Steven Paul Allen's Stories of Woe

Been a fairly quiet week this one, but I have to say that it has zipped past at a fair old rate of knots. No reason, it just has. On Monday, Tuesday & Wednesday I broke my current duck on exercise (haven’t done any since getting back from Crete) and did about an hour and a half per day on the cycle machine. Here are the films I whiled away the time with whilst peddling away:

Monday - Rogue. A nice little film about a killer crocodile that attacks a group of, quite innocent, people on a tour of the river.
Tuesday - Pontypool. A pile of steaming shit that has somehow got a 7/10 rating on IMDB. I had to go on there and give it 1/10 as I just couldn’t bloody well believe it. The film is about people getting a virus as the English language has been infected with it. Absolute clap trap.
Wednesday - Deadline. I quietly liked this. Just a lowish budget film about a woman who stays in a house haunted by a murdered woman. Charming.

I've been watching a few horrors at the moment, the best I've seen of late are Orphan and Paranormal Activities. The later was superb until the ending which let it down a bit. Anyway, I had an idea for a film, which I will run past you now:

It's set in the future to start, ideally in space I think. A bunch of characters have come up with a time machine type contraption and to test it out they get a load of convicts (some of these could be alien types like Chewbacca & Mac from "Mac & Me") to test it out on. So, they set the machine to go back to present day England, but something goes wrong with the experiment & the test subjects are caught up between dimensions. Oh yeah, it's pretty serious. They end up in dimensions at present day England (they nearly made it) & are close enough to touch but you never can. The problem is, you see, that they are not in the four dimensions we live in (not including time).

The film then focuses on psychic types who say they can communicate with the dead and such bunkum, who (for the purposes of the film) discover they can talk to the people trapped in the other dimensions. Obliviously there is nothing they can do to bring them back other than try to communicate with them. Therefore the trapped people get mad and do the equivalent of poltergeist activity on the psychics. Basically I want a sci-fi film which turns into a horror film with the explanation for the haunting being people trapped in another dimension, who’ve gone mad.

Let me know what you think?

Went to Ikea on Wednesday night because on their website they said they had this mini chest of draws, 25cm high, in stock. You see, they don’t do a delivery service for this product for some unknown reason, very unhelpful and more than a tad unreasonable considering. So, the website said they had 9 in stock in various formats, some with more drawers than others but all variations weighing in at 25 cm high. After quite a bit of wondering around trying to find this item, called Fira, I realized my efforts were not yielding the desired results so I went and asked an employee of Ikea. They told me it was out of stock and would be for at least a month. Oh fuck.

Tash asked me what I wanted to do and I rather foolishly said "we're here now, we may as well walk round their stupid one way syatem", or words to that effect. Well, by the end of the "marketplace" I was at the end of my tether with the hell hole, I just wanted to leave and catch what little of the football was left for me on the TV. Unfortunately the bastards at Ikea Croydon have latched on a horrific feature to the warehouse called the bargain basement, or something like this. Of course we had to have a look around the bargain basement and see what shit they were peddling.

Everything in this crappy section is covered in grubby marks, and frayed, and they still want to charge £200 for a smudged up version of this:

For some reason Tash became obsessed with this awful seat. She kept sitting on it saying it could be used as a bed. I was then left to point out that she was sitting on a filthy bit of tat and no-one in their right mind would even consider it as a bed. It really is a nasty little trap to set right at the very end of the store, just a nasty little leaving present from the bastards of Ikea as you think you're home free.

Half way home I asked Tash if she wanted to go back to Ikea as I'd changed my mind about the bit of tat pictured above. To my astonishment she was actually up for doing this and I was left to say that I was actually joking. I mean, it wouldn't even fit in any of the rooms in our house, and that's just for starters.

My cough has nearly gone now, I just need to clear some catarrh from my chest intermittently now. I found these nifty little blighters called Catarrh Pastels which I've been woofing down, they're bloody lovely and work a veritable treat. Now for the science, the active ingredients are Eucalyptus Oil, Menthol and Pumilio Pine Oil. Having read a few reviews of these so called pastels on the information superhighway it would appear that most find the taste & smell of them a tad abhorrent; I disagree strongly and will probably carry on sucking them down once I have dislodged the last of my catarrh. They are delicious.

Having had this rather unpleasant coughy cold thing for the past week got me wondering. Should I spit or swallow all this catarrh and phlegm I'm generating? Having looked on the internet it would appear there is no right or wrong answer to this. If you swallow the mucus is simply broken down by the gut, and expelling via sputum clears the airways just as effectively. The common parlance seems to be to spit when in private and swallow down the catarrh when on public view. I have to say I tend to employ a combination of spitting and swallowing. However I do make a special effort to spit when I can feel a particularly rich and viscous gob full of the stuff.

