1 Year Later.

Probably my favourite picture of Danyl. That face meant he'd done something quite immature.

1 year seems to be the milestone that everyone gravitates towards in regards to grief but for me it seems like another day, just like when you're unemployed weekends become meaningless, when you feel as much sadness as I have every day over the last 364 then another just seems like a drop in the ocean. There isn't a single day that I haven't thought about my best friend or how my life is completely different without him. The number of songs I can't listen to and films I can't now watch because of the fear that they'll push me over the edge into a blubbering mess is more than I dare count, yet still I must put a brave face on it all. I suspect that since that day I've become quite a depressingly sombre cunt but I suspect there are a great many people who knew Dan that aren't quite the same for not having him around.

I miss a lot of things about him but he was the only person who ever agreed with me on 2 extremely important things... That Final Fantasy 8 was better than Final Fantasy 7 and the Rocky 4 was the best of the bunch. It may not sound like much but it's the small things that really matter. I remember one time we went to Tesco because I needed beer and he needed Tesco brand cola, I bought a 4 pack of something fancy that he didn't approve of and he spent about 10 minutes filling the trolley TO THE BRIM with Tesco Cola and Go Ahead Bars. When I asked him he simply said that they were on offer and that the trolley would last him a week at most.

I think the one difference between a year ago and now is that now I find it a lot easier to remember the good times. A year ago all I could think of is HOW? And WHY? Shortly after that it was all about going to see him at the undertakers after they'd fixed up his face, laughing and pointing because they'd put make up on him and then crying solidly for half an hour. That was the moment that really confirmed it for me, because before I wanted it to be an extremely elaborate practical joke so hard that a part of me was fooled by my own desperation. Even seeing him there, dead, and really obviously dead too, there was still a little part of me that wanted him to jump out of that plush coffin and shout "Ha! Fucking got you!"

Soon after that I was consumed with a festering hatred for the people who had done it. How dare they kill my friend, I thought to myself, they should probably kill themselves to make it even, I rationalised irrationally. I even drafted out an open letter to them, trying to convince them that if they had any shred of human decency, a point which I questioned several times, that the guilt of taking another life should erode them, eat them from the inside out until there is nothing more than a husk. The only logical thing, I reasoned, was for them to just kill themselves... I now understand that I was wrong, and somewhat dim about the whole thing. They would never have read it and I wouldn't have felt any better knowing they had. Now I save that hatred for the people representing them in court but that is mostly on principal alone.

The emotion behind the pain of remembering soon died down, like an infected wisdom tooth that you slowly get used to, but I tried to find ways to keep remembering him because even though it is unpleasant to remember how much we have all lost, I'm scared of the day that I forget. For about 6 months I wore a white shirt and black tie, the same ones I wore to the funeral, everywhere I went. The collar on the shirt was near black by the time I eventually washed it. I completely stopped shaving because, and this is how I reasoned it, "Dan didn't care and there are more fucking important things than cutting hair off your fucking face." For a while, like many others, I considered getting a tattoo but I could only think of "WWDD" or "What Would Danyl Do?" Only to come up with the answer "probably not get a tattoo." So I didn't.

There was 1 inside joke that only he and I had and it was this:

Me: It's foggy out, Dan.
Dan: You know what that means.
Me: Yep, means someone just died.
*insert raucous laughter here*

... Yes, it's a horribly morbid joke (and even the word "joke" is a bit of a stretch) but it was in reference to a game called Persona 4 where murders would happen, almost on schedule, whenever there was fog. Dan and I found the mechanic hilarious and would constantly mock it whenever it actually was foggy in real life. It genuinely brings me no end of sadness that on the day before he died I was driving to work and it was really foggy, I typed out the text when I got to the warehouse and was about to send it to him... But I didn't. I'd already made the joke 2 weeks before and didn't want it to get stale.

I wish I'd sent it. I wish my last words to my friend were something that meant more...

This is why when I signed anything or had to write anything at the funeral it was always "It's foggy out, Dan."


Danyl, I drove home tonight, a year to the day after you left us, and it was so foggy I could barely see the road. An unnervingly eerie coincidence that, to me, seemed simply appropriate. I will continue to miss you and the effect you had on my life until the day I forget you, a day which I will relentlessly attempt to avoid.

Top 6 Super Badass Hero Animals

I realise that my blog is all about things I hate, it makes a sick kind of sense to have a place where I can keep all my bile but what you may not know is that I possess the ability to have respect for things, which if you have read any of my previous blogs you have reasonable cause to doubt. I was flicking through buzzfeed and saw a photo that didn't move me as such, there was an emotional reaction but it wasn't pity or sadness, it wasn't sympathy or empathy, it was simply "FUCK! THAT'S TOTALLY BADASS! THAT POOCH IS MORE OF A BADASS THAN MIGHTY THOR AND MR. T COMBINED!!" It's just a case of being so impressed by the heroism of animals that surely can't even fathom the slightest idea of what the word itself represents. Reading about some of these animals makes me question what the word "hero" even means, is it just another word for duty? All of these animals were doing what they must have considered their duty, all of them did it to the point where they, themselves, were nearly or actually killed in the process. Life must be important to animals because you can see that they understand what danger is, which means they must understand on a basic level that they are alive and it sure would suck to be not so alive anymore. Yet they throw themselves into harms way regardless. That's what makes them BADASS.
So here's my salute to the top 6 beasts that simply gave the finger to bad things and were all like "fuck you, bad things! I'm going to spin around in a circle for a bit and then shit all over your parade!"


