A car. An interstate. Rain. Thunderstorms. Hail. Fear.

The ingredients for a intriguing tale feel the need to recount to you good people in sunny (and somewhat safer England). The elements of a story that I would like to say had never happened, or that I made up or even a story that happened to someone else (yes, I did just say that). Wow I hear you say, sounds like exciting stuff. We all know Simon to be a manly man, what could have him talking this way? We all know he never exaggerates about anything. Well, if you care to read on I will tell you.

A car. An interstate. Rain. Thunderstorms. Hair. Fear.... A tornado. Aha. I have you attention. Are you sitting comfortably? Then I will begin...

A sunny 85 degree day. What could be better? A beer on the porch, a spring in my step, a lovely woman next to me and a delightful trip to see Rachel’s family on the horizon. Well I’ll tell you what could be better. A sunny 85 degree day that doesn’t implode into a storm. More specifically, one that doesn’t implode into a storm when you’re 15 minutes into a two hour car journey.

It starts (innocently enough) with rain. Actually it starts with the most wildly optimistic and churlishly fateful observation of all time, ‘Oh no, I hope that’s not rain’ but that’s as maybe. Pitter patter pitter patter on the windscreen. Lovely. Or so I though. It turns out that just like everything else, Americans don’t do weather by half either. They apply their usual seamless logic. Shall we just make regular 12 inch pizzas? Hell no, lets make the new 21 inch deluxe edition. Shall we be like the rest of the world and use normal sized popcorn boxes at the theater? Fuck no, last time I checked this was America - let’s use a skip for our popcorn and smother it in butter. Can we make do with a small sprinkling of rain? God no, let’s scare the shit out of Simon.

The rain starts to get harder. Hmm I think to myself. Isn’t the gentle pitter patter getting out of control? Isn’t it getting a little loud for rain, the once delightful pitter patter turning into an ominous drumming? And hasn’t it got dark all of a sudden? Where did those clouds come from and why are they so black? My musings were answer by a blinding light and a clap, no, a roar, no, an explosion of thunder. The drumming of the rain, the blinding zap of the lightning, the roar of thunder are, to be honest beginning to concern me. D-rum, d-rum, zzzap, zzzap, roar, roar, BANG.

Holy Shit. I nearly knocked myself on the roof I jumped so hard. When I pull myself together I think logically. There are no canons in the back seat and I haven’t recently bought any illegal fireworks. In fact, there’s nothing in the back seat except a man called John. A good man, but man who looks as mystified as me.

Hail. Giant golf ball size hail is now plummeting from the heavens and dropping onto the top of our car, a few inches above me noggin’. Bastards. We’re only 1 mile from our exit so we try to carry on, slowly now, inching our way along. And yet (and I still find this hard to believe) the hail starts to get bigger. Giant lumps solid ice the size of tennis balls (yes, clench your fist to see the size and imagine my terror) are slamming onto the car, the windscreen and sunroof. We pull over for good now, parked on the side of the road, 30 feet behind a giant semi. Nice, I think to myself. The lightning is sure to hit that before us, not only is it taller but I decided right then that the trucker was bound to be a worse person than me and if anyone was supposed to be char-chilled it was bound to be him. But wait, where did he go? In less that a minute a thick white fog had entirely enveloped us and has reduced visibility to zero. Actually zero, well, I’m having trouble seeing the lines on the middle of the road. Oh god. We are so tiny and the world is so big. On the interstate there is nothing until the horizon and I can assure you that the sky is a lot bigger when there’s nothing to protect you.

So let me recap. I think this far the story fails to convey the pure doomfulness of the situation. We’re sitting stationary on the side of an unsheltered road, where giant semis are still flying by, driving blindly and missing by quite literally by inches. We have zero visibility, save for the constant, and it really did seem constant flashes of purpleish lightning, roaring thunder which hit a level of decibels that I'm pretty sure is usually saved for the apocalypse, pounding, painfully large hail like I have never seen before battering our car and threatening to shatter the windscreen directly into my face and I can’t tell anyone quite how wrong this is as no one can hear me. At that point it seemed like the car was the entire world, and the world was suddenly not a desirable place to be in.

Now, the more beady eyed of you will notice that as yet I haven’t mentioned the wind. How bizarre. At some points it was getting up to 55mph, pushing the car about, rocking it. But right now, it was still. Calm. Eerily calm. Interesting...

I would like to take this moment share some wisdom with you. To give you a little piece of genius that I had to learn the hard way but I want to give you out of the goodness of my heart. I am going to assure you of something that I think you will all need to know at some point in your life. If you are stuck in the worst storm of your life in a car that feels like it could be crushed at any time, the last, and I mean the very last, bottom of the barrel, rather go deaf that have to listen to thing is a blaring siren to come screaming out over the radio and an official sounding man to use the words tornado and overhead in the same sentence. And if that were to happen, you wouldn’t want to be on top of a large, high flyover bridge type thing, one for example like the one that we had crawled onto in the last few minutes.

When was the last time you were scared? Really scared. Not just a little wary but in the very true sense of the word terrified. Maybe the last time you watched a scary film. But then you could always turn it off and lock the doors. Having to walk home in the dark after the LCR? This was the first time in many years that I was truly afraid. I can not remember the last time I felt a fear that was truly unescapable. When there’s no where to hide and nowhere to run a warm bed with covers you can pull way over you head seem not only miles, but literally ages away.

