These are the confessions - such as they are of a non-drinking, monogamous, heterosexual, omnivore.
The Ginger Mumbly is a humorous and humourous, satirical, column. People who like this will probably like reading books.
They'll be interested in second hand books.
I also write about cafes - both in Brighton, where I now live and in Cambridge, where I used to live.
I spend a lot of my time in Cafes and have very strong opinions about what makes a good one.
And sometimes I write about travel, I like Paris, Berlin, Athens.
It's a secular, militantly agnostic site, so there probably isn't much point sending ads for religious organisations.
They will probably like reading authors like Hunter S. Thompson, P J O' Rourke, Saki, Mark Twain, James Thurber, Charlie Booker, Damon Runyan.
They might like TV shows like "The Thick of It", "The Mighty Boosh", "The Wire", "Arrested Development".
The might like films like "A life Aquatic", or "The Big Lebowski"
Fear of a Flat-Packed Planet
I resisted. I wailed, I screamed, I gnashed my teeth (damn those dental bills) but in the end, it was
knowledge that was the dangerous thing. There are some things that, once you understand them, have
inescapable consequences - like the negative head problem. Once you know what a negative head problem
is and you understand that you've got one; once you understand that your landlord can hardly stop laughing
and counting his money long enough to tell you that he won't fix it. Well then there really is no escape. For
those of you that care, a negative head problem is... Oh forget it. Nobody cares. Nobody cares and it
doesn't matter. It would matter to you if you had to limbo dance to get a hot shower, but all you really need
to know is that it was this particular pea that broke the camels back.
Add to that the painful knowledge of
how much you're paying in rent and, well, once you've understood that, it's only a matter of time before -
boomph! Something breaks, the script writes itself for about sixty pages and if your life were a Hollywood
movie you'd find yourself in a montage of estate agents and lawyers and walking round
two-bedroomed
flats that you couldn't get a bed in and DIY stores and you up a ladder with busy strings in the background
signifying industry and DIY stores and you at a pasting table and DIY stores upon DIY stores spinning
endlessly in a special effect and then fade. And the scene would resolve to find you where you find me
now - being beaten senseless by a heavily-tattooed Essex bushman wielding a flat-packed mirrored
bathroom cabinet (in fact the last flat-packed bathroom cabinet in the shop - h60cm x d30cm x w60cm, the
"Blurpi").
That is correct, I am suffering interior-decoration rage at the hands of a man who clearly loves his
mother and Arsenal (reading forearms from left to right) and somehow it just feels right. It fits. Isn't there
after all a definite "Tea break's over - back on your heads", sulphurous whiff about the warehouse, the large
intestine of the Scandinavian dream-home beast? Even through the heavenly parade of dream kitchen after
dream lounge after dream bedroom after dream S&M dungeon (maybe I dreamt that one) hadn't there been
nagging doubts? Beside the obligatory nagging kids and the doocot of other halves cooing "Look dear!
Look dear!".
For a start why do all their products have such sinister names? Isn't brand and image supposed to
be everything? So how can they get away with it? What deal have they done with what mephistophelean
daemon that allows them to select all their product names from a vocabulary of vomiting sounds?
"Ah yes, good morning, I'm interested in ordering a Gurpi wardrobe and a Jukka sofa."
"I'm afraid we're out of stock of the Gurpi sir, perhaps you'd like to look at the Brurghhhh
instead."
"All right then"
"And would you like some Nevveragain cushions or perhaps an Idontremembereatingthat sofa
cover to go with that sir?"
And there was the fact that anything you did actually take a shine to had a little label on it saying
"Out of Stock." Out of stock eh? Then why are you showing it to me - you beech-veneered
cock-teasers?
Or even worse than "Out of Stock" - "See Assistance" which means you go find a girl who looks it up on
the computer and tells you that there's just one left in the warehouse - so it might have gone by the time you
get there.
And then, in those reflective moments when you are hopping about blinded by throbbing pain,
rubbing the backs of ankles recently clipped by a trolley carrying a family of four who are racing blindly
towards the last Throup bunk bed and desk playroom combination in the store. In those few seconds before
you lost consciousness, didn't you start to wonder if you really did want to be the only thing in your house
that didn't conform to Swedish furniture regulations?
But the worst thing about purgatory is that you think that you're in hell. My sweet, my innocent.
You have so much to learn. Relinquishing a bathroom cabinet and several millilitres of blood to your inky
opponent is just the start. You have not yet begun to plead, entreat, scream, threaten and cajole for -
deliverance (between 9am and 5pm, no specific time can be guaranteed).
11th November 2001
These are the confessions - such as they are of a non-drinking, monogamous, heterosexual, omnivore.
The Ginger Mumbly is a humorous and humourous, satirical, column. People who like this will probably like reading books.
They'll be interested in second hand books.
I also write about cafes - both in Brighton, where I now live and in Cambridge, where I used to live.
I spend a lot of my time in Cafes and have very strong opinions about what makes a good one.
And sometimes I write about travel, I like Paris, Berlin, Athens.
It's a secular, militantly agnostic site, so there probably isn't much point sending ads for religious organisations.
They will probably like reading authors like Hunter S. Thompson, P J O' Rourke, Saki, Mark Twain, James Thurber, Charlie Booker, Damon Runyan.
They might like TV shows like "The Thick of It", "The Mighty Boosh", "The Wire", "Arrested Development".
The might like films like "A life Aquatic", or "The Big Lebowski"