liverpool in europe

round at marks last night watching the footie. liverpool in europe. me, mark, carl, john and Souness. Souness is the scouser in our midst so of cause he's come dressed in full wally regalia: red hat, scarf. looking a proper spud when all said and done. it wouldn't have surprised me if he'd bought a rattle the big fucking daft tube that he is. the scousers won 2-0 which gave old gerard hollier something to woggle his beady eyes about in the post match interview.

mark was as miserable as fuck all night long. though to be fair to mark, he's always fucking miserable lately, is mark. looks like he's about to slit his wrists half the fucking time he does. i sometimes wonder about mark. like, what the fuck has he got to be miserable about. heis got his own pad, earns a decent enough wedge working for his brother on the removals and he's knocking off that bakewell from the two conkers. got it fucking made to be fair. so why is he miserable all the time? Alright so he is married, I’ll give him that, but so are a lot of blokes and I don’t see them moping the whole time. i'd try to cheer him up if i could be bothered but i can't so he can fucking stew in it for all i care.

john's irritating everyone telling us about the fight he's got coming up. we know he's got a fight coming up. he's been telling us every 10 minutes for the past fucking 3 months. it's his first fight. unlicensed boxing. he's 34 for fucks sake. it's no age to be pulling on the gloves is it, come on, i mean, most fighters are usually finishing up or making a greedy come-back by that age, not starting out. you can't tell him though. in one ear and out the fucking other with john.

carl's a difficult one to pin down. a bit of a paradox is carl. he's like gullible stupid funny and intelligent man all at the same time. it's almost like his missing bits in certain areas and has too many bits in other areas. a little off balance if you get my drift.

liverpool! liverpool! liverpool! souness is giving it large. all fucking night we have to listen to his bollocks! we're going to win the cup! we're going to win the cup!2-0. big fucking deal. it don't take much to please a scouser when all said and done. anyone would think bill shankly had risen from his grave the way souness was acting. liverpool F.C. ... once the greatest football team in europe, if not the world. now a mediocre, at best, assemblage of twinkle-toes not fit to pass wind let alone a ball. alright, maybe i'm being a bit harsh. i mean. they're still in the top 4-5 in the country. and they're winning this game, but cards on the table. they're not a shadow of the team they were. and now tonight they've got a poxy win in the uefa cup and souness is having delusions of grandeur. the uefa cup's not the respected tounament it once was anyway.

his real name's keith. souness that is. we just call him souness because he looks exactly like early eighties era graham souness. i'm talking 'tache, perm, the lot.

(souness in his prime)



oh well. they're friends ... what can you do?

divorce
the wife wants a divorce. last night she told me
i'm a good for nothing slovenly bastard apparently. her exact words
"well at least i've got my looks love," i told her
went crazy then didn't she. starts throwing things and that. good job john was out seeing her in that state. it'd disturb the little sod
who does she think she is anyway calling me slovenly? she can fucking talk. she should get a gold pen for the amount of years she's been signing on

stuck
i'm stuck on a train
this can't be happening to me
today of all fucking days
this cannot be FUCKING HAPPENING!

i've got a job interview in the city - night-watchman gig - and i'm stuck on this useless fucking tube of metal junk

AAAAAAAAAAAAAARRRRRRRRRRR!!!

fuck! fuck! fuck!

25 minutes i've been down here. i'm writing this on my lap-top by the way in case you were wondering

the driver's rubbing salt in the wounds. who employs these idiots that's what i want to know. every 2 minutes this twat is on the loud-speaker telling us ... we're stuck and will be moving off shortly. we know we're fucking stuck you cretin! these idiots never ceize to fucking amaze me. this bloke, that some brains of britain as deemed responsible enough to drive a train full of people, actually thinks there's other people in the world as fucking stupid as him and his mates. and what does he mean 'we'll be moving off shortly?' i don't know about you but for me shortly is not in fucking twenty five minutes time. fuckit!

