Hallowe'en Haiku

‘Trick or Treat’ they say,
dressed in their scary costumes.
Annoying shitbags

A family tree full of fungus

Recalling the deaths of my relatives in service yesterday has reminded me of some other curious stories from the Chesworth Family Death Scrolls. We seem to have a genetic predisposition towards untimely and unusual demises.
Take Gerald Forster for instance. He was my mums cousin. He died of a gangrenous infection in his hand, which he got trying to remove a tattoo with a chisel, which he had given himself with ink and a compass after seeing ‘On The Waterfront’ as a teenager.
A trawl in the archives reveals one Cuthbert Arthur Chesworth (1857 – 1893) who died on Christmas Day in a blizzard after passing out on a farm track. He froze to death before being found ‘semi-naked and buttocks exposed’ by traumatised walkers on Boxing Day.
My aunt Jessica passed on only last July. She overdosed on contraceptive pills after mistaking them for multivitamins. Then there was my Uncle Louis. If he was still alive he could make a fortune as a lookalike for Borat. He’s not alive though. After a lunchtime session on Cointreau he couldn’t decide whether to take a shower or make some toast. In the end chose to kill two birds with one stone. He killed both birds all right, along with himself and the electricity supply for one-fifth of Berkshire.
So don’t expect me to succumb to heart disease or gently pass away in my sleep. If family history is an indicator, I’ll get struck by lightning while shagging a princess or trampled to death by pygmies while operating a roadsweeper.

RC 30-10-08
2150 GMT

Remember, remember..

The kids in town have started throwing fireworks at me again. It’s not even Hallowe’en yet, why have they started selling bangers to infants?
I’m sure it’s not just me who gets terrorised on his way home from the shop of an evening, but it’s hard not to personalise it when a group of 12-year-olds are singing ‘You Fat Bastard’ while one of them hurtles a catherine wheel at my head.

I must have a moan about poppies. Firstly, let me say that I fully support the Poppy Appeal, and the British Legion are a wonderful organisation deserving our praise and gratitude and donations. My family, as much or as less as anyone’s, has been touched by the horrors of war. My great- great- (I think) grandfather died in the trenches, my great uncle Harry lost a leg to a landmine in 1942, and my dad’s cousin Harvey blew himself up with a hand-grenade in the 60s after never fully recovering from D-Day. But let me say this – wearing a poppy on your jacket from the middle of October doesn’t mean you care more, or give more, or respect the fallen (and those still fighting) more than anyone else. It just means you want to be seen with one earlier than anyone else. It just means being first to display a poppy is more important to you than the sentiment and symbolism of buying one in the first place. It just means you’re a prick.

RC 29-10-08
2320 GMT

Let It Be

I think I may have made my peace with Jamie Oliver.
I called into the corner shop today to see if anyone had signed my petition, only to find the manager had refused to let them leave it on display. He said, apparently, that Jamie Oliver is immensely popular with middle-aged housewives, and he didn’t want to alienate ‘the Woman’s Own demographic’. I said he sounded like a fascist, but Mrs Willow (who works there three afternoons a week now) made some good points in his defence. She also gave me a lovely speech about learning to convert my anger into ‘positive personal action’, and reminded me that I can always turn off the telly if I don’t like someone that’s on it. Isn’t it hateful when people point out the obvious? She was right though – I have enough going on in my life without wasting my thoughts and energies on some tubby, gormless baker who can’t cope with being off-screen for five minutes.
If I ever decide I need a mother figure in my life again, Mrs Willow is going to be top of my list for adoption.

On a different topic, I have today taken delivery of “Sergeant Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band” on CD, which I am about to enjoy in the bath with some Avon Mascarpone Bath Cubes and a large hot chocolate. I would like to thank Messrs Lennon, McCartney, Starr and Harrison, Tim the Postman who delivered it, and MesserschmittFan10 on eBay who sold it to me for a fiver, for what will almost certainly be the best night I’ve had in an aeon.

