Paul Haine | Tales from the city
Editorial
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Petty Victories
So, this week I’m going to talk about toilet rolls, and toilet roll dispensers. This might seem like a bit of a departure from my usual high-brow material — you know, Superman, Gameboys, Cafés — just please bear with me, as I’m trying to make a wider point.
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Bald Men’s Last Haircuts
Joeblade this week is brought to you by Ian
Hair has always been an issue for me. In my family, there comes a time in every young man’s life when your male elders switch in your estimation from being everything you want to become to being those bald guys you know you won’t be able to avoid turning into.
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So What’s Up With Me?
Though it may not seem like it, I don’t exclusively spend my days drinking coffee in Oxford and bitching about bad comic-book adaptations (though I do do this a lot). No, sometimes, I’m busily being productive, so busy that I’ve been drafting in guest writers at short notice to fill the gap here and there when I haven’t managed to write something. I will now explain why.
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Living It Up
Not being much of a traveller, my experience of hotels has been slim to the point of non-existence. In fact, last year during the @media conference was the first time I’d even stayed in a hotel, which was unfortunate as it was a God-forsaken Holiday Inn Express or some such, with the bare minimum of walls and ceilings and only dry bread available for breakfast. This year I was again attending @media, but this time — fuck it, I thought, I was going posh.
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Turn That Racket DOWN!
Joeblade this week is brought to you by h
Hello. My name is Helen and I have a problem: I’m a cantankerous 40-year-old harridan trapped in the body of a nubile early twentysomething.
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Café con Lechery
It’s that time of year again when I start using up my annual leave allowance, which is almost always spent lounging around in Oxford parks and cafés because I lack imagination, money, and sufficient gumption to get out and do something less boring instead. This year, my first five days of leave coincided with the wettest May since 1983.
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Crosscut
Joeblade this week is brought to you by Ian Edhouse
I, the author of this article, am a guest contributor to Joeblade. You, the reader, will likely have assumed that I am male, and you will have been correct. This, my small contribution to history, kindly facilitated by Paul, is an article primarily about a thing called Crosscut.
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Breaking News
We’re just receiving reports of an incident on a farm in Sussex, where a number of people have been arrested in connection with annoying the nation. It is believed that the owner of the farm, a Mr Hibbert, has been co-operating with police and government officials, in a plot codenamed “Operation Fewer Pricks”, and kindly granted permission for the use of a 17th century tithe barn as a temporary holding place for those arrested.
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The Long Dark
As mentioned previously, I hate winter. This was something I felt worth expanding upon, as it’s about now that winter really gets into the swing of things even though everyone feels it ought to have ended on December 26th. Let’s be blunt; this time of year is just rubbish.
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Shopping for Blood
So it’s Winter, and that’s annoying. I don’t much like Winter; it’s cold, bleak, everyone’s miserable because it’s Christmas and everyone is spending money they don’t have on stockpiling food they don’t need for that horrific period where the shops are shut for nearly whole two days. I like to stay in during the Winter, far from the maddening crowds, but I was forced out on Saturday because I had to go shopping. For gloves.
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Autumnal
It can sometimes be hard to pinpoint the precise moment when an English summer turns to autumn, but this year I think it happened during the middle of last week when Covent Garden released their ‘Soup of the Month’ and it was lentil, bacon and oak-smoked garlic. Only weeks earlier, it had been ‘pea and lettuce’. Ever had lettuce soup? Imagine a bowl of green water, but a water that comes without the complex, abundant flavours that water has and you wouldn’t be far off the mark.
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ntl, Revisited
In a worrying example of continuity, I thought it worth updating you all on the story so far regarding my little spat with ntl.
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Ebay and Sleep
There comes a point where the human brain is so worn out and tired that previously-illogical acts suddenly take on a new clarity and seem utterly normal.
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Swanning Around
Given the way things have been going these last few weeks, I decided it was time to take a break and use up some of my holiday allowance. This means I will be spending the next 11 days swanning around Oxford, drinking lots of coffee from trendy cafés and generally being a bit of a git.
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Involuntary Noises
The last few weeks has been a voyage of discovery for me, with the discoveries being ‘what sounds the human body involuntarily makes during times of unexpected crisis, frustration or disappointment’. Join me, if you will, as I take you through them one by one.
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ntl Hell
You would suppose, I suppose, that as ntl are known colloquially as ntlHell that might have given me a sort of a clue as to what I could expect from them. I mean, as warning signs go, that’s a pretty big one, but it was one I ignored. Stupid, stupid, stupid.
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Residents of Oxford
While I’ve grown quite fond of Oxford’s Famous Oxford in quite a short space of time, I feel it’s time that I made a couple of things clear, as there seems to be a bit of confusion here and there.
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Life Changing
The National Lottery used to be fairly straightforward; you’d choose six numbers, then depending on how many numbers you got, you won a cash prize. Or, to be more accurate, you won bugger all, and somebody else won upwards of £10,000,000.
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The Gym, Revisited
Regular readers will recall that after a good six years of abusing my body with burgers, biscuits and a general lack of movement, I joined a gym. My subsequent departure from The University put a stop to that, but now, six months on, I’ve started again.
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Hiccups
It is perhaps a reflection of my personality that I can go out for a night in London with Decline & Fall and Vikki, and yet return to write an article on hiccuping. The opportunity for new anecdotes should have been great, and it no doubt was, but nevertheless, this is where we are.
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