….you need more sleep when you rock up at work at 8am and think and you go to the buildings cafe to be greeted with the following interchange.

Me: Hello, can I have a large MOCHA please?

Spanish lady who now works at the cafeteria who has replaced our trusty Eastern European staff and makes dubious coffee because SHE HAS NO PRIDE IN HER WORK: You look like you’ve slept with your eyes open.

Me: Sorry? Are you saying I look rough?

Spanish lady who failed charm school, adopting a slightly too serious voice: Oh yes.

She puts the change on the counter and walks off like I’ve shat on the floor.

The end.

Or so she thinks. I will kill her. Oh yes. Revenge will be mine you surly senorita. Your piss poor customer service skills will be your down fall.

What a stressful an frankly ridiculous couple of days! It started a week last Friday night when, being very bored, I decided to start my own satirical football site called Crab Football. Harmless enough you’d think. First I wrote an article about how Arsenal’s aloof manager, Arsene Wenger, had predicted 9-11 two years before it happened. I then followed this with another quick fire entry on West Ham’s lost striker Dean Ashton, who had fallen off the face of the planet and was being searched for by his manager.

I was very happy with the results.

So then a day later I wrote a spoof article about Nicolas Anelka’s forthcoming autobiography ‘It’s not me. It’s everyone else.’ If you don’t know much about Anelka all you will need to know is that he’s pretty unpopular and generally seen as a trouble making money grabber. So the excerpt from his autobiography I wrote was meant to be a perpostuous piece on people who had wronged him.

I decided to write in this historically inaccurate article that essentially he left a former club because their captain, Patrick Vieira, had slapped him around the face with his penis. Yes that’s right. You heard. I have the mind of a deficient child.

I wrote it very quickly, sniggered to myself and went to sleep.

Anyway over the coming days my site literally exploded. And when I mean exploded I mean in comparison to this blog, which usually attracts 10 or so lost souls a day. However this was just the tip of the ice berg because despite copyright and disclaimers the autobiography got pilfered left write and centre and many, many websites started posting it up without links to my site. This was:-

a) Annoying that people were claiming my work.

b) Grating because I wasn’t getting the hits I deserved! (I love watching the site visit chart grow!)

c) Scary because even though these sites printed the work verbatim, none of them caveatted it. None of them categorically stated it was fake.

At first I was just happy it was being read but my face literally drained of colour when my site started getting visitors from youtube.

“Strange!” I thought “Why would my article be linked on youtube?”

It was only then that the true horror of the situation hit home, on youtube was footage of that afternoons Charity Shield game and some innocuous footage of Anelka waiting for a corner.

All I could make out from the commentator was:-

“Blah blah blah blah blah Anelka blah blah Vieira blah blah blah Anelka blah blah Vieira.”

The penny dropped immediately.

One phone call later and my Finnish friend translated the content. The bare facts is that the commentator, Antti Mäkinen, was passing on these lurid allegations to the audience at home, apparently oblivious that it was a spoof. I don’t know if the Finnish do sarcasm but I could detect none on the commentators voice.

Shit shit shit.

Anyway it’s been two days now an there has been no fall out. I hope the footballing world (an Mr Anelka, Cole, Vieira and Dickov) have a sense of humour.

I rarely get the look of respect from other men. Unless of course I’m at the bar and I’m holding a mates pint in which case other men sometimes give me a look which I think roughly translates to “Ahhh yes another fellow man, you appear to be drinking beer.” And I in turn give them a nod which says “Yes I am, yum yum yum, lovely foamy beer, I’m so manly I could just eat a packet of pork scratchings, wear an England shit and punch a Frenchman.”

Then we both roar like an MGM lion.

The only time I’ve really, REALLY got the look of respect from another man was when I was in Thailand a few years back, it was Thai new year which, for convoluted reasons I can’t be bothered to go into, is basically the worlds biggest annual water fight. On Koh San road, where all the backpackers live, locals get up at the crack of dawn to line the streets with stalls of water pistols, buckets of water and wet chalk. (Basically part of the annual blessing ceremony is to be dowsed with water and have two lines of chalk drawn on your cheeks – although it basically has degenerated into hit and run happy slapping with fist fulls of chalk.)