RC 27-10-08
2003 GMT

An eclectic mix..

We all know the saying - “If the wind changes while you’re pulling a face, you’ll be stuck like that forever.” Surely if that’s true, you just pull your face so it looks how it did originally, and wait for the wind to change again? There’s only so many ways your face can contort, and only so long that the wind can maintain a constant direction…

If Friday the 13th is an unlucky date, why don’t all calendars and diaries just burst into flames when they’re printed?

Again I thank the Lord for mums departure. Being under the same roof as her again just made me feel like a six-year-old, scared that I might get hit again any second just because mums feeling ‘sauced’
Her burgeoning weight and dissolving liver are now a problem for Yorkshire NHS Trust, and they’re welcome to them.

Hate-filled Haiku

Jamie Oliver
is a chuffing waste of space
someone should eat him

I hate bus drivers
they always want exact change
and smell of stale sweat

why does my sex life
involve drunken nights of filth
with ugly fat chicks?

I have a birthmark
in an unfortunate place
shaped like a walrus

My mum is a bitch
who put drink before her kids
Thank God she ****ed off

I hate all sportsmen
with their fitness and their looks
How I envy them…

Why does the weather
always piss down on Norfolk?
WHAT DID WE DO WRONG?

When did my haiku
become just hate-filled ramblings
about chefs and rain?

I might start getting driving lessons.

RC 24-10-08
1905 BST

Chthonian delights

Today, I made fire.
Hannah spent most of the weekend trawling through some of mums junk, and most of it was worthless, rotten or festering in a dull mist of whisky, sweat and the dust of a thousand hangovers, so we had a clear-out. Four bin bags are now sitting outside waiting for tomorrow morning’s collection, and anything mum had labelled as a keeper we burnt. It was wonderful. Cathartic, yes – burning her possessions was probably the closest we’ll ever come to actually cutting the memory of her from our lives forever – but it was deeper than that. It was tribal; ancient; a throw-back to our long-gone days that stirred my DNA and took me closer to my fore-fathers than ever before. Standing in our back garden trying to light a fire in a dustbin when there was high wind and a drizzle might seem foolish to some, but I saw it as a challenge to my manhood and I stayed out there until the pile was alight and flames were spitting skywards. All it took was a Ray Mears survival book, some caveman ingenuity, and a 2-litre bottle of barbecue lighter fluid. I watched my creation suck oxygen from the air and convert it to heat and energy and I felt the way our ancestors must have felt a thousand years past on that great day of discovery. I was positively damp with excitement.. or maybe that was the leak in my Wellingtons.

RC 22-10-08
2020 BST

Working Girl

I warn you – I’m buzzing, so this may be a rambling blog day! I’ve just done my first days work for a decade! Sure I had odd jobs while at uni but they were all part-time and never more than five hours to a shift, so the last time I did a full day was a Saturday at the flower shop when I was 14.
Today though, I re-entered the gainful world of employment.
Tom Scott and his wife run a small wallpaper store in town and they’ve decided to send out a huge mail-shot as a way of getting more business. So today I helped sort 12,000 letters into postcode areas, bag them in appropriate sacks, and then help load the sacks onto a mailvan. £6 an hour with lunch provided, and unlimited use of the teapot.
The morning was a bit of a confusion while I got the hang of what we were doing, but after an hour or so it was second nature, and then the afternoon just flew by. Tom was pleased with our efforts and says they may need help next month when the business sends out their Christmas cards. So that’s another possibility in November.
Truth is, adrenalin rush aside, I’m absolutely exhausted. How the Hell people can do this six days a week is beyond me.. If I can’t find someone who’ll pay me to sit on my fat arse and eat, I may just stay on the dole or retire.

