Yes, another photo of a field, I confess, but after an evening of said field, pub, fizz and fire in the garden, I think I’m entitled to share more of the wonders of simply being alive.
TheBoyEllis Blog
Dog bore and part-time piano-fiddling noise maker.
Filed under General …
Little car, big problems.
Having broken down earlier that evening, I was feeling a little sorry for myself, therefore the two giant red signs informing me that only buses were allowed beyond the point ahead seemed a little harsh. Give me a break, I thought. I’ve had a tough night – just this once is the least I can ask for.
So, I headed through, confident the angels of the road were on my side.
They weren’t.
I’d made several catastrophic mistakes. Firstly, I’d picked Northampton’s busiest night spot through which to drive illegally. As usual, revellers were queuing to get into bars, stumbling across the street, arguing, fighting, crying and generally making Saturday night in Northampton what it has always been – horrendous.
I could perhaps have looked past this, but not on that fateful night a couple of weeks ago. No, due to my car breaking down earlier that evening, I’d had no choice but to take my wife’s Smart Car out. I’d also decided to bring my four-legged friend along for the ride. He sat, as he usually does, on the passenger seat, rear legs slumped either side of his belly and resting on his behind, like a gnome. We looked more Dumb and Dumber than Dukes of Hazard.
If I’d been out, drunk, I too would have found the spectacle of a man with his dog as a passenger driving a matchbox-sized car through a bus lane at eleven thirty on a Saturday night hilarious. Certainly, several people momentarily stopped punching each other in the face to watch me drive cautiously up the road.
Worse was to come. Out of nowhere a policeman appeared and motioned for me to wind the window down.
“Why are you driving up here?”
Immediately, I panicked.
“Sorry, I lost the plot back there,” I said. I knew what I meant, but the moment the words stumbled off my lips and fell into an incoherent pile on the floor, I realised it simply made me sound quite possibly drunk.
“What do you mean, you ‘lost the plot’?” asked the officer, quite understandably.
“Er… I just forgot you couldn’t drive up here.” At this point, the dog clambered over onto my lap and edged his nose to the open window, waiting for the most inopportune moment to plant a smacking great lick on Mr Policeman’s lips. That moment never arrived, thankfully.
All sorts of things rush through your mind when you’re getting told off by the police. Unfortunately, your blind determination to prove you are not a blithering, mental criminal means you inevitably come across as one, immediately.
“But you must know you can’t drive up here because you just told me that you can’t.”
He had a point, and an annoyingly good one. I certainly wasn’t in any position (or car) to argue the point.
I said something else, equally as pathetic which, thankfully, he interrupted.
“Turn around and drive back down there. This would normally be a £60 fine and three points. Be warned.”
I didn’t need asking twice, so quickly slammed the Smart Car in reverse (anyone who has one will know how long this can take), did the tiniest three point turn possible, grabbed first gear and very nearly ploughed knee caps first into a drunk man. He stumbled out of the way, thankfully, and I trundled off down the road, tail dangling limply between my tiny little car’s rear arches.
Thank you, angels of the road. Thanks for nothing.
The definitive guide to house buying and selling
Right, now it’s out of the way (and I therefore feel I can safely write about it without jeopardising anything via the medium of fate), here’s how a house sale and purchase works. Remember my earlier blog, which likened it to that of a huge eBay transaction. Pay attention to this and you won’t be on the receiving end of any nasty surprises. I promise. I may see if I can get it on Wikipedia. Or perhaps in the Bible.
1. You put your house on the market. Nothing happens. People visit, offer you £10 and demand to know why it isn’t within acceptable walking distance of the Kremlin. This continues for eons until every person, inanimate object and anything that matters is very dead.
2. You get some interest from investors. These people will want the house for £9 but will insist they’re perfect buyers because they will happily wait until the end of time for you to move out before they ship 30,000 immigrants into what used to be your master bedroom. You politely decline.
3. A first time buyer offers 90% of the lowest price you’ll accept. You say no. They up their offer to 91%. You say no, again. They magically find the remaining 9% but make it clear they had to sell important bits of their children and a goat in order to do so.
