Don’t send a man to do a man’s job

Posted on May 1, 2014 by headinablender

This morning in the break room at work I saw one of the girls struggling to open a pack of muffins.

I laughed.

It wasn’t a malicious laugh to say ‘ha ha, you’re pathetic!’, but more of a little chuckle to say ‘aaw, can’t you open da wittle packety wackety?’

Nothing patronising, you understand.

“Struggling by any chance?” I said, smiling ear to ear as I made coffee.

She let out a sigh of frustration and, with bottom lip fully extended and puppy dog eyes set to maximum, thrust the packet at me (the man) to open it.

I put down my coffee spoon.

“Give it here”, I said in my most manly way and gripped the packaging with both hands, preparing to pull it open as effortlessly as a bag of crisps.

Smiling smugly, I pulled.

But wait. Oh no! It wasn’t opening!

I pulled harder. Nothing.

Oh shit.

I looked up and saw a grin forming at the corners of her mouth.

I pulled with all my strength, but the muffins still remained locked away inside their impenetrable fortress of transparency and deceit.

“OK, this isn’t good!” I said; half playful, half fearful for my masculinity.

No matter how hard I gripped the packaging and pulled at it, this thin plastic treachery to my manhood wasn’t going to open. I thought about tearing a small nick with my teeth to help rip it apart, but it wasn’t my packet of muffins and she may not have appreciated my slobber all over her breakfast.

It was unavoidable, this bastard was going to need scissors.

Admitting defeat, I shamefully handed the packet back to my chuckling colleague and went back to making coffee.

As I left the room I gingerly picked my penis and balls up off the floor and put them in my pocket to be reattached later.

Sleep, snot and testicles…a normal morning’s commute.

Posted on Mar 26, 2014 by headinablender

This morning’s blissful snooze on the train was disturbed by a man stood right next to my seat.

It wasn’t because his junk was unnervingly close to my shoulder, threatening to bump into me every time the train driver applied the brakes; it was because he kept sniffing.

Very loudly.

It sounded exactly like someone sweeping the road with a very hard bristled broom, using short and ear piercingly sharp strokes.

“Shhhhnniiiiifffschhkk!!”

Every 12 seconds, for around 35 minutes.

That’s 175 times I just wanted to punch him or shoulder barge his balls.

Eventually the train driver did it for me.

(shudder)

Seeing Red

Posted on Feb 17, 2014 by headinablender

I had trouble walking through London Victoria station this morning due to some idiot in front of me pulling a big red holdall on wheels.

Slowly.

I tried as hard as possible to pass him, but he blocked me at every attempt; zigzagging like a shark swimming through an ocean of directionless pillocks….sorry, pollocks.

Is it wrong that I wanted to punch him out of the way?

He was a menace, nearly taking out my legs and those of others around me. He was oblivious to the carnage he was leaving in his wake.

It might also explain why his bag was red; stained with the shin blood of the capital’s masses.

Eventually I managed to get past him and felt the same sense of freedom as overtaking a tractor on a narrow country road. I had the urge to run through the station, flailing my arms in the air screaming “Yes! Yes! I’m free!!”, but I decided against it as I wasn’t entirely convinced my wife would join in.

Although she IS American, so there was a chance.

Still, I wasn’t going to chance it and frankly I was just too tired.

The excitement and energy of passing the holdall hauling halfwit meant I really didn’t have the strength to do anything but place one foot in front of the other.

Anyway, we traversed the concourse and headed towards the underground station, joining the throng of people shoving themselves through the entrance.

As we joined the back of the crowd, there in front of me was the big red holdall on wheels.

How the fuck?

I looked behind me in case there was another big bag bearing bell-end, but only saw a trail of hobbling commuters; limping and clutching their shins.

I turned back in disbelief and it was then that I noticed the writing on his bag:

‘London Fire Brigade – Keeping London Safe’

(clenches fist)

Stop talking

Posted on Feb 10, 2014 by headinablender

There’s nothing like that beautiful silence when one half of the ridiculously loud and plummy voiced couple talking utter bollocks on the train finally arrives at their stop and gets the fuck off.

