Saturday 21 July 2012

The Things You See...

I'm in Coventry city centre. Please help me... I'm in Coventry city centre. I don't know quite how i arrived at the place i am now, other than the coffee was acceptable and the ham and cheese pannini went down quite well. You see, i seek out the smaller independent coffee shops rather than join the sheepish throngs at the corporate coffee shops with their long queues, packed tables, crap beverages and over enthusiastic barristas smiling the smile of an otherwise out of work media graduate.

So there i was, minding my own business when he passed before me. A rather large chap hoved into view, a huge dark shadow falling over the table where i sat. He was wearing worn out desert camouflage trousers, red socks and sandals. It was all i could do to stop myself from exhaling coffee and pannini bits onto the window through which i saw him. To top it off, he had a shaved, bald head and a tattoo of a barcode on the back of his head. Yep, you read that right, a barcode... Tattoo'ed... On his head. What that barcode would reveal should he ever scan himself through a checkout i can only guess at...

'Beep'... re-scan 'Beep'... Twat (XXL) 320lbs, Second hand, £1.42p. That's my guess.

Paul Martin is @ukcameraman on Twitter.









Sunday 8 July 2012

Old Fashioned Service.

I walk up to the counter of the local petrol station and offer the surly, callow youth my hard earned cash for the fuel at pump number 4. A fresh, crisp £20 pound note, to pay for the fresh, crisp 10 Litres of petrol.

Callow youth: "Would you like some chocolate? Only one pound a bar..?"

Me: "No, thank you very much."

Callow youth: "Coffee, Tea...?"

Me: (Sigh) "No, thank you very much."

Callow youth: "Anything else for you...?"

Me: " PETROL..! ALL I WANTED WAS THE BLEEDING PETROL..!! I don't want a half pound bar of fruit and nut, a choco Latte Frappe, or Lapsang fucking Suchong in a flimsy cardboard cup. PETROL..! That is all i wanted. Did i ask for anything else..? I would have collected it on my way in or asked you for it before offering you my cash, wouldn't i... WOULDN'T I..?"

That's what i wanted to scream at the spotty faced young whelk at the counter anyway. Today's counter staff of the forecourt variety are now instructed by their bosses to try and sell any old pap from the 'nearing the sell by date' box to every customer who passes in front of them. Even if i come in every day, they ask me the same bloody questions, trying to sell me the same bloody things.

One day... One day, i'm going to really hurt someone.

Paul Martin is @ukcameraman on Twitter. 

For Starters, I'm Just Pissed Off... At Everything.

There is a time in every man's life when we realise we are getting older, grumpier and more pissed off at the world than we ever could have imagined back in the halcyon days of our misspent youth. Not much got in the way of what we wanted to do, except our parents of course. You know, those guardians of our morals, language and time. A swift slap to the back of the head from your Father made you realise that something you had done was amiss and that said infraction of the rules should not be repeated, on pain of being sent to bed with no supper and a cauliflower ear.

Things have changed somewhat. Today's misspent youth carries on into a misspent adulthood with an attitude that carries over from the misspent youth. Trousers revealing the crack of a thirty somethings arse is not a pleasant sight. Tattoos covering vast swathes of skin along with piercings that would make an Amazonian tribesman blush seem to be the norm... and that's just the Women.

All sorts of things conspire in the current climate to make me angry, annoyed and darn well pissed off. So i have decided to open this blog as a dumping ground for all of the machinations that sometimes occupy my thoughts on a daily basis. I hope you enjoy, inwardly digest and maybe even learn something...

If not... You can fuck off.

Paul Martin is @ukcameraman on Twitter.