So you thought it would be a good Idea?

Hello friends of internet-land. Firstly I would like to apologise for my lack of digital presence. It has indeed been around 8 months of dwelling, self loathing and if I may be so bold as to mention I also released my ramblings onto the digital medium that is Kindle store. I now make my return to where it all began. The holy church of the Beardless Messiah.

So you thought it would be a good Idea?

The last year was somewhat a monumental disaster of sorts but dependent on your mind set it can be seen as quite amusing and certainly an improvement on two years ago! 

Take January 2014 for example, two years ago. Some may say I had a dark start to last year but the year before was far worse. At about 10:30pm on the 27^th January 2014, I stood on a bridge, full of Captain Morgans finest. I remember thinking to myself now this is going to be a good idea. You see I was going through a kind of “Cobain” stage. I couldn't get hold of a shotgun though, as cash generators in Walsall, don't really cut a prophet dealing arms. So I seriously thought about things and came to the conclusion, a bridge jump into the canal would be a wizard idea! Now, as you can probably guess, my attempt (as half arsed as it now seems) failed miserably. As I regress back to the moment, I realize I failed for two reasons. One, I only jumped from 18 feet. Two, I jumped ass first. I remember thinking to myself, there are only two possible outcomes to this situation. I will either die and be found by a tramp, then subsequently become his life spooning partner after he has stolen my shoes (this is genuinely why I removed my shoes first! In all of this I didn't want a homeless guy stealing them!) great to see I prioritize but I have always had a thing about people wearing my shoes. The second possible outcome will be, A failed attempt and this will hurt like absolute hell. I will tell you without delay. The second option was the winner and it wouldn't have taken a Monty Hall paradox expert to see that coming. The thing that I did not count on, whilst standing on the bridge edge, just about to jump, for some reason, singing Hall & Oates – Out of touch. Yet again not sure why, I just bloody love Hall & Oates. The thing I absolutely did not count on was what, at that point would be my final thought. Now when people do something stupid like this, because let's be honest it is dumb. People ask the same question. “What was he thinking?” I will answer that question now, the moment, the second I stepped off that bloody bridge and started to fall, that little bloody voice in my head, that we all have. Simply said. “You've changed your mind haven't you?” the answer to that question was “Yes, but you could have told me that before I jumped to prat!” Allow me to tell you this, if you've jumped already, changing your mind is kind of a pointless thing. I suppose you are thinking now, well it's ok, you can just swim out! Well yes! If I hadn't been a 29 year old, who can't swim (I didn't learn, because I am scared of piranhas!) The overall outcome was a bruised ego, what I thought was a broken ass or as I so eloquently put it at the time, my ass has gone all Christopher Reeves. I also broke my leg, which was and always has been incidentally screwed, now it's even worse. Most of the time I walk like a leper with a loose leg.

I think the most important lesson I have learned is simply this, life is precious and short enough as it is. So don't jump of a bridge and break your ass! If you do make rash decisions, make light of them when you come through them. You will come through them, life may be contaminated with faecal matter sometimes but smile! It could be worse, you could be related to Justin Bieber.

Break Ups, Coco Pops and Tramadol

The Curly Locks of A Genius

Last night at ate cereal from a regular sized cereal bowl. I realize that this is a rather odd way to begin a new post but please do go along with it. As some may have realized I have been absent for quite some time. This is due to self loathing and meandering through life in what I like to refer to as “White guy woman depression” allow me to rewind a little.

It's Tuesday morning, I am not at work today, I open my eyes in a disappointing fashion and struggle to see the clock through my hazed Rum and Tramadol pained state and notice it's midday. Today I will make a choice, I will segregate myself away from the world and wallow in the self pity that I have yet again found myself in. First step I need to eat. In my barely functional mode I look to the kitchen and reach for the cereal. Problem one hits me in the face like Bobby Brown on a bender. I have broken all of the bowls and I have no way to eat my beloved cereal, or do I? In the hallway cabinet I have a brand spanking new washing up bowl, I couldn't could I? Well I only ask this question to myself now because I will be honest, I did. I filled that black plastic bowl of dreams to the very brim and glazed the dusty brown fruity goodness of fruit and fibre with a pint of milk, grabbed a bottle of rum from the kitchen work surface and made my way back to the sofa of dreams.