4. Your For Sale sign magically changes overnight. SOLD is in big letters, ‘subject to contract’ is in size 2 print beneath. Only, it’s that bit that matters now. No whooping and hollering like you get with Kirsty and Phil. Just a foreboding feeling of having little choice but to stare into the abyss that is THE REST OF THE PROCESS. Everyone you know and love tells you this is ‘the best bit’. You smile politely, knowing full well that having your lips gaffa taped to Mick Hucknall’s testicles for a year would be more enjoyable.
5. You start looking for a new house. You’ll look at twenty, all of which will be horrible and have current owners who either follow you around with hawk eyes or, as we experienced, are ghosts (one lady let us in, walked upstairs and then completely disappeared).
6. Just as you are inserting your head into the noose you’ve hung from your once-treasured SOLD sign, you decide to take one last look at Right Move. You swear a bit about the fact that it is still the worst website ever created, but you also find the house of your dreams. It’s perfect – even in the flesh – and you put an offer in. That’s rejected, so you try again with the only offer you know would ever be accepted, rendering your previous attempt completely pointless (although you settle for the fact it made you feel like Phil Spencer for five minutes). The new offer is accepted.
7. You don’t whoop, holler, punch the air or pop champagne corks; you realise everything that happens on Location, Location, Location is an absolute abomination and in no way reflects the arduous, depressing and stressful process at hand. All you do is begin to panic, mildly, and in stages, with the inevitable thud of each solicitor’s letter that hits your doormat every morning and the interminable and dread-filled toll of your mobile phone ring tone when the estate agent calls.
8. As if you haven’t got enough to worry about with the impending survey, your house begins to sink under the weight of the paper your solicitor and estate agent insist on sending you every five minutes. Royal Mail have to draft in extra staff and several new envelope manufacturing plants are built in North East China. Just for you.
9. Your buyer threatens to pull out unless they can move in three weeks ago and keep your telly. You call their bluff, they pop their willy back in their trousers and get on with crying uncontrollably into their own mound of paperwork.
10. Surveys take place. Non-existent damp is discovered, newly-fitted boilers are definitely broken unless independently inspected, bushes ‘erected without planning permission’ are deemed worthy of demolition and you are informed that you will definitely die of radon gas poisoning at your new home, even though no one can properly explain what the fuck it is.
11. Time stands still. New continents are formed, wars are fought, Apple run out of numbers to put after ‘iPhone’, new constellations appear in the night sky and new lifeforms are born, exist and go extinct.
12. You receive another piece of paper explaining your vendor is taking the toilet roll holder with them.
13. You reach exchange day. For reasons you cannot fathom, people insist on hand delivering their signed contracts and in turn holding everything up at the last minute. You resist the urge to suggest you’ll have your deposit delivered on horse back and divided into pieces of eight.
14. Exchange day lasts for a week as solicitors refuse to return calls, sign paper work and, presumably, give Janet in accounts a seeing to instead.
15. You exchange. Champagne corks are popped. You get drunk. Then, you wake up the next day and realise you’ve got to pack everything you own, including the dog, into as many boxes as you can steal from the back of Morrisons. This isn’t fun. Thoughts turn again to Mick Hucknall.
16. You move in. It’s done. You’re free to whoop and holler. If you know what that means. I don’t.
You’ll find better reviews of 2011
And so the curtains are gradually drawn on the year that was 2011… The economy is still as limp as a wet sock, we all had a good laugh/gasp at the unearthing and demise of criminal journalism, a couple of tyrants finally passed, the Royal Wedding provided a perfect excuse to drink alcohol before 10am, all Apple products suddenly made sense with the introduction of iOS5 and iCloud, someone shot Bin Laden in the face and the Eurozone… well, no one knows what’s going on with that, including the people involved, but it was (and still is) all very terrible indeed.
I spent most of the year either getting married or tidying up my iTunes library. I highly recommend both of these seismically different activities.
Next year, we have another long weekend to look forward to thanks to the Queen and a big school sports day in London which everyone is desperately trying to get excited about. The world is supposed to end at some point, too. 21st December, if you want to put it in your diary.
Me? I’m going to keep it simple and just enjoy being alive. For we are but once on this Earth.