There really is nothing like it…

Do you agree?

Posted on Feb 5, 2014 by headinablender

“Yeah”
“Yeah”
“Yeah”
“Uh huh”
“Yeah”
“Mmm hmm”
“Yup”
“Yup”
“Yeah”
“Yeah”
“Yeah”

(Long pause)

“Yeah”
“Yeah”
“Well yeah”

(Pause)

“Yup”
“Uh huh”
“Mmm hmm”
“Yup”
“Yeah”
“Yeah”
“Yeah of course”
“Yeah”
“Yup”
“Yeah, OK bye”

…was the half of the telephone conversation we all had to endure from some guy on the train.

It was as annoying as a dripping tap.

I’m sure he’ll agree.

The accidental pugilist

Posted on Jan 31, 2014 by headinablender

Another normal* morning on London’s fine underground network system. The masses and I were stood on the platform awaiting the next oversized Pringles can to arrive and whisk us away.

Soon enough it arrived and the doors wheezed open as we all stood back to allow the shuffling morons off. We made sure to wear our customary scowls as they did so, before pushing and shoving onto the train; desperate to fill the void left in their wake.

As we crammed on I noticed that the woman in front of me had a shitload of space in front of her, but wasn’t moving into it. I’m not sure she realised the loud voice over the tannoy telling us all to “move down inside the carriage and use all available space” applied to her.

Those straddling the gap between the train and the station did.

I concluded that common sense should “move down inside the brain and use all available space”, but quickly dismissed that as futile and instead tried to push past her.

She wasn’t having any of it.

I’m 6 feet tall and this little twat was only about 5 feet tall, so it was inevitable I was going to succeed in pushing past her. This was a further indication that common sense eluded her.

Never before have the words “Mind The Gap” been so appropriate.

Despite her best efforts I shoved past her and lifted my arm to grab the handrail bolted into the ceiling. In the process of pushing past this brainless bint and raising my hand at the same time, I succeeded in punching a seated man in the side of the head.

Yes, that’s right; I punched a stranger.

This wasn’t a light brushing or a mild scuff; it was a full on, four knuckled, unrestrained smack across the side of his head. In fact, the force of it was strong enough to cause his head to jerk wildly to the side.

I looked down, ready to apologise profusely and lay blame with the stubborn bitch who should’ve been the one to punch him instead of me, when I saw that he hadn’t even looked up from his phone.

Nothing.

No reaction.

What the fuck?

He just sat there and continued playing Angry Birds as if he gets punched by strangers all the time.

“So how many was it today Dave?”

“Only 3. Although I did get a headbutt in the nuts from a midget”

I’m sure there’s a joke in here somewhere about a punchline.

*who am I kidding?

All for one…

Posted on Jan 28, 2014 by headinablender

This morning my train was delayed due to a “passenger being taken ill” on board.

My first clue that something wasn’t right was when a man entered from the adjoining carriage and woke me up by screaming “IS THERE A DOCTOR ON BOARD!??”

No reaction.

“PASS IT DOWN!”

No-one did.

He stood there for a few seconds, shot everyone a contemptuous look and headed back to his carriage.

Once I’d wiped away the drool from my mouth and the shoulder of the woman next to me, I looked out the window and saw we were just outside Clapham Junction, the busiest train station in the UK. I then looked at my watch and saw that we were running 40 minutes later than usual.

What the fuck?

I soon discovered it was something to do with signalling problems/electrical issues/leaves on the track/frost. [Delete as applicable…take your pick]

It was at this point, as the train slowly trundled into Clapham Junction (the busiest train station in the UK), that I noticed an unnatural silence in the carriage. At first I thought it might be due to concern for our fallen comrade in the other carriage, but I soon concluded it was because everyone was thinking the exact same thing as me….

“Don’t stop the train, don’t stop the train, don’t stop the train, don’t stop the train…..”

