Online gaming, eh, allegedly the future. Playing games against other people without them even being in the same room or even country as you. Brilliant. No more awkwardness as your mate outstays their welcome in your flat, or accidentally takes the Player 1 control pad so you have to talk them through everything. Just fire up the game and it’ll find someone from the Internet to play against.

The problem is… almost everyone on the Internet is, at best, a massive pain in the arse.

My game of choice is FIFA on the Xbox. Through hours of wasting my life waving my thumbs at it, I’m quite good. Not brilliant, but can play without embarrassing myself. Cos I’m new to the Internet gaming thing, it doesn’t know that I’m the thumb equivalent of Eric Cantona and pairs me up against other new or rubbish people.

The first game I played saw me winning two nil after not very long, so he started to cock about – trying to get players sent off, watching the entirity of cut-scenes and fucking about making needless substitutions. So far so bland, but I scored a couple more past him and he quit after 85 minutes of the match.

Is that what people really do for fun? Start losing then throw their toys out of the pram and strop like a baby? The second guy disconnected at half time. The third after the third goal went in. And that’s where online gaming falls down:

In real life, you can punch your friends for being dickholes.

I did the next best thing and sent him a message that said “knob”. Me one, internet stranger nil.

On an unrelated note, I once bought two tickets to see Stewart Lee from a stranger online. They were selling four, and I took two of them. This bloke bowls in at the start and sits next to us, stares at us for a bit and then asks: “Are you from the Internet?” “No,” I replied, “I’ve never heard of it.” I spent the next two hours not making eye contact with him.

Hey! You! Do you have a girlfriend or a boyfriend or a husband or a wife or an “it’s complicated” on Facebook? Of course you do, you stud, you’re gorgeous. Especially you. But for some people, those with less fortunate faces, finding the right man, woman or monkey to make hideous noises and smells with isn’t always so easy.

If you’re struggling, then the best thing to do is start an incredibly bitter blog about how precisely none of it is your fault and EVERY SINGLE GUY IN THE WORLD IS AN IDIOT OR FAILS TO MEET YOUR EXACTING STANDARDS.

“The Book Of Love Was Written By A Sadist” is what you need, where an undateable, unlikeable twat covers her ‘adventures’ in e-dating. (such as they are – think the Famous Five but with bitterness and disappointment, instead of ginger beer and homoeroticism.)

She delights in taking apart the private messages sent by other members of the dating site she’s on. Hilarious! People on a dating site! Sending messages! And sometimes they’re not to her tastes! God, let’s see just how fucking terrible they are. I bet they’re horrendous! I mean, if you’re going to blog about it, then I bet they’re hi-larious. Pant pissingly funny. Tena Lady inducing. I hope she has some hilarious banter to add!

Gorgeous eyes, beautiful hair fantastic smile. You must be a GODDESS!!!

**He would be correct

or…

hello. name’s Eric. read your profile and i thought i would say hi. just curious…. are for real? it just seem you’re a little raw… not that it bothers me. just saying

**I won’t be going out with Eric either. Not because of anything that he said but because of his pictures. His smile screams to me “GAY”. I love my gays and my roommate is gay so nobody can accuse me of being a homophobe but in one of his pictures he’s actually trying to deepthroat a sushi roll…need I say more?

Oh.

Right.

Um.

Still, I’m sure there’s some enjoyment to be found in hearing about her grooming routine.

And now, I’m going to let you gentlemen in on a little secret. The hair doesn’t just grow on the sides of our pretty little lips. Oh no. It grows everywhere! Up towards your belly button all the way down your crack. Ever get a brazillion or Playboy wax? Didn’t think so, men. I ask you to try getting your butthole waxed, paying $100 and still trying to keep a smile on your face. Why don’t you try it sometime? I guarantee you will have nightmares and trouble sitting for weeks.

Even her own family have nothing to like her for. Her Christmas Eve family toast showed off the accomplishments of everyone. Except her. A whole year of her life wasted.

(Cheering and clapping followed by a long, hard blank stare in my direction)

…and to Melisa…

(Crickets)

(Chirping)

(Loudly)

…to Melisa…Gosh! We just love you!”

