And now, a word from our sponsor...

This blog is brought to you by the good old British weather. No, really - it was born on a wet, windy Sunday morning, had the sun been shining it might still be no more than a half-formed aspiration. You see, I'd planned to go biking with some friends - which I see as doing my bit for the environment: y'know, pumping out large amounts of burnt hydrocarbons, and cutting a swathe through the flying insect population of southern Scotland (no doubt somewhere sparrows will be starving because their dinner's splattered all over my leathers).

But the weather, it seemed, had other ideas and, not being one of those bikers who particularly enjoys getting soaked and blown into the path of oncoming traffic, I was left with no option but to make good on a promise I'd made Art-Girl the day before: if the biking was called off I'd start a blog. You see, for some reason best known to herself, Art-Girl finds my writing mildly amusing (here's a tip guys: if you wanna get into a girl's knickers you need neither Donald Trump's bank balance nor Linford Christie's lunchbox, all you need is Woody Allen's sense of humour...though there's always a risk he'll sue you for copyright violation if he finds out you're using it). Anyway, for some months Art-Girl had been suggesting I start blogging and now, thanks to that most capricious manifestation of the Random - the British weather, I have.

This blog does exactly what it says on the tin. Here you'll find my meditations, observations and rants on all sorts of things - some utterly trivial, some deadly serious. You'll find wit (just maybe), wisdom (unlikely, but anything's possible), derision (almost certainly) and mockery (guaranteed) - sometimes all in one sentence. You may find your favourite sacred cows not just mocked but stunned, slaughtered, butchered and served up medium-rare with a nice merlot. You may well find some robust language or other cause for offence. Well, if anything you read here offends you in any way I cordially invite you to stop reading and bugger off! That's what 'grown-ups' do in free societies - if they don't like it they don't read it or watch it. Freedom of expression is an absolute and I'm under no obligation to make sure I don't offend you (whoever you are). I won't mock your race, sex, age, disability or sexuality (well, not unless you're into something really pervy) but all else is fair game.

Now, if you still want to read this blog just come this way...

Wednesday, 2 June 2010

And today's nominee for the Darwin Awards is...

...the pillock I encountered standing in the middle of the road washing windows with a very long pole (no, I don't mean he was being assisted by a 7 foot tall mate named Stanislaw). I was happily cruising to the office (well, as happily as I can manage at 7:00 in the blessed AM, a time when all good children should be in bed) when I rounded a bend and almost had a head-on with the taxi that had swerved to avoid Mr BigPole. For a moment the driver of the Transit behind the taxi looked like he might just go for it but, after a milisecond's contemplation, decided that discretion is the better part of not just valour, but also not triggering the airbags, and executed an almost textbook emergency stop. I did likewise, offering a fervent prayer of thanks to the god 'Bridgestone' that the new tyres, which had recently cost me as much as a week in Marbella, had been worth every penny.

Meanwhile, in the midst of narrowly averted automotive carnage (well ok, not to over egg the pudding: a narrowly averted minor shunt), the idiot who was wielding Stanislaw continued washing someone's windows, apparently oblivious to the smokey-tyred Transit breathing down his neck, a Bluetooth earpiece jutting from the right side of his head, and an iPod plugged into the left. He wore no hi-vis flourescent clothing, only dark stuff - perfect for being hard to see in the dawn's early light. There were no warning signs up the road saying "Caution! Plonker waving a big stick just around the next bend!". 

I drove slowly past and continued to the office, musing that this was one of the finest examples of stupidity I'd seen for...ooh, about a week. Or maybe I'm being too harsh: maybe he was simply some poor member of 'Exit' who couldn't afford the flight to Dignitas in Switzerland...
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