Domino Gate

I've recently been made aware by a colleague of mine that you provided him with a pizza with both anchovies and pepperoni as toppings. I want to know what world you live in where this could ever be deemed acceptable. I'm appalled.

This flavour mispairing is not only in very poor taste but potentially dangerous. I've a good mind to contact my local MP as this is surely infringement of several clauses of the Geneva convention.

I'm going to beg you to reconsider allowing this in the future as this diabolical construction should never have seen the light of day in the first place. And before you say anything, yes I think it was wrong of him to make the order but it was even worse for you to let him purchase it.

Until this happens I cannot advocate the purchase of any further pizzas from your establishments.

Regards

Conor Charlton

Scraps, near scraps and drunken bolshie confrontations, Part 1

There are a few ways you've stumbled across this particular blog. The most likely one is that you're a Facebook friend of mine and presumably know a little about me. You probably know that I live up to the Irish stereotype of loving drinking and loving fighting. The drinking is a given. I enjoy few things more than a good session. With regards to fighting its a little bit more complicated than that. I love martial arts. I've trained in run down boxing gyms, Muay Thai camps in Thailand and stretched my limbs out with the most aggressive form of yoga known to man: BrazilIan Jiu Jitsu. That's not to say I can fight well. I'll whole-heartedly admit for the length of time I've spent getting my ass kicked in dojos, sports halls or make shift rings over the last ten years I'm still as soft as cotton wool, no more able to take a punch than the next slightly doughy-round-the-edges guy. More to the point, I like my fighting well contained, to the environment of sporting venues and action movies. Street and for that matter bar fighting is messy and nine times out of ten almost completely pointless. Why risk hurting your hand trying to smash somebody's skull in when you can kick back, relax and have another drink.  UFC legend Chuck Liddell's first two pieces of advice to anyone wanting to win a fight are simply "Don't get into fights". If The guy with a Mohawk and a Chinese famed for dropping wrestlers with a baseball pithing style overhand letter tattooed into the side of his dome advised not to start scrapping with the guy who stares at you too long, you should probably take his advice. What do you have to prove? That you can physically hurt someone? That you can assert "alpha male" dominance over another drunken fool in front of a crowd of strangers. Behave yourself. Your testosterone fuelled outrages impress almost no one. Any woman aroused by outdated displays of barbaric "masculinity" are probably entirely defective, her mal aligned decision making process are cruel missteps in our evolution. Or at least that's what I try and tell myself as my fight or flight reactions kick in and I find myself firmly on the flight end of the bargain, trying to puff my chest out and flare my nostrils in order to conceal my inner desire to plead "please don't hurt me. I'm too pretty!" So generally speaking I play pacifist, sometimes even drunken Jesus as I foolishly step between two warring factions but very rarely the hard man, I just don't have the stones to back it up. 

Despite all this, sometimes my judgement is still poor. I'll say the wrong thing or decide I'll stand up to perceived bullying, or believe I'm capable of teaching some clown a lesson. Sometimes my levels of natural social awkwardness will provoke disdain in others. This is the beginning of a series of posts about times in my life where alcohol, poor judgement, bad luck or just general dumbassery got me into scrapes or almost scrapes, Narrowly avoided punch ups or rare occasional full blown ones.  For the actual street brawlers this may seem tame and for the sanctimonious some of these things may seem tedious proof giving examples of why drinking is a pointless leisure pursuit, but Id like to believe these fables will provide mirth to some.

Let's begin with my first night of drinking, 

Conor learns basic boxing combinations, goes out on first actual night out

Amongst some of my friends who have endured me during my extremely awkward teenage years (and later general wanker years of which I still progress through these days) there is some confusion as to when my first drunken night was. Some would point to an Easter "fling" night. A school committee organised underage drinking session in a hotels ball room, where bar staff refused to serve me, knowing full well most of the other students were underage, they had feigned being of legal age by dressing the part - stripey shirts, glitzy dresses and Lacoste polos. I had rocked up in a skull and crossbones embossed skater hoody, as acne ridden as I had been the year I bought the scruffy, bleached by whatever doctor prescribed ointment damn jumper. Made an example of, I was forced to ask others to buy pints for me using the measley £10 coins Id scraped together from my paper round. Four pints in and I was mine sweeping, abducting any wayward pint left unguarded more than 120 seconds. Thankfully no bad came of this grand theft pinta other than being warned by a friend not to open my pig swill filled gob on the journey home, lift granted by her father.

