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Five things I am proud of myself for:
Not having one member of staff quit because of my management techniques
Shifting lots of weight, and keeping it off (so far)
Snagging an absolutely wonderful wife despite being ugly and socially awkward
Keeping most of the horrible thoughts I have about customers internal instead of voicing them while they’re still in front of me
Being able to think of 5 things I am proud of myself for (if you include this one; if that counts)
Five things I would still like to achieve/improve:
Not being so negative in blog postings
Stop finding excuses to NOT cycle
Make more use of the degree that I struggled so hard to get
Appreciate my wife more; and let her know that I do
Watch more films and learn more about film history
Five-course meal I would like to try (preferably in the next hour or so):
Spicy parsnip soup
Chicken and tarragon sauce with chunky wedges and sweetcorn
American style Blueberry cheesecake
Cheese and biscuits
Strong Irish coffee with a chocolate mint
RC 31-7-16
Two weeks into her tenure as Prime Minister and my strange crush on Theresa May shows no sign of losing its intensity. I’ve thought about seeking therapy but actually I might just give into it and embrace it and ride it and enjoy it. In a way it’s a nice situation to be in. When I was first approaching maturity, and starting to notice ladies as objects of desire, we had Margaret Thatcher in Downing Street. Despite her position of power I found her about as sexually attractive as a half-evaporated puddle. Now we have someone in charge of the government who, rightly or wrongly, I have an urge to be locked in a sauna with. We also have a future queen who is one of the most stunning looking women in Britain. These are heady times indeed. We could reach a point in the near future when William and Kate are the monarchs, and Mrs May has to go and visit them to talk about opening parliament and stuff. There may even be a scenario where William is away on state business, and Queen Catherine and Theresa end up alone in the throne room at Buckingham Palace, the two most powerful women in Britain close to each other in the centre of our capitals most culturally significant building. They might even greet each other fondly with a warm embrace that lingers a little bit longer than would be constitutionally acceptable.
Oh God, I need help.
And a moist cloth.
RC 30-7-16
There is a journal called “Global Biogeochemical Cycles”
That must be riveting reading for the everyday man on the street.
Some recent articles have snappy titles like ‘Topographic variability and the influence of soil erosion on the carbon cycle’, ‘A novel molecular approach for tracing terrigenous dissolved organic matter into the deep ocean,’ and ‘Dynamics of carbonate chemistry, production, and calcification of the Florida Reef Tract (2009 - 2010): Evidence for seasonal dissolution’
I have a degree in chemistry and an obsession with global warming, but even I would find that lot hard going.
RC 29-7-16
Someone at work said “I found your blog the other day. It’s mostly you just moaning about things, isn’t it?”
I said “You should be glad I’ve got the blog to moan in. If I had to hold all that unhappiness in it would just turn to a tidal wave of inner rage that would eventually explode out of me in a hideous act like stabbing a customer in the eye with a fountain pen. Or something.”
He walked off unhappily, but I have to admit he has a point. I do often lose myself in a wallowing pit of indulgent bile. So I’m going to make a concerted effort to be more cheerful and less moany.
But not today, because Philippa has wound me up by going on about babies again.
RC 28-7-16
I’m sick of being told that I should be on Twitter, or follow people on Twitter, or have a Twitter account or two. It’s been going on for about 10 years now and I’m sick of it, so please leave me alone to enjoy my real world in peace.
There are many reasons I choose to avoid it. I’m not going to list them here, and I’m not trying to convert anyone away from their social media obsessions (which would be a futile pursuit anyway) but please let me just share these three:
Lots of business owners I know say things like “You HAVE to be on Twitter when you’re a businessman,” or “My company wouldn’t exist without an online presence,” or “There’s no point starting a business unless you also start a business Twitter account.” But when I ask them if they’ve ever had one bit of work come in that came to them exclusively because of their Twitter dealings they stare at me blankly and say “That’s not the point.”
When I worked at the other supermarket, one of my colleagues spent ages trying to convince me to ‘give it a go.’ I asked him to explain how it worked and he said “People can find you and ‘follow’ you and then you can ‘follow’ them back. You update your ‘feed’ as often as you like and anyone who follows you gets to read it IMMEDIATELY and INSTANTLY.”
I said “Wow. Immediately AND instantly? That’s amazing. Where are these followers then?”
He said “Everywhere. They could, literally, be anyone from anywhere.”
