Would you like some brains with that?

Today I made another awful and all too frequent for my liking decision to attempt to go shopping. That’s twice this year. Uggh. But it was an emergency. I have my second photography job tomorrow and it’s a baptism, so I need to look respectable. Church respectable. Fark.

Anyway, excrutiating story short, of course the trip was not fruitful in any way that would help me tomorrow… but I did see this…

What the fugging fug? Ignoring the fact that it’s pink (vomit) is this what fashion has come to? It looks like a bath mat that someone has sewn a hood on and attached a zip to. Or should that be the other way around? Hood to, zip on? Whatever… who would buy this?

Now, at first I actually wrote that maybe these are the new uniforms for people who work in the toilets at nightclubs, that in a push for better tips they’ve taken to lying on the floor and literally letting people walk all over them. But then I had second thoughts. Too far you think? But what if I told you that I used to work in a toilet at a club, would that make it ok? Is there room for censorship in The Bum Diaries?

Oh you now what, it’s Friday. Here’s a silly fluff story instead. I probably deserved this for being in a McDonalds and I don’t know why it irks me so, but as I’ve said before customer service in the UK hasn’t been invented yet. Feel free to call me a hypocrite at this point though, because when I got treated badly in New York I wore it like a badge of honour, it made me smile, I gloated to my friends, hell I even wrote it on postcards “A New Yorker was rude to me, I feel like a native, I may move here!”

Weird stuff I done seen today #6

So what’s going on in this street near Brick Lane then eh?

a) It’s Harry Potter’s house.

b) It makes perfect sense, considering the size of properties in central London.

c) In a sad reflection of the education levels one needs to be a postman these days, a government initiative seeks to ensure no street number exceeds 100.

Jamie’s profits flushed down the loo

Jamie Oliver says so many customers at his Italian restaurants are stealing toilet fixtures that it’s costing him £30,000 a month to replace them. Really? Are you sure Jamie? I mean, I admit that when I first moved out of home most of my friends’ cupboards were stocked with assortments of glasses and cutlery they’d “gifted” to themselves whilst dining at the Hard Rock Café and TGIF (not me of course, I’d never do that Mum), but Jamie Oliver’s?

One would imagine, with his prices, the diners he attracts would be on a reasonable salary and of an age a few years beyond the need to cram three friends into a one bedroom flat so you can afford to eat more than cereal and packet noodles. For instance, for a grilled chicken with some herbs, Jamie’s Italian charges £13.25. Similarly, at his Barbecoa, a chicken breast with some corn and mushrooms is £18 (for that price, they’d better be coming from the Pamela Anderson of chickens). Hardly the stuff someone slaving away pulling beers at a pub will want to spend their tips on. So it makes sense to think that the people eating at Jamie’s are at the very least on a first-proper-job salary and have moved on to the years when you discover the delights and distresses of Ikea, does it not?

Maybe this iss why their chicken is so expensive… it’s self saucing.

The idea that Jamie Oliver’s clientele steals fixtures from his bathrooms just seems odd. He says they are designed by Thomas Crapper (no, really), are ultra-expensive and ok, maybe they are quite funky, but putting salary level demographics aside, how exactly do you steal toilet fixtures from a restaurant? Do you come to dinner armed with a shifting wrench and screw drivers? Do you just forcibly pull a toilet roll holder off the wall? Or is the real reason women take so long in the loo because they are struggling to detach the cistern pull from its chain? (they still have these in abundance in the UK)

And what do you do with the stuff when you get home? Do you suddenly start holding dinner parties just so you can gloat “The bathroom’s down the hall. Check out the right hand tap, I stole it from the Jamie Oliver’s. Next week I’m going back for the left hand one and a soap dispenser”.

Five definitions of boredom

Laziness
It was Saturday. The sun was out for the first time in days. The miserable weather of the last week had driven me inside, into the pajama pants, and under the covers to you know, do work, research, study, surf the internet, lose motivation, catch up on Dexter and all right, fine, become a sloth. So I turned to the girl who blows her nose with one hand and I said “That’s it!”

“That’s it” I have learnt, is a proclamation I make quite often, usually followed by some ridiculous statement I have no intention or ability to commit to. That’s it, we’re moving somewhere with better weather! That’s it, I’m going to get fit! That’s it, I’m learning to fly a plane so that when I’m neighbors with Ange and Brad we’ll have something to talk about!

On Saturday, disgusted with myself for not going outside when the sun came out, it was “That’s it, I’m hiring a car and we’re going for a drive tomorrow!” But this time I actually did it.

On a scale of self inflicted pain, driving in London runs a close second to piercing your netherbits. Then again, that results in a happy ending, allegedly. There is no pleasure to driving in London. But since a train ticket to the English countryside starts at around £25, there were three of us and the rental was £40 plus petrol, it made sense to grit our teeth and just deal with it till we got out of the city right? With a car we could come and go as we pleased, there’d be no screaming babies/teens/bogan mothers to annoy us and we could pull over if something quaint and English presented itself. Much better right? Hmm.

Concentration
The girl who I decided was in charge of navigation set about trying to get us on the A2 while I set about trying to decipher all the different squiggly lines on the roads. I realised then that I don’t really know London at all by road. I’m always on trains or buses and never really take any notice. I didn’t even know that the main street of Peckham Rye, one that I’ve been on many times, is only for buses and bikes. Luckily a guy on a bicycle explained this to me in a nice loud voice and with helpful hand gestures.

Nobody ambles about anymore do they? We always have somewhere to get to, an itinerary to stick to, and we want to get there the quickest and easiest way. So in a car that means freeways, and for the driver (that would be me) that means an hour or two on a straight-ish road, shifting focus between three mirrors, making sure some other driver hasn’t fallen asleep from all that concentrating.

Small Towns
I chose Whitstable because the girl who eats anything except (so far) turnips and sea urchins had expressed a desire to try an oyster. As soon as I had made sure there wasn’t any kind of innuendo in the meaning of that sentence I researched, and apparently if it’s oysters you want in south east England, it’s to Whitstable you go. I also noticed that Canterbury was close by and it’s always good to have a plan B if the small town proves unsatisfactory. Not that I knew anything about Canterbury, but I expected it would be a smaller version of Oxford or Cambridge – over run with day tripping tourists and extortionately priced memorabilia, but better than being at home in bed watching the sunshine fade.

Weird stuff I done seen today #5

Well actually, weird’s not the right word… more like bloody brilliant. This makes me want to own a shop, just so I could have signage like this. I especially love the daily special.

The spirit of Basil Fawlty is alive and well in the little seaside village of Whitstable

Weird stuff I done seen today #4

I was in Camden yesterday and whipped out my phone to take this snap in the Underground. Unfortunately my phone decided to focus on the shady looking bald guy in the back, but just so we’re clear, or fuzzy as the case actually is, this post is about the slightly overdressed couple in the front of the shot. What you can’t see unfortunately is that the guy’s suit was shiny satin type material and very rock n roll tight. Just use your imagination.

What’s this all about then? Is it…

a) Times are tough and weddings are expensive. You gotta cut corners somewhere.

b) There was a Tim Burton fest on and if you come in costume, tickets are half price. The guy in the back was obviously Uncle Fester.

c) Well… it was Camden… this is probably just what passes as casual dinner outfits for the goths.