An Open Letter to People With Wheely Bags

Dear People With Wheely Bags,

I’m sure you’ve already worked out that I hate you with enough passion to collapse a medium sized universe.  You’re unlikely to be wondering why, as I’ve helpfully stated the reason in the address of this letter.  What you might be concerned about, however, is what I have against your beloved wheely bag.

Let me first clarify a few things.  If you’re female, over 65 and have a perm, big coat and beard, you’re not the kind of wheely bagger I hate.  If you’re a holiday maker, heading to the airport wheeling your short sleeved shirts and flip flops behind you in a suitcase whilst looking at the rest of us and thinking “see you later you miserable bastards, and when I do see you I’ll have a shit hot tan,” I (probably) don’t hate you (depending on what the time is).  I also don’t hate you if you’re considerate, sensible or just not a lazy cunt.

Is this you? I don't hate you. Well, not for your bag, at least.

I do, however, hate you if you’re on of those fucks that insist on wheeeeeeling your bag around all over the place when I’m trying to walk behind you.  Inevtiably, I’m walking faster than you becuase A) I’m a fast walker and B) All the extra effort of wheeling a bag is making you walk slower.  This makes things difficult for me.  When I’m walking behind a normal slow-walking person, I can judge my distance behind them based on how far away the back of their head is from me.  If it’s within arms length, I can punch them to the floor should they stop suddenly.  If not, get a little bit closer and maybe my breath on their neck will make them walk a bit quicker.  But you fuckers don’t let me get this close.  Your wheely bag is in the way.  If you stop suddenly, I’m steaming right into you – meaning I’m going to suffer the same pain and humiliation as I would be causing you had you not got your beloved wheely bag to protect you.

Every other person that breathes oxygen knows that, when you reach the top of a busy staircase, you get the fuck out of the way because there’s an endless flow of people behind you.  Even more so on an escalator where this torrent of bodies is being mechanically hoisted into the position your body presently occupies.  I remember my escalator training when I was a kid.  My dad told me to make sure my laces didn’t get caught between the steps, and to focus my entire brain capacity on getting the christ out of the way of everyone else as soon as you step off that thing.  I was taught how to judge when to start walking off at the end of the escalator, because people who don’t step off until the very last second get sucked in to the machine and escalated straight to hell.  I was also taught that the brushes on the sides are not for cleaning shoes.

Clearly you never passed this training.  Or were never privileged enough to have a parent that cared about you enough to teach you how not to be a fucking mindless splatter of shit on a public toilet ceiling, no-one knows how it got there or why no-one’s got rid of it yet but they also can’t help but stare in disgust.  Somehow, it’s become your priority on reaching the end of an escalator not to get out of the way for all your life’s worth, but to just quickly get this handle extended on my wheely bag, oops that’s not quite it, sorry everyone, just one minute, oh yes that’s got it, now where was I, oh yes now I can start to slowly walk on trundling my bag behind me, oh my god two thousand people are literally piled up behind me and they’re all screaming for my blood.  Oh well, at least I don’t have to bear the extra weight of this awfully heavy bag.  Oh look, now I have to get on another escalator, one second let me just push the handle back down into the case, ok now I’ll spin it around, tut at someone trying to walk past me and drag it onto the escalator on the left hand side where everyone is trying to walk past me.

Equally, my problem is with your recent fascination for wheely bags so small that there’s completely no justification for them having wheels in the first place, unless you’re some kind of iron age caveman and all the shit you need for work actually genuinely weighs loads.  You fucknuts with a bag no bigger than a briefcase that only contains a copy of the free paper and a pen to do the crossword have no reason to wheel it behind you other than that your brain has been replaced by an easter egg which has since melted out of your ear, leaving only a less-than-generous sized packet of five jelly babies and some purple tinfoil.  CARRY THE FUCKER with your arms you fucktard.  I find myself wondering if dinosaurs were actually made extinct or if they were some kind of far advanced time travelling species who left a few bones behind, and that humans are slowly evolving from dragging our knuckles to having T-Rex style arms so short we have to put long handles and wheels on everything becuase we can’t carry stuff.  But that would make you some kind of advanced evolutionary being, and considering you’re about as intelligent as something I would dispose of in a tissue, this is unlikely.

Raaaaargh I'm a cunt.

The handle attaching your bag to your scrawny, weak as piss arms is so long I think I could reasonably cut it off with a circular saw and tie it to a stray cat and you’d only notice the difference when you tried to open the cat to get out your Sheaffer fountain pen only to find your face is dripping with blood from several deep claw wounds.  Even then, you’d probably grab the cat by it’s tail and try to wheel it outside.

Here’s what I’d like to propose to you in order to remedy this issue.  Either carry the bag you have until you’re well clear of all crowds (remembering three’s a crowd.  If there are more than three people within your gaze, keep carrying it) or get another fucking bag that doesn’t have wheels.  Try a rucksack, or a satchel, maybe a briefcase.  Perhaps keep it ‘homeless chic’ and carry your laptop in a Tesco’s bag.  I could even spare you one of those as I’ve been keeping a few in my pockets for the day I actually get the guts to throw one over your head and suffocate you to death for being a wheely bag using cunt.

Let’s hope we can work something out.

Chris

An Open Letter to Islington Borough Council

Dear Islington Borough Council,

I’m writing today to bring to your attention a fly tip that has recently appeared in an area which concerns me.  Being a resident of your borough, and a regular contributor to your council tax fund, I feel it falls well within your responsibility to rectify this problem.

I discovered this tip yesterday, when, having almost arrived home from a long weekend away, I was tired but glad to be (almost) back home.  Upon turning into the alleyway down which I reside,my emotions changed to excitement that someone may have brought to fruition my long suppressed idea for a fantastic new range of ‘urban domestic appliances.’  Who hasn’t considered the notion of replacing home washing machines and public launderettes in one fell swoop with a street washing machine?  Or replacing the household oven with a hot pavement that the whole community could just sling some meat on?

