The Young’uns Podcast 108 (Super Waffle):The season of peace and good will is well and truly over; this episode of the Young’uns Podcast features street brawls, battering rams, police arrests and dead cow exploitation. Other themes include Martians, wombles, singing vans and jungle adventures. Ruth Notman tells a “joke”, a Dutch folk group steal all of the Young’uns songs, we attempt to get down with the youth (or yoof, depending on your school of thought). Plus there’s more recordings of the Young’uns performing over the summer festival season, including a couple of weary drunken late night gigs. Click here to download.the current podcast channel will be being replaced in the next month or two because the people who design the website have seemingly decided they don’t want blind people using it and have therefore made it massively inaccessible. So I’m afraid you’ll have to do things the old-fashioned way. I know it’s a laborious, arduous task having to manually click a download link, I’m sorry. There is also currently no link to stream the podcast or archived download link because that website has also decided they don’t like blind people. What did we poor blind folk do to upset the Internet?I’ll be back soon with a blog about chickens.

I woke up this morning (feel free to insert your own blues rif at this point) and decided that today was going to be a productive one. I needed to record a Voice Over and I had decided that today was the perfect day to do it. I was in the bathroom washing my face and brushing my teeth (two activities which dramatically improve the quality of a Voice Over. You can always tell when a Voice Over has been recorded by a man who hasn’t first washed his face and brushed his teeth. That bloke who does the voice on XFactor and Come Dine with Me: he obviously hasn’t washed and brushed before hand; you can just tell. They should sack him and employ me instead; I am evidently a more hygienic Voice Over artist and would set a much better example to the kids). Anyway, I am still in the bathroom washing my face and brushing my teeth.

Don’t worry, you haven’t missed any action while you were reading that aside. I am wondering about how to deliver the third “and” in the second sentence: should it be strong and forceful? cheeky and playful? exuberant? or deep and resonant? My musings are disturbed by a loud bang and a yell. I turn off the tap and listen, but I hear nothing and so I turn the tap back on and once more consider that fundamental question: how should I say that “and?” I decide to go for strong and forceful. Then I hear another bang and another yell that also just so happens to be both strong and forceful; surely a sign from the Voice Over gods that I have made the correct decision. Again I turn off the tap to listen, but again there is quiet. The sound seems to be coming from one of the attached flats. I have moved to Gateshead incidentally as of October so that I do not have to do four hours of bus travel everyday. I live near some rather interesting people, as you shall soon discover. I walk to the kitchen to get some water and practise that all important “and”. “and, and! aaand! aaaaaaaand! annnnnd!” My musing is again interrupted by a couple more bangs. There is something strange going on next door, but then again, the neighbours at the other side of me are probably thinking the same about their neighbour who is repeating a single conjunction at various volumes and pitches. I listen a bit longer but quiet has returned once more. I decide to say the word “and” like “aaaaaaaand!” with both forcefulness and strength; a wise decision I’m sure you’ll agree. I position myself at the microphone and start recording. As the first syllable passes my lips there is an all mighty bang, and then I hear a woman shout something like “Don’t you dare hit me!” Damn those neighbours, damn that stupid woman and her protestations towards being assaulted. she has just ruined my first syllable, and it was a bloody amazing first syllable too; perfectly executed. “I’ll call the police” the woman continues. The door to their flat flew open and the voices spilt out on to the street. I gallantly tried to continue recording the Voice Over but the argument was far too loud to be disguised by my voice. So instead I politely waited for them to finish their contretemps.

so, the computer kept recording and I maintained my position at the microphone waiting for the dispute to cease. But it didn’t, the argument got louder and more people joined in. The window was closed, but the argument was still very audible and the microphone was having no difficulty in picking everything up. Well, they had completely ruined my voice over, but perhaps there was something useful to be salvaged from this event. I edged the microphone closer to the window and decided to postpone my voice over attempts in place of some unexpected Saturday morning street entertainment. I could elaborate more about the argument but what’s the point when I’ve got the actual recording to offer. You can download it as an MP3. Half way through the recording I managed to set up the digital recorder and so you get the rest of the argument (including when the police turned up) in stereo, which is, let’s face it, how all street-based arguments should be enjoyed.

Warning: this audio clip does contain a lot of swearing, as does the rest of this blog post.) (The whole argument is ridiculous. It has seemingly resulted in a woman being hit, which is of course a very serious issue. But I lose all sympathy for either character when it becomes clear how the argument started and the infantile way that both of them deal with things. we discover as we listen that the couple have been together for eight years, but that this particular incident has apparently been the catalyst for the relationship’s demise. It transpires that the whole sorry affair started because the woman wouldn’t get out of bed and help the man clean up the dog shit. This, and subsequent events that morning, led to him hitting her which she understandably seemed pretty upset about. however the seriousness of the situation is somehow distilled by her infantile comments about her man, such as: “you look like Stig of the Dump; you need to get some new clothes, you tramp”, although the actual quotes are enhanced by a few additional swear words. When the woman chastises the man for hitting her, he offers the following, seemingly as some kind of vindication for his actions: “well, you need to shave your fuckin fanny”.

Also listen out for another of my favourite lines from the very same gentlemen which goes something like : “you know that 3 grand I owe ya? Well you’ll get it all back, every single penny, I’ll pay it all off. And you know why I will?” This question is followed by a dramatic pause while he considers his next statement, and then he adds, “because, I fuckin will!” Also, who is “Shitty Pants Shaun” who apparently the woman’s dad is scared of? And there are so many other quotes that come direct from the school playground: comments along the lines of “my dad’s bigger than your dad”. All these classic lines and more can grace your ear drums if you download the following MP3 file. Click here to download. Ha! That’ll teach them for ruining my voice over! The world may never get to hear that “and”, which is a big shame because it was amazing: it was forceful and it was strong. But hey ho. Finally, what I find ridiculous about this whole recording is how this tiny transient moment has been preserved in stereo, has been equalised and compressed, has had hiss reduction applied and has been edited so that the silences have been removed. I’ve spent more time and effort in postproduction for this than I ever do for a Young’uns podcast. O, incidentally, the next Young’uns podcast will be out by the end of the month providing I haven’t been beaten up by stig of the dump and a woman with unruly genitalia. God forbid Shitty Pants Sean gets involved; he’s pretty scary apparently. Wish me luck.

