Blogging ends
I'm afraid that, like so many fine blogs before it, the Thom Kennedy blog has to come to an end. It's not hat I had run out of subject matter -as anybody can tell you, I have an opinion about just about everything under the sun- nor that I am lacking in time to carry out the blog (I could always make time for my precious reader. Sorry, I meant, readers.)
Rather it's because today is the last day of my tenure at the Bridlington Free Press. I have worked out my notice and begin a new role with a weekly series of newspapers in South London as of Monday. Many thanks for persisting with my blog, even when it hasn't been updated for a while and when some of the subject matter has been a bit thin - we all hit off-days now and again. But I like to think that the 'how many grapes can you fit in your mouth' blog at least partially made up for some of the rubbish ones.
Take care.
Thom
Published Date:
14/12/2007
Modified Date:
14/12/2007
Hey thomkennedy...
I like questions from strangers. A simple 'do you have the time' can be a fairly boring affair, admittedly, but there is such joy to be gleaned in the most simple of questions. Around election time, high streets around the country can suddenly become highly politicised, as candidates take to the streets to try to gauge the balance of public feeling. It can be quite exciting. Yet when a candidate springs across your path waving a leaflet like a tiny British flag during Jubilee years, his or her question is often fairly bland: "How will you be voting int he next election?" So clearly the appropriate response is to wave one's hand in the air and totter past like a drunken old ham actor, shouting over one's shoulder: "In a booth with a pencil, daaaahhhling."
At the other end of the scale, being asked directions is up there with crossing the middle of roundabouts and defacing pictures on trains in the great league of things-that-make-you-feel-macho. There is a strict protocol to be followed in such circumstances, and it goes something like this:
Q: "How do you get to the station mate?"
A: "Alright, do you know Chapel Street? No? How about Queen Street? No? Do you know the level crossing? No? Do you know how to carry out long division? Does wet or dry weather contribute to the relative quality of truffles? Who was left int he rocket when Neil Armstrong stepped on the moon? Don't know? Can't help you mate."
This leaves you feeling vindicated and manly and as though you have tried to help somebody in need, but they were just beyond help.
Cold callers, including, I might add, Jehovah's witnesses, are particularly entertaining, as they are easy meat. I've never done this, but I just realised that if I kept a Trilby and a notepad by the door, whenever a cold caller came by offering me "A quote on double glazing", I could immediately whip out said Trilby and notepad and say: "Sure, I need a quote on double glazing. What's the deal with double glazing?" Before scribbling down a response and shutting the door. That would make me laugh.
The stock response to Jehovahs' Witnesses and the standardised question, "Have you found Jesus?" is to go "No, why? Is he missing?" but this can leave you open to a set of sub-questions. One of my old school teachers, who was a particularly inspirational chap who always came into school on the ides of March wearing a toga, used to open the door to Jehovah's witnesses with the words: "Sorry, but my spirit is already promised [pause, look of deranged detachment] eeeelsewhere." Another used to invite them in for a chinwag, which he said always flummoxed them a bit.
But surely the richest source of comedy is in Spam e-mails. Aside from all the obvious invitations to, um, reassess one's manhood, spam also regularly invites you to test your newly reassessed manhood against a succession of bewilderinghly named women, who seem to only know how to address you by your e-mail. A friend of mine, for example, used to have an e-mail called something like 'kangaroo-battler@something.com'. So these mysterious 'women' would all start their e-mails "Hi Kangaroo-battler. I have been thinking a lot about that date the other night". Some are more oblique, saying things like "Hey kangaroo-battler, I saw you in the lift and found out who you were". But some are just plain pleading. One just came to me saying "Hey, thom_kennedy, please don't ignore me, I'm just a Russian supermodel who wants to hook up..." Now, there's two fatal mistakes here. First, they've named me by my e-mail, and secondly, they've pleaded with me not to ignore them. Man, ever a vain being, is bound to ignore this kind of supplication, puely on the grounds that it will make you feel powerful.
Similarly, I have had countless offers from Nigerian oil magnates asking for help smuggling £6,000,000 out of the country this week alone. All I have to do, apparently, is send £1,000 to their mysterious 'helper' in Holland, or Switzerland, or, more likely, Cloudcuckooland.
One came for me yesterday though, that sounded fairly convincing. Apparently some African missionary church wants me to send £5,000 to help get their multi-million dollar fortune out of the country, and then they will give me £1.5million once they get to London. I think I might respond...
