Friday 13th Special - It's scary being an idiot

With Friday 13th having snuck up on us like Jason Voorhees on a babysitter, I thought it would be an appropriate time to talk about FEAR. No not the average film staring Mark Whalberg where he goes a bit mental over a girl, chops off a Rottweiler's head and rides a roller coaster (that is literally all I can remember about it), but the bum hole twitching, palms sweating, heart pounding terror that comes from being truly scared. Whether that be by a horror movie, something taking place in the real world, or watching any of the frighteningly bad films Nicholas Cage has been churning out in the last 5 years, fear is something that we all have (other than Chuck Norris), so that is what this weeks blog is going to be about, and because it's Friday 13th it is only right that I focus on scary movies.

The Halloween team building exercise didn't go down well at all

Now to me a scary movie is not one that simply throws a load of gore, blood and filth at the screen like say 'The Human Centipede', no it needs to be something that taps into the fears you have inherently in you. Now don't get me wrong, I'm not saying the thought of someone turning up at my house, slicing my knee caps and then gluing my mouth to some other dudes bum hole like we've totally misunderstood how to do the conga doesn't scare me, it certainly does, it's just that this is not something that a rational person ever thinks about.

Well I say that, but since writing that last sentence that's all that's running through my head. Let me just go and check the locks and make sure I've stocked up on mouth wash, back in a mo....

No to me a truly scary film is one that makes you think about the movie when you are no longer watching it. I mean who hasn't swam in the sea and suddenly started thinking about Jaws, or watched 'The Descent' and decided that pot holing is potentially the most horrific hobby anyone could ever consider? It is those films that get under your skin and effect the way you think that are the most effective.

Now what you can guarantee with all horror films, whether they are good ones (E.G Jaws/Paranormal Activity/The Blair Witch Project) or bad ones (E.G Any 'Saw' film after number 2, Hostel, The Last House on the Left), is that they are packed to the rafters with people doing stupid things. You know, where rather than all stay together to fight the killer, everyone decides to split up and do it on their own. As New Kids on the Block, Take That, Blue and most of Nsync will tell you, if you started as group, stay as group, as once you've gone out on your own your shortcomings will soon become apparent. And if that short coming is exposed by a knife wielding maniac wearing a hockey mask, then you are bang in trouble.

So I have put together a list of stupid/illogical things that happen in horror movies and how to overcome them:

1) No one ever turns the lights on.

If you are going into a room in a house that you know is haunted, contains a man who likes wearing masks and playing with knives, or has an inbred with one eye and a penchants for rape potentially hiding in the cupboard, turn the fucking lights on! I can guarantee it will make the whole escape thing easier.

2) People run upstairs rather than out of the front door.

If you are on the ground floor of a house and someone is chasing you with a kitchen knife, a chainsaw or the head of your dead housemate, don't just run past the front door and then up the stairs. No try going out of the front door, legging it up the road, flagging down a cab and hot-stepping it to Starbucks to have a coffee until you calm down.

3) People offer lifts to those that they shouldn't.

If a bloke is standing on the side of the road asking for a lift and he looks like a serial rapist or like his sister is also his girlfriend, do not pick him; drive past, maybe give him a look as if to say 'sorry no room' and then get to your destination and have a good time. I'm sure he won't mind waiting another 5 minutes for some other idiot to pull over.

4) People do things they know will lead to trouble.

If someone tells you that saying something into the mirror a specified number of times will lead to your immanent demise, heed this advice, don't just jump up and yell Candyman 5 times whilst your doing you hair as he will undoubtedly turn up within a few minutes and beat your arse to death. My advice would be to get rid of your mirror, or anything that provides a reflection just in case.

5) People temp fate.

If you have heard that there is a giant crocodile/piranha/alligator roaming around a specific lake why on earth would you ever decide to go swimming in it? Get back in your car, drive to the nearest swimming baths and go and enjoy yourself. If you're lucky they may even have a water slide, or a wave machine.

6) People fall over for no reason.

When a serial killer is casually strolling after you whilst you sprint for your life, watch your step, as there is a 99% chance you will fall over something that in everyday life wouldn't normally send you tumbling. So that blade of grass that just the morning before you stepped on with no problems at all? Well it is now likely to be out for revenge, so try to avoid it at all costs. And remember at no point will the killer break into even a light jog, as for some reason all horror movie murderers are lazy bastards, so you have time to watch your step.

7) People do things that are illogical.

It's 3 in the morning, a man with an axe is chasing you (slowly of course) and you're banging on the door of a shop that said 'closed' in the window. Quickly realise that you're being an idiot, it's 3am and you're banging on the window of a haberdashery, so why the hell would it be open? Just in case an idiot turns up looking to escape a mass murderer? If it was 17:31 and you can see the staff cleaning up, then yeah bang away, otherwise it's probably sensible to try and hide elsewhere.

8) People don't take other peoples good advice. If there's a shark that's the size of a house circling you and someone says 'We're gonna need a bigger boat", take their advice, go back to shore, pick up something like a cruise liner or an Aircraft carrier and return. Chances are if you don't one or all of your arses is going to end up as chum.

