Now, we all know it’s the smokers of this country who prop up the Government coffers with the extortionate tax on cigarettes, but let’s not forget England’s drinkers.  When ever there’s a budget those in charge of fleecing the already poor, always manage to add a tad extra to the price of a pint. 

I mean, can you recall the last time that wine, whiskey or champagne went up?  No, no, as usual, it’s the average man and woman in the street who are having the life squeezed out of them and the ones who have to work twice as hard to make ends meet.

If you didn’t know already, it’s the way puffers and slurpers are controlled in this and other countries because of the addictive nature of alcohol and nicotine.  And it’s been a well used method of power over the masses pegged since the days of yore, mead and flagons.  The only difference now is, soon it’ll be cheaper to drink four star! 

If you’re an aware person, you should by now have noticed the conflicting reports on alcohol via Governmental information and the World Health Organization.  The latter makes a big to-do to show their concerns with the use of alcohol, but really nothing actually changes. 

Take the unit system of gauging what you consume.  Could it be anymore confusing?  Typically, from the Governments side, it’s perfect to keep alcohol buying up and the tax coming in.  The only foolproof system would be is to introduce a format whereby if you didn’t understand what you were reading, you know you’re pissed!

And another thing, cigarette advertisements on television have been banned for years now, and yet you can view a Guinness or Lager ad 24 hours a day.  Then are the deals you can find in the supermarkets.  So it’s great to know that Tesco, Sainsbury’s, Morrison’s and the like are supporting the British alcoholic. 

If you go back a few years, and you don’t have to go far, the pubs in this country closed at 11:20pm and an off-license would be shut at 10:30.  My, how things have changed!  Now you can drink your self stupid until the early hours and if you feel you need a top-up, you can pop down your local food store and buy a few more cans at 8:30 in the morning!  What the hell’s that all about?

And now for a bit of history and mathematics.  To put thing in prospective you have to comprehend the wages of the time and the old money system, pounds, shillings and pence, (£-s-d).  Today’s pound is divisible by 100 pennies, but when I was growing up in the 60’s; it was divisible by 240 much bigger pennies, and it was a period when you actually felt like you had money in your pocket.

Prior to WW I, 1914 you could buy a pint in this country for 3d, leaving you with 237 pennies out of you old pound.  The ‘d’ symbol comes from a silver Roman coin called a denarius.  And don’t forget, there were 240d to the pound and 12 pennies to a shilling, which now everyone calls a 5 pence piece.

By 1920 the price of a pint had doubled to sixpence or 6d or a tanner, and tanner equates to two and a half pence in today’s money.  And, at the time, the price of a pint had better relativity between its cost and a person’s wages.  Now it seems you need £20,000 plus, just so you can afford a pint in your local. 

In my 20’s the pub circuit was the great gathering point, a real social hub.  Forget silent friends on a computer, my social life was a live face book page, most nights of the week.  I could buy three pints with a pound note and still have 10p change, and 20 Rothmans would cost me 42p!  And that was in 1976.

However, it’s not until you get a little older, you realise what’s what in the tax department.  You may get an answer to a question you pose, but nothing will change because well, everyone else pays taxes, YOU HAVE NO CHOICE!

A long while ago I visited a friend in Cardiff and it wasn’t long before we were sitting down in his local pub with a pint in front of us.  Sometime later it was my round.  I ordered two more beers but was astonished to find out the same two Welsh pints were 70p cheaper than the London pints!

And then it dawned on me, I’m on the wrong level of the tax and earnings pyramid, and I and thousands like me are getting belted from all sides, and unless I secure a substantial lottery win, that were I’ll stay.  Born free – taxed to death, and that’s the way it’s been for hundreds and hundreds of years.  An educated person could get a little ticked off with that piece of information!

So how can the same product, made by the same company, has such a range in price from one part of the country to next?  A landlord will say, ‘The brewery is in charge of pricing’.  And the brewery will say it’s the cost of fuel and transportation.”  So logically, if you drive to the pub, you’re getting charged twice for petrol, just so you can enjoy a pint in your local – a nice little earner.

