Nov 15-20, Dead Cats, New Flats and Arsenal being Crap

As you can tell by the title of this post, it really was a great week. We got told on Tuesday morning that our previously lovely landlady wants to move back in. This is completely fair enough as it’s her prerogative but it now means I have more unwanted admin to sort therefore as a stroppy twat I’m annoyed at her. I’m already dreading packing boxes, cancelling bills, starting bills, changing address even learning the names of my new neighbours who we will not speak to. More than anything, the prospect of dealing with estate agents makes me want to be sick in bin. One rang me yesterday and this is exactly what he said, “hello Mr Martin, I think I have a flat for you…hang on you wanted a 3 bedroom flat…this is a 2 bedroom one…no worries…see you later”. Prick.

If I thought moving home was annoying then hearing that my 16-year-old cat needed to be put down was really annoying. By really annoying I mean heart breaking. This is a cat that has been fully knackered with heart disease and kidney failure for the last few years so we’d been expecting his death for a while. This meant I was happy to go with my massive dad to the vet for the inevitable. As soon as we both stepped into the vet’s office and she told us she was going to ‘terminate’ him, we both started crying like schoolgirls. I guarantee anyone would blub at this exact moment; with the exception of that woman who put a can in a bin, she’d probably do a little dance.

One thing I didn’t realise about this morbid process is you have to watch your pet die in front of your eyes, which is as horrific as it sounds. The other is that you have to pay the person to do it. I know this information is well known but something about turning a vet into the world’s crappest assassin seems weird to me. If you’re going to pay them to kill your pet at least make an effort: maybe sneak into my house dressed as a ninja and shoot him with a silencer. In tragedy therein lies moments of comedy and this situation was no different. When we walked out of the vet’s office there were two schoolgirls waiting to collect their dog. They looked so happy about the prospect of getting their healthy dog until they saw two grown men crying, holding an empty cat cage. It didn’t take Columbo to work out what had just happened: their faces dropped. It was like a wake up call to them about the real world, after seeing us their fixed dog was going to seem like nothing more than a panting parcel of inevitable sadness.

The funniest thing about this whole debacle was when me and the big man got back in his car we didn’t talk for 2 minutes. The silence was broken by me saying, ‘did you see those girls?” and my dad laughed and said, “yup, we totally ruined their weekend”. So the moral of this story is, if you’re feeling sad upsetting other people will make you feel better.

Also Arsenal made me cry by losing to Tottenham. Lots of crying this week.

8-12th Nov: airports, Ireland and Immodium

I spent most of the week over in Galway and Dublin, which was really fun but would have been a whole lot better if I wasn’t petrified of soiling myself.

It was my first visit to Ireland as an adult and I was excited because it involved me flying there. Whenever I fly anywhere I can’t help but feel like I’m on holiday. Even if I was flying to a prisoner of war camp, I’d still be excited about it once I browsed electrical goods and was shown how to use a seatbelt; incidentally If you need to be shown how to use a seatbelt, you deserve to drown. The security at the airport has become ridiculously over the top. 10 years ago you could have walked straight onto the plane for a domestic flight with just a driving licence and a sack of dynamite on your back. At the security scanners I saw an old lady walking through in front and heard the 2 girls working there have this conversation:

“Getting that old is really sad”

“It happens to all of us eventually”

“Yes, but it just depresses me”

That was right in front of this wrinkly woman’s face. Right in it! Let’s hope she was so old she was deaf.

Ireland itself is an awesome place. I hardly had a chance to see Galway due to my flight and train times but I really want to go back as everyone is so friendly, even after they find out your English. I was in Dublin for 3 days and I was supposed to visit loads of things with my friend Shona, who I met in Bali. I, however, had proper gastric flu and so spent a lot of time trying not to follow through. Therefore I just walked within a few hundred metres radius of my hotel room and more importantly the toilet. I nearly cried when I had to eat Immodium then managed to rip one of my sneakers when putting it on, if I’d split my trousers I prob would have jumped out of my first floor window. Dublin has just as many nutters as London and a lot of homeless people: probably because it’s £6 for a pint. They probably think, ‘I can either afford rent or booze…and if I’m drunk the fact I’m on the street won’t bother me’.

Get yourselves to Dublin if you get a chance. It’s a beautiful city and even better if you’re minted and you’re bowels are working properly.

Nov 1-5th: Getting sick sucks, especially when you don’t remember the 5th of November.

Comedians’ football aside, this week was spent feeling ‘under the weather’. It’s such a mum’s phrase but so accurate. Not fully bedridden but not 100%. When you’re feeling a bit ill you start telling anyone who will listen what percentage you’re at. I was going up to strangers saying, “I’m only feeling 70%” but turns out no one in Tesco cared. The benefits of living away from home far outweigh the negatives yet when you’re feeling like a bag of rat droppings all you want is a mum to put the palm of her hand on your forehead and bring you treats; I do mean ‘a’ mum because any mother will do when you’re below par. I’m looking into founding a rent-a-mum business for sick people: you get waited on hand and foot without getting nagged about tidying and washing.

When my percentage rose to an acceptable level, I managed to do a podcast with Carl Donnelly. After we’d talked nonsense we met up with Richard Mills to find a Chinese lantern for Fireworks weekend. The approach of fireworks night had completely passed me by because it is a holiday that has no appeal to me. It may sound miserable but my theory is once you’ve seen one firework, you’ve seen them all. The day a firework spells my name or shapes a penis in the sky is the day I get excited about bonfire night. Since there isn’t much money in spelling my name or displaying a massive sparkly cock at an event primarily more kids, I’m out.