this is so bad. if i lose this gig because of these fuckers i'm fucking well suing the lot of them. sorry for the language but fucking hell

uncle norman
i popped round mum and dads last night. uncle norman was there. he's a weird one my mums brother. got a funny way about him. eyes just a little bit too close together for my liking

it’s not just that though. i don't quite know what it is about him to be fair, can't put it into words exactly, it's just a feeling you get when you're in his company, it's like ... the wheel’s spinning but the hamsters dead if you know what I mean?

you won't see him from one month to the next then he'll turn up out of nowhere. open the front door and in he shuffles like charlie babbit from rain-main, straight into the living room where he’ll plonk himself down on the couch and proceed to tell you all about the wonderful adventures he’s having living in dagenham with his dog 'alan'

this'll go on for about half an hour, him not allowing you a word in edgeways, (not that i've anything i want to say to him to be fair though that's hardly the point) then he'll stand up and tell you that he's got to go now cause his bus is coming. how the hell he can see his bus coming through solid brick walls is a fucking mystery to me

i offered him a lift home last night. guess what he says? "no thanks, i'll stick to the bus, save the old legs," then ... before yer can say 'i blame the parents' he's up and shuffling out the door again

how do you deal with people like that?

it's not that he's not welcome at mum and dads though, in fact, i think mum and dad like the company to be fair, it's just, you can't have a two way conversation with the bloke. he just babbles on till his finished then fucks off. and if he’s not talking he’s playing tetris on the gameboy. this one time, mum reckoned she opened the door, he shuffled in playing gameboy, sat down playing gameboy, and left, still playing gameboy. I mean …?

wonder what his score was?

i’m telling yer, he’s one depressing punter my uncle norman. he could bring down a evangelical meeting he could. when you first meet him I wouldn’t put it past you to start watching crime-watch just to see if you could put a wanted poster to the face.

that's not beyond the realms of all possibility either - old norm’ being a mass-murderer and that. he’s definitely got the haircut. a proper charlie manson number if ever i've seen one

old mum and her sisters will be on news at ten banging on about how lovely norman was when he was a kid and all that. then his neighbours will want their say. "he was a bit of a loner was norman, kept himself to himself, but always had a smile ... and he loved his dog 'alan'"

it'll happen i'm telling yer

videos
i'm not happy with keith. apparently he's selling videos of my beating for ten pound a pop. tosser!

happy days
feeling better today. the next door neighbor's keeping a low profile. not surprising as old bill carted him away on friday. got him bang to rights. apparently he's saying it was self defence

it's looking good for me though. Keith from no. 2 got the whole thing on video. 10 minutes of footage apparently, 9 minutes of which i'm lying on the ground taking a good kicking. i tell you, if i'd been awake it would have been a different fucking story. talk about kick a man while he's down.

talking of keith, he sold me a laptop computer for the sole purpose of updating this blog. i can take it anywhere. write anytime anyplace. cost me a ton which brought on my stutter but if you want the best you've gotta be willing to dig deep

hospital
i spent the weekend in hospital. friday night it all kicked off when i went next door to ask them to turn their music down. this big ugly bastard comes to the door, huge and soapy looking, head the size of a wrecking ball perched on two massive, neck-less shoulders. pig-ugly this one was

"do us a favor mate," i says, "could you turn the music down please. if it's not to much trouble like?"

"no!" he says. just like that. then he just stares at me open mouthed. at first i thought he was just admiring my karate suit, which i'd put on before i came out. then, for no apparent reason, he cracks up laughing. starts pointing at me, saying "bonzai daniel son" and "wax off wax on". like i'm bothered. fucking piss taker

"you want to watch your mouth pal," i tells him, because you can't let gorillas like this think your scared of them or they'll just walk all over you. no. you have to get in first. show them you mean business. i'm not a hundred percent sure what happened next. i do know he must have caught me unawares before i could react. playing dirty.

i woke up in the ambulance on route to hospital.

