Stagecoach

The older I get the more I realize how easy it is to drop the reins of one’s life. To just let them go and allow them to drop to the floor where they can be picked up by absolutely anybody or even nobody at all. Suddenly the stagecoach on which you are riding – the stagecoach which is you – is not heading in the direction you had thought it was or the direction in which you had intended. Worse, you realize you had no real sense of direction at all and now you are looking around wondering where the hell you are. You just know you are not in the place – the vision of Utopia – that you were holding in your mind as your ultimate destination and you have no idea of how to get there.

I’m starting to see that a passive nature often leads to a passive act of self-betrayal.

When I was a kid I had a very definite vision of what I was going to do when I grew up; of what I wanted to be. Initially it was a crimefighter. A superhero. The world can’t have too many of those and fighting evil seemed a perfectly legitimate way to spend one’s time. Note I say “spend one’s time” and not “earn a living”. Receiving monetary recompense for my future acts of derring-do didn’t ever occur to me. My motives were pure. This was just something I wanted to do and my vision was completely unsullied by any transactions of filthy lucre. Dosh wasn’t the important thing. What I wanted to do was.

Such wisdom in one so young.

As I got older I had a Father Christmas moment. That horrible epiphany that you get when you realize something you have long believed in and held dear is, in fact, an abject impossibility and not a little stupid for all its inherent idealism.

Crimefighting wasn’t going to work. Han Solo was unlikely to want to join my crimefighting gang and the government were unlikely to allow me unfettered access to an unlicensed lightsaber even if the science bods had been able to create one.

So I settled on writing. Being an author; a novelist. Through my teens and twenties this was transmuted into poet and now, later, older, it has reverted back to author.

Don’t get me wrong. I do consider myself a writer. I’ve written novels, scripts, articles, poetry, radio plays and joke letters. I suppose I am an author.

But I don’t consider myself to be leading an author’s life. Whatever that is.

When I was younger the vision I had of this author’s life didn’t entail daily battles against exhaustion, futility, frustration, despair, ennui or the many other vagaries of a 9 to 5 job. The vagaries of making a living that get in the way of the life we are trying to lead.

I daresay the life I have now is most definitely a real, genuine author’s life. My teenage vision was well wide of the true mark. That Father Christmas moment is damned necessary if any of us are to engage with reality and function properly as adults.

But I can’t help thinking that my younger, purer, infant vision was infinitely wiser: it is the choice of doing that is the most important thing, not the remuneration and how you achieve it.

Because it is the moment you reach out for that tightly bundled fistful of dollars that you drop the reins and the stagecoach that is you takes a lurch for the worst and, terrifyingly, speeds up.

It is the moment you pocket that cash that you find you have lost your way.

Shoddy Comes Fitted As Standard

I have an age old problem with computers.

Or rather with the operating system itself. I admit my experience is limited to Windows and I know there are alternatives out there but nevertheless I am driven to persist with the devil I know.

It's the updates.

The constant updates that make my machine lag just when I need it to be super quick; the peremptory order to restart so that the new updates it has shoehorned into its electronic gizzard without my knowledge can be installed properly; the interminable wait so that Windows can "configure" itself (and then stalls at 37% for hours) before my own machine is released to me once more.

I sometimes wonder who my machine belongs to. I distinctly recall paying a whopping great bill for the actual physical components. I still have the receipt. But it seems that as soon as Windows was installed Microsoft then took ownership.

Kind of like a sitting tenant. Yes, you own the property but Mr MS is living here now and possession is 9 tenths of the law so sod off; if he wants to set fire to the wallpaper he jolly well will and there is nothing you can do about it.

Now I know you can turn off Automatic Updates and make it all manual but, really, we humans are all on the paranoid OCD spectrum so we leave it all Automatic in case we miss the update that plugs the huge security breach that Microsoft didn't realize was there when they first sold the software to us (as being the next best thing to sliced bread) for £100+.

And that is my problem. A new version of Windows is in the offing or at least on the brink of being offered. It will undoubtedly be huge, i.e. you are suddenly going to need a dozen terabytes of memory just to run it and a processor large enough to handle the data from the Hadron Collider. Inevitably we are all going to be forced to go back to the computer shop of our choice and pay out another large sum of cash to buy more machinery that Mr MS will then move into and take possession of.

But I don't want this new version of Windows to be bulked out with new services, new apps and new lights and flashing bells (or whatever). I just want it to be like the one I have now but finished.

Finished. Perfect. Not broken. Not with bits missing. Not with any security issues. In short, without any need whatsoever to have to continually update itself.

I mean, if I buy a car I don't expect to wake up one morning 2 months later to find a team of mechanics on my drive changing the tyres.

"Sorry, gov, you can't use the car for the next 3 hours until we swap the tyres over. Yeah, they suddenly decided that the original square tyres that were fitted when you first bought the model aren't conducive to high speed travel so now we're upgrading them all with these round ones."

"But I need to get my wife to hospital this morning - it's an emergency!"

"Sorry. But you chose to have automatic updates and once the process has started we can't stop until it's finished - otherwise the car won't be configured properly."

Ridiculous!

Surely there is an operating system out there somewhere that gets it right first time?

Otherwise, the simple fact is, in thousands of years of human history we haven't actually improved upon the abacus...

BAFTA

The wife and I made the mistake of watching the BAFTAs last night.

I say mistake because the BAFTAs are a viewing pleasure that is by turns guilt inducing and frustrating.

Guilt inducing because you know this is a horribly cliquey, elitist, uber-lovey event that you really ought to sneer at and boycott. And frustrating because the winners inevitably do not match up to your own personal BAFTA winner’s list that you’ve drawn up completely ad hoc as the names of the shortlisted nominees were being read out.

In my BAFTA award ceremony Miranda Hart, Benedict Cumberbatch, Fresh Meat and Misfits were all winners. But plainly I am out of touch with the official BAFTA judges because they all came away with absolutely nothing. Not a sausage. And I very much would have liked to have given Miranda Hart a sausage.

Best part of the night was Rolf Harris getting some kind of fellowship award. Fellowship of the ring, perhaps? He’d certainly terrify the Orcs of Mordor with his impressive didgeridoo blowing. Worst part of the night was some actor twat (whose name I have intentionally chosen not to remember)  deliberately not reading out the names of the Best International Drama winners because they were Danish and he couldn’t be bothered to learn how to pronounce them. Of course, he didn’t actually say that. He just joked, “ho ho... I’m not even going to attempt to read out these names... ho ho... aren’t I cool?” Actually he didn’t really say that either but something very close to it. How rude. Learn the names of the winners next time, matey. Show some respect. The best part of it was one of the names was “Adam Price”. How difficult is that to pronounce? Obviously Mr Actor had lost considerable dexterity in his tongue after years of bum licking his way up the greasy poles of RADA .