Unfortunately my hopes and dreams were dashed upon noticing that not only was this magnificent alley fridge that stood before me not plugged in, but also had not been adapted to urban use and was clearly not new.  Equally upsetting was the fact that the one other person who clearly did share my vision for outdoor facilities was having a piss right next to my front door, confusing it for some kind of street friendly urinal.  It’s actually just a wall, and the fridge is actually just a fridge that some cunt has just dumped there because they couldn’t be fucked to call you people and have you take it away.

So it is with some trepidation that I write to you to ask you to remove this regular, non-urban fridge from the alleyway outside my house.  I say ‘with some trepidation’ because it has not escaped my attention the methods you appear to employ when dealing with other fly tipping sites.  In my few short months living here, I would estimate I’ve come across no fewer than five fly tips that you appear to have ‘dealt’ with, all along the same road.  You’ll notice the word ‘dealt’ in inverted commas there, because as far as I can see, you’ve only ‘dealt’ with them in as far as I’ve ‘dealt’ with world poverty by putting my coppers in the charity pot in at the corner shop.

It’s the tactic you adopt that concerns me, a tactic not dis-similar to that taken by a young boy adding a footballer to his Panini sticker album.  By ‘not dis-similar’ I mean completely identical.  All you seem to do is put a fucking sticker on it.  I’ve seen mattresses, bags of clothes, a sofa and a bed  frame all with a big yellow sticker on saying something along the lines of “Don’t fly tip or we’ll fine you £1500.”

I don’t know if you’ve ever heard the term “locking the stable door after the horse has bolted,” but I think it applies quite well in this scenario.  I can’t imagine a time when I’ve done something, then found out I shouldn’t have done that and it magically becoming the case that I never actually did it in the first place.  In the same way, putting a sticker on some rubbish fails to make that rubbish no longer present.  In fact, it manages to make it even more of an eyesore, because your stickers are bright fucking yellow.

Maybe you’re counting on that famous theory that a criminal always returns to the scene of the crime, and that they will surely see the notice and realise that they appear to have accidentally left a large item of furniture on the street, and remove  or at least leave their details on it so you can apply the relevant fine.  Maybe you mean it in a similar way to the pictures of diseased lungs on cigarette packets with the warnings ‘SMOKING CUNTS UP YOUR LUNGS’ or ‘SMOKING MAKES YOU FUCK CHILDREN.’  Perhaps it’s your idea that for other people to see the hideous damage they’re doing to our beautiful slice of London they might consider not doing it in future.  Which is of course, great, but then you know what would be even better?  If you actually removed the fucking rubbish.

I’m sure if someone dumped a fridge on the steps of the town hall you’d have the building evacuated, the senior council members down the golf course and the bomb squad in doing a controlled detonation on the terror-fridge.  I’m not asking for it to be treated like an unattended bag at an airport, all I want is for this fridge to be removed, preferably before I’m forced to carry out my own controlled detonation on it by kicking it with my new steel-toe-capped wellies on until I kick a hole in it and probably do the ozone layer some damage with the CFCs that I think might be in it.  (It looks pretty old)

Don’t get me wrong, I certainly don’t have a dislike for fridges.  I’ve been told as a toddler I once described to my Dad exactly how a fridge works by having him pull our fridge out from under the kitchen work surface and pointing to each relevant part after having once watched a tv show about it.  I’m well into fridges, that’s for sure.  This isn’t some kind of racial prejudice against white goods.  Any colour of kitchen appliance being dumped on my doorstep would illicit a similar response.  It’s just that this one particularly riled me up as, for one split second, I really believed someone had installed a fridge in my alleyway rather than just dumping it there.  It’s the harsh reality of these crushed hopes and dreams that means I really must demand you come and deal with it PROPERLY as soon as possible, before I try and cram one of my idiot neighbours in it because they are the undoubtedly stupid enough to dump something like that outside their own house, and I wouldn’t be surprised if, in the next recycling collection, there’s a box for a new fridge neatly folded with the rest of their stupid rubbish.  Bastards.

You must understand that the main source of my concern stems from safety information I was pedalled as a kid crossed with first hand knowledge of the social evolution of public spaces.  We were always warned as youngsters not to play inside fridges incase you get stuck and die, which was never really an issue with me because firstly I was born too tall to fit in a fridge and secondly, I have never harbored a desire to play inside a fridge.  However, if a warning is necessary then clearly there is a group of children who enjoy playing in fridges.  I am well aware of the long term consquences should this fridge be allowed to develop into a playground.  It can only be a matter of weeks between someone putting up a sign along the lines of “this fridge is only suitable for children aged 12 and under” and some scummy 15 year olds tearing it down, pissing on it and proceeding to sit on the shelves of the fridge drinking cheap cider that they threatened an old person into buying for them and having sex with one another in the ice box.  I will not allow my alleyway to become a drop off point for the slags in stretch hummers I complained so sincerely about almost a year ago.

Please see that this is dealt with swiftly and stickerlessly.

Yours

Chris

An Open Letter to the Woman Who Left a Half Eaten Percy Pig on the Table Outside the Burrito Restaurant

Dear above mentioned woman,

I don’t know if you spotted me today, but I was sitting outside the burrito place outside my office eating lunch as you walked past. I was with my friend Pete, who failed to notice your bizarre course of action. Lucky for the world, my eagle eyes spotted it and it concerned me greatly.

I didn’t realize how concerned I was by it at first, but Pete waving his hands in front of my eyes and asking what I was looking at brought to my attention the fact that I’d been staring intently for a good few minutes without listening to a word he’d said.

