I really am very sorry.

By virtue of some unlikely circumstance, I recently spent a curiously prolonged period of time with someone who, among many other things, can be most accurately described as 'American'. As an Englishman, this inevitably led to an avalanche of culture clashes, casual imperialism, and pointing out that, at least from an administrative level, the US is still technically a British colony, and it might be an idea for them to remember that once in a while.

But more than anything else it led to apologising. Constantly.

At this point you're probably thinking: 'Good! Bloody Americans, it's about time they started acknowledging a few things.' You would of course be completely wrong.

You see, as any good English person will tell you, it's entirely reasonable to compose a sentence that's comprised of 70% apologetic terms. 80% if you're being polite. Which you should be. Always. For an American this is frankly incomprehensible. After all, how on earth can I spend that much of my life being that upset about things that in their (savage?) mind I shouldn't even have acknowledged?

I have apologised for being in a slightly inconvenient position (for them), doing something entirely legitimate, but thus putting them through the trauma of having to work around me.

For not predicting their precise need to intake fluids, thus forcing them to actually have to ask for them in the first place.

For having the audacity to attempt to engage them in casual conversation.

For trying to be helpful (I apologised for this a lot).

And for them bumping into me. As frankly I probably shouldn't have been there in the first place.

This was met with a constant procession of confused expressions, and an awful lot of "wait, did you just apologise for that?" Which made me feel awkward. So naturally I apologised for that too.

The only thing I'm worried about is that I might have left something out. Or not apologised enough. Two thoughts that frankly keep me awake at night wondering how best to apologise for that.

One thing I'm not apologising for though is my manners. Which are clearly impeccable. I'm sorry, but I'm just not prepared to call that into question.

The best things about the British summer

As a few people have seen fit to point out, it's summer in the UK at the moment, and for a change we mean that literally, and aren't just optimistically attaching a badge to the 3 months between Spring and First Winter.

So, in commemoration of this once in a lifetime event (there are now an entire generation of children who never had a proper summer when they were at school. Seriously nature, what's up with that?), here's the best things about exactly that.

1. A whole new kind of complaining

We British are a curious type, a nation that comes together over the common understanding that literally none of our infrastructure was designed to work in the environment it's in. For years we've sat there, quietly tutting away at train companies who get caught out by snow in Winter, leaves falling in Autumn, and the concept of rain falling anywhere in the country. But now, now we have something new. It's now too hot for them to run the trains!

We're still complaining, it's still because of the weather, but it's from a DIFFERENT KIND OF WEATHER! Do you have any idea how exciting this is? Do you? I doubt it. I doubt it very much.

2. British summer fashion

We have none. We never have done, and likely never will do. Which is quite predictable really given that we've next to no use for it in the first place (excuses for other seasons will be provided in due course). So simply setting foot outside in this weather is hilarious. Don't believe me? Have you seen Hipsters trying to work out how to ironically wear a sweater and skinny jeans in 90 degree heat?

3. Queuing for 30 minutes to spend £5 on an Ice Cream

It's just like normal queuing; which is amazing, obviously. It's also just like paying massively over inflated prices for everything, as usual (we only do that to see the look on the faces of tourists, just in case you were wondering. And yes, that includes northerners in London). BUT it's in the SUN. Everything's better in the sun.

4. British Beer was designed for exactly these circumstances

You know the moment, the moment where you've been sat in the park with your friends, having a picnic, maybe a couple of drinks, and you reach over to grab another Beer. Grab that can, hear that reassuring hiss as you pull on the ring pull, that moment of expectation as you put the can to your mouth for that first glorious, cold, refreshing taste. Only to discover that rather than the amber of the Gods, what you're now drinking is horrifically warm, and likely the product of building a brewery next to an animal refuge with particularly lax security.

Not with British Beer. We thought ahead. It's meant to be warm. It's literally impossible for it to be ruined by the heat. Amazing.

5. Doing anything is an extreme sport

There is one simple over riding fact of living in Britain. At literally any given moment it could absolutely pour down with rain. We know this, and 9 out of 12 months a year we're completely prepared for it. But in summer? No chance. If you've not attended a BBQ in Britain and had to spend 20 minutes sprinting around the garden trying to get the food covered, find the Dog, and get the garden furniture back in the shed before everything is ruined you've not lived.