So anyway I wanted to buy some water balloons but the Thai people aren’t really big fans. It’s not their thing is it? When they decorate something it’s lanterns and bulbs and fairy lights etc. So I was in a local Seven Eleven buying four boxes of extra large Trojan condoms and the guy behind the counter gave me a look of pure admiration, he so taken by my manliness that for a moment I thought he was going to high five me and everything.

Of course he wasn’t to know I have a penis you can fit in a polo and was only going to use them to throw water grenades from my hotel balcony but still, I felt so positively bad ass I could have roared the place down.

“Ladies watch out!”

On Thursday last week I think I got the polar opposite of that look. I had somehow been coaxed into doing a week long trial at my local gym with the girls at work and had joined them for an ill advised Legs, Bums and Tums class for reasons that really escape me. Anyway five minutes into the proceedings I turn aound to notice a bloke behind me looking in through the window.

And he gave me a look. And when I say look I mean a look of disgust.

The look said this. You bring shame on our kind.

It was either that or Why is that gay guy dressed so badly?

To be fair to him I was:-

a) The only guy in the class (eleven women)

b) Wearing my yellow Kill Bill tracksuit bottoms. I should really invest in some gym attire.

c) Had somehow found myself to be the polar magnetic opposite of the rest of the class. When they side stepped left I went right and vice versa. It took about 10 minutes for me to get my bearings. I just kept finding myself desperately out of sync and trying to keep up, flidding around in the background like an epiletic pillock. Even Michelle who had invited me in the first place had to stop looking at me because I was making her laugh so much.

I think the instuctor thought I was purposively mocking her class. But that would be giving me too much credit.

So how bad was I? So bad that an African lady came up to me in the interval and put her hand on my shoulder before telling me ‘not to worry, you’ll get better.’ I felt like I was an aids victim. A social priah to my gender and incompetent Legs, Bums and Tum-ist.

I was genuinely trying but the lady running the class, a vicious cross between a fitness instructor, Barbara Windsor and howling banshee didn’t give us an introduction or warm up, she just fired straight into it and stated barking motivational instructions like a member of the SS.

“And four steps! One, two, three KEEP IT GOING! BURN IT UP! YES YES YES PUMP IT!”

You know the cafe scene from When Harry Met Sally? It was like that but in a gym. She was cleary crackers.

She also slipped into one diatibe that she was carrying an injuy. Which wasn’t reassuring.

“Pump it! Pump it! I-have-my-knee-sugery-next-week! FEEL THE BURN.”

My main problem with the class were two fold.

a) I was the only guy in the class and it was a mirrored room. All around me tightly clad ladies when prancing around and clenching their buttocks. I felt like a pervert. I didn’t know where to look. I wanted to imitate their moves but  didn’t want to stare too intently. I was stuck behind a rock and a hard place. This really came home to me when I was lying on my back doing the pelvic thusts and I made eye contact with the girl next to me who was doing likewise and she gave me a look of death. A don’t even think about it buster kind of look. Which was kind of unfair as…..

b) There was a girl at the front of the class who was unbelievable. Jessica and Michelle referred to her as the ‘pouty bitch’ but I’m going to refer to her as ‘the amazing goddess wrapped in a liberal amount of spandex.’ She was amazing. I’m not typically a bum man but JEZ-US. Her spandex shorts were frankly struggling to hold her curvaceous booty in but despite this, and the fact the material was tight as a drum, it still managed to concave in the buttock cleft, almost like the arsehole was trying to eat the material. The end result was frankly amazing. Two majestically defined buttocks that danced for me and hypnotised me for most of the proceedings. When the instructor told us to clench in time to the music I nearly fell over myself.

I don’t think I’m allowed back.

Carrie wrote the following about a conversation me and her had many moons ago however since 50% of this is my intellectual property I thought it was only only fair to re-appropriate (plagiarise) it and to cut and paste it on my blog too.

