New computer. Mac or Asus?

Asus of course. Slim, light, two USB ports, three other ports that I don't know what they are and, most importantly, not a Mac.

And to top it all I got it cheap. Apparantly there is a superficial error in the finish. I can't see it though.

To don't list.

I bet you've been wondering what I've been up to these past few days. I'll tell ya. Not compiling a "To Don't" list. I really must get around to writing a list of things I really must get around to never doing. I thought of writing a book called "100 things not to do before you die." But then I simply changed my mind. Why? Becaue I'm too damn lazy and, frankly, I'm not sure I could keep it down to only 100.

So far I haven't thought of a single thing to not do so I'm going to look around me and find inspiration in my surroundings. Not entirely unbelievably I'm in Nero's again. No work this week, so it's lying on the sofa singing "I got plenty of nothiiiiiiing....and nothing's plenty for me," practising cricket in the park, having a picnic and doing things with my noooo computer.

Anyway. Casting my eyes around the coffee shop and noting what my fellow human beings are up to, I present to you, a start on my "To Don't" list. Now let me see...... what's that horrible noise?....ahhh yes....
1) Don't talk nonsense loudly in an American accent and without leaving any pauses for your friend to get a goddam word in edgeways like a daft bint or something.
2) Don't be an annoying 6 year old kid with specs, pissing about, flapping your hands and being a general absolute bellend next to a grumpy 48 year old bloke writing a "To Don't" list.
3) Don't join a social network. No one's actually doing that here I just thought of it and put it down. And before you go getting all, you now, internetty, this is my "To don't" list. If you don't like it write your own.
4) Don't walk out of coffee shops assuming you are the only person on the planet and you don't have to look where you're going, when, in reality, you are in one of the most crowded areas of one of the most crowded cities in the world. If the altercation I have just witnessed is anything to go by, sometimes you'll bump into some other cretin, who is also assuming they are the only person on the planet so they don't have to ...blah blah blah, so on and so forth.
5) Don't be female. I have great respect for women. I mean how do they fit in all the things they have to do every day. Talk, take boody ages to choose a sandwich then, when they are about to pay for it, go back and change it for the same flavour sandwich but just a different one (Anna!), turn the simple act of paying for comestibles into a Sissyphean, accessory- assault course involving  being completely unprepared to pay for your coffee, despite having had to pay for your coffee many times before and then having to embark on this exhausting rigmorole.

Unzipping the handbag, searching its Tardisian bowels for your stupid purse, finding the stupid purse, unzipping the pocket devoted to notes, changing your mind, zipping it back up, unzipping the pocket devoted to coins, fishing out a really lot of loose change, starting to assemble exactly the correct amount from this motley collection of coppers, Euros, a hairclip, crumbs and a hair bungee (or whatever they're called - the elastic rings with stray hairs trapped in its rapidly-perishing rubber embrace), getting to within 2 pence of the correct total then realising you haven't got the right amount, pouring it all back into the pocket, zipping it back up, unzipping the first pocket and fishing out a tenner, handing that to the barista, accepting the change, putting the fiver back into that pocket, zipping it up, unzipping the change pocket, pouring the change into that, zipping it back up, throwing the stupid purse back into the handbag version of an event horizon, without a thought of starting a system where it always goes into the same place so it's easier to find next time, picking up the coffee, remembering that you haven't had your "free coffee" card stamped, putting the coffee back down, unzipping the handbag, searching it's cavernous interior for the stupid fucking purse, unzipping the purse, unzipping the pocket you have reserved for "everything under the fucking sun," locating the card, handing it over, getting it stamped, putting it back into the compartment reserved for "everything under the fucking sun except, you know, coins, notes and other stuff," hoying it back into the handbag version of a tear in the very fabric of time itself, re-pick up the coffee and depart.

6) If you're a planner in an advertising agency, don't use the term "Glocal" as a way of getting round having to ask the creatives to write yet another global ad, then on being asked how this is different to "Global," smile and explain patiently that everyone knows global ads are crap so the client doesn't want a global ad. They want a local ad that also appeals to everyone else on the globe. I shit you not.


By way of changing the subject and calming down a bit. Here is some DIY I did.

This is a wooden bathmat I made myself by buying a square of decking and sawing off two of the wooden slats. As you can see the space between the bath and the wall is too narrow for a conventional bathmat so I had to improvise. These are the instructions.
1. Buy a wooden square of decking £8
2. Saw the slats off.
3. Be pretty bloody pleased with yourself.