Of course, things always seem to work out. Fog lifts. Hail stops. Rain fades away. Clouds lift. We take the car back to Rachel’s house and slowly climb out, stunned and shaken and stiff. For the last hour I’ve been tense, and holding my breath it seems. The car, that’s another story. It honestly looks like a mad man has taken a baseball bat to it. Rachel’s dad is currently waiting for the insurance company to write off the car, there is not a panel on the entire truck that has not been dented or chipped. The truck’s fucked, the world is flooded and a little part of me has died a slowly death, but I am home and that’s got to count for something surely.

Safe. Home. Happy. And nothing could ever convince me to leave. And yet there I was getting back into the car. I’m not going to lie to you. I was not best pleased and it was with a slight sense of reservation, and a perverse sense of logic that we set back out. Yes, you heard me. I left the house that I spent the last two hours praying I would ever get too. Now I’m not a freak. The rain had passed since earlier. The storm had gone overhead and the world seems a little friendlier. But dinner beckoned you see, and with all the stress I’d built up a bit of an appetite. However, the weather was not my friend that evening. Fuck it, I think it’s fair to say that since that evening me and all that meteorological hoo haa hate each other deeply. If I could kill the weather I could. I feel like it had a good crack at me anyway. But I digress. My point was that by the time we finished dinner the rain was as bad as it had ever been. But this time it was dark. Bollocks.

One more journey to go. Just one ten minute journey to go. Six hundred seconds drive along the back streets and I’ll be safe for another evening. And so we start. And so we pray. And yet God is particularly merciless this day and decides that he hasn’t sent enough of this finest invention this day. Hail. This is too much for us. It’s make or break time. It’s five minutes to Rachel’s home or there’s one last house immediately in front of us. I think we all know what to do. Within 20 seconds we’ve parked, got out the car, waded across the new lake that has accumulated in this stranger’s garden and crowded into his front room. Which is lovely but it’s only putting off the enevitible. Eventually we have to get back in that car and drive in the dark along the back roads, in rain, hail with a tornado warning still in the exact area we’re in... At this point, saying no to strangers possible seems like the stupidest thing my mother ever taught me.

I survived. Clearly I survived. But when I found out that I’d been in the back end of a tornado I did almost have a cardiac arrest. There were apparently many tornadoes up in the air, directly above us but they didn’t touch down. The one that did touch down was thankfully a few miles away. Yes miles. And the people around us seemed glad. What the fuck?! I’d be pissed off if it was one hundred miles away but there we are. The crazy ass Yanks strike again.

I’d imagine if you’d been through this, you wouldn’t want to get back in the car for a six hour round trip tomorrow.

WHEN GOOD LOCKS GO BAD
also known as the day the doorways disappeared
A.K.A ‘Screw you Mr. Door’

Just how many bad decisions can you make in 30 seconds? How many of those bad decisions turn will turn from unfortunate choices into full blown mistakes? I don’t think I even want to know how many of those mistakes will come back to bite me in in the ass, or exactly how unforgiving they turn out to be. Of course in the real world you don’t get a choice. You find out whether you want to or not.

For example, consider this sentence:

I get back from the store, take off my coat, jumper and hat and chuck them all on the sofa, shutting and locking the door behind me, before slipping on the safety chain. Then I take off my shoes and put on my slippers, but instead of sitting on the chair to watch T.V I suddenly decide to do a little housework. More specifically I decide to take out the trash. Without putting my coat back on or slipping my phone into my pocket as I usually do (this whole ‘trash taking out’ thing usually only takes 30 seconds) I grab the trash bag and head out the back door, of course, locking it behind me.

Now, that might seem like a normal enough situation but somehow it leads to a much less than everyday scenario. In fact, believe it or not that simple course of action actually contains 13 mistakes. Yes 13. And trust me, that was seriously unlucky for me. So where was I? That’s right, after lugging the trash (apologies to the English - I of course mean rubbish) to the wheelie bins out the back, I jog back in the back porch, to the warm, fish out my keys and slide them into the lock. I begin to turn. Twist, twist, twist, crack. Hmm, not a great noise. Somehow the key has turned but the lock hasn’t opened, the key seems to have slipped around without pleasing the key genie or turning the pins or doing whatever else it needs to do to make the lock work. If truth be told I couldn’t care less, so long as I can get in my house. Except right now I can’t. Hmm. I take out the key and try again. Crack. Same thing. Stupid freaking key. I take it out, look at it to see if i can work out what's wrong, realise that i know less than nothing about locks and key things but decide to rub it with my sleeve anyway so i don't feel completely inadequate. I try again. CRACK! Same thing. . Well I don’t worry about it too much. I nip out of the porch into the cold, wearing nothing but my fetching Scrabble™ themed T-Shirt, and mosey on over to the front door, again jogging so I can get out of the cold. This is bound to go better than the last time I tried to open a door. And yes it did. Technically. Well the lock worked at any rate. I confidently open the door with a powerful stride in order to get into the warm. But the door stops. Stops dead in it tracks. Alarming, but at this split second in time I’m more concerned that I don’t seem to be stopping at all. In fact my momentum carries me on at quite a rate - my outstretched arm perched on the doorknob starts to bend, my torso starts to fall forward and before I can stop myself, my face stops me by introducing itself to the wooden panel on the door. OUCH. Or should I say OUCH and FUCK. I left the fucking key chain on the inside of the door. That’s not good. I also look like a dickhead to everybody that saw me on the street. That’s really not good. So let me recap. At present I’m locked out, in the Chicago winter cold, in nothing but a T-Shirt with a chained up front door and a bum lock on the back one.

