Are they for the regular weekly food shop? Do you procrastinate about doing little jobs through the week and then spam them all on the Sunday before a new week starts and they all reset? Do you spend hours in the garden trimming and pruning bushes and hedges so everything is perpendicular?
For me, I like to have a nice mix of jobs to do and lounging. I love a good lounge on a Sunday no matter the state of the weather. If it’s nice and sunny you stretch out and soak it up. If it’s cold and wet you wrap up and enjoy being inside. Come at me with whatever you have, Northern weather, I’ll take it all in. I can louche with the best of them.
No matter how hard I try though I can never be as louche as Daisy. She seems to be able to louche without even properly trying. She’s the grand master.
I heard a rumour that Kev really loves pictures of doggos so this seemed like a good idea for a post and I would heartily encourage anyone else with doggo pictures to post them here.
In Florida there are a lot of gift shops. A LOT. They want all of your disposable income and they will do whatever it takes to get you in their store. A lot of them advertise ridiculous statements such as “gifts as low as $1.99” or “five t-shirts for $9.99” and it’s all lies. You’ll go in to be greeted by five kids t-shirts for $9.99 or the kinds of cheap mugs that not even an auntie with bad eyesight would pick up and consider. All lies.
Initially I ignored these places because I knew what would be inside. Later on I relented for a laugh and, you know what? I was right. Laden with plastics of all shapes and sizes, pirated Disney goods, the kind of nonsense every gift shop has. It was a treasure trove of bobbins.
What made me sit up and notice though were the buildings themselves. Nothing in Florida looks new, in fact everything has this worn out faded murky visage which you get used to after a while.
This shop made me laugh because you notice it straight away and every time I walked past I would think, “mwear!” to myself. The best mwear in all of town. Ladies love top of the line mwear; purchase one today for your gal, fellas!
I also keep saying it in a Matt Berry voice for maximum effect.
The best part of being on holiday is taking photos of things that people have zero interest in and then forcing them to look at them once you get home. It’s a legitimate way of being annoying because they instinctively want to know about your time away and you can show them through 10,000 photos of a camel.
Not that I’m on holiday with a camel. Far from it, me ‘n’ the V have been sunning it in Florida for almost two weeks. We’ve done a lot of walking, I’ve drank dozens of watered down sodas and eaten my way through many burgers, tasty barbecue ribs and steaks.
I thought it best to ease you into the holiday snaps with a couple of posts, tossed off in my quieter moments, showing all the excitement of Orlando.
First up is this one. This is a fantastic photo of me emerging from the 7/11 with my Frosty blue ice thing. It was a hot day and I needed some cool refreshment. To my delight, this only cost a dollar for some reason (it was advertised as costing more) so I had to capitalise on the moment. I was on my way to pick up lunch from Subway, a blinding buy one footlong and get another free offer which we used several times. That was a good day.
Shoe: … left to relieve himself behind the back of Dixons.
Bin: Words to live by surely.
Shoe: It’s coming up tooooooooooo 14:04 this Tuesday afternoon. We’ve been on air since midday…
Bin: Hey, we’ve been broadcasting longer than that.
Shoe: Snappy as always, Bin. Ten years next July, isn’t it?
Bin: I’m afraid so. We’ve been inflicting these people for almost a decade, poisoning even.
Shoe: A decade of Shoe ‘n’ the Bin. Any highlights?
Bin: Nah!
Shoe: Insightful as ever. 14:05 and we’ve already taken you to the dizzy heights of ‘Since You Bin Gone’ by Rainbow and even though he really wanted to, I had to veto Bin from playing Rainbow and Kelly Clarkson back-to-back.
Bin: It’s two songs with the same name! How can you veto entertainment like that?
Shoe: It would be as ker-azy as playing Jennifer Rush, Frankie goes to Hollywood and Huey Lewis and the News one after another.
Bin: I don’t know what you’re referring to.
*honking horn noise in the background*
Shoe: This is why I’m in charge and you’re not.
*sound of applause*
Bin: Can you believe this? Recount! Recount! Après vous!