Hamburg. Zwei (two).

I'm back in Hamaburg again. Came back last week and I'm out here again this week. Not much to add apart from it's a bally sight warmer out here than the last time I ventured into Euroland. Last evening I was sharing a Duckstein or two with Rob (bloke I'm working with)  sat outside a bar in Hamburg's equivalent of Crouch End. Which is itself London's equivalent of a place inhabited by hippy dippy, yoghurt crunching, middle classes.
In a T-shirt. If you did that in London's Crouch End you would be in a wet T-shirt. Which for my one American reader is because it hasn't stopped raining in Britain since they declared a hosepipe ban. My mother really took this ban to heart and threw away her hosepipe altogether. Why? Incase they discovered it and locked her in jail. In her head the hosepipe was the horticultural equivalent of "drug parapenalia" and damning evidence of wrongdoing on her part. So we destroyed this, in my opinion cirumstantial, evidence of her not using her hosepipe by hoying it into the tip. "Better safe than sorry when dealing with the hosepipe police" is, was and always will be, her motto.

Anyway look at this photo advertising a show by two famous German comedians. Here they are taking the mickey out of Chinese peoples by adopting a face that is frowned upon in the UK. And China. But not Tibet. Anyway I bet it's a hell of a hoot.

All this toing and froing between Hamburg, Shanghai, London and Hastings has awakened in me a visceral hatred of an object and its users. Here is a picture of it below. *Shudder*




Look at this massive bellend. Man up. It's the size of half of a medium sized dog. Or a quarter of a large one. Or an eight of a lion or....you get the idea. It's small is all I'm trying to say.

On my flight over here a business man was trying to fit a wheelie bag into the overhead lockers. The bag would have fitted in, just, if there had been several factors in his favour.
1) He hadn't been a enormous douchebag (American for fucking idiot).
2) No one else on the entire plane had also wanted to put hand lugage in the overhead bin.
3) Everyone else on the plane hadn't also been a fucking idiot.
4) He hadn't been last on the plane and everyone's hand luggage was already packed in tighter than a nun's fan belt.
I settled back to watch the show. There's nothing I like better than seeing a wheelie bag user in distress. It's not an admirable characteristic but I make up for it by being hilarious (I bloody am), having a large number of amusing faces to deploy, being able to imitate almost any foreign accent in the world, having a big nose and shouting loudly when people only ever call me on my mobile when I am driving. Honestly - I only have to engage 1st gear to go from pariah to most popular man on the planet. (I often wonder if I am in the Thrueman Show and people only do things when they know it will most annoy me but that's a paranoia for another post.)
Anyway. He tried shoving - No joy. He tried moving back and forth - No joy. He tried a pitiful look at the stewardess - No joy. So he had to resort to the one thing he didn't want to do. Moving other people's stuff about to try to make room. It was like trying to do a massive 3D jigsaw puzzle, while a plane load of people and one grinning idiot looked on, while trying not to be a bellend but in reality being a bellend and while wanting desperately to shout "GO IN YOU FUCKING STUPID CASE!" ie. impossible.
Eventually his exertions resulted in someone else's case popping out, that person standing up and shoving it back in and the stewardess finally doing her job and taking the fucking stupid wheelie bag and hurling it out the window. Actually stowing it away somewhere (and hopefully kicking it for the entire journey).
Right. Back to work. Bah.

Hastings: A critique.

The English Channel in all it's winter fury.

In the imaginary league of top 10 places begining with Ha, what could top Hamburg? I'll tell you. Hastings. It could but it doesn't. Nestled down on the south coast betwixt Rye and America it stands, a once proud and popular seaside resort, it has now gone right down the shitter and is home to nothing but seagulls, people with tracksuits and tattoos who smoke fags and a really nice hotel called The Swan House Hotel or somesuch name. How do I know this? Because I just went for a weekend away there with Liz Baines. Who the bloody hell is liz Baines? My girlfriend, that's who.

Yes my one reader, I've only gone and got a girlfriend. How? Some people ask. The truth is I don't know but rest assured booze played it's alchemic role. That's correct. When I met her she was completely drunk as a lord and I can only assume that the drink had, in her head at least, transformed my face (a normally unlovely collection of ill-matched, so-called features) into an approximation of something not hideous. Et voila! Girlfriend. Good old booze.



Skimming stones. This was a niner. Look at that stance. Low centre of gravity, good follow through, eyes on the horizon. A group of German youths nearby tried to emulate. Needless to say, when it comes to bouncing objects across the surface of the water, we British are de best. If you know what I mean. And I think many of you do.