“I stopped by Max’s on my way home to pick up some more of my TV shows. Somehow, and I can’t remember why, but we got to talking about Star Trek. Now, back in the day, I was a huge Star Trek fan. Well, I still am I guess, but I don’t watch it like I used to, mainly because nothing good has come out of the franchise for a while. So, after a short conversation and quoting Picard saying ‘Engage’ etc, and me searching my ever addled brain for the name of Worf’s weapon of choice (a Bat’leth, in case you wondered), and Max asking if I know any Klingon (I don’t), Max decided to tell me a joke. Oh, and note, Max has never watched Star Trek.

M: Ok, so, Picard has got a sewing machine and it’s broken…
C: Why doesn’t he use the Replicator?
M: What’s a Replicator?
C: It can make anything you need.
M: He’s sewing
C: But if Picard needed a garment he would just go to the Replicator and say ‘Hey, Replicator, I would like a jumper’, and he would have it.
M: The Replicators are broken. So he takes the sewing machine to this guy…
C: Why wouldn’t he take it to Data?
M: Who’s Data?
C: A character on the show!
M: Data can’t fix it.
C: Data can fix anything! He’s an Android, he has a computer for a brain!
M: Big Sigh.
C: Now, if Picard was on another planet say, without Replicators or Data, then I could understand the need for a sewing machine. If you’d just put a little back story in, this joke would work much better.
M: Fine. He’s on Earth…
C: Not Earth. Earth in Star Trek is very advanced.
M: Fine! He’s in Wombwell*, they’re still very backwards there.
C: Silence.
M: He takes the sewing machine to a man to get it fixed. The man says ‘What do you want me to do with it?’ And Picard says, ‘Make it sew’.**
C: You know, that’s not a very good joke.”

*My hometown
**Picard’s well known catchphrase is ‘Make it so’, in case you don’t know, often followed by ‘Number 1′, cos he was talking to Riker.

Cheers Carrie!

A picture of some geeks to brighten up the post.

So recently I’ve been going to my local Starbucks in Central London and engaging in some very very unsavory activity. I believe the legal term for it is deception (if you want to be picky). Basically my local Starbucks is adjacent to a hospital where all NHS staff get 15% off their purchases. And how do they know you’re a doctor, nurse or whatnot?

Well they possess a small white security card round their neck on a blue cord. Just like my security pass.

You can probably see where this is going from a mile off can’t you?

The first time I went in there I admit I attempted to put the record straight in a half hearted way. The employee asked if I was a doctor and I laughed and  and asked if he was ‘feeling okay?’ to which he just smiled and said, “Well I just needed to check before I give you your discount.”

A light bulb flashes above my head.

“Well its good you checked” I said. Ha! Aren’t I cunning?

Furthermore the discount transpired to be 15%. Well I wasn’t going to argue with that. And I didn’t even have to lie per se. It’s not like I uttered the word ‘yes’ and wheeled out some extravagant back story, I just let them come to their own assumptions. I didn’t even know they offered discounts until they alluded to it. They practically invited me to lie.

Anyway it was fortunate they didn’t ask many questions as the only medicine I know comes from medical dramas. And when I say medical dramas I mean Scrubs.

However this was a few months ago and the water is getting murkier. I’m trying to walk a very fine line between suitably dangling my pass in front of their faces as I order (thus allowing them to think I’m with the NHS) and deflecting any questions they have with glib, non commital comments. I comfort myself in the knowledge that I’ve never claimed to be a doctor or work for the NHS. That’s what I’ll tell them when they corner me. Who can argue with the facts? Also they don’t ask often. I’ve only have to give the three following answers.

1) “How is the hospital today?”

“Still standing I’m sure! Iced cafe mocha puhleasseeee.”

2) “What have you been doing today?”

“Ohhhhh just solving problems as usual! (dramatically mops brow) Iced cafe mocha puhleaseee..”

3) “What sort of doctor are you?”

“Ohhhhh I’m not a real doctor! Seriously! You’d do a better job than me! Hahahahahaaa (please don’t ask any more questions) ahahahahaha.”

Iced cafe mocha tastes so much better with 45p off. I reckon I can keep milking this for at least a year. Or until someone has a heart attack at the counter and I have to leave surreptitiously via the fire exit.

“Oh is that my pager?”

And my favourite Scrubs quote of all time?

“You have delusions of grandeur!”

