A neighbourhood in waiting... pt 2

As the din continued underneath, I stood listening for a few minutes frozen behind my front door, safe in knowledge that my unlit vestibule and the coats draped across its security glass camouflaged me from the noise-inducing cretins below. The same loud thudding that had awoken me seemed a little louder now that it had less brickwork to dampen its echo and through the wired glass I caught a few murky, distorted shapes moving around in the stairwell beyond: actual morons were in my midst.

A neighbourhood in waiting... pt 1

It was a low and dull distant thud that initially brought me out of my early morning slumber, where I was partly protected from the outside world’s intrusion by the yellow foam earplugs snugly fitted into my aural canals. I blinked once and then squinted at a point on my nearest bedroom wall, feeling the relaxation of the last eight hours of sleep rapidly dissipate as I awaited the arrival of another muffled bang.

Dental plan

Last week sometime, I had to pop and do some shopping into my local supermarket and so, after a protracted time spent fondling nets of Satsumas and trying to decipher the ‘best before’ dates on half cucumbers and round lettuces, a sit down at my local cafe seemed the perfect remedy. Finding an empty table inside, I ordered a cup of coffee and a bacon butty from the young girl behind the counter and then sat down to peruse the morning paper I’d picked-up while shopping. As I begin to scan the pages, I became aware of two lads sat just across from me and they epitomised the appearance of the poverty-stricken youth of today: each was wearing a dark, hooded jacket, shell bottoms and trainers, with shaven heads finishing off the look. They must have been aged in their late teens or early twenties at a push and one of them was telling a profanity-laden story whilst the other listened, nonchalantly.

In eBay sellers we trust

eBay and the collection of utter cretins that now dwell within its virtual confines have stripped away my very humanity over the last couple of weeks. Amid ever increasing examples of (un)intentional seller idiocy to contend with no matter where I’ve looked, I honestly believe my days on the world’s biggest auction site are now numbered. As I actually run eBay sites for a living and have done so for the last 5 years, the above statement is tantamount to making myself unemployed and back in the bosom of Job Seekers Allowance, which is not the most ideal situation I grant you. However, I feel I have the insight and understanding of selling and buying on eBay as a whole to comment upon some recent examples of moronic traders I’ve had to deal with within this silicon-based market place.

The ballad of T-Mobile Solo: The horror, the horror...

Adverts. They have always been designed to showcase what a healthy culture needs and cannot live without and this is achieved via our total belief in “living the dream” which is basically consumerism, a stark lesson in the haves and have-nots within a divided society. So this is the dichotomy we all face in our throwaway culture: to feel self-fulfilled for possessing what’s new and trendy or to feel absolutely pathetic for not being wealthy enough to afford the stuff being continually rammed down our throats. In that respect then, we’re all continually bombarded by these self-esteem attacks and the advertisers play on this knowledge by plunging their ”BUY NOW! BUY NEW! KEEP BUYING!” knife into us all, over and over and over again...