Intro to Awkward Situations 101.

I realise that during this whole debacle of writing I have had no real form of continuity in that some weeks I will write three bits and others I will write none for a month. So in order to try and help me with this I am going to do a mini-series, along with my usual smattering of nonsense along the way.

This series shall be named Awkward situations 101, and will go through all of life's things which I find awkward but because they are commonplace now I dont really address them anymore. for instance buying a poppy and the old lady insisting she pins it on for me and me being to polite to tell her that she pierced my skin.

It shall be done in episodes, because I like the reference to TV and will maybe make me want to write something for video which I've always wanted to do. But seriously, not like when I though it would be funny in Breaking Bad if Jessie was moonlighting by making candy for kids birthday parties and mixed up the batches. These will HOPEFULLY occur once a week. Emphasis on hopefully which you can tell by my infantile use of the caps lock key.

So yeah I'm pretty much going to start now with:

Episode 1: Portable Bin Men?

Now of course since I have moved from the countryside to London litter has become far more obvious, and with that you get people who put stuff in bins. Good people, and then those who don't. Bad people. But there is this third group who are completely unregistered.

This is where street cleaners come in. And I'm not using that as a colloquial term for Batman or any other superhero-types. But the guys with the picker-upper-clampy-sticks (TM).

Well here is where these two parties meet. Say someone wants to throw something away, and then the litter picker comes by and here are your options:
1) You keep hold of your litter and wait for an actual bin, which then means you have resigned yourself to the fact that you didn't want to give a litter man some litter, plus you were more inclined to hold rubbish than to give it to the guy.
2) You put it in his bag, now this would be normal but it's like you have invaded his area of work, you're raping him of his masculinity. (There is no way you would see someone from your local dry cleaners out of the store and start to throw clothes at them) You are saying straight to his face, your job could be done by a cylinder with a blocked up end...Now of course there are some situations where this is true but honestly I'm not even going to try and delve into that one.
3) Perhaps the most patronising option. The childish one. The one that when you read it you would think is funny and then look at the logic. That is simply putting the litter on the ground waiting to make sure he sees it then fleeing the scene.

"But wait, this third option interests me!"

Well of course it does you're starting to think it through. this way the litter gets picked up and thrown away or recycled. You're letting them do their job, but you're also mocking them slightly. I mean replace the litter picker with a dog and and the litter itself with a ball and it's next to normal (Not that I give dogs what they want and then flee, that's just slutty).

In reality none of these options are ideal, and we will probably go on with our lives as normal, some of us unafraid to simply put it in their bag and stare them right in the face while doing so, and then the rest of us, holding onto that empty drinks bottle waiting for the perfect bin, with the knowledge that we cannot face our fears.

To be fair we all know the that if you leave a bottle somewhere, and it's upright it's not littering though right? Right?
Yeah I'm right...

Random Hungover Thoughts...

I went out last night and got quite drunk. I know this is against what I've been saying about me not being a massive drinker but peer pressure etc...

So when I woke up and had a headache which felt like my world had more rumble-cam than that Volcano movie I immediately felt guilty. The sort of guilt I always feel which is thinking back and remembering how embarrassing everything the night before was but at the time seemed normal.

One of the things I do when I'm like I was last night is speak bad French with a bad accent. It's weird and makes no sense the next morning but at the time it feels like the most natural thing in the world.

Another thing is that when most people go out one of the primary objectives is to find someone of the opposite gender (Or the same gender depending on your preference) to get it on with and while I can see the benefits I also don't make this my main goal, but one of the things I like to do which is purely for my benefit is just tell girls who are passing by that they're beautiful and they should never forget it. Now if there are any mothers reading you're probably all going "awww" and I wouldn't blame you but I probably do it for more selfish reasons than elating the female population of London's self-esteem.

During these exercises most of the girls either pretend they don't hear me, (or actually don't hear me, but I'm not going to run after them and check if they heard what I said) make a sour lemon face or smile. I prefer the last option. But still I'm not sure what I'm trying to get out of it because if they are going to run away from their boyfriends mid-party and join me at the bar and say "I forgot how beautiful I was" then that's definitely not the kind of girl I would like. It's like when Woody Allen is quoting Groucho Marx in Annie Hall and says "I don't want to belong to any club that will accept people like me as a member." And yes, that's right. I just quoted and quote from a quote...

Still it doesn't stop there! I was brave enough to challenge the theory that A guy can go up to a girl and say "Do you want to buy me a drink?" and it work, as portrayed in many films.

So I approach a woman and say said line and she laughs and shakes her head so I then hit rock bottom claiming to be a relative of Ed Sheeran's. Or Ed himself. And everyone that knows me knows that that is when I'm on my last hope. I got from saying hi, to last hope in around 6 seconds...

Still probably for the best, as then I would probably have to buy her a drink later and she would find out my budget includes living off sausage rolls.

(Smooth Transition Link)

A good friend and I once came to the conclusion that ending relationships were like Trainspotting. The film, not the actual act of trainspotting, with the end of a relationship you're sitting there upset, crying (This isn't me of course...) and begging for that one last text telling you're now-ex that you don't need them and then five minutes later you're back on the phone telling them you miss them and you regret everything. And then saying that you won't need to ever text again and that you should just get one last ride. Just like detoxing. You want that one last hit and if you don't get it then there is no point in living.

Maybe ending relationships would be better if you just locked yourself in a room with two buckets, tinned soup and certain magazines for certain activities.

I am going to leave you with the thing that entertained me the most this week. There was a woman with a labrador puppy trying to go down some escalators, and obviously the dog is terrified. I mean why wouldn't they be they have twice as many limbs on the ground to look out for. So she picks up the dog and puts it on the escalator herself shouting "Come on! You have to learn to do these things for yourself! You can't have other people doing things for you all the time!"

At this point I'm wondering if she knows the purpose of an escalator is to make it so you don't have to walk up or down stairs YOURSELF. Hypocrisy thine name is shouting lady on the tube...