6: Zoey the super-hench baby-saving Chihuahua

It's like the mind teaser about a sack of grain, a chicken and a fox. You've got a boat, can only fit one in the boat and you need to get all of them to the other side. The fox will eat the chicken and the chicken will eat the grain. Only in this situation you've got a 1 year old child, a chihuhua and a rattlesnake. On top of that there's no boat and the rattlesnake's all like "FUCK YOU, CHILD! I'M GONNA BITE YO' FACE!"

Grrr, I'm totes evil etc.

99% of the time, given the same situation, something tragic happens. Rattlesnake bites child, child dies, parents mourn. However, this time, in sunny Northern Colorado, Zoey the Chihuahua was having precisely none of it. Zoey leapt heroically in front of the child as the villainous reptilian was fixing to strike and took the, highly venomous, rattlesnake bite like an uber-boss. In my head she lay on the ground dying, flipping the cowardly bastard snake off as she slowly slipped into the blackness.

You suuuuuuuuck, snaaaaaaake.

And so Zoey died... Wait... What?! Zoey pulled through and is now prancing and barrelling around like a mental? Every joyful leap seeming to echo statements like "FUCK YOU, SNAKE!" and "IWINIWINIWIN!" Wonder what ever happened to the snake? Well the grandfather of the child curb stomped the fucker and now keeps its skin as a trophy.

Nature 1-0 Nature

FLAWLESS VICTORY!

5: The 3 Anti-Paedophile Lions of Ethiopia

A horrible and gut wrenching story that has become one in a sea of human rights atrocities that seem to be an African pandemic, it's not exclusive to Africa but there does seem to be a monopoly. 3 men kidnapped, abused and probably did other unspeakable things (unfounded but they're definitely a bunch of cunts and I wouldn't be surprised) to a 12 YEAR OLD GIRL before attempting to force the girl to marry one of them.

NOPE! Ain't happening according to 3 unnamed lions! One moment a horrible human rights atrocity is about to happen, the next moment the girl is found being guarded by 3 super hardcore lions, flexing and growling and giving the evil "I'm gon' fuckin' eat you" eye to anyone who came near. The thing that makes this so miraculous is that, firstly, child abduction stories never really end well,  this is definitely one a billion, and secondly, LIONS EAT PEOPLE! They're big muscly cat bastards with hench manes and raptor-like claws. It would have been more likely for the lions to see the 3 men abusing the poor girl, attack them, maul them to shit and then eat the fuck out of the girl. This time, they decided to protect the girl from 3 paedophiles. 

Well done, lions, well done.

Perez Hilton made this... He is accurate.

4: Cher Ami, Le Pigeon avec BALLS

Ever watch Stop The Pigeon as a child? You know, the program where Dick Dastardly moonlights as a Red Baron rip off? No? Well it's all about a brave carrier pigeon that avoids the clumsy attacks of Germany's best even though everyone had American accents. I may be remembering it wrong but all I remember from childhood viewings of the show is that it was deeply confused in its message.

What? Create planes that can eat pigeons... What are you trying to say? Also I question the physics here.

During World War I carrier pigeons were used to great effect and were the unsung heroes of the war. All unsung apart from Cher Ami, a pigeon of British origin with a French name who was trained by the Americans. Many pigeons succeeded and many pigeons failed but Cher Ami was special because she managed to do both, saving 194 people in the process. Her mission had initially been a success, one way at least, but upon returning she was spotted and fired upon relentlessly. She was felled. German soldiers had shot Cher Ami (French for Dear Friend) through the breast, on top of that she had been blinded in one eye and she was covered in blood, possibly from the bullet in the chest or maybe from the leg that was only attached by a single tendon. I don't know about you but I reckon that list of injuries is enough to justify anyone calling it a day and hopping towards the light.

"Fuck Zis!" I like to imagine the pigeon thought, even though she wasn't actually French, "I've got a job to do! Those pussies can't shoot for shit!" At which she got back up and flew, bloody and broken, back home. She delivered the message and saved 194 people, at which point she cooed her last breath and...

What?! This one lived too? That's just implausible! Yep, that's right, surgeons (plural) battled to save the life of the pigeon... Which they did, even fashioning a small wooden leg to replace the one that got obliterated. Cher Ami returned to America and received a bundle of medals including the Croix de Guere. She died from her injuries but that was not the end of her journey, there was one more trip for her... To a taxidermist! She can now be found, standing proud on one leg, in the Smithsonian!

3: Togo, Hero Sled Dog

The story is widely known as the "1925 Serum Run to Nome" and other places are where you can get most of the details about that. To dumb it down to its most base elements, some idiots lived somewhere too cold for normal people to live and all suddenly got diphtheria, probably not their fault but it probably would have been smart to live a bit nearer to civilization and, I don't know, a doctor. Let's just assume these people were doing crucial research in the field of... Snow and therefore HAD to live here, that makes the whole situation sound a bit more worthy of your sympathy. I don't actually know, I dislike doing research, but that's what the imagination is for, huh? A relay was set up with sled dogs to deliver the serum to these people, a truly heroic mission that would be taken up, mostly, by a man called Leonhard Seppala, a man who looks so grizzled and badass that I feel like I've just been throat-punched by his grainy, black and white, wiki pic.

