"Just Put It Down There"...

My family received a lovely 40-inch plasma screen TV from Santa this year. Our chimney was a bit of a tight squeeze though, so Dad pulled some festive strings and got it delivered free with John Lewis. God bless middle class values. The reason for the new telly was because the other one went and broke last year. I won’t beat about the bush - I was a bit disappointed with the lack of drama it died with. There were no explosions, flames or Carbon Monoxide emissions one would expect from a telly on its way out. The people on Eastenders just went a bit green. So purely for that reason, we haven’t tried to fix it. We took it to the tip instead.

The tip is in the middle of an industrial estate in the heart of Southend, surrounded by small, failing businesses with rubbish logos. The only one that isn’t failing is Keymed, a dominating glass and metallic building that my old girlfriend’s Dad more or less owned. It makes medical equipment used in hospitals and other places, like dentists and that. She did work experience there once and broke a two million pound medical machine. They put her on CD packaging after that.
Also near the tip is a carpenters, a marble dealer, and directly opposite, a Jewish cemetery. This makes me feel uncomfortable. I always thought it a bit tactless that they decided to place a Jewish cemetery just across the road from the local dump. Them poor Jews. God forbid the day someone gets it all horribly, horribly wrong, “I’m sorry to hear about your loss Mrs. Freedman, but we just don’t know how Marc ended up in Glass and Plastics.”

The tip really isn’t the ideal place you want to find yourself in. Everything smells funny and the whole place looks and feels grubby. The crushers look like ATATs fresh from Star Wars and the “Recycling Advisors” walking round are about as likely to help as Bin Laden in a charity shop. Nonetheless they still took our shit telly. We both agreed there’s no way they’ll let that go without trying to fix it first, and to be honest they’re welcome to it. Even if they can’t get it working, I’m sure it’ll make a wonderful bathmat for somebody.

The TV we’ve got up and running now works perfectly fine and everybody’s happy. We can hear what they’re saying at the same time they say it now. We don’t have to pretend we’re watching a badly dubbed Japanese action film. The people on Eastenders are still green, though. I’m starting to think they’re just like that.

Houses, lots and lots of houses...

My downstairs toilet took a revamping a couple of months ago. It now is orange – bright, bright orange. The toilet seat, bog brush and even the bog roll is all a lovely shade of tangerine (we’ve used up all the fancy paper now, hello Charmin Ultra, you pale-coloured excuse for a bumwipe). In fact the only thing that isn’t orange in that 2x1 metre room is a small stain of puke put there by Tom Beale the night we all got hammered at my crib. How he managed to get a little bit above the door handle I’ll never know, but respect points for bouncing it that far off the toilet rim nonetheless.

The house I live in has actually taken a battering. It used to be semi-detached, but after our next-door neighbour’s husband died she sold it to us for some knock-off price. I think he died in the room that’s now my bedroom actually – what a lovely thought. I also went through a phase of unscrewing all of the plugs in the house when I was small. I thought that unless I did, I’d end up as a younger and slightly crispier Desmond Tutu. Now I look back on it, it’s kinda obvious that if anything was going to kill me, it would be the act of actually unscrewing a plug socket and ripping all the wires out. But when you’re little it’s a necessary risk, if not a bit fun.

As I write this, I’m lying in the guest bedroom on a double bed with my legs as far apart as I can get them. It sounds kinkier than it actually is; I just enjoy the room I don’t get at university. In those cells you don’t get the luxury of not being able to feel the bed planks underneath. I’m still waiting on a reply to my request for a new mattress. I might deliberately sabotage it so all the bed springs pop out and I get a lovely new one, but give it a couple of months and it’ll do that by itself. I won’t feel so bad about milking em for all they’ve got then. Our hoover is also a bit rubbish too. When the bag is full, the hoover simply stops working. Thing is, we have to apply online for a new one, which takes about five days to actually get results from. Sounds a bit like hygiene-fail if ever I saw one.

Richard Search, head of accommodation, if you ever read this, the views expressed are not my own but simply a series of spelling errors made by my elderly and senile secretary that I’m dictating this to. Your hoovers are of immaculate condition and the system you run is very hygiene-friendly and does not in any way piss me off. Whilst I’m here, I’m sorry but it was me that cracked your Batman coffee mug you left on your desk. If it makes you feel any better, I think I did do a good job selotaping the handle back on though. I think it adds character.

Jumping The Rug

I own a Jesus mug. I’m no Christian though, more agnostic if you’re going to be a bit arsey about it. It was bought for me for my 16th birthday by a mate. He tippexed out the “Jesus” from “Jesus, I trust you” and scribbled on “Guy” in pink crayon. It was a lovely idea, but not too well thought out. It came off in the dishwasher, leaving me basically with a cheap mug with holy J. Chrizzle on it. It’s still my favourite though. The only problem is that whenever I drink Ribena out of it, it drips down the side and looks like Jesus is crying blood. I don’t like that much. I also have to lick his face whenever I take a sip. I’m definitely going to hell for that. Soz babes.

When I was little, my parents made me go to Sunday school. Maybe it was because they thought if I turn out to be the next Hitler, Stalin or Katie Price, then at least my arse is covered. I had that old S.S. card. My earliest memory of Sunday school was inside a dusty side-hall with a group of Sunday school mates (no doubt all dressed in woolly jumpers and worn-out Velcro sandals). The stuff they made us do was crap. We were made to stand on one side of this sickly green rug, whilst René the 80-something-year-old S.S. General stood at the other. We were told we were on Earth on our side of the rug and on the other was Heaven. How do we travel across that dusty, stained, inherited-from-some-dead-dude mat from Earth to Heaven? Of course the answer was by praying daily, forgiving trespassers and loving Jesus. I was only eight - I said motorbike.

Christianity- in fact religion in general- is fading. This is a bit bad I think. It always guided people towards living well, which was never that awful. Yeah a few took it a bit far and that, like Hitler and his lot. But they kinda jumped on the Christian thing because it was a bit more popular than Nazism. More people knew about it, I suppose. So as we become a Godless society, standards are slipping more than Jesus trying to ice-skate in his sandals (turn the frozen lake to wine, then we can all have a bevvy whilst laughing too). I spotted today that parents are giving their children alcohol at home, “fuelling binge-drinking” at a later age. The question has got to be asked though: is this seemingly poor way of living because of the way we live nowadays, or was it there the whole time and Christianity did a good job blagging that we’re all Perfect Peters?

So alcohol campaign groups (known to many as trouble-makers, bored-and-retired or nuns) are saying that because of the “pocket money prices” of alcohol, kids can get hold of it no problem at all. Je disagree, what a bunch of deluded virgins. There is no chance in hell an 11-year-old can rock up to an offy and get alcohol just like that. No way at all. I tried it once, but it failed big time. Grow a beard, wear a large coat and leave a suspicious red button in your hand, go to an airport and you won't come close to how Fail the whole jabazzle was. I left with nothing more than a J20 and a pack of mini cheddars. While I'm here, if you can tell me where I can find these “pocket money prices”, I’m there. I’ve never found one. Ever. Perhaps if people are concerned about teenage drinking, they should buy them an old green rug for Christmas. Or Jesus mugs. Ribena, anybody?