Initially, I thought it was some chewing gum, which, quite frankly, disgusted me. It’s bad enough sticking discarded gum to the underside of a school desk, but that’s generally accepted because a) who’s gonna find it, and b) if someone does find it, it’s likely they’ll be scraping desks as a punishment so you’re actually helping with discipline. (I’m choosing to ignore the other possibility – that the tall kid will find it stuck to his trousers because his legs are so long they rub against the bottom of the desk – because it’s a traumatizing memory.)

In fact, it brought me back to a time when I had to scrape desks as a punishment after being busted writing graffiti on a desk in the French room. I think the punishment would’ve been less harsh had the graffiti in question not been derogatory towards the French teacher. See, I never enjoyed French, particularly because the teacher in question was a bell end. Conveniently, he had a moustache, which was enough for us teenaged idiots to equate his appearance with that of the great John Cleese, and nickname him Basil after Cleese’s character in Fawlty Towers. It was during a particularly boring lesson that I decided to write this on the desk, as though me pencilling ‘Basil’ onto the desk would somehow make him realize everyone hated him and make him liven up his lessons, maybe by taking us to the pub or zoo or something. Alas, it didn’t work, neither did my protests that I was trying to remember the French way of spelling ‘Brazil’ and had not only mis-spelled it but also missed my exercise book with my pencil.

Apparently this reminiscing had left Pete in the dark as to what I was still staring at, as he was now suspiciously eyeballing everyone that crossed my gaze. I carefully considered for a second whether I should point it out to him or make something up in case he was so disgusted by it that he threw up or died of disgust, but decided it was in his best interests, just in case he put his hand in it or something by accident.

“Look,” I said, “that woman that’s just walked past has put something on the table next to ours. I think it’s chewing gum.”

“That’s no chewing gum.” He responded, “that’s part of a Percy Pig.”

You know in action films when the true extent of the massive terror plot is finally revealed to the hero, like he thought someone was shoplifting but it actually turned out they’d rigged The Whitehouse to explode or something. That’s what it was like to me. I imagined myself vomiting in terror, I imagined the scenes of chaos and panic in the streets, I wondered what we could do to save the world from this despicable act, then stopped because so far my imagining had got us nowhere and just confused Pete.

“What the fuck?” I thought and said at the same time.  (Well actually I probably thought it a bit before I said it.)  Why on science’s green earth would somebody eat three quarters of a Percy Pig and then discard the remaining piece neatly on the edge of a table outside a burrito restaurant? There were so many angles to consider. Why Percy Pig? Could it be to do with the swine flu pandemic? Were you trying to instill fear in the next user of the table? Were you equating the pink flesh of Percy with that of a pasty white person who’s spent too long in the sun, implying that you’d be coming to kill me on my holiday? Perhaps it was a secret message to someone.  Could this be part of an elaborate terrorist plot?  I mean, the Taliban are Muslim, and they are well known for their dislike for pigs and pork.   Are they planning to blow up my new favourite restaurant?

Equally concerning to me was the fact that you’d walked straight into a building following your Percy deposit. Not just any building either, but the building I WORK IN! Whilst this didn’t bother Pete particularly (I don’t think he grasped the severity of the entire situation to be honest), it concerned me to the point of severe concern, or defcon 4 as I like to call it. Which brings me back to this letter that I’m writing. Basically I just want to know what on earth possessed you to do it, why you did it there, are you insane, are you a terrorist, please can I be spared if this is part of a global terror plot and if you have any Percy Pigs left, can I have one please? Or any of those prawn sweets because for a minute I thought it was one of them and now I kinda want one. Even though it’s a bit nasty, I mean, can you imagine if they actually tasted like prawns? But they don’t, so why make them the shape of prawns? It’s not like prawns look tasty with their shell on, they look like a retarded wet insect. Their legs are all creepy. I always preferred those white chocolate buttons with the hundreds and thousands on even though the chocolate is clearly sub standard. So if you’ve got any of those, I’ll happily take some off your hands as well.

Yours scared and craving sugar,

Chris

The Offending Confectionery

An Open Letter to Myself

Dear Chris,

You think you’re pretty clever eh? Writing all these letters to people who have pissed you off, thinking no-one will call you out when I make a mistake or get something wrong?  Well guess what dickballs, the tables have turned and I’m calling me out now.

See, being the same person I know that you’ve always been one to get a cheap laugh off anything you consider even remotely amusing.  You know very well that my favourite type of joke is that at someone else’s expense.  As do our long suffering friends, who to be frank should probably hate my guts as much as I hate people that piss you off.

Never have we admired a line of text as much as ‘Caution, Contents Hot’ on coffee cups.  How I laughed at that story / urban legend about the (probably fatter than a house) American person who sued for their coffee being too hot.  Who wouldn’t expect coffee to be hot?  Only a fat American bucket-o-chicken munching sweatfest probably.

So this story should perhaps come as some surprise.

I’m not one to forget the elation we share at that point in time when all our stars align and you are able to seek out the holy grail.  When you realise that you’re out of the house, near a town centre, and that it’s before 10.30 AM, and that I have a spare 15 minutes.  That smile that spreads across our face can only mean one thing; McDonalds breakfast day.  How we love the build up, as we merrily skip towards McDonalds, my nose leading you along the scent of sausage McMuffin in the air like Yogi Bear towards a picnic basket.

You don’t care that I look like a grinning idiot as you stride up to the counter and place the order to the infinitely less excited staff member that’s been there since 6 AM, even on a Sunday.  Do you remember how we know that fact?  That time I stayed up all night waiting for them to open on Sunday morning at 6?  That was a great night.  Those were the days.  Like those times you used to bunk off maths on a Thursday morning to go and get that lovely, slimy, rubbery, how-the-hell-is-that-called-a-sausage-when-its-clearly-a-burger treat.  It was always the same order, Sausage and Egg McMuffin (double if I’m feeling adventurous), hash brown (not brown, not containing any hash – another weak joke – same goes for when it’s about corned beef hash) and orange juice.