So why do I watch the BAFTAs then, when all I do is sneer and sigh and stamp my feet?

Because I have a dream that one day I will be there, that’s why. One day it will be me getting the top writer’s award like Steven Moffat did last night (well deserved). It’ll be me expressing genuine surprise when I am called up to the stage by Miranda Hart to accept a prestigious BAFTA award because I really, genuinely was not expecting it, so much so that I haven’t even prepared a proper speech or anything but I would like to thank my wife and kids and [reels off a long list of showbiz celeb pals]. And best of all it’ll be me kicking twatty Actor chappie in the pants and telling him next time to get an effing language coach (no pun intended)!

Until then all I can do is sit and watch and sigh and gnash my teeth at all those who are lucky enough to be there right now but squander the opportunity with poorly prepared presentation speeches and crap jokes and smug looks to the camera because they are out on an industry jolly.

Grr.

One day these people will all be my friends and colleagues and I will have to play the game.

But until then I can say what I damn well like about them.

And surely that is as good as any kind of BAFTA award?

Is There An App For This?

Is there an app for cack-handedness? Because I need one. Desperately.

I have come to the stark conclusion that somehow the inbuilt ergonomic design of the mobile phone is no longer pandering to my natural abilities.

It could be an old age thing but in my defence (and my kids will back me up on this) when it comes to Lego building I still retain the dexterity of a 7 year old.

But mobile phones I can no longer handle. Literally.

The buttons are too small. Or require a precision of touch that seems beyond me. And what makes it worse is that I have a work mobile as well as my own “home” mobile so the problems are doubled.

Take the automatic keypad locking facility on my work phone. Every phone has one and will employ it within seconds of the phone last registering the caress of your fingers across it’s knobbly little body.

I cannot get my phone to unlock without a deal of hassle and stress. I press a key, any key, and it tells me to press * to unlock the phone. So I do. It tells me to press * again. And again. Seems I’m not pressing it hard enough though the amount of pressure I use seems to be fine for when I’m typing out a death threat. Did I say death threat? I meant text. Three or four attempts later I have finally unlocked the phone but by now I feel like stamping on it and crushing it into oblivion. I have the shape of the * button indelibly imprinted into my finger.

It would be easier to unlock Fort Knox than to unlock my phone.

And then take the touch screen key guard on my home mobile. Oh how I thought it would be marvellously “in” to have a touch screen mobile phone. Something I could smear and flick my thumb across and have it put me in touch with the entire world.

The key guard works fine in a non-urgent situation. I slide it down and my phone becomes instantly touch sensitive. I slide it up again and it becomes as unresponsive as Katie Jordan Price wired up to an MRI scanner. Total key guard protection.

But give it an “urgent” situation. An “urgent” situation being someone calling me on my phone requiring me to operate the touch screen in order to accept the call then the key guard decides not to operate at all. It’s like the phone can’t cope with having to do two things at once. What? Employ the ring tone and enable the key guard function toggle button? No way! This is a mobile phone not a multitasking device! Back and forth I slide the key guard switch and all that happens is that the phone vibrates, continues to ring hysterically and then eventually the caller either calls off or gets diverted to my voicemail.

Major phone answering fail.

This cannot be right. This cannot be in the designer’s remit surely – to sabotage a user from using their own mobile phone in the fair pursuance of the mobile phone’s basic fundamental duties?

Does this happen to everyone or is it just a conspiracy to prevent me personally from talking to other people?

Am I really that dangerous?

Next thing you know they’ll be closing down this here blo...

Easy Rider

I like to think of myself as a cultured, educated kind of guy. I know my Munch from my Munchies; my Socrates from my sock drawer. I can string a few words together and sound vaguely articulate.

But this is all a lie.

I am at heart a popularist. A pop person. A middle of the road, representational, non-abstract, can-you-see-what-it-is-yet, the-medium-is-not-the-message, does-what-it-says-on-the-tin kind of guy. I like paintings to look like something real. Music to have a tune. Lyrics to tell a story. And movies...

I like movies, even if they do nothing else, to just entertain.

And this gets me into trouble. Because my frustration threshold with movies is pretty high. I can take a whole heap of cheesy dialogue and improbable plot devices and still have a great time at the cinema. Because, at the end of day, I just want to be shown a good time.

The movie doesn’t have to be intelligent. The experience doesn’t have to be meaningful. The story doesn’t have to be worthy. In fact I’d much rather it wasn’t.

If movies were women I’d be up for a one night stand with the town bike.

I don’t want a relationship; something that will stay with me forever; something that will change me. I don’t want a trophy girl, or a rich girl or a high maintenance girl. Quick, cheap and nasty is fine. Behind the pub, up against the bins, no small talk. In and out, both our bells ring, ding-a-ding-ding. Never going to see you again... not unless you’re out on DVD for a reasonable price anyway.

That’s entertainment.

Which isn’t to say I don’t get pulled into worthy movies. To classics. Of course I do. I enjoy a steak as much as the next man. All I’m saying is, most of the time, when I go out to the movies, I’m happy with a hamburger.

It means I can forgive films like Immortals, Sherlock Holmes and Clash Of The Titans. I’m aware that other bloggers can’t. Bloggers with more taste and higher standards than me.

I’m a movie scumbag and I admit it.

I look at film posters for movies like Black Swan and Salmon Fishing In The Yemen and I can feel my guts cramp in boredom. I’m sure these are great movies. Well written. Pieces of incredible movie art. They’d enlighten me. Cause me to question my own linear, one-track existence.

But they make me want to shit bullets.

I want pizzazz. I want spectacle. I want escapism.

I don’t want misery and the dreariness of the human condition thrust into my face while I thrust handfuls of Mars Planets into my face.

I ain’t looking for nothing but a good time. I’m just an easy rider, baby. I’m out for a laugh and nothing more. Don’t get all heavy on me.

And if that makes me shallow and superficial, well, I can stay at home and self harm to Joy Division records with the best of them. I have as many depths and facets as everybody else. I really do.

I just leave them behind me when I climb into a cinema seat.