“So one of them could be a trainee suicide bomber in a terrorist cell in Pakistan who is reading your messages as a way of determining whether you’re a worthwhile target when he launches his one-man war against the West?”
He said “Well ,technically, he could be, yes.”
“But if someone like that was following you in real life you wouldn’t ‘follow’ them back, you’d get an injunction against them.”
He stared at me blankly and said “That’s not the point.”
A few years ago, I finally caved in and decided to at least give this thing a look. One of my fellow managers was convinced that if I saw this magic happening before my eyes I would fall in love with it and agree with him that it was the best thing since sliced bread (decent sliced bread, that is, not the cheapy awful own-brand crap we were selling at the time for 80p a loaf.)
So I spent a dreary lunch break in the managers office where he insisted on showing me his ‘Twit-feed.’ It just struck me as a confusing, chaotic mess. Every two seconds, thirty new messages would appear on the screen, only to be replaced by thirty more before I’d even managed to read three words of the first one. While my eyes tried to adjust to this vertical barrage of literature, he proudly pointed to the bit in the corner that told me he had “1,900 followers”
I said “What exactly does that mean?”
He said “Every time I put out a tweet, it gets read by 1,900 people.”
I said “No offence, mate, but how the Hell have you got to 1,900 followers?”
“Oh there are certain hashtags you can use that make people automatically follow you.”
“Even if they don’t know who you are? Or agree with anything you say? Or have any shared common interests beyond this website?”
“That’s right”
“Well why on Earth would you want them to do that?”
He said, as if it was the most obvious thing in the world, “to get to 1,900 followers.”
While this conversation had been taking place, approximately 32,000 tweets had appeared briefly on the screen before scrolling themselves away into nothingness.
I said “So you sit on this thing and you read the messages from 1,900 people do you?”
He said “Good God, no. There isn’t time to keep up with them all.”
So I said “Then what on Earth makes you think any of them are reading anything that you write? When you tell me you have ‘1,900 followers’ what you mean is ‘1,900 people that ignore my tweets.’ So what exactly is the point of doing it?”
He stared at me blankly and said “**** off, Ches, you Luddite.”
Case closed.
RC 26-7-16
Think about ALL MEN WORLDWIDE before answering this question:
Which of the following figures do you think is higher?
A) The number of men this weekend who drank beer while using a barbecue.
B) The number of men this weekend who thought about Harley Quinn while masturbating.
That “Suicide Squad” trailer, by the way, makes it look like the Film of the Year.
RC 24-7-16
I got my report written for work last night. I thought “I’m buggered if I’m going to waste my weekend detailing a way I can successfully implement some half-arsed plan that’s been formulated by a twenty-something graduate with no experience who is desperately trying to justify their thirty-something grand a year job.” So I put on a pot of coffee, added some brandy to it, and sat up til 3am having fun and finding faults.
It’s not very good, but it’s done, and that’s all I care about. I’ve had a lie-in, I’ve had a fry-up, and soon I’ll be cycling down a footpath and then driving off for a surf and a pub tea. Try as they might, the money-grabbing supermarket hierarchy shall NOT disrupt my leisure time!
RC 23-7-16
My superiors at work are talking about opening our garage 24-hours a day. A while back they tried to make me bin a member of staff, now they want me to find a way to man the place through the night. I don’t see the point. The store closes at 10 and the last hour is really slow, so the fuel takings between 9 and 10pm barely cover the cost of the lighting. But they seem to think we might get one or two customers overnight which would add up to a few pounds profit somewhere and that’s the only incentive they need to make my life harder and to force some poor sap desperate for a job to sit in our kiosk in the dark serving stoners and insomniacs. I don’t know where these ‘overnight customers’ might be coming from - it’s not as if we’re on a main road or close to an all-night cinema or anything. But someone somewhere getting paid to look at a spreadsheet and squeeze every possible penny out of the British public has decreed that it might be worth doing, so now I have to come up with a way to make it work. Will I get paid extra for doing it? No - it will be included as part of my managerial duties. When did I find out about this? This morning. When do they want my ideas by? Monday.
So much for a weekend off.
