Herders Anonymous

Why is it that, whenever I park my car down the empty end of any car park, I can always guarantee that there will be somebody parked right next to me when I return to my car?

I deliberately park away from everybody else so that I can open my doors wide without having to worry about bumping anybody, yet — EVERY SINGLE TIME — I come back to find that I've got to squeeze myself through a two inch gap, even though there are empty spaces for about two miles in all directions.

Now I realise that the part of the car park in which is park my car automatically becomes the cool part, but surely common sense would dictate that — in a virtually empty car park — everybody has lots of lovely, lovely space around them?

Actually, I'm beginning to suspect some kind of herding instinct.

---

Previous / Next

Costume Design By A.N. Idiot

Yes, whenever I'm starring in a horror movie, and I'm planning to prowl around at night and hunt potential murderers – who may, in fact, be after me next – I like nothing better than to wear tight, bright red leather trousers and massive dangly jewellery.

It's a great way, I find, to both remain inconspicuous in the dark, and maintain maximum agility and flexibility.

---

Previous / Next

How To Recognise Different Types Of Tree From Quite A Long Way Away

Well, the outstanding furniture has finally arrived.

Of course, when I say outstanding, I am referring merely to the furniture that I had not yet received, and not anything of any remarkable quality or design – we are talking cheap flat-packed tat again, after all.

Even so, I had ordered everything in "beech", hoping that it would all match; but I noticed that it wasn't all quite the same colour.

My friend's comment on the subject?

(Very profound, it was.)

"Yes, well, one man's beech is another man's… not beech."

Beautifully articulated, I'm sure you'll agree. Fortunately, he's a lot more gifted with power tools.

---

Previous / Next

Retraction: Most Haunted

So, we actually found ourselves watching Most Haunted Live last night, and I feel the need to make a retraction: Yvette Fielding was utterly fearless the entire time.

And, what's more, nothing touched her hair.

The historian's a bit dodgy, though.

Personally, I would have thought that the idea of researching a name that the investigators have given you was quite a simple one, but apparently it's quite a complicated process.

Apparently what you really have to do is change the initial letter, add a couple of syllables – in fact, come up with a name that is completely different in every single way, but that features in the research that you've already done on the place – and then offer that back to them preceded with the line "well, that sounds a bit like…" or "what I think you meant was…" and then follow it up with: "and, since that's the *family name / nickname / job title / second cousin* of the *owner / designer / gardener / dog-walker* of the *house / castle / cattle shed / military bunker*, then it's hardly a surprise that it's come up – ha ha ha! – aren't I an incredibly smug historian?".

I'd give you a precise example, but I absolutely cannot be bothered.

Feel free to just take my word for it.

---

Previous / Next

Paul Anka Blinded My Boyfriend!

Believe it or not, there is such a thing as being too orange.

At least, though, nobody will ever forget your face – it's not really possible when your image has been burned onto their retinas.

---

Previous / Next

Bloody Silly Woman

"When I need to rummage around and find something in my handbag, what I like to do is stand right in front of important doorways, so that nobody can get through."

Okay, so perhaps that wasn't quite what she was thinking this afternoon, but I'm sure I'm pretty close.

Possibly she was also thinking that doing all of this whilst wearing a bizarre pink trouser suit would somehow enable her to do this with a little more finesse.

---

You know, I spent over six hours on the road over the weekend during my little excursion to Liverpool, and I swear that nobody tailgated me until the final stretch of the M1 on my journey home.

Technically, there was some woman in a white hatchback who was right up my arse on the M6, whilst chatting on her mobile, but, even then, I was over halfway home by that time.

Can it be that people are better drivers the further north you go?

Perhaps I should move. It might do my blood pressure some good.

---

Previous / Next

Found Out

It's happened at last.

The car behind me this morning finally figured out that the magic button to make the slow car at the front of the queue go faster is hidden in the back of mine.

