Reed.co.co.uk?

I first mentioned this on Twitter back at the start of the year but it bugs me every time I see the advert on television. I am convinced that at the end of the Reed.co.uk job adverts they jingle they sing says reed.co.co.uk, which makes no sense.

Watch the video below and let me know what you think. I have messaged Reed on Twitter to ask for a response but to no avail but it's just too infuriating to let slide.

I'm sure they say http://t.co/TNtP6Cmtm7... https://t.co/T5XoEnzQNy

— Dan Worth (@danworth) January 4, 2015

The spitefulness of TFL

My girlfriend sometimes calls me a grumpy young man when I begin ranting and raving about my dislike of various things, and perhaps in some ways she's right, but my contempt for TFL often feels entirely vindicated.

Two examples from this week:

At Piccadilly Circus the electronic board proclaimed a train was one minute away. We stood there for at least five minutes before it arrived, and then it was utterly packed and getting on was basically impossible. It took two more trains before I was able to board. Why claim a train is one minute away when it isn't?

This morning, at Leicester Square there was a large poster board at the top of the escalators that said "On June 3 TFL and the British Transport Police conducted ticket inspections of travellers at Leicester Square at found X number of passengers fraudulent tickets and X passengers without tickets. £75 was gathered in fines".

This whole thing is idiotic.

So TFL are proudly warning all travellers through the station that all their checks – which included manpower from the BTP for goodness sake – raised a total of £75! Should they be pleased by this? They're boasting about £75? It's pathetic.

What a shocking waste of time, energy and resources that surely could be applied to more useful, meaningful tasks. The BTP in particular should not be deployed in this way, what a hateful thing to do – is that why people become police officers, to facilitate the fining of travellers on the underground to return £75 in revenue?

Also, what' the point in the board? As a warning to travellers, a deterrent? What for? If people try to skim the system then they will regardless and no fines (a total of £75! ha!) will stop it.

The only people that actually suffer are legitimate travellers impeded on their journey because of stupid ticket checks or who, probably due to genuine reasons of forgetfulness or mistakes, forgot to top up or have the wrong Oyster Card on their person, but are ruthlessly fined merely because TfL can – despite running a service at a level that passes as nothing more than competent.

Strange woman on the train

Strange woman on the train

There's nothing worse than when a four-carriage trains arrives at a station where people are spread out along it expecting an eight-carriage dealy. It sends people, me including, rushing down the platform to squeeze into tightly packed carriages.

On clambering aboard I ended up stood next to a man who was in turn next to a very feisty, hairpinned back to pull her-eye-balls-back woman who acted very oddly at this intrusion. She huffed and sighed, put her bag down, picked it up again, turned around, turned back around again, all the time while having a face like a slapped you know what at the sheer rudeness she no doubt felt our climbing aboard represented.

At the next stop I watched her closely to see how she acted when more eight-carriage good four-carriage bad passengers had been caught short and sure enough when a women climbing on had the misfortune to rub against her and said "excuse me", she immediately said:

"yes excuse you, you didn't need to that"
"do what?"
"The elbows thing!"
"What elbows thing? I said excuse me"

The woman who showed remarkably calmness then pushed on into the crowd and took up residence. The bitter woman continued to stare at her like she was the devil. Moron.

Two stops later a man told another man to "just fuck off will you" because he was apparently pushing in to him. The other man said "I'm sorry, it was just my bag".

It was 8.56am.

London is lovely sometimes.

Sliding doors

One of the best things about Christmas is watching endless films. Repeats, classics, randoms and films you'd watch at no other time than during the lazy festive period. Tonight I watched Sliding Doors with my family post dinner and it was one of the worst films I've ever seen.

Utterly dated with terrible music, clothes, dialogue and acting, but mostly for some horribly dated shoe-horning in of US references to help sell it to the US market (Seinfeld and Jeopardy were mentioned by two otherwise highly British-afied characters), and then the most incorrect out of date reference to a former pop star Gary Glitter:

I'm on the rebound myself in a way.

Who are you on the rebound from?

A girl called Pamela. My whole life pivots around Pam and I breaking up.

When was that?

We were eight.I bloody loved that woman. No warning. Just up... gone. Left me for somebody else.

Who?

Gary Glitter.

Get out.

Gary Glitter, for crying out loud. I mean, all my friends were being left for Donny Osmond or David Cassidy. I could have come to terms with that given time. But Gary. Oh, she wanted to touch him there, yeah.

I mean, surely this bit should have been edited out, seeing as that's sort of what basically happened?