MISTAKES 1 - 8
I get back from the store, take off my coat (1), jumper(2) and hat(3) and chuck them all on the sofa, shutting and locking the door behind me, before slipping on the safety chain(4). Then I take off my shoes and (5) so I could put on my slippers(6) [and]… I suddenly decided to take out the trash(7)
. . . . .
I grab the trash bag and head out the back door, of course, locking it behind me(8).

So what’s the plan? Try the back lock again I guess. I run through the cold to the porch but i've already got that familiar snking feeling in my stromach, and despite the frezing cold outside i'm beginning to sweat. Cold, dread sweats. I slip the key back into the dodgy lock. Twist, turn, twist, JAM. Hmm. Now, not only will it not turn but now it won’t come out either. So what do I do? aLet me jiggle it a little. Jiggle, jiggle, SNAP.

FUCK.

DOUBLE FUCK.

I’m not really sure what to do now. I’m pretty much completely locked out. Half a key ignoring the laws of physics so it can piss me of by getting impossibly jammed in the back lock, and a burglar proof key chain stopping me getting in past the front lock. So really what can I do? I guess I ring someone.

Mistake number 9
[And without] slipping my phone into my pocket as I usually do (9)

Crap. This isn’t good. I haven’t actually seen one but I guess I’ll have to try to find a payphone to ring someone.

Mistake numbers 10 - 12
Without putting my coat back on… (10-12)
- - > READ - without putting my coat on which contains all my money,
the bills(10),
the coins(11),
my credit and debit cards(12),
not to mention the possibility of any warmth.

Well this sucks. I guess Rachel will be back soon and she’ll be able to help. Actually wait, no she won’t. Her keys won’t help now either. Well I guess at least she’ll be able to ring someone, maybe even a locksmith at this rate. Oh wait, no she won’t. She’s not at work today. In fact she’s in another state - in Milwaukee Wisconsin on a business trip for work for the whole week.

Well I’m not a panicker but things really don’t seem to be going my way. I’m stuck outside with nowhere to go for a couple of days, in 31 degree temperatures (no not Celsius - Fahrenheit which incidentally is minus numbers in Celsius) in the middle of Chicago, with no money, wearing nothing but a T-Shirt (well and slackpants of course, i'm not a complete pervert) as it starts to get dark. Oh I and I can’t even stay at friends as I have to get in by tomorrow to get everything I need for my immigration appointment with the U.S. Govevernment. So what do I do? I guess the only thing to do is to work on the chain blocking the door. It’s much to solid to break (obviously) but I can open the door a few inches and I can claw about inside to see what I can do. Aha. Two screws hold it in place. If I can only undo them I’ll be back indoors. However, the only thing I have on me is my keys and a tissue. My keys don’t fit in the screws. The tissue doesn’t work as a screwdriver. Do I have any coins on me at all? No. Even my lucky coin I always have in my little comedy pocket on my jeans? No. Not very fucking lucky then is it? I start to look about on the pavement for coins. No luck. I start to look on the pavement for screwdrivers. No luck there either. I even knock on the neighbours’ doors to see if they have a screwdriver. No answer. No good but there’s one more person I can ask. Well more accurately one more group of people. That bunch or burly Mexican removal men who seem to be talking in Spanish and whether or not it’s my imagination giving of extreme fuck off vibes. I decide to use the English card. Putting on my best quintessentially befuddled British accent I plead with them for a screwdriver. As it turns out there was no need for pleading. After a few seconds of me nervously waiting around as they converse in Spanish they decide to go and get me a screwdriver. Apparently. I say that because after ten minutes of me freezing my testicles off they still haven’t come back out. Hey I’ll cut a very long story short. Eventually whoever they are moving comes out and after a pleasant exchange he does give me a screwdriver, and the necessary chat about where in England I’m from etc. Incidentally he’s from Pennsylvania, has an office his London and my new neighbour is in fact called Mary who would invite me in for tea except “it’s a bit of a mess at the moment what with the moving in”. Lovely people.
But I digress. The important thing is I have the screwdriver. I run back to the door and begin.

I don’t know if you have any idea how hard it is to do what I’m about to do, or why you would you ever need to know how hard it is but I’m going to try to explain. I was attempting to unscrew a security chain which is designed specifically to make it hard to unscrew so that burglars can’t get in, by removing screws which feel like they had been put in by a man with the strength of an ox on muscle gainers. Oh, and did I mention that the ’ox man’ was using an industrial strength screw insertion device? Yeah, well he was. Oh and then he varnished over the screws, before using the fiers of Hades to dry and engrain the varnish on.. I forgot to mention that. Also, I was attempting to do the aforementioned screwing (or maybe anti-screwing) with a screwdriver that was much too long so I couldn’t get the proper control of the instrument or the proper purchase on the handle. Oh, and the door only opens two inches wide and during all this the cat is jumping up at me and rubbing it’s head against my hands threatening to knock it out of my hands. And I don’t even want to think about having to go back the Mexican men empty handed (although as it turns out later they were actually very nice.)
But there we are. Eventually I get the screws out. Job done right?

Maybe.