RC 21-10-08
1958 BST

A dream to end all dreams

Last night I had sex with a cheerleader. She was 22, an athlete, American, and had skin like the sweetest olive you’ve ever tasted on a pizza. It was frantic, beautiful, vivid, long, and as the sun began peeking through the curtains onto our tired, spent bodies she stroked my stomach gently and told me I was incredible.
Then I woke up, and headed for the washing machine.
The mind is an amazing thing. It can invent a scenario like the one above to thrill you while sleeping, and it seems so real you feel superhuman for at least twelve hours afterwards. All day today I’ve had a remarkable post-coital glow, and a spring in my step that even the mass of my hulking torso cannot dampen - just because my brain imagined something erotic, and then convinced another part of my brain that it had really happened. Fantastic. I was tempted to find mums old sleeping pills to see if I could go back for seconds.

On an unrelated topic, I now have a petition on display in the corner shop. It reads – “We the undersigned appeal on behalf of all that is sane and decent for Jamie Oliver to be ripped from public life and forced to swear never to present, write or cook ever again on pain of having his fingernails removed by a blind, drunk one-armed failed medical student from Southport”
I’m aiming for 500 signatures by Friday.

Now I’m gonna eat two blocks of cheese and have an early night. All being well I’ll be back in my cheerleaders arms by midnight.

RC 20-10-08
2153 BST

What was I thinking?

As I’m sure you know, I like to experiment with my food and drink.. I have yet to discover a recipe that couldn’t be improved by the addition of one or more exotic ingredients, and if the saying “Everything Is Better With Cheese On” hasn’t yet been credited to me, it damn well should be.
This afternoon, I tried an oft thought of but previously un-attempted delight. LUCOZADE WITH ICE-CREAM IN IT.
Anyone who has ever been a child will have experienced the joys of a Coke Float – a standard glass of any brand cola with a sizable helping of ice cream piled in. The froth that rises is a food stuff in itself, and about as close to nectar as mortal man can taste.
Add full fat milk and chocolate sprinkles on top, and it’s a sweet little cocktail called an Artery Blocker.
I really fancied one today, but the only drink I had in the fridge was some Lucozade. So I thought – sod it, why not???
It’s hard to describe the experience really.
You now those soluble Vitamin C tablets? The orange ones? Imagine dropping 10 of those in a pint of Cream Soda and you’re somewhere close to the painful truth.. The only thing I’ve tasted worse is Fat Mandy’s minge after a work-out. That’s a lesson learnt, by the way – don’t go down on a girl after a gym class. That’s a mistake I won’t make twice; and ditto with the Lucozade Float.
Still - nothing ventured, nothing gained, as they say.

RC 18-10-08
1720 BST

MY FIFTIETH BLOG!!

I’m looking forward to Halloween. I like the Trick Or Treat concept. It’s a night when youngsters can terrorise old folk in their neighbourhood the way they do every other night, but this time they end up with sweets instead of ASBOs.
I’m enjoying life in general at the moment. I’m looking into furthering my studies next year, and sick of dealing with the Palace Of Ineptitude And Despair they call the JobCentre, I’ve started approaching businesses direct to ask for work. With Christmas on the way, there are plenty of temporary positions coming up, and at least three shops and warehouses took my details ‘for a later look.’ Honest Gerald the butcher has said “If you’re not afraid of a bit of blood, I’ll pay you cash in hand to help with the turkeys” and I might even have a few days work at the College Library next month ‘while Jeannie gets her ovaries fixed.’ So things are looking up work-wise. Also, with mum gone, my sister and I are actually getting on, and getting to know each other a bit better. With the over-powering influence of The Gin Monster gone from over her, Hannah is actually showing herself to be a decent, caring, capable human being, and not the worthless slut that my mum painted her to be.
For the first time since I moved back, I’m enjoying spending evenings on the sofa with a member of my family, instead of hiding in my bedroom under a cloud.
Whisper it quietly for fear of breaking the spell, but I think I can say I’m quite happy.

RC 16-10-08
2055 BST

They always happen in threes..