9) No one ever listens to the experts.

You think your house is haunted and a ghost hunter/priest/weird man you met on the internet says whatever you do 'don't try to summon the demons yourself'. Don't do what they do in the movies and immediately run off, set up a Ouija board, dim the lights and then start asking your mates 'are you moving that glass?'. It's 100% certain that they aren't, that it will spell out something scary and then all of you will end up getting the crap kicked out of you by something you can't see (probably because you haven't turned the lights on).

10) People stay in an area even though they know someone's out and about killing everything that moves.

So there's a man on campus who is killing everyone. Now rather than staying put, or going to a secluded spot to engage in 'heavy petting' with your girlfriend, try going back to mum and dads for a few days until the killings have stopped. I'd imagine your teachers will allow you to miss that homework deadline if your excuse is that there is some fella roaming around your halls of residents cutting peoples hearts out. It's got to at the very least be worthy of an extension.

11) Zombies like to bite people, but people still wear clothes which leave lots of flesh exposed.

If you are under attack by the living dead and they are keen to gnaw on your arms, legs or head, don't walk around in a bikini, or a pair of shorts and a vest, get yourself some jeans, a role neck sweater, Doc Martin boots and ideally put on a motorcycle helmet. Yeah you may look like you've come straight off a 1990's porn set but that's got to be better than having some bloke chewing on your nose.

12) People don't question what they've been told even if it doesn't make sense.

Take Gremlins for example, so you buy an animal that's certainly not your run of the mill pet and the wise old Chinese man who sells it to you advises that whatever you do, 'do not feed him after midnight'.

So rather than go home and break out the chicken wings, the first thing you should do is question when the hell 'after midnight' ends!? Surely all time is after midnight? If not then where is the tipping point? I'd want to be made fully aware that if i'm serving up a plate of chicken nuggets at half one in the afternoon that this was sufficiently past midnight that I wasn't going to come back a few hours later and be confronted by a monster intent on shooting me in the face with a crossbow. It's just self preservation people.

So that's it, there's plenty of other things that happen in horror movies that are illogical or just downright stupid, as that is what's needed to make a good scary movie because if everyone was sensible then no one would ever get killed. I mean imagine watching Candyman where at the beginning everyone just threw away their mirrors, or Jaws where no one went in to the sea, that would be one boring 2 hours in the cinema.

Anyway just to finish off I have listed my own favourite scary films of all time. Now depending on what type of scary movies you're in to, you may agree or disagree, but all I can say is that each of these films had the ability to scare the bajeebers out of me when I was growing up:

1. Jaws

2. The Descent

3. Paranormal Activity

4. The Blair Witch Project

5. Arachnophobia

6. A Nightmare on Elm Street

7. IT

8. Alien

9. Halloween

10. Poltergeist

Drinking booze and hangover blues

....so last weeks blog was all about the ill advised decision I made back in 2006 when I decided to take a legal 'herbal high' whilst backpacking around New Zealand. If you missed that blog post then I advise you jump in a Delorean 'Marty Mcfly' style and go back one week as there are rumours that it was a humdinger of an article and it could even potentially save your life. If you don't have a Delorean, don't panic, there's also a rumour going around that you can alternatively just scroll down on this page and look out for the blog post beneath this one. I know, crazy isn't it.

Anyway so to continue where 'Herbal Highs And Massive Lows' left off I am going to write this week not about the hangovers that taking tablets called 'Mad Dog' or 'Meow Meow' can cause, but about that pain that probably 99% of all human beings have suffered from at one point in their life. No not watching a film directed by Clint Eastwood, but an alcohol induced hangover.

Now ten years ago, when I was in my early 20's, I used to drink far too much. It was one of those periods in your life where for some reason you convince yourself that in order to have a good time you 'have to' turn up at the pub drunk, as God forbid someone sees you at the pre drunk stage when you can still string a sentence together or have a conversation with a girl for more than 5 minutes without getting the wrong impression and assuming they've fallen in love with you.

So in order to aid the task of turning up at the pub 'in the zone' we would begin the evening drinking 4 or 5 pints round my mates house's before heading out. Now I have come to realise over the years that this pre-drinking err drinking is silly for 3 reasons:

1) It makes your liver hate you and for days after nights out back then I could feel mine throbbing as if it was crying out for help.

2) It makes you fat and in the few years that this pre night out boozing took place I reckon I put on at least 2 stone and most of which went straight to my chin(s). So by the age of 23 I had what can only be called a pelican neck sagging from my jaw line, which was fine if I was just trying to store food to feed my young, but unfortunately I wasn't storing anything but fat and with a face increasingly looking like a dropped pie there was very little chance that someone would find me attractive enough to produce me any young any time soon.

3) The hangovers. My good God. Drinking a stupid amount of alcohol before you go out can only ever lead to one thing. Yep a hangover so bad that you get that throbbing behind your eye as if someone's trying to do a remake of 'Inner Space' in your head and Dennis Quaid is frantically trying to escape.

