After his very generous gesture back in January, Sky Sports News presenter and general cool guy, Jeff Stelling, offered to take my friends and me out for pizza and cinema again. OK, it wasn’t Stelling personally; John works for Sky and was given the vouchers as a gift – obviously from Jeff himself who had been admiring his work from afar.
We started the evening’s proceedings at Pizza Express. I went for the good old Pepperoni. Simon decided to have a pizza called Etna. Despite his pizza being named after one of the most impressive and active volcanoes in the world, Simon was a tad surprised to find his pizza was rather hot. This led to him picking chillies off his sizzling dish and nibbling at the base like some kind of squirrel.
When he finally finished his pizza, Simon was left with a pile of chillies on his plate. Not wanting to offend the chef, we suggested he should finish his meal like a good little boy. Unsurprisingly, he refused to eat the red hot chilli peppers. It time to play mind games…
Simon is a massive Arsenal fan. His team haven’t been doing too well in recent times and haven’t won a trophy in 52 years. I informed the poor Gooner that if he did not eat his chillies, Arsenal would not win a single honour ever again. Amazingly, this seemed to work, and Simon devoured the chillies.
If Arsenal do indeed win a trophy in the next 5 years, it is not down to the managerial skills of Arsene Wenger or world-class talent of Emmanuel Eboue. No, it was because on the night of Saturday 11th April 2009, Simon Goater ate a pile of chilli peppers.
After the pizza, we travelled to Longwell Green in Bristol where we went to the cinema to watch The Boat That Rocked. A film set in the 1960’s and based on a ship in the North Sea broadcasting pirate radio. I really enjoyed it, especially all the instantly recognisable British actors who filled the excellent cast list.
Today was my first day back at work since New Years Eve.
I arrived at my desk to find my lovely colleagues had kindly replaced my nice, modern PC and LCD monitor with a dinosaur of a server and what looked like a 1970’s CRT screen.
Turns out it was a trick. The PC had not been moved – the cunning swines had just put an old server case over my current PC (and attached a LED light to the USB port for extra authenticity). The monitor, however, had gone. I later took the liberty of getting myself a new one.
Well, that’s Christmas over with for another year.
I would be lying if I said I joined my family in a wonderful Christmas dinner, comprising of pheasant and luxury champagne; before singing carols around a piano. There was nothing wrong with this years celebrations – just nothing magical, either.
Present highlights:
Sony Ericsson K800i – my Nokia phone was as good as dead, so I begged Santa and his elves for this little baby.
Guitar Hero III – a cool little game for the Xbox 360, complete with a “lifelike” guitar. I haven’t had much chance to play it yet; but expect me to be appearing on Top of the Pops or (its modern day equivalent) sometime in 2008.
The Stig – a remote control car, featuring The Stig from BBC2’s Top Gear. Like with GHIII, I haven’t had much time to play with it; but expect a blog on how I broke it soon.
Christmas dinner:
Overrated as always. I hate having a large meal at lunchtime. The turkey was dry – I don’t think the chef reads my blog (luckily). I left most of my dinner, so when the evening came, I was very hungry – I worked my way through Pringles and chocolate.
Christmas telly:
Supposedly another Christmas tradition amongst us Brits. I didn’t watch anything. My sister had EastEnders on – what a horrible programme, especially for Christmas. In the space of ten minutes, I watched domestic abuse, a man vomiting in the street, a mother trying to commit suicide in front of her young daughter, before falling down the stairs to her death. Not exactly a nice, festive TV show is it – more like “TV to cut your wrists to”.
Football:
Another Crimbo tradition. I went to watch Bath City play Dorchester today. A rubbish game that finished 1-1. City need to buck their ideas up, or I might have to open a can of whoop ass on them. Leeds also drew 1-1. A sporting gesture, I must say. If Leeds wanted, they could win every game 5-0; but that would mean the season would be over in January – how kind they are!
I had the rather unpleasant experience of visiting Sainsbury’s this evening. A trip to the supermarket is nasty at the best of times, and made worse by the fact Christmas is just days away. As the shops are closed for two days over the holiday period, and everyone is confined to their homes; people stock up on excessive quantities of food and drink; as if we were on the brink of a nuclear war, and had to live in bomb shelters for 12 months.
THE CHRISTMAS SHOPPING RUSH CAN ONLY BE LIKENED TO THE THREAT OF WAR
The shelves were depleted, while the aisles were grid-locked with trolleys and annoying customers chatting and browsing aimlessly – getting in my way! I find a sharp bash to the back of the foot with the trolley wheel gets the herd moving (what lovely Christmas spirit).
THE TROLLEY WHEEL. ONLY A GUN MOVES SHOPPERS FASTER.
I managed to get all my shopping done, surprisingly with as little stress as possible (considering the crowded conditions). I do, however, have a few complaints. I will be airing these to my friend, Simon, who works in Sainsbury’s and is a top ambassador to the supermarket.
1) Why was I not allowed to use my trolley at the self-service checkout?
2) I found a number of Coca Cola bottles had some disgusting oil/pig-fat/wax residue on them. Is this normal? The strange fluid went all over my hands. I had to wipe myself on a female store assistant’s uniform – she was fucking livid.
3) When buying bananas, I always check them for spiders. What I didn’t look out for, was quality of fruit. Only when arriving at the checkout did I find them to be as soft as baby shite and inedible. I left them on the floor by the checkout. Did anybody slip on them in a comical manner after I left?
4) I see Sainsbury’s have donation boxes for charities. Why is it that there is more dog food in the animal shelter trolley, than there is “people food” in the collection for tramps? Do shoppers care more about animals than hobos, or is the Pedigree Chum fed to the crusties? As tramps like drugs, I donated a box of Lempsip.
TRAMPS LOVE LEMSIP
5) Why are Pringles so addictive? Should they carry a warning, or be upgraded to a Class B drug?
PRINGLES – A GATEWAY DRUG
Over to you, Simon.
Following a rather disappointing FA Cup exit for a battling Bath City, I met up Simon and Watkins for the evening. We decided to get pizza from the local takeaway, which caused rather a few problems. Simon ended up humiliating himself, while at the same time insulting an Italian man. The conversation went something like this.
Simon: “Can I order a Meat Feast pizza please?”
Italian: “Certainly, sir”
Simon: “Can you put beef on it as an extra topping?”
Italian: (rather confused) “It has beef”
Simon: “No. Can I have beef as an extra topping please!”
Italian: (now more confused) “But there is beef!”
Simon: (getting rather annoyed and speaking slowly) “Can I have some ‘B-E-E-F’ on my ‘P-I-Z-Z-A’?”
Italian: (points at the menu) “Mincemeat is beef; that is on pizza”
At that point Simon realised his mistake, paid the man and waited for his pizza; hoping the Italian he had just insulted wouldn’t violate it with his genitalia.
About Me
So you stumbled across my blog. No doubt after searching for something bizarre on Google. Before you hit that 'Back Button', why not stay and have a read for a few minutes?
If you are after a website which gives advice on how to hack an iPhone X, download the latest Steven Seagal movie, or view nudy ladies, you've come to the wrong place and may now press 'Back'.
However, if you would like a lifestyle blog, written by a 30-something chap, living in Bath (England), feast your eyes on this.
You won't discover how to copy PlayStation 4 games. What you will find is a blog, covering life in the West Country, the highs and lows of supporting two unsuccessful football teams, while sharing a house with a wife and rabbit.
All written by a man, somewhere on the sanity-scale between normal and eccentric.
