Caption Competition

We found it in the field...

Credit Crunch Tales - Terrance of the tree house

Terrance lived in the tree house for several reasons: solitude, the escape from modernity – but mainly it was because of tax and a hefty credit card bill.

Terrance had certainly lived the high life. He was only an assistant at a local B&Q (a bad one at that), but that didn’t stop him living like a millionaire. His house had all the mod cons – SkyPlus, HD TV and a six-slice toaster. Women would be showered with gifts, friends would receive expensive birthday presents – but the dream had to come to an end one day.

The credit crunch came and Terrance fell off the debt merry-go-round. After narrowly escaping a bailiff, Terrance retreated to the local forest. He spent a few nights sleeping rough, but soon realised if he was to carry on his Robin Hood lifestyle he would have to find a new home. He found an old oak tree and planted his flag.

Running away from his troubles, Terrance became a tree person.

Terrance’s idea of problem solving was escaping to the woods. He had done this when he failed his GCSEs, when his Dad left and when his football team had been relegated. He even ran away for a week when his Mum told him he couldn’t have a second slice of gateaux. But this was the first time Terrance had decided to become full-time feral as a means of solving his problems.

His days at B&Q were not wasted – stealing supplies from the warehouse, for which he still had keys Terrance went about building a tree home. He built a fairytale home where he could run away from his debt problems and live tax-free. But it is a lot harder to build a liveable home inside a rotting tree than Terrance thought. In the end, after several attempts to make it like an ‘arbour-Ikea’ Terrance settled with a mouldy shit hole with windows.

He tried to make pets of the squirrels that shared his domicile. They didn’t acquiesce – they bit him, stole his cereals and pissed all over his toaster. Since then squirrel and the man have led a cold war of attrition in that old tree - Terrance ate one of their babies in the spring, so the squirrels gave him rabies by September.

Terrance can’t go back to the modern world now. He has sunk too far into the wood - he is a Wildman or Sasquatch, a myth that financial advisers tell their indebted clients. And he still owes Barclays around £7,000.

Maybe if you wander down to the woods one-day, you will see Terrance in his little home. He hasn’t had a job for a while, and can’t bring girls back to his tree home, so he spends most of his days unkempt, searching the wood for discarded porn.

"Madam, your discretion would be appreciated"

A blogger, a 21st century version of being a diarist

In 1666, Samuel Pepys* documented London in all its seventeenth century glory. Well, sort of:

"I went out to Charing Cross to see Major General Harrison hanged, drawn, and quartered; which was done there, he looking as cheerful as any man could in that condition."

He was like the blogger of his age. Pepys was most famous for writing an account of the Great Fire of London, but he did more than that. He had a go at women, he talked about farting and he drank too much. He was like a one-man Nuts Magazine, circa 1670.

He documented the ups and downs of the day, mused a bit and generally wrote what he knew. This is what the Hellfire Club will do - it will be a diarist of its day, but will probably write less about houses that were burning down with children in them. And maybe more about farting. And if, fingers' crossed, there are some more hangings at Charing Cross, the Hellfire Club will be there, documenting for the ages.

Also, Pepys did drink in the Cheshire Cheese on Fleet Street a fair bit, as does the Hellfire Club. If that pub was serving the same toxic piss as it is now then somewhere in London there may be some missing chapters of old Sam's diary, where he yells at his wife, craves a kebab and then pisses himself.

We don't know what Samuel started his diary, probably why this blog has been created - a mix of boredom, narcissism, egomania and the desire to get his point across. He, like the Hellfire Club, probably got bored of his desk job, saw what other diarists were up to (farting, shagging, burping and such) and thought he would have a pop at it. So here it is, the diary of its day. In 450 years from now, kids may be dissecting this very post and writing a little comprehension on it. On a computer made of lasers in space.

The Hellfire Club is the same as Pepys diary. It sees what other bloggers are doing and scoffs in the face of mediocrity and badly spelled anecdotes - the time is now to create a fucking good blog that's funny. Welcome to the Hellfire Club.

*pronounced 'Peeps', as in "The paedo peeps into the little girl's bedroom from the vantage point of a big tree"

Fizzy Milk

Fizzy Milk.

