The War on Socks

I’ve never liked socks, all my life I’ve been locked in a constant struggle with survival, a war that can never be won against the sock-kind. Over the years the nature of sock-warfare has evolved and changed as new technologies have been developed and new frontiers have opened up, but at all times I’ve been engaged in a War with Socks. I just don’t like wearing them. I can just about tolerate wearing them at work or out shopping, whilst wearing shoes. But as anyone who’s ever lived me will be able to tell you, as soon as my shoes come off my socks are whipped off faster than the average I’m A Celebrity... contestant whips off their dignity.

I just can’t see the point, you wouldn’t wear gloves indoors, so why socks? Admittedly you’re lumbered with the unpleasant side effect as you travel around the house and your feet pick up all kind of debris that collects on the carpet like dust, pepper seeds, bits of tissue and the odd homeless person. It’s like my feet are like some kind of super kitchen roll dredging the carpet, but surely this is a small price to pay for the freedom of toe-based flexibility (they’re not battery hens after all). If it’s cold I put on a pair of slippers, ok they’re less sexy than a Midsomer Murders DVD Box Set but if comfort, warmth, rights for toes and victory over socks are what you’re after they’re the way forward. Though you will have to get machine washable ones as a few weeks of sockless slipper wearing and they end up smelling like nuclear Armageddon in a Babybel factory.

Socks are intrinsically evil. Not convinced? Well consider is the seam that joins the toe of the sock to the main body. Is it just me or is there something inherently annoying about the fact this seam is in exactly the same point as where toe-nail and toe join? And I find this very uncomfortable, admittedly not in every pair of socks, but if I buy a pack of seven pairs for some reason at least one pair will have a particularly annoying seem making them unwearable. Why does this happen randomly? Are these faulty? Can they be sold in special cheap packs like broken biscuits? Who knows? Either way I don’t want them. And itchy seems are just one of the weapons socks use. As it is you can’t even trust socks, their numbers are constantly changing, you put an even number of socks in the wash, and an odd number come out. What’s happened? Has a sock gone undercover in the T-shirt drawer to spy on your every move and report to sock command? Or have the socks been breeding, increasing their foul numbers to take over the world?

At this point you may be thinking that I’m a child, and I should just shut up and wear socks as things will never get better. Well you’d be wrong. In recent years a great victory in my battle with sock-kind was secured, I finally broke through enemy lines with only the deaths of 25,000 innocent civilians.  This first big break through came in the discovery of coloured-toe socks. You know the kind, that all the big department stores sell in large multi-packs?

Up to now the biggest bane of my domestic chore life (other than the daily trip to the bottle bank to deal with my drinking habit) was the pairing up of plain black and navy socks. Over time the various pairs bought across a number of years had all slightly faded by differing amounts. This turned the task of the correct pairing up of them whilst removing from the clothes dryer’ into a Krypton Factor-esque challenge, but without the excitement of Gordon Burns or an obstacle to course to finish with. Coloured toe socks have changed all this, they can be paired up quicker than E-list celebrities in the Big Brother compound. And when out and about wearing a shoe, (typically two) no one need know about your eccentric behaviour of wearing mad coloured socks with crazy coloured toes, unless you’re wearing sandals that is. This victory alone has saved about half an hour off my weekly chores.

However, while I may have won the battle, I certainly haven’t won the war, for with new socks came new problems. Now I do realise by even opening up this can of worms, I sound older than Peter Stringfellow’s hair cut, but is it me or has the quality of socks got worse? Either that or my feet are slowly turning into talons and I’ve not realised. Rarely a week goes by when I haven’t manage to shred the toe of one of my socks on my barbed, cheese-grater like feet. I’d be happy, it’s the destruction of socks, but sadly I need socks – society forces me into a symbiotic relationship with them.

Thank god I never shed a bed with another human or, judging by the state of my socks, my toes would slice their feet off like a scythe ploughing through wheat. Which on the plus side would mean if I did ever convince someone to get in bed with me, they’d find it hard to run away.