6. Confusing Australians

There's nothing quite as magical as seeing the look on an Australian's face when you talk to them about a heatwave in the UK. The only other way to get a similar reaction is to start a conversation speaking Klingon, and finish it by urinating on their shoes.

7. Ordering flavoured Cider without having your sexuality being silently assessed by the bar staff

The fact of the matter is, unless you're ordering a Strongbow (and seriously, why the hell would you?), there's no way for a man to order a Cider without immediately putting his sexual orientation up for debate in the process. In summer however it's simply accepted that you've just order a pint of cold, that comes complete with blocks of extreme cold to make it colder. Essentially announcing yourself as the Ranulph Feinnes of the beverage world. Manly.

Just pants.

Aren't bookstores great! They're full of books. Proper books. Books that make you feel like the intellectual you always hoped everyone else would mistake you for. Books that people will see upon walking into your flat and suddenly be overcome with the thought that they like to have sex with people who like books. So, as someone who recently purged a vast array of DVDs specifically to create more space on his bookshelf to fill with said books, I just pointed myself in the direction of the Plaza's glorious Waterstones store to do just that. (The book buying bit, not the casual sex with other bibliophiles bit. This isn't about to turn into some kind of book based dogging. Mr Cameron would never approve of that)

Which is when it happened. The boundless joy of nosing through the shelves in the kind of chaos free oasis that, in central London, only a bookstore can provide came crashing down like a, well fine, I can't think of a good enough metaphor for once, but trust me, it hit the ground hard.

Ladies and gentlemen, I have just witnessed something that should simply never have been allowed to be. Something that was not only terrifying, but that as a man I have literally no frame of reference point over how to deal with.

While happily nosey through a collection of, inevitably alluring, fantasy books, I casually turned my head and saw, well, frankly there's no good way of putting this. In fact it's so far from being right that I'm going to devote an entire paragraph to the sentence to describe it.

Three teenage girls, wearing jeans, with their knickers on over the top of their Jeans!

Seriously fashion, what the actual fuck was that? Normally at this point I'd love to share a photo with you as evidence, but as I'm not a complete moron, I realised pretty much instantaneously that attempting to photograph this monstrosity had somewhere between slim and no chance of not landing me with a lengthly jail term. So you're going to have to take my word for it. But there it was. 3 teenagers going about their, largely unfathomable, lives, wearing some very large pants, over some reasonably baggy Jeans. Just, just stop for a second, and picture that.

I know fashion's had it's fair share of train wrecks over the years. Shell-suits were liable to spontaneously engulf their owner in flames. Emo hair was the equivalent to voluntary cataracts on one side of your face. Skinny Jeans was fashion's least subtle effort to sterilise the male population. And I was once a Goth. But this, this just defies explanation. It's bad enough that many men under the age of 30 have seemingly gotten so bored with getting dressed that they give up half way through pulling their trousers up, but at least they've remembered the basic order in which to apply clothing!

I've literally spent the past 45 minutes trying to comprehend why a person would do this. My best idea was simply that it was a bet. They were all young enough to be on some school trip. So it might have been a joke. Some glorious youthful hijinks that they'll have a good chuckle about later.

Then I came back to the office and saw this on Twitter:

No fashion. No. Even Superman's gotten past this now.

*NB Tweet stolen from the excellent @peachesanscream who you should probably follow.

Film Review: The Worlds End

I'll get this clear from the outset. I bloody love Simon Pegg and Nick Frost. If I were starting life with a brochure of people to pick my mates from, they'd be top of my shopping list. I imagine I love Edgar Wright too, but for some reason I don't tend to make that association between him and the films so there we go.

Equally, I bloody loved Shaun of the Dead, Spaced, Hot Fuzz and Paul (told you I didn't make the Edgar Wright association), in all of their hilarious, often quite mental, glory. So I had high hopes for The Worlds End. How could they possibly get it wrong? It's basically a take on combining the best bits of Shaun of the Dead and Hot Fuzz, ageing the characters to a sensible degree, and rocking on with the concept.

Which is why it sucked when I discovered that it had all gone a bit wrong really.

The first half of the film is reiterating the same point over and over again, Gary King (Pegg) has never grown up, lives in the past, and desperately wants to reclaim his long lost youth in some desperate final act of rebellion. All of his mates have grown up, become everything that every teenage boy swears they'll never be, are now basically annoyed with him, but decide to come along come along anyway. Now rinse and repeat that concept until we're a few pubs into the crawl that provides the crux of the setting.