I’ve written before about the people who sit on the back of busses playing music loudly on their mobile phones. I wonder what thought process these people have which makes them think that it is acceptable and normal behaviour to play their music to everyone on the bus. Do they believe that they are doing us a favour: that their musical taste is
somehow superior to ours and that by playing their music they are educating and enlightening us? But since the music played by this type of person seems to generally be generic pop music, I don’t think that they consider any such noble cause. It is more likely that these people don’t even think about the rest of us and are doing it simply because they are ignorant. It is ignorance isn’t it? I’m not getting old surely? Perhaps I’m spending too much time hanging around old incontinent people with Senile dementia. But surely not. I mean, is it even possible to spend too much time with old incontinent people with senile dementia?
Surely that’s a paradox.

There is a line that people tend to wheel out whenever someone is doing something annoying and socially agitating like this. A passenger sitting a few seats away from me is talking to the person next to her about the ignorant man playing his music, and has just come out with this line. “what if we all did that?”

This is actually quite a fun theme to explore if you’ve nothing better to do, and since you’re reading this blog then chances are that you haven’t got anything better to do. So what are we waiting for? Let’s explore this theme!

The passenger who is complaining about the man with the phone has a bottle of nail varnish open which she is applying to her nails. Presumably she thinks her behaviour is harmless, but what if everyone on the bus did that? Well, we’d all be high I suppose and perhaps we’d have a big party and our friend at the back of the bus with the musical phone would no longer be an annoyance but instead would be the party’s DJ. So perhaps it would be a good thing if we all had a bottle of nail varnish open as we travel on the bus. Plus, we’d all have great nails. But on the other hand (a figurative hand, but one which also happens to sport great nails) perhaps it would not be such a good thing because we might all throw up as a result of the fumes of the nail varnish.

So next time something annoys you and you jump straight for that cliché line, “what if we all did “?that” perhaps consider the possible positive consequences that could occur if indeed we all did decide to do that thing, and maybe you’ll actually realise that it might not be such a bad thing after all. Or, consider what activity you might be engaged in, and what possible ramifications might exist if everyone else emulated your actions. (This really is classic Thought for the Day material. Come on radio 4, what are you playing at? Commission me!)

So, what if everyone on the bus decided to play their music to the rest of the bus? Maybe this could be a new social experiment for me to conduct. I could sit one row forward from the person with the music and whisper to the person next to me to start playing music loudly on their phone, but firstly to pass the message on to the row in front. This message could then be disseminated in whispers to everyone on the bus and in time the whole bus would be filled with conflicting loud music. How would the original person playing music on his phone react? Perhaps by doing this we will make the person at the back of the bus think about what he is doing and this defiant collective act from all the passengers might mean he never does it again. Or perhaps we will all enjoy the experience so much that we’ll all go on busses in the future, play our music really loudly and try and coerce other passengers to join in.

The other thing I could perhaps do is sit at the back of the bus, wait for the song on the person’s phone to finish playing and then turn to the person playing the music and say, “well thank you for showing me that song; it has really challenged all my preconceptions of generic pop music. How about I return the favour and play you a song now? This is a lovely up-tempo number, I really hope you like it. It’s the perfect track to play loudly on a mobile phone above the roar of a bus engine in front of loads of stressed commuters on their way home from work”, and then play the person a song. What if we all decided to do that: to diligently listen to each other’s musical offering and then offer a musical suggestion of our own? Well, we would be sharing and learning from each other. Surely this would be the truest form of community radio. Wouldn’t that be a lovely bonding moment? So perhaps it wouldn’t be so bad after all.

Perhaps I will try these two social experiments and video them for this blog, but feel free to attempt it yourself first and let me know how you got on and if you’ve still got all your teeth.

My friend works at an ,old people’s home. She is responsible for organising activities for the residents. I was chatting to her at the start of December and she was musing about what activities she could do over the Christmas period. Later in the conversation, she was telling me about some of her residents who had senile dementia. “Some of them pretend to be different characters” she told me. “there’s one who thinks she’s a princess, and another one keeps going on about how he’s going to get out of this place one day and travel to London to make his fortune.”

“Sounds like you should do a pantomime with them” I responded. “You’ve already got a princess and a Dick Whittington. You don’t happen to have anyone who believes they’re an Arabian prince, or a wicked witch, or a man who likes to dress up as a woman do you? Old people shrink, so you’d probably have enough people to play dwarves if you decided to do Snow White”. I laughed loud and hard at my hilarious quip. Sadly she didn’t join in with the laughing. I can’t think why because what I said was evidently hilarious and I’m sure you’re all engulfed by hysterical laughter right now.
take a few deep breaths and then join
me in the next paragraph.

Rather than laughing hysterically, like any normal person would, she replied by enthusiastically declaring, “what a great idea. I’ll do a pantomime with them! We’ll invite their children, their sons and daughters and family along to watch them!”.

“But some of them can’t even remember their own names” I reasoned. “Half of them need to be ferried to the toilet every ten minutes. You can’t have sleeping beauty getting out of bed every ten minutes to go to the toilet. It wouldn’t be very believable would it? unless you modified the script so that the wicked witch’s curse had an unusual caveat whereby sleeping Beauty would be allowed to periodically wake from her hundred year long deep sleep to go to the bathroom. But that would probably inhibit the dramatic tension somewhat”

“Ah yes, good point” she said. “So it would have to be something other than sleeping beauty then”. I don’t think she quite got my point. Surely a Christmas pantomime starring a cast of incontinent people with Senile Dementia would be a total disaster. It wouldn’t work at all. It would be chaos. But it would be hilarious. I know it’s not really the done thing to laugh at incontinent people with Senile Dementia, but come on, it’s Christmas.

“Yes, it’s a great idea” I said.

“You think?” she asked.

