This happened. Was Great.

Take a moment to look at this image. Really drink it in. If you feel the need to weep, please do. I know I did.

I went to a place and asked a man for some pies and this happened. That's right. All I asked for was some pies. What I received was a gift from the heavens so awesome in its majesty that I'm finding it hard to look at any other plates of food with anything other than utter contempt. I was ready to get down on one knee and marry the pies there and then, but animal instinct took over and I shoved them all inside my gob instead. I would attempt to describe the joy I experienced whilst eating the pies, but our language isn't advanced enough to fully convey such wonderful splendour. So I will simply leave you with this image. Thankfully, my first mouthful took my breath away to such an extent that I was able to fire off a quick shot before I continued smashing it right down my face. Come join me as I pray at the pie altar...

Snotty Bugger

As I was strolling from Canada Water tube station to my little office last week, I glanced upon a small boy walking alongside his mother. Suddenly, something caught my eye. Instantly, my gaze was drawn towards a silvery trail running half the length of his sleeve, as though a daredevil slug had conducted its own X-Games on his forearm. Clearly this young lad was still at that carefree, joyful age when wiping a runny nose on his clothing was still totally acceptable, nay encouraged. Occasionally I smell something that takes me back to my childhood – the smell of rain after a particularly hot spell, cut grass – but rarely have I seen something that reminds me of being a young whippersnapper quite like this. How unfortunate that in this instance it was a small boy’s grubby sleeve. Groceio, as some might say…

Anyway, it got me thinking about other stuff that was once entirely acceptable or enjoyable, that we gradually grow out of as we get older. I mean, come on, when was the last time you remedied a dripping shnoz with brisk rub from your favourite sweater? And does anyone really have a favourite sweater anymore? So here you go, a brief rundown of other stuff I used to do, but gave up as time took its toll…

1) Be honest, when was the last time you pointed to various relevant parts of your anatomy whilst singing “Milk, milk, lemonade, round the corner chocolate’s made”? Once a playground mainstay; now relegated to occasional wistful thoughts over several alcoholic beverages. As a youngster, there was no situation where that rhyme wasn’t perfectly appropriate. As an adult? Next time you’re asked to give a presentation in work, deliver that and see how it goes down. Maybe wink and tap your nose before doing the bit about chocolate/poo. Let me know how that goes down.

2) A couple of weeks ago I saw a little boy standing on his seat on the train, banging on the windows with excitement at the sights whizzing past outside. I no longer have that excitement about Berrylands rail station. And even if I did, standing on my seat and screaming would see me swiftly arrested upon arrival at Waterloo. Shame.

3) Once upon a time, a little boy called Andrew John Durrant had the sweetest fucking mauve tracksuit you’ve ever seen in your life. What’s more, it had MY INITIALS ON THE CHEST. I strolled around, knee-high to a fully-grown adult human, earning nothing but respect and praise for my outfit. Nowadays, I’d be routinely shouted at in the street, mocked, laughed at and maybe even physically assaulted. Who’s in the wrong? I don’t make the rules.

4) When I was at school, maybe up to the age of about 12, I would head out for lunch, play football for an hour and return to afternoon classes a sweaty, sweaty, red-faced, sweaty mess. I didn’t feel self conscious, nobody minded, everybody did it; it was fine. If I went back into the office after lunch, covered in sweat and smelling like an alpaca’s genital rucksack, I’d be called into a meeting about personal hygiene quicker than James Corden could eat a Gregg’s steak bake.

Anyway, it’s Sunday, I’m tired and no one is paying me to do this, so that’s your lot. Cheers for now, see you again soon.

Signs

Just thought I'd do this quickly. Look at this road sign...



I'm assuming anyone who holds a current UK driving license will be aware that this sign signals that you can drive at the National Speed Limit. Therefore, on roads where you see this, the limit is 60mph, or 70mph for dual carriageways.

