Glasgow Litter Wardens

Today I witnessed visible proof that Glasgow litter wardens are not in the least bit interested in making the streets of our fair city cleaner but are merely there to surreptitiously raise revenue for some other council hair-brained idea.

While standing in Argyle street I watched two of these SWAT wannabees obviously hiding behind a couple of public telephone boxes spying on a poor woman struggling to contain one of her children while feeding the other a sandwich. In the melee she, clearly for everyone else to see, unknowingly dropped part of the sandwich wrapper.

In a blinding flash the two SAS (Seriously Anal Saddo) wardens emerged from their den and pounced on the poor woman resplendent in their full body armour.

One of them, clearly wishing he had an assault rifle instead of a ticket book, stood chewing his mandatory tough-cop chewing gum, holding his thumbs in his invisible trouser braces and provided assault cover for his partner who lent a deaf ear to the innocent pleadings of their target and dished out a £50 fine much to the disgust of everyone in the street who had witnessed the clandestine operation.

No doubt while all this was happening a thug was probably beating up an old man safe in the knowledge that all they will get if caught is a £30 pound fine.

I bet those trash-troopers wouldn't be as quick to assist a helpless victim of a mugging as they were to come to the rescue of a sandwich wrapper.




A Glasgow Litter Warden ready to take on a Werthers Original sweet wrapper

Bag Ladies

Okay, what gives with the bags ladies?

Why is it that many a female sees the need to horde and re-use designer clothes shop carrier bags?

It isn't because they're environmentally aware because you never see them nipping about town with a Morrisons or ASDA bag as part of their designer outfit for the day.

My ex-girlfriend was a prime example of this curious behaviour and would horde countless numbers of these bags, most of which never saw the light of day again but woe be-told if I used them to put the garbage in.

Is it some sort of snobbery to pretend to other females when out shopping that they regularly go into these posh overpriced outlets when in reality they've only ever bought one pair of knickers out of them?

No Socks Please - We're Scottish

By my reckoning the profits of sock and odour eater manufacturers profits must now be fast approaching those of international weapons manufacturers.

Ever since Mr. Laden did the dirty sales of these items must have rocketed as travellers all over the globe must now ensure, to avoid the ultimate executive embarrassment, they are not wearing holey, odd socks or have mingin' feet as they pass through airport security and get their shoes checked.

I for one have had to shell out a considerable sum to replace my old and considerably well ventilated collection of feet apparel in order to avoid exposing myself, or to be precise, one of my big toes and scabby toe nails in public and possibly causing the passengers of the Heathrow redeye to spew their coco pops and full English breakfasts.

Fringe Benefits

One of the many benefits of staying in Glasgow is that when the Edinburgh festival is on you get to see all the street entertainers peform before they go on through to the "other capital city" but without all the hassle of pushing your way through a million tourists on the Royal Mile.

Out Of Body Experiences

Article in today's news about how experts have found a way to trigger an out-of-body experience in volunteers. The experiments, described in the Science journal, offer a scientific explanation for a phenomenon experienced by one in 10 people.

Two teams used virtual reality goggles to con the brain into thinking the body was located elsewhere. The visual illusion plus the feel of their real bodies being touched made volunteers sense that they had moved outside of their physical bodies.

Through these goggles, the volunteers could see a camera view of their own back - a three-dimensional "virtual own body" that appeared to be standing in front of them.

However no one thought to tell these scientist that many a Glaswegian jakey discovered similar effects several years ago without all the high tech jiggery pokery but by instead drinking a few bottles of this.........

The resultant effect of drinking buckfast activates a part of the brain that not only allows the user to experience seeing themselves but entire crowds of virtual people and have full conversations with them.

Unfortunately the amount of liquid stimulant required to achieve this level of mental being also results in the aggressive part of the brain becoming overexcited and most users end up being quite content to just argue and have a fight with their out-of-body self.

The buckfast effect....

Brataslavian Bluff

While out for our usual Friday lunchtime meander my mate David and I thought, as the sun was unseasonably shining today, to take a stroll up Buchanan Street and eat al-fresco, however half of Glasgow unfortunately had the same idea and the top of the street was a tad heavin'.

We were about to give up on the idea when we spotted a team of sales reps who had set up their display consisting of a table-come-display stand and 3 rather handy and unoccupied chairs.

It was then we decided to hatch our cunning plan to grab a prime comfy seat to park our bums and enjoy oor pieces and while the sales reps were busy we casually sat on the empty chairs and started to tuck into our lunch trying to hold back the sniggers as the two unwitting reps approached us and asked if they could help.

At that very moment David and I suddenly became fluent in Brataslavian whilst at the same time completely losing the ability to understand let alone speak English.

After several minutes of frantic Lionel Blair - Give Us A Clue impersonations from the reps and a lot a very convincing shoulder shrugging intertwined with the occasional "Da, Da" and the odd "How far please to the nearest duck pond" from yours truly and my accomplice the now quite frustrated reps eventually gave up and went to dish out some information leaflets leaving us to finish our lunch in supreme comfort.

Needless to say we received some rather dirty looks when we stood up to go and shouted over to our foes "cheers" in a curiously familiar Glasgow twang.

Mating ritual of the common ned

El-Scorchio in the fair city today so a jaunt to Sainsburys for some eating out edibles before offing to the Royal Exchange Square to meet up with my buddy David.

Whilst enjoying the sunshine sitting on the steps outside Borders bookstore and watching the world go by we started to notice within about 5 minutes of the temperature rising the all too common site of a male Nedicus Commonus proudly displaying his summer plumage.