All this has lead to a new frontline with the socks, I need new socks, I’m losing them faster than Adrian Childs is losing jobs. Obviously I could get more socks. But through reasons more tedious than Louis Walsh, I’ve been gifted an unwanted set of socks with the days of the week embroidered on them:

We all know the type, quirky socks with the days of the week printed on them, that want to be quirky and friendly when really they’re evil. On the one hand these sound perfect, they are easy to pair up and no one need know I am wearing anything other than plain black socks. But am I ready to accept that my life has reached the point where it’s tragic enough to have the day printed on your sock? It seems a ridiculous level of organisation, even for my anal standards, to have my socks already designated to a specific day. What does that say about individuality, surely it means the socks are controlling me – they’ve won? I mean I could wear the socks on the wrong day, to spite them, but introducing an additional level of complexity to my already worrisome existence doesn’t seem healthy. Also if I was going to have a calendar based system printed on my footwear, days of the week aren’t that helpful, (except on holiday and at Christmas – where socks have no chance of being worn) I generally know what day of the week it is. The date would be more useful, and let’s face it a pack of 31 socks is likely to fit better with the average lazy person washing schedule that a pack of 7. Though that would mean letting 62 socks in my house, that sounds dangerous.

As it stands, with my social life being about as exciting as a meeting of the Keith Chegwin fan club, I never leave the house at the weekend. Thus if I take up the offer of these free socks the Saturday and Sunday pairs will stay shop fresh whereas Monday to Friday will be ripped apart like the body of a small child fed to a pack of hungry wolves. And what if Wednesday’s socks have the dodgy seam, and are unwearable? What am I supposed to do? Introduce a midweek barefoot office day? I don’t think it will catch on. Oh the dilemmas! Will there ever be simplicity in my life.

As you can see The War on Socks is never won, there are always new battles to be fought. Constant vigilance is required, I’ll see you on the front line.

The Ladybird Book of Adrenaline

Yep it’s another update from the blog with more words on it than are tattooed on Frankie Cocozza’s arse, although at least it’s 191% less twatish. However much like Frankie I have been kicked out by Gary Barlow – who knew Take That Concerts had such good security?

Anyway moving on to this week’s topic, last weekend I had my first ever taste of Extreme Sports, I say “extreme” sports, “extreme” is of course a relative term. Those of you veteran blog readers will remember way back in August, when I talked about the London rioters and my predisposition to worrying.

If not click here.

Yes. When worrying is a full on hobby for you, crossing the road without using a designated pedestrian crossing can give you the kind of terrifying thrill, that a normal person can only find by going parachute jumping without a parachute. So given my deep nervous disposition you’ll understand when I say that my Sunday spent Go Karting, to me was a foray deep into the world of Extreme Sports. In fact not knowing how to drive and never even having had a single driving lesson, all meant that this would be my first time in charge of a motor vehicle with any speed above that of kiddy dodgems, which generally are so slow that even the most lacklustre of snails have time to throw themselves to safety should they see one approaching.

Usually pathetic people, such as myself, would only ever dream of doing something so adventurous if we were forced to by circumstance – such as a stag weekend, or other such hideous social activity where people do things they don’t want to please someone they sort of like. As a general rule I try and avoid new experiences in case they’re aren’t enjoyable, why do something that could turn out to be unpleasant when you can do something you always do, that you know you’ll enjoy? Never have I once been horrified by sitting on my own sofa, except for the time my flatmate had Coach Trip on.

Anyway for reasons too tedious to explain, on Sunday I found myself at a Go Karting track near Tower Bridge with a group of work colleagues/friends - they might be reading so I don’t want to sound too fond of them. Now you’d think trying out a new activity in amongst a group of friends, would be the perfect way to test out new experiences – as they’ll be there to support you every step of the way, even if you don’t enjoy the experience or aren’t any good. How wrong you are. Friends I’ve found can often be as much support as Gordon Ramsay in a beginner’s cookery lesson. Unlike friends even the most obnoxious of strangers tend not to pour scorn over you whenever you make a mistake or find yourself out of your depth, whereas friends (certainly these ones – in case they are reading!) have an entirely different dog-eat-dog agenda where all that counts is finding new material with which to mock you. A hobby which they already excel at. Still part of me had high hopes, maybe I’d be naturally good at Go Karting, maybe despite all on-paper predictions, I’d be a brilliant Go Karter zooming around the track, weaving in out of the opposition and running loops round my friends. As I claimed victory after victory and got to stand on the podium spraying champagne around with comic disregard for where it was landing. It would be like the movies where the nerdy kid is really good at American Football and has a result wins a place in the cool kids and a hot girl to be at his side. Maybe, just maybe, I held onto that dream as I entered the building.

