He's in here, the perv

I've spent the last two days on the road. No, not literally lying across the tarmac (although I did do that whilst once very drunk in Greece) I've been up and down the country and managed nearly 900 miles in around 36 hours.

That means my average mph since yesterday at 9am has been around 25 miles an hour, and that includes sleeping and standing still. Scary.

Anyway, along the way I amuse myself with the radio, music, podcasts, crunching up 5 extra strong mints and swigging a mouth of ice cold water (try it, it's like a cold version of poppers). But sometimes I get the amusement laid on for me by the general public and the things they write on the back's of dirty lorries and vans.

The last 36 hours have been particuarly good. Here's my faves that I saw

SLAP MY TOP...you goblin - you've probably seen Slap My Top before. Apparantly it comes from a radio 2 DJ. For me it's a nice familiar sight, what I enjoyed the most was the addition of 'you goblin'. No sense at all, perfect.

I wish my wife was this dirty....she it! - another common one (example right) but this time someone with the simple job of adding 'she is' gets it wrong. Unless his wife is Information Technlogy of course, in which case it should be IT in capitals.

He's in here, the perv - funny at the best of times, but this was adorned on the back of a Group 4 truck that carriers prisoners. They even drew an arrow pointing to the door and had drawn an extra handle in the dirt too (either to facilitate the escape of the perv or add an extra layer of security - I couldn't decided). Nice one. Although I hope he has been proved a perv and this isn't just slander.

LOL - seriously, in 4 foot high letters. I did, by the way.

So thanks to the British public and their now dirty fingers, you do make the hours pass a lot more enjoyable then any amount of Radio 1 ever could.

What me? Worry?

I caught about 14 seconds of one of those 'Should I worry about...' programmes on telly the other day. If you're not aware of them, they were made about 5 years ago and feature Richard Hammond asking various experts 'Should I worry about..." stuff like drinking too much, eating too much, punching yourself repeatedly in the face with a potato masher, that kind of thing. Ironically they never did one called 'Should I worry about the safety of BBC planned rocket powered car events' - I guess the title was just too long.

Anyway I wasn't disturbed by the programme but it did immediately set off the other worries that inhabit my brain like unwelcome drunks at a wedding reception. Always lurking there, waiting to just stumble onto the dancefloor and make a mess

I've talked before about the things in my head I struggle not to say, for fear of offending people, but these are the thoughts that just stay there and tell me to worry about the most trivial things.

I worry that the car will need new tyres everytime I drive it I worry that people don't believe I don't drink tea or coffee. I worry that the slide in standards of punctuation is in someway a crime that I only want to fight. I worry that I don't know if it's pronounced Tesco or Tescos. I worry about stupid stuff. So much so that I don't tend to worry about the big things like death, mortgages, the fact that Paddy McGuinness is considered 'an entertainer' So perhaps my little worries aren't so much to, well, worry about if they are keeping these other ones at bay.

Although saying that, I'm now worried that they aren't. And I'm worried that this blog won't ever end unless I just cut it right here and now.

Although now I'm worried I should have written more.

I'll stop now before I start worrying you'll come round and batter me to death for this type of nonsense.

Crisps, nuts and seriously ill children blowing up power stations.

I was talking to my good friend Rusty the other day. Despite the fact he has the memory of a goldfish he can remember stuff from the 1980s, which is good. Anything from the last week, no chance. But 20 years ago? Yep. Anyway, it got us talking about 'how things were different' and we clearly felt old.

As a result it set me thinking about times past and stuff you just don't see these days. I'm not going to go into all the usual Channel 4's The 100 best things from the 1980's (Del Boy falling through the bar etc.) but just a few examples that stick in my mind.

Seriously ill children blowing up power stations

This used to happen a lot. Always one of the last items on the news where some child with a life-threatening illness was allowed to push down the plunger that set off explosives that blew up chimneys, decommissioned power stations, blocks of flats, Coventry, that sort of thing. Seriously, this used to happen every other week back in the 1980s', and now you just don't hear about it.

I doubt we ran out of sick children, so was it the buildings we ran out of? Did the kids go too far and start blowing up stuff they shouldn't have been? Or was it when the traditional explosive plunger got replaced with a button. It just didn't look the same so wasn't worth covering? It needs bringing back. Get Justin Lee Collins working on a show called "Bring Back Sick Kids Blowing Up Powerstations" and put him in the first one they blow up. I'd watch.

I'll conclude by saying 1980's - knife crime non existent, 2000's - hoodie stabbers everywhere. It must be the lack of controlled demolition by the ill youth.

Peanut Pornography

That phrase seems just wrong. But it's legitimate I promise you. Basicially if you went in a pub and wanted peanuts, specifically 'Big D' peanuts they would be on display high up on a wall. Why on such high display? Because the peanuts were secured on a card background with a topless lady pictured. The more nuts you bought, the more the lady was revealed. Normally she was topless in a place like a barn or a garage or Coventry.

