The greatest trick the Devil ever pulled, was convincing people he was funny.

Greekings Reeking Lums, 

Going down laughing is infinitely
preferable to just going down

6 months to go working on the big International Sports day, I'm pretty sure it will be great, but it also means the looming prospect of joblessness for me when its all done.  

Around the same time the final spent firework at the Paralympic Games closing ceremony falls back to Stratfords regenerated streets I'll be finished.  

I'll be looking forward to a rest, but you can only really enjoy a rest if you know its not an infinite one and you can actually still  afford to feed yourself.   

It doesn't help that my best pal and perennial Peroni partner has left, gone to till the soil in the hotel business, another mate discovered the escape tunnel that comes up in Abu Dhabi and my excellent boss too has found a seat in a lifeboat and has pootered off to the media business.  

Good luck to them.  

I did have a funny day at work a couple of weeks ago.  I volunteered to help make a security awareness video for the "firm"  which involved me, in disguise, in various security scenarios.  Now, we're not talking about active shooters or bombs on buses going off if the speed drops below 50.  Its more, your documents left in the printer and the value of ID badges messages.   

The highlight was having the videos, oh yes, there was a series of them, played in front 200 cynical, hard nosed security professionals that wanted to go home at the end of the day, but had been told to stay late and see our fantastic films.  So after 10 excruciating minutes of the silenciest silence I've never heard, and the reddest redness my head has ever been, I was introduced to the mute, humourless horde. 

I had to explain the content and talk about the messages, but decided to go for comedy instead, as I always do at inopportune moments.   "Hello, I'm Troy McClure".  I'm not obviously, and I did give my own name, "you may know me from such informational films as "Something Juicy to Read and Tailgating! Door to Disaster."   A new, deeper more spiteful silence enveloped the hall, "never mind, carry on I said to myself, at least they'll hear you".  "Well, I must say, I'm delighted that you all saw past the comedy elements in the films (and there were plenty) and managed to take on board the very serious messages contained within the films.  You cant get quieter than silence, but if gurning expressions could suck the residual sound waves that are above and below the human ears spectrum out of the room, then what we would have had is an audio vacuum, I may have come across as being slightly mocking, but still, no need for aggressive indifference.  I talked for 5 minutes, reinforcing our points, then closed with a bit of humorous self deprecation, which, even though I say it myself,  I'm not that good at.  " I must say, I've been working for this organisation for two years, I'll take so much away from the experience, after these films, I now know, dignity and credibility are not among them" .  And that was that, I had died, but had learned a valuable lesson, the security professionals of the UK wouldn't know funny if it was fisting them with day-glo Marigolds on.  That's a good thing, we don't want them getting distracted by comedy capers.  

Viva ze Revolution!!
Can we stop off at  Aldis on the way? 

I'll miss London if I'm honest,  I think it must be one of the best cities in the world in which to live.  I think that must be true because of all the people from every corner of the world that end up here.  I love that diversity, so many different looking people.  Until you get to the office door, you hardly ever see the same person twice, its a constantly changing canvas that you never tire of.  There was a guy on the tube the other day who was the spitting image of a young and fiery Che Guevara.  He had the khaki military bush coat, the wiry beard  barely meeting the adolescent moustache and thick unruly glossy black Argentinian hair poking out from underneath his beret.  He was trying hard to be Che Guevara I think, mind you, the Waitrose carrier bag kind of detracted, but none the less a good effort.  I really don't think Che Guevara would shop at Waitrose, would he shop anywhere in fact, or just live off the good will and charity of grateful liberated peasants.   There aren't many liberated peasants around these parts, all are still well and truly under the yoke of The Man,  so I guess Che Guevara would need to pick up some groceries, but surely he would support the little corner shop, or the ethnic fair trader.   

I have suddenly gotten Twitter.  I don't mean got it, like downloaded it and generated an account, I mean just twigged the concept and meaning of it, and its a hoot.  I was always reticent, I genuinely have a lot of affection for Facebook and didn't want to feel like I was being unfaithful.  And it sat there, in my favourites folder,  like a feathery lure, but one I was too wary to approach, not wanting to put the work in to get to know it, reluctant to invest in a relationship when I was perfectly satisfied with the one I had.   Facebook has let me find old and distant friends, keep in touch with ex-colleagues and maintain a watchful, ever anxious and sometimes mortified eye over some entertaining fun loving kids, mine I hasten to add before The Police get involved.   Twitters not for keeping in touch with friends you already know, its about reaching out to strangers, offering something that someone else may be tuned in to, or turned on by and creating friends,  well, virtual ones, or not, it doesn't matter.   It turns out, its a laugh, there are a lot of people with genuinely funny thoughts bursting out of them.    The trouble is, I get distracted, I've been meaning to write something for weeks and weeks but I end up spending all my inanity on social networks and none on the Reeking Lum,  must try harder.  