Keyboard warriors aren’t what they used to be
A long time ago I had a yellow Fiat Punto. It was the exact same colour as my hair at the time, as my best man took great delight in explaining to our wedding guests. The car was what your parents would call a ‘souped-up’ edition with a turbo that propelled it forward like the Starship Enterprise and a suspension system which would do its level best to kill you if you dared attempt any type of corner.
As a result of owning the car and knowing no better, I joined the Punto owners club forum and set about arguing with as many people as possible. For no reason at all.
I was young, full of (incorrect) opinions on everything I didn’t know anything about and, crucially, hidden behind my keyboard, like a soldier crouching behind a sandbag. I was safe and could toss literary grenades at anyone who dared disagree with me.
The most memorable of arguments involved car air conditioning. No, really, stick with me. I argued that turning it on did not affect fuel economy, or engine power. I screamed about it in italics until several keys pinged off my keyboard. I’d used it for years, I said, and had never noticed a drop in either my MPG or less oomph when giving my right foot the beans. I was right and everyone else – including car manufacturers and respected motoring journalists – was totally wrong.
Only, I knew I was talking out of my backside. I was arguing for the sake of it. More worryingly, I was also getting deeper and deeper into a topic I knew literally nothing about. To make matters worse, my opponent did know what he was talking about and, to my horror, began detailing exactly how air conditioning works in cars and why it has adverse effects.
I can’t remember how it ended, but it probably involved lots of expletives and meaningless acronyms followed by a swift closure of Internet Explorer. That’s all I had. I was out of grenades.
It’s been a long time since I got involved in anything similar, but I spotted the following retweet from Chris Moyles earlier today:
RT“
@BrightNomad: lots of decent new music; just doesn’t get played by subhuman scum like@CHRISDJMOYLES” Merry Christmas to you too
I decided to check this BrightNomad chap out. I spotted he’d tweeted over 38,000 times which is pretty heroic in the world of social media. And when I say ‘heroic’ I actually mean catastrophically depressing. Bearing in mind Twitter only started in 2006, if we hypothetically suggest BrightNomad joined back then, he has tweeted, on average, twenty times a day, every day, for five years. That’s a lot of tweets, even for people with not very many friends at all.
His timeline was full of replies to people who had presumably tweeted him after seeing Moyles’ retweet. So, I thought I’d do the same and kindly point out what a terrible waste he was making of the wonderful tool that is Twitter.
What follows is a transcript of our conversation:
Mark Ellis: I suggest you read your timeline, although I’ll warn you – it makes pretty pathetic reading. Is this what social media is for?
Martin: I suggest you fuck off. Try it.
Mark Ellis: brilliant. How old are you, 12? And… Try what? Come on, you can do better with that keyboard. Hit me.
Martin: you have trouble fucking off then? Hardly surprising #MoylesScum really don’t know when to fuck off.
Mark Ellis: I’m just not sure where to go. I’m sat at my desk at work. If I leave, I’ll get sacked. ‘MoylesScum’? Please explain. And before you think I’m being a smart arse, I’m genuinely intrigued. A quick scan of your blog shows you’re a literate chap.
Martin: OK I apologise. You’re clearly not #MoylesScum that was a determined polite question & respect that.
I’ll be honest, I expected a bit more from him. Had this been on the Punto forum we’d be arguing into the early hours. Not so. Perhaps Martin and myself are of a similar age and therefore beyond that type of behaviour, but as far as keyboard duels go, the above is pretty pathetic.
I hereby withdraw my sword. I will not fight another battle.
The mother of all eBay transactions
A long time ago, I attempted to sell my better half’s beloved Fiesta on eBay. It was a sorry old thing – perfectly serviceable but a little tired. The stereo was gaffa-taped to the floor, rust was creeping in and its tappets were just about the happiest bunch of mechanical mysteries on the planet.
It did work, though, and was perfectly safe, which is why I was rather disappointed with the winning bidder’s reaction on viewing his new purchase.
“That’s been crashed,” he said, peering at the back of the car.
There was a little dent on the rear bumper, yes. Where it originated from I could only guess. A supermarket trolley, perhaps. It certainly wasn’t the result of crashing at speed, backwards, into a tree.
