Thursday 10 December 2009

I wake up feeling tired this morning.  On a brighter note though the cold at least is beginning to feel slightly on the wane.  Here’s hoping for clarity this weekend.

At the station I snag a much better parking spot than usual, one underneath the covered section.  Are these the fruits of people slowing down for Christmas?

I get to the platform quite early but then the irony is that the train arrives packed.  In the end I wind up sat opposite a Brandon Block lookalike reading the Frankie Boyle book.  Yup, that’s his level.

Once in London I bowl into work the first person in thus having to deal with the alarms.  You know have arrived within a company when you possess the power and authority to be responsible for the alarms.

Today is all about the biscuits as both people in the office bring in treats.  Additionally I get mad props for my plum v-neck jumper and the other two people don’t look bad either.  All in all a nice atmosphere prevails from the start.

Ultimately it is a casual and leisurely day as my pre-holiday mentality kicks in.  I have the bare minimum of wage schedules to get completed and in the end that is pretty much what I achieve.

For lunch I hit the chargrilled salmon, new potatoes and hollandaise sauce option once again as I come towards the end of my schedules.  Also I get in touch with the consultant while also snagging a couple of Daniel Kitson tickets for next Wednesday all in all making the day a relatively productive one with little effort.

I am ashamed to admit that after this the remainder of the day is spent sleepwalking, waiting for home time.  Next Week I will really have to pull my finger out but for now while the consultant leaves us in limbo I can’t really proceed fully with the November accounts.

Today I discover that Borat (well, Baron Cohen) was in our restaurant with his other half eating recently.  I curse that I missed him and feel disappointed that he didn’t cause a scene.

Also today I discover that somebody somewhere has decided to remake Mona Lisa with Mickey Rourke starring in the Bob Hoskins role.  Is that really going to work?

Towards the end of the day Stevo phones up with regards to hitting the KUNT AND THE GANG show tonight and with it a plan gets hatched.

Eventually 5.30PM comes around and with a sense of relief.  It comes just as the Filipino appears to be thoroughly fed up with me and The Girl continuously sniping at each other, half in jest and often half intended.

Heading back to Liverpool Street tonight frustratingly the tube beaches at Kings Cross and a few moments later Information Jimmy sends out a call to see if there is a doctor.  It is at this point I know my journey home is truly in trouble.

Without concern for the apparent patient my patience calms down slightly as the tube eventually reaches Liverpool Street just after 6.10PM (almost normal) only to be met with the sight of all the trains back to East Anglia having been cancelled.  This truly is typical.  As news filters through it turns out that there has been a fatality at Ilford.  What is the deal with people becoming ill this evening?

For a strong period I wait hoping to avoid the wanker train back but as the delay lengthens and very few trains emerge when a couple finally do turn up there is no choice but to board one of them (one of the wanker trains).

In order to snag a seat I find myself having to sit in the Quiet Zone of the first Norwich train that I see.  At this point it is bye bye iPhone and bye bye distraction sanity with it.  As I settle down into sitting quiet for an hour almost immediately I begin to fidget in opposition.  Suddenly I find myself able to hear myself think and it is a terrifying thing.

As the train slowly begins rolling out of the station not far into the journey some cunt woman begins talking on her mobile phone.  Hey lady this isn’t the Quiet Zone for nothing, the Quiet Zone being the shitty equivalent of the minute silence.  Immediately I feel aggrieved as why am I observing this wretched ritual and she isn’t?  Why does she deem herself special and above the law?  I turned off my iPhone so she should switch off her stinking cum breath mouth also.  The call ends eventually though leaving an elephant in the carriage.

Just as the train creeps through the sewer pit that is Ilford (the apparent source of our problems this evening) she starts up on her phone again.  This time at the end of the call some guy picks her up on it and has a pop at her, suddenly he becomes my new hero in the process and with it comes the hope/wish that he grabs her phone and throws it across the train, just like in the movies, that’s what I would do.  The woman however is shockingly adamant in that way only women can be.  A mini argument ensues as she goes crackerjack and childish making as much noise with her physicality as possible after she makes the point that the noise of his turning the page on his newspaper is annoying her.  Now it is no longer the fact that she has been using her phone in a quiet carriage that makes her annoying but her shitty forthright attitude that comes with her so proudly exhibiting her faux pas.  That and her whiny annoying fucking voice.  If I were braver than I am I would tell her that she is a cunt and that she should fuck off and die.  I don’t though, alas I am a good guy and occasionally a coward that fights the good fight in order to maintain a quiet life (evidently something that is impossible here tonight).  A member of the silent majority rather than the mooing mob.

Eventually she does a third call on her phone and this time it is without question and with this lack of gesture she wins the fight.  By the time she is making her fourth call the incident has been reduced to joke status and now she is just taking the piss out of everyone and everything.  She is why this country is in the fucking mess that it is.

Elsewhere during the journey I discover www.sketchysantas.com and genuine laugh out loud at a couple, laughing out loud in the Quiet Zone.  Criminal.