As we stand to date, the average price of a pint in London is £3.05 and the cheapest pint I could find was a pound in Bridgend.  But you’ll be pleased to know I’ve found the most expensive ‘sherbet’ in the UK, and I can only assume the beer is served by a high class topless escort and delivered to you on a platinum tray.  If you fancy a pint get yourself along to a pub Guilford where you can pick one up for just £6.09!!!

Some people don’t know the difference between ripping and tearing…

 

As a keen satirist I look at the forthcoming 2012 Olympics as another financial accident waiting to happen.  When we were awarded the Games, the rest of the world must have breathed a sigh of relief that they hadn’t been stuck with them and the financial outlay during a global recession, which by the way is now moving nicely along towards a double-dip recession.

So we picked up the white elephant, and in true British style we’re going to sally forth come what may and I have to start this rant with the logo.  Yip, 400,000 quid for a pink daub!  Quite honestly an epileptic squid dipped in mat emulsion could’ve produced a better artwork I feel.  Nuff said.          

I don’t give a toss about the positive spin that keeps coming out of the mouths of the organizers; this is England mate!  The place of strikes in a crisis, the place where a single leaf can shut down the entire network of London’s over ground train system – the place where snow can fall at any given moment. 

I can only assume the head honchos working with Sebastian Coe were forced to attend a course in bullshit before signing up!  Just the logistics of London Transport’s tube network has got to be their biggest nightmare, and don’t start me on the cost of the Games. 

Picture the scene: you’re on the starting grid to catch your first tube train of the day towards your place of work at the ‘Kipper Splitters Emporium’.  You’ve got a drink and a round of sandwiches, just in case the train breaks down, and your shin and shoulder pads are in place, as are your gum shield and knuckle dusters.  You put your head down and make a break for the sliding doors, and for your efforts, you secured a place crushed against a window in the standing position.  

From there you’re thrown around for twenty minutes towards your next connection and when you alight you bite, kick and punch in a bid to tear yourself away from the on-board commuters.  But it’s only when you reach Kings Cross station you realise that 350,000 extra foreign visitors have turned up for the Games and they’re going to be here every day for the duration of  the Olympics.

Now, I don’t like to spilt hairs (believe that and you’ll believe anything), but it’s come to my notice that the events that make up the Games don’t have many links with the past.  In fact, 28 of the 38 events weren’t even invented at the time of the original Olympics, and how the hell Beach Volleyball and BMX cycling slip in as sports, it’s absolutely farcical!   

So, the rush hour will become the ‘crush hour’, and 80% of the athletes will be within 20 minutes of their events and 97% will be within 30 minutes of their events.  Aah haha aahahahaahahaha  hahaha – priceless! 

Have the Olympic board undertaken a dry run on a Monday morning with the expected extra weight of human traffic – doubtful.  And right there is what should become a new Olympic sport – just getting the athletes from their hotels to the arena! 

The rumour is that 93% of training venues will be within 30 minutes of the athlete’s village and the aim is for 90% of venues to be served by three or more forms of public transport. 

Well we’ve got that now, and you still can’t get to work on time!!!  The Olympic board came to me for an answer to this problem obviously, and after seconds of rigorous power meetings with myself I’m glad to say I have the solution.  Everyone living in the London area and within a 15 miles radius of the M25 will have their homes boarded up so they can’t leave their properties.         

The next transportation problem will of course be our aviation system, which team GB hope to turn to their advantage in the javelin and the pole vault events.  The plan is to ensure the incoming athlete’s equipment and luggage is diverted to Guatemala!  The M25 will remain a car park for the length of the Olympics.     

Okay, let’s take a look at the cost of 17 days of running, jumping and slinging various objects about in a field.  The estimated bill for staging the Olympic and Paralympics was £2.1bn.  Forget all of the other figures you may have heard about, as no one can accurately forecast the eventual cost. 

So, after years of construction and hype, we’ll be lucky if this project breaks even.  And you wonder why your gas and electric has doubled recently! Yep, it’s what your supplier is using to pay for advanced orders of fuel to cover the extra usage during 17 days of watching a bunch stick insects run about a bit.   