If you’re are feeling a bit nervous prior to your first race you’d be hoping that walking into the Go Karting centre is going to reassure you of some of your fears - it’s not. As to great you at the door is a sign saying that “Go Karting is a potentially dangerous sport, you are here at your own risk.”, after reading that you are presented with a waiver to sign, accepting you may die, and asked to give details of your next of kin. All of which is about as comforting as receiving a large package at your house hand delivered by the Taliban. You’re then presented with a one-size does not fit all Crystal Maze-esque jump suit (Richard O’Brien era of course, with different coloured shoulder pads for no real discernable reason) to put on in the changing room where you also find a locker for all your worldly goods and a pad and pen for recording your last will and testament.

Afterwards it’s time to head to the briefing room to be given a tutorial on how the karts work, and all the important safety information. My general reading of the room is the more manly a person you are, the more likely you are to scoff at and ignore the safety instructions. I took detailed notes. The controls seemed simple enough, a steering wheel – which was pretty self-explanatory and two pedals, the accelerator and the brake (this is broadly speaking how normal cars work – or so I’ve been told). And the basic rules were no bumping, no hitting the sides (who aims to hit the side anyway?), no running down the marshals, no spitting and no wearing poppies on your shirts. There’s also a complicated system of flags and lights dotted around the track, green lights mean go (with me so far?), flashing yellow lights mean proceed at walking pace (and try not to hit the marshal who is on the track pushing someone off the wall), red means stop and black means you’ve been disqualified. How anyone is supposed to see a black light though?

With all that information appropriately stored, I nervously headed trackside, a place where it’s impossible not to hum Fleetwood Mac’s Formula 1 theme tune in your head, no matter how inappropriate to your driving skill it may feel. Here I was given a helmet, which due to my hideously deformed oversized head had to be one of the super-freak sized helmets on the top shelf designed to fit Andrew Marr’s ears. I followed the important advice to leave the visor open a crack so as not to steam it up. Given my nervous heavy breathing there was every chance my helmet would turn into a Finnish sauna at any minute, and driving round with a completely obscured visor might not be the safest driving experience. Still I held onto my dream, maybe I would claim victory?

Approximately ten seconds after leaving the starting grid it became exceptionally apparent that I would not be fulfilling my dreams today. Whilst everyone else roared off (well didn’t really roar, they were electric not petrol go karts), I stuttered along the track like a crippled milk float. Unaccustomed to being in charge of a motor vehicle at any speed, the 30mph these karts could easily achieve left me a stressed, terrified, wreck at the wheel. Which didn’t improve as I headed into the first hairpin bend and simply ploughed straight into a wall of tyres, only to have to be pulled out by a marshal, a feat which much to the marshal’s disapproval, I repeated on the next four laps. The lights changed from green to flashing yellow so often due to my incompetence you could be forgiven for thinking it’s an indoor disco. After the marshal gave me a little pep talk on how using the steering wheel would help get around the corner (I knew that, I’m just not very good!), I started to worry that I’d be taken off for poor driving – crashing into the walls, after all, is disallowed. Bad as it would be to come last, I’d never survive the post race ribbing I’d get from my friends if I was disqualified for been as inept as Maureen from the old BBC show Driving School. Hence the next few laps were spent carefully steering around the course, allowing people to overtake me, simply concentrating on getting around the track rather than worrying at all about position.

