Steven Paul Allen's Stories of Woe

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.

The title of this posting is something I shouted out whilst punching a cushion on the sofa; I'd been playing Mario Kart online and had just won a race. This was on Friday during a bit of a Mario Kart session, Nick came over and after watching Peep Show Mario Kart was played online until 2.30am before I retired to my bed.

On Saturday I initially woke up around 9.30am, as Tash woke me when she got up. I was determined to go back to sleep though; so I listened to a bit of an album called "Sleepwalk" by "Matrix", that is until the CD started skipping. I then shoved on "Moving Shadow 02.1" and drifted off. It was around mid day when I woke up again and I got up and had a bowl of All Bran and a cup of coffee, whilst watching the Carling Cup draw on Sky Sports News. Then, I thought I'd better do some exercise so I went upstairs and got out the exercise bike.

Whilst cycling I watched a film called "Push" which I quite liked, and what's more I did over 25km in the first hour of cycling, which (between you & I) is quite something. This helped me sweat out the beer I had whilst playing Mario Kart on the Friday. I then had a shower and a shave, before setting off downstairs and making myself some macaroni cheese. I discovered these Tesco Value macaroni cheese things a few weeks ago, they're 75p & take 15 mins to cook in the oven. I can really recommend them, bloody bargain and bloody nice. I haven't looked back since discovering them, and that's the truth.

After woofing down my macaroni I simply pottered about for a bit, you know, flicking through TV channels and that sort of thing. Come circa 5 o'clock I did a bit of a weight lifting session whilst watching this film called "Book of Blood", or something like that. I'm about 45 mins in thus far and there was one bit that really made me jump. I then had a bath, a bath and a shower in the same day... Unprecedented. Whilst in the bath I listened to a bit of Talksport on DAB and just had a bloody good soak, you see.

Pretty much straight after my bath I went to Reigate & had a Pizza Express & then went to some public houses of the area. This was in Honor of one "Benjamin Measures", who’s birthday it was. He likes to be called "Ging" & owns an electrically charged tennis racquet. He actually lives in rather close proximity to me & I do have the ability to shine my high powered torch into his house at night. Also, I have witnessed him on many occasions doing the washing up when I am in my garden. Once, when he was in his garden, I launched a handful of compressed mud his way from where I stood in my garden. This hit his shed, making quite a thud, and I observed him about turn and survey the area. I, of course, was hidden down behind the fence, laughing away to myself. Got him again!

Well, we all had quite a bit to drink on the night, and we even went to Horley for a pint or two. Suffice to say that yesterday was not the jolliest day for my system. Tash & I had a curry, made from a ready meal & supplemented this with £12.60 worth of peripheries from the local curry takeaway. This included 10 popadoms and I ate them in what I call a "popadom frenzy" whilst watching Forest give Plymouth a good, and sound, one nil beating. Then Tash & I watched "United 93", which I thought was very good. I then watched the cricket and went to bed around midnight. It's been a bit of a struggle today but I'll feel better later on after I have "sweat it out" on the exercise bike, which I shall be doing when I get home from work.

Here we have some random photos that I've taken whilst out and about on my travels. A couple have slipped in from my homestead, but don't you worry about that. Some were taken on my camera phone, which is sadly no longer with us. It was a white clam shell type communicado device which did serve me will until it malfunctioned. What happened was this: the screen in the flip top segment of the cellular stopped displaying images. I therefore bent it completely round destroying it permanently. I now sport one of the slide phones and find it equally good. Please…

Just incase you're interested, Brno Airport in in the Czech Republic.

Cheerio.

Great news one and all, I'm going on holiday in two weeks. All-inclusive to Crete for a week. This will be my third holiday this year, a personal best, no less. I've never been all-inclusive before so this will be a new experience for me, this place we're going to has a bar in the pool which you just swim up to and, basically, your uncle's name is Bob. Sounds bloody brilliant to me.

So, yesterday, after booking the holiday we went to Tesco. Did a bit of a serious shop, our total spend was about £130, but the wine rack is now burgeoning and we'll hopefully have enough food to last us until we go on holiday. Then it's only one week when we get back from Crete until pay day. Oh yeah, it's all been planned out.

