Life... With No Breaks (A laugh-out-loud comedy memoir) Read Online Free Page B
Author: Nick Spalding
much when I wrote an opinion piece, and here I am proving him right once more.
His name was Professor Wrigley and he always considered me to be something of a hack.
This was fine by me as it was the hacks who earned all the money, while the writing elite lived in misery - permanently half-way through a bottle of scotch, moaning incessantly about the work to anyone in earshot.
I bet they never spent their time glancing up at the nearest Timex though, seeing how long it was until lunch break.
No, for them I expect it was all about wandering through quaint street bazaars in Morocco, chatting up the local girls and writing down spurious observations on the nature of man’s soul.
…I may have just alienated all the Hemingway fans with that little observation.
So the clock is our natural enemy. An evil deity controlling our lives on a day to day basis.
We even build bloody monuments to it, like the Tower of Westminster in London (and I do love the fact Big Ben is part of a building where the art of wasting time has really been perfected over the centuries).
Strange then, that the clock’s nearest time monitoring relative, the calendar, makes us feel good about ourselves.
I’ll grant you there are some things we put in a calendar that cause us heartache and stress. Dentist appointments for instance, or birthdays for relatives we hate but must buy a present for, otherwise our mothers will be cross with us for rocking the family boat.
How about the return to school date, after the long, lazy months of summer with nothing to do but watch TV, worry old people and vandalise bus shelters?
The whole point of looking at a calendar though, is that things tend to be quite far off and not looming round the corner, like a psychopath wearing a hockey mask.
Calendars can be safely ignored when necessary.
You may have one hanging in your kitchen - one of those long ones with pictures of slightly worried looking kittens on it - all those nasty appointments scrawled on it in biro, but at least you can avoid looking at the thing if needs be when you go to get a yoghurt out of the fridge.
When you’re out of the kitchen entirely, it doesn’t exist at all!
Out of sight, out of mind.
Not like mister clock however - who's impossible to get away from.
He’s on your wrist, on the car dashboard, on the wall at work, in the bottom right hand corner of the computer screen.
Bastard!
He’s everywhere, and no matter how hard you try, you’ll eventually find yourself staring up and realising with horror that you’ve only got twenty minutes to finish the shopping before the kids get out of school.
Calendars also have good things written on them frequently. Things you want to remember.
Like holidays and the birthdays of relatives you do like - or your own, of course.
We all make sure we write down good things in large black marker pen so they’re easy to see, drawing our attention away from the date of the next rectal exam just below.
I have a theory that men are bad at remembering things such as anniversaries and special occasions because most of them tend to go for calendars featuring naked women. Staring at a pair of big tits is a great diversion from the mother-in-law’s birthday next Wednesday.
I have a calendar hanging in this room.
It’s one of those dull corporate ones from some printing company or other.
I stole it from work because it has fairly large spaces to write in under the dates and covers up the hole I made during an aborted shelf-making incident.
Currently, a picture of a speedboat - looking very impressive as it carves its way through the surf - is being used to denote the fact it’s April.
I have no idea why.
I guess spring must be a good time for a sixty-knot blow job through the harbour.
The calendar has only two entries on it for the month:
The first is my son’s birthday - in large black marker pen - and the second is for a doctor’s appointment - in small blue biro .
Here’s a
His name was Professor Wrigley and he always considered me to be something of a hack.
This was fine by me as it was the hacks who earned all the money, while the writing elite lived in misery - permanently half-way through a bottle of scotch, moaning incessantly about the work to anyone in earshot.
I bet they never spent their time glancing up at the nearest Timex though, seeing how long it was until lunch break.
No, for them I expect it was all about wandering through quaint street bazaars in Morocco, chatting up the local girls and writing down spurious observations on the nature of man’s soul.
…I may have just alienated all the Hemingway fans with that little observation.
So the clock is our natural enemy. An evil deity controlling our lives on a day to day basis.
We even build bloody monuments to it, like the Tower of Westminster in London (and I do love the fact Big Ben is part of a building where the art of wasting time has really been perfected over the centuries).
Strange then, that the clock’s nearest time monitoring relative, the calendar, makes us feel good about ourselves.
I’ll grant you there are some things we put in a calendar that cause us heartache and stress. Dentist appointments for instance, or birthdays for relatives we hate but must buy a present for, otherwise our mothers will be cross with us for rocking the family boat.
How about the return to school date, after the long, lazy months of summer with nothing to do but watch TV, worry old people and vandalise bus shelters?
The whole point of looking at a calendar though, is that things tend to be quite far off and not looming round the corner, like a psychopath wearing a hockey mask.
Calendars can be safely ignored when necessary.
You may have one hanging in your kitchen - one of those long ones with pictures of slightly worried looking kittens on it - all those nasty appointments scrawled on it in biro, but at least you can avoid looking at the thing if needs be when you go to get a yoghurt out of the fridge.
When you’re out of the kitchen entirely, it doesn’t exist at all!
Out of sight, out of mind.
Not like mister clock however - who's impossible to get away from.
He’s on your wrist, on the car dashboard, on the wall at work, in the bottom right hand corner of the computer screen.
Bastard!
He’s everywhere, and no matter how hard you try, you’ll eventually find yourself staring up and realising with horror that you’ve only got twenty minutes to finish the shopping before the kids get out of school.
Calendars also have good things written on them frequently. Things you want to remember.
Like holidays and the birthdays of relatives you do like - or your own, of course.
We all make sure we write down good things in large black marker pen so they’re easy to see, drawing our attention away from the date of the next rectal exam just below.
I have a theory that men are bad at remembering things such as anniversaries and special occasions because most of them tend to go for calendars featuring naked women. Staring at a pair of big tits is a great diversion from the mother-in-law’s birthday next Wednesday.
I have a calendar hanging in this room.
It’s one of those dull corporate ones from some printing company or other.
I stole it from work because it has fairly large spaces to write in under the dates and covers up the hole I made during an aborted shelf-making incident.
Currently, a picture of a speedboat - looking very impressive as it carves its way through the surf - is being used to denote the fact it’s April.
I have no idea why.
I guess spring must be a good time for a sixty-knot blow job through the harbour.
The calendar has only two entries on it for the month:
The first is my son’s birthday - in large black marker pen - and the second is for a doctor’s appointment - in small blue biro .
Here’s a
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