Während - During

During these tough economic times, it’s important to be incessantly reminded quite how tough these economic times are. Constantly. They’re tough. They’re economic. It‘s economic toughness gone mad! On a scale of one to old boots, it’s a Lidl mutton steak prepared by chimps. Special chimps in special motorised chimp chairs. Actually, that’s probably less tough, more a day round Mary Chipperfield’s house. But hilarious images of animal cruelty aside, these tough economic times have had practically zero perceivable impact on my life (Sooft - 7/10/08 is still quite relevant) - in fact I’ve disposed of more disposable income in the last twelve months than ever before. Well done Andy! You’re helping the UK through these tough economic times with your reckless spending! Well, not quite - most of it has ended up in the hands of foreigners. Before you get all judgemental, I‘ve not been on a trafficked prostitute binge, no! It’s mostly been blown travelling, notching up a healthy carbon footprint with thirteen flights taken in a single six-month period. Ooops. Sorry environment. But contributions to climate change aside, it is a global economic crisis, so spreading my cash across borders can’t be considered that irresponsible, can it? In this country, these tough economic times aren’t nearly so bad as those of Latvia or Mexico, so injecting some foreign currency into their systems can’t be a bad thing. Even if it is just a few nights, a few meals and a (good) few beers, it all helps. Mostly though I think I’ve aided Chinese finances by splashing out on tons of place-branded tat they always seem to have manufactured. Decorative wooden spoon from Tallinn, Estonia - China. Lithuanian flag from Vilnius, Lithuania - China. Novelty Seattle crab from Seattle, USA - China. Fridge magnet from Cromer, north Norfolk - China. I really hope that in the markets of Beijing, alongside the vegetables and tiger penises, they’re selling “I Luv da Great Wall” T-shirts made in Bradford. Or maybe a range of Terracotta Army figurines lovingly hand-crafted in Diss. Think of the people in this country they’d be helping during these tough economic times! It’s about time both the Chinese gave something back, and I abruptly ended this piece without explaining why.

Bereiten - To Prepare

Although I’ve had a good few months to prepare for my impeding homelessness, I still haven’t got anything sorted - and my lease is up in less than two weeks. Piss artistry is one of my strengths, but this is extreme even for me. It’s tough looking for a place by yourself. A flat on your own is out of the question, unless you want to spend most of your wages (if you work in a cinema) on rent and bills. So some kind of house or flat-share is the only sensible option, but finding a place as a single guy isn’t that easy. Girls want other girls to live with so they can do each other’s hair and not get raped, while guys want girls to live with because there’s a slim chance of accidentally-on-purpose seeing them naked. That’s what I read on the internet anyway. But seriously, looking at online room ads, most of the decent-looking places state ‘females preferred’ or (not seriously at all) ‘blokes: piss off’. The rest are either situated in the most ghetto of areas or look like they belong to guests of the Jeremy Kyle show. It’s amazing that for an advert picture the owners don’t even pretend their home isn’t hovel. You’d spend five or ten minutes making it look a bit less council-house sheik if only for the purposes of the photo. They should at least invest in a piece of Ikea furniture and a decorative fruit bowl. Adding to the background a cardboard cut-out of an Aga adorned with flowers and James Morrison albums would show such utter and irresistible class, they’d be beating potential tenants away with a baseball bat and their barely-legal cross-bred terrier. Okay, so not all the places that accept guys look that awful, but the others are almost always populated with the morbidly middle-aged. It’d be like living with my mum again but without the cooked meals and cups of coffee every eight minutes. Moving in with anyone over 40 who isn’t related would just feel weird. But then with eleven days to go it might end up happening anyway. Stuck in a house with a 10pm curfew and a constant Spandau Ballet/Status Quo soundtrack would be hell. That verses a box outside the train station with fleas and a bag of glue is a contest simply too close to call.

Mittwoch Morgan - Wednesday Morning

Check your calendars, I‘m not lying! It is, most aptly, an actual, genuine, bona fide, non-made-up Wednesday morning. Oversleeping as usual, a bleary-eyed me turned on the TV around 10:30 to see the usual selection of daytime turd across the four and a half channels my aerial deems worthy of Andy viewing. Channel Five is mostly static, like a freak snowstorm has blown into the studio, invisible and undetectable by Matthew Wright’s Wright Stuff panel, audience and crew. A bit like a cruddy horror film where everyone else is carrying on as normal, oblivious to the dangerous stab-crazy mental who’s right bloody there. I felt like calling in saying “Get out! You’re all going to die! Hypothermia‘s a silent killer!” But no doubt before I got that last bit out they’d have evacuated the building, rounded up any suspicious people nearby (read: non-white), and called Sky News so they can scare the shit out of the entire country with talk of hyper-mega-terrorism. Within seconds they’d be smashing through my window to treat me to a lovely piece of 45-days-without-charge detention. All because the digital signal to my TV is so diluted I constantly get the psychedelic multicoloured squares with stuttering bits of speech more suited to an early Cronenberg flick than The Jeremy Kyle Show. So the trusty analogue signal has to suffice, causing the constant blizzards on Five, meanwhile sending the other four channels back to the late 80’s, creating an odd futuristic-past feel - al la The Matrix - as grainy presenters talk about high-speed broadband and super-hi-def TVs. Instead of watching BBC News by default, these days I end up catching a medley of Homes Under the Hammer, This Morning, and Loose Women, the latter featuring less eye-candy, more eye-cancer as host and panel guests alike are routinely ugly and annoying. If they weren’t so rich and famous, the only screen time they’d get would be doing ASDA or B&Q ads, being well and truly part of the haggard underclass that I’d assume (most sweepingly) watch Loose Women every day. Except for me. I’m still not nearly irritating, overweight or unemployed enough. Ouch. Yep, I’m a horrid person. Oh well, not enough time to re-edit now, as an evening of cleaning up after Terminator 4-viewing idiots awaits. I’m sure that’ll make me feel less jaded. Or just want to kill all humans. Yeah, probably just wanting kill all humans.