“Yes, you should definitely get a load of incontinent old people with senile dementia to act in a pantomime. It would be such a laugh. For them, I mean. Not for me. For them. They’ll have such a laugh”.

“Yes, they would” she responded cheerily.

“In fact, I could come along on the day to offer support if you like? I could be one of the audience members. Some of them won’t have sons or daughters to watch them. I could fill out the audience a bit, be a surrogate family member.”

“Oh, that’s really sweet of you” she replied. I can’t believe she fell for that.

So I had managed to wangle my way into an old people’s home to watch a load of old incontinent people with Senile Dementia acting in a pantomime. What a great way to start Christmas.

A week or so later I got a call from my friend. She was worrying that the pantomime idea might not have been as good as she had first thought. The old people kept forgetting their lines, reading each other’s lines and falling asleep during important scenes. “Maybe I should forget the idea” she said.

What? This couldn’t happen. Of course it was a crazy idea, of course it wasn’t going to work. But that’s the point. It would be hilarious. She couldn’t quit now, I’d been looking forward to the old incontinent people with Senile Dementia all week. She can’t go and ruin Christmas for me. I must reason with her.
“don’t be silly, it’ll be fine” I said. “you’ve still got another week to rehearse, plus, it’s not like the audience are coming to
see an award winning performance; its just something nice for their families”.

“Yes, you’re right” she replied. “Thank you, you’re so sweet”. Ha, fooled her again.

When I left University I was doing occasional Freelance radio work but it wasn’t really getting me much money, so I played music and sang in a few old people’s homes which paid me even less money. I know I have made light of Senile Dementia and age related illness in this blog post, but I of course understand that this is a very serious, debilitating condition that is very sad to witness. I witnessed it in many people during my time performing in the homes; and that was just the staff, hahaha. Some people would act like different characters every single week and they would tell me completely made-up stories about their lives. They would tell me about things that they had done in the outside world earlier that day even though in reality they hadn’t left the home. I got very friendly with a lovely old lady (not like that you perverted animals. She wasn’t my type of lovely old lady). We used to chat every week. I used to look forward to our conversations. In spite of her mental condition, it was evident that in her prime she would have been a very intelligent and independent woman. She was very kind and was very interested in hearing about my life. But one week she took a complete disliking to me for seemingly no apparent reason. Perhaps she was upset that she wasn’t my type of lovely old lady. The fact was that I had done nothing to warrant her disliking me. The week before she’d told me I was a lovely young man (probably the exact type of lovely young man she liked. Awkward) and gave me a kiss on the cheek. The next week I went over to say hi and have a chat, and she told me to piss off and slapped me in the face. Actually I did find the slap rather arousing so perhaps she just knew what she needed to do to get me interested. I came back to the home the next week, and she was back to her usual sweet self again. She seemed to have remembered nothing of last week’s outburst, and so I said nothing of it and we chatted about the war over a cup of tea.

It is of course very sad to think that these people were once children, teenagers and young adults, falling in and out of love, going to work, raising children and grand children and living independent lives; and now they are dependant on carers and often can’t remember their own identity and family.
But despite my sadness about all that, I had some really fun experiences and there were some really funny moments. One week I had been informed by a member of staff that there was to be a test of the
fire alarm system. This wouldn’t necessitate a need for any of the residents to leave the building and I was told to just keep playing. During a rendition of We’ll Meet Again the alarm went off. I continued playing and singing as instructed. One woman started to shout “it’s the Germans. The Germans are bombing!” and dived for cover under a table. A few of the other residents joined her. A man started to do an impression of an air raid siren. accompanying the sound of the fire alarm. A few more people shouted and scrambled for cover. I stopped playing, a bit concerned. “Keep playing” shouted one of the women, “keep singing, it takes our minds off the bombing”. There didn’t seem to be any staff around to offer assistance in this matter and I knew it was fruitless trying to explain that it wasn’t the war, so I started to play and sing again and everyone joined in from under the table. I tell you, that was true wartime spirit.
Eventually the alarm stopped, as did the man making the air raid siren noises, and everyone got up from under the table and sat back down, breathing sighs of relief.

“Can you play the Lambeth Walk love?” asked one of the women, and normality was resumed.

So, now that I’ve hopefully assured you that I’m not a complete bastard who is totally insensitive about people with senile dementia, perhaps I can get back to the task at hand, which is taking the piss out of old people with senile dementia. Excellent.

I am glad to report that the incontinent old people with senile dementia did not disappoint. It was brilliant. They forgot their lines, got into arguments with each other, got very confused, and the play was split into about 20 parts due to the actors’ bladder issues.

The pantomime was Cinderella. All the cast comprised the residents of the home apart from the prince who was played by the home’s cook.

It was odd from the very start. It commenced with some opening music which was a version of Rihanna’s umbrella, only the word “umbrella” was replaced with the word “Cinderella”. This is actually a commercially available version of the song that Rihana has released; it wasn’t a specially commissioned piece just for this pantomime. “I can be your Cinderella, ella, ella, ay, ay, ay” sang Rihana and all the old folks joined in
too. Unfortunately the music faded out before the chorus ended which is a shame because I was hoping one of the old men would have joined in with Jay-Z’s rap. I was looking forward to some
geriatric hip-hop (or geriatric hop as it is actually called because the hip has been replaced, hahaha). Anyway, the music faded, and then there was quiet. Followed by some more quiet. Cinderella had obviously found the Rihanna song to be particularly soporific because she’d fallen asleep. There were a few murmurs from the staff and residents as they realised the situation, and then one of the ladies, playing an ugly sister, nudged Cinderella awake.

“Wake up you silly cow” cried the ugly sister, which apparently wasn’t part of the script. “Wake up and do the house work” she shouted. A pretty good adlib I thought. Cinderella woke from her slumber – perhaps sleeping beauty would have been a better choice after all – and declared that she needed the toilet. The ugly sister continued to improvise brilliantly, remonstrated with Cinderella, but Cinderella was insistent that she was escorted to the toilet, leaving the audience with an unexpected cliff-hanger only one minute into the proceedings.

There was some quiet, awkward murmurs of conversation from the audience and then after a few minutes Cinderella returned.