It’s only now that you’re getting on a bit that I decided to change it up a bit, make a substitution.  You’ve come to realise the awakening powers of coffee, so decide to make the switch, ditch the orange juice in favour of something that will prevent me falling back to sleep on the train and missing your stop.  The ear to ear grin still intact as you stride over to a table to sit down and eat.  Grateful that you decided to get the later train and save ourself half the fare, even though I’m claiming it back from work anyway.  The grin turns to a smirk as you see that ever constant source of merriment, the ‘Caution, Contents Hot’ embossing on the lid of the coffee.  “Of course it’s hot, I’d complain if it wasn’t”, you think to myself as you stir in the metric shit-ton of sugar you need to pretend you are grown up enough to enjoy coffee.  It’s then, as you well remember, that I raise the cup to our mouth to take a sip.

And your whole face evaporates.  Starts with the tongue melting, then your jaw has disintegrated, next thing you know my nose has turned to steam and the whole front of your brain is exposed.  Luckily that’s the bit that likes the sausage and egg McMuff, so now you can just wipe it on there seeing as there’s no chance of chewing it as your eating equipment is starting to form a condensation on the ceiling.  You could probably pick the hash brown apart and stuff it down my newly exposed throat to make sure we get our money’s worth, plus considering we’re probably going to die before that coffee cools down, this could be my last McDonalds breakfast.  My only regret was that I never got to try a bacon and egg / sausage and egg McMuffin combo, double stacked eggs and meat. MMMmmmmm.

I’m fairly sure a similar thing happened to us as a child, but with a McDonalds apple pie.  It was probably at that birthday party you had where actual Ronald McD turned up.  Mum said to wait a bit cos it would be hot but we were too excited to wait for something as trivial as thermal energy transfer.  I think before then I wasn’t even ginger, it must have been then that you were burned to the hair follicles and blessed an entire generation of bastards with comedy material.  This probably goes a long way to explaining why I don’t eat apples anymore, or trust men dressed as Rondald McDonald, let alone the real Ronald McDonald.  I’ve always been a Hamburglar fan since that day.

And so it came to be that you made such a massive mistake and learned a life lesson.  That lesson: don’t make jokes at ridiculous American lawsuits because one day you might get burned by whatever it was that the fat American was suing for in the first place.  It’s quite a specific lesson, and leaves enough wiggle room for me to laugh at most ridiculous American lawsuits, but still, it’s a lesson you should remember for life.

So don’t let me forget it.

Chris

An Open Letter to the Fat Woman in Front of Me on the Stairs

Dear Fat Woman in Front of Me on the Stairs,

I’d like to start by complimenting you, in saying that you’re by far not the fattest person I’ve ever seen on the tube. That’s certainly not to say I would, but I’ve seen some people that, had you seen them above ground, you’d find yourself wondering if they would be allowed on the tube or if maybe they’d just plug it up. But then these fatties were generally just sitting down, taking up four seats and I generally don’t mind having to stand on the tube whereas you’ve practically doubled my journey time today.  Granted, that wasn’t helped by me leaving work 20 minutes late, waiting 20 more minutes for a tube with some room on it for my slightly large frame, giving up, walking 15 minutes to the next station, waiting another 10 minutes then squeezing onto an already full train just to get the fuck home, but at this stage of the journey all those parts are complete and all that’s left of this journey is to get to the top of these stairs and get the fuck home so I can waste the evening doing nothing and do all this shit again in the morning.

Let’s consider my reasons for trying to get out of here as quickly as possible.  Firstly, I edged/pushed my way in front of a man on the platform to get here and I’m fairly sure the old bastard is stood right behind me now cursing my youthfulness and lack of manners.  I, of course, have my headphones in which means not only can I not tell if that’s what he’s saying, but also that even if it is, he’s wrong because I can’t hear him and therefore can’t defend myself.  Secondly, theres the fact that it’s the summer, and with those flying bastards we call bees and those fucking bastards we call new Big Brother contestants, the summer brings the hot girls.  We all know the science behind it; as temperatures drop in autumn many female humans develop a thick semitransparent fur which not only shields them from the harsh winter cold but also acts as camouflage, blurring their appearance as if they were stood behind frosted glass to the point where they can generally go about their day to day life unnoticed, safe from the prying eyes of the male.  Thankfully when the summer comes around they shed this fur and wear dresses and shit which makes them a thousand times hotter.  I could be staring at them right now up on the surface, but instead I’m forced to watch your elephantine arse sway from side to side as you waddle up these fucking stairs.

It was a tough decision to take this staircase, one which I did not take lightly.  I assessed my options: there are two staircases here, and each is wide enough for two people.  Thats four possible paths to take.  Now, this isn’t like me deciding which traffic lights to cross at, there are significantly fewer factors at work here, it has to be a quick evaluation then a snap commitment otherwise I’ll hold up the people behind me and probably get a whack from the old geezer.  If he’s got up yet, I’m not sure if I knocked him over (not my fault – headphones, remember?).  My decision making process went along the following lines:

Staircase 1, left side – Old lady walking slowly

Staircase 1, right side – no blockages except a lot of people avoiding the old lady

Staircase 2, left side – morons with suitcase (AT FUCKING RUSH HOUR?)