“Did you know I coined that term?”

Arf arf.

Maybe it was the second mocha I had at Costa Coffee? Maybe its karma re-dressing the balance in my life after a fortnight of disaster? Maybe its sheer bloody minded perseverance on my part or the stars aligning or it even maybe that I, Maxwell Rees, am a dormant musical genius? Who knows. All I know is that around 12:30am British time I  became a bonafide Guitar Hero God.

By this point I’d been bashing away at the ‘ol ‘axe’ for nearly a whole hour when I had my Rain Man moment, I wasn’t even looking at my fingers anymore or concentrating on the multicoloured symbols firing towards me on the monitor. Nor was I sticking my tongue out as I played or furrowing my brow in frustration.  All I was doing was panicking that if I thought about it too much then *POFF* the magic would go just as quickly as it had arrived. I WAS IN THE ZONE. Suddenly I’m playing ‘One’ by Metallica like I was Jimmy Page. I wasn’t even aware how I was doing it. I just went with the flow and let it take me where ever it pleased.

It was a thing of beauty.

It took me to 98% on medium mode. It is a watershed moment that we should all salute and will probably be remembered long after we’ve forgotten about the Moon Landing and the collapse of the Berlin Wall. I was so pleased with myself that I’m sure my cock started twitching. It was probably the same for Jimi at Woodstock.

(BTW never look at yourself in a mirror whilst playing guitar hero, because no matter how awesome you think you are the visage of a grown man in tracksuit bottoms and a fisher price guitar gyrating around like a village imbecile will always bring you and your ego crashing down to earth)

“Hmmmmm I appear not to be cool…”

But anyway. I officially rock in electronic land and the electronic groupies love me. Now its time for bed as I have important meetings and tings tomorrow.

ONE MONTH AGO – AMSTERDAM

A month  ago I was having a long weekend in Amsterdam, whilst taking in a fascinating and cultural tour around the city (not the dirty red light district – nosiree) I had the surprise of bumping into an old acquaintance as we passed through the Jewish quarter.

“Adam!” I shouted, a little too loudly, the moment our eyes met.

I’m quite poor with names so I was just chuffed I could recall his through the fog of time. Although to be fair its hard for me to forget his name, Uni may have been seven years ago but I fondly remember spending numerous weeks in the Spring of ‘02 brokering a tentative peace settlement between himself and his girlfriend, a good friend of mine called Jenny.

Those were the days.

Anyway we didn’t really have time to stop and chat, we exchanged a manly hug and he introduced me to his new girlfriend Clair and explained to her how close we were. “We used to go to the same rock club!” But it was all very brief, my tour group and friends were melting into a labyrinth of streets ahead of me so we made plans to facebook and hook up sometime later. (How many times have I said that for it not to happen?)

Anyway the stars obviously wanted me to keep my promise. The small world kept getting smaller and I bumped into him again the next night on a tram.

Now my years in intelligence haven’t been wasted on me as one thing immediately struck me about Adam. He was wearing a suit. On holiday. I only wear a suit when protocol forces me too. And even then I’m usually in trainers. I break all the rules. Anyway this un-nerved me slightly. Mainly because Adam was two years younger and people younger than me should never wear suits out of choice. Adam was different from when I last knew him seven years previous, as patronising as this sounds,I remember him being a hesitant, nervy kinda guy who liked System of a Down. But lo! Before me was a calm and confident man bereft of a stoop. It was almost like he’d……… grown up.

Actually he was very grown up. He owned a house (fair enough – I like renting – honest – I don’t imagine murdering my flatmates EVER), was a marketing manager at the Home Office (same as me – well I work for a non compartmental government body and we have temps – its close) and drum roll please…. had 10 minutes previous just proposed to his girlfriend…..

“You’re the first to know!” She exclaimed, flashing a ring at me, smiling so broadly her head was in danger of splitting in two. It was very sweet but ever so slightly surreal. This wasn’t what I was expecting in Amsterdam. I was expecting art, bicycles and debauchery and not to be congratulating Adam Addison on getting married.

