by AD Moreton
I’m never that sure where a lot of these articles, or essays, or short stories, or rants, or whatever they are, come from. For the first book they were essentially an accumulation of varied stuff that had sort of been embedded in the back of my mind over a period of 40 – 50 years of general, typical, “pain in the arse”, life. All I had to do was gradually scrape them off the back of my skull and somehow dump them down onto pieces of paper.
And I’m sure there’s still a lot more in there; somewhere. But the information would all take a lot more scraping off and there tends to be a number of common themes; so it could become a bit repetitive.
So this time, I’ve decided to not really dig things out that are already there, but more wait for some sort of a prompt. Something in the news (I don’t think the prompts are likely to dry up there anytime soon) or maybe something that someone might just say. Something that happens to switch some sort of light on and then light the blue touch paper.
This episode originated from something that a kind lady, who might like fine Italian designer kitchenware, who I’ve never actually met, said. And it related to the alleged sort of complete ineptitude of men in relation to supermarkets and trying to acquire a range of everyday items that might enable them to consume enough calories so they can carry on breathing, not disappear and drown in 8 foot of crap inside their own home; and manage to wipe their own arse.
Now most blokes I know, would sooner nip down to the local town centre and volunteer for some “fat and turd sweeping out” of the local installed sewer network rather than go anywhere near one on those retail palaces that happen to stock toilet rolls, beef burgers, chips and tea bags, in very large quantities.
And most ladies seem to have worked out that whilst it can be a bit difficult fighting their way round one of these palaces with two full shopping trollies, a double buggy with 18 month old twins and also a six year old high on E-numbers in tow, this is MUCH, MUCH easier than taking her nearest and dearest along with her for any sort of “help” or “assistance”.
Personally, when it comes to supermarket shopping, I know I can’t win. If I go with my wife to whatever budget or premium level palace she might be trotting off to, everything about the place from the very moment of entering the door right up to the point of leaving again (3 ¾ hours later), will piss me seriously off and I’ll moan. And this will in turn wind my wife up culminating with the usual “I don’t know why you bloody well insist on coming” comment.
But if I don’t go, I know the shopping bill will increase by 15,679% compared to what it would have been if I’d have gone along to persist in the continual improvement in the quality of my moaning.
Now there are sound solid scientific reasons for why men and supermarkets don’t mix, and it relates to how a woman’s brain works in relation to the procurement of ingredients and cooking; and how a bloke’s brain works. And the same differences correlate across to cleaning, general routine house maintenance and arse wiping.
So, there may be occasions, for various reasons, when a bloke has to break the habit of a lifetime and HAS to go to one of the retail palaces squat, discretely, just outside of town. His nearest and dearest could be away on business for example. Or she might have taken the kid’s to see grandparents. Or, she might have finally seen sense - and pissed off and left him.
The reason is irrelevant. The point is he could be FORCED to go to one of the places. Unless he wanted to begin an impersonation of a mid-eighties IRA hunger striker and also be in danger of running out of arse wiping material.
And it will help the nice half of humanity, the half with longer prettier hair and waists narrower than the width of their arse, fully understand why it’s not even worth considering the remotest possibility of seeking assistance on any future supermarket expeditions, if I lay out on paper the thought processes of the ugly grumpy half of humanity in relation to cooking and other home chores and the necessary shopping required to enable these activities to be undertaken.
So, first to the cooking. A bloke on his own knows and accepts he doesn’t have the faintest clue as to what he is doing in relation to cooking anything. So he knows he has to be smart (oh shit!). And keep it simple. And plan it all out in advance. So, he’ll scour the inner depths of his brains to work out a meal plan that is dead simple. One that even an eighteen month old snotty nosed kid would be able to pull off.
So ….
Breakfast? A complete piece of piss. Cornflakes. No mixing, no preparation, no heating, no nothing. Out of the packet and into the bowl, a bit of milk and a dash of sugar. And, the added key success factor – no shitty debris left at the end that’s difficult to wash up. A quick swill under the tap and it’s all ready for the next morning. Done.
Lunch? A complete piece of piss. Sausage roll or a pasty. No mixing, no preparation – just a simple bit of heating up and then bingo. It’s in your gob and off to commence on it’s turd preparation duties.
Dinner? Now it can start to get a bit more complicated. Pizza, obviously; for all the same reasons as the sausage roll and pasty are perfect for lunch. But, the thing is, the nearest and dearest might be away a while. Possibly even a month? And, therefore, most blokes past the age of 23 will realise that they need some form of variety. But the meals all need to be simple and pass the “minimal residual crap” at the end of eating test.
So, Spag bowl? Possible. What do we need for that? Well, in bloke land, again it’s dead easy. Spaghetti and mince. That’s it. Onions or herbs? Why? And what the f**k is passata?
Steak? Blokes like a good steak. Required purchases? Again, nice and straight forward. Steak, onion rings and oven chips. At a push some lettuce and a tomato. That’s it. Oil? It’s for the car. Dressing? We don’t wear dresses and by dinner time even a bloke, even a useless incompetent one, will be already dressed. And what the bloody hell is “Rocket”?