“But mummy, I updated my blog 43 times and went on a million dates with a million assholes.”
“That’s nice dear, but Cindy got into college. That’s a real thing. Not just your shit. I wish you’d been a boy or a stillbirth or something.”

At least someone in her family loves her:

This morning my 23 year old cousin found it a fitting time and medium to call me a whore on Facebook

She’s still in a position to dole out relationship advice, which is like The Pope advising on condoms or Jodie Marsh on nuclear physics:

* People that are “Separated”. In the eyes of God and the law, you are still technically married. You shouldn’t be looking for a date. Perhaps that’s why you are separated in the first place. Ever consider that?

Surely what you’d prefer is a tedious blow-by-blow (not that – although she probably would manage to make that boring too) account of each and every fucking date:

We settled down to eat and he began sharing stories with me about his karaoke adventures and past Halloween costumes (apparently he makes a good looking woman?). He was nothing short of flamboyant and I found myself forcing myself to laugh just so to not hurt his feelings as he did appear to be somewhat nervous around me still.

Nothing short of flamboyant! Dresses as a woman! C’mon…

He offered to sleep on the couch but I said he could join me in bed. All thoughts of him being gay had been swept out the window when he put that tank top on. We talked a little more and finally Flame Boy attempted a kiss. Suddenly Flame Boy wasn’t so flaming. I’m not sure what switch turned on but something happened and he suddenly had the confidence and self assurance of a male gigolo. I can honestly say without hesitation that he was the best make out partner I’ve ever had in terms of skill. I complimented him on his abilities for I like to give credit where credit is due. To which he replied…

“Do you remember the end in Revenge of the Nerds where the cheerleader was amazed at the nerd’s ability to make love? He said it was because they’ve had plenty of time to practice. That’s me. I’m a nerd.”

Not that there’s anything wrong with that.

But a tank top, making her think he’s MORE straight?!

Try reading this – I’ll wait for you. Oh, you’re back. That didn’t take long. Cos you didn’t read it, did you?

Let’s have a quick look into the various guys in her life:

Nigerian #2 – I won’t even waste a whole 3rd blog entry on him. He had the audacity to tell me I was using him for sex and was argumentative because I felt like sleeping after working a 12 hour day and then driving home from Vegas (a five hour drive). Then when I couldn’t describe my life’s dreams, hopes and aspirations in 30 words or less he said I wasn’t as “driven” as he. Well, fuck him and his trying to shove it in my ass every time I wasn’t paying attention.

Ugly John – I met this guy several years ago through a friend. He looks good on paper and has a voice so sexy your panties almost come off by themselves. However, he’s ugly as homemade sin in person. I know that he’s been practically in love with me from the beginning but I’ve never felt any spark for him in a way that makes me want to “settle down.” Perhaps that’s why lately he’s felt it necessary to shit on my dreams and every idea I’ve come up with to try and better my financial situation. He takes playing the devils advocate to a whole new level. Not to mention, the moment I told him I had quit drinking he stopped asking me out. I know this is because he can no longer “drink” me into bed. Fuck him for being desperate and transparent.

Ugly John! Fuck HIM for being desperate! Even though she drunkenly slept with him! Lots! With such a lovely personality, how can she *possibly* be single?

The Redheaded Stepchild has the honor of being quite possibly the worst lay in history. At least my history. And that’s saying a lot considering I’ve been around the block a few times.

Aww, how did you meet Redhead?

He started instant messaging me here and there insisting on meeting for cocktails and weed. I wasn’t interested in him romantically. Until he told me what he did for a living and posted a picture of the house he lived in, in the Hollywood Hills. Me? Shallow? Abso-fucking-lutely.

Brilliant. But what if he wants to get you naked?

Anybody that can make me laugh and tell me I’m pretty has a half decent chance of getting to see me naked.

Oh yeah?

“Honolulu, it’s got everything. Sand for the children, sun for the wife, sharks for the wife’s mother.”

He’s rich, too!

Due to my timing (ahem) we weren’t able to have sex but I did get a chance to check out the non-too-impressive goods. Of course I’ve been surprised in the past by “little” men so he wasn’t out for the count by a long shot.

Still, at least the guy with the diddy willy has a shot, right?