“where’ve you been” shrieked the ugly sister at Cinderella.
“I’ve been to the toilet” replied Cinderella.

“Well get on with the house work” demanded the ugly sister. The ugly sister was doing an excellent job of keeping the story going, but Cinderella was not playing ball (haha, I’m so funny, you see what I did? Ball). She had seemingly forgotten that she was in fact playing a role in a pantomime.

“I’m not the cleaner” she snapped back at the ugly sister, “that’s Jody’s job”. She pointed at Jody, the home’s cleaner, who was suddenly and unexpectedly brought into the performance.

The ugly sister gallantly continued while a member of staff helpfully handed Cinderella her script and pointed to her next line.

“No” retorted the ugly sister, “you are the cleaner, and you will have this house cleaned from top to bottom”, there was a pause, and then she added, “by the time I come back from the toilet”.

And so the second interlude commenced and the audience resumed their conversations while the ugly sister was escorted by a member of staff to the bathroom.

The pantomime recommenced and for a time it went fairly smoothly. But then, in part 13, things took an unexpected turn. Cinderella seemed to be having a wale of a time at the Ball. She was dancing with the Prince, holding him very close and wearing a very broad smile. She was really starting to get into the play; a little too much as it turned out. The prince declared his love for Cinderella and asked her to kiss him. Cinderella didn’t need asking twice. She flung her arms around the prince and began to give him a very passionate snog. At first the audience laughed, assuming that it was all planned to happen like this, but the Prince’s horrified expression soon alerted them to the fact that it was very much a moment of enthusiastic improvisation on the part of Cinderella.

“It was meant to just be a peck on the cheek” my friend told me later. but this was much more than just a peck on the cheek. The prince was certainly getting more than he’d bargained for. The other old women were starting to get more and more excited by the unfolding scene and they encouraged Cinderella ever onwards. Even the ugly sisters forgot their loathing of their stepsister and joined in the chants of support. The prince could do nothing. He could hardly use force against a frail old woman, and so he had no choice but to grin and bare it. She eventually broke off. The prince took a few hasty steps back just in case she had plans to resume the kiss.
But Cinderella had moved on from the kiss and had her mind set on other important matters. “I need the toilet” she declared and was once again escorted to the bathroom while the Prince raided the mulled wine.

My friend was a bit concerned that Cinderella may want to take things from where they’d left off once she returned from the toilet, and so she hastily made an alteration to the scene. She announced to the audience that Cinderella had made a dash to the toilet on the stroke of midnight and was unable to return to the ball as the magic spell would have worn off. She instructed the actors to start the performance from the slipper scene.

The prince did his monologue about how much he loved the lady at the ball and how he wished he knew who she was so that he could kiss her lips again and be with her forever. There were a few titters from the old women
who were evidently up for some more action between Cinderella and the prince. The prince then produced the slipper from his pocket. Cinderella rose to her feet and indignantly declared
“That’s my slipper!” somewhat ruining the dramatic tension created by the prince’s monologue which intimated that if only he could discover the owner of the slipper then he would know the identity of his true love. The prince pretended not to hear Cinderella’s comment, but Cinderella would not be ignored. “That’s my slipper” she shouted. “I want it, my foot is getting cold!” A member of staff went to Cinderella and tried to explain that she would have her slipper back shortly but that she would have to wait a bit until the moment of the pantomime came where she could try on the slipper, then the prince would fall in love with her and she could marry him. This seemed to placate Cinderella, who I think was tempered by the notion that she might get to snog the prince again.

Eventually, once the ugly sisters had tried to force their feet into the slipper to no avail, Cinderella was reunited with her item of footwear and the prince, very hesitantly and nervously announced that he and Cinderella were to be wed. The audience applauded. But there was to be no wedding ceremony. My friend decided that we’d all had enough fun for one Christmas pantomime, and chose to skip the wedding scene entirely in fear of a repeat of earlier events. Rihanna sang out the pantomime, the audience stood and applauded the actors and the cast sang the “ella ella ays” and all of them looked very pleased with themselves, apart from Cinderella who looked a bit crestfallen.

“That was a disaster” my friend said afterwards as she downed another glass of wine.

“Oh no it wasn’t” I said, and I laughed loud and hard because I’d just done a hilarious pantomime pun. I can’t think why no one else seems to have come up with that joke before. “everyone loved it” I replied “and had a great time”, which was true. Everyone had loved it. We’d all enjoyed the whole weird
episode. Despite the fact that the surrealism was because of the effects of age related illness, no one in the audience seemed sad. The residents’ family members were able to laugh and enjoy the whole crazy experience. All the actors had had a great time. The only person who hadn’t enjoyed himself was the poor Prince, who incidentally is no longer working at the home. Coincidence?

Before we go any further – which if you’re going to read this and I’m going to write this we must inevitably do – I want to stress that this story does not involve me. I am not the protagonist in this scenario which I am about to relate to you. I know most of my blog posts are autobiographical, but this is not one of them. I’ve spent the last two months waiting for something interesting to happen to me so that I can blog about it, but alas, nothing, which means I’m going to have to write about someone else I’m afraid. I hope that doesn’t put you off reading this. Anyway, I just wanted to make sure that you understand that this story is definitely not about me, OK? I wouldn’t want to harm my reputation, especially since I’ve spent the last three years painstakingly building it up through this blog.

My friend has recently subscribed to a dating website. I won’t give the name of the website or the name of my friend since I know it would invariably lead to a throng of readers subscribing to the site, communicating with her and attempting to date her merely as a means to getting closer to me (o yes, I know your game).