After a few laps like this, I made a fatal mistake. I became confident. Heading into a rather tight corner, I decided speed was of the essence, the brakes weren’t required, simply confident steering. A few seconds later a sharp skid caused me plough side first into the tyre wall at what I considered to be an horrific velocity, I was flung into the side of my seat which dug right into my ribs. The combined force of the impact and the surprise, as unlike most of my other crashes I hadn’t seen it coming, successfully took the metaphorical wind out of my sails. Not to mention leaving with a really sore set of bruises all over the side of my body which are currently the colour of the Ribena berries. The force of the impact had been so great that my visor sprung off it’s mountings on my helmet, and I headed straight to the pits to have it repaired, much to the mocking of fellow racers who considered my foolish worry for protecting my eyesight to be ridiculously unnecessary.

The rest of the first race I completed terrified of repeating my crash I headed around at the pace of an average student tidying their bedroom, stopping at each corner before looking both ways and completing the turn in a safe and serene fashion. I got lapped so often, that the race organisers thought the lap board must have been malfunctioning. Eventually the chequered flag was waved, and we all had to head in the pits next time we’d passed them, but where were the pits? In all the “excitement” I’d forgotten where the entrance was. I couldn’t afford to just miss it, and go around again, that would surely get me thrown off the track as it would like I was taking the piss. Plus the other drivers would have to wait seven hours for me to complete one more circuit of the average twenty-eight second course. The track ahead was clear, so I took my eyes of the road and darted around looking for the pits, ahhh there they were just round the next corner. My eyes darted back to the road, to find that I simply veered off at a right angle and was rapidly approaching a tyre wall. I hit the brakes and came to a rest about 10 centimetres in front of the wall, I’d not crashed, I’d effectively parked. However without a reverse gear there was no way I could get out of this position without crashing. Worse I’d crashed/parked on a completely straight bit of the track, there were no marshals around to help as no one had ever crashed here before in the history of the course. Instead I was forced to call one over with a camp wave and a shout of “Ahoy there!”. I finally made it back to the pits and gracefully navigated the tight entrance to stop a foot behind the car ahead of me, in what I thought was quite a controlled manoeuvre. Unfortunately the marshal wanted me to close the small gap between the cars to half a foot, as expected I was unable to perform such a subtle navigational change and simply ploughed into the back of the car ahead shunting everyone ahead along like a racing themed Newton’s cradle.

The remaining two races were much the same, with me trailing at the back of the leaderboard, simply pleased to have stayed on the track as everyone else merrily overtook me. In fact the only people I ever overtook were stationary cars that had crashed, I never once overtook anyone at speed. Finally we got trackside again, and were presented with our result’s sheets, at this point no one else knew how awfully I’d done the leaderboard only listed kart numbers not names. Sadly this ignorance was shattered when the marshal handing out my sheet called my number in a very loud and unsubtle way – that man should not be allowed to break bad news in a hospital.

So there we go, my first taste of Extreme Sports, did I enjoy it? My ribcage would certainly say no, I’d go as far as to say it was “alright”. The fun aspect was largely balanced out by the stress I found during the whole experience as I constantly gripped the steering wheel so hard it was probably bent out of shape. I did get better in fairness, by race three I came last by a considerable margin rather an astronomical one. Would I do it again? Maybe, with a roll bar, padded seating, wrapped entirely in bubble wrap and with someone else to do the driving. Oh and to the bright spark who after the race suggested paint-balling next time… no thank you, I’d rather eat my own scrotum! Leave me my own Extreme Sport of walking past a broken glass bottle worrying that if I feel over I could cut my neck open. It could happen.

WH-at a Dump?

What’s the scariest thing that can happen to you whilst walking down the High Street? Get caught by 15-year old Trick or Treaters, who are actually topical muggers? Seeing someone in a scary Halloween mask and then tragically realising it’s just your own reflection in a shop window? Meeting Boris Johnson on the campaign trail? – Something which incidentally I have seen, fortunately I was looking down from the top deck of a bus, so was protected. Though saying that I am presuming he was campaigning for votes, for all I know he was flailing around the High Street asking people to tell him where his feet were. Going off on a tangent at this early stage, a couple of months back did you get a letter from him entitled Tell Boris What You Think?

