by Enormous on April 24, 2009
Audrey and I pass dozens of teenage schoolgirls every morning when we are coming back from our early walk along Mansfield Road near the Common.
It never fails to amaze me how such creatures are allowed to dress for a day of solemn learning in institutions that were – in my day, at least – very sober places.
Standards are too low now; attitudes to learning have become, sadly, frivolous and woefully lax.
The girls we pass daily seem to be on their way to a night out on the town with their thick, sickly-sweet perfume, short skirts and about half a stone of garish make-up; the carefully glamorous way they present themselves clearly announcing gala intentions, not a day of study in the classroom.
My old mum, in her amiable dementia, believes that schools should be done away with entirely and every child should be educated at home by their parents. Bless her.
I think I have the perfect solution, however: simply do away with teenagers.
Tagged as:
Education,
Humour,
School,
Standards,
Teenagers,
The Decline of Western Civilisation
by Enormous on June 11, 2008
A photocopied leaflet was pushed through the letterbox earlier today which informed the reader: Wanted! Unexperienced person who are proffesionel 2 work for local company delivering leaflet’s door 2 door. Experience not nessasery as training will be given. Good rate’s of pay. Salery negotiated. Call ring or telephone 693214. You’re reprisentitive is, KAREN.
I was sorely tempted to call ring or telephone KAREN. The organisation that she reprisents seems impressive – and I certainly are unexperienced.
‘Let’s go for it, Audrey!’ I told my sleeping dog.
She opened one eye and groaned. ‘No, let’s definitely not,’ I’m sure I heard her say.
I was going 2 ignore her and just do it anyway, and then I suddenly had a vision of myself attacking KAREN with a machete, so I came to the decision not to call ring or telephone her after all, at least not in this lifetime, anyway.
Tagged as:
Audrey,
Jobs,
The Decline of Western Civilisation
by Enormous on May 7, 2008
I am now a Freegan.
When Audrey and I were walking past the Co-op car park this morning, I noticed that one of the large, brown bins at the side of the shop was overflowing with some brightly-coloured packets of food. ‘We’ll be having a look at that,’ I told my eager little companion.
To my delight and astonishment, the bin was crammed full of 500g packets of Californian seedless raisins which were all one day past their sell-by date – a minor detail that means nothing to man in my position. A quick glance up and down the street revealed no onlookers so I stuffed four or five of the fat, little packets into my pockets. I couldn’t believe it – free raisins! I love raisins, me, especially Californian seedless ones. I’m going back later for more. (I hope the Polish people of the village have not ventured that way.)
It is such a waste, the amount of perfectly good food that supermarkets simply throw away. And if you consider how many poor and starving people there are in the world, it would not be inexact to describe the situation as obscene.
Anyone want to buy any Californian seedless raisins? Hurry while stocks last!
Tagged as:
Freegan,
The Decline of Western Civilisation
by Enormous on May 5, 2008
I was already in angry bear mode when I woke up this morning but the fact that my next-door-neighbour keeps throwing his empty cans of Foster’s lager on to my back garden made me feel even worse.
I took a moment to gird my loins and stormed round there. I banged on his door ready to murder the moron. ‘Are you mentally ill?’ I asked him.
Apart form a smile without promise, the only reaction I got from him was this: ‘It’s not me, buddy.’ Buddy!
My anger was reaching nuclear meltdown levels; I was ready to explode, to hurt, to maim and kill. To be honest, I was actually looking forward to something else going wrong so that I might vent my spleen further – anything from running out of milk to actual Armageddon would have been welcome.
In an effort to calm down, I took Audrey – who was seething in sympathy under the sofa – for an early lunchtime walk.
We went down by the old colliery railway tracks and explored some of the disused industrial buildings that no one has yet been bothered to demolish. They are fascinating places: derelict warehouses and abandoned depots of crumbling red brick, full of redundant machines, rotting cardboard, broken glass and garlands of twisted steel.
The damp smell of chaos and decay made me feel much better.
Tagged as:
ANGER!,
Annoyances,
Idiots,
Neighbours from Hell,
The Decline of Western Civilisation
by Enormous on April 28, 2008
There is a boy whose photograph is splashed all over the front page of the local paper today who was viciously attacked by a gang of youths at the weekend. He was so badly beaten, his own reflection didn’t recognise him.
His attackers are typical of hundreds of young males around here: ignorant and intolerant – and there are just too many of them. On this occasion, their victim was chosen because he has Tourette’s syndrome, which is like having a large sign on his back that says Hurt Me. And hurt him they did.
I feel so sorry for him because, according to the report in the paper, when he arrived at the casualty department of the local hospital, he was searched by nurses who discovered that he was wearing women’s knickers, a fact that – believe it or not – has now become a focus of the police investigation.
There are just too many unemployed and unintelligent young people in this area. Families are allowed to breed unchecked, to produce too many atavistic offspring. The village is largely populated by uneducated, randy Catholics who should be made to convert to a more sensible religion or at least be taught the benefits of birth control.
To be honest with you, I am surprised that there is enough cider in the Co-op for all of them.
Tagged as:
Crime,
English Village Life,
Idiots,
The Decline of Western Civilisation,
Tolerance
by Enormous on March 14, 2008
by Enormous on October 22, 2007
Once again, the filthy urchins of the parish have outdone themselves.
When they turned up at the house last night, they had not even bothered to dress up in the appropriate Halloween costumes or masks. ‘Trick or treat!’ came the inevitable demand.
They were actually shouting at the window because I was pretending that I wasn’t at home. They must have seen me peeping at them through the net curtains, however, because one of them seemed to be looking me directly in the eye. He had an unfortunate twitch in one of his beady, pig-like peepers that made it look as if he were winking at me. ‘You and I know something they do not,’ he seemed to be intimating.
Then I noticed that one of the group was lying slumped in an old wheelbarrow that the others were obviously pushing around with them as they went from door to door. Deformed and inert, the sight of the little body worried me. I thought that perhaps one of them had suffered some kind of epileptic seizure and had collapsed; and because his fellow beggars did not want him to feel left out, they had bravely elected to carry him around with them for the remainder of the evening whilst they went about their difficult work. I assumed – somewhat romantically, I admit – that they were transporting their fallen comrade around in the makeshift perambulator as a noble gesture of defiance against the rest of the village. Concerned for the welfare of the unfortunate child, I opened the door and pointed at the little body. ‘What is wrong with your friend?’ I asked. ‘Is he all right?’
‘Penny for the Guy!’ one of them blurted out as quickly as his scabby little mouth would allow.
You can imagine my reaction. How I wish I had managed to find someone willing to sell me a Taser: I keep looking.
I fully expect to next week have more young beggars at the door with their badly made Guy Fawkes’s in various shopping trolleys and pushchairs shouting Penny for the Guy! and singing Christmas carols in various awkward, augmented keys.
Tagged as:
Annoyances,
Anti-Social Behaviour,
Halloween,
Kids,
The Decline of Western Civilisation