Now to me there are two types of hangovers. There's the one where you don't have to get up for work the next day and then there's the one where you do. This post will focus on the one where you do, as although it is not something that happens to me much since I've grown up a bit and realised excessive drinking does me no favours whatsoever, it is this type of hangover however that causes the most issues.

The issues I mention tends to be especially prevalent in the Advertising Industry that I work in as quite often the events you get invited to involve a free bar and so in my younger less sensible days I would end up drinking far more than I should of, which in turn always made things far more, well let's say 'interesting', the next morning.

Free bars also caused another phenomenon that was guaranteed to make any hangover worse, and not just in the advertising industry, but in any 'free bar' situation, whether that be a wedding or some other occasion when someone is foolish enough to allow you to drink their hard earned cash away.

This phenomenon is that you always see people walking around holding two drinks?! It's as if they (and I am including my younger self in this) think that the free bar is going to end any moment, so must stock up whilst they can like you saw idiots do before Y2K, or people do before a tornado or flood strikes; loading up their arms, pockets, even children with all the provisions that they can carry 'just in case'.

Well it's the same in a free bar situation, everyone stocks up as quickly as possible as who knows when the 'freeness' of it all will end! So you see people wandering around holding on to all the free booze they can get their hands on as if they're doing a smash and grab down the local off licence or something.

So anyway, after a work night out such as this you wake up the next day and if you are like me something horrible will happen. You will have at least a ten second moment where you think it's Saturday and as you look over at the clock and see its 8:45am you smile, whilst thinking to yourself 'Yeah I feel like hell, but at least I don't have to go to work'. Then those ten seconds start to tick down and your thought process goes something like this:

10, 9, 8 seconds. God I feel horrific, what the hell is going on in my head, it feels like a Chilean miner is trying to dig his way out of there. Still no work, so I may as well just sleep it off.

7, 6, 5 seconds. Wait what was I doing last night? Oh yeah, work do, let's see if I've got any texts from work people to see if I did anything stupid.

4, 3, 2 seconds. Hold up, work do? It can't be as work do's are always on a Thursday and I know it's now the weekend?

1, 0 seconds. Oh fu*k.

That's when it hits you, not only do you have to go to work but also you have to be there in under 30 minutes. This is made even worse because you know its a 60 minute journey in and currently your lying on your bed, still wearing half a suit from the night before and with a tongue so furry it feels like you've been using it to lick clean your carpets. You've also got beer sweats so bad that there's a good chance if you rang out your bed sheets the resulting liquid would probably have a head on it.

It's at this point however that you spring up and head for the shower, knowing that although in an ideal world you wouldn't need one and would just head straight for work, but in reality you currently smell like a urinal in a pub toilet so it's essential you wash away the previous nights sins before you face the general public once again.

So in the shower you get thinking this should be the moment when things start to take a turn for the better, but for me this never happens. Now I may have used this analogy before but to me when that water hits me I do what that guy does in the film 'The Crying Game' after he realises that he's slept with a transsexual the night before, I just curl up into a ball in the corner and hope that the water bouncing off my back and head will cleanse me of everything that's happened to me in the last 12 hours.

Of course it doesn't, so once the showers done it's then over to the wardrobe to grab some clothes whilst having a little prayer that no ironing will be needed because you know that attempting that in your current state is likely to end with you burning down your house. So you decide to just chuck on whatever looks the least creased and out you go into the big wide world, still feeling sick, still with a brain that seems to want to leave your body through any orifice it can find and still pretty certain that the next 8 hours are going to be the worst of your life.

Quickly dropping a text to a colleague to say 'Sorry' about your lateness and hoping that they are in the same position, you head off to work. Now depending on where you work and how you get there the next bit can be tricky. For me I have to get the train and the underground, which I personally feel is the last thing needed when feeling like you've just been run over by a bus....full of Sumo wrestlers.....carrying a pallet of bricks.

See the problem with the train and especially the underground in London is that you very rarely get a seat. So you are left to stand in the isle with some blokes pit in your face, or as I'm over 6ft I tend to have the pleasure of the top of some girls head straight in my mouth, which is great if you want to use their hair for flossing, but when feeling like even a cuddle could make you vomit, this is horrific.

The other issue is on the underground the air-conditioning is non existent. So combining this with the beer sweats and that the rest of the carriage seems intent on rubbing themselves up against you in a manner that is borderine sexual assault, things are never going to go smoothly. Eventually however you make it off the tube and in to work, probably about 10am and in all likelihood carrying a McDonald's breakfast which although at the time you think will help, does in fact just makes you feel worse.

Once in you then have that moment where you declare to anyone who will listen that 'I don't know what happened, I didn't drink that much and had a pint of water before I went to bed so I should be fine, my drink must have been spiked' in some kind of desperate attempt to convince yourself that the way you are currenlty feeling is no fault of your own. Even though you know all to well that 8 hours earlier you were roaming around a bar holding two pints of 'Stella' in your hand and singing along to 'Don't stop believing' like you'd just wandered on to the set of Glee.

The rest of the day will be spent praying that the phone doesn't ring, asking people to feed you water like your life depended on it (which it does) and praying that the hair of the dog that you are having at lunch time will sort everything out (which it doesn't). By the time it comes to going home you have finally declared that you will 'never drink again', but we all know exactly what happens next.....