Two hours later I seem to find myself shoveling soggy cereal into my mouth, very inebriated, cloaked in a quilt, dressed in only my underwear and watching the notebook on Netflix whilst sporadically shouting at the television offensive nonsense. You see there are some of us out there who do not cope well with the departing of ways from a woman, I am not ashamed to admit I am one of them but I did myself become a woman in the process, not an actual woman may I add. I don't tuck anything between my legs and start calling myself Susan when I look into the mirror.

As usual I digress, now people say everything happens for a reason and these situations show up to teach us valuable lessons. Let me first start by saying, whoever “These People” are, you are all absolutely wrong you wrong and not just wrong but so wrong in fact, that you couldn't be more wrong if the international wrong club showed up at your house on a Saturday afternoon, with five of the finest wrongers and spelled the word wrong using their wrongly shaped freak bodies! The only lesson I have actually learned from this whole experience is that If I ever see Michael Cera in real life, I will find a plethora of offensive words and possibly beat him to death using one of his legs which I hope may become a separate entity to his body in a near fatal traffic accident!! I mean how is this guy even famous! Absolutely everything about him screams sex offender! This guy is a just a Neverland away from a court case!

I gradually find myself as time slowly moves on, not so much in a state of recovery and the 7 stages of grief just don't apply but more in the most complicated state, yet amusing now I regress and look back. Now being a sad, lonely Caucasian gentleman. First thing is first. I must create a playlist! Do not sit there and judge me! We all do this, music is great to set the mood and I needed the right mood. Rule one! Absolutely no soppy love songs! I remember yesterday whilst dining on coco pops skimming the music stations and Michael Bolton rearing his remarkable curly blonde locks, don't get me wrong Mr Bolton is one of those people you just empathize with, I remember in the midst of my milk turning really chocolatey thinking, you sing it Bolton, I feel your pain. This was possibly a turning point for me if I am honest. I think if you are sitting in your pants, drinking Rum and eating coco pops at 2pm on a Wednesday afternoon whilst having a conversation with Michael Bolton, you should also reconsider the direction your life is taking.

Now in the present day, I feel good. Well as good as somebody like me can feel I have a playlist of death metal and the best of the worst of 80's hair metal. I have stopped eating so much All Bran and thus stopped spending 6 hours a day in the WC. I haven't watched Chocalat in a while now and I have also decided to be an adult about things and forgive the person that totally ruined my life in every way and Allow her the somewhat displeasure of being my friend. Now I am left with only one small problem, I am a socially awkward 30 year old with no brain to mouth filter, I look a little like the love child of Crispin Glover and Adrien Brodie and now I have to do the dating thing again. I think I may be in trouble. On the positive side though, I am back and now there will be just no filtering...

The How to Guide For the Socially Awkward Part 4

           We all enjoy the exciting feeling that travelling brings right? Well some of us do, sometimes when you look back on your relaxing holiday you quietly reminisce about laying on a beach or that couple who were your holiday pals. If you really stop and think though. It wasn't all that relaxing was it.

            If you are lucky enough to have found a holiday that hasn't required the remortgage of your house and the sale of your least favourite child, you eventually find yourselves ready to take flight. Now initially you will have passport panic about 50 times on the way to the airport and you've had the taxi driver reassuring you that not all planes crash, you will eventually be checked in and awaiting take off. The flight can be a traumatic experience for some. for example, smokers and people who get hungry but have left their wallet in their case. You then become the most irritating other half on the planet. I myself have found that I have moaned for 4 hours on a flight that I am hungry, so much so the person in front gave me a sandwich to shut me up and for those adventurous flyers out there who think it's a good idea to join the mile high club! Why on earth would you do this? You are 'doing it" in one of the most confined used toilet cubicles on earth. I mean have you seen Slumdog Millionaire? Those toilets are more hygienic!  