Despite my apathy, I still helped Carl and Rich try to find a lantern because it was better than killing time alone. We went into a shop in Wimbledon that sells fireworks, guns and darts. I cannot believe that shop exists: all it’s missing is topless women staff to make it the most blokey shop in the world. The man who sold us the merchandise was also the biggest giggling geezer. When we went “have you got any Chinese lanterns?” He went, “no…apart from those massive one right in front of you”, then he laughed a lot. This also cheered me up and made me feel better. Therefore, I’m thinking of creating a rent-a-geezer business to be the sister company to my rent-a-mum and basically cure illness all around the world. Screw Oxfam, send mums and happy geezers to Africa and the world will be fixed. On that completely unexpected and odd note, laterz

25th-30th Oct: Didier Drogbear bruv

At the start of the week I invited my friend Max Garth over to play Fifa but mainly because he wanted me to mention me in this blog. I’ve no idea why his name being read by 8 people is appealing to him but I thought I’d oblige.

Having said that, he is the most hilarious man to play a computer game against. He genuinely thinks it’s a real match. He slags the ref off for the whole match whilst claiming that I have bribed him. Unless there is a cheat I’m unaware of, I’ve no idea how you pay an imaginary person to fix an imaginary game. His competitiveness is actually more entertaining to watch than the game itself. I once played in a 5-aside team with him and when we conceded a goal he got on his knees he started slapping the ground like it was a naughty girl and he was a notorious porn star. The fact he’s a bit of a geezer makes it all the more amusing. He at one point, paused the game to shout “Ref, how did you not see that foul…owwwww….you just made me swallow me gum!” after he restarted it, the ref had in fact given him a free-kick so his gum swallowing was in vein.

“Can you do me a favour and hang with me at Chelsea and I will pay you 60 quid to dress as a bear”
The above sentence was a message I received from my friend Joe Williams on Wednesday night. I naturally replied with “What in the name of Jesus’s left testicle are you on about? “ Turns out Joe was organising a promotion for a new kids bear and to do so he needed someone to join him in dressing as a massive bear. I obliged, a bit because I love hanging out with Joe but mainly because I got to dress as a massive bear. The way he sold it to me was “mate, this is proper bear suit with a speaker in it and everything.” My main concern is the novelty would wear off after 10 minutes. I was correct. It was sweaty and heavy and I now have new found respect for anyone who dresses as a massive toy at Disney Land: that is a sentence I never thought I’d utter.

It was only between 11am-4pm and we shared the time out but as I haven’t had a proper job for 18 months, my lack of a work ethic was highlighted. I was ready to knock it on the head by lunch time. The low-lights of it were, the sweating, the fact it was a Chelsea scum bear and constantly fearing a kid hitting you in your buried treasure. The funniest thing was how everyone, adults or children just wanted to hug you, it made me feel really happy collecting over 300 hugs. The other messed up thought that jumped into my brain was: if you were a sex offender and you wanted to touch children get yourself a bear outfit. It also baffled me how stupid most kids were. 8 year old boys were saying, like they were mini Columbos, “I swear bruv, that ain’t a real bear, there’s a man in dat suit. I swear.” Whilst I was inside the suit shouting, “of course I’m not a real bear you moron”.

A lot of kids also thought Didier Drogba was inside the suit. They should not be allowed outside the house or in public.

In summary, make someone's Christmas and buy them a bear outfit...unless they're a pedophile.

18th-22nd Oct: When a Polish Cleaner Meets a Cockney Builder

This week I got to had a friend visit from Ireland so got to hang out with them and therefore stave off the loneliness for most of the week. Rather than bore you with that I’ll tell you about my cleaner again.

Firstly I actually found out her name, it’s Pepper. So now I make hilarious jokes to her like, “Where’s Salt?” and I start sneezing on her but as she still speaks no English she just stares at me. She came over on Tuesday as she normally does but this time my flat mate Be asked me to request she does his ironing because he’s the world’s laziest man. It took me about 5 minutes of me miming and gesticulating to convey this message. Once she’d started though I never realised how long it take to iron 15 shirts, she was about an hour in before I realised she probably wasn’t going to have time to clean the flat properly. Worried we’d have a flat that contains a human turd on the carpet but 15 really straight shirts, I emailed Be and BJ about the scenario. They hilariously sent me about 10 emails along the lines of, “stop her!” and “unplug the tossing iron!” I wasn’t going to try to get her to stop something I’d laboured over to get her to do, otherwise I might end up with an iron shaped burn mark on my forehead

Whilst this was all happening I got a text from a cockney builder coming to sort the damp out saying he’d be over in 20 mins. He was supposed to turn up the day after, but a builder being a day early is pretty rare so I wasn’t going to complain. I had to wait for him to come over before shooting off. Now baring in mind how hard it was for me to explain ironing to Pepper imagine how ridiculous it was that I was trying to explain a small, shaved-headed, cockney builder was coming over and they were going to be in the flat together. It’s like the script to a low budget porno/ 1970’s sitcom. I just had to leave these two paradoxical figures alone in my flat. No one was dead when I returned, so I guess it all worked out fine. In my head I like to think they had really hygienic and well-constructed sex. I don’t know why I have these thoughts….

This is all something a normal person would do in day-to-day life and think nothing of it, whereas it’s the highlight of my week.