Finally the train pulls in Colchester and as I get up to leave I try my hardest to sneak a look at what this woman looks like and resembles but unfortunately she just looks like every other extra aboard this train, ordinary people being an ordinary nuisance.  If only she had been on the phone at the time.

The train pulls in at 8.45PM and Information Jimmy quotes that it was a delay of forty minutes.  Please National Express don’t try patronising us and pulling the wool over our eyes, it was more like an hour and forty five minutes delay.

Back in Colchester tonight I have to head to Asda to get some petrol, which always feels like a chore of a detour when I get back after a day at work.

On the way home I stop via my parents’ place where Bobby does his usual happy dog lap dance.

Late in getting back to Colchester I head straight to The Bull where KUNT AND THE GANG is performing tonight as part of the latest Flux Capacitor gig put on by Lee.  Tonight I have really fucked up and when I arrive at the pub I suspect that Stevo has unfortunately already been and gone.  I’m a shit friend sometimes.

Arriving at the place the night is already in full flow as AVEC NOIR are already doing their thing on stage.  This is a truly demented sight of locals pretending to be droll European musicians in the harshest way.  Their songs are bouncy and often atrocious plus unnerving.  At the front of the stage is a crazed bald man wearing a wig pretending to be French.  Maybe he actually is French and just pretending to be an English man pretending to be French.  Behind him is a real professor of music, who Stevo later likens to Kraftwerk for some reason.  Tonight there truly is a European air to proceedings.

The latest local hero REV SIMPKINS follows firing out a set of pain white man blues.  It is usually split as to whether this serves to be a convincing portrayal of existence but being the first time that I have seen him it all looks good to me, although at times it is a very fine line.  He’s a brave man, luckily for him he’s cut from the right cloth.

Eventually KUNT AND THE GANG arrives and ultimately that is all that matters.  With tonight billed as “Fourteen Shopping Days To Christmas” he opens with his Christmas tunes, classic tracks about wishing your neighbour a “Kuntish Christmas” after he breaks your strimmer and songs about “Santa’s Sack”, the variety that he sticks in your grandmother’s snatch.

As ever these songs are a triumph, a victory of good taste and those that might wish to enforce it.  Soon the festive songs are out of the way and KUNT AND THE GANG tears into his sack of classics singing songs about wrong love and the subject of crime.  This may not be highbrow stuff but it is definitely high on humour in the most vile Derek And Clive manner imaginable.

Half the humour comes in the expression that KUNT sports on his face.  You know he is a genius, he knows he is a genius but his pretence is a naïve and confused one.  Early in the set comes “Wank Fantasy” and with a series of lyrics and vocals that are impossible to resist.  Along with the words he has moves to go with, all designed to chime in the good times.

Tonight as per usual his set is littered with the hits.  When my own personal favourite of “Chips Or Tits” (my workplace anthem) gets wheeled out it is with a knowing nod of approval and recognition from that this is my song.  From here “Men With Beards” crawls out like a prowler on the lurch while “Fucksticks” succinctly expresses the frustrations of modern day man.

Obviously no KUNT AND THE GANG set is complete without an appearance from Little Kunt who gets dragged out for a couple of numbers including “For A Million Pounds.”  By this point my fellow accountant buddy Stevo is quite literally doubled up with laughter, crazily staring in disbelief at just what KUNT AND THE GANG is telling and selling him.

As with all good things it eventually has to come to an end and with another Christmas song before proceedings close with his Katy Perry tribute/pastiche/steal “I Sucked Off A Bloke.”

With the night now at an end a happy atmosphere envelopes all in the house.  At this point cheerily a group of wrong ‘uns approach me to inform me that their friend thinks I look like James Corden.  Now this is something I used to get all the time but alas these days I don’t necessarily think I bode as well.  Regardless they insist on having their photo taken and being in a good mood off the back of KUNT I happily oblige, being more accommodating than a sensible man necessarily is.  As the photo gets snapped I stick my fingers up to really give the photo an authentic Corden touch.  Afterwards I begin to tell them that I have been told of my doppelganger for years now but immediately they fuck off no longer wanting anything to do with me now that they have their picture.  Scumbags.  I now fucking fear for the thought of where on the internet that photo ends up.

At this point Stevo and I coyly make our way towards KUNT with view to buying some merch from the dirty fucker and I really want to get my photograph taken with him.  In our slightly drunken states we get the picture, taken in perhaps the darkest part of the room.  We didn’t do our homework.

From here we leave The Bull with a sense of victory, happily entertained of an evening.  Stevo is now the proud owner of a KUNT AND THE GANG t-shirt which he suggests wearing at the Butt Road Christmas meal that is happening tomorrow night.  Like a child I confirm that this makes for a good idea, egging him on in the escapade.

I give him a lift home which after years of him driving me around feels a strange turnaround.  When I drop him off at his block of flats it is in a completely different area of Colchester to where I was thinking.  As he exits my car there is a guy walking along the other side of the street and as ever the drunken Stevo gets a bit tetchy towards strangers.

Eventually after all this I return to my own home where I chow down on Moroccan houmous at an unsociable hour.  By now I have a headache but for some reason I don’t take any pills for it as I head to bed.  Second schoolboy error of the night.

Otherwise we win.