So I’m just saying... if you read this blog and you’re expecting choice movies reviews that are considered and sophisticated and erudite you’re going to be (or, more likely, have been) massively disappointed.

As long as a movie can stick it’s tongue down my ear and frottage me up, I’m perfectly happy.

So you Culture Show fans might want to get your movie reviews somewhere else...

Now shut up please – the Pearl & Dean presentation is about to begin.

Would Have Should Have Could Have

Being a sentimental sort of chap whose sentimentality is triggered by feelings of profound frustration with my current circumstances I am often given to bouts of “if only I’d...” and “why didn’t I [fill in the blank] when I had the chance?”

These bouts of bemoaning the clouds in my coffee for not realizing themselves into the life I have always dreamed of seem to increase the older I get. Maybe because I have more to regret or even because, as my knowledge and understanding increase (albeit in small increments), I am perhaps more aware of what I should have done when I look back at my formative years.

Don’t get me wrong. I have much to be thankful for. A loving wife and two healthy rumbustious boys.

But I can’t help feeling that modern living is inimical to my spiritual contentment.

Take my career. Or what I laughingly refer to as my career.

I never aspired to anything.

Well. That’s not strictly true. I have always and still do aspire to write. All I ever wanted to do was write. So as a consequence I never aspired to be anything tangible in the career food-chain. I never wanted to be a bank manager. Or a bus driver. Or an electrician. Something that would have required training or an apprenticeship. Something whose usefulness to modern society (with the exception of bank manager) would never go out of date or popularity.

I was a fool to myself. I would still have strived to write but I would have had a fallback position.

But even this wouldn’t have been smart enough. And I think what I am bemoaning most of all in this post is my naivety and my laziness in not properly contemplating how I would really like to spend my work days back when I had the youth and the non-pressure of living at home with my parents to actually invest some time and sacrifice some wages in order to achieve it.

Because any kind of retraining now is going to cost money and time that I don’t have. And energy beyond my capacity to generate.

*sigh*

You know what I’d most like to do? How I’d ideally like to spend my days and earn my money?
I’d like to work outside.

Forestry commission. Farming. Landscape gardening.

Just something... out there; outside, out of the dull soul-eating cube of the office. Away from the dusty fans of soulless PCs and the subliminal thought-knife of the telephone ringtone.

And years ago I could have done it. I could have still written. I wouldn’t have lost anything because, beyond a few published poems, I was never in danger of hitting the big time.

And right now I’d be coppicing a wood (no euphemism intended) in the sunshine. I’d have my hand up a cow’s arse in the Cotswolds. I’d be digging out the foundations for a ha-ha at Blenheim Palace.

But instead of those things I am beating my brains out against a brick wall of spreadsheets and Health & Safety legislation, wondering where the hell the sunshine has gone.

Well, I’ll tell you where it’s bloody gone.

It’s hiding behind the ruddy great clouds in my coffee.

Held To Ransom

I’m feeling a bit emotionally hijacked this morning.

I feel like an old friend has stabbed me in the back. Or worse, slashed the buttons off my best coat with a flash of his blade like the Scarlet Pimpernel putting down some damn Frenchie.

In the bigger scheme of things this is no big deal but it has got my goat: Blogger has changed the layout and functionality of its Dashboard.

Some of you will be shrugging. Some of you may not have noticed any difference. Some of you may like the changes.

I don’t like the changes.

Worse, I can’t click on anything without Blogger informing me that my browser is incompatible with the new Dashboard, some functions will no longer work and I might like to try installing Google Chrome instead.

I don’t want to install Google Chrome.

I’m sure Google Chrome is a lovely browser. I’m sure it would make love to my computer and make it come all night long. But I use Internet Explorer, like Internet Explorer and am familiar with Internet Explorer. And further, I don’t like having unnecessary bits of software installed on my computer chogging up the registry and increasing the potential for foul-ups. Having two browsers installed goes against the grain.

I feel like Blogger – owned by Google, of course – is trying to bully me into using its own software. This is not on.

Persuade me (if you can) by all means. Sell it to me. Bribe me. Make me come all night long.

But don’t bully me. Don’t mug me. Don’t hold me to ransom.

Because that makes me dig my heels in even harder. That makes me flex and exercise my rather muscular stubborn gene.

At the end of the day this whole thing is a cynical exercise in overly ferocious marketing. What annoys me most is that if you check your blogging stats via the Dashboard (if you can get yours to work now, that is) you will see that Internet Explorer is still the most popular browser that the majority of people use when logging into and using Blogger.

And yet Blogger / Google has seen fit to deliberately disregard the lion’s share of its own user demographic and create an interface that doesn’t work properly in Internet Explorer.

If that isn’t a slap in the face I don’t know what is.

So what do I do?

Go against my principals and install Google Chrome? Dump Blogger and switch to Wordpress? *shudder*

Stop Blogging altogether?

(I’m going to ignore all of you who are currently screaming, “yes!”)

No.

I’m going to moan about it on my Blog via Internet Explorer.

Screw you Blogger. You’re not the only one who can rip off coat buttons with a flick of a dandy’s foil.


Addendum:

I couldn't even publish this post via Internet Explorer. The compose and edit functions don't work. So I have had no choice but to install Google Chrome. I now feel like, not only have I had the buttons slashed off my coat, but I have also had my balls cut off and shoved into my mouth.

Fuck you, Blogger.


P.S. My thanks to you that have pointed out that you can revert to the old Dashboard by clicking on the cog icon on the top of the Dashboard. Alas, this icon does not even appear when viewed in Internet Explorer... therefore one has to install Google Chrome just to revert to the old Dashboard and then carry on using Internet Explorer.

Damned sneaky. Damned underhand.

The Inevitable Kick In The Teeth

The first time is always the worst. I don’t think you ever get completely hardened to it.

You send all your hopes and dreams off out into the world and expect the world to instantly be dazzled by their worth and startling beauty. To recognize their barely disguised merit – ‘cos if there’s one thing you’re not going to do it’s hide your light under a bushel.

Instead the world flicks you off its tabletop like a ten day old mouse dropping with the smallest of sneers.

If you’re lucky.

Most of the time the world doesn’t even realize you’re there and merely brushes you away accidentally along with all the other crap and detritus that has built up around its privileged higher echelons.

My latest novel, The Great Escapes Of Danny Houdini, received its first rejection slip yesterday.

Polite, polished and perfunctory.

