Monthly Archives: December 2006

Pretentious? Nous?

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You’ll never guess what I saw in Tesco, Prestwich, last Thursday—right next to the HP Sauce. Go on, have a guess.

No, that’s not it.

No, that’s not it either.

Pickled quails’ eggs. I kid you not. In Tesco. Who do they think they are?

Come to think of it, what sort of person actually wants to buy pickled quails’ eggs in the first place? Have you ever seen a quail’s egg? They’re not exactly filling. I reckon I could get one in my nostril at a push. And, even if this mythical customer was in the market for a few pickled quails’ eggs, can you imagine them saying to themself, “I wonder if they’ll have any at Tesco.”

Hardly bloody likely, is it?

(Unless they read this, of course.)

I’ll get my coat

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BBC: Euro jackpot lost in player error

Members of a Belgian lottery syndicate who thought they had won 27m euros were dealt a huge blow when they found their winning numbers had not been entered…

[T]he group of friends were crushed when it turned out the person charged with buying the ticket had allowed the machine to choose random numbers.

This is exactly the reason why, in my two-person lottery syndicate with Carolyn, I insist on choosing random numbers each week. Carolyn, however, believes in the Gambler’s Fallacy, so, in her two-person lottery syndicate with me, she always chooses the same numbers.

To date, my randomly chosen numbers have won us fifty quid, whereas Carolyn’s lucky numbers have won exactly zero sausages.

Not that that proves anything.

Cheese and wine

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I’d just poured myself a glass of wine on Thursday night, when Carolyn sent me an instant message asking for some computer assistance. I didn’t really understand what she was on about, so I rang her. It turned out she was about to pour herself a glass of wine too, so we had a virtual drink together. It’s the best we seem to be able to manage these days.

The following conversation took place:

R: Which wine are you drinking?
C: It’s a posh one with lots of gold thread round the bottle: Marques de Valido… REE-ODJA.
R: REE-OCKA, it’s pronounced REE-OCKA.
C: No, that’s a type of cheese!
R: No, that’s ricotta.
[Howls of laughter on both our parts.]
C: It’s very good: nineteen ninety-nine.
R: Bloody hell! It should be… Oh, you don’t mean the price, do you? You mean the year.
[More howls of laughter.]
C: You were really impressed for a moment, then, weren’t you?

Of course, Carolyn wasn’t quite sure whether to believe me about Rioja being a wine and not a cheese, so she took the precaution of checking with her dad the following morning. He said he was fairly sure it was a wine.

Mannerisms of the glabrous

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Don’t bald men seem to spend an awful lot of time rubbing their heads? They want to get over it. I’m fat, but I don’t spend all day rubbing my stomach.

But perhaps I’ve got it the wrong way round. Perhaps rubbing their heads all day is what made them go bald in the first place.

Someone should do a study.

Weirdo

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I nearly forgot all about this one. Last Friday, Jen and I did a spot of Christmas shopping in Manchester. While we were in Marks and Sparks, I took the opportunity to powder my nose. As I walked into the gents, a scruffy-looking man followed me in carrying a huge pair of branch-loppers. This was rather off-putting.

On his way out, rather than using the door handle like any normal person, the scruffy-looking man opened the door by reaching up and pulling on the mechanical door-closer. He did it on both sets of doors. I thought this was pretty odd, so I gave him a few seconds before I followed him out.

Thinking about it afterwards, I’ve come up with four possible explanations for his strange door-opening technique:

  • he had a toilet-door-handle phobia
  • he was a fugitive from the law and didn’t want to leave any prints
  • he was drunk
  • he was nuts

Any other suggestions?

End of an era

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Moleskine

Moleskine numero uno

Ever since I was a little kid and read Bobby Brewster, Detective, I’ve been a compulsive notebook collector. Not that I ever wrote anything in them, you understand—they were far too nice to spoil with my scrawl.

Then, a few years back, my poor old Psion Organiser finally went west, and I was suddenly without something to note down amusing stuff that might eventually make it into one of my letters to Stense, or something like that. So I finally cracked open one of my many unused Moleskine™ notebooks and started jotting stuff down.

Much of the crap that has appeared on Gruts over the last few years appeared in first draft in that notebook. It has been pretty much my constant companion since 15th December, 2003.

Last week came the end of an era: I finally filled my Moleskine. It was kind of sad. Over the years, in addition to covering its pages with my untidy (and often drunken) handwriting, I had padded it out by sticking in stuff which happened to come to hand. It became a sort of scrapbook. Stuck amongst the pages, you will find collections of fruit stickers, train tickets, idle doodles made on loose pieces of paper, and the occasional raffle ticket.

Pensive bird

Here, for example is a pensive bird I doodled on 17th May this year. It’s some sort of finch, by the look of it. When I showed it to Stense during one of our hot dates, she suddenly went all dewy-eyed and girlie on me, saying it was gorgeous, and wasn’t I a talented artist? I didn’t like to tell her it started off life as a doodle of a parrot which went horribly wrong.

So, anyway, it turns out that my Moleskine is packed full of rather a lot of sentimental rubbish and fond memories. Which is why it was kind of sad to finish it.

I’ve started a new one, of course, but I haven’t really broken it in yet: its pages are far too pristine and, well, white. But I’m sure I’ll soon knock it out of shape.

Bungled Banksy heist

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BBC: Gang foiled over Banksy theft bid

A gang of thieves disguised as workmen tried to cash in on the popularity of guerilla artist Banksy—by trying to steal the door of a derelict building.

The Bristol-based artist had daubed a painting on the steel door in Slater Street, Liverpool, as part of the city’s biennial in 2004.

The gang attempted to steal it but they were scared off by cleaners…

The work on the door, known as Liverpool Love Rat, has not been valued but is now under lock and key.

They would have gotten away with it, if it weren’t for those pesky cleaners.

Fortunately, for those of you who might have missed it, I was prescient enough to capture the work of art in situ for posterity:

'Liverpool Love Rat' by Banksy

Liverpool Love Rat.

Ah, yes, but is it really art?

See also:

Burka’s peerage

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I don’t know if it’s some sort of reaction to Jack Straw’s recent comments about Moslem veils, but there certainly seem to be a lot more women wearing burkas in Liverpool in recent months.

Well, I assume they’re women.

On Tuesday, someone wearing a black burka with an extremely thin eye-slit walked past me carrying a cup of Starbucks™ coffee. I then proceeded to spend far more time than was sensible wondering how a person wearing a burka manages to drink coffee in public without revealing their face. As I thought about the problem in depth, I found myself conjuring up various contraptions involving drinking straws’ passing through eye-slits.

I think I might have spotted a gap in the market—and a market in the gap.

Postscript: Actually, having now consulted this useful BBC graphic, I think the person was wearing was a niqab, not a burka. The title of this item stands, however, as I’m rather proud of the pun (eye-slits, peerage, geddit?).