Looks somewhat like the Illusive Man from Mass Effect.

The freight dog Balto became the hero of the mission in the eyes of the LAZY ASS PRESS who only gave credit to the dog who'd completed the last 55 miles. Yes it was -35 C and yes the wind could strip your face clean off your skull but Togo made a round trip of 365 miles, crossing Norton Sound, dealing with ridiculous blizzards where visibility was ZERO and Togo navigated through and he kept all the rest of the dogs and his owner, as well as hundreds of Nomenites, from certain death. Togo was the lead dog, it was his responsibility, it didn't matter if it was -40 C and it didn't matter if the wind was blowing him off his feet. Togo knew he had to man the fuck up for the sake of the mission, so that's what he did. He manned the fuck up... Old school!

Nothing more old school than piggy backs, yo!

The Nomenites got their serum in the end but what of Togo? Well, he di... Seriously? He survived too?! Shit snacks! That's a hefty-ass beast and no mistaking! Togo survived for another 4 years before he was euthanised. However, before that and directly after the mission, he got off leash and chased reindeer for a couple of hours... The 365 mile round trip had only heightened his need to CHASE THE FUCK OUT OF SOME REINDEER! This needs to be put into context, Togo wasn't young, he'd been lead dog for 7 years by this point but even after traipsing through the maw of the frozen, beating heart, of Hell he still thought "w00t I'ma be all over these damn antler horses! Come back here Rudolph, I wanna nibble at your hoof dealies!" When he returned he was recognised for his achievement and became somewhat of a celebrity, even showing up in a Lucky Strike commercial (smoking was both cool and good for you back then.) The team, led by Togo, competed in several sled dog races, utterly trouncing the locals to a point that when they referred to the competition in a later conversation over fresh cups of tea and piping hot Narwhal blubber, they could air quote and say "competition."

After Togo (who was named after a Japanese admiral, by the way,) died his skin was custom mounted and put in the Iditarod HQ museum and his skeleton is in the Yale University collection. A truly exceptional dog.

2: Sergeant Reckless the War Horse

What? Oh yes, that's right, the most amazingly badass name you'll ever hear. It would fit as the name of a rock band too, it just works that well. Regardless of totally badass name, Sergeant Reckless, a mare of Mongolian horse breeding with an insatiable appetite for just about everything (though she was restricted to only 2 bottles of Coke per day) earned those stripes by being a gutsy old battle-axe.

Her job was to carry recoilless rounds, between 4-8 a trip, each weighing 24 pounds, which for normal people is about 11 kg. So that's between 44 and 88 kg per trip! Her most notable accomplishment was at the battle of Panmunjom-Vegas (did I mention that this was the Korean war? I'm proper good at story telling, I am,) in which she carried a total of over 9,000 pounds (over 4 tons) over a distance of 35 miles in a single day. All of this was whilst under heavy fire, all whilst having the ring of gun fire in your ears, all whilst avoiding barbed wire and mines, in fact she suffered 2 shrapnel wounds, the first above her eye and the second in her left flank. She soldiered on like a freakin' tank, if anything I like to think that the sight of her own blood only made her mad and turn green like an equine Incredible Hulk. To put this into context, we are pretty sturdy, tough and determined creatures, we rocketed to the top of the food chain and we clung on and never let go but I bet you that even Hulk Hogan hates carrying shopping in from the car when it's raining, I bet that Arnie would be rather annoyed at having to help someone carry a sofa across a busy street and I bet you that Jackie Chan hates carrying hand luggage around a busy airport. Sergeant Reckless, 4 tons, 35 miles, no rain, no street, no busy airport, a fucking full on shit-storm of bullets, shrapnel, barbed wire, land mines and hot flying death. To even compare the examples, Arnie would have had to be hit by a truck and Hulk Hogan would have had to accidentally prick his finger on a pineapple. For these heroics she was promoted to corporal and rightly so!

It cannot be underestimated how much the horse helped morale. I know if I was stuck in the Korean war being quipped at by Alan Alda all day while he stitched up my liver that I'd love a horse that ate all my food, helmet linings and its own horse blanket, I'd love a horse that slept next to the majors camp fire because it was the warmest place around, I'd love a horse that upon being reluctantly let on to a ship that had been given a prize for "cleanest ship" 2 years running INSTANTLY HURLS EVERYWHERE! Sergeant Reckless the War Horse was a character and she was promoted to sergeant several years after the war finished. She also received more medals than I've ever seen in real life, including 2 purple hearts for the wounds she received, a Marine Corps Good Conduct Medal for eating everyone's shit and a lot of other fancy medals that governments give out for extreme horse bravery.

and a statue!

She died, aged 19, after developing arthritis and, ironically, falling onto a barbed wire fence. Sergeant Reckless was the kind of animal who worked hard, played hard, saved several hundred lives, inadvertently ended several hundred (not on her side though, so it's ok) and ate ALL OF THE THINGS.

SUPER AWESOME FAN ART!

1: Zanjeer, Bomb-Sniffing Super-Dog

In a country where life is cheap, meaning that the cost of killing everyone must be sky-high, one dog decided to cock his leg at the chequebook of terrorism. Zanjeer was a simple detection dog, a Labrador retriever who served under the wing of the Mumbai police. As with many of the animals in the list there was a single defining moment in the life of Zanjeer that catapulted him into the status of "hero-animal" but in the case of Zanjeer even before that moment happened in 1993 he could have already been considered to be, at the very least, an exceptional detection dog who had already saved several hundred and maybe even thousands of potential lives. Before the events in 1993 he had already found 11 military bombs, 57 country-made bombs, 175 petrol bombs and 600 detonators.