Personally I’m a bit uncertain about the idea of dating websites; it all
seems a bit forced: people signing up to a website, creating a profile where they enter carefully considered details about themselves, uploading a specific photo of themselves which they believe best represents them (although of course this does not necessarily mean it accurately represents them). They then browse other people’s profiles and perhaps initiate communication with a person once they have seen how the person looks and once they’ve ascertained certain aspects of their personality. Based on their profile you can divine a person’s hobbies and interests, their favourite music, books, films. You can accumulate all this information before you even say hello to this person. There seems something a little too clinical about it all. When two people meet in actuality, they discover more about each other through conversation and perhaps there is a spark. You don’t decide to say hello to someone on the basis of preliminary research into the person: their
hobbies, likes and dislikes; you discover that as you talk to them. Plus, when you talk to someone on a dating website, surely there is already the implication about what you hope might develop between you and that person; there is already an agenda set. This is generally not the case when you spontaneously meet someone when you’re out. I enjoy being out with friends and then meeting someone completely unexpectedly. Perhaps something exciting will develop; perhaps it won’t, well obviously in my case it invariably won’t (of course I am just writing that to come across as endearingly self-deprecating; the reality is that I am constantly seducing women.) Surely you can’t get any of that surprise and spontaneity on a dating website.

Dating websites seem to me to be a bit like buying a product rather than forming a chance relationship. Are dating websites just another example of how much we have become a consumer society? Using the shop analogy: you browse around and have a look at the various items on offer in the hope that you’ll possibly find a bargain: someone who shares similar interests to you or looks attractive – or maybe a two for the price of one offer on cute twins.
When we’ve found a suitable girl we pick her up (off the shelf as the saying goes – you see what a clever metaphor I’ve got going on here?) you take her to the checkout and hope that she won’t complain about any unexpected items in her baggage area. Then you put her in a plastic bag and bundle her into the boot of your car and drive her home. (I think I might have lost the metaphor a bit towards the end.) Mark my words, in a few years time dating websites will be exactly like shopping on Amazon: “people who dated Helen also enjoyed Patricia and Charlotte”, “if you enjoyed Jenny, why not try Rebecca?” You’ll be able to read reviews before you date, and there’ll be a 30 day money back guarantee, providing your woman hasn’t been unwrapped.

When our story’s protagonist was browsing for women, he wasn’t exactly checking out hobbies and interests; he was looking for something a bit more specific. He thought he might have found it in my friend.

The conversation seemed to be following a perfectly normal course at first but then he made his move.

He started off by telling her that he had really enjoyed talking to her and he felt like she might be responsive to a rather strange request. He had a rather unusual sexual fetish and he wondered whether she would be up for entertaining it.

The discovery of this fetish happened while he was watching the TV. A Chinese woman was arguing with a man. She got so annoyed with him that she karate kicked him in the balls. Instead of reacting as you might expect, feeling the man on the television’s pain, he was surprised to find that the incident had aroused him. He rewound the film back to the ball kicking part and once again he found himself becoming sexually aroused by it.

Intrigued, and curious to explore this new sexual predilection further, he went on a dating website and searched for someone who might entertain his desire. I’m not sure of his exact thought process here but he decided to search for Chinese women. Perhaps he thought that it might have been the Chinese girl that formed an essential part of his arousal rather than simply the ball kicking on its own. He started chatting to a Chinese girl online who was a student at Newcastle University. He eventually broached the subject. She did not seem at all keen, but he was so determined to explore this peculiar fantasy that he offered to pay her for the service. As luck would have it she was pretty hard up and so she consented. The arrangement was that she would come round to his place twice a week and kick him in the balls for fifteen minutes.

Surprisingly he enjoyed the experience so much that this arrangement continued for a whole year. But this summer she graduated and went back to china; therefore he decided to search for another woman who could take on the mantle. Alas, he could not find a local Chinese girl who would agree to his request. Eventually he decided that he would have to branch out a bit and so he went looking for women who weren’t Chinese.

My friend is Asian; perhaps this is why he homed in on her. Sadly she did not consent to the man’s wishes in spite of me begging her to do it so that I could write more about it in the blog (I’m a great friend).

She was going to send me copies of their conversations so that I could include them in this blog post, but when she attempted to visit his profile a few weeks later, she found he had deleted it. Perhaps he had tried a few more women in the hope that someone would be persuaded but then eventually accepted defeat and deleted his profile. Or perhaps he was questioned by revenue and customs as presumably he wasn’t paying VAT for the service and it was just cash in hand. Or perhaps he has died or become severely ill due to testicular damage. There are so many possible reasons why he is no longer on the dating website, but as it’s Christmas I shall spare you the litany of further theories, just this once.

Before I go, I would like to remind you that this story was not about me. Any damage to my groin area is simply caused by overheating laptop computers
as stated in my previous blog post)
and not the result of any kinky sexual antics.

Well I’m sure this blog post has got you all in the Christmas spirit. Merry Christmas and see you in the New Year for a new series of
Young’uns podcasts.

The first part of this blog post was written on the 5th October.

—

I reached the bus stop this morning just as the bus was pulling away from it. On this occasion however I did not get annoyed and scream curses at the bus driver as I did the time before as written about in this blog post from July. I’d already done enough damage with my cursing, as I’d just discovered only five minutes ago. As far as I was concerned, I deserved to have missed that bus. It was the very least that I deserved as punishment for what I’d done, or might have done; whether I’d directly caused the event to happen or not is impossible to say. It probably wasn’t my fault, but the fact is that I said it, and then it came true the very next day.
Allow me to backtrack a bit; it would help this blog post make a bit more sense than it’s probably making to you at this moment in time.

I would have made the bus fine if I hadn’t stopped in my tracks and went back into the house. Obviously I didn’t do both of those things at the same time. I stopped in my tracks first, and then stopped stopping in my tracks so as to enable me to start going back into my house. I just thought I’d better make that clear, in case you were wondering how I’d possibly managed to do both at the same time. I’m not a miracle worker. At least I don’t think I am. At least, I didn’t used to think I was. Now I’m not so sure. (I’ll go back to the backtracking and explain what the hell I’m blabbering on about.)

This morning, radio 4 was on in the kitchen as I prepared myself to leave the house for work. At 7’30, I made to leave the house, but as I closed the kitchen door behind me I caught part of the news headline emanating from the radio. I stopped, in fact, I stopped in my tracks – you should know that by now. You should also be aware of the fact that once I’d stopped in my tracks, I then stopped stopping in my tracks so as to free myself up to start going back into my house. We’ve already established all this; I see little need to elaborate on it any further. Shall we move on then? You can always email me with questions if I’m going a bit too quick for you.