The problem is, that while there are some genuinely hilarious moments, you spend the entire first half of the movie constantly expecting it to get going, and it never really does. The tragic life of Gary King is played up over and over again, to the point at which you start to wonder if there was really any point to any of the rest of the cast not called Nick Frost. So by the time the Alien Robots finally show up you're almost longing for a distraction. It does get better at that point, and it REALLY makes an effort to come across all Shaun of the Fuzz, but there's still something that's not quite there. You see, we've seen this film. I know I said at the outset that taking the best bits of Hot Fuzz and Shaun of the Dead could only ever be a good thing, and I stand by that. But what they've turned out at the end of it is really an exercise in taking the good bits, and making them quite, well, mediocre really.

The Robot vs Human fights scenes are brilliantly shot, but lack the charm of their SotD counterparts (something that can probably be explained by actually having a special effects budget on this one). While the 'all to perfect' town is so perfect that it completely lacks in any of the character that Sandford mustered in Hot Fuzz.

The final scenes get better, and get back to what we know they're capable of producing, but the very end of the film just seemed to me to show how cool a film they could have made, if they'd not wanted to do a very British pub crawl first.

A few people gave up and walked out on this when I was watching, and it's certainly not bad enough for that. Hell, it's worth a watch and I certainly don't regret giving it one. It's just a classic case of the whole not being as good as the sum of its parts.

David Cameron on Porn

Dear David Cameron,

It's a nice idea isn't it; a perfect world where our children are protected from anything that we might consider to be bad for them. I can see it now, little Timmy merrily skipping off to school wrapped in a limitless bubble of joy and naivety. A bubble the stops all of life's little nasties from getting at him. Porn for example. You know Porn, that overly exaggerated past time of having a camera in a room while human beings do things that human beings tend to do when given half a chance, and then showing it to other people. Now, in the name of fighting the good fight you've decided that the Internet should block it by default, lock it away somewhere cold and dark, and help keep little Timmy's bubble of joy that bit stronger.

Fair enough. It's a plan that's about as intelligent as putting a Cat Flap in an Elephant house, but hey, it's a good way of making it look like you're doing something good for a change. Let's face it, there's not a Daily Mail reader in the land who won't weep tears of joy over the concept alone!

Now, I'm not here to argue the morals, and I'm not here to argue the psychological science or otherwise behind viewing such things. Hell, I'm not even here to point out what might happen if you suddenly decide that other things are now bad as well and should be locked away too. And of course, because some book dodging halfwit will inevitably assume it if I don't say so; no, I don't want to expose little Timmy to porn. No, I'm simply here to point out that you're idea is so utterly flawed at a basic level that I'm staggered you even got this far through the thought process to start with. Let me tell you why.

First up, any teenager with half a brain can use a proxy, and happily bounce themselves around anywhere else in the world online instantly bypassing the entire thing. Total effort involved? Less than it took me to write this sentence, and in an instant all your litigation and effort has come to nothing. China can't keep it's people behind their great firewall, Egypt's previous rulers had to cut off the internet entirely for the whole country to keep them quiet (and it STILL didn't work). So what chance exactly do you, a man with FAR less practical power than either of those regimes, have?

Secondly, define Porn. Sure, RavingLesbianNymphs.com is probably a pretty good place to start, so that can be on the block list, but what about say, Facebook? Or maybe Twitter? YouTube? Flickr? (I was going to say MySpace as well, but let's not let this become ridiculous) Because what exactly would it be that would stop me uploading something Porn based to one of those sites? Nothing, nothing at all. Now seeing as it doesn't take an awful lot of thought to realise that it's impossible to validate everything ever posted on the internet we can be pretty sure of one thing. It's still going to be distributed just fine.

Sure the Facebooks and Twitters of the world would take it down reasonably quickly (once they've been told about it anyway), but that's the thing about the internet, block something in one place and within 15 minutes the whole thing is back again, hosted in another country and doing exactly the same thing. Total cost to the user: fuck all. Total cost to the Government & various ISPs (or whomever else) to plough through all the legal proceedings: A lot more than fuck all.

