342: Stupid @easyjet

We're off in sunny Spain – having a sunny time, sweltering, sangria-ing, and waiting for our missing luggage to turn up. Staying at the inlaw's wonderful appartment, modelled on a classic Fred Flintstone / Bedrock style, well-stocked with beer, and centred on a circular blue pool. At the local Mercadona one (or more) can purchase litre bottles of a cerveza pilsner beer called Aurum (Gold) at 0,65€ - and you know what, it's pretty darn tasty. ¡Ole! 65 cents a litre – crikey ; I'm staying.

Did I mention our luggage hasn't joined us at our destination. Blame EasyJet – useless bastardos. It's the first time I've ever flown EasyJet, and the first time any airline has forgot to put my fucking luggage on the plane. The shrugging Spaniard on the complaints desk didn't offer an apology, but did say we would have our luggage within 24 hours. That was almost 30 hours ago. In that time I have been sweating in shorts and a vest belonging to my (soon-to-be) father-in-law. I had a small wealth of gaily coloured vests and delightfully bright Hawaiian-style shirts packed in the case and waiting to be given their first wearings. Sad times. Blame EasyJet – they suck.

EasyJest complaints blog

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to distract me from easyjet's incompetence

Just sent a wee tweet @easyJet, @easyjetcare, and @easyjetservice to express my minor dissatisfaction. But I didn't mention that all of my holiday so far has been spent waiting for a box of my own clothes to arrive ; a box which should have got here at the same time I did ; a box which a fucking syphillitic goldfish could have managed to sling in the back of the plane.

It's lucky I decided to let my fiancee ride in the passenger compartment of the plane, instead of contorting her into the suitcase like usual. She'd still be god-knows where, being trundled and trawled carelessly about by that group of feckless, forgetful fools that ride under the collective noun of EasyJet. The collective known of idiots, morons, and travelling football fans, is an easyjet ; an easyjet of idiots. Between us we can start that meme.

Next time you are sat in a beautiful beer garden trying to enjoy a quiet Sunday afternoon, and your peace is being disturbed by a collection of hooting, guffawing ninnies in rugby shirts, you can say ; look at that easyjet of prats, wish they would shut up. Someone should go and shut that easyjet up.

Still, I've used my time wisely having installed something on the balcony to provide some shade, made some salsa (my own v v basic recipe – perfect for salads, burgers and nachos), started back on the ol' blog catch-up, read a healthy portion of my beloved Christopher Hitchens' memoir Hitch-22, and started on Philip Pullman's His Dark Materials trilogy.

As if to answer my tweet, yer wee man from easyjet has just turned up with my suitcase, saying I have your order, here is your order. Yep, thanks for my order ; I ordered one suitcase full of my own possessions, to be delivered over a day after it's required. Perfect timing. Now to shower and get changed. Pheee-ew.

332: Bring beer.

Public park like a large private garden twenty seconds walk from my front door – getting the hang of flip-flops, flip-flopping it to a patch of grass to sit and read – try to write, scribbling crap in a girly little note book. Attempting literature and science-fiction and slowly failing at both- chin up son, you'll get there in the end. Start a story, write for a bit, and then finish it – woohoo a finished story. A family punt, putt and pot golf balls at one another across the uneven green. Little girl-little dog jumps on our blanket yip yip yip, clouds swirl before and behind the sun, raising goosbumps and shivers, smoothing them out with soothing sunbeams.

Bicycles, joggers, an idiot on a motorbike, footballs. If there were tennis courts they would surely be in use right about now, as Wimbledon brings about pretensions of tennis-love in all who are easily persuaded. Future generations of Brits will be world class participants at playing on the swings and pushing about little sisters. Or lying on a blanket eating crisps and reading Asimov – gold medal.

drawing by kate at bejeweled

The sun goes down and who knows what goes down in the park once the sun has gone down. The robot rats and the hobbling pigeons take over, pecking the eyes and knawing the toes of all who impinge upon their land. They man and mouse the border and flick sticks when they see the whites of your eyes. Invisible rainbows rise over the secret paddy fields and potato patches. The moles parade in tophats and tails, as the gnomes snicker to themselves. I cannot confirm the truth or otherwise of these claims – those pesky rats are keeping me well at bay. Plus, you know, I've got my shoes off and it's sort of bedtime, so perhaps I'll give all that stuff a miss. Its not important anyway.

