The potrait of the slacker as an aging man

 What does a man get up to on his day off? It needs chronicling. I rose to find the sun nosing its way through the gaps in the curtains. ‘Why its practically the summer’, I thought, ‘the world is my oyster – no work. I shall not throw this away, this chance to enjoy this amazing land of liberty and freedom. I think I will sit in the dark for several hours, watching a film I’ve heard mainly negative things about. Perhaps making this the tasty filling of a fun sandwich. What could be my bread? Perhaps a visit to Specsavers to get my glasses altered (they’re a bit loose and slide down my nose), and a run on Friday evening?’

So I was in the shower and inevitbaly listening to the station. Parry was on there with one of the presenters who is interchangeable. They were hyping their great new feature, possibly reprising it from 12 months ago. It was a take on the Apprentice. ‘Sir’ Mike Parry was taking the Sugar role. And…well if you’ve seen The Apprentice, you know the deal: budding entrepeneurs compete on a weekly basis in order to land a job with his Sugarness. They sell things, they market things, they research things and of each episode one of them gets to be pointed at while SAS gives it the old ‘You’re fired’. The Talksport version entailed three listeners (morons) giving Parry a pitch for an idea a product that could be produced and make money – they also asked for a hypothetical sum of money to produce said product. If you’re thinking ‘that sounds quite like Dragon’s Den’ (or possibly Dave Gorman’s Genius, seeing as they were hypothetical products and not fledgling business or prototypes), then that’s because that’s what it did sound like. BUT….they played the music from The Apprentice in the background, so – y’know – it was like The Apprentice. Incidentally, the winning Apprentice/Dragon’s Den person suggested that he would produce a kind of mop-shoe for cats and dogs – so they could clean your house as they walked around, you fool. He said he could produce these for ‘about £4′ and as he had £4 he didn’t need Sir Parry’s hypothetical investment. He had clearly done some thinking about these animal mopshoes as he had the answers – how would they be attached to your pet? “Masking tape or something”.

I had agreed that my friend Ste would come and pick me up at 12.30 for our sunny day trip to the cinema. I had got into the shower at about 12.40. I then sat on the settee in my towel for about 20 minutes, slowly thinking how rude it was of Ste not to be on time. Sat in my towel, showing no urgency in moving to put the clothes on that would see me in a position to have any high-ground on the situation. I wasn’t really annoyed about the tardiness but I did have those petty thoughts about it while sat there not getting ready. Kind of sums me up in many ways.

That’s one hell of way to spend your day off, you’re thinking. Well there’s more…I went to watch Watchmen, but that’s a separate blog.  

More? Ok, I did more – I went for a four mile run. I know it was four miles because I looked on Googlemap. I don’t know because of my Nikeplus running thing. As has become the norm it tries to stiff me. 3.18 miles it claimed. But I have Goooglemap and know the truth. Perhaps this is something I should take some of the blame on, though normally the gadget undermines me, this time I think I anadvertently paused the workout while carrying on running for about ten minutes. So, if the big cheeses at Nike are reading this, and I am 99.7% certain they are: your Nikeplus Ipod thing is not necessarily a tool of evil sent to undermine my exceptional running abilities. To be fair all the other times it undermines me are probably due to the little widget thing being a bit loose in my sock. But I’m not buying the special trainers for it to fit in. Though Big Cheeses, who ARE reading – unless the 0.03% error possibility comes into play – if you send me a pair of these trainers (size 8, uk size eight) I will edit this blog to say how amazing the Nikeplus thing is, all the time ..and isn’t evil.

To prove my day doesn’t come round to Talksport and thinking how shit the people who phone in are: I had Talksport on in the shower after my run. One of the subjects for phone-in was along the lines of ‘What footballer would you have on your sunday league team to show off something?’ They wanted people to say like ‘Rene Higuita – to do his scorpian kick’ or, if they were funny ‘Diego Maradona – to cheat’. The two I heard were ‘Paul Scholes – for his dignity’ and ‘Ryan Giggs – for his professionalism’. I’m not saying they wouldnt impress your mates on The Fox and Bull XI, turning up with their dignity and professionalism but what drives someone to ring in to a phone in and say something like that? Yeah I am the one writing this stuff down for no-one to read and they are the ones with attention seeking problems. If the two people who phoned in are reading random blogs about peoples’ day-off and recognise themself in what I have just written, can I just say I mean no disrespect to you, you sad fuck(s).

So that was my day off. And that was a good one. Maybe one day I will recount one of the ones where I get up around half one, go to Tesco for a wrap and play Call of Duty for 5 hours.