Belton, Norfolk
Monday 23 July 2012 at 2:00 pm
As an atheist, as far as I'm concerned a church is a big pile of stones which uses up valuable land, gets in the way and causes old people who only drive on a Sunday to veer dangerously along my road. However, some people seem to like it and have ideas about 'tradition' and that sort of thing. And yes, I suppose some of the architecture is quite nice.
What does get me riled is when the right-on vicar (who, as an aside, is constantly begging for cash for the church whilst driving a brand-new convertible) of the local church starts ripping out pews and internal fittings and replacing them with plastic chairs for that 'community centre' feel (even though the village already has at least one community building). The other day I walked via the churchyard to the local shop to see this dumped unceremoniously outside the front door of the church.
It's the remains of a pipe organ, and whilst I'm sure the argument would be that it was broken and beyond economic repair, it doesn't quite seem 'right' or respectful to simply dump an old instrument like that in plain view. It insults the eye, the congregation and the craft of the maker of what was once a beautiful instrument, however misguided and peculiar the beliefs of those who venture inside the medieval building. Give it a decent burial, a ceremonial pyre or at least hire a skip.
Expect to see parishioners' corpses dumped outside in a pile soon. I should probably write and complain to the incredible publication that is the Village Voice but they'd probably just spell my name wrong and get all the apostrophes in the wrong place. You can if you want.
<Edit> A fortnight later, it's still there.
Monday 23 July 2012 at 1:53 pm
When trying to find the words to describe a girl without being disrespectful, may I suggest that any comparison to the neighbourhood whore, however favourable, is not the best place to start.
Saturday 04 September 2010 at 8:21 pm
I’m often accused of being a grumpy bastard, and that’s probably quite fair. Here’s an ongoing list (in order of when I thought of them) of stuff that really pisses me off.
- Football, to include the game itself, footballers, and all the associated flag-waving jingoism and riduculous ‘my team of overpaid delta-minuses are better than your identical team of sub-human missing links’ nonsense.
- People who describe themselves as ‘wacky’.
- Old people driving around with their bloody door mirrors folded in.
- Cheryl Cole
- The new so-called Mini. Ghastly horrible travesty, not worthy of the name. In fact, I’ll go further. Anyone caught owning a new Mini convertible and putting a private registration plate on it should be summarily shot, and their horrid little car fire-bombed. Leave your iPhone in the car, love.
- On the subject of cars (and football), people who have a private registration plate with their favourite football team on it. There’s several ‘WHU’ plates locally which really narks, especially as I was beaten up by some charming West Ham ‘fans’ in 1987.
- My f***ing lawnmower.
- Songs which contain the words ‘crib’ or ‘club’. Or ‘clerrrb’ as it’s usually pronounced.
Tuesday 09 December 2008 at 09:48 am
Exhibit A: http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=ltd8aUEXFK8
I keep ranting about this - people just look at me in a "you're a bit mental, aren't you?" kind of a way. But surely someone must appreciate how bloody ridiculous this advert really is.
If you don't know, the setup is this; child waiting for breakfast, mum pours hot milk onto child's Coco Pops. Camera then zooms into the bowl, to reveal, at the bottom of the bowl, three animated female* hippos doing some sort of synchronised swimming dance to "Sign Your Name" by Terence Trent D'Arby off of the 1990s. As the camera pulls out again, voice-over says something along the lines of "you never know what's going on in the bowl".
This concept is clearly from the diseased imaginings of a copywriter on the edge. Was there an ideas meeting, when this idea was brought up? What were they thinking? I've seen wildlife documentaries, and that tail-wagging poo-spreading thing hippos do to mark their territories. And when the child gets to the bottom, will their greedy spoon seek out the poor unfortunate creatures - to bite their little hippo heads off in the name of fun? Or wail to the unsuspecting parent, "Mum! Mum! There's three tiny animals dancing and crapping in my breakfast, make it go away!"
Should the strapline be: "Coco Pops - so full of hippo shit it turns the milk brown"?
*They have bows on their heads. That's how you can tell.