These blogs don't write themselves you know, but on days like this I wish they would. It's backbreaking labour ; much worse than being a pit pony or drug mule. Those marathon runners with bloody nipples know nothing about hard work or pain compared to what I'm going through. Those guys can turn their brains off and just keep putting one foot in front of the other, whereas when my brain is turned off and there seems to be no on switch.

There is a constant beeping coming from the security system downstairs. It's not the alarm, just a meaningless beep-beep-beep that will not stop. Come around and sort it out ; bring wire cutters and a blow torch. And beer.

329: in which I start a story and dream a dream

"Sunday morning, bloody sunday morning" was the first sentence in what was going to be today's blog post. As it turned out it somehow lead me into a short story about interpersonal relations between two people confined together for an unimaginably long period of time set against the background of high-concept hard-SF. Because it seems like it might be pretty bloody good I can't post it here; that will immediately make it inadmissable for the competition I am preparing entries for.

I wrote a good portion of the hard-SF intro (hard meaning attempting to base it on the fundamentals of real science, as opposed to the space-operas of soft sci-fi), before realising I had made a fundamental mistake. The entire story rested on the concept of relative time speeding up to an observer travelling close to the speed of light then, just as I tried to expand the concept in my mind by yammering about it to my fiancee, I realised my mistake. Of course time would appear normal to the traveller at the speed of light, but relative to him stationery observers would be moving extremely slowly. If I travelled out to the stars and back again at the speed of light only a year or two would pass for me, but millions of years would pass on earth. This realisation resulting in me spitting damnation and the desperately trying to fix my mess ; and more importantly fix my story. It's done now. The seams need hiding somewhat but it's getting there – trust me.

We sat in the park in the beautiful sunshine, read Asimov and made notes in my girlie little pad. She made a daisy chain and I scratched the little fleaflies off my knees. In my notebook I wrote I dreamed of a different world where all was the same except that the word 'plunger' had been replaced with the word 'plumb' and only I was aware of the disparity. I'm not sure 'disparity' is the right word here, but that was a real dream I had. I was entirely bemused that not only were people saying plumb to mean plunger, there seemed to be a higher than normal number of reasons to use the word. How often do you have cause to use a plunger, let alone actually see one or think about them. The fact is there is one in our bathroom, but it's not something I thought I was particularly interested in.

Science fiction is more interesting and exciting than I ever could have imagined ; now in retrospect I think my whole life might have been contrived in order to arrive me at this point. I am reading a huge amount, planning a wedding and a future, being happy and creative, and my belly is full. I've also just sorted out the majority of my tiny little office space and am actually sat at my desk writing this. Until now that was impossible due to the insane amount of crap I have accumulated and the boxes they live in. There is a bug on my laptop screen. It's gone now.

313: BLACKPOOL - Wish you were here?

Blackpool today, and I got through ten handy-packs of Kleenex and had to resort to stealing loo roll.  (Compulsory retort to obvious masturbatory-themed joke, “Yes, it was that exciting”.)  Crippled by a summer cold/severe hayfever, but the jolly uplifting fun of Blackpool still allows me to say C’est la vie and live and let live to the cold virus and the plant pollen.  Aside: no it doesn’t; despite the fun of Blackpool I still cry death to common colds and all anemophilous plant species.  But, erm?  Oh, yes... Blackpool!

Things I saw in Blackpool

• As we were arriving the car in front had a Blackpool FC scarf which boasted We Are Premier!  No you’re not mate.  Get with the now granddad.