Shoe: In the next hour you can expect to hear the delights of Otis Redding with ‘I’ve Bin Loving You Too Long’, Charlene’s ‘I’ve Never Bin To Me’.
Bin: I’ve never been to her either. That’s a weird song.
Shoe: It is a weird song, yeah. Ending shortly before the half past news with the succulent sounds of Roxette and ‘It Must Have Bin Love’.
Bin: I tried to find her on a map once, spent hours looking for her, thought I clocked her in Leicestershire but it was Charnwood instead.
Shoe: The lovely government district borough of Charnwood. Shout out to anyone listening in Charnwood. Actually shout out to anyone listening.
*slide whistle noise*
Bin: Once that’s bin and done, we’ll be hitting 3pm with a bang because it’s SHOE HOUR!
*sound of an explosion*
Shoe: Never get tired of that, can shoe believe it? I’m not one to tease but if shoe were hoping to hear the Kinks, Rick Astley and Queen…
Bin: ‘Shoe Really Got Me’, ‘Never Gonna Give Shoe Up’, and ‘We Will Rock Shoe’ respectively…
Shoe: Then you’d best keep tuned in to the best radio show shoe’ve ever heard.
Bin: We’re here every day whether we like it or not.
Shoe: I need to confess something before we move on. I used to be a criminal, but I have since reformed my ways.
Bin: You never told me this!
Shoe: All true, all true. I would have carried on as well however after I had ‘Bin Caught Stealing’ I stopped and thankfully Jane’s Addiction set me on the straight and narrow. Take it away…
Do you often plan to do things and then sort of half do them and come back to them later, in their unfinished state, and wonder why you didn’t bother to finish them in the first place?
Such is the case for me and my review of ‘Wizards of Waverly Place’, another Nintendo DS game that my brother and nieces decided to inflict upon me. I must have originally done my thirty minutes of playing in July because I took some photos at the time. I was clearly gearing up for a post with the details and then nothing; I didn’t write anything else other than some hastily scribbled notes on a random bit of paper from my work bag.
For the uninitiated, ‘Wizards of Waverly Place’ is an American sitcom shown on the Disney Channel about a teenage wizard who undertakes training to be some kind of better wizard alongside her two brothers. It features one now famous person (Selena Gomez who, at the time in my subconscious, I referred to as “that rapping chipmunk”) and lots of people I’ve never heard of. The premise sounds a lot like ‘Sabrina: the Teenage Witch’ but with a family of magic people instead. It ran from 2007 to 2012 but according to Wikipedia will be coming back again soon in a sort of semi-sequel of sorts. Keep an eye out for that everyone.
I am sure that whatever kids were watching this at the time loved every second and begged and pleaded to their parents to buy the tie-in video game so they could continue the, I don’t know, wizarding. It’s the successful formula of young people acting like adults mixed with comedy that Disney has been churning out for the last few decades that will make anyone over the age of 21 throw up in their hands but works because children will watch anything.
Enough of that. Back to me, consider me! The notes that I wrote are as follows:
Picking up coins – why?
Let’s head to the lair?
Sandwiches
Keep skipping dialogue
Floating sarnies – catch game
Bottle on a podium
Smaller than me
Make a *can’t make out what this is, could be cake* – end
As you can see, I was my usual in-depth and very thorough self, going through the majority of the intricacies and idiosyncrasies of the gameplay, graphics, history of development and everything else. Ahem. This is why you should never start a job unless you intend to finish it. I get that now.
I am at the point where I don’t have time, not even a mere thirty minutes, to go back to understand this nonsense. I must therefore move forward and count this sham as my attempt at a game review.
After re-reading the notes, I do remember a mini game where you had to assemble sandwiches to serve to customer. When a magic spell goes awry, you have to try and wrangle the sandwiches back into a bag, or a hat, or a bin. It was a fairly average video game, much like the previous one I did, with nothing too bad and it seemed to fit with the property. Not that I’ve ever seen ‘Wizards of Waverly Place’ or know anything about it. If you were to ask me in passing, I would tell you it’s about a teenage girl who goes around collecting coins to stash in her lair so that she can afford to make sandwiches and sell them. Surely some kind of philosopher’s stone would eradicate the need for some of this but whadda I know?
Apparently Selena Gomez has an estimated net worth of $1.3 billion and is the most followed woman on Instagram. Not bad for a rapping chipmunk.
This is what we used to say prior to attempting a jump in the video game ‘Driver’. You’d be flooring the accelerator, trying to make your car somehow leap over a truck the length of a swimming pool or some other ridiculous feat. The other person sat with you, because it was a communal thing, would look at what you were attempting and read the line. We were both 17 or 18 so it was funny because neither of us were old. Hilarious.
I have done a lot of ill-advised things. The list could probably run into twenty plus items, however I did a similar post covering this ground before, so we won’t go through that again. What I am trying to set up is the problematic approach when you decided to do too many things at the same time because that is always ill-advised.
I have moved into my new job but the induction and proper training doesn’t begin until the first week of September. I am also due to purchase a house shortly, meaning next month will be spent moving our possessions into the new house, researching carpets and paint colours, getting a new garage door installed, painting the downstairs and assembling the furniture etc. I know neither of you two have bought a house before but these are the kinds of jobs you will expect to complete.
A few days into joining my new team, getting to know everyone and watching how it functions, someone asked me if I had any interest in running and I said that I did. Indeed, it is the only “sport” (if you can call it that) that I seem to be good at and don’t mind doing twice a week. This then led to an invitation to joining the team charity event happening in September and, wanting to make a good first impression, I accepted. It was then that I realised that I had misinterpreted what was expected of me.
The blurb said that you had to run 100 miles over the course of September. I took this to mean that the 100 miles was split between however many people there were on the team, therefore the reason for asking me to join was to make more money for the charity and ease the burden on the other people doing the running. What it actually said though is that every participant has to run 100 miles. There is no sharing. That’s 100 miles over 30 days amounting to roughly 3.3 miles a day per person.
As a running potato, I have at best managed 2.5 miles with two days rest in-between and then another 2.5 miles. I now have a week in order to get better at running to somehow achieve this magnificent feat. What I want from you though is your cold, hard cash to help ease my September because I’m going to be busy every day and my sorry ass needs all the help it can get.
I’ve already had several very generous donations so there’s no backing out, this is definitely happening. Time to chug my chutney and get out on the streets in my shorts and sweaty t-shirt.
What’s a modern day hero to you? Is it someone who saves your life after getting your tie caught in a printing press or is it the person who hands you your sandwich and wishes you a good day? What even classes as a good deed anymore when the tiniest thing can be misconstrued or misunderstood?
It’s a good job that I’m such a good egg, ready to put all of you to shame with the sheer wealth the SHEER PLETHORA of good deeds that I’ve knocked up this month. My days have been brimming with altruism that I don’t even know where to start. I suppose I’ll have to cut them down to, I don’t know, a list of three, the three main ones, so that you don’t all die of embarrassment.
Don’t tell me that I never do anything for you.
Package save – when I was out walking the doggo one afternoon-o I chanced upon a package in the street-o. The delivery truck-o must have dropped it-o when they were doing something else. I took it back home and checked where the address-o was and, thankfully, it wasn’t too far away-o. Later on that day-o, I posted it through the person’s letterbox so that they safely received their goods.
Pigeon save – when I was out walking the doggo one afternoon (again?), we turned the corner and I went to put the doggo’s poo bag in the bin. What I wasn’t expecting was a pigeon to be staring back at me from inside the bin. It looked a big manky and had green stuff smeared on its wing, as if someone had thrown a drink and showered the poor thing. I ran back to the flat, picked up a few items and then carefully (hands wrapped in empty poo bags) scooped it up and placed it on the floor. After a drink of water, it looked a lot better. I was reluctant to give it food in case this was some kind of pigeon grift and a thousand pigeons all flocked towards me as soon as I brought out a bag of breadcrumbs.
Spoon save – I gave a friend at work a plastic spoon so they could eat their breakfast.
Personally, I think the last one is the most important because if you don’t have the right implement, how are you going to eat your oats? Think about it.