Halloween Special - It's scary being an idiot

With Friday 13th having snuck up on us like Jason Voorhees on a babysitter, I thought it would be an appropriate time to talk about FEAR. No not the average film staring Mark Whalberg where he goes a bit mental over a girl, chops off a Rottweiler's head and rides a roller coaster (that is literally all I can remember about it), but the bum hole twitching, palms sweating, heart pounding terror that comes from being truly scared. Whether that be by a horror movie, something taking place in the real world, or watching any of the frighteningly bad films Nicholas Cage has been churning out in the last 5 years, fear is something that we all have (other than Chuck Norris), so that is what this weeks blog is going to be about, and because it's Friday 13th it is only right that I focus on scary movies.

The Halloween team building exercise didn't go down well at all

Now to me a scary movie is not one that simply throws a load of gore, blood and filth at the screen like say 'The Human Centipede', no it needs to be something that taps into the fears you have inherently in you. Now don't get me wrong, I'm not saying the thought of someone turning up at my house, slicing my knee caps and then gluing my mouth to some other dudes bum hole like we've totally misunderstood how to do the conga doesn't scare me, it certainly does, it's just that this is not something that a rational person ever thinks about.

Well I say that, but since writing that last sentence that's all that's running through my head. Let me just go and check the locks and make sure I've stocked up on mouth wash, back in a mo....

No to me a truly scary film is one that makes you think about the movie when you are no longer watching it. I mean who hasn't swam in the sea and suddenly started thinking about Jaws, or watched 'The Descent' and decided that pot holing is potentially the most horrific hobby anyone could ever consider? It is those films that get under your skin and effect the way you think that are the most effective.

Now what you can guarantee with all horror films, whether they are good ones (E.G Jaws/Paranormal Activity/The Blair Witch Project) or bad ones (E.G Any 'Saw' film after number 2, Hostel, The Last House on the Left), is that they are packed to the rafters with people doing stupid things. You know, where rather than all stay together to fight the killer, everyone decides to split up and do it on their own. As New Kids on the Block, Take That, Blue and most of Nsync will tell you, if you started as group, stay as group, as once you've gone out on your own your shortcomings will soon become apparent. And if that short coming is exposed by a knife wielding maniac wearing a hockey mask, then you are bang in trouble.

So I have put together a list of stupid/illogical things that happen in horror movies and how to overcome them:

1) No one ever turns the lights on. If you are going into a room in a house that you know is haunted, contains a man who likes wearing masks and playing with knives, or has an inbred with one eye and a penchants for rape potentially hiding in the cupboard, turn the fucking lights on, I can guarantee it will make the whole escape thing easier.

2) People run upstairs rather than out the front door. If you are on the ground floor of a house and someone is chasing you with a kitchen knife, a chainsaw or the head of your dead housemate, don't just run past the front door and then up the stairs, try going out of the front door, legging it up the road, flagging down a cab and going to Starbucks to have a coffee until you calm down.

3) People offer lifts to those that they shouldn't. If a bloke is standing on the side of the road asking for a lift and he looks like a serial rapist or like his sister is also his girlfriend, do not pick him, drive past, maybe give him a look as to say 'sorry no room' and then get to your destination and have a good time. I'm sure he won't mind waiting another 5 minutes for some other idiot to pull over.

4) People do things they know will lead to trouble. If someone tells you that saying something into the mirror a specified number of times will lead to your immanent demise, heed this advice, don't just jump up and yell Candyman 5 times whilst your doing you hair as he will undoubtedly turn up within about 5 minutes and beat your arse to death. My advice would be to get rid of your mirror, or anything that provides a reflection just in case.

5) People temp fate. If you have heard that there is a giant crocodile/piranha/alligator roaming around a specific lake why on earth would you ever decide to go swimming in it? Get back in your car, drive to the nearest swimming baths and go and enjoy yourself. If you're lucky they may even have a water slide, or a wave machine.

6) People fall over for no reason. When a serial killer is casually strolling after you whilst you sprint for your life, watch your step, as there is a 99% chance you will fall over something that in everyday life wouldn't normally send you tumbling. So that blade of grass that just the morning before you stepped on with no problems at all is now likely to be out for revenge, so try to avoid it at all costs. And remember at no point will the killer break into even a light jog, as for some reason all horror movie murderers are lazy bastards, so you have time to watch your step.

7) People do things that are illogical. It's 3 in the morning, a man with an axe is chasing you (slowly of course) and you're banging on the door of a shop that said 'closed' in the window. Quickly realise that you're being an idiot, it's 3am and you're banging on the window of a haberdashery, why the hell would it be open? Just in case an idiot turns up looking to escape a mass murderer? If it was 17:31 and you can see the staff cleaning up, then yeah bang away, otherwise it's probably sensible to try and hide elsewhere.

8) People don't take other peoples good advice. If there's a shark that's the size of a house circling you and someone says 'We're gonna need a bigger boat", take their advice, go back to shore, pick up something like a cruise liner or an Aircraft carrier and return. Chances are if you don't one or all of your arses is going to end up as chum.