Staircase 2, right side – people coming down (this is acceptable)

Clearly the choice was to go with staircase 1, as we both elected to.  I made sure my head was clear and prepared myself for the iminent merge of people flows as everyone else avoided the old lady, I dont mind people nipping in front of me when they’re only going to move back out of the way when they get in front of the old bird.  I’m considerate like that.  Somehow this didn’t quite go to plan though did it.  For some reason, once you’d got past the old biddy, you decided it was your rightful place right in the fucking middle of this staircase.  At such a pace that even the old dear looks like she wants to watch you get eaten by bears.  She’s not the only one,  since you stepped in front of me I’ve actually been trying to evolve bears from the gunk underneath my fingernails.  By the time you’d made it up 5 steps I’d almost managed to breed a couple of angry fish with lungs instead of gills, but then I tripped over the incredibly long beard I’ve grown and dropped them.  At least one good thing seems to have come of this, and that’s that I now know I can grow a full beard.  I find myself wondering what life is like above ground these days.  Maybe North Korea bombed the shit out of the whole planet and we’ll get up there to find that radioactive dinosaurs roam London, or maybe it will be more like the Jetsons.

A few days ago I was on some stairs that were being blocked by someone else.  This, however, was a very young girl who had clearly only just learned how stairs work and was taking one step at a time, making sure both feet were solidly on each step before progressing to the next.  Did this make me mad?  No.  It was actually quite cute.  Maybe it was because I’d been drinking but I actually didn’t even consider hoofing her down the stairs just to get down a bit quicker.  What I’m trying to get across here is that I don’t hate all slow stairs users.  Just you (this is a lie to get my point across, I actually would quite happily slaughter anyone that moves slower than me with a rusty chainsaw) (As long as I had earphones, because the rust would probably squeal like nails on a chalkboard) (If I didn’t have any earphones, I’d be happy to use a fresh chainsaw).  You’re like that guy with the big 4×4 who parks across two disabled spaces and then when anyone looks at you like a cunt you shrug and you’re all like “what? disabled?  Oh, I didn’t know, I can’t see the sign from up here.  Oh, two spaces, yes well it is a big car and after all, I’m in a hurry.  What about that actual disabled person behind me looking for a space?  Well no I’m not going to move it now, I’m only going to be 5 minutes (HOURS-CUNT).  What’s that, ran over someone in a wheelchair?  Well, they should have run out of the way.”

If there’s one thing you should take away from this encounter, it’s that I hate you and I wish you were dead, because then I could step over your body and actually get up these bastard stairs.  If you want to take something else, maybe learn that when there are 2 rows of people, then you decide that you need both those rows EVEN THOUGH YOU’RE NOT MORBIDLY OBESE, you might piss off a few people.  Or maybe just one.  But one with the fury of a thousand rabid wolves.  Hows about you go and eat a few bucket meals, get yourself so fat that even thinking makes you sweaty and then maybe you’ll be wide enough that I’ll change the tone of my letter to rip into you for being a fucking fat bitch rather than just a fucking stupid one you oblivious retarded cunt.

Lots of love

Chris

An Open Letter to Jason

Dear Jason,

I understand you might have some trouble reading this letter, as according to Greek mythology you died around 2500 years ago, but I thought I should write anyway to ensure you are aware of the current state of your ship and it’s crew.  Please understand that I’m not blaming you for anything, as this would be slightly unfair bearing in mind your considerable lack of life and the possibility that you never existed in the first place.  Please don’t be offended by that, I just have trouble believing most of the stuff you’re credited with.  Particularly the bit where you plow a field with fire breathing oxen and you struggle to not get burned but seem to have no problem making cows breathe fire in the first place..

Anyway, in modern day England your ship is no longer a ship, but a large chain of catalogue based shops.  Due to the plurality of these shops, they are no longer named The Argo, but Argos.  You should also be aware that the crew of your ship are no longer the group of incredible heroes they once were.  They don’t stock any golden fleeces, dragons teeth or indeed any of the crazy shit you spent your whole life questing for, but they do have a rather impressive toy section and their other golden stuff is highly coveted by the Sirens of today’s world, now known as sluts.

The process of buying something from these shops reflects the three tasks you undertook whilst in Colchis trying to get your hands on that golden fleece  (Side note – these days fleeces are a fashion faux pas, unless you’re my Dad and refuse to let go of the blue one we got in Blackbushe Market about 15 years ago).  Where you had to plow a field with fire breathing steak trees, customers have to plow the catalogue to find their desired product, then write down it’s catalogue number with an ink breathing pen (another side note – once in the Argos in Elephant and Castle I saw a little kid throwing these pens and he managed to hit a baby, it was well funny.  Even more funny was his Mum telling him off in a thick African accent – “Look what you have done, you have hit the tiny baby!” – Classic).   In a modern day re-enactment of your second task, defeating hordes of warriors grown from dragon’s teeth, customers have to defeat hordes of other customers to get to the front of the queue and place their order.  Then, when you were busy chloroforming the sleepless dragon to get the golden fleece, we now have to wait until our number is called out and pick up our item from the relevant collection point.  Dragons these days are not fierce, fire breathing monsters but smug, rich business people who host a TV show where they belittle nervous inventors, and as such play no part in this transaction.

My reason for writing to you lies in parts 2 and 3, and in fact 4, of my own personal adventure, the Quest for the New TV.  I’m not about to explain to you what a TV is, if you’re reading this then you can go and look it up,  I recommend Wikipedia as a reference point.  Following my selection of a TV from the (disappointingly no-longer laminated) book of wondrous prizes, I set sail towards the ancient kingdom of the checkout where I was met by the first foe of my daring crusade.  Whilst initially being visibly dismayed at being forced to cease conversation with her shipmate, she managed to muster up enough morale to convey what I interpreted to be concern for my well-being.  As I was paying for my purchase, she asked, with apparent disquietude, how I would be returning the TV to my homeland.  Not one to be portrayed as anything less than a man of strength and power, I informed her that I would be carrying it home myself, with my man arms.  At this point she saw fit to inform me that it weighs over 20 kilograms (just over 6 fleeces).  I have no idea how much that is in real terms and, armed with this lack of knowledge, dismissed her concern and proceeded to my collection point.

