My car's a bit like Grolsch...

And why is my car like Grolsch?

Last Thursday, my car went a bit schizo on me - the accelerator didn't feel right, pulling back on me. It was alright when I got up to a decent cruising style speed, but when building it up it was all juddery. I put it down to an air bubble in the fuel tank (or some bullshit like that) and thought it'd go away. I even turned it off, and back on again as seems the normal protocol when something's broken nowadays. Anyway, I took it to the garage on Tuesday morning at 8am - I'm not a morning person at the best of times, I'm even grumpier and irritable than usual (!). It didn't help I may have been slightly hungover too after a cracking night out at East on Monday. Anyway, I left it there for the day, went to glorious Haskins for a 7 hour shift. Nothing really happened, apart from some lady storming out of the shop because someone (Richard) outside had accidentally squirted her with a hose. Silly bint. Anyway, got a text from Jimbo saying my car was ready to be collected after work. Excellent I thought.

Sharon took me to the garage to pick the car up, I got in, turned the key...

And the engine light was still on. For crying out loud! Someone can't do a job properly, or was on a wind-up. The car's still there, and any additional work they do, having handed over £150 already I'm going to suggest they do free of charge. Though they would be quite good on the Grolsch adverts - "Your car isht not quite ready yet", well that's if they grow some bollocks and develop a bit of honesty.

Anyhoo - I've not blogged in a couple of weeks. For various reasons, not being arsed, being relatively busy etc - but the above incident kinda pushed me into wanting to have a rant and a rave.

Was up in London town last Thursday for Athlete's gig at the Koko Club in Camden. Was very good indeed. Nabbed myself another setlist, had a strum of the lead singers guitar and ruffle of his hair in the encore - was a very decent gig. Heard new stuff from their album coming out in September which I've *ahem* acquired, it's well worth checking out as and when it's released. Otherwise, their new single "Hurricane" is out this month, and currently getting a lot of airtime on Radio 1 I believe. You can also listen to it on Athlete's website.

Kez's birthday on Friday could only mean one thing was near. Our annual trip to Woodside Road to watch Worthing play the Seaweed from Brighton. It was a sunny afternoon, lots of gays on the terraces all w*nking over their new 34 year old signing Nicky Forster (he was very good actually...but it was only Worthing) and we were unfortunately standing near someone who had the footballing knowledge and commentary likeness of David Pleat. Many gems were heard, from the old-skool "get stuck in", and then there was the old "he was never offside"and general abuse of the linesman whenever a Seaweed player was a good 3/4 yards off. It made for an entertaining afternoon. And then we all went back to Ben's for a BBQ...well it nearly wasn't a barbeque as we couldn't get it working. Thank God for Sainsbury's disposable BBQs is all I can say. A good day all round.

Rihanna's still #1 then. And the weather's still all crappy and changeable. Needs a good hard slap with a wet fish that girl does. She's got no idea the grief she's putting people with SAD through, they all want it, and expect it to be sunny, but she insists on it raining so people can get their umbrellas out....selfish cow.

A week of football coaching is on the horizon for next week. I genuinely cannot wait for it. Marvellous fun indeed. It's bloomin' knackering though, gotta be all bouncy and energetic for 6 hours non-stop, though it's rewarding at the end of it all (when I get paid haha) when you see how much the kids have improved and enjoyed themselves. It's all gravy, baby.

Errrm, I'll wrap it up there for now me thinks.

I'll leave you with a thought:
Putting Magners in a Bulmers glass is like taking a shit in a urinal - 'Spoons should be ashamed.

It's all Rihanna's fault

After the brief interruption in el bloggo for me to bring the amazing two parter of our excursion oop north - of which you can see parts 1 and 2 by clicking on the numbers I've just typed (flash, huh?) - normal service will be resumed this evening in a slightly shorter blog, but still as good as ever. I hope anyway...

For once, global warming is not to blame for the absolutely shit weather at the moment. I blame pop star Rihanna for it. Naturally, the link I make is tedious - but ever since her song 'Umbrella' has been at the top of the charts in the UK - it's absolutely pissed it down, incessantly. I don't care whether the whole song's some crap innuendo for something else - the fact that it's about umbrellas and it's now started to rain cats, dogs, elephants and Bolivian tree frogs cannot be ignored. Coincidence maybe. Perhaps the weather might stop if every radio station in the country stopped playing the song, and gave our gardens and ears a nice rest. Music is more powerful than you think, y'know.