Anyone driving at 40mph past these signs deserves to have their bum stitched to their own mouth, thus completing the vile circle of detritus that they already represent in my eyes. I've thought about it and it turns out I'm not over-reacting.

Thanks.

Joy Sad Joy Sad

All too often, it has to be said, I take to these digital pages to grumble about something that’s irked me in the past few days/weeks/months/since I was born. For those of you who don’t see me all that often, you probably think I’m a right miserable old bludger. That’s only 99% true, so in order to show that I am genuinely content at least some of the time, I hereby vow to balance every moany statement of displeasure with a statement of inversely proportional floaty joy. I guarantee this will last for at least one post. So let’s kick this off with a passage of unbridled ecstasy. I’ll even do my best to end on a high too…

Reason to smile
Hooray! The clocks go forward this weekend! Lighter evenings! Summer’s on its way! A sneaky suspicion that the unremitting ruddy bleakness of winter is finally over! And who cares if we technically lose an hour of sleep? It’s a Sunday for Christ’s sake (literally), it’s not like I’ve got to be up for work; I’ll just stay in bed an extra hour! Delicious!

Reason to moan
Jim Carrey was wrong when he suggested in Dumb & Dumber that a loud, shrieking guttural sound was the world’s most annoying noise. Clearly it’s actually selfish people on the train (surprise, surprise…). This morning I was treated to a cacophony of clicking, whirring, beeping, tapping and general fuck-facedness. General rule: if you can hear the cunty sounds your phone is making, then so can everyone else in this cramped, enclosed space! Please either turn your phone to silent when in close proximity to hordes of potentially violent strangers, or LEAVE THE FUCKING THING ALONE FOR FIVE FUCKING MINUTES! FUCK!

Reason to smile
In just over a month I will be going to La Manga with three fantastic human beings for a week of sun, fun and no doubt lots of great chat. Who knows, if the weather’s decent I might even come back a slightly darker shade of translucent! It’s been 10 years since the four of us last went on holiday together, so this will be a real pleasure. Looking forward to it massively.

Reason to moan
Service providers – you know, those companies supposedly in existence to provide us with services – are being a bunch of throbbing arseholes again. Given that Barclays has just paid the head honcho a reported £6million bonus, you’d have thought dealing with my credit card application would be a stroll in the park. I mean, any company dishing out bonuses like that must be well-oiled, ruthlessly efficient machines that constantly surpass expectations of excellence, no? Apparently not. 1 month, 2 letters and a host of pointless, confused and utterly rancid phone conversations later, I’m still no closer to getting said card. Given that I’ve held a current account with them since I was about 4, you’d have thought it would be pretty simple. Elsewhere, I recently discovered that Vodafone have been charging me 83p every day for the past two-and-a-half months for accessing the Internet on my phone. Actual number of times I’ve accessed the Internet on my phone = zero. Cool.

Reason to smile
Two of the greatest couples in the world have recently announced that they are expecting! I’m absolutely over the moon for them and can’t wait for the mini humans to arrive later this year. Great day for the club! To top it all off, I’m even going to be Godfather to one of them! Wowaweewa! From now on I will only respond when addressed as The Godfocker. What’s that? Andy? I’ve no idea what you’re talking about.

Reason to moan
I’m not sure if it’s my newfound interest in coffee, the almost tracing paper-thin nature of my bedroom curtains or the close proximity of the railway station, but I honestly don’t think I’ve had a full night’s sleep in about two months. Pretty annoying really. I even tried sleeping in an eye mask last night to cut out the light. Turns out it’s about as comfortable as being teabagged ALL NIGHT.

Reason to smile
Ummm… lambs… lambs and all that? Daffodils.

Bi-monthly review

Incidentally, that heading has nothing to do with people who have a broad field of sexual preferences. That'll come up in future though possibly? Who knows...