Anyhoo, we went to Hastings on a road trip and stayed for the weekend. Activities included lying down, lively debate in pubs, fish and chips, a 10 mile walk along the cliffs, a "99", lying down, a game of Pirate golf, eating thai food in a bookshop, lying down, throwing stones in the sea, a lively game of spoof, lying down and observing the town of Hastings and it's denizens.



The Hastings Pirate Golf Tournamet 2012. I wasn't really taking it that seriously. I was pretending. For a joke. Ha ha ha ha. Like that.



The 12th hole. A par one. Basically if you got the ball into the skull's mouth it rolled down a pipe and popped straight into the hole.



Yes. After three days spent mainly asleep in a town I've never been before, I am now an expert on Hastings, its peoples and its ways. 

All Hastings is divided into two parts.

1. The Old Town

2. The rest of it.

The Old Town is full of ancient beamed dwellings and old fishermen's cottages. It is very nice and if the hotel was anything to go by, the houses can be lovely. The rest of it is home to a mixture of gaudy amusment arcades, crap pubs, the sea, some faded grandeur, a smell and the kind of chain shops you find in every High Street the length and breadth of the land.

It is home to much of Sussex's unemployed, which was a bit of an eye opener. It must be frustrating being unemployed (having said that, I am currently sitting in Nero's on Theobaldy Road in the middle of the day and I'm fucking liking it - but of course the circs are diff. Diff circs.) but being unemployed in one of Britain's shittest towns rubs salt into the wound a bit. The uniform is track suit, snarl, a fag and a baby. If it weren't so stereotypical it would be tragic. Anyway this heady mix of the unemployed, bikers, stag dos, hen dos and visitors intent on having a great time makes for a lively Saturday night. The screaming went on well into the early hours.

Compared to Hamburg it's.....errrmm..... well it's errrmm......no, they're so different you can't compare them at all. You can compare Hastings to some of the fishier parts of Shanghai and it gives a good account of itself.

So to sum up in four words:

Great. Smelly. Golf. Hat.

Guess where I am?

Me outside a WW2 flaktower/air raid shelter

Hamburg! Home of the careful driver, more Italian restaurants than you can shake a stick at and Eva's burger. Which ironically contains chicken instead of ham (beef).
Allow me to explain.
I'm here for work and, for various reasons which I won't bore you with (but are in turn frustrating, alarming, bewildering, Tutonic and hilarious) it's been pretty busy. So I've only managed to see 28% of what Hamburg has to offer. This includes the Reeperbahn, so as far as many people are concerned (you know...sex people), I've seen 100% of it. The Reeperbahn contains shops selling things called "dongs" and contraptions that seemingly suck your fanny inside out
Anyway. What is my analysis of Hamburg, its ways, customs and peoples?
It's peoples are indistinguishable from British peoples. I was expecting them to barge around taking up the pavement and invading everyone's personal space. I couldn't have been further wrong. The evidence of this is that I found myself being able to stroll around without muttering "get out of my fucking way" under my breath. In London I do this all the time. In Shanghai I just announced it out loud, relying on their lack of English to prevent me getting a roundhouse ninja kick on the conk.
Not only that, you only have to look as if you are thinking about crossing the road, for traffic to screech to a halt and wait while you a) wonder why the traffic has stopped b) get cross c) realise they're waiting for you and finally g) start crossing the road at exactly the same time they decide you're an idiot and set off again.
And they all speak English.

Hamburg contains the largest Italian community outside Italy. Why? I don't know. Simple as that.
What that means is that a square entitled Grosseneumarkt, not 20 yards from where I am staying, contains no fewer than 8 Italian restaurants. And as any of my three friends will tell you, I am a big fan of pizza. Though if the truth be known it's cheese but...you know....pizza is about 50% cheese, so you can see my point.
Though if you come to Hamburg on a weekend, have breakfast at the restaurant perched alongside a lake called the Binnalster. You pay about £12 and there's a buffet system where you can eat as much as you like and go back for seconds, thirdfs and fourfths. Don't have the raw mince. Just don't.

Where I live. Nice.

I have mainly been eating (by that I mean almost every night) at a bar called Thamers. Who's specialite de la maison is Eva's Burger. It is a chicken burger and it's bloody delicious. I don't know what they put in the special sauce but the girls seem to like it. Heroin I expect because it's very moreish. Anyway. I normally accompany this with a pint or two of Duckstein, a sort of dark lager. So a typical dinner for Andy B consists of a chicken and two ducks. Ha ha ha ah ah ha ha ha ha.



