Pocketropolis The Leamington based arts, entertainment and personal blog of Stephen Blake.
 
The Aisles Of Wrath
Tesco.

How many great blog posts have been written about Tesco?

I’m betting not many and after this post that answer won’t have changed but I need to get this off my chest before I burst (as Christina Ricci once said to her breast reduction consultant).

Now I’ll admit that I don’t very often “reality-shop” “in-store”. After all, I prefer to spend my leisure hours doing other, more pleasurable, things... like de-clogging the toilet, giving myself a DIY root canal or burying hastily dismembered bodies beneath my patio. 9 times out of 10 though, when I do shop at Tesco I shop online. Virtually. It saves both my sanity as well as the lives of all the other shoppers.

Because whenever I do venture “in-store” (every once in a while you forget something or something drops off the virtual shopping list – I’m guessing it’s the cookies) I inevitably want to kill somebody.

Not just anybody. I’m not arbitrary about it. I don’t sing eeny-meeny-miny-mo and pick someone out at random. There will be a reason behind it.

A good, solid, cast iron reason.

Basically it’s anyone who gets in my way.

Anyone who’s too slow. Or stops dead in front of me so I have to do the hippy-hippy-shake to avoid making genital crushing contact with their bottom. Or people who hover in front of a particular food section – a food section that I need immediate access to – but don’t actually buy anything; they just stand there, hand to mouth, calculating, weighing up, umming and ahing. Like they’re about to make an amazing chess move with a tin of spam. And then they shuffle a half-step away only to snap back again like they’re on a piece of elastic the moment I reach out tentatively for the tin I want.

And sliders. Sliders get me. Teens and twenty-somethings who use the trolley like a makeshift toboggan to drag their sorry po-cracker asses around the store whilst leaving stupid looking Nike rubber marks on the polished floor. Idiots.

But what annoys me most about shopping “in-store” at Tesco – and I realize this is probably just local to the Leamington Spa town centre branch – is the aisles. The aisles of Wrath. The aisles of Hatred. I don’t know why the store managers just don’t punch a few murder holes in the ceiling and have done with it.

In the olden days (i.e. when I was a kid) the aisles were made up of individual islands. Segmented with freezers and individual displays. Punctuated every 4 metres of so with crossroads which gave the shopper ample opportunity to wander off at will through the produce as if through a giant consumerist maze.

A few years ago it was obviously decided that this wasn’t good enough. That people needed to be funnelled. Controlled. Driven.

The islands disappeared. The crossroads were closed up.

Now we have the dragster strips. Long unending wind tunnels of product. Once you head down the neck of one of these aisles you have no option but to continue all the way down to the bottom. Fighting your way through the cholesterol of lost shoppers, those coming up the other way and the inevitable obstacle snarl of tangled trolleys. And you can’t turn back. You can’t turn around. Because behind you is another phalanx of weary shoppers chasing your tail, sighing as loudly as you are ‘cos they’ve just sussed out that, like you, they’re in the wrong aisle, they need to be in the next one along but now they can’t get out of this one except by following it on, on, on to its utter and completely tedious termination.

It’s like a version of hell. Hades with strip lighting and a self service counter. An extreme assault course to test your resistance to the psychological effects of attrition. To test how badly you want to get your shopping done in the face and teeth of man-made adversity.

Well, nobody wants a tin of spam that badly, Tesco. The guy who designed your floor layout needs to be shot: his gizzards removed and strung out over the frozen meat counter like little red party streamers.

Or failing that can you please just sack him?

‘Cos as your adverts so smarmily point out: every little helps.


Check out my official blog - Bloggertropolis.
Published Date:
24/02/2010
Modified Date:
24/02/2010

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Carry On Cadbury’s

Cadbury's chocolate


I’m probably jumping onto the bandwagon a bit late here but Kraft + Cadbury’s = bad news.

I’m not talking about the risk to investor’s money.

I’m not talking about the probable future closure of factories (given Kraft’s past track record).

I’m not even talking about the inevitable jobs losses despite Kraft’s “you’re all safe, you are, honest” protestations.

No. I’m talking about the important thing. The chocolate. ‘Cos for all Kraft merely want to grab Cadbury’s bubble gum marketing network they will inevitably mess with the chocolate recipe. They’ll cut corners. Go for cheaper nastier ingredients. Like greedy street corner pushers they’ll start cutting it with baking powder and sawdust and horse tranquilizers. They’ll bring out an American version that’ll taste slick and plasticky like a Hershey’s bar. They will eventually commit the ultimate sin and call it candy.

Can you imagine that?