The whole thing was tired, boring and directionless, and a clear example of a clear attempt to cash in on the success of Four Weddings (don't tell me you've never watched Four Weddings - Jeez, Peep Show).

I wonder what's on tomorrow.

Eggscellent

I tried to make an omelette last night and end up with metaphorical egg all over my face. Let me explain.

I had fried some mushrooms and chopped a couple of slices of pepperoni to add in to the dish and everything was ready for the addition of the eggs so I grabbed the egg box and took an egg from the box.

I should clarify that, despite what I am about to tell you, I have made many omelettes in my life, at least 40 I would say, maybe 50, and know how to make them. Yet somehow in the rush and excitement of the frying mushrooms and the egg in my hand my brain let me down.

I cracked the egg on the side of the pan and, at the same moment, said aloud, "Is this how you make an omelette?". The egg splashed and broke across the pan, immediately beginning to fry. "No," I said aloud to no-one, "this is how you make a fried egg".

Man, did I have egg on my…oh wait, I've already made that joke.

For closure nuts out there – I just turned the meal into fried eggs, mushrooms, pepperoni and a handful of chips I had already started making in the oven. Disaster averted!

Snake in the park

London is a mad place. This is well known. It reaches absurd heights sometimes though, taking the sublime and rubbing it in the face of the ridiculous.

Today, a bright, cloudless, vapour trail-less day, a real spring day of the highest order and, like many in the city, I take myself to a park with a sickly, over-marketed cider in tow. Waiting for friends on the corner of the entrance to one of these green areas of the city I see coming towards me a young lad, maybe in his early twenties, carrying a massive python.

Yes, a snake. He'd chosen to visit a London park on a glorious sunny day with his pet python. As you do.

I mean, fair play, but why? Is it even legal to take a snake to a park?

You don't get this on Final Score

Why Sky Sports News' coverage of the goals flying in around the country is the best in the country.



Chris' face is like that of a school boy who didn't mean to do something wrong but inadvertently did while the others laugh a genuine laugh not at him, but with him at the way he has so honestly admitted to missing a key piece of the action.

I've often said football's best moments are the comedy moments. Wonder goals and epic matches are obviously great too but the comedy from a missed open goal, a disastrous own goal, riotous crowd banter and chants and the overall joy of seeing a game that is so often at great pains to justify its own seriousness - the tactics, positioning, players ability to control the ball etc - undermine itself so frequently are often the best moments in the entire game.

Short straws

Last night I caught the last 25 minutes or so of sci-fi flop Armageddon on BBC3 (another great justification for its existence right there). You know the story. Asteroid, Americans, comedy Russian, Liv Tyler, mission to land on asteroid and plant bomb, then leave to detonate bomb, Aerosmith, Bruce Willis, mission fails, one member of team must stay behind on Aerosmith and blow it up, thus dying.

So, we reach this climatic point of this process and the only logical way to choose which member of the crew should do this, and therefore save the entire planet is to draw straws. Of course!

So, instantaneously, we see six straws being proffered to each member of the crew. Where on earth did they find six straws from? And all of different colour. Which forward-thinking planner put that on the shuttle, thinking of all eventualities?

Also, funny to see that some minute before this we see a shard of the asteroid blowing up Paris. I mean, why did the multi-million dollar Hollywood film decide to choose Paris as the one city that should fall foul of the deadly rock? What a pathetic film.

Thirty-nine plot holes

I read The Thirty-Nine steps recently. It was awful. Truly terrible. Full of bizarre, utterly implausible 'as luck would have it' moments and some terribly dull chapters in which Hannay scuffs his shoes about a bit and talks with an accent to give the criminal masterminds the slip.

The bits everyone knows from the film(s) - being chase by a plane, escaping from a train, hanging from Big Ben - never happen in the book. N.B. The plane does exist, but it never chases him, just looks for him - YAWN.

It's interesting though that, with so many adaptations, from stage to screen to small screen (I've seen them all) the story doesn't really exist in any one form. It's open to interpretation. In the book the 39 steps, the actually steps, are just some boring steps from the back of a house to the sea. In one film version they are steps to the clock face inside Westminster Tower while in both Hitchcock's films and the stage version they name refers to an organisation of spies.

So often films are berated for ruining the essence, subtle, characters of a book. However, sometimes the touch of an outside who sees that having a character run to the wilds of Scotland, only to just 'happen' to walk into the ring leader of the entire evil organisations' house, is slightly improbably, and could be easily tidied up by making the hero Hannay have to go to Scotland as part of the story involving the The 39 steps. Buchann simply sends him to Scotland as he has family ties there and it’s a good place to hide. Silly.