Not to mention all the false positives that will come up from this. Sexual health clinics? Countless entirely legitimate sites that happen to discuss things around gender or sexuality? Charities? What about written porn? Slash fiction? The fucking Discovery Channel? We could even bring up that great piece of internet based folk lore and talk about the people working at Pen Island. Or are you going to fix it so we're all provided a list of things that we are allowed to look at, read, learn, watch, and things that we're not? Unlikely if you ever want to be voted for again.

Dave, let's keep it simple here. You don't really know how the internet works do you. It's a nice idea this whole protecting the children thing, and I get where you're coming from, I really do. But it won't work. It'll never work. The ISPs and search engines know it wont work, and that's why they want no part in it unless you force them by law. Now, I don't want to alarm you here Dave, but perhaps if you spent a few more minutes listening to the experts, and few less listening to irrational screaming Daily Mail types, you might just save yourself a hell of a lot of time and effort, and save the rest of the country a hell of a lot of money.

Alternatively, we could always encourage people to do some bloody parenting once in a while?

The joys of air travel

As I type this I'm cruising at about 30'000 feet, (which is quite high, even by my standards) somewhere over Siberia, on what feels like a flight that could only get worse if the cabin crew asked us nicely if we wouldn't mind popping our arms out the window and flapping them up and down for a while.

Suffice to say, this, as with pretty much everything else on this blog, is going to be a bit ranty. So buckle up and get comfortable, as the emergency exits are only painted on, and you're going to be here for a while.

Air travel is shit. From the moment you get to the airport, to the second you leave the next one. You arrive at security where you're asked to strip practically naked, be casually groped by someone so unappealing that you're pretty much certain that their job satisfaction comes from a less than conventional angle, and then someone waves something scary at you, and empties your bag on the floor. Thus completing an experience that I was promised wouldn't happen again once I stopped  doing PE at school.

So why? Security apparently. They don't want you taking explosive death fluids on planes. Which, on the surface seems entirely reasonable, until you notice what they do with them. 

Once your vicious looking bottle of middle class mineral water has been removed for being the threat that it is, this, supposedly highly dangerous, and/or explosive mixture is, quite literally, thrown in a massive bin full of other explosive highly dangerous things right in front of you. Don't believe me? Then you've never flown from Gatwick. They literally fling all these potential bombs into one massive container, or super bomb if you will, right next to the security check point, and expect you not to realise that they're taking the piss. Frankly at that point they might as well drop their trousers and start slapping you in the face with something floppy and ask if you'll blindly accept that too.

Right now you might be thinking that it's for the greater good. Fair enough. You're an idiot, but at least you've made it easier for the rest of us to spot you. That of course is because the actual stupidity started 24 hours earlier with the concept of the 'online check-in'. Where we're basically asked by an inanimate object to promise not to put any nasties in our luggage, on what can at best be described as history's most laughable honor system. Let's face it, humanity stopped clicking on anything other than 'I agree' the second iTunes started its ceaseless T&Cs barrage, and nobody has ever used the Internet for anything that wasn't at best a mask for something morally dubious.

So, hand luggage is a mockery, checked in luggage is laughable, body scanners are staffed by perverts, and not once when I've been quizzed about bringing on any weapons or general pointy things with me has anyone ever asked if I'm a Ninja.

How's that secure feeling working out for you?

Lets get on the plane.

You're spending 12 hours on a metal tube hurtling through the sky. 60% of the other passengers are on day release, 20% are under the age of 5, and the remainder have locked themselves into the one working toilet. Then finally you find yourself sat next to someone who's last shower was apparently administered when they were walking under a window in Victorian London (that was clever, look it up if you don't get it). Then at some point a homosexual will ask you what you'd like to eat, pay literally no attention to your answer, and present you with something that looks like it was originally prepared in the mess room on the Ark, and has just this second been reheated for your culinary pleasure. What a treat!

This is usually the point where you give up, and turn to that last bastion of hope, the in flight entertainment system. In my case being one of the 5 people on this flight for whom it works, initially left me feeling immeasurably smug. But as I said, right now I'm writing a blog on a plane, and not, obviously, enjoying a selection of Hollywood hits. That, quite simply is due to one very simple thing. I clicked on 'movies' and the first thing it deemed to present me with were the words "Twilight: Breaking Dawn. Part 1."

The 12 best things about being tall

Apparently there are 32 bad things about being tall, which, for the Hobbits amongst you, you can find here, if you need to feel better about your tiny little lives.

Unsurprisingly, and despite those being largely, well, true, there are a truck load of benefits of being tall. Which, for the sake of your education, and my own overblown sense of superiority, I'll run through now!