On Friday the 12th of March in 1993 13 bomb explosions ripped through Mumbai (then Bombay) killing a total of 350 and injuring over 1200. A series of terrorist acts perpetrated by the nefarious leaders of India's underworld, headed by a mob boss and carried out by smugglers and Pakistani double agents (allegedly,) essentially a dream team of stereotypical evil doers, all of which would not be out of place with an assortment of moustaches previously owned by Dick Dastardly and/or Hitler. A right bunch of evil cunts essentially. I don't care what their agenda was, I don't care if they were fighting against injustice or anything (they probably weren't) nothing excuses terrorism. I hope they all died painfully and if they're still alive I hope they have terrible AIDS.

Zanjeer got his best sniffing boots on (completely metaphorical, India do not possess the technology to efficiently produce sniffing boots for dogs in all districts,) strapped on a "can do" attitude and got to work. There were no airs or graces about Zanjeer, at least there were none that made it to any report of the dog. His wikipedia entry is a fifth of the size of Sergeant Reckless or Cher Ami but even though he was never under the line of fire, he was always working against time and against impossible odds. If I were told that just under 20 bombs would go off in my district, potentially killing thousands, I'm not entirely sure how I'd react to that, I'm not sure I'd be able to cope with the pressure, I'm almost definite that I'd have to stop home before setting out to save the district to change my pants, trousers, socks and shoes. Zanjeer didn't really have to but he did his job and he did it better than anyone possibly could have under the circumstances. There's a lot to be said for simply being very good at your job.

On that fateful day Zanjeer found a scooter bomb that contained RDX explosives and gelatin sticks, he found 3 Type 56 rifles (Chinese AK-47s,) 5 9-mm pistols, and 200 grenades. Several days later he found suitcases that contained 9 Type 56 rifles. Now, it's not like Togo where there was a sickness and he had to deliver the cure, it's not like Cher Ami where the message had to be delivered so that the troops could march in the right direction. This isn't black and white. What Zanjeer did was, at the very least, stop 3 additional bomb explosions, saving potentially hundreds of lives but when you consider the number of assault rifles he made sure were found, the number of potential lives saved starts to get into silly numbers. Each grenade is designed to cause as much damage as possible with the potential to kill a dozen or so people in one go, multiply that by the 200 that Zanjeer found and you've get a lot fewer hurt, maimed, injured and dead innocents on your hands. I understand that the numbers could be far less but eliminating the threat of even 1 grenade or 1 gun is ensuring someone out there gets to keep on breathing, it's ensuring that someone out there gets to see their children, their wife, their husband, their friends, smile just one more time. It ensures precisely 1 less potential tragedy in a country that could definitely do without the heartache.

Zanjeer died from swelling in his paws and lungs. To pay adequate tribute to a dog that had saved so many people Zanjeer was given a full state funeral. An exemplar of the virtue of duty if ever there was one.

Good boy, Zanjeer. Good boy.

Drew vs. London

I love London, I really love London, there's something about how it's a melting pot of the weird and wonderful built on the hub of an old empire that still persists in having faint residues of its own sordid history hanging in alleyways and down little, cobbled, side roads. I like how there are a billion museums of London that seem to be built into industrial estates, how there are several billion gift shops that sell the same 5 t-shirts, none of which have anything to do with London, but have more to do with quotes from films that were hilarious 5 years ago. I love that small businesses have a chance because even though the rent is probably sky high in EVERY part of London, there's probably enough footfall to justify there being a decent amount of walk in trade, completely regardless of what your business is. Are you an organic, indoor, squid farmer/breeder? You are? Well New Cross or Dalston will be perfect for you! Herbalist, Punk, Henna, Magician? You are? Brilliant! There's probably a market for that in Shoreditch somewhere, though Shoreditch isn't as mental as people think, it's just tourists with stupid haircuts and locals with massive beards that they'll shave off in a couple of months once they realise that having a fake tail is the new in thing. I genuinely love that when I drive around London I can expect to be stuck at Trafalgar Square because that means I can eat my lunch somewhere with a great view that's air conditioned and I can listen to my own music. I look out at tourists who paid to be here and sometimes I laugh and point before realising that I'm a) Pointing and laughing through glass and b) at work.


I really love the MONEY parts of town too, they're all so grand and sterile looking. All the business people look the same, all the same suits on the men and all the same heels on the women with exactly the same proportion of stockinged leg showing. Not one businesswoman I've seen has been ugly but, then again, maybe the ugly ones have to work through lunch to make up for it. It's odd that in the rich areas that even the roads are nicer to drive on, the people are more pleasant to look at and the pubs have ever so slightly more hilarious names, most notably Dirty Dicks... Look it up, it's real. So what is there to dislike about London? Well, if you're just a stereotypical out-of-towner then there's a lot, especially if you're from the North I notice, there sure is a great deal of animosity from the North for our nations capital. Maybe it's because there's a greater number of great cities up North than there are down South. We only really have London. Canterbury is pretty awesome but it's not really a city, not in the same way that Manchester is a City, not in the same way that Birmingham, Leeds and Sheffield are cities. It's not exclusive to the North though, there's about a 50/50 chance that anyone from the South who's not from London will have something negative to say about the place. The impression I get from the North is that it's because London is an unfriendly place and that people are in a rush, everyone's rude and nowhere sells a decent pint. Well, yes, it can be unfriendly and people are in a rush but I've met plenty of pleasant people there and you'd find a decent pint if you didn't go to the first Wetherspoons you saw when you got out the station. The southern dissenters are a bit more vague, citing personal experiences with traffic or weather or a particularly violent mugging, these are a lot harder to argue with.