If he'd been an inch closer, he'd have been able to reach out and press it.

With his nose.

Unfortunately, it would appear that he also passed this knowledge on to the van that was behind me this afternoon.

The bugger.

---

Previous / Next

Other Drivers: Another Rant

Why is it that people seem to think that the closer they get to you whilst you're all stationery in traffic, the quicker they'll get to where they're going?

It's as if they seem to think that all those inches will add up and somehow magically shave five minutes off their journey time.

The worst example by far, though, is when you're on a steep incline. Now, even if I didn't have an automatic gearbox in my current car, I am confident about my hill starts; but I certainly don't expect everybody else to be. I've seen people unable to do simple turning manoeuvres without mounting the curb, and people backing into parked cars without even realising they've done it. I've seen people steering jaggedly round roundabouts in the wrong lane and with one hand holding a mobile phone to their ear. (I've seen van drivers park across my drive.) And I've seen men using electric razors whilst driving to work.

But what idiot could possibly think that squeezing right up somebody's arse on a 1 in 14 road is a good idea?

A staggeringly large number, it seems.

As ever, I despair am hopelessly optimistic about all of this.

---

Previous / Next

WD40 Salesman Joke

A WD40 salesman walks into Stevenage Cineworld and says, "Hello, I'm a WD40 salesman. Have you ever considered the benefits of buying WD40?"

And the staff at Cineworld say, "Gosh, no, we haven't."

And the punchline?

Well, actually there isn't one. It isn't even a real joke. I just bloody wish a WD40 salesman really would walk into Stevenage Cineworld and teach them all about the benefits of using WD40. I'm sick of all the toilet doors squeaking so painfully that they almost make my ears bleed.

---

Yes, I've been to the cinema today. We went to see The Last King of Scotland. A good movie, all told.

The film was quite grainy, and particularly seventies-looking. Personally, I'm utterly convinced that this is how the film is meant to look, and it is not simply the result of there being anything unpleasant afoot in the cinema projection rooms. Naturally, of course, one lady still felt the need to go off afterwards and complain to the staff about it.

There always has to be one, doesn't there?

---

Previous / Next

Bloody Van Drivers: A Rant

As I was driving home tonight, doing the usual slalom between the parked cars and dodging the other traffic, a large van in front of me did something I wasn't expecting.

We were both sat behind a parked car, waiting for the oncoming one to get out of our way. The van had his right indicator on, as well he might in that situation.

But, when the road ahead had cleared, instead of pulling out and overtaking the parked car – as I had been expecting – he pulled over to the right, and used the entrance to a bungalow's driveway as a lay by.

Now, I could tell that this was a bit naughty for three reasons:

• Firstly, by parking the way he had, he had positioned himself at a right-angle to the driveway itself. This odd perching behaviour said to me that he had no actual business at these premises.
  
  
• Secondly, it was a large drive and, by parking in this frankly bizarre manner, he was unnecessarily blocking access to it. This seemed a little strange and a bit stupid in itself. And also indicative of somebody who knew they should not have been there.
  
  
• Lastly (and this is the worse bit), it was my fucking drive!

And did I mention the bit about me being on my way home?

The bit that really got me peeved was when I sounded my horn and he just scuttled forward a few inches as if he thought that I was struggling to pass him. So, not did he show himself to be an inconsiderate arse, he also went on to impress me further by making the immediate assumption that I was some sort of rubbish girly-girl driver who couldn't squeeze her ickle car through an enormous gap.

I stayed put and beeped again. He sodded off eventually.

---

Previous / Next

FROM THE DESK OF MR AHMED SALISU BANK OF AFRICA (BOA)

I've just had a cracking email from Mr Salisu. Apparently he craves my indulgence and needs me to help him access an abandoned sum of over $10,000,000.

All I have to do is give my bank name, account number and my private telephone number and I can have 30% of the money.

I'm sure I don't know why I haven't managed to get round to replying.