The end of the chain is still attached to the wall. Oh shit. The screws are out now, shouldn’t the chain be in a heap in the floor, defeated, feeling very sorry it itself, and frankly quite ashamed that it couldn’t do the one thing that it was designed specifically to do - keep people out? I’m just praying that it’s not glued to the wall as well. I don’t know what to do if it is. I grab the chain. Its all or nothing time. I kneel on the floor ready to push the chain in three,
Two,
One,
Crash….
So where do I find myself now? There is a chance that I find myself flat on the floor, as the door flings open and I fall on my face, chain in hand, feeling slightly silly. But I’m in. Thank goodness I’m in. And I never want to leave again. I do of course to hand back the screwdriver, thank the new neighbours profusely and kick the back door heartily to make myself feel better but I may never again.

So there we have it. That’s the story of the day the locks went bad - and my thirteen mistakes.

What do you mean there’s only twelve. Oh, the thirteenth? It’s like you don’t even know me…

Then, instead of sitting on the chair to watch T.V I decide to do a little housework (13).

But don’t worry. I’ve learnt my lesson.

THIS IS A LETTER I SENT TO THE PEOPLE CURRENTLY LIVING AT FLAT 10, COURTYAND A, ROOM A THE VILLAGE (WHICH FOR THOSE OF YOU THAT GDON'T KNOW IS MY OLD ROOM AT UNIVERSITY). I DO NOT KNOW WHO THEY ARE OR WHAT THEY DO, BUT I DO KNOW THAT THEY DID NOT REPLY, AND I THINK THAT THAT IS PRETTY RUDE

51 Swansea Road
Norwich
Norfolk
NR2 3HU

07779 602081
thelardfather@hotmail.com





To Whom It May Concern (well, the occupier of Courtyard A, Flat 10, Room A to be specific),

To begin with let me apologise for the rather odd nature of this letter and let me assure you that I will not try to contact you again if I do not hear back from you.


The reason I am writing to you is because of a bet. Well, I guess in fact the bet comes later, let me instead start at the beginning. With a towel.

Yes, the true origin to this letter lies years ago in the mists of time, way back in the day when I myself was an eager eyed fresher living in the very room you inhabit now.
As you are no doubt aware by now, doing laundry is one of more arduous of tasks that a student ever has to do (probably coming only second to dragging your lasy ass out of bed to put the kettle on for your pot noodle). Personally, I used to put it off as long as I could, or to be honest not do it at all. And so I didn’t and for weeks the laundry piled up. What’s a man to do? The obvious answer to me seemed to be to lug a whole suitcase of washing back down home to Brighton and get your dad to do it for you. And so I did, and it got washed and it smelt fresh like meadows and it looked like I had cheated the system yet again.

Except I hadn’t. I arrived back to halls and dumped my stuff in the corridor, and went to my room. I opened the door and was greeted by a rather unpleasant odour. Well no that wasn’t quite what happened. More truthfully I walked in to a room that stank of mouldy and rancid towel. Even more truthfully I was viscously smacked in the face by a violently heinous stench that made me retch and gag until I thought I was going to pass out. Simply put, my whole room smelt like a sack full of lumpy sheep shit.

The towel.

Yes, I bet you were wondering when the towel was going to come into the picture.

I had made the rookie mistake of leaving my towel in the bathroom when I had gone home for the week and it had now stunk out the room to high heaven. Curled up in the corner, damp and festering it had begun to do almost decompose in a putrid vile heap of cheaply made goo. There was only one thing for it. Braving the fumes I rushed in, flung open the window and threw the towel out with all my might, thinking (somewhat naively) that that would be the last I ever saw of it. The evil disgusting towel that had been so cruel to me, and had caused me to classed as the laughing stock of flat 10 (until a few days later my flatmate blew up the microwave.) I truly thought, or perhaps wished, that that would be the end of it all; the mocking, the name calling, the fact that I was now the skank of the hosue. But alas it was not to be the case.

Fate was weaving its towel based web…

October came and passed, I worked a little, ate a lot, slept even more, and had a generally good time being a fresher. I avoided the Fiveways pub like the plague, worshipped the convenience of the 24 hour Tesco garage (though back in those days it was a BP) and learned to love the L.C.R. What great days they were, and if I were you I’d love every minute of them, you’ll never have as much fun at university again, but back to the story at hand.

November flew by and before I knew it winter was well and truly upon us. The snow was falling heavily, the chill was in the air and most importantly the leaves had now all fallen off the tree.

One day near the end of November, as I was working at my desk (or should I say worked at putting off work – not dissimilar to what I’m doing by writing you this letter) something caught my eye outside. I tried to continue to work, check emails, read, have a conversation, watch porn, but it was no use. It was still there flashing my peripheral vision. A purple something wrapped somehow around the tree, impossibly caught, snagged in its branches. Something blowing in the wind, weighing down the branch just in my field of vision, teasing me, begging me to look. But I didn’t want to. I already knew what it was. I slowly turned, if only to confirm what I already knew in my heart.

Surely it couldn’t be.

It was.

It was my towel.

This was two years ago. And that was the story of the towel. Now, why do I tell you? Well, because this story (like most good stories) has worked itself into the stuff of folklore. Maybe to the point, that folklore (like all good folklore) has worked it’s way into a bet.

Last year, we checked from the roadside and saw the towel was still there. This year, the trees are too bushy and we couldn’t see whether it is still somehow managing to stay up in the tree, defiance of the wind and the rain and the local inbreds. It has been two years since the towel was thrown in the tree and the bet is now more fierce than ever. WHERE IS IT NOW?

Some say the towel must be long gone. Some say it’s still there. This is a dispute that we simply must settle.

