361: A list and a joke

My notebook is supposed to contain prompts for blog posts which I have generated throughout the course of the days – the days, as the days go by and by – but at the moment all it seems to contain is meaningless lines and tedious bullet points. For instance there is an idea for a script based on a follow-up to The Smoking Room combined with a dream I had about a car crash outside my parents non-existent dream-house. There is an amazing idea for a coin-operated shoe-size measuring machine (seriously, I hearby copyright that idea – it will make me millions). There are the scores from an unfinished game of Scrabble, some notes about ring sizes, and some mundane and possibly offensive observations from Saturday afternoon in Manchester city centre. Let's take a look.

• The arhythmic limps of two disabled walkers, cycling in and out of syncronisation like Captain Beefheart's Magic Band during the Trout Mask Replica recording sessions. To the tune of a busker's tin-whistle rendition of Pop Goes the Weasle they amble proudly shoulder-to-shoulder.
• The ubiquitous perma-stickiness found on all pub tables. Available in a wax or a spray from all good licensing trade wholesalers.
• My one-year old godson's obvious delight and glee when glancing shoes in Neu Look, escalators and bras in Debenhams, and a plastic illuminated panel with a grass pattern in Arndale Market.
• The endless hours your (my) fiancee can spend getting her make-up done by your (our) friend who works at Urban Decay.
• The way drinks always leave a wet circle even if you don't spill. And how the good drinks (a cold beer, white wine or whiskey) will drip condensation all down your front.
• The way you think writing a list of observations, instead of a single expanded and explored thought, will be an easy way of blogging, and how it can turn out to be quite a struggle. See any episode of Just A Minute featuring Paul Merton or Clement Freud for examples of the difficulties, and potentially high rewards, of listing.
• A couple sitting alone (you know what I mean... together, but alone) at a table. One props her ehad with one hand and taps away ignorantly on her phone. He taps his foot, scratches his chin, sniffs his finger, takes a sip of his pint, shuffles and reshuffles his arse in his seat, and looks blankly at the menu for the fifth time. Mobile phones: the rudest piece of shit on the planet, after the people that use them.

That was the equivilant of building a wooden chair by simply pouring carpenter's tools onto the table and saying 'ere, look at these. Just spare parts and tools lying there ineffectually.  Anyway, I am shit.  Clement Freud was not.  Here he is at his best: