Category: Not very good

Avatar Perfect for all the family

Do you like sport?

Do you like families?

Do you like ball-based sports?

Then you need sport balls!

This unbeatable set includes:

  • A football, which is 8cm in diameter and made of foam, so cannot be used to play football
  • A basketball, which is 8cm in diameter and made of foam, so cannot be used to play basketball
  • A tennis ball, which is 8cm in diameter and made of foam, so can be used to play tennis if you don’t mind the ball not bouncing or travelling far enough because it has the wrong weight and ballistic properties
  • A baseball, which is 8cm in diameter and made of foam, so cannot be used to play baseball

Perfect for all the family!

Avatar How to speak British

You might think you know how to speak the language of Great Blighty, but just because you picked it up as a child doesn’t mean you’ve fully grasped its intricacies. Thankfully the internet is full of helpful advice for those trying to master British English, and in this post I’m going to round up some of the key findings for you.

Food

Every guide seems to begin with food words. In Britain, eggplants are called aubergines and zucchini are called courgettes. Then we have some more useful translations from YMT Vacations:

WordTranslation into British
ChipsCrisps
BeerJar
CheetosPuff snacks
DoritosDoritos
Slices of cured hamRashers

Vogue add that flapjacks are “not pancakes”, though they have no information about what flapjacks actually are.

Nouns

What do you call that thing? If you want to avoid just pointing at something, you need to know its name. Thankfully Vogue knows a lot more about what things are called.

WordTranslation into British
ToiletLoo
ElevatorLift
UniformKit
PregnancyUp the Duff

Quintain Living helpfully throw in some more common nouns that you might require. Don’t make the mistake of using the words on the left if you want to avoid being laughed at.

WordTranslation into British
KissSnog
ManBloke
Toilet paperBog roll
Police officerRozzer

On that final point, YMT Vacations also helpfully share their understanding that the common British term for a police car is “jam sandwich”.

Idioms and phrases

If you really want to speak like a native Britisher, you should sprinkle some common Brit-sayings into your conversation to convince the locals that you too are from Fair Albion’s green and pleasant shores. Vogue have soaked up the culture and offer the following extensive list.

WordTranslation into British
WeirdDodgy
CrayBonkers
GrossGammy
UglyButters
DatingCourting

YMT Vacations don’t know many common phrases, but they do know that if the weather is bad you should say it’s “blowing a hooley”.

We will give the last word to Quintain Living, though, who recommend avoiding the heavily Americanised phrase “go away”. Instead you should tell British people to “sod off”.

With all this advice you should have no trouble fitting in to British society and you’ll be the King of Downton Abbey in no time. Pip pip!

Avatar Cloves? No idea

The world is full of mysteries. There are so many things that we still don’t fully understand. I personally struggle to understand a lot of things. Sometimes it’s easier to make up your own ideas than taking the time to read a book and get the jist. That’s 50% of parenting anyway, making your kid believe that you have all the answers.

Oh, you expect to get them from me? Don’t be silly, I can’t answer your questions. Who do you think I am? I’m no science master like Kevin, all I’ve got are my street smarts and the money maker (aka my viso / volto).

That’s all I got.

Have you ever considered cloves? What they are? Where they come from? No, me neither. Cloves are a thing that is and you have to accept them regardless. The sooner you do the sooner we can all move on.

You still want me to explain them? Go on then.

You might think that cloves are the aromatic flower buds of a tree in the family Myrtaceae Syzyglum aromaticum, but you’d be totally wrong. They’re really toenails from donkeys that have been “lightly spiced” with effervescent apples and fervent aggression. Put it this way; have you ever put a clove in your mouth and felt happy? No. No you haven’t, and if you have then you’re a liar.

Cloves are made bitter to suck the very life out of you. There’s all this talk of helping with looking after your teeth and improving the flavour of your cooking and it’s all nonsense. They want you miserable and they will stop at nothing to turn you into a brittle, chafing dish of a man. They taste of misery squared. Do me a favour and steer clear of cloves.

Avatar Gorilla the (money) spinner

Hey everyone, it’s time to sing a song. A lovely song with lovely lyrics where everyone can have a great time, like those classic songs of the 1940s about losing your watch down a sewer grate or looking for milk in all the wrong shops.

This is a song about purchasing a fake gorilla.

“I want you all to know, I want you see to see,

What this terrible absence is doing to me.

I need to find something special for my garden,

I need to find something brash, oh, beg your pardon.

I wandered round and round, ’til I finally found

Something deeply profound.”

“There it was, sitting, waiting for my presence,

There it was between foxes, hares and pheasants.

Animal jumble bumble, humble though I was,

I was thoroughly pleased until I saw the cost.”

Wait, wait, stop the song.

Thirteen hundred pounds? For a gigantic plastic gorilla? What kind of insanity is this? I can’t afford that. No wonder there’s a thin layer of dust all over its back; it’s because nobody wants to splurge that much on something so decidedly useless.

I’m sorry, everyone. I promised you a heartfelt song and what I delivered was gorilla vitriol. You’ll have to find your good cheer and mirth elsewhere.

Avatar Unfortunate

One of the places I sometimes go for lunch when I’m at work has recently started handing out fortune cookies. Sometimes when you go to pay they’ll just drop one into your bag.

When you eat them the cookie itself is unbelievably dry and tasteless, which is exactly how a fortune cookie should be. You’re not meant to enjoy eating them in any way. What you’re there for is the fortune. My first one said this.

“All’s well that ends well” is not a fortune. It does not tell me my fate. It’s a cliche and I was not given a cliche cookie.

Maybe I just got a dud. But then I picked up a couple more on subsequent visits, and they were just as bad.

As a result I have been left without any idea of my future. Three cookies in a row have failed to tell me anything of my fortunes and instead have just insulted me with a bunch of vague inspirational quotes and truisms.

This is why I am turning to the Beans Massive for help. I don’t know how supernatural you are, but if you have any way of telling the future, I’m all ears. Tell me my fate in the comments. Thanks.

Avatar How not to catch a train

Recently, thanks to a kerfuffle relating to a car being serviced under warranty at a garage that was nowhere near where we live, I needed to get back home from Maidenhead by public transport.

Getting to our house from anywhere by public transport is difficult, but even given our limited options, no effort has ever been made to link our home with Maidenhead. So getting home meant two buses and four trains and would take a minimum of two hours and 40 minutes, and even that journey time was only possible a few times a day.

The last couple of weeks have been both busy and stressful, so I will admit I was not in the optimum frame of mind for a difficult journey, and may have been distracted when a little concentration would help. But even given that excuse I managed to screw this up to a degree I would scarcely have believed possible.

This is the story of my #trainsaga.

Read More: How not to catch a train »

Avatar Classic photo

If you happened to be living under a rock you may not have noticed a certain anniversary of a certain album last year. An album everyone, and I do mean everyone, has heard of from the year 1999. Can you remember the year 1999? What a time to be alive.

Pop music was yet to turn a corner from fabricated bands and artists put together by middle-aged men in suits to everything auto-tuned to within an inch of its life and sounding like they all came from the same computer programme. Yes, as you can see I’m an old person. I can’t say I preferred it when “bands” like Steps, A1, 5ive, Backstreet Boys and all the others invaded your ears through the radio but at least they had a bit of personality and a distinct style. These days I struggle to hear the instruments in modern pop music.

Anyway, back to 1999 and everyone’s favourite Dido. Even I with my angst and my Clash liked a bit of Dido. She may have pronounced ‘I’ as ‘ah’ in every song (“ah won’t go, ah won’t sleep, ah can’t breathe…) and struggled with a tempo anything faster than what can only be described as plodding however there was something about her songs. They were breezy, easy to sing, and plodded so hard even your dad liked it. This prompted everyone in the known stratosphere to buy a copy of her album which is why you’ll find it in most charity shops.

Cut to last year and the 25th anniversary of ‘No Angel’. A milestone. A wonderful thing. I was reading the description when I got to the bottom and squinted.

Dido is a singer. Is she photographic? Of course. So what’s a classic Dido photo? Did I miss that part of her career? Did people walking around with a photo of Dido shaking hands with Prince Charles? Dido playing with friendly gypsies? Dido squatting over a bin? I tried googling it and was directed to an article on Wikipedia about the first queen of Carthage. Please can someone post some classic Dido photos so I know what I’m missing out on.

(Thank you for reading this. I am very tired and struggling for WORDS.)