That night we had tragic sex. Things started out okay as I put him to work massaging me. I was still angry with him for being broke. Not his fault I realize but mad at my unfaltering bad luck. I hadn’t even asked him for money…EVER! Yet, when I needed it the most, he just happened to have switched bank accounts over a holiday weekend and hadn’t pulled out enough before getting his new ATM card. JUST. MY. LUCK. The poor guy didn’t even know that deep down I was plotting his death. In my head I’m a really evil woman. This I know and I’m able to mask it but evil none the less. I made sure he hit it from behind because a) I have a great ass for doggy style and b) I was watching TV. However, with him going semi limp it was hard to concentrate on South Park when I felt like he was stabbing my clit with a pencil. Eventually, he finished and I left him to hog the covers and pass out so I could chat it up with a hot cop I had dated a few years back online. A few hours later I came back in to find sleeping beauty taking up ¾ of my bed and not wearing any covers. I was not impressed. Not sure where I get off thinking that I’m the only one allowed to carry a few extra pounds but I do. So fuck it.

How can I put this any more bluntly: You’re a fucking idiot. You deserve to be single, you stupid, judgemental cunt. You’re not perfect, you’re a fucking retard, and the fact that you get any dates at all must be down to a single flattering, well angled and lit shot on your profile. You’re a high maintenance fuckhead, an idiotic twat and clearly have more standards than your personality can match. You won’t meet Brad Pitt on a site called “Plenty of Fish”, so why not take your “few extra pounds” off the computer and go outside, meet people and have a good time, instead of bitterly whinging online. Waah, waah, fucking waah. You deserve to die alone.

Getting angry at Fearne Cotton is a bit like getting angry at a piece of ham or a button. For the most part, she’s entirely inconsequential, dithering her way through the day. However, she’s also the speaking equivalent of an excitable, impressionable child that has been raised with a vocabulary of two words: Brilliant and Genius.

Fearne lives in a happy, shiny world where nothing is bad, and war and fighting don’t exist, because her little brain cannot comprehend the world being any bigger than the hundred yards around her. She’s perpetually surprised, like a goldfish that can’t understand how much room she has to move around in.

Everything is brilliant. Jamie Cullum? Brilliant! Doctor Who? Brilliant! Machiavelli’s The Prince? Brilliant! Who needs more than one word to describe anything? Fearne Cotton likes it. She might as well become a ‘fan’ of them on Facebook and indiscriminately click the little ‘I Like This’ button. That’s her life. She’s as useful as a Facebook virus.

But if every piece of work she sees is ‘brilliant’, how then to describe those who produced the work? Genius. Every single one of them. Every single thing that’s been produced. She walks out of the toilets in the pub and exclaims to everyone “I did a brilliant poo. I’m a genius!” before walking face-first into a door that she’s too stupid to open.

Pop quiz. Spot the odd one out.

The worst thing about her is that she’s the BBC’s appointed YOOOOOF person, so she gets thrown everywhere, like a ubiquitous fart that pops up blandly and unexpectedly whenever you least want it. Like in a lift, or on Top of the Pops. The despair on her face on the Christmas Day TOTP, when she had to introduce Rage Against the Machine was palpable.

She’s a butterfly, an idiot bumbling through the day with no idea what’s going on around her, flapping helplessly at a world that’s far bigger and more complicated than she can comprehend. But, is, let’s face it. Brilliant.

Her hilarious racism at Morgan Freeman was probably an accident, stupidity rather than hating the strange tanned man.

I’ll leave the last word to Fearne herself:

so much snot..how can there be this much inside my head??

The joke is too obvious.

Have you got some old jewellery knocking about that you don’t want any more? Are you easily conned by daytime TV adverts starring Dale Winton? Great! You can just ping your priceless heirlooms into an envelope and fire them off to Cash4UpMyGold, and walk away with literally pennies. Lucky you.

There’s a better kind of Gold though. One that has taken over my diet and would possibly lead to an early death from morbid obesity, if it wasn’t for my overwhelming urge to purge myself clean after every binge. Things always taste better the second time, slightly warmer and covered in bile.

These are, of course, the Wispa Gold, which I wouldn’t vomit up to save your life. Because I’m horribly addicted to them. They’re like the worst possible impulse buy, stacking them up at the supermarket next to the tills because they know I’m weak and I can’t help but buy a couple, just in case they stop selling them.