I, nay, we ask you to check and see if the towel is still there. Just outside your window to the left, caught on the large branch that Jerry the Squirrel (or whatever you’ve named the resident squirrel) runs up and down as he collects his nuts and acorns and other squirrel tit bits and treats for winter. If you could please let me know by any of the means given above (phone, email or post) we would be very grateful, and if you weren’t too scared to meet us (which I probably would be if all I had to go on was this letter as you do) we’d buy you a pint, or a pint of whatever your favourite tipple is.

I send you this in the greatest of hope,

Yours truly,

Simon Baker

On behalf of myself, of Jamie Ayliffe and the residents of flat 10 and to a lesser extent flat 9.

P.S To prove I did once live there, if the police gave you one of those annoying purple light thingies to check the invisible pens with which you write your details on electronic goods in case they get stolen, check the bathroom door when it’s dark. I left you a note : )

27.01.06 1.21 AM

Hi guys. I have an interesting predicament which i would greatly appreciate your help with. The story begins innocently enough in a local campus store with a make shift sign saying 'play our lottery or we will lose it'. Well, when some one asks you for help, my mother always taught me to do what you can. After emptying out my pockets i have a little over four pounds. I go in and purchase four scratch cards (i'm a busy man, i don't have time to wait for the daddy lotto) and a pack of softmints for lunch (it's now all i can afford.)

One boring lecture later (in which i learnt about the ominously sounding case - The Italian Banana Affair) i manage to convince Dave to buy me a pint, so we go off to the pub and i set about the serious task of scratching off the tickets, and most likely turning the once promising cards into small rectangles of paper trash. The first card gives me nothing. No surprise there. I begin to wonder if this was really such a good plan. However, my faith is restored when i win 4 squid on the next one. Now whatever happens i haven't lost anything, and how silly do i feel for doubting the world. I feel even more like a tit when over the course of the next two cards i win 13 more of your English pounds. That's seventeen in total. Good form if you ask me, and for an instant i'm quite excited, until it's the next round, then the next and the lottery gets forgotten entirely.

The tickets lay untouched on my floor for about a week when as i tidy up (much to the delight of my flat mates, who i think may have even bought champagne to celebrate the occasion) i come across the tickets. Now to me it seems obvious what i should do with them. This is not only seventeen pounds that i shouldn't really even have but it's seventeen pounds i'd forgotten about. Let me surmise. If i keep these seventeen pounds I'll be living on borrowed money. The shop still needs business. I can't be bothered to tidy any more. I like gambling. I think we all know where this is going...

I got a couple of odd looks as i slap the winning tickets on the counter and demand seventeen more, but i'm more or less used to getting these kind or surreptitious glances anyway now. I think it might be my face. Anyway, i walk out of the shop a proud owner of seventeen pounds worth of new scratch cards. For those of you who are good at math (or those of you who enjoy a sly 'alf) you may have worked out that this is approximately (and by that i mean exactly) 10 pints of the finest Carling money can buy (or is that a contradiction in terms?) I waste two out of these ten pints as a slowly and deliberately scratch off the new tickets. And for the record, does everyone evaluate everything by how many pints they could buy? Or is it just a slippery slope to a drinking problem; or much worse it's a slippery slope to drinking the insanely cheap (even though it's cheap for a damn good reason) Special Brew...

Firstly i have to get through the two double tickets. The first one (which promises me a obscene amounts of money or a car) is a complete duff. A worrying start. That's not just a 1.70 carling i've lost but a 1.95 Grolsh. Things are looking down. However, the world taught me a lesson about doubting it before and yet again i fail to take this on board. Straight away i win three quid on the first half of the second card. Now, i just need one more and i'm even with what i originally spent. I'd be a happy man. Not quite as happy as i was however when the second half gave me two pounds. Now i had 5. I'm already in profit. Things are looking up. My pint sipping intensified during the next few cards as i get nothing except a pound. I have six left and only six pounds won. The odds are looking grim. And yet as i start to fear the worst, the next card goes above and beyond the call of duty. It comes up trumps, comes up good to the value of ten pounds. I now have a hard earned sixteen pounds. I can almost taste the possibility of actually making profit out of the reinvesting into scratch cards, i can almost imagine myself smiling at the people who said i was 'crazy' and 'odd' and who ignore me when i tries to insist that one has to speculate to accumulate. But i'm a wary man, loathed to tempt fate. And yet it appears it just might be too late. The next three yield nothing but a slightly disappointing feeling. It's all down to the last two cards. The penultimate one gives me 1 pound. I'm exactly even. It's all or nothing on the last card. Slowly, and with a shaking hand (well, clearly not but i want to try to add suspense to this incredibly self indulgent e-mail) i reveal the numbers which will reveal my destiny, my fate (see, isn't it more exciting now i'm using cool words?) 500, 2012, 50, 16, 1, 2012. Things aren't looking good. But low and behold, with the next two i get another 16 and another 1. Two pound symbols with one last chance, one last roll of the dice, and one last number. I think i lady next to me, and to a lesser extent even Dave was a little shocked as i leapt form my chair, needlessly excited about merely winning a pound. After all, that's only equivalent to a shot of house whiskey. But it's more than that. Not only does it put my tally at eighteen pounds, officially taking me to my highest profit yet, but it reaffirms that the way to live is to clearly make it up as you go along and have a giggle. You can't win them all, but i sure got this one beat...