         So you are lucky enough to have landed safely and providing you haven't flown with monarch, you probably have your luggage too. You are in new uncomfortably hot county where nobody understands a word you are saying. So you now adopt the local dialect, this being English but said.........very............very............slowly. My dad once asked me to order him a coffee when we were away in Rome. so I put on a really bad super Mario style Italian voice and asked.

"Heya, Escuse... you giva me da cafe eh?"

turns out the barista was fully fluent in English and just thought I was a head mental child. She even gave me free Biscotti. You also as an adult maybe faced with my problem. Now I absolutely do not have a body to be seen topless, yet my girlfriend is one of those head turners. So I just kind of sit around in a t-shirt and shorts afraid of the beachy judgement.

         Whilst in a new country every day poses new challenge, The food being one i mean go to Poland look at a menu and think I will try the local cuisine. Once I thought I was getting experimental and ordered 'Kurtka sera ziemniaków i fasoli' when a cheese and bean jacket potato arrived I was pretty disappointed to say the least. 

Then you are struck with the thought of maybe I should embrace a little of the local culture. This in many places is an amateur mistake!

Once I was in Morocco and went into a shop to buy a fez, Do not judge I was young! Also I have a good egg shaped head which suits the shape of a fez. My first mistake was trying it on. I was forced to buy this fez as apparently in some places in Morocco, If you try, you buy. If you don't by I hold you hostage until you do buy. I'll be honest, I brought it. This is all part of the holiday experience which in my view is the least relaxing thing to do. Just go to Devon! It's the riviera of England and everybody kind of understand what you are saying.

      

The How to Guide for the Socially Awkward

       

          As some may have guessed I am not a stand out, fits into societies norms kind of guy. In fact I am terrifically awkward. So I have decided to compile a series of how to manage in seemingly normal situations that the awkward among us may appreciate.

Riding A Bus

       Now I know you are already thinking what a pile of nonsense, do read on. Getting on a bus is possibly one of the most awkward scenarios for a socially challenged person, There is a thought process involved that challenges the mind at every turn. First and foremost you are presented with waiting for the bus. Now do you sit down? Well this depends on who is already sitting down. If for instance seated and hunched smelling of stale urine is a nervous looking pensioner. You may only sit dependent on how you are dressed. If you are heading to town in a pair of comfortable trousers and a hooded top. BEWARE! This lady has only 3 pleasures in life, Tea, Meals on Wheels and Crimewatch. Trust me when I say the moment you sit, old Mildred will then clutch to her back as if it contained the last of the rationed butter in 1941. Now dependent on your location you have to mind your surroundings. In my local area we have people that encroach upon our bus stops. They are unidentifiable, They are seemingly you and extremely Caucasian at first glance but when they speak, oh boy! They talk about bears and blood an awful lot. It's beyond me and they have a fetish for stabbing people up! I believe we should have these humans eradicated possibly some new strain of myxomatosis and let them wipe each other out. 

      A new conundrum awaits with the arrival of the bus, providing you are already waiting for it. I personally guarantee if you are not you will miss it. How do I know? Well as soon as you start to run for the bus the driver spots you in the worlds biggest mirror. Waits for you to almost make it and think, this time I have you. He will then proceed to close the doors and move the bus 4 inches from the platform, looking at you only to gesture that he cannot open the doors as he has pulled out already. Bus drivers the world over. You will pay for this. One day your bus will break down and you will require assistance. I will approach you as if to help, tell you I know the problem and then kick you in the shins before I walk away smiling.  Anyway, now the bus has arrived and you are being British and doing what every good Brit does, You have formed a queue. Hold on a moment there is a swarm of morons just pushing there way on to the bus. You deal with this in the appropriate way. The only way there is. You tut! you tut at each and every one of them.