1) It doesn't matter how confident the other guy is, their threats are never going to be anything other than hilarious.

Ever had that worrying moment when a group of "young people," as I believe they're called, take one look at you from a distance, size you up, pull up their hoods and masks and walk over? I have, a few times. And then they got closer, and closer, and I watched them visibly shrink before me, and slip off quietly to the other side of the road. Threats therefore, are always going to be funny. Pick on someone your own size Frodo.

2) Gig tickets are 100% value for money

When I spend £50 on a gig ticket, I get to both hear AND see the band. What is it like seeing your favorite bands through the back of another persons head anyway? I have, over the years, bent down to other peoples levels at gigs to see what it's like a fair few times. As a result I have literally no idea why any you bothered buying tickets. The words "restricted view" mean nothing to me.

Look, it's a band, and they're playing music! How many times have you seen that? Exactly. None.

3) Clothes shopping is really efficient

On average how much time do you spend shopping for clothes? Trying stuff on? Making decisions on what to get? Do you know what I do? I use the following conversation:

Me: "Excuse me, what's the longest leg length you do?"
Shopkeep: "34"
Me: "Thanks, bye."

Job done. Off to the Pub.

As for if they say 36"? Well, then it's still a job done. I have saved hours of my life on this fact alone.

4) Studies have shown that taller people progress further in their careers, and faster than their shorter counterparts

Yup, it's true. In fact the biggest problem I have right now as I type this is the fact that my mattress that I happen to be sitting on is a little lumpy as a result of the VAST QUANTITIES OF CASH STUFFED INTO IT, such is the enormity of my earning potential.

5) Air travel, is indeed shit. Initially.

Until you request an upgrade as you don't fit in the seat. At which point the airline will probably say something along the lines of; "You know you could have paid extra for the premium seats." Which you immediately follow with the statement "Why am I being charged more due to my height, that's a form of discrimination," and BOOM! Welcome to Business class.

6) Easily being found.

Every time I go to, well, anything, there is one simple plan; meet by me. What does this mean? I am always in the right place. By definition it's completely impossible for me not to be. I can't even get in trouble for it if people can't find me. Nobody panics, nobody has a tired panic because they can't find their friends. The whole event is made better for everyone because of me.

7) I walk faster than all of you

Why? Because not only do I have long legs, but I can see the gaps in the crowd, so while you lot are bumping into each other and going nowhere, I've already got where I'm going, stuck the kettle on, and made myself a nice cup of tea. Let me know when you catch up.

8) You can, quite legitimately, completely ignore small people

Now, this can be delicate, but to put it bluntly, I genuinely don't notice a lot of people until they either speak, or I've walked into them. It's not deliberate, always, but it's completely true. Sorry my little leprechaun friends, but you're either going to need to put a flashing light on your head, or pay attention to where you're going. As for the line "why don't you look where you're going!?!" Well, I was, what I wasn't doing was staring at the floor, so please, tell me again what your point was?

An artists rendition of my recent stroll down Oxford St.

9) Walk tall, walk straight ahead, and the seas will part

You've probably been told that if you walk and act with confidence people will naturally move around you. Well, that goes double for tall people. Head up, walk straight forward with confidence and I have genuinely seen people leap out of my way. I, boys and girls, am basically a modern day Moses!

10) You can never hear people at parties. If you want to.

Everyone alive has been in this situation. You're at a party, and you've found yourself next to the terminal bore of the evening. A couple of minutes of being generally polite to someone has turned into the kind of experience that makes you want to take a Cheese Grater to your eardrums and scour away at your hearing forever more. Feigned deafness, is, frankly bloody handy. It breaks a conversation's flow, throws off the other party, and basically offers you escape routes a-plenty. If I've ever done this to you, well, then this is awkward.

11) Being heralded as a God in Asia

I was once mobbed by a group of 50 Vietnamese businessmen at Ha-Long Bay who insisted on having their picture taken with me and measuring themselves against me. It might have been a little random, but it was stupidly entertaining. Similar, if somewhat more restrained, experiences also took place in Thailand and Laos. As for Japan, well, I'm just going to walk around Tokyo in a few weeks wearing a Dinosaur mask. Trust me, you'll hear about it :-)

12) Everything they said about the size of someones feet is completely true.

My shoes are also fucking huge.