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.

Two years ago, I wrote a blog post about having just turned twenty-four. I suggested that my blog posts would probably become a lot more refined and sophisticated as I matured with age; no more fart jokes and sexual innuendo. It seems as if I was completely wrong with this assertion, since my first blog post as a twenty-six year old was a long piece about having sex with scores of bus drivers. I wonder what I’ll be writing about at twenty-seven.

I was walking through Stockton High Street last Friday, looking for KFC where I was meeting some friends. I
was about to ask a person a few metres away which way to go, but I became distracted by a loud voice shouting something further down the street. I listened to hear what he was shouting about. He sounded very passionate about whatever it was and he didn’t seem to be relenting to let anyone respond. As I got closer to the voice, it became clear that this man was preaching. He was preaching the word of Jesus; or at least his interpretation of it. “And the lord said”, the man trumpeted. “I am the way, the truth and the light … seek and you shall find …”

No one seemed to be listening. A few youths passed and hollered insults at him, but no-one seemed to be actually listening.

“I am the way … seek and you shall find!” This was obviously a divine sign. So I did the logical thing and asked the man for directions to KFC.

Sadly, the Jesus man turned out to be a bit of a fraud. He had absolutely no idea where KFC was. “But you said seek and you shall find?” I argued. The man had no come back. It was clear that he had been rumbled. Victory for the atheist!

The great thing about being blind – and it’s not quite enough to recommend it as a life style choice but it is a plus point – is that you can get away with doing things that would ordinarily be socially awkward or unacceptable. You can just pretend you’re unaware of what you’ve done. So for instance, I am able to pretend that I am unaware that I have just interrupted a loud, animated man preaching to people about Jesus in a busy street. I can just saunter towards him and interrupt him in full flow with “excuse me”. And then, when he falters in his impassioned speech and comes to a hault say, “o sorry, were you talking to someone? I didn’t mean to interrupt you, sorry”.

I heard a few people near us laughing. They stopped to listen. They assumed, no doubt, that I had inadvertently interrupted this preacher, rather than it being a deliberate comic conceit.
The small crowd in the street were probably laughing at me as well as the preacher. Little did they know that they were my audience and that I was the comedian and the preacher was my comedic prop.

The man was very nice. He apologised for not knowing the whereabouts of KFC but said that he could direct me to another restaurant if that would help. Presumably this restaurant would have been TGI Fridays. (Ha ha ha!) I said that I needed KFC because that’s where I was meeting my friends. I thanked the man and assured him that I’d be fine; I’d ask someone else for directions; I was confident that I’d get there. “Go now, your faith has saved you” he said. No he didn’t say that, but he might say that in the film version of this blog.

I asked the man if I’d inadvertently interrupted anything important. “You appeared to be talking to someone” I enquired, playing innocent. My audience were lapping this up. There were a few teenagers stood round, laughing heartily at this scene. If only they knew that they were witnessing a deliberate comedic construct. If only the preacher man was a bit funnier and played along a bit more; we could have sold tickets and put on a show.
I was doing my best to entertain, but the man was a bit stilted; hardly developing his character as much as he could have been doing.

“Every Friday we go down the high street and me and a few mates preach the word of god to the people” he explained.
“O well, there’s a number of people all gathered round us now” I responded, “so I’ll let you get on”. The poor preacher man would soon see the crowd move on, now that I – clearly the star attraction and the talented one in this arrangement – had gone. He had been given his chance to impress, and had quite frankly failed. Showbiz is a cruel mistress; he might as well learn that from the get-go. I thanked the man for his time and walked away.

A few metres down the road was another preaching man, only he had a much more aggressive approach and was loudly berating us for walking past him, ignoring what he was saying, just getting on with our lives with no regard for the word of God. I wondered whether I should audition this man and ask him for directions, but at that point my friend shouted me over from across the road. I had made KFC.

About half an hour later, I reached into my pocket to get some money to pay for my meal, and noticed that there was a little booklet in it. It was titled “Your father’s love letter”. A friend read the contents of the letter and it transpired not to be a letter from my father at all, but a note from God telling me that he loved me and that he knew me very intimately – the dirty deity.

