Imagine you’d never met me (some of you haven’t; you should, I’m nice) and I went up to you in a train station in London and said “Excuse me, can you do me a favour, I need a newspaper, but rather than going to the newsagent just over there and buying one, I’d rather give you the money and you go to Manchester for me by train, pick one up …
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With the Eurovision Song Contest taking place in Malmo, Sweden this year, I’m already well-prepared in advance for the festivities, with a Swedish flag and a Swedish sash with Sweden written on it. Now some of you might think that I’m the kind of person who has national tat for every country in the world stocked up in my cupboards “just in case”. You’d be …
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I was hoping it wouldn’t come to this. That I would not have to be writing on my blog, satirising this most recent girl I was in touch with through online dating. It seemed like we might even progress past the first date into proper dating, and she would be immune from inclusion in my posts, except when we had had hilarious times together and …
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I’m well-known for my way with words with women, sadly not quite in the manner I’d hope for. If there’s something inappropriate to be said I have a habit of saying it and if there’s a back-handed compliment to be made I’m usually the first to make it. I never mean anything wrong, I’m very well-intentioned, but I have a habit of trying so hard …
Continue readingLet's face it, I hadn't had the anaesthetic, I hadn't cried when I got my injection, and I hadn't pissed myself. I'd already done pretty well with this girl today.
I’d been having some problems with the strength of my voice, it was croaky and would cut out sometimes. I’d tried all kinds of things to resolve it, but the only thing that seemed to do it was singing Belinda Carlisle on SingStar. I could sing karaoke just fine, but this was not a solution that would help me at work. “Hey Alan, how’s the …
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There are a lot of stories on this site that involve drinking, but to be honest it came as a shock to me how many actually don’t. When I first started writing this blog, I assumed it would mainly consist of an endless line of alcohol-related misadventures, but while some of my finest, or perhaps simply most bizarre, stories have involved heavy drinking and inebriated debauchery, the …
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This anecdote cost me £415 so it better be fucking worth it. I took the day off on Thursday for two things I intensely dislike, the dentist and the barber. With the dentist it’s not so much me that has the problem with it, it’s my wallet. Actually that’s not true it’s both of us. I was “blessed” with not one but two hereditary/genetic conditions which …
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“Whit’s yer favourite colour wee man?” It’s a strange question to be asked in a dank seedy underpass. Maybe when I answered, the other young chap urinating against the wall with his back to me would turn around and my favourite colour would be written in marker pen on his forehead, perhaps these lads were merely travelling magicians. No, I knew exactly what was happening …
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Me and airports don’t really get on. I think it stems from the notion of having to be there at a certain time (my timekeeping is legendary for all the wrong reasons) and also because there is such a grey area surrounding exactly how early you need to be. Do I really need to be there 2 hours before, can I get away with 1.5 …
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No, this is not a generic “tramp on public transport” story, this is far more freaky and evidence I lead a charmed or cursed life. Some years ago, I had booked a trip from London to Glasgow for a very infrequent trip home and for some personal business. I was involved with a band called The Complete Stone Roses, the definitive Stone Roses tribute band …
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I recounted in my previous post how I found myself in Birmingham living and working. I had settled in the Moseley area, very leafy and green and popular with students, which meant that a lot of my colleagues in the small internet-generation publisher I was working also lived there. I lived just one street along from where JRR Tolkien lived when he wrote Lord of …
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This didn’t happen to me, I read it in the news. Please calm your outrage, no I am not going to start simply reviewing common or garden news stories on this site (unless people really want me to, I’ve got no integrity really, it’s all about the page views), but I saw this and I felt it was an example of someone else’s anecdote which …
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