The wheel reinvented, Jurassic Park set loose. That's right, Fizzy Milk. Coca Cola is set to launch Vio, a carbonated milk.

Coca Cola "scientists"* have developed the drink at the firm¹s laboratories in Atlanta, Georgia. The only thing it will curdle in its 8oz aluminium bottle is the boundaries of your mind.

The Times says one of Coke’s copywriters claims it tastes “like a birthday party for a polar bear”. I would have thought that tasted more like butchered seal and ozone, but anyway. Perhaps a better tagline would be “like a birthday party for a polar bear who’s mind has comprehended it’s approaching extinction with acute lucidity”.

It comes in four “natural” flavours: peach mango, berry, citrus and tropical colada (straight from the Colada tree). It has 26g of sugar a bottle, and 1.5g of fat.

This is it. Seriously, It¹s the End of Days.

Some of you readers will be already reaching for your gas masks and baseball bats, ready for the impending maelstrom of discontent. And good on you - science has finally destroyed nature.

Someone takes a sip they think: “Huh, Fizzy Milk? not bad”. Then, a week later you¹re having a coffee, avec fizzy milk, when some axe wielding lunatic comes smashing through the window of a Café Nero screaming GOT MEEELLLLLK?’

Milkmen will be pushed from their cabs as the hoards upend his cart, dancing naked on its ruined, milk-stained corpse. Cows will be set alight, punched to death and garrotted as the fields are stained with red.

People will come to fear the moustache, a sign of the fizzles, a madness induced by the realisation that everything is nothing, up is down, milk is fizzy.

Someone has a lovely bottle of fizzy milk. Then they start thinking “Wait a sec, why can’t I ride my bike into the sea?”. The financial markets fall, everyone sinks into depravity and primitive stupor. Statues of the Virgin Mary in the Vatican begin weeping fizzy milk. Soon you'll be having sex with your pets while your Mum, caked in her own defecation, watches while drinking a fizzy latte.

Everyone starts chanting, “Fizzy Milk Fizzy Milk Fizzy Milk Fizzy Milk” in anticipation of the arrival of a giant moth to take everyone away. It never comes.

I can¹t tell you how dark this is.

*Not really scientists. Men and women who try and cure cancer are scientists; people who put the rover on Mars are scientists. People who fanny around with sugary liquid aren't scientists. Their "lab" will look like Professor Burp's Bubble Works and they will all wear over-sized top hats.

We are all going to die

Set your coffee down gently. Okay, I have some terrible news for you. Terrible, horrible news. We are in the midst of a pandemic in this City, one which will pretty much bring society to its fat bloated knees. In a bitter twist of irony, it’s the tiniest being on Earth that is the most powerful.

SWINE FLU. N1H1 motherf*cker.

It’s here, in London town, ready to finish off what the Black Death and the Nazis started.

It wouldn’t be scary if it was just flu oh no. And it isn’t scary if the virus just has a code (SARS? Please, that only killed the Chinese.) We had Bird Flu, but that just screwed up Bernard Matthews. No, this monster needed a name that envisages terror. The pig, the animal people most want as a pet but don’t have, is now the source of the world’s most deadly virus.

This is how it starts, the old apocalypse, a gentle stream of news reports providing the hacking, snot-filled background music to your everyday life. You’re not really listening that hard to the Swine Flu warnings as you’re more concerned with buying a load of coloured jeans from Uniqlo and going up to Shoreditch to eat a soft cheese sourced from Peru. Then it turns out you have an acquaintance that’s caught it, but that doesn’t really phase you as whenever you met this kid he always had an off yellow tint, he was never one of Gaia’s foot soldiers.

So, you buy a magnum and forget about it and oh look, Peaches Geldof went a disco last night. Thanks, London Lite. All the while micro terrorists are zipping through the tube lines and handrails, declaring a tiny Jihad on your immune system.

The Government are setting up committees and hotlines and getting a lot of grief for not giving clear guidelines for pregnant women. This debate doesn’t seem to have much to it – pregnant women should avoid public transport at peak times and crowded areas. Hardly rocket science is it? Not getting on the tube while duffed up should be good advice anyway. There’s no place for a bump at rush hour - I’ve seen someone pour a frappe in a Louis Vuitton handbag and that’s worth much more than a baby*. It’s difficult down there at the best of times, especially without the threat of a highly contagious disease breeding in amongst the squalor of London.