Wimbledon isn't going to get finished this year as a result of Rihanna. I'm bored of catching highlights during the rain breaks of the Men's final from 1983 when everyone had a bubble perm, moustache and wore tight trousers (sounds like Kev's dad) . Though the one day I went, last Thursday, was the only day it didn't see a drop of rain - result! Watched Tiger Timothy Benjamin Edward Albert Henman from Middle England come from behind....and still lose because he's a bottler. Watched a bit of Miss Gruntalot Sharapova too - that was nice. Saw a fair bit of action on the outside courts - Ivanovic (fit as...), Safin and also saw Roddick practising where I snapped a few decent piccies. Didn't have time to see Rafa Nadal play though which was disappointing as I had to dash back and take Lucy off to play a tennis semi-final. Not to worry. Next year will be Tim's year...

Certain people have been spreading rumours about me too. About my whereabouts on Saturday evening for a piratey party. Many have said I had drank too much on the Saturday afternoon with some old friends and wasn't in a fit state to go. I'd like to categorically accept these rumours are true. Unfortunately. But I live and learn that I'm not a heavyweight when it comes to drinking. Not to worry, makes life interesting I suppose. Speaking of parties, Beckie's 18th on Sunday was good fun indeed - shame I was driving but I probably deserved that. Saying that, I didn't fancy paying £3.20 for a bottle of Corona - feck that for a game of soldiers.

The transfer market's playing silly buggers again - £17m or something for Darren Bent - f*ck me sideways. Is he really 17 million quid's worth? Spurs in "throwing money at someone relatively young and English" shocker. Saying that, I wouldn't call £27m on Fernando Torres wise either - far from proven at the top level though is probably going to do the business for Liverpool, it's a big risk. Ditto Arsenal's £10m move for Eduardo Da Silva - he's a cracking player, but far from proven at a high level and not many of Wenger's bigger money signings have come off - Reyes, Wiltord and Jeffers to name but three. But we'll see - I look forward to seeing Torres and Eduardo next season and seeing whether they can adjust to the rigours of the Premiership. Stick to Palace's policy - bring in a left back from Millwall and one from Lincoln - we don't even know if they can kick a ball straight, but at least they cost peanuts.

Work at Haskins has been as exciting as ever with the summer overtime really kicking in. I sold £350 worth of picture frames to a lady today though. She seemed a bit strange, probably lived alone with about 50,000 cats, which is a surprise as she didn't buy any cat food. Her loss I suppose. The dreadful receptionist, Sue, is on holiday for a week so our brains can rest from her boring stories about "when I was a girl" and then asking you for your thoughts, and not letting you get a word in edgeways because she's then off on another tangent. Not to worry, I leave on 2nd September, I cannot wait....

That'll do - cheerio cheerio cheerio.

How hard could it be? (Part 2)

(I'm well aware it's 3 in the morning - I've just been out clubbing and am currently a buzzing on Red Bull [drew the short straw so I drove]....which is nice)

Where can we pick it up from last week....Hot Car brought heat, sweat and tears to the car on the way up before I locked my keys in the boot, needed a Brummie bloke to come break into my car with some funky equipment to get the keys, Ross' sense of direction took him the wrong way around the M25 - but it's OK, Ben's sat-nav kept us on the straight and narrow....kind of.

And you wonder why Hollywood made films about Road Trips, ours minus the sex and drugs but it had the rock and roll, well, apart from Kev's music choices.

Having found the Travelodge after an uneventful trip from a soaking wet Alton Towers - we spruced ourselves out in anticipation of a night out in the party capital of England: Stoke-on-Trent. I had, however, managed to turn our bathroom into a lake....though I could blame that on the weather, and therefore - global warming (click it - go on...), lovely.

After Jez had turned his hair into a hairy pyramid, or pineapple if that floats your boat - Ross drove us into Stoke having lost a one-off rock, paper, scissors game to yours truly to decide who would be chauffeur for the evening. I didn't win another game of that with Ross for the whole trip, I know how to perform when the pressure's on though - that's what counts. It was only a short trip down the road, but we contrived to spend half an hour looking for somewhere to park, northerners obviously don't have cars so the need for car parks isn't great. We found a particularly ropey car park which looked no safer than calling Ricky Hatton a "soft, pug-ugly wanker" but it did a job. A curry was needed to set our mouths on fire for the fine people of Stoke, so we found Stoke's answer to the 'Curry Mile' which consisted of 3 curry houses, JJB Sports and a Woolworths. In which time we'd been confronted by a kangaroo trying to get us to go to Walkabout...we took a flyer, and I took the kangaroos head. Deal. A curry later, or a chicken and chips (that famous Indian dish) for Jez we came across a studenty looking bar.