Cadbury’s Candy?

I’m dry heaving even as I type.

To mess with our chocolate would be sacrilege of the highest (lowest?) order. But the desecration is inevitable. Like Vikings raiding a Saxon village Kraft will tear down our temples, smear faeces on our alter cloths and make us worship the goat headed god of candy pseudo-chocolate.

I’m stockpiling now. Dairy Milk, Caramel, Fruit & Nut, Wispa, Boost. My loft is becoming a chocolate warehouse. Bursting at the seams with all that is good and wholesome about Cadbury’s before it’s too late. Before (to paraphrase Merry from Lord Of The Rings) all that is good and brown about our chocolate is gone from the world. And then there won’t be a Shire, Pippin.

And there won’t be no Curly-wurly neither.

You see, my biggest fear is that my personal chocolate stash will become a shrine. A DNA database for chocolate to remind us of what good chocolate once tasted like. A few dusty bars held in suspended animation that nobody dare consume or brought out of cryogenic storage solely to be minutely sampled by rogue scientists to try and rediscover and replicate the old magical recipe.

And then we’ll be into the realm of genetically modified chocolate. A world where interplanetary companies like the Tyrell Corporation control and tailor our chocolate eating experience in line with intergalactic legislation. I tell you now the motto “more chocolate than chocolate” will be our undoing!

Oh good people of earth clasp your Fruit & Nut to your bosoms! Defend your Cream Eggs to your last breath! The heathens are even now on our doorstep and pissing into our hot chocolate!

Or am I just over-reacting?


Check out my official blog - Bloggertropolis.

Published Date:
05/02/2010
Modified Date:
05/02/2010

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George Davis Is Innocent
The above appeared, clumsily spray painted on the wall of a dilapidated pub building in Leamington, a couple of months before Christmas.

At first, being ignorant of gangster lore, I assumed it referred to a local lad; some poor yob out misspending his youth who had found himself on the wrong side of a policeman’s taser. Before he could protest that he had just gone up that there alley for a quick Jimmy Riddle he’d found himself banged up for burglary with 500 other spurious offenses to be taken into consideration and escorted to a prison cell by a couple of uniformed officers who were slapping each other’s backs for singlehandedly improving Leamington’s clean-up rate over night.

His siblings, his mates, even his 85 year old granny with her dodgy hip and rheumatoid arthritis had taken to the streets of Leamo armed with cheap aerosol’s to protest his innocence on every wall, pavement and fence they could find.

Who was George Davis? That was the question that was rattling around my mind every time I walked past this enticing bit of graffiti. Who was he? What had he not done that he had been accused of doing?

In the end I Googled him. And lo and behold George Davis wasn’t a local lad done wrong by the local constabulary at all but a London mobster who was dodgily convicted for The London Electricity Board Robbery in 1975. He was released a couple of years later as a result of a campaign by supporters who protested his innocence before being later re-imprisoned for armed robberies that he did actually commit. So not so innocent after all.

Which must have been a bit of a kick in the teeth for Roger Daltry and Sham 69 who via T-shirt wearing and song-writing had come out in George’s defence. Stick to rock opera’s, Rog, your wrists are too subtle to divine the true realities of a man’s innocence.

So back to the graffiti of 2010. George Davis Is Innocent? Plainly the graffiti artist hadn’t done his research properly. I’m eagerly awaiting an addendum to the said piece of graffiti that starts with the words “Well, actually, ahem, the thing is...”

Or perhaps this is the first instance of “retro graffiti”. A celebration of famous graffiti from times gone by? Is the wall at the back of Tesco’s car-park going to shimmer with the words “The Juwes are the men who will not be blamed for nothing” sometime in the not too distant future? Or shall I get ahead of the game myself and paint the side of my house with the legend: “Is there intelligent life on earth? Yes, but I'm only visiting”?

Hmm.

Answers painted on a brick wall at the usual address please...


Check out my official blog at: Bloggertropolis
Published Date:
22/01/2010
Modified Date:
22/01/2010

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"Ang Is A Sket"
This particularly informative piece of graffiti appeared on the road outside my house late last week. Applied with white aerosol paint the letters are about a foot high and each word has been rendered with a wobbly capital.

I have, I admit, been tempted to take a photo of it to publish it here for your delectation but, much as I love you all, being run over by a passing BMW or a souped-up moped doesn’t strike me as a suitable pay-off for my photographic skills so you’ll just have to use your imagination.

I had to Google the word "sket". I’m afraid I’ve long lost touch with street slang and youth speak but there are some bizarre resources available online which can bring one up to speed in no time at all (the Urban Dictionary being invaluable). Sket, for your information, means a loose woman of elastic morals. Or thereabouts. You get the picture I’m sure.