If this is the end of civilised London society then it won’t be all bad. I’ve long since held the notion that I would thrive in a post apocalyptic landscape, living in Big Ben, living off tinned peas and firing buckshot at mutants. I’d marry the one of the only beautiful girls left in the world, then chuck her when a slightly prettier one comes along (don’t judge me, it’s Darwinian).

So this is it. Some reports suggest 100,000 people will die, some say slightly less people will die of Swine Flu than regular flu. But who cares? This is it, the end of days. Go and tell that girl in accounts you want to do horrible things to her in the break room, steal something from Boots, tell your Mum you hate her, rob Topshop, do anything – because tomorrow you might have quite bad flu.

*We’ve looked into it.

London Mayor 2012 - vote Medieval

Are ye sick of the constant bickering and back stabbing that has infected modern British politics? Do you want to see an end to the two-faced shameful melodramas that are played out in the tabloid press?

Then you need to vote MEDIEVAL in the next London Mayoral Elections.

The Medieval Party wants to bring back good old Britain, a Britain with values, with work ethic, and with a feudal system.

We want to hark back to a time where Britain fought against the French for scraps of land, where men were hanged for looking at gentry in the wrong way and where only kings and clergymen ate three meals a day.

There will be no sniping and backbiting in a Medieval parliament, only beheading and poisoning. There will be no doublespeak or rhetoric, only Machiavellian scheming and dueling. You will be sure that your Medieval candidate is stronger, more skillful with a sword and more likely to win a joust than the opposition candidate. Who is very probably dead.

Medieval also vows to end the expenses row in one, swift swing of an axe. Medieval politicians do not claim for expenses, they merely take what is rightfully theirs. Which is usually what is initially yours.

If you vote Medieval, you'll vote for a place where women are not seen nor heard, where beggars really are hungry and where shit slides down the street like a river of death. You will be saying yes to a place where rats are king, where disease is controlled by leeches and where maggots merely tell you that the sell-by date is close at hand.

Lord Robert D'Arcy La Pue, leader of the Medieval Party, speaking from his seat in the court of the Holy Roman Empire in Germany, says: "A vote for Medieval is a vote for a Britain that says no to foreigners, no to democracy and yes to daily, free executions.

"We will bring Calais back to its rightful owners, we will brick up Hadrian's Wall and we will begin bullying the poor into military service that will result in their prolonged and agonising death, the theft of their land and the raping of their family.

"It's 15th century politics for a 21st century world."

"What can you recommend?"

The restaurant industry is cut-throat in London; if you don't succeed in the first 46 seconds you are dead. So restaurants are having to get more and more pretentious, high-brow and original every day - the brains of the sector are trying to develop a completely new niche in the restaurant world, the eatin’ out biz.

The below ideas could be the product of several meetings which involved lots of smoking, continuously cutting each others sentences off with lines like “I would rather eat a bag of your mothers toenails” and spending countless hours trying to get hold of Julian Metcalf, the chief of Pret A Manger, who’s open door policy is not as open as the marketing materials try to promote:

1. ‘Sean’: Basically we take the entire life of Sean, a man, and turn it into a restaurant. All the dishes are either based around his favourite things to eat, or possibly, even more interestingly around core characteristics of his personality (the word ‘peas’ makes him wince). The menu is inter-spliced with pages from his diary (Dear diary, today I looked at my co-workers and all I could think about was a gun – pate and toast). We’d have his pin number and bank statements on the wall along with testimonials from old friends, jilted lovers (“He always waits until it’s his round then he goes to the toilet, his nickname is Sean-Bastard”). The cherry on the cake is the man himself, suspended in a plastic box in the centre of the room, coding invoices and muttering words in French for apparently no reason.

2. ‘Mon petit pleur’: Something slightly classier here. The central concept revolves around a unique dining experience. Imagine a Parisian café at the turn of the century, the wooden floors bleached ivory white with the main attractions. For every part of this meal is constructed around devouring the suffering of others. For an exorbitant fee the customer can pay to eat food complimenting an over riding emotion. For example, the special of the day may be ‘Man told wife has started on the slots again even after they defaulted on mortgage payments’ (accompanying food – salted veal) or ‘concert pianist wakes up from botched operation, handless’ (food – a deep tomato sauce along with a flat bread to mop tears).

