Get me a martini. Shaken not stirred. Oh and while you're at it, I'll have a tuna sub with extra mayo and no lettuce. Thanks.

This was inspired by reading the article above in our local rag, The Burton Mail, announcing that Subway was planning to open until 3am and employ bouncers on its doors at night. I’m sorry about the length, but I may have got rather carried away; I’m afraid to say it is probably indicative of an overactive imagination and too long spent watching episodes of Monty Python...

Alan’s stomach rumbled as he walked briskly through the cold night air. He had been working late at the office and now, at 11pm he had finally finished and, remembering the distinct lack of food in the fridge at home, had decided to pop into town to get a bite to eat at Subway.  He had walked along the whole length of the High Street before he realised he hadn’t seen Subway at all. That was odd, he thought. He hadn’t been for ages but he was sure it was on this street. The only place he’d passed which had been open had been a rowdy nightclub. He shrugged and consigned the mistake to a symptom of premature middle age, before deciding to walk back and ask the bouncer on the door of the club if he knew where Subway was. The bouncer was a thickset man with a shaven head, a surly scowl and a beard, called Dave (the bouncer’s name was in fact Phil, but he had a habit of anthropomorphising his facial hair). 

“Erm, excuse me, can you tell me where Subway is?” asked Alan, feeling slightly self conscious and more than a little nervous.

“You’re standing right in front of it mate,” said Phil the Bouncer.  Alan looked up at the sign above the door for the first time. It read: “Club Sandwich- Subway’s no. 1 fast-food nightclub”. A throbbing bassline vibrated the pavement as the music spilled out into the street and, past the bouncer, a mass of clubbers was visible, their figures illuminated by the bight strobe lights which flashed on and off continuously.

“Club Sandwich?” Alan was stunned by the awfulness of the pun in the name.

“Yeah, it’s awful I know. Everyone says that. Don’t blame me, I didn’t come up with it. You comin’ in or what?”

Alan wasn’t really sure whether he was ‘comin’ in’ or not.

“Er, I suppose so.” he replied.

“Well I’ll need to see some ID.”

“Oh. I’m not sure if I’ve got any on me. I wasn’t expecting... well, a nightclub. I just wanted a sandwich.”

Phil tried unsuccessfully to look sympathetic whilst maintaining his stern grimace. “Yeah it’s quite recent,” he said “Not all that keen on it meself really. It started off small: just opening ‘till 3 and employing a bouncer, like. But you know what management’s like these days, always takes it too far. Before long they’d put in some lights and a stage and before you know it it’s a bleedin’ nightclub isn’t it? Made us a lot of dough, mind and it gives me a job so I’m not complaining. Still, it’s going a bit far isn’t it?”

Alan nodded mutely.

“I hear they’re bringing in stripper poles next week,” Phil muttered wistfully, “what’s the world coming to eh?”

Alan proffered his driving licence cautiously.

“Is this all right?”

“Yep, that’s great. In you go. Enjoy yourself mate!”

Alan stepped over the threshold and into the dimly lit club. He looked around for somewhere to buy a sandwich, but all he could see was the throng of people. He moved to the edge warily.

“Erm excuse me, do you know where I can buy a sandwich?” he asked the heavily tattooed man standing next to him.”

The man looked puzzled “Do they sell sandwiches here?” he asked.

“I think so...” said Alan.

“Oh I dunno. Try the bar.” He pointed to the corner of the room. Alan thanked him and made his way over to the bar, which had behind it the usual selection of beers and spirits but, curiously, no sandwiches. A spotty faced youth stood behind it, looking distinctly bored.

“Do you sell sandwiches?” Alan asked him.

“What?” said the youth as Alan’s words were drowned out by the music.

“I said do you sell sandwiches anymore?” said Alan, a little louder.

“I can’t hear you.”

“Do you sell sandwiches?” yelled Alan.

“I’m sorry, you’ll have to speak up.”