Lang May Yer Lum Reek 

Jings, crivens, from eating to bleating and carnage in between

Howdy Lums,


That's in honour of the Superduper bowl that was on when I started writing this.  I saw more of it than normal, at least an hour, which included about 7 minutes of actual play, before retiring to sleepy town.  I've only a vague idea of whats going on, but how can it not be a spectacle worth watching, its 65 aside and the sporty equivalent of head butting buffalo's.

January and February have been annoying months, well, I mean, more things than normal have annoyed me, and not January or February being annoying, though, thinking about it, they are shitty months, long, cold, wet, skint and full of annoying happenings.

Frankie and Bennys new  cutlery friendly
departure lounge menu

The first thing that really annoyed me was the dinner I snatched in Stansted airport.  

Starving and on a low carbs diet, I plumped for a steak from the generic Italian themed diner.   Let me tell you how arduous eating an airport steak is post 9/11.  Its because of the cutlery, the knife they give you is like the one that comes with a play-doh gift set.  It was going like a fiddlers elbow trying to get through that thing, I swear I expended more energy than I managed to take in. There was no cutting edge to the knife, so I have to imagine it was the heat generated by my berserk sawing that melted the steak into sinewy separation.  I nearly missed my flight with the time it took to eat that thing, and I couldn't lift my bag because of the lactic burn in my slicing arm.

Back to vaguely interesting things.  At work I was visited by a boffin from one of those secretive government departments that come up with James Bonds gadgets.  Or at least, thats what I'm pretty sure they do, and not as a colleague dismissively suggested, just sorted the WiFi in GCHQ.  This guy, with his pasty skin, ponytail and and long leather overcoat had obviously spent a lot of time watching Blade movies but it was also an indication that these people don't get brought to the surface often.  The language he used probably makes perfect sense deep down in the brain bunker as he and his chums try and reproduce all the technology from Star Trek but up here, among IQs that average less than a hundred, its like the white noise radio astronomers get excited about. And why did he want to speak with me?  I would tell you, but they are probably monitoring my keystrokes from space and the guy sitting in the corner of the cafe looks like a background extra from Underworld, so for the moment, I'll keep that to myself.

I went to the pictures a couple of weeks ago to see Carnage, excellent it was, genuinely laugh out loud funny despite the woman sitting next to me, pulling her phone out every 5 minutes to send or receive a text, or to check if she had received one, or even just to have a look at her screen saver, because it makes her smile or something.  

I've just invented an indiscreet i-phone user
   bludgeoning device  

This is almost as annoying as a ring tone.  In the darkness of the cinema, the brilliant light from her poxy       i-phone was an all pervading distraction, I began to feel like a bug, hypnotised by the light, getting drawn towards it with dreams of nirvana flashing across my mothy brow.  Nirvana for me though would have been grabbing her phone in mid-text and throwing it with all my might down the cinema.    I imagined it spinning   through the air in slow motion, like the femur in Space Odyssey, and as it landed, the entire audience, but one, two if you count her pathetic boyfriend, would stand up and cheer, hoist me to their shoulders and carry me all the way to The Office of Cinema Etiquette, where I would unveil a statue of me hurling an i-phone (other makes of phone are available and equally annoying).

I see faces...everywhere

That was annoying, but THE most annoying thing, and its really getting on my thruppennies is the language used in facebook updates.  Why do Scottish people, and remember, I am one of them, feel the need to write a status update as if they are a Broons scriptwriter, typing phonetically exactly how it comes out their mouths.  Now, phonetics is a wonderful teaching technique for three year olds, but if your old enough to work facebook, your old enough to write English.  I can, and often do speak in my home town dialect, and I can understand it like a native when its spoken to me, but its really hard to get your eyes around it when its written down.  And before anyone says " your jist aw saft noo yiv gaun tae london" " an ener hing, am gaun ooot tae get pished" " Jings crivvens n help ma boab PC Murdoch is gaun tae catch us plunderin aipples" or anything like that,  remember you write for others, whats the point of writing a status update for yourself, you already know what your doing, so it would be nice to read your status updates with all the letters in the proper order or at least, if your going for  "a braw Scots tongue" and that can be great. Example, DC Thomas has never been hard to read, but they don't mangle it and go out of their way to replace commonly used English words with some made up regional short cut.    