So basically some love-struck teen has discovered that his gal has been spooning some other chap behind his back and it’s soured his brandy somewhat to the point where he feels he must besmirch her good name in the nature of a painterly public broadcast announcement to warn all us other chappies to steer well clear of her unless we’re not averse to taking sloppy seconds.

How sweet.

I can’t help feeling sorry for Ang for all that she may be no angel. I can’t help but think of her every morning as the wife, kids and I pile into our little red Peugeot and inevitably drive over her name as we set off for our various destinations in town.

She’s been condemned without a fair trial. She may be innocent and of unblemished character but the tarmac now accuses her of base harlotry. She may even be guilty, may lie on her back nightly with a whole regiment of thrusting young bucks... but there may be mitigating circumstances. Maybe her "official" boyfriend is something of a sket himself or just plain nasty and she has sought comfort in the arms of someone more worthy and more understanding of her needs.

Whoever she is, I can’t help thinking how upset she must feel to see her name cast so indelibly to the dirt in this way. How awful if she lives in the same street (which presumably she does) and has to pass this graffiti every day with her parents or her siblings. What must they think? The shame must be burning her up inside.

I hoped, when I first saw the lettering, that a good rain shower or two might wash it all away. But no, Mr Paragon Of Virtue Himself saw fit to spray his snide little missive in permanent paint. Nearly a week later it’s still there, as bright and brazen as when it was first applied. Hester Prynne must be turning in her fictional grave.

Whoever you are, sir, I put it to you that there are worse things in life than being a sket.

Being petty and immature are two of them.


Check out my official blog at: Bloggertropolis
Published Date:
22/10/2009
Modified Date:
22/10/2009

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Anti Anti-virus
There are some things in life that you just have to put up with.

Paying taxes. Catching a cold. Working for idiots (for peanuts). Bruce Forsythe.

These things are just never going to go away. They are always there. The rough with the smooth. If you want the positives (i.e. local amenities, immunity to millions of bacteria, money to enjoy and... er... Tess Daly) then you just have to put up with the negatives.

So I understand why, if I want to enjoy broadband connectivity with the World Wide Web, I need to have an anti-virus program installed. And since first going online in 2000 I have never been without one. Although I initially bumped for McAfee I have, by and large, for the last 9 years stuck with Norton.

And it has increasingly irritated the faeces out of me.

It has got more and more invasive. Rather like a virus itself actually.

It hogs resources. It does things behind my back. Things like “idle time scans”. It slows and frequently stalls my machine – particularly when I’m in a rush to do something – to the point where sometimes the whole thing just freezes and I have to initiate a “hard reboot”. Of course the scandisk thing then kicks in. And although you can press a key (any key) to opt out of this, you just know that paranoia will get the better of you in the end. So you let it scan.

And it finds errors. Invalid entries. Truncated files. Misreported file sizes. Files with names that no homo sapiens would ever come up with in a million years. And these files all originate from the Norton program folder.

Because Norton was doing something that I hadn’t asked it to do and the hard reboot messed it all up.

*Sigh*

I’ve started to hate my anti-virus program with a passion.

I know it is only doing its best to protect me. That it’s looking out for my best interests.

But really.

It’s like hiring a security guard to protect your house and then finding yourself barred from the kitchen when you want to make a meal.

“Sorry sir, you can’t come in. I’m scanning the kitchen for malicious equipment.”

“But... I’m hungry. I need to eat. Can’t you do this later?”

“Sorry sir. Got to be done now. The procedure can’t be interrupted once it’s been started.”

“But I only want to make a sandwich. I’ve somewhere I need to be in half an hour. I have to eat now or I won’t eat at all.”

“Sorry sir. Your security comes first. You’ll have to wait.”

“But... but it’s my bloody kitchen!”

And it’s my bloody computer!

I don’t want Norton to initiate idle time scans without my permission. If my computer is being idle leave it damn well alone. Let it be idle and receptive to my commands! I want it to be ready to do what I want it to do!

And I don’t want to have to have a Master’s Degree in computer programming just to be able to make Norton behave. I want Norton to have one button which says “Steve, you are my master” which I can press and then relax in the knowledge that my computer that I bought with my own money and operate daily does so under my command and not at the behest of a group of faceless computer geeks based in America writing program code that takes over every computer it is installed upon under the guise of doing the owner a favour.

Anti-virus?

Yeah. Half right.


