Monday 15 October 2012

The Magic Newsroom

I hardly write in this pissy little thing any more. There was a period there where I seemed able to sustain writing a blog at the same time as having a crystal meth habit. When the time came to choose between the two there was only ever going to be one winner. Now that me and meth have fallen out I'm back to this shit. The most powerful drug I know... bloggin'

I've bought a house! Well, not really. My girlfriend and I have made three mortgage payments on a house. This means that we own a portion of the pubic hair which was left in the toilet bowl when we moved in. In 2017 we will own the whole toilet.

I am now sat at my new desk in my new office. It's incredible to think that from this very spot I will write countless classics. Not today though. I'm tired.

Two years ago I wrote this post... http://ferguscraig.blogspot.co.uk/2010/08/flat-pack-fergus.html

In it I described the difficulty I had with putting together a flat pack chest of drawers. The last three months or so has been that blog on a loop. My girlfriend is putting together a house and I am standing around trying to look helpful. One weekend I was left alone with the responsibility of painting a room.

Have you ever painted a room? It's fucking hard. On the adverts it looks like so much fun. Dulux advert = Roll a bit, kiss your pregnant wife, roll a bit more, dog runs in, roll a bit more, settle down to smile on a sofa, happiness. In actuality painting a room is horrible. If you're like me it's a weekend of stressing that you're doing it wrong, then standing back and looking at the great big streaks of uneven paint that confirm you have done it wrong.

As I painted that weekend I wore a football shirt and I baggy bleach stained pair of shorts. On the Saturday a hungover me nipped out to get a KFC. On my way back I bumped into my new lovely and definitely middle class liberal neighbour, KFC in hand. That was not the first impression I wanted to give. That picture represents a portion of me but not the bit I want my new middle class neighbour to see. Every day since I've strolled across our shared balcony wearing slacks and carrying a copy of Private Eye hoping to be spotted. This is the *real* me!

I've been listening to a lot of radio whilst ruining the walls of the house that will eventually cost me something close to whatever Chris Addison got paid for those Direct Line adverts. 5live and 6music have been the standards. Sometimes though, as if trying to get into the mindset of a painter and decorator, I've been listening to Magic FM. Why can't I fucking paint properly? That's it! I'm not listening to enough 10cc! For an hour or so Magic FM is great. Every song is sing alongable. It's like being on an enjoyable but tacky Mediterranean holiday with people you like but wouldn't want to hang out with in Britain. Like playing cards with your partner's extended family at Christmas. But you can only talk about traffic and the death penalty/sing along to Shania Twain for so  long. At some point you're going to have to go home, to where you really feel comfortable. This place for me is 5live which ironically talks about nothing but traffic and the death penalty.

My favourite thing about Magic FM is that they call their newsroom - the Magic Newsroom.

DJ: Let's go to Sarah in the Magic Newsroom.

Sarah: Today in parliament George Osbourne sawed Ed Balls in half.

I'd love to carry on writing but I have to leave the house again soon and was hoping to have a poo first. Sorry.