Im sure the owners of Lidl are having a laugh.

A new post has been a long time coming and thanks to some convincing here is a new one.

My closest supermarket(small amount of emphasis on the word 'super' here) in London is Lidl. You all live relatively close to one as well but you never bother to go in because its completely wank. It carries the similar stigma that Aldi used too when I was a kid and you didn't want to be that kid. But to be honest with you I sometimes cant be fucked to walk all the way up to Ealing so I have to take a deep breath and just go for it.

It is as if the owners have never visited a normal supermarket. For starters, £1 for a trolley?? are you still that backwards Lidl? Kids don't knick trolleys anymore and head down the park to push their mates down hills, they are too busy playing online and taking crack. and who carries loose change round in this day in age? Put a chip and pin on that bad boy and ill be all over it.

Thankfully I don't need a trolley as I'm normally(and by that I mean ever) only shopping for one. So I head inside and look around for the baskets. Then I look a little harder. Then I head back outside to see if I missed them on my way in. Then I look up and see people assembling boxes they have brought with them or nicked by pouring some tomatoes on the floor. What the fuck is going on?

I don't have a box. What am I to do?

In my head I am already shrinking my shopping list into just enough that I can now carry round the shop. Eggs are out of the fucking question. So is glass anything. Did I point out I have actually agreed to carry my fucking shopping around the shop and then down the road?

I not only have to cross things off the Lidl wish list but I now also have to plan which items I am going to pick up first in order to be able to maximise my carrying ability. Fortunately Lidl help you out here by laying our their shop with no clear common pattern what-so-ever. So in reality you end up going around the shop back and fourth about 17 times and have to re pack your hand fulls at least twice and during all this faffing id of been to Ealing and half way back.

Lidl does have some plus sides though. It is filled with shit you thought you could really only get on holiday. Novelty foods such as decent bratwurst. If your a fan of curry as well their Balti cooking sauce is banging as are their wholemeal pittas. Don't be completely fooled by their little novelties though, you have not seen the cue yet.

AND WHAT A FUCKING QUE IT IS. Theres only ever two aisles open, no one speaks English and everyone is buying bloody loads. It is more tedious than the cues in Wilkos as at least there your items are in a basket and not wedged between your hands and your chin.

I don't even think the place is that cheap. Everyone is always harping on about how cheap it is but I just don't see it. I go there, not for the price, just to give myself a surreal experience on how life should not work and to occasionally scratch up on my Latvian. They do do cheap chicken breasts though.

To top it off, its normally raining when you get outside too. Great fun.

Hopefully the next one will not be in such long waiting.

Lewis x

P.S never buy the dodgy branded sausage and beans. I recently had a well bad craving for beans on toast and it was only after I got home and had eaten it did I realise the tin had 100% of may salt for the day in. 100% fucking percent. Is that shit even legal anymore?

The London Diet, Try it.

Heres my London based guide to weight loss.

Step 1 - You have to be the right type of fat.

So im not talking the type of person who wants to loose a few pounds before they go on holiday in anticipation of putting on a few whilst on holiday as this method is too radical for that. I am also not talking about people who are properly fat, like way fat, like huge. This method puts far too much pressure on your mind and body for you to be able to cope and you probably will die.

The type of people I am talking to is people who are maybe a stone to three stone overweight and are looking to shed that extra weight but still have the ability to move around freely and can see all their toes.

Step 2 - Load yourself with unmanageable amounts of debt.

There are many ways you can do this. My chosen option was to go to university and also take out the maximum overdraft I could whilst at university. I also chose to buy a car(all be it 2nd hand) on finance and just for that extra kick I am going to canada next year for three weeks which will cost about £2000 in total.

You can load yourself with debt in other more adventurous ways if you wish, such as, gambling, drug use, buy a house, have a baby... all of these would work but it needs to be a good solid amount so lets say atleast £30,000.

Step 3 - Get a job in London (probably the hardest step, as the first two are fun)

This can be any job but it needs to pay you a good amount of money but not a great amount. Lets say £15,000 a year for instance. Just enough to have old mr student loans knocking on your door.