Saying that,

Lang may yer lum reek.

Letting the brain take the strain.

A right reeking new year to you both,

The Glasgow-London Darjeeling Express, there's room for a small one

I've started writing this on the train south, heading back to  Mt Olympus.   The train is packed out, like one of those you see in India with people squatting on the roof and clinging like limpets to the side as the telegraph poles brush past their arse.  
I have a seat though, I pitched up early as soon as I realised I had no seat reservation, in fact, because of my ungainly canter along the platform I was first on the train and had my pick of pews in the unreserved carriage.  It wasn't until I attempted to reach the canteen car that I realised how bad it was.  
There were people stuffed everywhere, standing, sitting, lying wherever they could, with suitcases, bodies and bags blocking every door and passageway.  I struggled through for a flapjack and a latte and nipped into the toilet on the way back, the 3rd world travel experience was reinforced in there.  The sink was full of water which meant that it slopped over the side every time the train rounded a corner or in fact moved at all, flooding the floor and seeping out into the passage.  I pitied the squatters huddled around the door as I exited, they've probably paid a hundred pounds for this experience. 


Its that time of year when we're encouraged to consider resolutions and self improvement plans, in a hope the coming year will actually see something achieved.   Mine are simple enough, lose some of my 14 stones of weight, a stone and a half to be precise, and balance the books.    
I'm going to achieve the first by sticking to a low carb diet, cutting out bread, potatoes, rice and pasta.  Easier said than done when you rely on convenience food at work, its all sandwiches, pasta salads and shit that fills you up for an hour.  
The second I will attempt by judicially noting every pound of spend and hopefully that will depress me so much I'll be happier locking myself in the flat rather than go anywhere spendy, like The Slug and Lettuce.   


Oh, nearly forgot the most important one, bear in mind I'll be out of a job about the same time the final Olympic closing ceremony firework falls back to earth, I need to GET A JOB. 


Lang may yer lum reek.  

Happy Christmas

Happy Christmas to all Reeking Lums. 

Happy Christmas Sis, look it even has a straw

Its 9:01 on Christmas Day and the kids are not even awake yet.  


I should be sleeping too, I had a terrible nights sleep, vivid dreams about Professor Cox, quantum physics and how I had the gift to manipulate with my mind the atomic structure, this allowed me to pick outcomes of events, follow alternative universes and pass through solid things, pretty cool, my X-MAN name would be Neutrino. 


In reality, I've forgotten its my Sisters birthday today and there is nothing I can do about that, unless I find a petrol station that is open on Christmas Day and buy her a can of WD40 or something, looks like I'll have a little bit of guilt to unwrap later,   


Have a great day everyone, whatever you believe


and


Lang May Yer Lum Reek

When cranes collide

Hello Lums,




Help! can someone apply a tourniquet

I walk past it every day, as I join the snaking multitudes trudging to the front line to do some paid work at the commercial coal face.   I've watched it sprout and grow, bit by bit over the past few months, dominating the skyline and local residents TV receptions as it goes.  

Its the ArcelorMittal Orbit Tower, springing up in the Olympic Park.  

Its been accused of fascist gigantism, and of being a monument to ego.  The Times described it as "looking like a giant wire mesh fence has gotten hopelessly snagged around a french horn".  I'm guessing that's not a compliment, though you never know with the arty crowd. "An undesired intrusion on the consciousness of the many" is certainly not a compliment, though, we have so many of those every day, especially this time of year with peoples growing need to drape their homes in garish, blinking Christmas lights and glowing Santa's. 
My favourite, maybe because its easily imagined, is " a catastrophic collision between two cranes".  Twisted spaghetti, Meccano on crack,  horrific squiggles and a giant ( if slightly undone) Mr Messy have all been used to allow people who don't have the dubious fortune to look at for real an idea of what its like. Without the pretentious comments about what it means, how it represents art and engineering and its seemingly chaotic form actually means.  
WTF?, I don't know what it means,  its a big corporate bill board really, that cost £19m to build but will be visible in nearly every Olympic Park outside broadcast shot next year, that exposure is worth billions.