However, there is a last ditched plan to recoup some of the groats lost in the coffers, but I can’t say I’ll be subscribing to it.  In this country we have been constantly reminded we’re a bunch of ‘lard-arses’, and eating our five-a-day is the way forward.  There’s even rumours of a fat tax – well how about this, DON’T PUT THE CRAP IN OUR FOOD TO BEGIN WITH!  

So what’s the plan to redeem some cash?  Lord Coe will raise funds through broadcast revenues, licensing, tickets and local and global Olympics sponsors such as Coca-Cola and McDonald’s.

McDonald’s!  At the Olympic Game!  Are you bloody sure?

 

Now, if you or I thought about it, made plans, hired a team, and then applied for a grant for this particular project, you’d either be laughed at or at the very least sectioned for your notion and actions.  However, somehow an artist has managed to convince the Arts Council to stump up 500,000 big ones to tow part of an Icelandic island around England’s coastline!  

Oh it’s not just any old island oh no, this one’s been uncovered by a receding glacier and the point of the exercise is to highlight the issue of global warming.  That’s the good point, if global warming does actually exist that is.

So what are the plans to shift six tons of rocks and dirt from Norway to Bristol, and how would you achieve this bloody stupid idea?  Well, the artist Alex Hartley and his team of 18 idiots, dug and bagged up, yes bagged up, part of the island and then transported the lot 200 miles across the ice covered ocean to a waiting schooner.  Now call me Mr. Picky, but I thought global warming was at the heart of this project?  Not so far. 

Point one: you have to ask yourself, what means of transport was used to shift said rubble to the schooner?  My guess is – it wasn’t a herd of pack animals.  Point two: what does a schooner run on?  Well it ain’t fresh air all the time that for sure as mustard, no it’ll be a fossil fuel won’t it!  So right there Mr. Hartley has added to the global warming crisis.  And he seems hell bent on continuing to do so.

So, you’ve got your rocks, what are you going to do with ‘em?  Well first of all you’re going to drop off the rocks in Bristol.  Then you’re going to ‘sculpt’ them into another floating island-shaped mess, about the size of a football pitch, and call it Nowhere Island.  

Actually, sculpt is a bit of an exaggeration, as so far I haven’t seen any evidence of tools being used.  So really the blokes been paid to just throw rocks about at your expense!  A six year old would do that for nothing.  Shortly after this your floating masterpiece will become part of the Cultural Olympiad to run alongside the sporting events in 2012.  Spiff-triff-marvellous, I can hardly contain myself.    

At the risk of repeating my self phrases like, ‘how much’, ‘burn up’, and ‘fossil fuel’ keep coming back to haunt me.  And to continue the fossil fuel burning issue, the floating Flintstone’s patio will be sited in Weymouth for the Olympic sailing fest and later towed around the South West coast of dear old Blighty.  Whoop-de-bleedin’-do!    

If this is just one of 12 projects chosen nationally to represent each of the UK regions alongside the sporting events in 2012, what the hell are the others like?  So far, they haven’t hit the headlines and I can’t say I’m surprised.  If they all cost half a mil to support and are as bloody ridiculous as this one, there’ll be blood on the streets at the price tag, in a time where the country is skint.  Art for sport’s sake!  Old bollocks for art sake more like.  But don’t worry; it’s only the hard pressed tax payer that’s coughing up for it.

It actually beggar’s belief that in light of the recent financial cock-ups, this gross and indecent use of public money has been allowed to continue.  We’re almost at the stage where some berk (rhyming slang: Berkshire hunt) will stand up and say, “Let them eat Jaffa cake.” 

Schools have had their budgets cut to pay for inane and senseless ideas such as these, and if I hear, “We’re all in it together,” again I’ll puke.  Yes, we are ‘in it’ together, but some of us will weather the storm without any damage to our bank and offshore accounts. 

Mr. Hartley says the environmental cost of towing the island will be outweighed by the “poetry of the project“.  Prat!  Well I suppose he would say that, now he’s got a bank account that’s never looked so healthy.  And just to bolster my view on the ridiculous, at the end of the Olympic season the visionary artist who, I suspect is hearing voices, plans to return the rubble back to Norway and rebuild the island it came from!    

If anything needs bagging up and towing out to sea it’s the English Arts Council.  I’m setting up new concern whereby any hacked off tax payers can book a ride on a Royal Navy ship.  Once aboard individuals can have full use of the ship’s artillery and use the Arts Council Island for target practice.  Three shells for a tenner, bargain mate, and more than a little satisfying!