Simply not what the agent was looking for.

This particular agent dealt with writers who guarantee a huge audience and generate a good income. Or so it said between the lines. Well, duh! If I’d known that I’d’ve sent my novel to an agent who was looking for little or no success and hoping to earn just enough to buy a baked potato from the marquee operating in the square outside.

*slaps head in frustration*

So it’s back to the drawing board. Back to the writer’s yearbook to pull another random rabbit out of a bottomless, unknowable pit of a hat. There’s so many to choose from and you never know you’ve chosen the wrong one until you’ve paid for the postage, sent off your novel and they write back to tell you so.

They want this, that and the other – not what you have presented them with. But they’d like you to try somewhere else because another agent might see things differently.

*sigh*

Normally I can cope with the rejection. I’ve become pretty immune to its bloodsucking effects over the years. But sometimes, just sometimes, it sneaks a punch in below the belt. Wallops your tenders like a couple of cathedral bells at a Royal wedding.

It gets you when you’re at your most weakest...

When you’re at your most hopeful.

Sir Richard Branson Giveth And Sir Richard Branson Taketh Away

I had an email from Virgin Media on Friday. One of those “hey we’re your best mates, we are, and to illustrate this we’re going to give you an amazing deal to show how much we love you, bud, pal, matey, mucker, fellamelad”. I read the email with the kind of indifference that only a longstanding Virgin Media customer can muster and it transpired that dear Old Uncle Rich – Sir Richard Branson to you – was about to “more than double” my broadband speed but for less than the price I was currently paying. And he was going to do it because I was such a loyal longstanding customer. Because, let’s face it, me and Rich have been going steady ever since he took over NTL half a decade or so ago and renamed it Virgin Media.

Well, it was a nice start to the weekend if nothing else.

Cue Saturday morning. Another email from Sir Rich arrives. This one less chummy and rather more apologetic in tone. Turns out Friday’s email was a mistake. Mr B apologized profusely, nay cheesily. It was sent out by mistake. They were sorry. He was sorry. But there would be some good news for all loyal Virgin Media customers in the next 2 weeks. Honest. About something else. Something else equally as good. Probably.

Yeah right. Another Virgin mobile phone offer or extra sports channels on Virgin Media TV, I should think. I’m not a big fan of shot-put, Sir Richard, you can stick it.

But this whole debacle got me thinking. The poor sap who pressed Send on all those emails (because surely I wasn’t the only one who received such a missive) must be up to his neck in hot water right now. That’s assuming he still has a job, of course, and that Sir Rich didn’t drop-kick him out of a hot air balloon somewhere over the Atlantic. And someone – some graphics design geek – obviously created the email in the first place. Which says Virgin Media were planning this broadband upgrade thing for some time but then just decided to change their minds.

Was it something I said? Or didn’t say? Was I supposed to have replied to Sir Rich’s original email profusely oozing my thanks and attaching a tasty Polaroid of my freshly oiled up genitalia? Did he consider my lack of response to be a singular act of monstrous ingratitude and consequently cancel the broadband upgrade?

That’s rather petty, Richard.

Or was the whole email a scam? An act of in-house sabotage from a disgruntled employee? Sir Rich has banned his marketing team from downloading stuff from the SKY BSB web site and they’ve hit back with an email to drop Sir Richard in the shite?

Hmm. To be honest, that scenario doesn’t work for me. If you were a disgruntled employee you’d send out a far worse email than “we’re going to double our customer’s broadband speed for half the price”. It would be along the lines of “hey, did you know that Sir Richard Branson molests disabled baboons in his personalized spaceship paid for with your hard earned money?”

Now that’s the kind of email that would have made my weekend a good one.

But no.

So, a double-dip disappointment on the Virgin Media front, then.

*sigh*

Situation normal. Thanks Rich.

Monitoring My Aggression

It’s not often I write about my computer hardware. I’m not a nerdy twenty-something anymore who obsesses over the size of my motherboard or the speed of my processor. I no longer care about the make, model or speed. I just want things to work. To let me do what I want to do. To surf, to write, to research. Whatever. And no, “whatever” does not equal “dodgy web sites”.

I wrote about my monitor a while ago (a Cibox if you must know). It keep switching itself off. I was close to committing acts of violence against its LCD display. I realized at the time how ridiculous such an act would be.

I’m ashamed to say I’ve now gone beyond seeing the ridiculousness of computer focused brutality. It has become my normal mode of operation.

I snatched 10 minutes of computer time this morning before leaving for work. The bloody monitor switched itself off no less than 8 times. The only remedy is to unplug the power cable and then ram it back home again.

This has now become a dangerous remedy. I can hear electricity buzzing and arcing around the back. I suspect the socket has taken such a beating it now resembles Pete Burns’ lips. I have also punched the monitor in the face more than once too. I mean, actually physically punched it. To the point where it hurt my knuckles.

I’ve searched on-line for a diagnosis (for the monitor problems not my sore knuckles – I’m well aware of what caused that). Some web sites speak of driver issues with Windows 7. They might be right. The sporadic shutting down isn’t as arbitrary as it should be. It feels like my own interactions with the internet are causing it. No, not dodgy web sites again. I click on a link or close down a web page and ping! The monitor dies. The timing it just too spot on. However, my constant stabbing away round the back with the power cable has probably caused additional damage to the monitor. It now can’t be trusted to be sold on safely. It will have to be ditched.

I will take great pleasure in doing this, believe me.

I am seriously considering buying a gun.

Anyway, the upshot is that, despite not being able to afford it, I have ordered a brand new spanking 21.5 inch Samsung monitor from Amazon. It was dispatched this morning. On the one hand it feels like an extravagant waste of money on what is – relatively speaking – a non-essential item.

On the other, it does mean I will save a fortune on no longer having to attend anger management classes.

Because let’s be honest, they weren’t working anyway.

Rather like my old monitor.

*Sigh*

And breathe...

Oi! Moffat! No!

It was the pressure. It was fear. The motivation was stinking lily-livered terror.

That’s my theory anyway.

It was announced last night that Steven Moffat – Doctor Who script writing major domo – has announced that the next series of DW will be the last to feature Amy Pond and Rory Whateverhislastnameis. They’re going to be written out via a “heart rending storyline”.

*furious sigh*

Well, I’m just sickened. Sickened.

Not just because Amy Pond (Karen Gillan) is leggy and red-headed (actually that probably ought to be “not just in spite of”). Not just because Amy has been the best DW companion since Donna Noble. Not just because Amy is River Song’s mum.