So what has this entirely pointless e-mail been about i hear you practically screaming. Yes it some ways it was about me not wanting to do my seminar prep that now lies neglected to one side. And yes in some ways it was about me feeling better because i haven't talk to any of you in ages. But really i want to know what to with the 5 lottery tickets that are in my pocket, totaling eighteen pounds in value.

Does the one extra pound go into a proper lotto ticket? Do they all go into proper lotto tickets? DO i do it all again (although this time clearly lose the lot?) Who knows? Who cares. Let the people decide.

Email me back before Wednesday and i'll do whatever is most popular. Now i feel that right now i have to warn you not to simply click the reply button. I'm going to have to ask you to send it to my hotmail account and not here. This is simply my uni account (meaning i never check it) and i'm only sending it from here as for some reason i can't send out from hotmail (rubbish, what am i paying them for) Oh, and if no one replies i will burn them. And you think i'm joking....







RESPONSES……..


From : Adam Rancid
Written in pain, written in awe, by a puzzled man who questioned what we were here for says:
Be a king amongst men and do it! You know it makes sense! you could be
richer then your wildest dreams, or failing that have enough to buy a
round of drinks, or failing that become a quivering husk of a man when
your dreams of winning are dashed upon the cruel cold rocks! Don't be a
pansy and think 'ooo but i could buy a veritable feast with 18 pounds'
because you may be passing up on that golden opportunity of a life
time, yes, enough money to buy a house of lard, nay a mansion!


From : Dave ‘let’s cycle to Chichester’ Shirman
Lord Meat says:
go out for a drink with a mate with half, give half to a charity or to 9 homeless people, it's cold out


From : Sophia Koullas
Sent : 31 January 2006 20:31:35
To : thelardfather@hotmail.com
Subject : W0401641@uea.ac.uk???
My adivce to you is this, luck has been kind to you not once, oh no..but twice. Do not feel that he will be kind to you again. So from me to you...Take the god damn money and run to the nearest public house ( preferably refreshers!) and drink those lovely £18.
Do the right thing!!


From :
Sent : 31 January 2006 05:49:53
To : thelardfather@hotmail.com
Subject : Lady Luck Keep a four squid bank, and keep re-investing. If you hit it big my following my advice, then I would like a 10% cut of the winnings. It is purely optional, but highly recommended.


From : "Emma Muspratt"
Subject: RE: lady luck, a king amongst men....
Date: Tue, January 31, 2006 6:13 pm
To: W0401641@uea.ac.uk hello my dear sweet lard how are you? still reeling from your unbelievable daliance with the beautiful lady luck?! personally...not being a gambler myself and never having bought a lottery ticket of ANY kind...scratch card or otherwise...i think you should split the 6 evenly between full blown lotto tickets and scratch cards...that way you're more likely to strike it lucky with the scatch cards, but are also in with a chance of a BIG WIN on the lotto!hows that? speak to you soon baby doll...






03.02.06

11.37 AM

The damage is done. The decision is made. My bed is now officially made and it's up to me to lie in it (though if anyone wants to join me you can apply at the end of this e-mail.) It is, i believe now 'go time'. I currently have 18 pounds worth of lottery tickets laid out before me.

Now i know what some of you will be thinking. But there was just too much variation from everyone who replied (that is, those of you worldly people who bother to check there junk mail folders.) The advice ranged from keeping it all (Soph), keeping all but the origanal four pounds and keep going hoping to strike it rich (Sheets), keeping half and giving half to a homeless person (Shirman) and simply putting it all back in (Adam). In fact, i think Adams advice in his exact words were :

Be a king amongst men and do it! You know it makes sense! you could be
richer then your wildest dreams, or failing that have enough to buy a
round of drinks, or failing that become a quivering husk of a man when
your dreams of winning are dashed upon the cruel cold rocks! Don't be a
pansy and think 'ooo but i could buy a veritable feast with 18 pounds'
because you may be passing up on that golden opportunity of a life
time, yes, enough money to buy a house of lard, nay a mansion!

and i have to say it is his advice that i enventually ended up taking. Whether that was a good idea or not remains to be seem. As i was buying the new tickets today i didn't have the lucky feeling that i've become so attached to. Gone was that little spark, that feeling of magic, and whether that's down to a preminition of doom, or to the much more likely fact that the last two attempts to 'earn' money involved a certain ammount of alcohol will i'm sure soon be resolved.

Like i say i currently have 18 pounds worth of tickets, unscratched in front of me. I am currently worth 9.230769 (ish!) pints of Grolsh. I just hope they represent the pints i'm going to be drinking to celebrate rather than those which i'll need to drown my sorrows.

Perhaps i'll let you know how it goes.









13.07 PM

all good things must end i guess....

It's funny how the world seems to balance itself itself. I started with four pounds as you remember way back and have after hitting the dizzying height of eighteen of your finest Sterling i have ended up with a rather simular (and somewhat meagre) fiver. Slightly disappointing, but still a profit of a pound in the long run. Down, right down, but not yet out.

Despite a great plan from Sheets, which i believe was to see how many times i could circulate the winnings before i ran out of luck entirely abd lost it all (so far there have been three cycles) i just can't bring myself to do it. The deal this time is is that all my winnings from these scatch cards is going be pumped right into the big Euro Lottery tonight, in which to be honest i'm sure i'll see the last few pounds of my winnings dissapear in a puff of smoke of failed dreams, and fleeting, past glories (that's right, y'all better me giving me some sympathy right now... :) )

No, in truth i'm not that upset. I've still got three tickets in the big one tonight, and with the change left over i'll buy myself 50 pence of good Karma, at least someone on the streets tonight can buy themselves a cup of tea, i hear it's going to be a cold one.