“Oi!” we shouted at Cadbury, “these say limited edition. Are you gonna stop selling them?”

And Cadbury came back, and they said “Thanks for your e-mail about Wispa. We are always delighted to receive feedback and comments from our consumers.”

Which was nice of them.

So I bothered a real person there, an actual real person with a real job, who took time out of their day to talk to us, and they said this:

“Here at Cadbury, we’re big fans of Wispa. And Wispa Gold. So it’s pretty great you guys are too, otherwise we’d have a lot of Wispa on our hands. And caramel. So the more fanatical the better, really.” – Ross Farquhar, Brand Manager for Wispa.

Thanks Ross! We’re not just fanatical, we’re fatatical. See what we did there?

So to celebrate bothering Ross, we’ve clubbed together to pick up a box of Wispa Golds, that we’re torturing ourselves with by not even eating. It’s just sitting there, watching us. Watching us sob. That’s 48 bars of the bloody thing, more than enough for you to be sick of the sight of the things.

But that’s okay, we don’t have to: We’re giving it away. That’s right, we’re going to put them in the post and leave them at the mercy of the Royal Mail man, who will hopefully bring them to your house and not steal them, like they did with my birthday money from my grandad a few years back.

All you have to do to win, is, using 12 words or less (or 924 words or more), complete the following sentence:

“If I was locked in a room with 48 Wispa Golds and Ross Farquhar, Brand Manager for Wispa, I would…”

Leave your answer in the comments below with your e-mail address, which we’ll sell on to Chinese spammers and leave you spending the rest of your life filtering out crap offers for fake Rolexes. Or, lob your answer up on Twitter, using the HASHTAG #wispagold. The winner will be announced in a couple of weeks, or whenever the entries embarrassingly dry up.

Competition Closed. The winner has been notified. Have you been notified? No? You were shit, then.

For some reason, actually for a specific reason, I spend a lot of time on trains. The reason being, of course, that things are far apart. The best bit about trains, apart from the crippling coldness and hilarious attitude to punctuality, is that it’s a great opportunity to watch other people and check out what they’re up to. Not in a creepy, stalkeresque way, although it’s definitely going to come across that way.

Here’s just three people that I met (and by ‘met’, I mean ’stared at’) on a journey into London and back.

Exhibit 1, Cool Kid

Cool Kid is Cool. We can see lots of evidence for that, notably the can of lager in his hand. It’s a Tuesday night, he doesn’t need to wait until he gets home before he has a beer. Nah, he can pull a can out JUST LIKE THAT and chill out, relaxing all cool, with a beer. Just the way he rolls. Drinking in public at 6pm. He’s the MAN.

Do you like his trainers? Do you? They’re white, very white, and that’s because he’s just bought them, as he enjoyed telling his mate. In minute detail. LOOK HOW WHITE THEY ARE. They’re the sort of shoes the BNP would be proud of. Only £60, too. Because he’s pretending to be modest about his money, cos he earns billions of pounds and usually spend a million quid PER SHOE. Plus he’s still wearing his backpack, like a spastic.

Exhibit 2, Sergei

“Tonight, we march on London.” I love the hat. Literally, love it, want to take it home and put it up my bum because JUST LOOK AT IT. He’s all stern and everything, silently contemplating the sacrifices made by his comrades. How can a beard be serious? Who knows, but that is one seriously serious beard.

Exhibit 3, Sighing Business Guy

As everyone knows, the best way to look busy when you aren’t is to sigh a lot. Business Guy here (note the MI5esque way I took his photo), he was definitely busy doing his crossword, because he was sighing. A LOT. That must have been one tough crossword, like those cryptic Sunday Times ones that say things like “A St. Bernard on Wednesday, perhaps?” that don’t make any sense at all.

Despite looking like Ed Rooney from Ferris Bueller’s Day Off, he hasn’t let this hold him back, as he made a theatrical show to everyone else in the carriage about his fucking crossword. A delighted little noise when he got to scribble something down.

But all that work tired him out (insert a sad face here) and he fell asleep, or possibly passed out because it was SO FUCKING COLD. This photo was less stealthy, so I have no idea what I’d have said if he’d woken up (“Sorry, I was fascinated with your antics in that 80s comedy film, and subsequent crosswording.”)

