Cheques...

No, not Jan Koller. But the unfortunate hassle of getting a cheque through the post, usually for a rather small amount of money - say £10 for your birthday. Why do people do it? It's just as easy to slip in the money! It just means that the person recieving the cheque has to have the hassle of going to the bank and cashing it, and then waiting 7 days for the thing to clear!

Secondly, why do they take so long to clear? I mean, you put money into your account and it goes out straight away, a direct debit goes out whenever the bastards want to take it out, so why does a cheque take a week and a half to go into your account? It's bollocks. Cheques are the laughing stock of Britain. But one thing worse than recieving them is the twats that actually use them week in, week out. You know the ones, you are there queuing to pay for your weekly shopping and you wonder why the queue is so long and nothing is happening. And there you see the culprit, some middle aged snob thinking she is great by writing a cheque! I tell you what Mr Blair, forget immigration, forget foreign policy, cheques should be your main policy, ban the fuckers! Why can't they use their cards? Chip and pin is simple enough, it's why we brought it in! Or, and here is another revolutionary idea, pay by cash you sad old bastards!

Disclaimer - This does not mean to say that i won't accept cheques for my birthday, they are as welcome as normal money. I'll just hate you for a few weeks until i have cashed the bastard...

The next train departing from platform...

This time last year, i'd never used the train. It wasn't until January of this year that i met my girlfriend who lived t'other end of the country and realised the only would we could continue the relationship was based upon travelling upon said public transport. Well i'll tell you this for free, they're amazing. How else can you get from York to London in 2 hours? Yes yes ok, i can hear the knob at the back thinking he is clever saying "fly", twat.

Anyway, due to moving into student digs in Leeds and the girlfriend moving 'oop north' to the colder climates of 'Ull, i've increasingly found myself wasting hours on the train. Now we've all heard the nightmare stories that we read in the sun, y'know the ones.. delays for days, or "I got on the GNER and ended up in Ireland, i was meant to be going to Newcastle!". But i have to say i've not once experienced a delay, apart from the odd minute or two.

The one thing that i have noticed though in the many hours i've spent on trains to Hull and York in the past weeks is the amount of freaks you get! And i aren't talking trainspotters as they're not just freaks, they're UFT's. Unindentified Fucking Twats. But it's the mixture of the buisnessman constantly on the phone talking about his next multi-millionaire transaction, the politician slagging off the tories and the odd goth in a long jacket thrown in for good measure. Then you have the tourists, stereotypically Japanese or American, talking to their partner, or even better, a random geek about anything and everything!

The conversations you here on the train are baffling, do people not realise that everyone around them can hear them as well? I had this one girl (not literally, i mean on the train, deckhead) who decides to talk to her mate about her job. Usually not a bad thing, i bet you're wondering where this is going. Well, the bint (it's nothing personal love if you're reading i just like the word and you were ginger..) worked in an STD clinic! She decided to inform the whole carriage that "we do scans for everything, it's not just the usual things you've got to look out for y'know, gonorrhea, chlamydia and syphilis, but there is allsorts now!" She then went into graphic detail about random cases she had 'come' across (pardon the pun) ... i felt like i'd walked into a clinic rather than boarding the 17:38 train from Leeds to Hull.

This is just a warning, to those who do talk to loudly on public transport, to keep it quiet. We don't want to know.

Excuse me waiter, there seems to be plants on my plate!

Why do they do it? It's not gourmet, it's garden. Why does everywhere seem to put plants on food these days? It's awful. I just don't understand the mentality of these ideas. Do they think it's funny? Throw a leaf or two onto your plate, and see which twat actually eats it? Well i tell thee now, it's about as funny as a jew situated in Berlin in the 1940's...ie, not very funny in the slightest. It's as if they've left back door open and the trees have blown into the kitchen.

Keep it in the garden, get it off me fucking plate.

Stubbsy's funny story...

Basically think Partridge, without the slipstick effect...

This is my first installment of funny stories, which will be funny stories that have 'tickled my fancy' during my hectic days. Todays story comes from the streets of York city centre, where i was walking in order to get to the bank. For those familiar with York, i was going past Mcdonalds, for those not familiar, i was on a street! Anyway, forget the 'setting the scene' bollocks, a guy has his white van parked on the side of the road. Said guy was quite skinny, bleached blonde hair, the technical term for it is basically 'a mess'. Anyway (again) he leans into said white van and picks up a load of tote boxes...5 or 6 of the buggers. (See picture if you don't know what a tote box is!) He is clearly struggling - laughable at this point because they aren't heavy things! He then proceeds to walk away from his van towards a shop, before tripping over something on the floor - what i presume was his shoe lace, and dropping these tote boxes on his foot! At this point he screams, falls to the floor and starts rolling around the floor as if he had taken a bullet. The bloke thought he was an Italian footballer,but he wasn't totti, he was just a twat.

Student Fuckup Direct

Job Title : Answering the phone
Where : Glasgow
Skills needed : annoying voice, deep scottish accent that means no-one south of Newcastle can understand you and the helpfulness of Adolf Hitler.

Student finance direct? Meant to make things simple? Great interest rates maybe, but not in the interests of students and pilot schemes that are stuck at gatwick on the runway with no fuel.

Booked it, now i've got to pack it and fuck off!

The clue is in the title on this one folks, unless you haven't watched Peter Kay live in which case you think i've gone mad, or I'm Pete off Big Brother. But isn't going on holiday a stressful time? Especially for me, i've only had two holidays - and i was young enough to have my parents sort everything out for me! I'm like a duck out of water, a 12 year old virgin in a brothel or a nazi in a catholic church. My point is, I'm in trouble - i'm confused and i don't know whether i'm coming or go (well hopefully going but you know what i mean - tsk, pedantics!)