After months, its the Lums turns to Reek his observations.  It looks to me like a fountain of de-oxygenated blood, spurting out of an opened pulmonary artery of Stratford.  It reminds me a little of that scene in  Braveheart where Mel Gibsons guts get yanked out during his execution scene.  Its the colour for me, that's whats most striking, in the city your used to looking at big structures, as a rule though, they are greyish, not crimson red. People will tire of it I think, unlike the Angel of the North that you can feel some affection for, this is just too hard to get on with. 

100 years apparently since Captain Scott's ill fated Antarctic adventure, he's painted as both a hero and a blundering idiot, but you cant argue with the courage of those pioneers, especially when even 100 years ago, there were huge swathes of the globe still more or less a blank.   But I wonder how he would view some of the latest conquerors of the South Pole.  A 16 year old girl did it a little while ago, taking nothing away from her, she must be fit and brave but I just heard that a TV presenter is cycling there in a few months.  Cycling? To the South Pole!  What will be next, the first to reach the South Pole in fancy dress, the first man to walk backwards to the South Pole, perhaps Olly Murs could rollerskate there for Children in Need.  And another thing, this day and age they get airlifted in and walk the last 100 miles or so, Scott and Amundsen walked over 800 miles and back. 

Lang may yer Lum Reek.

Pic'n'mix anybody? Yes please, can I pay with this kidney?

Greekings Lums,

Who is gummi Keyser Soze? 

It began as an evening much like many others.  

The best of intentions tested by the careless irresponsible suggestion of a pint in The Slug.  I cant even remember who made it,  it might even have been me, still, that's not important.  I was only going for one of course, but as the village elders (+ one village idiot) gathered and once I had bought a round, I was never leaving until I had got them all back.  So after 5 Peronis, my continuing contribution to the rehabilitation of the Italian economy  I buttoned up and headed out into the cold.  The wind funnelling down the corridors of concrete and glass in Canary Wharf making it feel like Ice Station Zebra, without the ice and Ernest Borgnine.  

Its only 30 paces between The Slug and the shelter of the tube station, but some of those 30 paces take you right past a pic,n,mix sweety stall set up to snare the drunken reckless and sugar craving kids that head out east to try and spear a big fat fish from one of the banks on a Friday night. 

I fancied a little something myself, so grabbed a bag, and a scoop and went about selecting a few of my favourite things, fizzy cola bottles, coconut mushrooms, gummi bears and jelly strawberries, they were all in the bag, topped off with a raspberry cable, about the same girth as a standard CATV but much more densely packed with chewy gratification.  By the time I had completed my circuit, I was aware of having quite a weighty sack, I forced a little joke with the NES (No-English Speaking) till jockey about it maybe being a £10er.  He didn't laugh, and neither did I when he hoisted my selections on the scales and announced that it was in fact £17.  The best part of twenty quid for re imagined sugar.  I gave a little cough, followed by a " your f-in kiddin", he wasn't of course, they inexplicably leave British sense of humour out of the patriotism test.  I had no option, I had to get out of this situation with dignity and my one remaining £10 note intact.  To do that I had to lie, I employed the old, "Oh, I don't have that much on me, I'll have to nip to the ATM, just hold this for me and I'll be back in two minutes", and made off in the direction of HSBC, only for about 5 yards though, then veered as discretely as I could back towards the anonymity of the tube, well, you cant be too careful, I don't know if you get Bangladeshi triad gangs, but if you do, they probably control the supply of fizzy worms in East London. 

A great escape in any ones language, though tainted by the inner known fact that had I had £17 I probably would have stumped up with little more than a blow of the cheeks.

When did sweeties get so expensive that they have a greater street value than some class A drugs?

Billionaire Bertie Bassett, worth his weight in...in..well, sweets

Do the white mice come with doctorates, do the jelly watches contain Swiss mechanisms,  are the cherry lips a physiological copy of an Amazonian beauty's pout?

Keyser Haribo Soze, the fizzy jelly king pin

Perhaps there collected at great risk from the pic'n'mix mines deep underground in a super secret and hard to get to location, with Bertie Basset controlling the world supply like blood diamonds.  Are there commodity traders specialising solely in liquorice and bonbons, speculating on the demand for allsorts.  Where are all the sweety barons, why dont they have 800 foot yachts and premiership football clubs and swan about Kensington in their Gummi coloured Lambos.   