There are these effervescent multivitamins I like to buy from Tescos, I really do. I saw them yesterday and they had been reduced from £0.98 to a snicket at £0.24 a pop. This is them:

Now, to complicate matters Tesco were also running a buy 3 vitamin products and get the cheapest free; and I had opted into this little deal. Not wanting my £0.24 effervescent to interfere with this I put them through separately at the till. The till operative ran my effervescents through and it came to £4.44, over what I was expecting to pay, but without really thinking about it I pulled out a Jacks Alive and handed it over. I was then duly handed my £0.56 change and receipt, which I immediately scanned for errors. Sure enough the silly old fish wife had managed to put through 6 plain croissants at a hefty £0.50 each peach plum pear! Well, I can't tell you how annoyed I was.

I told the till operative and was told, in words not dissimilar to these, "there's nothing I can do about that now, you'll have to get a refund at customer services". How rude, I thought, and off I went to the customer services stop. I gave the lady there my receipt and started to explain what exactly happen to me, when this rather scum like rag tag of a woman waiting at the cigarette kiosk piped up. "If your working the tills then you should come and serve me, I was here first" she barked at the customer services executive. "Sorry mate, but I was here first", she croaked at me. Oh fucking great, I thought, what a charmer.

The customer services lady served her the fags, 20 Benson's it looked like, whilst listening to the woman complain about waiting at the ciggie kiosk. Then another customer came and stood at the ciggie kiosk and she blurted out "I wouldn't wait there, mate, you'll never get served". To compound matters the poor customer services executive had to log into the till and it was taking a while. Please refund me, that's all I could think.

Well, my turn came and I started again. I passed over my receipt and explained my situation, the woman looked a little shell shocked from her previous encounter and she got my refund from the till and handed me a Rocket and an Alan (that's a fiver and a pound between you and I). I couldn't believe my luck. All I can think is that she saw that 6 croissants had been put through and had just got £6 out because of that. I took my winnings and made a quick exit, I had to get out as soon as possible before she could realize her error and make a recall. It was just the best.

In effect, you see, Tesco paid me £1.56 to take 6 effervescent vitamin tubes off their hands. They paid me.

Edmund Honda

Most of the time when I make a coffee I usually put the granules into a cup which I have already poured my desired amount of milk into. I find this helps make the coffee creamier when the finished article is unveiled. After pouring in the water and stirring I often find that a few stubborn granules take longer to dissolve than their counterparts, and rise to the surface of the coffee. I call these semi dissolved granules "guano". After some stirring they disappear and I am left to enjoy my coffee in peace.

Presently I am having a Twix and a cup of coffee. A twix without coffee is like horse racing without the horses.

I have recently discovered quite a splendid coasting opportunity on my route to work. It allows me to coast 0.8 miles, and I have annotated the exact length of this coast in red marker on the below map.

It is quite a nice thing to do, actually, and what is more this coast saves me engaging the engine for a total of 1.6 miles daily. This is because I return home at 1.30pm, for a spot of luncheon, most days (just for an hour between you & me). Hence, doubling my trip. Working this number up we discover that I am saving myself a quite generous 8 miles a week via my coast. Something that shocks me, yet delights me, and causes me to feel fine. It is a good shock, a shock I can liken to landing a hefty gamble on the nags.

Basically my method is very simple. I build up my velocity at a steady speed until I reach the brow of the hill, of Pendleton Road. I time my disengagement of the gearbox with the arrival of the hill brow, and also with a speed of anywhere between 50 and 60 mph. I then trundle along at maximum economy for 0.8 miles. I once only just topped 45 mph, causing me to reach a trough of only just 20mph for a time along my coast. This was not a problem, however, as the road was clear as a bell and I was therefore able to travel at such a sluggish speed without causing distraction to a fellow motorist.

Sometimes fellow motorists can tamper with my coast. It is not their fault, I suppose. How are they to know they are messing with my miles per gallon? It still irritates the very living daylights out of me, though. The most common tampering other drivers cause is to drive their conveyance like a milk float. This means I have to engage the brakes & lose precious velocity. Another favorite is for some swine to be making a right turn and cause a jam. This can cause the unthinkable, if the piluk is a hesitant fool or the traffic coming the other way does not engrave an invitation to go, and cause me to grind to an economy shattering halt. This is the worst possible outcome.