9) No one ever takes the advice of experts. You think your house is haunted and a ghost hunter/priest/weird man you met on the internet says whatever you do 'don't try to summon the demons yourself'. Don't do what they do in the movies and immediately run off, set up a Ouija board, dim the lights and then start asking your mates 'are you moving that glass?'. It's 100% certain that they aren't, that it will spell out something scary and then all of you will end up getting the crap kicked out of you by something you can't see (probably because you haven't turned the lights on).

10) People stay in an area even though they know someone's out and about killing everything that moves. So there's a man on campus who is killing everyone. Now rather than staying put, or going to a secluded spot to engage in 'heavy petting' with your girlfriend, try going back to mum and dads for a few days until the killings have stopped. I'd imagine your teachers will allow you to miss that homework deadline if your excuse is that there is some fella roaming around your halls of residents cutting peoples hearts out. It's got to at the very least be worthy of an extension.

11) Zombies like to bite people, but people still wear clothes which leave lots of flesh exposed. If you are under attack by the living dead and they are keen to gnaw on your arms, legs or head, don't walk around in a bikini, or a pair of shorts and a vest, get yourself some jeans, a role neck sweater, Doc Martin boots and ideally put on a motorcycle helmet. Yeah you may look like you've come straight off a 1990's porn set but that's got to be better than having some bloke chewing on your nose.

And finally number 12) People don't question what they've been told even if it doesn't make sense. Take Gremlins for example, so you buy an animal that's certainly not your run of the mill pet and the wise old Chinese man who sells it to you advises that whatever you do, 'do not feed him after midnight'.

So rather than go home and break out the chicken wings, the first thing you should do is question when the hell 'after midnight' ends!? Surely all time is after midnight? If not then where is the tipping point? I'd want to be made fully aware that if i'm serving up a plate of chicken nuggets at half one in the afternoon that this was sufficiently past midnight that I wasn't going to come back a few hours later and be confronted by a monster intent on shooting me in the face with a crossbow. It's just self preservation people.

So that's it, there's plenty of other things that happen in horror movies that are illogical or just downright stupid, as that is what's needed to make a good scary movie because if everyone was sensible then no one would ever get killed. I mean imagine watching Candyman where at the beginning everyone just threw away their mirrors, or Jaws where no one went in to the sea, that would be one boring 2 hours in the cinema.

Anyway just to finish off I have listed my own favourite scary films of all time. Now depending on what type of scary movies you're in to, you may agree or disagree, but all I can say is that each of these films had the ability to scare the bajeebers out of me when I was growing up:

1. Jaws

2. The Descent

3. Paranormal Activity

4. The Blair Witch Project

5. Arachnophobia

6. A Nightmare on Elm Street

7. IT

8. Alien

9. Halloween

10. Poltergeist

A dental debacle

"Now this is going to pinch a little as I stick it in, but you should only feel a bit of pain and after that you won't feel a thing.  Anyway don't worry it will all be over in a couple of minutes".   No these are not the romantic words I used to lose my virginity, but these are in fact the mutterings of my dentist after I paid him a visit last week to have a 'temporary' crown fitted to one of my teeth. 

As per previous trips to the dentist things didn't quite go according to plan and just a few days later whilst I was eating lunch out the crown popped, jumping straight down my throat and adding an extra not so tasty filling to the sandwich I was enjoying.   I immediately rang my dentists and the conversation went as follows:

Me: "Hi there, I had a temporary crown put in the other day and it's just fallen out and I've errr, swallowed it?!."

Dentist: "ha ha ha ha ha"

Me: "Errr is that dangerous?"

Dentist: "ha ha ha ha, no it's temporary, so this happens all the time! Ha ha ha".

Me: "So can I come in and get it replaced please?"

Dentist: "Ha ha ha, no we're booked up and you don't need to, we only put them on because people are used to having a full tooth anyway.  Just come in next week, ha ha ha, and we will fit your proper one, ha ha ha."

So that was that, no replacement for a week, just a crown floating around in my stomach, a dentist laughing at my misfortune and a stump where my tooth once was.  And I only paid £200 for the privilege.  Bargain.

Now I'm not going to lie, I have never been a fan of dentists.  In fact ever since I was a teenager I feel like they have had a personal vendetta against me as if I was a fizzy drink in a former life or something.  So today's blog is about just one of the many disasters I have had in their quite often incapable hands.

Now when I was growing up I had slightly protruding front upper teeth, now nothing to horrific, but bad enough for other kids to occasionally chuck out a 'buck tooth' chant when they'd run out of abusive things to say about the rest of my appearance.  

My lower teeth also had some issues, as they seemed to be fighting to get on top of each other like a pair of wrestlers going for a pin but rather than giving up on a count of 3 they stayed in the same place for 14 years.  So when I got to about 14 it was decided by my dentist and my parents that I was to get a brace to sort out my dental issues and in turn take away any possibility of me kissing any girls for the foreseeable future. 