If fibre optic cable cost the same as Stawberry cables, we'd still be sending telegrams and keeping pigeons.  Mark my words, at the centre will be Haribo, pulling the strings, the sweet elite. 

So, apart from learning to never entertain the thought of pic'n'mix ever again, what else have I learned this week?  Well, what about the fact that if I drank 165 cans of Red Bull, I would quite probably get a pair of heavenly wings of my own, dont worry lums, I didnt drink 160 cans and begin to feel a bit off, I just read it somewhere while aimlessly web bound.  Or how about Britains funniest joke?  I'll retell it here, it actually made me chuckle when I read it, but maybe its the way you type it, here goes.

"A woman gets on a bus with her baby, the bus driver says,  

Ugh, thats the ugliest baby I've ever seen.   

The woman, very upset, takes a seat up the back of the bus and says to the gentleman next to her,  

I,m so upset, that driver just insulted me, to which the man replies, 

you should go down and have a word with him, on you go, I'll hold your monkey"  BOOM BOOM. 

One more thing, I scored a free ticket for Stephen Merchants stand up show, Hello Ladies at Hammersmith Apollo, and he was brilliant.  

Lang may yer lum reek

  

Money, Money, Money and a banana

See, its just not right!!! 

Lums of the bankrupt World


I crashed head long into the credit crunch this week.  My expensive twin city existence means I'm burning through cash faster than Boo.com. 
Of course , I had a growing ache that I was running on fumes but that's all, just a suspicion. You see, I've always found that the best way to steer clear of financial troubles is not to look for them. Its a strategy that earned all those CEOs in the big banks millions of bonus pounds after all, so diligently going over the outs and ins of my bank balance has always been avoided during times of fiscal stress.  But, again, a lesson from history, you cant hide from it forever, and one week to go before pay day the ATM stubbornly refused to pass over the requested £50, or the £40, or the £30, or the £20, or even the     measly £10 that I asked for in increasingly desperate button jabbing.  


Quantitative easing was not really an option, not seeing as I had apparently spent my last £10 buying a one way ticket to Slough.  The prospect of spending a penniless 5 days in Slough you don't need me to tell you, isn't an attractive, though it felt a very real, one.  A penniless 5 days anywhere would be pretty grim, but Miami or Las Vegas I'm guessing would be less bad than Slough, hell, from what I saw from the train window, penniless in Pyongyang would be a  funnier experience.  I had no option but to turn to a major stakeholder and ask for a credit extension, yes, the lovely Girlfriend Monetary Fund offered an emergency loan with no strings attached other than a promise to look after my finances a little more carefully.  


I thought I'd give it a go, I've never tried it before, it might even be fun, I do love a spreadsheet, especially when you get to colour them in.   I got all the scheduled bills out the way, there isn't much you can do about them, then started on some fiscal prudence.  "Eating out" is a usefully vague category to put boozy pub visits in so I hazarded a guess at what I eat at work, added in a projected monthly pub spend and then promptly got busy getting through 90% of it in less than 10 days. I can cut back in other areas to compensate, like groceries and other frivolous luxuries, I could  also make every bodies Christmas presents for a change, I'm sure they will appreciate the personal touch and thinking of the long term, all the friends I'll lose will mean a less expensive Yule tide next year.   I'll need to do something, the Christmas party season is almost upon us and have conservatively estimated that "dining out" is going to overspend by about 50%. At least "personal supplies", an equally discrete euphemism for cigarettes is in line with expectations.   


As we approach the turn of the year, the Janus man within me cant help but look forward to the summer and the global sports day scheduled for the end of my road.  Its a sobering thought that in 8 or 9 months I'll be back looking for a job, and a job in Scotland more specifically where I can at least be closer to family and those that mean most to me,  I miss home. Its not going to be easy though and realistically have to consider applying for jobs anywhere until the right thing comes up.  I got asked last week if I'd be interested in working for a tobacco company.  As a smoker, albeit, a casual and slight one, I didn't think I would, but the more I think of it, the more I have ethical reservations, which is a bit rich when I worked in the drinks industry for 20 years, but the tobacco manufacturers have such a dodgy reputation from the cancer denying days.  It just feels wrong, like making prolonged eye contact with someone while eating a banana, still, this time next year I'll probably be willing to work for anyone, human organ harvesters, toxic dumpers, cluster bomb sales, you name it, I'll be up for it, morals are just another thing I cant afford.   




Lang may yer lum reek