I've got another theory. I've been around London long enough now to see that it has some quirks, some awesome bits and some bits that some people would find unattractive, however there's only one thing that really bugs me. It's something that, every time I see it happen, I audibly say something along the lines of "EURGH! What a horrible sort of utter cunt that person is!"

 Spitting.

Yes, spitting. Sometimes in bins, sometimes out of a taxi window, sometimes into a burger king wrapper that is then flung to the ground (littering is another blog entirely.) Spitting utterly disgusts me when done in public, especially in a place so crowded and especially done with the sheer ferocity that people in London seem to do it. Imagine me, driving along as happy as the proverbial Larry, I stop at the lights, bobbing my head to whatever totally badass music I chose that day, I look around and there's some guy hocking a massive wodge of phlegm, dangling it out of his mouth as if it was performance art, letting it drop as if it was in slow motion and then rolling his window back up as if it was nothing. What a fucking bell end!!! How does someone even produce THAT MUCH PHLEGM?! Why would he do it in plain sight of, at least, 5 people?! What an utter cunt! How bloody disgusting!

The moral of this story.

I look tastier when you can see my face.

Calm... I must calm myself to analyse why I hate it so much. BECAUSE IT'S FUCKING DISGUSTING!!! Don't fucking spit in a bin on a busy high street! I know it's standard practise in many other countries, especially around Asia, and some Asian people have been culprits in this but it's been an even split with white locals too, so don't think this is some sort of intolerance for the racial and cultural melting pot that is Greater London, because I'm all for that, it makes the capital what it is. If you didn't have the Turkish, you wouldn't have Shisha Bars and Kebab Shops, if you didn't have the Jamaicans you wouldn't have clubs that encourage odd and violent sex-dancing, if you didn't have the Chinese you wouldn't have mutated orange ducks hanging from steamy windows. Stop being a racist, you racist!

I don't entirely care that it's unhygienic, but I do a bit, I think the odds are stacked in the favour of me having stood in considerably worse, my problem is that it makes me personally feel a little bit ill. I don't have an entirely delicate disposition but I know that there are people who are a little bit more wafty than I and, therefore, there must be people who find the act completely revolting. Also, according to the official AIDS website, saliva can contain AIDS if the spitter is a carrier too. Slim chance I know but it's about as slim as getting lung cancer from second hand smoke from someone smoking twenty metres away when it's windy... Which it ALWAYS is.

Dear London, stop spitting so I can live without the possibilities of contracting AIDS... Or Lung Cancer from your awful gob... Just stop it, ok?

Hyperbole and a Half get it, why can't you?

Danyl Ponsford, the eulogy.

This picture lies on his grave. I'm proud to call him my friend.

What is there to say about Danyl that hasn’t already been said? Everyone has experienced extreme grief as well as joy after reminiscing upon stories that we’d all been saving for a rainy day. Danyl was a great many things to a great many people, he loved his football, he loved his games but the overarching theme, the bit that you didn’t often see unless you really looked was that, above all, the man loved his friends and his family.

I look at you all today and I remember your sad faces, I remember your tears and I remember your cries of pain and anguish. I’m sure a lot of you are torturing yourselves now, wishing to the stars that you could have more time with Dan and I don’t blame you… But Danyl would.

I’ll tell you what I remember about him. I first met him as a boy with many troubles, he had a philosophical silence, honest to the point of bluntness and a way about him that suggested that everything he did was for a good reason, even if the reason was that he was extremely pissed off. He grew into the best friend any of us could ever have. He embodied the Ponsford strength, both physically and mentally, this was a man who refused to take pain medication for the abundance of scrapes, cuts, bruises and BREAKAGES he would accumulate through football, (once waiting until his ankle had swelled to the size of a small basketball before even considering not playing another game, nevermind going to the hospital! I can only imagine that he considered waiting for 4 hours surrounded by sick people was a waste of time when the doctor would only tell him to rest. He knew he had to rest, he just didn’t.) This was a man who faced adversity with nothing but pure contempt, I can’t count the times I’ve seen people, situations and circumstances try to get the better of him, each one failed and each one failed spectacularly.

Danyl was a man of true clarity, a renegade realist in a world where escapism and hedonism are accepted cultural norms, cultural norms that he would never judge you for, he accepted that other people would always do things he, personally, would not approve of and he would nudge you towards the way of reason and logic but would ultimately accept that the rest of the world is going to do what the rest of the world is going to do.