      So you make it on to your rush hour bus but you are now faced with the ultimate in problems you have to sit next to a person. This is a choice that should not be just rushed into. This person is going to be your companion for what could be the entire journey. Never and I mean never sit next to the person wearing the Bluetooth headset, he will be a loud, obnoxious idiot who wants to announce his enormous success to the whole bus, my friend here is a PTT (a Public Transport Tosser) avoid at all costs. Also I may add DO NOT sit next to the attractive girl, She is more than likely going to start doing her makeup and will get very elbow unfriendly. The most important person to avoid on a bus is the person who looks like he is talking on the phone but in fact, he does not own a phone. He is clinically insane and believe me when I say this, There is one on every bus and he IS the reason people put bags on the seat next to them. My suggestion look for the person who is sitting on the outside seat with a carrier bag or two. They will be getting off soon and you can enjoy your journey.

     If I may add at this point after 9pm do not sit at the back of the bus. Once somebody asked me for a lighter and then took out a spoon. I know it was Birmingham but that was a little bit too much. Finally under absolutely no circumstance get on a bus with an angry looking driver. He will drive like an insane person, open his doors only to swear at other drivers and stop at every other stop to read his bloody newspaper.

That was my guide to riding a bus.   

Maybe Inappropriate but...

              I have always had a strange relationship with people, I think that it's things like, I refer to other people as humans whilst talking to them, which is apparently is a rather odd thing to do and also I have a tendency to say things to certain people and fail to notice that their reaction is that of a person that has just witnessed a cult burning a witch for the first time. I am told on a regular basis that I have no filter. Unfortunately this I can't argue with, but I do choice to rub icing on that description and usually state.
"I am just saying what everybody else is thinking."
knowing that quite possibly nobody at all is thinking anything of the sorts, and what actually happened was that the voice in my head shouts at me.
"Make a holocaust joke!"
My mouth instantly regurgitates the most inappropriate arrangement of words you could possibly imagine. My mind seems to have some sort of trolling vendetta and refuses to hide it in any way.

            If you can think of absolutely anything you shouldn't say whilst in a relationship, I can personally guarantee that I have said it. When asked the question do I look nice, Generally rule one is there is only one answer, that answer i should always be yes. My thought process says yes, my logic says yes, my interfering nonsensical unfiltered mind chose to send the following signal to mouth.
"No, you look a bit like a rugby player in a dress"
Not a good answer! I once worked in a restaurant in Birmingham, Now firstly let us get one thing straight. TV chefs and the shouting. It's all very dramatic, my kitchen was a very fun place and you would usually find me dancing like a moron to Footloose by Kenny Loggins! any way as usual I digress. We had a new waitress start as part of our Christmas recruitment. A German girl, very quiet, very timid, very pompous and cantankerous also to a young chef with a warped sense of humour very easy to maybe play a joke or two on.

          After her third day, I hadn't spoken to her at this point. I was planning on playing a small joke on her maybe with a rat in the bin yard and she would scream blah blah, you get the picture. For some reason thought engine came straight into practice the moment she went to introduce herself. I turned and shunned her smiling with my back to her. I walked out the back and explained my plan to the head chef, who incidentally thought it was as brilliant as I did.

The next day the waitress approached the head chef and asked him if she had offended me in any way. This is what we agreed he would tell her and did.
"It's nothing you personally have done, It's more everything your kinsman. You see Rob is Jewish and you are the only German he has ever met. So naturally he blames you for the death of his grandparent"
This woman was so gullible, I mean she tried to make so much effort to communicate for a week and I just got further into pretending to be a Jew. I even brought a Kippah (a Jewish skull cap) from ebay and started wearing it whilst referring to people as buby at every opportunity. I must say after a week I did tell her it was a joke and we became very good friends and she is aware that this is being written.

People for reasons as mentioned generally see me as Marmite personified. I mean as a younger person my filter-less mind was seen as cute in some respects, apart from the time I appeared on a childrens TV show in 1995 on BBC one called why did the chicken? and decided to embrace my moment in the spotlight apparently that was not so cute, also what did that 9 year old child just say on television?

