Friday 28 November 2014

Danger Danger Black Friday

There are many days of the year I dislike – Valentine’s Day, any day dedicated to something trivial like talking like a pirate, dress like a carrot, learn to speak Romulan, open your curtains whilst upside down, PI day (yes I know I have ranted about it before but it annoys me, okay!)  - but there is one day of the year which makes me want rip the phone out of the wall, shoot all television screens, delete the internet and barricade all shops’ doors closed.

Yes, I hate Black Friday.

I have no problem with people going out in hordes to get huge discounts on luxury items – what people choose to spend their time and money doing is their business. I don’t do shopping at the best of times except for visiting the corner store for food and the off license for my whiskey, tequila and other spirits so Black Friday doesn’t really affect my shopping habits.

Five reasons that I hate Black Friday:

  1. People spend a week phoning and asking whether I am offering discounts on my services over the Black Friday Weekend
  2. Harry turns up at my door every single year with a catalogue in hand trying to convince me that I need a plasma screen TV, surround system and media centre.
  3. When I am trying to follow people, the crowds, screaming, random outbreaks of violence and police presence make it very difficult for me to do my job.
  4. Fred buys lots of things and then tries to give me lots of useless gifts.
  5. My favourite weapons and ammunition specialist shops never seem to hold Black Friday sales.
The number of phone calls I have had this year alone have been enough for me to unplug my phone from the wall. Then when people started arriving at my office and demanding Black Friday discounts I had to chase them out of my office and even had to throw my phone out of the window after them.

When Harry turned up had I had to threaten to shoot him five times and shoot the catalogue out of his hand to make him leave.
Fred then turned up with only five gifts instead of the usual fifty. This year he had bought me a kettle to replace the one that Ryan borrowed and sold for drug money, a microwave to replace the one that exploded, a new phone to replace the one that was now lying down on the street in several hundred thousand pieces, an engraved cigarette case and a sofa bed.

So this year there was only one useless gift that Fred brought with him. When I asked him why the sofa bed, he said he was sick of sleeping on the broken lump of wood and padding that I called a sofa. I told him that he had his own bed in his own home that he could go home to quite easily but for some reason the sofa bed still made its way into my home and my old sofa ended up sharing the street with my phone.


Sometimes I think that Fred is far more manipulative than anyone gives him credit for.

Wednesday 26 November 2014

Cancellations

I can't just be me that finds cancellations one of the most annoying things in the world - yes there is something I find more annoying than Fred Barlow and cancellations are it.

The most irritating form it comes in is cheques. This is especially troublesome in my line of work as I deal solely in cash and cheques and there is nothing worse than when someone writes a bad cheque or writes one that will actually clear but then cancels it before I can put it in the bank.

This week alone I have had three, yes three, cheques cancelled on me so quite clearly something needed to be done and being a private investigator it really wasn't hard for me to find out where these deadbeat clients were hiding from me and took even less time for me to beat my money out of them. In my line of work you either get paid or you starve, or get whacked, or get walked all over by scumbags.

It did get me thinking though about other things being cancelled and why it is that you have no control over them. Bus and trains being cancelled are one of the more frustrating things for the general population since they often lead to people having to stand around in the cold and the wet waiting for something that is never going to come and on rare occasions does leave individuals stranded.

I tend to avoid public transport so that doesn't bother me too much though every time I seem to have to take a plane it gets cancelled.

The other form of cancellation that really annoys me is when TV series are cancelled - especially halfway through a series. The one that most people gripe about is Firefly, and yes it was amazing but there are other series like the Visitors, Sports Night, the Magnificent Seven and Caprica that were all cut short in their prime. It's one thing that Fred and Harry never seem to shut up about.

It worries me that most of their conversation seems to be orientated around topics like television and Star Wars and other things that they seem to talk about just to annoy me, but then again it is still better than listening to Rick and Harry discussing which of their female conquests that they have in common.



Wednesday 19 November 2014

The case of the missing sock

It may surprise many people to learn that I do my own laundry. Yes, I do know what laundry is and how to operate a washing machine and even a tumble dryer. Even more shocking is the fact that I know where to put the washing powder/liquid and fabric softener so you don't end up with clothes that still have soap in them when you are ready to dry them.

I can even separate my dark clothes from my lights and whites - well I could if I had any white and lights and the same goes for delicate items - hosiery and lingerie have never really been something I'd had much use for, especially when ammo is a much better investment.

Granted blood doesn't really ever wash out and grease can be a pain, but on the whole I manage to keep my clothes clean enough that there isn't a repellent scent of body odor that comes wafting to the nostrils every time I open my wardrobe or my drawers.

Though I do have experience with laundry, I have never really understood why people make such fuss over machines "eating" socks. I mean it had never happened to me and on days when there really didn't seem to be anything else to discuss, Fred and Harry would bleat on about how one of their socks had got lost in the wash, or the machine had mangled one, or someone had put something red in with their whites - oh wait that's something different - but still not only did the sheer dullness of this topic numb my brain, the idea that rational people could blame a machine for losing their sock seemed utterly ridiculous to me.

Of course I voiced these views in a very adult and respectful manner...oh alright, I called them both idiots and told them they deserved shooting for exposing me to firstly boring conversation and secondly for believing that machines for cleaning had developed a consciousness that revolved around depriving them of their socks.

Needless to say it brought an end to the evening.

However the next time I came to do my laundry, I collected it from the washing machine, put it through the dryer, but when it came to pairing my socks I found that two were missing - one white and one black, and I am not talking about the kind of socks that you buy from any normal shop (they only sell really, really, really, really dark blue ones). Oh no this one sock that was part of a pair of priest's socks that Pastor Patrick had given me.

So I searched through the dryer and the washing machine and couldn't find it anywhere. I retraced my steps to see if I had dropped them anywhere, checked my laundry bag and went over my apartment and office with a fine tooth comb when it struck me that it seemed very convenient that I should lose two socks just days after I had ridiculed Mr. Wonderful and Mr. Sleep-with-everything-that-moves over their enjoyment of trivialities.

Both denied all knowledge of stealing my socks, so when a pair of red knickers got mixed in with both Fred and Harry's white shirts, it was complete mystery as to whom they belonged to.

You might call it petty, but pettiness works for me.