Well, it’s now February 25th and Christmas seems like an absolute age ago. It’s at roughly this time of year that I realise I’m thoroughly bored of cold weather and thoughts turn to the upcoming summer. Like some kind of brainwashed idiot bastard, I still think of summer as being a few months of dazzling sunshine and warmth, even though the last time that happened was sometime in the 1970s. I blame Wimbledon. And ants. Sneaky. Let's face it, we're probably going to get 2-3 hours of direct sunlight sometime in June and that'll be it.

Anyway, as I reach this temperature-based watershed, I thought it might be a good opportunity to look back at the things I’ve achieved so far in 2011…

1. I went to the dentist for the first time in about 5 years. You might think that’s an extreme length of time to go without having the nashers checked, and you’d be right. The thing is, last time I went to dentist he charged me £60 just to look at the bastard things, then told me he’d be needing in the region of £300 to sort them out. I spat in his general direction – he asked me to, it was that mouthwash stuff, not an act of defiance – then ran away crying into my wallet and never went back. So imagine my surprise recently when I finally found an NHS dentist, had a check up for 16 reasonable English pounds, and was told that my teeth are in great condition and the only work I needed was to replace my one and only filling because it was a bit old. So there you go, apparently I’m a great brusher and have exemplary oral hygiene. But it all begs the question: what the fuck was the previous thieving tooth shit going on about?! Was he some kind of tooth fairy crime lord? Arses.

2. I finally investigated Spotify. Very rewarding. I can now listen to tracks like Don Henley’s Boys Of Summer and Journey’s Don’t Stop Believing without ever having to pay for them. There’s no downside to that arrangement. Still can't get the brigging Facebook friends’ playslists thing working though…

3. I pulled a hamstring. Standard. It’s my once-a-season ritual. Thankfully it didn’t tear this time. That would have been a proper bugger.

4. Last week I wrote the final ever issue of the Buffy & Angel magazine. Sadface. It is no longer part of my job to watch episodes of Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Angel in the office. Genuinely upset.

5. Perhaps my greatest achievement so far this year is commuting into London every day without punching anyone’s face. I walk a tightrope every day. Fall one way and the result is a train carriage full of violence and rude words. Fall the other way and I slowly curl up into a ball of frustration so tight that I eventually disappear under my own field of gravity.

What a start to the year I’ve had. It sure puts Colin Firth to shame! Loser.

2011? Already?

So, it turns out my enthusiasm for this blogging lark has been on a downward trajectory since roughly 5 minutes after I wrote my very first one. It’s not that I don’t enjoy sitting on my own and typing a load of balderdash every now and then – quite the opposite – it’s just that as free time decreases, tiredness tends to increase. It’s an unavoidable vicious tangle of circular swords, wires and vipers. Something like that anyway. And, in all honesty, if I’m going to do any writing during my spare time, I should really be doing something that might actually benefit me in some way. Like writing that movie script/sit-com/book I’ve always dreamed about…

Nonetheless, in complete contrast to everything I’ve just said, I’m going to try writing a few blogs every now and then anyway. Because it’s fun. And who knows, maybe someone hugely influential will read them one day and decide to offer me an amazing job. Pigs do fly. Occasionally. But only if you involve an electric current or bombs.

I’m gonna kick off 2011 with a look back at 2010 and my awards to the great and good from the previous 365 days. So here goes…

2010 Man of the Year – He’s won it before, and with another exceptional showing this year the award simply had to go to ‘Papa’ John Schnatter. What a man. Truly. Throughout 2010 Papa John delivered high quality delicious pizza treats directly to my mouth at affordable prices and with a song in his heart. The introduction of ‘Papa’s Lounge’ and the fantastic money-saving offers it brought only made the whole experience that much more rewarding.

Machine of the Year – Without doubt, the Blue Disco – aka my old Peugeot 106. After nine wonderful years of service, the Disco finally shuffled off in search of new adventures. He’d become very ill and needed more attention than I could afford to give him. Now, with a new owner who can smother him with love, he looks set to enjoy the twilight of his life in rude health. One of the automobile world’s last remaining characters, the Blue Disco was one hell of a machine.