Five steps to trouble

Ok so as you can imagine I am not exactly a tongue swizzling charmer with the opposite sex. Saying that I have learnt my fair share and I have also made my fair share of wrong thing said at the wrong moment times. These are my top five life lessons of what definitely not to do.

1) Ok, number one is one that some young men out there will have only had slightly wrong dreams about doing but I implore you do not! Stop! Do not under any circumstance get inebriated with a friends mom whilst waiting for him to come back from college, notice that his mom is quite attractive and then proceed to make very slow, old and disgusting love to her. THIS DOES NOT GO DOWN WELL. consequently I was caught with my friends mother during the act of what could be defined as beautiful, but in this case I won't describe it that way. After being chased into his back garden I was hit in the face with a shovel and left with a broken nose and ego. I suppose I should count myself lucky that nothing was removed from my person whilst on the floor. Just do not go there. that friend is no longer a friend and I believe he still wants me dead.  A little dramatic if you ask me.

2) Under no circumstance take any drugs and carry a mobile phone. As previous readers have discovered in my younger years I experimented with narcotics and carrying a mobile phone only leads to trouble. The only other time I was arrested but never prosecuted if i may add was the time I had taken some lethal cocktail and incidentally I rang the police to report my camel had been stolen. They later removed me from the local railway station whilst scream.
"Have no fear Thomas the tank engine, I've stolen the fat controllers hat so he won't be in tomorrow"

3) Number three is an obvious one but I believe it destroyed my first relationship. Absolutely under no circumstance compare your relationship to Auschwitz! I went on to say that I saw her as "The Hitler" figure and I was being wrongly punished for things I hadn't done. Looking back had I used a better analogy it may not have caused the faecal storm that ensued. Ironically I am sure she used to leave the oven on, on purpose after that.

4) So growing up we all used to play games, a favourite of mine as a child was knock door run. For those of you who do not know what that is. It's where you taunt a local neighbour by knocking their door and running. My favourite victim was the man at number 87. He was mental, and I'm not talking a little crazy. This man used to carry a goldfish bowl with him everywhere he went and hoover his lawn! He was also 6' 4" and the size of a well built tractor. We used to knock and run every day for months until one day we upped the anti. We decided to cover his door entrance from top to bottom in strips of tape before we knocked, it was perfect. The moment finally came for the big knock he ran out as if he was waiting for us. Straight into the tape. He was insanely furious and this was by far the funniest thing I had ever seen. I was laughing so hard I forgot to start running by the time I realised I had to run it was almost too late. I turned and fell straight over a brick onto a piece of metal on the floor. I was in pain, covered in blood and quite frankly thought Mr 87 was going to feed me to his wife. Luckily he didn't he took me home where I had to go to the hospital with an angry father and have 4 stitches. lesson the nutty ones may provide the best laughs but also the most stitches.

5) Finally, to complete the list. If you do not want to annoy your parents and you are a creative 7 year old then I suggest you express your artistic nature in a drawing book of sorts. My parents had recently decorated my room in a full Teenage mutant ninja turtles theme. I was pretty much over the moon apart from the wall colour, it was a shade of blue only a sailor could like so I decided I would redecorate. I was faced with one small problem I didn't have access to paint. I waited until I heard my parents go to bed and thought (for some reason) this will surprise them! I will redecorate myself. They were more 'The angriest middle aged couple I had ever seen in my entire life' than surprised when they came to get me the next morning only to find that I had coloured in my bedroom wall (not walls) from corner to corner in crayola red. Yep I had stayed up all night and worn my complete red collection of Crayola Crayons down to the pure paper. I was told later that day that Santa was going to bring me nothing that year (my step mom) and my dad told me that the ghosts were going to watch me in my sleep if I didn't start behaving. I will be honest, I was more frightened of my dad's consequences rather than no presents 11 months later.