Published Date:
05/12/2007
Modified Date:
05/12/2007
Return
Yes, it's been a little while since this blog was last updated. I admit my tardiness and apologise profusely. I'm sure everyone in the entire northern hemisphere (as well as Australia, Fiji and some remote Argentinian outposts) have been checking every day to see if I have put on an update, but been bitterly disappointed. Well wait no more. The trouble was I ran out of steam a little bit with the relatively recent blogs, and a little break can only serve to freshen things up. If not, then... well, go outside and enjoy the sunshine, go for a walk on the beach or something. You shouldn't be such lazy swines anyway, shacked up in front of a computer all day. eeh, in my day, we played conkers and knock-door ginger and happy-slapping and things like that.
Anyhow, last week I scuttled off on me jollies and took a few days' holiday in Berlin. It was incredibly pleasant, most relaxing. Getting the train back to Bridlington from Birmingham New Street station was less of a pleasure, but nonetheless, I had time to complete the Guardian Sudoku and graffitti all over the faces of contestants in Strictly Come Dancing in the Daily Mirror.
Defacing things on trains is an important part of modern British life. People can see exactly what you are reading, so it is important that you express your opinions lest they believe that you are flicking through Woman and Home magazine with a genuine interest. If, for example, somebody spies over your shoulder that you are taking an interest in the latest line of Argos kitchenware, it is important to immediately scrawl 'Argos is for rubbish-heads' across the page you are reading. If you are admiring the ice-maker on a fridge in Ikea, you don't want to put across an image of excessive domesticity to undermine your alpha-male image, so why not just flick continuous 'V' signs at the fridge throughout your visit? And if you get caught by your partner/mother/boss/friendly local bobby flicking through the er otic fiction section of Waterstones while drooling and snorting like Darth Vader after several painkilling injections in his face, prove that you were just passing the time waiting for a bus by scrawling 'E rotic Fiction is for girls' all over the front of the bookshelf. In blood. (or biro if no blood is available).
Anyway, I got a bit distracted then. The point is, I was scrawling 'Strictly Come Dancing is rubbish, stupid face TV presenter has no brain' across Gabby Logan's sparkly, sprightly face. Bear with me here, I'm coming to a point. Every man feels that they need to put across a macho image, whether it is by scrawling on the Daily Mirror like me, being ridiculously macho in the first place like Charles Bronson, or drinking beer out of your colleague's jockstrap like a rugby player.
So here is my top five list, in reverse order, of things to make one feel macho.
5)Scrawling obscenities on the front of the daily mirror (see above)
4)Giving people directions when they stop you in the street, even if they are completely wrong (and I'm going to be honest here - they often are).
3)Not really caring that a fly is sitting on your arm, then after about 10 seconds, casually flicking it away before ordering another can of Kestrel Super.
2)Scoring a goal in a football match (see tomorrow).
1) The single activity which makes a person feel manlier than anything else, is walking across the middle of a roundabout. It feels a little bit illicit, yet it's not particularly dangerous, and can be carried out with absolute nonchanlance. The best one's are those which are tarmacked over, so you don't even have to feel guilty about treading on flowerbeds, although I would never admit that as a concern in public. I suggest giving it a try, then going home, breaking wind, and cracking open a can of stella while flicking immediately onto a very atmospheric football match on the television, from the comfiest leather armchair in all fo existence. If it works in advertising, then it muyst be true.
Of course, none of these are things that are exclusive to men, but it's nice to feel as though everybody is absolutely nailed-on certain about your gender.
Published Date:
07/11/2007
Modified Date:
07/11/2007
Quick question
Tuesday again, going to press, lots to do, etc etc.
But a question is bugging me. I've been writing a story about a dog, and it snapped into my head and refused to budge.
How socially acceptable is it to stop people you don't know in the street just to pet their dog? I always feel a bit embarrassed about it, but still feel it is something that ought to be done from time to time.
Am I a victim of the closed-off modern society, that I don't dare stop people in the street to pet their dogs? Or did people never do it? Answers on a postcard please. Or in the comments box.
Published Date:
02/10/2007
Modified Date:
02/10/2007
I'm not Milton Keen
Milton Keynes, as dilligent reader will remember, was noted for being such a head-mess that it deserved its own complete blog entry. So here it is.
Milton Keynes - what a crazy place.
The end.
Not really.