The other grand popping of the inebriation cherry came when I decided I'd head out to meet some potential friends. I say potential friends because Id schooled with them for six years, had shared hobbies and wanted to be part of their group. Maybe, just maybe, if I spent some outside of school time I could prove my coolness and say some witty things. They'd want my trading card shuffling ass in their gang and would want to play all those great games I tried to force upon them. Alas, it was not to be. I soon got brushed off with questions like "what are you doing here?" And "who did you come with". The "you guys, I guess" suggestions quickly became scorned, sniggered at and I stood around feeling out of place. Thankfully, more accepting folk were in that bar. A young Niall graham, whom id become acquainted with through the aforementioned world of collectible card game geekery and his friend Daffy, whose real name is unknown but stands as a pillar of the people nicknamed after looney toons community. They were buzzed, bouncing around the place like they'd drank the maximum sugar squishy from a very specific Simpsons episode you should go watch again (and if you haven't seen it, you're a wankdog, get a life, fuck face).  In their haze they seemed far more interesting than those who shunned me and invited me to join them on their level ten hallionry.

After more beers we headed off to nightclub famed for its disdain for anything bright: The Venue. This haven for goths, moshers, metallers, fishnet wearing pale skinned princesses and chain smoking make up wearing men and generally unwashed folk was disregarded by . Though no doubt many cherries of the other kind were popped over the years in the bar, my main concern was being the drunkest bastard in there.

Being that it was a particularly shady club for quite sometime it made a point of not selling alcohol. It sold tickets instead, that could be traded for drinks. I don't know how exactly this got around whatever legal restriction it was faced with but for years it dived right through that loophole reasonably successfully.

Firstly I'd need to buy drinks tickets, then I'd exchange those drinks tickets for vodkas. Straight double vodkas in fact. I'm not entirely sure how I managed to stomach one of them, let alone four of them - not all subsequently but certainly within the space of two hours, the Russian poison had infected me, turned off most of the part of the brain that says "don't do that, it might not be such a great idea...". Id taken up boxing only a few months previously. Now it was time to remind everyone just how skilled I'd become - by busting out my three punch combos at the air. Jab, cross hook! Cross, hook, cross! Hook, cross, hook! With a combination of cheap alcohol and adrenaline coursing through my blood stream, I deemed myself unstoppable, capable of knocking out Mike Tyson with one well placed punch. I needed to show the world how this air in front of my face was no longer any threat to me, how I could dispatch the once mighty foe like it wasn't even there. Maybe then the chicks would flock to me, bountiful breasts bouncing free from their corsets as they leapt towards me.

I had to be sat down multiple times. A group of older guys who I also knew from geeky gaming aimed to ensure I was safe from bouncers disdain, or from landing a stray punch on some unfortunate fat girl's jowl. I'd stop momentarily, gorge on the paper-plated curried chip produced in the restaurant's seedy kitchen, a delicacy made solely so the could maintain "restaurant" status but I couldn't be held down for long.  A single back turned and I'd spring to my feet, launch myself towards the dance floor and start drunkenly comboing off again, sweating vodka and dribbling luminous yellow curry as I did.

With the help of the older goths, I somehow made it to the end of the night without anyone doing anything to truly get beaten up or thrown out of the club on my first night of getting steamed. I managed to provoke only one drinker into doing anything giving me any kind of negative response.  When the music ended and the lights were up I found myself dancing circularly round the dance floor with a punk shouting obscenities, taunting me, seemingly intent on getting me to fight. I was game, this drunken fight was the one I had been preparing for all night after all.

For the third time that night my wisened goth and metaller friends stepped in to lead me away from the potential fray, intercepting the punk and physically motioning away from the scene. It was utterly anti climax but it would mark the beginning of a series of booze fuelled idiotic adventures.

