Hello all,
After taking an extended leave of absence from both Facebook and The Jolly Box, circumstances beyond my control dictate that I rejoin the online community. It does, however, beg the questions why and where? For those of you looking for a reason, I am prepared to give you one. Well, these things happened that are totally none of your business, then I deactivated my Facebook and Blog. How was that?
In any case, recent events have led to me wanting to write them down.
So last week I went to another pub to help out in their kitchen. Long story short; most of their chefs quit at the same time and now they're fucked. It was actually obnoxiously quiet, and when I wasn't arguing with the chubby imbecile from Romania who was running the kitchen I was stood around doing nothing. I was only there for two days and one night, but it was on that night that I met Callum.
Callum was a forty-something local, who was described to me as "a paranoid, schizophrenic, manic-depressive." I thought the staff were just taking this piss out of some nutty regular, but no. They were being quite literal. Callum was, in fact, the single most insane person I've ever come into contact with.
He came up behind me while I was talking about some South Africans I knew, decided, for some reason, that I was a South African Soldier and started quizzing me about the readiness of the South African Military.
Once he was done with his questions about South Africa's ability to take on Nato, he told me a story. When reading the transcription below, imagine Callum as a 5' 6"ish, rotund chap, with thin greying hair and a slight northern accent (Yorkshire, I think). Every word he came out with was said with such staunch sincerity and a stern expression that it would have been unnerving if it wasn't so hysterical. It went a little something like this...
Callum: "So I was on this planet millions of light-years away from here, that was populated by these Witches, right? And me and my mates had this broom which we had to keep away from the Witches because they were going to use it to destroy something"
Me: "Who were your friends?"
C: "There was me, John and this other bloke. John wanted to use the broom to destroy the Universe, but I wouldn't let him."
Me: *Don't Laugh. Don't Laugh. Don't Laugh* "When did this happen?"
C: "Ooooh... more than eight hundred and fifty seven years ago. It was shortly before Ray Mears took over Canada."
That's the basic jist of the story - it actually carried on for more than fifteen minutes in great detail before he decided to tell me which version of the Bible was his favourite and the best way to drain someone of their blood. The manager then refused to serve him any more alcohol, he got angry and said he was going to get a gun and kill us all. Ten minutes later he strolled back in with (what I hope was) a plastic machine gun. I laughed so much it hurt.
In other news, I think I've finally decided which charity to support for my half marathon. I think I'm gonna go for Naomi House, which provides care for children and young people with terminal illnesses. As a general rule, I can't stand any and all children, so why would I want to support this charity? In my experience, terminally ill children are far less irritating than the healthy ones, so I've decided to do all I can to keep them that way. And it just so happens to be the charity that my company is supporting this year, and I may or may not get extra sponsorship because of it.
Also, my laptop of four years finally gave up the ghost on Sunday, which has left me feeling somewhat ambivalent. Annoyed: I had to use a credit card I finally finished paying off two weeks ago to buy something which four days ago I didn't need. Happy: I have finally joined that most noble lineage of smug pricks who use a Mac. "Oh, what's that? You're PC has crashed again? Vista? Oh dear, no. If you've got three seconds to wait for it to boot-up, I'll look up a solution for you on my MacBook Pro. You're so, totally welcome."
I'm not sure I can be bothered with all this social-networking crap. As much as I enjoy looking at photos of events I've not been invited to, I can't see me putting up with it for long. We shall see.
Later, a-holes.
Joe.
No comments:
Post a Comment