Anyway, that as they say is that. The somewhat long and undoubtedly pointless story of the shop that needed help - a cautionary tale of what you can miss if you do the sensible thing too often.
And there the lesson endeth :) I hope you're all as lucky as i have been this week, but right now i'm off.

Wish me luck for tonight. You can't win them all, but i could really do with winning this one....















RESPONSES:


From: "Emma Muspratt"
em... says:
lol. No-one could do what you do with a few lottery tickets…



From : Dave ‘let’s cycle to Chichester’ Shirman
Sent : 03 February 2006 15:11:25
To : thelardfather@hotmail.com
Subject : RE: read this email second

You're a cock. x

Hello everyone. I have neglected this for well over a month and i feel heartily ashamed. And yet i still can't be bothered to write, so i've decided to just upload some stuff i've already writen. Like this (true) story about how hard it can be for me to use public transport.



Dear Mr. or Mrs. United Airlines,

You are going to find this out sooner or later anyway so I might as well tell you now and get it out in the open. This is a letter of complaint. Moreover, this is a letter for compensation asking for money I had to spend after certain things had gone wrong with a few of your flights. Let me set the scene.

I’m sitting at departure gate C6 at Chicago airport. I’ve got myself a Big Mac from a near by McDonalds, I’m now only one flight away from seeing my girlfriend and I have a very friendly and chatty Irishman sitting next to me. I’m a happy man. However, as time passes I start to become noticeable less cherrful. My flight does not come on the board at the departure gate. After waiting a while, at about the time that the plane should be taking it comes on the board, delayed from 9.50 to around 11.50. Now don’t get me wrong, I certainly don’t want compensation for that. I think we all expect planes to be delayed sometimes (although when I tell you that the flight – UA7512 - was delayed because of a missing crew you may start to understand why I was a little dubious of United Airlines. No, I may as well be honest, a little bit upset with you guys.)

My time in America passed a little too quickly for my liking and after a wonderful couple of weeks with the Woman I had to set off for my home in sunny old England. We arrive at Indianapolis airport and check in to discover my flight to Chicago (where I catch I connecting plane with Air India – remember that, it will come in important later) has been delayed. Fair enough we thinks, we go get some coffee at a nearby Starbucks (they seem to be everywhere nowadays.)

During our refreshment break we continually look at the
departures board and yet my flight does not appear to me up there. Irritating of course, but probably not your fault, that I assume is Indianapolis’ Airport’s problem. ‘No problem’ I think to myself, I’ll just go check with the United Airlines check in desk. Between us, my girlfriend and I checked with three employees. They all said the same thing, as did the automatic telephony service you provide. The plane will take off at 7.15 they assured me. Which it did. However, they also told me that it would be departing form gate D7 which, as it turned out it most certainly did not. After passing security (my, aren’t they thorough nowadays, I’m pretty sure the guy that patted me down did some cupping, and in fact, didn’t even give me his number.) I sat at gate D7 for about quarter of an hour before I got a bit worried. There were no lights and no people. To begin with I thought it may have simply been delayed further (how would I know, it wasn’t on the board) but after another 5 minutes I act on my Sherlock Holmesian instincts and go on a hunt for either my plane or assistance. I find the latter, well ‘assistance’ only to be told my flight has already left. Poor show United Airlines.

However, you know it isn’t even for this crock of shit mis-advice that I want compensation. That was only the start. Oh yes, the plot thickens. In fact, to be fair to you, your guys did amazingly and manage to get me another flight in about half an hour, flight UA7785. We board this plane only about 20 minutes late, which I was rather impressed with. At this rate I might still make me connecting flight (remember, the one I told you about earlier.) However, once we had all boarded and had been through the safety instructions we were still unable to up, up and away because the crew were unable to shut the door. Yes, the main cabin door would not shut. It would not shut when they pushed it, it would not shut when they pulled it and it still (surprisingly) wouldn’t shut after five burly guys came from maintenance another twenty minutes later and ran at with all their strength, causing the plane to wobble liberally (and quite disturbingly may I add.)

At this point in time I was felt uncannily similar to how I feel in the mornings. My alarm clock is set to go off at eight o’clock every morning. However, I invariably reset it to first eight twenty, eight thirty, eight thirty five and if it was a particularly heavy one the night before even down to minutes like eight thirty seven. However, it comes down to a point where you can’t put off getting up any longer. It’s balls to the walls time, either I get up, or I miss my appointment. Either that door shuts now or I miss my flight. Maintenance gives one final push. One more desperate lunge, as he bravely and dutifully throws his entire sizeable, nay, formidable weight at it in a laughable maneuver, a last ditch ‘attempt’ to shut it and save the day. The door gives an unnerving crack but crucially stays open; laughing heartily at all those around it, mocking them to their faces, as it rolls, slowly and knowingly back open.