RC 22-7-16
1955 BST
Been so hot this week
My socks are soaked with arse sweat
And I’ve shed three pints
RC 22-7-16
For any aliens who may have landed on the planet recently, and having perfected their physical impression of humans would now like to be able to impersonate their behaviour, and who have realised that many people interact through various sports, and would like to know more about them all in the hope of better fitting-in, I present
RORY’S GUIDE TO BRITISH SPORTS:
Golf: A game in which stupidly dressed middle-aged men are charged ridiculous amounts of money to walk around a garden centre hitting a small ball with a curtain pole.
Football: A game in which two teams of millionaires with apparent brittle-bone disease fall over each other while amassed thousands lose themselves in an orgy of tribal ignorance.
Boxing: see ‘marriage’
Hockey: A game in which people from posh schools do impressions of Richard III brandishing a mis-shapen headless broom.
Polo: see ‘Hockey’ and add horses
Cricket (T20): A bat-and-ball game in which the object is to hit as many cars in the car park as possible.
Cricket (ODI): A bat-and-ball game in which the object is to give people something to watch while they spend the day getting blind drunk and singing.
Cricket (Test): A bat-and-ball game in which the object is to stand still long enough for your feet to take root in the ground.
Formula 1: A game in which idiots spend large sums of money to watch other idiots drive past them very fast.
Horse Racing: An event in which poor people gather in the hope of looking richer than they are by wearing clothes they can’t afford and handing large sums of money over to cockneys.
RC 21-7-16
The same customers who last week were complaining about the lack of Summer weather are now the ones moaning about it being too hot. It should be company policy to have a gun behind the counter that I am allowed to use on these people.
To be fair, though, I have spent all day gagging for exercise but then telling myself “It’s too hot for cycling.“ Then I remember that it’s hotter over in France at the moment and the Tour de France continues apace and I tell myself to shut up. I can’t really moan about a ‘hot’ bike ride in the beautiful, flat Suffolk countryside when the likes of Chris Froome are doing 110 kilometres in 10 degrees more heat, most of it up a mountain, and most of it with 50 other riders trying to beat him and countless French spectators trying to get in his way all the time. (Has anyone nicknamed him ‘Froome the Zoom’ yet? If not, then a) they should do, and b) they should give me credit for it as I’m pretty sure I‘m the first person anywhere to suggest it….)
Too hot to cycle, but not too hot to surf. I’m off to the beach for a late-evening dip in the sea.
RC 20-7-16
New Prime Minister!
A different cabinet!
But the same old smell…
RC 18-7-16
Ted is furious. It was the last day of The Open today and it’s the first time in living memory it wasn’t available on live terrestrial television. He’s refusing to ever pay his licence fee again and if that doesn’t work he says he’s going to blow up parliament.
In other news, we went surfing today. It finally feels like Summer.
RC 17-7-16
A month after Brexit, as we head into the most turbulent, uncertain times our country has ever faced politically and economically, Theresa May names her first Cabinet. We need a strong Foreign Secretary. This is more important than Chancellor in many ways; our relationships with all the major powers will be changing as we prepare to leave the EU, and the person charged with leading our international interactions needs to be strong, respected and trustworthy. Prime Minister May HAS to get the appointment of Foreign Secretary absolutely right.
Step forward, Boris Johnson.
I’ve never been much of a one for politics, but with my limited knowledge I get the feeling we’ve just bought a one-way ticket to a very dark destination.
Tomorrow I’ll talk about surfing, I promise.
RC 16-7-16
Another Cabinet reshuffle goes by without me getting a phone call…. I may have to consign my dreams of being Home Secretary onto the same shelf as my dreams of being MasterMind champion or Rachel Riley’s husband.
We have a female Prime Minister again, which is nice, as I can’t remember much about the last one. I watched Theresa May give a speech last week and she reminded me of the Wicked Witch from The Wizard of Oz. But the pictures of her outside No. 10 yesterday have made her look almost attractive. Maybe she’s more relaxed now the horrors of the EU stuff is behind us, and the softening of her facial muscles has made her look younger. Maybe she’s striding forward with confidence now she’s got the job she always dreamed of; or maybe I’m just being swayed by her position and finding her sexy now she’s the Most Powerful Woman In Britain.
Whichever is true, this blog and my psyche have taken a curious turn and one I want to stop right now.
RC 14-7-16
Just to clear up my little ‘Sunday Night Recollections’ mini-series, I present for you:
Five Reasons I Will Never Watch Wimbledon Again:
1.
