Highlights of 2012
What I thought I’d do this week is what many publications or television programs put out this time of year. We’re going to have a nostalgic look back at some of the pieces which I’ve roasted about during 2012. Or to put it another way – recycle a load of crap because I can’t be arsed to write a proper blog this week.
With that in mind …
January.
Ha! There was no January. I only started this site February 1. However, as I’ve pointed out on a number of occasions, the Sunday Roast ran for three years on Myspace. The decline of that site was the reason I decided to set up my own, but I am always thankful for Myspace, even if it is now a total bag of shite.
February.
Okay, this has to be one of my favourites, straight from the off.
Poor Roger Medwell. Imagine the scenario. You spend 55 years working for British Aerospace and on retiring as a director, they give you this …
Smile, Roger, smile. Stop gritting those teeth. You didn’t want a new surround sound system, anyway.
March.
If you follow my blogs, you’ll know I have a love/hate relationship with my own Walsall Council. I love to bait them, and they hate me for it. So much so, I’m told my site has been blocked, meaning council workers cannot read it while at work.
Anyway, after one of our spats, I trawled through their Twitter feed and came across this picture of their attempts to promote the town.
What exactly are they trying to attract – prostitution? I think the idea was to display a layout for planned improvement. However, all it seemed to show was a damn good place to pick up hookers.
April.
This was a Titanic month. In fact, it was a theme which went on for quite a while. You see, I’ve always had this beef with the film, Titanic. You know, the fact that Rose is safe in the lifeboat but jumps back on board thus endangering Jack. All that, “I jump, you jump,” nonsense. If she’d stayed on the bloody lifeboat, Jack would have had that piece of wood to himself when the ship went down. Not only that, it was bloody well big enough for the both of them.
Couldn’t she have given him a turn? And then there was his last words to her. “Don’t let go, Rose, don’t you ever let go.”
So what does she do? She bloody let go. Her may not have been dead, just in cold storage for a bit. What a cow.
May.
It was about this time I had loads of people searching for pictures of the dentally challenged when I did a bit about guests with bad teeth on the Jeremy Kyle Show.
Sorry, no dentures today. That was drilled to death in the summer. Go and search the archives.
My favourite piece this month showed the fine line between humour and tragedy, and that newspapers need to have a bloody good copy editor before they send the thing to print.
A note to anybody in the newspaper industry. Always check for inappropriate advertising placement before you run a story above it.
June.
This was it, the month when I took the kids on their annual holiday, only for it to piss down all week. As well as getting rained on, I was kept awake with my caravan being ten feet away from a main road. I also faced financial ruin after spending all my cash in amusement arcades because I couldn’t go anywhere due to the aforementioned rain.
But did it end there? No! Not only did the machines bankrupt me, they wouldn’t pay out on the few occasions I did win.
Yes, IOU £1. That’s the first time I’ve ever been given an IOU from a machine.
July.
And to celebrate his 94th birthday, Nelson Mandela turns into a chameleon.
August.
And I can’t believe after many months, some people were still using their search engines to find Jeremy Kyle Teeth and ending up with me.
No – still not going to show any pics but one thing I did comment on was the evolution of man. You see, scientists reckon in a few million years, the human race will have evolved into a higher and lower species.
Millions of years? It’s already happened. Look!
Ascent of man? I bloody hope not.
September.
Bit of a quiet month over here, but not in Haren – Holland after some silly girl posted on Facebook that she was having a party. 4000 people gatecrashed the event causing riots and thousands of pounds worth of damage.
4000 people! Imagine. That’s 4000 people without a social life.
October.
I spent much of this month traumatised after a good friend of mine, Rich, pointed out that the picture of the smiling Aquafresh family from the 80s, seemed to suggest the mother and father were siblings and their child could be the result of an incestuous relationship.
I’m still receiving counselling.
November.
November – I saw this strange sight.
A single seat for shoppers to sit on. All the others in Wolverhampton Centre appeared to be of a two or three seat variety. However, this one was on its own. A seat for Nobby No Mates.
Only in Wolverhampton.
December.
Two words to sum up December.
So that was 2012.
Not sure how long I’m going to go on roasting. Could be time for a break. Like a jar of pickled onions, there’s only so much you can take before things start to repeat. I mean, how much more can I wring out of the Titanic nonsense, or talk about Gothic Girl while going on about people with bad teeth on Jeremy Kyle.
Yes, I certainly think I should leave the latter, alone.
Cheers.
Nick
Antony N Britt - Author 
Hi Nick,
The Nelson Mandela picture made me laugh, haven’t seen that before.
I’m talking to a young writer in China. She tells me I am better off than many people, because not many old people can use computers! Her grand parents aren’t interested in computers. I had a PC before Windows came out and a Commodore before that. My young Chinese friend has only used Windows 7 and 8! I had Chinese students as guests on Christmas Day. That was interesting. We played Yahtzee, because numbers are the same in most languages! They came all the way from Wolverhampton! 🙂
I’m only just getting used to computers, now – though I did used to have an old Amstrad.
Hi Nick! I hope all is well with you and yours. Is it Myspace, or is it that so many jumped ship so quickly? I wonder what happened to that awful painting! Do you think it was ever hung, (except, perhaps, with a noose.)? I never detected any “love” in your relationship with the Walsall Council? Nick, it’s a friggin movie…..fiction….let it alone and just don’t watch that movie again. As for the arrangement of the newspaper, perhaps th person had a particularly sick sense of humour. I haven’t been to LAs Vegas, our closest gambling mecca, since I was 21. I didn’t spend a penny. I gave someone a ride, stayed for a few weeks, met a nice guy, and had some fun. I didn’t spend a penny. I did however have a really GREAT meal and beating someone at their own game. This rich Texan kept bugging me to takemeto a meal. He was obviously talking about4 more than a meal, kept mentioning how much money he had and stuff like that. Finally I said, “Sure, I’ll have lunch with you and ONLY lunch!” He took me to a very expensive restaurant. I ordered steak, lobster, all things that I knew were expensive (no prices on the menuy). Then there were several things I took from the dessert cart, not to mention, very expensive champaign. THEN, I said, thank you very much for the meal. He said, as I knew he would, “How about coming up to my room and letting me give you a massage.? I prompltly said, again, thanks for the lunch and walked away. He never bugged me again. I think he got the message. When
I told the guy in the band that I was seeing, I had told him how the guy had been bugging me. he laughed and laughed and laughed! Gambling is not my thing. But certain ‘games’ can be fun! Mandela’s smile always shines through, even if the rest of him blends into the background. Imagine going into a restaurant and saying…”Party of 4000!”
I love Dicken’s ‘A Christmas Carol’. Scrooge got past the BAH HUMBUG stage pretty quick. My favorite lines in the book are wen he tells Jacob Marley that he was good man of business, and Marley counters with “Mankind was my business!” The rest of the story entails Ebenezer coming to understand just that. I wish for you a different perception!
Be happy Nick!
I think folk jumped ship because it was ruined. Even now, I find it hard to stay too long as it’s so unusable. Takes ages to load pages and then navigating the back button often doesn’t work then takes me too far when I hit it twice. Frustrating.
I have nothing against Christmas, but it’s been hijacked by the retailers. Like all festivals – Easter, Halloween … Just an excuse to get you to part with your money.
As for gambling. Never done it big. I’ll stick to penny slots.