Made it Ma - top of the world!

Well, who’d have thought? You can now get the Illegal Songs album by John Parkes from Tescos!
http://www.tesco.com/entertainment/product.aspx?R=831977

Just wait until I make the checkouts in your local Tescos Metro! You may have to kill me if I haven't killed myself.

Shorts, scissors and a latex glove

Well, swimming bath changing room stories (or Locker Room Tales for American readers) have been a bit thin on the ground lately. So today comes as a refreshing change. Assuming ‘refreshing’ is the correct word. Which it isn’t.

Anyway, in the changing room I found myself stood next to a man in cotton boxer shorts who, I assumed was just getting dressed after swimming. He then proceeded to walk into the shower with the boxer shorts still on. I should add that there was no way that these could’ve been swimming trunks. Wrong design, material, everything. I had to use the shower next to him. Then, said shorts were dramatically stretched to allow washing 'front and back' while he was still wearing them. I think I’ve mentioned this before. ‘Just whip ‘em off lad’ I felt like saying, ‘no-one’s watching’. This would never do of course and isn’t true (i.e. people are watching, hence me relating this story). Mind you when the man’s son took off across the changing room heading for the lockers armed with a pair of scissors it was another unrelated man who intervened to say 'your little lad's just run off with some scissors' or words to that effect.

Eventually boxer shorts man left the shower. The moment he did so, another man stood immediately next to me on the other side wearing a latex glove on one hand. Thus is provided almost a text-book definition of the phrase 'faintly disturbing'.

Back to the pool

I should have mentioned that along with the deodorant / body spray / shower gel (i.e. soap with water added at your expense) that smells of toffee pudding and popcorn and the like there’s also the sort that smells of mouthwash / toothpaste. I think we should all avoid both kinds.

However, on the subject of the advisability or otherwise of backing up to the shower and using the part of ones back between the shoulder blades to turn the shower on I’m not decided.

Silly names for buildings

What is this thing with giving buildings silly names? ‘Government Office for Yorkshire and the Humber’ (in itself a silly name – what kind of river needs an office?) is based in a place called ‘Lateral’. I’ve seen it referred to as ‘the Lateral Building’. This sounds like someone who still has some sense of the use of language trying to make the best of a bad job. Its real name is however ‘Lateral’. This will date it at least as precisely as ‘Mafeking Terrace’ or whatever.

On Burley Road in Leeds (and I really am not making this up) you may find ‘Concept Place’ directly opposite ‘Opal One’. These are not of course abstract concepts somehow made concrete and plonked in the physical world but cheap blocks of student flats. They’re exactly like the 60s ones that everyone agrees were horrid. Actually, that’s not quite true because they have bits of funny shaped metal attached to them at regular intervals. They’re painted in lilac and green and have holes in (the metal bits that is). This makes them completely different to the 60s type blocks obviously. Mind you, the rust marks that have already appeared look broadly similar. If I live another 30 years I shall be able to say ‘I told you so’. Mind you, the whole of Leeds city centre is the same. Who’d have thought that the mistakes of the 60s and 70s would be digested in the 80s, demolished in the 90s and built again in the 2 thousands (no, I’m not going to say ‘noughties’ thank you).

Me, I’m off to live on Deep Space Nine.

Shoes

I was made to go in a shoe shop today. I felt physically ill and had to leave. Couldn't get out of people's way fast enough. Not only were there too many people, but they were mostly the type of women who are especially interested in buying shoes. The ones with their brains removed. Who consequently not only like shopping but also shoes.

Then a bizarre twist - turns out that at least some of the women in the shop were actually the Ladyboys of Bangkok. They're here to do a show in Leeds it would seem. But how do I know these were the ladyboys out shoe shopping? That's an interesting question - one just knows these things...

Brains removed maybe, but not everything.