 

I’m sure you’ve noticed that  a lot of oxygen and money is wasted in the filming of television entertainment, but none more so than during daytime TV.  Quite how the production teams chose what topics to cover is beyond me, and I can only assume they either quaff large amounts of alcohol or take an inordinate quota of ‘Billy whizz’ (Speed) when they brainstorm their ideas…

I guess you have to put yourself in their shoes for a while and take a look at what they have to work with and who might be their target audience.  Students – well, we can forget about them they don’t get up before 3pm.  Who else?  Mums yes, pensioners certainly, a smattering of the ill and fracture patients maybe, the newly dead and the wealthy housewife with nothing better to do than spend hubbies money by inventing new projects to keep  herself occupied.

And it was right there one smart production assistant struck gold.  Forget  about flogging antiques, bat watch updates and repeats about ferret farming, aim for the woman-about-town who wants to move to the country, brilliant!

So what do you need to produce such a televisual feast?  To start with you have to hire a ‘pride’ of hosts who don’t mind repeating themselves every 13 minutes while using every cliché in the book.  (Did you see what I did there?  Oh please yer-selves.  Next track down a constant supply of ladies who live in town-houses who are more than keen to get their phyzogs on national TV and drag hubby along for the ride, and a film crew. 

Overall, the episodes of ‘Escape to the Country’ are clearly for the affluent who love the fact they’ve got wads of cash and don’t mind shouting about.  They are the stars of the show and the host or should I say, victim has to pander to their every whim and need. 

Well, to be honest, he/she doesn’t do any of the background work, that’s what a plethora of unnamed researchers are for, hence the clause in their contracts that reminds them that, “You don’t have a Springer spaniel and a brace of Labradors and bark yourself!”  No, overall, the host is there to keep the peace between the ‘stars’ of the show and the camera crew, because if they can’t make their mind up about a property, everyone has to work late. 

The premise of the programme is simplicity it’s self.  Smugly rich couples, (the wives) put their names forward to appear in the show because they want to swap from the hurley-burly world of town dwelling for a retreat in the countryside.  Now, I’m sure the programme makers want to know the ‘ins’ and ‘outs’ of their prospective buyers, but really what it boils down to this, if you’ve got between £450,000 to a mil to spend, so they can keep the ratings up – come on down.

All they have to do is pick one property out of four, which has be chosen for them to their spec, and at the end of the show say, “Yip, we’ll take that one.”  Do they?  Do they bollocks.  You can almost hear the film crew in the background shouting to one another, “Frank, put the kettle on mate, the silly bint thinks the wallpaper’s to thin!”  So, off we trot along to property No. 1. 

The host reels of a load old cobblers, which is set to big-up the couples wants and needs, and in they go.  It’s set in two acres of land, there are four bedrooms, the view all round is stunning and the bathroom, living room and kitchen are large enough to undertake a three point turn in an Austin Healey 3000. 

Is it suitable for the Pilkington-Smythes?  Well hubby likes it, but he dare not say it out loud or in front to his account-drainer.  Instead, he waits for her view, and then nods approvingly saying things like, “Well spotted dear, and “I hadn’t thought of that.”  She walks away with her ego inflated and the host bites his or her lip.

It’s clear to the host who’s the doormat in the relationship and who has her trousers made in Savile Row, and notes she/he has to up her/his game with property two.  Even before they enter the house the wife grimaces at something and hubby recoils with a non committal look on his face.  What can be wrong?  Shock-horror-gasp!  They have neighbours!  Oh well, upward and onward.

House three was the wrong shape, (The wrong shape?) the grass wasn’t the shade they/she had ordered, and it was “A bit windy.”  Imagine that, wind in the middle of a Cumbrian valley!  With gritted teeth and a false smile, the presenter walked them through the gates of property four.

Now this was more like it.  Suzie (home-maker) Pilkington-Smythe was in absolute raptures over this gaff.  Well, she had a half-smile on her face, which is more than she had all day, and this was the cue for her mobile purse to grin broadly.  All of the rooms were big enough for ‘modam’, and the south facing view was a key selling point too.