3. ‘Chips’: Just a title at the minute, although we're fairly sure this is where the real money is.

Toilet attendants

I'm a bit hungover, so I am not going to beat around the bush. I hate toilet attendants.

If I am paying £8 for a vodka, I think it's pretty fair that I get to piss that up the wall for free. And I know £8 is too much for some watered down, cheap vodka and some economy OJ, but there is an honesty to being ripped off in a trendy, City bar. They could write "we will be ripping you off, you stupid dickhead" on the door, but they don't need to. I know it's going to happen, they know it's going to happen so let's get on with it, and make it a double.

But having a bloke standing around the toilet, usually singing something about sex, is not an honest arrangement. It's supposed to be a break from de riguer of the evening - a few minutes where it's a bit quieter, you can have a breather and think about what you are doing.

Every man in a bar on a saturday night will unzip, begin splashing out the urine which cost oh so much to create and heave a big sigh. That sigh is a little indication that we know we are talking rubbish, shamelessly attempting to have sex with anything in a skirt and helping our livers die just a bit quicker. We know what we are doing is sad and wrong and will only lead to pain, frustration and regret in the morning but we are doing it anyway. So leave me the fuck alone to wee in peace.

Also, I am confident of few of my abilities, but one I pretty much have down pat is the ability to toilet. I can release all that needs to be released in a timely manner and clean up after myself without too many problems. Oh there have been slips - a splash here, a mark there, the occasional unwashed hand - but I am, on the whole, good at going to the toilet. Thank you.

So why should I have to give a tip to a barely-hirable idiot who's only job is to stand behind me, watch me piss (and maybe comment on my abilities) then offer me some soap and a handtowel? I can squeeze soap out of a dispenser myself and I can pick a towel from a pile myself. Shit, I can even wipe my own hands.

No, I don't want a squirt of cheap cologne, I have my own. And no I don't want a lollypop, I am not on pills or 10. I want to wee alone, maybe have a mumbled conversation about how pissed I am with a fellow micturator, heave a big sigh, and then maybe wash my own hands. I don't want to have to feel obliged to give a twat a pound for a job that I can, and wish to do myself.

There was a time where men were not paid to stand around toilets. They paid for the privilege. And no matter what people say about George Michael, dammit it's more honest than the toilet attendant scam that's blighting the stinking piss holes of our country's fine establishments.

R'mance

“Yeowgh!”

“Shh you, why all that din?”

“I said two, but you put all your fingers in”

Dusty Night Terror

“Who are you Sir?”

“My name is Mr Cherrick,

From Ryman, Hucklwitz & D’Troth,

We represent the interests of a Giant Moth”

"Do ya want a can?"

This guy on my bus last week was a full blown nutter. I’m not a fan of that word; never the less, this big mad-fox-eyed Shaun Ryder look-a-like managed to plunge the number 29 to Trafalgar Square into a state of panic. He was a real life nutter.

Everyone had a strained look of “I’m really trying to pretend this isn’t happening, although I am acutely aware that this might end in me getting kicked to death” as he paced down the bendy bus. It was happening though, but luckily it didn’t end up in an old lady getting a kicking.

When something like this happens though, my mind instantly leaps to all those photos from the internal cameras on public transport where some anaemic looking, shirt wearing office worker (i.e. me) gets stabbed in the neck with a William Hill pen 47 times for politely suggesting to the maniac that maybe listening to Dub music really loudly and yelling might not be for the morning commute, it might be suited slightly better to say…3am, in Fabric.

Anyway, aside from randomly shouting at people, calling them “trannies” and declaring “Yeah, I was raised by Yardies, bruv” this chap was having in-depth conversations with himself along the following lines:

“Do you want a can mate?”
“Yeah, I do, can I have one of yours?”
“Yeah mate, no problems bruv”

This is the sort of teeth gritting tension you don’t get on the tube, only the bus attracts this level of terror-inducing psychopath. He managed to shut off an entire section of the bus and keep everyone firmly away from his vicinity. And all it took was an external/internal monologue, some wild golf ball style eyes and a lifetime of substance abuse.