I'd later go home to throw up a fusion of straight vodka and curried chips or a combination I like to call currodka.

The Worst Jobs I've Ever Worked - Part One, the Teenage Years

I'm almost 28.  This means I've pretty much missed my opportunity to get famous and die of a heroin overdose/motorcycle accident.  Whilst I've been close to the latter form of death, I've never been close to achieving fame or fortune.  That's not to say I won't achieve them, who knows - I could well live my dreams of being DR Actor-Model-Lead Singer-Superstar DJ-MMA Fighter-King of Humanity-Alpha Male-Love Machine-Superhero but until then I may continue to pass my time in part time jobs gaining enough money for the next travelling experience whilst trying my hand at a few different activities along the way.  Whilst others from my school peer group may be in positions making £30-40k a year, I'm currently shifting sideways and having fun doing it. I've done all sorts of low paid jobs, some great fun, others horrendously stressful for wat they were providing me with.  So here's a run down of some of the worst.

Paper Boy - Ormeau Newsagents

The owner of Ormeau Newsagents was by all means, a nice old guy trying to run a shop which the western world was beginning to have no use for.  Who needs a newspaper when the internet will provide you with up to date coverage of world events?  Perhaps those of older generations still want to play sudoku or do their crosswords with a biro on an actual piece of paper, whilst truck drivers still get a kick out of page 3 of the Sun but sales of paper editions are on the decline.  Meanwhile confectionery and soft drinks can usually be picked up on offer from any of the twenty million Tesco's that seem to dot the city-scape of Belfast.  So old Stevie had to keep his primary source of income keep running whilst he entered his retirement phase by acting as an old school newsagent, providing services like you've guessed it door-to-door paper delivery.  If you lived near the Annadale Flats building or on the Ravenhill Road area you could have the service just by paying the daily price of the paper plus an additional weekly 20 p delivery charge.  The money from that delivery charge went to the courier, in that case - 16 year old me.  Even with nearly forty people per area this didn't amount to much.  Especially when you consider how long it would take you to deliver that many papers.  Now the job wasn't as difficult as playing the NES classic - I never got mauled by any dogs or knocked over, but the whole affair wasn't exactly easy.  Papers couldn't be thrown, they had to be dropped onto the porch of every paying customer, on time - or there'd be complaints.

Classic my hole, hated this game almost much as I hated that job

On a few occasions I'd be late to the job either due to having to stay late at school or because I wanted to stay home and wank over Sabrina the Teenage Witch.  When these academic/masturbatory debacles kept people from getting their papers before their 5.30 supper they'd start whining.  Customers would ring the newsagents up, demanding that the paper would be left there on time.  Some even came out of their houses to tell me to my face that I wasn't doing my job properly.  I'd typically freeze up in my teenage awkwardness, unable to respond with anything other than stuttered apologies.  In the same position today, I'd love to tell those cunts to fuck off, but unfortunately it's an opportunity I will never have.

The job took too long to complete every day and often meant striving through horribly wicked weather just to complete it.  It also on a number of occasions put my back under immense strain.  Have you ever lifted a stack of 40 newspapers, including all of the extra magazines and  glossy adverts?  Now imagine trying to jam that same stack into a PVC bag and cycle it around for an hour and a half.  Not exactly a comfortable bike ride.  When I tried suggesting to Stevie's wife who ran the shop that she should have dumped the advertisements before I picked up the load she would roll her eyes as if to say "why should I waste my time doing that".  Splitting the load into two piles and delivering them in two runs would have increased my delivery time to about two hours an evening.  I might have been a loser teenager with few friends and no romantic prospects but even two hours a night for a measly £7.50 a week.  Not to mention I seemed to spend half of my miniscule pay packet on sweets as soon as I received it at the end of every Saturday afternoon. 

Whilst the job was generally awful, I think the absolute lowest point was meeting some drug addled smick in the Annadale area and having this conversation

"'ere mate, my aunt lives on Lower Ormeau and they all know I'm a protestant and they'll get me if they can.  Lend us yer bike would ye?"