Now, onto more pleasant matters. On Friday I purchased myself a Hitachi ultra flat screen 32 incher from Richer Sounds. £250, which is a bloody bargain even if I do say so myself. It's gone straight into the spare room and no mistake and is due to be fixed to the wall with the TV bracket that was delivered today. The first film I watched on it was Surrogates, which I thought was rather good, followed by The Tournament which I also found to be more than acceptable. Any film starring a drunken priest is usually alright by me. Well, to be honest I'm very happy with the way things are shaping up in the hot room.

Got some more pictures from the holiday to Crete. These have been extracted from the mobile phone cameras of Tash & I. One is of a salad monster they created in the canteen, at first I thought this might be some sort of delicious desert but as I edged closer I realized what it was. Immediately a sense of horror over came me. I had to reach over the bastard to get some butter and it made me feel sick. Now, what else have we got? Oh yes there is Thomas, of course. We met him on the first night of the holiday, drinking in his bar we were, mmmm. He was an Eric Cantona doppelganger and kept putting his collar up. I also met another strange fellow in Thomas's bar who followed me to the Booze Bar, I befriended him by complaining about the Turkish occupation of Cyprus. He liked this. The picture of Tash in those odd glasses is also from this same night out. Incidentally we spent over half of the money we took with us on this evening; 120 Euros for a night out when we've gone all-inclusive, a little bit silly considering.

I did not try beer with cola, however nice it sounds. Here's a free lesson. Just a couple of pictures of my origami efforts, my pencils, the Bugle crisps and Nice Day House in Cyprus:

This is Dolly Shoehorn. I drew her last week:

I feel cheated when I buy a bottle of Rinena undiluted cordial and it is in a plastic bottle. At those sort of premium prices I expect Glass.

No posts last week as I was away on my holidays. Went to Crete for a week and it was very nice indeed, thank you very much. The flight back, however, was quite horrible and it took my right ear 79 hours to pop, I had proper plane ear. Just under three and a half days with a load of pressure swilling around in my middle ear deafening me.... very uncomfortable. Eventually I expelled the pressure on Tuesday lunchtime after shaking my head from side to side and then doing this weird swaying thing with my head. I found by doing this I could feel the pressure swilling about in my ear, and for some reason I felt that it helped. During the final swaying session I felt the pressure shift and so I pinched my nose and blew hard for a bit. Then, the magical moment arrived and I felt this long painful crackling ooze out of my right ear. The feeling of being able to hear finally after 3 days of nonsense was really quite elating. I was also getting a little bit worried I might have to go to the doctor to get it sorted.

Never fly with a cold, this is truly the moral here. For, you see, I entered onto the flight home in a bit of a state. It all started on Thursday. There I was lying on the sun louger by the swim up bar supping on a Tequila Sunrise at 11am. I knocked out several of these Tequila cocktails in such a fashion before going to sit at the bar in the afternoon and going quite mad on the brandy and cokes. I stayed there until they closed the bar and was forced to seek residence at the main bar where the hotel is. There I continued to consume the brandy and coke until dinner time, where I had a short break from drinking and had a nice plate of pasta covered in grated parmesan. Nice and plain, just the way I like it. After dinner I went straight back to the bar and progressed onto Ouzo.

It was quite the gathering of the English at the bar. You see, the small amount of English people who were there tended to stick together as there were so many Germans about. Here's who was there:

Ian & Alan (A father & son combo from Liverpool, they were Evertonians and we got on fine)
Jim & Betty (From Bolton, Jim looked like Ron Atkinson)
Dave & Amy (Not sure where from but it was the north; another couple in their 50's)
Chris & Dee (Can't remember where from, but slightly more southern, Dee had been to Bluewater)
John & Ann (These were Welsh, I spoke to John about horse racing)
Benson & Alison (Mad Geordies, I knocked over Benson's drink and was asked to keep away from him)

It got to midnight and I insisted to Tash that we went into the town (just a short walk outside the complex). I don't remember any of this, but Tash tells me that:

1. I went into the Booze Bar and disappeared for a bit
2. At the Anfield Bar I asked for any drink with whisky in it and then hardly drank any of the Whisky cocktail I was given