‘Crackle’

Oh no.

‘Fizz’

Oh shit.

“Good morning ladies and gentlemen, this is your conductor speaking…”

Please no.

“…it appears the alarm has been pulled in one of the carriages…”

Ah, dammit!

“…owing to someone being taken ill on board.”

Here we go…

Now, I’ve ranted about the delays caused by those ‘taken ill’ before, but that was about the afflicted being on the platform, whereas this time it was someone actually on the train.

After multiple “apologies for the delay” and “awaiting a first-aider” announcements, it occurred to me….

Just take them off the train.

I mean, how ‘ill’ was the person if all we were waiting for was a first-aider? At no point did the announcements say we were awaiting a surgeon…or a mortician; so why not take them off the train and treat them in the cool, refreshing morning air?

Nope. As a lot of us feared, the inevitable happened.

The speakers crackled and fizzed to life again and the conductor suggested it might be a good idea we all leave the train and board another one. After all, there were plenty of trains heading into London as this was Clapham Junction; the busiest train station in the UK.

As you can imagine, this went down as well as a vegan’s fart in a broken elevator with the packed masses who were already very late for work.

Now, I’ve estimated a train carriage holds over 100 people and this was a 12 carriage beast packed tighter that Tom Jones’ trousers, so in effect we had over 1200 rats fleeing a sinking ship. That’s 1200 moaning, tutting, multi-directional shuffling zombies joining the crowds at the busiest train station in the UK; all heading towards platform 14 to join other equally packed trains full of scowling, miserable sods all unwilling to ‘move down the carriage using all available space’.

Amongst the crowds and mayhem I found a gap on platform 14 and, whilst silently congratulating myself, smugly waited for the next London-bound sardine tin. Soon enough it pulled up and I discovered why there had been a gap on the platform; I was stood equidistantly nowhere near the train doors.

I couldn’t have positioned myself better if I’d tried.

The doors opened and people started piling off the train. The rest of us glared at them as we watched the ever increasing space form behind them like a tin of cookies at a Weight-watchers meeting. I began sizing up my fellow commuters to see who I could take down if the need arose. The small Chinese woman, the man in front of me with the rucksack, the woman checking her make-up in a portable mirror; I reckon I could take them all with a well placed elbow here and a careful headbutt there.

As it turned out we all got on board.

Lucky bastards.

Mind you, some dude had my arse in his face all the way into London.

Lucky bastard.

Anyway, we arrived into Victoria almost an hour later than usual and everyone made a beeline for the underground station which, for some reason, wasn’t busy at all. It was actually a breeze getting through the barrier and I couldn’t, for the life of me, understand why th……

Oh wait, it was 09:25am. Of course it was quieter; most people were actually AT work!

Oh well, at least the tube would be a nice end to this nightmare journey.

‘Crackle’

Oh no.

‘Fizz’

Oh shit.

“We apologise that, due to a signalling failure at Brixton, the Victoria line is subject to major delays in both directions”.

Maybe someone should call a first-aider.

Quickly.

See word?

Posted on Jan 20, 2014 by headinablender

Tonight was a particularly interesting train journey home.

I was sitting there watching cartoons on my phone (Rockin’ Dungeons & Dragons retro stylee.) when i could feel the prescence of someone stood over me. I looked up and there was this guy, mid 50s, newspaper in hand, wearing glasses and a weird grin.

I removed my headphones.

‘Excuse me, i’m a bit blind and I cant read this article; only the headline”, he said holding open the newspaper at the sports section.

“Would you read it to me?”

“Are you fucking kidding me?? Go bother someone else you weirdo!” (I wish I’d said).

“Of course” (I actually said).

He sat down and I began to read an article to him about tennis players Ana Ivanovic and one of the Williams sisters. I think it was Serena; it could’ve been the other guy.

He interrupted me.

“I dont know if youre into tennis or not…”

Im not.

“…but Ivanovic is very easy on the eye” (said the blind man)

I know. There was a picture of her with the article.