“Oh forget it.” He turned and walked out of the club. Phil gave a low chuckle as he walked past him.

“Going already?” he called as Alan began to walk away.

He received no reply.

“What about your food though?”

Alan stopped and thought about it for a moment.

“I’ll go to Mc Donald’s.”

“Oh I wouldn’t go there, it’s their 70’s night on a Thursday. Don’t think that’d be your kind of thing at all.”

Alan walked away hurriedly, his stream of expletives fortunately drowned out by the music.

Phil sighed and went back to looking fierce again. It was going to be a long night.

"It's the end of the world as we know it (but I feel fine...)"

Blimey, I haven't posted on this blog for a while... Reading my first blog post again, I see that it is replete with the assurance that I will update this blog daily and become a regular contributor to the world of the internet. Sadly, my promises have turned out to be somewhat optimistic and a little naive: I have updated this blog a grand total of twice, both in the first week. It seems I underestimated the power of procrastination (I was going to write an entry about that, as a matter of fact, but I think I'll write it later...).

So imagine my shock when I read yesterday that the world was due to end at 6pm today; it would have been enough to spur even the most hopeless layabout into action. Fortunately the world seems to be very much intact at the moment: no-one I know has been 'raptured'; New Zealand says that their teatime passed without anybody being whisked away into the sky; and there seems to be a distinct lack of demons rising from the depths of hell. In a way I'm rather disappointed. All this shooting off to heaven sounded quite fun: like a bizarre cross between the National Lottery and a roller-coaster.


But it's the name that ruins it for me really. When I hear the word 'rapture', I instantly think of Bioshock or the Blondie song. Neither of them really conjure up too much of an image of biblical end times. Also, what about the 2012 thing? Does that mean the world ends again on 21st December  2012? On balance I think I'd rather go with the Mayan one. And why's that? Well we've already ordered our tickets for the Olympics. If the world ended tonight we wouldn't be able to go. What a terrible waste of money that would be...

"It looks like you're trying to get rid of an annoying, talking paperclip. Would you like some help?"

It's a fashionable thing to complain about Microsoft these days and, though I use it myself and have no major quibbles with it, I am prone to fits of ranting against Windows occasionally. But I think I have traced all of its foibles to a single source:

It's just too goddamn helpful.

Every time you try to do something which requires more than the intellectual capacity of a particularly dim-witted flea, Windows will thrust some ingenious wizard or help option upon you which ends up causing more trouble than if it had just left you alone. A good example of this was the 'office assistant' (AKA that bloody paperclip) with its immortal line, "looks like you're writing a letter". Sadly, getting rid of the thing was often actually more time consuming than writing the letter itself and so the object was thoroughly defeated there.

Fortunately, this has disappeared in Word 2007, to be replaced by Vista's User Account Control feature which presumes that all programs not made by Microsoft are riddled with viruses.

So I know you mean well Mr Gates, but next time, just don't bother. I'll do it myself...

Blogging- 'This way madness lies'

Blogging is one of those things which seems to have passed me by completely. It’s been plastered all over the media for several years now and yet I’ve never knowingly actually read a blog in my life, let alone written one. 

So when, whilst attempting to procrastinate wildly to avoid doing things I was meant to be doing, the thought occurred to me to start one, I realised that I needed to do some research on the topic. What exactly is a ‘blog’? Wikipedia (the website to which conciseness is an alien concept) was able to tell me the history of blogging, its political and cultural impact and a plethora of other interesting but equally useless facts. It failed however to tell me what I should actually write in a ‘blog’ (the word sounds to me like the name of some unsavoury creature you would expect to find lurking in the sewers), so I decided to do what comes naturally and just ramble on until I run out of things to say, whilst watching the last vestiges of my free time and sanity bid me farewell and slip quietly away, never to be seen again.

I’m therefore most likely to be doing this all wrong and I expect I have already broken thousands of blog conventions with this single post, but who cares? I'm actually almost enjoying writing this. It could even turn out to be fun: watch this space...