Check out my official blog at: Bloggertropolis
Published Date:
30/09/2009
Modified Date:
30/09/2009

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The Fame Game

 

Russell Howard lives in Leamington Spa
On Monday afternoon the wife and I decided to make the most of the last day of our holiday staycation by following in the footsteps of many and spending a pleasant few hours in the local park with the kids.

And by “the kids” I, of course, mean our kids specifically rather than “the kids” generally. I’m afraid the days when I’d sit on a park bench necking back a bottle of Diamond White with the local yobbery are far behind me. There are, after all, only so many cars that you can nick, joyride and leave burning by the roadside while you hold up the nearby petrol station before it all becomes a tad boring.

Ennui totally killed crime for me. My low boredom threshold made a straight man of me in the end.

So we’re feeding the ducks and some of it is reaching the birds and 33% of it is going into our youngest son's mouth as he can’t bear to part with his share and we pass what looks like Russell Howard on a park bench.

(For those of you who don’t know Russell Howard is an up-and-coming comedian who appears regularly on the BBC’s Mock The Week programme...)

Anyway, Mr H is neither swigging Diamond White nor getting down with the kids but is doing his best to look unobtrusive and unremarkable while he talks to someone rather earnestly on his mobile phone. He is, in effect, blending in.

And indeed he would have got away with it but for an uncanny act of synchronicity... I’d bought the wife Mr H’s comedy DVD for Christmas last year but as we’re working our way through an immense DVD backlog we’d only got round to watching it the day before our visit to the park. The “Extras” package on the DVD features footage of Russell in civilian mode where he looks oddly unrecognizable from the bouncy persona he presents on TV and stage... but having seen it we were able to see through his “blending in” tactics and pick him out immediately.

It was him. On a park bench in Leamington. Him off the telly. A real life famous person. Him. Him there.

It’s funny but I always thought I’d be unfazed by a close encounter with a famous person. That I’d play it cool. Nonchalant. They are, after all, only people. Same as you and me. No big thing. Autograph hunting is for saddoes. Etc.

And yet I cannot deny there was a small part of me wanting to run up to Russell, shake his hand, say hello and act like his best mate in a manner that would have resulted in the rest of my life being spent trying to overcome the subsequent sense of shame and wince-worthy degradation.

The impulse was so strong.

But I was saved by his mobile phone. Fame be damned. There was etiquette to think of! One cannot just interrupt a phone conversation for the sake of self gratification! It’s bad form! It would be un-English Goddamnit!

So we fed the ducks and left Russell Howard in peace and he – no doubt feeling the sniper glare of our distant attention beginning to bear down on his shoulders – soon got up and walked away from us, looking smaller than he does on the telly and disappointingly un-star-like and disappeared into the milling Bank Holiday crowds of Leamington Spa.

When we got home we did a quick Google search... you know, just to see if he was playing any gigs locally which would explain his presence in the park and found this (check out the last question at the bottom of the page).

Yep. Russell it seems lives locally. He’s moved in. He’s become a Leamingtonian.

He and me are practically brothers!

Welcome to Leamington Spa, Russell! Hope you like it here. But next time you’re walking around town, keep your mobile phone handy, eh?

For both our sakes.


Check out my official blog at: Bloggertropolis
Published Date:
03/09/2009
Modified Date:
30/09/2009

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A Load Of Rubbish

 

Street rubbish
Just over a week ago I had the misfortune of being called out in the early hours of Sunday morning to attend a fire alarm activation at my place of work. I didn’t get away again until 7 am.

Seeing the windy streets of Leamington Spa at this time in the morning as I wended my way home was something of a revelation.

Or rather like something out of Revelations.

I don’t think I have ever seen so much rubbish and stomach lining spread over so much surface area of one town before.

It looked like someone had disemboweled a rubbish cart at 15,000ft and let the contents fall to earth in a 10 mile radius.

It was horrendous. Chip paper. Newspaper. Polystyrene burger cartons. Styrofoam cups. Half chewed chips and chicken nuggets. Shredded lettuce. The ubiquitous McDonalds paper bag. The entire gherkin crop of Bulgaria. All of it knee-deep.

I swear I saw pigeons re-enacting the trash compactor scene from Star Wars.

Worst of all though was the vomit.

We are talking vast, half congealed porridgy oceans of the stuff.

And it was multicoloured.

My worst encounter was under the seat of the bus shelter right outside the Parish Church. It was pink with red bits in it, flecked with the odd strangulated shard of green. Someone had either thrown up a chicken tikka or had crawled home minus their entire stomach and the taste of their lower intestines dissolving on their tongue like a rubbery alka seltzer.