Yip, for a knock down bargain basement price of £795,500 or 7955, as we say in the trade to make it sound cheaper, it was a steal.  Then, Mrs. ‘Up-herself’ spotted a flaw in this perfect Des-Res.  The house she liked, and the land she liked too, all four and a half acres of it.  After taking another Valium, the host asked why she was going to reject this property.  Do you know what the silly cow said?  “The house is in the wrong place, it should be a bit further over to the right!”  Visiting the ‘surprise’ property was cancelled.

In the round up at the end of the show, the host did her best to find some positives in shelling out thousands of pounds in the production of another failed show.  And the couples last passing shot was, “We weren’t sure what we wanted anyway.”  What a pair of arses!  Call me Mr. Picky, but surely the money wasted on the show would’ve been better spent given to a charity that supplies drought regions in the third world with clean running water perchance.  Pillocks!!!

  

If you’re old enough to remember Twiggy, you’ll recall she was no wider that a coat hanger, and since the 60’s of swing, model-wise at least, nothing has really change except the bizarre efforts of the fashion designers…

Well no, two things have altered over the years as it goes, there’s now a ‘lard arse’ range to appease the bloaters of society who can’t stop forcing Mc Donald’s down their necks, and the re-touching guys still have a license to shave pounds of off a model by doctoring the pictures.  And the next thing you know an eight year old girl says to her mum, “I need to go on a diet if I’m going to look like Kate Moss,” and a browbeaten mother replies, “I’ll get some cigarettes, strong coffee and a bag of coke for you tomorrow dear!”

I’m not sure who’s the worst, the designers or the celebrities that buy their clothes, then fawn all over them for producing a master piece for them.  Alex McQueen was a prime example; local boy makes good, but even he ended up brown bread (dead).  There’s no doubt that his earlier pieces were the work of a craftsman, well he did learn his trade in Savile Row after all, and in short he was the dogs wotsits at a very young age.  But it all seems to go breasts upper most when fame and fortune catches up with these people. 

Have you seen what comes down the catwalk lately?  More importantly, have you seen the piece worn anywhere else?  I mean, if you want to wear something that looks like green marzipan with a chandelier dumped on your bonce, you help yourself.  It’ll probably only set you back 12,000 grand and rest assured, no one down the supermarket will be wearing the same mess.  In fact I doubt whether you’ll find an occasion to wear the bloody thing in the first place.

So, as a hot-shot designer with a bundle in the bank, you can really let loose with your creative side, knowing full well that some twit with more money than sense will buy what ever you make for them.  Would you buy a neck scarf for 300 big ones?  Well that’s what happens when you have your own brand name, you can charge what you like!  However, when this occurs you find yourself at parties three times a week and a whole bunch of new ‘friends’ whose main intent is to supply you with as much Colombianmarching powder as you can stick up your schnoz.

Well, how odd, the McQueen range suddenly went into overdrive, and his work became more and more farcical.  I’m still trying to discover who thought it would be a great idea to purchase a dress that looked as if it had been fashioned out of carpet off-cuts – in purple!  I mean, you can actually see the cocaine at work.  Oh yeah, I can stay up for three days straight and design a dress, the trouble is I’m pretty sure no one would look twice at my matching Swiss roll meets brown  Plasticine ensemble or would they?     

Other pieces of McQueen’s work have been described as thus: from the autumn range, “A dress with a floral embellishment.”  I kid you not; it was a bush, with leaves and twigs included!  Next; “A white coral reef skirt.”  Yip, if it wasn’t a recently under cooked omelette, then I’ve got two bottoms!  And what was he on when he thought that designing a pink boiler suit with a snood and a gas mask was a good idea!  Moreover, who agreed with him when he slapped the first sketch down on the table?

Honestly, these people get so far up themselves they can’t see the dress for the trees!  And what about the models?  Well, they’re young and will probably wear anything for the right money, but all the same, what a life.  All are hoping to be the next top catwalk queen, but in the run up to that coke-fuelled position, they’re pushed and pulled about, makeup is slapped all over their heads and they have to subscribe to a diet of a lettuce leaf and 400 cigarettes a week.  So it’s no surprise when they lose the will to smile.