turns out my good neighbor is a kick-boxer. ex light-heavyweight champion of great britain

no respect
the music from next door is worse than ever. it's a disgrace. no respect at all. it's not even good music either. it's shite rap music crap. that's it - i'm going round there

noisy neighbor's
the new next door neighbor's are doing my brain in. playing their music at all hours of the day and night they are. it's a piss take. if this carries on i'm going round there. 2 days i'll give them, then i'm round there to have words. people think they can do what they want. you've got to make a stand or who knows where these things can lead. and if the man of the house wants it he can have it as well. i'm telling yer, he wants to try it on with an orange belt in Shotokan Karate and he can suffer the fucking consequences

i've been doing the old Shotokan for 2 years now as it happens. it's down to my son john to be fair. his friend tony purr had taken it up so of cause john's got to have his slice of the steak and kidney. then again ... if it was good enough for a son of the purrs then it was good enough for a son of yours truly, so me and his mother took him into town and got him kitted out. none of your cheap second-hand shite out of loot neither. no. this was your geniune okinawan regalia. the proper outfit. some of the shite these parents put on there kids is embarrassing. some of em wear bloody tracksuits whilst going in for their belts for fuck sake. how do these parents expect their kids to have any sort of enthusiasm if they're made to wear tracksuits whilst doing their belts. how they can call themselves parents at all is a mystery to me

anyway. midway through his second lesson john decides it's not for him this karate lark. this pisses me off no end. especially after all the trouble i've gone to with kitting him out and that.

personally i've always been a glass is half full sort of bloke so with a bit of prompting from alan the sensai, i decide that i'll have a go myself. i mean how hard can it be know what i mean. anyway i loved it. the suit was a bit tight but i soon got used to that. turns out i was a natural. the stances came natural and before you can say chuck norris i'd done the business and got my red belt. i would have gotten it 3 months earlier but i fucking well fell over in the middle of the grading the first time around. total embarrassment. i've never been a quitter though and 3 months later i got the belt that i so richly deserved which just goes to show you can achieve anything in this life if you put your mind to it

what was i talking about? oh year. The neighbors. like i said i'll give them two days then i'm round there for words

lost my trousers
i woke up this morning in a strange bedroom. can't remember a thing about last night. bedroom's odd. there's hundreds of pictures on the wall of peoples heads. all shapes and sizes. reminded me of the beatles song 'penny lane' with the barber-shop, all the heads he'd had the pleasure to have known and all that

i was wearing my 'pogues' - streams of whiskey t-shirt, which i can't remember putting on yesterday, and my pants and socks. my shoes are over by the door and my coat's hung up nicely but there's no sign of my strides anywhere

i cross to the window, have a look outside. i'm upstairs. looks like a nice residential area to be fair. there's a lorry grumbling down the street, binmen trying to keep up, trying to lug 10 bags at a time so they can get the job done quick and get down the cafe for 7am, day finished. they're throwing bags from all angles, over hedgerows, the roofs of cars, spilling rubbish all over the street and not giving a hugo if truth be told

search everywhere but cant' find my strides so i open the door and shouts down. no answer.

i step out on the landing. open another door. there's a fat man and women in bed together. they must weigh about 20 stone a pop. all the covers were off them so i copped for the lot.

who were these people? more to the point ... what am i doing in their fucking house? and even more to the point that that ... where's my strides?

i leave that room and do a quick search through the rest of the upstairs. i'm feeling a bit out of sorts. another bedroom - nothing in there but more pictures of peoples heads. what the fuck is with this head thing? then a bathroom - containing the smallest bath you ever saw. i can't help thinking of the fat couple on the bed trying squeeze one anothers vast bulks into the tub on bath-night. nearlly puke up right there and then.

trousers? where the fuck are my trousers?

downstairs living room. bog standard tv-and video, fake leather sofa, frayed carpet. the good news is there's not a picture of an head in sight.

just tacky pictures of dogs playing pool

no trousers?

out to the kichen. nothing.

i'm about to give up and make do with wrapping myself in a towel and calling a cab when i catch sight of them through the kitchen window. in the backyard. hanging on the washing line, flapping in the wind. for a second if feel sorry for them. all alone out there in a strange garden. i need a coffee.

i unbolt the backdoor, grab my strides, (they were still a little damp) whip them on, and then i'm away on my toes to the nearest train station which turns out to be upminster on the district line.

upminster? what was i doing in upminster?

upminster was miles from where i lived. in fact. i don't think i'd ever been to upminster before that moment.

i got on the train went home and went to bed