In the morning (Friday) I felt rather like I had contracted a cold, or Pub Flu as they call it up north. I had a nasty cough as well, which I can still feel the residue of. We had to check out so were forced to pack and this was a pain on top of actually having to get out of bed. After checking out we went to a bar and had an English breakfast which was quite nice. Then we went to the beach and I enjoyed just lying there in the sun and I also went in the sea at least 4 times. The following chain of events took place:

1. We went to a restaurant and I had an omelette, about 3pm
2. After this went back to the beach
3. We went back to the hotel and Tash had a shower and changed
4. We went for a walk down the seafront
5. During the walk I had a few pints which was probably a bad idea
6. I went into a bar to use the toilet as I was so desperate I was shaking
7. We walked back to the hotel and sat on the sofa

Now, our coach transfer to the airport wasn't until 3am. So, there we are absolutely cream crackered just sprawled on the sofa in reception trying to go to sleep at 10.30pm. I honestly didn't know how on earth we were going to pass the time. First off the coach, but then the flight wasn’t until 5.50am! Then, the manager came over to us and said he had a room we could take until 3am for 15 Euros, well we bit his hand of. He obviously didn't want us cluttering up the reception area, the little scamp. So, I managed to get an hour or twos sleep and also have a shower before 3am when we had to go and wait for the bus.

So, you can see how such a process can result in such a terrible flight for me as an individual. I did not enjoy this and certainly will think twice before taking a flight at that time in the morning from a foreign country again.

I have focused on my negative experience somewhat, but this only really was the last day and the journey home which doesn't really count. The rest of it was topper. It was much hotter than I expected for October around 25 degrees I think, which is more than acceptable to lie out in the sun all day. I elected factor 4, but Tash got a bit burnt one day using this tactic. For anyone who likes a drink the All-Inclusive is a real treat. You can sit around the pool drinking merrily away in the day and then go for a rest for a couple of hours before dinner and then get back on it in the evening. I started off on the beer but quickly migrated to cocktails, which were jolly nice indeed dear boy.

On one of the days I'd had my boxers and shorts on to play a bit of tennis, and after the game couldn't be arsed to go to the room and change so just went in the pool in the boxers and shorts. Clearly they got wet and so in the evening I put the said articles of clothing over the railing on the balcony. The next day there was a hell of a wind blowing in off the sea and my boxers and shorts had been blown off. My shorts were nowhere to be seen but my boxers were in view atop the roof of the hotel. I decided that there was no way I was ever going to get them back so took a photo for posterities sake (see below), I dare say they are still there now. A little gift from me to the Hotel Aphrodite Beach Club.

This morning I weighed in on the Wii Fit pre toilet session and noted the result, I was a non mover at 27.29 BMI. I then went to the loo and did a poo. Another weigh in ensued and I noted the result was 27.17 BMI. This means that my poo weighed slightly under half a kilo, or 0.91 pounds. That's nearly half a bag of sugar ladies & gents. An interesting little experiment, I'm sure you'll agree.

The below is a list of text messages I have sent to my brother over the past two days, I still await a reply:

"Andy Hamilton, Henry VIII lookalike"
"Creme de la darting, creme of Ireland"
"Rip roaring honky tonk fun & games"
"Barney's losing it again"
"The Pieman Andy Smith"
"The Pieman made it trough"
"Jockey Wilson cup on 5th December. Just a heads up"
"The Pieman is through, I can't believe it"
"Well, the Pieman made it through last night. Good on him"
"Beware the judder man my dear"
"The Pieman made it through, it's all fun & games"
"PIEMAN"

Went & got my haircut yesterday lunchtime. I'm slightly concerned as Yousef wasn't around and there were three employees there, the ratio of people to Yousef was all wrong. There was also a fellow who appeared from round the back and he looked like he could well be hanging about in some managerial capacity; I just got that impression from the fellow. This has concerned me, and if this is true I will hunt down Yousef and make him cut my hair. Until I know more I shall not change my routine. I like it the way it is.

I got some new speakers this morning, they are JBL Control 1 by brand. I bought them on eBay, on Sunday, for a total of £42, which was a bit of a bargain I say. They are very small but pack a punch, which is exactly what I need. Now, previous to today I had been using a pair of floor standing TDL Studio 5 speakers which I have had up for sale on Friday-Ad for the past few weeks. On Monday evening, rather conveniently, I received a call from a buyer inquiring about the speakers. Oh, this is very timely. He wanted to come over right away and pick them up.

I gave him my details and incorrectly told him I was the first house on the right, I do not know why I did this. Then, about an hour later he rang again and he was wondering around on the other side of the road looking for me, oops. Oh well, served him right for driving a smart car, the fool! He offered me £35 cash, and I accepted. Whilst waiting for him to come & collect I watched the football on ESPN. It was Villa versus Man City and as I watched I packaged a book in manila envelopes. It was Villa Vs Man City with me and my manila.