Welcome to The Hellfire Club; MEMBERS ONLY

Welcome to the Hellfire Club;

A place for persons of quality to meet, to politik and to take part in immoral acts.

Do what thou wilt.

The Gods of Fate

Have things got bad? Have I had to seriously consider what a penis might feel like against my gums while fingering a filthy £20 note? Well yes, they have.

Why is it that when you’re in the straights you feel more desperate? Is it the loneliness? The claustrophobia? The unexplainable horniness?

I decided to tempt the Gods of fate today. The soul crushing drudge of working through the recession in a complaints department made something snap, and I brought a scratch card.

I delay it; not straight away, you see. I like to divide up the fictional money in my head, imagining how the £100,000 would be spent: How many hookers are too many? Are you alright not giving to your div cousin? Do people still have a problem if you wear mink?

After finally imagining travelling India and living a life of intellectual pursuit, there’s scratching to be done. Using a pound coin is a no-no, for two reasons:

I don’t want to anger the Goddess of Luck by being brazen with my wealth.
I don’t have one (sob).

Best go with a 50p, not too flashy but not embarrassing like a 2p.

Scratch. £100,000. Scratch. £25. Scratch. £400. Scratch. £1. Scratch. £100,000. Gasp. Scratch. £900. Fuck.

Then comes the self loathing. It’s instantaneous and heavy, like a giant bird shit on your head while all the cool and attractive people laugh at you with their white teeth and muscles.

Hellfire Club Members: Paul Burrell

The first in our 'Hellfire Club Member', an initiation our favourite human beings on this earth. First, it's Paul Burrell.

For those who are not in the know, Paul was Princess Diana's butler. When she was alive he did really important things like iron her bra, make her some mint tea and pick up after her budgie*. Paul, like all of us, really really loved Diana. But unlike all of us, he stole loads of boxes of her stuff and kept them in a cupboard for years. And wore her underwear.

He made a name for himself, after Diana was murdered*, by going on TV and talking about Diana. This developed into Burrell going on TV and talking about folding napkins and eating bananas with a knife and fork. He wrote about 22 books, all about Diana, and he also had a flower shop, with loads of pictures of Diana on the wall. Oh yeah, he also says he's not gay. While in his flower shop, with loads of pictures of Diana on the wall. And while loads of gay blokes keep telling the papers they shagged him, with documentary evidence of the fact.

Problem is, we don't care about Diana that much any more. We, as a caring nation, have new obsessions to pull at our heart strings, like the skinny one with the big head off of X Factor and Karen Matthews, the fat woman who unsuccessfully kidnapped her own kid for money. So Paul has fallen out of favor, so he's not on TV anymore. And that's bad for Paul, because Paul loves being on TV.

So Paul has begun to tell the world he knows something. We don't know what he knows, and he said he will never say what he knows. He is getting back on TV because he keeps telling people he knows something, but he won't tell what. Genius.

The thing is, Paul doesn't know shit. Paul was a big fairy who was good at shining silverware and picking up corgi poo. He realised he had shot his load soon after Diana's suicide* so he had to keep making stuff up. And he really, really loves being on TV.

Introversial loves Paul because he really believes he knows a secret, a secret that could rock the very foundations of this sceptered isle. He just hasn't thought what it is yet. But while he thinks of something he is going to hold onto Diana's stuff for a bit longer, for safe-keeping.

Remember to tune in next time for another Hellfire Member. Each edition will come with a 'cut out and keep' face of our hero, like the one of Paul, up there. After 36 weeks you will have enough faces to poster a very small, sad bedsit.

*These facts may or may not be true.

Yoghurt on a packed tube train

Yes, yoghurt on a packed, rush hour tube. Just imagine it.

I was on my way to work having just bagged myself a seat. Feeling particularly chuffed with myself, I looked round and watched, open jawed, the woman in front of me pull out a big Tupperware container full of yoghurt. It was huge, big enough to fit about 4 hearty sandwiches. Certainly too big for yoghurt. You expect yoghurt to be in a pot, not in the Tupperware. Anything else is madness.