The problem however with getting a brace is that it is not as simple as turning up at the dentists and saying "I need a brace as my teeth seem to be trying to escape from my mouth" and then the dentist pops one on and away you go. 

No before I got my brace I was told that I needed to have 4 teeth removed as the reason my teeth were protruding and sitting on top of each other was because they didn't have room in my gums to sit comfortably, so were effectively jostling for position like a bunch of grannies in a bus queue.

So off I went to the dentist with my Mum and Dad in hand as they were guaranteed to protect me from any dental misdemeanors and of course promise me a McDonald's afterwards for being "Mummies brave little boy".   Thinking back it amazes me how just the mention of McDonald's made me content with having a 6 inch needle in my mouth, 4 teeth removed and a metal rod placed where my smile used to be, but hey it appeared to work.  It makes you wonder what I would have been willing to go through for a Burger King.

So anyway in we went, the reception area was laced with out of date magazines solely targeted at women (why is that always the case?) and on the shelf were various dental products telling me how I could get whiter teeth and fresher breath in just a few easy steps.  Unfortunately there wasn't any off the shelf products for sorting out my particular ailment so I waited to be summoned.

"Daniel" the dentist shouted as he poked his head out of the door of his surgery and up I jumped and gave him a wave that contained far too much enthusiasm for a boy who was about to have parts of his body removed. 

On entering the surgery the dentist had a big smile on his face as if to say "look how great my teeth look compared to yours" and then asked me to sit down.  He then went on to explain what he was going to do and how he was going to have to give me "a few" little injections that "shouldn't hurt too much" and will mean they can then remove my teeth without 'any pain'.  This at the time made me feel pretty comfortable that what was about to happen wasn't going to be like something out of a horror film as i'd suspected and I started to wonder why people were so scared of going?  I mean just type in 'dentist' on google image and you'll see all the patients seem to be exstatic about whats happening!  I've added just a few below for your amusement:

The reason for peoples fear however soon became clear......

"Lean back and open your mouth please" the dentist advised.

So back i went, laying down in the chair and opening my mouth as far as i possibly could in the hope that this would mean the dentist or his assistant wouldn't have to delve their hands too far in to my gob.  I was of course wrong and in they went, both of them seemingly in competition with each other about who could get the furthest into my mouth and as they tried to shove every tool they had inside it I got the sense that my gob was quickly becoming the oral equivalent of a garden shed.

After a few minutes of the dentist rummaging around like he was trying to find his car keys down the back of the sofa and after his assistant had stuck a small Hoover in my mouth to suck up my saliva and anything else I may have been storing between my teeth after lunch, he lent back and grabbed the needle.  Well I say needle, this thing to me looked more like he was just preparing to go jousting and any minute he was going to whack on the medieval armour, jump up on to horse and charge towards my gums.

The dentist was pleased with his new equipment

"Little injection, little injection, little injection" kept running through my mind in the hope that although the needle was like a Marlin's nose only the tip of it would go in and then everything would be fine.  As it started to enter my gum I remember thinking "this isn't to bad".  But then it carried on, further and further and further until I was at the point where I just assumed it had come out the other side of my head and I was now a human kebab.

Now to be honest the pain wasn't horrific, I mean it was bad, but I've had worse since (watching any Nicholas Cage film in the last 5 years for example) but it was more the fact that this wasn't the only injection I was having and over the course of the next hour I ended up having 6.  1 on each side of my upper and lower gums/cheek and then 1 under my tongue and one in the roof of my mouth.  So by the end of it, not only was I looking like one of those guys in 'One Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest' after they get lobotomised but I was also effectively turning into a human colander.   

Just to make the whole experience slightly more degrading, and I don't blame them for doing it, is that the dentist constantly asked me if I was "Okay" whilst he continued to stab me with needles like he had finally been given the opportunity to work on a real life voodoo doll and he wasn't going to waste it.  

Now at first this is fine as the injection takes a few seconds to start taking effect, so your just like "yeah all good", but then as you take on injection 3 and 4 speech becomes impossible and your response turns to "ywerrerer" whilst dribble rolls out your mouth and onto your cheek and your tongue flops out like Jabba the Hut after he's been strangled. 

Once all the injections were done however and I was now basically just a lump of mash potato wearing a school uniform, the dentist went in with his pliers and grabbed hold of the first tooth he wanted to remove.  "Are you okay?" he questioned.  I wanted to respond with "well I've been better", but it would have come out as "werrererr wive weennnn wettterr" and he might have thought i'd pissed myself so I just went with a thumbs up and off he went wrestling with my tooth as if he was Steve Irwin taking on a crocodile.  

After what felt like half an hour the first tooth was out, proudly displayed in the forceps by the dentist like I'd just gone through labour and he was presenting my new born baby to me.  He then moved on to number 2 and repeated the process.  More "are you okay's", more tooth wrestling and more proud waving about of the piece of me he'd just hacked off.

Once this second one was out he then declared I'd have to come back in a weeks time for the other 2!  At this point I nearly lost the will to live as I knew it would mean another 2 bouts of the dentist doing his Steve Irwin impression, another bout of me dribbling on myself and mumbling incoherently, and potentially another bout of me having more needles in my face than Hellraiser.  Isn't this nice I thought to myself.