He probably didn’t know that.

“And Williams is a muscly butch nigger”

“Whoah, easy now!”, I said quickly and loudly; nervously aware we hadn’t long passed East Croydon.

I looked around the carriage for anyone who might think I somehow knew this blurry eyed twat.

He apologised, and then proceeded to tell me about how he’d been accused of racial abuse despite having been married to a white woman, a black woman and a half cast (mixed race actually) woman, even though this racial slur had been against an Irish person, which he”d found strange, and that he’d been bitten by a spider in spain over 6 years ago which had caused him to lose his sight, but it’s got better now, although his peripheral vision on his right side wasn’t great, and he used to be quite rich but his ‘friends’ sold all his stuff which he’d signed off on because it was when he’d lost his marbles and now he didn’t have money but that’s OK because money doesn’t really make a difference in life really.

Pause.

“So….shall I continue reading?”, I asked.

“Oh there’s more?”

I’m afraid so.

“Yes please”

I finished the article and handed the newspaper back to him in a ‘there you go, please go away now’ manner.

He didn’t leave.

Fuck.

He then told me about his love for chess, and that he was a member of the Crawley chess club. In fact he’d been playing tonight, although nowadays he can’t differentiate one piece from the other. At times he couldn’t remember mid match if he was white or black. It seems this is a reoccurring issue for bigot boy.

Thankfully his station came up and the racially dubious mole eyed weirdo THEN introduced himself and proceeded to get off the train.

Did I mention I boarded the train tonight, threw my arms in the air and screamed “COME TO ME, FREAKS AND WEIRDOS OF THE NIGHT!”?

No?

Maybe I should’ve opened with that.

I’m walking here!

Posted on Jan 14, 2014 by headinablender

Today on Oxford street in London I saw a man get beeped at by a black cab driver as he crossed a side road. The traffic lights had changed before the guy had finished crossing and the cabbie wanted to ensure the man knew it.

Believe me, from his two fingered salute I’m pretty sure he knew it.

Without uttering a word, these two strangers had engaged in the following conversation…

Cabbie – “Come on mate, I haven’t got all day here. The lights have changed and I need to turn left into that street, but you’re causing me to delay that turn by a further 4 seconds. So i’m going to beep my horn at you unnecessarily just so you and those around you are alerted to the fact that you’re taking too long!”

Man – “Fuck off”

I love London. I really, really do(n’t).

Miss taken identity

Posted on Jan 8, 2014 by headinablender

I’d been on the train about 20 minutes this morning when a guy got on and sat opposite me. He was short, dumpy with glasses and was wearing a big anorak. To be honest, he looked like Benny Hill.

I sat there for a while with my eyes closed in an attempt to get some sleep. However, I could feel a bat in the cave and desperately needed to pick my nose.

The train stopped again at another station and I open my eyes briefly to see if any women had joined Benny and I before donning my mining helmet.

No women. Just Benny watching something on his tablet.

In went the finger.

Oh yeah, that’s it; that’s what I’m talking about. Don’t run away. Where are you going? Come to daddy. Come on you little fucker….

I opened my eyes again for a second to see if there were any disgusted females around.

Nope, still just Benny.

On I went, like an 80’s ZX Spectrum classic prequel to Jet Set Willy.

(Nerd reference)

Once I was done I settled back in my seat to comfortably drift off to sleep.

After a few minutes I was woken by Benny and his rustling anorak, which was officially the loudest coat I’d ever heard. As he stood up to remove the deafening apparel I got a face full of boobs.

Boobs?

Holy shit, Benny was a Jenny!

He…sorry, she then sat back down and went back to his…sorry, her tablet. I decided it was probably best to close my eyes and continue to ‘sleep’.

In all fairness I could be forgiven for mistaking Jenny for a man. She had short man-hair, a stocky man-like build, unflattering jeans with big man style boots and, when the guard announced that our train was being terminated due to technical difficulties, an ability to let out a massive “Farkin’ ‘ell, what the fark’s that all abaat?” for all to hear.