Yes, well, anyway, I went to Milton Keynes last weekend, to lap up the culture, take in a show and admire the local architecture (okay, I went to a football match at the brand, sparkling new to the extent that it's not even finished StadiumMK). But before I took in such cultural highlights, I went into the town centre to pick up my brother and his friend. Okay, the town centre wqasn't hard to navigate, in the sense that it was perfect chequered. Viewed from above, the place would look like a huge grey tartan kilt, with, at the very centre, a big Snowdome 'sporran'. I've never been to America, but some of the depictions suggest it has a similar criss-crossing road system. Everything is a car park, punctuated by chain shops and general madness. Let me add here that I'm not complaining about the place. It's a new town, people choose to live there, if people want to dink in Revolution and shop in warehouses then so be it. I know I spend quite a lot of time complaining about the pedestrianisation of town centres (a la Alan Partridge), but I can't find it in myself to really complain about MK. I'm just not sure that I could face living there myself. It's like a massive outlet shopping centre, built on the moon, pumped full of artificial air which is rotting with the stench of one thousand cars all trying to find the optimum parking space for the city centre, but since the whole city is a car park, it's like running so far into a forest that eventually you are running out of it again. All it really needs to round it off nicely would be a set off plastic bears parading round the streets singing songs about how much they love each other (ew!) like in Eldon Square in Newcastle or the (shudder) T-T-T-T-Trafford Centre in Manchester.
I once had to work through the night in the Trafford Centre, constructing a stand for an exhibition of new lines by Marks and Spencer. Aside from the artificial air making me feel like my whole body was withering, they also leave their singing bears on throughout the night. After being awake for 30 hours, and being utterly exhausted, I can't say that the bears' declaration of love for me was reciprocated. Conversely, I was apopleptic with rage, and was ready to listen to Iron Maiden having a chainsaw fight with the Transformers just to clear my mind of their insipid, saccharine, soulless declaration of love. The bears don't even know what emotions like love or rage or fear are! Or the true meaning of Christmas! I mean, they're robots! Gah!
I can't believe that I'm still so angry about it four years down the line.
Anyway, yeah, my point was... uh... Milton Keynes is ideal roaming ground for bears (I think that was my point anyway). If you get attacked by a bear in Milton Keynes, run down the snowdome, and then when you get to a tree, step aside very quickly, and the bear will smash its face into the tree.
And that's that.
Published Date:
27/09/2007
Modified Date:
27/09/2007
Settle down
Come on everybody, settle down, we have a lot to get through today, so get to your seats. Come on Dazzer and Shazzer, sit down. Today, we are going to be studying all the blogs that never got off the ground in the last few weeks. So sit down, behave, and watch the video of Alexei Sayle telling us all about what Thom has been up to.
Hello there. It's not really Alexei Sayle, it's me! Thom! Although you could probably tell from the accent. I feel well, if still not quite in the frame of mind where I recognise it is no longer the weekend. Of course, on Sunday night I felt considerably poorer. This was because I had been bitten, while enjoying the atmosphere in a beer garden in a Sutton Coldfield on a balmy Indian Summer's evening. Now, I know climate change is doing funny things to the world, but I really didn't expect the nuclear-powered turbo uber-midges to appear so soon. I was bitten by one, and when I woke up on Sunday morning (okay, you're on to me, it was Sunday afternoon), I found that I had been infected with their nuclear powers. Unfortunately, this just involved have grotesquely mis-shapen luimps in indeterminate places around my body, rather than me having absorbed gamma rays and being able to perform telekinesis. So by the time I was driving back up from Sutton on Sunday night, I was still looking a bit like the Hunch-head of Notre Dame, so was forced to wear a cap all the way back up. I was fortunate I no longer had the look of the aliens out of Mars Attacks on Monday, or the cap would have been out again.
This upset me, as I was hoping I was on a good karmic balance with the world of nature at the moment. Recently, while on another journey up the M1, I had the pleasure of stopping at Tibshelf services (88 out of 100, for the record - damn fine place). Therein, I was walking through the services towards the toilets when I noticed a tiny little frog had somehow found its way intot he station. I, like a diligent environmental crusader, borrowed a Costa Coffee bag, and captured the frog and put it back outside. This, I imagined, gave me some kind of happy balance with animal kind. but aparrently frogs and midges don't communicate, they just sit and maul me and give me big, squidgy lumps on my head when I go out for a quiet drink of a Saturday night.
Still, magical things obviously happen at service stations. At Woodley services you can get a cup fo coffee from a shop which has the oh-so-European slogan 'Qualitata Guarantita', which is surely some sort of foreign mumbo-jumbo about the type of beans they use. Still, Italian is such a mystical language, it would be great to know what it means.
And at Northampton Services on Saturday, after a visit to Milton Keynes to watch my beloved Darlington play (lose), I had the pleasure of meeting the heroic boys in black and white at a service station near Northampton after the game. What excitement! And all thanks to your friendly local service station! Milton Keynes would be in the round-up-blog-which-seems-to-have-become-another-blog-about-service-stations, but I feel it is such an absolute headmess of a place that it deserves its own entry.
Stay sexy.
Published Date:
25/09/2007
Modified Date:
25/09/2007
What a wall-y
I saw Withnail and I the other day (a fine movie, as always), and was struck by how excellent some of the camera work is in that film. Normally when people talk about great direction, I sort of go drift away from conversations before diving back in when I remember where I am with a Frank Spencer impression, followed by a hasty retreat from the room. But it struck me that Withnail and I does have some delightful camera shots. Well done them!