How the heck did this letter get in my pocket? I assume it must have been the preacher man, but I didn’t notice him putting it in. I can’t see how I would have missed him doing it; it was my inside coat pocket. But it hadn’t been there before I saw the preacher man, so it must have been him! The man must be an illusionist. He couldn’t do comedy, but he could make things mysteriously appear.

I had rashly dismissed him for his lack of comedic value, but hadn’t considered any other talents that he may be able to lend to the act. I went back to the place where the preacher man had been. I could do the comedy and he could do the tricks. We’d definitely sell tickets. But the man had gone; perhaps even vanished in a puff of smoke in front of a thrilled audience, once he’d made sure that I – clearly the untalented fool who fancied himself as a bit of a comedian – had left. Damn!

Perhaps this blog post is a kind of modern day parable. Perhaps I shouldn’t have been too quick to judge the man. OK so he couldn’t do comedy but he had great potential as an illusionist. Let this be a lesson friends.

I hope that one day, people will read, translate and interpret this blog post in a variety of different ways and then have wars based on the individually interpreted elements of the blog post that they disagree on. If you are reading this and are thinking of having a war, or are in the process of having a war to defend the sacred purity and truth of my blog post, I want you to know that I’m on your side. You’ve got me on your side. Tell all your supporters – your army – that I am on their side. Be warned however: your enemies will be reading this and foolishly interpreting that I am talking to them; that I am on their side. They will be telling their supporters – their army – that they have me on their side. How fickle, how ignorant they are. They’re wrong, of course. You’ve got me on your side, so go out there safe in that knowledge and kill and get killed in my name. Then when you die, you’ll get to the big place in the sky (which has actually had to downsize a bit due to the current economic climate) and you’ll all discover that this blogger who you’ve been fighting for, and got killed for, doesn’t actually exist. That’s right, the whole blog was written by a ghost writer. Ha ha haaaaaa!

The 106th Young’uns Podcast is finaly here.
This is the description for it:

The Young’uns Podcast 106 (The Itch of the Golden Nit)

The Itch of the Golden Nit is a film
produced by
Aardman Animations
(the people behind
Wallace & Gromit)
and is the creation of thousands of UK-based children. The children chose the celebrities that they wanted to feature in the film.
David Walliams,
Catherine Tate
and
Miranda Hart
are just some of the big names starring in the film. But perhaps most tellingly – indicating that this future generation is clearly going to be a much more enlightened lot – the Young’uns were also asked to appear. Of course it was the children who chose us; not some ignorant researcher who assumed that The Young’uns (based purely on the name) were a folk group consisting of children, only to find out the truth a bit too late once we’d signed the contract.

Some people in the folk world may accuse the Young’uns of selling out, ditching mining songs and ballads about ship wrecks for the more commercially viable (and much more lucrative) film soundtrack work. This is of course complete nonsense. How could we have said no to those children? They would be heart broken if their number one celebrity choices snubbed them. Such a disappointment could destroy a whole generation, and could be the root source of future criminality and warfare. So we accepted – for the kids you understand, and for the stability of our planet – and did the song on the film.

For those people who are still not convinced and are crying “sell outs”, take heart in the knowledge that the money we generated from the project went to good causes that folkies in this country will wholeheartedly support: the majority went straight into the real ale industry, namely the real ale tents at folk festivals – and we were happy to hand this money over in person whilst maybe having a couple of samples of each real ale, just to make sure that we were definitely giving to a good cause. The rest of the money went to
Seth Lakeman;
and you can’t say that’s not a good cause.

The song that we sang for this film was about smelly pirates with hairy knees, and we were singing alongside
Vick Reeves
who played the pirate. You can hear anecdotes about our filming experience, plus the song itself. We also speak to the film’s musical composer,
John Brown
who worked with children all over the country to create the songs. Jim Molyneux from the folk group
4Square
played the drums on the smelly pirate song. We’ll be talking to him about the film and about his group 4Square. We also have music from 4Square and another live performance from the Young’uns.

