Pri-Cunt

Welcome shoppers, to Primark Oxford Street in glorious Cunt London for all your cheap couture needs.

Yes, welcome to shopping hell.

If there is a hell, it'll resemble either Primark Oxford Street or IKEA in Croydon. Two massive stores, which despite their size are still too small for the volume of human dregs who stumble punchdrunk through their open doors; wandering aimlessly like cattle seeking cud to chew.

Of course, I include myself amongst their ranks!

I should have known better - I really should - that POS (as it shall now be known) was going to be like Hell on earth. But, no! I convinced myself, in my infinite wisdom, that a trip to London's shopping Mecca at 6pm would be like a trip to the countryside; a genteel stroll through pastures green as I rubbed shoulders only with nature.

How wrong I was.

I bumped shoulders with the doziest fuckers London has to offer, including a fat fucking pork bone who was practically dancing up the fucking street, eyes closed, weaving like a boxer who's taken one punch too many, whilst listening to his fucking iPod.

As this arse bumped into me, he looked round - now that he'd managed to open his eyes - and bellowed: "Watch where you're fuckin' going, you twat!"

I eyeballed him before retorting: "That's a laugh. Try opening your eyes once in while, dickhead!"

"I'll fuckin' twat you, you cheeky cunt."

I laughed at him. "That's the funniest thing I've heard all year. Now go and jiggle your tits for me, fat girl."

Understandably he started to go for me, but was prevented by a gaggle of shoppers who walked through our little melee, all of whom were completely oblivious to the conversation that had just occurred.

As I walked away (quickly) I heard him bellow something unpleasant in my direction and I realised that one day my fast mouth will probably get me killed.

By the time I got to POS I was sweating like an eskimo in the Sahara, the stuff was practically oozing from my eyes (no, wait, those were just tears of frustration).

The scene that greeted me was one of chaos. Shoppers scraped shoulders, picked things up, threw them down, fought over items of clothing, wandered aimlessly as if seeking the Holy Grail of tat, stood in queues of unspeakable boredom.

And that was just the women's section.

Once I made it upstairs I realised the men's section was just as bad. Alpha males barged into Betas, men and women rifled through racks of clothing with crazy-eyed abandon throwing stuff over their shoulders as they sought out the perfect fit. Couples argued amongst themselves loudly enough to share their displeasure with the people closest to them, regardless of whether they wanted to hear it or not. Amongst these scenes of chaos I managed to find several items of summer clothing I considered acceptable and stood in a queue - a queue that didn't seem to be decreasing.

I was confused. I leaned across to the bored man next to me and asked: "Is this the queue for the checkout?"

The man laughed: "Funny, mate. Like me you're in the queue for the changing rooms. And like me you're probably praying this stuff fits."

He wasn't wrong. For twenty minutes I stood there until finally I got into the changing room.

I peeled off my soaking wet shirt and tried on item after item with a growing sense of dismay.

Nothing fit. The items were either too baggy or too small. Six items I tried, and all were unwearable.

I put my shirt back on handed the items back to the assistant who said: "Nothing fits?" with some degree of disgust.

I shook my head and, realising it meant more finding, and much, much more queueing, walked away shaking my head.

I wandered out of the shop with an empty sense of numbness and vowed never to come back - until next time.

As there's always a next time - regardless of our best intentions.

Distressed

I'm rather distressed at the moment. I've started writing my next novel before I've even finished my last one.

I always do this, and I really must stop it.

My novel at 120,000 words is in very real danger of coming to a halt if I don't.

So I'll leave my new magnum opus as it currently stands until I get the one I'm working on out of the way:

The thing that was once Dave lay before us. It wasn't a pleasant sight to behold but, then again, Dave hadn't been much to look at whilst he was alive, so the only thing he'd really lost out on was his life.

Judging by the state of his corpse, that life had been beaten out of him. He looked like he'd taken on a herd of elephants and come a distant second best.

Poor Dave, always second best - even in death.

He lay on his stomach, face down. The brains that should have been inside his head were being worn on the outside, where they'd do him no good, not that they'd been much use to him, anyway. Dave was strictly muscle.

In the end, it turned out his muscles had been of no use to him, either. His arms and legs had been broken, several times, and his head and face resembled raw hamburger meat, pulverised, ground down, and nasty; the kind of stuff you get fresh from the mincing machine, still dripping blood.

In life, Dave had been a big man. It would have taken several men to hold him down and pull this off, several big men, or a herd of elephants.

In this neck of the woods I wasn't prepared to rule out either.

"Who the fuck did this?" asked my brother.

"Sienna Miller," I said sarcastically. When my brother sighed, preparing himself for the inevitable retort, I answered, "How the fuck should I know?"

"Was just asking, like."

"Well, don't. You took the same call as me. You took the same car as me. And you're stood in the same place as me, looking at the same fuckin' body.Well, do you know?"

"No," he snapped with teenage surliness.

"Then don't ask me if I know, cos I don't."

Last Orders

Yesterday or, more accurately, from 12.00 this morning, London's new mayor, Boris Johnson, implemented a drinking ban on all London transport.

Londoners mourned by getting thoroughly pissed up and rowdy, causing untold disruption and damage, until 12.ooam, June 1, GMT.

What bothers me about this is not the ban (which, frankly, isn't that much of a big deal), or the vandalism and arrests (again, there's little surprise there), but rather the fact that Londoner's gathered to mourn the passing of their right to get pissed and cause distress and misery to other commuters. It seems like an odd waste of energy better spent doing something useful.

The normal modus operandi of any Londoner, be they natural or naturalised, is apathy. Normally, if a baboon ran on to the platform at any underground station and started shitting and wanking and causing a general ruckus, 99.9% of Londoners would ignore the incident with that heads down, nose in a book or newspaper, attitude of oblivious ignorance, consumed by apathy and their own affairs. However, God forbid somebody should mess with a Londoner's right to get pissed and it's a case of: "How dare you? Fuck you! How dare you mess with my right to be a cunt."

Yes, what a protest it was, folks: A procession of morons going nowhere fast on the Circle line screaming, "Not in my name," to the notion of a ban that might actually make life on the tube and buses a bit better in the long run. Yes, that really makes me proud to be a Londoner. God forbid we should stand up against the rising cost of living or the fact that the police are slowly but surely storing our collective DNA on a big fucking database, or that we're still in Iraq and Afghanistan with no sign of things getting better, or that a bunch of city boys ripped us all off and now normal working stiffs can't get credit or mortgages any more. No, instead, let's all go in a fucking circle and get pissed, because that's what our forefather's would want. Now that's what I call protesting.

Useless, apathetic motherfuckers.

If you're going to protest something, how about protesting the increasing, and distressing, right of the police to break up any gathering or protest, thus negating our freedom of speech, by using the laws designed to protect us all from terrorism. Or how about protesting all the other far more insidious ways our governments chip away at our rights and freedoms.

No? Oh, well, have it your own way, here's a big bottle of Tesco's 'Value' Vodka for you to suck down. Whilst you're at it, here's a big fat fucking Crack pipe for you to smoke, you fucking dumbbells. And whilst you're abusing your system here's all the reality television you can handle.

Now, put your nose back in your newspaper, London, and go to sleep!