The essential point of it seemed to be a survey that you could fill out about London so he (and by he, I mean someone else) could collate the results into useful sound bites saying how well he is doing. For example Question 4c) read “Since being elected, Boris Johnson has quadrupled London’s rape crisis provision. Do you support his efforts to increase support for victims of rape?” Given the wording of this question, it’s almost implicit that every single respondent, bar Julian Assange, would tick the yes box in response to this question. Thus generating the impressive but entirely fabricated soundbite, that 99.9% of Londoners support Boris Johnson’s effort to tackle rape.

As a legal aside I should point out that Julian Assange has never been proved guilty of rape and I am sure he is a very nice man in person, though I wouldn’t trust him with my diary.

What puzzled me is that presumably Boris’s team of advisers helped him with this letter, otherwise it would have probably be written on the back of a telephone box and hand delivered by him on his bicycle. So surely they could have got to him pose for a better photo than this.

Here it looks like he’s fallen through a hedge backwards and then is surprised by his own existence. Perhaps he is genuinely surprised by the fact that we are still yet to realise he doesn’t know what he’s doing? But surely his advisers could have got a photo where he looks a bit less moronic, or were they worried if they did, we wouldn’t recognise him?

Anyway back to the point, the scariest thing that can happen when walking down the High Street is to accidentally walk into WHSmith having forgotten what an absolute abomination of a shop it’s become. This keeps happening to me, I merrily walk into the shop expecting to find something nice in there that I want to buy and as soon as I enter the repressed memory that it’s actually turned into a downmarket version of Poundland floods back (without the one redeeming quality that everything in there is a pound).

I’m sure not that long ago it used to be a decent shop, with its random but eclectic mix of stationary, greetings cards, books, magazines, music and videos. An odd combination that I’m sure were it ever to be pitched on Dragon’s Den today would be laughed back into the entrepreneur’s face with all the sour disgust the overly shouldered Cruella DeVille look-a-ike could manage (seriously if you’re struggling for inspiration this Halloween then you’ll find no concept more scary than going dressed as her). However odd a mix of things it may have seemed it worked. You knew that if you were going for a particular book, magazine or a good selection of birthday cards you’d find it. But with the pressure of the internet and supermarkets cashing in on those markets WHSmith decided to diversify, unfortunately no one seems to be quite sure into what it diversified. It seems to have turned itself into Woolworths except only stocking the rubbish tat you’d pass by on the way through Woolworths to get something more useful like some clothes pegs or a grill pan.

Nowadays in WHSmith you can pick up Adopt a Polar Bear Kits, enough chocolate to sink a battleship and Henry the Hoover wind-up toys but you’d be hard pushed to find that book or DVD you’re looking for. In fact the DVD selection in their Oxford Street store looks like one you’d find in a service station on the M4. As in, containing five titles, three of which you already have and the other two are so awful that even if the only other thing in the world to watch QVC’s Christmas in March Shopping Spectacular, you’d still find the DVD perfectly encased in it’s shrink wrap on your shelf.

For those of you who haven’t had the misfortune of visiting a branch of WHSmith recently here’s a step by step guide of what to expect:

Firstly you’ll turn up and the store will be closed. Like it or not opening hours have been lengthening in recent times, and whilst the rest of the High Street has embraced this as an opportunity to sell more goods at more convenient times, WHSmith has not. The branch right outside the busy Brixton Underground Station, perfectly poised to capitalise on the rush hour footfall is only open 9-5. This coupled with the staff’s eagerness to pull the shutters to the store down and stop people entering 15 minutes before closing all but guarantees you won’t get in (I mean seriously how long do they think it takes to browse the four books and one pen set and decide none of it’s for you – no one could possibly spend 15 minutes in the store, discounting queuing time). Still count yourself lucky, at least the store’s still there. In the time it took Paperchase to refurbish and reopen the old branch of WHSmith that closed down at Clapham Junction Station, the WHSmith website has not managed to remove it as “the nearest store to my current location”, which is annoying if you made the trip specially.

Should you manage to miraculously arrive during the brief window of opportunity provided by 1970s opening hours, you’ll find the shelves stuffed with things you’ve always known you’ve never wanted. With magazine racks cleared to make way for Pic N’ Mix and the stationary section so small you can blink and accidentally walk through it, there’s limited chance that you’ll be bothered by the next point, and that is queuing at the till.