It’s a lot easier to admit it now that I’m absolutely sure he’s not listening but the man was ALWAYS RIGHT in so much as his arguments were so ingrained in logic and so steeped in his own personal idea of honour that even if you felt you’d won, you’d feel bad for doing so, which (Dan would tell you) means you’ve lost. It would often be infuriating dealing with Dan, he’d give you a hard time simply for the fact that he could but I know, as I hope you all do, that it was never malicious. The way I saw it was that it was a mixture between a constant test of character and simple play. We all know he loved to play his games and play football but how often have you been on the wrong end of Dan playing with what is and isn’t socially acceptable? From simply correcting someone’s grammar to their face or correcting EVERYONE’s spelling on Facebook, to slowly deconstructing the facile complaints of angry customers in the most calm and the most methodical manner so that by the end of it the customer felt like a complete jerk for having the gall to even make a complaint in the first place. I’ve seen this happen, I’ve seen him do it to loud, irritating, people at the pub, even when it back fires and the other party reacts, he can still talk them down to a point where they, firstly, humbly apologise and, secondly, rethink their entire existence as a living entity.

It’s genuinely as if the man was a Jedi.

But this was just one of many qualities that the people who were close to him tried to emulate. I could feel myself, over the years, becoming more and more like Dan, I tried replicating that cold stare he saves for people he doesn’t know and for all intents and purposes it just looked like I had rather uncomfortable gas. I corrected people’s grammar and spelling online and I got called a Nazi. I tried to play every game he played better than he did but I’d fail miserably and when I thought I’d won, like that time I managed to bounce a 2p coin off the table and into his Pepsi, I had only set myself up for spectacular defeat. In this particular case he congratulated me, got up as if to go to the toilet, we didn’t see him for about 5 minutes, it turns out he’d gone to his car and grabbed a handful of the grubbiest, fluff encrusted, KFC grease stained, change from his car, returned and, without a word, dumped it unceremoniously into my pint. He looked at me as if to say “Check Mate,” but I knew that wasn’t the end. I eventually fished the change out, counted it up, and what he’d put in my pint was JUST less than the price of another pint.

His game was DEEP!

At times like this we remind each other that we should not grieve because the departed would not have wanted us to do so, they would’ve wanted us to celebrate their life and the fact that we are lucky enough to have ours to look forward to. After nearly 16 years of knowing Danyl, I reckon he would’ve wanted you to grieve a little bit, just a little bit. But after that he would’ve told you to “Man Up” and get on with things. A philosophy that fits him so well that I genuinely can’t imagine him saying anything else to people grieving at his own funeral. In fact, knowing Dan, he probably would’ve hurried proceedings along so he could go play football.

I know that his loss is as big a tragedy as most of us have ever encountered but Danyl would’ve rallied (were he not the victim) and he would’ve been the pure embodiment of Ponsford strength, he would not have cried, he would have remained stony faced and given those who looked to be struggling most the rarest of gifts, a reluctant Danyl hug. He would have reminded us of all the wonderful times we’d had with that person and how nothing can ever take that away from us and though life may have flittered away for them, it continues to steam on for the rest of us, so don’t feel too sad for too long because the deceased, who loved you so very much, would not like to think that their death led to you having a miserable life. He would be solemn and respectful and then, afterwards, he would drink several pints of Pepsi (WITH NO ICE! DAMMIT!) while the rest of us drowned our sorrows and he’d laugh, smile, and tell us stories we’d heard a hundred times before, stories that we’d told each other a hundred times before, but now seem proper, appropriate… Poignant even. He’d be your quiet cheerleader and your shoulder to cry on and if you were still suffering he’d be your swift kick up the arse too. He was a great many things to a great many people because of one simple fact and that was that Danyl Ponsford, our friend, our brother, simply excelled at life.

So do not grieve too long for Danyl, for he died knowing that he was truly great, knowing that he had the love of an entire town, knowing that he had family who adored him, that he had the closest of friends who would each take a bullet for him, that he had lived his life the way he wanted to, never once compromising.

And do not feel sorry for Danyl. When next you raise a toast to him, do not do it out of sadness, do not do it out of anger for those who did this, don’t do it out of the fear that this may one day happen to you. The next time you raise a glass to our GLORIOUS DEAD, you do it with PRIDE! Pride that you had the honour of knowing Danyl Ponsford and PRIDE that he chose to have you in his life.

Danyl Ponsford, my friend.

No words can adequately describe the sensation of losing your friend, no mere words can comfort you regardless of how soothing or witty or perfectly constructed they are because they’re all overshadowed by those original two, “he’s dead.” It is not a special feeling when you look at the world, people have lost loved ones and they’ve lost them in the most disheartening of circumstances but that doesn’t make the fact that YOU’VE lost someone any better. Today I lost my best friend. Today my friends and I have lost someone who meant more than the world to us.

AND AS A SIDE NOTE! THE WORD “LOST” SEEMS INADEQUATE TOO! IT’S NOT LIKE WE’RE GOING TO FUCKING FIND HIM AGAIN!

I knew what to expect, I’ve been told enough about the various stages of grief to know that I’m in for a rough time, the old cliches ring true but it doesn’t mean they weigh any less on the shoulders of those who have to deal with the reality of the situation.

His name was Danyl, yes with a Y, I didn’t misspell. He was someone I truly respected. The word respect gets thrown around a lot especially in regards to celebrities and other folk that people don’t actually know but I really respected Danyl. He was unwavering in his beliefs and in his strict code of honour, he was fiercely loyal, he was the strongest of us and now, because of the recklessness of some utter FUCK, he is no more. I remember every time I’ve felt down, depressed, angry or sad, I remember all the times that I’ve wanted to throw in the towel, strike a match and watch the world burn. He was always there and he’d always have the same pattern.