I’m sick of setting aside two hours to watch a specific match, only to tune in and find a replay of an insignificant outer-court match from yesterday, because there’s yet another rain delay, but the players might be back soon so the producers want to be ready to cut to them at short notice, so they daren’t start something interesting like an old Fawlty Towers or an Ealing comedy. (Just as well, really, as it would be a reminder of stuff I could be doing instead of waiting for tennis. Lets face it - who would want to sit through Heather Watson vs. Venus when you could be watching ‘The Ladkillers’?)
2.
I’m sick of seeing shots of players insignificant others seconds after they’ve won the biggest game of their life. When Milos Raonic booms an ace down to dump Federer out in the semis, I’d like to see how Raonic reacts to the victory, not a close-up of some leech in the players box who wouldn’t be with him if he was a road-sweeper.
Which leads nicely onto..
3.
Judy Murray. JUDY chuffing MURRAY. Her son is the greatest individual sportsman GB has ever had and her contribution to his success was popping him out in the first place. The way the BBC obsess about her you’d think she’d knitted his abilities, rather than sat back and watched while he dedicated twenty years of his life to backbreaking, soul-destroying, body-wrecking physical exertion and breakdown-inducing mental strengthening. I think he’s superb, and I’d love to support him, but I can’t go through another fortnight of seeing his mums old-mans-scrotum of a neck on display every time he wins another point.
4.
The noises that players make when they hit the ball have now got so ridiculously loud and bizarre that it’s distracting to the point of distressing. The soundtrack to Williams vs. Kerber was like a really bad 1970s porn flick played in really slow motion (and with rippling applause edited in every couple of minutes.)
Which leads nicely onto..
5.
The women’s outfits, that used to give me so much pleasure, have now got so ridiculously revealing that it’s not even titillating anymore. It’s such an all-out fleshfest that the only thing we haven’t seen is VulvaCam. (which would, presumably, be available on the Red Button.) More is not always better, ladies. Show us your ankles, rather than half your innards. I now hark for a return to the days when a flash of a bit of calf would give me a little rush of raciness, so until female players turn up in something resembling a Victorian bathing costume, I’m out.
RC 13-7-16
I’ve witnessed some spectacular jingoistic tribalism exhibited by football fans before, but nothing to compare with things that went on around me on Sunday night. I don’t think there could have been a more unpopular result in football history than Portugal 1 France 0. The main annoyance levelled at the poor Portugese (aside from the presence of Cristiano Ronaldo in their team) seemed to be that they had ended up lifting the trophy without actually beating anyone along the way. It was all draws, penalty shoot-outs and golden goals, and all against lower-ranked teams made up of part-time goalkeepers and bus drivers. So while the best teams in Europe fought it out on the other side of the draw, they were able to sneak along quietly while playing a standard of football akin to South Suffolk Sunday Schools League. They didn’t really win the trophy, they stumbled over the line and stole it while everyone else was looking elsewhere. Their victory was like someone winning a game of musical statues at a party by being the only person there who didn’t have a sneezing fit when the music stopped. And that, apparently, is not on. Or “NOT ****ING ON, MATE” as it was eloquently put to me on Sunday while someone breathed the aftermath of fourteen cans of Stella into my face. As far as I can tell, the winners of these events should always be the best team in a tournament, and that should always be England.
I think I’ve got that right.
RC 12-7-16
Yesterday we had a ‘Sports Day’ of sorts at Ted and Beryls. They set up a barbecue and a drinks table, and four different televisions, and people congregated in the room of their choice to watch whichever of the many individual or team events they wished to follow most closely. By my counting, there was the Wimbledon Mens Singles Final, the Mixed Doubles Final, the British Grand Prix, the Tour de France, the Scottish Open golf and the Euro2016 football all taking place in tandem or in isolation, and about 47 people in the house to enjoy them. (I may have missed an event or two in there somewhere - The First Invitational City of Swansea Three-Legged Race For Pantomime Geese, or something - as it was all a bit of a blur.) It was an unusual, unrestricted, unbridled celebration of sporting fun, for everyone apart from me. There aren’t many sports I enjoy watching on TV, but when I do, I prefer to watch them alone. Not with four dozen rapidly intoxicating ne’er-do-wells who mistake my indifference for some kind of ancient unheard-of Puritanism. Womens tennis I love, but that’s because it’s basically an excuse to spend two hours watching young ladies in the prime of physical fitness behaving athletically in the kind of tight, white clothing that would be banned from most public places just decades ago. It’s a perverts paradise, and therefore best visited alone.