It was here that I was met by another of your modern crew, this time a moderately attractive young lady who was even more eager to help me.  I would later learn that this was all a part of the ship’s plan to make me look and feel like an idiot.  This one again asked how I was intending to get the TV to my car.  Keen to enforce my masculinity which was apparently lacking from my visual appearance, I explained that I did not have a car, but would be carrying the entire 20+ kg TV back to my lair using my own arms, and that I was not a puny little girl but a large male and that not all of my bulk was fat.

At this stage, she decided it would be appropriate to taunt me.  Carrying the TV with a male colleague, she explained to me that it’s not really that heavy, just somewhat awkward.  Really?  Not that heavy?  Could that be because you’re only carrying half of it?  I notice that dude on the other end of the box isn’t preaching about how it’s as light as a feather.  If only I’d realised what was going on then, I might have conceded defeat and bought some kind of skateboard to tow it home on.

To be clear, I’m not telling Jason, Leader of the Argonauts, that I’m not manly enough to carry a TV home, because I actually did make it.  Feeling somewhat dejected by the lack of confidence displayed by your crew, I was determined to complete my quest and arrive home to a jubilant house, eager to greet their hero and his gift to them.  There were numerous challenges on the journey alongside the weight and awkward shape of the box.  The filthy homeless types heckling me whilst blind drunk on a bench, the potential robbing chav kids whose parents are mere months older than themselves and the attractive women I walked past who could see that the effortless expression on my face was wholly fake by the massive sweat patch on my back.

However, I overcame these obstacles and returned not to the scenes of elation I had foreseen, but to an empty house.  I was not fazed by this, however, as I was more than happy to revel in my own success at reaching my final destination in one piece and with the spoils of my quest.  I had beaten the odds, and the opinions of your crew.

Until the following day, when I realised the genuine motive of your crew.  I woke up to find both my arms in a load of pain whenever I extended them. The crew were not hoping to see me fail, they wanted to see me in pain and they had succeeded, the bastards. Upon my defeat I resigned myself to a death reflecting yours, but I am not engaged to anyone and don’t know anyone else that would marry me causing the fianceé to kill the wife and our children, and I don’t have an old boat that could collapse on me and kill me in my sleep so instead I’ve decided to just stretch it out and watch TV for a bit.

Yours Sincerely

Chris

An Open Letter to the Mental Guy off the Bus

Dear Mental Guy off the Bus,

You might not know that this letter is aimed at you.  Due the nature of sanity, it’s difficult to ascertain if an insane person knows that they are, in fact, batshit mental.  Let’s run through a few things, if any of these ring a bell, it could be you:

You fucking stink so bad that birds fall out of the sky dead when you leave the house.

Your back is more hunched than the hunch I had that you were mental when you first got on the bus.

You sometimes wear cords on the bus.

People often laugh when you are on the bus.

Your hair is so greasy that the nation of Greece has filed a copyright claim against you attempting to force you to upgrade your hair description from greasy to slimy but you’re so fucking bonkers that you ate the letter, confusing it for a rabbit which you like to eat because  you’re mental.

You’re a noisy, crazy motherfucker who stinks and sat next to me on the bus.

Any of these sounding familiar?  Ringing any bells?  Or perhaps banging any drums, seeing as that seems to be your preferred musical outlet.  “How does he know about my drum fetish?” I hear you barking to yourself like a dog with a tin of dogfood that’s frustrated that it cant open it because it doesn’t have any thumbs to use a can opener.  I know because, from the second you sat down next to me on the bastard bus, you fucking drummed with both your shit retarded hands and all two of your arse trodden feet all the fucking way home.

I’ve never heard a bag of papers make so much cunting noise.  In their defense, I’ve never heard a bag of papers make any noise, but you were noising them up like there was no tomorrow.  For you, I hope there is no tomorrow.  I hope someone killed you after I got off the bus with still over a mile to walk to get home just to get the fuck away from you.  Also, can I just say, the London air has never smelled so fresh as it did when you were finally out of the air surrounding my face.

I’ll be honest, after I got over the smell of what I thought was your burning flesh, I was initially entertained by your apparent lack of sanity.  It managed to create a bond between me and my fellow passengers, each of us equally disturbed by your incessant drumming.  Even the scraggy teenage girls audibly expressed their sympathy for me, but I think that was more in a fruitless attempt to get your attention and perhaps humiliate you into not drumming any fucking more.  However, true to your insanity you ignored them and persevered, even when they played some crappy clip off their mobile phone telling you to be silent or they would kill you.  I’m fairly sure they would have killed you, in fact they may well have, they stayed on the bus after I got off.

Highlight of the trip for me was when the hippie with the bongos got on and even he was confused by you.  The kind of guy generally known for smelling off and annoying everyone by drumming.  Maybe he was pissed off that you stole his ‘thing’, maybe he just realised that after all this time he looked and smelled and acted like a prick.  I bet tomorrow on the bus he’s wearing a suit.  Its a pretty sad time in your life when even dirty hippies look down on you, but then being so fucked in the brain you probably didnt notice him looking down at you and instead probably thought he was a clown trying to give you some flowers for being such a great drummer.

Maybe in your head you’re in some kind of band, and the bus is actually a massive stadium, and all of us wankers on the bus are your fans.  This is not the case.  At all.  Maybe you were once in a band, I will admit your time keeping was pretty good, and the tempo changes were impressive.  However these days have now passed, if they ever happened in the first place, and this is a bus not a stadium.  The only music anyone wants to hear here is from that 12 year old’s mobile phone, and its only other mental people that want to hear that.