It would take about 32 packets to reveal the full image and most pubs uncovered it from top to bottom so half way through you would unveil the main nakedness. Rarely did any landlord put up a new pack and remove the two packs that were over the breasts, else it would have left a picture of two breasts surrounded by 30 packets of peanuts.

Anyway, this was the 1980's so it was fine. I just tried explaining this to someone born in 1984 and he swore I was making it up. When I said "Big D" he believed me even less.

Oh, apparantly some little pubs still do this and the more modern ones are tasteful. The picture, not the nuts - Big D taste horrid.

Cheese and Onion crisps

You're thinking I've gone mad. Of course Cheese and Onion still exist Tim, you clearly haven't been looking out enough.

Oh they exist. In packets. In blue packets. Blue.

For some of you that won't mean a thing, but for me and my generation we always knew that Cheese and Onion crisps were in green packets - always were. Golden Wonder made them and the packet was green. Then, at some point, Walkers came along with blue packaging and before we knew it the traditional crisp packet for Cheese and Onion became blue. And we can never pinpoint the moment it happened, the tipping point. But it must have happened. Even in Coventry.

I know that these days smaller crisps still hold onto green for Cheese and Onion, but the biggest selling crisps are Walkers Cheese and Onion and they are blue.

But here's the thing. Neither Cheese nor Onion were green anyway were they? Onions tend to be red or white and cheese is mainly yellow or white or sometimes red. But sometimes Cheese is blue. So perhaps Walkers have corrected a mistake?

Anyway, I miss having crisps in a green packet. And I'd like them back please.

Toe-day is the greatest day

In the realms of illness I have, touch wood, never had much to complain about. Most of my ailments have been decidedly middle-class and that goes for the ridiculous tale of the toenail on the big toe of my left foot (there's the name for a book).

Today I can finally put that to bed, because today at 12.31pm my podiatrist 'signed off' my toe as fixed. That might not seem a big thing, but considering this fella has been dogging me since May 2006 I feel like dancing with delight. Dancing being something I can do now, rather than hobbling round like Herr Flick from Allo Allo.

I banged the toe in the pool on my honeymoon and since then I've been having treatment, on and off, for three and half years. That's, like, 1270 sleeps. That's longer than a 'serious' relationship. It's nearly the distance between two world cups, a period of time any man will tell you is FAR TOO LONG.

And it's been painful. Ooh. Like you wouldn't believe. Like someone sticking a little nail in your foot and jiggling it whenever you moved. And laughing at you. Stupid thing. Seriously, If I wanted that sort pf constant irritation I'd buy a boxset of Myleene Klass presenting on TV.

I reckon it's cost me the best part of £500 from check ups and bandages to . £500? I could have had a surround sound system for that. Or one hell of a night out.

Anyway, there's no point harping on about it, because it's fixed. It's done and as my podiatrist said so nicely to me "Hope not to see you again soon."

Toe-riffic.

Booze smooze

I'm off the booze.

Honest. I haven't touched any this year. This decade even. Now, that might sound a little trite considering it's only January 4th. It's up there with the old school gag of when people say "what are you giving up for New Year" and you say "School". And you all laugh for 13 minutes. Before getting a C in A-Level Politics.

Anyway, it's probably because me and the wife have both been ill rather than a sheer 4 day display of will power, but I'm quite enjoying the clarity it brings to my health. By that, it means I can no longer blame booze on feeling ropy in the morning, or smelling odd, or whatever it was I was excusing. Now I have to deal with the real me, the non-alco-pop me. I've even kept two cans (not toucans, no) of Fosters in the fridge almost as a tease to myself - and it seems to be working.

There is a serious point to this. A few years back I had a blood test and the doctor said 'oh, everything is fine, apart from something in your liver - you'll be fine as long as you don't drink stuff like whisky'. I went home and poured away the two bottles I'd been given as a leaving present from a job at that point. It put the willies up me - and not much does that. Apart from the woodbeast in Flash Gordon of course..

I'm not sure i'm on the wagon for good, but that I'll save drinking for special occasions such as birthdays, holidays and seeing old friends - rather than days which have the letter 'y' in them. Of course, without the effect of booze in my life I'd never have such great memories as these - all events helped along by alcohol.

1.Punching a plate glass window into my friends face.
2.Wanging a full pint of beer out the door of a hotel because another one had arrived to take it's place.
3.Dancing to Jason Nevins vs RUN DMC and saying 'ooh, this is really good'
4.Claiming, on live radio, that Robbie Williams had been shot dead during an interview with a prospective politician.
5.Hanging sausages on threads outside people's doors so that when they came out of their room they walked into a seemingly levitating sausage

Of course, there's probably a lot more than that. I just can't seem to remember them.