Walking Like They Need An Emergency Poo

Welcome back my readers to a belated edition of my blog. Saturday may have to be the new regular post day due to my new busy lifestyle, apologies if this throws your literature schedule out of the window. It is always my aim to give you an incite into my thoughts without driving you to a near death experience in the process. These posts aren't meant to lead a new cult of people who tolerate less and demand more, far from it. These posts hopefully provide food for thought and a view that you may have kept hidden hoping to never unearth.This week I am just going to start typing and, at the end, not read what I have written but just post it. It's a little more like my early posts where I have absolutely no idea what I am going to write and no idea of the consequences as a result.  I will continue on the British theme, this week it is about Brits abroad and how other countries perceive our millions of holiday makers.

I have not been abroad in a while and when I do I usually go to a Greek island or Spain. I am not a well travelled man, in fact I have never left Europe. When I visit these other countries I am usually too drunk to realize where I am, let alone take in the culture and sights. The places I go to are usually dead during the day and rammed with drunk people at night. The streets are awash with loud rugby players or football fans wearing the same tops but with nicknames on the back. Names like Chewbacca, Knob jockey, Custard Cream, The Fridge and Count Duckular are among the Neanderthal mess of the "strip" that you will find on a lads holiday. The "ladies" are a delight too. Many end up lying down covered in a mixture of donar kebab and vomit with legs akimbo advertising their "feminine side." This is obviously the extreme interpretation of events on a small percentage of some pretty great holidays, but it does make you wonder what these foreign countries think when they see these atrocities. Perhaps they are glad for the revenue generated and don't complain, but something tells me we are treading a fine line.

Most holiday makers go to historical sights in cities with a rich history and heritage. Places like Rome, Madrid, Berlin or Milton Keynes. I would be very interested in seeing these places and finding out about ancestral history and crap like that. This stuff fascinates me a lot and the first thing I think of when planning a well deserved holiday from thinking and working is to go to a place that involves loads of walking and learning. If your not picking up on these sarcastic undertones you're beyond help. I am actually very content to stay in my green and pleasant land and get wasted by the seaside. I can learn about Greek mythology and Roman empires in a library, I don't feel the need to return to the scene of the crime. I suppose this interest is developed with age, so I will wait until I am old and feel guilty that I know nothing about my planet.

I am going to try and put myself inside the head of a native when they see the next freshmen of UK residents invading their neighborhood for seven days. What would my first impressions be when I see a coach load of pasty white fat people who clearly don't know their size with regards to clothes, holding brochures highlighting points of interest in hand, digital cameras suspended from their necks, back packs strapped to each bingo wing, bum bags containing travelers cheques, caked in sun cream and walking like they need an emergency poo. I'm not sure how I would feel about that really. Probably not ecstatic.

I love the mad scramble for duty free products at the airport. We love a bargain here in the UK, even if the items we purchase are relatively useless. Why do we go mad about saving a few quid on products we wouldn't buy normally? I just don't get why people feel the need to buy massive bottles of cologne or perfume when they are only spending a bit less and probably wont use it. Alcohol and cigarettes are dirt cheap in this country as well so there really is no need. Oh wait a minute, no their not they are extortionate and well over priced!!! I have a suggestion, sell duty free petrol at airports then maybe we could get something we need. Thanks for reading and remember Saturday is now the regular post day...

Fear Of Black Ice Or Abominable Snowmen

Welcome back readers to another edition of my thoughts in cyber form. I will take you on a journey where the destination is unknown, even in my head, but as I write there will be plenty of road-side stops filled with rants, many junctions of humour with a few roundabouts of immaturity thrown in. Hopefully as you read this you are in a nice warm room and not out there in the blistering cold that we call winter. Of course if you are reading this in Australia or any southern hemisphere country, have a cold beer and try to stay cool. This week is all about the Great British weather and the way us Brits react to the tiniest change in temperature or climate.

As a British citizen I am programmed with the same mentality towards our weather as every other UK resident. We complain when it’s hot and we complain when it’s cold. In fact we complain when it’s not hot or cold. The truth is that the weather here on our beautiful green island is never the same for long and we never get used to it for long enough before it changes again. When the sun comes out we savour it for a few days. We wear shorts, t-shirts and flip-flops and do many outdoor activities to soak up the warm weather. After a while it goes in again and we all sigh and get on with mediocrity once again. The problem is that when the weather is hot we, as a country, collectively never want to do any work. People phone in sick, builders finish half way through the day, the beaches become packed with pasty overweight people and the bars spill out onto the streets. Suddenly we become a tropical island overnight. News reporters show temperatures of other countries and compare them to the UK, revealing that we are hotter than Miami, Athens and the surface of the Sun. We are top of the temperature tables for one week in a year hooray!!!

September and October come around and we are all on edge. What coat should I wear? Do we put the heating on yet? When does Alton Towers close for the season? Ultimately over the last few years the weather has only started to turn cold at the back end of December, give or take a few sub-zero days here and there. Then you get to January and February and suddenly the country becomes obsessed with how cold it is (including me). Some of the stories you hear are a bit extreme though. Airports at a standstill due to a foot of snow whereas in Oslo or Stockholm where they endure tens of feet of snow the airports operate all year round. How come they cope yet we leave half of our holiday makers stranded in Tenerife or Tokyo wondering when Heathrow Terminal 4 will reopen? It’s snow for goodness sake!! Why don’t we plan ahead for these things? Surely there is a climate secretary or a transport minister in the political world that has contingencies and budgets in place in case these common weather patterns occur.

We are not asking for a lot half of the time on the front line when it comes to planning ahead. Just for there to be enough grit on the roads for us to continue our daily routines without fear of black ice or abominable snowmen roaming our streets. The chaos that ensues whenever a freak weather system comes to our island is sometimes quite scary. When I see pictures on the news of cars being swept away by floods and whole city centres being engulfed in water through a river that has burst its banks, it makes me feel lucky to be living in a town where the only weather we worry about is the wind blowing our bins 200 yards down the road. This country is still very lucky when it comes to nature’s destructive power. We only get baby tornadoes, we have no known volcanically active mountain ranges and we only get tiny earthquakes that barely measure on the Richter scale. The fact that we live in a pleasantly safe environment doesn’t mean we can’t complain about our weather, far from it. My theory is that we have it so good over here that we almost have nothing to complain about at all. So the mere fact that we complain about the weather is just our way of saying that nothing’s wrong, but if we had to nit pick...

What will happen at the end of this week with regards to the snow on the way? Who can say but we are all in agreement that it could be a lot worse, so let’s all stop with the winging and get on with it. Right after we stop moaning about the credit crunch, teenage anti-social behaviour and the spineless Liberal Democrats. Thanks for reading.