BoldBelvoir's Grumpy Owd Twat Blog

I smugly watched all my neighbours this morning scraping ice from the windows of their cars. They all had their motors running, exhaust polluting the atmosphere, while they scraped. And scraped. And scraped.

All of them, to a person, have a garage. And where do they park? On the fucking road, two wheels on the pavement as is standard nowadays, causing an obstruction both on the pavement so that mothers with pushchairs have to step into the road to get around the vehicle, and to road users who have to skilfully weave in and out of the cars parked on either side of the road.

Meanwhile their garages remain full of cardboard boxes and carrier bags full of crap that they will never use but they’re either too lazy or stingy to get rid of it. So they park on the pavement. Brilliant!

So, as I watched them scrapety-scraping their screens, I lifted my garage door, got into my warm car and drove straight off. Moral of the tale? – Use your garage for what it was fucking built for. Tossers!

Have you noticed the really annoying trend that seems to be the growing tendency amongst TV announcers to t-a-l-k r-e-a-l-l-y s-l-o-o-o-o-w-l-y when introducing programmes?

“Commming uup onn- Iiiiiiii-Teeeeee-Veeeeee-Twoooo, the stoooory ooof a mootherrr annnd”….. FUCK OFF!!!!

Is this so thickies can keep up, or is it just the patronizing manner of the announcers? Either way, it’s bloody annoying. And while I’m at it, have you noticed how loads of actors, especially on the British soaps (not that I watch them) almost always give a deep sigh after their first sentence.

“Oh, Ricky(khaaa)”… “Shut it(khaaa)”. Try to talk like that – it’s impossible. If you did, people would look at you a bit strange.

On American shows, however, everybody either mumbles or whispers. Take for example the totally unfeasible but highly entertaining ’24′. You can go through the whole show with almost all the dialogue being inaudible. So much so, in fact, that you don’t actually know what’s going on.

And while I’m on about this silly show, what’s with all this two-handed holding of pistols that all the cops/robbers/FBI agents/serial killers do now? They move from corner to corner, wielding their guns at arm’s length, swinging them around like they’re practicing at throwing the hammer.

Whatever happened to good, old-fashioned gun-holding like they did in the early Bond films? Where they just pointed a floppily-held pistol in the general direction of their adversary… and still managed to hit them!

…trick or treat that is. Can someone tell what’s in it for me? Kids come round knocking on the door and announce ‘trick or treat’. If I say ‘treat’, I have to give them something – I lose. If I say ‘trick’, they play a prank on me – I lose. How fucking fair is that?

Can someone explain the logic of this? I know t-or-t came over from the states, but the origins of it were that the poor used to beg at the doors of the wealthy and, in return for food, would pray for the giver’s dead relatives. Fair play, I can understand that. But how did we get to the nonsense we have now? What kind of morals are the kids going to have when they grow up if we allow them to go knocking on doors, demanding treats with threats?

I’m going to start a new ‘tradition’ where adults go round knocking on doors and when kids answer, they say ‘kick up the arse or kick up the arse?’. I think it could catch on.

Today was bin day. I remember once upon a time when we had proper bins. Corrugated metal ones with a lid and two handles. We used to keep them down the back yard, out of the way. Every week on bin day the dustman would come, lift the bin deftly over his shoulder, walk the bin to the dustcart and empty it. Then he would bring the bin back and replace it exactly where it came from.

Nowadays, we have plastic bins. With wheels on. We have to put them out front ourselves, at the side of the road, all ready for the bin man to wheel it all of about six feet to the back of the lorry, where it is magically lifted by levers and automatically emptied, no effort required.

The poor old dustmen do this to my bin once a fortnight now, not weekly. I think the least they could do is put the bin back where they found it. Not half way down THE FUCKING ROAD!!!

It was my car’s 100,000th birthday today. Yes, one hundred thousand. Well, I’ve moaned about her in the past, but she keeps going, more or less, so thanks to the old gal.

Happy birthday to you,
Happy birthday to you,
Happy birthday dear Pee Six-Oh-Nine Jay-Kay-Why-iiiii,
Happy birthday to you.

Go shopping anywhere in the UK and almost everything is priced £XX.99 – what the hell is all that about? It sounds less? So saying ‘twelve ninety-nine’ sounds less than ‘thirteen’ does it? Bollocks it does!

And think of some of the implications in this pricing mentality: How much small change swaps hands unecessarily? And how many holes in pockets have had to be fixed because of it? How much bigger do all the price tags have to be to accommodate the extra .99 – twice as big?… and twice as much ink used to print them!

Apart from that, how stupid is it getting just a penny change from £150 after buying say, a camera, for £149.99. Keep the sodding change. Or better still, just bring out a fucking 99p coin!

I think the only thing to cost 99p should be an ice cream with a flake in it.

How many times have you stopped at a roundabout to give way to a driver approaching from the right who is not using their indicator lights and then turns left? Infuriating or what!

Are they just forgetful? Lazy? No, they’re just PIG BLEEDIN’ IGNORANT!!

Strictly Come Dancing – Who friggin’ cares? Not me for one. This banal programme is on every night on BBC. EVERY FRIGGIN’ NIGHT. And when it’s not, it’s mentioned on Breakfast news. And Evening news. And the One show. There’s even an analysis show, for fuck’s sake.

OK, a lot of people may like ballroom dancing, but does it warrant being mentioned almost hourly on BBC? Let’s get 24-hour Rammstein on BBC4. That’d be more like it.

And as for the theme music. Aaaaaarrrrrrrrgggggghhh!!! All together now… Da da da da, da da daa, Da da da da, daaaaa. Aaaaaarrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrgggggghhh!!!