Step 4 - Live about 2-3 miles from work.

Heres the weight loss key and were this whole diet really starts to come together. Living just far enough away from work so that it takes you somewere between 40 minutes to an hour to walk to work. The key here is WALK. You could get the bus, yes? NO, remember you have all the crippling debt and not alot of spare cash so the walking not only helps your weight but your wallet too.

Step 5 - Enjoy Life.

Enjoy your new surroundings, enjoy your new job, enjoy your weight loss. All in the comfort that you are (just) servicing your debts and you are getting a bit fitter in the process. You also dont really have to watch what you eat, I mean your walking five miles a day and all the debt means you dont really have any cash so how much bad stuff can you really afford t eat?

Conclusion - I hope that you enjoy trying to fit all these pieces together over the coming years and make sure you remember the debt, thats one of the key elements of the diet. A nice big debt. I really do think this diet can be as big as the atkins, and it will get more people back to work, and give more money to the banks, and stop people driving to work. This really is the diet the global crisis' we face today have been waiting for.

Lewis

A Turban a Day keeps the Racist away.

Been from the north and having spent three years in Carlisle(probably the most incomprehensibly racist place I have ever been, only second to Wigan) its fair to say I have been around my fair share of racist comments and general abuse.

Been in London is so different.

Every day since I have got here I must have heard atleast three different accents and come across so many different views and things I never really got to experience at home. I must say, im liking it. It adds a different feel too every day life.

Now im not going to sit here and say that I have never enjoyed racist jokes or ever been stereotypical and im not denying that it ever goes on but its just nice to see so many different people and so many different cultures and so many ways of life all getting along with life.

Someone should really explain to northern people who are scared of it all that its not too bad.

Lewis

Another stupid company name...

Holmes and Daughters Funeral Directors.

Surely no one who has been burying a daughter has ever used this funeral directors? Probably because they have burst out crying and started breaking down before they have even got through the door. Way too bring them feelings roaring back.

They are instantly cancelling out a quarter of their market here, idiots.

Daughters burying daughters is just weird.

Lewis

So you wanna work in a shop in London but your worried because you dont speak a word of the queens? Well dont be, because neither does anyone else.

I am liking my very descriptive titles for my blogs at the moment.

This recent one comes from yesterdays expedition to the shops in Ealing. Dont judge me on the shops I am about to describe, you would do the same in my financial circumstances.

So first, Wilkos, Cheap and Cheerful shop with the most agonisingly painfully long cues thats enough to make you contemplate going into Boots next door and buy everything you have in your basket for double the price. When I finally got to within three people of the front of the cue I started picking up on the conversations between the lady on the till and her current customer. Now this till lady was in way to happy of a mood which was obviously a false face that was put on to compensate for english been only, at a guess, her 4th or 5th language. I hate people who are too happy, it really fucks me off, especially when you know its bullshit as she is working in Wilkos. No one can be this happy all the time. To make things worse it was the only line out of all the tills with the option of buying a lottery ticket(another thing I hate, its only second to the premier league in giving stupid people millions of pounds for actually doing very little) so this women was also trying to get us to buy anything to do with the lottery, in which there are about 17 different fucking games she has to ask you about.

The women she was currently serving was English. I didnt work out what the till ladies nationality but judging by her broken accent it was anywhere east of Germany. A pointlessly painful conversation ensued.

The next person to be served had obviously realised what nationality the till lady was and had a fluent conversation(which to my anguish seemed to put her in an even happier mood that she had previously been) which thankfully ended all too swiftly. The women next and also infront of me was also from the same part of the world and they chatted away like the best of buddies.

Now it was my turn for the painstaking ordeal of trying to buy something in London when your only language is English. I said hello as happily as I could muster and refused her offer of a bag politely. She then went through the extensive list of lottery opportunities I had to turn down, by the end of it I sounded like I was been tortured "no, no, no, no, no". I then messed up the card payment about three times by putting the card in too early, which was annoying as she kept saying it was ready. I probably got charged loads of times and the money either went home to her family or to some underground wilkos based drug scene.