He got off before me and left the newspaper behind. I stole it.

He was shit at it, and he wasn’t even doing the cryptic clues!

Coastal holidays in Britain are, let’s face it, crap. The weather is rubbish here, and Scarborough and Blackpool are hardly Venice Beach, are they? A miserable week spent wandering round identikit towns (“Ooh, they have a Smiths and an Argos too!”), and trying to muster the enthusiasm to set a single foot on a dog-shit strewn shingled beach.

The only saving grace is, ironically enough, the weather. The weather means you don’t have to be outside avoiding chavs, when you can be inside and the glory of The Arcade.

For some people, the arcade meant playing brand new games, using light guns to shoot at cartoon zombies or racing in barely realistic cars, sat next to the other drivers.

That sort of reckless abandon wasn’t for me though – not at a pound a go. A pound! In my day, that was enough to go to the cinema and get the bus home, so long as you didn’t pay for either.

No, I preferred the miniature games, the cheap, cheesy and cheerful ones.

The horse racing, where you could bet on plastic horses that ran along in front of you. They were fun, and none of them got shot.

Or those crane things that hilariously couldn’t pick up a single fucking thing that had been placed inside. Y’know, there used to be a hint of ‘maybe I could win this’, when the prizes were a small cuddly Pooh Bear toy or something. Now they have little boxes withiPods and ten-pound-notes inside. Yeah, you’re going to win that off a 20p outlay.

I was, and still am, drawn towards the 2p machines. Those ones that have no other name that “those 2p machines in the arcade”. Say that, and everyone knows what you’re talking about. The money-sucking littlesodhandlers that are full of 2p pieces and have a metal tray pushing the newly inserted ones ever closer to the edge.

The machines that have horrible internal gravity so that the coins at the very end seem to be levitating right before you. And you drop one more coin in, just to edge everything closer to the gaping hole that shits copper at you like a demented anus.

Of course, you never win. And at 2p a pop, even if you did win, you wouldn’t exactly be walking away with Brewster’s Millions. You’d end up with a cup full of coinsthat’d be more of a hassle to lug around than it was actually worth. So in a way, you expect to lose money and you want to. And lose money you do. For every quid you drop in, two pence at a time, you end up walking away with about three coins. Which instantly go back in the top. So you walk away with nothing. Every time.

There’s no ‘hilarious’ Vegas-movie style moment as you walk away, someone behind you bowls in and inserts one coin, winning the jackpot, because they’re equally doomed to spunking coin after coin into the slot, and walking away with a vague sense of disappointment and hands that smell vaguely of copper.

I like shopping. I’m pretty good at it. I mean proper shopping, actually going to a shop with something in mind and buying it. It’s exciting. Until the credit card statement arrives.

The best shopping is supermarket shopping, cos it’s like having loads of shops in one place. In the olden days, the supermarket only had one aisle of books, magazines and stuff. Now my local Tesco has an entire upstairs (upstairs!) with escalators designed for trolleys and everything. Upstairs is the magical, exciting bit with all HDTVs and big aisles full of videogames that I don’t need, but I’ll buy and they can sit on the shelf until I get sick of looking at them and trade them in for a pound at Game.

Actual shopping is exciting though, from choosing the trolley – if I get a big one, I’ll throw more unnecessary stuff in, a basket might be weighed down by bottles of Coke, and I’ll look silly if my mini-trolley only has four things in it – to navigating as efficiently as possible through the aisles.

Some people, for whatever reason, work their way up and down every aisle, regardless of use: They don’t own a dog, stay outta the petfood aisle, you fool. And there’s no need to leave your trolley in the middle of the bloody aisle while you dig through ever piece of chicken to find one that looks about the right size. Get to one side, or you’re getting your trolley gently barged out of the way. And a bit of beef dropped in the end, to cause an argument when you get to the checkout.

Shopping in the supermarket can be done in 15 minutes. Easily. Straight in, straight round and straight out. Especially when you’re cooking for yourself, there’s no obligation to buy healthy crap, and you can head straight for the pizzas.