I suppose it had to be loud to be heard over her coat.

She didn’t care.

She had balls.

Literally?

Posted on Jan 6, 2014 by headinablender

2014 is upon us and, so it seems, is some of the worst weather England has ever seen.

On this lovely Monday morning all the trains were either delayed or cancelled due to severe flooding from the deluge our fine country is relentlessly being twatted with.

There were buses being operated between certain parts of the route which meant the stations were getting very crowded, very quickly.

So, to hear a guy on the train tell some uninterested bastard on the phone that “there was literally a million people on the platform” left me to conclude that he was “literally an arse”.

Fat, hairy and spouting nothing but shit.

Happy new year everyone!

The great divide

Posted on Dec 18, 2013 by headinablender

Whilst in ASDA I noticed that the guy behind me in the queue at the checkout wasn’t putting his shopping on the conveyor belt behind mine.

It was a self-service checkout and the woman in front of me was scanning her goods at an impressive speed, so the space being created behind my shopping was fast becoming wider and wider, and yet this guy still wasn’t putting his shopping on the belt.

Odd.

He only had a 4-pint bottle of milk and a couple of loaves of bread, but his reluctance to do his duty and put said items onto the moving black rubber meant the couple behind him couldn’t put their shopping on either. Their grimacing and angry whispers to each other suggesting they were just fine with it.

Eventually Speedy Gonzales in front of me bagged up her shopping, paid and buggered off, meaning it was my turn to ‘bleep’ through my purchases. I picked up the plastic divider that had been between my shopping and that of The Flash’s wife and placed it at the back of my items on the belt.

It was at this point that this idiot sprung into action, placing his crap on the conveyor belt in under a fifth of a second. It seems he had been waiting for the divider all along. Clearly I couldn’t be trusted to stop scanning when I got to the end of my items if there wasn’t a plastic divider. I must love the bleeping sound so much that I get into a bleeping frenzy and wouldn’t think to bleeping stop without the bleeping divider!

Bleeping twat.

And what if I DID accidentally scan one of his items that wasn’t one of mine? Putting aside the fact that I didn’t need any of his shit, what would be the problem if my bleeping frenzy went a little overboard? Well, I would get a member of staff to remove it, or he gets his fucking milk paid for by a stranger.

Anyway, once he’d finished putting all (three) of his items on the belt, the couple behind him started piling their shopping on behind his with a ferocity that might suggest they’ve been waiting to do it for a while now. He looked at them nervously and shuffled his shopping closer to mine, creating a very definite gap between his and theirs.

Uh oh, no divider.

Maybe he’s worried that he might forget to stop without a divider there? Oh no!

Anyway, I finish scanning (luckily there was a divider otherwise I might have kept going) and paid for my shopping. The moment I removed my debit card from the card reader to indicate the end of my transaction (and the absolute certainty that I had indeed stopped scanning items), he practically leapt onto the plastic divider that had now become redundant and wedged it triumphantly between his shopping and that of Mr and Mrs Grimace.

He then turned back and in doing so, knocked his milk off the belt, splitting the plastic bottle and covering the floor in an ocean of the white stuff.

As I picked up my shopping bags and stepped backwards quickly, I resisted the urge not to laugh, smile, smirk or grin. The Grimaces, however, did not. They even pointed.

Idiot’s idiom

Posted on Dec 17, 2013 by headinablender

I’ve just heard a man on his phone refer to some business plan as “… the last arrow in the box”.

It’s ‘quiver’.

You twat.

Subway club

Posted on Dec 17, 2013 by headinablender

Imagine a Subway sandwich shop at lunchtime. It was busy; heaving with people cramming themselves in for 6 or 12 inches of satisfaction.

Ahem…

The queue was practically out of the door and it was going to take a while until anyone was served. This allowed plenty of time to peruse the brightly back-lit displays of delicious sandwiches on offer.

And yet there was some penis who, after queuing quietly for a lifetime, got to the front and THEN begin deciding what he wanted.