“You know you haven’t changed a bit.” Adam said, smiling from ear to ear and slapping me on the arm. Which I think was meant to be a compliment but the look up and down he gave me wasn’t reassuring. Did he not approve of my grubby trainers, ripped jeans and leather jacket? Maybe he meant I’d retained my youthful good looks through the years? Or was he mocking me!?!

Had I really not changed that much? Seven years is such a long time and I’ve accomplished so …… much….. I’m ………sure……. I now own two consoles and don’t live cheque to cheque. That’s progress isn’t it? Plus I don’t exclusively wear Carharrt jeans anymore. I’m practically a different person. Actually as we were speaking I was rocking a pair of Cheap Monday’s. It was apparent Adam wasn’t qualified to make such a bold statement in the face of overwhelming evidence suggesting otherwise.

“Anyway this is our stop.” Said Adam “Where is your hotel?”

“Zelctanshauung.” I said, omitting the fact I was staying in a hostel but whats a continent between friends? Plus hadn’t he seen the exchange rate? Its £9 here for a bloody sandwich!

And with that he and his new wife to be were skipping off through the night. Waving goodbye and giggling to each other.

“Last year I took some kids to Borneo to build a school!” I shouted as I waved them off.

Fuck.

Me in Amsterdam. Looking mature and ting.

SATURDAY 6th JUNE – WOODGREEN

To further compound the feeling that I’m being out grown by my peers I was recently invited to attend the wedding of one of my friends from my Borneo expedition who is also younger than me. Who isn’t? Oh how these youngsters mock me. But I was determined to go. I’m a big boy now and should go to weddings and things. I didn’t buy that suit from Primark for nothing. Plus I’d get to see the Borneo posse.

All I had to do was wake up at 6am, iron a shirt and meet Dee at Hatton Cross by 8am for a lift.

Simple.

So you can imagine the feeling of fear that came over me as I lay in my room on Saturday morning wondering why my room was so light and wondering when would my alarm go off?

I hopped over to my phone.

It was 8:45am.

I had several missed calls.

Shitity shitity fuck fuck…

“Yes hi Dee its Max. I’ve kind of just woken up. Yep. Uh huh. I know I’m a moron. Cheers for that news flash…So I erm, suppose I’ll see you there?”

Dee was very calm about it. However Alex in the background wasn’t.

“I got up at 6:15 you dick!”

I’ve never got ready for anything so quickly in my entire freaking life. I literally collapsed into my wardrobe and rolled out again fully clothed. I was out of the house in approximately 3 minutes and tearing my way along to Wood Green station like a scruffy business man who has just woken with a stonking hangover to find Camila Parker Bowles next to him smoking a cigarette and licking her lips seductively.

Of course when I arrived to Wood Green station is was closed for the weekend. Trouble loves company doesn’t it?

Shitity shitity shit.

I am Hugh Grant in Four Weddings and a Funeral. I’m a fully functioning cliche. A moronic man child running around London in a crumpled and creased white shirt with flecks of week old mocha on it and smelling like someone with the plague has spat in my arm pits.

So I ran further to Turnpike Lane station. Sweating unhealthily.

By 9:30am I was at Euston station. Purchasing a ticket through the nose. Which is painful.

“I’d-like-a-single-to-Kidd

Standing room at the back.

I love this picture. Its too damn cute for words.

I have nothing more to add really except that Caitlin is now smiling at me and not crying every time I hold her which is progress. I even made her STOP crying the other day by walking around with her and patting her on the back and making motorbike noises.

I think the reason she cried previously is she picked up on my fear and apprhension around babies. I have three irrational fears in life.

1) Shopping somewhere and having something fall in my bag when I’m distracted by something shiny which results in me being unfairly arrested for shop lifting.

2) That I accidentally cause a miscarriage with a wheelie chair at work. Y’know, someone behind me calls my name and WHAM! I’ve spun around and elbowed a preggers lady straight in the womb.

I get the nickname of baby killer.

3) I throw a kid up in the air like young fathers do and catch them by the arms as they land but I throw them with such vigour that their arms snap out of their sockets on the way down. The baby hits the ground with a thud and I’m left holding the arms.

Anyway ignore how disturbed I am and look at the cute picture. Ahhhhhhh