Everything you buy can be categorised into two piles; One; stuff that you’ll eat as soon as humanly possible. This includes the impulse bought snacks because you’re hungry, a bag of doughnuts, a chocolate eclair and a multipack of ham. Two; stuff that’ll get thrown in the cupboard or freezer and eaten begrudgingly, eventually, when you’re trying to eke another day out of your food without shopping again. Like the trout that’s been in my freezer for six months, because I haven’t got a fucking clue what to do with it.

The only pitfall, the only problem that I have, is when it comes to the checkout. They always ask “do you need any help with your packing?” and don’t find it amusing when I look at the five items I’ve bought and say “I think I’ll be alright, thanks.” But that’s not true. I won’t be alright. I do need help with my packing, like a little old lady trying to use her crippled, arthritic fingers to load up cat-food, bought lovingly for a cat that she doesn’t realise is dead.

The truth is this: I can’t open the fucking carrier bags. My fingers slip and slide all over them, rubbing the bits of polythene together in a vague attempt to get inside. The shopping is piling up around me, I barely have time to organise it so that the freezer stuff goes together and fridge stuff together. I’m loading the bags as fast as I can, pathetically trying to catch up with the cashier’s super-speedy swiping technique. Then it gets to the end, she’s swiped everything through and told me how much it costs. I’m fiddling with my credit card, and still trying to fill the bags. It’s impossible. I give up, and throw everything into the basket and take that home with me, sobbing into the evening. FUCK YOU, TESCO. OKAY?

50 things I can’t do.

There aren’t 50.

1) Growing up

• Poo in a public toilet
• Grow a proper grown-up beard
• Resist drawing cocks on blank paper. Big spunking cocks with all balls and pubes
• Go to bed at a sensible time, even if I have to get up early
• Work the washing machine (why does it have more than one setting, really?)
• Understand the inner workings of a car
• Leave spots alone
• Dress up smartly
• Wake up on the first alarm and get up
• Save money

2) Other people

• Chat up women
• Subtly check out cleavage
• Leave a coherent voicemail message
• Enjoy being in a crowd
• Feel comfortable haggling in a shop
• Pee at a urinal next to someone really tall

3) Games & Entertainment

• Give a computer game character a sensible name (“Hello, my name is Spunky”)
• Play board games fairly
• Play computer games online
• Simplify tactics on Rock-Paper-Scissors
• Dance without looking like I’m mocking people with cerebral palsy
• Sing in tune
• Maintain any sense of rhythm
• Listen to Metallica’s “Sad But True” without air-drumming along to the intro, like a twat
• Down a pint
• Sit still for the entire duration of a film

4) Health and safety

• Enjoy the meat in sausage rolls now I’ve started thinking about what it actually is
• Eat crisps quietly
• Drink one, and only one, beer
• Last a whole year without some sort of disorder that causes excess snot
• Know when to stop texting / e-mailling / instant messaging after drinking alcohol
• Drive within the speed limit
• Cook a complicated meal
• Play football (1 x destroyed ankle, 1 x ball-saved-with-face)

5) Day to day

• Take recycling seriously
• Go into a supermarket and buy everything on my list. And nothing else.
• Take a menu-selection risk when ordering a takeaway
• Walk past a stone and not kick it
• Speak foreign, despite 10+ years of learning, and somehow a qualification in German.
• Moderately swear
• Make small talk with a stranger

6) The Rest

• 8 times table quickly
• Be photographed and look even a bit normal. Oh good, I’m blinking again.
• Show a suitable amount of decorum through the National Anthem, without looking like I’m taking the piss
• Watch an entire episode of Question Time in one sitting
• Really genuinely understand the history and politics of places like Israel
• Get excited by film hype
• Enjoy porn, um, afterwards
• Talk on the phone without doing anything else
• Write legibly, after years of computer based doing everything

Merry Christmas, probably.

If 90s dance act “Haddaway” had really thought about their song “What is Love?” then they’d realise that it’s a fleeting emotion and stuff. What they should really have been bothered about is the far more pressing question: “What is Soup?”

Specifically, what is the act of consuming soup called? Do you eat it, or drink it?

There’s strong arguments for both sides, which have been debated at great lengths by myself and unwilling friends. On the one hand, you can consume soup through a straw, therefore it is a drink. But, it could be argued, given a large enough straw and powerful enough suction device, even steak could be consumed through a straw. Probably. And thick milkshake is a drink, and that’s a pain in the balls to drink.