I have found myself wondering how it is that you came to be so insane.  I think when you were born there was a mix up at the hospital, and your brain was accidentally removed and replaced with a bacon double cheeseburger.  Due to the preservatives in these foods the burger lasted a few years.  The sesame seeds on the bun were enough intelligence to get you through early life without attracting too much attention.  Perhaps people thought you were ’special’.  I’m sure you liked that.  As time has passed, the bun has now decomposed, the cheese melted and oozed out of your ear when you were on holiday somewhere hot and the bacon has shrivelled up to next to nothing as your advanced thoughts drained all the bacony goodness from it.  All that’s left now are two slabs of 50 year old beef to power all your thoughts and actions.

If this is the case then you can’t really be blamed for your incessant fucking drumming, but that doesn’t stop me hating you with such a passion that I’m reluctant to ever get on that bus again in my life you mental bastard.

Chris

An Open Letter to the Lowest, Most Vile Scum on the Planet

Dear People Who Take Off Their Shirts in Clubs,

Fucking put your fucking shirt back on now or choke to death on a fat cock you fucking brain dead moronic arseholes. No one in here wants to have sex with you, least of all me.

I hope you die in a fire.

Chris

P.S. Stop moshing or I’m going to stab you.

An Open Letter to People Who Use Cash Machines Twice in a Row

Dear People Who Use Cash Machines Twice in a Row,

What the hell is the matter with you people? As if the whole cashpoint ordeal wasn’t enough, what with the ridiculous fees levied by greedy bankstards (£1.75? ARE YOU FUCKING KIDDING ME?), the constant threat of being mugged, card-cloned, pressing the wrong number of zeros and withdrawing 10x what I wanted, the machine being out of tenners and NO I DON’T WANT A FUCKING ADVICE SLIP, now it turns out it’s not even my turn yet?

I knew I should have walked a bit further to the Halifax machine, but I have a strange sense of loyalty to Nationwide. I wouldn’t want them to think I was cheating on them. Even though their machines are significantly slower than others. I mean, NatWest machines are the fastest, with them the card is in and out and you’re done before you’ve even worked out that the strange shadow on the screen is the NatWest logo burned into it. NatWest machines are like seasoned porn stars. You can see from the worn off number pad that she’s had a lot of experience, she swallows your card like a pro and then spits out your cash whilst loudly beeping expletives straight into the camera.

I know she’s a slut baby, but why do you Nationwide machines take it so damn slowly? We don’t need hours of foreplay when I’m just trying to get a tenner to buy some lunch. Why is your card reader so slow? And how long does it really take you to retrieve my account information?

So I didn’t want my card to get an STD which is why I joined this queue. It’s only 3 people long, shouldn’t take too long. I don’t like that it’s across a busy pavement and we’ve had to leave a gap for people to get through, I mean what if some queue jumping bastard decides to get in that gap? I’m not gonna tell him to fuck off, he might have a knife. Why does no-one ever queue along the wall to the side of the cash machine?

The guy before you wants an advice slip. Rookie. How has he not learned by now that they don’t really give that good advice? It’s generally just your balance. If you really want advice, ask your parents, they’re normally full of it. Or better yet, don’t ask them, they’re probably gonna tell you anyway. That’s what they do. What kind of advice are you asking for from a cash machine anyway. It’s a really basic computer, it’s not some advanced artifical intelligence. It’s not like that fortune telling machine in Big that Tom Hanks chatted up then she made him into a man boy (that looks strangely boy like still compared to Tom Hanks these days). Its just a cash machine. The best advice it could give you is either ’stop spending money’ or ‘don’t ask me, I’m just a machine and in the 4 seconds it’s taken me to impart to you this advice, the ginger guy two behind you in the queue has got so angry that he might have beaten you to death already if you didn’t at least step to the side of the machine before reading this’.

And then you step up. Greedy Jim the cash machine hog. It gets a bit annoying when you stab your retarded fingers at the buttons on the keypad like you’re you’re playing whack a mole with the numbers. Then when you realise you got your pin wrong and have to start again, but instead of pressing clear, you press cancel and have to wait for your card to come out, the machine to be ready again and then start all over again. Then after putting in your pin you look round at everyone to make sure no-one’s looking over your shoulder. Guess what dickbrains, if anyone’s looking over your shoulder now, they’ve already got your pin because you already poked it in, plus I’m fucking definitely looking over your shoulder because I want to know how much fucking longer you’re gonna take before I can get a fucking tenner so I can eat some fucking food because I’m fucking hungry and my fucking lunch break is almost over because I’ve been stood behind you practically since I was fucking born.

By now I’m already contemplating the cost of a gun, I’m pretty sure that guy with his hood up could sell me one, and I’m wondering if he’ll take payment after I’ve shot you and had a chance to use the bastard cashpoint. I’m wondering if there’s enough in my account, but decide against it because I don’t know how much is in my account and I don’t want to hold up the queue behind me when it is my turn. It’s a pity you don’t think like that, as you’re currently browsing your transaction history and appear to be confused over a £5 transaction you can’t quite remember making. I wish you were dead. I wish your father had never met your mother on that street corner, or that the cash machine had been out of order when she demanded payment up front. Or that he could only afford a hand job so you and a million of your other potential brothers and sisters ended up in a drain instead of in front of me in the fucking queue.

What’s this, did you just press no to wanting another service? You don’t want any money? My emotions are torn right about now. I’m glad you’re finally about to cock off, but this means you’ve wasted all my time for nothing? Could you not have waited until after lunchtime? I think even the guy in the hood looks disappointed, I guess mugging you would have got him quite a bit of crack. Ah well, now why don’t you step to the side whilst putting your card back in your wallet?