But because I was planning to write a DW script in the New Year centred around Rory. I had it all planned out and everything. A nice WWII story set around the D-Day landings and featuring Rory’s (about to be invented by me) grandfather. I’d even begun to research odd happenings on D-Day so that I could have used a weird happening as a plot device to shoehorn The Doctor into proceedings.

But no. The uber-work has been nipped in the bud. The rose has been cut before it could bloom. My plans have been scuppered. Sabotaged.

Moffat heard about my plan. He must have. It’s the only explanation.

“Christ on a unicycle,” He probably said. “Steve is going to write a script and send it into the Beeb. The game will be up. I can’t withstand that kind of competition. I need to pull the rug out from under him.”

And thus he hit low and hard. Removed the two characters that were integral to my plot.

Karen Gillan I am sorry. I am so truly sorry. I feel so responsible for your having been written out of the show. And Mr Rory Actor (I can never remember your real name) I would have made you a star. And I would have learnt your real name off by heart. It would have been a fabulous story. Worthy of being the 2012 Christmas special.

But now I’m going to have to wait until after the next series. See who the new companions will be. Adapt my story to their personality and the way they speak. It’ll be 2013 at the earliest.

Because I’m not giving up. You hear me, Moffat? You ain’t off the hook yet!

I’m coming for you and there won’t be a Tardis big enough for you to hide in!

Steve Pilgrim vs The World

So, lagging behind the cool people by a year or two, I only got round to seeing Scott Pilgrim vs The World last Saturday on account of missing it at the cinema on it's initial release and my wife kindly buying it for me on DVD for my birthday (which was last Saturday).

This isn't going to be a film review - other than to say this was one of the best and funniest films I've seen for a long time and if you dig geek cool and computer games and kung fu then this is the film for you. Oh and chicks with pink hair. If you're into chicks with pink hair you're going to love this film.

No, what this post is going to be is a revelatory experience along the lines of: oh my God, my life has curious parallels with Scott Pilgrim, the eponymous hero of the film reviewed in thumbnail above.

I'd like to undercut the shock of this statement a little by doffing my cap at verisimilitude and pointing out that no, I don't have a catholic Japanese High School aged girlfriend (who goes to a school that insists on its students wearing school uniform) and I am not two-timing her with a cool chick with pink hair who has seven deadly ex's whom I must battle for the right to continue dating her.

Because, let's face it, that's taking this whole geek-cool thing a step too far. Real life just isn't like that.

But I do feel like I have to battle seven deadly hexes to get to where I want to be. Hence the poor excuse for a comparison that probably won't stand up to too close a scrutiny, so please don't even try.

Hex 1) lack of motivation. This is my biggest failing. I need a power-up already just to put this baby to bed. It's not like I don't want to do stuff. It's just that sometimes I don't want to do it now. There's always tomorrow, right? Wrong. Tomorrow just got here and I still haven't done the stuff that I want to do. Don't even get me started on the stuff that I have to do.

Hex 2) lack of focus. I'd never make a good Sith Lord. I don't have enough anger or focus or mind power to visualize what it is I want to do with my life other than write. Now writing is fine if it pays. Until then I need to be doing something that at the very least fulfils me just a little bit and doesn't bend my sanity out of shape in the process of paying for the food on my table. But can I visualize something that I want to do? Can I heck. It's all furry, smudgy and out of focus. It feels like Darth Maul has sneezed all over my glasses.

Hex 3) Lottery dependence. This is probably a direct result of Hexes 1 and 2 above. It's like looking for life's cheat code. The short cut to the top. The secret level where you can just do what the hell you want and you can laugh at the bosses rather than having to fight them. Trouble is when you depend on the cheat codes you don't play the game properly and hone your skills and do stuff for yourself. Cheat codes are bad, people. They cheat nobody but yourself. And that's about as meaningful as this post is going to get.

Hex 4) lack of admin skills. Doesn't sound such a big thing, does it? But it's something that trips me up everytime. Organization. Order. Due process. I can write the novels. I can write the poetry. But following the steps needed to get my superlative material out to agents or onto Kindle has my feet tangling themselves up worse than Chris Penn's plates of meat in the original version of Footloose, (you know, the one with Kevin Bacon and Julie from Fame in it).

Hex 5) penchant to daydream. My CV address has my mail sent to cloud cuckoo land, I swear. Sometimes I'd just rather reinvent the world around me inside my own head than face up to the trolls, demons and baddies of reality. Trouble is, while I am blissing out, the trolls, demons and baddies are kicking my butt.

Hex 6) lack of nerve. Sometimes I just bottle it. Sometimes I have it all there - the comeback, the punchline, the plan of action - but I fail to engage. Is it worth the hassle I ask myself? Is it worth the short-term trauma? The answer in the big school hall of life is yes, it is worth it, you dumb-ass but in the moment I say "no, it isn't worth it; I just want a peaceful life, man." Wrong choice. A peaceful life isn't always synonymous with inner peace. Shit. I just got all meaningful again.

Hex 7) me. Or to be exact: Nega-me. I am my own worst enemy. I am the end of level boss I need to face and just like Scott Pilgrim maybe I need to take him out. Not as in punching his brain through the back of his head but as in taking him out for a drink. Taking him out on a team building exercise somewhere. Maybe paintballing in the Forest of Arden. I'm a pretty good shot. Maybe we need more quality time together. Male bonding. That kind of thing. A new rebel alliance needs to be forged.

There. Mission accomplished. Game completed. Job done.

Now excuse me whilst I chase after that chick with pink hair...

To Sleep, Perchance To Dream

So I’m back at work.

I’m back up to my neck in petty bureaucracy, ropey plumbing and orang-utan arsed contractors.

The familiar smell of my workstation – Tipp-ex, chocolate, wood polish and cyanide (I will find a use for those capsules one day, I promise you) is not acting as a balm. One expects a little residual sourness when one returns to work after a holiday but the rising torrent of acid that is currently bubbling away in my gorge (oo-er) is alarming to say the least.

How am I keeping myself sane? You may very well ask.

Current favourite coping strategy is to indulge in a spot of dark fantasizing.

No. Not of that sort, you mucky minded lot...

I am not really a building supervisor for a local government authority.

I am a sleeper agent.