That’s it, start the decision process now dipshit.

Right now.

Not when you came in. Not while you were queuing for an eternity.

Nope…now.

Now is the perfect time to start thinking about what you might possibly maybe want to have, you total and utter bell-end.

“Erm….I think I’ll have, er…hmm, I don’t really know. What’s your sub of the day?”

“We don’t do the sub of the day anymore sir”.

“Oh right, er, ok. Right….I’ll have…erm….hmm….what do I fancy?”

At this point I could take no more. I stood up from my seat (I wasn’t even in the queue), turned him around, clubbed him across his stupid face with my sandwich shouting “too slow cockface!” while covering him in bits of masticated turkey ham and salad, before frogmarching him out of the shop to an enthusiastic, if not distinctly boney, round of applause from the emaciated starving masses in the queue.

If only.

Sleeping, er, Beauty

Posted on Nov 22, 2013 by headinablender

‘Tap tap tap’

Zzzzzz….huh?

“We’re at Victoria”

Oh, er, thanks.

I love being woken, mouth open and dribbling, by a complete stranger on a carriage full of onlookers who are all stood up waiting to get off the train.

A great start to the day.

Chew chew train 2

Posted on Nov 14, 2013 by headinablender

Some people have an inability to eat quietly.

I’m not an eating Hitler, but when you can hear the man open mouth chewing his apple from 3 seats away on a moving train…it does make you want to shove the fruit up his arse.

Or down the throat of the fat bloke who just won’t stop coughing loudly and with big heavy wheezes.

I’m loving my snooze on this train this morning, I really am.

Hal E. Tosis

Posted on Oct 21, 2013 by headinablender

Holy shit…the guy opposite me on the train has breath that can cut through steel…and my skull, via my nasal cavity.

‘gip’

(Swallow)

Remember to use your ‘inside voice’, ok?

Posted on Oct 10, 2013 by headinablender

A couple of mornings ago the guy sat next to me on the train uttered loudly “for fuck’s sake!” whilst reading an email on his phone.

Sigh.

What was the point in that? Hmm? What did that achieve?

Nothing.

Well, I say nothing; it DID achieve a certain sense of awkwardness which was nice.

What EXACTLY was the reaction he expected from me?

I have no idea what the correct etiquette should be when all I really wanted to do was tell him to shut the fuck up because it’s early and no-one was interested in his tedious bid for attention.

But seriously, what do you say in a situation like that?

I suppose I could have turned to him with a face of deep concern and said “Oh my god friend, what’s wrong? What’s happened? Are you ok? Do you need me to do anything? Oh god it must be terrible whatever it is!”, whilst gently stroking his face and sporting a quivering bottom lip.

I suppose I also could have tutted, rolled my eyes and said “bad news eh?” in a knowing ‘we’ve all been there mate’ kind of way.

But I was wearing headphones so I opted instead to ignore him because he was a prick.

What a swine

Posted on Oct 2, 2013 by headinablender

The guy opposite me on the train keeps oinking like a pig.

I’m serious.

I don’t mean a comedy cartoonish oink or a squeal, but that sound resembling a snort. Yes, that’s it, he’s snorting; three quick little snorts in a row every 10 or 15 seconds.

What the famyarding fuck?

He’s in his mid fifties with glasses perched on the end of his nose, reading some manuscript whilst wearing headphones. I don’t think he realises he’s doing it.

Thank god the next stop is mine. I don’t want to sty here any longer.

It’s all in the voice

Posted on Sep 17, 2013 by headinablender

The woman on the table across the aisle from me has done nothing but whine on the phone about the delayed train we’re sat on.

I can’t see her because of the rather ‘stinking of booze’ mountain of a man sat directly next to me chugging wine from a selection of mini bottles in his satchel, but she’s really getting on my tits.

I imagine from her chavvy voice that she’s a bit grubby with lank greasy hair scraped back from her fat, spotty, fuck ugly face.

I look over.

It’s a little skinny man in a suit.