---

Previous / Next

I Keep Seeing A Television Advert…

… For a furniture shop, where a female voiceover talks about how amazed her friends always are about her fashionable furniture. Apparently, she's always up to date with the latest styles and these friends wonder how she can afford it.

Just how frequently is this woman needing to buy new furniture?

What is she doing? Eating it?

---

Previous / Next

Ah, Fog!

At last an opportunity for what seems like dozens of car drivers to turn off their fog lights for a change.

---

Previous / Next

Why Do We Even Have An Answerphone?

A lesson I have learnt is that it is significantly easier and less faffy to use the answerphone to screen calls than it is to just answer them willy-nilly. It isn't that I won't talk to people, it's just that it's nicer to know who they are first so that I can decide if I want to talk to them right now.

Yet the amount of people who get as far as the answerphone, hang up and then phone again half an hour later is alarming. They don't seem to understand that they will NEVER get to speak to anybody, and we will all be forced to live our lives in a perpetual annoying and frustrating state where nobody answers their calls and our phone never stops bloody ringing.

Add into that the fact that our answerphone seems to like recording the ol' hang-up noise as an answerphone message, and we also have to clear it regularly of unwanted 'BUUUUUURB' noises.

It's almost like a battle of wills now. It's a case of waiting to see which of us will buckle and give in first.

Personally, My money's on it being everybody else.

---

Previous / Next

It's A Miracle We Made It Through The Stone Age

"I'd been out shopping one afternoon.

I hadn't noticed, but whilst I was walking a bit of the thread at the bottom of my trousers had been gradually working itself loose. I was wearing open-toed stilettos, and eventually this piece of loose thread became so long that it managed to wrap itself around one of my exposed toes, nearly garotting me in the process.

I fell heavily, narrowly missing the lorry that was passing in a neighbouring village, onto the rock-hard paving; bruising my coccyx in the process and scattering my newly-bought lunch – which was then immediately devoured by pigeons and passing hobos. I was left both malnourished and injured.

As if this wasn't bad enough, I'd also managed to inadvertently launch my heavy shopping bags – shot put style – as I fell, straight into an oncoming crowd of school children, decapitating one of them and seriously maiming three others. The pitch of their distressed cries then caused the windows in all the nearby buildings to shatter, and great deadly shards of glass rained down on everyone, nearly taking out both my eyes.

As we all scrambled for shelter, one particularly sharp glass shard managed to cut clean through the lead that was tethering an enormous rabid dog to a postbox. The animal got free and proceeded to run amok, eating an old lady and infecting everybody else with botulism and agoraphobia.

At the same time as all this was going on, an undersea earthquake in the Pacific Ocean caused distressed yaks all over the world to stampede, and the combined pounding of their strong hooves managed to knock the entire Earth slightly off its axis. All the seasons then shifted back by one, causing my porch to flood, and ruining my prize turnips.

I needed compensation…"

---

Previous / Next

New Entry In Highway Code?

Is there some new addition to the Highway Code that I haven't been informed about, or have pedestrian crossings always had a range of up to 50 metres in either direction?

I say that, of course, because surely it can't really be that people are so lazy that they'd rather start an impromptu game of real-life Frogger in town centres than walk the few extra paces it would take to cross the road without testing everybody's brakes.

Unless it's some sort of evolutionary thing: perhaps car drivers are supposed to run down everybody who can't understand simple concepts of road safety until only those that can are left? Maybe this is how society moves forward and improves itself? I'm beginning to hope so.

To be honest, I wouldn't get so annoyed about it if half of them weren't dragging small children along with them and setting a horrible example.
Although… that would fit in nicely with my evolutionary theory. Hmmm…

I think I might go out for a drive.

---

Previous / Next

I Learnt Something

Apparently it's OK to go the wrong way up a one-way street provided that you do it in reverse.

I wish I had witnessed this useful tidbit sooner.

---

Ex-Cat

---

Previous / Next