I am here to dismantle the system, the authoritarian regime that maintains law & order and regulates the price of DVDs in this capitalist nanny state. You see me sitting here, searching Google Maps for the nearest Jewson’s outlet, never realising that I am in fact subtlely interrogating Google Earth for the wherewithal to gain access to this country’s great edifices of power.

But I am not sure, at this point in time, what exactly those edifices are.

I thought it might be 10 Downing Street but mentally I have this confused with Billy Smart’s circus. My ‘controller’ is pushing me to apprehend the nerds that run Twitter but I suspect they might be a little out of my jurisdiction. Besides which, I use Twitter to further my own socialist manifesto so suspect my ‘controller’ might be a double agent. Or at the very least Ryan Giggs. Either way, not to be trusted.

However, the perks are pretty good. I have excellent ball control.

Unlike Ryan.

I am of course building a dirty bomb beneath my desk. My work colleagues no doubt think I am up to something seedy and unpalatable with a sheet of bubble wrap and an old copy of Hello magazine but really I am constructing a weapon of such awesome destructive power that Harold Camping has snapped his Casio pocket calculator clean in half and is currently sobbing into his Gideon’s Bible. Once I’ve inserted the last paperclip you’re all for it.

I am looking around the office. Taking careful note of the photocopier, the stationery cupboard, the water cooler. Noting their location.

‘Cos tomorrow they won’t be here. Instead their atomized remains will be spread across a 10 mile wide crater, at the centre of which will be the smoking remains of my desk and my sock suspenders.

I may bequeath my hole-punch to someone before it is too late.

Oh what the hell. It’s too good for any of them anyway.

Now, where was I?

Oh yes.

There’s dog poo outside the building.

By ‘eck, I needs must get me shovel.

It’s so nice to be back at work.

Small Unremembered Acts Of Unkindness

I’m sure it’s not deliberate but this has happened with galling regularity during my time “here” as corporate slave. And it makes me hit boiling point every time because, in all honesty, I’m never quite sure how to handle it.

An engineer turns up in a company car. Or his own car. Whatever. The car is not important. But he needs to get parked and doesn’t want to use the Pay & Display spaces in town. This is fine. I lower the bollards and allow him to drive into the fiercely guarded enclave of the building’s footprint. I direct him to the staff parking bays down the back of the building. Off he drives with a cheery wave.

Pleasure, mate. I’m here to be helpful.

And then I wait by the entrance doors so I can chaperone the poor bewildered engineer to wherever he needs to be in the building. Usually a urinal which is behaving like the gateway to Hell.

And I wait.

And I wait.

And he stays in his bloody car. He doesn’t move. He just sits there in the warm, sealed cockpit of his worksmobile.

And I stand there by the front doors feeling like a jilted groom.

What do I do? ‘Cos I’m getting narked. I’m getting annoyed. I’m stood there like the proverbial last sausage and he’s rubbing himself off against his walnut dash.

Logic and the laws of dynamic motivation (is there even such a thing) dictate that I go up to the car and knock officiously on the windscreen and ask very loudly if he’s going to be joining me anytime soon because the vicar is getting impatient and the reception is booked.

But I worry that this might precipitate a faux pas of monumental proportions.

You see, he could be delayed for a very legitimate reason...

He’s taking an emergency phone call from his wife: “Darling, little Terry has found your stash of crystal meth and he’s bouncing off the walls with grandpappy’s pump-action assault rifle – the nanny is pulling her hair out and the nursery looks like a bomb site! What shall I do? What shall I do?”

Or – and this is the scenario that I fear the most – I storm up to the car, violently yank open the driver’s door and have a paraplegic engineer fall out onto the pavement like a newborn lamb from its mother’s womb.

Oh God. I am so sorry. Do you need a hand? Oh shit. I didn’t mean that the way it came out, honestly.

You get the idea.

So I wait.

And I wait.

And eventually the engineer shuffles out of his vehicle – not panicked in any way, with a full complement of limbs, wiping the foam of a take-out cappuccino from his top lip.

Utter. Git.

On The Prowl

You’ve had the same meat, week in, week out for the last God knows how many years. The same meat cooked the same way, with the same sauce. Vanilla vanilla vanilla.

You get to the point where you fancy a change. Something a bit different. Something a bit spicy, perhaps. A bit exotic. Something that resurrects your old enthusiasm for the dish. Reminds you of when you were young and it was all fresh, new and exciting. Before the ennui set in. Before you became over-familiar. Bored. Before you had to fake it.

How was it for you, dear?

Yeah. Yeah. Great. Are we done? Good, ‘cos I really need to sleep now.

And you hit the z’s knowing full well you’ll have to go through the same charade again tomorrow. And the day after. And the day after that.

Unless you do something. Unless you find, I don’t know, ingredient X. A new flame.

Well, I’m on the hunt for ingredient X. I’m on the prowl. And all offers will be welcomed, considered and one might even be accepted.

I’m not quite sure what ingredient X is but I know it has some of these components:

a) A better wage. No point making a change unless I get more money.
b) More kudos. That would be nice. No more poop-scooping or shoving buckets under leaky urinals.
c) Less crap responsibilities and more good responsibilities. Hell, we all want that but that doesn’t devalue the demand.
d) The ability to leave work at the office at the end of the day and not get rung at home, without fail, every holiday and 2 out of 3 weekends.
e) A better class of workmate. Could write oodles here but can’t, if you see what I mean.
f) I’m prepared to bargain-plea with most of the above but a) and e) are non-negotiable.

Trouble is, for all my hunting skills, my flint headed spears are finding scant prey to be launched at. New job opportunities are a bit thin on the ground.

I know that, in theory, this means I should turn back to the bony carcass of my existing job, make peace with it, cuddle up to it like we’re a couple of old spoons and be reconciled.

But. I. Just. Can’t. Do. It.

I’m sick of the same old bitter meat. The same old bitter meat topped with poisonous gravy.

I fancy an Indian. Or an Italian. Or a Chinese. Hell, even a vegetarian moussaka would do the trick. Anything.

Anything but this.

I’m shrivelling up. And I’m going to lose it if I don’t use it.

So I’m on the prowl.

On the prowl for something new. Something exciting.

I just need a decent shot at it.

Just one.

Survival Tactics

Welcome fellow hunters to the wancid world of big game hunting in the office enviwonment... Now this is a dangerwous activity, not for the faint hearted or for those of you with a nervous admin portfolio. So be warned. Things could get vewy twicky.

So. Popguns at the weady, pith helmets firmly ensconced... let’s pwoceed on our way deeper into the office undergwowth...

