Hooray for BGC!

After last week’s pitiful attempt at a blog entry I have high hopes that this latest instalment will be back to the usual tip-top standards worthy of a Pulitzer. 

Annoying point number one of the last week has been the sodding road works along the A34 which is just making the journey to work sooooooooo much more fun everyday. To be honest the actual waiting in the queue up to the road works is not a great deal of grief but what has me banging my head off the steering wheel in flabbergasted frustration is the petulance and childishness show by my fellow waitees. I’ve really glad that any road works nowadays seem to be accompanied by a series of road signs which instruct the road user to “use both lanes whilst queuing” and then goes further onto say that we should “merge in turn” when we finally get to the start of the single lane. Presumably this should then lead to a situation of great equality as both lands proceed to the bottleneck and relatively identical speeds and it should also prevent great long tailbacks and the concertina effect that these then create. But oh no that would be far too easy would it, no you always get some wiener-dicked lorry driver deciding that everyone in the outside land is ‘pushing in’ and declares it on himself to become the guardian and bouncer of the queue, pulls out to the outside lane and then keeps pace right beside the vehicle that he pulled out from behind. Apart from the fact this goes in perfect contrivance of the road signs, what the hell are they trying to prove other than ‘oh look my lorry is bigger than your car so I can do what I want’ – if they are so frustrated about being behind the wheel of a slow vehicle for 8 hours a day then perhaps they shouldn’t have married their pregnant teenage wives and assigned themselves to a dead end job in the process. And anyway it’s not as if they’re going to get to the transport café for their greasy fry-up any quicker is it?  

The terrible weather we had last weeks causes a power cut to the industrial estate on which I work. Unfortunately for the bloke who had to climb up the pylon but not unfortunately for me this meant at least half a day without power, so like a sickly schoolboy I was sent home for the rest of the day. Now whilst we all know that the phrase ‘working from home’ is possibly the biggest lie ever thought up by any employee ever I would like to state for the record that the following story happened whilst being fully dedicated to my day job, i.e. the phone was on. Anyway I ended up watching that brilliant piece of daytime televisual viewing ‘Cash in the Attic.’ Now the usual thought that goes through my head whenever I do manage to catch this gem is that if they ever came to my house they would basically find ‘Nothing in the Attic’ – well I should qualify that with saying that they would find plenty in the attic, but all of it old shite and not worth a measly penny, unless there’s an untapped market in old army boots, broken picture frames and unfitting clothes. Anyway this week the lovely Lorne Spicer (a close contender for ..and for the lady I must add) was visiting some ex-actor, dancer and showbiz agent’s house. Needless to say for someone who’d spend his working life in around theatre his house was crammed full of things to sell. Mind you nearly every item seemed to be something that he’d ‘obtained’ from the props store on a show or two, but I digress. So anyway the bloke, Lorne and the idiot ‘expert’* rake together a right old collection of lamps, tables, chairs, ornaments etc etc for the auction and merry trot off to the auction house to reap the gains. So as they usually do in this type of program, before each item is sold Lorne introduces it again i.e “now it’s the turn of the stained glass lamp which ‘idiot expert’ was hoping would easily make its suggested price of £100” accompanied by a shot of the aforementioned item in it’s location in the sale room. But obviously this week they were filming in Paul Daniel’s parents auction house as when they introduced the item it was accompanied not only by a shot of the item but also by a cuddly-old-granny type, in twin set and pearls, doing a show girl arms out ‘look what you would win’ type pose. She hadn’t quite got the toothy grin off pat (perhaps she hadn’t got any teeth) but she had got that gymnast/dancer’s pose where they have one foot behind the other at right angles to each other, which was a nice touch.  

(* Being the 'expert' on this type of show must be the easiest job in the world. OK you do have to know enough about your subject to be able to waffle on for 5 minutes but when it comes to the all important valuation it's a piece of cake. Firstly you give a huge range of possible values, so you say something like, "oooh I think something like this will make anywhere between £100 and £450 pounds." and then when it comes to the auction you've got a great chance of hitting the range. But if you don't and the item makes more than the valuation everyone's so chuffed they forget to take the 'expert' to task for cocking up his so-called field of expertise. And if the price is less than the valuation then you simply brush it off with "well the thing here is if you don't get two people who want the item it can fall flat like that." - As Steve Wright might say..........."EASY LIFE!")

Do you know what one of the most bloody annoying things that tabloid newspapers do is? It’s that stupid thing of superimposing heads of the subjects of stories onto other bodies or situations so that they can cleverly proclaim ‘what xxx might look like as a xxx’. They did it recently with golden balls himself, David Beckham, by putting his grinning mug on top of a L.A. Galaxy footballer just so we could picture what he would possibly look like in the football strip worn by players of that club. Now apart from the question of whether seeing good old Becks in a yellow football shirt rather than the white one of Real Madrid warranted the work of several digital processors and some nifty graphics software you really do have to question the contempt that the editors and staff of these illustrious journals hold their readership in. The scary thing is, is that this can only be a short slippery slope until the ‘news’ and stories that they report are completely based on fantasy doctored pictures. Let’s run with this a little, why not, in this week of the Big Brother racism row, show us a picture of Jade Goody ‘as she might look in a KKK gown’? OK I know a lot of this is meant to be done with an element of fun, but I just find it so bloody puerile.

We got a wrong number phone call tonight, luckily it provided a surprise source of entertainment.

"Hello, can I speak to Mr Lloyd?"

"Um, no, no-one called Lloyd here."

"No? Mr Lloyd, Mr Harold Lloyd?"

"Yeah, um no, not here."

The best thing was as the chap on the other end actually said the words 'Mr Harold Lloyd' you could hear it in his voice the realisation that possibly he'd been given a false name and number.

Laugh? Well it made the fish pie go down slightly easier.

Crikey BGC, how many glasses?