Anyway back I went a week later and repeated it all again and like previously the experience was pretty much horrific.  2 more teeth were removed, I was incapable of speech for several hours afterwards and even the promised McDonald's didn't materialise as just like after the first time the thought of having anything near my mouth was enough to make me want to cry into my cavities.

Finally, just to make sure I was never keen to go back to the dentist ever again, when I returned to see him about 8 weeks after he'd torn out the final 2 teeth, he sheepishly advised me that they'd accidentally left part of one of my teeth still in my gum.  He then went on to explain that as the skin had now closed up they'd have to cut it open and remove it!!!!  So resigned to my fate back I leaned for round 3, mouth wide open once again, both in shock at the latest revelation and also in preparation for my nemesis to hit me with needle number 13, whilst knowing in the back of my mind that I still had 3 years of wearing a brace to look forward to.  'Well isn't this nice' I thought to myself.... 

Babies, babysitting, Barack Obama and me....

So I’m lying on the sofa in a country house that me and my mates have rented for the weekend.  I’ve got beer sweats following the previous nights activities, am smelling of chlorine from the drunken late night swimming/piggy back racing in the indoor pool and am chuckling to myself after watching a clip of Nicholas Cage's best bits in the remake of The Wicker Man, where he basically overacts, gets covered in bees and punches almost any woman he comes in contact with... 

Anyway at this point my phone vibrates and it’s a message from my brother,

"Would you like to babysit on Wednesday?” the text reads on my Iphone as I run my glowing red eyes over it in slow motion, looking like a hung-over version of the Terminator struggling to find Sarah Connor.

Now this is not an outrageous request, as I’d done it once before and it kind of passed by without incident.  However as I sat there digesting the message I couldn’t help thinking that if my brother could have seen the complete disgrace who had just picked up this text he probably wouldn’t have even considered asking me to look after his house plants for a night let alone look after his most cherished possession that his wife had been cultivating in her belly for 9 months just a year and a half earlier. 

However knowing I was not only the uncle, but also poor little Robert’s Godfather I thought it was time to man up and do what responsible adults not like myself do and I kindly accepted my brothers offer with a ‘yeah cool’ text response as if baby sitting was something I do as a hobby rather than something that terrifies me to my very core.

Anyway I got another response from my brother saying “Brilliant, cheers mate, call you Monday”, clearly failing to realise that he’d just decided to put his baby in the capable hands of a man who once thought that when Saddam Hussein invaded Kuwait they were talking about a Q8 Petrol Station. 

So on Wednesday last week I dashed around to my Girlfriend Nai's after work to prepare her flat for Robert’s arrival.  Now I am not quite sure what preparing the flat consisted of as when we arrived all that really happened was we ate dinner and watched Hollyoaks, but I guess we just wanted to make sure no one had accidentally left a bear trap out or even worse, let Gary Glitter in without us knowing. 

The reason Nai’s flat was deemed a better choice than my own was three fold:

1) It had 3 girls living in it.  This meant in my mind that similar to when a work mate brings their new baby in to work for the first time, the girls can all surround Robert, make noises like ‘Oooh’ and ‘Ahhh’ whilst men like myself can quickly rub him on the head and then back away as far and as quickly as possible to minimise the risk of accidentally dropping him on his head.

2) The girls had a healthy collection of Disney films.  This meant in my ‘ideal world of babysitting’ that when Robert arrived we could just stick him on the sofa, force his head towards the telly (does that count as child abuse?) and then sit back and watch as the cast of Toy Story did the babysitting job that my brother and his wife had been so ill judged to have given to me.

3) We’d babysat Robert there once before and he survived that without even losing a single limb, so clearly it was far better than my flat, which not only didn’t have any previous success stories of babysitting to it’s name, but also was next to a Lidl’s store, so there was no guarantee that at some point Robert wouldn’t be ‘borrowed’ by one of strange folk who shopped there and end up living as a gypsy.  

So when my Brother Matt, his wife Anne and the unfortunate Robert arrived me and Nai sprang to work.  I quickly ran over and took the little man off his mum and immediately did what every person does when they see a child that they have no idea how to control.  Yep I made a funny face that involved me basically gurning and appearing like I was having trouble going to the toilet, called him a ‘little trouble maker’ for no apparent reason and then proceeded to bounce him up and down in my arms hoping he wouldn’t cry, whilst he just stared on confused with a ‘get this fuc*ing lunatic off me NOW’ look on his face.  Luckily for me however, due to Robert not being easily scared and seemingly being an ill judge of character, he contently stayed in that position whilst we said goodbye to his parents and told them not to worry about opening up the buggy for us as we will be ‘fine’ to work it out ourselves.

Suprisingly enough as soon as we did try to unfold said buggy a little bit later we realised our mistake, and it took myself and Nai about 15 minutes to work out what the hell we were doing, whilst Nai's housemate Gemma shouted out support from the sidelines like one of the team mates of a contestant struggling to find a crystal on the Crystal Maze.   Where's mumsy when you need her....

