Zinhar – My Manifesto

It’s a wonder we don’t all suddenly break down! Has the world gone plastic mad?

I was minding my own business in town the other day, wandering around not doing anything in particular, when I was unfortunate enough to stumble upon a couple – clearly students from Cambridge University, they had the glasses and the stiff backs – discussing the place that plastic has in our modern society.

“It really is taking over our world!” said the male geek.

“I know, it truly is devastating excessive,” said the girl geek. “Imagine what our world will be like in twenty years?”

That was it.

Five minutes later I saw a plastic sign saying Tattoo removal . From that moment on I couldn’t help but imagine what the world would be like in twenty years. How debilitating it was! I would take one step forward down the street and see a plastic robot serving someone coffee in the cafe…another and see a plastic blackbird bathing in a puddle. I would just think I was safe and then I would see someone with a plastic hair-cut and a plastic dog walking behind them. It ruined my day. After a while I had to sit down and try and forget that plastic was taking over the world. It was difficult to do, considering that I could virtually feel my legs turn to plastic on the plastic fake wood bench I was seated on…

Today I was in the city. It was hot, the atmosphere was joyous, and there were about a million tourist / students running around getting in the way of cars, people, and women with baby pushchairs.The worst thing? They weren’t speaking English!

Now, as we all know, the tourist / student is the enigma of our time. We love them because they bring us money and wealth when there would be so much less – the summer trade all but supporting a vast number of businesses that couldn’t do without – and we despise them because they are a) not English b) Foreign (there’s a difference between being English and being foreign: first people think of them as not English, then they notice what kind of foreign they are and that really is a goat-getter, especially if they are wielding a head-scarf! and c) unable to understand our incredible English culture.

It isn’t like we own half the villas in Spain now, is it?

Now wait a minute…

It truly is odd if you ask me. How can we moan about the money tourists bring us in the same breathe as saying how great tourists are because they allow us to work over-time in café’s and earn money we would otherwise never have?

Who knows when we will get over this. It may take years. Maybe one day some of the people moaning might actually learn a foreign language – or at least enough to properly get by – before they go abroad for some far away club med ski holidays?

Now I don’t mean vegetable oil for cooking I mean the dark stuff, Texas tea, ’black gold’.
Yes there are the obvious areas of avoidance such as not having a car, using solar energy in your home for heating water and the such like. But if we dig deeper into the fabric of our lives isn’t oil interwoven into and around almost everything we do? Did you know for instance that hair brushes are made with oil (as are in Read the rest of this entry »

It has to be said: us humans are absolutely FANTASTIC at wasting money unnecessarily. Take councils and institutions in England, for example, what devils they are!

In this particular case I am pointing my finger right at, yes YOU, Corpus Christi college in Cambridge. I recently went there on a visit and was lucky enough (some might say) to see their brand-new clock, the purpose of which is about as confusing as what Tattoo removal is good for Read the rest of this entry »

I love being alone. Sometimes I sit in my chair with my neck pillow, and just think about stuff. That may sound sad, and it may even sound depressing, but it isn’t like that for me. It isn’t even that I particularly like myself (sometimes I even get my own goat, it has to be said), it’s just that I am comfortable in my own skin. I get to think about things, what I Read the rest of this entry »

In the grand scheme of my personality, and without sounding too self-involved, I have to say that I quite like myself. There is just one little thing that I think I would like to change if I had the chance, and that would have to be my unflappable attribute to procrastinate at every possible opportunity.
I have heard all of the sayings, “Don’t put off until tomorrow what you can do today,” or even, “the early bird catches the worm.” Read the rest of this entry »

There is nothing like a damn good To Do list to get the day started the right and productive way. Now, you may well be the kind of person who keeps a mental To Do list at the forefront of your mind at all times, but let’s be honest: most of us are useless when it come to this sort of motivational thing and we simply have better things to be doing, like looking at Read the rest of this entry »

The country gets a bad rap. Many town folk think it is rife with farmers, inbred locals, and the stench of horse manure and biodiesel coming from tractors that drive really, really slowly and hold you up on your way to the city. While all of these stereotypes and perhaps more are absolutely accurate, there are many places where they are not. Take my gran for example. She lives out in the country, has non-webbed hands and feet, is over Read the rest of this entry »

I was having a browse around on the internet a few days ago and I read an article on Sky News entitled ’iPad-mania as fans flock to Apple stores’ where iPad obsessed fans queued outside Apple stores through the night before the iPad was scheduled to be released on the 28th May. The 28th May would be remembered by every gadget fan forever for the birth of the iPad.

I can just imagine a whole bunch of geeks wrapped in Read the rest of this entry »

There are times in a man’s life when he finds himself entangled in a situation so preposterous that no amount of hypothesizing, thinking or calculating can render his mind sublime and free of tormenting thoughts. These tormenting thoughts are hard to come to terms with, especially when they arrive in ones mind in the following situation, as thick and toxic as red diesel :

I was entering Read the rest of this entry »