We own a microwave. Big deal right, who doesn’t? Ours was far too expensive. I’m not bragging, this isn’t beacuse we wanted a fancy brand microwave oven combo thing from a fancy brand, but because we wanted one that didnt ‘explode when you use the cleaning setting’ (Hotpoint/Whirlpool/Indesit) or ‘frequently burn your arms on the metal posts on the door’ (Siemens/Bosch/AEG)… and also because we had the cheek to try and get a kitchen fitted during a brexity pandemic, and all (some of) the other ones we could have bought were unavailable.
The device itself is excellent, it cooks food the way you’d expect it to and it looks nice in the cupboard above the oven it matches. The problem is that THE DAMN THING NEVER SHUTS UP!!!!1!!1!1!!!!
I would say its safe to say that almost all microwaves (even ones combined into an oveny thing) give some sort of audible alert to let you know its finished. From the humble ding of a bell, to the frankly unnecessary tune of a midi melody. That said, ours makes a little “bee-boop” noise when its finished. Fine. That’s enough, I know you’ve finished. So why does ours insist on beeping every 15 odd seconds until you open the door?!? It’s a microwave, when it stops doing its thing the cooking is no longer happening, not like an oven where leaving the thing you’re cooking in there will cause it to dry up and burn due to residual heat or whatever. The only danger is that the thing I was cooking/warming will go a bit cold. Shut the hell up! Just stop.
I know this sounds like a non-issue, but I often use the microwave whilst cooking to part-cook things, or cook rice before frying etc etc. I don’t always need the thing I’ve microwaved ‘right now’. Its fine for it to sit there for a bit…. STOP SAYING “BEE-BOOP”.
I’ve looked in the settings… twice. I’ve even emailed the customer services team who say it cant be changed, and then checked the settings a third time anyway.
It’s been doing its best to match the appalling failure that was 2020, but we’re not letting it. No, 2021 will be the year things got better, not the year things got worse.
Still – it’s been a bit of a slog so far. Now, to celebrate the fact that half of it has gone and the other half is probably going to be a bit more enjoyable than the first one was, let’s all sit down and have a slice of cake.
It’s incredible, isn’t it? How does he manage to write four different pieces of something every single month? Each time it’s something fresh and interesting, like a butterfly made of marzipan. He’s clearly some kind of journalistic genius and the world is better off for having him.
All of those things about me are completely correct but don’t be fooled, writing is a serious game and one that takes a lot of effort. You think I’m pulling off (wa-hey!) and pulling out (WA-HEY!) these ideas from thin air like they were biscuits on a plate? You don’t think they take their toil on this mortal body? For sure back in the day I was tossing out so many posts that the Big Men had to put a cap on it to keep me at four whereas these days it’s a complicated and messy process.
Let me walk you through an average month:
1st – thank god a new month, thirty odd days with which to play with. 2nd – I should get organised and write one now but there’s still plenty of time left. 3rd – ooo look, Chris has posted something. 4th – there’s probably a weekend coming up so I’ll post something next week. 7th – that was a crap weekend, oh dear, best knock out some nonsense for the website. 8th – ah, another podcast. Let me type my ‘I’ll listen to it tonight’ comment and get back to doing nothing. 9th – I love corn because it goes with everything. 10th – if I run fast enough could I burst through a brick wall? 11th – nobody else remembers ‘Ovide’ the cartoon and that makes me sad. 12th – ooo look, Chris has posted something. 21st – blimey where did the last 9 days go? I’ve not done anything yet. Find a photo, ooo look it’s funny. First post done. 22nd – scan through previous month’s posts and ride the back of something else someone else wrote. 23rd – two in the can, it’s plain sailing now. Time to knock out a ‘Newsboost’ or something tragic that happened to me. Ha ha, hilarious. 24th – ooo look, Chris has posted something. 25th – is Kev going to reach his quota this month? Could that be the basis of one of my posts? Keep it as a back-up for dire times. 26th – DIRE TIMES ARE NOW! Post that mother. 27th – damn, Kev posted again. My post is superfluous. I’m no good at this anymore, even though young me was an arsehole he was so good at doing this. 28th – here’s a random thought, ‘if cakes were alive, would they try to eat themselves?’ Good enough. 29th – sod it, another photo will have to do. 30th – ooo look, Chris has posted something.
So as you can see, it’s not easy doing this month in and also month out. For all those secret readers out there who don’t make their presences known, you are most definitely welcome.
Back in about 2005 we thought we were brilliant at writing scripts and making videos, and presumably sooner or later someone from, I don’t know, Paramount Pictures would be along to tell us they’d seen a bootleg VHS of NiSH and they wanted to commission us for a five year run at a million dollars an episode or something.
That never happened. What actually happened was we kept having half-baked ideas in which we all played basically ourselves, wrote two pages of script, and then lost interest.
Let’s look at another of those stupid projects now.
In my time, I’m well aware that I’ve been known to be an annoying pedant:
I’ve been the guy to point out when people have flags upside down.