He had shed off his traditional garb of Nike and Burberry and was now flaunting for all the female office workers his naked wiry top half, a glorious shade of milk bottle white, under the Buckfast fed delusion that he was remotely athletic and attractive to his female prey.

It was quite humorous watching him circumnavigate the square with that all too familiar “look at me I’m a tough guy” swagger only with each lap of the square to watch the swagger rapidly degenerate into a sort of “I’m a plonker” shuffle when he started to realise that the lovely ladies weren’t looking at him out of admiration but out of shear curiosity.

He finally gave up on his mating ritual when he was outshone by a wee drunk guy who had a higher IQ in his toe than numpty had in his entire brain under the fake Burberry cap he was wearing.

p-mail

A recent article describing how "today's e-mail glut is a constant worry for many office workers" has moved me to develop a fantastic new communications tool to end e-mail stress once and for all.

I have developed a system that allows the user to compose and send messages by interacting directly with an information portal using a specially developed interface removing the need for the traditional and clumsy keyboard

The interface itself takes up a fraction of the room that a normal input device would utilise and would be welcomed by premises managers wishing to maximise available office space.

The process completely bypasses expensive and often unreliable email servers and clients whilst at the same time providing both the author and recipient full control over their workflow process.

Although only at the prototype stage early indications are positive with a market research sample of office workers reporting that my new system provides not only greater control over their day to day tasks but allows them the time to fully digest all the information and provide constructive solutions that, due to the pressure of e-mail, they would not normally be allowed to do.

The model shown below is an early working prototype..........

Wee dod 'o' cultyer

Decided to pop down to Glasgow Museum and Art Gallery for a bit of art and culture.

Out of all the museums that I ever visited Glasgow's is by far the best not only for what's on display but the fact that it's welcoming unlike many of the pretentious ones in the likes of Edinburgh and as it's owned by the people of Glasgow it's free.

Today was even better as, for the first time ever since I've been going here over the years, the pipe organ was actually being played.

I don't know many museums other than the London National History Museum where everyone no matter what their age or background enjoys wandering around and reading about the displays.

Curiously for a museum it's always best to visit this one when the weather is nice as it's set on the river Kelvin where the river walkway passes right through the grounds and along the impressive front entrance, or rear depending on what local story you believe and makes a lovely walk in the sun.

Burgered Off

Why can Mattel recall millions of toys for having too much lead in them and yet McDonald's won't stop selling burgers that have just about everything else but lead in them?

Actually if they did put lead in them they'd probably be more nutritional.

Ironically there's probably more chance of you suffering long term health damage from eating a quarter pounder everyday than from chewing on one of the recalled toys everyday.

Bog Roll Call

Stuck yet again in Heathrow suffering total boredom whilst waiting for my flight back home.

After reading all the travel mags in the lounge it struck me that whilst fully informing the would-be tourist of the best places to eat, drink, go clubbing, sightseeing etc none of them seem to inform the reader of the best places to undertake their daily ablutions, a fundamental necessity I would have thought on any trip abroad where the water or food is dodgy.

And so in the first, and probably last, in a series of articles I intend to cover the good and not so good places to partake in life's essential "business".

As I found inspiration in the Heathrow BMI exec lounge where best to start than there.

Here we find a traditional receptacle with twin bog-roll dispenser to help avoid those all too embarrassing moments of finding out "post evacuation" that the paper has run out and you have to waddle to the next cubicle to get some more whilst hoping that no one else comes in and spots you.

Although not scoring highly on space or decorative style this bog does have the welcome addition of the loo brush to assist in the removal of any persistent offenders.

London Lament

Having to head down to London and Heathrow again and surprise, surprise the flight is delayed forcing me to sit in the exec lounge and pass away my time on a diet of oat crunch biscuits, nibbly things and crap magazines.

Exec lounges are annoying places in that 90% of the time they're full of loud mouthed numpties whos ability to spout never ending boring flannel whilst ensuring everyone within a square mile can hear about their latest "big account" or new home in the Algarve is only matched by the amount of flannel on their Armani suits needed to cover their over ego-ed bodies.


Todays menu sir....

"Aye"....Now whats the question?

Only in Scotland can you climb a mountain or walk through any fishing village and total strangers will without fail look you in the face and say "aye" to you before you've asked them any question.

No where else have I experienced this strange phenomenon and this has led me to constantly climb mountains safe in the knowledge that all strangers will instantly provide their approval on any subject matter that happens to be going through my brain at the time.

This method of instant subconcious approval can be useful for so many things such as "is it okay to blow my overdraft", "should I buy that shiny ipod", "can I really afford that holiday"......etc.

Be wary though as this phenomenon can have certain drawbacks if, for example, you decide to go climbing in pink chequered stay-pressed slacks and subconsciously ask yourself "do I look fab & groovy in these?" whereupon your ESP gifted passer bye will without fail say "aye" thereby convincing yourself that you're the Brad Pitt of the mountains when in fact you're actually the Sad Tit of them.

Hire cars and the tall man

Down working in Cardiff and Swansea last week, haven't been to Wales for years.

Got off to a good start by picking up an airport hire car from National and all that was left was a shopping trolley with an automatic gearbox. My protestations about me being 6 feet 1 tall and the car only being 5 feet in total length seemed to fall on the deaf ears of the not so lovely "Gwyneth".

Yours trully drove away looking like, what can best be described as, a mad mental WWE wrestler in an undersized dogem apparently trying to pick his nose with his knees.


Version shown is the GLX Sport softtop convertible version
(Also available in 4 door saloon and hatchback models)

Picture courtesy of the National Car Hire Rental brouchure
(or at least it should be)