"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?

Guy-In-A-Box

I won't lie. I proper belly-laughed when I heard some guys off my course got stuck in the lift of the Media School a couple of weeks ago. That stuff never happens to you. So when you fall to the same fate (in the same poxy lift ironically) on your own, the humour suddenly stops being so humorous. Especially when the very reason I'm in that lift is to go home for a shower and a poo.

A lot goes through your mind when you get caught in a metal box. Embarrassingly enough, my main worry was that I left my Facebook on in the newsroom, completely open to what has been coined as "Frape". This is the bastard child of "Facebook" and "Rape" - Frape. Anything can be typed into your Facebook status or to anybody else's in fact, that could land you in a lot of the brown stuff I was thinking about at the time. Usually there is no attempt to hide it nor make it seem like you. I won't disgust with the details, but next time I drop a meatball on a hairy carpet the three second rule doesn't apply. I'm not eating that.

As I ponder what I'll look like decorated over the walls of the lift when it crashes down to the ground, I start to worry about other things. Did I leave the oven on? Did I leave the iron on? Have I got asthma? No, it's fine Guy, you don't do ironing. Then the woman comes on loud-speaker just as I'm feeling better and kicks me in the teeth with this little gem: "Lift out of service. Please exit the lift". What a bitch. Any tips on how I do that, Houdini?

All this stuff that was sloshing round in my head happened in the space of about 40 seconds, but it felt like at least three minutes. The bitch then decided she'd had enough and took me back to the ground floor, crazy socks and tacky scarf not covered in Guy-mush like I thought. Underwear was though.

Spiderman, Lyme Regis and Jedward - A Multi-blog...

Jyothi Rai is India's "spiderman". He gets this name naturally because he can scale buildings very quickly, even with a small break dance in the middle! Pretty swish.

Check this out:



This is what I'm doing with my life at the moment- simply browsing on youtube like some kind of audio/visual pervert. As for my life recently it's been interesting to say the least. Friday night saw the collapse of Lyme Regis car park, and after spotting the pictures on a well-known social networking site (...) myself and two mates headed down to take a peek. We interviewed people and firemen etc being proper little journalists and then headed back to write it up and ring everybody. Turns out we broke the story to the BBC, ITV and the Echo so good times on that front! We had to be up at 9am at Lyme Regis the next morning to be filmed about it though. Bad, bad times on that front. People are beginning to get worried about the safety of Lyme Regis itself, and so they should really. People have been reporting pan-fires that didn't set the fire alarms off, faulty fire panels and gaps in the stairway, creating a huge wind tunnel that would feed a fire like a Big Mac. Not meaning to scare anybody who might be reading this and lives there of course! I don't envy you though.

So I found myself in the newsroom again on Saturday night, finishing off the law essay I should have done Friday night, just in time to catch Edward nearly stack it jumping through paper and Calvin Harris up-stage them. What an excellent end to their X-factor run. Except they're still going. I believe ITV picked up on the success of John Sergeant and his rubbish dancing getting viewers, as did Simon Cowell who in the words of Freddie Harrisson "values ratings over talent". Well said. X-factor unsurprisingly will be swamped with essentially tacky acts for next year (if they get that lucky) and Simon will regret ever meeting the Irish ladyboys. As for Jedi-Jedward, the longer they muck around wasting people's time and kicking out perfectly good acts the better- more people I can blitzkreig for voting to keep them in once I obtain world domination status. And good on Calvin, he may have made a sharpish exit after that stunt, but god damn it was funny. And when he comes on, you know you're pretty crap. Just leave.

Crazy Horse and Crazy Kilts

I have recently come under fire from certain senior members of the Larsen family about my swearing on Blogger and Facebook. It seems like language can be hurled at me, but can't be broadcast back out. Apparently it's a turn-off to employers who might be researching me to see how suitable I am for a job. Pfft, and what employers are we exactly talking about here?

It's not like I am misrepresenting the public domain anyway. Half the people that Charley Bray and myself interviewed yesterday whilst getting views on binge drinking were cursing left, right and centre. It was a case of Ctrl+replace the word "Tw*t" with "imbecile" a lot of the time, in reference to Phillip Laing urinating on the war memorial. Some of the other quotes were a bit more special however, and we certainly were practising our "serious faces" when they came out with them. These are just a few unedited quotes, for your eyes only, that didn't quite make the cut...:

"He's a tw*t. Simple as, isn't it" - Tom Rooney

"Theres no violence as such, but it gets to a point where it’s violent" - Watz Iyentar

"To be honest if people wanna drink theyre gonna drink. Like if people are going to do drugs theyre going to do drugs. If people wanna go eat roast dinner they’ll go eat roast dinner" - Bob Sweetmore

"It costs you 50 quid to be sick in this taxi" - Bill Buckley

"My child binge drinks on milk!!" - Louisa Yates

"What? Take my picture? Ohhhh no! I've got a thing about it. Do you know the native Americans? What about the chief Crazy Horse?! He never had his photograph taken because they thought that would capture his spirit. I'm a big believer in the native Americans" - Alf Perry

A short blog/long facebook status

Apologies for not writing yet another awesome blog. If any of you reading this are Journalism students at Bournemouth University, you will understand why! My days have been spent for around the last week completing what can only be described as a "fuck-off essay" to be handed in tomorrow, and I am sat here in the newsroom waiting for my dear friend and colleague to go through and check my work. The essay title? What are the effects of competition on the quality and diversity of media programmes. My question? What are the effects of giving a shit.

Writing for me at the moment is not exactly something I want to be doing. I've been doing it literally all day and frankly am only on here to stop myself melting of boredom. Waking up before ten o' clock is bad enough, let alone slogging out all day something which realistically nobody cares about. That said, if a small child and my essay were both hanging off a cliff and I could only save one, it would be the essay any day. I'm not a racist, I just put badass effort into that!

Hannah is here with me as I'm writing this, telling me about her predicament back home- bloody brummies. I hope she reads this now and appreciates the fact I didn't make a ginger joke about her. If Ash was here, she'd have shaved her hair off by now. I can only guess that the situation has deteriorated, I could swear she picked up her phone to read a text message before it even vibrated. Oh, and apparently the German market starts on Thursday back at her home. She looks genuinely upset about that. Facebook status update over.