It doesn’t matter what I say because the clothes cattle market will carry on long after I’m in my box.  And if your wife or partner wants to dress up in a matching two-piece ‘Borrowers’ outfit, let her get on with it.  In fact, get yourself one; it’ll give the members of the Rotary Club something to talk about. 

Rest assured, you’ll know if you’ve been to a high class catwalk show, all you have to do is check the maximum load sign in the lift.  Instead of stating it can carry 1000lbs or eight people – it’ll say 1000lbs or 36 models!

 

This is the follow-on from, ‘You know when you just want a beer’.  Adapted from chapter three of Bi Polar Expedition. 

If you’re unfortunate enough to join the world of the mental health system, you’ll learn one fact pretty much straight away, understanding your disorder and the medication you’re prescribed is an ongoing learning curve from the outset…

All I knew at the time was I was ill and hospital, and the drugs administered would, in time, help me recover apparently.  However, not once, at the beginning of my bipolarity did anyone mention the word, side-effects or add the prefix – severe!  Just so you know, all forms of medication have a side-effect of some kind, even aspirin.  Most go unnoticed but, as I found out to my cost, the stronger the drug, the more powerful the side-effects can be.

So I’d escaped with the ward keys and hit the local pub and, as I’d been a naughty boy, (out witted the staff) I was jumped on, sedated and then pasted out.  I woke up to discover a burning sensation on my forehead, and a loud and repetitive banging noise in the background. 

All of a sudden the door of my room burst open and in stormed the cleaner from hell.  It was ages before I was able to work out why my ears were more sensitive than normal, but it was all down to my first batch of injected anti-psychotic drugs.  After what seemed like an hour all went quiet, and my door was closed again. 

For the next three days I sat in a vegetative state with an inane grin on my face and by day four I was in a bad way.  You could’ve slap with six pound turbot and I would’ve just sat there and smiled at you!  I could only manage to walk in short pigeon-steps and my legs were locked at the knees in a half-bent position. 

It was a bizarre situation and try as I might, I couldn’t stand up straight.  Brilliant!  Not only did I feel like prat, the predicament had left me eight inches shorter! 

Then I noticed my forearms, they were stuck out in front me like a puppeteer, which would’ve been okay, but I didn’t have any puppets.  Thinking it couldn’t get any worse, it did.  I found that my fingers and thumbs were all pointing towards the floor, and like my knees, were also frozen.  And to top it all off, every time I went to sit down, literally two seconds later I had an uncontrollable compulsion to stand up.   

Day by day something else joined the list of ever-growing side-effects.  I can laugh about it now, but I was in a great deal of pain, pain like you would never believe.  I tried to console myself that it couldn’t be as painful as child birth, but it didn’t help.  Fortunately, only person saw me in this state. and ever helpful my good friend evaluated my situation for the record.  He said I looked like ET with a beard.  What are mates for!  A week later I was still in the same condition.

As time progressed the agony spread its way from my legs, arms and hands and settled nicely in the whole length of my spine.  A full night’s sleep was impossible, I couldn’t sleep on my back or my front, and in the end I slept on alternate sides, waking up, on the hour, every hour.  I started to think that the Irish River Dance troupe had been practising on it for a month. 

Eventually, after three weeks of agony and broken sleep, I started getting some answers to my crippling situation.  After speaking to the meds man on the ward it became apparent that I’d had a severe adverse reaction to my recent jab and it was called, akathisia.  Yip, never heard of it either, but by God I new I had it!   

Okay, how long was this debilitating side-effect going to last for, I asked?  Well, certainly no longer than 14 weeks!!!  I was given an extra tablet to take with my usual medication to help the crippling effects of the akathisia, but what I hadn’t anticipated was that the so-called anti side-effect tablet had a side-effect all of its own.  Three days later I found out what it was – constipation!   