"No, I can't."

As I cycled on he delivered this threat

"If I see ye again, I'll chase ye!"

Now at 16, I was far too old to be starting that job - a job that was meant for a younger kid, who didn't have as much AS Level Coursework as I did at the time.  I think the main reason I stuck the job out for a full year was that I was told the last paper boy had received big money in tips that previous Christmas.  Maybe it was my occasional lack of tardiness that meant only half of the customers seemed to give me anything at all.  Maybe those that didn't tip didn't realize they should have been tipping their paper boy.  Or maybe those well off middle class types of the Ravenhill area were just tight as a duck's bum and if that's the case then I hope they end eating breakfasts of microwaved dog turd. 

I made a lot more money when I was ten going door-to-door offering to wash people's cars for a quid and I was my own boss.  God I miss those days of being a small business owner.

Sales Associate - TK Maxx

In the summer of lower sixth, I decided it was time to get a "real job".  At least one that paid at least minimum wage and provided shift work.  This meant filling in a job application form, lying a little about experience and gaining the position of Sales Associate.  I don't know how long the position of "sales associate" has had the title "sales associate".  Really it should be "teenage cunt that works the tills" or "shelf stacker/bitch that has to clean up the entire store after grown women have trashed it on their hunt for a bargain.  This was my first and last play in the retail sector.  

Whilst I still shop at TK Maxx from time to time as it genuinely is a good place to pick up reasonably priced fashionable items, I would recommend working there to no-one.  It desperately tried to follow the corporate stylings of its American brother "TJ Maxx" and in doing so encouraged its minimum wage paid staff to be Shiny Happy People saying "have a nice day" with a shit eating grin to every customer who traipsed through the doors.  I still remember the badly acted "educational" videos shown to us how to detect store thieves, price ticket-swappers and what to expect if we were ever caught "skimming".

The job was full of things that plagued it - incompetent mangers, rude customers and awkward hours.  I was typically scheduled to work 6-10 on a Tuesday and Thursday night.  The store would close at 9, much like all of the other stores that shared the retail park.  However, whilst all of the other employees would get away within ten or twenty minutes, TK Maxx had a long "recovery" process required.  Because of its layout and the fact it stocked such a varying range of clothing, customers (more often female than not) would pull things clothes off of the rails and throw them out of the way like packs of shit tossing chimps.  I think the latest I ever got out was around midnight, whilst my father sat in his driver seat waiting for me to emerge.  When the Christmas period ended, I decided focusing on my raising my dreadful grades was far more important than enduring red shirt slavery.

Sandwich Artist - Subway

If Sales Associate sounds like a made up position, the official job name of a regular Subway employee brings things to the next level.  I made bread sculptures, painted them with a variety of thick sugary sauces and filled them with freshly prepped, insecticide covered vegetables and heavily processed reconstituted meats.  I was another pimply faced teenager in a American chain fast food franchise and I hated it.  The late night shifts were the worst, feeding drunken students the means to soak up some of the cheap alcohol they'd spent the night guzzling.  When they were finally ushered out by a security guard (the fact these places sometimes need a security guard is simply hilarious) the dreadful clean up would involve taking a scrubber to a meatball marinara encrusted steel saucepan.  

Unsurprisingly my co-workers tended to be unskilled Eastern European workers whose limited English skills prevented them from getting better tipped hospitality roles and archetypal stoners.  I quit to focus on my studies and spend more time involved with a much more enjoyable part time position: Officer Cadet.

On the upside, I got a free Sub on every shift I worked.  Within reason I would create Scooby Doo style monstrosities which would tie me over for the seemingly never ending six hour shifts.  For most employees, this perk of the job was quickly ignored.  The GMO flavoured garbage would become intolerable.  As a result, I now only  eat Subway about once every three years.  There are rare occasions the smell of that preservative enriched pre-rolled dough baking drags me in and I just can't help myself ordering "Sub of the Day" or steak and cheese with extra bacon.  I may never have a fantastic "Veggymax with Ham" on honey oat again though. C'est la vie.

I do not miss this one bit