First off, let’s see what we can spy at the watering hole. Shh, now. They’re easily spooked and you don’t weally want to be caught in the middle of a buffalo stampede. As Simba fwom Lion King well tell you, a violently thwust bulldog clip to the face can quickly end anybody’s woyal ambitions.

Ah, here we have the lesser spotted Stationewy Cupboard Gazelle... a nervous and flighty beast that is easily startled and that can often be seen gwazing on Bic Pens and those Tippex mice things that make your cowections look like they’ve been snogged by Michael Jackson. This beast is welatively harmless and is perfectly happy pwovided it has a steady supply of paperclips and camewa battewies. At the first sign of twouble it will merely wun and wun and wun. It’ll just wun away, take my word for it. It’s a big softie and hardly worth the twouble of hanging it’s doe-eyed head over your mantelpiece so we’ll move on.

OK. Now we’re in dangewous tewwitowy. The office mangwove swamp. This is cwocodile countwy, folks, so watch where you step. In fact, there’s one there, wight now. Lurking by the photocopier machine. Its big career mashing teeth weady to wend any wary twesspasser limb from limb. The photocopier is a much sought after wesource in the jungle and the beast that contwols the copier contwols the entire food chain. You set off a pwint-wun without the say-so of the cwocodile and you’ll find yourself on the wrong side of those big flesh wipping teeth before you can say “photocopy subsidy”. It’ll be no good you complaining that evewybody takes fwee photocopies evewy now and then, that some beasties pwint off entire web sites of shoes and handbags... you cwoss the cwocodile and you’re gonna get cwapped on from a gweat height. Twust me on this, fellow hunters, it just ain’t worth the wisk.

Let’s climb up now into the twopical wain fowest. The lair of the Stabu-inthebak Snake. This particularly venomous serpent is never ever seen until the last few seconds before it stwikes and even then you may be so blinded by the clouds of venomous mist that it exhales awound itself that all you'll see is the pitiful flutter of your own blood dwenched P45 as it splatters down to the undergwowth. Game over. Cuwiously the Stabu-inthebak Snake doesn’t actually eat the prey it kills but pwefers to munch on Müller fwuits of the fowest. It kills purely for the fun of it which makes it a far more dangewous animal than those cweatures that do actually kill for food.

Lastly, we have the kings of the jungle. Those at the very top of the food chain. Now, I know you’re all expecting it to be a lion. A mighty lion like the one Elton John sang about that had the voice of Darth Vader. But you’re wong. Completely and utterly wong. The jungle is wuled and contwolled by a team of monkeys that spend the entire day chattering and arguing and picking fleas out of their own backsides in air conditioned offices poised on the tallest peaks of the fowest and never actually weach an accord about anything. Hence all the tumultuous chaos and wecidivistic naughtiness that occurs among the lower orders of the jungle. It’s totally wild in here, folks. Wild and fewociously dangewous!

The only option is to get the hell out of the office environment and take a job in much less vicious suwoundings. Guantanamo Bay perhaps or even as a bodyguard to Osama Bin Laden.

Trust me: your chances of survival will impwove gweatly.

This concludes your tour with Corpowate Jungle Tours. Please tip the dwiver as you disembark from the shit covered vehicle.

Pre-Ops Briefing

OK, soldier.

You better listen up and listen up good. You've had it easy so far. Trips to the beach. Trips to Birdland in Bourton-on-the-Water. Trips to Legoland. You've lived the high life and battered that ol' credit card pretty good.

But now it's payback time.

Here's where you start paying in sweat - and I ain't talking 'bout no dirty dancing with Irene Cara.

Tomorrow, you're going in. Behind enemy lines. Deep into enemy territory. You knew this day was coming. Hell, we knew this day was coming; that's why we cut you some slack. But the leash is back on now and yanked tighter than a nun's gusset.

Now, don't panic none, soldier. We're gonna get you kitted out with the finest hardware the military can buy.

I'm talkin' an assault action poker-face that you can don at any time. Any of those admin lovin' mofo's try to slide some red tape up your ass... well, you just don this and stare the suckers down. I guarantee they'll buckle and shit staples.

I'm talkin' ACME "couldn't give a shit" body armour. We got you the full body suit straight off the production line, son. You got balls to brain protection. Shoot, those tie-pin wearing nerd-busters can spend all day firing 'high responsibility' rounds at you and you ain't gonna feel nothin' but a pin-prick. You give them the finger and send them home to mama.

But most of all, I'm talkin' secret weapon. I'm talkin' something so ball-breakingly big and meaningful those mealy-mouthed sons and sonesses of bitches are gonna lactate pure devil-deep frustration. I'm talkin' life and drive and ambition for something way beyond that hell box they call the office.

And we're giving you that in spades.

So you dig deep, boy. You dig deep and tomorrow... you go back to work.

Debt Collection

I knew this day would come. The great post-Christmas reckoning. The revenge of the great gods Commerce and Credit.

I’ve tried putting it off. Tried locking myself in that little room called Denial whose built in tannoy system plays that curious brand of muzak that goes “blah blah blah” very loudly every time somebody knocks at the door with a bank statement in their hand.

Nope. Can’t hear you. Come back later. No, it’s no good posting it under the door; I have stabbed my eyes out with the hoover attachments.

But eventually, just like those poor German soldiers in Raiders Of The Lost Ark, you look even though you know you mustn’t. And then the lightning bolts of remuneration hit you and pierce you straight to the heart and you are transported up into a huge whirlwind of self recrimination and regret and the only person who survives is Indiana Jones and to be honest, he’s looking damned ropey these days.

Every year this happens. You run and you run and then you hit the wall of financial accountability. It’s time to face the facts. Face the music. And not the blah blah blah kind.

I think what annoys me most (about me, ‘cos let’s be honest, this is me we’re talking about) is that I kind of bumble my way into this position. I’m reasonably good all year round and then Christmas comes along and, well, I just can’t handle it.

(Cue Jack Nicholson in a US Army uniform shouting, “You can’t handle the Christmas!”)

I think it’s the releasing of the purse strings. The sudden opening of the flood gates. The unlocking of the chastity belt. You get the picture.

Months of abstinence come to an end and suddenly you find you are hopelessly incontinent. Money is pissed up the wall, higher and higher, a little further and you’ll get it clean over the top, go on, keep trying, keep straining, nearly there and...

Oh. It’s run out. It’s stopped.