Best decision we'd made all day (saying that, we'd not made many good ones) - the music was superb, the drinks cheap and the standard of females wasn't bad either, surprising for northern birds (who smell of burgers - not my opinion, listen to a hilarious song by Amateur Transplants - available at all good filesharing websites and programs near you) - which was nice. Once the music wound down to the generic r'n'b, hippity hoppity type shite you hear in a lot of bars, and people slowly filtered out, we did similarly and were at a loose end as to what to do.

Wandering around aimlessly, past the Walkabout - a familiar sight greeted us down a side-street (easy tiger) - Stoke had a Liquid Lounge. Bingo. Now the one in Wurvin isn't the greatest, surely the wonderful people of Stoke knew how to build and run a nightclub....the sight of dancers on platforms (not the shoes) quickly suggested that Stoke-ites knew how to pull the punters in. It was massive, the drinks were naturally overpriced oop north as they are down south but that didn't matter - a quick dance upstairs and we headed downtown into some cowboy bar downstairs. Now, this is where Stoke's pondlife appeared to hang out, fat ones, ugly ones - I'm sure they're all nice on the inside though.

But what's that on the other side of the dancefloor? A drunk bird looking scarily like Amy Winehouse caught mine and Ben's eye, for the wrong reasons - she took it the wrong way and came over for a 'friendly' chat. Lasted all of 60 seconds mind you, Ben did the talking and got offered a 'proper handshake' - who said northern people lack class? They're clinical and to the point when they want to be. The gent that Ben is, declined politely and we slipped off elsewhere - quick dance, out the club as the time limit on the car park was nearly up.

Easy trip back up the dual carriageway it was then, back to the Travelodge and sleeping ahead of a long day Tuesday. Wrong....where's the Travelodge again? What road do we need? Cue an hour of driving aimlessly around Stoke and it's surrounding area - we were on first name terms with every junction, roundabout and traffic light set in Staffordshire by the time we'd found our way back. But we still had time for Jez threatening to walk back because we didn't know where we were going...errrr - OK. Blame the alcohol.

Back at the Travelodge, four/five hours kip and we were up and raring to go ahead of a second day at Alton Towers. A quick Little Chef brekkie was in order, greasy spoon stylee - love it! We were ready to go. Stopped at a nearby Asda to pick up a few supplies for the journey home later - our southern money goes a lot further oop north. Then for the relatively straight forward trip back to Alton Towers....well, at least it was in my car anyway. Ross decided to follow directions he'd obtained off of some lorry driver he met in the Travelodge foyer, which guaranteed him there in 10 minutes. It took him nearer 90 minutes to get there, especially considering he started going in completely the wrong direction - again. Nice one.

Ben, Kev and I decided to make use of our headstart on the other two by joining the queue for Oblivion. A 40 minute queue you say? With it being one of the bigger rides, with a vertical drop - you'd like to think that you're safe and that nothing could go wrong - the videos on the screens in the queue did nothing to scare, more annoy me. But the fecking ride kept breaking down, temporary delay, tests and everything meant a 40 minute wait turned into nearly 2 hours before we'd got off the ride, which was very good - but an anti-climax given how long we'd waited. Thereafter, Enterprise was a decent ride in itself. We went on the Rapids too - Ross developed a mild case of tourettes, introducing the fine people of Staffordshire to the word "bollocks" and it's many uses, well - generally used when Ross got a bit wet (ooh err). Speaking of getting wet...

That cunting log flume. Stuck at the front, first went down a drop of about 2 feet and water poured over the front getting my shorts absolutely soaking whilst the others at back were obliviously admiring the scenery. This repeated itself in a drop in the dark before being confronted by a giant duck which scared the sh*t out of me. This wasn't my favourite ride of the day....and the biggest drop soaked me, but left the others with a gentle shower. Poofs.

Ripsaw was another soaker - flipped over, upside down, inside out and all that and getting soaked in the process. I enjoyed that one though...hopped in some cooker thing to get dry - that was nice. There was still time to go on one last ride - the pinball wizard which was surprisingly good, a rollercoaster in a teacup I guess you could call it. Pretty darned good. Wandered back to the car park, time for Ross to perfect his heel-clicky thing, some strange pictures in the shop and reflecting on the past day or two.

The car journey home was nowhere near as eventful as the one coming up, in fact not a lot happened. We drove back on the right roads in decent time, stopped at services together, via the hard shoulder of the M6 to stick the door seal on my car back down - Ross headed off to Wimbledon with his sister on the Wednesday. Played Hot Car from Oxford to home - but incidents - none. No locking keys in the boot, no going the wrong way. It was perfect.

Still, we had Kev's guitar music keeping spirits high. Hmmm.

A very good couple of days if you ask me and many decent moments to look back on.