timboblog

Naked people! Bucketloads of naked!

Sometimes you find yourself surrounded, nay, invaded, by amorphous blobs (read 'other people') who flagrantly disregard you, your personal space, your companions, your conversation. Generally, YOU. And that's something I find annoying. Maybe I'm the only one? I don't know.

Then at other times you get totally surrounded by shitloads of naked people, cycling about, making all sorts of noise, and generally being TOTALLY NAKED with all their bits out on display. Right there. And the weird thing about that isn't the nakedness or the being surrounded by a whole bunch of nakedness. It's the fact that it's, well, more normal (and natural) than anything else and yet paradoxically totally abnormal to see that sort of thing because of the 'rules' that our society dumps upon us and the embarrassment factor that makes it so weird and great and celebratory.

So to conclude, more nakedness please! And I don't mean that in a dodgy way, I just think, you know, that it's a good thing. Personal freedom, expressiveness, a distinct lack of twattishness... It's all good stuff.

The moral of this story is that open-minded people are great (although if they play the bongos and sing really badly, yet obviously think their singing is THE BEST, then they don't count), and close-minded yobbish thugs (essentially the stereotypical flag-waving van-driving Sun-reading British male - it's only a stereotype because it fucking exists!) can go swivel. Although whoops! Silly me! I'm not being very inclusive here. Let's also include every person who makes no effort whatsoever to move even slightly out of your way while walking along the pavement, even forcing you to walk into the path of oncoming traffic, such is their disregard. And let us not forget practically every smoker ever, who without fail, WITHOUT FAIL, will always flick their fag butt into the street, and drop the foil and wrapper from their packet of smokes on to the ground despite there being a bin conveniently placed about 2 feet from them. AND any person who while walking along stops dead in their tracks to have a look around and have a sandwich/insert anything you like here frankly, then acts surprised that you nearly walked through their sandwich and had to make a frantic avoidance manoeuvre and ended up in a pile in the gutter as a result. They're crap too.

This one could go on and on, so I'll save more for next time. If anybody feels like having a cathartic moan or alternatively a big old celebration about nakedness in the comments then be my guest.

FYI - The nakedness was all to do with World Naked Bike Ride Day. Check the relevant link for all the info. Nakedness + Good Cause = perfect for Brighton. Although I'm still not 100% sure exactly what being naked has to do with anything, but still, MORE NAKEDNESS!

It's a long long way (to Worthing)

This last week and a bit has been a right old up and down affair (not in the saucy sense though; that'd just be rude), veering from the sublime to the shit with unerring regularity. A nice boring patch of humdrum mundanity wouldn't go amiss every now and again, but what's the likelihood of that happening? Pretty fucking low.

So, to catalogue our escapades (as opposed to our espadrilles, which are very nice and shiny as it happens) let's get the proper shit stuff out of the way first. Hold on to your hats people, cos I've been ill again! Woohoo! Readers of this blog either think that I'm ill all the time, or that I'm a massive hypochondriac. I can assure you that neither of these is the case. It's true, I do like writing about being poorly, because it let's me get it off my chest (as it were). But re the hypochondria, well, I fucking wish I was a hypochondriac, then I wouldn't actually be as ill as I have been over the last year or so. Maybe I've just turned that corner into Bed-Ridden Old Bastard Avenue, or maybe it's something else even more sinister. Whatever, it sucks arse, and I don't much like it. I've spent the last four days on the sofa, throwing up occasionally, and generally feeling like a pile of manky bollocks. This morning I went into work and nearly fell off my chair, so I decided going home would be the safer option. I'm feeling a bit perkier now, but we shall see. To my complete lack of surprise my GP had no good advice to offer. Either I have an infection and have just been really unlucky over the last year with all this food poisoning, etc, OR I have something really wrong with me. He even suggested having an HIV test, which is all very kind of him, but probably not essential seeing as I've been with Mrs Timbo for almost seven years now. So unless someone craftily took advantage of me while I was busy checking the price of couscous in Waitrose the other day (if they did I didn't notice), then I can't rightly explain it. So it's probably not that, but please feel free to share your observations in the comments box. I'm all ears.

Annoyingly, I really intended to get loads of stuff done over the weekend, so being really fucking ill well and truly scuppered my plans. The only productive thing I managed in the 48-hour period from Saturday lunchtime to Monday lunchtime was waking up in a horrible sweat on the sofa at 3am on Sunday morning, with Great Balls of Fire (starring Dennis Quaid with a godawful haircut and a stupid face) on the telly and some knob playing Bob Marley at a stupid volume somewhere up the road, only to find that I'd left the rabbit out and about in the lounge for the last 12 hours and that in that time she'd set up her own makeshift latrine in the corner by the cd rack and proceeded to do large scale shits and pisses all over it, all of which meant that had to spend about twenty minutes trying very unsuccessfully to persuade her to get in her fucking hutch, followed by a good hour or so of cleaning up stinky rabbit wee. At least their poo isn't runny and icky.