“No, I must have heard the headline wrong” I thought, “it’s too coincidental”. But I hadn’t. “Steve Jobs – The CEO and co-founder of Apple – has died”.

Steve Jobs is a man I have respect for, and it’s a shame he’s died, but ordinarily it probably wouldn’t have caused me to turn back into my house and risk missing the bus for work. But things were different now. This wasn’t ordinary; My actions two days previous made me react to the story in a very different way to how I might have ordinarily acted.

Two days ago, at about 11’30 in the evening, I was sitting at my Apple Mac computer. It was talking to me, and I was talking to it – well actually, to be more accurate, I was shouting at it.
The Mac’s part of the dialogue went something along the lines of, “busy, busy, busy, busy, Safari busy, busy, busy, busy”. My retort to this unhelpful monotony was to shout similar things to what you might expect me to be shouting at a bus driver who had just driven off when I was just about to step on the bus.

Being blind, I obviously can’t see the computer screen, so I use a screen reader which essentially tells me what’s going on–or in this particular case, what isn’t going on. Apple have revolutionised the information communication technology industry by integrating highly advanced screen reading and magnification software into their products. The iPhone, the iPod, the iPad, Apple Tv and the Apple Mac computer have all got speech and magnification built in to them at no extra charge. This is one reason why I have a lot of respect for Steve Jobs and Apple.

My respect for Apple however was being tested on this particular evening because I was having great trouble using Apple’s in-built Internet browser, Safari. People I know who have Macs testify that their computer never crashes, that it is ten times faster than windows computers, and so on. In my opinion, these people are bending the truth a bit. They like to be all elitist about the fact that they are using a computer which is more expensive than your standard computer, and they make exaggerated statements about the Mac’s superiority so as to make them seem superior as people. Yes, Apple Mac computers are much much less prone to crashes than your average windows computers. Yes, I have found my Apple Mac computer to be more reliable and much faster than most windows machines I’ve used. But they do crash. Not in the same clumsy way that a windows computer crashes, with a sudden halting of a process, followed by a series of incongruous error messages, beeping sounds, an over active fan that sounds like the computer is about to take off, and then “the dreaded blue screen of death”! Mac crashes are a bit more elegant than that. I’ve never had the blue screen of death, unfathomable error messages telling me that “this programme has performed an illegal operation and needs to close”. What the hell does that mean? I was using a perfectly legal version of Microsoft Word to type a blog post. What kind of illegal operation could that possibly have caused? (and keep your derogatory jokes to yourselves, they’re not funny.)

Or what about the classic: “This programme has stopped responding. If you end the programme now you will loose any unsaved information”, to which the only option is, “end
now”. This presents the computer user with a very perplexing dilemma: either sit and wait to see whether the computer might, just might, start responding again and thus reclaim the unsaved information that might otherwise be lost, or click “end now” and lose the information instantly. There is no indication of how long your wait might be or whether it will ever yield a response at all. How long would you wait? How important is the blog post? Thanks to windows crashing, you will never hear my joke about the ostrich and the cucumber. I waited three days to salvage that post, but the computer never righted itself and so now its lost forever.
Whether you choose to wait or not might depend on when you last did a save on your document, but my attempts to remember this information are inhibited by the fact that I’m unable to concentrate on anything other than the irritation of the loud, wearing fan noise of the laptop, plus the fact that the computer is getting hotter and hotter and starting to burn my lap and melt my groin. (note to my ex-girlfriends: this was actually the reason for your nocturnal disappointments. The laptop has melted away half of my manhood. O, if only I’d chosen an Apple Mac sooner, we might still be together, and I’d have better things to do with my time than spend it writing lengthy blog posts to a handful of readers.)

On this particular night, sitting with my Mac, I was very tired and
just needed to check and reply to an Email before I could go to bed. But Safari was stopping me from doing this, and had been stopping me for the last twenty minutes. I have mentioned in a
previous blog post
that when I get irritated at an errant computer I tend to shout and curse it. I think this is partly due to the fact that the computer talks to me and so it seems fairly logical and normal to talk back to it. I am also prone to cursing and damning various people who I believe are responsible for the problem. It is not uncommon for me to wish unpleasant things to happen to Microsoft’s Bill Gates.

I was so annoyed with the situation with my Mac that I began to curse Bill Gates, until I realised that on this occasion it wasn’t actually anything to do with him; this wasn’t his remit. I then changed my attack to focus on Steve Jobs. The Mac kept goading me with “busy, busy, busy” with even more intensity. This exacerbated my anger even more, and in the heat of the moment – albeit a far reduced heat than the moment would have had if I was using a bollocks-burning PC – I blurted out the following statement: “O for fuck’s sake! Steve Jobs! Drop
Down Dead!!!”

Again, just like the incident with my outburst at the bus driver, I wasn’t proud of what I’d done. When I said it I realised my reaction was extreme. But I was annoyed. and it was only a stupid, rash statement made in anger. And it wasn’t like I meant it. And anyway, its not like I’m going to shout “Steve Jobs! Drop Down Dead!!!” and then a few hours later he’s going to die is it?

—

This blog post was written on the bus a few minutes after I heard the news. It has taken me three weeks to upload it because I lost my memory stick which housed the blog post. Perhaps it is better and more respectful to have waited a bit before posting anyway. I’m sure that I didn’t have any part to play in the death of Steve Jobs, although people do believe in the power of intention, thought and prayer. To those people who believe this, I can only offer the fact that there was no intention at all in my statement
as a means to vindicate myself.

I was telling this story to some friends a couple of days after the event. In that conversation I said that I would, as an experiment, curse another person so as to see whether my cursing holds any actual power. I said, in a jocular manner, “colonel Gaddafi! Drop Down Dead!” Two weeks later, he’s dead. OK, so there was a bit of a time lag with that one, but I wasn’t angry when I said it and so perhaps the power of the curse was a bit diminished, but the curse met its target eventually.