Soup is a meal, albeit a shit one, which by definition makes it a food. Especially if it’s got bits in it, for example, chicken. Clearly the chicken will be eaten, but just the act of placing food into a drink doesn’t render the drink a food. You can’t throw a Pepperami into a can of Irn Bru and claim the Irn Bru is now food.

In addition, the issue of the vessel of consumption has also been raised. If you have soup in a bowl, it’s a food – soup in a cup is a drink. This must be rejected as silly, as clearly Coke can be consumed, inconveniently, from a plate, and that doesn’t change what it is.

As you can tell, this has been occupying WAY too much of my time, so I e-mailled off to the professionals, to find out what they had to say.

Good Afternoon

Thank you for your email.

I’m happy to confirm that you are both technically correct:

A chunky soup is EATEN
A thinner broth type soup is DRUNK

Hope this helps to resolve your dispute.

Kind Regards

Debbie Bonnington
Customer Relations
New Covent Garden Food Company

Debbie has fallen into the trap of claiming that the content of the soup can change the nature of the soup itself. REJECTED.

There is no set way to consumer our soup, some people prefer to drink it from a mug and some to eat it from a dish.

Heinz called me “Ms”, which is a disappointment after years of being blokey. But does explain the tits. They also tell us nothing, only that people enjoy soup in different ways. The consumption vessel argument has also been REJECTED.

This is an important question indeed, well raised.

In a fully conclusive survey of one person (me), we can categorically say that, well, we don’t know.

In fact, the mere act of trying to work out which it is has exhausted us.

I wish I could be of more help, but I think I need to lie down.

Good luck on your quest – please, if you find out the answer, do let me know.

All the best,

Joe

Joe from Innocent is my fucking hero, and tells us what we wanted to hear: Even the professionals don’t know. They don’t know what they’re making. This should shock you to the core, at least for 0.00001 of a second. Did you feel that? Was it like a sneeze only better?

Next week: What is yoghurt? And are soggy cornflakes technically a drink?

Does anyone actually know what soup is?

I don’t even like soup that much.

NOTE – The wonderful Hayley has pointed out that it should really be “What is Soup? (Baby don’t slurp me, no more)”. I’m not changing it though, as that’d be an admission that she’s funnier than me.

As very few of you have noticed, and even less of you cared, blogging has been a little light lately.
This is because I’ve been embarking on a ridiculous literary adventure, under the umbrella of National Novel Writing Month (which is shortened to NaNoWriMo by those not smart enough to shorten it all the way to NaNo.)

The idea is simple, to sit down and write a 50,000 word novel in November. Thirty days, 50,000 words. That’s 1,667 words a day, a figure that I saw many, many times as I fired up Windows calculator to figure out what sort of ridiculous, relentless pace I’d have to keep up for the month. “If I give up now for today, how many extra will I need to do this week…”

Holding down a full-time job means that midweek writing goes tough, coming back exhausted and being met with a barrage of words that need to be completed that evening, it’s tough. Weekends are, surprisingly, worse, normally a time to get some rest and recover, but NaNo meant trying to get a bit ahead so the following week wouldn’t be so rubbish.

The sheer pace of writing is intentional – I’ve tried to write a novel before, and ended up redrafting the same sentence repeatedly, getting hung up over a description of a tree, without moving on and getting into the story. With NaNo, you don’t read it back, you don’t edit, you just write. Of course, the more sleep deprived days lead to absolute crap being written, like:

I lifted the saw, I think it was a hacksaw, but only because that’s the only type of saw I know. I placed it on top of his left leg and began to cut. The fabric from his jeans started to rip and tear as the saw went through easily. Then a slight resistance as it hit flesh. I grimaced and tried not to think about what I was doing. I continued to cut, until an even harder resistance: bone. I shuddered at the thought, and continued to cut round it, stopping at the horrible noise every single grind made.

Hmm.

Saturday night, I finished the novel, wrote those two awesome words: The End, and closed Word down. Okay, it was only the first draft (the “Ben Elton Final Draft” as it’s wonderfully known) and I’d have to – shudder – read it and edit it at some point, but I’d done it. I’ve written a bloody novel.

In a way, that makes me like Jesus, because he wrote a made up story too.