Hold up you festering fuck hole.  We all just saw that.  Did you really think that the whole queue of 3 people would miss you slipping another card out of your wallet and into the machine?  What gives you the right to twosies on the cah machine?  Maybe if you’d had a friend queue up behind you and you used his turn we could maybe accept that, but you didn’t.  You probably don’t even have any friends.  They probably realised they should give up on being your friend when they all died of old age whilst you fucked about with your fucking personal finances on the bastard cash point.  I wish you were dead so hard it hurts me a bit.

You should be aware that when you finally leave this machine I’m going to give you a slightly off look because I’m really pissed off.  Then, if you’d like to stick around I’ll demonstrate how to properly use a cash machine whilst following my own unspoken cash machine rules:

1) have your card ready as you approach the machine

2) try and poke it in the slot before it’s ready so that as soon as it is ready you’re already in

3) enter your pin and press enter just in case.  Not all machines need you to press enter, but if it does and you don’t press it then I’m going to kill you

4) cash, no receipt, done, fuck off

Notice that my process took all of 45 seconds (30 on a NatWest machine) and yours took so long you missed your firstborn daughters wedding despite the fact that you’ve not even met the mother of your child yet because any woman that had met you would have run a mile when you explained to them that your hobby is conducting your personal finances on cash machines with a queue behind you.  Lets say it takes you 5 years to get over this, then another year to meet that blind, deaf and dumb woman that’s going to fall for you, a further year before she gets pregnant and that your daughter gets married at 23.  This means your transaction took a whole 30 years, 8 months, 30 days, 23 hours and 15 seconds more than mine did.

Is it any wonder that everyone hates you so much?

Yours frothing at the mouth in rage,

Chris

An Open Letter to Jim Morrison

Dear Jim Morrison,

I visited your supermarket today, as I often do when I need to buy food. It’s quite convenient that I choose to visit your place, as it happens to be the closest to my house. Other than the newsagent/grocery place, but I’m always a little bit scared to buy food there as it’s all a bit exotic for my tastes (some kind of Turkish or something) and the guy that works there is basically a darker skinned version of the girl from the uni shop (see my earlier letter to her).

Perhaps opting to visit an hour before closing was a bad idea. I was initially dismayed to see the lack of fresh produce at the bakery until I realised that was probably my fault. I guess you can’t keep baking lovely baguettes all day, otherwise you’d have a massive surplus at the end of the day. If you did decide to do that, I’d be happy to take a few off your hands. The shop was also pretty busy, I assume with people getting those last minute things they need for the night. And with staff getting in the way of their last few people before they get to go home.

Every time I turned a corner it seemed that one of your staff members stopped right in front of me to have a conversation with another one. Jim, you really need to train your staff a bit better. I’m all for letting them have a chat on the job, but please get them the fuck out of my way. I mean, I’m pretty sure one of them was trying to sit on the end of my trolley. I’d also be very grateful if you told that chav girl to not let her children run off. The sound of her screeching the ridiculous made up names she gave to her children is pretty annoying when you’re trying to decide which margarine to get. I went for the own brand olive oil spread in the end, not before almost hitting Danesha and Chantellion with my trolley.

It was pretty freaking busy as well, but I know that’s not something you control. Unless you’re holding out on us in a pretty big way. I mean, if you do control how busy it gets, maybe through some kind of mind control drug in the food, I would appreciate it if you could use that power to make it a bit quieter when I turn up. As if weaving through grannies wasn’t enough, when my aisle pattern gets synchronised with 3 other shoppers, it makes it pretty hard to randomize my flow to make it not look like I’m stalking someone. I get enough strange looks from people without them thinking I’m following them.

The checking out experience wasn’t great either I’m afraid to say. My hopes were high, having witnessed what appeared to be a smooth, friendly transaction between the gentleman in front of me and the cashier, but when I didn’t even get a hello, I almost cried. As it turns out I may well have been greeted by her, as when she did start talking I had to lean in so far she was basically licking my eardrum before I could even hear her. Even then it was a struggle to understand what the hell she was saying due to her strong accent. It turned out she was asking a question which was akin to something from a text-based adventure game, as I was apparently unable to proceed before providing the correct answer.

Usually when faced with these situations, I smile and nod. When there’s money involved, I’m less inclined to nod incase I’ve just agreed to spend more. In this case I opted to respond in the negative, which appeared to disappoint my cashier somewhat. I think she might have asked ‘do you find me attractive’. The answer would still have been no.

On departing the store, it became apparent to me that your groceries are apparently made of concrete. I’m unsure why you chose this material for everything in the store, other than the fact that it makes things incredibly difficult to carry home. At first I thought perhaps I had forgotten I had to carry this stuff and neglected to consider the weight of the items I purchased, but I’m not that stupid, it must be your fault. I would appreciate if, in future, you used a lighter material to produce your groceries, such as air. You might also find this reduces your production costs, resulting in discounts all round. This tactic would surely allow you to win the supermarket war.

Unfortunately, my story doesn’t end there. In fact, it was on arrival at home that my complaint is based. Whilst in the store, I was unable to resist the temptation of your Toffee Crisp Cookies. In fact, it was the thought of these that gave me the strength to carry the concrete groceries home. Imagine then, if you will, my disappointment when, on opening the bag of cookies, instead of the displayed quantity of five there were only four cookies contained within.

My initial response was an attempted suicide by suffocation, but my head would not fit in the tiny bag along with the four cookies and I’m not entirely sure it would’ve been air-tight anyway. It was then that I hit rock bottom, and decided to write this letter of complaint. I have attached an image of the bag in question, presently empty (it took the other cookies to cheer me up) and would be grateful if you could bake the missing cookie and send it back to me. Please don’t over cook it, I like it when they’re soft in the middle.

Yours sincerely

Chris

See the bit where it says 5? That was a lie