The website through whom I met ex-girlfriend Melissa Rhyke sent me an e-mail asking if I would be interested in joining them on a long-term contract. I told them their one and only recommendation for me turned out to be a selfish, malignant, maladjusted dog-bitch and I’d rather waste my money on a t-shirt, thank you. It felt good.
Late last night, an old friend from uni called to say he was moving to America for business, and would I like to attend his leaving do next Friday “somewhere chic in London.” I said I’d be along if the dole office would provide me with funds for transport, entertainment and sundries and he laughed. He promised to keep in touch, but we left uni over a year ago, and it’s the first time he’s contacted me since, so I won’t be expecting a call anytime soon. (The dole office, by the way, don’t provide funds for transport, entertainment and sundries. I know. I asked them)
Then this morning I get an e-mail from Mr Patel, the manager at the cheapo store that wouldn’t hire me, stating “Our first choice turned out to be unsuitable and disappeared on Monday with the weekend takings and a vanful of merchandise.” Would I still be interested in the assistant manager’s position, now it’s vacant again?
I said I’d rather run naked through Chelmsford with my scrotum superglued to an Arab than ever set foot in his store again, but thanks for thinking of me…
Isn’t life fun??

RC 15-10-08
2123 BST

Has Stephen Fry been cloned?

I like Stephen Fry immensely.
True, the programme ‘Kingdom’ is an embarrassment to Norfolk, and the accents are an abomination, but at least he puts our county on the map, and he’s a spokesman for all that is good and clever and English.
I’ve noticed recently though that THE BLOODY MAN IS EVERYWHERE.
In the last 12-15months alone, by my reckoning, he has done each of the following:
Narrated the seventh Harry Potter as an audio book; shot another series of QI; shot another series of ‘Kingdom’; written a book about poetry; featured on ‘Who Do You Think You Are?’; presented and produced a film about The Guggenheim Press; presented and produced a documentary about bipolar disorder; narrated the ‘Pocoyo’ children’s programme; made frequent appearances in US TV drama ‘Bones’; written and directed a panto for a London theatre and given a keynote speech to the BBC in Edinburgh. Not to mention countless ‘guest’ appearances on ludicrous ‘celebrity’ panel shows on TV and Radio 4. Last week he popped up as the voice of a new radio ad about flu jabs, and now he’s hosting a 6-part, 6-hour series ‘In America’ for which he visited all 50 States of the Union. When did he find the time to do that exactly??
With his total hours on-screen and on-air over-taking even that of Ubiquitous Twats Russell Brand and Jonathan Ross, I have to reach one of the following conclusions:
- STEPHEN FRY HAS BEEN CLONED.
- STEPHEN FRY DOES NOT SLEEP.
- STEPHEN FRY IS 157 YEARS OLD (and has been making programmes constantly since birth, many of which we are only now seeing.)
I don’t know which is more likely, but bearing in mind the unceasing quality of his work in all fields, it must be stated – if he hasn’t been cloned yet, he bloody well should be.

At least I tried, mum...

My brief career as a drunkard may be over.
Yesterday I got through three bottles of vino and Campari, and I now have second-hand cheesecake on my curtains, and a liver the size of Swindon.
Part of me would love to take the path of my mother, and two of my grandparents, and several uncles and cousins, and live my waking hours in the comforting arms of oblivion, but I lack the necessary constitution. The more I drink, the sicker I get, and that may sound obvious to most of you, but it’s like a scientific breakthrough worthy of Einstein for me this week. In a welcome moment of clarity, I could see my life this week becoming my life each week for a decade.. If you drink all day you do even less than before, you have even less money and your prospects of changing both those factors is zero. So after three days of blissful escape, followed by three days of chaos and chest pains, I have given up the plan to be a piss-head. (You see – even when I set myself minimal goals I can’t achieve them or stick to them)
On a lighter note – literally – drinking all day and not eating properly has seen me shift a few pounds in weight, so maybe now’s the time to dig the skipping rope out of the garage, and find a second-hand weight bar on e-bay.
I wonder if I can get a gym membership paid by Social Services?