So that was all good fun!

But it hasn't all been sickness and bodily excretions. We've also managed to take advantage of the amazing weather by doing a ton of walking and beaching. Mrs T has been to London and picked up some stonking blisters for her troubles, and I went for a walk on the South Downs with my Mum and brother, and as a result of which got right royally burnt to a cinder. Still, it was a lovely walk, and I saw lots of birdies and little furry animals and generally had a very lovely time. And last week me and my good lady ventured all the way down the coast to Worthing (which is a little bit further away from Brighton than I thought it was) and had a very nice walk all the way along the beach from Worthing to Shoreham power station (photos to come), then back to the main part of Shoreham because there was nowhere to cross back to the mainland, then back to where we'd just come from but on the right side of the water this time, and then all the way back to Portslade and then Hove. Unfortunately, due to the afore-mentioned misjudgement, coupled with the fact that we only got to Worthing at 5pm in the first place, this meant that we ended up getting home at about 11pm. Slightly later than we expected. Still, it was a lovely evening and a lovely walk for the most part. We'll just conveniently forget about the last two hours spent walking along a shitty main road in the dark...

What else? Oh yeah, the main computer totally fucked up (again) so I had to spend an entire evening sorting the bastard thing out. Thank the lord for partitioned hard drives!

I must start posting regularly again, because every ten days is pretty poor (although noticeably better than one post every six months), so there are gonna be some photo posts soonish because I've got a bunch of cracking photos that need to see daylight, and I'm going to go into detail about the new gaff, because we love it and want to show it off! Hurrah!

Lastly, many thanks for all the comments after the last post.  They are always appreciated (even if I don't always understand what you're on about), are generally informative and insightful (where else can I learn all there is to know about the world's greatest deodorants?) and have a tendency to put a smile on my face, which I am politely informed is for the most part 'a good thing',  although this must surely be a matter of opinion. Still, keep them coming! I love you all.

Poohsticks

My legs hurt and I am seriously rusty. Jogging should not be rushed into lightly, especially (as my girlfriend points out) after a week of multifarious food and drink, late nights, friends and family, and getting burnt to a crisp lobstery pinkiness through nobody's stupid fault but my own.

Once the pain subsides I may find a four and a bit kilometre jog a weentsy little bit easier. Oh yeah, and I'll take some water with me.

Today I talked to a man who told me a Winnie the Pooh story. I didn't remember it, but it was the one where it's Eeyore's birthday; Piglet gets him a lovely balloon which he promptly bursts after tripping over and falling on it, and Pooh finds a jar of honey for him. Unfortunately, Pooh gets hungry on the way to give Eeyore his gift and decides to eat all the honey. So Eeyore gets a burst balloon and an empty jar for his birthday, and spends the rest of his birthday putting the remains of the balloon into the pot, then taking them out, then putting them in again, and so on, which makes him incredibly happy.

Being told this story made me incredibly happy too. Little things.

The same chap who told me this story also told me about his worn out old Test Match Special hat that he uses to ward his wife off while the cricket's on, and talked to me at length about French wines.  He has a website too and who knows, I may just end up buying some plonk from him one of these days.

Another bloke even said "good morning" to me while I was on my way to work. He also did a little Chinese buddhist bow thing to a trio of squirrels behind me, but still, it was very nice to be greeted so pleasantly, even if he was a bit mad.

What a great day.

Oh yes, and Pride was brilliant. What I saw of it anyway; I only managed the parade. By the time the party proper was under way I was suffering from third degree burns, sleeping off a bladder full of beer and getting the shakes. I am such an old man.

If you like what you see you can view the full set of photos here.

Nobody does it better

As spotted on the side of the Camera Obscura on Eastbourne Pier.

Exactly what it does best, I'm not entirely sure.

It does getting fucking stupidly jam-packed with tourists, students and moderately drunk/stoned wasters particularly well. It does not do fixing up it's currently extremely delapidated and awful looking 'beauty spots' well in the slightest.

It does the having same cost of living as London bloody well. But it doesn't do paying it's inhabitants enough to cover the high cost of living that well.

It does the pub, club, cafe, bar, restaurant culture thing extremely well. But it needs bigger buildings and pavements to accomodate all the patrons. Small pavements are bad.

It could also do with a cracking beigel place. It doesn't have one of those yet.

But it's still better than Eastbourne, which is a great place if you want a bit of peace and quiet and totally love old aged pensioners and creamed tea. If you don't then I'd advise keeping a wide berth. Strangely, despite all this, I had a nice time there the other day. This could be down to the painkillers, a mild case of sunstroke, and the Guinness that was probably a bad idea due to my course of antibiotics, but still, it was nice. It has a lovely pier too. And it is so much quieter than Brighton that it's frankly ridiculous.

Seriously, if you want a relaxing day at the seaside, go there instead. That way Brighton might be a bit more spacious for it's lovely inhabitants. Like me.

All my Eastbourne pics are found here.