Finally, the below traces the route I took home on Saturday night when I was found, by the police, in my Homer Simpson slippers and sent on my way. It is a two mile walk, please study it carefully:

I opened the freezer to get some ice cubes for my pint of water and discovered a roll of cling film in there.

I needed the water as I got up at 7am and did an hour on the exercise bike with all the doors and windows closed. I had created a sweat room in which to, quite literally, sweat out all the toxins from the weekend. Also, I had spaghetti bolognaise last night and I wanted to sweat out any stray onion that may have sneaked into my system. I certainly couldn't taste any in the food, but you can not trust onion. It is evil and will try to weed its way into your digestive tract by any means.

Therefore come 8am I was incredibly thirsty, & hot, & this is why I reach for the ice.

Incidentally on Sunday, when I was severely hung over, I found just lying down with an ice cube held in my mouth to be very satisfying. It is cooling, refreshing & ultimately hydrating. I did watch a film whilst I lay with melting ice held in my gob. It was called "The Cell" & it starred Jennifer Lopez, it was not good.

I asked Tash if she’d put the cling film in the fridge but she denied it, I must have done it. It was me, apparently, but I de ne recall not such an incident. Cling film, why you do this to me?

Had an interesting day on Saturday. It started innocently enough with a nice two hour cycle on the exercise bike, I refused to get off the contraption until the little computer thing had clocked up over 1000 calories burnt. It was a point blank refusal and I wouldn't have it any other way. There was a brief moment of pain when I raised my rear off the seat having been sitting there for two hours. I don't understand why, but all you need to know is that I believe it is a combination of stiffness of the rear coupled with the pressure on my arse from sitting on a saddle for two hours. The pain is momentary and goes very soon; I find a nice thing to do afterwards is to have a nice soak in a piping hot bath. It's just something I like to do, it may not suit everyone but I love it.

Whilst I cycled I did not simply stare nonchalantly into space, no. instead I watched a film, it was called Duplicity and I thought it was rather average. I wouldn't bother watching it again, it wasn't up to much. After my bath I had some cheese on toast and a cup of tea, oh yeah. Then I did something a little bit silly and placed a £50 wager on the Ayr Gold Cup; of course the horse came nowhere. This irked me and caused me to make a further decision which was a little bit silly, which was to drown my sorrows.

White wine was the beverage I consumed. I started around 5pm. Tash's Dad came around for some pie and I supplemented my pie with some white wine. It was a steak and ale pie and it would have been perfect except for the smattering of onions that Tash insisted on spiking the pie with. Why do people feel the need to put onion on everything? I really find it incomprehensible. It's like mayonnaise in sandwiches, what if you don't like mayonnaise? I'll tell you what; you are victimized for finding something rightly disgusting. Tash wants to make some Ragoo later and she's going to have to sieve this Ragoo because, surprise surprise, the idiots have infested it with onion. I would really like it if onions were eradicated from production. An onion virus could romp through the agriculture and wipe out the horrid bulbish turnip imposters for good. That would be ideal.

So, after Tash's Dad left I carried on with my wine consumption. To start with I was on my own as Tash went to bed & all I did was play Mario Kart whilst supping my wine and listening to music. I was getting quite irate because I kept getting done by homing blue shells in the finishing straight, it was so annoying and caused me to shout & curse at the console. I don't remember what time it was but Ben popped over later on in the evening. By this time it was going jolly well pear shaped and I don't recall much of what happened. There was definite playing of Bowie, this much I can tell you. After an hour or two we then made our way to Rob's house.

The next memory I have is being in Lesborne Road in Reigate being interviewed by the police. I was not wearing shoes but instead was sporting my Homer Simpson slippers. From what I gather they had discovered me asleep on the corner and were trying to find out what I was playing at. Clearly coming around in such a situation is not ideal. I had to gather myself and evade the grasps of these police. There was one female and one male and I insisted that I was okay and all I wanted to do was walk home, I said I'd had a few drinks but I knew what I was doing now and reiterated my intention to walk home and stay out of trouble. They wanted my postcode and I think I may have started explaining my postcode and the exact address and which way I intended to walk home. Eventually they went and I walked back by running a bit and then walking a bit. It is quite a long way and I wasn't sure how I had come to be so far from home, especially in the Homers.