Anyway now the parents had left it was then time to work out how to spend the next 3 or so hours until my brother and his wife returned from the cinema.  So Nai, Gemma and myself had a brief conversation surrounding this issue.  I think the general consensus was that none of us had a clue; we just assumed that now the baby was here, he’d quickly fall asleep and then we’d get back to watching ‘Come Dine With Me’. 

In reality however we all knew deep down that was never going to be the case and if the last time we did it was anything to go by it would probably end up with me spending most of my time crawling around on my hands and knees chasing the little rascal around the flat, whilst Nai would end up with him in the washing basket and dragging him around the kitchen floor whilst he laughs hysterically at the craziness of what he’d managed to create.  Don’t get me wrong, it was great fun and I loved every minute of it, but that still didn’t stop me feeling the dread now I was stepping up to the plate again.

So we set about the task in hand, and perhaps taking the word ‘Baby Sitting’ too literally we just plonked him on my lap, aimed him towards the telly and stuck on Toy Story 3 so Buzz, Woody and my personal favourite ‘the aliens' could get to work (notice strategically placed 'alien' in the picture) .  To be honest it worked and for the most part Robert was transfixed, staring at the screen intently, frequently drinking from his bottle, sporadically dribbling on himself and occasionally making funny noises that we couldn’t quite understand but assumed was him confirming what great babysitters we were.  Ironically he was behaving pretty much the same as I was when my brother sent me the text asking me to look after him.

Once the film had finished Robert decided it was time for him to start roaming about to see every room of the flat, detemindly trying to get into every nook and cranny like he was sizing the place up whilst considering entering the housing market.  I have to admit it was incredibly cute to see the little man wobbling from room to room because at 18 months he was now just about able to walk but never looked too steady on his feet. He'd simply walk for about 5 yards, then pause to work out where he was, wobble a bit, occasionally fall over and then move on.  

In fact if I list down Roberts babysitting traits..... 

1. Seems happiest when he has a bottle of drink in his hand
2. Sporadically dribbles on himself
3. Makes funny sounds that are difficult to decipher
4. Wanders around the house and struggles not to fall over
5. Constant fear of him wetting himself

 ....it practically covered everything I was doing the previous weekend, the only difference being he's an innocent 18 month old child, whilst I'm 31, was drunk and should be ashamed of myself....

In fact, to make the similarities complete, all we needed was a drinking game involving a deck of cards, a pint glass filled with a concoction of other peoples booze that he had to down, and a group of people chanting 'down it, down it' as he poured it into his mouth and all over his clothes and it would have been perfect.  Well not from a babysitting/child welfare point of view, but you understand what I mean...

Anyway, another thing that I find strange with young kids is their keenness to put anything they can get their hands on straight into their mouth.  It’s unbelievable, you put them on the floor and that’s it, they're off, crawling around looking for crumbs, dust, pets, other children, literally anything seems to be seen as edible.   In fact I think if I couldn’t afford a Vacuum cleaner, I’d probably consider just grabbing Robert by the legs in wheelbarrow fashion and simply moving him back and forth whilst he hoovers up everything in sight and cleans the carpets for me.  Seriously who needs a Bagless Dyson for £300 when you’ve got a baby Robert that does the same job for free and can empty himself?

Anyway for someone like me, who is literally terrified that something bad will happen to the little fella whilst in my care, this 'eating anything he can find' behaviour is a huge issue.  So as soon as Robert gets on the floor I’m down there with him, checking his every move and if he even considers a slight cough or hiccup I’m ready to instantly call an ambulance/his parents/Childline/Batman or basically anyone who may be able to help.   Luckily for me on this occasion he only got one crumb off the floor and into his mouth, but Nai was in there quick enough to remove it before I had the chance to inflict the Heimlich Manoeuvre on the poor defenceless boy. 

The final thing that Robert does, and what I’m sure all toddlers do when they only have a few words in their vocabulary, is he likes to randomly point at things and just shout out any of the 3 words he currently knows.  So whilst pointing at the sofa he’d shout ‘car’, or pointing at the shelves in the living room, he’d shout ‘ball’, then even more randomly he points at a picture of a topless Barack Obama on the girl’s fridge and shouts ‘Dad’!! 

Clearly this last one was the most confusing, both because I literally have no idea why Nai and her housemates have a topless picture of Barack Obama on their fridge and secondly because biologically at least, it’s feasible that President Obama could bare my sister in laws children.

Actually come to think of it I’ve always thought Robert has Obama’s eyes...

Anyway, I'm sure Robert’s Mum and my brother would certainly contest this, but I say if Roberts calling him Dad, let’s get them all on Jerry Springer or Jeremy Kyle and sort this thing out.  It’s nothing a good old lie detector couldn’t answer, although I guess finding time in Barrack’s diary could be an issue, but I’ll get on the case.  

Wow and just to think, me and Barack used to get on so well....

So there you have it, after only my second night of babysitting I've come to realise it's not only great fun, slightly terrifying, very amusing and extremely rewarding, it also makes you question your own 'grown up' behavior and the true identity of your nephews father.

Can't wait for round 3.