RC 13-10-08
2025 BST

Things I Like And Hate (today)

I like bright, cool, sunny autumn mornings.
I like cheap Vermouth in a tumbler after breakfast.
I like the sound of an axe being slammed into a tree trunk.
I like the feeling of not feeling, and not caring.
I like a toasted sandwich stuffed with so much out-of-date cheese that it oozes out of the crusts and burns your wrist.

I hate my mother; because she ruined us, and I still love her.
I hate my neighbour’s children playing PS3 loudly at daybreak.
I hate Jamie Oliver.
I hate celebrity children being named after fruit, or yoghurt brands.
I hate poorly written haiku.

I like online chess tournaments.
I like Facebook, and the stupidity of the people who use it.
I like Tesco, even though they are, apparently, the death knell for village shops, and local life.
I like cheese.

I hate anyone who works for the JobCentre.
I hate anyone who ever stands in front of me in a queue.
I hate cars.
I hate being fat.

I like Heather Locklear, when she starred in ‘The Fall Guy’ in hotpants.
I like Britney Spears, especially now she’s damaged.
I like samphire, dripping in butter.

I hate Jamie Oliver, more and more and more..
I hate train conductors.
I hate people who write lists, instead of taking time to write their blog entries properly.

I like port and stilton (the two should never be apart)
I like Rentaghost

I hate tuna and sweetcorn (the two should never be together)
I hate Mastermind

I like you

I hate me

RC 10-10-08
1753 BST

Cold hatred, and the cold truth

I hate Jamie Oliver.
He’s a tosser.
I’d like to be able to write a reasoned, intelligent essay about him and point out his defects and convince you all to hate him as much as me, but I can’t. The more I think about it, the more unreasoned my hatred becomes. It’s just one of those things. One of those clashes.. The hatred I bear for him is one of those all-encompassing world-shattering hatreds that occasionally crops up and affects all around them. The sort of hatred that Johnny Marr developed for Morrissey. The hatred that Judas bore toward Jesus that led him to betray him, and start a religion. If I had the opportunity to kiss Jamie Oliver and watch him dragged away to his untimely death by Roman soldiers, believe me I’d do it. He’s a tosser. And I hate him. Nuff said.

I’ve started drinking earlier in the day. My happiest moments are normally after I’ve had my first drink, and no-one wants to employ me at the moment, so why not start earlier? Why not have a can of cold Guinness at 10am while working on my daily blog? Why not numb the pain of a pointless existence by experimenting with cocktails at lunchtime?
The answer to all those ‘why nots?’ is, of course, ‘because your family is riddled with alcoholism and you’re on a slippery slope to oblivion.’ but stuff it. I’m not Ray Milland and this ain’t “The Lost Weekend.” so for today, and until I’m happier, stuff it.

RC 9-10-08
1605 BST

Happy New Month

The police called unexpectedly yesterday.. Mum punched a bus driver while drunk and disorderly, and gave our home address as her ‘fixed abode.’ Stupid bitch. I was tempted to say “I’ve never heard of her,” but instead regaled them with the full story in the hope they’d put it in the file and never call us again, or possibly condemn her to death.
She was as pissed as a ferret, and it was 8.15 in the morning. Apparently she dropped frozen peas on the floor, asked where the toilet was, and then attacked the driver when he asked her to leave. Stupid bitch. I guess no matter how far away she moves, she’s always going to have an impact on our lives.

Our neighbour has passed comment about the state of the garden. Something about lowering the value of the area.. Bearing in mind we’re surrounded by immigrants, whores and drug dealers I’m not sure how much lower it can go, but I took his point on board. I’m still waiting for Social Services to get back to me on the grant for a mower, so for now the jungle will remain as it is.

Elsewhere, the JobCentre website has vacancies for the following positions:
Tusk polisher for the Mammoth Display at the Stone Age Village (experience essential)
Childcare assistant on Friday afternoons only (enhanced disclosure essential)
Gravel grader at the builders supply merchants on Warner Street..
I guess my unemployment may go on a little longer.

RC 2-10-08
0851 BST