There are some people out there who may believe that I am some kind of dangerous, powerful god, able to bring death to anyone I curse (even if I make the curse with a smile on my face with know intention behind the words whatsoever).
There will be others out there who believe that all this is just a slight coincidence and that Steve Jobs’ and Colonel Gaddafi’s deaths were more to do with Pancreatic Cancer and being hunted down and killed by Libyan soldiers than a unintended curse made by one insignificant man in the North East of England. In case you don’t follow the news and the only external contact you have is this blog, it was Colonel Gaddafi who was hunted down and killed by Libyan soldiers, not Steve Jobs.

I suppose the moral of this story is: don’t wish people dead in case it comes true, unless of course its a dictator you’re wishing dead, but that’s down to your own conscience and set of morals. Look! there is no set moral to the story. You need to stop looking for fundamental answers hidden away in some poorly written blog and just start living like (what you consider to be) a good person; treat others how you’d like to be treated; always remember to save your work periodically; and if you’re a man, don’t let your computer melt your genitals down to a humiliating blob! Now, go forth in peace!

This is a warning for a specific Angela who lives in Durham. Your man has been unfaithful! I heard him on the train yesterday (Sunday 25th September) bragging about his infidelity. The man and his mates got on the train at York at 2:10 and left the train in Durham at 3:00, before heading off to the Bridge pub. I’m not sure about the culprit’s name, but he has some mates called Nicky, Darren and Robert. They’ve all got strong North-eastern accents. They’d been celebrating their mate’s birthday with a weekend away in York. They stayed in a hotel in York; not sure on the name. They went out to a number of clubs in the area, including Flairs and Reflex. So, there are clues for you Angela that might help you identify whether this is your man.

I suppose it rests upon my shoulders – since I am a writer of a blog that gets read by … some people (and one of those could be you Angela) to let you know about this man’s infidelity. I’m sorry if this is painful, but I feel that you deserve the truth.

I had no choice but to listen to the men’s conversation; your man, Angela, was shouting very loudly and was sitting on the seat opposite me. I found him to be a very annoying character, and frankly I can’t see what you find attractive about him Angela. Now and again some spit would fly out of his mouth and land on my face, which I found even more disconcerting than I may do usually because I knew what he’d been doing with that mouth the night before, and the night before that, because he loudly told everyone all about it on the train. I will spare you the graphic details that we weren’t spared on the train Angela, but let’s just say that I may have to check myself into a sexual health clinic, what with all his spitting on me. “I took ‘me plunger and plunged it right up her shitter”, he loudly declared to his mates, and the rest of the train. An interesting start to a sexual fling I thought: for some reason he had come across a complete stranger in a club, who must have – at some point during their initial chat – mentioned that she was having a problem with her toilet. Presumably she had some kind of blockage due to excessive bowel activity. This man was kind enough to spend some of his weekend which he was meant to be spending with his mates – to help unblock her toilet.

It appears – and I’ve had to do a little bit of lateral thinking here because the man wasn’t clear about how things progressed – that the woman was so moved by this man’s altruism towards her (and happy also to have found a man who doesn’t judge and dismiss her simply because she might have more of a propensity to crap than the average human being) that she had sex with him.

But this wasn’t the end of the tale, because it transpired that the next day, he took his plunger again and “plunged it right up her shitter”. So in the space of one day she had managed to block her toilet again. As with yesterday, she rewarded the man’s altruism by having sex with him, and a whole lot more (which I won’t go into here because it was quite graphic and I like to keep this blog clean. Plus he used some very interesting sexual metaphors which you might not be savvy enough to comprehend. I mean, obviously, I am, of course).

What I find odd about this tale is that the man then left her on the Sunday and returned back to Durham to you Angela. I know things are pretty bad for you at the moment, but I can’t help thinking about that poor girl he’s left behind in York. She’s finally – after years of searching – found the man of her dreams: a man who cleans her toilet and doesn’t ask awkward questions and judge her because of her overly-active bowels; a man who accepts her for who she is. She is so consumed with relief and joy that she makes love with this man. The next day he cleans her toilet, and again they make love. She’s probably already starting to think about having children with this man. “After all, why not? he’d be happy to change the nappies and clear up the mess”, she’s thinking; as long as he didn’t expect their kid to remunerate him in the same way as she would, then this would be the perfect arrangement.
But this man, after everything that’s happened, just gets up and leaves her, returns to Durham and to you Angela as if nothing whatsoever had happened. This wasn’t the harmless friendship that it might have been: a chance for him to help a damsel in distress. Sadly, as so very often happens in tales concerning distressed damsels who are rescued by brave and gallant men, she ends up having sex with him.

I’m sorry I had to be the barer of bad news Angela, but I think you disserve the truth. Sometimes this blog is just me rambling about nothing at all, but then other
times it’s about making a difference in the world, and bringing the truth to a poor, betrayed girl in Durham. It’s not easy being a blogger, but I take my responsibility seriously.

I’m off to see if any of the girls in my street need any odd jobs doing.

The Young’uns and friends gather round a piano to perform some interesting pop songs. We return to Holland to bring you more observations regarding Dutch culture, including the musical tastes of Dutch chavs, the toilet habits of Dutch men and some information about Dutch law. There’s the obligatory report from an Indian restaurant as we sample our most adventurous dish yet. What’s
Martin Carthy’s
favourite TV programme, we have exclusive news about the exciting new addition to
the Imagined Village,
and could folk music be the new cricket? Our featured folk group is
the Tea Cups
(the artists formerly known as the Dirty Tea cups); two songs and an interview with them. There’s also music from
the Spooky Men’s Chorale
and the Young’uns are joined by
Jackie Oates,
Ruth Notman
and Joan Crump for a
Peter Bellamy
shanty.

Click here to download.
Click here to listen>
Click here to download from the archive site (this is a perminent link).

