The tray, as far as I can make out, is a one-sided box. It's a device for carrying things that appears to lack even the basic characteristics required of such a device. Namely sides. This is why things are always falling off trays. It's like moving house and transporting all your worldly possessions around on a giant, outstretched palm.
Maybe if you bought five trays and taped them together, I might be interested. But then you might as well just buy a box.
And that's why I hate trays.
Radio DJs love telling you what the time it is. They love it so much they give you regular minute-by-minute updates, like it's breaking news.
"8.18 on this Friday morning, Scott Matthews in for James O'Brien… 8.19 now. We've got a really good show for you this morning… 8.20, over to Helen for the traffic and travel..."
In fact, some of them love telling you the time so much, they don't just tell you what time it is, they'll tell what time it isn't.
"Just coming up to 8.21 now…"
Helpful. Cheers. So just to recap, it's 8.20 now, but it's almost 8.21. Thank god someone told me.
The bit that really gets me is, every radio I own has a clock attached to it. Car stereo: clock. Portable radio: clock. Radio alarm clock: is a clock. Failing that, in the unlikely event that I really do need to know the time and the clock attached to my radio isn't working, I'll just look at my watch.
Really, it's no big deal.
In my 28 years on this earth, I've played no fewer than seven different pirate-themed crazy golf courses, from Hunstanton to Florida, Las Vegas to Singapore. Over 80% of the crazy golf courses I've visited have been piratical in theme. Pirate, it would seem, is the default theme for the crazy golf course.
My question is: why?
Why pirates and crazy golf? I'm no golfing expert, but from what I can gather it's a sport very much played on dry land. (And not, for example, on the poop deck of a three-masted squarerigger.) Now stop me if I'm wrong, but if memory serves the pirates were not primarily a 'land-lubbing' people. Quite the opposite in fact.
All I'm saying is, crazy golf ('land-lubbing' sport) and pirates (self-confessed 'salty sea-dogs') are mutually exclusive concepts.
That's all I'm saying.
It's not the actual films that I have an issue with. It's the effect they're having on my nan. Because quite frankly, they're confusing the shit out of her.
See, I still haven't gotten around to explaining the concept of the 'DVD' to dear old nanny. I probably won't bother. She's pretty old and my worry is that the sheer brain-freaking paradigm-shift of 'films on a compact disc' might push her over the edge. The way I look at it, she's lived 91 years without Dolby 5.1 surround sound and MPEG4 encoders. She can probably manage a couple more. (At least a couple more, if by some miracle you are reading this nan.)
Anyway, when these magical 'records' fall from my nan's newspaper every Saturday, she treats them like Mana from heaven. These precious objects get safely stowed away for me. Each and every last one of them. Whistle Down The Wind. Passport to Pimlico. Cabaret. One Foot In The Algarve. Grease II. Shark Week. (Shark Week?!)
And so, when I go round to see her, I have to pretend to be really, really, really excited about the latest addition to my DVD collection. "Nan, are you kidding me? Of course I want Road To Morocco! Bob Hope and Bing Crosby! It's, like, my favourite film! After Whistle Down The Wind, obviously."
Going out for tapas is a complicated business. What you're basically doing is ordering and sharing one giant meal. That's basically what you're doing. So it's imperative that you're able to trust your fellow diners, both to: A) make good ordering decisions, and B) not eat too much.
Ideally you'd assemble a dedicated 'Tapas Squad' for such occasions. You know, a meat specialist, a really shit-hot vegetarian, maybe a baker. And they'd all be really, really selfless, generous people. Possibly Christians. But sometimes, sometimes you've just got to work with what you're given.
And this particular time, what I was given just so happened to be a group of people I didn't much care for. I didn't know these idiots. How could I possibly trust them with my dinner?
The simple answer was, I couldn't. Within seconds of the food arriving, my chosen dish had vanished in a flurry of jabbing forks. I managed to get maybe a meatball away. Possibly two. It was like trying to pull survivors from a burning plane wreck. And then, as quickly as they'd arrived, my meatballs were no more.
That's when the red mist descended. That's when I took the only sensible course of action available to me. That's when I started eating things just to spite people.
If someone had eaten one of my lamb meatballs I ate two of their sautéed prawns. (It's like Sean Connery says in The Untouchables: "He sends one of yours to the hospital, you send two of his to the morgue.") I ate and I ate and I ate. I ate until I felt sick.
But ultimately I proved my point. Although obviously no one was big enough to admit it.
'This Man' in isolation, I like. He's called Pete and I'm working with him on a BBC1 show at the moment, and he's funny and intelligent. Funny and intelligent enough to make you hate him, in fact. But I don't. I like him. Really.
Add 'This Man' to the action 'Eating Carrots', however, and the results are appalling. A percussive blast of cracks, snorts and slaps, it sounds like a piglet being kicked down a flight of stairs. Or a human beatbox drowning in a vat of chewing gum. If Satan has a ring-tone, this is it.
But, you know, I've found a way to cope with it. From now on, when it's a carrot day, I just eat my lunch in the car.