“Haggis,” he’d start, completely disregarding that I’ve tried to distance myself from that nickname for the last 9 years, “you COULD strike that match,” (this is all hypothetical by the way,) “you COULD strike that match and self destruct but what would that get you? You’d have nothing to gain and after it you’d have something worse than what you started with. Just calm down, step back and live to fight another day.”

He’d say it in a way where you knew that listening to him would be the right choice, not because his voice was soothing or that he was overly sympathetic, because it wasn’t and he wasn’t, but he was empathetic. He’d gone through a great deal of things that I could barely even imagine and, right up until he told you, he would seem like a completely closed book.

I remember my first car crash, he was in the car with me. A van smashed into the passenger side door and wrote off my car, he was fine but I’d twisted my back and I got out of the car as if I was going to knife someone. He was the picture of calm, he told me that the only way to deal with reality is to see things how they are. He told me to stop being emotional and to simply write down everything that had happened, he told me to get a number plate, to write down a description, to draw a diagram and then he stayed with me and told me about his life. It was from that point that I knew Danyl was a real friend.

I know that everyone has to speak well of the dead but I don’t know anyone who didn’t like Danyl, when you first met him he was cool and inattentive, barely even recognising your existence. I’ve heard people tell of his laser-like stare, which he would save for people who had offended him and I’ve witnessed it a couple of times when I’d had a little too much to drink, but it was always a front, he was the most open and accepting person I knew, never one for prejudice and always ready to give people the benefit of the doubt. We were like chalk and cheese and I often question how he ever put up with someone like me as a friend but I know now that it’s because he had faith in people and he trusted his friends. I genuinely wish that we could all have more time with him, it’s only been half a day and I already miss him more than I’ve ever missed anyone before. My eyes have not stopped with the water works since I heard and I’m ok with that, they can do what they need to do but I know that, in the long term, my tears won’t bring my friend back to me.

I would pay anything! Any sum of money! I would go to any length just to be able to go to the pub with him again and make Simpsons references all night and talk about football and just simply BE there. I would give absolutely anything I had! The pain I feel is nothing compared to what I’m sure everyone else must be feeling but this is MY PAIN! He was my friend and I’ll never see him again! Life will never ever be the same for not having him in it and there’s nothing I can do! Why is it that when confronted with death our only reaction is outright helplessness? I can’t do anything, I can’t feel anything other than horror, I want to curl up and sleep and cry for a year but I know what Danyl would say.

“Haggis,” he’d say, “you could crawl up in a ball and cry and mourn for me, but what would that achieve? Why don’t you just dry your eyes, calm down, step back, and live to fight another day?”

And, as in the past, I would ignore his advice and make the mistake he told me I’d make. I hated telling him this but he was always right.

Goodbye my friend, I genuinely don’t know what I’ll do without you.

Drew vs. Blogs

Look, let's face the facts shall we? Almost all blogs are boring as shit! There are some that are really cool, really creative and really interesting but the remainder are either horrifically boring, preachy or try hard. I decided to go over to my sister blog Drew's Brew and click the "next blog" button until I found a blog that was interesting or, at least, not entirely shit. The following is a list of blogs I was sent to before I found one that wasn't entirely objectionable.

http://lauramcbryde.blogspot.co.uk

http://duranscolemanblog.blogspot.co.uk

http://lodestoneandladysmantle.blogspot.co.uk

http://dianaibrahim.blogspot.co.uk

http://oakenknowesblog.blogspot.co.uk/

http://bigtubofgoo.blogspot.co.uk/

The list above mostly comprises of glorified twitter/flickr/facebook accounts and few of them have any actual direction or relevance to anyone outside their own personal circle. I only stopped at the last one because of a haiku the writer had made about whale sharks that missed a syllable on the last line and wasn't actually a haiku. I was quite fortunate, this time, to have avoided all the religious bollocks you tend to get on some blog
ging sites, I did find one called "Extreme for Christ!" But I refuse to link to something with such a ridiculous name, on principal... That and their opening gambit was "We're awesome youths and we're on fire for our awesome God!"

Hyperbole and a Half

The main problem I have with all these nothing blogs is that they dilute the market and give the whole medium a bad name when real writers, people of substance and intrigue, are producing better, more varied, much more interesting and considerably more coherent work. On some occasions I have seen status updates on Facebook that have been better thought out than several blogs I have seen. The contents of the portable toilets after a mass outbreak of food poisoning at Leeds festival is preferable to a lot of blogs I see floating around. Not to say there aren't good ones, because there are plenty! Blogs like "WTF, Evolution?" and "Badly Stuffed Animals" are among my personal favourites, and that's not to forget the queen of the blogosphere, Allie of "Hyperbole and a Half". The problem is that rays of sunshine like real life pain scales and poorly stuffed otters are so few and far between that they become statistically irrelevant, for ever site like WTF, Evolution? There are 500 about carving statues of Jesus out of potatoes or pictures of famous toe nail clippings. Even when something interesting does surface it almost instantly becomes utterly shit, the biggest example I can think of is "Goths up trees" which I found entertaining enough to subscribe to but my thought processes quickly turned from thinking "Ha! That's a goth up a tree," to "Oh... Look... Another goth up a tree," to "Oh for cunts sake! This is as fucking tedious as chewing a stress ball made of pickled pig bollocks! What the fuck is wrong with the people who keep coming back to this page? It's just people wearing black, looking sad or moody, in a tree... I know that's what it's always been but it's just not fun any more." All the creator needs to do is, every now and then, utterly slam the shit out of one of the entries, give someone a score lower than 4 out of 5, maybe give someone a 1 and really mix shit up. He should make the happy goths cry by giving them low scores and, hence, turning them into REAL GOTHS WHO DON'T KNOW THE MEANING OF THE WORD "JOY."