You see, I have put loads of books up for sale on Amazon and Green Metropolis, and have consequently been generating quite the hotbed of sales (it's a veritable gold mine, if you will). What I was packaging was an old text book on Statistics and it had sold at a profit of £11.89 (after Amazon took their little wedge). One of the nice things is that I don't have to pay for postage as I can just chuck it in the post at work. My current system is to wrap the book in manila and then reinforce the corners with parcel tape (today I used duct tape as I have run out of parcel), I then put this reinforced bundle in another manila envelope. This I neatly seal and address. The final package is then transported to the cubby hole at work, where I make my deposit and walk off as if nothing has happened.

It was an interesting weekend, I made £2.65 total on the nags. This was on three horses, the names of which were: Applause, Pipedreamer & Kirby's Vic. It would have been better but I bet on some right rotters as well, so at the end of the day when I made my final withdrawal to my checking account I was a mere £2.65 to the good. Still, this does signify the end of a horrible losing streak on the nags so I am pleased with the overall outcome.

On Friday night I had a real rip roaring weights session whilst I watched a film called "Drag me to Hell", which was just splendid. It's a film about this bank clerk who refuses to give a gypsy a loan. This then prompts the gypsy to put the curse of the black goat on the lady’s coat button, prompting all manner of nasty business. I really enjoyed it and hope you will too. After encouraging lactic acid into my system I had a nice bath and then did something I have been enjoying very much. I had a Mario Kart session and consumed wine. Oh shit, so sorry I forgot, I watched Derren Brown and Peep Show before Mario came to the party.

Saturday was something of a write off and I spent a large proportion of the day ensuring a deficit of calories was a certain non starter. If memory serves I had the following: 6 chicken McNuggets & chips, 2 plates of cheesy chips, a curry and half a pizza. It is, apparently, a fact that you only ever discover cheesy chips if you go to university and the amount of life experience you have can be garnered from knowledge of the cheesy chip phenomenon. Ging says he first heard about cheesy chips when he was in the sixth form as they did them in the kebab shop next door to (the then) Curry Katyre. I personally discovered them at Reading University student's union. They used to bloody love them down there.

Anyway I went to Ging's house for a bit on Saturday evening and found that he has a game called "Demolition Man" on this Super Nintendo emulator he has on his computer. I was very pleased when we put it on and it was, as I had suspected, a computer game of the film. Result! I got past the first level but then it got a bit difficult and I had to go home to get the internet working for Tash, so I left. Simple as that really, no conspiracy here.

On Sunday I went to Crawley as Tash insisted that we go shopping. I have to highlight one particular word of caution to people. Please do not go in a shop called "Primark", it is the Devil's shop. Full of these gannets rushing round the aisles, it is really bad. They have the typical rotating displays of clothes that create a kind of maze like quality within the shop, and to make it worse some of these display racks have mirrors on top of them. This makes it very confusing if you are scanning the shop trying to find someone, very much impossible actually. Plus, most of the clothes have been taken off their hangers and just disguarded. This gives the whole place the feel of a jumble sale. It is just the pits, please do not go there. It's like a down graded TK Max, as if that isn't bad enough.

Anyway, the best on Sunday was that we had a Wimpy. Bloody lovely it was, Tash & I both had sausage, egg and chips and a Wimpy coffee. Bliss! It made the whole Crawley experience at least that little bit more tolerable.

We got in from Crawlers about 4.15pm and I sat and watched the football whilst I scoffed a pepperoni pizza. Then, later, I had a marathon 2 hour exercise bike session, 44km total. I didn't finish until 10.20pm and to settle down a bit I had a deep bath and relaxed. Despite this I still couldn't get to sleep until about 1.30am, which caused me to be rather tired yesterday.

I had a rampant cycle for an hour yesterday whilst watching the new Star Trek film. It's actually not bad, and I say that as a man who thinks Star Trek is utter tripe. I attribute the film being alright to the fact that is directed by J.J. Abrahams, who is a wizard behind a camera. You may have heard of him from Lost, Fringe or Alias, all of which I thoroughly enjoy with aplomb. Après cycle I had a bath and, as per usual, had an earful of Talksport on the charming little DAB radio I have positioned on the porcelain cistern cover (or the lid on the back of the toilet box, between you and me).