“It’s just a dent,” I replied before pointing out that this really didn’t matter – he’d won the auction, therefore the car was now his.
“We can’t take this. It’s a death trap.”
The guy, in his fifties, trudged round the Fiesta he’d won – if memory serves me correctly – for about £300. His son, who was the intended new owner was a bit more forgiving about the understandably scruffy appearance of a fifteen-year-old car.
“Come on, dad, it’s not that bad.”
“No, it’s been crashed, several times, I reckon. This guy’s having us on. Aren’t you?” He looked at me.
I simply reiterated the fact that it was now his, therefore any opinion he had on the car did not matter a jot. To reassure him, I pointed out that I wouldn’t have let my girlfriend drive around in it for a year if her perpetual habit of crashing into trees would have rendered it a death trap.
After some expletives, he bundled his son back into their car and sped off. Eventually, we had to give the car to a neighbour who insisted he could ‘make it disappear’ for £50.
Like nearly all eBay transactions, it was pointlessly expensive, needlesly complicated and, ultimately, an utter waste of time. I thought this kind of thing was limited only to eBay. However, imagine my surprise when, some ten years later, I find myself selling our house and purchasing another one only to find that the entire experience is exactly like that of an eBay transaction. A massive, stupid eBay transaction involving literally hundreds of thousands of pounds.
I’m not going to say any more at this stage, as I would rather not tempt fate. Think of this blog as a cliffhanger. A rubbish, boring cliffhanger, yes, but what I will eventually report on here will hopefully assist fellow naive house buyers and sellers. Stay tuned. Or don’t. I’m not really that fussed.
Gay me up, Scotty
I fancied a cup of tea the other day. So, without further ado, and taking fully into account that I was a recently married man and therefore allowed to request such things from my better half, asked for one.
The method with which I did so was more Star Trek than Jim Royale. Rather than scratching my arse, leaning back in the chair and barking my orders, I picked up my new iPhone 4S and asked it to send my wife a text message. Hey, this is 2011, I thought. Using new technology to ask my wife to do something I could quite easily do myself makes it far less chauvinistic and almost acceptable. Classy, even. I was quite pleased with my decision to do so, I’m not going to beat around the bush. Perhaps I would single-handedly change social politics forever. It felt like a big moment. Game changing.
What was neither classy nor acceptable, however, was the resulting text message Lindsey received which read, ‘Can I have another pussy please?’.
Quite how it substituted the homely sound of ‘tea’ for the rather more guttural ‘pussy’ I have no idea. Needless to say, she wasn’t particularly impressed.
Realising I needed to salvage the situation and try to avoid an instant annulment, I decided to tell my wife how much I loved her. That would sort it out. And, again, I wouldn’t need spoken words. Technology was my new friend and my harnessing of both it and the art of love would render me the type of husband all blokes aspire to be. I’d probably end up on Wikipedia, or something.
Once again, I turned to my phone and gently asked it to send my loved one a brief but ever-lasting sentence which confirmed she meant the world to me.
I shouldn’t have.
‘I love your ex,’ read the resulting text.
In approximately 5 minutes I’d managed to paint myself as a chauvinistic, sex-demanding homosexual. And all thanks to my new phone.
Siri is the real culprit here. It is a voice recognition system like no other, if you believe the Apple hype. Rather than issue pre-defined, scripted orders, you can have conversations with it. ‘It knows what you mean,’ boasts their website.
Clearly, it doesn’t always know what you mean. Yes, it’ll tell me what the weather isn’t going to do tomorrow (I’ve never once read an iPhone weather report that can reliably predict the future), allow me to set timers and inform me of what meetings I have next Wednesday. But when it comes to text messaging, it just does not have a clue what I’m talking about. More worryingly, it appears to be constantly questioning my sexuality.
Take the other night, when I wanted to let Lindsey know I was running late on the way home from work. I asked it to tell her that very fact but, instead, it responded with, ‘Mark, do you want me to confirm that Steven White is your wife?’. Much sweaty-fingered fumbling and bashing of the ‘cancel’ button ensued. As I was driving at the time, this somewhat diminished the most obvious (only?) advantage of Siri – allowing you to send text messages whilst maintaining control of a motor vehicle. Instead, I almost confirmed I was married to a man I only know through weekly 5-a-side football and very nearly crashed legs-first into an elderly passer by. I never thought I’d do either of those things and certainly not at the same time.