But that's not what today's blog is about.
I have always been a man who prides myself on having an ounce or two of dignity. Not that it always works out that way, particularly when I am at a football match. Or driving. Or having a conversation. Or awake. But when I am asleep I am dignified (expcet for the snoring and sleeptalking. And nudie sleepwalking).
Anyway, on Thursday, after returning from my weekly football in Scarborough, I went to the supermarket in Promenade to grab myself some tea. On arriving in the car park, I found that the front door was closed because of work to the building, so I went to go to the side door, whcih I knew to be open. This would have involved walking back out of the car park and down the street, or cutting the journey in half by hopping the little wall. With an athletic little vault, I cleared it with effortless cool, and strutted confidently into the canned tomatos aisle contemplating a new career as a free runner.
I went and bought my chopped tomatos and sultana bran and wandered back outside, still with a spring in my step and still feeling like Jonathon Edwards wearing spring-loaded shoes. On a trampoline. On the moon. So I thought another macho-yet-dainty little spring over the wall would make me feel quite the hero, especially now there were a lot more people around. But this time, I had a bag of sultana bran and chopped tomatos. And the wall was slightly higher from this side. And halfway through the jump, I lost complete confidence, and began to flail. At different points, all within the same two-second period, I was jumping, straddling the wall, feeling an intense pain where I had impacted with the wall (somewhere around the groin area), and then panicking as I began my head-first descent from the wall to the floor. I ended with one hand on the floor, one leg in the air, the other hand grabbing the wall, my other leg at complete odds with the demands of the first leg, and my head below wall level. As I scrapped myself back to the car, I realised that I may have looked a little bit silly, so to anyone who was watching and laughing, I sort of waved back over my shoulder, tossed my head, and gave a forced little 'bwa-ha', as if it was the greatest jape I had ever played. Yeah, I bet that really made me look better.
Published Date:
18/09/2007
Modified Date:
18/09/2007
Hello there
Sorry, another blog had to be deleted a week or so ago. It was quite a funny one, I thought, about me drinking a cup of tea. Never mind, c'est la vie, it just means I can be lazy and re-write it when I'm next struggling for subject matter.
So what have I been up to? I'm not entirely sure, to be honest, as I don't know how much I have been updating my blog with actual events, rather than scattering my thoughts randomly onto the page with the predictability, and the tastefulness, of scattering cumin onto a meringue.
On some occasions, no doubt, I have been bored. But wait, there are things to do when one is bored. Have you ever considered the difficulties faced by ITV1 when they are looking to commission a new programme? Well I have, and I have put together a random television programme generator to help with the process. It works like this: Select the name of any generic celebrity/pair of celebrities. Then, take two random and unconnected nouns (proper or improper), and place those words, in order, in the areas of this sentence marked with stars:
*celebrity's* celebrity *noun* *noun*.
For example, I choose Amy Winehouse, Robinson Cruesoe, surfboard. Hence, ITV1 are given the joy of presenting to you, for your entertainment, Amy Winehouse's celebrity Robinson Cruesoe Surfboard, a riveting piece of viewing, presented by the singer of such hits as: "they said I had to go to rehab, I said no, no, um... possibly" and "some other ones", in which eight celebrities have to battle it out to decide who makes the best Robinson Cruesoe-themed surfboard.
A personal favourite of mine, and one which I might actually put forward to the increasingly desperate ITV is "Abi Titmuss' celebrity Cheese Ombudsman". Expect it to hit your screens soon.
But Channel 4 don't have it too hard either. It's quite easy to make a good documentary for channel four programme name. Simply select a noun, a verb and an adjective which are all loosely related. For example, chicken, grow, quickly, and you have, "The Chicken who Gre Too Quickly". Slight variants work, there's no rigidity to this: "The boy whose feet were too cold"; "The blog which went on too long"; "The Anthea Turner who wouldn't go away"; "The anitihistemines which were too hard to swallow". Channel four directors, thank me later.
And go on then, the Beeb. Looking for a programme for your new hip tv channel, BBC3? How about, "Help! I'm insecure about my weight!" "Help! My goldfish is too long!" "Yikes! My hair's a bit dirty!" or "Gosh! I'm a TV presenter... and a bully!"
You can play any of these games, any of the time, and frankly, it makes train journesys slip by in merely 99% of the normal time! Super stuff.
And in case any Channel 5 aficionados are feeling left out, you can simply change the names of your favourite programmes to make them smutty! super! No examples here though. This is a family blog.
Published Date:
11/09/2007
Modified Date:
11/09/2007