I don't imagine this blog is much different, except that mine has the added bonus of being about as popular as a priest in a school for abused children. I bet there are some people who actively dread when I post... Which is good. If that's you then you can go fuck yourself and, also, Ha(fucking)ha! Because if that is you then you've just read the majority of this blog! Sucks to be your awful face! ...Dick breath!

Drew vs. Facebook

What the utter fuck happened to Facebook? I remember, a long time ago, innocently browsing through my news feed and seeing between 1 and 5 things that utterly infuriated me, now there are far too many to count. Some of this is my fault, over the years I've accumulated around 700 "friends" most of which I don't even try to pretend to give a shit about and, yes, since I'm posting this ON Facebook then I'm probably talking about you. Even so, I can't be entirely at fault for the absolute tidal wave of poorly spelt musings by people who should probably learn to spell before taking to a medium that involves the medium of reading and writing to work properly. This can't just be me, there must be people out there who have a select group of Facebook friends but still get inundated with the modern version of chain letters, you know, those awful 1 paragraph non sequiturs that say something obvious and tell you to share the picture if you agree, or say something racist and ill-informed and tell you to share if you're not an illegal immigrant who came to this country to burn poppies and give children aids.

If it's not that then it's pictures of CUNTING puppies! Or some stupid shit from memebase that I thought was entertaining about a year ago but am now sick of seeing every day. There are also hilarious Facebook conversations that get screen capped, shared, and then read again on other Facebook feeds to fill the gap in the market where people weren't getting enough of reading about other people on Facebook whilst, themselves, using Facebook.

To be completely honest, there are far too many things that have pissed me off on Facebook to make a short, punchy and, most importantly, coherent blog, so what I'm going to do is give you a couple of examples of the sheer fucking idiocy that exists online amongst people that a social networking site calls my friends.

"Share or you're evil!"

This utter bunch of fuckasses tried to get this picture to go viral, which it did, and tried to insinuate that Heineken themselves were directly involved in the promotion of dog fighting. Why? Because people have too much fucking time on their hands. How do I know that Heineken didn't directly endorse this dog fight? Because I'm not a FUCKING MORON!

Look at the fucking picture! Look closer. Asian crowd I'd say, right? Has anyone here ever been to ANYWHERE in Asia? Well if you have then you'll know that in bigger cities, in bars and venues there will be advertising everywhere! A lot of the time for stuff they don't actually sell and almost always without the written consent of the company involved. Why? It's a status symbol, it's a big western brand that may well attract the fat wallets of western tourists.

This was, however, borderline successful and the number of comments I read that outrightly agreed with the simplistic and idiotic assumptions of the people who made the caption utterly sickened me. How fucking dare some utter shit manipulate the suffering of these animals for their own pointless and wholly redundant agenda. Right. Next.


"My life is horrible, tell me how pretty I am..."

Next on the list are status updates often posted by the kind of girl who is both desperate for attention but rather shy and self loathing whilst also managing to be a massive attention whore. If you think that this bit is about you then it probably is, though I'm sure it isn't, aw what's up hun? *hugs* yeah, that make it better? OF COURSE IT FUCKING DOESN'T! NO-ONE GIVES A SHIT ABOUT YOUR AWFUL AND POINTLESS LIFE.

Example status updates:

"Sick of it all..."
"I h8 lyf rite now"
"Why are people so mean?"
and my personal favourite...
" :( "

All of which are greeted with a string of supporting friends (much more supporting than I'll ever be, I've got my own problems, real ones at that,) who almost always use the word "hun" as if there was some sort of invasion and they always ALWAYS type out the word "hugs" as if typing it is a substitute for human contact... That thing they can't do without crying.

The thing is that the more someone does it, the more desperate vultures start to flock overhead. These girls just seem to love the attention and it is precisely because of this that they completely deserve to be as fucking miserable as they post that they, in fact, are.

I don't mean to pick on the girls with this one but I only know of a couple of guys who do this and their lives are bad enough without me going into it. It's not sexist... Well, maybe it is but when an attractive girl posts a status like that there's an utter swarm of admirers to pick up the pieces and offer consolation, if a guy does it then either no-one posts because no-one cares or 1 person posts to tell them they're being a soppy cunt and that if their life sucks that much that they should just kill themselves. Life obviously isn't fair sometimes, get the fuck over it.


Relig-o's

A word that I'm trying to induct into common usage as a new epithet for ALL religious people who insist on posting their WRONG opinions on Facebook and other social mediums where people can't physically fight back.

Just stop it, ok? Even children can see that ALL of your beliefs are deranged, borderline psychotic or just plain wrong. I don't want to have a Facebook argument every time you say something completely benign whilst giving Jesus a reach around because there wouldn't be enough time in the day for anything else.

The nature of Facebook, however, is that of change and these trends will probably phase out to be replaced with entire photo albums of assorted rotten veg, writing status updates backwards or reverse planking (pictures taken of unconscious people.) Whatever replaces this hand full of awfulness, I imagine, will be a whole lot worse and when that happens you can bet I'll be all over it like a picture of a tortured llama on the front page of the PETA website.