Lord of Leisure

Hooray! A new year! 6 months ago….

Yes, it’s the first of January and that means there is much to look forward to, perhaps this year, humanity will find a global harmony to live and work together, meaning the world will seem a far less disturbin… hang on….(looks at calendar)….what do you mean it’s the 5th of June? What the hell? Where did the last 6 months go?

It’s hard to imagine that so much can happen in such a short space of time to everyone in such a blink of an eye in the grand scheme of things, after all, they say a week is a long time in Politics, so 6 months must be at least the equivalent of an ice age.

But events have indeed moved on since the end of last year, where the Euro was on the brink of collapse, people were losing their jobs left, right and any other point of the compass, and generally the feeling you had after watching the news was that of a chronically depressed lemming who got nowhere speaking to those Samaritan chaps.

It would be nice and easy to go off on a diatribe about how the government makes so many u-turns about their policies that you’d think they were stuck on roundabouts in Milton Keynes, how Rupert Murdoch has settled back to sleep nicely now the focus is away from his evil empire a bit now, and how things in the middle east always seem to heat up when no-one’s paying attention to them, but not this time. Continue reading →

Seasons greetings to you all! It’s the 25th of December and that means a festive Ooh Sometimes message to be displayed to those who finished all the mince pies, burnt the Christmas dinner and thought those crotchless hot pants they gave to Grandma was a good idea, especially when she came back to show everyone what they looked like on her.

As what should kind of go without saying yet you can’t really get away with it, Merry Christmas to everyone whether they like it or not today, and indeed instead of wishing cheer and peace to all mankind, let’s just remember what it’s all about; spending time with people you go elsewhere to get away from and being disappointed to once again receive that novelty item that everyone thought you’d love but instead would rather choke the dog with.

I told you I wanted a microwave bitch!

During the festive period of tolerance to all, the Lord of Leisure will be in residence away from (insert weather condition here) London, more than likely right now I’ll be sharing the sheer joy found on my father’s face over the breast implants voucher he now has to use and the belt sander that mum will use clean the car with.

Ok, let’s just pause for a moment as if you happen to be reading the text within this blog post straight (we’re not sexualist, if that is even a term), you’d be forgiven that the writer of this piece would be about to commit suicide by tinsel. Rest assured that is not the case, it’s just a slightly harder time of year that one would care to admit. Continue reading →

Only way to get decent BBQ in London.

Given that it’s been at least 6 months since anything meaningful arrived here, one might forgive you if you used Ooh Sometimes as your number one news source, in which case you probably had the idea that London was still burning down in full riot mode, which as it’s coming up to the festive period, would have meant that this time of year would have been a better time as there would have more things to select from your local TV shop than there was in the summer. After all they normally save their best stuff for Christmas.

So at long last it was time to deck the halls with bits of rubbish found in the nearby bins, prepare Grandma for a good stuffing and once again run around trying to get things for people we cannot stand, with money we simply do not have. Merry Christmas indeed. Bah, humbug and other words that Charles Dickens would care to throw out.

In last year’s warning over the forthcoming festive season, it was commented that in general, people’s attitudes seem to have altered in comparison to years gone by, not that I’m an expert in reading human behaviour. There was a great restraint on people mentioning the whole “New Year, New Start” phenomenon which was so popular the year before, which borderline drove me insane, therefore reaching out for some stranger in the street’s throat, screaming “Why wait for next year to do something when you could try and do something about it now….hello officer, didn’t see you there.”

Of course, we were still in the mix of financial cuts that many faced, be it individuals or businesses, and as a result, it seemed to be getting back to basics for a large part of it, in turn somehow making Christmas something more special than getting a few days off to eat, drink and p*ss our misery away while moaning about getting a book about road signs and a watch that tells you that you need to buy another watch.

This year, what actually has changed? Continue reading →