Anyway, she then opened up the container and began spooning the goop into her mouth. It was smelly, probably probiotic or something, full of friendly bacteria and bifidum digestivum, y’know – the tang of ‘sort your fanny out’. The train kept bouncing around, as trains hurtling through ancient tunnels tend to do, every bounce and knock adding to the mess on her face. Round this fully-grown woman's mouth, on her hand, her bag and even a little tiny bit on the pole next to her. The more we rolled along, the messier she got.

Our eyes met for a brief moment. I glared, hoping to get across how completely and utterly disgusted I was. I don't think my distain got through as she carried on eating regardless, flecks of yoghurt splashing round her mouth as someone innocently and understandably bumped her spoon-wielding arm.

After a few minutes I couldn't bear to watch the macabre show in front of me, like a sad 'You've Been Framed' clip that has gone on for way too long – there would not even be a pithy comment from Harry Hill, as he’d have already scratched his eyes out. Luckily it was my stop and I hopped off, a little saddened by the fact that you can't choke to death on yoghurt, no matter how hard you try.

Facebook ships in the night

Tales of intrigue,

I got an interesting message on Facebook the other day from the mysterious Ms Black. She isn't a 'friend' of mine on there so there was an initial panic, but then I thought 'how many really are?' and that calmed me a little. This mystery lady had no profile picture and she was asking who I was.

She wanted to know if I was the same Chris who was in the Army (!), the one who was stationed in Korea (!!). Wow, I wasn't really sure what to make of it. I have a namesake who's some kick arse G.I.

I had a couple of odd reactions to this. The first was this really existential line of thought where I started to think about my life, all the things I hadn't done. This other Chris had been off, fighting in that damn war. Probably fell in love with a local girl, shaped some experiences with his bear hands. I once stole a copy of Take A Break from a shop as a belated birthday present for my Mum.

Secondly, and inevitably, my mind turned to sexual thoughts. I began to think, I could say that I'm the same guy. She may get on a plane from where ever she is, she may be beautiful. When she gets here it could be played one of two possible ways. First, she could get here and find my lies and deceit hilarious and endearing. We'd tell our kids the story of how I pretended to be a Green Beret before she found out I was actually a clammy office spore. Alternatively, I could sidle up to her and just say, "Yeah, well, I know that the last time we saw each other I was this 6" black guy but, y'know, this war has changed us all, baby".

Some thought that it was some CIA plot (well, admittedly I did. After I took that pill I found sitting on a garden wall). I thought that I'd end up in the same cow shed where they hanged Saddam, having the shit water boarded out of me.

In the end I decided to do the right thing and tell her I wasn't the same guy she was looking for. I told her that I probably couldn't be further away from this other Chris and that the closest I'd ever been to being in the armed forces was my big long stint on Call of Duty. Not exactly the same, but it probably gave me a 15 rather than a 1000 yard stare.

I wished her luck though, especially if he was on the lamb from paternity payments.

Down with the sickness

I have some sort of hideous, disgusting disease this week, and I have been advised to blog about it.

It seems to be a stomach bug, because that's where the symptoms and the pain are centered. I won't go into further details, because it's horrid and smelly and has left me eating just banana bread and going to the toilet 12 times an hour.

I probably caught it by eating a) food off the floor b) gone off food or c) from licking a handrail on the tube. I'm joking! I don't eat off the floor.

It hit a peak around 4am today when I became delirious and was sweating profusely. I got out of bed, and was particularly worried because I had pretty bad chest pains to boot, and they are never good. Especially when you are 24 and eat pork scratchings on a semi-regular basis.

So in my panicked state I did what all sleep-deprived, delirious people do at 4am: I went on a web doctor website. I typed in my symptoms (vomiting, diarrhea, fever and a tightening of the chest) and I got up a few diagnosis:

Ebola

Stomach Flu

Legionnaires disease

Pancreatic cancer

In the cold light of the day, I could probably safely assume I have stomach flu. But at 4am you don't think straight, and my chest really hurt. I started feeling for lumps, but realised I didn't know where my pancreas was. I couldn't rule out ebola completely, because I did stand near this guy on the tube who looked like he lived with apes. And I don't know what Legionnaires is, but it sounds like something off of House, and I watch lots of House.