I’m running on empty.

I’m running on empty and all the little plants in the garden now need watering.

Bugger.

But I’ve come up with a solution. See, I can’t handle the all or nothing nature of my finances. The long desert and then the brief flowering period. I need to even out the scales. Balance things and thus balance my approach to my expenditure.

And it’s so simple.

I just need to spend all year round so that the madness never builds up and overwhelms me. I need to acclimatize myself to spending money constantly.

Isn’t that just sheer genius?!

I bet you could build entire global economies on such a foolproof ethos.

No, No, No! That Is Not How You Do Sci-fi!

+++ APOLOGIES +++ MINORITY INTEREST NERD POST +++

One of the drawbacks of having a pre-teen boy around the house is the sighing acceptance of having to watch crap sci-fi on TV. Because when you are young and a boy, absolutely any sci-fi is good even when the quality control guys were plainly out of their minds on rohipnol and the ultimate product is complete and utter shite. I know this for a fact because I was once both a boy and young and thought that Hawk The Slayer was well scripted.

As you get older the scales fall from your eyes and you realize that sci-fi is the altar upon which many make offerings and most of them end up burnt. And not in a good way either.

Take Primeval. It should in theory work. It's like Einstein's theory of complete relativity. It's all there. Kind of. Dinosaurs. Big guns. Time travel. Sexy blonde chick. Dopy-but-good-looking nice guy. But somehow it just doesn't work on the quantum level. There's something missing. The atoms don't play ball with each other. The only black hole that has been created is the script writer's arse that the plot continually falls into.

I'm not quite sure what ITV are playing at with Primeval. It got ditched after the last series. Someone plainly thought it needed to be put out of our misery and they put a gun to its prehistoric head and pulled the trigger. Respect. But then some other buffoon decided to resurrect it and Haven holidays decided to sponsor it and suddenly its back on ITV. The show that refuses to die. The show that staggers around a shopping mall crying, "Brains! Brains!" in the pathetic hope that somebody will actually donate one.

It ain't gonna happen.

I have this theory that ITV just don't do good sci-fi. They don't get it. Or rather they get the veneer of it. The patina. Yes, we need monsters. Yes, we need chases. Yes, we need guns and A-Team style violence.

But where the hell is the science? Where is the consistency in the plot? Where is the emotional heart?

Primeval has none of these.

First series, the space-time continuum anomalies that enable random acts of time travel (try saying that without sounding like an absolute cock) merely brought dinosaurs forward to our time. But after that, realizing (I guess) that there are only so many dinosaurs you can pick from the Top Trumps Dinosaurs set before you have to do some, like, real boring proper research in a library and shit, the show's writers decided, oh sod it, let's have our space-time continuum anomalies also open up portals on parallel universes so we can just make any kind of monster appear.

Hence we now have dragons appearing alongside the occasional T-Rex.

Bullshit! Bollocks! Balderdash!

That is just lazy. Damned lazy. Lazy and inconsistent.

And this laziness infects the whole show. The plots are scanty at the best of times but they are now reduced to threads of American-corporate media-speak strung out between a relentless barrage of car chases and dinosaur chases.

Scene 1: the team shout and argue with their boss in the big science base. Scene 2: a dinosaur appears right outside and the team chase it in their cars. Scene 3: the boss shouts at his team via a radio. Scene 4: the team in their cars are chased by the dinosaur. Scene 5: dopy guy messes things up but in a good way and saves the day. Sexy blonde girl pouts but somehow doesn't look sexy. Scene 6: team return to base where the boss shouts at them but in a good way. Scene 7: repeat this entire process until the end credits roll.

Gaaah! (This is the sound a velociraptor makes when it realizes all those years treading the boards at the Sylvia Young Stage School learning Hamlet have been a complete and utter waste of time.)

The characters are flat and have no emotional life outside the "dinosaur world" that has been hastily erected around them. The dinosaurs are just CGI'd lumps of meat that run around bumping into industrial size storage containers. And the science behind the show is as convincing as Barney the Purple Dinosaur trying to convince a judge he isn't a serial kiddie fiddler.

Lord knows that Doctor Who doesn't always hit the mark but at least there is always an emotional arc and a plot arc. It's not all about the monsters and the chases. It's about emotionally real characters being placed in moments of crisis and jeopardy that dare us to dream and wonder about future worlds.

And that, ITV, is how science fiction is supposed to work. Please take note.

You Scumbag, You Maggot, You Cheap Lousy Faggot

I’ll admit I’ve bashed the UK postal service somewhat on this blog over the last couple of weeks or so. I’ve accused them – though in not so many words – of being wussies in the face of a bit of snow and ice.

Then I heard from a colleague that their recent no-show-in-the-snow on Saturday was due to the fact that 3 postmen had managed to break their legs in the icy conditions. I felt, I admit, a small twinge of guilt for my hard heartedness. This colleague went on to say that the rest of the post office work force had then been sent home by their managers and informed they would receive no pay for that day.

Outrageous! The last thing anybody wants is to be a day’s pay down right before Christmas. Surely there was sorting that could be done at the office? Rounds prepped ready for Monday? The PO management are clearly heartless penny-pinching maggots thought I.

And then to top it all, all but one of my missing parcels arrived yesterday. The PO had redeemed itself. I felt a feeling of peace and goodwill pass through me. All’s well that ends well. There had been an unwarranted delay but they’d delivered the goods in the end. We’ll say no more about it. I may even throw a frozen mince pie at our postie next time I see him.

But this morning they can kiss my arse. The mince pie is going back in the box.

I sent my parents a Christmas card through the post. A normal one. Bought from a shop. I posted it over 10 days ago with a first class stamp.

Not only has it only just arrived but the buggers reckoned there was insufficient postage on it. It needed another 10p. My parents had to battle through the snow in Rotherham to collect it. And then had to pay £1.10p to have it put into their possession. The extra £1 was a “handling fee”.

Excuse me?! Am I missing something here, Royal Mail? I paid for a 1st class delivery service that I didn’t get; you – as far as I can see – mishandled my card to the extent where next day delivery was transmuted into next week delivery; the card was possibly handled less than it normally would and merely languished in a warehouse somewhere while you warmed your fingerless mittens over a brazier. And then you charge my parents £1.10 for the privilege of being the recipients of your defective pathetically lax service?

Sod you, Royal Mail! You’re a bunch of money-grabbing overly officious cock-monkeys!

Merry Christmas my arse!