• Moments after parking the car we saw our first hen do.  The oldies walked with their sashes reading mother of the bride, mother of the groom, and the like.  The youngies trailed behind with their bride to be and bridesmaid sashes.  All wore blue denim skirts, black tops, and pink deely-boppers.  We turned the corner and outside the first B&B we passed, sat a stag-do drinking blue WKD with their breakfast.  Welcome to Blackpool!

• Of course everywhere we looked there were stag and hen parties, all dressed to match one another, and all having a huge time in the North West’s capital of the pre-nuptial celebration.  One group of young women were dressed from head to toe in black robes; sort of like a shapeless colourless sheet, that even covered their heads and faces leaving only a small slit for the eyes.  They weren’t wearing sashes so I couldn’t tell which one was getting married.

• You now have to pass through security scanners and undergo a bag search to get into Blackpool Pleasure Beach; bit weird.  They confiscated my spanner which I had cruelly calculated to throw into the works.  As it turns out I didn’t need to, as the heat was doing its best to shut down all the rides.

• In the queue for the Big One a large dark-haired woman in a black flowered summer dress had an entire ‘knitted’ sleeve of self-harmed scar tissue, unbroken from shoulder to wrist.  And she wasn’t even close to being the weirdest looking person there.  No offence Blackpool, but your gene pool is dangerously shallow.  There are a lot of sand-scraping knuckles, Neanderthal brow-ridges and overly hairy faces... and that’s just the women... the orange women...

• A spectacularly good collection of seaside postcards.

• Hot dogs, fish and chips, ice cream, chips and gravy, candy floss, seagull, cockles, muscles, whelks and oiks.  Snotty tissues.

273: Bite It, You Scum

Were you in the garden of The Met bar in Didsbury today (22^nd April 2011) at 5 or 5.30pm?  Are you a clumsy lumpen dredge of human waste?  Did you lunge into the path of a poor soul carrying a tray of drinks (1 bottle of wild berry cider, one pint of cloudy cider, one pint of Sam Smiths, one lemonade, and one overpriced bag of potato scabs), sending all into the air in a downpour of ice and liquid?  Did you arrogantly look the, rightly pissed off, person up and down and then turn back to your friends?  Did you apologise?

No you didn’t, did you.  You clumsy shite, you spilt all my drinks and didn’t even have the manners to apologise.  I poked you in the shoulder and said you’ve just knocked fifteen quids worth of drinks on the floor.  Your reply, what do you want me to do about it?  What do you think?  Have you ever been in a society before?  An apology would be nice for starters; a sincere one.  If I thought you gave a shit then you might have been able to claw back from arsehole to clumsy thicko.  My fiancée said, if that had happened in Ireland you’d have got a sincere apology and twice the drinks bought for you.  She’s right as well, and I’d likely have made a new friend.

You could start by buying me some drinks, you prick.  “I haven’t got any money.”  Really.  Really???  You should be ashamed of yourself.  Yes it was an accident, but it was clearly your fault, and any decent well-mannered civilised person would be embarrassed and contrite.  Apologies at least, and preferably getting a round in are without doubt, the done thing in this situation.  You are less than half a human being.  Your testicles are peanuts, and your cock is a cross-eyed parasitic worm.  Your spine is an old whore’s-bath dish rag, and your breath stinks like one.

I wish the blood vessels in my vengeful eyeballs to lurch out and choke your unapologetic throat.  I wish upon you the demon hell spunk of GG Allin to fill you with its poisonous piss disease.  May the tips of your fingers burn; you try and try to reach your severed manhood as it sinks below the surface of the deep fat fryer.  May the debt for your sins pass on to every generation that you begat, and may your firstborn spurn you from the age it can speak.

You need special medicine to live.

Phew... Sorry everyone.  I'm glad that angry rant is out of my system.  These sorts of things can cause terrible problems with high blood pressure, twitching eyes, and nervous disorders.  I've even gone back and toned down the language.