In all fairness, Siri is clearly labeled as ‘beta’, which essentially means it isn’t ready for public consumption. This is unusual of Apple but shows how excited they are by the new feature which is, joking apart, pretty impressive. That said, it does seem that it’s early appearance is perhaps more intended to impress with it’s potential and, more often than not, amuse with it’s rather poor grasp of it’s master’s dialect.
Thankfully, I’m not alone in my Siri scrapes. At 11:30pm the other night, Lindsey attempted to push the capabilities of the software as far as I’d imagine they’re willing to go by asking, ‘What is on this season’s catwalk?’ I immediately chortled, suggesting it wouldn’t have a clue. My amusement was short lived, though – and not because it dutifully gave a Gok Wan-like run down of the colours and shapes we should all aspire to be wearing – no, because, in response, it proceeded to call someone else I occasionally play football with.
The most vivid dream
If you’re getting married in the near future, one piece of advice will be offered regularly by those who have already said their vows: ‘Sit back and take it in – it will go by in an instant.’
And it is great advice, because it does. Only, it’s advice which is almost impossible to follow, as the frequency with which you’re offered it goes some way to proving. I got married to my lovely lady of ten years, Lindsey, last week and it already seems like an age ago. The entire day was like an incredibly rich, vivid dream. Even looking at the pictures now feels like we’re peering in on an event we weren’t part of.
People you know are at every turn, smiling, shaking your hand, kissing your cheek, wishing you well and taking photos. Professional photographers follow you down the street ‘papping’ you as you make your way to church. Your friends and family throw small bits of multicoloured paper at you which end up in your mouth, lodged in your ears and down the front of your trousers. Beautiful, old cars await your arrival, champagne on ice. Red carpets guide you into a building where everyone continues to congratulate you and erupt with applause as you enter the room and head to your table for something to eat. And, to cap it all off, your best mate unearths all manner of embarrassing stories from the past and uses props for maximum impact.
It is, in a word, overwhelming.
Satisfyingly, things went a bit wrong, too. In the church, Lindsey momentarily forgot which hand was her left – twice – and the vicar dropped my ring… twice (and no, that is not a euphemism – something you have to squeeze in whenever the word ‘ring’ is used). At the reception, the photographer ushered us all out to what looked like a beautiful flat piece of grass only for us to find that it had an 80% incline, thus proving particularly treacherous for the older guests and what technically amounted to a request for death-defying stunt work for the ladies in high heels.
My speech was interrupted by one of our pageboys farting just as I mentioned his mum’s name and my big moment in the spotlight also suffered a dramatic loss of structure when we discovered the presents for everyone had seemingly been hidden in random locations throughout the room by the hotel staff.
Our toastmaster also disappeared. That’s understandable – he was a busy man, but choosing the moment after I requested we cut the cake to perform his Houdini act was slightly inconvenient.
My dad, who kindly agreed to make an appearance as Elton John, quite rightly made an enormous song and dance (literally) about my new wife playing the part of Kiki Dee and joining him for Don’t Go Breaking My Heart. Unfortunately, in all the excitement, he forgot to introduce me on piano. I’m not at all complaining as I wasn’t particularly keen on drawing attention to myself, but this did mean I had to sidle onto the stage and sit down at the keys looking a bit like an unwanted, forgotten band member. This must have been particularly surprising for those who didn’t know I played and I wouldn’t blame them for thinking I was either lost, preparing for an ill-judged joke or monumentally drunk (or possibly all three).
But you know what? I wouldn’t change any of it for the world. I just wish someone could have hit the pause button halfway through.
Wedding week diary – Wednesday: Lonely coffee
There’s an art to the way in which you conduct yourself while alone in public places that are typically reserved for mutual enjoyment. This is of particular importance in pubs and an art in which my dad excels. He’s been visiting pubs on his own for as long as I can remember and I’m sure many years before that. This isn’t because he hasn’t got any friends or because he takes any chance he can to get away from the house, but simply because my father is perfectly comfortable sitting there on his own, enjoying a pint of beer or glass of wine.
