What To Really Not Ask An Interviewee For

        As much as I try, I really can't imagine a worse job to do than to be the guy who tests cat food. Yes, apparently, testing cat food is a thing. What it needs to be tested for is beyond me, but there are people in this country, working for cat food makers, who find themselves lying at every party they attend when that inevitable question is asked. I can't blame them though, I mean, can you really imagine trying to defend it by saying that at least the lunch is free and you can eat on the job? Also, how does someone get that job? Do they apply via an advert or do they try and get promoted to cat food taster? So many unanswered questions! Also, how do you know what cats like? They might want hint of mouse, or whatever the tassels on your dining room rug taste like. Either way, It must be tested, and someone's got to do it. It's the same problem you encounter when something goes wrong on a 1,700ft antenna station. Not at the base of the antenna, where it's all accessible and safe and completely non-vertigo inducing, oh no. Right at the top! Well, this happens. If you don't like heights, you'd better be sending off your CV to Go-Cat!

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Smartasses Bore Us To Tears, But It Pays To Be One Sometimes!

If there’s one thing that winds me up, is those people who love to ruin a perfectly good film by explaining how the far-fetched plot line just couldn’t happen. I mean, that photon blaster would require more energy than a gazillion Hiroshima bombs and, like, really couldn’t fit into that handheld design, and that light sabre would totally not stop like three feet away from that handle. These people are so annoying, it makes you wonder how they have any friends to ruin stories with. I even heard one of these in a cinema while watching The Golden Compass (which, incidentally, was three hours of my life I’ll never get back). Near the end, when the giant bear snuck up on that Russian-looking bloke and turned the tide of the battle (don’t worry if you haven’t seen it, I’ve just saved you from an 8th of a day of utter brain-bleeding boredom), this guy, who sounded like every 80’s teen movie geek stereotype, said “well that wasn’t realistic, surely all those guys behind him would have seen it”. What, realistic like the idea of a giant talking freaking bear walking around and commanding armies?

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The Riots, And The One Large Causal Factor That's Been Overlooked.

I want to start today by telling you about this guy I know. He grew up in one of the poorest areas in Scotland. School clothes were always hand-me-downs, which doesn't always do wonders for someone's self esteem. He didn't get his first bike until age 12, after saving up months of paper-round money as his family simply didn't have the money. TV was simply this pretty box that other people had, a telephone was that thing that you walked down the street to get to, and you gave it 20p to ring your date on. It's something that's somewhat hard to imagine, but those are just the luxuries in life! The idea of the toilet being in the garden as a glorified hole in the ground today would be unimaginable anywhere, but that was the norm for our man. When he had his weekly bath, he didn't pull out the plug, he simply tipped the water out and hung it up in the shed. This wasn't even in between working in the cotton factories in the 1800's, this was the 1970's! So what's he up to today?

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What will you spend 150,000 hours doing? Something fun, I hope?

Sometimes, I've often looked at a mushroom and thought a little too hard about how it came to be sitting on my chopping board. For the moment, we'll overlook why I'd bother thinking about mushrooms instead of simply eating them. What I mean by this, is that they must have been cut by someone from wherever mushrooms grow, and then packaged. It's this person whom I think about. I mean, most people will tell you (while they're still young enough not to be dragged into that realm of scepticism and mis-trust that we call "being grown up") they want to be a fireman/doctor/lawyer/policeman. One of my friends actually wanted to be a bus. No, not a bus driver, or anyone who works on or in a bus. I mean, she wanted to actually be a bus. I know, right? Anyway, that aside, the person who cut my mushroom must've had these dreams about what they'll do as a dream job when they were younger. And now they're cutting mushrooms. What happened to the dream?

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People's dignity: cheaper by the day, it seems.

So there I was, in the queue at a shop in Cambridge to buy a pair of shoes, as you do, and I can see him at the end. He's wearing the kind of cringe-worthy blazer that someone dons when they've just proudly bought a boat, and insist on calling everyone "skipper". He had a straw-woven hat that matched the awful ensemble that he was sporting, and had a John Thompson-esque goatee. His wife was next to him, with that "sun-kissed" skin that could only remind me of a ten year old sofa. I don't like making snap judgements about people I've never met, but I couldn't shift the belief that these two are the kind of folks who are full to the brim of their own pompous opinions, and take great enjoyment in broadcasting them to everyone.



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Stop being so grumpy. It could be worse. For example...

I do love mornings! Not the "getting-up" part, or the "few-grumpy-minutes-before-the-kettle-boils" part obviously, but after then, when I'm wide awake and can find the mental capacity to laugh at everything and everyone. I try not to get annoyed in the morning, especially if I have to commute somewhere. This is for a very good reason, you see. I see every morning the same people getting very and hilariously wound up behind the wheel of their car in the jams. I can even see them shouting abuse at everything before them, which simply means I can insert my own amusing commentary to what they're saying, or give these complete strangers, who I see all the time, their own nicknames. Hey, some of those traffic jams are pretty long, I'll have you know! Anyway, I am always cheery on a long morning drive for a very good reason. I call them "They".

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Well it's results season again!

Firstly, and rather belatedly, I would like to say a massive well done to all those students who whooped for joy upon receiving their A-Level or GCSE results over the past few weeks. I appreciate that, being a few weeks ago that it has already sunk in, and the roaring hangover following the celebratory night out is a hazy memory (rather like the night itself), but I prefer my congratulations to be late than never.

This is an interesting viewpoint, I feel. I am in no way what I would call "old" (I'll avoid quantifying what I call "old" as I'd prefer not to be heckled) but as we climb the winding ladder of age, we tend to become very annoyingly sceptical. As we all know, those young 'uns who got good grades clearly only got them because exams have been getting easier. I mean, they can't have been studying hard as we've all seen them with our very own bespeckled eyes robbing grannies and stealing houses while high on cats, or whatever new drug will end the world this week. Well, I say "seen", I mean "read in the Daily Mail". But it's the same thing, right?

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