If this is the morning after the night before I’m glad I no longer frequent pubs or go out drinking as a social pastime.

What disgusting selfish creatures we are.

All this waste. All this mess. And it probably happens every Thursday / Friday / Saturday night of every week of every year in most towns across the Western world.

Here are major contributions towards global warming for you. Here are carbon footprints that smell as bad as they look.

As I picked my way home through the detritus the litter pickers and street cleaners were already hard at work picking, sifting, lifting and hoovering up the evidence of a single night’s pleasure seeking.

I felt sorry for them. Sorry that such thankless work is plainly necessary.

Oh I know it gives them a job. A friend of mine once threw litter quite deliberately onto the street and justified it by saying "it gave someone a job and allowed them to earn a living”.

Well, as I said at the time, such a stupid argument could also be used to justify rape, child abuse and murder but I’m sure the police and the support workers and the attendant counsellors would all rather be doing something else if they could ever express a choice about it.

Forget dubious employment opportunities, what this billowing carnage said to me was the majority of our species just don’t have any true thought or respect for their own environment or the people they share it with. That maybe too many of us justify appalling behaviour and antisocial activity under the guise of “just having a laugh” and “just having a drink after a hard week at work”.

That maybe going out and getting yourself absolutely twatted on a Saturday night is not so much an innocent way to let off steam and de-stress but a way of proclaiming to the world that you really just don’t give a damn about anyone or anything that exists outside your own little sphere of beer-goggled selfishness.

What a load of utter garbage.

Our street cleaners are unsung heroes.

We’d all be dead or dying of cholera, typhoid and bubonic plague by now if not for their sterling efforts.

Gentleman and ladies of the broom, I salute you.


Check out my official blog at: Bloggertropolis
Published Date:
17/08/2009
Modified Date:
18/08/2009

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Squirrel Nutkin Must Die!


His Royal Highness, Prince Charles, the Prince Of Wales
(Adopts 1940’s terribly proper BBC voice...)

People of Great Britain!

Your country is in peril!

Your country needs you to rally round, gird your loins and perform exemplary duties on behalf of your noble Prince, God save him.

Yes, the call has gone out by the glorious Prince of Wales to rid the land of the grey menace. Forget swine flu. Forget improper use of the expenses system by our doughty MPs. The grey squirrel is threatening the livelihoods of our most respectable landowners.

“The greys are doing immense and increasing damage to hardwoods all over the country and threaten to compromise all our efforts to restore native woodlands...” said the Prince in a beautifully crafted letter to the CLA (that’s Country Land and Business Association to lower class people of unprivileged education).

The Prince – ever mindful of ecological issues – also raised the point that “wiping them out” might be the only way to preserve the red squirrel – the native denizen of these shores who, if it could choose its own colour, would surely be true blue. God save the Queen!

A short advertisement for Izal toilet paper will now follow this broadcast...

*****

So there you have it. A call to arms by Prince Charles no less.

Now, having bought my own house which comes replete with its own humungous garden I am technically a landowner. I might be stretching the point slightly but I bet I could get it to stand up in a court of law.

So I’m taking it as read that by Royal Decree I have been granted license to kill. Admittedly license to kill only grey squirrels but there’s enough of them around that I could make it a full time job. I mean, let’s be clear. The Prince is not suggesting we merely pop one or two of them off. He’s suggesting we wipe out the lot of them. Genocide. Total eradication.

It’s rather a shocking clarion call from our fuddy-duddy Goon loving Prince.

But what I want to know it: is he going to put his money where his murderous mouth is?

Is he going to supply me with the arms to carry out this mission? Hand me an antique musket emblazoned with the Windsor family crest and a bag full of lead balls? Buy me an AK-47 from Ebay replete with newly minted Russian ammo? Or just park a lorry load of cyanide outside my front door where the kids can gain easy access to it?

‘Cos I’m really not fussy.

Hell, I’d even give it a go with a bow and arrow.

I mean this is Prince Charles asking after all. Future King of England and all that...

But I do have one small concern. Where does it all end?

I mean, we murder the grey squirrel today... fine. Do we butcher the mink tomorrow? Do we move onto flora after that – start napalming great swathes of Japanese knotweed and floating pennywort? Because they shouldn’t really be here in the UK either.

Where does it all end? Or, perhaps more pertinently, how far could it be taken?

Hmm.

Puritanism of any kind is never a good thing. It inevitably leads to bloodshed. Or am I just reading far too much into it?


Check out my official blog at: Bloggertropolis
Published Date:
05/06/2009
Modified Date:
05/06/2009

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