I reasonably regularly visit the Oxford Street store, as it’s close to my place of work, and despite being located on the busiest shopping street in the country; there are only ever two members of staff on the till. So unchanging is this situation I can identify them on sight. It’s always the exact same two people on the tills, except at busy times of course when one of them’s on lunch. Consequently the queue snakes on and on through the store like the polling queue in the Syrian election, although of exceptionally less historic note:

Despite this there’s always another member of staff pointlessly stacking the shelves or faffing with something else right next to you as you queue for seven hours, oblivious to your plight. Whilst in the massive queue pictured above in Brixton branch, rather than helping out the nearest member of staff was attending to this display:

I’d argue surely the more current matter at this time, given the 55 shopping days to Christmas, would be the queue, not the 3 for 2 wrapping paper stand. Though admittedly I should have picked some up, as by the time I left got to the head of the queue there were only two shopping days left until Christmas.

Should you survive the Herculean task of getting to the front of the queue, regardless of who you are and what you’re buying, you will always be offered a bottle of mineral water, bag of mints, or a chocolate bar the size of a double duvet for just a pound. Yep it’s equal opportunities in WHSmith you will be actively encouraged to become obese regardless of race, gender, sexuality or social standing. I should imagine if an armed gunmen held up one of their branches, as the cashier loaded the contents of the till into the bag of swag they would utter the immortal line “would you like a bar of Dairy Milk for just a pound” before proceeding to give the robber a receipt buried in amongst a thousand bloody money off vouchers. For the love of God stop giving these out, shocking as it may seem one visit to your store was enough, without thrusting a Yellow Pages thickness worth of money off vouchers encouraging me to return into my hand as I’m trying to leave the store. Stop doing this immediately. I suppose at least they’re not for Boots No. 7 range. I mean seriously do I honestly look like the kind of person who would want to buy that.

In response to the horrendously long queues, WHSmith management have come up with two plans to try and address this problem. Firstly they’ve opened up branches of the Post Office within their stores, so that by comparison their own queues look short. If WHSmith are looking for ideas to make money, why not set up a mini one of your travel branches of WHSmith (like the kind you get at airports and railway stations) so that people intending to queue for the Post Office can purchase sweets, a book, bottle of water and a crossword magazine to get them through the long haul economy class only queuing system operated by the Royal Mail. The second plan is the introduction of self-scan tills, these are tills where you the shopper both purchase and weigh your shopping. Already popular on the High Street these tills are part of the ongoing campaign to outsource customer service, as should you want anyone to answer a question or be polite to you in a High Street store, you are now expected to ring head office. However these aren’t popular with all customers, as a woman behind me in the queue who was brave enough to cause a fuss (rather than cowardly just grumbling about it under their breath, leaving the store vowing to never come back, only to return the next day and rant about in their blog) pointed out. When questioning a member of staff as to why they wouldn’t open the till and she had to serve herself, they replied that “the tills were only to be opened in an emergency”. An emergency, really? I suspect that at the moment the East Coast of the United States of America was battered by unseasonal snowstorms and several states declared a state of emergency, the next step was NOT the opening of WHSmith’s tills. When pressed further on this point by the aforementioned customer, the staff member replied that self-scan tills were “the future”. Which I thought showed a remarkable strength of character as the staff member explained his own inevitable redundancy to a complete stranger, particularly when the customer replied “I’ll probably just shop somewhere else”. Good for her for saying what I chickened out of.

Still I uncharacteristically looked on the positive side, and reasoned that the self-scan tills would be an opportunity to escape the bullshit of the usual “chocolate bar for a pound routine”:

At least I won’t be saddled with a mass of money off vouchers:

OH THAT’S IT! Will this f**king s**t charade never end, I am never ever setting foot in WHShit again…

Of course tomorrow I’ll probably have forgotten this entire rant and will bravely enter the store once more in a doomed attempt to do my Christmas shopping. I hope my family like four kilogram bars of Galaxy chocolate.