On to William Golding's Rites of Passage now, which won the 1980 Booker Prize, so should be better. He comes from Cornwall too, which not a lot of people know.

The dream, it dies.

Okay Marion, concentrate, four years training, you can do this. Focus, remember what coach told you, hit the start hard, get some early speed up, build towards the middle, then fly to the end. Right, here we go, oh.

Very strange

Stood outside Oxford Street tube last night while it was closed due to overcrowding me and the rest of the impotent mass of post-work workers wishing we were elsewhere were subjected to this bizarre message from the Tannoy (okay, Alan, public address system) several times.

"Ladies and Gentlemen, you are being held outside due to overcrowding. Please do not stray from the pavement into the road."

Are we dogs? Have people been found wandering aimlessly in the road before when held outside? Does life lose all meaning for these people when they find the gates shut? Do the hordes of eager tube-travellers back up the steps, and in the confusion, spill out into the road, resulting in mass casualities?

Apparently so.

How refreshing

So there I go, getting you all excited that I might leaving, only to come back. This was something that happened that I felt required committing to the internet's paper.

I went for dinner with a very good friend on Tuesday night. We've known each other for over seven years, gone through the school system, the university lifestyles, the job hunts, and many other things between and come through it as even better friends than before. We make each other laugh, enjoy the same things, discussing books or films, sport, running together, comedy and so forth. You get the idea.

But...at dinner on Tuesday, something happened that scared me. We'd been talking for about an hour, about this and that, our mutual friends, holiday plans for summer, the usual. Then there was a lull, nothing unusual there, happens all the time, perfectly easy silence between friends...only, it seemed to drag on slightly too long, I really couldn't think of a thing to say, and evidently neither could he....I panicked, I thought of something, anything...

"I've got some Polos in my bag," I mumbled, "We can have them afterwards." I winced, wondering why I had said such a banal thing.

My friend though, perhaps sensing he needed to at least feign interest said, "I tried that new Trebor chewing gum the other day."

"Oh yes," I replied, "Any good?"

"Mm, really refreshing!"

There was a pause...I looked at him, and spoke in a hushed voice across the table, "I think we've just hit a conversational low in our friendship." He nodded back and we asked for the bill.

Venetians were blind

I can stand it no more. I can only hold my tongue on this subject for so long until I must proclaim, 'Venetian blinds are rubbish'. There. Who invented them? The Venetians I guess. They work on none of the levels that window implements (i.e. curtains) are supposed too.

One: keeping out light. They fail here by about 237%. The moment the smallest slither of daylight begins to creep in over the Northern Hemisphere it pierces through the Bolton Wanderers defence sized gaps that exist on this ridiculous invention and means my room is flooded with light so that by 5am I am awake. Joyous.

Two: Warmth. They offer no heating insulation either. Where a large, thick, long curtain help keeps any warmth in, and any cold air creeping in through hairline cracks in the windows, if not out, then at least stuck behind the curtain, Venetian Blinds do absolutely nothing except let the airs all mix together and come and go as they please.

Three: Cleanliness. Okay, not as important as the other two but blinds gather dust in a way that curtains can only dream of (if curtains do indeed 1) dream and 2) dream of gathering dust.)

Four: Opening / closing: Unlike the fantastically simple 'drawing' mechanism of curtains, Ventian blinds require this ridiculous twiddling of a long often double-joined pole to open and close them, and then another system to pull them up to let more light in. This involves strings and hooks, loops and pulleys, and yet offers no other advantages over the more simple, traditional, and far superior curtains: (see above).

Muppets

So it's been 40 years of Sesame Street; I can't think of much to say about it really except that I was absolutely terrified of Big Bird when I was a child. I think it's understandable really; this massive, yellow, huge nosed creature peering down at the camera with the slightly gorky, fluish voice saying 'ooh hello children, today's letter is the letter Ttttt' is terrifying. Ho hum.

BNP want BST for all-time.

Nick Griffin has pledged to keep British Summer Time if he is elected PM. Speaking to no-one in particular in an underpass the outspoken Euro-MP allegedly said: “I think I speak for a great number of people when I say I am outraged at the end of British Summer Time on Sunday. It’s another victory for the EU-sympathisers on the loony left. Time is part of what made this country great and by giving away our rights to our, historically pure British Time, it is the white, middle-class people of this country who are the ones to suffer. As they are time and time again. Ha Ha, do you get that?"

In a final flash of inspiration Mr Griffin added, “In fact, if I had my way, I’d rename it Great British Summer Time. Yeah, that'd show them.”

D is for...

Dick Dastardly.