I’ve been annoyed that people don’t cook toast properly (justifiably in your case Ian!)
I’ve been someone who re-arranges people cutlery draws to put them in the correct order.
Anyway…
Last week we bought a new cutlery set. Our old one was getting tatty and the shiny bits were starting to wear off, so we popped down to Freeport and bought a new one.
Sometimes life just conspires to give you a metaphorical middle finger…
A good cover version can make the world a better place. One talented artist taking the work of another, and filtering it through their own lens, can bring new depth or a different sound to something familiar. The best cover versions take something wonderful and turn it in new and unexpected directions to produce something else that’s wonderful. Have you ever heard Stevie Wonder’s version of “We Can Work It Out” by the Beatles? Have you heard David Bowie covering The Kinks’ “Waterloo Sunset”? A good cover version can be glorious.
A bad cover version, on the other hand, adds nothing. Singing your way through someone else’s song just to say you’ve done it will only make your audience wish they were listening to the original, because the original is associated with happy memories and was made with a conviction that the cover is entirely missing.
If you would like to listen to twelve cover versions in that second category, plus a badly made “megamix” and one track of library music that seems to have got lost and arrived here by mistake, then the album for you is Discomania, a compilation of genuinely dreadful music released by Mercury Records in 2004 when they could have just as easily not bothered.
Warning: this post contains gratuitous scenes of exercise. Viewer discretion is advised.
This boy has been running now, jogging now, a bit of a mix of the two since the start of the year. Rogging arounds wrong so let’s stick with junning. I’ve been junning since January. I have dabbled in it in the past however nothing substantial. I suppose with a lot of things collapsing in on itself it’s only fair that one tiny thing in my life prevails in a positive and optimistic fashion.
Cut to Thursday night though when shit got real.
I prefer junning at night because there are less people around to point fun at the tiny shorts I wear. The temperature is at a steady balance, much better than slogging through ice and snow anyway. I start my jun and headed off in the direction of my route. This route has been planned to perfection i.e. it features very little uphill bits and mostly flat or downhill bits.
There is a housing estate close to where I live that I do a couple of laps of to warm up. As I approach the edge of it I’m feeling the juice, I’m feeling the jun through my veins so I decide to speed up a bit. Down the first street, right at the end there is a footpath which curves round a corner down to the next street. Bounding like a chopper I go, I approach the curve and this is where it all goes wrong.
There was no slow motion here, no events slowing in my brain or anything like that. It was a short, sharp pinch in the eyes as far as my recollection of events goes. One moment I was junning away, the next I’m lying on the ground with scrape marks on my legs and blood staining the palms of my hands.
Some little dear had left their scooter in the middle of the path, something which you couldn’t see because it was round a blind corner. Unless I had leapt 2 or 3 feet in the air I was going to hit it every time. Not a full size scooter, no no, something someone just out of toddler-dom would use. I have no concern for myself, my god, I must check that my electronic life partner is still okay! The phone is nestled snugly in my jacket pocket, safe and sound. I stagger to my feet to assess the damage under a dimly-li lamppost.
Now this is exactly the kind of thing that I would do to myself; I am no stranger to injuring myself in unusual circumstances. What really sealed it as an ‘Ian’ moment though was just as I turned the corner and collided with the scooter a teenage boy was walking up the path from the opposite direction. He daren’t touch me, for obvious reasons (following Bovona guidelines to a tee) but asked if I was okay which was nice. As I stood up to brush myself down and turn to start running again he called for my attention. To my confusion and astonishment the boy brought over the tiny scooter. “You forgot this.” Luckily the violently sarcastic part of my brain was sleeping at the time.
Unreasonable reaction: WHAT THE F*CK DO YOU THINK YOU’RE DOING, LAD? DO YOU REALLY THINK THAT F*CKING SCOOTER IS MINE? F*CK ME, I COULD BARELY GET ONE OF MY TOENAILS ON THERE LET ALONE A FULL F*CKING FOOT. I’M WEARING SHORTS, I’M OUT JOGGING. WHY THE F*CK DO YOU THINK A F*CKING 37 YEAR OLD MAN IS SCOOTERING AROUND AT 9PM ON A THURSDAY F*CKING NIGHT? DOES THAT SOUND SH*TTING PLAUSIBLE TO YOU?
Panting through the stinging in my hands, I merely said that it wasn’t mine and thanked him for his concern. There I was, stumbling in front of a member of the public only for him to believe that the situation was that much worse because I had embarrassed myself by failing to use a scooter properly. Remarkably my legs were fine, a gash on one knee and nothing more, so I carried on with my jun.
This is getting too long. I did consider that perhaps this was some kind of cosmic karma for something else. A balance had to be made by me making a tit of myself. The day after I was in agony. Some bruising to my right side meant breathing, coughing, you know, any kind of movement caused a little jolt of pain to explode under my ribs. I am on the mend after a few days of rest and hope to be back junning later on this week.