Plus: What do female Morris dancers get up to in toilets?; a live musical performance from a choir who we happened upon in a takeaway; The Young’uns have a new idea for a cover song to add to their set (see what you think), and there’s another report from an Indian restaurant.

Click here to download.
Click here to listen
The above download link is a temporary link and will probably only work for a couple of months, before new podcasts take its place. If the link doesn’t work then you can download the podcast from our archive site
here.

The reason I provide both links is because mobile phones might struggle downloading the archived file. It’s all technical, clever stuff. Nothing for you to worry your pretty little heads about.

You can subscribe to the Young’uns Podcast in Itunes
here
or in Google
here.

Warning, the following blog post contains strong language (in case you hadn’t gathered that by the title.)

Before I start ranting: just a little note to let you know that the 106th Young’uns podcast will definitely be available from the beginning of next week.

And now: my rant.

I set off from my house for work at the usual time. My most loyal readers will be aware of what time that is.
I’m not going to tell the rest of you; you’ll have to trail through my entire blog to find out. That’ll teach you for being a part-time reader.

There is a double set of traffic lights that I have to cross before I get to the bus stop. Today, I reached the traffic lights and went to press the button, but it had been taped over with a big cardboard sign.

For blind people, signs are a bit useless and can actually pose more of a hindrance than a help to us. I’m thinking in particular of those big, self standing signs that say “caution! wet floor!” Firstly, such a sign is completely redundant for someone who can’t see it. But in addition to that, the signs often tend to get in the way of a blind person’s path. I have been walking along a corridor, unaware that there is anything in my way, and then collided with one of these “caution! wet floor!” signs. Once or twice, I have crashed into the sign and have been sent skidding along the wet floor at a much greater speed than I would ever have done if the sign hadn’t have been there. I have skidded across the wet floor with my shoe laces caught on the sign and then ended up face down in a puddle of whatever wet stuff the sign was trying to warn me about.

This particular sign, taped on the traffic light box, may have been explaining that the lights were automated or were not working at all because of the roadworks that were in progress on that road. I was aware of the road works because it had taken me two minutes to cross the road just before the traffic lights which normally would take me a few seconds to cross, meaning I was running a bit late. There was also a lot of loud drilling going on which suggested that there was either a new alfresco dentist who had just set up by the road side, or that there was roadworks. Those are the only two plausible options I can think of, and I challenge you to think of a better one. No, you can’t, can you? Keep reading and leave the advanced detective work to me.

At the bottom of most traffic light boxes there is a little stick that protrudes down. This spins round when the green man appears to alert blind people that it is safe to cross. But that was also blocked by the cardboard sign, so I’d have to determine when it was safe to cross using my own initiative. This was made even more difficult by the loud drilling sound. After a while I decided to chance it and crossed.

Did I make it across the road alive? Well yes, of course I did; I’m writing this blog post after the fact, so what a silly question that was. I couldn’t write this blog post if I was dead; unless I’d decided at the roadside to write this blog post first, then send it to a friend who could publish it in the event that I was killed crossing the road. But surely I’d write something a bit more interesting than this nonsense if I knew it was going to be my last post? Thank goodness I survived, otherwise this blog post would be an embarrassing and very disappointing swan song, hardly in keeping with the amazing legacy I had helped develop up until this point with my previous blog posts. People would be so disappointed. “To think, that he would leave us with such a banal and mundane blog post
as his final parting words to us. This, the same man who once regularly thrilled us with his amusing anecdotes from the 36 bus; this, the man who sang about smelly pirates with hairy knees alongside Vick Reeves; the same man who enthralled us with a detailed exposition of his satnav! … And he leaves us like this?!”

With an enterobang?! where the whole sorry thing started?!

My god, that was some tangent. I’m sorry. I’m not dead. The blog continues.

So, I managed to cross the road without
coming to any harm whatsoever. Glad we established that.