A child of about 9 has just got on the bus and asked for “half to the town”.There was a short pause where nothing happened, then the child added, “please”. Perhaps the child thought that the driver was refusing to act on his request until he added the “please”. This is what his parents might do, and he assumed therefore that the rest of society works in the same way. I thought I’d tell you about that little incident because it made me smile, just a little bit after a stressful day, and I thought it was a nice, cute thing to write about at the start of the blog. Also, I thought it might come as a bit of light relief after the posts about having sex with multiple bus drivers and swearing Satnavs. I know it was a very small observation and not particularly funny, and don’t worry, I’m not planning on basing the entire blog on this one tiny incident. Although, maybe I will, just for the challenge. Instead of writing about what I plannedto write about, I could spend this entire blog analysing and theorising about the child who said “please”, just to see how long I could go on about it for. I might even construct a whole routine about it and wheel it out at every gig the Young’uns do. The other two will grimace every time I start the story, knowing only too well (from months of painful experience) how it fails to illicit any kind of positive audience reaction. But that won’t stop me! O no! I’m not going for the populist vote; this is art! I’ve had an idea. I know where the child is sitting on the bus. I could follow him off the bus and observe his life and blog about it. This simple little observation could just be the start of an epic tale. This will require some dedication on my part, but I recon it might be worth it – for the story. I’m meant to be getting off a few stops before the town, but I could stay on the bus till we got to the town and follow the boy off. At least then I could find out if he says “thank you” or not. Perhaps the driver will refuse to open the doors until he does. Alas, I’m not prepared for this exercise: my batteries are running low on my netbook and I’m quite hungry after a day’s work. If only I was more prepared; but I had no idea that an opportunity as alluring as this would present itself. There I was, sitting on the bus, readying myself to write a blog post about something that – in comparison to this would have seemed mind-numbingly tedious – when this child came on the bus and said … well you know the rest. Sadly, I feel as if this task is going to be too much with the limited resources I have. My stop is approaching; well, the bus is approaching my stop to be accurate. I’m afraid I’ll have to let this opportunity pass me by. I’ve let you down, I’m sorry.I was wrong about this scenario not taking up an entire blog post, because it has. A very fat man has just sat next to me on the bus. He is squishing me into the window and I cannot move enough to write properly. So I shall leave this blog post here. Perhaps I’ll write my next blog post all about the fat man that is sitting next to me on the bus. I’m sure I can ring that out for a few hundred words at least. Stay tuned. Please. Thank you.P.S. The 107th Young’uns podcast will be upon you by the end of the week. Relax your shoulders and bend your knees.

I was in a taxi the other day. The taxi driver was obsessed with his Satnav. You might think (if you remember
my blog post on the subject of my Satnav)
that me and this driver would have consequently formed a special bond, talking non-stop about distance, altitude and other Satnav related trivia. This was not the case. The taxi driver wasn’t particularly enthused by the fact that his Satnav could give him instructions about how to get from a to b; to him, this was merely an ancillary point. The man was more interested in the array of additional voices he had bought for his device.

He was very excited about the fact that he’d
fribbled away his weekend downloading novelty and celebrity voices for his Satnav. He treated me to a litany of these voices on our journey:
John Cleese,
arnold schwarzenegger,
Bart Simpson,
Steven Hawking
(which is a bit of a rip off really, considering Steven Hawking’s voice is a synthesiser. Surely that should lower the cost somewhat). The driver’s particular favourite was
Ozzy Osbourne.
The taxi driver was keen to show me how Ozzy berated him if he took a wrong turning. He demonstrated this by turning left when Ozzy instructed him to turn right.
“You fucking cunt!” Ozzy screamed. A bit harsh I thought, but the taxi driver seemed delighted. He laughed most heartily, causing the car to swerve. What a way to die: crashing into a wall at high impact with Ozzy Ozborn screaming “you fucking cunt!” as we drew our final breath. The taxi driver would no doubt have died a happy man, but this wouldn’t have been my ideal choice of death. No naked beautiful women, palm trees, or harp music; just a fat taxi driver and a foul-mouthed Satnav.

He proceeded to go through more voices and demonstrated the various rebukes whenever he (deliberately) made a wrong turning. This was significantly increasing our journey time. The taxi driver didn’t ask me whether I wanted this long demonstration, nor did he enquire as to whether I actually needed to be at my destination for a specific time and whether his wrong turnings would make me late.

Eventually the Satnav voices demo came to an end and we reached our destination for the second time; the first time courtesy of Ozzy Osbourne and the second with John Cleese. As John Cleese’s over-the-top announcement sounded, the driver came to a halt, laughing merrily. “Well, it’s been fun” he said. “That’ll be £8 then”. Hang on! £8? It’s normally £6,50. Surely he’s not charging me for the extra time and milage his unrequested Satnav demonstration had taken. He’s essentially charging me for something I didn’t ask for. Not only that, but he’s charging me extra for making me late. I should have argued, but I’m too much of a coward, so I begrudgingly handed over the money.

I’m writing this blog post while in the car with
the Young’uns.
Mike’s Satnav’s voice is
Billy Connoly.
It’s been Billy Connoly for the last two years. His jokes have not updated; he’s been doing the same routine all that time. “turn around when possible. It is advisable to turn your whole car around; do not just turn yourself around inside your car.” I dread to think how many road accidents have been caused by drivers helplessly careering into walls due to uncontrollable laughter caused by Billy Connoly’s Satnav based quips.

Currently, Billy is telling us – for the 8th time – that we have reached our destination. “Remember that none of this would have been possible without me; you would have been hopelessly lost”. The irony is that we are hopelessly lost. Mike has asked Billy to take him to the fuel station. Billy has taken us to a random bush in a remote part of town. Unless, Billy knows of a certain type of bush with special properties that can fuel a car, Billy has completely miscalculated the whereabouts of the fuel station, and Billy should really stop being so smug about his navigational abilities and concentrate more on correctly guiding us to a fuel station rather than wasting our time with cheep, outdated wisecracks. Mike is currently shouting obscenities at Billy, saying similar things to what you might expect Ozzy Osbourne to say. Billy is responding by repeating the same joke for the third time which is doing nothing to temper Mike’s exasperation.

O dear! I better go and be a mediator between Billy Connoly and Michael Hughes before this gets out-of-hand.

The 107th Young’uns Podcast is coming soon.