Tidings of Comfort And Joy.

Well it’s full steam ahead with the credit crunch then, what with Woolworths going breasts north and MFI folding (see how they like it), it’s all getting a bit down in the mouth back home. The holiday makers over here are suffering too, what with the exchange rate being such that, by the time you’ve changed your money over to Euros, you’ve just got about enough to phone home and ask for some more money to be sent over, - these are trying times.
The other “turns” that I’ve spoken to are getting a bit jumpy and wondering if they’ll manage to feed the cat this Christmas, but I think that it’s a bit early to be reaching for the poisoned mushrooms just yet, must admit though to feeling a bit paranoid meself. Recently after a show in the last remaining venue where I haven’t been laid off, the sound and lighting man who had just returned after a trip back home says. “I thought about you the other day, I bumped into a Big Issue seller in Wakefield”. (!?!?) It turns out that this particular character was Polish and it reminded him of a couple of jokes I use in the act (all in the best possible taste of course, and anyway it isn’t me strictly speaking, it’s Billy Connolly).
I’ve spent most of the last couple of weeks writing a synopsis for my book “Chasing The Cheese – A Year In The Life Of A Benidorm class B Celeb”, but whichever way I write it, it makes me sound like some slightly twisted student out to make a nuisance of himself in his gap year, or some dozy old train spotter who’s finally fallen off the end of the platform, but there you go. I’ve trawled the internet looking for suitable publishers and literary agents who might be interested in my work, and come to the conclusion that, well,…. there aren’t any. Not helped by the fact that 99.87% (I’ve done the research), of them reside in London!! - no reason to stop trying though.
A couple of news stories that appealed this week are of the pilot who flew 80 passengers from Cardiff to Paris and then announced “I’m not qualified to land, - we’ll have to turn back”. It turns out that once they arrived in Paris it was a touch foggy and he hadn’t got the qualifications to land in overcast conditions would you believe. What about taking off in overcast conditions then? Presumably he’s fairly skilled in this procedure if he’s working out of Cardiff in the middle of winter?!
The other one concerns a 22 year old woman who was banned from buying a box of Christmas crackers because staff feared she was too young under the 1875 explosives act.
She had picked out a box of ten crackers at Marks & Spencer in York and was amazed to be asked by check-out staff if she was 16 or over. This is a direct quote from the paper -

Heather said: "The member of staff looked at me for a moment before asking for ID. She refused to believe that I was 22 even though I have nearly finished a degree course.
"As if that wasn't bad enough, she said that she was protecting me by not selling me them. It's as if she was suggesting that if I was left alone with the crackers I couldn't be trusted and might blow myself up."