I would go to the doctor, but London seems to be full of people with sickly kids who have booked before me, so I can't visit one until June. So I am stuck with webMD and the unnerving feeling that I have ebola.

LondonLove

The LondonPaper - 5 minutes of not very entertaining tosh (for those not in the know it's one of the two evening free papers commuters are hit with on the way home from work) but one thing that always catches the eye is LondonLove.

LondonLove is a section where people can blindly text in attempts at finding love: "To the brown haired hottie who likes to sit down on my train in the morning" or "To the fit bird on the tube..." you know, 'romantics' who think true love is perving on someone on public transport. So you text in with your plea, and maybe, just maybe, the lucky boy or girl will respond "YES! I love you too, strange person who I have never met".

“To the extremely muscley woman at Paddington on Thursday, I was the tiny, mustached man with the comb over. Can I watch you work out? Please?"

“I was the tall guy with the hundred yard stare and the knife on the N4 night bus to Islington on Saturday. Any of the women on there will do.”

“You told me to ‘fuck off you fucking weirdo, put your cock away’ on the tube at Baker Street on Wednesday night. Want to give it another go?”

“Homeless man who just stole a guy’s mobile needs change for food. You will find me in a green sleeping bag at Liverpool Street. Nothing less than 50p, please, my dealer is pissed off at me using coppers.”

“To the girl who always dresses really funky at Tufnell Park, In my head you’re the answer to my bullshit life. Drinks? xox”

“To the shifty eyed, scruffy looking man at Tottenham Court Road. I know you took my purse but I think I love you”

“I was the guy kicking the shit out of the Asian fella on the 12:02 to Milton Keynes, you were the fit bitch looking on, horrified. Meet up, yeah?”

“To the really old creepy guy who stares at me in the mornings while touching his cock, my self esteem has hit rock bottom after a series of life-shattering let downs. Lunch tomorrow?”

“I was the guy at Goodge St tube station, you’re the girl who had a clump of her hair pulled out at Goodge street Tube station – I still have it x”

“You’re the girl reading The Da Vinci code, five years after everyone else. I’m the guy that whispered the ending in your ear at Oxford St”

Drug maths

Going past some yoofs in Camden yesterday, I was treated to some very technical drug maths.

Yoof 1: "'ow much we gonna get yeah?"

Yoof 2: "Well, right, we bin off a week yeah, and we gone through 30 quid's worth, and we still 'ave a week left."

Yoof 1: "So we gotta get 40 quid's worth?"

Yoof 3: "yeah, man, get 40"

Yoof 2: "yeah, bruv, wicked"

Drug maths.

2 + 2 = 4 and a bit.

3 + 3 = about 8.

10 + 10 = shitloads.

Belated Valentines

So, what better day is there to end up in Victoria Station, tears streaming down your cheeks, looking at a faded ‘If you don’t like your life you can change it’ poster?

Yes, Valentines Day! Nothing quite says ‘Jesus, I didn’t think I’d still be looking at your tired old face’, like being herded into a restaurant and staring at other, more successful examples of functioning relationships. Then again, it can be an exciting time for new love, getting to know the girl you met during that mad confidence trip you had (which oddly coincided with the burning nostril you had the following day):

“Do you want some olives?”

“No, I don’t like them”

“Really?”

“Yes”

"I did not know that. Fascinating."

Electrifying stuff. This year Valentines Day unfortunately landed on a weekend, meaning that people sort of have to be out any way. This led to a lot of blank stares and a lot of couples realising they would have had more fun at home watching blue collar saturday night TV without the cheap flowers, bad poetry and fizzy wine. Because let's face it, if you are in a couple, Valentine's is shit.

But it also saw a larger volume of lonely, desperate ‘we’re alone and completely not bothered, let's get fucked up! Wooo! Who needs love! fuck romance! More tequila!' crowds that are completely bothered and are weeping inside. Girls dancing to the beat of their biological clock, and boys drinking their way to another evening alone with a kebab and poor quality porno. Because let's face it, if you are single, Valentine's is shit.

There does seem to be something ever so slightly tragic about it all, a day to celebrate all that we strive for and never reach. But I suppose going out and bursting into tears is better than doing it in your own flat, where you’re really near the gas oven.