!’

Bitches.

Anyway, the end result is that it will be Tuesday afternoon before they can do the work. I’d do it myself but they don’t even have it in stock so I’m doubly shafted.

So, Tuesday…. hmmm. Just in time for me to go back to sodding work.

Damn, I really want to open that wine. Maybe if I text her now she can tell me of she thinks she’ll make it to a garage? Hmmm, maybe not. As pissed off as I’ll be having to rescue her, I doubt my wrath will compare to hers if I can’t perform said rescue because I’m drunk.

*Sigh*

M 🙂

Party Time!


I have the shits. Post booze craps. The alco-poops.This appears to be my bodies new way of telling me I had a great night. I used to get the most horrendous hangovers lasting a minimum of two days. It was a real pain in the arse as I had to plan my drinking to coincide with at least two rest days. Thats not good. I wouldn’t consider myself to be a light weight, but then again that is a rather long time to recover s it not?

Anyway, the hangovers used to be hell on Earth. The kind where you think you are dying if you so much as move an eyeball. The kind where you know food would help and put you back on the road to recovery but you physically cannot move and go to the kitchen to stock up on nibbles. I often used to puke too. Just once mind, usually mid afternoon seconds after thinking I may be on the mend. I used to take that brief feeling of recovery as a dark portent. Blurrrrgh!!!! Huey!!!!! Heeeeeeerb!

If I have had a particularly heavy night I would also have another something else to look forward to. The ‘Fear’. The ‘Fear’ is that feeling you get after a night out on the booze that leaves you feeling very alone and terrified in your own home. FOR ABSOLUTELY NO REASON. There is no mad knife wielding psycho behind the door, you will not fall asleep and not wake up, your partner is not about to leave you. How fucked up is that?

I think a lot of people suffer with the ‘Fear’ after an apocalyptic piss-up. Not many would admit to it though I bet. I do however and I have told Jemma that she must be around the day after I have had a drink so that I don’t get scared of I don’t know what. The sun maybe or a strong breeze outside, or maybe even fuck all! I hate the ‘Fear’.

Where was I? Ah yes. So I used to get god awful hangovers but not anymore it would appear. Now I just get the shits. By ten this morning I had been four times. Real pan splattering bastards too. Serious.

I attribute this change due to me not smoking anymore. Okay, I still smoke a bit. I have maybe one at the beginning of a night out (or in) if I am drinking and maybe another around mid night. That’s all though. I no longer smoke at work, in the car or at home. I don’t smoke anywhere as a matter of fact. Last light I had one at a party and it was my first one for nearly a month. I believe that smoking (in the past) intensified my hangovers a hundred fold.

Yet some sick bastard up there simply will not let me go out and enjoy a few dozen cans with friends without paying for it somehow. Was, end-of-the-Earth-we-are-all-doomed-I-am-surely-dying-cracking-nauseating-headaches but no more. No now my guardian angel sees fit to watch me shit myself into oblivion the day after a piss up. Oh well. I would rather it this way to be honest.

So I went to party last night which is actually what this post was meant to be about. I do apologise for ranting on for ages about shitting myself and being scared of my own breath.

It was a mates 30th birthday. His name is Chris and he used to be a crew mate of mine on the ambulance when I worked in Essex. I don’t have many fond memories of my time down there but I do remember who my friends are. So Jemma and I booked a room down in Basildon and went a long to the party. It was a surprise party held at his parents house. Everyone turned up well before and we all hid in a massive marquee his parents had hired and put up specially for the occasion. Chris’s girlfriend distracted him (somehow) for a good hour or so before the party was due to kick off and so he genuinely had no idea. Then they rocked up round the parents house for what Chris thought was to be a nice family meal. Led by mothers hand into the back garden he clocked the marquee and blurted

‘Oh Fuck Off! You fucking have not…. have you?’

He peered inside and we all screamed our heads off. He looked royally pissed off I have to say so we all did our best to put him centre stage and ensure he didn’t try and leg it. Great fun.

It was good seeing them all again. I heard all the gossip from what’s going on with Essex ambulance, traded it with my own and laughed with abandon as we all agreed what a shitty state of affairs it was.

It was a cracking night. I drank my fair share and Jemma’s. Jemma was a diamond, laughing and joking with all my old mates and making a real effort to fit in. I think she succeeded spectacularly well.

Though I had a lot of fun, I have to say that from an outsiders point of view the party was not the event the parents were obviously expecting it to be. The marquee was perhaps three times bigger than it needed to be. The food and drink that had been laid on would have fed and watered half the street let alone the twenty or so who turned up. Most of them were family too. I was surprised I have to say. It was a Friday night after all. Chris is a popular guy and I would have thought his mates would have filled that marquee on their own without anyone else being able to fit in. I guess thinking back, they wanted it family only and close friends only? If that were true I feel even more honoured to have been invited. I shall invite him to the wedding of course.

Anyway, I should away. X Factor is on and I am in need of a shit.

M 🙂