I’m going to have to stop there. Not because I’ve run out of time, but because I can’t remember much else from last year. Funniest moment? No idea. Best film? Was Flight of the Navigator released last year? I guess that’s the trouble with turning 30. Unless it’s written down, it’s gone…

‘Till next time…

Reality TV

As a general rule of thumb I’m not an enormous fan of reality TV. Most of the shows are filled with vacuous imbeciles who clearly have a thoroughly overblown opinion of themselves. The worst part is that large sections of the general public lap these people up and celebrate them as if they’re actually worth celebrating. I just don’t get it. That’s more a comment on society than the contestants themselves, of course.

However, the one reality show I genuinely enjoy watching is I’m A Celebrity Get Me Out Of Here. Something about the format makes it infinitely better than the other festivals of reality shit that pour out of the telebox on a regular basis. Maybe it’s the consistently amusing quips of Ant & Dec that keep it moving along so brilliantly. Perhaps it’s the variety of familiar faces on offer that maintains interest. Or maybe it’s just the fact that it’s set in a jungle in a tropical location. I don’t know. What I do know is that I’m A Celeb offers up a far more entertaining slice of television than all of the other reality shows put together.

Let’s look at the facts: these are people probably accustomed to living in a fair degree of comfort, and here they are co-existing in some genuinely testing conditions with cameras pointing at them constantly. Bad performances in tasks deprive them of a decent meal, jungle creepy crawlies the size of a small dog wander through camp 24/7 and they’re sleeping on makeshift camp beds out in the open in a fucking jungle! I mean just look at the X-Factor – if some deluded fuckwit gets up and attempts Bryan Adams instead of Westlife, Louis Walsh will gush over them for performing outside their comfort zone. Seriously?! Throw the fucker in the jungle, make them eat rice and beans and shit in a bucket for three weeks, then we’ll see if they’re outside their ruddy comfort zone!

Even z-list celebrities who are only famous because they were once tag-teamed by a group of footballers gradually earn your respect on I’m A Celeb. It’s hard not to feel an ounce of admiration for someone willing to selflessly devour a marsupial’s anus just to provide meals for their fellow campers. Would you even do that for your mates, let alone a bunch of strangers you’ve only recently been thrown into a jungle with? Equally, if one of the contestants is a genuine cretin (cough, McKeith, cough), it’s impossible for them to hide it in such circumstances. People’s true colours will inevitably shine through in such testing conditions, for better or for worse.

As such, Big Brother, X-Factor, Britain’s Got Talent and The Only Way Is Essex can all go swivel if you ask me. Nothing more than sickly exercises in self-aggrandisement and disgustingly undeserved backslapping. Strictly Come Dancing can stay if it likes. It all seems very good natured and doesn’t do anyone any harm. Plus the female dancers are all very pretty. But I’m A Celeb continues to rule in my eyes. I’ll leave you with a brief list of facts to have been thrown up by the latest series:

1) Gillian McKeith has single-handedly earned her children at least a year’s worth of bullying. Cheers mum.

2) The combination of this year’s I’m A Celeb and Google Images has probably guaranteed at least an extra 10 million people have now seen Kayla Collins’ vagina.

3) Dom Joly should be referred to forever more as “The Voice Of The Nation”.

4) Stacey Solomon proves that all can be forgiven if you go on I’m A Celeb after X-Factor.

5) She also proves that hyperventilation needn’t interrupt speech.

6) Gillian McKeith is just one year older than Nigella Lawson. I’m not saying I’m particularly attracted to Lawson, but it makes me think I’d rather eat what she’s eating than what Gillian says we should eat.

7) I still don’t bother voting for anyone.

8) Having dated both Kara Tointen and Caroline Flack, it’s safe to assume that Joe Swash practises mind control.