About quarter of an hour after the maintenance men are finished standing around and looking at the problem some more (bloody hell why not get a cup of tea and biscuits whilst you’re at it) a rather sheepish looking flight attendant informs us all that we all have to deplane and get on a new plane which will be pulling up shortly. We all alight and stand in poor shelter from the howling wind (barely out of the rain) as I assess my options with the sheepish but I must say distinctly pleasant and to a lesser extent helpful flight attendant. I can either travel to Chicago now hours late and miss my connecting flight or I can stay in Indianapolis with my friends. Unsurprisingly I plump for the latter option and go back to the gate to rebook my flight. The attendant sorts me out with a plane ticket and says they’ll contact Air India to sort out a new connecting flight. ‘Aha’ I think to myself, It all looks like it’s going to work out alright. That is until I find out the two following things. Firstly, my luggage has already been sent to Chicago. Meaning I am stuck in Indianapolis overnight wearing nothing but pajama bottoms, a t-shirt, a fleece and a smile. Irritating. Secondly, after phoning up Air India to check if my flights have in fact been rebooked I find that they don’t fly out the next day so I am in fact stuck in Indianapolis for two days wearing nothing but a fleece, a t-shirt pajama bottoms and a smile. It appears that in fact United Airlines had in fact NOT contacted them at all. More than irritating. That verges on lies. Wait, that is lies. Anyway, I’ll come to the point. During the next two days (however pleasant they were) there were various expenses as a consequence of your late and gate changing flights.

Firstly, I had to buy new clothes (as my exsisting ones had already been shipped into the unknown.) These came to about 30 dollars. Food during the next two days also came to (at a minimum) thirty bucks. I would appreciate if this would be reimbursed. I believe these to be costs that my friends and I should not have be lumbered with.

Secondly, come the more serious direct effects of not being able to get to Chicago. I was charged 45 dollars by Air India to reschedule my flight (which I believe I should not have to pay as if it were not for my bad connection (i.e your services) in Indianapolis I would have arrived in plenty of time. Secondly, I had purchased a train ticket (which I enclose) which was valid until the 15th of January. Had I have been able to get my original flight I would have been able to travel that day. However, as a direct consequence of my delay I could not travel until the sixteenth. The ticket cost thirty two pounds sixty pence which is probably about fifty dollars. I expect these to be returned to me as a matter of course.

One last thing that I wish to say is as follows. Although as I have detailed in the above letter your services are somewhat haphazard and in fact sometimes don’t even happen, your crew are extremely friendly about not doing them. If it were truly the thought that counted, then this would be an entirely different kind of letter, namely one of congratulations. Air India it seems are the opposite. Needlessly, churlishly rude in doing it, but at least they succeed I guess. A bit like the people down at Chicago O’Hare airport. The airport keeps on going but bloody hell are they viscous about doing it. Bugger me if they don’t enjoy shouting at you in that place.

Anyway, that’s enough of my blather,

Thank you for reading this,

I anticipate a swift return,

Love from Simon Baker – a disgruntled customer.

P.S I am serious about getting money from you. If you don’t reply to this letter I may have to write yet another, substantially sterner letter.

Hey people, i'm back from Back down Indiana way. It was actually a nice weekend. It involved the a few simple steps.

1) The trip down. Stopping at several fast food joints and finding the miracle that is Wendy's chilli (although i should point out that i was desperately disappointed with their burgers.) Also what's with the McDonalds advertisment for their new mini chicken fajita wrap - "welcome to Snacktown, population : delicious". I'm pretty sure that doesn't make any sense at all, and is in fact a pretty large abuse of the English language.

2) The birthday party on the saturday. This involved five small children running about like mad mini dictators unwrapping presents, shouting, screaming, drooling, playing with new toys ecstatically then discarding them seconds, stuffing cake into their greedy little mouths and smearing food over everything including the counter, their clothes and their mother, the very person trying to feed them. Ungrateful, selfish, and messy. Or is that harsh? I guess they're really not too bad. Maybe cute even, but if this weekend have taught me anything it's that i only want one child. One. Tops. For sure.

3) The trip back. The one on which we stopped at yet more fast food stores and didn't get sniped. Hooray. Oh, and we picked up Rachel's friend Kimbre who is staying with us for a few days. Which gives me something to do when Rachel's at work. Not Kimbre you understand, i mean we'll do stuff together we'll go to the pub. So, um, yes. That was my weekend. Nice.

why howdy folks,

hope y'all are doing good. I know i have somewhat been neglecting this blog but that's because i've been extremely busy. Well, no, maybe not. If truth be told i've been extrememy un-busy so i've had nothing that much to write about. I've watched a lot a lot of television and played a lot a lot of X-Box. Currently (for all those who care) i've been playing Blitz : The League which involves American football with no penalty flags and extra points for giving people concussion or broken bones. What a simply genius idea for a game. Oh, and talking of sport i've watched my precious Red Sox tumble into a five game losing streak (and as if that wasn't bad enough all the losses have been against bottom placed teams, have seen the MFYankees climb above us in the division and have seen the Red Sox fall to third in the wildcard race. Hmmm.

So anyway, the point is i'm going down to Indiana to see Rachel's family and the like this weekend and i can assure you i shall be blogging and updating like i should. Until then, just let me finish with my three key objective for this weekend

1) Don't get shot by the madman with a gun on the road we have to take to get to her house. For no reason some nutter had been sniping people for the side of the roads. Thank goodness for the second ammendment. The fact that i too could go get a gun tomorrow as easy as 1-2-3 (even though i'm sure i'd almost be as dangerous as him with it) makes me feel so much safer. Remember, guns don't kill people, people do. Yeah, and tell that to the guy with a hole in his head.

2) Ring my mum and admit that i STILL haven't posted the Vegas postcards.

3) Eat a mountain of the delicious food Rachel's family seemingly always manage to cook. Piles of Mac & Cheese, chicken, lasagne and all sorts of quality tucker. Yum.

Later people.