Oven fish and chips. Again, out of the box, onto a tray, into the oven and then into our gob.
Any ready meal Indian or Chinese meal that can be microwaved and eaten straight out of the plastic tub.
And that is fine for a month. And if it happens to be more than a month, all you have to do is just “repeat”. Obviously we’ll need to add in a few “essentials”. A bit of pudding and some liquid refreshment, for example.
And so, taking all of the above requirements into account, here we can present the Standard Blokes monthly shopping list, in order of priority:
5 x 24 can packs of Fosters.
30 bottles red wine.
6 large packs of Cadbury Twirls.
5 boxes of Magnum ice creams.
10 Margareta Pizzas.
4 four seasons Pizzas.
4 ready meal fish and chips.
4 ready meal curries.
4 ready meal Chinese.
1 supersize box of cornflakes.
15 cook from frozen sausage rolls.
15 cook from frozen pasties.
4 steaks.
8 bags of chips.
1 bag onion rings.
1 lb mince.
1 pack of spaghetti.
Buy bread and milk from the local shop or garage every three days. Assume that sugar, tea, coffee and all the usual crap is already in; and then PRAY that the wife bought enough toilet rolls before she left.
And that’s it. All of it.
Look, ladies, there is no way on earth our brains can compute anything to do with ANY of the following:
Washing powder, fabric conditioner (now somebody really is taking the piss), whitener (for battleship grey knickers (we don’t wear them)), dishwasher liquid, salt, rinse aid, washing up liquid, dish cloths, pan cleaners, brillo pads, disinfectant, floor cleaner, polish (don’t make me laugh), pegs, hand soap, shower gel, shampoo, deodorant, light bulbs, washing line cord, toilet cleaner, tea towels, tea bags, coffee, sugar, baked beans, tinned anything, herbs, spices, cooking oil, sauces of any description or any f**king garnish (whatever it is).
Basically, we assume that the house comes perpetually
stocked with any of this sort of shit that we could potentially require.
And in a nutshell, that is why we should NEVER be allowed to go shopping. Or even go to help.
It probably also explains, why, on one particular visit to Tesco I waited in the car park while my nearest and dearest just “popped in” to buy a lettuce. A lettuce that took 27 minutes to locate, appeared to fill a large supermarket trolley to the top and cost £87.38 (including VAT; that’s not even added to lettuces).
Glossary (What Stuff Means)
BBQ: Barbecue. Still none the wiser? It’s for burning shit that used to be food on a fire. Don’t worry though. There’s lots of Fosters and red wine at all our events.
CO2: Carbon dioxide. A gaseous chemical that certain deluded scientists and incompetent politicians think might be causing the degrees centigrade of your back yard to increase. It’s a different gas. Your dog doesn’t fart this one. But, you still have to stop him breathing - so BBQ and eat him anyway.
EC or EU: Bunch of WODs in Brussels or Strasbourg, or Luxembourg or somewhere. Nobody knows the details of what or where or why. The only bit you need to understand in 27 languages and counting is WODs in the plural.
EHIC: A completely useless and unnecessary crock of shite invented by the WODs in the EC/EU.
E111: An even bigger useless and unnecessary complete crock of shite invented by the WODs in the EC/EU. Came before the EHIC.
FOC: Free of Charge. The polite version my wife lets me use. See FOFC.
FOFC: Free of Flipping (or alternative) Charge. Special present from me, to one or more WODs.
GDP: Gross Domestic Product. Something to do with how much money is chucked about in a country each year. The only thing you need to know is that after the thieving bastards in charge have done their stuff, it will always be less next year than this year.
JC: Bloke with long hair and a beard who died and then un-died a couple of thousand years ago.
MAISTUC: Monitor Activities and Immediately Screw Tony Up Completely. “Look, I am NOT bloody paranoid”.
MP: Member of Parliament. See OMFG and WOD. Best BBQ’d.
NEA: Nuclear Energy Agency (in Paris).
OECD: Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development.
OMFG: Oh My Flipping God. Statement – needs to be made regularly when you don’t know what to do: fall about laughing; slash your wrists; or potentially make deceased vast numbers of WODs. There is an alternative to flipping but my wife won’t let me use it in a public manuscript; and my mum might read it as well.
Oz: Australia. A big nice warm country with a posh opera house and lots of people that can unfortunately play cricket.
Ozzie: Somebody whose arse is normally based in Oz and talks funny.
PM: Prime Minister. The biggest most important WOD in any particular country.
SW1: Somewhere in London where the WODs supposedly in charge hang out.
UK: United Kingdom. Where our arses reside unless we are on holiday.
WTF: What the Flipping-heck.
Acknowledgements
Finally, from Planet Me, I’d like once again like to say thanks to a few people who have helped out from time to time in this very weird place that constitutes Planet Me. As it turns out, it’s actually exactly the same, very few people who were implicated in the first book in the series. Hence, in order to save more Amazonian rain forest from biting the dust, please just check the acknowledgements there.
Now, Join the Madness:
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ISBN: 978-0-9928150-4-2