As I reached the other side of the road, I saw my bus overtake me and pull into the bus stop. I started to run, but it had been raining all night and the ground was wet which caused me to slip and skid out of control along the path. What were the council thinking? You’d have thought they’d have had the common sense to put up a wet floor sign! My skidding eventually stopped when I collided into a bush which soaked me and gave me a few complimentary stings too. I quickly regained composure and sprinted the few remaining metres to the bus stop. Fortunately the bus was still at the stop. I was just about to step on the bus, which still had its door open, when the bus pulled away.

I was so close. Surely the bus driver could see my frantic attempts to reach the bus stop? All that effort: dicing with death by crossing a road without the ability to see or hear if there were any cars coming; the frantic sprinting; the skidding, the soaking and the stinging. Despite all my efforts I had missed the bus and would now have to travel miles out of my way and I’d be about an hour late. I was furious that the bus driver hadn’t waited that extra second. There is no doubt that he would have seen me.

I’m not proud of what I did next. I’d like to think I was innately conscientious enough to at least subconsciously check to see that there weren’t any children around before doing what I did, but I was too enraged to care. My immediate reaction to this frustrating situation was to lift my head up to the sky and then shout, at some considerable volume, “fuck! fuck the bus driver! Fuck all bus drivers! Fuck you all!”

Writing about this now makes me feel and sound pathetic, but at the time I was so annoyed at the bus driver and aggrieved by the soaking and stinging I’d received on my frantic sprint, that this outburst seemed justified and reasonable. I don’t know why I chose to tarnish all bus drivers with the same brush just because of this one particular bus driver, but that is just what impulsively burst from my mouth in my state of fury.

As soon as I had made this loud outburst I immediately knew that I’d overreacted. I turned to see whether there was anyone else around, hoping that there wasn’t. I didn’t see anyone, but about thirty seconds later a man came up to me and asked me if I was OK. I wasn’t sure whether he had heard my cursing or not. I said that I was fine and explained about my ordeal. He sympathised with my plight and told me that he certainly would have waited for me if he was the bus driver. He then informed me that he in fact was a bus driver. He would be driving the next bus and was waiting for it to arrive at this stop. It transpired that he’d be the driver of the bus I was about to get on.

I started to feel a little bit uncomfortable. Had this bus driver heard my “fuck all bus drivers” comment, and then came over to me and initiated conversation as a result. Perhaps he was trying to prove that not all bus drivers were bastards, disserving of being “fucked”. Or maybe he was setting the groundwork for some sweet revenge: he would lull me into a false sense of security by being all matey and sympathetic with me, only for his bus to arrive and for him to dash on it, quickly close the door and speed off down the street, laughing evilly as I stand on the road side having been tricked by yet another cruel bastard of a bus driver.

Or maybe he heard me shout “fuck all bus drivers!” and thought that this proclamation was a sexual pledge. Perhaps when he heard my declaration, he thought: “o, that’s interesting. This man obviously finds bus drivers so incredibly sexually alluring that he has an overpowering urge to fuck us all. It’s obviously a very overpowering urge because he’s more than happy to shout out his desire in public, despite the fact that there might be children around to hear. Hmm. I suppose I do quite fancy him, to be honest. But I’m not sure that I really want to be having sex with a man who has subsequently had sex with scores of other bus drivers before me. I’d feel dirty and used. If he’s going to try and have sex with me at some point in my life anyway, then I might as well get in their first while he’s still a bit fresh. Plus, there’s less chance of getting a sexually transmitted disease if I do it now, and at least I wouldn’t feel as disgusted by the act. I better go and introduce myself then.”

I’m sure you can understand why I was getting nervous.

The conversation was polite. He didn’t seem as if he was aroused in anyway. But maybe he was expecting me to make the first move. After all, it had been me who’d made the bold declaration. He might have been confused that I’d suddenly got all shy after my initial boldness. He might even be feeling rejected. Perhaps I should have sex with him, just in case. I wouldn’t want him thinking that I’d made a pledge to universally “fuck all bus drivers”, but had found this particular bus driver so sexually unappealing that I’d decided to make him an exception to this rule. How do I get myself into these situations?