Once out of the bath I had a bloody good rub down and applied E45 sparingly to my face. Then I put on some red tartan PJ bottoms and went about my business. This business was to give the computer a dam fine hovering in order to remove dust from the various assorted bits that were causing it to be very loud when on. It had, quite honestly, become far too intrusive a noise for me to take any more of and I simply had to take measures. I turned the computer off, unplugged all the peripheries and transported the pay load down to the bottom of the stairs. It was then that the vacuum was plugged in and I was able to focus all of the sucky power of the nozzle directly onto, and inside, the apparatus. I paid particular attention to the areas housing the fan which had become encrusted with dusty detritus.

Once fully sated with the job I packed away the vacuum, put the workstation back together and located back to the spare room. The peripheries were reintroduced to the system and the power was switched on with an air of anticipation. Ah, my jobby had worked, the computer was whirring away (once more) at a more than acceptable level of noise pollution. This was a job well done, to be sure. To celebrate such a magnificent achievement I had a couple of glasses of wine, played a bit of darts, checked on a couple of ebay sales and had a few games of Mario Kart online.

Bed was taken at 12.10am and I was asleep fairly rapidly for I was quite tired, you see.

I've had a good couple of days, made myself £30 into the bargain to boot. First off I got a tenner on Tuesday for my correct postulation that Arsenal & Barcelona would both win, and yesterday I made a further twenty pound sterling when Man U, Chelsea, real Madrid & Bordeaux all won. It was all too easy. After witnessing all my results come in yesterday I had a bottle of rose wine and played a bit of Mario Kart. As a result of consuming the wine (I believe this is what caused it) I woke up with a knee jerk reaction at 6.25am precisely. It was really odd, I was bolt upright in bed before I knew it. I went straight to the toilet and had a sitting piss for a good minute. I must have really needed that. Then I went back to bed; I did toy with the idea of staying up and doing some morning exercise but I was asleep before I knew it.

It was a busy hour for me this luncheon. I went home and had some scramby eggs on toast, bloody lovely even if I do say so myself. There is just no getting away from that fact that my scramby eggs are superior. I then jumped in the motor and went to Reigate, coasting where ever possible. There was quite a lot of traffic at the one way system, which irritated me greatly. I think this is somewhat attributed to the fact that this morning the traffic into work was appalling and meeting yet more traffic, on this very same day, had an accumulating effect on my irritancy. I eventually got parked at Morry car park and got my letter posted and cheque cashed.

Now for the interesting part. On my way out of the car park a BMW 4x4 just stopped slap bang in the middle of the road, I think they must have been picking or dropping someone off. I waited a number of seconds before shouting out "come on" at the top of my voice. A middle aged woman then took the time to exit the BMW from the passenger side, look at me, and say "don't shout". You see, I had all my windows down and I expect my hollering had reverberated round the car park and right into their earshot. Well, I was most pleased that I had clearly got to this silly cow. It did irk me somewhat, however, that instead of just getting on with it, as instructed by my call, she instead took extra time to leave her car and tell me not to shout. I guess no-one really won that war.

Here, I give you, my Amazon review of the Homers:

I sweat it out a treat last night after work. Started off by doing some weights whilst I finished watching "Book of Blood", which was very silly. Then I sat on the exercise bike and peddled furiously for a period of 1 hour 20 mins. During this time I watched a film which sounds really good, but didn't really deliver the goods. It was called "The Killing Room", about this room that a secret American government organization uses to conduct experiments to see how far they can push the human mind. It wasn't really that good because not a lot happens in it and the experiments are not that interesting. Oh well, there are always other films.

In order to sweat it out good and proper I had all the doors and windows shut and I refused (point blank) to use the fan. It was a terrific struggle to make it through and I was drenched after my session, so I had a nice deep bath to induce a sleepy mood before I went to bed. For, you see, it was 9.05pm by the time I'd done my stretch on the bike. This morning when I got up I was slightly groggy, but now I'm as chipper as can be. It really has done me the world of good I tell you.

For lunch today I had a can of tinned spaghetti bolognaise, it was horrible. The beef in it was like cardboard. I ate it anyway, but I will not be buying this product again. No sir. To put a bit of a positive spin on the experience I have fed myself for 70p, which is bloody good I say.

This afternoon I rang up O2 because, to be quite honest, I am fed up of my phone bill. I told them I could get unlimited texts from Virgin for a ten and the nice chap on the other end of the line offered me the following:
A 24 month contract
£15 for unlimited texts & 100 mins per month
£150 credit to get me started (that's the first 10 months free).
Well, I chomped his hand off. This is going to cost me a mere £8.75 a month over the two years and I can text like sliced bread has just been invented.