In Wacky Races Dick Dastardly would spend the entire show zooming ahead of the other racers to set elaborate traps. Hilariously these would always back fire leaving him looking foolish and his 'faithful' hound Muttley (great name) laughing at him - until scolded for doing so.

It made no sense. He had the fastest car. If he didn't stop to set needless traps he'd have won ever race by an absolute mile.

A is for...

It could have been aardvarks, it could have been Anne of Cleves, it could even have been Accrington Stanley, but no. My Great Twitter / Blog Crossover experiment (i.e. asking for people to suggest things beginning with A) resulted in anti-protons. So here are some words about a subject I know nothing about:

Anti-protons. Well, actually I am ProProtons. Or just Protons I suppose. I am also in favour of the unit of measurement known as a tonne. So I am Pro-tonne too. But I am no expert on this and so not a Tonne-pro.

Anti-protons are, actually, the opposite of protons. Obviously. If you wish to make them it's quite simple. Like any good journalist, I have taken the following from Wikipedia:

Their formation requires energy equivalent to a temperature of 10 trillion K (10¹³K). At CERN, protons are accelerated in the Proton Synchrotron (PS) to an energy of 26 GeV, and then smashed into an iridium rod. The protons bounce off the iridium nuclei with enough energy for matter to be created. A range of particles and antiparticles are formed, and the anti-protons are separated off using magnets in vacuum.

So you need a hoover, a fire and some iridium nuclei (most hardware stores stock this).

Now, before you go off to look for anti-protons you need to know they are really small. Think of a small bird - smaller than that. A grain of sand. Smaller than that. I mean they are really tiny. But if you stare long enough you'll see them dancing around with their little faces smiling up at you. Cute little things they are. In fact it's a little known piece of trivia but the Smiley Face is the exact anatomical structure of the face of an antiproton.

Perhaps I'll do B tomorrow - so if you want to suggest a topic, comment away...

OMG LOLS!

T-Mobile have recently been vox-popping complete morons on the streets of Britain.

They have been doing this to ask them what they would do with free texts for life. The answers I have heard / seen are 'I'd text all my mates about my DJ night', and, 'I'd throw a huge party and invite all my mates'. My favourite is the person who just says, 'I don't know, it's mind-boggling'.

No it isn't. As my brother said to me, 'nothing of importance has ever been sent by text message. It's always stuff like "see you in 5" or "put it on bbc2".'

Spot on. Furthermore, those answers make no sense. If you've got a DJ night on surely you'd tell your mates anyway? What sort of a friend only texts mates about something as important as that (to him presumably) if he can do so via unlimited free texts for life. Similarly, if you have a party you would never decide on who to invite on the basis of the fact you can text everyone for free. It's a party! Send an email, make a phone call, or just take the 10p text hit.

Meeting with disaster

I have always enjoyed a brief flutter on football. Nothing major, just a pound here or there. I do believe though that something is telling me to give up. Here are some bets I have lost recently.

In April I put a pound on a six way accumulator at 65-1 and with 5 results in the final score was 3-1 to the team I needed to win. There was 25 minutes to play and the other team came back to 3-3. Annoying.

Yesterday I had a four way accumulator at 24 to 1. With three games won, the fourth was one minute from finishing at the result I needed when Bolton equalised in the last minute of time to ruin that one.

Today, and this is the one that has a real air of finality about it, I had a hugely random, gut feeling 50p on United and City to draw 3-3 at 70 to 1. So £35 for 50p stake. This happened.

I've won some other smaller bets of six or seven quid but nothing of note. Winning 30+ is enough to cover tube travel or a weekly shop. You should understand I am not bitter, I am open enough to accept the money was never really mine and I have lost nothing (bar a pound or two) and I know gambling is for mugs, as the above proves, but there are some times when I do wonder if the fates have it in for me.

Or...perhaps they are saving me up for one massive pay day in the future...

If you can make one heap of all your winnings
And risk it on one turn of pitch-and-toss,
And lose, and start again at your beginnings
And never breathe a word about your loss;

Okay so the last line doesn't apply, but Kipling didn't live in the world of blogging and internet gambling.

True stories

It was only after the movie Forest Gump, and the famous saying “Life is like a box of chocolates, you never know what you’re gonna get” that chocolate manufacturers starting putting menu sheets in the boxes, having been alerted to this oversight.

The term Stand-up Comedy has only existed since 1971 when experimental comic JB Wollington (know to his fans as The Wolly) first performed standing up at a gig in Bristol. He was booed off stage within three minutes but the idea caught on. Before then all comedy gigs took place with the audience standing and the comedian sitting down which made Sit-Down Comedy hugely intimidating.