Men’s tennis just isn’t the same; not for me anyway. I admire the athleticism, and I appreciate the enormity of Murray’s success, but watching a sweating, grumpy Scotsman out-serving a sweating, lanky Canadian didn’t attract my attention the way that three sets of Mlandenovic vs. Cibulkova would have. That’s just the way it is, and that’s just the way I am. So most of my day was spent slowly supping lager that I didn’t really fancy while Philippa lost herself in a world of sporting eye-gasms.
I did have a lot of stuff to write about when I started, but I seem to have gone on a bit already and I think we both need a break, so I’ll leave it there for now.
Let’s call this the end of the first set.
RC 11-7-16
And so another week is washed away by a downpour of depressing, dirty rain. Shakespeare never wrote a sonnet about it. But if he did, it might have looked like this:
Shall I compare thee to a Summers day?
Thou art drier, and not as fecking annoying
Rough winds do shake the windows while I play
And I can’t be bothered….
RC 9-7-16
Realised today that I’m on course for a year where I post a different number of blog entries each calendar month. Haven’t done that since 2012 so might take it on now as a challenge for the rest of the year.
Ran a competition at work for the best INITIALOETRY based on the word ENGLAND. I had to explain to most of the entrants what an acronym was, but once I did they realy got into it. I know very little about football, and most of them covered that topic, so I probably wasn’t the best person to be be appointed Chief Judge, but these were the winners (each receiving an out-of-date Toblerone)
Europe Now Going. Let’s All Nuke Denmark.
Embarrassing Nancyboy Gits Lost Again - Now Disappear.
I have spent most of today wishing it was Friday already.
RC 4-7-16
Not entirely sure what to write about today.
I could talk about the continued indifference of the British weather to my happiness.
I could talk about the fact that, since the results of the EU referendum have been known, everyone that comes into the garage seems to be eyeing everyone else with suspicion, as if we’re on the brink of civil war and no-one is sure whose side we’re all on.
I could talk about the genius of the Wimbledon organisers, who insist on all female tennis players wearing all-white, which is by far the sexiest colour of clothing for a woman to wear.
I could talk about Ted’s week-long spell of anger about the England football team, and his determination to ring me daily about it and use me as a sounding board, even though he knows I’m not really bothered about the sport in the slightest.
But I want to blog positively today, so I don’t want to write about any of that.
Bye, then.
RC 3-7-16
These are supposed to be the days that we dream about and reflect upon during Winter. When it’s battering it down with rain and it’s two degrees Celsius, we’re supposed to look back on late June and early July and go “It was lovely, and it makes the dark days bearable when we know we have a glorious Summer ahead of us.”
That’s what it should be like. That’s the way the script should be written. That’s what I try and tell myself when I struggle with days of SADness.
Well, we’re in that ‘glorious’ spell now, and it’s been shit.
I think we’ve had two hours in the last eight weeks that have been calm, warm and bright. Everything else has been a combination of low cloud, heavy rain and/or perpetual wind.
I want to give up on this stupid country and move to Dubai. It may be teetotal, misogynist and corrupt, but at least you can go outside without your coat on.
RC 2-7-16
Last week I got moaned at by some drivers for not displaying enough England flags and signage ‘in support of our National team.’ I had made a managerial decision, in light of the impending EU referendum, not to be seen to support either side of the Leave/Remain argument, but still got moaned at anyway. I asked for clarification of our policy from Head Office, and was told that I should indeed be flying the flag of St. George, and hanging bunting from every available surface, as “the more patriotic products we display during football tournaments, the more we are likely to sell.”
And everything, of course, has to come down to money.
So, on the day after the British public voted to say goodbye to the European Union, and on the eve of England’s humiliating sporting defeat to Iceland, I covered almost every available inch of space in the garage with symbols of our ‘great nation.’
And at precisely ten minutes past six on Tuesday morning I had my first derisory comment about it. Specifically - “I hope you’re gonna rip that shit down now.”
Then twelve minutes later - “I hope you’re happy then. You got what you wanted. My kids will grow up with no chance of travel and no prospect of working abroad, but at least you flag-waving ‘Leave’ bitches ‘got your country back.’ Well done, you must be very proud of yourselves.” My argument that we were simply supporting a small team of footballers and not making a geo-political statement fell on deaf ears.
RC 1-7-16