Eva's burger and a Duckstein

Anyway I'm back tomorrow and I'm moving flat the day after that. Pretty busy. What I'm doing is teeing up the fact that I won't be updating the blog for a while.  As if you care.

Auf Wiedersen!

Operation Overlord II (or three middle aged idiots go to Normandy)

I haven't written for ages and I have no excuse. I've just been very lazy. I got back from Shangers ages ago and since then I've been doing mostly nothing, which I confess, I have been thoroughly enjoying.
I got shat on twice by albatrosses. You've seen the picture of the first one but I got dive bombed again in Red Lion Square. This one was reasonably solid with a "miniscus" of calcified slime that landed with an audible thump on my right shoulder, up there near where it joins the neck. Once I'd cleared the solid debris I left the dried miniscus up there as a sort of lucky poo-brooch. I will undoubtedly win the lotto today (10 million big ones my friends. Friend. Rollover.). I haven't got a picture of this new poo. Frankly, for all but the keenest bird shit fancier, once you've seen one bird shit on someone's shoulder, you've seen one more than you wanted to see in the first place.

Anyway I tell a lie. I have been up to something.  Me and two mates went to Normandy to visit the invasion beaches. I think it's something men do when they reach a certain age and they start to wonder if sitting at a desk, a'tapping away at a computer laptop, going to meetings with shitheads, fuckos and bellends and dealing with the day to day inconsequential bullshit that is advertising (and let's face it most of what passes for "work" these days) is, in any way at all, a noble way of living. You reach an age where the glamour of sitting on your fat arse thinking up stupid stuff, getting drunk all the time, having meaningless sex and playing with crayons, starts to pall and for once in your life you start to think of something other than your own hedonistic, solipsistic pleasures.
So we seek to empathise with brave men who did something corageous, noteworthy and terrible. While we test ourselves against nothing more dangerous than a moron in a suit armed with nothing more deadly than a fucking stupid opinion, they tested themselves against the terrible fear of violent, painful and imminent death.
And, not unsurprisingly, we find ourselves lacking. Just my opinion of course. Oh and Samuel Johnson's (who wrote English Literature's most emminent work, namely the first ever Dictionary of the English language) who wrote "Every man thinks meanly of himself for not having been a soldier, or not having been at sea."
In the thankfully fleeting moments I have been able to get even close to putting myself, albeit only mentally, in the boots of these men; boys really, I have been terrified.

Bit serious wasn't it? Back to the fooling about.
Dan and Giles are both married with children and I have no concept of taking responsibility for anything. A heady mix of potential stupidity when we are released from the day to day grind of talking bollocks, trying to sound like you know what you're talking about and dealing with "life."
That's right my one reader, we got completely pissed on the first night. The whole night got off to a weird start when the waitress at our chosen restaurant was cross-eyed. Normally you can deal with this by gazing intently at the eyeball that is gazing at you. She, however kept swapping which one she was looking at you with. Sometimes in mid sentence. I think she was doing it on purpose. Needless to say I quite fancied her. Of course we got terrifically over excited (not about her, about freedom) and the scores were thus.
We each had 7 pints of pissy French biere and an equal share of two bottles of vin rouge. We got back to the hotel at 3AM. A good 5 hours past our bedtime. Here's pic of me the next day with one of the hotel's early residents.

He looks a lot happier than I do. I am so hungover here, that my hair was hurting.

I've done the lottery today.

I pretty confident I'll win it. So everyone start being nice to me or you won't get in the will. Why so confident? I'll tell ya. I got shit on by a bird. Not a nut-eating wren or a little berry-nibbling peewit. No. A fucking great ocean-going, seafaring, fish guts-eating, ice cream cone-stealing, seagull/albatross bird.

I estimate the shit was loosed from Angels 25 so it had easily reached terminal veocity well before it reached me and had started to break up. I think I glanced its final approach in my peripheral vision (I have excellent peripheral vision) and it seemed to make a whistling noise as it shot past my ear. Anyway part of it (a satellite portion of shit) hit my neck, but the mothership of shit hit my shoulder with a splatting noise. Another quite small satellite portion of shit struck my thumb and via the action of steering my car, was transferred onto the steering wheel of my car.

Anyway. All this is incredibly lucky so by tomorrow, according to the estimate on my ticket, I will have 10 million big ones. I think I'll splash out on a new cricket bat.

Look at my daft face all upset.