Yesterday I woke up covered in bruises and with a quite terrible hangover. I managed to eat some carbonara for lunch but was then unable to eat again until 11.30pm at night, due to feeling like I was going to be sick. Incidentally, I should point out that Ben was discovered by his mother passed out on the toilet floor. He doesn't know how he got there. So anyway, at 11.30pm I had some chips, they were quite nice as it goes. I went to bed at 2am for some reason, which wasn't really a very good idea because I've been really tired today.

Oh well now your back's gonna hurt as well, because you just pulled landscaping duty.

Smashed my hand against the kitchen sideboard yesterday. It well hurt, so much so that I thought I may have done some serious damage, but today I just have some rather delicate digits. This is because of two particularly vicious bruises that have reared up since the incident yesterday.

I was in the kitchen, see, stabbing holes into the film lid of a macaroni cheese ready meal with a skewer, when this pesky and bothersome fly started buzzing around. I had noticed this fly previously when in the lounge and the fucker had followed me into my own kitchen. I was mad by this, and so I stopped my stabbing of the macaroni cheese to focus my attention on seeing off the fly once and for all.

At the correct opportunity I swung my arm at the fly and delivered a high velocity back hander to the insect, knocking the bastard out. Unfortunately, however, the kitchen sideboard was too close and on my follow though I wrapped the backs of my middle finger & ring finger quite hard indeed. I recoiled almost instantly and started waving my hand about to try and shake off the injury. It bloody hurt a lot, I can tell you.

The fly was out for the count on the kitchen floor, and I stamped on it many times. It was my final retribution for making me smack my own bloody hand about. I then put my macaroni cheese in the pre heated oven and went into the lounge.

This morning on my drive into work I got stuck behind this moron who was refusing to take over a cyclist. He had plenty of time to take over this cyclist, but I can only reason that, because he wanted to turn left, he didn't think he would have enough time to do so. I, on the other hand, could clearly see that he had time in abundance to pull off such a maneuver. Then the cyclist stuck his arm out to indicate he was turning left as well, so I got myself over the other side of the road and proceeded to take over the dawdler. As I was over taking I glanced over to get a look at the numpty &, as chance would have it, he also looked over. So I gave a very disapproving shake of my head at him and went on my way. The best was when a little way down the road he beeped me, it must have taken a few seconds for my disapproving head shake to sink in & irritate him & he reacted with a beep of his hooter. As soon as I heard this I knew I had got to him and began to smile. Even typing this now, and recalling the incident, makes me laugh.

This is the list of films that I've watched from 17th August to 16th September; a one one month slot for this little lot:

The Watchmen
Knowing
X-Men Origins: Wolverine
What Doesn't Kill You
Moola
Preminition
The Hangover
I love You, Man
The Haunting In Connecticut
The Damned United
Bronson
Bruno
Angels & Demons
The Last House on the Left
In the Loop
The Devil's Advocate
Fifty Dead Men Walking
Outlander
The Hurt Locker
Terminator Salvation
The Uninvited
District 9
Public Enemies
Ghost Town
Randy & the Mob
Underworld: Rise of the Lycans
Adventureland

I think I can safely say that Bronson is easily the most psychotic film of the bunch. Of all of them Moola was the biggest struggle, just because it was so poor. On the other hand I thoroughly enjoyed District 9, probably the pick of the lot; followed by Bruno & Fifty Dead Men Walking. Randy & the Mob was a strange one, I nearly turned it off after the first half hour but then this really funny character came into it and I have to say I found it highly entertaining from there on in. The Devil's Advocate is the only one that I watched on TV, it was on BBC3 and I hadn't seen it for ages so gave it a viewing. Ghost Town was the only other film that I had seen before, but I hadn't seen it since viewing it in the cinema & wanted to watch it again. I think probably the most mental act contained in all of these films is to be found in the last scene of The Last House on the Left, where a live man's head in put in a microwave. Knowing was excellent until the ending, which was a bit daft, but it had a superb train crash, so it gets a let off for that.

I should point out that the films are roughly listed in the order I watched them in, from the 17th August. Thus Adventureland was watched last night. I found this film to be a little soppy, I was expecting far more comedy, and I therefore say it was average. I won't be watching it again in a hurry, let's put it that way.