Thankfully i have a saviour. The mrs (and my companion on the holiday) is used to this, her dads a pilot and shes had more holidays than Michael Winner and David Dickinson put together. She's got it all prepared, she has the creams, the infectant sprays, the sun lotion, shampoo and the obligatory conditioner...sorted. Hallelujah, which lives me to worry about what i'm packing, how many 'pairs' of boxers i will need and what i can pack in order to show the muslims that i'm a proud englishman. So if i come back alive, be thankful! Especially since i was reading across various websites to do with Sham El Sheik (for those who don't know, this is where i'm going - T'Egypt!) and i stumbled across a helpful website about what you'll need whilst out there, what there is to do - nightlife, during the day etc etc, when i found a message left on the site, and here it is..

"This IS Usama bin Ladens summerhouse! I asked at the hotel,cabdriver and locals and they all said YES! I did not see him around (maybe he was snorkeling) Usama has a lot of houses around the world, but he is never visiting them, but somethimes his relatives visit this place. Unbelievable? - belive it! This is true!!!!" Well, if i spot "Usama" i shall give him a "reet good kickin' " The picture of today is the supposed hide out of Bin Laden, so if anyone would like to inform the police, please do.

Passports, Planes and General Pinochet.

Why do businesses do it? They give you automated forms, where you have to fill in boxes so that a computer can read them, rather than having humans do it. A great idea, ruined by the insistance of having everything in small boxes! The worst case example of this is the dreaded passport form, in which you have to write in font size 4 to fit anything into the boxes they supply. The catch? If you write outside of the box, you're screwed. I wonder how many holidays are ruined each year because of this stupid insistance on having such small boxes? Here's an idea for Allan Leighton, former Leeds United fuckwit and now messing up our Royal Mail, make the boxes bigger, to the size of average writing and do the nation a favour, you prick.

Second rant of the afternoon, is aimed at travel agents. Gone are the days where you could nip down to your local Lunn Poly and tell them where you wanted to go, at the price advertised in the window and you flew a week later! Oh no, now you have the basic price. And then you have transfers from the airport. And then fuel charges and charges for collecting your ticket on the day! Why do they not just include this in the price, and so we know how much we are paying before reading the small print? You don't go into your local electrical retailer and ask to buy a washing machine at £299, to find out you have to pay an extra £10 if you want it to come with a plug, and £50 if you want someone to fetch it out from the warehouse and put it in your car do they? Of course not, you intend them to be in a price because they are central to the purchase, and are compulsary! But with travels agents, despite having to pay the fuel charges and the other aforementioned "debts" they don't put it into the price until you start to pay!

As for general pinochet, well i need a P (the letter, not the action) and so decided to throw in a political stance. I hope the picture now makes perfect sense..

"Come and join me on Bebo"

Two words, FUCK OFF!

If i wanted to join you on bebo, i'd have done it already. Yet some people have to send you the junkiest of junk mail, asking you to join them. Also, it's not even people who you know, or at least want to know! It's random people who you've somehow got on your contacts from ages ago, and who obviously still have you on theirs! And it always contains the following line, i've blocked out the culprits name to save them from this public shame:

"******** is using Bebo to share photos and keep in touch with friends."

Why not just go to the pub you tit? As for the picture, well i blame google images, you put "bebo" in and you get that, oh well, moo.

Mastering the art of a "lie-in"

I can't do it, i simply can not sleep past 9am! It's starting to annoy me now, because no matter how tired I am, I always wake up at ridiculously early times! Even when i am not woken up by my little brother repeatedly kicking his ball against the house, or my mum deciding 7.45am is a normal time to hoover the house, i still manage to work up. Any tips on how to reset my body clock in order to be more student-like and be able to sleep until midday?

(Disclaimer - The picture of the fit woman was just included for effect, and has no involvement in my inability to sleep)

Call Centres, Automated number things, Loans and Students digs

So i'm 3/4 weeks away from moving into student accomodation and starting my new life in Leeds, yet i still haven't sorted out my student loan, or my accomodation! I know i shouldn't leave things till the last minute, i tell myself when i first get them that i will do them tomorrow because 1 night of playing footy manager or pro evo won't make a difference, however i tell myself that night after night until the deadline reaches and i post it off...

It means with 3/4 weeks (not quite sure!) until i start, i don't know how poor i will be and where i will be living, oh well! So i try phoning the nice people at www.studentfinancedirect.co.uk up, in order to see why they still haven't done my student loan in the 4 weeks they've had it. After 6 minutes of pressing random numbers in accordance with my problem (I'll come back to this later) i get a Scottish woman (probably not as fit as the fit call centre woman in the picture), who asks me for my ID number - the fact that (and this is where i come back to it!) i've just keyed this into my phone and the stupid automated robot on the other end doesn't matter, i may as well not have done it because they ask for it again! Just as stupid as that of Leeds United, who have an automated robot type when trying to call the ticket office, press 1 for home matches, 2 for away matches, then specific numbers for which match etc etc. However, when they finally answer they ask me what my problem is! Well i've just pressed my fucking problem in numbers on your machine, do you not have that? Tip : Press any numbers until they answer the phone, 1 and 3 are my personal favourites.

So, back to the call centre. It turns out she is Scottish, Glasgow would be my guess. Couldn't understand a word i was saying. She asks me for the 4th and 6th letter to the answer to my security question (why not just ask for the whole fucking word so i can say it rather than having to take 30 seconds figuring it out?!) so i hesitiantly say "G and T", she then tells me it's wrong. I tell her it isn't, the word is *insert word here* and she says it can't be, because T isn't the 4th letter! Well no you daft cow, I said "G and T" not the other way round, hence G is the fourth letter and T is the 6th you silly moo!

Bring back call centres in England, not Scotland, Wales or Pakistan!