A week later, I was still having problems sleeping and was given another tablet to take.  Guess what, I now had a new side-effect to cope with, blurred vision, mostly with a tad of extra lethargy.  If I wasn’t walking the corridors or circumnavigating the hospital grounds, in small circles I might add, I could be found propping up a wall in the corner of the day room.  You couldn’t miss me.  I was the blind, bearded, stationary alien with a packet of Ex-lax sticking out of his top pocket!  If there is a God, I just like to say, yeah thanks for that…

 

A true story

So I escaped.  Well, it wasn’t my fault someone left a dirty great bunch of keys in the soap well of the sink in the ward office.  I spotted them and  Wallop mate – I was off and  headed straight for the locked ward door…

Once outside and past the reception, I threw the keys into a mass of bushes and proceeded to stroll down the half-mile road which led to the main gates of the ‘Fun factory’.  On reaching the entrance I had a quick shufti to find that, so far, I hadn’t been followed and when I looked over the road there was a site to behold – a pub.

Ambling into the car park I noticed a black London cab and the drivers’ door slightly ajar.  The temptation to climb in and mess about with the instrumentation on the dash board was far stronger than my medication. 

After much pushing, touching and fiddling I got out and made my way to the pub door.  I may have been mental and heavily medicated, but I still had a few ‘normal’ marbles left in reserve.  So, to satisfy my worst fear, I touched the pub’s brickwork just to check it wasn’t a mirage, nope it was rock solid.

It must have been near closing time, as I could see the staff clearing up.  Undeterred, I entered my oasis and ordered a pint of Guinness.  As the barman placed it on the bar I said, “Can I owe you for that, only I haven’t got any money on me at the moment.”  By the look on the bar steward’s face I could see he wasn’t too pleased with my request. 

As quickly as he poured it, the accommodating sod chucked the pint down the sink.  Six weeks without a beer had made tetchy, so, gutted by his unfriendly nature, I left the bar and decided to stir things up in the car park.

I spied a brand new 4×4 Land Rover and thought I would test out its suspension.  For a short time I jumped up and down on the running board on the drivers’ side.  After a while this felt a bit tame, so I climbed onto the roof via a small ladder on the back of the vehicle and had a proper bounce about.  Oh yes, this was much more aesthetically pleasing.  At this point of the proceedings, a gin sodden old bint stuck her head out of an upstairs window. 

Her opening gambit was most unbecoming of a lady, and in true fishwife style she hurled a volley of abuse at me.  I must have answered her back, but for the life of me I can’t remember what I said, more’s the pity.  I presumed that this ravishing, Gordon’s gin blue-eyed beauty queen, 1947-1987, was the landlord’s wife, poor bugger.

Jesus it was a state.  She had a face like a clear plastic bag full of crushed walnuts which had been ravaged by time and alcohol.  I was soon joined in the car park by the publican and his young son, to the shriek of, “Look Bert, he’s climbing all over our new Motor”, spoken in a heavy cockney accent.  I thought he was going to ask me in for a night-cap. 

But no, instead he was offering to rip off both of my arms and beat me to death with them.  Some people just can’t take a joke!  Somebody must have phoned the hospital because a Ford Transit van pulled up and out stepped four familiar faces from N2’s night-staff.

I was ‘helped’ into the van and returned to the ward.  I tried to do a runner from the main corridor but the nurses were all over me like a rash, and a bit later I was asked the whereabouts of the ward keys.  I told them roughly where I’d aimed them, but the trouble was there were literally thousands of bushes in the grounds of the hospital.  I said they had more chance of setting up a threesome with a couple of novice nuns than retrieving the lost keys, but they would insist we searched for them.

So off we trotted into the night with a couple of torches and hope in our hearts!  After 20 minutes of fruitless scavenging through the undergrowth the search was abandoned.  I was frog-marched back to a single bed side-room on my ward, restrained and injected.  [Part II to follow]  

Adapted from chapter three of Bi Polar Expedition

 

So there I was, old, free and single, when a neighbour said, “Oh you’ve gotta try internet dating, everyone’s doing it.”  Yeah well, never being one to do anything just because everyone else is, I eventually signed up on one site, just to see where all this hot action was occurring…

Right from the off, I should’ve known it was going to turn in to a farcical episode in my little life, and I wasn’t disappointed.  My advice to you, right from the start is don’t bother, unless you want to be disappointed and short in your wallet.

Pick a site, any site there are hundreds to choose from and they all say, FREE to join.  However, it’s not until you’ve spent eight hours of your life attempting to download a picture of yourself you realise that they are cost involved after all.