My next shop in me living the London Highlife was Iceland for some good old frozen chicken and that nice bread that needs baking for like 5 minutes before you eat it.

Since I knew what I wanted this was a rather painless ordeal and after a few minutes I was ready to join the cue. Which in truth was not hard to do, since from almost any point in the shop I could have turned 90 degrees and I would have, at some point, touched a part of the cue. A saturday afternoon in one of the cheapest places to buy food and theres only one small asian girl on the counters serving customers, shocking. It took me 2 minutes to get my things, it took me almost 15 minutes to get served. Unbelievable.

Although this girl was almost certainly English and there was none of the language barriers of the previous shop. She was actually quite good looking too. I seem to have a thing for Indian girls since moving to London. Looks like ill be buying more frozen chicken and bread.

Lewis

Thin bin bags piss me right off.

The title says it all really. For anyone who has to deal which such pathetic products on a daily basis like me will realise the truth in what I am saying. What is the point of making a bin bag when everytime I pick the little bastards up out of the bin they stay where they are and I just end up with two little rips of liner in my hands and no rubbish. Then to make things worse, when you do manage to coax the twats into coming out of the bin theres no bag left in which to tie a knott, so you end up doing it around your little finger with a knott so small its never going to hold... and it doesnt because as you go to pick it up it rips again and sits on the floor mocking you, probably about your weight.

If your going to trust your waste to such vessels then please do not buy waffer(if you want the correct pronunciation of waffer click here) thin bin bags. Buy the big thick heavy duty black bastards.

Lewis

Stupid names for companies and how it amuses me(atleast)

So, been doing alot of walking and alot of staring into space while driving and I have noticed a couple of really stupid names for companies, thought id share them with you...

First one - Access Self Storage.

Now this is a really shit name for a company which you are intending to trust your belongings too. In fact I would go as far as saying that the number one thing you would be looking for in a good self storage company would be the inability for anyone to access your stuff while your leaving it there. Otherwise, if accessibility is what you are after whilst you are on your 'year out' you might aswell just box it up and leave it on the street with a note on it saying 'fragile - handle with care'.

To make things worse, heres the logo

The box is fucking open on the logo!!!!! Who's been in my shit? Im sure I gaffered the bastard shut when I left it?

Fucking clueless some people. It really annoys me that someone got paid to do this shit.

Company 2 - General Demolition.

Fuck me, I think this one is worse. If ever in life you would like something to be specific, I assume it would be when your paying someone to demolish something. Just the meaning of the name is enough to make you shit yourself that something is going to go wrong.

I understand that the thinking behind it is probably meaning that they will demolish anything you pay them to do but for me the meaning just comes across all wrong. Im having visions of a man turning up with a sledge hammer and some explosives and using both to equal effect.

Their logo is nothing to be made fun at but they are a real company, you can see here, and a big company at that by the looks of things. Its amazing that they are so big yet no one has ever turned around and gone "mate, thats a shit name that".

Finally - shit advertising.

Theres a greggs in brentford near where I work and on a regular basis it teases me with its advertisements in the windows and smells of cakes and pies coming out the door, as if to say "come'ed fatty, weve got it all in here" but I have also noticed some really shit adverts in their collection too.

One of their signs says 'Greggs - Ready when you are'. I can assure you this is a lie. When im on earlies and im walking past at about 5.30 the stupid women is never fucking ready. After walking the 2 miles from home I am gagging for an apple turnover by the time I get there and she just mocks me with her look as she is placing the cakes in their stands for the days business. Whore.

The second thing I have picked up on is one of their adverts which says 'Greggs - The home of fresh baking' and accompanied a picture like this -

Now im no Delia Smith in the kitchen but even I know that isnt fucking baking. Thats making a sandwich. Thats getting some bread and filling it with tuna. You also not its not baked on site in the morning because its not got the texture of a fucking brick.

What they should have put along with this tuna sandwich is 'Greggs - NOT just the home of fresh baking'. Idiots.

Conclusion -

People in advertising are stupid.

N.B - Since the success of my viewing ratings since I put rude words in my tags I will be using that ploy again as thankfully there are enough weird men out there that google this shit.

Lewis