I’m a novice. However, travelling the country alone has certainly warmed me to the idea that having just yourself for company is, actually, alright. I’ve had some pretty stimulating conversations with me. I’ve even argued to the point where I need one of ‘us’ to leave the room before it gets ugly.
Today, halfway through a dog walk, I fancied a coffee. So, I entered the nearest pub I could find and approached the bar.
You have to give off an air of confidence in order to achieve maximum lonesome nirvana. Not over-confidence, as that simply renders you a tit. No, just an indication to those around you that you may be alone but you’re perfectly happy with the fact and do not require their sympathy. This often means striking up meaningless conversations, off the cuff. I’m not great at this, I’ll admit, which is probably why I asked the barman: ‘What coffees do you have, mate?’
This took him a little by surprise, as my windswept, shaven-headed appearance should only ever result in a request for ‘man drinks’ like real ale. Suggesting that all I was interested in was Americanised, needlessly complicated varieties of coffee was dangerous.
He duly listed all the coffees they could whip up and I plumped for a cappuccino.
I then browsed the paper rack. ‘They’re all Sunday’s papers, mate,’ said my new barman friend (I figured we were close enough now to refer to him as so – we’d been through so much together).
‘No problem,’ I said, picking up a dog-eared copy of the Mail on Sunday. And it wasn’t a problem. I was going to read three-day old news simply because I could. That’s what us loners do. We drop our pants and fart in the face of conformity.
I got bored of the paper very quickly and ended up playing Cut The Rope on my iPhone instead. That, too, lost its appeal, so I took a photo of my coffee. I’m not sure why I did that and, unfortunately, my new mate caught me doing so. To his credit, he pretended he hadn’t witnessed it and got on with his duties.
Realising I was in over my head, I decided to leave. Another thing my dad is good at is saying goodbye to bar staff in every pub he visits. Unfortunately, my misjudged beverage paparazzi episode seemed to have forced my ex barman friend to get as far away from me as possible. The pub was suddenly empty. There was no one to say goodbye to, so I trundled out. Alone.
I don’t need your sympathy, though. It was fine. Really.
Anyone fancy a pint?
Wedding week diary – Monday: Hot sandwiches and scary cows
Cows: scary.
Today, I bought a sandwich toaster, a torch, about four hundred AA batteries and very nearly got into a fight with a cow.
And so begins a week with a somewhat surreal air to it – my last week as an unmarried man.
The sandwich toaster and torch bits were easy. I’ve lost count of how many of the former I’ve bought in my life but the number is dangerously close to rendering them a disposable item. The batteries were unplanned, but, then, they always are. It doesn’t matter that I’ll take fourteen years to use the mountain I ended up carting back to the car. No, there’s just something comforting about stocking up on the little cylindrical bundles of energy, even if you have absolutely no use for them at all.
There’s nothing comforting, however, about being eyeballed by twenty-seven cows while in a field with only your dog for company. And that’s exactly what happened to me this evening.
I don’t care how soft this sounds – cows are scary. Sure, they look cute and harmless chewing grass as you admire them from the safety of your driving seat, but as soon as you get within fifty yards of them – on foot – they stop, raise their heads and just stare at you. All of them. I think there was even one playing the piano who also stopped, put down his scotch and swung his head in my direction.
At first, you think they’re perhaps just a bit stupid and therefore struggling to make out what the two-legged creature approaching them is. Then you realise they’re not stupid at all. Like the velociraptors in Jurassic Park, they’re weighing you up. They’re working together, sussing you out. The bull, in particular, who was about the size of a small village, followed my every move as I clumsily and pathetically stumbled around the field, searching for an alternate exit (they had surrounded the only gate offering escape).
All in all, it took me about twenty minutes to pluck up the courage to scurry past them, practically hugging the fence (until I spotted it was electrified). My dog, who had frozen with fear moments earlier, was tucked under my arm, head bobbing as I speed-minced my way to the gate.
The cows shrugged and got back to what they were doing. The unexpected entrance of a bearded Paris Hilton had clearly lost it’s appeal.
I’m not sure what happens after you get married, but I’m pretty sure that, as the husband, I’ll need to man up a bit.