So I began entering some details in to ‘sadlonleygits-mealforone.com’ and got a message straight away!  The very sexy Sandra who wanted to speak to me – way hey!!!  Putting my Lionel Blair’s (Flairs) on, my stacked heeled shoes, plus my Brut and a rather fetching brown and orange nylon wally-collared shirt, I waited with baited breath to see what the brown-eyed beauty had to say for her self.  She said, “Welcome to the site,” and that was it! 

Forty-two days later I’d finished the questionnaire on my profile and went to bed with a repetitive strain injury caused by constant typing.  Well that’s my story mate and I’m sticking to it.

Weeks went passed by and there wasn’t a hint of a connection with the great beyond.  I could only assume that I had a face like a baboon’s bum and no one would bother to message me.

Then, quite out of the blue and some months later, I received an email alert that there was a message waiting for me in my account.  This is it, I thought there’s gonna be some hot rumpy-pumpy to night.  I went to my profile and saw, “If you would like read your message, simply give us the details of your bank account and we’ll empty it for you!  It was about this time that the swearing began.

So I left it for a while, months in fact, and stumbled on another sight.  With the wind in my trousers and both hands down my pants, I proceeded to enter every bleedin’ known fact about me, minus my hat size.  

‘Shagtilyoudrop.com’ seemed different to the other sites I’d viewed somehow.  You know, a tad more in your face, brazen even.  It was as if you could pre book a lady-person with huge jumper-lumps and they would come straight to your house, even at two o‘clock in the morning!  I thought then as I do now, how on earth can they keep a free site running without any money changing hands!

There was another long pause before attempting the rigors of another dating site, but oh boy, this was more like it, yes, abottleofwineandagooddvd.com’ was totally FREE, FREE, FREE.  And now I know why, it was full off DULL, DULL, DULL women who looked uglier than me and dressed in their mum’s clothes.

I’ve lost count of the man hours lost to this ridiculous pursuit but like a fool I signed myself up for one last time to a dating site called ‘justgladofashag.com’ and settled back for an influx of banter with the opposite number.

Imagine my surprise when the very next day a message arrived, well worth the £6.50 I’d spent for a weekend trial.  The little minx’s name was Sam, and she was bloody gorgeous.  Of course she was; she was welcoming me to the site!!!

Message two looked more hopeful, well it had too; after all, at some point someone’s had to ask me a question or mention something about my profile that we’ve got in common.  W-R-O-N-G!  Not only did she live in bloody Guatemala, all she said was, ‘Hi’, stupid trout!  My sharp senses told me, even in the event that we did meet for a coffee, somewhere in the Gobi dessert; I believe the conversation would be sadly lacking content.  Although I was very tempted to say ‘Hi’ back, just to see if she could see the irony.

Ooh, never mention in your profile that you have a mental health history.  Me, I’m as honest as you can be, and after looking at some of the ladies information, that’s what they feel is the main requirement in a relationship.  So I was honest, I have no need to lie about anything.  What happened, I was stigmatised in my own front room.  I can only assume the daft bint, with a PhD I might add, glossed over the fact that I’ve remained ‘well’ for the last nine years and focused all of her attention on the reality that I brazenly mentioned I was bipolar.

The result was this, after number of exchanges through the site and finding we had much in common, she wrote, “I’ll have to sign off now as I simply couldn’t be associate myself with someone who has a mental illness.”  What a cow!!!  That’s the ‘c’ word I’ll use for now, but it’s not the ‘c’ word I used when I read her message.     

Last point, if a Miss Oujer-nikya Bolokov contacts you chaps, blow her out.  She says she’s 24, a teacher and looking for the love an older man and will travel to the four corners of the world to find him.  She’s blonde, blue-eyed and beautiful.  No she’s not.  She’s a great big hairy Russian builder looking for a passport and if she can’t get that, she’d like you to send her some money! 

Well I guess it’s down to the docks for me to see if I can get a cut-price shag under the pier…

I’ll take this opportunity to say many, many thank yous to every one of you who read my ramblings, and hope in the past I’ve caused a few laughs.  I’m taking a break now as it the summer, and will return on the 4th of September 2011.