Just as I was considering my next move, the bus pulled up. We both got on the bus. Then he said to me, “stay on the bottom and sit at the front and I’ll tell you when to get off”. O dear! Well that confirmed it. He’s deffinitely after sex!

There’ll be some of you out there reading this, not as streetwise as me, who’ll naively assume that this was an innocent comment. “The bus was a double Decker. If you sat at
the front of the bus on the bottom deck then the driver would be able to tell you when to get off at your stop. Surely that’s all it could mean David?” You poor, naive fool. It was obvious what this bus driver was insinuating. “stay on the bottom” is an obvious sexual reference; he is stating a sexual position and is obviously requesting that I am the giver in this situation. Then there’s his comment, “sit at the front”. ok, granted,these two statements seem to counteract each other. How can I stay on the bottom and sit at the front at the same time? “So surely that means that he was definitely simply suggesting that you sit on the bottom deck of the bus, at the front. Surely?” O you poor, innocent fool. I dread to think how many bus drivers you’ve let take advantage of you. He was obviously just so excited that he wasn’t thinking straight (in both senses of the word), and in his sexually aroused state he just blurted something out. That’s the only obvious explanation to his statement.

Plus, there’s that other statement: “and I’ll tell you when to get off”. Again, that’s an obvious sexual suggesttion. Even if I had felt sexually inclined towards this particular bus driver, he had ruined any chances of me and him having sex. It was clear that he was a selfish lover and evidently liked to be the dominating partner; telling me what he wanted, with no consideration of how I might feel about it. Also, i thought this was a bit presumptuous on his part. Since I’d been the one who made the bold statement “fuck all bus drivers”, surely I should be seen as the person in the position to call the shots here, to stipulate how, where and when I want my bus drivers. He’s got no right to assume that he’s suddenly running the show. He’s not the ring leader, I am (and yes, you could interpret that as another sexual pun, if that’ll make you happier).

So the driver ruined whatever small chance he might have had with me. And of course, I sat on the top, right at the back. And I’m talking about my position on the bus. Obviously. Seriously, I can’t believe the way your minds work sometimes.

Due to the overwhelming surge of popularity for
the Young’uns
following our epic televisual debut, we’ve decided to sign up to Twitter – give them some extra business. I’ve personally not done anything on their yet and perhaps never will, since apparently you have a limit of 140 characters per post which (as regular readers of my blog will understand) might prove a bit of a challenge for me. I will however – should you send an email to webmaster@theyounguns.co.uk – be only too happy to continue to reply in a needlessly lengthy fashion which you won’t even bother reading because of the fact that your intimidated by the unnecessary length of the thing, but primarily because you were hoping for a response from either Mike or Sean. Well now you know that if you want a reasonably concise reply to your message without the risk of me getting in touch with you, then you should use the Twitter option. Although, I would appreciate the occasional email from a real human as it will come as a welcome break from the usual spam mail that we get on the Young’uns account.

It can be a bit disconcerting when the Young’uns mail account gets spam, especially when you get emails saying, “sexually satisfy your woman with this proven technique”. Baring in mind that all three of us get this email, the inference is that the Young’uns share the same woman and that all three of us are attempting to satisfy her sexually. Perhaps even at the same time. There’s no knowing what the dirty spam bots are thinking (and that’s actually what they’re called: spam bots. That’s not a euphemism or an affectionate name I have for them).

I am ignoring the spam about penis extensions that go into my personal mail account in the hope that perhaps we can get a three for the price of two deal if the Young’uns get their penises extended at the same time. But I hope they’re not expecting the three of us to share the same penis, because that’s not going to happen. Unless it’s detachable, in which case I might consider it. You’ve got to think frugally in this economic climate.

Anyway, the upshot of all that was that The Young’uns are on Twitter. We’re called theyoungunstrio.

In other news, I’ve finally done a deal with the robots and the Young’uns Podcast is now actually a podcast.You can subscribe to the podcast here:
in ITunes”
Or with Google

The 106th Young’uns Podcast will arrive this week.